Has it really been that long?! 3 weeks?! I've definitely fallen into the "I've been too busy playing to blog about playing" thing that I've heard from some other people.
My gut instinct was to level all of my characters straight to 100, and I've seen a lot of people doing that. But I'm taking my time. Loihi and Adelaide are still my only level 100s. I've got my new (boost character) druid, Stitch, to 98. I've got my priest, Bisous to 94. It's unlikely that either of those will ever be "serious" characters, though. L & A have always been my only serious alliance characters, and I don't see that changing now. And Todd & Co. bailed on us with the guild they formed (and we joined) so I've somewhat abandoned A.
I did finally convince Josh to start playing horde with me. I have been maintaining Amayaa's garrison this entire time. I've made sure to send my followers on missions at least once a day since I got my garrison (November 20) and it has put me way ahead of the game. Amayaa is only level 93, but she has four level 100 followers and over 4000 resources. I'm pretty dang excited about it. Since Josh didn't get Zelu's garrison until about a week ago when he started playing him, he's not so far ahead. But with these characters we've decided to really take our time, think things out, and do things right. We're learning from the mistakes we've made with Loihi and Popkorn (and Adelaide and Vare) and we won't make them this time around. There's no rush to 100. Amayaa and Zelu probably won't see Highmaul, or if they do, they'll be on the tail end of it. Loihi and Popkorn are our "main"s and they'll teach us everything we need to know.
I'm a little unsure what to do about Amayaa's professions, though. She is an enchanter/jewelcrafter, and it has always worked out really well for us. But now that gems are sort of a non-thing, I hate that I have a jewelcrafting building taking up space in my garrison. I guess when they designed garrisons, they assumed one of your professions would be a gathering one so they didn't make those take up space, and then you'd have a space for a building of your choice. Unfortunately, Loihi is a tailor/enchanter, so that didn't work out for her either. I'm hesitant to drop jewelcrafting for fear that gems will once again be a thing (that they'll start putting definite gem slots on items) but I guess it doesn't matter that much. Somehow Amayaa is always rolling in gold, so I can easily buy gems when I need them. But leveling a new profession. Ugh. And what would I choose? I could go blacksmithing, but by the time I need that gear, it will probably be obsolete. I could pick up a gathering profession and then just get a building to do the work for me (like alchemy, maybe). I could go engineering because that's always fun but super expensive to level. Oh, the decisions!
Wednesday, December 31, 2014
Tuesday, December 9, 2014
Go for the Gold
I don't think I've mentioned this, but I've been struggling with Loihi. I've been struggling hard. I mentioned how my dps was deplorable the one time I ventured into SoO with my guild, and it wasn't getting better. I've been kicked out of two heroic groups for having terrible dps. It's really frustrating because I have the item level and the silver proving grounds achievement that say I'm allowed to be in heroics. I wasn't causing wipes, and we were killing bosses. People just like to be asshats.
Ever since Elitist Jerks stopped being the go-to place for information about how to play my class, I've been using Noxxic. I stumbled upon Noxxic on a Google search, and I've never really felt like I could trust it. I couldn't quite put my finger on why. I think it was mostly that I'd never heard anyone else mention it, whereas, everyone had talked about EJ.
Last week, someone in trade chat said, "Noxxic is the Fox News of WoW." I went, "AHHHH I KNEW IT!!!!" Hahaha. So it became a discussion and the consensus seemed to be the Icy Veins was the way to go now. I, of course, immediately went to check it out. My talents were a little off. My priorities were a little off. Everything was just a little off. I literally read every word that Icy Veins has to say about destro warlocks, and I learned a lot.
My guild has a requirement that you have to get gold in the proving grounds to be allowed to raid. I had really struggled with silver, so I was not looking forward to attempting gold. With my new information came new-found confidence, so I gave it a whirl. And I failed. Repeatedly. I kept getting stuck on wave 6. The AoE was killing me. I didn't want to look up any strategies. I wanted to do this on my own. After all, it is called the proving grounds. (Although, when Josh mentioned the proving grounds over the phone to his friend, the friend replied, "You mean 'prah-ving' grounds?" Uhh, no, I mean 'proo-ving' grounds...) I'm supposed to be proving my ability to play, not my ability to Google.
