Archive for the ‘PTR’ Category

Newer Entries »
Gamer

2.4 PvP Patch Notes

by Gamer at February 15th, 2008 in PTR | No Comments »

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

General
  • Characters will now retain talented spell ranks so when they retalent they do not have to relearn the spells from trainers.
  • Spell Haste: Spell haste now reduces the global cooldown on spells, down to a minimum of 1 second. This change does not apply to melee and ranged abilities.
  • Spirit-Based Mana Regeneration: This system has been adjusted so that as your intellect rises, you will regenerate more mana per point of spirit.

What could have potentially been the biggest news here is that Spell Haste will affect the global cooldown. However, most PvPers don’t have access to Spell Haste gear outside of Zul’Aman, so this is far less significant than it could have been. Because of limited access to Spell Haste gear, Intellect affecting mana regeneration is far more important for PvP. It’s unclear as of now how much it will affect it, but expect to at least come away with more mp5 than before. Immediate impact: This makes druids even stronger than before.

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

Druid
  • Empowered Rejuvenation: This talent now properly affects the final heal from Lifebloom.
  • Gift of Nature: This talent now properly affects the healing from Tranquility.
  • Insect Swarm: Casting lower ranks of this spell is now properly penalized like other healing and damage effects.
  • Lacerate: This ability now deals additional damage based on the attack power of the Druid.
  • Mangle (Bear) now properly triggers a 1.5 second global cooldown, increased from 1.0.
  • Natural Perfection: This ability will no longer be triggered by taking critical strikes while sitting. In addition, it is now affected by the Subtlety talent.
  • When a Druid in cat form casts Pounce it will now properly animate.

Druids were anticipating a handful of nerfs, but from what we see above it looks like they only received a few bug fixes and nothing more. Empowered Rejuvenation working properly is actually a buff. Way to escape the nerfbat, because I was really certain going into 2.4 that Druids were going to see both nerfs to Cyclone and nerfs to Lifebloom.

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

Hunter
  • Equipping a thrown weapon while in the middle of an Auto-Shot will no longer cause animation issues.
  • Casting Flare while in any way not visible, will no longer cause your flare to be invisible to other players.
  • Hunter’s Mark: Hunters with Improved Hunter’s Mark will now properly overwrite Hunter’s Mark cast by Hunters without the talent.
  • The stamina tooltip for hunter pets will now display the proper health increase.

Nothing significant here.

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

Mage
  • Using low ranks of Fire Ward and Frost Ward spell will now be penalized the same way healing spells are penalized.
  • Fire Ward: Using low ranks of this spell is now properly penalized like other healing spells are penalized.
  • Frost Ward: Using low ranks of this spell will now be penalized the same way healing spells are penalized.
  • Frostbite: When a frost spell is reflected back at a Mage, it is now possible for the Mage to suffer from the Frostibte effect.
  • Ice Barrier: Using low ranks of this spell will now be penalized the same way healing spells are penalized.
  • Permafrost: This talent will now correctly increase the movement slowing effect of frost Armor instead of the attack speed slow.
  • Spellsteal will no longer overwrite a longer duration buff.

Slight tweak to Spellsteal.

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

Paladin
  • Avenger’s Shield, Holy Shield and Holy Shock: Casting lower ranks of these spells is now properly penalized like other healing and damage effects.
  • Divine Illumination: The mana energize from this talent no longer has a chance to set off other triggered effects.
  • Holy Shield and Holy Shock: Casting lower ranks of these spells is now properly penalized like other healing and damage effects.
  • Judgment of the Crusader: It is no longer possible to have icons for two different ranks of Judgment of the Crusader appear at the same time when judged by multiple Paladins.
  • Judgment of Wisdom: Some abilities (such as Frostbolt) were not triggering the mana energize effect from this spell. This has now been fixed.

Is this Divine Illumination change a typo? Divine Illumination doesn’t have mana energize. I suspect they mean standard Illumination rather than DI. DI simply reduces the mana of all spells by 50% for 15 seconds.

