Patch 4.1 PTR: Patch notes

Blizzard has just released the official patch 4.1 PTR patch notes.
The major highlights:
The major highlights:
- All non-damaging interrupts off the global cooldown will now always hit the target. This includes Pummel, Shield Bash, Kick, Mind Freeze, Rebuke, Skull Bash, Counterspell, Wind Shear, Solar Beam, Silencing Shot, and related player pet abilities.
- Zul'Aman has returned as a level 85 5-player heroic dungeon featuring a revamp of the original dungeon and improved loot!
- Zul'Gurub has returned as a level 85 5-player heroic dungeon featuring all-new encounters, achievements, and improved loot!
- Both dungeons will be in a new dungeon finder difficulty tier above the current level 85 heroic dungeons and offer epic-quality item level 353 loot.
- Work has begun on a new Looking for Guild system. Further details will be provided when we are ready for feedback.
- Spells bound to a key now start to be cast when the button is pressed down by default, instead of waiting for the key to go up. This is an option that can be turned off in the Interface menu under Combat. Mouse-clicking has not changed and operates on mouse click up.
Classes: General
- All non-damaging interrupts off the global cooldown will now always hit the target. This includes Pummel, Shield Bash, Kick, Mind Freeze, Rebuke, Skull Bash, Counterspell, Wind Shear, Solar Beam, Silencing Shot, and related player pet abilities.
Death Knights
- Dark Simulacrum now works on numerous additional spells in dungeon encounters.
- Talent Specializations
- Blood
- Death Strike self-healing no longer generates threat.
- Frost
- Blood of the North (passive) now permanently converts both Blood Runes into Death Runes. There is no longer any proc interaction with Blood Strike required to activate Death Runes.
- Blood
Druids
- Efflorescence has a new spell effect.
- Talent Specializations
- Balance
- Solar Beam is now more responsive when enemies move into or out of it.
- Balance
Hunters
- Explosive Trap now has a new spell effect.
- Master's Call now has a new spell effect.
- Tame Beast now tames pets to match the hunter's level, rather than 5 levels below.
Mages
- Talent Specializations
- Fire
- Ignite is no longer triggered from periodic critical effects.
- Fire
Paladins
- Word of Glory now has a 20-second cooldown.
- Talent Specializations
- Holy
- Walk in the Light (passive) removes the cooldown of Word of Glory.
- Protection
- Divine Guardian cooldown is now 3 minutes, up from 2.
- Retribution
- Divine Storm now generates 1 point of Holy Power if it hits (i.e. successfully lands on) 4 or more targets.
- Sacred Shield's internal cooldown has been increased to 60 seconds, up from 30.
- Holy
Priests
- Divine Aegis duration has been increased to 15 seconds, up from 12.
- Dispel Magic can only be used on the casting priest as a baseline effect.
- Holy Word: Sanctuary has a new spell effect.
- Power Word: Shield duration has been reduced to 15 seconds, down from 30.
- Talent Specializations
- Discipline
- Absolution (new passive) enables priests to use Dispel Magic on up to 2 harmful effects on friendly targets.
- Holy
- Absolution (new passive) enables priests to use Dispel Magic on up to 2 harmful effects on friendly targets.
- Discipline
Rogues
- Recuperate base effect now heals 3% per tick, up from 2%.
- Stealth base cooldown has been reduced to 4 seconds, down from 10, and the movement penalty from being in Stealth has been removed.
- Tricks of the Trade now has a 100-yard range, up from 20.
- Talent Specializations
- Combat
- Improved Recuperate now adds 0.5%/1% to the health restoration effect of Recuperate, down from 1%/2%.
- Subtlety
- Nightstalker now reduces the cooldown of Stealth by 2/4 seconds, and instead of negating the movement penalty from Stealth, it adds a 5/10% movement speed bonus (stacking with other effects) while Stealthed.
- Combat
Shaman
- Fire Nova has been redesigned and decoupled from shaman Fire totems. Instead, it now pulses that same area-of-effect from each target that is afflicted by the shaman's own Flame Shock debuff. It now damages all enemies except the target hit by Flame Shock. The ability's cooldown has been reduced from 4 seconds, down from 10.
- Magma Totem now lasts for 60 seconds, up from 21.
- Stoneclaw Totem's area-of-effect threat pulse no longer affects critters.
