Posts with tag beta-patch-notes

They're here, and they're mostly a tuning pass.

The latest patch notes for the Warlords of Draenor beta are much less about sudden, massive changes and much more about getting damage and healing output where it needs to be for the live release of the game. So what are we looking at?

• The pandaren racial Epicurean now increases the effect of buff food by 75%, down from 100%.
• Typhoon's range was decreased to 15 yards, down from 30 yards.
• Pretty much every single class saw some damage adjusted up or down.

We definitely seem to be heading towards release at the pace you'd expect for a November release of the expansion. Head on over to the official site for more details.

The WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? What secrets does the game still hold? If you enjoyed Patches of Yesteryear, you're going to love this.

Do any of you vanilla WoW players remember how terrifying Teremus the Devourer used to be? He was among the very first world bosses, and boy was he annoying. He was immune to fire damage, frost damage, and magic-based DoTs. Seriously? Immune to fire, frost and DoTs? Yeah, he was brutal. It was perfectly normal to find him rampaging through Stormwind thanks to a friendly hunter kiting him to town.

You have patch 0.9 (Aug. 17, 2004) to thank for Teremus' rather ... aggressive nature. He was in the game world before that, but he would leave you alone as long as you left him alone. As of patch 0.9, he turned into a lowbie ganking machine.

Other patch 0.9 highlights:

• Hunters opened up for play testing -- yes, after mages and warriors were given talent trees. And they could use shields.
• Priests and rogues received the first iteration of their talent trees.
• Micro-dungeon redesigns were put in.

"What the heck is a micro-dungeon?" I hear you ask. Well, let me tell you!

The new 31-point talent trees are now in the beta! More information incoming tonight as we get it in ...

Update: The patch is now available to download for beta testers. Just fire up the client and wait for 300 megs of new talent goodness.

Blizzard

A first pass on new talent trees has been implemented.

• Each specialization has been reduced to a 31-point talent tree.
• Players will now get a total of 41 talent points to spend.
• 31 points must be spent in the primary specialization tree before any points can be placed in additional trees.
• Players will be asked to choose a specialization at level 10. Doing so will result in the unlocking of a spell or ability unique to that specialization, as well as one or more passive bonuses.
• While this is a first pass on all of the talent trees, death knight, druid, paladin, warlock, Arcane mage, and Assassination rogue trees are not as far along as other specializations.
• More information regarding our plans for talent trees can be found on our Cataclysm forum.

source

The full notes after the break.

Each week, Arcane Brilliance fills your head with as much Mage-related information as it can. You may have wondered how our signature buff works--how exactly does a Mage make you smarter for an hour? Well there you have it: we shoehorn this column into your brain with a flick of our fingers. That's how awesome Arcane Brilliance is, not only does it entertain, it also actually makes you more intelligent. For an hour. Or until a felhunter eats it.

It's Saturday again, and you know what that means: you guessed it, everything I'm about to write will be completely obsolete in about 15 minutes.

I'm not even sure where to begin this week. I was planning to turn this column's attentions to the Frost tree, but how can I ignore the vast and fairly sweeping changes the other two trees have undergone in the past seven days? The answer? I can't.

Still, I don't want to short-change the Frost tree. So here's the plan. I'm going to deal with the most drastic of the changes to the other two trees this week. Next week, barring another giant list of new craziness, we'll lay our hands upon upon that new Frost tree and wring it dry.

So what's new, you ask? Lots of things. Come back after the break for more newness than you can shake an epic wand at.

There's a new Beta build out on the testing servers tonight, numbered at 8681. The patch notes themselves only have two changes from the other patch notes in them. However there are a ton of new glyphs which are going to be useable via inscriptions, and a lot of undocumented patch changes.

The two main changes have to do with the calendar system and the mount / vanity pet interface. You can take a look after the break for the exact text, and also keep an eye out on WoW Insider for the latest on both of these new interfaces.

One interesting thing to note: Elizabeth Harper is reporting that the mount interface isn't working. If you have a mount in your inventory, you cannot successful "train" it into your spell book, which means you can't cast or use it. This means those in the beta can't mount unless they already have their mount as a spell. An interesting tid bit that we'll keep you updated on.

