World of Warcraft 5.4 – Crib Notes

Due to be released on the 10^th of September patch 5.4 is shaping up to be one of the most explosive World of Warcraft patches to date. The coup d’état that has been building up against the Horde Warchief and Leader of the Orcs, Garrosh Hellscream is about to reach breaking point, and it is up to the heroes of Azeroth to put a stop to him once and for all.

The old adage that absolute power corrupts absolutely could not be truer. Having been Warchief for less than 3 years in real time the blood thirst has quickly taken a grip on Garrosh’s soul since our first foray into Pandaria almost a year ago.

So rather than pour over the 5.4 patch motes I have for you the information the average player can expect. While the information I have included are for the PTR we can expect most of it to be included.

Beyond the Siege of Orgrimmar which will be a two stage Raid; consisting of dealing with the Sha incursion and contamination of the Vale of Eternal Blossoms and then the fight in Durotar which will include the Darkspear trolls and the Alliance making a final move into Orgrimmar to take on Garrosh. There will be 14 bosses in total.

The Siege will be the first Raid encounter to feature flexible raiding. This means that you can enter a raid with a pre-made group of 10 to 25 people and the difficulty will scale to the amount of people, and will have the difficulty in between Raid Finder and Normal Mode.

We can also look forward to a new area, The Timeless Isle. The area is a max-level PVE zone near the Jade Forest and will allow you to collect Timeless Coins which you can then trade to NPC’s for ilevel 496 Epic Gear. The Island is designed for gearing up alts without having to run Raid Finder or constant Heroic Dungeons.

Proving Grounds is also set to appear in 5.4, and is looking to be beneficial to players in learning how to play their offspec. Usually play a Shadow Priest, but fancy taking up healing? Proving Grounds will help you practice. This is available for all 3 roles.

Blizzard have also introduced Virtual Realms to endeavor to help low population realms which groups together multiple realms – players will share an Auction House, be able to join arena teams and raids, group up for quests or dungeons as well as join guilds. Essentially your realm just got bigger.

Of course there are a lot of class changes, with Druids receiving the most changes. You can read about class changes here.

Pet Battles also have a few changes mostly involving changes to passive effects for the different classes.

So that folks is essentially it. Enjoy. I won’t have internet access on the 10^th of September (major sad-face) but I hope this helps some of you wrap your head around the changes coming your way.