PTR = 3.1 on this Maintenance Tuesday

Yep. 3.1 is on the Public Test Realm. I'd love to check it out, but I think Blizzard is messing around with the account log-in pages because it absolutely refuses to recognize my log-in name. Very frustrating, as I desperately want to download the PTR client and the new patch to test out all the new content. And I'm not even talking about Ulduar. I'll just cover the stuff I'm interested in... although this will still be a big post... you want to see the full notes? Check this out. Now, on to the patch notes (oh, and I'm paraphrasing this stuff hardcore):

General

• Ground mounts won't bolt when they get wet.

It's about time. Our mounts will stick around and swim with us, it seems. I think that's cool, although the only time their disappearing act bothered me was when I was fording a river. Having to mount up again, just because I hit one little spot of deep water would frustrate me. Well, no more! I can't wait to take my mounts swimming.

• Level 80 toons can pay a one-time fee to activate the dual spec feature.

I want to see how the new dual spec system works out, as well as how much it will cost. I'm really itching to try out a fury build that I've been toying with, as I've been diligently putting together a decent set of fury gear from quest greens. Plus, sometimes it's just fun to really see the big numbers and burn something down so fast, it doesn't know what hit it. Maybe that's why I've been loving my mage so much lately. At any rate, this is something that we've been waiting for, and I'm practically humming in anticipation.

• A new Gear Manager is being implemented to aid in switching gear fast.

Interesting. I already use Outfitter, so this may be entirely moot for me, but I'll at least try it out to see how it works. If it's anything at all like Outfitter, I may just end up using this due to the fact that I have way too many add-ons... it's starting to bog me down, I think. I really like the automatic switch that Outfitter brings, though, and they've already said that this Gear Manager won't do anything automatically. We'll just have to see.

Classes - General

• Various damage bonuses from different class talents no longer stack.

Things like Enrage, Tricks of the Trade, Wrecking Crew, etc. no longer stack. I haven't been raiding or grouping at all, really, so this hasn't affected me, but I bet raiders are interested in this change and how it might change dps.

Death Knight

• Looks like Blood got a dps buff, which is nice for me

Purah will always going to be Blood, no matter what. It's the principle of the thing. So the buff to blood makes me happy. Blood boil now does damage to all enemies, even if they don't have a disease on them, and more damage to those that do feel under the weather. Bloody strikes increase blood boil damage as well, instead of pestilence. It almost looks like they are making diseases less important for Blood spec. Blood worms heal for more, that's cool. Scent of Blood will now proc more often, as they changed it to also potentially proc on dodges and parries, plus the internal cooldown is lower. And the icing on the cake? Sudden doom now just procs a free Death Coil. Automatically. No pushing the button or missing the proc. Nice. There are enough changes that it looks like Death Knights will probably get a free talent respec.

Mage

• Change to Water Elemental

I am looking forward to getting my water elemental on my mage in the future, so the changes are interesting to me. Improved water elemental has completely changed to Enduring Winter, a talent that has a 33/66/100% chance on a frostbolt cast to increase mana regen for up to 10 people your group/raid.

Rogue

• Combat got some buffs

Reduced cooldown on Adrenaline rush, increased damage for Killing Spree and Savage Combat, and only 3 ranks for Lightning Reflexes. My rogue isn't quite there yet, but these changes make me happy.

Warrior

• Heroic Throw missile speed increased

Yay! Faster pulls!

Professions

• Damn. No love for Engineering.

Heh. I don't know what I was expecting, but nothing for engineering. Blacksmithing has been rebalanced to be more useful from 1-300, though. Too bad NONE of my toons have Blacksmithing.

User Interface

• New Advanced quest tracking

Looks like they are trying to make the basic quest tracker not suck. I have no idea what this is all about or what they've changed. I doubt it will make me stop using QuestHelper.

Items

• White Tickbird Hatchling is now considered a pet

Um... I don't have one, but plan to do so in the future. What the heck was it considered before?

So, those are the changes I'm really focusing on. Can't wait till Blizz fixes the log-in so I can get this stuff downloaded. :D