lfr Archives - Page 3 of 4 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Santa RNG

December 25, 2013 by Belghast

The Sidewalks Roll Up

This holiday is considerably different than most. Always there is a natural flow to the events, but due to my Aunt needing dialysis it has completely changed the order of things. Traditionally last night I would have been up with my family, as they have always celebrated on Christmas Eve. Traditionally we would go to “midnight mass” that actually happened about 7 pm, and then retire to my grandmothers house afterwards for awkward conversation and eventually even more awkward gift exchange. During this my uncles would get into the cherished conversation of “why this random thing I own, is better than this other random thing you own” or “who hates ethnic groups more” or even the more recent “random insane government conspiracy theory”. One of my uncles spins these grand tales of conspiracy that are delivered in way that they almost sound cogent… until you realize that the keystone of his argument is completely batshit crazy.

Now however the game has changed, as we did not spend last night with them… but are instead supposed to go up today. Which pushes aside my wife’s family gathering… but that is a tale for another day. This left us at home, by ourselves for the first time in years on a Christmas Eve. We did not exactly plan well for this occurrence and as about 7:30 rolled around we decided we were hungry, and that nothing at all in the house sounded good. Which is slightly insane, since we keep silly amounts of food on hand that could be prepared with minimal effort. I got bundled up and went out into the cold night in search of sustenance.

We have a saying here that the “sidewalks roll up” as a way of saying that the town is completely quiet and no business is being transacted. Last night it quite literally felt as though the sidewalks had rolled up. The only businesses open were Walgreens and Taco Bueno… and the line there extended quite a long ways across the now empty Reasors grocery store parking lot. Seems like there were other people trying to find food on Christmas Eve. Slightly forlorn I returned home and cobbled together something to eat out of the banquet of things we have laying around the house. This morning when I went out to forage I was feeling no more positive that it would not occur again, however I successfully scrounged two sausage rolls and a jump start of caffeine to get us both going.

Santa RNG

I would have thought that maybe last night players would have felt a wee bit more charitable since it was in fact Christmas Eve. However if anything it seemed to make the assholes more assholish, and the clueless even more lacking. I got to listen to more than one variation of the “you all suck” speech, but I dealt with it, because like I have said before playing DPS lets me compartmentalize my world. I only care about the objective and achieving that objective, and since I am not tanking or healing and by default only responsible for myself… I can just zone in on that job and perform it. I have lamented over the last few weeks how I have been unable to get weapons for my Enhancement Shaman. So yesterday I soldiered on in the effort of trying to fill those gaps.

It might have been in the spirit of the season, or maybe I just finally hit a lucky spot in the random number generator… but for whatever reason Santa RNG paid out big-time. First I managed to pull the extremely cool looking Softfoot’s Last Resort from the protectors event. Not very long after that I managed to pull the Seismic Bore mace from the Iron Juggernaut encounter. So in one night I managed to bump both of my weapons up to decent levels and can now actually chart on the damage meters. Thing is… Santa RNG was not finished quite yet. Over the course of the evening I managed to pick up two pieces of the Tier 16 Shaman set the Shoulders and then finally the Chestpiece. I still have a few slots that have 496 gear in them, but at this point there are not that many. I have reached the point where Throne of Thunder really has no benefit at all for me, so I can simply focus on doing Siege each week. I might have to do one last run however to pick up my final sigil of power.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

So while I might sound sullen at the moment, I am sure as the day moves on I will enjoy myself. Right now we are trying to get up and about and out the door so we can be long gone from my grandmothers house by the time my uncles show up. As a result I need to finish this post up, get showered and ready and gather up the gifts. I hope you all have a really awesome holiday, and that if you didn’t get what you wanted… you at least got what you needed. I personally got exactly what I needed… some time off work and the freedom to mill about the house peacefully. Other than that anything else I gain from the holiday is gravy. Hopefully you have a wonderful day surrounded by loved ones and blanketed in goodies. I wish you all a very Merry Christmas, and if you don’t read my blog again before then… have a very Happy New Year.

