Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

• If a team does not enter an arena match that is starting they will lose points equal to the amount that would have been deducted if they had played and lost.

• Improves your resilience rating by 45.
• Removes all movement impairing effects and all effects which cause loss of control of your character. (2 Mins Cooldown)

A new 2.4 PTR build includes new changes to Druids, Mages, Shamans, and Warlocks.

Sunwell T6 Gains Back Some Stamina

We previously reported that Sunwell T6 belts, bracers, and boots had their stamina removed in most cases, but Blizzard has reverted these changes. Blizzard hasn’t given back as much stamina as the Sunwell T6 items had in the first PTR build, but after lots of complaints from the PvE community, these items now have between 15-25 stamina per item.

This only affects drinking in arena.

The Warlock buff was short lived. I didn’t really understand Blizzard buffing Warlock’s mana drain in the first place as based on the changes to resilience (it now affects mana drain) as well as the change to Star’s Tears, it looked to me as if Blizzard was trying to reduce mana drain in arenas, not buff it. Well, it was certainly a short lived buff and we’ll see if anything else mana related gets changed too in any upcoming PTR build.

Stamina in New Sunwell T6 removed

All non-tanking Tier 6 bracers, belts, and boots found in Sunwell have had their Stamina removed (the item points have been put in other places). My guess is that Blizzard is preemptively solving the problem that four piece T6 and four piece Arena gear would have caused. I certainly was looking forward to wearing four pieces of each on my Paladin, but doing so will prove to be a lot harder with the removal of stamina from these three Tier 6 items.

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

• Lifebloom healing coefficient has been reduced.
• Many shapeshift form tooltips have been updated to be consistent with each other.
• Nurturing Instinct increases your healing spells by up to 50/100% of your Agility, and increases healing done to you by 10/20% of your Attack Power while in Cat form.

• Improved Mend Pet now has a 50/100% chance to remove one Curse, Disease, Magic, or Poison effect, up from 15/50%.

• Arcane Fortitude now increases your armor by an amount equal to 100% of your Intellect, up from 50%. Blink, Slow, and Spellsteal have all had their mana cost reduced.
• Icy Veins no longer stacks with Bloodlust/Heroism.
• Improved FireWard has become Molten Shields.
• New Talent: Molten Shields will cause your Fire Ward to have a 10/20% chance to reflect Fire spells while active. In addition, your Molten Armor has a 50/100% chance to affect ranged and spell attacks.

• Resistance Auras: It is no longer possible for two Paladins in the same party to make it appear that players have two of the same resistance aura active.
• Righteous Defense: This spell will now always be castable on friendly npcs.
• Seal of Blood: This ability will no longer cause spell pushback for the Paladin with this seal active.
• Turn Undead(Rank 3):This spell has been reworked and has been renamed to “Turn Evil”. It will now work on Demons in addition to Undead. Turn Evil is subject to diminishing returns, and lasts 10 seconds in PvP.

• Chastise no longer disorients the target, but now is instant cast and roots the target for 2 seconds.
• Focused Will now reduces damage by 2/3/4%, down from 1/3/5%.
• Power Infusion: Infuses the target with power, increasing their spell haste by 20% for 15 seconds.

• Improved Backstab is now called Puncturing Wounds.
• Puncturing Wounds increases your critical strike chance with Backstab by 10/20/30%, and the critical strike chance with your Mutilate ability by 5/10/15%.
• Improved Sprint: This ability will now always remove Entangling Roots.

• Ghost Wolf: Cast time reduced to 2 seconds, down from 3.
• Nature’s Swiftness and Elemental Mastery now share a 10 second cooldown.
• Tremor Totem now pulses every 3 seconds, down from 4.

• Blood Pact now has a tooltip.
• Demonic Sacrifice: Now works properly in sanctuary regions (such as Shattrath City and the Stair of Destiny).

• Matchmaking: If a queued player has a personal rating higher than their team rating, the matchmaking system will now use the highest personal rating of a queued member of that team for matchmaking purposes, instead of the team rating.

• There is now a Join as Party option.

There are two new daily PvP quests and a new Battleground repeatable quest that rewards 314 bonus honor per completion. The first PvP daily quest takes place in Zangarmarsh where you are rewarded money and bonus honor for taking the Spirit Towers. The other is in Halaa in Nagrand and also rewards money and bonus honor. These two quests should invigorate world PvP in both zones (especially Zangarmarsh, which rarely has anything going on).

The new repeatable Battleground quest is a great way of ridding yourself of the 100 Alterac Valley, Warson Gulch, Arathi Basin, and Eye of the Storm marks most of us have been racking up since Battlegrounds were introduced. The objective is to gather 1 mark from each of the four Battlegrounds and to turn them in as shown below:

Join AV as a Group

While looking through these new quests, I also found that you can now join Alterac Valley as a group. People can finally stop using LightQueue and counting down when to click Join on Ventrilo to play together now. It should make Alterac Valey more interesting, and possibly more competitive, if people start joining up together in large numbers. We’ll see how the queue times are affected.

• Tier 4: Gladiator Season 1
• Tier 5: Gladiator Season 2
• Tier 6 (Mount Hyjal, Black Temple): Gladiator Season 2
• Tier 6 (Sunwell): Season 3 Vindicator “honor” gear (belt, bracers, and boots)

This is an interesting change that may help to calm PvE players that often complain that PvPers get their gear so easily. PvE players can get PvP gear without having to step into Battlegrounds to farm honor. Furthermore, PvE players that may have been hesitant to take arena seriously due to lack of time to farm honor can now continue to PvE and receive the rewards that way. I think this is a welcome change and I don’t think that anyone on either side (PvE or PvP) can argue against it.