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MMO post

Catch Up Mechanics

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Last week I talked about it feeling like it was the end of the expansion in World of Warcraft, and in part that was due to the way that I am playing the game and focusing on alts.  However there is apparently another key way things are starting to feel like the end of the expansion, and that is catch up mechanics.  Now yesterday I posted about pushing through and dinging 110 the Legion expansion level cap on my Orc Deathknight.  I managed to find a couple of lucky grabs on the auction house including 3 cheap pieces of demonsteel at 835 item level and a cloak at 870 item level.  Other than those items however I managed to scrape together what is a reasonable item level to start going and doing stuff…  in a single nights time between a combination of world quests, legion invasions, and opening the broken shore.  When I first saw the Dauntless items I found them a little underwelming…  but that was on my already 890 main character.  The fact that you can start picking up 850+ items for 400 nethershards…  when I walked into the Broken Shore with roughly 4000 of them…  allowed me to really flesh out those missing gear slots.  The only negative there is that the rings and trinkets are both “Unique Equipped” which were sadly the two slots I needed the most.  Thankfully during the invasion event last night I managed to pick up a second ring at 840, taking my item level to the point where I could apparently start queuing for Looking for Raid.

Now I am not sure what the item level breaks are for the various LFR segments… but I was honestly shocked to find out that I could queue for Nighthold without having done anything in Emerald Nightmare or Trials of Valor.  Before heading to bed I did the first part of Nighthold and picked up an 860 necklace and an 860 artifact.  So other than a few strategic grabs from the auction house…  I managed to pick up everything else I needed to gear a character in a single night.  I am now sitting at 846 item level… and will probably finish doing the rest of LFR tonight hoping to pick up a few more pieces.  I also need to start running dungeons so that I can complete the Death Knight Order Hall sequence…  and during the day today the final missions that I need to run should be finished.  I guess while sitting on a higher level character I didn’t notice just how quick the item level ramps up, but while out roaming the world on a brand new character it is extremely noticeable.  It definitely seems the end of expansion catch up mechanics are in full effect, as the game attempts to usher you closer and closer to that 900ish item level.  I still have yet to get a Legendary, but in truth I have only been trying to two nights now.  I also need to research how exactly to get the alternate artifact appearances, because while I am not expecting to go crazy and start farming for them like I did on my Warrior and Paladin…  I do however don’t want to miss easy opportunities when they come up.

The other interesting thing I am noticing… is that playing Horde on a server cluster where the Alliance greatly out numbers you…  leads to some interesting interactions with other players of the same faction.  The two items I got from LFR I was functionally handed by other players who were offering them to me.  Also while out in the world on Broken Shore especially…  the horde seems to do the same sort of thing that I do in open world zones on my warrior.  That is help random players.  There are a lot of cases where I was straight getting wrecked and another player ran up and started attacking the same mobs to help me push through them faster.  Up to this point I really haven’t had much in the way of communication, so maybe I am just reading intent into their actions where it really isn’t there.  Just saying so far it has not been a horrible experience, and at least the public channels are not clogged with madness the way they are Alliance side.  I still have a significant problem with the Horde in general…  not from a factional standpoint but from the standpoint that “bestial humanoid” is not really the sort of thing that I flock to in games.  However Orc seems to be a happy medium for me, and I’ve come to this realization pretty much any time I play one.  Every other Horde race and I have significant issues.  The Tauren are just too big and feel lumbering and slow.  The undead and trolls… I cannot get past the hunched posture… or the tusks…  or the missing bits of armor.  Bloodelves have the problem of being the most elvish elves ever…  and if you have been around my blog for long you know my distaste for all things elf.  The goblins in theory are an option….  but they sorta end up being played for comic relief much in the same way that gnomes do that that annoys me.  The Horde really missed their opportunity to make a lifetime member of me when they failed to somehow recruit the Dark Iron Dwarves.  For the moment however I am largely okay with being a blue green guy with a Mowhawk and Mutton Chops.

Deathlord Rises

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For those not in the United States… apologies for taking yesterday off from the blog.  I had an insanely busy weekend, and it was about half way through yesterday that I finally realized that it was in fact a Monday…  and not a Sunday.  Extended holiday weekends always feel a little odd, because it just seemed like I had two different Saturdays.  One of the Saturdays we went to Oklahoma City in a whirlwind trip to hit the three Half Priced Books they have…  in an attempt to get there and back before the tornadic storms hit that evening.  Thankfully for the most part all we got was some rain…  and not the grapefruit sized hail that they had been warning us about.  Then Saturday number two…  aka Sunday…  we spent the day deep cleaning the house and working in the backyard.  I once again have flower babies, that are going to need to be watered in a few minutes whenever I finish this post.  I am going to give them some time to acclimatize to the back yard before taking any photos.  Additionally right now our pool is a lovely shade of green because we are fighting an algae bloom…  so hoping that clears up as well before I snap some photos.  Then of course yesterday was me hanging out and doing nearly two weeks worth of laundry…  because we were lazy as hell last weekend.  I wound up going to sleep around 9:30 last night instead of the usual midnight…  because maybe the crazy weekend was catching up with me.

