Hello,
As of today’s reset black arrow is bugged in PVP combat. The damage is significantly lower compared to before reset. The ability was supposed to be buffed by 50% baseline, and nerfed by 15% in PVP, for a net total of around 30% PVP buff.
However, black arrow’s damage is lower by roughly 20-30%. I played more or less 100 arena games today and I can confirm this was not a fluke or an enemy using defensives.
I’m not finding any evidence of it being significantly lower than intended in pvp. I did notice one oddity though when trying to test this in pve to get a baseline. Black arrow is an ability that lacks a random ±5% spread on damage dealt which made it pretty which made it pretty obvious to spot that subsequent casts of black arrow on the same target hit 10% harder. I thought this might be related to recasting black arrow while the dot was already ticking, but target dummies retain this 10% bonus even 5 minutes later. Maybe someone knows where that comes from, but I don’t.
So we’re going to be ignoring that one oddity and using a different target for each shot. I tested this with no gear on with a pve weapon so there would be no pvp ilvl scaling. Black arrow tooltips for 190,313 in pve and 161,670 in pvp. The damage in pve was generally 190,314, so as tooltipped with some rounding. Retesting this in a duel (against a level 10 worgen with 0 versatility, because that’s what I have on my other account to test against) the damage was 160,054, 1% lower than tooltipped because of the worgen racial granting 1% damage reduction to nature/shadow damage. So the tooltip values are correct in how much damage the ability will do, which is 15% less in pvp. The 10% subsequent shot damage noticed in pve didn’t express itself in pvp, at least not through duels ending.
So, I established that at a baseline, the tooltip values are generally correct, and the pvp tooltip is 15% less than the pve tooltip which is all as expected. I also went scouring through warcraftlogs to find logs of the only dark ranger from before the patch to verify that black arrow was generally hitting harder. It was closer to like 45%, and they had 4 ilvls of upgrades, but that might’ve just been rng on procs and trinkets or whatever. IDK, I didn’t feel like continuing to go through logs trying to find someone playing dark ranger a week ago who also had logs this week.
And then finally, looking at the spelldata we can see the modifier on both the direct and periodic amount of black arrow was increased from 5% (0% in pvp due to a 0 pvp coefficient) to 57.5% (33.925% in pvp due to a 0.59 pvp coefficient). 157.5% * .85 = 133.875% which is close enough to 133.925%. So PvE damage went from 105% to 157.5% (50% increase) while PvP damage went from 100% to 133.875% (33.875% increase). We would’ve expected a 27.5% increase, but the initial 5% damage bonus that was not applying in pvp is now applying in pvp. 127.5%*1.05=133.875%
Name : Marksmanship Hunter (id=137016) [Spell Family (9), Passive, Hidden]
Effects :
#12 (id=1196242) : Apply Aura (6) | Add Percent Modifier (108): Spell Direct Amount (0)
Base Value: 57.5 | Scaled Value: 57.5 | PvP Coefficient: 0.59 | Target: Self (1)
Affected Spells: Black Arrow (466930), Black Arrow (468037), Black Arrow (468572)
Family Flags: 91
Hotfixed : Base Value (5 -> 57.5), PvP Coefficient (0 -> 0.59)
#13 (id=1196243) : Apply Aura (6) | Add Percent Modifier (108): Spell Periodic Amount (22)
Base Value: 57.5 | Scaled Value: 57.5 | PvP Coefficient: 0.59 | Misc Value: 22 | Target: Self (1)
Affected Spells: Black Arrow (466930), Black Arrow (468037), Black Arrow (468572)
Family Flags: 91
Hotfixed : Base Value (5 -> 57.5), PvP Coefficient (0 -> 0.59)
tldr: read the first sentence. Damage was actually buffed 5% more in pvp than it should’ve been.