Patch 4.0.6 hotfixes for Feb. 16
by Anne Stickney 
Feb 17th 2011 at 12:40AM
Along with a list of hotfixes for the dungeon finder tool and vote kick system, Community Manager Zarhym released an update of hotfixes to other portions of the 4.0.6 patch. While some of these hotfixes go live the moment they're implemented, others will take a realm restart to go into effect. Today's list is just a small handful of class changes, plus one change to Blackwing Descent:
Zarhym- Classes
- Druid
- It is no longer possible for Skull Bash (Bear) to hit two targets at a time. A macro was previously circumventing the intended functionality of this ability.
- Shaman
- Purification (Restoration passive) now grants a 25% bonus to healing effects, up from 10%. More information can be found here.
- Priests
- In addition to its current effects, the Body and Soul talent now grants 12.5%/25% reduction to the base mana cost of Power Word: Shield. This is not reflected in the tooltip, but is reflected in the amount of mana used when Power Word: Shield is cast by Holy priests who have this talent. The tooltip update will require a client-side patch.
- Power Word: Shield now costs roughly 34% of base mana, up from 25%. This is not reflected in the tooltip, but is reflected in the amount of mana used when the spell is cast. The tooltip update will require a client-side patch.
- More information on these changes can be found here.
- Druid
- Dungeons & Raids
- Blackwing Descent
- Maloriak will no longer cast Flash Freeze on anyone who is tanking Aberrations or anyone who has recently been hit by them.
- Blackwing Descent
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
jsin1276 Feb 17th 2011 12:46AM
Hopefully one day this game can be perfect.
shatto.a Feb 17th 2011 1:49AM
The day this game is perfect is the day I stop playing. It would be way too boring.
PeeWee Feb 17th 2011 1:54AM
And hopefully one day there will be no dickwads on the 'net. Both are beautiful dreams. Unfortunately, I'm fairly sure my wish will come true before yours.
pancakes Feb 17th 2011 1:20AM
"Maloriak will no longer cast Flash Freeze on anyone who is tanking Aberrations or anyone who has recently been hit by them."
Yay!
PictoKong Feb 17th 2011 7:55AM
I Don't know how many times we wiped cause the OT was frozen with 6 or so adds beating him in the back.....
Scomparsa Feb 17th 2011 12:51PM
lol my guild and I were doing Maloriak last night and our OT got frozen like 5 times across attempts. I was wondering when this was gonna happen.
Rob M Feb 17th 2011 3:48AM
Finally! Resto shammy love!
Hammyfan2 Feb 17th 2011 1:52AM
I knew a nerf on the shield was coming, didn't think it'd be a mana cost increase though.
Bromide Feb 17th 2011 4:10AM
Discipline "Fix" makes me a sad puppy.
it really hits the wrong end of the discommunity. the ones still struggling with mana who had only heard about shield spam being possible again.
does not fix anything!
push for poor shamans well desevered though!
Bikhai Feb 17th 2011 4:40AM
There are so many things wrong with the changes to disc priests over the past couple weeks, I don't even know where to start. Let's try it in list form.
1) The increase in PWS mana is over the top. As I understand it, the only priests able to spam this are already at the top end of the gear spectrum, so it seems like it'll pan out to be a minor annoyance to them and devastating to those of us who still have to mix spells to extend our mana pool. Not to mention, using PWS for Rapture becomes a lot less effective (is it even a net gain anymore?).
2) Most healers have some measure of raid healing. With the accompanying nerf to PoH, disc at best has subpar raid healing ability.
3) From a design perspective, it seems a little backwards to me that Power Word: Shield, the signature ability of disc priests, is going to cost more mana to use as disc than as holy. Who thought this was a good idea? Or maybe I'm wrong for thinking disc is all about absorbs.
4) Once future tiers are released and gear level increases for the priest populace as a whole, this mana increase will mean jack. Does Blizzard plan to continually nerf this ability throughout the expansion to keep it from being the workhorse for disc priests? That would certainly be awesome.
