Patch 4.2 PTR Notes - May 10th Update
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Classes: General
  • All healing critical strikes now heal for 2 times a normal heal (+100%), up from 1.5 times a normal heal (+50%).

Buffs
  • All class abilities which place a buff on friendly targets no longer generate any threat. This goes for raid-wide buffs like Mark of the Wild and Power Word: Fortitude, as well as triggered effects such as Blessed Resilience or Fingers of Frost, and single-target buffs like Dark Intent and Hysteria. The exception is buffs which directly cause healing or damage, such as Thorns or Renew. Abilities such as these still generate normal threat.

Pets
  • The Aggressive pet stance has been removed and replaced with the Assist stance. This stance will cause the player's pet to attack the player's target. The pet will not change targets unless the master attacks a new target for a few seconds.

Spell Interrupts
  • When interrupted while casting a single-school spell such as Mind Flay or Frostbolt, players will now be able to cast dual-school spells such as Mind Spike (Frost and Shadow schools) or Frostfire Bolt (Frost and Fire schools). However, being interrupted while casting a dual-school spell will still interrupt all respective schools as intended.

Death Knight (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)
  • Obliterate base damage has been reduced to 150% weapon damage, down from 160%.

Frost
  • Annihilation now increases Obliterate damage by 12/24/36%, down from 15/30/45%.

Unholy
  • Unholy Might now increases Strength by 10%, up from 5%.

Druid (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)
  • Ferocious Bite damage has been increased by 15%. In addition, its base cost has been reduced to 25 energy and it can use up to 25 energy, for up to a 100% damage increase.
  • Mangle (Cat) damage at level 80 and above has been increased to 530% weapon damage, up from 460%.
  • Omen of Clarity clearcasting buff from now lasts 15 seconds, up from 8 seconds.
  • Ravage damage at level 80 and above has been increased to 975% weapon damage, up from 850%.
  • Shred damage at level 80 and above has been increased to 520% weapon damage, up from 450%.
  • Swipe (Cat) now deals 600% weapon damage at level 80 or higher, down from 670%.


Balance
  • Insect Swarm now generates 8 Lunar Energy for Balance druids.
  • Moonfire now generates 8 Solar Power for Balance druids.
  • Sunfire now generates 8 Lunar Energy for Balance druids.
  • Earth and Moon's duration has been increased to 15 seconds, up from 12.
  • Fungal Growth spell visual effect has been updated to be less visually intrusive and more aesthetic.
  • Lunar Shower has been redesigned. When casting Moonfire, the druid gains Lunar Shower. Lunar Shower increases the direct damage done by Moonfire by 15/30/45%, and reduces the mana cost by 10/20/30%. This effect stacks up to 3 times and lasts 3 seconds. While under the effects of Lunar Shower, Moonfire generates 8 Solar Energy, and Sunfire generates 8 Lunar Energy. The amount of Lunar/Solar Energy gained does not change based on the number of points spent in the talent, or stacks of Lunar Shower. Those druids who wish to delay transition in or out of an Eclipse state should now cast the one of their two basic attacks which will not move the Eclipse bar (either Starfire or Wrath).
  • Solar Beam has a new spell effect.
  • Wild Mushroom: Detonate can now also trigger Earth and Moon, in addition to Starfire and Wrath.

Restoration
  • Symbiosis (Mastery) has been removed and replaced with Harmony. Harmony increases direct healing by an additional 10%, and casting direct healing spells grants an additional 10% bonus to periodic healing for 10 seconds. Each point of mastery increases each bonus by an additional 1.25%. Healing Touch, Nourish, Swiftmend, and the initial heal from Regrowth are considered direct healing spells for the purposes of this Mastery. All other healing from druid spells is considered periodic.

Glyphs
  • Glyph of Berserk duration increase is now 10 seconds, up from 5.

