World of Warcraft is releasing the Curse of Ula’tek 12.1 update on August 11, completely changing the class meta from Midnight Season 1. World of Warcraft‘s Midnight expansion has been quite controversial for being lighter in content due to the housing addition, as well as the changes to classes, specs, and button presses for all of them. Those going into Midnight had their characters completely changed from the previous expansion, with button pruning removing lots of skills from the game or incorporating their effects into existing abilities.
World of Warcraft‘s patch notes for the Curse of Ula’tek 12.1 update were released recently, and while the update’s content has been changing in the PTR over the past few weeks, the core of it remained roughly unchanged. As with every new season and major release, the team at Blizzard made a lot of changes to each spec, and Curse of Ula’tek is no exception. On top of the class and spec changes, the update also brings a massive shift in player Health and enemy damage, increasing both by 25% at max level across the board. As such, the meta was hit hard, and many good specs from Season 1 will be in a rough spot in Season 2.
Say Goodbye to The Best Classes and Specs in World of Warcraft’s Midnight Season 1
Some of the best specs in WoW Midnight Season 1 are now heavily nerfed in Curse of Ula’tek. The biggest nerfs in WoW‘s 12.1 update so far include five specs: Unholy Death Knight, Guardian Druid, Augmentation Evoker, Devastation Evoker, and Brewmaster Monk. These specs were great in Season 1 of World of Warcraft‘s Midnight expansion, but were changed to be much less impactful in Season 2 for various reasons. Unholy DK lost a lot of power with minions and burst windows, going from one of the best specs in Season 1 to middling in Season 2. Guardian Druid and Brewmaster Monk went from the best tanks in Season 1 to middle-of-the-pack, with the former losing uptime on Lunar Beam that cut the spec’s damage significantly, and the latter getting a nerf to the uptime of Purifying Brew and suffering from a suboptimal transition to higher Health vs. higher monster damage.
Who’s That Character?
Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.
Augmentation Evoker was one of the best class specs in World of Warcraft‘s Midnight expansion in Season 1, and it was almost mandatory in endgame comps. The Scalecommander Hero Talent tree was nerfed, Breath of Eons’ cooldown was increased, and Upheaval lost crowd control, making the spec less desirable in high-end content than before. Devastation Evoker was even worse, to the point that some content creators are calling for last-minute reworks or for players to reroll their main. An interaction between the spec’s Scintillation talent and the new Venomous Abyss set bonus made Shattering Star much more powerful than intended, so Blizzard heavily nerfed it and capped Eternity Surge procs, leaving the class with a broken set and bad performance.
As such, five of the best specs in Season 1 are now less than stellar, and the final patch notes confirm as much. Some players are frustrated at the changes, as their favorite specs are losing their staying power in the meta. The massive nerfs come at a strange time, as a Blizzard developer was caught helping a WoW player in Mythic+ Dungeons, leading to some fans asking for leaderboard wipes.
It may not be enough to make up for the broken state of some specs, especially Devastation Evoker, but World of Warcraft is officially adding Jimothy as a pet sometime in the future. This is a pet raccoon modeled after the viral creature affectionately called Jimothy that lives in the Seattle area.
- Released
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November 23, 2004
- ESRB
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T for Teen: Blood and Gore, Crude Humor, Mild Language, Suggestive Themes, Use of Alcohol, Violence (online interactions not rated)
- Engine
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Unreal Engine
