Thursday, February 21, 2013

The Thrill of the Hunt

I never talked about this, but this relates to hunters. I've been meaning to do a short post on this. This relates to the new mysterious hidden rare pets roaming the lands of Pandaria as we speak.

Since the inception of Mists, there were new pets implemented that are invisible to non-hunters. This is of course to mitigate ganking woes and un-wanted beast slaying.

I think this is a great implementation, however most of the pets are fairly easy to find and once you find them you have nothing to do with this new system anymore. Turby has hunted down a white tiger, a red water strider, a white goat, and also a purple quilen.

This new pet hunting business is fantastic. Say you are out questing and all of a sudden you see these weird tracks on the ground. Granted when I was hunting them the tracks were actually backwards, but then you become curious. You follow them and try to plan one step a head of these strange tracks. You see other hunters nearby and your heart beat increases. You must get it first. The tracks have turned or disappeared. The hunt must go on!

It was such a great hunting experience, to actually TRACK these hidden beasts. It beats the rush of finding a rare and being the first one to tag it. This is being the first to REVEAL the rare and be the first one to tag it.

I shall take some pictures with my "new" pets and shall include them in the next post.

Turby the Hunter

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

On Raid Group Progression

Ah yes, gearing up is always a fun process. With enough new loot we break each threshold and become stronger. For example you won't feel much stronger going from 460 to 463 but once you break into 468 then 476 and so on you'll slowly get stronger.

This is how they want us to "progress in raids", as the group has a bit more out put and a bit more healing each week you'll see progress so don't worry about having to do LFR and what-not. Though one point the blues point out often is if you're not in heroic raiding, flock off because your progress does not even matter. And the truth is it doesn't. If you're not getting world firsts, why bother?

I like this concept. Except in reality, you get a pittance of VP and unless your entire raid is comprised of plate wearers (or in some cases, mail wearers), I ask the question: WHAT progress? How does the plate bracers that drop EVERY week help us?

We grind rep and dailies to get lots of vendor VP items. Those are our friends. They are always there. They were intended to supplement raid drops, as if raid drops were so plentiful all of a sudden. The sad truth is you can still go weeks and weeks without seeing an upgrade, and only the tank receives any upgrades with the rest being disenchanted. Sad times.

The sad secret is, we don't really NEED to out-gear the content anymore. (Do we?). We cleared MV in blues, the purples that it drops only makes it easier. Perhaps one day we will know what the minimum threshold is to be able to comfortably clear any given content.

For example, you can probably do the current heroic DUNGEONS in ilvl 300. Who knows.

Triple Ranking

My Death Knight finally hit level 90 over the weekend and after running endless heroics I got him geared up enough to run MV LFR. I actually dinged 90 minutes before our raid however he wasn't an accepted candidate to dps. This is the thanks I get for having a powerful warlock.

Instead, I brought my hunter in an attempt to gear him up for no reason at all and managed to win a trinket off Elegon's bonus roll. We had some damage issues on the 6th boss so I brought in my warlock. Sigh, I do miss the days when I would roll in 8 different toons for the same raid.

On Ranking

One of the joys of raiding is seeing your name magically appear on the worldoflogs ranking whether you had intended it or not. Up until last weekend my Warlock had never "ranked" since I never played her in Cata and we never logged in Wrath, as I may have ranked many many years ago.

If you see your name listed, it means that "you have an acceptable understanding of your class and how it performs in whichever fight you ranked in". That's it. ACCEPTABLE. What would be interesting is if these numbers were pro-rated to your average ilvl as compared to whomever you are ranking against, as well as the overall DPS/HPS of their group as well.

Destruction's strength comes from managing Havoc when there are multiple mobs and Will of the Emperor has MANY multiple mobs.

With this, my three "mains" have officially "ranked" at least once on at least one encounter. My hunter was a rare breed of BM back in T12 and I ranked on some random fights. (Since no one played BM).

My druid has ranked many times healing random shit, however rankings for heals is totally bull-shit. It's not "how much healing" you did, it's "did they die?". Maybe there was nothing TO heal. My main initiative going into each fight is how to maximize my healing all while never going OOM or at least timing my OOM to very near the last second of the fight. And as groups get better at avoidance and kill faster, there's less to heal so I guess at least healing ranking is a good indicator right at the beginning of each expansion (up to 2 weeks in and that's it cause unless you're doing heroics within 2 weeks you don't matter).

Anyways, perhaps this week I will go in with an intention to maximize dps to an even further extent, but then again it has been very hard to pay attention nowadays.

Truny the No Updates

Monday, February 11, 2013

Warlock-itis

No, sorry, the suffix -itis denotes swelling. Swollen warlock?

Hmm, Warlockaria? Yeah sure, whatever. This isn't a greek and roman course anyways.

So I've been afflicted (get it? hahahaha) by this malady.

But, what say you Warlockaria, such a peculiar ailment must have a pre-set chart of logic behind it?

Well my dear friend, this sickness only affects those who have played a warlock, and thus, will prove to be a hindering detriment to the progression of your alts.

Let me paint you a pretty ass little picture, perhaps a nice visual will enable me to portray this message in a much more detailed manner.

Beautiful Summer Day

It is always a beautiful summer day in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, the birds are fluttering about, chirping away merrily while the warm breeze dances and skirts around the flora. Today is a good day. Today is Tuesday and our dear warlock friend's daily quests have rest. Her outlook today is that of enthusiasm. Her VP count is at 1700 and by performing some trivial tasks for the Golden Lotus, she can buy herself a new belt.

The sun shines golden, and seems to be singing in unison to a mysterious yet magical force that permeates throughout the entirety of the vale. Our brave is browsing through her Digital-Stable-Organizer (DSO) and has chosen the aid of her Icebound Frostbrood Vanquisher Fyragosa. Fyragosa is grateful to her master, ever since she freed her from the icy clutch of Arthas, she has been able to visit much more temperate climes such as Stranglethorn Vale and now, the Vale of Eternal Blossoms far away from home.

Today's tasks include destroying a treacherous stone behemoth set forth by the Mogu, as well as freeing some of the clumsier Golden Lotus members. Our brave warlock sets to the skies and has her targets acquired. The behemoth, along with five vile mogu. Upon her descent, she has already killed two mogu with her Chaos Bolts, and her hardy Voidwalker Hathnagma is dutifully tanking the behemoth. In an almost manical flurry of fire and brimstone, all the Mogu within a 50 yard radius are dead and our warlock friend is now heading to her second hub.

The warlock art of slaughter is fluid, yet brutal. Searing flesh, and incinerating bone. Bolts of pure chaos coalesce into the form of a fel-dragon to devastate souls. Our warlock friend scorns silly melee classes who have to actually move about to kill their foes, and also any other class who can't devastate walls of mobs in two globals. So inefficient.

The end.

So in conclusion, I've been trying to level my DK for the past...two months. I've been saying a lot that "I should level my DK". So I log into my DK, and realize I have to actually WALK up to a mob (when deathgrip is down), then slowly whittle away at it with my frosty powers. Say what? Where's my kill-shot that hits for 200k? How do I attack multiple targets? Bah!

Truny the Super Lazy