Just in before the patch

Last Updated on Tuesday, 21 May 2013 11:40 Written by Kadomi Tuesday, 21 May 2013 02:00

WoW Patch 5.3 is rolling out in the US today, and us Euros get it tomorrow. I for one enjoy the pace of the content rolling out, but I likely won’t say that when 5.4 comes out and we’re still not done with Throne of Thunder. But intermediary patch? I’ll take it! Mists of Pandaria is the expansion of the main, but my main didn’t really have anything to do, other than valor capping. Isle of Thunder got boring real fast, and I haven’t been back for a while. I just travel through on my way to Nalak or raid night. So what will I do in 5.3? Poke around the Barrens and see what Vol’jin is up to, for sure. I really am a big fan of lore delivery in MoP. I thought Dominance Offensive lore presentation was superior to Isle of Thunder, but that was pretty much because it was on a much grander scale. You traveled around Pandaria, infiltrated Darnassus, went to Dalaran. It was awesome. Isle of Thunder lore developments usually meant exploring yet another, dreary looking part of Isle of Thunder, kill many many trolls, left side, handle it. I greatly enjoyed the Taoshi scenario, but then I am a Taoshi fangirl. She’s very cool. Grey DeLisle is perfect for her, isn’t she? That said, Jennifer Hale should totally do some voice acting in WoW. How about the first non-atrocious sounding female orc? I’d dig it.

Do Pandaren get any cooler than Taoshi? I doubt it. Makes me want to roll a pandaren rogue everytime!

I am curious to see how the Kor’kron stuff in the Barrens will play out. When I first read about it at WoW Insider, I have to admit I thought ‘Oh wowza, they’re nabbing dynamic events from Guild Wars 2′. Which is nifty. There’s no denying for me that MoP got a lot of inspiration from the competition. More NPCs with voice acting, more story, more events. I’ll be curious to see how it plays out. As long-time horde player with a horde main since 2005, the Barrens are what I consider my horde homeland. I can still turn the music on, find a nice hill, and just gaze at the sunrise, misting up. I am that sentimental.

The Barrens. The oldest screenshot on my computer.

Of course with the events being placed in the Barrens, this means the ‘glorious’ return of the Barrens chat.

What am I looking forward to the most? Probably Heroic Scenarios. I hope they’re difficult but fun. The valor points reward is quite high, and I like the idea of bonus objectives for added challenge.

Maybe I should whine about raid difficulty more often

Just last week I used this blog to complain about Throne of Thunder’s odd difficulty ramp. This past week, we only had a raid on Sunday, so I didn’t have particularly high expectations. I am happy to say that I was completely wrong! For the first time ever we one-shot Jin’rokh. He’s nominally easy, and yet we’ve never been able to get him down without one, two or three wipes first. This time we actually got him down after two puddles, just bam! On to Horridon, who was a very smooth one-shot as well. Onwards to Council. On our firstkill, Sul Empowered and we got one Sandstorm, but this week he was dead before Empowering. Sul dying is like this huge weight lifted off the raid’s shoulders. Then we went to Tortos and two things happened:

ARC’s firstkill, May 19

I don’t usually pull DPS numbers like that.

So that was pretty awesome. It finally feels like our pace of progression is picking up. We managed to squeeze in one pull of Maegara and wiped at the 3rd rampage, but that made me cautiously optimistic that this won’t be so hard after all. Fantastic raid nights are such a lovely thing.

The DPS spec with 2 sub-specs

I am currently playing a dual-wielding frost deathknight. My mainhand is a 502 Worldbreaker’s Stormscythe off Jin’rokh in LFR, my main-hand is a 496 Kilrak, Jaw of Terror off Sha of Fear. Because I play dual-wield, my stat priority is that of the masterfrost playstyle: strength, expertise and hit til cap, mastery, haste, crit. According to Noxxic’s DPS Tools, no other spec scales as badly as DW frost. Ever since I saw that table, I have been depressed about my choice of weapons. In fact, I have blown many mogu runes on trying to acquire a 502 2H weapon, to maybe give Unholy a shot or be a 2H frost DK. But you know what? Noxxic’s DPS tables can go suck it, because I still manage to be top 5 on most fights in LFR. Sometimes even number 1. I am one of my guild’s top 3 DPSers, and our number 1 is another class that supposedly performs poorly, Windwalker monks. I have found that sometimes it is for the best to not look at rankings and similar and just play.

