Delays

Yes, as you probably figured the delay for this post was due to me getting sucked into new content. For those of you yet to experience its majesty, by all means skip the rest of this post; it's spoiler-heavy.


So yus, 'tis awesome. I've been going through my mains, carrying out respecs and testing out skills, and I have to say I haven't been disappointed with -any- of them, despite what the class forums may say. Boomkin is fantastic fun; I can AoE grind now, with the changes to Hurricane and the added spells, and I found it is actually totally possible to tank, so long as you've stacked stamina or have a good healer (I chose the latter, since it was spur of the moment). I discovered that the only issue I had was with the 70 warrior who insisted on coming along - and on several ocassions I out-threated even him, which I was infiinitely proud of (Fury with Titan's Grip, obviously).

Next up is Daigeil's Arms spec. I've loaded him up with Bladestorm, of course, and it's totally crazy. Coupled with the updated recklessness, Shield Wall and Retaliation, Bladestorm is a monstrosity; every five minutes I pop recklessness and sweeping strikes, hit bladestorm and kill -everything- around me. Seriously; Blizz cannot possibly have thought it through. The possible DPS on these three abilities is, I believe, well over 10k, although I don't do Theorycrafting. Let's just point out the basics; each Whirlwind hits for 1k-ish, critting for about 2k tops. There are five whirlwinds in the move, so the DPS is more or less sustained for 5 seconds. Recklessness forces the next three specials to crit (yet to see if that's each hit from Bladestorm or the entire skill) and Sweeping Strikes causes yer next 5 swings to hit two targets. If you have 4 targets in range (the most whirlwind can hit), that's 8k damage from those (all critting due to recklessness, remember, unless the targets have insane resilience), and 8k from the sweeping strikes, which will overlap between them. The first whirlwind could crit for -16k-, and you've got four more of those coming, albeit without the effects of the cooldowns. Bear in mind that this is -my- damage, and I don't have any really special gear.

Thirdly we come to the Hunterspec, Beast Mastery, and I have to say... It's not as special as the other three. The actual Beast Mastery talent is very nice - devilsaur has crazy DPS - but there're no really amazing changes that catch your eye until you've got your pet to your own level - which I haven't yet. From Big Red Kitty I've learned that most pets can now hold aggro with the right gear, spec and petspec, well enough that you can spamvolley. However, until they're appropriately levelled the pets really aren't that amazing - and with the changes to 60-70 experience (it's more or less halved) I have this feeling my devilsaur and gorilla will never catch up. Admittedly the auto-levelling is nice, but... Hmm. We'll see.

Finally is rogue. Zul is currently Combat Daggers, as an experiment, and it's crazy enough without the consideration that I'd really be better as swords. Killing Spree is -absolutely nucking futs-, especially in 1v1 PvP or even against more than one. I'd just love to have three combat rogues use it at once and absolutely slaughter a few targets in a couple of seconds; it's that insane. You can't be stopped once you start, either, except with an exceptionally well timed blink, because you teleport after them unless they're more than a certain distance away. Mages get absolutely whacked, although I failed in my duels simply because I've not worked out my keybinds yet. With blade flurry and multiple targets I could see multi-target fighting being very fun indeed.

So.. yeah. And, naturally, I've had a haircut, leaped off a tall building and done various other obscure things (including hugging a corpse) in a desperate bid for achievements. I have no idea what the compulsion is to do so... but it's compulsive. DO IT.