Racials: Srs Bizniss

I've been getting a little bored of my warrior lately, so to inject some life into poor ol' Nalria I've been considering a faction or race change.So instead of dressing different races up in the gear she has, I've been looking at Racials.

First thing I saw - they've CHANGED. I have a troll hunter and was actually surprised to see Beserking was a flat haste buff and didn't scale with lost health. Quite frankly, I'm not impressed! If there was a stupidly annoying Facebook page called "The Change to the troll racial Beserking" I would not be a fan of it. I used to love my little dips in the fire™ to lower my health a bit before hitting Beserking. It was risky and if it paid off, you'd do more dps. My arrows would block out the sun they'd be going that fast. If it didn't pay off, you looked like a right fool infront of a pug or even worse, your fellow guildies! It fitted a Horde race aswell, you're backed into a corner. Maybe you've lost a limb (dont worry, it'll regenerate later - maybe even longer ;)), you're out numbered. What do you do? You turn green, nasty and start windmilling like a motherfucker.

I'd known about the change to the Orc racial back when it was made, mainly because I wasn't getting a debuff when I popped it. I wasn't impressed with that either - seeing as the racial fitted the Orc so well, especially as a warrior. You start swinging madly, taking no regard for your health but pwning extra hard? Yeah, that's proper Orcish. You can almost hear the "RUUUUUUUUUUUUUWR!" in the name - Blood Fury.

I certainly wasn't a fan of the Will of the Forsaken change - sharing cooldowns with trinkets? Screw you Blizzard.

Blood Elves get their silence/mana restoration thingy, which is pretty useful in OOM situations but I really do feel Taurens got the short end of the racial stick - 5% health is really useful, granted but going "Cow SMASH!" and being awesome at picking flowers? Not really that good. If any race deserves something that increases Strength or something, it's a massive, muscular freakin' cowmanbeast.

With thoughts of a faction change I started looking at the alliance Racials and it's pretty easy to see who Blizzards golden child is - Humans. They've got fucking everything! Racial which gets rid of movement imparing effects and fear and stuff? Check. Reputation bonuses? Check. Passive Stealth detection? Check. Increased Spirit? Check. And to cap it off, Expertise with not one but TWO weapons. Wankers.

Dwarves have that Stoneform, which is pretty nifty for a tank. Night elves have Shadowmeld and something that makes them harder to hit (okay, I kinda skipped over the nelf racials because I dont like them...) and Spacegoats are good with gems, have a little self heal and more importantly require 1% less hit, which is cool.

But then again, after all this, I'd decided that if I were to faction change. I'd be a dwarf, because they're awesome, their combat animations rock, they look good in most kinds of armour, they Riverdance, are about 4 feet tall and love to get drunk. The only down side is the terrible Scottish accents.

Looking back, I didn't really care about the racials at all. No one really does, except for the "elite." I always used to get asked - "Why didn't you roll and Orc or Troll rogue?" and my answer was simple - Undeads are cool, their combat animations rock and while you're running around getting feared in a raid, I'm stood there, hacking at whatever is in front of me.

A tale of Two Hunters, in which I am neither!

I've just finished a ToC10 pug, still aiming to get my shield on the shaman. Blizzard mocks me once again by dropping the axe. Wankers.

But that didn't phase me, because today I met a player who was genuinely skilled. He was a random hunter, in a guild that I cant pronounce. I'm gonna call him Mr.Neeson - because he has a certain set of skills.

He was the unconventional Beast Master specc. Which is renowned for being super for levelling but pretty terrible at end game (well not terrible but when compared with Survival or Marksmanship speccs in the same gear, it gets left eating their metaphorical dust).

There was another Random hunter in the group, who I'm going to Mr.Arrogant. He was in 3 parts T10 and thought he was gods gift to all things hunter. He was a cookie cutter Survival build.

The gear difference between the two hunters wasn't that much. Mr.Neeson was sporting 4 parts T9, some ICC10 epics and the 264 bow from ICC25. Mr.Arrogant as said before was in 3T10 and some ICC/ToC10 epics. Pretty even.

We had a wipe on beasts, our tank disconnected and the other tank ended up on 13 stacks. Not nice to heal. The second attempt was much better and what I saw was something very surprising, Mr.Neeson was pwning. I automatically thought "Mr.Arrogant is utterly terrible, getting beaten by a BM hunter..." but no, Mr.Arrogant was a close second, a few dps behind Mr.Neeson and around 1% damage. I was quite shocked, I was in a party with someone who was skilled...

