Healer at Heart A healer's thoughts on MMO's.

17Jun/090

Seattle!

Well, I'm in Seattle, which means no WAR and no new patch play time.  But I'm on vacation so that doesn't bother me all that much.

I was able to play a bit last night and it was fun to get back into Riekland Factory and play with Delaunay (Archmage).  I do miss playing a rank 40 character.  Haven't had the time to test much else but I was at least able to complete 3 out of the 10 tasks for the Live Event.

Be back after vacation.

Ta!

4Apr/090

Jinxed.

Unlike my first run through Sigmar's Crypts and Warpblade Tunnels (where I generously received 3 pieces of Sentinel gear) this week I came out of there with almost nothing.  I say almost because our resident Salvager/Talisman Maker, Haymaker, was able to make a few talismans with all the Engineer and White Lion gear that dropped, of which we had none of in our group.

On other news, my Warrior Priest Ciarra reached rank 18 today.  I'm looking forward to hitting up some scenarios before I move on to tier 2.  I have to say, she looks pretty impressive even at a low rank.

While questing on Ciarra I came across an awesome find: a grave with the name Paul Barnett.

Paul Barnett's GraveToo bad the screenshot isn't better quality.  It's hard to read in this photo, but if you want to take a gander for yourself, head over to Ostland in front of The Catacombs.  Approximately at 60817,60668.

19Mar/093

Lady Luck.

Last night was my first instance run on Delaunay.  Or first three I should say.  We attacked Sigmar's Crypts and both Warpblade Tunnel dungeons.  It's suggested that you go in there with some Lesser Wards of which I had none.  Apparently if you know what you're doing you can five-man them both.  I think I was just along for the ride as the sixth person and for those rare "uh oh" moments.  We had some good times and some great laughs and an almost wipe.  Thank you Risn and your shield morale before being clubbed to death (with maybe 20 hit points left?).  And thank you Standard resurrection.  That's just awesome.

I was excited just to participate.  Yeah I was hoping for a piece of gear, but I'm not greedy ... often.  Turns out, luck was with me.  I ended up with 3 Sentinel set pieces.  3!  Helm Shoulders Belt

Pretty New Me

Pretty New Me

Thanks to Zil, Baror, Jitte, Haymaker, and Risn for waiting until I got home from work to run with you guys.  Much love to Ordo Malleus!

After all this I of course had to get it dyed as my ideal color scheme is based off the San Jose Sharks hockey team.  I'm not too worried about getting the good dye yet.  Then bam!  I get the title The Fashionable.  Now, I'm all over that since that's pretty much my love away from WAR.  Fashion.

So my first adventure into the gear grind isn't quite so grindy as I know it can be.  Sigmar's Crypts ... how you don't get lost in there I have no clue.  I would have wandered in circles forever if I wasn't following the others.  Warpblade Tunnels I haven't really made up my mind on but I think I like them.  I'm a big instance (dungeon) and raid fan, so I can find good in just about every one of them.

Let's hope that next time through is evenly painless as that trip.

16Mar/095

Ha ha, just kidding.

I've done it!  I've finally hit rank 40.  It's just in time too.  My guild (Ordo Malleus) needed another healer as they're attempting to push on to Lost Vale.  I know that I'm a ways off in terms of gear but now at least I can work towards that.

Rank 40!

Rank 40!

My first hours as 40 was fun, new, long, frustrating, then boring.

Fun/New/Long: After a short congratulations I was immediately ordered to head to Black Crag as our Alliance was about to head to a planned fortress siege.  Making it there just in time I was able to participate in my first succesfull fortress take.  We then rode out and headed to Chaos Wastes captured the BO's and took the keeps.  We camped out near the Destruction warcamp and guarded the zone for the 2 hours (that long?) needed before we headed up to The Maw.

Frustrating:  I went into this whole siege thing new and not expecting anything other than a thanks for helping.  The first fortress went down and I think I ended up 88th.  Fine by me, this was my first attempt at this sort of thing.  But somehow during the second fortress attack I was lucky enough to place 13th.  Gold bag!  OMG OMG OMG.  How does that work?  This is super cool!  I think I actually had butterflies.  So I made it past the wall of people into the lord room.  But guess what?  There were so many people standing on, near, and around the box that my timer ran out before I could even click on it. Not to mention the dead bird thing sitting on top of it too.  I know I wasn't the only one shorted the loot either.  Region chat was a mess at that point.  I've never been so mad at stupidity and just plain rudeness before.  Oh well, not much I can do about that now.

