Patch 5.4 patch notes
Virtual Realms feature revealed
The Proving Grounds are coming
The latest patch 5.4 newsCataclysm hotfixes for Jan. 5
by Alex Ziebart 
Jan 6th 2011 at 1:16AM
- Heroic Deadmines now has significantly fewer trash mobs.
- Ramkahen now has a functional mailbox. What can King Phaoris do for you?
- The number of guard spawns in Tol Barad has been increased for both Horde and Alliance base camps, with guards now surrounding the edges of each camp. Both Alliance and Horde guards use all abilities that the Furious Hyjal Warden uses and will attack with ranged abilities when unable to find a path or at a distance. Guards are also immune to taunt effects. In addition, Hellscream and Baradin Guards now respawn more quickly.
Jan. 5 HotfixesGeneral
Alchemy
Battlegrounds
Dalaran
- Mix Master (guild achievement) is now awarded at 1,000 flasks, down from 10,000, and Better Leveling Through Chemistry (guild achievement) is awarded at 3,000 flasks, down from 25,000. It turns out we overestimated these numbers just a smidgen. More information can be found here.
- The 7th and 8th guild bank tabs will now let players withdraw and deposit items after the guild master is changed.
- All six of the guild battle standards have had their experience and honor gain buffs increased to 5/10/15%, up from 2/4/6%, and they last for a duration of 10 minutes.
- Haste buffs no longer reduce the effectiveness of haste on resource regeneration rates (energy, focus, etc.).
- "Smart" food ended up not being so smart. Players who have small amounts of dodge rating as a vestige of some item bugs in the past will no longer get a dodge buff when they eat "smart" food like Cataclysm feasts if they are not plate tanks. Other classes and specializations will get their dominant primary stat.
- Fungal Growth is now applied even if Wild Mushroom: Detonate is used at a distance of 40 yards.
- Skull Bash no longer interrupts the target if it fails to land successfully.
- The heal from Atonement is now capped at 30% of the priest's health before any modifiers such as healing percentage bonus effects/talents.
- Friendly Grounding Totems are no longer affected by a warlock's Soul Swap or Soul Swap Exhale. The Grounding Totem is not despawning on either cast, and Soul Swap is working correctly when moving damage-over-time effects to other targets that are near the totem.
- Several Cataclysm raid bosses are now properly immune to pet provoke abilities.
- Players are no longer put in their own instance after relogging in a dungeon to which they've already been saved.
- Shadow/Fire elementals are now always absorbed during the Cho'gall encounter. Elementals are absorbed no matter what amount of health they have. Cho'gall always receives the appropriate amount of the appropriate buff when consuming an elemental. The elementals are unable to fall below 1 health or otherwise be killed, so Cho'gall always gets 1 stack of the corresponding buff at minimum.
- Shadow Lords will no longer regenerate health under any circumstance.
- Liquid Ice in phase 3 of the Ascendant Council encounter now deals more damage.
- The damaging component of Eruption no longer interrupts Terrastra when casting Harden Skin or Quake.
- Bellows Slaves no longer drop elite-level loot.
- Anti-Magic Shell no longer stops Onyxia or Nefarian's Shadowflame Breath from being cast.
- Chimaeron now resets his melee attack cycle after each Massacre and removes the Double Attack buff.
- Caustic Slime no longer effects non-player targets.
- As creature pulls in Blackwing Descent can be very condensed, they now have a slightly higher chance of dropping epic loot.
- Heroic Deadmines now has significantly less trash mobs.
- The mechanical nightmare section of the Vanessa VanCleef encounter has less sparks of doom, and is notably easier and faster to navigate.
- Vapors in the Ripsnarl encounter now increase in power every 8 seconds, up from 6.
- No aura or strange movement is applied when using the Slipstream after Grand Vizier Ertran is killed.
- A summoned pet will correctly re-summon when using the Slipstream after Altarius is killed.
Alchemy
- Crafting the four Northrend flasks (Endless Rage, Pure Mojo, Frost Wyrm and Stoneblood) no longer counts toward the guild achievements Mix Master or Better Leveling Through Chemistry.
