Notes from the PTR

My character copied in like one day. It's probably a good thing I got in as soon as I could, because copies are taking even longer now. Result: tons of level 1 people trolling the starting area chat.

Observations so far, as seen from my Druid:

- I had to change my character's name from "Rawfle" to "Notrawfle."
- When I copied old [Not]Rawfle, I was logged out in a Shattered Sun building. Because this is a new server, there's no progression yet on the Isle; it's just that one building with a handful of quests. I didn't die, but I was a bit confused at first why dudes were hitting me as soon as I zoned in.
- Not having mods is way wierd.
- Orgrimmar is way laggy, because people really have nothing to do but duel to try the new stuff.
- Those last two make for a deadly combination for me. My build is 51/0/10, so I got Starfall and Typhoon, but I had to skip on the new and improved Omen of Clarity, along with Intensity. The problem is, my gear is crap, and I suck at PVP. AND, I don't have any of my mods, and I use a lot of mods. Pitbull, Dominos, Power Auras, etc... all these things that help me do better. Thus, I lose a lot of duels. I've mostly been beating Warriors and stupid Paladins. Maybe I'm a noob because I depend on mods, but who doesn't?
- It'd be nice if we could get 1c respecs. :(
- Speaking of talents, I've got an interesting bug on my talent window. I spent all my points, but when I went to look at it later it said I was 48/0/10, and I had three talent points left. But, while my 3/5 Earth and Moon and 1/1 Starfall were still filled in, Starfall was greyed out, because you need 50 points in a tree to get to its last tier. Just an peculiar bug. I didn't try spending the 3 bugged points; I thought the world might end or something.
- I got my Tauren some wicked horns that shoot straight up. The total cost of sawing (?) my character's bovine features and coloring them white cost a grand total of 14 gold! Wow! I stuck with the braided beard, although I may change that at some point, bringing my total cost up even more.
- Who's actually going to "test" Inscription? You're only option, really, is to already be an Herbalist so you can either grind out the mats yourself or be lucky enough to have some Peacebloom lying around your bank. You can't just buy herbs off the auction house, because these are new servers. What you can do, however, is buy a metric ton of herbs off the AH on the live servers, then copy your character and go to town. However people find ways to level Inscription, it would be filled with pain and misery I'm guessing.
- The treants have a pet bar! We like that. I didn't check what behavior they set to, but they do attack as soon as I summon them. Obviously they still die fast and have no real use other than annoyance.
- I miss OPie; it helps me condense a lot of crap into a few keystrokes. Like, I normally have all my CC (ER, NG, WS, Cyc) on the 4 key,and all my forms and mount on `. Can't do that now, unless I can get that mod running on the PTR client. Maybe I can.

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Not a lot to do on the PTR really. I probably will just stay Balance and continue dueling people. But what about the new skills? I can't seem to get Typhoon to work, or at least the knockback, so we'll call that a bug. I did keep standing still to cast it, because I kept thinking it had a 1.5 sec cast time (it had that in beta).

Starfall seems best when paired with Celestial Focus, giving every single star hit on your target a 15% stun chance. I was dueling a Warlock and I had her chain-stunned for maybe 6 sec. So that was fun. The cooldown seems a bit long. I think one minute would be better, or two minutes. Also, the act of summoning stars is a buff on you, meaning someone can dispel it and stop the spell. That sucks, but probably a coding limitation. If it was a targeted AOE or a point-blank AOE, you could move out of its range, making it useless. It probably has to be a buff so the game can use your current position to determine what targets are in range. So can they make it an invisible buff or something?

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It's only been a week, dangit! Why am I taking five days to make new posts?! Got two almost ready. So don't you loyal readers fret (all one of you). More delicious content is on the way.