Standing in Fire

Star Wars: The Old Republic

Traellus — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 03:32:20 +0000

I probably had the most fun I have had in a while playing a game this past weekend. I was lucky enough to get a beta key for Star Wars: The Old Republic and had a complete blast playing through part of it. Since the NDA has been lifted, I thought I would share my impressions.

Pros:

it is a fun game. BioWare has done an amazing job putting SWTOR together. The story lines are excellent and the controls are superb.
The quests are not overly hard to complete with a nice spattering of elite mobs thrown in that are solo-able when you are at an equal or slightly higher level. In addition, once you get a companion, it increases what you are able to solo.
The environments are huge and very well constructed. Although some of the caves are repetitive (similar to WoW) they are large enough not to notice. There are some cities that are the size of entire zones in WoW.
The story lines are very well written and very engaging. You end up really caring about your character because of the story

Cons:

The environments are huge so there is a lot of walking, especially once you get out of the starting areas
The quests involve a lot of running back and forth to the same areas
The dialogue cut scenes for every quest gets a little annoying if you are leveling two toons in the area
Due to the point above, I think the replay value of TOR is very, very low so I really hope the end game lives up to the beginning zones
There are no pleasant surprises. By this I mean that in WoW, you fly over an area and the designers have put in small surprises – a small cabin in the middle of nowhere with a dwarf fishing, a village of dancing trolls, an island with npcs containing real people’s names, an area with signing dragons, etc. None of these kinds of small surprises exist in the game

Based on the beta weekend, I definitely think I will be picking up a copy of SWTOR and playing it through at least once to max level. What I don’t know right now is if I will participate in the end game, we’ll have to see.

If ya gonna tank… learn how

Traellus — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 05:46:27 +0000

I realize that not everyone has the time to spend on ElitistJerks and min/max their class. I understand that players have lives and other things making demands on their time. But if you are going to tank, the least you can do is learn how your class tanks. I attempted an heroic run of Lost City of the Tol’vir on my rogue, Twyllite to try and get her some new gear. It didn’t go well.

First, the tank was a Blood Death Knight who thought diseaseless tanking was the way to go. I am surprise that they weren’t trying dual wield tanking as well. The image above shows the spells they used. Not only were they not using their diseases, but the were not even using Rune Strike. This is what ElitistJerks.com says about Diseaseless Tanking:

Prior to 4.0.6, there was some merit to ignoring blood fever (from plague strike). In 4.0.6, you should keep blood fever on your target because it provides a -10% damage debuff. Similarly, frost fever provides a melee speed debuff; whilst that debuff can be applied by other classes, it’s more reliable and safer to maintain it yourself. Thus, you should tank with both diseases on your boss target.

I am also fairly positive they weren’t using their cooldowns since they were always the first to die. In addition, every pull was a Death Grip.

Regardless of how many mobs were in the group, he would just Death Grip one out and and smack at it til it was dead. Then he would go onto the next one. As the healer and the rest of the group slowly died from the rest of the mobs. Argh!!!! Please, for my $15/month and the other people’s in the group, learn your class before venturing into a heroic dungeon.

The healer wasn’t much better. A Druid healer should have Rejuvenation at the top of their spell use, not at the bottom at about 9%. Generally, the second person to die, shortly after the tank, was the healer. Although, a few times, I think they flip-flopped. Once again, learn your class and don’t try to heal a heroic until most of your greens are gone.

Still here after all these years

Traellus — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 17:34:45 +0000

I realize my last post was basically a farewell to arms from me and should have signaled my departure from the game, but… something got in the way and I am still here. And not only am I still playing the game, but I am raiding Firelands on my Frost DK. I am also trying to get into a new guild, Defenders of the Pass. Somehow the game still holds an appeal and the community hasn’t completely driven me away, yet.

Just about ready to quite

Traellus — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 04:06:36 +0000

As the title says, I am just about ready to quite this game. The reason, I am getting tired of the player base and I am getting tired of the Cataclysm content, specifically, the 5-man dungeons. I think I am up to about 1 in every 5 instance that I run, at any level, that is even remotely successful. More than naught, the runs I am in involve either the tank thinking he can grab the entire room and live or the DPS thinking they can attack anything they want regardless of what the tank may or may not be doing.

