Patch 5.0.4 Coming - Tuesday, Aug 28 2012

[Shadowwolf]

If you weren't aware, 5.0.4, the patch that preempts Mists of Pandaria is set to be pushed out to everyone tomorrow (Aug 28th). There are a ton of changes being introduced with the patch that will essentially make this a new game again, similar to the patch released before Cataclysm.

Because of this, I have postponed scheduling any runs during this week based off past experiences with patches this large and encompassing. I anticipate it will take roughly a week to make sure all the bugs and tweaks are finalized, hopefully not longer, and in addition to that time for everyone to adjust to the new changes of game and class mechanics. Add-ons being out of date, server restarts and the like generally plague patches of this size for quite some time and we've also all been party to the undocumented raid bugs where bosses don't behave as they are supposed to making what would usually be a typical routine run into a never-ending run of frustration and wiping.

For those of you like me who haven't really been following the Beta changes all that closely because things tend to change so frequently in development, Blizzard has compiled a generalized list of changes to expect once the servers come back up for play (whether or not that's tomorrow or later, heh).

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/7045643

For those too lazy to look at that page, I'll outline some of the more considerable changes here:

Talents

Talents are changing drastically for everyone once again. This time they are even more radically different than the changes in Cataclysm though. Every class will have default core abilities and you will be presented an optional choice of 3 "bonuses" to your abilities at different levels. These new talents will not dictate what spec you play your character any longer. The concept of the traditional talent trees has been scrapped for this new system.

Glyphs

Glyphs have been also radically changed. Prime glyphs have been removed and most glyphs now will be smaller customizable features of your character and abilities instead of heavily relied on boosts to specs as they have been in Cata.

Gear Currency (Points) Conversion

Valor and Conquest points will be converted as of tomorrow. In most simple terms, any Valor Points will be converted to Justice Points and any Conquest Points converted to Honor. You will be unable to earn more Justice or Honor points if this conversion puts your totals above 4000, however you will not lose any points.

2 Weeks from tomorrow all Justice and Honor points above the 4000 mark will be converted to gold at the following rates:

• Justice - 0.45g
• Honor - 0.35g

All Valor and Conquest point earnings will cease. Bosses will now award Justice points and Arenas will be closed.

Class Changes

There are an extensive number of these for each class so I would strongly urge you to view the blog for a high level overview of the changes that affect you and your alts.

Misc Changes

• Cooking - Recipe rewards from daily questing will now share a universal award currency of "Epicureans Awards". These can be used to buy new recipes from WotLK, Cata and MoP.
• AoE Looting - If you find yourself farming a lot, you will now be able to round up a bunch of mobs, kill them as usual and instead of individually looting every corpse can loot everything in a single click.
• Spells/Abilities Automatically Learn - You no longer have to visit a class trainer for new abilities. Once you reach the appropriate level you will automatically learn the spell/ability.
• Account-wide Mounts, Pets and Achievements - Most mounts, pets and achievements will now be shared with all characters on your Battle.net account. There are limitations and exceptions but more details on this can be found here: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/6413172080
• Daily Quest Cap Removed - You are no longer limited to 25 daily quests per 24hr period and can effectively do as many as you want between daily resets. The quests will still require the normal reset to become available again, however you can now go back and do older content daily quests without eating into current content daily limits.
• Mana Pools are Capped - What the exact cap is right now is unknown but this is supposedly designed to inspire casters to focus on other stats more once they hit a limit so that casters are not 100% about stacking Intelligence anymore.
• Battletag - The Diablo 3 Battletag Battle.net feature will now function within WoW. This will allow you to use RealID features amongst friends without having to use your real name allowing people you share a tag with to see wherever you are logged on within Blizzard's games.
• Head Enchants Removed - You will no longer be able to buy helm enchant items from vendors.
• PvP Stats Changing - Resilience and Spell Penetration have now been replaced by "PvP Resilience" and "PvP Power" respectively. More info can be found here: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/4544194
• Ranged / Relic / Thrown Items Removed - Items typically equipped in those slots for caster classes like Wands and Hunters will now be equipped in the main weapon slot and have their stats increased to be competitive with typical weapons.

Thats basically it for the major changes. Right now without MoP being fully released a lot of these can still be subject to change and reversals as well. Wowhead also has a survival guide with a bit more detail posted here:

http://www.wowhead.com/news=205755/5-0-4-survival-guide

Time to enter a new chapter in WoW =)