- Talent Specializations
- Elemental Combat
- Earthquake is no longer a channeled spell. It now has a 2-second cast time, lasts for 10 seconds, and has a 10-second cooldown. Its damage has been reduced by 40% from its channeled version.
- Enhancement
- Improved Fire Nova has been redesigned and replaced by a talent called Seasoned Winds. When an enemy spell cast is successfully prevented with Wind Shear or Grounding Totem, the shaman gains magical resistance (in an amount equal to what a protection totem/aura would grant, stacking with such buffs) to the spell school(s) of the interrupted spell (except for Holy spells), lasting 10 seconds.
- Elemental Combat
Warriors
- Charge and Intercept no longer have diminishing returns on their stun effects.
- Colossus Smash now ignores 70% of an opponent's armor, down from 100%.
- Inner Rage is now available at level 56.
- Intercept now has a 1.5-second stun, down from 3 seconds.
- Overpower damage has been increased to 140% weapon damage, up from 125%.
- Rallying Cry (new ability) is available from trainers at level 83. It temporarily grants the warrior and all party or raid members within 30 yards 20% of maximum health for 10 seconds. After the effect expires, the health is lost. It has no cost, no stance requirements, and is not on the global cooldown. It has a 3-minute cooldown, but also shares a cooldown with Last Stand.
- Whirlwind now has its cooldown reduced by 6 seconds when it deals damage to 4 or more targets. The Whirlwind effect caused by Bladestorm remains unchanged.
- Talent Specializations
- Arms
- Improved Hamstring now reduces the global cooldown on Hamstring by 0.5/1 seconds in addition to its current effects.
- Improved Slam increases Slam damage by 20/40%, up from 10/20%.
- Juggernaut no longer adds 2 seconds to the Charge stun, but instead lowers the cooldown of Charge by 3 seconds (to 12 seconds total).
- Mortal Strike damage has been increased to 175% weapon damage, up from 150%.
- Arms
Dungeons & Raids
- New dungeons available for partial testing.
- Zul'Aman has returned as a level-85 5-player Heroic dungeon featuring a revamp of the original dungeon and improved loot!
- Zul'Gurub has returned as a level-85 5-player Heroic dungeon featuring all-new encounters, achievements, and improved loot!
- Both dungeons will be in a new Dungeon Finder difficulty tier above the current level-85 Heroic dungeons and offer epic-quality item level 353 loot.
- These dungeons may only partially be available for testing at this time. Stay tuned for additional updates.
- Blackwing Descent
- Flash Bomb (Golem Sentry ability) now has a more clear warning visual.
- Magmaw now triggers a raid emote when summoning Lava Parasites.
- Further improvements have been made in the Maloriak encounter to avoid Flash Freeze targeting the tanks.
Guilds
- The Guild Perk, Cash Flow, no longer prints out text to the Chat Log. Instead, the daily amount deposited is shown in the Guild Vault Money Log. In addition, players can view the weekly contribution in a new window at the bottom of the Money Log.
- We have added two new custom guild tabards as Guild Rewards. The tabards are account bound and offer a bonus to gaining guild reputation.
Items
- The PvP Horde and Alliance trinkets have a new spell effect.
Professions
- All major cities will now have every type of profession trainer and their associated trade supply vendors.
PvP
- Battlegrounds
- Twin Peaks
- Graveyard Changes
- Players will now only spawn at their base graveyard when they die in the enemy base.
- Defending players will respawn at the middle graveyard.
- Midfield players will respawn at the middle graveyard.
- Attacking players will respawn at their base graveyard.
- Graveyard Changes
- Twin Peaks
Races
- The gnomish racial ability, Escape Artist, is no longer affected by the global cooldowns triggered by other abilities.
- The human racial ability, Every Man for Himself, has a new spell effect.
User Interface
- Work has begun on a new Looking for Guild system. Further details will be provided when we are ready for feedback.
- Spells bound to a key now start to be cast when the button is pressed down by default, instead of waiting for the key to go up. This is an option that can be turned off in the Interface menu under Combat. Mouse clicking has not changed and operates on mouse click up.
Filed under: News items






Reader Comments (Page 1 of 11)
Diirtyhippy Feb 24th 2011 11:15AM
Wow, bout time
Diirtyhippy Feb 24th 2011 11:30AM
My kingdom for an edit button!