Hunter (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)
  • Multi-shot damage has been reduced. It now deals 120% weapon damage at level 80 or higher, down from 137%.
  • Traps now scale with hunter stats such as hit, expertise, spell penetration and attack power as intended.

Mage (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)
  • Spellsteal now has a 6-second cooldown.

Paladin (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)
  • Divine Light mana cost has been increased to 35% of base mana, up from 30%.
  • Flash of Light mana cost has been increased to 31% of base mana, up from 27%.
  • Holy Light mana cost has been increased to 12% of base mana, up from 10%.
  • Rebuke, Divine Shield and Divine Protection have new icons.

Holy
  • Holy Shock mana cost has been increased to 9% of base mana, up from 8%.
  • Speed of Light now increases movement speed when Holy Radiance or Divine Protection are cast. In addition, this talent now reduces the cooldown of Holy Radiance by 13/26/40 seconds, up from 10/20/30.

Protection
  • Ardent Defender has a new spell effect.
  • Hammer of the Righteous mana cost has been lowered to 10%, down from 12% to match Crusader Strike.
  • Judgements of the Wise now procs on attempt rather than on strike, which means judgements that miss can still grant mana. This is to help ensure Protection paladins are not starved for mana if they aren't capped on hit rating.

Shaman (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)
  • Lightning Shield and Water Shield can no longer be dispelled.
  • Unleash Elements is now in the Nature school, and thus can no longer be used if a shaman's Nature school has been locked out.
  • Water Shield has had its internal cooldown reduced to 3.5 seconds, once again matching other shields. The amount of mana restored when Water Shield procs has been reduced by 50%.

Elemental
  • Lava Flows now grants a 30/60/90% haste buff when a Flame Shock effect is dispelled, up from 10/20/30%.
  • Thunderstorm now reduces the movement speed of players it knocks back by 40% for 5 seconds.

Restoration
  • Improved Water Shield has been redesigned and renamed Resurgence. When Water Shield is active, Resurgence causes critical direct heals to restore mana (Resurgence rank 2 is roughly equal to 150% of the old Improved Water Shield value when a Healing Wave or Greater Healing Wave critically hits, and scaled down accordingly for faster or multi-target spells).
  • Mana Tide now grants 200% of the caster's Spirit, down from 400%.

Glyphs
  • Glyph of Unleashed Lightning (new Prime glyph) allows Lightning Bolt to be cast while moving.

Warlock (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)
  • Soul Harvest has a new spell effect.

Dungeon & Raids
  • The Firelands, a new 10- and 25-player raid, is now available for limited testing. Please visit the PTR Discussion forum for the latest raid testing schedule.

Guilds
  • The daily guild experience cap has been increased by 25%.
  • The weekly guild reputation cap has been increased by 25%.
  • The guild experience cap is now removed at level 20, down from level 23.

Items
  • Darkmoon Card: Hurricane damage done when triggered has been increased by 40%, however, it can no longer deal critical strikes and no longer receives any modifiers to its damage from the equipping player.

Set Bonuses
  • The 4-piece Elemental shaman PvP set bonus (Gladiator's Thunderfist set) has been redesigned. It now causes Lightning Shield to generate an extra charge, rather than consuming one, when it is triggered by receiving damage, up to a maximum of 3 (9 with the Rolling Thunder talent).

Professions
Skinning
  • Players can no longer skin corpses already being actively skinned or looted by other players.

PvP
Conquest Points
  • The minimum cap on Conquest Points earned per week is now 1500 at 1500 or less Battleground rating. The maximum cap remains 3000 at 3000 or more Battleground rating. The cap continues to scale non-linearly between those two points.
  • The game now separately tracks different Conquest Point caps for Battlegrounds and Arenas. The cap for Arena rating will always be 2/3 of the cap for Battleground rating at any given Arena rating. Players may earn a total number of Conquest Points per week equal to the higher of these two caps, but once players have reached the cap for either Arenas or Battlegrounds, they can no longer earn Conquest Points from that source. Conquest Points from Battleground holidays only count toward the total Conquest Point cap.

