Patch 4.1 PTR patch notes update for March 15
by Mathew McCurley 
Mar 15th 2011 at 9:35PM
One of the biggest changes, however, is that Colossus Smash now ignores 50% of armor in PvP but still ignores the 100% armor in PvE, right after Blizzard's developer answers said that they did not want to make two rule sets for the game. Very interesting. Hit the jump for the full notes.
March 15 patch notes update
Classes: General
- Several persistent ground effects now display different visuals for hostile and friendly players. The following spells have the same visual effects for friendly players, but new alternate visuals for hostile players: Ring of Frost, Consecration, Desecration, Wild Mushroom, Flare, Ice Trap, Power Word: Barrier, Smoke Bomb, and Hand of Gul'dan. As a general rule, the alternate effects have a red tint or hue indicating they are created by an enemy player.
- Living Seed is no longer a prerequisite talent for Efflorescence.
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Talent Specializations
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Arcane
- Improved Arcane Explosion now also reduces the mana cost of Arcane Explosion by 25/50%.
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Frost
- Ice Barrier base damage value has been increased by approximately 120%. In addition, the benefit from spell power has been increased by approximately 8%.
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Arcane
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Glyphs
- Glyph of Frost Armor (new glyph): Frost Armor also causes the mage to regenerate 2% of maximum mana ever 5 seconds.
- Colossus Smash now ignores 50% of a hostile player's armor (PvP), but continues to ignore 100% of a non-player character's armor (PvE).
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Blackwing Descent
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Atramedes
- Searing Flames now causes a 6-second cooldown on Modulation.
- Searing Flames no longer increases Sound on players.
- Players should no longer be able to avoid the first period damage tick of Searing Flame, and Searing Flame now ticks every 2 seconds. The damage of Searing Flame has been increased to compensate for it ticking less frequently.
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Nefarian's End
- The damage of Shadowflame Barrage has been reduced by 15% (10-player normal and Heroic difficulty only).
- The damage of Tail Lash has been reduced by 20% (10-player normal and Heroic difficulty only).
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Atramedes
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Bastion of Twilight
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Dragon Siblings
- Blackout can now be dispelled on Heroic difficulty.
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Cho'gall
- The health of Blood of the Old God on 10-player Heroic difficulty has been lowered by roughly 20%.
- The health of Darkened Creations on 10-player Heroic difficulty has been lowered by roughly 20%.
- Corruption: Accelerated on 10-player Heroic difficulty has been lowered slightly.
- Knockbacks and Deathgrip can now be used to interrupt players that are converted by Cho'gall.
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Dragon Siblings
- Arathi Basin is now available as a 10v10-player rated Battleground.
WoW Patch 4.1 is on the PTR and WoW Insider has all the latest news for you. From previews of the revamped Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub to new Valor point mechanics to the new Archaeology items.
Filed under: News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
Necromann Mar 15th 2011 9:47PM
Nerfing 10 man heroic will be a welcome change for some people I know.
SamLowry Mar 15th 2011 11:02PM
And yet 5-man heroics weren't touched at all.
Someday, I'd really like to make it all the way to the end of a second heroic.
SamLowry Mar 16th 2011 12:00AM
Here's another one to downvote:
I really enjoyed not only finishing Wrath heroics, but doing so in less than half an hour.
Yeah, I'm real naughty.
Leliana Mar 16th 2011 12:29AM
Heroics have already been nudged with the nerfbat, some were buffed, they aren't hard anyway...
Oh, and the only reason we remember wrath heroics as easy/quick was because we were used to running them in ICC gear, which is 3 tiers of raiding ahead of the first heroics.
So... I dunno... Run these heroics in full T14 gear and see how hard they are then?
Plastic Rat Mar 16th 2011 12:54AM
@SamLowry:
Why you play an MMO I have no idea. The x-box and other consoles have many games that are perfectly suited to your playstyle already.
