Hilarious Death Grip Bug

Yet another hilarious death knight bug, once again affecting the death grip ability. I don’t want to ruin the surprise so I’ll let you check out the video and see for yourself what you’ve been missing out on.

On a brief sidenote, do be aware that game masters are aware of this bug and have given warnings to players who they felt were exploting the bug. Never the less, it’s still pretty damn funny.

Free Server Transfers

Upcoming free server transfers.

Source A (PvP)
Thaurissan (Horde transfers only)
Frostmourne
Barthilas
Jubei’Thos

Destination A (PvP)
Gundrak (Oceanic)

Source B (PvP)
Kel’Thuzad
Skullcrusher
Arthas
Warsong
Burning Blade
Mannoroth
Bleeding Hollow
Magtheridon
Shattered Hand
Lightning’s Blade

Destination B (PvP)
Tortheldrin (Eastern)

Source C (PVP)
Illidan
Emerald Dream
Sargeras
Dragonmaw
Stormreaver
Mal’Ganis (Horde transfers only)
Laughing Skull
Bonechewer
Burning Legion
Tichondrius
Destromath

Destination C (PvP)
Drak’Tharon (Central)

Source (PvE/RP)
Aggramar (Alliance Transfers Only)
Alleria (Alliance Transfers Only)
Argent Dawn
Azjol-Nerub
Blackhand
Bloodhoof
Cenarius
Dalaran
Doomhammer
Draenor
Dragonblight
Earthen Ring
Hellscream
Icecrown
Lightbringer (Alliance Transfers Only)
Medivh
Silvermoon
Whisperwind
Zul’jin

Destination (PvE)
Garrosh (Eastern)

source: blizzard

Updated 3.0.8 Patch Notes

General

• Players may now create death knights on any realm once they reach level 55.
• Bonus Armor: The mechanics for items with bonus armor on them has changed (any cloth, leather, mail, or plate items with extra armor, or any other items with any armor). Bonus armor beyond the base armor of an item will no longer be multiplied by any talents or by the bonuses of Bear Form, Dire Bear Form, or Frost Presence.
• Racial restrictions on mounts have now been lifted. Night Elves on mechanostriders? Tauren on raptors? You’re not seeing things.
• Tapping: All player spells which cause a creature to become aggressive to you will now also immediately cause the creature to be tapped.
• A new mailbox is now available at the Crows Tavern in the Dalaran Sewers.
• We have added over 60 new graveyards to Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms.
• The run speed in spirit form has been increased by 50%. Night Elves in Wisp form will now move at a 75% bonus speed.
• The Darkmoon Faire vendors have new items now that trade routes into Northrend have been better established.

Achievements

• The Loremaster of Kalimdor Achievement has had its quest amount reduced.
• The Perma-Peddle Achievement is no longer a part of the “Fool for Love” meta-achievement.
• The Winds of the North has had its requirements changed. This achievement is now earned by getting Exalted with the Alliance Vanguard or Horde Expedition.

PvP

• PvP vehicles are no longer immune to most player spells, are immune to all CC and snares, but can be diseased, poisoned, and cursed.

Arenas

• Arena rating requirements for all Deadly Gladiator’s Arena items have been reduced by 100.
• All rage and runic power are set to 0 when an Arena begins and the preparation period is over.
• Ring of Valor: The small pillars will now rise immediately once the arena begins.

Battlegrounds

Lake Wintergrasp

• Wintergrasp Commendations can now also be purchased for the low low price of 9 Wintergrasp Marks of Honor. Players can visit their respective Wintergrasp vendors and put those Marks of Honor to use!
• Wintergrasp PvP vehicles have had their health increased.
• Wintergrasp Tower cannons have had their health increased.
• The Wintergrasp Fortress Exterior walls have had their health increased.
• The Fortress Keep door now has had its health decreased.
• The Orb is now instantly clickable.
• Elementals should now always despawn when the battle begins.
• Wintergrasp now extends further south so that more revenants can be reached.
• There are now three ranks in Wintergrasp: Recruit, Corporal, and First Lieutenant.
• Players will be eligible for participation rewards after two honorable kills.
• Players will receive increased honor with increased rank.
• Players will receive additional Marks of Honor at Corporal or higher rank.
• Players will receive corporal rank at 5 honorable kills instead of two.

