Patch 5.2 interview with Dave Kosak
Inside an old alt's vault
The latest patch 5.2 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsPatch 4.2 hotfixes for July 1
by Alex Ziebart 
Jul 1st 2011 at 8:25PM
Stars, a high-end raiding guild, used that to its advantage this patch; they cleared Firelands on its normal difficulty, faction-transferred en masse, and then began clearing it again, this time banging away at its hard modes. Why? To get a leg up on the competition, of course. Players watching the situation were waiting for an official response from Blizzard, assuming that a lack of response would be the developers condoning the faction transfer practice -- but I think this decision clears up the situation pretty well. It was an oversight on the developers' part that hopefully will not happen again.
The other hotfixes today include numerous class changes, Firelands balance tweaks, and an assortment of bug fixes. You can find them all past the cut below.
July 1 hotfixes-
General
- Characters should no longer randomly suffer falling damage.
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Classes
- Pets should no longer be attacking new targets at random while a player is under the effects of any crowd control.
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Druids
- It is no longer possible to cancel Lunar Shower by right-clicking the buff, or canceling it via a macro.
- Starfall is no longer hitting targets that are within 40 yards if they are not in combat with the druid or his/her party/raid members. It is targeting all hostile characters in combat with the druid's party/raid members, is not hitting Stealth characters, is not breaking crowd control effects, and is not targeting nearby critters.
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Hunters
- All of the Hunter-centric rare spawns in Mount Hyjal and Molten Front are now immune to both Distracting Shot and Taunt.
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Priests
- The Flash Heal from Surge of Light will now correctly activate Chakra.
- The heal-over-time effect from the Glyph of Prayer of Healing now will correctly apply to targets that are within 30 yards of the target of Prayer of Healing, but over 40 yards away from the priest.
- Channeled spells are no longer being interrupted if cast immediately after Shadowfiend.
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Rogues
- Sap is no longer placing the rogue in combat when he/she is visible and the target is sapped.
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Warlocks
- Warlocks will no longer fall through pillars in Ring of Valor if the pillar is moving when the player uses Demonic Circle: Teleport.
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Dungeons & Raids
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Dungeon Finder
- It is no longer possible for two separate guild groups with less than five players each to be matched with any other groups or players in the queue from the same guild.
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Firelands
- Firelands Heroic difficulty has been turned off in all regions until the following week's realm maintenance.
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Alysrazor
- Blazing Talon Clawshapers and Blazing Initiates cannot be interacted with any longer prior to them shifting to human form.
- The Molten Feather power bar is now reappearing when appropriate.
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Baleroc
- Baleroc's gate will now properly unlock itself again after a wipe, even if Shannox is still alive.
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Beth'tilac
- Beth'tilac's trash will no longer respawn after she has been killed.
- Cinderweb Drones will now add threat to players on the bottom floor (below the web) and not give any threat to players above the web.
- The Widow's Kiss will now ignore immunities, including Divine Shield and Anti-Magic Shell.
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Rhyolith
- Rhyolith is now slightly easier to turn in 10-player mode.
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Creatures
- Cinderweb Spiderlings no longer drop any loot and their health is restored to full after players exit combat.
- The Flame Archon range of Fiery Torment has dramatically increased.
- Flamewaker Subjugator, Flamewaker Animator, and Unstable Magma health has been reduced. Flamewaker Subjugator damage has been increased for 25-player raids.
- The damage-over-time effect from the Hell Hound ability Rend Flesh now stacks up to 5 times, down from 10.
- Molten Flamefathers had too much health in 10-player mode, and too little health in 25-player mode. This has been corrected.
- Surger damage dealt by Surge has been reduced.
- Unbound Blazing Elementals now have a greatly reduced chance to drop epic items and crafting recipes. They also drop less gold.
- Unbound Pyrelords can properly target banished/cycloned Smoldering Elementals with Ignite Elemental. In addition, Ignite Elemental cannot be interrupted.
- Unbound Pyrelord health has increased, while Unbound Smoldering Elemental health has decreased.
- Neither the Sulfuron Span nor Shatterstone volcano are able to be affected by the siege damage done by a Saronite Bomb.
