BRK does it again

Well that intrepid dwarf hunter has impressed once again.
In honour of Ezra Chatterton, BRK organised a bull run: a thousand young Tauren on Argent Dawn sacking Stormwind City, and making donations to the Make a Wish foundation.
The server pretty much crapped itself the whole time, and died completely before Stormwind was reached.
End result: complete mayhem, and ALL the servers are now having problems authenticating.
Lol.

EDIT: servers up again.

What can we expect tomorrow?

So servers have gone down tonight, presumably so that 3.0.2 can come out.
Earlier I had the following conversation with Toresh of Hunt This (edited slightly for relevance):

(02:24:03 PM) Toresh: i know what will be happening tomoorw though. in trade"where did my mounts go. and /w me "where u get that pet from"
(02:25:04 PM) darksentinel: lolk
(02:25:22 PM) darksentinel: and also "where's skill [x], it disappeared from my bar"
(02:25:40 PM) darksentinel: "/r your talents got reset"
(02:26:10 PM) Toresh: not going to be a good day at all :D
(02:27:21 PM) darksentinel: bah
(02:27:24 PM) darksentinel: /leave trade
(02:27:28 PM) darksentinel: /leave general
(02:27:31 PM) Toresh: good plan
(02:27:32 PM) darksentinel: /gquit :P
(02:27:38 PM) Toresh: lol

Some things we might expect post-3.0.2:
Chaos.
People asking where their mounts went (hint: spellbook tabs).
People asking where talented spells went (hint: assign talent points).
People leveling inscription like mad (hint: sell herbs).
People running around with devilsaurs, corehounds and all things awesome (hint: get your own BM hunter).
Hunters running around taming everything. Un'goro will be full, and MC will see more activity than it has for ages.
Hunters trying to solo stuff, 'cos you know, they're kinda broken in pve post-patch.
Hunters.
Hunter pets with no talents.
Players with no talents.
QQing.
Me bitching about not getting an arena title.
Really busy trade channels.
Broken add-ons.


What might we not see:
Holy paladins.
Survival hunters.
People who left WoW for Warhammer Online (not really relevant to the patch, but something I talked about today).
Marshal Windsor in Stormwind City.
Various other things we'll suddenly miss.
The alts of all the people playing hunters.


Anyway, good night for now, will post something tomorrow (don't expect much, I'll be too busy playing my hunter and ret paladin).

[WOTLK Spoiler] So, like, whoah

Was busily procrastinating, when I came across this [mega SPOILER warning]:


WOW_Wrathgate_1024.avi

That's pretty ****ing epic.

Part of a really awesome questline, and explains a lot of stuff about the Forsaken.

The full questline, courtesy of BlizzPlanet can be found here [more spoilers]:
Alliance version
Horde version
And they're... (author has run out of superlatives, will now resort to 'cool') really frickin gob-smackingly... cool

All I can say (apart from "wow") is that now I'm really looking forward to Wrath, and DKs.

A brief look at the crafted PvP blues in WOTLK

BRK recently made a post displaying his awesome new blue PvP gear, which has replaced a large chunk of his 70 epics (although he still has his 2-piece Tier-5 bonus, /jealous).

Listed below are the item sets, plus the stats specific to each set (resilience and stamina are ubiquitous):
NB: set name links to the set on wowhead, the helms are linked for mouseover goodness and comparisons.
Eviscerator's Leather (agi, crit, AP) - Rogues, Feral Druids (Eviscerator's Facemask)

Overcast Leather (int, spirit, spellpower) - Resto/Balance Druids (Overcast Headguard)

Stormhide Mail (int, stam, MP5, spellpower) - Resto/Elemental Shamans (Stormhide Crown)

Swiftarrow Mail (agi, int, crit, AP) - Hunters, Enhancement Shamans (Swiftarrow Helm)

Frostsavage Cloth (crit, int, spellpower) - All clothies (note that wowhead lists this set as requiring level 80, while the others require 78) (Frostsavage Cowl)

Ornate Saronite Plate (spellpower, MP5) - Holy Paladins (Ornate Saronite Skullshield)

Savage Saronite Plate (str, crit) - Warriors, Retribution Paladins (Savage Saronite Skullshield)

Since they're made through tailoring/leatherworking/blacksmithing, these items seem really accessible, requiring basic ingredients for each (frostweave cloth, borean leather, or saronite bars respectively) plus one eternal (apparently the new motes). Since the items are BOE they'll really boost profit margins from crafting professions and also provide solid entry-level gear for 80 PvP (and probably represent a few PvE upgrades during questing).

Sadly the gear seems extremely streamlined. While Moonkin now benefit from spirit, I'm not sure that DoT-based Warlocks scale all that well with crit, and there's probably other sub-par itemisation offered by the new gear for other classes/specs I'm less familiar with.

One thing you might notice is the complete lack of sockets on this gear, and the complete lack of hit rating. While the lack of hit on shared healer/dps gear makes sense, not being able to socket for it will mean quite a few resists/misses especially given things like the nerf to the Hunter talent Surefooted (from the BC Surefooted).

Overall though, I very much approve of these items, and will probably be leveling the hunter for the Leatherworking love.

Also, turns out Ghostcrawler is male, and I have no idea why the forums kept refering to him as a "she". Lots of blogs did it too. Man, my world just got turned upside down. That being said, does it really matter?

[Hunter] LF4M Utgarde Keep have DPS and Tank

So. Hunters can have their pets tank. Damn that is awesome. I've tanked stuff (non-heroics) on my hunter using a weird 17/0/44 build and a lot of PvP gear, and having the DPS using Omen, and Blessing of Salvation. But having my pet tank stuff generally resulted in a dead pet. But no longer, with worms having Acid Spit (think Sunder Armor), and some really awesome Tenacity talents, they not only do increased threat, but also are easier to heal, have a taunt (although 3 minute cooldown is a bit harsh) and higher survivability. A chance to have 4 dps in an instance? I sure hope so. Just need to work out how they will tank multiple things, otherwise the healers will /cry. A bear or gorilla might be able to hold threat at melee range, but would still have problems with casters.
Still, even if it requires 5 cc/dps, should provide some interesting flexibility in group composition during the race to 80. Although it will mean Hunters become even more imba in solo content (yes, you can solo Hogger in Hell Difficulty), which will mean that a lot of hunters will have even more difficulty doing well in group situations. QQ.

Some quick points on Wrath

While I'll probably make a longer post on Wrath later, a few things excite me:
- new hunter pets. Especially the really awesome ones. Well most of them are really awesome. THEY'LL BE ABLE TO HOLD THREAT AGAIN. Can't remember when the last time was that a pet of mine reliably held threat. Mid-60s? A pre-Charge-nerf boar?
But in Wrath, they'll be able to tank, and possibly even tank 5-mans. THAT is exciting. 4 dps, and an off-spec healer doing Utgaarde Keep (or however you spell it)? Yes please. Although how well a Worm can tank without Taunt, or (afaik) any AoE threat abilities, remains to be seen.

Also, wtf, ret paladins. Buffed? Just a bit. That's pretty nuts...

So yeah, those are the updates. Currently working on getting the Druid geared for Arena (oh so slowly, damn honor farming) and the Hunter is sort of floating around farming leather kits for the druid. How exciting.

Also working on a longer post about gearing baby-70 Feral Druids. Vatch dis space.


Edit: really need to find a good way to distinguish between the wowhead links, and the non-wowhead links. Anyone got any ideas?