In gaming news… I played a silly amount of World of Warcraft.  Like I am not really certain what is going on but much like Grace I find myself in a mini renaissance with the game.  It is funny how when I didn’t have flight I didn’t think I really missed it.  I have always been one of those people who espouse the philosophy that not having flying during the early days of an expansion is a better thing.  It forces us to get down in the weeds and not to skip quite as much content.  That said… it is funny just how much more enjoyable the game has been since I could zip around wherever I wanted to go.  I had zero desire to play alts prior to getting the Legion Pathfinder achievement and flight…  and suddenly afterwards its like the skies have opened to a whole new day.  I had mentioned before that I am now working on my first 100+ hordie and choosing to do it on this low population server that Grace has the majority of her horde characters on.  That in itself has been an interesting experience.  The challenges have been that there simply are not that many people out in the world so when you encounter something you cannot solo… it might be a bit before another player happens to wander along.  The benefit however is that there are always plenty of ore nodes to mine and I figure when I start Broken Shore I will have zero issue finding treasure chests.  I figure if I am going to stick around for long… I will have to at least level my tanking weapon so I can solo things a bit easier.

For the moment however I am loving being an Unholy Death Knight.  Last night I managed to get about halfway to 109, which I hope means that I can push across the finish line to 110 tonight and begin properly gearing my character.  I am completely caught up in the Order Hall quest line, and to the point where I have to be 110 to get the next step.  I am sorta fast tracking my way through Stormheim at the moment, and if need be I will do the same in High Mountain.  Years ago I compiled a list of the order in which you should do SWTOR planets and bonus series in order to get the most bang for your buck…  and if I am going to do more alts I feel like I need to come up with the same sort of thing for classes and the order hall campaign.  Grace has a good idea in that she waits to do the order hall dungeon steps until she has opened up that zones quest as well.  Had I done this… that would have meant starting Highmountain First and not Azsuna like I usually do.  As I have a mountain of alts still to level it would be nice to have some sort of a guide to go off of… and most of this information is available through a series of other sites…  but not really written out as plainly as I would have liked.  So that might be a little bit of homework going forward.  I know that when Stormblood hits I am going to lose a lot of my gusto in World of Warcraft, so I guess in a way I am trying to get the most out of this moment.

Side Note:  You should totally check out our AggroChat where we talk about the May game of the month Wolfenstein New Order

 

No Time To Explain

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Once upon a time in Destiny year one, there was a weapon called The Strangers Rifle.  It was funky looking, had a unique feel and sound to it… and you got it whenever you finished the primary storyline of Destiny…  then spent forever collecting stuff to level it up completely.  It was also gained from someone that we really know little to nothing about…  other than the fact that she doesn’t have time to explain why she doesn’t have time to explain.  However this weapon got left behind in the past largely because The Taken King introduced the ability to upgrade weapons through infusion.  However they did introduce a hidden quest that involved a bunch of madness that I mentioned at least briefly back in April of 2016 in a post.  Apparently they have changed it up a little bit… but once upon a time you had to wait for the Paradox mission to appear as the daily heroic.  Then during the course of the mission you had to collect three ghost fragments and return the Future War Cult Ghost to Lakshmi-2 in the tower.  From there you had to pledge the Future War Cult and gain 1000 reputation to unlock the next part, which involved killing Taken Minotaur until a Simulation Core dropped.  Then we reach the part I was stalled on for over a year for various reasons…  killing Atheon in the Vault of Glass on any difficulty.

Last night the awesome folks in Tequila Mockingbird…  but more importantly Squirrel and Jex helped pull together a raid for the purpose of getting me my Atheon kill.  We did it on old school difficulty, largely for the purpose of trying to steamroll through it and then move on to getting in a Crota kill.  After the raiding I lucked out during the next part, which is to find a chest that spawns in a weird version of the Twilight Gap crucible map.  Thankfully I knew my way around the map and I decided to head over to B first…  and sure enough sitting right beside what would normally be the capture point was a chest containing the piece I needed.  From there I went on to do the Blood of the Garden quest, which did not exactly work how I was expecting it.  Firstly I did not realize I was not in the final area of the map…  and I knew there was an anger mechanic that was supposed to spawn the Taken Ultra that I needed to kill to get the final component.  However I didn’t remember how high I needed to get my anger and I wound up slaughtering wave after wave of Minotaur until I somehow managed to get the anger to over 200%…  and when nothing still spawned I noticed the arrow on my mini map pointing to the next area.  Sure enough the big Minotaur was up and way easier to take down than attempting to survive that constant deluge of a dozen regular Minotaur at a time.  Finally I went back to the tower and claimed my No Time to Explain exotic pulse rifle…  to which I had to sacrifice both an exotic that I was no longer using… and a 400 primary to bring it up to modern standards.

