WotLK Beta Build - 8885

A new build (3.0.2.8885) has been deployed on beta realms. Rapidshare mirror for EU download is available in 3 parts: one, two, three. US mirror here.

Changelog

23:30 CET - Patch mirrors up there -^
19:10 CET - Crystalsong Forest updates
16:30 CET - Death Knight voice modulation video (jump)
16:10 CET - Patch contents broken down by filesize at the bottom (jump), new dungeon descriptions at the top
11:50 CET - Death Knight changes (jump) and new Login Screen options (jump)
11:15 CET - Druid changes (jump)
10:50 CET - New glyphs at Druid, Hunter, Mage, Paladin, Priest and Rogue
10:40 CET - Some more Rogue changes (jump)
10:25 CET - Paladin (jump) and Warrior changes (jump)
10:00 CET - Priest (jump) and Mage changes (jump)
09:45 CET - Warlock (jump) and Shaman changes (jump)
09:30 CET - Hunter changes (jump)
09:15 CET - A list of new titles (jump)
09:00 CET - New Leatherworking recipes (jump)
06:45 CET - Naxxramas shields have been renamed to Protective Barricade of the Light and Crygil's Discarded Plate Panel
06:40 CET - 23 beta screenshots of Ahn'Kahet: The Old Kingdom
06:30 CET - Gundrak and Ahn'Kahet: The Old Kingdom are now open.
05:50 CET - New Cooking Recipes added.

Gundrak is a level 76-78 dungeon located in eastern Zul'drak and is the home of the Ice Trolls featuring 4 bosses: Slad'ran, Moorabi, Bloodstone Annihilator and Gal'darah. Our gallery has many pictures from this dungeon, check them out!

Ahn'Kahet: The Old Kingdom is a level 73-75 dungeon located in western Dragonblight, south of the Icemist Village, it is the second wing of the Azjol Nerub instances. The dungeon is the home of the remainders of the once magnificent Nerubian Empire, not yet touched by the Scourge. It features 4 bosses: Elder Nakox, Herald Volazj, Jedoga Shadowseeker and Prince Taldaram. The gallery has new pictures from this dungeon, you can view them here!

Crystalsong Forest updates

Last patch added an Alliance and a Horde questhub populated in Crystalsong Forest, this patch adds a new map and background music (download here) to the magical zone! In addition the subzones have names now:

Dalaran - The Azure Front - The Great Tree - The Decrepit Flow - Forlorn Woods - Sunreaver's Command (blood elf camp) - The Unbound Thicket - Violet Stand (teleportation rune to Dalaran) - Windrunner's Overlook (night elf camp)

Death Knight voice modulation

Instead of completely new emotes for the hero class, this patch added a new feature that enable death knights to modulate the sound of their emotes. Basically it is a filter in your soundcard that creates an echoey effect. For instance, it makes female characters sound like a banshee. Below you can find a demo:

New Login screen options

With Patch 8885 you can change Sound, Video and Effect options right on the Login Screen:

Class changes

Death Knight
Blood

• Bloody Vengeance: Gives you a 1/2/3/4/5% bonus to Physical, Frost and Shadow damage you deal (old: only Frost damage) for 30 sec after dealing a critical strike from a weapon swing, spell or ability. This effect stacks up to 3 times.
• Hysteria: Induces a friendly unit into a killing frenzy for 30 sec. The target is Enraged, which increases their physical damage by 20%, but causes them to suffer damage equal to 1% of their maximum health every second.

Frost

• Improved Icy Touch: Your Icy Touch does an additional 10% damage and your Frost Fever reduces melee attack speed by an additional 2/4/6%.
• Toughness: Reduces the duration of all movement slowing effects by 10/20/30/40/50% in addition to its armor increasing effect.

Unholy

• Dark Command added to Unholy Command's effects
• Reaping now affects Pestilence and Blood Boil (old: Death and Decay).
• Desecration now affects Plague Strikes (old: Obliterate).
• Scourge Strike: An unholy strike that deals 100% of weapon damage as Shadow damage plus 333 and 50% additional damage for each of the Death Knight's diseases on the target.

