A Hunter's Story

It is so nice out today. Mowed the lawn this past weekend because it was so nice out. Then it snowed earlier this week, and now it’s nice again. Took the bike in to work today too! But I’ll tell you, I wish I were elsewhere. Right now I’m in the time of year that I do 2 nights per week @ work in addition to the full day. I suppose the open bar tonight is pretty cool, but since I’m working at the event it’s not quite the same. Then there’s the huge paper due for the MBA tomorrow. Did the huge comprehensive exam earlier this week and my brain is pretty much fried. Oh well, at least it’s only a little over a month until I’m done. Then maybe I’ll have more time for WoW, relaxing, doing other stuff, etc. Regardless, at least in a few weeks I won’t be spending every waking hour here. Anyway, time to get back to work.

Heh, just looking at the noob-instruction post over on WoW.com… Like many people, it makes you think about some noob thing you did back in the day when first playing WoW. And… Well one of these days I’ll stop bugging Lady X for not telling me…

See, when we finally got gear that had gem slots, I was holding out for a little bit before putting gems in. Not because I didn’t know how to, or that it existed or the benefits. In fact, I had all those things down and was just trying to figure out which gem to permanently put in the socket.

I’ll give you a sec to re-read that and see if you can find my mistake.

In case you haven’t figured it out, I thought that once a gem went in the socket, that was it. I thought you couldn’t replace it with a new one later. Hence why I was waiting a little… I didn’t want to stick a rare quality gem in and later not be able to put in an epic! Or change out if I wanted AP instead of AGI! So I bug Lady X because one day when reading the helpful tooltip when logging in I found out that you could replace them later (the original one is destroyed, but it can be replaced by a new gem). So me being the nice guy shares this valuable piece of info with m’lady. Who then replied something along the lines of “I know.      Wait, you didn’t know that?”

But that also made us realize when to share tips back and forth. It came from the difference that I’ve played games like WoW before, so I had an existing base knowledge about the game, mechanics, character control, etc. She didn’t so she read and researched everything. So yeah, there ya go.

Ok, enough with all the glittering horsies. I get that it’s new and shiny. And I get that it’s cool to have a mount that goes as fast as possible for the area you’re in. Heck, I wouldn’t mind having one myself! But wow there are a lot of them in Dalaran. But I think more people should look into getting livestock. Why? Because it’ll mount you with an appropriate mount for the area you’re in. It’ll choose randomly from the mounts you have too. And you can choose which ones to use or not use. So the cool part about it is that you’ll be able to show off the various mounts you have instead of the same one everyone uses every time!

Now we just need Bliz to fix one problem – the 310% mount problem. For those that have earned a 310% speed mount, that’s the only one we ever use anymore (not counting Druids – their flight form got the speed boost too). Why would we use a slower mount, other than it’s pretty, when we’re trying to get from point A to point B as fast as possible? So simple fix is to make it that those who earned the speed boost get that boost transferred to all their flying mounts. So please bliz make the change soon so I can go back to using more than 1 mount? Especially since Children’s Week is just around the corner which means I’ll soon have a Violet Proto Drake on my third character. Which means that on my 3 main characters… I use the same mount (well, ok, the 3rd one is a Druid so I mainly use flight form, but still!). Ugh. Oh well, at least it means a new pet and new achiev for Gal! Which is another reason I use Livestock… To show off all 113 minipets… lol.

Hah! Just thought it random that my current main pet, Fluffy (a wolf, since I do most dmg in SV), got a mention on WoW.com. But then, he’s talking about a long standing problem, so it’s nothing new. But that’s ok, that’s why we have our own rudimentary healing abilities. And pets are much better at surviving boss fights, so it’s not near the big deal it used to be. I’ll tell you though, a tear still comes to my eye when poor Fluffy hits the deck. But my spirits are brought back up when I hear the cries over vent of “Nooooo, Fluffy died!!!”

