Patch 5.4 patch notes
Virtual Realms feature revealed
The Proving Grounds are coming
The latest patch 5.4 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 3 of 4)
Thomas Higgins Jul 2nd 2011 8:49AM
Sorry, Bikhai, but what has high end raiding and instancing got to do with morals? Nowt, so far as I can see. Stars did something that a lot of other raid guilds of their ilk would have done if they had enough guts. That they gamed the system isn't their fault, it is Blizzards for not bolting the stable door shut and welding the cracks before they decided to try it.
Calling someone a dullard because they express an opinion you do not happen to agree with is frankly wrong. Shades of pot and kettle methinks.
Kellif Jul 1st 2011 11:31PM
Something interesting I found: if you start the entering firelands quest chain, you get the 20 marks needed today. The first two (non-dailies) award 16, not 8 like they did this morning.
So, my two raid ready toons need 2 more days to complete the entrance requirements, but a couple of alts are in and are growing a tree and getting some nice 365 gear.
gewalt Jul 2nd 2011 12:03AM
that did not happen for me today
Rolly Jul 2nd 2011 2:52AM
It happen to me on my priest today, hit 85 and followed the chain right through the portal to the 365 gear and dailies.
My other characters had to wait 3 days before today.
Amaxe Jul 2nd 2011 9:38PM
I've been doing all four alts since it opened. All of them have 53 tokens today (7/2) after turning in the first 20... hope there isn't another hub out there somewhere where i could be getting more.
Clinton Jul 1st 2011 11:53PM
I am in the exact same situation, rather irksome if you ask me. In my opinion, Blizz would not be out of line to refund me the marks I missed out on simply because I did the quests earlier in the week. I'm not saying, I'm just saying.
arcaniadia6 Jul 2nd 2011 1:10AM
"This is the kind of crap that made Blizzard move away from catering to the top 5%."
I agree completely.
librariankay Jul 2nd 2011 7:09AM
Actually, they did it because spending the vast majority of your effort on 5% of your customer base is bad business.
Hollow Leviathan Jul 2nd 2011 11:30AM
Bad business? No way! You're supposed to invest all of your time and energy into the top 5% because they're the ones creating raid slots. If you take away their privileged status, all that fun that trickles down from them naturally and fairly to the rest of the population will just shrivel up and outsource to India or something.
rovingbandit21 Jul 2nd 2011 1:29AM
I don't remember any fuss about a world first Heroic Halfus or Magmaw. The only reason this is news is it was done earlier than expected. Truthfully I'm sure all of the uber core guilds out collectively went "Meh" to the whole deal. Now if they had got Rag down, the outrage would be warranted and expected. Bliz put in a fix so now there's no way anyone can get to content early. As it stands, quit crying because you didn't think of it first.
matt Jul 2nd 2011 1:59AM
I'm a raiding member of a competitive top 10 (according to wowprogress.com) guild that killed Rag early on Wednesday. When we saw what Stars did we just laughed...it's obviously an exploit, not in keeping with the spirit of the competition (ie, one raid clear per week) and basically doesn't count and taints everything else they do in the future. They screwed themselves out of the competition by so obviously exploiting, and then bragging about it.
theRaptor Jul 2nd 2011 3:18AM
What? People didn't think of this already? Of course they did, they just either didn't try it because of the cost OR knew it was an exploit.
When the issue of raidID's being reset with faction transfer was first revealed to players I am pretty sure I remember people talking about faction transferring to get more attempts in. The only thing that is new here is faction transferring to activate heroic modes a week early. Which really should be obvious if you know the mechanics.
Most top raiding guilds apparently had better things to do with a few hundred dollars.
Pocky Jul 2nd 2011 3:28AM
There are children starving to death in the world... human rights being stomped on in different parts of the world... animal species dying out due to pollution... oil spills... radiation leakages...
But yeah... some people exploited a video game so lets get all upset.
Wow.... just wow....
