Arcane Hotfixes, Patch 4.0.6 Hotfixes - Feb 14, Blue Posts, Valentine's Day Comic

[Boubouille]

Arcane Hotfixes

As previously discussed ( http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2065568025 ) we're currently planning to put out a couple hotfixes specifically for Arcane mages. Likely today.

• Arcane Blast base mana cost from 7% to 5%.

However, with the above change in mind we are also going to nerf the Shard of Woe trinket to halve the mana savings for Arcane spells only. It's still a fantastic trinket for Arcane mages even with the reduction.

Patch 4.0.6 Hotfixes - February 14

February 14
General

• Players who are exalted with 40 factions are again awarded The Exalted title. Note that the associated achievement does not state that this title will be awarded when it's earned. This will be corrected in a future patch. More information can be found here.

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

• Starfall will now hit any target in range which is in combat or not at full health (including the Exposed Head of Magmaw, which was causing issues with Starfall).

Paladin (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• The hotfix to Beacon of Light and Light of Dawn on February 11 did not produce the intended results and has been reverted. Light of Dawn should still trigger Beacon of Light.

Raids & Dungeons
Blackwing Descent

• The Atramedes achievement Silence is Golden was incorrectly failing when any raid member's sound bar went over 30%. The achievement now requires no one's sound bar to go over 50% as advertised.

Professions
Alchemy

• The Mysterious Potion was restoring the wrong amount of mana. It now restores 1 to 15,000 mana, instead of 1 to 30,000.

Fishing

• The Bone and Jeweled Fishing Pole quest rewards are now item level 15, down from 200.

Herbalism

• Whiptail was spawning too quickly in Uldum after patch 4.0.6. The spawn time has been reduced.

Blue Posts

Whiptail respawn rates way too high?
We're aware of this and taking a look at the respawn rates. (Source)

Twilight Jasmine spawn rate
There was no nerf after release, but there (I believe) was an issue with herbs being in different phases than you so thus the sparseness. I also believe that this was corrected. But, I can definitely ask about Twilight Jasmine. (Source)

Zul'aman and Amani Bear Mount
One never knows what might happen with Zul'Aman and the treasures of old found therein... (Source)

Warlock (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)
Warlock damage "changes" in 4.0.6
We're aware of the concerns that the damage of Immolate and Corruption may have gone down unintentionally as part of 4.0.6 or a bug fix shortly thereafter. This was not an intentional change and so far we’ve been unable to determine if such a change occurred or what could have caused it. We have, for example, looked at several Destruction warlocks whose DoT damage went up, which would be the expected outcome of the Improved Soul Fire talent. If you have additional new information, especially if it's empirical and reproducible, please share it with us as we continue to investigate. (Source)

Warrior (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)
Fury in 4.0.6
After 4.0.6 went in, Fury was doing more damage than projected, and higher dps than we wanted for the spec. Essentially, the 4.0.6 changes for Fury weren't intended to be a damage buff to begin with - we just wanted to make the mastery more appealing and de-emphasize Heroic Strike. Instead, we saw Fury damage jump up more than could be accounted for from factors like the metagem change. It also seems that Raging Blow had become very strong after the mastery change. So, we made the decision to reduce Fury damage, and Raging Blow became a good place to make that adjustment, since that allowed us to address both the PvE damage issues and the PvP burst concerns at the same time.

We think the verdict is still out over whether Single-Minded Fury has become a clear choice over Titan's Grip. All the evidence available right now is theory crafted, but we still want to see how performance shakes out in actual play. If the theory crafting turns out to be correct, then we'll consider adjusting Single-Minded Fury then, probably a reduction. In the meantime, it's probably best to stick with whichever play style you find the most fun, or at least, have the most appropriate weapons for. It's good to keep in mind that there are more two-handed weapons with strength on them than there are strength heavy one-handed weapons, though there's also probably more competition for those two-handers as well.

