Shadow of the Necropolis
Floating above the Plaguelands, the necropolis known as Naxxramas
serves as the seat of one of the Lich King's most powerful officers,
the dreaded lich Kel'Thuzad. Horrors of the past and new terrors yet
to be unleashed are gathering inside the necropolis as the Lich
King's servants prepare their assault. The Scourge marches again...
Naxxramas is the new 40-man raid dungeon that will present even the
most experienced and powerful players with an epic challenge.
General
- The cost to unlearn talents will now decay over time. This cost will
be reduced by a rate of 5 gold per month to a minimum of 10 gold.
- After a disconnect from the server, it is now possible to log back
in immediately, instead of receiving the message, "A character with
that name already exists."
- Chain targeted spells and abilities (e.g. Multi-shot, Cleave, Chain
Lightning) will no longer hit stealthed or invisible units unless
visible to the caster.
- Fear: The calculations to determine if Fear effects should break due
to receiving damage have been changed. The old calculation used the
base damage of the ability. The new calculation uses the final amount
of damage dealt, after all modifiers. In addition, the chance for a
damage over time spell to break Fear is now significantly lower. Note
that Fear continues to be roughly three times as likely to break on
player targets as on non-player targets. In addition, Intimidating
Shout now follows that player versus non-player distinction, while
previously it did not.
- Periodic Healing: Spells which do periodic healing will now have
their strength determined at the moment they are cast. Changing the
amount of bonus healing you have during the duration of the periodic
spell will have no impact on how much it heals for.
- Reflection: Effects which cause reflection will no longer reflect
triggered effects separately from their base effects (eg. Impact,
Improved Shadow Bolt, Aftermath, etc.)
- Optimization code known as "M2Faster" is now enabled by default.
M2Faster can improve performance in crowded scenes when "Vertex
Animation Shaders" is turned on.
Battlegrounds
- Alterac Valley
Most of the NPC guard units have been removed.
Players now drop more quest items.
Creatures that remain in Alterac Valley have had their hit points
reduced.
The buff that is periodically cast by each faction's Captain has
been changed to a flat 20% hit point buff.
Upgrading troops through armor scrap turn-ins will also now result
in your team's General enabling a periodic buff to your melee and
spell damage.
This buff scales from 10% at the Seasoned unit level, 20% at the
Veteran unit level, and 30% at the Champion unit level.
Druids
- Innervate: This spell is now a base ability for all Druids, trainable
at level 40. Any Druid who formerly had the Innervate talent now has
the Swiftmend talent instead.
- Nature's Grace: You will no longer consume this effect when casting a
spell which was made instant by Nature's Swiftness.
- Swiftmend: This new talent has been added to the Druid Restoration
tree, replacing Innervate as the 31 point ultimate talent. It
consumes a Rejuvenation or Regrowth aura to produce an instant heal.
- Enrage: Tooltip edited to clarify functionality.
Hunters
- Counterattack (Survival Talent) - All ranks of this talent will now
share the same cooldown.
- Scorpid Poison: Duration slightly lengthened.
- Changed the way hunter pet family armor bonuses and penalties are
applied to allow the exact value from the Natural Armor talent to be
applied correctly. This may result in a very slight loss of armor to
some pets (less than a third of a percent).
- Improved Scorpid Sting: The aura from this Sting will now be removed
(as intended) when a different Sting aura is placed on the victim.
Mages
- Due to significant talent changes, mages will have all talent points
refunded and can be respent. Training costs for all talent spell
replacements have been significantly reduced.
- Arcane Explosion is now instant cast and will no longer remove the
Presence of Mind effect when used.
- Evocation - Is now available to all mages (via trainer), starting at
level 20.
- Conjure Food now has a new rank (Rank 7) available in Stratholme.
- Frost Ward now has a new rank (Rank 5) available as item loot in
dungeons.
- Mana Shield - Damage taken will now be absorbed by other absorb
spells (e.g. Ice Barrier, Power Word: Shield) before being absorbed
by Mana Shield.
