Hunter And The Hunted

Perhaps this post should be called Hunter and the Huntard. I have played my Hunter  almost from the beginning of my time in WoW. Warriors and melee classes are not my forte, so when I found the hunter class, it was 2nd character ever rolled, and I hit the jackpot. I chose Beast Mastery at level 10 because this seemed like the logical step for a hunter to work closely with his pet. I trundled along for months slowly leveling until I discovered a Blog which blew me away. Big Red Kitty had just started blogging and I was in from the beginning, he was a handsome Dwarf, with a pet cat, which liked to turn red as often as possible. BRK was very funny and talked sense when it came to the hunter skills and had a very easy writing style. It was like looking into a mirror (without the easy writing style, sense of humour  and interesting content), and seeing myself in BRK's adventures. From that day forward I was a diehard BM Hunter and have only briefly ventured into the realms of Marksman during some of BM's darker days.

I was pottering the other day and got a shout in guildchat to come along and kick Deathwing's bottom in normal. I was offered a slot on either my hunter or shaman. After a 2 second delay I logged out and strapped on my Hunter gear and polished my bow. Now there was one slight problem with all this, I had not actually logged onto Bob since patch 5.0.4 dropped, but I had gone through the options on my other hunter. I quickly made the Talent choices, changed the major Glyphs and got ready for action.

"Bob, can you logon to Mumble please?", Oh bugger, I had just installed Windows 8. Installed mumble in a few seconds. "Sorry guys, I am on Mumble but I have no sound". "LOL, Ok Bob, stand there and kill things". To this end I stood there and killed things moved when needed, killed the adds and in general played with my new toys. There was 3 major issues that night.

1. Bobcat, my faithful companion did not like changing platforms, and sometimes just sat next to me looking cute.
2. I never actually saw the effect of either Lynx Rush or Dire Beast
3. My DPS sucked, sitting between the Tanks. (The shame of it)

Now 1. could have just been a bugfest, these things happen, 2. I have time to play with these functions whilst leveling and 3. its my first time out and I can refine me options later.

So now is my time to review the options. The first mistake I made was that in a rush to help out the Guild, I forgot that I need Expertise, and my only saving grace was being a short, fat hairy dwarf for 1% of my requirement. I have remedied the situation, and will not get caught short again, so I ventured of to Elitist Jerks to investigate if anything else was amiss in my methodology.

I got to Cooldowns and stared at Ancient Hysteria / Bloodlust. Now I have been asked about this before but have never seen it in my spellbook, and this is the reason:

Ancient Hysteria / Bloodlust / Heroism / Time Warp.

As BM hunters we can provide this otherwise external haste buff by bringing a Core Hound. Ancient Hysteria (or one of the other names) buffs the haste of the entire party or raid by 30% for 40 seconds. Under AH maintain your regular priority, as above under RF.


Oh bugger, no wonder I could never find it. It is a pet buff that come with the Core Hound. Time to tame a Core Hound and put into my stable of 5 for that 1% time there is no Shaman or Mage in the party. D'oh.

Men At Work

As expected there are some strange little bugs associated with patch 5.0.4, but in general it was a smooth transition to the start of the next expansion. Decursive is still having a fit about LUA errors, I have updated all my addons twice so I will live with the problem until it sorts itself out.

On Monday I mentioned that the Darkmoon Faire was yet again experiencing some problems. The hotfix was implemented by Blizzard as promised and you can now pickup your profession based monthly quests.

On the subject of professions there have been strange activity in the Secondary Professions.

Fishing

Whilst trying to complete my fishing quest "Spoilin' For Salty Sea Dogs" I noticed that in general I was getting 2 skillups for only 5 casts. In the 300 - 400 level it is normally a random number between 1-10 according to the fishing expert and Nat Pagle's Love Child "El". I raised the issue on El's forum and appeared a bit of a muppet for not having anything resembling empirical evidence. Last night, I remedied this issue by catching 101 fish, and obtaining 30 skillups in the process. If this turns out to be the case that Blizzard have increased the chance of obtaining a skillup, then it is a welcome step in my opinion.

