World of Warcraft: 2.3 and You

From AJS.COM

This article is part of the World of Warcraft: Raiding the Metagame series.

Major changes to the minimap in 2.3! Evey class gets tracking for vendors, trainers, etc. Also, available quests show up on the minimap.

World of Warcraft 2.3 is a massive change, on-par with the 2.1 patch, and will be released sometime fairly soon (it's on the test realm now). Even though the patch notes are out,^[1] it can be hard to figure out what it will all mean to your character. It's also tru that the patch notes do not contain all of the changes! That's what this annotated list of changes is all about. I try to figure out what the changes mean and give you a heads-up! What will it mean for you? Read on....

From a posting of mine on the Warcraft Boards on the day of the patch.

Since many people are asking the same questions, let me answer a few:

Q: Did 2.3 land today?
A: Yes.

Q: Does that mean season 3 started?!
A: Season 3 starts November 20: Season 3 Start Date - Updated 11/7 by Drysc

Q: Does that mean that season 1 gear for honor will be available next week too?
A: Yes. This is answered in the above post as well.

Q: Did my class get <some change you care about>? I don't see it in the patch notes!
A: http://www.wowwiki.com/Patch_2.3.0/Undocumented_changes

Q: How much faster is leveling now?
A: Quite a bit, but no official numbers are out. One of the factors that you won't find in the patch notes is that, because you get more XP and require less, you don't have as many gaps where quests are thin in the pre-Burning Crusade levels.

Q: Is the hunter (well, all physical ranged attack, really) deadzone gone? I heard it was.
A: See the above link to WoWWiki or the one in my sig. The answer is complicated, but "yes" is a very good short version.

Q: Was my class nerfed?
A: Probably.

Q: Was my class buffed?
A: Probably.

Q: Free respec?
A: No.

Q: Will Drysc and Tigole be giving out free candy at the Org and SW banks?
A: Why yes, yes they will.

NEW!This patch is scheduled for release on November 13th, 2007, and season 3 PVP (which will also include the honor-based season 1 gear) will begin one week later on the 20th!^[2]

I don't promise that this article is 100% up-to-date. That would be nearly impossible. I'm keeping up as much as I can, but the changes are announced frequently, and I'm also trying to log into the PTR and try things out.

Note: I've also mentioned this article and the one on Lich King on my AJS Gaming blog.

General changes

Quite a lot of 2.3 affects everyone, especially the PVP and tradeskill changes.

PVP

There are major changes to Alterac Valley (AV), that I'll go over below....

The biggest changes will be the release of season 3 arena sets; the release of season 1 sets to the honor point system; and the re-vamp of AV. Season 3 arena gear will likely be on-par with or close to tier 6, to keep pace with the raiding community, but I don't think any stats are available yet.

Here's the details:

Arena Relics will be expanded for Shaman, Paladins and Druids in all specs. Naming has also been addressed.
Season 3 arena gear will be introduced with the change of season shortly after or with the 2.3 patch, and several other things will change as well.^[3]
- Personal ratings will be associated with a player for each arena team they are on, and will only be affected when they player is in a match, so it will be different from the team's rating if they don't participate in all of the team's matches.
- The weapons will required 1850 personal rating
- The shoulders will required 2000
- Season 1 gear will be retired to the battlegrounds for honor points (and possibly tokens)

How much, you ask? Kalgan suggested 15k each in August.^[4] Drysc later gave a partial answer that, if you were capped out for honor you could get, "two or three pieces I believe." That means somewhere between 25 and 37k per piece (is that an average)? Then again, he says in that same thread, later on, that nothing was set firmly in stone and he would take anything at this stage with a grain of salt... the answer may have changed by now (that was 5 days ago).^[5]

Daily quests will exist for battlegrounds. These will rotate daily, so daily quests for WSG might exist today, but tomorrow there might be dailies for EoTS. No word yet on how many or if it will just be one. These quests will be given by the "Alliance Brigadier Generals" and "Horde Warbringers".^[6]
Battlegrounds will also gain upgrades to the existing epic boots, belt and bracers.
Buffs may be cast for free for a period after being resurrected at a spirit healer in battlegrounds.
If you drop the flag in a battleground, you won't be able to pick it up for 3 seconds.^[6]
Eye of the Storm will aware more points per flag returned depending on the number of towers controlled.^[6]

