It's one of the last patches of World of Warcraft's Mists of Pandaria expansion, and that means one more set of adjustments to the game's classes. You could, naturally, assume that all of the changes are being made because Blizzard hates your favorite class and loves your least favorite class. Or you could take a look at the most recent development post detailing why class abilities are being changed for better or worse.

Death Knight

Most of core changes were to Blood DKs. added the Riposte passive to DKs (and Warriors) to allow them to increase their damage using the avoidance stats that naturally occur on their tanking gear.

• Several abilities now no longer cost Runic Power, freeing up that power for other uses. The big two are Icebound Fortitude and Dancing Rune Weapon. The first allowing Death Knights to get a little more survivability without having to spend their power (or to have it in the first place).
• Riposte is a new passive ability that helps Death Knight and Warrior tanks. It raises their crit chance for 20 seconds by 75% of their parry and dodge rating any time they parry or dodge. This will boost the damage a DK or Warrior tank can put out and therefore help them with threat.
• Lastly, anti-magic zone has been changed. The damage reduction is now down to 40% (from 75%) but no longer has a cap on how much it can absorb. This means it will last longer time wise and potential protect more players for more damage over time, but will not protect them from as much of a percentage from big hits.

Druid

• Druids have less reliable damage reduction, which isn’t a problem itself, so long as they have the health pool to compensate for it. For Feral Druids, we reverted an earlier nerf to Cyclone’s cooldown but removed Cyclone from Predatory Swiftness. We felt like this ability had become a PvP problem that was too unpredictable to counter. Several spells and talents have been redesigned and simplified as many players found them confusing. Key examples are Dream of Cenarius and Soul of the Forest, which were good abilities but because of multiple effects for the different specs were hard to understand for some players.
• Innervate now grants 50% of the druids spirit as mana every second for 10 seconds instead of a flat 10% mana boost. This makes the mana gained from caster based druids higher than previously granted but lower from feral or guardian druids.
• Restoration druids gain a new ability called Genesis, which affects all players within 60 yards and accelerates their rejuvenation effects on them by 400%. This will allow Druids to use their Rejuvenation spell as more of a quick healing spell than a longer term HOT spell.
• Bear form will now grant 40% extra stamina from all cloth and leather items which is aimed at countering the fact that druid tnks take more damage than other tanks.
• Wild Mushroom for Restoration Druids now only summons a single mushroom instead of 3. The single mushroom heals for as much as the 3 used to in the past, and when re-cast the accumulated healing bonus moves to the new mushroom.

Hunter

There have  three main issues we wanted to resolve for Hunters this patch: Silencing Shot, Readiness, and Stampede.

• Arcane Shot now does 125% ranged weapon damage instead of the old 100%, but costs 50% more than previously.
• Silencing Shot is no longer a talent and is now a Marksman hunter only ability.
• Hunters now have a new Counter Shot ability that counters a spell being cast but does not cause a silence.
• Binding Shot moves from a Marksman hunter ability to a talent to replace silencing shot. This gives all hunters a little more CC ability but a little less anti-caster ability.
• Readiness has been removed from the game as the Devs viewed it as a boring ability.
• Revive pet no longer requires you to have a line of sight to your pet. This will make it much easier to use in PVP situations while staying safely in cover.
• Stampede will now do much more damage in PVE than it does in PVP situations.

Mage

Mages see only minor changes to their class. For all specs there are a few AOE abilities get minor DPS increases in PVP situations. Frost mages also have their whole mastery bonus changed. Instead of an increase to damage against frozen targets frost spells now work in pairs boosting the damage of each other based on your mastery, fingers of frost boosts ice lance and brain freeze boosts frostfire bolt. The goal with Frost seems to have been to lower the control aspect slightly so that it is easier to deal with in PVP.

Monk

There are only minor tuning changes to the monk class and nothing earth shattering to worry about.

Paladin

Most of core changes were to Holy Paladins. While some are minor, some will have a major effect on how the class plays. Specifically,  felt like the healing style of blanketing a group with Eternal Flame to proc absorbs from Illuminate Healing had become too widespread, and didn’t fit the healing style we wanted for Paladins. Some of the bigger changes are as follows:

• A new talent called Evil is a Point of View has replaced Burden of Guilt. This talent allows Paladins to use Turn Evil on players and beasts. This grants paladins a way to fear and control players in PVP situations. Turn Evil now has a 15 second cooldown.
• The existing Sacred Shield talent has been changed significantly. It can now be active on more than one target at a time, but has a mana cost and 3 charges witha a 10 secon recharge per charge.
• Guardian of the Ancient Kings now is down to a 3 minute cooldown..
• Seal of Insight no longer returns mana, however Divine Plea has been buffed to return more mana and Holy Shock is now significantly cheaper to cast.

Priest

There are a few changes for priests in the new patch, most are minor however there is at least one big one coming, that affects shadow priests. The change is that shadowform loses its 15% reduction to damage but provides a 60% boost to armor. This will increase the overall damage that that a shadowpriest takes.

Rogue

There are a few minor changes to rogues, the most significant being to recuperate, nightstalker, and evasion.

Shaman

Shamans have several minor adjustments most of which are not that big but do have some effect on the class.

• Astral Shift now has a 90 second cooldown, down from 2 minutes.
• Healing Tide Totems heal for 50% more.
• Conductivity has been reworked and now lengthens the duration of Healing Rain by 1 second per ability used.
• A fairly significant change is that chain heal will no longer decrease in effectiveness with each jump, it used to decrease by 30% per player it jumped through.

Warlock

Because Warlocks had so many changes coming into Mists of Pandaria, blizzard  did nerf Fel Armor , lowered the passive damage reduction of Balance Druids, Shadow Priests, and Hunters. increased Fel Flame’s damage but removed its DoT extension, which had become a liability for Fel Flame in PvE rather than letting it provide damage on the move as it was intended. For Affliction, they  shifted more damage to DoTs and away from Malefic Grasp. Malefic Grasp is a cool spell, also simplified the Soul Swap mechanic slightly by removing the glyph and the initial damage component. For Destruction, They changed Rain of Fire to not be so essential to the single-target rotation by reducing its Ember generation.

Warrior

Most of our Warrior changes were to increase Protection Warrior damage, try to improve the area-effect and cleave damage of Arms, or to address PvP quality-of-life issues. Buffing Blood and Thunder helped both Arms and Protection. Changing Enrage and Ultimatum for Protection Warriors provided both more damage and active mitigation by making Critical Strike a more valuable stat.