Okay, did a good grind last night, but we came up a little short (had to go to sleep to get to work today) and only got to ~2150. We were playing A LOT better than we were last Wednesday night. Our control and communication were an order of magnitude more accurate and therefore, our play showed that (we beat a couple of 2300+ RMPs... that felt good). Unfortunately, today marks the start of Week 5, and that means that our opponents (who haven't bought the T1 weapons) will be getting their T2s (for the most part) and that is going to make melee-heavy teams that much more difficult to defeat.

One thing we are going to do (and I'm kicking myself for not having done it earlier) is that I am going to "rent" the T1 weapon (Bio has been doing this since we hit 2k) for 2 hours and sell it back before it gets locked on me. The nice thing is that I'm a melee class who relies on my weapon, but disarms simply don't matter against me, so I can afford to not enchant/gem/etc and it will still be a rather large upgrade for free only to grind with. Additionally, Blizz's official stance on the matter is that this is "okay" and they aren't banning people for doing it (though it's an exploit in my humble opinion). SO, hopefully we can hit 2200 while renting the T1 weapons, which will allow us less of a discrepancy when facing T2-wielding monsters.

OKAY, the PTR is back in full swing for 3.3.3. Here are the Druid notes so far:

* Nature's Grasp: Now has 3 charges, up from 1.
* Starfall: The damage done by this spell has been significantly increased.
* Typhoon: Mana cost reduced to 25%, down from 32%.

SOOOOOOO, only really balance and resto buffs... there is precisely dick for Ferals thus far. I have been petitioning to get SOMETHING in the way of dispel resistance (particular in light of DKs getting pandered to and gaining "diseases cannot be dispelled off your train via Death Coil" changes to Unholy Blight... bah) to Infected Wounds and Barkskin... but to no avail thus far. Blizz seems okay with the fact that Ferals, once trained, have no escape options AND their defensive cooldown is 100% dispellable... and if we ever manage to get onto a target, 3/4 healers can remove our snare... 4/4 if our target is the healer themselves.

Nature's Grasp could be interesting... it will largely depend on how the diminishing returns on Entangling Roots works and whether you can have multiple targets Rooted (in the case where 2 people are beating on you and you need a peel from both... is it going to root one, then the other, then the first guy again... resulting in no one being rooted for more than 3 seconds?). Blizz still hasn't come to terms with the fact that no one can have Frost Nova because it will just get dispelled... the reason it works so well with Mages is because of Winter's Chill - which gives is a dispel-buffer. We'll just have to wait and see... I honestly don't use Nature's Grasp in PvP at the moment anyway... it's a waste of a GCD in most instances.

However, let's get to talking about more distant changes... Cataclysm stat changes as they pertain to Ferals:

"Attack Power - This stat will no longer be present on most items as a flat value, though it will still show up on some process. Strength and Agility, which will be present on items, will grant the appropriate amount of Attack Power (generally 2 Attack Power per point of Strength or Agility) depending upon which stat a particular class favors. Agility may provide less Crit than it currently does." (source)

This is a pretty big-ticket item for Ferals, given that AP is a lackluster stat for us given how much Feral Attack Power we have currently... although AP will still be useful given that:

"Feral attack power will be gone. The damage of the weapon affects cat and bear attacks like other melee classes." (source)

So, they might actually know what the hell they're doing with this rebalance after all... Feral Attack Power has a LOT of badness involved with it, but if they redistribute damage and rescale Rip and Rake, then Feral Attack Power leaving forever won't be the end of the world (might actually be a buff to scaling with regard to Rip/Rake).

I'll keep posting as new tidbits flow from the devs...