Patch 5.4.8 Live This Week, Blue Tweets

[chaud]

Skin Spotlight: Infested Tychus

Patch 5.4.8 Live This Week
It looks like Patch 5.4.8 will be going live tomorrow, so be sure to get your weekly Valor cap tonight!

Our friends over at AskMrRobot have a nice tool to tell you which items are the best to upgrade first, which anyone can use with the one week trial or Premium. There are also lots of Flex, Normal, and Heroic Siege of Orgrimmar raids posted over on OpenRaid for this week to take advantage of the new upgrade levels.

We recently looked at how Siege of Orgrimmar progression is going for the playerbase. Everyone being able to earn 8 more item levels should boost that some, and we will take a look again in a month or two.

Item Upgrade Changes

• Siege of Orgrimmar loot and the legendary cloaks can now be upgraded two more times, for a total of four upgrades. The cost of upgrading is unchanged.
• Heirloom weapons from Garrosh have had their item levels increased by 8. (Example)

Valor Changes

• You can purchase Deeds of Valor for 3000 x Timeless Coin from Mistweaver Ai.
• Deeds of Valor won't allow you to go over the weekly / total Valor caps, as they are just an alternative way to earn Valor.

Unofficial Changes

• Gaze of the Black Prince and Heart of the Valorous aren't in the notes, and it looks like how they will work will be announced at a later date.
• The Grinning Reaver is not in the official notes.
• The Warforged Nightmare (Nightmarish Hitching Post) is not in the official notes, but was teased as a mount that is used with friends.

New Icons

New Mounts

New Items
You can see all of the new items on the WoWDB PTR site.

Level	Type	Slot	Name
20	Mount		Warforged Nightmare
20	Mount		Grinning Reaver
90	Consumable		Deeds of Valor
1	Consumable		Nightmarish Hitching Post

New Achievements

Name	Category
Collector's Edition: Dread Hatchling Owner of the Warlords of Draenor Collector's Edition Dread Hatchling pet.	Feats of Strength
Collector's Edition: Dread Raven Owner of the Warlords of Draenor Collector's Edition Dread Raven mount.	Feats of Strength

Patch 5.4.8 Official Notes

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.

Blue Tweets

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)

[moveth]

The only thing I REALLY wanted was the legendary catch up mechanics :|

[Deleted]

Oooh i didn't think they would let that bug mount fly. For some reason i can imagine it without the legs xD. Oh and I didn't expect that horse mount to have that kind of animation when flying, i expected wings but this is something different too ;D

[Ozolus]

How does one get the Grinning Reaver mount?

[Deleted]

With this patch does this mean we won't get the feat of strength achievement for defeating Garrosh before the next patch? I've not logged on for some time but would like the Ahead of the Curve achievement.

[lavafoxx]

With this patch does this mean we won't get the feat of strength achievement for defeating Garrosh before the next patch? I've not logged on for some time but would like the Ahead of the Curve achievement.

No, blizzard will make a HUGE announcement months in advance before doing that. It is the same with all the other things they've changed like that.

[Fenicks]

That was...sooner than I expected.

[TrollShaman]

The only thing I REALLY wanted was the legendary catch up mechanics :|

working on 3rd cloak and i already want this so bad

[Panicbutton]

The only thing I REALLY wanted was the legendary catch up mechanics :|

Indeed, that was what I was looking forward to as well.

[Todd Duval]

Blizzard is really trying to drag out the content. How many people really consider this 'content' to stay subbed?

The timeless coins to VP isn't a positive change to keep subs, since the people who are still playing have a billion coins saved up, and will be even more bored since they don't need to earn valor anymore.

[grexly75]

Booyah for once I actually called a patch release even if it is only a minor patch http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/...age=3#comments ...rofl

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Blizzard is really trying to drag out the content. How many people really consider this 'content' to stay subbed?

The timeless coins to VP isn't a positive change to keep subs, since the people who are still playing have a billion coins saved up, and will be even more bored since they don't need to earn valor anymore.

And bingo there is always one who will complain, at least it is better than nothing at all, and well the VP change is a good catch up mechanic for alts..

[Brewhan]

That was...sooner than I expected.

subs be dropping fast thats why

[grexly75]

subs be dropping fast thats why

Who knows probably the case but will have to wait and see, but they might want to think of something major for filler if WoD is taking longer than they hoped..

And well the immanent release of Wildstar might also have something to do with it..

[Zephre]

The only thing I REALLY wanted was the legendary catch up mechanics :|

Indeed suddenly overcome with annoyance. I suppose it might show up at some point, hopefully.

[Tenjen]

sooner than expected? subs dropping that's why?

its only 5.4.8, it wasn't going to take very long. people are talking like it's 6.0

[Kazuchika]

"At a later date"

This game is going to start hemorrhaging subs and you want to put off more things to keep people interested?

[DizzyMonk]

I was excited to hear about the legendary catch up mechanic because it would finally give me an excuse to use my free lvl 90 boost. I guess I'll wait till WoD to do that.
The item upgrades are nice to have but for people like me that are already 14/14H, how does it help me stay interested in this game?

[Krazzorx]

"At a later date"

This game is going to start hemorrhaging subs and you want to put off more things to keep people interested?

I get your point but Admittedly no one thought 5.4.8 would come out this early. It sounds like they will have some explanation tomorrow about those parts.

[Biggles Worth]

The only thing I REALLY wanted was the legendary catch up mechanics :|

They giving out legendarries these days?

[Some Vanilla Player]

Booyah for once I actually called a patch release even if it is only a minor patch http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/...age=3#comments ...rofl

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And bingo there is always one who will complain, at least it is better than nothing at all, and well the VP change is a good catch up mechanic for alts..

Complain about no content? sounds like something to complain about to me. But if people try to complain blizz responds with "well we are working hard to release the next expansion soon trademark because we say this shit so much, and have no way to justify releasing an expansion with the least amount of content ever, some more bullshit, blah blah blah keep paying for a game with nothing new for another year or more"