tanking

Back to Tanking

September 6, 2016 by Belghast

It always feels strange sitting back down at the keyboard to blog after an absence. This weekend was of course the Labor Day holiday weekend here in the United States, and our plans caused me to miss Saturday. Since I was taking a single day off, I decided to go ahead and take the entire weekend off to just chill out and enjoy the goodness that is Legion. When we last spoke I was sitting at level 105 and knee deep in Azsuna. Since then I have dinged 110, which for some reason took me starting the final leveling zone High Mountain to accomplish. Most of my friends hit the new level cap without touching that fourth leveling zone, but I am thinking some of it might be coming from harvest experience. Additionally I seemed to get all log jammed up in my Class Hall quests, because it seems the order in which they would love you to level for Warriors is Stormheim and then High Mountain. However I did Stormheim, Azsuna, Val’sharah, and finally High Mountain… and even then the Warrior quest was buried deep inside of the content so much so that I finally said screw it and went out trying to find the location only to wind up terrain hacking my way onto the appropriate path with Heroic Leap. Have I mentioned how bad I am at following the path? This is my downfall in many games… that I see that a path exists, but the first thing I want to do is go running off into the wilderness on either side of said path. As a result I miss so many quests because quest givers tend to be… on paths. Also as a result my first time through a zone takes me easily twice as long as literally any other player because I keep ending up backtracking trying to find that quest I missed. On the positive however this expansion seems to FINALLY reward folks getting way the hell off the path.

This screenshot… is the result of getting way the hell off of the path. This is quite possibly the most enjoyable quest I have done in a really long time… and I didn’t understand a damn word of it. That is right, you end up doing a quest for a Murloc… who only speaks Nerglish which I had to google to find out what the hell their language is called. The result is a bunch of quest objectives that are “0/1 ?????” that you have to sort of figure out on your own what the little guy is wanting you to do. This quest is something that none of my friends seemed to know about, and I only managed to find because I was completely off the path and wandering aimlessly along the coastline of Suramar. This expansion more than any to date seems to be the expansion that Blizzard finally learned a lot of lessons, or at least reflected those lessons in their design process. In the past there was always a problem of folks ONLY doing the boss that was required for a quest in a dungeon run, and then pugs often times dropped immediately after that kill. So there was a high likelihood that you would get randomed into an instance with the boss you needed already dead. Now anytime there is a collect X item or kill X boss from an instance quest, it also requires you to kill the final boss in order to get credit. Similarly they seem to have learned the lessons of what made Garrisons feel horrible, because the Class Order Hall while deeply related in design… feels nothing like the Garrison did in the daily requirement of logging in and doing wizard chores. To make this even better it was announced over the weekend at Pax West that there was a mobile companion app on the way that lets you handle the Class Hall bits without ever needing to play the character swap game.

Another thing that I spent a significant amount of time doing this week is exploring the various dungeons. Yup you guessed it that also means that I have once again shifted focus to tanking, and have for the most part put my two-handers away for the moment. Both protection and fury artifact weapons are at rank 13… which means any further progress is going to be completely silly as far as the artifact power cost goes. I am however largely focusing now on the sword and shield, and am even considering doing some pvp to unlock that specific appearance. The above screenshot is extremely special because Belghast and Finni were started at exactly the same time back in Vanilla. Both my friend and I really wanted to level a Warrior and a Priest, but had minimal luck getting traction in leveling them solo. So we made a leveling pact and we quested our way through the old world content as a Holy Priest and a Protection Warrior… and it was a blast. All of my bad tanking habits probably started here, because she enabled my horrible instincts. I would roll up into a Gnoll camp and pull the entire thing… knowing that she would keep me alive while I whittled them down slowly. Once I hit the level cap I started tanking the alt raid nights for the Late Night Raiders, and with the release of Burning Crusade I shifted focus to tanking as my primary gig. However due to motherly responsibilities, Finni just doesn’t get the amount of playtime that she used to so it is always awesome when we can run relevant content together. The way this expansion levels content so that it is perfectly viable for a 100, 105, and a 110 to be in the same instance is really nice. While other games have done this well for quite some time, I am happy to see Warcraft catching up here.

