Beast-Master
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Check out Black Desert's renamed Tamer class in quick combat trailer
Black Desert fans already knew that a Tamer class was heading into the game; today that class is available to play on the Korean servers under the new name of Beast Master. As the name would suggest, the Beast Master class utilizes summoned magical beasts during battle and has a close-to mid-range fighting style; the skills available will be dependent on whether or not the player is fighting alongside her pet or is mounted during the battle. If you want a quick peek at how the Beast Master plays, check out the class combat trailer below.
Star Wars Galaxies strikes back, 30 years later
If someone walked up to you on the street and told you that, this month, The Empire Strikes Back is 30 years old, how would you respond? Weeping at the ravages of time? A proud salute to one of the pinnacles of scifi cinema? A quick step away from a stranger who is now looking at you with shifty eyes? For the crew over at Star Wars Galaxies, the response to Empire's anniversary is to lavish players with gifts and goodies. In a recent Producer Note, dev Teesquared was pleased to announce that the entire month of May would be devoted to celebrating this milestone. Each week, all characters over 10 days old will be the recipient of a collection item and an in-game gift -- get all four gifts, and a fifth gift will be tossed in absolutely free! (Wait, is this starting to feel like an infomercial?) You'll also want to swing over to Hoth, obviously, and check out a few special loot drops, including a mystical snow globe that contains the spirit of the Wampa. Other highlights of this article include plans to tune up the Jedi and Beast Master professions, a switch of many no-trade items to make them tradable, and future events such as SWG's 7th Anniversary and the return of Empire Day. Head on over to the Star Wars Galaxies forum for the full broadcast!
Pimp My Profile: Shippleton, beast mastery hunter
Welcome to Pimp My Profile, the column in which the WoW.com staff turns zeroes into heroes. Don't think you're performing where you should be? Not sure how your class/spec is supposed to be gearing up? E-mail us with your Armory link, and you might be next to receive our help! Hi, I'm 80 and I've been so for weeks. I've been running random heroics for gear and I followed your guides for my pet specs (though I think I messed up on my Tenacity). My DPS barely cracks 1000. As far as I know, as a hunter, there is almost no excuse for this. Please help me. -Shippleton Thanks for writing in, Shippleton. You are wise enough to understand that your DPS is lower than it should be and intelligent enough to ask questions. It seems likely that you are also uncommonly good-looking, a trait shared by most hunters. You are to be applauded for taking the first step down the road to becoming a death dealer, which is the right of every hunter! Right off the bat 1k DPS seems sufficiently low that I suspect we should be taking a look at your shot rotation as well as your talents and gear. In the interest of science I went ahead and ran Utgarde Pinnacle heroic with some extremely understanding friends while I was completely naked except for my gun, shirt, and tabard. My lack of mana kept me in viper for about 50% of the fights, and I ended up at about 1,100 DPS for the run. So that gives us an absolute bottom DPS benchmark.
BigRedKitty: 3.0.2 Hunter talent trees
Daniel Howell contributes BigRedKitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for and about the Hunter class, sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary. We didn't make 80. Nope, we were much more focused on obtaining a Spirit Beast for a hunter-guide movie. We failed. But we spent hours patrolling in Sholazar Basin, playing with Gorilladin, making leatherworking gear, and trying out all the hunter talent trees while not leveling as fast as we could have. Actually, we leveled from 77 to 78 without doing any quests at all. We also haven't run any dungeons or raids. OK, we did one Utgard Keep, but it didn't count. The entire party, except the healer, was was way over-geared for the place. We also haven't done DPS-testing with Recount or Training Dummies in sufficient quantities to provide factual evidence of one hunter-tree's superiority over another. We also haven't done hours of arena, battlegrounds, or PvP-zones. We've done a little, killed and been killed, but nothing that would give us a serious insight into the solutions that Blizzard has come up with to make our class more amenable to PvP. But! We have played all three trees, full 51-points each, for at least one entire level. We have tried just about every tree/pet-class combination at least once. Except Spirit Beast, natch. And we've cranked our leatherworking to 432! /win! So when we discuss the new hunter talent trees, keep in mind that your opinion of our opinion my vary. We may have some seriously beta-PvP-experienced hunters who disagree with some of our assessments of the new talents. We may have some Naxx-raiding hunters who disagree with some of our conclusions. But that's OK! The major purpose of this column is to give you, the WoW Insider reader, a point of reference. You know our writing, you know our play-style. You should know our limitations and the areas at which we're not too shabby. Read, absorb, analyze, and prepare to test to it all yourself on Tuesday.
BigRedKitty: "Exotic" declassified
Daniel Howell contributes BigRedKitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for and about the Hunter class, sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary. Once upon a time, there was a comedian who did a bit about Troy Aikman. Mr. Aikman is a famous, former Dallas Cowboys quarterback who was forced to retire due to receiving multiple concussions over his career. The joke went like this: "Troy, you've been a Super Bowl MVP and are one of the greatest quarterbacks of the 20th century. How do you feel having to retire after receiving your 10th concussion, and how has that incredible series of blows affected your brain?" "Ummmm... I like... pudding!" How is this pertinent to WotLK and hunters? Well, the new 51st talent point in the beta of the Beastmaster tree is named Beast Mastery. As written, it's kind of obscure, a little open-ended, and the programmers don't seem to have a clue what it could really mean: "We're still working on implementing this particular talent. The talent will allow you to train a different "class" of pets which we're calling "exotic" right now. Only hunters with this talent will be able to train those pets. They won't necessarily be "stronger" (though will all have unique abilities that you can only get from exotic pets), the extra power you should get from the talent will be from the additional pet skill points (pet talent points). "Devilsaur anyone?" So when pressed for an answer on the WotLK beta forums for what "exotic" entails, the blue-poster basically said, "Pudding!" But did you ever have a doubt that BigRedKitty wouldn't know what "exotic" is? We sure hope not! We're totally on the case, ready to spill the beans on "exotic" pets, and announce what you 51/15/5 Beastmaster hunters can expect to find come expansion-time. Devilsaur, indeed.
Preview of Star Wars Galaxies Game Update 5
The Game Updates to Star Wars Galaxies are all about filling in the cracks, making the game experience as a whole better for the players. It's great, then, to see previews for Game Update 5 already on the official SWG forums. This patch looks to be improving the game for Munitions Traders (just one of the Trader variations), and folks making use of the Beast Master expertise system. What the devs tackled for this patch was partially dictated by the suggestions of the community and the representative Senator for that profession.The Trader Senator identified basic economic viability as the biggest weakness of the class; looted weapons are generally much better than crafted weapons, and level requirements ensure that the class is essentially useless until the very highest levels. Even then, the lack of upgrades and tweakability makes for a lackluster experience. In response the developers are introducing an experience more like that used by Traders specializing in armor. Weaponsmiths can put any level 'core' into any weapon appearance, allowing for endlessly customizable and specifically-aimed products.The Beast Master Senator had similar concerns, given the extremely long time it takes to get a pet to an appropriate level. The developers are going to be reexamining the leveling curve in response, and (much appreciated by me) they're going to consider allowing newly made pets to be stuffed and mounted as decorations for player housing. We'll follow this patch as it moves along its path to the live servers.
