Mounts at 30?! Yes, it’s true: Apprentice Riding and mounts are now available at level 30. Training costs 35 gold.

Green quality gems can be found in mining nodes again. The drop rate of blue gems from mining nodes remains unchanged.

Curse of Elements: This spell now applies to Arcane and Shadow damage, as well as Frost and Fire.

Mounts at 30?! Yes, it’s true: Apprentice Riding and mounts are now available at level 30. Training costs 35 gold.

Then again, the nearest character I have to 30 is a druid, who would have gotten her 40% speed increase at 30 regardless Well, this might give me an excuse to level my mage some...

Very cool. Lifted directly from Gurgthock's EJ thread on consolidating raid utility, or just a nice coincidence.

Either way, on 2-warlock nights I won't have to ask them to either not use CoS or not use CoE to make sure the uber melee group has CoR =)

Bit of a raid DPS buff as well for our normal line-up, which often includes 4 warlocks, as now two warlocks will be using damage curses.

Plus its a nice bonus for 5 and 10 man runs where its sometimes hard to pick which curse to use to best help the group.

I can imagine all the crying that the community (read, mouth-breathers on the official forums) will be sobbing about, but I for one appreciate this. Having decided to level up a few lower level characters (I'm terrible, I had never levelled anything bar my main over 25 until this week. In two years.) I'm once again reminded of how goddamned terrible all that running around is. The sub-50 zones have some of the longest runs still in the damn game, and just being able to cross Ashenvale or (shudder) Desolace in less time is a tremendous benefit.

Very cool. Lifted directly from Gurgthock's EJ thread on consolidating raid utility, or just a nice coincidence.

Either way, on 2-warlock nights I won't have to ask them to either not use CoS or not use CoE to make sure the uber melee group has CoR =)

Bit of a raid DPS buff as well for our normal line-up, which often includes 4 warlocks, as now two warlocks will be using damage curses.

Invisible players with Hunter’s Mark can see the hunter that put the mark on them.

So...this ability works in reverse now, then?

Rogues

* Cheat Death: This talent has been rebalanced significantly. Killing blows are no longer 100% absorbed. If the Rogue is below 10% health, the killing blow is still completely absorbed; if the Rogue is over 10% health, enough damage will be absorbed to reduce the Rogue's health down to 10%. For the following 3 seconds, damage is not always reduced by 90%; it is now reduced by a maximum of 90%, depending on how much resilience the Rogue has. The damage reduction will be four times the damage reduction resilience causes against critical strikes.

You can no longer click the minimap to cast ground targeted spells.

Yeah, I'm not exactly sure how this makes sense.

Well, I mean, it's not like they couldn't see the hunter in the first place, unless it was a Shadowmelded NE, but does this mean that the hunter who marks them shows up on THEIR minimap? Eh, they've broken HM so badly in regards to stealth (Check the tooltip, it's not been changed...) they might as well give up the illusion it does anything in/to someone in stealth, and just use it as/for a scaling AP boost only.

...

What?

*Fires up Visio so he can make a flowchart in order to understand what, if anything, Cheat Death does*

Note that they say "invisible", not "stealthed". The mechanics of invisibility are that you can only see other people that are invisible, or other people that (for some reason) can see you. So, I believe you can see the warlock with "detect invisibility", for example. If the hunter's mark let's the hunter see you, then you should be able to see them (not on the minimap, just in your regular view).

Equipping an item will now cancel any spell cast currently in progress.

Hrm. So I guess means farewell to casting a spell, and then swapping weapon mid-cast...

I think this is for people who macro idol swapped and hid the GCD of doing that in their cast time/GCD.

This might kill CasterWeaponSwapper.

There is a S4 weapon (dagger?) with a crapload of spell haste on it, I believe. I think the weapon swap change was made to prevent winding up a spell with the spell haste weapon equipped to lower the cast time, then swapping to a spell damage weapon to get the full +dmg effect of the spell.

Uh? 15% chance to be frozen on hit is a huge problem?

Frostbite is crap.

Should be noted that there's possibly a "stealth" change going into this patch that's causing Ice Armor, Fel Armor, Demon Armor, Mage Armor, Molten Armor, and all the other magical armor effects for Warlocks and Mages to be classified as physical effects and thus undispellable effects.