- The rate at which crafting recipes drop has been greatly reduced.
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Zul'Drak
- Players are again successfully able to complete the quest Betrayal.
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Items
- The Heroic and normal versions of the crossbows Arbalest of Erupting Fury and Lava Bolt Crossbow no longer have identical stats.
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Dungeon Finder
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
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 4)
thebitterfig Jul 2nd 2011 9:22AM
The perfect Stars punishment: after they fix the transfer-glitch, Bliz goes in and manually extends the raid lockout of all the players by 1 week for each additional time they cleared Firelands. That's fair, right?
SillyString Jul 2nd 2011 9:08PM
I just find it amusing and sad that there are people who are so competitive in this game that they'll do anything to be #1 with pointless achievements and hollow bragging rights. Personally, I find finishing a game as fast as possible and then whining about not having anything to do a bit retarded.
blaznbrazen420 Jul 3rd 2011 1:16PM
They found a code glitch and exploited it. That is cheating even in its most basic definition. I hope they all got nice bans.
Kole Jul 1st 2011 8:48PM
Characters should no longer randomly suffer falling damage. - YAY!
The rate at which crafting recipes drop has been greatly reduced. - BOOO!
I just hope those people in Stars don't get screwed over from Blizz for doing that...cause they DID pay Blizz to do it....and now Blizz knows of the exploit. Then again who knows what Blizz feels...
Margaritascat Jul 1st 2011 10:00PM
The guild knew this would be an exploit, and they took advantage of it for bragging rights. All players know that raid IDs lock you out of a raid once completed for that week.
They spent money to cheat the system. I have no sympathy for them. They couldn't do hard-modes without faction transferring; they knew that, obviously.
It's Blizz's game, they can say what is the right way to so something, and what is the wrong way to do something.
I believe they should have the credit for whatever achievements or bosses taken from them. Not to do so just enforces the great sense of entitlement too many players have in this game, and the accompanying lack of respect so many players show to others in the community.
Snuzzle Jul 1st 2011 8:48PM
I don't think anyone reasonable thought that a lack of action was condoning STARS' behavior on Blizzards' part. They needed to look into it, verify it, decide what they wanted to do about it (and if anything could even be done to fix it) and then type up a PR statement. Those things take time.
Well, I guess they couldn't make it so that faction transfers keep your Raid IDs, so they just disabled the ability to activate heroic mode for the rest of the week. I guess that means it's okay to use this service to reset Raid IDs, but just not to get world firsts.
Mugutu Jul 1st 2011 9:22PM
I think they realized how much bullshit it was that a raid group could buy their way to world firsts just with a simple faction change, especially when the situation is such that the raid has been available for three days. No one is supposed to be able to access heroic modes right now.
theRaptor Jul 1st 2011 11:55PM
@Snuzzle
I think it is more they couldn't put a fix in quickly enough. The raidID and faction transfer is complicated code and leaving in a known exploit is better then introducing unknown bugs and exploits.
They are probably looking at it now to see if the issue can be fixed, and if it can't they will probably just add it to the ToS/EULA as something you aren't allowed to do.
DarkWalker Jul 2nd 2011 9:12AM
This just made me realize something.
If Blizzard offered two different versions of WoW, the normal one, and another one where Firsts kills didn't count, but there were absolutely no locks on gearing speed, raids, whatever, I would be playing that other version.
In the end, I guess having played a MMO that has no raid locks (DCUO; instead, it uses loot lock) has spoiled me; I'm getting to really dislike when a game says I've already burned my weekly quota of fun things to do :)
(In fact, one thing I really enjoyed about the LFD tool, back in WotLK days, is how I was able to just keep doing as many heroics as I could find time to do, without worrying about locks.)
Branalia Jul 1st 2011 9:16PM
I guess Blizzard really does want to make balance druids spec out of Lunar Shower entirely. It's not even a buff anymore, it should be classified as a debuff.
Lissanna Jul 1st 2011 10:40PM
I just dropped lunar shower from my spec and made a blog post encouraging other moonkin to do the same. When we don't have lunar shower and Eclipse is still causing problems, THEN maybe Blizzard will actually make real fixes.
