Tales of the Aggronaut

Re-Learning Tankadin

December 21, 2015 by Belghast

Pretty Cow

One of the frustrations of playing Horde side is that as a boosted level 100 character, I am lacking a backlog of awesome gear to use for transmogging purposes. I mean afterall the true “end game” of World of Warcraft is looking fabulous. As a result my down time has been spent running a bunch of older raids so that I can have something in my void storage worth transmogging. Yesterday I finally completed my set of Tier 10 heroic armor from Icecrown, and while I don’t really have a belt that matches it perfectly yet… I am thinking it works pretty well. I am not sure why but I have always loved the “plate dress” look that a few of the sets have, and Judgement is probably my favorite set period. The thing is… a paladin running around in full judgement at this point is somewhat cliche’d so instead I started chasing either the tier 8 set from Ulduar or tier 10 from Icecrown. The problem with Ulduar is that I have run it numerous times and have yet to get the correct arm piece to drop, leaving me with a glaring hole in my armor. Similarly frustrating is that the Tier 8 set does not seem to have a belt that matches it terribly well. The positive about playing a Cow/Worgen/Draenei is that the boot slot doesn’t matter quite so much since there are hooves/paws in the way.

As far as the weapon I really like this spear I picked up in Ulduar, the only problem there is that I just don’t care for the polearm animation. I need to sort out a better two handed sword that matches this set… and honestly I think they are going to similarly come from Ulduar as well. I remember there being some pretty cool blades from there as well. There were cool swords in Alliance Crusader’s Coliseum, but unfortunately all of the horde variants are big axes. I have this very specific style that I am going for with the MooCowAdin… which is polished and civilized. Essentially I am going for the traditional Paladin vibe, not a tribal version of a Paladin. The only thing I wish I had is a better pair of goggles, but alas this character is not an Engineer but instead a Blacksmith. I figured Blacksmith would simply be more useful in the long run, since creating your own gear is pretty great. It is my hope that by Legion I have managed to catch up his tradeskills to the point where I can actually create useful stuff.

The Deep End

Yesterday did not go exactly as planned, and we wound up going out shopping again in the afternoon. The positive however is that I got Indian food… which is always a good thing. The negative is that I once again missed the Star Wars pen and paper game, and most of the Horde side raid in World of Warcraft. I had been working on gearing to be a viable tank, and when we decided more healing was needed… I said I was able. The problem being… that not only have I not tanked in a really long time… I have not tanked as a Paladin in an even longer time. Part of me questions my pushing the Paladin up, when I could have gone with a tank I was much more familiar with like the Deathknight or the Warrior. But in part the Paladin was so that I would have access to dps, tanking and healing in one character… and I figured it might be cool to get some more tanking as one of the other classes under my belt. Druid was also a possibility but honestly… I suck at healing with HoTs and after being so damned used to the Warrior… playing a druid tank feels like a really trimmed down version of it. Similarly… cat dps feels like a really confusing version of a rogue… so honestly I think I made the right call as far as multi-function classes goes.

The challenge is that I did not join the raid until Kilrogg which seems to be one of the more complicated fights. The person I was replacing… was the person who normally tanked the main boss so it was very much a sink or swim situation. I had two big problems… firstly holding aggro off our feral druid was a challenge… and one that I was largely failing. Druids have always had the highest aggro, so holding off of them is a challenge in the best of situations. The complicating factor here is the fact that in order to survive I had to keep from getting stacks of this debuff, and the ability that allows me to do that… is essentially my highest threat attack. So I would have to hold it in reserve just to make sure I had it available at all possible times and then hit it when the attack was incoming because the immunity only lasted three seconds. This ability was essentially both a shield slam and an avoidance buff, and normally when I am tanking something I am spamming it every time it is available. We survived only because Obi is overpowered and managed to solo tank the boss down after I died. On Gorefiend however I was feeling much more in my element, and I think did a far more palatable job of tanking. Nothing like being thrown into the lions den to sort out how to play a class!

Week In Gaming 12/20/2015

December 20, 2015 by Belghast

The Week of Star Wars

This week was all about either waiting for Force Awakens or riding the high after seeing it. Some other stuff happened in the middle, like on Tuesday I went yet again to RiffTrax with some co-workers and had a blast. This time around was Santa Claus and the Ice Cream Bunny, and apparently it was a slightly new version where they include the story of Jack and the Beanstalk instead of apparently Thumbelina. I have to take their word for it, because I did not manage to catch the previous version. However coming up is a rebroadcast of Starship Troopers, which is one of the Riffs that happened before we started doing this as pseudo team building. In truth it has very little to do with building morale… and more to do with the fact that we just share a similar sense of humor. So I am looking forward to that in mid January. The only negative with this week however is that quite literally I did not actually get to spend any length of time with my wife until Friday. On the nights I had free she was up at school doing prep work for the end of the semester and the rest of the nights I had something going on. I am really looking forward to the break however… because we tentatively have planned a movie marathon for Christmas day. My wife has not seen the original Star Wars films since the theatrical release of the special editions in college. So right now the plan is to marathon through all of them and take her to see Force Awakens afterwards.

