Weekly Ulduar Patch (Patch 3.1) Roundup

WARNING!! Today’s Round-up is EXTREMELY Long.

Your probably bombarded everyday with what’s going on with the 3.1 patch. As I follow the MMO Champion, WoW Insider posts, as well as the Official Forums, the Lodge Forums, with what’s happening on Twitter and the Blogosphere, there’s a plethora of information out there.

Instead of giving you updates everyday, we’ll make Friday our Weekly Patch Round Up.

That way for those that want to brave the PTR over the weekend can have a single spot where to go for Hunter related 3.1 info.

I’ll try to make sure and give credit where credit is due for every entry.  If you notice one that slipped by without the source properly cited, please point it out to me so I can remedy the situation.  Also,  if you have anything to report please either add it to the comments, post it on the PTR Forum in the Lodge Forums, or drop me an email.

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Since this is about the patch, let’s see what the Official Patch Notes tell us is suppose to be happening this release.

Note: I’ll try to limit the list to only what seems to directly affect Hunters and not other classes.

You can always find the complete notes by visiting the PTR Patch Notes site. (link)

General

• All Ground Mounts may now swim without dismounting the rider. Flying Mounts still may NOT, and will dismount the rider upon entering water.
• Ulduar is now available for limited testing. Please visit the Public Test Realms for more details. http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?forumId=11572
• Players at maximum level will now be able to visit their trainer to pay a one-time fee and access the dual talent specialization feature.
• A new Gear Manager feature has been added. Players will now be able to save gear sets for easy gear switching.

PvP

Battlegrounds

• Players will now be able to queue for battlegrounds from any location.
• Seaforium Barrels can now be looted while mounted, seen from anywhere in the zone, and found at the Central Graveyard.
• Teleporters can now be used while mounted and can now be seen from anywhere in the zone

Classes

General

Hysteria, Tricks of the Trade, Enrage, Wrecking Crew, Death Wish, Arcane Power, Owlkin Frenzy, Beast Within, and Avenging Wrath damage bonuses no longer stack together.

Hunters

• Disengage: Cooldown increased by 5 sec.
• Frost Trap: If the target who triggers Frost Trap is immune to its effect, the Frost Trap area effect will no longer be triggered.

Talents

Beast Mastery

• Improved Aspect of the Hawk now has a new spell effect.
• Improved Wing Clip: This talent has been removed.

Marksmanship

• Piercing Shots re-designed: Your critical Aimed, Steady and Chimera Shots cause the target to bleed for 10/20/30% of the damage dealt over 8 sec.
• Ranged Weapon Specialization: Points reduced from 5 to 3, 1/3/5%.
• Wild Quiver: Chance increased to 4/8/12%, up from 4/7/10%. Damage increased from 50% of an auto shot, to 80%.

Survival

• Hunting Party: This talent has been reduced to 3-points, and now increases your total Agility by an additional 1/2/3%.
• Lock and Load re-designed: You now have a 33/66/100% chance when you trap a target with Freezing Trap, Freezing Arrow or Frost Trap and a 2/4/6% chance when you deal periodic damage with your Immolation Trap or Black Arrow to cause your next 2 Arcane Shot or Explosive Shot spells to trigger no cooldown, cost no mana and consume no ammo.  This now has a new spell effect and sound.
• New Talent: Trap Launcher: When activated, your next Trap will be launched instantly at the enemy target. 1 minute cooldown. Removed per GC (source)
• T.N.T. re-designed: Increases the damage done by your Explosive Shot, Explosive Trap and Immolation Trap by 2/4/6%.
• Trap Mastery: This talent has been moved up to tier-2, up from tier-9.
• Wyvern Sting duration increased from 12 sec to 30 sec. PvP duration reduced from 10 sec to 6 sec.

Pets

• Roar of Sacrifice can be used on the hunter only.
• Stampede (rhino) only affects 1 target, but adds a 25% bleed damage debuff (that does not stack with Mangle etc.) in addition to its knockback.

Professions

Alchemy

• Increased the health granted by the Flask of Stoneblood.
• The Mercurial Stone is no longer required as a tool for alchemists. It is instead a green quality bind-on-equip trinket.

Blacksmithing

• Most of the recipes in the 1-300 skill range of blacksmithing have had their stats updated to be more useful.
• Added a new recipe for the Titansteel Spellblade.