I will continue to be DW frost, because I am good at it. I know as 2H frost I could do higher single-target DPS. Yet the moment we have fights where I can cleave, and that’s still most of them, I get a chance to shine. My DPS on Tortos is only that high because there were bats, Whirling Turtles and Tortos himself to DPS.

I must admit I am not a fan of the two vastly different playstyles in one spec. Should Council drop their 2H weapon next raid, being a clear upgrade over my two 1H weapons, I still wouldn’t be able to use it straight away. 2H frost uses a completely different stat priority: strength, expertise and hit til cap, haste, crit, mastery. I have done the transition multiple times in T14, and it always requires extensive re-gemming and re-forging. It means replacing every single gem. I can’t just simply switch weapons. Is there any other WoW spec where choice of weapon basically dictates a different stat priority and a different rotation? Plus the use of a swing meter to actually play well? I can’t think of one. I myself would prefer if it was similar to fury warriors who can play either Titan’s Grip or Single-Minded Fury without different priorities. But alas, it is as it is.

Now excuse me while I go look into recommendations how to best make more gold with 5.3, because the blacksmithing PvP gear is finally slowing down dramatically.

Happy patch day, Americans!

The Circus – PONIES

Last Updated on Thursday, 16 May 2013 11:55 Written by Kadomi Thursday, 16 May 2013 02:00

I think today is going to be an Erasure day. I loved that album, sure did. I am so 80s. As mentioned yesterday, we had free tickets to the Circus Roncalli, one of the contemporary circuses à la Cirque Du Soleil. They had a beautiful location right by the river in the park in Düsseldorf.

The entrance to the circus

The show lasted 2.5 hours, plus a 15 minute break, and despite my bum aching quite severely on the hard benches (free tickets didn’t get us plush velvet seats in the front, bugger), it was a fantastic show I would highly recommend to anyone who happens to be in Germany and in a town where they perform. Not that it’s very likely for most readers, but… My personal highlight was a group called Opening, trapeze artists from Kiev who all have giant mohawks. They were absolutely incredible.

Those were some power mohawks, I tell ya.

Roncalli doesn’t have any wild animals. It’s mostly artistic elements broken up by comedic moments. My SO, who is a giant pony-lover, had seen ponies in the flyer, so was all excited when after the break there was sawdust in the ring. And then we got this:

They were also incredible. I mean, really. I don’t get excited about ponies but…

Good times.

Wednesday is for LFR

I recently recruited my friend Fi and her husband to my guild. I am totally to blame for them playing WoW in the first place, as I gave them WoW as a wedding present in…2005, I think. Time flies. The two of them have never raided and I lured them to the dark side. Fi is now finally ready for raids, and so yesterday was the big moment. But I wasn’t there to hold her hand through it, so I did LFR with her to explain the differences between LFR and normal, Heart of Fear being the target raid. From all I heard she did fine, but sounded like a bundle of anxious nerves after the raid when I came home. I feel slightly guilty now because I feel responsible for her. Have you ever recruited someone to try raiding and then they hated it or did not like it as much as you expected?

I only did the first part of ToT on Yata, so today I have to do parts 2 and 4 for another shot at shoulders. Grrr, shoulders. I will be halfway through Revered with Shado-Pan Assault, so I know there will be shoulders in my future, but I want shoulders now! I hope queue times will be okay today. They’re terrific on Wednesdays, EU reset day, 5-10 minutes even as DPS.

Today shall also be the push to get the priest to Outland, but I need to get my pet battle team ready for Outland as well!