I Hate People

December 23, 2013 by Belghast

Plans are a Crutch

I had these plans yesterday of running the last part of Siege of Orgrimmar, but didn’t actually do that at all. I queued for it at one point, but after seeing it would take an hour I bailed and gave up. After being iced in for several days, we were out of a few things… not the least of which was toilet paper and paper towels. The above picture is to show the extent of the icing… for years I have gotten in the habit of raising my wiper blades so they don’t get frozen to the window. As you can see it is like everything had been sealed in plastic to preserve it for eternity. If nothing else I knew I had to clear the vehicles so we could leave if we absolutely needed to.

It actually did not take as long as I expected. I went outside in my pajamas and started my jeep, then went back inside to take a shower and get ready for the morning. When I got back out the heater inside and engine had managed to warm the ice up enough to where I could start breaking it off rather easily. Roughly 20 minutes later I had cleared my Jeep and was headed back inside to let my wife’s vehicle warm up. I could barely feel my fingers… but it was at least clear. When I cleared my wife’s vehicle I had the foresight to actually wear gloves.

We made it out of the house pretty easily, and I have to say this is the weirdest ice storm I have ever experienced. Everything is absolutely coated in a layer of ice… the trees, the vehicles, the grass, anything elevated even slightly off the ground. However the roads are almost completely dry. It is like the perfect ice storm… all of the pretty with none of the consequences. Granted some parts of the city are out of power as the ice snapped powerlines… so they would definitely question my assessment of no consequences. All in all however it could be been and likely should have been much worse.

I Hate People

I mean this in the nicest possible way… but I hate people. When you put me in a room with more than a half a dozen people a severe fight or flight instinct triggers. Now imagine how that instinct multiplies when you put me in a busy store during the holidays filled with hundreds of people. I am generally pretty good at swallowing down that feeling, but the more stores you expose me to… the more of an asshole I become. I am thankful that my wife realizes this because by the time we reached the last two stores of the day I am sure I was an absolute bear to be around. We had several things still to pick up on our list, so while we were out and about… and since we were both going a little stir crazy we decided to try and knock as many things off the list as possible.

Target was both the worst and the best place we went all afternoon. It was the worst because it was inanely busy and as I rounded the corner near the seasonal area… the instinct kicked in harder than it has in years. There was this huge zombie-like shambling mass of people migrating back and forth between toys and electronics. I gave up on any notion that I was going to go check the Lego isle and got out of there as soon as possible. It became a logistical exercise to even navigate my shopping cart through the narrow passages left by gawking customers. I suddenly realized why a lost child just sits down and cries… because at that point I seriously did feel like surrendering to the hopelessness that was all of those people pressing in on me.

That was the worst part… the best part however is just how efficiently they were managing the checkouts. They had roped off the area in front of the cash registers and while this caused the line to snake all the way down to the pharmacy area, it did make it move faster. They had a worker acting like a traffic cop to funnel people down the little shoots and to the next waiting cashier. Additionally they gave us a 10% discount as an apology for the whole credit card fiasco. Since we were actually hit during that event… I felt like we had more than earned it. Last weekend my discover card was off in Oklahoma City and Norman making purchases without me… and we are assuming since we still have our credit cards… it is tied to the whole Target event.

I probably would have gone postal at some point during yesterday, but we went to eat at Monterry, a Mexican chain restaurant we go to regularly. When I say regularly… I mean it, because the waitresses know our order by heart and often times fight over who is going to wait on us. Yesterday we had Daisy, who is extremely awesome and has the same pen fetish that my wife does. Over the time we have been going there, we have become rather social with them… and eating there act like a reset of my buffer. It was a happy place that helped me cope with the madness that was stores like Old Navy. Still by the time we ended our tour at Big Lots, I was so far past going that I am sure I was acting like an ass.

