Patch 3.0.8 - PTR Build 9386

[Boubouille]

Update - Added today's blue posts and a few other things.

Patch 3.0.8 - PTR Build 9386
A new build has been deployed on test servers, only a few minor changes here, and most of them were posted in the last few days. Make sure you don't miss the new blacksmithing items if you're a Death Knight!

Blacksmithing

• Titansteel 2H Tanking Weapons have been added to the game - Titansteel Defender, Titansteel Deflector.

Engineering

• New plate goggles have been added to the game - Unbreakable Healing Amplifiers

Death Knight (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Frost

• Howling Blast had its cooldown removed.

Glyph

• Glyph of Blood Boil - Causes your Blood Boil to slow affected targets for 5 sec. (Old - Also reduced damage of Blood Boil by 20%)
• Glyph of Death and Decay - Targets of your Death and Decay have a 10% chance to cower in fear for 2 sec. (Down from 20%)
• Glyph of Icy Touch - Your Icy Touch generates 10 additional runic power. (Old - Also reduced damage of Icy Touch by 10%)
• Glyph of Death Strike - Increases your Death Strike's damage by 20%. (No longer increases healing)

Druid (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Balance

• Starfall is now cancelled upon shapeshifting into an animal form or mounting. (Old - All shapeshifting, could be a wording change)

Feral

• Berserk has been fixed and now causes your Mangle (Bear) ability to hit up to 3 targets. (Up from 1)

Hunter (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Beast Mastery

• Master's Call now remove all root and movement impairing effects from itself and its target, and causes your pet and its target to be immune to all such effects for 4 sec. (Old - Didn't affect pet)

Marksmanship

• Arcane Shot mana cost has been reduced from 7% of base mana to 5% of base mana for higher ranks. From 10% of base mana to 7% of base mana for lower ranks.

Survival

• Explosive Shot have been greatly increased but the ability doesn't deal AE damage anymore. (Rank 4: You fire an explosive charge into the enemy target, dealing [ 18% of RAP + 476 ] Fire damage. The charge will blast the target every second for an additional 2 sec.)

Pet

• Spore Cloud (Rank 6) range has been increased from 5 yards to 6 yards.

Priest (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Glyphs

• Glyph of Mind Flay - Increases the range of your Mind Flay spell by 10 yards, but it only reduces the target's movement speed by 49%. (Old - no longer reduced the target's movement speed.)

Shaman (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Elemental

• Elemental Oath now has an additional effect, while Clearcasting from Elemental Focus is active, you deal 5/10% more spell damage. Lasts 15 sec.
• Elemental Mastery now gives your Fire, Frost, and Nature damage spells a 20% increased critical strike chance and reduces their mana cost by 20%. Lasts 30 sec. (Old - Only affected your next spell, increased critical strike chance by 100% and reduced mana by 100%)

Enhancement

• Static Shock has been swapped with Mental Quickness and moved to Tier 8.
• Mental Quickness has been swapped with Static Shock and moved to Tier 9.
• Mental Quickness PTR changes have been reverted and now properly scales from attack power again, increases your spell power by an amount equal to 10/20/30% of your attack power.

Glyphs

• Glyph of Lightning Bolt - Increases the damage dealt by Lightning Bolt by 4%. (Old - Reduces the cost of your Lightning Bolt ability by 10%.)

Warlock (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Demonology

• Master Conjuror now Increases the combat ratings gained from your conjured Firestone and Spellstone by 15/30%.

Pet

• Devour Magic Effect range has been increased to 45 yards, please note that it's only the effect and not the Devour Magic pet ability. It could be related to the maximum healing range of the new Glyph of Felhunter.

Glyph

• Glyph of Felguard - Increases the Felguard's total attack power by 20%. (Up from 10%)
• Glyph of Felhunter - When your felhunter uses Devour Magic, you will also be healed for that amount. (Old - Increases the critical strike chance of your Felhunter's Shadow Bite ability by 6%.)

Ads on official forums

For those people demanding the ads be removed, there's not much we can say that's going to satisfy the nerves. We are carefully monitoring the constructive feedback players are providing on the subject so it can be compiled and presented to those who have a hand in such matters.

We've extended the post cap of the following thread and suggest it be utilized for providing feedback/suggestions about the ads: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=13771067090&sid=1

Those creating additional threads with little or no input are considered to be spamming and may be removed from the forums faster than they expect the ads to be.

