Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Improving Professions

WoW Insider's blog topic this week asks how we would improve professions. Perhaps because I have been pretty successful on the AH lately (profiting 3k per day for the last month), or because I'm only in four professions, I'm not sure they need that much improvement. That said, there are some things I would like to see improved. Some of these are the tools used around professions as opposed to the skills themselves. Also, most of these ideas are not original. I get a lot of my ideas from gold podcasts such as Late Night with Stede and the now retired Call to Auction. On to how professions could be improved.

  • Either get rid of all the combat bonuses or truly balance them. It's lame that raiders feel forced to take the same specific professions for the sake of an extra gem, etc. Professions should be totally optional regardless of what you do in the game, and players should feel free to chose whichever ones, if any, they want to do. I have to think if they could be balanced exactly, they would have been by now. They should probably just go away. Utility stuff like drums and rocket boots should stay.  Edit: Apparently getting rid of combat bonuses has already been announced for Warlords. I totally missed that, but glad to hear about the change.
  • Every profession should be able to make a mount, and they should all require that trade skill. The current situation is inconsistent and convoluted. 
  • New armor and weapons should have unique models. There should be exactly ONE way to get some awesome looking models, wether it's for transmog or not, and that is a craftsperson.
  • Multiple recipes on a shared daily cooldown. Right now, my alchemist makes Living Steel every day regardless. That isn't exactly interesting.
  • Maybe make those cooldowns weekly so we don't feel compelled to log in every day. Want to make 7 Living Steel on Tuesday and be done with it for the week? No problem.
  • The ability to repair things you can craft at a nice discount. Maybe put it on a 2-5 hour cooldown.
  • Extra storage if you have two professions at max. Perhaps an extra bank slot gets unlocked.
  • Improve the AH. Make the default interface more like the mobile version or just like Auctionator. More importantly, implement buy orders. Buy orders would allow crafters to see real demand and margins for products before they have committed to making them. They would also make it easier to purchase hard to find materials. If I see that I can instantly sell Clefthoof leather at a great price, I might just go farm some up.
So that's what I have. How would YOU improve professions?

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Your Character Boost is NOT Free

The character boost to level 90 you will get when you buy Warlords is not free. Not in any way. People keep calling it free and for whatever reason that bothers the hell out of me. Perhaps it's because part of my job is teaching economics and personal finance, I don't know. But the more I hear the boost referred to as free the more it bugs me, hence this rant. The character boost is a feature of Warlords. One of many. When you pay $50 or whatever the expansion ends-up costing, you are purchasing the boost alongside garrisons, new zones, and an increased level cap. It is in no way free. It's a cool part of a cool game that anyone reading this blog will almost certainly buy. But if it were in any way free, wer would get it regardless of buying Warlords or not. It's really that simple. When I try to explain this to people, the common response is, "I was going to buy WoD anyway, so this is a free bonus." A bonus? Sure. Free? Not at all. You buy and pay for the whole game regardless of which parts you want or use. I would have bought MoP without pet battles, but that doesn't mean they were free for me. I leveled a character without going to Dread Wastes. Was that zone "free" for me? Hell no. If you never PvP, you still pay for new battlegrounds and the availability of PvP gear. The cost of developing and supporting the entire game is passed along to all of us, and this includes the level 90 boost. Let me explain it with a non-WoW example. You order a pizza. You never, ever eat the crust. It's just not your thing. If you pay the same price for the pizza as someone who loves the crust, you didn't get it for free, even if you were going to get that pizza anyway. Blizzard is a corporation. They shouldn't give us things for free, and they rightly never have. We purchase, and subscribe to, their wonderful game. Many times over the years they have added value to our subscriptions to keep us paying month after month.But let's be informed consumers and stop calling the boost free. It is not. /rant over

Friday, February 14, 2014

The Very Basics of Hunters

We will be getting the ability to instantly level a character to 90 sometime "soon." I thought I might throw together a super basic guide for any brand-new level 90 hunters. If you've been playing a hunter for a while, you're not going to find anything in here you (hopefully) don't already know.