Relaxing with Friends

Yesterday before the madness began, I noticed that my good friend Vernie had managed to hit 90 on his mage. I did my normal song and dance about how awesome the Timeless Isle was for catching up, but as a very squishy class it seemed that soloing out there was just not something viable. We made tentative plans for me to grab one of my characters and help him get some gear after I got back from the holiday craziness. It was shortly after I got home that he logged back in and we did just that. At first I tried to use Exeter my paladin, but I quickly realized that I already had gotten the weekly chests when I swam him out to get the chest in the pirate cave. I grabbed Belgarou my druid, because I knew I had not really played him in a few weeks.

It turns out that this was a great call as I ran out of leather some time ago and could greatly use a run to replenish it. We faffed about the island for several hours and in the process we managed to get him Helm, Chest, Bracers, Belt, Gloves, Back, Legs, Ring and Trinket. Which in itself was a pretty amazing haul for our first outing. He had not really played since Cataclysm, so there are a ton of systems that simply did not exist back then. The big one is the LFR system, so as we hunted for gear on the island we queued for Mogushan Vaults. The queue was surprisingly short and we managed to make it through the three boss raid in extremely quick time.

I guess the game did not want him to have an unrealistic view of how the LFR system worked, because when we queued up for the second part of the raid… it went horribly. Someone pulled the boss too quickly, the tanks had no clue what they were doing… and we wiped. Moments after the wipe the raid just disintegrated in a matter of seconds. I told him that sadly that was also extremely common. While we waited for that raid to officially die we went out to Dinosaur Island… or more properly Isle of Giants. We had zero luck in both pets and eggs, but we killed quite a few and I got some more leather. I am not sure if it was in the first raid or the second… but at some point Vernie managed to pick up shoulders.

During the course of our faffing about he managed to go from 450 something to 474 and if we can get him a few more upgrades he should be able to start doing Throne of Thunder…. which I think is one of the more enjoyable instances of the expansion. After we finished the second raid, that went surprisingly successfully. Elegon managed to eat a half dozen people to the “floor boss”, but all in all we pulled out a win. Will of the Emperor was a wipe at first, namely because the tanks didn’t really know what they were doing. However someone luckily explained to them and we managed to pull that victory out as well. All in all it was a really fun night, and I was happy that we got Vernie a ton of upgrades in the process. Once again Faffing about pays off.

Hole In Itemization

December 18, 2013 by Belghast

Just Too Good to be True

I set out on a mission to attempt to earn a 498 pvp weapon last night through the justice point to honor conversion. For the most part it went easy enough, and while there were plenty of mouthy folks in LFG the instance runs themselves were smooth enough. I just kept my mouth shut and did my job as dps and pushed through it. It is amazing how much it defuses a troll when no one at all in the party responds. They make a few comments then quiet down themselves because no one is feeding them ammo. For awhile last night I was thinking that this was really going to be an awesome way to earn starter weapons. Unfortunately like so many great ideas this one had a massive flaw, that comes from the fact that I do not PVP… nor I understand how the PVP systems in any game work.

First flaw in the plan was the listed conversion rate was not 375 Justice Points to 250 Honor, but instead 500 Justice Points to 250 Honor. This was manageable but basically meant that you had to earn 3500 JP to be able to get a weapon. I did that last night without any real issue in a matter of hours. Second flaw… and this one is the fatal one. Apparently in order to purchase weapons with honor points, you have to have PVPed enough during the current season to earn 7500 honor. Since I have not PVPed at all on any of my characters during this expansion, let alone the current season I simply cannot purchase weapons. I have no desire to PVP enough to gain 7500 honor, which would be roughly 30 battleground wins. In fact that sounds like just about the worst possible way to spend my time I could imagine.

