warrior Archives - Page 17 of 18 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Cyrodil Excursion

May 15, 2014 by Belghast

Turning a Corner

I am still not overwhelmed with excitement about Wildstar, but I am maybe starting to turn the corner on this game. Last night I opted to work on the warrior a bit more, and it turns out the area I was languishing around had no actual quests for me. One of the frustrations with the game is that the quest advisement on the minimap makes zero sense to me. I keep trying to figure it out, but end up just hopelessly lost as I keep opening my main map to find the objectives. I know there is some sort of a golden path system that you can turn on to get advisement but I find that whole process frustrating. All I really want is a blip on the edge of the minimap showing me where I should head to get to the next sequences of quests. Additionally I had mobs that I simply could not find. There was an NPC in town that no matter how many times I moved through an area, never seemed to be where the quest turn in location was marked on the map.

All of this said, in my flailing I happened to stumble upon an instance of sorts revolving around trying to save Outpost M-13. I was woefully underleveled for the content but found it extremely enjoyable anyway. I entered the instance at level 10 and all of the creatures I stumbled across were 13 to 14. You start the mission as a hired shiphand on a cargo freighter delivering crystals. You are boarded and it is your job to try and protect the freight. I did fairly well here until it came time to fight the actual boss, and then I struggled a bit… having to try two or three times to get past him. Finally we land on a planet, that is absolutely gorgeous. You roam around with a 1950s style spaceman helmet, exploring what appears to be an asteroid with minimal gravity. What is awesome here is that when you jump you get hangtime like you would expect in lower gravity. Finally you wind your way around to Outpost M-13.

The next sequence of events plays out like the movie Aliens as you explore the base and subsequent mine looking for either survivors or the cause of the catastrophe. Mostly if more content like this exists in Wildstar… I might be happy to play it. While I simply could not chew through the hive queen boss, and will likely have to return “at level” I had a blast doing it. If nothing else this sells me on their universe, because stuff like that is really fun. The game still feels rather awkward at times, and I still have my problems with the warrior overall, but at the end of the day I am a melee player. While running around as a Chua with a shotgun was fun, it just doesn’t feel like “me”. So while I am still having issues with their UI design a bit, I am hoping I can fix most of that with modifications. I need to do some searching to see if I can find a serviceable mini-map replacement.

Cyrodil Excursion

For roughly a week I had on the Anook Alliance of Awesome calendar an event called “Faffing About in Cyrodil”. The idea was to grab as many guildies as we could and head to Cyrodil looking for whatever we could do. When we pulled together and finally coalesced we had roughly a dozen players, and not the most balanced party… but we worked with it. At first we made a valiant attempt on Fort Glademist, that was currently being held by the Aldmeri Dominion. However we struggled to even take the Lumbermill. This was partially because we mostly just charged in aimlessly and spread ourselves too thin, but even more so that we were a group of bolstered to level 50 characters… and it was being guarded by actual veteran rank players. The problem with bolstering is that it levels you to 50… but the base stats for a 50 without the benefit of armor increases or anything of the sort. This means as a whole we represented a pack of level 50 paper dolls for someone to rip through.

After making a couple of attempts we got tired of the running back and decided to shift focus to what my original goal was… collecting skyshards and beating bosses. The cool thing about Cyrodil is that it is pretty much a normal questing zone in addition to being a zone full of PVP objectives. So we wandered around the zone, often times aimlessly, collecting the various skyshards along the way. At the end of the night I was up three skill points and had dinged 49, and various other folks in the party had dinged as well. The dungeons in Cyrodil are really good experience, not to mention insane amounts of loot. It is somewhat sad that instanced dungeons are rather pitiful experience if you are not completing the quest, however you can gather up a group of friends and roll through the Cyrodil dungeons for hours and almost level exclusively that way. The respawn is fast enough that we were constantly having to fight our way back out of the dungeons as stuff was popping only one or two packs behind what we had just killed.

I was streaming last night and captured almost the entire thing, and as always posted it up on my youtube channel. It seemed like folks were having a good time, even though we didn’t really have any success at the PVP aspect of cyrodil. It is my intent to do this more often, and I will likely be trying to schedule another one of these nights for next Wednesday. However I think I am going to try and start it a little earlier in the evening. As the night drug on, you could tell that most of us were barely holding in there. This is the negative side effect of being a guild almost entirely made up of 30 somethings… and mostly LATE 30 somethings and 40 somethings. Five thirty in the morning comes really early, so I personally try very hard to head towards bed by at least 11. For our east coast folks that had a lot of them staying up til midnight or so. Hopefully with time we will find a happy medium that works for both the east coast and west coast contingencies.

