World of Warcraft: Shadowlands update has brought in the first round of major balance changes

With the race for Castle Nathria now well and truly underway, the disparity in power between the various classes and specializations has become extremely apparent. As such, I am very happy to say that Blizzard has decided to take a more proactive approach this time around and has already released a balance update in order to address the situation!

Overpowered DPS classes like Hunters, Druids and Death Knights have received their rightful nerfs, while the bottom-dwellers like Rogues, Demon Hunters and Warriors have snagged themselves some small but meaningful buffs. If you're curious about the actual details, here's the full list of PvE changes:

Tank Specializations

• Threat generation for all Tanks increased by 10%.

Death Knight

• Unholy

- Mastery: Dreadblade effectiveness reduced by 20%.

• Blood

- Blood Boil damage increased by 10%.
- Heart Strike damage increased by 15%.
- Marrowrend damage increased by 10%.
- Death Strike damage increased by 5%.

Demon Hunter

• Havoc

- All damage abilities increased by 5%.

Druid

• Balance

- Starfall damage reduced 6%.
- Balance of all Things [Legendary] now causes Eclipse to increase your critical strike chance with Arcane or Nature spells by 40%, decreasing by 8% every 1 second (was 50% crit, decreasing by 10% per second).

Hunter

• Marksmanship

- Aimed Shot damage reduced by 5%.
- Arcane Shot damage reduced by 5%.

Rogue

• Assassination

- All damage abilities increased by 5%.

Shaman

• Restoration

- All healing abilities reduced by 4%.
- Healing Rain reduced by an additional 10%.

Warlock

• Destruction

- Chaos Bolt damage increased by 22%.

Warrior

• Arms

- Mortal Strike damage increased by 20%. Damage reduced by an equivalent amount in PvP.
- Slam (Rank 3) now increases Slam’s damage by 50% (was 25%).

• Fury

- All damage abilities increased by 5%.

Given that the DPS difference between the top and bottom is between 20 to 30 percent in some cases, I wouldn't be surprised if the lower tier specializations get even further buffs next week. Personally, as someone that's primarily been playing a Havoc Demon Hunter and Fury Warrior throughout Shadowlands, I certainly hope that's going to be the case as both are currently struggling to keep up.

Whatever the future brings, I'll make sure to let you know. Until then, however, you can check out the full list of changes and bug fixes over at the official website.