January 7-18th

• General
  • Broiled Dragon Feast is correctly being tracked by the guild achievement, Set the Oven to "Cataclysmic".
  • The guild achievement Lower Blackrock Spire Guild Run can now only be earned in a group of at least 4 players from the same guild in a 5-player party.
  • The achievement Sunwell Plateau Guild Run now requires a guild group to complete. This achievement can no longer be completed without the requirement of having 75% of the raid be guild members.
  • Guild experience daily resets should no longer sometimes fail to occur.
• Classes
  • Death Knights
    • Necrotic Strike is now affected by resilience.
  • Druids
    • Druids previously unable to learn Nature's Grasp will be able to learn that spell now.
    • Rejuvenation now consumes 16% of base mana, down from 26%, but still requires 26% of base mana in order to be cast.
  • Mages
    • Rank 1 of Pyromaniac no longer improperly gives 5% passive haste.
    • The mana costs of the following mage spells have been reduced, but they still require the previous percentage of base mana in order to be cast: Arcane Barrage (11% of base mana), Arcane Blast (7% of base mana), and Fireball (12% of base mana). As an example, Fireball requires 16% base mana to cast, but only consumes 12% of base mana.
  • Priests
    • Sin and Punishment is now properly causing its terror affect when dispelled. In addition, it no longer shares diminishing returns with fear effects. It now shares diminishing returns with horrify effects.
    • Priests who were unable to learn Holy Nova will now be able to train the spell.
  • Warlocks
    • While Nightfall is active, Doomguards will not instantly cast Doom Bolt.
  • Warriors
    • A bug has been fixed where the Shield Block ability granted 25% more critical block chance than was intended for Protection warriors with very high total chance to avoid attacks.
• Dungeons & Raids
  • It should no longer be possible for players to inadvertently be locked out of killing a raid boss depending on whether or not they were online when the boss was killed.
  • The battle resurrection counter will now correctly reset if players are not inside the dungeon when an encounter resets.
  • The Bastion of Twilight
    • The hotfix on January 5 to increase the damage of Liquid Ice during phase 3 of the Ascendant Council fight has been reverted. Due to a separate bug with the size of the Elementium Monstrosity's hitbox, it is often impossible for melee classes to avoid damage from this ability. This issue is slated to be addressed in patch 4.0.6 so that Liquid Ice damage can again be increased.
    • Many adjustments to the behavior of various mechanics in the Sinestra encounter have been made.
    • Fester Blood now hits everyone in the room instead of having a 20-yard radius on Heroic difficulty during the Cho'gall encounter. No more kiting he who has too many eyeballs.
    • Valiona's Blackout can no longer be absorbed by Grounding Totem or reflected. Its healing absorption effect has also been increased for 10-player normal difficulty.
  • Blackwing Descent
    • Atramedes will now reset if the players targeted by Sonic Breath or Obnoxious Fiends attempt to leave the room.
    • Zoning into the dungeon after a soft reset now causes all Atramedes-related objects and creatures to reset completely. The introduction event will replay once the dwarves have been cleared. Entering combat with Atramedes forces the gongs to become usable and the fight will function normally from this point.
    • Atramedes will no longer despawn when his tail passes through the area trigger in the entrance to his room. He will no longer despawn randomly during the fight. Pulling him out of his room will now cause him to reset.
    • The damage of Chimaeron's Caustic Slime has been reduced for both raid sizes and dungeon difficulties.
    • Chimaeron will not cast Caustic Slime on Feral tanks in Bear Form unless there aren't enough non-tank specialized targets available. This fix applies to Magmaw's targeting functionality as well.
    • Rip and Bane of Doom damage is no longer affected by the damage increase of Stolen Power when engaging Nefarian.
    • Abberrations spawned during the Maloriak encounter were displaying inappropriately high health values on Heroic difficulty. This has been corrected.
• Items
  • Bloodthirsty Gladiator's Badge of Dominance and Vicious Gladiator's Insignia of Dominance on-use effects now properly modify healing done.
  • Darkmoon Card: Volcano now triggers from periodic damage.
  • Divine Shield and Blessing of Protection no longer remove the Blind Spot debuff from the normal and Heroic versions of the Jar of Ancient Remedies. When targeting an ally at very close range (2-3 yards) when using this item, it will still energize them instead of the user. This will be fixed in an upcoming patch.
  • Free Action Potions now cannot be used above level 80.