Strand of the Ancients

• Antipersonnel Turrets will now gain vehicle immunities, use falloff damage, and damage increased to 4000 + 200 per level to compensate for falloff.
• The Strand of the Ancients Demolisher has had its health increased.
• The Strand of the Ancients tower cannon has had its health increased.
• Seaforium charges have been moved closer to the graveyards on the 2nd tier.

WotLK PvE Warlock Changes

We’re generally happy with locks for PvE too. I think the rotations are more interesting than they were in BC and it’s nice to see Affliction up there with Destro. Demo is probably still too low, but see below.
e are a few things we are looking at on the PvE side of locks:

1) Get shards into a place that is more interesting and less of a hassle. We have two models we’re considering. One is very cool, but a huge change to gameplay, which might mean it has to wait. The other is more of a quick fix that we’d do until we can implement the very cool model.

2) Simplify Affliction’s rotation a little bit. This might involve making dots last a more uniform duration (so you didn’t feel that external mods were mandatory) or just reducing the number of spells you’re expected to cast.

3) Locks are still built a lot around damage over time, but a lot of fights just aren’t lasting a long time. This might mean locks needs some more options for quick damage, or the problem might fix itself in Ulduar.

4) We’re a lot happier with demons in LK, but we still have some work to do. The Voidwalker, Succubus and maybe the short-term demons aren’t quite there yet. Improving demons should also help kick Demonology up a notch.

5) There are a couple of awkward places in the talent trees still.

Note that I am only talking PvE here. Some of these changes will help PvP too, but some of the lock problems in PvP will require different solutions too.

Source: Blizzard

First Deathknight with Thunderfury!

Words I thought I would never type…truly, now the DK community can rest easy knowing one of their own now wield the legendary blade, Thunderfury. My good friends over at deathknight.info broke the news a bit ago and I have to say it left me a bit baffled…don’t get me wrong, I think it’s cool that the guy got a thunderfury, really cool in fact.

But let’s be honest, to say the item is a novelty would be a gigantic understatement. With so much you could be doing at level 80 I just can’t even begin to understand why you would want to spend so much time, effort, and gold in a 4 year old instance. Maybe that’s just me though. Anyway, congrats to Dragoth, World’s First Thunderfury wielding Death Knight!

Daily Blue Posts – Wintergrasp, DPS, & Class Changes

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.

Daily Blue Posts – Arena, SOTA, Class Changes

Last days worth of important blue posts, most of which speak specifically on changes for the next major content patch on the PTR, 3.0.8. Make sure to check out the complete patch 3.0.8 notes here.

PvP Related Blue Posts

Arena Burst Damage Balancing

We definitely hear you that you think Arena burst damage is too high and it’s too difficult to heal. You don’t need to keep shouting.

Gear Rewards for Arena

It’s certainly not a system for everyone. I personally don’t favor the arenas either, so I make the choice not to spend much time with them. I think the issue most people have is that the arenas provide the only source for the best PvP gear in the game. We are working on an improved system by which we can measure skill and contribution in battlegrounds so that more competitive rewards can be obtained via means other than the arena.

Strand of the Ancients Balancing

Actually SOTA originally did start with the factions randomly attacking or defending. But there were issues with it; it wasn’t quite as cut and clear as it seems in theory. It turned out it worked out a lot better if Horde were always starting in defense. So the way it is now was a somewhat temporary fix to that issue. If it’s really not working out so well, of course we’ll be looking into reinstating the random start.

Potential Vehicle Changes

We are talking about making PvP vehicles susceptible to all player damage spells. They would still be immune to roots and other forms of CC, but could be poisoned, cursed, etc. It’s wacky, but the way the classes have been designed it isn’t worth the balance issues just for flavor in this case.

