On Success

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Blaugust Post #4

As you may have heard by now, our previous raid night was spent working on content that we were 10 levels above. For a bit now, our raid group has been working on clearing the last of the raid content from the 2.x series, the Final Coil of Bahamut. We finally beat the final boss on Monday, and I have to say it feels pretty good.

Months Behind

At no point in this game have we been raiding on the bleeding edge. We beat Turn 5 (The hardest boss in the game at release) shortly after the Final Coil of Bahamut (Turns 10-13) came out. We were stuck on Turn 9 for months (and the same phase of it, at that), despite making decent progress with every other raid we attempted. We finally beat it after Heavensward, and I was more happy that it was over than happy I’d beaten it. Things were a bit better moving into Final Coil, because the boss fights there are really cool. (I think T11 is mechanically one of my favorite fight concepts in the game.) As a result of being so drastically behind, we out-geared and/or out-leveled all of the content we’ve been doing.

On Success

And Loving It

It turns out that these raids are still pretty fun this way, and nothing was a pushover (except T10, which we got below 50% on the first pull without explaining things). Mechanics are still capable of wiping you if you mess up, and while the DPS numbers are now kind of easy, standing in things meant to kill you will usually still kill you. In the final dungeons (T5, T9, T13) there are still things that can kill you with no save, like Twisters, Divebombs, or messing up fire/ice. What really gets me are some of the numbers on things not meant to kill you. Akh Morn in Turn 13 is an attack meant to be shared between the tanks that does massive, increasingly large amounts of damage as the final phase goes on. I have no idea how anyone survived this at 50 (and especially in the first groups to clear, who didn’t have full loot from the rest of Final Coil). 10k+ damage through cooldowns is kind of intense. It was certainly a rush to actually beat it.

On Success

What the Future Holds

Currently we’re looking at participating in more current content next week, probably either continuing with Alexander or taking on The Limitless Blue (Extreme). The raiding experience in this game has been quite enjoyable, so I hope this continues.

On Success

by

Blaugust Post #4

As you may have heard by now, our previous raid night was spent working on content that we were 10 levels above. For a bit now, our raid group has been working on clearing the last of the raid content from the 2.x series, the Final Coil of Bahamut. We finally beat the final boss on Monday, and I have to say it feels pretty good.

Out of a Bind I

Months Behind

At no point in this game have we been raiding on the bleeding edge. We beat Turn 5 (The hardest boss in the game at release) shortly after the Final Coil of Bahamut (Turns 10-13) came out. We were stuck on Turn 9 for months (and the same phase of it, at that), despite making decent progress with every other raid we attempted. We finally beat it after Heavensward, and I was more happy that it was over than happy I’d beaten it. Things were a bit better moving into Final Coil, because the boss fights there are really cool. (I think T11 is mechanically one of my favorite fight concepts in the game.) As a result of being so drastically behind, we out-geared and/or out-leveled all of the content we’ve been doing.

Angry Red Ball

And Loving It

It turns out that these raids are still pretty fun this way, and nothing was a pushover (except T10, which we got below 50% on the first pull without explaining things). Mechanics are still capable of wiping you if you mess up, and while the DPS numbers are now kind of easy, standing in things meant to kill you will usually still kill you. In the final dungeons (T5, T9, T13) there are still things that can kill you with no save, like Twisters, Divebombs, or messing up fire/ice. What really gets me are some of the numbers on things not meant to kill you. Akh Morn in Turn 13 is an attack meant to be shared between the tanks that does massive, increasingly large amounts of damage as the final phase goes on. I have no idea how anyone survived this at 50 (and especially in the first groups to clear, who didn’t have full loot from the rest of Final Coil). 10k+ damage through cooldowns is kind of intense. It was certainly a rush to actually beat it.

Alexander

What the Future Holds

Currently we’re looking at participating in more current content next week, probably either continuing with Alexander or taking on The Limitless Blue (Extreme). The raiding experience in this game has been quite enjoyable, so I hope this continues.



Source: Ashs Adventures
On Success

#Blaugust Day 5: Under the Weather

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Today's post may be a bit scattered; I'm not feeling too hot which is making concentrating on writing a bit difficult. I went in for a checkup Monday since it's been a good 15 years or so since I saw a doctor and got a tetanus booster shot while I was there. I had forgotten how much those can hurt. I've been pretty achy since then; hopefully it won't last too much longer.

No, not that Lockjaw
Being under the weather meant I didn't really feel like anything group-based or terribly complicated yesterday, so after a bit of a nap after work I jumped into Marvel Heroes for a while. I've reached level 45 with Magneto and have begun Chapter 8 of 9, which ends with the assault on Doom's Castle. Chapter 7 is the first I've finished without reaching the top of it's recommended level range, so I may have to head to Midtown to pick up a few levels before facing Doom. Without the synergy bonus I've got effectively doubling my experience gain I imagine I would have needed to spend a fair bit of time there or in Industry City even to reach this point.

Hopefully by tonight I'll be feeling more sociable. We shall see.

#Blaugust Day 6: Magic Duels: Tromple Not Included

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I’ve been somewhat interested in the new free-to-play online Magic: The Gathering game, Magic Duels, since I heard that a) it had come out and b) it wasn’t blatantly horrible or absurdly monetized. Wizards of the Coast hasn’t had the best track record with online versions of Magic, or really with anything online ever. Still waiting on those digital tools for D&D 5th Edition guys!

I decided to check it out a couple weeks ago when I first heard it was out, but discovered it wasn’t out on PC, just iOS. I am not one of the chosen of the Cult of Jobs, so I moved on and kept an ear out for the PC release. Last week I learned that it had been released on Steam. I ended up downloading it while we were recording the most recent Aggrochat, and opened it up Sunday. Sadly, horrible connection issues meant it kept crashing in the middle of games or losing connection entirely. Since playing offline would mean not earning any currency for my games, I gave it a miss and played Marvel Heroes instead.

Yesterday, I decided to try again. Apparently the connection issues have been even worse the past few days with servers being entirely down for large swaths of time. By the evening however, things were working smoothly and I was able to play through the first bit of story and get access to my initial cards for duels.

Once the connection issues were out of the way, the game worked very well. Menu items are highlighted to direct you to where you should go next to learn your way around, and the first story campaign introduces the basic concepts, spell types, and abilities as you go along. I had seen someone claim (I don’t recall where now) that the concept of the stack wasn’t included in this game, and that there were no instants. I’m happy to report that that is not the case; I have to assume that they just didn’t play far enough in for instants to be introduced. Most of the decks I tried out in AI duels were green / something and the pleasure of turning a 2/1 weenie into a 7/6 trampler is alive and well.

Admittedly, I was gilding the lily a bit when I did it

Currency seems fairly reasonable to earn; it takes 150 coins to buy a 6 card booster, and you get 5, 10, or 15 from an AI duel depending on difficulty level or 20 from a player duel. There are also quests given each day; each of yesterday’s involved winning 2 or 4 duels with particular deck colors and was worth 40 coins. Sadly you don’t earn any coins from playing friends, but win-trading is a thing, so I’m not surprised.

In the end, I was impressed. Magic Duels is a solid online version of Magic (assuming the servers don’t fall over again) that you can play for free. If you decide to check it out, feel free to friend me on Steam so we can duel!