The Victims of the Stat Squish

When you hear the One Ring, do you think, "To rule them all?" Well you're wrong! Everyone knows that The 1 Ring is, "Not quite as good as the 2 Ring". Thankfully, it can only be destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom, which does not exist, so everything is fine.

The 2 Ring is, obviously, "Vastly superior to the 1 ring." It was a glorious sight to behold, with a magnificent 22 of every stat. What paladin could ever say no to a ring with strength, stam, intellect, and agility... and I guess spirit is allowed to be there. Alas, the fires of Patch Doom (6.0) have damaged it. Now it is a mere 10 of every stat. It's not the 10 ring! The 10 ring is a terriying thing to behold. This is just... a joke, killed by so-called "updates". Just like this. REND IS SUPPOSED TO BE BAD. *ahem* The worst part is that they were so close. All they had to do was make it The 01 Ring and everything would be okay.

This brings us to the last one, The 5 Ring. "This ring appears to have eaten the 3 and 4 rings." It has 17 stam, 17 crit, and 17 haste. Add up all the digits and you get 24, which is 6. 5+3+4 is 14 which is 5. Basic math says that this patch ruined everything.

I take it back, there is SO MUCH to complain about.

What's there to complain about?

I love a good complain. Change anything and I bet I can complain about it. And that's why the pre-warlords patch has me so angry. I'm at a loss for legitimate complaints. Oh sure, I have a few, but it's just not enough for a frothy-mouthed rage.

As might be expected, I'm a bit peeved about the switching of UBRS. And at first I found it to be terribly boring. Then I remembered an old pet peeve: people who watch TV while playing: paying no attention, making mistakes without even noticing), and generally making me wonder why they're even logged in. I'd become one of those people.

Pausing Netflix, I turned the sound back on, and focused on the game. Suddenly I could heard what I'd been missing, and generally notice. I pulled more carefully, rewired the gun turrets to help us, and soaked in as much fun as I could. Turns out, there's actually a bit of fun to be had. Maybe when it isn't half an instance I'll enjoy it more. In the meantime, it's nice to run a place where I can actually die if I play badly. I need to remember to bring my ring from LBRS to see if I can get a second Vael.

On the other hand, I like how the weird squish-non-squish has screwed up the already-broken tuning of old raids. Everything dies as if it were meant to be soloed, perhaps because Blizzard realized that people are typically running these solo or in small groups. I wouldn't say they're "tuned" for that, not in the sense that they're remotely challenging for such groups. It was fun to be able to just run straight into some of these places and knock them out without trying to rally friends to the cause, what with their annoying habits of having lives outside of outdated raids.

The invasion event was mildly interesting, though also almost an exact copy-paste between Alliance and Horde. Oh no, my filler content wasn't carefully customized for each faction! At this point the Iron Horde seems somewhat generic, but it probably doesn't help that I've seen literally nothing about the expansion outside of the game and whatever I saw on wowhead while looking for UBRS loot.

People in trade are mad about the squish, or some ability being removed, or... something or other. It's an enlightened bunch. Someone claims the squish ruined everything. As best as I can tell, in practical terms nothing changed, except that my Thunderfury, due to a fully-powered proc, seems to work just fine. (I got buffed! Wee!) I am still in the habit of trying to refresh Inquisition. I asked in trade if hunters still need mana; someone replied that they never needed mana. Jokes are wasted on some people.

I'm glad to have an enchanter; strange dust is selling well in pairs, thanks to the Fire and Poetry event, though I'm guessing that will slow down as people finish the quest. And then pick up again as people realize they haven't finished the quest.

Trolls look weird when they run.

Farewell, Brawler's Guild

Since The Great Betrayal soon after Cataclysm, I've been a bit spotty on the raiding front. My rogue did some in Cataclysm, but mostly LFR and I saw nothing outside of Dragon Soul beside a few wipes on whatever the first boss in the first raid was. Mists of Pandaria has mostly been LFR for me, because finding guilds is not my strong point and I'm not interested in PUG raids.

