Beta Impressions: Welcome to Northrend

No, I'm not going to be posting about the beta exclusively from now on.  This is just a result of nothing of interest [1] happening on live this last week and a bit, while lots of interesting things happened in the beta.

I've decided not to post much in the way of concrete details on the beta content.  I want to keep this blog relatively spoiler-free; to the extent that instead of describing the details of a quest or NPC conversation, I'll probably just mention the general concept and move on.  Maybe the odd landscape screenshot or the like, but nothing really spoilery.

One aspect of that are the letters from Northrend; they let me poke fun at the beta content without having to explicitly talk about it.

So, impressions of entering Northrend for the first time; what can you expect on day one?

Crash, Bang, Boom!

Hopefully what you do not experience are error dialogs telling you that the data files are corrupted, that they cannot be repaired, and you have to sit through an hour and a half install again.

For the eighth time.

Because that's how many times I've had to reinstall Wrath so far; that's not even counting the times that I tried to install and had it fail.  I don't know what Blizz has done to their installer, but it's garbage at the moment.  It looks like it's not bothering to validate that the files it installs are actually valid; so when you get to the latest patch an hour later, you find that a random file's been corrupted and you have to reinstall.

(Incidentally, that's what Its' "fainting" problem was a symptom of.)

For now, I appear to have a reasonably stable install, which is nice.

Welcome to Northrend, Here's Your Axe

The first time you step into Outland, there's a real sense that you're not in Azeroth any more.  Outland is weird and alien; that made it exciting the first time, but nowadays the only Outland zone I still really like is Nagrand, which is ironically the most "normal" zone there is.

Northrend is completely different.  It doesn't feel out of place in Azeroth; Blizzard could have shoved it in next to any existing Azeroth zones, and it would have fit right in.  The difference is that the Northrend zones feel more... polished.  More epic.  Bigger and better.

Outland's zones were, I think, better designed, but suffered from a very alien art direction.  Northrend is even more well-designed in comparison to Outland, but returns to a more classic Warcraft art style.

It also, as I said, feels more epic.  For example, the first time I flew from Orgrimmar to Warsong Hold, I had to wonder whether the hold had been built into the side of a massive canyon... only to realise I was just in an utterly colossal building.  There's also the conversations with the NPCs themselves.  As your character "grows up," you are very much a nobody.  You're not a big hero like Jaina or Thrall.  You're just a freelance warrior among the multitudes.

But there are times in Northrend where the NPCs stop and say "wow; I can't believe you really did that.  You're awesome!"  When you have the leader for the Horde forces in Northrend praise you for your efforts, organise an honour guard for you and give you one of his wolf mounts to get you to the front lines, you start to feel like an actual somebody.

And it's bloody fantastic.

"I seek the holy grail!"

Quests are also much better in Wrath than in either vanilla or BC.  Sure, there's still the "kill N of X, Y and Z," "gather Q of J" and even a few dreaded "escort M back to N" quests in there.  But they feel more polished.  I'm yet to come across a quest where I groaned and felt like putting off doing it because I could see it being a real pain.

Take the kill quests for example: normally you get something along the following lines:

Deathstalker Biggles wants you to kill 5 Fluffy Penguins, 6 Harmless Penguins and 14 Baby Seals.

But now, most of the quests look like this:

Deathstalker Biggles wants you to kill 20 Fuzzy Defenceless Critters.

There's still a number of the "old style" there, but they tend to be much easier to accomplish, and won't see you running around half the zone trying to find the type of mob that, inexplicably, only spawns about 5% of the time.

And then there are the vehicle quests.  I've seen a number of people complaining that the addition of vehicles is going to turn WoW into a glorified online Halo clone, but it's simply not true.  Do you know what the first "vehicle" I encountered was?

A horse.

Seriously; there's a quest to steal yourself a horsie.  You go up to it, and it has the "enter vehicle" cursor on it.  You click on it, and your character jumps on (quite literally, I might add; you don't just appear on its back in a puff of smoke) and you ride off with it.

