Patch 3.0.8 Death Knight, Druid, and Hunter Changes (revis.)

I’m going to be covering all the recent Blue posts on classes in regards to upcoming changes in patch 3.0.8. I’ll also include some undocumented changes with classes and coming up. It’s safe to assume that we’re getting very close to patch 3.0.8 being released live as a new build was pushed through recently.

To keep things short and not really drag out the post into this massive long scrolling mess, I’ll be breaking it down into about 5 separate posts 3-4 classes each.

Death Knight
Blood

• Will of the Necropolis has been changed – Damage that would take you below 35% health is reduced by 5/10/15%.

Frost

• Killing Machine now gives Your melee attacks a chance to make your next Icy Touch, Howling Blast or Frost Strike a critical strike. (Old – 10/20/30/40/50% from critical strike)

Unholy

• Virulence now reduces the chance that your damage over time diseases can be cured by 10/20/30%. (Old – Affected all spells)
• Necrosis now give your auto attacks an additional 4/8/12/16/20% shadow damage. (Up from 2/4/6/8/10%)
• Summon Gargoyle now persists up to 30 seconds (Down from 1 minute). Damage from Gargoyles has been reduced from 64-86 to 51-69.
• Anti-Magic Zone now lasts up to 10 seconds. (Down from 30 seconds)

Ghoul

• Gnaw cooldown has been increased from 20 to 30 seconds.

Glyphs

• Glyph of Death Strike now increases your Death Strike’s damage by 2% for every 5 runic power you currently have.  The runic power is not consumed by this effect.
• Glyph of Raise Dead  – Your Raise Dead spell no longer requires a reagent. (Old – You generate 20 runic power whenever you summon a ghoul.)
• Glyph of Obliterate – Increases the damage of your Obliterate ability by 20%. (Old – Your Obliterate strikes for 20% additional weapon damage)
• Glyph of Death and Decay – Damage of your Death and Decay spell increased by 20%. (Old – Targets of your Death and Decay Damage of your Death and Decay have a 10% chance to cower in fear for 2 sec)
• Glyph of Bone Shield – Adds 2 additional charges to your Bone Shield. (Up from 1)
• Glyph of Anti-Magic Shell – Increases the duration of your Anti-Magic Shell by 2sec. (Old – Also increased cooldown by 15 seconds)

Items

• The Death Knight PvP sets gauntlets have been changed once again, the new bonus is: Whenever you cast Chains of Ice, there is a chance that your Frost Rune will immediately refresh. (Screenshot)

Killing Machine Proc rate changed
Killing Machine is a “ppm” now or a proc per minute. That means it will proc 5 times a minute with 5 ranks, depending on your weapon speed. We generally use ppm when we do not want players to gravitate towards faster weapons with the sole purpose of improving proc rates.

Killing Machine now is based on auto attack hits, not crits. Overall the random element will decrease, but it won’t greatly benefit faster weapons. It will still benefit dual wield, just not as much. (source)

Vampiric Blood Nerfed
Vampiric Blood is 15% health and 35% healing in 3.0.8. (source)

Shadow of Death
We’re not happy with the way this ability is working in Arena. Honestly, Shadow of Death has been a pretty buggy talent for much of its existence, and you have my apologies for that. It was a neat idea but it’s been a huge pain in the neck. (Source)

Druid
Balance

• Subtlety now reduces the chance your helpful spells, Moonfire, and Insect Swarm will be dispelled by 10/20/30%. (Old – Affected all spells)

Restoration

• Moonglow now also reduce the mana cost of Nourish.
• Nourish now also effects Wild Growth.

Shielding shapeshifted targets (Feral Druids)
We did fix, to the best of our knowledge, the bug with shielding shapeshifted targets. It may not have been made in time to show up on the PTR. (Source)

Aquatic Form trainable at level 16 and related quest
I’m fairly certain we’re not removing the quest, it simply won’t be required for the aquatic form. (Source)

Hunter
Beast Mastery

• Ferocious Inspiration now also increase the damage of Arcane Shot by 3/6/9%

Survival

• Lock and Load now has a 30 seconds cooldown.
• Explosive shot damage has been slightly decreased and now deal {RAP*0.16+428}-{RAP*0.16+428} Fire damage at level 80. (Down from {RAP*0.18+476}-{RAP*0.18+476})

Marksmanship

• Improved Stings now reduces the chance your Sting damage over time effects will be dispelled by 10/20/30%. (Old – Affected all stings)

Pet

• Spirit Strike (Spirit Beast) damage has been decreased and now Burns the enemy for 49 to 65 Arcane damage and an additional 49 to 65 damage over 6 sec at max rank. (Down from 85 to 115)
• Rake (Cat) damage has been increased, now deals 47-67 (Up from 24-34) bleed damage and an additional 19-25 (up from 10-24) damage over 9 seconds at max rank.
• Scorpid Poison damage has been increased. (From 45 to 100 Nature damage over 10 sec for the last rank)

Prowl / Spirit Beast bug
We fixed this bug. Prowl was designed to work with cats, so it wasn’t set up to look for ranged, non-physical attacks. Spirit Beasts have gotten a lot of love, and we certainly run the risk that they will feel like mandatory pets now. We’ll see. (Source)

Hunter nerfs in 3.0.8 and effects on scaling
To repeat, I did not say we will nerf you now and buff you later. I said we are going to nerf hunters now because we think they need it. Scaling, which is sometimes a valid concern, is not a valid concern in this case because we are going to change the numbers before anyone can acquire gear higher than a 226 item level. We are not changing the numbers to buff or nerf hunters at that point. We are changing them for entirely different reasons which we hope to be able to talk about once we have had a chance to iterate on them some more. (Source)