Big 12.1 Buffs and Nerfs! Is Your Main Safe?

[00:05] 12.1 on the PTR right now and everybody's holding their breath for a potential meta shift in season 2. While we cannot guarantee or discuss about the degree to which the meta will end up shifting right now, we can however give

[00:20] you the juice with our currently very biased opinions. that is getting the most amount of buffs and nerfs because yes, they come as a

[00:35] package deal. First of all, the developers had this to say about the changes. We're increasing the strength of several rotational abilities that were underperforming in the overall breakdown. Additionally, we're improving

[00:49] Frost Death Knight's consistent damage outside of cool down windows. Obliteration gameplay and tuning during Pillar of Frost remains strong allowing us to redistribute some power into the rest of the kit. Now, of course, we're

[01:03] no strangers to what the devs consider strong and okay and satisfied with the current gameplay. Suffice to say these types of developer notes can kind of apply to the rest of the specs and the general classes in 12.1 where a lot of

[01:17] damage is taken away from cool downs and put into general abilities to reduce the amount of burst and increase the amount of damage you do outside of them because we're no strangers here to DPS specs dealing tank damage when their cool

[01:29] downs are on cool down. So, if you've been watching our content so far or kept up with the 12.1 announcement, this would likely not surprise you too much as the devs did mention this stuff about a week

[01:42] ago. As such, Pillar of Frost will now increase your strength by 20% instead of the previous 30%. Additionally, Obliterate has had its damage reduced by 25%. Frost Bain nerfed by 30% and Frost Worm's Fury damage taken down by 20%.

[01:58] These are a bit harder to put into perspective because Frost Bane right now is incredibly strong and likely the reason Frost Death Knight can even keep up with top specs in dungeons while Obliterate is absolutely destroying in

[02:14] raids where Frost Decay is still king. Breath of Sindragosa is taken everywhere and since it and Frost Worm's Fury are both burst cooldowns, the chances of these slipping under the radar in 12.1 were very slim.

[02:28] To compensate for this, we have some significant buffs. Howling Blast, Icy Death Torrent, Remorseless Winter, and Frost Fever will deal 100% more damage in 12.1. If we take our current numbers into consideration, these seem like

[02:41] into consideration, these seem like decent buffs so far. But wait, there's more. Empower Rune Weapon and Glacial Advance have both been buffed by 30%. Lastly, Frost Strike will be buffed by 25% and Frost Scythe by 20. Frost Strike

[02:55] could always use more juice, but Frost Scythe needed a buff considering in regular Mythic Plus dungeons where it's mostly AoE combat, Frost Scythe does significantly less than its single-target counterpart, Obliterate.

[03:10] Lastly, Permafrost will get an increase to 35% of the damage dealt converted into a shield up from the previous 30%. This is more to do with the HP levels and damage intake going higher in season 2. More on that later. For Deathbringer,

[03:24] either way will cause Frost Fever to deal its damage 75% faster instead of the previous 100% faster. Deathly Blows will increase Frost Strike damage by 35% instead of 15. Reaper's Mark cast and explosion damage will be reduced by 25%

[03:40] and Exterminate nerfed by 17%. Considering Deathbringer is the premier hero talent right now, this is not entirely surprising either. Rider of the Apocalypse, in an interesting turn of events was also nerfed. Whitemane's

[03:54] events was also nerfed. Whitemane's Undead damage was reduced by 30%. Unholy also received some changes. Blight Burst has been nerfed to now cause Putrify to extend the duration of plagues by 3 seconds instead of 4.5. Considering with

[04:09] the Unholy changes we received so far covered in our upcoming Unholy video, I would get to over 2 minutes duration on my plagues. This nerf is a nothing burger. Same thing with Runic Power spenders extending plagues by 1 second

[04:23] instead of 1.5. An interesting change is that now Dread Plague will retain its extended duration when applied to a new target within 40 yards of the Death Knight. In case you've been playing any dot class for years like Assassination

[04:37] or Affliction, how about this nugget? It only took Dread Plague for Unholy less than 6 months of live gameplay to receive a change that other classes have been asking for for years. Fun.

[04:56] Starting with Havoc, Trail of Ruin will now have the damage applied immediately rather than as a dot for 4 seconds. Now actually, I'm not 100% sure how this currently works on live with the double Blade Dance gameplay and if the dot

[05:10] actually stacks when applied twice. But the fact that this change is in season 2 leads me to believe it either did not stack and just refreshed or it was a mess to tune properly. Havoc is also not a dot class. Supporting instant damage

[05:25] for president. Down with the damage over time. Serrated Glaive received a quality of life change where the buff to deal extra damages well a buff now on you instead of being a debuff on the enemies and it will last for 12 seconds instead

[05:40] of 15, but really not sure if this makes a difference. It does help to maintain the damage increase without worrying your target will die in the process. Blind Fury will now generate 10 and 20 Fury respectively down from 15 and 30.

[05:53] Inner Demon was moved to a new choice node with Chaos Theory. The moment they made Inner Demon be on the same talent node with Chaotic Transformation, they essentially killed it. Chaos Theory is meh and not taken at the moment. And

[06:08] Inner Demon is also meh, so they deserve each other. Vengeance got big changes. Not many, but impactful ones. First of all, Sigil of Chains is now a baseline ability. Finally! I was getting really tired choosing between my best utility

[06:22] spell and survivability. This experiment was made with Blood Death Knight for almost 6 years and it never yielded the results they were hoping for. Putting utility as a choice with throughput, whether it is damage or effective health

[06:35] gain through mitigation, will make that utility absolutely dead because of two things. One, WoW is not a game that optimizes player skill, which means if you are skilled enough, you can bypass mechanics. Meaning utilities optional

[06:50] since with enough skill you can play around it. Making utility versus player power never a fair choice to make. Player power always wins. Two, WoW and in particular Mythic Plus where utility is actually important is an endlessly

[07:04] scaling content. Meaning that there will always be a point and need for you to invest in throughput numbers once again. Be that damage or tankiness and combat isn't designed in such a way where utility can bypass lack of DPS or

[07:20] survivability. Not anymore and not in a significant matter. And this kind of utility like Sigil of Chains will never make the cut. So, player power wins once make the cut. So, player power wins once again.

