Kategorie: patches

Holy! They for sure polished up Enhancement Shaman with the latest build. The issues I mentioned in previous posts have been mostly fixed and playing shaman turned out to be quite fun!

„Many Shaman improvements in build 12857“ weiterlesen

After the recent complains about the bugs and general power of our Enhancement Totem of Quaking Earth they changed the proc to be 400 AP instead of 200 AP. I have a link to the MMO-ITEM DB here.

It is kind of odd that no other shaman changes are listed for now, but well the improvement of the Totem will be a nice boost and we Enhancement Shamans will no longer run around with the Elemental Totem anymore.

Shaman

• Totem of Quaking Earth: Each time you use your Lava Lash ability, you have a chance to gain 400 attack power for 18 sec.
  (Up from 200 Attack Power)

It is not yet in any official Patch Notes, but some Shamans confirmed this change already in the PTR Forum. Don’t forget to save up some emblems for the coming Patch!

The release of Patch 3.2 seems to be imminent, a good moment to list the coming changes for the Shaman class. You can find the complete patch notes here.

Personally I am looking forward to see the Totem Bar, the ability to drop multiple totems at the same time. I am not so sure what to think of the Earth Shock change, yet. At least you can continue full dps while interrupting, at the cost of one more button on the action bar.

The Q&A that you can find in Original here is all about the Shaman class and a quite interesting read. It seems that Blizzard is well aware of our issues and some fixes are incoming.

This week we’re starting our class Q&A series with Greg “Ghostcrawler“ Street and the development team. We’ll be taking a look at each class and answering some of the top questions brought forward by their communities. First up, we take a look at the most asked questions from the shaman class and find out more about the design philosophy behind the class, the expectations for the class, and what may lie in store for it in the future.

Shaman Q&A with Ghostcrawler and the World of Warcraft Development Team

Community Team: We’d like to start things off by asking a question that players often ask in regard to the very purpose of each class. In this case, we’re looking specifically at the shaman, which has seen a variety of changes since the start of World of Warcraft and perhaps doesn’t fit into the original description quite the way they used to.

Q. Where do shamans fit into the larger scope of things currently and where do you see them going from this point forward?

A: The shaman class has a pretty dynamic history. In classic World of Warcraft there was a period where everyone viewed shamans as overpowered. I remember one of my earliest experiences in the Barrens trying to group with a shaman to do a group quest. But he just told me was an overpowered shaman (Frost Shock!) and didn’t need the help.

In vanilla World of Warcraft, shamans at the end-game were healers. Period. By The Burning Crusade, we decided that all three of their trees should have viable roles in the end-game. We also decided that hybrid classes (those that can fill more than one role, such as damage and healing) should do less damage than the classes that could only fill the damage role. This philosophy generally worked, in some cases too well, because Sunwell raids were infamous for stacking lots of shamans.

In Lich King, a primary goal for raiding was to give players far more flexibility in which classes they brought and try to de-emphasize “raid stacking” as much as possible. This meant we needed to share the unique, mandatory buffs among more classes and specs so that, for example, a raid wasn’t gimped if they happened to lack a +spellpower or +crit buff. However, we didn’t want say shamans to no longer be attractive for raiding so we brought up their damage a lot. It might still not be as high as rogues or warlocks, but it’s close, and if you have the right gear and really know how to play, you can even beat those classes on some bosses. No raid worth its salt would turn down an Enhancement, Elemental or Restoration shaman for fear of bringing down the raid.

In PvP, especially Arenas, shamans have never really been a powerhouse class and we view this as a problem. Shamans have always had a place in the 5 vs. 5 bracket, where their buffs are most meaningful spread out among multiple characters. Elemental has sometimes had a niche as the “kill the wounded guy” spec. Currently, however, much of the PvP community is very focused on the 2 vs. 2 bracket, where teams that pack a lot of abilities into a single class tend to dominate. This is something we need to improve for the shaman class.

Shamans have three really distinct roles. Enhancement is melee DPS. Elemental is ranged DPS. Restoration is healing. Once upon a time there was a potential tanking role for shamans as well, but we have pretty much phased that out.

Q. What is it that makes them unique compared to all other classes?

A: Totems, totems, totems!

Okay, that’s the obvious answer, but it goes deeper than that. The weapon enchants are an unusual part of the shaman class, as are mechanics like the shield spells (Earth Shield, Lightning Shield) and Frost Shock. Shaman buffs and utility spells are quite powerful, including the infamous Heroism / Bloodlust, but also their self-rez ability, Reincarnation. As envisioned from the start, shamans were also the “offensive” hybrid. Things have inevitably blurred a bit since then, but they are still a counterpart and complement to paladins – paladins have cleanse, shamans have purge; paladins will let an ally move freely to escape or catch an opponent, shamans will snare an enemy to let their ally escape or catch him or her; paladins will make sure their allies’ casts aren’t interrupted, shamans will interrupt enemy casts; and so forth.

Don’t underestimate the gear either. Shamans are only one of two mail-using classes in the game, and the only non-plate wearer that can use shields. Shaman shields provide a lot of defense and stats for the Restoration and Elemental shaman.

One of the other unusual things about the class is their degree of hybridization. An Elemental shaman can easily throw out heals if a group needs a little extra help. A druid, by contrast, would need to shift forms first, possibly giving up other abilities to do so.

Community Team: There is a unique quality to shaman due to their use of totems as a means of protection, healing, and even as an offensive tool. At the same time, there is a strategic element to being able to place the right totems to do the best job and even more important to place them in the optimum possible spot.

For some players, totems’ lack of mobility and range limitations seem to be more of a liability than an element of strategy, and some shamans in PvP encounters often choose not to place any totems at all.

Q. Are there plans to look at totems in general, the way they are managed, their uses, and their benefits in the future?

A: Absolutely. One of the features we have been working on is a way for shamans to drop all four totems at once (on one global cooldown). This will hopefully make the totems more attractive while soloing and will let the shaman in a group environment quickly get his or her totems down again if the group has to move or they get destroyed. We’d like to get this feature in soon, but we want to make sure the user-interface works well and feels integrated to the rest of the game, so we can’t yet announce a date. And of course, this is still in the planning stage, and so subject to change.

In PvP, we want to make sure we end the use of “totem stomping macros” where a pet class essentially programs their pet to automatically kill any totem they see. It’s perfectly acceptable for pets to kill totems, but the player should at least have to make a decision and spend some of their attention to do so.

We want to look at the range of the buff totems and make sure you don’t regularly get out of range on say large boss fights.

Finally, as a small quality-of-life improvement, we are going to let low-level shamans trade in the four elemental totems that clutter their bags for a single totem they can equip in their totem slot. Since the four “clutter”; totems can’t be destroyed or sold, currently there is no way to get rid of them. This change will essentially give shamans their four bag slots back.

Q. And, what are the possible impacts of considering changes to a system like this?

A: Sometimes you will see the community suggest ideas that basically write totems out of the game. That’s not what we want. A shaman player should care about totems and use them often.
Obviously being able to drop four totems on one global cooldown is a pretty decent buff to the class as a whole, which will require some balance attention.

We have talked a few times about improving the health of individual totems, but if we did, we don’t want to do it by much. One of our Restoration shamans said he still wanted to be able to whack down enemy totems with his healing mace at the end of the day. The balance for totems being able to cause damage or other effects while the shaman also does is the fact that they can’t move and are relatively fragile.

One longer-term change we are considering is removing the buff totems (replacing them with normal spells) and making all of the totems do something more active, like the current damage or healing totems. We’ve even discussed letting shamans carry a totem on their back (the tauren do it already) but that may be too far out there.

Community Team: To continue down the path of totem questions, there are many different types of totems available, and at times the amount seems to be overwhelming. In some cases, there seem to be some totems that don’t have a clear, obvious use to players, such as the Sentry Totem.

Q. Is there any plan to look at the way totems are being used and either update little-used totems or consolidate totems that don’t seem to be of a particularly great strategic value individually?

A: There are still some totems that just aren’t cutting it anymore, and we want to continue to consolidate those so that shamans don’t have any totems that they just never, ever use. Sentry Totem is a possible candidate for the chopping block. It’s hard to really carve off unique niches for Magma Totem and Fire Nova Totem, so those may get merged. Stoneskin is not a terribly exciting totem, so maybe there is a way to just tack that benefit onto another Earth totem. Finally, we are exploring the possibility of the elementals coming out of any Fire or Earth totem respectively rather than to have to drop a new totem just for their temporary benefit.

We combined or cut some totems for Lich King, and you should expect another round of that at some point in the future. As always, we’re unsure of how many of these changes we will get in for the 3.2 patch. We’re trying to keep the list of class changes down compared to 3.1, where some players felt whiplash from so many frequent and sometimes substantial changes to their class.

Q. In addition, many valued enhancement totem relics are only available via random drops, which has been voiced as something that we’ve wanted to avoid in the past. Are there any plans to change this?

A: The “relics” (the items that fill the ranged weapon slot) are always tricky to hand out, since they can only be used by one class, and are often attractive to only one spec. We have typically put them on badge vendors, and that might be the way to go with them in the future. On the other hand, several “best in slot” items for every character are subject to the inherent randomness of boss loot drops. Typically these upgrades are attractive but not so mandatory that you can’t do your job without them.

Community Team: Shamans currently have the lowest base health of any class, and this often leads to concern over their survivability.

Q. Is there any reason that they start this way or is there any future change in store to address this disparity between their base health and that of other classes?

A: This is one of those weird legacies that has been in the game forever. Nobody currently working on classes can remember why that decision was initially made, so we plan to revert it for 3.2.

Community Team: Looking into the Player vs. Environment (PvE) aspect of the game, there are various concerns that are brought up. One recurring concern among all shamans, whether they are Elemental, Enhancement, or Restoration, is in regard to itemization. For some, they are looking for better two-handed weapons. For others, they are looking for that better one-handed axe. Others wonder at the choices that are made in relation to the stats or gem bonuses that are placed on items. An example brought up regularly is concerning Armor Penetration being prevalent in Ulduar despite it not being the most desirable stat for shamans who choose to play as Enhancement. In addition, many shamans express concerns that the options for upgrades are more limited for them than other classes.

