Cuddle Tiem

Wintergrasp on Murmur

2008-09-09T11:26:00.000-07:00

I was unlucky enough to have had a chance to copy over a level 80 premade shaman to Murmur and try out an initial pass of Lake Wintergrasp pvp. Of course all forms of shaman are completely broken right now: main hand Windfury doesn't work, Thunderstorm knocks back 5 yards instead of 20, and resto goes oom after two-ish heals. (Poor resto; the death of downranking will be a difficult thing to compensate for.) So this was doomed to be a masochistic experiment from the start.

When you enter, you have absolutely no idea wth is going on, and nobody else does either. General chat is plagued with panic and pleas for invites into a nonexistent raid. In battlegrounds you can glean the rules relatively quickly, but Wintergrasp objectives are very different from anything else we've seen. There are factories and siege weapons and nodes on the map with unfamiliar icons. An in-game tutorial or questline for first-timers is probably necessary, although the warzone atmosphere is highly effective when you've had no prior exposure.

What really made the whole experience for me was that none of the rezzers were functioning. It was pretty hypnotizing watching the rez timer repeatedly tick from 26 seconds remaining back to 30. Basically you could rez by relogging if the Horde took your insignia, but if they didn't, you had to run back to your corpse, get ganked again by campers, and hope that one of them would take enough pity to loot you so that you can relog in a safer place.

By a "safer place," I suppose I am referring to the graveyards. Blizz apparently wants to discourage camping, as evidenced by their design of EotS; the Wintergrasp graveyards are placed on top of steeply sloped snow mounds, so that melee on the ground would be unable to walk up to the graveyard to farm kills. Unfortunately this meant you couldn't get back to the rezzer if you jumped off as a ghost and attempted to seek a rezzer that wasn't on strike in an adjacent zone. Also, snow mounds aren't stopping shadowstep rogues, ferals (wtf?), and Hordies dropping from their flying mounts because some noob hilariously implemented the unflyable zone aura as a lawlbuff that you can click off rather than a debuff.

Not to mention there were about 10 Alliance, and hundreds of Horde. I'm sure this is just a minor detail, and that non-instanced zone pvp will be a completely balanced game on servers with 5:1 Horde to Alliance ratios and vice versa. Just like how instanced pvp is perfectly balanced without using any gear-based metrics for matchups. Then there's the problem of non-instanced pvp having the Shatt effect — the last thing pvpers want is moar lag. It will be interesting to see if and how Blizz attempts to address any of these issues.

Best of all were these graphical display delights that appeared whenever I attempted to cast.

Sexy leet perspective transform skillz.

I'm looking forward to seeing the Lake Wintergrasp experience improve, seeing as it's about the only thing it can do at this point.

Dragonblight to Grizzly Hills

2008-08-27T10:28:00.000-07:00

To me, Dragonblight is really a creepy place, with its sci-fictitious time warping and the daily litter of twitching oversized dragon corpses. It's also an unfortunate zone for low graphics settings. I felt like so much of it was Galli ooh-ing and ah-ing at the scenery on his kickass gaming machine while I stared at a mildly chlorinated swimming pool populated with dust bunnies. The drastically sloped terrain makes high draw distance necessary, and underpowered shaders mattify the snowy sheen that blankets the region. It's really the first time having a poor computer has detracted so dramatically from the atmosphere of a zone.

Less impressive than on Galli's machine.

Less contentious than My Inner Turmoil.

More altruistic than is credible.

Just plain creepy.

Admittedly I was pretty relieved to escape to the Grizzly Hills, a zone that has a strong vibe of the comfortable and the familiar. It is curiously refreshing for an area that doesn't add much that is new, whether in the way of mobs or storyline directions. The worgen threat quests directly reference the storyline out of Silverpine Forest. The slightly remodeled furbolg are back at their tribal faction feuds, now inhabiting evil world trees instead of tunnels bridging level 50-ish zones. The Westfall Brigade makes you reflect on the impact and influence your adventures have had on the world (of warcraft); ol' Gryan Fatmantle greets you with hearty recognition even if you've never seen him before. All this pleasant action-packed nostalgia happens amidst lodges, woodsy wildlife, and pine trees you can practically smell.

