Halfus World First Kills, Dec 15 Cataclysm Hotfixes, Winter Veil, Blue Posts

Here you will find a list of hotfixes that address various issues related to the release of patch 4.0.3a and World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. While many have already been deployed on all realms, some may not be implemented until the next time your realm is restarted. We will continue to update this thread in the days ahead as additional hotfixes are applied.

December 15
General

• Many guards who maintain peace by slaughtering PvPers have been properly buffed to match the stats of Furious Hyjal Wardens. Beware!
• Players are no longer able to go At War with the Dragonmaw faction.
• Trapdoors and transporters should no longer break when hit with area-of-effect abilities.

Druid (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

• Rake will no longer receive twice the benefit from the Feral druid Mastery Razor Claws.
• Soothe and Wild Mushroom are both correctly benefiting from, and consuming, Predator's Swiftness.

Mage (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

• Ring of Frost does not cause the mage to stand up (interrupting eating/drinking) while it is active.

Priest (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

• Blessed Resilience now increases healing received by 15/30%, up from 5/10%.
• Focused Will now reduces damage taken by 5/10% and 10/20%, up from 4/8% and 6/12%.
• Healing done by Glyph of Dispel Magic no longer improperly caps out at a certain health pool range.
• Holy Concentration's mana regeneration component has been increased from 10/20% to 20/40%.
• Player-controlled vehicles return an Invalid Target error when attempting to use Leap of Faith on them.
• Rapture's mana regeneration component has been increased from 1.5/2/2.5 to 2/4/6%.

Shaman (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

• The Mana Tide buff is now applied for each Mana Tide Totem on the ground.

Warrior (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

• Rude Interruption is no longer incorrectly consumed by Execute, Mortal Strike, or Overpower.

Dungeons & Raids

• Both the 5- and 20-quest versions of the Dungeon Quests Completed achievements trigger correctly on dungeon quests done.

Baradin Hold

• Argaloth now respects the faction that kills him and does not drop trinkets for the opposing faction.

Bastion of Twilight

• The doors controlled by the Halfus and Ascendant Council encounters should no longer become stuck after a soft reset.

Blackwing Descent

• Arcanotron's Shield should only proc off of player attacks and not things like Searing Totem, pets, etc.
• Players can no longer engage Nefarian without killing all three sub-bosses first.

Deadmines

• Defias Blood Wizards, Defias Shadowguards, and Defias Enforcers summoned during the Vanessa VanCleef encounter no longer award experience.

Halls of Origination

• Spatial Anomaly can no longer critically hit.
• Setesh's movement speed has been decreased.

Lost City of the Tol'vir

• Frenzied Crocolisks should always despawn when Lockmaw resets.

Shadowfang Keep

• Troll druids in particular, when shapeshifting into Cat/Bear form, were dealing an extra 5% damage to themselves via Beast Slaying when afflicted by Barion Ashbury's Asphyxiate. This caused them to die instead of being taken down to 1 health. This has been corrected and Asphyxiate now properly ignores damage modifiers.

The Stonecore

• Slabhide can no longer be killed while he's in his air phase, and can be properly killed when he's back on the ground.
• Flame Ascendants are now dropping loot that is appropriate for non-elite creatures.

Stratholme

• Eyes of Naxxramas will now spawn a set number of Gargoyles (2).
• The Vortex Pinnacle
• The "corpse-catching" mechanic now properly teleports players to the entrance platform of the dungeon.