Cooking

• Grub now sells the Dig Rat Stew recipe to players who completed the quest.
• Prospector Khazgorm, found in Bael Modan in southern Barrens, now sells the recipe for Dig Rat Stew to the Alliance.

Enchanting

• Added a recipe for enchanting staves with spell power.
• Several recipes in the 250-300 skill range have been rebalanced.

Jewelcrafting

• Added a new recipe to cut black diamonds.

Leatherworking

• Shadowskin Gloves and Dusky Boots no longer require Shadowcat Hide to create, but instead require an equal quantity of Shadow Silk. Shadowcat Hides can no longer be obtained from skinning.

Quests

The fight event for the ” Grim(oire) Business ” quest at Vim’gol’s Circle in the Blade’s Edge Mountains now only requires one character to stand within a fire circle in order to summon Vim’gol the Vile. However, it still takes five characters, one in each of the fire circles, in order to interrupt Vim’gol the Vile’s Unholy Growth cast.

Dungeons and Raids

Eye of Eternity

• Malygos will now properly delay before breathing after a Vortex on Heroic difficulty.

Naxxramas

• The Chains of Kel’Thuzad will no longer reset the raid’s threat.
• The Portal of Shadows created by Shade of Naxxramas will only persist for a maximum of one minute.
• Players with pets who attempt to use the Obedience Crystals in Naxxramas will have their pets dismissed automatically so they may possess an Understudy.

User Interface

• New Advanced features for quest tracking are now available. Players will need to activate this option within the Interface panel.
• A new Color Blind option is available under the Interface panel.
• For additional notes on Lua and XML changes please visit the UI & Macros forum.

Items

• Darkmoon Cards of the North will now take three seconds per card to create.
• Old Naxxramas Shoulder Enchants will now soulbind items.
• Outrider’s Lammellar Legguards and Sentinel’s Mail Leggings have had their costs reduced to the correct value.
• Pack of Endless Pockets can now be mailed.
• Patroller’s Pack now sounds like a bag.
• PvP Trinkets will now break Shackle Undead.
• Several beverages missing from the ” Beverages Consumed ” statistic have been added.
• Several foods missing from the Food Eaten statistic have been added.
• White Tickbird Hatchling is now classified as a Pet.

Bug Fixes

• Dartol’s Rod of Transformation has had its tooltip corrected.
• Many items with 110 attack power now correctly grant 110 ranged attack power.
• Oracle Talisman of Ablution’s spell data has been clarified.
• Personal Rating Requirements for offhand Deadly Gladiator items should now display correctly.
• Yaaarrrr! now has a detailed tooltip.

So there you have it. If your like me, you probably just focused on the Hunter section, so make sure you look at the entire Official PTR Patch Notes when you have a chance.

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Evias, Morwynna, zefirys, Adele, Tiaxa, Darkstryder, and Arora from The Hunting Lodge Forums have provided many details as to the status of some of these changes.  Feel free to follow what’s everything that is going on by visiting the Lodge PTR Forum.

Below is what we’ve been able to confirm so far as of PTR Build 9626.

General Items

• Character faces are wrong.



• The loading screen still does not display until the bar is full.
• Titles are still being rewarded upon logging in.
• The PTR client seems to be blowing up less frequently, judging by trade chat. Evias personally didn’t experience a single crash in an hour.
• Riding Mounts are confirmed to work underwater

Hunter Related

Dual Spec
This one was actually fairly straightforward. Head over to any Hunter class trainer, select the “Learn about dual specializations” dialogue option, pay 1000g. Hit N to bring up your talent sheet and…

Then once you go to the talent pages and can switch to your secondary spec. It’s a 5 second cast, usable only out of combat, no reagent cost. Currently no cooldown.

however, it still hasn’t been given a flashy cast animation.

SURVIVAL
• Sniper Training is still listed as [NYI]
• Ammo is still only stacking to 200 as of this build.
• Black Arror is a Survival Talent but shows in the Marksman Spellbook.
• Black Arrow does very little damage per tick (about half of a Serpent Tick) and no one has reported what spot in the rotation it should have yet.
  “Putting it first before ES seems to result half the time in it coming off cool down right after I’ve just used ES, putting it after ES has the effect of missing the 6% damage bonus for the first ES, which is kinda bleh), but 6% is 6%, and the fact that it’s shadow damage helps. – Morwynna”
• Rapid Fire got a new visual, iAotH unchanged.
  