I used what Icy Veins had taught me and reworked my talents again. I gave it a little more thought and came up with a better strategy on my own. And this time I made it all the way to wave 10. I didn't beat it, but I saw every wave. I was so excited. I gave it several tries before I decided I needed a break. We went out to dinner and then ran an errand. We came back, I gave it a few more tries, and BAM!
I don't think I have ever been as proud of an in-game achievement as I was of that one. I truly was starting to think it would never happen. It was such a weight off my shoulders too; I wouldn't be sitting on the bench while the rest of the guild goes off to Highmaul. There were still several people after me who hadn't done it yet too. So, YAY LOIHI!!
Ever since Elitist Jerks stopped being the go-to place for information about how to play my class, I've been using Noxxic. I stumbled upon Noxxic on a Google search, and I've never really felt like I could trust it. I couldn't quite put my finger on why. I think it was mostly that I'd never heard anyone else mention it, whereas, everyone had talked about EJ.
Last week, someone in trade chat said, "Noxxic is the Fox News of WoW." I went, "AHHHH I KNEW IT!!!!" Hahaha. So it became a discussion and the consensus seemed to be the Icy Veins was the way to go now. I, of course, immediately went to check it out. My talents were a little off. My priorities were a little off. Everything was just a little off. I literally read every word that Icy Veins has to say about destro warlocks, and I learned a lot.
My guild has a requirement that you have to get gold in the proving grounds to be allowed to raid. I had really struggled with silver, so I was not looking forward to attempting gold. With my new information came new-found confidence, so I gave it a whirl. And I failed. Repeatedly. I kept getting stuck on wave 6. The AoE was killing me. I didn't want to look up any strategies. I wanted to do this on my own. After all, it is called the proving grounds. (Although, when Josh mentioned the proving grounds over the phone to his friend, the friend replied, "You mean 'prah-ving' grounds?" Uhh, no, I mean 'proo-ving' grounds...) I'm supposed to be proving my ability to play, not my ability to Google.
I used what Icy Veins had taught me and reworked my talents again. I gave it a little more thought and came up with a better strategy on my own. And this time I made it all the way to wave 10. I didn't beat it, but I saw every wave. I was so excited. I gave it several tries before I decided I needed a break. We went out to dinner and then ran an errand. We came back, I gave it a few more tries, and BAM!
I don't think I have ever been as proud of an in-game achievement as I was of that one. I truly was starting to think it would never happen. It was such a weight off my shoulders too; I wouldn't be sitting on the bench while the rest of the guild goes off to Highmaul. There were still several people after me who hadn't done it yet too. So, YAY LOIHI!!
Friday, December 5, 2014
Broken System is Broken
I get an awful lot of page views over here, but zero comments, so I have no idea if anyone is actually reading this, or if it's just bots.
But tell me if you know anything about this.
Way back in the Wrath of the Lich King days...I can't remember how it all went down. They implemented the Looking for Group system, and I don't think it was right away, but they implemented a penalty system for kicking too many people. It's been quite awhile now, but if memory serves, in the beginning you had to wait 15 minutes before you could attempt to kick someone. Each person was allowed to initiate one kick per dungeon. You couldn't kick in combat or shortly after combat.
Then they implemented this penalty system. Ever since then, both Josh and I have had a 4 hour timer on our ability to kick people. There is no dungeon in the game that takes 4 hours, so there is no way we can ever kick people. The best part is that sometimes it will say 2 minutes, and then when the 2 minutes is up, it switches to 4 hours.
I have opened tickets a number of times, and every time I get a completely different answer. My second to last ticket got a response saying that it is a known issue and they're working on it. This was a couple of months ago, and after a particularly frustrating dungeon experience earlier this week, I decided to open another ticket. This has been going on for more than FOUR YEARS now. That's right, folks, neither Josh nor I have been able to initiate a kick in a dungeon for four years. I think if it's a known issue, four years is a pretty reasonable amount of time to get it fixed. And if you can't fix it, turn the system off. It isn't fair that I pay to play this game just like everyone else, but one aspect of it is broken for me that isn't broken for most people.
