World of Warcraft: Patch 5.0.4 Expectations and Analysis

With Mists of Pandaria looming ever closer, the pre-patch for World of Warcraft is now deployed on the live realms. This pre-patch, like other expansion pre-patches, will introduce players to features planned for the expansion, but not restricted by the expansion's zone or higher level cap. These generally involve class and mechanical changes to the game. While I could go straight to the patch notes and dissect them, in this case the changes are so broad that I am going to heavily abridge the patch notes to discuss important class (I probably won't go too in-depth here) and general gameplay changes, mostly using material from their July 20th patch notes.

While here is already a guide on surviving patch 5.0.4 that covers many details (which I'll end up repeating to some degree), I'm going to go one step further by using experiences from the beta test to give opinions and additional advice on some changes (I will also make some small updates as I notice things on live that may be inconsistent with the article). With that said, let's get started.

General

In Patch 5.0.4 and beyond, the majority of your character's Achievements, pets, and mounts will be shared with your other characters. Please read: Bringing Achievements to the Account Level, by Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street

While this implementation began as account-bound pets for the new Pet Battle system (this will be implemented when Mists of Pandaria is released), it was hinted there would be an extension of account-bound achievements and mounts. While this does not cover everything (such as PvP-obtained mounts and many other obvious achievements and mounts), a vast amount of all three categories will become usable on any character in the same account.

This means that not only are costs reduced to the point you only need two mounts (as a new player) and you've effectively paid for mounts for all your characters, but you can take advantage of your "collector" characters who hoarded mounts and/or companion pets by using said mounts and pets on any character you want. To find out what did and did not become account-bound, just check out your achievements/the article above or the new Mounts and Pets menu (now separated from the Spellbook, bound to Shift-P).

World Event: Attack on Theramore Isle - Warchief Garrosh, obsessed with assuring the Horde’s supremacy over Kalimdor, launches an all-out attack against Jaina's island home of Theramore. Though valiant Alliance defenders rush to repel the sudden onslaught, they’ll soon find themselves unprepared for the terrible scope of Garrosh's true plans…

This is the special "pre-expansion event" that accompanies patch 5.0.4 for the transition to Mists of Pandaria. It will describe the beginning of the descent into the madness of Warchief Garrosh's lust for war that will eventually climax into the final encounter in Mists of Pandaria (though, unlike in other expansions, the focus won't just be on Garrosh as if he's the main villain). Keep in mind this is a Scenario, an implementation that will become more prominent in Mists of Pandaria.

This will not be available until three weeks after this patch, effectively giving one week to do the event.

Area of effect looting comes to World of Warcraft with this patch. After killing a group of enemies in close proximity, when you loot one of their corpses, the loot window will include items from all of the nearby corpses for which you have loot rights.

AOE looting is something I consider a very beneficial feature. It trivializes the monotony of looting many corpses into a single click. While I am concerned about the impact on the World of Warcraft economy as a result, convenience in doing what is otherwise unnecessary and annoying makes AOE looting a good tradeoff. At first you'll probably be like me and try to loot every corpse in sight, but you'll get used to it.

Battletags are now available for use on World of Warcraft (add/invite players)

Parts of this implementation have been around for a while (since the release of Diablo 3). Prior to this, battletags could be seen on World of Warcraft but it was impossible to add new battletags via World of Warcraft unless you added a battletag using the Real ID "friend of friends." This patch allows the adding of battletags by manually typing in the battletag. You can also see your battletag.

The daily quest cap has been removed.

This is a change to prepare for Mists of Pandaria, which will have an enormous amount of daily quests available. Besides, there's easily over 100 daily quests available for a player to do so if someone really wants to do all the dailies, they'd be hard pressed to finish them all before the day is out.

Cross-Realm Zones. We’ll be rolling this feature out beginning with a few realms at the launch of 5.0.4, and increasing until all realms are included for the release of Mists of Pandaria. If you’re looking to level a new character up before Mists of Pandaria, this feature will have a noticeable impact on the world around you.

This is pretty much an attempt to breath life into some of the lower level zones. I highly doubt they will end up being crammed full of players to the point quests are impossible to do (which, unfortunately, is the fate of the Pandaria zones within a month or so). It may be a little harder to get materials and quests done, however.

All Cooking awards have been combined into a single currency: Epicureans Awards. This means that doing the daily quests in Stormwind can help you buy the Chef’s Hat in Dalaran.

