Monday Random Thoughts

- I really missed posting here.

- I think I enjoy the friends I have made on the blog as much as the friends I have made in my guild.

- I don't think I will be posting as often as I used to, but I do intend to drop a small post here and there from now on.

- "Small" being the swing word word here.

- Small for me is not the same as small for someone else.

- I plan to level my hunter first.

- Marksman.

- Not because MM will be OP at the start because we get our main artifact abilities first but because MM, to me at least, seems like the best leveling spec.

- That used to go to BM.

- But with limited pet survival as it is and the loss of the glyphs that helped with a pet ability to survive, added to the loss of the misdirection glyph, MM just seems better.

- For those interested here is the MM hunters best choices for a leveling spec.

- Again, my opinion only, feel free to disagree.

- Level 15 Talent: Lone Wolf

- The other two options, while they give you a pet, are not as good as they would be if the pet had any chance at surviving.  So you are best off with lone wolf.  You have the tools to survive without a pet.  If you play correctly, and choose the right talent next.

- Level 30 Talent:  Black Arrow.

- If you kill a mob fast enough the cooldown resets, even if you don't, you will only 4 seconds without a pet out.  And the black arrow pet can survive WAY better than the actual pet.  So this is a no brainer.

- Level 45 Talent: Post Haste.

- Speed boost.  'Nuff said.

- Level 60 Talent: Patient Sniper.

- You can go Explosive Shot if you want to AoE your way though quests and are good with the timing, but Patient Sniper is a set it and forget it ability that you do not have to worry about. I feel the added focus helps and reduced debuff time does not hurt, so it is good to go with.

- Level 75 Talent: Binding Shot.

- Since it was added I think Binding Shot was always the best in its row whatever it was against, nothing changes here.

- Level 90 Talent: Barrage.

- Even with the recent buff to crows and volley they do not seem worth it.  However, for leveling both are viable options.  Not kidding. If you want to test one, play with it a little. If not, barrage will do the job.

- Level 100 Talent: Piecing Shot.

- Actually I could say "anything not named Sidewinders".  Sidewinders is dreadful for leveling as it leaves you with no on demand always there instants and possibly waiting on abilities.  Not a good combo if you want to keep leveling at a nice pace.  One thing that always made hunters the best leveling class in the game was instants.  Without sidewinders you have both arcane and multi and as they generate focus and don't spend it you can fire forever without having to worry about resources.  With shared tags now, you want to hit the world, even if someone else is fighting it. And to do so you absolutely NEED arcane and multi.

- Just a reminder.  This setup is not very good for DPS and should not be what you use while in dungeons if you want to contribute your fair share.

- But for leveling, I think this is the way to go.

- After I level my hunter I am going to level my druid, a lot sooner than I normally would an alt.

- I want to get a leg up on it because I know I will not be raiding as a hunter unless something changes in the next 24 hours, or shortly after, balance wise.

- And I do like druid tanking and druid healing.

- Not exactly fond of feral, I hate that wait for energy design, it is slow and boring.

- Partly why I hate the sidewinders MM design too, the wait on proc design is boring and adds nothing to the game, fun wise.

- Balance is give or take.  It is leaps and bounds better and more enjoyable now with that stupid cycle crap, but I am still not really big on playing balance.

- I've cleared out any left over quests not done from my quest log.

- I've cleared out all the old mats and things I will not need from my bags.

- I have a couple of stacks of food and potions and a stack of flasks, which I am 100% sure I will not even use half of.

- I am guessing the total leveling experience should take no more than 5 flasks at most, maybe 4.

- BTW, alchemy, mine are 2 hours, so that means 8-10 hours to level.

- Yes, I plan to level in one sitting.

- I always do.

- Well, except for cataclysm where I made the mistake of going to the underwater zone first.

- By the time I was done I was so dizzy and sick and had to lay down and ending up sleeping for hours.

- Funny part is, I still came within 5 hours of realm first.

- Someone dinged realm first and 4 hours and 40 minutes later I dinged max level.

- That basically means if I had not spelt for 17 hours I would have been realm first by a full 12 hours before anyone else.

- Wow, my main server has some slow levelers. lol

- Or at least did for cataclysm.

- I would not be surprised if they, like myself, did the first zone and needed to take a break.

- I hope blizzard never does an underwater zone again.

- Some people love it but I hated it with a passion.

- Oddly enough, I liked it on my druid.

- Seal form maybe?

- Not sure, but it was the only character I did not feel ill on when I went there.

- What "seems" to be my final count on max levels is as follows.

- I still have many 90s left behind but I got a fair amount to 100 thanks to invasions.

- 6 Hunters.

- 4 Druids.

- 2 DKs.

- 2 Priests

- 2 DHs.

- 2 Mages.

- 1 of every other class.

- I still have a few others are 90 that I did not get around to.

- Not like it is really a big deal.

- I do not see me playing many alts with how restrictive being behind on an artifact weapon will be.

- This will be the most alt unfriendly expansion ever.

- Unless they do something to massively increase alts leveling of artifacts.

- Which I believe they will do.

- Not massively, but some.

- Hopefully it will be enough to be worst leveling alts.

- But knowing blizzard, they are always a day late and a dollar short.

- The will probably give us some awesome alt catch up mechanic 2 months before the next expansion comes out.

- Gee, thanks for nothing blizzard.

- Here is to hoping to do something 2 months in and not 2 months before it is over.

- Cheers.

- You can do it blizzard.  I know you can.

- Don't let the grumpy one down.

- Again.

- So what did you like about warlords?

- I loved the leveling.

-Think it was the best it had ever been.

- So why did I have so few alts before this invasion let me level a ton easy?

- Because I dreaded what was at 100 for us.

- So I never even bothered leveling them.

- These invasions have been fun for alts on servers I did not have much on to begin with.

- Selling the gear was a great way to make a few bits of coin.

- On a few low levels I just popped into one or two invasions.

- Not really for the levels, for the gear to sell for gold.

- Got enough on those lowbies to get them bags.

-Which is all I ever really wanted.

- I like to actually level them, and will some day when I am bored, but at least now I will have some bag space.

- That is the single most important thing to me in the game.

- I still say if blizzard really wanted to make money from me, offer more bag slots in the blizzard store.

- I would buy it for every active player I use.

- Add five more bag slots on my main?

- Yes, thank you.

- Add a second row of bag slots in my bank?

- Sure thing, thank you.

- Make my starting bag twice the size?

- Hell yes, take my money.

- I am the worlds biggest sucker for bag space.

- I would gladly spend real money to get more.

- Back to leveling in Legion.

- What zone will you do first?

- Honestly I really do not care for me.

- Being things scale now all zones are the same in terms of which you "should" do first.

- And as I always get loremaster on day one doing all the quests I will do so again and do them all.

- So for me the order really does not matter much.

- HOWEVER!

- I will not finish any single zone until I am max level.

- Why you ask?

- The end of zone rewards are the best of the bunch, gear wise.

- The zones, quests and yes rewards from doing said quests scale based on your level.

- So I am going to save completing the best quests until I am max level.

- Won't really be a huge boost to power and anything I get will be replaced in a dungeon but it will be something to start off with.

- And anything to start off with will be good.

- You know those first day, heck, first week dungeons will be a nightmare to do.

- New bosses for everyone, new mechanics for them to learn, I see a wipe fest coming on.

- And god forbid we get a disc priest as our healer.

- I have never ever even considered kicking someone based on the spec they play, and I would not start a kick, but if one popped up, I would hit yet without even a seconds thought.

- Disc priests are not healers, they are a support class.

- Fantastic for raids, actually beyond fantastic for raids.

- If you have someone that knows what they are doing a disc priest in raids are amazing beyond the meaning of the word amazing.

