Did Blizzard un-ruin Melee DPS?

As a follow-up to this post about the unintended effects that certain mob abilities have had on melee DPS classes in the Burning Crusade, Blizzard has announced the following changes in internal testing for Patch 2.1.0:

The following changes to cleave have been made for the 2.1.0 patch.

--Cleaves will only hit people in front of the creature.
--Cleaves will have a chain length equal to the combat reach of the
creature.

We still don't have an exact estimate on when this patch will be ready but
development is wrapping up and the test phase should begin relatively soon. As a
reminder, the patch undergoes internal testing before public, PTR testing.

This change would go a long way toward reestablishing some balance in PvE game play for melee and ranged DPS classes. Good work, Blizzard and thanks for reading my blog... /wink