The Official 2.4.2 Patch notes have been updated with a variety of new class and item changes that should be live on the PTR right now. For the most part, the class changes are just bug fixes, some of which were already listed, but have been moved from the bug fix section to their proper class section. However, Paladins and Hunters have recieved some very interesting changes.

Boar pets have recieved what looks like a massive hit to their aggro potential with a general nerf to Growl, but in return, there's been a slight buff to Aspect of the Viper and a major buff to Scare Beast. Raiding Hunters have also been buffed in that Elixir of Demonslaying now works for ranged attacks. Retribution Paladins may now actually end up using Seal of the Crusader, as it now gives a 40% damage increase to their Crusader Strike.

The changes are listed after the jump, courtesy of World of Raids.

Before 2.4.2 is even up on PTRs, MMO-Champion and World of Raids have undocumented changes listed on their sites. That's dedication! Of course, given that none of this can be verified, you should take it with a grain of salt, but most of the time changes found in the game files end up going live. Here's what's been noticed so far:

• Most mount-speed-increasing trinkets (Carrot on a Stick, Skybreaker Whip, Riding Crop) have been changed to enchantments, which can be permanently applied to a single mount in your inventory and cause it to become soulbound. Furthermore, Charm of Swift Flight (which will stay a trinket) now also reduces the mana cost of Flight Form and Swift Flight Form by 115 mana, and Carrot on a Stick is now craftable (1x Simple Wood, 1x Fine Thread, 1x Golden Sansam). I imagine it would be an engineering recipe.

  This seems like a good change for the most part, since we won't have to use add-ons to swap in our riding speed trinket all the time (and we'll save an inventory space). However, it does have the major drawback that you'll need to get a new one for each of your mounts, which could get expensive if you're a mount collector. More business for the leatherworkers, I suppose.

• Continuing on the mount theme, a sort of horned Swift Zebra mount appears to have been added to the game, as well as a Headless Horseman's Mount (both pictured).
• Aspect of the Viper has been buffed. Previously, it generated mana equal to up to 55% of the hunter's Intellect every five seconds; now, it generates up to 55% of the hunter's Int plus 35% of his or her level. This means a boost of up to 24.5 mp5 at level 70.

There are also some changes to various items and recipes; check MMO-Champion for those. What do you think of this mount trinket change? Oh, and if you haven't seen the official patch notes yet, check Adam's post from early this morning.

Update: I just signed on to the PTR, and was unable to verify the change to Riding Crop. So this might well not end up happening after all.

Blizzard has released tonight the patch notes for patch 2.4.2, which means the PTR will probably be up and running sometime soon. Patch 2.4 will likely be the last major patch before Wrath of the Lich King, and we expect to see a couple more of these minor patches before WotLK comes out.

Highlights of 2.4.2 include:

• Changes to the way arena points are calculated - essentially what Drysc talked about earlier.
  
• Void Shatter no longer has a cooldown, and other cooldowns have been reduced.
• Illidan will no longer despawn if a raid wipes during his death speech.
• If you are sheeped / polymorphed by a mob, you will no longer gain back health (ie: the mass sheep in Aran, which regens your health before he fire blasts the raid). This is a potentially large change.
• Many main hand weapons are now one hand weapons.
• A good list of bug fixes, including several problems associated with sounds.
  

Full patch notes for your convenience after the break!

The following changes were made to Alterac Valley:

• Captain Balinda Stonehearth Stonehearth can no longer be interrupted, silenced, or have her spells slowed. In addition, her water elemental cannot be banished, and does increased damage.
• Vanndar Stormpike and Captain Balinda Stonehearth have had their health totals reduced to match the health totals of Drek'Thar and Captain Galvangar.
• Warmasters/marshals in Alterac Valley now increase each other's maximum health and damage by 25%. This is a stacking effect.
• Horde players will now start the battle closer to Drek'Thar and Frostwolf Keep.
• There is now a Join as Party option.

Take a look after the break for a mirrored copy of the live version of the 2.4 patch notes. This comes directly from the downloader, which is now working. The normal patch note site located at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/ is not updated yet. However, I'm sure it will be soon.

