Here comes the next content patch (3.2)

[chargerrich]

anyone have the complete patch notes that they can post or a work friendly site? 

[Selby]

Absolutely nothing major changes for my mage.  Again.  Nice to not be affected by changes.

Although being able to get T8.5 gear from Heroic Emblem runs is... odd.  Not that I'd complain after having run Naxx-25 for so long to get all the T7.5 stuff, but it does seem strange that they would change it.  Who would ever pick the old stuff now?

[Ingmar]

Absolutely nothing major changes for my mage.  Again.  Nice to not be affected by changes.

Although being able to get T8.5 gear from Heroic Emblem runs is... odd.  Not that I'd complain after having run Naxx-25 for so long to get all the T7.5 stuff, but it does seem strange that they would change it.  Who would ever pick the old stuff now?

The different tiers of gear don't all fill out every item slot.

[Selby]

The different tiers of gear don't all fill out every item slot.

Ah!  Good point.

[March]

* Players with experience gains turned off who compete in Battlegrounds will face off only against other players with experience gains turned off.

Didn't see that coming.  Best psych evah.

The Lord Giveth and...

[Lantyssa]

* Players with experience gains turned off who compete in Battlegrounds will face off only against other players with experience gains turned off.

I had the exact same reaction.

[Fordel]

My poor tanking DK got nerfed again. Stupid PvP.  

Jesus, no kidding.  Frost got savaged.  Nerfs to Frost Presence, Frost Strike, Icebound Fortitude and Toughness?  I must be the worst tank to ever play WoW because it didn't feel like the current skillset was making me overshadow anyone.  The Frost Strike nerf especially sucks because threat is one of my bigger problems and more boss parries isn't going to help.

Edit: holy crap, they killed Unholy Blight too.

Edit part deux: And of course a bunch of nice, tasty feral nerfs as well.  Since it's all base points it'll probably be a pretty severe nerfing, too.

It's not just PvP, though PvP is a huge part of it, but DK's were just superior Hard Mode tanks due to cool downs as well.

[Soulflame]

The correct response is not to nerf DKs.  It is to buff other tanks.  Either that or redesign their stupid encounters so three failed avoidance checks in four seconds will not equate to seventy five thousand damage taken.

[March]

On the copious tears shed over the Conquest Emblem changes

I left out the patch note that says we're just giving tier-8 gear to everyone for downloading the patch. That's my bad.

I love it when blue does green.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=17899770556&sid=1

[Ingmar]

The correct response is not to nerf DKs.  It is to buff other tanks.  Either that or redesign their stupid encounters so three failed avoidance checks in four seconds will not equate to seventy five thousand damage taken.

Unless they're happy with the difficultly level that the encounter presents with the other 3 tanks. If that's their target, then nerfing DKs is in fact the right choice.

[Sjofn]

We wanted to make Paladin healing more interesting

So now, we've made it so you can cast Holy Light on people other than the tank! ENGAGING!

Seriously. 

[Soulflame]

The problem is that if DKs are nerfed to the point where they suck as much as warriors or paladins, then guilds will switch to druid tanks instead.

That will also make everything better.  Somehow.

Because, seriously.  Prot paladin tanks suck, and warriors are only useful if there need to be interrupts.

[Soulflame]

Which also doesn't really address the whole "happens all the fucking time" scenario where a tank doesn't avoid three hits, and eats 75k damage in four seconds.  Holy Light spam is the only thing that has a prayer of keeping a tank up in that situation, and Blizzard is now saying they don't want paladins to be HL spamming anymore.  Instead we should be beaconing the tank and spamming flash of light on the raid!  Because those 4k heals every second will definitely fix the problem 75k damage eaten.  Or, you know, result in paladins being sat while a disc priest does the same job, but without tank threatening spikes or gimped mana regen.

[Ingmar]

The problem is that if DKs are nerfed to the point where they suck as much as warriors or paladins, then guilds will switch to druid tanks instead.

That will also make everything better.  Somehow.

Because, seriously.  Prot paladin tanks suck, and warriors are only useful if there need to be interrupts.

They did buff paladin tanks, and to a lesser extent warriors with the doubling of block value from items, and more is supposedly coming.

