Cataclysm Digital Sale, Patch 4.0.3/4.0.3a, Expertise Cap, Blue Posts

Cataclysm Digital Pre-Sale FAQ
Originally Posted by Slorkuz (Blue Tracker)

Q. In what regions is the Cataclysm pre-sale available? What day/time is Cataclysm launching in my region?
A. The pre-sale is available in the following regions, with realms scheduled to launch at the following times:

Americas, Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia - December 7 at 12:01 a.m. PST Europe and Russia - December 7 at 12:01 a.m. CET

Q. When will my credit card (or other payment method) be charged?
A. You will be charged on the day that you place your pre-order for World of Warcraft: Cataclysm.

Q. Why do I need to log in to the game once after I’ve upgraded?
A. The first time you log in after pre-ordering, your account will become eligible to begin receiving the Cataclysm data when it’s available. The data will automatically download in the background while you play World of Warcraft or while you have the Launcher window open.

Q. Can I pre-order a physical copy of Cataclysm and have it shipped?
A. Not from Blizzard Entertainment, but many retailers offer pre-orders of physical boxes and Collector’s Editions.

Q. Will a digital version of the Collector's Edition, with the exclusive pet, be available?
A. No. The World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Collector's Edition is exclusive to physical retail copies. The digital version consists of the standard edition.

Patch 4.0.3 / The Shattering Date
Originally Posted by Zarhym (Blue Tracker)

Even though we have a set December 7 release date for Cataclysm, we still want to avoid giving out specific dates for upcoming events and patches in the event we need to shift our scheduling around at all to meet production needs.

I'll try my best here to give you useful information without it feeling like a non-answer. :)

Be patient! If you're really hoping to roll brand new characters once the shattering of Azeroth takes place, I'd strongly recommend just waiting. You'll get a sense soon enough for how events will unfold from now until December 7. I suggest you stick to your main characters for now. Very soon the pre-Cataclysm events will begin and they'll continually ramp up in severity and things to do over time, leading up to the shattering (patch 4.0.3a). You're going to want to participate in these events, as they'll only be around for a short time and will not return once Deathwing is unleashed.

[...] One thing we'll be clarifying a bit better next week is the distinction between what is in patch 4.0.3 versus when the shattering takes place.

Patch 4.0.3 will implement virtually all of the content necessary to make the changes to Azeroth, but those changes will actually take place in patch 4.0.3a, which is scheduled to be released shortly after patch 4.0.3.

Expertise Cap
Originally Posted by Ghostcrawler (Blue Tracker)
Due to recalibrating expertise for Cataclysm, level 80-83 creatures (which includes bosses) dodge and parry less, so you need less expertise, 23, to be exact. Sorry we didn't announce this. I would classify it as an unintended consequence (though not unknown) and not a desired change on our part.

At level 85, you will need 26 again.

Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Current class balance
At 85 on the current beta build, Fury is high. Ret, Feral and the DKs are either close or slightly high. Rogues and Enhance might be a little low. This is how things look this AM and after a few more raid tests and balance tweaks, we might feel differently.

We know not everyone is able to beta raid test, but it is very useful to compare our internal tests and estimations to what players are actually able to accomplish. (Source)

Unique Buffs
Nobody brings unique buffs anymore. It isn't a tenable design when you have 30 different specs and raid groups that are sized 10 and 25 to have 30 very valuable unique buffs. I further question how fun it is to know that you probably only got brought because you make everyone else functional.

[...] A raid leader should bring you because you perform well, contribute to guild progression and are a pleasant person to play with. If your dps is dreadfully low, then it's understandable if a progression-focused leader feels like he or she can't afford a spot for you. The only PvE specs we felt were dreadfully low in the previous expansion were Arms warrior, Frost mage, Subtlety rogue and BM hunter. If we can fix those for Cataclysm then we'll be in pretty good shape and the onus will be on you to be a capable enough raider that folks want to raid with you. (Source)

Insane of the Membrane breaking in 4.0.3
Most of those changes are specific to when the world actually changes (mounts, feats, quests, etc). That's technically patch 4.0.3a. We'll have more information on the distinctions between patches 4.0.3 and 4.0.3a to announce next week. (Source)

Paladin (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Shield of the Righteous changes in latest build
We changed Shield Slam and Shield of the Righteous to do more base damage and scale less with AP. This was to fix a problem where numbers became absurdly large with a lot of AP, especially under the effects of Vengeance, dwarfing the damage done by druid or DK tanks. With these changes, a tank in heroic dungeon blues should deal the same damage with no Vengeance, but Vengeance will have less of an impact.

