The Dog Days of Cataclysm

The expansion has reached the point where we are waiting for what comes next.  Most people have completed what they wanted to complete and now it comes down to running the same stuff we have been running for months already over and over to get that one piece that still won't drop for you (actually three for me) or playing around with alts and/or achievement hunting.

Really what it comes down to is this is the point of the expansion where you just want to have fun.  It is no longer about the rat race to finish content before the next patch.  It is no longer about getting as much gear as possible because we all know our gear will get replaced by quest greens soon enough.  Now it is more like if you get it you get it and if you don't, who cares.

This is the time of the expansion where people usually leave the game in droves which is not good news for an expansion that drove them away when it started, which is the time it is usually supposed to gain subscribers.  While the quarterly reports are due out today and I expect to see a rise in subscriptions from the scroll program and people popping back into the game to see the last raid, it is still the dog days.

These are the days that we just try to make it through.  The days where we look for things to do.  The days where we play with new specs or new classes or new aspects of the game we normally don't.

For me, on my main at least, there is not really a great deal for me to do.  I do some solo mount farming once in a while.  I like to try and solo some more challenging content as well from time to time.  Over all there is not much for me to do as I have nearly all the achievements you can get solo already.

So it is time to play with some other characters some.  Change my warrior from a tank/tank spec to a tank/arms spec.  Change my priest from a disc/disc spec to a disc/shadow spec.  Change my druid from a bear/tree spec to a bear/kitty spec.  You know things like that.

These are the dog days, the hard times, the heat is hitting us full force and the last thing we want to do is doing anything that isn't fun.  This is where the expansions start to lose people.

Why does the expansion start to lose people now?

There are a few good reasons for it really.

1) If you have done everything you can save some money by not being subscribed.
2) Knowing there is no new content coming until the expansion makes people lose interest.
3) The desire to earn gear that will be replaced by quest greens turns off many people.
4) There are other new games out there to test out during the lull in the game.
5) The game is still not fun friendly for most, so trying new things is not appealing to many players.

The heat is on now and it is getting hot in azeroth.  So much so it is scaring people out of the sun.  This is not a cataclysm thing, it is an expansion thing.  Four of the five things I mentioned blizzard can do nothing about.  One they can and I would like to see it fixed, even if it really is not broken to begin with.

The perfect example of the dog days and why I think they might get to me for the first time comes from a random heroic I ran while trying to learn to play a warlock better.  Yes, learning my warlock better is one of the ways I am dealing with the dog days of having nothing else to do.  So I figured I would just have some fun.

Long Version of the Dungeon - Skip ahead for the short version if you do not want to read it all.

I finally reached the item level to get into HoTs with my warlock so I queued up for one while doing my cooking and fishing dailies, two other things I am doing just to pass the time during the dog days.

My lock is still not enchanted, still has at least 6 pieces 333 or lower and only the few 378 items he is wearing are even gemmed.  At this stage I do not bother gemming and enchanting anything lower than 378.

The way I look at it is this, 378 is easy as sin to get, it is the lowest of the starter gear as I see it.  So that is where you "start" now.  Just like when the expansion came out, you started at 346 items.  That is the first time gear began to matter.  Now, gear only matters if it is 378 or better.

Either way, back to the dungeon.

We enter the first of the HoTs, End of Time.  I say hello, as I normally do, you could hear a pin drop.  We port to Baine, the tank runs right into the dragons after everyone else had ran to the platforms and start attacking.  The healer sees that and runs up to try and save him, I figure if the tank is tanking and the healer is healing, we can just down them, no big deal right?  Apparently so.

Tank died, healer died, I died, the other two DPS, that did nothing, somehow managed to get on the aggro list and died as well.

Tank leaves. One DPS leaves.  No words said yet.

We get new people, I say hello, I once again hear the crickets.

Second verse, same as the first.  Tank runs into the dragons, this time the healer and all DPS start fighting the dragons but the DK tank apparently does not understand that DK tanking is all about cooldown usage and that not every healer is an over geared healer that can handle it so he dies, the healer dies, the three DPS die.

At this point I was thinking to myself, okay, maybe the dragons are not a push over like I thought they were.

One DPS leaves this time, one replaces the lost one, I say hello, I hear crickets.

We get to the boss, finally, after the tank decides to fight them again, the healer decides to heal him again and one DPS decides to do damage to them again.  The other damage dealer and myself decided we wanted no part of it so we moved on to the platforms and waited for them to die and mass resurrected them.

The tank didn't want to accept.  He waited and waited and waited, one DPS dropped group, we got a new DPS and I said hello to crickets again and the tank finally accepts the rez that has been going out for about 6 minutes now.

Tank asks if everyone is ready, everyone says they are, tank pulls, we wipe.

No one threw the totem back at him and sadly being I was alone on my platform and none where thrown at me I had nothing to throw back.  The DPS was subpar as well.  I mean I knew mine would be subpar because I do not know how to play a warlock, I do not have any decent gear and I do not have it gemmed and enchanted.  But when I am the number 2 DPS behind the tank you know there are going to be issues.

You should be able to do at least 12K in HoTs as I see it.  It can be done with 8K each, if the people know what they are doing but that does not change the fact that if you have a 353 item level you should be able to do 12K, even if you do not know how to play a class well, have no enchants, no gems and the 15% buff.  I am glad to say I barely make my own cut off point, I can do 13K at the moment under those conditions.  The sad part is, compared to everyone else there, I was a god.  This is sad, this is very sad.

Apparently the tank noticed that little fact.  I could almost hear him thinking through the computer screen.  "Not one person threw a totem back and that shitty lock is the only one that is even doing DPS capable of a wrath heroic nevertheless a cataclysm one."

He left group of course.  Then one DPS leaves and another follows.  When we get new people, I say hello again, to no one apparently and start thinking is my party chat broken, not one word from anyone even if I have went through this many people already.

Tank pulls, totem get thrown at me, I throw it back, I spend half my time running from platform to platform while the tank is tanking the mob in the lava and finally I see something in party chat, the tank complaining he did not get heals after he died.

We wiped of course and I am on the healers side here even if the healer never said anything, nor anyone else outside of that one outburst from the tank.  I was thinking if you tank him in the lava with the subpar DPS we had there is no healer, not even a heroic raid geared one, that will be able to keep you up.

At least I notice that party chat is not broken.  One DPS leaves, we get another one.

Tank pulls, we wipe again.  Not enough DPS and we run out of places to go.  One DPS never did anything.  They start a kick and get rid of the AFK DPS.

Tank pulls, we barely survive this time but we finally down it.

I say, port out and back in so you do not have to run through the dragons again.  Three people do not listen.  maybe it is their party chat that is broken and not mine.  They die.

