Friday, February 20, 2009

Bad assumptions are bad

FYI to everyone that thinks that all hunters have gone Survival: If there is a symbol that looks like this on your buff bar, THEN OBVIOUSLY THAT IS NOT THE CASE.

As officers, we are expected, for the most part, to know raider's talent specs. Details may not be totally important, but where the majority of those talent points lie is something good to know. You really don't have to look them up: if a Warlock transforms into a mini Illidan, then they are deep Demonology; if a Mage discusses Living Bomb, they are deep Fire. If a Hunter's pet turns red, they are Beast Mastery. If you have a buff called Trueshot Aura applied to you every raid, then obviously there is a Marksman Hunter - the one distinguishing feature of the tree from the deepest recesses of vanilla WoW.

One of our officers commented on the number of Replenishments in our OS35+3D raid last night. He counted three, a Shadow Priest and two Hunters. I checked the raid list just to make sure, and indeed, there was only one Shadow Priest and two Hunters, so one of our other SV hunters hadn't managed to sneak in without me noticing. I laughed at him in OChat and shook my head in disgust IRL. This isn't a case of random new icons being thrown on you by healers (hell, I dislike healing and even I know from what classes those HoTs/buffs come from) - this is an icon that sits right up there with the rest of your standard buffs. How can you be so obtuse as to not regard what is being applied to your character, even if it has no buffing function to your class?

Maybe I'm just the product of my class and habitual about multitasking every thing about this game. (Which reminds me - I laugh when people complain about the amount of multitasking required for Sarth+3D. Want a challenge? Try having to deal with a pet and a disgustingly inefficient mana pool while dodging Lava Strikes, maintaining a shot rotation, and not killing yourself OR your pet while the Acolyte is up. Then you can talk.)

Maybe I just greatly dislike egotistical mages.

But maybe, just maybe, I want my spec to be removed from under the shadow of the overpowered talents of the other trees, so that Marksman can be appreciated as the challenging, viable, and acceptable raiding tree that it is. As much as Blizzard claims it is satisfied with Marksman damage as the ideal zone of Hunter DPS, the rest of the raiding force doesn't recognize that.

/endrant

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

(snip)But maybe, just maybe, I want my spec to be removed from under the shadow of the overpowered talents of the other trees, so that Marksman can be appreciated as the challenging, viable, and acceptable raiding tree that it is. (snip)

That is all win - seriously - great point.

Pike said...

These days I literally go into raids and heroics saying "By the way guys, you're allowed to think I'm a bad hunter cause I refuse to spec Survival!" I kinda make it a running joke, actually. Then it's all the better when I inevitably am near the top of DPS =P

I find it funny that we've reached a point where BM and MM are in the same boat but in a way it's refreshing. For once people will see me as a Beast Master and know it's because I like the pet stuff and not just cause I'm reaching for optimum DPS.

Negathle said...

@ Pike

Careful though, we don't want BM to go back to the dark days pre-2.0. We want BM players to be noted for their choice of pet reliance in addition to being viable DPS. I miss having FI in raids, for certain :(

Rilgon Arcsinh said...

Maybe I just greatly dislike egotistical mages.

Who doesn't?

Negathle said...

Seriously, I want the option to join with the Blue Dragonflight. I don't need Dalaran. We could have our own little Caverns of Arcane instead!

Look Rilgon! "While in humanoid form, many dragons also notice the scientific discoveries of other races and take an increasing interest in the development of engineering and similar studies"

Oh, yeah.

Rilgon Arcsinh said...

Sorry, I'm a lieutenant of Chromie. :x