Carneus, Today at 5:33 AM

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Update - Just to make it clear, this is not a full list of 3.0.8 changes, the full patch notes and other undocumented changes are still available in previous posts.

• Patch 3.0.8 PTR Notes and Undocumented changes
• Patch 3.0.8 Build 9355 Undocumented changes and new PvP Rewards
• Patch 3.0.8 Enchantment changes
• Patch 3.0.8 Reputation and Item changes
• Patch 3.0.8 Small notes update

The official 3.0.8 PTR Patch notes have been updated. Some of the professions changes are very interesting (Mining now only takes one hit) and hundreds of bug fixes have been added, I guess you can stop saying that bugs aren't fixed. (Note: I'm pretty sure I mentioned some of these changes in one of the earlier update, but most of them are new)

General

• The Darkmoon Faire vendors have new items now that trade routes into Northrend have been better established.

Achievements

• The Perma-Peddle Achievement is no longer a part of the "Fool for Love" meta-achievement.

PvP

• PvP vehicles are no longer immune to most player spells, are immune to all CC and snares, but can be diseased, poisoned, and cursed.

Arenas

• Arena rating requirements for all Deadly Gladiator's Arena items have been reduced by 100.
• Ring of Valor: The small pillars will now rise immediately once the arena begins.

Battlegrounds
Lake Wintergrasp

• Wintergrasp PvP vehicles have had their health increased.
• Wintergrasp Tower cannons have had their health increased.
• The Wintergrasp Fortress Exterior walls have had their health increased.
• The Fortress Keep door now has had its health decreased.
• The Orb is now instantly clickable.

Strand of the Ancients

• The Strand of the Ancients Demolisher has had its health increased.
• The Strand of the Ancients tower cannon has had its health increased.

Death Knight (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• Horn of Winter now has no cost and grants 10 runic power in addition to its stat buff, but has a 20 second cooldown. (Old notes had 30 Seconds)
• Howling Blast: Cooldown removed.

Druid (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• Aquatic Form is now available from druid trainers at level 16.
• Moonglow: This talent now also benefits Nourish.
• Nourish: Wild Growth applied to a target now increases the healing done by this spell by 20% like other heal over time effects.
• Polearms: Now trainable by Druids.
• Starfall: Instead of canceling shapeshifting, now cancels on shapeshifting into an animal form.

Hunter (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• Arcane Shot: Mana cost lowered to match the cost of Steady Shot.
• Explosive Shot: Damage increased substantially, and additional scaling added to compensate Survival Hunters for the decrease in power of Steady Shot. No longer deals damage to secondary targets.
• Tranquilizing Shot has had its cooldown reduced to 6 seconds, down from 15.

Paladin (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• Avenging Wrath: Divine Shield, Divine Protection, and Avenging Wrath cannot be used within 30 seconds of each other anymore. Forbearance removed from Avenging Wrath. (Note: Not affecting Hand of Protection anymore)

Shaman (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• Mental Quickness and Static Shock have switched positions in the talent tree.
• Mental Quickness: Reduces the mana cost of instant cast Shaman spells by 2/4/6% and increases spell power by an amount equal to 10/20/30% of your attack power.
• Elemental Oath: In addition to existing effects, now increases spell damage done by the Shaman by 5/10% while Elemental Focus Clearcasting is active.
• Elemental Mastery: Redesigned. Now increases the Shaman's critical strike chance by 20% for 30 seconds. Cooldown remains at 3 minutes.

Warlock (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• Demon Armor and Demon Skin: Armor increased by approximately 120%.
• Demonic Circle: The teleport now clears all snare effects.

