Some (or possibly all... not sure yet) of the 3.1.3 patch notes have been posted. There are a number of changes, but essentially Ferals and Priests remain untouched as of this posting, which is nice for a change. I had been getting a little burned out from arena grinding over the last couple weeks (sitting around 2100 at the moment) and I attribute it a lot to warriors, druids, and dks (less - Pallies and Hunters) being overpowered at the moment, so imagine my happiness when I see the following changes which will not hit a PTR but instead go straight to Live, hopefully next Tuesday:

* Frost Presence: Armor bonus is now 60% down from 80%.
* Improved Tree of Life: The armor bonus to Tree of Life Form from this talent has been reduced to 67/133/200% bonus armor.
* Improved Barkskin: This talent now also grants 80/160% additional armor while in Travel Form or not shapeshifted.
* Eye For An Eye: This talent now deals 5/10% of the critical strike damage taken by the paladin back at the attacker.
* Hand of Freedom: The base duration of this buff has been reduced from 10 seconds to 6 seconds.
* Juggernaut: This talent now also increases the cooldown on Charge by 5 seconds.
* Death Knight PvP Gauntlets: The chance to refresh a Frost Rune when casting Chains of Ice has been removed. When equipped, these gloves now generate 5 additional runic power whenever Chains of Ice is used.

So, obviously Frost Presence and Improved ToL getting their armor reduced substantially will make a difference to me. Eye for an Eye, Juggernaut, and Hand of Freedom nerfs are all just what the doctor ordered in most cases, particularly for HoF as 10 seconds out of 25 for snare/root immunity was a bit much. The Death Knight PvP Glove bonus getting gutted is EXACTLY what the doctor ordered for all specs of DKs, as it means they no longer get free infinite snares... they'll exactly have to expend resources to get Chains of Ice up on someone (no more sitting on my priest CoI'ing me from 30 yards away horray!).

The only questionable change is to Improved Barkskin. I honestly feel that this talent needs to be moved OUT of the Resto tree and into the Balance tree at the same tier. Resto druids are extremely strong healers with huge survivability without the need of a mostly non-dispelable Innervate and a self-Pain Suppression every minute. That being said, Blizzard is ignoring my suggestion (not surprisingly... apparently I did something to warrant another forum ban, though I can't for the life of me understand what that would have been) in favor of buffing Improved Barkskin further in compensation of the ToL nerf. The wording of the Improved Barkskin change is what is confusing me: "This talent now also grants 80/160% additional armor while in Travel Form or not shapeshifted."

Does this mean that anyone who takes 2/2 Improved Barkskin will get 160% additional armor while in Travel Form or not shapeshifted ALL the time, or just when Barkskin is up? If it's always up, then we'll see resto druids walking around not shapeshifted with around 10k armor... which would be silly since resto druids are least likely to need that (hello boomkins... I understand your plight).

Regardless, warriors, dks, rogues (maybe... 30% energy regen for 20 seconds MIGHT be a nerf rather than 10 less energy consumed for 6 seconds... I haven't done the maths), pallies, and likely resto druids all got nerfs in 3.1.3. If it goes live as-is, then it will definitely be a buff for our team. Keeping warriors off Guntir is tricky at 14 seconds, and it will be a little less tricky at 19 (or 18.6... depending on whether the glyph takes off 7% at 20 seconds or 15 THEN +5 seconds...), but the real problem with warriors is still MS... we need to break away with enough time to heal up without MS up, and ~5 more seconds on Charge will make that easier, but still feel tough. DKs not being able to spam Chains (or even USE Chains without taking a hit in the DPS department) will be a HUGE buff against that team, as Guntir can dispel Chains of Ice and it might actually be worth doing now, and of course I can shift out of it without worrying about getting chain-Chained (lawl) and getting nuked when I finally get there (COI COI COI COI COI FS FS FS OBL WTF). Rogues MIGHT feel a slight nerf from Overkill, but then again they might feel a slight buff... it's hard to say at this point. It'll probably come out to something like ~3 energy per second for 20 seconds rather than a potential 30-40 energy saved from Overkill straight out of the gate... I guess that makes it a buff in the long-run, but a nerf directly out of stealth. Pally teams will obviously be feeling the nerf of HoF being reduced from 10 seconds to 6, and that is just a good change overall considering they can dispel basically every snare/root in the game anyway.

All things considered, it will probably be a good bit of changes. I'm going to get home early today (brought a lunch to work and came in on time for once), so we'll probably get some arena games in tonight and I'll see if I can't record some of them in hopes of getting the videos up here unedited to show off our playstyle a bit.