Patch 4.1 hotfixes for May 2
by Anne Stickney 
May 2nd 2011 at 11:59PM
Tonight, we've got another round of hotfixes courtesy of Zarhym (community manager), who posted them to the official Warcraft blog. Along with what should be a welcome change to Zul'Aman for healers, there are a handful of class changes related to one particular raid encounter:
- In Zul'Aman, Akil'zon's Static Disruption will no longer chain if players are more than 5 yards apart. Not only that, but he'll only cast it every 12 seconds, up from 5. Healers rejoice!
- Death Knights can now cast Death and Decay correctly on Cho'gall's trapdoor.
- Druids will note that Efflorescence's effects will now heal targets standing on Cho'gall's trapdoor.
- Paladins can now cast Consecration on Cho'gall's trapdoor.
We've really got it in for Cho'gall's trapdoor. Follow after the break for the full list of hotfixes.
ZarhymMay 2
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Classes
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Death Knights
- Death and Decay can be cast correctly on Cho'gall's trapdoor (or other transports).
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Druids
- Efflorescence will heal targets standing on Cho'gall's trapdoor (or other transports) regardless of the druid's location.
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Paladins
- Consecration can be cast correctly on Cho'gall's trapdoor (or other transports).
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Rogues
- The energy gained from both ranks of the Murderous Intent talent is now properly applied immediately after Backstab consumes energy.
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Shaman
- The internal cooldown of the mana effect from Water Shield has been doubled.
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Warlocks
- Due to the damage increase when Unstable Affliction is dispelled post-patch 4.1, the spell power coefficient applied to its dispel damage has been reduced.
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Death Knights
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Dungeons & Raids
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Stratholme
- Players should be able to complete the quest Weapons for War regardless of tradeskill.
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Zul'Aman
- Akil'zon's Static Disruption will no longer chain if players are more than 5 yards apart and is now cast every 12 seconds, up from 5.
- No non-elite creatures should drop epic loot.
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Zul'Gurub
- No non-elite creatures should drop epic loot.
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Stratholme
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Items
- The Gurubashi Punisher is correctly able to be sent in the mail between characters.
- Horde players no longer have access to Alliance-only tabards.
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Professions
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Archaeology
- The new rare Archaeology items should now correctly grant skill-ups when crafted.
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Archaeology
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PvP
- Player should no longer have issues resurrecting and using graveyards in Battlegrounds under certain conditions.
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Quests & Creatures
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Mount Hyjal
- Twilight Juggernauts are now immune to Death Grip and cannot be moved from their location without being engaged. Players are still able to engage and kill the creatures while on the quest Disassembly.
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Stonetalon Mountains
- Deepmoss Webspinners are now properly exiting combat.
- The quest item Krom'gar Flame Thrower for the quest Ashes to Ashes is now zone-bound.
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Mount Hyjal
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Mend0zA May 3rd 2011 12:26AM
5 years apart? As a healer, that still sounds tough.
Ghrinedhur May 3rd 2011 12:12AM
If you're droping a heal once every five years, I don't think you have to worry about it. Your mana should regenerate in that time.
WeWhoEat May 3rd 2011 12:24AM
5 Light-yards? :) Yeah I know, typo :) But if your melee stay in a triangle at max hit box, they will easily be out of range, don't forget the cooldown is also being increased.
Bikhai May 3rd 2011 12:34AM
Akil'zon nerf. Oh thank you Baby Jesus.
karatesmashunhurt May 3rd 2011 4:09AM
Not nerf, fix. :-)
jacksworth May 3rd 2011 8:13AM
nerf
acurry08 May 3rd 2011 8:50AM
Why does everyone think the Akil'Zon fight was so hard? Dispel the debuff and cast a HoT on the tank and you never have problems. Wow, that was hard.
Spellotape May 3rd 2011 9:15AM
@acurry08
It's not that dispelling is hard, it's that dispelling every single person in the group is hard if they refuse to be properly spread out.
While I've healed many excellent groups where the melee (and ranged) have been awesome and not spread the debuff or got it from the tank, I've healed just as many where they either haven't known about it or didn't care to observe the potential danger of a growing amount of people with the debuff.
