Guild Wars 2 Beta: Initial Impressions

Meet Tove, my Norn Ranger. Isn’t she awesome?  She’s pretty awesome. Also, the character creator is addicting, guys, you have no idea. I have sliders to play with, weeeeeee. There could be some more variety in the faces (for those of us who are bad at sliders), but after 7 years of WoW character creation I’m just not going to bitch that much. There’s a height slider (more wee!) and while there’s no body sliders, you do have a selection of frames to choose from, and that’s something.

I didn’t level as high as some of my friends did–the sense of BUT I HAVE TO DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN AT RELEASE was definitely there, holding me back. Getting Tove to 10 was enough for me to know I wanted to play a ranger. I also poked around with a Guardian and an Elementalist and liked those. Warrior and Thief didn’t instantly appeal, but I also only leveled them to like…2, so.

Combat was fun, although for both Ranger and Elem I did a lot of OMG RUN AROUND IN CIRCLES KITE KITE KITE.  Ranger pets could use with being made of a little less tissue paper.  One really nice thing I noticed, though, was that individual pets within a family mattered.  My snow leopard was not the same as any other cat–each type has their own special ability. I also noticed some slight differences in cat models, although I failed to get a good screen shot. My norn ranger’s cat seemed to have a thicker tail (as befits a snow leopard) than my friend’s human ranger’s jaguar.

We tried PvP. We were bad at it, but we enjoyed being bad. Wait. No, we enjoyed PvP despite being bad. It feels somewhat like old AV, in the sense that it’s a huge map with points you want to capture. Only…with a larger map. And supply routes and caravans to defend and things. And no mounts. Yeah. Don’t get me wrong though, we really DID enjoy ourselves! We were just also terrible.

It was also interesting to note that you don’t see the names of your opponents–they are simply labeled by team color.

This is a Charr. A female Charr, in case you were wondering (and I couldn’t blame you if you were). I had fun making mine resemble a snow leopard. The four ears and two horns are a leeeeettle weird, but actually, I rather like this race.  See MMO people, not all females of every race have to be pretty. I can rock FIERCE and be glad. Although I wish her claws were a little smaller–those just seem impractical!

Awesome random notes: you can only have two professions active at a time, but you can switch without losing progress. You can TURN OFF YOUR SHOULDER GRAPHICS. There’s armor and then there’s town clothes, which are also awesome. Oh, and dying clothes works SO much better in GW2 than it did in RIFT, seeing as how RIFT like to leave swathes of the garment undyed and thus looking awful. Replacing gear also automatically dyes it to match the rest, until you change your dye scheme in the hero panel.  Squee!

The game is fucking pretty. SO fucking pretty. The cities feel like cities. There’s fascinating nooks and crannies, interesting NPCs, and breath taking background views.

RP is a little awkward. For one thing, there’s no official RP server, although Tarnished Coast has been declared the unofficial one, and I did indeed see RP in various cities as I traveled around. There’s no /say though, and the emote range is expansive…so you basically spam the zone with your emotes and talk in the local channel. That’s the most significant issue we have to see addressed. I’d also really like to sit in chairs.

Some people complain about a lack of chat bubbles, but I don’t see the point–I’ve always kept an eye on my chat log. The only time I rely on chat bubbles is in spammy, tavern type events…but, I think I could live without them. Chat bubbles pop up next to players in the party interface, so there’s always that as an option.

But I want to sit in the chairs, damn it!

So. That is my rambling overview of the GW2 beta. I will indeed be playing, and at this point in time there’s vague plans for an RP guild build around a core of my RP friends from Earthen Ring. Look for Tove in future beta events if you want to say hi!

BM Huntering: Spec Experimentation

I’m not a math person.  I’m far more likely to slog through the mathy guides and try to “translate” them into something more palpable (and amusing) than I am to try to generate numbers myself.  These are trying times, however, as the math gods of EJ are distracted by the shiny numbers at 85 and I cannot rely on them to do the hard work for me.

So!  I slapped an alternative spec into my other tab and decided to test it on dummies FOR YOU.  Don’t you feel special?  You should.  I’m normally too lazy to do anything so technical.

