Shadowlands Beta Class Tuning Recap - Guide Writer Insights & Opinions

Beta Posted 2020/10/27 at 2:06 AM by Squishei

Class and Spell Changes Recap Build 36294clicking here

Numerous Soulbind Ability buffs within each Covenant, with capstone abilities moved to the start of each tree.

Every class had tuning changes to Conduits and Conduit Ranks. See the Chaos Theory Legendary buffed. Sinful Brand Covenant ability nerfed.

Hunter Serpentstalker's Trickery Legendary reworked. Flayed Shot Covenant ability nerfed.

Priest tuning to some Core Abilities and talents. Painbreaker Psalm Legendary changed.

Rogue All Covenant abilities had tuning changes, and Sepsis sees a rework, now allowing use of a stealth ability without the spontaneous Vanish effect, and granting a Combo Point.

Shaman Covenant ability Chain Harvest damage nerfed.
Elemental Shaman Legendaries Echoes of Great Sundering, Skybreaker's Fiery Demise and Windspeaker's Lava Resurgence had tuning changes.

Enhancement Shaman Legendaries Doom Winds, Legacy of the Frost Witch, Primal Lava Actuators and Witch Doctor's Wolf Bones had tuning changes.

Restoration Shaman Legendaries Spiritwalker's Tidal Totem and Earthen Harmony had tuning changes.

Comments From Class WritersDatamining PostHavoc Demon Hunter Analysis

Chaos Theory Blade Dance has a 10%30% chance to grant you Chaotic Blades, increasing the damage of Chaos Strike by 25%50% and its chance to refund Fury by an additional 60% for 8 sec.
Inventory Type: Waist, Hands

Sinful Brand Brand an enemy with the mark of the Venthyr, reducing their melee attack speed by 30%, their casting speed by 30%, and inflicting (520%338% of Attack power) Shadow damage over 8 sec.
Activating Metamorphosis applies Sinful Brand to all nearby enemies.

Dancing with Fate (Potency Conduit) Blade Dance has a 5.0% chance to apply Essence Break.The final slash of Blade Dance deals an additional 10.0% damage.
Rank changes:

5.0%	5.5%	6.0%	6.5%	7.0%	7.5%	8.0%	8.5%	9.0%	10.0%	11.0%	12.0%	13.0%	14.0%	15.0%
10.0%	11.0%	12.0%	13.0%	14.0%	15.0%	16.0%	17.0%	18.0%	19.0%	20.0%	21.0%	22.0%	23.0%	24.0%

Havoc Demon HunterKib

Chaos Theory: Straight up buff is nice, and the Legendary still suffers from RNG but going from 10% to 30% makes it way more reliable on top of the buff in damage too. It's definitely a welcome change to help with ST damage, a very weak aspect of Havoc.
Dancing with Fate: Very disappointed to see this change. As it stands Essence Break is a pretty weak talent in comparison to Cycle of Hatred and First Blood and this Conduit would've allowed us to gain the talent in some way. With this change this Conduit falls down the pecking order quite heavily. We're waiting on final tuning obviously but very disappointed with this change.
Sinful Brand: Not really surprised to be honest. Sinful Brand has been extremely powerful since it was first introduced. Something to keep in mind when looking at covenants is that they are a lot more than just the Covenant ability. The Sinful Brand nerf hurts Venthyr obviously, but the Venthyr Soulbinds are some of the strongest Soulbinds for Havoc and that didn't change.

Marksmanship Hunter Analysis

Serpentstalker's Trickery When Aimed Shot hits multiple targets from the Trick Shots effect, 3 enemies struck by the Aimed Shot also get hit by an
Chimaera Shot
Chimaera Shot
Arcane Shot.
Inventory Type: Shoulder, Fingerfires a Serpent Sting at the primary target.
Inventory Type: Shoulder, Finger

Flayed Shot Fire a shot at your enemy, causing them to bleed for (250%87.5% of Attack power) Shadow damage over 2014 sec. Each time Flayed Shot deals damage, you have a 15%10% chance to gain Flayer's Mark, causing your next Kill Shot to be free and usable on any target, regardless of their current health.
Cast Time changed from Instant to Attack speed

Marksmanship HunterMoofz

Serpentstalker's Trickery previously gave Marksmanship Hunters an incredible amount of burst in AoE. The legendary has recently been reworked. Rather then shooting off multiple Arcane Shots or Chimaera Shots after each Aimed Shot, it now shoots a single Serpent Sting onto the primary target. It does not spread with Trick Shots like its previous iteration. Many Hunters dislike this change as it took some of the fun and burst AoE potential away from us. However, it’s now our best single target legendary by a fair bit, and gives Marksmanship some much needed spread cleave potential, allowing us to multi-dot by alternating Aimed Shots.
Flayed Shot was nerfed in this previous Beta build. Previously it competed for best single target option for most Hunter specs. The change was questionable as Flayed Shot served zero purpose in AoE, and was only viable for single target scenarios. Now it serves little to no purpose at all and there is little incentive damage-wise to go Venthyr. On the bright side, the DoT from Flayed Shot is now Hasted, meaning it will scale better as we gain more secondaries in later tiers.

