Wednesday, October 31, 2012

D3: Idea for Paragon leveling

First thing I want to say is that I think that Paragon leveling added a nice touch to D3. On the other hand, I think that there is a nice amount of room for improvement.

Each character has to Paragon level which means you generally just choose one. I love my Barbarian and he is going to be my Paragon toon, but sometimes it would be nice to switch it up a bit and not feel like you are being penalized for it.

I have a level 60 DH and am also working on my Mage. I cannot really play them at max level because it makes me feel guilty since I should be working on my Paragon level. Well guilty isnt really the word. More annoyed.

I think that there is a simple solution to this. Account bound Paragon levels. As you hit 60 on other toons, the Paragon levels match up and gain XP on the account, not just the character. That way if you feel like playing a different toon, you can without thinking about the paragon level xp you are missing out on with your main.

I would probably sample a bit of every class at max level if this were the case. I really hope Blizzard thinks about this sometime soon.

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Diablo 3: Legendaries Fall

One of the greatest features of the most recent major patch is that you can actually get legendaries.

Last night I had two drop for me. Granted, both of them were mostly crap, but I am happy that they are dropping. There is little more statisfying that seeing those orange letters and that beam of light.

I got a 600 and something dps one handed crossbow that I turned into crafting materials. It was bad. The stats were ok, but the dps was god awful.

The second piece I got was a one handed mace. It will be a nice item for one of my followers as it had 42 percent magic find on it. I need to build up a follower magic find set. I am thinking that I will put it on my Templar.

This is one of the things that keeps me coming back to D3 for more.

Monday, October 29, 2012

Weekend Update

It was quite a busy gaming weekend. In WoW, I actually did a bunch of dailies each day of the weekend. I had been going very slowly on them, but decided I should do them just to get the out of the way.

On Sunday I was in uber quest mode apparently. I did Tillers, Anglers, and Golden Lotus dailies. Then for good measure, I went and polished off the Dreadwastes for the most part (I left one quest up with no rep gains).

Our little group is also moving on up. I gained a level on my Paladin and almost a level on my Priest. My wife got ger Paladin to 90. Fettsbounty got his Monk to level 90. Kev and Jody got their Paladins to 90 (I think Kev did, may have been 89). Now we just need to get our group together and do some Heroics and such.

I am looking forward to revered with the Klaxxis so that I can grab those sweet ass tanking pants.

In Diablo news, I got my Demon Hunter to level 60 and have been trying out a new spec on my Barbarian.

My Demon Hunter had about 4 levels to go to 60, so I decided to grind them out. I hit level 60 somewhere in Act 3 of Hell. I ran MP10 through act 1 and dropped it down to MP5 for act 3 and 4. Once I hit 60, I went to the AH for some upgrades. I got legendary two handed crossbow and a Dead Man's hand as well as several other pieces. I have about 69k dps on my DH now, which is ok, but not spectacular for a Demon Hunter.

On my Barbarian, I decided to try out a two handed rend build. I grabbed a Skorn for about 1.5 million and went to work. My paper DPS is up to 114k with my Battle Rage up (which is always up). The build is not nearly as mobile as the double tornado build, but if you crit with Rend, you can literally watch the monster health melt away. The one bad thing is that if leap is on cooldown, you do not have a good escape ability. I have gotten better at using this spec and die less than I did at the beginning.

During my travels, I also picked up two legendary items and a set piece. It is nice to see that kind of stuff drop. It really gives you incentive to keep plugging away other than just grinding out paragon levels.

Friday, October 26, 2012

On to the next class....

Well, since having gotten my Druid to 90, I am going to start working on my Paladin. These are the same three I have leveled in order since Wrath.

I do my warrior first because I love tanking as a warrior, and he is and always will be my main. I level my Druid second because I have long loved Druid healing. My Paladin comes third to round out the holy trinity and give me a dps.

I choose the Paladin because I really enjoy the feel of Retribution. It is nice and involving. I like when stuff procs and you have to decide what to use. It is also nice having some decent healing skills.