Kittens May 3rd 2011 9:26AM
@ accurry
Everybody thought it was hard, because it WAS. After the last patch for hotfixes, the fight became either overtuned or seriously bugged. The debuff was jumping like crazy, to everyone, ALL the time, nicely hitting for 35K if you were unlucky. There were reports of the debuff also jumping to and from pets, minipets and the little bears from the arch buff.
In a fight with more than one melee dps, this became healer hell. You'd have the debuff jumping to at least 3 players, and once you were done disspelling those with barely time to throw out a heal, they were already applied again or jumped to someone else. And don't mention what happened if someone with a debuff was picked up by a bird, flying over the heads of those who had been debuff-free before.
I did the fight on my resto shaman a couple of times in the bugged/overtuned mode, and the healing going on there was more intense than for example the first phase of Halfus. Now, I am a pretty good healer and running in 359 iLvl, with groups of competent people that know when to move, when to shoot birds, when to stack etc. Still, yesterday's attempt left me with only the tanks standing and myself at 10% health. I pulled out about 2.3 million in heals, disspells around 30.
If you are a healer that actually needs gear from these bosses, good luck on that without running OOM from disspells alone halfway through the fight.
If you want to read more experiences from 346 to heroic raid geared healers on this fight, here's a nice thread: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2456906582
So yes.. definitely not a nerf, but a much-needed fix. These are dungeon bosses for people that need gear, not raid fights.
Vector May 3rd 2011 10:38AM
Funny, this dude was my FIRST fight as a healer in 4.1 with ilvl 354 -- I figured I was screwed. I even have the glyphed dispel (3% heal per dispel) and we still wiped 3 or 4 times and then finally got him down with 3 people left. Subsequent runs weren't much better.
So ya...I'm definitely rejoicing.
s256 May 3rd 2011 10:50AM
Indeed.. I was running this as Resto shaman and got annihilated a bunch of times. It was dispel hell! I'm glad it's fixed.
Amanda A. May 3rd 2011 11:29AM
@acurry-- It was easy, as long as you had, at most, one melee. More than that, and there wasn't room to spread out. The healer can't very well be cleansing constantly on that fight.
All this nerf does is makes this fight possible with 2 or 3 melee. If you had a lot of ranged, the fight is effectively unchanged.
Brainded May 3rd 2011 12:41PM
Given that they swapped the numbers (5 seconds became 12, and 12 yards became 5) I think someone might have made a wee mistake when configuring the fight on Blizzard's end before the patch released. Could be just correcting a transpositional error, and this is actually how it was supposed to be the whole time.
Bikhai May 3rd 2011 12:52PM
@brainded
Excellent point. I hadn't noticed that.
@acurry
I think kittens put it very well, but ultimately it boils down to this: Up until the fix/nerf/whatever, a minimum of 1.5 out of every 5 seconds (1 GCD) was being used to dispel the debuff. The other 3.5 seconds (~2 heals depending on your class) had to be used to heal up the 35k static disruption (heaven forbid it hits more than 1 person), the boss's melee damage, whatever 20k attacks the little bird adds did, and the 20-25k hits that kidnappers put on their targets. That's massive healing on multiple targets, regardless of if you have a hot on the tank or not. And for players of appropriate gear and skill level it was way over the top.
I'll be looking forward to actually queueing for the instance again.
Cephas May 3rd 2011 1:00AM
Thank Aman'Thul for the Murderous Intent fix! Hopefully we won't be energy capping anymore.
DruidGuard May 3rd 2011 1:05AM
Healer here. I am rejoicing.
Shadowwind May 3rd 2011 11:29AM
SHAMAN healer here, who relies on Water Shield procs. I am NOT rejoicing!
Xotzalqual May 3rd 2011 1:50PM
@Shadowwind
Pick up Teluric Currents and spam that lightning bolt whenever you're not healing. You won't be so dependant on watershield after that.
Fdaapprovedd May 4th 2011 4:21AM
I feel like Telluric Currents should get a +hit buff or glyph to lightning bolt, no?
lsschwartz May 3rd 2011 1:26AM
Yes! I am rejoicing. The non-bugged buffed encounter was a bit challenging but fine, the bugged one was just frustrating.