How to kill annoying Goldspammers!

Izriul from Laughing Skull made an interesting post on the official forum, how to kill Gold Sellers with the Shaman Fire Nova Totems (see the original post here). The basic idea is, that totems become neutral for a splitsecond, once their owner logs off just before they disappear. If you time the Fire Nova Explosion for the brief periods where the totem will be neutral it will deal damage to allied players.

Testing it I found out that it works best for me to type /camp, but not to hit enter until yata (yet another totem addon) shows 1.6 seconds remaining. Then I hit enter and will be logged out a few miliseconds later, leaving my neutral totems on the ground. Depending on your latency it should work roughly the same for you.

I put up a short demonstration video (5mb) for you:

Season 4 Arena Sets revealed.

Blizzard turned on the Arena Season 4 vendors on the Test Realms. World of Raids has a list of all Sets here.

The Enhancement Shaman Set is just like T6 a failure in itemization stats. We have again useless 20 mp/5 on our set, the same mistake Blizzard did on T6. I have been starting to wonder if the devs, after all our "adjustments", still know what is good for our class and what is not.

But with a 2200 rating requirement for the shoulders it is out of reach of most Enhancement Shamans anyhow.

Anyway here it is:

Enhancement Season 4 Arena Set

New honor gear

  • bracer: 1575 personal rating requirement
  • boots: 1700 personal rating requirement
  • ring: 1650 personal rating requirement

It used to be a nice way to get some decent bracer, boot, belt, ring and neck for my alts by honor. I kind of dislike to be forced to do the totally imbalanced Arena jsut to get rewards for my hard earned honor, so why bother at all with BG's?

Dual-wielding Dragonstrike

With Patch 2.4.2 the crafter only blacksmith weapons like Dragonstrike, Wicked Edge of the Planes and Blazefury become dual wieldable. They will lose their current unique and mainhand only status.

While this might be nice for players pre-Hyjal, blacksmithing is still not an option for Rogues/Shamans who are beyond Tempest Keep. It is quite ironic that most professions got some high end crafter only items with the introduction of Sunwell Plateau with the exception of Weaponsmiths.

Blacksmithing

The most exciting innovation in blacksmithing will be the ability for blacksmith players to make epic quality items that only they can wield. A master swordsmith will be able to forge a special sword for him(or her)self, and a suit of epic armor awaits the master armorsmith. The smith will be able to upgrade these special items, so they will always be a solid item for the smith to wear or wield no matter what stage of the game he or she is in. To allow everyone to take advantage of this, blacksmith specialists will be allowed to change their focus in The Burning Crusade.

Excerpt taken from the official Homepage.

With the introduction of Hyjal and Black Temple 1 year ago these solid choices for a Player have become outdated by far. I’d like to see a new upgrades to these Weapons that include Hearts of Darkness and in the latest Version Sunmotes to craft. At least the dual wielding of crafter weapons is nice for beginner Shamans.

Crafter only Weapons Dual Wieldable in 2.4.2 taken from MMO-Champion.com

Edit:

The procs do apparently stack and not refresh each other, including Dragon Spine Trophy. Found this picture here:

Dual Dragonstrike & Dragonspine Trophy

NOTE: The stacking haste buffs did not make it into Patch 2.4. Thus I am no longer sure if it is worth it to dual wield 2 outdated weapons over the badge fist weapons. The Dragonstrike was a nice alternative in TK, but with the introduction of Mount Hyjal, Black Temple and especially Sunwell Plateau they have been way outdated.

Patch 2.4 goes live.

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

The latest patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/

The latest test realm patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html

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.

How to earn Gold in World of Warcraft!

Generally speaking there are plenty of ways to earn cash, you just have to find the one that fits you best. I will try to show you a couple of ways that worked for me and some advice that I learnt the hard way.

Grinding:

The most obvoius way is all about killing mobs and hope for good drops. Personally I prefer to grind mobs that serve multiple purposes – like giving reputation, dropping special items in addition to normal drops, etc. For example the mobs on the Blades Edge Plateau's Etherum Prison Keys (if you completed the quest), Netherweave Cloth, Greens, Blues, Epics, depleted Items, Motes of Mana, Apexis Crystals, … there are plenty of mobs and fast to kill.

Of course there is also grinding by gathering. Just check AH, which resources are low Mountain Silversage, Terocone, Netherbloom, Nightmare Vine, Adamantite Ore usually sell very high on my realm. Much higher than the Potions and Elixirs you can make of it.

The best farming time seems to be late night and early morning. If someone else is on your route you can easily swap the direction of your route, change the zone or resource you are gathering.

The more professions you have access to via alternate characters or friends the more you can make of the drops you find. For example I have swift flying on a gathering char to get to minerals and herbs as fast as I can. The characters that crawl through instances have enchanting. The Jewelcrafter (prospecting), Tailor, Blacksmith, Engineer, Alchemist do not need to be high level characters since you need only level 50 to get 300+ max skill in these profession and it is enough to max the profit you can do with these professions.

With the exemption of herbs raw materials usually sell for less than the products you can craft from them. Just look at a stack of Runecloth. It sells on this Realm for 2.5g/20, but if you create Runecloth Belts and disenchant them you get 2-5 Dream Dust (3-7g), 1-2 (6.75-13.50) Lesser Eternal Essence or 1 Small Brilliant Shard (9.95g).

Awesome profit comes for example from:

Prospecting: 

Prospecting Ores is more gambling than a secure way to gain cash. Personally I like the excitement that comes with it and you can have great luck. Here is a nice list of prospecting percentages and which ores to expect.

Auction House:

So how do we gain the most out of the items we grinded? I suggest that you have a basic cache of money that will finance your daily expenses. This way you do not rely on the cash you get from the auctions and do not have to undercut the lowest price and you will gain a steady income after a while.

Even if you are not the cheapest seller, you will still sell plenty of auctions, after the cheaper ones are out, or when you manage to list your auctioned items at the first pages. Even after 2.3 it is still possible to gain money this way, since not all players sort the auctions after prize. There are stilll a few tricks. It seems that the auctions are sorted by the min bid price and not the buy out. If you sell your item for 1.99 bid and 2.50 buy out and someone else for 2.00 and 2.25 buy out your auctions will be listed as cheaper and most players use the buyout function anyhow.

