Category Archives: Games

SWTOR – Rishi

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I took my Powertech through the Prelude quests and the experience was pretty similar to my Sorc.  Mind you, my Sorc has a pretty sweet AE attack and simple rotation compared to a Powertech, so it was more about finding a new rhythm.  New set of gear (BIG jump, from ~126 to 168ilvl) and 1.5 levels.  I think that’s the largest benefit from the prelude actually, since the first few quests on Rishi give you a new set of gear (complete with pirate hat).  1.5lvls in about an hour’s time is a nice deal.

Off to Rishi though.  Of interesting note, Rishi has class trainers, comms vendors, tradeskill vendors but no auction house or bank terminals.  Auction house, fine.  Bank though… that’s a really odd thing.  My bags filled up within an hour, easily, especially with an entire new set of gear to equip.  I looked high and low, no luck.

Perhaps this is the same on Yavin, but Rishi quests are a different mold.  Ignoring class quests, as I’ve only see part of one (and it’s cool so far), there are main quests and sub quests.  The main plot line is well acted and makes sense.  It’s fun.  There’s a lot of go over here, then come back, then go where you were but a little farther involved and that’s a bit less fun.  What with no transport to get there but your own feet.  Sub quests come in 2 flavors, dailies and one time shots.  Both don’t have any voice over, just a quest box which you hit accept on.

This is very weird.  Up until this point, every single quest (I’m sure there are near a thousand overall) have been voice-acted.  That’s 16 voices (4 classes, 2 factions, 2 sexes) per quest for you, then the NPC dialogue.  I had guessed at the investment required and wondering if it was worth it, in particular for those smaller ones that no one really cares about.  I mean, how much exposition do you need to kill 10 birds, right?  So, in the end, I don’t mind so much.  The quest text has the necessary exposition if you want it.  The quests themselves are incidental.  And if this helps Bioware release content on an accelerated timeframe, then I think it’s a fair trade.  No other game on the market does this, so…

I’m level 58 now, which I found out was a “skill bonanza” level.  Every so often in SWTOR, you reach a level where instead of having 1-2 skills to train you have 10.  Thank goodness it’s free!  I’m a few hours into Rishi, only the first subzone really, of what appears to be 4.  The plot is cool, I get to be a badass pirate and ruin people’s day.  There’s no skill changes that I’ve seen so far, just bigger numbers.  A new solo-flashpoint as well, which was extremely challenging, though for reasons unrelated to my skill.

The penultimate bosses, a male and female, jump in and out of this arena with an edge into a lava pit.  Of course there’s knockback.  Of course my companions will follow these two in and out of the arena.  It took 5 tries to not bug out.  The last boss, Torch, was a pretty sweet fight.  Maybe more of the zones are like this but I found there to be a ton of movement required to get through it.  There just seemed to always be a red circle somewhere to avoid.  Sorc aren’t very mobile (at least Lightning isn’t so much) so it required a bit of skill juggling to pull off.  I can only imagine how that would work in a group setting.

I know a lot of games are aiming for more action oriented combat.  There’s a fine line to be held here though, as your system needs to support it.  And let’s be honest, the Hero engine is a piece of garbage that’s as responsive as a drunk sumo wrestler.  FF14 was smart enough to put in a 2.5s GCD to combat the server lag.  SWTOR balance is going to need some work to not make too onerous for the players.

More pirate work to go.  More explosions too.

SWTOR – Solo Flashpoints

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Given that I had only subscribed on Nov 7th, I missed the first week of the Shadow of Revan expansion.  Good news is that I saved about 500k in credits in that week as now skill training is free.  I wouldn’t have minded a nominal cost but training costs from 1-55 are (were) huge.  You started the expansion broke, for the most part, unless you were a fairly active player.  Heck, you needed to be a subscriber to have enough credits in the first place to pay for it all.

Which rolls into the part I think SWTOR does well, and that’s introduce new content and smooth our the power curve.  There have been 2 leveling plateaus so far, one at 50 and one at 55.  The current leveling process works up until 50 but the Makeb portion was punishing without the right gear.  If you were just using leveling gear, you’d be behind by 50-70% in terms of stats.  So Makeb now has a GSI buff which makes sure you have the stats to make it through.  And if you complete the content, then you’re given the gear for a pretty decent 55.  Smart.