We finally assemble for the moonwell run, after another DPS drops and is replaced, and it seems one DPS decides to attack one mob while waiting for the tank, who seems AFK, even if he didn't say anything.  Suddenly we are covered in mobs doing all we can to survive.  The tank comes back and decides to tank them right there at the entrance and not bring them to the moonwell.

You can tell where this is going right?  We wipe.

Everyone leaves, I think of getting four new people when I finally get that completely defeated feeling and give up.  I do not want to finish it.  At the moment I do not think I ever want to do a dungeon again.  By the end of the run I was feeling as if I never even want to play this game again.

Short Version of the Dungeon - For those that just want the facts.

After a horrible wipe fest on what is really simple content, not even getting crap down and rolling through at least a dozen different players I am left feeling like I never want to play this game again.

Back to the dog days.

By the time we get to that point where there is nothing to do but things just for fun we no longer can deal with those bad dungeons any more.  Not like wiping was fun before, but they go way beyond frustrating now.

There is something about cataclysm that makes these dog days worse than any dog days before a new expansion ever. But really the only thing we have that can be compared was the end of wrath.  Random finder was not around any other pre expansion time.

At least at the end of wrath you could pop on a rarely played alt, get in a dungeon and be done with it.  Something just for fun.  Something just to pass the time.  Something that kept you playing during the dog days.

Unless luck is on your side, you can not do that in cataclysm.  This was a Tuesday, the day the best players usually random, and I could not get even one person that seemed to have a clue what they where doing in their role, I could not get even one person that seemed to have a clue about the dungeon we where in.

If this is the day that the best players play and this is the group I get, I do not see many people surviving the dog days.  There is no reason to stay playing, to stay subscribed, unless there is something worth doing, even if just for fun.

The dog days of cataclysm are going to bring the game to a whole new low in subscribers for this expansion, it is going to show that a game can't make it past its best used by date, it is going to show that the hell the start of cataclysm rained down on the subscriber numbers will hit a second time, for the same reason, the dungeons.

Also, I should note, even if you run into the truly good players, if you use gear as a measuring stick, they even make the dogs days horrible.

Had a run with a rogue, with the legendary daggers and every piece of heroic gear with his savior title proudly displayed, do absolutely nothing on trash for an entire run.  Trash was beneath him, he only attacked bosses because he was better than us.

Sorry, that guy with his attitude would not even get into the third team DS run that we bring fresh 85s on just for fun and laughs and never get more than a few bosses down with.  He would not even be good enough for that with his attitude.

Even the good players make the dog days horrible this expansion.  I don't see things going too well for the game as a whole if mists does not come out soon.

The community is ready to implode and destroy itself.

We all have a front row seat to watch it while Blizzard allows the dog days of cataclysm rip the game apart.  At least, the ones of us that don't unsubscribe do.

How to Fix Bad Players: Part II - Leveling Content

This is a second in a series of posts aimed at fixing bad players and determining what makes bad players bad.

How to Fix Bad Players: Part I - Leveling
How to Fix Bad Players: Part II - Leveling Content

The concept of content dictating what people learn was touched on last post about leveling.  Longer leveling meant you needed to use each ability for a longer amount of time which in turn means you get used to using it and get used to what each ability does making it more a reflex, which is what we call skill.

You can argue many points because they are mostly based on opinions with some facts sprinkled in here and there but you can never argue that repetition helps people learn.  That is a known fact of life and that is where the faster leveling mentioned in the last post abandoned the aspect of teaching people.  However, this is about content and not the speed of leveling as last post was.

So lets touch on the leveling content that has abandoned teaching in favor of just letting people get to max level as fast as possible.

Before I start I want to remind people that they need to think about when they where new.  Sure, we all know how to play now but when we did not know how to play our leveling did teach us things.  Sure, nothing is ever really hard in game but when you had no idea what you where doing it was challenging and we learned how to play our classes because of that challenge.

Each and every person that plays the game probably has learned a hell of a lot from questing and they do not even realize it.

Before leveling was changed to be as quick and easy as it has become there were inherent difficulties with it.  The mob packs were tighter grouped.  The mob packs were in bigger groups.  There were more roaming mobs that would come and join the fight.  Mobs would last longer meaning runners could become a huge issue, even more so if they happened to run into a pack of four or five more mobs.

With the decrease of mobs in the world it has become increasingly easier for new players that do not know any better to pull one mob at a time.  That is something the people that leveled before the old world was changed did not have the pleasure of.  It was rare you could get one mob at a time in dense areas, now it is commonplace.

When going into a questing area, to hunt murlocs for example, it was well known to anyone that has been there in the past that you where going to die.  Many times.  Those buggers traveled in packs, large packs, they moved fast and they bought friends when they moved and there were always murlocs circling your hunting grounds.

If there were ever a case of mobs teaching you how to pull at a low level, murlocs were it.  There is not one of us, at least on alliance side, that can say we have not ended up getting our asses handed to us by murlocs at least once.

While it is true that is it still possible to get two or three murlocs in a pull, the packs have been thinned out greatly.  So much so that it is to the point where someone new, someone that does not know better, could very possibly go to kill their 10 murlocs and never once pull more then one, even if they didn't know their history and even if they didn't actively try to only get one at a time.  Getting one at a time in some areas back before the world was changed was a skill, a real skill.  Murlcos do not come one at a time.

The thinning of the packs have made it that new players do not die as easily when questing which means they do not learn from their deaths.  There is something to be said about having the murlocs rip you limb from limb and that is the next time you went there you paid close attention to their pathing.  

You paid close attention to when you pulled so you could get the least amount possible.  You paid close attention to which one was getting low on life and into that life total running range so you could kill it before it took off to grab some friends. You paid close attention to anything and everything whenever you went into an area with murlocs or you where dead.

Those bunched up packs, like it or not, taught people pulling procedures, taught people to wait for the right moment to pull, taught people an attack priority, taught people to use abilities that are best classified as utility abilities such as slows or crowd control or any other trick you could pull out of your sleeve, taught you positioning to get them as far away from others so they might not run quickly into more mobs.  It taught you a lot.

Now add another part to the then and now equation.  Life total and damage dealing.  The mobs had more life than they do now and you dealt less damage.

When you had gotten three murlocs, by accident or on purpose because you did not know better yet, you would die.  It was just the way things were.  Maybe on some rare occasions you might make it out alive but that had a lot of luck to it if you did.

There was no way in hell you could kill all three before they started to rip the flesh from your bones most of the time.  They did not go down in one shot or two.  Heck, they did not go down in three or four even.  Maybe if you had some good gear you might be able to down them in six shots or five if you happened to land a crit or two.

Usually, back then, a mispull like that would spell death with a capital D.  It is a pull we all had happen.  It is part of the reason we needed to pay attention to what we pulled and how many of them we pulled and where we pulled too and when we pulled them.

Now lets look at today's version of the same pulls in the same area.  The mobs are not as tightly packed which means the odds of trying to pull one murloc and ending up with 42 (slight exaggeration of course) of them is really rare. 

