leveling Archives - Page 7 of 13 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Raider on Red Maps

August 13, 2023 by Belghast

Hey Folks! We did not record an episode of AggroChat last night, and as a result, I don’t have the usual Sunday post. Instead, I am going to talk some more about Lightning Arrow Raider. Last night I finished leveling through the campaign and then started running some maps to test the build further. I am still very much wearing the same SSF gear that I picked up through the campaign, with some minor crafting in order to try and fix my resistances a bit. As it stands I have woefully negative Chaos Resistance, very low Cold resistance, and then capped Fire and Lightning. If you want to check out the current state of my build, I dumped a fresh POB or you can check out my character on Path of Exile website.

I also recorded a video of me running a T11 Red Map, where I took a single death from a random rare. I had no clue what hit me, but after the fact while editing I noticed that it was an Innocence Touched monster, which is one of the more annoying god-touched mobs. All told I am pretty happy with where this build ended up with only some assorted bench and essence crafting. It gives me a lot of hope for a smooth transition into maps as I do this all “for real” on Friday evening. I’ve always liked leveling a Ranger because generally speaking all of the tools you need you have easy access to. I will likely run Lesser Multiple Projectiles/Mirage Archer/Caustic Arrow until I can get Lightning Arrow from the quests. I also plan on muleing a bunch of Lightning Arrow gems as I can so that I can hopefully corrupt my way into a Vaal version if I don’t get one to drop.

My goal with the build is for it to be a fast mapper that I can hopefully use to progress my Atlas quickly. At some point, I am likely going to create a Righteous Fire Juggernaut again to have something that I can do Heist and Delve with. I have to say though I am looking forward to playing something with big screen-clearing potential because there are a lot of league mechanics that I have never really explored very much. Legion, Blight, and Breach all really want you to be able to kill lots of the screen quickly in order to get the best possible rewards, and Righteous Fire has always sort of sucked at this. I am legitimately wondering how well this build will do with Heist as well, and I’ve spent a tiny bit of time in Delve and it seemed mostly fine so long as I did not press out into the darkness too much.

If nothing else there is a satisfying explosion of lights whenever I fire my Lightning Arrows, and that will be fun to map around on. I am not necessarily trying to race or anything, but it will be fun to wreck maps for a change. Don’t get me wrong, Righteous Fire is plenty good at mapping but it never felt anywhere near as satisfying as some of the videos I have watched of dedicated mapping builds. I think my early strategy will be Essences, Expedition, and maybe some Lockboxes in order to get a stash of crafting materials to help fix my own gear. I am also going to try and lean as little on buying from trade this league as I can. The main reason why I am not rolling SSF however is so that I can start selling things that I might find along the way that could be worth some change. I am definitely a trade enjoyer, but it was also refreshing to level the Lightning Arrow Raider on mostly found gear.

Anyways… I feel like I am probably annoying everyone with talk of Trial of the Ancestor league. I am excited I guess, and just can’t stop talking about it.

Rethinking Diablo IV

June 2, 2023 by Belghast

Good Morning Friends! Yesterday was the launch of Diablo IV and I did in fact play the game as the servers came up. There was a bit of weirdness with battle.net as things launched but it had resolved itself within the first fifteen minutes. After that for the most part it felt like logging in and playing any game that had been active for months. I feel like whatever work Blizzard did ahead of the launch was deeply beneficial to the stability of the servers, because while we have yet to see what a difference the “standard copy” players make on the 6th… for the most part every was solid. In fact, I would say that the game itself performed far better than I had experienced in any of the closed or public testing phases that I had participated in. The entire game just felt snappier than I remember from the last public test and I am not sure if this was engine optimization on the side of Blizzard or the fact that Nvidia released brand-new drivers for the game launch. Whatever the case it felt pretty great, which I guess is making me question some of my early opinions of the game.

