WoW SoD Phase 4 PTR: Mage and Warlock Class Changes

• Brain Freeze chance to trigger increased to 20%

Developer’s Note: Brain Freeze has hard competition with the passive of Spell Power. So we’re buffing it to make it a slightly more competitive option for Frost Mages.

• The Balefire Bolt ability now counts as Frost damage in addition to Arcane and Fire.

Developer’s Note: Balefire Bolt hasn’t seen too much usage so far, with most mages favoring the passive of Molten Armor. Making Balefire Bolt now have synergies with Frost Talents opens it up to all Specs as an interesting option. We’re comfortable with increasing the power on Balefire Bolt as it’s unlikely to act as a full replacement for the other abilities in your rotation… unless you want to cast it 10 times within 30 seconds at which time your rotation will most certainly end. We don’t recommend that, however.

• The cooldown of Fire Blast has been increased to 15 seconds with the Overheat ability 

Developer’s Notes: Moving Hot Streak to the helm alongside the new Overheat rune has helped improve firemage gameplay, but they are getting Hotstreak slightly more frequently than we intend, so we’re pulling back a little bit of Overheat’s power via the frequency but keeping the 100% crit chance. We’ll continue to evaluate mages after this change."

• Soul Siphon: Causes Drain Soul to now inflict its damage once per second rather than once every three seconds.

Developer’s Notes: One of the big issues with Drain Soul in oOiginal WoW is that its ticks occur every 3 seconds, which means it is always competing with Shadow Bolt as a filler ability. So making it tick faster allows it to be used in situations where you wouldn’t finish a Shadow Bolt cast.**

• Soul Siphon: Causes Drain Soul to now have a chance to trigger Nightfall if the Warlock has that talent learned.

Developer’s Notes: Feeding off of the previous note, Drain Soul having a chance to proc your Nightfall talent will ideally make Warlocks feel a little less loss aversion when they not hard casting Shadow Bolt as filler.

• The Shadowflame Rune has been redesigned:
  • Shadowflame is now a 2 second cast single-target ability that burns the enemy for Shadowflame damage and then an additional amount of Shadowflame damage over 15 seconds. Shadowflame triggers and benefits from all effects that modify or interact with Immolate, or with Affliction, Destruction, Fire, or Shadow spells, but only one of Immolate, Unstable Affliction, or Shadowflame per Warlock can be active on any target.
• Backdraft no longer consumes the Immolate damage over time debuff.

Developer’s Nootes: We’ve recieved lots of feedback that it can be frustrating to cast Immolate and then be required to cut off its remaining DoT just to maintain your Backdraft buff. An opener of Immolate → Conflag → Immolate feels like wasted time on your Haste buff as well, so this will address the recasting of Immolate and immediately consuming it, just to cast it again.