3.0.9 going live today

Hey look, SURPRISE BUTTSE…uh, I mean, hey, look, a patch.  3.0.9 patch notes are not up on Blizzard’s normal patch notes page as of Tuesday morning EST, but are available here at MMO Champion and the other usual spots around teh Intertubes.  So expect “extended expanded extended maintenance” today; my guess for server uptime is no earlier than about 4:45 pm EST, which oddly enough, is about the time I leave work.

Oddly enough, this is one of the few patches I’ve seen that doesn’t touch warriors at all, good or bad.  There are changes to most other classes, including the reversal of a couple of 3.0.8 BM hunter nerfs.  Serpent’s Swiftness is now back up to +20% pet haste at max rank, and Kindred Spirits is now back up to +20% pet damage.  I think Blizzard figured out that they dropped the hammer too hard on BM hunters.  These are countered by two ability nerfs–Lava Breath and Poison Spit only slow target casting speed by -25%, down from -50%.  (Several other cast-slow effects like Slow and Mind-Numbing Poison got halved as well; this looks to be a PvP adjustment for squishies.)

One more semi-related hunter tidbit:  Big Red Kitty, your one-stop shop for all things huntrish, commissioned an interesting WoW Armory-mining survey of hunter specs and just what 3.0.8 did to the BM/MM/SV proportions.  The results shocked the hell out of me.  Looks like survival hunters definitely win the Flavor of the Month award for January.

3.0.8 patch notes up on the PTR

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html

Nothing particularly unknown or unexpected there.  The only change for prot warriors is that Taunt (and druid Growl) have a 30-yard range now instead of 20.  There’s better news for Fury warriors…the extra 5% miss penalty for Titan’s Grip is gone.  I, for one, welcome our new dual-2H-axe-wielding overlords.  All the Titans Grip barbarians I know will be drinking and wenching far into the night in celebration.

Hunters, well, they don’t do so well.  Beltar, a hardcore marks hunter, will be pleased with the reduced cooldown on Kill Shot and the small buff to Improved Tracking, even while lamenting the moderate nerf to Steady Shot.  But Illithanis, my BM spec?  Not a happy belfette.  Her DPS is so low and her gear so terrible at 71 that she may not even notice, we’ll see.  But between the Serpent’s Swiftness attack speed nerf, the Unleashed Rage damage nerf, and the Kindred Spirits damage nerf?  Pet damage is going to drop considerably.  And, the Readiness/Big Red Pet cooldown change may be the death of the 50/21/0 gimmick build.  We’ll see.

And for you mages and warlocks:  Any ability that agros a mob will now “tap” it to you, so nobody else will be able to get xp/loot from it.  Yep, you won’t get your sheep stolen anymore, and locks won’t have that two-second window of vulnerability before the first DoT ticks hit.