Q. When itemizing for the shaman class, what are the aspects that are looked at, and are there plans to make additional improvements to the way itemization is done for the class or for specific talent specs?

A: One of the problems we have with dropping one-handed weapons is the overlap. If we drop axes, rogues can’t use them. If we drop swords, shamans can’t use them. If we drop fists, death knights can’t use them. We are looking at changing one of these restrictions in 3.2, though it likely won’t be for shamans to use swords.

It is our basic assumption that Enhancement shamans dual-wield and Restoration and Elemental shamans go for a one-handed weapon and shield. While we don’t prohibit players from playing with other types of gear, they may not find their damage or healing output to be as high. At this point in time, we aren’t trying to support a two-handed DPS build. That would require a pretty extensive reworking of the tree, and we also want to make sure some class besides rogues are using one-handed weapons.
We got a lot of questions on specific itemization, especially in the new Ulduar tier. The designers do feel like we’ve let the value of various stats get too far apart for the classes as a whole. When some characters want armor penetration and some don’t yet they are supposed to share basically the same gear, it makes the randomness of loot drops even more frustrating. We just need to get Enhancement to where they feel like armor penetration is as valuable as other melee stats.

We’re also in the process of taking a hard look at all the stats in the game. Something that gets brought up in our meetings a lot is that haste and crit are relatively straight forward stats and most players have a reasonable intuition about what boosting those stats will do. When you start to throw something like armor penetration into the mix, it’s hard to estimate exactly what that will do for your character. We’re not sure armor penetration is a rousing success as an interesting stat (though it can be quite good for some characters).

Q. What is the expectation for how shamans choose the gear they use?

A: Players sometimes have the expectation that everything that drops that they can use should be an upgrade for them. This isn’t strictly speaking the developer view though. We want gear to be a little bit of a puzzle where you have to analyze if that piece is really an upgrade or not and how it fits with your other stats. Remember also that much of the normal versions of Ulduar is itemized at the same level as Kel’Thuzad and Malygos.

There are some pieces that are just inferior to what they should be and we are getting those updated over time. As I mentioned above, we also want to improve the situations where some stats are so superior for your spec compared to other stats that pieces with the latter on them are just perceived as junk.

While we have a lot of bosses in Ulduar, those bosses also drop an awful lot of loot. Having loot drop that is attractive to more than one spec is paramount in making the bosses feel rewarding enough. Otherwise boss loot tables are just too large and your chance of getting what you want is low. (The huge loot table works for Emalon who is easy to reach, but not Algalon.) We have to avoid the situation where say the Elemental shaman only wants one set of shoulders in the whole instance and those shoulders are unattractive to everyone else in the raid. This is why we often say that we need to fix these problems on the class side, not the item side.

This is a situation where the distinction among the shaman specs can hurt them a little. Restoration and Elemental shamans both basically want caster gear, but the healer wants regen and the nuker has no use for it. This means if there is mana regen on mail, it is pretty much only useful for a Restoration shaman. (Healing plate presents the same problem for paladins.) We don’t have a great solution for this problem yet other than just dropping three kinds of mail.

Community Team: Continuing to discuss the PvE element of the game for shamans, the introduction of Ulduar changed the strategies players had employed in the past to account for these larger-than-life encounters. Restoration shamans in particular have brought up a concern for their role as raid healer being diminished in light of their inability to effectively raid heal like they once did with the use of Chain Heal specifically. Many have taken to the role of main target heals and are concerned about their continued effectiveness in a raid environment.

Q. Where do we feel the role of the shaman is in raids now and where do we see that going in the future?

A: We want all three shaman specs to feel like they can contribute to raids, and to be honest, we think they’re in a pretty good spot certainly relative to some classes that have specs that are perceived as much more viable than other specs. Enhancement can do great melee damage. After the recent Lightning Overload change, we think Elemental can do competitive ranged damage. I know there is some concern about Restoration shamans losing their healing niche of area damage. We think that perception might exist in Ulduar just because recent talents, glyphs, and set bonuses have all propped up things like Lesser Healing Wave over Chain Heal. Chain Heal is still quite useful in some situations and with different gear in the next couple of tiers, we expect to see more shamans going back to it. We don’t want to see them return to just using Chain Heal as was the case in much of Burning Crusade. We do think Restoration shamans are at the risk of running out of mana perhaps more than any other healer right now, and in fact the seemingly unlimited mana in some healers is what leads to Chain Heal getting stomped on by other big heals. This is a problem we plan on addressing.

Q. Is the change in how shamans are used situational only as we move forward into the next encounters, or is this a shift in philosophy as to the role of the shaman in raids?

A: It isn’t a philosophy shift. We want Restoration shamans to be a strong group healer with the option of focusing on a single target with Lesser Healing Wave as needed. Restoration shamans have two distinct healing styles now that they can shift between, and we want to preserve that. We don’t want to return to the Sunwell era, where 95% of healing came from Chain Heal. It’s just a boring play style. (And yes, paladins, we hear you.) We suspect that with a new totem or set bonus that propped up Chain Heal a little more, you’d see it getting a lot more use. We’re cool with that. It’s fun when you upgrade your gear from tier to tier and it actually pushes you into a slightly different play style.

Elemental shamans have had a couple of opportunities to shine in Ulduar — blowing up constructs on Ignis is one example. We try to make sure the encounters are diverse enough that the same classes aren’t always in the spotlight on every encounter, but we also don’t want to constrain our encounter designers’ creativity too much. Elemental may suffer from so many fights in Ulduar requiring movement. Also, while we have given Elemental strong AoE in the form of the Magma Totem, some players feel like this comes at too high a cost to their buffs and mobility, so this is something we’ll look at.

We’re pretty happy with Enhancement shamans in raids, though we want to continue to analyze whether their DPS is where it should be and if their buffs are comparable to other classes that can bring the same benefit.

We do hope we’ve finally settled the issue of which weapon enchantments shamans should use with the now normalized Flametongue.

Community Team: Let’s shift gears a little and go into the realm of Player vs. Player. As we spoke of previously, survivability and mobility are a couple of shaman concerns that recur more strongly when in reference to PvP interactions. More specifically, shaman performance and visibility within the top-rated teams in the Arena is a much-discussed topic. Players have noticed difficulties both in being able to avoid stuns and roots as well being able to move effectively in the playing field without losing the benefit of their totems.

Q. Are there any other considerations in store for improving overall performance for shaman in PvP encounters (whether in Arena or in Battlegrounds)?

A: Mobility is a big problem. One of the designers described casting shamans the other day as “turrets,” which is very apt. You sit and spin and shoot (or heal). We need to get shamans some more mobility, and we have some ideas for how to do that without just giving everyone Blink. We want to see more shaman gladiators soon!

For Restoration shamans, we think their survivability is low, especially while stunned. Teams have learned to kill the shamans first, because if they don’t, the shaman healing output is good, especially in larger teams. In fact, shamans generally are more powerful on the larger teams because of the nature of their powerful buffs affecting more people. In general, we’d like to get the community back to being more focused on the larger Arena brackets, but we realize we have some work to do there first. Earth Shield is too easy to dispel. An idea we’d like to explore is just letting a single charge get dispelled at a time.

Elemental shamans used to have a niche of being able to blow up a wounded target on demand, but we have been trying to back off some of these really high burst moments. We do need to improve their mobility though, which includes not just the standard melee escapes, but also a way to not lose so much DPS when moving. Elemental is a caster and all casters are getting beat up a little too much by melee at the moment.

Players sometimes accuse Enhancement of being too much of a one-trick pony. It’s understandable that saying “I bring damage!” when so many classes have multiple forms of crowd-control and crowd-control breaks may not cut it these days. Players often request more anti-CC in the form of the Feral Spirits, but we don’t want to turn that ability into something that is saved only to be used as a PvP trinket. Again, mobility (both offensive and defensive) will help Enhancement. A lot of the spec’s damage come from procs and sustained effects, while PvP is more about front-loading damage at the right moment. We definitely can make some changes to give Enhancement more of that, but it requires a lot of changes to the talent tree and playstyle and not the kind of thing you can just hotfix in. On the other hand, Enhancement can offensively dispel, interrupt, and use Tremor and Cleansing Totems while still being a melee DPS. They do have a lot of utility — they just need a little help in order to bring it about. They no longer have mana problems in the longer matches.

One of the challenges of designing the shaman class is that we think it is one of the most challenging classes to play in PvP. (Players sometimes call this having a “high skill cap.”) The shaman has to think about defense and offense at the same time, while many classes can worry about one or the other. For example, a Holy paladin can concentrate on keeping his or her group alive while the Restoration shaman has to do that while also keeping totems up, offensively purging buffs from the enemy team, using Wind Shock to interrupt spell casts, etc. The challenge is making it not too difficult for the average player but also not too powerful for the guy who can master all of the shaman’s tools. (Warlocks and hunters have very similar challenges, by the way.)

Q. What considerations are being made for combating the use of totem-killing macros in PvP, and is this seen as a problem currently?

A: It is a problem. Totems are fragile by design, since they essentially can do their jobs while the shaman does other things. We’re fine with this except in the case of pets being able to target and kill totems via macro without any input from the player. We want the player to at least have to target the totem first before commanding the pet to attack. We have a technical change in 3.2 which will prevent macros from doing this while still giving macros the functionality that players currently enjoy elsewhere. Players have made many suggestions for how to accomplish this technically (a common one is to rename the totems), but the solution is a little more complicated than that. Whacking a totem with your weapon or wand is fine because you are making a choice and spending valuable combat time (similar to dispelling a buff or debuff). Using macros requires no player interaction, and is not working as intended. One totem that is just too easily destroyed is Mana Tide, for which we could see bumping up the survivability. Again, remember that while totems are fragile, they aren’t particularly expensive (especially if we get the change in to drop more than one at a time) and the shaman can do other things while the totems are doing theirs. We’re sympathetic to warlocks and hunters being the two classes most affected by the removal of totem stomping, and we do think their respective representation is low, but we don’t think the way to buff them in Arenas is by letting them be ultimate totem stompers. On the other hand, a reason to just not hotfix in more health to totems is that that change would primarily nerf warlocks and hunters, who need nerfing the least in Arena at the moment.

