AggroChat #218 – Tam’s Broken Character

Featuring:  Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen

aggrochat218

Tonight we have the full group and end up talking mostly about World of Warcraft and the Battle For Azeroth expansion so far.  If you listened last week…  Tam became interested enough in the expansion that he renewed his account which lead to a whole sequence of events happening.  One of which resulted in him finding out he had a hopelessly broken character.  We talk about that event and the absolutely primo customer service he received as a result of it.  We talk about the lack of players in War mode and how Blizzard apparently is planning on throwing more incentives towards playing in that fashion.  We talk about our experiences in dungeons so far and how some seem way harder than others.  We talk about the release of the Queen Azshara cinematic and what that maybe means for the future.  We talk about how we are seeing some of the best storytelling in WoW’s history through this expansion.  Tam presents an impassioned defense of playing “boring” humans in fantasy games, which leads to a discussion more about world building than anything else.  Finally Kodra talks a bit about his new career in Glitchless Speedrunning primarily through VVVVVV, which turns into a discussion about speedrunning and the glitchless variant in particular.

Topics Discussed:

  • World of Warcraft
    • How Tam Got His Groove Back
    • Battle for Azeroth Expansion
    • War Mode – Please Be Content
    • Dungeon Experiences
    • Queen Azshara Cinematic
  • Why Humans Are Great
  • The Letter F Six Times
    • VVVVVV
    • Glitchless Speedrunning

 

On Weapon Variety

Warframe has a very large number of weapons. There are currently over 100 primary weapons, almost as many secondaries, and more melee weapons than I care to count. While it’s true that many of these are variations of each other (there are 4 versions of the basic Braton assault rifle for example) there’s still a relatively large number of unique weapons. Here are a few primaries that I like:

Vectis

On Weapon Variety
The most standard weapon in this list, the Vectis is one of the first sniper rifles that you can get in the game. It only has one round so you have to like reloading, but does good damage with great critical stats and is capable of killing things from when you get it through some of the hardest content in the game. There is a somewhat difficult to get prime variant that does somewhat more damage and loads two rounds, but the normal one is still an amazing choice if what you want to do is kill enemies before they can even see you.

Supra

On Weapon Variety
The Supra is a hand-held plasma minigun, and is my most-used weapon overall. In sharp contrast to the Vectis, this one’s for pointing at a group of enemies that you want to go away. A significant amount of travel time and spread make this unsuitable for anything longer than mid-range, but for anything in the same room this can clean up amazingly. This also has a mod that can make it give you energy, cause an AOE explosion, and boost your max energy slightly.

Quanta

On Weapon Variety
There are a few cases of weapons that make it incredibly obvious that Digital Extremes worked on the Unreal Tournament series before making Dark Sector and Warframe. The Drakgoon bears a more than superficial similarity to the UT flak cannon (without the secondary fire, unfortunately). The Angstrum (which is a secondary weapon somehow) has a similar charge mechanic as the UT rocket launcher. Along these lines, the Quanta is a re-implementation of the shock rifle. Primary fire is a perfectly accurate continuous beam; secondary fire shoots floating cubes that explode when touched by enemies. If you shoot a cube before it blows up naturally, it does additional damage. This union of great AOE weapon and great single-target weapon is useful for just about anything.

Others

On Weapon Variety
This is just scratching the surface. There are shotguns that shoot exploding shells. There’s a giant cannon that you’re going to probably blow yourself up with more often than the enemy. There’s an energy bow that shoots arrows that explode into a giant cloud that freezes and then blows up your enemies. There are several highly-effective normal bows. I’m not sure where this statement was going.

The giant variety of weapons on offer here is one of my favorite parts about the game. The variety in Warframes and their abilities is a close second; the combination ensures that many different playstyles are possible. If you tried Warframe forever ago, now might be a reasonable time to give it another shot.

P.S. You have one week to finish the FFV Four Job Fiesta. Get to it!

Early Doldrums

Early Doldrums

I didn’t blog this morning in part I think because I didn’t want to write the post that was sitting inside my brain.  First off I wanted to share this amazing image of my Elder Scrolls Online Imperial Dragon Knight that I commissioned Ammo to create for me.  Secondly I ended up creating a big damned thread over on Mastodon and I just realized… it was the blog post I should have made this morning.  So I ultimately lied to you and am going to largely post that thread over here since it is actually a post.

I am in a really weird place with WoW at the moment.  The last several nights I have logged in mostly to do the Emissary quest and then largely logged back out.  I rapidly reached a point where the World Quest gear isn’t really an upgrade unless its one of my dwindling number of 300ish items

The other main problem is…  the Protection Warrior just doesn’t feel as good as it has in past expansions, especially for open world content.  Sure after swapping around my build I can survive essentially indefinitely, but the time to kill just feels awful.  Not to mention the flow of combat just feels off for some reason that I can’t quite quantify.

I am starting to feel like maybe I chose the wrong main this time around…  but I am also not finding the oomph to level something else in its place because that is even more time being out of sync with my friends playing.  The stingy nature of weapons while leveling, means that I don’t really have a viable off spec weapon set up to go Fury (my choice of dps spec as warrior), and even Arms would be super anemic since my single two-hander is pretty crummy.

I think if I force myself into chain running some dungeons I might be able to kick start that joy again… but right now I am in a doldrum the earliest I have ever been in any previous expansion.  The last few nights have been a little odd and lead to me just not playing at all with friends so I think tonight I am going to see what a round of dungeoning feels like to see if it kicks me back into enjoyment phase.  Otherwise I have to tackle the thought of leveling something else…  or just moving on for now knowing that eventually I will come back.

Sometimes you just gotta be willing to let the post out that is inside of you even thought you maybe don’t want to be negative.  It will get out one way or the other…  either in a long thread on social media or in a series of private messages to friends.

Raiding and true friendship

I’ve gotten myself into the mode of grinding gear and getting all the upgrades I can, now that I’m at the level cap. I clear the emissary quest, and any WQs that give gear every day. Then I stopped to ask myself why I was doing this. What exactly do I want to get out of this WoW expansion? Do I want to raid? Do M+? Just be casual and get all the battle pet achievements and fashion? I haven’t really figured it out.

I think I would really like to do LFR at a minimum, maybe raid a little if I can get into the right group. I know I probably won’t stick with it for the long haul though. It’s easy to get caught up in the new expansion hype and want to try everything, but it has been very hard for me to find a schedule for end game stuff that fits with my real life needs.

Raiding and true friendship

Luckily I have a great friend who tried to temper my enthusiasm and cushion my inevitable disappointment. He kindly reminded me what raiding actually feels like sometimes, to help me get some perspective. The funny part is that we became friends because we were raiding together.

It is sad, though, how quickly my hardcore raider persona sneaks back out when I start doing group stuff in MMOs. It makes finding a raid group even harder. I’m still probably going to try. The fun times! with friends! killing internet dragons! is usually worth it, at least for a while.