World Of Warcraft: Compiled 2.4 Changes!

Over the last few days a huge deluge of information about patch 2.4 has been released, suggesting that this is going to be much more to this patch than just a few new instances.

A quick look at the Under Development page suggests that we can be expecting a few things:

- New Heroic Badge Rewards
- A much needed portal to the Caverns of Time!
- Superior Quality PVP rewards will be purchasable through Outlands Reputation vendors. There aren't any specifics on this available, but this should shorten the gap between experienced PVPers and those new to it.
- New Fishing daily quest!
- New repeatable BG quests.

Some exciting new Alterac Valley changes are coming in 2.4:

The first change will be to move the Horde's starting tunnel back to a more equal distance from the first objectives, which will help evenly distance the starting points for each side across the terrain when the battle commences.

In addition, the General and Warmasters for each faction will receive a stacking buff from each other that boosts their health and damage. The more of them that are still in the battleground, the more dangerous they will all be. This will put a greater focus on destroying (and defending!) the towers that remove the Warmasters as players work toward defeating the appropriate General and conquering the land.

Also Balinda Stonehearth has been studying her spellbooks to become a more challenging opponent to the Horde and will do more damage with her spells. The additional health we recently added to Balinda and General Vanndar Stormpike will no longer be needed with these improvements and will be changed back to their previous amounts with the patch.

With these improvements teamwork and strategy will be more important than ever from beginning to end as the Alliance and Horde battle for victory in Alterac Valley. We'll see you on the battlefield.

These changes should help with the disputed Horde advantages in AV that have, on many servers, led to a total Alliance boycot of the battleground.

Alongside this change there comes the announcement that in 2.4 diminishing returns for honor will be removed. Originally this was put in place in the early days of the honor system to prevent players from "farming" each other in order to rack up easy honor, but with the speed with which honor can be collected in the battlegrounds, this type of cheating is no longer profitable. Beyond just increasing honor totals in BGs slightly, this change will also allow for honor to be posted immediately, eliminating the need for "estimated" honor.

Two more general changes will hit in 2.4 that will affect pretty much all players, be they PVE or PVP focused.

- When changing talents, talented spells and abilities will retain their rank regardless of whether or not you have them in your current spec.
- Spell haste rating will affect global cooldown, reducing it to a minimum of 1 second.

A variety of minor class balance changes will also go out in patch 2.4:
- Mages get some love in the form of a change to spell steal to prevent it from overwriting current buffs that may be longer. Also, Mana Biscuits now are limited to 80 per player, which will prevent table ninjaing in BGs.
- Endless Rage has finally been acknowledged as not providing as much rage as intended, so that will be buffed. Also off-hand whirlwind crits will now proc flurry and rampage, a much needed fix for fury warriors.
- The recently promised summoning buff will be in 2.4, allowing warlocks to summon from anywhere to anywhere, including Netherstorm and instances. No more sending 2 people out to summon when a priest ninja AFKs during Lady Vashj attempts!
- Healing Grace will now reduce the chance that all your spells will be dispelled by 10/20/30%.
- Fear Ward + Shadowform = Win!
- In addition to recent changes to Crusader Strike which merge DPS warrior and retribution paladin itemization, retribution paladin items will be changed / added in 2.4 to allow for a decent DPS upgrade for the red-headed stepchild of WoW.
- Lacerate will scale with attack power in 2.4, making feral druids around the world sigh in relief.

Raiders, both hard and soft-core, are looking at some significant buffs in 2.4:

- 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.

These changes seemed to be geared towards mid-level raiders who are right now progressing through the tier 5 content. The increase in loot will hopefully speed up progression and allow them to get into and conquer the Sunwell Plateau before WotLK comes out.