The SoR expansion also does this, as they’ve assigned the baseline to a certain gear level.  If you don’t have it, then you can do some solo flashpoints (the Forged Alliance quests) and get a full set of top level 55 gear to get you ready for Rishi.  It’s a great bridging mechanism that allows players new to the game keep pace on the stats treadmill at all times, without massive peaks and valleys.  Before the WoW stat squish, every expansion had massive power jumps between them.  There are mechanics in SWTOR to mitigate it, which is smart.

The flashpoints themselves are cool, as I never had the chance to do them previously.  You’re given a GSI droid who can DPS/Heal/Tank and makes it rather hard for you to die.  Everything outside of a boss was a faceroll for me (though I was in gear better than Makeb quality) but it was a cool experience nonetheless.  Each boss had some interesting mechanic – shield swap, stuns, massive telegraphs, movement debuffs.  As a mechanic, I think this is pretty neat.  There’s something to be said about soloing old dungeons and challenging yourself.  The droid they give you simply allows for you to experience the content without that challenge, assuming you came in a bit late.  I mean, I realize it’s simply a bridge and won’t be applied to other dungeons, but there are possibilities here.  Old operations come to mind, as the power scaling in SWTOR is a fair bit different than say, WoW.

The story around these flashpoints is pretty neat too.  It’s split into 3 pieces, and I’m not sure if there was an original delay between them all.  I won’t spoil too much but suffice to say that Forged Alliance is pretty obviously an alliance between the Republic and the Empire.  It’s all a setup piece for the expansion, so there’s a cool reveal at the end with Revan.  A few characters are introduced during the run, including a pretty funny combo of a wookie and droid meshed together.  There’s only a single decision point in all the 3 quests that seemingly would have impact, so I’m curious as to how that rolls out.

It really is something when you play a game and you’re the central character.  The final cutscenes in WoW lately have been other people.  Heck, my Alliance Monk’s final scene in Nagrand was 2 orcs fighting each other.  My character has never spoken a word.  It’s like watching a movie for the most part.  I think that’s why I like garrisons, cause I’m the focal point for once.  SWTOR scratches that story itch something fierce.

And for those who say you can only do a story so many times, I think that depends on the quality of the story.  The “choose your own adventure” books, I’ve read hundreds of times as a kid.  I’ve watched Blade Runner and Fifth Element at least a 100 times each.  LOTR books/movies I’ve done a ton of times.  Golden sci-fi, Hitchhiker’s Guide, Star Wars (4-6), Futurama…plenty of stories where I’ve enjoyed the experience multiple times.  SWTOR really has a story quality issues.  Some portions are amazeballs but they are not the typical story.  I really enjoyed the 12x boost because I could focus only on the quality (-ish) stories, the ones where the most time was invested.  I didn’t have to kill 10 bears.

I’m enjoying my time and that’s all that really matters.

Dragon Age – Play Shifting

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A few levels deeper into Dragon Age Inquisition now, 8 I think it is.  To sum briefly, the Hinterlands stink because your character stinks.  I’ll explain.

In RPGs, there are two types of power curves.  A statistical one, where you get better armor/weapons and the dice roll bigger numbers.  This is offset by the enemy also getting stat upgrades.  It usually evens out in the wash, assuming both are the same level.  This is linear growth and you see most of this in MMOs once you’re at max level.

The second power curve is skill based. You get more skills as you level and DA:I gives you a new one every single level.  And because the game is cooldown based (with some resource management), the more skills you have, the more powerful you become.  Combos start being viable.  Superior skills become available, including AE attacks that incapacitate opponents.  It’s one of those paradigm shifting things, where the gameplay suddenly shifts. And it’s not like the enemy suddenly gains more skills, as they are more or less locked depending on their type.

An example.  My warrior just gained enough skill points to use both single and AE taunts, with enough additional skills to survive the damage from all those attacks.  This means that they can successfully funnel all attention to themselves while the other 3 characters, all decked in a pile of AE attacks, mop up the floor.  1 level previous to this, closing a rift could be hard because of all the stragglers and lack of a tank.  Now it’s like a cake walk.

And I’m not even level 10 yet, what with advanced classes further building niche skill sets.  There are rogue builds out there that solo dragons on nightmare difficulty.  That’s not even a thought in my mind at lower levels.  This is an odd change compared to other level-based games, where the power curve is incremental.  MMOs have more levels, and therefore a normalized curve.  Right, a level 5 typically has the same time to kill (TTK) that a level 80 has.  The jump is when your stat power curves up at max level due to gear, not skill.  There might be one or 2 skills while leveling that change your playtstyle, but not every level.