Worse case scenario would be three at most and while three can still surprise you and kill you, most classes can handle it without much of a hassle.  It wouldn't force them to have to rethink their plan of attack to try to learn from it.  They would still run straight back in because something like that is amazingly rare.

Once you reach level 10, every class gets a powerful ability now.  Every class gets something that will most likely one shot one of them which means that three on one, worst case scenario, never happens after level 10.  Worst case becomes two on one.  If you happened to be one of the class and spec combos, like a protection paladin, that gets something that hits multiple targets you could very well kill all three with one shot. 

Yes, I've done it with my shield with only quest greys and whites at level 10, no heirlooms.  Three murlocs dead with one shield.  Sounds like a huge difference from grabbing three back in old days doesn't it?  Three in the old old world meant a very big chance you will die.  Now three means one key press and three mobs to loot.  That is not exactly going to teach anyone anything.

The old way a runner would become the top priority, and it taught you that because you knew what would happen if you did not stop it, but now a runner means you get more mobs and you want them.  You look at it as, thank you, now I do not need to move, and switch to target another murloc closer so you while the runner goes and gets you more loot, er, mobs.  Big difference from seeing one runner getting away and the only thing that went through your head was "oh shit, I'm dead".

The compact mobs, the tied together mobs, the crowd control pulling, the mobs that walked paths, the runners that could not be killed only by the DoT left of them when they took off, all those things made a difference in the difficulty of leveling.  All those things taught people while they were leveling.

While I did argue that leveling is faster now and it is true and I did argue that leveling faster helped make bad players it doesn't mean that those faster leveling quests and more experience giving mobs had to also be so watered down.  So not only is the speed of leveling an issue with the game developing bad players, the quests themselves and what is required of the players is developing bad players.  It just compounds the error that faster leveling has made further.

How about the elite mobs that were part of quests.  Some were group quests.  Some were just slightly harder end of the quest line quest mobs.  They taught people to get others to work with.  They taught people how to work as a team and make a plan of attack.  They taught people roles and how to work them in a group to best benefit everyone in the group.

Even the mobs that you could solo required you to clear an area to attack it beforehand or you would be in a special type of hell as soon as you had 15 mobs on you.  Even the classes that mastered soloing mobs like that, hunters come to mind being one myself, you still needed to plan your attack so you could solo something like that.  It was not like that big baddie end guy would be going down in three or four shots like it does now, the fight was going to take a little bit of time and you needed to make sure you had that area clear for however long it was going to take.

All of that taught you something, but those quests are gone now.  No more elites to run into, no more need to make groups, no more massive amounts of mobs that will come after you if you went straight to the big baddie.  No need to worry about respawn timers because it is not like the fight is going to take more then a few seconds.  No more epic battles that would require you to know every ability you have and be able to use them.

I know some people will say I am wrong and they are entitled to their opinion as much as I am.  All I know is that leveling used to teach you because as post one stated, it took time so you learned your main abilities by repetitive motions and as post two here says, it taught you the other basics like lesser used abilities and how to pull.

I first learned about pathing mobs from questing.  I first learned about pulling too many from questing.  I first learned about runners from questing.  I first learned about creating kill orders from questing.  I first learned how to best set a path to get to where I wanted to go from questing.  I first learned how to use my extra abilities like slows from questing.  I first learned the power of crowd control from questing.  I first learned how to kite from questing.  I first learned how to manage threat from questing (because I was a hunter, this does not fit for other classes solo). I first learned how to use line of sight to my advantage from questing.  I first learned how to pick a spot to stage my battle from questing.  I first learned my limits from questing.  I first learned how far I could push those limits from questing.  I first learned how to work as a team from questing. 

I first learned how to do so many things from questing.  All of those things I would not learn now because everything dies so fast even with only quest gear that planning is no longer a part of the game and neither is learning what your class can do apparently.

So it is not only the speed of leveling that is creating bad players, it is the content of the quest that people do while leveling that is creating bad players.

Leveling just does not teach anything any more.

It is kind of hard to teach things when one shield from your paladin can kill three mobs.

Next up:  Leveling dungeons are teaching players to be bad players.

Monday Random Thoughts

- Another Monday and another new mount.

- Maybe I should change the title to Mount Mondays.

- Not a rare one this time, an achievement one.

- I finally finished Cataclysm hero.

- I assembled a group just for the purpose of helping me with headed south.

- I swear that one if the bane of hunters.

- All because of minimum range.

- So many things are going to change when minimum range is gone.

- I must say for soloing that there are so many times I wish minimum range was already gone.

- Sometimes it can be hell to get a boss off you because bosses can not be slowed.

- Just one shot with a misdirect is all I ask and when you need it most you can never get it.

- I soloed blackwing lair this weekend for the first time ever.

- All thanks to seeing a video of how to solo the unsoloable first boss.

- Died like 6 times trying to get the timing down but once I got it down the fight is not really even a fight.

- Then again, what do you expect for a level 60 raid.

- There were a few fun moments soloing that however.

- Running through the area where you are slowed was an effort in seeing how much you can deal with getting annoyed.

- That had to be the hardest part of the whole thing.

- And the last fight, if you never did it enough to know, bring extra bows.

- Otherwise it is going to be a very long fight.

- As weird as it might sound, I've always carried extra ranged weapons around.

- At least I do not need to carry two types of ammo any more.

- So many times I have broken my weapon and it is not do to lack of repairs.

- I never pass an option to repair.

- Just seems bows break often.

- Nef broke four bows on that fight.

- He has an ability that breaks a random classes weapon.

- When you are the only class there, it is not really random, your weapon will break.

- What are the odds I would have five on me?

- I had the one I was using, the one I had it transmogged into for fun, my old one from the TB dailies because it has no sell price and I did not feel like throwing it away, one green one I got while in there and the bow I got from deathwing in the raid finder.

- I needed them all.

- Good thing soloing it made me more than 2 grand.

- I spent over 100 in repairs, just for my bows.

- Talking about doing fun things I finally got my light of dawn too.

- Only managed to get 6 of 12 in 25 man heroic back in wrath.

- Only managed to get 3 more so far this expansion because apparently even over gearing it ICC it way to hard for the average player.

- Got sin and LK now, so only need 1 more on heroic to have them all on heroic.

- Still wiped about 6 times too.

- Oddly enough, not one of those wipes to defile.

- Sad part is that the group was 25 people that had all done heroic, all did it back when it was current, but all only did it on 10.

- Some did it on 25, but not many.

- So you had 25 people that all knew the fight, and we still wiped, over gearing it to an insane level and we still wiped.

- We could do deathwing normal while sleeping but we can not do something we hugely over gear as easily.

- I know you will say normal vs heroic but I would say 85 content vs 80 content.

- I wonder why people still say that wrath was easy mode.

- Check your numbers fanboys, LK was how fights are supposed to be.

