Patch 5.3 interview with Ghostcrawler
Mystery of the Unborn Val'kyr
The latest patch 5.3 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsPatch 4.2 PTR patch notes updated for May 31
by Alex Ziebart 
May 31st 2011 at 10:00PM
- The defensive pet stance will now only cause the player's pet to attack enemies that attack the pet or the master.
- Hunters can tame eight new rare beasts, each with a specific "taming challenge."
- Party/raid interface profiles can now be saved, letting you easily switch for different encounters and roles.
- Mages: Arcane Blast damage done has been reduced by 5%.
- Warlocks: Soul Fire is now available at level 20, down from level 54.
General
- All character races now have a /roar sound.
- The Defensive pet stance will now only cause the player's pet to attack enemies which attack the pet or the master.
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Talent Specializations
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Marksmanship
- Careful Aim now grants additional critical strike chance against targets over 90% health, up from 80% health.
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Marksmanship
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Pets
- 8 new rare tamable beasts have been added, each of which provides a unique taming challenge. Will you be the first hunter to tame Deth'tilac, the rarest and most powerful of them all? Players will need to progress through the Hyjal Regrowth and Molten Front daily questing areas in order to unlock access to the full gamut of taming challenges.
- Arcane Blast damage done has been reduced by 5%.
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Talent Specializations
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Shadow
- Psychic Horror no longer has a forward facing requirement, making it consistent with other non-projectile-based crowd control spells.
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Shadow
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Talent Specializations
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Subtlety
- Hemorrhage base damage has been increased by 40%.
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Subtlety
- Soul Fire is now available at level 20, down from level 54.
- Recklessness and Deadly Calm can no longer be used at the same time. One cannot be used while the other is active, but using one does not put the other on its full cooldown.
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Talent Specializations
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Arms
- Two-Handed Weapon Specialization weapon damage increase has been lowered to 12%, down from 20%.
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Fury
- Dual Wield Specialization weapon damage increase has been lowered to 5%, down from 10%.
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Arms
- If a player wins a Need roll under the Need Before Greed system on a Bind on Equip item, the item will become Soulbound to that player. The item will remain unbound if won via a Greed roll.
- The order in which characters are listed at the Character Selection screen can now be rearranged and saved.
- Raid Profiles have been added which allow players to save the raid window user interface layout based on type of content (i.e. 10-player raids, 25-player raids, Battlegrounds, etc.) for future use.
The news is already rolling out for the upcoming WoW Patch 4.2! Preview the new Firelands raid, marvel at the new legendary staff, and get the inside scoop on new quest hubs -- plus new Tier 12 armor!Filed under: News items, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 5)
Telwar Jun 1st 2011 9:21AM
Actually, when they use a phrase like "taming challenge," it makes me agree with Wilk. This sounds awfully like the kind of class-specific content they said they didn't want to do any more, and is the reason new paladins and warlocks don't get to quest for their mounts.
Namssob May 31st 2011 11:06PM
Yay Rogues!
Yay Login screen!
Yay Need = BoP!!
YAY!
Wilk May 31st 2011 11:33PM
Well, considering the 'each of which provides a unique taming challenge' part of the patch notes, I'd say they put a bit more effort into them than the flip of a switch.
Straz May 31st 2011 11:57PM
Ouch. That Careful Aim nerf is gonna hurt opening burst damage a tad.
Wolfwings Jun 1st 2011 12:24AM
*HUNTERFSJAL*
Jabadabadana Jun 1st 2011 1:22AM
... to catch them is my real test, to train them is my cause...
charles.lavene Jun 1st 2011 2:03AM
By far the biggest update of this patch, that finally makes this a complete and perfect game, is the /roar ability. Now we can all die happy.
hp_hunter Jun 1st 2011 2:39AM
Loving that BoE items become soulbound when needed; No more ninjaing for AH!
Thunder Jun 1st 2011 3:47AM
Am i the only warrior who is tired off getting nerfed after every new raid-patch? Yes our dps scale very well with new Tier-gear on PTR, but plz remember that we dont instantly get all that gear( most of us will never get all of it anyway) and that your nerfs to your full-hc-tier12-ptr-warriors also hits the rest of the world of warriors ( who, atleast from a casual-raiders point of view is doing ok/mediocre dps but nothing fancy atm).
Arrohon Jun 1st 2011 6:59AM
Ah, the all-knowing Matthew Rossi. He kept saying that he expected a warrior nerf and here it is. It's a fairly sized hit but thankfully not earth-shattering. I wonder how much this will affect our stat weights with hit....