Blue posts

Dual specialization and itemization
I think that is a valid point. You can come up with a lot of reasons why players might want more than two specs. However this is a new feature for us and we need to see what actually happens to the game as a result before we go nuts. Down below you mention the problem of casters rolling on items without hit and a lot of spirit just because it fits the criteria of ZOMG PURP + SPELLPOWER. Now imagine that someone wants to roll on an item because one of their many specs (assume for the sake of argument that they are all legitimately used) can use it. The whole "I guess I can use that for an offspec" becomes a much bigger deal. (Source)

Healer UI improvements
I think there is a lot we can do to improve the default UI especially for healers. It won't solve every problem for players who use something Grid and Clique, but it can be a lot better. Just showing buffs and debuffs on the raid UI would be a nice improvement. There is a lot we can do here. (Source)

Hit cap in WotLK
We didn't put as much hit on gear as we did in Burning Crusade as it was frustrating for players who were already at cap to see tons of gear with more hit on it. There is plenty of hit gear, however. You'll need to do some research on where it drops, and if you're not at hit cap when you enter a raid (with precision you'll need 14% against raid bosses), use food and elixirs to compensate. (Source)

"Bring the Player Not the Class" and PVP
We would love to get that mantra to be more meaningful in PvP. It's just a lot harder. That is still the goal, but no, I do not think we are there yet. (Source)

PvP and burst damage
I do not have a great deal of information for you at this point, but I can say we do share the concern specifically regarding burst damage in PvP. There is much discussion amongst the developers about PvP game play at this point. We're going to see how people fare once battles are more saturated with resilience, however, we are well aware this may not fully address the issue. (Source)

Off-hand slot disparity
Paladins, druids and death knights are designed around the fact that they don't have the stat allocation on a gun (or a shield in some cases) available.

We typically design Idols et al. without say Strength or Stam on them because we don't want them to just be guns with different art that you can't shoot.

If in the overall picture a class or spec is gimped compared to others who fill their same role, then that is a problem. But you can't just lift any single piece out of the whole package and scrutinize it. In those cases we almost certainly have implemented a difference on purpose. It is one of the things you have to do to justify having multiple classes. (Source)

Death Knight (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Frost Presence armor bonus
Yes, the nerf to druid affects Frost Presence. When we buffed Frost Presence, we increased it above and beyond what was needed to offset IBF and Bone Shield in order to compensate for this change.

Specifically, items with bonus armor (rings, trinkets, necklaces and sometimes capes) do not have their armor multiplied by Frost Presence. Most of your armor comes from good old plate, which never has bonus armor, and thus is always multiplied by the full amount. (Source)

Druid (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Feral gear changes in 3.0.8

Feral druids were the poster child for normalization. You were dependent on relatively few drops -- if you were lucky, there were 1 or 2 feral staves per raid tier. Get those and you are happy. Fail to get them and you risk losing your spot. In many cases it isn't even an issue of optimization. Ferals couldn't pick up a tanking sword or rogue dagger as a reasonable backup if the staff didn't drop. You are really dependent on a random number generator to be good at what you do.

So what are the options to introduce more of those items?

Simply inflating the loot tables doesn't fix anything. Either we just drop more Feral loot than normal (which ends up frustrating everyone else and makes druids easy to gear up) or we just drop more loot for everyone on every boss (which makes everyone too easy to gear up). Having a dozen armor rings and staves per tier really doesn't do anything to the problem.

Requiring ferals to persue badge or PvP loot (to the exclusion of random drops) also feels lame. You finally kill Kael or Illidan and get... more badges.

These were not strictly feral issues. Several specs and classes had similar problems, especially as we designed gear that was more and more optimized for the particular stats that most benefit you.

Ultimately, we thought the best solution was to be able to have more players benefit from the same loot. The easy way out would have been to make e.g. all tanks care about the same gear, but at some point we think that leads to the only difference between playing a druid and a warrior what art you see. Now when you roll a druid you care about different gear than other tanks do, but it is still gear that is readily available without having to put it all on rep or badge vendors.

We're not completely done with how feral gear works. (As a minor example, we did just allow druids to use polearms.) We have some other ideas to make collecting pieces more interesting than just whatever the melee leather for your current tier happens to be. (Source)

Nourish
One of the cool things about Resto is there are so many different options to use depending on the situation. The downside is it risks making the niche for some abilities too small.

We think there is some validity to the notion that Nourish is not propped up enough by talents. It will also be getting a glyph at some point. (Source)

Tanking idols
I think I said recently that we recognized that we needed to add a few more idol options for bear tanking. (Source)

Shaman (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Windfury
A player asked at Blizzcon if we would consider removing the internal cooldown on Windfury. We honored that request and did consider it, but we concluded Enhancement dps would shoot throught the roof. So I'm sorry, but we aren't going to make that change at this time. We might consider it in the future as part of a series of changes that would nerf Enhancement dps in other ways to justify the WF change. (Source)

Elemental changes
Shamanism wasn't intended to increase Elemental's damage as much as it was damage scaling. You probably won't notice a big difference unless you are in a lot of Naxx 25 level gear.

Elemental Oath, Elemental Mastery and the Lightning Bolt glyph were intended to increase Elemental dps however. Don't discount the clearcasting portion of Elemental Oath.

