2/27/14

Tactics #1: Kiting

So this is the first in hopefully a series of posts about a specific skill in WoW; not a class ability, per se, but a standard method of applying various class skills to achieve a particular tactic for, usually, a boss fight.

I'm beginning with kiting for two reasons: my non-WoW-playing D&D group members didn't know what the term meant, and I learned how to do it way back in vanilla WoW, in Upper Blackrock Spire.

So, to start, what is kiting?  Kiting is getting a mob's attention, and then moving away from it to control its actions, generally to move it.

Why would you want to kite something?  Different mobs are kited for different reasons:
  • As a form of crowd control, by drawing its attention to keep it from hitting other players
  • To move it out of bad stuff (poison/fire/etc.)
  • To prevent it from using an ability or spell it only does while not moving
  • Because it periodically fixates on someone

 

Kiting as Crowd Control


The first two are the most frequently occurring reasons; for example, the original kiting fight I learned involved kiting General Drakkisath from his room to, usually, the Beast's room, although when you got better at it, you could often get him all the way to Rend's room before he'd run back.  Normally this was done by a ranged class, usually a hunter.  This tactic let the two tanks in the group pick up Drakkisath's two minions and let the raid kill them before having to deal with the general himself.  At the time the strategy wasn't complicated: distracting shot, concussive shot, run.  It occasionally got interesting if you fell off one of the bridges into Lower Blackrock Spire. (Ahem.)

This kind of kiting can be used to effectively lock down a mob that can't otherwise be crowd controlled through traditional methods like trapping or sheeping.  Many classes have a slowing effect - concussive shot, the Slow spell, hamstring, crippling poison, frost shock, frost bolt, and so forth.  If a group you're in asks you to kite something, it's probably either because you can handle the damage it's going to do to you, or because you can effectively slow it down and run away.  So find your slowing abilities if you're not familiar with them and get ready to run!

Another reason you might find yourself kiting something you can't sheep or trap is because your tank died.  Maybe you're just kiting long enough to get a battle resurrection for the tank; maybe you're kiting to finish off the fight.  In this case, keeping your distance from the mob while maintaining threat is often the most important part.  You might not be able to slow it, so if you have anything that can increase your speed (sprint, blink, rocket boots), they're your new best friend.

Kiting for positioning


If a mob needs to be kited to regularly move it out of bad stuff, this is probably being done by the tank who's tanking it, or maybe via a tank swap in a larger group.  This version of kiting is often done by backing slowly around the fight area, in order to get the mob out of a puddle of poison, fire, or some other deadly substance so that melee players can actually hit it.  Or, the puddle may provide a buff to the mob, so moving it out of the area will weaken it.  This is something to watch out for more if you're tanking.

Kiting as an interrupt


Occasionally you'll want to kite something to keep it from casting or using an ability.  An example of this is Garnia, a rare-spawn elemental on the Timeless Isle.  Garnia's ruby bolt hits hard, so it's best to keep her from casting it when possible.  Besides interrupting it, if you can keep her moving, she won't do it.  You may or may not need to slow a mob in this situation, but you definitely need to do whatever your class needs to in order to do damage on the move.

Kiting as a mob's focused target


The last common reason for kiting (that I can think of right now) is because a mob periodically focuses on and chases one of the people fighting it.  Generally when this happens, your group with have a designated place for running to; in some cases this may simply be "don't run it through the raid," or  you may need to get the mob to a specific spot in the room.  Thok the Bloodthirsty is the most recent example of a boss who will try to chase you down and eat you, but there are others.

Sometimes if you're kiting something that has focused you, it may not be a mob, but a beam of fire, a moving line of spikes, or some other ability which is linear/trail based.  In this case, you need to keep moving, but you don't have to worry about killing the thing chasing you; you just have to keep it from hitting your group or perhaps avoid dragging it across a puddle of something on the floor (don't set the oil on fire!).



