Patch Notes? /rofl

OMG! The patch notes for 2.4 have been leaked!

Let's see what kind of idiocy the guy who came up with these thought of...

-Ritual of Refreshment will now complete faster when activated by 2 additional players.

Uh. This isn't.... this isn't anything. Once everybody has clicked, it takes a couple seconds for the table to appear, but this is due mostly to lag rather than anything else.
This was a concern? By whom? Were people unable to ninja the mage bikkits fast enough? This isn't a patch note, this is nonsensical.

- Counterspell: The duration has been reduced to 6 seconds, and cooldown reduced to 20 seconds.
Counter spell, 8 second school lockout, 24 second cooldown.
Earth Shock, 2 second school lockout, 6 second cooldown.
Pummel, 4 second school lockout, 10 second cooldown.
Shield Bash, 6 second lockout, 12 second cooldown.
Kick, 5 second lockout, 10 second cooldown.

Starting to notice a trend here? Every "interrupt" spell thingy in the game can effectively lock down a spell school for anywhere from one third of the time to half of the time. Never more than half, never less than one third.
Putting Counterspell as a 6 second lockout with a 20 second cooldown will, unequivocally, make it the weakest spell interrupt in the game. This nerf would move it underneath the 30% effective interrupt line, making, quite literally, everything else a better interrupt effect.
Obviously, this could never happen. The QQ would be immense, and even a mages mortal enemies, the warlocks, would realize this.
Besides, it doesn't even make sense that, allegedly, the most powerful purist caster class in the game would have the weakest anti-spell abilities in the game.
Somebody didn't do their basic math... /wink

- Ice Lance now has a 6 sec cooldown.

Hahahahahahahahaha! Ahahahahahahahahaaa!!! *snorrrt* BAAAAAhahahahahahahahahaaa!

- Spellsteal: It is no longer possible to remove a Shaman's Ghost Wolf buff with this spell.

It never was, dumbass. I mean, yeah, it would be cool, but.... ya know, I even got all excited, went in game, and tried to do this. Not spellstealable.
I'm a sad panda now... you jackass.

- Arcane Power: The spell damage bonus has been reduced to 20%, from 30%, but the mana cost penalty has been removed and it now also increases your chance to crit with spells by 5% for the duration.

K... no. Just no. The entire Arcane Tree is built around the fact that mana consumption is placed on manual. An arcane mage can use up mana as fast as he likes, or as slow as he likes. Effectively, he is the only type of mage who can effectively "throttle" his DPS as required. You need look no further than Arcane Blast to see this relation between mana spent versus damage dealt. Things like a cast time are irrelevant. Its a straight up mana versus damage relationship. Arcane Power is one of the defining talents of the Arcane tree. More damage at the cost of more mana is exactly what the arcane tree is about.
And frankly... who in their RIGHT MIND would let mages have 20% increased damage, and 5% critical strike increase for NO ADDITIONAL mana cost?! Are you insane? The QQ over that would be, quite bluntly, utterly insane. It would take the mage forums a good month to dry out over those tears.

- Improved Blink has been replaced by Arcane Efficiency, a talent that reduces the mana cost of Blink, Counterspell and Spellsteal by 25/50%.

Well, this, at least, makes sense. Mages have been asking for a long time for a reduction in the mana cost of Blink and Spellsteal, which pretty much means Arenas only. Which means that only Arena mages would be interested in this.
However, due to its rather stupid positioning in the Arcane Tree, no arena mage will actually get this, although many will try and think of a deep-ish arcane spec that works.
Unless your partner is a resto druid, it won't work. Really. It won't. Don't even kid yourself. It won't work.

- Slow: The mana cost has been reduced by approximately 24% and the duration reduced to 12 sec, from 15 sec.

*Sings the Nobody Cares song*

- Master of Elements: This talent now also reduces Fire and Frost damage taken by 2/4/6%.

Someone just made this up off the top of their head, didn't they? It's like a more stupid version of Frozen Core.

- Dragon's Breath: The disorient effect will no longer break on damage over time effects.

Kinda a very real problem, considering how many fire effects have DoT effects. It breaks far too much, but in reality, we don't really seem to care much. It's basically a glorified spell interrupt. You can defend it, come up with all these crowd control examples, but seriously. Stop. Think. It breaks on damage, just like Repentance or Polymorph or any of those other things. How often do you really use Dragon's Breath to crowd control something for 3 seconds? If you answered "only when fighting elite mobs", you answered correctly. In any practical example of its use, its basically a massive "Inflict Epic Confusion Here".
And, of course, if you PvP, it's an incredibly useful spell interrupt. Like an Earthshock. Except its an AoE. And does more damage. And looks more awesome.

