Posts with tag Patch2.0.10

Another day, another set of revisions to the 2.0.10 patch notes! The only change in these appears to be the addition of the note on crit breaking mage's freezing effects, which is worded as Nethaera reported on the forums today (suggesting that frozen targets have a chance to break free on a crit), which is a little differently than Tseric phrased it this weekend (suggesting that frozen targets will always break free on a crit from anyone, not just the mage). Does new patch notes indicate that we'll be seeing a patch release tomorrow? Impossible to predict, but we'll find out soon enough.

Full patch notes are below, with changes (just the one!) indicated in bold. There's the chance that I may have missed something, though, so if you see any changes I missed, please leave a note in the comments!

As Blizzard would hate to leave anyone out of the joy of patch 2.0.10, we have recent news of a change for mages. And despite the fact that I don't regularly play a mage, I don't think it's good news for the class. Tseric informs us that you were never intended to be able to crit a frozen target and have the target remain frozen. So as of patch 2.0.10, any crit (and that is any crit at all, not just a crit by the mage) on a frozen target will immediately unfreeze them.

So watch out, rogues -- you could be the next victims of patch 2.0.10!

Blizzard has updated their 2.0.10 patch notes to include the recently announced changes to paladins and priests -- as well as a few surprises. Complete patch notes are after the jump (with changes from the previous notes in bold), but here's the unexpected bits:

• The effectiveness of priest's "Fade: Rank 7" has been increased by approximately 25%. This doesn't address concerns about Fade's uselessness in PvP and solo situations, it should help priests in some group situations.
• Per Nethaera, the priest's Circle of Healing spell mana cost will be reduced by 25%, not 33% as the patch notes say, or 30% as Eyonix mentioned recently. (Yes, I'm confused too.)
• The bonus of shaman's "Wrath of Air" (currently increases spell damage by up to 101) totem now applies to healing spells as well. Not a bad buff for healing shamans or any healers grouping with shamans.
  
• Increased the health bonus from warrior's "Commanding Shout" by 50%. The should increase the health bonus from 730 to 1095.
  
• The warrior's "Improved Battle Shout" talent has been renamed to "Commanding Presence" and now increases the health bonus from "Commanding Shout" in addition to increasing the melee attack power from "Battle Shout".
• Many dungeon tweaks.

Update: Changed info on Circle of Healing's mana cost reduction, thanks, Synapse!
Update 2: Changed the numbers on Commanding Shout in a weak effort to prove I can do math. Thanks, Beldoro!

Paladins rejoice, because Blizzard has decided to reverse the two changes that were planned to be implemented in 2.0.10. Eyonix informs us that they felt "the adjustments were too imposing on the class' ability to tank in dungeons." So Avenging Wrath won't be sharing a cooldown with Divine Shield (but will invoke Forbearance) and Forbearance won't give the player a -15% damage debuff. This should mean that paladins will be unchanged in patch 2.0.10.

While it's not clear if this is the mystery buff Nethaera was telling us about, Eyonix let us in on some interesting changes. In addition to looking at improving Lightwell and analyzing priest survivability in PvP and PvE, Blizzard is planning on making the following concrete changes:

• The cooldown on Prayer of Mending has been reduced to 10 seconds (instead of the planned 20 second cooldown).
• The damage mitigation of Power Word: Shield is being improved by increasing the bonus it gains from +healing gear by 10% (to 20%).
• Circle of Healing will now cost 30% less mana.

And while these are certainly improvements, I can't say that they excite me terribly much. The lessened cooldown for PoM is certainly better, but still worse than it is on live. And while PW:S will scale better than it does now, it still won't scale very well. And I'm not sure I'll want to spec for Circle of Healing regardless of how much mana it costs. So, yes, these are buffs -- but not particularly strong buffs and not buffs that seem to address priests' primary concerns. However, if they're still looking at priest survivability, we may yet have good news coming.

