All Change!

So, the 3.1 PTR Notes are available, and BOY are there some major changes. And we mean MAJOR.

1. Class Spells

• Stoneform (Dwarf Racial): No longer makes you immune to poison, disease and bleed effects for 8 seconds. Instead, using Stoneform will clear those effects when cast. Cooldown reduced to 2 minutes from 3 minutes.

I'd kinda hoped the'd go back on this, but no, it's there now. Those 8 seconds used to be REALLY useful, especially in PvP. *sigh*

• Faerie Fire and Faerie Fire (Feral): Now decreases armor of your target by 5%. Has a 5-minute duration, and a 40-second PvP duration.

This however makes me smile immensely. 5 MINUTES! Hooray for new and faster rotations, and hooray for not having to think as much in high-pressure situations. They take it with one hand, but they give it back with another... ^^

• Innervate: This spell no longer costs mana.

Or maybe they don't... This is a pretty significant boost. 4% of base mana saved. Nice!

• Celestial Focus redesigned: Reduces the pushback suffered from damaging attacks while casting Starfire, Hibernate and Hurricane by 23/46/70% and increases your total spell haste by 1/2/3%.
  

This is also not too shabby. 3% spell haste. I need to start looking at my talents as a matter of some urgency.

2. Professions

• You can now sometimes find Alchemist's Caches from bosses in Ulduar. Only players with an Alchemy skill of 425 or higher can loot these secret caches.

OooOOoooh special sekrit stuffs! A genuine excuse to level W the Lock to 80 at last... :D

• A new recipe has been added to cooking trainers for making Black Jelly, using several Borean Man 'O War as ingredients. While it looks disgusting, it restores more health and mana than the highest level food.

And this mere DAYS after I cleared the stacks of it out of my bank because I thought Blizz wouldn't use it...*headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* Note to Self: Blizzard are fiendish gits.

• Players no longer need to complete the Clamlette Surprise quest to gain Artisan cooking. The quest now offers the unique recipe, Clamlette Magnifique. If you already completed the quest, you can visit Dirge Quickcleave in Gadgetzan to learn this recipe (for free).
• Several Northrend recipes were given greater skill up ranges to make it easier to reach 450 cooking skill.
• You no longer need to learn cooking from books. The trainers have finally done their reading and are able to teach you the same thing.

So these couple are fairly significant. They've removed the 'you need a book/quest' part of Fishing as well (I can only hope they'll do the same to First Aid in time) and streamlined the entire process at the lower end. They've also removed the need for flint and tinder in fires so this will make cooking on the go a significantly easier part of any person's routine. You won't need stuff like apples or spices either for the low level quests, one assumes it will just be multiples of the meat. I'll log in M later and take a look at her recipes. Basically, as they have with the questing, they've made the levelling process a great deal easier.

• A new (and very rare) special mount can now be caught from Northrend fishing pools.

Like I didn't have competition enough already ^^

• You can now fish anywhere, regardless of skill. Every catch has the potential for fishing skill gains, but you are likely to catch worthless junk in areas that are too difficult for your skill.

Blimey :o So, it is now impossible not to catch anything, eh? I will believe it when I see it. As they've reduced the fishing cast time AGAIN, as well as the time it takes to mine and herb (wut no skinning reduction?) I will have an increased number of opportunities to try this out. Plus, as you can now fish in WG... now there's summat to do on the PTR when I get a chance...

• Added a recipe to trainers for creating a level 70 superior-quality off-hand item.
• Added a recipe for creating a different level 70 superior-quality off-hand item. Scribes will find the recipe is dropped from residents of Silverbrook.
• Added around 50 new glyph recipes. These new recipes can be obtained from Books of Glyph Mastery found as world drops on Northrend monsters. Reading a Book of Glyph Mastery randomly discovers one of the newly-added recipes.
• Glyph icons have been updated so it is easy to distinguish between classes.
• Players will now learn 3 recipes the very first time they perform Northrend Inscription Research. This does not apply to players who have already discovered recipes from Northrend Inscription Research (sorry).
  
  

So, all of these are really rather yaysome. Having glyphs that distinguish by class will be a HUGE bonus (we have a bank slot full of them and frankly it's impossible to work out which is which) The item drops from mobs thing is a logical progression as well, which brings the skill in line with all the other classes. One wonders if the books are BoE, if they are then there's a new huge bestseller on the AH. Oh yeah, and that's worth reproducing for the sorry at the end. *sigh*

It also seems a fair number of recipes across the board in the crafting professions have been rebalanced to become more appropriate. Thank Loken for That.

3. General Gubbins.

• Badges and Emblems looted off of any dungeon bosses by a member of the party or raid will automatically be given to all eligible party or raid members. Party or raid members must still be inside the instance to receive Badges or Emblems.

This is HUGE, it is AWESOME! and frankly is the most sensible bit of coding change I've seen for a LONG time. So, all you need to make sure of in 5 man is that at least one preson is awake after a boss kill... actually, thinking about it, maybe that's not such a great thing...

• Loot from clams now stacks correctly!

... and all is now well with the World.