Monday Random Thoughts

- Still really not playing lately.

- I log in for raid and that is about it.

- But this week I also logged in to do my four mythic dungeons.

- Can't say no to a heroic cache can I?

- Of course it worked out to be wasted time, like always.

- I got a 710 pair of hands.

- No thank you, I will keep my tier.

- But I'll hold on to them in case I end up needing them as an off piece at some point.

- I have 14 slots in my bags currently filled with pieces I am holding on to because I "might" need them at some point.

- Hoard much?

- I think getting those gloves really sends home one of the main points about what I dislike about this expansion.

- The reward does not equal the effort.

- I did the four dungeons in hopes to get something good and as I have only downed 6 heroic bosses thus far and have no heroic pieces yet it seemed I should almost definitely get an upgrade and I didn't.

- Well, that is on my main, my druid has heroic pieces, lucky furball that it is.

- So often we do things and get nothing for it and that gets frustrating.

- I don't know about you, but that is a colossal turnoff for me.

- It is like me only managing getting my four piece from last tier just the other week.

- Sure I had the normal previously, but the heroic is what matters to me.

- I am a normal mode raider, normal is now heroic.

- So the only gear that matters to me is heroic gear.

- I was killing at least 2 tier bosses from nearly the start of BRF and never saw a heroic piece, not even one, when it was current.

- Where is the reward for the effort?

- This is one of the biggest problems with warlords if you ask me.

- There is no real reason to play it because there is no reward for the effort put into it.

- They ask you to put effort into the game and they do not have a satisfactory reward system in place for anything you do.

- This random crap needs to go.

- It is not rewarding unless you are lucky.

- And even if you are lucky, it loses its luster really fast.

- Lets say you are lucky, you get your four piece in the first week or two, then what?

- You could go for ones that are warforged or with a gem slot, sure, but you got what you wanted, the basic pieces at least, so where is the motivation to keep going.

- This is why valor needs to come back.

- Make people work for their gear and not luck into it.

- If it takes 2 and a half weeks to save up valor for 1 piece then lucky or not lucky, every 2 and a half weeks, if you put in the effort, you get a piece.

- Now that is how you design a good effort equals reward system.

- The lucky people are not done gearing nearly instantly, so it keeps them playing.

- The unlucky people know that as long as they put in the effort they will get something so it gives incentive to play.

- Sounds win / win to me.

- It keeps people playing longer, and happier, as there is a reward at the end.

- Too bad blizzard is hung up on their poor reward systems as their idea of good game play.

- Chalk this up to one of the many reasons warlords is bleeding subs.

- But back to those mythics.

- I did one with guild so needless to say, no problem.

- I pugged the other three early sunday morning.

- Had a solid group with a beastly tank.

- A great tank in a mythic makes the run so much smoother.

- We had some deaths, but no big deal really.

- I don't drop group because of a few death or even a few wipes.

- Shit happens, no biggie.

- In the first dungeon 3 of the 4 fights we did it was only me, the tank and one other DPS left standing when the boss died.

- One boss it was like that from the halfway point.

- I hate being a hunter at those moments.

- Hybrids have all the luck, they can heal themselves.

- Me, I have one tiny healing pot to use and I use it and am now at the whim of what happens after that is done.

- I really think they should change pots, at least the healing pots, to a 30 second cooldown even in battle.

- And remove all hybrid healing.

- Let everyone live and die based on if they have a healing pot or not if that happens.

- Then you would know who came prepared or not.

- I never leave my garrison without healing pots.

- Just like I used to never go out without bandages.

- I miss bandages.

- Because they could be used multiple times in a fight.

- Do you know how many PvP battles were won on the strength of some smart bandaging?

- A hell of a lot.

- Sure they had the downside of being able of being interrupted, but if you were not interrupted you could heal nicely and get another shot to heal a minute later.

- Either way, back to the dungeons.

- Had another hunter in the group with me and I was quadrupling his damage.

- His item level was not far off from mine, maybe 5 or 6 item levels less.

- But he made, what I am guessing, were two huge mistakes.

- One was gearing.

- He had, what looked like, the highest item level gear he could find on.

- This meant no tier set from last tier.

- I did not mention the gearing issue to him.

- It would have been too long of a conversation to have while fighting and I did not know if he actively raided last tier to even have the 670 tier pieces.

- But bottom line is you would be better to have the 670 tier set than have a mix and match of 685 and 700 pieces in those tier slots.

- I did mention spec.

- That was his second mistake.

- He was survival.

- Told him MM was best, BM was pretty damn good too.

- So anything but survival would good.

- He had MM as his offspec it seemed.

- I stayed with the group for the second mythic run.

- He doubled his DPS in MM, and he was not even doing MM right.

- Yes, that shows how horrible survival is.

- Even doing MM wrong doubles your DPS.

- After looking at the boss numbers I saw he had 5 aimed shots during that fight.

- I told him the basic idea.

- Albeit, this is not the perfect way to explain it to someone, but good enough for a quick explanation.

- If you are at least 50% focus and chim is more than 1 second from coming off cooldown, hit aimed shot.

- Simple rule, won't get you top DPS, but will give the basic idea that you need to hit aimed and hit it a lot if you want to do well as MM.

- I would get more into it with him if I had time, but that line would have to do for some quick mid dungeon explaining.

- He did much better after that.

- He went from only hitting it when it proced to hitting it all the time and his numbers shot up.

- I must say, I love helping people.

- I'm glad he did not think I was a dick for giving him tips.