Yep, a mystery buff -- doesn't that sound exciting? We have no idea what it is, because the CMs don't have the go-ahead to tell us yet, but Nethaera claims it's "a positive change." And though she's trying not to overplay it, there are a lot of hopes riding on it being something good. Nethaera hopes to have more information for us on Tuesday -- but until then, it's speculation run wild! Do any of you have predictions for the priest's mystery buff?

Update: Nethaera is currently telling us that we may get news tomorrow, Wednesday the 28th. Sorry to get everyone's hopes up, but hopefully we'll have some official news soon.
Update 2: I believe we have the final word on improvements for priests this patch via Nethaera.

Druids have received some significant changes in the coming 2.0.10 patch, but while there's lots of complaint and speculation, there's little agreement on what the changes will actually do for druids. But the loudest complaint is that druids will no longer be able to tank and will be once more reduced to a pure healing role. Note that there are no changes to cat or moonkin effectiveness or damage output, which does leave DPS as an option (in both PvE and PvP) -- but with so many classes able to DPS and so few classes able to heal, druids are reasonably concerned about being marginalized. The facts on bears from the patch notes are as follows:

• Bear/dire bear form's health bonus has changed from +25% health to +25% stamina. While this sounds like a non-change, this means that +health enchants and health-increasing potions or flasks are no longer considered in the bonus calculation, resulting in a loss of health for some druids.
• Dire bear form's armor bonus has been reduced from +450% to +400%.
• The talent Savage Fury no longer affects mangle (bear), maul, or swipe. Savage Fury previously increased damage done by those abilities by 20% for two talent points. The ability lacerate is the only bear ability that is not effected by this change, but only because it wasn't effected by the talent previously. (This talent will still have benefits to cat form, but no longer benefits any abilities in bear form.)
  
• The talent Predatory Instincts has been changed from a critical damage increase of 3/6/9/12/15% to a critical damage increase of 2/4/6/8/10%.
• The rage normalization equation has been adjusted to grant more rage.
  

While we won't know the full story until the final changes hit the live realms, by piecing together some of the data coming from players on the PTRs, I think we can make some reasonable guesses. Curious? Keep reading.

Blizzard is looking at the value of sockets on items (currently, the value per socket is slightly higher on higher quality items) and standardizing it throughout the game in an upcoming (but unspecified) content patch. In addition to this, they're also going to reviewing the expansion armor sets -- Drysc says it's not the intent for higher tier sets to be poorer quality or side-grades to previous sets, and that some sets may see changes in the future.

While Drysc seems to be talking about future changes, some re-evaluation of item values seems to have already happened in patch 2.0.10, however. This list of undocumented patch changes, compiled by Ramiel, contains numerous item tweaks -- some good and some not so good.

After reading the patch notes, you may have come away with the impression that paladins made it out relatively unscathed. However, players hitting up the test realms have discovered that this isn't entirely the case. Paladinsucks is reporting that Forbearance (a debuff left for a minute after being affected by one of the paladin's bubbles) is also applying a -15% physical damage debuff (conflicting reports say this may be all damage). If this makes it onto the live realms, that would certainly put some hurting on the paladin class.

However, not even Tseric seems to know if this is an intended change. On the forums he tells paladins that he won't be able to confirm whether this should have been in the notes or is a bug until after the weekend. Seems like a terribly odd bug, if it is...

Love it or hate it, everyone's got opinions on the 2.0.10 patch -- not all of them positive. So with some classes going up and other classes going down, what do you think is the class to play this patch, in PvE, PvP, and anything in between? Some classes -- druids and priests -- seem to come out the clear losers in this battle, but the question of who comes out on top is less clear-cut, with no single class receiving overwhelming improvements.

One class to rule them all -- but which do you think it is? Let us know what you're planning on playing by the time 2.0.10 makes the live realms in the comments.

It seems like just yesterday we were talking about the Searing Gorge quest reward the Luffa and how useful it could be for an encounter in Karazhan. I, of course, was off silently cursing the fact that I'd vendored mine ages ago, being unable to think of a single use for it that was more important than the free inventory slot. However, it looks like I didn't need to be so sad about that -- because apparently the Luffa has been changed in 2.0.10 to not work on bleed effects cast by monsters over level 60.

