July 6 Hotfixes, Heroic Firelands First Kills, ilvl 371 Arena Gear, Blue Posts

[Boubouille]

Patch 4.2 Hotfixes - July 6

General

• An issue has been corrected that would cause players to lose their progress towards Veteran of the Horde II, Veteran of the Alliance II, Warbringer of the Horde, or Warbound Veteran of the Alliance if Veteran of the Horde or Veteran of the Alliance were complete.

Classes

• Characters should no longer disconnect or receive movement enforcement errors when certain spells, abilities, or item effects are used while on moving transports.

Druid (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• Faerie Fire and Faerie Fire (Feral) will now remove Stealth, Invisibility, Vanish, Shadowmeld and Prowl from players.

Mage (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• When using Spellsteal on a shaman, Lava Flows will no longer be given to the mage as a buff. The buff, however, will be removed from the shaman.

Priest (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• Shadowfiend is now causing the casting priest to enter combat when cast on enemy players.

Shaman (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• A Fulmination critical strike for more than 30,000 damage (10-player) or 45,000 damage (25-player) should now properly interrupt Rageface’s Face Rage in the Firelands.
• When Lava Flows is stolen by a mage via Spellsteal, the mage will no longer gain the Lava Flows buff.

Dungeons & Raids
Firelands

• Heroic difficulty has been activated and is accessible in all regions.
• Pet corpses, guardians, and placed items should no longer provoke Engorged Broodlings to a premature detonation.
• The pack of creatures fighting each other around Flamewaker Beast Handlers will stop fighting each other and attack the raid once provoked.
• Flamewaker Subjugators now award 50 reputation, up from 15, while Flamewaker Animators award no reputation or loot.
• The aggro radius on the third pack of Hells Hounds on the way to Beth’tilac has been reduced.
• Unstable Pyrelords now have an active stealth detection aura present when the gauntlet is triggered which prevents stealth classes from traversing up the hill undetected.

Baleroc

• Baleroc’s health has been increased on 10-player Heroic difficulty.
• Baleroc's gate now despawns properly when he resets.
• Shards of Torment despawn when Baleroc resets even if they are spawned after Baleroc has despawned.

Lord Rhyolith

• Lord Rhyolith can now be quickly snapped from left to right, or right to left, if the appropriate amount of damage is dealt to the opposite foot.
• Lord Rhyolith now prefers to activate volcanoes that are in front of him over volcanoes that are behind him.
• Lord Rhyolith now spawns slightly further back on his platform, allowing players to stand on the edge of the terrain and not aggro him.
• Lord Rhyolith no longer despawns when reaching the end of the encounter area, and does not despawn when casting Drink Magma from any of the possible locations.
• Lord Rhyolith now summons in volcanoes when intended, and it is no longer possible for the first set of volcanoes to be ignored.

Majordomo Staghelm

• Majordomo Staghelm has had his health increased by 10% on Heroic difficulty.

Ragnaros

• Living Meteors no longer evade and return to their spawn point when their original target dies or uses a threat drop. They will instead choose a new target.
• The Sons of Flame can no longer be missed by melee attacks and abilities.

Shannox

• Shannox will now rotate when appropriate instead of moving to get in range of his target while being tanked.
• Shannox will always use Hurl Spear after a raid wipes, even if Riplimb collapsed just prior to the group wiping.

Items

• Jamus’Vaz and Faldren Tillsdale are once again offering players Conquest Points in exchange for Valor Points.
• Normal and Heroic versions of Deflecting Star now correctly bind when picked up.
• Eternal Embers are now epic quality.
• Normal and Heroic versions of Pauldrons of Roaring Flame now have mastery rating instead of hit rating.
• Ruthless, Vicious, and Bloodthirsty Gladiator’s Clasps of Cruelty have had their Stamina values increased to remain consistent with equivalent belts. Note that the tooltip will require a patch to update.

Quests & Creatures
Hyjal Regrowth & Molten Front

• Players are now receiving 6 Marks of the World Tree from Caught Unawares and 10 marks from The Sanctuary Must Not Fall, which now allows players to obtain 20 marks as soon as they finish their first days’ worth of daily quests and unlock the Molten Front. The amount of marks offered is properly updated in player Quest Logs as well.
• There are now many more Wounded Hyjal Defenders to accommodate a large concurrency of players in the Molten Front.
• The Fiery Behemoths and Molten Behemoths are now the same size.
• Rayne Feathersong has been moved from the cave and is still available as a daily quest giver at Malfurion's Breach.

Firelands Raid Heroic First Kills - Day 2
Guilds around the world are still working hard on Firelands Raid encounter and the harder bosses are starting to slow progression down in both regions.

US First Kills

• vodka was the first guild in the US to defeat Alysrazor in Heroic Mode.

EU First Kills

• Method was the first guild in Europe to defeat Beth'tilac, Lord Rhyolith, and Alysrazor.
• For The Horde was the first guild in Europe to defeat Shannox.

As I write this news posts, 10 Guilds killed the first 4 bosses of the Firelands Raid and are working on the last 3: Baleroc, Majordomo Staghelm, and Ragnaros. See the ranking below, courtesy of WoWProgress.