Items

• Normal and Heroic versions of the Corrupted Egg Shell were not properly granting mana. This has been corrected.
• The Bloodthirsty Gladiator's Insignia of Victory now correctly grants Strength when it procs, rather than Agility.
• All of the Bloodthirsty and Vicious Gladiator gloves now have the appropriate glove bonuses for their respective classes.
• Players can no longer buy the opposing faction's mounts in Alterac Valley.
• Some items improperly shared duplicate stats with other items and have had their stats adjusted, including: Emberstone Staff, Rockslicer, Elekk-Horn Waistguard, Termination Axe, Sorrow's End, Soulsurge Necklace, Corefire Legplates, Blockade's Lost Shield, Sussurating Treads of Shok'sharak, Blazewing's Furious Kilt, Armagedillo's Tail, Book of Origination, Torturer's Mercy, Modgud's Blade, Maldo's Sword Cane, Maldo's Sword Cane (Heroic), Shadowskulk Leggings, Drape of Fiery Dreams, Hood of the Crying Rogue, Spaulders of the Savage Beast, Helm of Fatal Vision, Oath-Bound Gauntlets, Belt of Guardianship, Dorian's Lost Necklace, Don Rodrigo's Fabulous Necklace, Pauldrons of Edward the Odd, Je'Tze's Sparkling Tiara, Heartbound Tome, Arrowsinger Legguards, Thartuk's Inimitable Gauntlets, Terborus's Rotating Bands, Tol'Vir Heriditary Girdle,
• Reputation is no longer being granted while wearing the Tabard of the Guardians of Hyjal in normal mode Blackrock Caverns.

Professions

• Beauty in Blackrock Caverns can now be skinned.
• Canopic Jars are no longer poor quality and now show as white (standard) items.
• Obisidum Ore now spawns slightly less frequently in Mount Hyjal.
• The Blacksmithing Redsteel Shoulders item is now uncommon (green) quality.
• The Stormforged Legguards item is now rare (blue) quality.

PvP

• Progress is now properly tracked for the achievement Tol Barad Saboteur.

Quests & Creatures

• Feast of Winter Veil: there is now a quest blob surrounding the area of Growless Cave for the quest "You're a Mean One..."

Cataclysm Zones
Deepholm

• Pebble is correctly able to be picked back up if he despawns while being escorted from the crumbling depths for the quest "Lost in the Deeps".

Mount Hyjal

• Players are now able to enter the portal to the Firelands Hatchery as ghosts after the Aviana Regrowth event has occurred.

Twilight Highlands

• Grot Deathblow (Dragonmaw Quartermaster) and Craw MacGraw (Wildhammer Quartermaster) can no longer be killed by members of the opposing faction.
• "Bring Down the High Shaman" and "Warlord Halthar is Back" are now group quests.
• The amount of Wildhammer Food Stores required to complete the associated quests has been reduced to 10, down from 15. Please note the quest text will still state that 15 are needed until a client-side patch can be implemented to correct this.

Uldum

• Players are no longer able to receive Efficient Excavations before completing the quest "Do the Honors".

Vashj'ir

• Players can now ride the Seahorse in Darkbreak and Tenebrous Cavern.
• The questgiver Fiasco Sizzlegrin is now visible and giving the quest "Crafty Crabs" upon completion of "Waking the Beast". "Crafty Crabs" remain acceptable while players work on the other quests in the associated cave.

Eastern Kingdoms
Stormwind

• Earthworm Mounds for the quest "Diggin' For Worms" should now respawn more quickly.

Northrend
Sholazar Basin

• Bonescythe Ravagers no longer award experience or loot.

Outland
Hellfire Peninsula

• The quest requirements for the achievement To Hellfire and Back have been lowered for both Horde and Alliance characters. Horde characters need to complete 86 quests and Alliance characters need to complete 76.

Winter Veil Bosses
The denizens of the dungeons of Northrend are also getting into the holiday spirit, and some dungeon bosses even wear festive Winter Hats just like Greatfather Winter's. Defeat a Winter Veil boss, and the boss' hat is yours!

Winter Veil bosses of Northrend:

• Grand Magus Telestra (The Nexus) - Red Winter Hat
• Jedoga Shadowseeker (Ahn'Kahet: The Old Kingdom) - Red Winter Hat
• Mage-Lord Urom (The Oculus) - Green Winter Hat

Cataclysm Winter Veil bosses

• Deadmines (Heroic) - Admiral Ripsnarl
• The Stone Core (Normal + Heroic) - High Priestess Azil
• Blackrock Caverns (Normal + Heroic) - Corla, Herald of Twilight
• Shadowfang Keep (Heroic) - Lord Godfrey
• Grim Batol (Normal + Heroic) - Drahga Shadowburner

From December 25th to January 2nd only

Guild: Realm First! Working as a Team
Archaeology is a requirement for the Guild Achievement Working as a Team. It's incorrectly not shown on the criteria list, which is a bug, and will be fixed in a future patch. (Source)

