4.2 Patchnotes

[Vephriel]

Sounds like 4.2 will be going to the PTR pretty soon! Perhaps we'll get some info on hydras when it does. *crosses fingers*

Of particular interest in these notes is a big change to CC:

Many crowd control abilities no longer cause creatures to attack players when they are cast. The creature will not attack the player when the crowd control wears off, and nearby creatures will not become hostile to the player either. However, if a visible player gets too close to the target creature, the creature will remember and attack the player when the crowd control effect wears off. The intent is to make it easier for dungeon groups to manage crowd control assignments and pulling packs of hostile NPCs. The abilities affected by this change are: Hibernate, Entangling Roots, Wyvern Sting (will still cause hostility when it begins to deal damage), Freezing Trap, Polymorph, Repentance, Shackle Undead, Blind, Hex, Bind Elemental, Banish, Seduction.

Basically, no more frantic rushing to place your freeze trap before other people cast their CCs. Everyone can apply their crowd control without the group of mobs aggroing, and the tank can pull when ready. This sounds amazing, really looking forward to it!

Also, Characters can now be reorganized at the Character Selection screen. ^_^ Seems like it's still a work in progress, but I'm thrilled that they're finally implementing it.

And here's the rest of the notes:

Druids

* Druids now gain 1 attack power per point of Strength, down from 2. They continue to gain 2 attack power per point of Agility while in Cat Form or Bear Form.
* Entangling Roots and the equivalent spell triggered by Nature's Grasp no longer deal damage.
* Innervate now grants an ally target 5% of his or her maximum mana over 10 seconds, but still grants 20% of the druid's maximum mana over 10 seconds when self-cast.
* Talent Specializations
o Balance
+ Insect Swarm now generates 8 Lunar Energy for druids with Eclipse.
+ Moonfire now generates 8 Solar Power for druids with Eclipse.
+ Sunfire now generates 8 Lunar Energy for druids with Eclipse.
* Glyphs
o Glyph of Innervate now causes the druid to gain 10% of his or her maximum mana over 10 seconds when Innervate is used on a friendly target, in addition to Innervate's base effect.

Mages

* Ring of Frost now has a 1.5-second cast time.

Paladins

* Talent Specializations
o Holy
+ Beacon of Light can no longer be dispelled.
+ Speed of Light now increases movement speed when Holy Radiance or Divine Protection are cast.

Priests

* Priest Bug Fixes
o Players will no longer prematurely cancel a channeled spell when clicking on the Lightwell.

Rogues

* Blind duration against enemy NPCs is now 1 minute, while the duration against players remains 8 seconds.
* Stealth now once again begins its cooldown once the rogue leaves Stealth.

Warlocks

* Warlock Bug Fixes
o It is no longer possible to leave combat while channeling Drain Soul.

Warriors

* Overpower now has a 1.5-second cooldown and global cooldown (Taste for Blood's Overpower cooldown has not changed).
* Retaliation, Recklessness and Shield Wall no longer have stance requirements.

Dungeons & Raids

* Dungeon Journal is in the process of being implemented. While some UI elements may exist in the current Public Test Realm build, the feature is not yet complete.

Guilds

* The Reins of the Dark Phoenix, purchased from the Guild Vendor, has had its art improved. It's now less transparent and indisputably more awesome.

PvP Battlegrounds

* Eye of the Storm has been added into the rotation as a 10-man Rated Battleground. The tug-of-war style capture points have been replaced with Arathi Basin style capture points to better support 10v10 competition. This change applies only to Rated Battlegrounds. Eye of the Storm is otherwise still a 15-player Battleground with tug-of-war style capture points.

War Games

* Many improvements are being made to the War Games interface, though the changes are not yet fully functional.

User Interface

* Characters can now be reorganized at the Character Selection screen. This feature not yet fully functional and the reorganization of characters doesn't save at this time.
* The cast bar can now be moved to display below the Character frame.
* Move Pad is a mouse-click interface for movement which is now built into the base interface.

[Litlemouse]

Yay for the CC!
Just the other day, the tank told me to CC a mob, and I asked "when?" "now I guess" I CCed it, but all the creatures around were aggroed and after the fight the tank expressed anger that I'd "drawn the mobs you noob".

[SpiritBinder]

* The Reins of the Dark Phoenix, purchased from the Guild Vendor, has had its art improved. It's now less transparent and indisputably more awesome.

The CC change will be an amazing change in our trapping ability, I can't wait to see how it works out. Oh and the above particularity caught my eye considering we had much discussion on it within our threads I thought they may have been holding off to use that model for "the essence of the underworld" But looks like Christmas came early

[Vephriel]

Ooh, someone in the comments pointed out another benefit of this CC change. We can now use it to 'sap' mobs and bypass them as a Rogue might. If you just have to walk past some mobs and won't be staying near them, you can CC them, go past, and then when the CC wears off they don't aggro or anything.

[Litlemouse]

Ooh, someone in the comments pointed out another benefit of this CC change. We can now use it to 'sap' mobs and bypass them as a Rogue might. If you just have to walk past some mobs and won't be staying near them, you can CC them, go past, and then when the CC wears off they don't aggro or anything.

Oh yeah, I didn't think of that before ^_^ will be interesting to test out

[Vephriel]

Ooh, someone in the comments pointed out another benefit of this CC change. We can now use it to 'sap' mobs and bypass them as a Rogue might. If you just have to walk past some mobs and won't be staying near them, you can CC them, go past, and then when the CC wears off they don't aggro or anything.

Oh yeah, I didn't think of that before ^_^ will be interesting to test out

*nod* That only applies for mobs that you won't be near at all of course, so it can't be used to just chain CC mobs in a dungeon and ignore them all. If you get within aggro range of a CCed mob it will remember and come for you after the crowd control breaks. But if you just have, say, a single mob that you don't have to get close to, it'll be nice for that.

[SpiritBinder]

Not that I'm looking for exploits already, and I really have no idea of how this works yet.

But as we all know we can only trap one mob now. But lets say there is a group of 3 mobs. We throw a trap and trap one, no agrro they just sit there and look at their frozen buddy. We wait til trap timer is off cooldown, then MD/pull the 2 others a safe distance away from the frozen one to your pet. They run over and then when they get there we trap one of those.... will the 1st trapped one then just unfreeze with no aggro if we are far enough away..? Or will it has gained aggro from it's friends being MD'ed while it was frozen..? is this a sneaky way of double trapping again..? Or am I thinking to much..?

I think I'm excited

[Vephriel]

Ooh, interesting thinking SB. Probably worth testing once the PTR is live.

[Saturo]

Mages

* Ring of Frost now has a 1.5-second cast time.

THIS IS AN OUTRAGE.

Neat changes to CC. Will be interesting to see how it works out.

[Cialbi]

Hmm, they nerfed Innervate and Strength for druids. I'm kinda curious as to why with the former.

As for the latter, that makes perfect sense; trying to keep those shifty bears from stealing cloaks from protadins, blood knights, and prot warriors.