Although I enjoy when a game is carried by a well written character, I often relish the opportunity to design my own avatar, and forge my own way. This is often limited by current technology, so a lot of the 'fleshing out' process would have to happen in my head, when playing console games. With MMOs there's the added bonus of playing with others, so the 'fleshing out' process can be done outwardly. This is called Role Playing or RPing.
I love that my toons, the ones I come to care about, have dimensions. But I never RP. There are a few reasons why. One of the more poignant is some degree of shame, and fear of rejection. Given, the only MMO I've played with dedication is WoW, and the lore of this game is not that complicated, but I have not boned up on the lore anyhow. So I would be at a loss often, when RPing with other people. This disadvantage, coupled with the fact, that what I do in an MMO I don't feel is worthy of critique, positive or negative, as I do it exclusively for fun, is pretty much the main precedent for an inward RPing experience. Another reason is laziness. You can always go 'out of character', but I feel I would do it so often it would defeat the purpose. I have no stamina for making believe. My imagination gets bored easily, I would want to say. It wanders a lot.
Then there's the fact that some of my toons lose steam, as they might only be a part of my own inner self-image.
Jurakan was my first serious toon. My first level capped character. Jura was supposed to be an innocent and naive soldier of the light. Most of my toons were the result of a pairing when playing with my girlfriend. Jura was a first attempt, and I actually came to flesh him out a while after I had been playing. He was a pretty simple character, a goody two shoes. And this didn't satisfy my more visceral fantasies. It's not that he was a badly thought out character, but a bit juvenile.
My second SERIOUS toon was Felwenn. Felwenn was a rogue, and it took me a long long time for me to come to terms with this toon. I kinda struggled to fall in love with him. I do not know if it had to do with the class (Rogues as a class are hard to play, although as I've stated before, there is a certain flair to playing a rogue that lends dramatism)or if it had to do with the fact that at that point I was not very intrigued by night elves, but it was a bit uphill. In the end, I never deleted Felwenn because I got so far with him, but to this day...I feel I failed to breathe life to Felwenn. I've jumped back to him from time to time, and I can't come to terms with the fact that I want to like him as a character, but I never fleshed him out in my mind. Something didn't click. Later on I revisited making a rogue and I tried a human- I don't like human models, but I made an exception- which I promptly deleted and made a dwarf instead. For some reason, that stuck.
I then made Akarius and Mendrick. Mendrick took a while to get used to, and to this day, his usefulness precedes his preferential treatment, rather than his appeal as a character. I imagined a life before becoming a Death Knight, of being a paladin full of righteous fury and vengeance that met an untimely tragic demise, but this is SO trite, it detracts from my enjoyment, to be honest. He quested with a Shaman. They were a great pairing gameplay wise, but storywise, it didn't click that well, I felt. He's terribly fun to play, not fun to RP with.
I then made a night elf warrior, and it was a big hit, and it had to do with the fact that I made an unpopular class with the most unpopular race for that class. I feel I projected myself well enough that the toon to this day, as nerfed as warriors got, is one of the more fun toons that I've made. As a contrast to Jura, Akarius was kind of a dick though, he was not a do-gooder. He had no qualms with cruelty, so I got to tap into my dark side.
There are other aspects that I have been able to satisfy through other characters though, and I have come close to try and RP with other RPers. It happens more often than not when on my rogue, Sicari. And I feel I fleshed out that character in my mind as best I could, but there's always the embarassment factor. The 'what if' holding me back.
It's kind of embarassing to come clean about other instances of embarassment. So weird.
Oh well. I'm currently working on two more, a new paladin called Sigridus. Sigridus I'm fleshing out as a pious and religious man, practical, but moral to a fault. It's fun to play as that character because in real life I'm more in the morally ambiguous spectrum, I THINK? Hmmm. The other character is Maximilianus, a worgen druid. I'm still coming to terms how a werewolf was a druid. Or how a human, a posh human, was a druid that THEN became a werewolf? It's a bit overwrought, and it bothers me, but I am a sucker for lycanthropy and shapeshifting.
As I mentioned, my reluctance to RP has to do with my lack of knowledge of the lore, and my being a stickler for purity to a certain degree; I could not just make it up as I go...I would feel I need to commit to my character and his background, with all the racial and 'cultural' baggage that ensues. Perhaps with SWTOR I'll have the upper hand, and my girlfriend and I will be able to RP and speak in emoticons until our fingers bleed, hah!
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Druid tanking part deux
Well, I finally got to tank on a druid. Given, these experiences are definitely NOT representative of what will/could be. I mean, I just dinged 20 on the bear.
