Aberroth Down

Good Morning Folks. My new Judgement Paladin has been a bit of a wild ride. Like I said yesterday this was a brand new character on Sunday morning, and as of yesterday I have effectively completed all of the content that is reasonable to complete at this moment. Since factions are shared across your account, I was able to pick up where I left off on my spin to win character at seven of ten harbingers down. I trivially downed the last few harbingers and then was set up for the pinnacle boss fight which is Aberroth. I get that this entirely has been lowered in difficulty with the Tombs of the Erased patch, but it still seems like a significant challenge.

Yesterday over lunch I made an attempt and was shocked to take down the entire encounter in one go. There are some tricky bits that I happened to just luck into doing the right thing. The problem with being able to tank all the damage, is that you don’t really learn the fight until a bit later. At this point I have now done the encounter around ten times and know some of the pitfalls given that not ALL of those were successes. I’ve managed to pick up copies of most of the items that I will at some point want to swap over to… but I either need to cook them in Nemesis Eggs or hope for better drops with more LP in order to really make the transition.

Last night I grouped up with Ace, because the Woven Echo which requires you to kill 10 Harbingers in a row was kicking my ass. Instead of suffering alone… we suffered together because it was STILL kicking our collective asses. Instead we opted to alternate between summoning Aberroth and trying to farm the items we were needing from the encounter. The only annoying thing about doing this is that the only person who gets guaranteed boss table drops is the person who uses the key. There is a chance of getting drops, as we managed to pick up a few items on the table when not being the summoner, but it seemed super rare. That said it is still well worth it to group up for this because you can always gift items that the other person needs, and the encounter goes so much faster with a second person.

The only frustrating bit is that I realized some of the items I was hunting for were unique to the 500 Corruption Uber Aberroth Woven Echo version of the fight. It is highly unlikely that I will get any of those, at least not without them significantly nerfing the encounter which is counter intuitive to the fact that it is the highest difficulty pinnacle fight. I picked up a few items that like i said need to cook in eggs, but I did swap a few pieces of gear out. First up I got a chest piece with good health and t7 Mana Gained on Vengeance which is required to make the Judgement build feel good since that is your way of regenerating your mana quickly. I also farmed up a Twisted Heart of Uhkeiros and slammed T7 Judgement onto it so that I could swap off my weavers will sentinel relic. Lastly I farmed up a Throne of Ambition unique idol which is highly suggested for the build and does seem to significantly increase my damage output, but I did lose a bit of Healing Effectiveness in doing the swap.

More important than all of that however is that I shuffled my gear around and am now 100% Crit Damage Immune. This is pretty massive because during all of my recent boss attempts I was only sitting at around 35% which was VERY noticeable. I’ve also gotten my block chance up to 76% which is pretty solid, though I would love to be able to hit 100% at some point. The shuffling did drop my Increased Healing Effectiveness below 1300, but only barely which still feels pretty solid. My health is also just shy of 2800 and hopefully once I pour on some more levels I will be able to cross that threshold. A lot of my survive comes from stacking ward which I can usually have around 3000ish without much issue during a boss fight.

The four extra points in Judgement has allowed me to pour some additional area of effect and duration making the whole mapping experience feel considerably more comfortable. This actually does now feel like Righteous Fire and chasing down things like Loot Lizards has become trival. For pure boss fights however, I should probably drop the Anointed keystone because which it is great for mapping it is sort of counter intuitive to how bossing works. Since I am not dropping Consecrated Ground on the floor, I can’t stack it up and add multiple layers of damage on the boss and those same multiple layers of healing on myself. It is kind of annoying to have to unspec something and respec it for mapping…. but it might be worth it if I was chain farming Aberroth or something like that. Probably something I am going to play around with a bit. Ultimately I could probably get this effect by just un-equipping and re-equipping my relic… but then I would also have to fiddle with respeccing all of the other points it is giving me.