Jewelry Is Nice

Since I had already taken the hit converting 3500 Justice to 1750 honor… I really had no desire to take the hit again and convert 1750 honor back to 875 Justice. Other than weapons I have had a few glaring holes in my gear. I was still using a crafted 450 necklace and a 450 ring. While the weapons all require honor earned during the season to purchase, the gear however does not appear to have a similar requirement. As a result I picked out a fairly decent neckpiece from the vendor for I believe 1250 honor. This got me one step closer to my overall goal of being able to queue for Siege of Orgrimmar.

At this point I flew out to the Shadowpan Assault quartermaster in Townlong. Sure enough they had a decent ring as well. After plugging these two holes in my itemization and after picking up a slightly better weapon in the heroics I ran to get the stockpile of honor, I am now finally able to queue for Siege of Orgrimmar. While I didn’t necessarily get what I wanted out of the nights activity… I actually still got what I needed. Maybe the rolling stones were right all along.

Hole In Itemization

So after all of this, I return to the original thought process that there is a massive whole in itemization, at least from the standard late expansion “catch players up” mentality. I got into a bit of a discussion of an aspect of this yesterday over on Twitter. In previous expansions, there existed higher tiers of heroic level content. The prime example of this was Trial of the Champion that helped catch players up in gear, both on normal and heroic modes. Then later in the expansion you had the three instance story arc of Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron, and Halls of Reflection that ratcheted up the difficulty level as well as the rewards. I can remember Halls of Reflection heroic still being a significant challenge in Icecrown raid gear.

While I love the concept of the Timeless Isle, and the whole explore to find nifty things ideas… they are quite literally giving us epics in the process. This is extremely friendly to altaholics like myself, and has allowed me to gear out an army of 90s… but I feel little to know sense of accomplishment from doing so. The Wrath era sequence was probably my ideal for gearing. It felt significant gearing from heroic, to the trial 5 man and then finally being able to queue for the Icecrown 5 mans. Additionally the gearing seemed far more complete, since each 5 man tier dropped a complete set of gear including workable weapons.

Now it feels very much like, “Gratz on 90, here is your epic gear” but while you can queue for these raids… without having a way to get a decent weapon you become an instant drain on any group that ends up getting you. There are weapons you can get on the Timeless Isle, but like I said yesterday they are cost prohibitive (20,000 coins for a one-hander, 40,000 for a two-hander) and at 476 they are simply not worth the effort and do not provide enough of a bump over 463 crafted/heroic weapons to make it worth your time. Now that I can queue for Siege however I will hopefully get lucky enough to pick up a weapon that way. Additionally I will continue to run my nightly Heroic Scenario, as the potential 516 weapon would be well worth the time spent. Additionally these scenarios when run with a guild group put money in the guild coffers and count towards the weekly.

Crafting Hates Enhancement

My general theory is that this glaring hole was intentional… and by making it they did not want to devalue completely the 502 crafted weapons. I have my own opinions on the whole “crafting should be best” line of thinking, but I can see why they would want this. The problem however with this line of thinking is that there are simply not weapons available for every itemization. For enhance… they tend to favor slow weapons… so that rules out the daggers. That leaves Fist, Mace and Axe that are all usually 2.6 speed. In the 502 weapon itemization there is not a Fist, Mace or Axe that is agility based. The “rogue” weapon that is craft-able is a sword, which shaman simply cannot use.

I know in the past this has happened with Druids and other “weird hybrid classes”, but the fact that other players can nod and say “I know that feel bro” doesn’t really make it any better to try and work around. At this point I will start queuing my way through Siege LFR each week and hopefully in the process I will luck my way into a weapon. If not hopefully one of my nightly guild heroic scenarios will pay off and I will get one or more 516 random stat weapons. No matter which path I take however, my shamans fate is now in the hands of the random loot gods, which is never really a fun place to be.

Without Burdens

December 15, 2013 by Belghast

Of Holiday Parties

This morning I am slowly eating my oatmeal and trying to make my head stop throbbing. I feel like I have a “hangover” but I didn’t even drink last night. I think this means I am now officially “old”. Last night was the Christmas party for my group at work. I think I said it yesterday, but we are the only group that actually likes each other enough to hold a party. It has been years since I have felt the way about a group of people that I do about these people. Quite honestly I probably never have felt exactly the same, but my very first work environment was a similar “family” feel.

