Starcraft 2

Wow...

What an awesome single player campaign!

The story, just as much if not more than the setting, is what always drew me to the original Starcraft game. The deception, the betrayals, the grasping for life and happiness, were always so great! I'll probably get in to some speculation later on what might be coming in the Heart of the Swarm, but maybe not, since updating time has been scarce.

So anyways, what I'd really like to talk about is the multiplayer game I ran last night in the "newb ladder" with 3 other obvious new SC2 players.

It was a quick match up, with a Zerg and Terran player on each side, on some massive map that had about 18 different base locations including the starting four spots. I was running Zerg and my Terran ally didn't really know much of how to play. (Said he didn't even do the campaign yet and just wanted to jump in to a multiplayer map.) Myself, I had very limited experience with Zerg, but them being my favourite race in SC I wanted to give them a shake, so after only one match as Zerg against a computer opponent I jumped in to this match.

Now a lot of this commentary will come after looking through the replay, with sight at what everyone was doing, rather than just what I could see while playing.

So I started out, hatching drones and getting mineral production up as fast as possible, and ignoring gas until I had my first secondary base collecting minerals. This was fairly quick and simple since the expansion base was right next to the starting base, and there was an obstruction on the ramp into the whole starting zone for each team. My teammate was puttering around on his side and the opposition was fortifying their ramp with Bunkers/Seige Tanks/Missile Turrets as well as sending out a squad of Zerglings to try to rush us. Unfortunately for them my larger squad of Zerglings were ready when they broke through the ramp block. ^_^

So I continued mass-producing Zerglings and continuing expansion and climbing the tech tree, fending off small skirmish attacks while having roaming Zerglings take out a few enemy expansions while my partner managed to destroy one of the enemies larger expansions, followed by losing said area back to them, and almost getting killed by them before I could get some support to him in the form of some 'lings and Hydralisks.

That assault was a close thing, just managed to hold off a force of Thors/Marines/Banshees/Zerglings/Hydralisks at the ramp (that my partner wasn't defending at...) and so thought that there was a follow up force moments behind it to finish us off.

In the end my aggressive expansion into other areas allowed me the resources to build a big enough force of Brood Lords to break their defences. All in all a hard-fought battle that I thought I was going to lose at any moment, a very satisfying match!

What I didn't really see until the end was that the enemy didn't really branch out and exhausted their resources. They didn't have enough to pump out the unit numbers I had available, and probably couldn't have raided me successfully thanks to the Nydus Worms I had in my expansion bases.

Some good tactics from this fight:
-Roaming Zergling patrols to take out undefended new expansion nodes
-Fast Expansion for more minerals/gas
-Massed Brood Lords backed up with Mutalisks for air support
-Converting old drones to base defences after the minerals are all done

Some things I could have done better:
-Better coordination with my teammate on offence/defence
-Faster switch from ground forces to air forces when I saw which way the enemy were heading with tech
-Faster "going down" the tech tree to get Brood Lords
-Better grouping of units for "Fast Reaction" forces to attacks on satellite bases
-Better places of Nydus Worms so they don't get killed easily in bases, and secondary Worms
-More aggressive use of small groups of Brood Lords on different attack vectors

Overall tons of fun, especially when I managed to get a Nydus Worm behind their defences and take out about three quarters of the Zerg base. That was just a cool thing to do!

-LaFollet

OMG

Ok, still kicking around, lots of stuff going on, little desire to write, hence the lack of posts.

But I just ran across APB, and wow, why I haven't I seen this before?!?!

This just looks so crazy, the amount of customization and the detail in everything is just wow...

Gonna be hard to keep my hands off of it. ^_^

-LaFollet

What?!? Molten Core?!?! O_o

Real life has kinda been kicking me around lately, and it's not any one really big thing, it's a lot of little things and a few medium sized things. Hopefully everything will die down over the next couple of weeks and my life can get back to some semblance of normal. But boy how I could use some time off to just relax...

My Paladin's now Retribution/Holy, for spiciness, with her Holy set being the same set of gear she was sporting mid-Ulduar. Which is, bad gear, with a few Teir pieces I got from VoA PuGs over the months. I haven't even enchanted/gemmed it all, mostly on the basis that I could replace most of it with Triumph Badge gear. Of course I haven't replaced it either, I'm just doing Daily Randoms as a poorly geared/gemmed Holy Paladin. What that really means though is I get a challenge every once and a while, and when someone does something really stupid they'll possibly die. ^_^

I often wonder what people think about when they see the weird mix of gear I have, not a single piece over iLevel 219. I mean, to get that mix of gear now you'd have to work at it, and have people really interested in helping you get it. I've even got the Healing Mace off of Grobulus! No recent raiding (besides the weekly), and no advancement on the Ret set other than getting closer to the Frosts I need for my pants.

