WoW 3.0.2 Patch Notes

[Zehn - Vhex]

Originally Posted by Man0warr

They probably got rid of it because of how good it was with Feign Death/Shadowmeld

Hence the "disable in arena/bg's" bit.

[Zerai]

That one change ruined my whole night.

[Elerion]

I haven't tried it, but I imagine it would be far too good for world PvP. Yea, yea, "world pvp is dead" etc, but it still happens at times, and it's enjoyable. Kiting and escaping would be far easier though, which would suck. 10 seconds without damage and off you go. Flying mounts damn near ruined what little world PvP WoW had, no need to snuff out the last sliver of life by making them instant. It would also marginalize a number of class abilities related to movement and the effect they have on grinding speed.

I guess I just don't see the big deal. For plain travel, the cast time is a miniscule annoyance. For most the cases where you'd really love to have an instant cast mount, I think it would be detrimental to the game.

[The Ancient]

Originally Posted by Elerion

It would also marginalize a number of class abilities related to movement and the effect they have on grinding speed.

Those got marginalized when we got mounts at 30 too, but nobody with half a brain complained about that either. Before the fact though people always seem to complain about changes that would quite simply make the game enjoyable for what sometimes seems to be nothing but masochistic reasons.

[Thengel]

Originally Posted by Deathwing

Ok, so maybe the devs are a bit smarter than I gave them credit regarding feral itemization:

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Upcoming Feral changes

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

ARMOR
We are changing the way bear armor works so that bonus armor on items does not receive the bear armor multiplier. Specifically this means that trinkets, rings, necks and cloaks with bonus armor will not be multiplied by the bear bonus. The normal armor on leather will still be multiplied by this bonus. We are also going to remove bonus armor from Feral staves. You’ll get your bonus armor from the leather you acquire.

Examples:
1) A ring that grants 100 bonus armor will now grant a bear 100 armor (not ~470 armor).
2) Leather legs with 253 armor will still grant a bear ~1190 armor (not 253 armor).
3) A feral staff will now grant 0 armor.

We are making this change because armor is such a good stat for bears that it makes taking pieces with bonus armor a non-decision and we don’t want acquiring these pieces, which tend to not be common, to be so much of a barrier to a druid who wants to tank a raid.

This change will NOT be in effect when Lich King ships. We are letting you know this now so that you don’t go through heroic efforts to acquire items like the Badge of Tenacity, or Defender’s Code. Defender’s Code, with 850 armor, will still be a good trinket. But it won’t be an insanely good trinket for a bear.

We will adjust the bear armor modifiers so that your net mitigation does NOT go down with these changes. Let me repeat: this is not a nerf to Feral armor. It is a change to the amount of armor you get from gear with bonus armor.

MANA
We are adding an effect to a deep Feral talent (something like Primal Tenacity) to further reduce the cost of shapeshifting into cat or bear by 50%. This talent will stack with Natural Shapeshifter for a total cost reduction of 80%. PvP-focused druids can get both talents to shift easily and often despite, no longer having Int on gear at level 80.

PROTECTOR OF THE PACK
We are removing the group requirements from this talent. The new tooltip will say: “Increases your attack power by X and reduces the damage you take in Bear Form and Dire Bear Form by Y.” The values of X and Y themselves are not changing.

Again, these changes will NOT be in Nov 13 for Lich King’s launch. We will add them in a patch that will come out sometime before the major Ulduar content patch. We're letting you know now so that you can choose quest rewards and loot drops accordingly.

What does that leave? Bear hit box and swipe cone(these two go together and are kinda minor), avoidance scaling, AC cap/AC soft cap, and some sort of spell mitigation. Avoidance scaling and AC cap stuff are the only ones I'd really care about, spell mitigation I pretty much write off as "tank flavor".

On PVP Mana & Protector of the Pack (Mother Bear) - WHY couldn't they listen for the months of beta testers complaining about this shit instead of waiting until it was live, hearing MORE people complain, and then putting it in "some time after wotlk." I'll give you a hint, it's probably the same reason ret paladins went live in the shape they were in. There is no good reason.