Before I dive into these basics, a cautionary tale for anyone who is going to create a hunter alt just for some fun. I grew-up skiing. I LOVED to ski as a kid and I knew I would ski for the rest of my life. In college I got a snowboard just to try it out. I said more than once I would always continue to ski. I went snowboarding for the first time and absolutely loved it. There was just something about boarding that had been missing from skiing, even though I didn't know it was missing until I got a snowboard. My skis stayed in the garage for the rest of that season, but I knew I'd use them again. The following season they didn't make it out of the garage once. After five more seasons where I never even considered skiing, I sold them. It turns out I would be a snowboarder for the rest of my life. Hunters are snowboards, and other classes are skis. I enjoy the other classes. They are fun, but my hunter will always be my main and the toon I want to raid with. So be careful getting a hunter alt. There is a very good chance it will become you main. With that said, hunter basics in 60 seconds or so:

  • Your pet isn't decoration. It provides a BIG portion of your damage regardless of your spec. Learn how to control it.
  • Always, always, always have Aspect of the Hawk up. Always.
  • Currently, all three specs are good. Try them all out and find one you like.
  • Agility is king. The correct amount is more. Virtually any way you can increase your agility is something you should do. Beware of mail armor without agility on it-that's not for you.
  • There is no best pet for dps. Different pets bring different buffs, however, which can help in a group setting.
  • If you're going to do group content in any spec, have the Glyph of Animal Bond.
  • Your weapon is really important. Use bonus rolls on bosses that drop weapons. Put a scope on any blue or better ranged weapon.
  • If you know nothing about your shot priority, this add-on can help you learn it. Use the shot on the far left of the bar, and your regen shot to get focus back. Your regen shot is either Cobra or Steady Shot.
  • Traps are fun. Spend a little time learning how to use them.
  • Feign Death and Deterrence can and will save your bacon.
  • Our class has an anthem. You can hear it here.
Now get out there and shoot stuff!

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Do Hunters Need Spec Differentiation?

Blizzard's devs have said more than once that few classes, including hunters, need more dfferentiation between the three specs. They have been very clear that this does not mean an overhaul, just adjustments to make the specs feel more different from each other. Do hunters really need this?

Frankly, I don't think so. We have never had better spec balance, and the idea of messing around with hunters at all kind of scares me. Hunters have also been tagged as victims of button bloat, so spec differentiation seems at odds with button reduction unless we have a massive culling of abilities with many becomming spec specific. I would hate it if spec differentiation and button bloat create a situation where we become a 3-button class. Then why would we need Mages? Also, I don't personally think each spec needs to feel like it's own class. And perhaps because I play Survial 99% of the time, when I do go Marks or BM it already fells really different. It was stressful for me during Alysrazor when I had to go Marks for Silencing Shot. Compared to SV, the Marksman rotation is hard. Which is fine. I like the idea of one spec being less forgiving but having a slightly higer DPS. Hunters can be rewarded for putting in the time and effort to learn the harder rotation. And differentiation isn't just about rotation. BM has exotic pets! A whole group of awesome pets, many of which come with raid cooldowns, available only to one spec. I honestly don't know how BM could be more different without putting them back on mana.

So I'm fine with how different the specs feel currently, but many disagree with me. Or, maybe a better way to put it is people that disagree work at Blizzard and have the power to change things. If we really, really have to differentiate the specs even more, there are some good ideas out there. The best one I have heard was from a guest on the recently retired Hunting Party Podcast and is to get rid of Arcane Shot. We all hit a ton of them as a focus dump. We could either create spec specific dumps, or adjust costs of other abilities to not have a dump at all. I've done my best to come up with other ideas that would differentiate specs even more without contributing to further button bloat:
  • Give Marks 120 focus and reduce BM's burst. Marks would have the distiniction of high burst damage and difficult-but-competitive sustained damage. Perhaps Rapid Fire becomes a MM ability as well.
  • Marks only weapons. Just for flavor.
  • Survival is already the AoE champ. Multi Shot could be SV only.
  • I honestly have nothing for BM. Exotic pets and rotation feel like enough. I assume there will be some new exotic tames in WoD, just like every previous expansion since their inception. If I had to say something, it would be to make Stampede BM specific. But I would fucking hate that as Survival.
  • Traps. So much could be done with traps to help differentiation! One spce-specific trap each. Or make traps SV only. Or make SV traps invisible to enemies in PvP. Anything that retains traps and keeps SV's traps somewhat better. It's always been part of the Survival identity.
I hope none of this happens except the invisible PvP trap thing. That would be amazing. Please Blizz, don't break hunters at this point! We are finally competitive, balanced, and we got Stampede. We will all keep playing the class if you don't do any differentiation. I promise.