The long watch
WoW Forever PvP Meta: The Math
No tier list built on feelings. This is the WoW Forever PvP meta theorycrafted from the datamined client (build 1.60.1.70707 plus the 31 October hotfix cache): what really changes, the math behind…
6:36
Full Transcript
Read the original narration from the video.
Read Transcript
Language: en · Source: youtube_captions_oauth
No tier list built on feelings. No talk about ranks. Today, we talk numbers. I opened the client data myself: build one point sixty point one, seven-oh-seven-oh-seven, plus the hotfix cache from October thirty-first.
Datamined means it's in the files. It does not mean it's guaranteed in game. Want certainty? Come back in a month. Want a head start?
Stay. Part one. What really changes. Mage. The Ice Lance spam is over: an eight second cooldown on every rank, but plus three hundred percent against frozen targets.
Your burst now lives in Winter's Chill, plus twenty percent per stack on your next Cone of Cold... and Ice Barrier, plus fifteen percent Frost damage.
Priest. Shadow Word: Death is now a gamble: if the target survives, you eat thirty percent of your maximum health. On top of what Classic gave you, you have Penance and Prayer of Mending...
and Binding Heal's talent becomes Holy Binding. Druid. Wild Growth now has a three second cast, on its six second cooldown, for six hundred seventy-nine per target over seven seconds.
Add Bloom... and a three percent crit aura for the whole group, from Moonkin for spells, or Leader of the Pack for melee and ranged.
One or the other, they don't stack. Paladin. Divine Precision shortens silences on you by twenty percent. Stoicism shortens stuns and charms by twenty percent.
Hunter: Viper Sting now has a fifteen second cooldown. In Classic, it had none. Warlock. Improved Drains now boosts Drain Life, Drain Soul and Drain Mana, twenty percent at max rank.
Then the trick: Demonic Sacrifice, plus Demonic Pact. You sacrifice the Imp for fifteen percent Shadow damage... then summon your Felhunter and keep both.
Racials. Will of the Forsaken no longer leaves you immune to the next Fear. Touch of the Grave: fifteen second internal cooldown.
Blood Fury: two minutes. Berserking: fifteen seconds. Part two. The math. Level sixty, base values, no spell power. And before anyone screams in the comments: health and mana pools are my assumptions.
Spell Lock and Counterspell durations are Classic values. And I have not confirmed that Shatter or Nature's Swiftness exist in Forever. One. Warlock versus Priest.
Drain Mana moves about six hundred ninety-five mana per channel. With Improved Drains, eight hundred thirty-four. Channel for thirty seconds straight: five thousand and four drained, three thousand one hundred forty-four net of your own casting cost.
In a real fight, count two channels per window: about sixteen hundred sixty-eight mana. That's twenty-four percent of a seven thousand mana Priest.
Over time, nothing drains a healer like a Lock. Shadow Word: Death on a forty-five hundred health Shadow Priest. The backlash is thirteen hundred fifty.
That's about three times the spell's base damage. The expected cost of a cast is the chance your target survives, times thirty percent of your max health.
So it's an execute. Nothing else. Mage. Before, one Frost Nova meant three Ice Lances, about thirteen hundred thirty-six damage on base values.
Now, one Lance gets through: about five hundred ninety-four. That's fifty-five percent less Ice Lance burst per freeze. Your damage moves to Winter's Chill and Cone of Cold, at close range...
so you are more punishable. Four. Every Druid heal is Nature school. Kick a Wild Growth, which now has a cast, and that school is locked for five seconds.
A Rogue can Kick every ten seconds. So the Druid can be locked out up to half the time. Undead. Touch of the Grave can drain up to about eighteen hundred health in two minutes.
A free mini Siphon Life. Part three. Comps. Everything from here on is theorycraft. Warlock, Imp sacrificed, Felhunter out, with a Discipline Priest.
You win the mana war. Counters: the Orc's Shatter Curse, and teams that play line of sight. Warrior with a dispel healer.
Mortal Strike: minus fifty percent healing for ten seconds. The Stoicism Paladin handles that counter better than anyone. Rogue Mage. Sap, Polymorph, set up the Cone.
Counters: Stoicism, and the Human's Will to Survive, which breaks every stun. Anti-Druid. Rogue, Warrior, and a Lock with Felhunter: three interrupts for every Wild Growth.
And against Undead: Fear. They burn Will of the Forsaken. You Fear again. The Lock and the Priest win that trade. Part four.
What the datamine doesn't tell you. Hotfixes the server hasn't sent to the client yet. Spell power coefficients. Forever's diminishing returns. Whether Power Word: Shield absorbs the Shadow Word: Death backlash.
And whether an interrupt counts as a silence for Divine Precision. That's the math. I'm not telling you what to play. I'm telling you what the numbers say.
If the hotfixes move, I'll redo the math, and tell you what I got wrong. Disagree? Post your formula in the comments.
Not your feelings.