Professions
Alchemy

• The Cooldown on Transmute: Titanium has been reduced to 1 day, and the materials required have been simplified.
• Reduced the cooldown on Northrend Alchemy Research from 7 days to 3 days.
• The chance to discover a Northrend transmutation has been increased.
• Changed the Crazy Alchemist Potion so it always gives health and mana. It also grants the benefit of another random potion effect.
• Potion of Nightmares functionality changed. You can now move to interrupt the effect, and damage taken is no longer increased while you are under the effects of this potion.
• Added a new recipe for Ethereal Oil to grand master alchemy trainers.
• You can now discover a recipe for the Elixir of Water Walking with Northrend Alchemy Research.

Blacksmithing

• Increased the materials required to make several recipes that require cobalt.
• Added a new recipe for shield reinforcements that increases the block value of shields.

Cooking

• A recipe has been added for Kungaloosh. You can learn this recipe from an NPC in the Dalaran sewers once you have completed the quest 'The Taste Test' in Sholazar Basin.
• A recipe for the incredible Fish Feast can now be purchased for Dalaran Cooking Awards.
• Succulent Orca Stew and Shoveltusk Soup have been removed from the requirements for any cooking achievements as they will not be added to the game.
• A new recipe for Worg Tartare is now available for purchase with Dalaran Cooking Awards. This delicacy imbues hit rating and Stamina upon those brave enough to eat it.

Enchanting

• Many high level enchantment recipes have had the amount of Infinite Dust and Greater Cosmic Essence requirements significantly reduced, but with Dream Shards being added to them.
• Increased the Fire damage inflicted by the Icebreaker weapon enchantment.
• Reduced the armor penalty granted by the Berserking weapon enchantment.
• Added a new recipe to enchant bracers with Stamina. You can buy this recipe from Vanessa Sellers in Dalaran.
• Added a new recipe to enchant a weapon with Stamina. You can buy this recipe from Vanessa Sellers in Dalaran.

Engineering

• Reduced the cooldown and increased the duration of the effect for Hyperspeed Accelerators.
• Added a new recipe for epic plate spell power goggles.
• Weakness Spectralizers are now usable by druids.
• The Saronite Bomb recipe now creates a lot more bombs for the same material cost. While this breakthrough was discovered by goblins, all engineers can take advantage of it.
• Gnomish Lightning Generator has had its cast time and cooldown reduced.

Inscription

• Jessica Sellers, a new vendor in the Dalaran inscription shop, will sell most inscription inks for the cost of one Ink of the Sea. She also sells Snowfall Ink for multiple Inks of the Sea.
• A new recipe for Glyph of Arcane Blast has been added to Master and Grand Master Inscription trainers.
• Glyph of Death Decay has been changed to grant 20% additional damage instead of its current effect.
• Glyph of Invisibility duration has been increased.

Jewelcrafting

• Added a new recipe to convert a frozen orb and some green quality gems into several superior quality gems.
• Reduced the spell power granted by the use effect of "Figurine - Twilight Serpent", but reduced the cooldown significantly.

Leatherworking

• The epic leg armor patches now require a Frozen Orb in addition to their other materials.

Mining

• Mining veins and deposits no longer require multiple hits to receive all the ore. Players will receive around the same amount of ore, stone, and gems they would have received from multiple hits.

Tailoring

• Reduced the cloth required to make a Bolt of Imbued Frostweave.
• Simplified the materials required for Shining Spellthread and Azure Spellthread.
• Reduced the eternals required to make Brilliant Spellthread and Sapphire Spellthread, but increased the number of Iceweb Spider Silk.
• Greatly reduced the materials required to make the self-only tailoring leg enchants (Master's Spellthread and Sanctified Spellthread), but these recipes no longer grant any skill gains.
• Reduced the training cost for the normal Flying Carpet.
• Ebonweave now requires the tailor to be in the Maw of Neltharion in Dragonblight to create it.
• Spellweave now requires the tailor to be at the Azure Dragonshrine in Dragonblight to create it.

User Interface

• Chat frames can now be made "Noninteractive". When in this state, they will ignore all clicks.
• Various filters can now be applied to Achievements.
• A special UI for chatting with GMs has been added.