Additional Changes  

• New Ability: Dark Command (Level 65): Commands the target to attack you, but has no effect if the target is already attacking you. Shares cooldown with Death Grip.
• New Ability: Horn of Winter: The Death Knight blows the Horn of Winter, increasing the total Strength and Agility of all party or raid members within 30 yards by 155. Lasts 2 min. Costs 20RP. No cooldown

Druid
Balance

• Genesis: Increases damage and healing done by 1/2/3/4/5% by your periodic spells
• Nature's Splendor: Increases the duration of your Moonfire, Insect Sward, Rejuvenation, Regrowth, Lifebloom and Flourish spells by 10/20/30%
• Improved Insect Swarm: Increases your damage done by your Wrath spell to targets inflicted by your Insect Swarm by 1/2/3%, and increases the critical strike chance of your Starfire spell on targets afflicted by your Moonfire spell by 1/2/3%
• Improved Nature's Grasp removed
• Control of Nature removed

Feral

• Natural Reaction: Increases your dodge while in Bear Form or Dire Bear Form by 2/4/6% and you regenerate 1/2/3 rage when you dodge while in Bear Form or Dire Bear Form.
• Mother Bear: Increases the bonus attack power for Bear Form or Dire Bear Form by an additional 20/40/60%, and for each friendly player in your party, damage you take is reduced by 1/2/3% while in Bear Form or Dire Bear Form.

Resto

• Furor now also increases your total intellect while in Moonkin form by 2/4/6/8/10%

Additional Changes

• Nature's Grasp removed from the talent trees, it is a trainable ability 

New Glyphs

• Glyph of the Wild: Your Gift of the Wild spells no longer require a reagent.
• Glyph of Aquatic Form: Increases your swim speed by 20 while in Aquatic Form.
• Glyph of Rebirth: Your Gift of the Wild spells no longer require a reagent.
• Glyph of Challenging Roar: Reduce the cooldown of your Challenging Roar ability by 30 sec.
• Glyph of Thorns: Increases the duration of your Thorns ability by 50 min when cast on yourself.

Hunter
Beast Mastery

• Aspect Mastery changed: Reduces the damage penalty of Aspect of the Viper by 10%, reduces the damage done to you while Aspect of the Monkey is active by 10%, increases the attack power bonus of Aspect of the Hawk by 50%.
• Separation Anxiety changed: When your pet is greater than 20 yards from you or is out of line of sight of you, its damage is increased by 4/8/12/16/20%, and when you and your pet are within 20 yards of each other, you and your pet's movement speed is increased by 2/4/6/8/10%.
• Beast Mastery now grants you 4 (old: 5) extra pet skill points.

Marksmanship

• Improved Hunter's Mark: Increase the bonus attack power granted by your Hunter's Mark ability by 10/20/30%, and reduces the mana cost of your Hunter's Mark ability by 33/66/100%.
• Trueshot Aura now increases the attack power of party and raid members within 45 yards by 10%. Lasts until cancelled. (Previously, increased the attack power of party and raid members within 45 yards by 225. Lasts until cancelled.)
• Combat Experience now increases your total Agility by 3/6% (old 1/2%) and your total Intellect by 3/6%.
• Wild Quiver changed: You have a 4/7/10% chance to shoot an additional shot when doing damage with your auto shot, dealing 60% Nature damage (old: physical damage dealt). Wild Quiver consumes no ammo.
• Concussive Barrage now procs of more shots: your successful Auto Shot, Multi-Shot and Volley attacks have a 2/4/6% chance to Daze the target for 4 sec.
• Improved Arcane Shot: Increases the damage done by your Arcane Shot by 5/10/15% (old: reduces cooldown by 1 sec).

