Lucian Arrives

Good morning my happy people out in the land that is digital.  I am feeling a bit better this morning, so I must have managed to get a decent amount of sleep for once.  Quite honestly I think a good deal of my issues right now stem from the fact that my allergies are going into overdrive.  Normally bit late August things have calmed down a bit here in Oklahoma.  However all of the rain we have gotten seems to be kicking all the things into overdrive.  Dear summer sun… why you no kill these weeds?

Lucian Arrives

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Yesterday was mostly about League of Legends for me and some of my friends.  The champion Lucian finally was available, and this was something several of us had been anticipating.  Over lunch Rae and I both played him a bit in a 1v1 game to test out his abilities.  Overall he feels like a much less tanky Graves, but with a few more murdery tricks up his sleeve.  When we played him he felt extremely mana hungry…  but apparently early in the day yesterday his Q was costing double mana…  which could very well account for this.

He seems to have the same slowish building period that Graves does, but once he has a fair amount of gear his attacks become extremely potent.  I know later in the evening Tam played a few games with him and really liked the end result.  The Champion spotlight does a pretty good job of outlining his abilities.  Personally when I played him I was constantly out of mana, because the cooldown on his abilities is far shorter than your mana pool can ever support.  Essentially he feels like a bottom lane champ I could maybe get used to playing.

Seeking Bot

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To this point… pretty much all of the champions I really enjoy playing have been top lane champions.  Currently my favorites are WuKong, Darius, Garen, and Riven… all of which are primarily suited to the top lane…  though I feel like Riven would do fine mid.  Essentially the problem is… when playing with my friends I tend to always hog that one position of the map.  While no one has complained… I just feel like I should branch out a bit and try and find something I enjoyed on the bottom lane.

As a result I have been playing quite a few 1v1 custom maps to play with various champions, and see which ones I could get used to.  Early on Graves was a champion that Tam suggested I might like, since he played a lot of him early on.  I enjoyed playing him, but I was prone to rushing things and engaging way before my items and abilities would support it.  So he was a champion I played for a little bit while I was finding my own play style, but never really returned to.  Lately I have dusted him back off and realized that I do really enjoy him quite a bit for what he is.

Additionally I had picked up Jayce when he was on sale some time ago but never actually got around to playing him.  I have to say I really like him as a bottom lane champion and the tool kit is especially useful once the laning phase is over.  The Shock Blast / Acceleration Gate combo seems extremely good at harassing other champions in your lane since you can poke at them near the turret with impunity.  So far my favorite one of his attacks is To The Skies!… at one point last night I finished off a champion and stole the blue and red buffs with this little quick pounce.  Essentially any champion with a “pounce” attack is a champion I like.

So combined with Lucian, that at least gives me three champions that I like on the bottom lane.  I feel like there are probably more I should try.  I picked up Kennen at some point because I like ninjas… but have never really played him much.  The problem is… because of my dislike of mages… I tend to shy away from AP champions.  Building AD feels natural to me… but the AP items all feel odd to me.  I feel like this is a thing I need to get past at some point… but ultimately right now the ranged champions I enjoy are the ones that are also ADCs.  The problem is that I have pretty much exhausted the AD ranged champions that I like.  Ultimately I will have to get over the hurdle and start digging into some AP ranged champions to add some variety to the bottom lane.

Realm Reborn

 

This weekend begins the official head start for Final Fantasy XIV and I am climbing down off my fence and giving it a shot.  Quite honestly a good chunk of what changed my mind was the fact that Green Man gaming has a 25% code(GMG25-OGRUH-7SM8H) that you can apply which takes down the Digital Collectors Edition to a level I am willing to gamble on.  Additionally there are going to be a large number of House Stalwart folks giving it a shot.  For me at least this is going to be mostly a weekend game.  I still planning on playing Rift during the week because there are a number of things I want to do there.  Additionally the guild is still pretty active and I love the vibe we have built there.

Final Fantasy is not really a primary game for me… the job system is really interesting… but it is still very wow like overall.  Quite honestly… I know that this game will have worked its way out of our systems well before the First Quarter 2014 release of Elder Scrolls Online.  I am under no illusions that this is the type of game that is going to hold the attention of our guild for very long… but it might be enjoyable to explore for awhile.  Being brutally honest… the majority of folks will have burned through whatever they wanted and gotten bored of it within the first month…  but for a few people it might hold some meaningful long term gameplay.

With the ability to do all the jobs and all the professions on one character… I really plan not to alt at all.  Belghast Sternblade will be my only character far as I am concerned.  We are settled into the Cactuar server, and I am really hoping Square pulls their heads out and fixes the server capacity issues we experienced last weekend.  I was finally able to get in and register my head start code yesterday, so hopefully that is a sign that they have gotten a number of the kinks worked out.  Overall the gameplay has been enjoyable, but we have struggled with infrastructure problems that never should have made it out of alpha testing.

Unfortunately this weekend I am not really sure how much playtime I will get.  Friday night we have a wedding rehearsal, and Saturday morning I am photographing a wedding while my wife is a bridesmaid.  Then Saturday night we have a baptism to attend.  So that pretty much fucks both Friday and Saturday, leaving only Sunday to do anything enjoyable.  My hope is that between the Wedding and the Baptism… we can run any errands we need to run so that Sunday we do not have to leave the house at all.

Wrapping Up

Well I have rattled on more than enough and now it is time for me to get my ass out of this house and on with the day.  I hope you all had a good week and that you have a far less busy and annoying weekend ahead of you.  I am nervous as hell to be honest… I have never shot a wedding.  But this is a favor to a friend so I am sure I will muddle through as best I can.  I am just not one for portrait photography… people tend to bore me as subjects go.  But she was happy enough with the family portraits I shot for her…  so here is hoping she will also be fine with my wedding photos.

2 thoughts on “Lucian Arrives”

  1. I feel similar regarding the LoL problem: I just happen to enjoy bottom and jungle more than mid or top. I’m not aggressive enough for the top lane, I feel, and I always have poor experiences with middle lane and trying to solo those damned stun-happy finger wrigglers. While I understand things will be completely different when (if?) the group plays against actual players instead of AI, the standard bottom composition (ADC + support) seems efficient to me, and I’d have no problem playing either role.

    As for FFXIV, the game seems really fun and part of me hopes it keeps fun, but I also want to play TESO, and I’m not overly fond of having two subscriptions at once. I’ve been a little scarce on Rift recently due to trying to move forward in TSW (is Savage Coast supposed to feel shorter than Kingsmouth?) and play more LoL.

    • Kingsmouth is just massive in sheer number of quests available. After that… each additional zone is shorter. It took me roughly 45 hours to get through kingsmouth, 20 or so for Savage Coast and Blue Mountain… and around that for the rest of the zones in the game.

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