Mr.Arrogant spotted this and asked - "lol, why you bm? go surv or mm and you'll do more dps." I had to stop myself pointing out that Mr.Neeson was beating Mr.Arrogant but the self-proclaimed gods gift to hunters had a valid point.

Now, this next bit. Made me smile as this is pretty much my view on the whole game.

Mr.Neesons response was simply "I like playing BM, it's more fun and I play for fun. I've been BM for a while and I've got good at it..."

Hats off to you! I used to love BM back in the old 1:1 or 3:2 macro days. Cooldown management, micro-managing your pet so it was alive on even some of the hardest bosses. Trying to keep your mana topped up without wasting a global cooldown and generally having tonnes of fun. I was miffed when they changed it a little and luckily on my Hunter I gave Survival a go and it was amazing fun and also good dps.

I started thinking about what Mr.Neeson said while I was spam healing on Twins and I had to admit, this game is definitly more fun when you're doing stuff the way you like to.

I'm pretty skint in game but that's because I dont do dailys or grind - why? Because it's too much like work. When I come in from a day of lectures, the last thing I want to do is spend an hour repeativly killing mobs. I'll more than likely sit in Dalaran and catch up on the days events with my guildies, run a few instances or generally mess around.

I was also thinking of the downside to this. Cookie cutter speccs are cookie cutter for a reason - they're good. They make raids better, progress further and therefore increase enjoyment. I suppose if you're playing the specc you like AND have the skills to pull it off, then it's fair do's but if everyone was playing the game how they wanted to, it could definintly get messy, especially with some of the speccs I've seen on some people...

Jakkru and Ercles most excellent adventure

So the other day, I was pottering around on my shaman, doing a bit of mining and questing when Ercles of the Barrens chat, yes, that is his offical title (look in the blogroll, his blawg is there, good stuff!) asks me "Do you want to see what's under Orgrimmar?"

Now, that's not a question you can easily go "No thanks, I'd rather mine and quest instead" too. It's a question where you go "OMFG YES!" While logging in your rogue so fast you actually realise you haven't given a reply but instead created a character called "gyes" I'm a fan of glitches in Warcraft, because sometimes they have cool stuff involved. Sometimes they look cool and other times they're funny for a little bit but then really annoying.

So there we are, Jakkru and Erc's mage (mis-fat-nachos) who's name I cannot actually spell but means something fancy in latin, about to set off on an epic adventure.

So, we meet up in Orgrimmar and head to the Valley of Honour (or as it's known in game, the Valley of Americanisms). I should have really screenshotted how we did it, but instead I shall use my epic paint skills!

So yeah, while Ercles was faffing around for 15 minutes trying to jump over the wall, I was doing a bit of exploring.

The large crater behind me is actually Ragefire Chasm. You can jump down and you get shoved right into the middle of RFC but with little blue bits sticking out which you can jump back out of and you're back under Orgrimmar. You can see the distinctive entrance behind me, you can run up to it and there's little inlets where the large wooden planks are in the tunnel leading in and out of Orgrimmar.

The proof that Erc actually made it! Standing under the Valley of Spirits, near the entrance that bridges over the Ashenvale/Durotar river.

We then moved onto Silvermoon City, where Erc said we'd be mingling with rockstars.

While we were running around, Erc was telling me about an addon which he's been using to make his video's (check his blog!) documenting Azeroth before it gets torn apart. Apparently he's seen what's under Hyjal and other places and there's vast expanses of the game that aren't even used!

I remember when I first started playing World of Warcraft, I thought the starting area was pretty much it. It was huge. Durotar was the biggest place on the planet, to my noobish Orc warrior brain. I didn't have a clue there was an entire other land across the swirly water! When I finally got used to the size of Azeroth, which took around 50 odd levels to do, out came TBC and then Lich King after that. The game keeps growing and growing and for that Blizzard, I cannot thank you enough. Offering new, exciting places to explore (or hate, depending on experiences there). I just cant believe there's stuff they dont use! I really think Blizzard should allow access to the top of Silvermoon, for this single reason:

Look at it, the effort that's gone into making it, amazing. The same could be said for the other areas, like those underneath Mount Hyjal. Seems a waste not to let people interact with those places more and more, considering the time and money spent. Maybe in the future, who knows but for now Blizzard, keep it coming and I dont know about you lot but I'm definitly looking forward to the changes coming in Cataclysm!