Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen
Hey Folks! Hopefully, everyone is staying warm this week with the big cold snap hitting the center of the country and more specifically impacting Bel and Thalen. This week we start off talking about the Rogue Trader CRPG and how it is doing a pretty solid job of moving the bar forward. From there we talk a bit about the upcoming Granblue Fantasy Action RPG and how we have been waiting for it since 2017. In shocking news, we talk about the City of Heroes Homecoming server and how it is officially licensed and we believe it is the first fan-run emulator server project to achieve that status.
Last Epoch is nearing its official 1.0 launch and with it, a bunch more information about the Trade system came out this week so we dive into it for a bit and contrast it with our experiences from Path of Exile. Peglin has released a bunch of updates and we talk a bit more about that phenomenal puzzle combat game. Thalen shares some information about how Dungeons and Dragons Online is apparently just giving away a ton of content and selling a bunch of mission packs for cheap on top of it. Tam finishes out the show talking about how it has taken him the better part of a year but he finally understands Star Trek Online.
I’ve talked about my Righteous Fire Chieftain for a few days now and the more I play it… the more I think I maybe even like this build better than the Pre-Nerf Juggernaut that I have played for several leagues before. One of the things I dig the most about this build is how easy it is to get off the ground, and how easy it is to gear. Most of the items that I am wearing are effective trash drops, and there is SO MUCH room for improvement. My sceptre I threw a few essences at it until I got something halfway decent, my helm, boots, and gloves were things I legitimately picked up off the ground and just started using. The only piece that I feel is somewhat critical is the Lighting Coil, but I ran without that for a very long time and primarily it simply adds some survival layers bringing it a bit closer to the tankiness of the Juggernaut. Most builds I am seeing tend to favor the Cloak of Flames… but I wanted some more armor and have also seen four Lighting Coils drop this league making that choice a no-brainer.
The main reason why I am talking about it today, is that I thought I would record some of my dumb little videos showing off gameplay. In this, I am running a non-juiced T16, but the build can handle juicing via the forest… it just significantly slows things down a bit. Right now my happy spot is to run t11/t12 maps with as much juice as I can get. Despite not putting any investment into the run and doing stream of consciousness… I still get a wild map explosion during this video. The play style is just so comfortable and I’ve noticed some weird things about Ignite Proliferation and Hinekora’s Fury down in Delve… that it seems like it can hit things and kill things that are in the Darkness and would otherwise be invulnerable. I need to play around a bit more with this to make sure what I think I am seeing is actually happening but so far this is one hell of a delver and mapper but probably a pretty poor bosser… though to be truthful I have yet to run any bosses or guardians on it.
I am so far from an expert at Path of Building… and in fact all I really know how to do is import my build from the GGG servers and then set some of the correct checkboxes. However, if you want to see the current state of my build:
I have no clue how valid the damage numbers are… because it does not feel “ZDPS” but also can’t oneshot tanky things without a Hinekora’s proc. Bossing on this would be a challenge because not getting the Hinekora’s proc means you are left just grinding it down with Righteous Fire and Fire Traps. I’ve not really talked about what I am running for Primalist charms but the above image is a cut-and-paste job showing everything I am running for both Ascendancies. I would probably swap these out for explosive charms, but I have yet to see any. In a perfect world, I would love to find some with maybe Life Regen and Explosion. I’ve still yet to find the final big boss version of the King in the Mists so I am lacking one entire charm.
All in all, I kinda love this build. Pending nothing significantly changes between now and 3.24 I can see league starting it. I feel bad because I essentially have two other characters… Lightning Arrow Champion and Boneshatter Juggernaut that I built out completely but have also just been sitting there and rotting because I am enjoying the RF Chieftain so much. The only thing odd that you will see in my POB is Corrupting Cry. I just threw that gem in there because I had the spare slot and it converted my Infernal Cry to cost life instead of mana. I am doing nothing with it past that and legitimately just started using it last night given that my Stone Golem could no longer stay alive long enough to be useful. Normally speaking in past leagues this would have been the time when I put a Portal gem in there, but since I have not seen one drop… I can’t do that. If I can find a Vaal Breach I would probably socket that in because it would give me a way to summon a bunch of small adds… and therefore proc Hinekora Explosions on bosses.
