Friday, June 13, 2014

Diablo, Hearthstone, and a Resub to WoW

Well, it has been quite some time since I posted, and I don't even know if anybody is still reading. If you are, then thanks for checking in from time to time.

Things I have been doing include the above.

In Diablo, I am at around paragon 330 or so and have all classes to level 70. All of the classes are capable of at least Torment 1, and most are able to do higher. My Barbarian and WD can do the highest torments out of the group as I have gotten a lot of pretty good gear on those two.

It isn't exactly a secret, but the Rift if Forward community in D3 is awesome. If you don't know about it, you essentially choose to be either a runner or a leecher. Runners run the Rift up until the Rift boss. When they get there, they fill their group with randoms out of RiF chat and select one to reopen. The leechers get free bloodshards and the runner gets a rift opened for free. I have been on both sides, and I must say that being a leecher is 100 percent the best way to gear a character. I personally can only do it for a bit before I get bored, but there it is.

As far as Hearthstone goes......I love that game....and sometimes I hate it too. I am way too competetive for my own good and hate losing. I like ranking up, but I hate the grind once you get to rank 5. It will take forever to get to legend at that point because there are no longer win streak bonuses. I got to rank 5 last season, and am currently at rank 9 this season while playing extremly casually. I think I have over an 80 percent win rate in ranked so far this season. I want to hit legend for the card back, but the time needed to do it is just ridiculous. I have been mostly running everyone's most hated deck, Zoolock. It is just so strong against most matchups. I also created a Priest deck last night to mess around with and found it quite complicated and enjoyable. I wouldnt probably play it in ranked unless I already hit legend, but it was good fun.

Last night, I also resubbed to WoW so that I would have something to do with my wife in the video game world. She likes Hearthstone, but we cant exactly play together, and she is not really a fan of D3.

Since we had already preordered the next expansion, we were granted a free level 90 character. My buddy Kev signed back up as well and we decided to insta-level some of out horde characters to 90. I chose my Druid (since my Warrior on that server is already at 87), my wife chose.....a Druid (what else), and Kev went with a Shaman. It was nice that they gave us level 90 greens to get started. We headed out to the timeless isle after that and started getting some of the legendary gear from out there. That is where we finished the evening.

I am not sure what to do in WoW these days. I could barely remember how to play any class other than my Warrior when we logged on yesterday. Is there anything new going on that I may not be aware of from the past 5 or so months? I suppose I will get the rest of my Alliance toons to 90 and then work on at least my Horde Warrior as well.

What have you folks been up to?

Monday, March 31, 2014

Diablo 3: Quick Rundown on Bounties and Rifts

Literally. All of it. I could go play Titanfall....but I want to play Diablo. I should do my dailies on Hearthstone...but that game pisses me off a lot and I want to play Diablo.

I have now added my third level 70 (Demon Hunter) and have been gearing up my Barbarian in Adventure Mode and Rifts. He is at about 550k DPS unbuffed with 7 plus million toughness. Most of the time I have been either split farming normal bounties or running T1 Rifts with some friends.

Overall, the new expansion has been an amazing time. I have even leveled my Crusader up to level 52 as of last night. He has a reduced item level legacy Skorn currently, and it is beastly for the level.

For those of you who have not played, I will go ahead and do a quick explanatiing of Adventure Mode Bounties and Rifts.

Bounties: This is where most people start out in Adventure mode. Basically, each act has 5 areas with a bounty at it. This can be to kill a boss, a purple mob, or to clear a specific area. You go there, complete the bounty, and get some nice XP. If you complete all five in an act, you get a Horadric Cache as a reward. This is basically a goody box that has a chance to drop you some legendaries. It also drops a bunch of yellow items, crafting materials, gems, and Rift Keystones. You need 5 rift Keystones to open a Rift. Of the five acts, two of them will be Bonus Acts. If you complete those, you gain additional Bloodshard rewards. Bloodshards are basically used as a form of gambling. You trade them in to a vendor who lets you pick an armor or weapon slot. You then get random items from that slot. It could be a legendary, yellow, or blue item in my experience. Mostly yellow items.