I made a Barbarian, and effectively the same one I have made a half dozen times in various testing phases which allowed me to breeze through the character creation boss. As far as a skill set I decided to give Maxroll a shot and follow their Upheaval guide since of all of the fury spenders that one felt the best to me in previous phases. Now I am uncertain which is the case, but either Blizzard significantly buffed the Barbarian to make it feel better at the early stages of the game… or the entire game has been nerfed a bit. Whereas before combat felt sluggish and plodding… it now feels snappy and fluid. I gotta say… I don’t hate this game. It still isn’t really an ARPG in my book… at least not one in the traditional sense but for an Isometric MMORPG it feels pretty solid. Maybe I have just had enough time to get over my initial disappointment, or maybe it is the fact that I have largely finished with the current Path of Exile League and have mentally put that game to bed for a while. Whatever the case I had quite a bit of fun last night. Not so much fun that I did not have a pause mid-evening to go out and play with the outdoor cats.

When I say… something significant has changed what I mean is that I am level 15 and have mainlined the story through the first zone and have not taken a single death yet. This is very much NOT the case in previous testing phases. Barbarians had to basically spam potions to survive the early phases of combat and it feels like I have barely had to pay attention to my health other than during boss fights. Someone from the team had announced that this was pretty much the same build as the most recent stress test, but I do not believe them at all. It does make me want to fire up a Necromancer to see what the state of minions looks like and determine if that is also fixed. Whatever the case… my opinion of Diablo IV as a whole would be massively different had I experienced THIS build in any of my testing phases. I’m not sure what last-minute balance changes were made but they certainly feel significant.

The cash shop is now available in the game, and it is in fact a cash shop. Some of the cosmetics are pretty good looking, like this crusader-esc outfit for the Barbarian. However, most of the cosmetics are kinda fugly. Like maybe I am just not as big of an equestrian person, but it feels like a lot of effort went into the horses in this game and they are all sorta awful looking. I am hoping there will be mounts OTHER than horses… because really… I almost NEVER ride a horse in an MMO. Give me a big bear mount or something like that, and you might pry some money from my hands. Maybe it is a side effect of growing up around horses my entire life… but they are sorta boring. Essentially there is a single outfit for the Necromancer and a single outfit for the Barbarian that I consider worthy of a purchase, but the rest of the dross is kinda “mid” at best. Essentially the conversion rate of Platnium to dollars is $1 to 100, so the big fancy cosmetic armor packages are $24.

All I really did last night was make a beeline through the story bits that I have seen multiple times for this first zone. I’ve not even unlocked most of the map, so in theory tonight I will be spending my time branching out and exploring things… and now I feel like I have the motivation to actually complete all the dungeons to get the imprint unlocks. Mostly I wanted to finish up the story while I was still relatively low level in case they had not resolved the problem of leveling up and making you feel weaker. So far that has not really been the case, which I am hoping means that is the side effect of more balance changes. I am sure I will be focused on this game for most of the weekend and will likely give you a more formal review on Monday.

I created a Clan last night if any of the usual suspects want a home. However, I am rapidly realizing how long I have been away from Blizzard games and how pretty much everyone has a new guild family that they play with. I will admit it was a little weird to see that <House Stalwart> had been created and that I had nothing to do with it. Granted I have been “Not-The-Guild-Leader” of the guild that I founded far longer than I was actually the leader, and it has always been in great hands with Kylana. I figure <GREY> will be pretty small in Diablo IV given that I am not sure if any of the AggroChat regulars intend to play the game. That said if you need a chill home feel free to apply in the game or hit me up while I am playing for an invite. I left it public so folks could sign up while I was offline.

I’m still not entirely sure what I think of Diablo IV. I think better of it now after having played this latest version… but it is still not necessarily what I was hoping it would be. I think this is going to be a great game for most of the players who decide to pick it up because the vast majority of Diablo players as a whole… get in… play through the campaign once or twice… and then uninstall the game feeling satisfied maybe to revisit it at some point in the future when they get the itch. I do wonder what the endgame and seasonal cadence is going to look like going forward. I’m not entirely certain this is going to be a game for the players who have adapted to the ways of Last Epoch and Path of Exile. In fact, I think there are probably going to be some players who were waiting around to see what Diablo IV was… before finally committing to those games. I do have to give Blizzard credit for starting to change my opinion though with some last-minute tweaks and balance changes… and an incredibly stable launch night.

