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Legend of Silkroad shuts down today
On this final day of 2014, the year apparently cannot resist dragging one last body into the abyss. Legend of Silkroad's operation is ceasing as of today, following an announcement made back on December 24th. The forums and website will also be closed, so if you made friends on the boards, they've already given you alternative contact information. The shutdown announcement cites difficulties on the developer's end, thought whether it means that the studio behind the game shut down altogether or there's simply a lack of communication is unclear. Our condolences to fans of the game affected by the shutdown; hopefully you made some good memories in the game. At least it'll be difficult for any other games to shut down in 2014.
Breakfast Topic: Using "IRL," IRL
I used to work at a sandwich shop. Yes, I've heard the "make me a sandwich" jokes already. I worked the lunch shift and I had this regular customer who came in a few times a week to get a hummus pita. If you don't know what hummus is, it is a delicious and flavorful spread made of mashed chickpeas and spices. It's often served with pita bread as an appetizer, or as a side or dip for various Middle Eastern or Greek dishes. Anyway, after a few weeks of making the same pita for this woman, she told me "you know, you make the best hummus pita here." I smiled at the compliment and responded, "Well, I just make yours the way I would make my own. I really like hummus IRL." As the last letter of the acronym escaped my mouth, it twisted into an awkward tone as I realized the error in my sentence. Immediately flustered, I stuttered, "Err-- I mean... I like hummus... Uh..." She laughed at me with a smile and replied, "Don't worry, I know what you meant." But my nerdiness was already exposed; I was prone. I sensed an incoming AoO. It never came. At the time I was probably overreacting, granted. The usage of net speak is pretty acceptable and easily understood to the average person these days. "BRB" doesn't bewilder most people, for example. On the other hand, I find myself telling my friends once a month, "I don't feel like going out: girl debuff," always getting mixed responses. Recently, a friend of mine going off to college soon came to me for some advice on dorm living. I told him, "if you want more privacy, just bunk the beds." Before I could continue, he followed up with "oh yeah, that'd block LoS." I stared at him, dumbfounded. Had someone just out-nerded me? So what WoW terminology do you use in your everyday life? How do your friends who don't play WoW react?
Scattered Shots: It ain't over till it's over
Scattered Shots occasionally wanders around collecting arrows and bullets when they totally miss the target.The key to understanding hunters in the beta is to look at the big picture. This is something affecting all classes currently, but I'm going to discuss it in relation to hunters in particular. Beta testing buffs and nerfs ultimately come down to a matter of perspective -- do you see your class changes happening in isolation, for now and forever as long as you and your pet shall live? Or are your particular class changes happening as part of an ever-evolving system involving you, me and everyone else over time?As you've probably heard, hunters got some nerfs in the latest beta update, and some people are understandably upset about them. I'm not worried about it though -- and now I'll tell you why.
Things don't look pretty for PvP Hunters in 8926
The best thing you can say about Hunters in Wrath in this Beta build is that we still have the new Disengage, at least for now. In this build, most of our new PvP tools have had much of their new functionality removed or greatly scaled back in this build.
Blood Sport: Arena for dummies II
So you want to get into Arenas, eh? You're a bit late coming into the game, but that's alright. Whether you want to be truly competitive or just try Arenas out for fun, maybe even with friends, it helps to have a little bit of knowledge about what you're getting into. Before anything else, however, we'll take a look at some commonly used terms in the Arenas so you can insert some your vent communications so you can sound like a Pro... or at least not get lost in the discussion.2345A team comp (composition) consisting of an MS Warrior, a Discipline Priest, a Holy Paladin, an Elemental Shaman, and a Mage, usually Frost-specced.This is a 2-healer 3-DPS cookie-cutter composition that supposedly originated from the Bloodlust Battlegroup (BG9). Unlike basketball, where the numbers refer to positions (or classes) on the team, 2345 actually refers to the head-rolling-on-keyboard reference of mashing the buttons 2, 3, 4, and 5 repeatedly throughout the match. Roughly, this translates to unloading all offensive abilities based on, or during, the Shaman's Bloodlust / Heroism. The basic strategy is to assist off the Warrior who applies Mortal Strike on a target and burst damage coming from the Shaman and Mage with Shatter combo often with Nature's Swiftness, Elemental Mastery, and Chain Lightning. The Shaman and Priest also work off offensive dispels, removing shields and immunities, while the Paladin plays main healer. This composition can and does switch targets often throughout the course of a match.
Scattered Shots: How do you make sense of all the beta hunter changes?
