Patch notes have been updated on the PTR for 2.4, and there are some more major class changes that could again change the meta-game for several lineups. Biggest of which: (1) NS and EM for shaman will now share a 10 sec cooldown and (2) PI for disc priests is now reworked to give 20% spell haste.

Quick rant: As a shaman player since release, I must admit, that I’m a little saddened by the NS/EM change. The ability to use NS and EM in different combinations, to me, defines TBC and the elemental shaman. I’m all for balance, especially in the arenas, but if Blizzard removes something that practically takes elemental shaman back to pre-expansion days, they also should give something back in return imo.

Along with the changes already to drinking and resilience, this is shaping up to be a big class tweak patch after all. Blizzard is just being smart and slowly introducing changes a little at a time to prevent the forums from drowning in a pool of QQ.

Again brief reminder that this is only on the PTR, so these changes may or may not go through when 2.4 hits live. However, they are an overall good indicator of what the devs are thinking. ie. the shaman/priest burst combo needs tweaking.

Here is the list of PvP related changes:

Full PTR Patch Notes available here.

General
- Spell Haste: Spell haste now reduces the global cooldown on spells, down to a minimum of 1 second. This change does not apply to melee and ranged abilities.
- Item Cast Spells: Many spells cast by items were being cast as if the caster were the same level as the item. Most of those will now cast at the player’s level, giving them a reasonable chance to miss, be dispelled, or be resisted.
- Resilience: Now reduces the magnitude of mana draining effects by the same amount that it reduces critical strike damage. The Tooltip has been revised to reflect this.
- Spirit-Based Mana Regeneration: This system has been adjusted so that as your intellect rises, you will regenerate more mana per point of spirit.
- The benefits of drinking out of combat have been delayed. It will now take five seconds before the full benefit of the mana regeneration will come into effect.

Druids
- Empowered Rejuvenation: This talent now properly affects the final heal from Lifebloom.
- Gift of Nature: This talent now properly affects the healing from Tranquility.
- Insect Swarm: Casting lower ranks of this spell is now properly penalized like other healing and damage effects.
- Lacerate: This ability now deals additional damage based on the attack power of the Druid.
- Lifebloom healing coefficient has been reduced.
- Mangle (Bear) now properly triggers a 1.5 second global cooldown, increased from 1.0.
- Many shapeshift form tooltips have been updated to be consistent with each other.
- Natural Perfection: This ability will no longer be triggered by taking critical strikes while sitting. In addition, it is now affected by the Subtlety talent and reduces damage by 2/3/4%, down from 1/3/5%.
- Nurturing Instinct increases your healing spells by up to 50/100% of your Agility, and increases healing done to you by 10/20% of your Attack Power while in Cat form.
- When a Druid in cat form casts Pounce it will now properly animate.

Hunter
- Equipping a thrown weapon while in the middle of an Auto-Shot will no longer cause animation issues.
- Casting Flare while in any way not visible, will no longer cause your flare to be invisible to other players.
- Hunter’s Mark: Hunters with Improved Hunter’s Mark will now properly overwrite Hunter’s Mark cast by Hunters without the talent.
- Improved Mend Pet now has a 50/100% chance to remove one Curse, Disease, Magic, or Poison effect, up from 15/50%.
- The stamina tooltip for hunter pets will now display the proper health increase.
- Hunters will no longer spin around if they cast Aimed Shot or Steady Shot while facing away from their target.

Mages
- Arcane Explosion: The damage cap for area of effect damage on this spell has been increased by approximately 50%.
- Arcane Fortitude now increases your armor by an amount equal to 100% of your Intellect, up from 50%.
- Blink, Slow, and Spellsteal have all had their mana cost reduced.
- Using low ranks of Fire Ward and Frost Ward spell will now be penalized the same way healing spells are penalized.
- Frostbite: When a frost spell is reflected back at a Mage, it is now possible for the Mage to suffer from the Frostbite effect.
- Ice Barrier: Using low ranks of this spell will now be penalized the same way healing spells are penalized.
- Icy Veins no longer stacks with Bloodlust/Heroism.
- Improved FireWard has become Molten Shields.
- New Talent: Molten Shields will cause your Fire Ward to have a 10/20% chance to reflect Fire spells while active. In addition, your Molten Armor has a 50/100% chance to affect ranged and spell attacks.
- Permafrost: This talent will now correctly increase the movement slowing effect of frost Armor instead of the attack speed slow.
- Spellsteal will no longer overwrite a longer duration buff.

