Warlords of Draenor Alpha Patch Notes
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Paladin
Paladin (Updated)
For Paladins, there are a few tweaks in store.

There have been several changes made for Holy, to go along with other larger system changes to compensate for the removal of Guardian of Ancient Kings from Holy, and merged its benefits into Divine Favor. In order to follow through on our change to merge all types of Haste %, we removed the Spell Haste % from Seal of Insight to a Holy-only passive, so that it didn't also increase Protection's baseline Haste by 10%. Our changes to healer mana and mobility also indirectly increased the value of Selfless Healer by a large amount, so we brought it back down to be even in power with the other talents on its row. We also raised the range of Denounce to be consistent with other spells.

Avenging Wrath Divine Favor now also increases all of the Paladins healing by 100% for its duration.
Denounce's range has increased to 40 yards (up from 30 yards).
Infusion of Light now also passively increases Haste by 10%.
Seal of Insight no longer increases spell Haste by 10%.
Selfless Healer for Holy no longer causes Judgment to grant Holy Power. It also is only usable on Flash of Light, no longer on Holy Light or Holy Radiance.

For Protection, we tweaked Eternal Flame in order to reduce its massive self-healing amount, and provide better balance between talents on that row. We also added a new passive, Shining Protector, in order to give defensive value to the new Multistrike stat.

Bastion of Glory no longer affects the periodic healing of Eternal Flame. It still affects the direct healing portion of the ability.
Shining Protector is a new passive ability for Protection Paladins.
Shining Protector: All heals you receive have a chance equal to your Multistrike chance to trigger Shining Protector, healing you for an additional 30% of the triggering heal.

Blizzard made a few additional changes to Paladins. We revised the functionality of Hammer of the Righteous a bit, such that its performance is about the same, but its tooltip is much clearer. We also made Stay of Execution much more attractive to use as an emergency button. One big change for Retribution that isn't mentioned here is the removal of Inquisition (see Ability Pruning), which will have a notable effect on their rotation.

Hammer of the Righteous now deals 50% Physical weapon damage (up from 15%) to the primary target, but the primary target is no longer hit with the Holy damage.
Seals no longer cost any mana.
Stay of Execution (the Holy version of Execution Sentence) now deals its healing in a large burst at first, and then decreasing over time (reversed from before).

They want to improve Seal gameplay for Protection and Retribution, so have made a few changes in that regard. Protection had three Seals, but only used Insight due to its defensive value. Weve moved that defensive value into a passive for Protection Paladins, and expect them to primarily use a mixture of Seal of Truth and Seal of Righteousness now. To provide better gameplay between Seal of Truth and Seal of Righteousness, and effectively remove a button, we made Seal of Righteousness transform Crusader Strike into Hammer of the Righteous.

Seal of Insight no longer gives melee attacks a chance to heal the Paladin.
Inner Light is a new passive ability for Protection Paladins and provides a chance for each melee attack to heal the Paladin.
Glyph of the Battle Healer is now available only for Protection Paladins, and affects healing from Inner Light instead of Seal of Insight.
Crusader Strike and Hammer of the Righteous are no longer separate spells.
Seal of Righteousness now also causes Crusader Strike to be replaced with Hammer of the Righteous while active.
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Warrior
Warrior
Blizzard wanted to fix a few problems with Warriors. First, we still weren't happy with Arms' rotation (and neither were many players), so they've made some more changes, primarily through cutting abilities (see Ability Pruning above).

As with other classes, we wanted to reduce cooldown stacking. Cutting Skull Banner did a ton to help that across the whole game. But for Warriors specifically, they needed to make further changes, including merging some of the personal benefit of Skull Banner back into Recklessness. Also, to make up for Throw being removed, they modified Heroic Throw to be more frequently usable.


Heroic Throw now has a 6-second cooldown (down from 30 seconds), but now has a 15 yard minimum range.
Recklessness now increases Critical Strike chance by 15% (down from 30%) and increases Critical Strike damage by 10% (up from 0%).
Shattering Throw no longer reduces the armor of the target; it only does damage and breaks immunities.
It also is no longer learned via any specialization, but instead through a new Major Glyph, Glyph of Shattering Throw.

Haste has long been a problematic stat for Warriors, usually being of little value. As part of our commitment to ensuring all secondary stats are valuable (except Bonus Armor for non-tanks and Spirit for non-healers, of course), we're making a significant change to Warriors, to ensure that Haste has strong, competitive value. We're giving all Warriors a new passive, which lets haste affect their global cooldown, and the cooldowns of their very-short-cooldown rotational abilities.

Headlong Rush is a new passive ability for Warriors:
Headlong Rush: Haste reduces global cooldown and the cooldowns of Mortal Strike, Bloodthirst, Shield Slam, and Thunder Clap.
Sudden Death can no longer trigger from Opportunity Strikes.

Protection Warriors have received a few notable changes. First, we removed Dodge and Parry from gear, and expect Protection Warriors to value Haste and Crit as important secondary stats. In order to achieve that, we made Riposte give defensive value to Crits. The aforementioned Headlong Rush also helps for valuing Haste.

Blood Craze is a new passive ability for Protection Warriors.
Blood Craze causes Multistrike auto attacks to trigger a Blood Craze, which regenerates 3% of the Warrior's health over 3 seconds. When this effect is refreshed, the remaining duration is added to the new effect.
Riposte has been redesigned.
Riposte now gives the Warrior Parry equal to their Critical Strike bonus from gear.

A few Warrior Talents also were in need of revision. First, Second Wind was problematic; it was sometimes too weak, and sometimes too strong. We chose to change it from a passive health regeneration effect to the new Leech effect, so that low-health Warriors have to maintain combat in order to benefit, instead of kiting, hiding, or otherwise playing defensively. For the level-60 and level-90 Talent rows, certain combinations were proving problematic. We decided that Stormbolt would better compete with Shockwave and Dragon Roar, and that Bladestorm would better compete with Avatar and Bloodbath, so swapped Stormbolt and Bladestorm's positions.

Second Wind no longer directly heals the Warrior while active. Instead, Second Wind grants the Warrior 10% Leech while active, which causes the Warrior to heal for 10% of all damage and healing done by the Warrior while active.
Bladestorm is now a level-90 Talent, swapping places with Stormbolt.
Bladestorm no longer allows use of Shouts while active. It does still allow the use of Taunt, Enraged Regeneration, Shield Wall, and Last Stand.
Stormbolt is now a level-60 Talent, swapping places with Bladestorm.

Fury Warriors are receiving updates to spell alerts to improve usability.

Bloodsurges spell alert has moved to the top slot instead of the left and right slots.
Raging Blow now has a spell alert on the left and right slots.

With the introduction of one of the level-100 Warrior Talents, which deals Fire damage, we also expanded Enrage to affect all damage, not just Physical damage.