Quests & Creatures
  • There are no longer oddities in the critical strike and dodge chance of lower-level creatures.

User Interface
  • Raid Profiles are in the process of being implemented and are not fully functional. Raid Profiles will allow players to save the raid window user interface layout based on type of content (i.e. 10-player raids, 25-player raids, Battlegrounds, etc.).
This article was originally published in forum thread: Patch 4.2 PTR Notes - May 10th Update started by Boubouille View original post
Comments 261 Comments
  1. Alraml's Avatar
    The double heal is likely to make our efficient heals more potent. Especially tied in with the +5% crit you get on the t-11 set bonus
  1. Epple's Avatar
    Water Shield procs has been reduced by 50%.:O
  1. Archange1l's Avatar
    The Feral buff is just to offset the change to Str being nerfed from 2 ap to 1. It's a wash.
  1. mmoc006fb91b8d's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Improvedlol View Post
    So what about poisons crit being still at 150%?
    They allready said that will be change in 5.0. They can't change in middle of 4.0 because they have to change all numbers on rogues. (scale, damage, etc)

    Water Shield procs has been reduced by 50%.:O
    Read All lines.

    Lol now they r nerfing frost dk's and buffing unholy. blizzard is so fail LOL.
    Frost was overtuned and unholy undertuned. Trying to fix that now. But its we are in begin. They can reverse or change if they see was a bad move. Time will say that. Lets hope people go ptr do good tests and not only see how new bosses work and how good they are in full t12 heroic.
  1. Ryxxi's Avatar
    Lol now they r nerfing frost dk's and buffing unholy. blizzard is so fail LOL.
  1. iamthedevil's Avatar
    This expansion is constantly forcing people to change there play style because of Blizz making MAJOR class changes nonstop. It's getting fucking annoying.
  1. good diu bro's Avatar
    •The Aggressive pet stance has been removed and replaced with the Assist stance. This stance will cause the player's pet to attack the player's target. The pet will not change targets unless the master attacks a new target for a few seconds.
    Isnt thats whats defensive stance is doing right now?
    What do they need to remove aggressive stance anyway? To keep the priest attacking something when shadow fiend is out? That sounds like aggro to me, which is a highly technical word.


    Mage (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)•Spellsteal now has a 6-second cooldown.
    Finally, must be highly technical that take them half a year to solve it.
  1. iamthedevil's Avatar
    The pet change is great. I know water elementals will get caught up standing there attacking one target while you run off for another. When the time comes for the pet freeze, the ele is to far away.... This way, once you start attacking a new target, the pet will stop what it is doing and head for your current target.
  1. mmoc76b5d4d2b0's Avatar
    Pets
    The Aggressive pet stance has been removed and replaced with the Assist stance. This stance will cause the player's pet to attack the player's target. The pet will not change targets unless the master attacks a new target for a few seconds.
    The hell is this?
  1. megar's Avatar
    quiting paladin
  1. good diu bro's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by iamthedevil View Post
    The pet change is great. I know water elementals will get caught up standing there attacking one target while you run off for another. When the time comes for the pet freeze, the ele is to far away.... This way, once you start attacking a new target, the pet will stop what it is doing and head for your current target.
    Changing defensive stance to assistance stance sounds more sense rather than scraping aggressive stance, you know.

    Quote Originally Posted by Duster505 View Post
    The mana tide nerf was coming. Guilds were starting to stack Shamans to use it. Thats never a good sign. Hope the nerf is big enough to prevent stacking.
    That doesnt change anything other than screwing 10men(I dont play 10 men anyways), for 25men they can still stack more shamans for more mana. If Bliz really want to fix it, they merely have to apply an exhaust debuff, like bloodlust or heroism.
    Sounds like more a pvp nerf to me. (but then, why dont they make spirit link out of arenas and rated bgs)
  1. Northern Goblin's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by rochedo View Post
    Frost was overtuned and unholy undertuned. Trying to fix that now. But its we are in begin. They can reverse or change if they see was a bad move. Time will say that. Lets hope people go ptr do good tests and not only see how new bosses work and how good they are in full t12 heroic.
    Frost was overtuned in PvP, just because it's ahead of Unholy in PvE doesn't make Frost strong, that's just how weak Unholy is.

