2.3 Official patch notes

[Jayce]

Split body text:

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=26295.0

[Fabricated]

Happy Broken UImod day folks.

Now I just need to start running heroics like mad. My mage now can get 6 epic upgrades from badges. Insanity. My warrior must. have. the. trinket.

[Merusk]

Most mods are already updated for the patch. 

I reccomend using WUU or - if you trust them - downloading and using WoWAce's auto-updater.   (I don't trust them, only because I have no way of knowing what fan sites Ige owns these days.)

[Chimpy]

Whatever you do, don't loot all the items in the chest in heroic Hellfire Ramparts until everyone has had a chance to get their badge.

I did not get a chance to loot mine because the chest would not let me open it, and then it despawned when the last other piece of loot was taken.

[Fabricated]

Whatever you do, don't loot all the items in the chest in heroic Hellfire Ramparts until everyone has had a chance to get their badge.

I did not get a chance to loot mine because the chest would not let me open it, and then it despawned when the last other piece of loot was taken.

What server do you play on? Because that just happened in the ramparts group I was in. Our hunter crashed out after getting the riding crop and we waited for him, but the chest disappeared the instant we took the loot out.

He didn't lose any actual loot (I got my epic belt...nevermind I have better I think. shammy shit, and leather chestpiece), but he did lose a badge.

I love these dailys...too bad it still won't make some heroics worth running. Getting essentially 5 badges from Ramparts is nice.

[Xanthippe]

I played my hunter in AV last night.  For the first time ever, I ended up on the top of the damage meter and KBs with the grand totals of ~75,000 and 2.  The only reason I had that much damage was that I went to take the mine.  The horde and alliance raced to kill the General, and it seems nobody stopped to do much of any sort of defense at all.

Somehow I still ended up with 330 or something honor in a 15 minute or less game.  It was weird, though - not at all like the couple of games I played on the PTR, where there was plenty of actual pvp, more honor and the games lasted twice as long.

My hunter's lack of a dead zone makes me feel almost OP - haven't felt this powerful since the patch before TBC.

[Righ]

-  Client spell cast requests are now sent to the server even if your
   player is already casting another spell.  This eliminates the need
   for /stopcasting in macros to compensate for latency.

...is one of the more interesting changes. Somewhat penalizes hitting buttons early and repeatedly to anticipate cool down.

[ajax34i]

From what I'm reading on the boards, though, that little change also introduced an unwanted feature, namely that the client will activate the global cooldown as soon as you press any key, before the server has a chance to send back "out of range" or other failure messages.  So certain people who were spamming a button until it finally went through as they got in range or turned around to face enemy or whatnot, now are being hit with 1.5 s delay every time they push the button, which screws up their timing.

I like the changes to loot, where you can now see who hasn't looted the hound (though I'm going to miss that warcry), but like it's been said above, looting things out of chests seems to have its own bugs.  I like the 30% mana while casting, that's a huge change.  I like the change they did to forms, where you can switch from one to another without going through human form, but that screwed up my nice little travel macro (aquatic, flight, or travel form with 1 button depending on where I was) something fierce, and also the macros I was using to shift in and out of combat forms.  I like concept of the new button by the minimap that allows me to search for various vendors, but I'm used to using the keyboard, not clicking, to do stuff and it's annoying, plus, what I want is to see ALL vendors not just one type.

And so on.  This patch has some good ideas paired together with a lot of bugs and annoying changes.

[Chimpy]

The global GCD chaining sucks.

And not because I spam buttons, but beause my client shows the GCD as gone, lets me hit the key, sends the spell message and THEN I get the not ready yet thing.

Hunter pets are totally broken by the "pets will now try to attack targets from behind". It is causing pathing errors I haven't seen since they fixed pathing in 1.4 or 1.5.

Blizzard broke more stuff with this patch than I have seen broken in a long long time. I think a lot of it has to do with them trying to do too many overall minor mechanical changes in a patch that was supposed to be more about content.

[Morat20]

How are hunters doing arena now -- pet pathing aside?

[Righ]

Hunter pets are totally broken by the "pets will now try to attack targets from behind". It is causing pathing errors I haven't seen since they fixed pathing in 1.4 or 1.5.

Its pretty messy in crowded areas. And FD is 'iffy' again - probably a knock on effect of the spell cast server ping code.

[Simond]

Bwahahaha!
The cake is not a lie 

[Merusk]

How are hunters doing arena now -- pet pathing aside?

I can't speak for arena, but like Xanthippe I feel useful in BGs again.  I even took down a warlock who was trying to abuse my now nonexistent dead zone by tossing an Aimed Shot, then arcane shotting off his demon armor and spamming steady on him.  It made me giggle.

Ed: Oh, they did get one kick in the jimmy to us, though.  Cast a volley sometime.

