Class Changes For Patch 3.1 Part 3 Announced

The last installment of the class changes for patch 3.1 are here and like the first two parts, this one didn’t disappoint. In fact this final edition has some pleasant surprises that should be making a lot of people rejoice by now. In this final edition, we get to see the changes for paladins, mages, death knights and hunters. You can find the previous editions in the following links: Part 1 | Part 2

MAGE

# Improved Water Elemental – this talent has been removed and replaced with a new talent that grants Replenishment (similar to Shadow priests).
# We are also working on a way to give frost mages Ice Lance “Shatter combos” in PvE.
# We are also working on more survivability for Fire spec in PvP.
# We are also working on making Spirit a more useful and interesting stat for all mages.

PALADIN

# Blessing of Kings – this spell is now a base ability trainable by all paladins.
# Exorcism – this spell now causes damage to all types of enemy targets. However, it always critical strikes undead or demon targets. This change should make sure paladin damage doesn’t drop when going from Naxxramas to later tiers of content.
# Shield of the Templar now causes your Avenger’s Shield and Shield of the Righteousness to silence targets for 3 sec. The old damage bonus of this talent has been folded into Holy Shield, Avenger’s Shield, and Shield of the Righteousness.
# Ardent Defender, Improved Hammer of Justice, One-Handed Weapon Specialization and more have had their ranks reduced.
# Guarded by the Light – no longer reduces the mana cost of shield spells, but now has a 50/100% chance to refresh Divine Plea duration.
# Judgements of the Just – now also reduces the cooldown of Hammer of Justice by 10/20 seconds and increases the duration of the Seal of Justice stun effect by 0.5/1 second.

HUNTER

# Consumable ammunition has been removed from the game. Arrows and bullets no longer stack, but are not consumed. Ranged attack speed bonus gained from quivers and ammo bags will be preserved in a different capacity.
# A new tier of hunter pet talents have been added. In particular, this allows Beastmaster hunters to improve their damage per second (DPS) with their 51 point talent.
# Hunting Party – this talent has been reduced to 3 ranks and also grants a passive bonus to the hunter.
# Piercing Shots – this talent has been changed. Your Aimed, Steady and Chimera Shots cause the target to bleed for 10/20/30% of damage dealt for 8 sec.
# Sniper Training – this talent has been changed. After standing still for 6 sec, you gain a 2/4/6% damage bonus to Steady, Aimed and Explosive Shot.
# We are also looking to add additional trap functionality to Survival.

DEATH KNIGHT

# Gargoyle and Unholy Blight have swapped talent positions. Gargoyle’s damage has increased and runic power cost per time has decreased.
# Pestilence – this spell no longer causes damage but just spreads diseases. Blood Boil is intended to be the general area attack, and has been changed to be castable on targets with no diseases on them, but does extra damage if diseases are present.
# Unbreakable Armor now absorbs a flat amount of damage that increases as your armor increases. It no longer boosts armor.
# The Frost tree has been shuffled. Among other things, PvP talents such as Endless Winter are closer to the top of the tree where Blood and Unholy death knights can access them.
# Sudden Doom – this talent now procs a Death Coil rather than requiring an additional button click. It works similarly to shamans’ Lightning Overload.
# Magic Suppression and Blood of the North have been reduced to 3 ranks for the same benefit.
# Blood Gorged now grants armor penetration instead of expertise.
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Probably the most surprising change of all is removal of consumable ammo, because while this affects hunters the most, this also affects rogues and warriors since they use ranged weapons too, but especially warriors since they use ranged weapons to pull. I have a warrior friend who uses a throwing weapon since he didn’t like carrying ammo. In the next patch, he won’t need to worry about it. The removal of consumable ammo and the fact that they’re preserving the haste bonus quivers and ammo bags will give means that they’ll finally have space for another bag. This makes locks the only class that still won’t be able to have all their bags assuming they use a shard bag.

Paladins also get some surprising good news with the change to blessing of kings finally being made a baseline spell. There’s still no word about what talent will replace it but I’m quite confident it’s going to be something cool even if it might not be something as amazing. I’m thinking it’s going to be like when they replaced the mage iceblock with icy veins. Another surprising but needed change is the one to Exorcism (I wonder if it’s the same for the AoE version, Holy Wrath). Making this spell affect all enemy types with a special 100% crit chance to demons and undead is something that’s really going to make grinding easier and will help their dps.

we saw destruction locks will be a replenishment spec in the next patch and now frost mages will too. I think that they’ve really defended their stance stance that replenishment is mandatory quite well now. instead of just getting a replenishment like effect while the water elemental is up, now they get it even while it’s not up. It looks like death knights are going to get quite a mess of talent shuffling but it seems like it’s all for the best. The changes seems to be all buffs and will allow for more versatility in spec building.

There it is! Your chnages for the next patch have been unveiled and we now have a lot of reason to be happy in anticipation. This should make your game time a bit more pleasant while waiting for the patch to come.