The glorious fount of arcane energy known as the Sunwell empowered the high elves for millennia, until the death knightArthas laid siege to the elven kingdom and corrupted its sacred energies. Seeing no other alternative, a band of survivors led by Prince Kael'thas destroyed the ancient fount. Over time the surviving elves fell prey to a crippling magical withdrawal.
Now, promising salvation for his people, Kael'thas has returned. Soon the Sunwell will shine once again, but whether the sacred fount will usher in deliverance or destruction remains to be seen.
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.
Combat Log Improvements
The combat log has undergone improvements that allow more robust combat text filtering including the ability to define custom colors for enemies and friends, as well as combat text filtering for self and others.
Global Arena Tournament
Players will 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.
The combined forces of Shattrath have launched an attack on the Isle of Quel'Danas, to confront Kael'thas and the Legion at the Sunwell and surrounding areas. Players will now be able to gain reputation with the Shattered Sun Offensive and participate in a new set of daily quests.
Characters will now retain talented spell ranks so when they retalent they do not have to relearn the spells from trainers.
Spell Haste: Spell haste now reduces the global cooldown on spells, down to a minimum of 1 second. This change does not apply to melee and ranged abilities.
Item Cast Spells: Many spells cast by items were being cast as if the caster were the same level as the item. Most of those will now be cast at the player's level, giving them a reasonable chance to miss, be dispelled, or be resisted.
Resilience: Now reduces the magnitude of mana draining effects by the same amount that it reduces critical strike damage. The Tooltip has been revised to reflect this.
Spirit-Based Mana Regeneration: This system has been adjusted so that as your intellect rises, you will regenerate more mana per point of spirit.
Weapon Skill: Points will be gained faster in weapon skills for levels 1 through 59.
Insect Swarm: Casting lower ranks of this spell is now properly penalized like other healing and damage effects.
Lacerate: This ability now deals additional damage based on the attack power of the Druid.
Lifebloom: The bonus coefficient on the final bloom effect has been reduced by 20%. This spell will no longer cause error messages when interacting with Spellsteal or while the Druid is under the effects of Mind Control.
Mangle (Bear) now properly triggers a 1.5 second global cooldown, increased from 1.0 second.
Many shapeshift form tooltips have been updated to be consistent with each other.
Natural Perfection: This ability will no longer be triggered by taking critical strikes while sitting. In addition, it is now affected by the Subtlety talent and reduces damage by 2/3/4%, down from 1/3/5%.
Nurturing Instinct increases your healing spells by up to 50/100% of your Agility, and increases healing done to you by 10/20% while in Cat form.
Regrowth: The mana cost of this spell has been reduced by approximately 20%.
When a Druid in cat form casts Pounce it will now properly animate.
Hunters
Equipping a thrown weapon while in the middle of an Auto-Shot will no longer cause animation issues.
Casting Flare while in any way not visible, will no longer cause your flare to be invisible to other players.
Improved Blink: This talent no longer reduces the mana cost of Blink. Instead, it increases the chance for all attacks to miss the Mage by 25% for 2/4 sec after Blink is cast.
Using low ranks of Fire Ward and Frost Ward spell will now be penalized the same way healing spells are penalized.
Frostbite: When a frost spell is reflected back at a Mage, it is now possible for the Mage to suffer from the Frostbite effect.
Ice Barrier: Using low ranks of this spell will now be penalized the same way healing spells are penalized.
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% while active.
Mana Shield: This spell will now get a percentage of the Mage's bonus to spell damage as an additional effect.
New Talent: Molten Shields will cause your Fire Ward to have a 10/20% chance to reflect Fire spells while active. In addition, your Molten Armor has a 50/100% chance to affect ranged and spell attacks.
Permafrost: This talent will now correctly increase the movement slowing effect of frost Armor instead of the attack speed slowing effect.
Spellsteal will no longer overwrite a longer duration buff.
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.
Illumination: The mana energize from this talent no longer has a chance to set off other triggered effects.
Holy Shock: The healing, damage, and mana cost of this spell have all been increased.
Judgement of the Crusader: It is no longer possible to have icons for two different ranks of Judgment of the Crusader appear at the same time when judged by multiple Paladins.
Judgement of Wisdom: Some abilities (such as Frostbolt) were not triggering the mana energize effect from this spell. This has now been fixed.
