Patch 4.0 – Some Things to Expect

Patch 4.0 is on the PTRs and soon it will be coming to a realm near you.

• Patch 4.0 contains all of the class changes such as spells, talents, and glyphs.
• It does not have the zone changes.
• You cannot fly in Azeroth.
• You cannot be a Worgen or Goblin.
• You cannot level your character.

Things You’ll Want to Do

Training

There are a variety of new abilities that are available to hunters and you’ll want to go and grab them all.

• Scatter Shot is now baseline.
• There are multiple spells for call pet that allow you to call four of your five active pets (the fifth one requires level 82).
• The new Trap Launcher is available.
• We can train in Mail specialization which increase our agility by 5% if we wear nothing but mail armor.
• We also get our Mastery. Now in Cataclysm this stat will appear on lots and lots of gear. None of the Wrath gear has been updated to include Mastery so we won’t see the full benefit of this until the expansion.

One thing to note is that Cobra Shot is a level 81 ability and thus not available to us right now. Beastmaster and Survival hunters will want to use Cobra over Steady because of its ability to refresh Serpent Sting. When this patch hit Beastmaster and Survival hunters will be using Steady and will need to keep a watch on their Serpent Sting as it will drop off.

Other Things

• We’re focus users now. You can ditch the Honey Mint Tea and mana pots.
• Ammo is gone. Just vendor the leftover arrows and bullets that you have. Epic ammo is selling for 30 silver a stack.
• We have bigger stables. Get ready to run around tame all those new pets. Since the zone changes won’t be in effect you’ll want to check out Petopia and see if any of the current skins are going extinct.
• The new currency system will be in place.

Glyphs

• The new glyph system is here. We now have Prime, Major and Minor glyphs and can have three of each type.
• You only have to learn a glyph once and then you can use a reagent to swap them in and out.
• Your minor glyphs will still be in place.
• You will need to add Prime and Major glyphs.
• You won’t have to learn any glyphs you were using.
• Chances are the glyphs you were using are not the ones you’ll want moving forward, so you’ll want to find a scribe and get some new glyphs right away.

Gear, Gems, Hit and Armor Pen

• Now that we have the Mail armor specialization, you’ll want to ditch any leather items you have (*cough* Toskk’s Maximized Wristguards *cough*).
• T9 gear will be obsolete. You’ll want to get four pieces of T10, or at the very least replace your T9 with some form of ICC gear.
• We no longer have any talents that grant hit rating. If you plan to do any raiding you’ll most likely be under the hit cap (I was 2.18% under the cap when I logged onto the PTR). That means I’ll need to make up that hit through gems, enchants or gear.
• All of your Armor Pen gems will be converted to yellow Crit gems.
• Hit gem are now blue and purple instead of yellow and orange. Just keep that in mind if you have or plan to use any hit gems.
• Nightmare tear is still prismatic, but not as valuable because we don’t need intellect and no longer benefit from the intellect to attack power conversion. Also, there’s a good chance you’ll use some form of red, blue and yellow gems and won’t need a prismatic to keep your meta active.