[07:36] buffs across the board. We will have a video for each spec on our channel talking about all of that. Today though, we want to tackle the new changes announced recently for Guardian Druid's Apex talent. First, the Apex have been

[07:49] reworked with the announcement of the 12.1 last week. Well, this week they have been tuned a bit and likely nerfed as well. First of all, the first node gives you a 10% chance when spending rage to awaken a guardian spirit for 8

[08:02] seconds. It will attack your enemy whenever you use thrash or mangle for quite a bit of damage. The second node will make mangle, maul, raise, and ravage deal 40% additional nature damage over 12 seconds, while also increasing

[08:16] your mastery passively. Lastly, the rank three makes it so when a spirit is awakened, the cool down of thrash and mangle are reset, their damage increased by 30% while the spirit is active, and you generate eight rage when it attacks.

[08:31] Additionally, casting incarn or berserk gives you a charge of wild guardian, making your next raise or maul or ravage awaken a spirit guaranteed. Currently, this seems to be bugged as we are testing it on the PTR. We don't actually

[08:45] have end-game content to test to begin with, so training dummy is what you will get. The chance to spawn seems to be lower than 10%, and the spirit does not seem to last for 8 seconds. I'm sure these will be fixed.

[08:58] sure. Also, more worrisome is that the spirit, once summoned, charges in a weird direction on a weird target not even in combat with you. We remember such bugs being present on Brewmaster where they

[09:13] threw barrels away, and instead of landing on their target, they just landed in another room full of mobs pulling everything in a ninja style way that wiped groups. I'm not saying that this will make it to live, but that

[09:26] other one did make it to live, and we've reported that in the beta for midnight. So, you keep your fingers crossed, I keep my fingers crossed, and we all pray to Xal'atath.

[09:38] definitely more interesting than just empowering abilities. Again, more details when we get our bear coverage video out there for you.

[09:52] really quickly here since there's not much announced for them, but it's important what has changed. For Evoker, Panacea healing has been increased by 25% while augmentation gets 25% extra healing on the five set and molten

[10:06] blood. Monk has silent sanctuary buffed by 25% and wind walker in particular has by 25% and wind walker in particular has expel harm buffed by 25% as well. These numbers might not mean much to you until you understand that the devs are buffing

[10:19] you understand that the devs are buffing all of our health levels in 12.1 by 25% but also the damage enemies do to us by 25% as well. All hybrid classes receive the similar treatment. This is just an addition to that since Monk and Evoker

[10:32] already had most of their healing abilities increased last week when the patch was announced. Again, similar to the druid discussion, we will have individual spec videos for these in the future.

[10:49] paladin video, in due PTR fashion, changes have been announced to the four set that will have to get us to reshoot it again. I'll just tell you what the tier set does and what the changes will do in case you already have seen the

[11:01] initial set bonus. Your two piece will give you a 10% extra chance to get divine purpose and when you consume the proc, your holy damage is increased for 12 seconds by 10%. Your initial four set made it so that if you consume divine

[11:14] purpose with divine storm, regardless of the number of enemies that you are fighting, you would make your next Templar verdict free and deal extra damage by shooting a divine arbiter at your enemies. The problem with the four

[11:27] set was that there were too many free spender procs and you ended up capping resources left and right, turning generators like judgement into kind of useless buns. More on this in the red video. But, the change we had to the

[11:41] faucet made it so that instead of your next Templar verdict being free, consuming divine purpose with device or will buff your next two Templar verdicts to just summon the extra arbiter for extra damage. The rotation is way better

[11:54] with this version of the buff, and the gameplay remains engaging with you needing to be aware of your procs so that you don't accidentally consume them that you don't accidentally consume them with the wrong ability.

[12:12] healing increased by 25%, similar to what we have seen on Evoker and Monk. Additionally, on top of the previously announced changes, the 12.1 Stormkeeper ability for elemental will work as follows. It will make your next two

[12:27] lightning bolts or chain lightnings instant cast with an extra effect. Lightning bolt will deal 150% more damage, while chain lightning will proc an elemental overload on every enemy hit. Enhancement is getting a series of

[12:41] buffs. Lightning bolt and chain lightning will deal 20% more damage. Lava lash, storm strike, and melee weapon swings will deal 15% more damage. To keep in tune with the burst philosophy, Doom Winds will be nerfed to

[12:55] increase the chances of Windfury activating by 50% instead of 100%. Still for enhancement, Tempest from Stormbringer deals 10% less damage on your main target and 30% less on the rest. Totemic surging totem tremor

[13:09] damage was reduced by 15% and the surging bolt damage reduced by 10%.

[13:22] getting the drain life healing buffed by 25% and Zevrim's resilience also buffed by 25% while Arms is getting an additional 25% absorb increase on ignore pain. These two have not received their healing buffs last week like the other

[13:36] address that. We will keep you updated with every class changes we get as the PTR gets more content [music] for us to test. In the meantime, check the actual 12.1 video that we made to get you acquainted with the content, but also

[13:51] acquainted with the content, but also all of these class changes.