My questions is........what should I level after my Paladin?

Resto/Elemental Shaman
Destro Warlock
Blood DK
BM/MM Hunter
Disc Priest
Frost Mage
Assassination Rogue
Monk Brewmaster

I am currently leaning towards doing the Shaman next...after that, it is pretty much up for grabs. What do you guys/gals think?

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Ding level 90...again

Last night I decided that I should go the rest of the way getting my Druid to level 90. I had about half of a level to go and decided to head out to the Dread Wastes. That is my first venture into that zone, and it was very good XP.

Now that I have two level 90 characters, my next goal is to go for the third. I am thinking that I will make my Ret Paladin the next to reach level cap as I have in the past. Since Wrath, this has been my order for leveling toons. After that it will be a free for all, but I think my Shaman may be next in line.

In Diablo 3 news, I did a key run last night with both Bearness and Teknique who read my blog. It went fairly well.....at least for them. I kept getting caught in bad situations that called me many deaths. The worst is when you come back into a fight having zero rage and get gibbed nearly instantly. Most of my deaths came from the Act 4 key warden....that guy is a fucking asshole. He didnt even drop the plans for me. Something about reduced healing plus having the jailer affix to go along with his bullshit nuke spell than basically insta kills you.

I like doing the stuff with the key wardens because it gives me a sense of advancement. I dislike it because of the number of deaths.

I think the next couple of times I play will be just random mindless farming, but who knows?

Diablo 3 classes if they were from movies.....

Barbarian: Gotta go with Arnold from Conan the Barbarian....he looks like he want to whirlwind some shit.


Demon Hunter: Gotta go with Orlando Bloom as Legolas from Lotr. He seems emo enough plus the bow work.


Wizard: This one is a bit difficult for me to figure out....the Wizard looks fairly young in D3. How about Julian Sands from Warlock.


Witch Doctor: For the Witch Doctor, I thought the main bad guy from Indiana Jones and the temple of doom would be perfect.


The Monk: I found that this one was quite hard to come up with a good one. I ended up going with the version of Chuck Norris from Way of the Dragon


What would be your choices to play the character classes from D3?

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

What draws you to a class?

Most people I know have a preference for what kind of class they like to play and usually the first character they create in any game will show that preference. For me, I am a beefy melee lover.

My first character in WoW was a warrior. My first character in D3 was a Barbarian. As time goes on, you try out other classes to see what else you like. In WoW, I found out that I really enjoy both tanking and healing. Especially healing on a druid or shaman. In Diablo, I really enjoy sprinting around and whirlwinding shit to death on my Barbarian. Both my Warrior and Barbarian are beefy (I feel like Cartman lol, BEEFCAKE!!!).

My wife prefers ranged DPS. She doesnt like being in middle of all of the mobs if she doesnt have to, especially in instances.

Every person has a much difference preference. What are yours?

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Diablo 3: Key Farming and Incoming MP nerf

Last night I had a good time trying to farm up some Infernal Machine keys with Bearness. We played on MP 4, and generally did not have too many problems....well besides the Act 3 key master. That guy is a fucking asshole.

Edit: Fucking Asshole has been nerfed. He no longer cast illusions, and the frozen body attack hits for less damage. Woohoo!

I got the key from Act 1 and Act 2, but will have to continue working on 3 (and then whatever I need from Act 4).

The good news is that they are nerfing the damage done by monsters in MP1-10. It becomes much more pronounced at the higher levels, so here is a chart of how it is going to look.

•MP1: 109.60% (down from 114%)
•MP2: 120.12% (down from 130%)
•MP3: 131.65% (down from 148%)
•MP4: 144.29% (down from 169%)
•MP5: 158.14% (down from 193%)
•MP6: 173.32% (down from 220%)
•MP7: 189.96% (down from 250%)
•MP8: 208.20% (down from 285%)
•MP9: 228.18% (down from 325%)
•MP10: 250.09% (down from 371%)

This essentially means that if you were doing MP7 before, you can probably safely do MP 10 (although it would probably be slow with the hitpoints each mob has.