Wheres the Druid love? Feral is so broken in both tanking and PvP right now and all blizz is doing is lol'ing and playing their frost mages
Pyromelter Feb 24th 2011 11:44AM
Frost mages got nerfed pretty heavily in 4.06, although they are still good. Blizz stupidly nerfed their pve damage making them less raid viable (although still viable enough I guess).
As far as feral... huh? what? mer? I don't tank as a druid or do feral pvp, but paragon's bear MT seemed to be doing fine (world first 13/13 enough for ya?), and looking at arena junkies, 5 of the top 9 3v3 teams have a feral druid. (feral/mage/priest seems to be a popular comp).
so... whaaaa?
Also, btw, this is just a preliminary patch notes. They will be adding tons of changes and class balances as testing goes on, so don't get yer panties in a bunch.
Pyromelter Feb 24th 2011 11:56AM
aww nuts, i fail at life, saw the paw thought that meant feral, not just druid... looks like most of those druids on arenajunkies are resto or balance. So yeah, maybe feral pvp isn't so hot right now, but they still aren't terrible are they?
lownwolf Feb 24th 2011 11:57AM
I'm doing perfectly fine as our guild's druid MT. and even our OT goes on his druid sometimes and does just as well. I don't know where everyone gets the idea that druid tanking is completely broken...
mike Feb 24th 2011 2:02PM
Pocket dispellers don't count. Arena is not everything.
Mitawa Feb 24th 2011 12:07PM
Feral is broken for PuG tanking at least. Raids are a different beast. With only one or two targets to keep threat on, bears are great but I've been finding that bear performance on more than two targets to be rather underwhelming. And the "more interesting" rotation, while certainly more engaging than the way it was in Wrath, still feels like a recipe for RMS.
Roguesan Feb 24th 2011 12:23PM
Tell that to my guild's Feral Druid. He's picked up half of the Guild PvP achievements on his own and racked up about 15k honourable kills in the process. Sounds fine to me.
Ulrica Feb 24th 2011 12:31PM
The main problem with druid tanking right now is that bears only get [Thrash] to reliably tank mob groups at level 81. Before that all you have is [Challenging Roar] as an aoe taunt from lvl 28 onward with a 3 minute cooldown.
Sure, I could switch mobs and hit all of them individually, but PUGs are used to Paladins and Warriors who will consecrate/thunderclap which grabs aggro faster, more reliably and lets groups faceroll dungeons with hardly ever stopping. Can't do that as a bear.
I like tanking, but as a leveling druid I just don't bother at the moment due to this.
lownwolf Feb 24th 2011 12:47PM
@ulrica: Only have thrash at 81? What about thorns, what about swipe?
I did find aoe tanking without thrash (at the end of wrath) to be extremely painful, but once you get it at 81 things open up. Swipe and thrash complement each other well, add in a bit of tab and lacerate, and you'll get some free mangle procs and it suddenly gets easier.
I've mentioned it before in wowinsider comments, but the large caster pulls that are to the right and left when you enter BoT are massive aoe fests, and I hold on to them just fine.
1) Get Tidy Plates/Threat Plates
2) thrash/swipe on CD
3) tab target lacerate
4) click target any nameplate that is turning yellow (threatplates shows as losing threat) and use a free mangle proc
Aanye Feb 24th 2011 12:49PM
Feral tanking:
NOT broken
NOT easy
NOT fun?
I think the reason the LFD circles seem to think it's broken is because there are a lot of bears running around still expecting to hold aggro with Swipe spam, clueless as to how impotent/impossible that is these days.
I am more casual than I expected to be right now--haven't raided aside from BH, mostly doing randoms, not very frequently at that. But my feral is 347 equipped and can hold aggro roughly as well as my 351 warrior can.
On the other hand, I've stopped playing my bear, because it's just not fun. It's frantic. Frantic CAN be fun--I think warrior tanking is both fun & frantic, and was even more so in the past--but this is not that type of frantic.
So I agree that they need to fix bears, not because they're "broken" in terms of their overall capability, but because the gameplay is just mind-numbing.
The long version of my bear rant: http://bit.ly/hzZDvO
The Dewd Feb 24th 2011 1:12PM
@Aanye
I know what you mean. I don't really seek out to tank all that much but I'll do it for my guild. Right now I get into a fight, I start out ok and then I feel like I'm just (no pun intended) thrashing at my keyboard. At least in Wrath I could spam swipe and there was a rhythm to it as I threw in things like mangle or lacerate or whatever. Now I just mash buttons and try to keep threat. Plus it seems like every time I tank for the guild, I wind up getting a healer having an off-day or at least 1-2 dps that are exactly iLevel 329. I'd much rather find another tank or sit in a queue by myself and dps as kitty.