Hotfixes Unpredictability
Applying a hotfix is a complicated process that involves many different developers, including in this case designers, QA and server programmers. These changes are applied live, which is a very different scenario than when things are changed for an upcoming build. We still make our best efforts to coordinate our list of hotfixes with the actual hotfixed data. In this case they were made within a few hours of each other. It takes time to track the progress of all of the hotfixes being developed, as we cannot announce them until we receive confirmation that the hotfixes have been tested by QA and pushed live by our programmers. While this whole process is taking place, we're compiling a large list of all of the changes made each day so we can update players in as timely a fashion as possible. (Source)

Paladin (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Holy Paladin Nerf
It is intended that Protector of the Innocent and Light of Dawn transfer healing through Beacon of Light. Furthermore, we didn’t feel that changing either of those would have fixed the problem. When we looked at the numbers, paladins were getting far more Holy Power from Holy Light using Tower of Radiance than we had predicted they would. This wasn’t a problem of paladins topping healing meters or anything like that. The problem was that paladins could heal much more efficiently than other healers. Healers of equal skill should run out of mana at about the same time. In this situation, we didn’t want to buff everyone else to the paladin level, because we think the experience of priest, druid and shaman healers is playing out as we intended. (But we will keep monitoring things.) We understand some healers still don’t feel that they have enough mana to be able to do their jobs and we understand the design has changed somewhat from the Wrath of the Lich King healing model. However, the heroic dungeons are intended to be challenging. Moreover, the Cataclysm expansion has only been live for a week. Players are still improving their gear, learning the boss fights and getting familiar with the new healing philosophy. (Source)

Holy Paladins/Holy Power
Holy paladins can generate Holy Power through a number of mechanics: using Holy Shock is intended to be the main one. They can also take damage through Blessed Life or heal a Beaconed target with Flash of Light or Divine Light.

The problem we were seeing is that Holy Light was made very inexpensive so that paladins always had a cheap go-to heal. Paladins had figured out to use this as a Holy Power generator for Light of Dawn. They didn’t even care about healing the tank per se – they were just casting 3 Holy Lights to earn the Light of Dawn. It seemed to us an effortless way to play that was super effective. With these changes, we expect to see paladins making more decisions – sometimes they might want to Holy Light a Beaconed target just because that’s the right spell at the moment. They may also Holy Light non-Beaconed targets. They will still Holy Shock on cooldown, which will generate plenty of Holy Power.

Those of you saying Holy paladins will no longer generate Holy Power might be taking the change a little too much to heart. That's not the design intent behind Holy paladins, nor a desired outcome of the Tower of Radiance change. In fact, we haven't seen this to be the outcome since the change was applied. Often times when we bring an overpowered ability back into line, the reaction we see on the forums is that the ability itself, or the core mechanics of the spec, has been gutted. That's a natural reaction in most cases, this one being no exception, as paladins will have to adjust to a change that came rather suddenly in the middle of gameplay (i.e. in a hotfix rather than a patch).

We understand there is also a mixture of concerns regarding this change which really revolve more around general healer mana regeneration in Cataclysm. Some paladins may claim Holy Light is now the only affordable heal. This is inaccurate and we're confident we'll see talented paladins shine using all of the appropriate tools in their kit. Perhaps, if anything, it means paladins can't afford to spam many different heals. That doesn't mean they're not useful given the appropriate situation.

(For instance, when the tank is very injured or you have to move, use a Flash of Light. If the damage is coming in faster than you can heal, use a Divine Light. You aren’t playing badly by using these spells – you are playing badly if you only use these spells and neglect the efficient ones.)

When we see players who claim they don’t have enough mana to heal, one of the following is usually true: 1) they are undergeared for the instance, 2) the tanks are trying to tank everything without CC, 3) they are avoiding Spirit on their gear, 4) they are trying to keep everyone topped off as fast as they can by resorting to fast spells (like Flash of Light) or relatively expensive area heals when they aren’t warranted. If someone is about to die – absolutely save them. Using Holy Radiance (40% mana) to get two folks who are at 95% back to 100% is not efficient. Throw a Holy Light (9% mana each) at each of them instead. (Source)