The Shiny Side

I was going to throw down a post yesterday to describe my excitement over Talk Like A Pirate Day (and Pirate’s Day in WoW), but I actually was really busy with work and other pesky real-life duties.

However, I will instead point you over to Need More Rage’s Amazing Post celebrating the day. I LOL’d more than once.

Yarrrrrrrrrr!

Direct2Drive is turning 5 years old!

The digital game distribution website has decided to throw a big sale to commemorate the occasion. Every Monday for the next 5 4 weeks (I missed the first week, ohnoes!) they will update their sales page with new games that are only $5 each. I’m not talking just about crappy games no one wants, I’m talking Grade A titles here, people!

The schedule is as follows:

This week - ACTION
Week 3 - RPG/MMO Games
Week 4 - Indie Games
Week 5 - War Games

This week’s most notable titles (imho) include The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, BioShock, Sid Meier’s Pirates!, and Max Payne 2. If you have missed out on any of these games, $5 is well worth the price of admission.

What do you guys think? I’m interested to see what kind of MMO deals they have for us next week. If I can get another copy of WoW for $5, I might just have to get a second account. Heck, maybe they’ll do something crazy and offer something brand new like Champions or Aion for dirt cheap. Would you bite if they did?

<Warning: This is a bit of a whine post. Kinda. Just something that’s been bothering me lately. I wanted to give you fair warning ahead of time!>

Gems. Jewlcrafters cut them. You pay for them. They give you stats. The end? I’m not so sure…

This week I will start doing 3v3 Arena with a couple of my friends. While we were doing some battlegrounds last week (which I was rocking, by the way - top 3 in AV in five battles!), I was pleased with our performances. As a Mage, Priest, Hunter trio we have a lot of burst damage, some decent crowd control, and healing. Really, we have it all except for a meatshield, and I can pretend to fill that roll. Deterrence ftw?

So after these battlegrounds that really pumped me up about our chances, the priest decides to take a look at my gear.

“Wow. Look at all of those empty sockets.”

Well, yeah. I really only started getting my PvP gear two weeks ago. Hitting the honor cap, I decided to buy up a set for when we did the arena. However, that’s not a full excuse, as my normal PvE gear also had unfilled sockets. Why? Personally, I’m of the mentality that if I can craft something for (nearly) free, why the heck am I going to pay 300g+ for it on the AH? I mean, really?

So I explain this and we move on. We rock more PvP. We’re having a great time.

This week rolls around and I find out that I will not be able to participate in the Arena team if my sockets are still empty. Wait… what? I’m already rocking it out my own way, and you’re going to kick me off of the team because of a couple gemless pieces of gear that I bought specifically to do Arena with you? Umm…

This is the time when I ask you, the few and faithful readers, what your thoughts are. I know that gems can help a lot, but is it enough to make or break a team thatbadly? I know for a fact that I’m geared up better than some of the other people on the team (you can have more than 3 on your 3v3 team… kind of like subs on a bench), and yet I’m not going to get to participate because I got the better gear, but they’re not socketed?

“You can’t Arena with us with empty sockets. I don’t care if you have the crappiest gems available, socket your gear.”

Oooookay, then. So that’s what I did. I popped over to my oft-forgotten mage (who’s a 359ish JC) and made the cheapest, lowest, crappiest Outland green gems I could. +12 AP here, +3 Crit there… it’s pretty sad. I’m actually kind of embarrassed of my gear now, where as unsocketed they looked just fine.

The kicker - now that I have those crappy gems in, I’ll be allowed to Arena.

Wow, really? Glad that extra 30 AP and 6 Crit really is going to swing our team around. Um… okay.

Am I overreacting, or do you think I’m justified in my gripe here?

The patch notes for the PTR’s current version of 3.2.2 are up, and I finally got around to giving them a once-over. Some of the things I had been hearing about it (HUNTER NERF!) aren’t exactly all that they were cracked up to be. Let me go over a couple of the points and give my thoughts.

