Posts with tag passive

Since I complained (some have said whined) about the Horde yesterday, turnabout's fair play and I should focus my complaining on the Alliance for a bit. Because if we're fair, the Alliance needs some changes in its story, too. And I think it's fair to say that what the Alliance needs isn't necessarily a victory - especially in terms of Horde/Alliance conflict, it doesn't actually drive the story forward necessarily to have one side win, and the end of Siege of Orgrimmar could in fact be seen as the Alliance winning. No, it's not really victory that's lacking.

The problem the Alliance has is as simple as the statement at BlizzCon that the Alliance is the 'Captain America' faction, the faction that has a more standard heroism about it. The problem with that is, in many ways heroism is depicted as being reactionary. You respond to a threat, you react to a crisis, whether it be Deathwing or Garrosh. Villains act, and heroes react - it's one of the reasons that actors often state that the bad guy is more fun to play. For better or for worse, the Alliance presence in Pandaria was a reaction to the crash-landing of Anduin's ship after it was chased by a Horde fleet, and everything that followed was reactionary. The Alliance stayed in Pandaria purely because the Horde was there, they weren't there to explore or even conquer. The entire struggle over the Divine Bell was a struggle to keep the Horde from getting it because they knew the Horde would use it (as they did) and so far, despite her having every reason to feel that the Horde cannot be trusted Jaina Proudmoore is being painted as villainous for maintaining this position.

A guildie of mine discovered this last night, and reader Theronis sent us a note today about it -- after patch 3.0.2, defensive pets act a little differently. Before the patch, they would only attack an enemy automatically if they attacked you first, which made things a little tough with casters -- pets in defensive mode wouldn't actually move to attack until the first spell actually hit you. But after the patch, pets are a little bit quicker: now, they'll move to attack as soon as you attack something, so you won't have to wait around until you get hit before your pet springs into action.

However, this can be a drawback as well -- while Theronis says it's a good change and that his pets are smarter, my guildie had a problem: whenever he wanted to pull one mob out of a group, the pet would run in and pull them all. Anything you attack will get pounced on by your pet in defensive, and that might bring some unintended adds along for the ride.

Personally, I always keep my pets in passive -- it only takes a split second to hit CTRL-1 to send them attacking, and I can much better control, both soloing and in instances, what my pet is up to at any given moment. It can hurt my DPS a bit if I'm not careful (since I'm a BM Hunter, my pet is a big part of my DPS, so if I forget to send him, that's a bigger loss), but the tradeoff is that I can be careful about pulling adds and I have control of my pet all the time. If the "smarter" defensive works great for you, good, but if you find your pet springing in a little too early, you might try switching back to passive and just staying there most of the time.