Project Lore

Wow, these things are coming so quickly now that I better start labeling them more clearly. Build 10596 represents the second one that we've gotten this week! What's the hurry? With any luck, it means that we'll be seeing both Icecrown Citadel and the expansion sooner than we initially thought. If I had to make an educated guess, I'd say that Blizzard tries to release the final version of 3.3 in mid-to-late November, so that they can get it out before the holidays hit and people start finding other ways to spend their time. Following that, I expect some world events to occur either in a 3.4 patch or 4.0 in January or February. But enough of my pontification, on with the list of new changes:

General

Level 1 characters no longer start with food or water in their inventory.

Classes: General

Attack: Level 1 druids, mages, priests, and warlocks will no longer start with the Attack button placed on their action bars by default.

Reputation

• The following reputations have been sped up by roughly 30%:

Argent Crusade Alliance Vanguard Horde Expedition Kirin Tor Knights of the Ebon Blade Sons of Hodir Wyrmrest Accord

• Sons of Hodir quests now give more reputation overall.
• Top-level helm and shoulder faction-related enchants are now available as Bind-on-Account items that do not require any faction to use once purchased (they still require the appropriate faction level to purchase).
• Reputation commendations can now be purchased for 1 Emblem of Triumph each.

Druid

• Rejuvenation: The base duration on all ranks of this spell is now 15 seconds.

Hunter

• Pet Leveling: Hunter pets now need only 5% of the experience a player needs to level, down from 10%.

Mage

• Blast Wave: The mana cost of this talent has been significantly reduced.

Fire

• Burning Determination: The duration of interrupt immunity granted by this talent is now 20 seconds.
• Dragon's Breath: The mana cost of this talent has been significantly reduced.
• Firestarter: When this talent is triggered, it makes the next Flamestrike cost no mana in addition to being instant.

Frost

• Frozen Core: This talent now also causes Ice Lance critical strikes to reduce the cast time of the mage’s next Frostbolt or Frostfire Bolt by 0.4/0.7/1 seconds.

Pets

• Water Elemental: Waterbolt mana cost reduced by 80%.

Priest

• Vampiric Embrace: This ability now provides a 30-minute buff that cannot be dispelled, instead of a target debuff and only generates healing for single-target shadow damage spells.

Shaman

• Reincarnation: The cooldown on this spell has been lowered from 60 minutes down to 30 minutes.

Enhancement

• Earth’s Grasp: This talent now also reduces the cooldown of the Stoneclaw and Earthbind totems by 15/30%.

Restoration

• Improved Reincarnation: This talent now reduces the cooldown of Reincarnation by 7/15 minutes, down from 10/20 minutes. Reincarnation cannot be used in Arenas.

Warlock Affliction

• Pandemic: This talent now also increases the critical strike damage bonus of the felhunter’s Shadow Bite spell by 100%.

Destruction

• Ruin: This talent now also increases the critical strike damage bonus of the imp’s Firebolt spell by 100%.

Interface

• Any party member may mark targets (this does not apply to raid groups).

Quests

• Brittle Revenants, quest creatures fought for the Sons of Hodir daily quest “Hot and Cold,” no longer cast Shield Slam.

Glyphs Druid

• Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation: This glyph allows for the druid’s haste to reduce the time between the periodic healing effects of Rejuvenation.

Mage

• Glyph of Eternal Water: This glyph allows for a summoned Water Elemental to last indefinitely, but it can no longer cast Freeze.

Priest

• Glyph of Mind Flay: This glyph now increases the damage done by Mind Flay by 10% when the target is afflicted with Shadow Word: Pain.
• Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain: The periodic damage ticks of Shadow Word: Pain now restore 1% of the priest’s base mana with this glyph.
• Glyph of Shadow: While in Shadowform, this glyph causes non-periodic spell critical strikes to increase spell power by 30%, up from 10%, of the priest’s total spirit for 10 seconds.

Warlock

• Glyph of Life Tap: The effect of this glyph now has a chance of activating when Dark Pact is used.
• Glyph of Quick Decay: This glyph allows for the warlock’s haste to reduce the time between periodic damage effects of Corruption.

Warrior

• Glyph of Victory Rush: This glyph now increases the critical strike chance of Victory Rush by 70%, regardless of the percentage of the target’s remaining health.

Shadow Priest changes continued to be made in an effort to increase that spec's DPS viability in an end-game environment. Other interesting tweaks include those to the Shaman's Reincarnation spell, likely to bring it somewhere in line with similar change to the Druid's Rebirth (read: battle rez). Ghostcrawler had a few comments on the issue earlier in the week:

"We might drop Reincarnation to 30 base, talented to 15. That's a slight nerf to the talent, but at the same time taking the cooldown that low might make an unattractive talent more attractive." "We were concerned that a really short cooldown on an ability that rezzes you and only rezzes you would lead to bizarre behavior. Shamans could just commit suicide every fight knowing that they could come back. Standing in the fire too long? No problem. Too far away from where you want to be? Just die. Out of mana? Just die. Yes you might lose dps or healing time, but we still think it would happen and we think it would look weird. Soulstone by comparison can easily be used on the "wrong" person (if they don't die) and Rebirth can't be used at all if the druid dies. In some ways, Reincarnation is the only cooldown that you are guaranteed to see every fight as soon as it becomes that dependable."

If you want to know more about this change, I'd suggest reading these threads from the official forums. In addition to class mods, the most interesting update is being made to reputation. I know that I started to ignore most of Wrath's basic factions once I hit Revered and started getting tired of running 5-man instances for them. It'd be nice to finish them off before the expansion hits. And, as they have been with each successive build, Blizzard continues to refine the low-level experience. With increase regen capabilities for the 1-15 game, nobody should miss the lack of food/water in their starter inventory. Pray tell, readers, what say you of the latest and (not-so?) greatest changes to the game?