PvE Related Blue Posts

Dungeon Difficulty

The content you’ve mentioned is all content that is meant to be an introduction to raiding in Lich King. It’s not meant to preclude people and set a false standard. That being said, we feel that the difficulty of the content is in line with the rewards. While you may find it to be a bit less difficult than you woud like, I assure you a great many others do not.

Class Specific Blue Posts

Druids

Feral Druid Tanking

You’re not making a terribly fair comparison here. Warriors can block etc., true, but Ferals have Barkskin, Survival Instinct, Demo Roar and Enraged Regen as defensive abilities. You have Swipe and Berserk (and the nice Maul glyph) for area threat generation (and I still see bears pulling with Hurricane too).

I do think it is a fair concern that you can spam nothing but Swipe, but to fix that for other tanks we put a cooldown on their AE ability to force them to hit something else. I’m not sure we want to do that for druids.

While you may think of yourself primarily as a bear, we still think of you as a druid. Druids have a lot of abilities. I have played a bear (a lot) and I know it’s already hard to fit all of your buttons on the default Blizzard action bars, even just considering the bear ones. Now I’m not going to suggest you Innervate or use Rebirth or Regrowth while tanking, but at the same time, even bear MTs do sometimes use those abilities. They still count as abilities. When you pick a tanking druid, you are still a druid. We don’t want any class to have 300 spells just because they can use them in very different scenarios. Make sense?

Armor Trinket Changes

There will probably always be a best in slot item. The difference is that Offering was insanely better than the alternatives, to the point at which you either sucked without it or were OP with it. Greatness is a nice trinket, but can you do your job without it? Absolutely. We’re talking about degree of best in slot here.

Feral Gear Itemization

I agree with that overall, and it is something we’re working on. By the same token however it is very easy to take your argument and say “There will always be a best in slot item. I will always want that item. Therefore choice is always an illusion.

Druid Forms Note

We are working on an update to druid forms. It is long overdue. But we want to do it right, which means it takes time. The Ravenlord and Epic Flight Form models are the level of quality we are shooting for. We’d even love to add some customization, but we can’t promise that.

Hunters

Major Hunter Issues

I would agree that some of them fall into the quality of life or minor annoyance category. While those are still good things for us to look at (and sometimes great things since they can often be fixed pretty easily) it leads to a long list, which you even called a manifesto. An outside reader might conclude every aspect of the hunter class is broken (which is not true) or that hunters need all of those changes to be Arena viable or fun. I’m not asking you to cull out the minor suggestions, but you do want to make sure we see the ones you really, really want us to see.

On combining Viper and Cheetah, I would be concerned that you are accepting a penalty (decreased damage) that isn’t really a penalty. When you want to run away, you want to run away. Think of the PvE implications of removing the daze. Even think of the PvP ones. When you want to fight, you fight, and when you want to escape, you escape. Now consider a Cheetah where you take extra damage if you run – now that is an actual decision. You might get away, but you also might get clobbered. (This isn’t a change we are making – I’m just trying to show you how we think. Hitting a situational button should generally be a decision, not something you would always do in a given situation.)

We’re not interested in giving hunters stealth of any sort at this time. Even the Shadowmeld-like functionality is supposed to be handled by Feign Death.

We’re also pretty unlikely to remove the minimum range on hunter ranged attacks. Casters don’t have them, but casters are also very unlikely to stand there and keep casting when you close to melee with them. We don’t want to see hunters ever ignore or shrug off melee who are attacking them. Attacking them back is a different story, as long as we could guarantee the hunter felt like they had to attack their attacker and not just keep shooting whoever they were shooting.

Shamans

Elemental Damage

1. Yes, it is too low on live.

2. I can’t speak towards the PTR specifically. It takes awhile to create a build, so they are often a few days (or longer) behind our changes. I can say that in our internal testing all of the changes together gave Elemental something like a 10 to 12% dps increase for Naxx 25 geared characters in full raid buffs. Elemental dps should be very close to Balance druid dps, which we used as the standard we wanted to reach.

We discussed several of the concerns that have come up over the last few days and ran some additional tests, but we are still satisfied with the numbers produced by the new changes.