Bikhai Jun 1st 2011 10:23AM
Calling Rossi a prophet for foreseeing a warrior nerf in a patch is a bit much I think. Take a look back at it and there have been pretty significant nerfs to warriors in every major and most minor patches going a ways back, be it nerfing mastery values, changing charge and intercept mechanics, that goofy change to juggernaut in 4.0.6, figuring out what the heck they wanted to do to Titan's Grip way back in the day, making Bladestorm disarmable, etc. That's all I can think of off the top of my head, but I'm sure there's more.
It's not stretching too much to say that many of the buffs we've received have been because of how over the top the nerfs that came before them were. How much the reverse is true I think is an interesting concept. It's definitely amusing that this 5-8% nerf comes on the heels of the 40% buff to white damage in fury and the unnerfing of Colossus Smash for arms in PvE.
Arrohon Jun 1st 2011 3:49PM
Dude, I was joking. You put way too much thought into proving a joke wrong. /clap
SkippyMcGhee Jun 1st 2011 9:39AM
Yay for the pet change - nothing worse than my shadowfiend running (if you can call it that) off on it's own attacking things willy-nilly. "Herbert! Come back here! Aw darnit Herbert, what have you done? Bad fiend! Bad!"
Collected Jun 1st 2011 10:07AM
I have to say this.. and I've an 85 Hunter.. Hunters imho get by far the most love in this game. No down time in questing.. the ability to solo group quests with ease.. the ability to solo instances with a pet that acts as a tank and heals you and also this mini game of collecting the huge number of pets in the game, some of which look incredible.
I'm sure people will say 'Yeah but other classes get stuff too, like mages can port etc' but I've played a mage and a hunter and I can safely say hunter is like wow on ezmode. I solo'ed Kara on my hunter.. no way could I even try that on my mage. My 61 priest is always having to drink water because her mana has run out. I never ever had to eat/drink o my hunter. Just my 2c.
threesixteen Jun 1st 2011 10:49AM
wasn't always this way, let's not forget. remember running out of ammo? remember ammo level being gated by reputation? remember drinking endlessly when we were mana-based? remember your pet deserting you when you forgot to feed it? remember when there were so many GD hunters around that you'd rarely ever get an invite to an instance or raid? remember when you'd get yelled at for MD pulling to the tank, even though you KNEW it was the right thing to do?
i say, keep your head down hunters, lest some higher power take notice of our remarkable evolution.
:)
Alf Jun 1st 2011 10:12AM
all character races now have a /roar sound...
great, another annoying thing to do on bank/AH while waiting for dungeons queues.
Therinor Jun 1st 2011 10:24AM
I am wondering... is there a typo or something in those patch-notes?
It says Deth'ilac, so I tried to look that up at wowhead, to see whether they already had information on it.
I didnt find anything, but instead, I found Beth'ilac... http://ptr.wowhead.com/npc=52498
which apparently is a raid boss. Now, considering you can now tame Chromaggus (yeah, I know, that raid is lvl 60), I was wondering whether this is the tameable mob in the patch notes.
Then again, it says "the rarest"... so maybe there is another mob that is just a very very rare spawn and is named "Deth'ilac" (weird similarity in names, if you ask me, but then again, maybe that's lore-related).
So Im wondering... will this boss be tameable, or is there some other rare mob that they talk about which will be tameable but rare to find? If its that boss, I wouldnt be surprised if its rare since they mention taming challenges... it prolly WOULD be challenging to tame that boss, maybe with some mechanics that make it even harder.
I guess we will see, but does anyone have any info on this?
leggomymuoio Jun 1st 2011 10:42AM
Wow...was the Careful Aim nerf really necessary? Seriously, it might not even be worth taking depending on how long that first 10% lasts (here's a hint, it's not very long on most bosses).
threesixteen Jun 1st 2011 10:49AM
any word if blizz will be increasing the hunters' stable size to accomodate these 8 new pets?
threesixteen Jun 1st 2011 10:49AM
so have they tweaked the Aggressive stance to have the pet attack as soon as the hunter attacks? because this is a function that i have come to rely on, regardless of what it's called (aggressive, defensive, w/e)... it saves a click and i don't have to use a macro...
i'll admit that i actually really liked the "aggressive" pet stance when doing archaeology; made it so much easier to just have Chromaggus run around killing everything for me while i searched for frags.