Easing Back In

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Good Morning, Folks! It has been a while since I played Guild Wars 2. Around the drop of the current expansion, I flaked out and stopped playing. My guess is that this correlated with the launch of a Path of Exile league, but whatever the case may be, it has been a bit. We had a regular Thursday night group for months, and it was glorious, but as we all sort of faded away, we started playing other games. The activity of getting together on Thursdays has continued, but the unified game that we were all playing has mostly stopped. I am not saying that I think we will band around Guild Wars 2 again, but lately I have found myself missing it. The glider gameplay of Spirit Crossing feels very similar to movement in GW2, so it made me nostalgic.

The thing that I love the most about Guild Wars 2 is the drop-in nature of activities. As a result, it was super easy for me to get straight into the action, and I spent a bit of time doing World Bosses. These are probably my single favorite activities in game, and were ultimately the thing that sold me on Guild Wars 2 as a whole. I missed Tequatl, which is hands down my favorite event, but managed to catch the boss in Queensdale and a few others. I figured a good way to ease back in was to focus on the various Astral Ward weeklies. There is apparently a legendary kit up and available that I do not have, so in theory, I should probably pick it up if for no other reason than providing me gifts to complete other legendaries.

I also spent quite a bit of time last night in Desert Highlands, hoping that someone would fire up bounties, but it never happened. I realize I can easily do bounties since I have a commander tag, but I was not feeling social enough to make that happen. Instead, I worked on various events that spawned and slowly chipped away at the alternate conditions for that achievement. I did manage to gather up a bit of a group, but we never formalized it with a commander tag. Again, I love how easy it is for others to tag in and follow along and get completion on events. This is really the strong point of Guild Wars 2, and I am hoping that when we get Guild Wars 3, it will have this same functionality.

I had quite a bit of fun, but ultimately ran out of steam around 9:30 pm when I headed to bed. This is the problem that I have had with gaming under chemo, is that gaming exhausts me in the same way that literally anything else does. I wonder if it is mental exhaustion as much as it is physical. I have two more rounds of chemo in front of me, so the end is in sight. I am just hoping that I bounce back pretty quickly. I know I will be rolling into radiation pretty quickly, but it sounds like it will not be as extreme as chemo has been. I think Guild Wars 2 might be my speed, because it allows me to engage as deeply as I want to or as shallow as I might need.

Raven RF Mostly Works

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Good Morning, Folks! I am still mostly playing Path of Exile II with brief flurries of Spirit Crossing. This weekend brought a bunch of changes in my build, and I will catalog them shortly. On the personal side, Sunday is generally the low point in my recovery, and from this point forward, everything should be slight improvements. All of my friends seem to want me to get magically better, but unfortunately, the recovery from chemo does not work that way. It is slight incremental improvements until I am actually feeling pretty great by the time I arrive at Chemo for the next round. It seems deeply unfortunate that it works out to be that way, where I feel my best right before I get poisoned again. I am hoping to have a burst of energy tomorrow because it is our primary election, and I definitely want to vote.

The biggest change of the weekend is that I finally hit the point where I could equip Raven’s Flock staff, letting me finally have a Righteous Fire style aura that deals chaos damage to monsters in range of me. The big problem with this change is that, unlike actual Righteous Fire, my minion character is not terribly tanky. The gameplay that makes it so fun is the fact that I can shield charge and frost blink my way around the map, killing everything in my wake. Minion RF, on the other hand, still requires me to maintain my minion army, and I still cannot tank that many hits. I had been using the infernalist ascendancy, which reserves half of my health to give me more spirit and energy shield, and it made me feel exceptionally squishy.

The other major change in my build is that I have swapped over to the Lich ascendancy to improve my survival. This does a lot of really important things. First, it solves my mana problem by making my mana regeneration based on 6% of my total health. It also gives me chaos pops when I kill cursed enemies, which I am admittedly bad at actually doing. It also gives me and my minions Unholy Might, which increases the chaos damage being dealt. None of this screws with my life or energy shield, which means I have full access to all of this, giving me around 3500 shield/life and 500 runic ward. I feel so much more tanky than I did previously, so all in all, this seems to be a massive improvement.

That said, I need to run some actual hard maps to see how well I do. Right now, I have been farming t8 maps just to move around the atlas and look for new areas to farm. I am looking for a Ritual Area, because that is really what I want to be farming, and I want some of the passive points for that mechanic. I’ve farmed a lot of Abyss and Breach, and the passives both improve them greatly. Right now, I seem to MOSTLY be finding expedition areas, aka coastal regions. I should also probably farm some more delirium to earn more passive points. That is the only problem that I have with this current endgame: I feel like I am drawn in too many different directions and never actually make complete progress in any of them.

I am not sure what I have done with the normal atlas passives, but I seem to have triggered this weird event happening constantly. Essentially, I will kill a boss and then a bajillion two affix rares drop, and they are all identified as well. This is honestly kind of cool because it allows my filters to sift through them, but it has made me bump up to strict so that I can only deal with the well-rolled items. I have been able to pick up a lot of these and throw them in my shop and sell them for around 20 exalts each. It is not going to make me rich, but it is some nice passive income. I am seeing more Divines drop from maps as well, which are nice. That said, I did spend down some of my war chest when I bought an upgraded version of the Raven staff.

