Patch 12.1 PTR: Class Reworks & System Revamps — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:02] huge class changes to go over this week, including another spec revamp, some huge nerfs for specific classes, as well as some targeted healer changes. The new corruption-like powers available in patch 12.1 were completely revamped, so

[00:16] they work in a totally different way now, and the friends list has been redesigned with new features and functionality. The final quest for the Omnium Folio just became available, and the dev team made the entire quest line

[00:29] easier to complete. This is also the last week to start your turbulent timewaste adventures if you don't want to miss out on some epic rewards. Now, before we jump in, be sure to hit that like button and subscribe so you never

[00:41] miss another video. Let's kick things off with this week's round of class buffs and nerfs, starting with the demon hunters. For devourer, hungering slash now properly grants a temporary charge of vengeful retreat

[00:55] rather than giving a free cast and also resetting its cooldown. For Havoc, the inertia effect has been nerfed down to a 12% damage bonus, but it will last for 6 seconds up from five. So, you get an extra second of uptime, which should

[01:08] increase your overall uptime of the buff, but the damage bonus itself is lower. For the druids, the restoet bonus has been redesigned to now cause nature swiftness, tranquility, incarnation tree

[01:22] of life, or convoke the spirits to have a 100% chance to grant genesis, and its duration is increased by 4 seconds. So, you have plenty more ways to trigger that big heal overtime bonus. Moving on to the hunters for beast

[01:37] mastery, beast cleave can no longer be cancelled, which should stop any questionable gameplay around that buff. For marksmanship, explosive shot damage was doubled, but now only explodes for 50% of its damage to nearby enemies. So,

[01:51] more damage to the actual target and a lower portion being dealt as AoE. That should make it much easier to tune in single target encounters without it getting out of hand in AoE scenarios. And then survival has a lot of changes

[02:05] this week. Flame fang pitch has been removed. I guess the whole fire patch style of gameplay wasn't particularly popular. They'll have a new talent that increases the damage, crit chance, and crit damage of Wildfire Bomb. Wildfire

[02:19] Embument was redesigned to give you and your pets auto attacks some extra fire damage. Grenade juggler now gives Wildfire Bomb a chance to increase the recharge rate of wildfire bomb significantly. Lunge was buffed up to a

[02:32] 3% agility bonus baseline, but now it only provides an extra 1% while dual wielding. Wildfire shells now grants 5 seconds of cooldown reduction to wildfire bombs. The new two set now causes Mongoose Fury to increase the

[02:45] damage of wildfire bombs by 10% and the four set causes boomstick to extend the duration of Mongoose Fury and increases Mongoose Fury effects by 10%. The pack leader Hog Strider buff now lasts much longer, but it will be cancelled when

[03:00] you start a raid encounter or mythic plus dungeon. For Sentinel, Moon's blessing now grants six seconds of wildfire bomb reduction, up from four. And Sentinel's mark duration was increased up to 16 seconds. So, a lot of

[03:12] increased up to 16 seconds. So, a lot of changes for survival this week. Paladins are up next, and Protection has quite a few nerfs. Hammer and Anvil damage will see a 20% nerf. Instrument of the divine now shares a choice node

[03:25] with Soloulless instead of Sanctuary. Bullwalk of Righteous Fury increases the damage of your next shield of the righteous by 10% per stack, down from 20% per stack. And the new four set bonus now deals 100% increased damage on

[03:38] a crit strike, down from 200%. So that should reduce the overall damage potential of prop paladins by quite a bit, which has been quite high so far in the 12.1 PTR. Moving on to the priests, Holy has even

[03:53] more mana cost changes. flash heal and prayer of healing will see 10% reductions to their mana costs. The apex talent benediction's healing was increased by 15% and the rank three effect has been updated. So Apotheiois

[04:06] no longer upgrades flash heal to Benediction and Holywood Serenity now does it instead. So you should be able to trigger that effect more reliably and far more often. For the Shadow Priests, Idol of N'oth's insanity generation is

[04:19] getting cut in half down to two insanity at 50 stacks and six insanity at 100 stacks. There are a few bug fixes for tentacle slam and void form, and the new foret bonus has been redesigned to let you cast void volley at 125%

[04:34] effectiveness instead of a free use of vampiric touch, which makes a lot more sense and should be more impactful overall. And then the archon focused outburst hero talent has been nerfed to unleash void bullies at 25%

[04:47] effectiveness all the way down from 100%. Which is a huge nerf overall. Shamans are up next with a couple of buffs for resto. Healing rain healing was increased by 20% and healing wave healing will see a 10% buff. For the

[05:02] toemic hero talent tree, pulse capacitor now increases healing done by surging totem by 10% down from 25% and surging totem now increases the effectiveness of healing rain by 10% down from 20%. So buffs for resto baseline with a few