Further down the thread:

I do try, as do we all. A big thanks also to Ghostcrawler and the rest of the development team for taking the time to work on this. I’ll still be keeping an eye on things here and doing what I can to answer more as I can as well, but this should hopefully help. Keep in mind as always that changes depend on time and testing, but we’re working on it as we go. Our main goal was to keep you up to date on what we’re thinking and where we’re going with things.

[…]

We’re working on a lot of updates right now in light of all the new things that will be coming with the next content patch. We also plan to work on continuing dialogue in the class forums as much as we can aside from these large Q&As. It’s a lot of work, but we think it’s worth it and we’ll keep finding ways to keep everyone informed as much as possible.

Patch 2.4.3 finally came live. The biggest changes are mounts at levle 30, M’uru nerfed to nothingness and undispellable Buffs for Mages and Warlocks.

Hardcore raiders absolutely loved the M’uru encounter, the biggest challenge since the 4 horsemen fight in Naxxramas, but this patch brings him to easy mode. 400.000 HP reduction on M’uru and Entropius and the humanoid adds also reduced by a significant amount (think it was 120k HP -> 80k HP). Why nerf this last great challenge?

When they made Shamanistic Rage undispellable they severely nerfed its duration, while our worst enemies were not able to dispell it anyhow. To give mages and warlocks unnerfed, undispellable Buffs after 3.5 years of WoW sounds rather odd to me.

Anyway here are the full Patch Notes:

The latest patch notes can always be found at http://www.wow-europe.com/en/patchnotes/

The latest test realm patch notes can always be found at http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/underdev/testrealm.html

General

• Dispel effects will no longer attempt to remove effects that have 100% dispel resistance.
• Parry Rating, Defense Rating, and Block Rating: Low-level players will now convert these ratings into their corresponding defensive stats at the same rate as level 34 players.
• Haris Pilton has launched a new line of bags and jewelry. Check her out in the World’s End Tavern!
• Mounts at 30?! Yes, it’s true: Apprentice Riding and mounts are now available at level 30. Training costs 35 gold.
• Blood Elf flightmasters outside of Silvermoon City and Tranquillien have traded in their bats for glorious fire-breathing dragonhawks.
• Alcohol cooldowns have been rolled into Drinks: All 10-second cooldowns have been removed and replaced with the 1-second Drink cooldown.
• Numerous flying non-combat pets have had their flight height modified to no longer skim along the ground: captured firefly, dragonhawk hatchlings, moths, owls, parrots, phoenix hatchling, spirit of summer, sprite darter, and tiny sporebat.
• Nether Ray Fry (a non-combat pet) is now available from the Skyguard Quartermaster. This requires an Exalted reputation with Sha’tari Skyguard.
• Equipping an item will now cancel any spell cast currently in progress.
• Placing an item in your bank will now cancel any spell cast currently in progress if the spell was cast by that item.
• When a stun wears off, the creature that was stunned will prefer the last target with the highest threat, versus the current target.

Druids

• Barkskin: The cost of this spell is now reduced by Tree of Life Form.

Hunters

• Growl: Pets will no longer generate additional threat from this ability based on attack power buffs cast on them. Attack power buffs on their master will still indirectly increase the threat generated by the pet’s Growl.
• Pet Aggro: Pets will no longer generate threat immediately from being summoned.

Mages

• Frost Armor, Ice Armor, Mage Armor, and Molten Armor are no longer Magic effects and cannot be dispelled.

Paladins

• Greater Blessing of Light Rank 1: This spell will no longer overwrite Greater Blessing of Light Rank 2.
• Summon Warhorse is now available at level 30.

Priests

• Mind Vision: This effect will now be cancelled immediately on targets who use an Invisibility Potion or Gnomish Cloaking Device.
• Spiritual Healing: Ranks 2-5 of this talent will no longer prevent refreshing Prayer of Mending.

Rogues

• Cheat Death: This talent has been rebalanced significantly. Killing blows are no longer 100% absorbed. If the Rogue is below 10% health, the killing blow is still completely absorbed; if the Rogue is over 10% health, enough damage will be absorbed to reduce the Rogue’s health down to 10%. For the following 3 seconds, damage is not always reduced by 90%; it is now reduced by a maximum of 90%, depending on how much resilience the Rogue has. The damage reduction will be four times the damage reduction resilience causes against critical strikes.
• Sinister Calling now increases damage to Backstab and Hemorrhage by 1/2/3/4/5% (down from 2/4/6/8/10%.)

Shaman

• Earth Elemental: This pet will now leash back to its totem when pulled beyond 50 yards away.
• Lightning Overload: This talent will no longer do excessive damage when used with Lightning Bolt Ranks 2-10.

Warlocks

• Curse of Shadows: This spell has been removed.
• Curse of Elements: This spell now applies to Arcane and Shadow damage, as well as Frost and Fire.
• Demon Skin, Demon Armor, and Fel Armor are no longer Magic effects and cannot be dispelled.
• Health Funnel: This ability will now cancel channeling when the target pet is Banished.
• Ritual of Summoning: The mana cost of this spell will now be properly deducted when cast.
• Summon Felsteed is now available at level 30.

Warrior

• Revenge: Ranks 1-5 of this ability now have damage ranges instead of fixed damage values (like ranks 6-8.)

PvP

• The time available to accept the option to “Enter Battle” for a battleground has been reduced to 1 minute and 20 seconds (previously 2 minutes) in order ot give each side more time to get a full complement of players before the battle begins.
• The Warsong Gulch flag can no longer be picked up at the same time as a flag is capped.
• Rocket Boots Xtreme and Rocket Boots Xtreme Lite can no longer be used in the arena. These no longer have a failure chance.
• Zoning into an instance on a PvE realm will now drop your PvP flag.

Professions

Alchemy

• Philosopher’s Stone now requires 200 Alchemy.

Cooking

• Juicy Bear Burgers now correctly increase healing as well as spell damage.

Jewelcrafting

• Activated beneficial effects from jewelcrafting trinkets can no longer be dispelled.

Mining

• Green quality gems can be found in mining nodes again. The drop rate of blue gems from mining nodes remains unchanged.

Tailoring

• Removed the cooldown from regular Mooncloth.
• Herb bags can now hold Un’goro Soil and Evergreen Pouches.
• Mycah of Sporeggar has discovered how to create 28 slot herb bags.
• New Tailoring patterns are available from Haughty Modiste in Steamwheedle Port, Tanaris: Haliscan Jacket and Haliscan Pantaloons.

Quests

• Bhag’thera now spawns at a normal quest spawn rate.
• For the quests, Intercepting the Mana Cells and Maintaining the Sunwell Portal, phased characters will not be able to see non-phased character AoE effects and vice-versa.
• For the quests, Intercepting the Mana Cells and Maintaining the Sunwell Portal, pets gaining/losing phase status will now properly break off combat from unphased/phased opponents.

Dungeons and Raids

• Players can now be summoned to raid instances from heroic dungeons.
• Magister’s Terrace
  • The Stun component to the Sunblade Mage Guard Glaive Throw has been removed and the Bounce range reduced.
  • Vexallus and Kael’thas are now tauntable in Heroic mode.
  • Vexallus’ damage caused by Pure Energy has been decreased.
  • Kael’thas’ Arcane Sphere has had its visual size increased. His Arcane Sphere attack has had its range decreased and the damage/second of Phase two on Normal mode has been decreased. (Heroic mode remains unchanged.)
  • Sunblade Warlocks have had their damage reduced slightly.
  • Fel Crystals in the Selin Fireheart encounter have had their health reduced slightly.
  • Warlord Salaris and Kagani Nightstrike have had their damage output reduced slightly.

• Sunwell Plateau
  • Creatures in the area around Grand Warlock Alythess and Lady Sacrolash will no longer spawn while the twins are in combat.
  • M’uru, Entropius, Shadowsword Berserkers, and Shadowsword Fury Mages have all had their health decreased.
  • Kil’jaeden Encounter
    • Nether Protection will now correctly trigger from Kil’jaeden’s Shield Orb Shadow Bolts.
    • Vanish now correctly wipes threat on Kil’jaeden.
    • Sinister Reflections are now interruptible.
    • Sinister Reflections on Hunters now use normal Wing Clip instead of Improved Wing Clip.
    • Kil’jaeden will now wait slightly longer before casting Flame Darts after casting Darkness of a Thousand Souls.

Items

• Bow of the Verdant Keeper’s Aim: This item’s triggered effect no longer breaks the effect of Scatter Shot.
• Brutal Gladiator’s Pummeler has had its Stamina value increased to the appropriate value.
• Clockwork Robot Bots fight amongst themselves again…without attacking people in the arena. Well… they’ll blow up other Bots in the arena, but you know what we mean.
• The Eredar Twins will now always award the same items (including bonus items) regardless of which order they are killed in.
• Invisibility Potions: These potions now are on the same cooldown as other combat consumable potions (such as mana potions.)
• Pendant of the Violet Eye: This item will again work correctly with Holy Light and Flash of Light.
• Shattered Sun Pendant of Acumen: The triggered effect from this Item can now occur on periodic damage ticks.
• Thori’dal, the Star’s Fury is now Unique as intended.
• Vengeful Gladiator’s Baton of Light: This item now appears in the correct position on the vendor list.

