Chocolate Milk Isn’t Ovaltine
… the dragons have chocolate milk …
“Brain?”
… yes, the Transfusion would do nicely, thank you Thrall …
“Brain.”
… my toes… they’re warm, yes… no more tissues, they don’t have aloe ..
“Brain!”
… a hunter who’s an engineer should be able to track mechanicals …
“BRAIN!!”
/snork
“Brain! Wake up! The medicine should’ve worn off now.”
“Whoa… um, hi BRK. You feeling better today?”
“Yes, Brain. Much, thanks.”
“You drugged me?”
“Totally: Nyquil.”
“Well that explains it. Being sick stinks; you don’t use me at all. You just put the television on the Military channel or Discovery and sleep all day.”
“It’s fun waking up to a documentary on the PBY Catalina, or butterflies in HD-slow motion.”
“So what the heck happened to you blog the other day? Did you find out?”
“SQL Injection attack. They failed to get anything. We had an independent contractor do some poking around, without breaking any laws, and says we’re pretty safe. We did tighten up a little stuff, but we’re not going to make all our readers subscribe to read or make comments. Yet.”
“So it’s Thursday? What happened in WoW yesterday?”
“Explosive Shot got a stealth-nerf.”
“Explosive Shot? But we’ve just spent 1200gold on respecs and glyphs and enchants to learn how to maximize SV! You’re saying that’s a waste, that we’re gonna have to roll Marksman now?! I don’t want be a MM, BRK! TSA can kiss my…”
“Brain, chill. Everything we’ve read was that it was a 2% decrease to the bonus-coefficient and it’ll hardly be noticeable in raids. Since SV is such a proc-dependent talent tree, one probably wouldn’t be able to identify the difference during dummy-testing. Explosive Shot got a downward tweek, but we’re not consigned to the bottom of the DPS-barrel just yet. “
“Well that’s a very logical and reasoned argument.”
“Thank you.”
“Is this what happens when *you* get wigged out on NyQuil?”
“This, and we have cravings for grape juice and ginger ale concoctions that we call Transfusions.“
“Ooo! Mommy used to make those!”
“Ice cubes, ½ ginger ale, ½ grape juice, then a topping of ginger ale for added fizzes. It cures everything.”
“What else has happened since you drugged me?”
“We conscripted our guest for the next podcast: Gun Lovin’ Dwarf Chick.”
“Nice. Do you *have* to choose women for all your podcasts?”
“Have to? No. But the WoW Insider show is so heavily ‘male-centric’ that we feel we’re doing our part to even everything out.”
“So… you’re going to discuss the sorry state of hunterdom in WoW, I would presume?”
“Probably. We are still of the believe that a hunter without a pet is basically a mail-wearing mage. All three hunter trees should in some form or another incorporate the pet as a building-block of the class. But we’re talking about more than just DPS. We want the hunter-pet dynamic to be crucial to playing *all* hunter-specs, not just BM. Blizz has said they like MM and have pretty much left it alone. BM and SV have been buffed and nerfed; it’s almost like they don’t know what they want and are just changing coefficients and watching the results. We’re going to talk about how screwed-up this is. We may cry a little, obviously.”
“Anything else I’ve missed?”
“Blizz is coming out with 3.1 Concepts for all their classes. Hunters are due for a complete makeover, so we’ll report what they talk about, when they talk about it.”
“So… I didn’t miss much.”
“Mrs. BRK came back from her sojourn to Connecticut. She looks great.”
“A week away from you, I can image so.”
“Yes, we agree… hey! HEY!”
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26 Responses to “Chocolate Milk Isn’t Ovaltine”
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Poor BRK, even your brain stealth jabs you.
And congrats to GLDC! I can’t wait to hear it.
As an Engineering hunter (MM spec to boot /cower), I completely agree we should be able track Mechanicals!
BRK for Pope!
Skarlarth
Medivh
Always enjoy your Brain dialogues, BRK (and the Tales of Airman Howell too)
The following my opinion only….of Blizzard’s general approach to the game nowadays.
There was one pretty huge GIVETH, in one way or another, to all classes in the patch …I lose track of patch numbers…before LK arrived . Instance nerfs and the bestowal of power….in our case the BEASTowal of PvE power. It accelerated the game for everyone.
