WoW The War Within: Class Reworks Patch 11.1 Overview
24.12.2024 - 02:06:18
Game Guides , World Of Warcraft
WoW The War Within class reworks are set to arrive when Patch 11.1 launches sometime next year. The new changes are expected to shake up the meta so it’s a must that you check out what’s set to arrive as early as now.
Patch 11.1 is going to have lots of new changes as well, other than the reworks. If you want to prepare for those, make sure to check out our WoW store. We’ve got excellent deals on WoW gold to keep your bank stacked.
Demon Hunter Reworks
Let’s cover the highlights from the patch notes, starting with Demon Hunters. This class has received numerous improvements, ranging from small tweaks to significant updates, so there’s plenty to be excited about.
Spectral Sight Changes
One of the adjustments revolves around Spectral Sight, the ability that lets Demon Hunters detect stealthed characters, certain demons, and other hidden entities.
This skill has been invaluable not only for PvP but also for tackling stealth-based mechanics in dungeons, including some from the Legion expansion.
For PvP, Spectral Sight no longer breaks upon taking damage. Instead, the effect can now only be interrupted through either a magic dispel or crowd control from an enemy.
This change makes the ability far more reliable and effective in PvP scenarios. Additionally, its movement speed penalty has been significantly reduced, making it easier to use while staying mobile.
New Talent Options
Demon Hunters are receiving several new talents, but two stand out as particularly impactful. These should get you excited depending on how you’ve played the class in the past.
Screaming Brutality: This talent brings back the essence of the Dragonflight Season 3 tier set. It allows the Blade Dance ability to automatically launch Throw Glaives at your targets. This synergizes beautifully with glaive-focused builds, delivering excellent cleave and sustained damage.
Plus, it eliminates the need to actively press the Throw Glaive button, streamlining your rotation while amplifying your AoE damage potential.
Cycle of Hatred (Revised): This talent has undergone some significant rework and now offers gameplay that feels reminiscent of a cascading cooldown effect. With the new iteration, Eye Beam reduces the cooldown of your next Eye Beam, stacking up to 20 times.
This mechanic is a throwback to abilities that reduced Eye Beam’s cooldown incrementally, such as when hitting enemies with Eye Beam during earlier expansions. The revamped talent paves the way for a more aggressive and frequent use of Eye Beam, which could redefine how you approach both burst and sustained damage as a Demon Hunter.
These changes bring fresh options for both PvP and PvE Demon Hunters, and we’re eager to see how they’ll play out once they’re live.
Druid Reworks
Druids are receiving a plethora of adjustments across their specs and class talent trees, with changes aimed at improving quality of life, broadening utility, and addressing some long-standing issues.
These updates promise significant enhancements in gameplay for all Druid players.
Class Talents and General Adjustments
The overall structure of the Druid talent tree has been redesigned, with both old and new versions placed side by side for comparison.
This update makes defensive and utility options more accessible, with several talents being easier to acquire and less resource-intensive. For example, Ursol's Vortex, which was previously somewhat cumbersome to integrate, is now more streamlined for use.
Additionally, Skull Bash has been repositioned in the tree, making it available to Restoration and Balance Druids in their own unique versions, allowing more specs to pick up an interrupt without sacrificing too much.
Utility and hybrid-focused talents, such as those modifying abilities to suit hybrid playstyles, have also been adjusted. Costs for many of these talents have been reduced significantly, often requiring only a single node to unlock.
This reduction opens up a range of choices for players looking to diversify their builds.
New Talents and Nodes
Some notable additions include talents like Renewable, which introduces a passive healing mechanic. When you take damage exceeding 12% of your maximum health, you instantly heal for 10% of your health, with a cooldown of 30 seconds.
This talent provides excellent personal survivability without requiring active management. Another change involves condensing previously scattered talents into single nodes, such as combining Cyclone with other utility abilities, leading to smoother pathing down the talent tree.
Druids also gain access to Symbiotic Relationship, a new talent that allows you to form a bond with an ally. Any self-healing you perform sends a portion of that healing to your bonded ally.
Similarly, healing that ally returns a portion of the healing back to you. This talent has intriguing applications for PvP and Mythic+ dungeons, offering a unique synergy for group play.
Hybrid and Offensive Capabilities
The changes extend to hybrid builds as well. Talents like Circle of the Wild and Circle of the Heavens amplify the damage of your physical or magical abilities, depending on your build focus.
For Restoration Druids, this opens up hybrid options that increase the damage of abilities such as Bite, Maul, Moonfire, and Sunfire, allowing you to contribute to damage without sacrificing healing output.
Guardian Druid Improvements
The Guardian specialization has received targeted changes to address one of its biggest weaknesses: magic damage mitigation. A new talent, Ursol’s Warding, converts a percentage of your armor into magic damage reduction, up to 10%.
This change is critical for helping Guardians deal with encounters featuring heavy magic damage, which has historically bypassed their otherwise robust physical damage mitigation. These adjustments, combined with slight refinements throughout the Guardian tree, promise improved versatility and survivability.