Items

• Deadly Gladiator's Refuge has had its 4 piece set bonus changed. It now reduces the cooldown of Swiftmend by 2 seconds.
• Dreamwalker Battlegear: The Rip bonus is now 4 seconds instead of 3.
• Dreamwalker's Regalia 2 piece bonus has been changed to reduce the mana cost of Lifebloom.

Bug Fixes
Death Knight (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• Blood Aura Will now always do the correct amount of healing, based on the actual damage taken of the target.
• Blood Caked Blade: Now does the proper damage amount when triggered by an off-hand weapon.
• Bloody Strikes: The tooltip for this talent now has correct values.
• Butchery: Will now always grant 20 runic power, regardless of the creature type killed.
• Chains of Ice: This ability is no longer able to land on death knights who have Anti-Magic Shell active.
• Crypt Fever: It is no longer possible to have a duration longer than the disease which caused it. Will also no longer incorrectly increase Death and Decay damage.
• Corpse Explosion: Fixed a bug where how much Runic Power the Death Knight had was affecting the damage done, and also increased the damage substantially.
• Dancing Rune Blade: The weapon no longer echoes the Raise Dead and Army of the Dead spells. In addition it will now more closely match the master?s damage and will cast Rune Strike when its master does.
• Death Chill: The effect from this talent will no longer be consumed if Killing Machine is active.
• Death Pact: This will no longer cause guards to attack the Death Knight.
• Desecration: will no longer break stealth.
• Ebon Plague: It is no longer possible to have a duration longer than the disease which caused it. It will no longer stack with Crypt Fever used by another character.
• Frost Fever: This talent now works properly when spell reflected.
• Gnaw: This ghoul ability is now able to be set on autocast.
• Icy Clutch: This will now be applied properly in all cases to targets that gain Frost Fever via the Pestilence ability.
• Mark of Blood now works correctly with periodic damage.
• Pestilence: The diseases will now spread correctly even when the damage from Pestilence kills the primary target.
• Raise Dead no longer puts you in combat when you cast this spell.
• Tundra Stalker (Rank 1) will now work properly on Death and Decay.
• Unholy Blight: Will no longer cause spell pushback.

Druid (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• Bear Form: This ability will now grant the correct attack power per level for levels 71-80.
• Entangling Roots: When determining if a new Entangling Roots should overwrite an old one, and will now calculate the correct damage modifiers for the creature type of the target.
• Maim: Tooltip adjusted to match the duration the ability has always had.
• Opening: Opening doors and objects should no longer cause shapeshifted forms to be cancelled.
• Rake: The initial damage from this ability is now properly considered bleed damage, and will be increased by Mangle and Trauma.
• Savage Fury - Mangle (Bear) damage was being increased by a higher percentage than intended. This has been fixed, and in result Mangle (Bear) should see roughly a 16% damage reduction. Also fixed a bug with Savage Fury where the Rake bleed effect was not being increased.
• Starfall will no longer cause nearby creatures to become hostile for no apparent reason while the Druid is affected by fear effects. In addition, it will no longer pick ambient creatures as targets.
• Survival Instincts: The extra health from this ability now persists in all forms, but the ability can only be activated in Cat Form, Bear Form, or Dire Bear Form. This prevents the health gain from occurring multiple times if constantly shapeshifting.
• Swiftmend: Riptide will no longer cause this ability to light up, and this ability will no longer sometimes consume Earthliving off the target.

