Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Hunter Bugs of Yore, But Its Funny Now

The most recent comic strip over at dark legacy comics, seen here, reminded me of a bug hunters had when patch 4.1, the rise of the zandalari, launched.  It was one that not only took me by complete surprise, but also cost me the price of a very unexpected repair.

The comic strip, for those of you that decided not to go read it, had a non-hunter, also known as a support class, attempting to feign death and the mob not falling for it.  Of course the mob would not fall for it, only hunters can feign death silly support class.

But I have had the exact same thing happen to me before and it was the day that 4.1 was launched.  When I logged in I was given a quest to head over to stranglethorn and, as any good adventurer would, I took the quest and I did exactly that.

When I picked up the quests once I arrived one required me to kill a bunch of things which of course is what hunters do best so I did what it is I always do.  I ran around and got a nice little collection of mobs with some body aggro, then I dismounted and misdirected to my pet and hit multi shot.  Problem was that they did not go after my pet.  They kept coming right at me.

At first I thought I might have hit the wrong thing.  It has happened before, many times, more than I would like to admit.  My misdirect macro is bound to shift 1 so maybe I missed something.  Maybe I let go of shift before I hit the 1 or the other way around.  Either way, when I looked to my bar, misdirect was not on cooldown which means I did not use it.  So I did it again and made sure to do it right this time.  Still nothing, crap.  I dropped a trap to slow the mobs and disengaged.

Maybe the update broke my keybinding, it would not be the first time that has happened.  So I went and clicked directly on it.  Nothing, the mobs were still coming after me.  I was kiting like a mad elf doing my best to survive.  Next guess was maybe the update broke the macro itself so I opened my spell book and looked for the misdirect from there.  I figured maybe get a pure unaltered version of it.  I clicked it in the spell book and my pointer lit up.  Awesome, now it will work.  I clicked on the image of my pet and the pointer was still lit.  I clicked again, again and again.  F, nothing.  Guess misdirect was broken.

At this moment I was curing the game a little bit but at least I knew were I stood now.  No misdirect.  If I had known that I would have kept to a smaller pull no doubt but I can still do this.  I kited around in a circle, and wondered why my pet was not taunting.  I had not noticed previously because, lets face it, my plate was quite full while trying to get all those mobs off of me and battling with my broken misdirect ability.

The taunt was on, there was no doubt about that, it just was not doing anything.  So I targeted the mob that was closest to me to try and peel him off and get myself some breathing room and I hit growl manually by clicking directly on it so I would make no mistakes.  Things were not going my way thus far, so I was not taking any changes.

The mob kept coming for me, completely ignoring my pet snarling and threatening the mob while insulting its mother.  Nope, the mob would have none of that, it was still coming for me.  It smelt elf flesh and it wanted a bite and no animal, even a taunting one, would stop it from eating me.  There was nothing I could do here.  I had to go old school on their ass and just kite and kill.

At this point more mobs popped up.  I am guessing they were things someone else killed that were just respawning now.  Damn, this is not becoming any easier.  I am cursing blizzard right now.  They broke my misdirect, they broke my pets taunt, I feel like a freaking clothie now.  If and when any mob got into melee range I felt it, no question about that.  I might wear mail but don't let that fool you, hunters are made out of paper, anyone that PvPs can tell you that.

I killed a few of the mobs but the added mobs that popped up proved to be too much for me.  I could continue to kite forever but decided that I wanted to just reset this whole thing.  I once again cursed blizzard for breaking my misdirect and taunt and lead the pack I was kiting to a safe place for me to feign death.  One where there were no mobs so after they killed my pet I could safely get up.  Any hunter knows how to find the safe spot quickly if need be.  We all get good at learning those things early on in our career as hunters.

Once I found my reset place I hit every hunters favorite reset button feign death and ended up being in for a third surprise of the evening.  They F'N broke feign death too.  About a dozen mobs collapsed on me instantly and mauled my body.  I was saying words in blizzards direction that I just would not feel comfortable typing here at the moment.  Trust me, none of those words were things you want to hear but I am sure they are all ones you have said before when blizzard screwed up your class in a patch.

You know what was the worst part.  Not only did my feign death not work but after they killed me they kept attacking my dead body.  I am dead, leave me alone.  This went on for what seemed like forever but it was in fact only a few seconds.  They were mauling a dead body.  Not only was killing me not enough for them, they wanted to eat my remains.  The insult to the injury of blizzard screwing up my misdirect, taunt and feign death.

Needless to say I finished the quests and I later found out that MD will still work in groups, thank god for small miracles, but not solo, which meant I could not MD to my pet, but I just changed the way I played accordingly until it was fixed.  Either way I had quite a few choice words for blizzard.  I was really pissed they broke so much and it was not funny in any way.  But years later I can now look back and remember this and how funny it was.

Special thanks to dark legacy comics for reminding me of this one day I hated blizzard so much and was curing them like a sailor.  Because now that it is years later I can laugh at it and while it was annoying when it was happening, it is funny now.  Annoying bugs can be humorous, years later.

2 comments:

  1. was this for yesterday? Anyhoo, there is still a very very bad hunter bug even today. I doubt if it will ever get fixed. Fido will go off and attack the nearest mob that you have not targeted if you kill the mob that you did target before Fido has a chance to attack it. It has gotten me into hot water too many times over the past few months. The only way to stop if from happening is putting Fido on passive. If you put him/her on aggressive or defensive mode, it will happen. removing those 3 game folders does not fix it. re-installing the game does not fix it. It's a damned blizzard bug pure and simple. Adding my 8 cents (its my last, so take it!).

    -roo

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    Replies
    1. Yes, I posted this one yesterday. A little later than I normally post I guess, but still yesterday.

      I've heard a lot of that bug. Some of it can be explained. For example, if you have a fox which does an AoE debuff, it will do it on everything in an area, even if it does not aggro it. So when the fight is over it will run to whatever else was in range of the AoE debuff, even if it were not part of the fight to begin with.

      That is usually why you see your pet go crazy attacking critters when the fight is over. Because they got on its agrgo table because of something like that even if they were not actively part of the fight.

      The newer bug is something bigger, as in attacking things that are no where even near you once the fight is over.

      I must say, as much as I hate it, I do kind of like it too, sometimes. It gives your pet a personality. It makes it feel as if it were really a wild animal and sometimes its animal instincts are getting the better of it. But it is never fun when it runs off and pulls something you would rather not be fighting. lol

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