The difference between PTR and Live should be this -

Scenario 1 - No Diseases on any target
Live Result = HS hits primary target and secondary target equally
PTR Result = HS hits primary target and secondary target equally

Scenario 2 - Diseases on Primary Target, Not Secondary Target
Live Result = HS hits primary target harder than secondary target
PTR = HS hits primary target harder than secondary target

Scenario 3 - Diseases on both targets
Live Result = HS hits primary target and secondary target equally
PTR Result = HS hits primary target harder than secondary target

You can see that the change only affects scenario 3.

That is how it should be working, can anyone on PTR confirm?

The real test is to take that data, and apply diseases to the 2nd target, does that affect the damage? Is it still lower, if so by how much? Or do diseases on the secondary target even matter?

Would it be possible to create a mod, that predicts the best time to use DRW? Since we have so many procs, timing DRW can some times be slightly difficult in order to max dps. The idea would be to track procs rates of items and predict the time when most of your procs are off cooldown and ready to go. I personally hate having greatness proc right after I've use a DRW duration.

There is right now no change at all on PTR so there's nothing to test. I used a low weapon, removed all things that could procc and tried with diseases and without. In both cases both targets did get the same damage (with a difference from up to 6 due to weapon damage range).

You can test yourself. But the tooltip says clearly that the second target only gets half of damage. It's just not yet implemented.

edit:
Well, i did test it in a better way. To get really clear results, i didnt use any trinket, set bonus and weapon enchant and a low weapon from starting zone (had only a weapon dmg range of 2).

So i tested it exactly this way and i always got around with and without diseases the same damage for both targets (was just at maximum a low difference from 1-2 damage when both were non crit).

So yeah, i am pretty sure i got the right result. I was an European PTR, if it should matter (it shouldn't).

@ Bonecaller

I'm not going to dispute what you did, but can you post some numbers. The reason i say this is because the lower the weapon dmg you are using the less likely you are to see any difference, and you still may be mistaken "little change" as "no change"

If you have diseases up on primary and secondary target and your heart strike hit for 240 lets say on main target, it should hit for 220 on secondary target, and this would be correct with the said change.

The 20 damage difference could easily be mistaken for difference in weapon damage modifier the cleave portion of damage gets.

When you get chance could you please post some numbers with a weapon with high damage?

It also doesnt matter if you use trinkets or not for this, since you are only comparing damage on two targets from a single attack, NOT multiple targets and multiple attacks, which makes me wonder if your tests were really performed correct.

Get FF and BP up on one target, use pestilence and then hit heart strike. Thats it. Nothing more.
Write down what heart strike hit for on primary target, and what it hit for on secondary target.

If possible USE trinkets and high dmg weapons so we can get larger numbers which makes it easier to cloud weapon dmg difference and see what the actual cleave disease multipler damage difference is.

Some PTR testing..

The "meh" news:

Tried testing HS is normal gear on lowbie target dummies in Acherus - didn't get much useful data. I would get an instance of 9600 primary/9200 cleave, and then immediately after get a 9400 primary/10,200 cleave. The difference (if there) is minimal.

The good news:

T9 4pc - this is consistently critting around 35-36% of the time for me (32.26% tooltip crit with HoW, 24.19% spell crit). It appears to be based off of melee crit (yay).

The bad news:

DRW appears to be bugged and is not copying any "specials". Mine melees 6 times and then its timer runs out. This looks unintentional - at least the tooltip is still saying the same thing.

The "lolwut" news:

We already knew that pestilence (whether by using Glyph of Disease, or by target swapping) renews the duration of diseases and keeps the original "snapshot" of your stats at the time cast. I.E. if you put diseases up with all trinkets procced, abilities, etc, by renewing the disease with pestilence it would keep those, even if your stats had gone back down from 10,000 AP to 8,000.

I tried this with my dark matter procced (tooltip 45% crit instead of the 32% the first test had). I put diseases up with it procced, and then pestilence danced to keep the diseases going for about 70-80 ticks. The crit rates were up around 45-50%, so it appears to "snapshot" critrate as well, you just don't see it unless you're using T9 4 piece.