Rifts: Once you have 5 keystones, you can open a rift. A rift has many different levels, and is generally set up as a random act map with random monsters from any act in it. You could have Act 1 monsters in an Act 5 setting etc. Once you clear out a certain amount of monsters, a Rift Guardian appears and you have to take them down for some nice loot. Rifts are a very good source of XP, loot, and fun.

Overall, I highly recommend Reaper of Souls.

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Ding Second 70

As the title says, I got a second character to 70. I took my Wizard from 60-70 in "Hard" adventure mode in about 3-4 hours. It was pretty fun. Since then, I have been alternation between getting some gear for my Barbarian in Adventure Mode/Rifts and leveling my Crusader.

So far I really like the Crusader as he seems pretty nice and tanky. I have been leveling him up through Expert level adventure mode, but recently switched to the story so that I can progress through that yet again. I may end up just going back to Adventure Mode because it is infinitely more fun, and I can just have someone get me to the quest to kill Malthael at 70 to get my free legendary.

Last night I took my Barb into Torment 1 Malthael during a bounty as a group. Overall, it did not go well for me. So much bad on the ground, and every time I got rezzed, I was in the bad again and died several times. It was very annoying actually.

Overall, I am loving this expansion and look forward to many more hours of play.

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

D3: Reaper of Souls live (Ding 70)

As many know, Reaper of Souls went live last night. In the words of the Templar, it was GLORIOUS. I decided to hop on my Barb for the grind to level 70 and joined up with Bearness and one of his friends and got to it.

We started off with Torment 3 I believe, but by the time we hit 69 we were down to torment 1. We ended up having to take it down a couple of notches at that point because shit was killing us way too fast and taking too long to kill stuff.

One thing that I noticed is that the bosses are a bit difficult, which give you a pretty good challenge to not be a corpse.

Make sure that you hit 70 before taking on the last boss so that the guaranteed legendary that drops is for a level 70 character.

I farted around with the enchanting and transmog and found that I really liked it. I was able to transmog several pieces and I made a worthless weapon pretty good by getting the option to enchant a socket into it.

Tonight I am planning on playing some Adventure mode for bounties and rifts. Perhaps I will start my Crusader as well or begin leveling up my other toons. It took about 4 hours to get to 70, but that was with constant trips back to town to unload loot and fart around.

Thursday, March 20, 2014

D3 and Titanfall: PSA

If you have already preordered Reaper of Souls for D3, then today is the day that you will be getting your Imperius wings. Yes, you can wear those bad ass red wings today. If you have not preordered, and want the wings, then get on it! The expansion comes out on Monday. I do think they extended the time to get the wings until April however.

As for Titanfall, I am loving this game. I was also a bit annoyed that when I got to level 50 of generation two, I could not just go to three. You have to complete specific challenges to get to the next generation. In my case, it was getting a bunch of kills with the shotgun and the 40mm cannon. It has taken me a couple of days, but I am down to the last one. I just have to kill a few more of anything with the 40mm cannon and I can move on to the next generation (which is like a prestige in MW, only you get increased XP at each one).

So, basically make sure you find out what challenges you need to complete to get to the next generation as you start one.

This has been my favorite month for games in a long time. D3 is finally the game I wanted it to be, and Titanfall is the most fun I have ever had in a shooter.

Monday, March 17, 2014

D3: Last Day of Auction House Today

As the title says, tomorrow, the AH will be closed forever. If you have any items you have been thinking of selling, then last week was the time. But late is better than never. Get rid of all of your old gems asap. The expansion will have better ones and your current ones will become obsolete.

I am up to about 130 million currently off of selling one of my old Skorns for 50 million, and a set piece recipe for 30 million as well (Stalwart defender or something like that).

If you dont have much gold, you may consider buying a bit before the real money AH goes offline. You will need it for enchanting etc.

I think this is a good thing for Diablo. People can get back to playing for upgrades instead of paying for upgrades.

