Over the weekend, I spent some time on the PTR — investigating the new dailies, and looking at some of the things implemented in the upcoming patch.  If you hadn’t heard, it’s expected to go live on 6/21 — coinciding with the end of the Arena Season, and the beginning of the Midsummer Fire Festival. (Coincidence? I think not.) All Patch Notes can be found here.

New Quests

When 4.2 rolls, you’ll see a new quest pop up on the Hero’s Call board, which will send you to the Sanctuary of Malorne in Hyjal.  It takes days to unlock everything, so be patient.  You’ll also find a couple new quests starting at Nordrassil in Hyjal, which shows you the Thrall (Go’el) story.  I can’t emphasize enough how well put together this quest line is.  It might not be fun to do, but the story behind it is fantastic, and of course, a happy ending.  This quest also will give you an epic cloak, which is worth picking up since it’s better than what’s available in the 4.1 content.

The new dailies start with a small set in the Sanctuary of Malorne — where you help the Guardians of Hyjal push back the invaders from the Firelands, and assist them in establishing a base to move on Ragnaros.  It should be noted that unless you’ve completed a significant chunk of the Hyjal quests, you will not be able to get to this area and proceed with the dailies.  (Wowhead says: In order to partake in the Regrowth and Molten Front daily quests, players must have at least completed up to and including the quest Aessina’s Miracle. Once this quest has been completed, players should speak with Matoclaw in the Sanctuary of Malorne to take part in the Regrowth efforts.)

General

Many crowd control abilities no longer cause creatures to attack players when they are cast. The creature will not attack the player when the crowd control wears off, and nearby creatures will not become hostile to the player either. However, if a visible player gets too close to the target creature, the creature will remember and attack the player when the crowd control effect wears off. The intent is to make it easier for dungeon groups to manage crowd control assignments and pulling packs of hostile NPCs. The abilities affected by this change are: Hibernate, Entangling Roots, Wyvern Sting (will still cause hostility when it begins to deal damage), Freezing Trap, Polymorph, Repentance, Shackle Undead, Blind, Hex, Bind Elemental, Banish, Seduction.

Morynne Says:

I haven’t had any real-world experience with this change; however it sounds really solid.  It means when your trap breaks, whatever mob it is won’t immediately come try to eat your face.  Hopefully though this means that the tank, because they’re closest before the trap is broken, will immediately get solid aggro.

Hunter

• The Aggressive pet stance has been removed and replaced with the Assist stance. This stance will cause the player’s pet to attack the player’s target. The pet will not change targets unless the master attacks a new target for a few seconds.
• Multi-Shot damage has been reduced. It now deals 120% weapon damage at level 80 or higher, down from 137%.
• Traps now scale with hunter stats such as hit, expertise, spell penetration and attack power as intended.
• Talent Specializations
  • Marksmanship – Careful Aim now grants additional critical strike chance against targets over 90% health, up from 80% health.
  • Survival – Black Arrow damage done has been increased by roughly 40%.

Morynne Says:

I’m looking forward to the Assist stance.  It will become infinitely handy for fights like Omnitron Defense System — but it scares me at the same time.  The change to this stance will likely de-emphasize a hunter’s need to control their pet.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for it being easy, but every hunter still needs to be accountable for what their pet is doing.

It looks as if Marksmanship is getting a nerf with the change to Careful Aim, which will typically impact Survival hunters as well.  It means there will be far less hard-casting of Aimed Shot.  The Multi-Shot change doesn’t seem to be that big of a deal for Survival’s AOE ability.  It’s only a minor reduction, and SV will likely continue to be the big AOE spec.  It’s good to see that Black Arrow has been buffed.  Hopefully this means it will end up proc’ing Lock n’ Load more frequently as well.  Sadly I haven’t spent enough time in a raid type environment  or with a target dummy on the PTR to know for sure.

Tier 11 Raid Changes

All of the Tier 11 Raid content on normal mode has been smacked squarely with a Nerf Bat.  I recommend checking the patch notes for full detail.

Fun

• D.E.H.T.A. has recently placed a great number of critters under their protection, especially rabbits and squirrels. Because of this, Flintlocke’s Woodchucker has been re-fitted to use wild chickens until an “agreement” can be reached.
• Players are once again free to dance in combat (without causing graphic errors). Other animations, such as attacks, will take precedence over dancing. The dance animation will be suppressed until the higher priority animation is complete. Fun has been unnerfed.

Morynne Says:

Well thank goodness for D.E.H.T.A.  Saving all of those rabbits and squirrels. Now we get to kill the saved rabbits and squirrels with the proc’d chickens. (? really Blizz ?)

And I’m also glad I can now get my dance on during movement light fights like Chimaeron.  I’ll show him my p-p-p-poker face. (Worgen females, you know)

New Pets

There are 10 challenge tames now available.  Petopia has a good write-up for them.

Morynne Says:

I’m pretty excited about these challenge tames.  Some are clearly going to be easier than others, but certainly worth the effort.  I’ll probably go after the yellow spider and the onyx cat first — they’re pretty slick, and from what I’m understanding — some of the easiest to tame.  I’d ideally like to snag Deth’tilac, but I won’t lose sleep over it.

Non-Combat Pets

If you’re a collector, this is a great patch for you.  There are several new pets, and new achievements to boot!

• Alliance Balloon (source unknown)
• Horde Balloon (source unknown)
• Hyjal Bear Cub – purchase
• Crimson Lasher – purchase
• The Other Color Jouster – achievement reward
• Nuts’ Acorn – 100 pet achievement
• Brilliant Kaliri – 125 pet achievement
• Celestial Dragon – 150 pet achievement

Morynne Says:

Dang you, Blizzard.  I just made it to 150, now I’m going to have to push to 175.  Last additions to my collection were Tiny Shale Spider and Enchanted Lantern.  Now if only I can luck out and get a Hyacynth Macaw.

Quality of Life

• Characters can now be reorganized at the Character Selection screen. This feature not yet fully functional and the reorganization of characters doesn’t save at this time.
• Raid Profiles are in the process of being implemented and are not fully functional. Raid Profiles will allow players to save the raid window user interface layout based on type of content (i.e. 10-player raids, 25-player raids, Battlegrounds, etc.).

Morynne Says:

After having gone through two faction changes, my main has managed to sit near the bottom of my character selection screen.  It’ll be nice to have it organized again.

In Closing

With the build on the PTR having been labeled as a “release” version, what you see here shouldn’t change much between now and when it will be put on the live servers.  I’m looking forward to getting out of the Tier 11 content — it’s been 7 months roughly since we’ve seen any new raid content!