Daily Thoughts: An Interesting Patch Note for Warriors & PVP

I put up the original 4.1 patch note text HERE and you can find updated notes on blizzards blog http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/2356431. Although there are a handful of other changes from the original notes (shown in red on their blog) there’s one in particular that I think could potentially be a sign of things to come.

  • Colossus Smash now ignores 50% of a hostile player’s armor (PvP), but continues to ignore 100% of a non-player character’s armor (PvE).
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    4.1 Patch Notes

     

    *Edit – Since this old post is getting a lot of attention from players looking for patch notes I wanted to link the current notes here – http://us.battle.net/wow/en/game/patch-notes/ptr-patch-notes . – Feel free to let me know if you see a more recent set of notes on Blizzards site.*

    Finally, the long-awaited patch notes for 4.1, the first major Cataclysm content patch, have been made available. In addition to the notes below, I’m pretty sure we’re going to get the Firelands raid to kill Ragnaros and probably another one – both dropping tier 12. In later posts I’ll probably go into some of these changes in more detail but for now here’s a few of my personal favorites from the patch:

    Divine Storm now generates 1 point of Holy Power if it hits (i.e. successfully lands on) 4 or more targets. – Hurray for more Paladin AOE potential.

    Stealth base cooldown has been reduced to 4 seconds, down from 10, and the movement penalty from being in Stealth has been removed. – Non-rogues that PVP are crying right now… crying tears of blood in preparation for all the incoming deaths.

    The Guild Perk, Cash Flow, no longer prints out text to the Chat Log. Instead, the daily amount deposited is shown in the Guild Vault Money Log. In addition, players can view the weekly contribution in a new window at the bottom of the Money Log. – Cause that was really annoying.

    Continue on to see the patch notes in their entirety.

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    Daily Thoughts: Dungeon Finder/Vote Kick Changes

    Blizzard decide to make a couple significant changes to the Dungeon Finder system to help curb the rampant abuse that’s been going on recently. Personally, I’m a fan of some of these changes but one I really could do without.

    The Good:

    * Players who are outside a dungeon for more than a few minutes are now immediately able to be kicked.

    Players going AFK or off doing some for an extended period out of the group should be able to be kicked without waiting for the cursory 15 minutes that had been opposed up to this point. I absolutely agree

    * If queuing as a group with a tank or healer, and the tank or healer drops group (or is kicked) soon after joining, those that queued with them will also be removed from the dungeon.

    A simple change that prevents the “wtb tank queue 50g” attitude that’s been plaguing a lot of groups. This way a tank cannot insta-queue a group and then leave, forcing the people who waited legitimately to wait longer for a tank who actually intends to run to join.

    * If three or more players group queue with each other it will require an additional vote for them to kick anyone they did not group queue with.

    This is also a great change to issue that 3 man guild groups can’t as easily “bully” other non-guild member, at least not without the support of the other non-guild member in the group. Typically if the 3 guild members AND the 4th pug want to kick the 5th pug, there’s a pretty good change he was a baddie and needed to go. Good choice blizzard.
    * If someone initiates a vote kick for someone they group queued with they will not incur a penalty to their ability to initiate future kicks.

    Nothing really significant here. You won’t get punished if your guild member DC’s and you have to kick him.
    The Bad:

    * If a group queue of 4 kicks the one person that they did not group queue with they will each receive a more severe penalty to their ability to initiate future kicks.

    I have a little bit of a problem with this. If you join the Dungeon finder with a 4 man guild group and there’s a bad or inactive player you’ll get a significant mark against your ability to kick future bad or inactive players. This is a pretty unfortunate case of protecting the minority at the expense of the majority. Hopefully though, it still takes a few cases of this happening before it becomes a problem, otherwise getting a bad streak of AFK pugs joining your 4 man guild run could be detrimental to your ability to initiate legitimate kicks.

    Overall, it’s a pretty good change. I imagine the penalty for 4 member queued groups kicking won’t end up too ridiculous so we should just have a little less douche-baggery in our overall Dungeon Finder experience.

    The full text from blizzard can be found HERE.

    Daily Thoughts: 4.0.6

    Those anxiously awaiting patch 4.0.6 should be happy to know that this patch should be hitting the live servers tomorrow. This includes the redefining of how many players constitutes a “guild group”, fixes and adds to the “luck of the draw” buff, adds some balance to Tol Barad and Strand of the Ancients, makes Retributions mastery possibly their best stat, along with a plethora of other class and instance changes. This patch has seen a ton of revisions already – you can find the most current after the break – with more possible by the time it goes live. I’m pretty happy with the changes overall. We should see some class balance, random dungeon finder groups might be a little more manageable, and did I mention the buff to retribution? Continue on for the most recent patch notes (as of this posting) in their entirety.

