Hunter talents aren't in alpha, you mean.

I was fed wrong info I geuss then, I was told that not only were the talents not in game, you couldnt play the class. Even with a sandbox.

The AGI:AP ratio is true. There's a level 66 Hunter in Alpha right now, he's the highest level character there.

I ran a bunch of those items through the itemization formulas, and they certainly seem to fit fairly well once you find a good value for stamina. I checked Item Levels based on Armor/Weapon DPS, and tried various values for staminas mod from 115 to 125. It was hard to get perfect fits but around 120 usually worked.

So yeah, I'd say the itemization formula hasn't changed much, aside from the revaluation of Stamina. The question is, as per the change in itemization cost to Defense and Health/5, will this be retroactive? I really really can't see them doing that. Take the Dreadnaught Chest as an example, with the new Stamina itemization it could have 81 stamina without going overbudget!!

Did their stats stay the same? Or did they get a boost to Sta?

Level cap is 65 atm, so no there's no 66hunter. However there are hunters, they just don't have new talents. They have about half AP and quivers don't work, but they raised dps on every ranged weapon by 10%(same speed, more damage).

Oh and for info I have some interesting news from someone playing BC:
There's an item that isn't fully implemented yet(it does nothing) that might be a new solution to throwing weapons. It's a 1-7shadow damage 10stam 14ap Throwing weap item, but not equipable currently. They might make the throwing weap system into a weapon/ammo system like bows and guns, so you could actually get good throwing weap rewards.

I can confirm that I have seen that hunters only get 1 AP per agility and have the old talent trees.

Maybe the 2 RAP = 1 agil was changed so Hunters don't scale too much with an Enh Shaman (10% AP buff) + BoK or possibly there will be talents that share your RAP with your pet, so RAP had to be reduced to balance pets.

Woops, typo'd 66 when I wanted to say 65. Ah well.

Not really sure how this halved RAP from Agi thing is going to work out, good thing I don't plan on continuing my Hunter. I'm trying to figure out where Blizzard is going with this, though, and I don't really see what they're planning. You can't really fix it with talents, because then that would leave out all the non-BC players. Itemization? Ditto non-BC players. Maybe it's just a change you undergo once you get past 60? That would seem kind of dumb, though.

Two ways I can easily think of:
1) Bump base weapon DPS. Ranged weapon DPS (not wands) is historically pretty low.
2) Bump crit per agi to compenstae for the loss of AP per agi. Make hunters closer to rogues, in essence.

The difference between base weapon DPS of Ranged Weapons and one handers of equivelant level isn't really that great when you factor in ammo. Of course, considering most Hunters either use AV ammo or level 55 crafted ammo, you can see how this turns out as new instances are released. As it is, a Hunter can't keep up with the damage put out by Rogues, thankfully we can end up doing something else on most fights, like shooting webs and pulling horsies. Increasing our crit to Rogue levels while nerfing our AP from Agi at the same time isn't going to work out very well. For one thing, legacy Hunters will be hurt so hard because none of their set items have +AP to them, leaving them with just pure Agi.

It'll be interesting to see how they pull this off, anyhow.

That is what I understand as well. So the non-TBC players can do 41/10 builds if they want too.

Well if you can only level to 70 in the Outlands, and can only get to the Outlands with TBC, and you only get those extra 10 Talent points as you level up....... :D

leveling to 70 in the Outlands has to be the biggest load of bollocks i have heard. I can certainly understand how cloth/scourgestone hand ins won't give experiance, but a mob is a mob.

2.82 spirit = 1 mp5 (by ilvl formula)

30% mana regen gives the equivalent spirit a regen rate of 0.529/5 seconds.
Every 8 minutes a Mage can Evocation for 15 mana/1 spirit. That gives the equivalent spirit an additional 0.44/5 seconds.

So, in an absolute worst case scenario that still uses a mage's primary regen abilities (Evocation and Mage Armor) spirit is about 96.9% as effective as mana/5. If a mage spends any amount of time in the 5-second rule (say from moving around or clearcasting Fireballs) or if the fight takes less than 7 minutes, spirit is better than mana/5. Or if the mage has access to Blessing of Kings, and they get a 10% bonus to their stats, then spirit comes out way ahead. Or if they have the mana regeneration talent.

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Now, if the rumor to Evocation is true, and it no longer works off of spirit...

Let's upgrade our mage, give him 45% mana regen (more talent points yay!). So with 45% mana regen and Blessing of Kings, 2.82 spirit would give a mp5 of 0.87 mana. The amount of time needed in the 5-second rule to make spirit > mp5 would be about 13%. Clearcasting Fireballs only gives a mage about 5-7% more time in the 5-second rule... so the fight would require movement of some sort or a period of time where a mage wands to regen mana off of JoW.

In the TBC alpha, is there an option for pregenerated level 60 characters? I'm wondering if any existing pre-TBC raid gear (BWL/AQ40/Naxx) has had sockets added.

Painful? Free shards, which may be new and therefore rare and not being tied to gearing up in the lower instances in TBC isn't what I'd call painful!

Also, I'm surprised that they have people killing in hellfire, as I thought the current alpha was limited to blood elf starting zone lvls 1-20. IF they have this, then it's probably that they are letting people explore outlands, in which case the alpha is progressing well and we'll probably see more items like this in the future.

For info about spell pentration, see :

http://forums.elitistjerks.com/viewtopic.php?id=8323

Short and sweet summary - for PvE, it's utterly and completely useless in current content.

Only levelling in Outlands has been debunked many times:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...pageNo=1&sid=1

The real question is what am I going to do with these qiraji insignias and artifacts =D

I thought about holding onto them too. Two things made me decide it wasn't worth it:

1) The artifacts don't stack. Stupid things.

2) Turning them in would require that my guild do at least Skeram when the xp comes out. I suspect getting people together to do AQ after the xp is out will be akin to herding cats. It just isn't going to happen in my guild. Naxx, maybe, but not AQ.

current items in games will NOT be socketable, that has been said repeatedly. only new items will have sockets.

you can technically level to 70 just by staying in current content areas, but it would be an extremely painful grind since you'll be getting trivial amounts of XP on level 60 elites at level 69. Kind of like leveling from 50-54 killing 45s in STV, doesn't make too much sense.

I would assume Karazhan is the "equalizer" for gear. Current players in tier2/3 can ezmode through the 61-69 instances in their current gear and pick up a few upgrades. New players level 1-69, run the 61-69 instances many times to gear up (how many times did you run strat/scholo/ubrs/dm?), and both groups hit karazhan almost equally geared, tier3 people just get there much faster. Karazhan provides the next level of gear that replaces tier3 and the 61-69 instances. The gear from karazhan is needed to hit 25 man black temple and later raids.

I'm suprised I haven't seen more guilds talking about this. Maybe they're all keeping it behind closed doors, but I don't think a lot of guilds realize the completely slaughter of their routine that's about to take place. Similarly, people are going to be leveling at different paces, and I have a feeling there are going to be a lot of guilds that go through some intense growing pangs when everyone is scattered between 60 and 70.

Has anyone's guild actively discussed this yet?