Possible Incomming Something

So, the new list of balance concerns today reads basically like the list of complaints over the last month. You can read it two ways: Blizzard caves to QQ or Blizzard acknowledges player experience.

I chalk the growing list of Occulus nerfs to the former, but this new post to the latter, because many of those concerns were quite correct.

Details in the break

-- Warlock damage in PvE is a little low.
-- Protection warriors have too much utility and damage for PvP. (We don't want to hurt their tanking in PvE of course.)
-- We are considering adjusting (not replacing) the Elemental 4 piece Tier 10 set bonus.
-- We'll continue to refine and look at the Icecrown weapon procs.
-- Other stuff (yes, we've heard your concerns), but these are the big things we are focusing on at this time.

Warlock DPS lacking, prot OP in PVP, shaman tier bonus issue, and ICC weapon procs. Obviously most of this is outside of the general scope of this blog.

There's not many weapon procs that are relevant to our interests, but Nibelung has already seen a buff. The Val'kyrs it spawns are now automatically hit capped and their damage has been upped. The weapon is still inferior to a MH/OH combo of equal level, but it is a lot better than it was, possibly beating stat only staves, and it's borderline OP for AOE fights like heroic anub now.

Of more interest is the first item on the list. It's an overblown issue on the class forums, but it's still true, and what's more a lot of people saw it coming. The buffs to affliction and demo brought them up on par with destruction, which was already showing pretty stark scaling discrepancies with rogue, mage, and hunter DPS, among others. The "others" column only got longer with 3.3, as class changes and set bonuses were used as brute force buffs for several ailing hybrid specs like shadow and ret.

I will point out this is not the first time the exact same thing has been said. The last time was followed by no changes to affliction or demo and a nerf to destro.