Monday Random Thoughts

- Today's random thoughts seem to all be about pet battles.

- Maybe that is because weekends are pet battle time for me.

- I am top 500 in the world in pet battles now.

- Not really impressive if you ask me, just means I wasted more of my free time pet battling than 9,999,500 other people did.

- And I do not even have the 30 pets at level 25 achievement yet.

- Goes to show you that not many people are really that heavy into pet battles if I can reach top 500 and not even have a whole slew of level 25s.

- I plan to start working on leveling my pets next weekend being I now officially have every pet you can catch.

- Except the one you only catch in summer.

- I think that is why I rank so high, I have a lot of pets and most all of them are rares.

- The safari hat really does help a ton leveling.

- I leveled two pets from 1 to 25 yesterday with it on in no time at all.

- With the hat and changes to experience you can level a pet from 1 to 25 in an hour if you pick the right area with a high cluster of battle pets you can take out really fast.

- I use the area near the farm.

- Lots of critters so a beast with devour means everything dies in 2 shots and you never need to heal.

- Not to mention many of the pets there will shield or heal themselves on the first move so it is easy to get a level one some experience.

- Depending on what you get you can get to level 5 or 6 in the first battle.

- When out and about trying to catch one of every type of pet I learned there is one thing that needs to be changed.

- If you forfeit a battle it should give you a debuff that does not allow you to start another battle.

- Just like dropping a dungeon or raid gives you a debuff.

- Does not need to be long.  5 minutes would be more than ample.

- I fight every battle I get into.

- I get a chance at a stone and I can level a pet, so I always fight them.

- I hate when looking for a rare of a rare spawn I can see 7 paws on the map and go into one battle and come out and they are all gone.

-  Looking around there is only one other person there and you see them entering and leaving pet battles instantly rare hunting.

- What if someone else just wants one, or would be happy with an uncommon or even a poor.

- These idiots are clearing the area of them and being selfish.

- If you join a battle, battle.

- How hard is that?

- And how about those people that love to just kill the pets.

- I saw on various occasions, a mage running around AoEing all battle pets in an area.

- Why is it always a mage?

- If you want them dead, fight them.

- They need to make battle pets immune to retards that AoE them, that is another change that is needed.

- I know they are making some changes to forfeiting.

- The pets of the player will all lose some life and the battle pet will not despawn.

- Fine, but I would rather the 5 minute lock out, that is more fitting.

- A time out, so to speak, for being a selfish idiot.

- When I battle something I am looking for a rare of and it is not a rare, I finish the battle any way.

- Why can't others do the same?

- I would feel bad if I took the chance of someone else getting it away from them and just left the battle.

- Perhaps that is because I am a nice guy and I actually give a crap about other people enjoying their game too.

- I do not enjoy my game at the expense of others.

- Too bad it seems that the large majority of the player base does enjoy their game at the expense of others.

- As most of my battles seem to be against critters all I ever see are critter stones.

- I have now fought 1400 battle since the change to dropping stones and I have received 4 critter stones and 2 all purpose ones.

- 6 stones in 1400 battles, not exactly a friendly drop rare wouldn't you say?

- If it were even a 1% drop rare I should be at 14 now.

- I would like to see the stones not being soulbound either.

- That would be a nice change too.

- Because at this rate I will never get my other uncommons up to rares if all I get are critter stones, so it would be nice to be able to trade my critter stones for other ones.

- How about making an area where you can trade in a stone for a stone of a different type if you pay 200 gold to make it change.

- That would help too if they are not going to make them unsoulbound.

- As it is, once I have leveled all my critters up to rare the only use a critter stone would have to me being soulbound is to upgrade a buyable and sellable critter just to upgrade it and sell it as a rare.

- Being justice points are useless maybe they should add class specific stones for justice points.

- Even if they were 2000 each it would be worth it.  Something to spend your justice points on.

- I can only imagine how far I would be with pet battles if I started them right away or did them during the week as well.

- Just doing them for a few hours on sundays alone has moved me to having everything and soon to be leveling everything.

- It is only a matter of time because pet battles will no longer be a fun way to pass the time.

- Because for me, the fun is the leveling.

- Without something to level, a destination, there is no fun.

- I've always loved collecting things, it has an end goal.

- Getting all rare pets to 25 is the end goal.

- Once there what do you do?

- I guess I will try PvP pet battles then, still have not tried one yet.

- I have more important things to do.

- I think that is why I do not PvP in game either.

- There is always something else to do.

- PvP is the last in the line of things to do for me in every aspect of this and any game.

- I have to build and develop and once there is nothing left to build and develop, I will consider PvP.

- So now that I have all the pets, even if I do have a lot I need to get better ones of, the quest now switches to leveling pets.

- Which will come first, 5000 battles or 75 level 25 pets.

- I am sitting around 3800 battles now, so that means can I get roughly 50 level 25s before I do 1200 battles.

- I think so, with the changes to experience and the hat, I would say it takes around 40 battles to go from 1 to 25.

- So even if I level only level 1s that means it would take 2000 battles and we know damn well that there are many many level 20+ ones that I will get there first.

- Might be a close call in the end, because getting those last 5 levels take half those battles.

- It takes 20 battles for 1-20 and 20 battles for 20-25.

- Roughly, I did not actually count.

- If I level all level 20s, that would be 1000 battles to get to 75 level 25 pets.

- So like I said, it will be close.

- I now need one more pet for the raiding with leashes achievement.

- Looking at the achievement I think they did it wrong.

- It should not be to collect all the raid pets, it should be to level all the raid pets to 25.

- That would be more of an achievement if you ask me.

- I think once I am done leveling I will level more for gold.

- Being pets are account bound you can sell them on any account.

- This is a great way to make money on a new server when you start there.

- I could level the raid pets to 25 easily.

- Like I said, less than an hour to level from 1 to 25.

- So I get another of the raid pets, level it to 25, start a character on a new server, list it, collect tons of gold.

- On some of the servers I am on some of those raid pets are selling for 40K.

- At level 1.

- If that is the case I an easily see 100K at level 25.

- Can you imagine starting on a new server with 100K.

- That would make things so much easier.

- I have started multi server pet sales already with some multiples.

- Some servers the strand crawler is selling for 10 gold and others it sells for 150.

- Guess which one I am selling the 12 extra I had on?

- And guess what I am going to do when I sell out?

- I will buy them on the 10 gold server and sell them on the 150 gold server.

- If you are like me and have many characters on different servers, you can really make a HUGE amount of gold bouncing around with pet sales.

- I am sure if I actually put my mind to it I could net over a hundred thousand gold a day with the amount of pets I have and the ability to level them so quickly.

- So big money for little work.

- That is the dream of everyone making gold isn't it?

- Now the biggest problem is funneling that gold to the server you really want it on.

- Seems like a fun task to me even if a slightly daunting one.

- I wonder if blizzard realized that people would use pets as a way to transfer gold from one server to another.

- Do you think they will ever do something to stop it?

- I am surprised that I have never once read anything from anyone about buying and selling on different servers.

- None of the gold making sites that I read even mentioned it.

- I would have figured it would have been an obvious way to make money.

- It was the first thing I thought of when I read about it.

- And I am not even a gold goblin.

- How did this huge opportunity to make money completely slip past all of them?

- I can't believe I rambled on that much about pet battling.

- I am addicted, at least on the weekends.

- Next weekends goal is 30 25s and starting my quest to 75.

- 30 will be super easy as I only need a few more.

- That 75 number does seem imposing, but it won't be for long.

- Give me three more weekends of playing and I should be there.

- But being I do not pet battle exclusively every weekend that could turn into 6 weeks.

- Well, that is enough pet babbling.

- Have a great day and happy new years all.

What Happens on the Farm...

What happens on the farm stays on the farm.  At least until I make a post about it.  No, I am not talking about the dwarves and what they do with their sheep.  I do not even want to think about that.  Why did you bring it up?  Now I am going to have nightmares thank you very much.

The visitor...
One day while tending to my farm on a bright sunny day and fending off vermin and other unwelcome visitors I received a visit from someone I was not expecting but not exactly of the unwanted variety.  The little daily quest marker appeared on my screen when there were none there before.  I was half done farming and I knew there was nothing there but now there was.

I walked outside of the farm and went looking for it.  While the marker appeared to be on my farm I knew it could not be on my farm so I went looking for it.  As soon as I stepped out of my farm the marker disappeared.

Was I imaging things?  I mounted up and flew around quickly and nothing.  So I went back to tending to my crops and as soon as I stepped on my farm the quest marker appeared again.

Ah ha I said to myself, it is in my cabin.  I walked up the stairs and to my surprise there was a blingtron sitting in my cabin in the corner.  What was he doing here?  I am not an engineer and I did not place him here.  My farm has never had any visitors that could have come and left him here for me.  So he must have appeared from a different dimension.  Either way, free goodies from blingy.  Thanks buddy.

Interlude...
Did you hear that the dwarves have started a new safe sex initiative? 
They paint the legs of the sheep that kick.

Did you hear the new motto of Ironforge?
Where men are men and sheep are scared.

How many dwarves does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
One, but you need to pry him off the sheep first.

I Kill You...
Everyone knows the fun of the farm on a PvP server and even on a non PvP servers.  Need to escape battle quick, jump in your farm.  Need to stage an ambush, have everyone stay in the their farms and jump out at the same time.  There are lots of ways an innovative PvPer can use the farm to their advantage but there are also a few odds things that happen on the farm once in a while even if you do not PvP.

