Second of all: Out With The Old…

…In With The New!

And yes, this means that I will be changing the background and spending a little bit of time getting the armory buttons just the way I like them. I like to have 3, which link to the character I perceive to be my main on each server. I might squish my Warlock back in the header, we’ll see. Whatever I do, I need to slightly de-Blood Elf the place.

Three cheers for the waggle!

COW ON HORSIE!

I love making my characters look good. I spend hundreds of gold in the barbers, and I’m constantly browsing for interesting looking items for my Rogue. So, I thought I’d start a new series over here, “Playing Dress Up”. I would like to dress up my bank alt a bit, to start, who is currently a level 15 Night Elf Rogue I stopped levelling back in TBC, so these items will be useable between levels 1 and 15. I’ve stuck to cloth items so your class isn’t limited at all, and the look I was going for was ‘smart/classy’, after all, this is a bank alt not a mailbox dancer If you’d like to see the images a little bigger, simply click on them.

I’ll start with 2 outfits which are fairly commonly used. The Tuxedo made by tailors, with the hat and the pimp stick from Dalaran fishing dailies. Followed by the Lovely Black Dress except I’ve covered up a little underneath.

If a set cannot be used at level 1, I have said so, if you don’t want to level that much, then feel free to find a different item in place of the level requiremented one. Where I have included 2 items in the same slot, it is the same model, one might be easier to get for you than the other.

1. Tuxedo Shirt/White Tuxedo Shirt + Tuxedo Pants/Black Tuxedo Pants + Tuxedo Jacket + Diamond-tipped Cane + Battered Jungle Hat + Recruit’s Boots.

2. Lovely Black Dress + Stylish Black Shirt + Neophyte’s Pants.

Now, I’ve had a browse through Wowhead and the following outfits, in my opinion, suit the smart/casual auction house banker. This can be easily mix and matched if you wish to. Being for a low level bank alt, they are nothing overly extravagant but they will do.

3. This set requires level 15: Aboriginal Vest + White Linen Shirt + Acolyte’s Pants + Journeyman’s Boots + Frayed Belt/Tattered Cloth Belt

4. This set requires level 13: Barbaric Cloth Vest + White Linen Shirt + Apprentice’s Pants + Squire’s Boots + Frayed Belt/Tattered Cloth Belt

5. This set requires level 10: Darkmoon Vest + Formal White Shirt + Neophyte’s Pants + Recruit’s Boots + Ancestral Belt

6. This set requires level 15: Whispering Vest + Orange Mageweave Shirt + Apprentice’s Pants + Journeyman’s Boots + Journeyman’s Belt

7. This set requires level 5: Light Magesmith Robe + Stylish Green Shirt + Frayed Shoes + Disciple’s Sash

8. This set requires level 4: Violet Robes + Bright Yellow Shirt + Acolyte’s Shoes + Thin Cloth Belt/Light Cloth Belt

9. Acolyte’s Robe + White Swashbuckler’s Shirt + Frayed Shoes + Thin Cloth Belt/Light Cloth Belt (though it looks good without a belt too)

PS. I recommend you check the Wowhead links for availability of the item, a lot of the things I used can be obtained from Thomas Yance in Old Hillsbrad. Of course, there are low level starting zone items too which aren’t Bind on Pickup and can be traded between characters and the neutral auction house if you wish to.

PPS. I may have missed things because there is a lot to go through, if you find an item you feel is great for a bank alt, feel free to leave a comment.

This Blog Azeroth Shared Topic was brought to you by Tarinae.

“Blizzard has been on the fast track to promoting account security lately. They all new options for when accounts are compromised, they offered pets for authenticators, they made several posted awareness sheets, etc.

But running parallel to that is the amount of gold sellers we see.

I have seen two of my guildmates hacked already this year by devastatingly experienced hackers. I was going to construct a post about the ugly truth behind gold buying. Do I know anyone who buys gold? No, but I know people who suffer the consequences. I did it once…referring to the fact that I suffered the consequences of someone else taking my items and money to give to someone else. I was the victim not the gold buyer.

I want to try to make sure people are aware of what happens when a gold seller needs to fill an order…they don’t create this stuff out of thin air.

So I thought I would promote it as a shared topic so you can share any (hacking or other) experiences you have to help raise awareness. People expect blizzard to say this stuff…but we are just players….real players with real experiences.”

