Casual Huntering

Posts Tagged ‘Death Knights’

There was another Q&A twitter session recently. It was very enlightening. I wanted to talk about some of the points that we discussed, but I’m definitely not going to go over the entire session. Go here if you would like to read it in its entirety.

Hunter (Of course I have to start with the hunter stuff.)

Q. The Hunter class has many odd and situational abilities such as Mongoose Bite and Aspect of the Beast – are there any plans for changes to these types of abilities?

A. Mongoose Bite is most likely a goner. Let us weep. We think Aspect of the Beast could have some cool uses for Beastmaster hunters.

I really hope that Beastmasters will be a viable raid spec again someday. /crosses fingers

Q. Are hunters likely to see more stable slots for their pets in the future? With the current variety of pets, the amount they have right now seems too small.

A. Arm-waving here, but a model I would love to see is dramatically expanded slots (so you can store all those Spirit Beasts) but have a smaller number of “active” pets, like 3. You could summon an active pet from anywhere in the world, when outside of combat. You would swap a pet from active to the stable at the Stable Masters.

This is a great idea!! I mean really do you use more than 3 pets at a time anyway? We always have several pets that we just can’t manage to say good bye to, and … who would ever say adios to a Spiritbeast for goodness sake. I think this isn’t such a bad idea. I hope it happens.

Death Knight (My only other level 80 character is a DK at this point, I’m enjoying the class thoroughly).

Q. Two-handed (2H) frost death knights was a really fun playstyle that died when dual-wielding (DW) was introduced. Are there any plans to make using two-handed weapons more appealing?

A. We can’t make every death knight tree PvP, PvE and tanking viable and also offer both 2H and DW options for all three of those. We are currently designing Frost as a DW-only tree.

Right now my death knight is a 2 handed frost spec tank and 2 handed unholy spec dps. Why?  Because I haven’t picked up one handed weapons yet, but I totally want to dual wield with my frost tank. I won’t say more to further demonstrate my noobness when it comes to this subject.

Raids & Dungeons (I admit I have skipped a lot of the questions here.)

Q. What have you learned from this expansion’s emblem system?

A. Having that many different kind of emblems is overwhelming. In hindsight, we wish we had done maybe 2 emblems: the current tier and the previous tier (Frost and Triumph at the moment). They also felt a tad too grindy when 3.3 first came out before all of the sources of emblems were available.

I’m glad that they are simplifying this; it was a bit too overwhelming, confusing, and complicated previously. I don’t’ want them to make it so simple that its almost stupid, but I think 2 tiers are enough.

Q. Are there any plans to allow cross-realm raiding?

A. If we can solve the problems with it, we might give it a try. One of the problems is getting the group back together, especially on the longer instances. Loot drama and stuff like that is always a problem. There is also the ongoing concern about the concept of your realm having less of a sense of community.

I personally don’t see how this can end up being a good thing. Our raid group does some puging for ToC 25, but they have a “good list” and a “bad list”. With random, you get what you get. There just seems for too much coordination that needs to take place and too much time required. With that being said, I think it would make raiding more accessible to someone who doesn’t have a raiding guild or don’t have enough people to do 25 mans. I agree about the loss of the community feel though. I’m all over pugs for 5 man, but this looks like it could go sour.

Q. Will we be seeing more Caverns of Time in Cataclysm? War of the Ancients, maybe?

A. We will definitely see another trip to the Caverns of Time during Cataclsym. You are going to have to ask Chromie for more details though. =)

I love Caverns of Time dungeons, the lore, the story line, the chance to go back in time, it’s all epic in my opinion. I’m glad they are doing that in Cataclsym.

Q. Why have we not seen World Bosses in this expansion?

A. They just have problems. It’s always a race to get to them, which tends to favor larger groups who are online often, and it’s hard to discourage or even prevent players outside the raid from helping or screwing things up.

A#2. World bosses are something that we have been talking about more as of late. We really like the concept, but there are certain design problems we would like to address before we bring them back. Stay tuned.

I’ve been wondering about this myself. I thought it was cool having random world bosses in different areas. (don’t go over there if you don’t want to be eaten by a dragon **head nod**). I remember leveling and visiting the center of Darkshire only to be quickly killed by the large dragon there. I didn’t like dying much, but it was cool to see it. But I see the problem here; I wouldn’t have a chance being as casual as I am with my play time. I’m a little curious what they plan on doing.