- Flasks made by the Cauldron of Battle and the Big Cauldron of Battle are no longer soulbound.
- Both cauldrons now last 10 minutes. Please note the tooltips will not be updated until a client-side patch is applied.
- The Big Cauldron of Battle now has 20/30 charges instead of 17/25. Please note the tooltip will not be updated until a client-side patch is applied.
- All eight of the Engineering discoveries are now able to be learned through crafting the Overpowered Chicken Splitter at max-level Engineering.
- The Invisibility Field no longer causes the Dazzler backfire effect. Additionally, the Invisibility Field effect does not carry over into Arenas and cannot be used in Arenas.
- Giant Catfish now drop more frequently and Hardened Walleye now drop a little less frequently while on the appropriate daily quests.
- Dragonkin in Grim Batol can now be skinned.
- Creatures can no longer be skinned more than once.
Battlegrounds
- Cooldowns should now properly reset upon entering a rated Battleground.
- Players should no longer lose their Horde/Alliance buffs if caught by a druid's Cyclone while participating in War Games.
- The number of guard spawns has been increased for both Horde and Alliance base camps, with guards now surrounding the edges of each camp. Both Alliance and Horde guards use all abilities that the Furious Hyjal Warden uses and will attack with ranged abilities when unable to find a path, or at a distance. Guards are also immune to taunt effects. In addition, Hellscream and Baradin Guards now respawn more quickly.
- The northern graveyards on Tol Barad Peninsula for each faction have been moved further apart from one another to lessen the fantastic camping.
Dalaran
- Red Rider Air Rifle and Red Rider Air Rifle Ammo are now part of Jepetto Joybuzz's vendor list and can be purchased for their displayed prices.
- Kruban Darkblade now spawns above ground and paths normally in Orgrimmar while the Darkmoon Faire is active.
- Spiny Tidecrawlers and Darkwood Hatchlings now appear as non-aggressive (yellow).
- Imprisoned Workers now have a smaller aggro radius. They also drop Cellblock Rations for players that are on the quest "Food From Below".
- The Baradin Crocolisk can be skinned without issue and the Crocolisk Hide, used in the quest "Swamp Bait", is no longer multi-drop.
- "The Leftovers", "Swamp Bait", and "A Huge Problem" quests are now sharable on the Alliance, and both the Alliance and Horde versions give high reputation and gold.
- Tank and Problim now have full immunities to all crowd control effects.
- The Desert Fox is now flagged "Cannot be tamed" when Beast Lore is cast on the creature.
- Ramkahen now has a functional mailbox. What can King Phaoris do for you?
- Overseer Idra'kess now leashes and returns to his original position.
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has destroyed Azeroth as we know it; nothing is the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion, from leveling up a new goblin or worgen to breaking news and strategies on endgame play.Filed under: News items, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 5 of 6)
Caz Jan 6th 2011 12:32PM
I think a mailbox in Uldum makes sense from a lore perspective. The Alliance and Horde have both been there for a month, helping out and making connections with the Ramkahen. It makes sense that we'd be actively working to establish more direct and routine communications. A mailbox just makes sense, now.
Aaron Jan 6th 2011 8:18AM
Awesome! Even more reasons for me to be in Uldum. Love that zone and now I can mail my ore off to my JC and keep flying laps. =D
Zak Jan 6th 2011 8:19AM
I was in heroic deadmines last night and I like the changes. They took out a third of the trash!
Sleutel Jan 6th 2011 8:56AM
"The mechanical nightmare section of the Vanessa VanCleef encounter has less sparks of doom, and is notably easier and faster to navigate."
Oh c'mon. It was fun! If you had just one person in your party with the spatial reasoning and/or platformer skills to make it through, you could just mark that person and have everyone else follow them. And if you can't stack on a person with a giant mark floating above their head, you probably can't handle movement on the other encounters that require it, either, so your group would be wiping anyway.
trogdor259 Jan 6th 2011 11:02AM
Every time I did that part the Mario music would pop into my head. Was totally awesome.
winterhawk Jan 6th 2011 11:13AM
Yeah, whatever. Different strokes, I guess. If I wanted to play Super Mario Bros., I'd play it. That section was a pain in the neck, and every group I ran with (including guild groups where we were all 12/12 heroic ICC10 and 11/12 heroic 25) had numerous deaths on that section, while breezing through pretty much everything else. That section was just plain annoying and I'm glad they did something about it.
