Saturday, February 19, 2011

Sorry I got aimed shot nerfed.

No, I am kidding, they nerfed it for PvE (Because that is always the priority).

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Kaboomboom



Okay so yeah, I decided to see how hard I can crit an aimed shot.

I can crit harder than I thought.

How its done:

1. You need an agility flask
2. Agility food.
3. Cat pet (Call of the wild + agility buff)
4. An agility on-proc trinket. Key to the endless chamber or PvP trinket
5. An agility on-use trinket. Unsolveable riddle, or PvP trinkets
6. Potion of the Tol'Vir

Now that you got all of that, here comes the hard part.

7. Get berserking in a bg.
8. Kill something in close proximity to a squishy. Mages or rogues usually work well. For rapid killing. Hopefully this will make your trinket proc as well. This is the hard part.
9. Hunters mark the squishy, pop rapid fire, call of the wild, potion of the tol'vir, activate trinket and let the aimed shot fly!
10. Duck, there will be a shockwave.

11. For added bonus, have a rogue friend follow you around. He can stun the target to make it easier to aimed shot, and can give it expose armor. Ask for tricks when you are using the rest of your cooldowns, but make sure he doesn't get the target below 80%.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

To be MM or not to be

Isn't much of a question.

Sv is pretty bad right now, although it is much easier to play.

My thoughts on the recent changes:

1. Master's call being dispelled. What were they thinking? Seriously..
-Hunters do not have damage mitigation, the only way to avoid damage is by not taking it, which is what we are balanced around. This nerf to our best damage prevention ability is possibly one of the worst changes to the class ever. Also, they weren't thinking very clearly seeing as now we are the only class that has a very important buff to dispel and zero trash buffs to mask it. I am pretty certain that when they changed its animation, they just took freedom and renamed it, and that made it dispellable and what made the cooldown 45 seconds instead of 35. It was never hotfixed to be dispellable, it was always since 4.06 came out, the only thing they hotfixed was the tooltip. Pretty sad this is how far they will go to avoid admitting to being wrong. Crippling a class, but they never much cared for us anyways.

2. Deterrence while disarmed. Cute. I could deterrence while disarmed when I was dual-wielding before the patch, now I can't. Kinda went the wrong way, didn't you blizzard? On the other hand, I am very very happy rogues cant cheap shot me anymore.

3. Concussive shot glyph. Would have been really good, if it worked.
It makes it so they can't run above 100%, but they are slowed by 50% for the duration, so they wouldn't be over 100% anyways.. Essentially, it does nothing unless they are on a epic flying mount. Kind of dropped the ball here. This is supposed to be able to negate speed-increasing effects, like sprint for example. When a rogue is slowed by 50% and they sprint, it is 70% increased from 50%, not 70% of 100, minus 50%. When a rogue is dazed and sprinting they are going at ~75%, the glyph is supposed to make them be going at 50%.

4. Arcane shot damage increase. Never happened.

5. SV nerfs. Now, SV hunters use explosive trap and spam arcane shot to do their maximum dps. That is a 100% flat out fail in class design, we told them it would do that, we proved it on the ptr, they didn't care. Now, the spec is worthless.

5. Aimed shot, chimera shot, and kill shot. WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Basically, all we got was a damage boost to aimed/chimera/and kill shot. Extremely lackluster for a class at 1% arena representation. They even gave us NERFS, and they are discussing nerfing aimed shot... Safe to say that whatever they are smoking that makes hunters look playable, they need to share it with me.

My UI




Here is my current UI. Pretty similar to my old but there are some significant changes.

1. You may notice that nifty focus bar above my cast. That is an addon called hunterfocusbar and it is VERY good. I highly recommend it. It simply shows all relevant procs, improved steady shot, locknload, all that sort of thing and puts it above a focus bar. The little green section of the bar represents how much focus you will be at when steady shot finishes the cast. As we are now forced into marksmanship, it is a much more challenging spec as you have to constantly keep an eye on everything at once instead of just pressing buttons when locknload happens to proc. Having all of this information in one spot is a godsend.

2. That little double arrow above the focus bar is made from power auras, it represents rapid fire is online. I can do this with any buff should I desire, including trinket procs.

3. You may notice debuffs above the targets head. That is called platebuffs, and is VERY good for PvP. You can configure every buff/debuff in the game as to show it or not, so you can very easily see when an enemy pops a CD, how long something you aren't targeting will remain trapped, and all that sort of stuff.

4. Yes, I am a draenei. The 20% heal has saved me many times.

5. Yes, I am wearing 2200 gear. I am a grand marshal in RBG rating now.

Friday, January 21, 2011

Rated BG's and you

So I have been running rated bgs for some time now. I currently lead the top rated team on my server (And while there is no real team, the top rated people are in my group)

Strangely enough, I do not actually kill things in a rated bg. I am brought entirely for utility... and because the group is mine. >.>

My main roles:
1. Scout
2. Fast Response
3. Ninja
4. Escort
5. CC

Scout
Pretty simple, track humanoids + eagle eye means I can give constant reliable information on enemy movement, which is EXTREMELY important.

