Leaked Patch Notes

[Quark]

Just gonna counter a few things here, though I still wouldn't venture a guess either way.

Re: Shapeshift vs. Polymorph

This one doesn't make sense to me.  When pollied, none of your abilities work.  If you are polymorphed, you can't shift into animal form.  This would require a LOT of recoding to pull off and doesn't seem like there is a demand to justify the work this would require.

Paladins can already shield through just about anything. Mages can Blink through stuns. Why would this be any harder?

Re: Mana Shield Talent

Ok, this is a complete redesign.  What's more, it's not a unique one - this is basically "we're going back to D2 mode with this".  I don't buy this in the least.  Mana Shield is very functional in its current form and I'm willing to bet that the current form (vs. the D2 original) was argued and discussed for months and months before they came out with the final Mage class.  Again, it looks like a wish list.

You're arguing against them changing a useless talent? In the rare instance that I use mana shield, do you know what I do when it runs out b/c the damage has totalled up? I recast it. That makes the talent completely and utterly worthless. At least with this, the talent would serve some purpose

Re: PvP effects

These feel like nails in the coffin.  I've read way too many times that central to the WoW PvP design was to avoid nerfing abilities in PvP.  D2 was a horrible mass of PvP nerfs with abilities working completely differently vs. players than monsters.  Avoiding this was one of the design guidelines.  Neither Frost Nova nor Cone of Cold is so overpowering in PvP that it needed to be crippled in a way that would kill the design guidelines.  Even if it was "needed", I especially don't see why this would go in before Battlegrounds.

I haven't read anything saying they weren't going to touch abilities in PvP, and they certainly haven't followed that philosophy. Anything crowd control has been weakened to have diminishing returns. Freezing and slowing effects, while not nearly as powerful, are still crowd control techniques. This wouldn't prevent people from using it; it would prevent people from spamming it.

Effects that don't have diminishing returns have a severe problem ... masses of people using it over and over again on the same victim.

So while I'm not convinced either, I find perfectly viable reasons for the changes you think are fake.