Embracing the Fel

July 18, 2016 by Belghast

Confronting the Legon

This week on “the twitters” I said something to the effect of Legion might be the first World of Warcraft expansion that I never managed to get into either Alpha or Beta. Then almost like queue on July 15th I found an email in my inbox notifying that my account had been flagged for Beta access. As a result I installed it on both my Desktop upstairs and my Laptop downstairs, and spent a good deal of the weekend poking about around the fringes of the new expansion. The truth is I was not all that excited about Legion prior to this weekend, namely because I am stuck in another down cycle with this game. There are plenty of things I could be doing, but just nothing I felt terribly compelled to do other than log in a few times a week to collect “free gold” from the garrison chore masters. Even more maddening in a way is the fact that I desperately need the transmog system changes yesterday. I think a huge part of why I stopped playing so frequently is because one of the activities that I absolutely love is farming old content for interesting bits. The challenge there is that I have my entire bank, void storage and all but a half dozen slots in my inventory taken up with appearance gear. So I just really have no more place to store anything and with transmog changes so damned close… there is no way I am going to get rid of anything that might be cool looking. So as a result I think I just largely stopped playing, thinking that eventually Legion would arrive and I would be able to have a massive spring cleaning… or in this case late summer. Well that time has arrived almost and tomorrow the patch lands that is going to see me spending my entire evening sifting through shit trying to figure out what I can pitch and what I should actually keep.

Blood Deathknight

A huge part of the reason why I wanted into Beta was to fiddle with the class changes. Yes I realize that at any point in the last several weeks I could have installed the PTR client, but without having access to more than just those changes it didn’t really feel worthy of the 28 gig install. Throughout late Wrath of the Lich King up until Warlords of Draenor I was a huge fan of the Blood tanking spec. Then in Warlords alpha a whole bunch of that changed, because the feel of the class changed. Sure the rotation was similar, but the inclusion of Blood Boil as part of the standard rotation made the class start feeling too casterly for my tastes. It is funny how class fantasy can really effect the way you feel about a set of changes, and at least in this case it was a bridge to far. On the other hand the Warrior changes for Warlords were amazing, and I loved being able to indulge in a different player fantasy… which was dpsing with a sword and shield thanks to the Gladiator spec. While I mourn the loss of that option, I completely get why they had to make the change for balance reasons, because quite frankly Gladiator was just too much of a one off special snowflake. It was my hope that Blood on the other hand would be appealing again, and for the most part I think I like the changes. That said something is still off with the class and I am struggling to put my finger on it. Deathknights in general have undergone some pretty shattering changes, and while the feel of the class is right… there are a bunch of empty spots in the rotation where you are waiting on either runic power or rune regeneration. That is not to say that there is absolutely the chance that I might be playing it wrong. However in my experience so far there seem to be some pretty significant lulls in the action, and at the same time the class feels like it has lost a whole lot of survival. On my fresh 100 test character I struggled to get through the quest that ultimately earns you the artifact weapon, because I kept dying with no real way of keeping myself alive.

Demon Hunters

After a bit of a false step by accidentally choosing a talent that turned my resource builder into an auto attack key… I’ve decided that I really love Havoc Demon Hunters. Much like Deathknight was the Belle of the Ball in Wrath of the Lich King… it feels like Demon Hunters are the class that has the most new toys to show off. For starters… any class with a double jump is something that I am going to pay attention to. Better than that they have a built in wing glide, which is similar to using the goblin glider… but just as an intrinsic ability. Then there is the movement… this class has the ability to dart around the battle field like crazy… and those same abilities have allowed me to explore maps in ways that you really could not in previous expansions without copious amounts of wall hacking. The only negative so far is that I hear by creating a level 100, I somehow am missing a huge batch of abilities that you pick up from quest chains in the starting mission. The only negative of the class… is that you have to be an elf. I kinda hate elves, and will likely always hate elves… however ironically I have always loved Illidan and the concept of the Demon Hunter. I am seriously contemplating making Demon Hunter my new main for the expansion, even though I realize that will make me yet another member of the Legion of players doing that… pun only partially intended. The gameplay however feels fun and fresh and like this strange amalgam of Combat Rogue and Fury Warrior. Ultimately I need to spend some time with the tanky variety of the class to see if I like that as well, because if so you might be looking at a newly minted Demon Hunter.

Warrior

The class that I spent the least amount of time playing this weekend was Warrior, but everything I saw made me feel like tanking as a warrior was going to be just as stable and reliable as it always was. Unlike Blood Deathknight, I had zero issue completing the quest chain to get my artifact weapon, the only problem being… that the protection warrior artifact is boring as hell. I have a vault full of amazing one hander and shield combinations… and for the most part all of them are cooler than the artifact weapon. It seriously looks like leveling trash, and I am hoping that some of the mutations later will at least give me something I am not embarrassed to be using. With the absence of Gladiator though, it is going to be hard for me to really consider being a Warrior main this time around. I have to say however that some of the changes in animation for Fury looked amazing, so at some point over the next few days I want to give that a proper whirl… once again pun only partially intended.