An excellent spot for efficient farming of... gelatin?

A relaxing worgen-peppered tour of the woods.

The unique wildlife really brings character to the zone.

There's also this Bambi reference, which is one of those RP setups that just can't be ignored:

Galli couldn't help but oblige in performing his hunterly duties. I personally seized the opportunity to provide an alternate ending.

Elehunter questing

2008-08-22T09:54:00.000-07:00

I've been playing elemental lately because enhance has left me feeling pretty disenchanted. I'm sure at some point it'll be our turn for a polish that gives us something that remotely approaches dual-wielding 2-handers without speed penalty or auto-attack ms. But right now the wolves hit for less than druid Thorns, Maelstrom Weapon doesn't apply to heals, and Static Shock does nominal dps at the expense of much-needed mana regen in a world of increased caster hybridization and inflated mana costs. Not to mention the death of Nature's Guidance and the fact that my stats suck because I leveled, and geared properly for Burning Crusade. So right now one hilarious Thunderstorm animation every 45 secs is staving off that deep depression that has threatened shamans since the onset of Burning Crusade.

To be honest, Thunderstorm isn't even that OP unless there are cliffs involved. The gcd means you only really have time for 1.5-ish lightning bolts before dudes are meleeing in your face again. (The real killer talent in the elemental tree is revised EotS: 70% pushback resist is sure to make those ubiquitous quad-boxing ele shaman gladiators even more unstoppable.) However, Galli and I discovered that a Kill Shot that kills a thunderstormed mob leaves the dead mob in the air, which should make that combination extremely amusing in pvp.

Thunderstorm + Kill Shot creates excellent humiliation.

As I've stated before, my crit is shameful and my resto mp5 is through the roof for this spec, so I never have to stop for sips of pungent seal whey but I don't kill things quickly either. Luckily, Serpent Sting on beta makes it trivial to own elites even while naked and sleeping, so this alleged problem of "not enough damage" is kind of moot unless you face the terrible misfortune of attacking an unstung target.

Hunter: still the best debuff in the game.

Of course, there's always the option of having your golem army do your quests for you. As a bonus for pet classes, these mechanical drones will obey the commands given to your master pet, creating synchronized swarms of ownage. It's too bad that the golems are so highly vulnerable to server restarts and zoning into instances. Balance really is just such a rock paper scissors game.

It could make shamans viable in arena.

Dalaran

2008-08-20T09:53:00.000-07:00

More tasteful than a theme park and less dread than the dread citadel, Dalaran is... Dalaran. I kid, of course; really I can barely begin to describe the extent of Dalaran's wonders. The floating magical city is a clear foil to Naxxramas in WoW-space, and it is as delightful as Naxx is evil. I am also pretty convinced that it is made out of candy. This would explain why people are eating the city, creating holes to Crystalsong Forest below.

Arabian Nights meets high fructose corn syrup.

This fountain is brought to you by tears from Dalaran mage qq.

Dalaran is so nice that you won't even mind the blatant mage favoritism. The central inn is totally swank, with a lower level dominated by a spacious bar and luxurious accommodations upstairs. When you step outside you see cobblestone streets lined with well-groomed shrubberies and lampposts that you can actually turn on and off. In addition to the standard general goods vendors and white weapon-hawking repair dudes, Dalaran hosts a plethora of novelty shops and stands, including a mechanical toy shop, a non-combat pet supplies store, a relics vendor, and a treant named Applebough who will sell you fruit.

Omg wtb!!!!

I'll take the Mana Tide, plz.

Also new is the tabard vendor in the visitor's center, yet another win by the bag-space activists who brought us summoned mounts and disposable [Riding Crop]s. You can purchase any tabard you have the rep for, although there's no currency exchange market in sight, so you'd better have your apexis shards and glowcaps on hand. You can also necro any non-purchasable tabard that you might have destroyed for good reason, such as the [Green Trophy Tabard of the Illidari], which I prefer to call the Ugliest Item in the Game.

The Illidari tabard is why Illidan wears a blindfold.