- Many times in random groups if you give people tips or try to help them they think you are an elitist jerk.

- I was just trying to help him be better.

- Nothing wrong with that in my mind.

- Hey, that is how I learned.

- A hunter took me under his wing and showed me the ways, so to speak.

- Also reading a hell of a lot in places like the warcraft hunters union and the like helped a bunch.

- He added me to real id, said he wanted to know if he could ask me more questions later.

- I said I would be glad to help.

- You know what?

- Something like that, a simple interaction with someone in game, actually made me want to start logging back in more.

- I did not of course.

- After I was done with my third mythic, which was all I needed to complete the quest, I logged off.

- But interactions like that, decent groups, even if we did die a few times, like the ones I had, showed me how much fun the game could be again.

- Too bad so much bad has gone around that tainted me.

- I left group, opened my box, saw I got nothing of use, and logged off.

- BTW, I thought we got an extra roll coin from doing this as well.

- I know they lowered it from 5 to 4 mythic dungeons, but there was no coin either.

- I could swear there was a coin last time I did it.

- Oh well, what the hell does it matter, it is not like I win anything with the freaking coin anyway.

- Bought my shaman into a normal the other day to heal.

- Did 7 bosses, rolled 7 coins, got nothing.

- At a 672 item level anything that dropped would have been an upgrade.

- You would have thought that with 7 rolls I would have won at least 1 or 2 things.

- No such luck.

- I did win loot however, for my offspec.

- I am switching from elemental back to my original main spec of enhancement.

- So I got an agility back and an agility neck on raid rolls as no one else needed them.

- So no one rolled against me and that means I won, even with a 20 and a 7.

- Woot.

- Now I need a ring, some trinkets and some weapons and I will be ready to roll.

- I healed like crap really.

- During the boss fights the other healers were stealing everything.

- A very well geared and skilled disc priest meant that there was little if nothing for me to heal.

- I think I healed for between 18K-22K each fight.

- Those are highmaul numbers.

- But I don't think I did that bad, I was just healing a normal with a 710 disc healer.

- That meant there was never anything for me to heal on boss fights.

- On trash I ruled.

- I destroyed the disc priest.

- Have to love shaman burst healing.

- That was my first time healing HFC.

- It was a little fun.

- Still hate the warlords healing model however and would not want to heal it on a regular basis, that is for sure.

- Part of the reason I have not healed this expansion is I don't enjoy doing it, and I used to.

- All that is left that I like is my hunter.

- And it looks like next expansion they are taking that away too.

- I won't be able to have a pet as MM.

- Boo hiss hiss boo.

- I know they want to have it as the petless raid spec, but when I am out questing I want my pet damn it.

- And I will be forced to play melee as survival.

- And do not let anyone tell you for even a second that you will not be forced into melee.

- You know survival will be the #1 spec for hunters.

- They need to make it so, that way they can be justified in making the change.

- If survival does crap DPS than changing it becomes useless, it would still be the spec no one plays, even if they wanted to play melee, because it would be crap DPS.

- That means it will have to do great DPS and blizzard has a "great" track record with doing things like that.

- Which means survival, at least for the first tier, will be way the hell over powered.

- So all you ranged hunters, enjoy melee.

- I suggest rolling a melee class now to start getting used to it.

- Because if you want to be the best that you can be as a hunter, you will need to be survival.

- I hate melee, it is why I love being a hunter, so I do not have to be in melee.

- But blizzard is taking that away from me as well now.

- And I absolutely HATE blizzard for doing that.

- Remember the blizzard motto.

- If players like it, you have to either nerf it or remove it.

- I still do not understand why they do that.

- But knowing I will be melee soon I rolled on a two hander agility weapon that no one needed in the raid last week.

- Hey, I'll need it soon enough and it was better than sharding it.

- Everyone has enough crystals to build the fortress of solitude stashed up already so who really needs one more.

- So more clutter to take up bag space in terms of another piece of gear I "might" use.

- I was thinking I want a survival ability where they leap into the air and slam down on the person.

- Hey, they are using a spear, wouldn't that look freaking cool?

- It should add a root when you land on them, 3 seconds sounds good right?

- I know they are doing a scorpion type move with them already.

- Heard that somewhere, not sure where.

- I want the leap attack as a gap closer, that would rock.

- Not a targeted on the ground effect like heroic leap, but a leap on to the person effect, so if they move, you move with them as you are targeting them, not the ground.

- I could see doing SV solo, would want to test it out.

- I just do not want to raid in melee.

- I hate melee.

- Honestly, anyone in melee that is not the tank must have taken too many blows to the head.

- That big bad baddie is there, wouldn't the smart person want to be as far away from him as possible?

- Well, no one ever said melee were smart.

- Tanks make sense.

- They are danger seekers, they push themselves to the limit, they like the challenge of face to face (or face to foot for some bosses) combat to the death.

- But melee, why the hell would they be there.

- They are damage dealers, they are chicken shits that let someone else take the beating while they attack from behind.

- So it makes no sense for them to be that close.

- Speaking of large mobs.

- You know when you are on a rogue and you pickpocket a mob that has nothing it would say "this mob has no pockets to pick"?

- I would love for it to say "you can not reach this mobs pockets" for the large mobs and bosses instead of the no pockets to pick line.

- A little humor goes a long way.

- For me anyway.

- Can you just imagine a rogue jumping up and down in stealth trying to reach a large mobs pockets so he can pick them?

- Even better, a gnome rogue?

- I will leave you with that image in mind.

- Have a great day.