Hunter (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• Aspects: All aspects now have a 1 second global cooldown. (Important: Please read this)
• Aspect of the Beast: Will now increase Hunter pet attack power by the correct amount.
• Aspect of the Viper: Beast Lore, Scare Beast, and Tame Beast will no longer trigger mana regeneration from this ability.
• Call of the Wild: Now only works on the pet and their own master.
• Carrion Feeder: No longer causes extremely large amounts of threat when the pet gains happiness.
• Chimera Shot: The secondary effects of this shot will now still be triggered even when the target dies from the ability's damage.
• Cower: Now longer shares a cooldown with Growl, but has its own separate cooldown.
• Dust Cloud: This pet ability will now be cast by the pet at the target instead of while they are moving toward the target.
• Marked for Death: Now works properly for Steady Shot and Glyph of Steady Shot.
• Master's Call: Now makes the pet immune to roots and snares for the duration as well, allowing the pet to break roots on the target even when the pet is rooted.
• Nether Shock: Pets will now correctly use this ability on all targets, not just mana users.
• Noxious Stings: When this talent triggers Wyvern Sting, the Wyvern Sting will now last the proper duration.
• Owl's Focus: Free abilities will no longer consume this effect.
• Prowl: This ability will no longer sometimes turns atuocast on by itself.
• Sniper Training: Now increases the damage of Aimed Shot by the correct amount.
• Spirit Strike: This pet ability's duration and period have both been reduced to 6 seconds.
• Spore Cloud: This ability will now work properly.
• Swipe: The tooltip has been adjusted.
• Tracking: Entering an arena no longer disables tracking types.
• Fixed a bug that allowed Viper's Sting to target death knights. They are now invalid targets.

Mage (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• Arcane Missiles: This spell now only has one chance to trigger Arcane Concentration.
• Brain Freeze: This talent can now be triggered by Blizzard.
• Burnout: This talent will now properly charge the mage additional mana when Living Bomb causes a critical strike.
• Fingers of Frost: This talent can now trigger properly from Frost Armor.
• Frost Nova: Will now properly overwrite the effect of Shattered Barrier and of Frostbite.
• Icy Veins: The spell pushback reduction from this talent now works on Frostfire Bolt.
• Improved Scorch: This talent no longer triggers effects that trigger on casting a spell.
• Incanter's Absorption: This talent will now work properly when the mage is sitting.
• Living Bomb: Now triggers Ignite when it causes a critical strike. In addition, the final explosion will now still occur even if the mage is affected by a crowd control effect.
• Molten Fury: This talent will now interact correctly with Torment the Weak.
• Precision: Frostfire Bolt will no longer receive double the intended benefit from this talent.
• Spell Power: Now affects the critical strike chance of Blizzard.

Paladin (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• Devotion aura: When mixing two different ranks of this ability in a party, players will no longer sometimes see a spurious second copy of the buff.
• Hand of Freedom: Now works properly against the froststorm Breath Hunter pet ability.
• Judgement of Blood, Judgement of Command, and Judgement of the Martyr will now gain the correct damage modifiers for the creature type of the target.
• Judgement of Light: The tooltip has been corrected to remove the implication that it only works on melee attacks.
• Judgment of the Wise: The amount of mana gained has been corrected to match the tooltip.
• Pure of Heart: This talent will no longer cause Curse of Agony to do more damage than intended.
• Repentance: Avenger's Shield no longer breaks Repentance, but unfortunately, Seal of Vengeance and Corruption damage will break it again. This will be corrected in a future patch.
• Righteous Vengeance: This talent will now calculate its damage correctly when the damage is absorbed. In addition this ability will no longer cause excessive damage when refreshed on targets with damage reduction effects active.
• Seal of Command: The tooltip has been adjusted to show the damage gained from spell power.
• Shield of Righteousness now properly shares a cooldown for both ranks.

Priest (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• Dispersion: This ability can no longer be cast while affected by Cyclone; doing so consumed the cooldown to no effect.
• Guardian Spirit: It is no longer possible for simultaneous killing blows to trigger the heal from this ability multiple times.
• Improved Holy Concentration: The tooltip has been rewritten to indicate that this talent reduces cast time rather than providing haste.
• Mind Flay - Fixed a bug with targeting where you would not deal damage if not facing the target while channeling. Also corrected an issue where the damage from this ability was slightly delayed.
• Prayer of Mending: Will now only benefit from the healing talents of the priest who cast the original spell.
• Rapture: This talent will now correctly return mana for Power Word: Shield based on the caster?s mana poll instead of the target's mana pool.
• Shadow Weaving: Shadow Word: Death: Will now only apply one copy of this buff per cast.
• Shadow Word: Pain now will gain the correct damage modifiers for the creature type of the target.
• Surge of Light: Prayer of Mending will no longer sometimes cause Surge of Light to trigger on Priests who do not have that talent.

