Recent Hotfixes

[MongoJerry]

Tyren has recently summarized the hotfixe changes (emergency patches) that have recently occured on the servers, including a small Paladin nerf/fix.

I'm giving you a topic. Now discuss.

[Tal]

Tyren has recently summarized the hotfixe changes (emergency patches) that have recently occured on the servers, including a small Paladin nerf/fix.

I'm giving you a topic.  Now discuss.
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I love when "nerfs" don't affect me in the least. :)

[Bob the Beholder]

Every post in that topic past the first one was painful to read.

Anyway, Blizzard will not fix the 'bug' with pets, because it's NOT A BUG.

If a pet is affected by a de-buff/curse/whatever, then, unless disspelled, it has to run its full effect. If the pet is unsummoned, and re-summoned... then it didn't run its full effect, and will continue until it does.

This is obvious to me. It was obvious the first time my hunter hit call pet and my bear was still poisoned from the last fight. So why is it so hard for these people to understand?

[Thawwing Light]

Well, I wish this were the real patch, but it's nice to see some things are being resolved.

---

I don't think there's anything on that thread worth discussing beyond the content of the first post, so I'll reserve my thoughts for that.

-Living Bomb Fix:

A topical and current fix, and this indirectly explains the infamous Warlock destruction of the Ironforge Auction House, as by the timing and reading of this fix it can be drawn that the explosion was a Warlock summoned Living Bomb player. This actually makes me impressed by the explosion, as that's a clever trick and a hell of a way to go to simply blow up the city, what with that boss being a Raid Boss and all.

I wonder what they meant by 'can only be cast on players'? Is this referring to it being cast on mobs, or (more likely, IMHO) on pets?

-Paladin Blessing of Light/Flash of Light fix:

This is an interesting quantity. After play the Horde for a while, many people will be driven to yell 'OMG nerf PaLAs!' However, I've found that while the class is powerful and perhaps the best, hands down, at surviving against all odds, they aren't too overpowered, at least nothing more than can be explained by player skill. It's interesting to see that one of the main damage tricks was too powerful due to a bug (Seal of the Crusader), and that parts of their healing was too powerful due to bugs.

Ultimately, I don't want a big nerf on Paladins like, say, taking away their plate. No, the class just need any bugs in it fixed, as all classes do, and that ought to take care of a lot of balance.

On a side note... this is also a topical fix. This spamming of low level healing spells was one of the strategies listed by the banned guild, Conquest, in their strategies on beating the Molten Core. However, it was also not their main or even preferred strategy, which was one that closely resembled the healer rotation used by MongoJerry back when he fought Lord Lakmaeron in a raid in beta.

Say what you will about these fixes, but it strikes me as saying that Blizzard at the very least is hotfixing immediate issues that are brought to their attention.

-That other fix

Not at the point where I can do that sort of content yet, but I know I'll be glad its working properly when I get there. Ah well.

[MongoJerry]

A topical and current fix, and this indirectly explains the infamous Warlock destruction of the Ironforge Auction House, as by the timing and reading of this fix it can be drawn that the explosion was a Warlock summoned Living Bomb player. This actually makes me impressed by the explosion, as that's a clever trick and a hell of a way to go to simply blow up the city, what with that boss being a Raid Boss and all.

No, actually, what the warlock did was dismiss his pet that had Living Bomb on it, hearth back to Ironforge after everything was done with the raid, walk into the auction house, and resummon the pet. Pets continue to have their buffs and debuffs on them after being dismissed and resummoned, so the pet still had the Living Bomb on it. *Boom!*

By making Living Bomb only work on players instead of pets, it both made it more difficult to do this trick but also made it easier on healers in raid parties to get rid of the Living Bomb. Pet stats and buffs aren't shown on the left-hand side of the screen (something I've asked to be changed), so unless a healer specifically targets the pet, he or she might not know that the pet has a Living Bomb on it. Now, healers can just watch the left-hand side of their screens and not worry about pets so much.

