Mania’s Arcania

I have, against all odds, agreed to crunch as part of my current contract. Yup, crunch time — working so many hours so close together that you can’t possibly do a good job. Just like a real game developer!

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Much to my chagrin (because I was caught napping), Patch 3.2.2 made its way onto the live realms today. We’ve been talking about the hunter changes on the 3.2.2 PTR for a bit, and now we can see the changes in action.

From the Patch 3.2.2 patch notes:

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Today is Pirate’s Day in World of Warcraft.

This is a very simple holiday with relatively little content. If you log in today, make sure to talk to the Gnome Commoners you’ll find all over. They’ll turn you into a pirate for an hour. Then head to Booty Bay and talk to Dread Captain Demeza (on the roof over where the Elder stood). She’ll turn you into a pirate for 12 hours and give you an Achievement.

As I said, a simple holiday. But check out what else you can find on the roof with the pirates: Nyuni, a green parrot hunter pet.

Unfortunately Nyuni is a friendly NPC and not even tagged as a beast, but she is clearly a hunter pet. So perhaps Blizzard will consider allowing us to tame something like this beauty soon!

I’m beginning to feel like I should just direct you guys to read MMO Champion and leave it at that. The only real news happening is the PTR notes and what Ghostcrawler has been saying about us on the forums, and I haven’t been playing other than my Argent Tournament dailies, so I don’t have many personal experiences to add.

But then I realize that the value of this blog isn’t news — it’s discussion. So I’ll round up the hunter and pet stuff, and add my insignificant comments, and then toss it over to you and you can add the real value.

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Allow me to introduce my newest character.

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Just a quick update: Blizzard released a new build of Patch 3.2.2 to the Public Test Realms today, and MMO Champion kindly informed us that it contains another tweak to The Beast Within:

The Beast Within now reduces the mana costs of all spells by 50% for 10sec. (Up from 20%)

This change is not unexpected — Ghostcrawler mentioned the possibility when discussing the last set of changes to The Beast Within. And now it looks quasi-official. (Although note that nothing on the PTR is ever guaranteed.)

Ghostcrawler posted more today on the upcoming changes to Bestial Wrath and The Beast Within that are currently on the PTR.

Given the depth of discussion that the previous post has already engendered, I wanted to give these notes their own post so they have plenty of visibility.

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Patch 3.2.2 has been on the Public Test Realms (PTR) since well before BlizzCon, but so far I’ve not said a word about it. I usually love tracking the progress of the PTR, but between BlizzCon and real-life commitments and distractions, I’ve been remiss about keeping up with this one.

Tonight, however, Blizzard deployed PTR build 10433 — a build that is causing quite a stir among Beast Mastery hunters in particular — and so I thought it was high time to catch up.

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I am a bad blogger. I left you guys for almost two weeks with no posts. Now many of you kept the conversation going in the comments — which I suppose just goes to show that I myself am rather extraneous to this whole process — but I did promise you some hefty Cataclysm summaries and analysis when I got back.

Unfortunately, you’re not getting any of that today.

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