Belfonisis Mar 16th 2011 1:02AM
As soon as the next tier comes out, Heroics will be easy again with everybody geared in epics from JP.
pancakes Mar 16th 2011 2:49AM
I can already capably run most heroics without any CC whatsoever, and I'm not in full epics yet. Heroics weren't a cakewalk at the start of Wrath either.
fbp Mar 16th 2011 3:20AM
This is a most welcome change. Its about damn time.
I hope the next tier of content isn't as bad for 10 man groups. I would like to enjoy doing heroics with them instead of not even considering them because of the difficulty and near impossibility of them.
There really needs to be a couple levels of 5-mans, easy, normal, and hard. Hard is where heroics were at release of cata. Actually difficult.
kipling Mar 16th 2011 3:20AM
I am a mucho casual player;
I have no end-game action
and still
heroics are easy.
Hate away but it is true.
Viator Mar 16th 2011 3:38AM
@stella
love the idea of realmbased LFD, they should make it a choosable option in the LFD tab. Or just give prio to people on your own realm first when forming a group.
Nat Mar 16th 2011 4:28AM
I can definitely see your point, but can you imagine the queues?
Manadar Mar 16th 2011 6:32AM
We get a 15% buff to health, healing and damage, pushing my newly dinged warrior to the same HP level in dungeons as my feral raiding bear with mixed 359/372 gear have in raids, and people still complain? C'mon, they can't nerf 5-mans any more without actually sending the loot to your mailbox.
Spellotape Mar 16th 2011 6:46AM
@Stella
"But in Dungeon Finder, you really never know what you will end up with, it could well be 2-3 people who levelled entirely in dungeons, never used a spell interrupt before and don't have a clue what debuffs are."
This doesn't make any sense whatsoever. If they levelled entirely in dungeons they would be better equiped to deal with situations arising in the dungeon than someone who had minimal dungeon experience.
Snuzzle Mar 16th 2011 7:34AM
@Stella
So your idea of how to solve this is not to put them in dungeons that force them to snap out of this behavior? I don't care what realm they go back to. When someone says "Just go FFS!" that's when whoever is tanking needs to say "If we go without explaining this boss, we will wipe. If you think we're going to slow, we'll be happy to kick you." And then go back to explaining.
I don't know about you, but as a healer, whenever I get a tank that's charging into the next pull before the one we just grabbed is totally dead (in levelling dungeons) I tell him to slow down. I call them "race car" tanks because they always seem to be racing towards some unseen finish line. If they continue racing along, I drop party. It's not to teach them a lesson or anything, just because we clearly have two different goals in the dungeon and I'd rather they play with a healer that says "Sweet! A speed run!" than me who's constantly telling herself "At least it'll be over fast, at least it'll be over fast..."
Although I would appreciate a check box in the LFD tool for realm-based dungeon selection, I don't think that will ever happen when you can already do that yourself. Just form the group yourself in trade chat (most dps will fall over themselves for a quick queue with a tank/heals) and then queue for a random dungeon with the tool. Voila. Now, if you're dps, it's a little tougher, but if you advertise yourself as a competent, knowledgeable dps (and prove it in runs) then word will get around and you'll develop a small list of tanks who love doing runs with you. Again, get a tank, and the rest of the group will fall over themselves to get to run with you.
The nice thing about this is it seems they sub-consciously seem to think you're the one doing them the favor, and they're more likely to listen to you and behave. It's win-win!
Zelphium Mar 16th 2011 8:43AM
A lot of the problem is when people assume because one group went easilly they all should do. Gearing up, say, a healer can be very hard because people think when you have run an instance with everyone in epics and it is easy that after that you can forget tactics and the healer will always deal with it, and you are called a noob if things go wrong. Once the DPS drops the healers mana needs to go much further.