Alterac Valley

This is a summary of the Alterac Valley changes posted to the WoW boards by Nethaera

The biggest change to AV is the idea of reinforcements.^[6] This changes the nature of the game entirely, and creates new winning conditions in addition to killing the generals! Reinforcements are your team's "resources" if you think of it in AB terms, except in AB, resources are gained until someone gets 2000. In AV, reinforcements are lost (whenever a player dies, or objectives such as bunkers or key NPCs are lost) until someone hits zero and therefore loses.

Getting your general killed still makes you lose, but if your general is alive and you have zero reinforcements, you still lose.

Additional changes:^[6]

Taking a bunker removes one of the general's four guards
The general's guards and the general are linked and cannot be pulled separately
Destroying an enemy tower will not add a warmaster to your side
Tower and graveyard capture times will be reduced from 5 to 4 minutes
The honor for towers will be increased
Players will only re-spawn in the tunnel if no graveyards are held (major change! This means if the horde controls only SP, then all defenders who die will go all the way north to SP and visa versa for alliance)
Bonus honor for destroying towers and killing captains will only be awarded after the battle is over
The number of elite NPCs has been reduced in the base camps
There are no more commanders or lieutenants

Whew! Enjoy the new AV, folks!

AV on the 2.3 PTR

Well, first off the PTR isn't in great shape. There are dozens of issues that are plaguing it, and it just can't seem to handle the load, so this is a very rough take. However, what I've seen is this:

As predicted the game mostly becomes a melee with the Alliance slowly pushing through the Horde's weaker defenses, but held off at Galv for a time
Right now, resurrection has many issues, but it certainly does change a team's strategy when getting killed sends you back to your base's GY from the front lines!
You start with 1000 reinforcements, and it looks like you lose one per kill, so winning solely by killing players probably isn't going to be the norm, once people get the battleground strategies sorted out.

More to come once the server stops kicking me out ;-)

Raiding

Raiding changes are primarily in the form of the addition of Zul'Aman with the patch and Sunwell, shortly thereafter.

Zul'Aman

Zul'Aman, the new 10-man raid, will be opened in Ghostlands. It is currently undergoing the last phases of testing.^[7]

Because of its location in Ghostlands, Zul'Aman has been generating some concern.^[8] People are concerned that the horde-territory location will lead to quite a bit of griefing. NEW! According to Tigole, this will be addressed by adding guards and potentially some other changes to "how the area is flagged."^[9]

Zul'Aman is an "outdoor instance"^[10]
It has six bosses^[10]
It will involve the boss (final event?) Forest Troll Warlord Zul'jin.^[1]^[10]
Both Zul'Aman and Karazhan bosses will drop Badges of Justice like the heroic instance bosses now.^[11]

Sunwell

NEW! Sunwell will be released shortly after 2.3, and before the expansion. It will include a 5-man and 25-man dungeon as well as new daily quests in a public area known as Sunwell Isle.^[12]

Misc

"Champion of the Naaru" is a title that will be available to those who get flagged for Tempest Keep while still level 70 (the title won't be available to players who level past 70 in the expansion).^[13]

Quests, Dungeons and leveling

Lots of questions have been asked about the leveling changes. One of the most often asked is: should I bother to continue leveling my toon now, or wait for the patch. The answer is that, if you have nothing better to do, level now. If you have other characters to get to 20 or if you have PVP/raiding things to do, go play those characters until the patch. If you have no other characters that you want play that are outside of the 20-60 range, then don't hold off because there's no point in not progressing at all until 2.3.

NEW! Heroic dungeon keys now only require honored faction! This is a late change on the PTR, and has been confirmed as intentional and destined to go live!^[14]

One of the things that you will notice overall is that an attempt is being made to remove a lot of the guessing from quests. You will see what objects you can interact with; you will see quest givers on your minimap; and many other changes are being made to improve how fast you can start and complete quests.

