What changes in the patch

[Poisonenvy]

 

"Read More" to see further information, including patch notes and changes to the garrison - and what you should do before the patch hits!!

 

[Poisonenvy]

Blizzard Watch posted a quick guide on what to do to maximise your gold income from the garrison now, before the patch hits:

With the Legion pre-patch dropping tomorrow, there’s something you should know: Your garrison becomes worthless. No, no, that’s not quite true — but many sources of gold tied to the garrison are going away. The first change, of course, is related to garrison missions themselves. Missions will no long reward gold for completion. If you’ve spent this expansion with an Inn and a legion of Treasure Hunting followers, they can’t help you anymore. There’s nothing you can do about that. However, if you act today, you can cash out before other changes go into effect.

 

Garrison Resources

If your primary pursuit with your garrison is gold, your Garrison Resources will effectively lose all value in tomorrow’s patch. There’s a caveat here, though: Your server’s local economy will ultimately determine the value of resources post-patch, but generally speaking, the price of trade goods are hitting rock bottom across the board. If trade goods such as ore, herbs, leather, fur, and so forth still have value on your local economy, head to a garrison Trading Post and trade in as many of your resources as possible for whatever seems like the best trade. However, if trade goods are indeed worthless on your server so late in the expansion, the Trading Post currently offers a baseline value for Garrison Resources.

For every 50 Garrison Resources, you can purchase a Smuggled Sack of Gold which will yield an average of 15 gold. If you’re liquidating a full cache of 10,000 Garrison Resources, the Smuggled Sacks of Gold will yield a total of roughly 3,000 gold. It isn’t a lot, but it’s better than nothing, and this trade goes away with tomorrow’s patch. If trade goods do indeed still sell on your server, I recommend investigating which will yield better profits — a last minute exchange for trade goods, or a direct conversion to gold.

If you’re buying Smuggled Sack of Gold en masse, the purchase confirmation window is going to get annoying fast. Use this macro to automatically select “Yes” after clicking to purchase a bag:

/click StaticPopup1Button1

Or, to remove a step from the purchasing process completely, use this one:

/run BuyMerchantItem(27,1)

With that macro, simply mash the action bar button upon which you’ve placed it until you’ve run out of resources. And once your bags are full of small, jinglier bags, you can use this macro to open them:

/use Smuggled Sack of Gold

Primal Spirits

The Garrison Resource trade going away in the patch is a sure thing, but this particular trade is up in the air. It seems like a prime candidate for elimination, yet it remained in place on the PTR. Personally, I’ve leaned toward better safe than sorry, and I’ve cashed in.

Primal Spirits themselves aren’t going away, and neither are the trades at the Primal Trader. If you’re planning on continuing to craft gear from Warlords of Draenor content, you’ll want to hang on to your Spirits. However, if you want to leave Warlords behind you, we recommend converting your stockpile of Primal Spirits to Savage Bloods. Every 25 Primal Spirits will yield one Savage Blood. Take your Savage Blood over to a Trading Post, and for every Savage Blood, you can purchase a Bloody Gold Purse which yields an average of 50 gold per bag.

When you break it down, this means a single Primal Spirit has a baseline value of 2 gold. Keep that baseline in mind when liquidating your Primal Spirits. It’s possible your local economy will provide a more valuable alternative, but given items such as Sorcerous Fire are barely valued above their vendor price on most servers, the patch of Primal Spirit to Savage Blood to Bloody Gold Purse will be your best bet. Plus, it doesn’t involve any auctioning at all.

This trade, throughout the latter half of Warlords of Draenor, kept the auction value of Savage Bloods at a baseline of around 50 gold, because that was essentially the vendor value. If this trade goes away, the value of Savage Bloods themselves is apt to bottom out in the month leading up to Legion. If you have any Savage Bloods kicking around, now is the time to get rid of them, whether you got them from Primal Spirits or not. And if this trade doesn’t go away … stalk the auction house until the end of your days for Savage Blood priced below 50 gold, because you can make a guaranteed profit.

Salvage Crates

Most people I know who’ve been stockpiling Salvage Crates are doing so with the wardrobe in mind — waiting to reap those sweet, sweet cosmetic greens. Inventory space is hard to come by until Tuesday’s patch and there’s simply nowhere to store the sheer number of items which pop out of salvage. And though all crates received after the patch will be greatly nerfed, any currently held crates will remain the same. So no reason to open them until Tuesday, right?

That depends on how much you love gold and how well you can juggle inventory. Pre-patch Salvage Crates yield follower gear such as Balanced Weapon Enhancement. In the current game, all follower gear sells to vendors for between three and eight gold each. After the patch, follower gear will only be worth copper. If you have any way of storing the excess gear for 24 hours (such as mailing all of it to an alt), pop those crates open tonight for hundreds (or potentially thousands) of gold which won’t be there after the patch.

