“Looking for a way to make a quick bit of gold? Be sure to check the leather section of your local Auction House. Sometimes you can purchase a lower level bit of leather, turn it into a higher level piece of leather and sell it for a profit.”

Submitted by: Manomotes of Hellscream

February 25

Dungeons & Raids

• Bastion of Twilight
  • Blackout will no longer hit players sent down to the Twilight Zone by either Valiona or Theralion.
  • Collapsing Twilight Portal should no longer close faster when a person uses it while on Heroic difficulty. It now has a set duration.
  • Devouring flame maximum damage has been reduced.
  • Theralion’s damage should now be more consistent with Valiona’s on 10-player Heroic difficulty.
  • Twilight Blast damage has been reduced on 10-player Heroic difficulty.
  • Twilight Protection now lasts 6 seconds, up from 3.
  • Players should now always receive the Twilight Protection buff when entering the Twilight Realm.
  • Twilight Sentries have slightly lower health on 10-player Heroic difficulty.
  • Twilight Zone damage has been lowered slightly.
  • Unstable Twilight’s search effect has been lowered to a 1-yard radius, down from 2.

PvP

• Players in Battle for Gilneas and Twin Peaks who are Neutral with the associated factions should no longer experience issues resurrecting at the appropriate graveyards.

The PTR does not exist solely for balance feedback. They provide crash reports, bug reports, having the patches simply live on a test environment with people actively playing helps us catch a great number of issues that no one would even need post about. Beyond that though the bug reports that are posted are extremely helpful, and overall the PTRs lead without a doubt to a more stable patch than it would have been were there no public test.

In direct answer to what you’re referring, unless there’s new content, the number of people on the PTR is really pretty low. Too low to pull reliable metrics to base balance changes on. Unless there’s new content to drive people to the PTR there generally just isn’t a sample size. Which is fine, because we can make changes after the PTR once the patch hits the live realms. Issuing hotfixes after a patch is by no means something new. We’ve used hotfixes for quite a long time, but since Cataclysm and the new community site, hotfix changes are front page news through the blogs. Which is awesome. Before we were throwing out pretty much the same amount of hotfixes we were after 4.0.6. Difference being we didn’t have a great way to tell anyone about them. So now hotfixes are very visible and it makes it seem like we’re going crazy with them, when really it’s just increased transparency into the changes we’re making.

Going back to your question, the PTR does many great things for the patches, and it should be expected that we’re not going to make balance changes based on forum posts alone. The designers don’t believe their own play experience is reason enough to make balance changes, although it can be one part of the puzzle, and the same goes for us reading about yours.

“In both normal and heroic dungeons you’ll find that some bosses are optional. In other words you don’t have to kill them to complete the instance. On the one hand, you just want to get your random done quickly so you can get your points and get on with life. On the other hand, there’s loot and more points to be had! These can be a point of contention in groups so for today’s tip, we recommend for you to take the initiative at the beginning of the instance. Ask if the group intends to do the optional bosses or not. Vote on it if you need to but make sure everyone agrees so there’s no disputing later when the group is getting tired and the instance is getting long.”

Submitted by: WoWVault

We’re making a number of hotfixes to address use of the Dungeon Finder and vote kick tools. The following hotfixes will require realm restarts to implement, which are likely to be next Tuesday’s weekly maintenance.

 

 

 

• Players who are outside a dungeon for more than a few minutes are now immediately able to be kicked.
• If queuing as a group with a tank or healer, and the tank or healer drops group (or is kicked) soon after joining, those that queued with them will also be removed from the dungeon.
• If three or more players group queue with each other it will require an additional vote for them to kick anyone they did not group queue with.
• If a group queue of 4 kicks the one person that they did not group queue with they will each receive a more severe penalty to their ability to initiate future kicks.
• If someone initiates a vote kick for someone they group queued with they will not incur a penalty to their ability to initiate future kicks.

With these changes we hope to reduce some undesirable behavior and annoyances, and encourage greater patience when using the Dungeon Finder. In addition, keep in mind that both initiating and agreeing to vote kick have always carried the same weight to your ability to kick in the future. It’s always best to save your votes for when it really counts to ensure your ability to kick is available when it does.

We’ll of course be watching how these changes work to improve these systems, and always appreciate your feedback.