Yet in DA:I, it’s practically every level.  It’s enjoyable too, since the play pattern changes as I progress.  It’s not the same buttons for 40 hours, in some crazy dance (which is why I dislike the AC series and like Shadow of Mordor).  There’s some progress to be had and it’s actually noticeable.  I’m interested not only in the story (which has ups and downs) but the actual mechanics of this RPG.  It’s fun!

Final note for those with DirectX crashes.  First, update your drivers to the beta versions.  Yeah, no game should require beta drivers but whatchagonnado?  Then, set the game to windowed fullscreen.  That should stop most crashes.  Finally, set the Mesh option to anything above Medium.  That get’s rid of the plastic hair.

WoW – Proving Grounds are a First Step of Many

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I want to talk a bit about proving grounds, or rather the gating mechanic that some games use for top-tier combat.  There are a few examples around but I think most would agree the shining example of this mechanic is TSW’s guardian fight.

The main purpose is to ensure that a player understands all the mechanics and how they interact with each other.  If you have an interrupt ability, then it should be something you know how to use.  Defensive and offensive cooldowns should be a part of it.  Realizing that numbers, or the power curve, can allow you to ignore certain mechanics but the top level challenge should actually be challenging.

TSW’s deck format ensures that people have to slot the appropriate skills to get through an event and doesn’t put in major barriers.  Everyone has access to all skills, so there’s really no excuse.  When everyone has the tools, then you can have a single bar for people to reach.  Or rather 3, tank, DPS and heal.

WoW’s proving grounds are a bit like this but there’s a considerable gap in ability sets between the various classes.  Sure, they all have an interrupt but the mechanics are different.  Rogues use poison, warlocks are DoTs, DKs are offensive blasts and so on.  Some focus on AE, some focus on ramp up damage.   And that’s just DPS.

Healers and tanks are a completely different boat.  Some healers are really only able to heal tanks, others are on AE.  Some tanks are sponges, some are ninjas.  Some cooldowns just don’t line up.  And we won’t consider the NPCs that the game gives you to complete these tasks as some suffer from, uh, missing a few cards in the deck if you catch my drift.

Then there’s the fact that proving grounds were built for MoP and that combat has changed a bit for WoD.  Situational awareness is more important.  Target swapping happens a lot.  Massive damage spikes are gone.  Proving grounds were also a mid-expansion addition, so the power curve was all over the place.  WoD has people coming in at very similar ilevels.

While asking for silver for roles is a good idea, the actual value of that silver is debateable.  Silver DPS doesn’t need any interrupts, which I find strange.  It doesn’t require any burst.  It does require some movement to avoid a slow-moving ball of amber and to stand behind shielded enemies.  The actual DPS check is hard if you’re not an AE focused class, mind you.  Healers should be required to dispel, not heal through it.  Tanks, well, even solid play isn’t a super solution for so-so AI.

I’m not saying proving grounds are the be-all and end-all.  I am saying that if that’s the only baseline for entry into heroics, and all 5 people barely got to that point, you’re going to have a bad time.  In their current state there’s still a fair amount of tweaking necessary to accurately reflect a role’s requirements and the actual combat mechanics in WoD.  There’s a ton of potential here.

Bloggy XMAS 5 – An Old Soul

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I’ve been gaming for a long time, I can’t really think back to a time where I didn’t game.  It’s one of my two main hobbies – hockey and gaming.  I’m 35 now, and I’d bet dollars to donuts I’ve been doing it for 30 years.  As with most folk, I’ve had ups and downs.  My hobbies have kept me sane through them.  In a particular rough spot, at the tail end of my teens and early twenties, I was having issues with home and finding some direction in life.  It got pretty dark for a while.  Ultima Online and Everquest were my two main releases.  Given that high speed wasn’t around, a modem was required.  That took up a phone line, so I ended up playing overnight to avoid conflicts with the house line.

Aside from that, you should know that I’m a high-functional introvert.  It’s getting better with time and practice but my wife is the family extrovert.  Makes for a solid team.