Enrage now increases all damage (up from only Physical damage).
Mastery: Unshackled Fury (Fury) now increases all damage (up from only Physical damage).

We're also making a change to the design of Deep Wounds, to try to limit is effectiveness in PvP, without hurting its effectiveness in PvE.

Deep Wounds now lasts 15 seconds, or until the target is healed to full health.
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Warlock
Warlock
Warlocks received a number of cut abilities, but remain relatively unchanged. They saw the most change of any class in Mists of Pandaria, and so were in need of less revision this time around.

Warlocks brought too much unique Raid utility, so Blizzard decided to tone down Healthstones and Demonic Gateway. They moved Healing Potions and Healthstones into a cooldown of their own, and made them usable once per combat. For Drain Life, we reduced the base healing somewhat, but massively increased the effectiveness of the Glyph which increases its healing, so as to help open up more potential Drain Life use in ideal situations. And lastly, simplified Shadowburn a bit.

Healthstone's cooldown will now not reset until the player leaves combat. Healing from this ability can no longer be a Critical Effect.
Demonic Gateways no longer have charges (up from being limited to 5 charges). Every Party or Raid member can use them once every 90 seconds (up from 45 seconds). The maximum distance apart they can be placed is now 40 yards (down from 70 yards).
Drain Life now heals for 30% less than before.
Glyph of Drain Life now increases the healing of Drain Life by 100% (up from 30%).
Shadowburn no longer generates any mana.
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Shaman
Shaman (Updated)
Shaman has received a variety of changes, most of which are specialization-specific.

For Elemental and Enhancement, we had a few problems to solve. Enhancement suffers from having their damage split among so many damage sources that none of it feels impressive. We changed the damage of several abilities to try to reorganize their damage into fewer, more impactful abilities, while keeping the net total the same. For a long time Elemental Shaman were one of the specs most impacted by movement, at a time where other casters were increasingly able to cast while moving.

In Warlords of Draenor, we're pulling back on the ability for many casters to deal damage while moving, and that includes Elemental. They will still have some ability to deal damage while moving, through Shocks, Unleash Weapon, and instant Lava Bursts. For Chain Lightning, we wanted to reduce the impact of Haste soft capping, and so changed Shamanism to increase damage instead of reduce cast time. Additionally, we simplified Wind Shear by removing its impact on threat, which no longer matters.

Ascendance for the Enhancement specialization now changes the Shaman's auto attacks and Stormstrike to deal Wind-based physical damage that bypasses armor.
Searing Totem's Searing Bolt damage has been increased by 65%.
Earth Elemental deals 90% less Auto Attack damage.
Earthquake damage has been increased by 36%.
Echo of the Elements has been redesigned. The Shaman's spells and abilities have a chance to trigger Echo of the Elements, causing their next short-cooldown spell or ability to not trigger a cooldown.
Elemental: It may be used on Earth Shock, Flame Shock, Frost Shock, Earthquake, or Lava Burst.
Enhancement: It may be used on Earth Shock, Flame Shock, Frost Shock, Fire Nova, Lava Lash, or Stormstrike.
Restoration: It may be used on Healing Rain, Purify Spirit, or Riptide.
Feral Spirits damage has been increased by 100%.
Frost Shocks damage has been reduced by 50%.
Lightning Bolt is no longer castable while moving by default. Effects like Spiritwalkers Grace can still make the spell castable while moving.
Primal Earth Elemental's Pulverize ability no longer deals damage.
Shamanism no longer reduces the cast time of Chain Lightning, but instead now increases the damage of Chain Lightning by 100% (up from 70%).
Unleash Flame no longer deals direct damage, but now increases the damage of the Shamans next Fire spell by 40% (up from 30%).
Unleash Frost no longer deals direct damage, but now always snares the target by 70% (rather than only when the target is already snared by a Frost spell).
Unleash Wind no longer deals direct damage, but now increases attack speed by 60% (up from 50%).
Using Unleashed Fury with Windfury Weapon imbue active now increases Multistrike chance by 10%.
Wind Shear no longer affects threat.
Windfury Weapon no longer has a 3-second internal cooldown.

Restoration Shaman had the most passive and smart healing of any healer, and so received some reductions in that area, along with buffs elsewhere to keep them competitive. One particular change is to Mana Tide Totem, which we made less effective for other players, but still just as effective for the Shaman. We like that Shaman could help other healers out on mana, but it was just too strong, significantly impacting how those other healers gear themselves.

Chain Heal now heals each chain target for 15% less than the previous target.
Conductivity is no longer triggered by damaging spells for Restoration Shaman, or by healing spells for non-Restoration Shaman.
Multiple Earth Shields can now be applied to the same target.
Earthliving Weapon now increases healing done by 5% (instead of increasing healing Spell Power by a flat amount).
Healing Stream Totems mana cost has been reduced to 10% of base mana (down from 23.5%), and its healing has been reduced by 50%.
Mana Tide Totem now increases the Spirit of allies by 50% (down from 200% of the Shaman's Spirit). It remains unchanged (200%) for the Shaman activating the totem, and still ignores temporary Spirit buffs.
Unleash Life no longer increases the healing from Healing Rain.
Glyph of Chaining no longer causes Chain Heal to have a 2-second cooldown.
Glyph of Totemic Recall now only increases the mana returned from recalling your totems by 25% (down from 75%).

They also made a couple quality of life improvements to Shaman Shield spells.

Lightning Shield now persists through death.
Water Shield now persists through death.
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Priest
Priest (Updated)
They've made a few significant changes to Priests as well, focused mostly on reining in Discipline absorbs, improving quality of life for both healing Priest specializations, and solving single-target damage issues for Shadow.

Atonement was the original damage-to-healing conversion ability, but grew out of control during Mists of Pandaria. We decided to reduce its effectiveness, to bring it more in line with our goal of it being an option to trade significant healing for significant damage (ending up somewhere between a full healer and a full damage dealer). Another place where Discipline's absorbs were too strong was in their interaction with the level-90 Talents, especially in large Raids. Near the end of Mists of Pandaria, we uncapped the AoE healing of that Talent row; that has proven to be a mistake in Discipline's case, not because it caused the level-90 Talents themselves to heal for too much, but rather because the gigantic overhealing that that produced translated into gigantic Divine Aegis absorbs. To get back to a balanced place, we've reapplied the AoE caps to the level-90 Talents, making them consistent with all other AoE heals.

Atonement now heals for 25% less than before.
Halo and Divine Star now follow standard AoE capping rules.

For Holy Priests, our biggest concern is with the Chakras. We think that Chakras are the defining abilities of Holy Priests, but that they haven't lived up to their potential. We decided to move more of their effectiveness from their raw throughput buff (which felt like a penalty for being in the wrong chakra, rather than a bonus for being in the right Chakra) into the Holy Word spells that they grant. We also returned Renew to a normal 1.5-second global cooldown (GCD), so that Renew blanketing is still possible, but less ideal without Haste.

