Tales of the Aggronaut

Pugs Over Easy

October 9, 2013 by Belghast

Pugs Over Easy

If you have read my blog for very long at all, you will know that I am extremely gun shy about grouping with strangers. Namely in my time tanking I have had some pretty horrible experiences both as a tank and believe it or not healer in the various games I have played. Prior to World of Warcraft, I did this all the time… but with the advent of the dungeon finder everything seemed to go downhill. Today’s post is not really a reflection of any real or imagined events that have happened to myself recently, but instead spurred on by finding the most perfect analogy that wraps up my feelings about pugs.

My friends have all been following the release of Jinx the new champion for League of Legends extremely closely. Midday yesterday they linked me this thread on the forums posted by someone called Dread Pirate Arbuthnot. The intent was to explain what ranked play is like, but for me it rang true of the vast majority of my pugging experiences. As a DPS you can fade quietly and anonymously into the background and just do your job… but as a tank or healer… you always end up to blame for whatever failings the group has. On with the copypasta!

Look I can describe ranked play in a really simple analogy

So you want to eat a cake, right, but you only have eggs. So you have to find four other people who have milk, sugar, a blender, and chocolate. But you show up, and the blender guy throws his blender to the ground and screams EGGS OR I FEED, and then the other three people start yelling at you to give up your eggs. Then you have to piece together the broken blender, and it’s not really working properly, but you found some tape so it’s working. Except the beaters are kind of wibbly wobbly now, so it isn’t mixing the batter very well. The other four players start to scream at you for not blending the cake well enough, since that’s your job, and then the milk guy has to go leave for 15 minutes because his mom just made dinner.

Are you understanding this so far? Ok good

So any ways once milk guy is back you have the cake, and its time to put it in the oven. The problem is that there are professional baking teams who just played a world baking tournament, so everyone wants to bake a cake like theirs. Even though your cake is chocolate, they want to cover it with icing meant for a vanilla cake, because that’s what the Asian cake bakers do. You try to insist that your cake would be much better with chocolate icing, but they tell you to commit suicide. Finally, your shitty cake monstrosity comes out of the oven and it isn’t even edible because of the whole process, and apparently cakes need more ingredients than just eggs and milk and chocolate.

Then you go into the post cake lobby and everyone unanimously agrees its your fault

Then you immediately hit the ‘bake again’ button and pray that this time you can just ADD THE GOD DAMN EGGS

This seems to happen regardless of how many guild members you bring into a pug. Last week at some point I got drafted into trying to get one of our healers and her dps hubby through the Cutters Cry instance in FFXIV. I knew I should tank it, but I could really use gear on my Bard at the time… so at the nudging that it would be okay I stayed in as a dps class and we attempted to pug a tank. I knew this would be a decision I regretted.

Tolerance for Frustration

We proceeded to go through the instance with the tank only ever trying to hold aggro on a single target in each pull. Additionally it felt like he was going out of his way to stand in every bad thing he could. We limped along and did not manage to finish the dungeon before the timer ran out… and at the end… the tank was raging against us for somehow holding him back. We kept our cool and didn’t respond in kind… but this just bookends every experience I have had in pugging. When I saw the above post, it explained the feeling so well.

Granted there is a lot of league of legends specific stuff buried in there…. but the thrust of it is true. Doing a successful dungeon run with random people involves a crazy juggling act and if any one person doesn’t bring their specific ingredient it falls to hell quickly. Without a doubt the person that gets the blame is almost always the tank or the healer. In the case of the single target tank, I am pretty sure he all his rage was directed at our healer… who could not keep him healed because the adds kept killing her. While I and her husband did as much kiting as we could to keep her alive… and we made it as far as we did because of this… there was only so much you could do when the tank only wanted to tank a single mob at a time.

I guess after years of really good guild groups I have found my tolerance for frustration extremely lowered. On a regular basis I have one of my less patient friends asking me to queue for various things with him… and my answer is always the same. I will only do it if we have a full guild group. Ultimately I would rather wait weeks to make that happen, than to step foot into and tank another PUG group. Granted I am exceedingly lucky in that I generally DO have a large guild group that I can rely on. As a result I try my best to help the other members of the guild with whatever dungeon they happen to be needing at the time. It just works better when you have a non-judgmental group of friends doing something, than a bunch of strangers.