On the armor change - Have to wonder what this new armor modifier will be, and how it will balance.

This change makes bear itemization even less interesting. Instead of deciding between armor, stam, or dodge, you now decide between stam or dodge. Yeah, armor was overvalued. Now it's just an afterthought, just how it is with warriors and paladins. The difference is they have many other stats to worry about. Bears have two. Bears still aren't going to want defense, block value, block rating, strength, etc. Instead of grabbing the highest AC trinket, you now grab the highest stam trinket, because there is nothing else.

[Pyros]

Originally Posted by The Ancient

Those got marginalized when we got mounts at 30 too, but nobody with half a brain complained about that either. Before the fact though people always seem to complain about changes that would quite simply make the game enjoyable for what sometimes seems to be nothing but masochistic reasons.

Mount at 30 didn't, specifically because they had a cast time still, so it still sucked compared to travel form, ghost wolf or aspect of the cheetah, unless travelling great distances.

They should make mounts castable while moving though. Retain a cast time that prevent you from mounting if mobs jump you or whatever the purpose of the bar is, but lets you optimize distance by actually moving during the cast. I believe their biggest issue though is, once you're mounted, it's quite hard to get dismounted by players means, so the easier it is to mount, the worse it ruins world pvp.

Who knows what their reason is, probably the same reason mobs 15levels under can daze/dismount you, and shit like that.

Good thing for wotlk, I'll have base movement speed(unholy aura), mount movement speed(crusader aura) and burst base movement speed(aspect of the pack). This trio should prove enjoyable for questing.

[Mageling]

I'm only going to QQ for one minute about the new patch.

Fuck neutering Ret into the ground. Losing almost 1/3 of my overall DPS and going completely OOM after 5 minutes without even using Consecration is crap. Against a standard target dummy with no other people attacking, Monday I was around 1500-1600 DPS. Last night I had to use Seal of Command and Judgement of Wisdom as well as Blessing of Wisdom just to keep up a decent amount of mana and was barely around 1k DPS.

When my shitty PvP geared and specced Frost Mage can pull 1300 DPS for ~6 minutes without potting, something is just a bit wrong. At least it makes it easy to decide which character to level first when Wrath comes out.

[Fadaar]

Paladins are completely awful to test against the target dummies. You need full raid buffs/debuffs to actually do testing that's worth a shit.

Edit: Forgot to mention that Righteous Vengeance ticks for 1 on the dummies as well, but works fine on mobs.

[IruleYcauseImSweet]

I second the ret comment.

We were gimped for years, allowed a few weeks of joy and now are off worse then before they patched us.

[Sharmai]

Well on my ret I'm still doing great DPS in PuG's. No longer am I hitting 30% but I am still getting 18% of total raid dps. That said its a pug so everyone usually sucks and anyone with a single EJ macro sticks out.

I did notice that my mana is getting drained to hell and back and on prince I went OOM before the end of phase 2. Even with a mana pot I went OOM at 5%. If a fight lasts longer then 2 minutes I'm going to be fairly useless in wotlk. Further our long term DPS needs to be increased a bit as someone using macros and an EJ dps cycle in a PuG shouldn't be barely staying ahead of the pack. They should be destroying the pack.

[Mageling]

Originally Posted by Fadaar

Paladins are completely awful to test against the target dummies. You need full raid buffs/debuffs to actually do testing that's worth a shit.

While I agree that they can be bad to test against target dummies, they DO give an idea of what playing a Pally in a small group or solo will be like, and they're absolutely shitty at the moment.

I did enjoy my couple weeks in the lime light, but I'll be damned if they will even be worth playing in Wrath.

[Zehn - Vhex]

While that math shows that retadins are in a bad shape (nerfs to SoW show just how much that was skewing parses prior to the nerfs) mana wise, as far as dps goes are you taking into account that RV damage doesn't get calculated properly on test dummies?