Spirit Walk

Spirit Walk is supposed to break roots and snares on the wolves and the shaman. I know we’ve had a bug on that. I’ll need to do some research to know if it’s fixed.

Warlocks

Major Issues and Changes

Bevelton, the reason you’re not seeing changes yet is for exactly the reason you suggest. We don’t want to tweak a few numbers here and there. We are taking a comprehensive look at all three trees of warlocks and then we plan to unleash all of the changes at once. The downside of this approach is that the work takes longer to complete.

I know there are a dozen threads swearing that THE PROBLEMS ARE OBVIOUS and THE SOLUTIONS ARE OBVIOUS and DEMAND CHANGE NOW!1!!. What should be obvious is that we don’t think the situation is that cut and dried. I did post fairly recently (within a month or two perhaps) on what we thought the major warlock issues were. Players seem to have a hard time finding it or perhaps they are just impatient.

We don’t consdier things like tweaking glyphs and changing Ritual of Summoning as major changes to the class. We don’t expect to see a huge difference in how you play the game. They are just small quality of life issues. The Felhunter glyph was just a bad glyph — a trivial amount of dps. It was a relatively easy thing to fix.

Arena Season 5 Arena / Honor Items

Important information on the start of arena season 5 and new items. source

With Arena Season 5 launching on December 16, we wanted to provide some helpful information. The method in which Arena or Honor items can be purchased will be slightly different then how it was before. For Arena items, there will be 3 tiers of purchasable set items that includes pieces for the Head, Shoulders, Chest, Gloves, and Legs as follows:

Tier 1 – Superior (blue) quality items:

• No rating requirements
• Costs Honor and Arena points
• Equivalent to heroic dungeon items

Tier 2- Epic (purple) quality items:

• Medium rating requirements
• Costs Arena points
• Equivalent to 10-person raid items

Tier 3 – Epic (purple) quality items:

• High rating requirements
• Costs Arena points
• Equivalent to 25-person raid items
• This tier will also contain Arena weapons

In addition, there will be two tiers of Honor items that includes pieces for the neck, ring, boots, belt, bracer, and trinket as follows:
Tier 1 – Epic (purple) quality items:

• Medium rating requirements
• Costs Honor points
• Equivalent to 10-person raid items

Tier 2 – Epic (purple) quality items:

• High rating requirements
• Costs Honor points
• Equivalent to 25-person raid items

New Arena & Honor Items

• Season 5 Honor Gear
• Season 5 Arena Armor

3.0.8 Patch Notes for PTR

General

• Players may now create death knights on any realm once they reach level 55.
• Bonus Armor: The mechanics for items with bonus armor on them has changed (any cloth, leather, mail, or plate items with extra armor, or any other items with any armor). Bonus armor beyond the base armor of an item will no longer be multiplied by any talents or by the bonuses of Bear Form, Dire Bear Form, or Frost Presence.
• Racial restrictions on mounts have now been lifted. Night elves on mechanostriders? Tauren on raptors? You’re not seeing things.
• Tapping: All player spells which cause a creature to become aggressive to you will now also immediately cause the creature to be tapped.
• A new mailbox is now available at the Crows Tavern in the Dalaran Sewers.
• We have added over 60 new graveyards to Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms.
• The run speed in spirit form has been increased by 50%. Night Elves in Wisp form will now move at 75% speed.

Achievements

• The Loremaster of Kalimdor ( ) Achievement has had its quest amount reduced.
• The Winds of the North has had its requirements changed. This achievement is now earned by getting Exalted with the Alliance Vanguard or Horde Expedition.

PvP

• Arenas
  • All rage and runic power are set to 0 when an Arena begins and the preparation period is over.
• Battlegrounds
  • Lake Wintergrasp
    • Wintergrasp Commendations can now also be purchased for the low low price of 9 Wintergrasp Marks of Honor. Players can visit their respective Wintergrasp vendors and put those Marks of Honor to use!
    • Elementals should now always despawn when the battle begins.
    • Wintergrasp now extends further south so that more revenants can be reached.
    • There are now three ranks in Wintergrasp: Recruit, Corporal, and First Lieutenant.
    • Players will be eligible for participation rewards after two honorable kills.
    • Players will receive increased honor with increased rank.
    • Players will receive additional Marks of Honor at Corporal or higher rank.
    • Players will receive corporal rank at 5 honorable kills instead of two.
  • Strand of the Ancients
    • Antipersonnel Turrets will now gain vehicle immunities, use falloff damage, and damage increased to 4000 + 200 per level to compensate for falloff.
    • Seaforium charges have been moved closer to the graveyards on the 2nd tier.

