Thread: Patch 3.1 Information Compilation

We're going to start the week with a patch 3.1 information compilation, yes, this is definitely the most surprising news of the year (ok, maybe not). According to information and a few rumors here and here we might have a very interesting week, stay tuned!

Patch 3.1 - Information Compilation
Misc. Changes
A few mechanics will be changed in patch 3.1.

Ground Mounts
Ground mounts will no longer dismount in water and will be able to swim. (Blizzcon Q&A)

Dual Talent Specialization
Players will be able to switch between two talent specializations. Players will have up to two talent specializations and will be able to switch between them, action bars and glyphs will also be switched accordingly. (hunters will also be able to switch between pets according to this post)

Last time we heard about it, swapping specs (going from A to B) will truly be free in towns and possibly during the prep phase of PvP. In an instance it may cost a nominal fee (think reagent level). We want you to be able to do it when you want to do it, but we also don't want to slow things down if everyone is constantly flipping spec from fight to fight. But if it's free in town, then obviously it can't be more of a burden out of town than just hearthing and being summoned back is or nobody will use the remote option. (Ghostcrawler on Dual-Spec)


Class Changes Preview
These changes are NOT full patch notes, they're just a preview of class changes posted in three different blue posts last week.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

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

• Gargoyle and Unholy Blight have swapped talent positions. Gargoyle’s damage has increased and runic power cost per time has decreased.
• Pestilence – this spell no longer causes damage but just spreads diseases. Blood Boil is intended to be the general area attack, and has been changed to be castable on targets with no diseases on them, but does extra damage if diseases are present.
• Unbreakable Armor now absorbs a flat amount of damage that increases as your armor increases. It no longer boosts armor.
• The Frost tree has been shuffled. Among other things, PvP talents such as Endless Winter are closer to the top of the tree where Blood and Unholy death knights can access them.
• Sudden Doom – this talent now procs a Death Coil rather than requiring an additional button click. It works similarly to shamans’ Lightning Overload.
• Magic Suppression and Blood of the North have been reduced to 3 ranks for the same benefit.
• Blood Gorged now grants armor penetration instead of expertise.

Druid (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• Savage Defense – this is a new passive ability. When a druid in Dire Bear form deals a melee critical strike, the druid gains a damage shield equal to 25% of their attack power. The next hit completely removes the shield regardless of how much damage was done.
• Survival of the Fittest has had its bonus armor reduced to compensate for the above increase in damage mitigation.
• Faerie Fire (and similar debuffs) now reduces armor by 5%. See Sunder Armor in the warrior update below for additional details.
• Thorns and Nature’s Grasp can be cast in Tree of Life form.
• Survival Instincts now works in Moonkin form.
• Replenish – to avoid confusion, this talent has been renamed “Revitalize.” It now also works with Wild Growth.
• We are also looking at increasing the sustained (not burst) damage of feral druids in cat form.

Hunter (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• Consumable ammunition has been removed from the game. Arrows and bullets no longer stack, but are not consumed. Ranged attack speed bonus gained from quivers and ammo bags will be preserved in a different capacity. (Note: This was removed from this patch, see this post)
• A new tier of hunter pet talents have been added. In particular, this allows Beastmaster hunters to improve their damage per second (DPS) with their 51 point talent.
• Hunting Party – this talent has been reduced to 3 ranks and also grants a passive bonus to the hunter.
• Piercing Shots – this talent has been changed. Your Aimed, Steady and Chimera Shots cause the target to bleed for 10/20/30% of damage dealt for 8 sec.
• Sniper Training – this talent has been changed. After standing still for 6 sec, you gain a 2/4/6% damage bonus to Steady, Aimed and Explosive Shot.
• We are also looking to add additional trap functionality to Survival.

Mage (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• Improved Water Elemental – this talent has been removed and replaced with a new talent that grants Replenishment (similar to Shadow priests).
• We are also working on a way to give frost mages Ice Lance “Shatter combos” in PvE.
• We are also working on more survivability for Fire spec in PvP.
• We are also working on making Spirit a more useful and interesting stat for all mages.