#ESO #ElderScrollsOnline #WIldstar #Cyrodil

A Tale of Two Raids

December 9, 2013 by Belghast

Ending Hibernation

I had to vary up my morning routine today, as today is the first day back after snowmageddon. Until yesterday afternoon we had not left the house since Thursday evening. Mostly we got out yesterday just to see how the main roads were. If we based things on our neighborhood we would think the world was still under a solid sheet of ice. However as we got out and about we saw that the majority of the major roads were well travelled. That is not to say that I did not drive slightly under the speed limit on the way in, and not to say that I still did not slip and slide quite a bit. However I made it into the office without issue.

It is funny how quiet the office is. I expected to see more people here, however it is just me and one of the server techs. The irony is that while we are both in the office, we have been chatting over our in office instant messenger rather than face to face. I guess that is a sign of our lines of work, we are used to doing everything remotely. Had they not made a big deal about having “no remote work” policy, I would have simply worked remotely on Friday, and potentially this morning as well. However as to not give the impression that I was getting away with something untoward… I simply took a day of vacation on Friday. Not wanting to take a second one, I made the commute in this morning.

A Tale of Two Raids

Last night was a pretty interesting night. Since we had not really left the house since Thursday, I lost all touch with what day of the week it was. I had been living in a haze slowly poking away at leveling my rogue, which ended the long weekend almost 82. So when I was messaged by my raid leader to ask if I would be attending the raid, it was honestly a bit shocking. I had completely lost track of the fact that it was in fact Sunday, a night that we normally raid. Earlier in the week it was uncertain if we would even be able to make the raid happen, but we managed to pull in a friend of mine to dps for us. While a bit rusty she is improving with every single boss fight.

Stalwart has had something odd going on with raiding for some time. Essentially the guild has been a Tale of Two Raids. The non-guild-based raid group Duranub, had a pretty even mix of extremely high performing serious players, and not serious at all players that just wanted to raid for the sake of having fun. This lead to more than a few dramatic moments, so as 25 man raiding dissolved the groups fractured along those lines. During Cataclysm, we had no less than 5 ten mans that ranged from the super hardcore to the super casual. As attendance waned and folks left the game, myself included… the two groups that managed to hold together were that of the super hardcore, and the super casual.

When Pandaria released I quickly leveled Belgrave and Belgarou, and when it came time to raid I chose to bolster the super casual raid with my dps. The problem with that notion was the fact that the super casual raid lacked any form of reliable tanking. That unfortunately is one of those roles where you need your most talented players. Without a solid tank you get nowhere at all, and that is precisely what happened… they made little to no progression for a very long time. Seeing this floundering from a distance was a bit heartbreaking, but at that point I just did not have the patience to stick around and try and help out. I left wow once again, but this group persevered through sheer will of heart alone.

Warrior Returns

In the time I was away from the game, the Leftovers as they call themselves managed to recruit a stable tank Gamad, and the progress they have made was entirely thanks to her determination… and much drinking to manage to get through the struggles of working with the non-effective tank. Upon coming back I thought to myself… of all the groups that could use my help it was the Leftovers. So I have worked my little butt off to get geared enough to take a primary tanking slot. At this point I am sitting at 522 ilevel and for the most part can handle tanking almost anything out there right now. In the time I have been tanking with the group we have now cleared two new bosses, and are starting too work on a fourth. While we are still working our way through Throne of Thunder, it is nice to see steady movement forward again. At this point we are now done with the first wave of the dungeon and started work on the Tortos encounter last night.

This progress however might not have been. The under performing tank is back and available for raiding… and due to seniority and the fact that Gamad can out dps a good number of our dps… the Raid leader decided to put me with the under-performing tank for the night. Now I have to say, that the tank has some medical issues and is heavily medicated at all times. That said… it was still like trying to tank an instance with an easily distracted toddler. He was always off doing the wrong thing at the wrong time, and when it came time to do the first tank swap on the Troll Council fight… he was off dpsing something else. I have so much renewed appreciation for Gamad and what she has struggled with to this point. I have to say that if I have to co-tank with the other warrior very often, I will probably stop raiding. I knew it was bad, but I guess I had forgotten just how bad it was.