Death Knights

• All multi-rune abilities generate 15 runic power.
• Anti-Magic Shell: The cooldown has been lowered to 45 sec from 60 sec.
• Blood Aura now grants 2/4% instead of 1/2% healing.
• Blood Presence now grants 2/4% instead of 1/2% healing.
• Bloody Strikes will receive extra bonus damage from Pestilence.
• Bone Shield: The mitigation has been reduced from 40% to 20%.
• Corpse Explosion: Damage increased substantially, added 5 sec. cooldown, and changed cost to 40 runic power.
• Dark Command: Range increased to 30 yards.
• Death Knights have access to unique death-knight only facial textures and skin tones. These can be selected at the character creation screen.
• Death Pact now grants 40% instead of 20% healing.
• Frost Presence: The bonus armor has been increased from 60 to 80% and magic damage reduction increased from 5 to 15%.
• Heart Strike no longer has a haste debuff but will now be able to strike two targets.
• Horn of Winter now has no cost and grants 10 runic power in addition to its stat buff, but has a 30 sec cooldown.
• Icebound Fortitude now reduces damage by 20% instead of 50%. The amount of damage reduced increases with bonus Defense (to about 35% for 540 Defense, but can go higher).
• Night of the Dead now grants 40/70% passive area spell avoidance to your pet in addition to its current effects.
• Outbreak will no longer receive bonus damage from Pestilence. The bonus from Plague Strike and Blood Boil has been increased slightly.
• Pestilence no longer has a 10 seconds cooldown.
• Raise Dead has now been split into two spells:
  • Raise Dead now raises a ghoul or pet ghoul (if talented). Requires corpse dust if no humanoid corpse is nearby.
  • Raise Ally now raises a fallen party member as a ghoul and has no reagent. Available at level 72. This should now last for 4 minutes.
• Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle (two-handed only) now grants 25 Defense and 2% Stamina.
• Rune Strike: Damage decreased from 200% to 150% but threat increased to 150% from 100%.
• Shadow of Death: The duration has been changed from 45 seconds to 25 seconds.
• Unholy Blight has had its cost reduced from 60 to 40 runic power.
• Wandering Plague will now properly reset after being cast.
• Vampiric Blood: In addition to its current effects, also adds 20% health temporarily.
• 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,

Druids

• Feral Attack Power: All weapons now have the potential to grant feral attack power based on their dps (as compared to the best superior-quality weapons available at level 60). Players will see their existing feral weapons grant roughly the same attack power as they did before (+/- 2 or so), but many new weapons will be options for the feral druid. Some feral weapons have had strength converted to attack power to be more appealing to other classes able to equip them. All druids will see the amount of feral attack power granted by an item in the item tooltip, if it grants any, but other players will not see that information.
• Remove Curse and Abolish Poison can now be used in Moonkin form.
• Genesis: Now works with Tranquility and Hurricane.
• Growl: Range increased to 30 yards.
• King of the Jungle – The Bear effect is now physical, and thus cannot be dispelled.
• Nature’s Grace – Now also effects Revive.
• Primal Tenacity: Now reduces the cost of Bear Form, Cat Form, and Dire Bear Form by 17/33/50% in addition to its previous effects.
• Protector of the Pack: No longer changes value based on party size.
• Savage Roar: The buff now persists outside of Cat Form but only provides its benefits while in Cat Form.
• Starfall will now be cancelled by any shapeshifting.
• Survival of the Fittest: This talent now grants 22/44/66% bonus armor in Bear Form and Dire Bear Form in addition to all of its previous effects.
• Swipe: Swipe (Cat) has now been added at level 71, dealing 260% weapon damage, costs 50 energy with no cooldown. All talents affecting the Bear Form version affect the Cat Form one as well.
• Wild Growth now has a 6 second cooldown.

