Patch 3.3 PTR updated patch notes
by Zach Yonzon 
Oct 7th 2009 at 8:40PM
- The Forge of Souls is available for testing! Better find your five-man group now to hit this dungeon on the PTRs.
- Weekly raid quests are absolutely, totally in.
- A bunch of class abilities have been redesigned (!), check them out after the break.
General
- The existing /welcome emote now greets/welcomes targets (character says "hello"), while the new /yw is for saying "you're welcome."
- Many of the tail sweeps with knockback effects will no longer hit players' pets.
- The Forge of Souls and Pit of Saron in the 5-player dungeon are currently available for testing.
- Additional Icecrown Citadel dungeon and raid content will be made available in future test builds. For more information and testing schedules please visit our Test Realm forum.
- Area-of-Effect Damage Caps: We've redesigned the way area damage is capped when hitting many targets. Instead of a hard cap on total damage done, the game now caps the total damage done at a value equal to the damage the spell would do if it hit 10 targets. In other words, if a spell does 1000 damage to each target, it would hit up to 10 targets for 1000 each, but with more than 10 targets, each target would take 1000 damage divided by the number of targets. 20 targets would be hit for 500 damage each in that example.
- Pet Resilience: All player pets now get 100% of their master's resilience.
- Taunt Diminishing Returns: We've revised the system for diminishing returns on Taunt so that creatures do not become immune to Taunt until after 5 Taunts have landed. The duration of the Taunt effect will be reduced by 35% instead of 50% for each taunt landed. In addition, most creatures in the world will not be affected by Taunt diminishing returns at all. Creatures will only have Taunt diminishing returns if they have been specifically flagged for that behavior based on the design of a given encounter.
- Orc and troll shamans now have their own unique totem art.
- Battleground Experience: Battleground experience gained is now based on the level of the player gaining experience, rather than the highest possible player level in that Battleground.
- Scourge Strike: Redesigned. The base ability now deals 50% weapon damage plus an additional amount as physical damage. However, for each disease the death knight has on the target, the target will take additional shadow damage equal to 25% of the physical damage done.
- Unholy Blight: This talent now deals only 10% of Death Coil damage as a damage-over-time effect on the target.
- Prowl: This ability no longer has multiple ranks and penalizes movement speed by 30%.
- Call Stabled Pet: Cooldown reduced from 30 minutes to 5 minutes.
- Deterrence: Now also increases the chance for ranged attacks to miss the hunter by 100% while under its effect.
- Avoidance: This talent has been replaced by Culling the Herd. Hunter pets now innately take 90% less damage from area-of-effect abilities like all other class pets. This does not apply to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.
- Cower: Redesigned. This ability no longer affects threat, and instead reduces damage taken by the pet by 40% for 6 seconds with a 45-second cooldown. While cowering, the pet's movement speed is 50% of normal speed. Cower now only has a single rank and is available at pet level 20.
- Culling the Herd: This pet talent has replaced the Avoidance talent in the pet trees (Hunter pets now gain that benefit automatically without expenditure of talent points). Culling the Herd increases pet and hunter damage by 1/2/3% for 10 seconds each time the pet deals a critical strike with Claw, Bite, or Smack.
- Demoralizing Screech: The attack power reduction from this ability has been increased by 40%, equaling the maximum possible attack power reduction from the abilities of other classes.
- Improved Cower: Redesigned. This ability now reduces the movement penalty of Cower by 50%/100%.
- Venom Web Spray: Range increased from 20 yards to 30 yards.
- Web: Range increased from 20 yards to 30 yards.
- Wolverine Bite: This talent is now enabled when the pet lands a critical strike rather than from the target dodging the pet's attacks. In addition, this talent no longer has a prerequisite.
- Divine Guardian: This talent no longer increases the amount of damage transferred to the paladin from Divine Sacrifice. Instead it causes all raid and party members to take 10/20% reduced damage while Divine Sacrifice is active.