On my Realm you can get Arcane Dust for example as low as 1g per unit and I still manage to sell mine for 2.75 bid 2.85 buy out.  do that by listing masses of auctions. Since I can't compete with single sales or with whole stacks I specialized on stacks of 4 Arcane Dusts. Most people do not need 20 Arcane Dusts so they rather buy 4 for 10g than 20 for 20g. You will be listed after the single stacks but in front of the big cheap stacks.

sales.jpg

From my experience Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays seem to be the best days and 17:00-20:00 and 23:00-0:30 the best sale times. These are the time frames where your items should be at the first pageof the auction house. If you use this smart you can sell the same items as other sellers with a significantly higher price. I also noticed that you should always include a buyout with a little higher price, this will encourage last minute buy out to "save" some money.

Dominating the Market:

Basically you buy out all products below a certain price and resale them for more. If you decide to try that you have to choose the procduct careful. There should not be too many auctions of the item, it should not be too easy to get and the deposit price should be low. If you try to dominate a large market you will need a lot of money as reserve.

It also helps to have a few friends at your side while trying this. Many players look at the auction before they place their own items and many different characters with the same high prices will raise the overall prices. 

For example I tried to dominate the market with Arcane Dusts as it seemed to be a stable market and even if I'd have failed I would not have lost a lot of gold, due to stable prices. I had 9500g when I started to buy all Arcane Dusts that were cheaper than 2.75g each and put it mine up for for 2.75/2.85. People started to dump all their reserves on ah only slightly cheaper than mine. I spent around 8k gold before the first of my auctions started to sell, this nearly killed me. The income was much lower than the amount of dusts that were dumped on the market. But with the Tipps I gave above I was able to make quite some profits there.

Items:

Which Item sare good for sale? It is really hard to generalize this for all realms, but from my experience you gain a fortune with mats that others need to level their professions. For Enchanting for Example there is no way around Vision Dust, Dream Dust, Illusion Dust, Eternal Essence. Usually You do not sell a lot of these, especially if You sell them expensive. But players that level up their professions need those in large masses and are willing to pay a steep price.

Addons: 

Auctioneer is an easy to use tool to put up large masses of auctions. It saves the prices you are using for your auctions, stack sizes and shows an overview of competition ont he items you are trying to sell.

auctioneer.jpg

Auctioneer includes Btm-scan, a tool that shows auctions which promise a certain amount of profit. The longer you use the tool, the better results it will provide.

Large amount of auctions mean a large amount of mails. A great help dealing with masses of mails is Bulkmail2.

bulkmail.jpg

Possessions is an addon, that lists items in inventory, bank and mail for all characters on the account.

possessions_a.jpgpossessions_b.jpg

I will be updating this post regularly, feel free to ask questions.

New Mounts introduced in PTR Patch 2.3

Here are Screenshots of the New Mounts that are introduced with the new PTR Patch 2.3. The Engineer Flying Mount, Hippogryph Cenarion Mount and the most awesome looking Bear Mount from Zul'Aman:

engineering_mount.jpghippogrypgh_mount.jpgbear_mount.jpg

The Bear Mount is the coolest Mount ingame, it really looks awesome. Also the enigneering Mount, which will not backfire as the other engineering gadgets, looks really nice.

No way though I will spend 2000g for the Hippogryph Mount, the most ugly thing I have ever seen.Yikes.

More Gyrocopter pictures:

gyrocopter.jpgmountani1.gifmountani2.gifwowscrnshot_101307_233942.jpgwowscrnshot_101307_233931.jpg

And here is the recipe:

Flying Machine
8 sec cast

Tools: Arclight Spanner, Blacksmith Hammer
Reagents: Adamantite Frame (2), Fel Iron Bar (30), Handful of Fel Iron Bolts (8), Star Wood (8), Fel Iron Toolbox, Elemental Seaforium Charge (4)
Description: An amazing machine that allows the Engineer to fly in Outland.

The Epic Version can be found in the Link above, but there are still unknown Reagents.

World of Warcraft Patch Notes – PTR 2.3

Taken from the official World of Warcraft website here are the latest patch notes for Patch 2.3, introducing Zul'man, Guild Banks, Shaman Review, new Badge of Justice (heroic Badges) rewards and much more. Read on here:

Latest Patch Notes Disclaimer: The test realm patch notes only apply to features that exist on the public test realms. We provide these patch notes to players who wish to know what features and changes exist in the test environment in order to more effectively test these features.

To learn more about the Public Test Realm, visit our Test Realm Page.

World of Warcraft PTR Patch 2.3.0

The latest patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/

Zul'Aman

    Zul'Aman is a 10-player, level 70 outdoor instance located in the Ghostlands. Players will be able to confront six new bosses including the Forest Troll Warlord Zul'jin.

Guild Banks Introduced

    The Guild Bank is a shared repository for an entire guild and will be accessible through new NPC's called guild bankers. The Guild Bank will allow players with the appropriate permissions to store items and money for use by the rest of the guild. Permissions to withdraw and deposit money and items are controlled by the guild leader through the guild controls menu. The Guild Bank is divided up into separate tabs so that the guild leader may restrict access or group items into distinct categories.

