Patch / Hotfixes

[Fenblade]

copy+paste;

BWL:
- A second hotfix was applied last week to the Vaelastrasz encounter in Blackwing Lair. There were some unintended issues occurring with the Burning Adrenaline effect. It will now ignore line of sight, as was originally intended. Also, there was a bug that allowed it to be dispelled with use of invulnerability effects such as Divine Shield and Ice Block; this has been corrected. Burning Adrenaline should now be functioning as designed.

- Currently, there is an excessive amount of randomness in the Razorgore encounter. While the fight is chaotic and meant to have elements of randomness within it, there are occassions where random elements make the encounter harder than the intended difficulty. Specifically, we'll be putting a cap on the number of Dragonspawn adds that can spawn during the fight. Please note, there are other encounters in Blackwing that have a high element of randomness in them by design. But the excessive number of Dragonspawn which can appear in a particularly bad "roll" of a Razorgore fight needs to be limited somewhat more than it is now.
- Guilds will have one hour to attempt Vaelenstrasz per night. Currently, if he despawns on you after an hour, you have to wait until the instance resets to attempt him again. This was not intended and will be fixed.
- You won't be able to pull the drakes outside of the Lab anymore.
- Once a "pull" is defeated in Blackwing (for example the 6 dragonspawn pulls or large lab pulls) it will no longer respawn. None of the NPC's in Blackwing Lair are intended to respawn. Keep in mind, if you only kill part of a "pull" that the creatures in that spawn group will respawn if your raid wipes out. But once you successfully kill off a pull as a whole, it won't respawn.
- The Felguards from the Warlock pulls will aggro properly.
- The Felguards from the Warlock pulls will despawn in a more reasonable timeframe.

- When Razorgore the Untamed uses his Conflagration ability, he will no longer wipe the threat of the targeted player. This should allow guilds to much more reliably tank Razorgore even if their guild has been depleted from the previous phase of the encounter.
- Another issue was found with this patch that was causing Vaelastrasz the Corrupted to use his Burning Adrenaline too frequently against players attempting to tank him. The current casting rate was definitely not intended.
- When Broodlord Lashlayer uses his Knock Away ability, he will no longer completely wipe the threat of the ability's target. Only a portion of the player's threat will be lost. This should better allow tanks who are affected by the Knock Away to eventually regain aggro during the course of the fight, and not force guilds to bring an unbalanced numbers of Warriors to the encounter.

- Vaelastrasz's Burning Adrenaline spell will be cast less frequently on his primary aggro target. Random targets will still gain the BA spell at the same frequency as before.
- Fixed a bug that was causing Blackwing Warlocks to cast too many portals too frequently. As a result of the fix, there should be fewer Fel Guards to deal with.
- Reduced the duration of Firemaw's Flame Buffet from 60 seconds to 20 seconds.

- I wanted to take a momtent to communicate a known issue with Blackwing Lair. Currently, there are times when Chromaggus is not using his breath attacks. Obviously, this makes the encounter far easier than was intended. We're working on a fix for this and hope to have it live soon. I just wanted to inform everyone so there wasn't an outcry of "nerf!" when suddenly he starts breathing again... The breath attacks are one of the defining factors in Chromaggus's design.
- Kalahad, I understand and agree with you that the changes are quite significant. But Firemaw was never intended to be one of the most difficult encounters in the zone. His relative difficulty compared with other encounters in BWL was a little out of whack so we wanted to bring him back in line.
- I think there is a misunderstanding of how hotfixes work. You do not need to wait for a new Raid ID for changes to take place. Worst case, all you would need to do is zone out and wait 10-30 minutes for your current, open Blackwing Lair instance to close. Once you're certain it has closed (wait 30 minutes with no one inside it to be absolutely certain), zone back in and any hotfixes will be active. Hotfixes are in no way tied to Raid ID's. A hotfix is a change on the server. And in the case of an instance (such as Blackwing Lair) you simply need to restart the server by zoning out, letting it close and re-opening it.

