Scanning the patch notes

Test Realm Patch Notes for the upcoming (next week maybe?) 2.1 patch are here. Though far from an expert, here are a few things I found interesting. I apologize for the crappy formatting, it happens when I try to cut and paste, and I'm too lazy to fix it just now.

In the Mages section:

Added a new rank of Ice Barrier to mage trainers Ice Barrier is my favorite Frost-only spell. Mages need a "bubble" and Mana Shield isn't the same thing. When I was pure Fire (50 levels) I didn't know what I was missing. In some zones I don't even know where the grave yard is now..

Arcane Brilliance, rank 1, is now available from trainers. Any time a spell that used to cost talent points is made available to all via a Trainer, that's good.

Arcane Missiles: Rank 3-11 will now consistently pulse 5 shots of arcane damage. I knew it wasn't just me that noticed this...

Arcane Missiles: This spell will now obey line of sight restrictions during its entire casting. Was this broken? Loved the tracking of Missiles...they never miss. Also love how they turn the caster to face the target.

Arctic Winds (Frost Talent) now also increases all Frost damage caused by 1-5%. More damage for Frosties.

Cold Snap: The tooltip has been adjusted to indicate it only resets cooldowns caused by Frost spells. e.g.: Cold Snap will not reset the cooldown caused by Dragon's Breath. You mean I can have both Cold Snap and Dragon's Breath? Hmmmm...

Conjure Mana Emerald: This spell now triggers a global cooldown as intended. Who ever conjures mana gems when Global Cooldown is an issue?

Counterspell duration reduced to 8 seconds, and the cooldown reduced to 24 seconds. What? Why would this make any difference to anyone? Mages paying closer attention to sheep means less DPS on the bad guy. Maybe that's the intended effect, since it was already watered down for PvP methinks.

Water Elemental: This pet will now come into the game with full health and mana, including that gained from a percentage of its master's stamina and intellect. LOVE the Water Elemental! I'd really love it if it stuck around longer though. Not a permanent pet, like a Hunter or Warlock, but maybe 10 minutes?

Note that the title of the Mage section is "Mages" not "Magi." I still use them interchangeably depending on my mood.

In the UI section:

Players will now be able to access the Looking For Group Channel by joining the Looking For Group/Looking for More tool. Not looking for any groups right now, thanks.

Using abilities and casting spells that cannot be used while mounted will now auto-dismount players as needed. This can be disabled by turning off the auto-dismount option in the UI options. Useful for sure. Probably some inconvenience too though. We'll see if it's worth it to leave this on.

Spells that have reagent costs will show the number of uses left in the lower right corner of the action icon, just like consumable items on the action bar. Department of common sense contributed this one for sure.

Holding down the shift key while mousing over an equippable item that you can use will now show you the tooltip for the item you currently have equipped in that slot as well (much like how the auction house currently works). Hoovered up a popular add-on capability.

The network performance meter now shows framerate and how much memory AddOns are using. For the geekier players.

When consuming reagents or using items on the action bar, smaller stacks will be used before larger stacks. Department of Common Sense again.

Players who feign death no longer appear dead to party and raid members and friendly spells will not be interrupted. This will prevent some confusion, but players who feign death causing the 6 mobs they pulled to aggro on the Mage should be permanently dead.

Equippable items displayed as quest rewards will always show you the tooltip of the item you are currently wearing in that slot. More hoovering of popular addin functionality.

The area of interest while on a flight path is farther along the path instead of in front of you.Huh?

Your current target will now display all of the duration based spells that you have cast on them with cooldown rings so you will know how much longer they will last. Very useful for warlock damage over time spells and druid healing over time spells as well as many others. That sounds interesting. Wonder why they choose to supply more information about why it's useful on this change? Do they think people can just sense how other changes are useful? Like the flightpath "area of interest" one?

Raid Windows now remember their position in the gamefield between sessions. I've only had the Raid UI up once, during a guild meeting of all things, and found it incomprehensible. Of course, I wasn't actually trying to do anything except keep up with a million people in the chat window...

Profession UI now has a search field. Text that is entered into the search field searches against item names, reagent names and item levels (if you include a level). For instance you can type Peace into the search field to see all of your recipes that use Peacebloom, or type in 20-30 to see all of you level 20-30 recipes. This search field only appears once you have more than 75 skill in your profession. Good stuff.

Profession UI now has a checkbox that allows you to search by only items that you have the materials to make. Ditto.

Active corpses or objects (ones with loot on them) now can be selected and looted, even if they are underneath another corpse that does not have loot on it. What about the invisible mobs...will I ever be able to loot them, assuming I manage to kill them?

While flying or swimming the 'X' key will now make you move down. Will certainly prevent many a noob from drw

Party members will no longer see a hunter who is feigning death as actually dead. What, did they think we missed it the first time? Can party members now tell when I'm feigning interest?

The directional indicators on the minimap for the towns have been added in Outlands. Was ity really a problem? All the noobs in Ouland were getting lost? Heh.