Patch 2.4 news is everywhere. The patch will be massive, and literally every day brings more info mined out of the latest patch ‘dump’.

I’m sure many of you are expecting me to chase the buzz, grab the bees within my reach, and gush words like flowing honey all about how great this or that or whatever will be in the new Patch. 

And while it looked like the initial patch release on the PTR was mostly finished in concept, I was doing that.

Well, my apologies to you, but I’m all buzzed out.

Things are changing so fast on the PTR, with new things being added, existing things being changed radically, and hints being dropped at still more massive changes being considered, that I am no longer going to try to follow every little nuance of the patch.

If you want to stay as up to date as possible on the latest findings, I highly recommend you go to MMO Champion or World of Raids and follow their breaking Patch news and discoveries. They are working their butts off to stay on top of things.

So, nope, I’m not going to just buzz about every little thing that they find out, and then when that changes go rush to give you the new scoop.

Instead, I am going to wait until something actually goes live, and analyze that.

But I’m not going to just leave you out in the cold. I think there are a few things that are going to stay constant in the Patch, things you can prepare for right now.

The first thing is, no matter what your class, there will be new rewards available for Badges of Justice that are comparable to Tier 5 or Tier 6 end game gear. The key phrase there is comparable.  I do NOT believe that the items, as they are now listed, will remain unchanged. The Fist Weapons, Vanir’s Right Fist of Brutality and Vanir’s Left Fist of Brutality especially, are comparable to the Warglaives (Main and Off hand) in my personal opinion, and I just cannot see Blizzard leaving a pair of Fist weapons available for Badges unchanged, that are comparable to the very best hard to earn raiding weapons in the game.

Oh yeah, since I’m linking new Badge reward stuff, here is the Feral Druid stuff so far… what the heck.

Feral Dr00d Badge stuff in 2.4;

• Staff of the Forest Lord - 150 Badges of Justice
• Tunic of the Dark Hour - 100 Badges of Justice
• Trousers of the Scryers’ Retainer - 100 Badges of Justice
• Belt of the Silent Path - 75 Badges of Justice
• Embrace of Everlasting Prowess - 100 Badges of Justice
• Tameless Breeches - 100 Badges of Justice
• Handwraps of the Aggressor - 75 Badges of Justice
• Melee Ring - Angelista’s Revenge - 60 Badges of Justice
• Tank Ring - Ring of the Stalwart Protector - 60 Badges of Justice

But no matter what form they do end up in when the Patch goes live, there will be damn good gear for almost every class and spec, and it looks like, just as I surmised on one of my WoW Insider podcasts, Balance Druids are finally seeing some good loving… so far.

And you can prepare yourself by saving up your Badges of Justice.

As you can see above, there are leather Leggings and Chest pieces that would be amazing upgrades for Feral Druids for tanking, and there is a two handed staff and other pieces for Ferals that are just amazing. Again, I don’t expect it to go live unchanged. But there is plenty to look forward to. 

So if you are not immediately needing to use Badges of justice for upgrades, if you are exchanging them for Primal Nethers for crafting stuff you sell, I advise you to hold off on using them, store them up, and be closer to buying the goodies when it goes live.

Also, this is a good time to go ahead and change your play habits.

If you’re bored with Karazhan, and I know many of you are, or if you have what you want from heroics and are spending time you used to spend doing those to farm or dance naked in Ironforge or spam the Trade channel about Chuck Norris (and if you do spam the Trade channel, btw, I hate you), go run the daily Heroic instead.

Try and get a group of friends that will reliably join you, every day you can, to do either the daily Heroic, or something quick and easy like Heroic Slave Pens.

If you’re past Kara, go ahead and go back in there once a week on Badge runs. You can get 22 Badges for a full clear, and if you do 2 or 3 Heroics a week, they all add up fast. 

If you are interested in PvP, and you’ve been saving your points for specific pieces of Arena gear, don’t rush to spend them just yet. It’s been said by at least one Blue that the new Arena Season may start when the patch goes live, or one week after, even though Season 3 just kicked off a little while ago. And you know what that means; current Season gear becomes available for purchase with honor, and new Season gear becomes available for Arena points. Hold onto those points, unless you really need that upgrade you’ve been drooling over.

If you have been stockpiling Black Lotus, you might want to make whatever Flasks you can now, because one of the changes is supposed to be replacing Black Lotus with Fel Lotus in recipes, adn increasing the drop rate of Fel Lotus. If you’ve been slow in making your Flasks, go ahead and get it done before a patch comes along that may render your Black Lotus unusable for the Flasks you sell. This is nowhere close to being certain, but just in case, why hold onto those Black Lotus forever?

And if you have been using Primal Nether or Nether Vortex for BOE recipes just to make money, hold off. In the patch, they will both become Bind on Equip, so you will be able to sell them to people that want to desperately upgrade Blacksmithing weapons (just as an example) or make their Engineering Goggles and could never get a good group for Heroics before.

Plus, there will be tons of people, just like you, saving their Badges instead of exchanging them for Primal Nether. So the availability of folks selling crafting with Nether included can be expected to go way down,a nd if you don’t need those Nethers for much anyway, why not wait until the price of them rises?

I’ll give you one example of how I’m planning ahead.

I have a friend, Nawat, who can make the Spellstrike Set. The Spellstrike Hood and Spellstrike Pants are great for Shadow Priests, and I have already been doing my cloth transmutes on my 52 Priest to save up the mats.

Yes, that’s right, my Priest is level 52, with 367 Jewelcrafting and 355 Tailoring, and I have all the flight points in Outlands and have made two full transmutes of the cloth already. I’m sad. Corpse run through all of Outlands FTW! (Oh, and Cassie is sad that my level 52 Priest has more flight points in Outlands than she does at 66, since she hasn’t been to Shadowmoon Valley, Blades Edge or Netherstorm yet. We’ll have to fix that.)

The point is, each one of those recipes requires 5 Primal Might and 1 Primal Nether. I have two Primal Might already, but I’ll need Nawat to have 2 Primal Nether…

I talked with Nawat, and he offered to run with me on heroics until we got the Primal Nethers to drop so he could make them for me… or to use Badges to get the Nether.

But I happen to have two Primal Nether in my bank on Windshadow, sitting there waiting for me to decide what to do with them. I had been thinking of saving them for a Goggle upgrade, or of making a couple of tanking guns for the guild… but if I can mail them to Nawat in the patch, then I can provide him with 100% of the mats he’ll need to make my epics, and I won’t have to worry about having him waste precious game time farming some damn Nethers for me or wasting good Badges.

So, in conclusion, go have fun, by all means keep an eye on the changing news coming out of the Public Test Realms, but expect things to change without notice, and plan ahead for what you want to get out of it when it goes live.

And please, don’t worry about tomorrows changes until they happen. For now, go out there and enjoy the game as it is!