The shady sewers below Dalaran must be this century's most inspired innovation in urban planning. The pipe walkways are paved with foul sewage and lead to the city's rodent-infested haven for — you guessed it — arena! That's right, no longer must arena gladiators tread on the toes of WoW's first-class citizens; they can now be safely quarantined in this lower level where they have an arena battlemaster, a season gear vendor, and even their very own scrubby inn. Man Blizz, just segregate the trade channel too and we are g2g!!

Dalaran sewers: where the vermin thrive.

Between the flight master at Krasus Landing, the teleporting elevators, the sewers, the portals, and the barbershop floor, there is certainly no shortage of ways to get out of Dalaran. The Silver Enclave feels deserted and is actually kind of a vanishing point, probably because right now it is little more than a lineup of portals to not-Dalaran. There's nothing particularly Alliance about this Alliance quarter, especially now that they have replaced battlemaster NPCs with more advanced mage technology: queueing for battlegrounds is now a click of a portal away.

Creating unemployment for battlemasters everywhere.

The migration to this new impersonal, automated system is great for actually being able to queue, and certainly an improved iteration from the discarded pedestal idea of 2.4, but you gotta admit that half the fun of queuing for Warsong was an excuse to talk to sexy war-worn Lylandor with the long shadowsong amethyst locks. Hopefully they'll populate the enclave with some NPCs to make the area less of a giant EXIT sign.

Finally, there's this mysterious instance that Galli and I aren't old enough to enter yet.

Open sesame bagel restores 13200 health over 30 secs.

Clearly there's more to Dalaran than can be seen with the naked eye. I can't wait to find out what delectable mage secrets lie behind those shiny doors. (Food table recipe???)

Wax and a haircut

2008-08-11T15:30:00.000-07:00

I decided my hair was getting a bit long for the season, so I headed over to the salon behind the Stormwind AH to get some of it hacked off. When you first sit in a chair, it's a bit like wtf since you can't see your toon anywhere until you zoom your camera out quite a bit. Also it's somewhat startling the first few times someone else sits on the same chair as you, but they fade out and disappear pretty quickly.

My original hair was cute but had a limp, tired look.

The barber shop interface is straightforward enough, basically identical to selecting these features on the character creation screen. Horn reshaping was an undertaking I definitely wasn't prepared for, so I just browsed through the hairstyles. Most of them were just normal draenei cuts, except for a couple blood elf ones.

Do I pay 8g for a goblin to pull my hair back?

I settled on the blood elf bob, which on a draenei seemed to have the perfect combination of length, volume, and lift. It looks absolutely adorable with my puppy-ear horns and engineering goggles. A+++ WILL BUY AGAIN!!! — assuming that more creative styles are added in the future, of course.

Wow it's a whole new me!!!

Back and side views of the haircut are even cuter.

Wootgarde Keep

2008-08-10T23:04:00.000-07:00

Galli and I went through Utgarde Keep yesterday with Stenwick tanking (most of the time, ha ha) and Mareyn healing. Utgarde generally has a pretty badass look and feel. So much of its sheer awesomeness occurs earlier in the instance though, making the later parts actually kind of a letdown. The fiery mouth that you see in all the canned media is by one of the first hallways of the instance.

This fire consumes surprisingly few of my fps.

What mysterious portents lie ahead outside my los?

Prince Keleseth is the first boss and a superbly designed encounter. It's like a 25-man raid compressed into a miniature 5-man box, similar to Kael'thas in Magister's Terrace but significantly less obnoxious. Having not been spoon-fed strats from Wowwiki like we were for most of our nub WoW lives, we actually wiped a couple times figuring out wth was going on. Galli was terribly excited about using Master's Call while learning the fight, even though we discovered it wasn't necessary after all.

Knuth, go nom that off the tank plz.

The second encounter was a pretty average pair of bosses, and the third and last boss completely bugged out for us. It was probably supposed to be a totally earth-shattering culmination of the vrykul questlines, with adds, emotes, dialogue, and multiple phases, but the elite parties involved were curiously silent, and we had to zone out and back in to finish the guy off because he become unattackable.

Hmm, Ramparts reskinned?

Aww shucks... go easy on him next time, I guess.

Exiting the instance is reasonably convenient, which is always important when yours is mage-less party. You jump down this perilous trash-chute-looking thing, and the water at the bottom prevents you from dying. Shamans who pug bad players should remember to carry fish oil to administer retribution as necessary.

