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So, 4.0.1 just finished downloading to my home computer. This is the first of two pre-Cataclysm patches that will significantly alter the game.

You may be thinking to yourself, "What is even in this patch?" Well, most of the mechanics changes are in this patch, while most of the world and game changes are going to be in the 4.0.3 patch.

So, in this patch we get:
- Emblems consolidated into Justice Points (up to 4000) or money
- Talent overhaul: All trees only go to 31 points now, each character now gets a talent point for every other level, once you select a tree, you must go 31 points down into that tree before putting points in any other tree.
- Class mechanics overhaul: Hunters now use focus as a resource and no longer use ammo, DK rune resource is modified, Druids now get an Eclipse resource, Paladins get a Holy Power resource, Warriors get normalized Rage, and Warlocks now have Soul Shards as a resource, rather than a bag object.
- Glyph overhaul: Now three types of glyphs - Prime, Major, and Minor. Glyph component cost is increased. Once you learn a Glyph, you keep it permanently in "Glyph storage", meaning you can put it into a slot at any time if you have a reagent for it (Disappearing Dust)
- UI overhaul: New character info page, new guild management, new UI effects on procs
- World events: Events will start occurring in a build up to the cataclysm.

What we DON'T get:
- New class-race combinations
- New quests
- New world
- New zones

You can track multiple things on the mini-map! Now if you are a miner/herbalist you can see both on there at the same time.

Hopefully I'll be able to get on soon. Gotta check out the moonkin changes.

The servers aren't going to be up anytime soon. The running bet in my raiding guild is Wednesday.

Yeah, by soon I meant within the next week. I don't expect the servers to up until late tonight at the earliest.

I hope I have internet access still tonight!

Weeee, this is exciting! It looks like I'll have to spend the next couple days trolling Maintankadin and the other pally blogs to see what the word is on new prot specs and rotations.

Baerdog said:

Weeee, this is exciting! It looks like I'll have to spend the next couple days trolling Maintankadin and the other pally blogs to see what the word is on new prot specs and rotations.

Click to expand...

Everything you need to know about Prot and 4.0.1 at 80 | Righteous Defense

TL;DR: no more rotations, only priority systems. Don't freak out about maximizing your GCD-count, because tanking doesn't work like that anymore.

By the builds that I researched hunters will for the foreseeable future will be Beastmasters.

SpecialKO;444116][QUOTE=Baerdog said:

Weeee, this is exciting! It looks like I'll have to spend the next couple days trolling Maintankadin and the other pally blogs to see what the word is on new prot specs and rotations.

Click to expand...

Everything you need to know about Prot and 4.0.1 at 80 | Righteous Defense

TL;DR: no more rotations, only priority systems. Don't freak out about maximizing your GCD-count, because tanking doesn't work like that anymore.[/QUOTE]
Yep, I've seen Ridach's post and its a good one (Righteous Defense is one of the blogs I visit regularly) but I was also hoping to get some kind of second or third opinion on things before spending talent points.

Baerdog;444129][QUOTE=SpecialKO;444116][QUOTE=Baerdog said:

Weeee, this is exciting! It looks like I'll have to spend the next couple days trolling Maintankadin and the other pally blogs to see what the word is on new prot specs and rotations.

Click to expand...

Everything you need to know about Prot and 4.0.1 at 80 | Righteous Defense

TL;DR: no more rotations, only priority systems. Don't freak out about maximizing your GCD-count, because tanking doesn't work like that anymore.[/QUOTE]
Yep, I've seen Ridach's post and its a good one (Righteous Defense is one of the blogs I visit regularly) but I was also hoping to get some kind of second or third opinion on things before spending talent points.[/QUOTE]

I expect WoW Insider will have a pally post up about 4.01 specs/priorities soon. Their DK one is already up, and it's pretty good.

Roommate was telling me about the patch. Been trying to talk me into playing again. XD There's so many changes a-coming that I'm pretty sure I'll be trying it out since it'll be like an all new game. /excited

I have to wait until I come back to play. It will be in 2 weeks.

Yeah I really like WoW Insider's class columns as well.

So far I'm thinking I'll go with this spec, which is Ridach's all-in-one prot recommendation. At this point I'd rather save my second spec for a ret/PvP type dealio instead of having a single target prot spec and a trash prot spec.

Crap, that means I'm gonna need ret gear.

So are we taking bets on how long it'll be until they sort out all the bugs after this patch and stop restarting the servers every hour?
I say everything will run smoothly tomorrow at 2pm.

Well they've already extended maintenance from noon Pacific until 2:00 Pacific today. There's a huuuge list of known issues with this patch so I think we might not see them all ironed out until the weekend.