I don't much care for being that reliant on SA mana regen to make up for the nerfs. GC is in some delusional atmosphere said that DP is supposed to allow you to maintain a heavier rotation including consecrate + how + AoW procs when DP barely restores more mana then 1 consecrate takes.

It does put into light how "el oh el" their comment about how you should choose when to use DP and if they wanted mana regen to be higher they'd just build it into the class...and then they nerf jotw because they want you to use DP on cooldown and don't want it built into the class.

Though on a side note, PvP hasn't changed much. I'm still wtfpwning terribads while mages with arcane barage/slow are raping people left and right with absolutely no counter.

[Janx]

Originally Posted by Mageling

I'm only going to QQ for one minute about the new patch.

Fuck neutering Ret into the ground. Losing almost 1/3 of my overall DPS and going completely OOM after 5 minutes without even using Consecration is crap. Against a standard target dummy with no other people attacking, Monday I was around 1500-1600 DPS. Last night I had to use Seal of Command and Judgement of Wisdom as well as Blessing of Wisdom just to keep up a decent amount of mana and was barely around 1k DPS.

When my shitty PvP geared and specced Frost Mage can pull 1300 DPS for ~6 minutes without potting, something is just a bit wrong. At least it makes it easy to decide which character to level first when Wrath comes out.

Must be you. I ran a Gruuls yesterday and was top 5 dps (2nd highest melee dps under a mage and 2 hunters and a MUCH better geared enhance shaman) and still pulled 1400 dps and had zero mana issues. And I'm wearing mostly S2 pvp gear, blue rings and Jin'Rokh, so my gear is pretty sub par. Why do you even spec seal of command at this point?

I really wish they'd disconnect some of the paladins abilities from mana use since most have a pretty healthy cooldown already. DK's can go non stop balls to the walls without ever having to worry about not having something to cast. Cant remember the last time I heard a warrior complain about rage either, usually its "wtf else can I use to rage dump".
My biggest pain on my ret paladin is how badly my group/raidmates were hurt from JoW nerf. 25% chance to get 60mana ftw =/

As far as personal dps goes keep in mind that we'll be getting a mana return ability directly upon wotlk release (although personally, why not just bring JoW/Wise back up instead of just tacking on another damn ability to do the same thing).

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

"...while mages with arcane barage/slow are raping people left and right with absolutely no counter."

And this.

[Zerai]

Warriors can get a lot of dry spells. All luck with swings.

[Xequecal]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

While that math shows that retadins are in a bad shape (nerfs to SoW show just how much that was skewing parses prior to the nerfs) mana wise, as far as dps goes are you taking into account that RV damage doesn't get calculated properly on test dummies?

I don't much care for being that reliant on SA mana regen to make up for the nerfs. GC is in some delusional atmosphere said that DP is supposed to allow you to maintain a heavier rotation including consecrate + how + AoW procs when DP barely restores more mana then 1 consecrate takes.

It does put into light how "el oh el" their comment about how you should choose when to use DP and if they wanted mana regen to be higher they'd just build it into the class...and then they nerf jotw because they want you to use DP on cooldown and don't want it built into the class.

Though on a side note, PvP hasn't changed much. I'm still wtfpwning terribads while mages with arcane barage/slow are raping people left and right with absolutely no counter.

The nerfs didn't really affect PvE DPS. Ret does mediocre DPS now in raids, but it did mediocre DPS before the nerfs. You can spam Consecration with raid buffs and DP in addition to everything else.

Relatively speaking, Ret is actually in a very good place in PvE. Due to the fact that no DPS is even in remotely the same league as Hunters, non-Hunter DPS is ranked by their utility and Ret has the best utility period.

DPS-wise, a Hunter is worth 1.5 Rogues and over two Elemental Shaman. They also aren't limited by melee, and have infinite mana. The new scaling Volley with no CD is also now the best AE in the game, so you don't even need Mages/Warlocks for that shit anymore. They have no need for synergy buffs like casters do so the best way to make all Wrath raid content a fucking joke is to just stack as many Hunters in your raid as possible.