The only BAD thing about zooming through so many objectives as I have as quickly as I have… is that I am sort of directionless. I just set up a bunch of Nemesis Towers and I will likely be cooking a bunch of items in those eggs tonight, but in the coming days I am probably going to shift my focus to my Beastmaster build that I intend on going Squirrels with. Other than that I will probably offer assistance to anyone that wants help with Harbingers or Aberroth kills. I still need to max out my Weavers Faction, but it seems like chain buying Woven Echoes goes a long way towards that. I spent down all of my Memory Amber so I need to spend the next bit farming it back up.

Fully Specced Betrayal is Wild

Hey Folks! Tomorrow is the start of Blaugust and with it will come some more Blaugusty-themed posts, and probably a few days without proper league updates. Not that I think anyone out there is hanging on my words wanting to know what I did the day before… but you know I can pretend right. At this point, I am completely done with white maps and almost done with yellow maps. I get in this weird place where I try and finish the yellow maps before I run any of my red maps because I know Kirac will progressively stop offering lower maps when I actually do that. Tonight we have raid night and I will be back in Final Fantasy XIV, but after I bid Ace adieu for the evening I plan on starting running corrupted reds to begin knocking them out.

I did some more upgrades. First I bought a +1 fire gem neck for pretty cheap and was specifically looking for one with a lot of dex on it, fire res, chaos res, and everything else was negotiable. I picked up a second amethyst ring which gave me quite a bit of life and was enough to cap my chaos resistance while also pouring on more fire resistance to feed my regen. The boots came straight out of a shipment and all I had to do with it was drop a chaos/fire affix on them and resistance swap cold to fire with harvest. I still need to get relevant eldritch implicit on it, but did manage to hit ignite proliferation on my gloves. I think my gear is good enough for now to make it all the way through T16s. At some point, I plan on probably going block-based and dropping determination.

Right now I am running my first Atlas with Niko and Jun and will probably splash in some more points into Ambush and Scarab gain. My second Atlas for the moment is Einhar and Beyond with the goal of trying to farm Black Morrigan for six linking my chestpiece eventually. I believe Black Morrigan can only spawn in T14 or higher so I will get a bit more serious about that when I get up there. I’ve never done Betrayal with full Atlas support and it is honestly pretty wild. I will kill a single Betrayal mini-boss and end up getting a big ole loot explosion. For example, the above loot is from killing Hillock who spawned by himself and then offered to drop some currency. So I get why folks are talking about this mechanic for early loot bases. For me, I mostly was trying to speed run my way through the betrayal crafting unlocks. Once I get all of those I am likely going to shift over to Expedition since it is also on that same side of the tree.

At this point, I am sitting at 69 maps in my atlas and the only yellow-tier map that I have left is Leyline. I used a horizon orb to get a copy of that map, and will probably run it after I finish work and before I start doing some FFXIV nonsense. So like I said we have raid night and then I need to start running experts again because new bookrocks unlocked today, but tomorrow I will likely push through as many of the red maps as I can and see if I can maybe wrap my atlas up before the weekend. I running a bit low on chaos and do not want to cash in any of my divines yet, but I will likely start buying some of the unique maps needed to finish out the atlas. I am slowly pushing my way through Maven, Searing Exarch, and Eater of Worlds and hope to have those unlocked by the time I hit T16s. Hopefully, I get some more big ticket items to drop so I can be a little more liquid.

This league is so freaking good folks.

Iron Banner Results

Evaluating Guardians

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I spent quite a bit of time this weekend looking at this screen or one very similar.  As I stated the other day, this is my first time really doing the Iron Banner weekend content, and I have to say I really enjoyed it.  The only sadness that I feel is that it seems like I am deeply leaning into the game as many of my clan mates are leaning out.  I did however get to run a few matches with the Axioma clan crew, but unfortunately I had someone come to the door and had to run quickly to go answer it leaving them somewhat stranded with some dead weight.  The biggest take away from the weekend is that I am not nearly as bad at PVP as I always thought I was.  There were several maps where I lead the score count, which is a pretty cool feeling.  I rarely if ever however have the best KDR.  I am super objective based and there are many times I will bum rush an objective just to keep the opposite team from having time to secure it.  It feels like maybe the rest of the folks in Iron Banner are not necessarily doing this.  I saw an awful lot of deathmatching in areas that were nowhere near objectives and since the name of the game was control… it felt like I spent a lot of time trying to make up for team mates that clearly had no interest in actually playing the “game”.

