The Warlords of Draenor systems patch will be going live this week and it brings a lot of changes! Make sure your Background Downloader has downloaded the files so you aren't stuck waiting on patch day.
This patch will convert your install to using the new CASC format, which can be a time consuming process. Be sure to defrag before and after the install if you are not using a SSD. The free version of Defraggler is a useful tool, as it can defrag just the WoW files if you are in a hurry.
- New Character Models - Often requested, finally here!
- I cy Veins Class Guides - These detailed guides have everything you need to know about Patch 6.0.2.
- Cl ass Changes - List of class changes and short overview guides.
- Gu ild Changes - Guild levels? Gone! Most perks? Gone!
- Sieg e of Orgrimmar Changes - SoO is giving out Heirloom weapons and now uses the new Warlords raid size system.
- New Character Models -
- Level 90 Upper Blackrock Spire - You can grab some item level 550 gear and preview this dungeon for the next month.
- Bl asted Lands Quests - The Iron Horde have invaded the Blasted Lands and have a short quest line for you.
- Sta t Changes - The stat squish is finally here. Yes, you can still solo old raids.
- New Login Screen - The Dark Portal is back in this new login screen.
- Ite m Changes - Reforging, Hit, Expertise, Dodge, Parry, all gone!
- Aucti on House Changes - The Alliance, Horde, and Neutral auction houses have all been merged. The BMAH has moved to Draenor.
- Currency Changes - Justice and Valor? Gone! You can still buy most items (other than Heirlooms) for gold.
- Toy Box - The toy box is here to hold your novelty items and free up some bag space.
- Rea gent Bank - More storage space for profession reagents has been added. Most also stack up to 200 now as well.
- Voi d Storage Size Increase - Another Void Storage tab has been added. Try not to fill it up in a week.
- Gro up Finder - The Raid Browser is gone and the much improved Group Finder is here.
- Aren a Skirmishes - Proving that persistence pays off, the ongoing request for skirmishes has been granted. Thank Holinka!
- UI Improvements - The default UI has received several upgrades, including Raid and Battleground specific graphical settings.
- Da rker Nights - A few areas such as Redridge and and Elwynn Forest are now actually dark at night.
- Old World Dungeon Revamps - Blackfathom Deeps, Razorfen Downs, and Razorfen Kraul have been updated.
- Un delete Character Feature - You can now restore characters above level 50 forever.
- Server Responsiveness Improvements - The sever now processes events much faster, which should make gameplay feel even more responsive.
- Anti-Aliasing - MSAA had to go away to move the client technology forward, so we only have FXAA and CMAA now.
- Add ons - As always, we need your help collecting data from in game by installing the WoWDB addon. Many other addons are also already updated for Patch 6.0.2.
Official Notes
While the official notes aren't out just yet, the PTR notes should be fairly close to the final notes.
New Character Models
After asking for updated character models for years, they are finally here! (Except for Blood Elves, which are coming in a later patch)
If you don't like your new face, you can change it at the barber.
Icy Veins Class Guides
Our friends over at Icy Veins are just finishing up the Patch 6.0.2 updates to their excellent class guides.
Class Changes
Several of the forum members and mods have put together brief guides to help ease the transition to the new patch, so a big thanks to them!
Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
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Death Knight 
Druid 
Hunter 
Mage 
Monk
Paladin 
Priest 
Rogue 
Shaman 
Warlock 
Warrior Talent Changes
While you won't have access to Level 100 talents, all of the other changes are going live with the patch.
- Exclusive glyphs cannot be used with each other. These are usually glyphs that both modify the same spell, such as Glyph of Ice Block and Glyph of Regenerative Ice.
- Some glyphs are learned automatically as you level, such as Glyph of Siphon Life. These are earned at level 25, 50, 60, and 75.
Guild Changes
Guild levels have been removed for Warlords of Draenor, along with some of the perks that they provided. This includes the Cash Flow perk, which was causing players to form guilds and spam invite others to take advantage of the perk.
Every guild now offers the same perks. Many of the perks that were removed are just applied to everyone now, even if they aren't in a guild. A list of the remaining perks is below.
Name Description
Mount Up Increases speed while mounted by 10%. Not active in Battlegrounds or Arenas. 
Hasty Hearth Reduces the cooldown on your Hearthstone by 15 minutes. 
The Quick and the Dead Increases health gained when resurrected by 50% and increases movement speed while dead by 10%. Does not function in combat or while in a Battleground or Arena. 
Guild Mail In-game mail sent between guild members now arrives instantly. 