Chakra: Serenity now increases healing of single-target spells by 10% (down from 25%).
Holy Word: Serenity now heals for 40% more than before.
Chakra: Sanctuary now increases healing of area-of-effect spells by 10% (down from 25%).
Holy Word: Sanctuary now heals for 60% more than before.
Rapid Renewal no longer reduces the global cooldown of Renew.

Shadow Priests had one large problem toward the end of Mists of Pandaria: single-target damage. Their AoE and multi-DoT damage was some of the best around, so they still ended up competitive on most fights. But, in any fight that was mostly single-target, they felt lacking. Additionally, one of the new stats we're adding in Warlords of Draenor, Multistrike, is almost exactly what their current Mastery, Shadowy Recall, does for DoTs. So, we took these two problems and came up with a change that we think will solve both of them. The result is a new Mastery, which primarily increases single-target damage. Shadow Priests who want to focus on single-target damage can aim for Mastery in their gearing; or, when multi-dotting is more valuable, prefer other secondary stats over Mastery.

Shadow Priests Mastery (Shadowy Recall) has been replaced with a new Mastery: Mental Anguish.
Mastery: Mental Anguish: Increases the damage of Mind Blast, Mind Spike, Mind Flay, and Mind Sear by 20%.

There are a few other miscellaneous changes. One is a quality-of-life change for healing Priests. The other is a fix for a problem with Void Tendrils, where it lasts its full duration against creatures that had no way to attack it (such as in certain Raid encounters). Note that the health reduction is to keep it where it was in health, compared to player health doubling. The third is an efficient AoE healing spell for Discipline Priests. And finally, we swapped the Level-15 and Level-60 talent rows so players are presented with core Priest themed abilities earlier in the leveling process.

Prayer of Mending from multiple Priests can now be on the same target, and can be on multiple targets from the same Priest.
Void Tendrils now have 10% of the Priests health (down from 20%), and damage dealt to the rooted target is now also dealt to the Void Tendril itself.
Angelic Feathers, if cast on players, will always prefer the casting priest over others, then pick the player closest to the targeted location. If there are no players where it is targeted, it will still create a feather that can be picked up, as before. Additionally, when collecting multiple feathers, the duration will be extended instead of replaced; up to a maximum of 130% of base duration.
Holy Nova is no longer available via a Major Glyph, and is instead a Discipline specialization spell. Its mana cost has been lowered and its healing increased. It is intended as the efficient area-of-effect (AoE) healing spell for Discipline Priests.
Inner Focus: No longer provides immunity to Dispels, Interrupts, and Silences. This effect will be returning as a Major Glyph.
Cascade, Divine Star, and Halo have received additional changes based on specialization.
Discipline and Holy: The abilities now heal for 50% less, costs 67% less mana, and no longer damages enemies.
Shadow: The abilities now costs 67% less mana, but no longer heals allies.
Purify, Halo, Cascade, and Divine Star can now be cast while in Spirit of Redemption form.
Shadowfiend no longer restores mana.
Mindbender now restores 0.75% mana per hit (down from 1.75% mana).
Level-15 and Level-60 talent rows have swapped places.
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Monk
Monk (Updated)
The brand-new class for Mists of Pandaria, Monks, turned out to be a ton of fun. Brewmasters stayed fairly solid all expansion long. Windwalkers needed a few tweaks here and there, especially to their Mastery, and still have a few shortcomings that we hope to improve, but overall worked quite well. Mistweavers had a bit of a rollercoaster ride, veering between weak and strong over the course of the expansion. Most of our changes to Monks will focus on Mistweavers, to try to get them just right.

About midway through the expansion, it became clear that mana was not valuable for Mistweavers. Blizzard tried some adjustments to solve that, but it proved too large of a change to make at the time. They chose to just live with that problem for the time being, and tune them around not really caring much about Spirit or mana (once they reached epic gear).

Now that we have the time to tweak things, and for Mistweavers to acquire new gear, They're going to make changes to get them in the right spot. Initially, we experimented with giving Mistwavers a 1-second GCD akin to that of the Rogue to give them a faster combat feel. However, it's proven difficult to balance. Haste is attractive to healers because it lowers not just cast time but GCD as well. Therefore, Monks valued Haste much less than other healers. We explored a few options, but ultimately landed on changing the core GCD for Mistweavers from 1 second to the standard 1.5 seconds, which you will be able to reduce with Haste. This will feel jarring at first, but they're confident that it's for the best, long-term.

All abilities available to Mistweavers now have a 1.5-second global cooldown (up from 1 second).
Stance of the Sturdy Ox and Stance of the Fierce Tiger now reduce the global cooldown of the Monks abilities by 0.5 seconds.
Stance of the Wise Serpent no longer increases Haste from items by 50%.
Focus and Harmony is a new passive ability for Mistweaver Monks.
Focus and Harmony: Haste effects lower the global cooldown of your spells and abilities.
Crackling Jade Lightning's throughput has been increased by 100%, but no longer generates Chi for Mistweaver Monks.
Soothing Mist no longer generates Chi for Mistweaver Monks.
Thunder Focus Tea now causes the next Renewing Mist to jump up to 4 times (used to cause the next Uplift to refresh the duration of Renewing Mists on all targets).
Healing Spheres now heal an ally within 12 yards (up from 6 yards) for 100% (up from 50%) of their normal healing, when they expire.
Detonate Chi is a new spell available to Mistweavers:
Detonate Chi: Instantly detonate all of your Healing Spheres, causing each of them to heal a nearby ally within 12 yards of the sphere. 15 seconds cooldown.
Another issue with Mistweavers is that of Eminence, which has never really played out how we had hoped. The intent with Eminence was to create an alternate play style to fulfill the fantasy of healing through dealing damage, since we knew a lot of players had that fantasy, and a new class was the perfect opportunity to satisfy that.

Having two play styles in one spec (Eminence, and traditional Mistweaving, healing primarily through casting heals) proved challenging to balance, because we don't want players to take the best parts of both and stack them into an unintended superior spec. The most notorious of these cases was "Jab-Jab-Uplift". In order to solve this problem, we're giving Mistweavers two stances. Stance of the Wise Serpent will continue to be the stance from which to do traditional Mistweaving. The new Stance of the Spirited Crane will be the stance to use for Eminence. You can swap stances at will, with only the cost of a GCD and any current Chi that you've accrued. The intention is that Crane Stance allows Mistweavers to trade healing for damage; it should fall somewhere in the middle between being a full healer, and being a full damage dealer.