Seems like nothing more than a change to homogenize currency. Those Dalaran Cooking Awards were mostly sitting around anyways, so it's nice to see I can use one type of cooking award for everything now and there's more questing options.

All races will be available in Patch 5.0.4. In addition, the amount of characters per realm has been increased to 11 to account for the Monk class in Mists of Pandaria.

The former change was announced recently and will greatly favor Starter's Edition accounts and accounts below the Cataclysm (soon to be Mists of Pandaria) level. It will give players the option to experience the story of other races they couldn't before and through this sort of sampling, potentially want more of the game. I still think they should lift some Starter's Edition restrictions as well, but I'm not sure if the game (or the community) is prepared for that sort of drastic change. Pandarens will be available when Mists of Pandaria releases for all players.

The latter change is more about quality of life and is meant to fit into the theme of having one class of each type on each realm. It would be nice to have the realm character maximum restriction lifted, but for now I'll take what I can get and just play on other realms for the time being.

Guild reputation no longer has a cap. Guild experience and guild reputation gains increased in most, if not all, situations.

This is a change that took me a while to notice and a friend of mine told me specifically about the guild reputation cap removal. While the guild experience gains were on the beta (starting at 30000 per quest to 60000 per quest), I thought this was to expedite guild leveling on the beta. It appears this was actually the planned implementation for live realms. Guild reputation gains seem to have been increased to reflect this.

 Classes: General Changes

All classes have been updated with a new talent (and specialization) system, improved abilities, and spells (accessible throughout levels 1-85). Your character's talents have been reset. Many old talents have been converted to specialization abilities. New spells are now learned automatically. Class trainers are only needed to change talents, glyphs, class specialization, or to utilize the dual specialization feature.

This is one of the large changes coming in to Mists of Pandaria. It essentially means a specialization is chosen at level 10. Instead of learning talents like in Cataclysm, more specialization abilities will be learned upon leveling up. Talents are more of an additional bit of icing on the cake (though admittedly, some talents are stronger for a certain specialization) and are obtained every 15 levels. Talents are often categorized within each tier. For instance, one tier could have similar offensive abilities or defensive abilities. Not all the talents are active abilities either. For more information, check out the individual class change analysis below or the links above.

I personally like this revamp because not much was lost and talents have been cut down to the choices that we would end up making with the current Cataclysm talent design (i.e. a leeway of a few points).

Mana pools are capped. Intellect no longer increases maximum mana.

This is mostly a change to prevent healers (and Arcane Mages) from scaling exponentially out of control (for healers, I'm referring to mana sustain). While it is essentially a "glorified energy bar" now, I don't particularly mind the change especially since many mana using classes now manage other resources as well.

All characters now take 30% less damage from other players.

This is a change to make PvP transitioning for new players easier (as opposed to being stomped in a battleground for having no Resilience). PvP Power (see below) and Resilience will still make a significant different in higher level player, however.

Prime glyphs have been removed. Major and minor glyphs have been modified, removed, and/or added.

Most of said prime glyphs have been "baked in" to the abilities they modify, since it was generally a no-brainer as to what prime glyphs were used at any given time. The remaining glyphs will often add some sort of vanity or bonus effect that isn't just flat damage. Some glyphs even grant new abilities.  Many of these glyphs are creative in implementation, though I do sort of question why some glyphs are specialization-exclusive.

Classes

In this section I will state what I believe to be the most notable changes to each class and give my thoughts on them and how to adapt, as well as what the class may shape up to be like in Mists of Pandaria. I am only looking from a mechanics perspective, as values can (and probably will) be changed at any time between now and September 25th. If I miss over anything major for a class, please feel free to bring it up (and I apologize in advance if I do), as there's so much to go over.

Death Knights

• Frost Presence has been changed to also reduce crowd control effect duration in addition to increasing Runic Power generation (no longer increases damage done). The other two presences remain more or less the same. Specialization choice will grant a passive that favors the usage of a certain presence.
  
• There will be some unique talents and abilities, such as Death Siphon.
  
• Rune regeneration tools are now in talent form in the 5th talent tier as opposed to being tied to a specialization.
  
• Death Knights now get Corpse Explosion (back) as a vanity spell.