The Brood Mother Returns

• After years of lurking in her lair battling the many brave adventurers who travelled from afar to challenge her, Onyxia returns stronger than before to commemorate World of Warcraft’s five-year anniversary.
  • Onyxia has been scaled to offer new challenges to level 80 players and is now available for testing in 10- and 25-player modes.
  • Adjusted for modern raiding, but with the fundamental experience of fighting the Brood Mother still in effect, including the horrors of her Deep Breaths!
  • Onyxia will now drop level 80 item versions of some classic loot items from the level 60 encounter.

Brood of Onyxia, a very rare 310%-speed mount modeled after Onyxia herself will be available for the luckiest of challengers.

Onyxia returns. Bigger, badder, and with deeper breaths! I cannot begin to express just how awesome this is. For me, personally experiencing Onyxia when she was the 40-man level 60-capped wipe-you-all-night and then nom-on-your-corpse kind of boss… I really look forward to being able to not solo her. Yes, I can solo her. Yes, I’ve done it. I’ve got her head in my bank to prove it. Rawr!

The updated level 80 helms are kickass. As a hunter, I’ve always liked the Dragon Stalker head piece the most out of any set. I was really sad that I never actually got one for Jaarka Mk. 1, and now I cannot wait to get them on the new Jaarka. Gyah, it’s so pretty!

Of course, the mount needs to be mentioned. ZOMG, I CAN HAZ?!

With this change comes a bit of a problem, however. Any group of people who are even considering EVER going into Blackwing Lair to get the Classic Raider achievement needs to start doing some Onyxia runs NOW before the patch hits. BWL requires the Onyxia Scale Cloaks for everyone, and it’s going to be a lot harder to get those Scales of Onyxia once the patch hits. Just something to think about.

Moving on to more Hunter-centric items, we have this…

Talents

• Beast Mastery
  • The Beast Within: The duration of this talent has been reduced to 10 seconds. In addition, hunters with this talent will do 10% additional damage at all times.
  • Bestial Wrath: The duration of this talent has been reduced to 10 seconds.

Now, from what I had been told this was going to be a HUGE nerf to my BM hunter. This is not so. Nonono, not at all. Here’s my take on it.

Bestial Wrath (and The Beast Within, as they are linked) are dropping from a 15 18 second duration to 10 seconds. The power is not being replaced. It’s not changing what it does. It’s just not lasting as long. This means a few things:

1. The power still provides great burst damage, lower mana cost for the duration, and a great way to get out of crowd control abilities. It can still save you from that Waking Nightmare the Confessions throw at you! Yay!
2. It doesn’t last as long. Ah, well. Honestly, this is not a huge nerf. If you’re a BM hunter, you have this power. If you’re a BM hunter, you have (or desperately need… >.>) the Glyph of Bestial Wrath. 10 second up time with 50 seconds of downtime? Really, that’s more than enough to pwn major faces. However, Blizz was feeling quite nice this time around, and as such we get…
3. The Beast Within will now grant the hunter a CONSTANT 10% additional damage at ALL TIMES. Yes, that’s what you read. So, in exchange for 5 8 extra seconds of Big Red Kitty/Turtle/Whatever and Hunter, you get a constant stream of additional damage. This is HUGE for padding our damage meters and helping us be a more viable Raid solution. We’re coming for you, Survival. You hear me?! We are coming for all of you!(in my best Laura Roslin voice)

Okay. That’s mostly what I wanted to touch on. The PvP changes are okay. Some are cool, some are meh. The changes to mages are awesome, but I’ll touch on those in another post. For now, I just wanted to /squee about Onyxia and let everyone know that the hunter changes are not all Doom-and-Gloom for BMers.

Fret not, BM Hunters! We have always rocked, and we shall show the world (of warcraft) once again our awesome powers!

Much love and pincushions,

Jaarka, stalking around with his favorite Spirit Beast for all time.