I did the same testing as Decaying today. Ill add some pictures of my tests to make it more visual and calculable.



My Melee crit is 28.18% and my spell crit is 21.6%.
As you can see the crits tick in at roughly 200% dmg.

Edit* Imagebucket is giving some trouble atm. Ill add the data manually then:

BP:
502 ticks - 361 normal, 141 Crits. 28.1% crits
Normal tick: min 426, avg 472, max 533
Criti Ticks: min 891, avg 990, max 1113

FF:
502 - 371 normal, 131 Crits. 26.1% crits
Normal Tick: min 418, avg 457, max 524
Criti Ticks: min 873, avg 957, max 1095

Even with a low weapon, you will see huge numbers.

So i did the same testing and provide the numbers:

Without diseases i had 1077-1078 non crits on both targets (not higher, not lower).

With diseases up on both targets, i had critrange from 3167-3168 again on both targets, my non crits were at about 1292-1293 on both targets.

You see that especially well when both targets get a crit or non crit -> it's always the same damage(+- 2).

What i found out that was new for me: Spreading diseases over pestilence gave the diseases on other targets only the time left they had on the first target. Looks to me like another stealth nerf because i didn't find anything about that in patchnotes.

I see no point in using high damage weapons for testing. They just do have a such high damage range that my cleave damage on the second target is often a lot higher than on the first targets. That's why i chose these low weapons to get clear and unique results.

New changes from MMO :
Blood
* Heart Strike: Secondary targets of Heart Strike now take half as much damage.
* Subversion: Now also increases the critical strike chance of Scourge Strike by 3/6/9%.
* Vampiric Blood: Cooldown reduced to 1 minute and duration reduced to 10 seconds.

It will decrease multitarget capabilities of the blood spec.

Just like i said, this will be a huge nerf to HS cleave. Its right now not yet implemented on PTR, but it will be surely with the next build.

As mentioned above the Heart Strike change is a nerf due to PvP. There is ZERO reason other than that for the change. Personally I think this will have larger ramifications on Blood tanking and not so much on DPS.

I tested it last night on hardmode 25 beasts. I resocketed for all str and my dps went into the shitter dramatically. I used to be top 1-3 then it was more like top 5 thu out our attempts. I swapped over to unholy 2h and dps went up but the rotation was much more cumbersome and I stood around a lot waiting for runes in blood pres.

If you haven't resocketed I'd say stay with the 6200 ap raid buffed figures. Since I blew 800g and 3 drgons eyes for str gems resocketing I'm just going to stay like this till 3.2.2. no point to resocket now.

The 6200 AP number is very old and has nothing to do with todays Arp calculations. You aim for maximum Arp, either with a proc or without one. Theoretically Arp is related to AP, but practically every Arp item has Str on it and you always have more than the neccessary amount of AP.
Plase stop mentioning that number .

I hardly see how it could be a pvp nerf.
If we take the sk-gaming arena ranking :
- on the top 100 2v2 teams, there is only 9 teams with a dk (22 with a warrior), and 0 among them wich is blood spec.
- on the top 100 3v3 teams, there is only 12 teams with a maximum of 1 dk (22 with at least 1 warrior), and there is only 1 blood.
- on the top 100 5v5 teams, there is also only 12 teams with a maximum of 1 dk (43 with at least 1 warrior), and only 1 blood spec too.

So the cleave effect of HS is nerfed for pvp purpose ? This explanation is not consistent at all with the blood spec representation in arena.
On another note we can see the great impact on the dk representation in arena since the last nerfs.
In 2v2, on 200 players, there is 9 dk (4.5%)
In 3v3, on 300 players, there is 12 dk (4%)
In 5v5, on 500 players, there is 12dk (2.4%)
The theorical representation of a class in an idealy balanced world would be 10% in each bracket. We can see that it's far from being the case.
The representation for warriors seems to be correct.