I just left a run of Dire Maul in which a brain dead Moonkin decided to attack a group of plants, even though the tank had run away. I let him die, but he had aggroed so many mobs that the rest of the group died as well. I was in another run of Dire Maul where the tank decided, instead of clearing the last room he would jump down onto a pillar and just stand there. The DPS jumped down onto the floor and proceeded to attack the boss. I left before we wiped when everything in the room decided to join the fight.

In level 85 heroic raids, I think I consistently get grouped with people who have never been in the instance before and don’t have a clue what to do. They either can’t hold threat on the boss or they can’t heal or they stand in fire and die. I ended up pet tanking several mobs in Halls of Origination because the tank had died, again.

Argh… I am getting to so sick and tired of running fail instances with fail people and fail tanks who think just because they have some heirlooms on they are indestructible and just do OP. Get a life looser, you are as killable as anyone. Except the people who play WoW are just too stupid to figure it out. “I’m a tankadin, I’m OP, learn to heal noob. I can grab the whole room and heal myself”. Fine, do it!!!!!

I know, I know, Blizzard says that we shouldn’t be doing things on our own, we have to do them in a guild group. Well I am sorry, but I don’t want to have to bother them every time I want to run a dungeon!!!! Give me back my WotLK, rofl stomp dungeon instances. Yes, they were easy. Yes, they created bad players. But they were fun. I could go into a heroic dungeon as newly dinged 80 and have fun. Now, I dread going into a level 85 heroic instance.

I don’t raid anymore and if I don’t do dungeon instances anymore, I am not sure what else there is in the game to do. I would like to learn to heal, but I am tired of wiping on low level instances and I am terrified to try and learn to heal on level 85 dungeons.

In WotLK, I decided to heal on my Paladin and I was able to learn how by running normal and heroic dungeons. Once I felt comfortable, I started to heal ICC. I don’t feel that I can do that anymore. I don’t trust the player base and I don’t trust the dungeons. So I decided to start low level alts to learn and am finding I can’t stand it.

Also mixed into all this is that I am not really feeling a part of my current guild. Kurn is great and I have the deepest respect for her and for what she is trying to do. I wish her and Apotheosis all the best of luck. So this is not a comment about her, her guild, or the people in that guild. I just haven’t been able to find my place in the guild, nor have I been able to click with the people in it. Apotheosis is a level 25 guild and that is hard to leave. However, I think I am going to have to as I just don’t fit in with this group of people.

Playing WoW should be relaxing and yet I find myself getting frustrated, mad, and upset whenever I play and I really am finding it harder and harder to justify playing anymore. My subscription doesn’t run out until the middle of October, but I don’t see myself logging in that much anymore between now and then. If I could find the right Guild and the right set of people to play with that might changed. I don’t know. Each time I play, I get closer and closer to giving it up.

Day 13 – People (players/bloggers) that you admire

Traellus — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 02:52:13 +0000

This topic is an easy one as there are a lot of people that I admire in the game. Generally, they are people who have gone out of their way to contribute back to the community in some way. I tend not to admire people just because they are in a top level progression guild or hold a server first of some kind. With that said, on to my list…

WHU Baby Hunter Level 9 Event

Frostheim

The first person I have to mention is Frostheim from the Warcraft Hunters Union. He has probably contributed more to the WoW hunter community than anyone else I know of with the possible exception of BRK. BRK is gone though and Frostheim is still here with a weekly podcast, OutDPS!, writing for WoW Insider and still writing articles on his own website, WHU. In addition to all of this, he created the WHU Baby hunter guild on Icecrown. His website is always the first one I visit when I want to know something/anything about being a hunter.

Kurn

The second person on my list is Kurn, my current GM. Her website is a gold mine for any and all Holy Paladin information. In fact, it was her site that taught me how to be a Holy Paladin during ICC and allowed me to heal all the way up to Sindragosa. It was also her website and her description of what Apotheosis was going to be was what lead me to apply for a raid slot. She is an amazing guild master.

Lissanna

For anything I want to know about being a Druid, I go to Lissanna’s website, Restokin. Between her website and her posts on the WoW forums, I think she has done an amazing job of helping Druids every where and has offered a huge amount of time and knowledge back to the community.