Q. With the advent of Heroic Shadowfang Keep and Heroic Deadmines, is there any likelihood of other older instances made Heroic?

A. Yes. We are hoping to do more than just these two, but it just comes down to time. We are focusing on getting the new Cataclysm dungeons done first and then we can look into doing more old-world Heroics.

I’m so stupid; I thought that it was odd that they were only doing Shadowfang keep and Deadmines. That will be awesome; with new patches will get new old school heroic dungeons. What more could you ask for??

Cataclysm (not everything, just the questions that interested me).

Q. Regarding Cataclysm, can you reveal any of the ‘major changes’ in Blasted Lands and how this will affect the lore?

A. I love the fact that one of our first questions is in regards to the Blasted Lands! We have big plans in store for this zone in Cataclysm. We will be revamping the entire flow of the zone so you can expect an entirely new experience here. Some of the big changes include an opening to the coastline for a new play area, as well as a large new worgen area in The Tainted Scar.

You know, I don’t think I did anything in the Blasted Lands except go through the portal to the outlands, maybe I should check it out before the expansion. (I probably won’t).

Q. Should players be concerned about what gear they pickup in this expansion, because of the gear overhaul that is coming?

A. I wouldn’t stress over it. You’ll probably replace that gear pretty quickly. Since we have 5 levels, we don’t really want players getting all the way to 85 without having upgraded at all.

Yeah, of course a gear reset is coming. Kind of makes me want to work on alts instead of my main for the next few months.

Q. With the Lich King defeated, in Cataclysm, will the Plaguelands be green and beautiful again?

A. Western Plaguelands will finally be free of the plague in Cataclysm. It’s hard for the Scourge to survive without their beloved Lich King. I guess this means we need to rename the zone?

I love it; I always thought the place was kind of ugly anyway. These kinds of changes that fit with the storyline get me excited. I’m going to be tempted to roll a bunch of new characters and start over. I’m sure a lot of people will be doing that.

Q. Will we get some info about the other zones revamped in Cataclysm, like Stranglethorn Vale or Tanaris?

A. Yes, we are hoping to do a few specific web features on a few of the old world zones and exactly what is changing with them. Stranglethorn Vale is seeing a large amount of changes so it is a great candidate for this.

A#2. A. Some Tanaris goblins wisely invested in desert real estate and reaped the benefits when it became beach-front property.

Oh, do I remember the days of STV leveling on a PvP server. Can I say gank city? I remember be camped on multiple occasions. I think it’ll be good for the area to get a face lift. Them goblins are so good with money. I’d be tempted to hire one as an accountant if I didn’t think he’d rob me blind.

Q. Will there be any type of water mount, like, submarines?

A. We actually have two brand new subs that we made for Cataclysm. These submarines will be used as transports. We have one for gnomes and one for goblins. The subs are huge too! Both are about the size of the Gunships from Icecrown.

Can I just say how full of win this is? Now I think I’ll work on leveling my hunter first before making a worgen or goblin just so I can get my engineering up to make one of these. I’m very stoked about this. (update: I thought about this more and more, what was I thinking, these are just going to be like the boats or blimps for massive transport, not a mount. /fail)

Miscellaneous

Q. Where is my moose? Did you see that Ghostcrawler?

A. That was so epic. I was sure the screenshot was shopped until we saw the actual video. I guess we’re going to have to do a moose now…

Yeah, where’s our moose??

This Q&A session got me really excited for up and coming WoW stuff. I’m pretty darn excited for Cataclysm.

Alright, I finally hit an accomplishment that many people will think isn’t much, but it was totally a big deal for me. I got my second character to level 80.

The funny thing is that my second character is a death knight. Shouldn’t they be the easiest class to level to 80??? Yes, I’m afraid so. So, how long did it take me to get the toon to level 80 though? Well, I rolled her the night Wrath of the Lich King came out, when everybody else was rolling death knights as well. So, it’s been over a year. I remember the death knight starting area being crazier than hell. My wife and I rolled death knights at the same time and went through the death knight begin area together.

Now my wife and I ended up parting ways at level 58. I really wanted to level this death knight. I know my wife is still a little mad at me about that. Well, we do have a pair of death knights that we are leveling on the Feathermoon server at least. Originally, the death knight was going to be my farming toon. So, I leveling mining and skinning on her. By the way, leveling mining can be a pain in the @ss! It took a good deal of time to level that high enough just to take it to the outlands. Since then I’ve enjoyed playing the death knight so much I’ll probably try to get her geared enough to do some raiding, and maybe someday I’ll try to learn how to tank with her.

