Peter's Blog

Getting Weirder

This dual play is really fun, a nice new angle on the game. I've been developing the attack:

• target beast with Maez
• serpent sting to pull and leave Maez to drop into auto-shot
• switch to Sissle
• target same beast (still not macroed this but not big prob thus far)
• Shadow Word: Pain
• Wand to death

Using Mind Blast instead of Shadow Word: Pain took a big chunk out of the foes health but always drew agro, hence the two DoT's. Only now writing this do I remember the 'Fade' spell: this would help Sissle drop agro and put it back on Maez, leaving Sissle free to cast without interruption. Fade is a poor man's feign death but is not much use for soloing as the monsters don't have any other targets to turn their wrath upon. With Maez around this isn't a problem.

I find the priestly Auto-wanding thing to be annoying: it repeatedly auto-casts but while it is casting you cannot instantly switch to casting some other spell (Mind Blast/Healing/PW: Shield etc). I'd rather have a low damage, instant cast spell to spam. It's normally safe to leave Maez on auto and do the fiddly stuff with Sissle. Maybe I could write a load of macros that start with /stopcasting but that seems like hassle.

When I have to do two fights at once things do become a struggle, due to both my priestly noobness, dual-play noobness, hunter-without-a-pet struggles and sheer weight of options to skim through. Ressurection works nicely A res and a heal and Maez is up and running again. Having a priest on the team is highly recommended.

Consider the situation where Sissle has pulled agro, the logical thing to do is take Maezyn back to range and start blasting. Problem here is Sissle will auto-follow Maez and bring the enemy they are fighting with her. The net result is they are still fighting but Sissle has stopped auto-wanding.

While Maez has reached level 8 she is facing a situation where there are not a lot of quests left in Dun Murogh: getting less XP from monster kills is taking it's toll. However, killing is easy and XP grinding is an option. Sissle is nearly 12, she has benefitted more from the kills. As Maez catches up in level with Sissle this should balance out and we should really start rocking when they are both on the same quests. While collection quests (kill X monsters and get Y monster parts) are notoriously more tedious in this kind of play, straight killing quests are easy XP as both characters are getting clocking quest kills at the same time.

Playing like this there is no way could I ever be as effective as two players and probably not as effective as one player that knew what she was doing. I think I'm more effective than I am solo though

Maez's Future

Looking forward to getting the hunter pet. Apart from the coolness of three characters running round, play will be more like standard hunter play, with a side order of priest.

I was planning to make Maez a Marksman but I would really miss having an awesome pet. I need something that will hold agro while a priest blasts away. I'll think about this some more.

Pet wise, Maezyn will definitely pick up an Elder Crag Boar as they have charge and gore. For the other pet slot an interesting option could be a wolf: these have 'Furious Howl' which is a buff to group damage, useful with our little group. Small problem with this is it only has a 15 yard range and I'd hope to keep Sissle more than 15 yards from the fighting pet at all times.

I think I'm now settled on Engineering for Maez. So many good things:

• guns
• shot
• scopes
• Jumper Cables, giving her a one in three chance of ressurecting Sissle should the worst happen.
• goggles
• lots of other toys.

I'm in two minds about sending my duo off to Darkshore to get Darnassus rep while they are still low enough for the XP to be useful and for the quest markers to be visible. Is rep split between group members? Having the two of them on elekks would be fun.

Warcraft Addiction

It's a struggle but I have still played less than I used to and this blog post is longer than I intended mainly because I find this stuff so interesting.