Cataclysm hotfixes for Jan. 18

What with all the buzz about the PTR and the upcoming patch, it's been a while since we've seen some good old-fashioned hotfixes. Fear not, for blue poster Zarhym has posted with some new goodies for us all. Today's list of hotfixes seems to run the gamut from class tweaks to quests, but there are a few notable changes for raids and dungeons:
- In Blackwing Descent, Atramedes will no longer despawn when his tail passes through the area trigger in the entrance to his room. He will no longer despawn randomly during the fight. Pulling him out of his room will now cause him to reset.
- Also from Blackwing Descent, the damage of Chimaeron's Caustic Slime has been reduced for both raid sizes and dungeon difficulties.
- Over in Tol Barad, "The Leftovers," "Swamp Bait" and "A Huge Problim" can now be shared between members of the Alliance. In addition, these quests now award the correct amount of gold and faction for the Horde and Alliance as well.
Follow us after the break for the full list of hotfixes.
- General
- Broiled Dragon Feast is correctly being tracked by the guild achievement, Set the Oven to "Cataclysmic".
- The guild achievement Lower Blackrock Spire Guild Run can now only be earned in a group of at least 4 players from the same guild in a 5-player party.
- The achievement Sunwell Plateau Guild Run now requires a guild group to complete. This achievement can no longer be completed without the requirement of having 75% of the raid be guild members.
- Guild experience daily resets should no longer sometimes fail to occur.
- Classes
- Death Knights
- Necrotic Strike is now affected by resilience.
- Druids
- Druids previously unable to learn Nature's Grasp will be able to learn that spell now.
- Rejuvenation now consumes 16% of base mana, down from 26%, but still requires 26% of base mana in order to be cast.
- Mages
- Rank 1 of Pyromaniac no longer improperly gives 5% passive haste.
- The mana costs of the following mage spells have been reduced, but they still require the previous percentage of base mana in order to be cast: Arcane Barrage (11% of base mana), Arcane Blast (7% of base mana), and Fireball (12% of base mana). As an example, Fireball requires 16% base mana to cast, but only consumes 12% of base mana.
- Priests
- Sin and Punishment is now properly causing its terror affect when dispelled. In addition, it no longer shares diminishing returns with fear effects. It now shares diminishing returns with horrify effects.
- Priests who were unable to learn Holy Nova will now be able to train the spell.
- Warlocks
- While Nightfall is active, Doomguards will not instantly cast Doom Bolt.
- Warriors
- A bug has been fixed where the Shield Block ability granted 25% more critical block chance than was intended for Protection warriors with very high total chance to avoid attacks.
- Death Knights
- Dungeons & Raids
- It should no longer be possible for players to inadvertently be locked out of killing a raid boss depending on whether or not they were online when the boss was killed.
- The battle resurrection counter will now correctly reset if players are not inside the dungeon when an encounter resets.
- The Bastion of Twilight
- The hotfix on January 5 to increase the damage of Liquid Ice during phase 3 of the Ascendant Council fight has been reverted. Due to a separate bug with the size of the Elementium Monstrosity's hitbox, it is often impossible for melee classes to avoid damage from this ability. This issue is slated to be addressed in patch 4.0.6 so that Liquid Ice damage can again be increased.
- Many adjustments to the behavior of various mechanics in the Sinestra encounter have been made.
- Fester Blood now hits everyone in the room instead of having a 20-yard radius on Heroic difficulty during the Cho'gall encounter. No more kiting he who has too many eyeballs.
- Valiona's Blackout can no longer be absorbed by Grounding Totem or reflected. Its healing absorption effect has also been increased for 10-player normal difficulty.
- Blackwing Descent
- Atramedes will now reset if the players targeted by Sonic Breath or Obnoxious Fiends attempt to leave the room.
- Zoning into the dungeon after a soft reset now causes all Atramedes-related objects and creatures to reset completely. The introduction event will replay once the dwarves have been cleared. Entering combat with Atramedes forces the gongs to become usable and the fight will function normally from this point.
- Atramedes will no longer despawn when his tail passes through the area trigger in the entrance to his room. He will no longer despawn randomly during the fight. Pulling him out of his room will now cause him to reset.