Thoughts on raiding difficulty

Earlier this week I linked to Zellviren’s post about how normal raiding is too punitive. I am now reading the summary of an interview that the Convert to Raid podcast did with Ion Hazzikostas, the Lead Encounter Designer. I am heartened that Blizzard is recognizing that the current raid model is not quite fitting the bill for more casual guilds. My quote of choice: ‘There is a group of players that wants to do group raiding, but they aren’t well served by the current difficulty choices. This would include the friends and family type guilds that don’t remove players because they aren’t performing at their best. In Wrath of the Lich King, 10 player normal difficulty raiding served these players well, but there is now a gap between Raid Finder and Normal difficulty.’ Unfortunately he then went on that they need to keep 25-man and 10-man difficulty similar, which is not so heartening. At least he admitted that the tuning going from Jin’rokh to Horridon is a disaster is not as smooth as it could have been.

I am not unhappy with our raids, because despite the multitude of wipes, we’re having a good time in fun company, much like Spinks describes in her latest blog post. I just wish the difficulty progression was more like going through ICC or Ulduar, with a ramp-up, without running smack into a mountain-side.

Board game updates

I got a ton of recommendations here and on Twitter yesterday, so now I have a bucket list of games for us to try. For anyone that’s also interested, here are the recommendations I received:

• Race for the Galaxy
• Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer
• Escape: The Curse of the Temple
• Kingsburg
• 7 Wonders
• Arkham Horror
• Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries

That should keep us busy for a while! I might try to go to the Spieliothek for some of those. It’s basically a library for board games where you can rent them for a very small monthly fee. As some of the more opulent board games can be quite pricey, it’s definitely worth a trip. I’ll keep you guys posted how boardgame progress is going.

Steam game of the week

I finally settled down on a choice what to play and went with The Longest Journey. An oldschool point-and-click adventure by Ragnar Tornquist, the mind behind The Secret World. So far I can say that the story and the characters are fantastic. Honestly, wonderful characters. You control April Ryan who lives in the 24th century, in a metropolis called Newport. She’s an art student jobbing in a cafe, plagued by particularly vivid nightmares. Around her, strange things happen, and there’s the mysterious Cortez, who seems to know more about what is troubling her. There are many conversations, and the characters are all very interesting. I have a fondness for the lesbian landlord of April’s, unsurprisingly.

It is however a game from the year 2000, and runs in a small resolution which on my screen means I get a tiny window in the corner of my screen. I will have to look into fixing that, because that’s no way to play. I mean, I don’t want fullscreen, the pixels would be an eyesore. Also, it’s a point-and-click adventure game. I suck at those. I am not ashamed mentioning I frequently have to use a walkthrough. I am currently in chapter 2 and have to get into a movie theatre. I got stuck and went to a walkthrough, figuring out I need items from April’s job and from the subway tracks. I didn’t spot anything in the subway station earlier, and it never occurred to me that I would have to go to other non-related locations to pick up items. Sigh. I hope I am not the only person in the world who enjoys adventure games and yet sucks at them.

Another one bites the subscription dust

Last Updated on Wednesday, 15 May 2013 11:49 Written by Kadomi Wednesday, 15 May 2013 02:00

The big news yesterday was something I had somewhat expected ever since Scott Hartsman left Trion Worlds in January:

Over the years I have mentioned multiple times that I find Rift one of the nicest MMO experiences out there. I was a subscriber for 9 months after release, and went back on a trial basis last year. It’s a great, highly polished game with tons of interesting features and cool classes. Unfortunately the playing experience is maybe a bit too close to WoW and so I never really went back full-time. When I read about the F2P transition next month my first thought was ‘Wow, how awesome is that?’ It means that a ‘WoW tourist’ like me will have the opportunity to go back whenever I please, without any pressure, and without any obvious restrictions that would make it unpalatable to me – like say, SWTOR’s reduced amount of action bars, come on. Of course that’s easy for me to say. I am not a current subscriber, and some of those might feel entirely different about the transition, like Liore, whose opinion I value greatly. She is bummed, and probably for good reason. Non-cosmetic gear for sale in a cash shop smells like pay to win to me. On the other hand, if it’s solely catch-up gear so people can start raiding with their friends, maybe not so bad. I guess only time will tell, but as always, I wish Trion Worlds well, because ultimately, they always struck me as a good publisher who worked hard on making Rift very polished, with an incredibly high pace of new content delivery. Come June 12, I will likely download the client once again and dip my toes in. I always thought chloromancers were nifty.