One of the big changes from the PTR to the live realms is that CC non-breaking effects have been removed. You cannot Multi-shot with CC targets up and get a way with it (or a number of other abilities). This has been confirmed by Hortus, and thanks to reader Meph for pointing this out. However it should be noted that in the patch notes, Avenger's Shield will still not break CC. This is interesting and will be explored more once the game comes up.

You should be seeing the downloader finish about 10 megs worth of content, and then update the game. Everything went smoothly for me on both my Mac and PC clients.

WoW Insider will continue our extensive coverage of patch 2.4 today!

We know that patch 2.4 is on its way, sometime soon. The World of Warcraft page has been updated and the background downloader has appeared. Many of us are itching to experience the Fury of the Sunwell. Tomorrow was the second most frequently projected date in our "Guess the release day" contest. As always, Blizzard says it'll go live when it's ready, but tomorrow seems likely to me.

The first thing I'm going to do when the patch goes live is check out the patch notes and see which changes were actually included, what's been rolled back, and what's been replaced. After that I'll be heading into Warsong Gulch to see if the developers have found a way to make the battleground experience a little better. I hope they did better than the promised debuff after five minutes of flag-carrying time.

What's the first thing you're going to do once the patch drops?

The day that patch 2.3 was released I attempted to rush home from work to check out the new changes, but was thwarted by cross-town traffic. There are some things that I'm excited about for in the newest patch, but I'm not nearly as stoked as I was for the last major update. I try to keep in mind that what we've seen so far on the Public Test Realm is not the final product for the patch, but it gives us a pretty good indication of what's coming.

The PTR has changed once more. Sure, the star changes are rollbacks on the Life Tap nerf and Flametongue buff, but there is at least one other change that I think is highly significant. Expect a Patch Note Watch soon exhaustively detailing every change that made it into the patch notes. Until then, however, enjoy the following:

Cleave, Multi-Shot, Swipe, Chain Lightning, and Avenger's Shield will no longer hit targets that are under the effect of CC spells that break on damage, such as Polymorph or Sap. This includes Felguard Cleave and the Chain Lightning effects caused by various items. As far as I can make out, this is all spells that hit multiple targets, but are not AoE; Thunder Clap, for instance, will still break sheep. Edit: Whirlwind, Sweeping Strikes, and Blade Flurry do not seem to be included. Overall this change is, frankly, awesome. The implications for tanking alone are highly pleasant, as well as for Hunter and Elemental Shaman DPS. I'm starting to get excited about patch 2.4 all over again.

As Matt Rossi is analyzing in more detail, the attunement requirement for Karazhan has been removed, although at least one person in the raid does need to have the key to get in the door. How do we know? New patch notes.

Here, in full, is everything that's changed in the latest iteration of Blizzard's official test realm patch notes, brought to you, as always, by the power of diff. Much of this has been covered on WoW Insider already, because Blizzard is slow to update the patch notes; the stuff that looks new to me is in bold (which in this particular case is only that the new Mortal Strike-esque effect on Flametongue Weapon applies to Flametongue Totem as well).

• Removed: "The benefits of drinking out of combat have been delayed. It will now take five seconds before the full benefit of the mana regeneration will come into effect." (now restricted to arenas only)
  
• [Druid] Lifebloom will no longer cause error messages when interacting with Spellsteal or while the Druid is under the effects of a Mind Control.
• Mage
• Improved Blink: This talent no longer reduces the mana cost of Blink. Instead, it increases the chance for all attacks to miss the Mage by 25% for 2/4 sec after Blink is cast.
• Icy Veins no longer stacks with Power Infusion (as well as Bloodlust/Heroism from the last patch notes)
• Mana Shield: This spell will now get a percentage of the Mage's bonus to spell damage as an additional effect.

Today a big new build went up on the patch 2.4 PTR, and every change that was in the patch notes was detailed here. However, inevitably, there were some changes that didn't make it to the patch notes, and for that we have the intrepid researchers at MMO-Champion and World of Raids. Here's what they've managed to tease out of the realms:

• Most of the Tier 6 belts, boots, and bracers found in the Sunwell raid have had their Stamina removed, and other stats increased to compensate. The exception is the Warrior tanking set, Onslaught Armor. Edit: And the Paladin tanking set, Lightbringer Armor.
  