Well, with my attention deficit problem it has taken awhile to get my first death knight finally leveled all the way. In the mean time, I’ve taken four other death knights through the beginning area to level 58. I don’t keep rolling death knights cause I love the class (I do actually love the class don’t get me wrong), but mostly because whenever you go to a new server, well you ought to roll a death knight. It’s the quickest way to make money and get established.

So, how long did it take to level the dk? When I checked the /played feature it said I’d played this character for 6 days and 13 hours. That’s nothing compared to my hunter, but its still a freakin’ lot of time to be playing a game. My next highest leveled alt is only level 36, my druid on Deathwing. Now getting the druid to level 80 will be much more of an accomplishment. Of course I think just the fact that when I leveled my hunter it was still back in the day before Blizzard increased the speed at which you could level. I tell you, by golly, back in the day the grind from level 40 to level 60 was really bad. And leveling in the outlands took a lot longer as well. So, in my opinion leveling a toon in vanilla WoW was much more an accomplishment than it is now. Leveling from 70 to 80 still takes a good long while, but much easier and more fun with LFG. I would quest while sitting in the queue and then I’d jump into a group and take out an instance somewhere. Keep going if they would or jump back to questing. It’s the ultimate help while leveling. You get good gear while getting a ton of XP.

Well, there you have it, I’m probably one of the most casual guys in the game you’ll know, of course the very fact that I’m writing a blog means that I’m probably not quite that casual, but now I have my second 80. Well, neither of them are geared very well, so I’m still rather pathetic.

Happy St Patty’s day to y’all. I work at an elementary school so wearing green today was essential to my survival. (aghhhh, death by pinches….).

My Death Knight finally hit level 70 and after getting her mining all the way up she is now in Northrend. I decided to do something a little different. I’m actually attempting to play her slightly RP style. I don’t think I could ever completely play a crosstoon RP, because I’m not going to even pretend to know what’s going on in the female brain, let alone pretend to be one. However, I’m actually reading quests and interacting with NPCs. Northrend is perfect for this especially since the NPCs specifically talk to you a lot more now (remember who people in Dallaran say hello to you when you enter their shops?) Okay, the interacting with computer people seems a little silly to me, but the whole thing adds a new dimension to game play that I’m enjoying, trying to see through the eyes of my character.

Really why do we play the game? What do we get out of it? I for one love the social aspect of the game, even though I play solo quite a bit, but I usually keep twitter on and I chat with some of the other early birds in my guild. We play to try to get our next piece of cool gear? I know a lot of people who are all about getting uber gear (my little brother for one). Spending all of your time getting the best gear possible can be fun, but eventually it can get boring. I know so many people who were burned out on raiding before WotLK (and some who are as of now).

We play for the overall experience of the game, right? I say this, but that doesn’t explain why we farm. Farming can’t be that much fun. But we are trying to improve our toons, or collect cool stuff. It’s nice to be able to make a lot of gold in the economy (even if making gold IRL isn’t as easy… or fun). I say this but I’m pretty poor in Azeroth and IRL.

But I regress to random tangents as always. So, I’m trying out the RP thing (even though my main characters aren’t on an RP server). And so far it has increased the game play experience quite a bit. It adds a new element to the game that has made it exciting for me again. I’ll have to come up with some story about people doing crazy stuff, I best avoid capital cities I suppose.

So, maybe I’ll have to actually visit those level 1 characters that I rolled on RP servers and give them a shot. I just have a hard time spending time on other servers and redoing the whole leveling process. At least it’s a lot quicker than when I leveled my hunter /sigh. Yes, I know I could roll a Death Knight, but I really would like to try RPing a hunter. I guess that’s just something to look forward to.

Just thought I’d quickly say what I’m doing in the game these days. I have 3 main projects. The first one is to level to 80 (yes I’m not level 80 yet). I know only work on leveling my main (my dwarf hunter) when my wife is playing. So, we’re doing pretty good, we’re both level 78 now… plugging along.