Paladins
- Avenger’s Shield, Holy Shield and Holy Shock: Casting lower ranks of these spells is now properly penalized like other healing and damage effects.
- Divine Illumination: The mana energize from this talent no longer has a chance to set off other triggered effects.
- Holy Shock: The healing, damage, and mana cost of this spell have all been increased.
- Judgment of the Crusader: It is no longer possible to have icons for two different ranks of Judgment of the Crusader appear at the same time when judged by multiple Paladins.
- Judgment of Wisdom: Some abilities (such as Frostbolt) were not triggering the mana energize effect from this spell. This has now been fixed.
- Resistance Auras: It is no longer possible for two Paladins in the same party to make it appear that players have two of the same resistance aura active.
- Righteous Defense: This spell will now always be castable on friendly npcs.
- Seal of Blood: This ability will no longer cause spell pushback for the Paladin with this seal active.
- Turn Undead(Rank 3):This spell has been reworked and has been renamed to “Turn Evil”. It will now work on Demons in addition to Undead. Turn Evil is subject to diminishing returns, and lasts 10 seconds in PvP.

Priests
- Chastise no longer disorients the target, but now is instant cast and roots the target for 2 seconds.
- Fear Ward is now usable while in Shadow form.
- Focused Will now reduces damage by 2/3/4%, down from 1/3/5%.
- Inner Focus: Chastise now benefits from Inner Focus. In addition, Starshards no longer consumes Inner Focus.
- Power Infusion: Infuses the target with power, increasing their spell haste by 20% for 15 seconds.
- Power Word: Shield: Using low ranks of this spell will now be penalized the same way healing spells are penalized.
- Prayer of Mending: This spell will now fade from players who leave or enter an instance, change continents, or exit the game.
- Reflective Shield: The reactive damage from this talent no longer breaks crowd control affects which break on taking damage.
- Shadowguard: No longer consumes the charge of Inner Focus when triggered.
- Silent Resolve:This talent now affects Surge of Light, Power Infusion, Inspiration, Spirit Tap, Blackout, Levitate, Shackle Undead, Touch of Weakness, Hex of Weakness, and Symbol of Hope.
- Touch of Weakness: No longer consumes the charge of Inner Focus when triggered.It will also function properly even when the Priest with Touch of Weakness on is silenced or stunned.
- Vampiric Touch: Casting lower ranks of this spell is now properly penalized like other healing and damage effects.

Rogues
- Abilities that can be used while stealthed, without breaking stealth, can now be cast without breaking Vanish when used at the same time.
- Cheat Death: A combat log message will now show when this ability activates and now has an animation.
- Improved Backstab is now called Puncturing Wounds.
- Puncturing Wounds increases your critical strike chance with Backstab by 10/20/30%, and the critical strike chance with your Mutilate ability by 5/10/15%.
- Improved Sprint: This ability will now always remove Entangling Roots.
- Sap mechanic changed from “Incapacitate” to “Sap”. This will allow more humanoids that were previously immune to Sap to be vulnerable to Sap, but still immune to Gouge. Note that anything that removed Sap previously will still remove Sap after the change.
- Vanish: This ability will no longer sometimes cause the UI to display Shadowmeld as active when it has been cancelled.

Shaman
- Call of Thunder: (Rank 5) now gives 5% critical strike chance.
- Earth Shield: Mana cost reduced roughly in half, and charges reduced from 10 to 6.
- Elemental Focus: This buff will no longer be removed when Shamanistic Focus is triggered.
- Ghost Wolf: Cast time reduced to 2 seconds, down from 3.
- Healing Grace: This talent now reduces the chance your spells will be dispelled by 10/20/30%.The resistance to being dispelled modifier from this talent now applies correctly to Water Breathing.
- Nature’s Swiftness and Elemental Mastery now share a 10 second cooldown.
- Rockbiter Weapon: Tooltip and error messages have been adjusted slightly.
- Stormstrike has a new icon.
- Totem timer icons will now show up under your player portrait when you cast totem spells. Right-clicking a totem timer icon will destroy that totem.
- Tremor Totem now pulses every 3 seconds, down from 4.
- The Shaman spell Fire Nova Totem will no longer sometimes detonate without doing any damage.