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As the weekend went on I felt like I learned a lot.  I fell for far fewer “traps” where people were trying to bait me into attacking and ending up getting picked off easily.  I also started to learn the maps significantly better.  There are still a few that are the bane of my existence…  namely the Firebase Delphi, and the Dreadnaught map are ones that no matter how many times I play them I just feel like I struggle.  Then there are maps like Widows Court and Bannerfall that I always seem to do really well on, but I guess this makes sense as there were always maps I did better on in Enemy Territory or Soldier of Fortune 2.  I mention those games because in many ways playing Crucible and Iron Banner reminds me of all the time I spent playing shooters during the late 90s and early 2000s… and it has been shocking how fast certain aspects of it has begun to feel “natural”.  I’ve been wondering if I had done myself a disservice all of these years by not playing PVP in MMOs and now I am starting to realize that it is just a different experience.  MMO PVP just does not feel anywhere near as fluid as Destiny, and because of that I am doubting if I will feel anywhere near as good.  That said I do absolutely intend to take some time and give World of Warcraft battlegrounds and Rift PVP another chance.

Spoils of War

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Yesterday afternoon I managed to hit rank 5 with the Iron Banner and in doing so got quite the cache of goodies.  I of course bought the cosmetic rewards first…  because I kinda have a thing for emblems and shaders.  Based on all the various emblems that I saw during the event, I am wondering if they alternate between designs or something?  As far as the shaders go both were thoroughly obnoxious and I doubt I will use either, but I still had to pick them up regardless.  The weapon I was most interested in this go round was Finnala’s Peril the Hand Cannon because I am really hoping that with the April changes we see some quality of life improvements to that type of weapon in general.  Though if there is any evidence by the number of times I was killed by a Hand Cannon this weekend, I would say they are mostly doing okay.  Other than that I have always liked the look of the Iron Banner Titan gear, so any of that I could pick up would make me happy.  At some point I would absolutely love to be rocking a full set of the gear so that I look like the tank that I always thought I was.  I still have one full day to try and get some drops, and I have a feeling that tonight I will be upstairs on the PS4 doing just that.

The gallery shows off some of the drops I managed to get through the weekend.  In total I have gotten three different versions of the chest piece, and the one that I am showing off in the above image is not actually the highest level version I got.  I am now trying to level up a 309 light version to be my primary chest piece.  Similarly I have seen I believe three of the Hand Cannon drops but sadly most of them are pretty crappy stat wise.  I did manage to get one that was worth holding onto, but hopefully tonight I might see some with better rolls.  From my Rank 5 package I managed to get a really awesome 312 helmet and a 310 Ghost Shell…  then about fifteen minutes later got a 320 version of the same shell.  So all in all I managed to get at least three pieces of gear that I will be holding onto and making part of my permanent set.  As far as purchases, I picked up the Iron Camelot shoulders, and Bretomart’s Stand Machine Gun.  I kinda went back and forth on the Machine Gun as to whether or not to purchase it.  Comparing it to the Legendary machine gun that I had been using, I actually thought it was a little better and have now infused it up to usable levels.  I gotta say I really enjoyed Iron Banner this week and I have a feeling that I will be trying to do this next time it comes around.  Sure it took up a lot of my time, but I really enjoyed that time spent.  I can also already tell that once Iron Banner is over… I will be back to playing a lot of Crucible.

Hellfire and Horde

Adulting Sucks

This morning I am sitting here trying to eat my oatmeal and drink my coffee… and this Monday guy keeps pestering me and trying to make me adult.  Really freaking annoying.  This weekend was a tale of my wife and I avoiding adulting..  so much so that finally yesterday we had to get out and do things in the world.  Essentially yesterday was the day of doing all of the things we put off the rest of the break.  In the grand scheme of things it wasn’t too bad, but the world was cold and rainy… and when I first set foot outside yesterday morning my first instinct was to rush back inside and swear off breakfast.  Then my tummy kicked in and told me that it was hungry, and it was also sick of the options we had available in the house.  So I ventured out and got breakfast, and realized that I could in fact survive outside of my house shaped bubble with its blanket cocoon.  You can tell the hibernation instinct is strong… because we bought the fixings for a bunch of various crock pot meals…  so we don’t have to leave the house at all once we make it in from work.

