Monday, March 17, 2014

The Veteran's Bonus is Fine as it Is

There have been a lot of complaints about the Veteran's Bonus in the last week since character boosts went live. For those unaware, the Veteran's Bonus raises your professions to 600 (max level) if you use a boost on a character levels 60-89. When this feature was announced I was cautiously excited about it, from the perspective of someone who plays the auction house. I'm really happy with the current state of it, but quite a few are not.

The big question I had when we first heard about the Veteran's Bonus was in regard to recipes. What would these new crafters know how to make? Everything? Some things? Nothing? Turns out, nothing. You have 600 skill level, but no recipes. And that is where the complaints are coming from. People on Twitter and forums have been raging about this, and they are flat-out wrong. Just about every angry post I found, the person expected to get EVERY recipe up through 600. Many pointed out that the cost of EVERY recipe vastly exceeds the 150g your boosted character receives. Are you fucking kidding me? Do you even know what I had to do to learn all those patterns? While I'm as surprised as anyone that the VB doesn't give you any recipes at all, I am relieved that people aren't getting stuff that requires discovery or rep grinding. Stuff we just buy from a trainer? I'm ok with that. But I would be just as pissed as the guys that want it all for free if people had so easily gotten the patterns I had to work hard for. Some of my stuff required raiding. Some stuff (enchants) cost me hours of my life doing daily quests. Many of my good and profitable JC cuts were borne from an agonizing combination of random discovery and world drops. Meta cuts in particular took me a long time to get, and I'm frankly happy that my new competitors don't just have them because they are cool giving Blizzard $60. And why do these people want every recipe anyway?

If you're a completionist and you HAVE to have every purchasable pattern for your new professions, it's only going to cost you a few thousand gold. Really not much considering you're buying the potential to make hundreds of thousands back with a little discipline. The complainers posit that they are starting out on a new realm and only have the 150g the boost brings to work with. I suspect a lot of these complaints are false rationalizations for wanting patterns for nothing (you leveled to 60 and didn't make any gold?) but let's take them at their word. To start out, you only need to learn one or two current recipes for each of your professions to get going on your new realm. I'm going to give you a few examples from the professions I do.

Boosted an alchemist? Well, the stuff you want to learn is discovered. You can't buy it even if you have the gold. You can buy Master Healing Potion for only 20g, and each one you make gives you a chance to learn profitable transmutes. The mats for the potions are cheap. I think I discovered all the good stuff in about an hour. Let's talk leatherworking. You can get started for 5g. That will allow you to make Magnificent Hide, which sell consistently. You'll want to use them to make armor kits, but to do that you'll need to grind out some Golden Lotus rep like the rest of us had to. But you can start making profit for only 5g. Hard to complain about that. Jewelcrafters can get started even cheaper than that! The MoP cuts that sell are all discovered or dropped. You can learn the recipe to start discovering cuts for only 4.5g. It's going to take you a while to learn all the patterns that way, but the rest of us did it and we survived. You're on your own for the meta cuts. It took me months to get the ones that sell. But really guys, a 4.5g and reasonable time investment for a profession that makes quite a few WoW millionaires? Stop your bitching. Just to hammer my point home, you can get started in enchanting for 2.28g. Buy the pattern for Glorious Stats. They sell all day every day, and mats on quite a few servers are stupid cheap. I mean 80s for dust cheap. You can start cranking out enchants for the cost of a potion.

I don't know why people want a bunch of old recipes that don't really sell, but they do. OK fine, well you are going to have to go out and get them like the rest of us did. Farm some mobs and grind some rep. Solo super-old content for weeks while you wait for patterns to drop. Do totally repetitive daily quests. You're my competition now, so don't expect any sympathy. And I have clearly proven that you can get started making gold with your new professions for well under the 150g the boost gives you. So stop complaining. Asking for every recipe to be included with the Veteran's Bonus is lunacy.

Monday, March 10, 2014

Playing With Transmog

I
I have been having fun putting some new transmog sets together. This first one is based around the Chillwind Staff. It's a killer model and as you can see, it gently drops rose petals. It's hard sometimes to put an outfit together for a shadow priest, because we're pretty much always in shadowform. So I went with a bunch of purple and blue stuff.

This set is all about the Dragonstrike pieces. I like them both for how they look, and the fact that you have to be a leatherworker to wear them. Still looking for the perfect gun for this set..

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Lone Wolf is a Terrible Idea


I'm getting old. There is grey in my beard. Depending on where you live and which data you trust I've already hit middle age. And I'm catching myself thinking and saying the things older people do when they are struggling to understand changes in the world. Lately I’ve been saying crazy shit like, “There hasn’t been a really good Hip Hop album since 2000” and “Yeah, we sagged our pants. But not like the kids do today.” Yep, I’m getting to be a close-minded old fart. And I wonder if that is why I feel the way I do about the Lone Wolf talent.

I’ve been playing a hunter since Vanilla. I’ve actually been playing the same hunter since then (with quite a few race changes mixed-in). I’ve seen a lot of changes: mana to focus, ammo, the dead zone, pet happiness. While I can’t say I’ve embraced every major change to our class, I’ve never had a reaction as strong as how I feel about the idea of Lone Wolf. I hate it. I’m just praying it was a placeholder. I think it’s contrary to what it means to be a hunter, and it has serious potential to be a balance nightmare.

Hunters are the pet class. Pets are one of the most important aspects of our class’ identity. Some of us collect them. Some of us use them to tank current raid content. Some of us (me) forget to dismiss them, jump off a ledge, and pull all of UBRS to our group. A big part of being a decent hunter is having the right pet for your situation and properly controlling it. The fact that Blizzard is considering allowing hunters to bypass that part of the hunter experience is just baffling to me. I don’t get it. We’re not the only ranged DPS class in the game. If someone wants to play ranged but can’t handle a pet they have at least three other options. But there is more going on here than me being an old curmudgeon.

There are two prevalent arguments in favor of Lone Wolf. The first is simply, “A lot of hunters want to play without their pets.” I don’t think it’s really that many. I don’t think someone would roll a hunter if they don’t like pets. I don’t like melee, so I know better than to roll a DK. Furthermore, a lot of hunters want quite a few different things. They haven’t given us pistols or a dedicated tanking spec yet.  The second argument for it is more interesting, but it still falls short. There are a number of situations where our pets struggle. Some fights just don’t play well with pet pathing, etc. My pet despawns all the time during Immersius, for example. Don't get me started on the Hagara encounter. There is one of these fights pretty much every tier. Some say Lone Wolf is an option for fights where pets don’t function as they should. The problem with that argument is our pets not working is simply unacceptable. Frankly, we hunters have been too forgiving when it comes to these situations. I mean really, can you imagine Blizzard releasing a fight where pally tanks’ shields didn’t work? Or telling rogues that stealth doesn’t work as intended in the new BG? That just wouldn’t happen. It should be just as unacceptable for hunter pets to be borked. Lone Wolf could create a fairly dangerous situation where Blizzard can justify even more of these fights and we are required to get rid of our pets for them. All of a sudden for some fights we are essentially required to ditch a defining aspect of our class. That would be a fucking debacle.

I also worry about balance. Spec balance for hunters has been relatively good as of late. Such a fundamental change, especially one intended to be optional, could really screw things up. If Blizzard goes ahead with this experiment, they are going to have to be spot on with the balancing. I’d actually go a step further. Choosing Lone Wolf should cost a hunter a little dps. We should be rewarded for the added complexity of managing a pet. If I feel compelled to get rid of my pet, even for one fight each tier, I’ll be pissed. Beware the wrath of the angry old man.