Category: Gaming

5.0.4 What Did You Do To My Shaman.. #WoW #WorldOfWarcraft

In my years of MMO gaming, I’ve seen a lot of changes. I’ve had to re-learn game mechanics time and time again, each new expansion, in multiple games. I’ve normally taken this with a grain of salt, after all we all learn to adjust and move on – but the latest WoW patch REALLY bugs me, on my shaman in specific.

Shaman used to drop down 4 totems at once, it was “their thing”. What they were known for. You would pick the totem that best fit the situation, and before you started healing or DPS you would place those totems. They could even act as markers, they were raid wide, and they were wonderful. 5.0.4 removed the majority of these totems. Instead of dropping four, you’ll probably only drop ONE constantly (as DPS), with a side order of another here and there. Instead of lasting 5 minutes, they last 10-40 seconds. Instead of having nice totem hotbars where you can make sets of totems to drop, you’ll need them all on your regular hotbars so that you can drop the right ones when you need them. What the totems themselves do has been changed. That nice +agi/str buff is gone. Sure, your flame / stone pets are still there but the class doesn’t FEEL the same, at all.

I spent a bit of time looking over my skills, saddened at how many they removed. They seem to have consolidated every class in some aspect. This is great for freeing up space on my hotbars, not so great for someone who spent a lot of time learning how to play the class to begin with.

I have poked my other characters to some degree. The priest plays pretty much the same except that I have switched over to two heal specs. There is a large difference between the holy and discipline specs now – the level 85 AoE heal all priests used to get is now restricted to holy only. It was annoying to try to heal in my discipline spec. It was also annoying to try to heal a 5 man dungeon in my holy spec. Dropping shadow was something I had been contemplating before the changes, so I don’t mind too much.

Speaking of raids. The new LFRaid loot changes are.. not fun. In fact the majority of players I’ve seen in game have been complaining about them. I told them if people didn’t constantly roll on things that they didn’t actually need, maybe this change wouldn’t have taken place. In other words, THIS is why we can’t have nice things. See, before the change people would just roll on whatever their class could equip, needed or not. Some times trades would go on, some times players would win double items from the same boss. In other words human nature took over and suddenly everyone became a pack of loot hungry mongrels. The new loot system auto distributes 4 pieces of gear to random raiders, and everyone else gets a bag of 25g. You don’t see who wins, and you can’t trade the loot. In other words, blizzard is very literally just handing you your loot and saying here you go. It makes for some very drab and boring raids, that’s for sure. No worries though, people have found other things in-raid to bicker and argue about since they can’t argue about the loot with one another.

Over all? I’m excited about MOP and the pet battles, and even leveling up. I’m not excited about any of my class changes, and the LFRaids are a bit annoying. I LOVE that my guild experience no longer has a cap and they’ve increased the amount of experience you earn for your guild. This has been a godsend to my small guild of 3 people. We’re closing in on level 7, and that’s something that took a few months in the past.

What are your thoughts of patch 5.0.4?

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Ascalonian Catacombs #GW2 #GuildWars2

Last night the Combat Wombats met up in the homeland of the Charr to take on the level 30 story-mode dungeon ‘Ascalonian Catacombs’. Our greatest challenge was trying to get everyone into the zone, even when we all started from the same instance. Some how we got bugged and we all had to log out before the game would let us in. 20 minutes after pounding at the gates they let us through. Fixed? Not so much.

I learned a few more things this dungeon run. Rangers are not nice. Elementalists die first. Boulders are not an exploit, bring them and use them EVERYWHERE.

I also learned that if you really want to get the best benefits from a dungeon, you should try to do them when you’re level appropriate. While the gear that I got from every chest and drop was for level 57-58 (my level) the final dungeon chest rewarded a helm that was level 30.

To say the dungeon was easy would be a complete and utter lie. It took the Wombats about mid way through for us to finally find our groove. Once we adjusted traits and got comfortable with each others play style things went much easier, but were still really hard. Because dungeons scale you just like the rest of the world does, there will be no running off to solo instances that I can see, unless some sort of mercenary NPC is added further down the road.

Once you’ve completed story mode you’ll have the option (as long as you’re the right level) to either re-enter story mode, or move on to exploration mode. Apparently exploration mode is MUCH harder than story mode, so you’ve been warned.

Still, it was a great evening and I had a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to seeing what our next adventure will be.

As always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!

Harathi Hinterlands? I Just Don’t Like You. #GW2 #GuildWars2

We all have our favorite zones. Those places we just want to visit over and over again no matter how many times we’ve been there before. We look forward to them, share stories about them, and think fondly of all the memories we’ve created for our characters in those places.

Harathi Hinterlands, is NOT one of these zones for me. In fact so far it’s the zone I like the least amount, and one that frustrated me to no end.

In the zone there is a constant war going on involving many, many, many centaur. When wars go on, gate points become contested and prevent you from gating. Mobs spawn and rampage and pummel you to death. The vista you were trying to get to for the last hour becomes a dangerous place to hang out.

I think these dynamic war events are really neat – but – if you don’t have a lot of people in the section of the map you happen to be hanging out in, they’re also incredibly painful. This was the problem with most of my evening last night as it became too late for the majority of gamers to be up on a Thursday. It’s hard to get things done when there are 100 rampaging angry centaur beating you to the ground with their hooves.

As such, it took me far longer to complete this zone than any of the others. It also seems like the mentoring system is a bit borked because at some points I would be fighting level 46 centaur, but the game had me boosted DOWN to 42. Ouch. This does not make for happy times.

With a lot of deaths I made my way to level 45, completed the zone, and happily left. I’ve now uncovered 20% of the map, and Velours (my Asura Guardian) is glad that she can move on.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Caudecus’s Manor (Story Mode) #GW2 #GuildWars2

When I wasn’t getting thrown over ledges, I spent the better part of yesterday determined that I would finally find my way into a dungeon. The problem was that most of the time I found a group (which was an adventure in itself) we would end up in different instances, on different servers. Finally last night it looked like this problem was solved, and when someone mentioned in Harathi Highlands that they were looking for a few more, I eagerly volunteered.

I was level 41, and had never been to a dungeon before so I was really looking forward to it. At 30, the first story mode dungeon opens up. At 35 you open up exploration mode. The same goes for 40 and 45. My first dungeon was Caudecus’s Manor, which is the level 40 story mode. Hard to tell in the screen shot, but we did have a 71 auto mentored down, and they had been there before which was a handy thing. They were able to tell us the mechanics of the bosses and help us out with a few tips and tricks. I don’t want to spoil the dungeon at all but there ARE some new bits of information that you’ll want to keep in mind when doing these dungeons.

Number one: Always revive your group mates DURING battle. If someone has fallen, get them up asap, don’t try to continue the fight with people down.

Number two: Designate someone to tag mobs so that you can all focus your efforts.

Number three: Don’t just run off without your group, take your time, make sure everyone is ready before moving on. This is important because you never know what’s just around the corner, and unlike other MMOs you’re not going to be able to simply one shot it.

Number four: Dodge. Dodge. Dodge. Dodge. If you are not used to double tapping to move out of incoming damage, or to help reduce damage, learn fast. You can use the V key as an alternate. It’s so important in dungeons, I can’t stress this enough.

I also learned that dungeons reward an insane amount of experience. 20,000 in fact. I dinged while there, got some neat loot, and had a great time. The dungeon itself was unexpected and fun.

Finishing up Harathi Highlands (which I’ll go into more detail in another post) brought me to 45. Not a bad night at all.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!