Tales of the Aggronaut

All About Mounts

January 18, 2014 by Belghast

Do A Barrel Roll!

This week the previously announced Iron Skyreaver mount found its way to the in game store… and I simply could not resist picking it up. The mount is amazing, but it seems that it seems to be one of those love or hate situations among my close friends. Some of them absolutely love it, some of them completely hate it. The pure win of the mount is the fact that every so often it does a roll… I have been informed by one of my pilot friends that it is NOT a barrel roll. Quite frankly it doesn’t matter because every time it happens… I hear Peppy say “Do A Barrel Roll!”. Thanks Star Fox for misappropriating that term!

In truth in game it is a bit smaller than I had originally expected, or at the very least it doesn’t scale as much as I would expect it would for a Worgen. Some of my friends have called it sickly looking, but really if you think about the background of the mount it makes sense. This is a chimera that the Iron Horde has captured into slavery… likely abused and mistreated… and then augmented with badass armor and JET THRUSTERS!!!! You have apparently rescued it from Garrosh and his evil evil machinations. Now you and your mechano-chimera can rule the skies together!

All About Mounts

Another project I have been working on is chewing through the crafting cooldowns to make my own Sky Golem mount. Unlike most engineering mounts in the past, this one is actually usable by all of your characters. Which has made it a high priority for me to obtain. At some point I need to go back and build some of the other engineering mounts, as I never actually obtained my Mekgineer’s Chopper. Since I stopped playing Belghast as my main somewhere during Crusader’s Coliseum it just stopped being priority for me to get one. Additionally I got the recruit a friend two person rocket, which filled the need of being able to transport people with me. If they made it so all characters on your account could use the chopper… I would prioritize making one.

The big slowdown for the Sky Golem is the engineering cooldown, which at face value is really easy to craft. Jard’s Peculiar Energy Source takes only ten ghost iron bars, which is next to nothing… however it is on a daily timer and unlike all of the other cool downs out there… it is lacking a “speed up for more materials” option. The sky golem requires 30 of these, and 30 living steel. The living steel component however is not terribly bad since if you have a transmute spec alchemist you can get extra bars from time to time. At this point I am 6 days including today away from my sky golem mount, so I will keep you guys informed as I finally craft it.

Flight of the Netherwing

One of the last things I want to give an update on is my quest for exalted with the Netherwing. Essentially this has been one of those semi-casual things that I do every night. I go out to Shadowmoon Valley, complete all the quests… gather up all of the loose eggs that I happen to see while doing those quests and then move on for the night. I am sure if I wanted to seriously grind this out, I could do so in a single afternoon doing nothing but collecting eggs. However at this point I am at about the halfway point through Revered. At this point I figure I have a few more days until I have crossed the exalted threshold. I am bad at estimating these things, but given I tend to find a half dozen eggs each day I think this might be viable.

Mostly I have been doing this because I want the count of six more mounts. I have never particularly liked the look of the netherwing. I love the fact that they have a whole series of colors available, but it is the whole shark nosed dragon thing that gets to me. I have actually enjoyed the grind because I miss Draenor. I am looking forward to Warlords in part because I am really wanting to see Draenor as a viable place again. Burning Crusade was the expansion that I really came alive in, and grew into the role of raid tank and large-scale guild leader. While Wrath of the Lich King was the expansion we saw the most success during, I feel like Burning Crusade is my “golden age” of WoW gaming.

Myth of Melee Hunter

January 17, 2014 by Belghast

Long Weekend

Most of this week I have been recovering from whatever flu like respiratory crap I managed to catch along side my wife’s flu. So now that it is Friday, I have to say I am more than ready for it. I have been crashing suspiciously early each night, or at least early for me. Last night it was around 10 pm, and the night before closer to 9. Granted some of that time was laying in bed watching Netflix, but resting nonetheless. So when I realized I was heading straight for a three day weekend, I was absolutely pumped. Not that we have any major plans, but just stringing three days in a row is a pretty glorious thing.

Yesterday during a back and forth on twitter with MMOGC, we both talked about our proclivity for playing melee characters. For me at least if there is a melee option, I will be playing whatever it is. My 90s to date… Blood/Frost Deathknight, Protection/Arms Warrior, Protection/Retribution Paladin, Enhancement Shaman (second spec doesn’t really matter here), Combat Rogue, and the icing on the cake… Feral/Guardian Druid. Hell I even consider my Discipline Priest to be “tanky”. Essentially if there is a tank option I will be doing that, and if there is not I will at least be doing melee in some form of another. I am woefully predictable in my likes and dislikes when it comes to games.

Myth of Melee Hunter

I have made this admission before in the past, but I was a melee hunter. Granted at the time I didn’t realize that survival was NOT a viable melee spec… since back in vanilla it did actually boost your melee damage. More than that however it was a thing I WANTED to work. Something about ranged dps just bores me, and on the converse something about standing toe to toe against the boss exhilarates me. The above is a picture of me playing Lodin, my first real main in World of Warcraft. My love of the WoW Hunter… initially started as my love of the D&D Ranger. In D&D I played two things the Dual Wield Melee Ranger, and the Mace and Board Melee Cleric. When I came into wow I tried to create both of these with limited success in the form of a Survival Hunter and a Protection Paladin.