I'm guessing we'll see patch 4.02 by the first week in November, as the "final" system patch update before the 4.03 content patch.

When a patch practically going to change game play (my friends are telling me that people pretty much have to "relearn" to play their class especially after tank changes) I can imagine the server will be "stable" in a day or two.

Chibibar said:

When a patch practically going to change game play (my friends are telling me that people pretty much have to "relearn" to play their class especially after tank changes) I can imagine the server will be "stable" in a day or two.

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You'd think WoW players would be used to that by now.

Queue times for higher pop realms is going to suck. When the pre-Wrath patch came out there were wait times of nearly an hour on my other server. Ghostlands seems to be a bit smaller, so hopefully it's not too bad.

Addendum!

Other things I missed that are included today:
- New water and sunray graphical effects (turn on in graphics menu)
- Removal of spell ranks, all spells and skills scale with level. A new UI notification will let you know when new spells are available for training.

Blizzard has also posted a list of known bugs in 4.0.1, including many spell effects and graphical glitches that aren't working properly. Basically, stuff that doesn't break the game and shouldn't have prevented the patch from being deployed, but will have to be patched to fix at a later date (4.0.2, likely)

SpecialKO;444167][QUOTE=Chibibar said:

When a patch practically going to change game play (my friends are telling me that people pretty much have to "relearn" to play their class especially after tank changes) I can imagine the server will be "stable" in a day or two.

Click to expand...

You'd think WoW players would be used to that by now.[/QUOTE]
Nah...

Piotyr said:

- Removal of spell ranks, all spells and skills scale with level. A new UI notification will let you know when new spells are available for training.

Click to expand...

First of all, thank goodness! Second of all, does that mean that we're all owed a few hundred g or have the costs of brand new abilities been scaled accordingly?

SpecialKO;444172][QUOTE=Piotyr said:

- Removal of spell ranks, all spells and skills scale with level. A new UI notification will let you know when new spells are available for training.

Click to expand...

First of all, thank goodness! Second of all, does that mean that we're all owed a few hundred g or have the costs of brand new abilities been scaled accordingly?[/QUOTE]

Just add it to the "Blizzard owes me!" pile along with the 900g extra you may have spent on riding costs in vanilla, the endless gold from quests completed at max level before they rewarded gold for that, and the gold owed you for respeccing and relearning all your skills every time prior to them fixing that (and the upcoming 900g for the dual spec when it gets reduced to 100.)

*sigh* I was hoping, but in my digitally-respeccing heart, I knew it couldn't be so.

---------- Post added at 03:47 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:47 PM ----------

They really need to add Feats of strength to the folks who bought riding (or did the Pally/Lock mount quests) in vanilla.

They've already got feats for doing the mount quests.

Charger (achievement) - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft
Dreadsteed of Xoroth - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft

Baerdog said:

So far I'm thinking I'll go with this spec, which is Ridach's all-in-one prot recommendation. At this point I'd rather save my second spec for a ret/PvP type dealio instead of having a single target prot spec and a trash prot spec.

Click to expand...

That is pretty much what I was going with, though I will probably give up one point in Crusade to get Divine Guardian, since the skill has always been a life saver in certain dungeons when aggro management gets difficult, because it gives you some breathing room for that healer or mage to get a few hits without getting gibbed. I use it multiple times every Halls of Reflection run I do, and often mix it into my ultra-button that also casts Divine Protection, Gift of the Naaru, and my Rotting Thumb.

I will max out Crusade when I hit 81. My plan after that is to get either Eye for an Eye or Improved Judgements to open up Pursuit of Justice, since the speed boost has always been something I consider a requirement. If I find I can get by with a simple 8% enchant speed increase, I may instead move into Holy for Judgements of the Pure (will have to see how well haste helps threat gen) or fill out a few more Protection talents (Eternal Glory).

I have no idea what points I will put into where, except that I know they're going into the fire tree (until 31, and then I will pick up the 3% crit from the frost tree).

ScytheRexx;444188][QUOTE=Baerdog said:

So far I'm thinking I'll go with this spec, which is Ridach's all-in-one prot recommendation. At this point I'd rather save my second spec for a ret/PvP type dealio instead of having a single target prot spec and a trash prot spec.

Click to expand...

That is pretty much what I was going with, though I will probably give up one point in Crusade to get Divine Guardian, since the skill has always been a life saver in certain dungeons when aggro management gets difficult, because it gives you some breathing room for that healer or mage to get a few hits without getting gibbed. I use it multiple times every Halls of Reflection run I do, and often mix it into my ultra-button that also casts Divine Protection, Gift of the Naaru, and my Rotting Thumb.