Survival

• Trap Mastery changed: Increases the duration of Frost Trap by 30%. If your Freezing Trap is dispelled within 5 sec of it's duration, the dispeller will be rooted in Frozen Ice for 6 sec. Increases the damage of Immolation and Explosive Trap by 30%. Increases the number of snakes summoned by Snake Trap by 30%
• Lock And Load changed: You have a 33/66/100% chance when you trap a target and a 5/10/15% chance (old: 10/20/30%) when you Sting a target to cause your next 3 Arcane Shot or Explosive Shot spells to trigger no cooldown, cost no mana and consume no ammo.
• Survival Tactics now reduces the chance your traps will be resisted as well.
• Expose Weakness now only affects the caster.
• Hunting Party changed: Your Arcane Shot, Explosive Shot and Steady Shot critical strikes have a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to grant up to 10 party or raid memebers mana regeration equal to 0.5% of the maximum mana per second.

Additional changes

• Kill Shot now deals 15% of RAP + 2500, the extra damage against low health targets has been removed.
• Hunter's Mark stacking effect removed: Places the Hunter's Mark on the target, increasing the ranged attack power of all attackers against that target by 110. In addition, the target of this ability can always be seen by the hunter whether it stealths or turns invisible. The target also appears on the mini-map. Lasts for 2 min.
• Disengage changed: You attempt to disengage from the target, leaping backwards. Must be facing the target.
• Aspect of the viper changed: The hunter takes on the aspect of the viper, instantly regenerating mana equal to 100% of the damage done by any ranged attack or ability, but reduces your total damage done by 50%.  Only one Aspect can be active at a time. 

New Glyphs

• Glyph of Revive Pet: Gives your Revive Pet spell a 100% chance to not lose casting time when you take damage.
• Glyph of Mend Pet: Your Mend Pet spell increases your pet's happiness slightly.
• Glyph of Bestial Speed: Increases the speed of your pet by 40% while using Eyes of the Beast.
• Glyph of Scare Beast: Gives your Scare Beast spell a 75% chance to not lose casting time when you take damage.
• Glyph of Feign Death: Reduce the cooldown of your Feign Death spell by 5.
• Glyph of the Pack: Increases the range of your Aspect of the Pack ability by 15 yards.

Rogue
Assassination

• Improved Eviscerate: Increases the damage done by Eviscerate by 7/14/20% (old: 5/10/15%).
• Improved Expose Armor increases the duration of Expose Armor instead of increasing armor penetration.
• Fleet Footed: Reduces the duration of all movement impairing effects by 15/30% (old: 25/50%).

Subtlety

• Waylay: Reduces targets melee and ranged attack speed by 20% (old: 30%)
• Honor Among Thieves: When anyone in your group critically hits with a damage or healing spell or ability, you have a 33/66/100% chance to gain a combo point on your current target. This effect cannot occur more than once every second.

Additional Changes

• New Ability: Tricks of the Trade (Level 75): The current party or raid member becomes the target of your Tricks of the Trade. The threat caused by your next attack and all actions taken for 6 sec afterwards will be transferred to the target. In addition, all damage caused by the target is increased by 15% during this time.
• Mutilate no longer requires you to be behind the target.
• Expose Armor armor reduction increased through all ranks.
• Envenom now increases the chance to apply poisons by 25% to targets for 1 sec plus an additional 1 sec per combo point in addition to its current effect.

New Glyphs

• Glyph of Pick Pocket: Increases the range of your Pick Pocket skill by 5 yards.
• Glyph of Vanish: Increases your movement speed by 30% while the Vanish effect is active.
• Glyph of Blurred Speed: You gain the ability to walk on water while your Sprint ability is active.

Mage
Arcane

• Slow: Reduces targets movement speed by 60%, increases ranged attack speed by 60% and casting speed by 60% (old: 50%).

Fire

• Improved Scorch: Your Scorch spells have a 33/66/100% chance to cause your target to be vulnerable to spell damage, increasing spell critical strike chance against that target by 2% and lasts 30 sec. Stacks up to 5 times.
• Hot Streak: Any time you score 2 spell criticals in a row using Fireball, Scorch, or Frostfire Bolt, you have a 33/66/100% chance the next Pyroblast spell cast within 10 sec will be instant cast.

Frost

• Fingers of Frost now lasts 15 secs, but only affects your next 2 frost spells.
• Improved Water Elemental: Makes your Water Elemental restore mana to all party or raid members an amount equal to 0.2/.4/.6% of their total mana every 5 secs.