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

Priest
  • Fear Ward is now usable while in Shadow form.
  • Inner Focus: Chastise now benefits from Inner Focus. In addition, Starshards no longer consumes Inner Focus.
  • Power Word: Shield: Using low ranks of this spell will now be penalized the same way healing spells are penalized.
  • Prayer of Mending: This spell will now fade from players who leave or enter an instance, change continents, or exit the game.
  • Reflective Shield: The reactive damage from this talent no longer breaks crowd control affects which break on taking damage.
  • Shadowguard: No longer consumes the charge of Inner Focus when triggered.
  • Silent Resolve: This talent is now affects Surge of Light, Power Infusion, Inspiration, Spirit Tap, Blackout, Levitate, Shackle Undead, Touch of Weakness, Hex of Weakness, and Symbol of Hope.
  • Touch of Weakness: No longer consumes the charge of Inner Focus when triggered. It will also function properly even when the Priest with Touch of Weakness on is silenced or stunned.
  • Vampiric Touch: Casting lower ranks of this spell is now properly penalized like other healing and damage effects.

The two biggest changes with Priests are that Shadow Priests can now cast Fear Ward in Shadow form and that Reflective Shield no longer breaks crowd control. It was presumably just an oversight by Blizzard to now allow Fear Ward for Shadow Priests in the first place, but nonetheless this is a nice fix. As far as reflective shield not breaking CC goes, it’ll be interesting to see if Priests bother spec’ing into this. I’ve seen several high-end Priests use this in 2s to beat Warrior/Druid. We’ll see if it gets even more play now.

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

Rogue
  • Cheat Death: A combat log message will now show when this ability activates.
  • Vanish: This ability will no longer sometimes cause the UI to display.
  • Shadowmeld as active when it has been cancelled.
  • Abilities that can be used while stealthed, without breaking stealth, can now be cast without breaking Vanish when used at the same time. Sap mechanic changed from “Incapacitate” to “Sap”. This will allow more humanoids that were previously immune to Sap to be vulnerable to Sap, but still immune to Gouge. Note that anything that removed Sap previously will still remove Sap after the change.

No fix to Cheat Death. Rogues can rejoice.

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

Shaman
  • Call of Thunder: (Rank 5) now gives 5% critical strike chance.
  • Earth Shield: Mana cost reduced roughly in half, and charges reduced from 10 to 6.
  • Elemental Focus: This buff will no longer be removed when Shamanistic Focus is triggered.
  • Healing Grace: This talent now reduces the chance your spells will be dispelled by 10/20/30%.The resistance to being dispelled modifier from this talent now applies correctly to Water Breathing.
  • Rockbiter Weapon: Tooltip and error messages have been adjusted slightly.
  • Stormstrike has a new icon.
  • Totem timer icons will now show up under your player portrait when you cast totem spells. Right-clicking a totem timer icon will destroy that totem.
  • The Shaman spell Fire Nova Totem will no longer sometime detonate without doing any damage.

Healing Grace is now a viable talent for PvP. Formerly it simply reduced threat by 5%/10%/15% and was only used for PvE.

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

Warlock
  • Demonic Knowledge: This buff will no longer remain on enslaved demons when Enslave Demon is removed.
  • Pyroclasm: This talent now works correctly again with Rain of Fire.
  • Ritual of Summoning can be used to summon players into instances if they meet the instance requirements.
  • Shadow Ward: Using low ranks of this spell will now be penalized the same way healing spells are penalized.

Nothing of note.

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

Warrior
  • Endless Rage will now give the correct amount of rage as intended from damage dealt by a Warrior.
  • Stances: It is no longer possible to accidentally change into a stance you are already in via macros (resulting in a global cooldown and loss of rage).
  • Whirlwind: Critical strikes with the off-hand weapon from this ability can now trigger Flurry and Rampage.
  • Flurry will properly refresh if a crit occurs with 1 charge left.
  • Improved Hamstring (Arms) effect is now subject to diminishing returns when used in PvP.

Endless Rage being fixed is nice and you may now see some more Warriors going 41/20/0 than previously have, but the biggest change is to Improved Hamstring. I play a Warrior along with my Paladin and this is quite a significant change. It was definitely something you figured would happen sooner rather than later as spamstring without diminishing returns is unfair considering everything else has DR.

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

PvP
  • Diminishing returns on honor for kills is being eliminated.
  • Honor will now be instantly calculated, and available for player use.
  • Players that have the resurrection sickness debuff will be worth no honor.
  • Added new PvP daily quests that send players to Halaa and the Spirit Towers of the Bone Wastes. These quests are available for Alliance and Horde at their respective local quest hubs.

No diminishing returns on honor for kills is a major change and for the best.

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

Arenas
  • Shadow Sight now increases damage taken by 5% rather than dealing damage over time. Duration has been reduced from 21 seconds to 15 seconds.

This really isn’t a significant change. It helps stealth teams out more if anything, but really 5% more damage isn’t going to make or break the game as long as the obvious focus target on your team doesn’t grab the Shadow Sight.


Newer Entries »