[Thawwing Light]

No, actually, what the warlock did was dismiss his pet that had Living Bomb on it, hearth back to Ironforge after everything was done with the raid, walk into the auction house, and resummon the pet.  Pets continue to have their buffs and debuffs on them after being dismissed and resummoned, so the pet still had the Living Bomb on it.  *Boom!*

By making Living Bomb only work on players instead of pets, it both made it more difficult to do this trick but also made it easier on healers in raid parties to get rid of the Living Bomb.  Pet stats and buffs aren't shown on the left-hand side of the screen (something I've asked to be changed), so unless a healer specifically targets the pet, he or she might not know that the pet has a Living Bomb on it.  Now, healers can just watch the left-hand side of their screens and not worry about pets so much.
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Ah. Well, I wish the man had used my method, it's a good deal more convoluted. B)

Still, I guess both are fixed by making the spell only work in the Molten Core. I guess it's a good thing, for all that the explosion was hilarious the first time. Still, I wonder if they'll ever need to do this with other unique spells...

[Artega]

Tyren has recently summarized the hotfixe changes (emergency patches) that have recently occured on the servers, including a small Paladin nerf/fix.

I'm giving you a topic.  Now discuss.
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I'm going on a tanget here. You've been warned.

If they can hotfix Paladin skills, and ninja-nerf Mind Soothe and Soothe Animal, is it really too much to ask for them to fix Rend and Thunder Clap? And the Intercept bug? And both Execute bugs? For those not familiar with some of the Warrior issues, I'll elaborate:

Rend (and Lacerate, but most hunters never go that deep into Survival) have downright subpar damage when compared to other DoTs. I believe it was compared that untalented Shadow Word: Pain at Level 18 does more damage than talented Rend at Level 60. Blizzard said something to the effect that it's not the same, but Rend is pretty much pointless in its current incarnation, Stealth-killing uses aside. If they can add casting times and adjust how skills work, I don't think it would be overtly difficult to buff the damage on Rend and Lacerate.

Like Rend, Thunder Clap is a joke. It does an absurdly tiny amount of damage at max rank, and the 10% debuff simply isn't worth the 20 Rage. Suggestions have been made to (greatly) increase the damage, increase the debuff, or both. Combined with Rend's pitiful damage output, Warriors have very little in the way of damage-dealing skills that aren't dependant on weapons, making them prohibitively gear-reliant.

For Intercept, as some may remember, it was semi-nerfed as of the last content patch. Its damage (which was pointless, anyway) was reduced, along with its rage cost. However, the patch reduced the damage as stated, but not the rage cost. There was a hotfix that semi-fixed this - instead of actually TAKING the 15 rage, it now takes the correct 10 rage, but it still requires 15 rage to use. I'm wondering why it's so hard to fix this.

Finally, there are two bugs associated wth Execute. First, if Execute misses, is dodged/parried/deflected/conceivably blocked, you lose ALL of your rage, and not the usual 20% of skill cost (which would be 20% of all of your rage, in this case.) This has been confirmed as a bug. There is also a sometimes-bug (meaning it's not always bugged as such) where you can Execute a Priest using PW:Shield or a Mage using mage shield, no matter their health. While I'm not complaining about taking 2500 of a mage's mana in one hit, it's bugged, and it needs to be fixed.

I can understand if some of these patches require some client-side changes, but I think it's ridiculous that we must be forced to wait some time - possibly months - for the next content patch, when they could release a series of small patches to fix these obvious problems with the class. Up until I got a new 51.4 dps polearm, I was miserable - soloing even -5 mobs caused way too much downtime, and I was totally incapable of maintaining aggro in instances because of my paltry damage output. Warriors DESPERATELY need some changes or additions to make them less gear-reliant (consider: rogues certainly benefit from good gear, but they have damage skills like Rupture and Eviscerate to fall back on, which are totally independant of weapon damage; Warriors do not have such luxuries.) While buffing Rend and Thunder Clap and fixing the aforementioned bugs won't be a permanent fix, it will certainly help us weather the storm until the next content patch arrives.

[stabby]

Rend (and Lacerate, but most hunters never go that deep into Survival) have downright subpar damage when compared to other DoTs.  I believe it was compared that untalented Shadow Word: Pain at Level 18 does more damage than talented Rend at Level 60.  Blizzard said something to the effect that it's not the same, but Rend is pretty much pointless in its current incarnation, Stealth-killing uses aside.  If they can add casting times and adjust how skills work, I don't think it would be overtly difficult to buff the damage on Rend and Lacerate.