Hunters

• All Hunter pet abilities with a cooldown of 30 seconds or more are no longer on the global cooldown.
• Aspect of the Wild – This aspect is now raid-wide.
• Call of the Wild: The benefit from this pet talent now applies to only the Hunter and their own pet.
• Deterrence: Design changed to grant 100% parry and 100% chance to “deflect” spells coming from the front, but prevents the Hunter from attacking. Lasts 5 sec. 60 sec. cooldown.
• Improved Tracking(Survival): This talent has been slightly re-designed. Now reads: While tracking Beasts, Demons, Dragonkin, Elementals, Giants, Humanoids and Undead, all ranged damage done to those types is increased by 1/2/3/4/5%.
• Kill Shot – Cooldown reduced to 15 seconds, down from 35 sec.
• Kindred Spirits: This talent now grants only 3/6/9/12/15% pet damage.
• The coefficient of Rake (Cat) and Scorpid Poison (Scorpid) has been lowered.
• Readiness: No longer resets the cooldown on Bestial Wrath.
• Steady Shot: Now gains 10% of attack power as damage instead of 20%.
• Serpent’s Swiftness: This talent now grants only 2/4/6/8/10% bonus attack speed to pet. The hunter attack speed bonus is unchanged.
• Unleashed Fury: This talent now grants only 3/6/9/12/15% pet damage.
• Viper Sting: Now drains a percentage of maximum mana.
• Volley: The damage has been reduced on all ranks by approximately 30% (including attack power scaling).

Mages

• Arcane Blast: This ability has been significantly changed. Arcane Blast now increases the damage of the next Arcane spell by 15%. However, using Arcane Blast itself does not consume the charge itself. Each time you cast Arcane Blast, the damage of Arcane spells is increased by 15% and the mana cost of Arcane Blast is increased by 200%. This effect stacks up to 3 times and lasts 10 seconds or until any Arcane damage spell except Arcane Blast is cast.
• Arcane Flows: Now also reduces the cooldown of Evocation by 1m/2m.
• Elemental Precision: Renamed to Precision and now works on all spells.
• Evocation: Cooldown reduced to 4 min.
• Improved Blizzard: The snaring effect has been reduced to 20/40/50%.
• Slow Fall is now castable on others.
• Torment the Weak: Now works with Arcane Blast and does bonus damage against targets afflicted with any type of slow (such as the combat slow from Thunder Clap).

Paladins

• Avenging Wrath: Divine Shield, Divine Protection, and Hand of Protection, and Avenging Wrath cannot be used within 30 seconds of each other anymore. Forbearance removed from Avenging Wrath.
• Divine Protection: The penalty has been removed.
• Divine Shield: The penalty has been changed so that all damage done is reduced by 50% in place of an attack speed penalty.
• Hand of Reckoning(NEW): Available on trainers at level 16. It’s a 30 yard range taunt that causes Holy damage.
• Judgements of the Pure: This Holy talent now increases the damage done by Seals and Judgements.
• Judgement of Wisdom: Now returns a percentage of base mana instead of a percentage of max mana.
• Sacred Duty: Interaction with Divine Shield and Divine Protection removed, but stamina bonus increased.

Priests

• Abolish Disease and Cure Disease can now be cast while in Shadowform.
• Holy: Circle of Healing now has a 6 second cooldown.
• Levitate is now castable on others.
• Mana Burn: Now burns a percentage of maximum mana.
• Shadow
  • Shadowform: You can now shift into Shadowform while mounted or sitting.
  • Vampiric Embrace- Mana cost of this spell has been removed.

Rogues

• Fan of Knives: The cooldown has been removed. In addition, now deals 150% of weapon damage when used while daggers are equipped.
• Feint: Rank 8 now reduces the damage taken from area of effect attacks by 50% for 6 seconds in addition to its existing effects.

