Posts with tag patch2.3

Leveling is getting a boost. Along with some new content in Dustwallow Marsh, patch 2.3 (going live tomorrow!) will bring across-the-board changes for characters between levels 20 and 60. The XP required for each level is being reduced by 20%, quest XP is getting buffed, and the so-called "leveling" dungeons are getting some major changes. Here is what the patch notes have to say at the moment:

• Elite mobs outside of pre-Burning Crusade dungeons have been changed to non-elite.
• The level ranges of pre-Burning Crusade dungeons have been adjusted to a narrower range.
• Meeting stone level requirements, the Looking for Group system, and quests have been adjusted to match the new dungeon level ranges.
• All old world dungeon bosses have had their loot revisited. Players will now find that the loot dropped inside instances will be of Superior (blue) quality.

Well, that's vague enough, isn't it? Level ranges adjusted to "a narrower range"? We can't have that. So I went through to all the old-world dungeons on my trusty 70 rogue and checked the level ranges of the mobs there. I'll also show you a sample of a new or improved item for each dungeon; new items are on the left, and old items on the right for comparison. That means a lot of pictures, so dial-up users beware, I guess. TL;DR version: minimum level stays the same, maximum level nerfed down to somewhere between 3 and 5 more than the minimum level. If you want all the fun details, let's get to it!

Well, here it is, official word that patch 2.3 is scheduled to go live in North America on November 13th, one week from today. Season 3 is set to start on November 20th, so here's your two-week notice. That means 2.3 will be live for a week before S3 is. The PTR was just updated tonight with a new build containing unknown changes; I guess it must not have required very much testing. Just posted in the official forums by Drysc:

While testing continues and a delay could possibly change these dates, we are currently planning to start Season 3 on November 20 once the realms come back up from their weekly maintenance. This means that Season 2 will come to a close when the realms come down for maintenance on November 20. During that maintenance the final standings are taken and the end of season rewards are distributed.

The start date for Season 3 is purposefully planned to be one week later than the release of patch 2.3, which is currently scheduled for November 13. We will be closely monitoring the testing of the 2.3 patch, and if it looks like it won't make the November 13 date, we will announce a delay.

This confirms earlier news pulled from the WoW Taiwan site. Guess it's time to lay off the alts (at least until Tuesday) and get farming Sporeggar rep.

Patch 2.3: the patch that just keeps on alternately disappointing and bringing joy to the player community. Apparently, the staggering 4000 honor that had been previously reported to be the reward of the new daily battleground quest was a typo, of the "extra zero" variety. The correct reward is 400 honor, still up from its original value of 200:

It's off by a factor of 10. Battleground Daily quest bonus honor is supposed to be equivalent to 20 player kills at your level, ie 400 honor at level 70. (Drysc)

The new Priest talent Focused Will, reported yesterday, is going to be redesigned, so don't bother commenting on it in its current state. This is a good thing, because as far as I know no-one really liked the talent they proposed that much.

We wanted you to know that we're going to be redesigning the new discipline talent, focused will, so please hold off on providing further feedback on the ability until the new version is announced and/or it's pushed to the public test realms. The goal of the talent will still focus on survivability. (Eyonix)

The intention of this talent is provide an alternative to the holy talent, blessed resilience, so the priest who desires a talent of this nature has more than one option, adding more flexibility to the talent choices they make leading up to either. (Eyonix)

And finally, the changed-up Shaman Elemental tree is under much scrutiny from the dev team at the moment:

Though not the best thread to plug this into give what was provided, I'd like to state that we are looking into this [Elemental] quite extensively at the moment. (Eyonix)

Resto4life is reporting on a fairly significant change to the Arena season 3 gear on the PTR with Patch 2.3. Evidently the previous mana regen stat MP5 is being tossed over for Spirit, and this has some players howling. Now, I know there is some debate as to the utility of Spirit for priests in a PvE setting, but as they mention in the article, there appears to be little use for it at all in Arena PvP, at least where Druids are concerned.