[Via official forums]

After seeing the latest patch notes, there are plenty of unhappy priests out there. Not only was Vampiric Embrace -- a key talent for shadow priests attempting to maintain group utility and solo viability -- reduced in effectiveness by a forth (and its ability to crit removed completely), but shadow priests also lost threat reduction and holy priests lost Prayer of Mending -- a low-cost instant-cast heal that was excellent for priests trying to heal in PvP combat that is now rendered mostly useless by its new 20 second cooldown. Many priests seem to think that these changes are the death of PvE shadow priests and PvP holy priests.

Is there a reason for priest players to have hope? Well, Nethaera says there is. On the priest forums she's reassuring players that their feedback is important and saying that Circle of Healing is being looked at and Lightwell may be looked at. And while I'm happy the class is still under review for possible tweaks, I wonder if they don't need a little more than what Nethaera says Blizzard is offering. And like the many other players who have attempted to post well-reasoned and constructive feedback on the priest forums, I feel ignored, despite Nethaera's assurances that all feedback is read. But if that's the case, I have to wonder why abilities that made life easier for priests are nerfed while complaints on countless other topics produce neither response nor result. Thank goodness I've been leveling a paladin -- with strong healing talents and great PvP survivability, they're everything I used to think my priest could be.

You've seen the patch notes and had a bit of time to think about them. And while I imagine your opinion of the patch will highly depend on what class you play, what do you think of the patch? As someone who plays a priest and a druid, I can't say I'm terribly enthusiastic -- but that's what I have other alts for, after all!

It's not on the live realms yet, but these patch notes are as official as they come: straight from Blizzard's own mouth. In the mix is the usual assortment of bugfixes and nerfs. I imagine some people in the audience (those who have been screaming "NERF DRUIDS" lately) will be happy, and others not so much. My inner shadow priest is crying.

Complete notes are after the break, but I've got your highlights below.

• Across the board reductions for druids, including:
• Dire bear form armor bonus reduced from 450% to 400%
• Base damage multiplier for mangle (bear) reduced from 130% to 100%
• Predatory Instincts talent changed from +3/6/9/12/15% crit damage bonus to a +2/4/6/8/10% crit damage bonus.
• Improved Leader of the Pack can no longer crit
• A buff to moonkin, with moonkin form's armor bonus changed from +360% to +400%
• A couple of shadow priest nerfs, including:
• Reduction of Vampiric Embrace's healing from 20% to 15%
• Vampiric Embrace can no longer crit
  
• The threat reduction talent Silent Resolve no longer affects shadow spells
• Not a shadow priest? No worries: Prayer of Mending now has a 20 second cooldown
• Some interesting shaman changes, including:
• The clearcasting effect from Elemental Focus now procs on all (yes, all!) spell critical strikes
• An Unleashed Rage proc will no longer generate additional threat
• The free lightning spell cast from Lightning Overlord will now cause reduced threat
• Stoneclaw totem now has a 50% chance to stun attackers for 3 seconds when struck
• The warlock talent Demonic Tactics now grants the warlock and pet with increased critical strike chance instead of increased damage (no numbers given)
• Rage changes should grant an overall 15% to 20% increase in rage generation for warriors and bear druids
• A handful of interesting warrior changes, including:
• An approximate +1% critical strike chance overall
• Thunderclap now usable in defensive stance and causes additional threat
• The cooldown on Victory Rush has been removed
• Unbridled Wrath now has a fixed chance to generate rage (higher with slower weapons)
• Charge, Intercept, and Intervene will remove all snare effects (this isn't in the patch notes, but was confirmed by Tseric in the warrior forums). Update: Drysc says this change isn't actually going to make it into 2.0.10.
  

Update: Added a warrior change via Tseric that did not make it into the patch notes.
Update 2: Added extra points to the overview, as noted in the comments.
Update 3: Apparently the changes to Charge, Intercept, Intervene, etc aren't going to make it into the patch.