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Deep Rabbit Hole

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Deep Rabbit Hole

What is funny is that my weekend is not really going to shock anyone who has been reading my blog lately…  but it actually shocks me.  I would have thought that this recent obsession with World of Warcraft would have worked its way out of my system just as soon as I reached my goal.  My Orc Deathknight is 110 and rocking gear enough to bring him to 872 which makes the character my second best geared.  Instead of detaching when I reached my goal, or shifting to a brand new product…  I find myself spending more and more time on him.  Right now its the only the second alt that managed to get a hidden artifact appearance, and the only alt so far that has managed to get a legendary.  I am still shocked at just how fast the catch up mechanics can pull you up in the game.  Functionally if I manage to get a second legendary that will put me in contention for item level with Belghast my main.  I think what has helped is just how fun Unholy feels right now.  It is hard to quantify exactly what I like about it… but in part it is a high survival dps build that I can run around doing stuff with.  Back in the day when I first fell in love with my Death Knight it was thanks to the insane damage/survival combination that blood was.  Unholy sort of brings that same thing to the table with the side benefit of having the artifact weapon summon a mini army of the dead every minute or so.

The only negative however is that right now Blood feels horrible, so I don’t really have a tanking option that I enjoy.  I need to sit down and do some more research because I keep thinking that surely I am just playing it wrong.  It feels insanely squishy, and my ability to regen back health also seems way less than I am used to from blood.  In fact right now my Unholy feels way more stable and survivable than Blood… which should be the be all end all of tanky goodness…  or at least it used to be.  At this moment I have both my Unholy and Blood weapon fully unlocked to Broken Shore levels, and both have a decent assortment of relics in them to buff the item level.  Whatever the case though when I choose to play Blood I find myself barely surviving elites…  whereas with Unholy I can rip through them without seeing my health drop significantly.  If I have any blood players among my readers…  I am wondering what am I missing?  What is the ability that makes them playable as tanks?  Going up through the ranks on my DPS characters I have ended up with a bunch of DK tanks… and they all seemed squishy.  I just assumed it was “pug tank” that was the problem and not the class itself, but I am super hoping I am simply just not prioritizing the right abilities or something like that.  Going to spend some time doing research, because I really would love to have a viable tank option horde side that I actually enjoy playing.  Last expansion my “horde main” was my Tauren Paladin… and Paladin tanking is about as exciting for me as watching paint dry.

Deep Rabbit Hole

The other thing that I discovered this weekend is an addon thanks to my friend Giulietta.  For awhile now I have already been drifting deep into the Rabbit Hole on Transmog farming trips, but largely in a haphazard and uncoordinated manner.  While hanging out after the raid on Friday, a very sleepy Giu and I got to talking about farming warrior appearance gear and then he shared with me the addon that he has been using.  Functionally m0nAr’s Wardrobe Helper keeps track of everything you have appearance wise from all of the places in the world where you can obtain it.  So for example in the screenshot above I selected Normal mode Scarlet halls… and it shows that I have an Axe that I have not collected the appearance for off of Armsmaster Harlan.  I also noticed this morning that you can pop out a handy mini list to drag somewhere on your screen while you are running the place to keep track of what you are still missing.  While it is not showing it on this screenshot because I have not been farming anything in the Deathknight…  out beside each of the instances it also keeps track of your lockout so you can at a glance see what is and is not open for you to farm.  As a result of this addon I started focusing on the Burning Crusade era instances last night, and I gotta say… seeing the text come across my screen saying I collected a new appearance makes me super happy.  The only problem is… this is a super deep hole that I could be finding myself in… because the addon also gives you completion scores for how much of a given expansion or instance you hav collected.  Giu is already on the road to madness that is trying to hit 100%…  and sadly I am finding myself trailing along behind him willingly.

Lastly… because I decided to start doing this on Monday’s here is this weekends AggroChat podcast.  There may or may not be a part where I cry/sing the first line to the theme for Vernoica Mars.

