The RNG for LFD can suck it

Dear Blizzard,

Yesterday, I was put into Heroic Halls of Stone for my Emblems of Frost-runs on my priest and then my druid. Later in the night, a guildie asked me to come heal his Emblems of Frost-run for his baby tank, since he didn't feel confident enough to pug. I came on K, since I specced out of resto on S. We got Heroic Halls of Stone.

Then, I went on a random heroics spree on S for emblems, and got Heroic Halls of Stone for one of the dungeons.

Please, stop. Put a limit or something as to how many times it will come up per account. I know I have three toons (and thus, it is possible for what happened yesterday to happen) but come on - one of my least favorite heroics happened to come up four times in one day? Really?

Help me out, here, Blizzard.

K thanks,

D

New Pet Peeve - WARLOCKS

Well, specifically, warlocks who do this:

I did a pug run on my druid S last night and ended up in a group with two ret pally guildies, a warlock, and a healing priest.

After EVERY SINGLE TRASH MOB, the warlock would life-tap himself to almost death.

And then stand there.

And stand there.

And the priest wouldn't heal him. And he wouldn't bandage himself or eat.

And he'd stand there.

And me, as a tank, would shift out of bear form to throw a Rejuv on him, then shift back and make the next pull.

After the pull, life-tap. Life-tap. Almost dead.

Standing there.

Standing there.

Priest does nothing.

I sigh, shift out of bear form to throw a Rejuv, then shift back and pull the next group.

Even worse, one of my two ret pally guildmates also would come in after a wipe and not eat or heal himself, and the priest wouldn't heal him.

So after wipes we'd have both a ret pally and the warlock standing around with no health, and a priest healer just standing around doing nothing.

So I'd throw Rejuvs on the ret pally and the warlock and then make a pull.

No joke, this went on for the entire run. Near the end, I got fed up and said, "do you guys not have any food?!"

The response from the warlock? "We don't need food buffs for heroics."

WTF PEOPLE?!

Patch 3.3 impressions from a failpriest

How is this fail? I don't understand. Oh, it's because he's a Hordie, isn't it? BURN!!

So now that the patch has been out for a week, I think it's time to give my impressions. Here's a nice space to prevent folks from being spoiled:
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Icecrown Citadel

So after dicking around on Tuesday and Wednesday in Trial of Suck, D's guild finally gave ICC-25 a shot on Thursday.

Point #1 - I GOT TO SHACKLE!! It was fun being able to dust off the old shackle button. Fortexorcist even gives me a timer on the shackle while I'm targetting the other mobs - RESHACKLE FTW!

I suspect that in time, we'll resort to just aoe-ing the rooms down on our way to Lord Skeleton, but for now I'm enjoying myself immensely with the shackles.

After spending what seemed like an immense amount of time on trash, we got to Lord Skeleton.

Point #2 - You know what's worse than nubs who don't know how to do Oculus, trade chat anal and Chuck Norris spammers, and jerk tanks who run into the next room to pull mobs when the healer has no mana? Answer: SKILLED GUILDIES WHO DON'T EFFING KNOW HOW TO EFFING GET OUT OF THE EFFING FIRE!!!!!!!!

That's right, D's progression guild of win FAILED. Over and over again, people stood in fire, people didn't switch to spikes, people got in front of the boss, etc.

We finally, finally got it down. Finally. Nothing even remotely appealing to a dps caster cloth-wearer dropped, but we got our Emblems of Frost and moved on.

Next room, one pack of mobs at a time, AOE, D near the top with some slammin' over-10k dps. We do spider trash mobs on the sides, and then get started on Lady Deathlich.

And wipe.

And wipe.

And wipe.

And then the RL thinks that we will do better if we "practice" by deliberately doing it the wrong way. On that boss, you have a mana shield to burn through on the boss at the same time you deal with nasty adds. So you have some on the boss, and some on the adds, especially since there's an enrage timer.

But the adds group kept failing and failing, so RL wanted us to have EVERYONE on the adds and no one on the boss. He said that if we couldn't get the adds down, what we burned on Lady Deathlich didn't matter. Which is true, but ...

