All posts by Pike

thoughts

Rep Grinds Aren’t the End of the World

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Rep grinds can be a pain, sure, I understand! But I don’t get that people are quitting over them.

Do you remember back in Burning Crusade when you had to be Revered with a faction just to run that faction’s heroic? Yeah. Later they changed it to Honored, but still!

Remember Scryers/Aldors/Isle of Quel’Danas? That Isle of Quel’Danas got you all sorts of fancy purples. Scryers/Aldors was where you got certain inscriptions– shoulders if my memory serves me right. Other factions gave out other inscriptions based on rep.

Remember Sons of Hodir in Wrath? Man, those guys were a pain in the butt too.

Now here we are in MoP. You can get all of those inscriptions off of the Auction House– no rep needed. Instead we have a bunch of dailies/rep for gear. Now, there are two things that I think Blizzard could have done better here. First of all, there should be more turn-ins for rep. Think Sunfury Signets/whatever those Hodir things were called. I know Klaxxi has got something but those have a horrific drop rate.

Secondly I don’t think there should be a weekly cap on badges. I no longer play WoW for challenge (more on this later), but there are people who do, and they should be allowed to get as many badges as they want.

Other than those two gripes, I don’t have a problem with the current system. There are a ton of daily hubs, yes, but the alternative was that Blizz introduced one new daily hub each patch or something and then people would be crying about not having enough content at one time. It took me like a week and a half or something to get to Revered with Golden Lotus. That’s not bad. Personally I think that’s a perfectly reasonable rate of reputation gain.

So whilst I feel that the current system could use some improvements, I still don’t think it’s the end of the world as millions of posts on the official forums seem to be saying on a daily (LOL GET IT??) basis.

Cute cat picture to break up the wall of text. Move along.

Now I’m going to go back to the idea of challenge in WoW because it might make me biased on this whole dailies/rep grind situation, so I want to clear it up right now and admit that I’m coming at this from a different angle than everyone else is. I approach WoW as an inherently casual game. Yep. And no, that’s not an insult. It’s just the way I view things. If I want a really tough challenging video game I go play X-Com or Master of Orion 2 or something. Now that crap is unforgiving. That stuff will make you feel godly for making any sort of minor progress.

WoW is where I go to relax. It’s where I go to make cute blood elf boys look fancy with transmog and where I go to do farming and Tillers stuff and archeology. I am in no rush. I feel proud when I do a good job in an instance or solo some particularly tricky old raid boss or something but ultimately the game is a very forgiving one overall.

So because I am approaching the game from this standpoint, I am possibly biased when it comes to this sort of thing. Maybe I don’t understand raiders anymore. Maybe I don’t understand what it means to be “hardcore” in WoW anymore because I straight up quit raiding in WotLK. Maybe I’m not seeing it the way everyone else is seeing it. Who knows!

As far as I’m concerned, though, MoP is probably WoW’s best expac so far and, whilst dailies are a pain because they have always been a pain, I don’t think that MoP’s dailies are a particularly special case here. The expac is gonna be out for two years; spending a couple of weeks rep grinding just doesn’t bug me.

Okay! Time to go check on my farm! Stay chilly, free willies.

enchants, endgame, gear, hunter, i love hunters

No More Mr. Nice Pike.

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I’ve mostly been taking Mists of Pandaria nice and slow, as the pandaren themselves like to say. I’ve been inching my way through dailies and doing a couple of scenarios here and there and doing old content for transmog and unsuccessfully trying to convince myself that I don’t roleplay. *cough* I haven’t really focused on gearing or anything because I can always do that later, right?

Today, though, Mister Adequate and I tossed ourselves into a heroic just for fun. And we wound up with a Grade A Jerkball Healer who enjoyed telling us that we were the “worst DPS this expac” and other things even though there were no wipes or major issues. He also then promptly needed on things that he did not need and which would have been upgrades for Mister Adequate (Jerkball won the rolls, of course). Yes because obviously that’s how you help lower-geared players gear up! Nice logic there, broseph!

Anyways, then it got me wondering. Was I doing anything wrong? I knew my own DPS was low, but I figured it was just my gear. I can still hunter, right? I have been huntering since 2007, after all. Perhaps I had lost my magic touch? Perhaps I should hang up the gun right there and retire from Massive Quantities of Sustained Ranged DPS forever?