Resistance Auras: It is no longer possible for two Paladins in the same party to make it appear that players have two of the same resistance aura active.
Righteous Defense: This spell will now always be castable on friendly npcs.
Seal of Blood: This ability will no longer cause spell pushback for the Paladin with this seal active.
Turn Undead(Rank 3):This spell has been reworked and has been renamed to “Turn Evil”. It will now work on Demons in addition to Undead. Turn Evil is subject to diminishing returns, and lasts 10 seconds in PvP.
Priests
Chastise no longer disorients the target, but now is instant cast and roots the target for 2 seconds.
Mass Dispel now affects a maximum of 10 targets, increased from 5.
Power Infusion: Infuses the target with power, increasing their spell haste by 20% and reducing the mana cost of all spells by 20%. Lasts for 15 seconds. This will not stack with other haste effects, such as Heroism, Bloodlust, or Icy Veins.
Power Word: Shield: Using low ranks of this spell will now be penalized the same way healing spells are penalized.
Prayer of Mending: This spell will now fade from players who leave or enter an instance, change continents, or exit the game.
Reflective Shield: The reflective damage from this talent no longer breaks crowd control effects which break on taking damage.
Shadowguard: No longer consumes the charge of Inner Focus when triggered.
Silent Resolve: This talent now affects Surge of Light, Power Infusion, Inspiration, Spirit Tap, Blackout, Levitate, Shackle Undead, Touch of Weakness, Hex of Weakness, and Symbol of Hope.
Touch of Weakness: No longer consumes the charge of Inner Focus when triggered. It will also function properly even when the Priest with Touch of Weakness on is silenced or stunned.
Vampiric Touch: Casting lower ranks of this spell is now properly penalized like other healing and damage effects.
Rogues
Abilities that can be used while stealthed, without breaking stealth, can now be cast without breaking Vanish when used at the same time.
Cheat Death: A combat log message will now show when this ability activates and now has an animation. It will now almost always be accurate in displaying the amount of damage done to a rogue when under the effects of Cheat Death.
Puncturing Wounds increases your critical strike chance with Backstab by 10/20/30%, and the critical strike chance with your Mutilate ability by 5/10/15%.
Improved Sprint: This ability will now always remove Entangling Roots.
Sap mechanic changed from "Incapacitate" to "Sap". This will allow more humanoids that were previously immune to Sap to be vulnerable to Sap, but still immune to Gouge. Note that anything that removed Sap previously will still remove Sap after the change.
Vanish: This ability will no longer sometimes cause the UI to display Shadowmeld as active when it has been cancelled.
Shaman
Call of Thunder: (Rank 5) now gives 5% critical strike chance, down from 6%.
Earth Shield: Mana cost reduced roughly in half, and charges reduced from 10 to 6.
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.
Ghost Wolf: Cast time reduced to 2 seconds, down from 3.
The Global Cooldown of all Totems has been reduced to 1 seconds, down from 1.5 seconds.
Healing Grace: This talent now reduces the chance your spells will be dispelled by 10/20/30%. The resistance to being dispelled modifier from this talent now applies correctly to Water Breathing.
Rockbiter Weapon: Tooltip and error messages have been adjusted slightly.
Shamanistic Rage is now a Physical ability instead of a Magic spell, and thus is no longer dispellable. It now reduces all damage taken by 30% and gives your successful melee attacks a chance to regenerate mana equal to 30% of your attack power. This lasts for 15 seconds with a 2 minute cooldown.
Demonic Knowledge: This buff will no longer remain on enslaved demons when Enslave Demon is removed. It will now increase your spell damage by an amount equal to 4/8/12%, down from 5/10/15%.
Shadow Ward: Using low ranks of this spell will now be penalized the same way healing spells are penalized.
Warriors
Endless Rage will now give the correct amount of rage as intended from damage dealt by a Warrior.
Improved Hamstring (Arms) effect is now subject to diminishing returns when used in PvP.
Stances: It is no longer possible to accidentally change into a stance you are already in via macros (resulting in a global cooldown and loss of rage).
Whirlwind: Critical strikes with the off-hand weapon from this ability can now trigger Flurry and Rampage.
Flurry will properly refresh if a crit occurs with 1 charge left.
PvP
Diminishing returns on honor for kills is being eliminated.