Really, the vehicle system is just a way for Blizzard to make it so that you can hop on or into some other object in the world, be it a mount, a vehicle or a structure, and use special abilities that apply to just that object.

And unlike the bombing quests from BC, each of the vehicle quests thus far has been different.  I've ridden on the back of a stolen horse, driven around a field of battle on a tank, flown on a wyrm, and manned a static gun emplacement.

I also want to go out on a tangent briefly in order to highlight a moment from Wrath.  This has very light spoilers in it, so I'm hiding it in a little spoiler box.  If you want to see it, click in the box (you'll need JavaScript enabled) or simply disable styling on this page.

You're down on the beach near a small outpost with a scant few tents.  A much larger outpost lies just up the coast, shrouded in mist.  The place looks completely abandoned, and you're told that it was attacked by some nameless force.  The Tuskarr near one tent seems reluctant to name the attackers, apparently out of fear that invoking their name will summon them.

You are tasked with getting back some of his possessions, as well as the standard death and destruction that goes with attempting to recover any outpost.

But before you go, they tell you to be careful: they've already sent a number of people into the mist... and none have returned.

So I'm standing there, thinking that this is just a load of rubbish.  Thanks to my goggles with built-in zoom feature, as well as Eagle Eye, I know the place is deserted.  Maybe there's some sort of debuff for entering the mist?

Ah, who cares?!  I run forward, figuring on just running around to grab the quest items and...

...and then my vision narrows, the corners of the screen whiten out, and the NPCs disappear from sight.  Everything goes slightly foggy and then I see... something moving in the mist.  What the...

I back out of the mist; the NPCs return, and whatever was in the mist disappears.  OK, so Blizz is trying to mess with me, are they?

I head back into the mist, and carefully make my way in to meet the enemy...

 

I have to say that whilst not the most original idea ever, the execution of this particular enemy species is exceptionally well done; especially with the spooky atmosphere!

So those of you out there who love questing, I think you're going to be very happy with Wrath.

Lowbie Tanking Ninja Turtle

Another thing I can't help but have noticed are the changes to Hunter pets.  I won't go into excruciating detail on these right now, but I wanted to get this out:

My turtle is not only usable, but arguably a better levelling pet than my cat.

Here's the thing: back in vanilla and BC, turtles sucked.  Yes, they had excellent mitigation, but that couldn't offset their laughable damage output and threat generation.  They basically couldn't hold aggro off a baby kitten.

They couldn't tank in instances, they couldn't out-dps a fairy with a slightly damp tissue, and no one ever seemed to sell food they would eat.

Which is probably why Bisque ended up falling about 20 levels behind.

However, with the changes to Hunter pets in Wrath, Bisque is now a better levelling pet than Tiddles for one simple reason:

I can't pull aggro off him.

And he's two levels below me.

Tiddles' threat generation is more or less on-par with what he currently does, maybe a bit higher.  But Bisque's is through the roof.  Unless Wrath has bugged out and re-enabled Cower again (oh, how I hate that) or I've started going all-out before he got the first hit in, it's really hard for me to pull aggro.  The little guy just keeps on truckin'!

And he's got a lot of awesome toys now: a taunt, intercept and of course his shield.  Tiddles still blows Bisque out of the water in terms of damage output, but Bisque can now actually hold a mob's attention.

As I said, Tiddles is still pretty much still Tiddles.

There have been a few major changes to my Dragonhawk, Smaug.  He now has a focus dump, so he does decent DPS.  Fire Breath still makes me a little nervous in crowded areas, but he seems to make a pretty decent levelling pet.

Replacing Skill With Button-Mashing

And then there's the Steady Shot change.  Let me just say first off that it had to be made.  Hunters were penalised more than any other class based on their network latency.  But manually weaving my shots was part of what made being a Hunter exciting for me; knowing that I had to actually get my timing right to maximise my DPS.

And before you say it, no a macro would not have worked just as well.  Using a macro led to a 10% loss in DPS; please leave your raving zealotry at the door.