When I’m not playing with my wife I have two projects going. I’m trying to level my DeathKnight alt as a farming alt. At least that was the idea initially. I’m finding myself really enjoying the DK class. I speced unholy so that I could have a pet. The ghoul might not be as lovable as Mungula my Gorilla, but its comforting to have someone to hang out with, even if it stinks from decay.

My other project is the one everybody else has, to make money. Right now I really want to get enough gold to help fund my wife’s epic flying training. When you haven’t had an epic flying mount you don’t know what you are missing, but when you have had one, you don’t ever want to go back.

I’m still obcessed with mounts (I’m up to 60 now) and vanity pets (up to 40). I still have a lot of mounts to get, but there all going to take some work and/or luck. And I just need to get off my butt and look up which vanity pets I’m missing. Oh, and whenever there is a holiday I also get obcessed with that.

I’m still not raiding, so when I hear all of your talk about this 10 man or that 25 man in twitter or on the podcasts I’m pretty confused cause I have no idea what you are talking about. Pretty sad I know, but thus is life.

Anyway, what are your current WoW projects?

Well, I was running to the flightmaster on top of the mushroom town in Zangermarsh on my level 63 Death knight. And for some reason my mouse button got stuck or something and I just kept running. I thought that I was going to promptly fall to my death and have to run back to my body. I think (I’m already dead as a death knight so I’m not quite sure how that works, but we’ll leave that alone.)

Anyway, I didn’t die, I landed on top of another mushroom, so I spent some time mushroom hopping. I felt a little like Mario.

So, here I am fishing with my new DK friend. Why am I fishing when I should be leveling to 80???? Yeah, I'm still level 76, what am I thinking? Good questions, the truth is that its kind of relaxing. After killing things all day long (even though I make Mungula do most of the work), it feels good to sit back in Stormwind and catch fish that you plan on throwing back (because they stock the canals here with trash fish apparently). I thought it was fun to fish on top of the water thanks to my random DK friend.

Another reason (the real reason) I do random things like fishing, looking for mounts, searching for vanity pets, and other random non-leveling things, is because I’m only leveling with Kydra (played by my wife). I think we’re making great progress considering we have 3 kids under the age of 4. Yeah, we don't get on very much. We started leveling the day the expansion came out so, thats not our excuse, we point the blam at our kids, bless their hearts, lol.

It is fun to have a leveling buddy. I got all the way to 70 practically by myself killing boars (well, not just boars), not as fun (back in the days before they decreased the time it takes to level from 20-70 /shakes fist). Back in the day leveling from 50-60 was a nightmare, now it’s a joke, but that’s another blog post on another day. So now Kydra is at my level we’re staying together. I’m just glad that Bliz added so many other things to do in the game.

Most people probably thought that this Thanksgiving weekend was a perfect time to get a little bit farther to 80 (or get some gear for you people who are already 80). Well, I didn’t touch my Hunter at all this weekend. He’s a whooping level 72. But I wasn’t home and I don’t like playing my main anywhere but on my home computer. I don’t have my macros on other computers and now that I have… a lot of macros… maybe too much? idk. But I don’t like playing without them anymore. So, I leveled my wife’s druid all the way to 24 (I know I know, I’m bad@ass).

My wife and I finally got back to our DKs and finished the beginning quests. They are awesome. I don’t want to give any spoilers away (sorry Ryan), but even if you are not planning on rolling a death knight, I would still suggest doing the beginning quests at least then make them your bank alt or something. It was just too cool of a story line.

Anyway, I’m back for all of you thousand of readers (ha ha).

So, my wife and I got our pictures with Arthus. He showed us his sword and everything. Yeah, I’m cross tooning on my Death Knight, partly because I thought the male Dreani (spelling check, lol) are kind of ugly and I wanted their racial ability to heal theirselves.

The other picture is my dwarf, Aoirselvar, and his human girlfriend, Kydra. All the other dwarfs are jealous, they can stick with dwarven women and gnomes.

Okay, so my wife and I ran a couple of the first instances last night. Nexus, and the other one in Howling Hjord or whatever (i’m tired and I don’t care too much about spelling this morning). I’ve been so use to rounding up everything with my Mungula (my gorilla) and tanking big mobs that I forgot how boring it was to sit there and just shoot at things. I really would like to get my hands on attempting to tank some instances with my pet, but I don’t know if I have enough gear or enough people to take me serious. It really can be done. Check out this website for hunter tanks: http://bigredrhino.wordpress.com/.