July 2015 – Page 12

The Gearing Game

July 8, 2015July 8, 2015 by Belghast

False Starts

Yesterday I made an attempt to go to work, but ultimately was told to head home by my boss. Over the last few days I have been pretty much living on the couch with my leg slightly elevated and alternating icepacks on it. The problem being that I don’t exist like this in the real world, where sitting at a desk generally requires that your feet be on the ground. While I love the arrangement of my cube at work, it really does not allow for me to elevate my leg at all. Not surprisingly within an hour of being at work my knee was swelling something fierce. So I headed home and started the process of icepacks over again until it started to behave somewhat normally. The positive is however that the area that is actually swelling is rather small and contained as compared to the day the fall happened, so I guess I am recovering quickly.

The biggest problem, the one that effects this blog is the fact that my wrist has hurt an awful lot. After struggling through yesterday mornings post, I was pretty much typing one handed for most of the day. I wore a brace most of yesterday and as of this morning it is feeling much better. It is still extremely tender when I move my wrist too quickly or to any extreme of motion… but overall it is more functional. Hopefully this means I can return to normal typing instead of this frustrating one handed mess that I dealt with yesterday. Since it is also my “mouse hand” that is effected I have been surprised that really using a mouse doesn’t hurt much at all. I guess in general I am used to keeping my mouse sensitivity so high that I barely have to move my hand at all to send the cursor flying across the screen. Hopefully today will be a much better day and I will continue to mend quickly.

The Gearing Game

Like most players in Final Fantasy XIV, my life revolves around the acquisition of Tomestones of Law. To get a full set of “law” gear it takes roughly 3500 and they have given us many options on how to get them. Firstly there are three dungeons that reward 80 tomestones each, and an additional 40 if you can manage to catch someone who still has their first time bonus or “virgin bonus” as we have taken to calling it. In addition to that you get 100 tomestones for both a low level roulette and a high level roulette each day, and an additional 60 for a trial roulette. The one that surprises me however is that Expert Roulette is only worth 80, but I guess in theory it has a face value of 160 to 200 since you are getting stones from the dungeon proper as well. In order to get into Alexander, the raid that just opened players need to reach a combined ilevel of 170 which also happens to be the level of the tomestone gear. So in theory you need a full set in order to step through its doors.

Where you can cheat a bit is through those ubiquitous “Clan Hunts” that I have been using as filler leveling. It turns out all of the items needed to upgrade your gear from 170 to 180 come from Centurio Seals. Hopefully you have been doing these religiously because in order to get a full set of gear upgraded to the next step it is going to take a grand total of 2795 seals. Now granted you can hop on the hunt train like you could in the previous expansion and in theory grind this out in a weekend. Personally I happen to find the daily hunt mechanic rather relaxing, as I can log in… fly around the gorgeous zones and pick off the mobs one at a time. Right now I have four pieces of gear… chest, helm, ring, and weapon. Currently I have upgraded the weapon and ring to 180, and am saving enough hunt marks to upgrade the chest piece next. There will come a time when I stop messing with anything other than three star and elite hunt marks, but for the time being they also serve to help level my dragoon for the lower level ones.

Dragoon Dungeoning

Right now if there is a moment when I am not engaged doing something else, or tanking something that can gain me law stones… I am pretty much in the dungeon queue on my Dragoon. Right now the dps queue seems relatively manageable sitting around the 10 minute mark for “leveling” dungeons. As a result it is my hope to ride this queue for as many classes as I can manage. After running a couple of max level dungeons, I settled into a couple of quick runs on the dragoon who is now up to “Sohm Al” level. I have to say I find this pretty relaxing as well, because I can just sit back and poke things with a stick. I opted to go ahead and record my dungeon run to add it to the stack of dungeon videos I have on my youtube channel. I had not actually recorded any when I was not currently tanking, so it gives a slightly different perspective of the fights. I have to say I am really digging the “tribal” look that comes from Sohm Al. That helmet is freaking amazing, and is likely going to go in my glamour bin for future usage. At this point I am roughly halfway through 53 so I figure it will take two more dungeon runs to hit 54, and then five to six past that before I can do the next dungeon at 55. Embedding the video and cutting this post short today without a second paragraph.

Source: Tales of the Aggronaut
The Gearing Game

Raiding!

July 8, 2015July 7, 2015 by Grace

After playing WildStar for a full year, I finally got myself attuned to the first raid, Genetic Archives. And by got myself attuned, I mean my loving guildies dragged me through the final few dungeons I needed to finish it. Before my hiatus, I had been moving ahead pretty quickly and trying to get into raiding as soon as I could. After I returned, though, I was much happier just doing dailies and contracts, and making some money. I felt rusty and slow, and didn’t want to need to be carried through things. As it turns out, those few weeks of going solo did help me ease back into the game enough to at least carry my own weight through the vet dungeons I needed. I had also jumped into a couple world boss groups, which meant as soon as I got to that point in the attunement chain I could immediately turn the quest back in. In short order I found myself around on a raid night with no excuses to keep me from being pulled into GA.

