The Public Test Realm patch notes have been updated on the official American and European World of Warcraft websites. Some of the information we provided earlier is now official.
See below for the changes! We're also listing other misc information such as Blizzard chart for class representation in arenas and more.
In Memoriam: Gary Gygax
Blizzard Entertainment would like to dedicate the patch in memory of Gary Gygax. His work on D&D was an inspiration to us in many ways and helped spark our passion for creating games of our own. As avid D&D players and fellow game developers, we were all saddened by the news of his passing; we feel we’ve lost a true adventuring companion. Thanks for everything and farewell, Gary. You will be missed.
Global Arena Tournament
Players will now be able to create level-70 characters with epic equipment and compete on special tournament realms in a new global arena tournament. For more information, details and entry requirements, please visit the official tournament pages.
Class Changes
Druids
- Swipe: This ability will no longer strike any secondary targets which are under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. i.e. Polymorph, Sap, etc.
Mages
- Icy Veins no longer increases the chance your chilling effects will Freeze the target, but now increases the chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while casting any spell by 100%.
Paladins
- Avenger’s Shield: This ability will no longer jump to secondary targets which are under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. I.e. Polymorph, Sap, etc.
- Crusader Strike: This ability will no longer refresh the Healing Way buff from the Shaman talent.
- Sense Undead - Now persists after death.
Priests
- Mass Dispel now affects a maximum of 10 targets, increased from 5.
Shamans
- Flametongue Weapon: Having different ranks of this enchantment cast on two different weapons will no longer cause the enchantments to trigger multiple times per swing.
- Toughness will now also reduce the duration of movement slowing effects on you by 10/20/30/40/50%. (wording changed)
- (removed) Flametongue Weapon damage effects for rank 3 and above now also reduce healing done to the target by 50% and lasts 5 seconds.
- (removed) Flametongue Totem damage effects now also reduce healing done to the target by 50% and lasts 5 seconds.
Warlocks
- Felguard Cleave: This ability will no longer strike any secondary target which is under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. ie. Polymorph, Sap, etc.
- Sense Demons now persists after death.
- (removed) Life Tap: This spell now has only 3 ranks. Each now costs a fixed percentage of maximum health to cast, and grants the same fixed percentage of maximum mana: Rank 1 is 5%, Rank 2 is 12%, and Rank 3 is 20%.
Warriors
- Cleave: This ability will no longer strike any secondary target which is under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. i.e. Polymorph, Sap, etc.
Professions
- Removed the level requirement from the expert fishing book, The Bass and You.
- A new jewelcrafting recipe has been added to transform many green quality gems into a single random blue quality gem. This recipe is available from grandmaster jewelcrafting trainers.
Quests
- The daily quest Escape from Skettis has had its reward tuned down.
Items
- Justicar Raiment: The 2 piece bonus will now always give the correct amount of bonus healing to the Judgement Light effect.
- Masterwork Stormhammer: The Chain Lightning cast by this item will no longer jump to secondary targets which are under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. i.e. Polymorph, Sap, etc.
- Thunderstrike: The Chain Lightning cast by this item will no longer jump to secondary targets which are under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. i.e. Polymorph, Sap, etc.
World Environment
- Critters: Ambient level 1 creatures will no longer be picked as subsequent targets by chaining spells and abilities.
- Doomwalker: This creature will no longer sometimes cause a player’s Darkmoon Card: Vengeance to trigger and put the player in combat with the Doomwalker.
Bug Fixes
- (removed) Mobs no longer regenerate health during the stun effect from the Goblin Rocket Launcher.
Blizzard chart for class representation in arenas
Kalgan confirmed that the removal of the lifetap nerf was intentional, he also shared a chart that explains how Blizzard is analyzing class representation in arena. (src)
No other warlock nerfs are planned for 2.4. One of the things we look at is class representation in arenas (although normalized for class popularity). In this particular chart, a value of 100% means the class is represented as we'd expect, a value over 100% means the class is represented that much more often than we'd expect, a value below 100% means they're represented less than we'd want (obviously this chart doesn't include a spec breakdown in any way).
That chart is set at 2200+ rating:
2v2 3v3 5v5
- Druid 276.0% 184.0% 80.5%
- Hunter 43.0% 50.2% 43.0%
- Mage 8.7% 96.0% 96.0%
- Paladin 19.7% 29.5% 147.4%
- Priest 113.3% 164.8% 185.4%
- Shaman 37.8% 50.4% 138.6%
- Rogue 144.2% 175.1% 61.8%
- Warlock 149.2% 93.2% 111.9%
- Warrior 130.4% 90.7% 79.3%
Locks are doing pretty well overall, but what had us worried was that it appeared to us a month ago or so as though warlocks were on an uptrend. However, the evidence is strong that that trend is reversing, which means significant nerfs aren't really what we want right now (we really don't know where those numbers will settle down).
Here's 1850
- Druid 184.0% 138.0% 92.0%
- Hunter 50.2% 50.2% 50.2%
- Mage 61.1% 87.3% 87.3%
- Paladin 68.8% 88.4% 137.6%
- Priest 133.9% 133.9% 154.5%
- Shaman 75.6% 88.2% 138.6%
- Rogue 154.5% 154.5% 82.4%
- Warlock 121.2% 102.5% 102.5%
- Warrior 90.7% 85.0% 85.0%
Daily Blue -- Public Test Realm
Sunwell Plateau closed (again)
We discovered some additional issues with the Lady Sacrolash and Grand Warlock Alythess encounter, and are taking the zone down for now.
New Vendors on the TTR
We've added vendors in a number of new starting areas on the TTR, and plan to add more in the next patch. Until all the vendors have been added you may have to travel by foot from your starting location to another to use the vendors. We apologize for this inconvenience.
Focused Testing, Alterac Valley
Numerous changes were made to the Alterac Valley Battleground on 2.4 and we would like to gather some feedback on these changes. The AV battleground is currently available for players on the PTR. Please take the time to check it out and post any feedback about the changes here in this thread.
TTR, Random Spawning and Additional Vendors
We are currently in the process of creating a lot more starting locations to ease congestion for the vendors. As a part of these new starting locations, we are also currently testing random spawning for newly created characters, which should evenly spread the population throughout all vendor locations. If you create a new character now and log into the Arena Tournament Test Realm it is possible to load into an incorrect location with no NPCs. This will only happen while we test random spawning and before all new vendor locations are in place. In the meantime, you will find a list of all current vendor locations.
Current list of Vendor locations (subject to change)
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