Topics Discussed:

  • Destiny: Personality Changes in Taken King
  • Stormblood Changes
  • World of Warcraft
  • Deathknight Madness
  • Elder Scrolls Legends
  • Magikarp Jump

AggroChat #159 – Alt Madness

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

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This week we once again have Grace as a medical issue has kept her away a few weeks.  Tonight we have a relatively short show, at least as far as AggroChat shows go.  Thalen has reached the point where he is doing The Taken King and talks about the shock that happened when suddenly Cayde-6 developed a personality…  and is in fact Robot Mal.  We get on a tagent talking about the changings coming soon in Final Fantasy XIV Stormblood, and our thoughts about what might be tweaked during the expansion.  Grace and Bel talk a bit about their recent alt madness in World of Warcraft, and specifically how Bel has leveled and geared a character in a single week.  Kodra talks a bit about Elder Scrolls Legends and why he likes it much better than Hearthstone.  Finally we talk a little bit about the recent phone game craze that is Magikarp Jump.

Topics Discussed:

  • Destiny: Personality Changes in Taken King
  • Stormblood Changes
  • World of Warcraft
  • Deathknight Madness
  • Elder Scrolls Legends
  • Magikarp Jump

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Catch Up Mechanics

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Last week I talked about it feeling like it was the end of the expansion in World of Warcraft, and in part that was due to the way that I am playing the game and focusing on alts.  However there is apparently another key way things are starting to feel like the end of the expansion, and that is catch up mechanics.  Now yesterday I posted about pushing through and dinging 110 the Legion expansion level cap on my Orc Deathknight.  I managed to find a couple of lucky grabs on the auction house including 3 cheap pieces of demonsteel at 835 item level and a cloak at 870 item level.  Other than those items however I managed to scrape together what is a reasonable item level to start going and doing stuff…  in a single nights time between a combination of world quests, legion invasions, and opening the broken shore.  When I first saw the Dauntless items I found them a little underwelming…  but that was on my already 890 main character.  The fact that you can start picking up 850+ items for 400 nethershards…  when I walked into the Broken Shore with roughly 4000 of them…  allowed me to really flesh out those missing gear slots.  The only negative there is that the rings and trinkets are both “Unique Equipped” which were sadly the two slots I needed the most.  Thankfully during the invasion event last night I managed to pick up a second ring at 840, taking my item level to the point where I could apparently start queuing for Looking for Raid.

Now I am not sure what the item level breaks are for the various LFR segments… but I was honestly shocked to find out that I could queue for Nighthold without having done anything in Emerald Nightmare or Trials of Valor.  Before heading to bed I did the first part of Nighthold and picked up an 860 necklace and an 860 artifact.  So other than a few strategic grabs from the auction house…  I managed to pick up everything else I needed to gear a character in a single night.  I am now sitting at 846 item level… and will probably finish doing the rest of LFR tonight hoping to pick up a few more pieces.  I also need to start running dungeons so that I can complete the Death Knight Order Hall sequence…  and during the day today the final missions that I need to run should be finished.  I guess while sitting on a higher level character I didn’t notice just how quick the item level ramps up, but while out roaming the world on a brand new character it is extremely noticeable.  It definitely seems the end of expansion catch up mechanics are in full effect, as the game attempts to usher you closer and closer to that 900ish item level.  I still have yet to get a Legendary, but in truth I have only been trying to two nights now.  I also need to research how exactly to get the alternate artifact appearances, because while I am not expecting to go crazy and start farming for them like I did on my Warrior and Paladin…  I do however don’t want to miss easy opportunities when they come up.

The other interesting thing I am noticing… is that playing Horde on a server cluster where the Alliance greatly out numbers you…  leads to some interesting interactions with other players of the same faction.  The two items I got from LFR I was functionally handed by other players who were offering them to me.  Also while out in the world on Broken Shore especially…  the horde seems to do the same sort of thing that I do in open world zones on my warrior.  That is help random players.  There are a lot of cases where I was straight getting wrecked and another player ran up and started attacking the same mobs to help me push through them faster.  Up to this point I really haven’t had much in the way of communication, so maybe I am just reading intent into their actions where it really isn’t there.  Just saying so far it has not been a horrible experience, and at least the public channels are not clogged with madness the way they are Alliance side.  I still have a significant problem with the Horde in general…  not from a factional standpoint but from the standpoint that “bestial humanoid” is not really the sort of thing that I flock to in games.  However Orc seems to be a happy medium for me, and I’ve come to this realization pretty much any time I play one.  Every other Horde race and I have significant issues.  The Tauren are just too big and feel lumbering and slow.  The undead and trolls… I cannot get past the hunched posture… or the tusks…  or the missing bits of armor.  Bloodelves have the problem of being the most elvish elves ever…  and if you have been around my blog for long you know my distaste for all things elf.  The goblins in theory are an option….  but they sorta end up being played for comic relief much in the same way that gnomes do that that annoys me.  The Horde really missed their opportunity to make a lifetime member of me when they failed to somehow recruit the Dark Iron Dwarves.  For the moment however I am largely okay with being a blue green guy with a Mowhawk and Mutton Chops.

