I managed to try some things out on the PTR and here are my findings:

1) The new spell casting change either isn't active or it simply doesn't work.
I made a post about it on the PTR forums. Link here:
WoW Forums -> [bug] New casting mechanism doing nothing

On both Live and PTR chain casting a 1.5 sec heal with a G15 macro set to auto-repeat it was taking me 2 seconds per heal on average. (I have a 400 to 500ms latency).

2) As others have mentioned on the WoW forums, /cancelform isn't working correctly like it's supposed to. i.e. it's meant to be handled client side now, i.e. like /dismount, but that's not what is actually happening.

3) Starshard's coefficient is 5/6 (i.e. 83.333%). Weird, as for a 15 second dot I'd have expected a 100% coefficient.

4) Starshard's base damage is bugged. It's still got the back-loaded functionality and the first 3 ticks are ticking for the correct amount (157 per tick). The last 2 ticks are ticking about 50% more than normal ticks.

*edit* Upon testing with Lesser Heal Rank 3 (2.5 sec cast spell) the new casting code did seem to help. What seems to be happening is, the global cooldown is only starting when the server tells the client that it's started to cast a spell rather than being started by the client itself. And so any spell that takes less than 1.5 seconds + your latency to cast doesn't benefit at all from this change, whereas spells that take longer now work fine.

Any word yet on exactly how much less XP is needed to level and/or how much more XP quests are giving?

From here.

So a specific quest figure is not going to be readily available.

3) Is probably a deliberate decision to make it slightly less over powering. Then again they made chastise >_>

That seems like a really bad way of doing it since it just puts australians casting fast spells in the exact same position as before >_> If however I get a G15 keyboard with a shadowbolt macro I become a machine gun for shadowbolts only having to press other keys for life tapping and soul shattering. Al'ar will just be a matter of changing position and shadowbolts will just start up agian when I stop and I'm in range.

Not sure if this is news or not, but +4 Stats to ring has been removed from the SotS vendor on the PTR, according to Wowhead it now requires Honored with Lower City. I guess the only thing you get from SotS rep now is Ammo/Rings, since nothing new was added to the vendor :\

Can someone confirm this?

ImageShack - Hosting :: macespecializationrd1.jpg

[e]I guess it was confirmed in the other thread.

Perhaps they've added low drop rate epics to end bosses of low level instances like they had in BRS, Strat, etc? Would make sense in RFK or something.

Kibler's Bits - Items - World of Warcraft

My favorite new item

How many spectral tigers did that cost you?

It seems about the same, or perhaps slightly worse than [item]Phoenix-Wing Cloak[/item.

It's basically a Phoenix-wing Cloak for druids, with the extra armor and less defense/dodge. Personally, I still think [Pepe's Shroud of Pacification] is the way to go, unless you can get 9% hit elsewhere, which is pretty well impossible in tanking gear at this point.

Didn't see anyone post a link about this yet so here it is, farmed it in about 20mins

Hmmm "exactly" 2 blue gems? Hope this doesn't carry over to the melee meta gem.

I see no reason why it should, I think the exactly 2 blue is their twisted way of telling us to seek ways to get socket bonuses and not just slam 12 spell dmg in everything. /shrug

All it means is you put 2 blue gems in, and socket as usual. Don't see how that dissuades anyone from disregarding a socket bonus.

I think it's directed at the tendency to slam +12 stam gems in every socket for PvP gear.

+ Spell dmg/+Sta combo gems count as blue gems as well.

Don't be so ignorant. Blizzard intentionally itemizes bad as this will allow them to make "better" epic in lower level content for you to drool over.
If they would itemize every item the most optimal way for every class, things would be very boring. The best pieces would simply drop from the highest ilvl boss. They like people to rerun older (or easier) content for that one good item (like that BP).

It's all about relative power, not absolute. Speculating about "good" items in WotLK has no point. Blizzard can balance bosses to any form of itemization they come up with. What were the comments when stamina was going to boosted by 200% in TBC; omg bosses wont be able to one shot us anymore. What do we see, bosses damage in TBC was also increased and we still see one shot (perhaps to a slightly lesser extend).

Don't be so rude to people whose opinions differ from yours.

I don't buy it. If they're going to do that, why not design the first round of gear well, and then if necessary bump up the item level for the second round of gear? (Or equivalently, set the item level of the first round of gear lower.) They're free to set the item levels of gear wherever they feel like; they don't need to play quality-of-gear-design games with themselves if they want to change the quality of loot.

The fact is that when they're pushing out a large new chunk of content (e.g., TBC) with new talents, new player abilities, new mechanics, etc, they don't know exactly how things are going to shake out. They don't know what stats players are going to end up preferring, etc. And sometimes the class devs and the itemization team don't communicate well and they do things like putting mp5 on paladin tanking gear. After the players have had time with the first iteration of the gear, they know what to fix for the second round.

It's a complex system. Even its creators can't predict how it's going to behave.

Cloak comparison:

Phoenix Wing Cloak:
108 armor
37 sta
22 def (9.32 defense, 0.37 % dodge, parry, miss)
27 dodge (1.43 %)
Total evasion of about 2.5 %

Placation
348 armor
37 sta
16 def (6.78 defense, 0.27 % dodge, parry, miss)
25 dodge (1.32 %)
Total evasion of about 2.13 %

So here you lose 0.37 % evasion (which is good) for gaining 240 armor (which is also good). Never mind that this drop is free and the other is something that never even dropped for us.

Pacification
118 armor
45 sta
30 dodge (1.59 %)
25 hit (1.58 %)
Total evasion of 1.59 %

This is obviously a threat oriented cloak since the only good thing about it is the hit rating. At this moment I would not wear it at all since with the current incarnation of weapon skill I'm hit capped without it and it has nothing else to offer me. After patch it might be useful to get some more hit rating (3 % more miss from losing 5 weapon skill, but a total of 5.5 % more landing hits due to lowering opponent's dodge and parry will already increase threat output).

All in all, Placation is both the easiest cloak to get and the most well rounded.

The new repair bot is indeed one use only. And many people are picking up on the inside joke that it's named [Schematic: Field Repair Bot 110G]... as in it costs 110 gold to make.

I don't know why, but it is kind of blizzards thing. Compare pre-bc content itemization and how it was finally getting good around naxx, then compare pre-patch kara gear that was completely worthless. Really wouldn't be surprised if we didn't see a similar pattern for wotlk.