Patch 3.03 up on PTR - Notes in here!

[thatbloke]

Just went to the WoW website and patch notes for the PTR version of 3.03 are up, here they are:


Test Realm Patch Notes

The features below are currently live on the Public Test Realms.
The latest patch notes can be found at http://www.wow-europe.com/en/patchnotes/
When the next content patch is in the public testing phase, you can view this page to see what the planned changes for that patch are.

World of Warcraft PTR Patch 3.0.3
Racial

• 
  [*]Shadowmeld: The cooldown will now start on use instead of on break.
  [*]Devouring Plague: The bonus coefficient has been increased to be on par with other DoT spells. Base damage on ranks 7,8, and 9 decreased to partially compensate for better scaling.

Druids

• 
  [*]Druid talents points have been refunded. Players will need to visit a class trainer to relearn spells and abilities.
  [*]Berserk: Now clears the cooldown on Mangle Bear.
  [*]Earth and Moon and Moonfury (Balance) reduced from 5 ranks each to 3 ranks each.
  [*]Eclipse: Buff duration extended to 15 sec and bonuses doubled. The cooldown has been increased to 40 seconds.
  [*]Growl: Cooldown changed to 8 sec.
  [*]Survival Instincts will no longer be on the Global Cooldown.

Hunters

• 
  [*]Aimed Shot: Added to Barrage and Improved Barrage talent.
  [*]Animal Handler: Now increases your pet’s expertise by 5/10. (No longer increases the pet’s chance to hit.)
  [*]Aspects now have a shared cooldown category of 1 sec and no longer have a start cooldown.
  [*]Aspect of the Monkey: The Dodge chance has been increased from 8% to 18%.
  [*]Aspect of the Viper: The per attack mana regeneration has been reduced by 50% but this ability now generates 4% of maximum mana every 3 sec. In addition, the per attack regeneration now also works on melee attacks.
  [*]Disengage now fails if you’re rooted and is no longer on the global cooldown.
  [*]Mana cost of Disengage has been lowered to 5% of base mana, down from 14%.
  [*]Pets
  [*]Rake (Cat), Scorpid Poison (Scorpid): Lowered damage of all ranks.
  [*]Stampede (Rhino): Lowered the knockback to 10 yards.
  [*]Raised the damage of exotic attacks: Spirit Strike, Lava Breath, Froststorm Breath, Acid Spit, and Stampede.
  [*]Lowered the cost of pet specials from 25 to 20.

Mages

• 
  [*]Living Bomb: Mana cost reduced to be the same as Arcane Explosion.
  [*]Reduced the mana cost of Fireball, Frostbolt, Frostfire Bolt, Arcane Blast, Arcane Missiles, and Arcane Explosion.

Paladins

• 
  [*]Enlightening Judgments now increases range by 15/30 (was 10/20).
  [*]Infusion of Light (Holy) now affects Flash of Light too, reducing its cast time down to zero and can be used while moving.
  [*]Judgements of the Pure: Haste increased to 3/6/9/12/15%.
  [*]Repentance PvP duration reduced to 6 sec.
  [*]Righteous Defense cooldown has been lowered to 8 sec (was 15 sec).
  [*]Shield of the Templar now also reduces all damage taken by 1/2/3%.

Priests

• 
  [*]Divine Providence: This talent now also reduces the cooldown of your Prayer of Mending spell by 6/12/18/24/30%. With 5 points applied, it takes Prayer of Mending’s cooldown from 10 sec to 7.
  [*]Shadowform: Devouring Plague, Shadow Wordain, and Vampiric Touch cast in Shadowform deal increased damage percentage equal to the player’s chance to get a spell crit on their target.
  [*]Vampiric Touch: The Spell power coefficient has been doubled.

Rogues

• 
  [*]Combat Potency: Now only works with autoattacks (no more Shiv.)
  [*]Fan of Knives changed to be castable with no targets, further improved the visual affect and it no longer plays an impact on the caster.

Shaman

• 
  [*]Improved Fire Nova Totem: Increases the damage done by your Fire Nova Totem by 10/20% and your Fire Nova totem has a 50/100% chance to stun all targets damaged by your Fire nova Totem for 2 sec.
  [*]Lava Burst: The base damage has been increased by approx. 10%.
  [*]Riptide: The initial heal amount has been increased on ranks 3 and 4 and periodic healing has been increased on all ranks.
  [*]Storm Reach is now called “Elemental Reach” and now includes Lava Burst.
  [*]Thunderstorm: Mana gain has been increased to 8%.
  [*]Tidal Waves will now also proc with Riptide.