Fast Response
Simple put, no one but a hunter can disengage from combat so reliably and consistently to leave a battle to get somewhere quickly. Feign Death is very powerful. Running to defend another base that is under attack, running to intercept an enemy flag carrier, or running to help a friendly.

Ninja
Yeah so.. I have found that no one is as good at taking a base as me. I can see very clearly how many people are defending, I can sit in stealth for as long as I need, wait for a respawn to leave, I can CC someone effectively to cap a flag. Trinkets or paladins don't stop me, I can just cc them once and run away from the base until trap is reset and re-attack, when they cannot trinket, and I can kill nearly anyone in a 1v1 if required. (a 1v1 in a bg with no duel range and me getting guaranteed openers is really stacked in my favor). Also, the fact that I can approach relatively stealthily means they will not get reinforcements. If only one person attacks, I find that they will not send more to defend (especially when it is only a hunter attacking) They will only rapidly come to defense if it is two or more.

Escort
As a class that has the ability to cc multiple people at once, as well as give freedom, paired with an immunity to crit cooldown and ability to be a fast responder, I can get to a flag carrier in a pinch and help him until we get help, and if he dies I can grab the flag, while I may die very soon, I am the only class that can be completely immune to damage (except dots) while still holding the flag, if even for a very short time. I also have the ability to give the flag carrier pack, which means we don't necessarily have to have a druid running the flag.

CC
My cc is no where near reliable as another class, it doesn't scale with spell pen and has a fairly long cooldown, but I can cc multiple people at once, or one person for a pretty long duration, and all of my cc abilities are instant cast so I can do it if someone is trying to stop me.

Regarding people crying about dungeon difficulty.

Stop complaining that this game "doesn't cater to causals". It does. Your definition of casual is the problem.

Casual: Someone who doesn't play very often.

That is it. That is all. Casual is simply that and nothing more.

Casual is NOT "I play what spec I like because I like it and to hell with the consequences"
Casual is NOT "I don't want to learn how to properly play"
Casual is NOT "I shouldn't have to understand the boss fight"

It is simply someone that doesn't play often.

Does that mean a casual player never does some of the things listed? Of course they do, but that is different from being a casual. Casual is a very, very, simple definition, and people here are applying it to WAY to many things, things that have stretched reality too far.

This game caters to casuals. Here is why:

1. There is a limit to how much you can accomplish in a week. Someone, for example, who logs on once to clear a raid and then is never seen again will advance at the same pace as someone who logs on 8 hours every day, because there is a limit to amount of raids you can do a week. Doesn't matter how much you play, the raid won't reset until Tuesday.

2. There is a limit to conquest points. Playing more PvP does not mean you will get more points than the weekly cap. Playing more might mean you get more points next week, but someone who wins 10 games and loses 0 will still advance more quickly than someone who wins 10 and loses 50, and in the end there is a maximum cap to how many conquest points you can actually earn a week (It is somewhere slightly over 3000)

3. There is a limit to honor. While the amount of honor you gain is directly related to how much you play, you are hard capped to how much gear you actually get from honor. One person might play a lot and get it all in a week, but then they cannot get any more. One person might take a month to get it all, but they still end up at the same spot. There is a hard cap to everything. This rule is for casuals who do not play as often, so they may get gear more slowly, but it is essentially impossible to be left behind. Slow and steady WILL catch up, eventually. You can only get so far ahead.

4. There is a limit to heroic gear. Same principle as honor. Someone who does more heroics might gear up faster, but you can only get so much gear from heroics. Once you have all the gear, you don't gain anything from heroics, because there is a hard cap enforced to prevent people who play a lot from getting past causals. The same applies to JP gain. There is a cap to the gear you can buy with it.

5. There is a limit to valor points. Similar to #1, raid lockout, you can only get so many valor points per week regardless of how much you play, and eventually you will even be capped out on what you can buy with valor points.

Essentially, it doesn't matter how much you play, you are all hard capped to the amount of gear you can actually get. Someone who plays more might get it a week or two before someone who plays less, but that is the extent of it.

So, please. Stop complaining that WoW does NOT cater to casuals, because it does. If you are complaining about something being "too hard" and thus doesn't cater to casuals you are flat out wrong. Difficulty has no relation to casuals, many casuals are very skilled.

If you are having a problem with difficulty of the game at any point, it isn't because this game doesn't cater to casuals or that you are "casual" because this game does. It is because you refuse to step up to the next level.

Blizzard will not dumb it down for you. Stop confusing "Casual" with "Bad" and improve yourself. Heroics are NOT hard.