Sorry about the late post been busy setting up some college stuff so I couldn't get around to typing something up.
Recently I have really been intrigued by World of Warcraft and I have started to make use of my professions and bank toon after what seems like forever. I started light with just inscription using tradeskill master to manage my glyphs. The selling is rough because my home server seems to be losing population and there is a lack of interest right before the expansion. Apart from the financials of my return the fun factor is back for me as I level my fire mage. He is currently nearing the end of burning crusade instances and heading towards Wrath of the Lich King regulars which should be pretty fast considering blizzard buffed the experience gain in all previous expansions. Only thing I am worried about is the dps queue later on since for now its about as short as 2-3 minutes but it could go up to 10min+ after I hit 70.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Saturday, August 11, 2012
Stress test
It seems Arena Net still want to test the stability of the game hence the back to back stress tests we had Thursday and Friday. For the test that was Thursday it had a rough start with the log-in servers going down for the first 30 minutes which I did not mind much since it is just a stress test, and after that in world vs world it was a lag fest and tons of desynchronization which makes a normal battle at the gates of a keep rough because its hard to escape AoE when you have position lag and you just cant move in general. That part lasted about an hour while my guild struggled to get to the center of Stonemist keep in the eternal battlegrounds. It was like fighting an uphill battle because to get to the keep lord there is a ramp and the team defending can just set up on the outside and spam aoe on the choke point which gives them easy kills if they have enough players that can aoe or just a lot of elementalists. We finally got the keep with about a hour left in the test and defended it against both of the servers we were up against until the end of the stress test. They got close to our keep lord but our siege equipment kept them at bay and it was like shooting fish in a barrel.
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Dayz is fun.
Alright, been playing dayz recently on server US 717 hosted by a friend. Its a pretty popular server so you do meet other people in the large map you have to find loot in and survive. The types of characters you do meet on the server are interesting in themselves ranging from hackers, regular players, squads that shoot on sight, and the typical bad ass that shoots everything with big guns they most likely found on another server. In my travels I have been killed by just about every type of character and haven't been able to kill any squads because obviously I am out gunned and out manned and usually run out of ammo or get shot too many times making my character pass out and either bleed out or one of the guys runs up and delivers the finishing blow.
The most interesting however are the hackers because they are an unpredictable bunch. Often they like to grab everyone on the server or at least a large part of it and send them to a death arena called the thunder dome. In this dome everyone spawns in the middle and has to scramble to find guns and ammo in the crates if they did not already have a gun and if the hacker is good enough he will strip you of everything and make you find everything within the dome. After this its last man standing including explosions and bullets flying everywhere causing a death blow to all unlucky enough to escape the rage of all of the players around with the hacker watching as everyone else scurries as he tosses grenades. If you haven't played Dayz explosions are particularly deadly as they can break your bones even at the tail end of one and getting shot is no laughing matter either since it causes you to bleed at a steady rate until you can find time to bandage yourself which takes about 10 seconds. If you manage to survive the onslaught some hackers give you a gift such as a sniper rifle or they get mad that some one survived and drop a nuke on the server which kills everything and usually causes the server to experience heavy lag or even shutdown until it restarts.
Hell even with the occasional hacker they make the game interesting when all you do is run from town to town avoiding zombies and other players while trying to find loot in the few open building you can find.
The most interesting however are the hackers because they are an unpredictable bunch. Often they like to grab everyone on the server or at least a large part of it and send them to a death arena called the thunder dome. In this dome everyone spawns in the middle and has to scramble to find guns and ammo in the crates if they did not already have a gun and if the hacker is good enough he will strip you of everything and make you find everything within the dome. After this its last man standing including explosions and bullets flying everywhere causing a death blow to all unlucky enough to escape the rage of all of the players around with the hacker watching as everyone else scurries as he tosses grenades. If you haven't played Dayz explosions are particularly deadly as they can break your bones even at the tail end of one and getting shot is no laughing matter either since it causes you to bleed at a steady rate until you can find time to bandage yourself which takes about 10 seconds. If you manage to survive the onslaught some hackers give you a gift such as a sniper rifle or they get mad that some one survived and drop a nuke on the server which kills everything and usually causes the server to experience heavy lag or even shutdown until it restarts.
Hell even with the occasional hacker they make the game interesting when all you do is run from town to town avoiding zombies and other players while trying to find loot in the few open building you can find.
Monday, August 6, 2012
Mild adventure
Today I played a bit of WoW mostly on my mage for some nostalgia. Instead of my usual fire or arcane spec I decided to try frost since it was one of my favorite specs back in the day and a lot has changed since then. There is the typical stuff about spam frost bolt and icelance on Fingers of Frost procs which is quite nice because it produces high numbers and a ton of crits if done right.
I generally had fun in the few dungeons I ran with some random people but I was rather disappointed with the quality of people I had to run with. The range of dungeons I was running was 50-60 which is about mid range level wise and this also should promote a certain amount of skill or teamwork assuming the players have done any dungeons at all on the way to 50+ which is highly likely with the Looking for Dungeon tool. Anyways out of the 4 or 5 groups I was in maybe 2 went flawlessly and without confrontations in chat. For the first group we had a tank that could not keep up with the pace of the mobs in the dungeon and whenever we had extras pulled the healer would die or come close to death, the unfortunate part was it was a slow death with the heals running around the tank in a circle trying to get the mobs off. This lead to a stoppage in heals to the group and long story short we all died because of the tank. In this situation if I was healing I usually try to mix kiting the mobs to the tank and healing myself because keeping yourself alive is top priority along with the tank, also if your mana is above about the 50% mark you should be trying to use any and all quick heals you can to avoid interrupts and push back from the mobs clubbing you.