The coefficient for Shield of the Righteous was lowered from 120% to 60% at 3 Holy Power. The coefficient for Shield Slam was lowered from 75% to 60%. (Source)

Word of Glory
We buffed Word of Glory base points for Holy paladins. We nerfed the Ret and Prot talents to keep it about the same for them. (Source)

Rogue (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Vanish Bug
The only live Vanish bug we know of had to do with pets and guardians still being able to target you. We have fixed that on our end. (Source)

Shaman (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Enhancement
We are seeing Enhancement at about the same dps they were at before at level 80, and are competitive with e.g. Fury warriors, Ret paladins and Unholy DKs at 85 as far as PvE dps goes. As always, it depends a lot on the encounter and the individual behind the keyboard.

If you find that is not the case for you, let us know, but it would be helpful to provide something more than anecdotal information.

[...] From a quick glimpse at some of these parses, the priority of abilities seems fine but the numbers are lower than some of the other ones we've seen. That suggests it could be a gear issue. Mastery is pretty good for Enhancement shaman, and some chose to reforge and regem for it. I didn't go inspect all of you to know if you tried that or not.

We'll keep looking into the issue though.

I am looking at an Al'Akir parse right at this moment with an Enh shaman tied with Frost DKs, Fury and Ret. (Source)

Enhancement and Lava Burst
We don't intended for Enhance to use Lava Burst rotationally. If you hard cast a Lava Burst when you're out of range, no problem. The value of Lava Burst to score a crit will also go down as your natural crit rate rises (at 85; I assume your crit rate is probably pretty high at 80). (Source)

Warrior (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Shield Slam changes in latest build
We changed Shield Slam and Shield of the Righteous to do more base damage and scale less with AP. This was to fix a problem where numbers became absurdly large with a lot of AP, especially under the effects of Vengeance, dwarfing the damage done by druid or DK tanks. With these changes, a tank in heroic dungeon blues should deal the same damage with no Vengeance, but Vengeance will have less of an impact.

The coefficient for Shield of the Righteous was lowered from 120% to 60% at 3 Holy Power. The coefficient for Shield Slam was lowered from 75% to 60%. (Source)
This article was originally published in forum thread: Cataclysm Digital Sale, Patch 4.0.3/4.0.3a, Expertise Cap, Blue Posts started by Boubouille View original post
Published on 2010-10-28 05:03 PM
71 Comments
Comments 70 Comments
  1. mmocc026e927d8's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Myf View Post
    Mine too
    No new login screen =
    Guess we will have to wait until day one for that :P
  1. Wickedpissah's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by superfula View Post
    What part of the post did you not understand? Expertise cap is 23.

    I find it humorous that you'd believe the guessing done at EJ over the actual number given by Blizzard.
    Why is it humorous that he believes the people that have tested against dummies for tens of thousands of swings and not received a single dodge at 22 expertise?
  1. kavselj's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Xelestial View Post
    Maybe if you fail at the rotation or have crappy gear or something...I was doing about 4k-8k in heroics and raids on my Shaman (depending on the fight and whatnot) before patch and her gear was mostly 232 and a few 251s. Now I'm doing around 4-8k.

    At first I noticed a change in numbers, but that was mostly due to "not having the hang of it" and not reforging correctly (Mastery > Crit/Haste) and I had not changed my gems from haste to agility, but that was a player error. Now I'm at about almost the same DPS with a few more upgrades and I enjoy Enhance even more than ever- it feels cleaner. Besides that, this content was tuned with 85 in mind, not 80, and we have not even gotten Unleashed Elements yet. I don't think Enhancement needs much more work, maybe a little more tweaking but it's not as bad as you say.

    Btw, as a Disc Priest I do 2-3k smiting. Is your DPS really that low or are you just immensely exaggerating?

