Good day! It’s Librarian Husky. I had some things to say about it, though I wasn’t really going to mention Dark Ranger. I was going to sing praises of Hunter, but it looks like Beast Mastery (BM) Hunter got nerfed. It’s important to point out that we have seen BM Hunters and plent y of other Classes doing immense amounts of Damage in the Pre-Patch. However, Beta build and Pre-Patch build are not the same, so changes on the Beta will not appear in the Pre-Patch.

Beta vs. Pre-Patch Builds

Just be aware that you probably won’t see any of these Beta changes come into live realms until the release of this Expansion, which is in about three weeks. All of these changes are just for the development realms, not for the Pre-Patch. BM Hunter got nerfed significantly. First of all, the Pack Leader, which is their only really good and viable hero talent option, got nerfed. Try out Ranger, and it has you play around Call of the Wild, which isn’t even a talent setup that a lot of people are playing right now.

Specific Nerfs

Pack Leader is getting nerfed versus Hunt; that ability has been nerfed by 15% for Beast Mastery with a different tuning for Survival Hunters. For BM, this is definitely not great news. They’ve also adjusted the Howl of the Pack ability, which allows your basic critical strikes to increase your crit strike Damage by 5%, stacking up to three times. That 5% stack has been reduced to 3%, which is unfortunate.

Beast Mastery Specific Changes

The rest of the changes are Beast Mastery-specific. We see things such as Laceration going from a 15% bleed Damage to 5% bleed Damage. Kill Command Damage has also been reduced by 20%. Fenri and Hotti effectiveness has been cut by 33%. Dire Beasts’ overall Damage has been reduced by 10%, and Fenri and Hotti are technically counted as Dire Beasts.

Impact on Pet Damage

I wonder if that double dips on them specifically. The actual pet Damage itself, the basic abilities like their melee, their smack ability, and their stomps are all reduced by 10% as well. So that’s both of your pets getting hit in the crossfire. Additionally, the Barb Shot Damage is reduced by 25%, which is a hefty amount of changes hitting Beast Mastery.

Tracking Beast Mastery

I have been trying to track this class more closely since I was going to do a specifically Hunter-focused article looking at Dark Ranger. I spent time with some of the logs, at least when it comes to Mythic Plus. You don’t really see a lot of Beast Mastery Hunters in the logs. Logs aren’t everything, but a lot of people on the Beta are logging all of their runs, providing a lot of data to work with.

Comparing Beta and Live Realms

The data is based on those playing the Beta, which is a fraction of the players compared to those on live realms. We don’t see a lot of Beast Mastery like we see Survival Hunters or Mages, for example. However, we do see them here and there, and they generally have been performing okay. Not blowing every other class out of the water in every scenario, but they have had decent Damage at least, though nothing crazy.

Perception of Beast Mastery

In the past, a lot of players really perceived them as undertuned until they saw a couple of changes. Now, with the recent adjustments, the situation may evolve, but the current perception is that they are not at the top in terms of performance.

Surprising Nerfs to Beast Mastery

I’m kind of surprised that they hit Beast Mastery as hard as they did. I wonder if maybe somebody figured out some kind of a build for Beast Mastery that was absolutely busted, or maybe they are accounting for some of the other Buffs that are coming out in the future. The nerf in the baseline of Beast Mastery in terms of their Damage output affects what does the most amount of Damage in your overall breakdown. They will probably do some kind of aura adjustment, but that is the first class on our chopping block for the day.

Nerfs to Augmentation

The other spec on this list is Augmentation. Augmentation is receiving a nerf towards the primary buff party-wide mechanic, which is the main thing that really makes this class stand out. Specifically, we’re seeing a reduction to the Ebon Might primary stat increases. The baseline increase for nearby allies’ primary stat is being reduced from 6.5% of your own to 5%. This essentially removes roughly a 1.5% primary stat buff from every ally you would have previously buffed.