Follower equipment

Yes, we just mentioned follower gear, but I want to reiterate the point for people who may have been sitting on stacks upon stacks of the stuff. If you don’t want to keep your follower gear, whether they be set pieces which boost to 615/630/645 or items which add 3/6/9 ilevels, vendor it today. If you wait until tomorrow, all of those items will lose so much value you might be better off throwing them out of your bags than walking to the nearest vendor.

Champion’s Honor

If you have any Champion’s Honors kicking around, use them or sell them as soon as you’re able. Come Tuesday’s patch, they will be converted to a grey item worth 25 gold at vendors. Given how little time you have before the patch hits, finding a buyer on the auction house might be tough. And if you don’t PVP, you might not have any use for Honor or Conquest points. That being the case, maybe don’t use it — 25 gold is 25 gold, right?

Overall, unless you have a truly monumental stockpile of some of these items, liquidating your garrison isn’t likely to make you a mint — but you’ll probably be a few thousand gold richer than you would’ve been otherwise. If you’re planning on liquidating a veritable legion of alts, give yourself more time to do it than you think you’ll need. Opening hundreds of Salvage Crates or exchanging thousands of resources for gold can be tedious and time-consuming. If you only give yourself an hour of gametime but need to go through the process on a dozen different alts, it’s just not going to work out in your favor.

[Poisonenvy]

World of Warcraft: Legion Pre-Expansion Patch

New Transmogrification Collections System: Appearances

• New Collection tab: Appearances
• Unlock new appearances by collecting Soulbound weapons and armor your character can equip.
• Unlocked appearances are account-wide and usable for transmogrification by other characters that can equip the item.
• When first logging into a character after Patch 7.0, the appearances of appropriate items in your bags, bank, and Void Storage are learned automatically. Additional appearances will be unlocked based on previously-completed quests.
• Transmogrifiers located in most major cities have been improved with additional features.
  • Got a look that you like? Save the entire transmogrification set as an outfit. Create and swap between outfits at the Transmogrifier.
  • Additionally, transmogrifications can now be associated with your current specialization. Your outfit automatically changes when switching specializations if you so desire.
  • Added a new option to hide shoulders.
  • The option to hide helmets, cloaks, and shoulders has been moved into the transmogrification system.

Revamped PvP Progression and Honor System

• The PvP Reward System will now provide appropriate items for players level 100 and below.
• Honor Points and Conquest Points have been removed as a currency.
• Items that were purchased using Honor or Conquest are now available for purchase with Marks of Honor that can be earned from Battlegrounds, Arenas, and Skirmishes.
• Learn more about upcoming PvP changes in our Legion PvP Preview.

Equalized PvP Gear

• Gear has been normalized in PvP combat. Characters entering a Skirmish Arena, Battleground, Rated Arena, Rated Battleground, or Ashran now receive an aura called Principles of War.
• Principles of War removes all stats gained from gear (Strength, Stamina, Haste, etc.), disables gear related bonuses (like trinket effects and set bonuses), and gives the character stats based on their specializations, and increases based on overall item level. The goal is to provide a much more finely tuned and balanced PvP experience.

Arenas

• The pennant attached to the back of characters now changes its appearance based on the player’s best rating in the Arena bracket.
• The 5v5 Arena bracket has been retired. “Arena Master” achievement has been converted into a Feat of Strength.

Battlegrounds

• Winning a Battleground with characters below level 110 now awards a Crate of Battlefield Goods. Players on the opposing team also have a chance to receive a crate with an increasing chance based on team score at the end of a match. The crate contains a piece of armor appropriate for the character’s level and specialization with a chance for the crate to contain additional rewards such as weapons or relics.

Raids and Dungeons

Hellfire Citadel

• Enemies on Normal, Heroic, and Mythic difficulty now deal roughly 30% less damage.

Legacy

• Normalized gold from Legacy raids prior to Warlords of Draenor. Heroic difficulty Cataclysm Raids now award less gold than before, while raids from Mists of Pandaria and Wrath of the Lich King will now award more gold.
• Ruins of Ahn’Qiraj now resets daily instead of every 3 days.

Quests and World

Legendary Ring Quest Line

• Players can no longer start the quest line for the legendary ring. Players currently on the legendary quest line have until the launch of Legion to complete it; at which point uncompleted quests will be removed from the quest log.

Tap Changes

• All creatures and NPCs can now be tapped by up to 5 other characters.

World Events

• The Brawler’s Guild is taking a break and will return at a later date.
• The Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza has taken a temporary hiatus while the fish are restocked.

