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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsPatch 4.1 PTR notes updated for March 1
by Anne Stickney 
Mar 1st 2011 at 5:20PM
The patch notes for PTR patch 4.1 have been updated, and we've got all the latest changes for you below. Included in this update is some startling information regarding death knight talents.
The original round of 4.1 patch notes can be found here.
General
Death Knights
The original round of 4.1 patch notes can be found here.
General
- Resilience scaling has been modified for linear returns, as opposed to increasing returns. Under the new formula, going from 30 resilience to 40 resilience gives players the same increase to survivability as going from 0 to 10. Resilience now scales in the same way armor and magic resistances do. A player with 32.5% damage reduction from resilience in 4.0.6 should see their damage reduction unchanged in 4.1. Those with less than 32.5% will gain slightly. Those with more will lose some damage reduction, increasingly so as their resilience climbs.
Death Knights
- Raise Ally has been redesigned to be a battle resurrection, analogous to Rebirth. It is instant cast, but costs 50 Runic Power to use, and has a 10-minute cooldown. It shares the same global battle resurrection cap with Rebirth and Soulstone.
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Talent Specializations
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Blood
- Blood Shield now only works while in Blood Presence.
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Frost
- Frost Strike now deals 130% of weapon damage, up from 110%.
- Howling Blast damage has been increased by 20%. To compensate, the area-of-effect splash now does 50% of the single-target damage, down from 60%. The net result of this change leaves the area-of-effect damage roughly the same as 4.0.6 numbers.
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Blood
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Glyphs
- Glyph of Raise Ally is now Glyph of Death Gate, and makes Death Gate cast 60% faster.
Druids
- Swipe (Bear) cooldown has been reduced to 3 seconds, down from 6.
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Talent Specializations
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Restoration
- Gift of Nature (passive) also reduces Tranquility's cooldown by 2.5/5 minutes.
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Restoration
Priests
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Talent Specializations
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Discipline
- Power Word: Barrier's cooldown has been increased to 3 minutes, up from 2, and its effect has been reduced to 25%, down from 30%.
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Discipline
Warlocks
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Talent Specializations
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Affliction
- Shadow Mastery (passive) has been increased to 30%, up from 25%.
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Affliction
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Pets
- Doomguard's damage has been increased by 50%. The Doomguard is intended to be the best guardian for single-target damage, and the Infernal the best when there are multiple targets.
- Shadow Bite (Felhunter) damage and effect has doubled.
Warriors
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Talent Specializations
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Arms
- Strikes of Opportunity damage has been increased by 10% to keep stat parity with other strike changes.
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Fury
- Unshackled Fury now only grants 2 base points of mastery, down from 8. This change offsets the Flurry boost to better control Fury burst damage.
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Arms
Items
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Item Sets
- The current damage-dealing death knight 4-piece raid set bonus now also grants increased attack power when Killing Machine triggers, as well as when the death knight gains Death Runes).
- The current Holy paladin 4-piece raid set bonus now grants 540 Spirit for 6 seconds after casting Holy Shock.
Filed under: News items, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 5 of 5)
pancakes Mar 2nd 2011 1:35AM
Unless you play a pallie, you can't complain about minor glyphs. It's a law.
poggg Mar 1st 2011 7:03PM
"Shadow Bite (Felhunter) damage and effect has doubled."
So will Affliction warlocks finally use it over the Succubus again? I hope so, I've always liked it more.
mazca13 Mar 1st 2011 7:59PM
Have to admit I actually punched the air and said "YEAH!" when I saw that. Much as I may be taking WoW too seriously again, I love my felhunter - back before they removed the affliction talent that let you drain mana from your pet, my felhunter was always my choice while levelling and in a vague RP sense he's the pet my warlock's most attached to. Very happy to have a genuine DPS reason to use him now, rather than just because he's pimp and I like the demon soul buff.
jp Mar 1st 2011 8:19PM
And once again Rogues are left to stand around with their thumb in their @#$.
Not a drop of utility or buff to the Raid and yet we need to encourage more DK's.
They better have something really neat up their sleeves for Rogues or maybe just get it out in the open we need to delete or not?
LuZifer Mar 1st 2011 8:35PM
>not a drop of utility
CC (kick, improved kick, arcane torrent for Blood Elves)
Threat dump (TotT)
>or buff
Savage Combat for the Combat spec, Honor Among Thieves/Hemo for Sub
wat?
Zal Mar 1st 2011 8:37PM
Rogues have misdirection capabilities that they can use like hunters. They have a CC with few limitations compared to others, can provide some emergency CC with stuns and blind an early break if it is not due to dots.
Rogues are not hurting for utility compared to other classes, in addition to spending nearly two full expansions as top DPS within raids. As has been said before, class power usually goes in cycles, though it is not underpowered and OP like people presumed. It is balanced and unbalanced on the high end, rogues were in the later for BC and Wrath. Now is their time to feel what it is like to have the pack of the DPS nipping at your heals behind you.
SillyString Mar 3rd 2011 8:23AM
I think he's upset because Rogues still can't do everything the other classes can do while barfing rainbows that dissolve mobs.
razion Mar 1st 2011 9:16PM
Imagine a coin. The coin is made of silver. One half is tails, the other is heads. One *LOOKS* different from the other, but that is all. Both are still made of silver. By that end, if you were to cut the coin in half with a knife to separate them, and smelt them down into their base element, you could reforge either to look exactly like the other. By that notion, you could do anything with the Tails end that you could do with the Heads end.