  • Up to 6 purchasable tabs each containing 98 item slots
  • Permissions to view/deposit/withdraw per tab
  • You may use your Guild Bank withdraw limits to pay for item repairs (now enabled on all merchants)
  • Transaction logs of the last 50 actions in the bank viewable on a per tab basis

General

  • Experience: The amount of experience needed to gain a level has been decreased between levels 20 and 60. In addition, the amount of experience granted by quests has been increased between levels 30 and 60.
  • Expertise: We have added a new stat and associated rating called expertise and expertise rating. Expertise rating converts to expertise at the same rate that weapon skill rating formerly converted at. Each point of expertise reduces the chance for your attacks to be dodged or parried by 0.25%.
  • Healing reduction effects will now affect all health drain spells and abilities (e.g. Mortal Strike will reduce health gained from Drain Life).
  • Healing: Almost all items and enchantments that provide bonus healing now also provide a smaller number (approximately 1/3) of bonus spell damage. There are a few items and enchantments where this was not possible, such as random-stat items and Zul'Gurub enchantments, but this is now the case on virtually all other items.
  • On Kill Effects: Items and abilities that trigger on killing an enemy will no longer trigger on using an ability that kills your pet.
  • Weapon Skill: All items and abilities that granted weapon skill have been changed. In most cases, they were converted to expertise or expertise rating. Ranged attacks do not benefit from expertise, so ranged weapon skill has generally been replaced by critical strike bonuses or hit bonuses. In a few cases, talents have been changed to other effects to avoid granting players excessive amounts of expertise.
  • A new flight path has been added to the Rebel Camp in northern Stranglethorn Vale.
  • Flying units can see ground units and vice versa at any altitude.
  • Players no longer gain the moving AOE radius bonus if they are jumping.
  • Client spell cast requests are now sent to the server even if your player is already casting another spell. This eliminates the need for /stopcasting in macros to compensate for latency.
  • Vendor Discounts: All vendors with an associate faction now give discounts at all levels above neutral.
    • Friendly: 5% discount
    • Honored: 10% discount
    • Revered: 15% discount
    • Exalted: 20% discount
    • Quest givers who have available daily quests will have a blue exclamation point instead of a yellow one.
  • Pets will try to get behind their targets when engaging in melee combat.
  • Racial Abilities
    • Dwarf: Gun Specialization now increases chance to critically hit with Guns by 1% rather than increasing weapon skill.
    • Gnome: Escape Artist cooldown increased to 1 min, 45 sec.
    • Troll: Bow and Thrown Specialization now increases chance to critically hit with those weapons by 1% rather than increasing weapon skill.

PvP

  • Battlegrounds
    • Daily quests have been added targeting a random battleground for that day. Look for Alliance Brigadier Generals and Horde Warbringers near your faction's battlemasters in all major capitals.
    • Dropping the Flag in a battleground will now result in a debuff that will not allow you to pick up the flag again for 3 seconds.
    • Druids who are shapeshifted when they receive the Restoration buff from battlegrounds will now correctly regenerate mana.
    • Players will now be able to cast spells for free in the Battleground before it begins.
    • Players will now be able to cast spells for free for a few seconds after being resurrected by a Spirit Guide in the Battleground.
    • Alterac Valley
      • Additional Warmasters no longer report for duty upon destroying an enemy tower. However, destroying an enemy tower still eliminates the associated opposing Warmaster.
      • All Warmasters are linked to each other and their respective Generals and can no longer be pulled individually.
      • Honor from capturing towers has been increased.
      • All Commanders and Lieutenants have left Alterac Valley in search for other battle opportunities.
      • Players will no longer be sent to their starting tunnels on death unless that team controls no graveyards in the battleground.
      • Many NPCs in Stormpike and Frostwolf holds are no longer elite
      • Bonus Honor in Alterac Valley is now only awarded during the battle for destroying enemy towers and slaying the enemy Captain. Upon conclusion of the battle, bonus honor is also awarded for intact towers, a surviving Captain, and for victory in the battle. The total bonus honor awarded should be similar to the previous total.
      • The Horde and Alliance now have a limited number of reinforcements available in the battle for Alterac Valley. The number of reinforcements available is reduced upon player death, loss of towers, and death of Captain Galvangar or Balinda Stonehearth. In addition, all available reinforcements are lost upon the death of General Drek'Thar or Vanndar Stormpike. If a team is reduced to zero reinforcements, the opposing team wins the battle.
      • Towers and Graveyards in Alterac Valley are now captured in 4 minutes (down from 5).
    • Eye of the Storm
      • The points awarded from capturing the flag in Eye of the Storm is now increase based on the number of bases the capturing team owns.
    • Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, Eye of the Storm
      • Additional bonus honor is now awarded upon conclusion of the battle.

Druids

  • Barkskin: It is no longer possible to cast this spell while Cycloned.
  • Cure Poison and Abolish Poison are now usable in Tree of Life Form.
  • Cure Poison, Abolish Poison and Remove Curse range increased to 40 yards.
  • Entangling Roots: It is no longer possible for multiple Druids to have Entangling Roots on the same target. In addition, it will now always be removed correctly if multiple Druids overwrite each other's Entangling Roots.
  • Feral Attack Power: Items that granted bonus attack power in Cat, Bear, Dire Bear, and Moonkin forms have been re-evaluated. In almost all cases, the attack power on the item has been increased. This change corrects an issue where feral weapon damage was not keeping up with other classes in its rate of increase.
  • Force of Nature: This ability will no longer automatically break stealth on victims in its casting area. Nearby stealthed characters may still be attacked if they are too close to the summoned Treants.
  • Heart of the Wild: This talent no longer provides 4/8/12/16/20% bonus Strength in Cat Form. Instead it provides 2/4/6/8/10% bonus attack power.
  • Hibernate: This spell will now always be removed correctly if multiple Druids overwrite each other's Hibernate.
  • Intensity (Restoration) increased to 10/20/30% mana regeneration.
  • Primal Fury: This talent will now be learned correctly even if purchased while the Druid is dead.
  • Rebirth cooldown reduced to 20 minutes, from 30 minutes.
  • Remove Curse is now usable in Moonkin Form.
  • Shapeshifting Spells: Some of these spells were causing additional unintended threat. That additional unintended threat has been removed.
  • Soothe Animal: This spell now properly consumes Nature's Swiftness.
  • Tranquility now gains additional benefit from spell damage and healing bonuses.

