Herro people. Commentator cat are joining ur thread just in time to commentate on the recent release of the expansion! I guess I can do my character list and levels first, then blab.
Thelene - 70 shaman on Arygos
Haldum - 58 death knight on Area52
Bakudan - 70 hunter on Area52
Giselleraven - 55 paladin on Coilfang
My hunter was my first character ever made on my account, and my first 70 pre-xpac. I'm dps by trade, but my shammy respec'd resto for the Northrend instances(and the lulz), and I'm absolutely in love with my protadin, and plan on getting her to 80 before either of my non-Death Knight alts.
First of all. Death Knights are beyond fun. The initial quest line and event chain is absolutely genius, and the most fun thing I've ever encountered in the game. Plus, adding the runeforging skill into the math just makes me giddy. I honestly believe that, save the ability to be a healer, death knights are the most personalizable class so far. I'm absolutely in love with mine.. I came home from the midnight release and did the whole quest line save for the Light's Hope Chapel event before passing out to rest before classes.
However. I'm disappointed with some of the new talent trees. The hunter trees sort of get on my nerves a tiny bit. I see marksmanship as better dps now, personally. I don't particularly care about exotic pets, because I can set pet skills up fine for extra dps... although, I admit, in retrospect to my original beliefs about this argument, with the new pet skill system, the 5 pet skill points is pretty okay. But I've seen some absolutely mean crits come off of wyvern shot, and I haven't even taken my hunter to Northrend to play around yet.
I'll give a biiig thumbs up to the new shammy trees, though. The elementals get a nice little balanced aoe+knockback+mana restore; not overly powerful, but still insanely useful. Restos can basically sit back and depend on earth shield and riptide, until you hit boss fights, now, but they're not, I don't think, overpowered; I've healed three dungeons since my respec, and when I actually have to heal, I have some problems with OOMage. Enhancement... I am in LOOOVE with this new tree. I wouldn't be resto if I could play enhancement worth crap, but I just can't pick up the rotation.
Pallies. Are. The. Best. Tanks. (Threat-wise)
I have -never- had problems with threat on my tankadin. Ever. Especially not since avenger's shield. Plus, prot pally is ridiculous op for questage, especially in massive kill chains. We have the survivability to take harder mobs, like elites for group quests, etc, and we can, or I can with my spec and gear, aoe/shield spike/holy shield down groups of five or more for questing. If I had a good healer as a partner, I'd probably just aoe grind plaguelands til the high 50's, and play in stratholme with aoe til 60, and get a head start before OL quests.
Aaaaand.... that's my basic critique on things that have been going down since xpac, although I know my pally talk has nothing at all to do with WotLK content. All in all, two thumbs up, Blizzard. And I'm impressed that we got the expansion launched with no major server crashes! Three thumbs up. However. We can't overlook the two days previous with at least 30 hours downtime...
Jam it back in, in the dark.