Social Gaming

Ultima Online I was pulled in through a magazine ad a friend pass my way.  We played together at launch for a few weeks but he moved on and I delved deeper.  I eventually became a PK hunter and that meta aspect to the game made me a fair amount of friends.  The actions I took were such that I ended up “grey” most of the time, rather than hunting the Illustrious title of pure nobility.  It was my first real foray into social groups and it really taught me a solid amount about group play, delegation and responsibility.  I was fairly active, even after the Trammel split in 2000.  I made a few alt accounts and used my personal house as a base of operations.  EBay was my friend and I sold/bought property and characters which subsidized my gaming hobby for a very long time.

Everquest came out in late 1999 and it honestly took me a while to get into the game.  The inability to see in the dark was a major roadblock and I didn’t really swap over until 2001, when the guild I had in UO finally dissolved.  EQ I started playing with another real life friend but he also moved on.  This was probably the lowest of the low for me in RL. EQ was crack, came at a perfect time, and it was common to have 8-16 hour sessions go through without knowing it.

I ended up settling with a Dark Elf Necromancer, as the late hour sessions made it somewhat harder to find groupmates.  That said, things took a turn once I found this Barbarian Warrior in my mid-teens.  We’d play together all the time.  ICQ was a mainstay back then and we’d be chatting all the time.  He worked shift-work, was married (at 16 on Hallowe’en of all dates) and had kids, even though we were both the same age.  I can distinctly remember camping the isle in OoT for days trying to get through the hell levels.  The only recourse was our chats.  While this certainly kept me afloat, I’d like to think I did the same for him.

I printed out dozens of these maps

Time has a way with things and eventually we parted.  He found another job (with Gateway if I recall) with different hours and he had to work things out with his wife.  We’d still chat every week or so but clearly there was a gap.  I would say he was my first real online best friend.

I did keep up with EQ and met a nice couple from California, in a small social guild.  That was a ton of fun and that lasted many years.  We all merged into an adult guild, the Companions, back in the RoK days.  I think that lasted an extra 2 expansions, as I clearly remember raiding in the Vellious expansion as well and starting planes.  The guild had a requirement that people be over 30, though made an exception for me.  These were professional people, lawyers and doctors for a large part.  I think I grew up 5 years in 1 during this time.  I managed the website (which cemented my direction in IT) and did all the art and updates.  A bunch of the folk were related too, so it was like being part of an adopted family.  That was an awesome feeling – of belonging somewhere.

But the time in EQ had to move on and I moved off to Horizons and the promise of player-built housing with a subsection of the guild.  This was my first foray into group projects.  We’d set out build orders and collect/refine the material.  It was a lot of fun collecting everything and working as a team on a non-combat goal.  Everyone could participate. Unfortunately, the higher end part of the game was seriously broken and that prevented future growth.  Even more bad timing was EQ2 and WoW on the horizon (pun not intended).  We split ways here because after playing both betas, EQ2 held no appeal while WoW seemed to hit the right nerve.  This also coincided with a rather dramatic shift in the personal space and a relative uptick on future outlook.  UO and EQ both helped me get through a heck of a funk.

I think in hindsight the social aspect really filled a need I had at that time.  As I’ve grown older and matured, I’ve found other ways to meet my needs.  I have a great wife who understands and supports my gaming habits.  My kids are amazing and are so much more fulfilling than I had thought possible.  The social aspect at work is great and my friends outside of work fill in a huge gap as well.   Games, in of themselves, are less a social thing for me now and more of a hobby to get the brain ticking.  It’s also challenging in today’s gamespace where there’s no whitespace or dead time.  There’s a reason EQ implemented the /gems function after all.  Today it’s more about voice chat and that option just isn’t so viable with 3 other people in the house.

Social Blogging

With that gap in social from gaming I have moved on to blogs.  I’ve owned this domain for 11 years now, blogging for nearly as long.  A social network has been built over the years, supported through forums, games, twitter, podcasts and cross-posting.  The NBI is a great example of this, where the community comes together to help some new bloggers.  Blaugust was a cool challenge to post something every day.  Bloggy Xmas is obviously the most recent example of this.

With so many games available for our attention, the odds of a single community in a single game are long gone.  The bonds last across games but you still need a mechanism to share stories.  Blogs are an amazing way to do that.  While my blogroll isn’t as long as it should be, it’s a decent sample of the various folks sharing their ideas, with very little overlap.  In fact, there are a few that conflict with each other which provides some great counterpoints.

The community is small enough that everyone seems to know each other yet big enough for everyone to be able find something they can relate to.  I hope everyone reading this can find a few more friends through this Bloggy Xmas event.  We all share a same passion for games and that’s certainly something worth sharing.