Suddenly I had to find out.

I rushed off to the nearest training dummy and pounded away on it for about five minutes. I carefully weaved my shots and timed my cooldowns and watched my procs and my DoTs. Then I took careful note of Recount, and rushed off to a place I literally have not been to since I was raiding in early Wrath of the Lich King: FemaleDwarf.com, the Hunter DPS analyzer.

I loaded in my Armory, set my shots the way I was doing them, and hit “Update DPS”

…
…
…

…

Well, what do you know.

My recount is within ten DPS of what FemaleDwarf was telling me was my theoretical high.

Huh.

So I can still hunter.

Something clicked inside me. I need to show all these jerkball PuGs exactly what the Worst DPS This Expac can do.

So I ran to the auction house. I spent about 5000g on every available MoP hunter enchant. I enchanted blues and greens; I didn’t care. Everything got enchanted. Then I bought a bunch of flasks. Then I went back to the training dummies.

My DPS has gone through the roof.

It’s time.

No More Mister Nice Pike.

Tomorrow everything gets reforged. It’s going to be beautiful.

classic wow, screenshots

Well Ain’t That Something?

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Hunter/mage vs. Sunwell? You betcha.

I FRAPS’d the whole fight but I figure I won’t toss the video up unless someone asks because it’s fairly uneventful. Honestly Felmyst was the most difficult fight in the entire raid for us to do. Huge props to Mister Adequate for mage’ing it up and finishing her off after I bit the dirt on that encounter.

Now we just need Hyjal and Black Temple and then it’s on to WotLK stuff!

classic wow, screenshots

Push it to the Limit

Random blog title has nothing to do with anything!

SSC and Tempest Keep are both down as we continue our two-man runs. My new main is starting to look pretty snazzy now, thanks to transmog.

Tier 5? Tier 5! Just need to get the chestpiece to drop now.

In other news I find it amusing that I now have to tag posts with Burning Crusade content as “classic WoW,” seeing as I invented that tag during Burning Crusade for vanilla stuff.

classic wow, screenshots

A Duo

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Lately, myself and my other half, one Mister Adequate, have taken to going back to old content and duo’ing it. The twist is that we’re both pure DPS classes (hunter and mage) so we have to make do without heals and that sort of thing.

Some stuff we’ve done so far!

  • Everything left from Vanilla (Molten Core, AQ20/40, and BWL.  That gimmicky first boss of BWL can go step on a lego.)
  • Karazhan; a full clear took like thirty minutes. (Did I mention that Attumen FINALLY dropped that stupid necklace I’ve been wanting since TBC?)
  • Gruuls
  • Mags
  • 10-man Obsidian Sanctum, with all three drakes up.  Juuust barely.
Yes, that’s everyone dead. Boss included.

Things We’ve Tried But Haven’t Cleared Yet:

  • Sunwell Plateau, because the first boss is trolling us

We’re looking forward to doing the other 70 raids as well as giving 10man Naxx a shot.  I’m not sure if that one can be cleared with our hunter/mage setup, due to various gimmicky fights (Razuvious, I’m looking at YOU), but it’s worth a shot, at least.

We’re getting all sorts of fun transmog stuff, anyway, plus mmmm, all that delicious nostalgia.

Anyone else having fun with old content?

ding, pets, screenshots

Anyone want a free spirit beast?

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Because so far Althalor is batting a hundred for running into this guy anytime he so much as pokes his head into Sholazar Basin.

Oh, I hit 90, by the way!

I still can’t believe I did it on a character that has never been my “main”, but that’s love and Warcraft, I suppose.

The Klaxxi are the best faction because they are mantids who are alpha as smurf and talk about their young maturing under the beating of a million wings and whatnot. Also, the Tillers stuff is ridiculously fun. That’s really all I’ve had time to mess with thus far. I wonder what’s next in store?

hunter, i love hunters

State of the Hunter Address October 2012

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Sometimes I wear a mask for a while.

There was that warlock that I leveled to 64 or something, and there was the druid who hit 80 and whom I raided with. Then there were all the other druids I promptly rolled. Then there were all those other classes I rolled which never hit 50. I think the closest was a 42(?) rogue.

And you know, it’s fun. And I’d like to think I’m an okay druid.