Rogue (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• Envenom: The tooltip values have been corrected to be accurate.
• Fan of Knives: All poisons will now trigger correctly when used with this ability.
• Honor Among Thieves: The bug where stacking multiple rogues with this talent caused them all to gain additional combo points has been fixed. In addition, it no longer cancels eating and drinking if a party member gains a critical strike while it is active.
• Killing Spree: This ability no longer breaks stealth if it fails due to all targets being out of range.
• Mutilate: this ability will no longer give poisons on the off-hand weapon two chances to be triggered.
• Turn the Tables: This talent no longer generates threat when it triggers.

Shaman (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• Chain Heal: This spell will now give an invalid target error message if the primary target is a totem.
• Earth Shield: Now correctly uses the Shaman?s own spell critical strike chance to determine the chance of a critical heal.
• Elemental Shields was reducing flat physical damage, not a percentage. Now properly reduced by a percentage.
• Lava Lash - Fixed a bug which allowed you to use the ability even if you had a shield in offhand. Now requires a 1hand axe, fist or dagger to be able to be used.
• Fixed a bug where Thunderstorm (Elemental) was knocking back 15 yards, instead of 20. It should now roughly knockback the correct length of 20 yards.
• Magma Totem: Fixed a bug that capped the damage of this ability at too low of a level.
• Resistance Totems: Players will no longer see two copies of these buffs when two shamans cast the totems simultaneously.
• Spirit Walk: This Feral Spirit ability will now properly clear roots and snares from the Shaman master.
• Stoneclaw Totem: The tooltip has been revised to indicate the damage absorb shield also works on the Stoneclaw Totem itself.

Warlock (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• Corruption will now gain the correct damage modifiers for the creature type of the target.
• Create Healthstone: Attempting to create a healthstone when you already have one no longer consumes mana or triggers the cooldown of this ability.
• Demonic Circle: Teleport: the button for this ability will now darken when the Warlock is out of range of the Demonic Circle and will light up when the Warlock is in range.
• Demon Power Scaling: Spell power gained from spirit via the Fel Armor ability will now properly affect the scaling of spell power and attack power on summoned demons.
• Drain Mana: This spell will no longer cancel when the target?s mana poll is low or the caster?s mana poll is full. It also now generates a very small amount of threat instead of no threat.
• Everlasting Affliction: Will now calculate correct damage values for Corruption when it is refreshed in all cases.
• Haunt: Will now gain correct damage modifiers for the creature type of the target. In addition, this ability is now limited to a single target as intended. This also now works properly when refreshed on its current target.
• Mana Feed: This talent will no longer sometimes fire for warlocks who do not have the talent.
• Master Conjuror: Tooltip revised to indicate it does not increase the damage bonuses of Firestones or Spellstones.
• Metamorphosis: The bonus armor effect from this ability will now calculate properly and interact correctly with armor buffs and debuffs.
• Ritual of Doom: A Doomguard summoned with this spell will now scale properly from its master's stats.
• Shadow Embrace: This ability will now create a separate debuff stack for each Warlock with the talent, and each warlock will benefit properly from his or her own debuff.
• Shadow of Death: This ability will no longer cause tracking abilities to become inactive when the death knight becomes a ghoul.
• Soul Siphon: Will now gain the correct damage modifiers for the creature type of the target.
• Twisted Faith: This talent will no longer sometimes cause Shadow Word: Pain to fail due to a more powerful spell being in effect.
• Unstable Afflcition: Will now gain the correct damage modifiers for the creature type of the target.

