./facepalm Why is it so hard to understand that stam enchants/gems exist if you NEED stamina?

Well, there should be both speeds of weapons. 2.8 is ideal for a 1:1 (50% steady, 50% auto) rotation, but you can actually manage a little higher DPS with a 3:2 rotation (60% steady, 40% auto) and a 3.0 weapon. So it comes down to personal preference. I hope they leave the legendary bow at 3.0, because it's theoretically more DPS.

The problem with warrior gear wasting stat points in haste is that it actually lowers your dps in most situations. Until they fix the rage generation formula to actually increase your rage (instead of lower it with each % of haste), haste will remain nothing but a burden on warrior DPS gear.

Socketing is most effective when you socket for a stat that is already on the item, because it overcomes the item budget penalty that applies to stacking too much of one stat. Socketing for stamina instead of +damage means a sacrifice of 0.8 damage per point of stamina. The tradeoff would be much less if they simply spread the item budget over more stats by adding a moderate amount of stamina.

Because the tradeoff is so severe, the new gear becomes in many cases inferior to already existing drops when it is socketed with stamina. The issue isn't that we can't find ways to get enough hit points (arena gear works very well for this purpose), it's that, given the paucity of fights that are glass cannon-friendly, the new gear simply isn't very good.

(Personally I wouldn't have a huge issue with a glass cannon set that enabled me to drop my stamina to increase my DPS output greatly, but since most of the item budget on the shadow priest set was converted into crit rating, we didn't even gain much on the DPS front.)

(I guess I'd further note that given the muck up with the feral set and the existence of spell hit on the healing set I expect things to be changed again and I will reserve judgement until I actually see what goes live.)

Rage per swing decreases with more haste. Overall rage per second increases with more haste.

Probably because he is discussing the specific items whereas you are just discussing theory for theory's sake. Just to ensure this wasn't a shadow priest specific issue I glanced at the revised Hunter Tier 6 belt, boot, and bracers. The items lose 91 stamina and gain about 190ish armor penetration and 30ish hit rating and hunters are rarely short on +hit. Assuming you use +15 stamina gems you are only going to recover 45 stamina and lose out on a potential 30+ agility you would have gotten from spinels. I would rather have -190 armor penetration, -30ish hit rating, +46 stamina, and +30ish agility. I'm sure I am not alone in that assertion. As he stated: the numbers just don't add up. The stamina nerf on these items is akin to raiding without Power Word: Fort on anyone but the tank.

The new t6 hunter items are incredible. Hit is an issue a full t6 hunter is constantly gemming around.

Before they put hit on those two pieces of new T6, the entire 8-set had 0 hit rating. If you were to wear all of it, you'd pretty much be forced to use Halberd of Desolation, Shadowmoon Destroyer's Drape, Stormrage Signet Ring, Ring of Deceitful Intent/Lethality/Band of the Ranger-General, Choker of Endless Nightmares and either Shurefooted on your boots, Biznicks on your ranged weap or, if you're lucky enough, Tsunami or Madness. Either that or socket hit gems and eat hit food. And a good chunk of those aren't suitable for SV builds.

Fair enough. I was basing my estimations on items that aren't widely distributed like Madness of the Betrayer, etc. Personally speaking, it is still a horrible trade off for my class/spec. but I will refrain from commenting on other classes/specs.

Anyone who stockpiles hundreds of badges to buy items after the badge vendor is released (SSO dailies and such done by server) is not terribly casual, just as Drysc said. They spent their time and effort stockpiling the badges and will still be doing the dailies to open the vendor up. There's no real cause for concern whether they spend the time now or later, unless you somehow don't think that earning ilvl X equipment without raiding is somehow undeserved. If that's the case, that discussion doesn't belong in this thread at all; it's the exact same situation as 2.3. You can debate that in a separate thread if you like, though I'm pretty sure that Gurgthock and the mods probably wouldn't be too pleased about another one of those floating around.

Yes, please stop the OMG WELFARE EPIX!! derails, some of us are actually in this thread to keep up-to-date with the PTR build.

Agreed. Although I also think the small tweak that they made (reference Tigole's post) is a good once, since it reduces the potential for random annoyances without changing the fundamentals of the fight.

So far I'm very pleased with Sunwell and with how they're handling the PTR (focusing more on making sure the fights are tuned right rather than leaving it up for the entire duration for guilds to all work out full strats and have them posted, tuned and ready to go when the patch launches.)

In a different vein, the summer event is enabled on the newest build of the PTR.

There are some new quests including a daily to kill a extra boss in regular slave pens. Its some sort of Ragnaros lookalike icelord. As he's level 73 even in normal Slave pens, he is definately not solo-able, but I'd expect that his drops are of similar quality to the halloween event's headless horseman.

Why not just have duplicate gear, gemmed for different purposes? You're getting 3 tokens per kill after all; it's highly likely that you'll end up with extras.

Drinking to be nerfed only inside arenas.

WoW Forums -> Drinking Nerfed?

Hmm hopefully this is just early testing and not an indication of when this patch is coming. Isn't that summer festival in June?

Thank God.

I worry about the possible precedent of making things drastically different in PvP vs. PvE. I, for one, have always supported having the game feel more unified.

That said: This drinking correction in arenas will be fantastic, though I still maintain the real issue in arena is dropping combat too quickly.

Edit: Spelling

They probably have the event already made and wanna test it now so they don't have to add it to a small patch later this year and have to enable the PTR for just this summer event.

Uhh yeah, easily. I have over 11.2k health buffed in raids with no pieces of stamina gear tossed in. Dropping sta would put me to like 10.5-6k health. Which is plenty enough. And if they dropped me too far for my own good, I would just wear 2/3 and have a solid sta piece in the third piece, or do like someone has said and put amethysts in more blue slots to get a bit more sta.

I was merely correcting someone who mentioned that WoTlk will be out before casuals get 2 pieces of gear since a single clear of Kara per week (pretty casual) from the day 2.4 hit the PTR till the day it goes live will yield ~150 badges. I have no issues with the fact that new recruits, alts & raiders screwed over by RNG have alternatives.

Since the gate opening is linked to 25 man bosses I believe it is important to make 25 man raids more appealing & lucrative than Karazhan. Raising the number of badges dropped per boss in a 25 man or giving discounts to players with the 'Hand of Adal' title was just my suggestion to aid with that.

Raid bosses drop BoJ - which is more than enough considering the titled people dont really need much from them even for offspec now/then.
Not to mention as Drysc rightly said; casuals who only do <1 Kara a week dont really need T6 level items regardless.

If people thought about the t6 change in terms of every class overall rather than having some people from specific classes posting 'well I prefer the new items i gained raw power and i didn't need the stam'.

Look at it this way:
- every class gained a few % of raw power (crit/hit/-armor etc.), although some less than others
- everyone would have worn the old t6 because it was best in slot already (with set bonuses)
- it means that some people cannot wear their new gear on progression fights, and forces more to wear pvp gear also in pve

So the side effect is that some people get screwed by the change, and everyone else gets a few percentile power increase.

Which Blizzard is going to have to balance encounters around anyway.

It isn't going to change your spot on the meters, relative to the other classes (unless you were close to shadowpriests).

So looking at raiding and itemisation as a whole, there really are no positive effects from the change yet it has a lot of downsides.

Glass cannon gear should exist, because certain classes/specs do want to use it in situations compared to others (see mages with BT trash neck vs walocks with ROS neck due to warlocks needing more hit from gear than mages), but to change tier gear to be like it is not a good decision.