Patch 3.3.0 PTR Notes
Posted by 
Heartbourne on Thursday, October 1, 2009 - 17 Comments Tags: forge of souls, icecrown citadel, patch 3.3, ptr
Heartbourne on Thursday, October 1, 2009 - 17 Comments Tags: forge of souls, icecrown citadel, patch 3.3, ptr 
It looks like we will see the new patch, patch 3.3, on the public test realms any day now. Check out the current draft of the patch notes:General
- Icecrown Citadel
- The Forge of Souls, the first wing of the 5-player dungeon, is currently available for testing.
- Additional Icecrown Citadel dungeon and raid content will be made available in future test builds.
- Dazed: Creatures attacking a player from behind can no longer cause players level 1-5 to be dazed, and have a reduced chance to cause players level 6-10 to be dazed.
- Copied Test Realm characters will no longer be copied with their achievement history in order to better facilitate the character copy process.
Classes: General
- Default Equipment: Starting weapons are now more uniform. Rogues now start with a pair of daggers equipped. All other classes except shamans start with a 2-handed weapon equipped and the required skill already known. Shamans start with a 1-handed weapon and a shield, as they benefit more from the shield than they would from a 2-handed weapon.
- Glancing Blows: The mage, warlock, and priest classes no longer have an increased chance for their melee attacks to be glancing blows; and the damage penalty due to their glancing blows is the same as for other classes.
- Health and Mana Regeneration: These regeneration rates have been increased by up to 200% for low level characters. As a player's level increases, the regeneration rates gradually reduce, returning to normal rates at level 15.
- Spell Mana Costs: These costs have been reduced for almost all lower level spell ranks. In general, if a spell decreased in cost with a higher level rank in patch 3.2.0, that spell now has the decreased cost at all ranks. In addition, spells learned before level 20 with reduced cast times and/or durations have even further reduced mana costs, proportionate to their reduction in cast time or damage.
Races: General
- Racial Attribute Bonuses: These bonuses have been recalibrated to even out the amount of starting health on the various races. All races start with a standardized level of stamina, except for orcs, dwarves, and tauren who now start with 1 extra point of stamina. For each class, bonuses and penalties to all attributes have been adjusted so that each race has an equal attribute total.
Death Knights
- Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle: There is now a 1-handed version of this rune in addition to the current 2-handed rune.
- Talents
- Unholy
- Night of the Dead: Now reduces the damage your pet takes from area-of-effect damage by 45/90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.
- Unholy
Druids
- Pets
- Avoidance (passive): Now reduces the damage your pets take from area-of-effect damage by 90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.
Hunters
- Misdirection: Redesigned. Instead of having finite charges, it now begins a 4-second timer when the hunter using Misdirection performs a threat-generating attack, during which all threat generated by the hunter goes to the friendly target. In addition, multiple hunters can now misdirect threat to the same friendly target simultaneously.
- Talents
- Beast Mastery
- Intimidation: If the hunter's pet is in melee range of its target, the stun from Intimidation will now be applied immediately instead of on the pet's next swing or attack.
- Beast Mastery
- Pets
- Avoidance: Now reduces the damage your pet takes from area-of-effect damage by 30/60/90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.
Mages
- Talents
- Arcane
- Arcane Empowerment: This talent now also grants 1/2/3% increased damage done by the mage's party or raid for 10 seconds after the mage gets a critical strike with Arcane Explosion, Arcane Missiles, Arcane Barrage, or Arcane Blast. This effect is exclusive with Ferocious Inspiration and Sanctified Retribution.
- Arcane
- Pets
- Avoidance (passive): Now reduces the damage your pets take from area-of-effect damage by 90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.
Priests
- Pet
- Avoidance (passive): Now reduces the damage your pet takes from area-of-effect damage by 90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.
Rogues
- Dual Wield: Rogues now know this ability upon logging into the game at level 1.
- Stealth: This ability no longer has multiple ranks. While active, the single rank of this ability (available at level 1) allows rogues to move at 70% movement speed.
- Vanish: For the first second after this ability is used, neither Vanish nor Stealth can be broken by taking damage or being the victim of a hostile spell or ability.