Warlocks

• 
  [*]Haunt: The cooldown has been changed to 8 sec, and refreshing the Haunt will trigger the heal from the existing Haunt.
  [*]Shadowflame: Damaged increased approx. 75%. Coefficients unchanged.

Warriors

• 
  [*]Bloodthirst: Cooldown reduced to 5 sec.
  [*]Improved Rend changed to 10/20%.
  [*]Inferno: The Infernal is now useable indoors and the tooltip has been updated.
  [*]Rend: Damage has been adjusted to be less base and more weapon based.
  [*]Rend: Ranks 9 and 10 now do 35% more damage when the target is above 75% health instead of 4 times damage when the target is enraged. Sudden Death: Now has 3/6/9% chance on hit instead of 10/20/30% chance on crit.
  [*]Titan’s Grip: Changed to 12% penalty instead of 15%.

Professions

• 
  [*]The level requirements required to train gathering skills have been removed.
  [*]Alchemy
  
  • Reduced the effect of Elixir of Mongoose and Elixir of Major Agility.
  
  [*]Inscription
  
  • Glyph of Flame Shock: Now extends duration by 6 sec and prevents Flame Shock from being consumed by Lava Burst.
  • Glyph of Lava: Glyph of Earth Elemental removed and replaced with this glyph. This glyph increases coefficient on Lava Burst by 0.1.
  • Glyph of Shiv: Replaced with Glyph of Vigor, which increases maximum energy by an additional 10 for those with the Vigor talent.
  • Glyph of Shadow: Glyph of Mind Soothe removed and replaced with this glyph. This glyph increases spell power by 10% of spirit for 10 sec after critting while in Shadowform.
  • Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain: Increases damage done by Mind Flay when SW is present by 10%.
  • Glyph of Sinister Strike: Chance increased to 50%.
  • Glyph of Souls no longer removes soul shard cost. It instead reduces the mana cost of your Ritual of Souls spell by 70%.
  • Glyph of Spirit of Redemption: Tooltip corrected to 4 sec. extra when the glyph triggers.
  • Glyph of Strength of Earth: Replaced with Glyph of Lava Lash which increases the bonus from having Flametongue Weapon by 10%.
  • Glyph of Trueshot Aura: Now increases Aimed Shot crit chance instead of increasing attack power bonus.
  • Glyph of Totem of Wrath: Replaced with Glyph of Elemental Mastery, which decreases the cooldown on Elemental Mastery by 30 sec.

User Interface

• 
  [*]For additional notes on Lua and XML changes please visit the UI & Macros forum.

Items

• 
  [*]Held in hand books created by Inscription are now Bind on Equip rather than Bind on Pickup.

Bug Fixes

• 
  [*]Glyph of Rupture: The tooltip has been corrected.
  [*]Hunter: Ferocious Inspiration will now apply raid-wide, as intended.
  [*]Hunter Pets
  
  • Sonic Blast (Bat): Will no longer ignore LoS.
  • Bad Attitude (Croc): Will no longer ignore the Longevity buff.
  • Thunderstomp (Gorilla): Will no longer have a physical coefficient instead of a magical one.
  • Gore (Bore): Fixed an issue where a wrong value was being applied.
  • Savage Rend: Corrected typos in the tooltip.
  
  [*]Mage: Burning Determination will now work properly.
  [*]Mage: Frostfire Bolt (Rank 2): The DoT effect will now properly scale.
  [*]Mage: Living Bomb’s “explosion effect” will now be properly classified.
  [*]Priest: Holy Reach (Rank 2) will now increase the radius of Divine Hymm properly.

 

[thatbloke]

The one thing that stood out for me was this:

The level requirements required to train gathering skills have been removed.

Fix for DKs starting at level 55. Means that a DK (and other chars of course) can level up a gathering profession without haveing to spend a day camping low level mining/herb/whatever nodes just to be able to use a profession correctly.

EDIT: O and the award for most useless glyph ever goes to: the Warlock's Glyph of Souls!

 

[Razaak]

Good stuff: Liking the improvements for warriors.

Bad stuff: The rest. Nothing at all for holy priests mana regen issues. Nerfed the most crucial talent for rogue PVE damage, combat potency is the whole reason for speccing Combat.