Other issues affected by the patch 5.0.4 according to El are:

No cast bar while fishing: Replace your old fishing icon with a fresh one from your Spellbook's Professions tab.

"You are unable to fish in Iceflow Lake - Dun Morogh". My favourite spot! Fish are missing from all other Classic-era starting areas with water, but can still be caught elsewhere in low-level zones.

Sea Turtle's jump sound is delayed by several minutes (source).

Replacing the fishing icon from your spellbook will also give you a new feature:

Poleless fishing - Cast without a pole equipped. Your weapons remain equipped. No pole skill bonus, but great for pool fishing. You will need to replace your old fishing icon.

This is good news for all you hunters out there, because being without your ranged weapon is a far worse crime than being caught with your pants down.

Archaeology

It is pretty widespread information that there are 6 fragments available at each digsite since the patch dropped. This was always going to be implemented for MoP, but it is a welcome addition at the dogend of Cataclysm.

A new unintended feature that I noticed yesterday was the disappearing survey equipment. It would appear briefly , flash red or green point you in the right direction and then disappear. There is something wrong with the timer or my addons are playing havoc with the survey equipment, but the time that it appears for is less than 2 seconds.

Nobody else seems to have identified this as an issue, but then again I might be the only person sad enough to be still leveling Archaeology, with the possible exception of BBB but then he is only looking for canopic jars. On the subject of BBB, I seem to remember reading that only MoP fragments will count as skillups when the cap is lifted. So no point holding onto those Troll and Dwarven fragments.

Times They Are A Changin'

"Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that Azeroth has changed" 

Not wanting to nick a good idea or alternatively make a regular feature of it, but today is Bob's Monday Ramblings.

Having finally pulled myself of the Auction House, I have actually sampled a small section of what the last patch was all about. Most of my characters have stopped winking at me every time I logon and have got something which at least makes them battle ready. I am of course talking about talents (or should that be gimmicks) and glyphs. All 10 characters can now hit something at a push, it is just whether I have equipped a full set of spells on the bar.

On the subject of glyphs, I have noticed that my biggest sellers have been Glyph of the Stag (Druid) and Glyph of Marked for Death (Hunter). There have been other good sellers but these 2 come out on top. Just out of curiosity, Who is buying Monk glyphs? They are at there most expensive and you can't even use them yet.

I have ventured into wilds of Northrend in search of herbs and archaeological remnants and keep getting myself in a pickle. All over Azeroth low level mobs like to attack heavily armoured mercenaries, when they die the mercenaries like to collect the loot and skins from these suicidal creatures. Now after 7 years of playing this game I expect to shiny stars floating above freshly killed corpses, I am mentally trained to keep clicking until the pips squeak. Now somebody is not placing loot on these bodies or is stealing it when I am not looking. Don't get me wrong I have no desire to return to individual looting, it is just that AoE looting is confusing me. I will get there, I just have a lot of muscle memory to work through.

I was very pleased to read the adventures of the Godmother at the Darkmoon Faire. It would appear that it is time to dust down the ultimate weapon of mass destruction, The Holy Handgrenade of Antioch, for the rumours do indeed appear to be true. I so wanted this to be true, and that the fact the original posting was made on the 1st April 2012 made me very suspicious, even the fact that WoWhead had datamined achievements. Maybe I will wait until I have 5 levels before attempting this achievement. According to the Godmother it's a tough old fight and she should have heeded the words of Tim

"Well, that's no ordinary rabbit.  That's the most foul, cruel,
      and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on.

that rabbit's got a vicious streak a mile wide, it's a killer!"

 

On the subject of the mysterious island that is open once a month for a week at a time, it would appear that the Darkmoon Faire is not working again. I have posted several times of the reset issues with the Darkmoon Faire. It would also seem that Blizzard is aware of the situation and we can expect a hotfix to cure the lack of monthly profession quests.

