I started a bit of a discussion on Twitter yesterday, rather by accident, by talking about trackpads and their use to steer your character in WoW. I was writing outside, on my laptop, and wanted to log into the game to check something. It took me an age to steer my character over to the flight path in the Shrine, hop on a kite and head over to the PvP vendor to verify what I needed to check, and I momentarily glanced back to my first ever day playing WoW, when I used a trackpad. Man, that was hard. I quickly graduated to a normal mouse, and then onto a Razer Naga, and have never looked back.

As far as keyboards go, I'm still searching for the perfect one. I play on a laptop, and love the shallow travel, small reach and flat keys of my laptop's keyboard. I have a couple of external ones, so that I can play on a larger monitor, but haven't yet found one that replaces the laptop keyboard for sheer comfort and speed. The closest I've got is a Logitech super-flat keyboard. I'd use a Mac keyboard if all the keys weren't in the wrong places.

But how about you? Do you use a trackpad? External mouse? External keyboard? If so, which ones? And are you the mysterious, as yet unseen player who has played WoW on one of those mice that is a little rubber joystick in the center of the keyboard?

Blizzard Community Manager Daxxarri has taken to the US and EU forums to explain a temporary issue that has led Blizzard to temporarily disable the Conquest quartermasters for both factions.

Daxxarri

The achievement, Tyrannical Conquest, is only intended to be awarded when players earn 25,000 Conquest Points. Due to an issue that was not detected during the PTR testing process, the achievement could be awarded much earlier than intended. We are currently in the process of working to resolve the issue.

In the meantime, we've applied a hotfix that temporarily prevents players from purchasing gear from Tyrannical PvP item vendors.

source

This achievement required a hotfix back in patch 5.2, too, as it was incorrectly calculating the points required. It seems that, with patch 5.3, things have gone from bad to worse. The reason this is an issue is that the achievement's completion, at 25,000 conquest, now allows players to purchase conquest gear with honor. Allowing players to purchase that gear with honor at a far lower points earned level than intended was clearly a bit of an issue! Hopefully the developers will be able to implement a fix very soon, so that PvPers can continue to purchase their gear.

Update: Senior PvP Designer Brian Holinka tweeted WoW Insider this morning to clarify that the only disabled vendor is the one selling Tyrannical gear for honor. The Tyrannical conquest vendor is, in fact, still available.

From a PvP perspective, patch 5.3 is one of the biggest patches in a really long time. A really, really long time! WoW Insider has been covering the changes from a PvP angle to a pretty reasonable extent, from the first moment the resilience changes were announced, through the new arena and the new battleground, right up to the more recent alterations to tank damage and the like. All our coverage is collected in one easy place, so do check it out if you're searching for more information.

So we've struck upon a few changes already, but let's dig into the patch notes and provide some additional clarity. I've pulled out the PvP-specific items from the patch notes, but if you want to see them in full, that's absolutely fine too.

Patch 5.3: Escalation is finally upon us! Players in the US and Oceanic regions will already have access to this new patch, while Europe is kept waiting for another night for things to get real between the world of Azeroth and Garrosh Hellscream's cronies.

WoW Insider has been putting out a lot of coverage on all the various aspects of patch 5.3, but we've now got the official patch notes from Blizzard for your perusal. Hit the break for the full notes!

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and content creation at InternetDragons.TV), shows you how

Turtles and Hyrdas have a special place in the sewers of the Isle of Thunder. Their existence does sort of answer the question about what happens when turtles and snakes find their ways into the refuse of an empire full of magic and chemical experimentation. I mean, I know that was a burning question for me before this raid tier started. But now that you've stomped shells and knocked out a few one eyed monsters tentacle things, I'm sure you think you've done it all. Well, there's more to do still.

As you dive deeper into the sewers looking for a way back into the main castle, there is still a great number of horrors that await you. Well, rather, they're waiting for you so that they can try to eat you whole. The good news at least is that they mark the midpoint on the way to the final encounter with the Thunder King himself.

This will not be a comprehensive boss guide, instead this will be a quick run down on things that you, as a resto shaman, should be aware of or tips to help make your healing of the encounter easier.