- I want all last bosses to be like that.

- That and two lockout again.

- I want to tame a worgen on my hunter.

- I can tame a worg, so I should be able to tame a worgen.

- Speaking of worgen, have you noticed all the wrogen racism in the game?

- I was soloing Old Hillsbrad Foothills on my worgen rogue when I noticed it reach all new levels.

- You know that guy you talk to after you are done that will port you back to the entrance?

- Well, he took one look at me and said, no way I am porting you dog boy.

- I even switched to human form and tried.

- He hit me with a rolled up newspaper like I soiled the carpet or something.

- I was stuck hoofing it.

- He doesn't like worgen.

- That is not all even, worgen hate is all over the place in the game.

- People hate worgen, even Marrowgar in ICC won't spike one because he must think they are pets and he would never waste a bone spike on a pet.

- So why can't I tame one?

- Remember that short time when we could tame one?

- I never got one sadly.

- I had already done the quest.

- Wait, there is more.

- The path up to Azshara in Well, worgens can not use mount form, they need a real mount.

- More worgen hate.

- But wait, sometimes that worgen racism can be a good thing.

- I've soloed BC heroics on many characters, to grind rep, to make money, to look for patterns, etc.

- So I can say I have a fair deal of experience with them and enough of a test base to get a feel for drops and such.

- Gems that drop in the heroics are on a low drop rate scale right?

- When you solo things on your worgen, you will always get a gem, on every single boss.

- You know how on some rare, and I do mean very rare occasions, the bosses will drop two pieces of rare loot and the end bosses will drop two pieces of epic loot?

- When my worgen solos BC stuff every single boss not only drops a gem, they always drop two pieces of rare loot and end bosses always drop two rares and two epics.

- Yeap, worgens get extra loot when soloing BC content.

- I am not kidding.

- I've soloed BC heroics 100s of times and never seen drops like my worgen rogue gets.

- Every time there is a chance to get something, except mounts, my worgen gets it.

- A chance a gem will drop?  He gets a gem.

- A chance two rare loot pieces will drop?  He gets two.

- A chance two epic loot pieces will drop?  He gets two.

- Not once in a while, not more often than normal, nope, every single time.

- I guess it is the games way of making reparations for the racist treatment of worgen in old hillsbrad foothills?

- Now if only I can get that guy to give me a port back to the entrance.

- I wonder what other things there are that treat worgen differently.

- I am sure there have to be many I did not even notice.

- I know there are a few that I missed mentioning.

- I just want to tame one.

- A worgen warrior as my tank pet.

- A worgen rogue as my DPS pet.

- How about a worgen priest as a healing pet?

- Come to think of it, why aren't there any healing pets?

- Don't give me the spirit beasts argument either.

- You need to be lucky enough to catch one in a reasonable about of time or spend your life waiting to catch one, so that is not an option.

- Do you think it would be fair to tell a priest they have to be lucky enough to kill a mob that is a rare spawn that everyone wants before they can have their heal spells?

- No one else needs to get lucky or work to get their abilities, hunters shouldn't have to either.

- Not to mention, it only works in one spec.

- I want an atonement pet, like an atonement priest.

- Every time it does damage it heals itself or its master for damage equal to the attack.

- Now that would be an awesome freaking pet for soloing.

- It would also give hunters the holy trinity for itself.

- A tank pet, a DPS pet and a healer pet.

- Atonement pets now.

- Please, I've been a good hunter, can I have one for Christmas?

- I am out of here, time to go daydream of atonement pets.

- Have a great day everyone.

How to Fix Bad Players: Part I - Leveling

This is a first in a series of posts aimed at fixing bad players and determining what makes bad players bad.

How to Fix Bad Players: Part I - Leveling

The quality of players we see in our looking for dungeon and raid groups seems to keep going down.  More and more we run across people that we just have to look at and wonder how did they manage to make it that far.  It is really perplexing and easily explainable at the same time, if that is even possible. 

It is perplexing because you wonder why would anyone let themselves be that bad but it is easily explainable by the fact that blizzard lets them, even encouraged them, to be that bad.  There are many things the game is currently doing that actually develops bad players.  Leveling is one of those things that the game has changed to help develop bad players.

Leveling has been made so fast that it seems everyone has multiple characters at top level.  This is one of the problems with the game now and a reason there are so many horrible players in randoms. 

When anyone can level any class as quick and easily as it is now that means that they never get a change to really learn the character.  While it is true that you really do not need to learn to play a character until max level the fact that it was so easy to level gives people the feeling that it is that easy to play it well also.

#1 The easy leveling leads people to believe that end game is just as easy as the level, or should be.

#2 The easy leveling leads people to believe that because leveling needs no skill that max level needs no skill.

When it would take you 40 days of play time to get to max level people did not make an alt just for the hell of it.  It would be a lot of work and they were going to spend a fair deal of time on it.  So if you were going to get another character to top level you knew at least one thing was for sure, you are going to spend some serious time on doing it.

#3 The easy leveling means no real time investment for people to care if they are good at the character or not. 

#4 The easy leveling makes abandoning the character easy when it took no time to make it.

#5 The easy leveling means people are more likely to play something they are not good at just for something to do even if they know they are not good at it because it is not like it is going to waste a lot of time anyway.

People love to say that leveling did not teach people anything and you know what?  I agree.  Leveling did not really teach you anything, even when it took longer.  Not in and of itself it didn't at least but the time it took to level did teach people something.

Anyone that has ever been in charge of teaching something, anything, will tell you that the best way to teach something is repetition.  It is the reason in school the teachers had you practice your alphabet every day when you where first learning to write.  You write the letters enough and it becomes second nature.

When leveling took forever things became repetitious.  It might have felt annoying doing the same thing over and over again but it taught people something even if they did not notice they where being taught.

Lets look at a hunter for example now and then for one of those things that anyone that has been playing for some time might take for granted, kiting. 

In the leveling world, before, you where bound to get into a position where you needed to kite a mob from time to time because mobs where harder to kill, there were more elite mobs, there were much tighter pack clusters, there were more roaming mobs, crowd control would pull, pets being squishy, etc and you needed to kill roughly 12 million (might be a slight exaggeration) mobs to get one level so the odds are you would end up kiting a fair amount of mobs while leveling. 

It was not something leveling taught you, so to speak, but it was because of how leveling took longer and you did not breeze through it you ended up being forced to kite more often then not.  In most cases when us hunters first learned it, we did not even know it was called kiting, it was called keeping our freaking ass alive any way we could.  When killing 12 million (once again, might be slightly exaggerated) mobs you would end up kiting a lot of them, like it or not.  It taught you how to kite without you even knowing it was teaching you because leveling took time.

#6 The easy leveling has removed the repetition part of the game that taught many people without even making it seem like it was teaching them something.

