Update - Added Blue Posts and a nice wallpaper!

Patch 4.0.6 PTR Build 13580
Another build will be deployed on test realms tonight, I'm sure you will all understand that the impressively short list of changes means that we're closer to the live release of the patch now.

Achievements Changes
Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
Player vs. Player



Item Changes
Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
Mail
  • Feludius' Mantle now has +154 Spirit, up from 144 and +164 Critical strike rating, up from 154.
  • Feludius' Mantle now has +176 Spirit, up from 166 and +186 Critical strike rating, up from 176.

Plate



Spell Changes
Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
Hunter (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Pet Abilities
  • Spore Cloud (Sporebat) now has a 8 sec cooldown, down from 12 sec. Now reduces the casting speed of all enemy targets within 6 yards by 30% for 10 sec, up from 25% for 9 sec.

Mage (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Fire

Warlock (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Pet Abilities



Core Hound Pup Adoption Campaign
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)
If your account is protected by a Battle.net Authenticator or the Battle.net Mobile Authenticator, then you already know how safe and secure your Core Hound Pup pet can make you feel. But there are plenty of players out there who can still benefit from the companionship and peace of mind that our infernal puppy provides.

We're kicking off a Core Hound Pup adoption campaign and we need your help! Simply send us funny, cute, or just plain epic screenshots featuring your fiery two-headed buddy. We'll be picking two of the most memorable images each month in 2011 and awarding the winners with a brand new iPad.

If you have yet to adopt a Core Hound Pup of your very own, then don't wait a moment longer, or we just might have to give you the big puppy-dog eyes. Visit our account security site to learn how to get a Battle.net Authenticator or download the Battle.net Mobile Authenticator, available through our mobile apps page or as a free download from the Apple App Store or the Android Market.

Adopt a puppy! Protect your loots! Win an iPad! Read the contest rules for details and eligibility requirements, and happy screenshotting!

Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Tol Barad faction balance "exploit"
It doesn't actually work. The balance of factions is not dependant on if you’re in a raid or not. It's a mis-perception based on the inability to see the opposing team's numbers. What’s happening is that you can leave a raid, remain in Tol Barad, and because your old raid may pick up an additional player from the queue there’s an assumption that your side is getting more players. In fact the other side is keeping up and also getting additional players. We’ve verified across a number of realms that faction balance remains equal, even in cases where we found people actively attempting to use this to outnumber the opposing team. They weren't.

We keep a close eye on Tol Barad faction balance and turnover. (Source)

Dungeon & Raids Changes in 4.0.6
Granted those 80 or so lines of changes may not all be difficulty adjustments, but the majority of them will help in some way. You could argue that they're not the right changes, or not enough, and I could counter argue that they are, and you should try it first. But, what I don't believe you can accuse us of is sticking our fingers in our ears and ignoring anything. Not jumping to implement every request, yes, making measured approaches to alterations, yes, a slow decrease in content difficulty over time, yes indeed. (Source)

PvP Set Bonus Nerf in 4.0.6
Right now some hybrid classes benefit from wearing a pair of 2 piece set bonuses in PvP instead of their 4 piece bonus. We don't much like that behavior though, and we're going to eventually make the two bonuses exclusive so you can only ever have one 2 piece bonus at a time. We're not going to make that change in 4.0.6 as we realize some people have spent a lot of points to buy into the double-2 piece bonuses. However, it is likely we'll make the change at the start of the next PvP season. (Source)

Arena 2200 Weapons Delay
Sometimes, you have to make an unpopular decision, and you take a lot of heat for it. I understand that you guys aren't happy, and I'm sorry about that.

With regard to the weapon delay, as with any change which affects your gameplay, we always prefer to provide advance notice whenever possible, but in some situations it isn't an option. Unfortunately, this was one of those cases.

Some of you may recall that there were times in the past when it was common for the Arenas to be flooded by geared raiders actively engaging in arena matches exclusively to acquire weapons for the sake of defeating PvE content. That's not the intended design for arena rewards (that they be part of PvE progression), and that was a situation that we were hoping to avoid now. Raid content is very challenging currently, and as a direct result, there are fewer top tier weapons floating around. What we didn't want was a 'gold rush' on arenas, which would diffuse the competitive space there as well as give PvE focused players an undue advantage for raid content.

Ultimately, what we really want is parity in the availability of top end PvP and PvE weaponry. We want to see top end PvP and PvE items filtering into the player community at roughly the same time. This delay is an effort to achieve that aforementioned parity in this case. (Source)

Tabard Storage
We have a variety of things that we want to do as part of ongoing development for World of Warcraft, and a storage solution for tabards is just one of them. We understand that many of you care about this kind of feature, so we want to make sure that whatever we come up with is not only in line with our design goals (both in the short- and long-term), but is also appealing to you. We know that you have a lot of ideas on how this may be accomplished, so we're going to be keeping an eye on your discussions in the meantime. We may ask questions or point out potential concerns along the way, but don't let that discourage you; we love that you're being open with us and want you to keep sharing your thoughts and criticisms -- constructively, of course. (Source)

More Bank Slots?
We're not aware of any current plans to increase bank slots. The only thing that comes to mind is pretty much what other players have already pointed out -- bigger bags. With that in mind, you might have noted that in patch 4.0.6 the Illusionary Bag is being increased to 26 slots. I know you're saying that won't help you much though, but it can't hurt to mention it for others who might not be in quite as dire a situation storage-wise as you are. (Source)

New Wallpaper
A new wallpaper has been added to the official Wallpaper Gallery.