Mobile Banking Summons a Guild Chest that allows access to your guild bank for 5 min. Only guild members with guild reputation of friendly and above are allowed to use a Guild Chest. 
Mass Resurrection Brings all dead party and raid members back to life with 35% health and 35% mana. A player may only be resurrected by this spell once every 10 minutes. Cannot be cast in combat or while in a battleground or arena. Siege of Orgrimmar Changes
Siege of Orgrimmar is giving out Heirloom weapons and has been converted to the new Warlords of Draenor raid size system.
- Your first heirloom weapon drop per difficulty is now guaranteed. These weapons will scale up while leveling and won't be replaced until at least level 100, so be sure to grab some for yourself and alts!
- The Warlords of Draenor raid size system will be applied to Siege of Orgrimmar:
- There are now four difficulties: Raid Finder, Normal (was Flex), Heroic (was Normal), and Mythic (was Heroic).
- Normal and Heroic will scale from 10 to 30 players. Raid Finder can also scale down if players drop group.
- Mythic will be a fixed size of 20 players.
- Each difficulty has its own weekly lockout.
- Raid Finder, Normal, and Heroic have a loot based lockout, which means you can kill bosses as many times as you would like, but you will only get loot in each difficulty once a week. The amount of loot that drops scales to the number of people eligible for loot, so you can't game the system.
- Mythic difficulty has an ID based lockout, similar to how Heroic lockouts have worked previously. You are locked to one raid ID for the week.
- The Ahead of the Curve 10 and 25 achievements for killing Normal Garrosh are no longer be obtainable. These rewarded the Kor'kron War Wolf mount.
- The Cutting Edge 10 and 25 achievements for killing Heroic Garrosh are also no longer obtainable. These achievement had no reward.
- The Kor'kron Juggernaut mount that drops from Heroic Garrosh isn't going away, but after Warlords is live it will be a rare drop instead of guaranteed.
- You can queue for Dragon Soul LFR once again, but there is no matchmaking. You must form your own group and travel to Auridormi in the Caverns of Time to queue.
If you want to schedule a Siege of Orgrimmar run to get your Garrosh heirlooms, OpenRaid is ready with many groups already listed for Tuesday.
Level 90 Upper Blackrock Spire
There is a special Level 90 version of the revamped Upper Blackrock Spire available for players during Patch 6.0.2. The loot is item level 550, which is better than Flex Siege of Orgrimmar gear that hasn't been upgraded yet. There will be an item level restriction in place, but the dungeon is tuned for players with a few pieces of Raid Finder Siege of Orgrimmar gear, so it shouldn't be too high.
Level Type Spec Slot Name Model Viewer 550FingerFinger
Rosewine Loop550FingerMeleeFinger 
Painweaver Seal550FingerSpell SpiritFinger 
Rune Band of Healing550FingerPhysical DPSFinger 
Burning Band550FingerSpell DPSFinger 
Band of Desolation550ClothSpell DPSChest 
Polychromatic DreamwrapModelviewer550ClothSpell DPSHands
Grips of PowerModelviewer550LeatherChest
Nightbrace ChestguardModelviewer550LeatherHands
Fallbrush GauntletsModelviewer550MailChest
Bloodmoon TunicModelviewer550MailHands
Trueaim GripsModelviewer550PlateChest
Plate of Shamanic FuryModelviewer550PlateHands
Reiver GauntletsModelviewer550Two-handed MaceMeleeTwo Hand
Dripping WillowModelviewer550One-handed SwordMeleeMain Hand
Tharbek's Horrific PosessorModelviewer550One-handed SwordPhysical DPSMain Hand
Tharbek's Terrible ChargeModelviewer550DaggerSpell DPSOne Hand
Finkle's ShankerModelviewerBlasted Lands Quests
The Iron Horde have come through the red Dark Portal and taken over most of the Blasted Lands. Thrall, Khadgar, Vindicator Maraad, and other NPCs have set up small camps near the Dark Portal with a short quest line of standard kill, collect, and interact objectives.
At the end of the quest line, Thrall will assist you in killing the leader of this Iron Horde assault. Turning in the final quest played the incorrect cinematic when we did this preview. You can see the correct cinematic here. Quests were also very slightly tweaked since this preview, but nothing significant was changed.
This quest line rewards the Iron Starlette pet, the The Iron Invasion achievement, and the of the Iron Vanguard title.
Stat Changes
- The stat squish is finally here. Numbers will be much smaller, but combat should feel the same. Yes, you can still solo old raids.
- Health was not squished as much for PvP reasons.
