Thread: Patch 3.1 - PTR Build 9742, Blue Posts

Update 11:00 CEST - Added today's blue posts.
Update 03:30 CEST - Added a picture for the Chef's Hat and a change to the Death Knight Tier 7 Set Bonus

There will be a small change to the website, probably tomorrow. If you experience any (new) bug please report it to the Suggestions and Feedback forums. (No, we are not updating the site with a Hello Kitty theme on April 1st, this is a real update!)

Patch 3.1 - PTR Build 9742
A new build has been deployed on test realms, it looks like a minor build so I wouldn't expect too many changes from it.

Talent Calculator
The Talent Calculator has been updated to the latest build.

Achievement Changes
Raids & Dungeons

• Glory of the Raider no longer rewards the Plagued Proto-Drake.
• Heroic: Glory of the Raider no longer rewards the Black Proto-Drake.

Raids & Dungeons - Ulduar

• Never Stand Near the Faceless Dude has been removed from the game.
• Heroic: Never Stand Near the Faceless Dude has been removed from the game.
• Observed now rewards a new Title: Starcaller
• Herald of the Titans *New* - Defeat Algalon the Observer on Normal Difficulty without anyone in the raid wearing any equipment with an item level higher than 226. Title Reward: Herald of the Titans
• Heroic: Observed now rewards a new Title: The Astral Walker

Cooking

• Cooking with Style - Obtain a Chef's Hat. (Screenshot)

Feats of Strength

• Deadly Gladiator - Achieved Deadly Gladiator title.

Spell Changes

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Death Knight (3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Blood

• Blood Boil range has been reduced from 20 yards to 10 yards.
• Will of the Necropolis now cannot be triggered by damage which deals less than 5% of your health.

Frost

• Rime now procs from Obliterate instead of Icy Touch.

Unholy

• Death Strike damage has been increased and now deals 75% weapon damage (up from 60%) plus 222.75 (up from 178.4) for the max Rank.
• Anti-Magic Shell now absorbs the damage dealt by harmful spells up to a maximum of 100% of the Death Knight's Health. (Up from 50%)
• Summon Gargoyle now lasts up to 40 sec. (Down from 1 min)
• Ghoul Frenzy now Grants your pet 25% haste for 30 sec (up from 15 sec) and heals it for 60% (up from 30%) of its health over the duration.

Glyphs

• Glyph of Heart Strike - Your Heart Strike also reduces the movement speed of your target by 50% for 10 sec. (Up from 5 sec.)

Tier 7 Set

• DPS Set - 2 pieces - Increases the critical strike chance of your Obliterate, Scourge Strike and Death Strike abilities by 5%. (Old - Didn't affect Death Strike)
• DPS Set - 4 pieces - Your Obliterate, Scourge Strike and Death Strike generate an additional 10 Runic Power when used.

Druid (3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Balance

• Moonkin Form now costs 13% of base mana. (Down from 22%)

Feral

• Rend and Tear now increases the critical strike chance of your Ferocious Bite ability on bleeding targets by 5/10/15/20/25%. (Down from 10/20/30/40/50%)
• Primal Tenacity now reduces fear effects duration and damage taken while stunned while in Cat Form only.

Priest (3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Shadow

• Psychic Horror now makes the target drop its main hand and ranged weapons for 10 sec. (Old - All Weapons)

Warlock (3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• Everlasting Affliction tooltip has been corrected to remove Siphon Life.

10-Man Ulduar Achievements

Originally Posted by Bornakk (Blue Tracker)

Having a hardcore 25player guild getting both the 25 and 10 player realm firsts doesn't seem right. We want there to be an end goal for each one to shoot for, if you want to run both, that's up to you - but this way the guilds that only run the normal version have an end goal to shoot for that the hardcore 25 player guilds can't swipe.

To try and clear up any confusion, the planned item level for the achievement in Ulduar 10 is item level 226. This level gear drops from both hard mode Ulduar 10 and regular boss kills in Ulduar 25. So yes, while players who clear Ulduar 25 will get more 226 gear at a faster pace and possibly get this achievement first, it's an achievement anybody can do, so when a guild that only runs normal Ulduar 10 progresses through the instance and gets the hard modes done, they will be ready to take on this achievement.

