Patch 4.0.6 February 18 Hotfixes, Blue Posts

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Update Patch 4.0.6 Hotfixes - February 19
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)
February 19

Hunter (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)
  • The changes to Aimed Shot and Aspect of the Hawk announced yesterday have not yet been applied to live realms and should not go into effect until after the holiday weekend.

Patch 4.0.6 Hotfixes - February 18
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)
Here you'll find a list of hotfixes that address various issues related to the recently released World of Warcraft: Cataclysm patch 4.0.6. Hotfixes are updates we make on our end without requiring you to download a new patch. Some of the hotfixes below will go live the moment they are implemented, while others may require your realm to be restarted to go into effect. Please keep in mind that some issues cannot be addressed without a client-side patch update. We will continue to update this thread in the days ahead as additional hotfixes are applied. Visit our Bug Report forum for a list of 4.0.6 known issues.

February 18
Battlegrounds
  • Demolishers were respawning too quickly in Strand of the Ancients. They are now on a 20-second spawn timer.

Death Knight (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)
  • Death knight Ghouls under the effects of Dark Transformation can no longer cast Gnaw while it's on cooldown.

Hunter (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)
  • Aimed Shot damage has been decreased to approximately 160% weapon damage (at level 80+), down from 200%.
  • Aspect of the Hawk now provides around an additional 2000 attack power at level 85.

Paladin (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)
  • Light of Dawn no longer heals targets outside the paladin's party or raid. It correctly heals up to 5 targets in the paladin's raid.

Priest (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)
  • Body and Soul no longer reduces the mana cost of Power Word: Shield (the hotfix made on February 16 to provide this additional benefit has been reverted).
  • Rapture now returns 2/5/7% of maximum mana when Power Word: Shield is consumed, up from 2/4/6%.

Warlock (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)
  • Instant-cast Shadowbolts from Shadow Trance (both the talent and Glyph of Corruption versions) should no longer consume charges of Backdraft if both procs are available. Shadow Trance will always take priority and be consumed first when Backdraft is active. Subsequent Shadowbolts will consume Backdraft stacks.

Warrior (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)
  • Two-Handed Weapon Specialization (Arms passive) now gives 20% bonus damage with two-handed weapons, up from 10%.

Dungeon Finder
  • If a party member remains outside of a dungeon for more than 3 minutes, they become eligible for removal, regardless of other Vote Kick restrictions.
  • When players queue as a group with a tank or a healer, and the tank or healer drops group (or is kicked) within the first 5 minutes, all of the other players who queued with them are removed from the group as well.
  • If there is a group of 3 or more friends and someone in that group initiates a Vote Kick of a random party member, it now requires 4 votes to kick the player, instead of the standard 3 votes.
  • The penalty for using the Vote Kick feature too often is not issued to a player who kicks someone with whom they queued for a dungeon (i.e. the party member being selected for removal is not a player randomly selected via the Dungeon Finder).
  • The penalty for using the Vote Kick feature too often will be issued much more quickly to players who join as a party of 4 and kick the randomly selected 5th player.
  • The penalty for using the Vote Kick feature too often will now not allow the player to initiate a Vote Kick for 2 hours, up from 45 minutes.
  • These changes will require realm restarts to take effect. More information can be found here.

Dungeons & Raids
  • When switching a normal raid dungeon over to Heroic difficulty, players were instantly becoming saved without warning. There is now a warning dialog box which will appear before the difficulty is changed.

Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Today's Hotfixes
We actually spent a bit of time talking to the designers about this very topic, and it's something they're well aware of and realize isn't always ideal.

A few really great points came out of that meeting, though:


  • Some changes in 4.0.6 and/or 4.0.6a were just wrong. For a myriad of reasons the changes made in 4.0.6/4.0.6a either did not pan out as expected, or were simply mis-calculations/interpretations. Which is the reason for a number of the quick reversions and changes in hotfixes shortly after the patch.