If it's not a pvp nerf, it must be a pve nerf, because blood dk are still the best pve spec for dps. We can check a ranking like this one : WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay or this one : WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay to be convinced.
The explanation is quite simple : a lot of fights involve dpsing 2 or 3 targets (xt/mimiron/kologarn/algalon/jaraxxus/..), or have multiple phases (mimiron/northen beasts/..).
The blood spec naturally benefit more than the others from those fights (cleave + short burst cd), as the unholy spec benefit more from ae encounters (freya/yogg hm/factions champions).
Nerfing the HS by 50% on the second target is simply nerfing the blood spec on cleave fights, making it even or inferior to the other ones (see the jaraxxus hm ranking where unholy are present), making it inferior on ae fights, and letting it have the lead by a very small margin on 100% monotarget fights (vezax/ignis/twin).
With the arp nerf, but the SoV up, the dps should remains the same in 3.2.2

For pvp, i compared the dk population to the warrior one because the warrior is probably the best cleave class, while being an hybrid class too.
For pve, the warrior is amongst the top dps, even before x/x/43 future nerfed rogues, on clearly more fights than dks (blood dks), and totally dominate some. They are the true pure cleave class, and benefit even more than blood spec from cleave oriented fights.
This is the case on algalon, mimiron (where are the other classes ?), kologarn (same here), xt, twin, jaraxxus.
On monotarget fights, they are at the same dps level. On ae fights, they are at the same level as blood too.
So nerfing the blood cleave hability is simply illogical if we take into account what a warrior is capable of with this same type of hability. But it's true that warriors are a little overpowered in pve for the moment.

If this nerf goes live, it will majorly impact the blood gameplay fun, because since the introduction of the cleave hability on HS, every blood dk have learned to play and move to optimize this cleave aspect on every fight where it could be done.
Dividing HS secondary target damage by 2 will create a great frustration and probably make some blood dks to simply respect, which is probably the point.

As much as 4pc t9 fixed and the Sigil change would be nice ASAP, I really hope its up on the PTR long enough for them to revert this. It really doesn't make sense as a PVE change when Warriors in cleave specs are just completely dominating. Hopefully there'll be some Dev posts on the matter for constructive discussion.

I also found the blood cleave nerf a bit weird. If it isnt intended for PVP (in which blod DKs are nonexistent, as shown by Plopinou) but For PVE, I cant really see its use. Perhaps in Battlegrounds bloods are cleaning the house (they arent for as far as I know)?

There are very few fights in TotC25 where the cleaving of HS is a big dmg upgrade.
Beasts: When there is a snobold on a melee. Perhaps shortly on the worms, but they cant really be tanked next to eachother for long. Poison righs are to big for that on hardmode.
Jaraxxus: some splash dmg when a mistress is next to Jaraxxus
Faction Champs: HS gets a 75% reduction on main and cleave target. just No.
Valkyr: I havent seen any guild tank em on top of eachother in 25 man..
Anub: Probably the only fight where its a big deal. However, unholy is by far the better specc here, outdpsing blood with ease.

Next to that, Blood tanks could get serious aoe threat issues with this change. This probably wont affect 25 man raiding much, since blood tanks werent used for that (aoe tanking that is), but its pretty annoying for tanking heroics.

What could be the real reason for this nerf?

I have a hard time accepting that Blizzard would tone down the cleave simply because of the advantage when plowing through trivial content. If that were the case, they would have toned down aoe back in Naxx. The approach to these encounters changes significantly on heroic.

We have ranged managing the Snowbolds. Incidental aoe from melee won't hit them unless you target them, which isn't as simple as tabbing given how much they jump around in addition to accommodating both them and Gormok being in front and within range of each other. With the huge amount of damage and long interrupt caused by Gormok's Staggering Stomp, having ranged run to melee to be relieved of their Snowbold isn't even an option on heroic.

For the Jormungar, again utilizing a strat that benefits cleave type abilities is fine for normal mode, but on heroic this isn't an option due to the long duration of the poison clouds requiring careful placement (although even on normal and with their large hit box, I'm surprised you can utilize cleave abilities with a 15 yd sweep from the stationary one as you're suggesting).

For Jaraxxus on heroic, I can't possibly see tanking infernals in melee range being an option with how much aoe damage they do. Although you can tank the mistresses in melee range, I don't see the Heart Strike cleave being superior to other forms of melee aoe here.

