Good or bad publicity is publicity, right?
So it seems my stint writing the Scattered Shots column over at WoW.com has been going pretty well. I’ve finally figured out about how much time I need to budget for each post. (A lot more than I had originally thought, but that’s alright.) So after this weekend I can get back to a normalized schedule here and there. Hopefully, you all will appreciate that.
In the mean time. I thought I’d use the Lodge to share some email I got with you the past couple of weeks. It seems that I have gotten under one or more reader’s skin. See I got some bonafide hate mail on my last Scattered Shots posts. Here check it out for yourself. I’ve removed anything that identified the writer to keep it anonymous. So you’ll have to just trust me that these hilarious emails are real.
Here’s the first one. It was sent last week in response to my take on the new 3.2 PTR changes. (post)
I have to say I really miss BRK. While he could be as friendly with blizzard as anyone else at least I didn’t feel his opinions were as completely off base as Eddie’s.
Is Blizzard signing his paycheck? I mean, seriously, his review of the hunter changes is so lacking in actual content and feedback that he could be a community manager for them. He even misinterpretted one change to think it was a buff.
How this patch affects hunters is very small but in the end it’s a nerf. To start, the replenishment change is a nerf. You lose .05% mana regen per second. As far as I can tell he completely misread that, and maybe he should look at some hunter forums before posting an article because they’ve made that abundantly clear.
The traps change is a nerf and a buff. Yay, we can have three traps out, that took 5 seconds to lay down all three, but as we’re primarily a ranged class and snakes to get avoidance automagically, who cares. Boo, they only last 30 seconds and you can still only have one of each type out so now you’re double screwed if you knew how to double freezing trap or just liked having that safety net of being able to drop the second trap if the first one broke. Not to mention they then nerfed immolation and explosive trap so they no longer get entanglement.
Eddie’s response was to compare the nerf other classes were getting, specifically pointing out DK’s. Which, is wrong. DK’s had chains of ice reduced to 95% from 100% because the effect degrades immediately but was producing a better than average hold result on lower skilled players in PvP because it stopped movement and forced you to hit your button again which many players didn’t realize. That has nothing to do with why they removed entanglement from fire traps. They removed it because they don’t want you to lay an explosive trap behind an frost trap to double the distance on it or stick them on top of each other to double the proc rate. It’s a nerf, but it’s a nerf to fix a new issue they created by seperating the traps. Unfortunately the nerf out weighs the benefit and for a class that’s under-represented in the arena, you’d think they’d be looking to buff us.
Similarly his analysis on the 30 second cooldown was just plain lacking. One poster responded properly that it’s a huge grouping nerf becuase a BM/MM hunter has zero ability to retrap a resisted freezing trap quickly and the Survival hunter only has 6 seconds, a tight margin for the tank to pull in. That’s going to hurt hunter reputation in the long run, even good hunters that know how to trap.
Even his analysis of Kill Command is poor. Arguing that the ability is useful for leveling when it’s a late talent that will distract players from taking something they need and the secondary benefit is only currently useful for 14 levels is just bad logic. The talent will be largely ignored, and even if it is good for 14 levels it still confuses most hunters that they made this change because leveling ease is not something hunters are concerned with. It’s a bad PvP talent because it’s too deep in BM, and it’s a bad PvE Raid talent because it takes too many points away from better DPS talents.
3.2 is not a good patch for hunters. While we’re largely unaffected by the changes, the ones we will notice are nerfs.
What bothers me is this. Blizzards reps use this sight as another resource for figuring out what hunters are thinking. Analysis this bad tells them that they are on the right track with hunter changes because it doesn’t bring up any of the concerns hunters actually have. He failed to point out that the shaman change, completely unnanounced made it out ahead of the pet interface changes, the ammo changes, and just general QoL and Glitches that hunters are still suffering. That instead of putting a small buff on a largely ignored talent perhaps there was another small change that could have actually addresssed a hunter issue?
I don’t have beef with Blizzard, but if you’re going to prop up a guy as a hunter community leader by letting him write the hunter article, at least pick one that is aware of actual hunter issues. The last two Scattered-Shots that I’ve read were a complete waste of my time as they were inaccurate and failed to actually address any hunter issues.
Just my $.02
Now this one came in this week after I wrote up an article about specs. (post)
With the 100s if not thousands of emails you must get in a day i feel slightly bad writing with my complaint.
I have been reading wowinsider for over 3 years now. I have watched the community here grow and flourish. I have shared the highs and lows of going from vanilla to BC to wrath. I credit this site with alot of the information that allows me to be a viable officer, raider and source of info for my fellow guildies.
HOWEVER
the hunter column has got to stop. Not once since this new guy has taken over has there been anything worthwhile in these forums. He is wrong with his facts about 75% of the time, and his opinions are not those shared by the community at large.
While other classes get in depth discussions about gear and specs and proposed changes…we get “how to level a BM hunter” and “no seriously, you can play what spec you want and still be able to raid”. i call bullshit on this dude.I feel we as a class are being sorely underrepresented and our wow.com forum guy is failing us. As a class that has had to fight my way thru “lol huntard” to get where i am today, the whole scattered shots column is an insult.
I honestly don’t know what to say about this other than there’s no real bad publicity, it’s all just publicity. So I’d love to have your feedback on what you think.