WTF?!

He wanted us to practice with EVERYONE on the adds. How is that going to help the group when we start doing it the proper way and have only SOME of the raid on the adds?

Anyway, we couldn't get Lady Deathlich whatsoever. We didn't even make it past 70%.

Meanwhile, all I see on blogs and in trade chat, etc, is how "easy" all four bosses are so far.

GRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Raid time ended with only Lord Skeleton down. How utterly disappointing.

So because we waited so long in the week to start, we only had Sunday night left as a raid night.

Of course, not enough signed online. GRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!! We pulled the two trash packs in front of Lady Deathlich for the reputation (both packs pulled at once, go go 20k shadow priest dps!) and then called it.

Oh, and let's talk about 10 man ICC. On Friday, the officers of D's guild got together with a few of the long-time guildies and did ICC 10 man. Okay. I was busy with K's guild doing regular guild stuff, anyway, so I was not upset that I wasn't invited to be part of what was clearly The A Team.

But, BUT, on Sunday during the day, the officers went ON THEIR ALTS along with a few more guildies, and again D wasn't invited. Talk about disappointment - my main was not good enough for their alt team, or The B Team. Booo!!

Both of those teams did a full clear, by the way.

So on Sunday after the 25-man raid broke up due to lack of people, myself and one of the main guild tanks that had not gone on the two 10 man teams formed a group, and the RL took his THIRD ALT with us to "help us out".

Guess how far we got?

Yeah .. not even past Lord Skeleton.

I was livid. WTF? GET ON THE SPIKES, PEOPLE!! It was a boatload of fail and I was super pissed.

And Monday night, my computer went kaput and I had to reinstall Windows as well as the game itself, meaning no game time at all for me.

So this past week? I got emblems of frost from doing the weekly raid quest (it was Instructor Razuvious on my server), the random heroic daily every day, finishing the quest line from the new ICC 5-mans, and from killing Lord Skeleton in 25-man. I don't even want to think about how many emblems that is - too low, if you ask me.

I guess I was all pissy about not even being good enough to be invited to the alt team, and it sucked all the enjoyment out of the game for me. I got too personally involved and feel left out when I'm not invited to 10-man events.

I need to get over it - I didn't join D's guild to do 10-mans. I did get in a group that tried. But knowing that some of their alts have more emblems of frost than my main just makes me upset. And them going on their alts instead of breaking it up and inviting more guildies didn't really make that much sense, from a "help the guild learn the fights" standpoint. How is gearing their alts helping the guild?

I know, their $15 a month. But still, it sucked, and it still sucks.

Whiny McWhinepants (yes, me) is going to be around until some of those "older" members stop signing on again (they disappear after new content isn't new anymore) and The A Team is forced to invite more guild members to the 10-man runs.

WAAAAAHHH!!

Last night, we went in for the reset (this week's raid quest is Lord Skeleton, sucks to my poor druid and possibly my shaman) and we were able to down Lord Skeleton after about 2 hours of attempts (seriously, wtf). Again, people standing in fire, but more importantly, people not switching to the spikes fast enough. WTF PEOPLE!!!

(By the way, I made a target macro for the spikes:

/target Bone Spike
/s GET ON THE FUCKING SPIKE NOW SLACKERS!!!!

Again, nothing for a cloth-wearing caster dps dropped. Boo. We cleared the trash in front of Lady Deathlich and called it (we spent the first hour pwning ToC 25).

Hopefully, people will get off their asses and show up tonight so we can go back in there. I WANT TO SEE THE GUNSHIP BATTLE, DAMMIT!!!!!

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The New ICC 5-mans

Dude, I love the new five mans. Even the first one, with the soft-core porn music of the first boss in Forge of Souls (I know, I know, James Brown) and the fun ice glaciers gauntlet in Pit of Saron and even the chase at the end of Halls of Reflection. I like all of them! I have not seen a Battered Hilt drop even once on any of my toons, though (I was able to tank the first two heroics on my druid S, but I don't even want to attempt HoR yet. I did tank it on regular mode, though.)