Now they are in full blown Chinese water torture TAKETH AWAY mode. Hitting the brakes (and responding to howls with “Those are the breaks”)
I am just an ultracasual player who likes to keep track of what the Raiders and Elite PvPers are up to. But I sure am not gonna learn every new dance and respec everytime some creative players find a new cookie cutter loophole….because I believe they will taketh it away once more very soon….
Blizzard’s present philosophy is, to me, was demonstrated in the blue items they chose to ex post faco nerf. Nerfed em because they were better than many epic drops. Never seemed to occur to them to boost the purples rather than nerf existing blues…..
No more hidden messages? Somebody’s lazy
I had a chance to run a 25-man raid fully buffed yesterday and I can tell you that the difference was *very* noticable to my DPS…I suffered a roughly 8% loss on my Patchwerk DPS week-to-week because of the ES nerf. The differance was so noticable, I was trying to figure out if I had done something wrong incredibly dumb like forgetting to put up AotDH, using my crummy cheap questing bullets, forgetting to flask, etc. It wasn’t until I tabbed out and combed some forums & blogs that I found out we’d been ninja-nerfed.
Folks need to realize that the nerf actually hurts *more* when you get into a fully-buffed raid situation…since the 2% reduction comes off of your RAP, the more RAP you have the more of a hit you take. Someone with full-blown raid buffs in ilevel 213+ gear is going to see a bigger hit to their DPS than someone in heroic blues running a 5-man.
With *all* that said…we hunters are not dead in the water. We’re still highly competitive in raid environment, and the nerfs for other classes are coming according to Blizz (in fact, I believe that warriors got ninja-nerfed last night as well).
So I’ll continue to hang out in the back, blow stuff up and keep working my little dwarf butt that much harder to stay on top of them meters.
Hmm…that was my post above, forgot to add my name!
great…. another complete makeover…i’m really looking forward to this…
Umm does anybody know what the best Druid specc is right now?
bOOmkin for the fuzzys!!! they’re nice and shiney and are loved by the squishy clothy classes…
as far as respecing and re-everything to hunters….boogerface i say! I’m gonna level my priest xD
New Patch Notes: From the data mine super secret tools:
Before Logging in to play a Hunter, a Blizzard Employee must visit you at home, Kick you in the Balls, then enter a secret code to unlock your character.
/invest in protective equipment.
/move
“…and it’ll hardly be noticeable in raids.” Umm.. sure…
I noticed it as well, but, say you were right, that means the poor schmuck doing heroics is REALLY gonna see the difference, while the raiders are blissfully ingorant. That’s real cool… not.
I also noticed it while raiding and kept checking my gear to try and figure out what i missed…anyone want to bet on how hosed 3.1 will be?
I thought they had added some FR to Sarth or something, I was mucho confusedo.
I’d prefer to see the differences between the specs emphasized, so its not all about the dps. BM hunters have the great pets, possibly more than 1 out at a time, or the ability to pick a pet on the fly, between each fight. Survival could pick up a combat self-res, or have extra healing/bubble etc, MM could have shields to skateboard down stairs on, or trick shots or anything.
The pet is integral only to BM spec, not the other 2. Concentrating on DPS only, and ignoring the differences just makes us clones.
@Haylie: I am so not lazy! I have a blog of my own to support, you know.
There’s “other” blogs??
Pets are integral to ALL hunters. They are the above all defining characteristic of our class.
I, for one, would sort of want to see a major remake of the hunterclass.
I kind of hope for a similar situation concerning pets, as the deathknight. IF a major pet-thingie will be done.
And in this case Beast mastery is the tree that will have the perma-pet, and the other 2 get to summon pets at will, like shammys ghostwolf or dk:s army of the dead.
Step 2, would be futher gearing of the pet, giving it its very own collar… for gemslot or glyphs or whatever. Giving the hunter the possibility of futher tankspeccing a tendancy-pet, or giving it more of a edge dpswise.
My main is a hunter, and i always go back to my gorilla. Freaking love it.