Additional Changes

• Focus Magic now affects the raid.

New Glyphs

• Glyph of Arcane Intellect: Reduce the mana cost of your Arcane Intellect and Arcane Brilliance spells by 50%.
• Glyph of Slow Fall: Your Slow Fall spell no longer requires a reagent.
• Glyph of Fire Ward: You have an additional 5% chance to reflect Fire spells while your Fire Ward is active.
• Glyph of Frost Ward: You have an additional 5% chance to reflect Frost spells while your Frost Ward is active.
• Glyph of Ice Armor: Increases the duration of your Frost Armor and Ice Armor spells by 30 min.

Shaman
Elemental

• Totem of Wrath changed: Summons a Totem of Wrath with 5 health at the feet of the caster. The totem increases damage done by spells and effects by 160 for all party and raid members, and increases the critical strike chance of spells and effects against all enemies within 40 yards. Lasts 2 min.
  
• Elemental Oath changed: Your spell critical strikes grant your party or raid Elemental Oath, increasing critical strike chance by 3%. Lasts 15 seconds.
• increases the damage done by spells and effects by 100% for all party and raid members, and increases the critical strike chance of spells and effects by 3% against all enemies within 40 yards. Lasts 2 min.

Enhancement

• Guardian Totems: Increases the armor granted by Stoneskin Totem by 10/20%.
• Anticipation reduced to 3 ranks, adds disarm reduction: Increases your chance to dodge by an additional 1/2/3%, and reduces the duration of all Disarm effects used against you by 16/25/50%. This does not stack with other Disarm duration reducing effects.

Restoration

• Tidal Force now lasts 20 sec.

Additional changes

• New Ability: Wind Shock: Instantly blasts the target with a gust of wind, causing no damage but lowering your threat, making the enemy less likely to attack you, and interrupts spellcasting and prevents any spell in that school from being cast for 2 sec.
• Bloodlust / Heroism now trigger a debuff: After the completion of this effect, those affected will become Exhausted/Sated and unable to benefit from Bloodlust/Heroism again for 5 min.

Paladin
Retribution

• Improved Blessing of Might: Now increases the attack power bonus from Blessing of Might by 5/10/15/20/25% (old 10/20/30/40/50%).
• Judgements of the Wise: Your Judgement spells have a 33/66/100% chance to grant up to 10 party or raid members mana regeneration equal to 0.5% of their maximum mana per second.

Holy

• Beacon of Light: The target becomes a Beacon of Light to all targets within a 40 yard radius. Any heals you cast on those targets will also heal the Beacon for 100% of the amount healed.

Protection

• Shield Specialization now increases shield block value by 10/20/30%.
• Toughness now reduces movement impairing effect durations as well: Reduces the duration of all movement slowing effects by 10/20/30/40/50% in addition to its previous effect.

Additional Changes

• Blessing of Might Ranks 5-11 now grant more attack power to bring it in line with Battle Shout with talented.
• Blessing of Sanctuary: Gives all members of the raid or group that share the same class with the target the Greater Blessing of Sanctuary, reducing damage taken from all sources by 3% for 30 min. In addition, when the target blocks, parries, or dodges a melee attack the target will gain 10 rage, 20 runic power, or 2% of maximum mana.

New Glyphs

• Glyph of Blessing of Kings: Reduce the mana cost of your Blessing of Kings and Greater Blessing of Kings spells by 50%.
• Glyph of Sense Undead: Damage against Undead increased by 1% while your Sense Undead ability
• Glyph of the Warhorse: Reduce the casting time of your Summon Charger and Summon Warhorse spells by 0.5 sec.
• Glyph of Lay on Hands: Increases the mana restored by your Lay on Hands spell by 5%.
• Glyph of Blessing of Might: Increases the duration of your Blessing of Might spell by 20 min when cast on yourself.
• Glyph of Blessing of Wisdom: Increases the duration of your Blessing of Wisdom spell by 20 min when cast on yourself.

