Patch 5.2 interview with Dave Kosak
Inside an old alt's vault
The latest patch 5.2 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsOfficial Patch 3.3.2 patch notes
by Alex Ziebart 
Feb 2nd 2010 at 5:20AM
- Halls of Stone: Brann Bronzebeard has been getting into shape and now feels comfortable walking faster when escorted.
- Concussion Blow: The damage done by this ability has been reduced by 50%, but its threat generation will remain approximately the same.
- Violet Hold: The time between a boss being defeated and a new portal opening has been decreased.
- Season 8 has officially begun featuring all-new rewards!
Dungeons & Raids
- Icecrown Citadel
- Frostwing Halls, the final stronghold of the Scourge and their Lich King, has been added.
- Halls of Stone
- Brann Bronzebeard has been getting into shape and now feels comfortable walking faster when escorted.
- The Forge of Souls
- The Devourer of Souls will now cast Mirrored Souls less often.
- The Spell Reflect ability has been altered on several creatures. It now has a cast time, only has 2 charges, and has a 75% chance of reflecting spells.
- The Nexus
- Anomalus will now use the Create Rift ability only once, down from 3 times.
- The Old Kingdom
- Elder Nadox now only gets one Ahn'Kahar Guardian during the encounter.
- Jadoga Shadowseeker now only ascends once during the encounter.
- Several enemies between the Befouled Terrace and The Desecrated Altar have been removed or had their pathing altered.
- Pit of Saron
- Players can now zone back into the instance if they are dead while encounters with Krick and Ick or Forgemaster Garfrost are in progress.
- Utgarde Pinnacle
- Skadi the Ruthless can now be removed from his drake with 3 harpoon strikes, down from 5.
- Svala Sorrowgrave now casts Ritual of the Sword 1 time during the encounter, down from 3.
- Vault of Archavon
- Toravon, the latest boss to join the Vault's giants and masters of the elements, is now accepting challengers in 10- and 25-player formats.
- The Violet Hold
- The time between a boss being defeated and a new portal opening has been decreased.
- All healing abilities (including items such as potions) will be decreased in effectiveness by 10% when in Battlegrounds, Arenas, or Wintergrasp.
- Arenas
- Season 8 has officially begun featuring all-new rewards!
- Talents
- Balance
- Earth and Moon: This talent now increases the druid's spell damage by 2/4/6%, up from 1/2/3%.
- Balance
- Talents
- Elemental Combat
- Shamanism: This talent now provides 4/8/12/16/20% extra spell damage to Lightning Bolt/Chain Lightning, up from 3/6/9/12/15%, and 5/10/15/20/25% to Lava Burst, up from 4/8/12/16/20%.
- Elemental Combat
- Talents
- Affliction
- Shadow Embrace: This effect can now stack up to 3 times, up from 2. However, the periodic healing reduction effect has been reduced from 3/6/9/12/15% to 2/4/6/8/10% per application.
- Demonology
- Demonic Pact: The damage bonus granted the warlock by this talent has been increased from 1/2/3/4/5% to 2/4/6/8/10%. The buff granted to a raid or party by this talent remains unchanged.
- Destruction
- Conflagrate: The damage-over-time effect of Conflagrate has been increased to 40% of the spell's total damage, up from 20%.
- Empowered Imp: The pet bonus damage provided by this talent has been increased to 10/20/30%, up from 5/10/15%.
- Improved Shadow Bolt: Damage done by Shadow Bolt increased by 2/4/6/8/10%, up from 1/2/3/4/5%.
- Affliction
Warriors
- Talents
- Protection
- Concussion Blow: The damage done by this ability has been reduced by 50%, but its threat generation will remain approximately the same.
- Devastate: This ability now deals 120% of weapon damage, up from 100% of weapon damage.
- Shield Slam: The damage scaling from block value for this ability now diminishes faster and diminishes starting at a lower block value. The difference should be negligible for players in high-end tanking armor. In addition, the threat caused by Shield Slam has been increased by 30%.
- Warbringer: This talent no longer allows Charge and Intercept to break roots or snares. Intervene remains unaffected.
- Protection
- The party leader is now referred to as Guide in chat when a group is formed via the Dungeon Finder.
- Fixed a bug where players with Raid Assist capabilities were unable to perform a Ready Check.
- Fixed a bug where the first couple of tutorials were not displaying upon logging into the game.