Paladin (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• Blessing of Kings – this spell is now a base ability trainable by all paladins.
• Exorcism – this spell now causes damage to all types of enemy targets. However, it always critical strikes undead or demon targets. This change should make sure paladin damage doesn’t drop when going from Naxxramas to later tiers of content.
• Shield of the Templar now causes your Avenger’s Shield and Shield of the Righteousness to silence targets for 3 sec. The old damage bonus of this talent has been folded into Holy Shield, Avenger’s Shield, and Shield of the Righteousness.
• Ardent Defender, Improved Hammer of Justice, One-Handed Weapon Specialization and more have had their ranks reduced.
• Guarded by the Light – no longer reduces the mana cost of shield spells, but now has a 50/100% chance to refresh Divine Plea duration.
• Judgements of the Just – now also reduces the cooldown of Hammer of Justice by 10/20 seconds and increases the duration of the Seal of Justice stun effect by 0.5/1 second.

Priest (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• Divine Spirit – this spell is now a core ability available to all priests.
• Discipline has access to a new talent, Power Word: Barrier. (Think of it as Power Word: Shield for your whole group).
• Several area of effect (AOE) heal spells have been improved: Prayer of Healing can be cast on any groups in your raid party. Holy Nova’s mana cost has been reduced. Circle of Healing now heals for more.
• Shadow priest PvP survivability has been improved: Shadow Form now reduces magic as well as physical damage. Dispersion now removes snares.
• Penance – this spell can now be targeted on the priest.
• Serendipity – this talent now reduces the cast time of Greater Heal and Prayer of Healing when Binding Heal or Flash Heal are cast.
• We are also working to give Holy additional PvP utility.

Rogue (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• Hunger for Blood – instead of a self-buff, this ability can only be used when there is a bleed effect on the target. However, it has no stacks and grants a 15% damage bonus.
• Adrenaline Rush – the cooldown on this ability has been lowered.
• Lightning Reflexes – reduced to 3 ranks. In addition to 2/4/6% dodge, this talent now also grants 4/7/10% passive melee haste.
• Killing Spree – while this ability is active, the rogue does 20% additional damage.
• Savage Combat – now causes 2/4% physical damage done.
• Mace Specialization – this talent now grants haste in addition to armor penetration.

Shaman (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• Chain Lightning – now jumps to 4 targets but does less damage. We wanted to make the distinction between Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning more clear.
• Storm, Earth and Fire – this talent now increases all damage done by Flame Shock, not just periodic damage.
• Spirit Weapons – now reduces all threat, not just melee threat.
• Unleashed Rage – reduced to 2 ranks, now also increases your critical strike chance with melee attacks by 1/2%.
• Totem streamlining: The Mana Spring and Healing Stream Totems have been combined. The Disease Cleansing and Poison Cleansing Totems have been combined.
• We are also working on giving Enhancement and Elemental more PvP utility.

Warlock (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• Improved Shadow Bolt – this talent now provides a 5% spell critical strike buff (similar to Improved Scorch).
• Improved Soul Leech – this talent now provides Replenishment (similar to shadow priests)
• Drain Soul now has a chance to produce Soul Shards even if the target doesn’t die.
• Siphon Life no longer as an active ability but the talent grants the old Siphon Life effect to Corruption.
• Curse of Recklessness and Curse of Weakness have been combined into one spell
• Consume Shadows – this Voidwalker ability is no longer channeled but has a cooldown.
• Several other warlock talents have had their ranks reduced, their effects changed or removed. This list includes but is not limited to Demonic Empathy, Shadow Embrace, Eradication, Suppression, and Pandemic.
• Additional new talents have been added.

Warrior (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• Changing stances now has a much reduced cost: you lose a maximum of 20 rage (10 with Tactical Mastery). For example, if you have 100 rage and change stances, you will have 80 rage remaining. If you have 10 rage and change stances, all of your rage is lost. In addition, we may change the penalties associated with some stances.
• You now gain rage when damage done to you is absorbed, such as through a Power Word: Shield.
• Blood Frenzy now causes 2/4% physical damage done.
• Sunder Armor (and similar debuffs) now reduces armor by 4% per application, and is now a single rank. Creature armor has been globally reduced so that debuffed targets should take about the same damage from physical attacks that they did before this change. The net effect should be that this debuff is slightly less mandatory in PvE and is not disproportionately more powerful against cloth targets in PvP.
• We are also adding increased damage to Arms, possibly through Overpower or Slam.
• We are also looking at granting rage when the warrior blocks, dodges or parries.

