Thursday, July 21, 2011

Dailies and Burnout

Speaaaaking of dailies...I haven't been doing the Firelands dailies for about a week now after unlocking the Wardens of Shadow with Turby's first 150 marks. I just....can't. This is the only line of progress in the game for me, I have most factions at exalted save for the obscure ones, have all the cool pets save for the new ones, which I've lost all interest in, and the "progress" that comes from these dailies is just increasing your mark count. There's no "real" progress in each 20-30 minute daily session. There's that age-old complaint: There's nothing to do! I haven't raided in many many moons now either, our Saturday raid times prove to be quite difficult to attend given real life human summer activities and the next 15 Saturdays will be filled with CMA courses (It's a Canadian Accounting designation thing for all you non-Canadians). I won't miss raiding, though that's the only other thing to do. I've run ZA and ZG so many times that my Turtle has pretty much emergency tanked 60% of all the bosses when we happen to run into a Failpug.

Perhaps it's time to raid with another group? But then what's the point I'd just get burntout from having to schedule in gaming time. I hated that from before.

My plans to obtain the new 365 gun seems to have fallen through. I've obtained all the mats to make three, but I really don't feel like gathering another 150 marks! I said I'd do them every other day but now it seems like it's once a week. Perhaps that's a nice new timeframe to use. I can't quit now, I still have to show everyone that Beast Masters are super viable, and it's not just MM or GTFO!

Anecdote Time: My hunter friend in training/apprentice was in a Zul'Gurub several weeks ago and upon seeing his spirit beast the healer suggested him to switch into MM spec as "Bm Sucks, bad". He ignored the request and in his 355 gear gave the full 359 set paladin a run for his money.

This is funny, in a lot of people's minds BM sucks. This is a valid response, as BM did suck once. When DPS values were at 5k, not 20k. See, our guild knows that BM is fine. I taught another friend about BM'ing who has a following of BM'ers in his guild as well.

We shall see.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Truny's Occu'thar Tips

I've been feeling rather unhelpful as of late so here are some of my Mental Notes for the new Baradin Hold boss Occu'thar!

Upon entering the prison players will gladly find that the annoying pulse sentinels have been destroyed by some unknown creature and have been replaced by creepy floaty eyes. This trash is a bit more forgiving I think.

Mental Notes

Occu'thar is actually just as simple as Argaloth, though he does require lightning fast reflexes and fairly high AOE dps.

1. Both tanks stand on opposite sides of the boss. Preferrably with each tank's back facing the two far corners of the room as the boss has a Cone attack. Taunt when he does this.

2. Everyone else spread out and pew pew. When he Focus Fires a giant black laser on you, RUN AWAY INSTANTLY as it does 35k damage a SECOND and leaves a giant black pool on the ground.

3. The boss will then "summon eyes" that latch onto players,  when you see him summon, everyone group up and go balls to the walls on the eyes. They do damage while they are latched on, but the thing is they explode if they are not killed within 10 seconds and their explosion damage does 20k to everyone in the raid, so you can see how having 3 or more eyes left is dangerous.

4. RIGHT after the eyes are dead everyone SPREAD because he will immediately do a focus fire which WILL wipe your ENTIRE group the first time you do this.

Shorter Notes

Tank corners, taunt. Everyone spread, run from beam. Group of AOE eyes, spread again.

I believe the boss uses his abilities in this order from the start of the fight.

I am leaving out his cone attack as only tanks should worry about this and seriously...if yo usee it just taunt.

Focus Fire
Eyes
Focus Fire
Focus Fire
Eyes
Focus Fire
Focus Fire
Eyes

So only upon the start of the encounter will he only do one bad ass laser.

Upon defeat he drops T12 shit and 120 VP!

Happy Occu'thar Hunting!

Friday, July 8, 2011

Turby's Guide to the Fireland Dailies

Well not really a guide. More like an odd narration of the various dailies I"ve seen up to Phase 2. We can see that there is a bit more variety to the new dailies than say....the Argent Tournament? /shiver

I apologize for even bringing that up. Come, bring your minds back to 2011.