Whole Lotta Nope

There has been a lot of buzz about Black Desert Online, and largely the thing that everyone seems to talk about is just how detailed the character creation system is. You certainly can create a bunch of really pretty characters, but for me at least that is where the game starts to fall apart. I had largely avoided this game, because I didn’t like the concept of having classes tied to gender and to some extent “race” or what passes for race in the game. So to play the berserker type class, you have to play this mammoth Giant race of a character. My trip through Nopeland started however when I tried to install the game. I had all sorts of issues just getting the installer going, and when I finally got it loaded it booted up and sat on a black screen for fifteen minutes or so before finally loading into the game. The interface itself… feels cheaply made and I am really not sure how to quantify it other than that. Once you get into the game… you have an action MMO driven off of left and right mouse buttons. I tooled around the starter area and honestly… I just didn’t like what I was feeling. It does a thing… that many other games have done better. Sure the character creator allows you to pretty much live any possible player fantasy as far as looks go… but the game itself didn’t feel that fun. So at this point I have already uninstalled it, and will throw this game is the same bin I tossed TERA. Extremely pretty, but didn’t feel like I wanted it to feel.

Mount Chase

I am not really sure how I allow myself to get drawn back into holiday events, but right now there is one happening in World of Warcraft that has a chance of dropping a Yeti mount. Since the very first Winter Veil event, I have had an affinity with the Yeti, and used to save my charges of my mechanical Yeti each year so I could play with it off and on. Similarly when they added the first mechanical yeti battle pet… I had to have it. So it is no surprise that I am finding myself doing Holiday dailies each day in a vague attempt to get a Yeti mount from one of the Savage Gift satchels. I am going to be pissed as hell if I do not manage to get one this year. Essentially each day has the same basic flow, where I start with Belghast and cycle through all of my characters that can do the holiday quests… mailing all of the tokens to Belgrace on the horde side and then purchasing four savage gifts… only to be disappointed moments later when none of them yield the mount. I have managed to pick up the pet, so that at least is a positive. Of all of the holiday mounts I have chased over the years… I have very few of them. The king of all teases has to be the Headless Horseman mount, that I always make attempts on… only to be disappointed when I have zero luck getting it. The love rocket is another one, but that one I really don’t have much desire to get… other than for completion purposes.

Proper Tankadin

This week a lot of my focus has been on the MooCowAdin, largely because he is the one opening all the Savage Gifts. The root of my focus however has been to get a good weapon, which I FINALLY have in the form of the sword above. It is a blue baleful that has been upgraded to 705 via the 20,000 apexis crystal token and two valor upgrades. Finally I now feel like a proper tank, and am finally what I would consider a viable option for the Sunday night raid. As a result I have been doing most of my daily quests in tanky form to get used to doing all the tankadin things. I have to say I am absolutely in love with Light’s Hammer. It is like the best possible version of Death and Decay… it slows and deals damage to enemies… and heals allies at the same time. Who could ask for more?

The Orclock

My downtime character is still Belghula the Orc Warlock. I am enjoying leveling by dotting everything up and running around like mad until it dies. Thanks to Tam for teaching me the ways of playing a damage over time class 🙂 At some point I need to start with the dungeons… but right now I am sitting just shy of 20. The Northern Barrens are getting a little stale, so I am hoping that soon I will get the quest starter to jump to the next zone. I’ve not really made it terribly far in the horde side quest chains, so I am kinda amped to see the later areas. I am also working on leveling Tailoring so I have a bag maker, and enchanting so I have the ability to do enchants. The next character I run up will absolutely be a herbalist/apothecary so that I can hopefully at some point make my own raid potions. That has been the hardest reality check for me… the concept of starting over with a fresh stable of characters and no infrastructure. I guess that is a slight lie, because the guild horde side keeps shoving stuff into my hands and seems more than happy to support me… but I am very much a person who prefers being able to support myself. So I need to knock out some more characters so I can start to do that. I am going tailor first because the biggest problem I have right now is the lack of a bag maker to feed my alts.