    Sidenote: Yay, I get to reforge another 3 expertise off my Shaman's gear!
    I thought my post was an obvious example of sarcasm. Of course we do better than disc priests smiting. I can easily do 10-11k dps, but compared to other dps classes that is insanely low. Most are hitting 15-16k without a problem. I know this is 80 and we're tuned to 85 and all that, but when Fury (or was it Arms) warrior dropped immensely after 4.0.1 hit, they shortly got hotfixed and are topping DPS meters again. Mages and few other classes were buffed/nerfed. But Enhancement shamans are just... there, untouched. Unless we really improve come 85 they need to fix it.
  1. draxanlee's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Wickedpissah View Post
    Why is it humorous that he believes the people that have tested against dummies for tens of thousands of swings and not received a single dodge at 22 expertise?
    He's a very positive person who finds amusing details everywhere.
  1. Silarn's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by kavselj View Post
    I thought my post was an obvious example of sarcasm. Of course we do better than disc priests smiting. I can easily do 10-11k dps, but compared to other dps classes that is insanely low. Most are hitting 15-16k without a problem. I know this is 80 and we're tuned to 85 and all that, but when Fury (or was it Arms) warrior dropped immensely after 4.0.1 hit, they shortly got hotfixed and are topping DPS meters again. Mages and few other classes were buffed/nerfed. But Enhancement shamans are just... there, untouched. Unless we really improve come 85 they need to fix it.
    I have a feeling that they tweaked the numbers with balance at 85 in mind. The only changes reverted in the beta are the nerfs to mage damage, whereas most other changes on live were also and still are implemented there.

    Thing is, Enhancement is missing a key ability they can't learn yet. So is Arms, for example. Both specs are suffering right now. (The silver lining is that this puts those specs no worse off -- just similarly stagnant.) Fury, on the other hand, is not missing a key ability in their rotation and a result their damage is once again great (though somewhat humorously back to being a bit overpowered; blizz just can't get it right).

    I suppose that just means that Blizz is okay implementing temporary hotfixes to nerf the end-of-wrath OP specs to reasonable levels, but sees no incentive to buff classes that are 'fine' in Cata. Even if that's because of an ability you only get in Cata.
  1. deplorable's Avatar
    "The only PvE specs we felt were dreadfully low in the previous expansion were Arms warrior, Frost mage, Subtlety rogue and BM hunter. " - Ghostcrawler

    With the amount of fixes between cata beta's start (public wise) and now, is no one worried about how Blizzard go about testing and coming up with these "estimate" numbers?!

    in the past they've admitted they've failed (miserably without fixing it and just waiting until the "next expansion", and even in whole talent trees (retribution paladins, for example) and they're still make weird mistakes. I really hope they adapt with their testing abilities, and the numbers they generate are you know tested properly.

    4.0.1 definately wasn't. what was worse is they removed the feedback ability from the PTR almost 2 weeks before it went live.
  1. Laerrus's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by walkingbeef View Post
    ok, if the realms aren't available to play until 12:01 pst (2:00 am for me) can I still be playing LK stuff before that? will the realms have an auto restart? or do they just have to flip a switch and the realms are active with no in-game downtime for people already playing?
    If this launch goes like WoTLK did, expect the realms to go offline early in the evening on the 6th.
  1. Typhron's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by superfula View Post
    What part of the post did you not understand? Expertise cap is 23.

    I find it humorous that you'd believe the guessing done at EJ over the actual number given by Blizzard.
    Quote Originally Posted by Wickedpissah View Post
    Why is it humorous that he believes the people that have tested against dummies for tens of thousands of swings and not received a single dodge at 22 expertise?
    InB4 flamewar over a typo
  1. blackangel209's Avatar
    I kinda fail at time zones, but does this mean that EU is getting the expansion 9 hours earlier than NA?
  1. Wozarib's Avatar
    Local time (IE, realm time) i believe, blackangel209.

    either way, even though the digital download is more £££ I'll order it purely as a matter of convenience.
  1. Lemons's Avatar
    "The only live Vanish bug we know of had to do with pets and guardians still being able to target you. We have fixed that on our end."

    Wow...if this is true then I'm very, very happy. Kind of worded weird...what does "fixed that on our end" mean? Does it mean it's fixed on an in-house build that they'll release later? Does it mean it's fixed now? Does it mean the server-side problem is fixed, but it can still happen because of lag?

    Anywho if they actually fixed the bug with gaurdians and pets ignoring vanish then that would be pretty damn awesome.
  1. Xerganor's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by blackangel209 View Post
    I kinda fail at time zones, but does this mean that EU is getting the expansion 9 hours earlier than NA?
    Yes, it does.