Priest
Discipline

• Unbreakable Will now reduces the duration of Stun, Fear, and Silence effects done to you by an additional 3/6/9/12/15%.
• Improved Inner Fire moved to Tier 3: Increases the effect of your Inner Fire spell by 20/40/60%.
• Absolution moved from Tier 3 to Tier 4.
• Focused Power: Increases your total spell damage and healing done by 2/4%. In addition, your Mass Dispel cast time is reduced by 0.5 sec.
• Enlightenment: Increases Intellect, Spirit and Stamina. Damage and healing bonus replaced with spell haste.
• Reflective Shield reduced to 3 ranks: Causes 15/30/45% (old: 10/20/30/40/50%) of the damage absorbed by your Power Word: Shield to reflect back at the attacker.
• Renewed Hope: Increases the critical effect chance of your Flash Heal, Greater Heal and Penance spells by 3% on targets afflicted by the Weakened Soul effect.
• Grace: Your Flash Heal, Greater Heal, and Penance spells have a 50/100% chance to bless the target with Grace, reducing damage done to the target by 1%. This effect will stack up to 3 times. Lasts 8 sec.
• Borrowed Times: Increases the amount absorbed by your Power Word: Shiel/d equal to 8/16/24/32/40% (old: 4/8/12/16/20%) of your spell power.
• Penance damage and healing increased through all ranks. Duration reduced to 2 seconds, but the first tick is instant.

Shadow

• Shadow Weaving reduced to 3 ranks: Your Shadow damage spells have a 33/66/100% chance to increase the Shadow damage you deal by 2% for 15 sec. Stacks up to 5 times.
• Misery reduced to 3 ranks: Your Shadow Word: Pain, Mind Flay and Vampiric Touch spells also increase the chance for harmful spells to hit by 1/2/3%.
• Pain and Suffering: Reduces the damage you take from your own Shadow Word: Death by 10/20/30%. (Previously 20/40/60%)
• Vampiric Touch: Causes up to 10 party or raid members to gain 0.5% of their maximum mana per second while you are dealing shadow damage.

Additional Changes

• Inner Fire now increases Spell power (old: healing spell power). 

New Glyphs

• Glyph of Fading: Reduce the mana cost of your Fade spell by 50%.
• Glyph of Shackle Undead: Increases the range of your Shackle Undead spell by 5 yards.
• Glyph of Levitate: Your Levitate spell no longer requires a reagent.
• Glyph of Fortitude: Reduce the mana cost of your Power Word: Fortitude and Prayer of Fortitude spells by 5%.
• Glyph of Shadow Protection: Increases the duration of your Shadow Protection and Prayer of Shadow Protection spells by 10 min.

Warrior
Arms

• Trauma has been moved from Tier 9 to Tier 6
• Sudden Death has been moved from Tier 6 to Tier 9.
• Strength of Arms has been moved from Tier 8 to Tier 7

Fury

• Precision has been moved from Tier 7 to Tier 5
• Rampage now affects all party and raid members within 45 yards (old: 20 yards).

Protection

• Shockwave now deals damage equal to 50% of the AP of the Warrior (old: 25%)
• Sword and Board: When your Devastate and Shield Slam abilities deal damage they have a 3/6/9/12/15% (old: 2/4/6/8/10%) chance of refreshing the cooldown of your Shield Slam ability and reducing its cost by 100% for 5 sec.
• Safeguard moved from Tier 8 to Tier 7, Rank 3 removed: Now Reduces damage taken by the target of your Intervene ability by 30/60% (old: 20/40/60%) for 6 sec. In addition, your Charge, Intercept and Intervene abilities have a 50/100% (old: 33/66/100%) chance to remove all movement impairing effects when used.
• Critical Block: Your successful blocks have a 10/20/30% chance to block double the normal amount and increases your chance to critically hit with your Shield Slam ability by an additional 5/10/15%.
• Improved Defensive Stance reduced to 2 ranks: While in Defensive Stance all spell damage is reduced by 3/6% and when you Block, Parry or Dodge an attack you have a 50/100% chance to become Enraged, increasing melee damage caused by 5/10% for 12 sec.
• Vigilance's Taunt refreshing effect increased to the next 3 attacks and lasts 30 minutes.
• Improved Shield Wall: Increases the damage reduction of your Shield Wall ability by an additional 5/10% and reduces the cooldown by 30/60 secs.
• Puncture Rank 3 removed
• Improved Disarm reduced to 2 ranks: Reduces the cooldown of your Disarm and Shield Break abilities by 10/20 secs (old: 5/10 secs) and causes the target to take an additional 5/10% (old: 4/7%) damage while disarmed.
• Improved Revenge reduced to 2 ranks: Increases damage of your Revenge ability by 10/20% (old: 8/16%) and gives a 25/50% (old: 10/20%) chance to stun the target for 3 sec.
• Toughness: Increases your armor value from items by 2/4/6/8/10% and reduces the duration of all movement slowing effects by 10/20/30/40/50%.