General:
- Upon the release of the next content patch, the current debuff limit of eight is being increased to sixteen. This should allow players a little more freedom in using abilities which add debuffs, especially during encounters involving a raid boss. The interface display that only shows the last five debuffs used will still remain the same but may change in the future.
- All professions will be seeing small improvements over time. The next patch has a number of new recipes and patterns (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-mage&T=316539#Post316539) for all professions but Blizzard is not letting the cat out of the bag just yet.
- Also in the release of the next content patch, wearers of the Magister's Regalia, the Dreadmist Raiment, and the Vestments of the Devout will find that the agility on select pieces of the set will be removed, and other statistics which a caster would utilize boosted in its place. This change should make these armor sets more beneficial to its wearer.
- Following in the footsteps of World Events like the Darkmoon Faire, the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza is a grand new event set along the coasts of Stranglethorn Vale. Early in the day, friendly neighborhood goblins will visit Ironforge and Orgrimmar to inform aspiring anglers of the grand tournament and give instructions. At the appropriate time, the shout will ring out across Stranglethorn to bait your hooks and cast your lines! Will you be the master fisherman that gathers the necessary amount of tastyfish to win the grand prize? Can you reel in the right fish to receive some of famous Nat Pagle's fabulous fishing equipment? Will the Lucky Fishing Hat make its triumphant return onto the heads of anglers everywhere? You'll soon find out!
- Players who are found using a Sentry Totem to float in the air and attack targets in a manner where they can not properly attack back is considered an exploit of game mechanics. The development team is currently working on a solution, and until that time, we ask that players refrain from engaging in this behavior.
- Support Issues (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=1553438&p=1&tmp=1#post1553438)
- Rumor (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=4055618&tmp=1#post4055618) has it that in the future the effects of flasks will remain through death. This should make them more desirable to use considering the current market value.
- RaidID Lock-in, Explanation and Workaround (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-dungeons&t=106626&p=1&tmp=1#post106626)
- Zul'Gurub and Arathi Basin are 1.7.0 (next content patch). The patch is almost complete with a few minor hitches. Then it goes to QA and then the test server. After that it gets patched live. Ahn'Qiraj is 1.9.0 or later. It's a massive zone. 1.8.0 has some pretty cool stuff. We haven't announced any of that content yet but we'll try to get some information out soon.

Add-ons:
- ExtendedIgnore (http://www.curse-gaming.com/mod.php?addid=1813) is designed for every single person out there who's annoyed at the limit on the standard amount of people you can ignore provided by Blizzard. The functionality of ignoring a person should be broadly the same, though people you have ignored won't get a "[name] is ignoring you." message when they attempt to whisper you. Instead they will just be speaking into the wind.

[Bigshooter]

wow

[Mod]

How recent are the BWL fixes? Weren't these in when we attempted BWL this past week?

[Mirax]

What I really think is if Zul'Gurub is live on the Test server when that comes up again, we should schedule a night where we can go try it, just to fool around and not be caught completely off guard like we were with BWL.

[Zariel04]

BWL wasn't on the test servers. It's one of the reasons it was so buggy at release. It was also one of the reasons why many of the guilds had so much trouble with it at the beginning, no one knew what to expect, which is a good thing. I doubt they will put Zul'Gurub on the test server either.

BTW the extended ignore addon is bomb. Yay, no more yells in IF. Fuckers.

[Phegan]

ZG is going to be much easier than BWL its ment for 20-25 people not in MC so we should able to take it fairly easy, I think we shouldn't even worry to much about it, and maybe even take 1 day a week for it and focus more on BWL still, might benifit rogues who havent gotten alot of MC gear in BWL.