The BM portion of the spec is relatively standard.  Two points should go into Go for the Throat–nothing has changed there.

But what about the other points?

There.  That is my spec.  Effeciency was also tempting, but I opted to play with Improved Serpent Sting and…and um, whatever the other box is, that gives you haste.  In my “haste = more focus regen = less fail?” line of thought I was curious to see if putting full points in that would help.

It didn’t.

Now haste value is one of those subjective things.  How much latency do you have?  How much haste is already on your gear?  it could be that you’ll hit one of those magical sweet spots and it will do uber magical things for you but generally speaking…eh, go for full ISS and be done with it.

(The difference was ~100-200 DPS, if you’re wondering.)

And you might have already known this or it may be patiently obvious to you more mathy types but WHATEVER, I TRIED FOR YOU.

ICC Post 4.0 Commentary, and BM Hunter Musings

ICC Post 4.0

LOL Bug #1: if for some reason you can’t see Gunship, don’t just keep walking assuming it’s a graphics glitch even if everyone else is safely on the boat.  You will fall and die…just ask our tankadin Solt.

LOL Bug #2: Icy blasts and other important Things On Ground To Not Stand in on Sindy’s platform are well nigh impossible to see.  While you can see Sindy’s blasts of icy doom via the swirls (not the circles on the ground, oh no, but the swirls), whatever the little dragons cast is currently invisible.  I apparently died by standing in 3 of them.  Okay!

Which brings me to…
LOL Bug #3: A lot of people are having a hell of a time getting their buffs/debuffs to reappear, even after ditching whatever buff addon they were using.  I wish I could tell you how I fixed mine, but really all I did was flail at settings in Interface and then relog and they magically reappeared.  Relogging is the magic fix for a lot of things right now.  Let me tell you, not seeing buffs and debuffs made Sindy fun.

If you’re just curious about looking at some numbers, our WoL is over here: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/7iooyri0rxyay7co/

We started late and still killed Sindy.  ICC on normal mode, at least, is now /faceroll.  I’d say that it’ a fairly “safe” place to play around on alts-that-might-be-new-mains.

On BM Hunters, In Particular

I did not particularly enjoy huntering last night.  Of course I’m not going to give up on BM hunters that easily, but for now at least I’m going to be focusing on bringing up some other alts…just in case.

I don’t like focus.  It’s seriously disrupted the flow that huntering has been for the past 5+ years.  I’m going to give myself time to adjust, but initial impression is one of BLARGH FUCK THIS.

It’s hard to judge DPS while we’re missing key things (o hai, level 81 skills) but I was lagging massively behind everyone else.

I passionately hate being terrible at something.  Right now, I feel terrible at huntering, and it’s twice as frustrating since I used to be good at it. 

Serpent Sting needs to last longer.  I feel that with its current duration, it’s obnoxious to keep reapplying.  Or maybe I just can’t cope with a focus restrained shot priority, I don’t know.  It always seems like there’s one more shot I need to get in RIGHT NOW and I can’t because I have to steady shot for more focus and then kill command comes up and then oh god where did my focus go and fuck how long as serpent sting been down?

I miss my pew pew moonfire kitty.  The heal seems like a lackluster (and far less useful) replacement for a pet skill I used to enjoy based on looks alone.

Bleh.

Four Point Oh Noes: The BM Hunter

Updated 10/20/10

 

For now this guide is going to be primarily regurgitation.  I’ll update it with my own information and findings after I get in some testing time tonight (as I had to wait until it hit live because the PTR hated me).

Specs
These specs are tuned for boss damage–at his point we’re still raiding, so soloing builds can wait until Cata proper.  My post on builds, including my spec, is here.

Other options: 31/5/0

Rotation
BM used to have a proper rotation, but now it’s joined the Priority Club.

Start off your shots with Hunter’s Mark and Sepent’s Sting.