Changes to Passive Abilities

On top of this, Clutch of the Sky, the passive Evokers currently have as of the current Beta build, which allows them to increase the effectiveness of Ebon Might and Breath of Eons by 10% when they are outside of a raid, is being removed. This is significant because a good portion of Augmentation is set up for raid environments and high-target crowd environments, but they need to be a little bit more empowered in Mythic+ dungeons. This passive’s removal is a significant loss, as it impacts both Breath of Eons and Breath of Might.

Impact on Party-Wide Combat

When it comes to party-wide combat, it is a bit of a downsize, to say the least. Overall, I don’t really think this is going to be enough, and this is just going by gut feeling. I think Augmentation is still a very, very unique spec in the game. The support kind of playstyle that it offers does a lot more Damage now on the Beta with the Scale Commander playstyle, as well as a decent bit of Damage with the Chronos World Warden.

Unique Role of Augmentation

It is still primarily a DPS spec but has a bit more of a support role and flexibility that we’ve never really seen in World of Warcraft before. This makes this spec stand out from healers and DPS Classes as a whole new type of support class. With tanks getting nerfed, abilities such as Blistering Scales become even more important because empowering the tank with additional armor based on your own armor becomes even better for Mythic Plus.

Class Variety in War Within

I think it will probably be good if Augmentation wasn’t just a staple of every group because we could see the rise of a “God comp,” leading to a meta where you don’t see a lot of class variety. Ideally, I would want to see a diverse range of Classes in season one of War Within.

Avoiding a “God Comp”

I don’t want to have the one “God comp” that excludes every other spec and class, making for an unfun season. I wonder if they can manage Augmentation so that you still want to bring one, be happy with one, but not necessarily feel it’s a mandatory pick. Augmentation Nerfs are still going to come into effect, and it’ll be interesting to see how that’ll affect testing once the Beta realms get the new build.

Nerfs to Elemental Shaman

Another class spec getting a bit of a nerf is one of my favorites, and I’m actually sad about this one: the Elemental Shaman. Elemental quickly became one of my favorite ranged casters. I’ve always enjoyed Elemental, but they came out swinging after their first set of updates in the Beta, and the spec has been in such a good spot. However, Elemental is receiving some specific Nerfs for basic abilities.

Specific Ability Nerfs

Abilities such as Lava Burst and Lightning Bolt are being nerfed. Lightning Bolt is nerfed by 3%, which isn’t too crazy, but Lava Burst is nerfed by 20%, which is significant. Fire builds were becoming the most effective choice for pumping Damage as Elemental. Elemental Blast is also getting reduced by 25%, a very popular pick. Earthquake is nerfed by 15%, Flame Shock by 15%, and the haste from Splintered Elements is reduced from 20% down to 10%.

Potential Buffs and Future Adjustments

These are significant Nerfs across the board, and they will put a damper on Elemental performance. However, they are adding some Buffs to hopefully help Elemental a little. It’ll be important to see how these changes balance out and affect overall gameplay once implemented.

Promoting Build Variety

I think mostly to promote build variety, things such as your Thunderstrike Ward are apparently getting amped by 150%. Earth Shock Damage is being improved by 25%, whereas Lava Burst is being reduced by 25%, so maybe they’ll be more even. Power of the Maelstrom, which allows you to play around a big Chain Lightning build and weave Lava Burst into Chain Lightnings more, has seen its chance increase from 25% to a 60% baseline chance. Liquid Magma Totem is getting a 30-second cooldown base, which is kind of awesome.

Buffs to Abilities

Ice Fury Damage has been improved by 85%. Earthen Rage, which I remember from way back in Legion or Warlords of Draenor, is getting improved by 60%. This ability hasn’t been compelling for a while, but now it’s getting some attention. However, one more nerf I missed: the additional Lava Burst from Primordial Wave now deals 50% normal Damage instead of 80%, so that’s going to be quite an adjustment.

Flexibility in Playstyles

What they’re really trying to do is give Elemental Shamans a little more flexibility to play other builds and playstyles. This should support some of these other talents down the road. However, the Lava build and the Fire build ended up being very popular and fun. This nerf will significantly affect overall Damage and some of the fun factor for Elemental.