- Dampen Magic - Damage and healing reduction increased on ranks 3
through 5.
- Amplify Magic - Damage and healing bonus increased on ranks 2
through 4.
- Counterspell - Fixed a bug that made Counterspell unresistable.
- Winter's Chill - Changed to increase crit chance by 1% per stack, but
stacks up to 10 times (previously 2% max 5 times).
- Improved Scorch - Duration of Fire Vulnerability increased to 30
seconds (previously 15 secs).
- Blast Wave: The bonus this spell receives from effects that increase
spell damage has been increased.
- Cold Snap: This talent will now always clear the cooldown for Frost
Ward, even if the cooldown was triggered by casting Fire Ward.
- Cone of Cold: The bonus this spell receives from effects that
increase spell damage has been increased.
- Fire Ward: The amount of damage absorbed by this ward was increased
substantially on all ranks.
- Frost Ward: The amount of damage absorbed by this ward was increased
substantially on all ranks.
- Arcane Power: This ability will no longer stack with Power Infusion.
If you gain both at the same time, Arcane Power will take precedence.
- Added a new level 60 quest available from Archmage Xylem in Azshara
for mages.
- Fire Ruby now has a sell value and can be disenchanted.
Paladins
- Benediction: This talent will no longer incorrectly provide a double
discount to Seal of Justice.
- Blessing of Light: It is no longer possible for a target to appear to
have multiple ranks of Blessing of Light. These multiple auras had no
beneficial effect, merely causing confusion. Problems with targeting
the spell when the caster has Blessing of Light effect on them have
also been fixed.
- Divine Favor: It is no longer possible to cast this immediately after
a healing spell and "retroactively" make it a critical hit.
- Illumination: When several critical effect healing spells are cast
very quickly, you will now receive the correct mana refund for each
one.
- Judgement of Command: Now consumes a charge of the Zandalarian Hero
Charm. In addition, when this spell is resisted it will no longer
erroneously still do damage.
- Judgement of Righteousness: Now consumes a charge of the Zandalarian
Hero Charm.
- Seal of Command: Clarified tooltip.
- Vengeance: Seal of Command critical hits can now trigger this
ability.
- Vindication: This effect will no longer be absorbed by Grounding
Totem.
Priests
- Lightwell - Casting time reduced. Lightwell object increased in
size to make it easier to click; relative click radius decreased
slightly.
- Mind Control: If you cast Power Word: Shield while Mind Controlling
a target, the Recently Shielded aura will now appear on the correct
target instead of yourself.
- Shadowguard: This Troll Priest racial spell now works with Vampiric
Embrace, Blackout, and Shadow Weaving. In addition, the damage from
Shadowguard will now consume charges of the Zandalarian Hero Charm's
Unstable Power aura.
- Spirit of Redemption: This spell has a number of fixes: Priests
prematurely leaving battlegrounds with this aura on will now receive
the Deserter debuff (as intended); Priests in Spirit of Redemption
form at the completion of a battleground will have the aura removed
without dying; It will now work correctly with the Darkmoon Card
Twisting Nether item, resurrecting you after Spirit of Redemption has
run its course; If you should die underwater the Spirit of Redemption
will no longer have a breath bar appear; the Warlock Drain Soul spell
will terminate producing 1 shard when the Priest switches to Spirit
of Redemption form; You will no longer have to wait 30 seconds for
graveyard resurrection upon your first death while using Spirit of
Redemption.
- Vampiric Embrace: This ability will no longer heal for damage caused
when the target had no life remaining.
Rogues
- Detect Traps is now a passive skill.
- Pick Pocket: This ability will no longer trigger effects on your
target.
- Slice and Dice: This ability will no longer play its sound effect
twice.
- Vanish: Cancelling your Stealth aura while Vanish is running will
now cause Vanish to be canceled as well.
Warlocks
- Shadow Ward now has a new rank (Rank 5) available as item loot in
dungeons. The amount of damage absorbed by this ward was
increased substantially on all ranks.
