World of Warcraft tunes classes and tier sets ahead of Season 2

Blizzard has published a round of World of Warcraft class tuning that goes live with the weekly reset, ahead of the start of Season 2. The changes were posted during the first week of the Curse of Ula'tek content update and were detailed by Wowhead.

Most of the pass is aimed at the new Venomous Abyss tier sets. Blizzard said several of them were landing well above the power level the team had planned for, and that it was offsetting the reductions by raising the baseline abilities of the specs involved so the net change stays smaller than the set-bonus cut on its own.

What changes at the reset

Blood Death Knight takes the most-publicised cut: San'layn's Visceral Strength now grants 6% strength rather than 10%, and Transfusion increases Dancing Rune Weapon damage by 5% rather than 10%. Blizzard noted the tooltip will be corrected later. Frost Death Knight moves in the other direction, with all ability damage up 9% while its two-piece bonus is halved to 1% attack speed per stack.

• Demon Hunter: Devourer gains 14% ability damage outside PvP, while its four-piece bonus drops from eight soul fragments to two and its Reap damage bonus is halved.
• Restoration Druid: healing up 4% and damage up 20% outside PvP, which Blizzard attributes to the spec underperforming against other healers.
• Arcane Mage: baseline ability damage up 3%, with the two-piece Arcane Missiles bonus cut from 20% to 5%.
• Discipline Priest: damage down 30% outside PvP, offset by Atonement transferring 46% of damage into healing rather than 32%.
• Mistweaver Monk: casted healing up 8%, plus a 33% higher activation rate on the four-piece bonus.
• Subtlety Rogue: damage up 6% as the four-piece bonus falls to 60% effectiveness.

Beast Mastery Hunter and Demonology Warlock receive set-bonus increases rather than cuts, both framed as bringing weaker tier bonuses closer to the rest of the roster. Holy Priest gets a broader rework of its Oracle hero talents and faster mana regeneration through Enlightenment, and Assassination Rogue and Enhancement Shaman take small flat damage increases of 4% and 5%.

Blizzard also addressed Warrior indirectly: the team said a bug that let Executioner provide double value was recently hotfixed, which brought Arms back into its intended range, and Fury's baseline damage is being raised to compensate for both that fix and its own set-bonus reduction.

The adjustments arrive with the weekly reset, which is also when Season 2 opens. Wowhead published the full list, and Blizzard's developer notes accompany most of the individual entries.