My Death Knight's still ticking along, a lot less progress now that I'm close enough for most weeklies and perfectly fine for the Daily Random with 30k health unbuffed. Pretty much I enjoy tanking on her a lot more than I did on my Paladin, although I'm not entirely sure why, probably just variety or something like that. ^_^

Not much gear advancement, although I have the badges to pick up another piece or two, just haven't gotten around to looking at them. The real highlight of the last bit came from a group full of bad DPS.

I mean REALLY bad...

The kind that pull themselves, start in with heavy AoE right at the start, whine you're pulling too slow but won't let you pull big groups, and generally do nothing of value at all. (Rogue that doesn't Tricks when they run in to a new group... Who does that? O_o)

They really left a bad taste in my mouth for a few days, though I did manage to kill one of them when they didn't stay behind the boss. ^_^

But when you really think about it, that's one horrid group out of a lot of good/ok runs, so the overall impression of "Randoms are Good!" should remain. Really I should start taking down statistics of how many and what quality of group I run with, just for the fun of it.

I've dual speced my Priest (currently 74) and started running Molten Core to try and get an Eye of Divinity to finally have a Benediction. So far two runs and two Petrified Leaves, clearly I should be bringing my Hunter through... >_>

Not much else going on other than the seeming stagnation of the markets I'm in on the AH. I hit 90k gold a few weeks ago and have had a horrid time trying to break 100k. I should just invest in some lower-Wrath enchants to see if the money making has moved there instead of the higher-level ones. I mean someone has to be buying something somewhere right?

-LaFollet

That Was Surprising...

Well my Death Knight finally hit 80 over the weekend, and with a little bit of pre-crafting of gear was Defense Capped for Heroics within 2 seconds of hitting 80. Her unbuffed health was already about 20k before equiping the two iLevel 245 epics I had lined up (the chest and wrists from Trial of the Crusade), so I was expecting horror and complaining upon entering my first heroic afterwards, with much need to defend my poor little tank against the accusations of my fellow group mates...

Unfortunately, or fortunately I suppose, that didn't happen.

At all.

I've done several heroics since, gotten about half a dozen or so epics now, ranging from iLevel 200 stuff from the last boss to iLevel 245 and iLevel 232 pieces from badge vendors and it's actually been a much more enjoyable experience than a lot of the tanking I've been doing on my Paladin lately. Crazy talk considering all the stories about how "Death Knight tanks are kicked all the time" and "New tanks are hounded until they leave the instance" that are floating around the WoW related forums. But then I really shouldn't expect much from what someone says on a WoW forum, or rather remember that it's still a one-in-a-million kind of thing that's going on in these stories. My DK's spec is a hybrid between a straight Frost Dual Wield tanking spec with some extra things thrown in to make Heroics easier since that's pretty much as "far" as I'll be taking her, and so far it's been pretty decent. I really need a high end one-hand to up my threat for high-geared DPS, but even then I'm decently holding against anyone who gives me half a second to gain some agro on the mobs.

My Paladin's been able to pick up another two pieces of Teir 10, netting me the 4 piece bonus. Now the only piece left is the legs, which I may just be able to pick up from a Vault of Archavon run if I ever even see the pants drop in there, otherwise it'll be a short 95 more Emblems of Frost to "finish" my Paladin's Retribution set until 85. I'm still getting in the odd raid time here and there, but I still don't have the time or incling to do much more than the Weekly and maybe one or two short raids in a week.

Other characters are mostly chilling doing what they've been doing, the Auction House schemes are still scheming, making money at a respectable pace, and generally my activities in game are "stable".

-LaFollet

Change of View

Sorry about the slow update, been busy on the RL front.

I've broken 75k, mostly doing what I've been doing all along and not really expanding things.

Post-sprees two to three times a day where I always do stocked Glyphs and Rare Gems (still not even close to all the patterns, not going to try for that) and whatever Epic Gems I have on hand (one of each cut, things that I know will be useful for me if they don't end up selling well) and whatever Enchanting Scrolls I have lying around from the last batch I made up. I really haven't done a lot of Saronite Prospecting, just a moderate batch last night (about 2k Ore), mostly my time has been spent leveling characters.