- Icy Veins: The cooldown has been increased to 5 min, from 3 min and no longer increases your chance to Freeze targets, but now gives your damage spells a 30% chance of applying a chill effect, reducing the target's movement speed by 50% for 5 sec.

Haha. This makes zero sense. I know Blizzard is going to make efforts to try and make every single spec viable for both PvP and PvE, and Icy Veins was an effort to make the frost tree more attractive raiding wise, with the bonus that it would allow frostbolt to become more effective in arenas. Until it was dispelled anyways.
This new version is idiotic. A Chill effect to all spells? Please, have some common sense. If your using it in an arena, its going to be on Frostbolt, which already comes with a guaranteed Chill effect. If you're using it for raiding, a Chill effect is like PoM Pyro'ing a bubbled Paladin. Utterly pointless, stupid, a waste of time.
See below for the cooldown analysis.

- Frozen Core: This talent now increases the mana cost of your Fire spells by 2/4/6%, but reduces the mana cost of your Frost spells by 2/4/6%.

The only people who would be interested in this would be raid frost mages, and possibly arena frost mages. Arena mages are already hard pressed talent point wise in the frost tree, and there literally is no points to spare for this. Even if they wanted to, the increased cost of Fireblast would be kinda silly, since that is the most expensive damage spell arena mages use.
Raiding Frost mages should be highly interested in getting it, as it will pretty much negate any point that Clearcast ever had.

- Ice Floes: This talent now also reduces the cooldown of Icy Veins.

So. With these rather stupid patch notes, the changes to Icy Veins are as thus. The intention was to make frost more attractive to raiders, and indeed, very few mages now run raids without the godly Icy Veins. Increasing the cooldown, as the previous note suggested, would make the spell far less attractive. Tossing in the Ice Floes thing here, and the talent really only becomes attractive to raiding Frost mages.
Meaning, essentially, that this would make the frost tree more viable for raiding in an arbitrary, nonsensical manner.
Look. Understand this. Frost does less damage than fire. Plain and simple. You cannot change this fact. It IS a fact. End of story. This is not going to change.
If you want to make a DPS tree more attractive to raiders, it has to perform well. The Frost tree is the lowest DPS spec mages have avaliable. Therefore, why choose it over one of the other specs? If a DPS class cannot DPS, it needs to have a reason for existing.
Take Ret Paladins for example. It is a DPS class that isn't... well, "on par" with the other DPS classes. However, it brings a level of utility to a raid, such as 3% improved crit rate for everybody raid wide.
Its stuff like that, that makes a tree attractive to raiders. Frost doesn't have that, and it must if Blizzard ever expects it to be a solid Raiding tree.

- Arctic Winds: This talent no longer increases all Frost damage done, but now increase the critical strike chance of your Frost spells by 1/2/3/4/5%.

This actually makes sense. Frost already loves its crit rating a bunch, and this type of talent change would start putting it on par with Fire's crit rate. However, this would actually result in a net.... nothing to frost DPS.
The current Arctic Winds is a 5% increase in DPS, all the time. This new Arctic Winds thingy would be a 100% increase in DPS, 5% of the time. Which, mathematically, works out to an increase of... 5% in DPS. Ha. Look at that. Nothing happens at all.
Of course, it would be awesome in any sort of PvP perspective, since mages are built around the whole Burst Damage thing in PvP. An extra 5% crit would be far more useful in a competitive arena than an extra 5% damage.

- Empowered Frostbolt has been renamed to Empowered Frost and no longer increase the critical strike chance of Frostbolt, but now also increases the amount of bonus spell damage that effects your Icelance spell by 1/2/3/4/5%.

Stupid. Whoever bothered to think up this stuff was an idiot.
If you all can remember, Ice Lance gains 14.29% of our bonus frost damage.
Lets say you have 800 frost damage. Ice Lance will get an additional 114 damage.
Now let's say this change is implemented. Ice Lance will get an additional 154 damage.

So. We replace an increase of 5% critical strike rate on frostbolt, for an additional 40 damage on Ice Lance, and 120 on frozen targets.
Arena mages might think its cool, as it makes Ice Lance hit a little harder than usual, giving them slightly more burst potential. On the other hand, they could just as easily lament the loss of burst potential from the Frostbolt nerf. It depends a lot on play style.
Personally? I'd lament the Frostbolt nerf.

Oh, yeah, and raid frost mages would literally freak. A loss of that 5% Frostbolt crit is, quite bluntly, a loss of 5% DPS.
Which, of course, conflicts entirely with the other Frost changes which were supposed to make the frost tree more attractive to Raiders. Than this, which makes it ugly again.

TL;DR version:

This "patch" is a fake, because it is filled with stupidity.