Generally speaking I tend to gravitate towards tanking, and if you plunk me down in a brand new game that is almost certainly what I will roll. That said I think Final Fantasy XIV has spoiled me when it comes to tanking. Their version is just head and shoulders more enjoyable than pretty much any other form I have played since then. As a result I think I might be hanging up my tanking hat when it comes to World of Warcraft at least. I tried to tank for some of my friends late in Warlords, and I just didn’t like the way it felt in the least. Now I am sure I will still play things that have a tank spec… and be able to swap in for specific encounters or for copious dungeon runs, but more than anything I just don’t think I want to be a raid tank anymore in this game. So knowing that, I am trying to find the class I enjoy dpsing the most or hell I might even try out some healing. Mostly I have a feeling that I will never again be completely stable and reliable as a player when it comes to World of Warcraft, so I am trying to make sure I pick classes that are useful when I feel like attending something, and not a burden when I don’t. For all I know I might really love Demon Hunter tanking, and that ends up changing my mind… but I am prepping myself to no longer be a go to tank at least when it comes to this game.

Getting Unstuck

June 23, 2016 by Belghast

Not-Castlevania

It has been an up and down week for kickstarter games. Namely I am talking about just how bad Mighty No. 9 has been received. I own this on the PS4, and while the gameplay itself is not too horrible… the biggest problem that I have is that it feels like an odd throwback to the GameCube. Which I guess makes sense given that the game has released on a silly number of systems including the 3DS, which makes me think that quite simply all console versions… are the 3DS version. The saddest part about this is at various points during its development cycle the game looked really good, but the end result is this lifeless mess of flat color. Now earlier in the day I had commented that this whole debacle over the “Not-Megaman” game made me extremely concerned about “Not-Castlevania” which is my not so subtle jab at the fact that so many of these kick-started games are simply recreations of whatever game made the developer famous in the first place. Almost as summoned from the abyss… I got an email with a key to the E3 version of Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, which I didn’t even remember being part of the funding level I backed the game at.

It was a little late and I only played the demo long enough to get up to the first boss… I failed miserably at even coming close to defeating it namely because I entered the fight after a lot of backtracking. There are certain things that work extremely well, then there are others that I was largely confused about. The primary point of confusion is that for whatever reason I could not seem to get the game to do jump attacks… which are of course a staple of the Castlevania gameplay. I was playing on my PS4 controller which I happened to have hooked up at the time to my PC, and notoriously it tends to map things oddly, so I might give it a shot with the defacto Xbox 360 controller. As far as every other aspect of gameplay… this is very much the spiritual successor to Symphony of the Night, but done with cell shaded 3D models instead of 2D pixel art. It works, and it works well.. and gives you the feeling of the Castlevania art style. The game has some really strange creatures that you end up fighting, which is cool and something vastly different from the standard zombies and werewolves and vampires oh my genre. I am assuming that the demo leaves off after the boss fight that is pictured above, but nonetheless I am really happy to see this game at least appears to be still on the rails.

Catching Up

Last night I got drug into Final Fantasy XIV by Ash and Grace… and admittedly they didn’t have to pull too terribly hard. Largely they wanted to run some Void Ark, which is the thing that I needed to do to get caught up in gear levels. I am not sure why this was such an impassible obstacle mentally for me, because I had some serious anxiety about solo queuing for it. Memu had made an offer to help me out, but we failed miserably at coordinating a time to run it together… mostly because I fell into a Rift shaped hope and wasn’t around all that often over the last week. In any case all of my concerns were essentially for naught, because Void Ark is extremely easy…. but unfortunately not the gear bonanza I had hoped it would be. Over the course of the night I ran the Ark three times, two times with Ash and Grace and one time by myself later after getting back from a walk. In all of those boss kills I managed to get two pieces of gear… only one of which actually replacing a slot I had something lower in. I did however get plenty of Esoterics which allowed me to keep upgrading jewelry until a combination of the that and the Mhachi Farthings pushed me over the item level 200 barrier.

Ultimately I am probably going to keep running this place until I run out of slots to upgrade, and even then…. it is still a decent source of gear to help pull my Dragoon up in item level. I guess I am officially off high center, and soon I can pick back up the quest chain and at least be expert viable once more. My hope is that tonight, I can get together with Grace and run the new dungeons who now also needs them since she too broke the 200 barrier last night. I feel better about the game in so many ways considering how frustrating it was to hit this gear wall in the questing. I guess in truth this is something that never happened to me during 2.0, or at least once we got back and started really moving forward. We were always just good enough to keep pushing into the next set of dungeons, but at the same time I was also spending a ton more time grinding out tomestones to make sure I was the best possible tank I could be at all times. That is the piece that has been missing, because I really have not been able to push myself to do that the way I once was. As our little rag tag Tuesday night group is contemplating doing more “Real” content I guess that will start to matter significantly more in the coming weeks and months. Time to get over the hump and gear up a bit, and for the moment Void Ark seems like an easy place to do just that.