  • While there was feedback from the PTR on what is broken, overpowered, underpowered, etc. there simply wasn't enough data and real world proof for us to make changes. Forum posts always make a lot of noise. It's difficult to separate the seed from the chaff. Yes, it turned out a number of reports proved to be accurate once the 4.0.6's hit the masses and we were able to get a sample size that showed us what needed adjusting.

  • The third point discussed was that we have an obligation to deploy hotfixes when we feel we're making quality of life-improvements, fixing errors, or simply making good balance changes. Good balance is very much debatable among who you ask, of course. ;)

  • Fourth point really struck home with all of the designers, and that's that they also have an obligation to not use the live realms as a balancing laboratory. That while the changes being made have seemed very quick and sporadic at times, that there is thought and planning going in to them, and they are consciously avoiding throwing out changes and seeing what happens. While some changes have been implemented and then reverted, it's not because a lot of thought and effort didn't go into them, but that simply they didn't work as intended.

I know a lot of us remember the old days where classes would sit without changes for months, in some cases years for specific mechanics. A class would dominate for 6 months, and that's just how the game was. While we think good, measured changes in patches is far more visible and understandable, that hotfixes allow so much more to offering immediate relief that we'd be remiss in not using them to offer a better game experience to you, the players. There's an agreement that 4.0.6 and 4.0.6a have been pretty chaotic with hotfixes, and that's due to a number of issues that we don't consider to be 'usual'. We fully expect them to slow down substantially from this point, and we really appreciate everyone who stays on top of the hotfix blog, and relates the changes as they're made to their guildies and friends. (Source)
This article was originally published in forum thread: Patch 4.0.6 February 18 Hotfixes, Blue Posts started by Boubouille View original post
Published on 2011-02-19 05:43 AM
121 Comments
Comments 118 Comments
  1. fangless's Avatar
    In a month, people will forget what any of these patches were for. The community has the memory of a goldfish. They only complain and whine about the present, not what was.



    At least classes don't go broken/OP for the entire length of a content expansion anymore. I mean, if my one single DPS spec was a joke for an entire expansion, I'd be pretty pissed. Now, if things aren't looking good, I can at least have some faith that the ship will be righted sooner than later.
  1. Darknight587's Avatar
    What I don't get is why change something only to change it back. The change to body and soul doesn't make an sense, it lasted all of one day. Hunter's aimed shot gets buffed but still isn't a primary ability hunter's use, then it gets nerfed so it is only 10% higher then before. Many hot fixes is one thing but it seems like Blizzard just doing random things to see what happens rather then thinking about how it will effect the game.
  1. thorkin69's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by zrankfappa View Post
    its as if PW:S is a CD or something ...

    Ya know it causes me great pains when Bliz says "we are nerfing spell X, cause we feel that using spells A, B, C, and D provide more interesting game play".

    In my opinion using only heal, greater heal, CoH (or Pennance) , and PoH really isn't "more interesting gameplay". I used more of my spells raiding in WOTLK, because I wasn't penalized for using them. I am not saying that we should go back to WOTLK raiding style, but make our entire spell book usable, in a sense that we can come up with a true "play style" rather than this monotonous rotation style healing.
    Seems to me Blizzard is saying " We are not interested in how YOU play your toon. We want you to play it like we would play it. Blizzard needs to get out of the office and get on the planet that the rest of us are living on. if you go outside, you will find that the real world is not "Balanced". People that put an effort forth in real life go farther and have more sucess. People that are "Carried" don't go far and generally suck at life too. NEWS FLASH TO BLIZZARD-----Stop rewarding people that don't try. Your only creating more QQ posts.
  1. Kaneiac's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by F-Minus View Post
    And what do people say if they have to service their car every other month? That it's a shit car, and next time they are avoiding the brand. What we have right now in WoW with your analogy is like driving our cars to the service station every week or even twice a week and if I had to do that in reality I would go nuts and punch the service guy in the face long time ago. A car is there to be driven without failing on you or needing adjustments to fuel injection every week. Maintenance is fine, but you don't maintain the engine every week but on a service schedule and if you hold to the schedule the car will be running for 50+ years.