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    Daily Thoughts: It’s Not Christmas Anymore

    Apparently today is the official day after the Christmas holiday time for my universe. Last night my significant other took down our tree and decorations in the midst of a living room cleaning frenzy, and today the tree at the office where I work is packed away into boxes to wait for the next year.

    So, I’m now waiting for christmas again. Though, I sincerely hope it doesn’t take until december to find my presents, which apparently someone buried all over Azeroth. Yes, I’m talking about Archeology epics. This profession is a little soul-sucking, but I really want Zin’Rokh, the epic level 85 bind-to-account 2h weapon. Aside being a substantial upgrade for my ret main, would also look nice on my fury warrior and death knight once the paladin upgrades or finds a replacement. There is also a very nice healer trinket for my holy set or my resto shaman once he hits 85, and a caster ring, which lacks hit or spirit, making it a viable upgrade for my holy paladin, resto/ele shaman, or boomkin. The trinket and ring are also bind-to-account.

    Although the grind to get any of these (which I haven’t yet, by the way) is pretty long, at least due to the nature of the BOA epics, only one toon needs to be an archeologist unless you really care about multiple toons getting the pets and mounts. Just last night I got the Fossilized Raptor mount and although it’s pretty cool, I have no desire to level archeology on any other toons. I’m glad I have the last of the fossil solves that I have any interest in, but we all know we really want the gear.

    For those looking to start archeology, a couple important tips:

    • Do it now, they’re making leveling even longer in patch 4.0.6
    • After 100 skill you don’t get anymore skill points for leveling, so don’t solve any of your finds prior to that skill level, in 4.0.6 it seem they’re lowering the number to 50. So at least head to 100 prior to the patch dropping.
    • They’re also limiting the amount of fragments you can collect to 200 per race. Each solve takes a minimum of 35 fragments, rares solves up to 150 fragments. Some people were saving all the fragments of the race they wanted loot from (the 2h sword is from troll), in order to only solve that race once they were high enough to find the item. This won’t work after 4.0.6 either.
    • Unless you have a real preference of which toon gets pets/mounts/achievements, level this profession on your fastest character. Any toon with 310 flying, paladins for aura, druids for quick flight form, etc. The faster you can move the faster you get to dig sites and to the survey points
    • A decent guide/explanation of the profession can be found HERE.

    Daily Thoughts: Ret Gets Buffed in Patch 4.0.6

    The above chart was featured in a WoW insider Scattered Shots article, you can see the full article HERE.

    Notice retribution at the very bottom of the raiding dps specs. Now, this doesn’t include the traditionally low raiding performance “pvp” specs such as subtlety rogues, but ret pallies are still easily 25% below the top performing dps spec and also lower than the next lowest by almost 1,000 dps. Naturally, I’d love to run around topping the meters, but balance at least is much preferred to the current state of affairs. Did we paladins despair though? Of course not! We knew at some point the useless mastery would be reforged into something we wanted, at least a little, and boost our dps. Blizzard, in their infinite wisdom (is always wisdom when they’re buffing your class right?), also buffed our bread and butter attack, Crusader Strike. Check out the paladin class changes.

    Paladins

    • The mana costs of Blessing of Might and Blessing of Kings have been increased by approximately 217%, making them roughly equal to the cost of Mark of the Wild.
    • Crusader Strike weapon damage percent has been increased to 135%, up from 115%.
    • Divine Plea now lasts for 9 seconds, down from 15. It grants 4% mana per tick, instead of 2%, for a total of 12% mana, up from 10%.

    Talent specializations

    Retribution

    • Divine Purpose: The chance for applicable abilities to generate Holy Power has been reduced to 7/15%, down from 20/40%, but instead of generating 1 Holy Power, the next applicable ability used consumes no Holy Power and acts as if the paladin has 3 Holy Power.
    • Hand of Light (Mastery): A percentage of the damage done by Templar’s Verdict, Crusader Strike, and Divine Storm is done as additional Holy damage.
    • Repentance is no longer broken from damage done by Censure (Seal of Truth).
    • Glyphs
    • Glyph of Divine Plea now adds 6% mana, for a total of 18% over 9 seconds.

    The two biggest changes we have here are the 20% more base damage to crusader strike and our mastery changing. Mastery is now a passive holy damage buff to key attacks and our old Divine Purpose talent has become the same as what Mastery was.  Depending on what this percentage ends up being, we could see a very significant boost to damage. This mastery also gives blizzard an easy knob from which to tune our DPS if it’s ever too low or too high. Holy paladins are also probably a little excited about the slight buff to divine plea which provides an extra 2% mana (3% talented) over a shorter time span.

    I’m really excited to see ret damage come up to par with our other dps pals and for the first time was considering copying my toon over to a test realm to see the changes first hand before they went live, alas, the page isn’t currently loading. Maybe there’s a bunch of other enthused paladins clogging up the internet.

    The rest of the 4.0.6 patch notes can be viewed HERE.