The Restoration druids in particular are unhappy about this change, especially when taken in context with the recent change to the game that will allow everyone to see what magical buffs you have placed upon you. What this means is that just about every time a druid casts Innervate -- the spell that would benefit most from the change to Spirit -- there is a high probability it will be immediate dispelled. Now we have heard tell that Spirit as a stat will be changed somewhere down the line, that it will begin affecting spell damage as well as mana regen, so perhaps this is the first step toward that change. It's tough to know for certain.

What we do know, however, is that the change makes the PvP gear more attractive for use in PvE, where Spirit does help with the longer battles. But I have to wonder, exactly why would the developers, who have professed that they want to create two separate gear sets for PvP and PvE, make the Season 3 Arena sets more PvE viable? It may be that they want more people to participate in Arena battles, or it could be for some unknown reason I'm not seeing. Help me out here. Do you think the change from MP5 to Spirit is a buff or a nerf?

Update: Another patch just pushed through on the PTR, and this change to the Druid healing S3 set has been reverted. The gear will retain its MP5 stat bonus.

One of the features of patch 2.3 that I'm very much anticipating is the hastened leveling curve for characters between level 20 and 60. In addition to the XP required per level being reduced by 20%, loot from leveling dungeons improving, and "many" outdoor elites being made non-elite (not including Hogger, thankfully), the patch notes list that "the amount of experience granted by quests has been increased between levels 30 and 60". Which is nice, but the math lover in me wants (nay, demands) to know precisely how much the increase is.

Fortunately, Tekkub is on it. He's compiling a spreadsheet with quest XP changes over at Google Docs, and he needs your help to collect more data. If you want to help, you'll need a character on the PTR in the affected level range (30–60), and you'll need to go do some quests and note down how much XP you get from them. Then just email Tekkub (his email address is on the spreadsheet) with your data, and the collective information base of the WoW population will be increased! Ah, science. Personally I'm not seeing much of a pattern on the spreadsheet yet, but I'm sure there is one, and we will figure it eventually.

It looks like a few more changes snuck onto the patch 2.3 PTRs that didn't quite make it to the last round of patch notes, and here they are.

• Rogue
• Shadowstep (Subtlety) can now be used at any time, not only while stealthed. Now increases the damage and reduces the threat caused by the next damaging ability. Cooldown increased to 30 seconds. Range changed to 8-25 yards. Note was updated to reflect the most recent version on the PTR.
• Engineering
• Engineering potion injectors no longer require engineering skill to use.
• Jumper Cables XL is no longer a trinket.
• The materials required for the Field Repair Bot 110G have been simplified [and it now has 5 charges].
• World Environment
• Gas clouds in Nagrand now produce motes of air.
• Gas clouds in Zangarmarsh now produce motes of water instead of motes of life.

So if I'm reading everything correctly, Shadowstep has been changed to reduce the threat on the next subsequent move no matter what it is (previously it was just Ambush, Garrote, or Backstab), and the cooldown has been lowered from 40 to 30 seconds (still up from 15 on the live realms). How does that sound?

And being the intrepid WoW investigator that I am, I jumped on the PTR to find the new mats on the Repair Bot. They are: Adamantite Frame, Khorium Power Core, Primal Earth (3), Handful of Fel Iron Bolts (8), Adamantite Bar (6). Additionally, the bot now seems to have 5 charges, which I don't remember from before. The previous mats were Adamantite Frame (2), Khorium Power Core, Primal Earth (4), Handful of Fel Iron Bolts (6), Fel Iron Bar (18). Here's how it compares in raw materials: the new bot requires 32 less Fel Iron Ore, four more Adamantite Ore, and two less Primal Earth. That's a nice reduction in mats, especially considering it now has five charges, which effectively makes it five times cheaper on top of whatever the mats change did.

[via World of Raids]

It looks like Blizzard really did mean it about putting a rush on patch 2.3: I'm told it's up on the PTRs (thanks, Addie), and here are the patch notes! Edit: PTR not live until after 6 PM PST, apparently (thanks, Basic). There's a lot of sizable changes in there, many of which we haven't seen yet, so it's definitely worth taking a look. Keep an eye out for specific subject analyses; for now I just want to get this information out to you all as fast as possible.