Honor will now be instantly calculated, and available for player use.
Players that have the resurrection sickness debuff will be worth no honor.
Added new PvP daily quests that send players to Halaa and the Spirit Towers of the Bone Wastes. These quests are available for Alliance and Horde at their respective local quest hubs.
Arenas
Personal Rating: The amount a player’s personal rating can climb above his or her team’s rating is now limited.
The benefits of drinking out of combat have been delayed while in the Arena. It will now take four seconds before the full benefit of the mana regeneration will come into effect.
Queue times for arena matches have been reduced. Players will now be able to enter matches faster than previously.
Shadow Sight now increases damage taken by 5% rather than dealing damage over time. Duration has been reduced from 21 seconds to 15 seconds.
Players feared outside of the Arena (through the world or outside the arena walls) will now be teleported back to the center of the arena map.
Battlegrounds
If a player dies 50 times or more in a battleground, they will no longer be worth honor for the remainder of that battle.
When you first enter a battleground, messages about other players joining the battleground will be linked together for the first minute. You will see a message in AV like "28 players joined" rather than a line for each player that joined. After the first minute, it will work as it always has. In addition, all of the messages about other players leaving the battleground and getting marks of honor once the battleground is complete have been removed.
Battleground Rune Buffs: Speed, Restoration, and Berserking buffs received from battleground runes will no longer cause Stealth or Prowl to break.
Alterac Valley
Captain Balinda Stonehearth can no longer be interrupted, silenced, or have her spells slowed. In addition, her water elemental cannot be banished, and does increased damage.
When both flags are held, the flag carriers will receive 50% increased damage done to them after approximately 10 minutes and 100% increased damage after approximately 15 minutes.
Flag carriers can now be tracked 45 seconds after picking up the flag.
[Broiled Bloodfin] now increases resistances to all schools of magic instead of increasing Stamina and Spirit.
New recipes, [Charred Bear Kabobs] and [Juicy Bear Burgers], can be purchased from either Bale or Malygen in Felwood. These recipes requires 250 skill to learn, and are created from meat found on level 48-56 bears. This will aid players in leveling up their cooking skill to 300 without fishing.
The stun caused by engineering Bombs and Grenades is now considered an Incapacitate effect and uses the appropriate Incapacitate diminishing returns. Bomb and Grenades can now inflict damage to targets immune to Stun and Incapacitate effects.
A new jewelcrafting recipe has been added to transform 3 of each color of green quality gems into a single random blue quality gem. This recipe is available from grandmaster jewelcrafting trainers.
Increased the skill up potential for most smelting recipes.
Quests
New Daily Dungeon quests for both the heroic and non-heroic five-person Magisters' Terrace dungeon at the Sunwell.
Players can now turn in one of each battleground mark for an honor reward. The questgivers for this turn-in are the Horde Warbringer and the Alliance Brigadier General and can be found near the battlemasters in the capital cities.
Dungeon and Group Quest Experience: The amount of experience awarded for dungeon and 5-person group quests in Outland has been increased in almost all cases.
The number of elite Shadowsworn Drakonid patrollers on the Ata'mal Terrace has been cut in half. Most of the remainder have had their patrol paths lengthened.
Elemental creatures are no longer explicitly immune to poison and disease effects. Elementals with nature school immunities will still be immune to nature-based poisons, however.
Gems obtained through Heroic difficulty instances are no longer Unique-Equipped.
Loot dropped by Doomlord Kazzak and Doomwalker has been changed to Bind on Equip. In addition, the cash dropped by these bosses has been significantly increased.
The Human Illusion effect will now always be removed properly when a player leaves the instance.
Durnholde Lookouts no longer spawn in the Heroic version of the instance. The placement of creatures around Durnholde Keep in Heroic mode is now identical to that of Normal mode.
Hellfire Citadel: Magtheridon's Lair
Many gameplay elements of the encounters in Magtheridon's Lair have been changed to decrease their overall complexity and difficulty.
Karazhan
Players will no longer need the [Master’s Key] to enter Karazhan. The gates to Karazhan will still require the Master's Key to be unlocked.
Tempest Keep: The Eye
The Vapor Clouds in the Kael'thas encounter are significantly easier to see.
Crystalforge Raiment: The two-piece set bonus will now work properly. Additionally, the four piece bonus will now only work on the next Holy Light cast, as intended.
