How to make sure you can function with Patch 4.0.1

Byako
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How to make sure you can function with Patch 4.0.1

Unread post by Byako »

I was playing around a bit on the PTR, and noticed certain UI upgrades have effectively made certain addons no longer necessary. This is just a short survival guide and recommendations for all hunters on what to do when the servers return, followed by addons which I feel aren't required anymore.

1. When in doubt, DISABLE EVERYTHING

New patch = at least ONE addon going critical. Since the first few minutes with new patch would be spent playing with new skills and talents, go back to basics for a while to get used to things again.

Afterwards, you can slowly piece together a working custom UI, if you still need it. I recommend looking at Wowinterface's Survival Guide, which provides an alphabetical listing of just about all addons, or the most popular addons. Go through them and select those listed as Patch 4.0.1 or Cata compatible.

1a. If you happen to use custom patch .mpqs for cosmetic reasons (I use several of Andrige's famous Druid reskins to make my Druid alt prettier), REMOVE THEM ALL before the patch download is forced later! It would lead to corruption of the data files that would force you to spend a looong time Repairing!


2. Avoiding the Traffic

Nothing pulls players back like a new DRASTICALLY GAME-CHANGING patch. AVOID high-traffic racial cities for the love of your graphics card! I recommend Alliance to make a quick detour to Darnussus and the Exodar, while Horde should visit Silvermoon and Thunder Bluff. All 4 have easily available hunter trainers (although I'm unsure about target dummies), and none of the laggy mess that the more popular cities would suffer from.

Note! The PTR client gave a different graphical set-up than the current one on Live. As far as I could see, I had noticeably lower framerates even set on the lowest settings, compared to how my low settings work well on Live. This may have been due to the streaming downloader however.


3. Training Time!

You're going to definitely head to your trainers ASAP to get our POKEBALL BELT, holding FIVE FOUR Pokeballs for use anywhere and at any time! Also train up Mastery, and any other additional skills that you may see ;D


3. Glyphs

Depending on whether you did this earlier, try visiting the Auction House ASAP when you logon and buy out cheap glyphs while you can! If you have planned ahead, you'd prolly have bought a few of the glyphs that would have changed into something better after patch 4.0.1. Once Inscriptionists realize how they should be charging a price more appropriate to a permanent spell now, you'd start to see the prices on new Glyphs on the AH start to inflate.


4. Gems

Almost similar to Glyphs, sometimes you might still find reasonably priced gems on the AH just after logon. Gem inflation prices have been predicted as many hundreds/thousands of players might be regemming. For Hunters, this would truly affect MM hunters the most with the change of Arp to Crit for gems. Agi gems so far, seem to be the way to go.

From personal experience on the PTR, it appears Haste at this current stage does not affect our Focus regen greatly. I would suggest going for the more overall useful stat of Agi for now, till we get solid numbers on how Haste would affect us.


5. Reforging!?

Ah, reforging. I admit I didn't test this out on the PTR. The first few things a lot of people would be using this for is probably changing crit, excess hit, or haste on gear into Mastery rating. It's a fairly cheap service (currently just the vendor price of the item itself) and compeltely reversible, so don't get too hung up on it.

My suggestion: Since the removed of Focused Aim, you won't have access to +hit except if you are Draenai, and from your gear. Reforge existing gear to include hit rating until you are comfortably at the cap, and then test out Mastery!


6. The Wild Frontier!

Make your list, check it twice, got to find out which pets are nice! Keep one placeholder pet if you don't want to be alone, but it's time to do your duty to hunt out a variety of pets to fill our MASSIVE 20 stable slots! You finally have the freedom to pick a Pink Flamingo and not worry about how you abandoned a Spirit Beast for it. Cos you don't have to! Not anymore!

I suggest going BM while you're traveling, as it is still the lowest maintainence spec. MM and Survival still depend on procs, and BM gives you access to Exotics anyway, letting you feel your roster to the brim!


7. Putting it into practice


Once you've had your fun, it's time for a little 'work'. Test out the specs of your choice, FIGURE OUT FOCUS, and notice how several of our abilities have changed. Other articles have better explanations of how the new bells and whistles of our class work, so I suggest checking out Scattered Shots column on Wowinsider, and articles on Wow Hunters Union for more in-depth information.

Don't leave the target dummy till you're confident! Then hit the LFG and don't worry about dying because it's also the tanks and healers might not be as prepared for their class changes as you ;p


Short list of addons I feel aren't required as much anymore, or should be put on hold for now

a. Addons that modify Character panel, Guild panel, Arena/Battleground panel etc. - The Character panel has, IMO vastly improved. Overall the new UI would take some getting used to, but is overall providing more functions. Certain addons that are no longer required would be like Examiner that gives the free drag-and-move feel for the 3D character in the Character panel. This is now in the default UI, and very handy.

b. Power Auras - It DOES seem to have a working Patch 4.0.1 version, but you would not feel as unknowing about your procs as compared to before. Blizzard has an in-game 'power auras' set-up now that alerts you clearly to your procs (i.e. Marksman's Aimed Shot proc when it's instant cast, would hover over your head). Enable the default Combat Floating Text and it should show certain reaction states as well.