The presence change is certainly interesting and I hope that Frost Presence sees some use since it dwindled into uselessness this expansion. On the basis of the crowd control reduction, it seems to be a good PvP presence to use. Presences will still carry the same penalties for switching but there are ways to alleviate it.

Death Siphon isn't the only cool new ability (spend a Death Rune to drain health). For instance, Death Pact, an existing ability, has seen some changes and no longer kills the Ghoul. Check out the talent trees for some more interesting talents (some of these are straight out of Wrath of the Lich King).

The 5th talent tier is important because it determines what form of rune regeneration, which is one of those "categories" of talents mentioned before. In general I'll probably favor Runic Corruption because I always liked it as Unholy but that doesn't mean it should be the go-to. It is also important to note most rune regeneration tools have been eliminated as baseline abilities (but Empower Rune Weapon will remain)

I like having Corpse Explosion back. It doesn't do any damage, but to be honest I prefer it this way because if it was a damage tool it could determine a Death Knight's performance in certain fights (it was once considered as a talent in the early stages of the beta).

Druids 

• Druids now get a fourth specialization called Guardian, which is divided from the Feral tree. The Guardian tree is now purely for tanking, and Feral for melee damage dealing.
• Druids got some new tools (in terms of talents and spells) such as Ursol's Vortex, which can pull foes in. Other abilities have been renamed or moved around (to become specialization-specific, baseline, or a talent).
• Druids can use Charm Woodland Creature as a vanity spell. They also got some new vanity glyphs for their forms, including a 2-person "mount" stag form.

While I'm not in total agreement with the Guardian specialization, it does seem necessary since Druids are unique because they can have access to all three roles with dual specs. It also reduces the amount of defensive power Feral Druids can have, which means they can be rebalanced in some other front.

Druids have a huge amount of talent and ability (changes) made for all specializations. For instance, many abilities can be cast in forms now (such as Typhoon).  I like this because some of the talents look really fun (like Force of Nature as a Feral or Restoration Druid) and the freedom of form usage allows for a variety of talent choice. In addition, no matter what specialization a Druid is, they can be semi-effective in the other roles based on talents, passive effects, and active effects due to these new changes (or at least more effective than before). Did I mention Wild Mushrooms heal allies for Restoration Druids?

The vanity is what really takes the cake here, however. Being able to have critters follow you for an extremely long time is just the tip of the iceberg for the vanity Druids can get. Personally, I like Stag Form because it provides a shocking amount of utility on top of the vanity effect the minor glyph provides.

Hunter

• Hunters no longer have a minimum range. Ranged attacks, however, can now be dodged and Hunters will need to get the Expertise stat to improve the chance of their shots landing on top of Hit rating  (like everyone, essentially).
• Hunter pet talents have been "removed" and are now a choice of three specializations (Ferocity, Cunning, Tenacity), which any pet can take.
• Several Hunter abilities (such as Silencing Shot) have gone from being exclusive to a specialization to becoming usable by all Hunters either through talents or baseline abilities.
• Hunters can command their pets to Fetch to loot an item from a distant corpse as their "vanity" ability. They can also shoot out Fireworks from their weapon.

A large amount of the Hunter changes pertain to quality-of-life changes such as not having baseline interrupts or suffering from the minimum range issue (for little apparent reason). Now, several expansions later, Hunters are shaping up to be one of the stronger classes next expansion (although putting the Aspect abilities on the global cooldown could be a bit of a damper).

I think having Hunters stack Expertise (considering it's already on many Agility items) is a fair tradeoff as well. It did seem pretty unfair Hunters were one of those classes that could just get 8% hit and then start stacking damage stats. It should also be worth pointing out Hunters can talent healing abilities so there's no more significant imbalance between specializations regading survivability.

One thing worth pointing out about Hunter pets is some of the pet families received an overhaul (some pet families still provide buffs) to bring them more in line, such as Spirit Beasts no longer having a heal. Also, most of the pet talents still exist in some form, but are gotten the same way as specialization abilities.

Also, Fetch is amazing. I hope it triggers AOE looting, but even if it doesn't, it's still a good tool to have since Hunters kill mobs at range most of the time. I also like the free Fireworks shooting ability Hunters are going to get since I'm an Engineer and sink money to use the Lunar Festival fireworks.

