BlueTracker

In patch 9.0.5, we’re reworking the Rogue Necrolord Covenant ability Serrated Bone Spike. We’re now testing this set of changes:

• Rogue
  • Serrated Bone Spike initial damage increased by 300%.
  • Resolved an issue that prevented Serrated Bone Spike’s initial damage from dealing a critical strike.
  • Serrated Bone Spike now grants 1 combo point plus 1 per active bone spike after it strikes the target.
  • Serrated Bone Spike no longer refunds a charge and gets removed when the target is healed to full.
  • Serrated Bone Spike is now removed when the target leaves combat.

The design intention for this button is: impale your enemy with a bone spike from Maldraxxus, inflicting a permanent damage over time on them. We found that while the ability performed well in situations where multiple targets persisted for long times, it was unattractive elsewhere.

Greatly increasing the spell’s initial damage should improve its performance in the ‘other’ situations, including those where the enemy doesn’t live very long. However, we then feel we need to address a problem with the ability in PvP. Previously, if the afflicted target was healed to full, the damage over time effect would be removed and a charge of the spell refunded. The way this played out was the effect constantly being removed and charges constantly being refunded. As a result, the Rogue is compelled to constantly hit this button. With an increase to the initial damage component, this could be problematic. So we’re removing that mechanic, and we’re removing the bleed entirely whenever a player leaves combat.