wow World of Warcraft 10.2 and SoD Weekly Hotfix Summary: December 11th - 18th

[Starym 3,787]

 

Another week full of changes, both in retail and Season of Discovery, so let's take a look at everything that was adjusted. You can also check out this reset's upcoming big class tuning changes here.

Full Week of Hotfixes

Retail 10.2

Achievements

• Fixed a bug that prevented Assassin Bounties from progressing the Bounty Hunting and Band of Brothers.

Classes

• Druid
  • Feral
    • Heart of the Wild no longer unintentionally grants Combo Points to Feral Druids.
  • Guardian
    • Fixed an issue causing  Blazing Thorns and Dream Thorns to clear when engaging a Mythic+ boss.
    • Fixed an issue causing Blazing Thorns to proc on targets which were not in combat with the player.
• Paladin
  • Protection
    • Amirdrassil 4-piece: Fixed an issue causing Cleansing Flame to not trigger from Lay on Hands.
• Rogue
  • Damage dealt from Shadow Blades, Blade Flurry, and Sanguine Blades will now be logged correctly when buffed by an Augmentation Evoker.
• Warlock
  • Demonology
    • Fixed an issue that allowed several Immutable Hatred attacks to be queued up prior to combat.
    • Fixed an issue where Wild Imps summoned via Spiteful Reconstitution would stray from the Warlock.

Dungeons and Raids

• Amirdrassil, the Dream’s Hope
  • Tindral Sageswift
    • Fire Beam number of beam spawns per pulse reduced to 6 (was 8).
    • Fiery Growth duration increased to 20 seconds (was 16 seconds) in Mythic difficulty.
    • Lingering Cinder duration reduced to 2 seconds (was 3 seconds).
    • Pulsing Heat damage reduced by 33%.
    • Fiery Vines health reduced by 7% in Mythic difficulty.
    • Addressed an issue where Mass Entanglement can fail to root tank players.
    • Addressed a performance issue that caused a server delay at the start of the encounter.
  • Fixed an issue that could prevent Gnarlroot, Igira, and Smolderon from leashing as expected.
• Darkheart Thicket
  • Addressed an issue where Tormented Bloodseeker's Darksoul Bite is draining more health than intended in Mythic+ difficulties.
• Waycrest Manor
  • Addressed a Heartsbane Triad issue where Sisters without the iris can quickly melee nearby targets upon being interrupted.

Items and Transmog

• Ashes of the Embersoul will now reset its cooldown when a raid encounter ends.
• Ember of Nullification is now an eligible item for all Agility and Strength specializations.
• Spiked Counterweight damage increased by 20%.
• Xeri'tac's Unhatched Egg Sac summon is now affected by secondary stats.
• Wyrm's Bountiful Chest can now be purchased from Archdruid Hamuul Runetotem, as intended.
• Nature's Cradle should now work on Renown items purchased from Moon Priestess Lasara.
• Nature's Cradle should now work on Dream Wardens Renown items that were converted at the Catalyst.
• Fixed an issue that prevented Emerald Blossom Dreamstone from unlocking certain expected PvP appearances.
• Incandescent Essence will now be soulbound when used. It is no longer usable on Account Bound items and its combat effects will only trigger for level 70 characters.

Quests

• Fixed an issue that could prevent completion of “Step Into the Life”.

 