The most recent response that I got was this:
This is Game Master Phaelonum and I have your issue about the vote to kick! Thank you for taking time out of your day to hit me up about this, so that I could look into it for you :D
So, about the vote to kick, not sure if one of the things mentioned is that it is account wide, so any of your characters participating in the vote to kick, in any way, be it targetted, initiated, or even if you just click to vote someone, will reset the cooldown. Yes, even if you are the target of that kick, or the one who is voted to be kicked, even if it doesn't go through :(
I am so glad that I could look into this for you, Nicole! Please don't hesitate to reach out to us if you come across any other ways we could assist. Take care and may all of your adventures be EPIC! o(^_^)o(#) A cookie for you!
Okay, GM Phaelonum. Thank you for not even attempting to address the issue and telling me something that I very clearly already knew and talked about in my lengthy explanation of the problem. Here's the thing. It has been four years. Okay, I may have been the target of a few kicks in that time. I'll never know about the ones that didn't go through. (And if they don't go through, doesn't that typically mean someone is just kicking you to be a jerk and it isn't deserved? Why should that count against you?!) And every few months, I will attempt to initiate a kick in hopes that it has been fixed. But even before this happened, I really don't think I kicked people more than the average WoW player. Can you honestly tell me that four years isn't enough of a punishment? Even if I have been kicked and have attempted to initiate a kick a few times during that time, there's no way it has happened enough times that I haven't served my time in four years.
How do I know it's been four years, you ask? Because back when it started, when I opened the first ticket, I started tracking my dungeons. I made absolutely certain never to initiate a kick or to vote yes if someone else initiated it. I tracked over 150 dungeon runs, and I was guilty of a kick about 1% of the time. And the only times I did kick was when people were offline and my vote was required.
Meanwhile...Josh and I were in a group last night. The healer was just standing around and we wiped, so Josh said something like, "Are you afk or what?" They initiated a kick against him with the reason "gay." You cannot tell me that someone who is willing to kick someone that quickly has not kicked hundreds and hundreds of people...and yet...no penalty for them? And why in the hell should that count against Josh?! He did absolutely nothing wrong; someone initiated a kick because they wanted to be an ass, and Josh gets penalized for that? Bullshit.
It makes no sense. I responded to GM Phaelonum and demanded to see my stats in comparison to the average WoW player because they're going to have to do some serious work to convince me this system isn't broken. I doubt they will give me the stats, but I will open a new ticket every day for the rest of my life if I have to. It's not fair, and I'm tired of it.
I'm not one to complain about problems in the game. When everything was messed up on launch day, I sat back and relaxed. The game would be there later. When maintenance gets extended by several hours, I don't let it bother me. I don't write angry posts on their Facebook wall telling them it's their fault they're getting DDOSed. Almost every ticket I have ever opened has been about this one problem. And it's really starting to make me angry.
But tell me if you know anything about this.
Way back in the Wrath of the Lich King days...I can't remember how it all went down. They implemented the Looking for Group system, and I don't think it was right away, but they implemented a penalty system for kicking too many people. It's been quite awhile now, but if memory serves, in the beginning you had to wait 15 minutes before you could attempt to kick someone. Each person was allowed to initiate one kick per dungeon. You couldn't kick in combat or shortly after combat.
Then they implemented this penalty system. Ever since then, both Josh and I have had a 4 hour timer on our ability to kick people. There is no dungeon in the game that takes 4 hours, so there is no way we can ever kick people. The best part is that sometimes it will say 2 minutes, and then when the 2 minutes is up, it switches to 4 hours.
I have opened tickets a number of times, and every time I get a completely different answer. My second to last ticket got a response saying that it is a known issue and they're working on it. This was a couple of months ago, and after a particularly frustrating dungeon experience earlier this week, I decided to open another ticket. This has been going on for more than FOUR YEARS now. That's right, folks, neither Josh nor I have been able to initiate a kick in a dungeon for four years. I think if it's a known issue, four years is a pretty reasonable amount of time to get it fixed. And if you can't fix it, turn the system off. It isn't fair that I pay to play this game just like everyone else, but one aspect of it is broken for me that isn't broken for most people.