Oh, on the ten waves of trash on Halls of Reflection, you know there's the "line of sight" method where you stand in the little side cubbies where the bosses are standing? We tried that for a while, but one time a healer complained about not being able to see anything, so we moved our position to the hallway where we first come in. I thought it was much easier to control the mobs, spread out, and see everything. We were lucky that time to have two deathknights in our group, both of who used their deathgrip to pull casters and gunners to us. I liked that method a lot better than standing in the cubby.

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Boomkin Fun

I got a few (mostly cloth) spellpower drops out of the normal and heroic new 5-mans for S, and decided that since I didn't feel comfortable tanking or healing heroic Halls of Reflection and cat dps is wtfconfusing, I decided to bite the bullet and try rawrbear/moonkin.

OMFG, it's so much fun! I didn't realize how much fun it would be - I'm not sure why I like it so much, but I do. I like resto, as well (the only healing toon I like), but boomkining is SUPER KICKASS!

My hit is extremely low, but an Elixir of Accuracy and some hit food put me close to where I needed to be. I think my next Emblems of Triumph purchase will be a T9 piece with hit on it to help myself out in that department.

I got in a pug VoA 10 run last night as boomkin and recognized another boomkin in there. They have been a boomkin for a long time, I know. But I outdpsed them! Granted, I didn't do that well (couldn't break 4k, lol) but I still managed to pull my weight (the group wasn't superleet) and we still managed to one-shot all three bosses.

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The New LFD System

Yes, yes, it is KICKASS! I didn't put a lot of time into it, but I've been doing my heroic daily random every day on all three toons and doing some extras on S for the emblems. I queue myself up as a tank and BOOM, instagroup.

The bad? Yesterday, I queued up on K for the daily random and got Halls of Stone. Ugh. We did it flawlessly, I logged over to D, put myself into the queue again ... AND GOT EFFING HALLS OF STONE AGAIN!! %^E&$%&%

This tank didn't even bother to pull rock guy and big boned chick - he went straight to the Brann event and then the last boss. Fine with me.

Although now that I think about it, I did a random heroic on K the other day and entered into a group that had already downed a boss. Turns out that the next day, I found out that I didn't get credit for the heroic for my frost emblems (so I have two less emblems on K than I do on S). I wish I would have checked D before logging to see if that happened yesterday ...

Anyway, I don't really care about the "no talking" thing, though I've definitely experienced it. I DO care about the general asshattery that goes on, though.

Yesterday, in D's HoS run, the dps dk ran ahead of the prot paladin tank and aggroed some mobs. "Are you the tank? Then don't EFFING RUN AHEAD, ASSHOLE," said the pally. The dk apologized and said he hit the wrong key (autorun) and didn't mean to. The pally's response? "L2P, noob." No, seriously.

My boyfriend said that on the druid forums (I can't believe he reads the forums - there's no way I would go near there) there's this one douchenozzle saying that he grouped with a druid that apparently did terribad in a heroic, so douchenozzle inspected him and found that he had a "sub-optimal" spec. So douchenozzle, no joke, rolled a new toon on the other druid's server, just to tell him that douchenozzle and douchenozzle's guild laughs about the other druid's spec.

Seriously? You go to all that trouble just to mess with someone? Are you 12?

My boyfriend also just yesterday went to do one of the new heroic 5-mans on his sorely undergeared and neglected dps dk. He ended up outdpsing everyone and did 40% of the overall damage for the run. Second was an elemental shaman doing 1k dps and about 3 million less overall damage than him. Third was some 800 dps hunter.

Really? 800 dps? I think I can do more than that by stabbing a mob with D's dagger.

I have yet to come across absolutely atrocious dps, but I've heard the stories from guildies and my boyfriend, that's for sure. He said that yesterday he got Oculus twice in a row (ugh), and on one of the runs, there was a dps pally that did 1200 dps overall for the instance (HOW CAN YOU DO THAT WHEN YOU ARE ON THE BACK OF A DRAKE FOR MOST OF IT?!) and then said "this group sucks!" What?!