Slightly less ezmode than Kael's portal to IQD.

Thunderstorm

2008-08-09T17:19:00.000-07:00

We still can't mount in cities and I haven't mustered the patience to walk my second Chaotique alll the way over to Stormwind Harbor, so I decided to play around with elemental talents in the more accessible Stockade. Even with the spellpower changes my resto gear is still weaksauce for elemental; ele shammies itemize for crit and use clearcasting for longevity, not mp5. So with the new Flametongue Weapon I have about 1.1k spell damage and my lightning bolts don't hit very hard at all.

Low spell damage doesn't make Thunderstorm any less fun, though. This is one of those great abilities that probably feels more overpowered than it actually is. Hey, at least it doesn't heal you for all the damage it does or something retardedly crazy like that (ahem blood dks).

I'm surrounded! What's an ele shammy in resto gear to do?

INSTA EM THUNDER KNOCKBACK LAWLEZ!

Defias captives are a natural source of vitamins and linen.

Finishing up the fjord

2008-08-09T09:23:00.000-07:00

Ahh... being able to mount in a city. I logged back into live servers and felt calmed by the sense of relative stability. Beta is fun, but we definitely get all assortments of bugged environments, evading mobs, random disconnects and the like.

Physics-defying water and taste-defying hair.

Galli and I are almost through with the Howling Fjord, as signified possibly by our "Toured the Fjord!" achievement of having completed 110 quests in the zone. We kept thinking we were almost done, but then there was another followup that was right there, you know, and then we'd uncover another quest hub, and on and on and suddenly it was 5 a.m. and we were dead tired but couldn't stop because the quests were so goddamn amazing. The zone is a masterpiece in environment and atmosphere and the sheer diversity in quest design is really impressive. I hope the rest of Northrend can live up to Howling Fjord — I've already heard that Borean Tundra doesn't.

There is also endless opportunity for cuddles tiem in this zone, which we haven't talked about nearly enough given the name of this blog.

This horny reef cow needs a reef bull.

I win at arranged marriages.

Sorry Scoodles for converting you into delicious gold and xp.

Omg... I'm opaque.

I would've expected to find her in head to toe pvp gear.

Oh wait... that last one wasn't cuddles tiem at all. It was freakin' scary, actually. I must admit though that this whole tumultuous transition from live Burning Crusade to the Wrath beta to live Wrath really forces me to reevaluate how I find enjoyment in this game. Logging into live servers now frequently gives me a minor existential crisis. Memories will last you a long time — and so will titles and mounts. But gear will always be an ephemeral measure of epeen size.

Air Chao

2008-08-08T01:01:00.001-07:00

Real shamans travel via iron rune construct.

Air Galli

2008-08-08T00:12:00.000-07:00

From Assorted WotLK

What a hunterly way to travel! I approve.

Chill nymphs

2008-08-08T00:05:00.000-07:00

Maelstrom Weapon has pretty low utility in its current state, as it still resets the swing timer and doesn't proc off of Windfury crits, only auto attacks. Right now it is extremely effective at pulling mobs farther than 20 yds away using a hasted Lightning Bolt once every few kills, and not much else. Seeing as I used to use rank 1 LB for that purpose, I certainly would have preferred the old implementation where one could cast hasted heals (or insta-rez in arena lawl cue qq!).

The change of generic crit rating now affecting spell crit is noticeable. It kind of makes me wish all of our on-crit talents would proc on spell crits too — Mental Quickness, Unleashed Rage, Maelstrom Weapon, and the like. Our hybridized crit mechanics are getting nice and complex, with spell crits increasing melee crit chance and melee crits reducing mana costs of spells yet opening the door to higher mana consumption. I can't wait to train Lava Burst to add to all the confusion.

These sons of liches are strong... but not strong enough.

We've finally encountered some elite mobs that weren't trivially easy to kill, like some liches and some runed stone giants. The ginormous devilsaur bug happened again during some runed stone giant ownage, and I got owned instead while trying to take screenshots — which, like baby pictures, you totally can't get enough of.

Giant devilsaur, now with flagged hordies.

