Age of Conan = Nice PvP tide-me-over

So if you're burned out on arenas right now like I am, you've probably been sitting around being bored with wow pvp. I decided to give Age of Conan a try with a good buddy of mine who loves killing people just for the sport of it as much as I do. Well ok, maybe not as much as I do, but he's damn close.


So it took me a couple days to get up to where I am right now, which is level 19, and I've gotta say... I'm digging the ffa pvp in this game quite a bit. If you are someone who loves the thrill of the hunt, and the excitement of being hunted, then you will like the pvp in this game. It's basically all world pvp. Outside of the newbie town, you'll find dozens of mini-instances and mini-dungeons. When you zone in, you (and your group if you have one) gets randomly thrown into one of the half-dozen instances of that particular area, and you're free to roam about and kill as you please. In WoW terms, think of it as 6 instances of deadmines going at any time for everyone, and you can expect to bump into other players/groups as you go through the one you were placed in. So while you are questing, you also have the freedom to go ruin other peoples' days. And I love it.

I think we spent more time over the last couple of days roaming around and farming newbs more than anything. If we happened to be in the right area for quests, well, that was purely a bonus. So in that sense, we'd go around town gathering up all the quests, and then picking a place to go farm some newbies and make them nerdrage, all the while slowly accomplishing our quest log as we went. I also like the fact that PvP doesn't reward you for any reason other than the pure, simple gratification that shooting someone else in the throat can offer.

You don't get people participating in pvp for fabricated or alternative reasons, such as "farming honor" in WoW, which I find to be extremely boring. It's my personal philosophy that, as long as you create a system that allows for pvp, people will participate in it and play in that sort of environment if they enjoy it. If they don't, you have to end up creating these horrible "incentives" such as honor rewards and things like that. To me, you wouldn't need those if PvPing in your game was fun in and of itself. You wouldn't need to incite people to keep PvPing for gear if the PvP itself was a blast. I think this is something that Blizzard has really lost sight of with WoW. Did you play Warcraft 3 to farm points to buy better gear? No. You played simply for the sake of playing, and dominating your opponent. That philosophy is simply gone in World of IncentiveCraft.

In that sense, I will say that I hope more games in the future follow the Age of Conan philosophy and simply let players choose when and where they have their pvp engagements at. I would take a hardcore wow server if it meant that I could follow other people into their instances (even my own faction), and kill them as necessary. Sure would save a lot of customer service tickets about "he said this" and "she said that". Let them have it out on their own, and simply make it known that being killed will happen, and that crying about it will do nothing. You want justice? Exact your own revenge.

As my favorite Team Fortress 2 character would say: "Keep crying, BABIES."

A Hel Rune, Blizzard? Really?

Way to spoil it. Jeez. That really just took all the fun out of watching everyone squirm with anticipation.

New Blizzard Game To Be Announced Soon?

Looks like Hell has finally frozen over. Oh how I wonder what it could be... =] Guess we'll have to wait until this weekend!

Hopefully Blizzard will be able to talk more about some lich king stuff as well. I know a lot of people are eager to look at what their respective class changes will bring them.

Waiting is always the hardest part. Hang in there.

Beastly DPS

Here is my toon.

Here was my dps from the shade of aran fight as an example in a karazhan pug last week.

I picked up 2 of those epics (the cloak and ring) AFTER that dps was recorded, meaning i was using even worse gear.

A) I'm using a less than optimal bow for beast
B) I refuse to use macros to time my shots for me. I think it takes all the fun an interactivity out of the class.

People keep telling me that I NEED a macro to do good dps in pve. Clearly, this is not the case. I LOVE hunter pve because of shot weaving. It's fun.

However, it's just not as applicable in arena (when many other classes are more of a fire-and-forget or auto attack while spamming independent attack timers type deal), while having to be stationary to do it.

Don't let anyone sell you with the point that hunters need to rely on macros to do competitive dps these days. That's a lie. THEY might need one to do maximum damage.

The only problem that hunters typically have is trying to spec marks and hoping to keep up with BM dps. I probably generate a whole 35% less dps as marks. That's a substantial drop off, mostly due to not having serpents swiftness. That talent is absolutely essential for pve dps.

I've seen some comments on this blog stating such things like: "I just get tired of people saying hunter dps is fine in pve. IT IS NOT FINE, hunters made it work when blizzard destroyed our dps pre TBC."

I'm not even sure how that makes sense. Hunter dps is only fine because hunters made it work? What?

Also, how do you explain this:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...84542153&sid=1


So the stats from 10000s of Brutallus parses are in.

