Cataclysm: Preparing For Patch 4.0.1

[caladein]

Feral is really hurting and will do so until we get thrash at lvl 81 - I doubt I'll hang out in heroic HoR on her again as swipe made her the easiest tank in that instance. Maul doesn' feel like it belongs in the priority list/rotation but beserk procs are fun.

Why bother brining other people with you at all?  (Stolen from EJ.)

Resto druids can successfully solo heroics. We have a resto druid that has now solo'd Gun'drak, Halls of Reflection, and the Forge of Souls. The two talents that enable this are Nature's Ward - Spell - World of Warcraft and the new Gift of the Earthmother talent.

Any time you drop below 50% health, you instantly get a fresh rejuv that heals you for 15% of the total healing (roughly 2k healing), but because it works in bear form and most mobs don't hit for shit, you can easily solo any heroic. There's no cooldown, and it applies to every single hit below 50%. The only risk is that you pull too many mobs that all melee at the same time and kill you. In Gun'drak, you can take roughly 2-3 packs. In HoR and FoS, you should only do one pack at a time.

Oh, it also works while stunned.

(e) fixed the wowhead link linking to old talent.

[Shrike]

Borderlands rebalance? More info please?

Word is next week the level cap (finally) comes off and supposedly Pandora gets rebalanced for level 69 play. Think of it as playthrough 2.75. That's the rumor, at any rate.

As for WoW, I couldn't stay away and logged my shaman in. What a mess. 4 hours later, I had her dialed in, more or less, and--I think--I had most of her addons fixed. Some of this is speculation with the new enhsim still in an alpha state. Lot of changes. I'm liking the way it looks though. Even after totally reforging, I still had gobs of crit, considerably less haste, but mastery was looking pretty beefy, especially on the spell damage side. I think I have Shock and Awe up and running along with recount. Might spend some time on target dummies tomorrow to see what's what--although searing totem ignores them while blasting the small furry critters in Darnassus into charred confetti.

[Azazel]

Since I've got a bunch of computers with WoW installed, and good old Australian download caps, I downloaded the 3 massive parts today. Well, I started 2 of them in the morning before work, but couldn't start the third because Ausgamers only allows 3 connections per IP. I also screwed up by starting parts 1 and 3. Part 2, being the massive 2.4gb one.

So got home, started downloading that, and three hours later, it was almost done, since the speed was roughly 1/4 of the speeds I was getting this morning.

Now I've copied the files into my WoW directory, and it's downloading the last little bit via the blizzard torrent bullshit downloader. It's crying because I have a router with firewall and haven't set up port forwarding, so the last 30mb or whatever is taking 20 minutes. I may be ale to log in and see my ruined characters before I have to go to bed to get up for work tomorrow. Though my understanding is that Proudmoore has been up and down like the proverbial $2 whiore all day anyway. Yay patch day.

 

[Azazel]

Now it seems to be (re)installing the entire game. I'm assuming that all the cataclysm zone changes are in this patch, and hoping that the massive bloat of having 2 copies of the entire old world on my computers will be fixed/excised with 4.0.3?

Looks like another 20-40mins at least. Time to retire and watch some bedtime TV. Yay again.

edit - just back to check, and it's now been more than an hour, actually. 80% done. 
Back to Alton Brown.

[Merusk]

Is there a way to turn off the auto-display of Guild Tabards now? Also, how do I turn off that stupid ability queue?

The ability queue thing I haven't looked at, but I imagine it's under interface options.   The tabard thing I heard other guildies complaining about, but didn't have on my toons when I checked them.  All of them were wearing tabards when I logged in, though. When I removed the tabard it didn't display a guild one instead.  Try putting one on then removing it and see what that does.

Now it seems to be (re)installing the entire game. I'm assuming that all the cataclysm zone changes are in this patch, and hoping that the massive bloat of having 2 copies of the entire old world on my computers will be fixed/excised with 4.0.3?

Yes, all the zone changes PLUS all the texture upgrades and the new water/ light engine were in this patch.   I can't turn everything on (Water is greyed-out above Low), and it won't even give me the option of going above "Low" settings  on the auto-picker so I have to manually turn on textures, etc.   Looks like my 5 year old machine isn't going to cut it much longer.. time to retire. 

[Lakov_Sanite]

it wont let you max your video settings if your graphics driver isnt up to date, once i got a new driver it let me max everything out again

[Sjofn]

The tabard thing is weird, it seems pretty random as to when it gets displayed. My druid and rogue keep displaying a phantom top half (if you want to get rid of it, put on a tabard and then take it off), but some of my other non-tabard characters, like my priest, aren't showing one at all.

[Ironwood]

I'd like to second the cursing for the UTTER BULLSHIT Bittorrent they use.  It took 2 hours and 200mb to download the 'extra' 4 mb I needed.  That's an UTTER JOKE.