A while ago I planned to write a post about authenticators and why it will always be worth owning one and why. It seems to have been pushed back by a bunch of post ideas in my drafts, as always happens, so, let’s take a look.

In my first guild back in TBC, we were in Karazhan and my boyfriend at the time claimed a disconnect over vent. He tried to log back in, but we pointed out that his character was hearthing. I think a couple of us yelled at the person on his character, my little naive mind assumed that they would react with “Oh crap, they caught me, run and hide!” But of course, that’s not realistic, they carried on. The one being hacked quickly changed his password and managed to get the guy off of his account. He lost a few things, but he was pretty lucky.

Quite early on in Wrath, one of the guild’s officers was hacked. The guild bank was cleared out, and this happened twice. A few weeks later, our prot paladin was also hacked. His character was used for roughly 2 days before the account could be locked, it was constantly in Wintergrasp, so they were either using his character to farm, or they really liked PvPing with other people’s characters.

This all begs the question: are gold sellers hacking? Or is most of the hacking coming from another source? I’m sure we’ve all seen them farming away, Whelplings, Borean Leather, I’ve even seen them farming Hippogryphs in Feralas in the past, but how can we tell who’s actually hacking? Well for starters, the example above is very good evidence towards gold sellers hacking accounts to use. The most likely thing they could have been doing was using the level 80 character to farm eternals to sell. The hacked accounts themselves can be used as a great source of instant gold, selling gear and items and trading the gold to another account. It can be used to farm items to sell for further profits. They can use the account to whisper and trade people, which cannot be done from a trial account. Not to mention they will 9 times out of 10 have access to a high level character without all of the time and effort put into leveling and gearing. There probably are some out there who hack for malicious reasons, but the main cause, as far as I can see, will be gold sellers.

They ruin the economy. How many times have you seen stacks of Borean Leather and other things on the auction house for ridiculously low prices, sold by Wxrycd? Blue Whelplings for 150g? If I can, I try to gank them when I see them, anything to hold them up. I found one in Scholazar Basin a while back, there were a few characteristics you can pick up on to tell if somebody is or isn’t a farmer. Do they emote you? If they wave, smile, or something along those lines, often the interaction will throw people off, but don’t be fooled, it’s one of their tricks. How keyboard mashy does their name sound? Are they guildless, or perhaps in a guild you’ve never heard of? If they’re an enemy, if you place yourself next to them, do they ignore you, kill, loot, skin, keyboard turn away and rinse and repeat? They’ll be fairly slow with their movements and will usually be Hunters or Death Knights. Ganking them and reporting them are great ways to do your bit. Of course, this isn’t going to make people’s accounts any more secure, but let’s call it vengeance.

If you don’t have an authenticator, why not? Blizzard have done plenty to make them more accessible, they’ve made them cheaper, made them available for iPhones, they even come with a cute little Core Hound puppy now, so if you don’t have one, what’s your excuse? Don’t think using NoScript is safe enough, don’t think an over complicated password is safe enough, if you don’t have an authenticator, they can hack you and attach one to your account, making it even more difficult to regain access. Sounds fun, yes? Thought not. You can never be safe enough. I deeply recommend you get one. It’s always better to be safe than sorry.

“Me being a man that has loved world of warcraft for the years it has been in my life wants to make a proposal,
I am somewhere around the age of 900 and i am a time lord from the planet gallifrey,
I want to help seeing as you have a server problem,
I’ve nipped to the shops in the future and bought some new servers that are VERY reliable, and want to give them as an early christmas present”

My sense of humour is a bit odd, but whatever gets you smiling, eh?

I’ll be honest, this preview has left me a little worried about the Hunter class. The change from mana to focus is going to cause the class to change a lot, and I’m currently trying out Rogue, the energy mechanic frustrates me somewhat. I’m a little bit scared that I’ll go into Cataclysm and find that I dislike the Hunter class, and what then? Would I just quit after seeing the new content, or reroll? Anyway, that’s me getting a little ahead of myself because this is, after all, just a preview and things are subject to change. Though from what we’ve seen already, Beast Mastery looks to be a strong contender for most interesting talent tree.