NBI Poetry Slam

October 8, 2013 by Belghast

Internet Dragons

Last night my group wanted revenge for the previous two attempts at Amdapor Keep. During the day we plotted our path and strategized what we would change, and when our fearless healer made it online, we went into the dungeon once more. It has been a long time since a dungeon had gotten the better of any of us. That is one of the odd things about Final Fantasy XIV is that you have a fixed amount of time to finish any dungeon. For Amdapor Keep we had 120 minutes, and quite frankly we used every single minute of that in past attempts to try and reason through the fight.

On my first run through the dungeon, the group I was with had mastered the first boss encounter, and in the subsequent two runs we had one shot it without much issue. This meant on attempt two we spent nearly an hour and a half working on the Demon Wall encounter. For anyone that has played a Final Fantasy game, they will immediately realize the encounter, as it is one of the more legendary ones that seems to appear in most games. Essentially you have a fixed amount of time to destroy the wall before it destroys you. In the MMO version, it essentially reaches a point where there is just too much damaging going out to be healed through.

However the little tweaks we employed in the strategy worked well enough that on our first attempt, I managed to get knocked off the side and the group still recovered without a tank to finish taking down the wall. This brought us forth to new batch of trash… that basically included a version of the boss from Haukke Manor mixed in multiple times within the packs. I don’t think we actually wiped on any of this trash, but it was some of the more annoying trash I had encountered to date. Finally we were up against the final boss of the dungeon… that is some form of a black dragon.

It took us 30 minutes of tries but we managed to formulate a workable strategy, and then it clicked in place once we learned the secret to avoiding massive amounts of damage. With 30 minutes to go we managed to make it through the encounter, this time without losing a player and finish off the boss. Amdapor Keep is doubly awesome in that it rewards both the currency we need and some fairly nice gear as well. Over the course of the dungeon our dragoon got a pair of boots, bard a chest piece and I believe legs, scholar healer neck, ring and pants… and alas me the tank nothing but the satisfaction of killing the encounter. I hope to go back in now that we can hopefully farm the dungeon for goodies.

NBI Poetry Slam

Yesterday one of my good blogger friends Syl posted a call to arms of sort. Her idea is that we “shake the bonds of srs blogging bzns” and join the ranks of many other bloggers who have written poetry over the subject of games, gaming and MMOs. If this concept were not fertile enough, she also pinged me over Twitter to let me know that she was expecting an entry from me. So I realize I am not getting out of this at all. Warning… just like my blog, my poetry is “different”.

I spent a lot of time writing poetry in the past, and even participated in more than a few poetry slams at various coffee houses during my high school and college days. I tend to draw inspiration from beat poets… but my own brand of poetry is a bit “odd”. She was expecting a poem about my current MMO crush… Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn… but I chose to draw inspiration elsewhere.

The Tank

born of stone
embraced by fire
Juggernaut standing
with stalwart purpose
and sharpened will

moving slow
into dank crypt
long axe slung
across broad tense
rampart shoulders

leading cautiously
this weary band
of wizened adventure
moving closer
to the maelstrom

with pealing cry
and furious motion
swings bold axe
cleaving flesh
commanding attention

this is my domain
my steely sphere
of present influence
and none shall pass
my constant vigil

Hopefully that will appease the Syl god and she will not sent me furious messages over twitter of disappointment. I think it is a pretty cool idea and I look forward to reading what other people come up with. NBI started out with a simple purpose of trying to help out new bloggers, but it has taken on a weird blogging festival atmosphere for the various sponsors. Its almost like a holiday that lets us mingle together with a shared purpose, and I feel like this poetry slam idea really adds to that purpose. Syl will be collecting all the entries on her own blog, so it will be interesting to read them all together in one place.

Class of 2013 Rundown

October 7, 2013October 7, 2013 by Belghast

Sandman Spurned

I am having one of those mornings where I am progressively groggier as the day goes on, regardless of how much coffee I imbibe. Last night I had another case of simply being unable to shut off my brain. Upstairs at the keyboard I was falling asleep, but as soon as I went downstairs and laid down… all vestiges of sleep seemed to disappear. Eventually I got back up, and as a result I am paying for it this morning with a greatly decreased mental state. I wish I had some grand cure for not being able to think.