Successful kiting can take some practice; you have to be comfortable hitting your slowing ability on demand when needed and then run before you get smooshed.  Other kinds of it can be picked up fairly quickly - running away from your group with a beam of fire and such.  If a group needs a kiter and you're new to it, just make sure you know where to take the mob and if you need to do anything special to it while you've got its attention, and it will probably be okay!

2/24/14

Fan-fiction #3 (w/bonus scene!)

Here's the most recent fan-fiction challenge from the forums for reference: ~linky~


GO FORTH! sayeth the Mother Goddess
Go forth, Ermintrude, queen of all chickens!
You alone can protect my daughter!
You alone can save Azeroth!

I, Ermintrude, queen of all chickens, must go forth
I must leave my brood
I must leave Westfall
I must leave the Mother Goddess's protective gaze
I must save Azeroth

I, Ermintrude, queen of all chickens, designate an heir
This egg shall hatch a worthy heir
This egg shall hatch a mighty hen
This egg shall hatch a new queen
This egg shall be Westfall's new guardian

I, Ermintrude, queen of all chickens, prepare for my journey
Long are the roads out of Westfall
Long are the days under the scorching sun
Long are nights of darkness and danger
I eat the last of the grain from the Mother Goddess

I, Ermintrude, queen of all chickens, join my traveling companions
Daughter of the Mother Goddess, tall and fair
Pet of the Daughter, furry and uncouth
Defender of the queen, stout and metallic
And I, Ermintrude, queen of all chickens

I, Ermintrude, queen of all chickens, leave my home
Across the dust-caked roads of Westfall
Over the fields of okra and hops
Through the meadows of uncut hay
Westfall falls behind us

I, Ermintrude, queen of all chickens, brave the forest of Elwynn
Brave to cross the bridge of oak and stone
Brave to enter the shadows of the behemoth trees
Brave to pass the shrieking of the gnolls
Elwynn holds my first challenge

I, Ermintrude, queen of all chickens, defend the daughter of the Mother Goddess
Lo, but the vile squirrel swept down from the trees
The vile squirrel rushed at the daughter of the Mother Goddess
The vile squirrel did pelt us with the oaks' bounty
I defeat him with a swift strike from my beak

I, Ermintrude, queen of all chickens, am rewarded for my bravery
The daughter of the Mother Goddess leads us to a tavern
Her pet, a worthless beast, receives but a bone
My guardian requires no repast
But I!  I have never tasted such grain!



Elaine was supposed to meet me at the Lion's Pride Inn in Goldshire, and after a couple days of walking from Westfall, I finally got there.  She raised a brow when she saw the menagerie I was trailing.

"Okay," she said, "I can get the dog--"

"Coyote," I said.

"Yeah, whatever.  That makes sense, since you always seemed like you might follow the hunter's path.  But what's with the chicken?"

"What, Ermintrude?" I asked.  "Ma insisted I bring her so I wouldn't have to buy eggs."

2/20/14

Fan-fiction #2

This was for the second writing prompt in the fan-fiction forum.

As much as I hate the desert of Hellfire Peninsula, the awful mushroom infestations you find in your luggage after a couple weeks in the Zangarmarsh, and fel stench of Shadowmoon Valley, Outland does have one thing going for it.

No, no, besides the ethereals with their dreamboat voices.

Outland has no murlocs.

See, I grew up in Westfall, and, Light save you, you can't go fishing in Westfall without running into a crowd of them.  Those ichthyoid tribes are more or less why I left in the first place.

I've always been a tinkerer.  Harvest reapers don't fix themselves, after all, and when they go haywire, well, you've really got to be quick on your feet.  Better yet, you knock 'em over from a distance, and you don't get shredded while you're trying to turn them off.  Sometimes it's faster just to lob a stick of dynamite at them; you're going to have to tear them apart to fix them anyway.

Yeah, so if the hazards of daily farm mechanics weren't bad enough, then the murlocs got into my ma's chickens.  Normally they just eat fish, or turtles, or whatever random sea creature has washed up out of the depths, but the settlement closest to our farm somehow got a taste for chicken.  Ma is pretty proud of her chickens - she swears up and down Saldean's have got nothing on hers - so she was incensed when half a dozen of hers went missing, with a trail of blood and feathers leading down towards the murloc huts on the beach below the bluff.