The highlight of the evening was dirty santa, which for folks who do not know what that means. Gift exchange with the ability to steal from others. The best gift was… a large thing of crown royal, a pair of captain america underoos, and a package of fake moustaches. I cannot and nor do I really want to picture the scenario that was planned with that combination of items… but it was needless to say hillarious. Even better… someone had inadvertedly brought a Captain America mask and shield… the underoos were donated to the winner for the full effect. I brought some legos, and they were hotly contested… as were the call of duty mega blocks that were brought.

Probably the coolest item of the night was one I ended up winning initially but then was quickly stolen from me. The “Boozequet” was a floral bouquet made up of individual shots. The creator had hot glued the individually sealed shot drinks onto floral wire and then arranged all of them in a bouquet. Extremely clever, I told the creator that she should market it and I am sure during this time of the year she would get a lot of business. She even made a cute little “drunk santa” tub for the base of the arrangement. The whole night was pretty amazing. I go through this “I don’t want to go” phase right before any party, because my body rejects being around lots of people. However when I actually do go I have a blast.’

Without Burdens

I really do not have a lot of gaming news today. When you have a big event going on in the evening the entirety of the day tends to be dominated by planning and preparing for it. My day yesterday was either planning or waiting to play for the holiday party. As a result I didn’t get into anything that I could not rapidly exit if needed. That meant my only real options were LFR. After some moving stuff around I managed to get my ilevel high enough to queue for Vale of the Eternal Spring, the first section of Siege of Orgrimmar. In fact currently I am sitting at 502 with a 450 ring still equipped that I have not been able to replace. I am proud of myself because I got there on this alt without “actual raiding” and without leaning on Burden of Eternity gear at all.

Why does this matter? Well a Burden of Eternity is one of those things from the timeless isle that is either a super rare drop, or super costly (50,000 timeless coins). When you apply it to the gear tokens that drop from the island it transforms what would have been a 496 ilevel item to a 535 ilevel item. The problem is, just like the normal tokens there is no control whatsoever on what stat package you will get. This creates a lot of odd situations like tanking items with no avoidance stats on them. I personally find the burden gear to be a bit of a crutch, and what I mean by that is… I cannot seem to make my brain ignore the fact that it is higher ilevel and instead evaluate the stats of an item. Many 502 items will be better for your character than these 535 items just because of the particular stat distribution and the inclusion of gem slots.

Having these extremely high ilevel but not very optimized items just confuses the mix for me. I have or have had quite a few of these on Belgrave my main, and in each case I find it really hard to make myself abandon them for a better itemized but lower ilevel item. This is the double edged sword of ilevel after all… the number does not adequately represent how well a player is geared. I could have a bunch of extremely high ilevel items equipped that are functionally useless for my class. On my shaman I admit that I equipped a healing trinket that I got from a random loot bag… just to get my ilevel up high enough to be able to run Vale of the Eternal spring. I am sure there are lots of other people out there doing the same. I like the feeling of seeing my gear score going up incrementally, but I feel like as a gauge of quality it has never really been valid.

A Quiet Day

This has to be the slowest I have taken to eat my oatmeal in the morning. I blame the multiple directions my head seems to be spinning right now. As a result of my present state… I am hoping for an extremely quiet day. Far as I know we don’t really have much of anything to do today, so my hope is that other than doing laundry I can pretty much sit on my comfy couch and relax. Said relaxation is probably going to involve a lot of LFR for a shot at shiny shiny loot drops. Now that my paladin can queue for Siege I want to get him all the way through to Downfall. I also should run my shaman, dk and druid through as well. Who knows how much I will actually get accomplished but needless to say I will be enjoying my day today.