The patch notes for the PTR’s current version of 3.2.2 are up, and I finally got around to giving them a once-over. Some of the things I had been hearing about it (HUNTER NERF!) aren’t exactly all that they were cracked up to be. Let me go over a couple of the points and give my thoughts.

The Brood Mother Returns

• After years of lurking in her lair battling the many brave adventurers who travelled from afar to challenge her, Onyxia returns stronger than before to commemorate World of Warcraft’s five-year anniversary.
  • Onyxia has been scaled to offer new challenges to level 80 players and is now available for testing in 10- and 25-player modes.
  • Adjusted for modern raiding, but with the fundamental experience of fighting the Brood Mother still in effect, including the horrors of her Deep Breaths!
  • Onyxia will now drop level 80 item versions of some classic loot items from the level 60 encounter.

Brood of Onyxia, a very rare 310%-speed mount modeled after Onyxia herself will be available for the luckiest of challengers.

Onyxia returns. Bigger, badder, and with deeper breaths! I cannot begin to express just how awesome this is. For me, personally experiencing Onyxia when she was the 40-man level 60-capped wipe-you-all-night and then nom-on-your-corpse kind of boss… I really look forward to being able to not solo her. Yes, I can solo her. Yes, I’ve done it. I’ve got her head in my bank to prove it. Rawr!

The updated level 80 helms are kickass. As a hunter, I’ve always liked the Dragon Stalker head piece the most out of any set. I was really sad that I never actually got one for Jaarka Mk. 1, and now I cannot wait to get them on the new Jaarka. Gyah, it’s so pretty!

Of course, the mount needs to be mentioned. ZOMG, I CAN HAZ?!

With this change comes a bit of a problem, however. Any group of people who are even considering EVER going into Blackwing Lair to get the Classic Raider achievement needs to start doing some Onyxia runs NOW before the patch hits. BWL requires the Onyxia Scale Cloaks for everyone, and it’s going to be a lot harder to get those Scales of Onyxia once the patch hits. Just something to think about.

Moving on to more Hunter-centric items, we have this…

Talents

• Beast Mastery
  • The Beast Within: The duration of this talent has been reduced to 10 seconds. In addition, hunters with this talent will do 10% additional damage at all times.
  • Bestial Wrath: The duration of this talent has been reduced to 10 seconds.

Now, from what I had been told this was going to be a HUGE nerf to my BM hunter. This is not so. Nonono, not at all. Here’s my take on it.

Bestial Wrath (and The Beast Within, as they are linked) are dropping from a 15 18 second duration to 10 seconds. The power is not being replaced. It’s not changing what it does. It’s just not lasting as long. This means a few things:

1. The power still provides great burst damage, lower mana cost for the duration, and a great way to get out of crowd control abilities. It can still save you from that Waking Nightmare the Confessions throw at you! Yay!
2. It doesn’t last as long. Ah, well. Honestly, this is not a huge nerf. If you’re a BM hunter, you have this power. If you’re a BM hunter, you have (or desperately need… >.>) the Glyph of Bestial Wrath. 10 second up time with 50 seconds of downtime? Really, that’s more than enough to pwn major faces. However, Blizz was feeling quite nice this time around, and as such we get…
3. The Beast Within will now grant the hunter a CONSTANT 10% additional damage at ALL TIMES. Yes, that’s what you read. So, in exchange for 5 8 extra seconds of Big Red Kitty/Turtle/Whatever and Hunter, you get a constant stream of additional damage. This is HUGE for padding our damage meters and helping us be a more viable Raid solution. We’re coming for you, Survival. You hear me?! We are coming for all of you!(in my best Laura Roslin voice)

Okay. That’s mostly what I wanted to touch on. The PvP changes are okay. Some are cool, some are meh. The changes to mages are awesome, but I’ll touch on those in another post. For now, I just wanted to /squee about Onyxia and let everyone know that the hunter changes are not all Doom-and-Gloom for BMers.

Fret not, BM Hunters! We have always rocked, and we shall show the world (of warcraft) once again our awesome powers!

Much love and pincushions,

Jaarka, stalking around with his favorite Spirit Beast for all time.

Fear! Fear, you few readers! The end is now, and it’s name is…

CUDDLEBUNNY

Ankles. She will hurt them.

Ohman. Run for your lives!

I…

I have no words…

It’s going to happen…

You will see…

Keep an eye out…

This weekend, the World (of Warcraft) shall…

Ugh…

You’ll see…

(stay tuned!)

Yo!

Summer has wrapped up and school has started up again. What’s that mean?

Lots of time between classes to post! Huzzah!

So… look forward to this blog becoming *much* more active very soon.

So, patch 3.2 hit yesterday. Lots of changes came with it… but the servers were down for most of the day. When they came up, a lot of my guildies were giving excuses had stuff to do, so I didn’t get to do anything other than the new Argent Dailies and start my Ravasaur mount quest with Roz.

Also: Un’Goro douchebags for the loss.

Anyway, after I get to play more, I’ll post my impressions. Stay tuned!