3.02: The good, the bad, the indifferent. . .

OMFG PATCH 3.02 IS HERE!!!!!

Ok, now that I've gotten that out of my system, I'd like to give my views on the updates with the patch.. Mostly good, some bad, some as the title says indifferent.

The Good:
Tanking awesomeness! My two highest level characters that I currently play are a protection warrior and a protection paladin. I had intended to leave the warrior a tank, and take the paladin holy at 70, but with things in our guild being semi up in the air as far as tanks are concerned, I'm leaving both of them protection. After the re-spec, OMG! Finally, burst damage. And not like a small amount of burst damage, 1700 pnts on Avenger's shield, AWESOME. The new pally ability that does damage to target and additional targets, ALSO AWESOME. I actually felt like I was able do what I did before the patch, but more efficiently and more fun as well. If they come through with dual spec and allow me to have a holy build as well, that will be PERFECT. Oh, not to say I'm not excited about the new warrior goodies, I am. Being able to AOE with my warrior is AWESOME and the cone of cold-y ability they get is pretty sweet, as well as the damaging stun and improved heroic strike. I just don't have enough good things to say about the improvements to tanking DPS. Anyone complaining either A) is asking for too much, B) doesnt play a tank so their comments can't be taken seriously, or B) hasnt actually tried out the new abilities. I am super super happy what they've done with tanks from a solo standpoint.

INSCRIPTION!!! Ok, I am kind of a trade skills whore, so any new crafting is good for me. This one is pretty good. I like the functional boost to talents and the variety that it gives. The scrolls for armor and weapon enchants are AWESOME. I love having the utility to enchant things for my alts, especially BoP equipment without having to get a guildy to do it (granted they all have better enchants than me, but thats not the point)

The Bad:
MY ADD-ONS ARE BROKE!!! Cartographer, I am looking squarly at you. I use a host of different add ons: Cartographer, quest helper, gatherer, titan panel and auctioneer are the main ones. Cartographer is broken to the point where if I open a map with it, the map won't close and I have to shut the game down. QH seems to work ok, but I get a warning that says it is broken. Titan panel won't work, and the link in wow-matrix says their site is down. This is to be expected and within a few days all will be well, but damn it is annoying.

PEOPLE ARE GANKING WITH THEIR NEW TOYS!! Also to be expected, I had to bubble/hearth last night when a mage (human btw, not a gnome) decided to guinea pig his new abilities on me. He was frost, I was less than impressed, but I'll get to that.

WHY THE $#%^ IS THERE A PINK PIGTAILED GNOME WARRIOR ON THE LOAD SCREEN!?!?!? Maybe it was there all along and I never noticed it, but with the new art style, it is un-mistakable. Why Blizzard? Why?

The Indifferent:

Mage and Warlocks seem mostly unchanged: I have a frost mage and an affliction warlock. I decided to stick with those specs (I'm not high enough level as a lock to get the ability where you change into the demon, and even if I was, although its cool, I've adapted to drain tanking and enjoy it too much). I really notice no difference pre-patch to post-patch.

+dam & +heal replaced with spellpower: for my paladin this is super uber huge awesome amazing. For everyone else, I can see why they did it, but I think it makes caster gear lose a lot of flavor. The shadowcloth set used to be warlock and shadow priest only (why would a mage use +shadow damage). Things with extra frost damage were amazing. Now with spellpower, any caster can use any +damage gear. I should have picked up the cheap +arcane gear that was cheap in AH. While I think it will make leveling easier, I wish they wouldnt have done it. It just FEELS wrong.

Those are my initial impressions from a few hours last night. . .