Growing the Family

Rather than an off-topic post about the patter of little feet for my wife and I, this of course relates to my chronic gaming condition. Over the weekend I added a Zealot to my ever increasing WAR family, everyone say their hellos to Hotcakes, the third healer I have in my collection. I played Stilleto the Witch Elf for a grand total of maybe 20 minutes over the weekend before going back to pick up where I left off on my Sorceress, a weeks worth of rest XP has enabled me to catapult her to the heady heights of level 7.

The only other character to see any kind of serious play time has been the new arrival and I must say that I am fairly impressed with the class to start off with. While it took me a while to get used to playing the Shaman getting started with the Zealot was a lot easier. I’ll admit that the damage spells seem weak in PvE but then again, doing DPS isn’t what the character is designed to do in the end. I always find it amusing that the first few levels in the healing classes expands their range of damage spells rather than heals. I don’t know what the thinking behind this is for sure, but I always try and level up my characters in Scenarios for the first few levels, stripping away the limited armour you get to maximise the Tome unlocks which increases XP further.

I managed to top the healing charts overall in one instance and was at or near the top in all the others, I like that the basic heal is a direct heal, rather than a direct heal with HoT attached. This makes it much easier to conserve your action points as you know what is going on, it may be sad to admit it but the Zealot reminds me a little of my Priest from WoW. Easy enough to use but plenty to sink your teeth into to get good at it. (I wasn’t the Priest in our raids that overhealed by 60% of her total healing and was OOM after every trash pull).

So where do we go from here? I now have a total of eight characters on Karak-Hirn. I have my Magus with more rest XP than you can shake a stick at waiting for the patch that, hopefully, restores my ability to DPS effectively. What I think I’ll be doign is rotating them round to make maximum use of the rested bonus, learning the class as I go. I need to keep my hand in with the guild as well, only two characters are in there after all and I don’t want them to think I’ve gone AWOL. We’ll see if my Witch Elf can make much of a dent in Tier 3 or whether I can eek out levelling on my Magus in scenarios only, even with the measly DPS, I need some more power before trying to tackle what have proven to be some tricky PvE quests. I know my Witch Elf would rock through them, but that’s not the point is it?

Things I Learned at the Weekend – Part 5

That’s right, it has now been over a month since I delved into the destiture realms of the Destruction side of the Age of Reckoning. This has seen me spend two weeks on a Magus only to switch over to my Witch Elf and spending another two weeks levelling that character up to the same level as the Magus. Stilleto remains a mere 3 levels ahead of Ravenmane in the rank game and the Magus is the same Renown rank as my melee, lingerie model. After a week of having virtually no time to play I actually got some time in yesterday to play, my wife has been ill over the weekend, combined with an early morning on Saturday now means I am completely exhausted. A few weekend hours have seen another addition to the Altaholic team, I’ll get around to introducing her later, all I need now is a Chosen and a Maruder to complete the set.

Check out the updated banner at the top of the page to monitor gear changes and the addition of new toons.

1, My level 7 Sorceress can crit for more damage than my level 18 Magus, even with a mere 10-15 Dark Magic built up. Hopefully this will be fixed in the upcoming patch, otherwise I will cry…..manly I know.

2, My level 7 Sorceress doesn’t run out of action points in combat very often, something that happens all too often with my Magus (who did get some playtime this weekend, I haven’t forgotten her).

3, Rest XP is awesome, I now have enough characters that not playing one for a few weeks allows me to grab a few levels very quickly, mainly through scenarios. Rotating these characters will allow me to get a nice range of experience with each as we progress.

4, Despite patch 1.04b being pushed out to servers, Tier 1 is still 99% Nordenwatch (I did get one Khaine’s Embrace though WOOT!) and Tier 3 still popped Tor Anroc.

5, Destruction is lacking healers at the moment. A few weeks ago when I was on my Shaman there was 3-4 of us in each scenario. This weekend we’ve been lucky to get 1 or 2. Order is much better prepared when we end up against 3 Rune Priests and 3 Archmages, sprinkled liberally with a few Warrior Priests (who seem to be enjoying a resurgence of popularity at the moment).