- But in a five man, when everything is on their shoulders?

- Expect a lot of deaths.

- I have run with some mythic skilled players and they could not hack it.

- When we over geared them.

- How do you think most will do at a minimum gear level?

- Very poorly, to say the least.

- Word to the wise on how to run with a disc priest on day one.

- Have them blanket the entire group before the pulls.

- Let them drink after every pull.

- Do that and you will be fine.

- Get one raging chain pulling tank with a disc priest and expect to wipe a lot.

- Get one go go go damage dealer that pulls for the tank and expect to wipe a lot.

- Respect the design that disc "can" be awesome if given the time to do so and play it slow and steady, and you will have a smooth run.

- But you know as well as I do no pug is going to do that.

- So I expect a lot of disc priests to get kicked.

- The reason they will give is "bad healer".

- But the real reason should be "I don't understand how the class works so I would rather kick them than let them drink and get attonement on everyone first."

- Poor disc has been destroyed, just like so many other classes.

- I want to give fire mage a shot.

- I know they fixed a lot.

- I know if felt smoother.

- But I am just stuck in the past and remembering the nightmare it was with the luck based proc system.

- Even if it is not really like that any more.

- Just the thought of it is a turn off to me.

- I'll give it a real try this expansion.

- I mean, if I ever want to play ranged again and do respectable DPS I'll have no choice but to be a fire mage.

- And I see ranged will be a huge issue next expansion.

- With so many ranged specs being bottom of the pack and the most played class in the game losing one of its ranged specs and being poor DPS in the other two, I think finding ranged for a raid to be hard.

- Funny thing is, you know what held my raid team back this expansion mostly?

- No melee.

- Nope, not shitting.

- I would see in trade all the time "looking for ranged, on xxx" but for my guild we would have 15 people, 2 tanks, 3 healers and 10 ranged.

- Usually 1 lock, 2 mages, 1 boomkin, and 6 hunters.

- Over all on most bosses it did not hurt at all, but there were a few we needed melee and we had none most of the time.

- Admittedly we had, had being past tense here, some of the best melee in the world.

- According to the log sites at least, DPS wise.

- The #1 warrior, the #3 feral druid, and 4 other really competent players, even if they were not ranking.

- Another feral, a monk, another warrior and a death knight.

- But one feral went away to collage, the other had to go heals, the monk got a job that interfered with raid time as did one of the warriors, the other warrior just quit outright and the death knight became a tank because we could not find a replacement.

- And there you go, one mythic team, dismantled by real life and all our melee gone in one sweep.

- I am not kidding, we lost all the melee over the course of 1 month, and went from about to step into mythic (we were on heroic archie at the time) to stuck doing heroics for the rest of the expansion.

-Only made it 4 deep mythic myself.

- Because we lost our 20 and we could not recruit any more.

- Oh, we tried, but thanks to flex anyone we recruited thought showing up was "optional".

- Sorry, if you are a raider showing up is not "optional" even if it is flex.

- And the ones that did show up were either one of two things, or both.

- A) dreadful DPS, as in sub 30K over a 720 item level, or B) somehow managed to stand in everything, even things that we did not know where there.

- I'll be the first to admit melee can be daunting, I hate it myself, but we could not find one single decent melee as a replacement to what we lost.

- For months we tried and for months we never found one.

- We never got back to 20 regulars.

- I miss 10 man mythic.

- "I used to be a mythic raider, until I took an arrow to the knee"

- The arrow was 20 man mythic, in case you did not get the idea.

- I really hope raiding will be better for us next expansion.

- Either that or I have three options.

- One being to accept the fact I no longer raid mythic.

- Or two, change guilds to fill in where I am needed in an already running mythic guild.

- Or three, recruit like crazy and hope for the best.

- Option 3 is not really an option however.

- I no longer have the time, nor the desire, to run multiple runs of the same thing each week to "test" people out.

- I want to have my cake and eat it too, which probably will not happen.

- I want to recruit people that are already good raiders to start with.

- I do not want to teach during progression.

- That is what the saturday night alt runs are for.

- Am I wrong for not wanting to start all over again after so many years?

- Eh, maybe I am just being selfish.

- But so many years of training people to raid and experiencing some minor successes here and there, has worn me down.

- I have reached selfish stage.

- I just want to raid with people that know how to raid.

- I don't want to teach any more.

- But who am I kidding, I will end up doing it anyway.

- As someone once told me, "you can't change who you are"

- And I am always one that looks at a person and sees the potential of what they can be.

- So I will go back to teaching them.

- And I will be grumpy about doing it.

- But in the end, I will smile when I see them do well.

- Perhaps, for me, that is the bigger reward than the mythic kills.

- We do play the game for fun after all.

- And while kills are fun, helping someone get good enough to enjoy their first kills can be just as satisfying.

- I have high hopes for Legion.

- Even if I am worried about a lot of the little things.

- Did I mention I am still extremely bitter about not getting a beta invite?

- I wrote some good guides from being on the warlords beta.

- Those guides were even picked up and used on ask Mr. Robot.

- I supplied solid feedback, found and reported bugs, and over all did a solid job as both a tester and a reviewer along with my guides.

- And I did not get a beta invite.

- Yeah, I am very bitter about that.

- Blizzard did me wrong.

- I think on the strength of my guides alone I should have got and invite.

-I think that was part of the reason I left.

- I felt slighted.

- Well, on a happier note, my next post will most like be titled Ding 110.

- Have fun leveling people, and be sure to explore everywhere.

- There are wonders to be found in the world of Azeroth.

- And I expect to enjoy finding all of them.

- See you on the broken shores.

- Have an excellent day.

The Legion is Coming and I am Ready, How About You?

First off, long time no post.  I hope everyone that reads here has been well.  Sorry for my extended absence, as it was, but I had always said that if I ever really were to quit I would write an I quit post.  It does not make sense to do so.  I complained here on this blog because I loved the game.  If I were truly going to leave that would mean I no longer loved the game, so, why post in a blog about it. 

Either way, I never really left the game.  I was still playing, even if only on an extremely limited basis, but my love for the game was lost.  Lost so much that while things still bothered me about the game I really did not care enough to take the time out of my day to post about it.

Now with the "where the hell have you been" out of the way, I'll get right down to my grumpy thoughts on all the current topics I can think of, in as short a way as possible, if that is even possible for me.

Legion Outlook:

I won't say that there is not one factor about legion that does not scare the hell out of me in terms of game play, there are actually 3, but over all I am cautiously optimistic about it and believe it has the potential to be freaking fantastic.

Blizzard has a track record of swinging the pendulum and this expansion will no doubt be one where it is swinging in the better direction, in my opinion at least.  The game started out good with the original release and got better with the burning crusade and reached its peak in wrath, where it has been swinging the pendulum ever since.

Wrath was great, cataclysm sucked so bad I still shiver at the mention of how it destroyed the old world and ripped a gigantic hole in the continuity of the game for absolutely no reason what so ever.  Then we had mists which was fantastic from the get go with constant content releases and lots of stuff to do, and it was pretty alt friendly too.  The end was a little blah because they left it alone to start working on, believe it or not, warlords, when the pendulum swung back it complete garbage.  So much so it even got someone like me that loves to complain about thing to say, this is such garbage it is not even worth taking the time to complain about.

So if all goes according to blizzards track record, Legion should be just this side of awesome, maybe even with a bit of fantastic on top.  I have some high hopes rolling into this one.

The Three Things That Worry Me:

I go into this expansion with no class to play. I've been a hunter since I started and I love being a hunter so I will level my hunter first.  I will max out my hunters artifact, I will get achievements on my hunter, I will get reputations on my hunter, but I will be doing it just so I do not need to go back later to do it, as I like to complete things, if they ever fix my hunter.

