1.6 Leaked Patch Notes

[Tal]

Assuming the rather rare (and fair) 1 vs. 1 situation on the PvP battle field, but: Especially (Alliance) Mages are usually assisted and protected by 1 or 2 additonal players, i.e. a Tank, Healer and/or Hunter. And on PvP servers, where the number of Alliance players is often twice, or more, as high as that of Horde players, you can expect 3-4 assistants per Mage. And now tell me that crippling WotF on the HORDE side wasn't a severe blow against the Horde players! Considering the fact that the player ratio Alliance vs. Horde is overall about 2:1 on all WOW servers, WotF's spell duration should actually have been increased to 30 seconds to compensate this imbalance in PvP! What I also don't get is the fact why Blizzard crippled WotF to 5 seconds duration in both PvP and PvE. Programming-wise, it should have been easily possible - depending on the player mode - to leave the old duration for PvE, and limit it only in PvP (if that was necessary at all). No, this unfair change was obviously the result of the whining of thousands of Alliance players who saw that they can't simply trample down the Horde (and rake in "honor" points) fast enough on battlefields with a higher amount of Undead players among the opposing faction. And as far as Blizzard goes, these folks obvioulsy prefer Alliance players (the majority of the paying customers), and moreover have obviously absolutely no clue of the realities on the public WOW realms.
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Can we can the rhetoric please? Blizzard's CMs, developers and staff all play classes and races on both sides on the public servers. This has been repeated many times on the official forums.

With the advent of battlegrounds I would say that the population imbalance is less of an issue for this change. It is only in world conflicts that the population imbalance truly comes into play.

Lets look now at how this has really changed PvE for the horde. Lemekim pointed out that WotF allowed an undead tank 20 seconds or so to build up aggro on Onxyia and other fear producing mobs. To get the same effect the Alliance has to have two dwarf priests casting fear ward on a tank. The Lurkers on Stormrage are truly fortunate to have two dwarven priests but I can tell you that they are not overly abundant throughout the rest of the population. Other encounters where sleep and charm are abundant the horde had an advantage over the Alliance population. Granted these encounters are not overwhelming in number but they do happen in the end game instances.

But the real area to look at is in PvP. In capture the flag battlegrounds fear rules supreme. Those who are quickest on the fear and have more of it available will have an easeir time than those who don't. A typical encounter on the PvE battlegrounds is a horde warrior charges into an alliance group and fears. All alliance scatter. The fear passes and the alliance starts regrouping their tactics. Horde warlock or priest fears and the alliance re-scatters. Rinse and repeat at least one more time for fun. On the other hand the alliance sends our warrior charging in and watches as only part of the horde run in fear. The other part, mostly rogues, mages and warlocks then proceed to rip apart this warrior while his party mates are scattered to the wind by fear effects. And god help the priest or warlock who attempts to do the same on the Alliance side. I've been in CTF battlegrounds where the entire make up of the other team was undead and Tauren. No fear, earthbind totems ftw!