EDIT: I will say its certainly possible the DK nerfs go too far tanking-wise, but it was something they probably couldn't leave as is, if we take your view of the relative power of the various tanks as the norm. They keep nerfing Ulduar every week, so they have been working from that side of things too.

[Merusk]

 /pours a 40 for Unholy Blight.

There goes my passive AOE damage on trash.  Fuckers.

WTB "next big thing."  Burnout fast approaching...

[K9]

Replenishment got nerfed.

PoH got nerfed. Guess that's fine since I'm disc 80% of the time now anyway.

[Fordel]

I like new Unholy Blight much better.

[Merusk]

It's better for PvP or single-target, but sucks for all the AOE crap that is in LK.   It was a passive buff that scaled incredibly well the more targets you had to deal with.   They really, REALLY want you to only AOE with Pest/ BB and D&D, it would seem.

[Xeyi]

Replenishment got nerfed.

PoH got nerfed. Guess that's fine since I'm disc 80% of the time now anyway.

So I am, but as I duo heal nearly all of Ulduar with a holy pally I use borrowed time-hasted PoH's a fair bit for certain encounters.   Hopefully the Beacon change will be enough to offset the loss on hodir as that's where I use PoH the most.

I don't really understand the purpose of the conquest emblem change.  My alts are already tripping over fairly decent epics from Naxx and are basically all geared well enough to start Ulduar themselves.  Likewise for new players it's really not hard to gear up in Naxx as it is, and it's not like that instance is dying a death due to unpopularity.  

I'm in a guild that "only" does 10 man raids and so I don't have access to emblems of conquest myself right now but I'm perfectly fine with that.  I'm all for making good gear accessible for even the msot casual of players but this seems a step further than is really necessary.

[K9]

I guess it's a way to allow people to catch up quicker, while keeping them out of the top-tier.

The main thing I'm wondering is whether they'll allow us to trade-up existing emblems. I doubt it, but this patch seems full of surprises, so you never know.

[Ingmar]

I kind of suspect its as much to remove the annoyance of having 234234 different kinds of badges as it is to give people more access, but yeah. As it stands we're at the point where its getting kind of hard to catch a new character up to the rest of the guild for raiding stuff. This will make that much easier.

[Merusk]

Yeah, get a guy who rolls a much-needed class while you're in Uludar and suddenly your guild has to either run Naxx for weeks or drag him along as a useless filler spot until they're geared enough to not be a waste/ die to boss AOE.  This way, you can run a ton of heroics and be decently equipped in a few days.

[Fordel]

It's better for PvP or single-target, but sucks for all the AOE crap that is in LK.   It was a passive buff that scaled incredibly well the more targets you had to deal with.   They really, REALLY want you to only AOE with Pest/ BB and D&D, it would seem.

Unholy AE damage was just obscene, so It really isn't surprising to me. They were never really happy with Unholy Blight to begin with and it was always a little silly for single target as well. Don't forget Unholy still has wandering plague as well.

I always preferred DC as a RP dump to begin with, so bonus for me.

[kildorn]

It's better for PvP or single-target, but sucks for all the AOE crap that is in LK.   It was a passive buff that scaled incredibly well the more targets you had to deal with.   They really, REALLY want you to only AOE with Pest/ BB and D&D, it would seem.

Unholy AE damage was just obscene, so It really isn't surprising to me. They were never really happy with Unholy Blight to begin with and it was always a little silly for single target as well. Don't forget Unholy still has wandering plague as well.

I always preferred DC as a RP dump to begin with, so bonus for me.

Unholy's trash DPS was nuts. My DK could easily top trash chats in 3 casts. This change fixes up unholy single target a bit and downplays the AE so it doesn't blatantly outclass other specs.

As for the "waah holy light is the only thing that keeps tanks up during hard modes and now they want us to use FoL", no, they want to give the option for a paladin to raid heal on occasion. They're still entirely built around chaining giant fucking heals on a tank. They just are gaining (slightly, EVER so slightly) a boost in raid healing options.

From the note changes though, they still can't do shit well beyond chaining massive heals on a tank. The problem wasn't FoL being useless, the problem wasn't "give us a HoT!", the problem is all they have are single target heals in various sizes. They completely fall down on non gimmick raid setups for shit like XT Tantrums, where every other healer even in tank healing spec can pull off raid healing (if inefficiently)

Paladins need a real healing toolbelt, even if it's never going to be up to the fucking batman utility belt of Priests.

