Found an interesting bug in the Diablo 3 client yesterday. Not that it’s that big a deal but there is a tooltip for Strength for the Templar “henchman” that states that “Stength” item bonuses are multiplied by 2.5 for Followers… The error is in the quotes.. Interesting to think this could have slipped by. Anyway, I’m sure they will fix it in the next patch that is supposed to be out next week.

I’ve been having a great time with the game still and even got past my issues with Belial in Nightmare.. Ok.. I “cheated” somewhat.. I asked if anyone wanted to help me on twitter and @GettingWorse stepped up and joined me with his level 59 Barbarian and made it look easy. He also graced me with a few gear upgrades he happened to have lying around and a bunch of advice which is always appreciated.

I’ve even got some screenshots of how Fimlys (the Demon Hunter) and Fyra (the Wizard) are doing. Notice something? Yeah, I’m reusing names. Why not? Even though they can be the most annoying parts, the Elites and Champions are some of the best fights in the game. Definitely getting my kiting skills back. Somehow, I think the game has realized that I HATE mortar mobs with a passion. Hate Hate Hate. Another interesting thing is that some of these mobs have the equivalent of 3 or more talents. They have their 2 specials (like Mortar or Pestilence) and then whatever their monster class usually has. Sometimes this is FAST or Shooting Arrows or Quills.. Ugh. Those are also tough for me being a ranged class. New strategies are constantly being worked on, though.

I also turned on “Elective Mode” for my skills. The skills are still set based on the different types of slots, but now you can switch through the groupings for each slot and pick some other one. I have been using my final slot for this since I have found some of the functionality of that skill can be lost as long as I pick up some other talent which is worthy. You can turn this mode on in the gameplay tab of the options (I think).

I’m still playing WoW, of course. We didn’t get to raid on Tues/Wed because of lack of bodies but we did get a DS run in on Thursday night. We did Morchok in heroic but left the rest in normal so we could get all the way through. I’d love to be able to maybe transition our main raid to an alt run raid since we have issues with people not showing up on the alt run nights and cancelling.

I have not been playing the MoP beta much recently. I know I talked about getting on to check out my addons at some point and I still want to do that but it will take some time to start getting them in one at a time.

Post from: Asleep at the WoW

Give me Stength

Hey there! So, I have been playing a lot of Diablo 3 lately as out might expect. I haven’t gotten as far as others but I’m not really in that much of a rush. I have yet to play multiplayer but that is fine for now. I rolled a Demon Hunter (although I don’t know that “rolled” is the right word for it) and have really been enjoying the mechanics of the class. It was really cool because I had to “re-spec” for the final boss of Act IV after dying to it the first time. (Good thing it wasn’t Hardcore, right?)

I’m starting again in Nightmare difficulty now and just killed the First major boss in Act 1 before calling it a night. It’s great going through these areas with your full arsenal of skills. Much better than the protracted single-target shooting that existed in this area before.

I also started up my Wizard. It’s tough going back to being a itty bitty low level character without most of your skills. I find the DH was a little better equipped to handle himself in the beginning of the game than my Wizard is. Could also be familiarity.

I also created a Hardcore Demon Hunter. I figure I’ll mess with that one every so often just to get a feel for the idea of perma-death. It took a really long time for my main DH to die the first time. I’m hoping I can keep it up on Hardcore like that too. Anyone else checking out Hardcore? I also, contrary to my usual stance on such things, can’t wait until PvP is released. I think it is going to be pretty cool and I’m looking forward to getting my butt kicked repeatedly.. (Thank you sir, may I have another?)

Still raiding in WoW and working on our Heroic progression. Tonight and Tomorrow are our key nights. We’re still 3/8 but I’m hoping to have that 3/8 on complete farm. It’s still tough and go depending on who shows up to the raid.

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A New Nightmare

I know, I have been an absentee blogger for quite a while.. It’s not that I haven’t been playing WoW. It’s really just that I haven’t been doing anything particularly interesting. Also, while quite a bit of interesting stuff has been going on with MoP beta and information coming out of that, well, I usually don’t talk about that stuff here. That’s what TNB is for, right?

But, I suppose things have been going on, so I might as well give a rundown. We are up to 3/8 Heroic Modes for DS. Yes, that is after the most recent “nerf”. We had been getting Morchok down on heroic for a while though. We just finally got Yor’sahj a couple weeks ago and this last week we downed Ultraxion. So far, none of the Hunter tokens have dropped but I have “high hopes” .