I did manage to find a runic doodad that dropped 3 Divine Orbs, which was pretty nice. If I feel up to it, I might record a video of this build in progress, because I feel like it doesn’t really make sense until you see it in action. So far, I am enjoying myself, but it also doesn’t really scratch that RF itch. Pohx said as much, and I believed him at the time. I am hoping we get proper RF in this game, but I fear they might fuck it up as they did with Raging Spirits. The general design ethic of POE2 just is not my jam, and I will probably always prefer the first game. It is fun, and I can reach a point where I enjoy myself, but it feels like it is a massive battle to get there.

AggroChat #572 – Time is Weird

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Featuring: Ace, Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen

This week, we record one of our shortest shows because, quite honestly, we did not have a ton to talk about.  That said, I feel like there were a lot of fun discussions. We start off talking about Forza Horizon 6, as Tam has discovered how fun this series is.  After that, we talk a bit about Voidling Bound, a game that a lot of us were not following but are now interested in. Ace discusses Fields of Mistria and talks about how it is very adjacent to Stardew Valley.  We also briefly talk about how good Spirit Crossing is.  There is this weird new feature in Path of Exile II where a player can sacrifice themselves to give every other player a bonus passive point, and we talk a bit about this design space.  Bel talks a bit about Raven RF, and how it does not quite work well, but is completely viable.  We have a few quick topics, one of which is how good Pokémon Horizons: Rising Hope has been.

Topics Discussed:

  • Forza Horizon 6
  • Voidling Bound
  • Fields of Mistria
  • Path of Exile II Player Sacrifice
  • Raven Righteous Fire
  • Pokémon Horizons: Rising Hope

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Raven Staves and Smashy Monkeys

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Good Morning, Folks! I’m in the recovery cycle after my last round of chemo. I got my pump disconnected yesterday and then went to sleep around 7 pm and stayed that way all night, with a few brief wakeups here and there. Normally, I crash after coming home from disconnect, but I had someone ring my doorbell several times… which was not enough to rouse me but was enough to break my sleep cycle and cause me to wake up about thirty minutes later. I love my sister-in-law but it annoys the hell out of me that she swung by unannounced. I don’t do drop-in visits that well, especially if I am not expecting someone. I also try to limit my exposure to people when I am in an immune system weak period, because catching something when my immune system cannot fight it off… would be extremely bad.

All of that aside, I am still playing an exceptional amount of Path of Exile II, and mostly swapping back and forth between it and Spirit Crossing for my main gaming time. My focus right now is getting one more level because it will allow me to upgrade my gems to level 19, and also start using the new unique The Raven’s Flock. I managed to pick up a relatively cheap copy of this staff and have been sitting on it, waiting for me to finally be able to use it. Essentially, this is the staff that will give me a righteous fire style aura, but it scales off of minion damage. I currently have +413% increased minion damage, so in theory, this righteous-fire-like aura should be pretty strong. I plan on mostly just swapping directly over to the staff and seeing how well that goes. I will lose a few minions in the process, as my sceptre is giving me quite a bit of spirit.

Other than that, I have really been enjoying working through a number of the atlas quests. My progression has been nowhere near as fast as it would be in POE1, but I am still making steady progress. I’m now up to t11 maps, which pushes me into red maps, and for the most part, everything is still holding up. When I hit 84, I can take all of my gems to 19, which should be a significant boost in damage. My survival seems pretty solid, with a decent amount of energy shield, life, and runic ward helping to keep me alive. I could definitely use more life; however, as I swap gear pieces out, I am going to look for some more T1 life rolls on it. The biggest upgrade that I need to make is swapping over to a minion splash belt, so I can remove that and add a stronger gem in its place.

I’ve also leveled a Spiriwalker through the campaign and am now supported by a big smashy monkey friend. I think this might be too passive for my tastes because right now, I am literally doing nothing other than hitting health potions. The smashy monkey and cocaine bear are doing all of the damage, and I am mostly just applying marks and pain offering as I think about it. This build is absolutely getting nerfed because you should not be able to passively play in a way that you can clear all of the content without actually doing anything. I am an enjoyer of Righteous Fire, but even there, I am constantly using abilities to curse, shield charge, and frost blink. Once you get your monkey… the campaign is a breeze.

The biggest thing that I need right now on that build is levels, and to replace one of my rare companions with something that gives me haste. I really want it to be a monkey, because the quadrilla model attacks extremely well, but haste does not give a clear visual aura, so I keep having to mouse over things… which does not always give me time to mark the beast with tame beast before the monkey kills it. The number of times I have watched the haste beast die before I can capture it… is significant. I wish Tame Beast were something I could throw on my Necromancer build, but unfortunately, I lack the dexterity requirements. So instead I have to wander aimlessly and hope to stumble onto just the right beast.

I have been having quite a bit of fun with this league, but I am really looking forward to the next POE1 league that should, in theory, land in July. I enjoy Path of Exile II, but still feel like Path of Exile is the better game. POE2 is probably better for new players, but if you have only played it, I highly suggest, at some point, trying a POE1 league after learning the ropes. Other than all of this, I really want to ease my way back into Guild Wars 2. I am also playing a bit of Destiny 2 since the recent patch dropped. I am sure I will talk about both of those in the coming weeks. I hope you have an excellent weekend, and drop me a line about what is eating up your gaming time.