Hopefully this gets changed, because if it doesn't, it's a huge problem for Enhancement Shamans (and possibly Retribution Paladins as well) because of Frostbite. This wouldn't be the first time of Blizzard's left hand failing to communicate with the right hand (12 mp5 on the S4 Enhancement Shaman chest?), but it gets tiring having to wait for another patch to fix a stupid decision.

I wonder if this is at all related to the blue post about totems being changed to physical? Now if they made Ghostwolf undispellable I would be happy.

Uh? 15% chance to be frozen on hit is a huge problem?

Frostbite is crap.

I take it you never tried staying in melee on a mage as an enhancement shaman, when frost armor is up.

(Spoiler - if they aren't brain-dead, it's not going to happen)

No, I haven't. I don't play an Enhancement shaman.

It still doesn't change the fact that Frostbite is useless. Frostbite only seriously affects melee opponents -- and if a Frost mage can't handle melee opponents without Frostbite...

I really don't see the problem here.

In PvP situations Frostbite is effective at catching runners or slowing large groups, which is valuable in Warsong Gulch. Two effective ways to get a Frostbite are with Frostbolt (Rank 1) and Improved Blizzard (Rank 1). With Frostbolt (Rank 1), the cast time is 1 second with full Improved Frostbolt and 1.5 seconds untalented, allowing the mage to rifle them off quickly with the hope of landing a Frostbite. With Improved Blizzard, each tick of the AoE applies a chill, and thus each tick has a chance to Frostbite. Rank 1 is mana efficient enough to chain cast it for a Frostbite hit.

The Frostbite effect does not overwrite the Frost Nova effect or the Water Elemental's Freeze effect. These spells have a longer duration (8 seconds vs. 5 seconds) than Frostbite, and thus supersede it. Even if the Frost Nova or Freeze has fewer than 5 seconds remaining, Frostbite will not take effect. However, if the attack with a chill happens to break the freezing effect, it is possible for the Frosbite freeze to take effect immediately.

Because Frostbite only lasts for 5 seconds, and higher ranks of Frostbolt have a minimum casting time of 2.5 seconds (3.0 seconds untalented), a mage often only has enough time (due to lag) to cast one Frostbolt before the effect wears off. However, if a Troll mage casts Frostbolt in conjunction with the racial Berserking (thus reducing the cast time to 2.25 seconds or less) then he can have up to two chances to crit off a a Frostbite. A mage of at least level 66 can cast the Ice Lance spell instead of additional Frostbolts, as it can allow several castings into a frozen enemy, which is advantageous considering that it does triple damage to frozen targets.

Frostbite is an undesirable talent in frost AoE grinding builds. The goal in a frost AoE situation is to keep a large pack of mobs grouped close together and snared with Cone of Cold and/or Improved Blizzard. If Frostbite lands, it can separate a mob from the pack, complicating the kiting process.

Frostbite has uses in slowing down people, but not nearly as much as is said in that quote -- it only has a 15% chance of proccing.

So yeah, I'll admit it's not useless, but it's not nearly as useful as has been said on this thread.

This weapon is not currently available on the PTR. We'll find out tomorrow if they're actually going live with the haste dagger in Season 4.

I'm seeing reports that the Alacrity dagger is NOT on the S4 vendors at this time on live realms, so they appear to have decided against it. Seems there is some major disappointement among high ranked mages.

Is there an S4 vendor on the live realms? I can't find him. I found the S3 and S2 vendors in Netherstorm still and an S3 vendor in Nagrand. S1 stuff on the honor guy still. But I didn't look really hard and I didn't use the bunch of tubes called the interwebs to search to find out where I should be looking for them anyway.

This weapon is not currently available on the PTR. We'll find out tomorrow if they're actually going live with the haste dagger in Season 4.

I can only hope that Blizzard realized the implications for every relic-using class who's trying to make ends meet with an item-swapping macro. This type of a change to game mechanics should never be implemented to "balance" a single pvp toy that they were thinking of putting in the game.

I'm seeing reports that the Alacrity dagger is NOT on the S4 vendors at this time on live realms, so they appear to have decided against it. Seems there is some major disappointement among high ranked mages.

I have to admit to being confused by your attitude. You've got between 2k and 3.8k HKs a piece on three toons - of which the highest is a fire mage. You would think that you would have run into a few frost mages in that time on one of your melee. Though given the rep it appears you spent most of your time in AV the least pvp of the battlegrounds so you may not have run into too many frost snipers.