Santa and Grumplings

December 19, 2015 by Belghast

Santa Lives

Force Awakens has been my Christmas Miracle…. its like I am a kid that believes in Santa Claus all over again 🙂

— Frosty Belghast (@belghast) December 18, 2015

I’ve been going through this strange set of emotions since getting out of the movies on Thursday night. One of the things I am learning about myself is that I am in fact deeply susceptible to nostalgia. Growing up I honestly thought I was not nostalgic at all, because the things I cared about never seemed to align with the things I was supposed to care about. Photos for example are just not one of the things I care about that much, and the only time I take a photo of something is when I want to show it to someone else. I have a pretty good memory when it comes to visual images, and I can always summon up images from the past when I want them… and as such I never placed much value in having a physical representation. My mother on the other hand… that is the thing she finds most important in the world and has taken volumes of photos that the world will likely never see… because she never does anything with them. My nostalgia… seems to be firmly rooted in the things and places that gave me the most joy in the world. The king of all of this will always be Star Wars, because it truly was my first love. For so many years I doubted my memories, or at least doubted that I had as much fun with Star Wars as I seemed to remember.

Then Thursday night I watched Force Awakens and remembered just what it was like to experience that level of joy again. Now I am just riding the giddy contact high of the experience, and looking forward to talking about it with anyone that has already been indoctrinated into the club. Yesterday there was a sequence of tweets trying to decide when it was time to talk about the movie, and I guess personally… I am going to wait until January 18th. I am going to give the world a full month to watch it before I start openly talking about spoilers and spreading the world with my theory crafting. Spoilers are such a weird thing…. because for me personally they do not adversely effect my enjoyment of the movie. I personally guessed at four or five of the plot points from the movie, and it was in no way tarnished for me when I saw them coming. In fact there was a bit of strange excitement coursing through me when I realized that things were playing out in one of the ways I had imagined them. For others though… once something is spoiled it ruins the experience, and as a result I am going to try my best not to ruin anyone else’s.

The “A” Team

I love the Star Wars universe, and while I was greatly disappointed for years… shows like the Clone Wars and the current Rebels made me remember just how awesome the setting COULD be. I think they were essentially the gateway to allowing myself to indulge in the hype leading up to Force Awakens. The problem with Rebels is that as good as it is… it isn’t the team of characters that I wanted to be engaged with. Shows like it or Agents of Shield… no matter how amazing they might be… will always be stuck in the rut of being the “B” Team. These are the characters that are ALSO in the universe…. but aren’t really the characters that you really want to be watching. While shows like that might raise the excitement level a bit every now and then with a “special guest appearance” you know at the end of the day… you are never really going to get back the characters you care the most about. While to some extent the new movie is setting up a brand new cast of heroes to take over the throne… in the form of Finn, Rey, Poe and Ren, it still very much feels that we are going on another adventure with the characters we grew up loving: Han, Luke, Leia, Chewie, R2, and C-3PO.

There is a continuity that other derivative products lack, and in a way I am more okay knowing the cast of the original trilogy will always play a secondary role in this new trilogy of movies. The Avengers are still an active team… and while they exist… Agents of Shield will always be the lesser product. Similarly no matter how cool Rebels is… and how awesome it is for filling in the gap between the prequels and rebellion era movies… it will always be the story of people we didn’t know existed until Disney told us they did. So in the meantime I am going to embrace the joy I am feeling, because there were points yesterday where I wanted to take my hot-wheels Millennium Falcon and go running around the office making “space” noises. There is a kid inside me that has woken up, that has not been awake since the 80s… and I am perfectly okay with hanging out with him again. Part of my whole mission to limit the negativity in my life, and to be less cynical… was to be able to truly feel unbridled joy again… and this movie has paid off in spades. Sure I am almost forty years old… and sure I probably shouldn’t be enraptured by Star Wars. To that I say “fuck it” I get to decide what sort of Adult I am going to be, and I choose to be the one that never really grew up inside.

Grumplings

The most annoying part of any in game holiday event… are the things you have to fight other players for to get spawns. In the new Winter Veil garrison event, you have to fight players for patches of snow on the ground, in the hopes that instead of getting a snowball of various kids… you get a Grumpling pet. Last night after looting many piles of snow I managed to get one… and now I am done touching those piles of snow. I am not going to be one of these players that tries to profit off this event, because it is my hope that by removing myself from the picture others will have an easier time getting their own Grumplings. Now however I am still going to be completing the daily event… until I get the damned mount. I’ve decided to send all of my packages to Belgrace my MooCowAdin, because he seems to be the closest to getting all of the appropriate factions for the flying mount. So among the four characters I have that can do the daily, I am hoping ONE of them gets the stupid mount.

