Release dates - Cataclysm and 4.0.1

[Greentitch]

Resto shamans have another healing spell and I have to find a button to put it on! Oh woe is me...

[Commando]

I think the thing to remember as far as tanking goes is that you're not supposed to pull a pack of 10 mobs and hold aggro on them all, and that when you do pull a large group the DPS can't expect to be able to open up with AoE immediately and not worry about their own aggro. In fact, aggro and crowd control are going to have to be something people think about again like they did in vanilla (and to a lesser extent in TBC), unlike WotLK where it was basically something you could ignore for the most part.

On a related note, I find it interesting that the highest DPS rotation for Destro and Demo Warlocks at the moment involves using Searing Pain as a filler, a spell that specifically says "generates a high amount of threat". Obviously doing that from the pull is completely impossible as there's no way any tank could keep aggro off you, so people are suggesting switching to it at 50% immediately after a Soulshatter and balancing it against your aggro level. I'm not sure yet if that was a deliberate design plan by Blizzard or an accident that hasn't been patched yet, though.

[wvdveer]

Servers are coming up! gogo euro tears!

[Beckie]

I didnt get online till 9.45 last night.. mega slow patch download and install speeds. So didnt get much chance to test things out but I picked a spec and went to find a target dummy to try and work out my key bindings and rotations all over again. It took me a while to figure out pulverise the new ability and the cd on swipe and maul :s. Both me and Seth managed to get combo point like abilities (pulverise & Holy power) have they done it for everyone? Initial impressions makes me think pulverise is going to be worse then savage roar - much shorter duration (although I dont think I took the talent points for it - not realising what it was) and the stacking effect of it.. I was only on a target dummy so didnt get the vengence effect but I was only getting 2.6k dps and I have heard comments about tanks doing loads of dps.. so im slightly worried also if vengence has that sort of effect any fights like deathwhisper HC are going to become much harder.

Also wtf at my mangle glyph turning into some boomkin glyph? And Seths ability icons are all messed up.. well Judgement of wisdom is.

[wvdveer]

I didnt get online till 9.45 last night.. mega slow patch download and install speeds. So didnt get much chance to test things out but I picked a spec and went to find a target dummy to try and work out my key bindings and rotations all over again. It took me a while to figure out pulverise the new ability and the cd on swipe and maul :s. Both me and Seth managed to get combo point like abilities (pulverise & Holy power) have they done it for everyone? Initial impressions makes me think pulverise is going to be worse then savage roar - much shorter duration (although I dont think I took the talent points for it - not realising what it was) and the stacking effect of it.. I was only on a target dummy so didnt get the vengence effect but I was only getting 2.6k dps and I have heard comments about tanks doing loads of dps.. so im slightly worried also if vengence has that sort of effect any fights like deathwhisper HC are going to become much harder.

Also wtf at my mangle glyph turning into some boomkin glyph? And Seths ability icons are all messed up.. well Judgement of wisdom is.

They are already implementing some fixes to feral dps so you might want to try it again tonight.. Some classes got a combopoint like ability (priests got evangelism for example). Don't know how it's implemented for druids but for priests it helps a bit with healing/dps'ing but isnt really mandatory for functioning properly.

[Commando]

Yeah, took me until about 9:30 to get online as well. A word of warning if you haven't yet updated - you need about 18gb of free space on the drive you have WoW installed on for the update, though once it's installed you'll get most of that back again. It's used for temp files, and the updater does not check available free space before installing - it'll just error when it runs out of room and you have to start all over again.

I'm still waiting for updates for a lot of the addons I use. In particular Altoholic, BulkMail2Inbox, Grid, LunarSphere, MSBT, Shadowed Unit Frames and Utopia haven't been updated yet. Oh, and neither has RaidComp. I've also finally decided to switch from FuBar to ChocolateBar, so that's going to take some work.

I managed to get four of my characters mostly sorted out with at least one spec and some basic glyphs, but I've still got a lot of spare glyph slots that I can't fill yet. Looks like my Scribe doesn't know nearly enough, despite me thinking I had them all.

And Seths ability icons are all messed up.. well Judgement of wisdom is.

Judgement of Wisdom doesn't exist any more anyway, I don't think? There's a single Judgement spell which deals damage but has no secondary effects, and Seal of Wisdom and Seal of Light have been merged. The remaining seals are Insight, Justice, Righteousness and Truth.

[Commando]

On a related note, I find it interesting that the highest DPS rotation for Destro and Demo Warlocks at the moment involves using Searing Pain as a filler, a spell that specifically says "generates a high amount of threat". Obviously doing that from the pull is completely impossible as there's no way any tank could keep aggro off you, so people are suggesting switching to it at 50% immediately after a Soulshatter and balancing it against your aggro level. I'm not sure yet if that was a deliberate design plan by Blizzard or an accident that hasn't been patched yet, though.

