Being Saleh: Alt Invaders

As my friends are knee-deep in mythic progression and my online time become less and less dedicated. I found myself veered once more into my altholicism, at first I max leveled my troll warlock, as I realized many people specced destruction I quickly swapped my artifact to affliction but then blizz changed how unstable affliction works, which doesn't bode well to long time warlocks, but as I only played affliction like two days I can adapt to that, got into heroics in several days then I moved on.

And have a sweet scythe as a souvenir

For me Mists of Pandaria will always be the most memorable expansion ever (proved by my Wakener title) and monk still become my greatest failure of class (due to their drastic rehaul on Warlords of Draenor) but I have a sudden urge to tried out the class once more, and so armed with my renewed determination (but still zero skill-playing, and zero f*** about me as an abysmally bad tank) my Mistweaver becomes a Brewmaster

The keg comes for free

Cruising through Draenor (and Garrison) once again for leveling 90 through 100 is  not a welcomed throwback thursday (or in my case: monday) but somehow I did it in mere 10 hour-ish, by spamming dungeons, questing, mining, and (beyond my belief): pet battling.

Brewmastering in legion is radically different from other tanks, while warriors and paladins rely on damage mitigation, druids on dodging and reflecting damages, Death Knights and Demon Hunters on repleneshing lost HP, Monks are all about managing the stagger stack and a little bit of everything else, every damage dealt on the Brewmaster was mitigated by 40% but with a catch that the mitigated damage will be dealt slowly over time, more damage received means more will be transferred to the stagger stack, there are several skill built on the brewmaster to manage this stack, from delaying the damage for some seconds, or even cut it up to 50% of the damage still on the stagger stack, all these skills are brew-based making a brewmaster the real drunken fist class, Monk also deploying dodge as their mastery increasing their haste for the cooldown of those brew-based skills, or (depending on your talent) relying on their mastery gift ot the ox to a chance of self heal. In my case I choose to rely on brew skills, relying on the ox brew talent to instantly refilling any brew and my energy, which means my HP is goes slowly and steadily down when I'm tanking a dungeon, making some healer probably struggling to keep my HP full, you can't do that I'm sorry, I'm not speccing that talent :D

In like a week my brewmaster already entered the heroic dungeons, while learning my class I found the fact above and somewhat giggling, most people made monk to become a windwalker which is one of the highest damaging melee dps class at this moment, playing a windwalker somewhat reminding me of rogues (without daggers) and it's also one of the fun melee dps class (with their shoryukens and hadokens if you specced those), mistweaving is also fun but requiring more concentration than before (MOP xpac) as I lost most of my hugging AOE healing (healing spinning crane kick is no longer available), also my new area healing requires me to consume more MP with random targets but at least they also apply heal over time

Legion expansion still draws me in but as I one class away from my quintessential quintet achievement I decided to take a short break and return to (again to my surprise) Guild Wars 2, why? Because of my friends (again). So I'm looking forward to bash them (and the game) in my next blog post :P

Also: I'm in hell, plants hell

Being Saleh: From Astral To Umbral a.k.a it's getting easier

Since my initial plan to upgrade to Warlords of Draenor is blown to bits by several... circumstances (like my social life and Guild Wars 2) I finally have time to get back to Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, It's not without several planning though, for one: FFXIV has been the most improved MMORPG I've ever played, and since I'm a filthy casual what I meant by "most improved" is "it's getting easier"

Except those pants, which made me hate ninjas

Since it's initial release on September 30th 2010, Final Fantasy has transformed from a total wreck into one of the most polished MMORPG ever created, at least that was all the review you can get from numerous website, I don't really care about it all, I played since A realm reborn beta (pre patch 2.0) and I can tell you from my own experience FFXIV has been most approachable, even than WOW, since I don't really raid and have a real piece of work internet connection from patch 2.0 to patch 2.5 FFXIV has been a great journey in term of casual gameplaying and story

The Story so far.... 