User Interface

• The help interface has been simplified dramatically. Players will no longer be required to select a category when opening a GM ticket. In addition, players can use the “Talk to a GM” button to fill out a ticket that requires a GM response or the “Report Issue” button to fill out a ticket that does not require a GM response.
• Target buff/debuff timers that appear when you cast a spell are now more visible.
• Time Management features have been implemented! These features include an alarm clock, stopwatch, and viewing your computer’s local time.
• The new stopwatch feature can be accessed via the /stopwatch, /sw, or /timer slash commands. Inputting a time into the slash command will make the stopwatch count down. For example, /stopwatch 1:0:0 will make the stopwatch count down from an hour, /stopwatch 1:30 will make it count down from 1 minute, 30 seconds, and /stopwatch 30 will make it count down from 30 seconds.
• Added the following macro commands: /targetenemyplayer, /targetfriendplayer.
• Added key bindings for tab targeting players.
• Ctrl-Tab and other target nearest friend functions will no longer target you.
• Targeting using /target will prefer live targets over dead ones.
• You can no longer click the minimap to cast ground targeted spells.
• Invisible players with Hunter’s Mark can see the hunter that put the mark on them.
• Vendor items now show their Duration in Inventory.
• For additional notes on Lua and XML changes please visit the UI & Macros Forum.

World Environment

• Winterspring Ice Thistle Matriarchs and Patriarchs may now drop Thick Yeti Fur.
• Skinning any Winterspring Ice Thistle yetis may now result in Thick Yeti Fur.
• Increased the drop rate of Pristine Yeti Horns from Winterspring Ice Thistle Matriarchs and Patriarchs.
• Goblin Weather Machine- Prototype 01-B weather changes will no longer force the affected character to stand.
• Collector’s Edition Pet Redemption NPCs/items/quests have been relocated/modified to/for towns with mailboxes (Goldshire, Razor Hill, etc.).
• Young Sporebats and Greater Sporebats in Zangarmarsh now drop Sporebat Eyes for the quest Gathering the Reagents.
• Blacksmithing Supplies vendor and repairer, Blazzle, in Area 52 is now next to the forge and anvil outside the inn.
• Banker Meeda, in Area 52 is now in the…well…the bank, along with a guild vault and guards. The other three Area 52 bankers are still located in the auction-house-turned-bank.
• Wastewander Bandits and Rogues should be more plentiful in the northern parts of Tanaris.

Bug Fixes

• The mage spell, Counterspell now shows in the combat log.
• Gan’arg Analyzers will no longer occasionally become friendly to players.
• Talented abilities that cost a percentage of base mana will no longer display an incorrect mana cost when inspected by a player of a different class or level.
• Guild leaders should now be able to properly promote a new guild leader regardless of their range.
• Druids: Mangle will no longer incorrectly indicate a 100-yard range on the tooltip.
• Hunters: Using an instant ability after Steady Shot will no longer lock out auto shot.
• Hunter Snake Trap will no longer break players out of stealth if the snakes pass near the stealthed character.
• Hunters: Concussive shot will now properly have a chance to proc Bow of Searing Arrows.
• Hunters: Scare Beast will now be correctly limited to one target and has had its tooltip updated to display the proper cast time of 1.5 seconds.
• Paladins: Righteous Defense will now properly check for range when a mob is selected.
• Rogues: The talent Heightened Senses, Rank 1 and Rank 2 will now affect attacks from wands.
• Warlocks: The heal aspect of felhunter Devour Magic will now display in the Combat Log.
• Warlocks: The Succubus will now behave properly while under the effects of Lesser Invisibility.
• Warlocks: Demonic Sacrifice: This ability will now interact correctly with the Spirit Guide resurrection system in battlegrounds. A sacrificed pet will not be resummoned on death.
• Warlocks will still be able to resurrect with the pet they last summoned (non-sacrificed pets), even if it has since died.
• Using Jewelcrafting figurines will no longer cause scrolling combat text to appear twice.
• Fixed an issue in which shadows were not appearing properly for users with GF4 video chipsets in Open GL mode.
• Corrected an issue in which users with Creative X-FI sound cards would sometimes here a slight popping noise when running.
• Players will now correctly receive a Battleground Mark message for the marks that are received at the end of a battle.
• Corrected an issue where the initial trigger or activation sounds for Immolation Trap and Explosive Trap could not be heard by some players.
• Smelt Hardened Khorium will now properly require a forge instead of an anvil and hammer.
  Hardened Khorium Bars can now be placed properly into Mining bags.
• Corrected a typo in the tooltip for the Druid spell Rip (Rank 4).
• The flight from Zul’Aman, Ghostlands to Sun’s Reach Harbor, Isle of Quel’Danas and the flight cost from Emerald Sanctuary, Felwood to Astranaar, Ashenvale will now cost the correct amount of money.
• Looting a Nightmare Vine will now properly no longer apply poison when the node is looted.
• The Figurine- Seaspray Albatross ability will now properly restore the correct amount of mana.
• First Aid bandages can no longer be applied to a player with the Recently Bandaged debuff. An error message of, „Could not activate more than one bandage“ will be displayed.
• Corrected the tooltips to read properly for the flight paths from The Stormspire, Toshley’s Station, Blade’s Edge, and Area 52.
• Greater Elementals summoned by a shaman will now properly have a combat log entry.
• Players will no longer become stuck on the Nimboya’s Laden Pike when driving it into the ground.
• The quest, „Going Going, Guano!“ will now have a more consistent level requirement for the dungeon.
• The quest, „Into The Scarlet Monastery“ is now available to players of the appropriate level for the instance.
• Blueleaf Tubers can now be properly looted.
• The quest turn-ins for the Ahn’Qiraj war effort now give the appropriate amount of credit for each successful quest turn-in.
• Cloak of Shadows will now properly remove the curse Shrink.
• Nightbane will no longer become unresponsive and unkillable during his air phase.
• Several items sold by the Consortium reputation vendor Paulsta’ats are now bind on pick-up: Formula: Enchant Weapon- Major Striking, Design: Delicate Blood Garnet, Design: Shifting Shadow Draenite, Design: Lustrous Azure Moonstone, Design: Thick Golden Draenite.
• It is no longer possible to delete a character that is an arena team captain without first promoting another player to captain.
• Taunts will now properly stick when a target is stunned while being taunted.
• Taking the Druid flight path from Moonglade will no longer dispel buffs.
  Players who die on the Isle of Quel’Danas and release their spirit will no longer be sent to the graveyard in Eversong Woods.
• Disabling some subtypes under the Combat Log Message Types in the Combat Log Config menu will no longer cause main Message Types to be disabled.
• Changes on the Desktop gamma options will now be properly discarded when canceled.
• A message will now appear in the combat log if a debuff is removed by normal melee attacks.
• Moving a quiver from one container slot to an empty container slot will no longer reset the ranged attack speed.
• Fixed an issue where players could have two minimap tracking types active at the same time.
• Corpses with money on them will now be able to be looted even when all party members opt to pass on loot.
• Fixed an issue where ravager pets had all available pet skills.
• Players will no longer receive an error message while receiving money and attempting to send mail to another player.
• It is no longer possible to be in a guild without a Guildmaster.
• Pets will now properly attack mobs when out of phase with the real world.
• Players who have the Apprentice and Journeyman Riding skills trained already will no longer show these as available to train despite having the higher riding skill.
• It is no longer possible to dispel Shattered Sun Pendant buffs.
• Passive pets will no longer attack due to AoE taunt spells.

Patch 2.4.2 is now live, however it seems that some changes are different fromt eh patch realm. Scare Beast for example is not an instant spell, it has 1.5 seconds cast left. While the Dragonstrike is dualwieldable the procc does no longer stack. This makes the weapon less desireable, since it is outdated since Mount Hyjal/Black Temple, not to even mention Sunwell Plateau.

World of Warcraft Client Patch 2.4.2

The latest patch notes can always be found at http://www.wow-europe.com/en/patchnotes/

The latest test realm patch notes can always be found at http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/underdev/testrealm.html

Druids

• Talent: Primal Fury (Rank 2) will now be properly unlearned when it is untalented.

Hunters

• Aspect of the Viper: This ability now grants an additional amount of mana each 5 seconds equal to 35% of the hunter’s level.
• Boar Charge: This ability will no longer make Growl cast immediately after it generates excessive threat.
• The pet ability Growl will no longer scale with pet Attack Power and now scales with the hunter’s Attack Power.
• Dire Ravens in Blade’s Edge Mountains are now tameable.
• Scare Beast: The range on this spell has been increased to 30 yards and it is now instant cast.
• Tamed Drywallow Snappers now will know Bite 5 (instead of Claw 5).

Mages

• Talent: Improved Blink (Arcane) now reduces chance to be hit by 13/25% and the duration of Rank 1 has been increased to 4 seconds.
• Completing the quest “Arcane Refreshment” will now properly teach the spell Conjure Water (Rank 7).
• Polymorph: Mounted creatures will no longer remain mounted while polymorphed.
• Molten Armor will now do damage while a damage absorption shield is active.
• New Teleport/Portal: Theramore and Teleport/Portal:Stonard spells are available at portal trainers in their respective locations. You must be level 35 to learn these new spells.

Paladins

• Flash of Light and Holy Light will now work properly with castsequence macros.
• Seal of the Crusader: This ability now increases the damage dealt by Crusader Strike by 40%.
• Talent: Precision (Ranks 1-3) will no longer improperly display daggers and staves as a weapon class in the tooltip.
• Paladins that already have Apprentice Riding skill can now properly learn Summon Warhorse from the trainer.

Priests

• Fear Ward will no longer be consumed while under the effects of cyclone.
• Mana Burn: This spell can no longer trigger effects that require the target to be struck with a critical hit.
• Power Word: Shield now has the correct sound associated with it and can no longer be heard from large distances.
• Talent: Power Infusion will now consume the correct amount of mana when cast on yourself.

Rogues

• Ability: Blade Flurry: This ability can no longer hit critters as its secondary targets and will now use a proper range calculation for all secondary targets.
• Talent: Mutilate (Assassination) will no longer incorrectly appear multiple times in the combat log when used.