One day while farming on a rainy day at the farm a bird popped up and I sent my pet after him, hitting lynx rush in the process.  I did not notice it right away but I ended up flagged for PvP.  On my farm?  From fighting a bird?  Excuse me.  It seems that you can fight someone on their farm if they are flagged but hitting them in not an exact science.  You have to get lucky hitting them as they are not actually there, so to speak, so you have to use AoE sort of things.

I threw an explosive trap where my pet was fighting shortly after and a snake trap a few steps away from it and sat and watched to see if anything happened.  Each minute I would lay them again.  After a few minutes of laying them and just sitting there watching and seeing nothing I went back to farming only to see my snakes pop out all over the place.

Woot, I got me a hordie on their farm and they will never even know it was me.  I tried laying traps again but none went off and being hunters have no AoE what so ever I could not do much more, I need a target to do my abilities, but I could imagine the fun I could have with a class that has an AoE ability.  I could kill people on their farm while on my farm and they would never know it was me.  Well, unless they were smart enough to look at their combat log that is.

Interlude...
Where do you get virgin wool from?
Ugly sheep.

Why did the sheep cross the road?
To get away from the dwarf.

Why did dwarves make ironforge at the top of a mountain?
So when they took the sheep to the ledges they would push back.

Do I know you?...
While I mentioned my pet has visited another persons farm, and I could tell that by him attacking that person and flagging me and I know that blingy has visited me as well those are not the only occurrences of visitors I've had over the course of doing my farm work.

I've had a warlock imp actually look like it was following me around for a short time.  When I moved, he moved, and no, I was not on my warlock at the time.  I was on my priest.  My priest also seems to have a thing for hunters pets because they always love to visit her on her farm.

Not once, not twice, but three times she has had a hunters pet just hanging out with her while she was farming.  One of those three times was actually funny because I knew the pet.  It belonged to a friend of mine as it is a unique pet and I've never seen anyone but him use it.  I asked him, are you farming right now and he said yes, why.  I told him that his pet was on my farm.  We had a nice laugh about it.

The pet did not have a name over it but it was targetable.  I was able to touch it, so I pet his pet, and shortly after when he was done farming and left his pet left with him.  It was nice to have a visitor for a while however and being I am a hunter at heart I liked that it was a hunters pet.

It makes me wonder how many other farms has my pet visited and even more importantly, why did he not bring back any gifts.  If I went on vacation I would bring him back a gift.

So while I have seen hunters pets and warlock imps I have yet to see a mages elemental, but I have heard one before.  The wosh wosh water sound is unmistakable and if I really zoomed in I could see a faint outline of the little patterns of water he left on the ground.  Seems our pets get around.

Interlude...
Why do dwarves wear high boots?
So they can put the sheep's legs in them so they do not get away.

Did you hear that the dwarves have discovered a brand new use for sheep?
Wool.

Did you know a dwarf invented velcro?
He needed something for his gloves to keep the sheep from getting away.

Stop messing with my chickens...
One day yoonie and I were chilling talking about crop returns with dog staring at us, presumably wanting some food, when all the chickens on my farm went insane.  They started running all over the place with these little skulls over their heads.  Feared no doubt, but from what?

Yoon and I split up, he went to the front of the farm and me the back and we tried to look for anything out of the ordinary.  Just then, the chickens went crazy again.  Running all over the place and trembling with fear.  It was then that I saw my farm was under attack.  A death and decay landed on my crops, directly in the center.  Yoon, I yelled, run for your life.

The chickens were being feared by a priests psychic scream it seems and all other AoE effects were also appearing on my farm, all at once.  It must have been a busy day on the farm because between the consecrations, the death and decays and the chickens running around like, excuse the pun, chickens with their heads cut off, it seemed like everyone had it in for those little buggers.

You want to D&D my carrots and feel strongly about it, go ahead if that floats your boat, but please leave my poor chickens alone, what did they ever do to you.  I needed to bring a farm animal psychologist in to talk to my chickens.  They had nightmares for the next week thanks to that.

Interlude...
A gnome told a dwarf he could make his sheep sound like a cheerleader.  The dwarf of course did not think it was possible.  He challenged the gnome to put up or shut up and the gnome accepted.  He said for the dwarf to come back the next day.

When the dwarf came back the gnome said to put the sheep on that metal platform and just listen as the sheep would become a cheerleader.

The gnome stepped back and lit the fuse and it made a ssshhhhh sound.
Then the platform exploded and it made a boom sound.
Then the sheep went flying through the air yelling baaaaaa.

The dwarf, upset the gnome had just blown up his sheep grabbed him by the neck and started to strangle him when the gnome eeked out some words explaining.  I told you I could make your sheep sound like a cheerleader, it went ssshhhh-boom-baaaaa.

Bring out your dead...
Have you ever found a dead body on your farm?  I have, more than once.  One day I even entered my farm to find the skeletons of three bodies of the recently deceased.  It made me wonder how can you die on your farm?

The mobs can kill you I guess but you would have to actively try to die to die against one of them.  Either by pulling a lot of them or not fighting back.  Even in poor gear with poor skills it would not be easy to die to them so people have to be dying another way.

I took it upon myself to try and figure out how these people managed to die but I could not tell anything from the bones.  They were all in the farming area which would lead me to believe they did die to critter damage but there has to be other ways to die on the farm.

Flying high up and releasing will surely mean death on the farm.  Can a lock still hellfire themselves to death?  I have not tried recently but the last time I used it I don't recall it doing a lot of damage any more.  I am sure I could kill myself with it but it would take some time.  Could people cross farm PvP and actually kill someone?  I do think it is possible.  I've attacked people on other farms and I have seen their effects on mine.  My poor chickens are still recovering form them.

I'll bet every one of us has had some skeletons on the farm but it is a good thing what happens on the farm stays on the farm.  Including all those dead bodies people have laying around.

Endnote...
A lot of strange things happen on the farm and thank god it is phased and what happens on the farm stays on the farm or we just might not ever be able to get the images of the dwarves and those poor sheep out of our heads.  Strange things happen on the farm, strange things indeed.

Why so Serious?

I can't say that line and not think of the Batman movie, but the question still fits when referring to me and my game play as the years go by.  Why so serious?  I am not exactly sure why.  It has always been who I have been as long as I can remember.  While I do play a game for fun and I do like to joke around and have a good time outside of the game set objectives I realize there is a time and place for everything and when it is the time and place to get things done I do not want to play around I want to do what I am there to do.

I did a sha group yesterday in the short time I was on and knowing it was christmas and I most likely would not have a lot of free time to play I just wanted to get done what I needed to get done and for some reason it really started to bug me more than usual that people were happy to dilly dally instead of doing what we were assembled to do.

People where talking in raid and hanging out in the city while waiting to be summoned when the raid leader and many others had mentioned that there was no lock and they would need to head there.  Some people even had the nerve to say to kick someone and invite a lock so they could get summoned.  Thankfully the person that assembled the raid was not as much of an asshole as the people that suggested it.

All this time I was sitting there, because I flew over the second I got the invite like any decent player would.  So when that one player said to kick someone so a lock could summon him I thought to myself we should kick them and invite someone that isn't a lazy piece of shit, please excuse the language but that is how I felt about him.

But all in all I can handle the lazy players like that a lot better than I can handle the stupidity of people talking in raid.  People insulting each other making it sound like a third grade class at recess where two children are throwing yo momma jokes around to see who is coolest because they can insult the other persons mother with the most wit.  Or all those girls that think they need to flirt with everyone and and type < 3 at the end of every sentence and say things like i wuz hopn to haz lootz already.

Seriously and honestly, I started to think to myself, self, why am I even here?  Not just in the raid but in this game, why am I even here?  Can't people just act like human beings for a few moments and do the right thing, get here, keep their mounts shut, and do the task we assembled to do without all this crap.

I am starting to think more and more it is not the player base that is the problem, it is me.  It seems like the majority of the player base is filled with these people that do not take anything serious and I just do not get it.  Hence the reason I say the problem is with me.

While I do have a lot of fun playing I have my fun in doing things and not in hanging out waiting to do things.  I am not a big fan of wasting time, I think I have mentioned that in my posts before, many times as a matter of fact.

When I got invited to the group I was player 29, so I knew that it would be a few more minutes before we would get going.  Either way, like I should, I flew there instantly.  When I landed we were at 36 people and someone laid out some food.  I saw I had 38 minutes left on my food buff and knowing there were a lot of people here and the feast only feeds 25 I did not sit to eat, let someone else get the buff.  38 minutes is more than ample anyway.  Even if it takes another 10 minutes to fill the last few spots and get everyone here I would still have enough time to kill the sha 5 times over and some with the time I had on my buff.

From that point on I sat and read the dribble flowing out of the raid chat.  All I wanted to do was come and kill a boss in the little time I had available.  I did not give up, I was there, might as well wait.  I listened to people trying to justify why they should get a summon, even if that was completely impossible without a warlock they still insisted we should summon them, how, I have no clue.

I listened to people talk about good gifts they got, bad gifts they got, gifts they did not get, all of which based on the timing seemed quite appropriate but it was only a matter of time before people were insulting other peoples gifts and calling their friends and family cheap or rednecks or fags, or what have you, anything to try and make themselves feel cool by insulting another.

It was when it took that turn from christmas cheer to christmas jeer that I looked to my food buff and saw I had 25 minutes left.  Thirteen freaking minutes since I landed and we have not pulled the boss yet.  What the hell is wrong here.  Still waiting on 2 people to get there.  Can't we just pull without them, anything so I do not have to listen to morons insult each other any more.