Piece Of Crap

In addition to changing my Graphics card this weekend, I decided to trial the new Windows 8. The trial version is a 3 month copy that completely stops working at expiry. For me this is not a real issue and I am able to keep all my data on other drives so that a format of the operating system is no big deal.

Before you rush out and buy the next new thing, I must point out that Windows 8 only launches on 26th October 2012.

Installation is straight forward for anybody who has installed XP/Vista/Win 7.

What will strike you as odd when you first logon is, Where is my Desktop? The screen you are greeted by looks similar to the image.

The replacement Tile screen is designed for use with android phones and mobile devices. With the aim to make use of touch screen technology. Everything is geared around the purchase and procurement of apps instead of programs, with everything ultimately ending up at a Microsoft store with credit card in hand.

After the bashing that Microsoft have received in the European courts over abuse of monopoly powers, I am amazed that they should follow this path. The market leaders in this form of exploitation are Apple and the assumption is that they will hide behind the precedent set by Apple.

When I finally found the Desktop it is occupied by 2 icons Internet Explorer and the Waste Bin.
I was able eventually to find explorer and linked in the WoW Launcher. I am pleased to confirm that WoW will of course work on the new platform and in some ways is superior to Windows 7.

If you run WoW in Windows 7 Full Screen mode and toggle back to the desktop whilst in flight, 9 times out of 10 you will return to WoW disconnected. Windows 8 seems to keep enough WoW threads open to stop this disconnection from happening. Other than this I see no major differences that will affect the average WoW player.

One issue I did detect was that of setting up the sound card. Windows 8 shows the sound card as being available and setup but my ears where telling me a different story. Needing sound for Mumble I decided to install the driver that is labelled as Vista. There is no comparable version of Control Panel to monitor and administer the devices. I required a reboot to test the sound card and decided that a Deathwing kill, my first in normal was preferable to keeping people waiting.

I will test tonight because this might just be a showstopper. Other than that I am willing to persevere but my initial feelings are that the majority of people will want the familiarity of desktop on their computer, and not a OS designed for the small screen of a mobile phone.

I Can See Clearly Now

Last week I was left pondering the issue of WoW performance on my computer since the patch 5.0.4 dropped. Having the money for a new but low end PC, I decided to test the water and go for a graphics card that was giving reasonable performance during the Cataclysm expansion benchmark testing.

Not wanting to wait for my new purchase I decided to visit a large electrical retailer in the UK known for its poor service and overpriced computer goods. They of course did not have the card in stock which I had found on the internet so I decided to get the more expensive version of the same chipset - the Asus HD6670 weighing in at £70.

In comparison to my last card this was a beast. The fan is almost twice the size of the Nvidia GT8500. This is possibly the last card that does not need additional power source from the motherboard.

On turning the computer on, Windows 7 auto detected the card (which is always a good sign) and then I installed the manufacturers software. Updated a few addons and then opened WoW.

I was horrified, the graphics looked brighter and sharper but there was no much needed boost in framerate, I was hovering in Stormwind at the same rate I had seen before the patch with my old card.
Assuming this was as good as it would get in terms of FPS, I decided that maybe, I could at least push the settings up from low/poor to at least fair/good.

On increasing the settings an unusual thing happened. The framerate started rising, it was as if the new card would only respond properly to decent settings. In Stormwind the FPS settled at around 40, but in the wilderness I was suddenly getting 70-80 FPS as a standard.

I had no idea that the game could actually look this good. No jerking on turning round, no mistimed flaps on my flying mount. The colours are bright and vibrant and it is suddenly a joy to play the game again.

If you are in a similar position and are worried that a graphic card update might just be a waste of money, when your computer really needs replacing, my recommendation is definitely give it a try, they are really easy to fit, just make sure you unplug the computer first and check the wattage on your PSU the new cards need a fair amount of juice just to keep cool.

Dig

Patch 5.0.4 fails to mention anything about archaeology changes. It is not uncommon for some changes not to be included in the patch notes and are sometimes considered to be bugs or just undisclosed new features. It was widely talked about that archaeology would have less flying and that instead of 3 fragments per digsite there are now 6. What was not mentioned, is that I have noticed that at skill level 500, each Artifact solved now only rewards 1 skillup point instead of the usual 5. I have not completed any rares in this time but for now instead of being max level I am sat on 505 with another 20 digsites to visit.

