More about Learning & My Soapbox

So, everyone saw the news yesterday and like a lot of people, I am wearing a frown. While I can definitely say I will miss the destructive power of Volley, and I'm not sold that the changes to Steady Shot will really be all that much in the long run. The deciding factor here will be in how the new numbers scale with our AP and such. As far as the rest of the changes, I really am not all that worried about them. After looking over things in game and the overall numbers, losing 10% on Steady Shot can by returned through the Steady Shot Glyph, as long as you keep a sting on your opponent. This isn't such a bad deal as many of the stings, while situational, can be used. I know that some people will say this is a good use of mana, but the alternative is a loss of DPS in Steady Shot.

Personally, after having watched what Blizz has been doing in patches from the fall prior to the release of BC to now, I feel like Blizz, while being to kind to those who scream everyone else is OP, has the right intent at heart with most of their changes. I know they don't always get it right but hey, no one is perfect and when you have a group of people that are not perfect it can be interesting to say the least. Still though, while this changes things some for hunters I really don't see the numbers stacking up to be a major nerf. Losing a handful of points in damage is not really something to sweat. Now if they had said a 50% reduction on Steady Shot, I would have a problem as this would mean that this shot is no longer very efficient.

From reading peoples responses to this as well as take a further look into what the potential impact will be for me live in game, I can say that I concur with the sentiment of Loronar at 35 Years Out in that Blizz should not have released WotLK if they were not fully ready and had tested as well as possible all the aspects that were questionable. This unfortunately seems to be what a standard with Blizz. Rush things so the players don't get too bored and take the attitdue we'll fix it later. This is infuriating as a player in that we will see something and think this is what the new changes should be only to learn that is not what Blizz had intended from the bery beginning. To me this runs a bigger risk of alienating players than not having enough new content to keep people from becoming bored. But lets be realistic here as well and look at this in the scope of a broader picture.

When I began playing in the summer of 2006, the original Naxx had apparently just recently been released. I remember vividly back then that on my server, there were very few people or guilds that were in Naxx. The rest of the level 60 players, which to me seemed like a whole lot, mainly did the regular instance runs and Onyxia and worked diligently at their rep grinds in Winterspring, Silithus and the Plagelands. That fall there was a major change in the pre-BC patch that had a huge impact on a lot of players and talent builds. In many ways it totally elimated some talent tree builds from the game totally, especially for Rogues (whom we all know have been getting the short end of the stick for a long time now.) Burning Crusades released in the winter of 2007 and things really began to change from there. There was a diferrence though, in that many of the changes were attempts to fix issues that came up that Blizz had never intended to be in the game in the first place.

The confusion and anger this caused has been felt by all I feel, and this was made even greater with Blizz shifted focus towards PVP combat. All in all, the impression that I have gotten is that Blizz is sitting on a fence of sorts with the game and it direction, and BC only revealed to the players how deeply that indecision is at Blizz HQ. Over the course of the last two years, Blizz has seemed to balance some things and left other areas broken. Very little has happened in a positive way as far as class and talent changes go. There have been bright spots for most every class, these just haven't been very many or very often.

Lich King and it's pre-releaes patch have given the game a lot of positives. More than we've seen in a long time. But I have to agree wit Loronar in that Blizz should have taken the extra time to ensure that most of the issues were closer to where they wanted them to be in the first place before everything went live. Again, the impact here is greater than the WoW players getting bored. I know that a lot of people on our server were diligently working towards getting to Sunwell. BT had never been farmed so much on our server as it was that summer and early fall. But when Blizz announced that WotLK was going to Release on the November date that ended almost all raiding on our server. Why?

The principle reason why is that the players focus changed. Unlike the fall before the release of BC, people were not bored. The Outlands still provided everyone with a lot to do. Between dailies, rep grinding for great gear and flying mounts, to developing casual guilds into guilds capable of making it into Sunwell and the Arenas. There is more than enough for everyone to be involved in the game. Realistically I think Blizz could have easily waited until Feb of 09 or even maybe as late as May of 09 and not lost very many players to other games. Now though, Blizz may be in the crucible again of losing players over major changes because they didn't have all their ducks in a row when the game went live. If trade and general chat channels are a good way to measure the pulse of the players in the game, then Blizz should have noticed that most players had no intetions of ever leaving this game just because other games were coming out.

People have tried Conan and Warhammer, but most of the regular WoW players came back before the release date of LK anyways. Both games are good in their own right, but neither offers the total experience that WoW does. And this should be something that Blizz is aware of, as it gives Blizz a lot of room to be patient and to get things right from the get go. I really dislike reactionary actions and the release of LK so early I feel was reactionary to the release of so many other MMO type games this last summer and fall. Now Blizz is going to pay for this to some degree.