Shaman

• Fire Nova Totem: Now no longer generates threat.
• Healing Way: Now only one application is required to reach full benefit. No longer stacks.
• Improved Water Shield: Lesser Healing Wave now has a reduced chance to trigger this talent.
• Magma Totem: The damage and scaling has been increased and no longer generates threat.
• Mental Quickness: Reduces the mana cost of instant cast Shaman spells by 2/4/6% and increases spell power by an amount equal to 23/46/70% of your agility.
• Searing Totem (Rank 4) now does the proper damage for its rank.
• Tremor Totem’s duration has been increased from 2 minutes to 5 minutes.
• Elemental
  • Elemental Shields: This talent has been removed. It has now been merged with Elemental Warding.
  • Elemental Warding: Now reduces all damage taken by 2/4/6%. Changed from only reducing Nature, Fire and Frost by 4/7/10%.
  • New Talent: Shamanism-Your Lightning Bolt spell gains an additional 2/4/6/8/10% and your Lava Burst gains an additional 4/8/12/16/20% of your bonus damage effects.
  • Storm, Earth and Fire: This talent has been moved up in the tree, and its talent points have been reduced to 3 down from 5. Wind Shock is also included in the range increase (with Earth Shock). The damage bonus to Flame Shock has been increased, up from 10/20/30/40/50 to 20/40/60.
  • Unrelenting Storm: point cost reduced to 3, down from 5. Now does 4/8/12%

Warlocks

• Drain Mana: Now drains a percentage of maximum mana.
• Emberstorm: Now works with Conflagrate.
• Ritual of Summoning: Will now create a summoning portal object which can be re-used for multiple summons for 5 minutes.

Warriors

• Bloodthirst: Charges have been decreased to 3, but the effect has been raised to 1% per charge.
• Fury: Bloodsurge: Now has a chance to trigger from any hit with Heroic Strike, Bloodthirst, or Whirlwind.
• Fury: Titan’s Grip: The hit chance penalty has been removed.
• Taunt: Range increased to 30 yards.

Professions

• Alchemy
  • All flasks no longer require an alchemy lab to create.
• Blacksmithing
  • Reduced the spell power on the Titansteel Guardian to bring it in line with its item level.
  • Increased the material requirements to make high level frost resistance gear created with blacksmithing.
• Engineering
  • Engineers may now be able to properly engineer Centrifuge Constructs.
• Inscription
  • Glyph of Death Strike has also been reduced by 50% to 1% healing per 5 Runic Power.
  • 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.
• Leatherworking
  • Iceborne Belt pattern skill up range has been increased to the correct range.
• Mining
  • Weakened Giants and Iron Rune Sentinels can now be correctly mined.
• Skinning
  • Increased the critical strike rating granted by ranks 5 and 6 of Master of Anatomy (Rank 5 / Rank 6).
  • Carrion Fleshstrippers are now skinnable.

Quests

• The quest, “Scare the Guano Out of Them!” now only requires 10 Darkclaw Guano, down from 15. Also, only the character that scared the bat, or their party, may now loot the guano.
• Shoveltusk Meat obtained during the quest, “Shoveltusk Soup Again?” is now correctly flagged as a quest item with no sell price.
• During the quest, “Scalps!“, you can no longer use Ahunae’s Knife to scalp kills that you aren’t tapped to.
• The path followed by the Har’koa’s Kitten during the quest, “I Sense a Disturbance” has been improved.
• Westguard Sergeants, Winterhoof Braves, and Ethereal Frostworgs should no longer attempt to attack their opposite faction counterparts unless the character controlling them is first attacked.
• Westguard Sergeant and Winterhoof Brave demoralizing shouts will now only affect the Winterskorn vrykul and worgs at Skorn.
• Various fixes to the Queen Angerboda event during the quest, “The Slumbering King” ( / ).
• The daily quest, “Shoot ‘Em Up” now only requires 15 Jotunheim Proto-Drakes to be shot down, down from 20. As well, the harpoon now only costs 5 energy to shoot, down from 10.

Dungeons and Raids

• The Obsidian Sanctum
  • Players will now be affected by Twilight Residue when they leave the Twilight Realm. Twilight Residue grants immunity to Fire and Shadow damage for a few seconds.

