Morning Folks! I popped into the game for a bit this morning before sitting down to write this blog post about nothing and dinged 89 on Dark Knight. That means I am very easily going to polish off that job today probably by doing a set of Hippo Dailies and a MSQ Roulette. Then I plan on shifting my focus to Gunbreaker so that I can potentially get all of my tanks to 90 prior to the expansion and clear out even more gear. I like the concept of Dark Knight more than I actually like playing it. After level 80 it is a pretty fun class to play, but prior to about level 70… it just does not feel like I have nearly enough tools to make the process enjoyable. So this means things like MSQ Roulette are less than enjoyable because I don’t have for example a charge ability… and have very limited mitigation “oh shit” buttons.
Yesterday my friend Ace reinstalled the game, but I mostly left them alone because coming back… is “a lot”. I know each time I have returned to the game after time away… it takes me a few days of futzing before I finally get back into the rhythm of what I actually need to do. I am kinda hoping by tonight however they have sorted things out and have some modicum of goals in mind, and I can help be pocket-tank to rocket them through the Post-MSQ. Not that I intend to rush them or anything, just trying to be helpful… without also being fucking annoying about it. I know I personally hit a “give a fuck” wall when I encountered the first trial fight, and it took me half a year to get back around to engaging with it again. My goal is to help ease some of those barriers.
I warned you at the top of this post that I did not have much to talk about this morning, and I am delivering in spades. I have a problem… and that problem is constantly searching for the ultimate controller. There is part of my brain that thinks that if I ever find the ideal controller for my mammoth hands… I will finally prefer that style of play over a mouse and keyboard. I know this is a fallacy but I have ordered yet another well-reviewed controller… this time the Gulikit King Kong 3 Pro. Because I was in no rush I popped over to AliExpress to grab it and save ten bucks roughly over the Amazon price. Generally speaking, this is a thing I at least check when I buy a controller or one of my emulator consoles because they are all coming from China anyway… might as well pay the least amount for said item.
What interests me about this controller is that it is roughly the same form factor as a Nintendo Switch Pro Controller… which I dig, but comes with Hall Effect sticks that are interchangeable similar to that of an Xbox Pro controller. I also dig the Gameboy-esc color palate. China has retro nonsense on lock honestly. Of course, at some point after I have played around with it, I will report my thoughts. I linked one of the many review videos on this controller which at least piqued my interest enough to try it. One of these days though… I am going to have a massive controller sale or something because I have sooooo many.
Anyways! For a week where I worked two days… I am exhausted and looking forward to the weekend. I hope you all have a wonderful Friday and a great weekend and I will see you again when I post the AggroChat episode on Sunday. Then again I might see you sooner if you are on either Bluesky or Mastodon because I have been more active lately.
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Good Morning Friends! I hope you all had a delightful weekend. I spent most of my in Last Epoch and a shocking amount of it grouped up with friends doing some multiplayer shenanigans. That is really the piece of this game that works so much better than Path of Exile… grouping with my friends does not feel needlessly punitive. In fact, if you happen to die while grouped with friends… you can res up and port back into the instance just fine. I’ve mostly shifted back to playing my Void Knight but I will talk about the reasoning for that a bit later. Kodra has come back from his trip and recently we have been trying to get him caught up and through normal monoliths. Originally my Fire Bro was an attempt to keep a character at his level… but then it was just too damned fun and I rushed through to empowered monoliths without really meaning to.
As far as my Void Knight goes, I have added a few levels but have not really made any major gear changes since I last talked about the character. I keep farming 120+ Orobyss but have had zero luck in finding another Apathy’s Maw Axe… specifically one with legendary potential and have not yet seen a Shattered Chains belt. Similarly, I’ve farmed God Hunter Argentus a number of times and have yet to see another Wings of Argentus chest-piece let alone one with legendary potential. I have levers that I can pull to keep trying for better get, but have simply not been lucky. I did find an LP1 copy of Darkstride boots but didn’t exactly get lucky on the craft, but wound up with something better than nothing. If you are curious I’ve dumped a build over on Last Epoch Tools for the current state of my character.
One thing that I had to do this weekend was create a significantly more strict loot filter. I had been using one that started out as something that came from Maxroll and that I kept tweaking. I decided I just needed to blow that away completely and start out on my own. I’m essentially hiding all normal, magic, rare, exalted, and idols and then only showing very specific stats that I care about. I have a broader rule that shifts things to pink that I specifically want to keep track of for sharding. Then I have some super specific rules for the Sceptres and Two-Handed Axes that I am looking for on both Void and Fire builds. Lastly, I have a rule to show ALL Tier 7 Exalted items, and then the one I am showing in the above screenshot in an attempt to catch any Exalted item with two Tier 6 affixes. This was made more important since I am just about to ding Rank 8 with Circle of Fortune where EVERY Rare drop will have a 25% chance of upgrading into an Exalted.