Final Fantasy XIV has numerous story quests, which it's names (like the F.A.T.Es) are homage to almost everything in pop culture, names like "Sudul Eht Nioj" or "Life is a Syrcus" almost get me chuckled every time, the writing (and translation, hello, it's a japanese game) work to this day was incredibly tidy and astonishing, if you're not into reading quests text like me you might skip them into oblivion, but really, slow down and read them all even when there are no voice acting (with sometimes regretfully awful, minor, nvm) I came across a line of dialogue which can or can't be tailored to my selection of race, it could be my imagination and since I'm too stupid to take a screenshot I just continue in hope to find another one, alas I never did.... maybe I'll ask around sometimes.

Please enjoy this Minfillia screenshot to ease your pain

So, in every patch (from 2.0 to the latest 2.5) there are at least five story arc in FFXIV, one is the main story arc where you as the good hero of Eorzea faced and confront threats from every not-so-good fellas, (minor spoiler) the latest patch offered a major plot twist which served as an opening into what we might expect in patch 3.0: Heavensward (yes it's an expansion). 

With Batman

Number two is the Hildibrand arc which we embarked in a gag journey (hey, what a hero without it's sense of humours) with Hildibrand Manderville: self-titled agent of inquiry and Inspector Extraordinaire Gentleman, which actually just a private detective with a penchant for disastrous and hyperbolic solution which (surprise) not always right, combined with numerous luck and colorful allies Hildibrand arc probably the most extraordinary (har har) arc Final Fantasy XIV has ever created simply because it get me laughing every single time =))

I'm so sorry for posting this

 Number three is the moogle courier stories, it puts up us as a mail courier for the good (and again, not-so-good) people of Eorzea, to deliver them letters which lead us to know more about their problems and woes, and --of course as a hero -- helps them, it's a short episodic goodness which the NPCs are described as more than just a quest giver, but also have life of their own.

A very GOOD life

Four is the Crystal Tower arc, where you embarked with a group of researchers known as NOAH to unlock the secret(and raiding) of crystal tower, as I said before the bosses are homage to Final Fantasy III
 

Five is another raid story: the Coil of Bahamut story act where we accompanied by Alisaie Leveilleur, the twin sister of Alphinaud Leveilleur which is a major story character, Allisaie takes us into a research facility which studies the impact of Bahamut's prison from the last era, it served as a hardcore raid instance but since the story is so good (I don't know, I don't raid) there are talks about to make it a soloable arc for casual players, I'm looking forward to this.

Even with such numerous story arc apparently Square knows where to stop and overshadowing people with what might be expected on Heavensward, the stories are not yet over, my eternal question is whether they will be continued or not, WOW has so much unfinished story arc and only a few of them has ever continued, things like Koltira's last stand to Sylvanas and Abyssal Maw has been scrapped and considered finished, no it's not finished, I refused to acknowledge that. Hopefully with much overshadowing here and there Square will actually resumed it

The (lazy) gearing and gameplay

Take a look at my post here, here, here, and here oh also here

As you can see from my numerous posts about 'dem gameplay on FFXIV you might see that I'm not too hot about it, I stopped playing in the beginning of patch 2.3 and as I came back gradually I just realized how I might be wrong, on the verge of patch 2.3 my chosen first class is a monk, a punch drunk dps guy, I have a sphairai which is a relic weapon a.k.a the strongest weapon on patch 2.0, with the help of the -then added chimera and hydra encounter on duty finder on patch 2.1(yes in case you forget it's a LFG tool)I zoomed through the steps of it and with my saved mythology tomes which I farmed from my days as paladin I obtained it in days, not weeks, not months, days, boom.

As square has numerous free weekend I mostly farmed the next upgrade of my weapon, atma (obtained by the old fashioned FATE grinding) on those days, sometimes it's going good, sometimes it's friggin frustrating (RNG sucks) I hit the jackpot on September free weekend.

So there's me and my atma weapon, as I renewed my sub I set myself another goal, another upgrade, the animus, which is another grindfest, yes bloodying my atma weapon with blood from numerous creatures is kind of sadistic way to upgrade a weapon but hey I need 9 books to be completed, each has at least 20 challenges ranged from killing X things and running dungeons (don't die on the last boss or it won't be count, blah), I decided that I will solo this thing, using DF and old-fashioned waiting game for fates, I got into 1/3 on the last books so it'll be awhile but the thing is, it's only takes three weeks to get into this phase and I don't even focus on it with numerous story arc to finish,

Animus is a level 100 weapon, you know another way to obtain 100 weapons on FFXIV on patch 2.5? Here's what I do on my Paladin: Run Crystal Tower --> upgrade gear with tomes --> run Syrcus Tower --> buy level 100 weapon with tomes --> run some more syrcus tower --> upgrade them to lvl 110 with tomes and stuffs found inside.

