Patch Tomorrow! What's in it for Soloers?

  Patch 6.0.2, the advance patch for Warlords of Draenor, arrives on our computers tomorrow, Tuesday the 14th. (I don't expect to play until Wednesday of course, isn't that typical?) So what is in it for soloers and altoholics? Quite a lot!

• New Character Models-this change is purely subjective. I'm not wild about the changes and might revert mine to the old models for awhile. It might also be better for my computer to be on the old, lower pixel, models. I was in beta and honestly wasn't really thrilled with the new look or movements. But they might grow on me.
• Class Changes- so many things here. As an altoholic, and as someone with at least 2 of each class at level 90(one each Horde and Alliance), it's going to take time to get used to all of the changed. There is a lot of ability pruning, which in some cases is a good thing. There is one change that really grinds my gears at this point-taking away my Druid cheetah form when I choose to use it! What that means it "travel form" is one button-aquatic, land and flight. So that means if I am in an area with flight enabled such as anywhere on Azeroth, I can't just run around in cheetah(I HATE stag form), can't run back and forth from mailbox to auction house, can't do archaeology in cheetah, can't just run around where ever I want in my beautiful, beloved little cheetah! My first main was a Druid, and I ran that little cheetah until nearly level 60 because I couldn't afford a mount way back then. I LOVE MY CHEETAH! DON'T TAKE IT AWAY! (sorry for the rant)
• Guild Levels Gone- as a soloer, this one doesn't affect me as much, or it doesn't matter as much-and it's ultimately a good thing. Yes on my 4 main realms, 3 have personal guilds. One has managed to get to 25, the other two are at around 15. This change means all guilded characters get all of the benefits that level 25 guilds used to have. And all of my unguilded characters? The perks aren't worth it for me to attempt to find some place with strangers to hang around. 
• Blasted Lands Quests- the new expansion event, sending us to the Dark Portal to fight off the Iron Horde invasion. Looks rather easy to do. At this point I am pretty sure that the achievement title, ...the Iron Vanguard, is account wide, so I won't have to do the quests 43 times! I hope that is the case. However, the mini pet that comes with it apparently comes in different breeds-and if you are into pet battles, that could mean doing the quests numerous times in order to get the "right ones". Plus, there is a Bronze Whelpling that drops from the mobs in the area, so I am expecting much farming in the weeks to come.
• Stat Squish-this might be one that throws the casual player off if they haven't bothered to read anything at all in the last few months. On beta I barely noticed the number difference. BONUS thing here is there will be a new mechanic added to older raids/dungeons(lower than 85-?-)that will make them basically a steam roll for those at level 90 or higher. I really hope that means I can send all alts to Zul'Gurub to farm those mounts each day!
• Stat Changes- reforging is gone. For someone who didn't raid, I never bothered with reforging, so I really don't care. The stats "hit, expertise, dodge and parry" are gone. Since I never bothered to do the whole min/max thing, these don't mean much. But this means the annoying part of mobs dodging you hits is gone! Excellent!
• Auction House Merger- Horde and Alliance auction houses as one, dogs and cats living together. Not really sure how this will be. Glut of resources to compete with though more buyers. But no more sneaky selling things to your cross faction alts. Hoping for cross faction mail in the future. 
• Justice and Valor Points gone- never gathered many of these, so just send me the money from all the valor I gained doing dailies in Pandaria!
• Toy Box -might be biggest change of all! All those fun items taking up valuable bank and bag space moved to toy box! Account wide so ALL my characters can use the Orb of Deception or other fun things! I can't wait for this!
• Reagent Bank -a whole other bank page JUST for reagents. Costs 100g, which is pittance. Auto-upload all mats to that page, goodbye inscription, engineering, mining bags. For characters without access to a personal guild bank, this is very helpful. Not to mention most mats changing from 20 per stack to 200 per stack. Oh yes.
• Void Storage- a whole 'nother page for Void Storage. Hoarders and transmog collectors rejoice!

  So those are the main changes. There are other minor UI changes, such as adding a number to cooldowns(goodbye OmniCC), more info on Mount page plus a "favorite mount" option with button, quest log and map merger, change to some older dungeons-RFC, RFK and BFD, and all those nasty Kor'Kron guards are gone from Orgrimmar and Undercity. There are quite a few other changes to current raids and a new level 90 dungeon, but as a soloer those do not affect me.