Thursday, March 13, 2014

Titanfall

So, I got Titanfall for the X-Bone. It is the most fun I have had in a FPS....ever. Literally ever. If you like playing online first person shooters, this is probably the game for you. It doesnt have a single player mode, so beware if that is what you are into. What it does have are:

Titans: Who doesnt want to fuck shit up in a giant robot? There are basically three different types of titans which are balanced (Atlas), Tanky (Ogre), and fast (Stryder). They all have advantages and disadvantages. I almost always use the Ogre because I like getting up close and personal. Punching shit in a titan is super fun and effective. You can splatter a pilot, or do massive damage to the Titan itself. In case you are wondering, it is called Titanfall because when your Titan is ready, they shoot it down to you from space. If you aim it correctly, it one shots opposing Titans if it lands on top of it. You can ride around in your titan and fuck shit up, or you can set it to guard an area while you still run around and shoot shit.

Parkour!: You can run on walls, and jet pack jump. If you are decent, you can get to any place on the map pretty much. You can also wall hang to get the drop on people. You do not take fall damage. Literally none.
You can run sideways on a wall, double jump off and start running on another. You can jump out a window, jet jump backwards, and hang on the wall waiting for whoever was chasing you to come out. There are just so many possibilities.

Yeehaw Cowboy: There are some other very fun things in Titanfall, and that includes the ability to Rodeo. Basically, you can jump on an enemy Titan, pull off some armor plating, and start blasting it's insides. Most of the time, the pilot will stop and get out to shoot you off. If they don't you are going to take them out with the quickness.  A couple of other things I love are the melee attacks. If you attack from the front, you do a kick like Chuck Norris. My wife giggled uncontrollably watching me run around and kicking dudes to death like 10 times in a row. If you attack them from behind, it is even more fun. You grab hold of their head and twist it around completely. If you are on the receiving end, the last thing you see before respawn is the face of your murderer.

Overall, I fucking love this game. Absolutely a blast to play. If anyone else is playing it on Xboxone and wants to join me, my battletag is Bigjuicyhog52.

Monday, March 10, 2014

D3: Now with non-cookie cutter builds!

One of my absolute favorite things about this new version of D3 is that you dont have to go with a cookie cutter build. You get pieces of gear that have specific kinds of damage or specific skill damage increase (like lightning damage increased or whirlwind damage increased etc.)

This leads to you figuring out new and fun builds that you would not play before. I am actually enjoying my Wizard a ton doing a frosty and archon build. If you like a skill or skills, you can make them work with you, especially with the right gear.

Another good example is on my Barb. I picked up an Odyn Son (Mjolnir) during a run and decided to give it a shot. It gives me like 22 percent extra lightning damage and has a chance to spawn lightning bolts that do a nice amount of damage. My sheet dps went down by about 30k by equipping in, but it doesnt take into account the elemental damage stuff. I was melting through mobs using cleave with the lightning rune and whirlwind with the lightning rune. It is something different I may not have tried if not for the new patch.
In other news, I played some double Wizard torment 1 with Bearness and had quite a lot of fun. Two of them combined is super OP. Frost orb is explody goodness. We also both leveled at the same time essentially while running through sunken temple quests. He still has about 40 paragon levels on me though.

Thursday, March 6, 2014

D3: More Leveling Goodness

Last night was yet another night of Diablo leveling goodness. Kev and I started out on the adventure to finish leveling his mage. I decided so that I would get Paragon XP as well, I would do Torment 1 with level 60 mobs. Kev was 50 at that time.

We ended up running through most of act two, and he hit 60 just before Zoltan Kulle. After that, we decided to give his Witch Doctor some love (who was being woefully neglected still sitting at level 1). Well, it went pretty well.

We set it on Expert difficulty, and away we went. By the time we finished act one in a little over and hour, his witch dr was level 29.

I really love the new leveling process. It really makes it so much faster and enjoyable. The loot is a million times better as well. I really think that loot 2.0 will actually be a big improvement for Hardcore as well. I only have one hardcore character and it is only at 17. The fact that they are one and done doesnt really sit that well with me.

