Patch 5.0.4

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Siji
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Patch 5.0.4

Post by Siji »

I know I'm new to the game and all that, but there seems to be quite the potential for pissed off players in today's patch. Some of this stuff seems to seriously affect playing.
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Class Changes
Certainly one of the biggest changes coming in 5.0.4 is the new talent system, and with that comes a ton of changes and new spells and abilities , but before we get to that, a number of changes have been made that can impact how you play your class. These range from minor to major, but almost all specs have altered rotations, and a few have been completely redesigned. Once the patch launches be prepared to spend a little time reacquainting yourself with each ability, and setting your action bars up. Here are just a few of the highlights to be aware of.

Death Knight
Presences have changed . Frost Presence now doubles Runic Power generation, and each specialization learns a passive effect that should cause that specialization to favor the corresponding Presence for general use. Necrotic Strike, as well as the new talent Death Siphon, both cost a Death Rune, meaning that they can only be used when one of your runes has been transformed to Death.

Druid
The Feral specialization has been split into Feral (for Cat-focused druids) and Guardian (for Bear-focused druids) specializations. Each of the four specializations has a more distinct and different set of tools, but all of the spells available to the specialization are now useful. For example, Feral and Guardian druids can cast Healing Touch for a useful amount of healing, and Balance and Restoration druids can make better use of the Cat Form and Bear Form abilities they have.

Hunter
There is no longer a minimum range for the class. The ranged weapon slot has been removed from the game; hunters now equip their ranged weapon in the main hand weapon slot. Hunters now benefit from Expertise as their ranged attacks can be dodged. Any type of pet can now choose any specialization (Ferocity, Tenacity, or Cunning).

Mage : Mages received many changes intended to flesh out rotations and make them more interesting. Arcane mages now have a more complex rotation . Fire mages now have tools to control the random nature of their spells. Frost mages are now considerably stronger at sustained damage dealing, and now viable in PvE. Much of the crowd control and survivability that was unique to Frost has been spread to the whole class, or made available to all specs as talents.

Paladin : Paladins now have several ranged abilities , though remain primarily melee combatants. In-line with streamlining raid buffs (more on that below), Auras have been removed, and the buff focus is now on Seals. Paladins can now store up to 5 Holy Power at a time, but still can only use up to 3 on each Holy Power spender.

Priest : Mana pools are fixed for all casters (more on this below). Chakras are now more similar to warrior stances. Changes have been made to Discipline to further support the damage absorption playstyle. Shadow priests now have Shadow Orbs as a resource , which can be generated by some of their basic spells, and spent on either strong damage or crowd control.

Rogue : Poisons are now Spellbook abilities that affect both weapons at once. Poisons are divided into two categories, Lethal (Deadly or Wound Poison) and Non-Lethal (the rest), and you may have one poison of each type active at once. Many abilities that used to be restricted to a single specialization are now talents and available to all specializations; so you can have a Shadowstepping Combat rogue or an Assassination rogue with Cheat Death. Dagger speeds have been normalized such that the niche of the “fast dagger” intended for the off-hand no longer exists. Any dagger should be fine to equip in either hand.

Shaman : Totems no longer provide long-term buffs. Some of the old passive effects are now innately provided by the shaman. Totems instead have short-term situational benefits. In light of this the totem multidrop UI has been removed, though all totem spells are now sorted under draggable elemental flyouts in the Spellbook.

Warlock : Each warlock specialization has a unique secondary resource which allows them temporary surges in power. Affliction warlocks focus more on layering multiple periodic damage effects, and amplifying their effects, and use Soul Shards rotationally for strong damage, or occasionally for utility as before. Demonology warlocks now have a new Demonic Fury resource, instead of Soul Shards, which is built by casting their normal spells. Destruction warlocks now use Unstable Embers as a resource, which is built up slowly through casting their normal spells, and spent in bursts of massive damage. Warlocks no longer use armor spells, instead gaining additional armor and bonus health passively. All demons deal similar damage and are no longer linked to a specific spec. Doomguard, Infernal and Soulstone cooldowns reset upon wiping to a raid or dungeon boss.