Reward: Herald of the Titans (title)

If you primarily run 25 player instances and want to get this achievement/title, just hang on to your Kel'thuzad weapons and regular Ulduar 25 boss kills and you should be good to go.

[...]
The discussion (at least as far as I know, it's been all over the place) is about how we removed the Ulduar 10 player "realm first" feats of strength and we are working on replacing it with something else.

We are looking to replace these 10 player "realm first" feats with a regular achievement that anybody can do but is focused on being the pinnacle of progression for players who focus on 10 player raids while minimizing the advantage that players have in heroic 25 player raids.

Blue posts

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Additional Frostwyrms in 3.1
No additional frost wyrms are being added in patch 3.1, we will see what the future holds beyond that. (Source)

Noblegarden in 3.1
There are a few things to note:

• The new version of Noblegarden lasts one week, not one day.
• If you're looking at previous maps put together for egg-hunting, they're not going to be very effective. Eggs are spawned solely around the level 5ish towns (Goldshire, Brill, etc.) and there are always eggs up, even if many people are farming them. If you haven't found them, it isn't a matter of spawning... it's a matter of you not finding them. (Source)

Arena Season 6: One-week grace period at the end of Season 5
There will be a week between the end of season 5 and the start of season 6 where players will have time to spend points they've earned. In other words, you'll have one week from the day 3.1 hits to spend your points.

This confuses me a little - let's say hypothetically season 5 ends tomorrow - from your wording, season 6 will start the next tuesday. So there'll basically be a "dead" week for arena when there is no season going on at all?
Correct. We're giving a one-week grace period for players to spend accumulated points from season 5 since we're wiping them at the start of season 6. (Source)

Dual Specialization and Buffs
If you have a buff on you that another player cast, it should not go away when you switch specs.

If you have a buff tied to a particular talent spec, it will go away on you when you switch specs.

If you have a buff tied to a particular talent spec, it will generally not go away on the rest of the group. The general rule here is it’s as if you left the raid. So paladin blessings (which go away if you leave the raid) will go away. Improved Fortitude will not go away if you change specs to a spec without Improved Fort (though it will fall off of you), as those stay when you leave the raid. (Source)

No walking animation on Hippogryphs
It can land, however, the Hippogryph just doesn't like to get its feet dirty. Joking aside, this is something that we've been aware of, and it's just low (very) on the list of things to address. (Source)

Amani War Bear bugfix in 3.1
I looked into it and this is something we are aware of and working on changes. The problem is that we are working on setting this up so it works properly for all races. Going from a gnome to a tauren is quite a bit of different in size which affects the character and their positioning. We will see where it ends up when 3.1 launches. (Source)

Druid (3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Feral in Wrath of the Lich King
To be clear, we used to be happy with cats doing relatively low dps and bears being inferior tanks, and low Feral PvP representation was acceptable since druids had a very potent PvP spec as an alternative. Our design has evolved for LK, and we want cats to be doing similar dps to say warriors, paladins and shamans, bears to be able to MT, and for Feral to be viable as a PvP spec.

Primal Tenacity Nerf
It was strictly for PvP. Short of cases like Maexxna, we’re not convinced it's a huge tanking issue and we definitely don’t want to try and carve out some kind of ill-conceived niche for druids as the best tanks while stunned. We just weren't happy with the way that talent worked. Relative power in Arenas is something we take into account, but it is not the only thing we take into account. (Source)

Feral Changes in 3.1 and scaling
Some of the Feral changes in 3.1 were to handle scaling problems, some which would have made druids too good or not good enough. Savage Roar made AP trump all. The armor changes were made in part because bears we were worried bears were going to hit the armor cap (esp. with procs up, etc.) It is something we keep an eye on definitely. However, I also think “we won’t scale” tends to get a little over-emphasized in some of these threads. (Source)

Hunter (3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Hunter nerfs
There is this perception I think that we nerfed hunters because of ammo changes. We nerfed hunters because they were doing too much damage (and SS was a larger portion of total damage than we wanted).