Hunters

  • Arcane Shot (Ranks 6 and above) now dispel 1 Magic effect in addition to their normal damage.
  • Explosive Trap: The initial damage dealt by this trap is now also increased by 10% of your ranged attack power.
  • Immolation Trap: The total damage dealt by this trap is now also increased by 10% of your ranged attack power.
  • Misdirection: This spell will now always be removed correctly if multiple Hunters overwrite each other's Misdirection.
  • Readiness: This talent now finishes the cooldown on Kill Command.
  • Serpent Sting, Immolation Trap and Explosive Trap all gain additional damage based on ranged attack power.
  • Serpent Sting: The total damage dealt by this sting is now also increased by 10% of your ranged attack power.
  • Steady Shot: Tooltip clarified to indicate base weapon damage is used in the damage calculation.
  • Trueshot Aura (Marksmanship) no longer costs mana to cast and will last until cancelled.
  • Wyvern Sting (Survival) is now instant cast and has a maximum duration of 10 seconds in PvP.

Mages

  • Arcane Intellect and Arcane Brilliance mana costs reduced.
  • Arcane Meditation (Arcane) increased to 10/20/30% mana regeneration.
  • Detect Magic removed. All players may now see their target's beneficial effects at all times.
  • Evocation now regenerates 15% of total mana every 2 seconds rather than increase Spirit based regeneration.
  • Fire Ward and Frost Ward now gain additional benefit from spell damage bonuses. Base absorb values of ranks 5 and 6 have been reduced.
  • Hypothermia duration increased to 45 sec.
  • Ice Barrier now gains additional benefit from spell damage bonuses. Base absorb values of ranks 5 and 6 have been reduced.
  • Improved Fireball: The reduction in damage coefficient caused by this talent has been removed.
  • Improved Frostbolt: The reduction in damage coefficient caused by this talent has been removed.
  • Polymorph: It is no longer possible to polymorph a player and have that player remain mounted. In addition, it will now always be removed correctly if multiple Mages overwrite each other's Polymorph.
  • Portal Spells: Portal spells to capital cities can no longer be cast in battlegrounds.
  • Remove Curse range increased to 40 yards.
  • (NEW SPELL) Ritual of Refreshment available on trainers at level 70.

Paladins

  • Blessing of Light: Lower ranks of Flash of Light and Holy Light are now properly penalized when used with this Blessing.
  • Cleanse and Purify range increased to 40 yards.
  • Crusader Strike (Retribution) cooldown reduced from 10 to 6 seconds.
  • Exorcism mana cost reduced.
  • Hammer of Wrath mana cost reduced.
  • Holy Wrath mana cost reduced.
  • Improved Seal of the Crusader (Retribution) benefits folded into the base spell. This talent now gives the benefits of the Sanctified Crusader talent instead.
  • Judgement of Light: The combat log will now show the mana gained from rank 5 of this ability as Judgement of Light instead of Seal of Light.
  • Pursuit of Justice (Retribution) is now 3 ranks and increases movement speed by 5/10/15% and also reduces the chance you'll be hit by spells by 1/2/3%.
  • Sanctified Crusader (Retribution) renamed Sanctified Seals, which now increases your chance to critically hit with all spells and melee attacks by 1/2/3% and reduces the chance your Seals will be dispelled by 33/66/100%.
  • Vengeance (Retribution) duration increased from 15 to 30 seconds.
  • Vindication (Retribution) frequency and duration increased and now reduces all attributes by 5/10/15%, not just Strength and Agility.
  • Weapon Expertise (Protection) renamed Combat Expertise, now increases expertise by 1/2/3/4/5 and total Stamina by 2/4/6/8/10%.

Priests

  • Chastise (NEW) is now available to Dwarf and Draenei priests at level 20. Chastise causes Holy damage and incapacitates the target for 2 seconds.
  • Circle of Healing: The base amount of healing from this spell has been reduced along with increasing the bonus it receives from bonus healing effects. Characters with more than 1338 healing will see their Circle of Healing heal for more than previous patches. Characters with less than 1338 healing will see their Circle of Healing heal for less.
  • Cure Disease and Abolish Disease range increased to 40 yards.
  • Divine Spirit: It is no longer possible for a target to simultaneously have Divine Spirit rank 5 and Prayer of Spirit Rank 1 icons showing at the same time.
  • Elune's Grace (Night Elf) effect changed to reduce chance to be hit by melee and ranged attacks by 20% for 15 seconds. There is now only 1 rank of the spell.
  • Fear Ward is now available to all priests at level 20. Duration reduced to 3 minutes, cooldown increased to 3 minutes.
  • Fixed a bug where the global cooldown was triggered when shifting out of Shadowform.
  • Holy Fire: The tooltip on rank 4 has been adjusted.
  • Inner Focus: Rank 4 will now properly affect Lightwell.
  • Inner Focus: This effect is now properly consumed by casting Mind Soothe.
  • Meditation (Discipline) increased to 10/20/30% mana regeneration.
  • Pain Suppression (Discipline Talent) is now usable on friendly targets, instantly reduces the target's threat by 5%, reduces damage taken by 40% and its cooldown has been reduced to 2 minutes.
  • Prayer of Healing, Circle of Healing and Holy Nova (healing effect) now gain additional benefit from spell damage and healing bonuses.
  • Power Word: Fortitude, Divine Spirit, Prayer of Fortitude and Prayer of Spirit mana costs reduced.
  • Power Word: Shield now gains additional benefit from spell damage and healing bonuses. Base absorb values of ranks 10, 11 and 12 have been reduced.
  • Shackle Undead: This spell will now always be removed correctly if multiple Priests overwrite each other's Shackle Undead.
  • Shadow Word: Death: Resilience no longer reduces the backlash damage from this spell.
  • Starshards (Night Elf) is no longer channeled, costs 0 mana, is now a Magic effect, lasts 15 seconds, causes damage every 3 seconds and has a 30 second cooldown.

Rogues

  • All poisons will now enchant the weapon for 1 hour, increased from 30 minutes
  • Blind is now a physical (no longer a poison) attack. Reagent requirement removed. Now shares the same diminish category as Cyclone and is now diminished in PvE as well as PvP.
  • Fleet Footed (Assassination) now increases movement speed by 8/15%.
  • Kick: Interrupting a channeled spell with this ability will now always properly prevent casting spells from the same spell school for 5 sec.
  • Precision: This talent now also applies to ranged weapons.
  • Remorseless Attacks: This talent can no longer be triggered by the death of a rogue's target dummy or other pet.
  • Riposte is now subject to diminishing returns in PvP.
  • Rogue's Deadly Throw missile speed increased significantly and snare duration increased slightly.
  • Ruthlessness now only affects melee finishing moves. It no longer works with Deadly Throw.
  • Shadowstep (Subtlety) can now be used at any time, not only while stealthed. Threat caused by next Ambush, Garrote or Backstab is reduced by 50%. Cooldown increased to 40 seconds.