Additional Changes

• New ability: Weapon Throw (level 80): Throws your weapon at the enemy causing damage equal to 100% of AP. This ability causes high threat. 30 yd range, 0.5 sec cast, 20 sec cooldown
• New ability: Enraged Assault (level 75): A furious assault that consumes an Enrage effect on the warrior and attacks with all weapons. Can only be used while Enraged. 15 Rage, 5 yd range, Instant, 10 sec cooldown
• Execute damage has been slightly reduced, now scales with 20% of your AP.
• Battle Shout now affects your raid members.
• Shield Block duration increased from 5 seconds to 10 seconds.
• Revenge damage has been slightly reduced, now scales with 9.5% of your AP.
• Shield Wall damage reduction has been changed from 60% to 50%.
• Disarm rage cost changed from 20 to 15.

Warlock
Affliction

• Frailty changed: Increases the amount of attack power reduced by your Curse of Weakness by 10/20%, and reduces the amount of attack power granted by your Curse of Recklessness by 50/100%.
• Shadow Embrace changed: Your Corruption, Curse of Agony, Siphon Life and Seed of Corruption spells also cause you to gain the Shadow Embrace effect for 12 sec, increasing Shadow damage dealt by 2/4/6/8/10%.

Demonology

• Demonic Pact changed: Your pet's criticals apply the Demonic Pact effect to your party or raid members. Demonic Pact increases spell power by 2/4/6/8/10% of your Spell Damage for 12 sec.

Additional Changes

• Curse of Weakness Rank 9 now increases time between melee and ranged attacks by 20%.
• Curse of Recklessness armor reduction lowered through all ranks.

Obtainable titles 

Most of these title are part of the Feats of Strength achievement, they are awarded for First <class> to 80, First <race> to 80, First to reach 450 with professions, first kill of raid endbosses and exalted with certain factions.

 Leatherworking recipes

• Fur Lining - Stamina - “Permanently enchant bracers to increase stamina by 90. Can only be used on the leatherworker’s bracers, and doing so will cause them to become soulbound.”
• Fur Lining - Spell Damage - “Permanently enchant bracers to increase spell power by 70. Can only be used on the leatherworker’s bracers, and doing so will cause them to become soulbound.”
• Fur Lining - Fire Resist - “Permanently enchant bracers to increase your fire resistance by 60. Can only be used on the leatherworker’s bracers, and doing so will cause them to become soulbound.”
• Fur Lining - Frost Resist - “Permanently enchant bracers to increase your frost resistance by 60. Can only be used on the leatherworker’s bracers, and doing so will cause them to become soulbound.”
• Fur Lining - Shadow Resist - “Permanently enchant bracers to increase your shadow resistance by 60. Can only be used on the leatherworker’s bracers, and doing so will cause them to become soulbound.”
• Fur Lining - Nature Resist - “Permanently enchant bracers to increase your nature resistance by 60. Can only be used on the leatherworker’s bracers, and doing so will cause them to become soulbound.”
• Fur Lining - Arcane Resist - “Permanently enchant bracers to increase your arcane resistance by 60. Can only be used on the leatherworker’s bracers, and doing so will cause them to become soulbound.”
• Fur Lining - Attack Power - “Permanently enchant bracers to increase attack power by 120. Can only be used on the leatherworker’s bracers, and doing so will cause them to become soulbound.”

