The End of the World of Warcraft is Nigh: Patch 4.0.1

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The End of the World of Warcraft is Nigh: Patch 4.0.1

Post by darkjedi @ 09:23am 12/10/10 | 59 Comments

Tonight heralds the beginning of the end, with Blizzard announcing that patch 4.0.1 for World of Warcraft is to be rolled out on live servers. This patch brings with it new talent trees, class combinations, changes to the raid system and more, along with a continuation of the Cataclysm prologue storyline. If you're keen to read up more until Blizzard posts the official patch notes, head over to MMO-Champion's summary of what to expect in 4.0.1 for a fairly comprehensive look at the changes (including an all-new Talent Calculator!).

Goblins, Worgens, the ability to level to 85 and the other brand-new content won't be implemented until the next expansion ships on December 7th.

You can find the pre-load data for the patch here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. To use them, copy the files directly into the Updates folder of your WoW installation and run Blizzard Downloader which will check them and resume if required.

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DK
Posted 10:12am 12/10/10

You can only build into one talent tree? Or is it just the mentioned site...

Edit: You have to have a certain amount in one talent before you can go into the next?

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darkjedi
Posted 10:35am 12/10/10

Basically that's how it goes. You have to goto 31 points in a specific tree before the other two are opened up. This is to ensure people aren't getting confused and ending up with some sort of bastard hybrid build while levelling (going half way down the Prot & Holy tree if you're a pally etc and being somewhat useless). They've also set it up so each tree tells you bluntly what it's for and what special features it has (plus what the Mastery rating does for the tree). It's much, much easier than the current bastardised 81 point situation we've got now.

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DK
Posted 11:06am 12/10/10

Yer looks nice. You'd think it be much simplier for the devs to balance the classes too.

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Sc00bs
Posted 11:09am 12/10/10

sounds like a fun few days to that hog hahaha

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Hogfather
Posted 11:15am 12/10/10

sounds like a fun few days to that hog hahaha

I did it once for about 18 months worth of patches after reinstalling from the disc - it took the better part of an afternoon. No way I'd do it again ><

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darkjedi
Posted 11:30am 12/10/10

As I discovered from the last WoW thread, you only need to install the Wrath dvd now as it contains the entire game client + patches to 3.x. Takes a lot less effort from that point to get to current.

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Thundercracker
Posted 11:31am 12/10/10

Hopefully the new steaming client should relieve the pain of patching.

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Eorl
Posted 11:38am 12/10/10

Hopefully. I just wish they'd get better servers. Downloading patches at <1mb is just pitiful, especially with my 8mb+ connection.

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TicMan
Posted 11:40am 13/10/10

Does anyone know if those patches are cross platform or Windows only?

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TicMan
Posted 02:24pm 13/10/10

The answer is yes, they can also be used for Mac.

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Jim
Posted 03:08pm 13/10/10

just ran a few heroics, HoR, halls of lightning etc on my dk tank after respeccing and sorting my stats, not seeing any aoe agro issues yet, even with owls cutting sick with hurricane and starfall

only issue is I can no longer reduce the cooldown on death and decay to 15 seconds from 30, so it's not ready for every pull - apart from that it's mostly unchanged for that toon

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TicMan
Posted 03:22pm 13/10/10

Jim - hurry up with your priest build & rotation so I can steal it.

THANKS!

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Jim
Posted 03:31pm 13/10/10

:) might not get time to mess with priest and druid, pretty busy atm packing up for going o/s on saturday

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defi
Posted 03:40pm 13/10/10

God Damn,

Now I am going to have to play again.

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Eorl
Posted 04:22pm 13/10/10

So, how much has Prot Pally changed? Cause I'm coming back to a friends newly formed guild and I have the choice of being main healer or main tank. So, are they as sustainable now? Are we still the most reliable main tank?

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Khel
Posted 04:54pm 13/10/10

Priest is awesome, healing melee and tanks by smiting the boss, while penancing the tank (cos smiting makes your penance cool down quicker too) and shielding people when they need it. It seems to favour more reactive shielding and shielding when its needed rather than just shield spamming now, pretty fun.

I've got a holy spec too, but haven't tried it yet, though it does seem like it should be pretty cool, the whole Chakra thing has turned into something pretty awesome, along with the mighty moprhin Holy Word: Chastise.

