Patch 4.0.6 Hotfixes - Feb 15, Blue Posts, The Daily Blink

[Boubouille]

Patch 4.0.6 Hotfixes - February 15
Blizzard deployed another round of hotfixes today, the arcane mage changes are going live and Blizzard decided that it was time to increase the guild XP gains from raid bosses!

Here you'll find a list of hotfixes that address various issues related to the recently released World of Warcraft: Cataclysm patch 4.0.6. Hotfixes are updates we make on our end without requiring you to download a new patch. Some of the hotfixes below will go live the moment they are implemented, while others may require your realm to be restarted to go into effect. Please keep in mind that some issues cannot be addressed without a client-side patch update. We will continue to update this thread in the days ahead as additional hotfixes are applied. Visit our Bug Report forum for a list of 4.0.6 known issues.

February 15
General

• The amount of guild reputation and guild experience gained from killing a raid boss has been dramatically increased, as the previous rate felt too low compared to the difficulty of progressing through raid content. This change will require a realm restart to take effect, which will be next Tuesday's weekly scheduled maintenance at the latest.
  
• Shield of Velen guards in The Exodar are now consistent with other "royal" city guards in terms of health, level, and damage.

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

• Arcane Blast now costs 5% of base mana before stacking modifiers, down from 7%.

Dungeons & Raids
Baradin Hold

• Argaloth despawns and resets properly if the raid wipes during Fel Firestorm.

Blackwing Descent

• While flying around the Vault of the Shadowflame, Nefarian no longer forces everyone to stand up if engaged.

Throne of the Tides

• It should no longer be possible to summon a mount in certain areas of this dungeon.

Items

• Shard of Woe (Heroic trinket) now reduces the base mana cost of spells by 205, with the exception of Holy and Nature spells -- the base mana cost of Holy and Nature spells remains reduced by 405 with this trinket.

Professions

• Engineering Target Dummies are no longer able to taunt boss-level creatures.

Blue Posts

Epilepsy and elementals flashing death effect
We've actually seen a number of forum posts, and received a few letters on the elemental death effects. We have a task set to remove the flashes from the death effect, although as the work hasn't begun I couldn't accurately state when the change might make it in.

In any case, we agree and we're going to be changing them. (Source)

Lag in 4.0.6
To address these directly, we can't say what any individual ISP may look at when performing any sort of Quality of Service traffic management. There are numerous factors that a traffic management console can monitor and consider as an indicator that throttling a subscriber is required. Those settings and thresholds are between the ISP and, if they choose to divulge it, their subscribers. Blizzard is not directly privy to that information. All we can truly proffer is generic information regarding the technologies involved and how it may impact our users. (Source)

Bandwidth requirements in the future
As far as increased bandwidth requirements, nothing 'new' is coming in the works, as far as I am aware, that will require enhanced bandwidth. Our published minimum system requirements can change at any time, depending on what improvements and innovations we introduce. What I am saying is that some issues people have been reporting have indeed been traced to their current throughput limitations. This isn't true across the board, but this is the root cause of some of the reports. (Source)

The Daily Blink - World of Warcraft on the Kindle
Another ... interesting idea from The Daily Blink.

[Rukah]

still no hunter nerf xD

[Pennygear]

Ahahaha... text adventure! Hell yes.

[Darknight587]

Thats a lot of things happening in just 14 minutes.

[Luzifer]

lol @ dailyblink

[Ryme]

I really wish they didn't mercilessly nerf every single benefit of engineering in both pve and pvp. It kind of makes me think, what's the point of having the perks in the first place?

[Deleted]

Halleluyah for guild xp buff on bosses!

[Xunae]

+1 for daily blink

[Chrizesu]

This makes me want to write a text adventure in java.

[Matik]

I really wish they didn't mercilessly nerf every single benefit of engineering in both pve and pvp. It kind of makes me think, what's the point of having the perks in the first place?

Pretty sure it wasn't intentional for target dummies to take aggro on bosses in the first place.

[Ticktock]

Hehe, I'd import a kindle if this were possible.

[Evilmaniac]

daily blink was epic

[Pumps]

That Kindle Warcraft looks pretty hot!

[Bobonei]

Kindle +1

[Deleted]

still no hunter nerf xD

There won't be any. Aimed shot will get a slight nerf, but other than than, some of our shots will receive minor buffs.

[Rainec]

to elemental death effect:

make em easier to loot too, one shouldnt have to wait 5 sec just for the chest portion of the elemental to fall the the ground in a specific spot to become lootable


also, epic daily blink

[Azrile]

Why would hunters get nerfed . Survivial was nerfed already to bring it in line, and BM is currently one of the lowest dps specs for raiding.

As for that comment about BH resetting if you wipe during felstorm. If your entire raid wipes during felstorm.. you have much bigger problems then the boss not resetting. I would think it is almost impossible for everyone to die during fel storm unless they are doing it on purpose.

[Vereku]

Hell yeh, Cho'gall for the win.

[Killala]

Jaina/Thrall slashfic?? That's het fic, not slash! GOD Daily Bink, get it right!

>.>

[BlackrazorNZ]

I like how it took an entire guild 4 minutes to kill 1 rogue. No world first's coming from THAT guild anytime soon.