First and foremost my Paladin is still doing alright, getting close to being able to purchase 2 more pieces of T10, which I've been holding off getting the piece I can now for who knows what reason. I've also noticed that I have some really old epics still hanging around, like some iLevel 200-226 stuff that I can probably upgrade with some Triumphs or in the new Heroics, I just really haven't been looking all that deeply at that kind of stuff since my attention hasn't had to be on min/maxing my Paladin. I've been seriously giving thought to taking my Paladin's Tank spec to Holy, for no other reason than a change of pace. I've always enjoyed healing in general, and since my next highest (possible) healing character is only 73 (Druid, Priest is 72) I've really been missing keeping people alive.

Now Paladin Healing 5 Mans wasn't ever really my healing nirvana, but with the lack of other options I'm giving some serious though to dropping some surplus Triumph badges on the gear and starting to play around with it. It would even give me a little more flexibility with my guild's ICC runs since they're never short on Tanks.

My Death Knight is my biggest point of progress this week coming to within half a level of 80. I quested most of the way through the mid-70s and purposely stopped once I hit 79 to gather some some dungeon tanking gear before I hit 80. I'm also planning on using some stores of crafting mats to make some 245 epics to help ease the transition in to Heroics, but with 502 Defense with 17.5k health at 79 with clearly sub-standard gear I'm feeling quite confident about things. My main point of worry is threat in the guise of weapons. I'm using a couple of slow greens right now, but they're quite old (8 to 10 levels old) and will probably show some serious issues holding against DPSers in Heroics. I may just hold off entering Heroics until I can replace at least my main-hand with something a little heavier.

I'm getting quite good at tanking on my Druid if I do say so myself! Glyphs really help out with threat, espeically the Maul Glyph, and while Swipe isn't Super-AoE-Aggro-Fun-Time, if I can charge in and get a few off fast enough I seem to be able to hold alright. ^_^
I'm not sure if I really want to Bear Tank at 80 in Heroics, but for now since I only have one set of Leather/Cloth Heirloom Caster stuff, I'm either stuck tanking, or mailing that back and forth a lot. That'll be an issue if I end up leveling my Mage and Warlock in Cataclysm, but that's something to worry about then not now. What I'll probably end up doing is doing Tank/Healing on my Druid at 80, since I enjoy Druid Healing, but like the prospect of instant Qs rather than even 5 minute Qs.

I'm getting more comfortable with the prospect of spending the gold I've earned, in the last few weeks I've spent probably over 2k on vanity stuff, and 4k on a Greatness Deck for my Paladin, as well as starting up a Snatch list for things I use in crafting, all things I wouldn't have done even back at 50K for fear of "using up" all my "hard earned" gold, which was really just a mindset from my farming days when 14k was a huge amount of gold that took forever to get (was still thinking of getting a Chopper though, might get one at the 100k mark, maybe...) so spending on things like Ruby Shades or Argent Tournament Pets (that can just be farmed for) was unthinkable!

Which really just makes me think of how my time spent has changed from then to now. I used to log on my "main" and do dailies for gold, then log on alts to do alt things, which included doing dailies for gold/rep. Now I log on to a few characters to post auctions, then log around my characters to do dailies for badges, gold is more just something that's there, and it's a nice feeling. ^_^

-LaFollet

Milestones and Directions

Well, I suppose my biggest news is that I've broken 50k!

And when I say broken I don't just mean eked by just by the barest margin, but with enough wiggle room to continue buying raw mats and stay above 50k. ^_^ Feels really nice and somewhat annoying at the same time in a weird sort of way.

I can't really describe why it feels annoying, the really nice is obvious, but it does. It's almost like, well, I don't know. It's indescribable, but I suppose it really comes down to the progression, or lack there of really, along other lines. I've been trying to keep up with all my gold making schemes, get the daily dungeon done on all my 70+ characters (four right now, my Paladin, Death Knight, Priest, and Druid), keep all my profession cooldowns cooling (even been ignoring the cloth ones since they're going away soon and the price is falling flat, or so I tell myself so I don't have more things to juggle), do the weekly raid, and maybe even, if I have the time, raid with my guild a bit. But what it really comes down to is that I'm getting some of this done, mostly the gold/profession stuff and things on my Paladin. It does mean that my three other 70-80 characters are progressing just about in step, but none of them are doing it at any appreciable rate.