As it is now the hunter is completely unplayable.

Beast Mastery has issues with pets not being able to take a hit, and as you can not do any real damage yourself the fact that your pet constantly dies to almost everything in 2 hits means you are doing no damage at all.  There doesn't  feel like there is enough hunter part of a beast mastery hunter, it is all about the beast, the tissue paper thin dying all the time beast.  No thank you.  This is supposed to be the soloing spec, the spec here pets can take raid bosses, not die to elites in 2 hits.  The spec is broken from a game play perspective until the fix pets at the very least.  I, maybe, could live with there being very little "huntering" to do with this spec, if at least the beast mastery part was better.

Marksman is just flat out unplayable.  It is a sit and wait play style now for a class, and spec, that has always been about the rapid fire of abilities.   I had to wait 45 seconds for a marking targets proc.... 45.... fucking.... seconds.   And this happens all the time.  And you know what there is to do between procs?  Get up and go make a coffee.  Add this annoying luck based proc system to the wait for things to line up system to the god awful 1.5 second global cooldown, and you just crated a borring spec.  The sad part if that for leveling I think MM will be the best spec.  Just don't take sidewinders, whatever do you.  Sidewinders is the best DPS selection, but if you want to ever feel like a hunter should feel, you need that arcane and multi it replaces to allow you to go back to the rapid fire, or as close as you can get to raid fire with that snoozefest 1.5 second global cooldown, type of game play.  Too bad not takeing sidewinders gimps your DPS so badly.  It was would a good talent if it repleased either arcane or multi, but replacing both, it makes the spec unplayable.  At least if you want to actually enjoy it anywhere outside of a raid that is.

And survival, what needs to be said about this.  Hunters only have 2 specs now.  Survival is no longer a hunter spec.  Hunters are a ranged class, even by blizzards definition, survival is melee, this not a hunter spec.  In all seriousness, The game did not need an more melee classes before Legion and then they added an unneeded hero melee class, and they swing a perfectly fine ranged spec to melee to add to an over crowded area where no one wants to play to begin with.  They should have added more ranged specs because people want ranged.  If anything Outlaw Rogues should have been moved to ranged with their pistols, and maybe Arms Warriors should have been switched to range as weapon masters with throwing stuff.  It made no sense to make survival melee.  I will admit I played it and I really liked it, and it is pretty easy to max out DPS with it, but with all things considered, if I really wanted to play melee, I would have done so a long time ago.  I hate melee, and making my class have a melee spec did nothing to change that.  So this spec is not even an option to play.  Unless it becomes top DPS spec and i am forced to do so.  I really dread the idea of that happening.

Add to all that, all 3 of the hunter DPS specs are near the bottom of the pack, 20% less than the top of the pack, which makes them a raid liability, to say the least.

What to play:

With all that said the first worry of mine is what to play.

As stated, hunter is not an option.  Outside of the fact that early on MM will be godly as it gets all its powerful abilities before the other classes, once everyone catches up, it too will be left in the dust, but those first few weeks should be fun.

I have tried all specs, doing dungeons raids, invasions, you name it, for every class.  I like demonology warlock and it is an option, I guess.   I really like shaman healing and melee.  Shaman melee was the only melee class I ever really got into, not sure why, but it felt nice playing it again. Rose tinted glasses a bit remembering how much I loved it maybe, but even after playing it I still liked it.  It is fast paced, my preferred play style, and it doesn't have that huge gap it used it, but it is still melee, and in a very melee heavy expansion I can't see that really helping any group when they will be in desperate need for more ranged to begin with.

Over all druid looks to be the way to go.  Of all the classes they seem to have gotten beaten by the removal bat the least.  Balance is better than it has been in ages.  Feral is still wait and burst design which I am not fond of, but it does offer very good numbers which is a nice reward for all that waiting.  Druid healers are once again kings of the mobile healing ranks and with the exception of shaman on many fights, will be the best healing option.  And bears, my beloved bear the mana sponge. They seem to be in a nice place even if they do need a lot more healing than all the other tanks combined, and I love love love that I actually have more buttons for defense than I used to.  Add to that I am now a bear that shoots laser beams.  How awesome is that.

Put it all together and think that I have been main tanking, on a druid, since BRF released.  I tanked all our progression kills since then.  I guess I am now a druid tank.  Not sure I like it, I want to be a hunter, but blizzard does not want me too be one.  So not it is not just the guilds need that will make me tank, but it is blizzard itself that will make me tank.

On the bright side, druids have the BEST artifact weapons in the game.  I mean have you seen those awesome bear forms.  Yeah, I think I can live with being a bear main and only a bear main for one expansion hoping they fix hunters for the next one.


Artifact Weapons:

This is worry #2 because once again blizzard has stopped taking their anti psychotics.  They are downright delusional.  They say that this will be the most alt friendly expansion ever.

Lets go over the facts.

Fact one:  They said, paraphrasing of course, "This will be the most alt friendly expansion ever."

Fact two: They said, their own words paraphrased, that "it should take 3 or 6 months for an active play to max out their artifact weapon."

These two things mean two completely and  different things.  One says it will be alt friendly the other said it will make playing alts nearly impossible for most of the player base.  Get back on your meds blizzard so you can stop taking out of both sides of your head and get things straight.

It all depends on what you consider active.  I consider active to be 20 hours a week.  I consider myself an active player when I am enjoying the game and 20 hours a week seems about right, in my opinion at least.

Now with that said I would say that puts me in the top 20% of the players in terms of time played each week.  Maybe even top 10%, who really knows.  If it is going to take me 3 to 6 months to make out one weapon, for one spec, how long do you think it will take the average player?  Two years maybe?

Now how exactly is that alt friendly.  I'll tell you, it is not.  I expect HUGE changes to artifact progression pretty early in legions cycle, because this is most definitely the least alt friendly addition to the game ever made. 100% no doubt.

Yeap, the people at blizzard are off their meds if they think this will be the most alt friendly expansion ever.  Not with artifact weapons at least.  Not by a long shot.

Now to issue two with the artifact weapons.  They give us our weapon so not longer are we stuck behind RNG to choose whether or not we get one.  And we power it up by actually playing the game.  Oh my god how I love that idea so so so much.  No RNG. Being rewarded with power for actually playing the game.  Awesome idea blizzard, you had me at hello.

Then as time went on we see three relic slots on our weapon.  What are these for inquiring minds want to know.  Real gems do not go in them, relics do.  Where do we get these relics?  As random drops.

Mother F-ers.  So you took my one RNG to get a good weapon and turned it into three RNG occurrences now.  You dirt sucking bottom feeders you.  Took an awesome idea that removed the horrible design of allowing "random" to dictate what gear we have out of the game and then added triple the RNG back into it by making us have to get drops to get out item level up.  You people are indeed the scum of the earth.  What a bait and switch.

"We removed RNG to add more RNG."

Screw your blizzard.

But it does not end there, no, not at all.  Those relics all have secondary abilities on them.  So not only do you need to get three relics to level  up your weapon through nothing but random luck, but now you need to get the right ones.  Not just any +50 item level piece will do, you want the +50 that gives your a bonus to one of the abilities you use.

So you added more RNG to the RNG that you said you were removing from weapons drops by adding artifact weapons.

You know, I am really getting sick and tired of blizzards double talk. And from the looks of it, having lost close to 70% of its subs last expansion, it looks like many others have as well.  No real wonders there.

The artifact weapons worry me.  We still need weapon drops, but now 3 per weapon instead of just one, and the right three to make it even harder, and not having a leveled weapon will make playing alts, or at least getting them into pugs damn near impossible.