Yes it's easier, yes it's faster, but it just happened that I skipped patch 2.3 and 2.4 entirely!!! which means every good stuff of them is now available on vendors, so if I leveled another class now, on this patch, take it four weeks if you're a slow leveler (which can't be, because duty roulette bonus which will zoom you) add days for relic, run CT, buy weapons and armors, run ST, upgrades, voila, boom you're now decked in ilvl 110 in matter of weeks (probably one) if you skipped the entire leveling process entirely, on this ilvl you can access almost every single content on FFXIV, the first and second coil bahamut, the extreme primals, the odin, the hard and expert dungeons, The Hunt, world of darkness, latest PVP, anything, you see where this going? Yes FFXIV has become more approachable tiered-progress-based MMORPGs and that's VERY VERY GOOD

But what can I do on those content? I'm not fast enough to dodge things, or breaking things with heavy rotation, well just the point I want to make, Square tone down almost EVERYTHING in the latest patch, well not everything, hard still means hard and old dungeon can be irritating (yes I'm looking at you Aurum Vale) but the effort you pulled plus the gear you're wearing helped, the hardmode of Amdapor, Halatali and expert Wanderer's palace has a difficulty setting somewhere between sleeping in dungeon and breaking a keyboard, patch 2.0 Ultima battle was over the top and exceed all my expectation about how fun and engaging a dungeon battle is just because a) it's not too hard and b) it has a good song, the two latest trial and dungeon: The Chrysalis and Lake Keeper tops it, the balance was perfect, the boss battles are fun, last boss battle are somewhere between intimidating and brutally satisfying, there's no perfect way to win this, the one hit kill skillz was so few but if you don't entertain your footwork, you can still wipe, for a melee dps it's fun, for tanks and probably healer it's fun, yeah, that's only it, it's fun :D

Here's another SS to reward you, and no I don't even know what that is

Onward to 3.0

Well, I've written so much, so here's something, by scrapping everything that was on patch 1.0 FFXIV finally got a second chance and they used it well to gain acknowledgement from a solo (casually zerging in raid) player like me, by simplifying means and upping the rewards for activities FFXIV can continue to grow, but here's the thing, as you can see it's only the main game I'm talking about, come the expansion how approachable the state will be? Will the leveling process simplified? Up until now the main story arc requires you to get into dungeons and beat it but to be honest it's extremely worth it since the story is well written and enjoyable, For the story I think new player wants the whole experience too (Blizz cut the Undercity Siege story arc on Cataclysm, /rude), but LFG tool will probably without old players running around it (even if it's synced), so the fact that new players must open it all just to unlock high level dungeon can be.... discouraging, especially for new hardcores which tend to grind everything just to get into max level, and since max level dungeon in FFXIV tied to quests and main story quests and not the level, this can be a problem, at least for the powerleveler

Well there are solution, Blizz now sold instant level 90 on their website, it's also bundled with Warlords of Draenor expansion, but it's because they have 5 expansion pack and cataclysm rendered the old lore continuity useless for the sake of new graphics and eye candy, FFXIV still has a way to go, it's only the second expansion and since the main game bundled with patch 2.0 so it can be counted for a first expansion, it will be interesting if Square will go the same road as Blizzard (a.k.a make everything on the previous expansion obsolete, excluding Pandaria, they still have more content than all WOW combined)

But for now, I'll enjoy a little crystal action

The Edge of the Mists

I've told you that politics changed people to be the worst of them, you know what didn't get worse? World of Warcraft, What have Blizz done to WoW? I can list a few things, don't worry, just follow the number
 