Stance of the Spirited Crane is a new ability for Mistweaver Monks, which replaces Stance of the Fierce Tiger.
The Spell-Power-to-Attack-Power conversion effect has been moved from Stance of the Wise Serpent to Stance of the Spirited Crane.
The Eminence effect has been moved from Stance of the Wise Serpent to Stance of the Spirited Crane.
Eminence now causes a nearby target to be healed for 35% of all damage caused by the Monk and includes auto attacks.
Teachings of the Monastery now makes Spinning Crane Kick heal friends instead of damaging enemies, while in Stance of the Wise Serpent (previously, it would heal allies in addition to damaging enemies).
Mastery: Gift of the Serpents Healing Spheres now scale with Spell Power instead of Attack Power.
Muscle Memory, Serpent's Zeal, and Vital Mists have been replaced with a new passive ability, Crane Style Techniques. Crane Style Techniques enhances several of the Monk's combat abilities while in Crane Stance.
Crackling Jade Lightning channels 150% faster, generates 1 Chi each time it deals damage, but costs 300% more mana.
Blackout Kicks grants Crane's Zeal, increasing Critical Strike chance by 20% for 20 seconds.
Blackout Kick causes Eminence to heal 5 allies instead of 1, but heals for only 15% of damage dealt instead of 35%.
The Monk gains a stack of Vital Mists for every Chi consumed.
Rising Sun Kick is now available to Mistweaver and Windwalker Monks. However, it does not cause Mortal Wounds for Mistweavers.
The Windwalker passive ability, Combat Conditioning, now causes Rising Sun Kick to cause Mortal Wounds, instead of causing Mortal Wounds naturally.
The following abilities now require Stance of the Wise Serpent for Mistweavers:
Enveloping Mist, Renewing Mist, Soothing Mist, Uplift
The following abilities now require Stance of the Spirited Crane for Mistweavers:
Blackout Kick, Jab, Rising Sun Kick, Tiger Palm

Blizzard also improved all Monk Healing Spheres. You'll no longer waste them when running over multiple at once when you only need a little healing. And we significantly improved the effect when Mistweavers' Healing Spheres expire. They also made Afterlife Healing Spheres consistent with the rest of the class.

When a player runs through multiple Healing Spheres at once, only as many as needed to heal the player to full health will be consumed (instead of all of them if the player is injured at all).
Healing Spheres from Gift of the Serpent now heal an injured ally within 12 yards (up from 6 yards) for 100% (up from 50%) of their normal effect when they expire.
Afterlifes Healing Sphere now heals for the same amount as other Healing Spheres (instead of healing for 15% of maximum health).
We also did some polishing on Brewmasters and Windwalkers and made Storm, Earth, and Fire, Transcendence, and Touch of Death easier to use. Fists of Fury has also been improved; sometimes brute force is the right answer. Gift of the Ox was changed to give value to the new Multistrike stat for Brewmasters. Lastly, Tiger Strikes was improved considerably, and made available to all Monk specializations.

There were several changes that affected multiple Monk specializations. Wed like to see Monks using Transcendence more often, so its usability has been improved (some baseline, and some in a Draenor Perk). For Touch of Death, we like that its a unique execute being usable only once, but found it impractical to use on bosses and have improved its usability. For Tiger Strikes, they buffed it to grant Multistrike ability which it was similar to already, and extended it to work with all Monk specializations.

Transcendence: Transfer no longer has an energy or mana cost.
Touch of Death is now usable on targets that have 10% or less health remaining, or have less current health than your maximum health. The rules against players remain unchanged.
Tiger Strikes is now available to all Monk specializations, and has a chance to trigger on successful auto attacks and their Multistrikes. It has an 8% chance to trigger while using a two-handed weapon, and a 5% chance to trigger while dual wielding.
When triggered, Tiger Strikes now grants +50% to Multistrike for 8 seconds instead of +50% to attack speed and double attacks for 4 attacks.

Blizzard are making a few changes that mostly affects Windwalkers, but has a minor impact on Mistweavers and Brewmasters as well. For energy-based gameplay to function well, the primary limitation on ability usage should be energy, not time. As such, we're making the following changes to address GCD-capping problems. First, were reducing the effects and mana increase of Ascension, because it became more powerful when combined with several of our other changes to healers. We believe that Ascension will remain as a competitive talent for Brewmasters. Second, energy cost of Jab has been increased for Windwalkers. And Third, we reduced the chance for Combo Breaker to trigger. Individually, these may sound like significant nerfs but Windwalker damage has been adjusted to compensate for these changes. The goal is not to reduce DPS while addressing the issue with GCD-capping.

Ascension now increases energy regeneration and maximum mana by 10% (down from 15%).
Combo Breaker now has an 8% chance to trigger, per effect, per Jab (down from 12%).
Stance of the Fierce Tiger now also increases Jabs energy cost by 10.
A couple of additional changes for Windwalkers. Storm, Earth, and Fire, got buffed to make it smoother to use. We also buffed Fists of Fury because we felt that the ability wasnt giving a strong enough damage boost given its restrictions and impact on the Monk's rotation.

Storm, Earth, and Fire no longer has an energy cost, and is off GCD.
Fists of Fury now deals 100% increased damage, and always deals full damage to your primary target; additional targets are still affected by the damage split.
For Brewmasters, Gift of the Ox has been modified to allow it to scale defensively with the new Multistrike stat. The Black Ox Statue has been modified to aid Monks in establishing aggro on new enemies.

Black Ox Statue now also passively attracts the attention of all enemies within 30 yards, causing a minor amount of threat each second.
Gift of the Ox now has a chance to trigger only from auto attack Multistrikes, instead of from all auto attacks. It has a 100% chance to trigger while using a two-handed weapon, and a 62.5% chance to trigger while dual wielding.
Glyph of Leer of the Ox now also causes Black Ox Statue to passively pulse a minor amount of threat to all enemies within 30 yards.
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Mage
Mage
The Mage class has good specialization distinction when it comes to their single-target rotations, but utility and area-of-effect spells were heavily shared between specializations. Commonly, these spells were redundant as well. We made many of their spells specialization-specific (as described in Ability Pruning above). And probably most significant, we made changes to several existing Talents.

Presence of Mind was extremely strong for instant CC, which we wanted to curtail. Rather than completely remove Presence of Mind or make it not affect CC abilities, we made it a base Arcane spell, where we don't expect that it will be a problem, since Arcane has less CC than the other Mage specs already. In its place, we've added a new talent, Evanesce.

Presence of Mind is no longer a Talent, and is instead learned by Arcane Mages.
Evanesce is a new Talent available at level 15.
Evanesce: Fade into the nether, avoiding all attacks against you for 3 seconds. This spell may be cast while a cast-time spell is in progress and is not on the global cooldown. Replaces Ice Block. 45-second cooldown.

Going along with our goals to reduce cooldown stacking across all of the classes, they decided to remove Alter Time's DPS contribution. Alter Time has a number of clever movement and utility uses, but in practice it was mostly being used for additional uptime of offensive cooldowns. Mages also had many redundant forms of survival utility, so they moved a utility-only version of Alter Time into the Talent tree, replacing Temporal Shield.