Rank	Guild	Realm	Progress	Criteria
1	Blood Legion (25 r)	US-Illidan	4/7 (H)	5988.88
2	vodka (25 r)	US-Alterac Mountains	4/7 (H)	5988.88
3	Premonition (25 r)	US-Sen'Jin	4/7 (H)	5983.33
4	Method (25 r)	EU-Xavius	4/7 (H)	5977.76
5	DREAM Paragon (25 r)	EU-Lightning's Blade	4/7 (H)	5977.76
6	Envy (25 r)	EU-Auchindoun	4/7 (H)	5977.76
7	Inner Sanctum (25 r)	EU-Silvermoon	4/7 (H)	5977.76
8	For the Horde (25 r)	EU-Nazjatar	4/7 (H)	5977.76
9	Ensidia (25 r)	EU-Tarren Mill	4/7 (H)	5977.76
10	Карфаген (25 r)	EU-Пиратская Бухта	4/7 (H)	5977.76

Season 9/10 Vicious Gladiator Gear Changes in 4.2
For those of you who didn't understand the Arena drama going on, Blizzard stealth-upgraded all the parts of Season 9 Armor into new ilvl 371 items to replace the old ilvl 365 items. For example, Vicious Gladiator's Armbands of Meditation (365) was replaced with Vicious Gladiator's Armbands of Meditation (371).

The change wasn't retroactive and people who bought their gear a few days before the patch basically ended up spending their points on gear that was slightly outdated a few days later, without warning from Blizzard.

I've also seen a forum thread wondering why I didn't announce the change, easy, the items were definitely there but I had no real ways to know why; back in the day I just assumed it was Blizzard testing their new tooltip code (season displays) with old items to test everything. Test items happen all the time, and without anything mentioned in the official notes there was no real way to figure out what they are.

Thanks for making a clear-cut thread summarizing why this is a big issue within the PvP community, Tauranewone. To keep communication on this as clear as possible, I'll try and clarify what has happened with the transition between Season 9 and 10, as well as give you our take. For everyone reading along, please do not create new threads on this issue. We'll be primarily watching this one and would prefer to keep our forums as easy to read as possible.

Before getting into it, I want you all to know that we've maintained an open dialog with our developers over the past 24 hours regarding the way in which the PvP season transition went down since patch 4.2 (this includes relaying a lot of the feedback we've seen on the forums to them). We agree that the mistakes made were very unfortunate and unfair to a lot of players. We're currently exploring some options to try and alleviate some of the misfortune many of you experienced while purchasing PvP gear in the last week.

First off, to be clear, we made two mistakes which led to the primary cause of frustration for players:

1) We noted that Conquest Points were going to be converted into Honor Points above the 4,000 cap with the release of patch 4.2, giving players one week to spend these excess points before the start of Season 10, at which point the 4,000 point cap would go into effect. Instead, the Honor Point cap intended to be enforced yesterday was applied at the same time Conquest Points were converted to Honor Points with patch 4.2. This led many players who saved Conquest Points up for the season transition to receive gold for any Honor Points above 4,000, rather than points above that cap. There wasn't a feasible solution for correcting the fact that the calculations had been run a week early.

2) We didn't notify players that we made a slight change to the way PvP gear is introduced each season. The change simply wasn't communicated among all of the other patch 4.2 changes, which was a big oversight on our part.

These two errors compacted each other. Players were left with no more than 4,000 Honor Points after patch 4.2, which led many players to farm more HP to buy Season 9 gear. Then, when Season 10 hit yesterday, Season 9 (ilvl 365) items were replaced with an HP tier of Season 10 (ilvl 371) items. Since players didn't know this would happen, many of you farmed HP and spent it on the Season 9 items prior to yesterday's maintenance.

Obviously most of you already know what happened and are very frustrated by it, but I just want to clarify the nature of the unrest, as well as the intended way this season transition was to happen. This is the way it should have worked, and how it should work going forward:

1) During any season, a low tier of current-season items will be available for purchase with Honor Points.

2) During any season, a high tier of current-season items will be available for purchase with Conquest Points.

3) At the end of any season, any remaining Conquest Points will be converted into Honor Points above the 4,000 cap.

4) In between seasons, the previous high tier of items becomes available for purchase with Honor Points, allowing anyone who could not previously afford them with CP one last chance to buy them using the excess Honor Points.

5) The new season begins. Honor Points are capped at 4,000 again. The previous season's sets are removed and replaced with current-season HP and CP items.

We've seen a lot of players ask what the purpose is of having Season 9 items available for purchase with Honor Points for a week, before replacing them with better items. The purpose was for people to spend their excess Honor Points on any leftover items, as once the next season starts players can't keep more than 4,000 HP to spend. Now, the reason why this intent wasn't evident to most players is because we capped HP a week too early, which made spending any Honor Points last week less than ideal. The reality is players would have been better off saving 4,000 HP for the start of Season 10 when ilvl 371 gear was released. But they had no way of knowing that.

