World of Warcraft Client Patch 1.9.3

[Rasix]

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- World of Warcraft Client Patch 1.9.3 (2006-02-07)
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Love is in the Air!
  Are you looking for love?  All of Azeroth soon will be!  As winter
  draws to a close the races are starting to seek that special someone.
  Be on the lookout for amorous individuals!  Put on that special
  perfume or cologne, express your love, and receive gifts in return!
  Prepare yourself... love will soon be in the air!


Mac
- Added native support for Intel-powered Macs such as the iMac (Core
  Duo) and MacBook Pro. World of Warcraft is now a Universal
  Application.  Be advised that the minimum supported MacOS X version
  has been changed to 10.3.9; World of Warcraft version 1.9.3 and later
  will not launch on older revisions of MacOS X.


Battlegrounds
- The default graveyards in Alterac Valley for each side were moved
  further up the tunnels away from the battlegroud exit. This should
  prevent accidentally leaving the battleground.


Paladin
- Eye for an Eye - This talent will now still do damage when the
  paladin is stunned. In addition, if the critical hit kills the
  paladin, damage will still be dealt to the spellcaster.
- Greater Blessing of Sanctuary - Paladins with Righteous Fury will now
  generate extra threat correctly when this Blessing procs.


Rogue
- Deadly Poison V - The charges were inadvertently not increased with
  the new rank of the ability. Increased from 105 to 120 charges.
- Slice and Dice - This ability should no longer miss.


Warrior
- Shield Block - This aura will now correctly be removed when the
  charges are all consumed. However, it is still possible when fighting
  multiple opponents to get extra blocks due to technical restrictions.


Items
- Arcanist Gloves were not receiving the intended spell damage bonus;
  this has been corrected.
- The Stamina and Intellect on Kezan's Unstoppable Taint were
  inadvertently flipped; this has been corrected.
- The Enigma's Answer and Stormcaller's Wrath effects now have tooltips.
- The mana regeneration effect from food no longer causes threat.
- Quicksand Waders are now Bind on Pickup.
- The Slime-coated Leggings now have their proper nature resistance.
- Prophetic Aura, Mageblood Potion, Wizard Oils, and the Mana
  Regeneration bracer enchant no longer generate threat for the wearer,
  and should also provide the increased mana regeneration on normal
  ticks instead of every 5 seconds.
- The Ancient Hakkari Manslayer has the proper icon again.


Professions
- The Engineering schematic for the Tranquil Mechanical Yeti now
  requires a Cured Rugged Hide rather than Ice Thistle E'ko so that
  both Horde and Alliance Engineers can make the recipe.
- Stormshroud Gloves are now Bind on Equip.


Quests & Reputation
- Grammar fixed for gossip associated with the quest "Trial of the Sea
  Lion" in Moonglade.
- Fixed a bug with the quest "Glyphed Oaken Branch" that was having the
  quest become available sooner than it should have.
- The reputation modifier of Squire Leoren Mal'derath has been reduced.
- Zandalar Tribe reputation rewards for killing mobs in Zul’Gurub have
  been increased.
- Winterfall Spirit Beads and Deadwood Headdress Feathers now stack in
  quantities of 250.


Raid & Dungeons
- Various bugs have been rectified in the Ahn'Qiraj dungeons.
  Molten Core
  * It should now be very difficult to remain out of combat while
    fighting the bosses in Molten Core.
  Zul'Gurub
  * A small number of spawns have been removed from Zul'Gurub to allow
    for a slightly faster clearing time.
  * Increased cooldown on Poison Bolt Volley of High Priestess Mar'li.
  * Slightly reduced the melee damage of High Priestess Mar'li.
  * The vengance effect gained by the death of the raptor Ohgan during
    the Bloodlord Mandokir fight has been increased in power.
  * Reduced the overall damage of High Priest Thekal.
  * Slowed the rate at which the panthers spawn during the High
    Priestess Arlokk fight.
  * Hakkar:
     Melee damage reduced.
     Cause Insanity should now correctly target Hakkar's current target,
     rather than closest.
     Cause Insanity will no longer remove all threat gained.
     Reduced the damage dealt by Poisonous Blood Siphon.
     Increased cooldown on Blood Siphon.
     Gained an Enrage ability after 10 minutes in combat.
     No longer has the Slow ability.
     Corrupted Blood now deals direct damage with a following damage
     over time effect and no longer spreads to others in the raid.
     Fixed a bug that was causing Corrupted Blood to target the current
     target rather than the intended random target.
  * Increased duration of Poisonous Cloud emitted by Sons of Hakkar.
  * Shades of Jin'do are now considered Undead.
- Slightly increased the movement of Lethon's Spirit Shades.
- Reduced the duration of Lethon's Draw Spirit from 7 seconds to 5
  seconds.
- Fixed a bug that would cause Lethon's Draw Spirit to spawn two
  spirits per person instead of one.
- King Gordok can no longer be seperated from Cho'Rush the Observer in
  Dire Maul.