Somebody on MMO Champion was claiming that only the 45 fragment artifacts gave a skillup and that the 35 fragment artifacts gave no points.

I can only suggest that this is a bug and that nobody could possibly be so cruel as to extend my torture by another 20 digsites.

Computer Age

I am a computer engineer. I have fixed computers and software for a living, for nearly 20 years it has been most of my working life. I love interacting with them and like a PC Doctor I have developed a sixth sense for when they are struggling with their workload and will attempt to upgrade, fix, repair, and replace when necessary. One aspect of computers that I never fully grasped is the Graphics card. Under normal usage it will either display and image or it will not. Everybody is aware of the resolution control and the fact that images can appear squashed or fuzzy or in most cases crystal clear, depending on sight some like the images big and others like the font and icons so small you can barely read them. Business computers are relatively straight forward, but not so the home gaming computer.

I bought my first PC when I left University and started work. It was a DX2-66 a pre Pentium machine with 4MB of memory and an 80 MB Hard Drive. All the games came on floppy disks in those days, 7 disks for Windows 3.1 and 30 disks Microsoft Office if memory serves me right. Since those days I have updated my PC at a fairly uniform every 3-4 years and my current PC is coming around to it's 4th Birthday.

On Patch day (5.0.4) I spend the whole evening in Stormwind crafting and in the Auction House. Yesterday I managed to get out of the city and headed to Northrend in search of herbs and digging up relics. I noticed for the first time when landing near Crusaders Pinnacle that my screen was very jerky. Landing was awkward and turning was very slow. The Framerate which used to 30 FPS in Stormwind and a standard 20 FPS elsewhere was hovering closer to 10 FPS. Northrend should be fairly quiet and in theory should have less rendering to do. I turned the remaining 2 settings that are not currently on low to the minimum settings and the framerate returned to 20 FPS.

The terrain in Azeroth is now fairly standard with no plants and grasses showing above the main contours, it is playable but it is pretty poor to look at. On patch day we all noticed how the game was much brighter and sharper, but now we know there is a downside to this improvement. The minimum requirement for your hardware has just gone up. Cynwise seems to be having an even worse experience than myself and as rendered a 2008 Macbook unusable. 4 years maybe the cutoff period for hardware. The following show the recommended spec for Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria:

Cataclysm

Windows XP 32bit (SP3), Windows XP 64bit (SP2), Windows Vista 32bit (SP1), Windows Vista 64bit (SP1) Windows 7:
Dual-core processor, such as the Intel Pentium D or AMD Athlon 64 X2
2 GB RAM (2 GB for Vista users)
3D graphics processor with Vertex and Pixel Shader capability with 256 MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8600 or ATI Radeon™

Mists of Pandaria

4GB RAM
Windows 7 64 bit
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2 GHz or AMD Athlon 64 X2
Nvidia 8800GT
AMD 4830 512MB

My System

4GB RAM
Windows 7 64 bit
AMD Athlon 64 X2
Nvidia 8500GT

In theory my system is good enough with the possible exception of the Graphics card. I was already investigating alternatives yesterday and as usual it is a veritable minefield of options. The plans are for a budget card which will provide 30-40 FPS on medium settings. I have settled on the NVidea 630 and the AMD HD 6670. They appear to be of a similar standard and price, around the £50 mark.
Testing under Cataclysm conditions showed the AMD HD 6670 at a sensible 1280x1024 giving 37.3 FPS. If I get anywhere near that, I will be more than happy.

There is so much bovine excrement around Graphic cards, about having to buy the best, for more than the price of a good gaming rig. in 18 months the best will have been superceded and will cost 25% of its original valuation. That £50 card was cutting edge once.

I will do some testing at the weekend and maybe I can save somebody else the enormous amount of time I have spent wading through this macho bullshit.