Great idea blizzard, poorly executed.  Even before legion is released you can tell this will be the worse addition to the expansion.  It will backfire just as garrisons did.  People will love it at first and then hate it 6 months down the line when they worked their ass off to level up a weapon and then blizzard does some balancing and that top DPS weapon you worked your ass off for it now sitting on the bottom of the DPS charts and you need to do it all over again for another spec, or worse, another class.

Artifact weapons are DOA as an idea.  They failed before they even started.  Adding more RNG than we ever had before and making alts unplayable unless you quit your job.

The Third Worry:

Seriously, when I started this post I had three worries in mind and I forgot what the last one was. Perhaps it was not all that important and I was just worried about it for nothing.  Maybe when I addressed the pressing matters of classes and artifact weapons option three paled in comparison.

But I guess I will leave some lesser gripes here.

Legendary items.  Hate them, they will feel mandatory for any player that wants to perform well.  They will be luck based and extremely rare at that.  Horrible game design blizzard, there is no other word for it.

Flight.  How can they make the same mistake twice in a row.  You lost so many people last expansion from this stupidity, so why make the same mistake again.  Flight should be included on launch.  Sure, make us get an achievement for it, but it should be added on launch.  I really hate you for doing this to us again blizzard.  More and more I am getting sick and tired of this shit.  Maybe next time I leave it will be for good.


Invasions:

Are you loving these or what?

I did not level many alts this expansion despite the one really good thing about warlords was the fantastic leveling of it.  I just did not want to put myself in the position of feeling I "had to" maximize my garrison on yet another character.  It was my decision not to level most of my 90s, I get that, but it was the garrisons that made me not want to level them.  So we can share the blame on this one.

However, I have been leveling like a mad elf these last few weeks.  Many of my characters that were sitting at 90 are now 100.  A few that were lower are now 100, and of course one horde and one alliance demon hunter are now 100 as well.

I did a refer a friend and he and I leveled from level 1 to 100 in 4 hours. No shitting. But even more important, I will be getting my emerald hippogryph once he pays for some time.  I hope he pays for some time.  If he doesn't I will give him the money to pay for some time.  I love hippogryphs, can't you tell?

As I am typing this I have some of my 100s, yes, I actually activated my extra account just for this and leveled all 5 characters I had on it from 85 where they left off to 100,  just flying over invasion spots to get the baggie.  No real reason to participate in it on a level 100 other than the gear.  Invasions are for lowbies to level.  There is nothing a 100 can get from them except gear.  And you can not buy the gear with shards, so no reason to participate to get more shards.

Hey, I know I am doing "bad" by just hanging out there, but blame blizzard for poor design.  Do not blame me for taking advantage of it.

Speaking of taking advantage of it, have to love how fast you level.  Added a few more hunters to my 100 ranks, 2 more druids, another DK, and will surely have at least 3 more at 100 before it goes away, more if I stop writing this novel and get back to playing.

Shard Tech:

I am not quite sure how I like the new shard tech so far.  It is a great idea to keep areas from getting crowded during rushes and to make lesser visited areas seem fuller, but there are still some bugs that need to be worked out.

The other day myself and 2 fiends were in a group together, none of us could see the other.  We were in a group, but all three of us were on different shards.

If blizzard wants this to work, and I am sure they do, they need to give this a priority fix.  If you are grouped with someone you should always be on the same shard as them.  It really is that simple.  Fix that and I think this new shard tech will be a winner.

Still really disliking it for hunting rares and stuff, but blizzard screwed that over a long time ago with this CRZ garbage that really should have never been implemented to begin with.

Level Scaling:

From what I have seen so far it has been pretty damn awesome.  Sure I have seen some abilities that did not scale correctly, but that is bound to happen, lets just hope they continue to adjust them, but over all it has been great.

I did an invasion with 4 others and all 5 of us were completely different in level.  No two even close, and we managed to go around together, fighting the same things, and all contributing our fair share.  It was awesome.

I always said that blizzard is great at taking ideas from other games and making it their own.  I liked the scaling down in FF 14 the first time I saw it some time ago and said I would love to see this in warcraft.  Well, we now see a better version.  Instead of scaling the player down to the lower player, we both retain our own levels and our own skills and play together.

Well done blizzard.  I am really liking that we can play together, for this at least.

Makes me wonder, will this ever come for the entire world?

Maybe in WoW 2.0.  Coming soon to a gaming console near you.  I am sure of it.  Why else gut all the specs like that have if they were not trying to port it to a console.

But it does make me wonder.  Why did my hunter lose two thirds of their abilities, but most of my other classes did not lose many, if any, and some even have more buttons than before.

I think it is all one big conspiracy because hunters were so awesome.  They just do not want anyone playing them any more. They were afraid if they did these class halls and left the hunters as awesome as they were they would have taken over all the other class halls and turned everyone into a hunter.  The priest hunters, the druid hunters, the dk hunters, yeah yeah, that's the ticket.

Enjoy release day.  Get ready for a great expansion.  I am sure it is going to be one, because it has to.

Alpha News: Black Arrow Now Calls Forth a Skeletal Minion

In hunter news it seems marksman goes some skill changes but the one I found the most interesting, and actually made me smile, was the chance to black arrow.  While still not what I personally would have wanted I do see it as a step in the right direction.

For marksman black arrow is currently a level 15 talent choice and the way it works now is as follows.

Black Arrow:
Fires a Black Arrow at the target, dealing [ 4 + 40% of AP ] Shadow damage over 8 sec and summoning a skeletal minion to taunt it for the duration. Black Arrow's cooldown is reset when you kill an enemy. 
Marksmanship Hunter - Level 15 Talent. 40 Focus. 40 yd range. Instant.15 sec cooldown.

What made me smile was the recognition, even if they did not come right now and say as much, that hunters "need" pets, it is part of their Warcraft mythos.  So they should at least have the option of having one even if it ends not not being the optimal game play.  This shows they might, and I stress the might part of this, have noticed that marksman want pets too.

With the pet lasting for the duration of black arrow and the cooldown of black arrow resetting on the death of an enemy that means it is quite possible to have your minion up near 100% of the time in a questing environment, depending on the situation.

While I do want my real pet back, and my stable back, and the pet related abilities like masters call back I do see this as a step in the right direction for marksman that would like to have some sort of pet at their side, even if not all the time.

There are some suggestions I have with this however, if blizzard ever sees this, which I doubt they will.  But maybe someone that has the ear of blizzard could whisper a few sweet nothings into it for me.

Note:  These suggestions might already be the way it is on the alpha, as I am not on the alpha because blizzard does not love me I do not know.  But I hope these things are already how it is.

The skeletal minion must be a beast skeletal.

This is nonnegotiable.  This needs to be done if blizzard wants to play the MM spec out this way.  I am willing to accept they want to change the entire lore behind the class and take pets away from one spec and move another spec into melee, neither of which make any sense, but if they are going to MM some sort of minion it should at least be a beast.

Make it like dire beast where it is a beast fit to the zone, or make some glyphs to choose which beast is summoned, be it a skeletal nightsaber, a skeletal worg, a skeletal bear, or what have you.  Hunters and beasts have a connection, it is why I say MM should not lose their pet, but if they are going to force our hands the least they can do is let that connection exist past the barrier of death.  Let the minion that assists us with black arrow be a beast.  Let us have some sort of chance to have a real pet again.  A hunter calling some random minion or some nondescript minion would make no sense, but calling upon the spirit of the pet you once roamed the world with makes sense.  And is pretty damn sad in a way too. (I still just want my pet back thank you)

Back it up with other abilities.

There are already a few skill selections that are designed to work better when you have another talent chosen from a previous row.  I'd like to see some black arrow action added to some of the other talents.  Increasing the time of the DoT, decreasing the cooldown of the ability, making the pet permanent and only resummoned when it dies.