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Last night in the Trial of Suck 25 run, D won the Chalice of something from the Twins (I still have the ToC 10 man Chalice of something that has hit on it, the one that dropped last night doesn't). Now, with the Ashen Verdict ring, I am over hit-capped, and dropping the ToC 10 offhand would still leave me with plenty of hit rating.

Then I got a whisper from the person who had the second highest amount of points. "Are you willing to sell it? I still have an Ulduar 10 offhand."

Well, damn. For one, we work on DKP so I don't feel right selling something. And B, it's a guildie. And third, I have a better offhand than they do.

So I whispered the RL and told them that I was passing to the other person who had the second highest amount of points that wanted it.

I suppose I could always go for the Shriveled Maraca in Heroic HoR but .. buh. Guess I'll just wait and see what happens. :-( Maybe the Chalice will drop again next week.

I'm such a sucker.

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I do have a question for folks that have already killed Lady Deathlich - how do you figure out who stays on her and who handles adds? Would it be beneficial to those with slow ramp-up times (spriest (we just have 1), affliction locks (we have none), rawrcats (we have 1)) and those with half-spell, half-melee damage (enh. shamans (we have 1) and ret pallies (we have 1)) [so this is four people] stay on the boss, and have everyone else on the adds? Or would it better to just have all melee on adds, all ranged on boss, and having ranged switch to the embiggened Fanatics when they appear?

I know that if I say "slow ramp up time classes should stay on boss" our RL will say no. He does not seem to like singling any class out for any reason, including on Gormak (everyone switches to snobolds) and Anub (everyone switches to adds), slow ramp up time or no. But if it seems to be the general consensus to leave the slow-ramp up time classes on the boss ...

And really, what can enh. shamans do against the adds with half-spell, half-melee damage?

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Speaking of Lady Deathlich and Lord Skeleton, I will be doing a guide for ICC per Tam's request soon .. as soon as my guild stops failing and I actually get to see the rest of the wing. :-(

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Oh, and because people are now doing Oculus more than ever, the failboat has come sailing in from all directions. Here are some tips for doing Oculus like a boss:

Tip #1: After you get your drakes and clear the mobs on the first inner ring and are about to clear the platforms, fly around the inner ring until you get directly across from your destination platform, and fly STRAIGHT ACROSS. If you do it correctly, you will pull zero drakes. When you clear that platform, of course fly back the way you came and around the inner ring to the next platform. You will want to clear the drakes around the boss's platform, though.

Tip #2: Work out the order of who does the first time stop and the first rift (amber drakes, ability 2 and 3, respectively). Just go down the line - amber drake #1 get first time stop (when Eregos enrages and the whelps come out), amber drake #2 get the second time stop, amber drake #3 get the third, and then repeat. Similarly, start with amber drake #2 getting the first rift (you want to do a full channel, or apply 10 stacks of the debuff on Eregos, then start lancing for full dps while someone else channels), amber drake #3 getting second rift, and amber drake #1 getting third rift. As soon as each rift stops, the next one starts while the other two keep lancing (ability 1).

Tip #3: Tell everyone to fly to the first island to the right when he shifts into the Astral Plane thing. This is to prevent everyone from flying every which way. If you fly to the next island (there are three around the main island, you can't miss them) then that is enough space to avoid taking massive amounts of damage, as long as folks don't lag behind. And for Jeebus's sake, let the red drake start attacking first.

Hopefully, these tips will lessen the pain a little bit.

Patch Day woes and wins, and MMMM green bean casserole!

Today is "office holiday lunch" day, where the boss provides the meat (turkey and ham) and the rest of us bring side dishes and desserts. I brought my superdelicious green bean casserole of win. I know there are different ways of making it, but they all suck hardcore unless they are the exact recipe on the back of a Campbell's French Fried Onions can. Don't do your family and friends a disservice by messing around with that!

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So yesterday, I find out that my stupid computer did not download the patch. Background downloader was fail. I had to download the entire patch from a mirror site.

