Draddog’s Blog

Hunters - whats the point?

So I was sitting there, on the bathroom floor, last week recovering from another bout of “can’t keep food down thanks to stomach ick” and was wondering what the point of Hunters are in Warcraft.  I have practically abandoned Kimantha, my hunter, in favor of my Paladin and other alts - especially in a raid and group environment.  I still use Kimantha to run some quick dailies, especially ones that require a lot of uberdeathkilling, but that’s about it.

As I sat there, hoping the current vomitfest was over, I started to go through the various roles in a group to determine where the Hunter class really excels.

1. DPS - HA! and double HA!  HA-HA!   I’ve seen Fury Warriors, Rogues, Mages, Warlocks, and Priests out DPS an equally geared Hunter on a regular basis.

2. Sustained DPS - HA…. don’t make me repeat myself.   Hunter’s mana pool is not as shallow as Shamans (or other classes), but they will peter out of Mana fairly quickly - especially in long boss battles.

3. Frontloading DPS - Sure, they might be able to do a lot of damage up front, but that usually ends with the Hunter out of mana or feigned death (because of two much aggro) or both.  I’ve rarly seen a case where a Hunter is asked to do a bunch of damage upfront in a raid.

4. CC - Okay, now you are just being bitter. Ice Trap is the most unreliable CC in the game. Besides the fact that it can be broken by a stiff wind, most mobs in Heroics or Raids are resistant.

5. Buffs - Nope

6. Tanking - If your Hunter is tanking, you are wiping.

7. Misdirection - Probably the only unique Hunter ability, sending a mob after another friendly target and helping him build aggro.  So that’s nice, but it can also be replaced by simply allowing the tank a bit more time to increase his threat.

Later, once I had recovered a bit more, I went back and looked through various raid logs and noticed that Hunters were definitely optional.  Hunters are great in a solo environment, and if you don’t have a guild or a solid list of friends, you can play WoW as a Hunter quite easily.  I’d be curious to see what role Blizzard thinks Hunters fill and how well Hunters fill it now.

My Thoughts on Gary Gygax

So I’ve been linking several posts in my shared list about the recent death of Dungeons and Dragons creator Gary Gygax. I thought maybe I should write something up as well. I have been extremely fortunate to not only enjoy table top and video games, but work with and meet many of the most talented people in the industry.  Mike Mulvhill, creator of Shadowrun and countless other properties, is a close personal friend. I managed to piss Jeff Grubb off enough that he moved cubicals so he wouldn’t have to sit next to me. I got to work with Stan! whose work I knew, but for the first couple of weeks I thought he was an artist because he doodled all the time :).  I’ve met Margret Wies and Tracy Hickman and managed to thank them for introducing me to reading. I’ve worked alongside Jordan Wiesman for years. I consider people like Jon Leithausser and the Bonilla’s like they were family.

Many of these people are responsible for my love for games, technology, fantasy and fiction, and I’ve the chance to meet them all. However, I never got the chance to meet Gary Gygax, something I really wanted to do. I remember those early games of D&D that my brother played (I was to “young”).  They eventually did let me play and I enjoyed it. I went on to read and play other RPGs. While overseas I spent hours reading my old RPG books.  What Gary started many continued and still continue in different forms.

As I said, I’m fortunate, I’ve had a chance to meet some really great people who love their work and really put themselves in it. Gary, wherever you are, I hope you know how many people you touched.

Kymeseya hits 70!

So after 12 days of /played time, my Paladin, Kymeseya, hit 70 last night after a Shadow Labs pug. I still find the play pattern of a tank to be quite a lot of fun and very different from playing a Hunter. Actually they are quite the opposite. Kimantha, my 70 Hunter, does a ton of DPS but only has a limited amount of armor. She also has ways to get rid of aggro pretty easily. Kymeseya, on the other hand, does moderate DPS, but has a ton of armor (and will get more). Kym also wants to get as much aggro as possible ;).

I managed to do the last 5 levels by doing some questing, but mostly instances. I’ve also been working hard on gearing Kym up for Heroics and Karazahn.