We have also gotten almost all of the Achievements in DS. I think my raid group has gotten all but the heroic ones but I still need “Taste the Rainbow”. This last week we finished up Chromatic Champion by getting the “blue pillar” done. Given the nerf and that we were generally running with our core group, it was much easier than we thought it would be.

What else is crazy? TNB is turning 4! That’s right. On May 27, the Twisted Nether Blogcast will be four years old.. I still can’t believe we have been going at this for so long. We just recorded episode 167 this past Saturday and, while we have been doing an “every other week” schedule for a little while, we’re back to weekly for at least the next few. We still love doing the show and I’m hoping to at least get to episode 200! I expect a big uptick in blog activity (from everyone out there and even possibly me) because of the huge number of changes coming in MoP. 

In other gaming news, Diablo 3 releases TONIGHT! I will probably not be up at 3am when it finally unlocks but I’ll be sure to start it installing when I get up in the morning so I can play, possibly, when I get home. I am so excited about D3. Diablo and Diablo 2 were some of my favorite games of all time. I was even playing Diablo 2 when my wife told me we had to leave for the hospital to have my eldest child! If you haven’t seen it already, check out the 2D Short “Wrath”. It’s pretty awesome.

I also finished up Kingdoms of Amalur: The Reckoning last night. I was successful in my goal to finish it up before Diablo 3. I pushed it a bit, understatement, but I did it and I’m happy with my generally “clean” slate for Diablo 3.

I just want to say thank you to all of you out there that somehow still have this blog on your reader or wander in here every once in a while to see if I’ve posted anything. I really appreciate all of your support throughout all these years I’ve been doing this even through the slow times. Hopefully I can once again become more inspired in Mists and go back to posting more than once every 6 months..

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Pure Madness

I can’t believe that I didn’t blog about this immediately. Well, I can. I guess it’s that kind of thing where when you have a few, what’s one more? I dinged 85 on my Rogue the other night. He’s my fourth toon to max level and I’ll probably never play him again.. Ok Ok.. Not really. But I’d be surprised if I put in the effort to gear him up in any meaningful way (unless MoP is REALLLLLY delayed).  I have to say that with Heirlooms and full rested XP, it was a breeze to get him to 85. I did Uldum until I hit 84 and then meandered over to Twilight Highlands to finish up. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t even 1/2 way through TH when I hit 85. I also used the Love is in the Air dailies to boost my XP making ability. Quests at level 84 gave me 69k XP each. Not too shabby. Next up is my Mage. I’m not sure how quickly he’ll be moving but he’s at level 81 in Hyjal right now. We’ll see how it goes.

What else has been going on? Well, we got Madness down again this week (after having issues with people falling into the water between the islands.. booooo) and both Hunter pieces of loot dropped.. I already had the bow so unfortunately that got disenchanted but Kiril, Fury of Beasts also dropped. It has a very interesting Proc

Your melee and ranged attacks have a chance to trigger Fury of the Beast, granting 107 Agility and 10% increased size every 1 sec. This effect stacks a maximum of 10 times and lasts 20 sec

So, the +107 x 10 agility (1,070) is pretty freaking awesome. On top of that, I slowly grow to double my normal size, which is really amusing. With that proc especially, it’s a pretty nice upgrade. I also hit 398 equipped item level, which is pretty sweet. I have a PvP necklace that would put me on 399 but, of course, I don’t wear that to raid.

I’ve also been playing the AH a little. Well, “playing” is probably the wrong word. I’ve been putting stuff up for sale. No idea if I’m “working the system” correctly, but stuff is selling and I think I’m making some money… I suppose we’ll see if it works out in the long run. I just don’t have the patience I think.

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And the Number of the Counting Shall Be 4

Rades Tagged me.. Thankfully, he also tweeted that he tagged me. Well, actually, he didn’t but then he tweeted that he had forgotten to tweet that he had tagged me… Which is way too convoluted. So anyway.. Gnomageddon (re)started the Sixth Screenshot Meme. Here is the info:

Go into your screenshots folder, go into the sixth sub-folder and find the sixth image, then post it! And then you tag six more people.