Shaman

• Ability: Frostbrand Weapon: Rank 6 damage has been increased very slightly.

Warlocks

• Drain Soul: Channeling of this spell will now always stop when a player target dies.
• Pets: Using a sacrifice effect to kill your own pet will no longer trigger effects that should only occur when killing an enemy.

Warriors

• Sweeping Strikes: This ability can no longer hit critters as its secondary targets and will now use a proper range calculation for all secondary targets.

PvP

Arenas

• If a character’s personal rating is more than 150 points below the team rating, they will earn points based on their personal rating instead of the team rating.
• If the average personal rating of the players queuing for a game is more than 150 points below the team’s rating, the team will be queued against an opponent matching or similar to the average personal rating.

Professions

• All 23-hour profession cooldowns are now 20-hour cooldowns.
• All 4-day cooldowns are now 3 days, 20 hours.

Enchanting

• Removed the cooldown from Void Shatter.
• Void Shatter recipe now correctly requires 375 enchanting.

Engineering

• The Engineering supply item Delicate Copper Wire will now properly fit into engineering bags.

Jewelcrafting

• Brilliant Glass no longer requires a forge.
• Brilliant Glass now has a small chance to make an epic gem.
• Quick Dawnstone, Reckless Noble Topaz, Forceful Talasite are now all available at the Quel’danas gem vendor.

Leatherworking

• Completing the quest “The Journey Has Just Begun” will now properly teach how to make an Onyxia Scale Cloak.
• Greatly reduced the reagent cost for Glove Reinforcements. Also reduced the skill gain range slightly.

Quests

• The categories for the quests “Wanted: Sisters of Torment” and “Wanted: The Signet Ring of Prince Kael’thas” have been fixed to now properly read as Magister’s Terrace.
• The Shadowy Disguise will no longer be applied to druids while they are in Moonkin or Tree of Life form for the quests “Who Are They?”
• Jailor Eston and Jailor Marlgen for the quest “The Rescue” should now respawn more frequently.

Dungeons and Raids

Black Temple

• Illidan will no longer despawn if a raid group wipes during his death speech.

Karazhan

• Nightbane’s Charred Earth ability will now properly deal Fire damage.

Magister’s Terrace

• Vexallus is no longer immune to taunt on Normal difficulty.
• Kael’thas is no longer immune to taunt on Normal difficulty.
• Wretched Skulkers, Wretched Husks, and Wretched Bruisers will now reset properly.
• Sunblade Imps will now reset properly.
• The doors in Heroic Magister’s Terrace will no longer respawn after a soft reset if a boss has already been killed.

Sunwell Plateau

• Hellfire will no longer remove Dark Touched in the Eredar Twins encounter.

Tempest Keep: The Eye

• Void Reaver’s Arcane orbs now generate combat log entries.

Items

• Arcane Charges now deal arcane damage.
• Abilities and trinkets that trigger after killing an opponent that gives experience or honor will no longer activate after killing mobs during bombing quests.
• Battlecast’s Garb should now properly grant pushback resistance in addition to interrupt resistance.
• Borderland Fortress Grips have had their stats updated.
• Botanist’s Gloves of Growth have had their texture corrected.
• Bow of Searing Arrows and Red Whelp Gloves will no longer break crowd control effects.
• Brann Bronzebeard’s Lost Letter: This item will no lonber display a damage range in its tooltip.
• The Cloak of Swift Mending now has a level requirement (70).
• Crusader’s Scaled Battlegear: The tooltip spelling has been corrected.
• Darkmoon Card: Madness: The durations of the buffs received from this item have been extended to 60 seconds.
• Elixir of Demonslaying: This elixir now grants ranged attack power against demons as intended.
• Goblin Jumper Cables are no longer a trinket item.
• Hazza’rah’s Charm of Healing Haste rating reduced.
• Items that enchant other items no longer have tradeskill requirements (Mithril Spurs, Shield Spikes, Weapon Chains, etc.).
• The Helm of Fire has had its casting range reduced.
• The Magic Candle has had its casting range reduced.
• Many items sold by Consortium vendors are now bind on pick up: Formula: Enchant Weapon- Major Striking, Design: Delicate Blood Garnet, Design: Shifting Shadow Draenite, Design: Lustrous Azure Moonstone, Design: Thick Golden Draenite.
• Many items sold by Aldor reputation vendors are now bind on pick up: Design: Gleaming Golden Draenite, Design: Royal Shadow Draenite.
• Many items sold by the Shattered Sun quartermaster are now bind on pick up: Naaru Ration, Design: Ember Skyfire Diamond.
• The Lower City reputation item, Recipe: Flask of Chromatic Resistance, is now bind on pick up.
  Most Main-Hand weapons are now One-Hand weapons.
• Naturalist’s Preserving Cinch have had their stats updated.
• Nightfall now has a chance to fail on targets over level 60.
• Prince Kael’thas will now drop Primal Nethers in Heroic Magisters Terrace.
• Ravager: Judgements will no longer auto-refresh and break the effect from this item while its effect is active.
• Reins of the Black War Elekk spell and buff now correspond to the item name.
• Renataki’s Charm of Trickery has had its energy reduced.
• Rocket Boots Xtreme and Rocket Boots Xtreme Lite now properly share the same cooldown.
• The Romantic Picnic Basket will now display the blanket properly.
• Shard of Azzinoth no longer shares any cooldown with Shaman elemental totems.
• The socket bonus modifiers of some items will now properly display the bonus healing.
• The reduced cooldown of Shaman Nature’s Swiftness provided by the 4 piece set bonus from the Seer’s Ringmail Battlegear PvP armor will now apply properly.
• Shattered Sun Pendant of Might: The triggered effect from this item will no longer break Scatter Shot or other crowd-controlling affects. The visual on the Scryer version has been updated.
• Shifting Naaru Sliver: Using this item no longer puts players into combat.
• Silithyst Dust: The bonus from turning this item in no longer works for players above level 63.
• The Skyshatter Helmet’s gem socket bonus will now properly reflect the plus damage in the tooltip.
• Shadowsong Panther will no longer prematurely despawn.
• Talasite Owl: This trinket will now properly restore full mana as described.
• Ten Storms Set: The Chain Heal bonus from this set has been reduced by 5%.
• Troll Male off-hand items are now the same size as the main hand item.
• Tauren weapons while sheathed have had their graphic readjusted to their pre-patch (2.4.0) state.
• The Winterfall Firewater buff is no longer dispellable.
• Wushoolay’s Charm of Nature Haste rating has been reduced.

User Interface

• The guild log scroll bar will now properly display.
• Black Lotus will now show up under the Herb subcategory in the auction house.
• Primal Nethers will now show up under the Materials subcategory in the auction house.
• Mailboxes can now be tracked on the minimap.
• For additional notes on Lua and XML changes please visit the UI & Macros Forum.

World Environment

• Creature versions of the Polymorph spell no longer heal the affected target.
• The dragons in Blade’s Edge Mountains will no longer instantly knock you off your mount.

Mac

• Fixed a bug causing ATI kernel panics; all spell effects should now be visible.
• Weather effects are again visible on systems with ATI 2×00 graphics such as aluminum iMac.
• Fixed a bug that precluded use of the FireWire iSight microphone with voice chat.
• Symlinks can be used again for Interface and WTF folders and subfolders.
• Cinematics playback is working again.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where secondary sound effects would not work with the Use Hardware option enabled in the Sound options of the User Interface.
• Fixed an issue where attempting to use some instant cast spells with Auto-Dismount in Flight checked in the interface would fail.
• Items that have multiple charges will now properly display the amount of charges.
• Fixed an issue where chain damage spells were chaining to critters.
• Female Draenei horns will now correctly protrude through certain plate helms.
• The Vengeful Gladiator’s Rifle will now play the proper sound when used.
• The Cursed Vision of Sargeras now gives the buff, “Sense Demons” which can be canceled normally. Additionally hunters and druids are able to track two things at once while using the item.
• It is no longer possible for pets to get stuck in place after exiting the Spectral Realm in the Kalecgos encounter.
• Blood Elf Priest: Consume Magic will now require the buff to be active in order to work properly.
  Undead and Blood Elf Priest: Touch of Weakness will now properly reduce the melee damage of the attacker.
• Fixed an issue where some spells had extraneous Floating Combat Text messages when using the Auras option.
• Fixed an issue where sometimes debuff icons on a target did not scale properly to indicate the spells had been cast by you.
• Ritual of Souls (Warlock) and Ritual of Refreshment (Mage) will no longer be placed on cooldown without having completed the summon.
• Looting a boss while a player is outside of the instance will no longer cause the corpse to despawn in 2 minutes if the player still has loot on the corpse.
• Whirlwind now has the correct sound associated with it.

Patch 2.4 has come live. I was stil hoping Kalgan had some hidden Shaman buffs up his sleeves, but it seemes the tries to make Enhancement Shaman viable for Arena stopped halfway.

World of Warcraft Client Patch 2.4.0

Fury of the Sunwell

The glorious fount of arcane energy known as the Sunwell empowered the high elves for millennia, until the death knight Arthas laid siege to the elven kingdom and corrupted its sacred energies. Seeing no other alternative, a band of survivors led by Prince Kael’thas destroyed the ancient fount. Over time the surviving elves fell pray to a crippling magical withdrawal.

Now, promising salvation for his people, Kael’thas has returned. Soon the Sunwell will shine once again, but whether the sacred fount will usher in deliverance or destruction remains to be seen.

In Memoriam: Gary Gygax

Blizzard Entertainment would like to dedicate the patch in memory of Gary Gygax. His work on D&D was an inspiration to us in many ways and helped spark our passion for creating games of our own. As avid D&D players and fellow game developers, we were all saddened by the news of his passing; we feel we’ve lost a true adventuring companion. Thanks for everything and farewell, Gary. You will be missed.

Combat Log Improvements

The combat log has undergone improvements that allow more robust combat text filtering including the ability to define custom colors for enemies and friends, as well as combat text filtering for self and others.