Arena Season 6 Itemization and rating requirements

Originally Posted by Kalgan (Blue Tracker)

There's still plenty of room for some items to be pretty hard to get without causing most players to be left out of good gear. As I mentioned earlier, with the start of the next season we expect new teams and personal ratings to start much lower than they have before (not 1500). That way, everyone's experience is to climb toward the rating they're successfully playing at. So, knowing that, here's what our current thinking is on rating requirements for season 6.

Disclaimer: all of this is subject to change!

Other notes/caveats:

• Items with no rating listed would have no rating requirement
• It won't be quite as easy to get deadly items via emblems of conquest as hateful items currently are via emblems of valor
• The new Archavon boss (a new boss located in another wing of the Vault of Archavon), will have slightly different drops than the current Archavon (he can drop Furious Gloves/Legs, or any possible random honor item in addition to tier 8 pve set items similar to Archavon's t7 pve set drops, but cannot drop the Furious Chest piece)
• Honor/Arena costs aren't listed but Hateful costs would be similar to current Savage, Deadly costs similar to current Hateful, and Furious costs would be similar to current Deadly
• You might note that the Furious weapon is still at a high requirement, 2k, the thinking being that most players are encouraged to get their weapon upgrade through pve, although hardcore arena competitors have an outlet to get an equivalent weapon through arenas (if you're hardcore enough for 2k, you can forego raiding for a weapon)
• Additional note, "deadly trinket" refers to the current battlemaster's trinkets, "furious trinket" refers to an upgraded medallion of the alliance/horde

Hateful Gloves
Hateful Legs
Hateful Chest
Hateful Helm
Hateful Shoulders
Hateful Ring
Hateful Trinket

Deadly Bracer
Deadly Belt
Deadly Boots
Deadly Neck
Deadly Ring
Deadly Cape
Deadly Trinket

1300+: Deadly Relics/Idols/Librams/Totems
1350+: Deadly Gloves
1400+: Deadly Legs
1450+: Deadly Chest
1500+: Deadly Helm
1550+: Deadly Shoulders

1400+: Furious Bracer (honor)
1450+: Furious Belt (honor)
1500+: Furious Boots (honor)
1550+: Furious Neck (honor)

1600+: Furious Gloves
1650+: Furious Ring (honor)
1700+: Furious Legs
1750+: Furious Chest
1800+: Furious Trinket (honor)
1850+: Furious Helm
1900+: Furious Cape (honor)
1950+: Furious Wands/Relics/etc
2000+: Furious Weapon
2100+: Furious Shoulders
2300+: Furious Tabard (purely cosmetic and awesome looking)


Q: How good will the furious weapons be? Why would I want one if the PvE weapons are better?
A: In the case of the current deadly gladiator weapons, we simply botched the ilvls since at the time of their design we didn't account properly for the fact that Kel'Thuzad weapons would be as accessible as they are. Had we anticipated this better, the KT weapons wouldn't have been a full tier ahead of pre-KT weapons, and the deadly weapons would have been equivalent in ilvl. We expect that the best season 6 pvp weapons obtainable will be equal in level/quality to the best Ulduar weapons, even if that means we need more than one tier of pvp weapon to do it (ie: a 1750 weapon and a 2200 weapon). Note: the whole trick here is reasonably balancing what percentage of players get raid weapons of X quality versus what percentage of arena players also get a weapon of X quality.

Q: Why is the hidden rating hidden?
A: At some point, we'll probably expose the hidden rating and the calculations behind the MMR and such (although possibly only on the website rather than in game). We didn't expose the hidden rating in game because we felt it would be too confusing to see a 3rd rating, particularly considering players don't need to make any decisions based on it. You play the same opponents you would play whether you see the rating or not, and it isn't necessary to know the rating to be able to get points, buy gear, etc. However, I'm certainly open to at the very least showing the MMR of a team you just played against on the scoreboard, so that you can make more sense of why you gained/lost as much rating as you did, and at the very least showing your team's MMR on the armory. Exactly what patch/timeframe that might happen in, I'm not entirely sure.