Shaman

  • Chain Heal: The tooltips on tanks 1-3 have been adjusted.
  • Chain Lightning cast time reduced to 2.0 (from 2.5), mana costs reduced, benefit from spell damage reduced appropriately.
  • Cure Poison and Cure Disease range increased to 40 yards.
  • Earth Shield: This spell will now always be removed correctly if multiple Shaman overwrite each other's Earth Shield.
  • Earth Shock: Interrupting a channeled spell with this spell will now always properly prevent casting spells from the same spell school for 2 sec.
  • Elemental Focus (Elemental) now reduces the mana cost of the next 2 damage spells by 40%.
  • Frost Shock is no longer subject to diminishing returns.
  • Grounding Totem: This totem is now destroyed upon redirecting any spell to itself.
  • Lightning Bolt cast time reduced to 2.5 (from 3.0 where applicable), mana costs reduced, benefit from spell damage reduced appropriately.
  • Lightning Mastery (Elemental) cast time reduction reduced to .1/.2/.3/.4/.5 seconds.
  • Lightning Overload (Elemental) now has a 4/8/12/16/20% chance to occur and the additional spell causes half damage and no additional threat.
  • Mana Spring Totem effect increased.
  • Mental Quickness (Enhancement) now also increases spell damage and healing equal to 10/20/30% of your attack power.
  • Two-Handed Axes and Two-Handed Maces are now trainable by all Shaman at the appropriate weapon masters. The Enhancement talent has been replaced by Shamanistic Focus.
  • Shamanistic Focus (New Enhancement Talent): After landing a melee critical strike, you enter a Focused state. The Focused state reduces the mana cost of your next Shock spell by 60%.
  • Shamanistic Rage (Enhancement) now also reduces all damage taken by 30% for the duration.
  • Spirit Weapons (Enhancement) threat reduction increased to 30% from 15%.
  • Rockbiter Weapon: For ranks 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 the increased damage resulting from this enchantment has been reduced slightly to match the intended numbers given in the tooltip. Ranks 1, 2, 3, and 9 are unchanged.
  • Water Shield: This spell no longer costs any mana to cast and its duration has been shortened. At the end of its duration, it now grants mana for any remaining globes. In addition, the mana granted per globe has been substantially increased.
  • Windfury Weapon: This enchantment can no longer be triggered while you are disarmed.

Warlock

  • Banish can no longer be cast on targets tapped by other players or groups.
  • Conflagrate: The Immolate debuff will now always be removed correctly when this spell is cast.
  • Drain Life and Siphon Life now reduce the amount healed when the warlock is affected by healing reducing effects (e.g. Mortal Strike, Wounding Poison).
  • Hellfire: This spell will no longer cause enemy spells to increase casting time or reduce channel time. It will also no longer prevent flag captures in Battlegrounds.
  • Nether Protection (Destruction) now has a new, more distinct visual effect.
  • Ritual of Souls now takes significantly less time to cast and complete.
  • Seed of Corruption detonation will now obey line of sight.
  • Shadow Embrace: This talent's effect can no longer trigger other effects.
  • Shadow Ward: This spell now gains additional benefit from spell damage bonuses. Base absorb value of rank 4 has been reduced.
  • Soul Siphon (Affliction) now increases damage by 2/4% and no longer affects Drain Mana.

Warrior

  • Charge will work more often when targets are up against unpathable areas like walls and poles.
  • Defiance (Protection) now also grants 2/4/6 weapon expertise.
  • Devastate (Protection) now combines the effects of Sunder Armor into its effect. It is also now affected by all talents and items that affect Sunder Armor.
  • Disarm is now subject to diminishing returns in PvP.
  • Improved Berserker Stance (Fury) now also reduces all threat caused while in Berserker Stance by 2/4/6/8/10%
  • Improved Intercept and Weapon Mastery have swapped locations in the talent trees.
  • Intervene will no longer place you in combat.
  • Hamstring now has a 10 second duration when used on PvP targets.
  • Mace Specialization (Arms) now has a reduced chance to occur but generates 7 rage instead of 6.
  • Pummel: Interrupting a channeled spell with this ability will now always properly prevent casting spells from the same spell school for 4 sec.
  • Shield Bash: Interrupting a channeled spell with this ability will now always properly prevent casting spells from the same spell school for 6 sec.
  • Shield Slam (Protection) now always tries to dispel one Magic effect on the target.
  • Sweeping Strikes and Deathwish have swapped locations in the talent trees.
  • Sweeping Strikes (Fury) now lasts 10 seconds and affects your next 10 swings.
  • Tactical Mastery: This talent also now grants greatly increased threat from Mortal Strike and Bloodthirst when in Defensive Stance.
  • Weapon Mastery (Arms) now reduces duration of Disarm effects against you by 25/50% rather than giving you a 50% chance to avoid or full immunity to Disarm effects.
  • Whirlwind: This ability now strikes with both weapons when a Warrior is dual-wielding.