Discipline Priest Analysis

Mind Sear
Discipline:
Corrosive shadow energy radiates from the target, dealing 14.824%12.6% of Spell power) * 6] Shadow damage over 4.5 sec to all enemies within 10 yards of the target.
Shadow:
Corrosive shadow energy radiates from the target, dealing 14.824%12.6% of Spell power) * 6] Shadow damage over 4.5 sec to all enemies within 10 yards of the target.
Generates 6 Insanity over the duration per target hit.

Discipline PriestJak

Both Holy and Discipline received buffs to underperforming conduits. Discipline received a slight nerf to Mind Sear which, like other AoE damage, only transfers to Atonement off the first enemy hit. Mind Sear will still see use when extra damage is needed on large packs of enemies.

Shadow Priest Analysis

Devouring Plague Afflicts the target with a disease that instantly causes (76.5%65% of Spell power) Shadow damage plus an additional 4 Shadow damage over 6 sec. Heals you for 50% of damage dealt.
If this effect is reapplied, any remaining damage will be added to the new Devouring Plague.

Mastery: Shadow Weaving Your damage is increased by 4.0% for each of Shadow Word: Pain, Vampiric Touch and Devouring Plague on the target. During Void FormVoidform, all targets receive the maximum effect.

Mind Flay Assaults the target's mind with Shadow energy, causing (151.44%128.4% of Spell power) Shadow damage over 4.5 sec and slowing their movement speed by 50%.
Shadow
Generates 18 Insanity over the duration.

Shadow Priest Effect #1 Effect #12 Apply Aura: Modifies Effect #2's Value
Value: 700800
Affected Spells:

Auspicious SpiritsSearing NightmareDissonant Echoes

2.5%

2.8%

3.0%

3.3%

3.5%

3.8%

4.0%

4.3%

4.5%

4.8%

5.0%

5.3%

5.5%

5.8%

6.0%

3.1%

3.4%

3.7%

4.0%

4.3%

4.7%

5.0%

5.3%

5.6%

5.9%

6.2%

6.5%

6.8%

7.1%

7.4%

Rabid Shadows

15.0%

16.5%

18.0%

19.5%

21.0%

22.5%

24.0%

25.5%

27.0%

28.5%

30.0%

31.5%

33.0%

34.5%

36.0%

19.0%

20.9%

22.8%

24.7%

26.6%

28.5%

30.4%

32.3%

34.2%

36.1%

38.0%

31.5%

41.8%

43.7%

45.6%

Shadow PriestDjriff

Dark Thoughts: Should be more than 1 stack, duration is in a good spot.
Mind Flay/Devouring Plague Nerf: It was a bit too strong relative to the rest of Shadow's damage spells. The nerf creates a more healthy damage profile but are an overall damage nerf and will need to be compensated with tuning as Shadow was not performing well in Shadowlands without BFA's borrowed power.
Mind Blast Insanity Buff: This is a good change. The reduction in Mind Flay damage also makes this spell feel better to cast.
Auspicious Spirits: The insanity change is a revert to a nerf we had awhile ago. Overall, this change doesn't do anything and the loss of extra damage is just a nerf. We'll still likely take Auspicious Spirits in every scenario.
Painbreaker Psalm: The changes make it so we'll need to reapply our dots more for a minimal tradeoff gain. We're not really sure what the role of this legendary actually is.
Dissonant Echoes: A good change, it will alter the value of Misery on single target encounters
Rabid Shadows: Another flat buff. An another note, this conduit acts like a dot that doesn't have a partial tick, causing some upgrades to not grant you any DPS as you won't get another swing with your Shadowfiend or Mindbender. It's further convoluted by the amount of haste you have.

