Ironhammer

The official Blizzard World of Warcraft user manual defines a person's in-game character as their "Avatar." I might need to start using that one instead of "toon."

Q: When will Pyromelter be put on the WoW Insider payroll? Has anyone offered him his own column yet?

@shiftplusone I played Cosmic Rift daily from 2001-2005. Loved that game. It was sad to see the population die off once SOE started charging for it.

I like to tease the meter-dominating disc priest in my raid by telling her to stop "stealing all the heals" with her bubbles. (her response is always a petulant "No!") On normal-mode fights she doubles the HPS of the other healers with aggressive shielding. On heroic-mode, our numbers are much more even, and I even come out on top once in a while (I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Holy Priest).

I haven't really given much thought to wands since I leveled my Priest during Burning Crusade. Mana was so scarce, you'd cast one spell on the mob then wand them down. Yes, the Wand Specialization talent was useful back then! I remember getting access to Greater Magic Wand and loving how powerful it was... LOL!

It will be nice to craft wands again, though I doubt they will ever be a part of gameplay like they used to be.

I suspect you will only be able to choose Monk if you play a Pandaren. Think of all the new character animations that would have to be added to the other races to accommodate the Monk's fighting style.

Renew still scales linearly with haste (i.e. faster ticks) between break points. The haste break points add extra ticks to Renew, increasing healing per mana (HPM) of the spell. So, Dawn was actually right. To say haste does nothing for Renew between breakpoints simply isn't true, it heals faster.

I think the you can purchase the scrolls to learn these abilities from various enchanting or rep vendors.

The Mage 4-piece bonus should reduce the cooldown of Evocation for Arcane Mages instead of Arcane Power. All that haste and faster Arcane Power (it's already 1.5 minutes!) aren't going to do much good unless there is a way to get more mana to cast spells!

I like the Effort Points/Gear Points (EPGP) system. It's flexible enough to include changing rosters, is resistant to inflation and player collusion, and doesn't rely much on random rolls. It also allows people to gear up their off-spec without hurting their main spec loot chances.

Everyone in the raid collects a steady flow of EP every 15 minutes they participate. As they acquire loot, they are assigned GP for the item. The ratio of the two (EP divided by GP) determines their priority when more than one person wants an item. The person with the highest priority gets the item, thereby lowering their priority among their peers for the next item. Both EP increase and GP increase, neither are spent. At the start of a new raid tier, the numbers are reset to arbitrary minimum values.