Dragon Age – First Impressions

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So I found an online deal that shaved about $15 off of Dragon Age Inquisition.  Why not?  WoW servers are melting something fierce lately and SWTOR won’t open for a few more days.  26gig install was something else but interesting difference between Steam and Origin is that the download includes the install.  There have been more than enough times where I was sitting staring at a screen for an hour for a Steam game to install.  I mean, I know why it happens, just irksome.

So a few technical things to start.  You need a controller plugged in before launching the game.  Which is stupid but I guess since it changes the UI… I’ll live with it.  AMD video cards.  Now, I don’t have the best laptop.  It was top of the line 3 years ago and I paid mint for a custom one (actually, my guides paid for it) but it still handles every game I’ve thrown at it since, and at a decent clip.  Wildstar on max, ESO pretty darn high.  Even Tomb Raider was running everything but infi-hair.  But DA:I (if I can call you that) doesn’t like AMD chips.  I can get maybe 45 minutes out of the game before it locks up due to a memory leak or an invalid command.  I’m fully patched too, which makes it even more annoying.  But such is the master PC – video cards are always suspect.

Why is my hair shiny? I look like a plastic doll.

Why is my hair shiny? I look like a plastic doll.

That aside, the game plays fairly well.  I made a mage, playing on normal.  I find the actual skills much less interesting this time though the world is more engaging.  Instead of bits and pieces, now you have a relatively open world to fight in.  Combat has been streamlined too, so it’s closer to Mass Effect 2 than any other DA game before it.  I think the pacing is well done but I don’t like not having healing abilities or the ability to regenerate out of combat.  All I get are healing potions, shared across the group.  Why give me 4 characters to play with if the tank ain’t can only keep 1 target active and the support provides a temporary shield?  Bah.  It’s no longer strategic, it’s all tactics.  Take the heaviest hitting skill you can find and then support it with knockdowns/stuns to avoid taking damage.  Chain stuns keep you alive.

The story is neat. The characters so far interesting.  The quests are far from the fetch quests as they often involve exploration or dialogue.  You response choices are varied enough and the voice acting is decent.  Inventory management sucks, as usual with any RPG.  Things get tagged as junk when they clearly are not.

I’m kind of thinking this is in final beta right now and there’s a big kitchen sink patch coming my way – or at least in time for the holidays.  Let’s see how far I can get without the next crash though.

#WoW – Bodyguards

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A neat little feature in WoD is the ability to “hire” a bodyguard from one of your followers.  Now, there are only 5 per faction and they are set in stone.  You can’t miss them.  Each has their own perk, unlocked through faction with that specific bodyguard.  You gain 10 faction per kill, no exceptions.  It only works in the wild, so no dungeon runs.  And you need 2,000 kills to unlock the perk.  They also scale to your level, and have some decent skills.  Pretty good support actually.

I opted for Leorajh, as he comes with the ability to launch garrison missions in the field.  I already have a mailbox, a quick hearthstone to the garrison and repairs anywhere.  The summon a friend requires another person with you… so pretty useless out in the wild. Important note. While you can get a bodyguard to max faction earlier, you can’t complete the quest that unlocks the skill til 100. And even then it’s by knocking out a boss in a level 100 zone.

The hiccup here is the 2,000 kills.  My monk played the most out of MoP of all my characters.  From 1-100, including the bodyguard work, he’s amassed only 30,000 kills.  My rogue is sitting around 150,000 but he has way more hours in.  Anyways, 2,000 is a LOT.  I thought perhaps through normal play I’d see some decent progress but after a week, running the 1000 apexis dailies in a raid, I wasn’t making a huge dent in that number.  In comes Google.

For a while, 1hp critters gave you faction.  There was a neat spider spot in Talador that was just ripe for this action.  That got squashed a week or so ago.

Instead, through of all things archeology travels, I stumbled upon a neat spot in Gorgrond.

Stoneshard Grubling

Stoneshard Grubling

Now, in this 1 location there are 3 distinct spawning areas of these grubs.  A single run through all three will get you about 70 kills.  They respawn pretty much as fast as I could kill them.  I did the last 1,000 kills in less than 10 minutes.

The first 1,000 kills were done in Talador, at the Burning Front.

Burning Front

Burning Front

This place spawns demons, non-stop.  There are a few NPCs who can tank for you.  The mobs, while weak, still have decent hp so it isn’t a single shot deal.  If you’ve invested in the Artillery for this zone, then that works pretty well.  This one moves along at about 50 kills a minute, more if you’re lucky.