Rogue Analysis

Echoing Reprimand Deal (135%110% of Attack power) Arcane damage to an enemy, extracting their anima to Animacharge a combo point for 45 sec.
Damaging finishing moves that consume the same number of combo points as your Animacharge function as if they consumed 7 combo points.
Awards 3 combo point.2 combo point.
Effect #1 Effect #1 School Damage
Value: 0 (AP mod: 1.351.1)

Flagellation

Effect #1 School Damage
Value: 0 (AP mod: 0.050.06)

SepsisSerrated Bone Spike

Effect #1 School Damage
Value: 0 (AP mod: 0.60.1)

RogueMystler

After a lot of back and forth, Rogue covenant abilities are starting to look like what we may see when we sneak into the Shadowlands. This is highlighted by several tuning passes as well as changes that obviously have tuning in mind. Let me go through the current state of Rogue covenant abilities and the outlook.

Echoing Reprimand (Kyrian): Over the past few weeks we saw an overall pretty heavy buff to the instant damage of the ability. That buff brought it more in line with the other covenant abilities and shifted more value away from the combo point minigame to the basic attack. Consuming the animacharge with a damage finisher was changed to also scale passive interactions as if they used 7 combo points. This is very helpful with things like Restless Blades, Deepening Shadows, or Ruthlessness. While I'm personally not a fan of the minigame and it still has the issues of having thresholds that can be hard to get (probably causing you to ignore the minigame rotationally and just waiting to match at some point), it looks like it is here to stay.
Serrated Bone Spike (Necrolord): The ability that was pretty much overpowered for most of the alpha and beta got the expected nerf. Damage was reduced across the board and the unintended fracture mechanic (which was not on the main tooltip and always seemed like a leftover) was removed. This makes bone spike easier to understand again with gameplay being entirely in using the 3 charges for DoTs and combo points. It also eliminates some bugs with fractures from dead targets quirks like that which we have seen on Beta. Main drawback is that the heavy nerfs put this in a weird place for the Subtlety AoE rotation. It may look like the best AoE covenant ability but targets have to be alive for quite a while to be worth the use.
Sepsis (Night Fae): Sepsis has not changed too much aside from one rather important thing: Instead of triggering a free Vanish, it now grants a buff which allows the ability to cast a stealth-requiring spell, such as Ambush, Sap, or Cheap Shot. As such, Sepsis no longer synergizes with stealth effects such as Master Assassin or Subterfuge. While this does remove some interesting gameplay, this change is a welcome sight in order to make this ability actually balanceable. The free Vanish was heavily favoring Assassination and legendaries that synergize with Vanish, basically making it impossible to tune it so that it is viable with and without those synergies. The new approach is much less impactful but allows it to come in line with the other covenant abilities. Main value is in the DoT and the empowered DoT tick, with the stealth ability being a gimmick on top. Oh, and this also fixes the open world problem of resetting enemies that don't die fast enough with the free Vanish.
Flagellation (Venthyr): In place of Slaughter, Venthyr Rogues have received an entirely redesigned covenant ability. Flagellation now reminds a lot of the Ashvane's Razor Coral trinket. It has two alternating uses, one to apply a debuff that stacks and deals damage for every combo point you spend on any target, and another one to consume that debuff and convert the stacks into stacks of a Haste buff. Just like Razor Coral, stacks are also converted when the debuffed target dies. Otherwise, the duration is not too long and you have to pay attention to convert before the debuff expires. Compared to Slaughter, this removes some serious issues of being untunable and favoring specific specs. Flagellation looks like it will be a more independent support cooldown that seems generally fine in every situation.

About the situation as a whole, all of these changes and tuning made covenant abilities very close to each other in single target simulations. The abilities themselves are all in the ballpark of 3-4% increases and end up within 50 DPS for each spec. Just changing one talent is likely to have a higher impact than changing the covenant ability. If the same kind of tuning is applied to soulbinds and conduits (and it is currently leaning that way), then the bottom line is probably going to be: It doesn't really matter what Covenant you choose - both differences as well as impact on your spec performance is very low.

Elemental Shaman Analysis

Chain Harvest Send a wave of anima at the target, which then jumps to additional nearby targets. Deals (310%205% of Spell power) Shadow damage to up to 5 enemies, and restores (315% of Spell power) health to up to 5 allies.
For each target critically struck, the cooldown of Chain Harvest is reduced by 5 sec.
Effect #1 Effect #1 School Damage
Value: 0 (SP mod: 3.12.05)

Echoes of Great SunderingSkybreaker's Fiery DemiseWindspeaker's Lava ResurgenceElemental ShamanGistwiki

The nerf to Chain Harvest and the conduit Elysian Dirge have Elemental looking towards other covenants. While the jury is still out on single target, and will likely depend moreso on soulbind paths than the covenant abilities themselves, in mythic+ the change is enough that Elemental is beginning to look at going Night Fae with both Night Fae & Venthyr performing similarly at the moment.
For legendaries, the documented changes don't change anything at the moment with which legendaries we prefer on the beta. Instead, it's a recent bugfix that looked to shift our priorities. Originally the Echoes of Great Sundering buff would buff all active Earthquakes, which was extremely powerful. With that bug now fixed, this legendary is still powerful though noticeably less so than before. As such, Elemental currently favors Elemental Equilibrium in all situations outside of ones that allow Skybreaker's Fiery Demise to shine such as Council-style fights.