Kill Command > Focus Fire (when pet has full Frenzy) > Serpent Sting > Arcane Shot (focus dump) > Steady Shot (to regen focus)

Make sure that Kill Command is available for Beastial Wrath (nothing new here, you should have been doing this all along).  BW is now for Arcane Shot spamming, apparently.

Remember that you never want to sit at 100 focus, because then you’re wasting your focus regen!

Note that BM hutners do not yet have our “signature shot”–Cobra Shot isn’t available until 81, so I’d hold final judgements on this spec until Cata proper.  We can’t fully judge how awesome we’re going to be when missing a key shot.  My understanding is that it will replace Steady Shot.

The Cata thread on EJ posted this, but it made my brain hurt just to look at it.  If you can make sense of it though, kudos to you.

if HM is not on target or running out in less than a set time and there´s no MfD on target and focus/cooldowns/target heath don´t allow for KS or KC
–> cast HM
if KS is off CD and target health is at or below 20%
–> cast KS
if KC is off CD and enough focus
–> cast KC
if SpS is not on target and enough focus
–> cast SpS
if focus over or at 75 (modified by Efficiency)
–> cast AS
none of the above
–> cast CoS

Glyphs
Prime:
Kill Shot, Arcane Shot, Steady Shot
Also an option: Kill Command, Serpent Sting
ETA: My personal testing has revealed that I actually have higher DPS replacing Serpent Sting with Steady Shot, so I have revised the post to reflect this. Serpent Sting topped out at about 4.7 on a dummy, where SS was usually at 4.8/4.9 with spikes of 5k.

Major:
Beastial Wrath
Also an option: Whatever the hell you feel like.  Frostheim lists disengage, but if you’re anything like me and trying to avoid disengaging off cliffs to your death, you might not want to go there.  Since I’m trying to afford re-glyphing eleventy billion alts right now in multiple specs, I’m acutally not rocking any Majors aside this one.

Minor:
Mend Pet, Feign Death, Revive Pet

Notes on Stats
We only need 248 hit.  Pet hit no longer rounds down.
Crit > Haste?  Haste > Crit?  What about Mastery?  I’d love to answer this question for you but I don’t fucking know.  Research to come.  Haste is said to contribute to focus regen, but how much?  EJ is still working on this one.  So far it seems to 1% haste =1% focus regen.  I’m currently experimenting with trying to get more haste to see if this helps my “omg not enough focus” issue, or if I only fuck my rotation up more.  Ha.

From EJ:

… It’s unclear at this time whether agil/crit or agil/haste is preferable for yellow sockets but this is most likely relative to how high your crit and haste are. Keep in mind that although the crit and haste caps are very high, pet melee crit will cap out at a much lower amount, and haste’s value has sweet spots based on how it allows your shots to flow and keeps your focus in balance. Mastery can only be obtained at the moment from reforging. The theorycrafting on it isn’t clear at this time on whether it will outperform haste and crit.

As for old set bonuses, eh.  T9, even the 4 piece, is no longer as appetizing as it was.  I’ve opted to ditch my t9 entirely (keep in mind I killed LK rocking 4 pc T9 still) and wear what was once my survival set.  The higher crit/haste numbers on the higher ilevel gear gives me more room for reforging stuff.

Gems
Nightmare tears are now silly for us as we only benefit from agi.
Red: +20 Agility (Delicate Cardinal Ruby)
Orange: +10 Agility +10 Haste (Deft Ametrine) |  +10 Agility +10 Crit. (Deadly Ametrine)
Blue: +20 Hit Rating (Rigid Majestic Zircon)
Purple: +10 Agility +10 Hit Rating (Glinting Dreadstone)

Pets, Pets, and More Pets!
Hunter pet was normalized with 4.0, so now it’s a matter of personal prefrence/buffs.  While browising the EJ MM 4.0 thread I stumbled across from handy graphics (originally from Petopia?) that I shall now share:

Pew pew moonfire kitty now heals?  What?