6, I actually like the Zealot up to the level 5 that I have played the career.

7, I don’t enjoy melee screaming in Scenario chat that they aren’t getting healed when I have 25k+ healing done on the summary. It also helps if you don’t go charging into the middle of all the ranged guys at the top of the hill out of range and line of sight. I can’t cast through a hill, nor do much when you’re being focus fired by three Bright Wizards and their pocket healers.

8, I really do think I’m doomed trying to get any character to 40 considering my constant switching of characters.

9, I don’t do well as a Squig Herder. I know that they can do a lot of damage, I’ve seen it done, I jsut don’t seem to be able to mirror that.

10, Finishing the Dark Elf chapter 1 influence chart at level 7 means that the next area you go to is ridiculously easy. I am going to try and keep Cryo ahead of the curve in this regard using my “level and rest” rotation policy. I may also build up that XP by playing my main for a while….. sticking with one character for a while may tilt the Earth of its axis though. You’ve been warned.

Liberating Your Disk Space

Props to Bogomils from my WAR guild for bringing this to the attention of our guild, I thought I’d share this through the medium of the blogosphere as it’s a useful piece of information.

If you look in the root folder of your WAR installation there is a file called Data.myp. Now, apparently this file builds up over time with lots of crap. I checked mine last night and it had inflated to a whopping 38Gb, one of the chaps on the guild website had over 70Gb in his. To rectify this problem you can delete the file, then the next time you log into WAR on the sign-in screen put a check in the “Perform Full File Scan” box, this will look through all your WAR installation files and sort out what is missing, in this case our data.myp, the regular unbloated version is a mere 47Mb.

Go and reclaim your disk space today!

WoW unleashes the Wrath

Today is the day that eager beaver gamers can get their hands on the latest expansion to online phenomenon World of Warcraft. Now, you may ask what place does WoW have on a Warhammer blog, well, let me tell you. Despite these two games having very different aims and catering for different crowds all modern MMos owe something to Blizzard’s magnum opus. No matter what your personal feelings about the game are, one cannot dispute the impact that it has had upon the gaming world. Many people that would probably not be gamers have become so due to the ease of accessibility that WoW brought, it has also had detrimental effects on many of its players, me included, its sphere of influence is broad indeed.

There are of course various arguments echoing around forums on the net regarding who is copying who’s content with the various patches and updates that are floating about. It was only after The Burning Crusade was released that I really got back into WoW and then found some of my friends playing it and that took off with me getting my first ever character to 70, my Holy Priest Bouaza. I’ve actually played every class until at least level 20 over my time there too. I wouldn’t like to count the number of characters I have created in that game, my altaholism was well and truly fuelled by it. However, am I likely to go back and experience this new content, heck, there is even a totally new class that I have never experienced before. Right now I am involved in WAR and am giving that a go, I have yet to experience the end game and that will of course determine my long term future. However, while WoW has its charms I cannot afford to get into the same situation I was in at the beginning of this very year.

Our “casual” raiding ended up being 3-4 nights a week and every other hour in between to get materials to support that raiding. Addiction is the right word in this instance. I was playing every hour I could get away with and it definitely impacted other areas of my life, virtually to the exclusion of all else. My weekends would pass quickly in an orgy of WoW indulgence, there was no time left for anything else. I would think about it all day and then play it all night during the normal working week. While I was playing Conan I still maintained my WoW subscription and kept a character there, if I knew that there was anything other than that raiding waiting for me at the end game I may return someday, but to truly succeed you need to give your life over to the game and I am not willing to make that sacrifice again.

So, will I ever go back? Maybe, just to level some more characters and have some fun. What will it take? A strong community and I don’t have that in place at this time. Let’s see what happens with WAR! Who knows, after that I may stop with MMOs altogether……… but that’s a story for another day.

Would more people read this if I have the word “NAKED” in the title?

Just a thought.