World of Warcraft Test Patch 2.3.0

The latest patch notes can always be found at
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com...patchnotes.html

Zul'Aman

Zul'Aman is a 10-player, level 70 outdoor instance located in the
Ghostlands. Players will be able to confront six new bosses including
the Forest Troll Warlord Zul'jin.

Guild Banks Introduced

The Guild Bank is a shared repository for an entire guild and will be
accessible through new NPC's called guild bankers. The Guild Bank will
allow players with the appropriate permissions to store items and money
for use by the rest of the guild. Permissions to withdraw and deposit
money and items are controlled by the guild leader through the guild
controls menu. The Guild Bank is divided up into separate tabs so that
the guild leader may restrict access or group items into distinct
categories.
- Up to 6 purchasable tabs each containing 98 item slots
- Permissions to view/deposit/withdraw per tab
- You may use your Guild Bank withdraw limits to pay for item repairs
(now enabled on all merchants)
- Transaction logs of the last 50 actions in the bank viewable on a per
tab basis

Though the torrent of tidbits coming from Blizz Central has slowed, there are still a few new and interesting items for everyone (particularly Hunters, Mages, and melee people) to peruse today.

• [Hunter] Trueshot Aura will be free to cast and is going to last until canceled. (source)
• [Hunter] Serpent Sting, Immolation Trap and Explosive Trap are going to gain additional damage based on ranged attack power. (source)
  
• [Mage] Fire Ward and Frost Ward now gain additional benefit from spell damage bonuses (source)
• [Mage] Detect Magic removed, all players will see their target's beneficial effects at all times (source)
• [Rogue] one other change to poisons though is that they will last for one hour now, increased from 30 minutes. (source)
  
• all disarm immunity effects in the game were changed to 50% disarm duration reduction (non stacking) (source)
• The Guild Banks are still in the works and planned for patch 2.3. (source)
• Duration of wizard and mana oils created by enchanters has been increased. (source)
• Auction House will now sort server side. If multiple pages exist you will be able to sort across all pages.
• Auction House post times have been changed to 12, 24, and 48 hours. Deposit prices remain the same for each time increment.
• You will now be able to ctrl-click a recipe to preview the item the recipe will create in the dressing room.
• Ogri'la Faction Vendor: This vendor now sells potions useable anywhere for a large number of Apexis Shards. 50 shards, as good as super mana/heal pots. (source for the above 4)
  

The big news here, as I see it, is that there will no longer be full disarm immunity in the game, at all, period. I sense a drop in value for Steel Weapon Chains. The TSA change makes perfect sense: it is called an aura, after all. And being able to sort AH searches across pages is also long, long overdue. How do you all feel about this latest preview of patch 2.3?

By popular demand, here is the all-Paladin edition of our ongoing series "Patch 2.3 and you." Some of these changes were in our previous Palockter Omnibus, which seems to have angered my pally brethren; and some of them are new (thanks to Aurondil for the tips). On with the show:

• We're pretty much focused on Retribution with 2.3, but some more general changes are being made like lowering the mana cost for Exorcism, Holy Wrath, and Hammer of Wrath.
• Another Ret change (just to keep the momentum going) will be an increase to the duration of Vengeance to 30 seconds. (Drysc)
• You're amazing, that's absolutely correct [referring to Crusader Strike cooldown being lowered to 6 seconds] (Drysc)
• Well along with a few other Ret changes we're putting the benefits of Improved Seal of the Crusader right into the base spell, and the talent will instead give the benefit of Sanctified Crusader. That of course means Sanctified Crusader needs something else, and it's being renamed Sanctified Seals, which will increase your change to critically hit will all spells and melee by 1/2/3% and reduces the chance your Seals can be dispelled by 33/66/100% (Drysc)
• Pursuit of Justice (Retribution) is now 3 ranks and increases movement speed by 5/10/15% and also reduces the chance you'll be hit by spells by 1/2/3%.
• Vindication (Retribution) frequency and duration increased and now reduces all attributes by 5/10/15%, not just Strength and Agility. (Salthem)

And there you have it. Your very own Paladin edition of P2.3AY. And you're right, there were certainly enough changes to merit it. Well, Retnoobs (I kid), are you satisfied with these changes, or do you think you'll still be underpowered and unloved?

