Patch 3.3.3 is Live!

[Mania]

As always, you can find the entire patch notes on the World of Warcraft site at: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/

The big news in general is all PvP: Random battleground system (like the random dungeon system); battleground Marks removed.

There are also some interesting changes to the UI for the auction house and the quest tracker.

And here's a round-up of the hunter stuff:

• Hunter Talents
  • Beast Mastery - Ferocious Inspiration: This ability is now an aura and provides 1/2/3% damage to all party or raid members within 100 yards and boosts the damage of Steady Shot by 3/6/9%.
• Pet Talents
  • Heart of the Phoenix: Cooldown reduced to 8 minutes, down from 10 minutes.
• Hunter Bugs
  • Explosive Trap: Low ranks of this ability were receiving no bonus damage from attack power. That has been corrected.
  • Immolation Trap: Tooltips for lower ranks should now display more accurate damage.
  • Rapid Fire: Now triggers the global cooldown correctly.
  • Sniper Training: Reduced the time it takes to gain this effect so with lag it will feel more consistent with the 6 seconds stated in the tooltip.
  • Lock and Load: Fixed a bug where Lock and Load always proc'd 100% of the time from the first tick of Explosive Trap and never from additional ticks. It should now be 6% as advertised.
  • Master's Call: This ability will now function correctly when the pet is affected by one of a death knight's diseases.
  • Mortal Shots: This talent was not correctly buffing Serpent Sting by the full amount.
• Pet Bugs
  • Glyphs which modify a pet's stats in any way will now force a recalculation of the pet's stats when they are equipped or unequipped.

[Kalliope]

The other big thing is that Frozo is now taking your frozen orbs in exchange for trade goods in Dalaran!

This is good news (everyone!) for hunters who were looking at, say, the Ulduar craftables, but didn't want to pull together all of those mats.

EDIT: O_o at some of these bug fixes.

[Vephriel]

I'm eagerly anticipating to hear how the FI buff will perform. Even if it just brings up our DPS a little, that would be great! If anyone's able to test it out, please report back to us.

Another interesting tidbit, for those that have Authenticators:

Authenticator Frame: If a player has a Battle.net Authenticator attached to his or her account and selects Remember Account Name at the login screen, the next time that player logs into World of Warcraft, a field to input the Authenticator code will be displayed below the password field.

That will be much more handy, I can type in everything at once instead of just putting my password and waiting for the code box to pop up.

I'm also pleased to hear that future Holiday Bosses will be able to be queued for in the LFD tool. This means no more searching for a group every day, and everyone automatically comes with their 'summon' I believe, so no worries about those pesky ninjas who just tag along for the loot.

[Saturo]

Rapid Fire triggers the GCD? Was it a bug that it didn't?

*Sniff*

[Vephriel]

Rapid Fire triggers the GCD? Was it a bug that it didn't?

*Sniff*

Ugh, this sucks for macros....bleh.

[Kalliope]

Rapid Fire triggers the GCD? Was it a bug that it didn't?

*Sniff*

Ugh, this sucks for macros....bleh.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. -_- *sigh*

[Adam-Savage]

I'm curios to see the dps number for BM hunters now. All this talk about how they where supposed to be improved.

[Saturo]

Once this patch hits Europe, around tomorrow, I'll check it. I was able to make 3k dummy DPS on Stereo, with just a 3.9k GS, a level 79 Gondria and aark of the Wild.

I'll check out my DPS after the patch too.

[Skyshot]

I have something to add even though it's not really hunter specific or terribly important.. but it would appear that drakes, nether drakes, and nether rays are no longer mute when you use /mountspecial. It sounds like the normal drakes have 3 (slight) variations of drawn out roars where as nether rays/drakes only have one. Not sure if protos got any sounds though. Any proto owner care to try it and let us know?

[Vephriel]

Proto-drakes have always made an audible roar when they do their idle/mount special. Nice to hear that the normal drakes do now though! I like their big idling stretch, but the lack of roar was a bit odd.

[Skyshot]

Ooh never heard the proto before. I'll have to find myself someone in game with one to show me. xD
Or maybe this week I'll have a lucky egg and get my green proto... /crossfingers

[Vephriel]

Hehe, if you stand on the Dalaran flight pad I'm sure there will be a few people sitting there on their protos. Then it's just a matter of waiting for their idle to go off.

[Tahlian]

Well, after a quick round of testing on the target dummy, I can report that I'm showing about 4460 DPS on the target dummy over the span of my mana bar - WITHOUT popping Rapid Fire. That's about what I used to do WITH blowing Rapid Fire on a test, so yes, there is a DPS buff...but I'm not sure exactly how big of one because any testing is somewhat tainted at the moment.

You see, there's a funny little bug right now. All my pets had the Hellscream Icecrown Citadel buff of +5% to health, damage, etc...no matter where we were in the world. I hadn't been anywhere near Icecrown Citadel when I logged in and my pets still had it. I'm sure they'll get that ironed out quickly enough, and I hope they manage to fix it without having to revert the change - but it does tend to throw off quantitative testing for the moment.

[Kalliope]

You see, there's a funny little bug right now. All my pets had the Hellscream Icecrown Citadel buff of +5% to health, damage, etc...no matter where we were in the world. I hadn't been anywhere near Icecrown Citadel when I logged in and my pets still had it. I'm sure they'll get that ironed out quickly enough, and I hope they manage to fix it without having to revert the change - but it does tend to throw off quantitative testing for the moment.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Mine are bugged too! xD Thanks for the heads up; I'll be sure to enjoy this in the meantime.

[Aleu]

The Nether Drake roar seems a bit off. o.O But I like the roars from the normal drakes!

...Also anyone notice that some Cobras seem to have a darker coloring? o.O I just notice this in Gundrak and checked my Cobra Hatchling. Same thing. Their colors seem to be a bit darker.

[cowmuflage]

so sorry to sound out of place but are there any new non combat pets or mounts out? i am a HUGE mount hunter. I have 104 so far but i NEED more! I woudl like a new rare flying one as my time lost needs a rest XD Us cows are huge after all.

Im only asking as i can not get a new game card till the weekend

[Adam-Savage]

I've already noticed while doing the WG weeklys I was killing stuff alot faster then I did before. I'm gonna try out BM tomorrow on a heroic and see what the dps numbers are.

[Mania]

so sorry to sound out of place but are there any new non combat pets or mounts out? i am a HUGE mount hunter. I have 104 so far but i NEED more! I woudl like a new rare flying one as my time lost needs a rest XD Us cows are huge after all.

Im only asking as i can not get a new game card till the weekend

I don't have any information on new mounts that can actually be gotten in-game right now, although there was stuff in the data files.

There is a new mini-pet available from the toy shop in Dalaran -- a blue clockwork rocket bot. In addition, the two engineering pets that were only available to engineers, Pet Bombling and Lil' Smoky, are no longer BOP and can be learned by anybody.

[Chrizesu]

Sadly I do have an unreported issue that has to do with Macs and this patch. Seems that every once in a while you can't connect to servers when you log in until the computer is restarted.

[cowmuflage]

Oh thanks Mania for the pet info. Seems i will be adding to my pet collection then