World Environment
- Royal Dreadguards, Undercity Guardians, and Ironforge Guards will now
  detect enemy players at the same distance as the other cities' guards.
- Fixed a bug that would cause you to dismount in certain areas within
  the Undercity.


ZG being made a little less assy, a much needed shield block fix, and a Lethon nerf. 

The Lethon nerf will now make every one of the world boss dragons a race.  I guess it was kind of silly to have a mob harder than Nefarian have the same loot table as Ysondre.

[Righ]

- Added native support for Intel-powered Macs such as the iMac (Core
  Duo) and MacBook Pro. World of Warcraft is now a Universal
  Application.

That was quick. I wonder how much Intel "fat" I have on my disk so far.

[SurfD]

Well, having just come from a full ZG clear, I must say, this patch ROCKS.

They took out around 1/5th of the mobs in ZG (maybe more, not 100 % sure).  I can catagoricly say there is a LOT less critters in there, cause I only came out of the raid with about 2/3rd's of the leather I usually do when I am the only person skinning.  I am sure we shaved nearly an hour off standard clear time simply from pulls that were either smaller or not there entirely.

You now get double faction for almost everything in the zone, the exception being Berzerkers (2 rep) and some mobs in the Bat Boss room (3 rep). Thats right, double rep for all bosses.  Aspects now give you 100, Bloodlord/Hexxar give you 200, and Hakkar 400.

Might just have been luck, but Coins and Bijous were dropping like nuts. We got more Bijous in that one run then I think we have gotten in the last 5 put together.

Boss fights seemed way easier (this may have been due to the obscene amount of DPS my particular raid was packing however, as we had some of our best players in my raidgroup).  The only boss that gave us more pause then a speed bump was Hexxar, who is still the bitching pain in the ass he usually is.   Bloodlord, for all that they claim they buffed him, seemed same as ever was.

And lastly, Hakkar:  much much MUCH more satisfying fight.  No longer stand around hitting one button and getting free epics.  This fight requires a lot more activity from your mele dps, a small but manageable tank rotation, and is a fair bit more mana intensive for your priests.  Ranged DPS is now required to put out, rather then just fake it like they usually do, and you can no longer count on the Life Drain effect to win the fight for you.

All in all, I am HIGHLY impressed with these changes.  It makes the instance seem to go by a lot faster (getting from one boss to the next is chop chop quick now), and the final boss is no longer a total snooze fest.

Oh, for our clear (which still skipped a small number of unnessicary or out of the way pulls, and didnt do the Edge of Madness event) we appear to have pulled in somewhere near 2800 rep.   3k+ rep on more thorough single runs could easily be attainable.

[Calantus]

We had downed all but thekal and arlokk yesterday so I don'tknow about the previous bosses, and I was afk on a lot of the trash doing work so I'm not sure about that. On the bosses we did do Arlokk didn't seem any different. Thekal was so easy on healing now it's stupid. Hakkar is actually fun now, and oh so much harder. We also got a crazy number of coins and bijous for just killing those guys and the trash to them, about as much as we'd expect on a full clear.

Even though I like the changes I was unimpressed with the fact that he had to be changed so long after he was implemented. I don't like having to relearn bosses who are well and truly into farm status. We had a nice big celebration when we downed him though, first time the guild had killed something nobody knew head-to-toe before we attacked him.

Also, 400 rep from Hakkar baby! 

That basically sums it up for me.

EDIT: Hopefully they'll buff the tables on the bosses when they go through the 5-man/ubrs tables in 1.10, I want to see purple more often when I open up boss corpses. If they do that and take out 1/2 of the spiders and 1/2 of the undead in the zone I'll be fully satisfied with ZG

[Rasix]

I'm embarrassed to say that we didn't figure out Hakkar with who we had on.  2 tanks (one is our token DSP warrior) and 2 priests didn't seem like enough for that encounter with how sleepy everyone was.  We only took a couple shots though and we'll need to get down our poison timing so we don't spend 90% of the time taking 100 damage a tick.  That corrupted blood thing-a-bob hurts too.