Are you watching my health? 'Cause I'm not.

It finally occurred to us though that gear is totally going to devalue as we level because of the way hit rating, crit rating, and expertise convert on a per-level basis. That combined with the fact that there aren't any gear upgrades until like, say, level 77, is kind of depressing. We'll just continually enfeeble until we reach that sordid minimum. I gasped in dismay when I dinged 71 and saw that I had lost a precious point of expertise, and it pains me to think that my already pitiful crit chance will also be plummeting by the level. I actually broke down and replaced a bunch of my epic strength gems with blue-quality agility ones that were previously queued for Dijkstra's upgrades.

Anyway, let's not think about such dark, dark, dark things. NYMPHS. There are actual mobs called chill nymphs. You can free them from their unchilled forest that is a couple hundred yards away from the frigid habitat of the frost nymphs.

I'm totally sparing you the nymphomaniac jokes.

Devilsaur addendum

2008-08-07T11:19:00.000-07:00

There's a display issue with devilsaurs that I'm pretty sure hunters won't be reporting to Blizzard anytime soon. Sometimes Galli's devilsaur appeared elite in its unit frame and was displayed using the full size model of its untamed, natural state in the wild. This only ever seemed to happen on other people's screens (like mine) and not Galli's. So that's probably what accounted for all the "omg it's so huge" / "that's what Chao said" conversations.

Elite devilsaur turns in quest to Captain Adams.

Taming Tyrants

2008-08-07T09:57:00.001-07:00

From Devilsaurs!

I was very excited when I heard the announcement that Hunters would now be able to tame Devilsaurs. In TBC, far too few pets were used in practice. All of the hunters in my 25-man raid group (SGA Fubar), used windserpents. Although it was kind of cool to have a whole fleet of flappy serpents, it is more fun to have a variety of viable pets. Also, devilsaurs are cool. With this goal in mind, I set out for Un’goro Crater. I first headed to Menethil with hopes of catching a boat to Theramore, but it never arrived. Instead, we flew to Booty Bay, hopped the boat to rachet, and then flew down.

From Devilsaurs!

Upon arrival in Un’goro, I wandered around a bit using track beasts to find a devilsaur. There are three skins for the devilsaurs available: a greenish black one, a brown one, and a white one. The first one I came across was an Ironhide Devilsaur, which uses the greenish black skin. This guy was no problem at all to tame; he didn’t hit very hard. I decided that the white skin (with pink eyes!) would fit in better in Northrend. The problem is that the white devilsaurs have a knockback, which they use fairly frequently. Also, the brown devilsaurs have a fear. Both of these mechanics interrupt the (relatively long) channeling of tame beast, making taming these beasts problematic.

From Devilsaurs!

It turns out that both of these are tameable. To deal with the fear, I decided to use The Beast Within to become unfearable. Unfortunately, this requires having a pet, but you can’t have a pet while taming. However, the buff persists even after abandoning the pet, so you can pop the ability, abandon the pet, and then begin taming while you are still immune to fear. I also used drums of battle and Chao’s Heroism to speed up the cast time (this strategy will be familiar to those of you who tamed ghost wolves). The white devilsaur was tameable by waiting until it used it's knockback, popping heroism + drums of battle, and taming before it used the ability again.

From Devilsaurs!

I love the devilsaur. It has a family specific ability called Monstrous Bite, which increases it’s attack power and causes it to grow in size. It stacks up to three times, which makes for a pretty big beast. Pop Bestial Wrath, and you have a pretty large dino.

From Devilsaurs!

One drawback from this pet family is how noisy it is. I don’t mean during combat, but the footstep animation. As Kuruyami of Northrend so aptly put it: “dam thats one loud step”. Although the noise was annoying at first, I have gotten used to it.

From Devilsaurs!

Since devilsaurs are pretty new, I get a lot of comments on it while walking around. I'm sure people will get used to seeing hunters wandering around with giant dinosaurs, mauling their enemies...

From Devilsaurs!

Also, it seems that there are still some bugs to work out. The pet frame display is a bit strange, and there isn't a swim animation yet.

From Devilsaurs!

Here is a gallery of relevant screenshots. See you next time!

From Devilsaurs!