So yeah, neat feature. It’s time-gated, so my optimization subroutines kicked in.  The ability is sweet, the extra damage and healing is welcome and it’s nice to have a sidekick.

#WoW – Molten Core Run

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A funny thought occurred to me.  Blizzard’s trolling Wildstar, or at the very least, making fun of everyone who says 40 mans are the best.  I say this after having gone through a Molten Core 10-year anniversary run.

Now, I did MC back when it was cool.  Roster boss was a pain but sheer bad play was another one.  I can clearly remember dying multiple times to the core hounds, or the crazy respawn timers.  All of that glory is back if you want it. It took the group a solid 3 hours, with only 2 people leaving while it was underway.  I got my mount and lucked out on an ilvl 640 helm.

For those saying that LFR beats the roster boss, I disagree.  LFR, if anything, is a perfect example of the roster boss from the 40 days.  In those raids, you had a solid core of 20 carrying 10, with the final 10 more a hindrance than anything else.  LFR is exactly this.  A hunter pulled Shazz by accident.  A knockback into a pair of hounds wiped as well.  Mages who didn’t know they could decurse caused 2 wipes.  Players who honestly said “I don’t have any AE abilities in my bar” were a ton of fun on the hound packs.  It took the tanks a fair bit to understand that they couldn’t all taunt, which made many of the enemies spin around and AE the entire raid.  Every boss was a 1 shot deal but Shazz was the only one who took us to town (see decurse comment).  All told, out of all the 15 or so wipes, I would only consider 1 that wasn’t caused by someone doing something drastically wrong.

To compound this, the ilvl requirement is rather low in my opinion.  The difference between 615 and say, 630 is significant.  When I queued for LFR, it was by chance as I saw the option up.  I checked the eyeball and it indicated a 30 second ETA.  I found this interesting as most queues for DPS are around an hour.  When I actually got into the raid, I got assigned to heals.  And the raid leader since my name was the first alphabetically.  Hah!

I healed to the best of my abilities but clearly my gear was pretty crappy.  Monk healers are pretty crappy in terms of burst healing, though they apparently scale quite well.  After having healed as a shaman, woo, what a difference in a high damage raid.  I kind of like the mechanics of a monk healer but there are certainly some additional tweaks that are needed to balance out the good heals from the bad.  Let’s just say that of all the healers, I think the monk would have the hardest time overhealing anyone.

The fun part of the raid was that there were 2 core groups of raiders in the field, both from different servers than mine.  The banter was great.  It was a drastic change from typical LFR chat.  I really found myself chuckling at some of the stuff being said.  Tanks were smart, heals were smart.  DPS generally avoided the bad stuff.  In a raid where 1 bad move can wipe 39 other people, you can find some tough spots but here for some reason, people were good.

Now, would I want to spend another 3 hours doing MC?  Nope.  I have my mount.  I’m good.

#WoW – Where I Learned to Pay Attention

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Previous to WoD, if you played a second specialization (outside of mages, hunters, rogues and warlocks), you needed a 2nd set of gear.  Tanks, DPS and Healers needed different stats and you ended up with a full 2nd set of gear in the bag.  Leveling up this was even more ridiculous, as you’d hit cap and not have a single item for the 2nd spec.

WoD turns that around a fair bit.  Regular armor has multiple mail stats that vary depending on the spec in use.  So my monk is either Agility or Intellect based, depending.  This applies to the helm, chest, shoulders, legs, arms, wrist and feet.  I found this out the hard way, let’s say.

In order to run heroics you need to pass silver in the proving grounds.  Very similar to the Guardian challenge in TSW and in my opinion, the 2nd best thing MoP brought into the game (outside Flex raiding).  There are bronze, silver and gold runs for tanks, dps and healers, in increasing difficulty.

I had leveled as physical DPS, so the dps proving grounds were extremely easy.  I was geared, knew that I needed to interrupt and could move around to avoid stuff.  Simple cakes.

I mentioned before I wanted to try healing again, what with the DPS queues being stupid.  So I reset my macros and tried healing again.  Of note, I did heal as a monk on MoP, just not often.  I knew the rotation and the buttons.

I still failed bronze.  Badly.

I didn’t really understand why.  My skills were set up, my UI tweaked a bit.  I was pressing the right buttons.  So I tried again, and failed once more.  I started looking at the amount I was healing and realized it was quite low.  I looked at the gear quickly, sure enough my chest was Intellect as were other pieces. Try again, lose once more.

