Zarhym (Link)
Holiday bosses (such as Ahune for the Fire Festival) will now be accessible through the Dungeon Finder.
- Players must use the Dungeon Finder or speak to special holiday NPCs in the world to queue up and access these bosses.
- Upon accepting a queue for any holiday boss, the party will be ported directly to the necessary area for confronting that boss.
- The previous summoning criteria for these bosses have been removed. Players can queue up for and fight each World Event boss as many times as they want for any standard loot that they may drop.
- All rare holiday items (such as The Horseman's Reins) will have a chance of being found in holiday-themed loot troves which will drop once for each player in the party no more than once per day, in the same manner that doing the Random Dungeon daily quest will provide a specific reward the first time it is completed in a day.
- The Pet Bombling and Lil' Smoky non-combat pets are no longer Bind-on-Pickup.
- Chains of Ice: The ability now innately applies Frost Fever to a target.
Frost
- Icy Talons: The personal haste benefit provided by this talent is no longer exclusive with other sources of melee haste. This will allow death knights to always swing 4/6/12/16/20% faster when Frost Fever is applied. Windfury Totem and the party/raid component of Improved Icy Talons still do not stack.
Unholy
- Unholy Blight: In addition to its previous effects, this talent now also prevents diseases from being dispelled from victims afflicted by Unholy Blight.
- Nature's Grasp: Now has 3 charges, up from 1.
Balance
- Starfall: Te damage done by this spell has been significantly increased.
- Typhoon: Mana cost reduced to 25%, down from 32%.
- 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%.
- Slaughter from the Shadows: Now adds 1/2/3/4/5% damage to all attacks and reduces the energy cost of Backstab and Ambush by 4/8/12/16/20, up from 3/6/9/12/15.
- Waylay: The debuff from this talent can now be caused by Backstab in addition to Ambush and can be triggered by all hits from these abilities rather than just critical strikes, but the snare component is now 50%, down from 70%.
- Life Tap: This spell no longer scales with spirit, and instead scales with spell power.
- Vitality: Now boosts Stamina by 3/6/9%, up from 2/4/6%. Strength and expertise benefits have not changed.
More 3.3.3 class changes trickling in.
Nothing game changing, but some interesting tweaks to a few specs that Blizzard seems intent on buffing up.
Subtlety Rogues will see some significant gains as the buff to Slaughter from the Shadows was modified to reduce the energy requirements for Ambush and Backstab in addition to the extra damage. The removal of the critical strike requirement from Waylay also indicates that Blizzard intends Subtlety to be a viable PvP and Arena spec in the future. It will allow Subtlety rogues to use Wound and Deadly poison instead of having to use Crippling poison on one of their weapons since they no longer need the snare. Having to use a Crippling poisoned offhand was always a significant downside to playing Sub.
Blizzard must have seen some sort of statistical underrepresentation of Warrior tanks in Icecrown raids to warrant the Vitality buff. This will be good for a couple thousand additional hit points for high end warriors, a significant buff. Blizzard announced several patches ago that they would be looking into tank balance as players progressed through their Icecrown Citadel raid. The only tank class yet to be modified are Feral Druids, so they may be next!
The rest of the changes seem to be minor tweaks to PvP balance. The change to Nature's Grasp for Druids will definitely be interesting and may do something to boost Moonkin and Resto Druid participation in Arenas, which had been lagging.
The streamlining of the Holiday bosses into the Dungeon Finder queueing system is also worth noting. There aren't many player activities at this point that can't be accessed through some sort of automated matchmaking system.
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