Restoration Druid Mastery Rework
The Restoration Druid Mastery has undergone a significant overhaul to address issues with ramp-up time and effectiveness. Previously, Mastery increased healing based on the number of healing-over-time effects active on a target.
While this encouraged stacking multiple HoTs, it also required ramp-up time that could hinder immediate healing output.
In 11.1, the Mastery effect has been amped up by 30%, but its effectiveness diminishes with each additional healing-over-time effect.
For example, a single Rejuvenation spell can now deliver much stronger healing when amplified by Mastery, making it more viable in Mythic+ or situations where spreading many HoTs isn’t practical.
However, if you stack multiple HoTs like Wild Growth alongside Rejuvenation, the Mastery bonus scales across those effects, though with reduced overall potency per HoT. This adjustment balances the need for ramp-up while allowing strong single-target healing options, particularly in fast-paced environments.
These changes should reduce the pressure on Restoration Druids to heavily ramp up healing while still preserving the spec’s identity as a HoT-focused healer.
Whether you prefer a focused single-target healing approach or a broad, group-wide coverage, the updated Mastery will provide flexibility and efficiency.
With these changes, the Druid class talent tree looks much more streamlined, versatile, and accessible.
Specs like Guardian and Restoration are receiving long-overdue adjustments to better handle their respective weaknesses, while hybrid builds and general utility options are getting significant boosts. We’ll be diving deeper into each spec once the changes are available for hands-on testing.
Evoker Reworks
Evokers are seeing several significant changes, particularly aimed at improving the Flame Shaper build.
This spec, which emphasizes damage-over-time and healing-over-time mechanics, has been underperforming—especially for Devastation—but also has room for improvement within Preservation.
New talents are being introduced to enhance the Flame Shaper playstyle, focusing on its primary abilities like Fire Breath and Dream Breath. These changes aim to refine the empowerment mechanic, making it more impactful for both damage and healing outputs.
For Devastation, this update is intended to boost its performance, which has been lagging behind. Meanwhile, Preservation gets improvements that make its healing-over-time interactions smoother and more rewarding.
The overall goal is to create a more defined and cohesive identity for Flame Shaper across both specs.
The other major rework coming to Evokers affects Augmentation, specifically the Ebon Might ability. In 11.1, Ebon Might will no longer buff tanks or healers. This is a massive shift for Augmentation’s role, particularly in dungeon content.
Currently, Augmentation Evokers are almost mandatory at higher levels of Mythic+ due to their group-wide utility, which makes them highly sought after even in lower-tier keys. With this change, their dynamic in group composition will be fundamentally altered.
Instead of spreading their buffs across all roles, the focus will now solely empower DPS players, which could enhance their group damage potential while reducing their impact on tanks and healers.
This change also has implications for raid content. It simplifies targeting mechanics, as Evokers will no longer need to worry about accidentally buffing the wrong player—like a healer or tank—when positioning close to those roles.
Overall, these adjustments make Augmentation more consistent in raids and dungeons but could lead to shifts in how they’re utilized, particularly in high-level Mythic+ runs.
These changes will need extensive testing once 11.1 hits the PTR to fully evaluate their impact on Evoker viability across all types of content.
Hunter Reworks
Hunters are seeing significant updates in 11.1, particularly to the Marksmanship and Pack Leader specializations, with both receiving major reworks.
Pack Leader
The Pack Leader spec aims to fully embrace a Rexxar-inspired playstyle, focusing on commanding beasts in combat. Previously, the Vicious Hunt mechanic provided passive damage increases to Kill Command, but it felt lackluster and unengaging for many players.
In 11.1, this ability is being replaced with Howl of the Pack, which will summon a powerful beast every 30 seconds.
Each beast has a unique effect:
- Bear: Leaps in and applies a strong damage-over-time effect to enemies.
- Wyvern: Increases the effectiveness of your pets' abilities.
- Boar: Charges your target, dealing heavy single-target damage and moderate cleave damage to enemies in its path.
This new system makes Pack Leader much more dynamic and interactive. Additional talents will reduce Howl of the Pack’s cooldown and allow the summoned beasts to synergize with Beast Mastery and Survival Hunter abilities.
For example, they can amplify certain spells or reduce cooldowns, creating new build opportunities while reinforcing the Rexxar-like fantasy of commanding a variety of beasts in combat.
Marksmanship
Marksmanship Hunters are also undergoing significant changes, particularly around the Lone Wolf talent.
Traditionally, this talent encouraged players to forego a pet for increased damage but at the cost of utility provided by pets. In 11.1, Marksmanship gains a new mechanic: Eyes in the Sky, which summons a Spotting Eagle.
The Spotting Eagle isn't a traditional combat pet—it remains in the air but can swoop down to assist during combat. It synergizes with Precise Shots, where consuming them gives a 30% chance for the eagle to mark a target.
This mark increases your Aimed Shot damage on that target, with talents allowing you to scale this effect further.
