Since World of Warcraft: Shadowlands released in November, the Mythic+ dungeon meta quickly settled to be much different than its Battle for Azeroth predecessor. Even after rounds of dungeon and class nerfs, several outliers such as the Vengeance Demon Hunter tank continued to dominate the rankings. While some were expecting the biggest adjustments to arrive with Patch 9.1, Blizzard has rolled out substantial changes much sooner than expected.

After a player noticed Vengeance Demon Hunters were taking much less magic damage thanks to a bug with their passive Demonic Wards, its cause was identified and scheduled to be fixed with the upcoming reset on Tuesday. Although this normally wouldn't be enough to cause a shift in the current kiting meta, there is an additional set of buffs that will hopefully encourage more diversity.

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On the next regional restart, all tank specializations are getting another component to their passives such as the Protection Warrior's Vanguard and Blood Death Knight's Veteran of the Third/Fourth War. While these passives already increase stamina and armor, every tank now takes 10-percent less incoming damage. To clarify, this change applies to physical and magic damage from all sources and is a flat permanent damage reduction.

Out of the six tank specs, Protection Warriors and Guardian Druids look to benefit the most from this type of buff in Mythic+. Both classes prefer to stand their ground and mitigate the damage taken over an extended duration instead of burst healing or kiting enemies for most of a fight. However, Protection Warrior takes this playstyle to an extreme with constant blocking and mitigation like Shield Wall or Spell Reflection which may cause a rise in popularity thanks to the buff.

At the same time, the fix for Vengeance Demon Hunter isn't enough to completely knock the class off its pedestal. Though their ability to tank magic damage is getting nerfed, World of Warcraft Mythic+ dungeons remain mostly physical damage and the buff along with cooldowns like Fel Devastation ensure they are still capable of facetanking when needed.

With this change, every tank will also do much better in Castle Nathria. While the raid is over three months old, players still progressing through Heroic and Mythic difficulty should find encounters with heavy single-target damage more manageable than before. At the very least, the reduced damage can help save a cooldown or healer's mana which could mean the difference between a wipe or kill.

It may take several weeks for effects on the Mythic+ meta to become apparent but every tank will find their survivability goes up significantly especially on higher key levels come Tuesday. Until Chains of Domination and Patch 9.1 content arrives, this is one of the best changes that players could have hoped for.

World of Warcraft: Shadowlands is available on PC.

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Source: World of Warcraft