Step 3, of a “supposed” hunter-remake would be ridding us of the horrible ammobag and replacing ammo with a system like sigill/totem/libraim, för special buffs. And yea, everlasting ammo, why the fuck not. why not make it manabased like a casters “ammo”. (brain soar from hours of naxx atm, but this is not that farfetched thinking)
I for one part, feel the needed ammosack taking up one bagslot. Is a small, but still uncool hunternerf. this and the damn cost for ammo, is not really that awsome.
@Karma
I could not agree with you more! That is until you got to the skateboard thing….
Take DPS out of it for a minute and let’s try to figure out what would really make the three specs different from each other.
I love you. Get a job at Blizzard FFS.
BRK, I would like to humbly and respectfully disagree. A hunter without a pet is not a mail-wearing mage, but an archer/ranger. And, frankly, I don’t see why that is such a bad thing. I don’t know if your brain would agree with me when he’s no longer doped and all, or maybe not.
One may, of course, argue that our class is called “hunter” and not “archer/ranger/rifleman/etc.” and, therefore, assumes a priori that it involves a pet. But pet-hunter dynamics should not be the defining attribute of the hunter, because the tree that does it best will always do it better than the other trees. This has been, in fact, the reason why for so long the only powerful hunter tree was Beastmaster—it was simply the logical consequence of defining the entire class around a single mechanic.
In my honest opinion (and fully acknowledging that, as I am not a Blizzard developer, this will never ever come to pass), the defining attribute of all hunters that can be expressed in different ways is this: the ability to track, sense, pursue, and attack the prey. DPS parity is achieved and balanced around different aspects:
• Beastmasters will achieve DPS parity by incorporating pets (at the expense of doing less personal damage). They keep their prey at range with pet aggro.
•Marksmen will have weak or no pets, but achieves DPS parity the wide assortment of ranged options available to them, and the accuracy of their attacks (think marine rifleman), and by grouping up and stacking buffs (imagine a row of archers or gunners). They keep their prey at range with stunning shots.
•Survivalists are the masters of detecting stealth, tracking prey, setting all sorts of traps, surviving encounters, hand-to-hand combat (I have no issues against melee hunters; in fact, in history one can be a hunter with a melee weapons and traps) and shooting at point-blank range. They keep their prey at range with traps and achieve DPS parity by, basically, being physically stronger.
But that’s just my point-of-view, and though it is a distant hope, as I said, I acknowledge it won’t ever happen that way.
Still, that being said and considering the current status quo I still must say: No, BRK… a hunter without a pet is not merely a mail-wearing mage; we are, instead, a shaman with no magic, little to no melee capability, and can’t shoot at point blank range.
And yes! A hunter who is an engineer should be able to track mechanicals! Sheesh!
As an Engineer (in two senses!) I fully support any possible buffs to Engineering.
From Eyonix about 3.1:
# HUNTER
# Consumable ammunition has been removed from the game. Arrows and bullets no longer stack, but are not consumed. Ranged attack speed bonus gained from quivers and ammo bags will be preserved in a different capacity.
# A new tier of hunter pet talents have been added. In particular, this allows Beastmaster hunters to improve their damage per second (DPS) with their 51 point talent.
# Hunting Party – this talent has been reduced to 3 ranks and also grants a passive bonus to the hunter.
# Piercing Shots – this talent has been changed. Your Aimed, Steady and Chimera Shots cause the target to bleed for 10/20/30% of damage dealt for 8 sec.
# Sniper Training – this talent has been changed. After standing still for 6 sec, you gain a 2/4/6% damage bonus to Steady, Aimed and Explosive Shot.
# We are also looking to add additional trap functionality to Survival.
Hey BRK
That idea of yours to incorporate pets into all hunter tree got me thinking, something along these lines…
BM – Uber Pet DPS tree
MM – Pet CC Tree?
SV – Pet Tanking tree
BM would still be the obvious ultimate hunter/pet synergy tree but something like this would really make MM and SV more in touch with their pets.
“mail wearing mage”
Now this is a BRK I can get on board with!
argh ate my post /ragequit
hi brk,
u checked if ur website is free of any malware? coz sql injection attack, the attacker could plant malware on ur site without u knowing, and infect ALL the pple that visit u…. o.o