This patch has made D3 so much better at max level. I did not find any legendaries last night (Bearness found two Wizard Strength pieces lol), but I feel like every thing I log on, there is a chance I find something amazing.

I also got my Barbarian to Paragon 16 last night. Moving on up.....slowly but surely.



Monday, October 22, 2012

Weekend Update

The weekend was filled with a large serving of D3 and a side of WoW.

As for WoW, I basically would log on, do some dailies and log back off. I am now exalted with the tillers as well, and have started going at the Golden Lotus dailies. I have just not been in a WoW mood for the most part.

I did a bit of leveling on my Druid and am about a half of a level from 90. I also got him one of the healing rings during the Headless Horseman event.

On the other side of things, I have been playing quite a lot of D3.

I have been seeing a decent number of legendary drops, and even sold the legs to Inna's set for 11 million gold which is more than I have ever had.

My Barbarian is currently Paragon level 15 and working his way up slowly but surely.

I also went and started leveling up my Demon Hunter. He started yesterday at 40 and is now level 54. I think he will be 60 shortly, but I do not know how often I will use him at max level until they link Paragon leveling amongst all of your characters. I grabbed him a grossbow with about 850 dps on it and a reduced level requirement. I am owning baddies.

I went through the rest of Nightmare and have been going through Hell at Monster Power 10. I am still demolishing everything in my path. I just have to make sure not to get hit with any big attacks.

I enjoy the Demon Hunter, but do not find it nearly as fun as my Barbarian.

Friday, October 19, 2012

Legendary Drops and my wife, the machine

First things first for some WoW news.

Last night I got exalted with the Wind Serpends. I no longer have to do those dailies. WOOHOO. Now I can concentrate on some other dailies in the short amount of time I spend doing that.

Golden Lotus is next up, and I had been mostly skipping it because I dont feel like doing 30 plus dailies per day total.

My wife....the leveling machine. When she found out that Hallows End was coming, she decided that she absolutely NEEDED to get to 89 for the chance to get the Horseman helm as well as two chances to get the mount. She ended up getting from 87 to 89 yesterday and actually got her helmet. She was devastated when I found her a huge upgrade for her 85 Horseman helm. Now she can continue on with her Horseman laughter.

I D3, I have been having a great ole time. I got to Paragon level 12 last night and saw more Legendary drops than I had seen in the entire time I had played D3. I ended up getting three different legendaries, which makes 4 since the recent patch. I got a Demon Hunter cloak, a Monk fist weapon, and a Witch Doctor knife. None of them were awesome, but I love getting that beautiful orange text. It gives me hope to find my own upgrades and that I wont have to buy every single one.

I want to level some of my other characters, but I enjoy the Barbarian so much more than other classes.

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Inferno: Complete

With patch 1.05 out, I decided that it was about time I tried to get through Act 4 in Inferno on my Barbarian.

Last night I did just that.

I started the evening running Act 1 on MP1 and had a mostly successful run. One mob in particular killed me five times. My god was I getting pissed. It had firewalking, electrified, and jailer from what I could remember. The electrified one seems to be the worst for me these days. It used to not even be noticeable. Now it kicks the shit out of me.

That brings me to Act 4. I did it on MP 0 and it was really quite easy. I died a couple of times including once to Diablo of phase three, but stuff died incredibly fast.

If you have been struggling with Act 3 and 4 on inferno, I would suggest trying it out.

I also had the idea to level my wizard a bit, but kept getting my squishy ass kicked. I really need to work on a more survivable build. I have had a harder time with my Wizard while leveling than I did with my Barbarian.

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Diablo 3: First Impressions of Patch 1.05

So far so good!

Yesterday, I spent much more time in D3 than I did in WoW. This was for a couple of reasons. The first one was because of the new patch. The second was because I just really didnt feel like spending 2 plus hours on dailies.

The new patch in Diablo made things seemingly much better. I am quite happy about it. They introduced monster power which gives you higher magic find, gold find, and XP.

The default is MP 0. I ran MP 1 by myself and with another friend. I also got to run some MP 2 with Bearness, who has much better gear than I do.