#7 The easy leveling has removed the need to do some of the simple basic things that older players take for granted that everyone that plays said class should know, like ever hunter at max level should know how to kite.

Leveling offers new players and old players rolling on new classes a sense of instant gratification that is unparallelled in the game at any point ever in its history.  The feeling of moving so quickly is something that is easy to become addicted to.  Even if people like a challenge they will all say they like when they can beat that challenge.  They will also all say they like when they can beat that challenge faster and easier.

Just like back in vanilla people would try to level as fast as they could people still do that now.  I do it myself.  My current record is 1 day 18 hours with no rested, no refer a friend or anything like that.  Just basic heirlooms and guild bonus alone.  If I only played on rested I am sure I can get that under 1 day 12 hours.

The difference is, back in vanilla when people would try to speed level it took skill.  It took preparation.  It took knowledge.  You had to piggy back quests to maximize time spent doing them to experience gained from that time spent, you had to know the best routes to and from places, you had to know which quests to take and which ones not to, there was a lot to it.  It required analytical thinking.  Even in BC and wrath, both before the redesign of the old world, even with their updated leveling speeds, it still required analytical thinking to speed level because the old world did really like to send you all over the place.  Who would have ever thought those send you all over the place quests where actually teaching people time management?

So those people that raced to the end of the game where usually great players because they had to think things out and plan things to get the most out of it.  Low leveling time then was impressive.  My 1 day 18 hour leveling time in the leveling world of today, is not.  Anyone can do that.  It was not impressive that I did it that fast.  It just shows I was bored, that is all.

If you go to the darkmoon faire on a low level character you can get upwards of one and a half levels just doing those quests alone.  Excuse me?

#8 The easy leveling turned leveling fast from something that required still and a fair deal of intelligence into something that doesn't require skill or intelligence but many people will and do still mistake fast leveling for skill.

#9 The easy leveling gives people a false sense of ability because they think that a class must not be that hard if they have never even played one before and were able to level it so quick.

The lack of real threats in the world has also effected the people that level quickly now.  When a disc priest can walk up to Durn the hungerer and smite him to death without heirlooms and without top gear while three levels under him without ever having to worry about dying it takes something away from the game and the learning process for new players.

What was once something that would take an attack plan, a group with assigned roles and time to assemble is now another solo things for massive experience that takes no skill to do.  Quests like that taught people without even letting them know it was teaching them.  Kind of like the kiting example I mentioned before.  People would learn roles because they had to learn roles even if they had never used them before.  They would learn to make a plan of attack, like clearing the area out first so adds did not interfere.

The lack of areas filled with elites in the old world also took away from something.  They were removed to streamline leveling some but by doing so removed another important lesson people learned without even knowing they where learning.  The lesson that they should pay attention to their surroundings.

The mobs that had minions or pets that made it a choice of kill the helper first or the master first used to be a real choice.  Leave a warlocks imp up too long and it would rip you apart but go for the imp first and the warlock could ramp up a spell that could really hurt you.  The easy leveling now means that any class in the game will one shot the minion and then the master is no worry without the minion constantly pounding at you.

All these real threats in the world served as major learning experience even if no one ever took notice to the fact they where learning.  Those elite mobs are no longer elite so no worries.  The mobs with minions are no longer a worry either being the minions are easily one shot.  The multi player quests that require teamwork also stepped aside for faster and easier leveling in its place.

#10 The easy leveling removed the need for people to pay attention to their surroundings.

#11 The easy leveling removed the need to work as a team in the open world.

#12 The easy leveling removed the need to crowd control when doing something solo meaning many classes do not ever learn they have ways to control mobs.


#13 The easy leveling removed the need to silence, interrupt, disarm, buff, remove buffs, etc, mobs that were almost required when the mobs would kill you if you did not handle those things.

#14 The easy leveling changed it from the attitude that everyone is in this together and you should team up with someone when you can into an attitude that they better not kill your quest mob before you do, thus teaching new players a whole new level of selfishness.

The easy leveling has not only effected the solo content but it has also effected the group content.  With the super fast leveling combined with the lower level looking for dungeon system it has taken the previously mentioned new found selfishness to all new levels.

People are using each other as vehicles to speed up their leveling because the looking for dungeon allows them to level while never leaving their home city.  It teaches them that trolling trade while waiting in queue is a good thing to do to pass the time.  It teaches them that everyone else is just there to help them.  It teaches them that every time something goes wrong it was because of someone else, because they are these super fast levelers that have no problems on their own, so if there are any problems in a group setting it can't be their fault.

#15 The easy leveling makes people place blame whenever something goes wrong in a group setting.

#16 The easy leveling makes people believe they do not need to take responsibility for their own actions because they will never see these people again.

The biggest problem with leveling is that when numbered leveling ends and the real game, as most call it, begins those same players start in on a whole new unnumbered type of leveling.  The leveling of their ability to play their class.  When they enter that phase of the game they take everything they have learned and try to apply it and it just does not work the same in level capped game.

What they learned is that they can do anything and succeed and succeed fast and be rewarded well for it.  So entering things that require them to know their role and their class and do it better than just killing quest mobs in two or three shots it is a rude awakening.

#17 The easy leveling makes people think everything should be easy.

#18 The easy leveling makes people thing that if it isn't easy it is because someone else sucks.

This then carries on to getting gear and the hamster wheel that the end game is.  Everything they did to this point was so quick.  Everything they did to this point was so easy.  Everything was handed to them on a silver platter.  All without them ever needing to know what they where doing.

#19 The easy leveling makes people think that everything should be given to them for doing nothing, like is has for 85 levels so far.

#20 The easy leveling makes people falsely think that they are doing good enough because of how easy they leveled.

There you go folk, those are your bad players at max level and that is why they are bad, because the game teaches them to be bad instead of teaching them to be good by letting them level way too quickly.

To teach them to be better the leveling need to take longer.  Much longer, insanely longer compared to what it is now.  People would be much less likely to roll a throw away character.  People would be much less likely to make it to max level and not even have a basic understanding of the class they are playing.  People would be much less likely to not understand what real threats are.  People would be much less likely to expect everything to be handed to them nice and easily all the time because they would get used to working for everything they got.  People would be much less likely to put in all that work and effort and not try to be the best they can be because if they didn't get good that would mean they need to do all that hard work again on another character to try it once more.

Longer leveling, harder leveling, dangerous leveling, leveling where you earn your level every step of the way is a good thing for the game and in turn would make for a much better end game for everyone involved.

Do you want to know how to fix bad players?  Make them work to get to max level.  Most bad players would never make it.  Stop giving the bad players the free pass to end game and ruining the gaming experience for everyone else.  Make them work their way up, the way a good game does.

Picking an Off Spec

For a few of my characters, most glaringly priests and warriors, I am going to have to decide on an offspec.  With mists coming soon and there no longer being any reason to have two of the same specs I need to start deciding what I want to do with my offspecs.

