If this thread is inapropriate please delete it. In my opinion the new Patch 3.02 will change a lot in the current game and so a new discussion apart from the very long Wrath of Lich King Stuff (was 'Blizzcon' thread).

As worldofraids.com states about patch

Source: Patch 3.0.2 coming on Background Downloader - World of Raids Forums

Source: WoW Forums -> Next Patch: Background Downloader

Does 'everything' include Deathknights?
Depending on the time span from patch to WotLK-launch, we might start seeing some Deathknights in our raids even before the expansion then?
Would be great to get to level my new Deathknight alt to 70 before the expansion hits, as i suspect I'll be rather busy with Northrend leveling, instancing, and leveling professions on my main right about then.

And if it includes Inscription as well, does anyone know if we'll get glyphs in 3.02?

I was asking the same thing. Maybe Teza knows more than we do: Patch 3.0.2 coming on Background Downloader - World of Raids Forums

3.0.2 will include Inscription up to a maximum level of 375, so we'll see glyphs too before the AddOn release.

Death Knights being available prior to the expansion's release (possibly requiring a pre-order code to create/use until the xpack) would be absolutely awesome, and avoid the problems that people had who rerolled Pallys and Shammys last time.

Can't honestly see the need for a preorder code, something I and a lot of other people who've ordered from stores won't have received anyway. Letting people level death knight's to 70 before the expansion would be a nice touch and give a lot of people something to do till then. They definitely wouldn't lose any sales doing this, who in their right mind would put in the time and effort to level a death knight to 70 in preparation for WOTLK and then not get the expansion.

Just got the answer - no Death Knights before the expansion.

WoW Forums -> Content Patch Before Wrath of the Lich King

Whatever their reason are (less crowded starting zones, current raids collapsing due to everyone rolling Death Knight, set pieces, arena balance...) they decided against that.

I would assume actually that you can't get a DK in 3.02 because you don't have WoTLK installed, which I'm imagining is a pre-requisite. Similar to how TBC required you to have it installed before you could roll a Draenei or Blood Elf character.

*edited for a typo

My honest guess would be that they want the Deathknights to be a major selling point of the expansion, similar to how Draenei and Blood elves were for BC. An inclusion of Deathknights in with patch 3.02 would mean that you "only" get levels 70-80 and Northrend added with the expansion, which might not entice as many people as otherwise possible.

[e] Bah I'm slow

It's a thin line actually.

3.02 would allow people who don't own WotLK to see Death Knights in the old world if they didn't have WotLK installed, as well as check out New Avalon. They wouldn't however have access to the WotLK voice acting or the scripts and the instance(Since the entire DK area is instanced) they go through, making it impossible with the files we get in 3.0.2 to roll a DK. So in a sense, yes DKs would be...err available in 3.0.2, but without the WotLK CD to install the content to access(Their starting area, and all the quests), there's no way to roll one. Make sense?

I can't imagine it would be any time too soon. There are still so many glaring class issues that I can barely see the beta as it stands now being ready for the PTR, much less live servers. Unless they have an internal build which they've been working on and they're just bleeding the changes out to us one week at a time, this patch is still weeks if not months away from hitting live.

What I'd want to talk about in a 3.02 thread would be, coping strategies for raiding guilds trying to push content or farm instances before WotLK hits. Biggest changes impacting raids I can think of would be:

* Potion sickness
* No downranking spells
* Drastically revised buff/debuff system
* New talent trees
* Glyphs from Inscriptions
* Re-itemized paladin and warrior tanking gear (lose some agility and dodge, gain some strength for threat)

I think it's a foregone conclusion that people will be farming up Inscription materials well in advance since we know this will be available in 3.0.2, and will not require the expansion - there'll be Inscription trainers in the usual cities, including a master Inscription trainer in HFP.

Where I worry about TBC raids becoming difficult would be:

Kaz'rogal - mana-drain debuff on all classes
Any long fights where healers need to chug potions
Any fights where healers currently spam downranked heals

Other situations I missed? What kind of coping strategies can we use?

The Death Knights being tied to WotLK makes perfect sense. I wouldn't have expected it to be earlier than that. If anything, I was surprised by all the things they decided to include in this upcoming patch. There's so much that I would have expected them to put off, but I guess it will help keep people playing while they wait on WotLK.

I seriously doubt Kaz'rogal being an issue at all, he doesn't hit tanks hard so i don't foresee healers having mana issues, and if dps is downranking on that fight they're doing it wrong anyways.
The only thing i'm worried about is the loss of avoidance in Sunwell, they'll either have to tone down boss dps or remove Sunwell Radiance.

It's too early to wonder about 'coping strategies'. If you recall, the changes to classes (read: many classes became much more powerful) in 2.0 led to raid fights being far easier. They haven't finished looking at final dps numbers--and those presumably will be very different from the current numbers.

Edit: As a side note--I think arena/pvp balance will change far, far more than raid balance. Again, I'll refer to 2.0 completely reversing some classes (Hunters, Feral Druids were gods at the time, warriors were destroyed by rage normalization), but my experience with raiding at the time did not indicate a heavy change. Then again, I wasn't in a top-end guild. Perhaps someone else can comment on experiences from 2.0 for high-end raiding.

I wouldn't worry too much about it. It's going to be on the PTR, which will open up a lot of advantages to see what needs to be changed. I think, if anything, they'll nerf a rather large amount of content, including Sunwell, to help balance the changes, and maybe hold off on some changes until the expansion. There's really no need to include potion sickness, downranking changes, or even buff / debuff changes right now.

Speaking as a Paladin, I'm not too worried about the Prot itemization changes. All the spell power was converted into STR, so unlike Warriors, we lost virtually no avoidance at all.

We do, however, lose Anticipation, so that's 20 defense we need to make up (12 for me, personally, since I'm slightly over-cap). Should be manageable with a bit of re-gemming, though, and I've got enough stockpiled badges for that not to be an issue.

It's difficult to say whether or not Sunwell Radiance will disappear. With all of the SBV gained via the new STR conversion, we may very well be making up for the lost avoidance with raw Block.

Would be nice if Sunwell Radiance disappeared though.

One thing I was wondering, is level 60 Naxx still going to be in-game?

They haven't yet announced what they're going to do with existing high armor Feral Druid items, but it bears mentioning that 12% flat damage reduction from Mother Bear on top of 75% mitigation from armor would be quite over the top. Sure, we will lose a lot of avoidance from the Agility to dodge ratio nerf, but we are also getting 6% back through talents.

I believe I've heard from some in my weekend Naxx group that it's going to be removed in patch 3.0. I'll see if I can find a source.

Found this: WoW BlueTracker: Patch 3.0.2 and Naxx

While this post doesn't confirm it directly, it does seem to suggest it.

Good question. They might begin the story leading into WoTLK with this patch.