    Cataclysm starts at 23:00 UTC (=Coordinated Universal Time) on the 6th of December in EU and at 8:00 UTC on the 7th of December in NA.
  1. mmoce3a7916bc9's Avatar
    Do I have to un-freeze my account to be able to pre-download the Cataclysm content? I wouldn't want to waste my 7 free days since I'm not playing before I can roll a goblin. :/
  1. bethofwow's Avatar
    Just bought my upgrade. Happy as a clam

    Now, the waiting...
  1. Patrick Niwel's Avatar
    And exactly what terrible parse were they looking at? Frost DK made me LOL. I pull 23k DPS on an Unholy DK and 30k DPS on a Fury Warrior(which are severely overpowered); Enhancement is nowhere near those two. I know Frost Death Knights suck, but I don't know how Retribution Paladins are doing. Anyway, adding 30k DPS Fury Warriors in that sentence is the fallacy. Fix Shamans ya' morons.
  1. Pumps's Avatar
    "A raid leader should bring you because you perform well, contribute to guild progression and are a pleasant person to play with."

    And the autistic can just fuck off, eh?

    ---------- Post added 2010-10-28 at 09:35 PM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Macsword View Post
    Pre-sale at 7 December?!?!
    Pre-sale would be before that for me...
    Thats just a normal sale to me!
    That's not what it says. It says the accounts will be enabled one minute past midnight on December 7th.
  1. TheSauce's Avatar
    So what I would like to know is, will the collectors edition pet come bundled together with the game key like it did for Star Craft 2 (the pet was applied to your acct. when you registered the key on battlenet), or will there be a code on a separate piece of paper.

    I'd prefer to just digitally download the game so I can play right from the time they turn the servers on, and then apply the pet with a code later once the game gets there in the mail. I could then give the extra physical copy of the game to a friend of mine that isn't quite as hardcore about wow as I am. You think with the price we pay for the collectors ed. something like that would(should) be possible. Well, here's hoping for collectors ed. digital downloads sold on battlenet for the next xpac . . . (Blizz there is money to be made here!)
  1. Alianthos's Avatar
    Ok guys, question here.

    When you download this digital version, can you "store it" somehow, on a physicall support ? I mean does this digital version comes as a single file you can burn on any DVD ? Also do you get a Key ?

    My concern is that, say if I buy another computer, well I have Vanilla, BC and WOTKL on physical supports so Installing is easy, but what would happen with Cataclysm ? Would you need to download it again, using the key you received when you bought it maybe ? Or maybe you can just... somehow... copy/paste the whole WOW file on your original comp ?
  1. mosene's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Xelestial View Post
    Maybe if you fail at the rotation or have crappy gear or something...I was doing about 4k-8k in heroics and raids on my Shaman (depending on the fight and whatnot) before patch and her gear was mostly 232 and a few 251s. Now I'm doing around 4-8k.

    At first I noticed a change in numbers, but that was mostly due to "not having the hang of it" and not reforging correctly (Mastery > Crit/Haste) and I had not changed my gems from haste to agility, but that was a player error. Now I'm at about almost the same DPS with a few more upgrades and I enjoy Enhance even more than ever- it feels cleaner. Besides that, this content was tuned with 85 in mind, not 80, and we have not even gotten Unleashed Elements yet. I don't think Enhancement needs much more work, maybe a little more tweaking but it's not as bad as you say.

    Btw, as a Disc Priest I do 2-3k smiting. Is your DPS really that low or are you just immensely exaggerating?

    Sidenote: Yay, I get to reforge another 3 expertise off my Shaman's gear!
    Maybe you someday learn to play and don't challenge players that have been playing enhancement shaman more than 4 years already. The burst in pvp is random so it is not reliable and in pve if you ever done heroic ICC you would see that the enhancement shamans are 5-6k dps behind other hybrid classes. So please do not claim that the old enhancement shaman players don't know to play (I bet you like it now just because you had a hard time before 4.0.1 to do some nice dmg because you failed the priority list)
  1. Idras's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by TheSauce View Post
    So what I would like to know is, will the collectors edition pet come bundled together with the game key like it did for Star Craft 2 (the pet was applied to your acct. when you registered the key on battlenet), or will there be a code on a separate piece of paper.

    I'd prefer to just digitally download the game so I can play right from the time they turn the servers on, and then apply the pet with a code later once the game gets there in the mail. I could then give the extra physical copy of the game to a friend of mine that isn't quite as hardcore about wow as I am. You think with the price we pay for the collectors ed. something like that would(should) be possible. Well, here's hoping for collectors ed. digital downloads sold on battlenet for the next xpac . . . (Blizz there is money to be made here!)
    If all the previous WoW Collector's Editions were an indicator (with the exception of TBC perhaps, where they messed this up in Europe), the game key included in the box will upgrade your account straightaway to a Collector's Edition account; there will not be any separate code really.
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