It's now gronking away, as already mentioned, reinstalling what looks like every file under the sun.  This is going to be a long day.

[caladein]

For future patches: if you just want to use your normal BitTorrent client, use WoWTorrentEx to remove the torrent file from the downloader and be on your way.

1 - Place WoWTorrentEx.exe in your WoW directory.
2 - On patch day: log in to WoW, download the crappy Blizzard downloader and let it launch. Hit the cancel button when it comes up.
3 - Run WoWTorrentEx. A console window should open and disappear, leaving a .torrent file in the WoW directory.
4 - If you have a bittorent client your machine which has registered itself for the .torrent file type, it will be launched automatically.

That last part is kind of unnecessary though, just point your BT client to download to World of Warcraft/Updates (or copy it there afterwards).

[kildorn]

it wont let you max your video settings if your graphics driver isnt up to date, once i got a new driver it let me max everything out again

Wait, what? I hope they mean "relatively recent", because I'm pretty much not supposed to use the next 3 drivers from ATI, since they're all going to have a hilarious overscan settings problem that makes my monitor just not work right.

[Mrbloodworth]

Graphics


    * Improved water and lava rendering system (Video Options - Liquid Detail on the Graphics Panel)
    * Dynamic Sunshafts effect (Video Options - Sunshafts on the Graphics Panel)
    * Multi-monitor support (Video Options - Monitor on the Graphics Panel)
    * OpenGL Hardware Cursor support for Windows (Video Options - Hardware Cursor on the Advanced Panel)
    * Experimental support for DX11 (enabled by passing ‘-d3d11’ on the command line or adding SET gxApi "d3d11" to the Config.WTF file)

What does some of this mean in practice? What DX11 support do they have? Multi-monitor support (Can I put my map on another screen now?)? "Sunshafts"?

[Rendakor]

Thanks for the "equip and remove" tip about the tabards. Anyone know if there's a way to turn off the default equipment manager?

[caladein]

"Sunshafts"?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YubAg6Nm6qc (Background music is a bit loud.)

Edit:

Thanks for the "equip and remove" tip about the tabards. Anyone know if there's a way to turn off the default equipment manager?

There used to be a box you could uncheck under Features in Options.  Is that still there?

[Rendakor]

The entire "Features" section is gone; I had disabled it before but it's back now and I can't get rid of it.

Can't seem to turn off the display of NPC names now either; all quest givers and quest mobs seem to have their names permanently displayed. There's an option to turn it off, but it does nothing.

[Rasix]

Last night was just terribly confusing for the hour I got to play.  I wasn't sure at all how I wanted to spec my warlock, since they've added new mechanics (eh, I cast soulfire now?).  Shaman I did an easy healer spec with.  Rogue I went muti, since I heard combat is really bad right now, although I imagine it's probably not so bad at my gear level.  Apparently I need to backstab again.  With the DK I just randomly chose shit since all I'll be doing with him is mining.

Only thing productive I managed to do was put up about 50 epic gems for sale (nice changes to the auction UI btw).  In a lot of areas there wasn't a raw gem to be found.  My prices were far too low in retrospect.   Glyph market was already flooded by the time I got on and I wasn't really prepared for it.

[Xanthippe]

Even though I had the background downloader enabled, and enabled it to download while I was playing, it took from 11am until 8pm to get it all.  It's as though nothing was even downloaded at all prior?

Anyway.  A friend has a very slow dsl connection.  Does anyone know where he can download the patch or even if it can be done now without going through Blizzard?  (He also has no active account until the end of the month but would like to be ready to play when he starts).

[Rasix]

Even though I had the background downloader enabled, and enabled it to download while I was playing, it took from 11am until 8pm to get it all.  It's as though nothing was even downloaded at all prior?

I had everything pre-downloaded and had like 700+ mb to go when it finished patching.  Still let me log in, however, and patch as I played.

[Minvaren]

Even though I had the background downloader enabled, and enabled it to download while I was playing, it took from 11am until 8pm to get it all.  It's as though nothing was even downloaded at all prior?

I had everything pre-downloaded and had like 700+ mb to go when it finished patching.  Still let me log in, however, and patch as I played.

Same - but it was 1.3GB after the predownloaded 4.87GB or so of patching finished.   

I'm also not currently subbed, but I like patching things , so you can definitely patch to current without paying for it.

[Xanthippe]

I couldn't do anything until the installer finished at 8pm.

I guess it somehow wasn't enabled?  I really should have checked a week ago, just as I should have read this thread when it was first posted.

[Morfiend]

Quick heads up on the water graphics. If your water graphics turned in to a sort of green blueish mist that looks like crap, set the water detail to low and you will get the old water graphics back.

[Ingmar]

Little surprised at the reports of AE threat problems. I ran HHoR last night and didn't have any trouble keeping the waves on my warrior, although we did use CC there (I always make the dpsers CC at least the hunter).