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TicMan
Posted 04:56pm 13/10/10

Well some negative nancies already;

- My jeweller gems now only match a color socket instead of all so I lost my meta bonus
- Some of my enchants have gone

Some cool things;

- Much nicer UI
- Talents are easier to work out

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gamer
Posted 05:05pm 13/10/10

I was 5 fucking badges off having enough badges to get all 4 heirloom items for the new shaman i want to roll for cataclism last night...

Then this fucking patch comes along and converts my badges to 'justice points' and now i dont even have enogh for a SINGLE gucking heirloom.

So pissed off. The fucking heirlooms cost x5 more then Tier 10 for fuck sake? Yet all the forum shit i read is saying 'thats the way its meant to be - since the heirlooms goto 85, but the xp cuts off at 80 now'

Oh hey... WE DONT HAVE 85 YET!!! WHY THE FUCK UP THE PRICE TO LEVEL 85 COSTS???

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defi
Posted 05:11pm 13/10/10

Fucking 600kbs off Gamearena - FML

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Eorl
Posted 05:34pm 13/10/10

Anyone know of a newsgroup link for these patches?

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TicMan
Posted 05:36pm 13/10/10

3FL has them if you're on Westnet/iiNet .. or even if you're not.

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Eorl
Posted 05:52pm 13/10/10

Faster then the 281kb/s i'm getting at uni? -_-

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DM
Posted 06:17pm 13/10/10

Only played around on my rogue so far, and he is Lv 30 so here are my thoughts

- Assassination spec now seems to be the new combat leveling spec. Holy fuck does it kill fast. I can kill mobs quicker than they can cast a 2.5 sec spell

- Instant poison on main hand procs nearly every single hit. Kick ass.

- Recouperate heals between 50 and 100 a tick for me, refreshing once mob dies thanks to a leveling ability. Hello constant full HP.

- Using combo points on a dead target? Jebus christ! Have 4 CPs on a corpse and low on HP? No worries!

- Talent change is awesome as is the glyph change, which now acts like a spellbook of glyphs you know rather than them being usable and loseable items. Bout time.

- Tooltips changed to be clearer, and they no longer display damage.

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Eorl
Posted 06:19pm 13/10/10

-_- switched to 3FL, and starts downloading at 20 mb/s. FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF could of saved myself hours.

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Jim
Posted 06:24pm 13/10/10

I bought al the various heirlooms a while back, then started stockpiling triumphs - I logged in today and my 1300 triumphs on my dk had converted to 15,000 JP - fat loots

spent it all on t10/10.5 gear for dps off spec, then brought it down under the 4k soft cap buying epic gems and now I can earn more points again

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Crakaveli
Posted 06:26pm 13/10/10

I was 5 fucking badges off having enough badges to get all 4 heirloom items for the new shaman i want to roll for cataclism last night...

Then this fucking patch comes along and converts my badges to 'justice points' and now i dont even have enogh for a SINGLE gucking heirloom.

So pissed off. The fucking heirlooms cost x5 more then Tier 10 for fuck sake? Yet all the forum shit i read is saying 'thats the way its meant to be - since the heirlooms goto 85, but the xp cuts off at 80 now'

Oh hey... WE DONT HAVE 85 YET!!! WHY THE FUCK UP THE PRICE TO LEVEL 85 COSTS???

Let me guess, you're "this close" to quitting again?

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Khel
Posted 06:29pm 13/10/10

Since grid is broken I've been using the built in raid UI and its actually pretty sweet now, its almost grid built into WoW. Shows health, mana, buffs, debuffs, incoming heals, aggro, etc all in the boxes, which are resizeable length and width wise. You can also throw down markers now which is fucking AWESOME. Five different colour smoke flares you can use to mark collapse points and such for fights, about time tbh. No more having to mark stuff with warlock teleport circles.

Shame the built in unit and party frames are still shit and lacking options though.

New guild UI is pretty sexy too, being able to see everyone in your guild classified by profession is nice, and the UI to manage guild permissions has gotten a long overdue overhaul. Can rearrange guild ranks now and re-order them without having to spend an hour fucking around demoting and promoting people to the new ranks.

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Thundercracker
Posted 08:06pm 13/10/10

1300 triumphs

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TicMan
Posted 08:16pm 13/10/10

Haha Khel, I logged in and hit O to see who was online and no guild menu .. thought I was gkicked :(

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Eorl
Posted 08:38pm 13/10/10

Ohhhh fuck you guys :( Still need to download part 4 through launcher, and renew account with some subscription.