[Morat20]

How are hunters doing arena now -- pet pathing aside?

I can't speak for arena, but like Xanthippe I feel useful in BGs again.  I even took down a warlock who was trying to abuse my now nonexistent dead zone by tossing an Aimed Shot, then arcane shotting off his demon armor and spamming steady on him.  It made me giggle.

Ed: Oh, they did get one kick in the jimmy to us, though.  Cast a volley sometime.

What's up with volley? It's always sucked monkey nuts. It's a channeled spell, and any damage pretty much just ends it. Plus, in terms of damage/versus mana, why the hell would you use?

[Merusk]

Honestly? I don't unless I'm choosing to toss it on packs in Kara or some other instance where the locks/ mages will AOE them to death.  It's a crappy spell that's there to fill a spot where they felt they had to give us an ability.

Still, at least before it had a cool effect, with the hail of arrows falling and landing in the ground.
Now?  It looks like you're pissing fireworks.

[Ironwood]

The New Devastate is fucking Awesome.

[Fordel]

The New Devastate is fucking Awesome.

Yea, my Guild's warrior is giddy like a school girl over the change. 

[stu]

I love being able to buff everyone before Battlegrounds start without having to worry about using any mana.

[Fraeg]

How are hunters doing arena now -- pet pathing aside?

a shaman and BM Hunter duo did arena last night.. the shamans response in vent was "hunters are OP" 
they are very casual pvpers RL couple that normally go 4:6 in arena or something like that. Last night they went 9:1.  Granted that is hardly a stastically valid population.  But the shaman who does play the hunter now and then said that the hunter is a monster in arena now

take that as you will. 

The team that they lost to was two mace spec rogues who kept shaman locked down and just did a cooldown dps flush on the hunter taking her down in a few seconds.  The shaman said that really unless you are right on top of the hunter (like a rogue) there isn't really a noticable dead zone.

[Chimpy]

I have not done arena yet, but the lack of the deadzone has made it possible for me to kill locks and warriors in BGs when 1v1.

Which was something I was rarely able to do unless they really sucked or I got lucky. Locks could sit in the deadzone, and warriors could keep me in melee range or bleed me to death while I was in the deadzone.

I just never was good with the whole kite to get back to range thing.

Arcane shot's current chance to dispel is VERY high, and it can dispel anything, I dispelled king's off a pally today in AV :) .

Hunters will most likely get nerfed, probably by giving us back the dead-zone :( .

[Righ]

Hunters will most likely get nerfed, probably by giving us back the dead-zone :( .

Nah, they'll just keep itemizing and buffing the other classes.

[Paelos]

The New Devastate is fucking Awesome.

Yes, it is wildly badass. I fully expect them to fuck us and take it away or scale it down in 2.4 or something.

[Fabricated]

I've removed sunder from my bar and not changing a thing about how I tank I'm getting something like 100-150 more TPS on average. Also, mobs are going down considerably faster since I'm actually doing damage instead of just hitting devastate off and on to renew my sunders.

[Ironwood]

There are only 2 bad things about it :

1 - I don't know what the fuck to do with Sunder now.  It's sorta hanging in space.  And since my two hotkeys were sunder and devestate, I keep swapping other abilities in that my hands can't quite get the 'memory' to do right...

2 - They're going to nerf it.  I just can't keep the hope alive that something as awesome as this will stay as is.

Seriously, for the first time ever yesterday I felt that soloing was viable and fun.  A 9 point instant attack ?  One that grows in power as you hit ?  That's almost Fury shit.  Yum.

[Simond]

I levelled my alt warlock (with a D&D cartoon name) from just into 39 to just into 41 last night, mainly in Dustwallow Marsh. It was a bit weird though - running around actually doing the quests the xp gain was quicker, but not "Woohoo! level 60 here I come!" quicker. Then I started turning them in en masse and got almost a level's worth of xp. 

Oh, and Dustwallow is significantly easier to navigate now as well as having all the new quests - Tabetha's house has a path leading to it now (and past it to the crashed zeppelin) instead of just being sat on a random island somewhere in the middle of the swamp, and Mudsprocket (southern half of the zone) has a flight point, so no more tedious afk-but-not-really runs from Brackenwall/Theramore down to the dragons/ogre ruins/etc.

Speaking of tedious afk-ness: Ships and Zeppelins have crews manning them now, including vendors.

[Selby]

Tabetha's house has a path leading to it now (and past it to the crashed zeppelin) instead of just being sat on a random island somewhere in the middle of the swamp

About damn time.  That was one of my serious complaints about that zone, that a giver of sub 35 quests is way the hell out in the middle of nowhere surrounded by level 38-42 monsters.

[Jayce]

And almost impossible to find, even with coords in hand.

Sounds like I need to make a trip by Dustwallow just to take a tour.

