Review Update – Cat
His name shall be PuddyTat. Not that original, but, well, you know…
Truth be told, it’s actually my second Blackwind now. On Friday I spent enough time to reach loyalty 2 and get the 70 training points. Perfect timing as I could BG for the weekend. I popped open the train beast only … no prowl. No way I’m going to abandon one of my 2 real pets to get a skill for a temporary pet.
So I had to abandon, hit winterspring, and tame a frostsaber for prowl 3. Then back to tame another cat. Give me a couple more days to get level 2 again and I’ll let you know.
I also got my savagery enchant for my axe, and I’m now halfway to my PvP bracers and probably final upgrade. So by the time I’m done testing the cat I figure, I’ll have my gear set up too.
Review Update 1
Well, I’ve begun the process. Instead of a boar, I went and tamed a blackwind sabercat. A 2 family review does no one any good, so I’m going to do all the level 70 pets I can first and then work back to the ones that can only be found at lower levels. That will fill-in a great deal of the chart early, and catch up on the stragglers. I think I’m also going to do all high DPS pets first, and work my way down to better pickup on nuances between families. Read the rest of this entry »
Choice vs Diversity
Kinless left a great comment on my Raptor vs. Crab post critiquing my idea of normalizing pets. Go read it.
As a player, I’d love to see more diversity in pets. I really think bliz has dropped the ball in their design and I totally agree that they’ve only scratched the surface of what they ~could~ do. The problem is 1) it gets harder and harder to keep families diverse as more are added, 2) it gets harder and harder to keep families balanced as the game changes, and 3) all that work is only for a sub-set of players, when they could spend time on changes that affect everyone. Read the rest of this entry »
Review
Last night, I was feeling particularly ‘huntery.’ I had just ground 2 levels on my warrior (over several days) working towards getting my sporebat non-combat pet, and ran out of blue exp. On my AH char I spotted, a Blue Dragon Sinue for 50g, most likely due to the combination of no one knowing what it is and everyone that did know, already has one. I however, did not. Read the rest of this entry »
Pet Balance
I had a comment a few days ago asking how my raptor and crab compared at level 70. Took me a bit to remember to compare my pets in game. Keep in mind I’m BM so your talent spec may vary. Both have Cobra Reflexes, and Natural armor 10.
Raptor
DPS 160.3
HP 5821
Armor 12367, 53.95% damage reduction
Crab
DPS 138.4
HP 5882
armor 13167, 55.50% damage reduction
Give up 1.5% damage reduction and 60 HP and gain 22DPS? Yes please.
The more I think about it, the more normalizing pets looks like a good idea.
If you have 2 level 70 pets how do they compare? Which one would you use all other things being equal?
Shaman Review
It’s almost like Bliz wants shaman to hate them:
So I was reading through this list of shaman concerns for 2.4, and had some thoughts about how I would revamp the class. Read the rest of this entry »
Good day
I had a pretty good 24hrs in WoW: three ‘upgrades’ for three characters.
First of all, I got my [Vengeful Gladiator’s Waraxe] thanks to a little help from some friend’s alts. They had already done their arenas with their mains and since my normal partner has disappeared from the game once again, hopped on their alts and helped me out. Due to disconnects and queues it took 2hrs. Much thanks for taking time out to finish that off. I really hate the look of S2 and S3 gear so I don’t plan to upgrade my armor there much, but I do want to drop my gun ASAP (hate the noise), so I’m planning to get arena points saving for the bow. I don’t really care if it’s an upgrade or not from my Don Santos, it’s just bugging the heck out of me. Read the rest of this entry »
Rules of Pet Collecting
So several years ago now, I got extremely bored and decided that my warrior would collect pets. I think it was about the time that I got the captured flame during the first mid-summer festival. Now, if you didn’t know the place for all your non-combat pet needs is WarcraftPets.com. So far, I’m doing pretty good for still being level 60 (Ive grown to hate playing a warrior). If you check out my profile you’ll see I’ve collected 59 of 69 pets. There is of course more than 69, but I’ve limited myself to pets that do not cost real world money. In other words, no trading cards, no collectors edition.
But I have a beef.
I was looking at the number 1 collector on the top 50 list and something occurred to me. He’s cheating. Seriously, there’s no way you could have all the orphan pets on a single character. It hasn’t been around long enough. Nor can you have the US collectors pet on a EU server or vice versa. I hereby decree that multiple characters don’t count.
Or at least give me some kind of option on the site to recognize how many pets I’ve collected on a single character.
My epeen begs you.
WoW roles.
I thought I’d give this group blogging thing a try. Today’s topic “Does WoW need another party role?”
No.
So am I done here? Can I go home? Sigh, I suppose you’d like some explanation.
So currently people think of party roles in terms of the trilogy of Tank, Healer, DPS. So what other possibilities are there? Well, looking at other games some possible roles are buffs, debuffs, crowd control (keeps mobs out of combat), runner control (keeps mobs in combat). The thing is that all of these things exist already in the current classes.
Shaman and Paladin were obviously designed to be party buffers so that’s out already. Experiment failed. They now fit firmly in the trilogy.
If you look at Warlocks and their curses, you’ll see the underpinnings of a debuff class, and to a lesser extent most classes now have some form of debuff to add to their party. For example, Scorpid Sting, Viper Sting, Arcane Shot, Aimed Shot, Frost Trap, and Expose Weakness all could be considered debuff spells and that’s just for hunters.
Crowd control is in a similar boat. Want to CC undead, get a priest. Want to CC humanoids, have a rogue Sap. Want to CC demons, banish! Want to CC anything indefinitely? Frost Trap + skilled hunter FTW.
Runner control is pretty much nonexistant in WoW. For those wondering what that is, I seem to remember EQ 1 mobs running away towards their friends at around 40%, and adds were a real issue. This my friend is the whole reason behind the /train emote. Kill 1 mob, agro 3 more, shout “Train to zone/city guards!” and hope they didn’t kill you before you could hit the loading screen (your computer had to load between zones so mobs couldn’t follow you).
Pretty much any 4th role you can think of is already in the game. It is just distributed amongst the preexisting classes, and I think that’s for the good of everyone. Why? Blizzard’s design philosophy has always been “keep it simple.” Currently, how do you measure Expose Weakness’s contribution to your raid? You can’t really. Now imagine trying to include a whole class where their contributions are just as nebulous. Not simple.
Second, imagine that you class is based around CC, how would you DPS at the same time. Warlocks can do this to a limited effect, image the PVP QQ should and entire class be based around it. Debuffing as the primary focus of a class is just as misguided a notion, how would you kill anything? And if you could somehow solo as a debuffer what happens if you pair yourself with someone who’s focus is damage? In sanity OP.
The only possible class I have heard of is the Mesmer from Guild Wars, but even then I’m pretty sure that they’d quickly fall into the DPS category, which of course would not be adding a new role so much as a new way to DPS.
Sorry guys, but no. There is no 4th role in WoW.
Player Advocates
I just posted this on the suggestions forum.
I’m a frequent reader of the blue posts in the forums (I tend to ignore everything else), and the latest round of “CMs don’t listen” and “CMs don’t tell us anything” is definitely in full swing as 2.4 approaches. Just to lay out the actual discussion, the CM’s are contending that they read our feedback even if it’s not acknowledged, and actively post in some threads to stimulate discussion. Their goal is a conversation with the players. The players are saying that there is no actual conversation with CMs, just posts that say ‘tell us more.’ They cannot discuss the developers solution until it has already been implemented because they do not know what it is. Read the rest of this entry »
The Mystic Hunter 