Our cleave is definitely strong if you're tanking the twin Valkyr together, but again I don't feel that it is superior to the aoe capabilities other melee classes benefit from in this situation. In fact, going over wowmeeters, there are very few (one to two) blood DKs on the top parses (most of which are towards the bottom) for every ToC encounter that benefits from having a cleave type ability. All of them are being topped by warriors and rogues, and while wowmeeters isn't a solid source to base information off of, it is still worth noting.

For Anub'arak, again we definitely benefit, but I don't feel that our Heart Strike is overshadowing other melee aoe capabilities here.

It feels like an unnecessary nerf because it's good when there is an additional mob, however I don't feel that it pulls strongly ahead of other forms of melee aoe once three or four mobs are introduced. Perhaps I am just in denial because, like Orother mentioned, it feels quite weird and unwarranted, it hurts blood tanks, and overall I felt that the Heart Strike cleave made the ability very fun and unique.

Edit: do we know if the nerf is really half less damage to the secondary target? I read the updated patch notes as being corrections for poor wording, but since that can't possibly mean the same thing as what the nerf previously stated, I'm assuming it already got nerfed/changed again?

HS is overpowered with a 281dps weapon. I have one and I did one Ulduar raid with it. On bosses like Mimiron it's devastating with 95% Arp. The nerf is justified, since Frost+Unholy are the more aoe oriented specs and Blood still has very nice burst and single target damage.

As I said, multiple times, those were personal situations, and situations I have found to be true in a more than just a few circumstances. As an example our melee dps is substantially higher than our ranged dps, and we have more of them, so it makes sense for the caster to run into melee when they get a snobold and then we focus them (primarily rogues and myself). Because of how we manage it, one usually dies just as the other one is being ran in, letting me keep a seamless rotation full of cleaves onto Gormok, and we did this on heroic too (it's actually where we came up with the strat, because casters, and primarily healers, weren't getting them killed quickly enough).

For worms, we don't aim for it, but its quite easy to simply stand between them to maximize cleave damage until the cloud is about 5 yards from you, at which point they generally burrow and come up in different spots to begin with. Obviously I only mean to cleave in the opening of the fight (which is when most of my groups damage is done anyways), after the first burrow and swap the ability to cleave is greatly diminished unless you intentionally move them together (and I don't know of any guild that does that). I generally swap to unholy presence to soak incoming damage and improve my movement speed to get back quickly after a sweep.

As for Jaraxxus, I never said we tank them in melee, I said they incidentally receive cleave damage due to their natural teleport into melee, by no means should any legitimate raid comp move them into melee range (albeit, our strat has our rogues on infernals again due to our extreme melee dominance over casters). We intentionally move him towards volcanoes however so that the cleave damage can still effect multiple targets.

In my current gear I don't see cleave being really dominant, especially with our rogues in the group, but I certainly could see it scaling quite a bit out of hand with a higher level item (like Doc said). Blizzard has shown repeatedly in Wrath that they are taking preemptive adjustments to classes in terms of 'nerfs'. They are anticipating the ilvl growth and calculating the damage output based on those, and in that regard our cleave is exceptionally strong in comparison to other classes cleave mechanics (not necessarily AoE, but it varies by the amount of mobs in range as to what kind of AoE you're referring to).

So then what about abilities like Cleave and WW? If it's a problem with one cleave, it would be a problem with any other cleave. And isn't that arguably an issue with Armor Pen as much as it is an issue with cleaves? A warrior would be doing just as well, if not better in that kind of situation because they could both glyph Cleave to hit three targets in addition to using WW.

The fact that they only nerfed Heart Strike rather than all cleave abilities is what doesn't make sense, rather than if cleaves in general got nerfed. It's hard to extrapolate a meaning behind the nerf in this kind of situation.

Döc - I was curious to see this in action, so I pulled you up on Worldoflogs.com and was browsing your Algalon kill to get a good idea of what you're hitting for - it lists you as using blood strike not heart strike? Is this a translation issue (from German -> English), or is something else going on? Curious to see some parses with a 281 dps weapon.

Oh come on now, that's just asinine, you can't say a nerf was justified because a deep blood talent benefits from it heavily with a weapon and gear that a small portion of the population is going to get. A VERY small portion.