Ahh, the scent of a new Patch!

So lets see what changes lie in store for brave Pattern and Recognition… (and of course Ashella, my much neglected main). In theory the patch should hit sometimes soonish, but ‘soonish’ has all sorts of values with Blizz.

Forgive me for the old Patch picture, I’ll update it as soon as the new one drops!

Now onto the fun…

General Changes

• Efflorescence has a new spell effect. ♦ Since neither of my gals are currently Resto, not really caring about this one.
• Enrage no longer increases physical damage taken. ♦ A nice little reprieve from those rage-lean times, but so far I really haven’t run into that problem much. I’ll have to play around with it when the patch hits– might be worth it to macro this into Swipe.
• Lacerate bonus threat has been removed and replaced with increased initial damage done. ♦ Hmm, well since I don’t get this until level 66, it’s not something I’m going to worry about, but less threat doesn’t strike me as a good thing.
• Lifebloom‘s bloom effect has been reduced by 20%. ♦ Resto and level 64… yeah, not caring much.
• Prowl has a new icon. ♦ About time! But not that useful to the pair

• Savage Defense has been redesigned slightly. Instead of a single charge absorption, it now places an absorption effect on the druid absorbing up to 35% of the druid’s attack power (modified by mastery, if applicable) in damage and lasting 10 seconds. There are no longer any charges on the effect. ♦ I won’t pick this up until level 40, but the changes are interesting. Will be fun to play around with when I finally get ahold of it!
• Swipe (Bear) cooldown has been reduced to 3 seconds, down from 6, and is now trainable at level 18 (training cost has been reduced). In addition, the bonus threat from this ability has been removed and replaced with increased damage done. ♦ Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaant! Seriously, level 36 cannot come fast enough, I am dying for a good AoE threat generator for Recognition. 🙁
• Swipe (Cat) damage has been doubled. ♦ Not that I’ll be using it much in Cat Form, but it would be nice since I picked up the dual-spec.
• Thrash bonus threat has been removed and replaced with increased damage done. ♦ Level 81… yeah, not going to see that one any time soon.
• Druids now innately have 100% pushback protection from damage while channeling Tranquility. ♦ Resto, resto, resto… *yawn*

Talent Specializations

Balance

• Starsurge damage has been reduced by 20%. ♦ Annoying, but not going to be that big a hurt (at least not right now). Will have to figure out how this will affect the bear/boom rotations.

• Who needs Mage food? Boomchickens now lay eggs!
• About time we got something awesome out of this patch! I know there are a lot of folks who have been looking forward to this one.
• Solar Beam is now more responsive when enemies move into or out of it. ♦ I’m a little terrified to check and see what ‘more responsive’ is defined as… it’s a beam of light, not a bug-zapper.

Feral

• Berserk is no longer on the global cooldown. ♦ Sounds like a nice change, but it’s a level 40 spell, so I probably won’t see it for another few months. Fast leveling is not my style.
• Feral Swiftness now also causes Dash and Stampeding Roar to have a 50/100% chance to instantly remove all movement impairing effects from the affected targets when used. ♦ O_O … My kittehs have a dispel? … I think this just broke my brain. o_O;;

Restoration

I think it’s safe to assume I can skip this whole section… *skims* … Yup!

• Gift of Nature (passive) also reduces Tranquility‘s cooldown by 2.5/5 minutes.
• Efflorescence has been redesigned. It creates a healing zone at the feet of a Swiftmend target, but this healing zone now restores health equal to 4/8/12% of the amount healed by Swiftmend to the three most injured targets within 8 yards, every 1 second for 7 seconds. This periodic effect now also benefits from spell haste, but the individual ticks cannot be critical effects. In addition, Living Seed is no longer a prerequisite talent for Efflorescence.
• Malfurion’s Gift now reduces the cooldown of Tranquility”>Tranquility by 2.5/5 minutes.
• Nature’s Swiftness now also increases the healing done by the affected nature spell by 50%.

Glyphs

• Glyph of Rake is now Glyph of Pounce, which increases the range of Pounce by 3 yards. ♦ I really don’t see a benefit in removing a glyph that keeps NPCs from running and swapping it out for being able to leap further. Sure, it’s nice for stealth stunning someone, but I used Rake a lot more than Pounce. *shrug*

Druid Bug Fixes

• The troll druid models for Flight Form and Swift Flight Form has slimmed down to be more in scale with other druid flight forms. ♦ Nelfs all the way, so yet again another update that doesn’t hold much interest.