Patch 4.1 PTR notes updated for April 12
by Michael Sacco 
Apr 12th 2011 at 10:00PM
Death Knight
- Rage of Rivendare again applies 15/30/45% additional damage to Plague, Scourge, and Festering Strike, up from 12/24/36%.
- Swipe (Cat) damage has been doubled.
- Berserk is no longer on the global cooldown.
- Selfless Healer duration reverted back to 10 secs.
- Grounding Totem cooldown has been increased to 25 seconds, up from 15.
- Earth Shield healing done by Restoration shaman has been reduced by 20%.
- Nature's Blessing has been improved to 6/12/18% bonus direct healing on Earth Shielded targets, up from 5/10/15%.
- Glyph of Grounding Totem now increases the cooldown of the ability by 35 seconds, down from 45 seconds.
- Improved Hamstring now reduces the global cooldown on Hamstring by 0.25/0.5 seconds in addition to its current effects.
- Players will now get bonus rewards 7 times per week (while earning less than 980 Valor Points) instead of once a day when using Dungeon Finder.
- When there is only 1 player left in a Dungeon Finder group, they will now be able to queue for replacements as long as they queue within 2 minutes or stay in the dungeon.
- The criteria on many of the profession-related guild achievements has been significantly reduced.
- The caster shaman 4-piece PvP set bonus now reduces the cooldown of Grounding Totem by 3 seconds, up from 1.5.
- The Network category contains the options "Optimize network for speed" and "Enable IPv6 when available". "Optimize network for speed" will be enabled by default, and will send packets more frequently at the cost of higher bandwidth. The higher bandwidth may lead to disconnects for some players who have limited bandwidth. Players getting disconnected frequently should try unchecking this box.
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 and new archaeology items.
Filed under: News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
Xantenise Apr 12th 2011 10:05PM
"When there is only 1 player left in a Dungeon Finder group, they will now be able to queue for replacements as long as they queue within 2 minutes or stay in the dungeon."
Yay! My group inexplicably fell apart after one of the DPS ditched yesterday and if I was not a healer I would have pouted at having to start the queue all over again.
Nina Katarina Apr 13th 2011 7:47AM
I had a dungeon finder group fall apart on freaking Erudax once; I was the only deeps who was deepsing the adds. Honestly, 2 minutes more work for any semi-competant team. I was so angry.
radda Apr 12th 2011 10:07PM
"Swipe (Cat) damage has been doubled."
Yay? I guess? I only ever use Swipe on large packs of non-elite mobs in dungeons anyway.
Matthew Apr 12th 2011 10:16PM
and *that* my friend is the only reason it was doubled.
Razzanor Apr 12th 2011 10:17PM
That's exactly the point. They're trying to make AoE better for specs with poor multi-target capabilities.
Take fury warriors, for example; they have precisely two abilities that hit multiple targets - Cleave, which hits a grand total of two enemies, and Whirlwind, which is an instant cast with a ten second cooldown. They're reducing that cooldown to four seconds in the patch.
The change isn't meant to make AoE-facerolling through dungeons viable; it's to make certain specs less useless during the rare situations where AoE-facerolling is not only *viable*, but really the only logical option.
Eregos ftw! Apr 12th 2011 10:33PM
Well, my damage on the group trash in BoT has doubled (60k-120k dps...)
theRaptor Apr 12th 2011 10:48PM
So I am going to hit 30k DPS on trash packs now? With judicious timing off cool downs I never felt my Cat swipe did poor damage. The only people that were regularly beating me where Warlocks.
Revynn Apr 13th 2011 12:35AM
Heroic Maloriak has an additional Black phase with an extended amount of AoE
http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Maloriak/25H/100/14/60/default/
Look where Feral is compared to just about everyone else and you can see why Kitty's are in serious need of an AoE buff.
Ice Apr 13th 2011 2:32AM
"you can see why Kitty's are in serious need of an AoE buff."
Hmmh... weeell
Not to burst any bubbles but everyones AOE damage dealing abilities have been doubled, tripled and whatnot in 4.1 so kitties are not so special in this case (even tho kitties are cute, right?).
Its surely not because of some "heroic maloriak" or anything..Either Firelands brings huge AOE fight or they are now thinking that people can "aoe down" heroic trash..Well, those packs that can be, faster without sometimes tedious single target to everything.. you still prolly cant aoe down mobs who hit hard and/or heal..
theRaptor Apr 13th 2011 3:04AM
@Revynn
That parse says to me that Spriests, Fire mages, Demo locks, and Balance druids (and probably Aff locks and Arms wars) need to have their AoE reigned in. Everyone else is fairly tightly grouped except for poor Arcane mages.
I would also point out that the scaling of people in Heroic raid gear in Heroic raid fights is irrelevant to the other 90% of raiders and to 99.99....% of other WoW players.
The data for normals shows cats to the left of the average but they are hardly deviating to a significant degree and there are several other specs in the same area.
Also the problem cats have is with EXTENDED AoE. Doubling their burst AoE won't deal with this problem at all. If Blizzes intent was to deal with that they would have lowered the energy cost of swipe.
Manadar Apr 13th 2011 4:12AM
Haha, overall on most fights it's gonna be balanced I guess, but the burst with berserk, holy shit! Now they just gotta fix our single-target DPS scaling since we start falling behind badly in hardmode gear.
Noid Apr 12th 2011 10:12PM
Earth Shield healing done by Restoration shaman has been reduced by 20%.
:|
18% Nature's Blessing is just fine though.
Azzure Apr 12th 2011 11:00PM
That change to Earth Shield makes this Resto shaman sad... 1st blizz buffs us since we "are not in line with other healers" then they nerf the spell that makes us resto...
Shaurt Apr 12th 2011 11:46PM
Considering ES now benefits from our mastery on the PTR, I think this is more of a balancing act than a real nerf. It may have just been too powerful of a passive heal when the tank/target is low on health.
Bvannas Apr 12th 2011 11:47PM
I barely noticed the nerf because im dreaming of even higher GHW crits.
Henrah Apr 13th 2011 9:53AM
As far as I can tell with changes to healing across the board, Blizzard are trying to make all the healing specs exactly the same.
Three heals that are usable - One quick, inefficient heal, one medium heal, and one slow massive heal.
And then a bunch of spec-defining spells that they've turned into gimmicks.
This clearly makes healing more interesting and appealing.
magicjamie Apr 13th 2011 11:13AM
Earth Shield is pretty overpowered in PvP at the moment, as an instant cast 10 stack of auto-heal. This is why it has been changed, o raiders.
techvoodooguy Apr 13th 2011 11:38AM
@Magicjamie: No, it was changed because it benefits from Resto Mastery now. If it had mastery + the extra 20% healing, it would be OP.
My lowbie ele shaman rejoices! Now I can queue as a healer as an actual healing spec and not be bored to frikin death because I only need to refresh ES. Now I have to occasionally cast Healing Surge as well :rolleyes:
Matthew Apr 12th 2011 10:16PM
The number of changes wanes, patch day cometh.
theRaptor Apr 12th 2011 11:43PM
I thought patch day was going to be 2 weeks ago and spent a frenzied week trying to get enough Valor points to buy tier 11. It wouldn't surprise me now if we still had a few more weeks to wait on 4.1.