Shamans
- Fire Nova Totem: This totem has been replaced with a new spell, Fire Nova, which is available at the same ranks as the old Fire Nova Totem. Existing characters will automatically learn this new spell in place of the totem. With a Fire Totem active, shamans will be able to use Fire Nova (fire magic) to emit the same area-of-effect damage as the old Fire Nova Totem from the active Fire Totem, not consuming the totem in the process. Fire Nova will activate a 1.5-second global cooldown when used and has a 10-second spell cooldown. The caster must be within 30 yards of the totem to use this ability, but does not need to be within line of sight of the totem.
- Talents
- Elemental Combat
- Improved Fire Nova Totem: Renamed Improved Fire Nova. This talent now provides an additional 10/20% damage to the spell and reduces the cooldown by 2/4 seconds.
- Elemental Combat
Warlocks
- Pets
- Avoidance (passive): Now reduces the damage your pets take from area-of-effect damage by 90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.
- Summon Imp: This ability is now available from the trainer for level 1 warlocks and no longer requires a quest to learn.
Warriors
- Victory Rush: This ability is now trainable at level 6.
- Talents
- Protection
- Damage Shield: This ability will no longer trigger any chance-on-hit effects from the warrior or the opponent it damages.
- Protection
User Interface
- Quest Tracking Feature
- This system is currently under development and is not fully functional.
- Looking For Group System
- This feature is undergoing several improvements and is not available for testing at this time.
- For additional notes on Lua and XML changes please visit the UI & Macros forum.
Graphics
- A new feature has been added to the D3D graphics engine to improve texture management (particularly for Windows XP users). This is currently enabled by default on the public test realms. For more information please visit our Test Realm forum.
Professions
- Enchanting
- Black Magic: This enchantment now sometimes increases haste rating for the caster rather than inflicting the caster's target with a damage-over-time effect. It is also now triggered by landing any harmful spell rather than inflicting damage with a spell.
Items
- Glyphs
- Death Knights
- Glyph of Icy Touch: Instead of granting additional runic power, this glyph now causes Frost Fever to deal 20% additional damage.
- Shamans
- Glyph of Fire Nova Totem: Renamed Glyph of Fire Nova. This glyph now reduces the cooldown of Fire Nova by 3 seconds.
- Death Knights
Bug Fixes
- Druids
- Rejuvenation: Rank 15 of this spell was providing a 15-second duration. It has been correctly reduced to 12 seconds.
- Mages
- Flame Strike: Some ranks of this spell had an incorrect cast time of 3 seconds. All ranks now share a 2-second cast time.
Reader Comments (17)
sounds awesome! new rouge changes ftw! :D
woot first block xD
EPIC!!
Shaman getting fire nova makes me go OOOOOH
This makes me miss WoW so bad :(.
Don't have the money for it currently and stuck playing games like Combat Arms. I still keep up with WoW news as often as I can though.
WOW! Multi-Misdirections! I wonder if they are going to have fights that have to take advantage of this in 3.3
shamans now how a 3 sec cooldown firenova O.o.....which thy can hav while totem of wrath is active....O.o and i thought blizz went crazy w/ tauren pallies
This is a wonderful patch for lowbies, I kind of dislike the lvl 1 imp thing, I liked the quest :| but I think it use to be like that or something. Anyways, one step closer to the Lich King <3!
Nothing that good, just ways to make getting to 20 "easier" basicly and a way to let pets not get raped by PvE boss AoEs yet still take damage in PvP. Only real changes was the Fire Nova which may be nice, misdirect change which is nice, and giving rogues their current level 60 version of stealth at level 1rather then making them go slower till 60... nice but not a big diff.
Question is that when the list of changes actually grows what will the nerfs look like, they always like to not add the nerfs to the notes until the PTR actually goes live
Fire nova baby!
MD+Volley...
i have been dreaming about that ever since i discovered the spell! (paladin tank btw)
Warrior TG nerf still lives. Please Blizzard. Your punishment is too harsh :(
Imagine: droping a magma totem, poping Fire Nova, and filling in with chain lightning! Now that's AOE pwnage.
No paladin changes..
lol
God why can people not spell rogue?? Like really rouge is not a sneaky bastard wanting to stun lock you...it's just the color red in french.
Nice, very nice, no pally nerf, no mage frost nerf, no warlock nerfs and....
'Warrior
Protection
* Damage Shield: This ability will no longer trigger any chance-on-hit effects from the warrior or the opponent it damages.'
Nice don't you think? Tanks made a lot of dps and crit for you to take off a thing that help it!!!
Very nice Blizz! Very nice!!!! F***!!