Patch 5.4.8 Live This Week, Blue Tweets

Classes

• Druid
  
  • Resolved an issue where Cat Form's movement speed bonus was stacking incorrectly with Warrior's Stampeding Shout.
• Rogue
  
  • Burst of Speed can now be activated to remove movement-slowing effects even if another movement speed bonus such as Sprint is already present (the speed bonuses will still not stack).

Raids, Dungeons, and Scenarios

• Siege of Orgrimmar
  
  • General Nazgrim
    
    • General Nazgrim no longer calls in an additional wave of forces at 10% health on Raid Finder difficulty.
  • Garrosh Hellscream
    
    • Increased berserk timer for Garrosh Hellscream to 25 minutes (up from 18 minutes) on Raid Finder difficulty.

Items

• All upgradable epic quality items introduced in Patch 5.4 (items found in Siege of Orgrimmar and Timeless Isle) are now eligible to be upgraded an additional 2 times for a total increase of 16 item levels.
• Heirloom weapons awarded by Garrosh Hellscream have been increased by 8 item levels to keep them competitive with the additional 2 upgrade levels given to other items.
• Mistweaver Ai on the Timeless Isle next to the Celestial Court now sells a token called Deeds of Valor for 3000 Timeless Coins. When used, Deeds of Valor grants 100 Valor Points to the character, up to the 1000 Valor Point maximum per week.
• For additional details behind this change, please check out the forum thread titled: Gear Changes in Patch 5.4.8.

UI

• UI Add-Ons are no longer able to update a number of CVars while the player is in combat. A complete listing of CVars affected by this change can be found in the forum thread titled: 5.4.8 Changes to CVars While In-Combat.

Achievements

• Going to Need a Bigger Bag is now an account-wide achievement and items obtained by all characters on the account now contribute credit towards completion. This means the achievement can be completed by obtaining all the required items across multiple characters instead of having a single character obtain all the items needed.

Classes
Death Knight (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
why army of the dead be instant? It's so cool when they rise from the ground slowly, it's all about the cool animation.
They still do. The cast is just instant. (Celestalon)

Hunter (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
https://t.co/EEjkCalz3W looks like a ravager. Please let there be a hunter pet version. As a bug lover, I beg you. ;_;
That is the new ravager, tameable in the ravager family (Muffinus)

Shaman (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Dont want to turn shaman into a pet class. Give him another elemental in WoD. Make totally sense -.-
It does, actually. A temporary guardian that you can talent into is very different from a pet. (Celestalon)

What do u think about GhostWolf?Its useless without glyph.Wasnt ur goal with WoD to delete such skills / make them useful again?
Ghost Wolf is objectively not useless. It may not be as useful as you want, in the situations that you want, but that != useless. (Celestalon)
What about tweaking GW to make it more in line with the sprints, blinks, leaps and teleports almost every class has?
That's simply not what Ghost Wolf is. You want it to be a different tool than it is and is intended to be. (Celestalon)

Warlock (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
will felgaurd cease to be the goto pet for demo? Removing brostorm , axe toss and pursuit? Will there be a new cool demo pet?
All of those are currently planned to stay. (Celestalon)
will demo suffer from not being able to sac pets? Or will there be a benefit to pet having increased crit
I'm not sure I understand the question. There's indeed a benefit to your pet having increased crit... it crits more. (?) (Celestalon)
crit for doom is a big part of our damage. Why sac it for pet increased damage? Unless there is a sweet benefit unknown to us
Remember, there's no more snapshotting. Yes, you'll get fewer Doom crits, but the Wild Imps from those Doom crits will do more. (Celestalon)
Its tuning is extremely rough currently, but think of it as -10% crit for you, +60% crit for your pets/guardians. That's big. (Celestalon)
thanks for the quick reply. Us locks thought we were on the ignore list on the WoD info dumps lately XD we have so many ?'s
I keep hearing that, and don't know why. Warlocks are not getting ignored; no idea why some think they are. (Celestalon)

Art
When did Night Elves turn into Vampires? Does this mean a Night Elf with sparkles is from Twilight?
I hadn't noticed before either, but yeah, NE teeth have been that way forever. (Celestalon)

Your fixing spellclutter in WoD How about audio clutter Annoying to hear tons of spells and not dialogue New Slider?
Yes. Same thing to us. (Celestalon)

Character / Items
what happens to asian realms? Does it stay at 2/4 or does it bump up to 2/6?
25-player raid loot in Asian ruleset servers will bump up to a max of 6 VP upgrades, from the previous 4 they already had. (WatcherDev)

Achievements
What will you guys do with the Ahead of the Curve and Cutting Edge achievements? Just curious.
Those will be unavailable in patch 6.0 and not prior, as announced here: http://t.co/l1z3RZ9iPJ (WatcherDev)
Wasn't the original intent of the FoS to do content pre-nerf? This is an obvious nerf directly to SoO.
The intent of the FoS was for doing the content while current. It's still current. (WatcherDev)
Well I'm just recalling when they were first introduced in t14, but I guess it's a different philosophy now
To an extent, though the text of the achievements has always read (paraphrased) "...before the next tier." (WatcherDev)

PvE
Are some SoO fights (Thok prime example) getting tweaked to accomodate the diminish of raid CDs?
Yes. (Celestalon)

This is a gigantic nerf to the difficulty of the content. I can't even fathom what difference 8 raid ilvls will make. Bad move.
It's about an 8% "nerf" that will take effect gradually over weeks. It's nothing compared to 30% ICC/DS. (WatcherDev)

PvP
are gear changes (http://t.co/scRvQTN2qU) being applied to pvp gear as well? if so, what currency will plyers upgrade gear with?
PvP gear will remain as is (no upgrades). PvE Ilevel ceiling will still top out at 540 in Instanced PvP. (holinka)

If gear will scale up to minimum ilvl in BGs, will that minimum ilvl increase each season?
yes it will increase each season (holinka)

With 4/4 upgrades to pve gear coming, that basically reverts what u were doing with 550 prideful gear to make competive in WPVP..gg
I don't think 8 item levels completely negates it but I understand that perception (holinka)
PvE item levels always seem to scale higher than PvP.
Clashing design goals. 4 tiers of PvE & new gear should feel stronger. PvP doesn't want big difference between honor/conquest. (holinka)
As a result we're changing things pretty drastically in Warlords. (holinka)
so you're giving pve players a new goal to keep them in game, what about PvPers what do we get? Any love for us? :3
When we announced season 15, I got a lot of tweets like this one but with PvP and PvE reversed. (holinka)

World
Any chance you'll make the 5.0 MoP rares (Like Krol the Blade) like the Timeless Isle ones instead of being a campers paradise?
Yes, there's a very different sort of gameplay with rares spread across the entire world vs. clustered in a small high-pop area. (WatcherDev)
Something to expect in 5.4.8 or 6.0?
In Warlords. 5.4.8 isn't a content patch, just fixing bugs (and giving us an opportunity to tweak a couple of things like Valor) (WatcherDev)