Is it me, or does it seem like Bliz is trying to remove some of the differentiation between ‘things’? By ‘things’ I mean most things. The gear, for example. I mean, my tanking shoulders and my DPS shoulders look… the same… I mean, how many gear combos are there now that the only difference is a slight color change? Maybe it’s because everyone is running around in tier gear, but it seems like there’s about 4 different outfits for characters these days. But then if you look at talents, abilities, and spells, it seems they’re all changing to be the same too. I was looking at the Paladin changes and thinking it seems they’re trying to make all tanks tank alike. And thinking of Druid’s, they’re trying to make healers heal alike. Paladins are going to get an AoE heal that reminds me of Wild Growth. Or a new Tree form that is going to be a different form of heroism almost. I mean, these things are not all exactly the same, there are some differences (like how the new tree form won’t affect all members as heroism does, for example). But it seems as though they’re slowly aligning the classes to each other. I wonder if it’s a conscious attempt, or if it’s that they don’t have time for differentiation. Is it that they’re running out of ideas? Think about it. If they don’t have a lot of time, then they can make one set of plate gear, and then color it differently based on if it’s healing, tanking or dpsing gear. Much faster and easier than creating 3 different pieces. Certainly not as cool though. Also makes me laugh that the gear is all becoming the same look – and yet they want to make it so druids can show off their gear… Almost seems like there’s no point! Lol. But I think it mostly just stems from Bliz trying to put out new content continuously and quickly. They’ve hit the level where they need to bring out new stuff, or people start leaving because they’re bored. And it’s the same as back when Wrath came out too. Starting in the spring, people get bored with the content. They also stop doing progression raiding and such nearly as much since they know that in the Fall the expansion will hit and then their gear will be changed out in just a few levels. Wouldn’t surprise me if sometime soon the raiding guilds start merging again, as fewer players are around. But oh well. Certainly keeping busy ourselves w/ The Insane, leveling some alts, and so on. And that’s what I recommend you do. Take the time to explore WoW. There’s a lot more in there than people even realize. Heck, take 15 minutes one day when sitting in a dungeon queue and explore the various shops. You’d be surprised what you can find. Look in the glass box counter tops. Look at the ceiling in the Dalaran Visitors Center. Explore!

First things to note:

• Changes have been announced – lots of people will discuss on blogs. I am, obviously, not exempt from this guideline, lol.
• They’re preview changes. Not actual changes.
• The changes will probably be changed by the time they go live

So! If you haven’t seen them yet, heeeere it is! So please reference that when I make my notes. And here are the thoughts:

Cobra Shot, Trap Launcher, & Camoflauge – Good! I’ve been saying it for ages, but it’s nice we’ll finally be able to hide and shoot! I mean, obviously if there’s a warrior trying to take down the tree you’re hiding in, he’s got a good shot to hit you. So mele can still hit you. Or if someone lights your tree on fire, you’ll probably burn. But now that we can actually hide from ranged damage, it’ll make us more like we’re actually hunters! Cobra Shot? Bliz is just trying to take away the monotonous steady – shot – steaaady – shot – steaaaaady – shot…. So w/e. And launching traps? Well, we had to evolve somehow, since no one really uses traps much anymore. Heck, right now when I’m bored and want to do an additional 1.5-2k DPS, I’ll run in, drop some explosives, jump back, and then rain down arrows. But I’m in the minority, and I don’t even do it all the time. But if I could toss it from afar? Yep, becomes part of the list of abilities used for rotations.

Next change – Focus instead of Mana. Ok, I really don’t think it’s a smart move, as much as I’m trying to be open minded… I mean, we’ve used mana since the beginning. All of our gear has intellect on it. But I’ll still try to stay somewhat optimistic. Maybe it will be good, even though it completely changes the stats of gear we’re looking at, as well as how we use our skills and abilities and what we do in between fights, and during fights, and………….. Get my point? But maybe it’ll be good? Maybe we won’t become ranged rogues?

Ammunition – The hunter in my says “Yes!” (ignore the lore – it’s cool to not have to worry about stocking up) but the Engineer says “No!”. There goes my source of funding. I’ll be interested to see what they change for engineers to keep it as a useful profession. They’ll have to do something, since that’s pretty much it at the moment. This one though, I’m actually hopeful will work out (unlike the focus/mana thing)

Pet Management – Cool! The point of being a hunter (other than being the best class in the game, and doing some ridiculous amounts of DPS) is the pets. So it’s totally awesome we’ll be able to collect more than just one per spec. Some we train since level 1 and want to keep them because of the emotional bond. Some we had epic hunts to find. Others, well, they do lots of dmg with that spec, so we keep them around. And some are just plain pretty. And yes, there’s one or two we can release back into the wild. But anyway, cool. And it also seems like they’re trying to make the various pets more equal in damage output so that you can pick your pet based more on your relationship with the pet, or the buff it brings to the table, which is also cool.

We are reinforcing hunters as a ranged class. – D’uh, if they’re going to make our game mechanics more like rogues, they have to do something to differentiate us! Ranged Rogues, right? Ok, I’ll stop the sarcasm… For a few… Going to try to remain optimistic…

The rest of the changes are mostly just normal patch changes that Bliz messes with just for fun. I’m happy about pets, ammo, and that they’re trying to make us more like hunters in that we can actually hide and shoot. Now we’ll just need to see how it works out by the time November rolls around…