Nerf Bat? What Nerf Bat?

I was reading WoW Insider today, and happened upon a bunch of posts. Didn't read many of them, since the titles of those very posts spoke for themselves.

"8926 a test of faith for Holy priests"
"Shadow Priests beaten to death in the Wrath beta"
"Totem Talk: Curses, foiled again"
"Human racials revised again"
"Things don't look pretty for PvP Hunters in 8926"

To say that 8296 was known for its nerfs to many classes would be a sheer understatement. Which is why I loved to see this on MMO-champion regarding the new beta build.

Unofficial changes:



which is quite surprising, considering the introduction of Mirror Image. I could only guess that there simply wasn't enough time for the devs to observe the spell in action and make their adjustments. Expect more concrete evidence to be observed when more 80's show up via pre-mades or self-mades, and we'll see how it goes.

Regardless, it is frequently said that no news is good news. So if we're to walk away with anything, it's that with the inevitable tidal wave of QQ, it's refreshing to see that the mages aren't likely to be the ones not drowning in it.

But then again, I could be wrong.

A tiny detail that I failed to miss...

Not a big deal, but patch notes from the beta regarding the Fire talent, World in Flames:

"World in Flames - Moved to Tier 2, Increases the critical strike chance of your Flamestrike, Blast Wave, Dragon’s Breath, Living Bomb, Blizzard and Arcane Explosion spells by 2/4/6%. "

Let's cut out a few irrelevant words:

"...Increases the critical strike chance of your Flamestrike, Blast Wave, Dragon’s Breath, Living Bomb, Blizzard and Arcane Explosion spells..."

One more cut:

"...Increases the critical strike chance of your...Blizzard...by 2/4/6% "

Wait, but I thought that Blizzard doesn't crit! Does this mean that Blizzard (the company) is looking to make changes to the mechanics of Blizzard (the spell)? They did say that they wanted to increase damage output by mages, particularly in the field of area-effect.

Let's suppose that Blizzard (spell) is programmed to have 0% critical chance, then WiF will increase the chance to 6%. That would mean your blizzard-based dps would increase by 6%, since each critical hit essentially doubles the existing damage assuming the mage has the talents for it, and adds 6 more hits worth of blizzard damage within a span of a hundred blizzard hit occurences.

Then again, it's more likely that critical chance does not apply to blizzard, since talents such as shatter and winter's chill do not affect it. But if that's so, why even bother mentioning the spell in the first place in the changes? Let's hope it's not scratched off due to a typo.

But still, a 6% damage increase? Not too shabby. But with WiF being a Tier 2 Fire talent, will it be worth it taking? Curse you, Blizzard! October is still miles away!