Upcoming Rogue Changes

Quote from: Gamnin (Source)

Hello rogues,

We’ve got some updates coming soon for the rogue class and I wanted to duck in and give you a sneak preview of what we’ve been working on as well as our future goals. Below are lists (by no means exhaustive) of some of these changes and goals.

General
- Quality of life improvements: Removal of various reagents (Thieves’ Tools, Flash Powder) as well as a Poisons skill change. We’re removing the Poisons skill and making the finished poisons available on vendors for purchase. This should free up a fair amount of bag space.
- Envenom: Now also increases your chance to apply poisons by 25% for 2-6 seconds (based on combo points).
- Wounding Poison: No longer stacks. The first application now reduces healing by 50%.
- Anesthetic Poison: Now also removes one Enrage effect from the target.
- Evasion, Sprint, Vanish: Cooldown reduced to 3 minutes. (Talents that reduce cooldown take this down to 2 minutes.)
- Cloak of Shadows: Cooldown increased to 2 minutes. (Elusiveness now reduces this cooldown to 1 minute.)
- A new level 75 ability has been designed. This is going to be one of the bigger teases as we’re not quite ready to talk about this one yet. I will say that will add some much needed group utility.
- Fan of Knives: Weapon normalization to equalize effectiveness regardless of weapons carried.

Assassination
- Mutilate: No longer requires you be behind the target.
- Relentless Strikes: Talent is too “required” and will be made more accessible. Vigor will replace its spot in the tree and a new talent will be created to fill Vigor’s spot.
- Find Weakness: Made passive to cut down on the number of triggered effects that either don’t affect gameplay or affect it in a negative way.
- Cut to the Chase: No longer requires a critical Eviscerate or Envenom. The finisher just has to land.
- Hunger for Blood: Now removes any harmful physical effect instead of Bleed or Magic effects. Bleed effects will still be removed (as all are physical) as well as effects like Mortal Strike, Aimed Shot, Expose Armor etc…

Combat
- Riposte: Now generates a combo point.
- Mace Specialization: This will grant armor penetration when using a mace. (The warrior talent will as well.)
- Deflection: Reduced to 3 ranks for 2/4/6% parry. This should soften the prereq for Riposte.
- Fist Weapon Specialization: Merged with Dagger Specialization.
- Dagger Specialization: Renamed Close Quarters Combat, moved to tier 3.
- Dual Wield Specialization: Moved to tier 1. Lightning Reflexes swapped locations with it and still needs a little more “oomph”.
- Unfair Advantage and Stay of Execution: Change to more offensive/utility (read mobility) talents. Too much defense on this tier.
- Killing Spree: Weapon normalization to equalize effectiveness regardless of weapons carried.

Subtlety
- More attractive Tier 1 to draw in all types of builds.
- Fewer dagger specific talents to allow additional build options.
- Wrongfully Accused: Reviewed. This talent doesn’t fit well in this location. May be moved lower and/or redesigned.
- Shadow Dance: A bit awkward at the moment. Due for some polish and some design tweaks.

Plenty to do still as you can see. As I mentioned, this isn’t everything we’ve got our eye on but gives you something to discuss and look for in an upcoming beta patch. Please add to the list anything you think needs special attention.

Thanks for reading. I’m going back to work.

Major contents of the patch

• maps and various environmental objects: 26%
• zone music: 24%
  • Sholazar Basin: 23%
  • Grizzly Hills: 20%
  • Nexus: 9%
  • Chamber of Aspects: 8%
  • Ebon Hold: 7%
• dungeons: 12%
  • Ulduar: 15%
  • Dalaran: 11%
  • Utgarde: 11%
• minimap images: 5%
• creature animations: 2%
  • Malygos: 10%
  • Snobold: 9%
  • Female Vrykul: 8%
  • Crystal Satyr: 7%
• other small files worth mentioning: Warlock raidset, Nexus skybox, Icebreaker transport ship

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