The beach had been off limits forever because of the murlocs, which meant my friend Elaine and I snuck down there every time my ma turned her back.  We avoided the murlocs, though, because if you catch one's attention, you have the attention of all of them, and Ma would have heard them a mile away if we'd had to run back home with a pack of them coming after.  We just picked up shells and made sand forts and pretended like we knew how to swim.

But hey, I was seventeen now, and I'd gotten not bad at knocking over harvest reapers with my cobbled-together shotgun, so I figured if they came back, maybe I could at least scare them off.  This would, of course, require a stake out.

I set up just inside the barn, where I could see the chicken coop clearly in the moonlight, with my shotgun and a harvest reaper "heart" to work on while I was waiting.  I sat there all night, got the heart fixed, and had just decided that the murlocs weren't showing up, when an absolutely riotous clatter broke out across the farm, behind the house.  I could hear my ma yelling up a storm by the time I got disentangled from the blanket I'd been dozing in, and she was throwing stones after a critter disappearing into the brush at the edge of the yard.

"Not a murloc, I take it," I said, and she turned to glare at me.

"No, it's that stupid coyote you've been feeding," she said, then gestured to the scattered buckets around the kitchen yard.  "Look at it.  He's been into scraps now.  Those are supposed to feed the hogs."

"Maybe tomorrow night, then," I said.  Ma pursed her lips, looking me up and down once.

"You know, I haven't made Westfall stew since your father left for the war," she said.  "I think you'd just about fit my old armor now..."

I'm not sure just how incredulously my brow had knitted as she disappeared back into the house, but she rolled her eyes at me when she came back out with a bundle.

"Murlocs really aren't that dangerous," she said.  "Not if you're armed and you're bigger than they are.  Besides, they really won't chase you beyond sight of their huts if you do get in over your head."

"What do murlocs have to do with Westfall stew?" I asked.

"Don't you remember?  The little round bits that just sort of... pop when you bite into them?" she said, gesturing vaguely with one hand.  "Those are murloc eyes."

"Eyes?" I gasped.  "But those were the best part!"

"And that's why the murlocs normally stay down on the beach rather than coming up and harassing our chickens, too," Ma said firmly.  "So why don't we see if this armor fits, and you can go get us a dozen or so eyes, and we'll have stew for supper."

I was speechless as she helped me into the armor - a bit horrified, really.  Sure, they were basically walking fish, and they'd definitely kill you if you got too close - but eating their eyes?

"There," Ma said when the last buckle had been adjusted.  The armor was mostly leather, with a few metal accents, and by the smell, it had been in a chest with mothballs for quite some time.  There was going to be absolutely no surprising the murlocs dressed in that.

Once my ma was satisfied with the armor, I headed back over to the barn to retrieve my shotgun and some shells, then stopped in the shed where I had my workbench to collect a half dozen of the little copper bombs I'd been making to pick off haywire reapers.  I hadn't really gotten over the squickiness of eating eyes yet, but I had heard of occasional forays against the coastal murlocs to keep their numbers down.  I'd been maybe six or seven the last time I'd heard of one happening, though.  No wonder they were going after the chickens.

Once I'd gathered up my supplies, I headed for the bluff.  Presumably if Ma wanted the eyes, I was going to have to kill some murlocs, but I really had no idea how to do that without having a dozen of them in my face.  Once at the bottom of the bluff, I stopped in its shadow to scope out the murloc settlement.  Elaine had gone off to Northshire Abbey a while back to study for the priesthood, and I hadn't been down there in a while.

It had grown, pretty substantially really.  Where once there were three little huts, now there were almost a dozen.  Some of the murlocs were armed with bows or spears, and these were generally patrolling further out from the huts.  I figured these were probably the best bet for getting some eyes for Ma's stew, since they'd be further from the huts - and the other murlocs - so running was more feasible if it came down to it.

