Patch 3.3.3 and The Unbearable Heaviness of Being

Part inspirational vid, part cautionary tale. There's a mad surfing season coming up and my tummy's not cooperating AT ALL--just keeps growling like a black lion in heat.

And because there's always a BBQ here at the HQ, there's no way to break free from the Fat Man that's possessed me. I have more luck escaping from the Lich King.

You know the jiggles up (pardon the pun) when girls avert their eyes down to your belly the moment you turn. Grab them a glass of water. *STARE* Open them the car door. *STARE*

The belly monster has to go so I've scheduled some heavy riding sessions with my board soon. Well, just after I finish testing Patch 3.3.3, the latest update that made war mounts cost 50,000 honor.

It's been out for a couple of days now and gave a mixed bag of wins and fails. We know the full patch notes can be a snooze-fest, so we'll dish out our preliminary, biased assessments:

Buffs and Nerfs
- Death knight frost tanks got a boost. Could reverse their bad rep in heroic PuGs, but will be offset in battlegrounds where their upgraded talents are already annoying me more than usual.
- The population of Frostfire mages might rise by 0.001% due to patch buffs, while subtlety rogues can be less shy about their Recount digits.

Battlegrounds
- Marks of honor are now useless, so turn them in for honor at your local Brigadier-General. Only traded half of it before I got sick of the click grind. But bought new Relentless shoulders for my prot/ret pally so it's all even.
- New random battlegrounds finder put me in three straight Strands of the Ancients--more play than what I saw in the past month! Had a blast but will transfer to good 'ol Arathi Basin in a heartbeat. Terribly miss the paratrooper dives from the lumber mill node.

Heroics
- Digging the No-Drop policy in Heroics. Players are growing some backbone when landing in harder instances like Halls of Reflection due to longer 30-minute deserter debuff.

Crafting and Trading
- Frozo the Renowned is now in business. Don't mind the line because he sells some pretty useful stuff. Just beware of dang Mammoths blocking the engineering auction/trade shop.
- Auction House multi-stack selling! $weet for sellers, but utter torture for buyers. Imagine browsing 20 pages and still seeing 1-piece stacks of saronite ore!

There's a lot more changes, but I'm fairly confident these are the most important bits in the the update. With my sacred duty done, please excuse me porkers as I catch the waves. Vanity is calling. :D

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Jimbo Pellegrine video via YouTube Draenei
Death knight artwork by Rayph via DeviantArt