misdirection
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GPS leads couple into Oregon wilderness, snow and lack of common sense keep them there 3 days
So you're cruising along, in your GPS-equipped SUV, taking your dear wife back home to Reno. The trusty onscreen guide instructs you to "turn right" and you follow its typically reliable instructions. At what point in the next three days of plowing deeper and deeper into snow-covered Oregon do you start suspecting that maybe something is amiss? Alright, so this isn't quite on par with others driving buses into low-clearance tunnels, dipping their cars into rivers, or jamming heavy load trucks into unsuitably tight farm lanes. But we don't discriminate here, all instances of idiotic GPS dependency deserve their moment in the sun, so here's to Mr. John Rhoads and his tastefully named wife, Mrs. Starry Bush-Rhoads, who are now safe and sound after their phone pinged out its coordinates to emergency services when it began losing signal.
Scattered Shots: Autocast bugs and other animal handling issues in 3.0.2
Welcome to Scattered Shots, where Daniel Whitcomb loves his Hunter Judgement, but wishes he got the cool looking shoulders too. So between 3.0.2, the Scourge Invasion, and Hallow's End, my Hunter's seen a lot of play as I've been going after the title and the undead armor and playing with all the new changes on a live server and all, and in that time, I've had some chance to see how stuff works out when it's thrown into the crucible of live server playing. Most of my observations have ended up focusing around pets, which is probably to be expected. After all, they've changed quite a bit. Here's what's I've learned from 3.0.2 in the last few weeks about managing your pet:
Ask a Beta Tester: The Alchemist
Apologies to Paulo Coelho fans for borrowing his title, but we have two Alchemy-related questions to start us off today, in addition to questions on Blacksmithing, cinematics, and dailies: Horizons asks... Do the alchemy specializations in wrath still work the same way as they do now in BC? For example, will I still have a chance of getting 5 wrath potions even when I'm leveling starting at 375 such as Wrath Elixirs or Icy mana potions? And will transmute spec ever be fixed? Yup, alchemy specializations work the exact same way in Wrath. As a potions master, I've already procced a few, but don't expect to see the Runic Mana or Runic Healing potion recipes until...I want to say it's 410 Alchemy. You'll skill up on the array of new elixirs like Elixir of Mighty Thoughts and Elixir of Mighty Agility until then, but do save mats for the new Alchemy trinkets that become available at (I think) 400, like Mighty Alchemist's Stone. We'll have more information soon on materials you'll start getting in Northrend that you'll want to set aside for crafting.
When is it fair for classes to share?
Recently an interesting thing happened in the world of game design. To non-WoW players, it may seem like a minor detail, but it really shows an insight into the way that Blizzard designs their games.Rogues have, of course, been stealthy for a long time, and when word first dropped that hunters might be getting Camouflage in Wrath of the Lich King, we were pretty excited that some element of stealth might be added to our class too. Blizzard went back and forth on this ability, first putting it in, then taking it out, then putting it in again, and finally taking it out again. In the end they decided that it was just too similar to the rogue ability, and they didn't want to blend the classes together too much. This was about the same time that they gave rogues a new ability, called Tricks of the Trade, which looks a lot like the hunter's ability, Misdirection.To one player who asked what was up with this unfairness, Ghostcrawler spoke up and explained some of their design philosophy. She started by saying that they have 10 classes now, and they have to add more in every expansion. The "lazy-designer" way to handle this kind of situation is just to find an ability that works for one class and just give it to another. This would end up leaving the classes without enough to distinguish them all individually, and it's something they wanted to avoid. So why was Misdirection an okay ability to share, while Stealth was not?...
