WoW: Season of Discovery fixes bring huge Mage & Hunter buffs

The latest set of fixes for World of Warcraft: Season of Discovery is set to roll out during next week’s maintenance. Blizzard has detailed what these will be, and it is good news for Mages and Hunters.

The development team behind Season of Discovery has been bold in their approach to the maintenance of the seasonal experience. They have rolled out regular balancing patches between the classes, with some changes hitting the live servers most weeks.

Additionally, communication and the thinking behind those alterations have been remarkably clear. This allows players to better understand the direction of a game that moves along very quickly, by its nature.

The latest set of changes is going live on Tuesday, March 5, and there are some significant buffs to multiple classes.

WoW: Season of Discovery hotfixes for March 5

The big headlines are multiple buffs for both the Mage and the Hunter. Despite their notable prowess in AoE farming, Mages have lagged behind in some areas in Season of Discovery. Hunters started out very impressively, but it appears as though the developer thinks they have been nerfed too far. The full list of upcoming changes is as follows:

• Hunter
  • Chimera Shot damage increased to 120% of weapon damage (was 100%) and Chimera Shot Serpent Sting damage increased to 48% of Serpent Sting damage (was 40%).
  • Explosive Shot base damage done before Attack Power increased by 15%.
  • Carve damage increased to 65% of weapon damage (was 50%).
• Mage
  • Frostfire Bolt base damage increased by 50%, and its increased damage from bonus spell damage increased by 16%, identical to the value for Fireball.
  • Spellfrost Bolt base damage increased by 50%, and its increased damage from bonus spell damage increased by 14%, identical to the value for Frostbolt.
  • Regeneration, Mass Regeneration, and Chronostatic Preservation spell power coefficients increased by 88%.
    • Developers’ notes: This is to compensate for Mage healers wearing primarily items which grant “damage and healing” instead of “healing”.
  • Chronostatic Preservation mana cost decreased by 44%.
  • Resolved some tooltip issues with Chronostatic Preservation.
• Paladin
  • Seal of Martyrdom damage increased to 50% weapon damage per swing (was 40%). Seal of Martyrdom Judgement increased to 85% weapon damage (was 70%).
  • Seal of Martyrdom Seal and Judgement effects now benefit from talents and effects that modify Seal of Righteousness, particularly Improved Seal of Righteousness.
• Warlock
  • Grimoire of Synergy now increases damage done by the Warlock and their pet by 25% when it is active (was 5%).
• Warrior
  • Devastate damage increased to 150% of weapon DPS (was 100%), before being increased by number of Sunder Armor stacks.

As with any set of buffs and nerfs, we will see how they have changed the in-game landscape pretty quickly. It’s likely that some will feel overlooked but with the speed of alterations in Season of Discovery, they hopefully won’t feel like that for too long.