The name comes from the last Mage Knight set, Nexus. Its the name of my favorite Mage Knight sculpt ever, the Solonavi Tormentor. When we were putting the set together, I asked the game designer, Scott, if I could get one last figure (preferbly the Tormentor), named after my wife. Not that she Torments me - only in a good way ;). So Scott came up with this name. I’m not sure why I used it for my Pally, other then it was the first name to come to mind.

Something old, something new, something FRIGGIN HUGE

My wife got a super sweet bonus for Christmas last year. It was her first real bonus of her career. Instead of doing something sensible with it (you know, like paying bills or paying back people we owe - sorry Mom!), we decided to get something incredibly impractical that we would never be able to get other wise. So a couple of days after Christmas we went into the local LEGO store, and paraphrasing Dr. Zoidberg, I said “I’ll have one art please.” and pointed to the Ultimate Collector’s Edition Millennium Falcon. Well, funny enough, they don’t keep boxes of the $500 kit on hand. Instead they had to order it and ship it to us. Somewhat disappointing, I had wanted to build it over the New Years weekend, but I got over it (and made do with Vader’s Tie which I reviewed earlier).

Eventually the massive, 25 pound box arrived. With glee I popped it open and checked out the bags of parts. Now I don’t intimidate easily, but in this case I knew I would need to plan an attack, so I put it all back. In the mean time I managed to score an Ultimate Collector’s Edition Star Destroyer on the secondary market silly cheap. I worked on that one instead (review coming soon).

The Star Destroyer was good practice - it gave me some ideas on how to sort parts. When it was done, I started on the Falcon. I already had some of the Glad reusable plastic boxes, but I got a lot more. Like 30 more of various sizes. I started putting the kit together and sorting the parts at the same time. This ended up being a reasonably sound idea, but eventually I had to just stop and sort - there were too many bags.

The Falcon goes together extremely well. You start with the interior frame, which has a lot of support and strength to it (since you have 24 lbs of Legos hanging off of it). My only disappointment is that I was hoping that the interior would be represented as well. It’s not because of the interior skeleton taking up so much room. Once the skeleton and landing gear are in place, you start to skin it. The bottom comes first, starting with the front, and working around to the back. Then you move to the top, skinning the front, adding the cockpit, and then the back. The last piece is the communications dish.

Among the details are a raising and lowering ramp and a gunner’s seat for Luke (in the top center gun).

When considering display options, one of the guys at the local Bellevue LEGO store gave me an idea. Get a cheap lazy susan and put a board big enough to hold the Falcon on it. This way the Falcon can be spun to see all around it. That led me to think of diorama options. There have been some great scenes with the ship. The escape from Mos Eisley in the first movie. The ship landed in the Death Star (with Obi Wan and Darth Vader fighting in the background). The escape from Hoth. The escape from the asteroid worm creature. The Falcon does a lot of escaping. There are a ton of options. I like the Death Star one my self, though I’m not sure where I’d get all the Stormtroopers. Still it would be fun.

So the kit is amazing and highly recommended if you can afford it.

Along the way I won an auction for the LEGO Baron Blizzard from their Ice Plane 2002 collection. This has always been a favorite series and I was tickled to get a mint in box Baron Blizzard so cheap. With the Falcon done, I thought I would give myself a break from the gray, and put this kit together. Its a nice kit, if you can find it, get it, etc etc. What I thought was interesting, however, was the feel of the pieces. I have a hard time believing that any chemical decomposition has occurred, so I have to believe that the older LEGO plastic just felt different. The parts were less bendy and took some really pressure to put together. It was really interesting to go from the current blocks to the older style.

The Government’s $50M Marketing Campaign

If anyone watched my Shared items, you may have caught the article about the US Military wanting to shoot down a spy satellite that was falling back to Earth. It’s also been on the news or something. Well last night they actually hit the satellite on the first try:

So why all this hub bub? Was it really the fuel that the Government was worried about or the training they wanted? I don’t think so. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think this was a bad thing. I’m happy that the US Government was able to shoot down a high speed target out of the sky. It gives me some faith in the US Military. And I think that is exactly what they were going for. This is simply an exercise in morale building and marketing. “Look, the US Military can do something other then get us stuck in military conflicts in other countries. We actually CAN protect you!” Even if the protection is from unarmed satellites.