Light and Dark work in the same fashion.
Necromancy has always been used to raise the dead.
The Light has always been used to raise the dead.
Two halves of the same coin--their powers are one and the same.
They are no different.
Nyold Mar 2nd 2011 1:48AM
Can somebody explain the resilience change please? I always thought it's BEEN linear, and armor and resistance is diminishing (that is, concave-down curve). But I thought resilience has always functioned as: XX rating gives you 1% damage reduction. That sounds linear to me.
Roachy Mar 2nd 2011 9:41PM
For all those of you complaining about being brought back to "life" by a class imbued with the power of death then there is an easy solution....
Roll an Undead, problem solved!!!
Reckoner Mar 2nd 2011 7:08AM
I think the change to Raise Ally is going to really help in those situations where the dead raid member just happens to be the druid healer, or when another BRez is on cooldown... or simply when the fight is too hectic to force a healer to stop healing, target some fire-standing nub, BRez, then quickly play 'catch-up' on their healing target.
I have been tanking a boss, popped CDs when the healer stops to BRez, and still died because of a badly timed double-strike, or whatever. It's not fun.
And in many boss fights where RP is building up to be used for "OH CRAP" situations like self-healing through death coils, having an instant cast BRez for a mere 50 RP is pretty fantastic.
Now I *DO* wish they had simply changed HOW raise Ally works, making it a more interesting and viable ability while not cheaping-out and just turning it into a BRez. One way they could've done this;
1) Raid members raised as Ghouls start out with the same STAM they had when they died, giving them the same HP.
2) Remove the 5 minute restriction, allow for a ghoul rezzed ally to feasibly fight the whole way through a boss encounter.
3) Replace the ghoul-rezzed ally's highest stat with Agi.
4) 4 or 5 abilities unique to ghoul-rezzed allies, working off combo points, similar to a rogue--
- shred: generates a combo point
- gnaw: stuns on 1min CD
- claw: places bleed effect on enemy, generates combo point
- frenzy: uses combo points to increase personal haste, length of buff dependent on number of combo points used
- Putrid Outbreak: places Blood Plague, Frost Fever and Scarlet Fever on the target, uses combo points to determine length of the DoTs.
shiftbull Mar 2nd 2011 9:08AM
so.. thats the way you get a class (melee) to have more presence in raids.. "give it something useful" like.... brez... LOLZ!
razion Mar 2nd 2011 12:05PM
Death Knights are not using the light to bring back a fallen player--they are using Necromancy to reanimate your body by putting that person's soul back in control over the dead shell. In a sense they are forcibly anchoring both together. There is no good magic being used--everything being used is the dark empowerment of the Void, however the idea is that necromancy can do a lot of the same things (if not everything) that the Light can do, with the exception of looking different while doing so. If the light brings you back, that's great, you're brought back. If necromancy brings you back, that's great, you're brought back. In both instances the same effect is occuring--the individual is no longer gone from this world. The how doesn't matter, the fact is that both have the ability to do so in their own way.
The comparison with the coin was to try and elaborate that while we may see the Light and Dark in different ways, they are more alike than we in fact realize. The light can be used in bad ways, and the dark can be used in good ways. Just because Necromancy is being used to reanimate a corpse, it doesn't mean The Light is being used, it means that Necromancy is doing something that is usually thought of as being a "The Light Sort Of Deal".
Necromancy can be used to bring people back from the dead. There is no light being used by Death-knights. It is all necromancy, and it isn't anything new to Azeroth. Liches and Death-Knights have been reanimating people with dark magic for Titans knows how long. The only difference with a player Death-Knight and, say, Arthas, is that he's actually letting the individual stay in control of their shell.
They are quote-unquote "different", but they are NO *different*. I do hope you understand, because I have explained it to the best of my ability.
And as for your final example... yes, yes they could. Both Warlocks and Hunters master the art of *dominating the will of another being*. They only do so in a different way. Exactly like Light and Darkness, they accomplish the same goal in different ways. Different methods that procure the same result. Beast or demon, the same skill is being used. The only thing that keeps hunters and warlocks from taming or enslaving anything they want is game mechanics, really.
Mikespano Mar 3rd 2011 7:32AM
That 4 pc holy paladin set bonus still won't make me want the gear. Let's put some haste on the gear and I'll think about it.
Asaoirc Mar 3rd 2011 9:34AM
DK Battle-Rez - Makes more sense than the previous Raise Ally. If you just died, and I cast my DK-magics on you (now,) you are rezzed as a ghoul, as though you'd been dead for the longest time. You don't have any of the abilities you were using mere seconds ago and instead revert to 'feral' undead abilities. That resto druid? clawing mindlessly at the enemy! That mage? not casting spells, clawing! Makes sense right? and, at the end of the fight, when the magic has faded and the boss is down, they're ressurected by (healing class) and they're okay, gaining all their abilities and gear and skills... etc.
makes sense, right?
With a Brez, the DK can now infuse a small amount of (runic power) into your corpse to bring you back to life, then remove their influence(you are alive of your own power, not controlled by the deathknight), and the fight can continue as normal.
tl;dr - instant ghoulification makes less sense than a brez, imo.
Obsidiana Mar 3rd 2011 11:14AM
Death Knight battle ressurection? Really? So now, that brings the abilities a death knight doesn't have in someform from all other classes to what, two?
Normal ressurection, and bloodust/timewarp/heroism?
Seriously, since Blizzard has no interest in adding a second Hero class, Death Knights should be "just another class" and balanced with all the other classes.