Heh, this just got hotfixed - the damage of Searing Pain has been halved. Guess Blizzard realised that giving a very nasty side-effect to a high DPS spell wasn't enough to stop Warlocks from using it.

[Beckie]

And Seths ability icons are all messed up.. well Judgement of wisdom is.

Judgement of Wisdom doesn't exist any more anyway, I don't think? There's a single Judgement spell which deals damage but has no secondary effects, and Seal of Wisdom and Seal of Light have been merged. The remaining seals are Insight, Justice, Righteousness and Truth.

Sorry Seal of wisdom. It was more that he had the icon of Seal of Wisdom still - but it did something completely different - like Righteousness. And several other icons seemed to of changed - like hammer of something or other. - Im so bad with spell names. I havent got onto my paladin yet only had the time for one char - and yet theres alot of empty buttons on the action bars which I cant figure out what they were..

[Commando]

Yeah, looks like any icons which were from spec-specific spells will vanish from your toolbar. If you spec to get them again, then log out and back in without changing anything on your bars some of them will reappear. Any button which had a macro assigned to it will stay blank though, even if the macro still exists and works.

[ash]

I patched up whilst I was playing league of legends last night. You aren't kidding about the install/update time. think mine finished everything at 9:30 (stage 3)

not logged in tho

[Dave]

I patched mine and Dani's in the morning so it was ready to go when I got home from work at 23:00 last night. I didn't do much though, I just got a single Frost DW spec for Seigfried, sorted out some glyphs (though not all of them are the ones I want for my spec, I'm just too lazy to go make the right ones at the moment) and I tried out reforging just for the hell of it. Then I went to bed.

I like how they've changed DKs (or at least DW-Frosties). I'm doing the same DPS I was doing in raids while trying to deal lots of damage, but with half (or less) of the effort. I don't feel like I'm mashing at my keyboard quite so much anymore, so a welcome change for me.

[Commando]

Yeah, apparently most classes will be a bit less (or a lot less, depending on the class) button-mash intensive. The idea is that if people have a little breathing room in their rotations the encounters themselves can be made more complicated, as people will actually be able to MOVE OUT OF THE FIRE, etc.

I spent most of last night speccing my characters and fixing my UI again, but did manage to run two Heroics as Stilgar. I have a feeling I'm going to need to raid to really get to grips with the new spells though - I'm pulling about 4.5k without too much effort on both single-target and AoE trash, and 7.5k in short boss fights, but I'm not convinced I'm "doing it right" yet. And my gear needs some serious regemming and reforging.

[Vecko]

A word of warning if you haven't yet updated - you need about 18gb of free space on the drive you have WoW installed on for the update, though once it's installed you'll get most of that back again. It's used for temp files, and the updater does not check available free space before installing - it'll just error when it runs out of room and you have to start all over again.

This

Came home from work Wednesday evening, started the install. Went to our house to do some more working there (renovating it atm). Came back home with the happy thought that I could log in and play ... So yah very late before I actually could have a look at all the new shiny things.

Did some instances last night while leveling my druid. Really easy now to heal, 95% of the time I only had to keep a lifebloom and a rejuvenation up on the tank. Not sure whether that has anything to do with me ending up with more spelldamage due to the stat conversion or tanks taking less damage at those levels (or later). Maybe both dunno. Found myself doing some damage to keep it a bit more interesting.

[Juan]

Still patching. Lulz. Not.

[Commando]

Just a bit of advance warning, as patch 4.0.3a will be arriving shortly (i.e. within the next two weeks). Here's what to expect:

What is in:

• Portals in Dalaran/Shattrath Removed
• Class trainers in Dalaran where portals once were
• New race-class combinations (excluding worgen/goblin)
• New Gnome/Troll starting areas
• Changes to existing zones
• New cata load screens
• New cata intro cinematic
• New cata login screen
• New music
• City Quartermasters, with rep tabards
• Bug fixes
• Class balancing
• Druids, paladins, priests, and shaman will have their talent trees reset
• Experience required to gain levels 71 through 80 is being reduced by 20%
• New tamable hunter pets (Monkey, fox, dog, and beetle, as well as new skins for existing pet classes.)

What is not in:

• Creating worgen/goblin characters
• Worgen/Goblin start zones
• Archeology
• Professions past 450 (Illustrious Grand Master)
• Guild leveling
• Guild achievements
• Eastern Kingdoms/Kalimdor flight
• New Zones (80+)

Yes, that means the Cataclysm itself, with the whole destruction of Azeroth, burning of cities, splitting of the Barrens and Dwarven Shaman will be here shortly, and Dalaran will no longer be the central hub for travel. You might want to start thinking about changing your Hearthstone location.

Original post here.