But with this change, Hunter DPS really does just boil down to "mash X until it's dead."  I know Blizzard isn't finished with our class yet, but I really hope they come up with some way of complicating our DPS that doesn't depend on network conditions or some other factor outside our control.

On the whole, Wrath looks to be shaping up really nicely.  Blizzard are clearly raising their own bar on this one, improving (even if in just a small way) on pretty much every aspect of the game.

Also, if you have any questions about Wrath, feel free to ask them, and I'll do my best to answer them.

---

[1]  I didn't think a Kara run that got called on Moroes, a Gruul's run I didn't go on and farming Mudfish for a few hours qualified as "interesting."  :P

Northrend Letters (Part I)

Dear mum and dad,

Well, I seem to have landed up in the less-entirely-hospitable-than-I-would-have-liked continent of Northrend. You see, I was approached by some representatives of our mighty Warchief Thrall, who asked me if I would be willing to participate in a little scouting "expedition."

The first warning sign should have been the way they said "expedition," complete with air-quotes. They do not appear terribly accustomed to subterfuge. In any event, they made their case and I agreed.

Also, they gave me sandwiches. Really nice ones with pork and just enough gravy so's you can taste it, but not so much that the bread goes all soggy.

The zeppelin ride over was largely uneventful, apart from when a gang of pirates attempted to board us. This did not go so well for them considering that we were in a zeppelin and they in a boat. But I must give the Bloodsail Buccaneers credit for enthusiasm, if not for deductive reasoning.

After several hours of flying north, we arrived at the Forsaken port of Vengeance Landing in the Howling Fjord. Various persons had informed me that this place represented the first look at the Forsaken's own style of architecture, and thus was an important milestone in their cultural development.

However, I cannot help but think that they did not design their buildings with conventional properties such as structural integrity or aesthetics in mind. It appears they designed each structure to provide the maximal electrical conductivity. One cannot walk from one end of the settlement to the other without having to comb one's hair.

Upon arriving, I noted that Tiddles' fur was standing on-end. At first, I surmised that he must have detected the odiferous scent of cheese nearby, for you surely remember Tiddles'... aversion to cheese.

I changed my theory when his tail spontaneously caught fire. He now refuses to go anywhere near the town lest he combust again.

Sadly, I am yet to go out into the wilds and assess the situation here. There appears to be a problem of some kind whereby any time I attempt to walk south of Vengeance Landing, I suddenly pass out and wake up later back at the town.

Last time it happened, I woke up with a damn pencil stuck up my nose! Personally, I suspect those bloody apothecaries; they're always up to no good.

In any event, I shall make sure to write to you both again when I have more to say. If the fainting issue cannot be adequately resolved, I shall likely go to Borean Tundra and try my luck there.

Your now and, for the foreseeable future, present son.

Itsnoteasy.

Paper texture courtesy of BittBox.

The Advantages of Being an Addon Developer

Please don't hate me...

Its' Baseless Speculation Time!

So, you might have noticed a little bit of hubub in the last day or so when Blizzard lifted the NDA, kicked off the open beta of WotLK, and information started pouring out.

Happily, we've finally gotten a look at what new talents and abilities Hunters will have come WotLK.  Since it seems to be the "hip" thing to be doing right now, here's my take on some of the changes:

Being Talented

Master's Call [NYI] Rank 1/1 7% of base mana 40 yd range Instant cast 1 min cooldown Your pet attempts to remove all stun and movement impairing effects on the target, and cause them to be immune to all effects for 4 sec.

This apparently is replacing Animal Handler.  For the life of me, I cannot see how Blizzard is going to rationalise this.  I mean, it's cool and all, but how exactly does an animal make someone immune to movement impairing effects?

Perhaps it's best not to ask...

Cobra Strikes Rank 3/3 You have a 60% chance when you critically hit with Arcane Shot, Steady Shot or Kill Shot to cause your pet's next 3 special attacks to critically hit.