I appreciate the effort on Blizzard's part to prevent shield spam gameplay from becoming the norm because I know that's not fun. I just think that presenting PWS use as a penalty to the player is not the way to do it.
Personally, I think that usage of PWS is less a function of how good it is and more a function of how poor the alternatives are. For me, penance is subpar for a channeled heal, and FH and GH cost too much mana to use even semi-often in a boss fight. Either give priests another short CD mana return, increase Rapture's effectiveness, or give disc priests another alternative for raid healing.
WildYaks Feb 17th 2011 9:00AM
What I find funny is that when they nerfed PoH, they didn't give Disc priests a discount mana price.
Issac Feb 17th 2011 10:04AM
WildYaks hit the nail right on the head.
rjbaker3 Feb 17th 2011 10:42AM
Except when they nerfed poh they also gave disc a boosted absorb on it to counteract the lower healing. Counting divine aegis, does it even do any less now?
WildYaks Feb 17th 2011 11:52AM
I believe it was more of a "fix" to scale the absorb of DA with critical hits from PoH. But remember Holy also received a buff to their Circle of Healing to help ease the pain. My point is Holy priests were considered OP with PoH during Chakra Sanctuary, but Disc felt the nerf heavily because their AoE healing options weren't great to begin with. It would have been nice to get a little boost to an area where we were lacking.
Does it make me angry or frustrated or whatever? Of course not - I really like the changes in 4.0.6. and I knew the mega-bubble bananza wouldn't last more than a week.
xX FearHAVOK Xx Feb 17th 2011 1:22PM
QQ more.
All my spells had their mana costs increased by 10% and do you see me complaining?
Bikhai Feb 17th 2011 1:45PM
@Fearhavok
Heal a disc priest through a boss fight and then get back to me. When priests and paladins have the same mana regen capabilities compared to throughput, I will most certainly stop complaining. As is, paladins are still leaps and bounds ahead of any other healer. And it's been that way for most of two expansions.
Vladeon Feb 17th 2011 1:58PM
@Fearhavok
Not sure if you know about this thing we call math, but a 10% increase of your spells that cost 9% of your base mana now cost... *drumroll* 10% of your base mana. It's not like they increased the mana cost of your signature ability by 34%.
I play a holy paladin and I've not been affected at all by our so called nerf.
And I agree with Bikhai, except Holy Paladins have been the number one or two healers since vanilla. You almost never saw ret or prot paladins back then cause they weren't viable. If you were a paladin, you automatically healed, end of story.
milka.hanhela Feb 18th 2011 11:13AM
I completely agree with Bikhai.
I'm mostly worried about disco priests that have freshly dinged 85 and have no gear to support their Shields' mana cost. That, along with the nerf to PoH, kind of gives me the gut feeling that healing heroic instances as a 330-geared discipline priests is probably no fun at all right now. I remember sitting down to drink more often than not after trash pulls when my lvl 85 disco girl was new to the heroic madness. Now that she's almost in full epics mana is luckily not an issue anymore.
Also, to inform those who haven't leveled a discipline priest lately: PW:S is stupidly powerful in lower level content at the moment. I did a few instances with my lvl 50 and lvl 81 disc priest alts this morning (don't ask - I just love the spec), and unless the tank was mis-pulling several groups of mobs at the same time, nothing usually got through the Shield. Even in some boss fights, PW:S would sometimes stay on the tank for 30 seconds, then expire. As a Rapture-addict, I found it surprisingly infuriating!
In short, I think the ability currently scales a bit weirdly with character/gear levels. But I dunno, it might just be me.
WildYaks Feb 17th 2011 7:40AM
Let the wussy Holy priests have their wimpy bubbles for less mana. My bubble is way more sexy now and is worth the extra mana. I never had to spam it because I know how to play my class.
You'd think everyone and their mother was rolling Disc priests by the outcry on the WoW boards. I inspect priests all the time in SW just to see what's doing and I haven't yet seen another level 85 smitey heal friend. Heck, another player even mistook me for a holy paladin the other day in a random heroic because I had wings.
BigBadGooz Feb 17th 2011 8:38AM
Shamans our healing wsun block out the sun.