Patch 3.3 – Non-Warlock Changes

Warlock Tier 10

This post will be updated as the patch notes are changed.

Well, with patch 3.3 looming ever closer I’ve decided it’s finally time to do a review of the patch notes and take a look at what we can expect, both as Warlocks and in general. Today, we’re going to look at the new features (from a Warlock point of view) that stand out to me as well as anything notable to do with other classes, and tomorrow we’ll examine the actual (much more exciting) Warlock changes themselves in detail. Here we go!

Meeting Stones: To use any Meeting Stone, it is only required that the character’s minimum level be 15. There is no maximum character level requirement for any Meeting Stone.

This is a very useful change for people who want to boost lower level characters, or even for people who previously would have been just slightly too low or high to use the stone when in a normal group and would keep the others waiting. I can also see the meeting stones being used as a method of transportation now – “Hey mister, can you summon me using that stone for two gold?”. At least it might relieve the pressure on us Warlocks to do it!

Area-of-Effect Damage Caps: We’ve redesigned the way area damage is capped when hitting many targets. Instead of a hard cap on total damage done, the game now caps the total damage done at a value equal to the damage the spell would do if it hit 10 targets. In other words, if a spell does 1000 damage to each target, it would hit up to 10 targets for 1000 each, but with more than 10 targets, each target would take 1000 damage divided by the number of targets. 20 targets would be hit for 500 damage each in that example.

This is pretty self-explanatory, but simply put, they’re preventing AoE damage spells from doing too much damage by giving the spells a damage cap. If you’re attacking 10 mobs or less, you’ll see no change from how it works currently, but if you’re attacking more than 10, you’ll only do as much damage as if there were 10, and the damage will be divided equally up between the mobs. I can see why this change is needed – Rain of Fire, for example, does some pretty crazy damage sometimes, and the dps does spiral out of control.