- Spell Haste %, Melee Haste %, and Ranged Haste % have been merged into a universal Haste %.
- Spell Crit %, Melee Crit %, and Ranged Crit % have been merged into a universal Crit %.
- Dodge and Parry where changed
- The amount of Dodge gained per point of Agility has been reduced by 25%.
- The amount of Parry gained per point of Strength has been reduced by 25%.
- Attack Power was changed:
- Agility or Strength now grants 1 Attack Power (down from 2). All other sources of Attack Power now grant half as much as before.
- Weapon Damage values on all weapons have been reduced by 50%.
- Attack Power now increases Weapon Damage at a rate of 1 DPS per 3.5 Attack Power (up from 1 DPS per 14 Attack Power).
- Attack Power, Spell Power, or Weapon Damage now affect the entire healing or damage throughput of player spells.
- Cirtical Strike was changed:
- Agility and Intellect no longer provide Critical Strike
- Every class has a 5% base crit chance.
- Rogues, all Hunters, Feral and Guardian Druids, Brewmaster and Windwalker Monks, and Enhancement Shaman have an extra 10% chance to crit.
- Hit and Expertise were removed:
- Hit and Expertise bonuses on all items and item enhancements (gems, enchants, etc.) have been converted into Critical Strike, Haste, or Mastery.
- All characters now have a 100% chance to hit, 0% chance to be dodged, 3% chance to be parried, and 0% chance for glancing blows, when fighting creatures up to 3 levels higher (bosses included).
- Tanking specializations receive an additional 3% reduction in chance to be parried. Tank attacks now have a 0% chance to be parried vs. creatures up to 3 levels higher.
- Creatures that are 4 or more levels higher than the character still has a chance to avoid attacks in various ways, to discourage fighting enemies that are much stronger.
- Dual Wielding still imposes a 19% chance to miss, to balance it with two-handed weapon use.
New Login Screen
The Warlords of Draenor login screen also comes with Patch 6.0.2! It has been slightly updated since it was initially added in earlier beta.
Updated Character Selection Screens
A few of the races got new character selection screens.
Item Changes
- Almost all flying mounts are now also ground mounts.
- Access to Ordos no longer requires a legendary cloak.
- Season 15 Prideful (Item Level 550) items should be available for honor.
- The direct benefit to combat perks from professions have been removed, such as the tailoring cloak enchants.
- Reforging is gone and all items have been reverted to their original state.
- Hit and Expertise have been removed from items and replaced with Critical Strike, Haste, or Mastery. You no longer have to worry about being hit capped!
- Dodge and Parry have been replaced with Bonus Armor. If an item had both Dodge and Parry on it, it has been replaced with an additional useful secondary stat.
- These changes have been applied to gems, enchants, food, and flasks. For example, hit gems are becoming crit gems.
- New secondary stats have been added and are on a few items:
- Bonus Armor - Increases Armor and Attack Power for tanking specializations.
- Multistrike - Grants a chance for spells and abilities to fire up to 2 additional times, at 30% effectiveness (both damage and healing).
- Versatility - Increases damage, healing, and absorption done. Reduces damage taken.
AskMrRobot Updating
AskMrRobot should be fully updated and ready to go on Tuesday with a new UI. Reforging may be gone, but gear optimization is still a part of the game.
As an added bonus, the Best in Bags feature will be free this week, which should help you figure out which gear that you have is the best after reforges are undone.
Unfortunately it appears that the API team was not as prepared, as they are predicting API troubles with the new patch until Warlords release. If there are API issues, you can import your character with the AMR Addon.
Merged Auction House
Players on the less populated faction will no longer have as much trouble finding things on the auction house, as Patch 6.0.2 merges the Alliance, Horde, and Neutral auction houses into one for each realm.
Black Market Auction House
The Black Market Auction House has relocated to Draenor and the Pandaria location has been retired.
Currency Changes
- Item upgrades now cost 50 x Lesser Charm of Good Fortune each.
- Justice Points and Valor Points have been removed from the game. Most of the items that had a Justice or Valor cost are now sold for gold.
- Heirlooms are no longer available to purchase with Justice Points, but you can buy them with other currencies. They will return in a future patch.
- Commendation Badges for Wrath of the Lich King reputations are no longer for sale.
- If you still need some gear, the Warforged Seal no longer has a weekly cap.
- The Key to the Palace of Lei Shen no longer drops and In the Hall of the Thunder King is now a Legacy achievement. Existing keys are still usable though!
Toy Box
The Toy Box is a collection of most of the toy items on your account. You can find a list of toys on the WoWDB PTR site.
