Thread: Patch 3.2 Notes Update, Maintenance, Blue posts

Is Patch 3.2 this week?
I'm sure a lot of people are going to ask this question today, the answer is no. The current PTR Build is possibly the one we will see on live realms because it's flagged as a retail build, the final version of a patch.

Does it mean that it will be deployed this week? No, Blizzard is still tweaking PTR servers and testing raid instances and the US have rolling restarts scheduled for this week anyway. If nothing goes wrong on PTRs I would start to expect it on live servers next week.

Patch 3.2 PTR Notes Update
The official patch notes have been updated once again with a few extra changes.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Dungeons and Raids

• The Heroic dungeon daily quest will now reward 2 Emblems of Triumph and the normal daily dungeon quest will reward 1 Emblem of Conquest.

Paladin

• Seal of Vengeance and Seal of Corruption: These seals have been redesigned to deal substantially more damage. Now, once a paladin has 5 copies of the debuff from these seals on his or her target, on each swing the paladin will deal 33% weapon damage as Holy, with critical strikes dealing double damage. In addition, the damage-over-time effect is now considered a melee attack instead of a spell attack and the effects from these seals can only be triggered by auto-attacks and Hammer of the Righteous.

User Interface

• Casting bars under the target frame, focus frame, and nameplates will now display as shielded if the cast cannot be interrupted.
• New Feature Icons: Options recently added to any of the options menus will now display a yellow exclamation point next to them to indicate that they are new features.

Blue posts

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

PvP Healing
If you are a healer, you are often going to be a target. You aren't designed to be able to totally fend off every attack while keeping everyone alive.

This thread reads a little like "Healing is hard" (which is true), "and often unappreciated" (which is true), "and therefore healers should be really hard to counter and otherwise deal with." That last part is where you lose me. If healing can't be stopped or countered, then nobody dies until you run out of mana. If every PvP encounter becomes a mana drain race we don't think it will be very fun. If PvE encounters never challenge healers then you'll get lots of accolades, but probably also be pretty bored. (Source)

Paladin
Seal of Vengeance / Corruption and Ret DPS
Only white attacks can stack the Sea of Vengeance / Corruption dot. However special abilities should still trigger the bonus weapon damage. I'm not sure the current PTR build you have reflects that last bit.

The goal was not to nerf Ret for PvE. We do want the ramp up time to be significant for PvE or it won't solve the PvP problem we're trying to fix. However, once you get the stack up, your damage should be pretty decent. On very short kills (say trash or something like Thorim arena) you won't be able to get the full benefit from the dot, but any class with a finishing move typically loses that damage as well. Balance is important for both short and long fights, but it's normal to use different rotations or abilities for those two extremes. (In other words, we're okay with a long ramp up time for this ability.)

We will continue to monitor Ret numbers coming out of the PTR and even once the patch goes live and make changes if necessary. (Source)

[US] Rolling Restarts - 7/28/2009

Originally Posted by Achadu (Blue Tracker)

We will be performing a brief maintenance on select realms listed below on Tuesday, July 28th at 5:00am PDT untill approximately 9:00am PDT. For all realmst not listed below, we will begin a series of rolling restarts at 5:00am PDT for all United States and Latin American realms and 10:00am PDT for all Oceanic realms. We anticipate each of these realms will be down for no more than 15 minutes.

Alexstrasza, Alleria, Balnazzar, Blackhand, Cho'gall, Destromath, Dethecus, Garona, Gorgonnash, Gul'dan, Hellscream, Illidan, Kael'thas, Kirin Tor, Ravencrest, Spinebreaker, Stormreaver, Whisperwind

[EU] Extended Maintenances and Instance Capacity

Originally Posted by Wryxian (Blue Tracker)

Recently there has been a number of extended maintenance periods for certain realms. Some of these we informed you about in advance and some we were unable to until during the actual maintenance period. We want to take the time to explain the reasoning behind these extended maintenance periods, and also those that will need to occur in the future.

These extended maintenances are directly linked to the message we posted in early July (http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=9941934722) about our investigations in regard to instance capacity and our plans to implement hardware modifications to achieve positive change for your play experience. As we said we would do in that message, we are now informing and updating you of our progress.

These modifications are typically a two stage process, requiring two lots of extended maintenance for each group of realms being worked on. For the realms listed below, the first stage was completed successfully on Wednesday the 15th of July during a pre-announced extended maintenance period.

On Wednesday the 22nd of July we also began to complete the second and final stage of this process on the affected realms. However, we encountered unforeseen difficulties in implementing the modifications. We were left with two options; either to further extend the maintenance period well into the evening and thus the busiest playing hours, or to take just a couple of extra hours to roll back the changes so that the realms could be back up and playable quickly. Since we did not want to disrupt your ability to play the game during the prime time, we decided on the latter option.

Since the final stage of these modifications did not complete successfully, we will need to do a further extended maintenance for the realms listed below. This is currently planned for the next maintenance period on Wednesday 29th of July. Because of this, we wish to inform you in advance that the realms listed below will again experience extended maintenance as we implement changes that we believe will bring positive change for your play experience, especially in regards to the ability to enter dungeon and raid instances.

After these modifications are implemented successfully, we aim to post up a feedback thread so that you can share with us your thoughts on how they have affected your play experience. At that stage, we will greatly appreciate it if you are able to help us with your feedback.

Though these modifications will be rolled out to all realms eventually, the current group of realms we are implementing the hardware changes on are these:

Balnazzar, Bloodfeather, Darksorrow, Defias Brotherhood, Earthen Ring, Frostwhisper, Genjuros, Haomarush, Hellscream, Laughing Skull, Lightning's Blade, Magtheridon, Neptulon, Nordrassil, Quel'Thalas, Ragnaros, Ravencrest, Runetotem, Shadowsong, Shattered Hand, Silvermoon, Skullcrusher, Spinebreaker, Stormrage, Stormreaver, Stormscale, Sylvanas, Terenas, The Maelstrom, The Venture Co., Thunderhorn, Turalyon, Twisting Nether, Vashj

Originally Posted by Xacez

Soon™

Well it better be..... >

well...the emblem change is at least one little spark of hope (it almost cant be seen, but yes its there) in the black hole named Patch 3.2

Originally Posted by Maneken

Trying not to laugh hard on blizzard and ppl which thought that paladins seal will be anything near good as Seal on live server

which seal are you referring to?

Originally Posted by Barky

personally i'd prefer it out more in September

Releasing a patch in the summer months never goes down that well due to a lot of people not playing much, an example is my guild who are slap bang in the middle of our summer raiding break.

and like dr0nzer said before me, releasing a patch on the 1st few days of september is the perfect way to lure people back in to the game after the summers on its way out

While true, by that time Blizzcon will be over and any wow related announcement made there is likely to have a much bigger impact on the player base then 3.2.
I wouldn't be surprised if we'll get 3.2 next week.