Future Adjustments

In the current state, you could jump into a dungeon, do well, and perform effectively. This nerf will definitely dampen some of that output. Hopefully, other builds will work because it looks like they’re trying to make some of those Lightning-based builds better, even if they’re not as smooth as the Fire builds.

Elemental Shaman Adjustments

I wonder if they’ll end up reverting any of these changes going forward, just because the current version of Elemental is incredibly fun to play. Another class that has seen some Nerfs is actually Retribution Paladin. It feels like this came out of left field, but Paladins ended up taking a bit of a tumble. While other specs of Paladin like Holy and Protection have gotten Buffs here and there, Retribution just got hit out of nowhere.

Retribution Paladin Nerfs

First of all, the tier set four-piece Wake of Ashes increases Damage done by 10% for 8 seconds. That’s been reduced to 8%. Nothing crazy, but we go on. The popular talent Blessed Champion, with some of the different reworks that were done for auto-attacking, now sees the Damage cleave for Crusader Strike and Judgment hit secondary targets reduced to 25% instead of 50%. This dampens their overall cleave capability.

Specific Ability Nerfs

We saw a bunch of different Paladin abilities being nerfed, such as Templar’s Verdict reduced by 10%, Justicar’s Vengeance reduced by 10%, Hammer of Wrath (execute ability) reduced by 15%, and Blade of Justice Damage reduced by a flat 20%. Although, the Blades of Vengeance Damage is increased by 25%, mostly to compensate for the nerf to Blade of Justice. The Damage component of Expurgation is reduced by 10%.

Buffs to Balance Nerfs

Templar’s Strikes ability and Templar’s Slash are both reduced by 10%. Crusading Strikes Damage is also reduced by 10%, affecting both Crusading Strikes and Crusader Strike variants. To compensate, abilities such as Divine Storm have been buffed by 25%, and Word of Glory healing is increased by 20%.

Implications of Retribution Paladin Nerfs

I guess it’s nice for Herald of the Sun while playing with the Eternal Flame ability when it comes to personal survivability. Overall, though, these are just a bunch of 10%, 15%, and even 20% Nerfs for Retribution Paladin specifically, mostly single-target, with some compensation for AOE. However, it does seem like it’s still going to affect a good portion of their kit, and they kind of came out of nowhere.

Unexpected Nerfs

In the past, Paladins have had some bugs that allowed them to deal more Damage or less Damage for one reason or another. However, this blue post does not talk about any kind of functionality or resolution of any bugs that players were aware of. So, this just seems like an overall nerf. We have seen on the Beta and the blue posts multiple times now where they’ll say they buff an ability by a certain amount but then resolve certain bugs that cause that ability to do more Damage than it did before, kind of equalizing it.

Comparison with Survival Hunter Changes

For example, with Survival Hunter, they’re doing some flanking strike changes where they’re reducing the pet Damage by quite a bit, but then they are finally enabling the pet to scale with other stats. This actually increases the Damage rather than decreasing it by a considerable amount. But nothing like this for Retribution Paladin, so it just seems like the spec took a hit out of nowhere and caught a bunch of Nerfs unexpectedly.

Future Testing and Adjustments

As mentioned before, all of these changes are still technically not on the Beta yet; they are just a blue post. We’ll hopefully see more testing as this week goes on, with hopefully some kind of a Beta build maybe in a couple of days. All of these changes definitely need to be tested, as this build includes a bunch of these Nerfs but also a ton of different Buffs as well as they’re trying to get the tuning down.

Upcoming Expansion and Class Adjustments

I think by the looks of it, they are prepping all of our Classes closer and closer to the release of this Expansion, which is happening in just a handful of weeks. This is kind of exciting! With that, I definitely want to hear what you guys think about all these Nerfs. What are your thoughts on the impact these changes will have on specs such as Beast Mastery, Retribution Paladins, and Elemental Shamans?

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