Because Growl is So OP

So, Blizzard just took the lid off the changes in the upcoming Patch 2.4.2.  Rather than make an actual attempt at coming up with any real content, I've decided to instead just repost the interesting bits of the patch notes, inserting my paltry attempts at wry humour betwixt the bullet points.  Onwards, for great laziness!

Hunters

• Dire Ravens in Blade's Edge Mountains now tameable.

Because you can never have enough pet choices.

PvP

• Arenas
  • If a character's personal rating is more than 150 points below the team rating, they will earn points based on their personal rating instead of the team rating.
  • If the average personal rating of the players queuing for a game is more than 150 points below the team's rating, the team will be queued against an opponent matching or similar to the average personal rating.

Hahahaha!  Take that, you arena point-selling bastards!  Right in the unethical misuse of game mechanics... gland... thing.  Sadly, I don't see how this is going to solve the issue of me being steamrolled by teams in full Season 3 gear in sub-1500 brackets.  That's just wrong.  And also, not fun at all.

Professions

• All 23-hour profession cooldowns are now 20-hour cooldowns.
• All 4-day cooldowns are now 3 days, 20 hours.

Something that always annoyed me was that, taking the Transmute: Arcanite spell as an example, because it was virtually impossible to use it at exactly the same time every day (especially if you simply sold the cooldown and didn't transmute your own materials,) you would eventually push it so late that you just had to skip a day.  At least this change gives people a bit of leeway.

• Engineering
  • The Engineering supply item Delicate Copper Wire will now properly fit into engineering bags.

What I want to know is what they had to do to get this to work.  Did they have to go back through all those already purchased engineering bags and sew a little pouch into the inside for the copper wire?  Or is it merely a case of mailing out a spool attachment of some description?

Dungeons and Raids

• Black Temple
  • Illidan will no longer despawn if a raid group wipes during his death speech.

Wow.  Can you imagine how much that would suck?  Your guild's first kill, you just barely manage to down him, and then he suddenly vanishes with your phat lewts.  That's some serious "hole-in-the-wall" angst right there.

• Magister's Terrace
• Vexallus is no longer immune to taunt on Normal difficulty.
• Kael'thas is no longer immune to taunt on Normal difficulty.

"Nobody calls me chicken Kil'Jaeden, nobody!"  Did Kael'thas learn nothing from Back to the Future?  Or Star Wars, for that matter?  Come to think of it, he's starting to look a bit like Yoda lately...

• The doors in Heroic Magister's Terrace will no longer respawn after a soft reset if a boss has already been killed.

Nothing worse than vindictive sentient undead doors.

Items

• Goblin Jumper Cables are no longer a trinket item.

And it only took them four years to realise they shouldn't have been a trinket in the first place!

• Many items sold by Consortium vendors are now bind on pick up: Formula: Enchant Weapon- Major Striking, Design: Delicate Blood Garnet, Design: Shifting Shadow Draenite, Design: Lustrous Azure Moonstone, Design: Thick Golden Draenite.
• Many items sold by Aldor reputation vendors are now bind on pick up: Design: Gleaming Golden Draenite, Design: Royal Shadow Draenite.
• Many items sold by the Shattered Sun quartermaster are now bind on pick up: Naaru Ration, Design: Ember Skyfire Diamond.
• The Lower City reputation item, Recipe: Flask of Chromatic Resistance, is now bind on pick up.

I just checked, and it looks like you needed the rep to use the items, so I don't really see the major issue with these.  Maybe people were selling them at vastly inflated prices on the auction house to people who weren't very good at reading the fine print.

What am I saying?  Of course people were doing that!

• The Romantic Picnic Basket will now display the blanket properly.

What set of patch notes would be complete without an item that you look at and think: "of all the things they could have spent their time fixing, they chose to spend it on this."

• [Figurine - Talasite Owl]: This trinket will now properly restore full mana as described.