And now for the ugly stuff: Is every developer playing a fucking paladin? They're grossly overpowered as tanks, healers and DPS, and now they're buffing them even more?! Even the paladins out there are admitting that they're (at least) slightly OP, or (at best) Gods. The excuse is that they're balanced around level 80, well that's not going to happen for most of us for the thick end of two months... and now they're getting buffed ???

Is it really right that on a holy priest with superior gear, I need a shadowpriest in my group, a druid or two for innervates, my shadowfiend, and every other little trick I can use to keep up with a paladin who stands there spamming one spell for the whole fight and ends up on full mana?

Is it really right that a rogue can be out-damaged by a ret pally who also has the capability to heal, make himself immune to damage, buff the rest of his group and has plate armour?

Is it really right that a paladin with all the aforementioned abilities can also stunlock an opponent from 100% to 0% with their absurd burst damage?

Blizzard have really lost the plot.

 

[Silk]

Yeah I've been PvP'ing a bit lately and am shocked at the state of balance between the classes - especially paladins.

It used to be a lot more fun. But now you can see who's going to win based on how many paladins are on alliance/horde before the game has even started.

They are a hybrid. They should be able to spec as a good healer OR tank OR support. They should never be good at all three! And they should never be able to out DPS a pure DPS class (hunter, rogue, mage, lock).

I think warriors are second on the list. Two, three hits to kill me? In full purple mail? Erm.. yeah, ok.o.o;

As for patch.. hmmph.. hunter nerfs already. Cos yeah everyone can see they're the most imba class out there at the moment!! *facepalm* And no respec?!

 

[Chumpo]

I thought the day would never come.

I agree with Razz wholeheartedly.

I hate my life....

 

[Zooggy]

Ahey,

The level requirements required to train gathering skills have been removed.

Fix for DKs starting at level 55. Means that a DK (and other chars of course) can level up a gathering profession without haveing to spend a day camping low level mining/herb/whatever nodes just to be able to use a profession correctly.

Erm... How so?

What this does mean is that, if you're level one and being escorted, you can basically mine and/or herbalise to your heart's content, without needing to level.

But if you're already levelled (like, say, a DK at 55), then this changes nothing for you, and so, back to the low level nodes you go...

Or am I reading it wrong?

Cheers,
J.

 

[Razaak]

The way I read it is that if you're at 300 herbalism, you don't have to wait until you're level 50 or 60 to train your potential skill up to 375.

Could be wrong though, it's not very clear and could have a number of different meanings.

 

[thatbloke]

Maybe I interpreted it wrong but to me it looks like a fix for DKs so that they dont have top go off to the level 1 areas to start a gathering profession.

If you are starting a new character it really won't affect you much.

If you're a DK starting at level 55 in EPL then that's gonna screw you over quite majorly without it...

 

[decky101]

From what I hear Razz, Blizz have tried to make ret palas damage less bursty to stop them being OP for PvP, other than that, I also agree that palas are in need of some nerfs, or on the flipside, holy priests are in need of some buffs. Mana sustenance is now an issue for classes where it once wasn't, what with the nerfs to shadowpriest's mana regen ability and 1 mana pot per fight

About the issues though, since blizz is ultimately aiming for complete homogenisation, and the "pure DPSers" (although there aren't really any anymore as now even rogues bring utility) as admitted by Blizz should be a bit ahead of utilitarian classes such as surv. hunters, shadow priests, retadins and the like, it's just a matter of balancing, and although it may not all get fixed before LK goes live, it should be fixed in due course, just have a bit of faith in Blizz (I'm so hypocritical, I have no faith in em xD).

Cheers, Decky.

 

[AcidK]

Infusion of Light (Holy) now affects Flash of Light too, reducing its cast time down to zero and can be used while moving.

Now thats worth drooling over... Enter even more spamadin mode

And the gathering skills removed mean that a herbalist can train to go over lvl 300 even if they are, hyperthetically speaking, level 10

 

[Zhinrak]

Is it really right that a paladin with all the aforementioned abilities can also stunlock an opponent from 100% to 0% with their absurd burst damage?

Blizzard have really lost the plot.

Razz... blizzard havent lost the plot, they never had it in the first place.

However i have seen a blue post stating that blizzard are aware that the paladin burst damage is horribly obscene, as a result i think they said they planned to reduce their crit damage by 45%.

Eitherway they plan to fix it somehow.

im personally loling at how much blizz managed to fuck up hunter pets despite it being one of their main focuses. apparently 90% of pet buff abilities [like my wolfs furious howl for example] no longer stack with other abilities [eg, furious howl doesnt even stack with hunters mark or aspect of the hawk apparently]. and because other buffs are all raid wide its means that alot of pets have suddenly had their abilities made useless.