Spoiler Free Review

December 18, 2015 by Belghast

Doing Silly Things

#StarWars #ForceAwakens = my childhood memories vindicated. Nicely done JJ Abrams

— Frosty Belghast (@belghast) December 18, 2015

So the other day I said I would be doing a spoiler free review today, since I was in theory seeing it ahead of a good deal of the potential folks that will eventually see it. As a result I am leading off my post with the single line tweet that I sent out last night after getting home. Now I am going to talk about the day and night itself for a bit. I was not one of those first day ticket scroungers, in fact I ended up waiting at least a week before trying to find any. We have a smallish theater in town within walking distance of the house… however last night it fell in the “too damned cold” territory to even consider walking. For Lord of the Rings I was able to simply walk in on opening night and get tickets, without any pre-order… so I had no real doubt that I would be able to see the movie this weekend without much fuss. The original plan was to eat dinner at Plaza De Toros a Mexican place that I like quite a bit that just happens to conveniently border the parking lot of the movie theater. Just to make life easier… so we could meet up at 5pm and then walk over and start standing in line around 6pm for the 7pm show. This at least was our plan… our plan changed.

I went home over lunch yesterday to pick my tickets up, since pre-orders still need to be printed at the theater in our setup. I ended up having a lengthy conversation with the worker that was manning the booth, and he told me that they were seating for the 7pm show… aka the first showing as early as 4:30 so that we could go ahead and get seats. So when I went back and talked it through with my boss, we agreed that we would simply meet at the theater around 5ish instead and either eat at the theater… or like I did and grab something really quickly on the way home. The positive of both options is our theater has unlimited refills on both soda and popcorn, so my boss went with that option. The only negative is that I didn’t think to warn him not to take one of the Highways that is notoriously hell to travel on during the evening rush hour… so this meant it was running about 30 minutes later than planned. Luckily about this time another friend popped her head out of the theater and hollered at me, and saved us some seats near her, her husband that I work with, and their son who was completely amped about the experience and wearing and Ezra Bridger costume. So there we sat in the theater for an hour and a half ahead of the start time… chatting away and killing the time.

The Movie

I had a lot of hope riding on this movie… but at the same time I kept trying to prepare myself for the potential of it being just as disappointing as the prequels. In fact a good deal of my conversation with my friend was that both remember how excited we were for Phantom Menace and how disappointed we were immediately after. I have to admit… I was not immediately in love with this movie. Not saying I was disappointed in any fashion… but the movie has a look that is significantly different than the traditional “star wars look” for lack of a better term. JJ Abrams simply has a different design ethic than George Lucas did… and this is perfectly okay… but I spent the first few moments of the movie “adjusting” to the style. However at about the twenty minute mark… I was hooked and from that point through the end I was completely drawn into the world and believed that I was in fact watching a new Star Wars epic. The characters are all excellent, and more importantly than that… their interactions… are also awesome. There are jokes and quips… and not in a way that takes you outside of the picture. Much of this movie had to be about passing the torch from one generation to the next… and feel like we are now firmly introduced to the conflict through the eyes of Rey, Finn, Poe Dameron, and Kylo Ren. Not really going to delve into characters outside of the group, because those are the ones we already know quite a bit about thanks to the trailers.

What I like the most is that each of these characters is their own “new” character… and not “The New Vader” or “The New Luke”. They are each their own person and don’t really fit any predetermined molds in the Star Wars universe. The conflict that is set up… is one that I cannot wait to see resolved over the course of the next few movies. In fact I am hungry to see what happens next…. which is something that never happened during the prequels. This is the first “new” story that we have had from Star Wars on the big screen in a very long while, because the prequels had a fixed beginning and a fixed end point… and we were simply seeing how the details worked themselves out between. This time with Force Awakens… we have no clue what is going to happen in the beginning, middle or end… and in spite of all of our machinations and predictions… we know that we know next to nothing. There are certain aspects that I think seasoned veterans of Star Wars and the Expanded Universe might guess at…. but those guesses are never justified with a firm answer. This movie feels very much in the tradition of A New Hope, and also feels like this grand Star Wars pen and paper adventure… played out on the screen. The critics are more than likely not going to like it… because this is absolutely a “Star Wars” movie… and not something that is trying to get an Oscar. That said… the costuming and use of practical effects absolutely SHOULD get an Oscar.

The little kid in me is alive and happy. There was a period of time after the prequels where I doubted if my memories of Star Wars were really genuine. I wondered if the universe really was as cool as I remembered it. I am happy to say that yes… this setting still has amazing things to show us. Now stop reading this shit and go get tickets to see Force Awakens.