Cyclone Regalia: Trade skills will no longer consume the Energized effect.
[Darkmoon Card: Madness]: The buffs from this item will no longer interrupt casting and channeling.
[Deadman's Hand]: This item's effect now works while the victim is sitting. In addition, its effect is now properly considered a root for purposes of being dispelled or removed.
[Idol of the Raven Goddess]: The bonus healing, critical strike rating, and spell critical strike rating from this item have been increased. In addition, it no longer sometimes fails to apply the healing bonus.
[Libram of Mending]: The mana regeneration buff has had its duration increased. The name of the buff granted by this item changed to Grace of the Naaru to avoid having the same name as the Light's Grace talent.
[Masquerade Gown]: The spirit bonus from this item will now properly trigger all benefits from the Tree of Life talent.
[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.
[Mojo]: A pvp-flagged player can no longer kiss Mojo and cause non-flagged players to become flagged.
[Noggenfogger Elixir]: It is no longer possible using this item to keep the Old Hillsbrad human illusion outside of the instance.
Paladin Healer Gladiator Sets: The set bonus changing Hammer of Justice cooldown has been changed to a set bonus increasing the amount healed by Holy Shock.
[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.
The Interface Options screen has been completely redesigned. AddOns that interact with the Interface Options screen will need to be updated.
Players will now be able to inspect other players via their chat link. (Must still be in range)
Players may now inspect players of the opposing faction while they are not flagged for PvP.
Combat Log Improvements
New tabs are available for sorting combat messages.
ctrl-right clicking functionality has been added for individual information sorting
Colors may now be assigned for friends and enemies
The WoWCombatLog.txt file format has been changed to make it easier for programs to read.
The ability to chat-link player spells and talents.
Cast sequences work with slot numbers again.
GM messages now appear with a Blizzard icon near their name.
You can now declare war on a faction in the reputation UI while you are in combat.
Spell haste and Armor Penetration will now display on the character sheet. (Armor Penetration displays in the hit rating section). Spell Penetration now displays under the spell hit section.
Weapon enchants are now shown at the character selection screen.
The friends list now has a notes field per friend. Click on the note icon to add a note for a particular friend.
There is now a UI option to display free bag space. When turned on, your backpack will display the total number of free spaces available in all your bags.
You can now link quests into the chat log by Shift-Clicking on the quest name in the quest log.
Merchants now display how many pages of merchandise they sell (Page 1 of 2).
Guild Bank Changes
Ranks can now be set to allow withdraw of funds or allow repair with funds or both.
When purchasing a bank tab, it takes money out of the guild bank before it takes your personal money. This is logged as well.
Each Tab now has an info pane. This pane can be used for requests or for rules about the tab or anything at all really.
When looting Bind on Pickup items, the confirmation dialogue now lists the name of the item in the dialogue. You can now verify that you are picking up the correct bind on pickup item.
Bind on Pickup items that only you can pick up (Heroic Badges for instance) will no longer bring up a confirmation dialogue.
Players can now opt out of looting for group loot, round robin and need before greed looting styles. If a player turns this on, they will not get a looting turn in the loot cycle. This can be turned on from the right-click menu on your own portrait.
In Master Loot mode, all players in the group will see sparkles on corpses that have loot above the master loot threshold. This lets everyone see what the master loot items are, though they cannot interact with them. Only the master looter can loot those items still.
Searching for an item in the tradeskill search box should now hide empty categories.
The names over the heads of nearby players who are on your friends list will appear in a different color now so you can tell when they are nearby.
Stacked items for sale at the auction house now display the per unit price and per unit buyout price in the item mouseover.
The profession UI search field has been improved and now allows for searching of more types of things. For instance you can search for items by socket color, by effect ("Critical Strike" for instance) or search gems by their effect ("Strength" for instance). In addition, the searching of items by level has been made more intuitive. You can now search for items by level with "15-20" to search for items that you can make that have a minimum level required of 15 to 20.
The Tooltip for player Dodge/Block/Parry in the character sheet has been changed slightly.
Optimized particle system rendering for improved frame rates.
Creature versions of Intimidating Shout have been changed to Frightening Shout, and the primary target of the ability is now feared instead of stunned.
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.
Elites in Blade's Edge Plateau Regions: These creatures now have an increased chance to drop rare depleted items.