- New strength-based melee DPS rings are now available from representatives of the Ashen Verdict.
- Tier-9 Sets: The Aspirant vendors at the Argent Tournament grounds have worked out a deal with merchants in Dalaran so that all item level 232 set pieces will now be available on armor vendors in the city. Set pieces which require trophies will still be available for purchase only from vendors at the Argent Tournament grounds.
- Tier-10 Balance Druid 4-Piece Bonus: Fixed a bug to allow for this bonus to properly trigger.
- Tier-10 Elemental Shaman 4-Piece Set Bonus: Redesigned. Successful Lava Burst casts now increase the duration of Flame Shock on the target by 6 seconds.
- Tier-10 Tank Sets: The gloves and chest pieces for warrior, death knight, and paladin tanks have had their stats adjusted slightly to provide additional armor value.
- Tier-10 Warlock 4-Piece Bonus: This bonus should now correctly be applied to the warlock's pet.
- The cvar 'processAffini
tyMask' controls which CPU cores are available for the World of Warcraft client to use. Previously the game client was limited to 2 cores as a default which players could override in the configuration file. In the past this provided a performance boost on some CPUs and operating systems. We have identified several systems that are experiencing severe performance issues with this restriction and have removed it. Players who would like to restore the old behavior can do so by updating the Config.WTF file by adding: SET processAffinityMask "3".
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 7)
Red Feb 2nd 2010 7:27AM
I
Freyal Feb 2nd 2010 7:47AM
I'm surprised no one seems all that excited about VOA having another boss in there? I for one am kinda jazzed about it. Another chance for frost badges (I assume?), a chance at some new pvp gear of the right level, possibly tier 10 (if tradition holds) -- and a new boss to add a lil challenge back to voa since koralon is just too easy atm.
Yet I haven't really seen much mention about the boss/anything to do with VOA on wow.com at all really accept for this lil blurb in patch notes.
Nemu Feb 2nd 2010 7:58AM
I'm kinda indifferent to it.
Granted, my faction rarely has control when I'm online, so a lack of opportunity to even go IN there doesn't help...
Hoggersbud Feb 2nd 2010 8:54AM
It's hard to be excited about a completely un-developed loot pinata which folks will cruise in, smash into a few times, wipe, break up, try again, wipe some more, finally learn the strategy, or outgear the guy, and then take his stuff.
At least that's my feeling on it.
Soulbento Feb 2nd 2010 8:17AM
I think its funny, all the cries for Blizzard to stop nerfing the game, when the changes to heroics are mainly for people who are geared and tired of waiting for the damn VH portal to spawn, or tired of picking up spears on skadi. Doesn't everyone feel like those mechanics could've been shortened?
Jason Feb 2nd 2010 8:29AM
I wonder which Elder they kept.
Jason Feb 2nd 2010 8:32AM
Oh wow, ignore me... I totally thought got the first bosses of OK and AN mixed up. Guess I'm not quite awake yet. My bad.
Nephilia Feb 2nd 2010 8:33AM
Music to my ears! :D
eugee Feb 2nd 2010 8:38AM
All the heroic changes are to thing that annoy the shit out of me. The rifts, the ascension, the sword, the spears, these are all silly and trivial, and a source of annoyance.
I especially hate the sword thing from UP. She literally lands and takes off again two more times after the first one. The only time we can skip it is when I have some ranged DPS and pour on the firepower while she's in the air. I can kill the three adds MYSELF in 3 seconds, as the tank. (Three abilities, 2 GCDs.)
jtrain Feb 2nd 2010 8:41AM
I'm sure glad they increased threat on prot warrior abilities to compensate for the loss in DPS...I mean my DPS as a tank was perfectly fine, it was my single target threat I always had problems with...
...oh, wait
Devastate from 100% to 120% isn't going to amount to a hill of beans. You apply it until it's stacked, then you only ever use it again to refresh the debuff.
GG Blizz on yet another PvE nerf because prot PvP was apparently OP.
Lazerbyte Feb 2nd 2010 8:42AM
Here again no love for hunters!
Where is are unlimited ammo we have been promised like three patches ago?
I don't like using up bag space for my arrows!!
Show us hunters some love!