1. Maturing the talent tree
   Talent tree are a bunch of passive and active skills your character will unlock in his/her progress, in the first incarnation each class have three talent tree with a bunch of skill without clear meaning how you can play your class, you can put it so you become so OP or so weak that your character is not needed in every bunch of unforgiving massess of Vanilla WOW, then it become clearer on cataclysm that you supposed to fill this role-based talent tree then you can go to other, which makes cookie cutter talents (if I did this combination of talents this bleeding passive skills will raised my DPS to 100 points) so they scrapped it.
   On the latest talent tree gone is the 50 or some-of-it passive and active skills, instead now you have three choices every 20 level, it become more like: how you want to play your character? favoring single target devastating instant attack or the AOE effect? do you want to make a shielded stand against big dungeon bosses or just received every attack but you can mitigate it by repeated regen? your choice. it's like fiddling your thumb or your other finger in your keyboard, it becomes more of your... playstyle.
2. Polishing the encounters
   It's bad when you have the talents but you don't need it in an encounter/dungeon/raids/stuffs or the mobs has an immunity to it, or the encounter is so punishing you can't actually use your active talents, WoW is making all encounters met the requirements of players of all talents without losing it's originality
3. Scalable content
   Flex Raid, nuff said, hello Guild Wars 2
4. Daily quests vs Encounter-based Timeless Isle
   on the first patches of Mist Blizz made removed the caps of daily quests and added so much of it on every new NPC factions, this become somewhat a put-off for some people, so Blizz (again copied from the Guild Wars 2) make 'dynamic events' in an area which 'combined encounters and discovery', Timeless Isle has one NPC faction: Emperor Shaohao which reputation can be gained in some other ways, whether slaying beasts, NPCs, do dynamic events, slay world bosses (champion events), trading coins which can be gained by almost everything you do at the island, you can also explore the map which sometimes yield treasure chests contained some epics, pets, vanity items, tradable items for NPCs, or just Timeless coins.
   Yes, basically it's just a rip-off from hearts renown and dynamic events on Guild Wars 2 but people like it, and sadly some people will call it an 'innovation', poor them, but nevertheless: Blizz did it and will implement it on their next Xpac: Warlords of Draenor
5. The Lore
   Mists of Pandaria is probably the most optimist and shiny of all expansion, it didn't have such heroic moment like Wrath (Bolvar) or Cata (Thrall) so I called this the best lore of WOW expansion so far but don't take it for me, WOWinsider have it all

Well, my character is now asleep in his 'prototype instanced housing' content (The Tiller faction) in Pandaria, I think I'll wake him up in seven or eight months to kill some orcs :D

Being Saleh: No More Corpse Run

When I logged on yesterday there's one thing that surprise me, apparently in the latest patch Anet decided that Corpse Run (rezzing in the waypoint when defeated in a dungeon) was not working as intended so they changed it so that all of your party must be out of combat (or wiped) before you can ress yourselves on the waypoints

Later on my surprise become a thought as I stared at my character lay defeated on the dungeon floor, just lying there waiting someone in my party which kiting subject alpha all around, rezzing someone on Subject Alpha is 89% suicide, because of all the dragon tooth and ice stuffs, no place is safe when encountering Subject Alpha, previously I can rezz on the waypoint and get back quickly to rejoin the fight, but now? I'm just staring at my screen, feeling useless, defeated has become a punishment

I'm not a dungeon crawler although I love them dungeons, since the beta I have seen how dungeon works: you're defeated, nothing is lost, just rezz on the nearest waypoint, "go back and rejoin the fray", a line I used to tell dungeon newcomers to encourage them that defeated is not a punishment, it's just costly, and the journey back is it's own challenge. But now it seems like Anet has changed the basic rules, and I didn't see the benefit of it, now I don't know how many PUG starters got scolded because half of the party has to stop their DPS and ress them in risk to get defeated themselves.

"It's okay to die" rule has become "don't die" rule, and I expect nothing good will came of it, unless dungeon is now intended to the elites and not casuals

The End Of Guild Wars 2...

No it's not a doomsday post, and yes I haven't been writing for like 3 months because I was grinding learning dungeons with my guildmates, and I haven't been much online this month because of works, and why the hell I used such a provocative title? I really have no idea, I like subject alpha though :D

Break Yourself Upon my BODYYYYYY!!!

 I have to redact my last post, dungeons on guild wars 2 CAN be learned (Sorrow Embrace was a gamebreaking bug) but even when you learned all the tricks there will be surprises, some months earlier Anet added new dynamic events such as the troll events on Ascalonian Catacombs that will fight with some dungeon bosses, cut out our work for us, and now you'll get some amount of token, gems, gold, or karmas from every bosses, makes the journey from the first to the last bosses is worth a while, it also makes story mode is rewarding, so every time you guide some of the newcomer there, you'll get your own reward and it won't be an entirely carrying.

