Surving as a Hunter

My recent re-spec to Survival has gone well.. very well in fact.

I'm jumping back up the ranking as one of the top DPS'ers again. It's taken a little while to get used to the new playing style. But if anything it's actually a little simpler than playing as a Beast Master.

On bosses / mobs where I'm allowed to stand still and nuke to my hearts content my DPS (probably thanks to the 'Sniper Training' talent) is awesome. It's a bit less impressive on fights where I've got to move around alot, but still holds its own.

Being used to BM I was used to a differnt shot rotation, and was still stuck on the idea that stings were important. As survival, they're not.
My BM rotation was:
Mark -> Sting -> Multi-Shot -> Steady -> Steady
As Survival it's now:
Mark -> Black Arrow -> Explosive -> Steady -> Steady -> Explosive

Using stings was actually lowering my DPS because of the global cooldown, and the fact that my new glyphs mean that I don't recieve the bonuses from it that I used to.
I miss my traps a little too, since I'm almost always spamming Black-Arrow, which shares a cooldown. But for the times when I do use a trap (when I have time to prepare) they're much more effective.

I managed 2.8k DPS on the VH heroic bosses last night, and can easily put out 2.5k on a target dummy. So it looks like the new spec is here to stay, at least until it gets nerfed.

I believe wolves make better pets for Survival Specs too, so maybe a new pet is also on the cards. I'll research that a bit first.

Edit: I'd better re-install Omen too. Before Vedd starts shouting at me. As BM it was almost impossible to over aggro as my aggro was 50% me and 50% pet... as Survival, my pet is just a side-show.

Free Realms

Having read so much about Free Realms from Tobolds blog, and follwing my dissapointment in City of Heroes, I thought I'd give it a qucik try.

I wasn't really expecting it to be my sort of game, and my expectations weren't the highest. But I was very pleasantly suprised. The graphics are actually pretty good, the basic gameply elemts all seemed to be there, and although I felt it held your hand a little too much I can see myself playing more of it.

Probably the best thing was that I could easily see my 9 year old son loving the game. He always wants to play on Warcraft, but struggles to do so many things at once on the keyboard.

Funnily enough, give him a Joypad or a Wiimote and he'll kick your ass, with fingers flying faster than the eye can see, but he hasn't fully mastered keyboard gaming yet.

If you have any children who you want to introduce into the world of MMORPG's and spend a little family time together online, Free Realms seems a perfect choice. The 3D graphics are very good, the quality is very polished, the interface is intuitive, and the overall feel is excellent. And best of all... it's "Free". (I know there's micro-transactions but they're optional).

Imagine World of Warcraft between levels 1 -20 and that's pretty much what Free Realms is, albeit quite a bit smaller and with less idiots.

If this was a gaming review blog, I'd be awarding it: 8.5/10

City of Heroes

It sucks.

Short and sweet, but unfortunately true.
I thought it had alot of potential, and spent ages designing my character, choosing my skills etc.. but in the end, it was laggy, ugly, and I couldn't help but feel the combat was just predetermined, no matter what buttons I pressed.

It's true, I didn't give it much of a chance. But I gave it as much as I thought it deserved.

So much for a 14 day trial.