[Fenblade]

More BWL Hotfixes:
-Fixed a bug with Vaelanstrasz's Burning Adrenaline spell. Guilds will find that secondary tanks are hit with the spell less frequently now.
-Fixed a bug with the Shadow of Ebonroc spell. The spell was working on the closest target rather than the current target. The spell will now work correctly.
-Firemaw, Ebonroc and Flamegor are no longer immune to Taunt. The three drakes were previously more difficult than was intended for the dungeon. With the fix of Shadow of Ebonroc, the taunt immunity needed to be removed. The drakes were serving as gateway mobs and this is not our intention. Mobs such as Razorgore, Vaelanstrasz, Chromaggus and Nefarian are where the true difficulty of the dungeon can be found.
-Chromaggus's breath attacks should now work correctly. If you find that Chromaggus is not using his breath attacks, please let us know.

Known bug:
-It's been reported that the Nefarian encounter can only be attempted once per week. This is a bug we are currently investigating. We have a fix in place for 1.7.0 that will allow the encounter to be attempted once per day. We're looking for a way to hotfix this as well but currently do not have a feasible solution. For patch 1.8.0 we will be introducing new technology that will allow players to attempt the encounter as much as they like until they get it to "PHase Two" at which point they will have to wait until the next day for their next attempt.



Blessing of Salvation blue post:
Blessing of Salvation is an interesting spell. It's completely and totally meaningless in PvP. It's completely useless for a soloing Paladin. It's a minor (at best) imrprovement in a 5-man, PvE encounter.

For a raid encounter, where Aggro management can determine the outcome of a fight, it's an extremely powerful and advantageous spell.

As more and more raid encounters enter the game, and as aggro management plays a larger role in these encounters, it's obvious that spells like Blessing of Salvation need to be evaluated.

Now, the core of the controversy surrounding this spell is, of course, that the Alliance has it and the Horde does not. Let me take a moment to state that we do *NOT* expect all encounters to play the same for Horde and Alliance. In a perfect world, an *occassional* encounter will be easier (or more difficult) depending on whether or not you are Horde or Alliance. A good example of this is Magmadar. Some might argue that Magmadar is easier for the Alliance because of Fear Ward. Some might argue that he's easier for the Horde because of WotF. At the end of the day, both Horde and Alliance can beat the encounter. And it's not a drastic difference in difficulty. It is ok that sometimes the two sides are different -- if this wasn't ok, Starcraft wouldn't exist =P

But Blessing of Salvation is a different case. The spell translates through to any encounter where Taunt does not work (and to some degree, even encounters where Taunt does work).

We are aware that Blessing of Salvation is causing a sense of imbalance between the two factions. The recent addition of Taunt to the drakes in Blackwing Lair was *NOT* a solution for this problem. The Drakes needed Taunt (with the exception of Flamegor) because they have inherent anti-tank abilities to begin with.

But in the long run, we are analyzing Blessing of Salvation's overall impact on the Raid Game. At this point, the raid and dungeon designers are consulting directly with the Class Spells & Abilities team to determine what the next step will be. We will evaluate if BoS is too powerful or too weak. We will evaluate if the Horde has adequate aggro management solutions to match that of the Alliance. But it will take some time before any change is made. I will keep you informed of any developments that arise.

Our goal is not to favor Horde or Alliance here. Our goal is to provide our players with a fun experience, regardless of what side they chose at the Character Create Screen. Equally, our goal is to keep our raid encounters as fun and challenging as possible.



Other stuff:
-Razorgore encounter caps at 40 mobs, with 15 max dragonkin.
-5 instance limit per hour hotfix. Meaning, you can't reset an instance more than 5 times per hour or you will be locked out of ALL instances with ALL the characters on your account.
-DM chests have been removed in a hotfix due to an exploit, returning next patch.

[Fenblade]

More importantly... Ragnaros and Spellbinder fire buff (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=4437659&p=1&tmp=1#post4437659);

As far as I know, this is a legitimate use of the game mechanics.

Wish they'd give a definite answer on this.

[Xann]

ima be pissed if they nerf salvation.

[Balthor]

That 5 instance limit per hour really sucks >< no more farming Dark Iron ore for me if I don't want to get locked out of all instances it looks like. The fucking farmers and exploiters strike again!

[Serenity]

no more farming Dark Iron ore for me if I don't want to get locked out of all instances it looks like.


The fucking farmers and exploiters strike again!


/giggle