Jeff Stepp Jan 6th 2011 9:14AM
So glad they managed to fix nothing I care about... like the crit meta gem and what we actually NEED from Tol Barad.
Kaahn Stewart Jan 6th 2011 9:34AM
So. Still no fix for the Battleground queueing system? I'm getting rather annoyed at getting queued twice into the same battleground, making me unable to, you know, queue for a second battleground to try and speed things up a bit.
BoomBoomPowKin Jan 6th 2011 9:52AM
"Tank and Problim now have full immunities to all crowd control effects."
Not really liking this. You learn how to use your class to its fullest by using CC, and Blizzard goes ahead and nerfs it. Does that mean that they are going to nerf Army of the Dead so DK's can't solo it?
Manadar Jan 6th 2011 9:57AM
Wow, pretty big nerf to ferals. We're not hit- or expertise-capped b/c it sucks for DPS. Everything but haste is better.
If they're fking us over like this at least make Skull Bash show up in the combat log so addons like Recount can track it. Or give us a medium glyph to fix it because right now there's not a single one, except FF for bears.
Metric Jan 6th 2011 10:21AM
Is this also the case for other tanking interrupts? This means i need to be hit capped to make sure of interrupts, at the huge cost of reforging to hit over dodge.
mordred Jan 6th 2011 10:09AM
Please Blizzard fix the male troll topknot graphic so it isn't ruined by that wiggling thing up at the top of the braid um thx.
anderson.horn Jan 6th 2011 10:17AM
The change to priest atonement capping at 30% of the priest's health, what is that all about do you think? My atonement hits for about 10k, sometimes 16k, but never anywhere near 30k (30% of my hp). Do you think this is specific to some certain fight? intended for low lvl balance? I hope I'm not missing something, like it calcs on base HP, which i guess it probably would and I don't remember what that is.....but base mana is like 26k or something, and if health is anywhere near that, then 30% of 40k hp for example is 12,000. I hope that isn't the case, since disc is already quite hamstringed in dungeons compared to other healing classes and holy priests
Puntable Jan 6th 2011 10:37AM
I'm also worried that they deemed it necessary to nerf Atonement. There are 5 talent points and a whole talent build built around Smite Healing. It's the best thing that ever happened to combat healer boredom. Is there some raid fight that gives you a buff that increases your damage by a huge amount? I guess that would make healing the tank trivial if there was.
Amanda A. Jan 6th 2011 11:57AM
I'm guessing it's for fights like when you're bit in the San'lyan queen fight in ICC or the end of the final boss in Throne of Tides, where you can get a massive buff to damage done. 30% of a cloth wearer's health in level 85 gear is about 30k and will only go up as gear improves; that's nothing to sneeze at.
anderson.horn Jan 10th 2011 12:17PM
Yeah...but healing goes up for that phase too, throne of tides that is. Besides...when it hits that point, p3 on last boss, I'm just spaming Prayer of Healing as mana becomes a non-issue there.
Serrath Jan 6th 2011 10:24AM
"The Desert Fox is now flagged "Cannot be tamed" when Beast Lore is cast on the creature."
Did anyone else start singing Miley Cyrus? No? Just me? Oh. :-/
steve Jan 6th 2011 10:31AM
"The Invisibility Field no longer causes the Dazzler backfire effect. Additionally, the Invisibility Field effect does not carry over into Arenas and cannot be used in Arenas."
Now if only it could be used while in combat...
garrikp Jan 6th 2011 10:52AM
Why do Alchemists get bopped? Nowhere else are professions strictly Cata-level for the guild crafting achievements, this makes no sense.
Anaxamander Jan 6th 2011 11:40AM
By way of counterpoint: Cooking and fishing.