Leveling from 20-60 will be much faster as the XP required to level has been reduced and quest XP has been increased.^[15] When the patch goes live, your experience will be modified so that the percentage that you have to go to your next level will not change (though the raw number of XP that you have will change).
- Each level will require 15% less XP from 20 to 60
- Quests between 30 and 60 will give more XP, increasing substantially as you get closer to 60
- Many outdoor elite mobs will no longer be elite. The example given is Stormgarde Keep in Arathi Highlands
- 60 new quests will be added to Dustwallow Marsh
- The level ranges for dungeons will be reduced so that mobs at the entrance and ad the end of an instance won't be quite so far apart. The example given is Shadowfang Keep which will change from an 18-25 dungeon to 18-21, though they suggest that a party of 18s would find it nearly impossible.
- Dungeon gear will become substantially better for these low-level dungeons, adding new stats and upping existing stats on the items that drop. NEW! Any gear that's in your bags or equipped when the patch goes live should update. This may imply by exclusion that anything in the bank, mail or auction house will not be upgraded.^[16]
A flying mount that will cost 2,000 gold and require Cenarion Expedition faction to be exalted

The Auction House

A small number of important changes are happening in the Auction House, which may signal some significant beefing up of the AH's capabilities, server-side for the expansion...^[17]

Search results will be sorted before being returned to you. This means that when you change your sorting (by clicking on a column heading), the server will re-sort the entire search (not just the page you're seeing) and show you the new first page of results!
The amount of time that an auction stays up has been doubled, so if you pay what you would have paid before for 24 hours, your auction will remain up for 48 hours.
Support for additional mechanics in the API will enhance the ability of mods like Auctioneer to quickly scan the entire auction-house as often as every 15 minutes without having to search page-by-page.

Expertise

Expertise is a new stat that is being added, along with is corresponding Expertise Rating (like other ratings, this converts to Expertise directly, and is used to scale benefits from items and talents as a character gains levels). All items which previously gave a bonus to weapon skills will now give Expertise Rating instead. Expertise will lower the target's chance to dodge by 0.25% per point.^[1] This should not affect most players unless they have a racial (such as Trolls and Dwarves), item or talent that previously affected weapon skill.^[18]

User Interface

The tracking menu lets any class track vendors and trainers and the like, and also includes class-specific tracking

Probably the first change that you will notice is to the quest and tracking user-interface. On the test realm, I've noticed that the cursor changes when you mouse over a quest-NPC, and the dot on the mini-map that indicates a quest-NPC that you can turn a quest in to is now a yellow ! for available quests and a yellow ? for completed quests. This makes finding new quests much easier! This change was not originally announced in the patch notes on the forums, but is now on the official test realm patch notes at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html

This affects other things as well. The mouse-over icon for innkeepers, for example, is a hearthstone.

According to Slouken, they have been changing some of the ways unit frames are protected from taint (the process that prevents certain things from being changed during combat) in the last patches, and are continuing to refine it in 2.3. This may impact mods that touch unit frames, raid frames and pet bars.^[19]
Here's some more screenshots of changes to the UI:

Repair vendor tracking	Repair vendor mouse cursor	Profession tracking tracks all trainers	Class trainer tracking only shows your class
Guard mouse cursor

Trade skills

Cooking and fishing are getting some updates, and engineering will get two new key items that can be made.

For the most part, this is a band-aid release for trade skills. There's some fun stuff, but it's nothing like the huge list of changes that landed in 2.1. My guess is that any substantial changes in trade skills are being held for a patch that won't conflict with so many other things. Then again, there's the expansion that will raise all trade skill caps, and might be where many changes will happen.

Engineering

A new Field Repair Bot will be dropped by or in connection with Gan'arg Analyzers in Blade's Edge Mountains and will be act as a vendor as well
Engineers will get a crafted flying mount in epic and non-epic format.

Fishing

Fishing will have its own tracking ability which will be learned from a book that is fished.
New fish types are being added to Deadwind Pass near Karazhan and Ghostlands near Zul'Aman.

Cooking

Daily quests for cooking are being added.
The fish near Karazhan and Zul'Aman will have their own recipes.

Guilds

Guild banks will be a shared resource that your guild can all use, or which can be restricted to specific guild members. This will really improve the situation for many guilds that had to rely on particular members who might come or go over time to manage the guild's assets.

