Monday, September 22, 2008

Can't Touch This



First Strike has downed Kael'Thas in The Eye and finished all of Teir 5 content as of about 10 PM PST, 9/20/08!

Aside from the fact I noobed it up and accidentally abandoned the quest to kill Kael and Vashj (and then didn't pick it back up before raid time ><), I was there! I saw him die! The little bugger got me with a fireball crit right after I landed and bandaged up to full health, so I sat out the last 15%. But it was still awesome. And I can't wait to go back in there - I wants a chest from him! (T5 2 peice bonus is so sweet looking.)

As it was, no Hunter loot dropped. But again, that picture alone is worth it. Congrats to all of First Strike! :D

(Also, this is late in getting posted because I am in the last week of school right now for this quarter. So, real life before WoW, and all that. Now, on to Brewfest token gathering!)

Friday, September 19, 2008

Where I Stick My Foot in My Mouth

Once in a very great while, I find myself on the WoW forums (usually the Hunter forums) looking for a good debate, entertainment, or general news I somehow missed. Today, I found this thread.

I've been reading through it and honestly wasn't planning on writing anything about it, since I don't PVP, but I have to share a post written byAktarin, a Hunter from the Shadow Council server:

Hunter: Look, I think this is overpowered and here's why. *sets out logical arguments*
Rogue: OVERPOWERED?! YOU ALL HAVE STUNS! STUNLOCKS! POISONS! THINGS!
Hunter: No, that's you that you mean.
Mage: Um yeah. That'd be you.
Rogue: WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT! You ALL have stuns and things I can't fight! You.. you.. you can iceblock! NOT FAIR!
Hunter: Can we just get back to the point?
Rogue: THE POINT IS THAT YOU CAN'T PLAY!
Warrior: What were we talking about?
Rogue: How hunters are overpowered! They can wingclip! And frost trap!
Hunter: No, we WEREN'T talking about that! We were talking about dismantle and how it's unfair when you already have a gajillion stuns against our class!
Rogue: *starts flailing around spouting gibvberish and quoting improbably statistics*

-pause-

Warlock: Oh god. he's going to do the wookie defence.
Rogue: But, ladies and gentlemen of this supposed raid, I have one final thing I want you to consider. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk. But Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about it; that does not make sense!
Hunter: Oh god.
Rogue: Why would a Wookiee, an eight-foot tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of two-foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense! But more important, you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with this matter of OPdom? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this matter at hand! It does not make sense! Look at me. I'm a roguer defending my unbelievably overpowered class abilities, and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca! Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense! None of this makes sense! And so you have to remember, when you're in that developers room deliberatin' and conjugatin' the Emancipation Proclamation, does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this raid and development team, it does not make sense! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must nerf hunters!
Warrior: But..
Rogue: LOOK AT THE MONKEY! LOOK AT THE SILLY MONKEY! *waves a stuffed toy*
*Warrior's head explodes*


I may be alone in this, but this just cracked me up. Part of what I like about the Hunter community is we tend to attract some hilarious people. BRK is a very good example of what I mean. These people can make their point and do it in a way that is funny. I'm sure other communities have people like this, but I'm biased and so enjoy the Hunter people more. :P

So what's the skill they're all crying and ranting and debating about over there? Rogues are getting a new skill called Dismantle. It is first available at level 20, and increases from there - meaning Rogues will have this, as a base skill, come the 3.0 patch.

Is it OP? I honestly have to say "I don't know" because I didn't fight that many Rogues when I was dorking around in arenas with my Shaman friend. I have never really fought a Rogue because I know, with my latency, I can't kite him. That, and I don't enjoy duels anyway. :P

However, I can say if I had tried to level on my old PVP server and Rogues had this, I probably would have quit by the time I got to STV. It was bad enough getting camped by 70s, but having no weapon to help defend myself against a same-level Rogue would have been worse. I have managed to beat a Rogue at the same level as me on a PVP server in STV, but it was a very close thing. Only saving grace was a freezing trap -> aimed shot crit -> arcane shot crit. If he had had a trinket, I would have been toast.

So while I personally don't care if Rogues get more buffs to arena, I know there are plenty of people out there who would like to PVP on their Hunters. For their sake, I hope this gets reworked, because I can't come up with a way to get away from a Rogue without a melee or ranged weapon equipped that is not easily countered by a PVP spec Rogue. Short of having a secondary weapon, anyway (if you can even re-equip when disarmed).