As usual, I never said a word, I just sit and read.  I was there to do a job and that is what I should do.  I should not, would not, waste anyone's time chatting in raid about stuff that is not related to the task at hand.  If I wanted to chat I would chat in guild, on vent, or go to a chat room.  I am playing a game where people assemble to kill internet dragons and that is what I want to do, this is not a place for chatting.  It is a place for killing pixels.

My food buff wore off before we even pulled the boss.  Between whining players that complained about the long trip there and they did not want to make it and people getting so caught up in hitting on the "i haz lootz" girl or talking about their bowel movements or telling each other how bad they are or insulting their mothers and other family members and calling everyone gay or a fag every single chance they got they seemed to forget why we were there.  To kill that huge thing in front of us.

We finally killed it and moved along and I was left wondering if I was indeed in the wrong.  Was I being too serious?  Am I always too serious?  Maybe I am, maybe I am not, but either way, I can not see me getting into any of the conversations that were to be had there.  Except maybe the exchanging of what gifts we got and gave for the holidays but outside of that, it seemed like it was just a collection of mind numbing dribble.

Why so serious?  Because that is how I should be, we were there to kill a boss. That is how everyone should have been.

Is it just my bad luck or my bad server that is responsible for me always getting pugs like this or is it the fact I am just way too serious to play a game with people that think calling people fags, talking about poop, and hitting on girls that don't know how to type is how you have fun.

Maybe I am in the wrong, the game has changed, perhaps this is how it is meant to be now.  Perhaps I need to change if I want to keep playing it in a group setting without things getting to me.  I don't think I could ever become one of those people however, I am just way to serious about my game play.  I do not want to waste time and I do not want to chit chat.  I just want to kill some internet dragons and move on to the next set of pixels that need to be killed.

That is why I am so serious and I don't see anything wrong with that.  I don't think of it as serious, I think of it as playing the game and for me calling people fags, talking about poop, insulting others and hitting on girls online are not the types of things I find fun and are most defiantly not part of the game.  I don't like that type of stuff and that is why I am so serious, the more I see people acting like that the more serious I become.

Why so serious?  Because everyone else made me that way.

Should All Questing Be Made For You?

I am sure most, if not all, level 90s have experienced the Tiller quests Pest Problems, where you need to stomp 25 black nosed marmots and Weed War II, where you need to pull 100 weeds, as part of their dailies but how many of you have noticed that those quests are different from all other quests in the game?

I noticed it the first time I ever did them and I must say I love the fact they are different like that.  In case you have no clue what I am talking about and think I should drink some coffee and wake up before I start to write a post let me explain.

When you are on one of those quests the quest items are there just for you only.  Even if you see other people there they can not stomp your marmots.  Any marmot you see is for you only.  Even if they appear to stomp on the same marmot you have, yours is still there.  All that means is they had one in that area as well.  Everyone sees marmots and weeds that are there just for them only.  If you really wanted to you could wait until a lot are up and do it all at once instead of waiting for the weeds or marmots to spawn.  No one can take them from you, they are yours and yours alone.

This is fantastic design.  It removes the competition from a part of the game that really should not have any.  If you are a competitive type you can play on a PvP server and maybe the quests could make you compete for the objectives there, but for someone that plays a game for fun or just to relax there is no need to add the competition angle to the daily grind.  I can not speak for others but I know I just want to get my dailies done ASAP and having quest objectives that are mine and mine alone helps me with that.

Should all questing be designed this way?  Blizzard has seemingly used it in various parts of the game this expansion.  Finding those rare items is on a per character basis.  You will only see it on a character that does not have it.  However, there is competition for those, but it shows that things can be shown, or hidden, based on a per character basis.  Same with the gray items that are always there.   Everyone can loot it so if you see it and grab it and there is someone else standing right there they can grab it too.  But once you have grabbed it you will never see it there again.  It was there, just for you, always.

It is fantastic design and really helps speed up the daily quest grind.  Wouldn't it be nice if everyone had their own items to gather and did not need to fly around, sometimes for what seems like an hour, trying to find the 10 things they need to gather just because a lot of people are there doing the quest.  I have never been a fan of wasting time and competing for quest items is only a time sink, it is not difficult, it takes no skill, there is no reason to add competition to the concept of gathering items for a quest other than as a time sink.

Maybe someone at blizzard finally realized that there is nothing fun about gathering quest items like that and it make it frustrating when there are others competing for it as well.  Like I said, on a PvP server the competition is fun, you see someone going for something you need, if they are of the opposite faction, you can kill them and take it for yourself.  Now that is fun.  If you are into that sort of thing.  As a small side note, I think you should be allowed to attack your own faction members on a PvP server as well, but that is for another post.  Otherwise, the competition for gathering items is just a general annoyance and a waste of time for people on a PvE server, if anything it can get extremely frustrating as there is nothing you can do if someone steals your item.  Hence the reason this type of competition has no place on a PvE server.

Blizzard has shown that they can make questing just for you.  They can expand it past those quests to all quests with items that need to be gathered.  Could you just imagine how much smoother this would make the redundant task of dailies if you did not have to waste more time finding things for only one quest than it would have taken you to do the entire quest hub otherwise?

Should they go further, should they make quest mobs just for you?  Should they make everything just for you?  I am not sure about that, but I do believe that the items you need to gather, or weeds you need to pick, or marmots you need to stomp could really benefit from using the design that things are made just for you.  Gathering items is not hard and as a daily task it should not be competitive either.  Maybe this is the future, should all questing be made just for you?

How Close are You to Your Pet?

I always say, joking around, that there is a difference between people that play a hunter and people that are hunters and that is how they feel about their pet.

Someone that plays a hunter sees their pet as nothing more than a tool to use in game, a spell or ability.  Someone who is a hunter will see their pet as a companion, a friend, and so much more and you do not even need to be a role player to have that feeling.

While it might be easier for someone that role plays to see their pet as more than just a weapon that follows you around you don't need to be one to feel a connection with your pet.

My first pet was a nightsaber and he became more than just part of my toolbox, he became my buddy.  When I would sit to eat I would feed him as well.  As a matter of fact I think he ate better than I did most of the time in those early adventures.  Every little bit of meat I came across that I did not need for cooking went into his belly, just to keep him happy.

Many of the mechanics like feeding and happiness have been removed from the game now but that does not mean that you still do not develop a connection with your pet like you used to, or does it.

I've noticed that over the years playing a hunter there are some pets I feel connected to and they become part of me, for lack of a better term, while others are just there, as weapons.

I am not sure what it is that connects me to a pet but some of them I just feel as if I click with.  I know why I am so close to my nightsaber, he was my first buddy, my first friend, my first travel mate, I needed to care for him just like you would need to care for a real animal or he would have run away.

I wonder if new hunters, ones that started the game after the addition of the glyph that increased happiness when you hit mend pet so you no longer needed to carry around food have that sort of connection.  Or the ones that started after they removed happiness all together.  Or maybe the ones that started when you had a pet at level 1 and no longer needed to play a melee hunter for the beginning of your gaming life before you learned the beauty of having a pet and how much easier it made life on you.

Do those newer hunters still feel the connection with their pets the way I do with my nightsaber?

My first turtle was nothing special, it was just a basic everyday turtle and now there are so many other turtles out there that people can get.  Fancy turtles if you will, but my normal bland any day of the week and always there turtle is still my tanking pet of choice.  I could have one of those new pandaland turtles, could have the molten turtle from hyjal, or any of the other options out there, but I never felt the connection with them like I do with my original turtle.

My wolf, the one in the image up top, was my main raiding pet in wrath because every good hunter had to have a wolf but he was so much more than that.  He was a buddy.  He was more than just some wolf I went out and tamed because I needed a wolf.  He and I were connected.  He just looked as grumpy as I feel sometimes.  He and I were cut from the same cloth and he was my buddy.

I wonder if the fact I needed to care for the pets is why I have that connection to them.  I've caught so many since the need to care for them was removed and none of them are more than just pets.  Some I have not even named, like my spirit beast who's name is spirit beast even still.  He does not feel like a companion, he feels like a tool.

Over the last two expansions I have tamed my fair share of new little buddies and none of them come close to those early pets and how I feel connected to them.  Was it because they were the first ones, was it because I needed to care for them, or was it because somewhere along the time I forgot how to have fun and just worried about efficiency in leveling and everything I do and my connection with my pet became less important thanks to the changes.

It could be anything but it will not change that when I level when a new expansion comes out I want to level with my nightsaber and when I need a tank even if I can turn my nightsaber into one I will bring out my turtle and when I am doing dungeons, if buffs are not an issue my wolf becomes my pet of choice.  Because, in the end, those are the three pets I feel closest to.

While it is not intended I am sure, pets seem to have their own personality as well, have you ever noticed that?  Some pets, not all, just love to stand on top of every mob you kill, so you have to move to loot because it is obstructing your view as if it is saying, look what I killed for you, now pet me.  Not all pets seem to do that, but some do.  Or the ones that no matter how you move always have to stand right on top of the object you are trying to interact with?  It is like they have a mind of their own and are saying, pay attention to me.

Maybe it is just my imagination running away with me as I know it is only coding and I just interpret it being that way because that is how I want to see it, as I think of my pet as special, to me at least.

How close are you to your pet?

Is the connection I feel to mine left for people that played when we needed to care for our pets or do people still develop that type of a connection to them?  Do you find yourself having a connection to some pets but not others?