In the same vein, no patch would be complete without something like "fixed X to do Y," where "Y" is the entire basic function of "X."

• Tauren weapons while sheathed have had their graphic readjusted to their pre-patch (2.4.0) state.

And there was much rejoicing.

• The Winterfall Firewater buff is no longer dispellable.

Just... why?  Why this one particular effect?  I mean, it's not like it's a particularly special buff.  It's a pain to farm for, and it basically just makes you a bigger (quite literally) target in PvP.  I really think Blizzard should be forced to attach reasons to their patch note items.

"Changed because Tigole had it dispelled off him in an AV game and boy was he pissed!"

World Environment

• Creature versions of the Polymorph spell no longer heal the affected target.

Now that's just unfair.  Mobs always get the cool spells.  Non-healing Polymorph, Death Hand, Deep Breath...

• The dragons in Blade's Edge Mountains will no longer instantly knock you off your mount.

Although incredibly annoying, I've never had that much of an issue thanks to my trusty [Parachute Cloak].  There is, without exception, no Engineering item in the game as useful as that thing.  Shortcuts into Un'goro, getting to the Blacksmith from the Lumber Mill in a few seconds, dismounting in mid-air and raining death from above... good times.

Mac

• Cinematics playback is working again.

What I want to know is, given that the only way you'd even notice the cinematics are missing is if you'd either reinstalled the game and were paying really close attention or attempted to view them manually, how long has this been broken before someone noticed?

Bug Fixes

• Female Draenei horns will now correctly protrude through certain plate helms.

I know the joke goes "Yes, they are real and they can cut glass," but isn't that just a little excessive?  I can just imagine the squealing of steel when a Draenei puts on that helm that drops from Scarlet Monastery, gouging a great bloody hole in either side.

"Fits like a glove!"

• The Vengeful Gladiator's Rifle will now play the proper sound when used.

Yeah, the murloc aggro noise was getting on my nerves a bit...  man, that would be totally awesome if I wasn't just making it up.

• The hunter pet ability Growl will no longer scale with pet Attack Power.

Now this, right here, has me worried.  First of all, it's listed under "Bug Fixes," which is disconcerting since I've never seen any indication from Blizzard that this was unintended.  But more importantly, I'm concerned as to what this is going to do to my pet's threat generation.  2.4 screwed up something that made threat generation weaker, and now it's going to get worse?!

I suppose jumping to conclusions isn't going to be hugely constructive, so I'll just have to wait for the PTR to see what the real effect is.

• Paladin healing spells used in castsequence macros are now properly completing the cast sequence when a rank is not specified.

Sometimes, I really wonder what the source code to WoW must look like.  Not "spells," or "healing spells" in general; Paladin healing spells.  Methinks Blizzard doth have gremlins...

• Shaman Talent: Frostbrand (Enhancement) Rank 6 will now properly do more damage than Rank 5.

Now that's just sad.  "Guys, I think we forgot to make Frostbrand VI do more damage than Frostbrand V."  "Whoopsie."

• Warlock Spell- Drain Soul will no longer continue to do damage to another player after they have died.

So wait, does this mean they were taking damage after they ressed, or were their ghosts going into negative health?  At least it's not as bad as back when Warlock DoTs didn't wear off after duels... that was not funny!

• Priest Spell: Power Word: Shield now has the correct sound associated with it and can no longer be heard from large distances.

Ker-pshing!   Yeah, it was getting a little old.  I still say having a gun that makes murloc noises when fired would be hilarious, though...  for about five seconds, anyway.

• Whirlwind now has the correct sound associated with it.

Yeah, I was wondering why whirlwinding mobs sounded like one of those giant industrial buzz-saws they use in movies to cut secret agents in half revving up.  That seemed just a little unlikely.

On the whole, apart from that Growl nerf, nothing that big in this one.  Of course, that's only to be expected at this point.  We're only likely to see small tweaks and changes until WotLK comes out and breaks everything.  Aah, what fun.