Kinaesthesia and everyone at L2R

The L2R website is probably the current go to place for raid boss strategy guides and videos. The main person behind those guides is Kinaesthesia, a Priest healer in the Vodka guild (currently number 2 in the world). I have a lot of respect for someone who is in a top level guild and is willing to give their knowledge and experience back to the greater community. In addition to the strat videos he creates, he also does the Circle of Healing podcast with Dawn Moore.

I be healing

Traellus — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 04:06:38 +0000

One of my goals for this expansion is to learn how to heal. I healed on my Paladin almost all the way through ICC, but that was fairly easy; I hit one button. I want to try something a little more complicated, so I created a Blood Elf Holy Priest and am leveling strictly through dungeons.

Zaerie, my Holy Priest

So far, things are going fairly well. I have yet to really have anyone die on my because of a mistake I have made. On the other hand, I only have 4 buttons to press and it is fairly easy to figure out which one to hit when. Well, I actually have 5 right now, but I just got Greater Heal so I am not counting it as I am still figuring out when to use it.

My general spell rotation is to put Renew on the tank before he charges into danger and then to use Heal to keep him topped up. For everyone else in the raid, I simply put a renew on them and let it do its thing. I rarely have to use Heal to top up DPS, and if I do, it is usually just over heal. If the tank, or someone else, gets into trouble I will use a Flash Heal or Power Word: Shield, but I try to limit the use of the later. As Holy, Power Word: Shield just doesn’t seem to absorb as much, but it is good for stopping the damage and giving me time to cast a couple of Heals or Flash Heals.

The next spell I am going to pick up is Lightwell, but I am not convinced it is worth it right now. I am not convinced anyone will click it and I don’t think the fights last long enough to make it worthwhile anyway. But we will see…

Personally, I think Holy Priests have some of the prettiest spell animations in the game. Just take a look at the screen shot above of Zaerie casting Greater Heal with a Power Word: Shield bubble on. Pertty ain’t it? I also love the look of Holy Word: Sanctuary.

Day 12 – A usual day in your life/online time

Traellus — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 03:55:16 +0000

A usual depends on what day it is. If it is a work day, then on my usual day I wake up slightly on the late side and very quickly get leave for work. Somewhere on the way to work I will pick up breakfast. My current favorite is getting a smoothy from Booster Juice. I spend my day at work creating software and helping the company go from good to great by guiding them in discovering Agile software development methods and practices and removing the current waste in our existing processes. I then go home at some point in the evening.

Once at home, I play WoW or a I watch TV. Depends on how I feel and what kind of day I have had.

On the weekends, I tend to play a lot more WoW and do no work. I live weekends.

In terms of my time online, I don’t know if I have a usual day. Right now, I am doing the new Firelands dailies on my Hunter. I am also doing the dailies to get my rep up with the wintersaber trainers to get my Winterspring Frostsaber (only 6 more days to go). I then try to run a few random dungeons on either my hunter, my mage or one of my lower level alts. I am currently trying to learn how to heal as a Holy Priest.

Day 11 – Bad habits and flaws

Traellus — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 06:31:14 +0000

Today’s topic is simple; I have no flaws. Yeah, that’s it. Alright, I have a few. Some in game and some outside of it. In game, I think my biggest bad habit is back peddling while in a fight. This is something that I am actively working on. On my hunter, I tend to Disengage instead of walking backwards and on Syanda, I am trying to get into the habit of Blinking out of danger.

Out of the game, my biggest flaw has got to be not doing the amount of research and min/maxing needed to squeeze out that last drop of DPS from my toon. I spend way too much time playing my Alts and learning how each class works to spend time becoming an expert on my hunter. But, I can live with that. My other flaw is definitely not writing enough in this blog.

Day 10 – Blog/Website favourites

Traellus — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 02:28:03 +0000

Here is my list of favorite WoW sites and blogs in no particular order.

General WoW websites:

WoW Blog websites:

WoW Podcasts

Okay, I just realized that I read and listen to a lot of WoW stuff. But I am not addicted, I can quit anytime, really, I can…

Day 09 – Your first blog post

Traellus — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 01:22:07 +0000

My first post was a very simple introduction of myself and the blog. It was all of two paragraphs in length and was followed by the next post 5 days later. I actually did fairly well starting out with four real posts within a few days (10 or so) dealing with things like Hunters should not do melee and the annoyance of waiting for a LFG to pop and having people AFK for the check.