Anyway, life has come up and bitten me in the ass this week meaning that I am unlikely to be able to play until the weekend. Mondays are not traditionally a gaming night anyway as my wife and I meet up with friends for the evening every week to hang out and enjoy pleasurable company, not that we find each other that repulsive we have to get out and see other people to enjoy said pleasurable company. Tuesdays are normally a slow evening for me as well, I take time out to watch Stargate Atlantis which keeps me away from the PC, sometimes I play for a bit afterwards but due to how this week is going I am saving all that lovely rest XP for a blowout come the weekend. Tonight (Wednesday) and tomorrow (Thursday) I will also be out for varying amounts of the evening which is going to prohibit my gaming time. I have a feeling I will have some catching up to do come Saturday.

But wait! Surely Friday as the weekend beginneth I can start the spamming of scenarios and quests for my Tier 3 progress…well no. This is actually the worst of all the days. You see, every month I organise a LAN party style event for friends. We spend all night geeking it up and playing various games with each other over a wired LAN. It’s all good fun and everyone gets a kick out of it. November’s just happens to be this Friday. Lo and behold though, then the weekend arrives! Woot? Well, I have a lot of stuff going on this weekend as well, I’ll be out at 7am Saturday morning, home for the afternoon and out in the evening. Not a day designed for keeping pace with many of my guild mates. However, Sunday could prove to be back to normal service.

I don’t begrudge the time away from the game though, I can review my history with WoW and see just how long I spent each and every day in that game and be happy that things are not this way in WAR and I had more stuff going on a taking away my free time when I was playing WoW too. Wrath of the Lich King comes out this week and I can see all those people still addicted to it craving this latest pack of “Grind-in-a-box” (TM). It’s a great game (not without its flaws) and I can say that I did enjoy the time I spent there (was certainly a lot of it) but even though I get the odd touch of nostalgia and think of going back, I don’t think that I will relive any of those experiences that made the game for me as the vast majority of the people there are not playing anymore. People afterall make an MMO not the MMO itself I feel. If you have a good community then you can cover over a multitude of failings (goodness knows I spent long enough in SWG mainly due to the community after SOE butchered that game). A break from gaming all the time is good and refreshing and means I don’t get too caught up in it. Luckily my guildies are keeping me on the straight and narrow by offering helpful advice to stop me returning to Azeroth.

Roll on 1.0.5 and my Magus getting the love she deserves and we’ll see just what I can do to rip things up in game. Until this patch arrives I can afford to be happy in a more casual playing style.

L2P

Last night I did infact go ahead and create a tank class. I am now the proud owner of Chuck the Black Orc, you can see him on the new header image I’ve put up. I plan to try and keep it updated as the various parts of my alt farm progress through the game. I managed to get Chuck to the heady heights of the top of level 2 before stopping to give some time to my Disciple (who I now like less than the Shaman). How fickle my sensibilities are. I need to get some armour on the Black Orc though as he tends to die quite quickly, especially considering there appears to be an exponential growth in the number of Bright Wizards in Tier1. I ran a scenario in Nordenwatch last night where (again) half the warband was Bright Wizards. I think everyone playing on Order has one as a main or an alt. I’ll admit that I have one on my Order characters who reside on World’s Edge. I haven’t been there in weeks though, Destruction on Karak-Hirn is my home ever since I defected from my Witch Hunter on the same server. RIP Gunbunny.

I’m planning on building up some rest XP among my various alts so that I can level faster and therefore gain abilities at an increased rate, this should help me learn a little about the classes quicker and lend credence to my analyses. Everything will be obviously biased by the fact that I am on Destruction and I’m not going to play all the classes I find annoying. Unless someone wants to pay me a hugely inflated salary to do it full time, then I’m all yours and can work overtime! Slowly but surely I want to build up a picture about how all the archetypes fit together which will mean that whatever I am playing (most likely the Witch Elf or Magus) at end game will not be prohibited by a lack of understanding about team dynamics. If I can be the best that I can be I think our open RvR success chances are going to increase and means I can informedly comment upon the game in all its intricacies.

Hope you like the new header, you can see everyone on the back row but Skabz the squig herder is now too short to appear…

Less QQ Moar Pew Pew

I can appreciate that anyone that actually bothers to read this blog may leave thinking that all I have to do with my time is to whinge and moan about Bright Wizards. This is obviously untrue as I whinge and moan about many other classes as well, Shadow Warriors for instance also do my nut, just not to the extent that the pyromancers do.