Warrior : The design of Rage has changed to function more like a valuable resource. Warriors no longer naturally gain Rage from taking damage , but instead generate Rage with their primary attacks, such as Mortal Strike, Bloodthirst, and Shield Slam. Stances also now share a single action bar, rather than changing your action bar, and abilities are no longer restricted by stance. In addition, the benefits of the stances have changed considerably, with Berserker Stance allowing the warrior to gain some Rage from taking damage, Battle Stance making the warrior gain additional Rage from dealing damage, and Defensive Stance focused on survivability.


New Talent System
The new talent system redefines how you create your character in World of Warcraft, while keeping the core style and feeling of each class and specialization intact. When launching the patch for the first time and hitting ‘N’ to open your talent pane, you’ll notice a number of changes.

The most obvious is a new layout for specializations , which now show the Core Abilities for each class spec. These are the defining skills that can only be used when you have that spec active.

The talent tab will show you the new talent system. You have a wide variety of useful and powerful abilities available to you regardless of your spec, but you may only select one talent from each row . Many of these tend to be old talents, sometimes with a bit of a change, while others are completely new abilities. These choices tend to be quite difficult, and you should expect to spend time considering each. But don’t get too discouraged, you can reset a single talent at any time (and anywhere) by using a Tome of Clear Mind (a tradable item crafted with Inscription), or reset all of them by visiting your class trainer.

Of course with a change this vast all talents have been reset, and you’ll be able to explore the new skills and talents as you choose them for the first time!


Glyphs
Glyphs are now a bit more focused, and a bit more fun. Prime glyphs are being removed, and Major glyphs are taking on the majority of the power and utility bonuses from both Prime and Minor glyphs. Minor glyphs are instead focusing on more fun aspects and cosmetic customization .


Quality of Life
There are a ton of changes in 5.0.4, and you should definitely check out the full patch notes on August 28th, but a few of these are worth calling out because of how wonderfully pleasing they’ll be every time you log in.
• All Cooking awards have been combined into a single currency: Epicureans Awards . This not only cleans up your currency list a bit, but means that doing the daily quests in Stormwind can help you buy the Chef’s Hat in Dalaran.
• AoE looting ! Round up a ton of enemies, nuke ‘em, and then pick up all of their loot with a single right click – bag space permitting.
• The Daily Quest cap is removed . While this will truly shine in Mists of Pandaria with far more robust daily quests, you can certainly take advantage of it before then.
• Account-wide mounts, pets, and achievements ! It’s finally here, and you’ll be able to enjoy just about every mount and pet you own on any character, and any license, under a single Battle.net account. You can also work on a wide variety of Achievements from multiple characters.
• A new help system has been added to many of the UI elements and menus. You can toggle hints on and off by clicking the "i" button in the upper left corner of windows that have it.
• New spells are now learned automatically when you level up . Class trainers are only needed to change talents, glyphs, class specialization, or to utilize the dual specialization feature.
• Mana pools are capped . Not necessarily a quality of life improvement, but this change will impact all mana-using classes and the stats they want. Intellect will still make skills more powerful, and Spirit will still regenerate mana faster. The amounts you choose for each is a bit more compelling now.
There’s a bunch of other stuff in the patch, and if you think we missed something crucial here be sure to let others know in the comments below.


Massively Multiplayer
There are a few changes to be aware of that impact how you interact and play with others.
• New buff and debuff design . This builds off the class section above, but the basic premise is that there is now a specific list of available buffs and debuffs , and each are castable by a few classes or specs. When stepping into a raid you know you should have 8 buffs, and if you don’t, there’s probably at least one person that can cast it.
• BattleTag support. If you’ve played Diablo III you’re already well acquainted with BattleTags (and you have one!). If not, you should make one now . A BattleTag is your permanent account-wide nickname on Battle.net , so choose it wisely. BattleTags can do anything RealID can, but anonymously. RealID should be kept for your real-life friends and family, and BattleTag can be used for acquaintances or others you don’t want to reveal you real name to.
• Unified PvE queue. You can now queue for dungeons, raids, and other queue-able content in one handy place , all at once, and just see what pops up first.
• Cross-Realm Zones . We’ll be rolling this feature out beginning with a few realms at the launch of 5.0.4, and increasing until all realms are included for the release of Mists of Pandaria. If you’re looking to level a new character up before Mists of Pandaria, this feature will have a noticeable impact on the world around you.
• There’s also a new roll frame that pulls all the loot rolls out of the chat window and into its own spot.


