Daniel Howell contributes BigRedKitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for and about the Hunter class, sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary.

Dear BigRedKitty,

WWWUUUAAAAAAAAGGGHHHH!!

Yours In Friendship,

The Non-WotLK Beta Hunter Community

P.S. WWWUUUAAGHHH!! Seriously.

So. Are you hunters suitably Wrath-Freaked yet? Now now, be honest. You've read articles, forums, and some bloggers. You've been skimming the talent lists, the spells, and the patch notes. And your world is spinning.

Aspect Mastery is nerfed! Lock and Load has been gutted! Did you see what they did to Expose Weakness! Cats got kneecapped! Too many pets! Sporebats don't suck? Where'd the crit go! Rogues can avoid Flares?! Haste is a Lie! A damn lie, I say!

Oh behave. We've been in the beta a long time, leveled as all three specs, tried just about every pet there is, had the game lock up due to lag in every zone available in Northrend, and we're still breathing.

So grab yourself a raspberry latte and come join us in a calm, cool discussion about what hunters are going to be doing in WotLK.

Every Saturday, Eliah or Elizabeth will bring you their thoughts on the Priest class. Whether it's keeping your fellow players alive or melting their faces, you can read about it here!

Priests always seems to be in demand. Exploring or questing in any area of the game, at any level, whether Horde or Alliance, a Priest player can expect to be pestered with whispers for instance runs. Some polite, some demanding, some who need to be put on our ignore lists, and some who don't make any sense at all, but seem to be asking for something. What's a Priest to do when being asked to go here, there, or elsewhere? And what's a player to do when they need a Priest's help? Well, I'm going to try to explain here, in something of a how-to guide for grouping, for the Priests and non-Priests among us. So whether this is your first time partying with a Priest or your hundredth -- keep reading. There's plenty to know about how to act in a group, and we're only going to scratch the surface.

Well, I tend to agree with the sentiment expressed by this thread on the beta forums, which praises the 1 copper respecs currently available to beta players. Of course, not everyone agrees -- there are also those who side with Blizzard's standing opinion on the matter, which states that your talent spec shouldn't be a casual decision, and ought to mean something. And perhaps poster Warrenders hits the nail on the head when he explains that:

It would invalidate talent choices and specs as everyone can be any spec they want any time they wanted. Why not just make all talents baseline skills and be done with it then?

But regardless of your opinion on the issue, there is some excellent discussion -- from both sides of the fence -- here.

You've seen the expansion talents for most classes, so now's the time to ask - what do you think? (And if you haven't seen them, you can check them out at the official site or on Wowhead.) Do you already have a talent build all planned out or are you having trouble deciding? Since the priest changes haven't yet been announced yet, I have been busy drooling over the talent trees of other healing classes and plotting out my paladin-to-be. (I think at least 42 points in holy is called for!) So, have you got the perfect talent build yet? Tell us all about it!

With patch 1.12, we will have seen talent reviews for every class in the game. Every class has seen changes - both small and large - since the game's launch, and Blizzard has stated that there won't be any more large-scale reviews of this nature in the future. With that in mind, which class do you think has come out on top after this review process? I cannot, personally, think of a clear winner for PvE or PvP, as there is still much to be said for a player's specific build and skill, regardless of class. However, do any of you see a particular class winning out above all the rest?

It's been some time since I wrote about my initial attempts at playing the rogue class. And, no, I haven't given it up yet! I've only reached the fairly puny level of 33, but the rogue changes coming in the next patch have me excited about continued leveling - after all, there's little joy in having half of a talent build.

However, my recent efforts have been divided between my own rogue on the live realms and a pre-made level 60 rogue on the test realms. After some initial goofing off - it is, after all, a bit disorienting to jump from a low-30s character in mostly greens to a level 60 character with dual crusader enchants - I set to work trying different talent builds. Of course I've read all of the discussion on possible builds, but sometimes there's just no substitute for experience - and the test realms provide an ideal opportunity to see just what the class is capable of, with all possible talent permutations.

And, perhaps, some experimentation could teach me something about how to play my own, lesser rogue a bit better...

CM Drysc has updated us with additional news of the rogue review - including some substantial changes. The talent calculator has been updated to reflect these new changes, and presents rogues with some interesting new opportunities in the subtlety tree.

The changes are as follows:

• Murder has been changed to increase damage caused against Humanoid, Giant, Beast, and Dragonkin by 1%/2%.
• Remorseless Attacks has been reduced to 2 ranks, with the new effectiveness being 20% and 40%.
• Endurance has been changed to reduce the cooldown of your Sprint and Evasion abilities by 45 sec/1.5 min. It no longer increases the duration of Evasion.
• Weapon Expertise will now increases your skill with Fist, Dagger, and Sword weapons. It will no longer affect Maces.
• Mace Specialization will now also add 1-5 weapon skill with Maces, in addition to the stun effect the talent already provides.
• Adrenaline Rush now has a reduced cooldown of 5 min.
• Elusiveness has been reduced to a 2 point talent and now reduces the cooldown of Vanish and Blind by 45 sec/1.5 min. It no longer reduces the cooldown for Evasion.
• Opportunity is being moved to a tier 1 talent, swapping places with Camouflage.
• Ghostly Strike has been reverted back to the previous 125% weapon damage, but retains its new Energy cost of 40.
• Setup will now also provide combo points if you fully resist an attackers spell.
• Improved Rupture, Improved Cheap Shot, and Improved Garrote have been removed.
• New talent 'Serrated Blades' is a tier 4 talent in the Subtlety tree, causes your attacks to ignore X of your targets Armor, and increases the damage dealt by your Rupture ability. The amount of Armor reduced increases with your level. At level 60, the ranks will reduce target Armor by 100/200/300 respectively.
• New talent 'Dirty Deeds' replaces the Improved Cheap Shot talent, reducing the Energy cost of both the Cheap Shot and Garrote abilities by 10/20.
• Garrote, Eviscerate, and Rupture now all scale with Attack Power. (For the druids in the audience, Drysc has confirmed that the druid's cat form abilities ferocious bite and rip will also scale in this way come patch day.)
  

