Thursday, May 22, 2014

Quivers and Ammo (sort of)!

I havn't been posting enough lately because, well, there isn't a lot to say. I recently hit my goal of having a million gold in the bank, and with that out of the way I'm barely even logging into WoW. I log on every Tuesday to kill Ordos on my priest, and then I clear a few old raids looking for mount and transmog drops. All that takes about 30 minutes. Then I play Diablo (I'm terrible) or just go do something outside. I havn't cleared Siege yet, and I don't care if I do or not. I'm just over this expansion for two reasons. For one it's been out a looooooooong time. Too long. Nothing else really to say about that. Second, we keep hearing about the awesomeness of WoD. It's hard for me to get excited about old content while I'm reading all about the new shinies, like....

Quivers! We are getting cosmetic-only quivers and ammo pouches. That is just fun. Pure fun. We don't yet know how we get them, but as transmog has gotten me really into my character's look for the first time, the idea of a quiver sounds awesome. I was already leaning toward making my hunter a Night Elf (his original race in Classic and BC) and quivers sealed the deal.

We're also getting ammo types. Not literally, don't worry about bag space,  but the new level 100 talent that replaces Flaming Shots gives us a choice of one of three ways to augment our Auto Shots. One does AoE fire damage, one does a nature damage DoT, and one does a movement reduction. A comment on Eyes of the Beast specualted that we will use the first for AoE fights, the second for single target, and the third for PvP. While pure speculation, if the tuning is done right I think that makes a lot of sense. I'm excited about this talent for a few reasons. For starters, it's kind of like 3 talents in one. Quite a bit of versatility, although I'm not sure how many different DoTs survival really needs at this point. I know and love that that's our "thing" but if you take the nature damage one for single target, we will have Serpent Sting, Black Arrow, Explosive Shot, Explosive Trap, Bear Trap, and the new one all potentially on a target at the same time! Kind of nuts. It might take a little bit, but that target is gonna die. Taking the fire damage one will make survival even more amazing for AoE. I love doing awesome AoE, it's just fun. I don't PvP much, but the third ammo type seems over powered. Giving us a ranged slow that doesn't require a key press, much less a global cooldown will bring the complaints from non hunters. It's going to be interesting to watch the development of all this. The big question regarding this new talent is can ammo types be swapped during a fight? I hope not. That seems like aspect twisting all over again, which I personally did not enjoy. But no big deal either way. How many fights are going to really require a lot of swapping? On my old team, I was either doing AoE duty or single target duty. And if you are forced to have the AoE ammo during an execute phase, it's not going to be a huge deal. I'm also happy to just see a 100 talent I would actually choose. I've made no secret about disliking Lone Wolf. I hope to avoid Focusing Shot as well. I've gotten way to used to casting it all while moving and I don't really want to go back. If it were just a way to let more skilled hunters do higher damage I would be excited about it, but also being the focus generating shot seems problematic to me, at least for high movement fights. So this early, Exotic Ammo has me the most excited. The only issue I have with it at this point is the damage types seem redundant for Survival. We already have a single target nature damage ability (Serpent Sting) and a fire damage AoE (Explosive Trap). Damage type doesn't usually matter these days, but I'd like them to switch it up a bit just in case. Call one of them Blessed Bullets and make it holy damage or something. Variety is always good.

Things are shaping up for WoD. I'm really excited about it, which is why I'm barely playing World of Warcraft at all. I may even cancel my subscription for the summer and go fishing.

2 comments:

  1. I thought flaming shots was boring because it only affected autoshots. And really that's just not compelling. However, I'm all the sudden crazy excited about this talent, even if it's only affecting Autoshots too. It's basically like we're getting a talent which allows us to pick from three more talents... :-P

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    1. Toally agree. I wasn't as down on Flaming Shots as most, but this is way cooler.

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