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gamer
Posted 08:45pm 13/10/10

Well i fucking hate what they did with paldins. Seriously, giving them combo points is stupid. And with only one attach to generate them 100% of the time on a 3second cooldown.

Sure ret paladins needed some toning down on their front loaded dmg, but having a 9second ramp up time is stupid, i cant even read 3 combo points before im dead in bgs usually. Near 1400 resil as well Zzz.

The combo points work okay for holy but are shocking for ret/prot (especially prot). They gave paladins a interupt, but only to ret, prot missed out - who needs it just as much, for moving spell casting mobs Zzz.

Threat has been reduces, witch makes tanking fun again.

Mages seam to be ice lancing me for 10-12,000k crits. Which is amazing, since even as prot spec, they can kill me in about 8 seconds, thats 4-5 ice lance crits.

We also have a mage in our guild who posted a screenshot of himself hitting someone for 46,000 dmg, using only arcane power and his Teir 10 set bonus (+10% dmg i think?). No other buffs (trinket was up though), so i dont know whats with that.

Overall the damage is completly out of control for this 'bracket'. Its obvious they only looked at 85 when they did this.

Most healers are unkillable. I was wailing on this shaman with a arms warrior and a death knight and we couldnt kill him, found that quite infuriating.

Rogue, mage hunter all play very well... im pretty happy with them all, warrior is nice to.

Priest are really fun now for both pve and pvp as shadow or holy/disc.

Ive heard alot of people say death knights have been buffed, but they dont seam that dominate compared to mages.

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Sover
Posted 09:28pm 13/10/10

Well i fucking hate what they did with paldins. Seriously, giving them combo points is stupid. And with only one attach to generate them 100% of the time on a 3second cooldown.

Learn to play I've found no issues tanking as a paladin.

Druid tanks have been fucked over hard with AoE aggro due to swipe being on a 6 second cooldown, we have pulverize which is basically a big hit which removes lacerate stacks, but the best part is glyph of maul hits 1 additional target and does 50% less damage to that target.

Warrior tanks is a bit iffy due to the less of mocking blow but other than that I have found no issues so far.

But my main beef is with druid tanking they have fucked it hard and for no reason even the talent tree for feral supports Kitty spec rather than bear.

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Thundercracker
Posted 11:40pm 13/10/10

After installing the patch, the launcher decides I need to re-download 13 or so gig of content using the streaming downloader. Bizarro.

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eXemplar
Posted 12:08am 14/10/10

Herp derp why is content not balanced at 80 in an 85 patch?!?!?!

Shame the built in unit and party frames are still shit and lacking options though.

Just turn on use raid frames for party.

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Enska
Posted 12:47am 14/10/10

yah I thought the raid frames were nice

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Jim
Posted 02:03am 14/10/10

got disc priest sorted, lame delay between bubbles now but not the end of the world
aoe bubble is also nice, so is evangelism/archangel

and I notice recount now pulls bubbles into heals finally, so dumb pug raids can see how awesome I am instead of seeing only the piddly disc heals

then after that I went to do my bear/owl only to hit a bug with not being able to train insect swarm, which was apparently rampant on PTR months ago and still made it into this release, failcakes

apart from a bit of bugginess here and there I'm liking these changes a lot so far, across 3 toons with dual spec

and shit, reforging is the fucking bomb

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Rukh
Posted 02:07am 14/10/10

Here was our raid tonight.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-s0zhmbpbx967odck/

I'm Delmortis.

last edited by Rukh at 02:07:18 14/Oct/10

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Nerfington
Posted 02:51am 14/10/10

Here was our raid tonight

So.. much... detail...

I'm sort of impressed how WoW at least tends towards brain'ing.

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pARODY
Posted 03:01am 14/10/10

Overall the damage is completly out of control for this 'bracket'. Its obvious they only looked at 85 when they did this.

Yep. That's exactly what they did. They admit doing so as we're going to be waiting about 5-6 weeks like this. They sort out all the rotation focused bugs with a full crowd instead of the beta guys who are all pro/hardcore and usually just follow what some forum says.

Instance leveling my holy priest today from 30-37 in about 14 instance runs. Healers get all the runs ;]

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Reverend Evil�
Posted 03:45am 14/10/10

Cant believe how easy it is to heal with priests. Got mine specced disc and I have 38000 mana and I've never gone close to losing half of that. Everyone is so fucking OP it's not funny.