Temporal Shield has been removed.
Alter Time is now a level-30 Talent, replacing Temporal Shield.
Alter Time now lasts for 15 seconds (up from 6 seconds), has a 90-second cooldown (down from 3 minutes), and no longer affects the casting Mages mana, buffs, or debuffs.

A few of the abilities reset by Cold Snap were made spec-specific, or could be overridden with Talents, so we expanded what it can affect to compensate.

Cold Snap now also resets the cooldown of Presence of Mind, Dragon's Breath, and Evanesce.

The Mage Bomb level-75 Talent row, the Bomb row, was also problematic. We chose to add the Bombs to all Mages' rotations in order to spice them up a bit, to provide rotational variety. That succeeded, and we're overall happy with how they interact with your rotation in a single-target situation, but they also came with the prospect of multi-dotting (applying your damage-over-time spell to many enemies, individually), which we don't feel is an appropriate fit for Mages. Additionally, in order to make all 3 Bombs useful to all specializations, we had to lose some of their spec-specific perks. And, even more importantly, many Mages did not like DoT gameplay at all.

In order to solve all of these problems, we decided to merge the 3 current Bomb Talents into one that changes based on spec. That allows us to reintroduce spec-specific perks to each Bomb, and makes room for some non-DoT alternatives.

Nether Tempest, Living Bomb, and Frost Bomb are now available to their corresponding specialization only, and share the left Talent slot.
Nether Tempest can now only be on 1 target at a time (down from unlimited), but its secondary damage now hits all targets in range (up from only 1), and deals 100% of the primary damage (up from 50%).
Living Bomb can once again be applied to multiple targets, can be spread by Inferno Blast, and has a normal 1.5-second cooldown. More of its damage has been moved into its explosion.
Frost Bomb has been redesigned. It now lasts 12 seconds, has no cooldown, and explodes every time the target is hit by the Mage's Ice Lance while frozen. The damage per explosion has been reduced by 75% to compensate.
Unstable Magic is a new Talent available at level 75, in the middle Talent slot.
Unstable Magic: Arcane Blast, Fireball, and Frostbolt have a 25% chance to explode on impact, dealing an additional 50% damage to the target, and all other enemies within 8 yards.
The right level-75 Talent slot is now filled by a new Talent that varies by specialization.
Supernova: Cause a pulse of Arcane energy around the target enemy or ally, dealing Arcane damage to all enemies within 8 yards, and knocking them into the air. If the primary target is an enemy, they take 100% increased damage. Replaces Frost Nova. 25-second cooldown. Instant cast.
Blast Wave: Cause an explosion of fiery force around the target enemy or ally, dealing Fire damage to all enemies within 8 yards, and dazing them, reducing their movement speed by 70% for 4 seconds. If the primary target is an enemy, they take 100% increased damage. Replaces Frost Nova. 25-second cooldown. Instant cast.
Ice Nova: Cause a whirl of icy wind around the target enemy or ally, dealing Frost damage to all enemies within 8 yards, and freezing them for 4 seconds. If the primary target is an enemy, they take 100% increased damage. Replaces Frost Nova. 20-second cooldown. Instant cast.
One of the most problematic Talent rows in the game has been the Mage level-90 row. The primary theme of the row was mana, which only Arcane Mages actually cared about. Bonus damage was added in, making it functional for all Mages, but muddled in its goals. Additionally, some of them just weren't fun to play with. We've revised the row to be purely about damage, and made them have less maintenance cost. Arcane Mages will have enough mana regeneration without these Talents to perform well.

Invocation has been removed.
Mirror Image is now a level-90 Talent, replacing Invocation.
Mirror Images now inherit 50% of the Mages Spell Power (up from 5%).
Glyph of Mirror Image has been removed and its effects have been incorporated into Mirror Image.
Rune of Power no longer replaces Evocation, no longer increases mana regeneration, and now lasts 3 minutes (up from 1 minute).
Incanter's Ward has been removed.
Incanter's Flow is a new level-90 Talent, replacing Incanter's Ward.
Incanter's Flow: Magical energy flows through you, increasing all spell damage done by 5% per stack. While in combat, the magical energy builds up to 5 stacks over 5 seconds and then diminishes down to 1 stack over 5 seconds. This cycle repeats every 10 seconds.

Frost Mages enjoyed newfound PvE viability in Mists of Pandaria, and we intend to continue that into the future. However, Blizzard do want to clean up some rough spots, especially around their valuing of secondary stats, and the amount of instant-cast spells in their rotation. The Frost Armor and Shatter changes increase the amount of Haste/Critical chance that they can acquire on gear before they start hitting soft caps. The Shatter change also lowers the value of Critical Strike for a bit. The changes to the level-75 Talent row meant that having a Bomb spell is no longer guaranteed, so we changed the way that Brain Freeze is triggered. Blizzard also changed Brain Freeze's effect, in order to give Frost mages another cast-time spell in their rotation.

Frost Armor now grants 15% chance to Multistrike instead of 7% Haste.
Glyph of Frostfire Bolt is now available only to Fire Mages.
Glyph of Icy Veins now causes Icy Veins to provide 75% chance to Multistrike, instead of 20% Haste.
Shatter now multiplies Critical Strike chance by 1.5 (down from 2).
The Brain Freeze effect no longer makes Frostfire Bolt instant, but it can now stack to 2. It also no longer triggers from the Bomb Talents, and instead has a 10% chance to trigger from Frostbolt casts. Each Multistrike of Frostbolt increases that cast's chance by an additional 45%. (Total of 100% on double-Multistrikes).

In order to make room for more Haste effects to apply to Arcane Blast, we raised its cast time and damage slightly. They also made Arcane Charges last longer, to aid in questing and encounters.

Arcane Blast's cast time has been increased to 2.25 seconds (up from 2 seconds), and its damage has been increased by 12.5% to compensate.
Arcane Charges now last 15 seconds (up from 10 seconds).
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Hunter
Hunter
Hunters have lacked a strong distinction between the different specializations. What is meant by that is that the Hunter specializations all had rotations that felt similar, with Marksmanship and Survival having the most blurred identities (Beast Mastery felt well rooted in the pet). Hunters were also some of the most afflicted by button bloat. To address these problems, they opted to make changes to each specialization's rotation, primarily through removing abilities, and making some of them unique to each spec. This means things like Aimed Shot being the primary Focus dump for Marksmanship, instead of Arcane Shot or Serpent Sting being available only to Survival. Hunters also had a large number of cooldown abilities, which we've also cut down (some of which we moved to the talent tree, competing with other active buttons). For a full list of what was removed, please see Ability Pruning and PvP - Crowd Control and Diminishing Returns.

