This week’s reset not only brings Season 1 content with it but also a brand new class tuning pass. We’ve already seen the actual numbers. The new tier sets get nerfed and the base specs get buffs to compensate. But how does that all pan out in the end? Luckily we have our guide writers to analyze it all!
Death Knight
Both Unholy and Blood got hit in the Nerub-ar Palace sets and both got a 5% buff. So let’s take a look at what our writers say about it all.
Blood, by Mandl
Blood 4pc: Your damage is increased by 0.5% per active 
Bone Shield charge. Taking damage while below 6 Boneshield charges has a chance to generate 1-2 Boneshield charges.
All damage increased by 5%.
The halving in value of the Blood Death Knight 4-piece set bonus and its associated aura buff served only to fully remove any playstyle element from the set, as it is now a completely passive set.
Previously, you cared slightly about making sure 
Reaper’s Mark detonations, 
Tombstone and 
Bonestorm were cast at the full 12% value, as this was better than flat-out ignoring it. While the aura buff that comes with it is a positive (it lessens the dependence on balancing and damage on the 4-piece set bonus), the set bonus itself is now wholly irrelevant and a 4-5% increase in damage at all times, bringing it somewhat in line with other tank set bonuses.
The more infuriating part in all this is that this was the wrong solution to the wrong problem. The other element of the 4-piece bonus (bone generation chances while below 6 bones) could have been put in the limelight by instead capping the 4-piece bonus to 5 stacks (6 with reinforced bones, i.e. to its current value) instead of halving its value per stack. This would have allowed some light into what is a bleak set bonus, instead of discarding any feedback and nerfing it wholesale, all while managing to stay within tuning bounds.
Unholy, by Bicepspump
Unholy 4pc: When you summon a minion, your Haste is increased by 1%, up to 4% for 8 sec.
All damage increased by 5%.
As with the rest, Unholy received tuning related to our tier set. We previously saw a total 14% gain from the set, where the 4-piece contributed a 10% DPS increase. This made Unholy somewhat of an outlier in terms of tier set power.
The change to the tier set essentially cut the value of the 4p effect in half (2%->1%) Haste, significantly reducing its total value to the spec. To compensate, our damage was buffed by 5%, leaving us with a net 0.6% DPS gain in pure Single Target. Furthermore, the nerf to the 4p makes the buff upkeep less important in our rotation, putting some pressure off our buff tracking. It’s still important, but not to the same degree. Overall a healthy change that leaves us at a net positive.
Demon Hunter
DH also got two specs hit by the tuning, with a 4 and 3% buff to offset the set nerfs.
Havoc by Wordup
Havoc 4pc: 
Chaos Strike deals 12% increased damage, and has a 25% chance to reset the cooldown of Blade Dance and reduce its Fury cost by 30%.
All damage increased by 4%.
Havoc’s bonuses were generally strong, but this pulls some of the power out of purely Chaos Strike (which was contributing a huge amount of the overall damage to both Fel-Scarred and Aldrachi Reaver Hero trees) and puts it back into the overall toolkit.
This is a very, very slight single-target buff but more importantly, a solid AoE buff, while also putting some more power back into the baseline spec. A healthy change that’s purely positive for Havoc going into Season 1.
Vengeance by Meyra
Vengeance 2pc: 
Soul Cleave deals 10% increased damage and has a 25% chance to shatter 1 Lesser Soul fragment from a target it hits.
All damage increased by 3%.
Overall the impact of this change is fairly small. There seem to be few or no rotational adjustments because of the change. However, the reduced chance to spawn a lesser soul fragment does bring with it some frustration, since random and infrequent resource generation can be annoying to play around.
The Vengeance rotation, especially in multi-target situations, is to a certain degree reliant on reacting to sources of random soul generation, which makes infrequent sources annoying since you do not actively play around them often. They just occasionally introduce some variance to your rotation. Overall the impact is still very minor. The tier set power is exceedingly small now that the impactful bonus got reduced by about a third in power. This reduces an already fairly unimpactful tier set to passive bonuses you barely register in your gameplay.
Devastation Evoker by Blueprint
Devastation 2pc: 
Disintegrate damage increased by 6% and 
Pyre damage increased by 6%. Devastation 4pc: 
Eternity Surge’s cooldown is decreased by 3.0 sec and it now grants 
Essence Burst.
All damage increased by 3%.
With the upcoming tuning changes to both the tier set and the flat damage increase, Devastation’s viability in both raiding and Mythic+ remains largely unchanged. It also still leaves us as one of the highest DPS output specs in the game.
Enhancement Shaman by Wordup
Enhancement 2pc: 
Stormstrike, 
Lava Lash, 
Ice Strike, and 
Crash Lightning deal 6% increased damage.
All damage increased by 2%.
Enhancement’s 2-piece bonus was already pretty low in value. So the buff to our overall damage in exchange for this nerf generally results in a slight damage increase overall. Our gains from the set are heavily weighted toward the 4-piece bonus which also remains untouched. And so this change just slightly pulls some of the power back into our baseline abilities.
What matters more is the undocumented hotfix that allows 
Tempest to now stack to two, massively reducing the chance of “munching” procs alongside giving much better quality of life. That change in particular is likely to make a big difference in Nerub-ar when it comes to consistency and playability.