Blizzard has been working hard to keep things as balanced as possible in their latest expansion to their titanic MMORPG, World of Warcraft: Shadowlands. They’ve recently announced a new set of tuning changes to come with tomorrow’s weekly reset.
There’s a great number of changes coming, with alterations hitting Castle Nathria’s balance – mostly in the form of nerfs – and some class tuning changes for PvP as well. There’s a few alterations hitting the Mythic+ content as well, which we’ll get into here.
There aren’t too many changes, with only four dungeons being affected and only a single change hitting three of them. Still, they’re changes that many have wanted.
To get the simplest ones out of the way first, Xav the Unfallen has had his health reduced by 10% in Theater of Pain. Nalthor the Rimebinder has had the Champion’s Boon buff duration doubled from 15 seconds to 30 seconds.
Both of these changes have been heavily desired as the bosses were both made significantly more difficult from mechanics that remove DPS players from the fight, making it a much longer encounter due to DPS loss. These changes are set to make the dungeon significantly quicker, especially on higher keys or Tyrannical weeks.
There’s also been a change to Spires of Ascension, specifically on Ventunax. While the damage of Dark Stride hasn’t been lowered, the duration has been significantly decreased, going from 20 seconds to 15 seconds.
This makes the fight considerably easier, especially on healers, as the ticking DoT from Dark Stride was incredibly difficult to manage at times. It was made much worse by having it focus ranged DPS, often effectively removing a high DPS from the fight sometimes.
The final changes come to De Other Side, with four changes here. The first is increasing the timer from 41 minutes to 43 minutes, a much-needed change in a dungeon that requires so much travel and back-tracking down halls with few ways to make it quicker.
Hakkar has been heavily nerfed, with the damage from the Sons of Hakkar reduced by 50%, a massive reduction that some might argue nearly removes them as a threat from the fight altogether. The Blood Nova damage has also been reduced by 20%, greatly lowering the damage going out in this fight overall.
Finally, Dealer Xy’exa has had the damage to Arcane Lightning reduced by 25%. If players are adequately doing the “hot potato” mechanic on this fight, the damage will be practically negligible at this point.