As these and other hotfixes are implemented, they’ll be added to the hotfix blog – http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/2259389#blog

February 11 (Patch 4.0.6a)

General

 

• Players are no longer encountering errors when having their items bid on in the Auction House. The Auctions tab also updates appropriately reflecting the bid.

Classes

• Area-of-effect abilities such as Consecration, Efflorescence, Healing Rain, Holy Word: Sanctuary, Ring of Frost, and Smoke Bomb now function correctly when cast on any trapdoors (ala Cho’gall) or transports even while the caster is not standing on one of those same objects.
• Death Knights
  • Death and Decay no longer damages the death knight’s currently selected friendly target when it does damage to nearby target dummies.
• Druids
  • Starfall no longer exceeds 20 stars within its duration.
  • Frost Nova, Tranquility, War Stomp, and Starfire are all properly scaled when used by or on a druid in Tree of Life form. The previous temporary hotfix which removed the ability to use War Stomp while in Tree of Life form has been reverted.
• Hunters
  • Auto Shot was not firing while the hunter was moving under certain conditions. Auto Shot should now always function correctly while the hunter is moving.
  • Having a melee weapon equipped no longer causes the tooltips for Cobra Shot and Steady Shot to incorrectly display extra benefit from haste.
  • The cooldown for Master’s Call has been increased to 45 seconds, up from 35. In addition, it can now be dispelled.
  • The Warp Stalker ability Time Warp can no longer be used on paladins with the Divine Shield buff active.
• Mages
  • The Quad Core buff provided by the Sanctified Bloodmage 4-piece set bonus is now properly removed as soon as a spell is cast if the mage does not have 4 pieces of the set equipped.
• Paladins
  • Glyph of Dazing Shield correctly causes Avenger’s Shield to daze the target, and only allows Avenger’s Shield to trigger the dazed effect.
  • The area-of-effect attack of Hammer of the Righteous no longer has a chance to miss secondary targets when the primary attack hits the paladin’s target. If the primary attack of Hammer of the Righteous fails to hit the target due to miss/dodge/parry/block, no enemies will be affected by the area-of-effect attack. Rogues who are under Cloak of Shadows, however, are able to resist this damage.
  • The Warp Stalker (hunter pet) ability Time Warp can no longer be used on paladins with the Divine Shield buff active.
• Priests
  • Inner Focus can no longer be cast before the effect of its preceding spell completes (Inner Focus will only be applied to spells that are cast after it).
  • Sin and Punishment now works properly when two players of the same faction are fighting each other (including in Arenas). A string error may appear when the opponent is feared even though the talent functions correctly.
• Warlocks
  • All raid bosses are now properly immune to Suffering (Voidwalker taunt ability).

Dungeons & Raids

• Blackwing Descent
  • Drakeadon Mongrels can now be taunted.
  • The debuff from Pyreclaw’s Flame Buffet now only lasts 8 seconds.
  • The Golem Sentry’s Flash Bomb damage has been reduced in the 25-player version.
  • The health of Drakeadon Mongrels and Drakonid Slayers has been reduced in 10- and 25-player versions.
  • Nefarian’s Blazing Inferno damage and knockdown radius has been reduced to match the spell effect graphic.

Items

• Some Vicious Gladiator’s weapons (item level 359) incorrectly had their costs increased. This has been corrected. Two-hand and ranged weapons now cost 3400 Conquest Points, while one-hand and caster weapons now cost 2450 Conquest Points.
• All Vicious Gladiator’s weapons (item level 372) have been temporarily removed from the Glorious Conquest Quartermasters until the time is right to officially introduce them into Azerothian society.

PvP

• Many items incorrectly rendered unusable in rated Battlegrounds and Arenas have been made usable again.
• Battlegrounds
  • Battle for Gilneas
    • The banners at each capture point now take 8 seconds to capture, up from 5. Note that when the banners are neutral and have not yet been captured by either faction at the start of a battle, they will display the wrong location names (Mine says Farm, Waterworks says Blacksmith, and Lighthouse says Stables).

Races

• Gift of the Naaru now has a maximum limit to the amount healed when used on friendly NPCs with large amounts of health.Top Ten Weirdest Things You Could Find With Archaeology 

“When you reach max level, there seems to be very little reason to keep questing….or is there? At max level, all that experience that you would have gotten gets transformed into cold hard cash. And who doesn’t want more money? So get to it and get those zones completed!”