Warrior (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• Damage Shield: Rank 1 of this ability now works properly.
• Heroic Throw no longer triggers the snare from Mage Frost Armor.

PvP

• The Wintergrasp Aura should now properly update in all instances, transferring the buff when the zone control changes.
• Arena: Dalaran Sewer: The Flush effect which pushes players out will now also remove the ability to use Demonic Circles summoned during the arena start time.

Items

• Idol of the Emerald Queen: This idol was providing greater healing than implied by its tooltip. It has been reduced to correct value.
• Glyph of Ambush: This glyph will now interact correctly with Initiative when Ambush is used outside of combat range.
• Glyph of Charge: The stun from Charge will now work properly when Charge is used with the extra range from this glyph.
• Glyph of Corpse Explosion: Additional explosions from this glyph will no longer consume Unholy Runes.
• Glyph of Rejuvenation: The heal from this glyph is now properly considered a periodic heal.
• Gronstalker Set: The Aspect of Viper bonus from this set has been changed to work correctly with the redesigned Aspect of the Viper.
• Mana Potions: Warriors and Death Knights now receive a correct error message when attempting to use mana potions.
• Scrolls: Buffs from scrolls can now only be overwritten by more powerful scrolls.
• Soul Preserver: This item will now interact correctly with Desperate Prayer, Lay on Hands, Riptide, and Wild Growth.

Carneus, Yesterday at 5:41 AM

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World of Warcraft is a haven for scammers. People are getting robbed from their items / gold / accounts all the time, sometimes with almost no way to prove it to Blizzard to get it back. The first update to help against GM impersonations was the addition of a small icon next to the name of the Gamemaster, it seems that Patch 3.0.8 will improve the security by introducing a new interface to let players communicate with Gamemasters.

When a player is being contacted by a Gamemaster, a new icon will blink at the top right of his screen:


Clicking it will open a new frame where the Gamemaster will be able to message you (the slightly bugged text is a result of a bug on my side):


With the recent rise in the number of compromised WoW accounts, it's always nice to see Blizzard trying to introduce new features to fight this. While we're waiting for this patch to be deployed on live servers, you can always use the following picture if you're not really sure about who you're talking to. (Yes, this is a slow news day)

Carneus, Yesterday at 5:40 AM

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Theorycrafting with PTR numbers
We pay attention to player-generated numbers, but you must admit that if we took all player-generated numbers as gospel that the game would end up in a pretty funky state.

Your build will nearly always be behind ours, even in beta and on the PTR. We get the benefit of seeing the combined effects of many changes at once, including bug fixes. To estimate the effect that changes will have, you have to do just that -- estimate. Some players can still generate excellent numbers, and others, whether through mailicious intent or just because they forgot to consider something, do not.

But if we are wrong, I have no problem admitting we're wrong. We were wrong about Elemental shamans -- they are lower than what we thought they would be. We were wrong about warlocks -- they are probably too fragile in PvP. If we nerf hunters too much, we will fix them in later patches. But we can't be so terrified of making mistakes that we don't make changes when we think they are warranted. (Source)

Paid character transfers blocked on some realms
The primary goal right now is to reduce the most severe queues on our realms. At its peak concurrency Dalaran saw over a 400 person queue last night. This isn't the highest queue across all US realms by any means. With that said, allowing transfers to the realm would have a greater negative impact on all players of Dalaran, than allowing Horde to transfer to Dalaran would have a positive impact.

At the largest gap last night between the Horde and Alliance populations of Dalaran, the Horde made up for roughly 40% of the total realm population to the Alliance's 60%. While faction balance is a concern for all realms, overall population and realm queues have the better part of our attention at the moment, particularly as is the case for Dalaran.

Transfers may be reopened to Dalaran if and when the realm is no longer experiencing exceptional wait times at peak hours every day. (Source)

Balancing realm population
The answer at this time is not to provide experience incentives for players to transfer. We are reviewing realm populations, wait times, and faction balances at the moment to determine what solutions will work best. We'll provide additional updates when they are available.

