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Notable Notes from Patch 3.0.2

On Tuesday, October 14th, 2008, Blizzard released a major patch, 3.0.2, to World of Warcraft. This patch included many changes and new features that most people assumed would await Wrath of the Lich King, the upcoming expansion. Patch 3.0.3, released November 4th, 2008, was mostly tweaks, bug fixes, and glyph changes and doesn't rate a separate set of notes.

Even without Wrath, World of Warcraft is now a significantly different game: There are new talents, talent trees for pets, a new profession (inscriptionist), new ways to improve your characters (with glyphs), and a number of new or changed features that save bag and bank slots. (/Cheer.)

Changes and Features

Talents

  • The good: The Wrath talent trees, deeper by two tiers, are here. All classes have new and appealing talents, including 51-point talents.
  • The bad: All characters in all classes had their talent points refunded and were forced (or, if you prefer, "allowed") to respec. (Druids got to do this again with 3.0.3.)
  • The ugly: The patch notes, talent trees, tooltips for spells and skills, and the Armory display somewhat different versions of (game) reality, and it's not clear that any of them is completely accurate. The Armory is obviously lagging, but the others don't agree, either. At this point, it's hard to know what's actually going on - or what's supposed to be going on.

Classes

  • Druids get an additional, conventional rez (Revive) and can now use Roots indoors for some instance cc. Epic flightform is now trainable at level 71. (You don't have to do the quest for it.)
  • Retribution Paladins went from being almost useless to perhaps the most overpowered subclass this side of Death Knights.
  • The big change in Shaman attack power means Enhancement Shamans and Hunters will be using the same gear.
    • Old version (like bearform Druids):
      • 1 Strength = 2 AP.
      • 1 Agility = .04% crit (at level 70).
    • New version (like Rogues):
      • 1 Strength = 1 AP.
      • 1 Agility = 1 AP + .025% crit (at level 70).
  • Warlocks will be able to get their special epic ground mounts (the ones that required a long quest chain ending in Dire Maul) from the trainer at level 71.
  • Protection Warriors can now do more damage and hold aggro better but may take more damage. (Goodbye, 20 points of Defense from talents. Farewell, Shield Block spam.) The downside may be mitigated by an unpublicized change that now limits "crushing blows" - which do 1.5 x normal damage - to enemies at least 4 levels higher (not 3).

Professions

  • There is a new profession: inscriptionist. From herbs collected by herbalists, inscriptionists make pigments; from pigments, inks; from inks, a familiar class of temporary enhancements (scrolls) and a new class of permanent enhancements: glyphs.
  • Many professions now get a special bonus ability that affects only members of their profession.
    • Alchemists: Mixology increases the benefit (reportedly by 20%) and duration (by 100%) of any elixirs known and consumed. Passive effect.
    • Herbalists: Lifeblood is a self-healing spell - a HoT good for 1200 health (at level 70) over 5 seconds.
    • Miners: Toughness is a simple health bonus - an extra 300 health at level 70. Passive.
    • Skinners: Master of Anatomy increases the critical strike rating by 15 (at level 70). Passive.

Pets and mounts

  • Hunter pets now have their own talent trees (accessed from a tab at the bottom of the spellbook windows). There are three broad groups of pets (tanking, dps, and special); each gets its own talent tree (Tenacity, Ferocity, and Cunning, respectively).
  • The old, awkward methods of pet training are gone. Pets now know what they *can* know.
  • There is now an express method for leveling underlevel pets.
  • Mounts, combat pets, and vanity pets are now stored and accessed from a tab at the bottom of your character screen. Besides providing better organization, this frees bag slots - lots of slots, if you're a collector.

Stat changes

  • "Spell damage and healing" bonuses on enhancements and gear have been replaced by a new stat: spell power.
  • Pure healing bonuses also have been replaced by spell power.
  • "Critical strike rating" and "spell critical strike rating" are now the same stat: critical strike rating.
  • "Hit rating" and "spell hit rating" are now the same stat: hit rating.

Gear changes

  • Your gear has changed - often inconveniently. The backup gear you have sitting in the bank collecting dust may now be better than some of what you're wearing.
  • Spellfire and Frozen Shadoweave gear no longer boosts damage from specific magic schools; instead, it increases spell power (thus, all schools) - but not as much! As a practical matter, anyone wearing this is now doing less damage than they were before the patch.
  • Primal Mooncloth no longer boosts "healing" per se.
  • "Healing gear" isn't. It's caster gear now.
  • "Healing enhancements" aren't. Those gems, enchantments, threads, shoulder inscriptions, and arcana now boost spell power. And they may be identical to enhancements that used to be quite different.
  • Casters and healers will be sporting similar wardrobes, shopping at the same stores, and fighting over the same bargains. (This is not all bad but will take getting used to.)

Problems

Unfortunately, the transition so far has not been a smooth one:

  • There are so many changes that even experienced players feel like newbs.
  • Queues reappeared in at least some realms that haven't seen them in a long time. (This may be a temporary phenomenon as players scramble to respec all of their alts, make sense of the new patch, and get everything working again.)
  • Lag and latency increased across all realms.
  • Realm stability and general playability nose-dived. World servers crashed repeatedly and in some cases stayed down for hours.
  • Rolling restarts and hasty server-side fixes, some of which have clearly made things worse, have become commonplace.
  • Although the basic idea had some potential, the zombie invasion (part of the run-up to Wrath), as implemented, was intrusive and annoying and for a few days made the game largely unplayable.
  • The patch broke just about every WoW mod and add-on. Worse than not working, many old add-ons generate error messages and otherwise interfere with game play - often in odd but serious ways (e.g., preventing any chat at all from showing up in your chat window). You really cannot play post-patch WoW with outdated add-ons.
    • Go to the character selection screen.
    • Click the red "AddOns" button in the lower left corner.
    • At the top of the AddOns screen, *uncheck* "Load out of date AddOns."
    • At the bottom of the AddOns screen, click "Okay."
    • Either repeat this process for every alt, or make sure you have chosen "Configure AddOns For: All" in the box in the upper left of the AddOns screen.
    • To get your preferred add-ons working again, leave the game, and download and install updated, post-patch versions. In some cases, you may have to reconfigure the add-ons from inside the game.

Blizzard, of course, is working on the problems that remain, and we can assume most of them will get straightened out sooner or later.

You can find the complete patch notes in your WoW directory or online. In theory, "the latest patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/" - although occasional delays and glitches do occur.

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