Global Arena Tournament

Players will be able to create level-70 characters with epic equipment and compete on special tournament realms in a new global arena tournament. For more information, details and entry requirements, please visit the official tournament pages.

General

• The Sunwell Isle is now available for play. This area includes a new quest hub and 5 and 25-player instances.
• The combined forces of Shattrath have launched an attack on the Isle of Quel’Danas, to confront Kael’thas and the Legion at the Sunwell and surrounding areas. Players will now be able to gain reputation with the Shattered Sun Offensive and participate in a new set of daily quests.
• A representative of the Keepers of Time has been spotted at the World’s End Tavern in Shattrath. Players in good standing with the faction will be granted ease of passage to the Caverns of Time.
• 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.
• Item Cast Spells: Many spells cast by items were being cast as if the caster were the same level as the item. Most of those will now be cast at the player’s level, giving them a reasonable chance to miss, be dispelled, or be resisted.
• Resilience: Now reduces the magnitude of mana draining effects by the same amount that it reduces critical strike damage. The Tooltip has been revised to reflect this.
• Spirit-Based Mana Regeneration: This system has been adjusted so that as your intellect rises, you will regenerate more mana per point of spirit.
• Weapon Skill: Points will be gained faster in weapon skills for levels 1 through 59.
• The Daily Quest limit has been increased to 25.
• Non-self % based haste spells will no longer stack with each other.

Racials

• Find Treasure: This ability no longer deactivates upon death.

Druids

• Cyclone range is now 20 yards, down from 30.
• 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.
• Lifebloom: The bonus coefficient on the final bloom effect has been reduced by 20%. This spell will no longer cause error messages when interacting with Spellsteal or while the Druid is under the effects of Mind Control.
• Mangle (Bear) now properly triggers a 1.5 second global cooldown, increased from 1.0 second.
• Many shapeshift form tooltips have been updated to be consistent with each other.
• 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 and reduces damage by 2/3/4%, down from 1/3/5%.
• Nurturing Instinct increases your healing spells by up to 50/100% of your Agility, and increases healing done to you by 10/20% while in Cat form.
• Regrowth: The mana cost of this spell has been reduced by approximately 20%.
• When a Druid in cat form casts Pounce it will now properly animate.

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.
• Improved Mend Pet now has a 25/50 chance to remove one Curse, Disease, Magic, or Poison effect, up from 15/50%.
• The stamina tooltip for hunter pets will now display the proper health increase.
• Track spells will now persist after death.
• Hunters will no longer spin around if they cast Aimed Shot or Steady Shot while facing away from their target.

Mages

• Arcane Explosion: The damage cap for area of effect damage on this spell has been increased by approximately 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.
• Improved Blink: This talent no longer reduces the mana cost of Blink. Instead, it increases the chance for all attacks to miss the Mage by 25% for 2/4 sec after Blink is cast.
• Using low ranks of Fire Ward and Frost Ward 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 Frostbite effect.
• Ice Barrier: Using low ranks of this spell will now be penalized the same way healing spells are penalized.
• Icy Veins no longer increases the chance your chilling effects will Freeze the target, but now increases the chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while casting any spell by 100% while active.
• Improved FireWard has become Molten Shields.
• Mana Shield: This spell will now get a percentage of the Mage’s bonus to spell damage as an additional effect.
• 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.
• Permafrost: This talent will now correctly increase the movement slowing effect of frost Armor instead of the attack speed slowing effect.
• Spellsteal will no longer overwrite a longer duration buff.

Paladins

• Avenger’s Shield, Holy Shield and Holy Shock: Casting lower ranks of these spells is now properly penalized like other healing and damage effects.
• Avenger’s Shield: This ability will no longer jump to secondary targets which are under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. I.e. Polymorph, Sap, etc.
• Crusader Strike: This ability will no longer refresh the Healing Way buff from the Shaman talent.
• Illumination: The mana energize from this talent no longer has a chance to set off other triggered effects.
• Holy Shock: The healing, damage, and mana cost of this spell have all been increased.
• 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.
• 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.
• Sense Undead- Now persists after death.
• 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.

Priests

• Chastise no longer disorients the target, but now is instant cast and roots the target for 2 seconds.
• Fear Ward is now usable while in Shadow form.
• Focused Will now reduces damage by 2/3/4%, up from 1/3/5%.
• Inner Focus: Chastise now benefits from Inner Focus. In addition, Starshards no longer consumes Inner Focus.
• Mass Dispel now affects a maximum of 10 targets, increased from 5.
• Power Infusion: Infuses the target with power, increasing their spell haste by 20% and reducing the mana cost of all spells by 20%. Lasts for 15 seconds.This will not stack with other haste effects, such as Heroism, Bloodlust, or Icy Veins.
• 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 reflective damage from this talent no longer breaks crowd control effects which break on taking damage.
• Shadowguard: No longer consumes the charge of Inner Focus when triggered.
• Silent Resolve:This talent 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.

Rogues

• Abilities that can be used while stealthed, without breaking stealth, can now be cast without breaking Vanish when used at the same time.
• Cheat Death: A combat log message will now show when this ability activates and now has an animation.. It will now almost always be accurate in displaying the amount of damage done to a rogue when under the effects of Cheat Death.
• 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.
• 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.
• Vanish: This ability will no longer sometimes cause the UI to display Shadowmeld as active when it has been cancelled.

Shaman

• Call of Thunder: (Rank 5) now gives 5% critical strike chance, down from 6%.
• 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.
• Flametongue Weapon: Having different ranks of this enchantment cast on two different weapons will no longer cause the enchantments to trigger multiple times per swing.
• Ghost Wolf: Cast time reduced to 2 seconds, down from 3.
• The Global Cooldown of all Totems has been reduced to 1 seconds, down from 1.5 seconds.
• 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.
• Shamanistic Rage is now a Physical ability instead of a Magic spell, and thus is no longer dispellable. It now reduces all damage taken by 30% and gives your successful melee attacks a chance to regenerate mana equal to 30% of your attack power. This lasts for 15 seconds with a 2 minute cooldown.
• 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.
• Toughness will now also reduce the duration of movement slowing effects on you by 10/20/30/40/50%.
• Tremor Totem now pulses every 3 seconds, down from 4 seconds.
• The Shaman spell Fire Nova Totem will no longer sometimes detonate without doing any damage.

Warlocks

• Blood Pact now has a tooltip.
• Demonic Knowledge: This buff will no longer remain on enslaved demons when Enslave Demon is removed. It will now increase your spell damage by an amount equal to 4/8/12%, down from 5/10/15%.
• Demonic Sacrifice: Now works properly in sanctuary regions (such as Shattrath City and the Stair of Destiny).
• Emberstorm now also reduces the cast time of your incinerate spell by 2/4/6/8/10%.
• Nether Protection: The buff from this talent will no longer interrupt capturing PvP flags and bases.
• 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.
• Sense Demon now persists after death.
• Shadow Ward: Using low ranks of this spell will now be penalized the same way healing spells are penalized.

Warriors

• Endless Rage will now give the correct amount of rage as intended from damage dealt by a Warrior.
• Improved Hamstring (Arms) effect is now subject to diminishing returns when used in PvP.
• 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.

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.

Arenas

• Personal Rating: The amount a player’s personal rating can climb above his or her team’s rating is now limited.
• The benefits of drinking out of combat have been delayed while in the Arena. It will now take four seconds before the full benefit of the mana regeneration will come into effect.
• Queue times for arena matches have been reduced. Players will now be able to enter matches faster than previously.
• Shadow Sight now increases damage taken by 5% rather than dealing damage over time. Duration has been reduced from 21 seconds to 15 seconds.
• Players feared outside of the Arena (through the world or outside the arena walls) will now be teleported back to the center of the arena map.

Battlegrounds

• If a player dies 50 times or more in a battleground, they will no longer be worth honor for the remainder of that battle.
• When you first enter a battleground, messages about other players joining the battleground will be linked together for the first minute. You will see a message in AV like "28 players joined" rather than a line for each player that joined. After the first minute, it will work as it always has. In addition, all of the messages about other players leaving the battleground and getting marks of honor once the battleground is complete have been removed.
• Battleground Rune Buffs:Speed, Restoration, and Berserking buffs received from battleground runes will no longer cause Stealth or Prowl to break.

Alterac Valley

• Captain Balinda Stonehearth Stonehearth can no longer be interrupted, silenced, or have her spells slowed. In addition, her water elemental cannot be banished, and does increased damage.
• Vanndar Stormpike and Captain Balinda Stonehearth have had their health totals reduced to match the health totals of Drek’Thar and Captain Galvangar…
• Warmasters/marshals in Alterac Valley now increase each other’s maximum health and damage by 25%. This is a stacking effect.
• Horde players will now start the battle closer to Drek’Thar and Frostwolf Keep.
• There is now a Join as Party option.

Warsong Gulch

• When both flags are held, the flag carriers will receive 50% increased damage done to them after approximately 10 minutes and 100% increased damage after approximately 15 minutes.
• Flag carriers can now be tracked 45 seconds after picking up the flag.

Professions

• Added several new tradeskill items to the new Sunwell Daily faction vendor:
• Enchanting recipe to shatter a Void Crystal into two Large Prismatic Shards.
• Enchanting recipe to increase Defense Rating by 15 for chest armor.
• Three jewelcrafting recipes to cut gems with spell haste from Dawnstones, Talasite, and noble Topaz.
• Two new meta gem recipes.

Alchemy

• Gift of Arthas now stacks to 20.
• Transmute Arcanite no longer has a cooldown.

Cooking

• Broiled Bloodfin now increases resistances to all schools of magic instead of increasing Stamina and Spirit.
• New recipes, Charred Bear Kabobs and Juicy Bear Burgers, can be purchased from either Bale (Horde) or Malygen (Alliance) in Felwood. These recipes requires 250 skill to learn, and are created from meat found on level 48-56 bears. This will aid players in leveling up their cooking skill to 300 without fishing.