I will max out Crusade when I hit 81. My plan after that is to get either Eye for an Eye or Improved Judgements to open up Pursuit of Justice, since the speed boost has always been something I consider a requirement. If I find I can get by with a simple 8% enchant speed increase, I may instead move into Holy for Judgements of the Pure (will have to see how well haste helps threat gen) or fill out a few more Protection talents (Eternal Glory).[/QUOTE]

Not a bad idea. I'll have to play around with it when I get home from work and kung fu tonight.

Piotyr said:

I have no idea what points I will put into where, except that I know they're going into the fire tree (until 31, and then I will pick up the 3% crit from the frost tree).

Click to expand...

Enchantertim with frost talents? BLASPHEMY!

Baerdog said:

Piotyr said:

I have no idea what points I will put into where, except that I know they're going into the fire tree (until 31, and then I will pick up the 3% crit from the frost tree).

Click to expand...

Enchantertim with frost talents? BLASPHEMY!

Click to expand...

After 5 minutes of playing, I came up with a 3/35/3 talent build. I blame Blizzard for putting a crit% talent in the frost tree.

Also, maintenance has been extended to 4pm PST (3 hours from now).

So I think I'm looking at this for my eventual level 85 build. I think the extra damage against magic attacks from Eye for an Eye will outweigh the usefulness of a longer-ranged Judgment. There's not really much reason to use Judgment out of melee anyway.

WoW Talent Calculator - Sigrie

Ret paladins at 80 are pretty blah. I think a lot of paladins right now are suffering a lot from not having Inquisition (which is a lvl 81 ability), so hopefully the ret blahs will be temporary until Cata comes out. I was screwing around tanking on Test on my DK (I screwed around with my pally some too, but watching my husband play his pally was good enough for me really) and I can say right now that DPS really need to get re-used to the idea of giving tanks a couple of seconds before they start to DPS, as a lot of the "frontloaded" threat tanks used to have is gone. (I could manage on my DK for the most part, but DPS would unleash before I even got to the heroic bosses and no amount of taunting was helping me hold threat off that).

TLDR: DPS you damn well better have a threat meter or I will come kill you in your sleep.

ALSO: SMITE HEALING YAY!

Piotyr said:

After 5 minutes of playing, I came up with a 3/35/3 talent build. I blame Blizzard for putting a crit% talent in the frost tree.

Click to expand...

It looks good, though I think you are skipping most of the fun talents. I don't think Molten Shield will work well without Blazing Speed since I don't thin the Blazing Speed proc would occur without it, plus you passed up the juicy goodness of Improved Scorch and Firestarter for mana free scorches while moving. Yes, the fun talents won't squeeze out the best dps possible, but come on, with Cataclysm so close will if even matter?

---------- Post added at 09:04 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:00 PM ----------

Baerdog said:

There's not really much reason to use Judgment out of melee anyway

Click to expand...

Never underestimate the usefulness of long range snap aggro abilities. Sometimes you may find yourself with both Hand of Reckoning and Righteous Defense on cool down and that extra long range shot to the straggler means your healer didn't end up with a fireball to the face.

I am leaning on Eye for an Eye also, but I just wanted to point out that improved judgment won't be a bad option either. Both in the end will have very situational usage.

In the end I think it will probably depend on how many of the new dungeon and raid bosses dish out magic damage.

ScytheRexx;444207][QUOTE=Piotyr said:

After 5 minutes of playing, I came up with a 3/35/3 talent build. I blame Blizzard for putting a crit% talent in the frost tree.

Click to expand...

It looks good, though I think you are skipping most of the fun talents. I don't think Molten Shield will work well without Blazing Speed since I don't thin the Blazing Speed proc would occur without it, plus you passed up the juicy goodness of Improved Scorch and Firestarter for mana free scorches while moving. Yes, the fun talents won't squeeze out the best dps possible, but come on, with Cataclysm so close will if even matter?

[/QUOTE]

Actually, the Molten Shields proc works without taking the Blazing Speed talent (it basically just procs 50% extra movement speed). I'd like to take Imp Scorch and Firestarter, but I can't find 3 points to move from elsewhere

But really, who needs 3% haste when you can run circles around enemies casting Scorch forever?

Dei said:

I can say right now that DPS really need to get re-used to the idea of giving tanks a couple of seconds before they start to DPS, as a lot of the "frontloaded" threat tanks used to have is gone.

Click to expand...

I anticipate a solid month of back-and-forth, "please focus-fire on skull" and "STOP BEING A FAIL TANK!! THISGRPSUX!!" before DPS re-learns how to play heroics when everyone doesn't massively outgear the place.