- Divine Sacrifice: Redesigned. The effect of Divine Sacrifice is now party-only and the maximum damage which can be transferred is now limited to 40% of the paladin's health multiplied by the number of party members. In addition, the damage transferred to the paladin is now reduced by 50% before being applied to the paladin. Finally, the bug which allowed Divine Sacrifice to sometimes persist despite reaching its maximum damage has been fixed. Divine Sacrifice will now cancel as soon as its maximum damage value is exceeded in all cases.
- Mind Flay: The range of this ability has been increased to 30 yards, up from 20.
- Vanish: For the first half second after this ability is used, neither Vanish nor Stealth can be broken by taking damage or being the victim of a hostile spell or ability.
Affliction
- Improved Felhunter: This talent now also reduces the cooldown on the felhunter's Shadow Bite ability by 2/4 seconds.
- Decimation: Redesigned. When Shadowbolt, Incinerate or Soul Fire hit a target that is at or below 35% health, the cast time of Soul Fire is reduced by 30/60% for 8 seconds. Soul Fires cast under the effect of Decimation cost no shards.
- Demonic Pact: This talent now also increases the warlock's spell damage by 1/2/3/4/5%.
- Conflagrate: Redesigned. This talent now consumes an Immolate or Shadowflame effect on the enemy target to instantly deal damage equal to 9 seconds of Immolate or 8 seconds of Shadowflame, and causes additional damage over 3 seconds equal to 3 seconds of Immolate or 2 seconds of Shadowflame.
- Doomguard/Infernal: These pets now innately have Avoidance like all other warlock pets.
- Shadow Bite: This pet ability now provides 15% increased damage for each of the warlock's damage-over-time effects on the target.
Enchanting
- Enchant Weapon - Unholy: This enchantment now inflicts Shadow damage in addition to its original effect.
- The training costs for most bandages have been reduced.
- Enchanted Thorium: This ability now uses the Mining skill and is learned from trainers at a skill level of 250.
- Weekly raid quests are now available from Archmage Lan'dalock in Dalaran. Every Tuesday at 3 AM the Council of Six will choose a different strategic target that must die from either: The Obsidian Sanctum, Naxxramas, The Eye of Eternity, Ulduar, Trial of the Crusader, or Icecrown Citadel.
- For the various Icecrown Bomber quests at Aldur'thar: The Desolation Gate, players can now choose to eject from their bomber seats mid-run. If you do so, a rescue vehicle will transport your character back to the safety of your infra-green platform.
- Azure Drakes and Dragons will now attack back when attacked by characters not riding Wyrmrest Defenders.
- Death Knight Tier-9 4-Piece Bonus: This set bonus no longer grants Frost Fever a chance to be a critical strike. It still grants that possibility to Blood Plague.
Items
- Glyph of Immolation Trap: Now properly increases damage by 100%.
- Infected Wounds: This ability is no longer considered to be in the magical defense category; therefore spell hit no longer applies to its activation.
- Nature's Grace: The tooltip now correctly indicates that it will not be activated from periodic spell critical strikes.
- Concussive Barrage: This ability is no longer subject to spell reflects.
- Point of No Escape: This ability no longer stacks and now only functions for the hunter.
- Flame Strike: Some ranks of this spell had an incorrect cast time of 3 seconds. All ranks now share a 2-second cast time.
- Inspiration: The tooltip now correctly indicates that it also functions with Prayer of Mending.
- Mind Flay: The rank 1 tooltip has been corrected to indicate the accurate damage and snare effect.
- Curse of the Elements: Rank 4 has been increased to 11%, up from 10%.
- Drain Soul: This spell now deals 4 times the normal damage for all ranks. Previously it was only ranks 6 and above.
- Suffering (Voidwalker): Ranks 5-8 had the incorrect taunt radius of 5 yards and have all been adjusted to a 10-yard radius.
Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Beliam Oct 7th 2009 8:50PM
Is the AoE damage cap for raid encounters? Seems like it could be exploited by having the entire raid jump in the AoE to split the damage between all of them, make it healable.
Magician Bob Oct 8th 2009 3:08PM
This doesn't apply to Raid Bosses, only players, so no, it will not be exploitable
Faar Oct 8th 2009 7:26AM
It regards player-cast AoE spells. Not creature-cast.
