Tuesday (28 Nov) - Stealth Patch 5.1

Tuesday (28 Nov) - Stealth Patch 5.1

Ok, so patch 5.1 didn't exactly sneak up on us, but nobody in the Wild family paid much attention to it. It arrived on Tuesday, a very small installation, and at first I thought it was a common place bug fix. It's actually a rather significant patch. Anyway, all the changes I found interesting can be read below - after Fist gets a word in.

On Tuesday night Fist DINGED! to level 88. The quests have been mostly a blur, but individually, as Fist has done them, she has to appreciate the effort to make them entertaining. It's pretty obvious her pace has slowed, though. Fist never comes back to town with all her bags full anymore. Full bags were the norm prior to Pandaria.

She has been spending time in Halfhill at the market. She has been growing vegetables, but has been limited by her level, since the daily farming quests are for level 90s. Fist also discovered Sungshin Ironpaw, who carries almost all of the cooking materials needed to get from skill 1 to skill 525. Any character can do this, provided a level 85 plus character is available to buy the mats from Sungshin. Fist was at skill 380. She could have leveled to 525 in under ten minutes, except that she was short on one ingredient the trainer doesn't provide - golden carp. Those can be fished in any Pandaren waters. Fist meandered down to the river that runs next to Halfhill and fished all the carp she needed in about a half hour. Sungshin offers a series of quests to continue improving Fist's cooking skills.

Patch 5-1 News -

It's called the Pandaren Campaign. There are new daily quests and, based on what I'm reading, a series of quests involving battles with enemy npcs and opposite faction players. For pvpers it sounds like a lot of fun! For the HOrde, Ongrom Black Tooth is the point of contact. For the Alliance, it's Proveditor Grantley. Most of the action occurs in Krasarang Wilds and Vale of the eternal Blossoms. I assume it's level 90 action.

Level 90 players can now upgrade gear to higher ilevels (up to 8 higher ilevels) using justice and valor points.

There is now a "Brawler's Guild"where players can compete in one-on-one PVE combat with npc competitors. Members of the Brawler's Guild can actually watch other players compete. There are rewards.

TIME ZONE Standardization: Blizzard has adopted a single time zone for most events. For example, sunrise in a realm will occur at 5:30am PST whether you are east coast or west coast; ie, if you play on the east coast sunrise is now at 8:30am, not 5:30am EST. This applies to ALL realms except Oceanic. No change for us in PST, but a realms on east coast times will have to get used to sunset coming at 9:30pm, and daily quest/profession reset at 6am.

There are a ton of class changes as Blizzard does it's tweaking. The awsome healing of Mistweaver monks has a lot of fiddling. Can't tell if the end result is better or worse. Same for Fist in Windwalker spec. Too many changes to know what the overall effect will be.

Pandarn weapon enchants have been overhauled. For some time now weapon enchants have been proc-based. Meaning the enchant kicks in periodically for a limited time based on a formula vs being always on. Apparently there were many problems associated with these enchants, and the fix is to invent an entirely new system for these two enchants. It's called Real Procs-per-minute (Real PPM). I quote: "Regardless of how you’re attacking or healing, slow or fast, with DoTs or direct heals, whatever, you can expect to get the same proc frequency, on average. Dual wielding doubles the proc frequency. Haste increases the proc rate as well." Each enchant has a standardized proc rate, which is what they will tinker with when making adjustments.

There is a couple of PAGES having to do with Pet Battles. Sorry, I haven't even turned that on yet.

PVP Power have been changed: "PvP Power will now only increase the healing of dedicated healing specializations, and will now only increase the damage of dedicated damage or tanking specializations.The amount of PvP Power on weapons has been increased.Arena matches now have a 25 minute time limit (was 45 minutes)."

Lots of tweaks and fiddling with dungeons, raids, et al.