Mage

• Mages got a couple new tools, such as a bomb spell for every specialization.
• In addition, several passives, such as Burning Soul, and active spells, such as Deep Freeze, have become baseline. Other abilities are also available to all Mages via talents.
• Armors have been slightly reworked and now grant new bonuses. They require a 3 second cast to prevent quick Armor switching.
• Mages can disguise themselves as someone else for a short time and summon a small familiar based on their specialization as vanity spells.

I like the first two changes. Mages definitely need something to spice up their rotations a bit and having a DoT with some special effect attached isn't a bad idea (especially when judging from the talents and spell list). Burning Soul should've honestly been a baseline passive from the beginning of Cataclysm. Initially I reacted very negatively to all Mages getting Shatter and Deep Freeze. However, when I thought on it some more, I realized the change could be perfectly rational because now all Mages have the same stun utility and passive.

The armors change is somewhat staggering. Armors provide pretty significant buffs now and it'll become a decision (especially in PvP) regarding which armor to use since no one specialization seems to benefit more from a certain armor spell (at the time). Armors also last indefinitely.

The Mage vanity spells are pretty nice. It's cool to be able to change into someone else, as is having a little pet.

Paladin

• Paladins can now store up to 5 Holy Power at 85 through their new passive.
• Paladins have also received some quality of life changes, such as a talent that provides a slow.
• Some changes have been made to the Paladin's kit, such as Exorcism being Retribution exclusive but always being instant cast and Divine Storm being a Holy Power AOE finisher.
• Paladins can kneel down and contemplate for role-playing purposes as their vanity spell.

When I first heard about what Paladins were becoming on the beta I was pretty pleased. I'm glad a lot of the implementations made it through, such as the Boundless Conviction passive. I can't really go more indepth than my improvised descriptions of the updates coming to Paladins in 5.0.4, though I wonder if Retribution will get a Holy Power building AOE (they get Hammer of the Righteous).

Also, having a free Rosary of Light is nice. As I said in the description above, I think Contemplation may be the best role-play tool of the vanity spells so far.

Priest

• Priests have received some new toys for their talents, such as the ability to restore mana while dealing Holy damage or a stronger Mind Control.
• Shadow Priests now use Shadow Orbs as something of a resource unlike in Cataclysm. It is now generated by Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death and allows the usage of spells like Devouring Plague.
• Discipline Priests have received a spell that emphasizes the absorption shield playstyle. Holy Priests have a similar design intent as in Cataclysm.
• Priests can now take the confessions of a target as a vanity effect.

The Priest updates were another set of changes I looked forward to. The talents looked great (although unfortunately Divine Star is now a level 90 talent when it was once at level 45 or so) and the upcoming changes to Discipline, especially the fact Atonement is going to become an option (I personally like healing with offensive spells) without losing too much other strength that the Discipline specialization provides made me glad.

However, some parts of the changes I don't particularly understand too well. For instance, I'm not sure what the switch around for the Shadow Orbs resource system means (Mind Blast used to consume Shadow Orbs).

As for vanity, the confessions seem exceptionally entertaining. While I believe there's a specific set of lines that the target will say, most of them are pretty funny and it might be a good way to get some "WTF" moments out of people.

Rogue

• Rogues no longer have to buy poisons. They are in the Spellbook now. In addition, there are some talentable poisons. Poisons are also categorized in such a way that one damaging poison and one non-damaging poison can be used simultaneously only.
• All Rogues can now access many of the abilities that were exclusive to a specialization, such as Shadowstep or Preparation.
• Dagger weapon speeds have been normalized and thus there will be little to no negative impact of using daggers in either hand.
• Rogues can also disguise themselves (as their pick pocket targets) and attempt to "search" for something as vanity effects.

While Rogues (or as they say) didn't really receive anything too new this expansion, they got some nice quality of life changes. For instance, the poison change helps save on money and is, in general, a lot more convenient as there's no risk of running out of poison. The addition of new poisons (without risking inventory space) is also good. I sometimes wonder what poisons I'll end up running myself.

The ability to get Shadowstep or Preparation as any specialization is a huge step (no pun intended) in my opinion. It really helps to resolve issues related to both Assassination and Combat in terms of their mobility and cooldown management, both of which Subtlety was superior at (making it a good choice in PvP).

The normalization of dagger weapon speeds is welcomed, but I wonder what the impact on poisons may end up becoming.