Poltergeist Jul 1st 2011 9:22PM
Most of these top guilds have sponsors that are expecting results. A quick look at the advertising on Paragon's site is all you need to see to understand the pressure some of these guilds must be under.
It's sad to me that some people take gaming so seriously that they spend the money to faction change as a guild. I would imagine this is how some people felt in the early 20th century when the games they loved and played as kids started becoming serious business.
Eli Jul 1st 2011 9:24PM
I accidentally read it as "Characters should no longer suffer from falling damage."
Rejoiced, then read it again.
razion Jul 1st 2011 9:53PM
No longer in-combat after sapping a target that sees you?
WOO-HOO! Ur... I mean... *composes self* ... Yaay~... *cough*
PJ Jul 1st 2011 10:08PM
So nothing about stars, just trying to grab readers, eh?
Alex Ziebart Jul 1st 2011 10:12PM
Lost your ability to read, eh?
splodesondeath Jul 2nd 2011 12:22AM
Obviously he saw through your sneaky ploy, Alex, otherwise he would have known!
Or he actually thought the reason behind the fix was in the patch notes to express precisely why - which is just silly.
Perendi Jul 1st 2011 11:22PM
Some Definitions for us all:
Cheat: Act dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain an advantage.
Exploit: To take advantage of (a person, situation, etc), esp unethically or unjustly for one's own ends.
So I don't think people are quite understanding the point I was making. In my opinion Stars did nothing that Blizzard did not facilitate. Stars paid Blizzard to switch factions with REAL money for a service that Blizzard provides every single player. I feel like Blizzard being the corporation that they are should have seen this sort of thing coming a mile away. It was bound to happen eventually, because with every system or service there are imperfections. They did not hack, they did not 'cheat' their way into the new content. As far as I know as of right now Stars is not being penalized for what they did, and this could change in the future. I don't see it as an exploit, I see it as them being competitive and if this is considered an exploit.. anyone who has changed factions and then done a raid they were already saved to has been a part of this 'exploit'. I have a hard time believing that anyone responding to this is a member of Stars and if so my hat is off to you. I don't think that they would do something that they thought would get them banned. They are in the competitive raiding world, why would they do something that would take them out of the game? I think they wanted to be first, and they found a legal way to do it. Faulting them for that is unjust.
Power to Stars and whoever decided to lead the faction change. It was smart. My question to Blizzard would be, Why was the heroic content even available in the first week? In my opinion, if you don't want people to do the heroic content in the first week, don't make it available. Stars was not dishonest about what they were doing, I highly doubt that Blizzard didn't see what was happening, and using a legal service that Blizzard has made available to everyone is not an exploit.
This is not the same as what happened on the Lich King, it is not a bug, it was a service that yes, may not have been used in the same way most people would have used it, so what.
Congrats to Stars for getting there first, I am sure it was an exciting experience for all of them.
Haters Gonna Hate
Bikhai Jul 2nd 2011 2:06AM
While you're quoting the dictionary, you might try looking up Dullard too. Let me break this down for you. Just because something isn't against the rules doesn't mean it's an ethical thing to do- i.e. it's still unethical (check your second definition). In this case, transferring gave this guild an unethical advantage over every guild that was not taking advantage of a loophole in the game's code (second definition again), and they were most certainly using this to their own ends (lulz second definition).
One could argue that they did all of their transfers knowing that it would give them an unfair advantage (check your first definition), but since they did not violate any rules currently in the EULA/TOS to my knowledge, they technically did not cheat. By your own definition, however, they absolutely exploited the game's mechanics, and based on the actions Blizzard has taken, they agree. Now seriously, go look up dullard.
Andrew Jul 2nd 2011 3:04AM
"My question to Blizzard would be, Why was the heroic content even available in the first week? In my opinion, if you don't want people to do the heroic content in the first week, don't make it available."
It's never NOT had to be available before. To my knowledge, prior to this tier and the advent of the Dungeon Journal, no players had come to the live realms having fully cleared the PTR content to the point of farming it. The ease at which Stars and the other top guilds blew through this content after it dropped is unprecedented, therefore it's not surprising Blizzard hadn't considered deactivating the heroic modes for the first week.