Sources:
Warcraft Hunter’s Union (www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/2010/10/bm-hunter-patch-4-0-1-talents-rotation-and-glyphs/)
Elitist Jerks (http://elitistjerks.com/f74/t106028-mm_hunter_4_0_1_a/ & http://elitistjerks.com/f74/t97229-cataclysm_hunter_changes/)
MMO Champs: (http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/770793-4.0.1-Hunters)

Why Spirit Beasts Are Rage Inducing

Despite my new Survival off spec, I am still BM4LYFE.  The one pet that I have been after, for months and months and months…has been Loque.  I have seen him once, moments after he was tamed by another hunter.   

Why Spirit Beasts Are Rage Inducing #1
There’s several (SEVEN FOR LOQUE OH MY GOD WHY) mother fucking spawn points scattered across a large zone for all but 1 of them.

Seriously, Blizz?  I once spent a good, oh I don’t know, 7 hours camping Humar back in the day when he was more than just a pretty skin.  It wasn’t too onerous becuase I sat in one spot and entertained myself with friends while we waited.  He had only one spawn–I’d know the moment he popped and also the moment I missed him, if someone else beat me to the punch.  Even if I didn’t get him it wasn’t the end of the world–I’d have a good idea of when to come back and could safely wander off in the meantime and pretend to have something better to do.

You can’t do that with the spirit beasts.  Take Loque.  There’s so many spawn points for him, scattered so widely across the zone, that you can miss him and not even know it.  Did someone just tame him?  Are you wasting your time with no chance for him to spawn?  Did you move on just a smidge too soon?  The other hunter in the zone left–did he get him, or give up?  Did that belfadin who has been killing you repeatedly while he mines kill him out of spite?

You can never tell…so YOU MUST KEEP LOOKING. 

….FOREVER.

Why Spirit Beasts Are Rage Inducing #2

You’ve been hunting for hours.  Finally, you spot him–your moonfiring quarry.  You start to tame and….oh no.  Oh no.  FUCK.  FUCK.  GOD DAMN IT ALL TO HELL.

Tames can be fucked with.  People are jerks.  End of story.

Why Spirit Beasts Are Rage Inducing #2.5

Making Loque part of the Frostbitten achievement was a cruel move, Blizzard.  Fuck you sideways.

Why Spirit Beasts Are Rage Inducing #3

You will find and tame every spirit beast but the one you want.

I’m 2/4, if you’re wondering. 

I Am The Most Nub Hunter

I am the most nub hunter of them all, I swear.  Well…no.  Maybe not the most nub.  I may be a BM hunter but I’m not meleeing.  My gear does not have SP on it.   I have gems.  I even have ENCHANTS. 

What I do not have, sometimes, is a clue.

Ways I Died On LK:

Falling off the ledge during phase transition!
Hugging spirits! (I did not hug orbs)
Not tranqing the big uglies in time oh god the tank is dead it’s eating my face oh fuck!
….defile!

 By far the “falling off the ledge” has to win for nubness.  That said, we did get LK down to 17% percent…which means, of course, that he dies next time.

…meanwhile I’m going to learn to Survival Hunter.    /twitches

Altitis Rambles

This is where I ramble about my alts because I did nothing constructive over the weekend, WoW-wise. 

Aside from the occasional heroic, Lyrandre has settled into the role of “the main only played for raids”.  Ambrosine the Tankadin has found herself geared for ICC10 despite myself.  I had comfortably retired her, but we always seem short tanks for the Ulduar Hard Mode runs…

And then there’s the 80 I’m actively working on right now-Jamethera, my semi-infamous BM hunter.  I love her to death and mourn the fact that I don’t get to do much with her, when she was my main for most of BC.   I actually passed on DKP for my priest to run ToC25 with the hunter, instead.   With Ambrosine taking up my precious 3rd raiding day, I find myself resentfully chafing at my self inflicted Tank Bitch status.  Present me with a “someone needs to do X or the raid doesn’t happen” situation and I’ll be that someone every time.   I’ll just…whine about it.  Kind of like I’m doing now.  Ah, well.  My problem.