Warlocks
- Blood Pact now has a tooltip.
- Demonic Knowledge: This buff will no longer remain on enslaved demons when Enslave Demon is removed. It will now increase your spell damage by an amount equal to 4/8/12%, down from 5/10/15%.
- Demonic Sacrifice: Now works properly in sanctuary regions (such as Shattrath City and the Stair of Destiny).
- Nether Protection: The buff from this talent will no longer interrupt capturing PvP flags and bases.
- Pyroclasm: This talent now works correctly again with Rain of Fire.
- Ritual of Summoning can be used to summon players into instances if they meet the instance requirements.
- Shadow Ward: Using low ranks of this spell will now be penalized the same way healing spells are penalized.

Warriors
- Endless Rage will now give the correct amount of rage as intended from damage dealt by a Warrior.
- Stances: It is no longer possible to accidentally change into a stance you are already in via macros (resulting in a global cooldown and loss of rage).
- Whirlwind: Critical strikes with the off-hand weapon from this ability can now trigger Flurry and Rampage.
- Flurry will properly refresh if a crit occurs with 1 charge left.
- Improved Hamstring (Arms) effect is now subject to diminishing returns when used in PvP.

PvP
- Diminishing returns on honor for kills is being eliminated.
- Honor will now be instantly calculated, and available for player use.
- Players that have the resurrection sickness debuff will be worth no honor.
- Added new PvP daily quests that send players to Halaa and the Spirit Towers of the Bone Wastes. These quests are available for Alliance and Horde at their respective local quest hubs.

Arenas
- Matchmaking: If a queued player has a personal rating higher than their team rating, the matchmaking system will now use the highest personal rating of a queued member of that team for matchmaking purposes, instead of the team rating.
- Queue times for arena matches have been reduced. Players will now be able to enter matches faster than previously.
-Shadow Sight now increases damage taken by 5% rather than dealing damage over time. Duration has been reduced from 21 seconds to 15 seconds.
- Players feared outside of the Arena (through the world or outside the arena walls) will now be teleported back to the center of the arena map.

Battlegrounds
- If a player dies 50 times or more in a battleground, they will no longer be worth honor for the remainder of that battle.
- When you first enter a battleground, messages about other players joining the battleground will be linked together for the first minute. You will see a message in AV like “28 players joined” rather than a line for each player that joined. After the first minute, it will work as it always has. In addition all of the messages about other players leaving the battleground and getting marks of honor once the battleground is complete have been removed.

Alterac Valley
- Captain Balinda Stonehearth now has additional spells, and she can no longer be slowed or locked out of a school with interrupts (although she can still be interrupted).
- Vanndar Stormpike and Captain Balinda Stonehearth have had their health totals reduced to match the health totals of Drek’Thar and Captain Galvangar…
- Warmasters/marshals in Alterac Valley now increase each other’s maximum health and damage by 25%. This is a stacking effect.
- Horde players will now start the battle closer to Drek’Thar and Frostwolf Keep.
- There is now a Join as Party option.

Warsong Gulch
- When both flags are held, the flag carriers will receive 50% increased damage done to them after approximately 10 minutes and 100% increased damage after approximately 15 minutes.
- Flag carriers can now be tracked 45 seconds after picking up the flag.

Tags: PvP · News

3 Responses to “PTR 2.4 - More Big Changes in Latest Patch Notes”

1. shocktech Says:
   February 20th, 2008 at 9:48 am

   em+ns did not define shaman in TBC. It always defined them. Ele shaman were using it long before tbc and should continue to do so. It was about the only reason to be ele pre tbc. Nothing makes me angrier than when they nerf clas defining abilities. Every time shaman get a little taste of their old power (which we can all agree was op) then they get nerfed. My main is not a shaman. It was a long time ago;then they were pissed on repeatedly so i switched. More resto pigeon holing.

   Magog: You may be thinking of EM+CL or CL+NS. As for both EM+NS, TBC is a mile marker as that is when we got the extra talent points to be able to carry both talents. I still remember getting the grats in gchat a few hours after TBC started when dinged 61 and spammed ‘You’ve gained the ability ‘Nature’s Swiftness”.

   Pre-TBC, I’d wager that no other guild had more PvP-geared elemental shaman than FGJ. This ss with 3 EoD shaman should attest to that

   http://www.souja.org/wow/fgjeod.jpg
   

2. shocktech Says:
   February 20th, 2008 at 11:37 am

   yeah, i was being dumb…you are correct. Still a kick in the nuts to the shaman.

3. Winter Says:
   February 20th, 2008 at 4:59 pm

   Wow you obviously have no idea what you are talking about.

Leave a Reply