I am guessing that there will be more Diablo in my future tonight.

In other gaming news, I finished Hearthstone should be coming out of Beta soon, so you will need to get our Golden Mekkatorque soon if you want it.

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

D3: Quick and Easy Leveling

Diablo 3 is currently the flavor of the day. Yesterday I did not really do any Paragon leveling, but I did help my buddy level up his Wizard. We played for maybe a couple of hours total and he went from about 25 to 49. Leveling is now incredibly easy and fast.
What I found amazing is how difficult Torment 6 was even at level 49. I was never in danger of dieing on my Barbarian, but the mobs hit hard enough to take a decent chunk of life, and the rare mobs really took forever to kill. I can only imagine the insanity of it at level 60.
Another little bit of embarrassment (or maybe it is just that the new loot system is so much better). I brought my Wizard to kill stuff for my buddy. While looking through the yellow drops to give him upgrades, I actually found two upgrades for my level 60. This is level  40ish stuff by the way.
The new loot system is so far above the old loot system that old shit that was once ok at level 60 is not even as good as something you may get at level 40. My wizard is really the one I currently need to get a bit more gear on. Maybe Kev and I will do some Torment with my Wizard and whatever toon he decides to bring. My wizard is only anout 85k dps and 200k toughness, so he could really use the upgrades.

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

D3: Help me Deckard Wan Kenobi...you're my only hope.

Having played quite a bit of the new patch of D3, I have concluded that this is the best that game has been since release. You feel like you can actually make progress. In a couple of days of playing, I have gained about 5 paragon levels. Those levels would have probably taken me weeks before.


I am currently mostly running my Barbarian through the game on Torment 1. I have tried out some of my other toons in Torment with mixed results. My Witch Doctor who has somewhat low paper DPS did somewhat well. My Hunter who has good DPS kept getting his ass kicked by elites.

It seems like the current flavor of the month is Wizard. I haven’t played mine, but the current version must be significantly powerful.

The whirlwind Barbarian is not quite what it once was. Fury generation kind of sucks currently, which can be a problem when dealing with some elites. Rend with the healing rune works really well in tandem with the Whirlwind that gives your fury for each enemy you hit.

The best thing that Jay Wilson ever did for the Diablo franchise was leave. The game is so much better currently. I am actually looking forward to the expansion and leveling the fancy new crusader.

I also wanted to throw in a PSA about preordering. If you order even the standard digital download you will get the Demon Hunter for Heroes of the Storm when it comes out. You will also get the Imperius wings, which are the most awesome looking thing ever.

If it has been a while since you played D3, give it another shot. The game is much different, and much better.

Saturday, March 1, 2014

Wut I am bin doing!

Hello there fellow bloggers…..if there are any still out there that read my little blog. I have been absent for a while as I have not been able to post from work where is where I always did my posting. However, I have figured out a way to do this, and should be blogging a bit more regularly.


So, one thing that I have been up to….is not WoW. I unsubbed, then subbed, then unsubbed again. I am just not feeling it right now. You can only get so many toons to max level before it really starts to make your eyes bleed.

Things I have been playing are Hearthstone and with the new patch being released, I will probably be playing quite a bit more Diablo 3. The changes in Diablo 3 look like they are going to make the game more fun again. I will probably be playing a decent chunk today.

For those of you who do not know what Hearthstone is, it is a Blizzard CCG that you play online. It is kinda like Magic the Gathering only set in the Warcraft universe. It is a great amount of fun if you are into that type of thing and has several fun options for play modes. In ranked I am currently at rank 10, which is not great, but is decent considering the fact that I don’t have a single legendary card.\

One other new development is that my wife bought me the first console I have gotten since the WII. She got me the XBOX one so that I can play Titanfall with my friends when it comes out. I got Madden 25 for some sports goodness as well.

If you like shooters, and have not seen what Titanfall is about, check it out on youtube. It is amazing. I got to play some of the beta on my buddy’s XBOX1 and that pretty much sealed the deal for me.

So basically, I am playing all kinds of games currently…..just not WoW.