[Simond]

With all the changes, new quests and so on Dustwallow looks like it might actually be a viable alternative to STV.

Pretty much everywhere that had quests there has either had the quests re-tuned (crazy hick in the house who wants a sword now wants a mob-dropped sword rather than a tradeskill-made sword that costs more than the quest rewards are worth) or quests added (crazy hick has a friend now, Tabatha has two apprentices which offer quests); plus there's new quest hubs (Mudsprocket, zep crash site).

Combine that with the re-tuned quest rewards (saw at least three cloth quest rewards yesterday that would have been worth picking up if my warlock wasn't mildly twinked) and the general levelling changes, and I may actually start levelling some of my alts up past ~L40.

What I'd like to see is Blizzard do this sort of thing in maybe every other patch - new content in 2.4 (both Sunwell instances), then an Azshara (for example) revamp in 2.5. I mean, it's not like there's any shortage of zones that could use some tweaks...even the most popular zones (*cough*STV*cough*) could use some changes, and others (Desolace, Stonetalon Mts, the aforementioned Azshara to think of three off of the top of my head) could definitely use a more thoughrough re-tune/rebuild/revamp.

[Mazakiel]

At minimum, on the zones that are used because they actually work on some level, they need to go in and redo the quest rewards.  Most of the rewards are pretty much trash, especially if you make any effort whatsoever in getting greens off the AH.  It sucked going from the BE areas with actually useful quest rewards into the basic old world where most of them were disenchant fodder. 

[Morat20]

How are hunters doing arena now -- pet pathing aside?

a shaman and BM Hunter duo did arena last night.. the shamans response in vent was "hunters are OP" 
they are very casual pvpers RL couple that normally go 4:6 in arena or something like that. Last night they went 9:1.  Granted that is hardly a stastically valid population.  But the shaman who does play the hunter now and then said that the hunter is a monster in arena now

take that as you will. 

The team that they lost to was two mace spec rogues who kept shaman locked down and just did a cooldown dps flush on the hunter taking her down in a few seconds.  The shaman said that really unless you are right on top of the hunter (like a rogue) there isn't really a noticable dead zone.

I suspect the "OP" comments will go away, as people adjust their tactics. Anyone who depended on the no-brainer DZ exploit or was skilled enough to keep a hunter in melee (didn't take much once you caught them the first time) is simply going to have to relearn that Hunter's are free HK's in those situations anymore.

Having no deadzone is probably the biggest adjustment, as everyone's going to be making the "I thought I was in melee when he shot my ass" mistake until they relearn distances. (And Hunters as a class are VERY good at judging where 5 yards away from them is).

The Aimed Shot MS-component is weird -- it's probably OP'd in BG's (where Hunters generally CAN get off a 3.5 second shot on a healer) but it's pointless in Arena (where only against the World's Shittiest Opponents will a Hunter have 3.5 seconds of alone time at range). The dispell on arcane shot must be a bitch and a half for everyone. That thing has teeth.

[ajax34i]

A bunch of things to get used to, actually:  no deadzone, new global cooldown effect on ranges and insta- abilities, and I'm sure other things that require time to get used to, or are buggy and need fixing.

[slog]

The shadowpriest changes are making a huge difference for me.  I'm not able to cast a quick heal on myself instantly and get back to Shadowform very quickly.

[Morat20]

A bunch of things to get used to, actually:  no deadzone, new global cooldown effect on ranges and insta- abilities, and I'm sure other things that require time to get used to, or are buggy and need fixing.

I understand one particularly unusual aspect of arcane shot is that it can dispel Ghost Wolf. :) Takes rank 6+ to get the dispell, so it won't change the 10-19 twink WSG setup, but later WSG's might find Druids in travel form a better runner now.

Of course, in Arena's everyone and their dog loads up with trash buffs to protect the good ones, and Arcane is a single-buff purge on a 6-second cooldown. All the screaming over it is a bit misplaced, given the other ways buffs can be purged. (must faster ways, in fact).

Sure it probably sucks when the Hunter gets lucky and strips your Fel Armor, or Earthshield, or Ice-Barrier or something -- but hell, that's just luck for you. Sometimes you get the shit end.

[SurfD]

Hunters are going to get rocked pretty hard by any team with a resto druid in it. Why?  Cause a smart Resto Druid will have a single stack of lifebloom ticking on everyone (dispelling a lifebloom causes the final "bloom" effect to go off.  So Arcane-shoting someone with lifebloom on them will probably heal the person for more then the Arcane shot hurts them for.

[ajax34i]

Till the druid runs out of mana, though I suppose that'll take too long to have an effect.  Actually, for me it was easy to keep 2, maybe 3 people bloomed, but more than that became confusing during raids (yes, I had macros with /target and with /dbm timer bars).  I think the global countdown limits you to 4 people max, 3 if there's any lag.