In the early stages of WoW Classic Season of Discovery phase three, the new item Darkmoon Card: Sandstorm was ridiculously strong—stronger than Blizzard intended. The trinket caused players’ instant cast abilities to conjure a dust storm that dealt massive AoE damage, making world content and dungeon farming extremely trivial.
Today, suspicions of the trinket not working as intended were confirmed, as Blizzard applied a hotfix to Darkmoon Card: Sandstorm, reducing its proc chance and subsequently applying a direct nerf to any WoW classes that were relying on the trinket to artificially boost their damage numbers.
The trinket made farming dungeons an absolutely mindless activity when placed in the hands of a Rogue or Shaman player who could spam melee-range spells for quick damage and efficient procs of the Darkmoon Card. The Sandstorm Card would proc and kick up dust in the surrounding area, forcing grouped-up enemies to keel over within seconds.
The hotbar for Darkmoon Card: Sandstorm reads that the item creates a “chance on spells and attacks to summon a sandstorm that circles you, dealing 100 to 200 Nature damage to targets it passes through.”
Before yesterday’s hotfix, that chance was a 100 percent guarantee, but after the nerf, the proc chance of Darkmoon Card: Sandstorm is no longer 100 percent on instant-cast abilities. This means classes who have been abusing the proc (such as Rogues with Mutilate or Shamans with Maelstrom Weapon) will no longer be outright broken in AoE scenarios. While the trinket will likely still perform well, especially in high-density dungeons, you won’t be able to play the game with your eyes practically closed while the trinket does all the work for you anymore.
If you’ve been targeting the Darkmoon Cards that are required to build the deck and complete the quest necessary to obtain Darkmoon Card: Sandstorm as a reward, we’d recommend you keep going and get the trinket for yourself anyway. It’s likely even more balance changes will come down the pipeline surrounding this new item, and even though it’s no longer going to be a monstrously broken S-tier trinket, there’s still a decent chance it will be applicable in many AoE builds throughout the course of phase three.