No offense... but how did you not account for this?
No offense taken. World of Warcraft is a complex game, and due to all the factors involved, predicting performance changes over the whole playing population and in every feasible scenario can be challenging. We run the numbers to predict dps under several different conditions and then compare those estimates to empirical data (generated in house and collected from live games). Most of the time, that data gives us a pretty accurate picture. Still, there are a lot of Fury warriors out there with various mixes of gear, talent specs and skill levels, and despite the projections, damage went up for a lot of those players more than we expected. (Source)

Fury AoE
Some of you have expressed some concerns regarding Fury AoE, so this is a good time to mention that we're looking at area of effect damage for a lot of specs, Fury included. So, it's on the radar. (Source)

Warrior DPS
We feel that warrior dps is about where it should be, and that the class continues to bring valuable output to a raid and will scale well in the future as well. (Source)

SMF vs. Titan's Grip
Single-Minded Fury and Titan's Grip were really close in the wake of 4.0.6, which was a good place. Now it's possible that SMF is doing better than TG by a wider margin than we're comfortable with. We don't want to eliminate choices and see a rush on SMF, and we'd rather see players choosing the weapons they'd prefer. If that means bringing SMF back into line with TG, then that might be the course of action we take. Nothing is necessarily guaranteed or imminent though. (Source)

Class balance / PTR Testing and Fury Nerf
A lot of players on the PTR correctly predicted the problem, yes. But players always predict problems, many of which never materialize. The feedback from the PTRs is valuable, but we don't expect it to result in a perfect assessment, and we've learned that we can’t and shouldn’t just accept everything at face value. Players that post concisely, objectively and provide a lot of verifiable evidence of their claims tend to provide the most valuable information, and the kind of feedback that we're far more likely to heed. When concerns are raised, we discuss them and run tests of our own, and decide whether a change is warranted or not.

In this case, we were aware of the concerns being raised about Raging Blow burst damage in PvP. We agreed with the arguments that it required a lot of cooldowns and stacked mastery to get going, and even then enrage could easily be removed by several classes. We didn't believe that this would lead to Fury dominating PvP, and we didn't change it at the time because we didn’t want to nerf Fury’s PvE damage over a (possibly overstated) PvP concern. We also didn't want to risk making mastery a poor stat again, which was the most significant issue we were trying to fix. When Fury’s PvE dps proved higher than our target, then Raging Blow was the obvious candidate to decrease since a reduction there was likely to solve all the issues that we were hoping to address. (Source)

Love Is in the Air... and in This New Blizzard Comic

We've just added a special treat to our Blizzard Art gallery: a heartwarming piece from our own Samwise Didier, just in time for Valentine's Day. Be sure to check the Blizzard Art section regularly, as we plan to release more webcomics from Blizzard artists in the months ahead.

[Deleted]

Hmm, wonder what healers will think about mages affecting their gear, however the change is nice for arcane

[MushroomBomb]

That is slightly lovely. Except Valentines day is already over here -_-

[Ica]

Have anyone checked to see if we can go back and get our Amani Warbears?

[sadistic]

Hmm, wonder what healers will think about mages affecting their gear, however the change is nice for arcane

well, its only arcane getting nerfed. As far as i know, no arcane healing spells :P though, that would be neat... arcane healers...

[Olderonous]

nooooo my mysterious potions of 40k crit mana! Noooooo

[Zaros]

Bout time they realised that Whiptail was spawning too fast. Inc Price inflation.

[mezmir]

GG beastiality comic. LOL Naw, but it's pretty funny.

[Chrizesu]

Seems the hotfix is intended to level arcane mana management between having that trinket and not.

[Darknight587]

They believe the phasing issue in Twilight Highlands was fixed? They need to take a trip around the zone then. I still cant pick 2/3 of all the flowers there.

[Ozires]

I wonder about the Amani warbear thing. I hope it's a reference to the mount becoming a rare drop and not Zul'Aman or something similar returning as a lv 85 raid. I get the the ones that have the bear like to keep it as exclusive, but for me this would add so much fun to running Zul'Aman in a lv 70 group.

[hellboyy]

yall are mistaken. he's hitting on the dwarf

[Baygon]

blizzard hasn't seemed to properly account for anything lately at all, fury warriors? OP. Lol Barad? Apparently Balanced during the beta...haha blizzard are losing their touch..

[Daws001]

Ha! Cute comic

[looorg]

Another day, another patchnote and still no shaman fixes ... yay ... clearly working as intended.

[Cows For Life]

Glad to see that it only took over two years for them to make Starfall not pull entire rooms of creatures.

[GoldenGunned]

could mean a new troll raid incomming

[Strakha]

Another day, another patchnote and still no shaman fixes ... yay ... clearly working as intended.

I like that they had the time to fix a trinket that maybe 10 mages in the entire world even use, but spent 0 time addressing any concerns for the shaman class. Good times blizz!

[Azbulldog]

As everyone in the comments on the official WoW site mentioned, that worgen has a tail.

[Deleted]

They commented so much on Fury, but not a word about the abomination that is Juggernaut? Madness.