SW:ToR Tanking and the Assassin

Some of these changes I don't understand completely but I will attempt to go over each of them and what kind of impact it might have on our play styles (it can be fairly agreed upon that the majority of these nerfs were intended for PvP purposes with a few exceptions).

BEASTMASTER
* Flesh Rip: Will now properly show up in the reactive ability UI when your pet critically hits. Fixed an issue where this was gaining weapon damage to each tick of the bleed effect. Base damage reduced.
* Backhanded Blow: Now correctly triggers global cooldown. Fixed a bug causing Rank 3 to do 20% more damage than intended. Base damage reduced. Corrected Power cost on ranks 2 through 8 to cost the proper 25 Power.
* Slashing Strike: Fixed a bug where this ability was doing the damage of a single target ability. The damage has been reduced to match other cleave-style abilities.
* Fight as One: The benefits gained from Fight as One have been reduced to 5-15% for Hit, Critical Hit, and Damage. This ability has been taken off of global cooldown.
* Diversion Strike: Increases Critical Hit chance of the Beastmaster and their pet by 5% instead of 10%. Damage lowered.
* Tenacious Wounds: Now increases bleed damage by 2-4% instead of 3-6%.
* Feral Sweep: Resolved a bug where this was dealing extra damage on each tick of the Bleed effect. Base damage lowered.
* Tearing Slash, Fierce Strike: Damage lowered.

These changes were mainly to combat the fact that Beastmaster/Champ/Paragon builds were far outperforming other dps specs in end-game PvE (by a margin of several hundred dps). From what I can tell, these nerfs should bring this spec down to the level of other dps specs with no other real negative impact other than you can't guarantee top dps anymore. The addition of Flesh Rip to the reactives bar is a huge buff for us - currently the best you can do is place it high up in a spammable macro and hope you catch it in time, so if you don't use macros you are losing out on a good portion of dps from your pet.

CHAMPION
* Debilitating Strike: Made the tooltip for the debuff from this ability more clear.
* Titan's Strike: Damage has been lowered and the stun has been reduced to 1-3 seconds, down from 1-5 seconds.
* Mark of Extermination and Mark of Inevitability: Will now cause the target to attack.

The only real thing to note here is the nerf to Titan's Strike. As a PvP champion this was our biggest contributor to our burst damage. The main reason for the nerf was the OP combination of Champion/Paragon specs where you could stack several long duration buffs right before charging in and stun-locking some hapless person down for the count. Does this completely break Champion PvP? Probably not.... what it will do is make it so that the monkeys with good macros and crap gear are no longer competitive with the skilled/geared players. It still makes me sad, though. The stun-lock method was the only way I killed some Cleric specs.

PALADIN
* Touch of Life: Now continues cooldown timer on logout.
* Balance of Power: Now deals 25-75% of weapon damage.
* Aegis of Salvation: Ranks 1 and 2 have their cooldowns changed to 1.5 seconds to match with other buffs.
* Reverent Protection: Now only affects up to 5 targets, and range increased from 10 meters to 35 meters.

The first one on this list is a clear buff. Our Touch of Life has a 10 minute cooldown, and currently the cooldown timer stops when logged out (meaning you come back online 24 hours later and it's still got 8 minutes left before you can use it). The Reverent Protection change is a mixed blessing. The range increase allows us to hit our ranged friends in groups, but the limit to 5 players makes it not nearly as powerful as it used to be. And now the real kicker - Balance of Power. The current tooltip says that at 3/3 blocked attacks deal 160% of weapon damage back to the attacker.... where this really hurts us, as tanks, is its affect on the follow-up talent Tip the Balance. At 2/2 it currently heals you for 100% of the damage that Balance of Power did. This seriously nerfs our self-healing capabilities and could have a major impact on PvE tanking.

PARAGON
* Strike Like Iron: Ability is no longer on the global cooldown. Increased from a 10-30% damage buff up to a 16-48% damage buff, with the value doubled for follow-up attacks.
* Death Touch: Due to the Strike Like Iron changes, damage of Death Touch has been lowered.
* Force of Will: Due to the Strike Like Iron changes, damage bonus to follow-up attacks from Force of Will has been reduced from 20 per point to 10 per point.
* Path of the Wind, Path of the Raptor: Now have cooldowns of 6 seconds and a slight increase in damage due to the longer reuse time.
* Dual Strike: Fixed a bug causing this to do less damage than intended - as a result, damage from this ability has increased.
* Deadly Grace: Increased from 7% of Dual Strike damage per point to 9% Dual Strike damage per point.
* Weapon Master: Increased from a 4-20% chance to gain a second attack point up to a 10-50% chance.
* Rising Waterfall: Damage increased.
* Turn the Blade: Damage increased.
* Flurry: Damage lowered.