One of the most difficult abilities to decide to cut was Aspect of the Hawk. It began to feel fairly meaningless, since it was used virtually all of the time in combat, so might as well have just been passive. We decided to cut Aspect of the Hawk, and bake in its benefit to the other abilities. The remaining aspect abilities are all utility only, and are being moved off the stance bar and made toggles.

Overall, Hunters should see a drastic reduction in the number of active buttons, and have a clearer distinction between the different specializations. With some of these changes, you may find yourself favoring a different specialization. Keep in mind that Draenor Perks, earned from levels 91 to 99, will serve to further distinguish the different specializations.

Aspect of the Pack no longer appears on the stance bar and is now on the global cooldown.
Aspect of the Cheetah no longer appears on the stance bar and is now on the global cooldown.
Glyph of Aspect of the Beast: The ability taught by this Glyph no longer appears on the stance bar and is now on the global cooldown.
Glyph of Aspect of the Cheetah: No longer triggers any cooldown on Aspects.
We did a comprehensive pass on Hunter pet abilities. As mentioned above in Crowd Control and Diminishing Returns, all full crowd-control abilities have been removed from Hunter pets and replaced those with new abilities, including spreading some that were previously restricted to exotic pets. Additionally, Hunters can now tame beasts from new pet families.

Hunters may now tame beasts from 3 new pet families.
Hydra
Riverbeast
Hook Wasp (Exotic)
Abilities unique to each hunter pet family have been revised to provide a standard buff, debuff, or ability.
Combat Resurrection ability: Crane, Moth, Quilen
Mortal Wounds debuff: Carrion Bird, Devilsaur, Riverbeast, Scorpid
Increased Spell Power buff: Serpent, Silithid, Water Strider
Increased Strength/Agility/Intellect buff: Dog, Gorilla, Shale Spider, Worm
Increased Critical Strike Chance buff: Devilsaur, Quilen, Raptor, Shale Spider, Water Strider, Wolf
Temporary Haste buff: Core Hound, Nether Ray
Increased Haste buff: Hook Wasp, Hyena, Sporebat, Wasp
Increased Mastery buff: Cat, Hydra, Spirit Beast, Tallstrider
Increased Stamina buff: Bear, Goat, Hook Wasp, Silithid
Increased Magic Damage Taken debuff: Basilisk, Bat, Chimaera, Core Hound, Dragonhawk, Rhino, Wind Serpent
Increased Physical Damage Taken debuff: Bird of Prey, Boar, Porcupine, Ravager, Rhino, Worm
An ability that increases dodge chance of the pet by 30% for 10 seconds: Fox, Monkey
An ability that reduces damage taken by the pet by 50% for 12 seconds: Beetle, Crab, Quilen, Rhino, Shale Spider, Turtle
An ability that Reduces the movement speed of the target by 50%: Chimaera, Crocolisk, Silithid, Spider, Warp Stalker
The following pet families provide an ability that puts the pet in stealth mode, but slows its movement speed by 50%. The first attack from stealth receives a 20% bonus to damage: Cat, Spirit Beast
The following pet families also provide an additional ability.
Chimaera - Froststorm Breath: Causes Froststorm damage to all targets in front of the Chimaera over 8 seconds.
Core Hound - Molten Hide: Causes Fire damage to attackers.
Devilsaur - Feast: The devilsaur feasts on a nearby Humanoid or Beast corpse within 5 yards, healing it for 20% of its maximum health and restoring 20 Focus over 5 seconds.
Direhorn - Reflective Armor Plating: Deflects all spells cast in front of the Direhorn for 6 seconds.
Hook Wasp - Flutter: Slows the fall speed of both itself and the hunter for 30 seconds.
Spirit Beast - Spirit Mend: Heals the target ally instantly, and additional healing over 10 seconds.
Water Strider - Surface Trot: Allows the Hunter and the Water Strider to walk across water.
Worm - Burrow Attack: Deals Nature damage to nearby enemies over 8 seconds.

There were also a few other changes, primarily for quality of life and rotational consistency.

Aimed Shot now deals 20% more damage, no longer interrupts Auto Attacks, and can be cast while moving.
Dismiss Pet now ignores line of sight.
Growl now has a 30-yard range.
Hunter Pets now have a 1-second global cooldown.
Black Arrows periodic effect now has a chance each time it deals damage to cause the next 2 Explosive Shots to cost no Focus and not trigger a cooldown. This effect is guaranteed to activate at least once.
Explosive Trap now places a periodic-damage effect on each target within the radius of the explosion, rather than a persistent effect on the ground.
Several raid buffs provided by pets have been changed into auras that are automatically applied to the Hunter's party or raid.
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Druid
Druid (Updated)
Druids have seen a few significant changes. The loss of Symbiosis (see Ability Pruning above) will primarily impact druids survival, as many of the abilities received through Symbiosis were defensive cooldowns. To compensate for that change, they buffed Survival Instincts significantly and the ability is now available for all specializations.

Survival Instincts is now available to all Druid specializations. Survival Instincts now reduces damage taken by 70% (up from 50%) with a 2-minute cooldown (down from 3 minutes), and for Feral and Guardian specializations can have up to 2 charges (up from 1 charge).

Guardian Druids received a number of changes. They've had increased Armor as their Mastery for a while now. However, one of the new secondary stats available to all tanks is Bonus Armor. We didn't feel that the difference of being additive vs. being a multiplier was significant enough to warrant keeping their Mastery around. Additionally, active mitigation hasn't played out as well for Guardians as it has for some other tanks. They decided to redesign the Mastery for Guardian Druids to something that compliments the Avoidance-heavy nature of Savage Defense, and also to improve the usability of Tooth and Claw for more consistent damage reduction. Note that Primal Tenacity's calculation uses the damage before any other absorbs you have, and before Tooth and Claw's effects, so that it isn't negatively affected by any of those. Note that Primal Tenacity's calculation uses the damage before any other absorbs you have, and before Tooth and Claw's effects, so that it isn't negatively affected by any of the changes.

Rage for Guardian Druids has been problematic throughout Mists of Pandaria. Most of their rage generation was extremely passive, and most of their button presses either didn't affect their survivability, or only trivially did so. We made changes to Haste and Crit, to try to solve these rage generation problems, and improve their rotation. We also added Ursa Major, in order to give a defensive value to the new Multistrike stat.