Anyways I will probably stop talking about Righteous Fire Chieftain for awhile. I love it, but I don’t want to just pound the build into the ground on the blog now that I have finally recorded a gameplay video.
The post 3.23 SSF Righteous Fire Chieftain appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Shocking to no one… I’ve found myself back maining a Righteous Fire character. This time, I converted my Volcanic Fissure of Snaking Chieftain over to Righteous Fire, and in the grand scheme of things, it is going pretty well. I do not feel anywhere near as strong as my Juggernaut did, but for playing a very tanky Righteous Fire character, this might be a viable alternative to Inquisitor. I am hoping that maybe we will get a new alternate quality gem that restores RF to its former glory, but if not… I think I can be happy enough with Chieftain going forward. My comfy space seems to be alternating between T11 Cemetary and T12 Tropical Island and then trying to stack on as much juice as I can get from the mists.
My focus over the last week or so had been trying to get levels so that I could add a Medium Cluster Jewel with Fan the Flames. This essentially gives you Elemental Proliferation at the cost of SEVERAL passive points. I accomplished this at 95, but I have to be honest… it wasn’t really that big of a bonus. I am already running Berek’s Respite which gives me something akin to Elemental Proliferation any time I kill something that has been ignited. Since Ignites can’t stack… it essentially just didn’t add any significant bonus to the build. I’ve since specced out of this medium cluster and distributed the points around the board into more life which in turn should translate to both more survival and more damage for Righteous Fire.
We’ve also decided to let our Private League lapse into Trade League. There are essentially 8 days left in the league and at that point all of our characters will transition over into Affliction Trade. This is going to open so many doors for making minor tweaks to my characters, the one I am looking forward to the most is Boneshatter. I still feel like I have not given Boneshatter a proper shake, so when the private league collapses I think my first goal will be getting that character some better gear. I would really like to reach 100% spell suppression and have a MUCH higher damage Two-Handed Axe. It will be a challenge dropping into the league so late and being so relatively “poor” as compared to where I usually am at this point in a league. I have enough of a stash of Divines though that I should be able to make some movement on my characters.
Lastly this morning I recorded another one of my dumb videos, this time attempting to explain what I have been talking about regarding the SkyScale versus World of Warcraft Dragon Riding. Mostly after being used to instant mounts having to wait three seconds feels like an eternity. I show off some gameplay of GW2 specifically flying around on the SkyScale and then show some Dragon Riding and talk about its positives and differences. Maybe with some footage, it might finally start to make a bit of sense.
The post Flames Didn’t Need Fanning appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
The other day when I made my “done-ish” post I had essentially missed one entire zone of Dragonflight content before properly wrapping up the Main Story Quest. I’ve now done this as well as finished all of the Zaralek Cavern MSQ and am a good deal of the way through the Emerald Dream MSQ content. I have to say across the board this is some of the best content World of Warcraft has ever released hands down. Had I actually played along through the first two “seasons” of Dragonflight, I think I would have been extremely pleased with the level of detail and the amount of content that came with each. Zaralek and Emerald Dream are both excellent expansion areas and far more detailed and fleshed out than most of the ones we have gotten in the past. I also dig that each of these areas has a full set of gear that you can earn through the quest chain, which essentially acts as a catch-up mechanic and takes you up to around the item level of the LFR Raid that proceeded it.
It was because of all of these gear upgrades that I was able to set foot into LFR and am now capable of running Heroic Dungeons. I bought a few upgrades off the Auction House but legitimately did not need to do this as I got plenty of gear just through questing to make up for the difference in item level. Essentially on all of my alts from this point forward I will simply knock out the Zaralek Cavern content and then start Emerald Dream in order to get them to reasonable gear levels. The one thing that I wish is that the Account Bound items were a bit more common. While leveling I found two pieces of “Dreambound” armor that turn into gear for specific classes. One of these was a pair of 415 plate boots, and the other that I have sitting in my inventory is for a set of 415 cloth shoulders. I guess I need to see where this drops and potentially farm some up for alting as they seem like a great option.