    If you are into cars and like to tinker around in your garage every day - good for you, but for the same thing Blizzard got their internal servers and test realms, so they don't have to tinker with the game on live realms and change the way the game plays every other day for the 11 million customers that just want to play a stable game. If there is a critical bug, like for example the cog-wheel of death and other important issues, sure patch the game ASAP, but when it comes to balance of classes, take your time, test, adjust, test again and then apply the patch and do that on test servers not on live. I'm not getting paid to test, in fact, as it looks now I'm paying to test - that's just not how things work in reality.

    You're right, they're not. Thank god you're playing a video game and not relying on a critical service like a car.
  1. Vodkarn's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Chadwixx View Post
    "While there was feedback from the PTR on what is broken, overpowered, underpowered, etc. there simply wasn't enough data and real world proof for us to make changes"

    Why do you need data? Do you not play the game?

    Get real beta testers. People in wow pay to beta test while a beta tester on the ps3 gets 20-35$ and hour. Keep using little kids who hide their uber spec for live and you will continue to get these kind of results
    hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah I wish, hahahahahaha, oh man, people really have no idea how bad testing in games is, do they?
  1. mmocc46c8e1895's Avatar
    I am a shadow/disc priest and I'm very happy and glad with all 4.0.6. changes in general and later fixes. I agreed with the nerf after buffing the shadow priest, I still deal a lot of dmg. And I also agree with the nerf (increasing PW:S mana cost) to avoid shields spamming. I'm pretty sure there are things that could be done better, but I'm totally satisfied with my current favourite class. Gratz and thanks Blizzard.
  1. Lazoric's Avatar
    "While there was feedback from the PTR on what is broken, overpowered, underpowered, etc. there simply wasn't enough data and real world proof for us to make changes"

    Why do you need data? Do you not play the game?

    Get real beta testers. People in wow pay to beta test while a beta tester on the ps3 gets 20-35$ and hour. Keep using little kids who hide their uber spec for live and you will continue to get these kind of results
    Real beta testers will not be able to help blizzard get the required data needed for online games. There a many varying factors to online games that are not present on with single player games and most games with online play. Many ps3, xbox and wii games can be launched with poor online because of consumer internet setups and people finding things that have gone unoticed during testing (like king of fighters XII latency problems or Ken being OP in SFIV or the bugs in halo reach). In single player games if something goes unnoticed it's usually something that wont affect other peoples experience or cause much stress. Alot of developers now days when they release a game with online gaming as a big part of the process use the community to beta test for these reasons.

    I would rather Blizzard fix things now. PTR never works out well nor does any test realm patches for any mmo game.
  1. PromiscuousPenguin's Avatar
    Temporary fix galore..
  1. Babi's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kiro View Post
    Likewise yourself. Please, blizzard is "the leader" in MMOs, they have the money, knowledge, and skill to make it work. But they don't. They DON'T put the money back into the game, their best devs are off on other games right now, and who they're left with because of this does not have the skill to make it work. The game is in shambles. I've learned that when a new MMO that's about to launch which is vastly more a balancing nightmare due to the insane possibility their skill trees provide, is better balanced than a game that's heading to a decade in age, there is something majorly wrong here. Yes, RIFT is better balanced, and surprisingly has fewer bugs than WoW does live. And trust me, RIFT is a BIG game which is heavy on the content, before you blizzy-boys come to blizzard's defense.

    Blizzard lost a lot of respect of players here in this last patch. People are finally sick of their ways of "we know best, screw the consumer", and their elementary "balancing" methods as well as how lackluster the content really is that the honeymoon is over. Blizzard really needs to step up their game as a brand new MMO is exposing them for their worth, not to mention they have to deal with a Star Wars MMO and Guild Wars 2 this year as well. This may finally be the end of WoW's dominance, it won't die, but it certainly won't own as much of the market.
    Yeah I don't believe this kind of hype anymore.