Monday Random Thoughts

- It seems my luck with the random number generator has jumped to pet battles.

- Someone in guild had some love from the RNG the other day and got three battle stone on three back to back to back battles.

- I was up to 274 battles at the time and still had not gotten one.

- Asking her it doesn't seem like you need to be fighting a good group to get them.

- She did not recall any of those three having a rare in it.

- I did end up getting one stone shortly after, just before battle 300.

- Got another one in a daily baggie.

- I kept thinking I was doing something wrong being I had not gotten one.

- The one I got in battle was me leveling up a low level, it was an 8 with 2 25s in group.

- It was fighting 1 24 and 2 25s, none of them rare.

- If that helps anyone collecting data, enjoy.

- For those like me that might be worried they got one and missed it, don't worry.

- When you win one, you will notice it, trust me.

- It pops up in the middle of the screen.

- I've been farming so many herbs on my farms that I decided to mill what I had.

- I can't believe how many herbs I got while planting for lotus.

- Over the course of 3 weeks on only 3 characters I got enough herbs to make nearly 600 lower level inks and exactly 60 higher level ones.

- You know the cooking hat?

- I want an ink making hat.

- Pressing create all and waiting forever when making 600 inks is not exactly fun.

- Took me 1 hour 25 minutes to mill and process all those herbs and inks.

- Way to long if you ask me, there has to be a better way.

- Made 12 cards, none, yes none, I needed.

- I need 2 more ox for my tank set, 3 more serpent for my caster set, 2 more tigers for my DPS set, and 3 more cranes for my healing set.

- How bad does your luck have to be to get none?

- It has to be roughly the level of my luck.

- When I went to the auction house to sell all those it seemed my doubles were the ones always selling for 600 gold while the ones I need are all selling for 4,000 gold.

- Seems like I am not the only one the random number generator is hating on.

- I'll wait until fair time to list, those one that are 600 now will be closer to 1500 then.

- And the 4,000 ones will be closer to 6,000.

- I would say next week is buy time for cards.

- Flipping cards will not be as profitable now, as most people that care to gear up ASAP are already geared, but there is still money to be made if you are willing to take the risk.

- Buy cards next week, sell them the week after.

- Thing is, they will be harder to get top money for.

- I would never pay more than 10K for a complete deck now and I still think it is way too much.

- Not for an alt, even if the trinket would be good for them.

- I don't get prices, I've been trying to sell some of the BoE bracers from HoF and getting no bites what so ever.

- They are 496, and pretty nice if you ask me, and I am listing them at a very reasonable, for my server, 50K buy out with a 30K bid and not one bite in weeks.

- Yet looking at the black market auction house I see people bidding over 200K on 483 bracers?

- Am I missing something here?

- Are the 483 bracers better and I did not notice?

- Or are the people on my server really that stupid?

- Why pay 212K (the last bid on 483 healing plate bracers on the BMAH) when I have ones on the real auction house for 50K.

- Heck, even if the 483s were slightly better for some reason, save 163K and buy the 496 ones.

- Things like this make me think I am the last sane person in the game.

- Like people not willing to pay 15K for a darkmoon trinket, but they are willing to pay 8K per card.

- What am I missing?

- And before you say maybe they only needed the one it is not like that.

- That would make sense.

- The same person bought three serpent cards from me, two for 8K and one for 6K, when the trinket was going for 15K in trade at the time.

- Literally at the same time, as the person was posting in trade every few minutes for the last hour when all three sold during the last fair.

- So the person either has trade shut off, the person on ignore, or I really am the last sane person on my server.

- Actually, maybe I am the insane one and they are all sane.

- Got another one of the pets from the raids this weekend.

- Also realized that soloing some bosses on 25 man is still a little brutal for me.

- Patch on 25 man rips apart my pet and my old distracting shot trick does not seem to work any more.

- I could have easily did the run on 10 man for the pets but I needed the shocking achievement on 25 man as I was never able to find capable people that could understand not crossing paths.

- Took a while, but I did it.

- Holy crap it was not easy.

- It was really fun however and now I have shocking 25 man after, what has it been, four years of trying?

- All I needed to do to get it was be able to solo it.

- Now if only I could get the holding hands achievement in DS solo.

- That is not possible, and I don't think I will ever get that achievement now.

- You try finding 10 people that are willing to work over and over and wipe if need be to get an achievement from an old raid.

- Not happening with my guild or the people on my server.

- My guild just seems to have lost its taste for old raids, maybe later in the expansion when there is less to do they will get back into it.

- One wipe and all the pug people will cry how horrible everyone is and leave.

- It is the LFR mentality that everything should be simple and easy.

- I do not mind wiping a dozen times trying to get an achievement, even two dozen if that is what is needed to get it done.

- Another way I am different from everyone on my server.

- I want to find a new guild, at least for one of my alts, now that achievements are shared, that does all those achievement runs all the time.

- I like doing that stuff and there are some things I can not do alone.

- I should not have needed to wait until I could solo naxx 25 before I got shocking.

- It is like the cataclysm heroic raid content, my server can still not get it done.

- A guild mate went on a run this weekend and finally finished one of the tier 11 heroic runs after 8 hours of tries, people leaving and reassembling.

- Please, WTB a guild that can do this without people coming and going and in a reasonable time.

- Is it really that hard to get 10 people together that are competent?

- I am missing all last bosses on heroic, for every tier.

- Admittedly, I have not went back since mists came out, but that is because pugging it would be harder than when we were doing it at level.

- Tried soloing Ulduar 25 as well for fun.

- I need a lot more practice soloing, was only able to get 3 bosses down before I called it a day.

- Could have tried to get further but I was doing it so long I needed a break.

- I also have a feeling that for some of the later bosses more healing will be needed and hunters are really lacking in that area so I would need to work a little on planning a strategy.

- XT was hard enough.

- If I barely made it through that I will need to really step up my game if I go any further.

- Not sure who I could try next.

- Did not even attempt the furnace master.

- Maybe I will try him, but if he pots me it is over I would guess.

- Lets hope my pet does not count as a person.

- And no, I do not look for videos for hints, until after I try and hit a brick wall.

- Then I seek help.

- The fun of soloing is figuring it out on your own.

- I am currently, and very slowly, working on gearing up one of my level 85 hunters to be a super hunter.

- With all the best gear I can get for him he will have insane states percentage wise.

- I would not be surprised if he could solo some stuff easier at 85 with super powers than my 90 could with standard gear.

- If hunters still had agility converting to dodge I think it would be quite possible for him to meet dodge cap.

- I miss agility converting to dodge.

- I liked that at the end of wrath I could basically tank on my hunter because my dodge was over 70%.

- Being OP is fun sometimes.

- Can't wait to see how OP my 85 hunter will be when I finish out his collection of gear.

- Now to make a list of the things I need so I can start hunting for them.

- Speaking of lists, I should get going and do some last minute christmas shopping.

- I plan on getting a few cinder kittens for people in game as chirstmas gifts too.

- Have a great day.

I Miss Accountability

Don't get me wrong, I remember the hell of finding a group in those days before the looking for system was added.  I remember logging in and waiting for someone to post in trade they needed a DPS for something, anything.  I remember asking in trade looking for a group.  I remember spending hours, yes hours, try to find a group for a dungeon and sometimes still never getting to do one that day.  I remember more days than I could count where I tried on and off for four hours and never got a group.  I remember those times I did get a group and then someone would disconnect after the first pull meaning we needed to go back and look for someone again, or if it were a DPS deciding on if we should try it with only two damage dealers.

It was not fun.  Anyone that joined the game after the looking for system was introduced will never be capable of understanding what it was like.  I am not looking at those days with rose tinted glasses and saying how great they were because they were not.  They were their own small piece of hell just for you.

When the looking for system was added to the game our own little hell of trying to find a group was replaced by a different little hell, the hell of being with random people.  There are good, bad and the people that do bad on purpose because they think it is justifiable because other are bad.

But did the ease of group assembly end up losing us more than we gained?  We gained the ability to instantly assemble a group without even trying and lost any sense of accountability in the process.

The days before the dungeon finder, as I said, were not fun when you were a new player.  You basically needed to luck into a group and the only way you could do that is with continued spamming in trade or reading in trade and hoping you were the first person to respond to someone that was posting they needed someone for your role.

I had many times where I went days without finding a group.  Other days I logged in and saw someone posting and whispered right away and got lucky and was on a flight path to the dungeon within minutes.

One of the best tricks to getting a group was to hang around the stones of popular instances.  I did this a few times to get a group.  Basically what you were doing was hoping that someone dropped group or DCed and that they needed someone to fill in and they might just take you being you are already there.  Just saying in say, LFG, was usually enough to get an invite if someone needed you.

You basically had to work your butt off to get into a group.  It was all worth it however because once you did get in a group it was your time to show everyone why you were a good person to have along.  Do well, or exceptional even, and you will be remembered.  Even antisocial people like myself would often chat with the people in the group because you had to.  These people were from your community and if you wanted to make sure you get an invite again next time they needed someone, you sure as hell wanted them to remember you as a nice person and a good player, not just one or the other.

It took me a long time, many different dungeon pugs over the course of two months stalking trade and taking an invite from every group that would give me a shot and making connections with the people on my server.  After some time doing this people started to know me, they started to know I was decent and willing to do dungeons just about any chance I got.