Professions

• Archaeology keystone fragments can no longer be prospected.
• Lifebound Alchemist Stones can no longer be disenchanted.

PvP

• Arenas
  • Ring of Valor has been temporarily disabled until select bugs can be fixed in an upcoming patch.
• Battlegrounds
  • Teams who are in the rated Battleground queue and have a member disconnect are now removed from the queue after 10 minutes if the player does not come back. The team is still at the top of the queue if the player comes back and the Battleground will pop almost instantly.
  • Battleground ratings, wins, and losses should now always update after every game when playing in rated Battlegrounds. Certain conditions were not causing this to happen previously.
  • Players who do not show up to a Rated Battleground, either by leaving the queue or letting the Battleground queue time out, are not being credited for a win.
  • Players who are removed from a Battleground when it closes due to a lack of players will not receive the Deserter debuff.
  • Players are again able to queue for more than one Battleground at a time without issue.

Quests & Creatures

• Darnassus
  • Worgen character hearthstone location is now set to the Craftsmen's Terrace in Darnassus upon completing the quest "Ruh'theran Village".
• Deepholm
  • Fungalmancer Glop no longer grants experience and now rewards quest kill credit to all players who have damaged him.
• Tol Barad Peninsula
  • Players will receive quest credit for killing any quest boss, regardless of party status, so long as they participate in killing these bosses.
  • Problim can now be seen from a much larger distance.
  • Cell Watchers in D-Block are no longer incorrectly tagged as elite.
  • "The Leftovers", "Swamp Bait" and "A Huge Problim" can now be shared between members of the Alliance. In addition, these quests now award the correct amount of gold and faction for the Horde and Alliance as well.
  • Darkwood Broodmothers no longer flee at 25% and periodically inflict targets with Reckless Toxin instead.
  • Hungry Ghouls and Skeletal Beastmasters now drop the Cursed Femur quest item when on the quest "Salvaging the Remains", and the tooltip also indicates these creatures drop the quest item.
  • Restless Infantry and Restless Soldiers now spawn more quickly.
• Twilight Highlands
  • If reinforcements are not called after 60 seconds, Skullcrusher will now despawn. When reinforcements are called, Skullcrusher no longer improperly despawns.
• Uldum
  • Titanic Guardian's Burning Gaze ability should no longer put everyone in the zone in combat.

Blizzard posted:

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The mana costs of the following mage spells have been reduced, but they still require the previous percentage of base mana in order to be cast: Arcane Barrage (11% of base mana), Arcane Blast (7% of base mana), and Fireball (12% of base mana). As an example, Fireball requires 16% base mana to cast, but only consumes 12% of base mana.

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slythetove posted:

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I was gonna say... can someone explain to me how spells cost X but require you have X + Y in order to be able to cast them?

I really don't understand what this is attempting to "fix".

--Sly

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-MrBean- posted:

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My arcane mage is only level 80.... but I have never run oom, nor even come close, and I am almost always on top of the dps charts for the runs I have been in. Mage armor is a great mana regen resource.

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-Spacelord- posted:

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I don't understand the "Archaeology keystone fragments can no longer be prospected." part.

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slythetove posted:

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I was gonna say... can someone explain to me how spells cost X but require you have X + Y in order to be able to cast them?

I really don't understand what this is attempting to "fix".

--Sly

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-MrBean- posted:

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Blizzard posted:

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The mana costs of the following mage spells have been reduced, but they still require the previous percentage of base mana in order to be cast: Arcane Barrage (11% of base mana), Arcane Blast (7% of base mana), and Fireball (12% of base mana). As an example, Fireball requires 16% base mana to cast, but only consumes 12% of base mana.