Sayis Feb 2nd 2010 11:12AM
I'm pretty sure Hunters were promised unlimited ammo in Cataclysm, and not before that. You've only gotta wait a little bit longer!
disthis Feb 2nd 2010 8:53AM
I wish they would speed up arthas is COS omg he takes so long to run and start ,Although that is my fav dingeon he is just a wee bit pokey and needs to speed things up.
jaiek Feb 2nd 2010 8:53AM
Wow smart changes. Although I kind of which they'd boosted the bosse's HP or damage a bit to compensate.
It looks like overall they tried to lessen the annoying parts of boss fights where the boss performs an attack that basically "stops everything."
The point being, its fun to play the game, but its not fun to stand around doing nothing. They're fixing that.
Hoggersbud Feb 2nd 2010 9:04AM
Exactly. I don't think some of the people complaining about the heroics being nerfed get it...the heroics were bloody easy already, the things being changed are annoyances that serve as delays, not meaningful difficulties.
It's like taking a 12 step process down to 9. Chances are those 3 steps weren't important, they were just make work.
Ed Feb 2nd 2010 11:04AM
"Anomalus will now use the Create Rift ability only once, down from 3 times."
This does not not speed the instance but a few seconds. The ONLY reason to do this is to let failed healers into the "Glory To the hero" club.
biglou Feb 2nd 2010 9:22AM
For some reason I thought that there was supposed to be a big change to the mechanics of resiliance that would discourage DPS only teams and push for teams with a healer?
Did I miss something? I know I read about it somewhere.
Mr Shinra Feb 2nd 2010 9:56AM
"New strength-based melee DPS rings are now available from representatives of the Ashen Verdict."
Oh good, now my Ashen Verdict ring won't be sitting in my bank, useless and unloved.
Josin Feb 2nd 2010 10:20AM
"Concussion Blow: The damage done by this ability has been reduced by 50%, but its threat generation will remain approximately the same."
This seems like a very minor fix for PvP burst, and a middle finger to PvE tanks. Any lowering of our damage, which is already far below our tanking counterparts, is an unwarranted slap in the face. If you want to nerf any aspect for PvP, make it so the stun doesn't apply to other players. Leave the damage alone. It's the CC factor that's screwing people.
"Devastate: This ability now deals 120% of weapon damage, up from 100% of weapon damage."
The promised buff to our sustained DPS, in an attempt to bring us in line with the other tanks. Still far too weak to do so, though it may be enough to counteract the concussion blow and shield slam nerfs.
"Shield Slam: The damage scaling from block value for this ability now diminishes faster and diminishes starting at a lower block value. The difference should be negligible for players in high-end tanking armor. In addition, the threat caused by Shield Slam has been increased by 30%."
Another nerf to Shield Slam. They should just call it Shield Tickle at this point. I can't wait to see what they do with this in Cataclysm, when shield block value goes away. They'll probably ignore that it was nerfed, and leave it doing next to nothing. But hey, baked in threat! It's almost Molten Core these days. Sure, the tank doesn't do any damage, but hey, he brings Sunder and holds aggro!
"Warbringer: This talent no longer allows Charge and Intercept to break roots or snares. Intervene remains unaffected."
Hello kiting. Good to see you again. We've missed being picked apart by any and all ranged classes. Fortunately, this will end not just Prot Warrior "dominance" in PvP, but Prot Warrior viability in PvP as well. Considering the problem with Prot Warriors right now stems from Armor Penetration, this was a bizarre change to make. Heavy nerf for PvProt.
But what about PvE? Surely, this won't affect that very much, right? Wrong. Faction Champions are essentially now going to require Prot warriors to switch to Arms or Fury to be even remotely useful. Trash with multiple casters (FoS, PoS) or casters who use ice attacks (FoS, HoR) just got much harder with a Prot Warrior. Warbringer was a highly useful skill in PvE, which is now only useful for initial pulls, and catching an occasional stray add.
Leaving the root/snare break for Intervene benefits Arenas and PvP play far more than it does PvE, as it's an incredibly backwards mechanic for PvE, and only marginally useful. (I use it to cleanse poison from the other tank on Jormungar worms, and trying to catch up to people when running back from wipes. That's about the extent of its usefulness.)
All in all, this patch heralds a dark day for Protection Warriors. Especially the PvE tanks, who don't deserve nerfs.
MasterAsh Feb 2nd 2010 2:30PM
Your job is to make the big bad hit you.
It's my job to make the big bad fall down.
What part of these notes is making your job harder?