Wowhead update, comics, 2.4 compilation

[Boubouille]

We don't know if there will be anything new today about the 2.4 patch, however we'll keep our focus on it for the moment with a very huge compilation of the 2.4 known changes, and a few comics to keep busy the people who already know everything about the patch.

Wowhead update
Wowhead has been updated with new features, nothing big but they're definitely useful (especially if you're a hunter)

Tradeskill recipe skillup colors in profession sections and spell pages!
All recipes in their respective Spells > Professions listing now include the levels which they change from orange, to yellow, to green, to grey! This information should help players out a lot in deciding their tradeskill progression paths.

Relative patch number will now show after the date for all site comments!
All comments throughout the site will now feature information of which patch was active when a comment was made. This way, if an item or any other aspect of the game has changed significantly since a comment has been made, it is easier for our users to recognize the relevance of new and recent additions. It is also recommended that users appropriately rate comments if they do provide proven, now-outdated information.

Some new developments for alchemists!
We're working on a better way to sort out this whole magical and mystical art of 'discoveries' - for starters, now all recipes listed in Spells > Professions > Alchemy will list 'Discovery' under the 'Source' tab. Sorting the Source tab alphabetically brings these recipes to the top, and you can expect more features and possibly some new, profession-related filters to be added at a later date. Related spells will also state 'Obtained via discovery' in the Quick Facts box found on their respective pages. Also, while not exactly an alchemist-only feature, the Items > Consumables > Elixirs category now features subcategories for Battle and Guardian Elixirs! If you guys can think of any other logical item subcategorizations, feel free to post suggestions on our Site Feedback forum.

Pet skill pages will now display a list of pet species that can learn the skill AND a list of mobs to learn it from!
Every pet skill page (such as Bite (Rank 1), Gore (Rank 9), Furious Howl (Rank 3), etc.) will now feature a list of every pet species that can learn the skill. Clicking a particular pet species will bring you to the subcategory listing all skills that type of pet can learn - for example, the Bat. In addition (and in my opinion, more importantly!) every pet skill page now features a new 'Taught by' tab, listing all mobs that a pet skill can be learned from! Now users can navigate to any pet skill page and see a list of every mob in the game that a hunter can tame and learn that particular rank of the skill from. Hunters rejoice!


Comics
3 comics on the same week ? It almost feels like christmas.

2.4 Changes compilation
It's not like we've got anything new to report from the week end, so I thought it could be a good time to throw a full compilation of 2.4 known changes on the homepage while we wait for more 2.4 stuff this week, and maybe the test servers if we're very lucky. Let me know if anything is missing.

Changes confirmed by Tigole in Level
The changes listed below were confirmed by Tigole during an interview with the swedish magazine Level (and from a few blue posts on the german official forums for a few of them, but original posts have been deleted a few days later)

Sunwell Isle

• Sunwell Isle will be located off the coast, north of Silvermoon, and will be patched in with patch 2.4
• Sunwell Isle will be a major questing hub with a 5-man Normal and Heroic Instance (Magister's Terrace) and a 25-man raid (Sunwell Plateau). The goal with Sunwell Isle is to close the Burning Crusade storyline before the release of the next expansion.
• There are still a few scenarios left that could be released to provide the players with more content if WotLK gets delayed for any reason.
• At the release of the patch, players will access a small expedition camp where they can start questing. However as the questing progresses, players will expand the camp and make it grow to a small town by retaking building to the enemies (running daily quests mostly). You can consider it as a AQ Gates opening event, the more daily quests that gets done, the faster the whole server will progress.
• The quests will end the Tempest Keep story arc.
• "The Shattered Sun Offensive" will be the new faction of this quest hub. It also seems that Aldor and Scryers will finally start fighting together against the new threat.
• Both 5-man and 25-man dungeons will be accessible from the start, but some bosses will have to be unlocked by running the daily quests (server-wide) and/or leveling your reputation. The 5-man instance will most likely requires Honored reputation with The Shattered Sun Offensive, the first three bosses of the 25-man instance will be accessible from the start, while the three last ones will have to be unlocked through questing.
  

Sunwell Plateau (25 Players)

• The Sunwell Plateau (5-man) will be a multiple-buildings instance powered by captured Naarus. The last room will contain the Sunwell.
• Kil'jaeden will be the final boss of the 25-man instance. The other bosses include Brutalicus, a giant Pit Lord who has lost his wings, Kalecgos, a blue dragon enslaved by Kil'jaeden, a Fel Dragon, the female Eredar Twins, and a Dark Naaru.
• The 25-man instance will be slightly harder than Black Temple, and is tuned for Tier 6 geared players.
• There will not be any "real" Tier 7 set, but some of the drops will be set pieces (not necessarily class specific). The drops quality will be above T6.
  

