WoW Midnight: hotfix eases mage and paladin slows in PvP

Blizzard's hotfix notes for World of Warcraft: Midnight dated 24 September are mostly about PvP. Blizzard's developers say they have made a few more adjustments to their earlier changes to effects that reduce movement speed, which players call slows or snares. The PvP section changes 3 of them, for hunters, Arcane mages and paladins, and each change applies only in PvP combat. The notes come a day after Blizzard's class tuning reached EU realms with the 23 September maintenance, which carried its own list of changes for PvP alone.

The earlier changes came with patch 12.1, Curse of Ula'tek. In development notes published in June, while the patch was being tested, Blizzard said it had decided to reduce the effect of a large number of slows in PvP. It explained that when players have strong slows that stay on their targets most of the time, enemies get fewer chances to use positioning and escape. Blizzard said it mainly targeted strong slows that are applied automatically during a normal rotation, while some slows from abilities that players use on purpose kept their strength. In general, it said, each slow moved down a step: 70% became 50%, 50% became 30%, and so on.

In the new notes, the hunter ability Wing Clip now reduces movement speed by 40% in PvP combat, and Improved Snaring now increases the movement speed reduction of Wing Clip by 10%. Blizzard gives no earlier figures for these 2 lines, so the notes do not show whether Wing Clip ends up stronger or weaker than before. For Arcane mages, the PvP talent Chrono Shift now reduces movement speed by 30%, down from 50%: the one-step drop described in June. For paladins, Consecrated Ground now reduces movement speed by 20%, down from 50%, a bigger drop than that.

Outside PvP, the notes have 1 change, for Delves. In the Shadow Enclave Delve variant 'Infiltrate and Ameliorate', the Oddball 'Ingredient' now teleports to one of several points in the play area if it is dropped into the pit. Blizzard does not say what happened to it before this change.