- The damage of Chimaeron's Caustic Slime has been reduced for both raid sizes and dungeon difficulties.
- Chimaeron will not cast Caustic Slime on Feral tanks in Bear Form unless there aren't enough non-tank specialized targets available. This fix applies to Magmaw's targeting functionality as well.
- Rip and Bane of Doom damage is no longer affected by the damage increase of Stolen Power when engaging Nefarian.
- Abberrations spawned during the Maloriak encounter were displaying inappropriately high health values on Heroic difficulty. This has been corrected.
- Items
- Bloodthirsty Gladiator's Badge of Dominance and Vicious Gladiator's Insignia of Dominance on-use effects now properly modify healing done.
- Darkmoon Card: Volcano now triggers from periodic damage.
- Divine Shield and Blessing of Protection no longer remove the Blind Spot debuff from the normal and Heroic versions of the Jar of Ancient Remedies. When targeting an ally at very close range (2-3 yards) when using this item, it will still energize them instead of the user. This will be fixed in an upcoming patch.
- Free Action Potions now cannot be used above level 80.
- Professions
- Archaeology keystone fragments can no longer be prospected.
- Lifebound Alchemist Stones can no longer be disenchanted.
- PvP
- Arenas
- Ring of Valor has been temporarily disabled until select bugs can be fixed in an upcoming patch.
- Battlegrounds
- Teams who are in the rated Battleground queue and have a member disconnect are now removed from the queue after 10 minutes if the player does not come back. The team is still at the top of the queue if the player comes back and the Battleground will pop almost instantly.
- Battleground ratings, wins, and losses should now always update after every game when playing in rated Battlegrounds. Certain conditions were not causing this to happen previously.
- Players who do not show up to a Rated Battleground, either by leaving the queue or letting the Battleground queue time out, are not being credited for a win.
- Players who are removed from a Battleground when it closes due to a lack of players will not receive the Deserter debuff.
- Players are again able to queue for more than one Battleground at a time without issue.
- Arenas
- Quests & Creatures
- Darnassus
- Worgen character hearthstone location is now set to the Craftsmen's Terrace in Darnassus upon completing the quest "Ruh'theran Village".
- Deepholm
- Fungalmancer Glop no longer grants experience and now rewards quest kill credit to all players who have damaged him.
- Tol Barad Peninsula
- Players will receive quest credit for killing any quest boss, regardless of party status, so long as they participate in killing these bosses.
- Problim can now be seen from a much larger distance.
- Cell Watchers in D-Block are no longer incorrectly tagged as elite.
- "The Leftovers", "Swamp Bait" and "A Huge Problim" can now be shared between members of the Alliance. In addition, these quests now award the correct amount of gold and faction for the Horde and Alliance as well.
- Darkwood Broodmothers no longer flee at 25% and periodically inflict targets with Reckless Toxin instead.
- Hungry Ghouls and Skeletal Beastmasters now drop the Cursed Femur quest item when on the quest "Salvaging the Remains", and the tooltip also indicates these creatures drop the quest item.
- Restless Infantry and Restless Soldiers now spawn more quickly.
- Twilight Highlands
- If reinforcements are not called after 60 seconds, Skullcrusher will now despawn. When reinforcements are called, Skullcrusher no longer improperly despawns.
- Uldum
- Titanic Guardian's Burning Gaze ability should no longer put everyone in the zone in combat.
- Darnassus
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 1 of 5)
exogenesis. Jan 19th 2011 2:40AM
"Archaeology keystone fragments can no longer be prospected."
They were prospectable before? o.O What on earth did people get from them..?
exogenesis. Jan 19th 2011 2:46AM
"Ring of Valor has been temporarily disabled until select bugs can be fixed in an upcoming patch."
I'm sensing a lot of incoming QQ about why this gets disabled and Tol Barad doesn't.
I shall only QQ about the fact that I have to wait until I can get World Wide Winner now.
/QQs
/end QQ
Ah, who cares. I can still have fun in arena without it!
MechaKingGhidra Jan 19th 2011 3:25AM
I think they mean that people were prospecting ore and happened to come across them along with the normal assortment of gems and such.
Karch Jan 19th 2011 6:25PM
Alright, I'm going to be a jerk and highjack this first post.