Professions

  • You can now control-click on a recipe to see how the item that is made by that recipe will look on you in the dressing room.
  • Alchemy
    • Added a sound for when a cauldron is created.
  • Blacksmithing
    • A new world drop recipe for an Adamantite Weapon Chain has been added. This new weapon chain both reduces disarm duration and increases parry rating.
  • Cooking
    • Daily cooking quests are now available from The Rokk in Shattrath City! In addition to gold, you can receive random cooking reagents and new recipes as a reward for completing these quests.
  • Enchanting:
    • Duration of wizard and mana oils created by enchanters has been increased.
  • Engineering:
    • Engineers can now create incredible new flying machines! Find Niobe Whizzlespark in Shadowmoon Valley to learn these fantastic new plans.
    • Plans for a new Field Repair Bot are rumored to belong to a select few Gan'arg Analyzers in Blade's Edge Mountains.
  • Fishing:
    • Players can now track fishing nodes. This ability is learned from a journal sometimes found in crates obtained through fishing.
    • New fish can now be caught in Zul'Aman and Deadwind Pass. Recipes for preparing these new fish are obtained through the daily cooking quests.
    • Fishing difficulty reduced for some areas in Nagrand.
  • Herbalism
    • Picking herbs will no longer cause effects on items to trigger.
  • Jewelcrafting:
    • A new skyfire meta gem recipe can be obtained from the Coilskar Siren of Shadowmoon Valley. This new meta gem increases critical strike rating and critical strike damage with spells.
  • Leatherworking:
    • Stylin' hats no longer require Zhevra leather.
    • Greatly increased the radius of the Drums of Battle, Drums of Restoration, Drums of Speed, and Drums of War.
    • Removed the casting time from the Drums of Battle, Drums of Restoration, Drums of Speed, and Drums of War.
    • Slightly increased the radius of Drums of Panic.
    • Reduced the casting time of Drums of Panic and added a global cooldown equal to the casting time.
    • Drums of Speed and Drums of Restoration are no longer world drop recipes, and can now be obtained from the Mag'har and Kurenai faction vendors with revered standing.
    • A new recipe is available from Grand Master leatherworking trainers to create glove reinforcements, providing a substantial armor bonus. Reinforcements are a permanent enchantment and cannot be placed with other permanent enchantments.
    • New recipes are available from Grand Master leatherworking trainers to make 20 slot quivers and ammo pouches.
    • New recipes are available from the Honor Hold, Thrallmar, and Lower City quartermasters to create 24 slot quivers and ammo pouches.
  • Mining
    • Mining will no longer cause effects on items to trigger.

Items

  • All old world dungeons have had their loot revisited. Players will now find that all loot dropped inside instances will be of Superior quality.
  • Arena Relics: New relics have been added to support all talent trees for relic users. In addition, most of the arena-system relics have been renamed so there is a more consistent naming convention.
  • Arakkoa Feather: This item can now be sold to a vendor.
  • Ashtongue Talisman of Lethality: This item will no longer trigger when the victim of your finishing move is immune to that attack.
  • Ashtongue Talisman of Vision: The mana granted by this trinket has been increased.
  • Ashtongue Talisman of Vision: This item will no longer receive multiple chances to trigger per cast of Stormstrike.
  • Ashtongue Talisman of Zeal: The damage over time affect from judgments has been adjusted so that it will work properly. It now has a shorter duration, and is not refreshed by melee attacks.
  • Ashtongue Talisman of Zeal: The damage over time effect from this trinket is no longer refreshed by autoattacks and does not charge mana.
  • Band of Eternity will now make the correct sound when moved in a player's inventory.
  • Black Bow of the Betrayer: The triggered effect from this item will no longer use up charges of Misdirection. In addition, the triggered effect will no longer break crowd control effects.
  • Bloodsea Brigand's Vest will now make the correct sound when moved in a player's inventory.
  • Boundless Agony can now be disenchanted.
  • Cataclysm Raiment: The bonuses on this set have been adjusted.
  • Cooldown removed from Noggenfogger Elixirs. The shrink effect will no longer stack with other shrink effects.
  • Cowl of Benevolence will now make the correct sound when moved in a player's inventory.
  • Crystalforge Raiment: The bonuses on this set have been adjusted.
  • Darkmoon Card: Vengeance: This item will no longer trigger from environmental damage.
  • Dropped items that were rings/trinkets/one handed weapons that were previously unique are now unique-equipped. That means that you can have more than one of those items, but you can only have a single one of them equipped.
  • Enriched Terocone Juice: This item now properly provides mana regeneration no matter how it is used.
  • Expose Weakness: The triggered effect from this talent will no longer use up charges of Misdirection.
  • Felsteel Chests: The loot from these chests has been improved.
  • Gladiator's armor pieces of like nature from various seasons will now all meet the requirements for their shared set bonus. This means if you are using 2 pieces of Season 1 gear and 2 pieces of Season 2 gear of the same design you will now have your 4 piece set bonus.
  • Gladiator's Chain Gauntlets: The bonus damage on these gloves has been increased from 4% to 5%.
  • Grand Marshal's Dragonhide Helm: The intellect on this item was increased slightly to match the equivalent Horde-only item.
  • Hand of Antu'sul: The effect that triggers from this item will no longer cause a cooldown on Warrior's Thunderclap ability.
  • Lightfathom Scepter will now make the correct sound when moved in a player's inventory.
  • Lockboxes will now display the numerical lockpicking skill required to open them.
  • Low Level Cloth Items: All agility and strength on low-level cloth items has been replaced with other stats, usually bonus spell damage, but also sometimes other stats beneficial to mana users.
  • Merciless Gladiator's Chain Gauntlets: The bonus damage on these gloves has been increased from 4% to 5%.
  • Mr. Pinchy: This item no longer destroys itself when its charges run out. This resolves some bugs that occurred when its final charge was used.
  • Mystical Skyfire Diamond: A cooldown has been added to this item's effect, but the chance for it to trigger has been increased.
  • Ogri'la Faction Vendor: This vendor now sells potions useable anywhere for a large number of Apexis Shards.
  • Overseer Disguise: It is no longer possible via use of this item to be on a mount while in Moonkin Form or Tree of Life Form.
  • Pendant of the Violet Eye: This trinket will no longer fire multiple times from a single casting of some Paladin spells.
  • Shadowmoon Grunts will no longer drop Black Temple quality loot.
  • Shiffar's Nexus Horn: Many spells and abilities can now trigger this item that were unable to before.
  • Skyshatter Raiment: The four piece bonus is now being applied correctly and the two piece bonus will affect the correct spells.
  • Tidefury Raiment: The additional mana granted to Water Shield by this set has been increased.
  • Tome of Fiery Redemption: This item no longer can be triggered by casting blessings.
  • Totem of the Thunderhead: The additional mana granted to Water Shield by this totem has been increased.
  • Unstable Flask of the Sorcerer: This flask will now provide the bonus to healing specified in its tooltip.
  • Vambraces of Ending will now make the correct sound when moved in a player's inventory.

