Good Morning Friends! I had a pretty early night last night and turned in around 8:30, so did not make a ton of progress. I did however get my Summoner to level 90 like I thought I would, and made it up to Titan on my Kraken Warrior which we will run first thing this evening. I like Summoner quite a bit, way more than I thought I would at this time. The only annoyance is the casting times, and needing to interrupt them in order to move out of things. I do wonder how the game would feel if they removed all casting times or allowed you to cast while moving. Most of the summoner rotation does not require a casting time and it is only really the Ifrit abilities that chain me into place, so in theory, if I know movement is going to happen I can just start my rotation at the other end with Titan or Garuda. After being used to dpsing while on the go with the Machinist, this has probably been the biggest adjustment.
One of the more notable aspects of the Kraken project is that mounts look so much cooler when they are not super tiny. I’ve been running around on my Fenrir bike as I am used to doing and it looks so much cooler when I can actually see the detail in it. This is especially notable as the mounts now bank as you turn lending a bit more realistic movement than they previously had. I am not saying I will give my the Lala life on my Cactuar main, but I appreciate seeing a bit more detail in all of the mounts and even the gear pieces. Catboy life is pretty great and I am happy I decided to roll with that racial choice. I’ve always dug the dark-skinned Miqo’te appearances. I wish they had more proper beard action going on but I will life with the tufts around my chin.
I also now understand why folks talk about the ARR MSQ being so rough around the edges. I know they have streamlined a lot of the content, but there are still chunks that seem to drag on forever. For example in the lead-up to Titan, there is this 20-step or so sequence where you have to learn about wine and recover a famous vintage. This is extremely tedious and while the payoff for all of your busy work is somewhat fun… it definitely feels like something that could have been trimmed back a bit. I think the Japanese appetite may be more into the mundane “day in the life” sort of content than the Western audience. I’m looking at you Persona series and all of your tedious running about to do social nonsense. Thankfully I just kept my head down and pushed through it and now can finally fight Titan.
Grousing aside… I have had a heck of a lot of fun exploring the ARR MSQ again with fresh eyes after ten years of playing this game. I have so many fond memories of this era for the game and the group of friends we played it with. Ace and I have lamented how far removed from that era we are. We were joking about our friend Mor yelling “Medica Twooooooo” each time he cast the spell… and that is sadly just a bygone era. It was after the late ARR/early HW era that folks migrated westward and time zones became a problem… and it just became impossible to agree upon a time that was early enough for the Eastern folks but late enough to not collide with work responsibilities for the Western folks. So really if we want to recapture some of that joy we are going to have to start from scratch and rebuild what we had.
It is on that note that I am starting to try and rebuild that friend group. I am not sure what the restrictions are these days but I know for certain that I can group with anyone on the Aether Data Center on my main, and Dynamis Data Center on my alt. What I am looking for is folks who can play in an Eastern timezone compatible range of hours on weekday evenings (not sure which yet), and play a wide variety of roles. What we have currently is a Tank (myself) and a Healer (Ace) and potentially a few others who might be interested in our FC/Friendgroup. So I am throwing out the request to my longterm readers out there… do you want to do some of the harder content in the game? At a minimum I want to do all of the Extremes and Normal raids… and would love to maybe work up to Savage content at some point. I am way more focused on having a fun group than a highly skilled well-oiled machine.
If this sounds like something you would be interested in, drop me a line on one of the MANY platforms you can contact me in, or just throw out a note in the comments below. We will be organizing over on the Super Dungeon Friends discord when things begin to pull together. So feel free to join.
The post Reading Stories to Baddies appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Folks! Yesterday was of course a holiday here in the United States and as a result, I did not blog. Going into yesterday I had managed to push my Machinist up to level 99 and was able to equip the full set of artifact gear. Through some tribal daily quests and a few roulettes I easily finished off level 100 and now have my second job ready to go for Dawntrail. This means that I should speed up my tomestone acquisition as I was largely avoiding a handful of the roulettes because I did not want to tank them. Generally speaking I only do Trial and Alliance Raid roulettes as a DPS, and then the rest of them as a Tank. For now I am going to let this job languish in its level 99 gear until I finish decking out my Warrior in the ilvl 700 items.
I’ve also now completed both the Tank and Physical Ranged DPS role quests, which were pretty straightforward. I did not grok that all of the relics were connected until I noticed the similar designs between the Narwhal and “Steelhog” aka Armadillo relics. I think that leaves me Healer, Magical Ranged, and Melee role quests in order to do the full set… and get another round of quests to unlock the dyeable versions of the level 99 artifact gear. Largely my choice of jobs to level next are going to be aligned with something that can run each of these quests. Machinist however is likely going to be my DPS “main” as it was in Endwalker, and most of the things I am leveling are just to make all of the jobs go orange in my profile.