As for Fire Bro…. in truth right now in its current state, this build is just not good enough. I was able to get all the way to Empowered Monoliths… with some help from Ace in killing Elder Gaspar. However in Empowered Monoliths I either need more damage or more survival… because the combination of what I currently have is simply not good enough. I could tweak this build in a number of ways but I was trying to stay pure to the original goal of using the Torch and lighting everything on fire. I want to spend some time pouring over the character sheet and playing with it a bit in Last Epoch Tools to see if I can find a way forward either through gearing or respeccing points. I need to spend some time looking at other ignite builds to see how they are working and what sort of gearing they are going for. I’ve not given up… I just would rather focus on my Void Knight for the time being.
I also have a bunch of alts waiting in the wings that I am probably going to level a bit as well. I have a Falconer, Bleed Wolves Beastmaster, Flame Reave Spellblade, and a character that I plan on trying to yolo my way into a Fire Damage Earthquake Shaman build. Still having a heck of a lot of fun with this game and trying out new characters that I have not played before.
The post Fire Bro On Hold appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Well friends with the help of my friend Eliyon, we figured out where I fell off the Main Story Quest. It does not in fact end at Valdrakken but instead spins off with a few quests inside of the city, that then lead out into what is the fourth zone of the game Thaldraszus. So I have a bit more questing to go before I can wrap things up and finish out the story… and then proceed onto gearing through World Quests. I remember having this issue as well with Shadowlands where I dinged the new level cap and still had one and a half zones to complete before I could join the open-world “reindeer games”. I remember it was during this chasm that my friend Ace bounced from Shadowlands never to return, so I can’t say this is a super great design decision. It would be nice if World Quests just unlocked whenever you hit level 70 no matter how far you were progressed in the story.
Feeling somewhat deflated I spent most of my evening in Path of Exile. I had converted my attempt at a Volcanic Fissure of Snaking Chieftain over to Righteous Fire and so far… I think this might be the closest to the glory that was Juggernaut Righteous Fire. If you are so inclined here is a POB of where I am currently. The thing is the Chieftain comes with a bunch of really nice perks for Righteous Fire, some of which I had overlooked or at least written off as less good than they actually are. Namely Ramako, Sun’s Light is something that I had skipped on my previous attempts at an RF Chieftain during the Blast from the Past league, and this was a mistake. You spend a surprising amount of time “stationary” as Righteous Fire and if you frostblink from pack to pack you can maintain this “stationary” state. All of that time everything just has -20 Fire Resistance which seems to override all other modifiers and while in theory you can get a resistance much lower than that… this just always works.
This allows me to run a curse that isn’t either Flammability or Elemental Weakness and have it feel like I am double cursing without needing to fiddle with the nonsense that is involved in making that happen. Of the other options, I went with Punishment which causes cursed enemies to take more damage when on low life… meaning that things die faster and hopefully proc Hinekora, Death’s Fury and clearing the entire damned screen. I went Primalist with the hope of eventually using charms to get more chance to explode but for the moment I am running two Percent Strength and Life Regeneration Rate modifier charms. In a perfect world, I would find something that gave me explode and life or regen but I will have to keep fishing in the forest to make that happen. I’ve also still never seen the ACTUAL King in the Mists fight so none of my characters have unlocked their final doodads.
My defenses are also extremely solid and quite honestly… now that I have equipped a Lightning Coil I don’t feel that much less tanky than the Juggernaut version did. What I bring to the table is roughly 25k armor, almost 5000 life, 2500 life regeneration, 90% to all elemental resistances, and 50% of all physical damage is taken as lightning damage… as well as 30% crit damage reduction and some things to limit damage over time which I don’t believe the Lightning Coil applies to. Now that I have the lightning coil I am going to try my hand at juicing some T16 maps and see how that goes. Essentially the gameplay is a bit odd in that you are trying to kill enough small stuff so that you proc an explosion and then the entire screen around you evaporates before moving on to the next big pack. It feels better than it sounds.
All told it is fun to map on albeit a bit slower than Lightning Arrow. Lately, I have been alternating between Cemetary and Tropical Island because both are fairly enjoyable maps and relatively open. I should run some of the crappier and less bow-friendly T16s that I have rotting in my bank and see how that goes. Mostly right now I need a good deal more levels. I am working on getting a Fan the Flames gem up and running while trying to roll a slightly better version. If this works like I think it will… my ignites will proliferate among the packs of things that I am killing, and then also “proliferate” again when one of those things dies thanks to Berek’s Respite. If nothing else this should be fun as hell to watch happening. If I could somehow manage to keep my resistance high enough… I would love to have a set of Maven’s boots as well to only further add to the nonsense explosions.