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Khel
Posted 04:16am 14/10/10

aha Khel, I logged in and hit O to see who was online and no guild menu

Haha, I was pressing O all night, even when I knew the guild menu was on J, its 5 years of habit :(

Same as I'm used to pressing shift+B to open all bags, and now they've changed it so Shift+B opens your backpack and B by itself opens all bags, I can't fucking get used to that either. Seems retarded why they'd even bother changing that around.

The combo points work okay for holy but are shocking for ret/prot (especially prot).

I dunno, we tanked heroic icc tonight fine with a prot paladin, and he had no trouble. Speaking of paladins, that new heal they got looks sweet as, I dunno what its called, its the one thats like a "cone of heal", looks like a laser light show coming out of their hand.

and I notice recount now pulls bubbles into heals finally, so dumb pug raids can see how awesome I am

Yeah, this fucking rocked, actually topping heals as disc for a change. And yeah, evangelism is pretty sweet. I was trying to do an attonment type build, with the healing through smiting and penance and shields in between, but my smite just isn't hitting quite hard enough to do big enough heals. Need that talent from shadow that turns spirit into +hit so my holy fire hits, then get the glyph that makes smite do 20% more on targets with holy fire, that should give a tidy little bonus to the smite healing. Its nice that the smiting also brings down the penance cooldown though, get some mad penance spam going. I haven't tried a disc spec based around shielding and then using heal to bring down the weakened soul debuff so you can shield again, might try that next.

I ended up spending most of the night as holy though, holy is just off-the-motherfucking-hook now. Chakra is way more of a game-changer than I was anticipating, its like stances for priests, I didn't use the renew chakra heaps, but the aoe one was the fucking bomb on heroic festergut, and the heal one let me single heal and keep up both tanks on rotface and princes. Makes the whole thing feel so much more dynamic, i'm loving it, even though I had to completely rearrange how I had my spells laid out on my action bars to make sure all the new stuff is accessible and to fit the new heal in, so I'm constantly pressing the wrong buttons (like casting greater heals when I'm trying to cast renews), was getting more used to it by the end of the night though. And I even used lightwell! It heals for a fucktonne now!

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Rukh
Posted 11:24am 14/10/10

Enjoy it while it lasts (assuming no big balance changes). On Beta with the extra mana costs etc., Priests are pretty woeful healers as they simply lack both throughput and especially, regen.

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Jim
Posted 12:19pm 14/10/10

I think it's highly unlikely there would be any balance changes, it's a much better idea that priests would become woeful healers

no wait, the other thing

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Rukh
Posted 01:26pm 14/10/10

Just going off what it's currently like on Beta heh.
Of course they'll fix things eventually. But there have certainly been times in the past where such balance fixes have been....delayed is probably the best way to call it.

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glynd
Posted 01:36pm 14/10/10

Cant believe how easy it is to heal with priests. Got mine specced disc and I have 38000 mana and I've never gone close to losing half of that. Everyone is so fucking OP it's not funny.

this happens with every expansion though.

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Jim
Posted 01:47pm 14/10/10

well I hope they're not relayed too long rukh, for YOUR sake!

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gamer
Posted 02:28pm 14/10/10

having loads of fun on my hunter/mage, they seriously nailed those classes.

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Valtello
Posted 02:44pm 14/10/10

man my mage is out of control now 30k dps now fucking insane

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DM
Posted 02:47pm 14/10/10

Hunter thoughts

- BM raiding spec again! ABOUT FUCKING TIME. I can do the most dps with this spec than what I can any other and i'm loving it. Already saved a rather bad Ony 10 man with my Ancient Hysteria, corehound bloodlust.

- Having a massive pet stable now means you can get 1 of everything to no longer really limit the pets you really want, with others that the raid/group may need instead.

- Focus is a bit strange but is 100x better than mana.

- All my ArP gear turned to crit and haste, which means in BM spec I now have 50% crit and like 23% haste haha. Awesomesauce.

Warlock thoughts

- Demo spec is all i've tried and i'm sold. I don't need to try any other as this is just so awesome. Bane of Doom is awesome and the fact it can summon demon imp helpers is so cool. Having only 1 or 2 DoTs to worry about keeping up helps you blast away with shadow bolt or incinerate.

- Hand of Gul'dan is awesome too, specialy how it refreshes your immolate. That's cool as shit.

- Felguard is now a god damn beast! Whirlwind, 4 second ranged stun, short dash type speed buff... Is there anything this monster can't do now?

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Jim
Posted 07:37pm 14/10/10

haha I was laughing my ass off when I saw obes's felguard bent at 90 degrees doing that whirlwind animation

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