Live Blog: Patch Day 6.0.2

Merinna 6.0

I've never done this before, but here's the blow-by-blow account of my first time seeing all these changes hitting at once. I've been in beta the past several expansions and always had these things sort of filter through more slowly. Today, it's just an onrush of impressions. I will add to this as time goes on.

• We start the day off with Merinna. Mer is my main. She'll always be my main. She gets first attention no matter what. 
• Great God! It looks like she has a huge overbite now. Her hair looks a bit like she was standing out in the rain.
• Log out and update some add ons. Very few have updates ready to go. Very unschway. 
• And back. Poking around the UI. Not having bags open in Bagnon (no update there) is tough. It's taken me a while to find the glorified new Toy Box, but yup. There it is. And it's recorded all the archaeology toys I had built and thrown away because there was no room in my inventory. That is very nice. When I heard about Toy Box, I thought it was at least an expansion too late (and it may still be) because I'd had to purge my bank to make room for... anything.  Several of my key binds have been lost, but Bartender is functioning and keeping track as I reset some of those. Guppet, the add on I use to get something to ride on is hopelessly messed up.
• HOLY COW! DRAENEI FEMALES MAKE THE MOST AWFUL FACES WHEN YOU /DANCE. Ugh. I'm never doing that again. 
• Well, the overbite thing looks much less so out in the light. That's a relief. I'm spending a lot of time thinking about this new character model. But truth is, I expect to turn it off before I do anything for real. It seems highly unlikely that my 8 year old iMac is going to be able to handle all these additional polygons. That said, it's doing alright so far. And this is with new patch lagginess and insanity happening everywhere. We shall see.
• Swooped in and killed a rarespawn in the Vale of the Eternal Blossoms. I still got it, but man is it the crap that I'm no longer allowed to cast lightning while on the move. I hate hate hate that change and knew it was going to hurt. 
• Just realized my weapon imbues are gone. I think that's something they just baked into the specc build now. Elemental shamans were always supposed to use flame imbue and now that damage is just in the build. 
• Aaaaand, there's the first DC.
• While I try to get reconnected, I might mention that I'm using Ask Mr. Robot to evaluate the state of my gear. He has put his "Best in Bags" feature free for all users (usually it's premium) for a week. With the elimination of a lot of stats, and fundamental change to many enchants, your ideal gear will probably have changed. Mr. Robot's add on and his site are working in beta mode for the time being and he's doing most of his work to prepare optimizations for level 100 and has admitted that he's using best estimates for new level 90. Still. It's better than nothing.
• Mr. Robot has suggested a thorough regemming. I know why this is for Merinna though. Previously, mastery stat was the shizzle for elemental shaman. It was such the shizzle that Blizzzard stole it and made it a tertiary stat for everybody to share. Our new mastery blows chunks so I gotta get rid of all this mastery.  Side note: I can't even find what my mastery is now. They have redone all the passive abilities in the spellbook and I can't find this stuff. 
• Molten Earth is my new mastery and I look closer at the specific gems Mr. Robot recommends. He's not passing on the mastery, he's passing on the limited intellect gains in favor of bigger haste gains. Intersting. 
• OK, I shot over to Miwako my gem cutter and made 14 new gems for Merinna to install.  But I took the time to unlock the new reagents tab of her bank and dump all the gems and ore into there. And then I walked away and cut all these things, mystically transferring the uncut materials through time and space back into my bag and ready to deliver to Mer. I have to quote me some Borat for this one: "I like it. It's niiiize."
• I was listening to trade chat all the while and it's being the same ridiculous thing it ever is. I'm hearing a lot of complaints about animations, particularly for the Night Elf Male. Nobody else has had such a horrified reaction to /dance though. And the Instance Servers seem to be barely functional. That's not a huge surprise.  Also, I noticed that the dude who serves up your Void Storage is missing in action. I suspect that feature is struggling for the moment, though when I peaked at the transmogrifier, he still had access to all the goodies I placed in void storage. So, who knows.
• And with that note. I have logged off for the time being to go walk my dog.  I'll be back later.
• And we're back. The weather has turned quite fall like. Lula enjoyed her walk!
• Chatting with my friend Somaric and he has noted something that I hadn't quite put into words before now. I'm not sure if Merinna's breasts are "bigger" but they are kind of oversculpted. We have noted that the Hostess pix on the right side of the screen, the breasts are kind of pressed together and have a decent cleavage line. In the new model, it looks like Merinna has lost her bra and then spray painted on her armor. It's really apparent in the picture I included above.
• Alright, we've regemmed and just to see how things are going, I have gone to the Firelands to replicate an experience I read last week. 
• Somebody was "joking" about pulling a 2 million hit on the training dummies back in the cities... We all derided him for flashing an old log from yesterday. But now I'm not sure. My normal sized hits are eliciting numbers in the hundred thousands still. I thought that was all reduced. I smell a bug
• Whatever the numbers, the denizens of the Firelands are falling to my might. By contrast, last week I tried this same run and the trash kicked my butt.
• I don't know what kind of damage this new mastery is doing, but in practice, it causes these pointy bits of stone to come out of the ground and launch themselves at my target. And this is cool.
• Merinna has new pain and death sounds that she makes when taking damage.
• Well, the Firelands have fallen completely. I even got four or five achievements from that run. 
• I think I'm just going to futz around for a bit and this is a pretty long entry, so I think we'll let it go. Happy Patch 6.0 everybody!