I find this interesting since it basically increases your pet's ability to keep Frenzy up (heck; maybe we could drop another point from it!)  But by itself, it's not that incredible.  That's why I want to pair it with:

Invigoration Rank 2/2 When your pet scores a critical hit with a special ability, you instantly regenerate 2% mana.

Let's do a little light theorycrafting.  Currently, I have ~20% crit, and an attack speed of 1.74 seconds.  Averaging that out, that means I'm hitting a target ~1.15 times a second with a 1:1 rotation.  Taking a 20% crit rate, that's 0.23 crits per second.  Which is 0.14 Cobra Strike procs per second.  Now, let's assume that Cobra Strikes doesn't proc again until our pet has gotten his three specials off.  We'll also assume we have a focus dump, and that we can supply him with enough focus to keep using it.

Combined with 2/2 Invigoration, three crits per Cobra Strikes proc, 0.14 procs per second and a base of 6200 mana, that's:

~0.14 procs per second × 3 crits per proc × (2% of 6200 mana) per crit = ~51 mana per second

That's about 256 MP5.  You'd need to be able to supply your pet with 17 focus per second; according to Cheeky's spreadsheet, I'm currently at 24 focus per second.  What's interesting is that also according to Cheeky's, I use 69 mana per second during my 1:1 rotation, which is about 347 MP5.   Let's switch on Viper, which gives me (in the average case) 87 MP5.  That means if I got just 4 MP5 from other sources, I'd never actually run out of mana...

Beast Mastery [NYI] Rank 1/1 You master the art of Beast Training, teaching you the ability to tame Exotic pets and increasing your total amount of Pet Skill Points by 5.

This, right here, is huge.  Let's deal with the second half first.

... increasing your total amount of Pet Skill Points by 5.

For those that aren't aware, loyalty and the Training Point system is being thrown out for a simpler talent-like system.  Starting at level 20, pets will get one Skill Point every four levels to spend in their talent tree (each pet family has access to one of the three pet talent trees that will be available.)  That makes for a total of 16 points at level 80 (not 15 as most people seem to think; they're forgetting the point you get at level 80.)

This means that BM hunters will have access to 21 points.  But there obviously has to be somewhere to spend those points.  Additionally, I don't think Blizzard will have the talent trees set up in such a way that allows BM hunters to completely max their pet out, so we can probably assume that pet talent trees will have at least 26, maybe 31 points you can potentially spend in them.  The only question now is whether this will allow BM hunters to "back-fill" their pets' talents, or go deeper into the tree into some 21-point über talents.

The other half is also really interesting.  As you should be aware, there are various beasts that are simply not tameable by hunters.  For example, there is no tameable basilisk or mana wyrm in the game, despite these being beasts.

Some have speculated that this will allow hunters to tame any mob categorised as a "beast," but I don't think that's likely.  For example, Marsh Walkers are beasts.  Now, having one of those as a pet would be so far off the "awesome scale" that we'd have to get a rocket scientist in to figure out where the needle went, but I really doubt Blizzard would allow it.

Also, notice how "Exotic" is capitalised; that makes it a proper noun which suggests that instead of the current "Tameable/Not Tameable" status of beasts, it'll become "Tameable/Not Tameable/Exotic."

None the less, whether or not this is as awesome as it sounds depends entirely on what pets Blizzard makes Exotic.  Remember that in the new system, every pet will have access to a particular talent tree and a family-unique ability.  Some ideas that spring to mind:

• Basilisks: tanking tree, Hypnotic Gaze ability.  Depending on how long the gaze ability works, you could even make Basilisks utility pets, and have them as a form of temporary, emergency CC.

• Hyppogryphs: dps tree, Wing Flap ability, or maybe Swoop.  And tanks think wind serpents are bad!  These could actually be pretty horrible (for the opposing team) in PvP; you could use them to knock players away from yourself if they get too close (or to throw defenders off the cliff at the Lumber Mill or the bridge in AV...)  Or if they had swoop, it'd give BM hunters a semi-frequent spell interrupt.