So the more players that jump into the fire, the quicker the raid will wipe - yes, even in 3.3... ;)
Noid Oct 7th 2009 8:50PM
lets see some new draenei totems.
TJ Oct 7th 2009 8:53PM
I dont think the totems are new just for the sake of being new, but rather to make them unique among each race. Draenei already have unique totems, so I highly doubt they'll be getting new ones.
joshychrist Oct 8th 2009 3:18AM
your dwarves will have their own totems when they can finally become shamans dont you worry, trolls and orcs have been stuck with tauren looking totems for much too long
Zhiva Oct 7th 2009 8:51PM
Mage Armor got new, unique icon.
Blacksword Oct 8th 2009 1:58AM
Ah brings back the good ol' days of Mage updates in patches.
Mage:
- Changed icon for Arcane Missle
catharsis80 Oct 7th 2009 8:53PM
Geez, that's quite a change to Divine Sacrifice/Guardian. Party only? Was someone actually complaining about their raid being protected more? Of course, 40% x 5 party members is still more than the previous 150%, but still...no raid-wide protection. However, this will make it MUCH more protective of those 4 people in your party. I guess they're trying to get RLs to organize pallys better in their raid, and possibly get pallys to better use DS/G. Interesting change.
Otome Oct 7th 2009 9:27PM
Well DG works for party and raid, and it's now gone from being a situational talent to something people will want, especially for off-tanks.
Now, I wonder if it stacks with multiple Paladins? ..Of course not, that would be retarded.
Lemons Oct 7th 2009 8:56PM
"Vanish: For the first half second after this ability is used, neither Vanish nor Stealth can be broken by taking damage or being the victim of a hostile spell or ability."
Dammit! I shoulda got on the PTR sooner...now I'll never know the joy of one-second vanish protection :(
catharsis80 Oct 7th 2009 8:57PM
Also, glad to see that Druid cats also get the speed increase that Rogues are getting while being stealthed. Not sure why it's worded inversely here, but it's the same thing. 30% movement penalty is the same as the Rogue's 70% movement speed. They removed the ranks as well, just like they're doing with the Rogue.
Ian R. (Orkchop) Oct 7th 2009 8:58PM
The new Scourge Strike sounds much easier for them to balance and scale. Should be a good buff.
Noid Oct 7th 2009 9:04PM
theyre just really big and a pain to carry around. theyre so bulky and weigh a ton!!
Discount_Llama Oct 7th 2009 9:26PM
It's good to see some actual Warlock changes for once! Felhunters are getting a nice buff, and Demonolgy is also getting some cool buffs/changes. That change/nerf to Conflag kinda sucks, but oh well, at least less damage/ damage all at once will help with threat spikes.
Ken Oct 7th 2009 9:36PM
HOw is that a conflag nerf? it deals the damage it normally does plus extra? or did i read it wrong?
Discount_Llama Oct 7th 2009 9:39PM
Im not sure it is anymore. When I read the change originally, I thought Conflag did more seconds of Immolate damage then it really did. So it isn't a nerf, it is just spreading out the damage a bit.
fomhoire69 Oct 8th 2009 9:00AM
But the dot won't be effected by crit so on immolate you lose 3 secs of extra crit dmg
thebitterfig Oct 8th 2009 12:46PM
let's unpack this a little.
Conflagrate's initial hit is reduced by 25%, but they gain back 25% of that damage in a short-term dot after the fact. where a crit before would deal 206% of base damage (presuming Ruin and proper metagem, of course), a new conflagrate crit (including DoT) deals 179.5% of base damage, a 12.9% nerf to final crit damage (pardon all the percents flying around here). However, this does not mean conflagrate was nerfed by ~13%, since some number of your conflag casts won't crit, making the final nerf equal to about ~13% of your conflagrate critical effect chance.
joel Oct 7th 2009 9:23PM
K.
1) pallies lose AoE damage.
2)no more awesome raid wide shield wall (unless you keep DG XD).
Can we has interrupt now pwease?