Dear Mythic,

Please remove the 5ft deadzone for shooting my arrows. Between that and the underpowered Squigs, it's like painting a big target on my Squig Herder's back "Easy Kill for Melee".

I'm trying not to overreact here or just do a "buff now plz", this is based on serious observations about the class I'd prefer to keep playing and that I've seen others give up on.

Where did all the Squig Herders go?

Squig Herders seemed great in tier 1 and 2, the Scenarios matched our abilities well and some of the other classes hadn't come into their own. But since hitting tier 3, I rarely see any other Squig Herders in Scenarios at all. And I can understand why. Without someone specifically watching my back, it's a frustrating experience.

We're super vulnerable to a basic tactic: anything melee.

As Gobbos, we're hella noticeable. I'm sure many Order players mistake us for Shaman. I get regularly swarmed. No doubt White Lions, Witch Hunters and Swordmasters are chuckling with glee every time they see a Goblin. Either they're hitting a valuable target or it's a squishy Squigy that barely slaps them once they close in.

I didn't roll a ranged class to melee

For melee attacks, I have a dot, then it's mash that small basic attack repeatedly, quickly draining my AP for very little effect. 30 AP for a 70 dmg attack at Rank 22. Add it up with the dot, that's a grand total of 680 dmg using a full bar of AP against opponents with 3500+ health.

I'd use "Git 'Em" more, but it's situational. It requires my pet to be on a target, within range and not busy during another attack. All of my pet-related abilities have this huge lag delay on them, so it's rare for me to get "Git 'Em" off on another player. When it does work, well then there's the cooldown.

The range on pet abilities and the lag on using them are hugely crippling factors. Having my pet on passive to have it close by in case I need its laggy defensive abilities isn't exactly the fun way to play a pet class. My Squig needs to bounce around a bit for me to feel joy, my fun factor is rather intertwined that way.

I can jump into Squig Armor, but that's not something to do on the fly with its 55 AP cost and once again is Squig dependant to be effective, yet astonishingly they take away our abilities to control our pets while in the armor. Squig Armor isn't nearly as cool as in the opening video, which is evident in the fact that I've never seen any other Squig Herder use it in Scenarios either.

Speaking of pets

A White Lion's pet will kill me at T3.

Oh it won't do it quickly, but it will stick to me like glue with no means whatsoever to get it out of my 5ft deadzone and my melee attacks completely ineffectual to kill it. What a slow, painful and embarassing death, to be made completely irrelevant by another's pet. I watch every other class brush these lions aside like they don't matter.

It's sad that I need to be rescued from a pet attack. And who exactly assists a Squig Herder anyway?

And if I do try to fight back at the damn thing? White Lions get to heal their pets. Oh what I wouldn't do for the ability to heal my Squigs. See, our pets are supposed to be throwaways right? We're supposed to explode them, call new ones. Except that stuff isn't working right, it's rare that my Squig will explode when asked to, probably because he's bounded out of range. Worse, half the time the explosion happens at my location and my Squig just dies where he is.

For disposable pets, why does it take 3 seconds uninterrupted to call a Squig? Why does the same Squig get a 30 second cooldown even if he's just mysteriously vanished, or I've mounted?

Which is another point that sticks in my craw: Why does my pet die when I mount? Ugh, everyone else can mount up, then dismount and jump into the fray right away, but I've got to get murdered while I'm calling my damned pet.

And finally, one last sore point: How am I herding when I can only have one pet at a time?

Mythic, please do something

Getting rid of the 5ft deadzone would completely balance our class versus melee. They'd still have the ability to interupt us, just like with any caster.

Don't buff up our melee, just let us use our ranged regardless of situation. I'd even take a slight power loss within that 5ft zone as a compromise.

There, that's my PvP balancing bitching for the day. =)

I hit Rank 20 with Skereye this past weekend. Here's a quick video showing a small taste of Squig Herder soloing combat, plus a pleasant ride down the beach on my new mount.

I'm fairly happy with the Squig Herder class. The charm of the Gobbo (Goblin) makes up for the numerous pet-related bugs and design limitations (how is having only one squig at a time "herding"?). There's also the sheer joy of spraying arrows. =)

I hit the jackpot with Skereye during the Greenskin Chapter 8 Public Quest today. I rolled highest for a golden bag and receiving my first WAR epic, a pair of boots: "Squigkickas of the Driven".

I kid you not, I ran the same PQ again to maximize my Influence and once again I won the roll on a golden bag. The epic was the same pair of boots of course, so I chose the next item in the bag, some blue shoulders: "Vilein Shouldateef".

Add to these the other blue items I obtained last night and today and suddenly my Squig Herder is covered in pretty damn good gear.

Some days, you just get lucky.

Now that the Standard Edition Headstart WAR servers are up, I'm ready to introduce you to the character which will likely be my main for WAR. Meet Skereye:

So far Skereye is plainly dressed in the starting gear, since he's only Rank 2 (level 2, I'm still twitching at Mythic's jargon). I'll keep posting as I progress, but if you really want to track me, you can use Mythic's armory-style feature: Skereye character info.

As a side note, I've noticed that Mythic's web features sort characters numerically. I know it's not an accurate representation of WAR's population, but it does seem to indicate per server character creations. For instance it seems my choice of server (Monolith) already has a fair sized population within its first hour, as my character indicates being #1174.