Slow But Steady

Thankfully the raid leader also saw how untenable the situation was, and quickly swapped the warrior to dps and Gamad back to tanking. From there we made a few attempts, each with their own adjustments and managed to kill the Troll Council. During this time sadly, the warrior had swapped specs but not gear… and ended up fury dpsing with a sword and shield. Basically when you are this inattentive it is time to just hang up your spurs and bow out of raiding for the good of the group. The leader whoever has struggled to make the group about family and friends, but there comes a point where keeping certain individuals hurts the overall spirit and morale of the whole. This is the sticky stuff that made me hate being a raid leader. There were many nights when I slotted people I didn’t really want to slot for the sake of social reason… not wanting to make a wife raid without her husband etc.

To be truthful this level of stress over variables you cannot quite control is much of the reason why I refuse to be a raid leader anymore. I got my fill of it over the three years I did it, and I commend the raid leader of Leftovers for his diligence to this point. That said the warriors return was a comedy of errors, and essentially if he is unable to pay enough attention to keep from charging headlong into the boss while we are clearing trash, it is probably time for him to stop raiding. That is not to say that I don’t think we should start doing something else that he CAN attend. I am thinking maybe a world boss night would fight the bill of letting the people who just do not have the ability to pay attention during raids, to feel like they are making progress along with family and friends. I don’t think we will ever be a progression based raid group, but without two stable tanks we might as well just do something else with our evenings.

A Positive Note

I feel like I have dwelled a lot on the bad during this post, but I want to end it on a positive note. Since my time in the raid we have completed two brand new encounters, and while we failed miserably at the fourth, we will do some adjusting next Friday and hopefully beat it in the face. Each of the wins has felt like it was sustainable. On the try we downed the council, no one actually died other than the hapless warrior. We completed it a man down, and everything felt very maintainable. This is a testament to just how good the high performing players in Leftovers are. I have no doubt that we will continue to progress our way through Throne of Thunder and hopefully complete the instance, gearing each of us to a state where we are ready to take on Seige of Orgrimmar before the expansion is released. I am personally pretty happy where we are, and how successful we have been.

Transmutation

December 7, 2013 by Belghast

Trolls of Thunder

Yesterday went pretty much as I had intended it. I hung out around the house and ran first my Paladin and then my Shaman through a bunch of LFR. Things went a bit slower than intended since I kept getting in on the end of a run and having to queue again to catch the first boss or two. I managed to get both characters up into the 480ish range. Still no real luck with the weapon drops, which seem to be the issue with catching characters up enough to be able to do Siege of Orgrimmar. As a result my warrior, paladin and shaman are all using 450 level weapons still, and I have not really had much luck with getting spirits of harmony on the smith to be able to bump those up to 463.

Of the options I have at my disposal for weapons, none of them really seem palatable. I could queue for heroic dungeons and have a random chance of getting the dungeon that drops a weapon… and a random chance on top of that of getting the weapon to drop. This would only take me to 463, so not really great in the grand scheme of things. I could farm timeless isle coins, but it takes 10,000-20,000 to be able to purchase a weapon… and in those cases the weapon is only 476 which really doesn’t help that much. So the best option still seems to be to queue for Throne of Thunder each week and hope, all the while trying to accumulate Spirits of Harmony for the smith.

Transmutation

With all of my crafters going, I have really felt the lack of my alchemist. There are some pretty sweet items you can make as a blacksmith that are 502 ilvl but they require lots and lots of Living Steel. Once again the only way to get living steel is to get it transmuted by an alchemist. As a result I have been directing my extra effort towards leveling Gloam my rogue high enough to be able to raise his way through the Pandaria alchemy. Currently he is capped out at 450 and cannot progress again until I level 75. As a result I have been working on quests out in Borean Tundra and I almost have him up to 72. Thinking about just making a serious push to try and get him to 90.

Rogues are way squishier than I remember, and while they have recuperate it doesn’t seem to offer the level of survival I am used to with my other characters. As a result leveling the rogue has been less than enjoyable. I am not really a stealthy person, and I have always played my rogues more like a swashbuckler than an assassin. However the only time combat goes really smoothly is if I make sure I stealth up and get my opening attack. Hopefully with time I will get back into the swing of playing one, as in the past… burning crusade especially my rogue was my favorite alt.

The thing I find most humorous is that Paladins now kinda play like rogues. I have been doing a lot of Retribution paladin, and the mechanics are almost exactly like a rogue. Thing is in many ways it works better. Instead of everything being based on 5 combo points, all of the attacks seem to be based on 3 even though your bar can fill to 5. I keep thinking that rogues as a whole would benefit if most of the combo point dumpers capped at 3 as well. I think this is why I enjoyed my warrior in rift so much as opposed to my rogue. The three mechanic just seemed to work better, it made the game play feel more “in the moment”.