The time came where I no longer needed to hang around and read trade.  My chains were unlocked, I could now go out in the world and do other things.  No longer was I confined to a city if I wanted to do a dungeon.  I was now known and known to be a competent player.  I would not get an invite every day but it had gotten to the point where at least 4 of the 7 days in the week someone would whisper me looking to have me join their group.  When I was building my reputation, even on a good week, I could not get 4 dungeon runs, now I got them without even trying to get them.

That was the power of accountability.  I did groups with people that saw I was good and they wanted me around.  Sure, the nightmare of those months trying to find a group at the get go were not easy at all but being groups were assembled by hand, people were accountable for their actions.

When someone was looking for a damage dealer my name started to get around as someone that is often looking and I could hold my own.  More and more invites came.  If I had been a bad player or had been a huntard my reputation would have went the other way and it would have became increasingly harder for me to get groups.  People that were not very good were kept out of the inner circle because, not trying to be rude here but it is true, they did not deserve to be involved in group content.

Those people you see now in 480 gear that are struggling to do 12K, whether it is because they are bad players or slackers that are better but just do not try, would never see the inside of a dungeon or a raid again and that is how it should be.  Those people have no business ever being in that content because they are not capable of doing it.

Just because you can pick up a baseball bat doesn't mean you should be playing for the new york yankees, same goes for group content like dungeons or raids, just because you have the gear and are capable of entering them, doesn't mean you should be doing them.  The accountability system was a much better player run system to keep people out than the item level gating of the looking for system.

The looking for system was a wonderful addition for what it did, helped you find groups faster, but it was a horrible addition for what the game lost when it was added, and that is accountability.

People can act poorly, play poorly, or just exhibit poor work ethics and never have to worry about any repercussions.  No one is going to say in trade, he is a slacker, he ninja pulls, he ninja loots, he can not put out what is required for the content.  They do not need to worry about being invited to groups because any group is only one button away.  How they play and act means nothing now.  Nope, not even in the slightest, it no longer matters.  There is no accountability in the game any more.  You can act any way you want, play any way you want, do any thing you want and it will rarely if ever get back to hurt you.

If someone did not know how to play their class or role, it got noticed, word got out.  If someone had a bad attitude and was a problem player, word got out.  If someone was rude and insulting, word got out.  If someone had constant disconnects or AFKs, word got out.  If someone tried to get carried by letting everyone else do the work, word got out.

Just like those people added me to their friends list, the one that allowed me to get back into the world and no longer need to sit around reading trade, they put people they did not want to group with on their black list.  People shared their lists too.  Bad players names got out just as quickly as the good ones did.  If anything the bad players names got out faster because some people wanted to keep the names of the good people to themselves so they would hopefully always be available for them when they needed them.

If you needed a healer you would ask a friend and your friend would say, let me see who is on my friends list.  Do you remember those days?  I do and fondly actually, when we were missing a healer for the raid and everyone was looking through our friends lists and switching characters to see if we had one on another friends list.

We played with people because we wanted to play with them.  We played with people that were good or at least good enough.  We played we people we liked.  It took a lot longer to make groups and sometimes we still couldn't but we always played with the people that were worth playing with, that deserved to be doing the content, they are the same type of players we are.

Now with the looking for system there is no accountable, there is no consideration about who we want to play with, there is no filter to keep all those people out of there that should not even be there in the first place.  People seem to have this idea that if the system lets me sign up for the content that means I can do it and that is about as far from the truth as you could ever be.  Many people do not deserve to be there.

The bad players do not deserve to be there.  They deserve to get a bad reputation for being a bad player, which in turn will teach them to learn their role before trying to do content they are obviously not capable of doing.

We now have instant access to dungeons and raids and no one is being held accountable for their actions.  Was the complete dismantling of community and self moderated group content really worth what we gave up for one button group assembly?

Sometimes I say yes, sometimes I say no.

But one thing I always say is that I missed being able to be in a group where everyone was at least a decent player capable of doing the content because it was built with people that earned the right to be in that group by the accountability system we had in place before the looking for system.

Sometimes I wonder if what we lost is worth what we got.  We sold our souls for an easier system and lost our community in the process.

Being Talkative: The Unspoken Skill

You could call it communication but it is not that.  Communication is saying I will get the first interrupt, you get the second and bob will get the third and we will rotate.  Everyone knows communication is a key to success in the game and that good communication is a skill.  Being talkative is something people rarely mention.  People that are talkative and personable in the way they talk will always advance faster.

It is a case that we all have seen and you can usually peg the talkative person in a pug pretty quickly.  They will talk in raid, or speak in the voice chat you are using it, but not necessarily about what you are doing, just talk.  Not overly much, but idle chit chat.  They are a personable person and usually appear to be in a good mood and chatty.

When it comes to skills in game this is the one I am lacking the most.  I do not like to chit chat.  If there is a task at hand, deal with it, talk about it, I do not give a crap if you just saw this funny cat video.  I am there to do a job and that is what we should be doing and talking about.  Call it business like, call it focused, call it bland, it can be called many things, but it most certainly can not be called being talkative. 

Even if I am the only one talking and explaining a fight, it is not talkative, that is different.  Talkative is being friendly.  That is not me.  I don't play the game to make friends and it shows.  As I said, this is the skill I am lacking the most, I just need to learn how to fake it.

What brought this to mind?  A combination of two things from yesterday.  One I saw myself while doing the looking for raid and the other was something a friend was talking about when challenged by someone else on their server.

In the LFR there was a healer that started speaking the second we zoned in.  Idle chit chat, the stuff friendly people talk about with each other except this was not a group of friends.  I guess the skill of being talkative has no off switch.  Either way he made it clear he was the alpha male healer by putting himself front line and being talkative, basically letting people know he is there, he is a nice person, and he is going to do the best he can.  Coming across quite personable if you will.

Two fights into the run one of the other healers asked how they managed to get all that gear.  The talkative healer was in half heroic gear and half normal gear.  He clearly has raided and been successful, or lucky, enough to get a fair deal of gear.  He said that his guild is decent and can get down at least 4 heroic bosses a week.  Okay, that is fair, at least he was not being a braggart about it, but then again a person that is a master of the skill of being talkative will never call anyone else out.  They will be confident in their ability while never putting down another person in the process.  Hence the reason they end up liked so much.

The healer posted the healing meters and the heroic geared healer was 3rd, well behind two much lesser geared healers and the tank said, how do you heal heroic with those numbers.  The healer, being the master of being talkative, did not get defensive and said that while they did not seem exceptional he has the achievements to prove they are all that is needed to down at least some of the bosses on heroic.  How can anyone argue with that.  He did down bosses and while his numbers were less than my 470 geared priest alt can do, he did not make some excuse like he was not trying here or that this was trivial content so why pump the numbers.  He was a master of the being talkative skills for sure.  The conversation ended, we moved on, and this heroic geared healer basically got carried on the next two fights in terrace as he finished 5th in both.

The second event was when a rogue on my friends server was stating they were the best rogue on the server, a little arrogant but said in good humor no doubt, and someone else said that they were not even in the top 20 on the server they responded, then how come I have the best gear.

My friend asked me my opinion of that and I said gear means nothing.  While gear makes you capable of doing more if you are not skilled enough you will never get the potential out of that gear.  People can have fantastic gear and subpar ability.  It happens more than you would think.  I might even go as far as saying that half the people with heroic raid gear are less skilled than the average LFRer.  They just invest more time in raiding and eventually they get it down.  Repetition pays off.

The friend in question had pugged a HoF 25 man on his server over the weekend with the self proclaimed best rogue on the server and beat him on every fight.  He not only beat him but beat him by at least 25K on every single fight there.

He started to feel down on himself that he can beat this rogue so easily, had that day and in previous pugs this expansion, but he can never get gear.  After we talked a little and he answered a few questions I asked about the rogue, he asked me if I knew who he was talking about.  I said no, I do not know him, but I know his type.  He is the talkative type.  The one that is personable and friendly and everyone likes them so they take him along.  It is not about skill, it is because people like to have him around.  That is why he has all that gear.

My friends response was quite humorous if you ask me with what he said once he got the grasp of what I was saying.  You mean he is like the girl that always gets an invite to the raid just because she is a girl and has a cute voice on vent.  I said, exactly.  It has nothing to do with skill, people just like having him around just like all those horny teenagers like to have the girls around because they are girls.

Being talkative is the unspoken skill, no one talks about it oddly enough.  The skill to get people to like you and invite you to things just from what you say is powerful in game.  It is of course more than just being talkative, you have to be good in a group setting and personable but it is the act of talking and getting yourself noticed that sets the whole thing in motion.

It is why that rogue on my friends server is the best geared rogue on the server even if his skills are lacking.  It is why that paladin healer was decked out in heroics even if his healing skills were questionable at best.  Both of those people got their gear because they were in groups that could down the content.  Both those people could have easily been replaced with people that were better, much better, but they were talkative, friendly, and likable, so their guild keeps them around and in turn they get the gear eventually.

It is the talkative personally thing that leads these people to success well past where their ability alone would take them.

It was not his skill as a player that made the rogue the best geared on his server, it was his skill at being the talkative type that did.

One might ask, how do I master that?  I would be glad to give you some tips, but remember, they are coming from the type of person that is not the talkative type.  I would rather not raid at all and have zero progression before I would play the role of the talkative person and become friends with someone just to get a spot on a raid team.