The other thing that I spent a lot of time on Saturday doing was tracking down Dragon Sigils. These are objectives out in the world that give points that you can then spend on the Dragon Riding talent tree. At this point I have gathered all of the sigils from the four main areas of Dragonflight as well as all of them from Zaralek Cavern, and I believe the only ones that I have not picked up are the ones in the Emerald Dream. Some of these were fairly awful to get… like this one way the hell up at the top of a mountain that I had to stop several times along the way and let my stamina regenerate. The other day when I complained about Dragon Flying, I was met with a chorus of comments that I really needed to get all of the Dragon Sigils before I judged it. So I did that.
At this point, I have collected 15 talents so I feel like I can reasonably judge this system. I still feel like this is a poor copy of the flight options from Guild Wars 2. Essentially Dragon Riding is this kitbash that jams together some traits of the Skyscale and some traits of the Griffon from GW2 and is somehow worse than either. Don’t get me wrong… for World of Warcraft having access to flying almost immediately in this expansion is revolutionary. Mechanically the system is fine and does what it is supposed to do… but the system it copied homework from just feels better. Mostly the thing that kills me the most is how long it takes to summon the mount, how long it takes for stamina to regenerate, and that there is no dismounting attack. All of this combines to make the system feel way more passive and fiddly than the mounts in Guild Wars 2 do. That is not to say that the experience did not significantly improve as I got more talents… just that the final version is still a poor copy of the original.
The other place where Dragonflight seems to have copied Guild Wars 2 homework is that there appear to be “zone metas” now. I am not sure how many of these exist but I have seen ones in Ohn’ahran Plains, The Azure Span, and Emerald Dream, and for the most part… these are at least as good as the most simplistic zone meta events from Guild Wars 2. For the most part, the WoW version feels like a World Quest that spawns periodically and progresses through a series of phases until it finally culminates in some sort of World Boss. The only one that I have actually managed to participate in was the one in The Emerald Dream and it was enjoyable enough. Essentially you seemed to follow around a giant Treant and killed a bajillion mobs as they spawned in to attack him… then eventually took out a Druid of the Flame boss for fun and prizes. The higher the zone participation, the better the rewards you ended up getting. This was no Dragon’s End or even Tequatl… but was at least as good as the Svanir Shaman Chief or Great Jungle Wurm.
I am not trying to be overly harsh in my viewpoint of Dragonflight. It seems to have done a really good job of moving the needle forward for World of Warcraft. From what I can tell content releases seem to have happened more reliably over the last few years, and Dragon Riding really does greatly improve the feel of the game. I think the zone metas are an interesting addition as well, and I would like to see them try something a bit more ambitious with them. The biggest problem I see with the Metas is unless they are brain-dead… it is somewhat hard to get players to participate in them. World of Warcraft is a game that has spent the last two decades training its community to see other players as competition and not as collaborators. The metas work in Guild Wars 2 because there is never a time when other players doing things with you is in any way a negative, and instead, the more players you have the better your experience tends to be. Hopefully, the current World of Warcraft team can start to turn back years of antisocial game design to make something more cooperative.
I am getting to the point with my Warrior where I am thinking it might be time to swap characters and work on an Alt. World Quests seem to have a weekly timer instead of semi-daily ones… meaning there are just way less of them to complete at any given time. It also appears to not really be as viable of a method for gearing characters as it used to be. Again this is less of a problem because the quests chains now reward you with full sets of decent item-level gear, but my MO previously was just to ignore most of the quests and focus entirely on World Quests to gear up alts. I think I am going to try leveling the Paladin without going through the campaign. Mostly I want to play something for a bit with more viable tradeskills so I can experience how those systems work. Since the Paladin is Mining and Blacksmithing, I think that will feel a bit more enjoyable because Belghast sadly harvests NOTHING. I’ve always enjoyed letting the mining nodes dictate my path through an area.
The post Dragon Riding Still Mid appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
