Spooncraft

Howdy folks! I’ve almost beaten this cold so expect a lot more activity today than previously this week. Here are the new changes to the patch notes for the PTR and Patch 2.4.

The fact that Ghostwolf is now instant cast (with talents) is nice for us shamans, but I’m really excited about the ability to que as a group for AV as well as the arena matchmaking changes should make things a little less headache when a bunch of high geared members start a now team and roll over the 1500 bracket.

Basically the change means that if a play is in full season 3 vengeful gear and is trying to just power grind his team to a good rating for easy points, they will be paired up with another team that has equally rated/geared players.

Druids

- Lifebloom healing coefficient has been reduced.
- 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% of your Attack Power while in Cat form.

Hunters

- Improved Mend Pet now has a 50/100% chance to remove one Curse, Disease, Magic, or Poison effect, up from 15/50%.

Mages

- Arcane Fortitude now increases your armor by an amount equal to 100% of your Intellect, up from 50%.
- Blink, Slow, and Spellsteal have all had their mana cost reduced.
- Icy Veins no longer stacks with Bloodlust/Heroism.
- Improved FireWard has become Molten Shields.
- 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.

Paladins

- 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.
- Focused Will now reduces damage by 2/3/4%, down from 1/3/5%.
- Power Infusion: Infuses the target with power, increasing their spell haste by 20% for 15 seconds.

Rogues

- Improved Backstab is now called Puncturing Wounds.
- 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.

Shamans

- Ghost Wolf: Cast time reduced to 2 seconds, down from 3.
- Nature’s Swiftness and Elemental Mastery now share a 10 second cooldown.
- Tremor Totem now pulses every 3 seconds, down from 4.

Warlocks

- Blood Pact now has a tooltip.
- Demonic Sacrifice: Now works properly in sanctuary regions (such as Shattrath City and the Stair of Destiny).

PvP
Arenas
- Matchmaking: If a queued player has a personal rating higher than their team rating, the matchmaking system will now use the highest personal rating of a queued member of that team for matchmaking purposes, instead of the team rating.

Alterac Valley
- There is now a Join as Party option.

Professions
Alchemy
- Transmute Arcanite no longer has a cooldown.

Fishing
- Feltail fishing nodes have been changed to Brackish Mixed Schools; they now produce mostly Golden Darters and some Feltail.

Items
- Darkmoon Card: Madness: The buffs from this item will no longer interrupt casting and channeling.
- Druid Restoration PvP Sets: The bonus movement speed for Bear, Cat, and Travel Form has been removed and replaced with a new bonus to Regrowth.
- Shaman Elemental PvP Sets: The resistance on Lightning Bolt spell pushback has been reduced to 50%.

User Interface
- Searching for an item in the tradeskill search box should now hide empty categories.