Five tips to mastering the skill of being talkative:

1) Make Yourself Known:
Joining in on the conversation is a good way to get your name out there.  If you stay silent, you stay unknown.
2) Be Friendly:
A true master of the talkative arts is a friendly person.  They do not talk down on people and always have nice words to offer.  That is why people like having them around.
3) Be Upbeat:
No one wants to hear people all happy they wiped a few times but they don't want to hear someone whining about it either.  A talkative person will break the tension after a hard wipe with a small joke, but not one at the expense of another.
4) Be Available:
Talkative is not just about talking when you want to get somewhere but being talkative when others might need someone to talk to.  Listening is just as important for the master of the talkative.
5) Don't Be Me:
Grumpy does not work for the talkative type.  People do not want to hear someone complain all the time, even more so in a pug, don't be grumpy.

In the end, being talkative opens doors.  Being talkative and personable when doing so will get you remembered more for the fact people like having you around then for your skills.  Every time you see someone doing poorly in great gear you can be almost sure they are probably a pretty cool person to have around, or at least some crew thinks they are, and that is why they have that gear.

When it comes to most middle of the road guilds, no matter what anyone might tell you, how you interact with others is what will win you the raiding spot over skill most of the time as long as you are not a complete disaster of a player.  Remember, all middle of the road guilds are more about enjoying the time they raid than they are about progression and a talkative person with a good personality and at least decent in game skills will always get a raid spot in the end.

This old dog can never learn that new trick, but maybe it will work for one of you.  Go out and work on being talkative.  If it is gear you are looking for, it will pay off, trust me.

Is Choice Possible?

The game has evolved, just like every other game, and so many of the chances made are said to be added to give us a choice but do we ever really have a choice?

Usually choice comes down to an A or B option.  A is right, B is wrong.  When specs had many skills there were right and wrong options.  While it might be true that there would have been one hundred and one different choices made one hundred would be wrong and one would be right.  On rare occasion one of those wrong choices might become a right choice for a specific fight but every other time it would be the wrong choice.

Talent trees where shrank to the point where we felt like we had so much taken away from us but were told it was to remove things that were not considered fun choices.  The words fun and choices should never be used in the same sentence when talking about certain things, like dealing damage.  There will always be a right and a wrong in those cases and there is nothing fun about choosing between right and wrong.

Sure, choosing a 3% crit boost is not fun because it does not change anything in appearance or action, it does its work behind the scene.  I think that is what they meant by that, that something people could see happening was more fun.  Overall the choice between 3% crit or 3% haste would be a better choice of giving us choice in my opinion.  It becomes an actual choice, but even at that, there will still be a right and a wrong for it.  If that 3% haste is enough to get you to a haste cap you could not get otherwise it would be the right choice otherwise the 3% critical would be the right choice.  See, no real choice.  It is A or B, right or wrong.

With mists came an even simpler talent tree, one that removed choice completely and it made many, myself included, realize that sometimes having the choice to be wrong is a good thing.  I often had specs designed specifically for a task.  Mostly for soloing.  I would choose different things to solo content as they gave me a better advantage in getting it done, it was the wrong spec but I was choosing to make it, and for soloing, it was the right spec.  So was I really choosing to spec wrong, or was a not choosing and just taking the correct spec for the task at hand.  Again it seems to be the appearance of choice by allowing people to choose wrong.  In the end, I was not choosing wrong, I was just choose the right spec for a different task.  All that was removed with the most recent talent tree changes was my choice to decide to do that, to speak wrong.

They added 6 skills we could choose with the description that it would be more of a choice on how you want to play and to some extent it has worked but when it comes to certain fights some abilities are right and some abilities are wrong.  Even a tier like the hunter utility one that has silencing shot, wyvren shot and binding shot there is no choice and that is the perfect tier to illustrate choice.  You choose silencing shot for raiding.  Unless it is an add fight then binding shot might be useful otherwise binding shot serves no purpose as it does not work on bosses and neither does wyvren shot.  But silencing shot can still interrupt casts that are capable of being interrupted.  So still, even with the perfect tier to illustrate choice, there is only A and B, right and wrong.

In the end there will never be choice in game, there will always be a right and a wrong.

Even something like the daily quest grind.  They keep saying it is a choice.  I saw some responses yesterday when asked if they could add other ways to get lesser charms for people that do not want to do dailies tell them that the coins, and doing the dailies for them, is a choice.  No, it is not.

If the person is the type of player that rarely raids, or does not get a lot of bosses down each week, and they want to be the best geared they are capable of being there is no choice, they need to take any advantage they can get and that means doing dailies for coins even if they do not want to.  The blues responding to people saying that getting the coins is a choice are wrong.  It is not a choice for some.

Same with valor gear where they say it is a choice.  No, it is not a choice.  You need to open the reputations to get to the gear if you need the gear.  That is not a choice, that is a fact.  If you need gear and you are not raiding, that is the most viable way to get gear.  No waiting on lady luck for drops.  Buying gear with valor is a sure thing.  It is not a choice if you need gear.

If you are raiding, it becomes a choice but lets get real, a huge majority of the player base does not raid and even the ones that do, like myself, might have 6 characters they want geared and only one currently raiding.  So with the vast majority not raiding, valor and the rep grinds associated with them, is not a choice at all, unless you are choosing to be under geared when you shouldn't be because that is the wrong choice.

Every time you hear the blues say choice, they mean right and wrong.  There is no such thing as a real choice in game.

If the first tier of hunter talents made you choose between 2% additional damage as frost damage, 2% additional damage as fire damage, and 2% additional damage as shadow damage, it would then be a choice.  You would be choosing the visuals of the ability but all the abilities would do the exact same thing.  That is choice.

Once you add anything that could be considered right and wrong choice is no longer possible.  Whichever talent gives you the largest performance boost is the right choice.  If you are not raiding or rarely raiding, doing dailies for valor and charms is the right choice.

It makes you wonder, is choice even possible?

The only choice there will ever be in game is doing things right and doing things wrong.

How Many Abilities are Enough?

A recent post over at Warcraft Hunters Union & WoW Insider talked about hunters having too many buttons and explained the problem with the class right now better than I could have. 

It is almost frustrating trying to explain it to someone that is not in the situation that all hunters are in right now.  The fact there are so many active abilities going on at the same time devalues the abilities we do have to the point where they do not stand out among each other all that much. 

So to maximize your DPS you need to know the difference between hitting the 7% ability or the 8% one but if you have an agility proc the 7% one would now be worth 9% and that would be the better one to hit, but if you have a haste proc the 8% one is now a 9% one making the gap bigger and the mistake you can make hitting the 7% one instead even larger.

So many moving parts, so many abilities with comparable damage they do, so many changes based on your current focus level, the duration of cooldowns remaining, the condition of what procs you might be under, all changing those little numbers around.

Being the gap between abilities are so small one little change in condition could change your rotation priority completely.  While most damage dealing classes have minor changes under a proc, if any, hunters might change completely, all for 1% here and there.  Like using focus fire or not when you know bestial wrath will be off cooldown in 3 seconds.  Waiting 1 second on the kill command to line it up with your wrath. 

Super simple things like that should make a difference in your DPS and they do, but the margin they make a difference by is so small now.  So small and it still will add up to be a great deal over the course of a fight, but also so small that it makes it harder for a new hunter to understand and learn.  Sometimes you think to yourself 1% is 1%, does it really matter?

Yes, it does.

That 1% here and there does not end up being 1% over all.  If it were 1% over all no one would really stress it except for the best of the best elite style players.  But 1% of each ability every single time you hit an ability will add up to a great deal more than 1% overall.  Not sure if that makes sense, but trust me, that 1% is a lot more than 1%, so it matters to each and every hunter out there, not just those elite players.

The only reason hunters are in a bad place right now is because there are too many buttons.  Not because our DPS is low because if done right it is not.  Not because it is harder to get the maximum potential out of our class than any other class, we do not shy from the challenge.  Not because of any one reason people seem to hang on often.  It is all about the buttons. 

The fact that having so many abilities is watering down our rotation into one of two things, whack a mole or whack a mole priority.  And that is the difference between the hunters you see doing 100K on fights and hunters you see doing 50K on fights.  One is hitting whatever they can and another is remembering all those various priorities that seemingly change under various conditions.

Can hunters be fixed?  Yes but they won't be.  Mr Street has already made it abundantly clear that they have no intention of doing any sweeping class changes in the middle of an expansion.  Personally I not find his statement acceptable.  They can do it, they choose not to.  Two completely different things.

How many abilities are enough?

At what point did adding new abilities to hunters reach the point where our abilities no longer felt like signatures and felt more like numbers only? 

While I can not speak for anyone else, all specs of hunters feel the same to me now.  Hit what gives you the most DPS because it gives you the most DPS, not because it is "our shot".  While both end up meaning the same thing, hitting what does the most, hitting KC because I am BM, explosive because I am SV, and chimera because I am MM because those are my big shots feels more natural than hitting them just because they are the top number because now, with all those new abilities, that top number isn't really all that big any more, taking away the signature feel.

How many abilities are enough?

What we had seemed fine.  Adding stampede fells fine.  Even adding readiness to BM and SV felt okay.  All those other buttons did not feel fine.  Each one, as it was added, lowered the power of the signature shot for that spec and that feels off.

How many abilities are enough?

Each person will see it as what they feel comfortable with.  I've learned to adapt to all those extra buttons, but that is all they feel like to me, extra buttons, clutter, useless junk I need to do that could only be called busy work because none of it was necessary to add to the game.

How many abilities are enough?

Perhaps it is not a real number we can put on it, but a concept, like explained in the post I linked.  When there are so many abilities that the difference between them damage wise is so minimal in an effort to make you use them all, there are too many abilities.

My suggestion to a fix?