World Scaling Thoughts

January 19, 2018 by Belghast

Firstly since I was absent in making a blog post yesterday I feel like I need to address said lapse. I’m dealing with this horrible strain of the flu that has been going around. I was in fact one of those people who had the flu shot early in the season as soon as my work offered it, and still managed to catch it. Last week I went to the doctor and they misdiagnosed me with a bad sinus infection. As the week carried forward and I was not getting any better I went back to the doctor and this time around they thought to swab me for influenza. I feel horrible because I probably infected a bunch of people during that weeks time considering people are dropping at my work like flies. The biggest challenge of this batch seems to be thinking… as in stringing together a sequence of thoughts into something that makes sense. I tried it yesterday and failed… primarily because the topic I want to post about involves a little finesse. However here I go attempting to make a post work in between the coughing spells.

On Tuesday January 15th the World of Warcraft was once again forever changed with the introduction of patch 7.3.5 and World Scaling. You have to understand I have been thought a lot of emotional tinges about this sequence of events and it really has taken me this long to be able to sit down and formulate my thoughts. Now this is something that I had been wishing would arrive in World of Warcraft for so many years before there are lots of games out there that do it really well. Prior to the patch I had been furiously leveling a Tauren Hunter and upon logging in I had the immediate guttural reaction of “Gah! This Feels Horrible! LOGOUT!!!”. The longer I have lived with these changes the more nuanced my opinion has become, and today I am going to try and weave it all together into something that makes sense. Firstly lets talk about what leveling has been like for the last few expansions in the heirloom economy. Putting on a full set of heirloom items turned you into a god and you could pretty much roll though content with impunity. With zero hyperbole… on my beast mastery hunter I could pretty much oneshot every single mob in the game while doing level equivalent content. This had a bunch of positives and a bunch of negatives… the negative being you weren’t actually doing any of the content legitimately. The positive is it allowed you to tackle all of those boss level encounters and made up for the fact that the zones you were leveling in were effective ghost towns and you might never actually see another player.

The other side effect is that you could level exceedingly fast because of the sheer volume of things you could kill in your wake. You could pull big and pull sloppy and shake it off knowing there was virtually nothing the mobs could do to you that would actually kill you. This meant that on a really good night I might be able to do twenty levels of content, and on average something along the lines of ten to fifteen. It was not unusual for me to do literally all of outland in a weekend afternoon buzzing from 58 to 68 in a single sitting. The changes have firmly closed this era of the game. Speed leveling is probably still possible but the definition of fast has changed considerably. In the nights after the patch I have played with many variables but for the most part it is a really good evening if I see two dings. In addition to the lack of speed is the constant fear of death as even wearing a full set of heirloom gear I feel just as weak as if I were wearing greens. I am constantly in peril of pulling too much or the wrong combination of mobs at the same time and maybe not being able to live through the damage. Previously food and bandages had no value at all because you simply did not need them… but I find myself utilizing both again. The big boss encounters however are the problem because once again… there is no native population of players leveling through these zones anymore. There is no one in zone shouting that they need help cleansing ursoc for example… an encounter that is still mostly unsoloable for anyone but a tank with some sort of health regeneration of their own. The island full of all of the boss encounters in Grizzly Hills… I couldn’t even get through one of the mini-bosses let alone the final encounter that requires burning down the boss while also managing large waves of adds. Essentially if a quest rewards a blue item… it is probably off the menu for solo players to ever attempt because due to world scaling there will never be a time when it is far enough beneath your level to comfortably solo.

So do I mourn the old fast and silly leveling with heirlooms? Admittedly a little bit. Because it was fun to feel that powerful and get through the content that quickly. However I also realize it was a bit much and lead to all sorts of problems like being unable to kill something slow enough to complete any of those “use item while weakened” type quests. Level scaling in truth is good for the health of the game because it means everyone will be actually doing the content in the game rather than buzzing past all of it. Essentially everyone will be leveling every alt now like they were leveling their first. I am sure Heirlooms do speed things up still, but it isn’t nearly as noticeable as before. The problem I see however is that in the new economy… the survival capabilities of various classes are likely going to need to be tweaked. I’ve been playing a bit as Survival Hunter… and there are just certain encounters that I cannot handle by myself. I take too much damage and cannot chew my way through the hitpoints before they chew through mine. Survival is a fairly sturdy class, so that tells me lots of other classes are going to have pure hell in this new world order. I am not sure what sliders they have to tweak how the content feels, but this first pass feels like it lands a bit to much on the side of unforgiving brutality at times. There have been several times I have had to log out and walk away from leveling… because it was annoying me too much. Leveling alts was always my moment of zen and my happy place… and now it is stressful. Again a lot of the problems are with the fact that while the world is scaling I am still utterly alone in all of these zones with no help to be had from another player happening across my path and maybe seeing I am in trouble. The general world sorta feels the way that Argus feels at times when you are a little undergeared…. and maybe that is the problem. Heirlooms previously were supposed to scale like you were wearing the best blues you would wear at a given level. There should never be a time when you feel undergeared for the content… but unfortunately that is mostly how I have felt every moment after the patch.

