World of Warcraft fans can look forward to receiving a new expansion pack and source of adventure, Shadowlands, in the near future.
Blizzard Entertainment has worked hard to bring a lot of expansions to World of Warcraft throughout the years. Shadowlands is the 8th expansion made for the game in its sixteen years of activity, and now World of Warcraft has released the pre-patch for the expansion so it is readily available for players to try out.
As with any new expansion, Shadowlands has already included multiple class and system updates. These changes normally affect how much damage and HP scaling each class has, and also signal the end of some features from Battle for Azeroth. One key difference this update has made is in terms of damage-per-second (DPS) output for each class.
According to Warcraft logs, rankings are based on the first week of the pre-patch and how they have moved in the overall ranking system since the end of Battle for Azeroth Season 4. Currently, the class at the very top is the Shadow Priest, partly because the Azerite Trait is incredibly strong with the increased number of apparitions that spawn compared to Battle for Azeroth, as well as the class' leveling scale that complements the stats in Shadowlands.
The class that has been hit the hardest is the Demonology Warlock, having moved down from 6th place to 23rd. Due to the loss of Corruption, the player has lost an insane amount of Haste, so Demonology Warlocks can now generate fewer Soul Shards and aren't able to cast as many spells from their Demonic Tyrant. Since the class's whole build was centered around buffing, it has been heavily nerfed due to the changes.
These updates are only based on the first week, and there is still a chance that Blizzard Entertainment can balance the classes as time goes on. These changes affect all players regardless of whether or not they bought the pre-patch, so it is important to keep tabs on how classes change from here on out. Hopefully, this will help players adjust to the new updates being made to the game, as Shadowlands is now the best-selling World of Warcraft expansion in terms of pre-orders. Thus, it will be important for players to adjust their builds and get with the times.
World of Warcraft: Shadowlands will release on November 23 for PC.
Source: WowHead