Throughout my game play career I've always been a tank on all my warriors and a disc healer on all my priests.  My offspecs for those classes where tank and disc as well.  If anything, I needed tri spec and if I had it I would have had three tank specs on my warrior and three disc specs on my priest.

There was never such a thing as a right spec or a wrong  spec when it comes to the roles for tanking or healing.  If you are DPS it was usually an easy decision.  If marksman sims best at the moment then you make your hunter marksman.  Simple as that.  On rare occasion there might be need for another ability in the mix.  Like needing concussive barrage for the beth fight.  So that would be one of those rare occasions it might be good to have two marks specs.  But over all, with DPS there was always a right and a wrong.

Tanking and healing is never that easy.  You could tank single target great with an AoE tanking build and you could tank AoE stuff with a single target build as well.  What it usually came down to is what the group you ran with had and needed and what you are most comfortable with.  So unlike a damage dealer, you had a choice.

Same goes for healing.  Some people liked to go into strength of soul for disc while others avoided it completely.  I have two totally different disc specs and strength of soul is in neither whereas another person in my guild, after I convinced them that disc healing is leaps and bounds better than holy, added strength of soul to his spec because he considered it required.  Two different outlooks, both with excellent outcomes, all based on opinions and neither is wrong.  My numbers might still be better than his but that has nothing to do with strength of soul, that has to do with him having never played disc before and me having played it since the beginning of time.

Speaking of the beginning of time on my priest, it leveled PvP.  A PvP spec is another completely different spec from either of the two I use now or the one the other priest uses.  So here we go, looking at four totally different disc healing specs and all four are, for lack of a better word, viable.

For tanks and healers there have always been specs based on what is best to have but there are usually some points you can spend on flavor, even now with fewer swing point options, the ones where you turn your tank spec into a kiting spec, or an AoE spec, or a DPS tanking spec, or a threat tanking spec.  There might be a suggested spec, but there where always different things you could do and not be wrong.

Now, with mists coming, and all specs have everything they are ever going to offer there will be no choices anymore.  No more will I need to have a tanking spec for main tanking, for off tanking, for kiting, for DPS, for PvP, for whatever.  My tank spec is my tank spec and that is all it will ever be.  No choices here. 

The flavor now comes from glyphs and those 6 talent points, all of which I can change on the road at any given moment as long as I have some dusts of disappearance.  This is why I no longer need two tanking specs.  I do not need my add spec and my main spec.  If I need to switch from one to another I just change some things with a dust of disappearance.  I must say in a way that is awesome.  No need to have two tank specs because if you needed to switch a few times in one raid for certain fights, just change some things around with dusts and you are good to go with one tank spec.

That also means I need to learn to do something else on my warrior and priest.  No longer can I say that I do not have a DPS offspec on my warrior, that my second spec is for add tanking.  I could just switch some things around if I need to tank adds.  I need to get a real offspec now.  I need to do arms or fury.

Mists might be a long way away still but I might as well get into the idea that my warriors are not all tanks and my priests are not all healers any more.  They can now be something else.

This is a whole new world for me.  I am a purist.  Warriors tank and priest heal.  Anyone doing anything different is wrong.  End of story.  Well, the story just got a sequel because of the changes coming in mists and this grumpy elf needs to find offspecs for his warrior and his priest.

I made the first steps last night.  I deleted my add kiting spec from my warrior.  Not like I had used it often anyway.  The last time it got any regular use from it was on Mal in BWD. I love that fight.  I love add tanking.  I know, the grumpy one is also a strange one.  Most tanks hate add taking.  I just like it because it feels like I am doing more than just standing there getting beat on but that is another story all together.

I switched up to an arms spec.  Like I said, DPS is easier when deciding on a spec.  Where there is no right and wrong for healing and tanking but there is a clear cut best spec for damage dealing.  Arms can go two ways.  It could go with a little extra in the AoE department or a little extra in the single target department.  I decided to go a little extra in the single target department.  After all, that is what should be the main concentration most of the time.

All my warrior's DPS gear is ungemmed and unenchanted.  I still had a green piece, a few 333 blues and only one trinket so I am stuck using one of my tanking trinkets.  Can you tell I never took gearing up for an offspec seriously on this character?  The only DPS type pieces I had where ones that I had won on greed rolls in randoms where there was no enchanter to disenchant or on the rare occasion I needed for the sake of an offspec I knew I might never even make or use.

So I entered the world of non-instant queue time on my warrior for the first time at 85.  I got well of eternity, it went kind of well but scared me a little bit because I was the top DPS on that one guy at the beginning where it always seems everyone is huge DPS.  That would not be so bad if it where not for the fact this was my first time ever playing DPS on this character at 85 and the fact I only did 14K.

Okay, 366 equipped item level I should be doing more than that, but having no experience, no gems, no enchants, I had some hopes that I could do this and as least pass it off as I know what I was doing thanks to the 15% random buff.

We work our way through things to the first boss.  I am no longer #1 in DPS, the tank is.  Which to be honest is not uncommon there.  However, I am number two.

We knock out the first boss, no problems, the DPS in this group is nothing to write home about and I am surely not helping matters any either being new at it, ungemmed and unenchanted.  I still did 17K, which I was happy with.  When we looted I was more than just happy, I was ecstatic that the DPS plate belt dropped and I won it.  I just replaced a 318 green.  How is that for lucky?  Replaced my worst piece on my first boss as a DPS.

Like I said, the group was nothing to write home about.  The DPS was less than you might expect to see now but I would hazard a guess the group was something like myself.  All people that knew what they where doing but all trying new characters or new specs.  For our low group performance we executed perfectly and had no wipes and no issues.  Everyone did what they where supposed to do, which in a random is like winning the lottery, the odds of a full group of knowledgeable people is a rare thing.

This little win of a group in the world of randoms made me think that perhaps I should try new things out a little bit more.  Maybe test some specs I have not played much.  Maybe build up the confidence to work on my warrior and priest offspecs for the first time.

I should admit I did cheat a little and that might be the reason I did okay my first time in as an arms warrior.  Although I was ungemmed, unenchanted and inexperienced I did spend a good half hour on the dummy before I even considered going into a random.  I think that is the only reason I did even half way decent.  I practiced ahead of time.

I did three more runs with my warrior as DPS, did them in an all guild group this time.  So with no 15% buff my numbers where a little lower of course but over all with each run I got a little more comfortable with playing him.  By the end of those three runs I was doing more DPS without the 15% buff then I did in that first run with it.

I think I can do this.  I think I can break the mold of warriors are tanks only and priests are healers only now.  Like I said, come mists I am going to have to anyway, so might as well get a head start with it.