The Rogue vanity effects (especially the disguises) is a nice touch to the feel of the class in general. It seems appropriate that Rogues would be the observant and witty types, and both these vanity effects match.

Shaman

• Totems have been changed so that long-term buff totems are nonexistent. Most of the utility totems are still around in some form.
• Totem multidrop has been removed.
• Shamans have gained some passive auras in compensation to the totem loss (available for all specializations).
• All Shamans can now access some strong defensive tools through their talents. Some specialization-exclusive abilities are also in talent form

I'm going to miss totem multidrop because it was kind of cool, but I probably won't miss the buff totems because they had a much shorter range than other group buff auras (though it was nice to have a huge array of buffs). I guess with the utility the totems bring (including some completely new effects or glyphs made baseline), having multidrop may be a bit unfair and with the passive auras, no buff totems are needed.

Shamans gaining defensive tools as any specialization is also welcome given how Shamans have had a bit of a problem in that department.

Warlock

• All Warlock specializations have an additional resource, whether it's Soul Shards (Affliction), Demonic Fury (Demonology), or Burning Embers (Destruction). Each resource is used in a unique way by the respective specialization.
• All Warlock armor spells have been removed (but are now passive). Warlocks have also received some baseline and talented defensive abilities.
• Warlock pets are normalized and can be used for utility as opposed to damage (such as Imp for healing). Some talents also modify or use pets in a special way.
• Dark Intent no longer increases haste. It is now a raid buff that increases Mastery.

The Warlock's secondary resources were pretty fun to mess around with on the beta. For Affliction, Soul Shards are somewhat similar to how they work on live and feed the Soulburn ability to empower other abilities. Demonic Fury fuels Metamorphosis and any abilities cast during the effect meaning any spells cast outside of the effect will grant and ever increasing duration on Metamorphosis when it is cast. Burning Embers are gradually generated from casting spells and allow the casting of several Destruction abilities, including the very powerful Chaos Bolt.

The addition of defensive abilities for Warlocks, including a talent that is effectively a PvP trinket on a one-minute cooldown adds a lot of survivability to Warlocks. They also received some new healing tools or changes to existing ones.

The Warlock pet changes are nice and should result in less usage of pet X or Y for certain specializations. Most pets provide the same utility as they did before, though some, like the Imp, got some new tools (Imps can now heal their master).

The Dark Intent change is a bit of a shame since the buff was unique. It was, however, a little unbalanced and had to undergo some changes so certain classes or specializations didn't benefit so significantly that it greatly impacted their damage or healing output.

Warriors

• Warriors have had another rework on the rage and stance system. They no longer generate rage from damage suffered unless in Berserker stance. Battle stance now generates a high amount of rage from damage done and Defensive stance is solely for tanking. Specialization abilities (like Mortal Strike) can also generate rage.
• Several abilities that were once exclusive to a specialization are now talents, such as Bladestorm.
• In addition, some passive effects are now baseline, such as Deep Wounds.
• Warriors get many in-combat vanity effects, such as catching on fire.

The rage rework seems okay. I found I generated most of my rage (even in PvP) from weapon swings as opposed to damage suffered. The fact that the main strike that the specialization learns generates rage is also a winner in my opinion. The stance rework doesn't seem to be too big of a deal, especially since the need to stance dance is more or less greatly reduced (changes stances also incurs a short cooldown now).

While Bladestorm is an easily recognized specialization ability converted into a talent  that any Warrior can get, it isn't the only one. Warriors can now choose how their charge behaves (shorter cooldown, charge twice before incurring the cooldown, etc). Some talents are completely original while others look familiar but have received some changes of their own. As a result, while the novelty of Bladestorming with two giant 2-handed weapons is nice, Warriors can now be Dovahkiin.

I like a lot of the vanity effects Warriors can get even though they're generally exclusive to combat. Some of them are surprisingly graphic-intensive.

Currency Conversion

• Valor points will be converted to Justice points, and Conquest points will be converted to Honor points.
  
• At this time, you will not be able to earn Justice points or Honor points if the conversion puts your total above the cap of 4000 per type.
• Players will no longer be able to earn Valor or Conquest points (bosses will drop Justice, Arenas will be closed due to the end of PvP Season 11).
  
• Items formerly purchasable for Valor/Conquest will be available for Justice/Honor.