I’ve got it in my head that I really want to finish out my mentor qualification during this expansion. Essentially the requirements go up every single expansion drop, but once you have unlocked it you seem to have it for the life of your account. Do I think that I will actually do Mentor Roulette once unlocked? Probably not. I’ve watched Cider Spider through his process of running 10 Mentor Roulettes at a time, and while I find the process hilarious… I can’t see myself actually following in his footsteps. So why do I want it? I guess because it is there. I will likely never actively run with the mentor flag up because I am not sure I want the responsibility of folks thinking I have a damned clue what I am doing. I guess that is probably an ironic statement given I spend most of my time tanking lately… and being the de facto party lead but whatever. I still can’t do Mathbot… so never trust me.
All of this said… my goals are aligning so that I am planning on leveling Summoner next which will give me access to Healer and Magical DPS role quests along with being able to finally unlock Mentor roulette for the expansion. Mostly I want to finish off this quest before they bump the commendations up to 2000, which I do not quite have yet. This however means that at least on the most basic level I need to figure out how the fuck to play a summoner. More than that… I am pretty sure there are a bunch of job quests that I never completed because while I have Bahamut on my hotbar… I can’t seem to actually use it. In any case… this is now going to be my side mission for a bit as I take Summoner and by reference Scholar from level 80 to level 100. Admittedly I have always kind of liked the summoner thing in other games so I am interested to try and half-ass my way to victory.
Anyways! Hopefully, you are having a blast in Dawntrail. Ace and I were ahead of the curve in our Free Company but more folks are starting to catch up and ding level 100 and also near the end of the MSQ. That means I will likely be called upon more often for roulette shenanigans as I help folks catch up. I am hoping that the 7.0.1 patch whenever it drops comes along and makes some of the expert dungeons a little less painful.
The post Machinist Dings 100 appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Folks! I am still sort of in this pattern of MOSTLY playing World of Warcraft Pandaria Remix. I’ve come to realize that I do not have the fortitude to play this optimally… which would be to do ALL of the world bosses, a random heroic and normal dungeon, a random heroic and normal scenario, and then complete ALL of the raids. Instead, I think I am going to focus on trying to get my World Bosses done as they are fun and it is pretty easy to find groups in the LFG tool. After that, I think my goal tonight is to start chipping away at the Heroic Dungeons and Scenarios that I need to unlock rings. Then the next stretch goal would be to complete all of the raids on Normal mode, but that is probably going to take all week as I have realized my appetite for that sort of thing is not what it once was.
Related to that I got my Tauren Paladin over on Drenden up to level 25 at which point I tried my hand at one of the leveling theories. The idea is to run raids starting at 25 and level your character through doing that. I’ve personally found this to be a little lacking as I think in total I gained a single level after having done two wings of LFR. Because of this gameplan I’ve also been leveling as Retribution which is fine for playing at endgame levels… but is not my preferred method of leveling. So as a result I think I am going to shift gears with this character and just level it the old-fashioned way while switching over to Protection so I can bounce shields all over the map for fun and profit. I am also questioning my choice of Tauren as I remember now why I don’t like playing them… because they feel painfully slow.
Lastly, I created a little Vulpera Hunter on Eonar where another friend has a base of operations. In theory, my goal is to push this up to 70 before the event is up so that I can have yet another max-level character seeded throughout the cosmos in case I decide that I want to play on that server. I already have an Orc Deathknight that I played during Legion and a few babby characters of various ages. It would be awesome if they made the Stable go cross-character and cross-realm because that has been my core reason for not playing something other than the original Lodin. I did not love the concept of collecting spirit beasts again. I am kind of wondering how the Warband is going to change things up, because in theory, I should be able to have all of the characters that I am playing regardless of server on the same screen.
Now that I have capped my Barbarian, I think I am going to spend some more quality time with my Necromancer. There is a pattern that can be used from levels 20-50 that will allow you to craft legendary caches so that you can get aspects pretty quickly. So my plan is to push this character up to 20 and see how well that process works. Barbarian was a lot of fun, and I might still rework that character to go for the overpowered Dual Swing Twisters build, but I also want to see how the Necromancer world is doing. I also really need to find a bow build that I like because traditionally… tanky brawler, minion, and bow characters are what I tend to play over and over in ARPGs.
Anyways! Today is my first day back this week so I am not looking forward to getting back into the swing of things. I also have to go into the office tomorrow so I am somewhat dreading that as well. Hopefully, you all had a wonderful weekend and an extended weekend if you are in the states.
The post Raid Leveling Not for Me appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Folks! Or at least I hope to finish writing this and publish it within a timeframe that could still be referred to as “morning”. Here in the United States, it is Memorial Day and as such I would normally count this as part of my weekend and not blog. However, I found myself feeling weird about it being a Monday and not blogging so here we go! Since I last blogged I’ve hit a few milestones, the first of which is dinging level 100 for the first time in Diablo IV. Sadly I think it also probably denotes the end of my involvement with the game for the time being. I might max out my seasonal reputation but I am not feeling terribly driven to push further into the endgame. I am just not bossing motivated and the “mapping” experience in Diablo IV is sort of boring.
