WoW Hotfixes September 24: PvP Snare Cuts to Three Classes

What changed

Four of the five September 24 hotfix entries are scoped to PvP combat, and all four touch movement speed reduction. Two of them carry a previous value: Chrono Shift drops from 50% to 30%, and Consecrated Ground drops from 50% to 20%. The two Hunter entries do not - they state Wing Clip's PvP figure as 40% and Improved Snaring's contribution to it as 10%, with no earlier number attached. The fifth entry is a Delves fix in The Shadow Enclave.

Player versus Player

Developers' notes: "We've added a few more adjustments to our prior changes to movement speed reduction effects."

Hunter

• Wing Clip now reduces movement speed by 40% in PvP combat.
• Improved Snaring now increases the movement speed reduction of Wing Clip by 10% in PvP combat.

Mage

Arcane

• Chrono Shift (PvP Talent) now reduces movement speed by 30% in PvP combat (was 50%).

Paladin

• Consecrated Ground now reduces movement speed by 20% in PvP combat (was 50%).

Delves

The remaining entry is a fix in The Shadow Enclave, a level 80-90 Midnight delve.

• In the Shadow Enclave delve variant "Infiltrate and Ameliorate", Oddball "Ingredient" now teleport to one of several points in the play space if dropped into the pit.

Wing Clip with Improved Snaring

Wing Clip's own tooltip reads "Maims the target, reducing movement speed by 50% for 15 sec", and Improved Snaring's reads "Wing Clip slows an additional 25%. Concussive Shot slows an additional 10%." Neither of those figures is what applies in rated play after September 24: the hotfix puts Wing Clip at 40% in PvP combat and the talent's contribution to it at 10%.

Blizzard states the two parts separately and attaches no combined PvP figure to either, so plan around the published parts - 40% from Wing Clip and 10% added to it by the talent - rather than the 50% and 25% a Hunter reads off the tooltips. Concussive Shot is not named in the entry, so the 10% the talent adds to that ability is untouched.

What the Chrono Shift cut costs Arcane

Chrono Shift is a Mage PvP Talent, so its value is a rated-play value by definition. The tooltip reads "Arcane Barrage slows enemies by 50% and increases your movement speed by 10% for 5 sec", and after September 24 the slow half of that is 30%. The self-speed half is not named in the entry.

The slow rides on Arcane Barrage rather than on a cooldown, so Arcane pays the reduction on every cast it was already making while the talent is selected. There is nothing to hold or time differently; the peel is simply 20 points weaker than the tooltip prints.

Consecrated Ground and where its slow applies

Consecrated Ground's tooltip reads "Your Consecration is 15% larger, and enemies within it have 50% reduced movement speed", and the September 24 entry puts that reduction at 20% in PvP combat. The slow applies to enemies inside the Consecration, so a Paladin uses it to hold ground rather than to follow a target out of it, and a 30 point drop is felt most where the fight is being fought over one spot.

Where these three classes sit in rated 3v3

Snares decide how often a caster finishes a cast and how often a melee train stays connected, so the practical question is whether Hunter, Arcane Mage and Paladin turn up often enough in your bracket for a change of this size to reach your games.

Read movement in that ranking carefully for the rest of the week. Blizzard raised PvP rating inflation across every rated mode on September 17 and then pushed a 122-entry tuning pass on September 22, so a spec climbing or sliding right now is responding to more than one thing at once.

Why these values apply only in PvP combat

All four PvP entries carry the phrase "in PvP combat". That is a scoping tag rather than a description: the adjusted figure is applied once PvP combat applies, and it is not reflected in the ability's printed tooltip, which is why the figure on the tooltip and the figure in the notes disagree. How PvP scaling and PvP-only modifiers work covers the mechanism.

The tag can also be applied wrongly, and it was the day before: two PvP-only Windwalker adjustments were confined back out of PvE on September 23, one day after they shipped.

What to check in your next games

Treat the tooltip figures on Wing Clip, Improved Snaring, Chrono Shift and Consecrated Ground as the outside-PvP values from here on, and the four hotfix figures as what rated play uses. If you play Arcane, the EU Arcane Mage ladder and the US Arcane Mage ladder show where the spec stands while the Chrono Shift change settles. The full dated section is on Blizzard's rolling World of Warcraft hotfixes article.