Saeadame Jul 2nd 2011 5:59AM
This is a WoW blog, though, not a help the world blog. People here care about WoW (which is a video game). Sure, you can argue that some people care about it too much, but people who live in privilege generally have different priorities than people who don't. And yes, maybe there's something inherently "wrong" about that, but people are people, and people in wealthy countries care about more "frivolous" things than people in poorer countries, because they have the time, money and resources to.
librariankay Jul 2nd 2011 7:14AM
That's a fairly bad measuring stick. By that logic, complaining about anything, ever, that isn't as serious as starving children makes me a bad person.
I lost my job to downsizing almost 2 years ago and have been unable to find work. That's not as serious as starving to death as a child. Since I'm not starving to death, it's not even in the ballpark.
But, I don't feel crappy for complaining about it when it happened. Or complaining about it right now.
On a long enough timeline, all importance drops to zero. It's all an infinitesimal speck on the tiniest flicker of time in the endless eons that make up the history of the universe, in a thousand years noone will care about any slight little or big thing that happens now.
As long as you realize, at the end of the day, what's important and what isn't, complain away. There's much worse things you could be doing.
Oteo Jul 2nd 2011 7:19AM
Shouldn't you be cancelling your WoW subscription and internet service to you can pay those monthly fees to charities? Just sayin'.
Pocky Jul 2nd 2011 12:29PM
Meh... having a bad day. Sometimes it just really hits me how intense people can get over a game. I'm all for debate and discussion, but when people get all heated up, that's where I stop 'getting it' and just shake my head.
Perspective is all I'm saying.
Now excuse me, but I have horde to slaughter in AV this weekend!
Angrycelt Jul 2nd 2011 4:59AM
I'm sorry but... if your life revolves around cheating to get bragging rights that you defeated a videogame monster before anyone else. Yeah, whatever.
Blizz should know by now that through the PTR and special invites to the uberguilds that they aren't testing content, they're finding the loopholes so they can exploit them to the fullest for as long as possible before getting caught. It happens every expansion and every major patch.
I truly do not give a damn about world firsts or getting one over on Blizzard. We have people who destroy their own lives and friendships on my server just to get firsties. Crazy me actually plays games to have fun, not pay for the privilege of a second job.
Moonraker Jul 2nd 2011 9:15AM
Consider first that from Blizzard's own FAQ on Faction CHange in the EU:
"Will my raid IDs be reset following a Faction Change?
Your pre-existing raid locks will not be removed or reset completely, but your character will be assigned appropriate raid IDs for those bosses you have already defeated earlier in the week"
source: http://eu.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_GB&articleId=39811
This appears to confirm that it should not be possible or working as intended to be able to re-run bosses already killed.
Consider too that, that although Blizzard have now hotfixed it so that faction change will not allow you to set Heroic mode, it seems that there is nothing preventing guilds from re-running Normal bosses, which is confirmed by this thread on US forums;
'Regarding Aptitude's Faction Change'
source: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2743727485?page=1
This gives them the advantage over those guilds not paying for this service of;
1. Additional practice/experience of boss mechanics on live bosses (i.e. not just PTR versions which can be buggy and often not as it is live. not mentioned in the thread)
2. Allows them to farm additional gear to improve their chances come Heroic reset (
admitted in the thread)
Both these factors will give them a real and tangible advantage over those other guilds not taking advantage of this which results in in game advantage for a paid service.
As pointed out in the thread it appears as a tacit acceptance from Blizzard of this practice, given that they chose to hotfix the Heroic reset but left the possibly to Faction Change and re-run Normal content.
It also shows the ambiguity caused by differing official FAQ on Faction Change, with a clear statement on EU (see above) and nothing mentioned on the US version;
Faction Change FAQ Part 1/2
source: http://tinyurl.com/mkym6k
I can't confirm what is on the Taiwanese site.
TLDR: It's a Blizzard mess.
VegetaPrime Jul 2nd 2011 8:28AM
Apparently an undocumented fix was to increase the amount of world tree marks so that the initial push into the Firelands can be done in one sitting instead of 3 days. Finally got around to taking my DK up there and already got into the portal in about 20 minutes.