Recent Hotfixes

[stabby]

Rend (and Lacerate, but most hunters never go that deep into Survival) have downright subpar damage when compared to other DoTs.  I believe it was compared that untalented Shadow Word: Pain at Level 18 does more damage than talented Rend at Level 60.  Blizzard said something to the effect that it's not the same, but Rend is pretty much pointless in its current incarnation, Stealth-killing uses aside.  If they can add casting times and adjust how skills work, I don't think it would be overtly difficult to buff the damage on Rend and Lacerate.

Like Rend, Thunder Clap is a joke.  It does an absurdly tiny amount of damage at max rank, and the 10% debuff simply isn't worth the 20 Rage.  Suggestions have been made to (greatly) increase the damage, increase the debuff, or both.  Combined with Rend's pitiful damage output, Warriors have very little in the way of damage-dealing skills that aren't dependant on weapons, making them prohibitively gear-reliant.

They seem to be shying away from hotfixing anything but bugfixes and changes to abusable skills (the recent Paladin change was both). While I agree that Rend (to a point, its damage/rage isn't all that bad, with talents factored in) and Thunderclap (really, does anyone actually use it? I only do when I'm bored and want to make my friends go "hey, what the hell was that?") are in need of some love, hotfixes aren't the venue for it.

That said, tying bugfixes and balance tweaks to content is a bad call, in my opinion. It would be nice to see a level between their localization (mostly bugfixes/text edits) and content (everything and a toaster) patch varieties that was simply tweaks to existing content, and not the introduction of anything new. Call them Balance Patches or something. Similarly, there needs to be a level between emergency and localization (Bugfix or somesuch) that gets rolled out on a regular basis (once every 2 weeks, or when they've accumulated X amount of bugfixes that have been thoroughly tested). The important part here is regularity. I guess they're trying to keep down version number changes so as not to disable custom UIs too often, but that's not really a big deal for me (I'm sure that other people feel differently on the matter, and may, in fact, be in the majority).

For Intercept, as some may remember, it was semi-nerfed as of the last content patch.  Its damage (which was pointless, anyway) was reduced, along with its rage cost.  However, the patch reduced the damage as stated, but not the rage cost.  There was a hotfix that semi-fixed this - instead of actually TAKING the 15 rage, it now takes the correct 10 rage, but it still requires 15 rage to use.  I'm wondering why it's so hard to fix this.

Apparently the client-side rage cost is 15, and they don't want to roll out a patch to fix one number. I honestly can't blame them, it'd start a bad trend and have people demanding minipatches for every little problem. Witness the recent "OMG BLIZZ HOTFIX <insert pet cause here>!" threads that swept over the official forums after the Blessing of Light change. I'd rather have them stick to a somewhat slower (once or twice a month) schedule in which they push fixes when they're done.

Finally, there are two bugs associated wth Execute.&nbsp; First, if Execute misses, is dodged/parried/deflected/conceivably blocked, you lose ALL of your rage, and not the usual 20% of skill cost (which would be 20% of all of your rage, in this case.)&nbsp; This has been confirmed as a bug.&nbsp; There is also a sometimes-bug (meaning it's not always bugged as such) where you can Execute a Priest using PW:Shield or a Mage using mage shield, no matter their health.&nbsp; While I'm not complaining about taking 2500 of a mage's mana in one hit, it's bugged, and it needs to be fixed.

Neither of these are particularly gamebreaking. Well, the perma-execute bug is (I've gotten it against druids and rogues, too, but I haven't pinned down the cause yet. Perhaps shapechange for the former), but there's been no indication that a fix for that one is on the way, presumably because they have yet to locate what's wrong. It would be nice to see it go, though. The temptation to abuse it is too high.