[kildorn]

Little surprised at the reports of AE threat problems. I ran HHoR last night and didn't have any trouble keeping the waves on my warrior, although we did use CC there (I always make the dpsers CC at least the hunter).

I don't think AE threat is that bad, it's just that caster dps is absolutely stupid.

[Ironwood]

This is a fucking nightmare.

A Nightmare.

[Paelos]

This is a fucking nightmare.

A Nightmare.

Are you have patcher issues too or are you referring to the actual game? I'm just going to reinstall my entire game from ground zero and start over.

[fuser]

Little surprised at the reports of AE threat problems. I ran HHoR last night and didn't have any trouble keeping the waves on my warrior, although we did use CC there (I always make the dpsers CC at least the hunter).

Thunderclap threat generation is gone way down as its damage done is reduced. Things like the vigilance no longer transfers threat to warrior so its no longer useful on overzealous DPS, and I think the passive threat generation from the stance is gone.

What build are you using?

My warrior is 67 with 30 in prot without shock wave and pug DPS can grab mobs if they don't wait for me to generate a bit of threat(which they never do). One thing I have noticed is rend is now a requirement as charge/rend/thunderclap now will rend all your mobs long as you max the new talent Blood and Thunder.

Could be worse, bears swipe is on a 6s cooldown and have to tab target lacerate every mob  

[Ingmar]

It may just be that I have my dpsers trained to not be retards.

My build: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=Doomhammer&cn=Thorgrim&gn=Slap+in+the+Face

I will say I eventually stopped trying to get rend up before my first thunderclap, the snap aggro on the pack as a whole is more important than spreading the rend immediately. That can wait for the 2nd thunderclap. Also I don't think it is worth it to sit on shockwave until you have 3 thunderstruck charges.

[Ironwood]

This is a fucking nightmare.

A Nightmare.

Are you have patcher issues too or are you referring to the actual game? I'm just going to reinstall my entire game from ground zero and start over.

Wife's machine got fucked patching.  Copied my installation over and she works.  This SOMEHOW broke MINE.  So I tried recopying back.  Still fucked.  I tried repair and it said 'FUCK OFF'.  I'm now copying THE ENTIRE GAME across and we'll see how that goes.

I suspect I'm reinstalling from the ground up.  On my broadband that'll take Fifteen weeks.

[fuser]

It may just be that I have my dpsers trained to not be retards.

I will say I eventually stopped trying to get rend up before my first thunderclap, the snap aggro on the pack as a whole is more important than spreading the rend immediately. That can wait for the 2nd thunderclap. Also I don't think it is worth it to sit on shockwave until you have 3 thunderstruck charges.

Try the pugs man. Its insane with every class is going balls to the wall pew pew, mages are by far the worst.

Interesting, i'll have to try it out tonight and thanks for the warning on shockwave I gotta hit 69 before I get the ability back  

Did you play around with DPS on the warrior yet? Looking at some post patch raiding parsing it's really really bad.

edit: fixed parse link

[Ingmar]

No, I've been primarily a tank since release, I just threw an arms spec together and didn't mess with it yet. Arms was bad before, so it would be pretty impressive if it is worse now. I assume you were looking at fury warriors (and your link to the parse is broken btw.)

[fuser]

No, I've been primarily a tank since release, I just threw an arms spec together and didn't mess with it yet. Arms was bad before, so it would be pretty impressive if it is worse now. I assume you were looking at fury warriors (and your link to the parse is broken btw.)

Sorry here's the proper link. Feral/fury just barely above the tanks in damage done while all the casters have shuffled to the top. Melee DPS is severely unbalanced at 80, seems like the post 80 abilities are required to level the playing field (if at all).

[Ingmar]

Well, I don't know if a difference of 5k dps between that fury warrior and the druid tank is 'just barely' but ... holy shit at the casters. Will be interesting to see how it all shakes out as people figure out their new rotations and stuff.

[fuser]

Well, I don't know if a difference of 5k dps between that fury warrior and the druid tank is 'just barely' but ... holy shit at the casters. Will be interesting to see how it all shakes out as people figure out their new rotations and stuff.

Exaggerated a bit there, but other dps is in a totally different league. Compare it to their run a week before, the feral took a straight up 5k DPS hit on the same fight. Same fury took a 6k DPS hit, alas this isn't adjusted for the total raid DPS increase due to the casters.

[Lakov_Sanite]

There's a lot of variables to consider though, I am assuming it's because melee stat allocation has shifted a lot. perhaps they need more hit or haste or crit than before and now they arent geared right for it.

[Ingmar]

I'm guessing a big part of the fury warrior's problem is he can't reach deep wounds in the arms tree right now.

[caladein]

No, Ret Paladins, Feral Druids, and Fury Warriors are pretty much broken damage-wise.

At this point, if you're playing a class that's wildly overpowered, enjoy it while you can.  If not, just write off the next few months.