Patch 3.0.8 Released Tomorrow?
January 19, 2009 by Zuggy · Leave a Comment
While there has been no definite confirmation as of yet, there’s a reasonably good chance patch 3.0.8 will go live tomorrow! Note the following post from Eyonix.
When the next minor content patch is released players may notice two separate issues. The warlock spell Ritual of Summoning can only be used once every two minutes. Additionally, there are some human female animation errors, specifically when using two-handed weapons or shooting with a ranged weapon. Both of these issues are actively being addressed and we hope to have a fix available shortly after the patch releases.
List of Major Patch 3.0.8 Changes
New Lake Wintergrasp PvP Items
January 19, 2009 by Zuggy · Leave a Comment
Compiled list of the new lake wintergrasp pvp items, available in patch 3.0.8.
Source: mmo-champion
Updated 3.0.8 Patch Notes
January 16, 2009 by Zuggy · Leave a Comment
General
- Racial Resistances: These can now be mitigated against by gaining additional chance to hit.
- All Silence spells now have diminishing returns. This includes: Arcane Torrent, Garrote silence effect, Improved Counterspell effect, Improved Kick effect, Silence, Gag Order, Silencing Shot, Spell Lock, and Strangulate.
- Dispel Resist talents have changed to protect only beneficial spells and damage over time effects.
- Shield Wall, Barkskin, Guardian Spirit, and Divine Protection are now off the Global Cooldown.
- Reputation rewarded for killing mobs will no longer automatically deprecate. This means trivial mobs will continue to give out their full amounts of reputation on kill for the majority of cases in the game (level 70 creatures in Stratholme, for example, will continue to award the full amount of rep to level 80 players seeking to boost their Argent Dawn faction).
- World of Warcraft now supports 3-D imaging. Visit http://www.nvidia.com/object/GeForce_3D_Vision_Main.html for more information.
The Darkmoon Faire vendors have new items now that trade routes into Northrend have been better established.PvP
- Vehicles can now be affected by most player spells, except CC, snares and roots.
Death Knight
- Anti-Magic Zone: This ability’s duration has been cut to 10 seconds.
- Killing Machine: Instead of a chance to be triggered on critical strike, this talent now has a chance to be triggered on each swing based on the swing time of the weapon (slow weapons more likely, fast weapons less likely).
- Mark of Blood: The total amount of healing this can grant is now capped based on a percentage of standard creature health at the target’s level.
- Shadow of Death: The duration has been changed from 45 seconds to 25 secondsseconds and now has a 15 minute cooldown.
- Summon Gargoyle: Damage dealt by the Gargoyle reduced by approximately 20% and maximum duration cut to 30 seconds.
- Wandering Plague will now properly reset after being castand now considers the resilience of the target in determining its chance to be triggered.
- Vampiric Blood (DK) changed from 20% health / 50% healing to 15 % health / 35% healing.
- Will of the Necropolis will now reduce the damage of any attack that takes the DK below 35% health by 5 /10/15% instead of boosting armor when wounded. It no longer affects the cooldown of Anti-Magic Shell and retains the current damage reduction bonus.
Druid
- Celestial Focus (Balance) no longer includes Starfall.
Hunter
- Hunter Aspects are now off the Global Cooldown again. They still have a shared 1 second cooldown.
- Ferocious Inspiration: This talent now also increase the damage the Hunter does with Arcane Shot by 3/6/9%.
- Lock and Load: Now has a 30 second cooldown.
- Tranquilizing Shot (Hunter): Cooldown increased to 8 sec, up from 6. Mana cost reduced to 8%, down from 12%.
- Pets
- Rake: This hunter pet ability has had its damage adjusted to prevent unreasonable scaling with attack power.
- Scorpid Poison: No longer stacks. The damage has been adjusted to prevent unreasonable scaling with attack power.
- Spirit Strike (hunter pet ability) now has an initial attack (which can crit) and then a single dot. Damage overall is higher.
Mage
- Incanter’s Absorption: The amount of spell damage a Mage can gain from this ability is now capped at 5% of the mage’s health.
- Mirror Image: The Mirror Image Polymorph ability now has a range of 8 yards. In addition, Mirror Images will no longer have excessive threat values assigned to them when they are created.
Rogue
- Cheap Shot: This ability no longer has diminishing returns against anything other than itself.
- Kidney Shot: This ability now has diminishing returns against all other stuns.
Shaman
- All shaman talent points have been refunded. Please visit your trainer to learn spells and abilities.
Warlock
- Curse of Agony will now scale better when used with the [Glyph of Curse of Agony]. Ticks beyond the original duration will do 33% more damage than the ticks that preceded them. i.e. 74 -> 145 -> 217 -> 290.
Warrior
- Sudden Death: The amount of rage spent on an Execute while Sudden Death is active is now capped at 30 rage. Improved Execute and the [Glyph of Execution] will still increase the damage done by increasing the amount of rage able to be converted into damage.
