Last Week in WoW: Barrelling toward patch 5.3 edition

Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. Patch 5.3 continues to be on the PTR, and the changes keep coming. We still have no actual ETA for when the patch will hit live servers, but it's certainly not slowing down. On the other hand, the live servers are hopping too, with Raid Finder finally opening its doors to all comers, allowing us all to take down the notorious Lei Shen. As always, our intrepid team has been out covering it all.

Downtime today is just a series of rolling restarts at 7 a.m. PDT. The process is expected to take about an hour, which is more than enough time to skim our usual roundup of the last week of news. Read on to see what you may have missed.

Hot news and features

• The World of Warcraft community team will be hosting a live Q&A with the developers on April 25.
• Aiming for a BlizzCon ticket? We have a few tips to help you nab yours.
• Check out the latest patch 5.2 hotfixes for April 16 and April 18.
• The Answers to the recent PvP themed Ask the Devs are now up.
• Throne of Thunder Raid Finder is now completely open. We have a quick 5-second guide to each of the new bosses.
• We preview the new patch 5.3 battleground Deepwind Gorge.
• Engineers will be able to make a Bad Robot pet in a future patch.
• Fs, the original world first level 90 who was later rolled back to 87, has had his world first achievement reinstated.
• As of patch 5.3, carrying a flag in battlegrounds will cause a tank to take more damage.
• Legendary metagems are restricted to Throne of Thunder helms only.
• The Shado-Pan Assault trinkets have been hotfixed to be a bit less effective in PvP.

Class news and guides

• Scattered Shots examines the patch 5.3 buffs for hunters.
• Encrypted Text helps you get the secret rogue-only Bag of Coins item.
• The Care And Feeding of Warriors examines the current state of Titan's Grip.
• Blood Pact gleans warlock tricks from watching the elite players.
• Is playing a monk right for you?

Dungeons, items, professions, PvP, and more

• Want to do well in random battlegrounds? Keeping your healers happy is a good start. Luckily, we have a guide to doing just that.
• The devs are considering removing some existing battlegrounds. We speculate on which ones could be up for the axe.
• We have advise for downsizing your UI to a smaller screen resolution.
• Are your bags getting too full? We have a guide to storing your stuff in WoW.
• How would you design a raid boss? Rossi had dessert on his mind.
• Want to customize a macro icon across your characters? Here's some tips.
• Adam argues for less obsession over gear.

Odds and ends

• Know Your Lore discusses the internal conflicts of the Horde and makes a case for Garrosh's survival.
• Don't download game hacks. They're probably malware.
• Check the winners of the Blizzard Student Art Contest.
• 15 Minutes of Fame interviews a Forsaken apothecary roleplaying guild.
• A WoW-based project has won a 2013 Gamification Summit Award.
• We suggest some non-WoW books that will help you understand the game better.

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Tags: downtime, last-week-in-wow, maintenance, realm-downtime, realm-maintenance, rolling-restart, rolling-restarts, roundup, roundups, scheduled-downtime, scheduled-maintenance, server-downtime, server-maintenance, server-status, tuesday, tuesday-downtime, tuesday-maintenance, tuesday-morning, tuesday-morning-post

Filed under: Realm Status, News items

Source : http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/04/23/last-week-in-wow-barrelling-toward-patch-5-3-edition/