• Kill Shot is now back on the GCD
• Piercing Shots: Even with the buggy weaker DOT overwrites, this was accounting for about 3% of my damage on a 5 minute log. For reference, Wild Quiver is typically 2% on live. – Evias
• Multi-Shot testing on Darn dummies is borked.
• Surv and MM are at least fairly close; gear discrepancies/buff differences might narrow (or widen) the gap in either direction, but there’s no glaring 1k dps difference, even with MM’s ability to eat through mana faster than should be possible. – Morwynna
• A MM test on the PTR specced 11/53/7 sustained 2800 DPS on the heroic dummy not in a raid. – zefirys
• Call of the wild is affecting Pet and Hunter but seems to be reversed at the moment -
  “Effect #1 Apply Aura: Mod Attack Power %
  Value: 10
  Radius: 100 yards
  Effect #2 Apply Aura: Mod Ranged Attack Power %
  Value: 10
  Radius: 20 yards” – Adele

Pet Related
• Mobile pet stables – The spell is currently available to be trained for 24g, however the interface required to actually swap your pet in the field isn’t implemented. The cooldown is listed at 30 minutes.
  
• Call Stabled Pet ability appears to be working.
  Clicking it now will immediately put the ability on cooldown and will bring up the standard stable UI. EDIT: You gain a two minute Call Stabled Pet buff. The number of pet swaps during that period appears to be unlimited.
  Pet talents can now properly be reset and allocated. – Evias
• “Couldn’t see my pet talents, but they weren’t unlearned. After the 28th critical error and reload my dual spec UI bugged out, causing me to show as not having the second talent tab and being specced 0/0/0 with no glyphs and no points to spend. Paying the 50g to respec fixed it. – Evias”

NEW PET TALENTS HERE (taken directly from the in game tooltips):
TENACITY:

• Intervene was moved from tier 3 to tier 5.
• Thunderstop was added to the vacated spot in tier 3.
• Worth noting that Grace of the Mantis and Roar of Sacrifice are still here, despite them being added to the Cunning pet talents.

CUNNING:

• Grace of the Mantis has been added as the fourth ability on tier 5
• Roar of Sacrifice added to tier 6.

FEROCITY: (Unmolested aside from the new tier 6 talents.)

• Tier 3: Thunderstomp (1 point) – Shakes the ground with a thundering force, doing 161 to 163 nature damage to all enemies within 8 yards. This ability causes a moderate amount of additional threat.
• Tier 6: Silverback (2 points) – Your pet’s Growl also heals it for 1%(2%) of it’s total health. (Exclusive to Tenacity Pets)
• Tier 6: Shark Attack (2 points) – Your pet does an additional 3%(6%) damage with all attacks. (Exclusive to Ferocity Pets)
• Tier 6: Roar of Sacrifice – Your pet absorbs damage done to you, transferring 30% damage taken to the pet. Lasts 12 seconds. 30 second cooldown, 40 yard range. (Exclusive to Cunning Pets)
• Tier 6: Wild Hunt (2 points) – Increases the contribution your pets get from your stamina by 20%(40%) and attack power by 20% (40%) (Note: all three pet talent trees got this one)

New Gorilla ability to replace Thunderstomp

• Pummel – Pummel the target, interrupting spellcasting and preventing any spell in that school from being cast for 4 seconds. 10 second cooldown. (Note no one has had a chance to try this out. I’m assuming it works as advertised.)

Changed Wolf Ability

• Furious Howl – Increases melee and ranged attack power by 316 for the wolf and it’s master for 20 seconds. 40 second cooldown.
  “I couldn’t get this to apply the buff to the hunter whatsoever. Facepalm the wolf would properly gain the buff, but Evias would not, even with TSA and Dragonhawk clicked off. Confirmed it’s not applying to party members either (though the tooltip says as much) – Evias”

Changed Raptor Ability

• Savage Rend – now temporarily boost the raptor’s damage by 10% for 30 seconds. “Had to borrow this one from MMO-Champion, my raptor is currently floating in the 5th stable slot. – Evias”

Images provided by MMO Champion and Evias