One of the things that has gotten me down in Path of Exile lately is the frustration of trying to link things. Essentially I had a 900 DPS bow that I was working on getting linked, a Lightning Coil in RF colors, and more recently I finally got a Fourth Vow to drop which I am trying to link for my Boneshatter build. After spending about 1000 fusings trying to get the Bow linked, this morning I had gathered up another hundred or so and managed to get both the bow and lightning coil to six links. That alone has helped increase my enjoyment of the league. I still do not love being isolated from the trade environment, but finally getting some of the things I needed up and running is a significant improvement.
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Whelp friends… I have finished the main story campaign in Dragonflight and for the most part, I enjoyed it. I think it might be one of the better World of Warcraft expansions as a whole, but I also think that maybe my tastes in games have shifted a bit. I ran into this a bit when trying to ease into Final Fantasy XIV as well… my brainwaves seem not to flow along the traditional MMORPG patterns as much these days. Guild Wars 2 scratches the ARPG itch so that I can flow seamlessly between it and something like Path of Exile. World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV are so much slower-paced than I am used to now that I had to keep trying to make the combat more active than it was to stay engaged. I think the design pattern of the MMORPG feels a bit dated, and I still wish that someone would come along and create the Destiny of MMORPGs with tight action combat with really enjoyable feedback. I am looking for Arcade gameplay, whereas too many people seem to be leaning into the more slow and prodding Dark Souls feel.
I think what makes Dragonflight really stand out is the world design. The Waking Isles are phenomenal and have these nostalgic ties to so many other “favorite” World of Warcraft zones. There are also just some really cool visual setpieces like this cave full of spiders that were frozen in the state of descending. The team that created the flow of these zones deserves some massive credit because leveling through each area felt extremely enjoyable. So much is focused on the narrative story… but the mechanical flow through zones is super important and often treated as an afterthought in games. Dragonflight created this enjoyable ride from the moment you set foot on the docks of your capital city, to the moment you arrive in Valdrakken for the first time. Technically the expansion had three zones, but it feels like each zone is multiple zones at once with a lot of regional biome shifts and cultures.
Every time I have complained about Shadowlands, I get some diatribe about playing it at launch… I did play it at launch. I still did not really enjoy the experience at launch. The Shadowlands feels like a number of disconnected content islands that have radically different themes to them. Dragonflight instead feels like a place you could actually visit with a natural feeling flow to the transitions between zone boundaries. Shadowlands instead felt like a bunch of post-launch patch zones where narratively they did what they needed to do… but structurally were a bit of a mess. I am hoping that this same cohesion flows through to Dragonflight’s post-expansion zones because I know at a minimum at some point I will be stepping foot into the Emerald Dream. Now I just need to figure out what I need to do in order to get some starter gear. The transition from leveling to endgame has never been as smooth as it was during Legion, and I’ve not really seen much in the way of world events yet so I am wondering what I need to do in order to unlock those.
I think I am going to spend some time burning down the backlog of quests that I have sitting in assorted zones. I’ve reached the point where I can no longer accept quests and exclamation points are screaming in my face everywhere I go. I need to reconcile all of the junk that is in my bank as well so that I can figure out what I want to do with it. I should probably just Auction House the bulk of what is saleable. I kinda hate the WoW Auction House system and wish it was something more akin to FFXIV or GW2 where you could list an item and forget about it. I always sell items in those games because it is so painless… but I really hate managing failed auctions and the fees that rack up with them. I get that this is a flippers game and for “financial pvpers” but it sort of feels miserable for someone who wants nothing to do with that nonsense and just wants to convert “bag bloat” to liquid currency. I mean it is better than it used to be, but it is still pretty far off from what I would consider ideal.
Last night I bounced though after dinging 100. There was just too much to do and no real sense of purpose where I needed to start. Instead, I finished out the evening doing Delve in Path of Exile. I’ve gotten my Righteous Fire Chieftain to the point of comfort down in the mines. I still need levels so that I can socket in a bunch of jewels into my tree but I have managed to gather up three or four that will work beautifully. This is a far cry from how comfy RF Juggernaut felt, but it isn’t half bad. I’ve got two items that I have been trying to get linked… a Lightning Coil that I am going to swap to for this character and a new Lightning Arrow bow that should almost double my damage output. For now, I have been trying to link the bow because it will help me farm Sulphite more efficiently, but in either case, I just need a bajillion fusings to make this happen.
I am still shocked at just how fast the leveling goes in Dragonflight because I started on the 30th and now on the 4th I have effectively gone through two expansions. I just need to sort out how best to gear my character. I might throw myself at the LFG system and try and knock out some dungeons for gear. I am not sure if this is the case… but the community of begging for private loot gear really turned me off during Shadowlands so I am hoping that is less of a thing than it was then.
The post Dragonflight Done-ish appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