c. Minimap addons - Would not recommend using any too soon. The minimap was slightly changed by giving multiple tracking options at one time (i.e. Track Herbs AND Track Humanoids at the same time), this might go into conflict with certain minimap addons.

d. Unitframe addons - A bit tricky, your favored UnitFrame addon might be compatible yet on Patch 4.0.1. Perl Classic unitframes appear to be compatible, and for a basic Unitframe with a easy to set-up default option, I'd recommend it for now.

e. Action Bar addons - As far as I know, Dominoes seems to have one of the highest compatibility, since it reuses quite a bit of Blizzard's own code and should be fairly compatible. Bartender 4 is not listed as Patch 4.0.1 compatible as of yet. Please refer to your action bar addon info to check their compatiblity.

f. DPS meters - Recount was working well on the PTR. If you really wish to see the effect the patch has done to you, it's pretty much mandatory.


That's as far as my recommendations go, I hope they were helpful to someone ;)
Last edited by Byako on Thu Oct 14, 2010 1:27 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Royi
 
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Re: How to make sure you can function with Patch 4.0.1

Unread post by Royi »

i like it
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Sarayana
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Re: How to make sure you can function with Patch 4.0.1

Unread post by Sarayana »

Very nice list! I look so very much forward to this. Last thing I did last night was to move all my 80s out of Dalaran in the hope that I can play once realms are back up but... yeah, I'll probably still feel the lag. ;)

I have a tab open with the wow.com reforging guide right now. Haven't read it, but it might be a good place to start when looking for info on it.

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Mockingbird
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Re: How to make sure you can function with Patch 4.0.1

Unread post by Mockingbird »

I can't access wowhead or mmo-champ or anything from here (work lunch break), so this might be a silly question but...

Has anyone made a list of hunter spells that have been renamed, or know any offhand?

I know some have been removed entirely, and there are some new ones, but what about those that just need a re-type of a macro?

For example, can you still macro "call pet" now that it's a pullout, and does it require a different syntax?

Can we still use "/cast aspect of the hawk" or does it need to be /stance 1 or something? (I know we have a stance bar now, but don't know if there's actually a change in mechanics).

Interestingly, if we DO now treat them as stances, we should be able to condition on current stance, opening up new macro possibilities.

(hopefully this is sufficiently on-topic to merit inclusion in this thread)

Cheers,

M.
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Sarayana
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Re: How to make sure you can function with Patch 4.0.1

Unread post by Sarayana »

Mockingbird wrote:I can't access wowhead or mmo-champ or anything from here (work lunch break), so this might be a silly question but...

Has anyone made a list of hunter spells that have been renamed, or know any offhand?

I know some have been removed entirely, and there are some new ones, but what about those that just need a re-type of a macro?

For example, can you still macro "call pet" now that it's a pullout, and does it require a different syntax?

Can we still use "/cast aspect of the hawk" or does it need to be /stance 1 or something? (I know we have a stance bar now, but don't know if there's actually a change in mechanics).

Interestingly, if we DO now treat them as stances, we should be able to condition on current stance, opening up new macro possibilities.

(hopefully this is sufficiently on-topic to merit inclusion in this thread)

Cheers,

M.
Here: http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/201 ... -this-week

If you scroll down, Boub has made a long list of spell changes, organised by class. New spells, removed spells, changed spells. It's all there. :)

I don't know about your aspect question though.

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Kalliope
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Re: How to make sure you can function with Patch 4.0.1

Unread post by Kalliope »

As of the last PTR build, we'll only have FOUR active stable slots and the 20 inactive ones, so the OP might need to be updated to reflect this. :)

Beyond that, this is a really lovely rundown.

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND LOOKING AT YOUR STATS BEFORE REFORGING ANYTHING. My hit % changed on the PTR, so I actually ended up OVER the cap, even without the talent.

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Re: How to make sure you can function with Patch 4.0.1

Unread post by Worba »

One big change to addons is that the old reference

this:registerevent(etc etc)

no longer works. If your addon was sounding off at load time to let you know it was operational... and isn't now... that's probably the culprit. Check and see if there is a more recent version available for download - it doesn't have to necessarily be 4.0 compatible as this: was deprecated a long time ago. Otherwise if you know your way around lua you can replace all of your this: references with frames - that's what I was forced to do with BugMeNot and one other.

FYI.
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Re: How to make sure you can function with Patch 4.0.1

Unread post by Ryai »

Can anyone confirm if DBM is working? I downloaded the updated version and it's stubbornly refusing to work at all for me.


i can't believe I ever managed dungeons before using it.
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Wassa
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Re: How to make sure you can function with Patch 4.0.1

Unread post by Wassa »

Ryai wrote:Can anyone confirm if DBM is working? I downloaded the updated version and it's stubbornly refusing to work at all for me.


i can't believe I ever managed dungeons before using it.

It works, just make sure to download DBM from the main website at http://www.deadlybossmods.com/

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