Paragon really got some love in the damage department. With SLI being off of the global cooldown and its damage modifier buffed and DOUBLED for follow-ups, this spec should now make its way to the top of the damage parses for both PvE and PvP. The nerf to Path of Wind and Path of Raptor, while somewhat warranted, really puts warriors at a disadvantage as far as being kited in PvP and, more notably, in experts where being a melee is a huge problem for a lot of fights. The buffs to Paragon now put the soul on par with Champion as far as damage output, giving warriors more of a choice between which weapon types are preferred.

REAVER
* Due to the below changes, characters with soul points spent in Reaver will receive a free soul point respec.
* Soul Sickness, Flesh Rot, Necrotic Wounds, Blood Fever: The damage on additional targets when using Plague Bringer has been lowered. The Threat generation has been increased to keep overall threat gain of the abilities the same.
* Crippling Infestation: Moves down one tier to unlock at 21 points.
* Wasting Away: Moves down one tier to unlock at 16 points.
* Grisly Works: Moves up two tiers, now unlocked at 26 points. Now increases the healing of Soul Feast by 30-90% for 15 seconds after killing a target the Reaver has engaged.
* Soul Devour: Now increases the damage of Soul Feast by 50%, instead of 150%.
* Power from the Masses: Changed to give a stack per nearby party/raid member rather than per nearby enemy.
* Infestation: Cooldown increased to 1 minute, and damage increased based on the new cooldown.

The nerfs listed here, as far as I can tell, are all aimed to bring Reaver in line as far as PvP goes. As I stated earlier, combining Riftblade's ability to buff non-physical damage coupled with Reaver dots was horribly overpowered in a PvP setting. These changes, however, also cripple the most common leveling and grind spec used by many people. Where I get sketchy on these patch notes are the changes to Soul Devour. I believe they are nerfing the amount of health generated through our Soul Feast abilities. This ability has been fairly crucial for the spec considering it doesn't receive as many defensive abilities as the other tank specs. In experts thus far I have relied on my self healing to buffer the attending healer - with such a drastic reduction I fear that it may no longer be a viable spec for anything outside of normal dungeons. I will reserve my final thoughts for when this hits the live servers, but so far: ouch. Couple this with the change to Grisly Works and it looks like you will HAVE to pick that talent up to make up for the losses. Power from the masses is pretty nice, though. In a 5 man group you can guarantee an almost constant 5% damage reduction.

RIFTBLADE
* Earth Burst: Now properly interrupts elites and other high level mobs.
* Avatar of Wind: Fixed a bug causing the tooltip of this ability to report improper values.
* Rift Surge: Can now be removed with abilities that remove Curses. Now has a 30 second cooldown instead of 10 seconds and is no longer adjusted by Attack Power.
* Flamespear: Now has a cooldown of 6 seconds and has its damage slightly increased to reflect the longer cooldown.
* Burning Blood: Now deals damage based on 10-30% of the character's Strength.

Ah Rift Surge.... the bane of anyone who doesn't pay attention to their debuffs. The addition to allow it to be removed as a curse along with the increase in cooldown is a definite PvP hit. Making so that it doesn't scale with attack power, however, is probably something that really needed to be done (although it was pretty hilarious to watch someone kill themselves). The cooldown on flamespear, like paragon's ranged nerfs, really hurts the warrior class in terms of any ranged viability. I agree that warriors shouldn't do ranged damage comparable to true ranged classes, but if that's the case then the devs need to take a look at PvE encounters that penalize you for being in melee range. I supposed that you could probably produce some silly riftblade/paragon ranged spec that might be halfway viable for PvE. The change to burning blood is a flat-out nerf. The original tooltip at 3/3 states that critical hits done to you will reflect 45% of the damage taken back to the attacker. I guess reflecting 900 damage back when you were crit for 2k was too good. Now, you get a minor reflection of damage based on your strength. This might mean that 5 pts low in the Champion tree become somewhat mandatory (percentile increase to strength).