    Better this better that, same thing about was said about Warhammer which is sitting with the most pathetic state of game right I've ever seen, it's almost laughable how bad it's gotten and how far it's fallen.

    The determining factor here is the 1 year hill, if it can survive that without a major bleed, it's doing good, if not it's dead like every other MMO that's come out.
  1. DKThaelias's Avatar
    So what Blizzard is really admitted to is that they're overwhelmed with development issues since Cata launched. Hmm, could this be because everyone told them they were releasing too soon? That they kept changing their design intent for raid dps/tanking/healing up until the last minute? That content wasn't complete at launch, was buggy, and they had to freeze the pvp itemization and live-develop Sinestra. Think about that a moment, they were live-debugging end-of-tier raiding.

    Complete, utter, garbage. Consider that this is a game that's been out for years. With the amount of history behind their development they have no excuse (other than meeting Christmas deadline) for such piss-poor knee-jerk changes.
  1. Rukh's Avatar
    I certainly do appreciate their comment. I felt exactly like they were describing and it makes me feel good to know they realize it.
  1. Cinia's Avatar
    What does Blizzard mean with the "holiday weekend"? When is this exactly? Because holidays can vary from country to country.

    Thanks.
  1. Oriana's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Cinia View Post
    What does Blizzard mean with the "holiday weekend"? When is this exactly? Because holidays can vary from country to country.

    Thanks.
    I have exactly the same question after reading this news. Do they mean Presidents Day (February 21)? Is it a holiday in US?
  1. johnnysd's Avatar
    Blizzard needs to finally realize that PVP and PVE need to be balanced COMPLETELY separately, until they do that blancing will continue to be this inane see-saw like it is now
  1. cyloria's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Northy View Post
    Sory, yes it was sarcasm.

    I keep watching for an Ele fix so I can come back and play WoW again.
    Yeah, I finally just can't stand the lack of forthought into Ele. I havent logged into wow for 2 weeks except to say hi to a friend once for 10 minutes. I hadn't been off of wow for a day ever in 6 years. 780 days played. Even if they did "fix" ele it would be something i would not trust. Kinda funny Warriors and Paladins and Dk's get fixed all the time and so fast. I would much rather play something that goes up to the top, and back down to middle than something that has never ever been at the top.
  1. bullseyed's Avatar
    Hunter "fix" still isn't live. I don't know what "holiday" they are waiting for since it is patch Tuesday and all.

    Please tell me the "+2000 ap to AoH" is a joke, that's basically like nerfing aimed shot then rebuffing it along with all of a hunters other abilities
    Uh, that's the point. Hunters aren't doing too much dps, people are crying that it can crit for 80k. Too much of the hunter's overall damage is locked up in a few abilities, so they're spreading the damage out over everything. Hopefully it will buff the pathetically bad SV spec into playability again.
  1. pepizaraus's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by bullseyed View Post
    Hunter "fix" still isn't live. I don't know what "holiday" they are waiting for since it is patch Tuesday and all.



    Uh, that's the point. Hunters aren't doing too much dps, people are crying that it can crit for 80k. Too much of the hunter's overall damage is locked up in a few abilities, so they're spreading the damage out over everything. Hopefully it will buff the pathetically bad SV spec into playability again.
    you misrepresent that quote..... in essence it seems like they are giving the class MORE burst, not just spreading the damage out.
  1. Xetenor's Avatar
    Gawd....these hotfixes will never stop. Hotfix...reverse next day. No wait, do it again. WAIT, reverse!.....Okay, it is getting a little tiring honestly. Please just work on a patch and get that released instead of all this experimentation on the live servers picking on everyone's nerves. I am not surprised though. Blizzard developers never could really get things done properly the first time. Get your shit together already, common!
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