• Mana Wyrms: utility tree, Mana Burn ability.  Yes, a mana-drain pet.  Just imagine the QQing that would result from caster arena teams...

There actually aren't that many pet families that aren't already tameable and aren't obviously ridiculous.  But who knows; maybe there'll be some utterly awesome pets in Northrend that only BM hunters can tame!

(Of course, it could also be pointless where all the Exotic pets are inferior to regular pets in every respect, but let's not be too negative!)

Careful Aim Rank 3/3 Increases your ranged attack power by an amount equal to 100% of your total Intellect.

That's pretty interesting; being in the second tier of Marksmanship, it'll allow hunters to stack a bit more Intellect.  The problem is that in terms of stats, Intellect "costs" twice as much as Attack Power.  For example, for any gem that gives you +8 Intellect, you could have gotten a gem of the same quality with +16 Attack Power.  Still, even if you don't stack more Intellect, it's an extra few hundred AP.

Improved Tracking [NYI] Rank 5/5 Increases all damage done to targets that are being tracked 5%.

This is exactly eight kinds of awesome.  That's how many things we can track.  It basically boils down to a flat 5% increase in all damage on everything except things that are invisible (which we can't really shoot anyway,) and unclassified things like bugs.

Even better, it's a first tier talent in Survival.  I'm seriously considering dropping Aimed Shot and Rapid Killing to get this puppy...

There are more talents than the above, but they're the ones that interest me as a BM-centric hunter.  If you want to play around with them, MMO Champion have a hunter talent calculator.

L33t Pet Skillz

As I said before, pets are now moving on to a talent-like system.  In addition to the three talent trees (DPS, tanking and "utility,") there is also going to be one family-specific ability for each family.  Thanks to Wowhead's WotLK subsite, I've managed to put together a list of all known family-specific pet abilities:

• Bad Attitude - there's no apparent limit to the number of times this can happen, so I suspect this is going to work as reactive damage.  Combined with Crocolisk's +10% bonus to armor, could Blizz be intending them to be the AoE tanking pet?

• Dust Cloud - This looks to be a pretty powerful debuff, exclusive to Tallstriders.  Averaged out, it works out to be a 12% reduction in chance to hit.

• Gore - Now exclusive to Boars.  Sorry, Ravagers...

• Nether Shock - Can you say "tactical deprivation of heals in arena?"  Sure, I knew you could.  At least now Nether Rays are useful!

• Pin - Well, it's got a crab for an icon, so I assume this is what crabs are getting.  It's interesting; a combined root and dot that also roots the pet.  This could make for an interesting tanking ability for saving squishies and stopping runners.

• Ravage - Being able to stun with your Ravager would be great for saving squishies or just legging it.  Sadly, this also means that Ravagers lose Gore.  But then, I've never been fond of the Spiky Nightmare Clowns, so I'm not terribly fussed.

• Savage Rend - One of my mum's hunters has a pet raptor.  Named "Wally."  I just can't stop laughing at the thought of something being torn apart by a vicious raptor named Wally.

• Serenity Dust - Something to note about this one.  It says "moth" in the tooltip.  We can't tame moths.  Well, I guess come WotLK we will be able to tame them (although whether they'll be "Exotic" or not remains to be seen.)  Aside from that, it's a pretty amazing buff; +10% AP and a 2415 HoT once every 2 minutes.  I'm not sure where this will place moths in terms of being a tanking/grinding/raiding pet though.

• Snatch - First of all, I can see this really annoying rogues.  This is a good thing.  This is for owls, so this should make Tux (and Pike) happy.  Owls get this in exchange for losing Screech; though you can sort of think of this as a single-target version of screech...

• Sonic Blast - Basically Ravage, except it does slightly less damage, it does nature damage instead of (presumably) physical damage, and it's icon is a bat as opposed to a gaping, blood-soaked maw.  Since there aren't any hedgehogs in WoW, I suppose this must be for bats.