I do Act 1 because I like the atmosphere. I also like that there are many less annoying mobs than act 3.

The drops so far have been SOOOO much better. I got a legendary for the first time in forever (an Ivory Tower) and several other useful drops  including an upgrade for my Barbarian. I got an 1100 dps wizard wand that I will probably save for my Wizard. I also sold a couple of things for 250k gold, which is not a lot by most people's standards, but was quite nice considering I hadnt sold anything over 75k in quite some time.

The reason for the good drops is that they made it that the same loot drops in all four acts. Woohoo.

I will certainly be spending more time in D3. I hit Paragon 10 last night and am about 1.5 bubble from Paragon 11. I also plan on doing a MP 0 run of Act 4 so that I can officially finish Inferno.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

One remains....and some Monk tips

We are now down to one of our group who is not yet level 90. My wife hit level 90 last night and I had her go get a few pieces of justice point gear. I was looking to get her some upgrades on the AH, but the only leather gear was PvP gear. Not wonderful.

She immidiately went off on her way and started doing Pet Battles, which she quite enjoys. She said something that I found incredibly true..."At least the made sure that there is not a lack of things to do in MoP".

Isnt that the truth. On top of dailies, there are heroics, AH stuff, scenarios, PvP, and Pet Battles.

It should keep us busy for quite some time.

I am actually happy to still enjoy Diablo 3 for one reason. It gives me a little change of pace. Bored after doing a round of dailies? Smash the crap out of some skeletons and elite packs.

Last night was basically a daily night. I did my dailies on Darraxus then did a few quests on my Druid. I was bored with it, so I decided to play with my monk and gained a few levels.

A couple of fun things I have learned on my Monk that may help you guys out a bit.

1) If you use the mediatation portal to the Monk training area but still need to do some things in SW, then you can hearth back to SW. After you are done there, click the portal again and it will put you back in the zone you were questing in.

2) Monks can get a daily buff where they get an hour of plus 50 percent XP gain. A nice little tip is to let the time run down to about 10 minutes. Go do the daily. Now you have a two hour buff.

Monday, October 15, 2012

Forced to do Dailies

Until yesterday, I thought that the extra dailies were cool enough. You got to do as many or as few as you like and got to get some nice things.

That was until I visited the Valor Point Vendor yesterday. This is when I noticed that you need certain reputation levels with certain factions to even get it. What the fuck?

So, I have to get my golden lotus rep up so that I can even get a stiff of valor point gear. Whoopee. I was enjoying the dailies for the most part, but this really chapped my hide.

I was not doing Golden Lotus every day. Now I am behind. Fucking awesome.

In other news, my wife is nearly level 90 on her Druid. That will leave one of our 5 person group who is not yet at level cap.

I also have my Druid up to level 89 now. I am not looking forward to the 89-90 slog.

My monk is now level 43 as well. I love the xp buff you can get from the dailies. It really adds up and you can fly through.

I am still playing Diablo mostly every day. I just find something satisfying about destroying monsters in a giant whirlwind of doom. I also like getting loot (despite 99.9 percent of it being shit) and gaining Paragon levels.

I believe that the new Diablo patch will be coming out soon and I will attempt to finish inferno.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

What Do You do with your WoW time?

This though occured to me last night while doing some dailies.

There are a shit ton of dailies in MoP. If you do them all, you may be spending all of your time doing dailies. I made a decision that I am going to focus on three factions first (Tillers, Anglers, and Windserpents) before doing the Golden Lotus and Krikknik(?) dailies.

Even just doing those dailies, I find myself spending more time doing that than I would care for.

I also ended up running a heroic with my guild last night which went very quickly.

I was going to tank the new Raid Finder, but my gear was two ilvl short. I will probably run some more heroics to get my gear up to par.

I also wonder how the difficulty on the Raid Finder raids are. How quickly are they being cleared out?

I also spend a fair amount of times leveling. I am trying to get my Druid to at least 87 for now and am about 3 bubble short.

