More info on the upcoming World of Warcraft Patch 2.4.0: Sunwell Plateau. I will keep updating the patch notes as we have more infromation available. Be sure to check out this news as well for other patch notes.
Dungeons and Raids
- All 25- player raid bosses that drop set tokens will now drop and additional token!
- Gems obtained through Heroic difficulty instances are no longer Unique-equipped.
- Loot dropped by Doomlord Kazzak and Doomwalker has been changed to Bind on Equip. In addition, the cash dropped by these bosses has been significantly increased.
- Scale of the Sands reputation will now be awarded in Hyjal at a much higher rate.
- Diminishing Returns on Honor, Spell Haste to reduce Global Cooldown as well, raiding improvements, fear ward, shaman healing, and much much more!
Spell Steal
Spellsteal will no longer overwrite a longer duration buff.
Arena Shadow Sight (see invisible or stealth players power-up)
We have another change to the Arena that could alter things some as well. I thought it would be worth noting that we've made a change to Shadow Sight in patch 2.4. It is now going to increase damage taken by 5% rather than dealing damage over time. The duration has also been reduced from 21 seconds to 15 seconds.
Daily Fishing Quests
Fishing
New Fishing Daily Quests! Visit the mysterious old man fishing at Silmyr Lake outside of Shattrath City to discover what treasures he has to offer.
Feral Druids Buff
The Feral bears will be seeing an improvement with Lacerate dealing additional damage based on your attack power.
Fury Warrior Crit Buff
While I agree there is no exact number to shoot for in crit, in 2.4 we plan to make the off-hand weapon critical hits from Whirlwind trigger Flurry and Rampage which should improve damage a bit.
More Rage for Endless Rage
The fix in 2.4 should have Endless Rage provide significantly more rage.
General
- Characters will now retain talented spell ranks so when they retalent they do not have to relearn the spells from trainers.
- Spell Haste: Spell haste now reduces the global cooldown on spells, down to a minimum of 1 second. This change does not apply to melee and ranged abilities.
Items
- Players will now be able to purchase level 70 Superior quality PvP items from reputation vendors.
- Items intended for Retribution Paladins have had their stats adjusted. Retribution Paladins should see an increase in dps as a result.
- Players can now only carry 80 Conjured Manna Biscuits at a time.
Diminishing returns removed from Honor
As the PTR approaches we wanted to give everyone a preview of one of the larger changes for PvP that's currently planned for the 2.4 patch.
Currently, diminishing returns are applied to all honorable kills. What diminishing returns mean for honor is that each subsequent kill of the same target will reward you with less and less honor; 10% less per kill to be exact. One of the major downsides to diminishing returns is that the calculations, for potentially hundreds of thousands of players, is too intense to do real time, so they are calculated during off-peak hours. This in turn requires that the honor you gain be temporarily displayed as "estimated" until the calculations are run. It's a system that we've certainly improved (moving the calculation from weekly to daily) but still always disliked. It creates a very uninteresting and sometimes aggravating or confusing detachment from your achievements and the actual reward.
The reason for diminishing returns has always been to avoid the potential exploitation of the honor system. As the game has evolved, especially the honor and battleground systems, exploitation of the honor system now without diminishing returns would no longer be considered a lucrative alternative to simply participating in a battleground normally. We've also greatly improved our ability to monitor and track exploitation of this nature.
We've reached a point where we're now confident that applying diminishing returns to honor is no longer necessary, and we're currently planning to remove it with the 2.4 patch.
With this change we're including a few restrictions as well though: Players that have the resurrection sickness debuff will not be worth any honor, and if a player dies 50 times or more during a battleground they won't be worth any honor for the remainder of that battle.
What the removal of diminishing returns means for you is that as soon as you defeat an opponent that rewards you honor, you will receive that honor, and you will be able to spend it right then. There will no longer be an estimate, and you will no longer need to wait until the next day until you can actually spend it. Your achievements through honor-based PvP will be instantaneous.
Raiding Improvements
We have a few changes planned for patch 2.4 that we'd like to share a little bit with you. First, all 25-player raid bosses will drop more gold and those who dropped set tokens will drop one additional token. Additionally, the the loot dropped by Doomlord Kazzak and Doomwalker has been changed to bind-on-equip. These two outdoor raid bosses will also drop much more gold than before as well.
Lastly, Scale of the Sands reputation will now be awarded in Hyjal at a much higher.
Looting UI changes
Since I've decided there's absolutely no relevant thread I could ever find to throw out this info...
We're making some improvements to the way the looting UI and related functions work in 2.4. These are just a couple of the changes planned.
First when you loot a Bind on Pickup item that only you can pick up (such as Heroic Badges) you'll no longer see the confirmation dialog. One less pop-up to deal with, obviously you want your badges, AMIRITE?
Also when you loot a Bind of Pickup item the confirmation window is going to list the name of the item in the window. You'll be able to identify that you're getting the right items much easier now.
There are a few more but I won't ruin all the surprises.
Ritual of Summoning restrictions removed
Patch 2.4 will remove the restriction for Ritual of Summoning that prevents you from summoning players into instances. Provided the player meets the instance requirements, you'll be able to summon them in from anywhere in the world.
Fear Ward in Shadow Form
Maybe being able to use Fear Ward while in Shadow Form would help? Yeah, I like this idea, we'll roll with it in the next patch.
Conjured Manna Biscuits Changes
I do know that in patch 2.4 players can only carry 80 of your delicious conjured manna biscuits at one time. As a result, you should experience less banquet-creating frustration. Sorry, the spell icon will remain the same and not look any more new or unique.
Healing Grace Talent
One thing that will help is that in patch 2.4, healing grace will reduce the chance that all of your spells will be dispelled by 10/20/30%.
Transmutation & Void Stones
Well aren't you the little Nostradamus for the day.
You're pretty close, but it's actually going to be a part of Enchanting. Once every 24 hours, through Enchanting (not Alchemy) you'll be able to split a Void Crystal into two Large Prismatic Shards. This is through a new recipe that's being added in 2.4.
This helps reduce the exorbitant prices currently being seen for Large Prismatics, and helps raise the value of the Void Crystals. While this is the only change planned in 2.4 to help the Void Crystal prices, we're still looking at the possibility of additional 'help' for Void Crystal value in the future.