Dungeons and Raids

  • Players that complete the attunement quests for Tempest Keep and Coilfang Resevoir may now choose to display a new title, "'character name' Champion of the Naaru."
  • Elite mobs outside of pre-Burning Crusade dungeons have been changed to non-elite.
  • The level ranges of pre-Burning Crusade dungeons have been adjusted to a narrower range.
  • Meeting stone level requirements, the Looking for Group system, and quests have been adjusted to match the new dungeon level ranges.
  • Auchenai Crypts
    • Wandering Ghosts are now neutral to players
    • Summoned Ghosts now take longer to summon in.
  • Auchindoun: Sethekk Halls
    • Mobs inside Sethekk Halls will now continue to award Lower City reputation into Exalted.
  • Caverns of Time: Battle of Mount Hyjal
    • Increased the reputation awarded for killing Archimonde in Hyjal Summit.
  • Hellfire Citadel: Magtheridon's Lair
    • Mind Exhaustion is not applied until Magtheridon is successfully banished.
  • Karazhan
    • The number of creatures that must be killed in the Karazhan Servants Quarters area before a miniboss spawns has been reduced.
    • Phase hounds in Karazhan will now phase out less frequently.
    • Coldmist Widows no longer wipe threat when casting Poison Bolt volley.
    • The Chess Event chess in Karazhan now has a tap list so it can only be looted by players who were involved in the chess event.
    • Wrath of the Titans will no longer cause Shackle Undead to break.
  • Tempest Keep
    • The Blood Elves that patrol the Tempest Bridge no longer patrol directly into Prince Kael'thas Sunstrider's chamber.
    • Kael'thas
      • All four advisors have had their health reduced by 10%.
      • All of the summoned weapons have had their health reduced by 10%.
    • Al'ar
      • The ability "Meteor" has been renamed to "Dive Bomb".

Quests

  • New random Daily Dungeon quests have been added for both the heroic and non-heroic five-person Outland dungeons, as well as for the 5-person Caverns of Time instances. Each day both a single heroic and a single non-heroic dungeon are randomly targeted by these quests. The Consortium quest givers can be located in Shattrath's Lower City
  • Aether rays can now be wrangled earlier.
  • Dustwallow Marsh
    • Many new quests have been added to the zone.
    • The Steamwheedle Cartel have just completed building the new town of Mudsprocket in south west Dustwallow Marsh.
  • Level 1-60 dungeon quests have had their experience and faction rewards increased.
  • Many elite creatures and quests in the level 1-60 experience have been changed to accommodate solo play.
  • Nutral, the flight master in Shattrath City, now has a quest for characters who are level 70 and do not yet have a riding skill of 225. The quest will direct a character to visit the appropriate riding instructor in Shadowmoon Valley so that the player will know where they can purchase the skill necessary to use a flying mount.
  • The icon for the Charged Crystal Focus has been changed.
  • The Repolarized Magneto Sphere now only functions within the Blade's Edge Mountains.
  • Upon completion of the Ghostlands quest, "A Little Dash of Seasoning", if a character still has the Apothecary's Poison; it will be removed from their inventory.

User Interface

  • The Auction House UI has been much improved. The useless categories have been removed (Plate-Cloak for instance) and a number of additional sub categories have been added. In addition, many items have had their category changed so that they make more sense.
  • The Auction house time periods have been changed. Now items can be put up for sale for 12, 24, or 48 hours. The option to put up items for 8 hours has been removed.
  • The Battle Map has been renamed to the Zone Map and can be turned on for any zone rather than just PvP objective zones. There is now a drop down in the world map screen that allows you to choose when the zone map should display.
  • Items that have cooldowns will now display the base cooldown time in the item tooltip.
  • Game objects that you can interact with have a glow around them and display their name over the object to make them more obvious.
  • Items with Metagems in them will now display the gems required to activate the metagem and whether those requirements have been met on the item tooltip.
  • When you take damage and have a full screen UI up, the edges of the screen will flash red so you know you are under attack.
  • Inspect distance has been increased to 30 yards.
  • When you inspect another player, you can now see their talent choices as well as their equipment.
  • The Mind Control and Possession action bar has been revamped.
  • You can now send up to 12 items in a single mail message.
  • When you have an outgoing mail open, you can right-click on items to attach them to that outgoing mail.
  • When you have a trade window open, you can right-click an item to move it to the trade window.
  • When you have unopened mail, you can mouse over the recent mail icon and get the name of the people who most recently sent you the mail.
  • When you speak with an NPC with a single function (Banker, Flight Master, Etc) and who has no other gossip options or quests you will go straight to their functional pane rather than to the gossip pane. Most importantly this means that clicking on a flight master will bring up the flight path map directly rather than the gossip pane with the option to bring up the flight path map.
  • Quests that are much below your level will now have the tag (Low Level) in the gossip pane attached to the quest. This will make it easier to tell which quest to accept when a quest giver has both low and high level quests.
  • You can now set the loot threshold (/threshold) with a word as well as the loot threshold number for an instance-
    /threshold Epic- also sets the party loot threshold to Epic items or better quality
    /threshold Rare-sets the party loot threshold to Rare items or better quality
  • Corpses that belong to someone in your party, but that you cannot loot will say in the corpse mouseover who has loot rights on that corpse. This will help skinners who want to know who to talk to in order to skin their corpse, as well as master looters when special loot drops on a normal monster. Everyone will then see that there is a monster that the master looter has loot rights on.
  • The raid panes that have been pulled out into the gamefield should save their option settings between sessions now.
  • When raid bosses send an important message to the center of your screen it will be larger and have an effect that makes it more noticeable.
  • The raid warning command now appears in a larger font in the center screen and grows and shrinks slightly when it appears to make it more noticeable.
  • NPCs with a single function will now display an icon that indicates their function on mouseover.
  • When an Addon attempts to perform an action that is prohibited in combat, you will get a chat message "Interface action failed because of an AddOn". This only occurs once per login.
  • Many interface elements now display players in their class color so you can easily recognize what class a player is. Interface elements affected by this are LFG, Channel UI, Guild and Who.
  • The value of the TargetNearestDistance setting is validated at load time.
  • If a non-standard refresh rate is selected in the video options, it will now be saved.
  • Many On Use items now display the cooldown in the item tooltip.
  • The tooltip for Block on the character sheet now displays the amount of damage reduced by a successful block.
  • New macro commands: /targetlastenemy, /targetlastfriend
  • New macro command to target by entire name: /targetexact
  • For more details on UI macro and scripting changes, see the UI & Macro forum.