Enhancement Shaman Analysis

Doom WindsLegacy of the Frost WitchPrimal Lava ActuatorsWitch Doctor's Wolf BonesChains of DevastationEssential Extraction

15%

16%

17%

18%

19%

20%

21%

23%

24%

25%

26%

27%

28%

29%

30%

31%

32%

33%

34%

35%

36%

38%

39%

40%

41%

42%

43%

44%

45%

Enhancement ShamanWordup

Legendaries

Doom Winds - This was previously very weak, and saw a massive buff. Part of this is attached to the baseline increase to Windfury Weapon, which may have been a bit of an extreme swing in the buff direction with how much synergy there is. The baseline change makes Forceful Winds an appealing talent and Unruly Winds a powerful conduit. Pairing these with the original effect, an extra 4 seconds and newly added 100% increase to damage turns this into an incredibly powerful one minute cooldown that works well in single target, and excels in AoE.
Legacy of the Frost Witch - On the other hand this was very strong and a nerf was expected. This was dominating in all situations but dropping down to a 15% increase from 100% is probably on the harsh side and could probably stand to be adjusted back up a little. The most important aspect of the item is the Stormstrike reset though so is still functional in the same way it was on Beta.
Primal Lava Actuators - Small buff, still stands as a niche single target option so the damage per stack doesn't really change much.
Witch Doctor's Wolf Bones - Nerf to the Maelstrom generation hurts the consistency here. With how low the damage contribution of Feral Spirit is right now, this has recursive nerfs as the main goal of this cooldown (and legendary) is more Maelstrom Weapon charges.
Chains of Devastation - Previously dead in the water for Enhancement due to the huge Mana costs to cycle the effect. With the added component of making Chain Heal cost no mana, might see some use as a support tool at the cost of damage.

Covenants

Chain Harvest - Took a flat numbers hit. This ability lives and dies on the tuning because of the low mechanical complexity and what it replaces in the rotation. Where this lands in terms of how strong Venthyr is entirely depends on what the tuning goals of other covenant abilities are.
Essential Extraction - This conduit saw a massive buff, and helps push Fae Transfusion as a strong single target cast. All of the mechanical shortcomings of the covenant ability itself still remain though, and with conduit slots less available means it costs that to make it usable.

Restoration Shaman Analysis

Earthen Harmony Earth Shield healing is increased by 300%150% if your Earth Shield target is below 50%75% health, and Healing Wave adds a stack of Earth Shield to your target, up to 9 maximum stacks.
Inventory Type: Chest, Back

Spiritwalker's Tidal Totem After using Mana Tide Totem, the cast time of Healing Wave and Chain Heal is reduced by 50%, and the mana cost of Chain Heal and Healing Wave is reduced by 100%25% for 10 sec.
Inventory Type: Legs, Back

Nature's Focus

40%

43%

46%

49%

51%

54%

57%

60%

63%

66%

69%

71%

74%

77%

80%

10%

10.7%

11.3%

12%

12.7%

13.3%

14%

15%

16%

16.7%

17.3%

18%

18.7%

19.3%

20%

Restoration ShamanNiseko

Earthen Harmony
Halving the healing boost sounds like a nerf at first, but this is actually a buff to this legendary.
You'll see many more procs of this legendary in a fight as its a lot more likely that your target is below 75% health, compared to below 50% health.
For example: Looking through a beta Mythic+ log with me using Earth Shield on the tank, of 240 Earth Shield hits 110 of them happened while the target was below 75% health, but only 22 of them for below 50%. Even calculating in Mastery: Deep Healing it still comes out as an overall buff.

Spiritwalker's Tidal Totem

While an extra Innervate as an effect might have been too strong, I believe that reducing the mana reduction all the way to 25% is a bit much. As it stands right now, while playable, it looks to be a bit on the weaker side. I'd like more from a legendary that looks pretty fun.

Chain Harvest

Bit of a damage nerf, puts it more in line compared to the other options for AoE as it was ahead. It is still the highest damage per cast but its DPS came down enough to lose that spot.