-- Warriors
-- A bug has been fixed where the Shield Block ability
-- granted 25% more critical block chance than was
-- intended for Protection warriors with very high total
-- chance to avoid attacks.
I'm at Dodge 10.8%, Parry 10.9% and block 42.9%, which I don't think is that high. I don't think I have a single piece of Heroic gear. Shield block pushes me up to 67% block or so, and I can rocket up to 77% if I pop my mastery trinket on top of that. I just did did the TB dailies and I had to hit my survival cooldowns much much sooner, and that on smaller packs. Any other warrior tanks notice a jump, or is it just me?
I didn't think my total avoidance was very high.
CTD Jan 19th 2011 2:52AM
"Lifebound Alchemist Stones can no longer be disenchanted."
There goes my favorite source of income.
Roidrage Jan 19th 2011 3:39AM
I just spent thousands changing my rogue alts prof to alchemist just to get the stone for my enchanting main!
There was no warning about this anywhere. In fact if you scroll through the topics in WoW Insider you will find Insider Trader: The trick to farmable Maelstrom Crystals
http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/01/18/insider-trader-the-trick-to-farmable-maelstrom-crystals/#continued
Bad form Bliz!
Acorania Jan 19th 2011 3:40AM
As soon as I read this I quickly logged on to pull my crystals off the AH... prices are about to sky rocket... but I was too late. All mine had sold at the previously good price and one person had them all listed at 4k more than previously.
So, I changed up my snatch list and called it good.
Yshara Jan 19th 2011 4:24AM
If you were crafting it on an alt to disenchant on your main you were doing it wrong anyway as the item is BoP.
Firefly Jan 19th 2011 4:31AM
@roidrage
Seriously? Even if they hadn't done this, the price of those crystals is not going to remain high for long anyway. More and more guilds are stepping into raids and that means more crystals on the market. This seems like a pretty fleeting trend to go through all the trouble of re-rolling your professions over. You made a rather large and risky investment and it didn't pan-out. Deal with it.
Jawn Jan 19th 2011 4:41AM
You will notice that Basil ~did~ mention in the article that it was a very strong possibility that it would get nerfed.
If you went and changed your professions just for that... well... eh. You win some, and you lose some.
Neirin Jan 19th 2011 4:54AM
I think that the Insider Trader article even admitted that this sort of change had to be in the works because it was silly. The speed with which the change came after the article is kinda humorous, though, you have to admit. It's so fast I don't think the article had anything to do with it, of course, but man that timing was good.
Xantenise Jan 19th 2011 5:11AM
I bet it's all Basil's fault! :P
Pyromelter Jan 19th 2011 6:07AM
Basil's article actually was published after the hotfix notes were published. Other places around the web had mentioned it before though.
pvp valor point trade ins will be your best source of epics to DE, unless that was nerfed too and not noted yet.
Amaxe Jan 19th 2011 10:46AM
Seems like regardless of whether or not Basil approves (he's pretty good at keeping his tone neutral for the most part) of such quick ways, he is good at reporting the AH things which Blizz may not be aware of or intend. Once made public, it allows Blizz to either say "Working as intended" or else "Whoops... better fix that."
Personally, I think the removal of exploits are a good thing for the rest of us.
Mindaika Jan 19th 2011 12:42PM
I was exploiting an obvious mistake, and now it's fixed. I'm so angry! YEAAAAARGH!
Smurk Jan 19th 2011 1:48PM
As long as we can still disenchant Carnelian Spikes into disgusting volumes of cheap materials...
Helston Jan 19th 2011 2:52AM
"Titanic Guardian's Burning Gaze ability should no longer put everyone in the zone in combat."
YAY!
KataSamoes Jan 19th 2011 2:57AM
THAT's why that kept happening? Holy cow!
Shadowwind Jan 19th 2011 3:11AM
Oh wow! I'd thought it was a mob stuck underground or something! Wonder how the heck they figured it which mobs were causing it?!
julian Jan 19th 2011 6:16AM
Meanwhile in the Blizzard dev department: "Hey guys, you know that weird combat bug in Uldum that thousands of rogues writes tickets about every week?". Followed by the sounds of hands clasping faces.