Season of Discovery

• Population adjustments have been made to layers in the Ashenvale PvP event which should result in an improved experience for players.
• Ashenvale progress should be much more consistent.
  • Developers’ notes: In a future hotfix, the Battle for Ashenvale progress will no longer reset to 0% when the final layer on the server finishes their battle.
• Runes sold at the Honored tier of Azeroth Commerce Authority and Durotar Supply and Logistics reputation are now sold at the Friendly tier.
• Drop rates for higher-level Waylaid Supplies have been slightly raised and unfulfillable Waylaid Supplies have been removed.
• The gold prices of several runes and rune related items have been reduced.
• Druid
  • Starsurge rune ability damage increased 182%.
  • Starsurge cooldown reduced to 6 seconds (was 10 seconds).
  • Starsurge mana cost reduced to 1% of base mana (was 3% of base mana).
• Hunter
  • Flanking Strike now gains the benefit of weapon enhancements like sharpening stones, is now on global cooldown, and is now properly treated as a melee attack, letting it benefit from attack power and combat modifiers to dodge, parry, block, crit, hit, etc.
  • Flanking Strike is now prevented by Pacify.
  • Flanking Strike now requires a weapon equipped.
  • Flanking Strike pet damage is now properly treated as a melee attack, with same benefits as listed above for the hunter’s damage.
  • All damaging Hunter pet abilities now gain damage from Attack Power based on their Focus costs. Hunter pets no longer gain any spell damage.
    • Developers’ notes: Pets that cast spells such as scorpid poison or Lightning Breath were scaling too well and pets using physical abilities were scaling too little. We’ve now normalized the amount of attack power gained, to scale with the focus cost of individual pet abilities. This means that abilities with a higher focus cost, that are cast less often, will receive more benefit from attack power per attack than abilities with a lower focus cost that can generally be used more often. Overall this should level out the damage and reduce situations where some abilities were scaling too much or too little with hunter attack power.
  • Scorpid poison now distributes the additional damage it gains from attack power evenly over each stack of Scorpid Poison on the target.
    • Developers’ notes: Previously, Scorpid poison received most of its benefit from the Hunter’s attack power in the very first stack. Now the additional damage gained from the controlling hunter will not be gained until the full 5 stacks of poison are on the target. This increases the ramp time a bit and makes it less immediately deadly in PvP.
  • Pets now gain 30% of the hunter’s armor (was 45%) and 20% of the hunter’s stamina (was 45%).
    • Developers’ notes: Hunter pets were gaining far too much durability from hunter stats, to the point where some pets could get more than double the health and armor of a well-geared level 25 player. We still want dedicated hunters to have the ability to tank certain dungeon and raid encounters, but pets shouldn’t be so effective that they become the objectively correct choice.
  • Aspect of the Lion has been redesigned and will now function as an Aura.
    • Developers’ notes: This means that it is possible to have Aspect of the Lion up in addition to another aspect, such as Aspect of the Hawk. As an offset to the lower amount of damage that some hunter pets will deal, and to make talents such as Improved Aspect of the Hawk more attractive to Hunters using Aspect of the Lion, we’re shifting Aspect of the Lion into an aura rather than an aspect. This change will go into effect with scheduled weekly maintenance tomorrow, but the tooltip will not yet change. In a later hotfix, we’ll rename relocalize Aspect of the Lion to “Heart of the Lion” and update the tooltip.
• Mage
  • Living Flame will now cease to spread and deal damage if the Mage caster no longer has the rune equipped.
  • Regeneration and Mass Regeneration will now properly consume Arcane Blast when they benefit from it, regardless of the Mage’s healing targets.
  • Mage Temporal Beacon will now also heal based on damage done by Arcane wands.
  • The radius of healing for Mass Regeneration has been increased to 30 yards (was 15 yards).
• Priest
  • Priest Homunculi damage increased by 100%.
  • Void Plague damage increased by 200%.
  • Twisted Faith now increases damage done by Mind Blast and Mind Flay by 50% (was 20%) on targets afflicted with Shadow Word: Pain.
• Rogue
  • Saber Slash, Shiv, and Main Gauche will now properly consume Remorseless Attacks.
  • Saber Slash’s tooltip fixed; damage not reduced.
  • Saber Slash damage is now properly considered a Bleed and benefits from the Mangle debuff. Note: Bleed-immune creatures will no longer be affected by it.
• Shaman
  • Healing Rain will no longer interrupt the auto-attack swing timer of the casting Shaman every time it heals.
  • Lava Lash damage increased to 150% weapon damage (was 100% weapon damage).
  • Lava Lash mana cost reduced to 1% of base mana (was 4%).
  • Overload now has a 50% chance to trigger (was 33%).
  • Dual Wield Specialization now grants 10% increased chance to hit while dual-wielding.
• Boon of Blackfathom world buff adjusted. It now provides 3% spell hit and 25 spell power buff addition to the other physical damage and movement speed effects (was spell crit).
  • Developers’ notes: Spellcasters in general are struggling a bit in BFD, mostly due to poor scaling without spellpower and a higher requirement of spell hit to reliably hit creatures 2+ levels above the caster. Keep those Chronoboons handy and don’t stand in the fire and lose your buff!
• Blackfathom Deeps
  • Elemental Resistances lowered in Blackfathom Deeps to levels more appropriate for a level 25 Raid.
  • Gelihast Shadow Resist lowered to 25 (was 75).
  • Lorgus Jett Nature Resist lowered to 25 (was 75).
  • Twilight Lord Kelris Shadow and Arcane Resist lowered to 25 (was 75).
    • Phantasmal Priestess all Resist lowered to 0 (was 75), so it’s no longer bad news if double casters are sent down to the dream in Phase 1.
  • Invading Nightmare Shadow and Fire Resist lowered to 25 (was 75).
  • Void Elementals Shadow Resist lowered lowered to 25 (was 75).
  • Corrosive Droplets Nature Resist lowered to 25 (was 75), and Frost Resist lowered to 0 (was 25).
  • The waterfalls at the entrance to the Lorgus Jett encounter now properly despawn after he is defeated.
  • Dream Eater should no longer kill you if you’re pulled into the second phase of the Twilight Lord Kelris fight while still afflicted by the aura.
• Battle for Ashenvale
  • The Battle for Ashenvale will now progress about 50% faster than previously.
  • The reputation gain for participating in killing an enemy Keeper of the Grove or Blade Master has been increased to 400 (was 200).
  • Battle for Ashenvale camps will no longer delay their spawn if players are nearby.
  • The Priestess of the Moon Felore Moonray and Far Seer Kazragore are now spawned in Ashenvale while the Battle for Ashenvale is inactive, and are available to turn in quest items. Felore Moonray can be found in the inn in Astranaar, and Kazragore can be found in the inn in Splintertree Post. During the battle, they will move to their respective battlefield positions.
  • [With realm restarts] Fixed an issue where progress for the Battle for Ashenvale could be reset repeatedly by battles ending at different times on different layers.