Guild Wars 2 has been a great journey, ArenaNet hosted two major event and a 'love it or hate it' otherwise forgettable Karka Event (including a forgettable new area, and the it's-raining-free-precursors one time event) in two months, Halloween and Wintersday Event are huge festivities, I even enjoyed some of the jumping puzzle. I also enjoyed the vertical challenge of Fractals of the Mists, a new tiered dungeon system.

January is probably a bug fixing month from Anet, they fixed some gamebreaking huge bugs, some dungeon exploits, and even they announced to fix Fractal disconnect doom party pooper....

R.I.P: Titan's Grip, bug fixed

My guild has been on the roll, but even some of them aren't immune to the six-month-blues where there aren't enough content to whet their appetite, the World vs World vs World will started anew since now free server transfer is no more available and guesting will be live in several days (finally). There are talks that they'll add guild missions (more finally)

There's still a lot to come from Guild Wars 2, I really hope they won't be made some grievous error on Karka Event though, good idea, bad implementation, at least it was a honeymoon for some Legendary chaser though :))

Being Saleh: Dungeoneering, Part 2

Dungeons never got into my nerve, never, even Heroic on full blown WOW Cataclysm before nerf never once got me into the heat, this was before Explorable Mode Dungeon Guild Wars 2 came.

Sorrow's Embrace

I never ever lose my temper during the death on dungeon, even at a full wipe on a bad PUG groups, but Sorrow's Embrace Explorable mode is a death trap, an impossibly fast button mashing that can turn your fingers into jelly and irritate your eyes (at last that what happens to me when I ran it).

I first taste the explorable mode with guildies on a beautiful saturday afternoon, It was eventful but not too bad of an experience, so we're coming back with a different path on last night (Explorable Mode Dungeon has at least three different path to follow) and boy, what a surprise

The first path is bugged, but even without the bug the mobs are impossibly hardened that it caused us to run back and forth (means dead and teleported thorugh the waypoint for like thirty five times), the trash mobs are like tanks, and they hit with unblockable AOE attacks, it takes us like ten minutes just to clear one heap of them (which only five mobs, yep FIVE little runts), after one hour: exhausted and finally recognized the bugs we took another path, the one I'm slightly familiar with it

Surprise: They've been buffed, sure the trash mobs are still like butters but the bosses are extremely aggresive now since the last time. Their attacks are somewhat the same but they're more often now, and combined the fact that they have tons of HP wasn't really any help.

I lost my temper, really, I literally swear repeatedly on Raidcall, I can spend two hours with 35 gold repair bill on WoW Un-nerfed Cata Heroics (even Troll Heroics, yep Jin'do the PUGbreaker) but I still wonder why I quickly lost interest on Guild Wars 2 Explorable modes (even with my own guildies) and it didn't help my interest to make a complete set of a dungeon set, what do you mean people ran this over and over again? Are they borderline masochist? I WAS a borderline masochist for staying through a two hours failed PUG run on one of the hardest dungeon ever created on WoW and I feel fine but this... this... explorable mode thing is... almost a mental devastation for me and it's extremely exhausting, unenjoyable experience.

Maybe I'm not really there yet, maybe I'm just lack of madz skillz, still have to go through the 'learn ur class noobz', maybe I'm still just an ordinary b*tching casual who didn't deserve my Sorrow Embrace Pauldrons, but here's the thing: Guild Wars 2 have every element I love, even the PVP, and crafting, but I personally like dungeons from my past MMOs, and it's just a huge turn off to see that the dungeons are every single bit an.... utter disappointment

Yes, I'm basically saying Explorable Mode Dungeons (especially Sorrow's Embrace) are too hard, nerf it Anet or maybe you can modified it in some sort that it can be at least slightly enjoyable

PS: I do want to try another dungeon paths to see if it is the same, but as the rumor I heard that Sorrow's Embrace is the easiest of them all, I'm not really optimistic about the other

Being Saleh: Dungeoneering, Part 1

I've sharpened my swords, readying my scepter, polishing my staff, but to be honest I think nothing can prepare you on the first run on Guild Wars 2 dungeons, below I put on some words of my (cursing) time with them :D

The Hell and Heaven Runs on Story Mode

Welcome to Ascalonian Catacombs, where every Ascalonian dead elite fighters are still thinking that they're alive and everything that walks in two legs are charrs, AC is the lvl 30 dungeon located in Plain of Ashford, Charr's starting area, this is my first dungeon, tried the story mode a week after Guild Wars 2 release (still a cute lvl 27 at that time) but it's apparently bugged so we tried again on the next week.