Unexpected Activity

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A good chunk of my weekend was spent doing things to get gear for Belgrace my newly 100 Tauren Paladin.  When you boost a character they end up giving you a full set of green 640 gear, which is a significant increase over the sort of gear you end up with by natively leveling.  Also apart from having to get silver in the proving grounds… you are level appropriate for heroics and the first two LFR raids.  I however had pretty crappy luck in Blackrock Foundry with getting upgrades, but I did have a fair amount of luck picking up Baleful drops in the Tanaan Jungle campaign area.  So last night I was sitting at 656 with a decent purple weapon… that was sadly as good if not better than Belghast’s alliance side.  I had settled down into my blanket cocoon on the sofa prepping to watch my Sunday evening television binge of Once Upon a Time > Walking Dead > Into the Badlands > Talking Dead when I got a random invite from my friend Nubzy.

I knew that they raided on Sunday nights, but I had no clue they planned on dragging me into Hellfire Citadel.  I had told her that I was working on gearing and that I had managed to get to 656, but that did not necessarily mean I was expecting to raid.  They were resetting the instance apparently and were grabbing a ton of other people into what was their largest raid group to date of around sixteen people.  Brerhoof has always been awesome, and he set to making me some upgrades for my remaining 640 green slots.  So before I had even really set foot into the dungeon Brer handed me Gauntlets, Pants and Boots that were significant upgrades.  Then off the very first drop I managed to pick up Shell-Resistant Stompers and luckily I had not bound the boots yet so I equipped the drop and holding onto the BOEs for the time being.  Either I will get an upgrade for them, or pass them on to the next guildie that needs them.  The night as a whole saw me getting a bunch of really nice upgrades…  in addition to the boots I picked up a Helm of Precognition, an Warlord’s Unseeing Eye for offspec… and most importantly a 690 weapon upgrade Fel-Burning Blade.

Old School Feels

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While the gear upgrades were awesome… the real take away from the night was just how much fun I had.  The horde guild is named Facepull, and that should tell you something about the attitude and demeanor.  More than anything running with them… reminded me of the nights raiding with Duranub before Cataclysm.  It was an old school kind of fun, and even when we did something stupid… no one really got pissy about it.  We just kept pushing forward and making progress.  For having a bit of a strange balance we did really well making it up to Gorefiend before hitting a bit of a wall.  At that point we had a few members of the raid have to leave… one of which was a healer leaving us with a fairly unbalanced party.  The big surprise of the evening is I guess I did not realize that Nubzy was now one of the tanks.  I guess I knew her most as a Shadow Priest, so I guess in the back of my head I just assumed she was booming it up on her Druid.  Right now the plan is to gear out my offspec for tanking, but if we continue to need healing… I might change those plans at some point.

Paladin is the only class I have really successfully healed on… but that was back during  Burning Crusade/Wrath of the Lich King.  I know Paladin healing is far less whack-a-mole than it was… and for some people that is probably a good thing.  For me that really has no healing instincts left anymore from my Everquest days…  that is definitely a bad thing.  The only sort of healer I am is really the “mash button faster for more heals” kind.  Granted I did level as a healer in SWTOR on my Scoundrel, but good at healing companions is one thing…  good at healing people is a completely different one.  In Final Fantasy XIV I kinda fail at my Scholar and I am not exactly the sort of healer you really want on my White Mage either.  In any case I had a lot of fun, and the Sunday evening thing is something I could potentially get used to.  They don’t start until almost 8pm EST, which by that time I am always downstairs watching television anyways.  I managed to dps just fine while watching my shows last night, so in theory this is a decent fit.  I have to say I could get used to this raiding as a cow thing…  and the group of people seemed pretty damned cool as well.