Alright, in no particular order or completion:

Wolf Howling: This quest requres us to "howl" at the corpses of our enemies in the new questing areas. It turns you into a wolf momentarily but I'd really like to see us be able to "AOE Howl" down multiple corpses as howling ten individual times wastes about 30 minutes of our day.

Collect 100 Scales: Kill those scarly fire things and they can drop from what looks like 5-25 scales. Interesting.

Bird Herd: Fly around and "holla" at the various birds, the more you gather the faster you fly and once you hit 65 stacks you get an achievement (I realized this after the fact).

Kill 6 Things in Sethria's Roost: This quest is okay as there are usually tons of people doing the same quest and you can "tag"/share kills with anyone.

Punt Turtles: Forget punting these little guys I'd like to TAME one!

Heal 8 Wounded Druids: Is it just me, or is it rather horrible for us to wait around for our allies to spawn, and waiting for them to die so we can heal them back up? And is it even more cruel for us to think "hurry up and fall down now"?

Kill 8 Molten Front Things: This one's the generic filler quest for "while you're out there.."

Kill Flame Druids/Fire Hounds/Seal Up Portals: Here we have our "variety" to the initial Molten Front areas. It's an invasion, and there are various enemies invading and here we go.

Get Hit by Moose: I think this quest encourages poor driving habits. Running into Moose on purpose!

Quests I Have Now Randomly Invented

These are DAILY quests, and hence they must take all DAY to finish right?

Diluting the Firelands: The quests that we currently have are tailored to be completed rather quickly and lazily. We need some "epic" oomph. What better way than to have the player run around the world, gathering ten samples of Moonwell Water from various moonwells across Azeroth and dumping them into ten various spots within the Firelands to "cool it down"? This shall award 1 mark only.

Aid of the Elements: The elemental forces are awry, yet there is a special group of elementals with a steady head still in existence: within the Throne of Elemends in Nagrand! You must journey there and complete a single quest for each of the four elements, and in return they provide you with part of their essence in which you must return to the Firelands to unleash it upon the Fiery Enemies. Awards 1 mark only.

Essence of the Tidehunter: After Neptulon got pwnd by a Naga and got hit in the face by a Kraken, he didn't get as much awesome screen-time as we'd like. Why couldn't he have empowered the whole naval force when the Kraken was attacking before? He empowers a group of 5 players to fight back the Kraken where one is even a healer! Anyways, for this quest you must travel to the deepest part of Vash'jir and "drain" any of the Tidehunter's leftover essence from the surrounding environment and "infuse" them into the Firelands. 25 Shards of Whatever shall suffice. Awards 1 mark only.

Lieutenants of the Inferno: You thought the Sethria's roost mobs were tough, well you are now sent to dispose of Ragnaros' more powerful minions. Though I am not sure if these will occur in stage 4 (after recruiting the two druid thing factions). They will have oh let's say 8M HP and you must traverse through the Molten Front through a large gauntlet of mobs. You MUST group up and kill three of these lieutenants. Awards 2 marks.

So the "Elites" don't whine (Turby goes out of control):
All of the current quests that award 2 marks have been combined, and they only award 1 mark (four times less) and the ones that award 1 mark have been removed. How d'ya like THAT elitists? All kill and gather quests have had their requirements increaed five times. Instead of killing 6 Fiery Lords, we now must kill 30. Oh and all mark requirements have been tripled. And there are no longer special vendors that sell Epic items and recipes to you casual people at each stage. You only get ONE ilvl 365 ring at the end of this entire chain which will take about 4 months to complete (if you did all the dailies everyday). The Firelands raid REQUIRES a min ilvl of 378 to enter and all mobs and bosses have had HP and Damage increased by 50%. You must now complete the Molten Front quests before even being allowed to start the attunement to enter the Firelands raid. All BOE Epics have been removed from the game and all bosses only have a 0.5% chance to drop a Fiery Crystal, which will be used to upgrade your gear to 378...which you should already have. Most items will require 75-100 shards. And the very last barrier to entry is that character must SOLO the Deathwing at their log-in screen before they are able to log-in to their characters.