So my priest is up next.  Oh boy this is not going to be a fun choice at all.  I can still be a healer only on my priest.  I can go holy.  There is something about holy however that I just do not like.  I do not like the feel of holy healing.  I tried holy for a short bit in wrath and I hated it.  I was so glad when ICC came out and everyone and their mother was screaming for help from a disc priest and I got to go back to doing what I love doing, healing as disc. For a long time there it seemed like I was the only disc priest on the server too which lead to a ton of invites from people I did not even know just because I was disc.

Since ICC came out and I became disc again my main priest and all other priests I added since have only been disc.  A time has come for a change and it looks like I am going to be giving shadow a try.

Perhaps if my endeavor into shadow goes as well as my one into arms for my warrior went I might actually have another option to roll with.  In the day and age we are now, with the huge buff to DS and people looking for healers with an offspec more often, I could get some pug time in on my priest if I had an offspec.  Although to be honest I am not sure why anyone would want me DPSing when I can pump out the heals as well as I do to begin with. 

At least my priest will have much fewer gear issues to worry about.  I can, for the most part, use my healing gear to DPS in.  Being spirit translates into hit the only things I would really need to worry about changing are the tier set items for the set bonuses and I can reforge everything else as needed until I get replacement shadow only gear.

Warrior was yesterday, maybe priest will be today.

Seems like sometimes you can teach an old dog new tricks.

It took a long time but it seems I am catching up with the 21st century now and leaving behind the warriors tank and priests heal mentality.  But there is one difference with me and that thinking.  While I will finally accept that warriors and priests can DPS it will still always be offspec in my mind.  They should still be tanks and healers respectively as their main specs.  Or they are doing it wrong. ;)

Okay, so I am learning to open my mind slowly, but I am trying.

Quality of Life Upgrades

I wrote a post yesterday about wanting the call stable master function back for hunters now that there is a need for it again.  It is not really needed, we can work well without it but it would most definitely be a quality of life upgrade for the hunters of the world, that is for sure.

It got me thinking about what other little things could be added to the game that would make for excellent quality of life additions for all classes, not just hunters.  They are already adding one that would have been on my list and that is AoE looting.  I am very happy about that one.

That actually is the definition of a quality of life upgrade.  We could very easily bend over 6 times to loot 6 bodies but it is much nicer to be able to lean over once to get them all.  So what other quality of life additions would you like to see?

Gathering Node Tapping
This is something that I think is long over due.  If you are picking an herb, mining a node or skinning a beast when someone or something interrupts your gathering and someone else comes and collects what you had already been working on it is a general annoyance.  Worse even if when you start picking an herb and a tauren druid sweeps in and picks the herb before you even finish gathering it.

Node tapping would be a great quality of life addition.  If you started the gathering procedure and get interrupted the node is tapped to you for 30 seconds.  That should be more than ample to beat any mob that interrupted you and it is more than ample on a PvP server to get your fight on.

In the PvE world, or same faction PvP world, it would assure you do not have to deal with people node jumping on you and you not being able to do anything about it  In the PvP world it would mean no more stop the person, stun them, steal the node and then fight it out (which I must admit I've been guilty of doing on a PvP server), that is if you do not get away right after you stole their booty.  It would mean that node can only be worked on by the person you interrupted so you actually have to keep them busy for 30 seconds.  You actually have to fight for it.  How original of an idea.

This would be a quality of life addition in many ways.  For people that get upset with people stealing their nodes they no longer will get stressed out.  For people that just like to greif others by doing it, like one tauren druid on my server who brags about doing it to people, it would stop them from doing something that is against game rules anyway.  For people on PvP servers it would inspire more open world battle instead of steal the node and run, which happens most of the time now.

Remove Hit/Expertise
I keep reading ghostcrawler using lines like "we want to make decisions fun".  Okay, I can go with that, decisions should be fun.  The decision for hit or expertise is not fun.  It is annoying.  Not saying it is hard to cap because it isn't, even more so since the introduction of reforging.  What I am saying is that missing is not fun.  Thus you have to get to hit and expertise capped if you do not want to miss.  Doing something because you have to do it is not a fun choice it is a no choice.

They are continually trying to make things easier for everyone, well, removing hit and expertise would make it much easier for many people.  I think, outside of the "what gems should I use for a xxx", "what should I have for hit cap" is the most asked question in the game.

It shows on your character profile now and people still ask in trade 100s of times per day it seems.  Hit just confuses anyone that is not a part of the reading community.  You read, I'm guessing being you are reading this, I read, most the people on the forums read, we all know what we need for hit so it might be easy for us to label those that do not know as people that are not even trying.

See, part of the reason for the new talent trees is blizzard is attempting to remove the need to read for some things.  Just like there was a right spec and a wrong spec there is hit capped and not hit capped.  There are no more wrong specs and there should be no more hit cap.


We are max level warriors for good, fighters of all injustice, defenders of our faction and protectors of our world yet we can still miss something standing inches in front of us that is the size of a house?  Sorry, I don't buy that.  It is time we said goodbye to hit and expertise.  It servers no purpose other then separating the people who read from the people who don't.

BTW, this would also mean things like spell penetration would go bye bye as well.  They are removing resistances anyway, so this removal makes sense to begin with.

Reset Quests Option
With the addition of transmog there are a lot of people looking for items that can only be attained through quests.  Once done a quest is gone forever.  A nice little quality of life addition to the game would be a quest reset option that could reset all the quests you have completed in a given area.

It does not need to be complex where you pick a quest, it could be a lump sum thing.  If you completed only three in an area your option is to reset all three whereas if you completed all 72 in an area when you reset it resets all 72.  No pick and choose options here, it is always a full area reset.

They could easily hang a price on this option that would be based on the level of the area you are resetting.  Perhaps if you are resetting a level 30 questing area it would cost 30 silver per quest being reset.  If its a level 84 area it might cost 5 gold per quest to reset the area.  The amount is really not much of an issue because you will make gold back by doing the quests again but you now have the option to do those quests you might want to get transmog things from.

This would also have the added benefit of giving solo players something to do if they so wish.  It would also allows people to reset and redo the quests as a way to make money, to gather enchanting materials, etc.  For those achievement hunters it might even help attain a higher number of quests completed because resetting them would not lower the count but doing them again would up it.  They could then add a 10K quests done, 25K quests done and 50K quests done achievement. (I'd already have the 10K one the second they added it, which shows you I would probably use this for those boring days)

It would be a quality of life addition in a few ways.  Transmog, making money, doing something for solo players and I am sure others would find good reasons to reset certain areas.  I know I would have reset twilight highlands when the game first came out.  Sucked that I finished the area on day one and could not pick herbs because of phasing issues for what seemed like months.  If you liked a area before you passed a phase, just reset it to a previous phase.  There we go, another quality of life bonus quest resetting would add.

Better and Larger Ignore/Friends Lists
Personally I currently have no people on ignore.  Yeap, zero.  However, I see the use for it and people should be able to have better and larger ignore/friends lists.