    Revert this Obliterate nerf and bring Howling blast down to pre change numbers and you'll reduce the PvP damage output and keep Obliterate where it should be, right now we're risking the return of Shadowfrost. Honestly while the change is for the right reasons it's being done completely the wrong way.
  1. mmoc2f0222e775's Avatar
    Commenting on the only spec I use, ever.

    Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
    Hammer of the Righteous mana cost has been lowered to 10%, down from 12% to match Crusader Strike.
    Good, I always wondered when that was going to be changed.

    Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
    Judgements of the Wise now procs on attempt rather than on strike, which means judgements that miss can still grant mana. This is to help ensure Protection paladins are not starved for mana if they aren't capped on hit rating.
    Very good, who the hell reforges or gems Hit? There is like no hit on any heroic level gear either. (instances, not raids.)

    Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
    Ardent Defender has a new spell effect.
    It never had a spell effect. :-D
  1. Baluki's Avatar
    Oooh, slowdown on Thunderstorm. Neat.
  1. fangless's Avatar
    Frost was where it should of been. Not sure why Unholy was nerfed so much, it was where Frost is now. Both could of been competitive at once -_-
  1. mmocb162109f7a's Avatar
    still not fixed a buggy mid quest in the ptr
  1. Bahska's Avatar
    Symbiosis (Mastery) has been removed and replaced with Harmony. Harmony increases direct healing by an additional 10%, and casting direct healing spells grants an additional 10% bonus to periodic healing for 10 seconds. Each point of mastery increases each bonus by an additional 1.25%. Healing Touch, Nourish, Swiftmend, and the initial heal from Regrowth are considered direct healing spells for the purposes of this Mastery. All other healing from druid spells is considered periodic.
    Finally my mastery is no longer inferior to other mastery bonuses!! Its not interesting but is more powerful so im happy will still take some testing to know how much better but i like the change are old one always felt gimmicky to me.

    The crit change doesn't change much for resto druids to be honest, its a nice throughput bonus but it wont change the fact that Haste and even Mastery are better for the simple reason of: crit is very unreliable compared to the other stats
  1. Suphix's Avatar
    Ah well, had hoped they'd bring frost up from middle of the pack where it is now and let us enjoy playing the fun spec, but instead they push it futher down and buff unholy (which is boring) I'd roll a hunter if I wanted to play a pet class which I don't. Not sure what they are playing at really, this is actually quite sad. Time to get my feral druid into action
  1. Lamperouqe's Avatar
    I guess Warriors are just supposed to do at least 1.5 times more DPS than any other melee seeing that there are no Warrior changes.

    And yeah, I agree that the Howling Blast buff should have been reverted instead of messing with Obliterate.
  1. Triveal's Avatar
    frost dk - needed
    feral buffs - needed
    spellsteal - needed, but 6s might be too much?

    not entirely convinced they realize that taking aggressive out is a big disadvantage against stealthed players

    rdruid mastery really didn't need to be reworked (though it was useless in pvp). holy paladin mastery is COMPLETE trash and their changes to it last patch really didn't do anything to fix that. paladins in general are in a pretty sorry state and could use some overhauls.

    balance druids... well, it's obvious they have no idea what they want that spec to do. instead of screwing with solar/lunar energy gains, increase the base damage from all spells, but decrease base mastery significantly while leaving the % gain per mastery point the same. The disparity between eclipse and noneclipse should be noticable, but not utterly gamechanging.

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