Bert's Bots

New pet battles!  Yay!

Some of the new pet battles in Battle for Azeroth have been... odd.  Pets that are not of the family you would expect for their name/model, multiple pet battles where you just have to survive because they self-destruct after ten or so rounds, and the like.

Bert's Bots is a mechanical fight in Gnomeregan.  Bert is outside the instance, but underground, so if you're Horde, you'll probably want to take the transporter from Grom'gol, rather than do something like use the Last Relic of Argus, because it pretty reliably lands me on Eastern Kingdoms, think, "Oh, that's close enough to fly," and then fly through the gnome guards and end up flagged and at 20% at the pet battle.

The first pet will swap two of your pets back and forth, the second kind of spams fire puddles on the floor that are dots that persist through pet swaps, and the third just kind of spams a basic mechanical attack.

I tried it with Hatespark the Tiny (2,1,1), Fel Flame (1,1,1), and Water Waveling (2,2,1).  Hatespark the Tiny is from the Molten Core anniversary raid thing, so if you didn't get one and don't want to shell out the exorbitant prices for him (I paid something like 25k for him just after the event ended, but the US median price on Undermine Journal right now is about 250k), any pet with Deep Burn and another ability that takes advantage of Burning is probably fine.  Looking into Water Waveling's abilities, Geyser is rarer than I realized, but Water Waveling is just tamed in Zul'drak, and the other pets average 3k-15k on the auction house.  (Water Waveling is my go-to elemental for pet battles that have mechanicals in them.)

Basically I started off with Flamethrower and then just used Conflagrate, Deep Burn, and Burn as Hatespark and the Fel Flame got swapped around, re-upping Burning as needed.  Eventually the bots got through both fire elementals, and the Water Waveling was able to finish off the last one - I used Geyser first since I definitely needed the damage and stun to finish it off.

Pets for Bert's Bots

Battle for Azeroth: first alpha impressions

I'm not sure how I got invited to the F&F alpha for Battle for Azeroth, but I'm going to try to be useful and not just run around mining.  This post will probably be super spoilery if you don't want to know anything about quests and whatnot, it's just going to be a running commentary as I run around Zanchul.

So, Marksman hunter, yes.  Of course.

Tranq shot is back!  I'm super excited about that for no real reason aside from Molten Core nostalgia.

Lone Wolf is currently nowhere to be found - and honestly, I like it better like this.  I miss raiding with a pet, and if this sticks, I'll be happy.  With the whole raid buff return, I'm really not surprised if it does stick - you'd have to put the raid buffs back into the Lone Wolf thing somehow, or have Marksman not bring the raid buffs the other two specs do, and that seems like a bad idea (in terms of the likely social pressures it would bring to play a different spec, not mechanically).

And one of the default starter pets for the alpha is that fire turtle that was such a pain to tame in Cataclysm.

Zul shows up early!  Looks like he's going to be a whole quest chain focus kind of thing.

There are orc peons all over, which just feels super Warcrafty.

Just realized that Quick Shot has replaced Arcane Shot, doing functionally the same thing but as physical.

Brutosaurs!  I squealed and made my husband come look.

There's a handy test feedback mini window with both bug and confusion reporting, and feedback at the bottom of all the quests, which makes it easy for someone like me who isn't entirely sure how to be helpful for an alpha/beta.

So far I've gotten stuck in a wall once.

OMG tauren kites.

So Steady Shot is back, while moving, and OMG that druid NPC just turned into a triceratops.

Anyway, so far it looks like the only thing I can't do while moving is Aimed Shot.  There's Rapid Fire now, baseline, which looks like a single-target barrage.  All in all if this incarnation of Marksman makes it to live, I'm going to enjoy it.  (I mean, I've been playing Marksman since 2005 and just kind of rolling with the changes, but I was going to be really sad if I couldn't do solo stuff with my pet - that was probably the biggest potential change I didn't like.)  Aimed Shot has two charges - I'm not sure why, other than from making it too spammable with high haste, maybe?

Ooo, picking a loa.  This looks kind of like picking which building to build on the Broken Shore - each one gives a mobility bonus of some sort out in the Zandalar zones.

I kind of like this more centered main bars thing (default UI) even though it's going to take me a little while to get used to a new mouse position.

"Zandalar forever!"  Yeah, we know who's been watching which movie.

Ooo, trolls from other troll empires.

Anyway, that concludes day one of poking around in Zandalar... now I have to do actual weekend stuff, like laundry.