Professions
- Enchanting
- Increased the amount of healing from the Lifeward enchantment.
- Increased the amount of damage caused by the Icebreaker enchantment.
- Added a new recipe to enchant bracers with Stamina. You can buy this recipe from Vanessa Sellers in Dalaran.
Added a new recipe to enchant a weapon with Stamina. You can buy this recipe from Vanessa Sellers in Dalaran.(This was removed entirely)- Engineering
- The engineering Scrapbot can now repair.
- Inscription (Note: Glyph changes moved to Items)
Glyph of Death Decay has been changed to grant 20% additional damage instead of its current effect.Glyph of Invisibility duration has been increased.Glyph of Deterrence: Now -10 seconds instead of -20.Glyph of Holy Light now affects friendly targets in a larger radius.Glyph of Horn of Winter now increases the duration by 60 sec.Items
- [Emblems of Heroism] can now be purchased at a 1 to 1 rate using [Emblems of Valor].
- The Darkmoon Faire exotic vendors have been updated with new items.
- Druid Feral Tier 7 Set: The 4 piece bonus now also decreases the cooldown on Tiger’s Fury by 3 seconds.
- Glyphs (Note: Glyph bug fixes moved to Bug Fixes -> Items)
- [Glyph of Conflagrate] now makes it so your Conflagrate spell no longer consumes the Immolate or Shadowflame spell from the target.
- [Glyph of Death and Decay] has been changed to grant 20% additional damage instead of its current effect.
- [Glyph of Hammer of Justice]: Now increases range by 5 yards instead of increasing stun duration.
- [Glyph of Invisibility] duration has been increased.
- [Glyph of Deterrence]: Now -10 seconds instead of -20.
- [Glyph of Holy Light] now affects friendly targets in a larger radius.
- [Glyph of Horn of Winter] now increases the duration by 60 sec.
- [Glyph of Spirit of Redemption]: Now increases the duration of the effect by a fixed amount of 6 seconds.
- [Glyph of Turn Evil] now also increases the cooldown of your Turn Evil spell by 8 sec.
Bug Fixes
- Classes
- Death Knight
- Shadow of Death: This ability will no longer cause tracking abilities to become inactive when the death knight becomes a ghoul.
- Warlock
- Warlock Pets: Some pets were not properly classified to receive correct creature scaling for Wrath of the Lich King. Their health and damage done will now be higher.
- Warrior
- Bladestorm: Fixed a bug where sometimes stuns and roots would not be removed properly when this ability is used.
- Items
- Gronstalker Set: The Aspect of Viper bonus from this set has been changed to work correctly with the redesigned Aspect of the Viper.
Patch 3.0.8 Enchanting Changes
January 5, 2009 by Zuggy · 3 Comments
Compiled list of enchanting materials changes for patch 3.0.8.
Source: mmo-champion
Daily Blue Posts – Wintergrasp, DPS, & Class Changes
December 23, 2008 by Zuggy · Leave a Comment
The daily blue! Most of these changes will be implemented in the upcoming patch 3.0.8, which will be on the PTR very shortly.
Melee Haste
We are looking at the benefits of haste (or lack thereof) for all melee right now. If anything there aren’t enough stats available to make items distinct, so rather than swap out a less desirable stat with a more desirable one, we’d rather make the less desirable one desirable.
Wintergrasp Changes
It is slightly confusing. Wintergrasp has been reworked in 3.0.8. From what I have been told, players start off at Recruit Rank if they are in the zone and require a certain number of kills to get to Corporal and use vehicles. They get 1 Mark at Recruit, 2 at Corporal, and 3 at 1st Lt. So the only change is that being in the zone now gives you a mark.
Enchanting Materials Changed
In BC we thought that dust was too common and enchants were basically gated by the cost and availability of shards. We wanted to adjust this for LK and in retrospect overcompensated, such that dust is now the rare, limiting reagent.
As Excrusiate points out, this should be better next patch.
Paladins
Protection in PvP
Ultimately, we’d love to get Prot paladins as viable as Ret or Holy, but we realize we have long way to go.
Priests
Upcoming Hymn Changes
We still have plans to make some changes to the Hymns, but changes like that typically A) require a lot of discussion, B) are more technically intensive changes (which also can lead to bugs if not thoroughly tested) or both.
PW: Shield Bugs
Absorbs not (always) working is a known issue and should be easy to fix.
General Utility Discussion
You can only take that “priests are versatile” design too far or yes you will get into them either being better than everyone or jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none.
You have to look at the tools the priest has. Prayer of Mending is an amazing spell, and nobody has anything like that. Binding Heal is an interesting spell that will perhaps see more use after the Circle nerf. PW:Shield, SW:Death, Mass Dispel and Shadowfiend are all unusual mechanics that don’t directly map to another class.