I love the mechanics of the hunter when it comes to taming pets. This was the real thing that kept me playing the class for most of vanilla… that and I got sucked into a raid group that needed hunters. As some point I tired of standing back and firing at things, so midway through Vanilla I began transitioning to Belghast my tanky warrior. But I never really gave up hope that someday, somehow being a dual wield hunter would be a viable thing. While leveling and raiding… I was always far more interested in a nifty polearm or twohanded weapon dropping that could viably be identified as “for hunters” than any of the available ranged options. However I still count getting my Dragonbreath Hand Cannon as one of my greatest raiding moments. Thanks to getting this awesome drop… I never actually finished the hunter epic.

The Beastmaster

Funny thing is… there is a game that has a melee pet class that could in theory be termed the “melee hunter”. The Beastmaster soul in Rift for the Warrior class was essentially a pure melee dps class that also had a pet. It was one of those specs that I really used to enjoy dpsing in, when the pet was actually behaving. The problem is that Rift pets are boring. As a beastmaster you got a large cat… and despite them changing the graphic of it… it is still the same boring pet every single time. The piece of the hunter that I always found interesting was the ability to switch between pets depending on the situation and your present mood. If you got bored of a pet, you could run off into the world and tame a new favorite.

So static pet is a major strike against the Beastmaster soul, but in Storm Legion they took another big one. They essentially transitioned the spec from being a very soloable melee dps, to being pure support. If you have only played World of Warcraft, then you are used to the holy trinity Tank, DPS, and Healer. However several other games like City of Heroes, Everquest and Rift to name a few off the top of my head… had a fourth role of Support. These classes buffed the party in some way or provided some critical crowd control mechanic that overall made the fights go smoother. With Storm Legion they moved the Beastmaster into one of these roles, and while it is probably my favorite support class next to the Rogue’s Bard soul… it became something that you just really could not solo as.

Yes I Know I’m Crazy

Yup the sub heading says it all… I realize that this request is crazy. I realize that Blizzard will never give me a melee hunter. All that said it doesn’t make me want it any less. While I am not going to go to the lengths that some players have gone… when I play Lodin I still want to get up close and melee things down. Initially I think I thought it was just my way of keeping from paying for bullets, but now that bullets are a thing of the past… I realize I just wanted to get up close and person with the mobs. For the most part I know that each and every one of my ranged characters will be something I did just to say I had one at 90. Once I have finished with my Discipline Priest I will likely cycle back around to Lodin and finish leveling him to 90. However it won’t ever be a beloved character until I can bash stuff in the face with a mighty hunter polearm.

Why Have PVP Gear?

January 16, 2014 by Belghast

A Farewell to Gear

I have to say that still, months after the announcement of Warlords of Draenor, the most surprising and interesting change that has been announced still relates to the gear. During Blizzcon they made an announcement that gear would change its primary stat based on the spec you are currently equipping it under. This means no more healer plate that no one wants, but instead multifunctional items that can be equipped in theory by any plate class. The catch however is that secondary stats will not change, meaning we will have a situation similar to the Timeless Isle. On the isle you can get tokens for 496 epic gear, but the stat assortment is random, meaning you will end up with several items that are less than optimal… but still functional for your current spec.

That said, having gear that transforms for you should at least in theory cut down on the sheer number of items that you need to carry around in your bags. Since the advent of dual specs, this has meant that pretty much every player carries with them two full sets of gear, which doesn’t take into account any weird situational fight based items (yes I have a few of these). In a game with as small of bag sizes as World of Warcraft, this quickly becomes painful. Yes I consider 28 slots to be small especially when you consider I am used to having 6 44 slot bags in EQ2 with another 20 44 slot bags in my bank.

Why Have PVP Gear?

One of the big disappointments from the announcement however is that they seem to have stopped short of making this strategy work for the whole PVE vs PVP gear divide. One of the odd things about coming back to WoW and playing it seriously after spending several years playing other games, is it gives you a unique perspective that many devoted WoW players simply do not have. Quite frankly other games do a lot of the same functionality that World of Warcraft has, far better. I have noticed a big trend in these games to jettison the concept of PVP only gear, and in most cases I have to say the games are far better off for doing this. My question is… if they have this wonderful new tech that changes out the primary stats on gear based on the spec in which you are equipping it… why not carry these changes to whether or not you are in player vs player combat?

I don’t know for certain the specifics of the gear change, and honestly at this point I think the only people that do are knee deep in the bowels of Blizzard actively coding on it. However I have to assume that most of this functions based on the Item Level of an item. There has to be a direct correlation between ilvl X equates to X Strength or X Intellect. Why not carry this same logic forward to PVP gear in general. At a certain ilevel every single item tends to have the same resilience and pvp power etc. Why not make these latent stats on every single piece of gear in the game? There will always be players who only care about PVP and always be players that only care about PVE. However without really meaning to you are asking players to choose which game they want to play.