My Witch Elf is now engrossed in Tier 3 content, that means once I complete this area I am headed towards the end game and open RvR goodness. Encountering some of my guild in the scenarios is also good as it makes me feel less like the noob trying to scramble up the ladder and more a part of a group levelling to get to where we can really have an impact on the ongoing conflict. From now on I’m going to try and focus on the strengths of my classes rather than their weaknesses, after all, I can take out Bright Wizards, they aren’t all powerful, although they are certainly a good class in terms of raw damage output. I happened to play a Tor Anroc on Sunday that comprised of an Order team that contained six of our friendly neighbourhood Bright Wizards. Please do not confuse this with a QQ post, but we got our asses handed to us in no uncertain terms. With the power of their DoTs at the moment I am sure that you could sit on top of the volcano where the bauble spawns and tab target and apply DoTs as you will and rack up huge damage numbers. I haven’t played that class to the level that they are using so I can only see things from a Destruction perspective but with the current games balance in favour of ranged classes this kind of random party was always going to be tough to beat. We did actually win one though, which is surprising on our server. Maybe other people have different experiences but all I tend to see is lots of Destruction players getting flung into the lava.

Patch 1.0.5 is on the horizon though and I am looking foward to the Magus changes, if everything works out I’ll be back to playing Ravenmane more fulltime, I don’t know how anyone can stomach getting that career levelled at the moment given its shortcomings (we still don’t have a main Magus in the guild right now). After spending a weekend on not only my Witch Elf, but my Magus, Shaman and Sorceress I’m wondering how things will go in the future. Obviously I want to get to 40, but there is enough in some of my alts to keep me interested in playing them and it does open up other sides of the game for me to experience and I think this helps me gain a more rounded viewpoint about how the game functions. The only character type I haven’t played at the moment is the tank, we’re almost at the point of having three to play with, maybe that’s something I can correct tonight before I go out. Make that final part of the game available to me and I can then have a view on at least how all the archetypes work in tier 1. If I continue down this path then hopefully when it comes to RvR having that understanding may give me an edge.

See you on the battlefield

/quitewafflemode

Things I Learned at the Weekend – Part 4

Continuing the series of various observations from my progress in WAR. None of this will probably startle anyone, but hey, it’s an excuse to post about something that may not just be a whinge about how overpowered Bright Wizards are.

1, Cold Ones are huge when called, you need to scroll out just to be able to see where you are going.

2, Playing my Magus before patch 1.0.5 hits will only serve to remind me why I switched over to my Witch Elf in the first place.

3, A Goblin Shaman is actually quite fun to play when you gain six levels in less than three hours. Players love to be healed.

4, If you’re not playing a healer there is no guarantee you will get healed, even when standing in front of said healer with your life leaking away from Bright Wizard DoTs.

5, Most Order classes seem to have a knockback and they’re not afraid to use it in Tor Anroc.

6, Being rooted should give you a knockback invulnerability so you have some chance of not getting flung into the lava in Tor Anroc.

7, Watching Runepriests, Archmages and Bright Wizards panic when you pop out of stealth to butcher them is really quite funny.

8, Playing against a team with 6 Bright Wizards is not fun. Tab targeting + DoTs FTL!

9, The little Black Book mod isn’t quite working as expected when I still get “Revenge” announcements for a guy that has killed me just the once and I’ve stabbed him to death nine times.

10, I must read the quest log so I don’t kill random mobs that do not contribute to my quest and then end up back at town before I realise that I haven’t actually finished anything….

The Key to Victory – Bright Wizards

Now, anyone that knows me or has read some of the posts on this very blog is more than aware of the fact that there is no love lost between myself and the Bright Wizard community. In fact I think that many of the Destruction players also feel this enmity. Well, allow me to spin a yarn for you. After discussing the state of scenarios as a melee DPS class with a very close friend of mine, I resolved to do something that I probably should have always done. Rather than being lazy and using the “Join All” button in the hope of getting into a scenario earlier and therefore accruing more Renown, I should just join Phoenix Gate. This works better for me as a Witch Elf and is generally a lot more fun than Mourkain.