Turby is it's the Weekend!

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

The Pets of 4.2: Turby's Take

I hope everyone is having fun grinding the various dailies of the Firelands, be it trying to get run over by stray moose or slinging along a rag-tag gang of wayward druids to fight off the minions of the Firelord, we can definitely say that this artificual slowing down of content is..interesting no?

What do you think? Would you rather be able to grind grind grind and get to the end in three days, equip all your purchaseable epics and never look at Firelands again, or do you prefer this slower method? This phased approach shows us that there's really nothing to "rush" about. You are going help with the battle in the Firelands anyways, and you know that once you are done with the Avengers of Hyjal you are probably going to get bored, start complaining, and bitch and moan about 4.3 and how it'll make some drastic changes to your 4.2 experience right?

So why not take things in stride and enjoy (what little so far) has been offered?

Luckily for us hunters, we have much more to do than all those "other" folk. We have ten new beasts to tame, and as most of us have realized by now, most of these pets are heavily camped.

The Spiders - All Hunter Specs

Oh it's a cruel world after all! Five awesome molten-glowy-rock spider pets have been added for you PVP hunters, however there is a twist: you must engage in pve-esque kiting (which is also a very PVP "skill") or mechanics to tame them. I'm not going to list them here and describe them there are other much helpful and useful sites out there for that purpose. For all purposes and intent, Turby does not require a spider or any cunning pet at that. Solo PVE is fairly simple, and tougher mobs are "tanked" by a Tenacity pet and the Shale Spiders already have web-wrab to boot. They are definitely pretty so if I find a way to free up an extra slot in my stables (Olm the Wise might have to go home) I may attempt to tame one of the challenge spiders in the future. I currently have a red cinderweb whatever running with me as a filler pet. She's pretty (weak).

The Gem Pets - All Hunter Specs

Two gem pets have been added, a cat more famously known as the Black Gem Cat of Storm Peaks and a black gemmed CRAB. Come on another special crab? I think the Ghostcrawler spirit beast should have been the one and only "special" crab. Then again, Tenacity pets got some loving for those of us who are getting bored with Terrorpene and want to whip out something else with an awesome new texture on it! Though I do have to ask, why are there two random gem "beasts" at Fireplume Peak and how come there aren't other similar creatures nearby? And how do they even spawn on floating rocks? This goes against simple evolutionary and biological rules no?

The Spirit Beasts - BM Only

Three new spirit beasts have been added! I actually wanted to see more "other" Exotic beasts such as a new Corehound or a new Devilsaur. Perhaps in future patches when the designers decide to be a BIT more unique in their visuals. Of the three new spirit beasts, two are essentially Gondria but recolored. Whoopdeedoo, now you can collect Gondria's siblings. Or parents. Or whoever they are. Of course these two spirit cats are also "challenge" tames where you must take off all your armor or they one shot you. That's the excuse, it still doesn't make up for the fact that they are Gondria clones. Long Live Gondria! Ok fine, perhaps those of you who don't like Gondria's purple shade would enjoy this "diversity". Last but not least is the very first "Flying" spirit beast Ban'thalos. I am not sure if I should feel excited or disappointed as this is pretty much a reskin of Olm the Wise, with a bit of graphical flair for the wing-tips. So for those of us who would prefer to run with a flying Ferocity pet that isn't an ugly Vulture or a Wasp then this pet is for you, regardless of its unoriginality!

So to sum it all up, the new spiders are nice but would you ever bring them to a dungeon or raid? No. Sorry for dismissing PVP so harshly but..yeah you're dismissed. The gemmed beasts have no real context for where they are located and the crab (Karkin) feels like the they are shoving the idea of crab down our throats just a bit, but we do finally get a shot at taming a gemmed cat, despite it's non-exotic status. As for the spirit cats, well....if you never got lucky at finding Gondria perhaps with the addition of two new clones you'll finally be able to fight alongside a spirit sabre. Ban'thalos is neat, though we only wish that it had a more original skin, but I guess it's flying status makes up for it (damn you guys are crafty!)

Turby the Hunter