PTR 4.0.6 patch notes

So patch 4.0.6 has appeared on the PTR and with it comes some changes for the Druid class. Many other feral bloggers have commented on the feral changes, so I won't go into detail.

It seems some nerfing is going on to Bear damage, with Lacerate Mangle and Maul all taking the nerf bat. I assume this will also decrease the threat of these abilities, which is a shame although I've not had troubles on single target threat so far, if the DPS give me enough of a lead (and I don't need to switch around on other mobs too much).

It looks like we may lose our fear break from Berserk, which is a shame, but I guess I can get used to running around with everyone else in the party. There is also some changes posted on MMO Champion describing nerfs to Thrash and Swipe, but then these may be tooltip changes which are already in the code. Plus being able to Tauren Warstomp in bear, which would be ... awesome.

Some interesting Cat changes are going on, Rip and Rake damage are all down (the bleed DoTs) whereas Mangle and Shred damage have been boosted. Is this a good thing? Presumably this will mean more Cat damage comes from direct damage and less from DoTs as Blizzard have stated, which then might mean stuff like hit and expertise become more important stats. Will it be an overall damage boost or not is what I want to know.

Finally the worst change:

Archaeology fragments now have a hard cap of 200 per race. Players will not be able to collect additional fragments until they complete artifacts to take them down below 200 fragments. Players with more than 200 fragments will not lose additional fragments in 4.0.6, but in a future patch we may remove any fragments above 200.

Argh this means leveling to 100 by collecting alone then mass solving may become harder. Although this and many other changes I've seen on the internet have now disappeared from the "official" notes. Does this mean the official notes are out of date? Or they reverted the changes?