You will get 98 item slots per tab in the bank, and each tab will be purchased individually.^[1]
There are up to 6 tabs.^[10]
You can set permissions for access to each of these tabs, allowing access, presumably based on guild rank (though that hasn't been announced).^[1]
Vendors who repair will now have a special option to have the guild bank pay for it. Permission to withdraw funds in this way, and by how much is controlable through the guild bank interface.^[1]
The guild bank will present transaction logs for each of the tabs.^[1]

Spells

All casters will get 1/3 of their gear's healing bonus as damage bonus.
This spell damage bonus will include, "enchants, gems, and all other items. The only exceptions are temporary buffs, and some BC leveling greens with "of the..." stats, and some Zul'Gurub items, as there is a current limitation on how many different stats can be distributed on an item" -Drysc^[20]
Healing Reduction type spells and effects will now have an effect on any drains. Mortal Strike vs Drain Life is one of the examples given.
Blind will no longer be considered a poison.

Misc

Some very interesting general changes are coming out. These will probably not change anyone's world, but several of them (like the "world map") will certainly modify game play a bit. Many of these changes modify features that many mods relied on, so expect some instability in mods for a while after 2.3 is released!

A new Zone Map replaced the PvP-only Battle Map, and is available in all zones, and can be configured to display or not under different conditions.^[1]
Items which have an "On Use" ability will display their cooldowns in the the tooltip.^[1]
For those who got killed while taking a screenshot: there's now going to be an edge effect that will flash red when you take damage while in full-screen mode.^[1]
You can inspect other players' gear up to 30 yards away.^[1]
There will be a new action bar layout for mind control and possession, but no details are available yet.^[1]
Mailbox changes:
- Up to 12 items can be sent in a single mail message.^[1]
- Right-clicking on items while composing mail will attach them to the message.^[1]
- Pending mail senders can be seen by mousing over the pending mail icon without going to check at a mailbox.^[1]
Like mail, trade windows can have items added to them by right-clicking the item.^[1]
All single-purpose NPCs like flight masters and bankers will skip right past their "gossip pane" and go into their special-purpose UI (like the flight path map or the bank UI) unless there's some other option available.^[1]
Also, such NPCs will be identified in their mouseover tooltip.^[1]
Low level quests will be identified as such when you talk to a quest giver, so you know which quests are "current" for your level.^[1]
Loot thresholds can be set by word from the command-line ("Epic", "Rare", etc.)^[1]
New macro commands are being added: /targetlastenemy, /targetlastfriend, /targetexact. That last allows you to target by an exact name, not just part.^[1]
Boats, such as the one from Booty Bay, now have NPCs crewing them including vendors.^[21]
The Teldrassil/Darkshore boats now use the night elf ship model.^[21]
Vendors in cities and otherwise associated with a faction will discount their wares based on your faction standing as follows:^[10]
- Friendly — 5%
- Honored — 10%
- Revered — 15%
- Exalted — 20%
A new flight master will be added for the alliance in northern Stranglethorn Vale.
Objects that you can interact with will now glow.^[22]

There are some other minor changes, but most of those are very minor bug-fixes or adjustments that don't affect play very much (such as moving a mining node so that it's not in the air).

Classes

Some overall trends to look out for:

Classes with a talent that gave increased mana regeneration while casting spells have had that talent buffed (e.g. Meditation)^[1]
Many shielding type spells and talents have been given benefits from +damage gear, but their top 2 or 3 ranks have been slightly nerfed to compensate. Overall, this should result in more appropriate scaling at the high end, but hopefully not change much for the low end.^[1]

Druids

For druids, the most important change will probably be the Intensity buff. Obviously, this will affect resto druids, but other specs may find this talent worth taking now. Overall, spirit-based regen and mp5 will now be very close to even, with other advantages to spirit.^[23]

Another huge improvements for druids is instant shapeshifting. It seems that the macro:

/cancelform
/cast Dire Bear

Will take you from cat to bear so fast you don't even see the caster form, and you can throw in a potion use in the middle if you want.^[24] NEW! Questions then came up about why you could not instant-shift from bear to bear or cat to cat in order to use an item between shifts. It was confirmed by Slouken that this was a bug, and in fact, in 2.3 you won't even have to have /cancelform in the macro! You'll just cast/use and then assume your other form.^[25]

NEW!Heart of the Wild has been changed in cat form. It now produces 10%AP instead of 20%STR. In addition, many feral-specific items have been updated, and for the most part additional attack power has been added to them for Cat, Bear, Dire Bear and Moonkin forms.^[26]

Tranquility now receives added benefits from +Damage and +Healing
Cure Poison and Abolish Poison may now be cast in Tree of Life form
Remove Curse may now be cast in Moonkin form
Rebirth cooldown reduced to 20 minutes
Intensity increased to 10/20/30% mana regeneration
Some shapeshifting spells were giving additional threat, and that has been fixed.^[27]
NEW! Tauren cat form will be updated visually. It's not a huge change, but there's definitely an improvement. There are images posted of the change in graphics.^[28]

Hunters

NEW! Note: I've written a bit about the two new arrows that have shown up in 2.3 as a separate Raiding the Metagame article.

The biggest change for hunters will be the dispelling add-on for Arcane Shot. The ability to dispel makes hunters much more powerful in PvP, but will it be enough to make them effective in the arena? We'll see.

NEW! As announced by Kalgan^[29] the deadzone has been reduced. The min range on ranged attacks is now 4 yards^[30], making it much harder for other players to get into a hunter's deadzone and attack. Of course, how valuable this is when hunter melee is nearly ignorable is questionable...

NEW! On the current PTR, Aimed Shot now debuffs healing in the same way as warriors' Mortal Strike. (50% reduction in healing on the target for 10 seconds)

Wyvern Sting will be instant cast and will have the normal PvP/CC limitation on max duration (10 seconds).^[27]
Arcane Shot (Rank 6 and above) will now dispel a single Magic effect on the target
Serpent Sting, Immolation Trap, and Explosive Trap will all gain 10% of your ranged attack power to damage (on the initial damage only for traps).[1]^[27]
Trueshot Aura will cost no mana and will not expire (unless canceled).^[27]
Bug fixes with respect to misdirection from multiple hunters.
Readiness will affect the Kill Command cooldown.
NEW! 20 and 24 slot quivers and ammo bags are coming.^[31]
NEW! Adamantite Stinger and Adamantite Shells (upgraded) are in 2.3, and provide a player-crafted bridge in dps between the 5-man faction arrows/shot and the tier 6, Mt. Hyjal faction arrows/shot.^[32]
NEW! Although the pet positioning change affects Warlocks as well, its major impact is going to be on raiding hunters. The change only appears to take effect when the pet is not its target's target (that is, when your pet is not tanking). In this case, the pet will seek a position that's roughly behind (usually not centered) the target relative to its current facing. This will have some interesting implications especially on bosses with forward-facing AoEs.

Mages

While druids get more reason to add spirit to their gear, mages have a more complex picture. If they're not deep in Arcane, then spirit will likely become useless to them. Those who are deep in arcane will now have substantial reason to build a +spirit component into their gear sets, gaining +30% from 3/3 Arcane Meditation, but the incentive isn't as strong for mages as it is for druids, who get more advantages from spirit.

The so-called "coefficient tax" will be removed from the "improved" talents. That is, Improved Fireball used to get less benefit from +damage gear, but now will get full benefit.
Ritual of Refreshment is a new spell that will allow mages to summon a food/water source like a warlock does for healthstones.
Evocation will give 15% of your mana pool every 2 seconds instead of giving an amount of mana regen based on spirit.[2]
Arcane Meditation has been buffed. It will now give 10/20/30% mana regen.
Ice Barrier, Fire Ward and Frost Ward will benefit from spell damage bonus, but the base benefit for ranks 5 and 6 have been lowered.^[27]
Hypothermia will now last for 45 seconds.^[33]
Detect magic is now the default, so the spell was removed.^[27]
Arcane Intellect and Arcane Brilliance will cost less mana.^[27]
Portals can no longer be cast in PvP battlegrounds.^[27]
Remove Curse will have its range extended to 40 yards.^[27]

Paladins

The Pursuit of Justice changes are probably the most talked about feature of 2.3 for pallies. This class has not yet been updated with the latest info from the PTR patch notes, however. I'll get to that soon...

