Sunday, December 29, 2013

Pet Battles: Start Building Your Team

I am not going to hide it, I'm addicted to Pet Battles. As I've been leveling a druid, I've been making sure to grab at least one of every pet as I go through the zones. I might skip the ones that are rare drops, but I will try my hardest to get each pet available as I level. With luck, you'll get at least an uncommon of most of the pets. But, before you can do that, you have to build your team.

There are many ways to build your team, and many compositions. Personally, I am in love with the mechanical pets. My go-to team is a Rabid Nut Varmint 5000, a Robo-Chick, and a Desert Spider. But before I tell you why, let me fill you in on some good tactics to build a team. 

First off, you want to make sure you don't over-specialize unless you know who you are going up against. For instance, the pet trainers have set teams, and you can plan for them with powerhouse pets tailored to the fight. But out in the world, collecting and looking for rares, you never want to be caught with a team full of mechanicals with purely mechanical abilities and end up against a full set of elementals.

What I find to be the best way to build a full roster is to go all out on collecting. As you go through zones, try to stick around long enough to get at least an uncommon quality of the pets available. If you are paying attention, you can get higher level pets of each set as you progress, and that will help you to have backup pets so that your A-String high-level set doesn't just one-hit-kill all the new pets you are trying to find. Just switch them in and out as you go, and you'll find you have a pretty nice roster to start getting serious pretty quick.

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

WoD and the Newfound Futility of Optimal




As more information comes out about the new gearing system, I cannot help but giggle like my now-4-month-old. Allow me to explain why with a summary of the current system. 

As it stands now in Mists of Panderia gearing, like other expansions before it, gear has fixed stats. The majority of gear, in fact, doesn't have a thing you can do to change it without spending gold to buy enchants (1 for almost every slot), gems, and visiting the reforge NPCs. Gear is so customizable, in fact, that getting a new piece of gear almost seems like more of a chore than a gain once you figure in your hit, expertise, crit, and haste caps.

Fast forward to what we know about Warlords of Draenor gearing:

  • Few slots enchantable, and more powerful enchants.
  • Gem slots are uncommon, with no socket bonuses, and Metas are completely gone
  • Gear has 3 stat groups, primary, secondary, and tertiary.
  • Armor has primary and secondary stats. Primary stats change with spec for hybrids.
  • Non-armor gear (necklaces, trinkets, rings, and cloaks) has secondary and tertiary stats, and Blizzard still hasn't said definitively if they will have primary stats as well.
  • Weapons will have primary stats, and are likely to have secondary and tertiary stats.



Primary stats are just that, your bread and butter. Without them, you may as well be hitting Garrosh with a plastic spork. For casters, this means intellect; plate - strength; non-plate melee means agility. Stamina will be on all armor items. Yet to be clarified is if Stamina will be included on jewelry.

Next are the secondary stats: Critical Strike, Haste, Mastery, and Spirit (for Healers). Everyone is going to want these. As it stands now, raid and likely dungeon boss drops are going to have fixed values for these pieces.

Lastly, you have tertiary stats. This will be things like Multistrike (hit your target again for 30% damage), Lifesteal, Cleave (hit nearby targets for reduced damage, and others, as well as a chance to have a higher item level or a gem socket.

On top of this, if you are a hybrid, the primary (but not secondary or tertiary) stats will change when you switch specs. So, gearing a Moonkin that you want to dungeon tank with? Gather your gear and emphasis Crit and Mastery. Gearing a resto shaman but wanting to do enhance in dungeons? Gear for haste and use the same gear for both.

The bottom line is the concept of optimal, as well as best in slot gear, is largely going away. Yes, you can still gear for specific stats, but the lack of customization from reforging will mean that we can actually get a new piece, equip it, and continue on, without having to spend gold on a reforge and an enchant without having to worry about how it will ruin our optimization.