Sorry for the rant, but one of the major strenghts of this game is it's availability for solo PVE play, and I would like to see more from Blizz in this area. PVP, Instances and raids are great and making them more accesible to the regular player base is also a good thing. But there also needs to be greater focus on the stories in the game as well as a recognition that each class is different and this should be more apparent. Making the game more homogenized isn't the answer. Ensuring that each class is unique and interesting should be the answer as well as ensuring that people "need" the other classes and other players to complete the harder content.

Ideally I would like to see this game approach a medium where each class is significant in their own right. Rogues should be the masters of stealth and sneak attacks. Mages should be the masters of explosive power and warriors shouldn't have to worry about their longevity battling the masses and so on. Every class should have a strengh that they are the absolute best at and a weakness that can only be minimized by grouping with other people and classes. Some class v class match ups should be bad match ups. For example, warriors should be able to easily and quickly dispatch a mage or priest, but by the same token these classes should have a quick and dirty answer if those warriors don't play smart. A warrior that allows a mage to keep them at range should be burned down with a couple of spells, and a mage that allows a warrior to get to close should be cut down with a hit or two in duels. This only makes sense in a way regarding PVP.

Finishing up, I'd like to say, the upcoming changes are unfortunate but they are not seriously game breaking or class breaking changes. And in this respect we should be a little grateful to Blizz.

@Brajana:
Steady Shot is faster, no doubt. But having a mana pool of barely 5800 doesn't really make spamming Steady Shot feel better. I find that if I am in an area where I am moving through mobs rapidly, like around Camp Winterhoof and Skorn, I am keeping Viper up the whole time instead of keeping AotB up. Not that this caused any real problems, it just meant that I was still moving fairly slow. I'm still playing with it, so I'll keep you up to date.

Zulu

The Plague

So, I've been barely keeping up with the beginnings of the battle between the Argent Dawn and the coming Scourge of the Lich King. I guess now that you kinda have to keep up. I ran into Orgrimmar this weekend, before the arrival of the Necropolis's and became infected, and I could not find someone to cleanse me before I turned into a Zombie. So I kept running towards the Flight Master and headed off to Silithus. I didn't make it. Somewhere near the edge of the Thousand Needles I died and rezed at the bottom of the great lifts. Arrggghh.... !!

So I've decided that I will now avoid the cities, and where possible Shatt as well. I really think the idea of what Blizz is doing here is great. It's a captivating introduction to the new expansion but it very annoying. My bank toon has been hijacked by this crap several times now as I've been trying to post up my excess drops in the AH and manage my trade items there. And it's seems too, at least on our server, that the 'Scourge' has effectively shut down the AH. I've only sold 1/10th of what I usually sell in a weekend because everyone is either off killing zombies or avoiding the cities all toghether. Were I 70, this may be a littel different, espescially since the reward gear is actually really nice, even if it designed for the slaughter of the undead.

I am nearing level 62 and I think I have only about 20 or so quests left to do in Hellfire. I have already picked up the travel quest for Zangermarsh and I am fixing to head off to there and set up my FP for there. I also made the run to Shatt to get the FP there as well as to decide upon what sub-faction I will work with. I went Scryer. I have chosen this faction since I already have 2 toons on the Alliance side thart are Aldor. Plus Scryer seems to match up a little better for my spec and what I want to do with Zulu. Depending upon what level I am when Lich King arrives, will have an impact on how far I will take this relationship. Honestly, I feel I will be in Northrend long before my Outlands factions offers me much in the way of gear and such.

I am now searching for a good cunning pet and an exotic pet. I haven't decided up either. I know that I want to eventually have a wasp as a pet but other than that I haven't decided upon what to get. Most of the horde hunters I've seen so far have their hounds from Shadowmoon Valley or they have their Devilsaur's. I'm not particularly fond of either. Although I have thought about invading Azuremyst Isle and getting the Kurken. I am still researching all of this as I want to make sure that I get the exotic pet that I want or close to it from the beginning.

Anyways, happy hunting all
Zuluki

Blink... Blink...

When I hit 50, I was looking at my quest log and the coming zones and thinking that there is no way I will make it into them all. I still had quite a few quests to do in Feralas, Tanaris and the Hinterlands and I was already picking up the travel quests for many of the level 50 zones. So I sat down at my computer Friiday night and started to finish up my level 40 zone quests thinking it would be a while before I entered any of the level 50 zones.

So not true.....