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That was the part of the evening that went amazingly well…  the other part of the evening was struggling to do Crota.  First off I had only actually been into the raid once before… and back during the “we overpower this so much, what are mechanics even” phase.  As a result we struggled more than a bit, because we were doing it on heroic where resurrections are not a thing that happens.  Additionally we lost a member of our fire team a little bit into the raid, and wound up replacing him with an unknown quantity.  Said new person was moody as hell while we were actually failing to mechanic, and then when we called it a night made sure we knew how mad he was.  Before he left chat he said something along the lines of that he bailed on his normal raid to come get an easy Crota kill, and now he screwed up and missed the raid invite.  No one promised him an easy kill, and even though we were failing a lot… we were laughing and having fun while doing it.  That is ultimately the important part, and sure I didn’t manage to finish my Necrochasm quest…  but I had a lot of fun learning bits and pieces of the modern version of the Crota raid.  In truth I think if I went back in again I be more prepared for what I needed to get through on the other side.  All told however I managed to pick up a couple of cool weapons in the process including a spiffy new Oversoul Edict…  so I think in the grand scheme of things the night was a complete win far as I am concerned.  Once again huge thanks to Tequila Mockingbird for hanging out and making stuff happen, and Squirrel for prodding them into doing so.

Not Squishy At All

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I am having one of those mornings where I am struggling to find anything I feel is worth actually talking about.  The last few days I have been sick and as a result I have been living in this weird little bubble world.  I mean prior to this I had already been in a pretty deep turtle phase where I largely kept to myself, but when you add illness to the mix its like I forget the world exists.  As a result I have been deep into comfort gaming territory, which in this case means World of Warcraft and doing all sorts of random PVE stuff that no one is actually doing.  I’ve been spending a fair amount of time in old raids attempting to get set piece drops.  Similarly I have been roaming all over Draenor which is almost completely empty these days, and picking off rare mobs left and right for achievements.  I spent a good deal of time yesterday for example in Tanaan Jungle killing the big named mobs for mount chances and farming up Apexis crystals for that moment eventually when I get 150,000 and can purchase the spiffy fel themed mount.  All of which are not super important activities but give me just enough focus to take my mind off the fact that I can’t actually breathe.

I of course have also been keeping up with the Broken Shore content… even though it feels like I should be wrapping that in quotes.  Broken Shore feels like the most “more of the same” items I have seen in awhile.  Sure there are world mini bosses that are constantly spawning, and sure there is a new batch of world quests for you to do… and sure there is a weirdly futile base building mechanic…   but it all sorta feels like we have done it all so many times at this point that it is just busy work.  I mean it is busy work that I am doing because at least in theory it is busy work that should someday lead to the class themed mount.  However I am wondering how much more I care about it at the moment, and if I don’t shift into a “only hanging out on Friday nights” mode for the raid.  I have been greatly enjoying doing that and seeing the people I missed.  It is even sounding like I might cycle into a primary tank role for Friday nights to let the Wednesday night tanks have the night off.  In truth Fury is a fine spec, but it will probably only be something that I use for farming old world content or if someone really needs me to dps something.

I am just a prot warrior through and through.  Other than the two expansions where I flirted with playing a Deathknight…  I have been a Warrior for as long as I can really remember.  Sure my first raid main was a hunter, but as soon as I could get into tanking raid content I did…  even to the point of joining a completely different raid team to make that happen.  There is just something about the player fantasy about being this unstoppable object that appeals to me.  Like for example I really enjoy the fact that protection is a reasonably viable spec for player versus player content.  I take great pleasure in watching enemy players decide it is a good idea to attack me.  Like I am the least aggressive player while flagged, and I am generally going to leave you the hell alone pending you leave me alone while I do those PVP flagging world quest dailies.  However there is always somebody that wants to poke the bear…  and in doing so they get to learn the lesson of just how impossible it is to take me down in a one versus one situation.  In truth there are lots of times I am easily juggling three players as they attempt to attack me.  There was a moment from some time ago where it finally took five players focusing down on me to bring me down out in Stormheim.

So last night when a random Fury warrior decided it was a good idea to attack me while doing the PVP Naga daily…  and never actually managed to take more than 10% health off of me…  I had to chuckle.  I am definitely a PVE minded player, but if you mess with me I will stun your ass and wreck you.  That said I am normally more in the mode of helping out my fellow cross faction buddies and spent some time last night pulling packs of murlocs  so that people could get their Squirky battle pets.  This was apparently a limited time event and spawns on an island off the west coast of Azsuna.  Said island is filled with a bunch of elite murloc packs that are hyper aggro just like any other murloc in the world.  As a result I spent a good time just gathering stuff up and farming it down so players could fly in and get their pet… then get the hell out.  I have to say it was a challenge just clearing myself of enough aggro to be able to get out of combat to fly off the island when I finally decided it was time to go.  The end result is an extremely high fidelity Murloc battle pet…  albeit a fairly ugly colored one.  However since I love my murlocs… I will add this to all of the blizzcon themed murlocs I have hanging out in my pet storage.