They had to do that. They're nerfing every class this patch. It may be completely unnoticed, but they had to. They've nerfed hunters already last patch, but they had to share the love this patch too.

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That's good news for us mages. I mean, frost nova breaking on a molten armor crit was just a silly idea. However, experiments on the PTR have shown that this nerf shouldn't make any difference what-so-ever to the majority of players - you can still frost nova, fire off a frostbolt then icelance, both for crits. The only thing you can no longer do is spam icelance, and I don't mind that too much (the relevant thread is up on the EU mage forums but the whole forum is down for maintenance atm so I can't link it).

It does seem like a slight overall nerf to shatter as a 5-point talent. If you can only get one crit off every 24 seconds (not counting frostbite procs) then it's fairly worthless.

Then again, I'm a 40/0/21 arc/frost mage so I didn't have shatter anyway. Ho-hum, you win some you lose some.

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It was poorly worded by the person that posted it but a hunters ranged attack power also increased our pets spell damage and the amount the wind serpent actually gets has been reduced.

I noticed my wind serpent go from 300-350 damage with lightning breath to 170-190.

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Multiple ice lance crits were rare to begin with; it was not something you counted on. It was more like, oh, what a nice surprise! What you do want to remain is the frostbolt/ice lance combo crit on a frost nova'd target, which it looks like is still viable. That's all I care about. I was always surprised when I hit a target and the nova would remain. It's like when you're out of mana and Arcane Concentration would proc. Sweet!

It doesn't say that the nova WILL break, just increased the chances that it would. This is not gameplay changing.

As nerfs go, it is not significant. Still nice of them to include it in the patch notes.

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Yeah this was actually a pretty major nerf to hunters as the Wind Serpent could put out some respectable dps and scaled reasonable well. Its not just a +spell damage nerf, they've drastically reduced the amount a hunter's RAP adds to the pets lightning breath. And this change is live as of a hot fix that went in on Friday.

I can see why it was done, the wind serpent was clearly the best dps pet and bliz doesn't want all hunters using the same pet. But it hurts all the same when hunters are struggling to compete against other dps classes.

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When was the hotfix applied? I haven't had a chance to test my wind serpent since it applied probably.
Agreed with the above, I can see why they did it, wish they hadn't :P. I don't think it will be that much of a difference in the overall usefulness as a wind serpent as a pet, they still have pretty good damage and look cool.

I've a 70 hunter on Terenas, US.
~Plat

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Wheres the warlock nerf, blizzards prized evilness of stuff!

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@7
Locks got plenty of nerfs in the past few patches, almost all undocumented. Even our imp got a hotfix that nerfed its spell damage just like the windserpent.

How about instead of crying "nerf locks", you roll a lock and quit your crying.

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@8 Get em Zuuler.

@7 All the QQers need to be reminded AGAIN that no one forces you to play. What do you do in real life when you think something is unfair? How often does whining about it do you any good? Think about it.

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