Water walking wolf

2008-08-06T11:30:00.000-07:00

Galli and I had tacitly agreed to keep our leveling perfectly in alignment, so when he was busy yesterday I rolled a death knight for kicks. The starting questline feels pretty damn epic, but pretty damn evil too. Runic power definitely feels like warrior rage, which means combat requires the same kind of patience. Luckily the death knight abilities have such over-the-top colorful swirly graphics that it's easy to keep yourself entertained.

Ohai!!!

The leveling hasn't been super fast so far, since the scenery has been so fascinating. We're halfway to 71 after two nights of questing, a couple of hours per night. This was all with rested XP that seems to have been arbitrarily calculated. I've observed quite a number of cruises and flights with somewhat circuitous path planning — which is great while we're still wide-eyed fresh graduates from Outland, but seems like it could get old soon. People are already jumping out of the boat to Valgarde and swimming instead.

I'm loving the quests and environments so far, and at least one questline has me utterly intrigued. Things just seem more directed and motivated than in Burning Crusade. The wildlife is great too; it's cool to see hawks perched in pairs on rocks and shoveltusk stags sparring with their (oh so sexy) antlers. I did notice that a lot of quests give you control over some entity that replaces your action bars. Maybe after the catastrophes of Teron Gorefiend Blizzard decided that everyone could use more practice with this mechanism.

It's a boy thing.

I also remembered the whole thing about Ghost Wolf not canceling the Water Walking buff, and it is totally true. Now this is a real victory for shamans everywhere.

Yeah I put Water Walking on a wolf that disappeared after 45 secs.

Nice aurora borealis even for my ghetto graphics settings.

First impressions

2008-08-05T11:05:00.000-07:00

With my talents stripped away and my abilities unbound from my fingertips, I felt clumsy and disoriented venturing into the World of Wrathcraft beta. I was also apparently even in resto gear, which for you non-hybrids feels kind of like cross-dressing and being naked at the same time. Not that resto gear has any meaning anymore. The conversion to spellpower was rather thorough; no enchantment, gem, or socket bonus was left behind.

It's actually a little disconcerting how this change made a large fraction of BC itemization completely redundant. To think that the sunmote I used to convert [Gauntlets of the Ancient Shadowmoon] to [Gauntlets of the Ancient Frostwolf] totally sacrificed itself for a minor conversion of spell crit to mp5.

Spellpower everywhere.

Um good, now I can DE one of them.

Of course, my strength gems and enchants didn't magically convert themselves to AGILITY POWER! or anything, so after the changes to our AP and crit derivations from strength and agility my melee stats didn't look too impressive.

I'm so weak qq.

It took me over an hour to muster the courage to actually put in talents. By then Galli was slaughtering all the inhabitants of the Howling Fjord he could get his unlinked Auto Shot on. I was exceptionally pleased to find sharks in the water, which Galli lost no time skinning. There were also real live penguins hanging out on glaciers while we were on the cruise to Borean Tundra. Hopefully we'll see moar aquatic creatures moar (although it's too bad manatees are warm-weather ones... sigh, there's always next expansion).

Can you find the lost reagent pouch???

I basically spent the rest of the night with Galli on follow, trying to wrap my head around the fact of XP after 70. Fourier seemed extremely overpowered for some reason. After we got our UIs to a barely usable state, mobs just exploded. This made me regret putting points into Maelstrom Weapon so early, since there was no way you could crit a mob enough times for the buff to stack before the mob keeled over.

And ah yes... spirit wolves. As far as I could see they attacked with nonnegative damage — both of them even, for those who knew about the staying and cuddling bug. It will be interesting to see what uses they will serve when they are done being implemented. For now they provide very large doses of spiritual canine comfort for 45 seconds every 2 minutes.

Feral spirits in the spiritual world of aggro every Lich Kings.

Beta key

2008-07-31T22:45:00.000-07:00

Omg hai2U!!!!!

Hello!

2008-07-31T22:40:00.000-07:00

I'm Galli of Perenolde, a Hunter in the Sleeper Cartel. Chaotique and I created this blog to share our experiences in Northrend. I'll probably post primarily about Hunter mechanics, while Chao will cover Shamans. Thanks for stopping by!