But then I take off the mask and become a hunter again and I’m in my element, doing something as natural to me as breathing. This is the part of the game that’s in my blood.

Hunters have changed a lot over the last five years. The skill of watching your pet’s aggro when you solo– and your own aggro in a group– is mostly gone. The art of chain trapping is largely gone now that traps last over twice as long as they used to and are rarely used anyway. Ferocious Inspiration, once a Beast Master’s most iconic talent outside of Bestial Wrath, is gone. Steady Shot and Arcane Shot swapped places as the Shot We Liked and then we dumped Steady altogether for Cobra. Shot weaving is gone. Mana is gone.

Blizzard doesn’t seem to know what they’re doing with Aspects. At one point we had a whole bunch of them and it felt like an important part of the class, but now we’re down to “Aspect of the Always Use so It Should Really Just be Baseline”, “Aspect of the Running From the Bank to the Mailbox”, and “Aspect of the PvP Maybe or Something?” and the latter is about to be removed.

Hunters of all specs languish at the bottom of DPS simulations, and Beast Masters are so bursty currently that PvPers are complaining and we’re probably first in line for the traditional x.1 nerfbat.

It’s a tricky business.

So what are people doing? Retiring the hunter until Blizzard figures out what they’re doing with the class? Perhaps. As for me, I couldn’t ever permanently put on another mask. Five and a half years of playing a single class drills instincts and habits into you that you wouldn’t have playing something different, and perhaps it puts a certain mindset into you, as well.

And so I’ll keep doing what hunters have always done. Surviving.

All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies.
And whenever they catch you, they will kill you.
But first, they must catch you. Digger, listener, runner. Prince with a swift warning.
Be cunning, and full of tricks, and your people will never be destroyed.

alts

Some thoughts on Mists of Pandaria!

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Before I go into this I need to caveat this by saying that I quit raiding halfway through WotLK so this is coming purely from a “casual” perspective. I know that there are some kerfuffles going on regarding raiding but I have no personal experience with that so I can’t comment on it.

That said, Mists of Pandaria is fantastic so far. I really don’t have enough praise for it. I love the pandas. I love the quests. I love that I can group with people on other servers. I really love the zones. Every single zone so far is better than every one of the Cata zones (with the exception of Uldum but Uldum was just god-tier in every way so it sort of doesn’t count.)

Blizz has made a lot of really great quality of life changes and I appreciate them. I’m still waiting for a “toybox” or something to hold all of the toys we’re getting in panda quests because my bags could really use a break, but BEYOND THAT I love everything.

MoP has really revitalized the game for me. Cata was just… I don’t know. I wanted so much to like it. I appreciate all the immense amount of work Blizzard put into revamping 1-60, I really do. But something about it just didn’t click for me. Uldum, and to a lesser extent Vas’jir, were the only two new zones that I liked, and the others were thoroughly forgettable. Similarly I only really liked two of the new dungeons while the others just… urgh. Anyways, that’s why I hardly played at all during that expac.

But now here we are and I’m having a blast and Mr. Pike and I are talking about doing Loremaster because we’re just having that much fun!

Also, apparently a male blood elf hunter is my main now. I know, I know. But Mr. Pike rolled a female blood elf mage and grouping them up together is ridiculously adorable. Fun fact: this blood elf of mine has been around since Burning Crusade. No really, I think he was in his 50s or something when Wrath hit. Then I got him to 63 or so and quit leveling him entirely until about four weeks ago and now he’s level 88.

Also he’s cute. Shut up. MALE BLOOD ELVES ARE CUTE OKAY. I mean look at this bad boy:

Would tame.

How is MoP treating you, my friends?

pets, wrath of the lich king

Well That Only Took Four Years

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Tawyn, Hunter #1, has been making the rounds on and off for years and nothing.

Lunapike, Hunter #2, has been making the rounds on and off for years and nothing.

But today I was doing panda quests on Tawyn and I thought “Huh, Hunter #3 is my cat collector. I should send him up to Sholazar and see what happens.”

And so it came to pass that Althalor, Hunter #3, snagged Loque on his very first tiptoe into Sholazar Basin. Lucky SOB.

Congrats, belf boy. You’ve come a long way from posing with the Rake on Cracked.com.