My first reaction was “this is very purple,” then “holy cow 20 people in a raid,” and “that’s a lot of telegraphs.” My raiding history has spanned several MMOs and raid sizes, but I always seem to prefer the smaller 8-10 person raids. As a healer it feels so much nicer to get to know the group and how they work together, and it feels like each player’s contribution matters more. For my first WildStar raid, however, I was extremely happy to be just one little DPS in a crowd. That way every time I got murdered it didn’t slow the group down too much! Logistically, recruiting and maintaining a 20+ person roster is much more of a nightmare for raid leading. I also think for a somewhat niche game like WildStar that asking guilds to maintain huge rosters to be able to raid is just not a great idea, which I guess is why they got rid of the 40-person size raids.

“But Gracie, we don’t care what you think about raid sizes, what were the encounters like?” Well, I was surprised at how…unsurprising they were. After getting to know the style of this game, and seeing the crazy vet dungeon encounters, I imagined all kinds of nightmarish possibilities for what the bosses would be like. Instead, the vet dungeons do a pretty great job of preparing you, and mechanics are similar to what you’d expect from any modern raid. There were definitely lots of telegraphs to dodge but everything seemed reasonable. I am certain it was helped by being in there with an established raid group that had cleared those bosses already.

I guess my assessment is: WildStar raiding is fun! If you are intimidated by the echos of “HARDCORE” and terrified of some sort of telegraph hell, don’t be! If you can make it through all the content for the attunement then you can definitely deal with what the first floor of GA will throw at you. What are you waiting for? Get to it cupcakes!

Source: Moonshine Mansion
Raiding!

Long Overdue

July 8, 2015July 7, 2015 by Tamrielo

Turn 9 down last night. Finally.

We’ve been dedicatedly plugging away at that fight for a long time. Months, since before I moved to Seattle. Having beaten it, finally, I feel like it’s something I can unpack in my mind. If you’re in my raid, or otherwise looking for an exciting victory post, it’s probably best to stop here. I’m about to not be terribly positive for a while.

It is almost, ALMOST, an exquisitely designed fight. It’s worth noting that it’s a single phase that has given us such trouble for so long– we started regularly getting to the final phase of the fight– which lasts from 46% until the boss is dead– about six months ago, and it was a wall. Prior to that, we could make appreciable if slow progress, and then we reached that final phase and it all fell apart. It’s a high technically demanding section of the fight, and messages appallingly poorly as well. There are raid-wiping mechanics that require you to see a tiny debuff icon within a second or two, targeting a random character, as well as critical mechanics whose only indication is a thin beam of light connecting to a single random character amid a slew of spell effects… at a point at which everyone in the group needs to be stacked up together. In addition to these “die randomly” mechanics, there’s also an abusive amount of damage going into the tank, particle effects amid the mess that require you to react instantly and run to one of two points on the edge of the circular arena (that lacks landmarks to orient yourself), randomly targeted area effects that can kill easily, and the need for the entire group to move together and separate at important moments, and know exactly when these moments are as they change second-to-second.

This is one mechanic of about 15, in that one final phase.

That’s one phase. It takes ten minutes, by itself, to describe, and it comes after four or so other phases, each with their own unique mechanics. There is zero room for error– if you’re standing slightly wrong or don’t react fast enough, either you die, the group dies, or both. We were doing this while heavily overgeared and with a not-insignificant buff– 20% to everything to help us along, and that’s what we’ve been working with for six months. It’s beatable, but requires the kind of technical precision that demands, essentially, rote memorization: just do the fight over and over, frequently enough to sear it into your memory. We raid one night a week, not enough to keep that flame kindled.

As a point of comparison, we cleared every other piece of content we had access to. Extreme primals, other portions of that dungeon, all got smashed before us in (usually) record time. Turn 9 was a wall, thanks to a particular design choice that required a very particular sort of group.

We went back into Turn 9 tonight with a single, slight difference: we were almost all level 60, not level 50, with the full array of expansion abilities at our disposal against a boss tuned for people ten levels lower. It still killed us twice, more a testament to the gentle gear curve of FFXIV than anything else, but still notable. We did down it on the third try, turning our superior power to this boss that’s haunted us for more than half a year. Dropping the boss lacked the usual elation we have on a new boss kill– this one lasted too long and was too personal.

As a game designer and raid leader, it’s something I paid really close attention to. No one objected to us turning on “overpowered mode”; there was no voice of dissension saying “hey, maybe let’s try this the proper way instead of just powering through it”, but when the boss died, there was no cheer of victory. We all, I suspect, just wanted to be done with it, to see something new instead of the same boss and the same arena that we’ve been staring at for months on end. It made for a victory that rung hollow, but it largely didn’t matter– the vibe was that people just wanted OUT. I’m in the same boat; I have been tired of that same boss for months, and the excitement of potentially winning had long given way for me to a desperate hope that we’d win THIS TIME, just so I wouldn’t have to dance this same dance yet again.

I worry that robbing ourselves of a proper victory will hurt the raid’s morale, but I’ve been worried about this boss destroying our raid for months now. It’s the dark side of the high points of raiding. For every glorious victory and sweet celebration, there’s a chance that the next boss will be the one that you stare at for months, unable to beat and unable to progress past, leaving you no choice but to either give up on moving forward or slam your face against until something changes.