[Sheepherder]

# After much quiet contemplation, rogues now possess the ability to learn how to use one-handed axes.

So... who's pet project is Titan's Grip that they should break the class numerous times to keep it in?  Did the CD reduction on BT increase DPS to normal levels?  And why the fuck are rogues becoming nearly identical to the original fury warrior?

[Lakov_Sanite]

Yes, this make rogues identical to fury warriors....

wait, what? 

[Sjofn]

Paladins need a real healing toolbelt, even if it's never going to be up to the fucking batman utility belt of Priests.

They are REALLY insistant that there are paladins that LOVE that one-trick-pony style and they don't want to make them fuss. It makes me think that there's some dev that loves falling asleep on holy light and horrified no one else likes it.

[Sheepherder]

Yes, this make rogues identical to fury warriors....

wait, what?  

It's a pretty simple conclusion, Blizzard has been edging rogues towards the playstyle where fury used to reside at the same time they've been doing all sorts of shortbus stuff to fury (like being the only plate melee class heavily punished for wearing leather).  The axes change is just icing on the cake.  To me it seems a pretty good signal that they don't ever intend to allow warriors to dual-wield one-handers and have a sane energy mechanic ever again.

My warrior as fury in wrath bears little resemblance to the class as it was in 2005.  My rogue is far more similar on many fronts.  Added to that is the feeling that they really have no fucking clue what they want to do with the class, or how they should go about un-fucking up the ridiculous problems with rage and damage scaling that TG causes and I really have a hard time finding a reason to log in on a character who looks like a even more shortbus anime reject than is usual.

[Triforcer]

ROFL and RIP to battleground twinks.  Enjoy fighting other twinks you can't two-shot, chief. 

[Sheepherder]

I'm actually seriously considering making a twink now, because evidently it applies in PvE as well, so I could realistically farm up some nice twink gear and throw some enchants on.  Maybe in one of the later tiers, then again, the twink BG's might be utterly desolate because even though all the twink troll alts on the Blizzard forums claim it, I really doubt they actually like twink on twink pvp.

[Fordel]

I might make characters at X9 ranges and keep them there, just to group with people leveling up on those ranges. I currently have the issue of the characters I play are all 70+


Then again I probably won't.

[K9]

Paladins need a real healing toolbelt, even if it's never going to be up to the fucking batman utility belt of Priests.

Could say the same for mana efficiency.

[Merusk]

I'm actually seriously considering making a twink now, because evidently it applies in PvE as well, so I could realistically farm up some nice twink gear and throw some enchants on.  Maybe in one of the later tiers, then again, the twink BG's might be utterly desolate because even though all the twink troll alts on the Blizzard forums claim it, I really doubt they actually like twink on twink pvp.

Pretty much. Plus what they've really just done is killed low-level battlegrounds entirely.  It already took me 10-20 minutes to get games on my 17 hunter and 29 rogue, and on Alliance side at least half of those players weren't twinks.  Even in prime time the highest number of BGs that I've seen running at those ranges was 3.    Split that up and you're getting a bg every few hour or greater initially, which will only decrease with time as folks don't bother queuing up anymore.

[ghost]

Battleground experience has arrived!


    * Players will now be awarded experience for completing objectives and actions that yield honor in Battlegrounds (honorable kills not included).
    * Players who do not wish to gain experience through PvP can visit Behsten in Stormwind or Slahtz in Orgrimmar - both located near the Battlemasters in either city - and turn off all experience accumulation for the cost of 10 gold.
    * Disabling experience gains will prevent a player from gaining experience through any means available in the game.
    * Players with experience gains turned off who compete in Battlegrounds will face off only against other players with experience gains turned off.
    * Behsten and Slahtz can reinstate experience gains for players, for a 10 gold fee of course. Any experience that would've been accumulated if experience gains were enabled cannot be recovered

...................and now resubbing.

[chargerrich]

I have been waiting for years for PvP experience! And to think I was "not so seriously" contemplating resubbing to WAR just for this benefit... LOL @ Mythic getting bitchslapped by Blizzard.