Ok, so far I've just been posting the notes I make as I jot them down. I'm thinking perhaps I should do something more cohesive. More... paragraphy. Lots of spoilers! Don't read if you don't want to know!
So, to start:
Hunter stuff
The new hunter talents actually aren't too bad. I miss certain things (specifically faster pet reviving), but for the most part the Marksman stuff seems to be working out all right. I have no idea what kind of damage I'm doing, but I've found that, firstly, having automatic hunter's marking is awesome, and secondly, I can macro a rotation still, so I'm not entirely screwed.
Yes, I really said that, you can use a shot rotation macro with focus. The same way it was with mana - it's not ideal, and you have to reset it if you move or use another cooldown (by manually cycling shots until it resyncs), but if you're someone who can't watch a bunch of places on your screen without doing one or more of dying/dropping DoTs/missing cooldowns, the rotation macro still helps. (I can't keep Serpent Sting up and not die in fires without one.)
I love focus! I occasionally run into problems soloing where I try to front load too much and have something in my face while I really need to be hitting Steady, but it's really not bad at all. I've run one whole instance (Throne of Tides, excluding the bugged last boss), and I really didn't have resource problems. The macro worked great there, as well.
I had been thinking, as I'm soloing old instances on the live realms, that I'm going to miss Volley, until that Throne of Tides run where I discovered that, OMFG, the new Multi-Shot is spectacularly awesome. It's like shooting fistfuls of arrows at large groups. If the group is large enough, you will crit often enough that you can just spam it a lot until more of the group is dead, and you have to pop a Steady or two to keep going.
Trap launcher seems great, but I think it's somehow broken my left-click/right-click trap macros, which means I'm going to need five buttons for my traps instead of three. I'll have to work with the macros once things go live and see if I can remake them.
Aimed Shot I'm a little disappointed with, mostly that it's your signature shot as Marksman, but you can't really do much with it until you can get the talent points to make it proc as a free shot - which is really only good in groups. Yeah, yeah, it'll probably go back to hitting like a truck soon, which will make it more useful for soloing again. Right now it's not hitting hard enough to make it worth opening with on random mobs out in the world.
My bear seems squishier than he used to, but that may just be scaling needs adjusting. He seems to hold aggro a little better than he used to, at least.
I've yet to have a chance to really look at the glyphs, although from what I've seen, there's still some decent ones. I need to get my hands on glyph of Kill Shot for boss fights at least - if your Kill Shot doesn't kill the target, its cooldown resets (once every six seconds). Awesome. At least in theory.
Zones
I've mostly looked around Vashj'ir and Deepholm. I flew into Hyjal, but then went elsewhere. I've flown around the Twilight Highlands and Uldum, as well, but didn't do much beyond touring.
Vashj'ir is very pretty, lots of sea life, plants, nice details. The 480% speed Seahorse is amazing, and I really wish that were the faster flying we were buying. That would be worth another 4k or 5k gold. There are a few quirks in the questing that will hopefully get worked out before they go live. One is a quest with a terribly low spawn rate on the mobs, and the other major problem I've run into is that the floor in Nespirah (a giant... turtle? shell fish?) is horribly buggy, and 80% of the mobs fall through.
The Throne of Tides in Vashj'ir is also neat; its entry is, like Coilfang, down. It took some poking around to find it. The bosses took some coordination, but were all in all not terrible to PUG. The jellyfish elevator was quite cool.
Deepholm is underground, and most of the zone is absolutely gorgeous - but then, I'm the person who took two geology classes as electives. And, well, diamonds are a girl's best friend, and all that. Most of the quests there are not buggy, but they are fairly linear, so if you're competing for a quest mob, you can't do much else until you've gotten it.
Except mine. Oh, my God, the ore in Deepholm. I'm sure live servers it will be much more competitively farmed, but I've sold 11 stacks on the beta auction house for sick, sick amounts of money. I've already determined I'm spending the first day or week or whatever mining as much as I can.
Hyjal I mostly flew in and left, but if you've been to the battle of Mount Hyjal in the Caverns of Time, you're familiar with the basic geography. Much is wrecked, and your fly-in cinematic will give you great views of both Deathwing and Ragnaros. (I got goosebumps about Ragnaros. Oh. My. God. I need him as my ring tone.) And you run into Ysera and Malfurion Stormrage right off the bat. It's a lore nerd's dream.
The Twilight Highlands I haven't done much more than fly around, wave at Alexstrazsa on my way past, and mine all the elementium I could find. I saw one Pyrium (Pyrite?) node, but it was before I could hit it. Lots of ogres there.
Professions
Engineering is still NYI more than Wrath schematics, so I haven't been leveling it. I have, however, maxed mining. I've found, so far, Obsidium, Elementium, and the Pyrium (that I couldn't mine yet), and five types of volatile elementals - earth, fire, water, air, and shadow, all from mining. I've gotten five colors of gem (red, orange, yellow, blue, and purple), two in rare quality (I don't remember all the names at the moment). I've gotten first aid up into the 490s.
I haven't found anything that drops meat to cook! That must all be in Hyjal or something. I haven't tried fishing yet, partly because my inventory has been so full of ore I haven't done much else.
Quivers and ammo pouches become hunter-only bags - the Ancient Sinew Wrapped Lamina becomes an awesomely huge bag that definitely makes it feel worthwhile again. And I'm definitely making myself the largest-size ammo pouches or quivers (depending what I have patterns for) for all my hunters to see how many I can equip once the patch rolls over. (Banks slots. Oh, God. It probably won't work.)
Glyphs show up in your glyph interface as a list, so you know what you don't know, such as it is. I haven't managed to acquire any more yet. (If there's a glyph vendor, I haven't found it yet.)
I haven't touched most of the other professions yet - I should probably transfer more toons over and see how they translate. (Priest and warrior, maybe?)
Interface, guilds, etc.
The basic interface (where your buttons are, etc.) hasn't really changed, but once you pop open a screen for anything (character, spellbook, trainer, etc.), you see immediate changes. I... think? I like the trainer changes, but I'm not entirely sure.
I definitely like the spellbook changes. Pets, mounts, and such are all over there now. Your spellbook tells you when you have something new to pick up, too, if you haven't hit your trainer yet. The talent UI is... better than before, but for some reason comes across as arrogant to me. I know that sounds weird, but opening my talent pane makes me feel somehow affronted.
The professions UI has a couple nice options - filtering by what gives skill-ups, and revised chat linking options. The new character sheet is nicely customizable - you can move around various stat blocks or minimize them if you don't care about them.
The auction house and vendors haven't really changed. I'm hoping AuctionLite translates over to 4.0, because I still like its buy and sell panes better (even if the new default sell pane is essentially a ripoff - the auto searching and price setting is nice).
The guild UI has changed a little - there's a sort of messages page, and you have various sorting options for the roster. Ranks are easier to rearrange. And of course there's authenticator options for ranks.
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