[05:18] nerfs for the toemic hero talent tree. Moving on to the warlocks, there are a interacting with soul leech properly, so those bugs have been addressed. For affliction specifically, patient zero has been removed and a new talent has

[05:33] been introduced that increases the damage of drain life, causes siphon life to increase corruption damage, causes dark harvest to channel faster, and deal more damage. For destruction, they're going to see a 5% damage nerf across the

[05:47] board, which is a bit odd considering they just got a large buff to their damage dealt last week. So, I guess the dev team overestimated with those buffs. cooldown manager and the new four set bonus has been updated to increase

[06:01] damage from all sources instead of just Echo of Sargeras damage. So that should offset that 5% nerf at least a little bit. That's not all though. Just before this week's mythic raid testing began, the

[06:14] dev team pushed some hot fixes to the PTR focused specifically on healers. For resto druids, abundance increases the crit chance of regrowth by 60% and reduces its cost by 60%. And regrowth healing was increased by 25%. For

[06:30] preservation, dream breath healing over time was nerfed by 25%, Marithra's blessing saw a 10% nerf. Living flame healing was increased by 30%. Verdant embrace healing saw a 40% buff. Reverberations causes Verdant Embrace to

[06:45] heal for 40% over 8 seconds, down from 60%. The new class set triggers living 60%. The new class set triggers living flame at 100% value down from 150% and life spark increases healing and damage of living flame by 100% up from 50%. So

[06:59] quite a lot of adjustments for preservation evokers this week. Now mistw weavers are not going to be happy chappies this week. They saw an 8% nerf across the board for all healing done which is definitely going to sting. But

[07:13] their mastery healing was increased by 50%. So, at least it's not all bad news. Holy Paladin saw an 11% mana cost decrease for Holy Shock, and its healing was increased by 50%, which seems kind of crazy considering all of the buffs

[07:29] they got last week. And then for the priests, DISC is going to see a 15% buff to penance damage and healing. Grim deliverance now increases Shadowman healing by 40% and increases its cast time by.3 seconds, down from.5 seconds.

[07:44] Atonement healing now falls off faster when healing more than five targets. And void shield has been nerfed yet again, this time by an additional 10%. For Holy Priest, Prayer of Mending saw a 20% buff, and Oracle's prompt prognosis

[07:58] healing was increased by 30%. So, a lot of lastminute changes for healers specifically this week. That's all for this week's round of class buffs and nerfs. And with the patch only about 4 weeks away at this point, we don't have

[08:12] too much longer for classes to reach a good place before we're all gallivanting around the coil aisle and digging into all of this new content. It's not just class balance tuning, though. There have been quite a lot of

[08:25] updates for the 12.1 PTR this week, including a complete revamp of the way corrosive powers work. When the PTR first became available, you could use corrosive powers to apply a special effect to bracer and belt slot items. It

[08:40] reminds me a lot of corruption from back in BFA. The power or effect was random each time you applied it, and you would have to keep using a corrosive soul until you got the one you wanted. Curiously, past that point, there didn't

[08:53] seem to be any other use for these souls. So, if you got lucky and you got the best power or effect on your first try, you wouldn't really use any more corrosive souls until you got a new piece of gear in one of those two slots.

[09:05] On the other hand, if you were very unlucky, you could spend hundreds of these things and not get the power you wanted. I guess that's probably one of the reasons why the entire system was scrapped and redesigned in this week's

[09:19] PTR build. We'll still be collecting corrosive souls and they come from many of the same places like by taking part in the vault of Italy open world content from completing cursed surges in the coiled isle the new lair boss from the

[09:33] prey system and from completing bountiful delves. The main change is for how you use these souls. All of the powers are now tied to the altar of corrosion in the vaults of Italute and you can unlock them by

[09:46] spending eight corrosive souls per power. You can have one power active at a time and you can change the altar whenever you want. This means you can always get the exact power you want as early as you want and it's not tied to a

[09:59] specific piece of gear so you don't have to worry about replacing it over and over. After you unlock eight different powers, you'll be able to have two active at a time, doubling the value this system offers. Quite a few of these

[10:11] powers seem to be very strong, so you should see significant damage boosts with each power you enable. As an extra bonus, you'll be able to find mini altars of corrosion at the start of your delve runs, so you can swap things

[10:23] around at the start of any delve you run if you want to. Now, all of these powers are still only active in the open world and in delves. So, they're openw world powers first and foremost. They won't offer any advantages in PvP, dungeons,

[10:38] or raid, which is a good thing and a bad thing in my opinion. This means they aren't required content for high-end players. So, you can skip over this feature if you primarily push high keys or do heroic or mythic raiding. But then

[10:50] that also means those players kind of get less content from the zone as a whole. Either way, if your end game in WoW currently consists mostly of open world content, prey hunts, and delves, these bonuses should give you a big