[...] We're looking to open up free transfers for a number of high-population PVP realms to low-population PVP realms as soon as the request goes through the appropriate people. We would also like to make a new PVE realm available and open it up for free transfers from a number of high-population PVE realms. Lastly, we're looking to open up free transfers to Gundrak from the high-population Oceanic PVP realms. (Source)

Hunter (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Aspects off the GCD
No, it's not over. We took them back off the GCD. (Source)

Hunters in 3.0.8 and 3.1
We talked about it, and Aspects on the GCD is not that big an issue for us. We don't think it's a huge balance problem either way. We can understand though why it feels like a nerf to not have the GCD now and to get it back in 3.0.8. So we can keep Aspects off the GCD. No harm done. (They will still have the 1 sec shared cooldown.)

The argument of why you can't just do too much damage until Ulduar is a silly one. Hunters are doing too much damage. Yes, some other specs are also doing too much damage, but we are reigning those in too.

Remember, our tests are not done with the PTR data. Our builds are more recent than that and have numbers, bug-fixes and data you haven't seen. We try and give you a heads up to major changes when we can, but we can't give you an accurate picture of the data with just words.

We understand the concern that Survival's damage is too high relative to other hunters. That may be the case on the PTR but it isn't the case for us. We have some different numbers for Explosive Shot than the PTR has. We understand the concerns about T.N.T.

[...] On the Aspects issue, we don't like taking things off of the GCD. There is a reason we have a GCD and it has everything to do with being a server-client based game. We tried to fix the problem with Aspects being difficult to manage by reducing the need to switch from a defensive aspect (Monkey) and an offensive aspect (Hawk). Enough people (and not just on this thread) said Viper would still be a problem, so we agreed in this case to take the Aspects off the GCD. This is a good example of feedback working. (Source)

Patch 3.0.8 pet changes
We are iterating on the pet abilities I mentioned earlier and we have new numbers for anyone out there who is still trying to theorycraft this. One of the reasons I don't always provide numbers is because we change them a lot.

Rank 6 Scorpid Poison - 23 base Nature damage per tick, ticks every 2 sec for 10 sec, 0.014 coefficient, 1 stack max, 10 sec cooldown
Rank 6 Rake - 57 base physical damage, plus 21 base damage per tick, ticks every 3 sec for 9 sec, 0.0175 coefficient
Rank 6 Spirit Strike - 57 base Arcane damage plus 57 additional damage after 6 sec. The initial hit can crit. 0.04 coefficient. 10 sec cooldown.

We realize gorillas are great for tanking and leveling and we'd like to get other Tenacity pets up there, but right now we are focuses on the raid dps pets since they seem to be of the most concern to the community. (Source)

Rogue's Dismantle
I just wanted to comment on this for any hunters who are new to being disarmed. Weapon chains affect your global disarm duration. They aren't tied to the weapon per se. An offhand weapon chain works on both weapons and your bow.

When disarmed, you lose abilities tied to that item and armor, but not other stats.

Priest (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Circle of Healing nerf and other talent trees
We do care and we do listen. But I think sometimes players don't listen to each other. There are plenty of players who say they understand CoH was overpowered (even if they disagree with our solution) and there are plenty of players who say they like healing on their priests and that their priests are the backbone of their raid. If you don't feel that way, that's cool, but you can't realistically expect us to only listen to you while ignoring them.

You can tell us what you don't like about the class and what your concerns are, and many of you have. We appreciate that feedback. But that doesn't mean we are going to make a whole lot of changes if we don't feel they are warranted. We're not asking you to design a class for us to go implement.

Saying a class is broken doesn't make it broken. You can say it's underpowered in specific areas if you feel that way, or even that you think the mechanics are clunky and don't play well together. That can be useful feedback. But you're not going to be able to convince us that any of the classes in the game are horribly broken. They just aren't. With the exception of the DK (which doesn't seem to be hurting at all) these classes have been around a long time and through a lot of encounters. They are pretty battle-tested by now.

