Blizzard Entertainment is sharing some love to underperforming specializations in Shadowlands with the latest hotfix scheduled to go live next reset on Feb. 3.
While the changes are mostly aimed at helping out these specs in a player-vs-environment (PvE) setting, they could drastically change the player-vs-player (PvP) meta as well.
While some specs deserved buffs, such as Hunter’s Beast Mastery and Survival specs, Assassination Rogues, or Havoc Demon Hunters to bring them in line with other classes and specs, others shouldn’t have been targeted with buffs, such as the Frost Death Knight or Arms Warrior.
Arms Warriors have been dominating the PvP ladder and had a high representation during the latest Arena World Championship cups due to their huge amount of utility cooldowns and damage. This damage buff is unnecessary and will make them thrive better in the PvP environment, where they’re already dominating the ladder.
Frost Death Knights, on the other hand, have been finding success after the latest buffs in previous hotfixes and have been climbing to high rating with various compositions such as Windwalker Monk / Holy Paladin or Arms Warrior / Holy Paladin. These changes feel rushed and instead should be aimed at making Unholy Death Knight more viable, a spec which has been underperforming after the loss of key abilities from Battle for Azeroth.
- Death Knight
- All damage abilities increased by five percent.
- Demon Hunter
- All damage abilities increased by three percent.
- Hunter
- Beast Mastery
- All damage abilities increased by five percent.
- Survival
- All damage abilities increased by five percent.
- Beast Mastery
- Mage
- Frost
- All damage abilities increased by three percent.
- Frost
- Rogue
- Assassination
- All damage abilities increased by five percent.
- Assassination
- Shaman
- Enhancement
- All damage abilities increased by three percent.
- Enhancement
- Warlock
- Destruction
- All damage abilities increased by five percent.
- Destruction
- Warrior
- Arms
- All damage abilities increased by three percent.
- Fury
- All damage abilities increased by three percent.
- Arms
While some of the buffs are great to help specs across both PvP and PvE, others seem targeted to fix the PvE aspect, which might make those classes close to broken in PvP with Arms Warriors and Frost Death Knight being great examples.
Overall, the class representation at the higher PvP bracket of Demon Hunters, Death Knights, Hunters, and Warlocks should slightly improve. Some nerfs should’ve been aimed in the latest hotfix to bring down Paladins and Priests, however, which have been rampant across the ladder. Both classes have all their three specs viable at high level play and the main reasoning is due to their huge utility they bring across the board regardless of spec.