Don't forget to check the original thread for more details on Season 6 and Arena Matchmaking

Upcoming changes to Mana Regeneration

Originally Posted by Bornakk (Blue Tracker)

As we have suggested, we have become concerned that mana regeneration is currently too powerful, especially for healers. We want players to have to keep an eye on mana. We don’t want you to go out of mana every fight, but running out of mana should be a very real risk for sloppy playing or attempting content that you aren’t yet ready for. When mana regeneration is trivial then certain parts of the game break down – classes that offer Replenishment are devalued, stats that offer mana regeneration are devalued, and spells that are efficient are neglected in preference to spells with high throughput.

Here are a list of changes you are likely to see in 3.1. They will be available to try out on the PTR. Mana regeneration is somewhat technical, so please bear with us.

• Regeneration while not casting (outside of the “five second rule”) will be decreased. We think that (1) the ability to cast heal over time spells and then sit back and (2) benefitting from a clearcasting proc that also gets you out of the five second rule both provide too much mana regeneration, even over short time periods.
• To make this change, we are reducing mana regeneration granted by Spirit across the board. However we are also boosting the effects of talents such as Meditation that increase regeneration while casting. The net result should be that your regeneration while casting will stay about the same, but your not-casting regeneration will be reduced. This change will have little impact on dps casters, since they are basically always casting.
• The specific talents and abilities being boosted are: Arcane Meditation, Improved Spirit Tap, Intensity, Mage Armor, Meditation, Pyromaniac and Spirit Tap. Yes this makes these “mandatory” talents even more mandatory, if such a thing is possible.
• Since paladins rely less on Spirit as a mana-regeneration stat, we have to address them in other ways. We don’t want to change Illumination or Replenishment. However, we are going to increase the healing penalty on Divine Plea from 20% to 50%. Divine Plea was originally intended to help Protection and Retribution paladins stay full on mana. It should be a decision for Holy paladins, not something that is automatically used every cooldown.
• In addition, we are also changing the way Spiritual Attunement works. In situations with a large amount of outgoing raid damage, as well as in PvP, this passive ability was responsible for more mana regeneration than we would like. We want to keep the necessary benefit it grants to tanking Protection paladins, while making it less powerful for Holy paladins in PvP or raid encounters with a lot of group damage.
• We are also taking a close look at clearcasting procs themselves. One likely outcome is to change them to an Innervate-like surge of mana so that the net benefit is the same, but healers won’t shift to out-of-casting regeneration so often.
• We balance around the assumption that even 10-player groups have someone offering Replenishment. To make this even easier on players we are likely to offer this ability to additional classes, as well as make sure that existing sources of Replenishment are more equitable.
• These changes are ultimately being done to bring the different healing classes more in line with each other as well as to give the encounter team more leeway when designing encounters, who can balance with these new mana regeneration numbers in mind. In a world with infinite healer mana, the only way to challenge healers is with increasingly insane amount of raid damage, so that global cooldowns become the limiting factor since mana fails to be. An example is the Eredar Twins in late Sunwell. We weren’t necessarily happy with that model, and this change hopefully allows us to move towards giving healing a more deliberate and thoughtful pace rather than frenetic spam.

Ulduar
The raid wing of Ulduar will be added to the game in 3.1, it is closely tied to the titan lore and it will most likely be heavily related to the Storm Peaks questlines. Daelo (Lead Encounter Designer) wrote a few things about the instance a month ago.

Originally Posted by Daelo (Blue Tracker)

Ulduar will be on PTR in the future, but we're going to have tight controls in place on what can be tested at any given time. Ulduar will also not be up permanently like Naxxramas was in the WotLK Beta. If we have something to test, we'll make the zone and encounter available. If we don't, we'll disable the zone.

That being said, there's going to be a LOT of encounters to test in both 10 and 25 player modes. There will also be a whole lot of "hard modes" and achievements to test. We're shooting for most all of the encounters to have "hard modes" that allow raids to increase the challenge and reward level if they're up to it. We're pretty pleased with how Sartharion and his drakes worked, and we're going to expand on that idea extensively in Ulduar and future raids.

The reward for completing the hard modes are not going to be just achievement points, titles, or mounts, but improved, additional item rewards.