Jamethera is thiiiiiisclose to being ICC25 ready.  If the pole arm from H HoR ever drops again and actually goes to me, I think she’ll be good to go.  The other two important upgrades-a ring and a cloak-will come shortly thereafter from rep and frost badges.  I might even dual spec and take on MM, if it gives me a chance to beat our resident cocky hunter into the ground.  What I’ll do with her then, I don’t know, but it’s a goal none the less…

The ele/resto shaman is still level 47, as Josh hasn’t felt inclined to play his rogue.  I did spend some qualitiy time on my CatBearTree, though!  One of my guildies, Penitant, was kind enough run me through a few instances, so she went from 54 to 57 in short order.  Half a level to go and I’ll be in Outlands healing groups of 4 DKs.  Maybe I will…not be bored?

How To Not Look Like A Useless Git In Heroics

1) Gem your fucking gear. 
Look, we’ve all gotten a new peice and looked at our funds and cringed.  In the very least, toss a blue-quality gem in there.  If you don’t have the funds to gem it yet, then…don’t wear it.  If I look at you and see multiple ungemmed pieces, though, I’m going to be slightly irked in your direction.  I don’t care if it’s “just a heroic”, that’s plain fucking lazy.  Dailies, go do them for golds.

1b is naturally ENCHANT your shit (at least, your good epic shit).  Even if you get +8 stats instead of +10 because +10 is OMG exepnsive, it shows some effort on your part.   If you don’t enchant your ilevel 200 gear…okay.  But your 245 pants?  Proooobably worth at least putting something on.  Some day you might want to do something more than get carried through shit.

2) Interrupt your chain heroics to repair, or you might end up looking kind of dumb like me. 

3) Ditto that but with ammo and reagents.

4) Don’t forget the part where you at least try to spec, gear, and perform with some semblence of knowledge.   Those can be an evolving process, but seriously?  EMPTY GEM SOCKETS ARE AN EASILY SOLVED PROBLEM.

This post brought to you by lingering butthurt over losing the polearm to a huntard with full…ungemmed…t9.  But also laughing at myself (see point 2).

IMPORTANT PRIEST ANNOUNCEMENT

THE BOUNCING BALL OF INKY GLEE IS BACK

I REPEAT

THE BOUNCING BALL OF INKY GLEE IS BACK

THAT IS ALL, CARRY ON.

Random words on a screen

I’m a little sleepy and creatively pulled in a couple of directions right now, so forgive a rambling post today.  I’ll probably resume quasi-useful posts here shortly, as I still have a Saurfang strat to get up…yes I am behind the times, what else is new?

Last night the raid was a true BoO raid-we one shot everything except the easiest fight in the first wing (Gunship), then proceeded to wipe on Stinky and Precious.

Yes…yes, it was a BoO raid, and I loved it.  We’ll throw ourselves at Festergust some more tonight.

I probably need to re-download Rawr and spend some shadowy time in front of a training dummy, to see if I can’t “fix” my shadow self.  For fights like Festergut, I really need to do something.  In the meantime I might cave and dual spec the hunter, so that she’s available to do the most DPS possible in a pinch.  

Of course stubborn pride really has me not wanting to make my hunter anything but BM.  I’ve been a BM hunter since early ’05, before the first hunter talent reset.  I was BM when it sucked, I was BM when it was awesome, and I’m BM now that’s back to being the red headed bastard child spec. I’m proud of what I can do with it (over 5k).  And yes, I enjoy the occasional envious remark from a fellow hunter because they, too, wish they could raid BM. 

They could, of course.  They won’t, for one reason or another, but they could.  Me, I’ll take my place lower on the meters in order to enjoy the simple pleasure that is a devilsuar named Omnomnom.   I mean come on now, the sight of a devilsaur chowing down on a snowbold that is in turn clinging to someone’s head is hilarious.  BM is just a silly fun spec.   Alas, I might cave and go Surv or something if Festergust is really obnoxious.  I could always go dual BM later, right?

…right.

What the fuck was I talking about?

…can I take a nap now?

…also, it’s REALLY HARD to not bubble a pally tank in a heroic.  REALLY HARD.  You just need a winter hat, Steve.  Winter hats fix EVERYTHING.