A new talent calculator showcasing the rogue changes went online today.  With it, of course, comes plenty of speculation about possible new talent combinations and viable builds.  I don't think the combat build I've been putting together with my own rogue has changed much, there are more viable options in the assassination and subtlety trees to pair with it.  Decisions, decisions....

When I first rolled my priest, I planned to do more PvP with it than I had with my other characters.  And as I leveled up, I'd usually spend an evening or two a week running through Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, and eventually Alterac Valley.  But after hitting 60, I found myself wanting to PvP less and less.  I've talked a bit about struggling with healing in PvP, and while it's certainly possible, I can always tend to think up more entertaining things to do than venture into the battlegrounds these days.

Yesterday, when a friend asked me if I wanted to go to Alterac Valley with him, I replied immediately:  "No - all I do there is die over and over.  I'm no shadow priest!"  My friend had a quick comeback: "Why not respec?" 

I didn't have any response to that.  I'd leveled up with a holy/discipline build that had served me well, but in the past few days respeced several times in an attempt to make solo and PvP a little more fun, without gimping my healing abilities.  I hadn't been entirely happy with any of the results, so perhaps this was the time to consider more serious measures.  I headed straight for the priest trainer and, after some hesitation, paid the fee to unlearn my talents.

I put 20 points in discipline and remaining 31 in shadow.  I was now, officially, a shadow priest.

Everyone seemed to complain that the talent calculators on the official web site were slow and difficult to use.  The talent calculators on Wowhead seemed to be favored by nearly everyone I encountered, with their slick design and layout.  Blizzard has taken note of this when redesigning their own talent calculators, which are now online.  I find Blizzard's borrowing from community projects interesting (note also there are several features that are awfully similar to CTRaid Assist coming in patch 1.11) - any other opinions?

...and in a very good way.  Changes include the following:

Arcane Tree
Arcane Subtlety: Now a 2-point talent that reduces your target's resistances to all your spells by 5/10 and threat caused by your arcane spells by 20/40%.
Wand Specialization: Now only a 2-point talent.
Magic Absorption: New 5-point, tier 2 ability.  When you resist a spell, you regain 1/2/3/4/5% of your maximum mana and increases your resistances by 2/4/6/8/10.
Improved Arcane Explosion: Now a 3-point ability that increases the critical chance of Arcane Explosion by 2/4/6%.

Fire Tree
Burning Soul: Now adds threat reduction as well as prevents you from loosing casting time by taking damage.  Threat reduced by 15/30%.
Improved Scorch: The fire vulnerability DoT has been improved to 3% each, and still stacks 5 times (for a total of 15% increased fire vulnerability).

Frost Tree
Frost Warding: Moved to tier 1.
Elemental Focus: New 3-point tier 1 talent that increases your chance to hit with fire and frost spells by 2/4/6%.
Improved Frost Nova: Moved to tier 2.
Permafrost: Moved to tier 2.
Frost Channeling: In addition to the mana cost reduction, this talent now also reduces threat caused by frost spells by 10/20/30%.
Shatter: The pre-requisite for this talent is now Improved Frost Nova rather than Frostbite.
Winter's Chill: Changed functionality.  Now causes a debuff that increases frost crit chance by 2%.  20/40/60/80/100% chance to apply the debuff.
Ice Barrier: Now receives 10% of the benefit of +frost damage gear and can stack with a priest's Power Word: Shield.
 

Official talent calculators have been released for the recently reviewed mage and shaman talent trees.  These provide a clearer picture of the mage and shaman revisions than the already available text-based descriptions for the classes.  To those dissatisfied with these changes, I can only encourage you to wait until we see how they play out on the test realms. 

We've recently seen the completion of the mage and shaman reviews, leaving every class reviewed besides the rogue.  But have they all been for better or worse?  Do you look forward to class reviews or do you cringe at the thought?  Are official reviews a new beginning for a class, or the end of them?

You may have heard that the upcoming Burning Crusade expansion will raise the level cap of the game from 60 to 70.  But what doesn't seem to be such common knowledge is the fact that you will receive ten additional talent points to spend, and that all of the talent trees will be expanded to accommodate these extra points (likely providing each talent tree with a 41-point talent).

So, the question remains - what do you plan to do when you have ten extra talent points to throw around?

Have all of the priests in the audience decided how they want to respec when the servers come back up?  Despite having spent some time considering available options, during the my play-time on the test server I've been unable to reach a conclusion.  Fortunately, Azrathil of EU server Kel'Thuzad has put together a fairly comprehensive list of possible talent builds for 1.10.  For those of us still indecisive, there are a few pages of commentary in the thread, as well as additional build suggestions.