Take some of the new abilities off the global cooldown.  Things like dire beast, blink strike and glaive toss could be taken off the global cooldown and macroed in, like any good MM hunter had silencing shot macroed into everything in wrath because it had a damage component.  By doing so, they could increase our real abilities to a hit higher, as they should, and lower those off the cooldown abilities to hit lower, so it does not make us over powered, but enough that it would be noticeable that the hunter that used them would see a reasonable, if small, DPS increase from macroing them. Just like you could see the MM hunter that macroed in silencing shot did more in wrath.

Make some of the other abilities replace current ones with a slight boost to them, like some other classes have talents that remove one ability and replace it with another.  Make barrage replace multi-shot and boost it a little.  Make crows replace multi shot and boost it a little and make the crows unkillable.  Make binding shot replace snake trap and have a little boost.  Make power shot replace concussive shot trading in your instant slow for a cast time knock back with damage.

It can easily be fixed, and lower the number of abilities by changing some ability and taking others off the global cooldown.

This would leave use with one new ability across the board, stampede, with its long cooldown, and one new ability, readiness, for two of the three specs.

How many abilities are enough?

I can go either way.  I've adapted to the new way of doing things but it felt better before, in my opinion.  I want my signature shot back.  I want to see few numbers on the screen but bigger numbers instead of a whole bunch of smaller ones that add up to the same thing.  Like I said, I can go either way, but it does not change my opinion that we have way too many abilities now as it is.  How many are enough?  We had enough before.  That was how many in my opinion is enough.

If you have not read that post I suggest reading it.  I had adapted, I had accepted, I had been just living with it.  But after reading that, it made me understand that there is more than just more buttons that was the original problem, it was the watering down of all those buttons. If you had accepted things as they were, maybe reading it will change your mind too.

Monday Random Thoughts

- The darkmoon fair is over and I managed to get myself the darkmoon eye, a rare glowfly and an uncommon crow.

- Getting the eye was a big one, got it on the last day.

- That fight was a hard one, hardest one I have faced yet.

- By the forth day I had designed a team to do it with no wipes.

- Mixed teams are harder to fight and that made for a fun one but that monkey was brutal as the last guy.

- And he always was the last guy.

- One day I made it to him with all three alive and nearly got destroyed.

- If it were not for a mechanical bringing up the rear for me that monkey would have wiped me single handed.

- My mech died and came back to get the killing blow.

- Speed, that is what it was all about.  Whoever goes first wins.

- That is what pet battles are all about from my experience.

- I saw some groups for the darkmoon rabbit but did not join them.

- It was fun doing it at 85 and I did it as much as I could but now that I am 90 I can't be bothered.

- It is too easy now and the added fact that there are 40 people usually and everyone can roll on the pet and with my luck with rolls I am not going to win anyway, why bother.

- I'll just buy it some day.

- That is one of the things with stuff being BoE, I can get it another way.

- Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

- Good thing is I can still get it even if my luck with rolls sucks.

- Bad thing is, who would ever want to do it if they can just buy it.

- I guess I will do it if I am there and I am bored.

- Too much to do in game now to be distracted hunting rabbits.

- I am not elmer fudd, I have other priorities.

- Like getting another character to 90.

- Which I did when my rogue hit 90 last night.

- I did not intend to get to 90 with it this weekend but once you start leveling it is hard to stop.

- It goes by so very quickly too.

- But not quick bad, quick good.  If that makes sense.

- Like leveling in the old work is quick now, quick bad.

- This is quick good.  You get to follow the storyline and it moves along telling its story in such a good way that you do not even notice you are leveling.

- It does take some time but being the story is so connected and enjoyable you do not even notice it and look at the clock and realize you have just been playing for three hours and it feels like you just logged in because it is like you are on the same quest still.

- It is almost linear questing but not like cataclysm linear.

- I think that might have to do with the fact that quests are more enjoyable than the ones in cataclysm.

- Cataclysm seemed all over the place with no rhyme or reason.

- And as much as people might say they hate it, I think mists leveling is better because there is no flying.

- Designing quests people can flight right over to their objectives is a lot harder to do well than making quests where people need to walk to it.

- It makes for a smoother quest flow and better designed areas and mob clusters.

- Without a doubt one of the best things about mists is the fact people can not fly when leveling.

- But if you die, you should be able to fly.

- After you hit 90 of course.

- Have you ever died somewhere you could not get back to your body?

- I have.

- Not sure why your spirit can not fly, after all it is a spirit and is not confined to the rules of the living.

- Float up little ghostie spirit.

- Of the 6 90s I have now I have to say the rogue had the hardest time leveling.

- His DPS was beyond horrible and I had to fight every fight like it was a PvP fights interrupting, recuperating, disarming, stun locking, kiting, debuffing, etc.

- I could never get any power time in and just blow things away because if I took a few hits I was dead.

- Sure, it was easy enough to do it, nothing wrong with playing a defensive game, but it really slowed leveling down to a crawl.

- I also hated the fact I had no decent multi target ability.

- Two mobs I could handle, sometimes, but more than two mobs and I might as well stop wasting time and let them kill me so I could get back to my body and try not to screw up the pull again next time.

- As much as I hate playing a rogue I think there is something I love about it.

- It is a challenge.

- At least for my limited skills at being one it is a challenge.

- Just wish he were not so squishy.

- My mage and my priest could let multiple mobs beat on them as they mowed them down, my rogue could not even let a single target beat on him while he fought them.

- If I did not use defensive abilities I would have died every single fight.

- It felt like I was leveling naked.

- There was only one quest I could not complete while leveling.

- When I hit 90 I crafted myself 3 450 PvP pieces and went back there and did it no problem however.

- That was all I needed, a little extra DPS.

- It is amazing how huge a boost 3 items being 450 instead of 3 items being 437 makes.

- I had the control part down but I could not put out enough damage and I would run out of life before the big baddie would each time.

- I averaged 13K, it was a nightmare.

- How the hell can you level like that?

- I did it, but it doesn't mean it was right.

- If I did not have to deal with spending 90% of every fight on keeping myself alive I could have done much better numbers.

- Too bad that is not how a rogue operates.

- They either control the fight, or they die.

- Which for me and my limited rogue abilities meant low DPS and long fights.

- And still my rogue managed to make 90 in quick time.

- I had two of the 450 BoA daggers from the wastes.

- Did I mention I also got the relic hunter title this weekend?

- I can only imagine how horrible it would have been for me if I did not have them.

- So all I have left is the plate wearers, the warlock, and a monk, whenever I get around to it.

- Which will be the next 90?

- I plan to take a month or so off from leveling so I can spend that free time working on reputation for my other characters.

- Even if I do not play them much there is no reason they should not have at least valor gear if and when the time comes that I might need them to fill in for a second raid or something.

- I now have the big three, a tank a healer and a hunter and three backups another healer an a ranged damage dealer and a melee damage dealer.

- The big three are the only ones I worry about right now, gear wise.

- The tank is the only one raiding however, so it does not really need the valor gear, but I like questing with it.

- How strange is that, the one that does not need the gear is the one I do not mind getting reputations with.

- Yet my priest, who is over 470 without any reputations what so ever, has valor burning a hole in her pocket and can use some of those valor pieces.

- Doesn't it always work that way?

- The one that does not have the reputations can use reputation gear and the one that has the reputations doesn't need the reputation gear.

- Makes me wonder about the logic of gating it.

- People that actually raid and are actually serious about gearing up will max out reputations ASAP and be getting raid gear quickly.

- In the end, they are the ones that won't need it.

- The ones that are part timers or play less, or like me on my priest, do not like to do dailies, are the ones that can use the gear but will not have the reputations.

- Gating the gear makes less sense when you think that the only people that would need the gear are the ones that are part timers, not raiders and/or not dedicated players.

- So the people that don't need it, the raiders and dedicated players, can get it but the people that do need it, the part timers, alts and lesser advanced players can't get it?

- I understand the theory behind it and I do not mind, I will keep moving forward with my priest upgrading the gear I do get instead of getting valor gear, but I wonder why keep the gear from the people that need it.

- I know I will need all the gear I can get on my rogue if I ever want to make questing more bearable.

- Even if you do not plan to raid on a character, as I do not plan to raid on my rogue, I still want him geared up as best he can be from any resource outside of raiding.

- Perhaps that is just the completest in me.

- Even if I do not use a character I still want it geared as best I can get it geared.

- Even if I do not intend to use it, ever, as in it is just there for the professions and to say I have that class maxed.

- I max out all my professions, I max out all my classes, I max out all my gear.  Simple enough.

- That is why I dread pet battles, because I know I will have to max out every pet.

- That is just who I am.

- If you are not going to give it your best, even if your best isn't great, then why even try?

- Speaking of giving it all, I got the achievement for 10,000 daily quests.

- That is a lot of questing.

- Even with shared achievements and a few characters doing dailies the majority of them came from one character.

- To the tune of near 7K and at this rate I think that one character would have had 10K by the end of this expansion even if it were not a shared achievement.

- I am debating on changing some professions around on my characters.

- But I seem to be leaving the gathering professions behind.

- I can't go around with no gathering professions on any of my characters.

- I should make a collection of druids and hunters.

- When it comes to gathering those two classes are leaps and bounds better than all others, in my opinion.

- I have so many hunters with so many mixed and matched professions but oddly enough I have no tailor, engineer, blacksmith or mining hunters.  I have all others.

- I often think professions should be redesigned so gathering professions were not such a raiding loss.