After 78924871 hours later, I was in business - I made sure to turn on my "out of date" addons and logged in to find my minimap was the default one (can't remember which addon I use, but it makes it square and small and moveable, that I guess that addon was out of service completely or something). Other than that, I was okay - UI was fine, Recount was fine, Omen was fine, and Fortexorcist was fine. That's really all I needed to raid.

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23 guildies online for D's first raid day of the week. Guild leader decided right away that we would just go knock out ToC 25 since some guild members were still MIA and general chat was saying that ICC was down.

In we go, buffed and ready. A little laggy, but not too bad.

And my super-buffed new shadow priest dps? 5.1k. On Northrend Beasts. You know how many times I've hit over 5k on that fight? Yeah .. never. Too much movement and switching targets. But I went over that 5k mark and rejoiced. Oh, and instead of being like 7-8th on the meters, I finished in 3rd. 3RD!! I haven't even fixed my action bars and gotten comfortable with my new "rotation" yet, either.

My same gear had me at 800 haste, exactly. Crit with raid buffs was around 20%, spellpower just over 3k. It was magnificent. I think I died and went to Heaven, sang praises to the Lord, and came back down to finish the fight.

So in short, WHOOOO SHADOW PRIEST BUFFS!!!!!

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We kill Northrend Beasts in short order and rezzed the dead and rebuffed, then the GM/RL said, "uh, Officer A, come and see what this guy is saying," this guy referring to the dude you talk to to start the Lord Jarraxus fight.

Of course, everyone went and took a look.

"Come back next week for a shot at Jarraxus, for you are not ready and the fight isn't available, scrubs," though of course not word for word. The place was bugged, and we were stuck. BOOOO!!

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Icecrown Citadel it was. We flew over. Got stuck on the instance portal. More than once. I flew down to check Vault of Archavon, someone else flew down to Naxx (Instructor Razuvious was the weekly raid boss), and a mage ported to Theramore to check Onyxia's Lair. Naxx and Ony were down, but VoA was up, so we knocked that out. We're one of those guilds that usually just downs Koralon then goes to do something else, but since they now all drop Triumph emblems, we stayed and killed everything. There's a new "wing" open in the place as you are walking to where Archavon used to be, but no new boss. I suppose they could make the place as large with as many bosses as they wanted to, but I'm sure there will only be one more "element" boss and that will be the end. Someone said they might be timing it for Season 8? I haven't heard.

And yes, my damage was super dope.

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So we called it quits after that, so folks could go try the new five-mans. I put a group together and after much wrangling and getting stuck on the instance portals, we finally got ourselves into Heroic Forge of Souls. It wasn't too bad - only two bosses in there, with the second one casting this "mirror" ability where you have to stop attacking it, only our mage seemed incapable of doing so. We wiped twice on him.

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And I have to say - WTF Blizzard? If you die on Devourer of Souls (last boss), be prepared to spend 89721364891 hours trying to get back to him - the walk through the instance is most likely the longest I've ever, ever had to do. Asshole Jaina Proudmoore is at the beginning of the instance, but could she give us a teleport to the end? NOOO. But who magically pops on in beside us after we down the last boss?

No repair person around, either - I suspect there will be one when the Ashen Verdict folks show up (I didn't see them), but for now, you have to fly to Crusader's Pinnacle or something. I hope there's a repair guy inside ICC like in Ulduar, though I have a bad feeling ...

Anyhoo, the portal to Pit of Saron was borked and we couldn't get in, so the others called it a night. I said "eff that" and put myself into LFG for a random daily for my two Frost Emblems.

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Old Kingdom! Me and the randoms get to the third trash pack, get "frozen", finally get disconnected, and I sign back in to find myself in Dalaran without a group. *sigh*

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So I do a few crafty things - sent the Saronite Ore I've been saving up on my bank alt to S to smelt into bars, then sent the bars to K to transmute into Titanium Bars. Sent those back to S and got my blacksmithing to 440. Seriously, I was about to cry. That was a LOT of stacks of Saronite, and still not enough for 450 blacksmithing.