User Interface

• For additional notes on Lua and XML changes please visit the UI & Macros forum.

Items

• Amberglow Signet now correctly grants Hit Rating.
• Deadly Gladiator’s Staff has had the Agility and Critical strike rating restored to ratios consistent with other instances of the Gladiator’s Staff.
• Gifts and Pledges of Adoration for the capital cities are now soulbound.
• The Flag of Ownership now has only a 60s cooldown to match the 60s duration of the flag.
• The following crafted weapons have had their stats adjusted to properly reflect their intended power:
  • Corroded Saronite Edge, Corroded Saronite Woundbringer, Cudgel of Saronite Justice, Furious Saronite Beaststick, Saronite Spellblade, Saronite Shiv, Savage Cobalt Slicer, Notched Cobalt War Axe, Sturdy Cobalt Quickblade, Cobalt Tenderizer
• Living Lashers can now properly be skinned with Herbalism.
• Players can now open clams while riding a vehicle, sitting, mounted, stealthed, and invisible.
• Reduced the stats on the Savage Cobalt Slicer to match the weapon’s level.
• Some low-level rogue pvp gloves were accidentally omitted from the patch 3.0.3 update. This has been rectified.
• Some neglected creatures in Icecrown have found the contents of their pockets.
• Totem of Hex now correctly grants 165 spell power to Chain Lightning and Lightning Bolt, up from 85.
• The White Polar Bear Mount is now the proper (larger) size.

World Environment

• Incapacitating Shout now has an 8 second duration.
• Conquered Soul of the Blighcallers are no longer AE immune.
• Corrected a raid emote in Violet Hold to display the proper creature name.
• Corrected a redundant aura tooltip for Locust Swarm (10-person / 25-person) in Naxxramas.
• Several creatures in the Construct Quarter of Naxxramas did not have Heroic values for hit points and damage.
• Storm Peaks, Grom’arsh Crash Site – Peon Gakra is now an innkeeper and the zeppelin hull, an inn.

Bug Fixes

• Death Knight: Corpse Explosion: Fixed a bug where how much Runic Power the Death Knight had was affecting the damage done, and also increased the damage substantially.
• Druid: Savage Fury – Mangle (Bear) damage was being increased by a higher percentage than intended. This has been fixed, and in result Mangle (Bear) should see roughly a 16% damage reduction. Also fixed a bug with Savage Fury where the Rake bleed effect was not being increased.
• Fixed a bug with a Wild Mustard plant that was under the ground in Dalaran.
• Paladin: Repentance: Avenger’s Shield no longer breaks Repentance, but unfortunately, Seal of Vengeance and Corruption damage will break it again. This will be corrected in a future patch.
• Paladin: Shield of Righteousness now properly shares a cooldown for both ranks.
• Priest: Mind Flay – Fixed a bug with targeting where you would not deal damage if not facing the target while channeling.
• Shaman: Elemental Shields was reducing flat physical damage, not a percentage. Now properly reduced by a percentage.
• Shaman: Lava Lash – Fixed a bug which allowed you to use the ability even if you had a shield in offhand. Now requires a 1hand axe, fist or dagger to be able to be used.
• Shaman: Fixed a bug where Thunderstorm (Elemental) was knocking back 15 yards, instead of 20. It should now roughly knockback the correct length of 20 yards.
• The Wintergrasp Aura should now properly update in all instances, transferring the buff when the zone control changes.

Character Re-Customization Announced

Earlier today Blizzard announced their newest feature, paid character customization. Don’t like your character’s face, sex, or other aesthetic feature? No worries, now for just $15.00 USD you’ll be able to change virtually every aspect about your character!

Paid Customization FAQ

How much does this new feature cost?

$15.00

What can I customize for this 15 dollars?

You have the option of changing all of the following features about your character…

• Sex
• Face
• Hair
• Name
• Other Aesthetic Features

Can I change my appereance multiple times?

Yes, but there is a 30 day cooldown per character.

Make sure to check out the complete blizzard paid customization FAQ for further inforatmion.

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