The Nerf Bat Cometh

The first major patch after the Burning Crusade is getting ready to hit the servers in a week or two and with it comes the first round of dreaded class nerfs. Druids are getting hit the hardest which isn't too much of a surprise since every class has been calling out for druid nerfs. Its not just the bear-bomb maneuver either as tanking, healing, and dps classes have all felt threatened by the druid's recent improvement in tanking and healing. Also up to bat are priest and paladin nerfs which destroy some pvp utility but generally leave pve abilities alone. Its fun to see that the major influence on this patch seems to be the arena which is creating havoc in class balancing with its 2v2 and 3v3 brackets.

Nerfs for Druids: The druids are getting hit hard with Bear and Dire Bear only granting 25% bonus to stamina instead of overall health. Also armor class bonuses and damage abilities like mangle are getting reduced. Most people agree the damage the bears were outputting was ridiculous when the health and armor class bonuses were added in. Druids having been limited to healing for so long are sad to see a lot of their pwnage ability going bye-bye but hopefully they will still be able to put up a decent fight.

Nerfs for Priests: Priests are getting a 5% reduction to vampiric embrace which should make their shadowform healing a little less powerful especially since it will longer crit. Prayer of Mending got zapped with a 20 second cooldown which as Tobold mentioned makes it useless for soloing.

Nerfs for Paladins: The Avengers Shield snare component can now be removed with dispel. Priest's mass dispel now targets and removes Divine Shield first. *Stealth Nerf Alert* Testers are reporting that Avenging Wrath and Divine Shield now share the same 5 minute cooldown and that all paladin shields give forbearance which reduces the target's damage output by 15% for an entire minute. This is specifically made to address paladins throwing blessing of protection on warlocks and mages in arenas. Drysc will neither confirm or deny if its a bug but it is currently on the test server.

Small Buffs for Shamans: Shamans are getting some of their spells adjusted to generate less threat when used. Also their stoneclaw totem now has a chance to stun and clearcasting will now go off more often since it procs off every spell crit.

Big Buffs for Warriors: Rage normalization is up by 15% - 20% for warriors along with an overall increase of 1% to their critical strike rating. Thunderclap is now usable in defensive stance and generates rage allowing warrior tanks to compete with the paladin's consecrate aggro. Also planned to be hotfixed in when they get the code right: charge, intercept and intervene will remove snare effects.