The end is here! Or well the last of the Cataclysm themed patches at least. Next stop Mists of Pandaria World event and the expansion beyond. This one isn't an insignificant patch, however, with the new RealID cross-realm raids for old instances and the less-than-good-idea-maybe scaling nerfs to Dragon Soul Normal and Heroic modes, starting with 5% this week. There are also some regular old nerfs to Dragon Soul as well as the usual tweaks and fixes:
Classes
General
- Vengeance is no longer triggered by receiving damage from other players.
Druid
- The Tier 13 Balance Druid 4-piece bonus ( Item - Druid T13 Balance 4P Bonus (Starsurge)) now also increases the damage of Starsurge by 10%, in addition to its current effect.
Hunter
- Aspect of the Hawk now grants roughly 35% more attack power.
- Deterrence now also reduces damage taken by 30% while active.
- Black Arrow now ticks every 2 seconds for 20 seconds, as opposed to every 3 seconds for 15 seconds. The total damage dealt by the ability is unchanged.
Mage
- Fireball damage has been reduced by roughly 6%.
- Pyroblast initial damage has been reduced by roughly 6%. Damage over time is unchanged.
Paladin
- Holy Radiance now costs 40% of base mana, up from 35%.
Priest
- Mass Dispel should again prefer dispelling targets that have magic effects that can be dispelled.
Priest
- Adrenaline Rush no longer triggers a global cooldown.
Dungeons & Raids
- You can now form same-faction raids with Real ID friends, allowing you to enter Raid Finder in groups larger than 5, run older normal or heroic raids, or participate in Battlegrounds. You will not yet be able to run normal or heroic Dragon Soul with cross-realm raids of Real ID friends.
- Several typo fixes and clarified descriptions have been added to the Dungeon Journal entries for Dragon Soul.
- Players can no longer win multiple copies of the same item on a single Raid Finder boss kill. For example, a player who chooses Need on two set piece tokens or two weapons and wins the first, will not be eligible for the second on that particular boss.
Baradin Hold
- The roaming Eyes of Occu'thar have been replaced by hateful creatures (Discipli of Hate) who serve Alizabal.
Dragon Soul
- Yor'sahj the Unsleeping
- The Shaman spell Unleash Life now properly only triggers Deep Corruption on its target. Previously, this affected both the caster and the target.
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- Warmaster Blackhorn
- The visual warning for Twilight Elites' Blade Rush should be easier to see.
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- Spine of Deathwing
- Burning Tendonss health has been reduced by 15% in 10- and 25-player Heroic mode. This change eases the burst damage requirement to complete the encounter, which should allow players to make use of more varied raid compositions.
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Items
- Vial of Shadows damage (Lightning Strike) has been reduced to approximately one-third of previous damage. However, it will now trigger approximately 3 times as often. This is intended to keep overall DPS the same while reducing burst damage, especially in PvP.
User Interface
- Fixed a bug that caused the Mature Language Filter to reset on exit.
- A notice is now displayed 15 minutes prior to the player being disconnected by parental controls.


@Starym - possibly tho I dont think it'll be anywhere near what people will be expecting tho and i'd imagine there will definately be queues regardless because of the pass.
@Starym Qualified guess is 3months until the Beta and 6 months until the actual release. I'm still placing my bet on late October/November, especially looking at the other titles Blizzard got coming up. Diablo III is devouringly close to an impact with the live servers, so releasing MoP before the next Christmas season (Gifttime, very smart from the marketing site, huh? Didn't see that one coming). I'm basing this on discussions on the forums and such, along with my own opinion of new titles and how I think they're gonna be distributed and over which sort of time span.
/Smitra
@hp12rs it won't be "in" the patch, but you will be able to download it separately after it.
@Thresh I'm not sure about that, considering the gap between this and MoP release and the Annual Pass offer I think the beta is a big deal for Blizz now because so many people will have access to it.
they'll have queues for the beta servers most likely, doubt blizzard wouldn open additional servers just to test a beta out.
Sort of hoping we'll get a relatively short beta-period since they'll have a massive amount of people on it compared to past ones.
wish they'd just hurry up with the pandaria beta so I can get stuck into it/check it out tbh.
Aren't we getting a 64-bit client today?
Whooops, messed that one up pretty well. Serves me right for C/Ping and not checking!
On topic, it feels REALLY weird to have the last proper patch so long before the release of the next expansion (even though we don't really know when it's coming, but still).
Finally I can stop using trap launcher on single target.