Magister's Terrace (5 players)

• Magister's Terrace shouldn't be harder than Shadow Labyrinth or Shattered Halls.
• The final boss of the normal mode will drop Karazhan-level epic loots. (Like the first bosses of Karazhan)
• Bosses in Heroic Mode will drop karazhan-loot as well, and the endboss will have Malchezaar-quality loot. (slightly higher than the other KZ bosses)
• Kael'thas will be one of the boss of the 5-man dungeon, he's still alive and he's now got a huge green crystal etched to his chest. However players might be able to fight him only when they play the dungeon in heroic mode.
• The design of Magister's Terrace is based on Silvermoon City, it will also features the observatory the Blood Elves use to watch the Sunwell.
  

Daily quests

• Patch 2.4 will raise the cap of Daily quests allowed in a day from 10 to 25.
  

PvP

• Balancing actions will be taken in regard to PvP for certain classes.
• Blizzard have large plans for arena, and they will be aiming to bring it closer to e-sport acceptance (However, it's still very unsure if it will be in the 2.4 Patch or in WotLK).
  

Also, if you've been looking at patches carefully, you might have seen the name of Brutalicus somewhere ... yup, he's already in the game files !

Sunwell loot rumors
A few weeks ago a screenshot of Sunwell loots was published on a few forums, the quality was kinda poor and I was probably the first one to happily claim in public that it was a huge fake. However, the stats were interesting and it looked official enough to do some research on it, after a few mails I came to the conclusion that they're probably (and by probably, I mean 99% sure) real, even if they're from internal test versions and will probably get changed slightly before the release. They've never been confirmed by Blizzard and you shouldn't consider any of the following official.

• Items seems to be ilvl 154~155
• At least one of them is ilvl 164 (Apolyon, the Soul-render), we can assume it's a loot from Kil'jaeden. I didn't try to get the ilvl for all items, maybe there are more loots from KJ.
• Even if they're legit, these stats are probably from early beta servers and could be changed/removed once the 2.4 patch is released on PTR.
• The feral staff is with the caster weapons, I know, I'm not redoing the screenshot just because of that. :/
• Nothing is confirmed by Blizzard, trust it at your own risks.
• (Bonus) It seems that the Arena Season 4 sets will be named "Brutal Gladiator". This one is still fairly unconfirmed though.
  

All these items are from the original screenshot, I did a clean version to make it more readable. Here you go !

Obviously, that's only a few examples of loots you'll find in the Sunwell raid dungeon, there are many more that we'll be able to discover once the PTR patch is released ... soon ?

Professions changes
Mining and cooking will get a few changes in 2.4 to make the leveling easier, but we didn't see any confirmation in the first batch of 2.4 posts on the official forums.

Cooking (Source)
It's not intended to make fishing a requirement to level cooking. In 2.4 new recipes will be introduced to bridge the gap.

Mining (Source)
In general those changes mean lengthening the amount of time each type of ore would give skill ups, so that you can consistently get skillups or even go a bit beyond where you should be for your level before you have to move on, smoothing the transitions.

Note : Depending on how you interpret this post, it could mean easier leveling from nodes by increasing the amount of points you can gain from a type of ore before it turns green and become awfully boring to farm. It could also mean that they plan to increase the leveling from smelting the ore as well, and if you want to level your mining I suggest that you stock a few ore from each type just in case. (Don't waste your money by doing that now, wait until the release of the 2.4 patch to see if it's confirmed)


Changes confirmed on forums
All of these changes were confirmed through posts from community managers and developpers during the end of last week.

(1) - 03 February update.

General

• Characters will now retain talented spell ranks so when they retalent they do not have to relearn the spells from trainers. (Source)
• Spell Haste: Spell haste now reduces the global cooldown on spells, down to a minimum of 1 second. This change does not apply to melee and ranged abilities. (Source)
• Patch 2.4 will remove the restriction for Ritual of Summoning that prevents you from summoning players into instances. Provided the player meets the instance requirements, you'll be able to summon them in from anywhere in the world. (Source)
  

World

• (1) Summoning restrictions in Netherstorm have been lifted. (Source - Elitistjerks)
  