Updated July 29th, 2008 at 5:35 p.m. EDT: Elizabeth Harper has reported that the mounts are now fixed in the beta. Mount up!

No, I'm not talking about parenting and honey-do skills. In Wrath of the Lich King, each hunter family will have its own unique skill, just as Warp Stalkers currently have Warp.

While we've known this since the release of the Beta patch notes, we now have some of the details, courtesy of Mania of Mania's Arcania and Petopia.

In fact, some of the pet skills are so enticing that I'm beginning to think I'm going to need about 8 more stable slots! Here is a look at some of the juicier talents:

• Bats will be able to stun an opponent for 2 seconds.
• Bears will be able to Swipe similarly to druids, hitting three enemies in melee range.
• Birds of Prey will be able to disarm opponents for 6 seconds.
  
• Hyenas will reduce movement speed.
• Moths will be increasing their own attack power, and healing themselves.
• Nether Rays will have a spellcasting interrupt, preventing any spells from that school for one second.

Are you as excited as I am? Don't forget to head over to Petopia to check out the full, detailed list. What pets will you be taming?

Tip: Don't confuse pet skills with pet talents! Read up on the new pet talent trees for more information.

Each week, Arcane Brilliance blinks in from out of nowhere to deliver an instant cast full of Mage info and analysis to the interwebs. Or at least it tries to. Sometimes it blinks sideways, you see. Sometimes, backwards. On rare occasions, Arcane Brilliance casts Blink and goes absolutely nowhere. Oh well, at least the sparkly lights looked pretty.

Let's hear it for no more NDA! Now we can finally talk in detail about things a lot of us have known about for months. I'm sure we're all underwhelmed by the Beta patch notes as they apply to Mages. Here they are, in full. Pull up a chair, these could take you a full 90 seconds to read:

Mage

• Arcane Focus (Arcane) is now 3 ranks and increases chance to hit and reduces mana cost of Arcane spells by 1/2/3%.
• Counterspell now costs 9% of base mana.
• Frost Armor, Ice Armor, Mage Armor and Molten Armor are no longer Magic effects and cannot be dispelled.
• Invisibility now makes the caster invisible after 3 seconds, reduced from 5 seconds.
• Magic Attunement (Arcane) now also increases the range of your Arcane spells by 3/6 yards.
• Polymorph now costs 12% of base mana.
• Portal spells now cost 18% of base mana.
• Prismatic Cloak (Arcane) now also reduces the fade time of Invisibility by 1/2 seconds.
• Slow Fall now costs 6% of base mana.
• Teleport spells now cost 9% of base mana.

Ok. Deep breath. Repress urge to kill. Repeat after me: "It is still early in the testing process. These notes are incomplete. Changes are likely coming. Mages will get something cool." Feel better? No? Me either. Still, there are some things worth discussing here, and with the lifting of the embargo on leaked Alpha talents, we do have a great many things to talk about. Join me after the break and we'll do just that, starting with the tree that has changed the most: the Arcane tree.

Now that the Wrath of the Lich King Beta is live, and the patch notes are up, we have some solid information on Druid talents as they're being tested. Here is what the patch revealed:

Balance tree
If you were to invest three points into your Brambles tier three talent, you will not only have the current 75% boost to damage caused by Thorns and Entangling Roots, but your Treants will have their damage boosted by 15%.

In addition, all damage caused by Treants, and any attacks done to you while Barkskin is active, have a 15% chance of dazing the target for three seconds. Actually, Force of Nature, which summons your Treants, is having its cooldown reduced from three minutes to two.

This will be a nifty talent for Moonkin in battlegrounds and arena, although it won't be enough to convert all of those Restoration druids to the ways of the Giant Chicken.

Well, we were going to talk about other things, but with the Beta coming out I have to admit I've entirely forgotten what they were. There's really no point in pretending that we're not going to be talk about this, is there? I don't think so myself.