Right now, though, I don’t secretly dread Monday Night Raids anymore, and I’m genuinely excited that we can do some new, interesting content. It’ll be hard, and probably kill us repeatedly, but it won’t be Turn 9.

Source: Digital Initiative
Long Overdue

Nael in the Coffin

July 8, 2015July 7, 2015 by Belghast

Strange Dreams

For the last few nights I have had the strangest but at the same time most vivid dreams. The problem is that they are for the most part utter nonsense. For example this morning I woke up from a dream involving writer Beau Hindman. He had reached out to me to ask if I had any gmail invites… and for those of you for whom that makes zero sense… Google mail was once upon a time invite only and invites were rationed and carefully guarded. I told him that I had a couple that I could hand out, and he asked me to send one to someone. Turns out the person in question was an old man that lived in the small town my wife grew up in. Apparently Beau really needed to get ahold of this person… and apparently using the phone was just too cumbersome? Trust me… I fully understand a lack of wanting to call someone… so I too would probably go through strange lengths to avoid it.

When the guy didn’t accept the invite, I had to drive up to the small town and talk to him in person. He was afraid that the internet would steal his soul, and by having an email account he would be supporting the terrorists or something. So I spent the next hour talking him into accepting the invite, all so Beau would be able to contact him. Sure it is madness, and honestly Beau and I are not even in contact that often, but somewhere in my brain it made all of this make sense. That is the crazy thing about dreaming… is at the time none of this seems as irrational as it does when you are trying to break it apart later. I guess Beau got pulled in because I know that he is originally from Oklahoma, and my wife often gets a staring role in my dreams… so it is strange the way the mind weaves this seemingly plausible tapestry out of bits and pieces of leftover memories.

Nael in the Coffin

Monday nights is traditionally our Final Fantasy XIV raid group night, and last night was no exception. For months… literally… we have been working on learning the dance on Turn Nine of the Coil of Bahamut. For a long time now we have been super close to pushing over the edge, and held up on the madness that is the dive bomb phase. Last night we wanted to defeat Nael by any means necessary so we could move on with our lives. Not sure if it was true for all of our group, but I have developed a love and hate relationship with this fight, and was more than ready to put it behind me. One of the features added with Heavensward is the ability to queue for something as an undersized group. What this does in theory is zone you into a place without scaling your level down to the appropriate place. What this means in practice is that you can now wreck certain zones for the purpose of collecting those dungeon drops you missed in the past. Since several of us were sitting at level 60, we decided to give this option a shot on turn nine and see what would happen.

The truth is the very first attempt out of the gate we straight wiped to mechanics and over confidence. After that it still took us a few tries to get the dance close enough to being correct to be able to finish off the encounter. The funny thing is… that even with 20% echo and 10 more levels… the fight can still straight up eviscerate you. I think we managed to down it on our fourth attempt last night, and can now move on with our lives into Final Coil. On one level it bums me out that we didn’t “do it for real” by facing this encounter at level 50. On the other hand however I am happy to be done with being in there. There comes a time when you just get sick of seeing the same encounter over and over, and I remember our group reached that same place back in WoW’s Blackwing Lair with the Firemaw encounter. It is going to be interesting to see what the next few weeks bring us as far as content goes. Today is the official launch of Alexander, but as it stands right now… none of us are even vaguely closed to “geared enough” to tackle it.

Ice Packs and Grinding

Yesterday I stayed home from work because I was struggling to walk around. So my key focus in life became making sure I was ice packing every hour or so for maximum effect. This meant that most of the day I spent it hanging out on the couch with my leg propped up a bit. It also means I spent a lot of time piddling around in Final Fantasy XIV. Throughout the day I worked on getting all of my Clan Hunts for maximum upgrade token goodness, and did all three of my bonus law roulettes, which left a lot of time to work on my Dragoon. Now previously I had managed to get it to level 51, which is key because that unlocks access to the dungeon Dusk Vigil. So yesterday I spent the majority of my in game time queueing for Dusk Vigil over and over. Before raid time last night I was but a sliver away from 53, which should grant me access to the second dungeon… Sohm Al. The only problem with Dusk Vigil is that technically nothing in it other than the jewelry are strictly upgrades from what I had been wearing.

Sohm Al on the other hand… everything in there should be full of upgradey goodness other than maybe the weapon. The other good thing about running all these dungeons is that I am able to soak up gear for my alt jobs for when I finally get around to leveling them. I like that pretty much every dungeon in Heavensward offers an item set, which is unlike the old world where only every so often did a dungeon actually drop something cool looking. I really want to finish the Dragoon set from Dusk Vigil because it looks kinda amazing. It is a blue set of armor that looks just like the one that Lucia is wearing in the cut scenes. In the news of me… well I am largely functioning better thanks to the constant ice packs. At this point the swelling is down significantly and I am hoping I can function today without a lot of pain. I am sure come this evening I will need to ice pack once more but for the time being… life seems to be grand, or at least getting there.

Source: Tales of the Aggronaut
Nael in the Coffin