The Maw Fortress Siege

The Maw Fortress Siege

Boring:  We capped the fortress and moved on to the Inevitable City.  Woo!  We must have waited a bit too long to get into the city PQ's as our warband was put into a queue.  After defending the couple waves of Destro that showed up we realized we were most likely not going to make it in.  So we tried the suggestion of dropping group, logging out, logging back in, and jumping in singly.  That seemed to work except not all of were able to make it into the same instance.  I ended up being separated from my guild into a constantly losing PQ.  I played until we were finally kicked out of the city.  We were close, but not close enough to make it to the next stage.  But holy Hell was I bored.  It didn't help that I was in Vent listening to the rest of my guild dominating the one they were in.

Overall, it was fun though.  Hitting 40 and participating in my first city siege wasn't a bad way to start my rank 40 career.  I look forward to trying this again (hopefully with better success).

14Feb/093

Anger, confusion, and excitement.

Last week Alt Much? posted about someone complaining on his lack of heals.  I recently had an encounter like that as well.  I'm only rank 36 with most of my scenario allies being well above me so I understand that I cannot compete with a higher level Warrior Priest.  Towards the end of the scenario I was getting bashed on pretty good while some were really trying to keep me alive and kill off the Destro players.  They were successful!  Of course, the WP died.  He yells in chat "Way to protect the only healer you have!"  To which someone replied, "Sorry I was trying to keep Delaunay alive." (me)  The WP reply was something close to "Why? He heals for shit."  Oooh that got me going.  First of all, he's not the only healer that mattered.  Second I'm not a guy.  I was about to reply when the scenario ended.  Damn!  And because I'm not a mean person I didn't look him up to yell at him in /t .  I didn't want to deal with the drama.  But I took a look at the scoreboard when it ended, and yes, I was below him.  But we were the only two healers and I was constantly healing.  What more could I have done?!  I sat and fumed for a bit after that.

On another topic, Dark Crag Dispatch mentioned this post from Adam Gershowitz.  Apparently the Archmage (and possibly the Shaman) is broken.  Hm.  Really?  I was just as bewildered as they were on that information.  I know there are some things that annoy me about my Archmage but I never thought we were broken.  I must really be an unobservant player.  This has got me curious on how we're broken.  I think I'll check over at Warhammer Alliance to see if I can figure this out.

My thoughts on the Archmage patch notes:

Bug Fixes:
* Balanced Mending: This ability will now correctly function as described.  (I honestly have never used this tactic in favor of others. But I'm glad it's being fixed.)
* Gift of Life: This ability's build time has been reduced, and cooldown time increased.  (I could have used this before I learned Hurried Restore .)
* Hurried Restore: Fixed a tooltip display issue.  (Ok.)
* Storm of Cronos: This ability will now correctly reduce the target's Spirit resistance.  (Oh good!)
* Wild Healing: This ability's effect will no longer trigger from damage-over-time critical ticks.  (That's a bummer but I can understand why that's changing.  It's a good thing I don't rely on that.)
* Scatter the Winds: The debuff portion of this ability will no longer apply when the damage portion is blocked or disrupted.  (Makes sense.)
Balance changes:
* Healing Energy: This ability will now heal slightly more initially, but slightly less over time. The over time portion will now last 5 seconds.  (This was a pretty week fast heal and I'm glad they're changing this.)
* Blessing of Isha: This ability will now cast faster and heal for a higher value.  (Excellent!  I would skip over this in favor of single healing because it took too long when I needed it most.)
* Balance Essence: This ability's damage has been increased.  (This is good.  This should mean that the healing from this will get increased as well.  Very good stuff.)
* Searing Touch: This ability will receive greater damage contribution from stats.  (Superb!)
* Shield of Saphery: This ability will now absorb more damage.  (I've always thought this ability didn't do much.  I'm glad this is being fixed.)
* Isha's Ward: This ability will now absorb more damage.  (I wonder by how much?  This might be a morale that I put in now.)
* Winds' Protection: This ability will now absorb more damage.  (I haven't had the need/pleasure of using this ability yet but I can only image that this is good news.)

The bug fixes are just 'meh' but I can't wait for the balance changes.  Bring it on Destruction!

Other thoughts on the patch notes:

I'm extremely excited about the Salvaging changes.  I don't know how many pieces of gear I've destroyed to have it fail on me.  It's been a very slow process and I've had to rely on alts and lately the auction house since I've outleveled my Salvaging.

I was hoping for more with the Talisman crafting but I'll definitely take what I can get.  I'm cheap (in game) and would rather suffer through leveling this than spending money on it.  I'll get there eventually and I'm not complaining since I've put that limit on myself.  Though, I never thought there was an issue with the components needed.  I've always had an issue with never having enough fragments to work with.  And they're not even fixing that really.  Oh well.  I'll just have to see how it all plays out.

All in all, I can't wait for this patch to come out.