Artificial

He doesn't ignore the point. He addresses it in two ways -- first, by noting that the damage component is indeed too low and will be corrected, and secondly by explaining how they want the bear mechanics to work in this regard. If your argument is that his response doesn't say, "You know, you're right -- we've failed to completely homogenize bears so they work identically to those other classes, you're right, and we'll fix that so they're just furry warriors," you're absolutely right, he doesn't do that. But that's a good thing...

Curse of Doom didn't used to be a dot at all. When it became Bane of Doom, it acquired some dot-like mechanics, delivering damage in several bits rather than all at once like it used to, but it's still not a "real" DoT. The mechanics differ significantly.

Yeah, glyph vendors occasionally appear on the PTR as well. They're there because it's impossible to test the new glyphs without them, not because Blizzard has gone bonkers and decided to obsolete and entire profession.

@wow: Yes, you're way off base. If the new glyph has the same ID as an old one, the item is simply transformed, because it's not really a new glyph in that case, it's just the new version of the old glyph; even if the old version was "Glyph of Hot Fireballs" and the new one is "Glyph of Tasty Popsicles", as far as the game is concerned, it's the same glyph.

Old Blanchy did, in fact, survive the Cataclysm. The equicide occurred after...

It's also blantantly obvious that Metzen was joking when making the comment. "No corner of the world left untouched --well, except maybe Westfall. Old Blanchy, y'know, she's 'core." Obviously Westfall wasn't untouched either. The whole "except Westfall" part onward is obviously in jest.

It's not that people are confusing "top spec" with "viable", it's that there are multiple senses of "viable". You're using "viable" in the sense of "capable of doing the job well", whereas most people use it in the sense of "capable of being selected by the raid leader for inclusion". The spec is not viable in the second sense, making it practically not viable in the first, despite being theoretically viable in the first sense, since in practice you do no DPS at all while you're standing around town listening to the Fire and Arcane mages having fun on the raid and wishing that could be you.

It kinda doesn't matter if it is or isn't right now. They're still working on rotations and haven't tweaked damage numbers yet. DPS numbers on any spec on the beta right now are pretty much meaningless.

"Think about it: Glyphs of Stars, the Orca, the Chameleon, and the Stag all took a LOT of work..."

Sorry, but this proves false your previous statement, "I understand that." You clearly didn't, since the point of the post you claim to have understood was that those glyphs did not, in fact, take a lot of work.

@faytforsaken: Youhavenoideawhatitsliketobeagnomewithyourmindracingamilliontimesfasterthatalltheslowpeoplearoundyou!

@Yog "If you know you're a jackass while you drink..." lol... they're Goons. They pride themselves on being jackasses when sober.