  Now let's see how soon we actually get to play!

What's good for the solo-er in Patch 4.1

Making notes on the patch notes(and undocumented changes) for today and wanted to let other solo-ers know about some of the interesting changes taking place today.

CLASS CHANGES

Hunter: Pet happiness is going away. This change to may or may not be a welcome change. It basically means one or two extra bag slots for my hunters. With talents and glyphs, I rarely had to feed my pets, but I kept food around just in case(and several types, depending on which pets I would switch between). The glyph that formerly increased pet happiness will now change the size of your pet to smaller-which is fine by me, I hate huge pets, they are just obnoxious.

Also, all tamed pets will now automatically be the same level as your hunter. I didn't have a chance to test this, but I am hoping this applies to all pets already in your stable as well. Also meaning that they would level up when you do, same as Warlock pets. Very nice if so.

Rogue: Stealth cooldown reduced to 4 seconds. FOUR SECONDS! And with the Nightstalker talent on level one of Subtlety, it is reduced to ZERO SECONDS! Yowza I can't believe how happy this makes my many rogues! Now, Blizzard, please reduce the cooldown for Druids!


NEW MINI-PETS

Wintersaber Cub: Purchased from a vendor in Winterspring

Panther Cub: Quest reward from level 85 questline regarding the new Troll dungeon in Stranglethorn. Does not require entering the dungeon or any groups or any pre-quests other than the questline you start from either Orgrimmar or Stormwind.

Voodoo Figurine and Pterrordax Hatchling: Archaeology projects from Troll and Fossil projects.

It also appears that there are going to be new choices in the Children's Week events which arrive the first week of May(next week!). For Azeroth there will be a snail named Scooter and in Outland, a fenstrider named Legs.

DAILY QUESTS:

NEW! fishing and cooking quests are available in the Alliance cities of Ironforge and Darnassus, and Horde cities of Thunder Bluff and Undercity. Not certain if there is an achievement related to them, but at least I can break up the monotony of the dailies by putting alts in other cities. NOTE: You canNOT do all 3 sets each day; one daily of each kind per day. I suppose you could research daily to see if one of the three is one that rewards more than one skill point or award token and do that one, but not sure if the time needed would be worth it(unless you are a mage!).

GUILD INFO:

For those who are in guilds and for those who aren't.

GUILD FINDER
One thing I hate about looking for a guild on alts that aren't in my personal family guilds is doing the research or interacting with so many jerks to find the diamond in the rough. I am hoping that some of my higher level players can find a guild that fits their playstyle. If not, no skin off of my nose. I have one alt in a level 25 guild that is so huge that there is rarely talking, noone says "grats" and I can be fairly anonymous. The only other guild I have a character in is basically a family type guild where I know most of the higher ups are stay-at-home moms like me. If I can find others on other realms like these, fine. If not, no biggie.

GUILD REP TABARDS:
For those characters of mine in my family-only guilds, there are bind to account tabards are available to effectively double the amount of rep gained within the guild. Not that our level 6 guild has many perks or items unlocked, but being revered or exalted with them would still be nice! And for the alts in the big guilds, well then I can get to the cool stuff even faster(not sure I would ever buy that Scorpion mount though, just too ugly and scary!).

BATTLE.NET ACCOUNT BOUND

All items that were previously "account bound"(and are still realm bound) can now be sent to characters you have on other accounts under your Battle.net account. So I can send any heirlooms over to my daughter's account, or presumably also the Baby Blizzard Bear(which my level 85 Paladin is missing, but I am pretty sure my kid has!) or any Archaeology items I dig up!

WINTERSABER

Aside from the adorable little Wintersaber cub that can be purchased in Winterspring, it is now much easier to get the Wintersaber mount for my Alliance alts! My human mage did this grind about a year ago, and even though the rep had been upped by then, the grind was still a PAIN! It has now been changed to be more inline with the Venomhide Ravasaur questline for Horde. You get a baby Wintersaber, and feed it, train it, and raise it until you can ride it! It takes 20 days if you don't skip a day and then you have one of the best looking ground mounts in the game!



There are a few other minor things that are interesting such as Old Ironforge finally being open to visit, Honor gained being doubled, trading Justice Points for Honor Points(I only get Justice Points when I do Holiday bosses, never enough to buy anything), all cities having all trainers available, and targeted mobs or npcs showing as a dot on your minimap. It's the little things that make me happy!