World Environment

  • Stranglethorn Vale
    • Saltscale Tide-Lords no longer have frost nova
    • The fear on Mosh'ogg Lords is reduced
  • Lowered the fireball damage of Defias Pillagers
  • Increased the cooldowns on the heals of Kurzen Medicine Men
  • The standard Disarm ability that many creatures use now has a duration of 5 seconds instead of 6 seconds.
  • Sonic Burst now silences for 6 seconds instead of 10.

Bug Fixes

  • An issue with spawn rates in Forge Camp: Terror and Forge Camp: Wrath has been fixed.
  • Fixed the position of one of the Box of Mushrooms objects at Ango'rosh Stronghold for the quest, "Stealing Back the Mushrooms".
  • Fixed the position of a mineral node in the Blade's Edge Mountains so that it is no longer floating in the air.
  • Fixed a problem with the directions in the quest, "The Ultimate Bloodsport".
  • Fixed a bug in the pet sheet stamina mouseover tooltip that showed an incorrect health increase value.
  • Fixed an issue with aura stacking and debuff cooldowns when reapplying a debuff after being charmed.
  • Libram of Saints Departed: This relic now functions properly again.

WoW Patch 2.2 Audigy 2 ZS Latency and Sound Fix!

With the removal of hardware accelerated Sound, and thus rendering our Sound cards useless, I have experienced quite a lot of annyoing side effects. Huge lag spikes, high latency crippled sound.

After reading the official World of Warcraft Technical Forum I found a a message, that old audigy 2 drivers would fix the issues. It took me quite some time to find a driver that worked for me, but I wanted to share the link for you. Now everything seems to work jsut fine. Download the driver SBA2_EAX4DRV_031031.exe here: Audigy 2 ZD Driver

Notice, that this is a work around and an old driver, thus it may cause some issues with other programs. At least it worked for me.

Update: Creative Labs is apparently in contact with Blizzard about the issues(Link):

Hi everyone,

I have an update for you on this:

Following the recent WoW patch and the ensuing forum debates concerning audio, Blizzard's director of audio took the time and trouble to contact our developer relations group to discuss the matter. He explained that the recent audio changes in the game were necessary, extensive and ongoing. Initial efforts to turn on hardware support with the new audio implementation were unsuccessful and they didn't have any time left to work on it prior to the patch release. However, he has assured us that once they have had the chance to clear up the immediate issues with in-game audio they will turn their attention back to enabling hardware audio to work again via the new scheme. Creative greatly appreciates the positive response that Blizzard has offered in answer to its concerns, and while there can be no guarantees, we are optimistic that Creative soundcard owners will once again be enjoying a fully immersive WoW experience complete with hardware based 3D mixing and effects in the not-too-distant future. In the meantime, please ensure you have the latest drivers loaded for your card to ensure best compatibility with the new audio system introduced in the recent patch. Thank you for your understanding.

Cat

Forum Administrator
Creative Labs

Important Burning Crusade Raid Attunement Changes.

Finally a nice change for Altaddicted players like me. With 5 Level 70 Characters all the Attunements to Raidiinstances are a pain in the neck. Reputation, Heroics and all other crap made it really annyoing to attune all chars to Raid Instances.

I absolutely like to tank, but I hate Heroic instances, since there is not much difference to normal instances. It is maybe a bit more challenging, but its not more fun – if at all more annyoing.

Which means I welcome the changes Tigole just published in the World of Warcraft Forums:

"After a lot of thought and deliberation, we’ve decided to remove the attunement requirements to enter Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep: The Eye. While many of our attunements in the Burning Crusade have been good progression checks, a few of the attunements have turned out to cause unnecessary stress on guilds either doing the content or attempting to do the content. With Black Temple and Battle for Mount Hyjal thriving, we want to encourage (rather than prevent) new guilds and raid groups to attempt Serpentshrine and TK. We are going to leave the current attunement quests in the game so that players can still engage in the challenge and the lore of those quests should they choose to. At a later point, we are considering adding a final reward step to those quests as well (that way those who have already completed them would not miss out on a *new* reward).

We’re listening to feedback from you guys constantly and your opinions are important to us. We want this game to be the best possible MMO experience for our players.

Enjoy Serpentshrine and Tempest Keep =)

(Please note: This change will go live later today — it's not yet active)" Tigole

New World of Warcraft Armory Item Database online!

Nethaera introduced in the official World of Warcraft Forum the new Item Database.

The World of Warcraft Armory has been expanded with a new dimension of information and functionality – the Item Database!

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/item-search.xml

The Armory's Item Database is a comprehensive searchable database of the items of World of Warcraft. As the only official item database for World of Warcraft, it has the exclusive ability to draw information from the actual game servers and is integrated with the Armory's character profiles. It's also designed for ease of use – to give you the items you're looking for as quickly and easily as possible.

Here are some of the notable features of the Armory's Item Database:

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/updates.xml

New Search Categories

Items, dungeons, bosses, and factions are now searchable!

Find an Upgrade

With one click, get a sorted list of recommended upgrades for any item on any character profile!

"Desired by" filters

Refine your search to find commonly sought-after items for every class and take into account character specializations when appropriate.

Pin-a-character

Any character profile can be "pinned" to your Armory window, allowing you to display the matching item tooltip from that profile when viewing items.

Begin searching for items now from the Item Database main page.

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/item-search.xml

*Note that the Item Database, like the rest of the Armory, is still in beta.
**If you have problems with the Item Database, try clearing your cache.