- Make it so people can train two crafting professions and one gathering profession.

- That way all things are equal and they can stop trying to pretend like they are giving gathering professions raid worthy bonuses like crafting professions.

- Lets face it, none of the gathering perks are really great.

- So just remove the perks completely and make everyone capable of only having one gathering profession and then two main professions of their choice.

- Some would go together.

- Herbalism with inscription and alchemy would work nicely.

- Mining with jewel crafting and blacksmith would also be a natural match.

- Skinning really does not fit with anything but leather working but some skins are used in engineering and tailoring so that could work too.

- What gathering profession would my enchanter / tailor characters get then?

- I have that combo on every priest I have ever made.

- Not kidding, I have never even tried a different combo with a priest.

- They just seem a natural fit.

- They need another profession to use leather so that has two main professions that count on it.

- They also need another gathering profession that could support tailoring / enchanting.

- Make it like skinning, but of course not skinning.

- They would gather elements from elementals and salvage cloth from humanoids.

- So they could lose the extra cloth finding ability and tailors would have to salvage for their extra cloth instead.

- Have elements used for enchanting and the cloth used for tailoring be what they gather.

- There we go, now I have a gathering profession for all my priests.

- Call it salvaging?

- Nah, sounds lame, but it would be a nice little gathering addition.

- Engineering seems to be the only profession left out now.

- It uses mining the most but really needs everything from every profession.

- It is like the catch all, at least at the lower levels.

- Higher levels it seems like a mining only thing.

- Meaning mining has three professions that feed off it.

- When skinning only has one.

- I call profession bias.

- Mining is OP, I am going to call for it to be nerfed.

- Have a great day.

The Importance of Luck

Does your luck impact how much you enjoy the game?  Does your luck impact what you are capable of doing and what you get in game?  Does luck impact how well you can perform?

I am one of those people that has no luck, or seemingly none the majority of the time.  While I have had my rare dance with lady luck here and there I usually end up standing on the side without a dance partner.

On my main I have run UP near 500 times for the mount and now that mounts are account bound if you add all my characters together I am probably closer to 600 and I have still never seen it drop.  Same for the stonecore mount.  I have no clue how many times I have run that one.  For a few months I used to do 5 runs on normal every day, so I easily have to be over 300 there as well if not more and have never seen it drop.

Then there are my weird luck moments.  The mount in MT I got on trip 80 yet the easier to get pet I have never seen drop.  I recently just bought it being I gave up trying to get it.  The jewelcrafting meta patterns that are now drops in mists have given me the same luck.  I got every single meta gem pattern except 4 while leveling, three of those 4 I got pretty quickly once I hit 90, two of them in the first raid I stepped in.  The one I wanted the most, the agility one for my hunter, was the last one I got.  So I had luck, but not good luck, if you will.

There is that fish in org that I have been trying to fish up for years.  On alliance characters, on horde characters, on every character to the tune of what has to be close to 50 hours of fishing there if not more and I have never seen it.  At least if I ever do get it the achievement now it goes to all my characters so I do not have to do it again on another.  But look at the one in ironforge and me catching three of them while I was there fishing for something else.  How is that for weird luck?  Or is that still no luck?  Maybe the two of my characters that got the achievement for the one that didn't get away before they even had a fishing skill over 50 but my main, which has over 20,000 fish caught now, had that as the last thing it got to get the meta because it could not catch it at all.

How about gear drops?  Anyone that has ever raided surely has a story about that one piece that eluded them.  My hunter first killed DW before the buff, the first time I saw the staff even drop it was at the 20% buff, the bow after the 25% buff.  That is a lot of clears without even seeing it drop.

During that time we started doing it with two groups a week and I still never saw the staff or the bow drop even when I was not on my hunter.  By the time the 25% buff was out we were doing it with three groups a week and in none of those three had I ever seen the bow drop until that one time.  In that time it even took forever to get the drops in the LFR.  The staff came first but I lost the roll a few times and the bow really liked to give me a kick in the nether regions by dropping for the first time ever in the LFR the week before I finally did get the real one.  So I waited months with none and get two in back to back raids.

Luck really does have an impact on how you feel about the game, at least it does for me.

In a way I kind of like it, it gives me something to aim for.  Like soloing UP for the drake.  Whenever I am bored I will do it and now being the mounts are account bound I have 17 or so characters I can do it on easily to try to get it so if I ever get bored there is something for me to do.  So I can see how having no luck sometimes is a good thing, it creates content.  If I had it already that would be one less thing I had to do.  But it doesn't change the fact it still gets frustrating at times.

It gets even more frustrating when you know someone that has lots of luck.  There is someone in my guild that has the best luck in the world.  I was doing kara weekly for the mount and he asked me what I was always doing in kara on tuesdays, asking if I was farming to make gold or something.  I said no, the first boss drops a mount so I only do it for the mount each week.  He said he was going to give it a try.  5 minutes later he gets the achievement.

He then asked me what other mounts there were.  I said I was soloing SC every day to try and get that one and he posts a link asking, this one.  I said yes, he said, it dropped his first time in there and he won it with a one hundred.  I was afraid to ask him about the one from VP but he said he had that one too, and the rare that fly's around deepholm as well, it was right there when he first zoned in on his first visit there.  He just has super luck.  Whenever I told him about something it never took him more than 5 runs to get it, ever.

He had gotten the time lost proto drake on three different characters.  He even got it for two guild members that he was showing where it spawns and it spawned as he got there.  I am not kidding, really.  I have never even seen the dead body of the time lost proto drake.  The week after he got the kara mount I was joking around and asked him if I could borrow some of his luck and invited him to a group so I could go in and do kara.  That was the week I got the kara mount, because he was in the group with me.

Someone said in a comment that it sounded as if I were jealous over gear but that could not be further from the truth because gear is gear you will get it sooner or later, it is the luck factor I am jealous about.  I will freely admit I am jealous of lucky people.  Totally green with envy.  Like the time I told my girlfriend I had been fishing for 9 hours trying to get the fish in org and she comes in, trains fishing for the first time, and starts casting and catches it at the same time she hits 15 skill.  Jealous is absolutely the word for it.

I have never been a lucky person in game and it does effect my enjoyment of the game to some degree.  There is no fun in doing something over and over with no results knowing that you will probably have no results because you are unlucky.  I like things with an out clause if you will.  Like last noble garden with the egg hunt.  You could get lucky and get the mount in an egg or if you did not you could collect 500 of them and buy one.  It puts a number on it.  You know that if you have bad luck that even in the worst case at 500 you will end up with it.  You will have been awarded for your effort.  It is a consolation prize for the unlucky, like an angel of mercy for my in game soul.

Luck is not all about drops for mounts, or pets, or achievements or gear, now luck has added itself to another part of the game.  It is also about how well you perform in game now.

Two damage dealers in the exact same gear doing the exact same abilities the exact same amount of times over the same time period can have two completely different results based on the luck of the critical effect.  There seems to be a bug in the game where critical strikes can have a huge range and that will effect your over all DPS.

Just yesterday I did terrace twice in the LFR. I like to practice being I am not raiding with my hunter right now and it is better than getting stale at it, don't laugh, it makes sense to me to keep in practice.  On sha, which is basically a tank and spank for the most part I had two completely different results all because of the critical strike luck effect.

The first attempt I was with a rather poor group which usually means your DPS will be lower. I did not do bad but not exceptional either and ended with 96K, which I think was quite respectable for 480ish gear.  Second attempt with a much better group which usually sees your DPS go up as you spend more time in burst phase with shorter fights I ended with a horrible 70K.  Both attempts I was taken away once, both attempts I switched to adds.  So both attempts I played it the exact same for a basically tank and spank type fight and had two completely different results.  How?

Attempt one I had luck on my side and my critical strikes were much higher than my second attempt which seemingly had very low critical hits.  I must say I am not liking that luck now plays such a huge factor in DPS.  To the tune of 26K, that is over a quarter of the DPS I should be doing, which is roughly 100K on that fight.

Has the importance of luck just entered something that should be about skill and gear?

I am not sure I like that doing your job is now all luck based.  With my luck that means that even if I do everything perfectly I can always expect to do badly because I am not getting those lucky critical strikes that seemingly hit for up to 6 times what they should.  There is no reason that kill command should have critical strikes of 50K on one fight and 300K on another when not influenced by any outside buff.  A range of 50K-60K in the same gear makes sense, a range of 50K-300K based on luck does not.

It is not only one character either as my priest has seen greater heals with a 160K critical and greater heals with a 480K critical.  I can't say much for tanking as tanking has always seemed about luck a little.  Will you avoid the hit or not, but it seems more so now.

I tanked one random with a guild healer that asked me if I got new gear because we went half the dungeon before they needed to throw a heal on me, even past 2 boss fights where they DPSed the entire time because I never needed a heal.  I said nope, just getting lucky with avoidance.  I had never experienced that type of a luck streak before and it makes me think that it could have very well happened the other way around and I took constant hits even with cooldowns if my luck had been bad that day and it would have caused a slew of wipes.

I can understand the luck factor for things like drops.  Even gear drops that hate me.  I can see that and see why it is there, it creates content and gives people a reason to do things over and over.  I am not sure I can see why how well you do your job in game should be based on luck however.

Has wow become a game completely about luck and nothing else?  Where does the importance of luck lay now that it effects something that should be skill and gear based?

On a scale of one to ten where do you place the importance of luck in today's game?

I would call luck a huge factor now, an eight at least.  Luck it worth at least 26K DPS as I see it.