It would most likely not be optimal, as I mentioned before, but it could be made at least a decent option for those that wish to play with a pet but want to use the MM style of a sharp shooter.  We are talking options here.  It doesn't need to be the top option, but it sure should be an option nonetheless.

Bottom line is, it seems nice for blizzard to take notice of myself and many other hunters that are greatly upset with the loss of mans best friend and the destruction of the Warcraft hunter mythos in the name of developing classes.  Still not exactly sure how you develop a class by removing a key piece of what makes that class the class it is, namely pets, but I will save that for another post.  Lets just be happy MM is getting a pet... of some sort.  Here is to hoping it is a skeletal beast.  Cheers.

Random Thoughts - Blade and Soul Edition

- Figured I would do my thoughts on Blade and Soul in a random thoughts format.

- Because only having played it a few hours I do not have enough information to write about.

- But I do have some thoughts about it thus far.

- And I am enjoying it enough to write about it.

- I play a lot of games, or test them for a bit here and there at least to see what I like.

- I only write about the ones I can see me wanting to play again, and this one I do.

- I might even play tonight instead of just my normal weekend warrior thing which is how I usually play other games.

- First lets get the "bad" stuff out of the way.

- Being I wanted to be a summoner and the only race that can be a summoner is the cutesy race I decided to make mine a female.

- When creating the character I kept clicking on the "male" option and it would not change.

- It was after 5 or 6 attempts that I slapped myself upside the head and say "Grumpy, that is the male version".

- So in terms of choice, a female or a male that looks female, I decided on a female.

- Hey, if I am going to look female might as well be female right?

- One problem, I only have a few female names I like to use.

- I tried one server for new players, taken.

- Tried the other server for new players, taken.

- Tried a few other servers, taken, taken, taken.

- Blah, switch names and tried again on the new servers than some others, all taken.

- Tired a different spelling, slightly, all taken.

- Come on now, give me a freaking break.

- I was at the point I was almost going to say forget it and not even create a character.

- Seriously, if I can not even get a name I want on any server, why play?

- Sure a name is not that important over all, but it sure is frustrating when you waste 30 minutes trying to find a freaking name even.

- Even more so when you are not being picky and you will go on any server with that name and none of the names you want can be used on any server.

- Still do not understand why no MMO has used my idea yet of last names.

- So if a dozen people want to be John, they all can.

- One would be John Smith, another John Jones, and so forth.

- But names are something silly to complain about in the long run, however if it almost made me say screw it and I really do not care I am sure the people that are really attached to their names would never even sign up for a free game.

- Being there is no "cash" invested in a free game, they might not make it past character creation if they try a dozen servers and their name is unavailable on all of them.

- They would have nothing invested in the game, so why even sign up?

- So the name issue can hurt a free game, but I got around it.

- I added the word "Lady" to the front of the name and got in no problem.

- So now I am royalty.

- Complaint number two is the same complaint I have about every other MMO I think I have ever played, gold sellers.

- In the grand scheme of things, at least on my server, this is one of the things WoW is so much better than any other game at.

- And I am talking leaps and bounds better, entire different universe better, amazingly advanced better.

- I rarely see seller spam.

- But in this game, being it is both new and free, the pace of gold selling posts is break neck fast.

- If anyone posts anything in chat your chances of seeing it are slim to none.

- The screen never stopped moving, it was post after post after post.

- It is both annoying and very distracting, even more so when trying to learn the game.

- After I played a little I tuned it out, but starting out when I was trying to see messages from the system as I did things  and it was impossible.

- That really ends the complaints, so to speak.

- Now to the game so far.

- It is visually very nice in a slightly cartoonish way.

- And if you know me you know I actually prefer the cartoonish visuals over the "real life" ones.

- They lend them selves to standing the test of time a hell of a lot better in my opinion and you can just look at warcraft for an example.

- I still love their visuals and they are miles away from trying to be realistic.

- So that bodes well for the game in my opinion.

- Games that try to hard to look "real" tend to look dated within a couple of years of release whereas the art here is something I can see lasting for a long time.

- And as the game has been out in other areas for 4 years and still looks good on first impression here, to me, that shows the art stands the test of time.

- Look at any other "realistic" game from 4 years ago and see how dated their art looks now.

- I was not a fan of the race that I ended up with, as it was the only race that could be a summoner, because it was the cutesy race.

- I am not a big fan of that, but after playing it a while I didn't even notice I was playing the "silly" race any more.

- I forgot I was playing the cutesy race for two reasons really.

- The game play was so new and interesting to me that I forgot I was playing the "silly" race.

- The character creator was so great I forgot I was playing the "small" race.

- While I could not make her as tall as I wanted to it did allow me to make her rather tall for a small race, enough so that the size of the race, at least to me, was no longer an issue.

- Now the character just seems like the standard humanoid shape and size, maybe of a teenager, but still normal.

- Or as normal as you can get with cat ears and a big bushy tail.

- I took the smallest ears I could find, it just so happened the smallest ears came with one of the largest tails.

- Oddly enough, I've grown quite fond of the tail.

- The character creation options completely and totally blew me out of the water.

- I thought I would be stuck playing a small race I did not want to play and not only was I allowed to change it, I was allowed to change it enough that I am happy with it and do not feel "stuck" with something I did not like.

- In truth the character I am playing does not even look like the race it is intended to be and if it were not for the ears and the tail you would never even notice and I really liked that.

- Your opinion could surely vary.

- You might still hate the tail but I say, love the tail, it will grow on you.

- No pun intended.

- The main quest line quests are all, so far it seems, voice acted.

- And while the voice acting is not great, it is fair.

- You can skip them but I have been listening to them all.

- The voice actors really can not be the ones to blame for me calling it only a fair performance, that probably is more because of the writing.

- The story moves along nicely enough but they seemed to have over used the "I'm to scared, you handle this" vehicle to send you on missions.

- Because of that all the voice acting feels the same, as they are all playing the same character, just with a different skin.

- I am sure the voice actors could have done better had they had something better to work with than playing the same old song and dance each quest.

- The other quests are not voice acted, but I am reading them all, as I do my first time playing through a game.

- It is all standard fare for a game like this really, nothing earth shattering and more importantly nothing different from anything you might have already done hundreds if not thousands of times.

- Kill four of these, collected six of those, talk to this person at that place.

- If you played one MMO you have played this one, in terms of the questing it seems.

- The pace seems fast enough and I've learned from games before to pick up all the quests before you head out somewhere, this game is no different.

- Collect all the quests before you go into any cave or what not.

- Speaking of going into caves, there are these swirls between zoning (I am guessing) and they are near seamless.

- The most it takes is one second, for me, to move from one zone to the next.

- I jump every time I zone through so my character is stuck in a mid air jump for a second each time I zone.

- Call it silly, but I bet there are still people that jump going into the raids in WoW, I know I still do.

- Like there is going to be some guy on the other side to trip you or something.

- Who the hell knows why I, and many others, still do that.

- I can tell from watching other players a hell of a lot of people do exactly that, so it is not just me.

- The weapon (and gear) leveling system is different from anything I have seen before and I really like it thus far.

- However as an experienced gamer I figured out how to use it before I got the quest to teach me how to use it.

- This means I have a quest stuck in my quest book that tells me to upgrade a piece of gear.

- I wish the quest would realize I did it already and let me complete it, I will put in a bug report on this because I believe if you already figured it out you really do not need the tutorial quest on how to do it.

- You feed special items you get and/or other weapons into your weapon to level it.

- Every few levels you have to get a specific piece to upgrade it more, but up until that point you can feed anything to it really.

- It is kind of interesting.

- Different at least.

- What I believe, do not quote me on this yet as I just started, is that you will be able to transmog your weapon into the appearance of any weapon you fed to it to upgrade it.

- If it does indeed work that way I say that is pretty darn cool.

