More Patch Notes From The 3.1 PTR

A whole laundry list of updates was posted earlier this evening over at MMO Champion. Among the barrage of recent patch notes are some pretty significant changes to secondary professions, and the ways that we level them. Before we get to that though, let’s start off with the most important updates… Hunter changes.

Hunter Class Updates

  • Frost Trap: If the target who triggers Frost Trap is immune to its effect, the Frost Trap area effect will no longer be triggered. Now reduces speed by 50% (previously 60%).

Marksmanship

  • Chimera Shot: Mana cost reduced from 16% to 12%.
  • Concussive Barrage redesigned: 2-point talent. Now causes your Multi-Shot and Chimera Shot to have a 50/100% chance to daze the target for 4 seconds.
  • Efficiency: Increased to 3/6/9/12/15% up from 2/4/6/8/10%.
  • Silencing Shot: No longer on the global cooldown.

Survival

  • Entrapment redesigned: When your Frost Trap, Immolation Trap, Explosive Trap and Snake Trap are triggered, you entrap all afflicted targets, preventing them from moving for 2/4/6 seconds.
  • T.N.T.: Gives your Explosive Shot a 33/66/100% chance to refresh the duration of your Immolation Trap effect on the target.
  • Trap Mastery: This talent has been moved up to tier-2, up from tier-9, and is now a 3-point talent.
  • Trap Mastery, Resourcefulness and T.N.T. now all affect Black Arrow.

Hunter Glyphs

  • Glyph of the Monkey: This glyph has been converted to Glyph of Mending, which increases the healing done by Mend Pet by 40%.
  • Glyph of Snake Trap: Now reduces damage taken by snakes from area damage by 90%.
  • Glyph of Wyvern Sting: Now reduces the cooldown by 6 seconds, down from 15 seconds. No longer reduces the damage done by Wyvern Sting’s effect.

Racial Changes To Classes That Play Hunter

  • Gift of the Naaru (Draenei Racial): The heal has been changed to an instant-cast direct heal instead of a heal-over-time.
  • Stoneform (Dwarf Racial): No longer makes you immune to poison, disease and bleed effects for 8 seconds. Instead, using Stoneform will clear those effects when cast. Cooldown reduced to 2 minutes from 3 minutes.

Alright, so most of those changes we already knew about. Some of the talents and glyphs have been tweaked slightly, but no ground-breaking changes for the most part. Also, I logged onto the PTR tonight and it seems that the new Glyph of Mend Pet is indeed a major glyph. It’s still pretty awesome, but it’d be difficult to give up a major glyph slot for that one over something else.

The racial changes are somewhat huge. Draenei got buffed and Dwarves got hosed is the way I see it.

A few of the following updates are what some consider to be the “dumbing down of WoW”. The removal of quest chains for dungeon attunement, or for unlocking or training certain skills is what I’m referring to. Well, at least they’re making these profession quests optional and provide a decent reward. Coincidentally, my 63 Death Knight was just about to embark on his journey to Tanaris for Artisan Cooking.

I’m sure some people would passionately disagree with my view on this, but I really enjoyed the lore that went along with these semi-epic quests. The cooking one is probably my least favorite, but I really enjoyed the odyssey Nat Pagle sent me on in order to further my fishing expertise. Maybe I’m different than a lot of players, but I see the journey as being half the fun. These days it seems like everyone is in such a bloody hurry, but for what..?

When they made the Druid’s Aquatic form trainable, that made me sad in the pants. To me, that was one of the all-time memorable quests. Having Swift Flight Form be trainable is also pretty weak. Luckily they haven’t yet decided to auto-assign pets to Hunters at level 10 and let Tame Beast be available for a few silver. :-\

I’m sure Blizzard has a method to their madness. WoW won’t be around forever, and I know they want more and more players to be able to enjoy the end-game content much sooner than used to be expected. I also know that many players who have already completed those quests will appreciate not having to do them again on their alts, but I can’t help but feel like some of the newcomers will be missing something.

Well, I could go on about this for days, but I’ll hop off of my soapbox for the time being. On to the updates:

Professions

Cooking

  • Players no longer need to complete the Clamlette Surprise quest to gain Artisan cooking. The quest now offers the unique recipe, Clamlette Magnifique. If you already completed the quest, you can visit Dirge Quickcleave in Gadgetzan to learn this recipe (for free).
  • You no longer need to learn cooking from books. The trainers have finally done their reading and are able to teach you the same thing.

Fishing

  • A new (and very rare) special mount can now be caught from Northrend fishing pools.
  • New fishing dailies are now offered from Marcia Chase in Dalaran City!
  • Players are no longer required to do the Nat Pagle, Angler Extreme quest to gain Artisan fishing. The quest now offers a special superior-quality fishing pole instead. If you already completed the quest, you can visit Nat Pagle in Dustwallow Marsh to receive this new fishing pole.
  • You no longer need to learn fishing from books. The trainers have finally done their reading and are able to teach you the same thing.

That new mount is going to get me fishing again no doubt. I’m also jazzed about the fishing dailies. It’s not that I hate fishing, but it’s pretty low on my list of in-game priorities. When the daily was introduced in Outland, it made leveling the skill very attractive.

So there ya have it… just about everything profession-wise, with the exception of the new recipe drops in Ulduar, is going to be trainable.

The following changes, while not that significant to most players, are going to shake up the twink community a little. I for one hope they nerf the twinking exploits big-time. I prefer a more level playing field myself. Removing the gathering profession cap ruined low level PvP for a lot of players. These changes should bring some balance back to low level BGs.

Gathering Skills

  • Toughness, Master of Anatomy, and Lifeblood now have level requirements equal to the level required for the corresponding skill rank: Apprentice (1), Journeyman (1), Expert (10), Artisan (25), Master (40), Grand Master (55).

Enchanting

  • Some enchants now have level restrictions. Note: the enchant is never removed from the item to which it’s applied, however, the player no longer receives its benefit until they reach the required level. Any enchants modified in this way have had their tooltips updated.

This latest update was huge, and I only listed a fraction of the changes. I’m also going to wrap up this post and pass out in about 10 seconds due to sleep depravation caused by a 21 month old son, so if you want to see more of what’s in store for 3.1, go to MMO Champion.

Night folks. 🙂

Zzzzzzzzz…

1 thought on “More Patch Notes From The 3.1 PTR”

  1. Gift of the Naaru on PTR is an instant cast BUT still healing over time. I guess they wont make it “instant heal”, it sounds too powerful.

    Reply

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