Nobody Reads This

Gamer, Blogger, Student

James Reynolds

jamesr87[.at.]gmail.com

Endangered Species

So yesterday a friend finally kicked my back-side and convinced me to check up on the 3.2 patch notes, in response to me asking if there were substantial paladin changes he ominously replied “Ohhh yes”.

It has come to Blizzard’s attention that Paladins are over-performing on the mana effeciency front with many high end players completing Ulduar encounters with intact mana supplies. Blizzard has sought to resolve this by reducing our overall mana-pool with 5% off the top of of Divine Intellect and halving the mana return of Illumination (Down to 30% from 60% of Base spell cost).

As hard as two pretty nasty changes are to swallow they do not come without good reason. Paladins have always been the heinously effecient healing class but we paid for that in a relatively poor array of healing tools. We have no castable HOT’s and one insant cast heal which is on a 6 second cooldown. In return for this reduction in effeciency it was off set by providing us with a new take of Sacred Shield and an arguably fixed version of Beacon of Light.

Sacred shield will now apply a HOT for the total amount healed by the flash of light that procs it which means a sizable increase in healing done especially on those bosses where managing to even cast the heal is the hardest part, i’m looking at you Heigan the Unclean! The Beacon of Light buff now means it heals on potential healing done and for up to 60 yards in range, a very nice adjustment to an already powerful spell and arguably further encourages Raid Leaders to utilize us for Raid healing but at the same time further establishes us as the tank-healer of choice.

Whilst nobody likes the nerf-bat it becomes especially hard to swallow when Blizzard clearly does not realise where Paladins are actually underperforming. Any situational fight that contains either elements of movement or cast-time delays hampers us more than any other class. We are left casting 1 instant every 6 seconds, 1 sacred shield and if we are lucky a flash of light. During a Malygos throw the equates to as much as 20k healing split 10k over at most 4 targets but realistically 3 in a scenario where the whole raid takes as much as 20,000 a head.

Druids, Priests and to a much lesser extent Shaman are all better suited for difficult situations and yet Paladins remain as useless in the Malygos fight as ever before. Here’s to hoping that changes in the not to distant future but for now I’ll enjoy healing both tanks in the Razuvious fight and hitting 7.5k Hp/s.

Remember; never drink and heal,
JamesR.

Liadrin the Noble of Turalyon

Gamer, Blogger, Student

James Reynolds

jamesr87[.at.]gmail.com

Random Image is Random

Today I found out that I’m not a complete retard which brought with it a huge sigh of relief. My entry into the final year at University is now clear and I am safe to prepare my project in the knowledge it won’t be a waste of time.

Truth be told, the reason for the lack of posts is two-fold: It’s the summer and I like to relax incessantly and I’ve just plain been stressed out/too busy. Leslie has been staying with me now for about a week and before that I was grafting at the University to prove my worth.  Any time in between I spent progressing slowly, but surely, in WoW.

This blog and most of my other outlets have been starved of attention much like most media at this time of year. I recently answered the complaints of my current guild who hated the current Apathy of raiders not taking part.

It’s coming up to my fourth Anniversary in World of Warcraft and there is a regular activity pattern. Guild activity drops sharply during two periods of the year: The Summer and the Winter.

There are two obvious explanations for this, the weather is so damned nice why would you waste your time playing a computer game? The other is that Exams/School Holidays/Work Crunch times are typically around these periods of year adding to the stress, work load and apathy to all grown ups around the world.

This weekend I am down in Gosport again for a old-friend’s 22nd Birthday, I shall meet her new-born daughter for the first time.

Until then my friends, keep gaming and I shall see you for the Fire Festival.

Bring your Repair moneys,
James.

Gamer, Blogger, Student

James Reynolds

jamesr87[.at.]gmail.com

Wow, it’s hard to believe quite so much time has elapsed since I last visited the left a note for the … 8 … people who still look at this on a regular cycle. Sorry about that. Things are a little hectic not least because University stuff literally appeared from nowhere and kicked me in the nuts but also because I made the fatal mistake of getting back into WoW when I’m at my busiest. Yay for that.

