[WoW] First thoughts on the patch

Okay, I like parts of it... there are a few new Engineering recipes, but the profession as a whole still needs a lot of help. (Mind you, whatever Dev thought we needed Primal Nethers for the new helms should have their ass removed. Still, I'm going to get between 4 and 7 skill improves just in making the other components for the helm, but I have no idea when I'm ever going to get the Primal Nether.)

I'd like to be able to make all the helms, but apparently, that isn't something Blizzard thought was necessary. I can only make the rogue helm. Which also means that if I can't ever get a Primal Nether, I will need another rogue with engineering and a Primal Nether to make it for me. Which, as I may have intimated, is ridiculous.

Frost Grenades are interesting, but they really should do a little more damage, and the components need to cost less to make. (1 Primal Water per Icy Blasting Primer? Come on....)

And then, we come to the part that I really hate. The Skettis quests. Okay, I don't hate them all. Some are damn fun. (Bombing runs on egg platforms is amusing as hell.) However, there are at least a few quests where you need to be under the influence of a certain quest potion to complete the quests. What does the potion require? 6 shadow dust off of certain Skettis mobs. And they have a shitty drop rate. Oh, and the potion lasts 15 minutes. If you die, it goes away, and you have to farm 6 more shadow dust.

The first quest is to kill three named mobs, so you probably spend half your 15 minutes finding them, and if you're lucky, you kill them all before the potion wears off. I'm not so lucky. I'm building up to my third dose of potion and I've killed two of them.

But it gets better. The next quest in the chain is to nullify (or something) 4 bone piles. You need 10 scrolls per bone pile to do this. That's 40 scrolls. The scrolls only drop off mobs that you see when you're under the effects of? Anyone? You guessed it.. the same potion. Luckily, the shadow dust is not soulbound, so I have a feeling it's going to be a hot commodity. Also luckily, if you're in a group of 4 people, each person only needs 10 scrolls, because once each of the 4 in the group nullify (or whatever) a bone pile, it counts for everyone in the group.

But I suspect it gets worse from there, as I know for a fact that one of the quests in this chain requires killing elite mobs that drop a quest item that only one person in the group can get. So you have to farm these elite mobs X times (where X is the number of people in your group).

And all this is to slow things down so no one gets to exalted by the weekend.

Oh, and the Consortium rep rewards still suck.