I did say that we were going to redo some portions of the hunter equation for 3.1, which we did with changes to Explosive Shot, TNT, pet talent trees, Chimera Shot and all the other changes in the patch notes. When we redo ammo, we'll have to redo them all again. We made sure that hunters will continue to scale satisfactorily into the next couple of tiers of content, but if you think we made a mistake somewhere, feel free to point it out. But you need to be specific. Saying "We don't scale" isn't sufficient, because you in fact do. (Source)

Rogue (3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Hunger for Blood
So, there seems to be this perception that we are going to nerf HfB because a few players are trying to use it for PvP (and apparently mostly for 1v1 duels against targets who don't run around much).

I am going to assume this is one of those deals where some of you are reading the blue quotes out of context or not reading the entire thread. Therefore, at the risk of derailing this thread, I will sum up the Hunger for Blood story one more time.

1) We like where Assassination rogues are in PvP. You can have excellent crowd control, and decent burst, survivability and mobility. We think adding more damage on top of this would be too good, which is why we nerfed Mutilate in the first place.

2) However, that same basic build doesn't do enough sustained damage in PvE.

3) Our solution was to make 51 Assassination a large increase in damage for PvE. To confine it to PvE, we made it require a bleed effect, and we stuck it to the bottom of the tree where it is out of reach of the traditional PvP Mutilate / Prep spec. You can have your damage (presumably for raiding) or you can have your utility (presumably for Arenas) but you can't have both.

4) If we were trying to get the Assassination tree enshrined in the Game Design Hall of Fame, would this be our approach? No. Ideally, talents are not so skewed towards PvE or PvP. Ideally a single talent point wouldn't account for so much dps. Ideally there might be a strong PvP spec that uses the 51 point talent. Can we design an Assassination tree that does that? Yes, but it would involve moving around a lot of other talents. Since we think rogues are where we want them in PvP and where we want them in PvE, we think the risk of hacking apart the talent trees for 3.1 in order to create a single Assassination build that is good in PvE and PvP isn't worth the reward. It might be something we look at in the future though.

5) This is where I note that we had plenty of posts that said we could inflate the 51 point talent to a ludicrous level without the bleed requirement and no PvP rogue would EVER, EVER take it. Even then, we maintained there is a number at which we would see rogues start to abandon their utility for more damage. (I don't honestly know if that is happening now though.)

6) Some rogues are, understandably, not happy with this design. They want their PvE damage to not be so dependent on that one talent. They want HfB to be good in PvP. We understand why they feel that way, even if it isn't in the cards for 3.1. I suspect, as one player above posted, some are trying to use HfB in PvP out of spite. At this stage we don't think we'll see most Arena rogues go 51 Assassination. But you know what? If they want to give it a shot, go for it. We don't think it will be overpowered given what they have to sacrifice.

7) Long-term, we'll have to see how it goes in the Arena this season. As I have offered before, rogues were originally designed to be the guys who surprise an enemy and beat them down before anyone knows what happens. That is certainly iconic for the rogue class in RPGs and other media. But it also just isn't much fun for the victim. We have been moving away the stealth -> stunlock -> 100% to 0% in a few GCDs phenomenon (which to be fair, is pretty wildly exaggerated in the first place). We have chilled out the CC and the burst. At this point we don't think we can chill it out much more without giving rogues more staying power to just sit in combat and melee (which we don't think they have a ton of right now). We can imagine a PvP rogue that stuns less and stands and fights more, but again that's a big change, and it's not in the cards for 3.1. If you think that kind of direction is interesting or terrible, we would love to get your feedback (though probably not in this specific thread). (Source)

Small indeed.

Needs more cowbell.

Cooking

• Cooking with Style - Obtain a Chef's Hat.

Hope up for nothing

DS back to life ^^

the frost change from IT to obliterate but it sounds nice

Buffing DK's makes SO MUCH SENSE

Hopefully this small update suggests that the live build is being worked on/on being deployed?

Originally Posted by Netram

Cooking

• Cooking with Style - Obtain a Chef's Hat.

This. Anyone know how to get the hat?

Buffing DK's YAY!
considering most of the changes are buffs from the last build, but still nerfs when compared to 3.0's versions.