I think it's safe to say that Ulduar will be a bit more difficult overall than Naxxramas, even without the hard modes. We're still going to tune the zone for accessibility(*), but a raid group that's done Naxxramas, Malygos, and Sartharion and obtained the gear from those encounters should be well prepared for Ulduar. Not only is the raid's gear better, but players should now have some raiding experience under their belts. We also have a much more accurate picture of what guilds are capable of from a healing, damage, and tanking perspective then when WotLK first went live. If Naxxramas was the introduction to raiding 101 class for players who have never raided before, think of Ulduar as the second year class.

* There will be one optional encounter that is only tuned as a "hard mode" encounter.

I don't think you have to worry about spoilers from Achievements, to be honest. Seeing achievement text before you fight a boss is like seeing a single piece of a large jigsaw puzzle. Sure, it's something, but it's nothing really without seeing the context of the encounter as a whole. I also expect achievements to be something tested late in the PTR process. Implementing them is one of the last parts of the development pipeline.

According to a recent blue posts, a higher tier of Emblem will be introduced here and players will be able to exchange new rewards for [Emblems of Conquest].

Below are some screenshots and a video of an early version of the instance, this is mostly to give you an idea of the design here but it's not finished at all. Most of the nice stuff is added in the last stages of development and the final version will most likely be a lot more impressive than that. If you want to compare with a past exemple, check the following Gundrak screenshots from the beta: Before #1/After #1 Before #2/After #2

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Tier 8 Armor Sets and Ulduar Weapons Models
Ulduar will also introduce a new tier of Armor sets, most of the info we've got about these new sets are from the Beta and I suggest to be cautious about it.

• All races are available for each class, even if they can't pick this class in game. It didn't take a lot more time to do it for all of them and I figured it could be interesting to see how it looks.
• Only Death Knight, Hunter, Rogue, Priest, Mages, and Warlock sets are available. Don't bother asking for the others they're just not in the game files.
• Male version of the rogue set isn't fully implemented in the game files, undead females are missing as well.
• Dwarves aren't on mage screenshots because I didn't have the time to fix a bug with them. It's not that important I guess because dwarves can't be mages.

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Ulduar Weapons
These files have been here for some time and according to their name they will most likely be used for weapons in Ulduar. More models will probably be added to the game with the release of the patch 3.1, the ones below are just the one already here and also date from the beta.

Note: The model of the 2-Hand mace is actually named "Aspects" instead of Ulduar, but one of the skin used on this mace is properly named "Ulduar" and we will most likely see this mace for the first time in 3.1.

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Impressive job Boub <3

I am curious about 3.1 release date. Hope they do it till march.

Originally Posted by Boubouille

We're going to start the week with a patch 3.1 information compilation, yes, this is definitely the most surprising news of the year (ok, maybe not). According to information and a few rumors here and here we might have a very interesting week, stay tuned!

I really hate when articles start like this. It's always either a false rumor or just a lot of hype for something stupid. =/

Mucho Gracias Boubzord!

All I seen blues say is "soon" for dual spec's please point me to a blue saying dual specs are comming.

The comment of "If Naxxramas was the introduction to raiding 101 class for players who have never raided before, think of Ulduar as the second year class." makes me wonder if Ulduar will be as hard as we actually want it to be ... I really hope blizzard gets it right and if anything make only boss 1 or two accessable and boss onwards something you have to really work hard on.

30 minute seals! Don't recall seeing that before. That's a big win. Even though I like the proposed changes, to Pallies (my main) and Hunters (my top alt) I hope it takes them some time to get it out. I need to finish equipping my Hunter alt before Ulduar comes out.

Edit: I guess the seal change is 3.0.9 -- oh well, my comment still holds true. =p

and what about the flying machines in wintergrasp, they promised us at blizzcon ? O.o
Also, they should really look at the performances in pvp/pve, WG with two raids on both sides is lagging like hell, 5-10sec delay, its unplayable.
Imo, the flying motorcycle will look really weird and odd :P
Also, i am not sure what to think about the arcane mages changes.
The Ulduar is pretty cool, but we will talk about it after two weeks in 3.1, when all good guilds will have it cleared
And the Mutilate, FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY !

One might assume the "other" raid is the new wing in WG.