The Battle of Theramore
The first two Scenarios (one for Horde and one for Alliance) are coming with 5.0.4, but they won’t be enabled until a few weeks before the Mists of Pandaria expansion release. Keep an eye on the front page of this blog for more info.


The Kitchen Sink
None of this stuff seemed to fit anywhere else, but these are important bits to take note of to better understand way lay ahead in the land of 5.0.4.
• Currency conversion . In case you missed it, Kaivax put together the specifics of the currency conversion rollout in 5.0.4 and beyond.
• PvP Season 11 ends . As usual, we’ll be determining who is getting end-of-season awards, so stay put and don’t change realm if you think you’re eligible. Conquest points will also automatically convert to Honor points at this time.
• Head enchants removed . Another bit explained a while ago was the beheading of faction enchants . The design intent will be fully seen in Mists of Pandaria with the new factions, but the change (like so many others) will hit with this patch.
• Spell Penetration has been replaced by PvP Power , and Resilience is now PvP Resilience . A blog Ghostcrawler wrote up was posted a while back with the first incarnation of this change, and the design intent remains true.
• The ranged/relic/thrown item slot has been removed . All weapons should now be equipped in the weapon slot, and ranged weapons, including wands, have been adjusted to be more powerful.
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Re: Patch 5.0.4

Post by Boogahz »

yeah, these are essentially the changes that are being brought in by the expansion
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Re: Patch 5.0.4

Post by Fairweather Pure »

I love these pre-expansion patches. PvP is always crazy as hell.

I gotta work late tonight though. Oh well, hopefully the kinks will be worked out before I get to log in!
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Re: Patch 5.0.4

Post by Boogahz »

I might actually try to patch after I get home from work, but I don't know if I will be logged in much at all. I finally started logging in more since I've been paying for the annual pass anyhow. It has been relaxing to level some of my alts while rarely seeing anyone around.
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Re: Patch 5.0.4

Post by Fairweather Pure »

Boogahz wrote:I might actually try to patch after I get home from work, but I don't know if I will be logged in much at all. I finally started logging in more since I've been paying for the annual pass anyhow. It has been relaxing to level some of my alts while rarely seeing anyone around.
After the patch is finished DLing, it "optimizes" your install. Lots of people did not expect this and it can take up to an hour, so beware!

I started my optimization before a I came into work.
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Re: Patch 5.0.4

Post by Siji »

This is going to take me some time to figure out and I really hope I'm just missing something obvious.

First quick glance it seems nearly 50% of my actions I had keyed are now gone. Couple minor glyphs I had are gone, no idea if they're just been completely removed or if they're just freebie skills now (res not taking regeant for example). If I'm looking at this correctly, you no longer have the majority of the skills to use while in Bear form unless you're guardian spec.. the talents are just.. wow. Why make such a drastic change? I mean, I'm new and I know it doesn't even come close to resembling what it was before. 1 point every15 levels to choose one of three different talents (3 every 15 levels). I'm actually annoyed by the glyph changes. I just spend a bunch of gold buying glyphs and now they're completely gone. The glyphs I have, I'm not sure whether they're freebies or replacements but they're nothing like the ones I had before. Ferocious Bite glyph now heals you? wtf? There's *1* glyph which increases damage directly (Maul). My healing spells are gone (dont see them in the book even) other than restoration.

Does WoW do this sort of stuff often? I mean, I'm not sure I understand spending years playing your character, learning it, etc, only to have it completely change.

It seems everything I've learned about how to play my druid in the last couple weeks is almost completely out the window. Maybe I just need to keep investigating.
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Re: Patch 5.0.4

Post by Fairweather Pure »

Keep investigating. Overall, druids are pretty close to the way we were yesterday. Our rotations are pretty much unchanged and we keep our skillsets.

Many of the skills/perks from our old talent tree are now innate or automatically included with whichever spec you choose, same with powers/abilities that we used to have to glyph for.