[11:04] boost to help clear higher tiers or difficulties much easier. Another big update we have in this week's PTR build is a complete overhaul of the friends list and how it looks. It's got more of a modern feel to it now

[11:17] with each line or friend taking up quite a bit more space. Most of the tabs still together on the right hand side with icons instead of being split up between the top and bottom as tabs. So, we've got the friends list, recent allies,

[11:32] quick join, friend requests, and raid. The only two options missing from the old friends list are the who tab, which you can still access by typing /h who in window. That one doesn't seem to be

[11:46] dev team are planning to do something else with that in the future. One very cool update is the ability to add tags to your friends, so you can know what activities that player might like to take part in or why they're on your

[12:01] friends who always have their crafting professions sorted and they're your go-to crafters, you can tick the professions box, and that will appear when you hover over your friend. If some folks are really into PvP, but not

[12:14] really dungeons or raiding, you can mark that, too. And there are even tags for DPS, healers, and tanks. That should help you keep track of what each friend does and what roles they play if you need an extra body for battlegrounds,

[12:26] dungeons, or whatever else. But where this starts to shine is with the filters at the top. You can sort your friends by their status, which would be useful if you want players who are actively online and playing. But then you can also sort

[12:39] them by tags. So if you're only looking for a DPS or a healer, or if you want to run a dungeon or a delve, you can sort your friends list to show who might fit the bill for whatever content you're running. So you can reach out to those

[12:51] players first and hopefully get a group going faster. There's also a search bar specific friends without having to scroll through your entire list. It's a pretty cool update, and while it's not necessarily game-changing, it is always

[13:04] nice to see these kinds of features get some extra functionality. The last little update in this week's PTR build is for Mythic Plus dungeons. contributes to the overall trash

[13:18] requirement for your dungeon run has finally been added to the default tool tell you how much percent each monster is worth anymore. And with it being available as part of the default UI, that means this information should

[13:31] always be accurate. You can still use an add-on to change how that information is presented if you prefer certain visuals, but with it being a baseline option. That's one less add-on that you need to maximize your potential in Mythic Plus

[13:45] dungeons. Moving on, this week introduces the last quest for the Omnium Folio system, so you can finally unlock every power in this new talent tree. The last point doubles the damage or healing of your core rune, doubles the damage or

[14:00] healing over time effect, or gives the rune a damage accumulation effect. Adding that to everything else gives the Omnium Folio at least a little bit of a punch. Now, remember, all of these runes and powers will be active for the rest

[14:13] of the Midnight expansion. the dev team has confirmed as much. So that not only includes patch 12.1 and season 2, which we're going into very shortly, but also we're going into very shortly, but also patch 12.2 and season 3 as well. So

[14:26] they're definitely worth unlocking. It's just free damage and healing that could help you complete all kinds of content faster and easier over the next year or so of World of Warcraft. To make completing your Omnium Folio objectives

[14:39] a bit easier, a new portal has been added right next to the Majesters's missive in the same area as the field accolade vendors. That portal takes you straight to the Magesters in the Terrace Library. And there's even a portal back

[14:52] to Silver Moon. So, if the small trek back and forth to the quest givers was the main reason why you were putting off the Omnium Folio quest line, you'll be glad to know that these portals cut out any flying or walking required.

[15:07] And then to round out this video, this is the last week to start the Turbulent to earn the Master of the Turbulent Timeways 5 achievement. The achievement requires you to complete four time walking dungeons per week for four weeks

[15:21] during the event, and there's only 3 weeks left after the next weekly reset. The event ends on August 11th, so you'll need to get your first week's credit before Tuesday the 21st for NA Realms or Wednesday the 22nd for EU Realms. If you

[15:36] left in the event to earn the meta achievement and the spawn of Vyronoth mount. You can complete time walking dungeons and earn the buff on any character for each of those weeks. It doesn't have to be on the same character

[15:50] level up some alts or gear up some characters before the end of season 1, go get some time walking dungeons done. You only need four to earn the buff each week, and the cues have been pretty quick for the most part. The buff also

[16:04] gives you a huge experience boost while it lasts up to 30% if you stack it all alts much faster. So, that's a great way to complete multiple goals at the same time. But that's all of the updates we have so far. So, that's it for this

[16:19] week's WoW news video. What do you think of this week's round of class buffs and nerfs? And what are you most looking forward to in patch 12.1 and season 2 of Midnight? Leave all your thoughts in the comment section below. A big thank you

[16:32] and to all of our members here on YouTube. You can see their names on supporting the channel, you can find links to the description or click the join button just below the video. If you enjoyed the video or found it useful in

[16:45] that notification bell so you're always kept up to date. Thanks for watching folks. Good luck and have fun. And as always, I will see you next time.