Frustrated at this point, I went over each piece on my character and noticed a big chunk was wrong.  Necklace, 2x rings, 2x trinkets, cloak and weapon did not have Intellect.  I was running at half power, at least.  So I looked at my handy treasure map, found a few intellect pieces I could collect, bought a weapon on the AH and went to work.

I passed silver without any real issues on the next attempt.  My healing normal healing throughput was what I was getting as a crit before.  Astounding difference in power and it just started going together.

So yeah, the proving grounds did what they were supposed to do.  Make me pay attention.  Lesson learned.

#WoW – More Things to do at 100

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I think last night was my first full session at 100.  I mentioned previously that I was sort of dropped to my own devices when I completed Nagrand.  So what did I do?  I installed some mods.

Ok, not so fancy sure.  But this was a fresh install of WoW a month back and I didn’t really do anything that merited a mod.  This time, I opted for a few items.  Curse has all the mods listed, or a link at least.

  • A full UI replacement.  There’s not a lot to be said here than I think this should be the new default WoW UI.  It seems every game today allows the end user to manually move the elements around and ElvUI does that and more.
  • I’ve had this mod since Vanilla.  I have a long history with fishing.  WoW’s is the simplest implementation and casting in my garrison is great.  I’d have to triple check but I’m pretty sure I have 4 characters over 500 fishing.  I won’t bore you with the math about how many casts that took.
  • DeadlyBossMod.  Eh, don’t really need this yet.
  • HandyNotes + WoD treasures. This updates your map to show the location of treasures, points of interest and the rare spawns. There’s a fun part about discovery, certainly.  Then there’s the “where the hell is that box” part of it.
  • This gives you a popup anytime a rare is spotted near you.  I used this with my Hunter to find rare pets.  Works great in WoD since there are dozens of rares per zone.

So that stuff took a bit to set up.  But it’s good now.

I then focused on my garrison followers.  WoWhead has a good guide on it.  I had already collected 20 or so, so this was more of a stragglers issue.  In particular Leorjah who is practically hidden and the Archmage Vision (throwback to the TBC version).  In the process, I hit ~30 followers so I had to de-activate quite a few.  Considering I like some of the companions, that’s an odd choice to make.  So my thought process on hiding them is as follows:

  1. Focus on green-ranked followers
  2. Is one of the traits tradeskill based? A tradeskill I won’t use? (skinning).  Hide ‘em.
  3. Do they have traits that increase success, XP gained, reduce mission time or are a bodyguard? Keep ‘em.

I now have a few at level 100.  One in particular rolled great and has half mission time, double garrison rewards.  In a play session, I can get 2-3 missions out of him due to the short times, so I can collect ~200 resources.  Actually, I think I made about 1000 resources in 2 days because of that guy, combined with work orders on the mill.

This process had me running around the zones, finding folk and other rares I had missed.  I found some other treasures, completed some archeology (maxed now) and stored those results in my garrison.  Of really cool note, the back of your keep has a room built just for archeology finds.  That is amazeballs.  They are pre-slotted, so you can’t move them but it’s something.

Two particular notes to close off for now.  Archeology was/is/will be a pastime tradeskill.  Every other tradeskill interacts with some other feature (fishing is actually a big deal again) but not this one.  There’s some pretty cool lore and you get some items for the garrison.  What’s a little bugger is the way the zones work.  As an Alliance, I had 3 digsites in Frostfire – which is a massive pain to get to the first time and there’s only 1 flight point for the entire zone.  Eh.  Nagrand has digsites in the level 100 zones, where enemies have about a million hit points and you dig under them.  Since archeology dig sites are manually placed (I mean literally, someone picked the exact spots) there was obviously some logic applied here.  Why a flavor skill would put you in a heavy combat zone is beyond me.  As a monk, I send my cat to distract the enemies while I dig, then run away like a coward.  Works great.

The second part is a note on the music.  I typically play games with the music and sound are near equal levels.  Sound is a cue for action and there’s a certain rhythm to it.  WoD is a bit different in that the music has been updated but none of the sound has.  The speeches given by characters are still at near full level but the sounds – mounting, combat, clicking – are all disabled, while the music is full blast.  And there’s different music all over the place, 4-5 tracks per zone at least.  The garrison has one for the keep alone.  I am incredibly impressed.