Once I'd picked out one of the patrolling murlocs to start with, I got a bead on it through the scope on my gun, taking my time with the shot in order to hit a vital spot and hopefully drop it cleanly.  After a few seconds to get a bead on the murloc's chest, I pulled the trigger.

It actually wasn't that bad a shot; the murloc was bleeding profusely as it ran.  Unfortunately, it wasn't running towards me, as I'd expected, but back towards all its buddies, yelling all the way.

Honestly, my first instinct was to just book it back up the bluff.  I'd just provoked an entire village of murlocs, and I really wasn't that bad a runner.  Besides, they were a good forty to sixty yards from me.  I could probably be back up the bluff...

I hadn't expected the howl.  Despite living my whole life in Westfall, a coyote howl still gave me goosebumps.  It is, quite possibly, the eeriest sound I've ever heard, high-pitched and lonely.

There up the bluff was the coyote my ma had been chasing away from the scraps that morning.  He sprinted down the slope at the murloc I'd wounded, distracting them, and I quickly fixed my sights back on it as it was turning towards the coyote.

The second shot did drop it, and I took aim at another as the coyote moved towards the group that was now running towards it.  With the coyote's help, I was quickly able to drop half a dozen - I didn't even have to resort to the copper bombs I'd brought with me.  He sat, madly wagging his tail, and watched me while I gingerly removed the dead murlocs' eyes from the sockets.  And to think I had liked Westfall stew when I was little...

Ma wasn't really happy to see the coyote following me back, so I just handed her the sack full of eyes and headed over to the pump to clean off all the ick.

"Elaine's mother said she's just about finished her studies at the abbey," Ma said, still watching the coyote.

"Yeah.  And?"

"You didn't want to go see her?"

"Who's going to get the reapers working?" I asked.

"I can fix a harvest reaper, you know," she said, raising a brow at me.  "Although now that you can handle the murlocs yourself, we could have stew probably every week--"

"Fine, fine, I'll go see Elaine," I said.

I didn't really mind that idea, but my dad had left for the war twelve years before, and that was the last I had seen him.  I didn't like the idea of Ma being alone on the farm.  But if it meant I wasn't going to be picking murloc eyes out of their sockets anytime soon...


Outland did have some things going for it, for sure.

2/18/14

Weapon Models: Top 5 Crossbows

For the longest time, crossbows were a rarity in the game; only a few existed, and they were from lower-end content.  We saw more crossbows later in the Burning Crusade, and by Wrath of the Lich King they were making regular appearances on raid loot tables.  These are my five favorite:

5.  Felglacier Bolter - One of the many Wrath-era crossbows, this one drops out of the Pit of Saron, off Ick.  Groups that fell apart in Pit of Saron usually did so right after this, on the gauntlet, so it wasn't too horrible to farm for.  It's got a very Northrend-esque color scheme.


4.  Windrunner's Heartseeker - I like the references this one makes - all the Windrunner sisters; its model is a little be Scourgey, a little bit Night Elfish, with a dragony set of horns to boot.



3.  Steelhawk Crossbow - I want to say I used this up until the bow dropped off Prince; Attumen the Horseman drops it.  It's one of several bird-themed crossbow models, and perhaps the list garish of them.

2.  Death Lotus Crossbow - This is one of the new Pandaria crossbow models.  It's fairly understated, with a bit of sha-taint, and it comes in pink, blue, and purple flavors, depending what kind of raid you're running.  This is what I'm currently using, but I love the Sunwell bow enough that I've got it transmogrified.


1.  Scourge Crossbow - This crossbow model is used for a ton of green-quality ones, and when I was looking for a nice transmog crossbow for my blood elf this is the one I picked.  It's got clean lines, a nice mix of natural wood and metal, and a relatively compact size.


Next up:  Bows.  I'll have a bit more to say about them.

Fan-fiction

Blizzard added a fan-fiction forum over on their official forums a couple weeks ago.  I didn't think much about it, but then they started posting writing challenges.  And, well, my husband is the biggest troll of a troll mage, and a writing topic about portals... yeah.  So here's my first ever fan-fic, posted over here.