Also I have noticed an alarming number of tanks that seem to gear stamina, presumably because they get so much flak from people who judge a tank from their HP, or because thats what makes them feel good. Then it's incredibly hard for a healer to keep them up even if the group is doing massive DPS. And then there's the tanks that start to learn how to tank in heroics. Though lets not always blame the tank, it is often the hardest role.
And of course lets not forget how many random groups will kick people for the lousiest of reasons. I was in a group for a heroic the other day where someone was kicked for doing slightly below 10K DPS, claiming that this was a minimum requirement for heroics! And this was on Throngus where the tank didn't know the boss and was running round randomly making it a very hard fight to keep DPS up, but also taking all the mace hits. I was amazed that the rest of the group seconded the kick. Needless to say, after we got a replacement the group disbanded after the next wipe on that boss. The tank never stopped to ask tactics though. Personally I will always stick with someone till the end. This game does show peoples true characters. And it's fair to say there are angels and devils out there.
Things are getting a little tough for casual play. Personally I haven't found any benefit to being in a guild yet as I am more casual these days and they tend to have a core of players in them. But if you are casual you do miss out on a lot of the benefits of a guild, which was a nice aspect in WOTLK. I welcome the changes in difficulty in Cata, though I doubt the heroics are harder than in WOTLK. Perhaps Blizzard should be having more of a heroic 5 man progression like they started to do in WOTLK? All of the current instances are open for heroics though, so they would have to have many more to have much scope for casual progression.
Not that this has anything to do with the current patch, though the idea of nerfing 5 man heroics I think misses the potential solution. Perhaps they should nerf some, make others harder with new item level requirements and make the drops epic versions come the new tiers. Though of course all the gear distribution would be all wrong, and still misses the problem of the attitude of some of the people who play.
@Plastic Rat - perhaps since you don't have good social skills it is you who shouldn't be playing online with other people, even if he does make ascerbic comments himself.
loop_not_defined Mar 16th 2011 9:53AM
Yeah...pretty much what Snuzzle said. You can already form "realm-based" queues - just ask Trade Chat. Voila.
When LFD was restricted to the same realm, queues were horrendous, *especially* if you were queueing for anything pre-80. Even as a tank, queueing at level 64 resulted in anything from a 10 minute queue to a 2 hour queue. Teleportation and gold rewards have *nothing* to do with it.
Duts Mar 16th 2011 2:02PM
I used to run PUG Heroics mainly in Wrath but now see the benefits of running in guild:
A group of about 7 or 8 of us from guild usually run daily Heroics together (whomever is available at the time.) We're typically are all on vent and the Heroics go like this:
Tank: "You're star (or diamond) tonight"
Ranged: "Trapping (Fearing/Hexing/Sheeping,etc.) now"
Rinse and repeat.
All: "Thanks for the run guys. Anyone need another on an alt."
Dugmet Mar 16th 2011 2:57PM
My two-cents and opinion...
Ive been PUGging all content since BC, and I played on a server that has strong PUG raids. Ive used the LFD feature since it was introduced and for +/- 18 months I have not run into the problems so many talk about. It was only on rare occasion that I had a bad one.
For Cata I joined a guild of nice people who do not grief or flame or QQ, but I still PUG my daily dungeon, and it hss not been a catasyrophe.
This past week I decided to be a little more social and run Heroics with guild mates. OMG! Now I know what everyone else has been talking about! I have never played with worse players. I had no idea there were such incompetant players out there.
Im going back to PUGging Heroics. Its much safer.
Herman Mar 16th 2011 4:59PM
@spellotape
No, just no, dungeons below 80-85 are pushovers, if you level through them you don't ever have to really dispel, most healers that are specced into healing never have to stop for mana, and its actually difficult to wipe. even the level 80-85 dungeons are easy with a competent healer, I had a tank pull the entire hall before ozruk and i kept everyone above 50% the entire time without running out of mana at any point, and this was at 83. Heroics are a rude awakening to these people.
Nagrim Mar 15th 2011 9:47PM
Phew I never liked Living Seed.