- The toy box is on the collections tab, next to the mounts and pets tab.
- Items in the toy box are available account wide.
- Only one copy of an item can be added to your toy box, so all of the others will have to be deleted.
- You can set toys as your favorite so that they appear at the start of the list.
- Toys that you haven't collected yet will list a source.
- You can filter toys by source and name.
- Some toys that can no longer be obtained aren't listed under Not Collected, but if you have them you can add them to the toy box.
Name Points Reward Category
Having A Ball Collect 50 toys. 10 Toy Box
The Toymaster Collect 150 toys. 10 Reward: Robo-GnomebulatorToy Box
Tons of Toys Collect 100 toys. 10 Toy Box
Toying Around Collect 25 toys. 10 Toy Box
Reagent Bank
Patch 6.0.2 adds another tab to your regular bank that costs 100 to unlock and has 98 slots to store profession reagents. Keep in mind that profession reagents will now form much larger stacks, with many stacking to 200. You can craft with reagents from the Reagent Bank no matter where you are.
Void Storage Size Increase
Patch 6.0.2 increases the size of Void Storage, adding a second tab with the same number of slots as the first.
Group Finder
This patch also removes the old Raid Browser that got a temporary fix for Patch 5.4 and replaces it with a real Group Finder.
- Creating a group first requires you to pick a category: Questing, Dungeons, Scenarios, Raids (MoP), Raids (Legacy), Arena Skirmishes, Battlegrounds, or Custom.
- Questing: Allows you to select the continent and zone
- Dungeons: Allows you to select random or a specific dungeon, as well as the difficulty.
- Scenarios: Allows you to select the scenario and difficulty.
- Raids - Allows you to select the raid and difficulty.
- Skirmishes - Allows you to select the size (2v2 or 3v3)
- After selecting the activity, you can add a title, description, minimum item level (your own or lower only), and voice chat.
- When browsing groups, you can see the number of players of each role in the group.
- When applying to a group, you can include a note to the leader.
- When in a group, you can see a list of everyone's role and item level.
- When someone applies to your group, you can see their Proving Grounds achievements.
Arena Skirmishes
Players have been asking for skirmishes back for a long time and they finally make their return in Patch 6.0.2!
- Skirmishes have no visible ratings, unlike regular arenas. There is a hidden rating used for loose matchmaking to keep things a little more balanced.
- Skirmishes are only offered in 2v2 and 3v3 sizes.
- You can queue for a skirmish solo or with a group.
- Skirmishes will reward honor.
- If you run across someone you enjoyed playing with, you can queue again with them at the end of a match.
UI Improvements
The default UI has received several upgrades:
- The Dungeon Journal now includes short overviews of the fight for each role, which should help players that don't know the fights.
- The Key Binding UI has also been improved to a tabbed list rather than a very long list you have to scroll through.
- You are now able to manage addons in game without having to log out.
- Bags have several improvements:
- The default UI now allows you to assign item types to certain bags, search your bags, and auto sort your bags.
- Junk items in your bags display a gold coin icon when you are at a vendor, letting you know it is safe to vendor them.
- Items in your bag have a item quality colored border around the icon.
- The Mount Journal has several improvements:
- The journal now lists a source and description for mounts.
- You are now able to set mounts as favorites, putting them at the top of the list.
- There is a new Summon Random Favorite Mount button, which selects a usable mount at random from your favorites.
- Mounts that are faction specific now have a different background in the list.
- The map and quest log have several improvements:
- The quest log has been integrated into the map.
- The map now becomes transparent when you are moving.
- The map is now zoomable and draggable.
- If you prefer a fullscreen map still, you can make it fullscreen. M will then open the map and L will open the quest log and map combination.
- You can now scroll through your spellbook with the mouse wheel.
- Quest objectives, NPCs, your target, and mouseover all can have outlines now. These replace the old sparkles used to show quest objectives.
- The default action bars can now show cooldown duration in numbers.
- There is a now screen that gives you a list of a few of the big new things in a patch.
- The client now tones down or hides some less important spells when things are visually cluttered. This should increase performance in group content and make it easier to see what is going on.
- Graphics settings can be changed automatically to your presets in raids and battlegrounds.
Orgrimmar Changes
The Kor'kron Guard have been replaced by Troll, Tauren, and Orc guards. The Troll area of the city is now functional again and Xan'tish finally has his snakes back.
Undercity Changes
The Kor'kron are out and the Abominations are back!
Darker Nights
A few areas that were too bright at night now have darker nights, but most areas remain unchanged.