The eagle provides utility benefits akin to pet abilities. For instance, the Harrier’s Cry ability acts as a Bloodlust effect, similar to a Ferocity pet.
Additional talents allow the eagle to adopt abilities like Tenacity’s increased health and damage reduction or Cunning’s movement speed boost. This gives Marksmanship Hunters access to the utility of pets while maintaining their Lone Wolf identity.
New Talents and Abilities
Marksmanship Hunters will also receive new talents to expand their toolkit:
- Aspect of the Hydra: Provides cleave functionality, allowing Aimed Shot, Rapid Fire, and Arcane Shot to hit a secondary target for 40% damage.
- Double Tap: Returns, now tied to True Shot. Activating True Shot grants Double Tap, allowing your next Aimed Shot to fire twice at full power or doubling the shots of your next Rapid Fire.
- Feathered Frenzy and Improved Spotter’s Mark: Enhance the Spotting Eagle. For example, during True Shot, your eagle applies Spotter’s Mark more frequently, reducing the cooldown of Aimed Shot while enabling multi-target marks for improved cleave potential.
The return of Double Tap alongside new synergistic talents like Calling the Shots means Marksmanship Hunters will have plenty of opportunities for burst damage, emphasizing their identity as high-damage precision snipers.
The changes overall should make both Pack Leader and Marksmanship much more engaging and versatile in various content.
Priest Reworks
For those who enjoy playing Holy Priest in Mythic+ or raiding, this change could make the spec feel more impactful in diverse situations, giving it a better toolkit to deal with mixed damage profiles.
Another notable change is aimed at improving their mana efficiency. The new talent Guiding Light will allow your Prayer of Mending casts to reduce the mana cost of your next Heal or Flash Heal.
This addition should make Holy Priests less dependent on external mana management tools in prolonged fights, allowing for a smoother flow during encounters.
They're also introducing an update to Apotheosis, which is currently a strong cooldown but can feel clunky in high-pressure situations.
With the rework, Apotheosis will now automatically reset the cooldown of all Holy Words upon activation, giving you instant access to your burst healing tools without having to manage cooldown overlaps.
This change should make the ability feel more rewarding to use in critical moments.
Finally, Symbol of Hope is being adjusted to be more versatile. It will now also grant a small amount of mana back to your entire party, not just healers, providing a unique utility that Holy Priests can bring to group content.
This tweak is subtle but could make a noticeable difference in prolonged encounters where mana management is crucial for multiple roles.
The combined changes to both Discipline and Holy Priests aim to streamline their playstyles, reduce complexity in cooldown management, and provide more meaningful interactions within their healing rotations.
Whether you're weaving Atonement effects as a Disc Priest or balancing strong single-target and AoE heals as Holy, these updates should make each spec feel more dynamic and rewarding to play.
Shaman Reworks
Also a change coming for Elemental Shamans. They're getting some adjustments to their Maelstrom management to provide more sustained damage. One of the big changes involves Earthquake, which is being modified to work more fluidly with Primordial Wave.
This ability will now deal more consistent AoE damage while scaling better with your Maelstrom generation, allowing Elemental Shamans to provide more reliable burst and sustained damage during encounters.
The Totemic changes, particularly the new Surging Totem, are a big improvement in terms of mobility. The ability to reposition the totem every 6 seconds, while off the global cooldown, should make it far easier to position it in a way that benefits your team, especially in high-movement fights.
This change is being highly anticipated by many Shaman players, especially those who found the current Totemic Projection talent cumbersome.
Enhancement Shamans are also seeing some significant changes. The Primordial Wave rework should streamline your gameplay, eliminating the need for the previous setup and follow-up steps.
Instead of using Primordial Wave and then following up with a Lightning Bolt, it now does both parts in one, dealing instant damage and applying Flame Shock to targets.
On top of that, the addition of Primordial Storm brings even more AoE potential by dealing damage and healing nearby allies with a mix of elemental attacks, including Lightning, Frost, and Fire.
This should give Enhancement Shamans a powerful way to cleave multiple targets while dealing with the primary role of supporting group healing.
Feral Spirits are also getting a major update, with the new Elemental Spirits offering both magic and physical damage buffs, making them versatile for different builds.
This update should help make Feral Spirits feel more relevant regardless of whether you're focusing on Stormstrike physical damage or leaning into the Elemental magic damage playstyle.
Additionally, the changes to Maelstrom Weapon will make Maelstrom Builders like Stormstrike and Lava Lash much stronger, even as the overall damage of Maelstrom Spenders is toned down. This should help make your basic abilities feel more rewarding without needing to rely as heavily on Maelstrom for all your damage output.
Shamans are receiving a variety of changes aimed at improving mobility, reducing some complexity, and enhancing their utility and damage in different situations.
Whether you’re a Restoration, Elemental, or Enhancement Shaman, these updates should provide more fluidity and versatility, making the class even more exciting to play in group content.
Prepare Your Classes Now
The WoW The War Within class reworks for patch 11.1 are definitely big and worth noting. The class tier list for the game might significantly change with the patch arrives but at least you’re better prepared for them now.