Did my JC daily on E, no biggie.

Got a guildie to craft Heavy Borean Leather for me out of the stacks and stacks of Borean Leather I had saved up. Took those to the dwarf outside of the Leatherworking shop in Dalaran and got myself 6 pieces of Arctic Fur. Stashed those away for later.

Got back on S to start farming for more Titanium and Saronite, and put myself in LFG.

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Oculus! I'm tanking, awesome. Group is okay, the random dk doesn't seem to know what to do with the drakes, but we're off and things are going pretty smoothly. They really did nerf the place, but it still seems to take forever.

We get to Eregos, pull .. AND THE INSTANCE FREEZES. AND WE GET DISCONNECTED. AND ZOMG I SIGNED BACK IN TO FIND MYSELF IN DALARAN WITH NO GROUP!!!!!

Really? I had to go all the way through effing Oculus for NOTHING?!

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Put myself back into LFG. Culling of Stratholme this time, me tanking again.

There's a little gnome mage named "Pocketmerlin", which I thought was the cutest name ever.

We proceed through the place in record time, getting to Drake boss with 7 minutes to spare.

I had somehow missed going through the regular version on my way to 80, so I got the achievement for regular and heroic, and my two Frost Emblems. Hurrah!

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Then I got on D again, put myself in LFG. Halls of Stone. I hate Halls of Stone almost as much as I hate Old Kingdom, and definitely as much as I hate Oculus. Grr. But I have a solid, solid group. Tank is rawrbear with 57k health. We tear through the place with ease. I get disconnected right after Brann's "event" and feared the group would kick me to look for another. I finally got back online to find the group at the entrance to the last boss chamber. Yay! I was going to go kick some puppies if I had to do yet another heroic on D.

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Got my emblems, and then got on K. LFG, Culling of Stratholme again, and I'm the healer. Easy peasy, it was a quick run, no incidents, despite the slightly-squishy dk tank.

I was finally done with my first day of the "heroic dailies" circuit, after many problems and bugs.

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NEW LFG FEATURES

Overall impression? The new LFG feature is super fast, super easy, and super great, when it's not buggy.

You pick the roles you want to do, and a little box pops up almost immediately showing the tank, healer, and dps getting a checkmark when LFG has found one of each role. Then another box pops up after that one shows that all five group positions have been filled, and tells you which role you are. You hit "enter instance" or whatever, and you teleport there.

If something happens (like the bugs), you can still teleport to the instance if that initial box doesn't do it. There is a little icon on your minimap that you can right-click on to select an option "Teleport to Instance".

I think this will be great when they work out the kinks - I already think it is way, way superior to the old system.

I did also check it out on E. Apparently, under-80 (or at least 71 or over) will award 2 Triumph Emblems, some xp (it tells you how much), and some gold for doing a random instance. I was not able to get a group together yesterday (everyone was most likely on their 80 mains instead of their alts) but I'll have to check it out in the future.

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Bind on Account Goodness

I was able to buy the healer and tank shoulder enchants from Sons of Hodir QM and the tanking head arcanum from the Argent Crusade QM on D, and then mail them to S. No more rep grinding for S, though he still wears a tabard.

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So all in all, it was a good, though sometimes frustrating, night. My lag and the unfamiliarity of the "new" keybindings and "rotation" on D didn't hurt the fact that my dps most definitely increased from pre-patch, and once I get the "new" way down and get used to my new keybinds (I removed VE from the middle of my keys, so I decided to just rearrange them all) I suspect that my dps will jump even more. I'm in that "golden" ranged of 800-900 haste, so I think I'm good for now - I did not regem or reenchant anything (Black Magic enchant is only a few points higher than the highest spellpower one, so I decided that it wasn't worth the cost - once I get a new weapon, it will get Black Magic).

Oh, and the new corehound pet? Very cute - he rolls over, he wags his tail, he throws a bone up into the air and catches it, and he digs a little hole. Thanks, Blizzard!