Enchanting

• Reduced the materials required for Enchant Shield – Resistance

Engineering

• Gagsprocket in Ratchet now sells the plans for the Minor Recombobulator.
• Goblin Jumper Cables and Goblin Jumper Cables XL now display cooldown information in their tooltips.
• Removed the level requirement for the Craftsman's Monocle.
• The stun caused by engineering Bombs and Grenades is now considered an Incapacitate effect and uses the appropriate Incapacitate diminishing returns. Bomb and Grenades can now inflict damage to targets immune to Stun and Incapacitate effects.
• A new recipe has been added for Rocket Boots Xtreme Lite, a cloth version of the Rocket Boots Xtreme. This pattern drops from Mechano-Lord Capacitus.
• Rocket Boots Xtreme now have all their stat points allocated toward Attack Power, and will no longer have Stamina.
• Rocket Boots Xtreme and Rocket Boots Xtreme Lite will cause players to drop a PvP flag if used while carrying one. (Warsong Gulch, Eye of the Storm, and Zangarmarsh)

Fishing

• New Fishing Daily Quests! Visit the mysterious old man fishing at Silmyr Lake outside of Shattrath City to discover what treasures he has to offer.
• Find Fish now correctly tracks Schools of Tastyfish and Muddy Churning Waters.
• Feltail fishing nodes have been changed to Brackish Mixed Schools; they now produce mostly Golden Darters and some Feltail.
• Removed the level requirement from the expert fishing book, The Bass and You.

Herbalism

• Ancient Lichen now has a chance to drop a Fel Lotus where it used to drop a piece of random green jewelry.
• Black Lotus replaced by Fel Lotus in herbalism skinning tables for Outland creatures.
• Increased the chance that Felweed, Dreaming Glory, Ragveil, and Flame Caps will contain a Fel Lotus.
• Warp Splinter can now be skinned with Herbalism in heroic difficulty.

Jewelcrafting

• A new jewelcrafting recipe has been added to transform many green quality gems into a single random blue quality gem. This recipe is available from grandmaster jewelcrafting trainers.

Leatherworking

• Shadow Oil will now fit into Leatherworking Bags.

Mining

• Increased the skill up potential for most smelting recipes.

Quests

• New Daily Dungeon quests for both the heroic and non-heroic five-person Magister's Terrace dungeon at the Sunwell.
• Players can now turn in one of each battleground mark for an honor reward. The questgivers for this turn-in are the Horde Warbringer and the Alliance Brigadier General and can be found near the battlemasters in the capital cities.
• Dungeon and Group Quest Experience: The amount of experience awarded for dungeon and 5-person group quests in Outland has been increased in almost all cases.
• The daily quest Escape from Skettis has had its reward tuned down.
• The number of elite Shadowsworn Drakonid patrollers on the Ata'mal Terrace has been cut in half. Most of the remainder have had their patrol paths lengthened.
• Increased the slots on Old Blanchy's Feed Pouch to 8.
• The Thunderspike no longer sparkles for Alliance characters, nor does it show up on the mini-map when Find Treasure is in use.
• "Zapper Fuel" is now flagged as a Sunken Temple dungeon quest.

Dungeons and Raids

• All 25-player raid bosses have had their cash drops increased!
• All 25- player raid bosses that drop set tokens will now drop an additional token!
• Badges of Justice have been added to all raid bosses who did not previously have them!
• Players will no longer require an attunement quest to enter Hyjal.
• Players will no longer require an attunement quest to enter the Black Temple.
• Players who have completed the attunement quests for Black Temple and Hyjal will be granted the title of “Hand of A’dal”.
• You may now fight Prince Kael’thas and Lady Vashj without first killing all the other bosses in their respective dungeons.
• The Unstable Cloud and Frost Breath spells are now treated properly as a movement impairing spells.
• Non-corporeal Undead and Mechanical creatures are now susceptible to bleed effects.
• Elemental creatures are no longer explicitly immune to poison and disease effects. Elementals with nature school immunities will still be immune to nature-based poisons, however.
• Gems obtained through Heroic difficulty instances are no longer Unique-equipped.
• Loot dropped by Doomlord Kazzak and Doomwalker has been changed to Bind on Equip. In addition, the cash dropped by these bosses has been significantly increased.
• Scale of the Sands reputation will now be awarded in Hyjal at a much higher rate.

Caverns of Time: Heroic Black Morass

• Rift Keepers and Rift Lords now have reduced hit points.

Caverns of Time: Mount Hyjal

• The Vials of Eternity quest is no longer necessary for entry to Hyjal. This quest is still required for faction rings.
• Azgalor's Rain of Fire now affects a smaller area.

Caverns of Time: Old Hillsbrad

• The Human Illusion effect will now always be removed properly when a player leaves the instance.
• Durnholde Lookouts no longer spawn in the Heroic version of the instance. The placement of creatures around Durnholde Keep in Heroic mode is now identical to that of Normal mode.

Hellfire Citadel: Magtheridon’s Lair

• Many gameplay elements of the encounters in Magtheridon’s Lair have been changed to decrease their overall complexity and difficulty.

Karazhan

• Players will no longer need the Master’s Key to enter Karazhan. The gates to Karazhan will still require the Master’s Key to be unlocked.

Tempest Keep: The Eye

• The Vapor Clouds in the Kael'thas encounter are significantly easier to see.
• Void Reaver is now immune to Vindication again.

Tempest Keep: The Mechanar

• The Mechanar: It is no longer possible to gain an additional Badge of Justice by bringing Cache of the Legion keys obtained in other copies of the instance.

Zul’Aman

• Jan’alai will now only teleport players to him if they are too far away.

Items

• Players will now be able to purchase level 70 Superior quality PvP items from reputation vendors.
• Players will now be able to inspect other players via their chat link.
• Players may now inspect players of the opposing faction while they are not flagged for PvP.
• Avatar Regalia: The two-piece bonus from this set will now be consumed by Vampiric Embrace as intended.
• Bloody Brass Knuckles, Eerie Stable Lantern, Baelog's Shortbow, and Snakeskin Bag have been upgraded to Superior items.
• Blue Suede Shoes can now be disenchanted.
• Crystalforge Raiment: The two-piece set bonus will now work properly. Additionally, the four piece bonus will now only work on the next Holy Light cast, as intended.
• Cyclone Regalia: Trade skills will no longer consume the Energized effect.
• Darkmoon Card: Madness: The buffs from this item will no longer interrupt casting and channeling.
• Deadman's Hand: This item's effect now works while the victim is sitting. In addition, its effect is now properly considered a root for purposes of being dispelled or removed.
• Deathwing Brood Cloak: These cloaks are now bound on equip instead of bound on pickup.
• Druid Balance PvP Sets: The bonus movement speed for Bear, Cat, and Travel Form has been removed and replaced with a new bonus to Wrath and Starfire.
• Druid Restoration PvP Sets: The bonus movement speed for Bear, Cat, and Travel Form has been removed and replaced with a new bonus to Regrowth.
• Discombobulator Ray: This item will again not work on mounted players.
• Frostfire Regalia: The resistance bonus from this set now works with the Burning Crusade ranks of Mage Armor.
• Gladiator's Leather Gloves: This arena bonus will now properly school lock enemies when the damage from Deadly Throw causes them to stop channeling.
• The Gladiator’s Thunderfist 4 piece set bonus has been reduced from 70% to 50%.
• Gnomish Mind Control Cap: Victims of the Gnomish Mind Control Cap will no longer get Forbearance when the mind control is terminated due to Blessing of Protection.
• Gnomish Poultryizer: This item will again not work on mounted players.
• Goblin Rocket Launcher: Creatures will no longer gain health while affected by the Stun from this item.
• Heavy Netherweave Bandage: It is no longer possible to have two players bandage the same target simultaneously using this item.
• Netherweave Bandage: It is no longer possible to have two players bandage the same target simultaneously using this item.
• Idol of the Crescent Goddess: The mana discount on Regrowth has been increased.
• Idol of Feral Shadows: The bonus damage to Rip has been increased.
• Idol of the Raven Goddess: The bonus healing, critical strike rating, and spell critical strike rating from this item have been increased. In addition, it no longer sometimes fails to apply the healing bonus.
• Idol of the Unseen Moon: The cooldown added in a previous patch has been removed.
• Idol of Ursoc: The bonus damage to Lacerate has been increased and the tooltip clarified to indicate it applies to both initial and periodic damage.
• Idol of the White Stag: Duration increased.
• Items intended for Retribution Paladins have had their stats adjusted. Retribution Paladins should see an increase in dps as a result.
• Jade Pendant of Blasting: This item no longer increases physical damage dealt.
• Justicar Raiment: The 2 piece bonus will now always give the correct amount of bonus healing to the Judgement Light effect.
• Libram of Absolute Truth: The Holy Light mana discount has been increased.
• Libram of Divine Purpose: The bonus damage on Seal and Judgment of Righteousness has been increased.
• Libram of Mending: The mana regeneration buff has had its duration increased. The name of the buff granted by this item changed to Grace of the Naaru to avoid having the same name as the Light’s Grace talent.
• Libram of Righteous Power: The bonus damage for Crusader Strike has been increased.
• Libram of Souls Redeemed: The bonus for Flash of Light has been decreased and the bonus for Holy Light has been increased.
• Libram of Wracking: This item now increases the damage on Holy Wrath and Exorcism instead of decreasing their mana cost.
• Nether Vortex are no longer Bind on Pickup and can now be purchased from G’eras for 15 Badges of Justice!
• Masquerade Gown: The spirit bonus from this item will now properly trigger all benefits from the Tree of Life talent.
• Masterwork Stormhammer: The Chain Lightning cast by this item will no longer jump to secondary targets which are under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. i.e. Polymorph, Sap, etc.
• Mojo: A pvp-flagged player can no longer kiss Mojo and cause non-flagged players to become flagged.
• Moongraze Stag Tenderloin can now be consumed by hunter pets that eat meat.
• Noggenfogger Elixir: It is no longer possible using this item to keep the Old Hillsbrad human illusion outside of the instance.
• Paladin Healer Gladiator Sets: The set bonus changing Hammer of Justice cooldown has been changed to a set bonus increasing the amount healed by Holy Shock.
• Pendant of the Violet Eye: Paladin Judgment spells will again properly trigger this item.
• Players can now only carry 80 Conjured Manna Biscuits at a time.
• Primal Nether are no longer Bind on Pickup!
• PvP Relics: The bonus resilience from Idols, Librams, and Totems is no longer stackable by swapping between multiple relics.
• Resilience has been added to all Retribution Paladin PvP gear.
• Added Shattrath Flask of Pure Death and Shattrath Flask of Blinding Light to the reputation flask vendors in Shattrath.
• Shaman Elemental PvP Sets: The resistance on Lightning Bolt spell pushback has been reduced to 50%.
• Shaman PvP Boots: The pre-Burning Crusade bonus to increase Ghost Wolf speed no longer works for players over level 60.
• Shattrath Flasks now work inside the Sunwell Plateau raid instance.
• Skull of Gul’dan: This item now shares its cooldown with other similar trinkets.
• Steam Tonk Controller: This item can no longer trigger the Warrior talent Second Wind when it is driven out of range by the Warrior.
• The On Use effect has been properly changed to passive for the following items: Blue Overalls, Brantwood Sash, Firewalker Boots, Gloves of Kapelan, Hellion Boots, Hibernal Gloves, Hibernal Pants, Kimbra Boots, Mistscape Gloves, Nightsky Trousers, Sacred Burial Trousers, Turquoise Sash, and Woolen Boots, Spinesever.
• Thunderstrike: The Chain Lightning cast by this item will no longer jump to secondary targets which are under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. i.e. Polymorph, Sap, etc.
• Tome of the Lightbringer: The block value and buff duration have been increased.
• Totem of the Pulsing Earth: The mana discount for Lightning Bolt has been increased slightly.
• Vengeful Gladiator’s Waraxe: The weapon delay has been reduced.
• Weightstones and Sharpening Stones: The bonus damage from these temporary enchantments now works while shapeshifted.
• Winterfall Firewater: The tooltip no longer specifies only melee attack power.