Is the tauren above about to cut off his own head -- or lunge forward to attack? Perhaps he's just feeling confused about upcoming changes to hunters? Would you, too, like to know just what's going to happen to your class? Well, you can rest easy now, because Scattered Shots has all the answers to your most urgent questions.The short answer is: You don't; at the moment there is no making sense of all the Wrath hunter changes. We find ourselves at the mid-point of Blizzard's mysterious scheme for hunters, right in-between significant changes already in-progress and vague changes which they've promised or the future. We remain uncertain about which ones are going to make it live, which will be changed again, and which will be removed or added later on. Any analysis we do right now (and indeed much of the analysis we've already done) may or may not be completely out of date in a matter of days or weeks, and if your head hurts from all the ups and downs of turbulent beta-zone theorycrafting, rest assured that Scattered Shots feels your pain.The long answer is: Even though the jigsaw puzzle isn't complete, it's still a pretty neat picture to look at. Today isn't the day for point-for-point talent analyses plus spreadsheets of sting/shot-damage coefficients -- what a headache that would be. No, today is an opportunity to stand back and look at how all this is beginning to fit together, to see how the path our class is trekking through the wilderness of beta-testing ambiguity solves some of our long-standing problems, gives us more of what makes hunters great, and leaves us with several crucial questions mysteriously unanswered.What follows, ladies and gentauren, are the X-files of hunter beta mysteries, a fuzzy look through the crystal ball into the future of our class, the thrilling buildup to the surprising twist that comes just before the epic climax of the Hunter Saga season finale and leaves you hanging on the edge of your seat, biting on the tip of your fingernails, and gasping for air in the thrall of cliffhanger suspense.
Hunters get some major love in the Wrath Beta
It's been a busy day on the Hunter Beta boards, with Koraa delivering tidbit after tidbit of great news for Hunters. Here's the breakdown: Deterrence and Master's Call will become baseline. Animal Handler will be getting an overhaul. Serpent Sting will get a mana cost reduction and a coefficient buff with the aim of making it worth casting in your basic shot rotation. Silencing Shot will become a proper interrupt for PvE usage, and Trueshot Aura will go raid wide. Hunters will be getting a big push with lots of changes in the beta build after next. These are definitely welcome changes. In PvP, being able to stand up to focus fire or get back to range have long been weaknesses of the class. Having a non-talent way to break out of snares or add a bit of extra defense attacks will go a long way to making a bit tougher. It's not trainable Scatter Shot or pet resilience, exactly, but it's nearly as good as either, and may be better for us in the long run than the former option. Finally, we'll have a dependable way to get away from Hamstring or Crippling Poison that does not involve Beastmastery or being a Dwarf. Animal Handler has been looking more and more lackluster lately in the face of other mount speed talents that provide more speed and better benefits, especially now that pets will share our hit percentage, so hopefully this revamp makes it desirable again. Similarly, the state of Silencing Shot and its inability to interrupt silence-immune mobs has long been a sticking point with PvE-focused Marksmanship Hunters. So so far, all of the announced changes are definitely welcome news that should hopefully be nothing but useful to Hunters. We'll definitely be looking forward to this build after next to see the final state of Animal Handler, whether Serpent Sting will be useful for damage purposes again, and whatever other changes -- such as the promised counters to LOS -- Blizzard tests out.
Scattered Shots: The dev team takes on PvP
Welcome once again to Scattered Shots, WoW Insider's spot for all things Hunter, except for the stuff Big Red Kitty covers. Daniel Whitcomb will be your host today (a day late, for which he apologizes) as David Bowers tries to shake off some extra aggro. The state of Hunters in PvP is perhaps one of the most debated subjects in WoW PvP. Some call Hunters overpowered for their dispelling Arcane Shot (which is going away in Wrath, to be sent to the non-damaging Tranquilizing Shot), while others point to their low Arena representation and the ease of using line of sight to negate most of their DPS and Abolish Poison to get rid of their main PvP utility as proof that they need buffs. Regardless, even the devs acknowledge that Hunters probably need some help in PvP, and class designer Koraa recently spoke on the subject on the Beta forums. In his post, he covered the problems he sees Hunters having, and how Blizzard will be helping with those moving forward into Wrath. Unfortunately, his solutions seem confused in and of themselves. They involve giving Hunters more melee attack power (instead of more way to break from melee so they can use their ranged weapon) and a variety of talents scattered around many trees in such a way that it will be difficult for a solid PvP build to get them all. And, as I mentioned in a post yesterday, they still aren't giving pets resilience. Other Hunters such as Megatf have done an excellent job responding to some of Koraa's points in the thread itself, but I'd like to address and respond to the post myself in this week's column, and see how they stack up to the problems Hunters face in small scale Arena PvP.
Are Line of Sight spells an unfair advantage?
Player Amithral of the Magtheridon server has a complaint about LoS (Line of Sight) spells. These are channeled spells like Mindflay, Drain Mana, Drain Life, etc. Pretty much anything where you see a particle animation of a continuous beam from the caster to the target.His complaint is that if the target breaks LoS, the ray spell continues. Hunters are plagued by LoS issues, but Priests and Warlocks seem to get a free pass as long as they have LoS when they first cast their spells. Community Manager Tharfor responds that the ray-like spells are considered to be a "working feature and there are currently no plans to change it." However, he also went on state this game mechanic may need to be reevaluated and he will bring it up to the dev team to see if they want to address it.What do you think? Is the lack of a LoS check after casting an unfair advantage (especially in PvP) or should it be considered an advantage of the classes that have it?