The mobs are all ghosts, and they're nasty, when you have a party on minimal level prepare to die a lot, but as I told you before: dying is a requirement for Guild Wars 2. So we have nasty mesmers that confuses us, elementalists that rain down destruction from above, and some nasty archers that trapped and one shotted us. After several hours tried to clear the story mode we realized something else: our repair bills exhausted our pocket, we cleared it though.

A week later we tried the level 40 dungeons, the Caudecus Manor, located in Queensdale, humans are the denizens on this dungeon, regular bandits and regular difficulty, I was kinda surprised how CM is completed in only 20 mins rather than AC (which took us two whole hours), I've heard they fixed the diificulty (buffed it through the roof) on the latest patch, I haven't tried it again.

Since I was at max level now (I didn't even pay attention when I leveled up) so I've been running some more dungeon, Twilight Arbor is a nasty place with a lot of poisonous mobs, Sorrow Embrace is an exhausting place since it's a big dwarf city, Citadel of Flames are... well... fiery, and at Honor of The Waves the difficulty are plunging down again, in fact SE and COF final bosses doesn't require you to have some madz skillz, it's more like “stay away from the fire” kind of fight combined with using environments so the boss will somewhat hurt themselves (or taking a heavy damage from a tool) while we laugh in a safe distance, pretty easy, but the journey to that easiness is effectively hellish.

And yes, this is on story mode only, means you run it not for the rewards but simply an optional story, no loot table on bosses but they do awards you with some nice hat according to your class first time you complete it, which in my case: go straightforwad into the mystic forge just because I don't like the shape of it on my head when I wear it (most of the full-cap light armors hide charr horns, making me look like a superdeformed dolphin with fangs)

After The Runs

I sometimes think that the devs are experimenting with dungeons, there's a couple of interesting fight in there with mobs that have special abilities, but it's usually hard, and lots of dodging are required, on the other hand we have some boring standing generic bosses which are easier. The Dynamic Events (yes there are events in dungeon) are somewhat catchy but it requires awareness that you don't drag mobs from the events into another pack, the “pull it apart” strategy are common, it's more like crowd controlling but in a shorter time, one regular dungeon monster is enough to wipe you and they mostly did it.

There are lots of... 'unbalanced'.... difficulty on bosses, for example the first boss on COF is the most sadistic of all from my experience, try fighting a hard hitting whirlwind-ing boss while face a sentient invulnerable weapon of his (which also creates a whirlwind of fire), while the last boss of COF can even be faced naked, yes, naked, with no penalty since everything is coming down to you hitting him with a boulder he rolled at you and burn everything on him when he's stunned, after that it's just rinse, and repeat, also: you can't die on him since there's an invulnerability bubble erected from an NPC, so one of your party member can chill out while everyone tried to hit the boss's face, and the waypoint is right outside the room, so when you died and return you can still continue where you left off because one of your friends is bubbling and the boss will never reset while he's still there

I can't even suggest the devs to add/fix something from the dungeon, because it have so much extreme ups and downs on difficulties, but overall until this day I still think along the lines of “dungeons 'r hard”. For me Guild Wars 2 dungeons seems of a sort of punishment for me because of my usual facerolling on WOW Twilight Dungeons

I liked story dungeons, I do, but I probably won't repeat it unless I'm helping someone runs it, the story mode is not even the true dungeon, the real one is the Explorable mode when you face harder enemies and acquiring phat lootz. If the easy mode is not... well easy (for me and some guildmates of course) I think I need more time to try the Explorable Modes (like next month). I do want the Twilight Arbor's Greatsword =))

UPDATE: I finally managed ran two Sorrow's Embrace explorable mode on the last three days, next post is just up there