So, as a part of last nights dash to try and hit 20 (more on that later) I only queued for the Phoenix Gate scenario. I think after about half an hour I made it into my first scenario and I will tell you now that it was a massacre. We had the whole Order team penned into their spawn point and anyone of them that managed to grab our flag didn’t make it back to their capture point, we taunted them by walking around their spawn area while carrying their flag (why we just didn’t go capture it I have no idea, but we were well ahead to start with). We even had a go at the lvl 55 Champions that guard it, admittedly by mistake. I finished the scenario with 54 kills and 1 death, over 10, 000 XP in the kitty and over 500 renown points. Soild victory to destruction, this is the first time I have seen this happen and I think I know why.

What was remarkable about this particular PG (I’m not keeping on typing Phoenix Gate every time) was that there were NO Bright Wizards, nada, not one. Conspicuous by their absence but this meant we steamrollered the opposition. I plauyed maybe four or five further PGs throughout the night and things went from bad to worse after such a great start. Yes, that’s right, every other PG had their usual smattering of fire-flinging DPS maniacs. This resulted in us getting penned into our spawn point (I did escape and grab an Order flag but with their whole team sitting by the capture point and running around with our flag I was doomed from the start). Bright Wizards and their pocket healers are extremely annoying, I can free myself once every minute from their never-breaking Fire Cages but cannot outdamage the heals. I either kill the healer and get nuked before I can take them down, or go for the Wizard and watch him get healed while he nukes me. I expect this and try and plan for it and occasionally catch someone by surprise, but 2 vs 1 I’ll lose every time. I am not sour about this, that’s the way the Witch Elf gets crispified. What is interesting is the change in balance once the Wizards appeared. It went from a complete white wash for us to eventually the same thing for them. This will make it even more interesting to see what the 1.1 patch addresses.Also, what will happen with the addition of the two new tanking classes?

So, other than scenarios how did the charge to 20 go? Pretty well, needless to say I didn’t make it all the way through the level in one three and a half hour session, but got to 81% which I consider pretty good going. Hopefully can finish that off tonight and head into the weekend on a charge to Tier 3. I even dyed my gear to a rather fetching off white. Hopefully looking good with increase my XP gain!

So close I can almost taste it!

Last night before trying to find my way into an opening week Quantum of Solace screening I managed to play some WAR before making dinner. This allowed me to eek out the last bit of XP to get Stilleto to level 19, I also unlocked the “Run Away” title by achieving the “Died 10 time froms Monsters” unlock in my tome. Took me a while to get there and I died around four times last night anyway, most embarassing (apparently champion level mobs like her perfume). This is now obviously bringing me agonisingly close to being able to mount up for the first time. I’m more excited about the Cold One than having another kind of disc on my Magus, that actually aided my addition to switch, despite the fact that so far the Magus is easier going in RvR while the Witch Elf walks all over things in PvE. Now, if I could get a Magus that shoots Witch Elves that would be suitably OK and I could get my own back on Bright Wizards. I can picture it now;

“DoTs eh? Have some Witch Elves”

\cast FlickeringFireof Frenzy

“Arrghhhhh, get them off…..get them off…..”

Awesomesauce.

Barring my overactive imagination I’m hoping to have a good night of things now, although I’d prefer to have a load of rest XP to help me on my way to not having to walk anymore, I’m going to do the best I can to get to a new plateau. That then leaves the weekend to make the charge into Tier 3, but I’m not rushing, I’ll finished each of my PvE areas before moving along, even if that means that my RvR rank is going to lag behind even more.

I’m looking out for indications of the first patch contents as well, that is starting to get more important as I progress and see how things are balanced against each other and the way things are means that ranged combat is king from what I see. I am weeks behind where I should be already after I moved from Order to Destro and I’m not going to keep switching around characters (getting urges to play the Squig Herder) as that will delay my efforts even more. I want to see how the end game is and then casually level some other characters. Let’s see if I can hold out…..