Guardian Druids' Mastery (Natures Guardian) has been replaced with a new Mastery: Primal Tenacity.
Mastery: Primal Tenacity causes the Druid to gain a Physical absorb shield equal to 16% of the attacks damage when they are hit by a Physical attack. Attacks which this effect fully or partially absorbs cannot trigger Primal Tenacity.
Tooth and Claw can now accumulate 2 charges, its effects stack on the target, and are affected by Resolve.
Auto-attacks now generate 5 Rage (down from 10.9 Rage).
Lacerate now generates 10 Rage, has no cooldown (down from a 3-second cooldown), but no longer has a chance to reset Mangle's cooldown.
Thrash now generates 2 Rage every time it deals direct or periodic damage, has no cooldown (down from a 6-second cooldown), but no longer has a chance to reset Mangle's cooldown.
Faerie Fire no longer has a chance to reset Mangle's cooldown.
Primal Fury now generates 5 Rage (down from 15 Rage) when you dodge or non-periodically critically strike (up from only Auto Attacks and Mangle).
Mangle now generates 30 Rage, and its cooldown is reduced by Haste.
Bear Form no longer increases Haste and Crit from items by 50%, but instead causes Haste to reduce the global cooldown.
Ursa Major is a new passive ability for Guardian Druids:
Ursa Major: Multistrikes from auto attacks and Mangle grant the Druid Ursa Major. Ursa Major increases maximum health by 5% for 15 seconds. When this effect is refreshed, any time remaining on the effect is added to the new one.

Feral Druids received one major change, and few tweaks beyond what's been mentioned above in Ability Pruning and Facing Requirements. Combo Points are now stored "on the player", meaning that when you switch targets, any accumulated Combo Points remain with you. Pounce was buffed significantly, in order to bring it up to par with Ravage. Primal Fury was changed to let it affect area attacks as well. Glyph of Savagery was reworked to better achieve its intended effect.

Combo Points for Feral Druids are now shared across all targets, and are no longer lost when switching targets.
Pounce's damage has been increased by 100%.
Primal Fury now also grants a combo point for area attacks that critically strike the Druid's primary target.
Glyph of Savagery now grants a free 5 Combo Point Savage Roar when leaving Prowl, instead of allowing Savage Roar to be used with 0 Combo Points.

Overall, we are happy with Balance's rotation, however there are a few tweaks coming through Draenor Perks. With the changes to Periodic Effects, we're slightly modifying Eclipse to allow it to retain the gameplay it had before.

Eclipse now increases the damage of all Nature spells (or Arcane, depending on which Eclipse state is active) cast while it is active. This means that for example: a Moonfire cast during Eclipse will receive the Eclipse benefit through its whole duration, even after leaving Eclipse. The reverse also holds true; a Moonfire cast before entering Eclipse will not benefit from that Eclipse until it is recast.

Tranquility has an amazingly strong effect (pour a ton of healing into the whole Raid/Party), but had excessive complexity for a relatively simple task (5 different targets per tick, a short HoT, stacking, varied strength by raid size). So, we simplified it significantly. It still will be used just as it always has been.

Tranquility now heals every Party and Raid member within range every 2 seconds for 8 seconds. It no longer places a periodic effect on each target. The total amount of healing it generates in Raids should be approximately the same as before this change.

Restoration Druids got a few changes as well. In Patch 5.4, a Glyph was introduced where you could choose to attach your Efflorescence to Wild Mushroom, instead of to Swiftmend. That was a rousing success, taken by nearly all Restoration Druids, and felt like a much better situation to us, so we decided to remove the glyph choice, and bake it in permanently. Secondly, while we are fine with the playstyle where a Restoration Druid blankets their Raid in Rejuvenations, the Swift Rejuvenation passive made that too strong, and also limited their scaling with Haste. We removed that passive, to encourage using other spells more, but still allow Rejuvenation blanketing as a playstyle choice.

Swift Rejuvenation has been removed.
Swiftmend no longer causes Efflorescence. Instead, Wild Mushroom (Restoration) now causes Efflorescence to appear at the mushrooms location.

The level 90-Talent row for Druids was designed to encourage hybrid gameplay. We decided that, while you shouldn't have to give up a significant amount of your primary role throughput in order to gain the off-role benefit, you also don't need to gain an actual benefit to your primary role throughput benefit either. They've reduced the power of their primary role benefit, making them roughly neutral in their effect on your primary role. Note that the increase to off-role healing from Nature's Vigil is not actually a buff (see Healing and Player Health above).

Heart of the Wild no longer provides an increase to Hit chance or Expertise while active, and no longer increases Stamina, Agility, and Intellect.
Dream of Cenarius
Balance: Casting Healing Touch no longer increases the damage bonus of the Druids next Eclipse. Eclipse now causes the Druids next Healing Touch to become instant cast and reset the cooldown on Starsurge.
Feral: Casting Healing Touch no longer increases the damage of the Druids next 2 melee abilities, or increases the healing of Rejuvenation.
Guardian: No longer increases the critical strike chance of Mangle.
Natures Vigil, while active, increases single-target damage and healing caused by healing spells by 16% (down from 25%), and all single-target damage spells also heal a nearby friendly target for 35% of the damage done (up from 25%).

And the Druid changes are capped off by merging Glyph of Stampede's effects into Glyph of Stampeding Roar.

Glyph of Stampede has been removed. Its effects have been merged into Glyph of Stampeding Roar.
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Death Knight
Death Knight (Updated)
A few things have happened for Death Knights. As described above in Ability Pruning, several cooldowns were made spec-specific. Rotations remain unchanged for the most part. One thing we did polish up is the effect of Diseases on the damage of other abilities. Diseases now do enough damage on their own to warrant using them, so having them act as multipliers on the damage of other abilities was extraneous, and just cluttered up the tooltips of those abilities. We removed those multipliers, and just baked in their benefit to the corresponding base spell. This slightly reduces ramp-up time.

Blood Boil damage has been increased by 50%, but no longer deals additional damage to targets affected by Blood Plague or Frost Fever.
Heart Strike damage has been increased by 30%, but no longer deals additional damage for each disease present on the target.
Obliterate now deals 25% more damage on both main- and off-hand weapons, but no longer deals additional damage for each disease present on the target.
Scourge Strike no longer deals additional damage for each disease present on the target. The ability now deals 50% of the Physical damage dealt as additional Shadow damage; this effect can critically hit and no longer ignores modifiers.

Blizzard made several changes to compensate for abilities that have been removed by Ability Pruning. Blood Boil got removed and its effects were merged into Pestilence. This change in effect turned Roiling Blood into a passive ability; which we replaced with a new talent, Plaguebearer. For Blood specialization we removed Rune Strike and are adjusting the cost of Death Coil so it can be used in Rune Strikes place.

Crimson Scourge now interacts with Pestilence instead of Blood Boil.
Death Coil now costs 30 Runic Power (down from 40 Runic Power).
Pestilence now deals damage to all targets hit, including the primary target.
Roiling Blood has been removed.
Plaguebearer is a new Level-56 talent replacing Roiling Blood, causing Death Coil and Frost Strike to also infect the target with Frost Fever and Blood Plague.
Sudden Doom no longer reduces the cost of Death Coil.
Glyph of Outbreak has been removed.

In order to better balance the scaling rates and value of secondary stats for Unholy Death Knights, they have reduced the power of their passive Unholy Might ability.