- Curse of Agony: The damage from this spell will now continue even
if the caster dies or leaves the area.
- Emberstorm: This talent will now correctly increase the damage the
Warlock takes from Hellfire.
- Hellfire: Aftermath can now be triggered by this spell.
- Improved Shadowbolt: Periodic damage spells and
non-damaging spells will no longer consume charges of Shadow
Vulnerability.
- Shadowburn: If you cast Drain Soul while this aura is on the victim,
you will no longer receive two soul shards upon the victim's death.
- Soul Link: If your pet is banished, it will now break the Soul Link.
In addition, Soul Link's tooltip has been clarified to indicate it
only works with your imp, voidwalker, succubus, or felhunter.
Shaman
- Due to significant talent changes, Shaman will have all talent points
refunded and can be respent. Training costs for all talent spell
replacements have been significantly reduced.
- Searing Totem - Mana cost reduced.
- Disease Cleansing Totem - Duration increased.
- Fire Resistance Totem - Duration increased.
- Flametongue Totem - Duration increased.
- Frost Resistance Totem - Duration increased.
- Grace of Air Totem - Duration of ranks 1 and 2 increased.
- Nature Resistance Totem - Duration increased.
- Poison Cleansing Totem - Duration increased.
- Stoneskin Totem - Duration increased.
- Strength of Earth Totem - Duration of ranks 1 through 4 increased.
- Tremor Totem - Duration increased.
- Windfury Totem - Duration increased.
- Windwall Totem - Duration increased.
- Mana Spring Totem - Mana cost reduced.
- Healing Stream Totem - Mana cost reduced.
- Two-Handed Axes/Maces (Enhancement Talent) - Skill levels gained with
these two weapons will now be retained if you decide to unspend this
talent point and return to it later.
- Flame Shock - Damage over time portion of all ranks slightly
increased. Mana cost of ranks 3 through 5 decreased. In addition, a
new rank is available (rank 6) from Upper Blackrock Spire.
- Improved Reincarnation (Restoration Talent) - Fixed a bug where rank
1 of this talent was not decreasing the cooldown properly.
- Rockbiter, Frostbrand, Flametongue and Windfury Weapon mana costs
reduced.
- Elemental Fury: Tooltip now indicates it increases the critical
damage for Searing Totem, Magma Totem, and Fire Nova Totem.
- Fire Nova Totem: This totem now receives increased damage from
effects that increase the Shaman's spell damage.
- Grounding Totem: This totem will no longer reflect the Mage talent
Combustion back onto the Mage.
- Healing Wave Totem: This totem now receives increased damage from
effects that increase the Shaman's healing.
- Lightning Bolt: Mana cost reduced approximately 17%.
- Magma Totem: This totem now receives increased damage from effects
that increase the Shaman's spell damage.
- Searing Totem: This totem now receives increased damage from effects
that increase the Shaman's spell damage.
Warriors
- Improved Revenge - Chance to stun at each rank changed to 15/30/45%.
- Bloodrage - Fixed a bug that caused Bloodrage to cost twice the
intended health
- Sweeping Strikes: This spell has a number of fixes: When used in
conjunction with Execute and the second victim is below 20% health,
they will be hit with the full Execute amount. If the second victim
is not below 20% health, they will be hit with normal melee swing
damage; If the ability you are using does not deal damage, it will
not use a charge of Sweeping Strikes; The extra attack it generates
when used with Whirlwind now has the correct damage range; The
additional attacks generated by this ability will now properly take
into account the armor of the second target.
- Whirlwind - When this ability is used with Sweeping Strikes, it will
burn only one charge of Sweeping Strikes and will generate only one
additional attack.
- Retaliation - This ability will now function correctly at full melee
range.
- Intimidating Shout - The cowering in fear effect will no longer be
applied when the target resists this shout.
- Shield Slam: This ability now costs 20
rage to use and the damage it does is modified by attack power
(normalized to 2.2 speed). However, the base damage has been reduced.
