Kirise
OG
I'm reading a lot of mixed history here. Let's take a walk back down that path, and get things in their proper order.
When the No-XP patch landed, 29s got a steadily decreasing amount of XP-off games, as the battlegrounds were rife with hunters. Their damage wasn't extreme, but Aimed Shot applied a 50% healing debuff that 29 healers simply didn't have the throughput to overcome. In other words, players could do more for their teams by rolling up a hunter than rolling up a healer. That's why initial XP-off games saw so many hunters. Games died near the end of 2009.
In early 2010, a couple of players made drastic efforts to revive 29s on Reckoning (I got into the bracket as a result of this). Part of that effort included a ban on Aimed Shot. The bracket quickly grew to playing three nights a week, and the 29 community upheld the ban for months.
A few weeks before 4.0.1 dropped, 29 bracket activity tapered off, and finally stopped.
4.0.1 appeared, granting a ridiculously high damage buff all the way around. Even though Aimed Shot lost half of its power, the sheer damage of hunters, rogues, and ret paladins soon killed the reviving interest in the bracket, along with horrible queue bugs.
4.0.3 dropped, fixing the ridiculous damage problem. Battlegroups began to merge. Horrible queue bugs persisted. A few 29s paying attention to posts here in TwinkInfo and/or doing homework on changes coming in the Shattering collected gear that had grandfathering potential.
4.0.3a arrived three weeks after 4.0.3, grandfathering several items in the 29 bracket, including the quest that offered the skullbreaker and nailsplitter.
The queue bugs got fixed in a subsequent patch, and while 29s had a decent run for a couple of months, endless complaining and criticism killed the bracket a couple of times over.
Donteventrii does have the nailsplitter, but hasn't played his hunter (to my knowledge) since soon after the weapon got grandfathered, after seeing the ridiculous amount of damage it could do. The gun would actually have been BiS for 39s if any of them had gotten it -- that's how strong it is. I think a total of three 29 players, all currently Horde, actually got the nailsplitter, none of whom use it on the field.
There's a synopsis of 29s over the last couple of years (leaving out a ton of details, of course).
It's good to see 29s working their schedule back up. I'm hoping that in a couple of weeks, 29s will expand to a second night. If last week's close games are any indicator, the potential is there.
When the No-XP patch landed, 29s got a steadily decreasing amount of XP-off games, as the battlegrounds were rife with hunters. Their damage wasn't extreme, but Aimed Shot applied a 50% healing debuff that 29 healers simply didn't have the throughput to overcome. In other words, players could do more for their teams by rolling up a hunter than rolling up a healer. That's why initial XP-off games saw so many hunters. Games died near the end of 2009.
In early 2010, a couple of players made drastic efforts to revive 29s on Reckoning (I got into the bracket as a result of this). Part of that effort included a ban on Aimed Shot. The bracket quickly grew to playing three nights a week, and the 29 community upheld the ban for months.
A few weeks before 4.0.1 dropped, 29 bracket activity tapered off, and finally stopped.
4.0.1 appeared, granting a ridiculously high damage buff all the way around. Even though Aimed Shot lost half of its power, the sheer damage of hunters, rogues, and ret paladins soon killed the reviving interest in the bracket, along with horrible queue bugs.
4.0.3 dropped, fixing the ridiculous damage problem. Battlegroups began to merge. Horrible queue bugs persisted. A few 29s paying attention to posts here in TwinkInfo and/or doing homework on changes coming in the Shattering collected gear that had grandfathering potential.
4.0.3a arrived three weeks after 4.0.3, grandfathering several items in the 29 bracket, including the quest that offered the skullbreaker and nailsplitter.
The queue bugs got fixed in a subsequent patch, and while 29s had a decent run for a couple of months, endless complaining and criticism killed the bracket a couple of times over.
Donteventrii does have the nailsplitter, but hasn't played his hunter (to my knowledge) since soon after the weapon got grandfathered, after seeing the ridiculous amount of damage it could do. The gun would actually have been BiS for 39s if any of them had gotten it -- that's how strong it is. I think a total of three 29 players, all currently Horde, actually got the nailsplitter, none of whom use it on the field.
There's a synopsis of 29s over the last couple of years (leaving out a ton of details, of course).
It's good to see 29s working their schedule back up. I'm hoping that in a couple of weeks, 29s will expand to a second night. If last week's close games are any indicator, the potential is there.