Deathlord Rises

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Deathlord Rises

For those not in the United States… apologies for taking yesterday off from the blog.  I had an insanely busy weekend, and it was about half way through yesterday that I finally realized that it was in fact a Monday…  and not a Sunday.  Extended holiday weekends always feel a little odd, because it just seemed like I had two different Saturdays.  One of the Saturdays we went to Oklahoma City in a whirlwind trip to hit the three Half Priced Books they have…  in an attempt to get there and back before the tornadic storms hit that evening.  Thankfully for the most part all we got was some rain…  and not the grapefruit sized hail that they had been warning us about.  Then Saturday number two…  aka Sunday…  we spent the day deep cleaning the house and working in the backyard.  I once again have flower babies, that are going to need to be watered in a few minutes whenever I finish this post.  I am going to give them some time to acclimatize to the back yard before taking any photos.  Additionally right now our pool is a lovely shade of green because we are fighting an algae bloom…  so hoping that clears up as well before I snap some photos.  Then of course yesterday was me hanging out and doing nearly two weeks worth of laundry…  because we were lazy as hell last weekend.  I wound up going to sleep around 9:30 last night instead of the usual midnight…  because maybe the crazy weekend was catching up with me.

In gaming news… I played a silly amount of World of Warcraft.  Like I am not really certain what is going on but much like Grace I find myself in a mini renaissance with the game.  It is funny how when I didn’t have flight I didn’t think I really missed it.  I have always been one of those people who espouse the philosophy that not having flying during the early days of an expansion is a better thing.  It forces us to get down in the weeds and not to skip quite as much content.  That said… it is funny just how much more enjoyable the game has been since I could zip around wherever I wanted to go.  I had zero desire to play alts prior to getting the Legion Pathfinder achievement and flight…  and suddenly afterwards its like the skies have opened to a whole new day.  I had mentioned before that I am now working on my first 100+ hordie and choosing to do it on this low population server that Grace has the majority of her horde characters on.  That in itself has been an interesting experience.  The challenges have been that there simply are not that many people out in the world so when you encounter something you cannot solo… it might be a bit before another player happens to wander along.  The benefit however is that there are always plenty of ore nodes to mine and I figure when I start Broken Shore I will have zero issue finding treasure chests.  I figure if I am going to stick around for long… I will have to at least level my tanking weapon so I can solo things a bit easier.

For the moment however I am loving being an Unholy Death Knight.  Last night I managed to get about halfway to 109, which I hope means that I can push across the finish line to 110 tonight and begin properly gearing my character.  I am completely caught up in the Order Hall quest line, and to the point where I have to be 110 to get the next step.  I am sorta fast tracking my way through Stormheim at the moment, and if need be I will do the same in High Mountain.  Years ago I compiled a list of the order in which you should do SWTOR planets and bonus series in order to get the most bang for your buck…  and if I am going to do more alts I feel like I need to come up with the same sort of thing for classes and the order hall campaign.  Grace has a good idea in that she waits to do the order hall dungeon steps until she has opened up that zones quest as well.  Had I done this… that would have meant starting Highmountain First and not Azsuna like I usually do.  As I have a mountain of alts still to level it would be nice to have some sort of a guide to go off of… and most of this information is available through a series of other sites…  but not really written out as plainly as I would have liked.  So that might be a little bit of homework going forward.  I know that when Stormblood hits I am going to lose a lot of my gusto in World of Warcraft, so I guess in a way I am trying to get the most out of this moment.

Side Note:  You should totally check out our AggroChat where we talk about the May game of the month Wolfenstein New Order