We're looking at Flame Shock. Keep in mind that even if it doesn't compete with Lightning spam against static targets like Patch (and we're not even convinced that is the case), there are very few fights like Patch and anytime you need to shoot and scoot, Flame Shock looks like a pretty nice button. (Source)

Upcoming Elemental changes
Unrelenting Storm and Storm Earth and Fire will both become three point talents, so that should free up a few talent points for you. The new talent will improve damage on lightning bolt and lava burst, so it's one you'll want to take as an elemental shaman. You should be able to grab that talent and still place 14-pnts in enhancement. I'm curious where else in elemental you're spending your talents. (Source)

Warlock (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Upcoming warlock changes
Look, I know you’re impatient. I would be too. It’s totally understandable. We do have changes in store for warlocks. Changing shards is one of them, of which the new summoning mechanic is but a very early first step. (Source)

World of Warcraft Comic Contest: Winner
Also, check out all of the December comics.

[italyguy]

I like the new 2-h tanking weapons.

[mechleader]

Finally I can reach that cap easier!

[Nezoia]

* Starfall is now cancelled upon shapeshifting into an animal form or mounting. (Old - All shapeshifting, could be a wording change)

To clarify:

If you switch out of Moonkin form to heal, it don't cancel Starfall, but if you switch back into Moonkin (or any other form) it's canceled.

[Deleted]

Blizzard, rogue is over here *waves*

[Virulent]

Gee thanks for the help blizzard....2 BoP tanking weapons when every other titansteel piece was BoE.

[turkeyspit]

I like the new 2-h tanking weapons.

Yep, now you OP greedy DK's can lay of meh DPS weapons!

[Karadros]

Gee thanks for the help blizzard....2 BoP tanking weapons when every other titansteel piece was BoE.

Well it also says the axe is a sword.

[rboa]

Gee thanks for the help blizzard....2 BoP tanking weapons when every other titansteel piece was BoE.

Blizz does this after making such a big deal about you not having to be a particular profession! way to go

[Rueful]

* Starfall is now cancelled upon shapeshifting into an animal form or mounting. (Old - All shapeshifting, could be a wording change)

To clarify:

If you switch out of Moonkin form to heal, it don't cancel Starfall, but if you switch back into Moonkin (or any other form) it's canceled.

To correct the clarification, it's when you switch into an animal form it cancels but you are free to switch in and out of Moonkin form without it canceling.

[Yurok]

Glyphs

• Glyph of Mind Flay - Increases the range of your Mind Flay spell by 10 yards, but it only reduces the target's movement speed by 49%. (Old - no longer reduced the target's movement speed.)

What? http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=48156 So you only slow 1% less? Then what's the point of the penalty?

[hurtgen]

Blizzard, rogue is over here *waves*

My Prediction is...

Elemental Mastery now gives your Fire, Frost, and Nature damage spells a 20% increased critical strike chance and reduces their mana cost by 20%. Lasts 30 sec. (Old - Only affected your next spell, increased critical strike chance by 100% and reduced mana by 100%)....

But change Elemental Mastery for Cold Blood.

[Deleted]

Like the looks of the sword, wish the stats were the other way around.

[sinizuh]

yay for crafted DK weapons.
yay for paladin healing goggles.
boo for Death Strike glyph changes. Whole point of Death Strike is the heal, if it doesn't increase the heal, it's pointless (compared to SS and OB)

[sugarfree]

Finally a decent warlock glyph, I'm glad at least they made an effort in making our glyphs halfway decent.

What? http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=48156 So you only slow 1% less? Then what's the point of the penalty?

I would believe it's maybe to help SPs in PvP, because they already suck with the snare in PvP already. But I do agree, 1% penalty kinda doesn't make sense for a glyph, they can just increase the range of MF base and make a different glyph of MF like a DPS one or something.

[Vesena]

According to this believe the Glyph should read "Increases the range of your Mind Flay spell by 10 yards, but reduces the slowing effect by 49%."

[Hadoken]

Undocumented updates.

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I didn't see this mentioned (apologies if so), but new in todays update, many upper tier Enchants have had their mat requirements changed and/or lowered. And by lowered, I mean the focus isn't on 20 Greater Cosmics per enchant - it's more like 4 Greater Cosmics with a shard requirement.

An example -
Mighty Spellpower live - 40 Infinite Dust, 20 Greater Cosmics, 6 Abyss Crystals
Mighty Spellpower ptr - 16 Infinite Dust, 4 (!) Greater Cosmics, 4 Dream Shards, 6 Abyss Crystals

For those DE'rs out there like myself, this is an awesome change. I'm loaded to the brim with shards, but Cosmics are always in use. Nice to see they're smoothing out the mat curve. Those last points aren't looking so painful anymore.

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Also, Arcane Powder stacks to 100 now (up from 20). The new tables use 5dust per, and I typically carried 1 stack of powder, so this is a welcome change that lets me stock up less frequently.

Sadly, teleport/portal runes are still pegged at 20 a stack.

[thomasjs]

Are you sure that Titansteel Defender and Titansteel Deflector are BoP? Every other Titansteel item is BoE.

[Ehnoah]

How mutch would be Sacred Duty Incrased? By Protection Paladin?

[Exhorder]

Spore Cloud (Rank 6) range has been increased from 5 yards to 6 yards.

???