Patch Notes 1/28

[Signe]

Patch Notes - 1/28/05

 

General Changes
(detailed information for each below)  

Paladin
Seal of the Crusader: Fixed a bug where damage per swing was increasing instead of decreasing when Seal of the Crusader was active. This resulted in a dramatic increase in damage per second (DPS) that was unintended. The tooltip for the spell displays the intent of the spell:
"Fills the Paladin with the spirit of a crusader, granting additional attack power. The Paladin also attacks faster, but deals less damage with each attack."

The overall increase in DPS from Seal of the Crusader should only result from the increase in attack power and not from the increase in attack speed. We understand this is a significant decrease in the power of this spell, but was a necessary bug fix to ensure both overall game balance and the viability of different Paladin Seals.


Localization
Various text strings and audio have been corrected for the French and German versions of the game.

Macs
Fixed a bug that incorrectly enabled the vertex animation shader option on some GPU's that do not support it. This bug was causing player character models in-game and in the character selection screen to appear invisible or distorted. The fix should benefit users with NVIDIA GeForce 2MX or 4MX GPU's and ATI Radeon 7000/7500 GPU's. It should no longer be necessary to manually turn off the vertex animation feature on these systems - it should now be off and disabled automatically.

Bug Fixes
Group loot has been fixed to work as originally intended. It will now work exactly like round robin does, with the exception that when an item of threshold level or above drops, it will use the auto-rolling system. (Prior to this fix, when in group loot mode, the round robin system was only being used for items (all players could loot coins), which was rather confusing).
Fixed a group loot permission bug that was telling players they did not have permission to loot.
Fixed a bug that was causing the game to freeze when scrolling through auctions in the Auction House.
Murlocs play the drown animation when they die underwater now.
Onyxia correctly hovers instead of standing in midair.
You can target vocal emotes again.
Pets and summoned creatures attacking enemies will now tap the enemies for their owners.
Fixed a bug with Troll Shamans and the Berserk ability. Troll Shamans can only go Berserk when they are in the wounded state.
Rogues now correctly gain Lockpicking skill from items picked in the trade window.
Quests that require you to follow/escort an NPC will only complete when you arrive at the designated area.
Horde and Alliance members cannot duel with each other regardless of realm type.
Herbs and mineral nodes will remain active if they are not fully emptied.
Fixed a bug that was giving higher damage-per-second (DPS) to Steelarrow Crossbow and Blackcrow than was intended.
Sell prices on Hypnotic Blade, Illusionary Rod, Mantle of Doan, and Robe of Doan have been lowered.
Players who have completed the quest to summon Kirtonos may now obtain the Blood of Innocents from Doctor Theolen Krastinov.

Addenda
*These changes were made after the publication of the patch notes and thus could not be added to the in-game patch notes.
Hunter and Warlock pets will now correctly "tap" the targets they attack, thus giving the pet owner kill credit for a target even if another player later attacks the same target.
The tooltip for the Warrior's Intercept ability has been updated to reflect the proper rage cost. Using Intercept costs 10 rage, not 15 rage. The tooltip now accurately reflects that.

[Avatard]

Corrected URL.



See, I can be helpful too.



You bunch of flaming ass monkeys.

[Signe]

Thanks!

Well, for the correction... not so much for the unwarranted insult. :(

[Avatard]

Thanks!



Well, for the correction... not so much for the unwarranted insult. :(

I tease because I love.



Not so much love, more like loathe.



Starts with lo, close enough.

[Avatard]

Also this is from the forums about said patch.

A new localization patch was released to the European World of Warcraft service earlier today. The same localization patch is scheduled for the US weekly maintenance window on Tuesday, February, 1st 2005, between the hours of 6AM - 10AM PST.

[Calantus]

Group loot has been fixed to work as originally intended. It will now work exactly like round robin does, with the exception that when an item of threshold level or above drops, it will use the auto-rolling system. (Prior to this fix, when in group loot mode, the round robin system was only being used for items (all players could loot coins), which was rather confusing).

Very nice. This was a very retarded implementation of group loot. I don't want to have to hit every goddamn body incase it happens to be the one I can loot and not just sparkling because it hasn't been looted yet.

Paladin
Seal of the Crusader: Fixed a bug where damage per swing was increasing instead of decreasing when Seal of the Crusader was active. This resulted in a dramatic increase in damage per second (DPS) that was unintended. The tooltip for the spell displays the intent of the spell:
"Fills the Paladin with the spirit of a crusader, granting additional attack power. The Paladin also attacks faster, but deals less damage with each attack."

The overall increase in DPS from Seal of the Crusader should only result from the increase in attack power and not from the increase in attack speed. We understand this is a significant decrease in the power of this spell, but was a necessary bug fix to ensure both overall game balance and the viability of different Paladin Seals.

Ahahaha! Damn I'm glad I don't play my paladin anymore. I thought he was boring as hell with the previously buggy crusader, now I don't even want to touch a paladin.



Hmm, I guess the warrior/warlock patch must be the next one since this one holds almost nothing for them.

[angry.bob]

Ahahaha! Damn I'm glad I don't play my paladin anymore. I thought he was boring as hell with the previously buggy crusader, now I don't even want to touch a paladin.