The most recent response that I got was this:
This is Game Master Phaelonum and I have your issue about the vote to kick! Thank you for taking time out of your day to hit me up about this, so that I could look into it for you :D
So, about the vote to kick, not sure if one of the things mentioned is that it is account wide, so any of your characters participating in the vote to kick, in any way, be it targetted, initiated, or even if you just click to vote someone, will reset the cooldown. Yes, even if you are the target of that kick, or the one who is voted to be kicked, even if it doesn't go through :(
I am so glad that I could look into this for you, Nicole! Please don't hesitate to reach out to us if you come across any other ways we could assist. Take care and may all of your adventures be EPIC! o(^_^)o(#) A cookie for you!
Okay, GM Phaelonum. Thank you for not even attempting to address the issue and telling me something that I very clearly already knew and talked about in my lengthy explanation of the problem. Here's the thing. It has been four years. Okay, I may have been the target of a few kicks in that time. I'll never know about the ones that didn't go through. (And if they don't go through, doesn't that typically mean someone is just kicking you to be a jerk and it isn't deserved? Why should that count against you?!) And every few months, I will attempt to initiate a kick in hopes that it has been fixed. But even before this happened, I really don't think I kicked people more than the average WoW player. Can you honestly tell me that four years isn't enough of a punishment? Even if I have been kicked and have attempted to initiate a kick a few times during that time, there's no way it has happened enough times that I haven't served my time in four years.
How do I know it's been four years, you ask? Because back when it started, when I opened the first ticket, I started tracking my dungeons. I made absolutely certain never to initiate a kick or to vote yes if someone else initiated it. I tracked over 150 dungeon runs, and I was guilty of a kick about 1% of the time. And the only times I did kick was when people were offline and my vote was required.
Meanwhile...Josh and I were in a group last night. The healer was just standing around and we wiped, so Josh said something like, "Are you afk or what?" They initiated a kick against him with the reason "gay." You cannot tell me that someone who is willing to kick someone that quickly has not kicked hundreds and hundreds of people...and yet...no penalty for them? And why in the hell should that count against Josh?! He did absolutely nothing wrong; someone initiated a kick because they wanted to be an ass, and Josh gets penalized for that? Bullshit.
It makes no sense. I responded to GM Phaelonum and demanded to see my stats in comparison to the average WoW player because they're going to have to do some serious work to convince me this system isn't broken. I doubt they will give me the stats, but I will open a new ticket every day for the rest of my life if I have to. It's not fair, and I'm tired of it.
I'm not one to complain about problems in the game. When everything was messed up on launch day, I sat back and relaxed. The game would be there later. When maintenance gets extended by several hours, I don't let it bother me. I don't write angry posts on their Facebook wall telling them it's their fault they're getting DDOSed. Almost every ticket I have ever opened has been about this one problem. And it's really starting to make me angry.
Monday, December 1, 2014
So many choices...
Being level 100 is overwhelming. In the last few expansions, you would hit level cap, and you knew exactly what you were supposed to do - jump into heroics and get geared.
This time around, it isn't that simple. So I did the reasonable thing - I quit and started leveling another character.
Just kidding.
No, but really. I've been playing Adelaide on and off and I made it to halfway through 98 rested. I completely skipped Gorgrond and I was able to skip half of Spires. It was glorious. Once I got to that home stretch, I stopped caring about rest and just pushed right through to 100. Adelaide is in a guild with people that I have known on WoW for many years now. Todd, Kyle, Stevie, Ryan, Anthony, and...probably other people. Ryan was the first 100 on The Scryers and he is determined to do this thing hard core. They're jumping into High Maul tomorrow. They want Josh and me to come, but our item level is sitting right around 600. Besides that, they plan to start at 9:30. Assuming they start on time, we'd be able to stay for about an hour. They really want us (and by us I mean Josh) to be on their A team, but it's not going to work out. I have no problem being backup, but I've already made a commitment with Loihi. And that commitment is to people who actually raid at a time that is reasonable for me.