It should also be noted that not all changes are in... or that might be the case.^[34]

Exorcism, Holy Wrath, and Hammer of Wrath have all had their mana costs lowered.^[35]
The duration for Vengeance has been increased to 30 seconds.^[35]
Improved Seal of the Crusader and Sanctified Crusader major changes:
- ISotC's effect will become part of the base spell
- ISotC will now give SC's old benefit
- SC will increase your chance to gain a spell or melee critical by 1/2/3% and reduces the chance your Seals can be dispelled by 33/66/100%.^[36]
Crusader Strike cooldown is being reduced to 6 seconds.^[37]
Vindication frequency and duration will be increased. It will reduce all attributes by 5/10/15%.^[38]
Pursuit of Justice will now be 3 ranks and will increase movement speed by 5/10/15% and reduce the chance to be hit by spells by 1/2/3%.^[38]

Priests

NEW! Regarding pain suppression, Nethaera had this to say:

"The change to Pain Suppression is something that has been a subject of debate for some time ... This change makes it possible to cast it on others and still get significant benefit out of it. Don't forget that there is also an additional benefit of having Pain Suppression in that you get a 65% dispel resist for 8 seconds, if you have Silent Resolve, that's an 85% spell resist while it's in use. ... Discipline Tree itself is on the radar for further updates, but those are going to be more significant changes that are going to be a part of the expansion changes being worked on."^[39]

NEW! On the PTR, soon, shadow priests will be able to cast healing spells directly from shadow form! It will cancel shadow form, of course, but you won't need /cancelform before casting (just as you don't need to explicitly dismount anymore). This change is being made for all shapeshifters (druids, priests) and will allow these classes to shift between forms and use items or cast in between in a less manual fashion.^[25]

Dwarves and Draenei will get a new racial ability: Chastise, which causes Holy damage and a 2 second stun
Fear Ward will be gained at level 20 by all priests and will have a 3 minute duration and cooldown.
Power Word: Shield will receive additional benefit from +Dmg and +Healing and rank 10, 11 and 12 have had their base absorption lowered
Pain Suppression changes:
- May target Friendly targets
- Reduces friendly targets' threat by 5%
- Reduces friendly targets' damage taken by 40%
- The cooldown was reduced to 2 minutes
Mediation has been increased to 10/20/30% mana regeneration
Prayer of Healing gains additional benefit from +Dmg and +Healing
Circle of Healing gains additional benefit from +Dmg and +Healing
Circle of Healing's base healing has been reduced
Holy Nova (Healing only) gains additional benefit from +Dmg and +Healing
Cure/Abolish Disease spells have been increased to a range of 40 yards.^[40]
The Night Elf racial, Elune's Grace, has only 1 rank and reduces chance to hit for physical attacks by 20% for 15 seconds.
Power Word: Fortitude, Divine Spirit and Prayers of Fortitude/Spirit have reduced mana costs.
The Night Elf racial Starshards is a non-channeled, Magic spell that costs 0 mana, does damage every 3 seconds for 15 seconds and has a 30 second cooldown.

Rogues

NEW!There's some great info on the rogue board on the EU forums that includes a lot of math, and concludes about 2.3 Hemo:

Hemo looks a little better on the paper for rogue's personal DPS, but it's also a great boost to everyone else (An example of a mutilate rogue gaining 80 more damage on a hemoed target, any fury war - rogue - shaman enjoying +36 damage)^[41]