Now, I don’t subdiretorize my screenshots (yes, that’s a word. well, it is now). So, I did what someone else did and went 6×6 in my folder.. The image above is presented without editing (usually I brighten the images before posting..). It’s Lord Rhyolyth, of course.. This screenshot was taken on July 13, 2011 at 10:07 pm.. So, this is normal mode and we were getting ready to pull (probably AGAIN for the Nth time).

So, there you go.. I’m going to fail at one part of the meme though and not tag anyone.. Well, except for Hydra.. And since she is teaching me to be almost evil like her, I tag her 6 times! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! *cough*.. I really don’t know what that means but it sounded really evil before I typed it.. Good luck all and enjoy the meme.

(on a side note, my Rogue hit 85 this weekend.. I might or might not write a separate post about it..)

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A Sixth of…

Last night my guild had a few people who couldn’t make it to our normal Thursday night raid and so we decided to go into FL to pick up what we hoped would be the final parts and pieces needed for our Mage to get the Legendary! Unfortunately we only started with 8. While waiting for others to login, we cleared trash and then proceeded to down Shannox. While doing so, I noticed that Rilandune was logged in (through RealID) and I asked if he wanted to join us in FL. He only had about 30 min. but he came in for a couple bosses and that was pretty cool to be able to do that. I think it is a great idea to allow this for the older raids now.

After he left, Hydra logged in. So, I asked her “Do you want to come into FL with us, we are on Baleroc”. Eventually… She answered “Sure”. It was a big surprise and I bet she didn’t even remember you can do that now. So, she joined us and that was incredibly cool. I even got a screenshot so it actually HAPPENED! We proceeded to down the rest of the bosses. Unfortunately, the Mage was 1 off so we’ll have to clear the place again next week just to get the 1 and then kill Rag.

Ah well..

Post from: Asleep at the WoW

RealID Raiding FTW

Yeah, this is not a WoW post, sorry. I AM still playing WoW, I promise. Just not a lot going on. I’m still raiding and we’re working on Madness of Deathwing.

This is a SWTOR post. In TOR, 50 is max level. As of a couple of days ago, my Jedi Consular (Advanced Spec Sage) is now 50! I finished up his class quest and the final quests on Corellia (which is the final world the Republic visit). I really enjoyed the Consular story. It felt very “Epic” in a “Save the Galaxy” way. I haven’t gotten that feeling yet from my other Republic characters. Trooper is probably closest so far but I haven’t gotten far on my Jedi Knight.

Other than getting the Sage to 50, I also spent time on him at 49 in PvP Warzones. I only did 2 of the 3 warzones (you get assigned to one randomly) but I enjoyed doing them. This is, of course, odd for me because I’m not a huge fan of PvP. We won 2 of the 3 matches I played so that might have something to do with it.

My Trooper has now made it to 31 and is working on Alderaan. I have her specced as a Tank and while it takes a little longer to kill things, I have pretty amazing survivability using the Healing companion. Her AOE is pretty sweet too. My Smuggler is 25 and just starting Tatooine and the Knight is going to be heading to Taris soon.

We don’t have any other 50s in the guild yet and the LFG isn’t a queue type system like the PvP is, so I haven’t done many of the flashpoints (equiv to WoW Instances). I generally was way ahead of everyone else so I haven’t been able to do them at level yet. At 50, you get access to do the “Heroic Mode” versions but I haven’t even done the non-heroic ones! Well, I’m ready to heal whenever. Yes, I’m healing! I know I’m a hunter in WoW primarily and generally prefer DPS over everything else. I do enjoy healing though and I figured it was a good way to start. I can always re-spec to the DPS side of the Sage if I really want to, I suppose.

If you are interested in joining us in SWTOR, we are located on Republic side – Juyo-US. Hit up anyone in Polyjedious for an invite!

That’s about it. Raiding in WoW. Leveling in SWTOR. Don’t forget to listen to my podcasts, Polygamerous and Twisted Nether. Warning: Polygamerous is rated “Mature” even though we are largely Immature (I still don’t get that…).

Post from: Asleep at the WoW

50 Summat

I’ve been playing a lot of SWTOR but that doesn’t mean I’m not playing WoW. I’ve been raiding still with the guild and we’ve now gotten all but Madness down on 10man DS. We gave it a night of good tries last week and hopefully we’ll get back there and get him down this week!

In the meantime. Here are some screenshots from both SWTOR and WoW.

Post from: Asleep at the WoW

A Gaming Gallery

Just because this is a “WoW” blog doesn’t mean I always talk about WoW (just a disclaimer).. On that note, I’ll start this post talking about.. WoW..