That is about all of the information I have to share on this subject at the moment, but I want to remind you that the issues with this season transition are well on our radar. We know we messed up in multiple ways. This not only made our intentions very unclear, but led players to make choices to spend their Honor Points they otherwise probably would not have made.

If everything went according to plan, you probably would've spent any HP over the 4,000 cap last week on any remaining Season 9 items you maybe didn't have. You then would have saved 4,000 HP to get started on the low tier Season 10 items. This is the way we're looking at it and will let you know if and when we have more information to share.

Official Website Maintenance -- July 7

Our http://battle.net/wow website will be undergoing maintenance on July 7, beginning around 1:30 p.m. PDT. We currently anticipate this maintenance period to last approximately 3 hours while we apply the necessary updates. During this time, access to the World of Warcraft website, including the forums, will be unavailable. We thank you in advance for your patience.

For those of you who may need to access Account Management, http://battle.net/account should remain available while maintenance is performed.

Blue Posts

Soloing Firelands Raid Trash
If you're soloing Firelands trash, it's for a reason that will be corrected. We've already fixed several situations where this was possible, either by buffing the creatures, increasing the range of their abilities, or removing their loot/greatly reducing the rewards they provide.

[...] Most of the changes weren't just due to solo players killing creatures in there, or pug trash runs. Many of the loot tables just had much higher drop percentages than intended. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Racial traits balance in raid
Racial traits primarily exist to add flavor to each race, and to a lesser extent, situational advantages in line with the theme of each race. Naturally each one works better in some situations than others.

A player who wishes to can and should raid as Forsaken, or any other race that they enjoy playing. It's extremely unlikely that if a player has proven themselves capable, that a competent raid leader would turn them away based on their character's race. There are, after all, a very healthy number of Forsaken raiders active at this very moment.

[...] There are a number of ways to optimize a character outside of racials. I'm not saying that they can't be useful, or that certain racials aren't nice to have in certain circumstances (particularly in PvP) - that would be foolish.

I'm just saying that in general their importance has been over-emphasized. By and large, you can still be effective playing the race you want to play. The assertion that one cannot raid because they choose to play Forsaken is preposterous. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Season 9 Feats of Strength Bug
It wasn't intended for the mounts and titles to go out without their associated feats of strength. Unfortunately, this cannot be addressed via a hotfix and will require a client-side patch. The Season 9 feats of strength will be rewarded retroactively in a future patch to those who should have gotten them with the start of Season 10. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

World of Warcraft Comics
The Official Comic Gallery with a new submission.

Art Gallery Update
The Trading Card Game art gallery has been updated with ten new pieces.

[deathonabun]

...omg first

Infracted.

[Aztrazolo]

Second...doh!

Infracted.

[Deleted]

Enjoy your ban, first

[Qbn]

Not that the blue posts on ilvls and pvp gear changed anything, it's nice to see blizz own up to a mistake once in a while.

[alaskanfreezer]

Paragon has become a DREAAAAAAAAM.....grats on the sponsorship guys!

[Axigar]

Thank god Blizzard for fixing Rhyolith!

[Onzay]

DREAM Paragon?

[Deleted]

Baleroc’s health has been increased on 10-player Heroic difficulty. Majordomo Staghelm has had his health increased by 10% on Heroic difficulty. Some bosses have to go un-killed for a while i guess.

The change on 10man is to be hard as 25man is.
The last on Majormo i believe is to make guilds farm a bit more gear before they can kill it. Maybe a week or two. I think that boss is kind a gear check.
Anyway no guild ever try it in live server so we did not know for sure.

[Deleted]

oh no you didn't..

Mage (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• When using Spellsteal on a shaman, Lava Flows will no longer be given to the mage as a buff. The buff, however, will be removed from the shaman.

Inc QQ from poor mages rofl.

[Seegtease]

I saw that fanart (terrible fire effect) and immediately remembered what it was from my vanilla days... Nostalgia.

http://www.wowhead.com/item=8348

[retpally]

oh no you didn't.. Inc QQ from poor mages rofl.

Never feel bad for mages lol.

Andlso thanks Blizz for your usual BS. Now where's my refunded honor for my alts? Hm? For all the money Blizz wallows in you'd think they'd have competent people coding their game.

[InfernalDark]

Ensidia = fail. Gotta love when the swedes fail. Muahahahahahha.

[DeltrusDisc]

wellll hellloooo there to the high-kicking female night elf. :3

[Malefic]

How much HP did Baleroc have prior to the buff? In terms of percentage, how much of a HP buff is this, does anyone know? Just checked and he currently has 69million on heroic - which I believe is post hotfix, since stepping onto Rhyoliths platform didn't aggro him either (Another one of the hotfixes applied)

[bohapjut]

DREAM Paragon?

they're up there, 4/7

[Mathaios]

Ugh, the cards looks ugly

[Grinco]

Method just went 5/7 and got the WF on Baleroc

[furydeath]

People still care about world firsts?

[Charo]

Because omg, they're going to join said guild when they save up enough lunch money to server xfer. Who frigging knows why people care, I can't wrap my head around the "guild fanboy" mentality..