Hunter supreme Mania of Mania's Arcania and Petopia reports that Blizzard does indeed have a plan to help with pet leveling if it turns out that they need one. My wife turned me on to Petopia a long, long time ago and even though I rarely play a hunter (I like to melee too much) I do enjoy browsing the site, so I'm well aware that Mania generally has her thumb on the pulse of pet developments.

Also, it seems as though various hunter abilities will be scaling with
ranged attack power. The abilities mentioned include Serpent Sting and Immolation Trap. Since hunters tend to want to stack RAP anyway, these seem like pretty decent changes to the class in my opinion. Also, Arcane Shot is now dispelling one magic effect when it hits.

I don't know if this buff love is enough to balance out the fact that hunters tend to be under-represented in arena teams, but I'll leave that up to you hunters to decide.

Gyrocopter pilots of Azeroth, your day is coming. So says CM Bornakk today in the official forums. He mentioned both normal and epic mounts arriving in Test Patch 2.3. He went on to clarify where Blizzard is on the development of these:

The specifics of the mounts, such as skill and materials, isn't finalized yet, but we really want to get this mount/machine/gizmo into the game for engineers to enjoy. Whether it is easy or a challenge, the road to it will begin in 2.3, keep an eye out for when it hits the PTRs. ;-)

This news is so cool, makes me want to go out and level up engineering. But the question now is: what form will this mechanized flying mount take? WoW Wiki has an entry on gnomish flying machines from Warcraft 2 and their evolution into dwarven gyrocoptors and then gnomish biplanes.

But where's the line between fantasy and science fiction in Azeroth? Is Engineering just another kind of "magic"? What form would you like to see the engineered flying mount?

Yes, I know this is 2.2's-day. One announced change for patch 2.3 has slipped way, way under the radar, though, and I think it could use some recognition. Using macros, Druids will be able to directly switch from one form to another (cat to bear, for instance), with only one keypress. Here's how it will work:
/cancelform
/cast Dire Bear Form (or whatever your target form is)
Fun, eh? This works because /cancelform is going to be recognized instantly in 2.3, like /dismount is now. The macro should function no matter what form you're currently in.

This also allows things like shifting from bear to caster, drinking a pot and/or using a healthstone, and shifting back into bear, all without interruptions and with only one keypress:
/cancelform
/use Super Healing Potion
/use Master Healthstone
/cast Dire Bear Form
The 2.2 patch notes included an item that seems related to this ("Cast sequence macros no longer get stuck at feral druid abilities"), but I think that's just a bug fix; the above macros don't work in 2.2 as far as I know. Here's my question, though: if you can make a macro to shift forms directly, why not just make the default form buttons have that same behavior? Maybe they will, but I haven't heard anything about it yet.

[macros by Nandini of Darrowmere]

Shamans and paladins have long been in an "evil twin" type relationship, though which one is evil, I couldn't possibly say. Probably both. Anyway, since Enhancement Shaman improvements possibly destined for an upcoming patch were previewed at Blizzcon, it seems only fair that we should see some Retribution Pally buffs as well. And here they are!

• Crusader Strike cooldown reduced to 6 seconds, from 10.
• Vengeance duration increased to 30 seconds, from 15.
• Improved Seal of the Crusader replaced with Sanctified Crusader.
• Sanctified Crusader replaced with new talent, Sanctified Seals, whose tooltip reads: Increases spell and melee crit by 3% (with 3 pts) reduces the duration sanctified seals. World of Raids notes that this tooltip doesn't entirely make sense and is probably not finished.

So what do you think? Do these changes take some of the sting out of the Death Knight, which many see as a slap in the face to Retribution? Note that these changes are still under development; don't count on these making it into the live game intact. Allegedly, they are bound for patch 2.3, which is still a ways off. At the very least, these can be taken as insight into how the devs are thinking about Ret.

[via World of Raids]