As a result, I've been missing on the challenge high, of failing over and over until I get it right, and then feeling amazing. Unfortunately, I didn't give the Brawler's Guild much attention. The best time to do it is first thing in the morning, which is also the best time for me to forget what I was planning to do.

Then I heard rumors that it would be gone. I misinterpreted this as gone gone, gone forever, Cataclysmed gone. So, with no time to lose, the Friday before patch day, I started Brawler's Guild. And then immediately wished I'd started sooner. It turns out that, despite my ranking as the number one level 90 paladin with a partial Justicar transmog on my server, I couldn't one-shot everything.

It all began with Hexos. In a way, that was a great boss, because it forced me to actually learn how to DPS without paying much attention. A momentary distraction from the pink of death was death. Over the many, many, many attempts, I reworked some keybindings, finally macroed my gloves, potions, and wings together, and stopped clicking rend. Then I died some more, until finally, I won, and then worried that I'd pass out because a pot of coffee does not constitute a complete breakfast. Good times.

 From there I learned that, those things which are fought least are also fixed least. The snake was awful, filled with either bugs or just bad behavior. It would stop for no clear reason and get a stack, one of which is enough to end the fight. It would drop poison directly in its path. I hated that fight, not for being a crazy gimmick like Hexos, but for being a badly-made fight. The fire elemental angered me almost as much, though it at least took fewer tries. The stun would fail and the elementals would seem to go out of their way to run into the fire. But I beat them, and it felt great because it had not been easy and because I'd gotten better in the process.

Then finally the paladin. While it took fewer tries, I think it was a more accurate skill check than Hexos. Adapting movement to a rapidly-changing situation, seeing small changes, identifying the goal, timing, and finally winning a harsh DPS race. That's almost everything someone would need for an actual raid, beside other people.

And yet, there were other people. It had some of the social elements of raiding. There was the begging for a res from the person who had gone AFK and blamed you for dying. There was the delay as other people failed in their own unique ways. There was the every-growing repair bill. And there was the congratulations, because when everyone is trying to get the achievements on the last available weekend, they tend to stick around and recognize each other. We'd offer advice, learn from them, and cheer and smile as they finally beat a boss. It was a temporary crowd, but somehow, this solo activity seemed to bring people together better than LFR.

So here's to you, Brawler's Guild!

Next time, please have more arenas; it's not fun waiting 15 minutes for a fight.

The Long Dark

I saw this the other day, looked interesting. Don't Starve had been a good bit of fun, this reminded me of it. Ha. Don't Starve is a walk in the park in comparison.


This isn't a base-building game. You don't get fancier toys as you go along. You might get none, stuck smashing cans of pork and beans, losing precious calories as they spill on the floor. Then you find one, and it is your precious. You sit shivering in your unheated cabin, fixing a can opener with scraps of metal, knowing that the wolf might still be outside.

It mauled me on the way in. I bandaged myself, applied my only bottle of antiseptic, and slept. I woke up hungrier than ever. Outside was a deer carcass, but I lacked the tools needed to gather any meat.

I did what anyone else would do: I walked outside, nearly dead from hunger, shivering, and barely conscious from lack of sleep, and shot my five bullets at the stars.

At this point there's not a lot of content: one 'sandbox' map and no story mode. But I see a lot of potential. It's not a game that encourages wandering, because that's how you end up like the frozen corpses that you find here and there. But you must explore, so it pushes you onward to find food, and firewood, but the cold and fatigue want you to stay here, where it is warm and peaceful. You can be perfectly safe for the moment, and doomed to die if you don't go out to face the wolves.

 I'd say this game is like a small box of legos. There is a lot of potential for fun, but at the moment, you're pretty much limited to a very small spaceship. Note: There are no spaceships, but there is supposedly a secret bunker somewhere with great wealth, which means lots of fire wood.