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Sep. 14th, 2005 12:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ralphmeltonYesterday, World of Warcraft released a patch with a bunch of substantial changes to the way hunters work. Some first impressions:
- Bestial Wrath is extremely nifty. And with a 2-minute cooldown, you can activate the Buzzsaw Effect every other fight or so.
- I spent 10 gold on new pet skills. This was probably overly exuberant, since there's no way I can put all of the high-level resists on a pet at once. But no matter. (Now I have to budget my pet skill points! Oh no!)
- The pet trainer looked like a fireworks display with people getting the gold nimbus of new skills.
- new hunter quest! Whee!
- I tamed a lot of pets, mostly to look for new skills. Ferocious Howl is pretty neat, as is Dive.
- I had aggro management problems with my new pets. I found two lessons to be learned:
1) Growl is now free to train. When you tame a new pet, teach Growl right away.
2) Cower had gotten set back on on Humar. (No wonder he wasn't holding aggro.)
- I really like the new-and-improved AI for using Dash and Dive. When I tell Humar to attack, he streaks to the target, usually hitting before I can get an arrow off.
- Aimed Shot no longer touches the weapon cooldown timer, so after every aimed shot, there's a follow-up auto shot. It's kind of neat.
- In an experiment with a single target, polymorphing the target did not cause my pet to call off the attack. It still remains to be tried with two targets.
- Went to Stranglethorn to train a Jaguero Stalker, which had Prowl. Now I have a Stealthy Ninja Cat!
- I'm not quite sure how useful the the stealth is in terms of my suddenly-limited training points, but I have concluded that it's very efficient in terms of focus points--the panther turns on Prowl when he leaves combat, which is when he needs focus least.
- Bestial Wrath is extremely nifty. And with a 2-minute cooldown, you can activate the Buzzsaw Effect every other fight or so.
- I spent 10 gold on new pet skills. This was probably overly exuberant, since there's no way I can put all of the high-level resists on a pet at once. But no matter. (Now I have to budget my pet skill points! Oh no!)
- The pet trainer looked like a fireworks display with people getting the gold nimbus of new skills.
- new hunter quest! Whee!
- I tamed a lot of pets, mostly to look for new skills. Ferocious Howl is pretty neat, as is Dive.
- I had aggro management problems with my new pets. I found two lessons to be learned:
1) Growl is now free to train. When you tame a new pet, teach Growl right away.
2) Cower had gotten set back on on Humar. (No wonder he wasn't holding aggro.)
- I really like the new-and-improved AI for using Dash and Dive. When I tell Humar to attack, he streaks to the target, usually hitting before I can get an arrow off.
- Aimed Shot no longer touches the weapon cooldown timer, so after every aimed shot, there's a follow-up auto shot. It's kind of neat.
- In an experiment with a single target, polymorphing the target did not cause my pet to call off the attack. It still remains to be tried with two targets.
- Went to Stranglethorn to train a Jaguero Stalker, which had Prowl. Now I have a Stealthy Ninja Cat!
- I'm not quite sure how useful the the stealth is in terms of my suddenly-limited training points, but I have concluded that it's very efficient in terms of focus points--the panther turns on Prowl when he leaves combat, which is when he needs focus least.
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Date: 2005-09-14 07:25 pm (UTC)Wait a minute...
Date: 2005-09-14 07:42 pm (UTC)Look, I don't know how they run things over on World of Warcraft, but that nonsense simply wouldn't fly on the MMORPGs I've played (Earth & Beyond, Star Wars Galaxies and City of Heroes). The entire purpose of patches and updates is generate traffic on the game's messages boards. The only way to know whether or not an update was successful is to compare the number of players screaming that their favorite class was "nerfed" in this release to the number who screamed about the same thing in the last release. If the number is significantly higher, the update is a success.
Are you sure you're playing the game properly?
no subject
Date: 2005-09-14 07:51 pm (UTC)Halgin mark 2!
no subject
Date: 2005-09-14 08:05 pm (UTC)Re: Wait a minute...
Date: 2005-09-14 08:12 pm (UTC)- Spirit Bond now provides a constant trickle of health to both pet and hunter as a 21-point talent, instead of being a 31-point talent that provided as much healing as a healer ten levels lower, only slower. So far, I've been adequately consoled by the facts that a) the pet gets healing, not just me, and b) I don't have to interrupt my archery to invoke it.
- Mortal Shots has been lowered from a 10% boost to crits per talent point to a 6% boost per point. I do regret this, though I haven't quite gotten enough talent points to get to Mortal Shots. Mostly I just want big 4-digit crits.
But I certainly agree that it's highly suspicious that I've been having fun with the new stuff, and I shall be monitoring myself closely for further evidence of thoughtcrime.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-14 08:15 pm (UTC)And Prowl also seems to increase the chances of a critical on that stealth-breaking hit, and leading off with Frenzy is always good.
I still need to get around to training both Prowl and Dash on one cat, to see if I can be both speedy and stealthy.
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Date: 2005-09-15 03:52 am (UTC)