This article was originally published in forum thread: Patch 4.0.6 PTR Build 13580 started by Boubouille View original post
Comments 95 Comments
  1. mmoc4adf79b7bf's Avatar
    lol, they dont know what to do with devour magic obv
  1. Litledevil's Avatar
    people qq'ed too much so they buffed it again rofl
  1. BRO90X's Avatar
    they didnt buff it...its still a nerf from 8 secs
  1. mmoca0a0d7baf3's Avatar
    Well, even though I am yet to purchase Cataclysm, It is nice to be seeing bugs squished out so that when I get it in a months time, I will have a goo, enjoyable seamless experience.

    Good update Boubouille, Thanks
  1. Bohedral's Avatar
    YES! Awesome
  1. Charsi's Avatar
    someone needs to tell the fellas at blizz that they aren't going to fix pve mage dps simply by reducing mana costs
  1. mmoc3c347a2199's Avatar
    Player vs. Player

    * Master of Tol Barad no longer requires For Whom The Barad Tols.



    Why?
  1. Asciiguy's Avatar
    With such a short list of changes we might just see the patch this Tuesday.
  1. Fizzlethorpe's Avatar
    re: Frostfire Bolt mana changes

    Rather glad they decided to allow us to cast the spell that actually works with the mastery.
  1. Xetise's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Charsi View Post
    someone needs to tell the fellas at blizz that they aren't going to fix pve mage dps simply by reducing mana costs
    .... PvE Mage dps is low..?
  1. Exera's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Groom View Post
    lol, they dont know what to do with devour magic obv
    Or they tried it and realized the nerf was to much so they changed it.

    Quote Originally Posted by Xetise View Post
    .... PvE Mage dps is low..?
    Not incredibly low but slightly lower then it should be yes.
  1. Mercadi's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Xetise View Post
    .... PvE Mage dps is low..?

    Yes it is, on single target fights. Mages from all over the world are getting sat out on certain fights on heroic modes.
  1. Thessalor's Avatar
    someone needs to tell the fellas at blizz that they aren't going to fix pve mage dps simply by reducing mana costs
    Someone needs to tell the fellas at blizz that they aren't going to fix TB simply by removing an achievement.
  1. LoLHellcy's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Xetise View Post
    .... PvE Mage dps is low..?

    yes, it is
  1. zalvi's Avatar
    wow too many lock qq about devour uh?
  1. Jackolm's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Exera View Post
    Or they tried it and realized the nerf was to much so they changed it.
    He's pointing it out because it was first nerfed to 20 seconds, then nerfed harder to 25 seconds, now brought back to 15 seconds.

    The humor comes from the fact that they apparently thought 20 seconds wasn't enough so they added 5 more seconds, then they thought both 25 seconds and 20 seconds was too much so they changed it in the other direction.

    If I had to guess, though, I'd bet the 25 second nerf was a mistake and they originally meant to bring it from 20 seconds to 15.
  1. Raynhard's Avatar
    It's fucking PTR. The only reason of this server is to *test* things in a larger scale they could do internally. If PTR notes were final values, they would just deploy it on live.
  1. Chaoslux's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Charsi View Post
    someone needs to tell the fellas at blizz that they aren't going to fix pve mage dps simply by reducing mana costs
    The problem with pve mage dps is that they have to weave scorches in between fireballs or they run OOM and have to spam scorch waiting for mana to come back.

    Reducing mana costs = Less Scorches = More Fireball = More Damage done = More DPS

    Yes, they are indeed fixing pve mage dps by reducing mana costs.
  1. ComputerNerd's Avatar
    The fact that they adjusted the cooldown 3 times already is attracting quite justifiable complaints from warlocks.
    Proof that warlock balancing consists of nerfing something, then adjusting it repeatedly until it becomes acceptable again.
    Increasing the cooldown by 150%, another 25% and then reducing to 64% of that is understandably confusing.
    We were told that mana draining abilities were too powerful, and with the removal of Drain Mana that Mana Burn would be evaluated. Which as of yet there is no sign of, and by the looks of it will no longer happen.
    As usual a mechanism which is deemed too good, only gets nerfed or in this case totally removed from warlocks yet is all of a sudden seen as fine elsewhere.
  1. Isolyphic's Avatar
    Player vs. Player

    * Master of Tol Barad no longer requires For Whom The Barad Tols.
    That's because they're changing the way Tol Barad can be won.

    Attackers need to control all three locations and on double faction realms, this is almost impossible to successfully attack Tol Barad.


    Attacking Faction has Areas A & B
    Defending Faction has Areas C

    Attacking Faction attacks C (all or majority)
    Defending Faction ZERGS A

    Defending Faction wins Area A
    Attacking faction wins Area C

    Attacking Faction attacks A
    Defending Faction attacks B

    Defending faction wins B
    Attacking Faction wins A

    Thankfully the attacking team now only has to control 2 of 3 areas when the timer expires to take control of Tol'Barad.

    My realm's Faction (which takes up majority of the realm) have been unable to win Tol Barad for atleast a week now.

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