For starters: Cobra Shot: “A new shot that deals Nature damage instead of Physical damage. This ability will share a cooldown with Steady Shot. This will give hunters an alternative to Steady Shot on heavily-armored targets, and we will have talent incentives in the Beast Mastery tree to make this a signature shot.” This could either make or break Beast Mastery, giving them an entirely new shot to use instead of Steady Shot. My prediction is that it will hit like a train for a while, but I’m definitely interested in this one. One thing I wonder is how the nature damage aspect will work. Does this mean that Hunters will scale with spell power (or.. intellect I guess now) the same way that Unholy DKs don’t exactly suffer from it? What of hit and resistances?

Trap Launcher: “When used, the next trap can be shot to a location within 40 yards. This provides the current Freezing Arrow treatment to all traps and, as a result, we will be removing the current ability Freezing Arrow. 1-minute cooldown. No global cooldown.” Nice. Freezing Arrow has been a pretty useful tool, this means that we can plonk down an Explosive/Frost/Snake trap in a bundle of enemies in PvP without dragging ourselves into the thick of it at all.

Camouflage: “The hunter enters an obscured state that prevents him or her from taking ranged damage. The character would still be subject to melee or area-of-effect attacks, and dealing or taking damage will break the Camouflage effect. The hunter can move and set traps when under Camouflage, and will receive a damage bonus when attacking while under Camouflage (which will then break the effect).” At first glance, I thought, “what the hell?” and I looked again and I suppose this could be a nice tool for the start of a rotation, especially when used with the new BM talent, Careful Aim which “increases the damage of the next Steady Shot or Cobra Shot, but also increases the cast time of these abilities.” I can live with that, it’s a nice boost for BM.

The new focus mechanic worries me. I get frustrated at Rogue energy which regenerates at roughly 10per second. Focus will regenerate at around 6 per second. Eep. BM has always seemed to me to be the spec which focuses the most on Steady Shot. Steady Shot and Cobra Shot will be the focus regenning shot, thus I can see BM being much better for focus regen. Not to mention BM will receive mastery (which I still haven’t worked out /blush) talents for Haste, which will increase focus regeneration rates.

The pet changes could be just the thing I’ve been asking for! For starters, the mention of active and stabled pets, enabling us to keep pets that we may have certain attachments to but only carrying around the pets we plan to use, has been further confirmed. The amount of active pets allowed to us will probably be 3, though BM hunters may be getting 5 active slots. To switch a pet from passive to active and vice versa we will need to visit a Stable Master, which makes sense. The other pet changes I am particularly fond of? “Additionally, hunters will now start with a race-appropriate pet at level 1 and will be able to tame a different pet at level 10. We are also changing many pet family abilities to provide important buffs and debuffs. The intention is to allow the hunter to be able to swap pets and fill a position if a certain role is missing from the group. The goal is to have all pets provide a damage increase that is very similar and no greater than any other pet. Some examples of the changes we are making to the pet families are listed below:

• Wind Serpents: Will provide a debuff that increases the amount of spell damage taken by an enemy (similar to a weaker version of the warlock ability Curse of Elements).
• Ravagers: Will provide a debuff that will increase an enemy’s Physical damage vulnerability (similar to a weaker version of the warrior ability Rampage).
• Hyenas: Will provide bleed damage (similar to a weaker version of the druid ability Mangle).“

Yes, yes, yes! This could be just the thing to bring back a bit of variety in pet choices, and enforcing Hunters as a ranged class as early as the 1-10 bracket. Good. Those of us who’ve played for a while can manage okay with kiting mostly, though some players struggle with it, and even more so for newer players who may get used to meleeing as normality. Not to mention this is exactly what Razorstorm commented about in my last post ranting about pet mechanics. Nice call

TL;DR Conclusion: I like a lot of these ideas. I think I’m drawn more towards Beast Mastery as my Cataclysm spec from the sounds of a lot of the changes (and I don’t tend to enjoy BM as much as MM or Surv as it stands now). The pet changes might well be just what the doctor ordered, and if these go through I’ll be happy with it. I’m terrified of where focus will lead the Hunter class, as I struggle with energy classes, I’m worried it might lead to me rerolling if I really don’t like it (probably Shadow Priest or Warlock if it came down to it), though of course I will give it a try because I will probably be completely wrong and it will make the Hunter class just a little bit cooler. Of course, if you want to read the full changes, MMO Champion has them up, this post is purely a recap.

You might notice I haven’t kept up on Cataclysm changes too much, but I’d like to have a rough idea on how to play my class when it does come around.

All I’m asking is just to know, if you plan to write about these things, please make it obvious enough in your title or the first couple of lines, or let me know in advance to put your blog aside until the expansion hits.