We think Holy is a very strong healing tree, and we know there are cutting-edge guilds who agree with us. If you aren't in a very min-maxed guild like that, then the differences between classes should matter even less because you have so much power to improve your class' contribution just by learning all the nuances of the spells, the best gear to maximize them and how to coordinate with other healers.

Now there are some things we would like to do to all 3 priest trees. But I increasingly feel like it is necessary for me to add every time I say this that just because we have future plans for your class does not mean we think your class is currently broken and needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. (Source)

Rogue (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Mutilate rogues vs. other specs
As someone mentioned, Mutilate rogues seem great in PvP and pretty competitive in PvE (and will probably be spot on when some other outliers are brought down). We realize the other two rogue trees aren't keeping up and we definitely want to see them get there. We also want to make sure the rogue group buffs feel competitive. This is a touchy subject because so many classes will claim there is no reason to take them to a raid, or that their buffs are inferior to someone else's counterpart. There is a grain of truth to some of the latter claims, but there is also an awful lot of of hyperbole. (Source)

Shaman (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Shaman DPS
We are buffing Elemental shaman damage. There have been many posts about it. I strongly advise you not to play the game to see which class or spec gets the most posts. The closest correlation has to do with what we have been working on recently at work. It has nothing to do with who we think is the most broken or who we love the most or who writes the most eloquent posts. If anything I would just assume my posting is random and leave it at that.

EDIT: The thread mentioned Elemental, but I see the OP is Enhancement. My bad. We're not buffing Enhancement damage. It's pretty good. Once the wolf bugs are fixed (which they are next build) it should help Enhancement in PvP too. (Source)

Warlock (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Are the Warlock changes in patch 3.0.8 or 3.1 ?
There are changes in both. We will try and announce the 3.0.8 changes soon (tm). Those changes are mostly PvP survival considerations.

The PvP changes are not big sweeping changes but they should help. Depending on when the patch is you might be able to try them on the PTR.

Larger changes will wait for the Ulduar patch. Most of those are what we call quality-of-life issues. Cleaning up some talents that don't quite cut it and some of the spells that don't seem to have a clear role. Destro and Affliction dps look like they are pretty good right now. Demonology needs a little boost. (Source)

Carneus, Jan 6, 09 5:16 AM

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Patch 3.0.8 not going live today
The european server message was updated a few minutes ago with the following:

Weekly Maintenance, 07/01
This Wednesday there will be a live maintenance, i.e. rolling restarts of all realms between 05:00 and 07:00 CET. Each realm will receive a 15 minute notice prior to being restarted. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Carneus, Jan 6, 09 5:14 AM

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US Downtime - Extended maintenance

January 5, 2009, 4:20 PM PST
We will be performing maintenance for all realms on Tuesday, January 6th.  The downtime will begin at 3:00 AM PST and end at approximately 11:00 AM PST.

Is patch 3.0.8 going live today? We don't know yet and Blizzard didn't say about it, obviously the site will be updated as soon as possible if it's the case. (It wouldn't be impossible to see it, but there is still a lot of activity on PTR forums, just don't get your hopes too high)

• Patch 3.0.8 PTR Notes and Undocumented changes
• Patch 3.0.8 Build 9355 Undocumented changes and new PvP Rewards
• Patch 3.0.8 Enchantment changes
• Patch 3.0.8 Reputation and Item changes
• Patch 3.0.8 Small notes update

Patch 3.0.8 - New Ammo Icons ?
A few icons have been added in patch 3.0.8, 9 of them are for new ... ammos? We didn't see anything about that on 3.0.8 PTRs. I definitely won't jump to conclusions because there are thousands of way to use the icons but maybe we will see them on items introduced in Patch 3.1, which would be interesting now that Ghostcrawler said that hunters damage will be greatly changed in this patch. Again there is nothing official about this, and nothing unofficial either.