So 6.1 launches today if you're in the US and tomorrow in the EU, and it's bringing a few changes worthy of note.

Glyphs

First up, one of our previous mainstay glyphs, Glyph of the Alabaster Shield, which had been previously nerfed by 70%, has now been nerfed 100%, as in it's gone! Blizzard have removed it completely from the game, mainly for the purposes of choice. When something becomes mandatory across all fights, Blizzard tend to dislike it and either nerf it, or, as the case is here, remove it completely.

The other glyph change is Glyph of Harsh Words is now no longer usable by Prot. This means no more trading up pure survivability for DPS.

Seals

Seal of Truth? Gone! Prot no longer has any access to use SoT in 6.1. Similar to the situation with Alabaster Shield, first it got nerfed, and now it's been removed completely for us. Ret still have access to it, so it's still in the game, but it's specifically not accessible for Prot now.

Talents

As a result of the SoT removal, Empowered Seals is obviously impacted with only 2 seals to twist now. On top of that simplification, the remaining 2 seal buffs have, well, been buffed. Judging using Seal of Insight has seen an increase from regenerating 1% of your max health every 2 seconds for 20 seconds (0.5% per second) to 2% every 3 seconds for 21 seconds (0.66% per second).

Well woop. Colour me excited.

A little more exciting is the buff from Seal of Righteousness: The haste buff it provides has been boosted from +15% haste for 20 seconds to +20% haste for 20 seconds.

With the removal of SoT we no longer get the attack power buff at all.

Models

Of course the other big news with 6.1 (for me and most Horde Paladins) is the new Belf models get released as well. Now, I'm pretty happy overall with the update, as the female Belf models look great. And the males look great now as well, although most of the males suffer inexplicably from duck face.

However, the face I used on most of my Female Belfs (#3 fact fans) has been replaced by some horrific smiling face that resembles my old character's face in no way whatsoever.

So it's either pick a new face (bleurgh) or go male Belf, which is a possibility, at least for a while. I don't really like playing Taurens, as they're too big and slow and clunky for me :/

Misc

The only other changes in this patch are minor things: Heirloom tab and Twitter integration.

The Heirloom tab is handy, as it will clean up bags a bit further still, and make them truly account wide, but it does mean having to re-enchant each new copy you make.

The twitter integration? On a par with the Selfie camera they're introducing with a new garrison mission.

Aaaaaand, that's it really.

6.1, AKA the I'm on a diet patch: Guaranteed 95% content free.

That means, remarkably we've had 1 (count em - the expac launch itself) content patch since September 2013.

Let me repeat that:

ONE CONTENT PATCH BETWEEN SEPTEMBER 2013 AND JULY 2015: NEARLY 2 FULL YEARS!

 

Reasoning: 6.2 is likely another 5 months away, so that means, unbelievably, that we will have gone nearly 2 years (22 months) with 1 patch that actually carried content: from just after the release of Siege of Orgrimmar through the launch of Warlords itself right up to 6.2 in July-ish.

That's.....not good enough. In fact it's downright awful.

Blizzard really seem to have gotten into this groove of producing one great expansion followed up by a terrible one. And right now, at this very moment, Cataclysm has a very strong contender for worst expansion pack ever. Especially if 6.2's raid instance is the final tier of the expansion, then that would cement it.

Will the community abide such a horrific content drought? Especially after so many left during Siege, only to come back hopeful that WoD would re-invigorate the game?

I guess we'll find out...