• The five epic BoP jewelcrafted trinkets we learned about previously have had patterns added; they're available at the Revered level from the Shattered Sun Offensive quartermaster.
• In what must be a bug of some sort, rank 1 of the Warlock talent Emberstorm now increases the casting speed of Incinerate by 2%, as well as its previous effect of boosting all fire damage by 2%. Other ranks of the talent are unchanged.

That's everything discovered so far. Seen anything else that wasn't mentioned in the new patch notes?

We already highlighted some of the most important changes in the updated 2.4 PTR patch notes, but here is every difference in full, brought to you by the unblinking eye of diff. Anything that looks particularly significant to me, that wasn't in the previous post, is bolded. This includes a new Mage talent, a reworking of Power Infusion, and more...take a look!

• Druids
• Lifebloom healing coefficient has been reduced.
• Many shapeshift form tooltips have been updated to be consistent with each other.
• Natural perfection reduces damage by 2/3/4%, down from 1/3/5%.
• Nurturing Instinct increases your healing spells by up to 50/100% of your Agility, and increases healing done to you by 10/20% of your Attack Power while in Cat form.
• [Hunter] Improved Mend Pet now has a 50/100% chance to remove one Curse, Disease, Magic, or Poison effect, up from 15/50%.

Tipster Pzychotix has uncovered some new class changes in the latest round of patch notes, and some of them are doozies:

For Druids, the Lifebloom healing coefficient has been reduced. It'll be interesting to see how much. Rolling Lifeblooms have been the healing method of choice for most discerning trees, but if the nerf is severe enough, perhaps we'll see some return to Regrowth and Healing Touch. In other changes, Feral Druids are heading further and further to side of agility, with Nurturing Instinct now increasing your healing spells by up to 100% of your agility, and increasing your healing received by 20% of your attack power while in Cat Form. This seems like it may make Cat Druids at least a bit less squishy in PvP, if they're paired with a healer or can find a spare second to duck out of the fray and heal themselves.

Lots of additional changes after the break!

Since the blues told us any new changes to patch 2.4 would show up in the PTR patch notes, I decided it might be profitable to save copies of the patch notes every so often and run diff on them to see if anything's changed. It looks like there were some changes today; here's what I found that we haven't discussed in full yet:

• The benefits of drinking out of combat have been delayed. It will now take five seconds before the full benefit of the mana regeneration will come into effect.
• Hunters will no longer spin around if they cast Aimed Shot or Steady Shot while facing away from their target.
• Arcane Explosion: The damage cap for area of effect damage on this spell has been increased by approximately 50%.
• Drain Mana: This ability no longer increases in power from bonus spell damage effects. Base points of the effect increased by 50%.
• Queue times for arena matches have been reduced. Players will now be able to enter matches faster than previously.

In addition to the big change of Nethers not being BoP anymore, some other changes were pushed to the PTR tonight:

• Commendation of Kael'thas has had its dodge rating bonus reduced from 380 to 152
• Five epic trinket jewelcrafting recipes have been added, all with passive benefits and on use effects. See this MMO-Champion screenshot for materials.
  
• Crimson Serpent: +33 Int, + 49 Stam, use: +150 damage/healing for 20 sec (2 min cooldown)
  
• Empyrean Tortoise: +42 def rating, use: +165 dodge rating for 20 sec (2 min cooldown)
  
• Shadowsong Panther: effective stealth level increased by one, +80 attack power, use: +320 attack power for 15 sec (2 min cooldown)
  
• Khorium Boar: +84 attack power, use: summon the Khorium Boar to fight for you for 30 sec (5 min cooldown)
• Seaspray Albatross: +18 mp5, use: restores 900 mana over 12 sec (3 min cooldown)
• New gem cut: Regal Nightseye, +4 dodge rating, +6 stam, matches red or blue
• Warlocks' Drain Mana buffed by 50%; top rank now drains 300 mana per second (was 200). But remember that resilience now affects mana drain, to the tune of -20% at 400 resil.
  
• Paladins' Holy Shock damage buffed by about 35%, healing buffed by about 75%. Top rank now deals 721-779 damage or heals for 931-987 (was 530-574 damage or 530-574 healing).

That's a lot of changes. And now that I look at those numbers, those are big shifts for Drain Mana and Holy Shock. Is anyone now reconsidering those spells? Do you think those buffs will last through testing?

[via MMO-Champion]