I’ve been actively doing The Pit since around 95 and I gotta say it feels worse than Greater Rifts did. The above is a picture of having cleared a Greater Rift in Diablo III and the comparative loot explosion that you got at the end. Clearly, The Pit just feels lackluster because generally speaking you tend to get four items and it does not seem to scale heavily as you go up in difficulty. Maybe there are breakpoints where it starts to feel more rewarding, but for the most part, it feels like it is a system that entirely exists to get the materials needed to masterwork your items… which again is a system that only really exists so that you can go deeper into The Pit. If The Pit already feels unrewarding… doing more of it so you can do more of it… does not feel like a good experience to me. I am not driven to prove how hardcore I am… I play these games to get cool loot and when I stop getting that I tend to bounce.
On the other side, I have been playing a huge amount of World of Warcraft Pandaria Remix lately and dinged 70 on my first timerunner character. I gotta say this setup is extremely sweet for setting up a character and preparing it for the next expansion. Just creating a character gives you maximum flying speed and a full inventory of 36 slot bags, then you can pick up those same bags for 10 Bronze each and outfit your bank in them as well. From what I understand when the event is over this character will exit the other side as a normal level 70 character with one of those high item level gear cache bundles as though it had been boosted allowing for it to essentially start War Within on a strong footing. Given that every character gets a boost from the current level of my timeless cloak, it is honestly a great way to seed various servers with max-level characters. I’ve always had a slew of friends who play on Drenden so currently planning on leveling a Tauren Paladin and maybe some sort of a Hunter over there.
Here is a crudely photoshopped mess of me attempting to show off all of the stats of my cloak at the same time. I am not sure how to read the cloak rank number, but I think that means I have collected 15k threads so far. I would potentially believe this based on my stat hits, and this is all through legitimate means. By the time I started my first character the “frog farm” had been nerfed, so this is just through normal play patterns. I have enough survival through my gem choices and my cloak stats that I can pretty much roll around in Titan Grip Fury mode. I need to work on earning my rings and necklace which are associated with achievements. Basically doing all the dungeons in Heroic Mode gets one ring, another is associated with doing all of the Heroic Scenarios, and the last is from running all of the raids in Normal Mode. I wish they would nerf this a bit and change it to Raid Finder mode because it is way easier to queue for Raid Finder than to use Group Finder for raids.
All of the World Bosses and Raids are on daily lockouts so that they can be farmed constantly. In fact, one of the popular leveling methods for alts involves getting to 25 and then queueing for LFR wings on each character daily to get a huge boost in XP and threads. I’m focused on this main character though and trying to unlock all of the things I need to unlock before shifting to alts. Given that I am queuing as a DPS, getting into raids should be relatively straight forward. I contemplating tanking them but honestly, I am not sure if I want the responsibility of trying to remember how all of this content worked. Maybe after running through various content a few times, I might shift over to my tank gear and give it a shot.
I did not in a million years think I would be falling back in love with World of Warcraft. If anything I thought I would be limping through the remainder of the story content in Final Fantasy XIV and preparing myself for the launch of that expansion. Early Access for it starts on June 28th which will be here before I realize it. I essentially need to make some hard decisions about whether or not I am going to hop on that train or not. There is a bare minimum amount of work that needs to be done if I am going to attempt to play at all. Essentially I need to get through the MSQ and then do a massive amount of retainer maintenance. Every class is level 80 or higher and as such I really need to spend some time cleaning out gear that I will never wear to free up room for new gear. This would involve a lot of grand company turnins… and probably is a week’s worth of effort at a minimum.
At one point I was pushing up a number of jobs to level 90 and managed to complete Paladin which I leveled during the campaign and then Monk, Dragoon, Samurai, and Machinist through doing daily quests and pvp content. I was pretty close on Red Mage as well so I could probably easily push it up as well. Basically, the new jobs will probably start at 80 which means the only gear I would care about keeping that us below that are things for Sage and Reaper which I could probably easily push to 80 as well. The problem with all of this is that I just need to make the decision to get started. I think at some point I will be in a daily maintenance routine with Pandaria Remix which would leave some room for maybe dipping my toes back into FFXIV.
This is of course on top of any time that I am spending in Guild Wars 2, because I would also really like to finish out the Secrets of the Obscure content there. I picked up my next Legendary starter kit and this is one that I have wanted for ages… so I need to start working towards collecting a bunch of Mystic Clovers and knocking out another Gift of Exploration and Gift of Battle. I need to see which character is closer to 100% World Exploration and then finish that out. I will probably have more fun doing it on my Ranger thought. I would really like to have a Legendary Hammer because it is a weapon that I really enjoy on a bunch of different classes.
Anyways… I got a lot of gaming on my plate. The positive is that I will definitely not be bored for a while.
The post Multiple Caps Reached appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
