New Patch notes released

Rejoice, or cry.

http://www.wowhead.com/?patchnotes=3.0.8-ptr

Some interesting changes and some very bad ones for some class's...

D

Looks like I'm getting a tiny buff to AoE damage with those totem changes. Still it's hardly anything. Hopefully they'll do something a little more significant in the future.

No class-destroying changes for resto druids as far as I can see. I like the buffs to spirit forms!

Nice buffs for Blood, Especially the heart strike change, the haste debuff was worthless.

D:

Today:

Frost

* Killing Machine now gives Your melee attacks a chance to make your next Icy Touch, Howling Blast or Frost Strike a critical strike. (Old - 10/20/30/40/50% from critical strike)

Unholy

* Virulence now reduces the chance that your damage over time diseases can be cured by 10/20/30%. (Old - Affected all spells)
* Necrosis now give your auto attacks an additional 4/8/12/16/20% shadow damage. (Up from 2/4/6/8/10%)
* Summon Gargoyle now persists up to 30 seconds (Down from 1 minute). Damage from Gargoyles has been reduced from 64-86 to 51-69.
* Anti-Magic Zone now lasts up to 10 seconds. (Down from 30 seconds)

Can this mean the end of the DK infestation?

I doubt it.

Autoattacks doing more damage, Icy Touch procs - are they trying to make Haste useful to DKs?

Yeah, almost.

In a turn of irony: Haste is a staple (but not more important than Hit (to 9% melee)Strength > AP > Crit) , as currently, the entire point of Dual Wielding is getting Killing Machine procs (and using them on Howling Blast), and the best way to do that is to spam attacks to get as many crits as possible.

Currently, Killing Machine has a 50% chance to procc on a crit.

Killing Machine makes the next Howling Blast, Icy Touch or Frost Strike to become a critical strike.

And as Howling Blast is a very powerful attack to begin wtih, guaranteeing a crit almost every attack is ... good!

On an interesting note, using the WWS report, I find that yesterday I had 63% overall crit on Howling Blast, 60% crits on Icy Touch - with 373 Killing Machine Procs - or ~5.8 PPM.
According to a blue poster, the new KM will be a PPM on melee attacks, at 5 PPM at Max rank.

Early tests from PTR report that it's 5 PPM *per weapon*... which could be a buff (for me, probably not the top-geared DKs out there).
What it could mean, however, is that my fast/fast weapon setup is no longer any good at all.... but I'll need to test/read up on experiments before I can answer that.

....

Yeah, overkill.

As for the patch, I'm not convinced that the Necrosis tweak is a buff specific for Dual Wielding.

3.1 notes are here at last:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/

For me, I can't wait. Several minor but nice Prot Pally buffs that will all add up, though most of them are just to make soloing stuff as Prot easier to do, and considering dual specs are coming (if you pay 1000g) I won't need to solo anything as Prot again. But with threat becoming an issue again now you folks do 2k damage, extra damage is always nice.

Not much for tree druids, except a slightly buffed pink paw and a majorly buffed Faerie Fire vs armoured mobs. Living Seed should heal for more when it lands, or less - not entirely sure how the change will work.

As for dual spec, still not sure what the alternative will be - I've got a nearly full set of boomkin gear, half a set of kittyferal gear. But perhaps I should try a direct-healer hybrid spec - or a feral hybrid spec for OTing? Decisions..

Had a quick browse, looks good. Interesting changes to prot.

Dual spec's 1k gold is a bit much, but I guess gold is cheap nowadays really. Still looking forward to that and a working gear manager!

D

Plenty of good changes for Shamans in there. <3 the Spirit Weapons change. Now I can combat that threat reduction trinket Card clearly uses on me

Have the PTR downloading but have been waiting since Friday on the Character Copy to go through, it's amazing how long that thing can be "pending" for. Forum posts having the same problem, all Blizzard have said is "be patient", the waiting time however is current 27 days. Could be a while before I get to test anything :p. However there are those who copied their character moments before the PTR went live and are already online. Guess I was just unlucky.

Either way, looks like it should be a lot of fun.

Ulduar looks great

Interesting additions for holy priests -are we in for a slaughter in Ulduar?
Most important:

A glyph that lowers Guardian Spirit's CD to 60 seconds (WOW!) (The spirit increases the healing received by the target by 40%)

Prayer of Healing is now a targeted spell that heals the target's party.

Circle of Healing increased 40%.

Improved Holy Concentration removed from the game, replaced by increase in mana regen - it was useful to have and kept us entertained (quick! choose what to do with the free cast!)

As for dual, well, maybe I should try discipline but I dont know yet - as for Shadow.. I can't imagine we will have at our raids a surplus of healers together with a famine in dps'ers

Blue post on official forums, listing Patch Notes for 3.1:

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=8136495630

Not sure if they'll update it when the next build is up, this one's dated Tuesday 24th February.

I saw an important blue post today - Badges of Valor (the 25-man badges) will drop in 10-man Uldaur.

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/12/15199337843-buying-emble-of-valor-using-emblem-of-heroism.html

Good news! Though to be fair, they won't be any better than 10-man Uldaur lootz.

Loads of juicy talk of a new healer legendary weapon (Val'anyr, Gavel of Kings), but it seems this item only drops in 25-man Ulduar.

Boo.