Unholy Might (Unholy) bonus changed from +35% to +10%.

Active Mitigation was a very successful design that was inspired by Death Knights' tanking style. However, it went beyond that, and Death Knights themselves were somewhat left behind in that regard. We made several changes to bring up the interactivity of Blood combat. This includes making Death Strike cause healing based on attack power, but be affected by the new Resolve passive (see Tank Vengeance and Resolve, above), which gives it the traditional increase from recent damage. Plus, Rune Tap is being significantly improved, to become a strong Active Mitigation button. To tie those together, Blood's Mastery is being changed to affect both the size of the Blood Shield absorb, and the new Rune Shield absorb. Additionally, we removed Dodge and Parry from gear, and expect Blood Death Knights to value Haste and Crit as important secondary stats. In order to achieve that, we made Riposte give defensive value to Critical Strikes, and Scent of Blood give defensive value to Multistrike. To solve GCD-capping issues and increase the value of Haste, we also removed the passive rune regeneration increase from Improved Blood Presence. Finally, they tweaked the targeting AI of Dancing Rune Weapon, and fixed it up to properly copy most Talents that you know.

Heart Strike now only cleaves 1 additional target (down from 2).
Death Strike now causes healing that scales in effectiveness with attack power, instead of based on damage taken in the last 5 seconds. This healing is affected by Resolve.
Blood Rites now causes Death Strike to also cause an absorb for 50% of the amount healed.
Rune Tap now grants an absorption shield that scales in effectiveness with Attack Power, instead of a heal based on a % of maximum health. It also now has 2 charges, with a 30-second recharge time.
Will of the Necropolis now grants an immediate charge, and makes your next Rune Tap free. However, its damage reduction buff now only lasts 4 seconds (down from 8 seconds).
Mastery: Bloody Shields now increases the effectiveness of Blood Shield and Rune Shield by 16% (percentage increased by mastery), instead of adding the Blood Shield effect.
Riposte has been redesigned.
Riposte now gives the Death Knight Parry equal to their Critical Strike bonus from gear.
Improved Blood Presence no longer increases rune regeneration rate.
Dancing Rune Weapons summoned Rune Weapon now remains fixated on the Death Knights target at the time of summoning, and copies the effects of Talents that are tied to the Death Knight, such as Blood Boil, Frost Fever, or Asphyxiate. Should the original target be dead or otherwise unavailable, the Rune Weapon will switch to assist with the Death Knights current target.

Since the Ghoul pet is now Unholy only, that presents a problem for Death Pact. We revised Death Pact to not require an undead minion, but work a little differently. We left it at 50% heal, which is effectively a 33% buff to it from before (see Healing and Player Health above), and added a heal absorb for half the amount healed, instead. It should now be a relatively more effective heal for staying alive immediately, but with the downside of needing to heal through the heal absorb before you can be healed any further.

Death Pact no longer requires an undead minion, and instead places a heal absorb on you for 50% of the amount healed.

There were also a few other miscellaneous changes. The Runic Power generation of Anti-Magic Shell was standardized, to make it more understandable and balanced. Level-60 and Level-75 talent rows have swapped places, so the important rune regeneration talents could be acquired earlier.

Anti-Magic Shell now restores 2 Runic Power per 1% of max health absorbed.
Desecrated Ground now also makes the Death Knight immune to Roots and Snares.
Level-60 and Level-75 talent rows have swapped places.
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Rogue
Rogue (Updated)
There are a number of Rogue changes listed under Ability Pruning, but there are a few additional changes to note. The biggest of which is a fundamental change to how Combo Points work. They're now shared across all enemies; you can swap targets and you won;t lose your Combo Points.

First, in the efforts to reduce cooldown stacking across the game, they chose to remove the damage increase from Tricks of the Trade. And second, we decided to loosen the weapon requirements on Assassination. It's important to note that we still intend for daggers to be the optimal choice for Assassination Rogues, but this change will help Rogues who want to try out Assassination but don't have two daggers.

Combo Points for Rogues are now shared across all targets. You no longer lose your Combo Points when switching targets.
Tricks of the Trade now has no energy cost and no longer increases damage caused by the target by 15%.
Assassins Resolve no longer requires daggers to function.
Dispatch can now be used with fist weapons or one-handed swords, dealing 331% weapon damage (instead of 480%) when used with those weapons instead of a dagger.
Mutilate can now be used with fist weapons or one-handed swords, dealing 137% weapon damage (instead of 200%) when used with those weapons instead of a dagger.
Sinister Strike now deals 188% weapon damage when used with a dagger (instead of 130%).

Bandit's Guile is an interesting mechanic that is important to Combat gameplay, but wasn't working out quite as well as we think that it could. In particular, there's basically no way to adjust when you're going to be in Deep Insight, other than stopping your rotation (and thus wasting energy, combo points, temporary effects, cooldown time, etc.). So, we're making an adjustment to Revealing Strike and Bandit's Guile. The intention here is that you can use Revealing Strike in place of Sinister Strike when you want to delay Deep Insight (such as to line it up with a specific upcoming fight mechanic), and have little lost damage besides the overall Deep Insight uptime. We don't expect this nuanced rotation adjustment to be used by all Combat Rogues, but having a little more control over the pace of your rotation will be useful to some.

Revealing Strike now deals 20% more damage, but no longer advances Bandit's Guile.

Among some other changes to improve Rogue AoE damage, we made a couple of baseline changes, and added a few Draenor Perks that impacts their AoE. wanted to make sure that Fan of Knives benefitted from Seal Fate.

Blade Flurry can now trigger poisons.
Seal Fate now also grants a combo point for area attacks that critically strike the Rogue's primary target.

Honor Among Thieves is an extremely powerful ability, but has the downside that it adds significant disparity between character power while soloing and while in a group. They made this change to bring up the soloing Subtlety Rogue, without having a significant impact on their performance while in a group.

Honor Among Thieves can now also be triggered by critical hits from the Rogue's melee Auto Attacks.

A couple of Rogue abilities do periodic damage, but don't have an intended alternative if that periodic is already on the target. We made these abilities roll remaining damage from their previous effect into the new effect, so that it's still ideal to use them again in these cases.

Crimson Tempest's periodic damage now has rolling periodic behavior, meaning that remaining damage from the previous application is added into the newly-applied periodic-damage effect.
Hemorrhage's periodic damage now has rolling periodic behavior, meaning that remaining damage from the previous application is added into the newly-applied periodic-damage effect.

Subterfuge has proved too powerful, and frustrating to play against in PvP, so they decided to reduce its defensive capabilities, while preserving its offensive power. They changed the Subterfuge period to allow the use of stealth abilities without actually stealthing you, similar to Shadow Dance.

Subterfuge now allows you to use abilities that require stealth for 3 seconds after leaving Stealth, instead of actually staying stealthed for 3 seconds.

Sticky By Tyler-