Nobody Reads This

Gamer, Blogger, Student

James Reynolds

jamesr87[.at.]gmail.com

Brilliant but hard bloody work

Well, this is one of my biggest hiccups yet! About two months since my last post, 3 major international holidays and my own birthday have come and gone and I’m now riding some coursework deadlines…. Where does that leave this blog?

Well I’ll try is all I can say

Maybe the things I post will become much shorter and constitute primarily a few thoughts or links but I will certainly try to post a little more.

Since my last post I bought Arkham Horror and played a few games and enjoyed them, however it’s brutally heavy duty for the person generally in charge of running it which is inevitably me. I shall coax another few games out of it but will force the materials into the hands of the other(s) willing to pick up some of my slack.

I <3 BSG:BG

We actually picked up Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game to and have played about ten games … While we learned to play we were hammered as the humans but these days we find some careful control and fairly restrained cylons can lead to an easy game. It’s very easy to get crushed or breeze through depending on how bold or outrageous the cylon your opposed to are.

Hmmms. I like this game and will likely keep you informed.

I’ve also hammered Modern Warfare 2 and 100%’d it finishing many of the tougher challenges solo on veteran, I’m enjoying the online and I’ve prestiged once (and will likely continue to do so) but I feel like some of the prestige sacrifices are a bit overly savage. I’d make it so that you unlock more and more challenges, but not that they reset your progress of them but rather just lock off the weapons until the respective levels.

Anyway, that’s enough from me, hopefully you’ll see me soon.

Happy new year.

Regards,
James~

Gamer, Blogger, Student

James Reynolds

jamesr87[.at.]gmail.com

Worlds Biggest Lolipop

Today is my last Friday working for this company and the work-load has ramped up so I apologize for falling behind yet again, it often feels like you sit down to spend five minutes of your day (on break I suppose) to write some notes about what you did recently, only to have the IT-equivalent of an Atomic-S**t- explosion take place just ten feet from you and the universe as we know it imploads.

There’s also the fact that I have to pack all my shit up over the next 7 days, 2 of which I’m raiding – 4 of which I’m working and at least one of which I’m hungover. Needless to say, my caffeine intake will spike and for once not because of some Rare-drop I convince myself I must have.

I suppose an Ulduar 25 update is in order, according to some sources (but not Rawr) I got what is thought to be the BiS Helm for a Holy Paladin. Needless to say I’m chuffed but also needless to say I’m very very poor now with only about 250g to my name. The item I got was the Ancient Iron Heume (What kind of a word is heume…) with the Intellect+Mana return proc Meta gem and a +16 Intellect yellow gem. It drops from the council, one of the bosses I don’t mind as much but generally causes grief because an interrupter slacks and the raid effectively gets shelled causing trouble for me.

I did see our 45,000+ Hit-point tank take a 58k hit yesterday, needless to say I was not amused and we wiped it up.

Later on I did some number crunching and decided to buy an Emblem of Conquest item and my choices were between the belt (28 Badges) and the neck (18). Both were nice upgrades but I let Rawr make the call for me and I upgraded the neck. I grabbed my Frozen Tear of Elune (omg lorelulz) and logged for the night.

We got both Hodir and Thorim down so Sunday evening is Freya and Mimiron. I think that makes it only 3 bosses before Yogg’saron which I will begrudgingly take part in. In the not to distant future I’m going to start combing my chat logs from WoW for some great anecdotes, so keep tuned in for that but until next time – Die safe.

Regards,
JamesR.

I’m a Healer, not your errand boy.

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.