User Interface

• The Interface Options screen has been completely redesigned. AddOns that interact with the Interface Options screen will need to be updated.
• Combat Log Improvements
• New tabs are available for sorting combat messages.
• ctrl-right clicking functionality has been added for individual information sorting
• Colors may now be assigned for friends and enemies
• The WoWCombatLog.txt file format has been changed to make it easier for programs to read.
• The ability to chat-link player spells and talents.
• Cast sequences work with slot numbers again.
• GM messages now appear with a Blizzard icon near their name.
• You can now declare war on a faction in the reputation UI while you are in combat.
• Spell haste and Armor Penetration will now display on the character sheet. (Armor Penetration displays in the hit rating section). Spell Penetration now displays under the spell hit section.
• Weapon enchants are now shown at the character selection screen.
• The friends list now has a notes field per friend. Click on the note icon to add a note for a particular friend.
• There is now a UI option to display free bag space. When turned on, your backpack will display the total number of free spaces available in all your bags.
• You can now link quests into the chat log by Shift-Clicking on the quest name in the quest log.
• Merchants now display how many pages of merchandise they sell (Page 1 of 2).

Guild Bank Changes

• Ranks can now be set to allow withdraw of funds or allow repair with funds or both.
• When purchasing a bank tab, it takes money out of the guild bank before it takes your personal money. This is logged as well.
• Each Tab now has an info pane. This pane can be used for requests or for rules about the tab or anything at all really.
• When looting Bind on Pickup items, the confirmation dialogue now lists the name of the item in the dialogue. You can now verify that you are picking up the correct bind on pickup item.
• Bind on Pickup items that only you can pick up (Heroic Badges for instance) will no longer bring up a confirmation dialogue.
• Players can now opt out of looting for group loot, round robin and need before greed looting styles. If a player turns this on, they will not get a looting turn in the loot cycle. This can be turned on from the right-click menu on your own portrait.
• In Master Loot mode, all players in the group will see sparkles on corpses that have loot above the master loot threshold. This lets everyone see what the master loot items are, though they cannot interact with them. Only the master looter can loot those items still.
• Searching for an item in the tradeskill search box should now hide empty categories.
• The names over the heads of nearby players who are on your friends list will appear in a different color now so you can tell when they are nearby.
• Stacked items for sale at the auction house now display the per unit price and per unit buyout price in the item mouseover.
• The profession UI search field has been improved and now allows for searching of more types of things. For instance you can search for items by socket color, by effect ("Critical Strike" for instance) or search gems by their effect ("Strength" for instance). In addition, the searching of items by level has been made more intuitive. You can now search for items by level with "15-20" to search for items that you can make that have a minimum level required of 15 to 20.
• The Tooltip for player Dodge/Block/Parry in the character sheet has been changed slightly.
• Optimized particle system rendering for improved frame rates.
• The casting bar will now display properly when casting Blizzard (mage) or Rain of Fire (warlock) with spell haste.
• For additional notes on Lua and XML changes please visit the UI & Macros Forum.

World Environment

• Alterac Valley, Arathi Basin, Warsong Gulch, Blade’s Edge Arena, Lordaeron Arena, and Nagrand Arena: Players who fall below the world in these environments will now die instead of being stuck.
• Creature versions of Intimidating Shout have been changed to Frightening Shout, and the primary target of the ability is now feared instead of stunned.
• Critters: Ambient level 1 creatures will no longer be picked as subsequent targets by chaining spells and abilities.
• Doomwalker: This creature will no longer sometimes cause a player’s Darkmoon Card: Vengeance to trigger and put the player in combat with the Doomwalker.
• Elites in Blade’s Edge Plateau Regions: These creatures now have an increased chance to drop rare depleted items.
• Eye of Culuthas and Hound of Culuthas now drop grey loot.
• Goreclaw the Ravenous can now be skinned.
• Interacting with objects (chests, mining nodes, herbs) should no longer aggro neutral creatures.
• Monstrous Kaliri have learned how to chase players going straight up.
• Shardtooth Mauler: This creature now drops meat like other bears.
• Outland Rare Spawn
• The following creatures have had their hit points and damage significantly reduced: Collidus the Warp-Watcher, Fulgorge, Hemathion, Kraator, Marticar, Morcrush, and Nuramoc
• The Ratchet bank now has access to the Guild Vault.
• A mailbox has been added to the inn in Darnassus.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an error that was causing many auctions to never complete due to the item no longer being on the auction house.
• Splintertree Raiders will now respawn with Torek if Duriel Moonfire and her guards are killed while the Raiders are still alive.
• Female Draenei can no longer become stuck under a root in the tunnels leading to Blackfathom Deeps, Ashenvale.
• The quest description text for "The Corpulent One" no longer refers to it being a group quest.
• Saber/Tiger Mounts will now make footprints when walking backwards in snow.
• Ogri'la Peacekeeper's weapons have been scaled to a size more appropriate for keeping the peace.
• Unplugging speakers/headphones during the opening cinematic will no longer freeze the cinematic until canceled.
• Pets are now able to properly attack mobs near the walls on the ramps in Zul'Aman, Bear Wing.
• The flag on the battle map in Eye of the Storm will no longer show up as Horde controlled even if an alliance player has picked it up.
• Channeling spells will no longer continue to show the channeling bar after zoning into arena battlegrounds.
• Blood Elf corpses now properly have loot in Alterac Valley battlegrounds.
• Snake Trap will no longer affect non-combat flagged players.
• Leaving a 2v2 arena team and creating a new 2v2 team while on a 3v3 arena team will no longer result in incorrect rosters listed for each team.
• Joining a second arena match before a previous arena has closed will no longer result in personal rating not updating correctly.
• Attempting to promote an arena team member to Team Captain while that member is offline will no longer result in a "Player not found" error.
• Disbanding an arena team while inside an arena battle will no longer cause the arena UI to become corrupted until logout.
• The Arena Team Petition Window will now automatically close when the Arena Captain is out of range or offline.
• Switching arena teams after playing a game will no longer cause the PvP tab to incorrectly display your old team's rating.
• There is now a chat message given after attaining a new title.
  Spells that require targeting circles will now be castable on textures that would previously disallow their use.
• Alterac Valley quests will now properly show a golden ! or blue ? for players above level 65.
• Nazan in Hellfire Citadel: Nazan will no longer sometimes not land on the ground until after Vazruden the Herald is killed or Nazan is heavily damaged.
• Archimonde's Grip of the Legion will no longer target pets.
• It is no longer possible to be saved to a Heroic instance while not meeting the requirements to get into it.
• There is no longer an area in Serpentine Cavern where using Field Repair Bot 74A will cause it to fall through the ground.
• There is no longer an area in Coilfang Steamvaults where ground targeting AOE effects cannot be cast.
• The proc from Black Bow of the Betrayer will no longer break crowd control effects such as Scatter Shot.
• Vengeful Gladiator's Mooncloth Hood and Vengeful Gladiator's Satin Hood will now display Troll Tusks.
• Thori'dal, the Stars' Fury will now display its bow animations correctly.
• The Legion Ring boundary markers no longer occasionally disappear.
• Monthly quests will now properly reset at midnight server time.
• Fixed an area in Netherwing Fields in Shadowmoon Valley where players on flying mounts could be dismounted and were unable to mount.
• It is no longer possible for players to use guild banks in opposing faction cities.
• The Clockwork Rocket Bot can no longer be buffed.
• Players with moderator status in custom channels will now properly lose moderator status when kicked by the channel owner.
• Sending mail to a non-existent character will now result in players getting the message, “Cannot find mail recipient”.
• Zeppelin Master Zapetta will no longer become confused about whether the zeppelin in Orgrimmar is arriving or leaving.