Essentially it is an adjustment period, and I will have to get used to feeling weak again. I think in the grand scheme of things this is probably a good step for the long term health of the game. I just have to learn that I can’t fly nearly as close to the sun as I used to.

Grind to a Halt

December 4, 2017 by Belghast

When we last visited my Orc Warrior on this blog I was just about to start the Warlords content, and this week when I have not been poking my head into Destiny I have spent it pushing forward in World of Warcraft. It’s honestly been a shock just how fast leveling went until I hit Legion content. The old world was a confusion slog where I jumped zones each time I saw an exclamation point show up on the adventure guide. This meant I was constantly jumping zones every few levels and most of that journey was a complete blur. When I started Outland I did the majority of Hellfire Plateau then jumped over to Terrokar Forest for a little bit before finishing up the grind in Nagrand. From there I jumped to Northrend and did a good chunk of Borean Tundra before jumping to Grizzly Hills and doing most of it and finally leaping over to Scholazar Basin to finish the run out. From there we entered the Cataclysm zones and did all of the 80-85 grind in Vashj’ir without actually completely finishing that zone. Then came Pandaria and I managed to do the entirety of the 85-90 grind without leaving Jade Forest. From there I went to Draenor where I managed to hit 98 by doing the entirety of Frostfire Ridge and finishing up with just a tiny tiny bit in Spires of Arak.

This is the point where the express elevator has come to a grinding halt and I’ve been confronted with normal speed leveling because all of my heirlooms petered out at 100. I chose to do Stormheim first largely because it is both my favorite and least favorite zone at the same time. All of the Norse themed Vrykul bits are awesome, but all of that faction nonsense is not. It did give me access to another Order Hall champion quickly however so I am down with that. At this point I have finished both the main story arc of the zone and the faction bullshit arc and am likely to move on to the next area. There are a lot of things I have noticed… not the least of which is how ridiculously huge this shield is on my female orc warrior. It is as thought they scaled the shield for the insanely bulky male models and then just called it good enough for the female ones. The second of which is how much more intricate and slower paced the Legion content is compared to Pandaria or Warlords. When I leveled through the content it seemed really quick, but what makes things slog a bit in comparison to what came before is how fragmented the quest hubs quickly become. This might also be an aspect of the map itself feeling so busy with so many world bosses and objectives hidden out there to slow your journey down. I cannot resist wasting a few minutes to find a chest that is nearby or going after a mini boss, and as a result my leveling pace has gone to hell.

At this point I am contemplating investing in a set of Heirlooms which will set me back quite a bit of gold. It isn’t as much about leveling quickly, it is more about not outpacing the gear I am wearing…. and also not looking like I am picking up scraps from the battlefield while I level. I’ve liked making outfits for my character up until this point and then progressing my way through the content without having to care too much about swapping out items. In a perfect world Warcraft would have heirlooms for every slot and I could simply level my alts without ever having to worry about swapping gear out. With the new races coming in I fully expect to be leveling a lot more alts, and in truth investing in plate 110 heirlooms now will probably helm in the long run given that I tend to play plate wearing classes more than any others. I am still really bummed about the direction they are taking with artifact weapons. I would have loved to see them turn them into leveling heirlooms much the way that the items that dropped off Garrosh in Pandaria served this purpose. It would have been a fitting end to a really awesome chapter of the game to be able to then use those weapons to level your alts. Still having a lot of fun but I am also ready for the ride to be over and for my character to get geared up.