As with most patches and the Cataclysm pre-expansion patch before it, currency conversion is now a regular event with each major patch. Until Mists of Pandaria comes out, nothing really changes except for the fact equipment is a lot more accessible (and arenas won't be accessible for easy guild experience). However, once Mists of Pandaria releases, the currency caps will be enforced (4000 for Honor, Justice, and Conquest and 3000 for Valor) and any excess currency is converted to money. Check out the rest of the currency conversion article here!   

Items

Spell Penetration has been replaced by PvP Power on existing items. PvP items have received some stat reworks to make them itemized better for their item level. Resistances have been removed.

All PvP equipment will  have the new PvP power stat that causes players to do more damage or healing to other players in PvP. PvP equipment has received secondary stats similar to PvE equipment but their item levels have been decreased, resulting in decreased secondary stats, to compensate.

The removal of resistances is to account for the removal of spell penetration. This will have significant effects on PvE. It might also destroy the blue cut gem market.

Enchants that modify the gear in your head slot have been removed from the game. This includes older head enchants of every type.

This seems like a change that cuts down on costs for upgrading gear and also reduces reliance on reputations by a bit. Since all classes were using the head enchants and content will likely be rebalanced around the removal of these head enchants, I have no issue with this.

The slot in which ranged, relics, and thrown items were previously equipped has been removed. All weapons should now be equipped in the weapon slot and have been adjusted accordingly.

This pretty much obsoletes a large amount of equipment. Wands, bows, guns, and crossbows will be modified to be stronger because they can be used in the main weapon slot. There shouldn't be any messes regarding wands with 70,000 spell power this time.

User Interface

Buffs have been consolidated in the UI.

This may seem like a redundant change since buffs are already "consolidated" through an Interface option. However, with the change to raid buff design (there are now eight raid buffs), there will now be an icon at the top right that shows all the raid buffs you currently have as well as ones that are missing. I find this to be huge because I am very obsessive about raid buffs since I use them as something of an indicator of whether a player (or players) have an idea of what they're doing (or how absent-minded they may be). There's pretty much no excuse to fail to buff your group now.

A new help system has been added to many frames. You can toggle this on and off by clicking the "i" button in the upper left corner of the frame.

This is something of a "tutorial" for several of the game menu options. Help is always welcomed considering World of Warcraft isn't exactly newbie friendly (especially when it comes to the intricacies of gameplay at higher levels).

Vendors now offer item filtering.

This filtering system takes the form of a dropdown menu at the top of the vendor interface. This allows filtering based on class and specialization. I'm not sure how accurate it is, but it could be helpful to find certain equipment from vendors.

New roll results frame added. This new feature can be accessed by clicking the word "[Loot]" in chat, or by typing "/loot".

With Mists of Pandaria, loot distribution has been revamped a bit. Loot is now distributed to the highest roller but it will always be equipment their class (and specialization) can use. When I last checked, this worked for Mists of Pandaria dungeons, but chances are there's implementations for more content. Maybe people won't be able to "steal" loot in LFR anymore!

Spellbooks have been updated to reflect changes to core abilities, and now include a brief overview of specializations.

Abilities will now be sorted in the spellbook by (accessibility to) specializations (even if it isn't  your current specialization). This means you only need to use one tab to access your spells as any given specialization. Abilities are alphabetized, as normal. There will also be a help tab for newer players.

The character creation screen has been updated to be cleaner and more detailed.

This change makes the character creation screen look a little better and you can now see specific character features and choose between them as opposed to scrolling through a list of character features hoping to find the right one.

Final Statements

The changes that patch 5.0.4 bring are significant. Even given how long this article is, I hardly did the changes of the pre-patch justice. Thus, I highly recommend that you log in and take a look for yourself (even if it's on a Starter's Edition account) to see what kind of changes were wrought. Although it isn't as drastic as a change to half of the game world, the class changes alone are pretty staggering and many quality of life issues were addressed. The game, as a whole, looks a bit neater (though it may cause issues for people with slower computers).

However, because it is a major content patch that alters huge portions of the game, expect addons to stop working, for a start (there are many updates available that I highly recommend downloading now). In addition, with changes like the resistance removal, raiding is going to be very rough, so be careful of that as well. Finally, keep in mind this is a pre-patch and while it might have everything up to the current beta build, there will likely be some significant imbalance whether it's between classes, content, or something else entirely.

With that said, enjoy the pre-patch and prepare to venture into the Mists in a month.