This mage is trying to kill me.

It was supposed to be a cushy, easy job, really. And after I don't know how many months in the steaming Jade Forest, a trip up to Northrend would have been a nice change.

The commander said he wanted an update on how things were going since Deathwing's defeat. I figured it would be a couple weeks on a gryphon, stopping in the outposts across the continent for reports, with a handful of companions in case of any lingering trouble. The priestess was an easy choice - Elaine and I grew up in Westfall together, and I know she's got my back in trouble. She pulled in the paladin, Wilton Stonehammer. The dwarf has set himself up as something of a protective uncle to Elaine, and I can't really complain about that. The commander provided the - well, Elaine and I settled on rogue, because that gnome's hands are just nowhere to be found if not in someone else's pockets.

We were supposed to meet the gnome, Fizzle Stembolts, at Lion's Landing, so Elaine and Wilton and I headed down to Krasarang and eventually got him away from a group of rather irritated soldiers whose pocket handkerchiefs Fizzle had apparently acquired without their knowledge. We were debating how to get up to Northrend when Wilton spotted what could only be a mage, fishing off the docks. Since the dwarf is the best of us at striking up conversations with random strangers (seriously, it's like they're all raised in bars or something), he headed over to see if the mage wanted to go along, or, if not, if we could buy a portal to Northrend off him.

I suppose the archaic style of his robes should have been a warning; he had followed Wilton back to the rest of us after what had looked to be an amiable conversation and introduced himself as Malcolm Sanderson, and he had indeed agreed to go with us. He made some complaint about the quantity of octopus in the waters off Krasarang, and then did that hand-wavy stuff mages do, and a portal popped up on the docks. Fizzle hopped through first, then Wilton, then Elaine, then me, presuming the mage would follow behind us.

I found myself freefalling, blue sky above me and very definitely not the snows of Northrend below me. In a panic I pulled at the cords of the parachute I'd meticulously stitched into my cloak with one hand while I flailed out to catch Chad, the coyote I'd left Westfall with, with the other. Once I was floating a bit more slowly down - really, that parachute wasn't designed for two - I could see the others below me. Elaine was floating down slowly on a puff of cloud, and Wilton had that familiar golden glow of the protective Light around him. Fizzle was moving, but it looked like he hadn't fared as well as the paladin that had apparently landed on him.

Above me, I heard Malcolm say, "H-uh." He was, like Elaine, floating gently down through a simple spell.

"Where are we, Malcolm?" I heard Elaine ask, and I cringed at the tone. Elaine was not happy.

"This should be Dalaran," he said. "Last time I went to Dalaran, it was right here..." Malcolm said.

"Yeah? When was that, the First War?" Elaine snapped. "Forsaken Lordaeron. You've dropped us into the middle of Forsaken Lordaeron."

We had landed in a crater, and weak little remnants of the arcane magics that had moved the city flitted around. Wilton had healed the worst of the injuries Fizzle had taken from the fall, which was just as well, because Elaine, still glaring at the mage, had faded into the shadows. You just don't make a priestess angry.

"I could try again--"

"NO!" the four of us cut off Malcolm.

"We can't very well walk to Northrend, though," Wilton said.

"Look," I said, "the Horde maintain a zeppelin tower just outside the Undercity. If we're careful, we can probably just sneak onto one and drop off over the water in Northrend before it docks."

"Aye, lass, but we have to get to that tower. And there's all of Silverpine and a good bit of Tirisfal between us and it," Wilton said.

"What about the lake?" Fizzle asked. The dwarf raised a brow at him, then thumped his breastplate with his mace.

"Lakes and I do not get along."

"Oh, please," Elaine rolled her eyes, waggling her fingers at him, and Wilton frowned as he floated up about six inches on a cloud similar to the one Elaine was still standing on herself.

"You know I hate this," he said.

"But it works," she said.

"Fine, fine, let's get walking," I said.

"Hm, Lordamere Lake," Malcolm muttered as we started out of the crater. "Rather dull for fish..."