So I'm thinking I'm going to push more on one character to 80 while keeping my Paladin doing the 80 stuff cause I really want the Tier 10 Ret Set since it's so sexy. ^_^ First up for this plan is my Death Knight since she's closer than the rest, so it'll be questing/one dungeon with the "spare time" that gold making/professions leaves me with, with some mixing in the Priest/Druid when I want to do something else for a change.

We'll see how that goes...

And while that may seem like the Milestones and Directions thoughts of the title, the Directions part really refers to what my old guild is doing and the reason I moved on after the break I had taken. I'm not keen on what they're doing, or sort of how they're going about it, or I suppose who they're going about it with.

It's none of my business, which is why I'm not going to say anything about it to them, and I'm pretty sure none of them know of this blog, but it's a more hardcore direction than I'd ever want to take again. I've been there a few times briefly in my past and never liked it, in fact, quite a while ago, I came to the conclusion that if I ever end up raiding in earnest again it'll be very casual in a 10 man guild since it's so much more tight-knit than a 25 man guild. Of course me being me I'd want to be doing that with skill and focus, with equally skilled and focused individuals, but I don't think I'll get around to that again.

So anyways, the direction they're going, or at least a sub-set of the guild membership seem to want to go, is one that I'll never want to be a part of again, which is sad, since I really do enjoy their company, and if they were just as focused, but as a 10 man guild, I'd be VERY hard pressed to stay away, which would involve another faction/server change of at least one character to get back on my original server.

But I don't foresee them ever heading in that direction, it was never the direction that the guild had originally been founded under even, but it's the direction that I'd love in a raiding guild.

And I suppose that's really the melancholy behind my current mood. The complete and total understanding that there's now another group of people who I very much enjoyed hanging out with that I'll never really be a part of again...

-LaFollet

Oh Zul'jin.... What takes you so long?

Zul'jin is just about the last realm to come up after every Tuesday Maintenance. Now this is purely anecdotal, and I've only been on the realm for a couple months, but it's always last to come up. I gotta get on and post my auctions again! ^_^

Real life has been kicking my ass lately, what with four wondrous days of intense jaw pain with an infected tooth, starting right at the beginning of the weekend, the sleepless nights of pain and ice, and the lack of antibiotics until Monday to get it cleared up. Thankfully I've got a dentist appointment this afternoon so I'll be able to get the offending tooth back on to the road to recovery, but man what a pain...

Also, it's finally winter here, after months of next to no snow, we get dumped on (sort of) with lots of heavy, wet snow.

Blech...

But on to happier things in game. I'm up to about 35k in liquid gold with my typical stock floating around. My "less time posting glyphs" plan hasn't really cut in to my glyph profit, which is kinda weird, but I guess not really since I'm doubling up my glyph posts so I have a better chance of moving two of the same type in the time periods.

Enchanting scrolls are positively a gold mine, with lots of movement and never enough to stock anything. Pretty much any time I make some, it's just the best profit margin scrolls and within a week they're all gone and I'm scrounging to get more mats for new scrolls. I guess I really should up my prices and work off mats on the AH rather than try to process materials myself. Less profits, probably, but less work.

Other markets are pretty much as they were, rare gems are still moving, bags go like crazy, prism green gems are great, inscription off-hands are moving well, and now some elixirs used to level are moving well too. Overall lots of little transactions pay off well. ^_^

On the character front I've got my Priest and Druid up to 70 now, at least I think my Druid is 70, or at least 69, and my Death Knight is 72. Ironically enough I'm getting lots of complaints when tanking on my Druid or Death Knight, mostly for waiting for people to catch up to the group, or "not holding agro" against people who start AoEing right off the start, as in before mobs even get to me... I'm not sure what I can do about that on my Druid, but I'm thinking of front-loading threat more on my Death Knight by forgoing disease application and instead going straight to a Howling Blast/Blood Boil/Blood Boil opening. I saw sort of that suggestion on MMO Champion's forums, and I'm thinking of looking in to it more to satisfy the "gogogogo" DPS crowd.

I know I'll mostly be enabling their stupid behaviour, but if it works, then it works. Also still think a "Boss Fight Explanation" mod would be awesome. Gotta look to see if there's something like that out there or how hard it would be to make one...

All the other servers are up, but Zul'jin's still down...

-LaFollet