- The characters you run across are sometimes comical, as it seems they were intended to be, and you can see their thought bubbles, many of which make for a humorous side story all it own.

- Some give you a little back ground on the character or situation as well, sort of things you might know if you were reading a book, but would never know if you only had the information from the conversation to work with.

- This adds a little more depth to the characters as I see it.

- It seems like the game is trying for the "fun" approach to it and even if it does seem a tad bit childish and created for a younger crowd from time to time, I have been liking it.

- You do not seem to spend too long in any one place, which makes for a nice pace.

- I did happen to get lucky with the wheel spins in the first major town I went to.

- Some quest rewards gave me spins at a wheel and the second one I did gave me a full 8 piece set of soul shards (at least I think that is what they were called).

- It allowed me to equip all 8 giving me the stat boost from those 8 and the 3, 5 and 8 set bonus, right off the bat.

- So I feel a little on the OP side right now starting out that strong.

- But as it seems, I don't think I really am.

- Further spins got me two five piece collections and five three piece collections, meaning even if I was not lucky getting all 8 at once I think they want us to get our first 8 piece here as they gave me so many pieces.

- I got weapons from spinning for 4 different classes, but not the one I need to feed weapons so I can upgrade her weapons, sadly.

- Word to the wise however, do not those those other weapons away however, you can still feed them to your own weapon to upgrade it later and you do not even need to unlock them first.

- At this point I do not know if I will get more spins at the wheel ever again or if I will have to try to get my weapon upgrade piece from somewhere else.

- (Note, before I posted this I did some research and found that killing that one elite mob over near said wheel drops 5 of those rolls each time and you can kill it as often as you like, so I will get my upgrade that way it seems.)

- (Will leave the rest of the comments as they were because they were my first impression before I did research and this is about those impressions.)

- As it seems, I do not think they will make it so I can not upgrade my weapon so I will run across it sooner or later.

- Basically because you will use that weapon forever really as you upgrade it as you go so I doubt they will leave me with a starting level weapon.

- I looked all over the " cash shop" and I really could not see anything that I would call pay to win.

- Pay to boost, maybe.

- There are experience boosts which last a short time, buff foods which last a short time and are not huge buffs, this 5%, and other stuff of the ilk.

- There is nothing really powerful that I saw yet.

- And for experience boosts, it seems like they might be something you could consider if you are leveling a second character but surely not a first.

- I am already out leveling the quests I am doing and I am not grinding mobs or doing anything to level faster.

- Not sure if I am happy doing gray quests this soon as I out paced it, but it is what it is, and I will keep doing what I am as I want to see the whole story my first time through.

- I am just going from quest to quest and only killing the quest mobs or things that attack me otherwise.

- So leveling will not be a problem and there is absolutely no reason to speed it along, at least as I see it, on your first time through.

- I say enjoy the leveling, read the quests, get into the story and don't worry about rushing to max level.

- Speed leveling is for alts.

- Now to combat and how it feels.

- Pretty darn awesome thus far in my opinion.

- As someone that was a key binder to begin with it did not take much getting used to but I think that playing this, at least the entry parts, could really help many wow players that do not bind learn to bind.

- So I would suggest anyone that wants to learn to key bind, give it a try, it is free and it adds a little at a time to let you get used to it.

- I love that the left and right mouse do abilities.

- You have your standard builder and spender there for a summoner and the rest are cooldown based.

- Not sure if other classes are like this but so far I really like it.

- It reminds me of a cross between diablo and standard MMOs.

- I am level 10 and have about a dozen abilities so far.

- My builder and spender, some damage abilities, some defensive abilities, and some pet abilities.

- It uses a wide range of default key binds that should actually be very comfortable for many players.

- I know it was for me but some people will surely need to adjust to using things like Z, X, C and V more often.

- I greatly dislike the fixed camera angle but being I use a trackball mouse it does make moving a pleasure for me and I quickly realized I did not dislike it at much as I thought I would.

- You can hit Alt to free move your mouse, which I do often, but sometimes find myself forgetting and go to move my mouse to click on something lit up on my screen and it does not work quite as I intended.

- It is something you will need to get used to but only a minor annoyance right now for me after playing so many games that have free mouse movement.

- Looking at the future I do not see rotations in game as being overly complex.

- With builders and spenders and everything else on a cooldown it seems like your started rotation would be something like 1, build, spend, repeat 3 times, 2, build, spend, repeat 3 times, 1, and so on.

- Maybe I will be wrong but I am a long way from getting to the point of figuring out how to do max DPS, that is just the initial impression I get.

- If that is the case, I would be pleasantly surprised and this game would immediately jump up a few spots in my mind as an alternate game to play.

- I don't want any complexity, or at least not a great deal of it, for a game I might play once in a while.

- I want mindless fun, and at the moment, that is exactly what the game feels like.

- Now to my pet.

- When I first got my pet and they show the cut scene with it looking all sweet and cutesy I momentarily regretted my choice in classes.

- It seemed, at first, like this was aimed at the 10 year old female gamer.

- I am a hunter, I just wanted a class with a pet and I get this.

- But once that passed and I got out in the world and learned to use my cat I can say one thing, she is one hell of a bad ass.

- She looks all cute and sweet and innocent, but she will claw your eyes out in a second if you mess with her.

- For a game designed without the holy trinity, meaning no tanks and no healers, fluffy sure as hell can tank with the best of them.

- I think I've been hit a total of two times since I started playing and one of them was me walking into a mob.

- Fluffy is not as innocent as she looks, not even close.

- And you know why she is licking her paws all the time?

- It is not to clean herself, it is to lick all the blood off them.

- She has a thirst for blood.

- I am really liking my summoner, or as I call it, my caster hunter.

- The game has a lot of the overly sexualized stuff you expect to find in any asian import but not nearly as much as I have seen in others of the same ilk and not so much it was a turn off to playing it, they keep it pretty mild.

- I get some people like that style, I don't personally, I just want to play a game and kill stuff with my trusty side kick, and this game is giving me that so I am happy with it.

- So after initial impressions I can say with absolute 100% certainty that will be buying the membership, not sure for how long, but it seems with it from what I have seen thus far.

- Remember, I am only level 10, so my opinions can surely change as I experience more of the game like dungeons, PvP, grinding, and max level, but for now, it is fun to play and I will play again, for sure.

- Have a great day.

Monday Random Thoughts

- Not much of a WoW week even if I did do a fair deal of things.

- Another year has passed and once more I am left unloved.

- The love rocket has not found itself added to my collection of mounts I will probably never use but for some reason still compulsively try to attain.

- I would say I put in a solid 200 attempts this year.

- More than some years past but much less than others.

- Mostly because I have the fewest max level characters I've had since wrath.

- Each expansion I always got more to max, this expansion I got fewer.

- All because of garrisons.

- I like them and all, but I hate that leveling means they are waiting for me to build them up.

- So I just do not level characters any more.

- Blizzard killed my favorite thing to do in my off time.

- Leveling.

- Leveling low levels feel blah now and leveling to max seems almost like a penalty now.

- So I do not do either really any more.

- Or I do them, just at a massively reduced rate.

- But on to the things I still enjoy doing.

- Like grinding, I like grinding.

- There is one grind I was putting off until one day when I was bored.

- This weekend I was really bored, so I figured I would get my saberon claws finally.

- I was at 600 and needed to get to 5000 for the achievement.

- Took roughly 3 hours, could have taken a lot less if I rushed it.

- Quick and easy way to grind is tank pet, legendary ring, artillery strike.

- Round up a huge pack of saberon, really huge, as many as you can get on you, dismount (must be on ground mount for this to work best), spin, misdirect and barrage them all to your pet.

- Hit shell on your pet, because you are using a turtle right, they are awesome you know.