Items and Itemization

Itemization

• In an effort to reduce the amount of gear swapping between specializations, the following changes have been made.
  • Legion cloaks, rings, and items worn on the neck are no longer tied to a specific primary stat, and will remain relevant between specializations.
  • Spirit and Bonus Armor have been removed.
• Multistrike has been removed. Items that had multistrike have had it replaced with another secondary stat.
• Trinkets obtained from Raids, PvP, and world drops in Warlords were overtuned and have been brought back to intended power levels.
• Set bonuses for item sets from expansions prior to Warlords of Draenor have been deactivated, though the text describing their former function still remains.
• Spell Power on all caster weapons have been consolidated into Intellect to make it easier to compare item power between two caster weapons. Overall weapon power remains unchanged.

Items

• Equipment limits on the amount of crafted gear that can be worn have been removed.
• Potion of Luck and Greater Potion of Luck no longer have an effect.
• Gladiator’s Distinction set bonus has been removed from all PvP trinkets.

Character Changes

Specialization System Changes

• Characters can now change between any of their specializations at most any time for a progressive gold cost. Action bar configurations are saved for each specialization. As a result, Dual Specialization has been removed.
• Characters can now change between any of their specializations while out of combat. Action bar configurations and talent loadouts are saved for each specialization. As a result, Dual Specialization has been removed.
• Characters can queue up as any role that is available to their class and will automatically switch to the suitable specialization when entering the Dungeon, Raid, Battleground, or Arena without any gold cost. For example, a paladin might be questing as Retribution but queue up in Dungeon Finder as a Tank. When the paladin enters the dungeon, they will automatically switch to Protection.

Updates to Combat Visuals and Audio

• Updated and improved on the animations, visual effects, and audio on core combat interactions like auto-attacks as well as many melee class abilities.

Talent System Changes

• Players may now change talents freely when in any rested XP area. The Inscription profession can craft consumable items that allow for this to be done in the field. In addition, after queuing into an instanced dungeon, raid, or PvP content, players have a grace period during which they may change talents freely.

Glyph System Changes

• The Glyph panel has been removed from the game. Some minor glyphs that had a cosmetic effect that does not apply to a specific spell have been converted into cosmetic items that provide the same effects as before.
• Some minor glyphs that made cosmetic alterations to a specific spell have been added to the spell itself in the spellbook.

Draenor Perks Removed

• Draenor Perks have been removed from the game.

Armor Changes

• Hunters and Shaman can now equip Mail armor from level 1 (down from level 40).
• Warriors and Paladins can now equip Plate armor from level 1 (down from level 40).
• New Mail and Plate reward options have been added to low level quests.

Racial Abilities

Human

• Every Man for Himself now removes all Stun effects and shares a 30-second cooldown with other items or abilities that have a similar effect.
• The Human Spirit has been redesigned. Human characters now gain 1% more of all secondary stats (Haste, Critical Strike, Mastery, and Versatility) from all sources

Class Changes

All classes and specializations have undergone changes to abilities and mechanics. Check out our class preview logs for a better understanding on the thought process behind these changes.

 

Overview Death Knight Druid Hunter

Mage Monk Paladin Priest

Rogue Shaman Warlock Warrior

 

Garrison

• Many sources of gold from the Garrison has been reduced or removed.
• Newly obtained salvage from the Salvage Yard no longer contains equippable items. Salvage obtained from before the patch remains unaffected.

Collections

Toy Box

• A number of items with novel effects have been converted for inclusion in the Toy Box.
• Orb of Deception now lets the character retain features like armor that’s worn when transforming.
• New toy: Soft Foam Sword, sold by Jepetto Joybuzz. The toy mortally wounds (but does not kill) an enemy of trivial difficulty.

Professions

Inscription

• Major glyphs, along with many minor glyphs, have been converted or removed from the game.

UI

• Character nameplates have been reworked and have been upgraded to show class resources. Players may select a larger version of these nameplates from within the Interface Options menu.
• Enemy nameplates now provide additional information on status effects.
• Added class resource bars that display directly underneath your character.
• The character sheet has been trimmed down, though fully verbose stats are still available via the API.
• Interface options have changed and been further streamlined.
• Tab targeting logic has been reworked, and should now behave in a more consistent and predictable manner.
• A buff icon has been added to make it easier to tell when a character has XP gain disabled.

Account

• The maximum amount of gold that can be held at once has been increased to 9,999,999 gold. Guild bank maximum has also been increased to 9,999,999 gold.
• Maximum number of characters on a realm has increased to 12.

Graphics Engine

• Maximum draw distance has been extended greatly for all world content.
• 5 additional levels of graphics presets have been added with 3 above the previous ‘Ultra’ setting.
• More advanced rendering techniques for fog have been added.
• Modern techniques for rendering color and other post-effects have been added.