How are you spending your time in WoW?

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Nostalgia: Best Left in the Past?

Recently, Wilhelm at The Ancient Gaming Noob started playing on a Vanilla WoW private server. He seemed to be really enjoying himself.

For me, I would rather leave Vanilla WoW as a fond memory. The quality of living in WoW has gotten so much better over the years that it is ridiculous.

Vanilla WoW was great back then because we were all new to it. It was a huge new world to explore, and we were all making our way through at our own pace.

Vanilla WoW was far from perfect. I even stopped playing it for a couple of months as I became frustrated with some of the issues I was having. Granted, I was a noob, but thing could be quite difficult and unforgiving.

Here are some of my issues with Vanilla WoW that have since been addressed.

1) My Warrior sucked. Perhaps I was just bad, but I seemingly had to eat after every single mob I killed. If I accidentally aggroed more that one mob, I was more than likely going to die. I had no AOE. I am pretty sure I could Heroic strike....and that was about it. I also went through a lot of potions.

2) Mounts were fucking expensive: Not only did you not get your first mount until level 40, it was also very expensive. I seem to remember the level 40 mount costing around 100g and the level 60 epic riding costing around 600g. That may not seem like much these days, but that is a metric shit ton of gold in Vanilla terms. I think that the most gold I ever had during Vanilla was around 300. I was perpetually broke.

3) Quests sucked to find: These days, you can see quests on the map and mini map, there is a quest helper to quickly guide you along, and there are nice little bread crumbs to send you on to the next area. Back then, there was none of that. You did not know where quests were the first time through. You did not know what hub to go to next. You did not even know what zone to go to next. It made for a lot of exploring, which was cool at the time. I think I would find it to be annoying now.

4) You had to run to instances: There was no group finder function. I think that there was a time where you had no summoning stone either. You had to run your ass to whatever instance, and that caused a lot of content (especially on Kalimdor) to go unused.

5) Ground Mounts Only and no free flight points: You could not fly. There were no flying mounts until BC. You also had to discover all of the flight points. They did not unlock as you leveled. That is a recent developement, but it has been a very welcome one. It saves on time.

5) Leveling was slow....fucking slow: It took forever to level back in Vanilla. I had a friend with 5 level 60s and I dont know how the hell he did it. It took me 16 days /played to get to level 60. These days it will take half of that or less to get to level 90. There were no heirlooms.

To me, the game has gotten so much better than Vanilla WoW. I loved my time in Vanilla, but I could never even imagine wanting to go back to it. Broken classes and poor questing were just a couple of the issues that would drive people crazy these days. Back then, Paladins were so bad that people did not want them in the raid group except to be a buff bot. Paladin buffs lasted 5 minutes and you had to put each one on individually. Paladin seals lasted under a minute if I remember correctly.

I would never want to go back.

Monday, October 8, 2012

Great Weekend In WoW

I had an awesome weekend in WoW as the title says.

Dailies. Oh man are there dailies. I did a metric crap ton of them. I havent even unlocked each faction's dailies because I don't want to be tempted to do them all. I  have never really been a big fan of dailies, but I am actually enjoying these (minus the Wind Serpent dailies to be honest).

I also ran several new Heroics. I have noticed that Heroics are essentially the same as regulars only with more health on the bad guys. They are nice and easy and that is just the way I like it.

I got to try out the new Scarlet Monastery which was quite cool. It is nice seeing new versions of classics, but it also make me a sad panda (pun intended).

The best part of the weekend is that we had some awesome friends help my wife get MoP. We celebrated with out first MoP instance group together. It went perfectly and we had a bunch of fun and our first MoP instance group dance party.

My Druid is now about 86.5 and my Warlock is 85.75. I want to get several of my toons to 87 so that they are able to get the other recipes for their professions.

Overall, it was a great weekend.

Friday, October 5, 2012

Ding level 90 and My First Heroic

As the title says, I have dinged level 90. WOOHOO! Daily time!