Not that it'd matter, as treeform wouldn't let it show... /sourgrapes

New updated PTR patch notes (found through MMO-Champion):

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html

I particularly like the changes to professions, further reducing annoyance factors (like faster fishing/mining/herbing/skinning, for example); the merging of quest and achievement tracking (yay for adding "on use" quest items to the tracker!); and clam meat now stacks properly! XD

I don't like that they've halved the regen granted by Spirit though...

Boo to the improved scorch/winter's chill nerf

Just lots of elemental changes and PvP changes my end. Based on what I've seen on the PTR I think they're pretty happy with Enhancement DPS in PvE, still won't be able to really test anything until we're in Ulduar.

3.1 announced to go live tomorrow:

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/1/16365836582-extended-maintenance--414.html

Official patch notes:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=835

BRING DA PAIN!

I will be updating the raid signup section today at some point.

We will be raiding Ulduar tomorrow.

Cardinal wrote:

O.o

WOOOOOOOOOO!!!! *starts sticking twigs and leaves back on*

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html

Note: Replenishment is being nerfed (as I was told politely on the druid forum). 1% total mana per 5 seconds = 0.2% mana per second. The current Replenishment buffs grant 0.25% mana per second. This makes a lot more sense to me considering the changes..

Some interesting changes...

After being told that they hadn't liked the system at the end of BC where people were running heroics for badgers of justice to get BT/Hyjal-equivalent badge gear, and thus implemented the multi-tiered emblems that we have now...

* Both the 10 and 25 player instances of the Crusaders' Coliseum drop a new Emblem of Triumph.
* Any dungeons that previously dropped Emblems of Heroism or Valor, such as Naxxramas or Heroic Halls of Stone, will now drop Emblems of Conquest instead. Emblems of Conquest can still be converted to Valor or Heroism.
* The heroic dungeon daily quest will now reward 2 Emblems of Triumph and the normal daily dungeon quest will reward 1 Emblem of Triumph.
* The existing achievements to collect 1, 25, 50, etc. Emblems of Heroism, Valor, and Conquest have been converted to Feats of Strength since Heroism and Valor Emblems are no longer attainable.
* New achievements have been added to collect various amounts of any combination of emblems.

So you can now run heroics for badges that will buy you two pieces of T8.25... and if you do the normal and heroic daily dungeon quests for long enough you'll presumably be able to get some T9 (!).

Invisibility: Can no longer be interrupted by a hostile action or damage done during the 3 second fade time, however an invisible mage can still be stunned or silenced.

Nice change, it was certainly annoying to get your invisibility cancelled by some piddly bit of random damage coming in.

* Character names can now be colorized according to class in the chat frame through an interface option in the Development settings.

Addon function baked into the base UI.

* Druids will now be able to see their mana bars when shape-shifted.

Addon function baked into the base UI.

* Item Comparisons: Holding the shift key while hovering over an item will now display the stat differences with the item currently equipped in the relevant slot.

Addon function baked into the base UI.

* Macros and scripts will no longer be able to target totems by name.

I wonder how long shamans have been asking for / suggesting that one... hardly seems like the mindbendingly hard to implement thing that Blizzard were talking about which is why it's taken so long to happen.

* Quest creatures and objects will now show on the player's world map.

As though it wasn't enough putting HUGE SPARKLIES on quest objects, and listing creatures' impact on quests in your tooltips?

* The quest log is now double-paned for more easily viewing quest information.

Addon function baked into the base UI.

* Vendor prices will now be listed on items whether or not players are at a vendor.

Addon function baked into the base UI.

Flask of the North increases your spell power, attack power or Strength for 1 hour and is usable in arenas. It is not consumed when used.

Seems weird that it can provide strength, but not agility?

Five new epic gem transmute recipes are available from the Northrend trainer. The recipe for transmuting a Cardinal Ruby can be learned from a quest, given by Linzy Blackbolt in Dalaran.

...since let's be honest, it's the red gems that will really excite everyone

The Ultrasafe Bullet Machine and Saronite Arrow Maker schematics have been simplified to create a full stack of the appropriate ammunition. No longer requires an anvil. Reduced the materials required to make this ammunition.

Anything that makes my ammo costs cheaper rates for a woo and a yay...

Randomly generated uncommon (green) and rare (blue) quality items in Wrath of the Lich King had stat values that were lower than intended. All Wrath of the Lich King uncommon and rare items with random suffixes ("of the Bear") have had their stat values increased significantly.

o.O They've only just noticed that they were lower than intended? After WLK's been out for how long?

Telluria wrote:

Randomly generated uncommon (green) and rare (blue) quality items in Wrath of the Lich King had stat values that were lower than intended. All Wrath of the Lich King uncommon and rare items with random suffixes ("of the Bear") have had their stat values increased significantly.

o.O They've only just noticed that they were lower than intended? After WLK's been out for how long?

Guess they figured no one cared as Naxx25 was the great loot pinata it was.

So, though no new models have been brought out yet, seems most of the Tier pieces for 10man, 25 man and the Herioc counterparts have been released and placed onto MMO Champion.

Should give us a general idea of what we can expect, though no doudt tweaks will occur.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=67386.0

So, discuss...
Are we excited about this Alliance/Horde model for each tier?
Do we have any worries or grievances with the stats and benefits of the new Tiers
OR
is this information being released far too early for our liking?