We learn nothing about any new talents that don't directly replace older talents. Nothing about Bladestorm or Titan's Grip, and talents like Incite are only mentioned because they're directly replacing talents like Defiance. We also don't learn what the big new protection talent to replace Shield Slam is from these notes. (We do have other sources and we will be discussing those talents in more depth, I'm just pointing out what the notes don't specifically mention.) The notes focus more on protection spec than others although we do find out that mace spec and sword spec are being slightly nerfed while poleaxe spec is getting a nice little buff: these changes seem PvP related to my eyes, but I have no idea how effective they'll actually be.

The juggling of talents and the alteration of their effects definitely seems to confirm the notion that crushing blows are a thing of the past. On the one hand, this is a huge change to warrior tanking mechanics, as we're noted for our ability to hit uncrushability while druid tanks simply soak the damage with higher armor and stamina (paladins use the same mechanic as we do for uncrushable, they just need more block rating but can stay uncrushable longer than we can due to how their abilities work vs. ours): we've yet to see how this is going to play out. With the addition of DK's as tanks, removing CB's keeps them from having to rely on a gimmicky high parry (since they won't use a shield to tank) to avoid being crushed, but it also means that warriors will need a means to stay competitive with other tanks. Threat seems to be getting entirely reworked, so for now I'm cautiously optimistic about where tanking is heading for protection spec warriors, and indeed, all warriors.

I'll go so far as to say that arms and fury warriors will be tanking in Wrath. I don't expect them to be dedicated main tanks for raids, but I do expect to see them tanking in five mans without respeccing, and that is without taking the possible two talent spec idea into account.

With the Wrath of the Lich King beta upon us, we now have a plethora of new information about where shamans are going in the expansion, and one thing is clear: totems are changing. And for some folks, those changes may be seen as pretty bad. If you're a DPS warrior, you're not going to like the change to Windfury Totem.

"Windfury Totem is now a flat 20% melee haste totem. All ranks have been modified."

The up side for shamans is that our own Windfury Weapon ability seems to be unaffected, according to MMO-Champion. In fact, there's no reason that the two efffects couldn't co-exist, meaning that an enhancement shaman could get the benefit of Strength of Earth (with its new strength and agility benefits), Windfury Totem (with the flat melee haste) and Windfury Weapon allowing for the damage of two extra attacks with increased attack power.

We can talk more about the changes inside, shall we?

My main is a Priest. A Shadow Priest, to be precise. While I started out Holy, my Priest has always been my main and probably always will be. The only thing that could possibly draw me away is my Protection Paladin, should my raid ever need another. Obviously, the very first thing I looked at in the Wrath Beta patch notes were the Priest notes. I've talked about what we saw in Alpha, and I was cautiously optimistic at the time. After seeing these notes... well... yeah, I'm still optimistic. I am (dare I say it?)... excited, even!

I'll tuck my analysis behind the cut, but here are my three favorite notes out of the Priest notes:

• New Talent: Improved Spirit Tap (Shadow) - Gives you a 50/100% chance to gain a 50% bonus to your Spirit after gaining a critical effect chance from your Mind Blast or Shadow Word: Death spells. For the duration, your mana will regenreate at a 25% rate while casting. Lasts 8 sec.
• Lightwell (Holy): Cast time reduced to .5 sec, down from 1.5 sec. Charges increased to 10, up from 5. Now breaks from any attack that hits you for 30% or more of your total health. Cooldown reduced to 3 minutes, down from 5.
• Shadowform (Shadow): Now has an innate 30% threat reduction. Now has a shapeshift UI.

Take a look at the Wrath of the Lich King beta patch notes after the break. WoW Insider believes these to be the real thing. With the activation of the beta downloader and beta site, it seems like there is quite a bit of activity at Blizzard tonight. Expect to hear more as the night goes on.

If you haven't signed up for the beta yet and wish to do so, you can head over to the beta opt-in page and make your intentions know to Blizzard. It is rumored that the first round of invites will begin shortly, and we're all waiting on pins and needles for the emails.

Additionally, any information gained through the beta does not have an NDA attached to it, so expect to see a lot more information in the hours and days ahead.