Newbie Blogger Initiative

nbilarge

We are just about to enter our second week of the Newbie Blogger Initiative, and it seems to continue to gain momentum as we go. I really need to find the time to update my class of 2013 blogroll, because at the time I created it we only had 6 blogs in the program, and just moments ago I went to the forums and counted 18. So in the weeks time that the program has been underway that number has more than doubled. Remember it is not too late to join yourself. If you are interested please check out the website and post on the forums.

Class of 2013 Rundown

Check them out, add them to your news reader and potentially add them to your blog roll. Lets give these newcomers some much needed link love. I have been reading most of these and they are posting some good stuff. Additionally check out the NBI Info and Articles thread on the forums for a run down of all the sponsor topics that have been posted.

Much Ado About Mathosia

October 6, 2013 by Belghast

Much Ado About Mathosia

A few days ago I wrote about the upcoming zone event that had been advertised for Rift, called Mayhem in Mathosia. So I have to say it sounded really cool, major invasions going on for a few days in certain areas of the world. I did not have a chance to log in Friday night, but after running around town I logged in yesterday evening and participated for an hour or so. I have to say overall I am extremely disappointed. I expected there to be more going on than there actually was.

I wandered around Freemarch did several major invasions and quite honestly the entire time I was wondering why exactly they made a big deal about this. The invasions themselves felt absolutely no different than the ones that NORMALLY happen in Freemarch. As far as the loot that was supposedly available, I saw no sign of that either. The only thing out of the ordinary I managed to get were a bunch of gifts that you could give to the people of freemarch. I am guessing there is an achievement for giving these out, as it did not seem to really do much of anything otherwise.

Maybe after doing FATEs in FFXIV I have come to expect more out of an event, or maybe I had just worked this up in my mind to be something bigger than it actually is. In either case I found the experience overall disappointing. I fear that in order to see any of the loot they are touting you would have to literally grind events for hours… and the frustrating part there is there was a significant amount of time that passed between the spin down of one event and the start up of the next. The event so far seems like “much ado about nothing”, and while I am sure I will pop in and participate in some of the other zones… it is no longer a priority for me.

A Fitting End

Since the Rift event was a massive disappointment, I ended up back in FFXIV with the guild. For awhile now we have been trying to get eight players to 50 so we could finish out the storyline. The final arc takes place over the course of two eight man dungeons, and I really wanted to experience it with my guild members and freshly. One of our members got impatient and finished things up on his own, since he was the first 50… but he has generally been really good about keeping the surprises silent so we can experience dungeons together for the first time. Dallian was the last to reach 50 of the 8 man team, and as a result we spent a bit of time last night killing random stuff in Northern Thanalan to push him across the line.

The conclusion felt as epic as this game deserves, and the fact that it takes place over two eight man dungeons and an eight man trial only adds to this feeling. There has only been one other MMO that I have played that had anything close to an ending, and so far this game sets better with me. At the end of SWTOR you had a nice clean tie up… that went nowhere… nothing in the world changed around you. However in Final Fantasy you essentially have completed one chapter of the game, and are treated to a nice epilogue.

This would have been cool enough alone… but the moment you finish the sequence… you are given the NEXT set of quests to start carrying on AFTER the events of the finale. The peace you just fought for is only the opening act of a much more dangerous tale. The thing is… while you are playing out the finale, at no point does it feel like anything other than the end of a game. You are even treated with credits upon finishing the quest. It feels like finishing any other Final Fantasy game, but in the continued traditional of being the most inappropriately named series… there is nothing final about it.

I am really looking forward to seeing new content released. It has been rumored that the 2.1 patch will include a new 4 man, 8 man and the 24 man raid content. If we can somehow manage to keep our entire guild interested… we might someday be able to do the 24 man content by ourselves. At very least we seem to have a really well balanced 8 man team. The two 8 man dungeons were a bit of a letdown in one area however. The 8 man guild hest was extremely awesome in that there was no main tank… and as fights progressed both tanks were equally active. However in the two Garlean dungeons, there was definitely one main tank and one tank dealing with everything BUT the boss. After how equitable the division of labor was in the hest, it was disappointing to see it fall back to the old standby of main tank/off tank.