A Summary of 3.0

Here's my opinion of 3.0, and some of the things surrounding it.

1) The class mechanic/talent changes: For the most part, I like these changes. Elf is less about timing steady shots, and can now work in other things, as well as more micromanagement of the pet abilites. This is because most hunter shots have stopped resetting the Autoshot timer, which makes hunters more of a fast-paced dps class, instead of timing the same spammed attack. Steady's still the main shot by far, but glyphs now encourage us to work in stings and other shots. And also, pets and their talent trees are far better with the new system, as it allows us to decide more on what we want, as a matter of choice. Rabid and the new form of Kill Command are some nice things that add some more variation to our dps cycles.

Also, I might go MM soon to test out Chimaera Shot (or however it's spelt :P), and how that works with the stings. I have mixed feelings of AoTV - you regain mana far quicker, but lose damage in the meantime. Although it's far better for mana regain, and so only a short time with the dps recuction, I'm still not sure on this one. On a final hunter-mechanics note, the change to Volley is - obviously - very welcome. This allows us to do some nice AoE damage, just a nice new little element of the class. Overall, the new hunter mechanics are certainly a change for the better.

As for Paladins, the realm of healing has also become less boring. BoL, along with a glyph or two, increases our AoE healing capacity fairly nicely. Somewhere with the transition to spellpower coefficients, my heals have also been increased - FoL to an 1800 average, and HL to around 5-6k. I don't see why the complaints about Holy Light are so numerous, but then again, I haven't done much healing in 5-mans since the patch, so I can't be sure of everything. Holy Shock - while still not efficient - is now certainly a viable ability. With nearly a third of the previous cooldown, the mana cost lowered by a few hundred, a few talents that add synergy, and the healing amount/range increased (I've been able to crit-heal for well over 4000 a few times), being on the move doesn't hurt us as much as it used to. As I've already said, BoL helps with our raid healing (for those who don't know, Beacon of Light is a buff to put on the MT, and it means that whenever you heal someone within a generous range around the tank, the tank is healed for that same amount), but there's something that could change the usefulness of this - the controversial Glyph of Flash of Light. The question is - when Beacon is put on the MT, and you use the FoL so that your HoT is on 5 raid members at once - does the tank get healed for the combined sum of HoT's on all those 5 members? If so, this glyph could have some great situational uses. One last thing I'm glad about for Paladin changes is the Seal and Judgement rework. Judgement of Light in raids means I have a whole lot of ticks for around 150 on the melee, around 1 every 5 seconds for each melee - and in a raid with multiple tanks and a group of melee dps all on one target, this could surely help out with heals. As for the seals, I haven't tried Light yet, but Wisdom's mana regen is insanely good - although requiring me to swing away in melee, it allows me to keep a high mana pool - using this in some Kara fights, I had full mana at the end of the battle after being reduced to half at some point. And, for Prot and Ret - I don't know for sure, but Prot seems a lot of fun from what I've tried on PTR. And the ret changes are welcome, although I wish they'd stop requesting to be buffed more.


2) Instance changes: This is another topic on which I can't quite decide my feelings. The nerfs to raid boss health are great in that they allow everyone to get achievement points, instruct raiders for a brief few weeks to get ready for WoTLK, and see as much of the content as they can. The only problem I have with it, though, is that it's kinda an anticlimax. Blasting through things just doesn't mean as much as it used to, and it seems Blizz is just using this as another way to have us wanting WoTLK.
The thing is, it's working well for them. :P


3) Inscription: I don't have anything bad to say about this, really. I simply love this profession. Even though the insanely inflated price of herbs can get annoying while levelling the profession, and near-impossible for lower levels, there's nothing that can be done about that. It was expected, but couldn't be prevented. The actual profession, though, I enjoy very much. I'm not much of a crafter - it took me months after getting to 70 on Elf to raise my Leatherworking to maximum, and I didn't quite see the point in that, or enjoy it very much. Also, the general grind of getting different mats from all over the place, costing hundreds of gold to make a rare to even have a chance at getting one level, really isn't my thing. Inscription, though, is different. It's simple, basic. For the bulk of what you'll make - glyphs - all you need is herbs, and those thingies you buy from vendors. As usual, I forget what they're called for now. But anyway - as well as the simplicity of the mats, there's no long hours in instances or months of rep grinds required to get useful recipes. Everything you learn is - to my knowledge - from your Inscription trainer, or from minor glyphs you find via research. The last thing I like about this profession is that it doesn't need to be at maximum level to be useful. You can still make a living, if not a profit, from lower level inscription. There's rarely two glyphs for the same spell, meaning that if you like a certain spell, and it's a lower level glyph, then that lower-level glyph is what you'll use. Sure, things from 300+ are a fair chunk more useful, but the lower level glyphs aren't so obsolete that you'll never use them again.

I realise I'm rambling on, but - as I've probably said in about every sentence now, I've noticed - I really like this.


4) Hallow's End: Well, technically this isn't 3.0, but more a few days after. Either way though, it's a recent event that I thought I may as well post about, as the blog didn't exist this time last year.

I like the events - and especially the achievements centred around this. Although I think the one to gather 20 masks is pretty damn far-fetched. The Headless Horseman in SMGY is interesting, a way for people to get some quick epics - whether it be for saving them for the pre-WoTLK nostalgia that will come, trying to min/max every last bit for the final weeks of raiding, or simply because you want to ride around on a broom. All in all, a fairly good event, when compared to some of the others which are a fair disappointment. Maybe it's just because the achievements give a sense of - well, achievement - but I like this event, nonetheless.

5) THE LAG!: I don't think I can say much on this one. I probably don't need to, for anyone on Dath (or to a lesser extent, the other Oceanic servers) would know about this by know, unless theyve turned off all their chat channels, ignored everyone on their friend lists and sat in the middle of Silithus for the past week. And if I did say anything, I'd probably go for a hundred lines spamming about how annoying this can get while doing certain things (namely, collecting items from a mailbox) - so, for all our sakes, I think I'll stop here before I spam us all to death.


Wow, I've only just realised I've been writing for almost the last hour, and probably killed you all with my wall of text. My bad. :P