Last night was the start of our 3rd week in Dragon Soul. I’ve talked with a few of our guests on TNB about the raid and the difficulty level and we’ve heard both ends of the spectrum. I think I’m somewhere in between. I find, with my raid group, that the first 4 bosses are, apart from implementation quirks, pretty easy. I don’t find this to be a problem. I enjoy killing things (in game) without too much banging my head against a wall. That said, I was very happy to pick up my shoulder token last night which brings me to 2 pieces of T13 or whatever number we’re up to. Last night we got through the first 5 bosses. Ultraxion, while we were able to get him down in the second week and last night too, is still not a “cake walk”. Part of the issue is relying on a mechanic that can get completely hosed up due to lag. Since not hitting your button at the right time, or the server not thinking you hit your button at the right time, is instant death, this can quickly cause us to call for a wipe and reset. In the end, everyone stayed alive even in the end and we got him down.

The boat boss proved to be a little more difficult to get a handle on for us last week. This week we only did 3 tries but on the 3rd and final attempt, we got to Phase 2 finally! I’m hoping tonight we’ll get through that fight and finally get to start on Deathwing! I am having a blast in this new raid and think that Blizzard did a great job with it, personally.

Moving on to the next Dragon… Skyrim.. Yes, I have been playing Skyrim quite a bit (although that has now changed for reasons you’ll read about) and love the game. I’ve been playing for over 110 hours so far and my character is around level 56 (maybe 57 .. I can’t keep track ). I finished what some would deem to be the “main” quest, at least one of them, but then ran into a bug in the Imperial quest-line right at the end. The final confrontation with the Stormcloak King and while I can beat him to the ground in about two hits with my Uber Bow of the MIghty Death Killing, it won’t trigger the NPCs to do their thing and finish the quest. I’m hoping for a patch soon for this (PC version). Since I can’t get past that, I’ve been working on Thieves Guild quests and more of the seemingly infinite number of side-quests, etc. I am sure I still have more shouts to pick up so maybe that will be my next endeavor.

The Force.. I was invited to the first day of Early Access for Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO by BioWare. I played in the beta a bit over a couple weekends and it was great getting back into the game and finally being able to make “permanent” characters. This, of course, is the reason my Skyrim playing will be waning. I intend to continue to play WoW (mostly raiding right now) and also play SWTOR. My first class I’m working on is the Jedi Consular. The Consular is the ranged DPS version of a Jedi Knight. There is still plenty of lightsaber fighting at least in the early levels though. At level 10, I’ll probably pick the Sage advanced class and spec into DPS at least for leveling. At some point I might respec to healing for Flashpoints and Operations (instances and raids). Our guild Polyjedious is created and ready for people to join us over on the Juyo server. So if you are interested in joining a pretty casual Republic guild on a PvE server, hit us up. My Consular’s name is Ra-Mos.

That’s it for now. I’ve been having fun with all these games lately and I’ve got a bunch of PS3 games I’m getting for the holidays too (no idea when I’ll have time to play those!). Keep an eye out here for possible exciting news coming up.. But don’t get too excited, it might just be nothing..

Post from: Asleep at the WoW

Dragons, Dragons and The Force

Another post? I know! Ok well, we didn’t get Ultraxion down last night. We did get him to 8% on one try, but no luck. The end of that fight is just insane. I’m really glad I’m not a healer! We’ve got the mechanics down, it’s just a matter of buffing DPS a little bit more to get over that last hump.

After calling it, I decided to join a guild group and head into the new 5-man dungeons. We had time for 2 of them and did 2 randoms. We got End Time and then Well of Eternity (I think it did that on purpose since I hadn’t been in either).

I think they did a really good job with these instances. They are varied, the boss fights aren’t too technical but are fun enough. We had one non-main dps and the healer was a non-main also. We still had generally no problems with the bosses or trash fights. Hanging out with Illidan in the second one is pretty freaking cool. It’s nice to see some of the story unfold in these.

Given my gear level, nothing that dropped was an upgrade. Same for the quest rewards. I almost wish they would do the quests in such a way that they were something more than just “complete the things you have to do for the instance anyway”. Maybe even make one a randomized repeatable (either daily or for each time you run the instance). You can decide if you want to do it or not, but it takes you a little out of your way and awards some additional gold.

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End Time of Eternity