I generally had fun in the few dungeons I ran with some random people but I was rather disappointed with the quality of people I had to run with. The range of dungeons I was running was 50-60 which is about mid range level wise and this also should promote a certain amount of skill or teamwork assuming the players have done any dungeons at all on the way to 50+ which is highly likely with the Looking for Dungeon tool. Anyways out of the 4 or 5 groups I was in maybe 2 went flawlessly and without confrontations in chat. For the first group we had a tank that could not keep up with the pace of the mobs in the dungeon and whenever we had extras pulled the healer would die or come close to death, the unfortunate part was it was a slow death with the heals running around the tank in a circle trying to get the mobs off. This lead to a stoppage in heals to the group and long story short we all died because of the tank. In this situation if I was healing I usually try to mix kiting the mobs to the tank and healing myself because keeping yourself alive is top priority along with the tank, also if your mana is above about the 50% mark you should be trying to use any and all quick heals you can to avoid interrupts and push back from the mobs clubbing you.
Saturday, August 4, 2012
Guild Wars 2 Engineer theory.
Hello first time readers to my new blog. I am still working on the layout of it because I am still getting used to Blogger's settings and I do not have access to good backgrounds due to the 300kb limit on images. With this blog I do intend on sharing whatever seems significant to me as I progress throughout the days playing whatever I am in the mood for. This mostly includes World of Warcraft, Dayz, Team Fortress 2, League of Legends and Guild Wars 2 when it comes out.
I am really looking forward to playing Guild Wars 2 so I can try my hand at playing an engineer which is ideally the perfect concept of a class for me. Playing through all of the beta weekend events and the stress tests It is my most played class and one of the most complex offering an incentive to explore the different combinations of skills the engineer has since they are the only ones who cant swap weapons but they can swap tool kits. In the last BWE (Beta Weekend Event) they tuned the shield skills since they felt it was a default choice if anyone wanted to use a pistol for a condition build. It was a default decision because it was pretty useful with the situational knock back and absorb it helped move people off flags or doors and saved you from impending doom at the hands of a firing squad of Rangers and Elementalists. I'm not sure if it was the tuning or a bug but the knock back did not work at all so every engineer went with dual pistols or tried to go Rambo with the rifle which was really a shotgun.
The buff they gave to dual pistols was great as it allowed us to add a blaze condition to our already ticking bleed which gives us decent chunk of extra damage and AoE as long as we are close enough to the target for the close range bonus. That bonus is something I have recently discovered while I was chasing down some targets in world vs world and it works for Poison Dart Volley (Pistol), Blowtorch (Pistol), Blunderbuss(Rifle), and Overcharged Shot(Rifle).
Even though I prefer to use a more ranged approach running in after using Elixir B and giving a small burst with poison dart volley is fun and effective as it causes the average player to use an evasive roll early or back away playing into your ranged game where you can just keep boons up with elixirs and stack bleeds and burns on your target at a comfortable pace. This however does not always work which is why this is risky because if it is a melee you will be close and in their territory allowing them to set up a good stun and damage combo especially if the target is a warrior because they have one skill that can absolutely wreck a person if you are close enough and not moving. I tend to try to keep a distance and if they get to close drop a glue shot and roll out, the further away you are the less skills they can use on you and in this game kiting is usually a losing game since the slowing boons don't last long and there is no single class that can permanently keep something slowed so good use of evasive rolls and environment will take you far.
I am really looking forward to playing Guild Wars 2 so I can try my hand at playing an engineer which is ideally the perfect concept of a class for me. Playing through all of the beta weekend events and the stress tests It is my most played class and one of the most complex offering an incentive to explore the different combinations of skills the engineer has since they are the only ones who cant swap weapons but they can swap tool kits. In the last BWE (Beta Weekend Event) they tuned the shield skills since they felt it was a default choice if anyone wanted to use a pistol for a condition build. It was a default decision because it was pretty useful with the situational knock back and absorb it helped move people off flags or doors and saved you from impending doom at the hands of a firing squad of Rangers and Elementalists. I'm not sure if it was the tuning or a bug but the knock back did not work at all so every engineer went with dual pistols or tried to go Rambo with the rifle which was really a shotgun.
The buff they gave to dual pistols was great as it allowed us to add a blaze condition to our already ticking bleed which gives us decent chunk of extra damage and AoE as long as we are close enough to the target for the close range bonus. That bonus is something I have recently discovered while I was chasing down some targets in world vs world and it works for Poison Dart Volley (Pistol), Blowtorch (Pistol), Blunderbuss(Rifle), and Overcharged Shot(Rifle).
Even though I prefer to use a more ranged approach running in after using Elixir B and giving a small burst with poison dart volley is fun and effective as it causes the average player to use an evasive roll early or back away playing into your ranged game where you can just keep boons up with elixirs and stack bleeds and burns on your target at a comfortable pace. This however does not always work which is why this is risky because if it is a melee you will be close and in their territory allowing them to set up a good stun and damage combo especially if the target is a warrior because they have one skill that can absolutely wreck a person if you are close enough and not moving. I tend to try to keep a distance and if they get to close drop a glue shot and roll out, the further away you are the less skills they can use on you and in this game kiting is usually a losing game since the slowing boons don't last long and there is no single class that can permanently keep something slowed so good use of evasive rolls and environment will take you far.
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