I'm not sure what the deal is, but I'm hitting much harder after this fix with SoC. At level 36 with my happy happy love toy Midnight Mace I'm hitting for 130 a swing on average and critting sometimes just shy of 300. That's up about 20 points a swing more than before. Still boring but, that's the price of being unkillable. I'm soloing 4 things at once now that would have killed my warrior only fighting only one.

[Riggswolfe]

Looks good. a potential mini-Paladin nerf but that doesn't bother me. I am very glad about the group loot fix, the auction house fix, and the rogue lockpicking skill in trade window fix. (I don't like having to trust people to get my boxes open frankly)

Overall sounds good to me.

[Righ]

Horde and Alliance members cannot duel with each other regardless of realm type.

Grief fix. Turning on /pvp during countdown to duel.

[Pineapple]

Grief fix. Turning on /pvp during countdown to duel.

Good luck communicating that through waves and dances.

And hope that someone else doesnt jump into the fight (PvE servers). On PvP, that's always a danger so it doesnt matter.

[Pineapple]

See, I can be helpful too.

You bunch of flaming ass monkeys.

I just have to ask, are you Boog? Related to Boog?

[Dren]

The damage increase for Paladins before was nothing and the damage decrease will be the same.  We are only talking about something in the area of 5% either way.  I'm not going to miss that extra 5-8 hp damage per hit when I'm dealing 130+ anyway.  Now instead of 135, it will be 125.  I'll make up for that with enchantments and sharpening my blade. (+15 right now stacked.)

It is still slow as hell, but I can survive most anything.  Not a big deal.  The speed increase for swings is the big deal.  That is where we get more attempts for procs on our weapon, more attempts at a crit,  and on any judgements we used.  That's where our real damage comes from, not the average normal swing damage.

The added accuracy (power) is still a boon too.  It allows me to kill higher lvl mobs still. (Read: Miss Less.)

They are just making Pally's 5% slower at killing mobs.  Whoopee.  I doubt it will make even that much difference in PvP.  We've always been the slow somewhat-unstoppable Juggernauts (Read: 2 mages will take me down right now.)  However, we are totally avoidable too.  Can't have it both ways.

[Dren]

Grief fix. Turning on /pvp during countdown to duel.

Good luck communicating that through waves and dances.

And hope that someone else doesnt jump into the fight (PvE servers). On PvP, that's always a danger so it doesnt matter.

Huh?  I think Righ is saying they are changing dueling because there is currently a grief tactic of turning on /pvp during the countdown.  This ONLY affects PvE servers since doing that now flags the other dueler who now is open to attack by all of the other's friends standing around.

It is a well known tactic on the PvE servers.  Bliz is just cutting it out completely.  If you want to duel from now on, flag yourself and see what happens.  Usually, it makes an entire town like Booty Bay erupt in PvP.  The green name disease spreads like wildfire.

[Calantus]

Grief fix. Turning on /pvp during countdown to duel.

Good luck communicating that through waves and dances.

And hope that someone else doesnt jump into the fight (PvE servers). On PvP, that's always a danger so it doesnt matter.

I'm guessing what he's saying is that if you start a duel then /pvp it would force them into /pvp if they hit you. Then the ganking begins, of course.

EDIT: Meh, this is what I get for opening up everything in tabs and getting to them later. :/

[Pineapple]

Huh?  I think Righ is saying they are changing dueling because there is currently a grief tactic of turning on /pvp during the countdown.  This ONLY affects PvE servers since doing that now flags the other dueler who now is open to attack by all of the other's friends standing around.

I see. I did not know this.
So it actually fixes a grief? That is good.

I say they should silently fix grief exploits, in such a way that doing the grief insta-kills the griefer. That will educate them that it has changed.

[kaid]

Couple really good fixes in there. In my standard group we have all been driven nuts by the group loot mechanics. Since anybody can loot coin currently you can get into situations where you havn't been able to loot a corpse yourself for half an hour which makes people a bit testy.

And if I hear my dwarf go now that would be stealing I am going to KICK something bah.


The other big fix which drove me nuts with my hunter was the pets don't tap issue. If you sent in your pet and the pet was working on a target anybody could steal it from you if they shot it before you yourself did damage to it. This is a pita because as a hunter there are many times when you want the pet to either A work on an add or B mosh a bit to fix agro onto it before you unleash the guns of navarone.

kaid

[WayAbvPar]

Is there any content additions to this patch, or is it JUST the fixes outlined? That is not much of a patch for a 5 week period (since the last one). I am usually the last person on the 'patches too slow' bandwagon, but this makes me drift in that direction.

[blindy]

Is there any content additions to this patch, or is it JUST the fixes outlined? That is not much of a patch for a 5 week period (since the last one). I am usually the last person on the 'patches too slow' bandwagon, but this makes me drift in that direction.

Even though it only got one line in the patch notes, the purpose of this downtime is the "localization patch", where they go through and correct everywhere they fucked up the French and German translations.  And then, since they were going to have downtime anyways, they decided to toss in the bug fixes they happened to have ready.  But there's no new contact or balance changes in this patch.  It's not meant to be a "content patch".