Fleet Footed increased to 15% speed increase
Deadly Throw changes:
- Travel speed is being significantly increased
- Snare duration is being slightly increased by 1 second
- No longer triggers Ruthlessness
Ruthlessness now only affects melee Finishing Moves
Blind changes:^[42]
- No longer requires a reagent
- Now a physical attack
- Now shares the Diminishing Returns of Cyclone
- Now affected by Diminishing Returns in PvE
Shadowstep may now be used while not in stealth[3]
Shadowstep reduces threat caused by your next Ambush, Garrote, or Backstab by 50%
Shadowstep cooldown increased to 40 seconds
Dirty Deeds increases damage of special attacks by 10/20% against targets below 35% health
Subtlety rogues changes[4]
Poisons last on a weapon for 1 hour instead of 30 minutes.^[42]
Kick will work correctly with channeled spells, preventing spells of the same school.^[42]
Remorseless Attacks talent will no longer be triggered by the death of target's pets or target dummies.^[42]
Riposte will be subject to diminishing returns.^[42]

Shamans

NEW!In response to a question about the Spirit Weapon change (see below), Eyonix responded:

It never applied to only white damage. I personally had this tested extensively. It's going to be 30% damage reduction from white damage, plus stormstrike, plus windfury procs. 15% was simply too low, so the additional 15% should help quite a bit.^[43]

Lighting overload changes:
- Changed to 4/8/12/16/20% chance of activating.
- Damage decreased by 50%
- No threat
Mana Spring Totem now restores mana at a rate of 20 mana every 2 seconds
Water Shield changes:
- Will cost no mana
- Mana per globe is going up substantially
- Duration has been reduced to 1 minute
- Gives extra mana for each globe left when it ends
Elemental Focus will now reduce the mana cost of your next two damage spells by 40%
Lightning Bolt casting time reduced to 2.5 seconds, and mana cost decreased
Chain Lightning casting time reduced to 2 seconds, and mana cost decreased
Lightning Mastery reduced to .1/.2/.3/.4/.5 seconds
May equip 2-Handed Axes and 2-Handed Maces without spending talent points
Frost Shock no longer has Diminishing Returns
Shamanistic Rage will reduce damage taken by 30% in addition to it's current effects[5]
Spirit Weapons will reduce melee threat by 30%
Mental Quickness adds 10/20/30% to +Dmg and +Healing based on your total Attack Power, in addition to it's current effects

Warlocks

Ritual of Souls has had it's casting time significantly reduced

Warriors

Weapon Mastery's Disarm is being reduced by 25/50%
Mace Specialization will not proc as often
Mace Specialization Rage as been increased to 7
Tactical Mastery now greatly increases threat from Mortal Strike and Bloodthirst while in Defensive Stance
Devastate now combines the effects of Sunder Armor into it's effect, and is affected by all talents and items that affect Sunder Armor

Races

Racial changes include:

Dwarf and Troll weapon specializations will give +1% crit chance rather than weapon skill.^[1]
Gnomes' Escape Artist ability was slightly nerfed (cooldown increased to 1 min).^[1]
NEW!Humans and Orcs will have their weapon expertise in their racial weapons increased by 5. For Humans, this includes swords, two-handed swords, maces and two-handed maces. For orcs this includes axes and two-handed axes.^[44]

New items

With the addition of new daily quests and ZA, there are many new items in 2.3. Here's a sampling. Note that the wowhead links are more likely to work right now... Thottbot seems to be trailing a bit.

Amani Punisher (Wowhead) - A nice caster staff with stamina
Battleworn Tuskguard (Wowhead) - A great tanking helm, but no meta socket.
Bloodstained Elven Battlevest (Wowhead) - A dps plate chest.
Dagger of Bad Mojo (Wowhead) - Very nice rogue dagger.
Dark Blessing (Wowhead) - Healer mace with spell haste!
Helm of Natural Regeneration (Wowhead) - Druid healer helm.
Hex Lord's Voodoo Pauldrons (Wowhead) - Shammy shoulders.
Hex Shrunken Head (Wowhead) - Spell power trinket.
Hood of the Third Eye (Wowhead) - Cloth healer helm, but no meta socket.
Illidari Runeshield (Wowhead) - Shield
Loop of Cursed Bones (Wowhead) - Caster neck with spell haste.
Adamantite Stinger (Wowhead Pricing) - Along with Adamantite Shells (Wowhead Pricing) which will be upgraded, these are now the highest dps ammo in the game, short of the tier 6 ammo from Hyjal vendors. Hunters rejoice!
Tattered Voodoo Doll (Wowhead) - Possibly for a ZG enchant-like quest line.