For us, it always comes down to questions such as: Will Holy priests get invited to heal 5-player groups, raids and (in a perfect world) Arena teams? Will a raid feel like they are giving up something to bring a priest instead of a druid, paladin or shaman? Do groups do different things when they have healing priests? Do priests care about the same items, buffs, debuffs and mechanics as other healers?
I don’t beleive groups really organize themselves around healing niches in the sense that they want one hot guy, one AE guy and two direct heal guys. We just want enough distinction that you consider bringing e.g. a druid as your third healer once you have two priests.
Shaman
Elemental Discussion for 3.0.8
This is why I am often reluctant to post actual numbers. I think they end up launching more questions than actually providing answers.
The 10 to 12% number I quoted was the additional amount we wanted to add with the changes post-Shamanism. If you recall, we did two rounds of buffs on Elemental. The first juggled the talent tree a little bit (and introduced Shamanism). The second changed a couple of additional talents (Elemental Oath, Elemental Mastery and the change to the Lightning Bolt glyph).
For an Elemental in Naxx 25 gear, *each* of these rounds should have increased dps by about 10% between patch 3.0.3 and patch 3.0.8, for a total of about 20%. If you are in heroic blues and don’t have as much spellpower, then you won’t see quite such a lift from the first (Shamanism) round of changes.
Note that the build on the PTR only contains the first round of changes, IIRC.
Spirit Walk Bugged
This issue has been documented internally and is one of the major bugs we have scheduled to fix. That said, it won’t be ready in time for 3.0.8.
Warlock
General Discussion on the State of the Class
I did post a list of what we wanted to do with warlocks in LK and now that we have done those changes, we have a new list of what we want to look at in warlocks next. A few players linked it. I could have found the quote myself but I figured the community would be able to do it faster, which they did.
I am sorry if my communication sometimes seems disjoined. Reading all of these threads takes a great deal of time that I try to squeeze in during my other responsibilities. To some extent you’re going to get what you’re going to get. That may not sit well, but the alternatives are to give up on posting altogether or at least post a lot less frequently. I don’t see a way I will be able to spend more time here than I do already. (As most of you know, I’m not a CM. I also don’t want to hire people to read the forums for me, because that defeats the purpose. But I do have a lot going on.)
I think there is some truth to the notion that after enough tweaks here and there that you need to step back and take a big look at the class as a whole. I think we’ve reached this point with warlocks. We are satisfied with the changes we wanted to make in BC, which included things like giving Affliction more competitive damage, giving Destruction more than one button to push, and getting Demonology to consider more different types of demons. When I say we want to make some changes to the class, I would not interpret this as burning warlocks to the ground and starting over. Overall it’s still a really cool and distinctive play style.
I’ll reach for an analogy here, which can be illustrative but will also break if streteched too far, as all analogies do. We’ve spent some time checking the tire pressure and vacuuming out the interior, but every few thousand miles you want to actually pop the hood, check all the belts and hoses, and possibly even rebuild the engine. That is not the same as driving her off a cliff and then hitting the dealers for a newer model.
PvP Talents
In an ideal world, we don’t want Demonology (or any spec for any class) to be THE PvP tree. This is tougher with the pure dps classes because any spec that sacrifices all for dps feels like a PvE spec and any spec that has survivability, crowd control or escape tools feels like a PvP spec. Long term though it is definitely a goal.
Additional PvP Discussion
That is the goal. I think we’ve done better at Affliction wanting the felhunter, Destruction wanting the imp and Demonology wanting the felguard, at least in PvE. We would like to get the succubus and voidwalker into Arenas more. We have some ideas….
On fear….
We still like the change to how fear works overall. Because it can be broken it’s less of a long-term CC, but it’s also more consistent in the short-term.
However, I think a lot of the consternation about warlock PvP comes from losing fear as an amazing source of CC (probably replaced by stuns now which probably isn’t a good thing), coupled with losing some of the “tankiness” locks had before, but without giving you all of the get out of jail cards that a mage has.
Ultimately I think we actually do want locks to survive through mitigation (when compared to survival through CC or escape mechanisms). The trick is nailing this compromise between plate-wearers who stand and take it and glass cannons who run away. There is probably something to the fact that locks and hunters both feel like they can’t stand and fight and can’t get away from melee. It’s the mail-wearer paradox. I know you don’t wear mail per se, but we’re pushing you closer to that than we are the slippery mage.
Warrior
Protection in PvP
Prot warriors are better at PvP than they used to be. They still aren’t as attractive as Arms and Fury.
Prot Bugs
These are known issues. I can’t recall off the top of my head if we’ve been able to fix them for 3.0.8 or if they required technical changes.
Mostly I wanted to add that we fix several hundred bugs in patches like this. The patch notes typically only record big changes — the kinds that might confuse players if they weren’t explained. We usually only call out bug fixes if they were so common that people had really gotten used to the buggy state.