Two things today, I wanted to reflect on my recent WoW activity with a brief commentary on what I’ve been doing and how I feel about a few things including the levelling->Raiding transition and the other is a story over on the BBC about a poll they did on Radio 1 to discover the best game. Please do feel free to go read the top 10 so you are suitably horrified for the rest of this blog.

I’m going to assume you’ve read the results of the Radio 1 Games Poll and now know that Call of Duty 4 is the best game ever, a title coveted by many and seemingly reawarded every time a fad comes along.  I’m going to pass over the games I’m relatively happy with and just make a few comments regarding the fucked up entries:

• Grand Thef Auto IV (10): Are you fucking serious? This game was praised for it’s pretty nice engine but lambasted for it’s terrible gameplay, hateable characters and soul destroyingly dull plot. Are you actually serious? -_-
• Football Manager (2): Yes that’s right, FM is SECOND. The bricklayers and builders clearely voted en masse for this one. Sigh. I like sims! And I like football! And even I think FM is a bag of shite.
• Fifa 2009 (9): Yep, it’s Fifa. It’s like Fifa 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001 … but with exactly 1 more disappointment.
• Halo 3 (8): How did I know the OXM readership would listen to Radio 1?

Out of curiosity here are a few of the good games and where they placed:

• World of Warcraft – 4th
• Half Life 2 – 12th
• Deus Ex – 16th (Noticeably under Fallout 3)
• Pokemon Red/Blue – 18th
• Half Life 1 – 21st
• Command and Conquer

As you can see many of the truly good games ranked, probably appropriately considering that the Radio 1 listenership is quite young but at the same time: Who listens to the radio at the weekend? Predominantly people who are working one might assume. All those white-collar nerds (Like mahself) were probably raiding or trying to alt-boot DOS so they could check out a Microprose classic and did not even find out about the survey until they returned to work on Monday. Quite.

On the topic of raiding (See what I did there) my WoW activity has spiked now that I’ve dinged 80 on my Paladin. Around the 76 Mark I was loaned 500g by Rob to pick up my dual-spec and at the time I was levelling Prot and took off-spec Holy. Tbh, end game protadin is STRESSFUL. Although I generally know all the tacs wherever I’m going I frankly do not have the patience to deal with R-tards. When you’re tanking, it’s all a mile-a-minute and the shit can hit the fan quicker than you can reach for Holy Shield.

Holy is relatively tranquil. Amongst the peaceful sounds of Mik’s Scrolling Combat Text and the soothing glimmer effect that comes with flash of light it’s easy to forget you were fighting a reborn skeletal dragon. Although there is still an element of responsibility – After all I am responsible for whether you live or die – But it’s very much more of a supporting role calling any bonus tacs and pointing out any mistakes for people to improve on.

The Tank is the quarter-back and I’m the half-back. Obscure-American-Football-Reference.

Not long after I dinged 80 I was lucky enough to find myself in a heroic group with an extremely overgeared Prot Pally and a few of his Guild mates. That night we must’ve done 5 or 6 heroics in a row – Enough to come away with a new Epic shield. I accepted their invitation to join their guild and have been running heroics and raids with them ever since.

So far I’ve done OS10, Naxx 10 (All except Kel, they’ve downed him but people are making silly mistakes every time and I don’t join for the rerun) and heroics for most of the other instances. I’ve dinged Exhalted with the Argent Crusade (and got mahself a hat) and now over half my gear is epic 200 Item quality. No set pieces yet though, I passed on my only one since it was a fellow Holy paladin who was running in blues with me in my new Epic Spaulders that only dropped two bosses prior.

Since I dinged 80 and got some of my nice gear we’ve also been running old instances for giggles including Molten Core (2 resets in a row :>) and Onyxia. We also gave BWL a shot but I think some people are too undergeared for it, there were 6 of us which currently makes up: 80 Holy Pally, 80 Enh Shaman, 79 Feral Druid (tank), 72 DK,  72 Shaman, 66~ Mage.

My recommendation: Don’t go until you’ve got at least 3 overgeared top level people. i.e. If the druid could look after himself vs most of the mobs (and cover the Orb Nominee) and one person could be relied on to keep the adds off the boss then I think we’d be ok.