It generates more threat per rage and more damage per rage than it
did previously.
- Flurry - The tooltip for this talent has been adjusted to indicate it
only works on normal melee swings. And ranks 1 through 4 of this
talent will now activate correctly again. Your haste will now last
only the intended next 3 swings.
Items
- Key rings have been added to the game.
Level 1-39 = 4 slots
Level 40-49 = 8 slots
Level 50-60 = 12 slots
- Stack sizes have been updated:
Stacks of 20
Leather (Light, Medium, etc.)
Cured Hides (Light, Medium, etc.)
Shards (Small Brilliant, etc.)
Enchanting Dusts (Strange, Illusion, etc.)
Flash Powder
Rogue Poisons (Instant, Crippling, etc.)
Rogue Poison Reagents (Essence of Pain, Deathweed, etc.)
Stacks of 10
Hides (Light, Medium, etc.)
- We have re-evaluated the mechanics of consumable items in the game
and concluded that these should work in a more intuitive manner. As
such, most items that can not be equipped with right click abilities
have been streamlined into one of three categories. Using an item of
a particular category will trigger a shared cooldown among all other
items in the same category. The categories break down as follows with
category cooldowns as listed.
Potions 2 minutes: This includes items such as Health Potion, Mana
Potion, Invisibility Potion and Mighty Rage Potion.
Aggressive 1 minute: This includes items such as explosives, Really
Sticky Glue and Discombobulator Ray.
Non-Aggresive 2 minutes: This includes items such as Healthstone,
Night Dragon's Breath, Whipper Root Tuber and Target Dummy.
- Many items that can be equipped have had their cooldown category
removed and will be controlled exclusively by the item's self
cooldown. For example, the Gnomish Mind Control Cap should no longer
trigger the cooldown of the Talisman of Arathor.
- We have re-evauluated the class specific quest rewards for both
Zul'Gurub and Ahn'Qiraj Ruins. To bring them more in line with the
effort required to attain them we have upgraded the superior items
to epic quality.
- All food/drink can be eaten while silenced. Previously some
food/drink could not be consumed when under the effect of a silence.
- The Gnomish Mind Control Cap may now only be used on targets that are
not in combat.
- An updated set of armor rewards have been added to vendors for Honor
ranks 7, 8, and 10.
- The armor rewards for Honor ranks 12 and 13 have been increased in
level and stat point allocation. 42
Professions
- Four new nature resist cloth armor recipes have been added to the
merchants at Cenarion Hold for those with high Cenarion circle
reputation.
- Three new nature resist leather armor recipes have been added to the
ghost leatherworker of Silithus for those with high Cenarion Circle
reputation.
- Three new nature resist plate recipes have been added to the
merchants at Cenarion Hold for those with high Cenarion Circle
reputation.
- The two-handed agility Enchanting recipe now provides a green glow
on those weapons.
- When a paladin is replaced by their Evil Twin due to transporter
malfunction, they can no longer revert to their normal self using
Divine Shield.
- Tranquil Mechanical Yetis are no longer unique.
Quests
- Light's Hope Chapel has been revamped and is now a fully functional
quest hub.
A new mailbox has been added.
The chapel is now flagged as an inn.
A guard system is in place.
New vendors have been added.
- Dozens of new quests have been added to Light's Hope.
- New quests available in Zul'Gurub and Light's Hope Chapel for head
and leg resistance enchantments.
- Several new tradeskill quests have been added to assist players in
obtaining frost resistance armor and items.
- A new LEGENDARY item quest has been added! Casters rejoice (and
druids too)!
Raids and Dungeons
- Zul'Gurub
Class specific armor quests given by the Zandalarian trolls of
Yojamba Isle no longer require Bijous or Coins for completion.
Armor quests now only require a Primal Hakkari piece and appropriate
faction with Zandalar.