- Hit ring, hit misdirect again, hit artillery strike.

- If need be hit artillery strike a second time, but remember to misdirect first.

- Ring will pop and everything will die except maybe 1 or 2 which are easily finished off.

- I have looted over 200 claws in one pull a few times.

- Sad part is pulls like this are hard to come by as there are not enough packed tightly together and the one center area I used for each big pull seemed to have the slowest respawn.

- So I stuck to doing smaller packs of 7-10 most times.

- Still went by quickly and I got my achievement, and enough claws to purchase both mounts in the process.

- So now I have the title "of the jungle".

- I now need to make a character named George so I can be George of the Jungle.

- How could I resist.

- Was thinking dwarf warrior.

- Then considered human warrior as I can make a human look more george-ish.

- Then I thought a worgen warrior, who I could make look george-ish while in human form but in battle he would get all animal like, fitting the jungle theme.

- And of course he would have to be a fury warrior so I can be George of the Jungle the furry fury.

- It is puntastic isn't it?

- Was thinking maybe a druid too because a bear, which is what I would be, does kind of fit the "of the Jungle" title does it not?

- Either way I have 50 character so until I decide which one to delete there will be no new geroge's entering this world, dwarf, human or worgen.

- Raid night was a disaster this week.

- No one showed.

- And some of the few people that did show were, shall we say, not the top of the class.

- So I decided to pug, something I damn near never do with a guild group.

- Took over 45 minutes to fill, did one pull on Soc and we wiped at 50% and three people dropped.

- Waited another 20 minutes to fill and we pulled again.

- This time we had a hunter who had huntard in his name and lived up to it.

- He had better gear than I, much better, and did half the numbers, but that was no big deal because even at half the numbers it was still more than enough for the fight.

- His issue was he got targeted by everything and did not know how to move.

- Let the fire go right through the group instead of going to the side, which we survived because the group as a whole was smart enough to move from him.

- Then when trying to run from a ghost he put pack on and stunned the entire raid causing an eventual wipe.

- But that was only second in terms to the warrior who "knew" exactly what went wrong and was glad to tell everyone.

- Except he did not mention the mistakes by the self titled huntard dropping fire in the wrong place or the fact pack-ed the raid to death.

- Nope, it was all the tanks fault.

- Not exactly sure why that is, but the lowest DPS apparently was the "best" player in the raid and he has the fix, have the tanks switch jobs.

- He ended up leaving the raid, as a couple others, as we waited to refill.

- The other tank agreed it was a tank issue, in part, and they switched their roles.

- Next attempt after 20 or so minutes more, we wiped, this time to the tank screwing things up.

- Yes, it absolutely 100% was the tank and I am near sure he was trolling us because for someone in his gear, with the two healers he bought with him in their gear, there is no way he did not know that trapping the casters was a bad idea.

- But he trapped all the casters and they went on to, in mere seconds, decimate the entire raid in a matter of seconds.

- Well, you see something new every day, at least I do.

- I can not say I have ever seen that happen before and I have probably wiped on that boss 100 times between the original progression on it months ago and all the pugs I was in for it.

- It seems like it is always adds, sure, but not 12 casters all at once.

- So then the tank rages that the tank sucks and we wiped because of him and rage quits and the two healers that came with him follow of course.

- Ah, excuse me?

- You were the tank in the construct, you wiped us, so you are raging because you suck?

- Clearly you do see something new every day.

- I have never seen someone rage quit because they sucked.

- Either way, by that time we had some guild mates pop on, we bought in a guild tank, a guild healer, and being so many damage dealers left, we just went with a smaller group.

- We ended up having only a few pugs now, instead of the larger group I was trying with.

- This allowed me to pick and choose.

- Had a mythic geared friend as melee who I knew I could trust with interrupts, pugged another mythic geared player 749, and filled it out with a pug tank that said he was on an alt but knew the fights even if he could not do construct.

- I put my guild tank in construct and then 30 minutes after the last wipe we pulled for our 4th attempt.

- It was a nice clean kill, as it should be.

- With mostly all guild and two stellar damage dealing pugs and giving the pug tank the easy job it went down like nothing.

- In the end, it was mostly guild.

- In all honestly we would have never downed it without them as we had no melee at the time in guild, so they were absolutely required and I thank them for coming.

- As much as I hate to say it, some fights as just so much easier with melee, that is one of them.

- I think we are the only guild in the world that is not looking for ranged, we are dying for quality melee.

- I see guilds spam in chat all wanting ranged.

- I never see ranged as the problem, I always have tons of them around.

- Then again, I seem to be a hunter magnet, they all come to me to ask questions and stay.

- So we always end up with a lot of hunters or ranged in general as if they switch from a hunter they usually switch to another ranged class.

- But the moral of this story, I hate pugs and that is why.

- No, not the wipes, I can deal with the wipes.

- It is waiting 45 minutes to start a group, it is losing people after each wipe and having to wait again to get more.

- Despise it.

- Even on the worst night we should have gotten two or three bosses down.

- But we only got one and called it a night.

- It felt like a complete waste of 2 hours of my life.

- Pugging is just not for me.

- Not unless the quality of people and players of the game greatly increases.

- We need the people to not leave after every wipe.

- And we need players who can play their class.

- Not much to ask is it?

- I guess it is a lot to ask, oh well, I will continue to shy away from pugs I guess.

- But the silver lining, at least for me, was I got to be on my hunter.

- Did not win anything, but I still would rather be on my hunter.

- I think I bring more to the group on my hunter, game play wise.

- I also think I bring more to the group as a raid leader being on my hunter.

- I see more and can call for more from ranged than from tanking.

- Some tanks are awesome at raid leading, I am not one of them.

- Not that I am awesome from ranged either, but I am better than crap when at ranged.

- After my grinding I decided I needed something new for a bit.

- Downloaded blade and soul.

- Was going to list a lot of stuff here about it but this is already getting kind of long so I will save it for a post of its own.

- Bottom line is thus far I am not feeling as if blade and soul is pay to win, which is nice.

- And I am enjoying the crap out of it.

- In the end, isn't that the most important thing?

- And as you could guess if you know anything about the game, I rolled a summoner.

- Pet class all the way.

- Tomorrow I will do a Blade and Soul random thoughts to give some of my opinions about my first few hours of game play.

- Have a great day.

Epic Pets? Thanks but No Thanks Blizzard.

There was a recent announcement that they would, or could, be adding epic pets next expansion.  Currently the highest we can make out pets is rare.  There will be new epic pets in the world, presumably the new continent, and new stones you can buy that can make older pets epic.

I will admit I have not been into pet battles like I used to be.  At one point I was top 100 in the world in terms of pets, in terms of pets of quality, and in terms of pets leveled.  I was also one of the first (to my knowledge following achievement sites) to get the 5000 pet battle achievements. 

But the sad part, and mostly why I stopped being into it so much, was when my computer died some time back and I lost everything which meant I also lost the data saved for my addons.  This meant I lost all the teams I had made.  And I had one made for each and every single battle to make going from tamer to tamer so much easier. 

So when I got my new computer I had no teams saved because blizzard in their infinite wisdom by default only allows for one team at a time.  I honestly do not know how anyone lives without an addon to have as many teams as they want I understand even less why blizzard has not added that as a standard feature yet.  I wish they would add an unlimited team options instead of epic pets, if you ask me at least.

Because of that I have not been into pet battling that much this expansion.  I do have all the new pets, I do have nearly all the pets I own not only rare but leveled, and while I have not taken advantage of getting tons of charms to sock up on stones I have managed to get a nice little pile of them and all the toys, of course.