In WoW news

No 5.3 this week means I can mostly just putter around again. This coming week I will purchase the last piece of DPS gear for Yatalai with VP, and then I am done with that. I don’t have the energy to do the valor grind for tanking gear and instead will use any future VP for upgrades. With an ilevel of 509, I am chafing at the bit to be rid of my next to last piece of gear from T14, my Shoulderpads of Misshapen Life. I predict another week of me blowing two Mogu Runes on Iron Qon and Tortos in LFR to replace the shoulders, to get…gold. I have heard complaints about the loot system a lot, and because I have been a lucky beeyatch it’s never bothered me, but T15 is not very kind to me. Double-gold, all the time. Lame!

As I was valor-capped by yesterday, I decided to work on Raiding with Leashes some more. Gluth was a disappointment again, but I burned him down in no time. He was my only problem boss in my first solo Naxx attempts (aside from those two annoying guys before Thaddius), so I was pretty pleased with that. From there I decided I would try my luck with Blackwing Lair. According to forums, Razorgore is sooooo ez-mode, and everyone who can’t solo this a lesser player. Well, don’t let it be said I am that. Three wipes later, I started considering myself a lesser player. Most of the adds aggroed onto Razorgore, and when I hadn’t even cleared half of the eggs, he would die. Incidentally, so would I. Our raid leader Savitr was online, and confused about why the adds didn’t latch onto me. He recommended dismissing Razorgore instead of having it drop off. What can I say? That did the trick. Once I dismissed him, all of his friends ran over to me, I took control again, and once there were too many adds again, I dismissed again. Success!

Of course I’ll have to do it again next week, because neither Razorgore, nor Broodlord Lashlayer coughed up any pets. At least I got Chrominius!

I spent the rest of the day playing the little disc priest who could. She’s now level 57, and Outland is looming ever closer. As much as I love TBC it pains me to say that at the thought of Outland, I am bored already.

The Godmother won at WoW blog posts yesterday. Her post about attunements of old made me very nostalgic for them. It reminded me of the Onyxia chain for horde. It was a flipping pain in the arse, it was for sure. It was also one of the most satisfying experiences I had in the game. I fondly remember turning Rend’s head in to Thrall. I felt like a hero. I don’t feel like a hero today, even though Wrathion has me jumping through crazy hoops. Yet, I do not know if this same feeling can ever be brought back to a more modern WoW audience. We’ve all been spoiled by the game.

Two people, what to play?

I like board games. I really do. I love opening new boxes, and the prettier a game, the happier it makes me. Board game nights are always highlights for me. My SO LOVES board games. She’s excellent at just about any board game. The only board game she didn’t fully warm up to was Dominion, which is a shame, I like it a lot. If she could, my SO would play board games every night. Did I mention she’s good? She’s really good. This means for 2-player games, she usually dominates every game so hard that I find little enjoyment in them. She’s a top-notch programmer, her mind works completely different from mine. When it comes to games, she’s a Vulcan, cold logic, and the goal to crush her opponents.

So I come looking for help, Interwebz. If anyone who reads this knows any really cool 2-player games, please leave a comment. Somewhere out there must be the game where I won’t be crushed every single time I play with her. Right? We enjoy Kingdom Builder, but I don’t like it as a 2-player game. Qwirkle didn’t work at all, because she’s like a friggin’ computer when it comes to it. She actually wrote an AJAX-version with computer opponents and multiplayer support in her spare time. The Settlers of Catan card game is good, but it takes an eternity to play.

Must look harder. Last night we played Yahtzee, and that’s at least a game we can play without me wanting to flip tables.

Tonight we’re going to the circus. I haven’t been to the circus in like a million years. Seriously, since my childhood. I hope it’s going to be good. I am skipping raid night for it, so it better be good!