Items

• Once every 24 hours, through Enchanting (not Alchemy) you'll be able to split a Void Crystal into two Large Prismatic Shards. This is through a new recipe that's being added in 2.4. (Source)
• Gems obtained through Heroic difficulty instances are no longer Unique-equipped. (Source)
• Players will now be able to purchase level 70 Superior quality (blue) PvP items from reputation vendors in Outland. (Source)
• Items intended for Retribution Paladins have had their stats adjusted. Retribution Paladins should see an increase in dps as a result. (Source)
• Players can now only carry 80 Conjured Manna Biscuits at a time. (Source)
  

PvP
Arenas

• Shadow Sight in patch 2.4 is now going to increase damage taken by 5% rather than dealing damage over time. The duration has also been reduced from 21 seconds to 15 seconds. (Source)
  

PvP

• Players will now be able to purchase level 70 Superior quality (blue) PvP items from reputation vendors in Outland. (Source)
• We've reached a point where we're now confident that applying diminishing returns to honor is no longer necessary, and we're currently planning to remove it with the 2.4 patch. (Source)
• Players that have the resurrection sickness debuff will not be worth any honor, and if a player dies 50 times or more during a battleground they won’t be worth any honor for the remainder of that battle. (Source)
• What the removal of diminishing returns means for you is that as soon as you defeat an opponent that rewards you honor, you will receive that honor, and you will be able to spend it right then. There will no longer be an estimate, and you will no longer need to wait until the next day until you can actually spend it. Your achievements through honor-based PvP will be instantaneous. (Source)
  

Dungeons and Raids

• All 25-player raid bosses that drop set tokens will now drop an additional token! (Source)
• All 25-player raid bosses will drop more gold. (Source)
• Gems obtained through Heroic difficulty instances are no longer Unique-equipped. (Source)
• Loot dropped by Doomlord Kazzak and Doomwalker has been changed to Bind on Equip. In addition, the cash dropped by these bosses has been significantly increased. (Source)
• Scale of the Sands reputation will now be awarded in Hyjal at a much higher rate. (Source)
  

Professions

• A new daily quest will be added for fishing. It's available from "the mysterious old man" near Silmyr Lake outside of Shattrath. (Source)
  

Interface

• (1) GM messages now appear with a Blizzard icon near their name. (Source)
• (1) The profession UI search field has been improved and now allows for searching of more types of things. For instance you can search for items by socket color, by effect ("Critical Strike" for instance) or search gems by their effect ("Strength" for instance). In addition, the searching of items by level has been made more intuitive. You can now search for items by level with "15-20" to search for items that you can make that have a minimum level required of 15 to 20. (Source)
• When you loot a Bind on Pickup item that only you can pick up (such as Heroic Badges) you'll no longer see the confirmation dialog. (Source)
• When you loot a Bind of Pickup item the confirmation window is going to list the name of the item in the window/ (Source)
  

Druid

• The Feral bears will be seeing an improvement with Lacerate dealing additional damage based on your attack power. (Source)
  

Hunter

Mage

• Spellsteal will no longer overwrite a longer duration buff. (Source)
• Players can now only carry 80 Conjured Manna Biscuits at a time. (Source)
  

Paladin

• Items intended for Retribution Paladins have had their stats adjusted. Retribution Paladins should see an increase in dps as a result.
  

Priest

• Priests will now be able to use Fear Ward while in Shadow Form. (Source)
  

Rogue

Shaman

• Healing grace will reduce the chance that all of your spells will be dispelled by 10/20/30%. (Source)
  

Warlock

• Patch 2.4 will remove the restriction for Ritual of Summoning that prevents you from summoning players into instances. Provided the player meets the instance requirements, you'll be able to summon them in from anywhere in the world. (Source)
  

Warrior

• Endless rage will now yields the correct amount of rage (25%). (Source)
• Off-hand weapon can now critical hits from Whirlwind trigger Flurry and Rampage (Source)

[fr0hzn]

PvP

• 
  Balancing actions will be taken in regard to PvP for certain classes.
• Blizzard have large plans for arena, and they will be aiming to bring it closer to e-sport acceptance (However, it's still very unsure if it will be in the 2.4 Patch or in WotLK).

Please ... don't ...

[Boubouille]

I hate you Gary.

And actually I'm merely reposting because we're getting a lot of "new" users during patch days, people who probably didn't see most of the previous news. (also because there is absolutely nothing to talk about on monday, of course)

@fr0hzn : I doubt it will happen in 2.4 to be honest, it was probably a small comment during the interview that's why I added the (probably not in 2.4) part ^^

[Bunneh]

The reposts are useful since I copy and paste them to my guild's forums (with credit to MMOC of course). Saves me having to trawl through all the other news posts.