I'm thinking we should look into doing more guild dungeon runs until the general populace gets their shit figured out.

*Role Check Initiated*
*Aureon has selected TANK*

ALSO, just a random thing... If you use www.wowtal.com as your talent calculator, you can have it give you a /run command to input in WoW to fill out your talent tree automatically.

Baerdog said:

I'm thinking we should look into doing more guild dungeon runs until the general populace gets their shit figured out.

*Role Check Initiated*
*Aureon has selected TANK*

Click to expand...

*EnchanterTim has selected HEALER*

What's the guild make-up by role, btw?

that was still happening before the patch

SpecialKO said:

What's the guild make-up by role, btw?

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As regulars go...
ScytheRexx: Lakaru - Tank or Healer (Paladin)
Ms. ScytheRexx: Astrella - Healer (Priest)
Piotyr: EnchanterTim - Ranged DPS (Fire Mage)
Baerdog: Aureon - Tank (Paladin)
Dave: Nihsen - Melee DPS (Rogue), Tanksbunches - Tank (Warrior)
Shakey: Kilgore - Ranged DPS (Boomkin), Pendle - Melee DPS (DK)

Non regulars
Shannow - Healer (Paladin)
Six - Ranged DPS (Hunter) (levelling)
Chillblain: Ranged DPS (Mage) (levelling)
Dei: Chaise - Ranged DPS (Shadow Priest)
Timmus: Albinar - Shaman (levelling, not sure of spec)

EDIT: There are others with characters, but I can't remember them off the top of my head and can't check the armory right now.

Interesting...

You've actually got a pretty even spread. If anything, you might be short on DPS

It looks like we're actually in the weird position of needing more varied DPS.

Maybe when I get to it, I'll make a lock or a shammy.

One of these days I'm going to swing back around and level that priest, curse having to play on so many different servers. (Raid on one, play with hubby on another, HF is on yet another)

If anything, we can just use more people that enjoy playing.

We have zero warlocks, though.

---------- Post added at 07:08 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:06 PM ----------

Dei said:

One of these days I'm going to swing back around and level that priest, curse having to play on so many different servers. (Raid on one, play with hubby on another, HF is on yet another)

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*ENTIRELY SELF-SERVING SOLUTION* Maybe hubby would like to join us on Ghostlands alliance!

Oooh, now I want to make a worgen lock...

Piotyr said:

If anything, we can just use more people that enjoy playing.

We have zero warlocks, though.

---------- Post added at 07:08 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:06 PM ----------

Dei said:

One of these days I'm going to swing back around and level that priest, curse having to play on so many different servers. (Raid on one, play with hubby on another, HF is on yet another)

Click to expand...

*ENTIRELY SELF-SERVING SOLUTION* Maybe hubby would like to join us on Ghostlands alliance!

Click to expand...

Seconded.

Another g'dam patch?! Good lord, wasn't the 4.7 GB one enough?!

That must be the patch to FIX the first patch.

Server is apparently up.

This is taking for frikken ever. first try to down load sent me to the BSOD.

Second try is taking forever to install after the download.

It hangs when I try and get on.

Water looks so nice!!

Piotyr;444247][QUOTE=SpecialKO said:

What's the guild make-up by role, btw?

Click to expand...

As regulars go...
ScytheRexx: Lakaru - Tank or Healer (Paladin)
Ms. ScytheRexx: Astrella - Healer (Priest)
Piotyr: EnchanterTim - Ranged DPS (Fire Mage)
Baerdog: Aureon - Tank (Paladin)
Dave: Nihsen - Melee DPS (Rogue), Tanksbunches - Tank (Warrior)
Shakey: Kilgore - Ranged DPS (Boomkin), Pendle - Melee DPS (DK)

Non regulars
Shannow - Healer (Paladin)
Six - Ranged DPS (Hunter) (levelling)
Chillblain: Ranged DPS (Mage) (levelling)
Dei: Chaise - Ranged DPS (Shadow Priest)
Timmus: Albinar - Shaman (levelling, not sure of spec)

EDIT: There are others with characters, but I can't remember them off the top of my head and can't check the armory right now.[/QUOTE]

I've never played a shaman before. Can anyone recommend a spec to go with?

It all depends on what you want to do. Restoration is going to be your healing tree, elemental is ranged DPS, and enhancement is melee DPS. If you're starting fresh and leveliing solo you might want to go enhancement at least to start. I would check out the shaman class column on WoW Insider first and then look at the other shaman blogs linked from WoW Insider to get an idea of how to spec and gear. Since the patch just dropped today it may take a bit before the Hot New Specs are hammered out, so don't be afraid to experiment a little.

