Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. Patch 5.3 is out, and we have both a written guide and a video guide to the top 5 things you need to know. Beyond that, of course, we have guides to just about aspect of the new patch that'll tell you what to do to get the most out of it. Our usual roundup of those guides and the rest of the week's news can be found below. Maintenance today is 4 hours, starting at 5 a.m. PDT, so you should have some time.

Hot news and features

• Check out the official patch 5.3 patch notes.
• Check out our roundup of the patch 5.3 PvP changes.
• Read up on the latest patch 5.3 hotfixes for May 21, May 22,
• As with all patches, patch 5.3 has some known issues.
• Epic Scenario rewards are here. Don't lock yourself out of them.
• We have a guide to the new battle pets of patch 5.3.
• The random battleground queue system had to be disabled temporarily due to bugs.
• Blizzard's looking for feedback on some proposed pet battle changes.
• With the new battle pets in Karazhan, there's more reason to run the dungeon than ever. Here's a guide to soloing the Chess event.
• We take a look at farming Lesser Charms of Good Fortune in patch 5.3.
• The one-per-realm restriction for death knights is gone.

Class news and guides

• Totem Talk continues to guide restoration shamans through Throne of Thunder.
• Lichborne offers some more thoughts on patch 5.3 for death knights.
• The Light And How To Swing It discusses the underlying issues behind the patch 5.4 Vengeance nerf.
• Encrypted Text has a guide to Tricks of the Trade macros.
• The Care And Feeding of Warriors takes a look at warrior survivability.
• Blood Pact continues to look at warlock combat logs.
• WoW Archivist looks at more big class-based aggravations in early WoW.

Dungeons, items, professions, PvP, and more

• We have a simple guide to the new Deepwind Gorge battleground.
• We have a guide to using macros and keybinds to speed up your game play.
• We look at the 10 most desolate spots in WoW.

Odds and ends

• Know Your Lore examines the legacy of Gul'dan and Doomhammer and the nature of the Horde. We also have a discussion of the Alliance and the Darkspear Rebellion.
• We take a look at some WoW clone games.
• 15 Minutes of Fame interviews a draenei guild.
• The Hearthstone devs offered a look at the Stranglethorn Vale game board.
• We review Dawn of the Aspects Part Four.

---

Tags: downtime, last-week-in-wow, maintenance, realm-downtime, realm-maintenance, 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