As is, both our attempts have killed the boss before the eggs could go down, and subsequent attempts included botched controls which lead to mass-conflag and a wipe. Going to let the Feral tank ding and get some nice heroic gear – After which I think we’ll be good to give it another shot. The DK is likely to be the next person to ding after which I think Mark will be trying to level his warrior (He’s in outland now, doing fucking well tbh) and Leslie has renewed her levelling effort and only has one or two levels to go until Northrend.

Fun Fun right? Anyway, I look forward to doing some heroics in the not to distant future that are entirely friend driven! We’ve already got 3 80s (assuming Jim dings today :>) which include a Tank and a Healer so we should be ok. Jim may need to invest some cash in premature enchants and gems to get his stats up though but for now we can certainly run some of the easy stuff.

Random tail-end update and gratz for getting this far: I’m coming down to Gosport next week but I will be busy for most of it. I can probably hang out once or twice but I’ve got important University stuff that I need to do. We shall have to meet up and spend hours in Burger King again Also WoW will be on the back burner this week as I prepare all my materials for coming to Gosport.

Enjoy yourself, and GL with levelling Mark.

Gamer, Blogger, Student

James Reynolds

jamesr87[.at.]gmail.com

Furion: If your eternal vigil has hardened you, my love, it must be part of your goddess’ plan.

It’s not surprise the writing quality that comes out of Blizzard is as high as it is! Today’s update shall be a crazy new pseudo-segment called Premature Observation (Best I could come up with :/) where I talk about games and products that I’ve had not had long enough to fairly review! I have three mini-reviews lined up, so sit tight.

• Sennheiser CX 300 In-Ear Headphones (link) 4/5

Moving on from the Skullcandy around-the-ear headphones I had previously I decided I would not make the same mistake twice and realised around the ear headphones are attrocious! These new headphones which I grabbed in the recent (and seemingly neverending …) Play.com sale and they provide a great level of noise cancellation as well as nice performance overall with regards to audio quality and volume. 

They’re vastly more comfortable and don’t feel like they’re constantly going to fall out of my ear, I feel that Skullcandy headphones in general seem to be of a poor quality and really very overpriced for the materials used. The cabling felt consistently shabby and the pivot mechanism that makes the whole around-the-ear system work was just poor.

Whether or not the Sennheiser Headphones manage to survive the gym has yet to be seen.

• King’s Bounty: The Legend (link) 4/5

I bought this game on PCGamer’s recommendation that I’d get a free-roaming RTS/RPG hybrid that was quirky but fun. That is exactly what I appear to have bought. You pick a hero from 3 classes, then roam a map in “Real-time” (as opposed to turn based) which is very reminiscent of Warcraft 3 with sharper visuals. Whilst on the world map you ride around picking up quests, snatching loot and delving into caves. Then when you come accross a mob it starts an encounter and you fight an opposing army in a Hex battle.

Really this game is closer to a Heroes of Might & Magic clone than anything else but it does it so very well. There are a wealth of baffling quests and ridiculous dialogue: Thus far in my game as a Mage I have already bought a Ship from a Pirate, freed some Ghosts from a Pirate Ship, taken a quest from a talking Rock, Killed the king of the Thornmonsters and … well … the list continues. It’s a massive game that I doubt I’ll ever complete – What with the ragingly unpredictable difficulty curve … But I shall endevour to try.

• Fallout 3 (link) 2/5

The third time I started Fallout 3 I decided that trying to build an original or creative character was asking to get your ass handed to you. So this time I took Small Guns, Science and Lockpicking. Wow, exciting right? I get 3 minutes outside of the Vault and BAM attacked by 6 Mercenaries armed with laser rifles … Yeah … Thanks game.

I’ve clocked a few hours now and reached rivet city (arbitrarily meeting some new unexplained creatures along the way) but the whole place is such a clusterfuck of design I have no idea how to finish my quest… I just don’t get how someone can pour so much heart and soul into a game and get some basic level design elements so very wrong. But then … This IS the company who made Oblivion! It shouldn’t surprise me.

Regards,
///___[[[JamesR ]]]___\\\