Slowly but surely

Quick post today to say that I’m still in the process of leveling my warlock solely through dungeons. The usual dungeon fauna is still present and besides a few bad apples and weird ones (hi there Mr always walk backward for the whole of scholomance) it’s been good going and I’m now sitting at level 43. The levels have been coming much more slowly but I’m enjoying the rythm so far so it’s not a big worry.

Lastly, why did nobody ever tell me about how awesome chaos bolt is??? seriously, it’s the Death Star Laser of WoW that I’ve been searching for all my life.

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Soooo much Gnomer….

My adventures in leveling a warlock solely through dungeons continues and things are going smoothly on the whole. Run a dungeon, wait on professions while I wait for the next one and repeat. I’m managing good dps on the bosses generally speaking but still struggling to keep up with melee on trash. All things considered, not too shabby.

But of course my dungeon bliss couldn’t last forever and Gnomeragan had to rear its ugly head. Now, I know Gnomer has its fan but I’m not one of them. It’s too long, trash is boring and the rewards are meh…. plus you get to run it way too much. See Gnomer stands at that weird spot in the dungeon progression where it’s pretty much the only thing you run for a few levels in the high twenties. Case in point, I ran it 6 times during the weekend, 4 of those in a row…

But yesterday I had my first run of Scarlet monastery so there’s light at the end of the tunnel.

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So Recount, we meet again….

I have been a vocal hater of Recount and other Dps meter addons in the past. I value greatly the ability to be able to compare your own performance from one encounter to the other and being to compare to other players but too often, the information gathered is badly used and interpreted.

Recount is too often used as the only indicator of skill. The simple equation being more DPS equals more skill and that’s the end of it. Dps meters can be one of the many tools to evaluate skill but it shouldn’t end there. If I use a critical non-dps ability to save a healer for example and thus give us a win, I might end up lower on the dps charts but my being able to think on my feet and save the raid actualy shows more skill than someone having dps tunnel vision. Still many players are using DPS meters as holy gospel and it drives me nuts… hence my Recount hate.

But, if I want to be a good warlock I need to be able to see how I’m doing so I have put back Recount and I’m monitoring my progress in the low level dungeons. Good news is that I’m not at the bottom so I must be doing not too bad but I’m strugling getting over the tanks… in fact all the dps seems to be having trouble beating the tanks so I’m suspecting this is a low level issue. If not the heirloom twinks are usualy doing better than me but I’m pretty close to them and I beat a few on boss fights so I’m somewhat satisfied.

So that’s how I’ve been doing lately. Trying to improve my dps actualy makes those old dungeons a lot more fun so there’s hope. Also, heirlooms twinks are total cheats

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Horde acceptance in the workplace

My adventure continues in WoW and for the past two days things have been more or less stable in terms of my MMO of choice and things are veering nicely toward WoW. This is due partly to my being able to do instances in WoW and finding it way more fun than doing the Barrens yet again and my honeymoon ending with Neverwinter.

Speaking of Neverwinter I want to make a detour to talk about it rapidly. Neverwinter is great, kickass mindless dungeon fun… but nothing else besides that. The content gets repetitive quickly (ie there’s one or two mob types per zone) and the cash shop is probably the greediest thing I have ever seen. We’re talking 40$, 60$ for free services in other games… it all adds up very quickly.

But back to WoW now. Most of my WoW buddies are, for a reason that still evades me, favoring Alliance and it did cause me to question my Horde choice for a moment. I mean, if I want to play with people I already know, it would be much easier to roll Alliance.  I mean, I spent most of my raiding career as Alliance but in the back of my mind I always rooted for the Horde and this time I decided to stick to my guns… which led to Alas making fun of me.

So my dear Alas, I just wanted to tell you that my being Horde is not a choice, I was born this way and I hope that one day you’ll be able to accept Horde players for who they are without discriminating them. Hordies have a right to a happy life too…

… and we do bath… occasionally… in the blood of our fallen enemies…

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Stuck between a rock and some other place

I’m in a so effing weird place right now it’s not even funny. Yesterday I was talking about my wanting to raid again and even spend time to be good at it. I still mean those things today but at the same time my master plan has failed within hours of me starting… let me explain.

In one corner we have Neverwinter which I have recently started playing. It’s silly, it has by all accounts a greedy cash shop at the end game and people report a shallow endgame. But, against all reasons, I find it fun. Took me a while to realize what was happening but that weird feeling was genuine fun at playing an MMO for itself…. who would have thought?

However, there’s one big issue with Neverwinter that I know will come to bite me in the ass. By design it seems, the game doesn’t offer much in terms of group of content akin to raiding which in turns means that the guild experience I’m looking for will be a lot harder to find and might not even exists… The way things look, Neverwinter will probably entertain me as long as there’s content but I know if I keep at it solo I’ll lose interest at some point.

In the other corner we have the heavyweight champion, WoW. I’ve played WoW to death and can do the leveling game blindfolded. My initial plan to get back into some raiding was to level a character, make it ready for endgame and find a good home, just like I used to do but by the time I was level 12, I was already bored to death.

Then again, WoW does have what I’m looking for at endgame. It got raiding, established guilds and would probably hold my interest way more long term than any other MMO out there. Again, knowing myself, what will keep me in a game long term will be finding a good group of people to play with and I think that will be easier to achieve in WoW… but to get there I have to survive leveling once more and I don’t know if I can do that…

So I’m stuck in a catch 22. Neverwinter will be fun to level but will more than likely suck at endgame, WoW will suck to level in but will probably be better for endgame purposes…

Ideas anyone?

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