Tricksy Shotgunner

May 26, 2016 by Belghast

Surprise Banner

This weekend as I have said before I will be going to visit friends in St Louis, or more literally Lake St Louis. As a result we will be taking the weekend off from the podcast, and I will be taking the weekend completely off from my blog. I am not sure if I will be making a post Monday or not… because in theory if things work as intended we should be back Sunday night. One of the things I was mildly relieved about was the fact that I would not be missing an Iron Banner. There is a nasty bug going on right now that happens in a certain circumstance… which primarily involves the rocket launcher from the raid… if it happened to roll with the Clown Cartridge perk. It combined with Cocoon meant that you could have limitless regenerating ammunition and be able to fire rockets long before the heavy ammunition showed up in crucible matches. As a result they completely cancelled Trials of Osiris, and looked like they were going to cancel this months Iron Banner. However yesterday unexpectedly Lord Saladin showed up at the tower, and just like that Iron Banner was on for the month of May.

I know without a doubt that there is no way I can manage to get three characters through to rank 5 this time around because I will be out of town for most of it. However I decided to focus on my hunter that is my second highest light character. The hope being that somewhere in this process I get some decent infusion fodder if nothing else. This go around the weapons are the Fusion Rifle and Sidearm… neither of which I am actually interested in. As far as armor we have Chest and Arms again, both of which are pieces that my Hunter has. In theory I should probably be doing this on the Warlock because he could use both of them. I did however manage to ALMOST hit Rank 3 last night on the Hunter and knocked out some of the harder achievements like “top score” for a match. It was a lot of fun, and a whole bunch of that I chock up to the Lord of Wolves Shotgun. I had not really fallen in love with this weapon, but I had moved it to the hunter at one point because it was 335 light and I needed something to get my light levels up.

What makes this weapon awesome is that it works unlike pretty much any other shotgun. Firing it feels more like a pulse rifle, and at least now… no one seems to be expecting it. So many times I managed to pick people off just outside of normal shotgun range with a single burst to the head. While it doesn’t hit quite as hard as a traditional shotgun… it still hits plenty hard and the perfect balance perk seems to help quite a bit with the otherwise nasty recoil. This feels like one of those meta breaking weapons, that will probably only work well against untrained players. There are plenty of ways to counter it… and lord knows last night several people figured it out. However for guarding flags… this combined with Trip Mines seemed to be super effective. Hunters are just brutal in any of the PVP modes, and that throwing knife… so much fun to use, so much cursing when it is used against you. I am certain that I pissed off a handful of people during the night, because there was this one guy that seemed to make it his personal mission to seek me out and kill me… not always effectively which probably only added to the frustration. Its my hope that maybe I can push to Rank 5 tonight and then maybe try pushing the Warlock when I get back from my trip.

Goal Failing

As stupid as it might sound… this is the thing that I have missed the most from Final Fantasy XIV. The whole standing around and interacting while in the at the Free Company thing. Unfortunately this is also something that doesn’t really happen that often. It feels like with Heavensward there are not as many reason to keep returning to the Free Company house as there used to be. Also the FC is going through that pre-patch doldrums with not that many people being on within a given night, unless that night is Tuesday. I have been trying to clear my schedule so that I can participate in Tuesday night shenanigans and this week was no exception. For whatever reason however we struggled quite a bit, and in part I think that was because we were way short of a standard 8 player group. Towards the end we were down to five players… 1 tank, 2 healers, 2 dps which for most of the classic Extreme Primals was doable but considerably more difficult. As a tank I had to start dealing with mechanics that I usually never see like weight of the world. The other bummer was that through all of this struggle… we didn’t see any pony drops… and no real interesting weapons either.

As far as failing at my goal… it was my intention to get in every night and run at least one expert. The problem being… nobody has been around and my desire to solo queue is minimal. It is one of those hurdles that I need to push myself over, because I realize that it is not terribly likely that I will run into one of the “git gud” idiots. Most of the community is pretty damned chill, but there is a small fraction that feels just as toxic as any other. It was one of these people that halted another friends queue frenzy, and I guess I am afraid I will bump into one of those and have my happy reunion with this game halted. If you can bring two players into a four player group… you can mitigate a lot of frustration and if nothing else kick the offending party. However I wish I had a regular group of people to queue with for nothing more than a single expert, because god knows I need the currency to buy upgrades.