As soon as I hit 100 with Adelaide, I jumped in the proving grounds and did bronze healing. It was cake. I went out of mana because I was panicky and spam healing when I didn't need to be, but it was still super easy. Then I did bronze dps. Also super easy. It was kind of upsetting because bronze dps took Loihi several tries. Last night, I did silver healing. It took me a few tries. I have to remind myself that it's a marathon, not a sprint. I have to slow down and breathe. I don't have to heal every time someone takes the tiniest bit of damage. Once I got that under control, I did it with ease. Silver dps took me a couple of tries, but I got it done.
It made me feel kind of crappy about Loihi because I feel like I must have tried 100 times before I finally got it down with 610 item level. Then I learned that the proving grounds scale to your item level. This doesn't make sense to me because I tried it with Loihi SO MANY times when she had a lower item level, and I didn't come close. Then when my item level got higher, I was able to do it. But I'm not even close to gold. So am I just that awful? Do warlocks just suck right now? (Because seriously, it was so much easier with Adelaide, who is an elemental shaman.)
So I've got my garrison to a place where I'm comfortable with it. I've completed all the quests in all the zones. I'm working on my professions as quickly as they'll allow me. (I've made a cloak for myself and I'm halfway to making one for Popkorn.) Now I'm finally ready to jump into heroics. It's time for Loihi and Popkorn to get geared so they'll be ready when the time comes.
I am thoroughly enjoying this expansion so far. I can't wait till Josh is ready to play his blood elf. I'm excited to try out the horde!
This time around, it isn't that simple. So I did the reasonable thing - I quit and started leveling another character.
Just kidding.
No, but really. I've been playing Adelaide on and off and I made it to halfway through 98 rested. I completely skipped Gorgrond and I was able to skip half of Spires. It was glorious. Once I got to that home stretch, I stopped caring about rest and just pushed right through to 100. Adelaide is in a guild with people that I have known on WoW for many years now. Todd, Kyle, Stevie, Ryan, Anthony, and...probably other people. Ryan was the first 100 on The Scryers and he is determined to do this thing hard core. They're jumping into High Maul tomorrow. They want Josh and me to come, but our item level is sitting right around 600. Besides that, they plan to start at 9:30. Assuming they start on time, we'd be able to stay for about an hour. They really want us (and by us I mean Josh) to be on their A team, but it's not going to work out. I have no problem being backup, but I've already made a commitment with Loihi. And that commitment is to people who actually raid at a time that is reasonable for me.
As soon as I hit 100 with Adelaide, I jumped in the proving grounds and did bronze healing. It was cake. I went out of mana because I was panicky and spam healing when I didn't need to be, but it was still super easy. Then I did bronze dps. Also super easy. It was kind of upsetting because bronze dps took Loihi several tries. Last night, I did silver healing. It took me a few tries. I have to remind myself that it's a marathon, not a sprint. I have to slow down and breathe. I don't have to heal every time someone takes the tiniest bit of damage. Once I got that under control, I did it with ease. Silver dps took me a couple of tries, but I got it done.
It made me feel kind of crappy about Loihi because I feel like I must have tried 100 times before I finally got it down with 610 item level. Then I learned that the proving grounds scale to your item level. This doesn't make sense to me because I tried it with Loihi SO MANY times when she had a lower item level, and I didn't come close. Then when my item level got higher, I was able to do it. But I'm not even close to gold. So am I just that awful? Do warlocks just suck right now? (Because seriously, it was so much easier with Adelaide, who is an elemental shaman.)
So I've got my garrison to a place where I'm comfortable with it. I've completed all the quests in all the zones. I'm working on my professions as quickly as they'll allow me. (I've made a cloak for myself and I'm halfway to making one for Popkorn.) Now I'm finally ready to jump into heroics. It's time for Loihi and Popkorn to get geared so they'll be ready when the time comes.
I am thoroughly enjoying this expansion so far. I can't wait till Josh is ready to play his blood elf. I'm excited to try out the horde!
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