Tobold's Blog
Friday, June 02, 2006
 
WoW Journal - 2-June-2006

My fire resistance in my best FR gear for my priest went up to over 100. I found that I had a forgotten cloth bracers with +14 FR in my bank. And then I found a cheap tunic of fire resistance with +28 FR on the auction house for just 15 gold and bought it. But of course items like these point out the problem with fire resistance gear: it obviously has less good stats in other areas. So if I put on my FR tunic, I can't wear my Truefaith Vestment at the same time. And all the other FR items are replacing items that give me intelligence, and I end up with something like 1000 mana less for 100 fire resistance more. So as a priest I would certainly not want to shoot for 300+ fire resistance, if in consequence I just stand around stupidly without mana. For the rest of the people in the raid it doesn't make a huge difference whether I don't heal because I'm out of mana or whether I don't heal because I'm burned to a crisp. I tend to favor survival, due to the chance of regenerating mana, but that is slow, and I shouldn't go all out for maximum survival gear and forget about my mana pool.

In other news I'm playing "waiting for the weekend" during the week in World of Warcraft. My new guild is raiding every single night, *sigh*, and at hours that are incompatible with my need for sleep. So I didn't get into any guild group all week long. :( Last night I joined a pickup group to Stratholme living, but we abandoned at the third Ziggurat because the hunter had just wiped us for the umpteenth time by a bad pull and bad use of his pet. I know that there are good hunters around, but if I'm ever organizing a pickup group I'll install a "no hunters" rule. I don't know what it is about that class that makes them the source of trouble in most pickup groups I've been in. What was really annoying was that the hunter had already got a blue BoE polearm he could sell and his beaststalker boots at that point, so he probably left quite satisfied with his performance and reward.

So I'm wondering what I'll do during the week in World of Warcraft in the future. I play in 4-hour sessions from 6 pm to 10 pm, but at 6 pm it's still to early to get a group together, and by the time I got a group together at 8 pm, the remaining 2 hours are often too short to finish a dungeon. I spent a lot of time in activities that fall under the heading of "raid preparation", like collecting fire resistance gear, or gathering herbs for major mana and greater fire protection potions. But I don't think a cycle of raiding on weekends and raid preparation during the week will satisfy me, it is too repetitive. But I'm sure raiding and grouping on the weekend will be fun again.

What I really, really want is to play the Burning Crusade expansion, and experience all the new content, instead of repeating content I already know all over again. But of course the expansion is till half a year away, and I feel a bit as if I'm stuck on the longest loading screen ever.
Comments:
Hunters - a combination of being one of the most obvious newbie classes with also being one of the trickiest to play well in a group (IMO)? I've noticed Warlocks have similar problems.
 
Here's a suggestion for passing the time while you are waiting for Burning Crusade: At the risk of sounding facetious I think you should go back and play your hunter for a while. Hunters are great fun to play solo. It'll be even more enjoyable if you play for amusement rather than try to force level another end game toon - you can set yourself challenges like taking on Elite Mobs with just you and your pet. Granted grouping may not be the hunters forte - but soloing can be fun too and you can do it in your own timescale.
 
I played a hunter to 60 at the height of anti-hunter hysteria, in the pre-hunter love era. I've given him up for a shadow priest, so please pardon me if my memory is bad or some of this stuff has changed.

The problem with hunters is that most all of their features have huge honking caveats attached to them.

Pet: Your pet can wipe a group. Warlocks have to deal with this also, but they have pets that can phase shift (not draw aggro in passive mode) and attack from a distance.

Before pet resistances, pets were WAY too fragile. Now, they're still pretty fragile. There are 5 schools of magic, and only 2 stable slots.

Volley: AOE that isn't terribly good. If you hit, chances are that the mini-mobs will aggro onto you and out of the AOE area.

Multi-shot: Great in theory, not so much in practice. Fighting a group of three mobs in an instance? Don't multi-shot, because you might just hit a mob off to the side that hasn't aggroed yet. Clearing mobs before you fight Rend? Don't shoot -- you'll hit an observer. Even in the best case, a critter will probably get targetted and rob you of one of your hits.

Aimed Shot: As a Beast Mastery specced Hunter in not great gear, the time I spend aiming my shot would be better spent autofiring and hitting Arcane.

Arrows and Quivers: Better arrows increase your DPS! Better quivers increase your attack speed! But... they take up a bag slot, cost you tons of money, and run out at inopportune times forcing you to hunt for a vendor!

If it wasn't for Tranquilizing Shot and Pet Pulling I don't know if Hunters would be part of group PvE.
 
I would attribute Hunters as the most badly played class on WoW to the following few factors:

1. It is the most appealing class to most newbies creating their first character.

2. It is not as easy a class as it seems to be. The players have to control two entities, their character and pets in order to play the class to its fullest potential.

3. It is the class that takes the shortest time to level to 60. A personal research of mine shows that on most, if not all, the new servers, hunter is the class that reaches 60. Reaching 60 and yet a newbie is thus very common for hunters.
 
Hey, I explictly said that I know that there are good hunters, and of course I will group with all the hunters that I know that they do play their class well.

I was only talking about pickup groups, where picking up a hunter you don't know is a big risk, compared to inviting strangers of other classes.
 
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