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Tanking Pet Goodness

I managed to get onto the PTR last night (indeed, I was up until 6 AM my time), and decided to test out the pet tanking abilities. So I grabbed my Warp Stalker, named her Kaida, and went looking for someone to test with.

A Boomkin in IF was willing to duel me, so I could test out some things that I'd heard rumor of and/or wanted to see myself. First I put up a Serpent Sting and trapped him; yes, Traps will last with a dot! Next goal is to get a lock to help out, dot the bajeezus out of a tank, then trap him. I'm curious to see if there's a damage limit to what the trap will handle, or if it only counts direct damage now. I'm sure if they fixed this for trap, Hex/Sheep is the same. Hmm, must test that too...

Then I played around with Disengage. Going up hill it sucks. I think I moved 2 feet. =( But going downhill (we were testing on the road out of IF) it is wonderful. Popped me to my max distance, and I landed with auto shot still running. Can't wait to try it against a SStep Rogue and charging bear/Warrior. :D

Oh, and Viper Sting still sucks.

After he did his testing, and found his Resto set was better for Boomkin than his Boomkin set (lawl), we went off to test the healing capability for him and the increased heals for my pet. Banthar, take one: down in about 15 seconds with hardly any mana missing from the Druid. Hmm, we need something with more hit points... Oh look, there's Durn. *grin*

He took a bit longer to kill, but again, there was no real strain to keep Kaida healed. Since the instances were down, we headed off to BEM to take one the dragons. Instead of dragons, though, we were met with... tiny blue-and-white checkered boxes?? I wish I could find that screen shot! Kaida tanked like a pro, and even took on two adds our Druid friend was feared into. Peice of cake! Add a mage, Titan warrior, and pally to the group and off we go for Dragon 2. No aggro problems, no adds, and no lack of heals.

"Your pet is easier to heal than some tanks I've had."

/boggle

Tonight, I'm hoping to do a Ramps run or two with this guy. Just the two of us. It shall be epic.

Monday, September 15, 2008

A First Time for Everything

The PTR is open for patch 3.0, and I did a very odd thing. I got off my lazy bum and figured out how to get onto it. I only managed about a half hour today, but I do have a few first impressions.

1) The sign in screen for Wrath > the sign in screen for BC.

2) Everyone is on the PVE realm! Why is everyone on the PVE realm!? Get off the PVE realm so I can get on already!

/cast misdirect [target=PVP] /shoo!

3) The graphics got a nice upgrade. Love what they've done, but somehow things seem a bit grainier than they are in Live. Though, this may be because there's so many people on the same server... Also, must see if the shadow thing is on live - cause I love it.

4) Love the pet Ferocity tree! Respec'd Alvar, my ghostsaber, then had to respec him again as I found Heart of the Pheonix is borked. How is it borked? For those who haven't followed such things on the Beta forums, HotP allows you to rez your pet for free during battle. However, it has a cooldown of 10 minutes (though the tooltip shows it as 7 minutes). So what's the problem?

This cooldown restarts itself every time your pet is summoned. Mount up to go from the pet trainer to the Auction House? It resets. Still on cooldown and you have to rez your pet? It resets. I'm not sure as I haven't managed to test it, but I'm reasonably sure zoning into an instance and taking a taxi flight will also reset the timer.

5) Love the pet Tenacity tree! Went and tamed a white L70 Warp Stalker in Terokkar to play around with, and realized after that I had no fruit or fish. /facepalm

So, I plugged in the talents, and went off to see how quickly Guard Dog would increase happiness from Sad to Happy. Three mobs later, I had a fully content Stalker. /cheer!

6) The Cunning tree looks good, but I haven't had any chance to play around with it yet. A certain Shaman friend has demanded any testing I do be with a Spore Bat (indeed, he demanded I go tame one immediately), so we'll have some fun with it. Later. When the server isn't locked.

7) I am staying Beast Master for the expansion. Why? Because I already demand the 4 extra skill points Beast Mastery provides. Though, to be honest, I wish respecs didn't cost 50g in the PTR... Because of this, and my perpetual Broke-ness, I will not likely test the other two trees.

8) Five pets. 'Nuff said. (Though, 50g and 150g for the last two stable slots really hurts, considering the first two are 1g and 10g each.