Old World Dungeon Revamps
Patch 6.0.2 brings us updated versions of some lower level dungeons. These include Blackfathom Deeps, Razorfen Downs, and Razorfen Kraul. Tonight we are taking a look at Blackfathom Deeps and Razorfen Downs.
Blackfathom Deeps
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Razorfen Kraul
Razorfen Downs
[/align]Undelete Character Feature
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
In the upcoming pre-Warlords of Draenor content patch, we’re adding a new feature that allows players to undelete characters. But before you delete that character, there are a few limitations we want you to let you to know about first.
- Characters under level 10 and Death Knights at level 55 are not eligible to be undeleted.
- Characters between level 10 and level 29 will no longer recoverable after 90 days.
- Characters between level 30 and 49 will no longer recoverable after 120 days.
- All other characters level 50 and above are eligible to be undeleted at any time.
- Please keep in mind you will only be able to use the undelete option once every 30 days.
Reclaiming Your Name: What About Flugur?
We’ll be holding deleted character names for a limited time, and the original creator can reclaim it for use on a new character during that time. If you create a new character with the same name as one of your deleted characters (let’s say Flugur), the new character must be renamed, transferred, or deleted to complete the restoration of the original Flugur.
Server Responsiveness Improvements
Originally Posted by Celestalon (Blue Tracker)
I don't want to get too deep into the under-the-hood workings of WoW servers, but here's a super short version. Any action that one unit takes on another different unit used to be processed in batches every 400ms. Some very attentive people may have noticed that healing yourself would give you the health instantly (minus client/server latency), whereas healing another unit would incur a delay of between 0ms and 400ms (again, on top of client/server latency). Same with damaging, applying auras, interrupting, knocking back, etc.
That delay can feel bad just due to the somewhat laggy responsiveness feeling, but also because the state of things can change during that time. For example: Holly the Holy Priest is healing Punky the Brewmaster. Punky spikes low, and Holly hits Guardian Spirit in a panic. The server verifies that Holly is able to cast it, and that Punky is alive (great!). The cast goes off, Guardian Spirit goes on cooldown, and a request is placed for the Guardian Spirit aura (that prevents dying) to be placed on Punky. That request will be filled next time the 400ms timer loops, which happens to be 320ms from now. 250ms later, the boss lands another hit on on Punky. Punky dies. Sadface. Another 70ms goes by, and the Guardian Spirit aura request pops up, and goes "Hey guys, I'm here!... Aww... damn, I missed the party. Sadface."
We no longer batch them up like that. We just do it as fast as we can, which usually amounts to between 1ms and 10ms later. It took a considerable amount of work to get it working that way, but we're very pleased with the results so far; the game feels noticeably more responsive.
I can't guarantee that you'll never ever again run into cases where Guardian Spirit went on cooldown and the tank still died... but it'll be literally 40x rarer than before, and the whole game will feel more responsive too.
Anti-Aliasing
The old MSAA option is now gone. In its place is FXAA and CMAA options. These offer reduced jaggniess at less of a performance cost than MSAA, but tend to result in somewhat blurrier images. You can find more details in the related tech blog.
Challenge Modes
All of the challenge mode achievements are Legacy and Feat of Strength achievements, with all of the rewards other than the armor sets and teleport spells becoming account wide.
- Bronze - The Undaunted title is unobtainable and account-wide.
- Silver - The mounts are unobtainable and account-wide. If you have at least one of the mounts, all four all of the mounts should be unlocked.
- Modelviewer: Crimson
, Ashen
, Emerald
, Violet
- Modelviewer: Crimson
- Gold - The transmog armor sets and teleport spells are unobtainable and remained character specific. The Gold guild achievement that rewards a pet is unobtainable.
WoWDB Addon Data Collection
Quickly populating the database with 6.0.2 additions is done with the help of many players. The more people that contribute data, the more accurate and quickly we can update the database.
To help out, just click here if you have Curse Client already installed.
When you are playing the addon will gather data and save it. When you are done playing, Curse Client will see the game close and upload the collected data from the addon. You can see the last time data was uploaded by looking in the Plugins tab of the options, as well as making sure the addon is enabled there. Be sure you have Curse Client open before you close WoW so that the data will upload!
The addon now supports Live, Beta, and the PTR, so be sure to add all of your WoW installs to the client.
Updated Addons
Addon authors have been hard at work updating their addons for Patch 6.0.2 and Warlords of Draenor. Now might be a good time to take advantage of the Curse Client to update your addons, and the one click update for Premium users! If you are already using Curse Client, be sure to check this box in the options or click here to help populate WoWDB with data!
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