These are the rankings

1. Rogue - 2870 dps
2. Hunter - 2568 dps
2. Warlock - 2536 dps
3. Warrior - 2449 dps
5. Mage - 2386 dps


These are the actual stats:
http://www.wwsscoreboard.com/bosscla....php?bossid=42


By the way, for those who don't know, Brutallus is a fight of PURE straight up DPS. The fight is DESIGNED to be the best possible situation for direct damage classes (such as mages and rogues) to be able to dps. Since the fight has no mobility, it is the perfect fight for such classes to do the absolute maximum dps they are capable of without fear. The fight lasts approx 6 mins, and is considered a hard gear check for the raid.

According to the stats, the highest melee dps is done by Rogues, the highest ranged dps is done by Hunters and the highest magical dps is done by Warlocks.


So, where's the problem in pve dps?

Tourney Realm Games

In case anyone is wondering, we just couldn't get hunter comps to work well in 3v3 on the tourney realm, given the current balance of classes and itemization that's being used on there. (Seriously, how does a Lady Vashj bow for hunters compare with a rod of the sun king for rogues? I don't get it.)

Anyways, Socio, Kake and I will be playing the classes we feel most comfortable with, which just so happens to be warlock/warlock druid. I haven't had time to play many games at all this week since the ranked games started, but we should get a good amount of games played this weekend.

I just don't feel as if the hunter brings enough to the team currently to warrant using one, and apparently, I'm not the only one. With as easily as pets are killed off, and the necessity of constant scorpid pressure needed on a non-priest healer, viper sting is just too unreliable, especially after the mana drain nerfs. It's too easy to shut down hunter DPS (and almost more importantly, aimed shot) by simply riding them non-stop in a 3v3 setup, especially with the recent druid nerfs. It's much harder to keep things cycloned off of a hunter when an easy turn-and-burn can be made to druids now. This didn't used to be the case, and played a pretty important factor in the strength of HLD comps.

Anyways, hopefully we'll see some nice hunter changes coming soon. I know they're coming; I just don't know which ones.

Tom's thoughts on hunters/arena/ from gamespy interview

"GameSpy: Have you had similar balance issues with the battlegrounds as opposed to arenas?

Tom Chilton : Definitely, they're very different PvP experiences. The PvP balance feels different between arenas and battlegrounds, but also between 2v2, 3v3, 5v5. Class synergies come into play more in the smaller environments. There are certain classes that feel like they're extremely strong in battlegrounds, but are either harder to play or are just not as good in some arena formats.

A good example is the Hunter class. If you're playing a Hunter in a battleground, you generally feel they're a very strong class. Arguably one of the stronger battleground classes in the game. But they're extremely skill-sensitive in the arena environment because of the line of sight issues, that sort of thing. We find that the very skilled players can play Hunters well in the arenas, but I think it's fair to say that it may take a higher level of player skill to achieve the same kind of result in the smaller arena environment."

Pretty much what I've been saying for quite a while, even before I started playing one. You can read the entire interview here. So what does this mean, you ask? Well, you can probably count on some hunter changes to streamline the class into being a little more forgiving, at least as far as shot timings go if I had to guess. I'm looking forward to see what's in store for the class. Although, I wonder if hunters will see any needed changes prior to WotLK? I guess only time will tell.

Rapid Fire/GCD/Haste itemization problem for hunters.

Why doesn't this (rapid fire) reduce global cooldown on shots as well?

With trinkets/rapid fire/serpent's swiftness/imp hawk procs/haste itemization... My autoshot speeds can go all the way down to 1.0 speed or lower, obviously much lower than the GCD, yet my GCD remains unaffected.

It's very odd that "buffing" myself with rapid fire can actually lower my DPS output by causing horrible shot clipping. I go from being able to do a continuous 1:1 steady/auto shot rotation as long as my weapon speed remains around 1.8s or so (factor in .3s or so off the 1.5s GCD due to latency issues), to increasing mana usage and decreasing dps by clipping shots because my weapon speed is dropped below what I call the gcd/latency boundary.

I don't think I've brought this up yet, but it has been bugging me for a while. Blood lust reduces GCD: Why doesn't rapid fire? It's just as dispelable as blood lust is.

I could almost make the same argument for imp hawk in the beast tree, as well as the current trend towards haste itemization for hunters in general.

Stacking too much haste is actually a bad thing. Classes shouldn't be penalized for getting gear "upgrades". As far as I'm aware, the hunter class is only class really suffering from this, as a tremendous amount of their dps relies on steady/auto rotations.

Obviously this is a problem. Noone wants to look at a piece loot like this and really have to worry if it's going to hurt their dps more than help it because of the high amount of haste on it.