What about Dabblers?

In both raiding and pvp you have drawn lines in the sand based on gear determining at what point someone actually becomes effective. In order to be anything but canon fodder in on a PVP battleground you need a certain level of the PVP focused stats. This makes breaking into PVP a horrendously frustrating experience for most players. Sure there is a crafted set of PVP gear, and anyone with enough cash or tradeskill expertise can knock this set out and be relatively competitive. However this is a pretty huge chasm to cross going from the PVE world to the PVP one. The same is not really the case going from PVP to PVE, since the majority of PVP gear is functionally effective to start raiding without being too much of a drain on the raid group that is hosting you.

Additionally since Blizzard seems to relish forcing PVE centric players to PVP… I am looking at you legendary cloak quest line. It seems only fair to simply do away with the stark difference between PVP and PVE gear at this point. I am sure there are PVPers out there that can make the same frustrated argument that they hate being forced to PVE. Making all gear function in both situations seems like a win across the board to me. Gear should be gear, regardless of how you got it… and so long as the “effort” requirements are the same… either through weeks spent learning PVE content or weeks spent gaining honor… the end result should provide similar rewards.

The strength of World of Warcraft is that it is the total package. Like I said before, there are many games on the market that do this or that aspect of the game better, but no product offering has as many high points for as many different play styles as WoW does. It is because of this that the line in the sand between PVP and PVE feels all the more arbitrary. Let players play the game however they like and reap similar rewards from whatever activity they choose to do. Then again my whole multiple paths of progression diatribe is another topic for another day. I feel like WoW should embrace the “Wal-mart of MMOs” moniker, because it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There will always be niche games that do certain things far better, but it stands alone as the best complete package.

Date with Dragons

January 15, 2014 by Belghast

Feeding Tradeskills

Last night was a prime night for faffing. I started the evening by doing my semi-regular ghost iron farming run to feed my daily cooldowns on my blacksmith, engineer and transmuter. I have figured out that it is just simply easier to farm up a bunch of ghost iron and then turn around the transmute it to trillium than trying to play the mining lottery to get equal amounts of black and white trillium. In about 15-20 minutes I can farm up a big stack of ore and then funnel that off to each of the professions so I can do my daily crafts. Right now I am funneling all these resources towards two things. Firstly I am stockpiling materials so that I can make myself a Sky Golem, which when I saw it I knew I had to have one.

Secondly I am stockpiling the rare smithing material in order to make the tanky belt… the only problem is I have yet to unlock the tanky belt through the daily crafts. As a result I have more than enough Balanced Trillium Ingot’s to make one, but I figure I can use items for all of my melee characters. So this becomes a daily disappointment as I log in and craft an ingot only to see that I did not yet learn the Protector’s Trillium Waistguard. I could craft the legs, but that would currently break up my four piece set bonus… so that is not a thing I am willing to do just yet.

Date with Dragons

Once I finished with my tradeskills I worked my way through the daily Netherwing quests. Curently I am a good way into revered so here is hoping by the end of the week I will be zipping around on a new flight of Netherwing drakes. Honestly I am mostly doing this for the fact that it adds 6 mounts to my grand total, and less that I actually think I will use one of the drakes. Back in the day I never did the quest chain because I thought they looked goofy. For whatever reason I cannot look at a Netherwing drake without thinking of a shark because of the way their nose is shaped. Right now my absolute favorite dragon seems to be the one I picked up from Stonecore. To be honest farming up the Vitreous Stone Drake was far easier than I could have imagined, since it drops on normal mode.

I finished off the night running Onyxia a few times, with no luck on getting that mount, and then popped into Blackwing Lair with a friend. While I really like the blue judgment set that came from the opening of Wrath of the Lich King event… I would still like to own a full set of the original Judgment. As a result I have been clearing Blackwing Lair weekly trying for the various visual pieces. So far I only have the chest and shoulders, but that doesn’t leave that many visual pieces left, one of which I will hopefully get from Onyxia. Mostly since my paladin is now a Dranei, and boots no longer show up… I am mostly trying for the gloves. While I got no judgment, I did manage to get my mage friend robes and shoulders for his set.

Zoning Out

I am guessing that I did not get a very good nights sleep last night, because as I sit here writing this mornings post I find myself constantly zoning out. I can seem to only manage a paragraph before my mind starts wandering again. As a result I think I am going to cut this off here a bit abruptly. I am still feeling a bit under the weather and yesterday it felt like maybe I pushed myself a little too far. I went through a flurry of activity when I got home, and crashed in my recliner shortly after and was pretty much useless the rest of the night. I was offered spots on two different raids last night, and I ended up turning both down because I just didn’t feel like I could give vaguely close to my normal effort. I feel like I made the right choice, but hopefully I did not put off the people who offered me a spot from future offerings.