Feb 7

We’ve all been waiting for news of patch 2.4 for a couple of reasons: first, it means more changes, a little bit of new stuff, some new instances, and so fort, and second, because 2.4 is the last major content patch before the expansion comes out. I’m pretty excited about 2.4 for the first reason. The second one doesn’t excite me as much because, well, I haven’t hit 70 yet–there’s still a lot for me to experience, and if I’m just dinging 70 when the expansion comes out, I might as well forget it–no one will be running the old content unless they’re even slower than me, which is not likely.

However, everything we know about 2.4 has come from blue posts on the forums. We don’t have the official PTR patch notes yet. None the less, 2.4 has some pretty cool stuff in it already. Several sites have compiled a list of changes gathered from the forums. Let’s take a look at what we’re getting.

First of all, diminishing returns on honor from killing players has been removed, and honor is calculated immediately. This is good news for the PvPers out there. In the past, each time you killed a player, you got a little less honor, until after 10 times you no longer received any honor. However, your estimated honor did not take this into account, and if you did a lot of PvP, you could log in the next day to find your actual honor quite a bit lower than your estimated honor. However, this is no more, and your earned honor can be spent immediately.

On a related note, Alterac Valley is getting some pretty serious changes. You can read more about that in the link found above, but suffice it to say that this change should balance out AV a little bit.

Respeccing will no longer cost as much–but not the base price, that remains the same. Now, hoever, when you respec, you no longer have to retrain (for money) multiple ranks of a talent-learned spell that you already knew (such as Pyroblast or Aimed Shot).

Spell haste rating will now shorten the global cooldown, to a minimum of one second. How much reduction is possible with current gear, however, is yet to be seen.

Warlocks can now summon people into instances from anywhere in the world, assuming said summonee meets the minimum requirements for the instance. Also, the “no summoning” restriction in Netherstorm has been lifted.

Several other classes have gotten some love in the patch, as well, and I’m sure more changes are yet to come once Blizzard gives us the official patch notes. When that happens, we’ll be talkin’ about it on World of Warcraft Musings!

Related posts:

1. Patch 3.0.8 Notes Updated – Highlights
2. This Just In: 2.4 Hits the PTR!
3. Patch 2.4: People are Far Too Optimistic
4. Big 2.4 PTR Changes!
5. Patch 3.0.2 Today