So, we’re making some ground! It looks like Blizzard agrees with the large group of people that feels the Engineering glove modifications aren’t worth losing the chance to enchant them:

Increased benefits from Hyperspeed Accelerators, Hand-Mounted Pyro Rocket, and Reticulated Armor Webbing glove modifications

So while that is vauge, it is at least a step in the right direction!

Source: WoW Forums

One of the few arguments that Engineering isn’t the profession with the least Blizzard-love was, “Yeah, but they gave you guys those awesome arena boots!”

Actually, they first killed our regular rocket boots in arenas, and we were stuck with the consolation prize of Nitro Boosts on our regular boots (which wasn’t so bad, considering the added stats). Then they decided they were too good, and drastically cut the duration of the effect.

Now, they’ve just cut them out completely:

After several attempts to balance the Nitro Boots ability in the arena, we have decided that we currently do not have an acceptable solution. Until we are able to better balance this ability it has been shut down in the arenas. We fully plan to continue working on this item and we intend to adjust it in upcoming patches.
Crygil 

When someone gave Crygil a hard time about this, the response was:

We have plans to make certain that this item is still worth the investment made in it. So don’t vendor it just yet.
Crygil 

While this does hint very slightly (I’m ever the optimist) that they might be looking into engineering more seriously, it is likely that they’ll just never get around to following through on those plans.

At the very least, the more they nerf engineering, the more likely it is that the developers will finally “notice” the state of engineering.

Stay strong, PvPing engineer brothers and sisters… I know I’m sticking with engineering until they nerf it right out of the game.

UPDATE: More info from blue:

That is an option we may explore. We also have several other changes to Nitro Boots in mind. We may include additional stats to making this comparable to other boot enchants. Many ideas are currently on the table and we are narrowing them down to the very best. I hope that not too many of my fellow engineers dropped the profession because of this change. Cool things are on the way. Hang in there.

Source: WoW Forums (2) vis MMO Champion’s Blue Tracker

So it’s time for a bit of a reboot.

Fishermen tend to stay away from spam...

I just spent about an hour clearing all of the Russian spammers off of the forums, and getting everything updated. Forum registration will now be somewhat more strict, so we shouldn’t have this problem again.

At any rate, I finally have some time to devote to making this site a useful resource, and to try to foster a community. I know I currently have a grand total of zero regular readers after such a long leave of absence, but to turn that around I’m going to see if I can bust out an article a day for the next several days.

While post-wrath patches haven’t brought us everything we hoped and dreamed for, I’ve been really pleased with what has been added recently, in spite of the blatant nerfs to our favorite goodies.

I know it seems as if Blizzard doesn’t have any love for our profession as of late, and I know many of you are frustrated, but I’m not willing to hang up my rocket boots and net-o-matic in spite. The sad fact of the matter is that while every other profession is more practical and profitable, engineering is still, by far, the most fun.

I takes a special kind of crazy to be a dedicated engineer, and here’s to hoping that I’m not the only one.

UPDATE: The hog has been changed/nerfed/buffed. I’ll update below.

Yes, I finally made it a few days ago. It was neither easy nor cheap, but worth every bit of time spent getting it.

My hog at Cantrips & Crows - the official biker bar on The Venture Co server.

Sadly, I didn’t notice until after taking this shot that my front wheel had managed to dip into the “solid” dock in front of the bar.

Before long I’ll post the remaining parts of my guide for getting this spectacle of modern engineering, but for now I’ll just answer a lot of the questions folks seem to still have about the vehicle.

Is it a siege vehicle?
Well, yes and no. It is summoned just as any other mount would be, except for the fact that after the standard mount casting bar, you also have a very short animation to actually mount the bike. Once you’re on the bike, it technically counts as your minion just as any other siege vehicle would. It has its own health bar and it does take fall damage for you (even if you fall far enough for it to “die”). Enemy players and mobs are able to target the bike and attack it directly. If they kill it, you are automatically dismounted.
It is now a normal mount, except for the fact that players can hop in the sidecar. It doesn’t have it’s own healthbar, and it does cause you to take normal fall damage. The upside, however, is that it now is affected by crusader and path of frost - and dismounting is instant.

So it is just as convenient as a normal mount?
Not quite. While mounting up may be about the same, dismounting is much slower. You can’t use an ability to instantly dismount yourself like you can with a regular mount (even if you have the option set in your WoW preferences), you are still forced to wait half a second as you hop off of your bike.  Also, because the bike only has 5,000 health or so, you may not be able to run from burst DPS classes you otherwise would get away from. Say, for instance, a Mage tried to kill me as I rode by on my regular mount. I may lose several thousand health, but I have 17,000 even in my un-enchanted gear. I’ll probably be fine. If I’m on my hog, the mage could easily kill my ride and then start laying into me.
Yes. It is now a normal mount.

I heard you could park it and it would stick around for a few minutes, and you could hop back on at any time. Is this true?
Sadly, no. I think this would be an awesome feature to offset the inconvenience of the slow dismount time, and a huge huge bonus for those intending to roleplay with their bikes, but I guess Blizzard decided against it after all. 

Why does it have an attack function on its vehicle bar?
I have no clue. It seems to toggle like auto-attack, and it can’t be used unless you have something targeted, but it doesn’t appear to do anything at all. If anyone knows, please tell me! 
It no longer has this. 

Can you use this in Azeroth? I heard it was only usable in Outland/Northrend.
Thankfully, yes. You can use this anywhere you could use a land mount.

Does that mean you can give rides to lowbies?
You sure can! I drove a level 1 all the way from the Eversong Woods to the Valley of Trials to level with a friend. Sure, a mage could have made that easier, but it was a fun ride. The level 1 (though he dinged 2 just from exploring) still drew monsters with his huge aggro radius, but as long as you stay away from casters and don’t drive straight through any melee, you should be fine.

What else is different from a normal mount?
Well, as of right now, the hog doesn’t gain any speed advantage from crusader aura, and you cannot drive it on water with waterwalking. I have yet to test the death knight aura, but I suspect it will be the same. Climbing onto your hog also sometimes faces you in odd directions for no apparent reason, so make sure you’re facing the way you want to before you go zooming off. 
Again, it is now a normal mount. 

That’s all I’ve got for now! If you have any questions about it, ask them in a comment and I’ll go test it until I’ve got an answer!

Welcome to RatchetHead: The first WoW Engineering Community!

This site is still under construction, but please join us on the forums and tell us what you’d like to see. I’m working on user integration between the blog and forums so users won’t need to register twice.

The plan for this blog section is to post site news, information about the state of engineering, and useful guides and resources.

For those of you who haven’t looked at the other sections, we currently have a great tool in progress that will break down an engineering item into its base components. It still needs a lot of work, but it is still quite useful! You can access it either by using the “Tool” tab at the top of the page, or by dragging the following link to your bookmarks and clicking it when you’re on the Wowhead page for an item: WH->RH

We also have some forums, as I mentioned before. The focus of this site is to create a community of individuals passionate about engineering in World of Warcraft, as well as tools and guides to support that community. So please, join the forums and help us grow! The more people we have involved, the better we can make this resource.

In a related note, I’m looking for dedicated engineers with a knack for finding news and information and who have the ability to write without substituting numbers for entire words. If you’re interested, please let me know!

EDIT: This post has now also been moved to the About page.