The rest of ZG is seemed laughably easier though.  It was nice not to have to do so much tedious trash clearing, especially before spider bitch.  Tiger and Spider seemed a lot easier; no one even got killed in either attempt.  It all went really fast too, I think we we had cleared through spider in less than an hour. 

A lot more epics dropped, except ironically, none of the staves I wanted. Bijous and coins everywhere.  I like it a lot better now, although I have a feeling they're going to go back and tweak the loot tables.  I'm not sure they want it this bountiful.

[Fabricated]

Maybe it'll be possible to get into pickup groups for ZG now, and worth the trouble.

[Calantus]

Want any tips Rasix or just wanna work it out for yourselves?

The most enjoyable part of the battle for me is that we have a habit of 1-and-2-shotting new bosses for the most part, so everyone was frustrated over wiping 4-5 times. One mage left saying "I should do some homework and this isn't going anywhere" and 2 attempts later we killed him. He dropped the Bloodcaller that the mage has had a hard-on for since before we even started ZG. All the other DPS casters already had epic weapons so it woulda defaulted to him. Instead one of the mages got to upgrade his sorcerous dagger. Can't wait to tell him all about it...

[Rasix]

Want any tips Rasix or just wanna work it out for yourselves?

The most enjoyable part of the battle for me is that we have a habit of 1-and-2-shotting new bosses for the most part, so everyone was frustrated over wiping 4-5 times. One mage left saying "I should do some homework and this isn't going anywhere" and 2 attempts later we killed him. He dropped the Bloodcaller that the mage has had a hard-on for since before we even started ZG. All the other DPS casters already had epic weapons so it woulda defaulted to him. Instead one of the mages got to upgrade his sorcerous dagger. Can't wait to tell him all about it...

Pretty sure we can work it out.  We just really had mix of players that aren't used to working with each other. The two tanks aren't really ones that are used to being a MT (one just switched to prot)  and our mages were being lazy with the sheepage.   Our best tank and best healer both quit after panther. since it was late.  I think part of it is going to be staying spread out so that 1K splash damage thing doesn't eat up the healer's mana. 

I just want that fucking trinket.  We do DKP for ZG (it's guild only) and I haven't been able to bid until this week (initiates have to wait till rot).  But now that the faction is so easy, I'll be doing a lot more ZG.  Thank god they nerfed that stupid spider room.

[Calantus]

Looks like my wish came true before I even made it:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=7028570&tmp=1#post7028570

Below are a few changes implemented in 1.9.3 that unfortunately, did not make the patch notes.

# Nefarian's reset should now consistently be 15 minutes regardless of what phase your raid may have wiped out on.
# The High Priests, High Priestesses, and Jin'do the Hexxer will now drop their epic items more often. Some of the rarest items from Zul'Gurub such as the Warblade of the Hakkari and Zulian Swift Tiger can now also be found a bit more frequently.
# Zul'Gurub coin and bijou drops were increased
# The stats on the Tier 1 Mage and Warlock sets (Arcanist and Felheart) have been changed.
# You now have to be out of combat to open a chest.

Update: According to QA and internal tests, the stranglethorn arena chest was not flagged with the "not in combat flag", so it should be fine. If your experiences prove otherwise, please post in the Bug Reporting forum, so we can attempt to reproduce the report.

So now you get epics more often, and now with the increased drop of coins and bijous people will be able to burn them for rep more readily. Combined with the changes we already know this makes the zone much more worthwhile. Very nice.

[Rasix]

Yay, now the probability of me getting a goofy looking staff or tiger mount is better.   Nefarian reset thing was a bit annoying, but it gave everyone a 15 minute break after we figured out the color combination.

[Morfiend]

Yay, now the probability of me getting a goofy looking staff or tiger mount is better. 

My RL friend was one of the few people to get the tiger mount already. He got it about 2 months ago. We didnt even make him roll of DKP it, since he was the only person in the raid with a non epic mount. The problem is, he is a very methodic player. And it can be hard to get his attention in game. He frequently forgets to look at the chat box for 10 minutes straight. Having this mount really didnt help. Every time he mounts up, he gets between 2 and 15 tells from people. Now he is damn near impossible to get him to do any thing.

Oh yeah, a Tauren on a tiger is badass looking.