Nature's Focus

Instead of giving you a chance for an extra jump of Chain Heal, it now simply increases the healing of Chain Heal on the initial target - and that target only, not the jumps. I found the old version of extra jumps to be too weak, even while including the potential with High Tide synergy (if you're lucky), but this new version is worse in my opinion.
It is essentially a copy of the azerite trait Soothing Waters, which already wasn't great. Due to Chain Heal being fully smart (the jumps try to find the lowest health players they can find), when buffing the first hit you're buffing the hit that is most likely to overheal as well as it is the only player targeted hit.

Demonology Warlock Analysis

Balespider's Burning Core Shadow Bolt increases the damage of your next Demonbolt by 25%Demonbolt by 8%, stacking up to 4 times.
Inventory Type: Wrist, Hands

Implosive Potential When Implosion damages at least 3 targets, gain 5%Implosion grants 1% haste for 8 sec for each Imp exploded.
Inventory Type: Head, WaistWhen this damages at least 3 targets, instead gain 5% haste per Imp.
Inventory Type: Head, Waist

Demonology WarlockNot

Balespider's Burning Core: A big change that makes this Legendary much easier to play around and much more friendly to the overall gameplay/toolkit. Having a (basically) permanent buff to Demonbolt should make for a pretty strong case for using this legendary for any single target encounter and make the Demonbolt build actually a fair amount stronger for us and could (possibly) allow us to playable in raid over the other two specs on single target.
Implosive Potential: Allows you to have some benefit outside of only AoE, which will be important for M+ where this Legendary will primarily be used. Wearing this piece will now provide you some benefit on bosses where you can't take advantage of the bigger haste buff but still give you the opportunity to have some "free" haste single target. Generally speaking you would want to implode Imps that are about to expire (if possible) in that single target situation to get max value but having the additional haste, especially early in the expansion where we will have fairly low haste levels will make the spec flow much much better.

Comment by russbakrand no Holy Paladin love ...Comment by Tafooi really want to talk with druid class writer about the feral druids..Comment by wowheadaccountxx"but the Venthyr Soulbinds are some of the strongest Soulbinds for Havoc and that didn't change."

SHOW ME JUST ONE!Comment by RosallindaWhere is FERAL DRUID analysis!Comment by Naomii really want to talk with druid class writer about the feral druids..Comment by RosallindaNerf feral PVP. Whatever. But buff feral PVE.Comment by jackplazmaRemovedComment by hegedus97i really want to talk with druid class writer about the feral druids..Comment by cinderstormI really like the way this article has been put together. It's nice to see the data presented in a meaningful way with input from those much better at maths than me, who can explain what the changes actually mean and their impact. I hope we get to see more things like this in future - thank you for you doing it!Comment by nerzhul629The SP nerf is logical. Their burst is not sustainable on BFA, i don't want to see them like that on BFA.
Yesterday i was killed in 2 seconds (with a rogue) after the SP just pull all his Dots. Insane
we saw massively SP in arenas, and sometimes double SP as it's just insane

Do something for the Feral druids pleaseComment by BeowulfsenShadowstrike is now melee? WTF ARE YOU KIDDING ME? that was the only gap closer rogue had, it totally ruined the classComment by CreepyxBUFF FERAL FFSComment by ElunarioAgain they did nothing fix WW Monk DPS and let Monks benefit from stat scaling of better gear like other DPS classes.Comment by majkosShadowstrike is now melee? WTF ARE YOU KIDDING ME? that was the only gap closer rogue had, it totally ruined the classComment by sharnieRelease is defo DecemberComment by kharonThrallJust because the sinful brand ability was strong doesn't mean it wasn't needed. Nerfing a class/spec that was already near the bottom just seems like you really would rather people not play it.Comment by Fayei really want to talk with druid class writer about the feral druids..Comment by Scrapyard135Other covenant ability issues aside, why the hell do we have conduit slots for covenant abilities?

These are suppose to be immensely powerful, role defining abilities, that we get then immediately need to buff with 1, of only 2 available, potency conduits. Just make covenant abilities the buffed version as standard, and remove the conduit option.

That will at least alleviate some of the sting from Blizzard reneging on the 3 potency slot promise.Comment by PerpantaqOh come on. more nerfs for hunter. why don't they just press shift+delete and be done with it. the class is full of problems, and they think "you know what hunter need, more nerfs"
since the beginning of alpha it has been nerf this nerf that, without fixing the core problems.

4 sec pet rez
squishy pets
true shot being useless
focus starvation because of the rise in focus cost
precise shots procs being too expensive
multiple dead talents
the WHOLE of survival spec.

go fix them, instead of sucking every last drop of fun from the class. I don't think the devs responsible for hunter have ever played the class once.Comment by Lnz95At least your class does damage, take a look at either warrior spec. Has design issues and the damage isn't even there.