Ignore/friends lists should be battle.net bound so to speak, covering all accounts and all characters on all accounts.  This means if you friend or ignore that hunter you also have his mage, his priest and his death knight on your ignore/friends list as well.  No more will you need to waste 4 spots on that one person.

This would also stop something I see happen all the time.  People you meet in looking for raid that want to trade you when you win and you say no.  They seem to love to make level one characters on your server to curse you out and when you ignore them they make another and another and another.  If you ignore them once it should cover any character they ever make from that account and any other accounts they might have linked to the same battle.net account.

With the looking for systems out there and many people adding people that they run into doing them to their ignore lists so they do not get grouped with them again it is becoming needed a lot more to extend those lists.  I choose not to ignore anyone, it is a personal choice, but most people like to use it so they are not grouped with bad players again and this could fill up a list really fast.

Better and larger ignore/friends lists would be a very nice quality of life change and is something I think I have seen asked for more than anything else ever in the game except for maybe...

Bags and Stacking
They made one nice upgrade in this department already this expansion.  Gems stacking has been pure heaven.  There are some other things that need work however.  Many items in the game only stack to 5 for some reason, like voodoo skulls.  I have a friend that collects them and he says they take up so much space for no reason other than a fun item and I agree.  At the very least it should stack to 20 like most everything else in game.

Speaking of 20 stacks, it is about time they extended them.  At least for some items like cloth.  As someone who loves to solo I usually end up with massive amounts of cloth and it is not something I plan to throw away or vendor so I keep it and it really fills up the bags quickly.  They upped ammo stacking for hunters to 1000 arrows back when we still used them, why not 1000 pieces of cloth.

Heck, remember when leveling up, what was one of the biggest bag space hogs you ran into?  Cloth.  And it is something you will never throw away.  Even if you do not plan to level first aid and are not a tailor cloth is the one thing that always seems to sell fairly well, even more so for a new player just starting it can be their main source of cash flow.

Speaking of cloth, how about a tailoring bag blizzard.  Heck, we have a bag just to hold fish but we do not have one to hold cloth and bolts.  How about an archeology bag too that can hold anything you found while digging.  I have three bags filled with that crap.  I don't want to throw it away, so at least let me have a place to use as a catch all that is bigger then the average bag.

Besides making stacks stack higher and adding a few new profession bags I think the time has really come to finally address our starting bags.  You have redone the old world, redone our talent systems a few times, redone how so many other things work but we are still stuck with a 16 slot main bag.

There should be a quest somewhere in each expansion to up your starter bag.  BC could have a quest to increase it to 18.  Wrath, 20, cataclysm, 22 and soon to be 24 in mists.  Next time you are redesigning things, try redesigning something that has been asked for since the first expansion came out.  Heck, probably before that even, don't know, wasn't there for that.

I think the time has come to get some more bank space too.  Another row of bags, 7 more, 500 gold each to extend them, a minor gold sink and more space for those of us that need it.

This would all amount to an incredible quality of life change.  Bigger starter bags, better stacking, two missing profession bags and more bank bag space.  That is a quality of life change I can support 110%.

None of these things are gaming breaking, none of these things are even really needed but every single one of them would be a nice quality of life change.  Not everything need to be the next big thing to be a good change for the game.  Sometimes some small quality of life upgrades could be just what the doctor ordered for an ailing game.

What quality of life additions to the game would you like to see?

Hunter Ability Request: Call Stablemaster

Do you remember how we used to change pets while in a raid in the not so distant past?  We used to have a call pet ability that allowed us to access our stable so we could switch pets.  If I remember correctly it had a half hour cooldown but I could be wrong.

When cataclysm came out and we where able to carry five pets with us that ability went bye bye.  Now that mists is coming and we are getting a new ability called stampede I think it is time for that ability to make a return.

It will not be a huge deal to make sure we have five pets ready to roll when we know we are going to be raiding but why should we need to be full all the time just for that are keep switching back and forth at the stable master?  We had the ability before and I think we should have the ability again.

I am sure there are many hunters like myself that carry around different pets for different reasons.  I have my standard raid pet based on my normal team, I have my tanking pet for soloing, I have my PvP pet for some player carnage and I have my one joke pet, a sporebat, as if you needed to be told that.  I also always leave one space open should I run across something I want to tame.

I am sure I am not alone in things like that.  I am sure most hutners carry various pets around for whatever reasons they might have.  If the person happens to be beast master as a main or off spec they most likely have an exotic beast or two in their fav 5 as well.

Now that stampede looks like it might be a worthwhile cooldown that every hunter will be using at one point or another in a raid it would be nice to be able to change our pets around should need be instead of having to head back to a city to go to the stable master on a whim.

If you are running marks or survival and happen to have an exotic pet in your fav 5 it will not be called when you use stampede.  If you are like me and like to leave a space open you will not be using the cooldown to the best of its ability by calling only four pets.  If you are a beast master with a marks or survival off spec you might have some exotics and some normal pets where you would rather all exotics to use the cooldown to the best of its ability.

Lets say you just left the raid and are flying back home and doing some gathering or questing or whatever and run across a rare spawn you want.. What are you going to do?  Abandon a pet and tame it I guess.  If you where just raiding you have your fav 5 with you so if you want that want that pet then saying goodbye to one in your five is the only option. 

Sure, taming them is easy enough being they are your level now when you tame them.  Sure, there will be no specs for pets that you have to worry about respecing them.  But that does not change the fact that if you are a hunter you get attached to your pets and don't want to kick one out of their home and let them loose.  Or what if you only have rare tames as some hunters do?  Wouldn't it just be nice to be able to call stable master and put one away so you do not need to get rid of it?  I think so.

What if that same thing happens and you happen to be a beast master with one hell of a spirit beast collection?  Are you really going to ditch a spirit beast to get another exotic?  I think not, they are hard enough to get but to abandon one so you can get another should not be a decision we need to make.

Most people kept that one empty space for that very reason but having an ability that we need all five on us will mean if we are serious about our maximum DPS we will need to have all five which means no free spaces.

Being having five pets at the ready, and those five pets being the appropriate ones for you, is important again then having access to our stable even when on the road is something we once again need.  Just like we needed it when we could only have one with us.

Blizzard knows that having some access to changing pets is important to hunters, that is why the ability was originally there.  They also know when we could carry a few around that was no longer needed because we could only use one pet at a time anyway. 

They should understand that being we are going to be using all five at once now we are now in the same boat we were when we only could carry one.  We need to be able to switch them around on the fly, even if it is only once ever half an hour just like it used to be.

So I would like to see the hunter community step up and ask for this ability back.  It is not much to ask for.  It is not game breaking, it is just a quality of life thing.  It is something we already had in the game so it is safe to say the coding for it is already in the game, they would just need to reactivate it.

The hunter community has won a few good battles these past weeks when it comes to things on the beta, lets try and win this one too.

We want call stable master blizzard.

Please.