Nice cup of tea

Everyone else is doing it, so why not me? My thoughts on the PTR Patch 2.4.0 notes.

The Sunwell Isle

• The Sunwell Isle is now available for play. This area includes a new quest hub and 5-player and 25-player instances. Join the Shattered Sun Offensive in shutting down Kael’thas’ nefarious operations. This new force is comprised by both the Aldor and Scryers and is led by the Naaru. Players will take part in claiming Sun’s Reach and setting up a larger base of operation to stop Kael’thas and the Legion.
• 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.

This might be interesting, particularly as a quest hub. As a mainly duo-player (one more than a solo player!) I doubt I'll do the 5-man instances very often, and the 25-man instances are almost certainly never going to get a look in, but the daily quests might be interesting. A new faction to grind is always welcome, I just hope there is a way to do it without running lots of instances. I also hear from Ratshag's blog that the daily quest reward packages may contain a [Badge of Justice]. If this is true, and the droprate isn't hideous, then this is really, really great news for people such as myself, who aren't running instances.

General

• Characters will now retain talented spell ranks so when they retalent they do not have to relearn the spells from trainers.
• Weapon Skill: Points will be gained faster in weapon skills for levels 1 through 59.

I approve of both of these changes. It's getting so easy to level to 60 now! I'm so jealous of all the people starting their first character, everything is so polished and easy now.

Hunter

• 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.
• Hunter’s Mark: Hunters with Improved Hunter’s Mark will now properly overwrite Hunter’s Mark cast by Hunters without the talent.
• The stamina tooltip for hunter pets will now display the proper health increase.

Hmm... I really don't see anything to get really excited about here. The Hunter's Mark fix is appreciated, as is the stamina tooltip issue, but that's about it. Still, I feel very happy with my class as things stand, so I'm not disappointed.

PvP

• Diminishing returns on honor for kills is being eliminated.
• If a player dies 50 times or more in a battleground, they will no longer be worth honor for the remainder of that battle.

Mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand, the extra honor is welcome. On the other, people hanging around in the middle of WSG and at the choke points in AV and fighting instead of concentrating on objectives is common enough, without further rewarding this behaviour.

• Honor will now be instantly calculated, and available for player use.
• Players will now be able to purchase level 70 Superior quality PvP items from reputation vendors.
• Players that have the resurrection sickness debuff will be worth no honor.

All sound good. Being able to spend honor as soon as you earn it could be a nice perk for the serious PvP'er, and more ways to gear up (especially for PvP) are always welcome. I predict most of my level 70 equipment will be PvP derived. Not sure that the resurrection sickness change will do much though -- no one would do any organised PvP with the sickness, and lack of honor rarely dissuades the determined ganker.

Warsong Gulch

• 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.

Brilliant. Anything that makes WSG quicker is much appreciated. I hate stalemate matches that drag on far too long. And this change:

• Alterac Valley, Arathi Basin, Warsong Gulch, Blade’s Edge Arena, Lordaeron Arena, and Nagrand Arena: Players who fall below the world in these environments will now die instead of being stuck.

...makes it even better. Take that, terrain glitch exploiters! I can see myself really getting into battlegrounds and the PvP dailys in a big way once I (finally) drag myself to level 70 and start gearing up. I'll need to respec, and get some PvP-centric equipment, and, and...

Fishing

• New Fishing Daily Quests! Visit the mysterious old man fishing at Silmyr Lake outside of Shattrath City to discover what treasures he has to offer.
• Find Fish now correctly tracks Schools of Tastyfish and Muddy Churning Waters.

I have made only a tentative start into the world of fishing, but I really like the idea of daily quests, so this is another good reason to sit down by some water and get my fishing skill up.

Dungeons and Raids

• Non-corporeal Undead and Mechanical creatures are now susceptible to bleed effects.

Doesn't affect me directly -- is this to help rogues do more damage? -- but this change seems very odd. How do ghosts and robots bleed? Weird. I don't spend much time at all in dungeons, so I have no comments on the rest. It sounds as though many things are getting quicker and easier to achieve. I don't know if the hardcore raiders will appreciate that, but hey! Everyone else will.

User Interface

• Weapon enchants are now shown at the character selection screen.

For such a minor issue, this has bugged me for a long time. I'm glad it's been addressed!

• 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 chat log.
• 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.

I'm a sucker for UI addons and improvements, so these all get a thumbs up from me! Free space in bags is always an issue so being able to track it easily is a nice touch. Also, my friends all have lots of alts with shifting specs and tradeskills, so the notes feature will be nice to keep track of who's who and stop me asking embarrassing questions.

Overall? I'm very happy with this patch. Nothing I care about got nerfed, and a bunch of cool stuff got added. GJ Blizzard!

Labels: patches, stala