Too Many Choices

Right now I feel absolutely deluged with choices anytime I play the game. At this point i have yet to run Siege of Orgrimmar LFR on Belgrave or Belgarou my two best geared characters. I am 4 coins away from getting all of my sigils of power and wisdom, so I would not mind finishing that off so I can continue down the legendary cloak line. I have not even begun to work on Belghast, so in theory I could get his gear in order and start doing heart of fear or something like that to get him high enough to queue for Throne of Thunder. Additionally I really do want to get my rogue up so I can have a transmute spec person again. I spent a good amount of last night prior to our 10 man catching his herbalism up so he can now at least harvest whatever I come across in northrend.

In the past when I have quit the game I feel like it has been because I lost sight of the things I wanted to complete. I feel like I almost need to create a World of Warcraft Bucket List. There are so many little things that I forget about that I do want to complete. There are so many pets and mounts that I could be spending my time farming. The entirety of all of this is really almost overwhelming. I have never completely loremaster for example, and that’s a thing I have always wanted to do. I doubt I will ever work on the Insane title like Rylacus, but I am sure there are hundred of other little bullet points that I would actually enjoy. I feel as though if I had a list of these all, it would be much harder for me to lose sight of the progress I am making towards the total.

As a result I think I am going to add a new section to my site, similar to my beta list for my WoW Bucket list. As I think of more items I will add them to the list and then as I complete them… I will check them off the list. Probably will keep it as a google spreadsheet for ease of use. I’ve seen a few other players with these and I thought they were pretty cool. All I know for certain is that I am having a blast with all the players that seem to be back from their own hiatus. It is wierd to see my battletag/realid lighting up with players I have not seen in years. At the end of the day, this game really is about the people you play it with.

Nostalgia Won

October 30, 2013 by Belghast

Crackception

That’s right… you are seeing the above image correctly. That is two in game npcs in World of Warcraft playing Hearthstone. The game that has caused such an upwelling of nostalgia… is being played in the game I am nostalgic about. I feel as though they are missing an amazing opportunity here however. If you could ACTUALLY play hearthstone inside of World of Warcraft, the same way you can play Legends of Norrath inside of Everquest 2… it would quickly become the ultimate piddling around waiting on someone experience. I can remember how amazingly popular the bejeweled and peggle became as pre-raid activities and those were just addons.

It would be amazing if they wove hearthstone into every aspect of the game. Peggle loot was a thing that existed, and while it took forever it was an extremely fun way to settle loot disputes. Would be equally cool if you could do something like that with hearthstone. However that would also be a sure fire way to derail the gameplay, but still an enjoyable one. I guess the hearthstone game board feels all the more enjoyable… when you see it in a three dimensional table top version in the above screenshot.

Nostalgia Won

The fact that you are now seeing fresh World of Warcraft shots on my blog means that I lost the battle with nostalgia. I caved last night and renewed my account for a month so I could get in and satiate the urge to play that has been brought on by hearthstone. I go into this knowing full well that this decision almost always ends up in tears of frustration, but I felt like it was something I needed to “get out of my system” nonetheless. I have to say… once I got past the extreme awkwardness of seeing people I had not seen in years, that the overall gameplay was rather enjoyable.

I spent some time piddling around Timeless Isle and managed to find a chest with some purple shoulders in it. Of course my friends immediately told me those were “not good”, but hell when I left the game I was still in blues. I did not manage to stick around for much raiding at all in Panda-land so anything I could get was a massive upgrade for me. I liked the concept of the timeless isle overall, the fact that you could get decent purple gear just by killing random stuff out in the world. Additionally apparently there are lots and lots of chest out there that have the random chance of dropping something that can turn into a piece of gear like I found.

Similarly I had quite a bit of fun leveling Belghast. For whatever reason post Wrath, Belghast has not really seen any action. Right before the release of Panda-land I managed to push him up to 85 only to stable him again. For whatever reason it feels somehow wrong to have Belghast NOT be at the level cap for an expansion. Even though I pretty much transitioned to playing my Deathknight in Wrath, I would like to see him at least hit the cap here. The game is always enjoyable when I still have quests to do, but once that slows down I am sure I will get bored with it yet again and wander off in another direction. I know for certain that I am not back fully, because even if I end up landing for awhile… I will be gone once again when Elder Scrolls Online comes out. Right now every game that is not ESO is just a placeholder.