Eitherway my lost confidence in blizzard probably wont be redeemed any time soon, its still rather amusing how they have had to bring out this patch so quickly for the patch they released no more than a week or two ago

 

[Silk]

Maybe I interpreted it wrong but to me it looks like a fix for DKs so that they dont have top go off to the level 1 areas to start a gathering profession.

If you are starting a new character it really won't affect you much.

If you're a DK starting at level 55 in EPL then that's gonna screw you over quite majorly without it...

It's not far from tristal(sp?) glades

DK's will have to skill up same as any other class. Wouldn't make sense otherwise (why pick any other class for a profession if they get a head start?).

I think all it means is you can train up to whatever level you can afford without the level restrictions. There's probably still a skill level restriction on each tier e.g. min 50 to train to 125 and so on.

 

[Chumpo]

its still rather amusing how they have had to bring out this patch so quickly for the patch they released no more than a week or two ago

It always happens mate as no matter how much testing is done on a patch nothing can simulate it going live to 6 million ppl or however many of us sad-acts there are now

All of the major patches have a mini follow up one right after as far as i remember.

Baldi.

 

[Belegon]

Just a note on pally healing now, its changed from a one button spam task to a few more now. Judgement of light, holy light and holy shock now all play a usefull role in healing. Admitadly, its still alot of 1 button spamming! And i agree, pallys are quite a bit overpowered -retri pallys appearing top 5 in healing done is a bit....odd!

 

[thatbloke]

Just a note on pally healing now, its changed from a one button spam task to a few more now. Judgement of light, holy light and holy shock now all play a usefull role in healing. Admitadly, its still alot of 1 button spamming! And i agree, pallys are quite a bit overpowered -retri pallys appearing top 5 in healing done is a bit....odd!

Yea, and as Sillek said already, battlegrounds now seem to be won or lost based on how many paladins each team has - though i'll admit we did manage to pull an EOTS out of the bag recently even though we were outnumbered about 4-1 on paladins (we went 600 points down and won 2000-1987 ).

The problem with palas in PvP is that they need to either not be able to use that shield (or have more ways of being able to dispel it) or have their burst damage reduced massively. If a pala gets close you've had it atm - I get a series of 3k crits appear on my screen and then i'm dead before I can react.

In PvE - yes they need nerfing. I can put up with them being top of DPS - I'm perfectly ok with melee DPS being the top DPSers as melee DPS normally involves more risks than ranged DPS - but to simultaneously be high on healing is not right - they should be doing DPS OR Healing, not both.

My $0.02.

 

[Silk]

In PvE - yes they need nerfing. I can put up with them being top of DPS - I'm perfectly ok with melee DPS being the top DPSers as melee DPS normally involves more risks than ranged DPS - but to simultaneously be high on healing is not right - they should be doing DPS OR Healing, not both.

My $0.02.

I don't even agree they should be top DPS. They're hybrids.

Being ranged isn't the be all and end all - you know as well as I do many PvE encounters the mobs (or raid bosses) also have range and those lil cloth casters are equally at risk.

Top DPS classes should be those who only exist to DPS. Not those that can also heal and tank.

 

[shazam]

oh god people agree with me on this? wtf where they thinking i was a dps monster then nurfed to go and re gear as i now need 100 more hit rating so all my gear that i worked hard for is DEable but getting in pvp with a warrior or pally = instant death . bring back stun locking rogues at least i watch my self die a bit slower mana regen is hard as have not healed much on priest but for mages i think it should be fine, i have a pvp priest was great always top of the heals now dead in a blink of a eye 9k plus shiel = 3 hits from warrior or 2 secs with a pally eating my face

 

[Windzarko]

I'd like to make it known that the notes in the original post of this thread are incomplete. Anyone still whining about Ret can check the full changes posted at the link location below, and to make a long story short; we're going from very strong to rather piss-weak. I'm not saying Ret should be the highest DPS, that should be the territory of the pure classes, but we should be close. We ARE too strong right now, especially in PvP, but they've overdone it yet again...

And anyone whining about Ret "healing"; the numbers from that are because Judgement of Light's healing is now attributed to the paladin that cast the Judgement. It's more than it used to do, but not that massively much, and it's only because it's actually attributed to someone now that the meters are registering it differently.

Anyhoo, the notes can be found: http://www.wowwiki.com/Patch_3.0.3