It went like this, run around for 10 minutes. Feralas is done. Go to Tanaris and run around for an hour or so (mainly collecting scorpid scales for my Dragonscale LW quests), finished Tanaris. Went to Hinterlands and ran to the top of the troll city/temple and budda bing, Hinterlands finished. And now I am level 51 and all that is in my quest log are travel quests. So I am like, okay lets go...

Go to Azshara and get FP and start hunter quest chain. Go to Un'Goro and get FP and pick up quests there. Then I go to Burning Steppes and get FP there then fly back to Searing Gorge realizing that I have done nothing here. Well, I figure what the heck, lets see what we can do. I pick up all the quests and run off towards the gorge and start killing. Thirty minutes later I am level 52 and heading back to turn in my quests and that puts me almost halfway to 52. So I finally break down and go back to Un'Goro and start questing there. I completed almost half of the quests, dinged 53 and then turned them all in. Headed off to vend my stuff, level LW more with all the leather from my bags and then head off to Felwood.

I picked up the FP in Felwood and then went and completed the first quest for Timbermaw rep. Then I headed off to Winterspring and Everlook to turn in the travel quest for there. This has brought me to halfway through 53, which means I will probably hit 54 tonight. This all has happened in about 5 hours of play from Friday night to the one hour this morning I played before the servers shut down for maintenance and I had to go to work. Can it go any faster?

My goal of reaching the upper 60's if not 70 by Nov. 13th seems to be really within reach. Sadly though after the recent announcement of what is happening on the BETA regarding hunters talents and abilities this may be as far as I will take Zulu. A lot will depend upon what we see live, but right now it is looking like Blizz has decided that hunters are worse than rogues and they have hit us with a whole slew of nerfs. So many I feel it may just make hunters obsolete. Shot rotations will be gone, "Oh, Sh*^" buttons will be gone, trapping will change and from the looks of it right now our DPS will take a huge hit overall. Add to that everything seems to look like it will cost a lot more mana.

Ah well. I will just keep plugging away until LK goes live and then we'll have to see what happens from there.

Thoughts on the Future and MM Hunters

As I've been reading around on the blogs that I've come across, I am really surprised at the number of blogs pertaining to MM Hunters. Now, I have to admit, this is and isn't surprising. I happen to know someone very well that plays MM and they are currenlty in SSC/TK content and she gushes about what she can do. (This is where I really wish I was older than my current level.) Huge 6K+ Crits and solid DPS numbers.

**shrugs**

Hmm.... Now I have seen this over and over, and lets not talk about how often I've read it, but huge hits like that generate a lot of aggro. On my level 70 shammy, I was in Kara and watched our groups Ret Pally hit like that on Atumen's Horse. Know what happened to him? That's right, he died on the bosses very next hit. In fact I see this pally dead a lot in raids. Now, talking to other players that have played MM Hunters, there is a general trend of talk, they do pull aggro more than they would like. So if you don't have a uber awesome tank, your gonna see that boss run over and lay down some awesome "smackdown" and that will be the end of your DPS run for that boss.

My perspective on this subject is skewed from a hunters perspective because I haven't been behind the controls in situations like this yet. I have seen BM hunters in raids absolutely dominate number wise, even when they are having to do a lot of CC. So what makes MM so interesting then? I know a lot of players like it in PVP, but if your shooting someone who has a lot of resilience that isn't going to help all that much. And as strange as this will sound, the only hunters that my shammy has ever had problems with in the BG's are Survival hunters. From a standpoint of leveling BM, I can say for sure, BM does allow you to handle a lot of things that other classes have difficulty with (expect maybe, Warlocks). Given the number of times now that I have survived fights where I was greatly outnumbered by higher level mobs than me, I can say having a pet that can stay alive and kill a mob on it's own has serious merit.

With the proposed changes coming in Lich King for hunters and their pets I am totally chomping at the bit to get into it and play there. I can already see me having my boar, just because he's been with me since the start, my cat and a gorilla. And since they are adding a new stable slot I can tinker around until I find a good utility pet. What this is going to mean for me, as a BM is more options and strategies for leveling and playing. What I have to wonder though is how the changes will affect MM hunters? Of note, I see that a lot of the blogging MM hunters are also in guilds that are in Hyjal/Bt or Sunwell this does make some sense as the hunter gear at T6 level does lend itself more to MM hunters than BM hunters. Hmmm....

Our world is changing again. And we'll change with it, all I can say for now is that I await Lich King with a lot of anxiousness to see the impact it will have on the game. WOW is evolving slowly, but as with a lot of people, is the evolution for the best? So far, it all looks good, especially for hunters.

Happy Hunting. :D