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WTF?

So mages now have spells that they can't cast if they don't have more mana than it uses....Now that's a dumbass mechanic.

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Rill_of_WE posted:

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So...why bother hotfixing it to work like this? Why not just wait until patch? =/ I suppose it would help with mana efficiency until you're at the end of your mana bar...but really, was it so game breaking that it couldn't wait until patch?

I really don't know because I play no mages.

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-MrBean- posted:

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Blizzard posted:

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The mana costs of the following mage spells have been reduced, but they still require the previous percentage of base mana in order to be cast: Arcane Barrage (11% of base mana), Arcane Blast (7% of base mana), and Fireball (12% of base mana). As an example, Fireball requires 16% base mana to cast, but only consumes 12% of base mana.

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WTF?

So mages now have spells that they can't cast if they don't have more mana than it uses....Now that's a dumbass mechanic.

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Arunne posted:

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Keep questioning blizzard like this and Ghostcrawler will be forced to make a "patching is hard" blog entry.

I seriously need to shelve WOW for a few months till they get all this crap figured out! Best thing I ever did was wait a few months before starting to play after WOTLK was released.

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-MrBean- posted:

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slythetove posted:

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I was gonna say... can someone explain to me how spells cost X but require you have X + Y in order to be able to cast them?

I really don't understand what this is attempting to "fix".

--Sly

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I found through some searching it's because they can hotfix the server side so it costs X to cast, but until patch comes, your client side still expects it needs Y in order to cast.

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Sociop posted:

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-Spacelord- posted:

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I don't understand the "Archaeology keystone fragments can no longer be prospected." part.

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Maybe some smart JC's were getting gems from them when it was not intended for them to?

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_Warlucky_ posted:

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-MrBean- posted:

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slythetove posted:

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I was gonna say... can someone explain to me how spells cost X but require you have X + Y in order to be able to cast them?

I really don't understand what this is attempting to "fix".

--Sly

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I found through some searching it's because they can hotfix the server side so it costs X to cast, but until patch comes, your client side still expects it needs Y in order to cast.

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So now that is know how long before a client hack that means that you can cast at zero mana?

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-MrBean- posted:

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slythetove posted:

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I was gonna say... can someone explain to me how spells cost X but require you have X + Y in order to be able to cast them?

I really don't understand what this is attempting to "fix".

--Sly

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I found through some searching it's because they can hotfix the server side so it costs X to cast, but until patch comes, your client side still expects it needs Y in order to cast.

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slythetove posted:

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I was gonna say... can someone explain to me how spells cost X but require you have X + Y in order to be able to cast them?

I really don't understand what this is attempting to "fix".

--Sly

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PallyDog posted:

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slythetove posted:

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I was gonna say... can someone explain to me how spells cost X but require you have X + Y in order to be able to cast them?

I really don't understand what this is attempting to "fix".

--Sly

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Lazy. Period. Lazy or not willing to take the time to properly fix things. Oh oops, that's lazy. Or maybe jsut stupid. "Hotfixes" are just little quick patch jobs that don't address the real problem, however they shouldn't attempt to address such things in half ass jobs. fixing a bug I can understand. Making changes to the mechanicl of a class whent hose changes aern't done fully and properly is just....bad.

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Sprawl-zero1eye- posted:

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Time to bring back this oldie but goodie...

http://www.eldergame.com/2009/07/the-warcraft-live-teams-b-squad/

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Sprawl-zero1eye- posted:

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Why the hell does Blizzard do sooooo many hotfixes these days. Are their really that many exploits in the game?

What happened to normal patching (and testing) as a means to fix bugs?

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croaks35 posted:

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I think Blizard is just shakin things up to just do it.Why I dunno if the same forumla has worked for 6 years and you still have 10 million subs then obviously ppl do not want broad changes.Sorta like they have did priests and other mana based classes first was all spi based for regen then they wanted mp5 around time of bc then back to spi again gets old just make up your mind pick one and leave it.

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