It's a shame because back in Wrath, especially with the ICC 5-mans, I felt like I could tank just about anything and would help friends get faster dps queues. Now I just feel gimpy.
Ulrica Feb 24th 2011 2:27PM
@lownwolf at level 36 [Swipe] is learned rather late compared to the Warrior/Paladin abilities and doesn't stack up against them very well either
Aanye Feb 24th 2011 3:01PM
@ Dewd: You're right about the "rhythm" being missing.
The real problem is that, prior to Cataclysm, the rhythm of bear tanking was "Chopsticks". We could weave in Maul or Mangle or Lacerate all we wanted, but we were ultimately still relying upon Swipe spam, which was always sort of a mind-numbing (and RSI-inducing) rhythm, when you think about it.
Now without Swipe spam, we're expected to do more tanking, but haven't been given any more (effective) tools to do so. So the best rhythm we can muster is, oh, say the bass part to "Heart & Soul": http://youtu.be/rKrZiddRphw
Warriors, in contrast, have so many tools to work with, but they must be used in concert with each other in the right way. To extend the music metaphor, they get to play Mozart, Beethoven or Tchaikovsky. Pallies and DKs are somewhat in between... Perhaps John Williams? I guess DKs have dibs on the Imperial March. :P
Anyhow, bears need more abilities, or abilities with greater synergy. Blood & Thunder offers some nice interaction between Rend and Thunderclap, two abilities that a warrior will be using anyway--it provides great blanket threat for a warrior at the expense of one GCD's worth of snap aggro. But even without a Rend, TC does provide good snap aggro--something neither Swipe nor Thrash provide. What is Maul--is it our OOC dump, making it a counterpart to Revenge, or is it (glyphed) our poor version of a Cleave, something that is fairly essential to warrior AoE threat? I say it's neither. And Shockwave is a full-blown Swiss army knife in itself--we don't have anything that comes close to that.
I don't just wish for bears to become prot warrior clones--though it would be an improvement over the current state. But yes, bears need more rhythm and more synergy... more payoff for good tanking.
Edge00 Feb 24th 2011 3:17PM
Tanking on my Druid right now feels like a less fun version of BC bear tanking. At least back then I felt like a beast with my huge health pool and my massive amounts of armor
hshaft Feb 25th 2011 8:06AM
@lownwolf
Swipes damage (and threat) is very weak and no, it is not at all complementary to Thrash. If Swipe were to slap the Mangle bleed debuff on the targets, then it would complement Thrash, making Thrash hit quite a bit harder. Also, Thrash is a bleed that is mitigated by armor. It's the only bleed I know of in the game that does not ignore armor. We also have no ranged silence, the only tanking class that lacks this tool.
Bear AoE tanking is not impossible by any means; it just not where it could be and should be in comparison to other tanking classes. Read the forums. There's a thread in General called Why Druids are Frustrated by Saviodrood. It covers Bear Tanking issues as well as Feral PvP issues. There are some really good responses in there from some very highly regarded bear tanks. There's even a blue post, although the information in it seems way off the mark. Overall it's a good read.
I'm hopeful that due to all the recent changes to Feral, they are waiting for some more data and taking more time before planning any further adjustments. I do expect to see some changes in the next round of patch notes.
Knob Feb 24th 2011 11:16AM
Some nice quality-of-life improvements there along with the new content, like:
Tame Beast now tames pets to match the hunter's level, rather than 5 levels below.
Spells bound to a key now start to be cast when the button is pressed down by default, instead of waiting for the key to go up. This is an option that can be turned off in the Interface menu under Combat. Mouse clicking has not changed and operates on mouse click up.
Here's hoping that not all the new raid encounters are revealed on the PTR.
Sterb Feb 24th 2011 11:18AM
Back in my day, hunters had to level Humar from level 23 up to our level and we liked it.
Drakkenfyre Feb 24th 2011 11:58AM
"Tame Beast now tames pets to match the hunter's level, rather than 5 levels below."
Except it's been 3 levels for a long time. Seems like someone goofed on the patch notes.
shawn Feb 24th 2011 12:11PM
In Soviet Russia pet tames you!