Like Rend, Thunder Clap is a joke.  It does an absurdly tiny amount of damage at max rank, and the 10% debuff simply isn't worth the 20 Rage.  Suggestions have been made to (greatly) increase the damage, increase the debuff, or both.  Combined with Rend's pitiful damage output, Warriors have very little in the way of damage-dealing skills that aren't dependant on weapons, making them prohibitively gear-reliant.

They seem to be shying away from hotfixing anything but bugfixes and changes to abusable skills (the recent Paladin change was both). While I agree that Rend (to a point, its damage/rage isn't all that bad, with talents factored in) and Thunderclap (really, does anyone actually use it? I only do when I'm bored and want to make my friends go "hey, what the hell was that?") are in need of some love, hotfixes aren't the venue for it.

That said, tying bugfixes and balance tweaks to content is a bad call, in my opinion. It would be nice to see a level between their localization (mostly bugfixes/text edits) and content (everything and a toaster) patch varieties that was simply tweaks to existing content, and not the introduction of anything new. Call them Balance Patches or something. Similarly, there needs to be a level between emergency and localization (Bugfix or somesuch) that gets rolled out on a regular basis (once every 2 weeks, or when they've accumulated X amount of bugfixes that have been thoroughly tested). The important part here is regularity. I guess they're trying to keep down version number changes so as not to disable custom UIs too often, but that's not really a big deal for me (I'm sure that other people feel differently on the matter, and may, in fact, be in the majority).

For Intercept, as some may remember, it was semi-nerfed as of the last content patch.  Its damage (which was pointless, anyway) was reduced, along with its rage cost.  However, the patch reduced the damage as stated, but not the rage cost.  There was a hotfix that semi-fixed this - instead of actually TAKING the 15 rage, it now takes the correct 10 rage, but it still requires 15 rage to use.  I'm wondering why it's so hard to fix this.

Apparently the client-side rage cost is 15, and they don't want to roll out a patch to fix one number. I honestly can't blame them, it'd start a bad trend and have people demanding minipatches for every little problem. Witness the recent "OMG BLIZZ HOTFIX <insert pet cause here>!" threads that swept over the official forums after the Blessing of Light change. I'd rather have them stick to a somewhat slower (once or twice a month) schedule in which they push fixes when they're done.

Finally, there are two bugs associated wth Execute.&nbsp; First, if Execute misses, is dodged/parried/deflected/conceivably blocked, you lose ALL of your rage, and not the usual 20% of skill cost (which would be 20% of all of your rage, in this case.)&nbsp; This has been confirmed as a bug.&nbsp; There is also a sometimes-bug (meaning it's not always bugged as such) where you can Execute a Priest using PW:Shield or a Mage using mage shield, no matter their health.&nbsp; While I'm not complaining about taking 2500 of a mage's mana in one hit, it's bugged, and it needs to be fixed.

Neither of these are particularly gamebreaking. Well, the perma-execute bug is (I've gotten it against druids and rogues, too, but I haven't pinned down the cause yet. Perhaps shapechange for the former), but there's been no indication that a fix for that one is on the way, presumably because they have yet to locate what's wrong. It would be nice to see it go, though. The temptation to abuse it is too high.

[Thawwing Light]

Hmmm. So the perma-execute bug shows up on PW:S Priests and MS Mages? Good to know. I've gotten the bug on a Cat Form Druid that tried to gank me... he was 4 levels lower and I had full health and half rage. Even without the bug it would have been a stupidly easy fight, but watching him go down in about 3 seconds was quite amusing.

The perma-Execute bug could use a hotfix, but they'd also have to fix the other issues with it. Thunder Clap (which the running joke among my friends is that it's an intense form of Gonorrhoea) and Rend, to a lesser extent, could use some major rebalancing, but those can wait a bit, as at the moment I have better uses for my Rage.

[Malakar]

What's even more ridiculous than the Thunder Clap skill itself, is the upgrades. They're costly and serve only to increase the pitiful damage that may as well be taken out so that it doesn't break sheep.

I'd like to see something along the lines of one of the following:

-A duration increase on the debuff or a rage requirement decrease.
-Increased AOE damage or none at all so as not to break sheep.
-Possibly a stronger debuff with a target limit.

Edit: Oops, there's already a limit of 4 targets, lol.

Oh and as for rend, yes it's nothing compared to other DOTs, but its damage/rage ratio is twice as good as heroic strike, so I frequently use it at the start of solo PvE. It's also useful against rogues as already pointed out.