So I have earned my pet battle stripes, even if they are a little old and not really put to use much any more.  So with that all said I believe that my opinion should hold some weight on the matter.  It is not like I was never "into" pet battling.  It is not like I have "so much" work to do to catch up as everything is already maxed.  It is not like I have no intention to ever pet battle again, I do, and I believe some day I might get back into it as much as I was before.

With all that said...

I DO NOT want to see epic pets added to the game.

It is only my personal opinion, but it is the opinion of someone that likes the mini game of pet battling.  Who has hunted down rare pets.  Who has leveled well over 1000 of them to 25 for myself and for friends.

One of the reasons I like pet battling is because it has an end.  I like knowing that I did everything I wanted to.  I have everything there is to collect.  I like that there is a set ending line.  It makes for the perfect mini game.  A mini game, as I consider pet battling, should not have "progression" like raiding does.  It should not have us level up every expansion or increase gear with every patch.  That is why I have liked it so much.  Pet battling is what pet battling is.  Nothing more.

Having us have to boost our pets to get them to max once again, by adding an epic version, just makes more work for something I was done with.  If my Lurky is rare and 25 than guess what, my Lurky is done and so are the other 999 pets he hangs out with on a daily basis in whatever mansion sized pet house they all exist in that I have never seen and am pretty damn happy I do not have to clean up with all those pets living there.

I do not like having to level all my characters each expansion, but I do it.  There are only so many of them.  But there are hundreds, even a thousand (or more for some) pets out there.  I do not want to have to gather enough stones to make 1000 pets I worked to make rare into epic now, basically doing the same work I already did a second time.  Hell no blizzard, I did all that work already, I do not want to do it again.  And if they lose levels when you increase their rarity when they are over a certain level, which they most likely will do, that means I need to also level those hundreds and possibly thousand pets again.  Hell no blizzard.  I was done, they were 25, leave it be.  This is a mini game, this is not the next expansion for them.  This is not a regearing up process for them.  Pets are what they are, let them be.

So I will repeat, I DO NOT want to see epic pets added to the game.  Hell no.

I know I am in the minority here, but I just do not want to have to level all my pets again and I do not want to have to increase the rarity of a thousand pets.  It just seems like way to much work for a mini game.  Thanks but not thanks blizzard.  I'll pass.

Monday Random Thoughts

- Anyone have any love rocket love?

- Not me.

- I admit after the first few days of running all my characters through it I've been slacking.

- Doing all my tanks and healers but rarely all my DPS characters.

- So I would say I am averaging 7 a day.

- I did get the heartbreaker toy finally yesterday.

- So one more for the toy box but my mount collection is not feeling the love rocket love.

- Joined a nice pug this weekend.

- We wiped a few times here and there and I had to drop because I had a previous engagement before we downed a boss I really needed, which sucks, but I added the leader to my battle tag so maybe I will run with them again.

- This is why I like "guild groups" in the group finder.

- They usually need just a few people and wipes are not a killer.

- Also it is a lot easier to fill the holes if you are only grabbing a few people than grabbing a full pug.

- Never took long to replace the one or two that left after a wipe.

- They were not more progressed than my guild, end heroic, but that works for me.

- At least now when I am stuck tanking I can join them if they need a DPS, or skip it if they don't.

- I think they liked me even if I did not get on their voice chat.

- I would have to download a different voice chat client as I do not have the one they use.

- I am however proud to announce I got my first weapon drop since the opening weeks of the expansion when I got the normal weapon off brackenspore the first week highmaul opened.

- That was the last weapon I saw all expansion.

- Thank god for crafted weapons or I would have surely quit.

- Or been using a baleful one I guess.

- They need to ditch RNG in loot.

- I speak only for myself, but killing the same boss over and over hoping for loot is NOT fun.

- Never has been, never will be.

- But, for example, killing the boss to unlock the loot table and collecting a currency to buy what you unlocked would be freaking awesome.

- Then you would earn your gear.

- In two ways.

- One by beating the boss, thus unlocking the ability to buy stuff that drops from it.

- Two by earning enough currency, whatever that currency might be, to buy stuff you have unlocked.

- Leaps and bounds better than the luck system.

- Now mind you the weapon was not the one I wanted off manny, but it was the one of soc which was still an upgrade.

- Got the chest piece off heroic manny this week, which was nice.

- But needed to take off a 736 chest piece to put it on.

- However, that allowed me to put on 725 shoulders instead of my 711 normal tier ones and enjoy the crit that those 725 shoulders had.

- So going down from 736 to 720 and up from 711 to 725 might seem like a minor loss in stats.

- But if I told you my critical strike, which is my best stat for me, went up over 4% would you now consider it worth it.

- I really wanted the heroic archie gloves for my off spot as they have a ton of crit on them but alas no pugs that could kill him for me this week.

- I have normal tier on those so the heroic archie ones would be a major upgrade in both agility and giving my my best stats at the same time.

- The only heroic tier I have a chest, head and legs.

- So I mix and match whatever works best most of the time.

- I have a bag nearly filled with "off pieces" and possible upgrades.

- And upgrades that are item level only, so I don't wear them.

- And trinkets, I have so many trinkets I play around with on a fight to fight basis.

- Outside of my heroic warfored blademaster I really do not have one perfect second trinket.

- But in reality, I do not think there is one perfect one.

- Some work better on some bosses, some work better when doing normal, some work better for dungeons, some work better on demons, you get the idea.

- I switch my second trinket like I switch my talents, on a fight by fight basis it seems.

- I wonder, is this good design or just a waste of 8 bag spaces carrying all these trinkets.

- Or maybe it is just me because I have a horrible time making up my mind.

- Went back for a fun run of some old content this week with guild.

- We finally did the last three bosses we never got to on heroic (now mythic) in siege.

- We brought a bunch of new people who had never done it.

- Made it more fun.

- One of the new people, even after being warned got smashed by garrosh in the transition phase.

- Saw that coming a mile away.

- He is one of those "horrible at mechanics" guys that signs up for every raid and I have to try to be gentle in declining him.

- I don't not want to hurt his feelings, he signs up and he shows up.

- Now we just need to get him to be better.

- But I had it to about "here" with him.

- No no, not for that, we did not need him to kill last expansion content.

- But in the real raid I seem to keep having to call him out.

- And I try not to do that.

- I whisper, I make blanket statements explaining an ability to the whole raid so they can listen, and they still mess it up.

- So I finally got to the point I just called him out "if you keep messing up these mechanics you are going to stop getting invites".

- I don't think I was being mean.

- I have whispered him a lot.

- I have overly explained part of the fight I knew he had issues with before the pull, even if we have been killing these fights for months.

- I have given him weeks worth of attempts to get better.

- Doing normal and heroic with him each week.

- And he still messes things up.

- Flex or not, some people are just not mean to be raiders.

- And sure we can carry him through all of normal and even most of heroic without it hurting us but that is not the issue.

- The issue is if he is going to keep playing that poorly he has no right even being in a raid.

- Sorry, you do not need to be "good" to be a raider, but you need to at least listen to simple instruction.

- I say things like "this is not a DPS race, even if you have to stop your DPS, just do the mechanics right" and he still messes up.

- I am not asking for top players.

- But I am asking to at least run out of the group when you have doomfire on you.

- Hell, even if you run the wrong way at least you would be running with it.

- But no, he stands in the group and do not move and gets eaten alive by the doomfire.

- After six weeks of killing archie on normal with us (hell no I would not bring him to heroic) he still does not get it.

- Sure we still kill it without him but it is a matter of principle.

- So I told him, next time doomfire hits him because he stands still I will remove him from group mid fight.

- No excuses.

- Am I being too harsh?

- I don't think so.

- I believe that some people are just not raiders.

- It really is that simple.

- Enough ranting, more good vibes.

- May the light of elune bless you and the love rocket join your ranks.

- Have a great day.