World of Warcraft at Ten Ton Hammer

Welcome to the latest World of Warcraft newsletter from Ten Ton Hammer. The Overpull, where we gather most of the things we should and a few we probably shouldn't.

In this section we'll look at the hits and misses taking place in the game. It's another week of mostly hits:

One semi-simple little patch 3.0.9 dropped without taking the servers down for a silly amount of time, and as far as I know, all went according to plan.

Said Patch 3.0.9 provided Paladins with 30 minute seals. A distant second to Dual spec, this has to be hailed as one of the Halleluja patches for Paladins tired of seal dancing.

Mages probably don't agree now that the 3-minute Mage nuke has been wiped. Arcane Power and Presence of Mind share a cooldown so no more sparkly fireballs that deal giddy-type numbers of damage. At least the cool down has been reduced for all of the spells mentioned.

Warlocks got a Curse of Tongues nerf and just to show how much Blizzard hates Warlocks, Rogues got some nice buffs to Hunger for Blood and Slice and Dice.

Everyone is has their bloomers in a bunch over dual spec, but I remember when there was no cap on the costs to re-specs. Heck I remember when Yes, you could rack up a stupid amount of respec costs back when a gold was a lot of money.

Since I stepped foot in Northrend, I really haven't spent much time at the Auction House, so I'd forgotten about the sales tax of time on all sales - it takes an hour(at least) for money to arrive from the sales of goods at the AH. Do you remember when mail with money was instant and gear took an hour (or longer) even on the same account? Talk about catering to gold sellers. At least they caught on to that little loophole. 

   

Is that love in the air or are you feeling gassy?

Screw Valentine's day and all of the knock-offs in every flipping game on the market. I ignore the Hallmark holiday as best I can in real life, I really wish I could avoid that crap in my virtual life too. And for the record, my wife got some special attention on Valentine's Day so I'm not near as tough as I sound. You know the kind of "special attention" I'm talking about, don't you? Yep, I made dinner and did the dishes and she went off to lounge around while I put the kids to bed, that qualifies as quality time in my house. Hubba hubba.

Apparently I'm not the only one feeling that way because we had a full raid later in the evening on Saturday. Maybe all of our wives were out with their boyfriends. It didn't matter as we continued our quest into Naxx. First we finished off the Four Horsemen and then showed Grobulus how to take his own temperature with that  needle he wields. Malygos, you will be making the decision on whether or not to "release at the spirit healer" soon my friend.

My Horde Paladin continues to march on and I'm looking forward to having Naxx on farm with both the Alliance and Horde. I've always enjoyed playing both sides as I think they both are a lot of fun, but I know some purists are cringing. What are the bets that I will be part of Naxx clears from both sides before Blizzard can get some new content released?

Jeff "Tigole" Kaplan has officially stepped away from his day-to-day activities at WoW so he can focus on some un-named MMO that I've code-named "CashCow." I actually met Jeff outside of the restrooms at Blizzcon a few years ago. I watched as a couple of drooling fans kept poor Jeff from going potty for quite some time by explaining how great the Druid is at casting Roots in Zul'Farrak and how Roots should work everywhere. That argument never gets old, I mean, no wonder Jeff left.

Dual spec has been stealing the spotlight, but the Blizzard blue posters have been discussing the Healing mechanisms with more and more regularity. Fellow healers prepare for some big changes to how the overall healing mechanics work. Healing has always been more of a whack-a-mole game than true strategic decision processing, but it appears they want to change that. I would say Blizzard has a pretty good batting average when they go back and rework something, but they have been known to miss (for example; the updated Hunter's Volley animation that resembled something rude and crude before being changed again).

Are you really into the Valentine's Day shenanigans or are you just getting the achievement (this could mean both inside an outside of WoW)? Anything else catch your eye that you want to discuss? Stop by the forums and let me know what you think,

Until next week, have fun and thanks for reading,
Medeor