• Spore Cloud - Only does 6 DPS, but I suspect the 700 armor reduction is more the point.  It's also fairly obvious that this is for Spore Bats; this will make them pretty damned effective against casters.

• Swipe - Aside from being another ability starting with "s," this is the family ability for Bears.  They're like baby durids!

• Tendon Rip - Pretty simple snare; likely to be popular in PvP since the pet could potentially keep it up 30% of the time.  Pity it's only available on Hyenas...

• Web - How I shot web?  Spider is shot web!

If I haven't mentioned a pet family, it's because it's ability is already in-game.  It looks like we're going to have way more choices for viable pets come WotLK.  It's also worth mentioning that every pet has either Dash or Dive, as well as one of Bite, Claw or Smack.

That said, Wowhead has a number of other pet abilities in their WotLK database that aren't family-exclusive:

• Bullheaded - After having Tiddles get netted by those bloody Sunfury Archers, I say: bring it on!

• Call of the Wild - Sadly, nothing to do with making the target run around trying to find a bathroom...

• Carrion Feeder - Man, and I thought Cannibalise was nasty...  I mean, the health is one thing, but regenerating happiness?!  Just imagine this in PvP, though...

• Charge - Strangely, what used to be the defining ability of boars is now available to Cats, Hyenas, Raptors, Tallstriders and Wolves... but not boars.  Poor piggies are being hit with the nerf bat pretty hard lately...

• Dying Bite - This is the last thing you need to be worried about if you've killed my pet.

• Heart of the Phoenix - One thing BRK has advocated before is putting points into Improved Revive Pet for high-end raiding, since losing your pet early in the fight translates to a 30% drop in DPS.  This may make that unnecessary.

• Intervene - I'm sorry; I just can't take this ability seriously when it's using a picture of a turtle.

• Last Stand - Remember when BRK had that big thing about not needing tanks come WotLK?  Yeah, I'm beginning to think he might have been right.  All hail the Panzer Turtle!

• Lick Your Wounds - This + Mend Pet + Moth = Invincipet!  (Yes, I realise it's channelled; I just wanted to say "Invincipet.")

• Rabid - The only way this could be cooler was if it actually turned your pet into a Rabbid.

• Roar of Fortitude - A nice little buff for the melee peeps.

• Roar of Recovery - ... Are we even going to need mana pots come WotLK?

• Swoop - this one's for carrion birds and "undefined."  More un-announced pet families, methinks.

• Taunt - Wow; snap aggro for pets.  Very nice.

• Wolverine Bite - What's odd is that it only has one rank, and it's available at level 30.

We're Gonna Have To Find More Action Slots...

You may have noticed, while reading about the Hunter talents, that two abilities are mentioned several times:

• Bear Trap - So a combination of Freezing Trap and Immolation Trap.  Plus, it's got an awesome name: Bear Trap.  As Forthus suggested, disarming a Bear Trap should trigger every Bear Traps in a 40 yard radius.

• Kill Shot - For comparison, under normal circumstances, this does less damage (both over time and per mana) than Arcane Shot, on the same cooldown.  Against wounded targets, it does way more damage and becomes incredibly mana-efficient.  Awesome.

So that's about it for mechanical changes to our class thus far.  That said, there might still be a few surprises down the line for us considering that Hunters were one of the last classes to be worked on.  Only time will tell, but right now things are looking pretty good.

Wait, what?

Just a quicky: I found the following while wandering around the WotLK leaks wiki page for uncategorised spells.

51663 Slap to the Face Delivers a face slap to all nearby players, stunning them. Targets affected by this ability can still communicate through the forums. Lasts until the next patch is released.

For some reason, I have a funny feeling that's not going to make it live...

Ninja edit: there's something absolutely hilarious down the bottom of the page regarding Nesingwary. I decided not to post it here verbatim, as some might prefer not to see it. From what I can tell, it's apparently something you would get in the mail. Click the link above, head to the bottom, and have a look. I lol'ed.