Trust me. Its a big deal as a melee (aside from rogues who have more get out of jail cards) to deal with frostbite. A shammy could usually blow through that with purgespam and grounding totem and a ret pally with BoF. If its not purgeable it becomes much much harder to manage.

It isn't Frostbite that is not purgable. It's Ice Armor. Frostbite is the same as it's always been.

Please stop drawing conclusions based on the Armory. It doesn't show the extent of my experiences, and experience is not the only thing that matters in a discussion.

Edit: While we're on the subject, is there any particular reason for why Fel Armor is undispellable, while _____ Shield is? Are warlocks seriously getting a permanent passive 100 spell damage, +20% healing?

It isn't Frostbite that is not purgable. It's Ice Armor. Frostbite is the same as it's always been.

Please stop drawing conclusions based on the Armory. It doesn't show the extent of my experiences, and experience is not the only thing that matters in a discussion.

It isn't Frostbite that is not purgable. It's Ice Armor. Frostbite is the same as it's always been.

It isn't Frostbite that is not purgable. It's Ice Armor. Frostbite is the same as it's always been.

Please stop drawing conclusions based on the Armory. It doesn't show the extent of my experiences, and experience is not the only thing that matters in a discussion.

*sigh* You're missing the point. Its the combination of Frost Bite and Ice armor that would be so rough on a melee class.

Are being intentionally obtuse here? Or is it just because you don't PvP much that you don't realize how massively this hurts Enhancement Shammies? Hell, it probably hurts all melee, even Rogues.

You realize that a mage has a 50% greater chance to crit against a frozen target, right? And that ice lance does triple damage against frozen targets? So that instant cast spell is now capable of doing six times normal damage (thanks to Ice Shards, before Resilience adjustments.) It's entirely possible to have Ice Lance - an instant-cast spell with a massive 36 yard talented range - crit for 2000 or more against high-resilience targets. Against low-resilience targets, it's not unusual to see numbers going beyond 3000.

Not only this, but because enhancement shammies and rogues - who dual wield and thus attack very quickly - are going to have a much higher chance to proc Frostbite. Rogues can probably get out of it if they need to via Cloak of Skill or their other get out of jail free cards, but for a shammy, the only option he has is to try and dispel ice armor, which they're seemingly intent on changing. This now leaves you with the option of either trinketing (and just being rooted with frost nova, freeze, or another frostbite proc a few seconds later) or bending over and grabbing your ankles.

Moreover, any melee attacking the mage will now be moving at 70% speed because of the chill effect; for Warriors and Rogues this isn't a major problem because they can just keep Hamstring/Piercing Howl/Crippling Poison on the mage and keep up just fine. But for Retribution Paladins, who will be reliant on Blessing of Freedom (which can be stolen or dispelled), and Enhancement Shamans, this is a serious issue.

Yeah, it's a serious issue for Enhancement shaman. So what? The game isn't balanced around 1v1.

I'm not missing the point. It only affects melee classes with purge, i.e. only Enhancement shamans. Retribution paladins can still get out of it with BoF and Cleanse, so why mention them?

It only affects non-purge classes if they are paired with a purge-class. Ice Armor being undispellable means jack to a Ret paladin unless the Ret paladin is relying on a shaman or a priest or a warlock's Felhunter to remove Ice Armor.

In any event, Frostbite is still not a big deal. Good warriors exploit Frostbite to throw a crit back in the Mage's face via Spell Reflection, rogues can get out of Frostbite any number of ways, paladins can Cleanse it even if their BoF is on CD, and the rest of the classes have ranged spells, meaning that it doesn't affect their abilty to retaliate. An Enhancement shaman would have the most problems with Frostbite, yes -- but I still don't see the problem. I consider slowing effects on warriors far worse.

Should be noted that there's possibly a "stealth" change going into this patch that's causing Ice Armor, Fel Armor, Demon Armor, Mage Armor, Molten Armor, and all the other magical armor effects for Warlocks and Mages to be classified as physical effects and thus undispellable effects.

Hopefully this gets changed, because if it doesn't, it's a huge problem for Enhancement Shamans (and possibly Retribution Paladins as well) because of Frostbite. This wouldn't be the first time of Blizzard's left hand failing to communicate with the right hand (12 mp5 on the S4 Enhancement Shaman chest?), but it gets tiring having to wait for another patch to fix a stupid decision.