Class specific enchantments given by Zanza the Restless no longer
require Arcanum (Librams) from Dire Maul. The requirements have been
changed to items found within Zul'Gurub. Speak with Zanza the
Restless for more information.
The various clan speakers (Bloodscalp Speaker, Sandfury Speaker,
etc) have had their hit points reduced considerably.
Zandalarian Armor Replacement - Because of the changes made to the
armor rewards from the Paragons of Power quests, the trolls of
Yojamba Isle will now offer to replace pieces of armor that have
been lost or deleted.
After careful consideration we have decided to add an additional
loot table to the High Priests of Zul'Gurub. Players should now see
two items in addition to the tokens when slaying these bosses.
- Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj
Ossirian the Unscarred - There is a new crystal that will be visible
before the encounter begins. Players can use this crystal just like
any other crystal in the encounter, but it cannot come back up
during the encounter.
Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj Class Set Reward Replacement - Because of the
changes made to the rewards from the Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj class set
quests, players can obtain replacements for lost or deleted quest
rewards from Warden Haro, Keyl Swiftclaw, and Windcaller Yessendra
in Cenarion Hold.
User Interface
- Text that a raid leader sends to chat will now be displayed in a
different color and will have the [Raid Leader] label.
- There is now a new raid warning chat channel available to raid
leaders and assistants. Text that is sent to this channel will appear
in the center of the screen for all players in the raid. The channel
is called raid warning and text can be sent to it with "/rw"
- Raid leaders now have a Ready Check button on their raid interface.
This can also be sent with /readycheck from the chat line. A ready
check sends an "Are you ready?" Yes/No dialogue to all players in the
raid. The raid leader will get feedback in 30 seconds on all the
players who were not ready or who did not respond.
- Players now have a Raid Info button on their raid interface that
functions the same way /raidinfo worked before. This function will
display a pane showing all of the raid instances that a player is
saved to, rather than displaying it to the chat window.
- Players in a party may now select an option that allows them to
reset an instance.
You only get the reset instance option if you are a party leader.
The UI option appears if you are a party leader, you have one or
more instances open, and you are not currently in an instance.
The UI option is a right-click option off of your own portrait (like
party loot options).
You get a warning dialogue when you select this option asking if you
really want to reset all instances.
If you select reset all instances, all non-raid instances will be
reset to their starting condition.
World Environment
- New flight paths can be found at Ratchet and Marshall's Refuge,
Un'Goro Crater.
- Flight paths added between:
Morgan's Vigil - Lakeshire
Revantusk Village - Light's Hope Chapel
Aerie Peak - Chillwind Point
Stonetalon Peak - Nijel's Point
Cenarion Hold - Feathermoon Stronghold
Cenarion Hold - Camp Mojache
Cenarion Hold - Un'Goro Crater
Gadgetzan - Un'Goro Crater
Crossroads - Ratchet
Theramore - Ratchet
Ratchet - Talendris Point
Moonglade - Talonbranch
Splintertree - Valormok
Hammerfall - Revantusk Village
Camp Mojache - Freewind Post
Macs
- "Maximized Windowed Mode" on a multiple display setup now leaves
extra displays available for desktop use.
- In windowed mode, the window position and size is now saved on exit.
- Command-clicking the zoom button in windowed mode will now toggle
amongst a few standard sizes.
- The desktop is no longer displayed when switching between
full-screen resolutions.
- Cinematic support on 10.4.x systems has been revised to use CoreVideo
for playback.
- Fixed a bug that could disrupt window sizes of other apps and desktop
icons when switching in and out of fullscreen mode.
- Keyboard event processing has been improved and is less likely to
drop keystrokes.
- The config.wtf variable "screenshotFormat" allows the user to choose
"png", "jpeg", or "tga" (Targa) format for screen shots.
- Fixed an issue in WoW where pasting in multi-line text from the
clipboard would result in one long line of text in the text view.
- Fixed an issue where international characters were not being copied
and pasted correctly in some situations.
- Conditional support for future OpenGL performance enhancements in OS X.