Yesterday after hitting 90 I decided that I would start on said dailies. I ended up banging out the Anglers, Tillers, and Windserpent dailies in a decent amount of time. So far, they have been pretty decent, and I really liked the marmot stomping quest.

I also had my first Black Market AH purchase yesterday.....I got the helmet for my Dreadnaught set. WOOHOO. Now I just need another 7 pieces I think. I grabbed it for 17.5k.

I then went and spent another 18k upgrading all of my gear on the AH. Once I was done with that, I decided that it was time to check out the new Heroics. I must say that it was very enjoyable.

I died a couple of times including one wipe, but overall we pretty much blitzed it.

We got the new version of Scholomance. It is much shorter than the old version and has many less bosses. My favorite part is the difficulty level. It feels more like Wrath than Cata. I want to have a quick enjoyable run. Not a session of punching myself in the dick.

I will surely do more Heroics and also need to get into a scenario.

Last night, I also played my Monk and found something that was very interesting. Every day you can get a one hour buff that gives you plus 50 percent XP for quests and monster kills. You use the little meditation portal and fight one of the trainers. Bam, poor man's refer a friend.

I am liking the Monk and have been running him as a tank. The only annoying thing so far is a lack of self heals and that I actually have to eat from time to time.

Overall, I am enjoying the expansion like a lot more than Cata.

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Plugging Along

Not quite 90 yet, but I am getting there. My warrior is at 89.5 and I have been taking it fairly easy.

I will usually level on him for a bit then switch and do something else to not get leveling burn out. Leveling is fun, but sometimes you just want to get to the finish line.

I completed Kun-Lai and have moved on to the next zone. I also found out that Karasang Wilds is it's own zone and I thought for some reason that it was attached to the zone north of it. I only have one quest line left there to complete the zone.

Another thing I have been doing is checking out the Black Market AH. So far, I have not purchased anything, but I do plan on putting in a bid on the Dreadnaught helmet that is currently on the AH. It is my all time favorite set, and I will definately be getting it.

I am also looking forward to some of the mounts and pets on the AH. Most of the stuff has been pretty underwhelming, but I will continue to look.

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Playing Excitement

This is one of my favorite things about a new expansion. The excitement to play the game.

As soon as I get home, I find myself wanting to progress. I want to get to 90 and do Heroics. I want to get to 90 and do dailies....WTF. I actually want to do dailies. What is wrong with me?

I also want to level up my little monk.

And level up my professions....which I have been doing.

Yesterday I got my first JC maxed out and one of my alchemists maxed out. I may do the other JC and the other alchemists today.

Pandaria has done a very nice job of getting me to want to play. Now.....if only it were time to go home and play.

Monday, October 1, 2012

Pandaria: First Impressions....at bit late

So, Blizz finally finished fucking around with my account this Saturday after I sent them another ticket. I now have Pandaria and have done a good amount of playing. Here are some of my impressions.

Questing: I am really enjoying the questing so far. There are lots of little interesting quests, and many have given me fun items instead of just a weapon or piece of armor.

My favorite quest so far is the one where you punt Marmots off of the farm....and they make it even better as you get an item that lets you punt a marmot. Score.

I also like Chen and Mudmug. Mudmug is essentially a redneck Pandarian who will distill beer out of anything.

Instances: So far the instances are exactly what I wanted. They are short and interesting. One of the more interesting fights is the last boss of Shado-Pan monastery, where you have to mediate when your hatred meter gets too high. So far I have done each available instance once just to get the quests done. I will not mind running them more in the future.

Crafting: Crafting has gone very well for me so far. I have picked up a metric shit ton of Ghost Iron Ore while questing which has nearly leveled up three different professions for me. I have also made some progress in just about every profession I have.

New Stuff: As it stands, I am not level 90. I am currently sitting at level 88. I have however noticed some interesting things. The cooking is definately different. You level up different specialties of cooking within your main cooking. I have also started my Farm, which I guess is WoW's version of Farmville. So far, the things that I have seen are going to make it so that I will be entertained for quite some time.

Overall, I am quite impressed Pandaria. I am having much more fun through the leveling process than I did with Cataclysm.