Once my auctions finish processing I expect to have made over 40 thousand gold tonight. I logged in once the servers came up, started listing, and pulled in 30k before logging off.

I still have no idea how to deal with the class and mechanic changes, but I love this patch anyway.

Are you Inscription? You must be one of those guys I'm avoiding. I am not going into the AH for a couple weeks.

I have been thinking of going back to my Horde server and loading up on Glyphs before the craze dies down, but then again I am not really that nuts about having to be rich. Still, having some extra cash wouldn't hurt either. Bet farming the materials is going to be a pain though. All I know is if I need a certain Glyph I will still just make it myself on my Horde server, and I have my wife for when I need something on the Alliance server.

One little change I noticed, when you sit on the character screen for awhile, your character will now start casting random animations based on the class. My orc warlock started casting shadow spells at me last night when I was sitting on her for a bit.

All my characters are gone... The server I'm on says I have 9, but none are being listed.

I guess it is a sign not to play.

It's a sign you should be on Ghostlands with us.

Shakey said:

It's a sign you should be on Ghostlands with us.

Click to expand...

heh. I'm too poor to transfer my characters (bunch of 70s and one 80 my main tank) I guess I can start over again. Man, I hate being poor.

Well, looks like we have a few people that are going to be leveling or are still leveling, so you wouldn't be alone. Plus, what better way to learn all the new class mechanics than to re-level!

heh. It will have to wait until Nov 1st since I'm going to be out of town.

From raiding logs from last night, fire mages were pulling about 23000 DPS when fully decked out in heroic T10, thanks to a bug with Pyromaniac and glyph bugs (which allow a fire mage to glyph Living Bomb, Pyroblast, Fireball AND Frostfire Bolt simultaneously). I was doing about 5200 DPS with mostly blues and a single piece of T9.

A big part of this is how crit-dependent fire is, and how ridiculous the amount of crit possible with gear right now. As soon as players ding 81, it will heavily rebalance itself.

This patch makes me feel stupid. Seriously. All I really put a lot of effort into before hand was my disc priest, I didn't even try to figure out shadow or holy. On top of that, I looked at my alts, went "Durrrr" then ran away.

Chibibar said:

All my characters are gone... The server I'm on says I have 9, but none are being listed.

I guess it is a sign not to play.

Click to expand...

This happened with the Ghostlands character I made a while ago. It says he's there, and I can look him up in Armory, but he doesn't appear, either in his avatar or name, when I select the realm.

Did you just resub too? Maybe with the new patch the process to reactivate characters is taking longer than normal.

Shakey said:

Did you just resub too? Maybe with the new patch the process to reactivate characters is taking longer than normal.

Click to expand...

No, but I haven't touched my Ghostlands toon in more than a year. Then again, I haven't touched other toons I made on other realms in the same period, and I can still access them.

SpecialKO;444434][QUOTE=Shakey said:

Did you just resub too? Maybe with the new patch the process to reactivate characters is taking longer than normal.

Click to expand...

No, but I haven't touched my Ghostlands toon in more than a year. Then again, I haven't touched other toons I made on other realms in the same period, and I can still access them.[/QUOTE]

My characters on hellscream (my friend's server) is still good and can log into those. the BEST characters (my main raiding characters and all my other maxed out crafting team) are locked away in limbo

Huh, that's weird. I guess all that's left is...

Blizzard is aware of the missing characters issue and has addressed it here along with some other known 4.0.1 issues.

Baerdog said:

Blizzard is aware of the missing characters issue and has addressed it here along with some other known 4.0.1 issues.

Click to expand...

awesome. I try logging in at 6am CST. so they did a rolling restart at 8am CST. I should be able to see my character tonight then (hopefully)

I'm getting 4100 xp every time I pick some lovely flowers. Gathering XP FTW!

Dave said:

Are you Inscription? You must be one of those guys I'm avoiding. I am not going into the AH for a couple weeks.

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Yep. I had ~3200 glyphs made and ready to list when the patch hit. It was a fun night.

Yup... my account still bonked!

It is funny that the GM is telling me to delete my WTF, CACHE and Interface folder. This is a clean install and first time ever returning to play WoW but I delete them anyways and it didn't work.

Chibibar said:

It is funny that the GM is telling me to delete my WTF, CACHE and Interface folder. This is a clean install and first time ever returning to play WoW but I delete them anyways and it didn't work.

Click to expand...

That's their default recommendation. No offense to the GMs, but many times they're just there to stay in contact with you while they escalate up the chain.

I didn't even notice I had some characters missing... They were all lowbies that I was just messing around with. Anyway, they weren't there last night, but showed up this morning. So there is still hope.