Patch 5.0.4 - big changes in advance of MOP

[Tuftears]

Just a note for people, Gnomish Army Knife gives +10 to all three gathering skills. Engineers need 10 Saronite bars to make one.

[Sabra]

But whining is important. It's what makes loot drop.

How'd that work out for you with Netherwind Pants?

Ahhhh ... not ... so ... much, but I have somebody to BLAME!

[Shamago]

Just a note for people, Gnomish Army Knife gives +10 to all three gathering skills. Engineers need 10 Saronite bars to make one.

Also, if you don't need more than one thing (or if you're willing to take up more inventory space), the basic Mining Pick, Skinning Knife, and the new Herbalist's Spade all give +10 to the appropriate gathering skill without needing to be equipped. Sadly, it appears that such things as Finkle's Skinner do not stack AND still need to be equipped. Need to check the glove enchants.

Also, does the army knife still count as a skinning knife and mining pick as well? The flavor text was changed...

[LavCat]

Also, does the army knife still count as a skinning knife and mining pick as well? The flavor text was changed...

Works for mining.

My current question is about graphics. As with most (well, all) new WoW expansions, my framerate is unplayable. Turning down multisampling did not seem to make a difference. To save a lot of trial and error, does anyone know what changed and what parameters make the most difference in framerate?

[Tal]

My current question is about graphics. As with most (well, all) new WoW expansions, my framerate is unplayable. Turning down multisampling did not seem to make a difference. To save a lot of trial and error, does anyone know what changed and what parameters make the most difference in framerate?

This is according to Blizz support:

MoP Performance Checklist … or … you’ve been bold and set everything to Ultra and want things to be faster:

• Disable Vertical Sync. Vertical Sync means the game will try to present frames matching the refresh rate of your monitor. This is usually 60 Hz, so the maximum framerate you will get is 60 FPS. If the game just gets a little bit slower than 60 FPS, it will drop to 30 FPS. Unless you are extremely sensitive to screen tearing or have a very high-end graphics card we recommend to disable this feature.
  
• Disable multisampling, especially if you are running at a larger resolution (1600 x 1200 and up) and your graphics card is not very recent
  
• Reduce the SSAO setting or fully disable it, especially if you are running at a larger resolution and/or have an older/weaker graphics card
  
• Set Shadow Quality to High
  
• Set Liquid Detail to Good (Ultra causes a lot of the terrain and buildings to get rendered multiple times for reflections when the ocean is visible)
  
• Reduce Ground Clutter *
  
• Decrease View Distance *
  
• Reduce Texture Resolution *
  

* These settings have the biggest visual impact

[Sabra]

Just a note for people, Gnomish Army Knife gives +10 to all three gathering skills. Engineers need 10 Saronite bars to make one.

Woot! Thank you Ruvanal who made so many for me, and thanks for the heads up Tufty.

[LavCat]

This is according to Blizz support:

MoP Performance Checklist … or … you’ve been bold and set everything to Ultra and want things to be faster:

Thanks. I guess there is no silver bullet. I run with VS off. Changing MS from 8 to 4 did not do anything for me. I keep my ground clutter at min anyhow. Decreasing view distance would probably solve the framerate issue, but I am loath to do it!

Sadly new hardware is not an option at this time.

[LavCat]

I was rather glad to see that PvP titles are not shared.

[kandrathe]

But whining is important. It's what makes loot drop.

I haven't found any way to disable it yet. >whine< But, on the plus side... There are more looted carcasses to skin. AOE looting makes it harder to leave unskinnable bodies laying around.

Edit: I tried turning off Autoloot, but it still group loots.

[kandrathe]

Oh, another thing. Poisons are no longer "items" you apply to weapons. They are more like a spell you cast with a pull down similar to the other "choice" spells (call pet, summon demon, totems, etc.). All poisons in your inventory will be gray items. My understanding is that you can choose two poisons. They still need to be re-applied every hour.

There are two different categories: Lethal and Non-Lethal. You can have 1 Lethal and 1 Non-Lethal poison activated at any time, but you cannot have more than one of any individual poison category. If you activate a lethal poison and you already have another lethal one active, it will overwrite your existing lethal poison.

[kandrathe]

Spectral Researchers are gone from the revamp of Scholomance -- they were the mob that dropped Enchant Weapon - Lifestealing. If you see it on your AH for a reasonable price you might want to buy it now.

And, I know that for the Scarlet Monestary, the Tabard of the Scarlet Crusade is now gone.

[LavCat]

Some things I noted tonight:

The Darkmoon shooting quest animation used to be broken for some characters. But worked for most. Now the animation is broken for all characters I have seen.

Quest completion windows are fixed! It used to be if one had a dialog open with a quest giver prior to completing a quest, the window would have to be closed before the NPC would let one turn the quest in. Now the quest status updates dynamically.

This may be an old bug, but it seems one can't trade a battle.net account bound item between characters on the same battle.net account. Error given is that they are soulbound.

[shoju]

Your bug, is probably due to B.net account bound items probably being coded to just not be tradeable at all, but the work around was done for mail only.

[kandrathe]

This may be an old bug, but it seems one can't trade a battle.net account bound item between characters on the same battle.net account. Error given is that they are soulbound.

Do you have any type of enhance/enchant on the item?

[LavCat]

This may be an old bug, but it seems one can't trade a battle.net account bound item between characters on the same battle.net account. Error given is that they are soulbound.

Do you have any type of enhance/enchant on the item?

Nope, and mail worked just fine.

[Tal]

This may be an old bug, but it seems one can't trade a battle.net account bound item between characters on the same battle.net account. Error given is that they are soulbound.

Do you have any type of enhance/enchant on the item?

Nope, and mail worked just fine.

I think it's been that way for awhile - when the wife and I were levelling our DK/Shammy combo I had to mail the plate heirlooms to her because I couldn't trade them to her.

[kandrathe]

I think it's been that way for awhile - when the wife and I were levelling our DK/Shammy combo I had to mail the plate heirlooms to her because I couldn't trade them to her.

I guess in the Blizzard world of coding, the mechanics of transferring an item via trade window is that much different than that done by a mailbox.

[Kevin]

I think it's been that way for awhile - when the wife and I were levelling our DK/Shammy combo I had to mail the plate heirlooms to her because I couldn't trade them to her.

I guess in the Blizzard world of coding, the mechanics of transferring an item via trade window is that much different than that done by a mailbox.

Trades are "live" transactions, mailboxes are "queued" transactions. Trade windows are also an easier target for hack/dupe exploits than the mailbox interface because you can have control of both ends of the transaction if you are trying to cheat around the system (and there were some successful gold dupes in the early days). So yes I could see there being differences in how those are coded and what attributes the item objects have and calling a completely different method to handle the transaction.