Feral keeps all our resto/balance spells and they still have all the feral abilities as well.
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Re: Patch 5.0.4

Post by Boogahz »

Siji wrote:Does WoW do this sort of stuff often? I mean, I'm not sure I understand spending years playing your character, learning it, etc, only to have it completely change.
This is probably the third or fourth incarnation of their talent system (maybe more), and somehow they always claim to have it exactly right each time. While it can be hard at first, you'll forget they changed until the next time they have the perfect talent/skill system to implement :P
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Re: Patch 5.0.4

Post by Fairweather Pure »

Also, some classes have had complete redesigns from the ground up. Hunters, Warlocks, and Pallies have been changed completely in a single patch! My feral druid has witnessed a good 6 major tweeks/updates. Two were during the original game, making feral tanking viable and often perferable, when Burning Crusade launched cat form was improved, WotLK saw new skills and tweeks, Cata saw the least amount of changes, and finally today (which also changes very little but adds a bunch of new crap).

Basically, everytime they have rehauled the talent system my druid has gotten better. Whenever they address class skills I have gotten burnt though. For instance, the complete tank/aggro redesign when Cata launched. What a fucking disaster that was!
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Re: Patch 5.0.4

Post by Boogahz »

That's when I switched to oomkin
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Re: Patch 5.0.4

Post by Siji »

Definitely going to have to spend a lot of time figuring out where they've moved stuff.

From the perspective of Feral Druid:

Feral Charge now appears to be Wild Charge (under Talents). Big change affecting Feral Charge/Wild Charge is the removal of the Stampede talent. The closest equivalent to Stampede is the Incarnation talent. However Incarnation has a 3 minute cooldown where Stampede had none. With Stampede each time you'd do a Feral Charge, you could use Ravage w/o being behind the target or prowling. Now you can only do this once every 3 minutes.

Rejuvenation still exists and is (as far as I can tell) the only instant cast heal (seems stronger).

Healing Touch has been added and is a 2.49 sec cast 405 mana heal (at 67 heals 8,993 hp).

Thorns (damage shield) seems to be completely gone.

Insect Swarm (DoT) is gone.

One of the DD spells is gone (can't remember name). Wrath still exists.

Skull Bash still exists, but you'll have to hotkey it again as it was changed.

Thrash has been lowered - was previously 85. *
Savage Roar has been lowered - was previously 75. *

* - according to WowHead. I didn't have these before, but have them today (67).


I'm kind of the opinion currently that Incarnation isn't worth wasting 1 of the only 6 points you'll ever get on. With that out of the picture, Wild Charge becomes much less useful. Displacer Beast and Renewal seem nice 'save your ass' type talents.
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Re: Patch 5.0.4

Post by Fairweather Pure »

Pretty overwhelming, but I powered through it. I have my bear spec pretty much figured out. It took me 2 hours to glyph, spec, and redo my action bars. I still have my cat spec and 3 alts to go!

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/tool/talent ... 00.!ZYXSPs

That is my fun/bear/PvP until MoP comes out build. It is subject to change when I actually play using the build though :P
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Re: Patch 5.0.4

Post by Siji »

This crap of taking the servers down every single Tuesday blows ass. Why can't they do a monthly or bi-monthly patch like everyone else?
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Re: Patch 5.0.4

Post by Zaelath »

Siji wrote:This crap of taking the servers down every single Tuesday blows ass. Why can't they do a monthly or bi-monthly patch like everyone else?
I've long since suspected it was to solve memory leak issues and to allow them to take coherent database backups, swap out some servers that are aging out, etc. They wouldn't be the first tech shop to have a weekly scheduled outage just so they have a maintenance window that people are used to.

There's often no "patching" just a series of restarts. I assume that's the weeks where the tech support staff say, "yeah, we have nothing to do" and they just bounce them to solve the memory leaks.
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Re: Patch 5.0.4

Post by Siji »

In the time since I've started I don't think a single patch day has been completed in the time they've initially given. Didn't SOE learn and start giving themselves much longer estimates, then making people happy by coming up 'early'?
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Re: Patch 5.0.4

Post by Aslanna »

If it's every Tuesday just make plans not to play that day!
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Re: Patch 5.0.4

Post by Siji »

Bah, fuck. Apparently enough changes made to fark up a great number of my addons.
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