Hunter changes in beta 8962
There are a slew of new updates to Hunters in the latest beta build, but the biggest one comes to Aspect of the Viper. Blizzard has been tuning this spell for a while -- originally it gave Hunters back their ranged damage as mana (pretty overpowered), and then was tuned down to each shot giving back mana based on twice the base ranged weapon speed. Now it's still based on the base ranged speed, but they've buffed it back up to a percentage of mana -- if you have a base ranged weapon speed of 2, for example, you'll get 4% mana back for every shot that hits. Not a bad deal, and hopefully Blizzard is getting close to settling on making itso that Hunters only need to switch to AotV sometimes, instead of leaving it up all the time.Most of the other Hunter changes in 8962 are just tweaks -- Kill Shot no longer does a knockdown and got a little damage buff. Tranq shot got added utility, in that it will remove enrage and magic effects rather than just the frenzy effect that was so hard to come by. Misdirection's cooldown got dropped to 30 seconds from two minutes, which means Hunters will get more chances to dump aggro when necessary.There's one new skill which will make things pretty interesting on the trapping side -- Freezing Arrow lets you fire off an arrow that will lay down a Freezing Trap (which, by the way, now has only a chance to break on damage, instead of 100% certainty). That, combined with some quick Misdirection, could make trapping a whole new game at level 80. Unfortunately, it looks like the tradeoff for that is that we're losing Camouflage, which some Hunters already aren't happy about. But as always, all of these skill and talents are still up for grabs, so maybe we'll see Camo back in some form before it's all over.Update: Whoops, forgot to mention that AotV is still carrying that 50% damage penalty while on. That's pretty harsh, even with the mana coming back, so look for a buff on that end before 3.0.2 goes live.
Misdirection gets a shorter cooldown in Wrath
Since the addiiton of Tricks of the Trade to the Rogue repertoire in the Wrath of the Lich King Beta, Hunters have felt a little slighted. Not only did Rogues get Misdirection, a somewhat defining Hunter ability in PvE, they got Misdirection on a much shorter cooldown that also augmented the tank's damage for even more threat. Koraa brought good news late last night, mentioning that Misdirection's cooldown will be lowered to 30 seconds (down from 2 minutes) to match the cooldown of Tricks of the Trade. While Misdirection still doesn't have any secondary effects like Tricks does, you have to consider the fact that it can be used at range which is a pretty big deal. While the abilities have similar effects, they'll be used for wholly different things. It's a threat management tool for Rogues, whereas it's a pulling ability for Hunters. The two abilities fill different roles despite their similarities. Hunter threat tends to have some pretty wild spikes sometimes, but I think they have all the threat management they need. Feign Death is on a 30 second cooldown, and the Rogue threat wipe is at 3 minutes.
The 10 people you need to know in WoW
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/pc_games/10_MMO_Players_You_Need_to_Know'; One of my favorite people to read online is a fellow by the name of Pjammer on Livejournal. He's smart, funny, and a gifted writer, and if you are not sobbing by the end of "King of Masochists" then you are pretty much a terrible person. But another great entry is "The 16 Essential People In Your Life," which lists such valuable acquaintances as the Computer Security Guru, the Wolf, the Consigliere, and (most importantly) the Best Friend. Pjammer, quoting Harvey Mackay, correctly notes that 2 am is a bad time to make new friends. These are the kind of people you want in your life as early as possible, and to exercise a positive influence on its course. My realm's seen a number of guild instability issues of late, which is something most of us have come to expect with an upcoming expansion. I've found reason to mull over how the virtual world differs from the real world with respect to friendship, backstabbing, greed, betrayal, honor, and how people choose to handle their problems. In my considered opinion it doesn't differ at all, and your experience ingame is largely determined by the network of players assembled around you, whether that alliance is a recognized one in the form of a guild or simply a more informal group of friends.So, from my own experience and with a hat tip to Pjammer, these are the people you want in your posse for the best possible experience in the game:
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.
Adventures in Beta: Fun with Misdirection
Most classes have at least one spell or talent that, while not the most effective damage dealer, is extremely fun to mess around with. How many priests have mind controlled people into lava? How many mages have set up portals to Darnassus and announced that it was going to Ironforge? How many rogues have accidentally pulled half of UBRS through uncautious pickpocketing? Well, there are three very interesting spells in the Burning Crusade with great potential for abuse: Misdirection, Spellsteal and Seed Of Corruption. According to the official Burning Crusade site, Misdirection is an insant-cast level 70 hunter spell that has this effect: "Threat caused by your next 3 attacks is redirected to the target raid member. Caster and target can only be affected by one Misdirection spell at a time. Effect lasts 30 sec." The spell has a two-minute cooldown.