I ran two instances, Ragefire Chasm and Van Cleef...now rightly called Deadmines, as Van Cleef is not to be found in the Deadmines.
Ragefire is not a hard one, in fact, I have completed this with just a healer at level, when running it with the paladins. It is a bit of a joke, actually. This went fine. The group actually asked to keep going to get all the bosses within the instance. Interestingly enough, we had a level 20 hunter, who took aggro ever so often, but I was able to tank for, at level 15. Hah.
Deadmines was a bit more challenging, and aggro was a bit of an issue at times, but I must admit that we had no casualties, and our biggest hurdle was the healer's grid going bonkers. We decided that we should level a bit more before we continued instancing, so I could manage aggro better, and so I could be less squishy, as the healer, my significant other, was complaining how difficult it was.
Tanking on druids is weird. You have -
1. Auto attack (oddly enough, a must. You can crit at 310% with auto attack, so, a must)
2. Taunt (which I feel should have a shorter cooldown)
3. Bleed attack- forget the name.
4. Go to-aggro grab attack
5. Aoe debuff
That's as of now. I know that soon enough I'll get more stuff, but honestly, it's not that much. The cooldowns are long too, so very similarly to dk tanks pre- 4.0.1, you get a lot of dead time where you're just waiting for stuff coming out of cd.
Where the druid gets interesting is this- unlike pallies, they have few (so far, no) aoe abilities to speak of, and there is little to no hang time when you cast the ability, only the cooldown. So I ended up tab-cycling quite a bit. It felt very similar to Warrior tanking. Except warrior tanking is now plagued by a queue system for their abilities. I jumped on Akarius last night and tried pulling big groups, to see what it felt like. The ability queue is still there, but it doesn't feel as blatant as before.
But as of right now there's one BIIIIIG problem with my druid. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, BUT, I find myself without rage ALL THE TIME, a problem I do not have with the warrior. Maybe this will change as I gain more talents, or as I start critting more, but dangit, was it difficult.
Questing as a tank on a druid though, is...retardedly fun. Questing as a protadin prior to 4.0.1 was....idiotic. It took forever. Post 4.0.1, it's...idiotic. It doesn't seem fair to the rest of the specs, that a tank can do so much damage. Questing as a prot warrior is nifty: you are hard to kill, and you can zip around with charge and intercept, but stuff still takes time to kill. Questing on a DK...is...weird. They have some very interesting resources, and hardy, but they don't necessarily kill things fast enough to make the going faster.
On a druid though...imagine this: you approach 1 mob, you root it to the ground, approach as cat, start killing it FAST, it starts running away and brings 3 more mobs, you turn into a bear, start killing them FAST, they start hitting hard, you rejuv fast and pop back into bear, it goes the mob's way, you turn into a cheetah, and run away.
...It's like a tanking rogue. It's awesome. OH! Except rogues don't turn into mutated sea lions and swim faster. Never mind.
...Druids are OP. More on this class when I level it up. But man...so OP.
I ran two instances, Ragefire Chasm and Van Cleef...now rightly called Deadmines, as Van Cleef is not to be found in the Deadmines.
Ragefire is not a hard one, in fact, I have completed this with just a healer at level, when running it with the paladins. It is a bit of a joke, actually. This went fine. The group actually asked to keep going to get all the bosses within the instance. Interestingly enough, we had a level 20 hunter, who took aggro ever so often, but I was able to tank for, at level 15. Hah.
Deadmines was a bit more challenging, and aggro was a bit of an issue at times, but I must admit that we had no casualties, and our biggest hurdle was the healer's grid going bonkers. We decided that we should level a bit more before we continued instancing, so I could manage aggro better, and so I could be less squishy, as the healer, my significant other, was complaining how difficult it was.
Tanking on druids is weird. You have -
1. Auto attack (oddly enough, a must. You can crit at 310% with auto attack, so, a must)
2. Taunt (which I feel should have a shorter cooldown)
3. Bleed attack- forget the name.
4. Go to-aggro grab attack
5. Aoe debuff
That's as of now. I know that soon enough I'll get more stuff, but honestly, it's not that much. The cooldowns are long too, so very similarly to dk tanks pre- 4.0.1, you get a lot of dead time where you're just waiting for stuff coming out of cd.
Where the druid gets interesting is this- unlike pallies, they have few (so far, no) aoe abilities to speak of, and there is little to no hang time when you cast the ability, only the cooldown. So I ended up tab-cycling quite a bit. It felt very similar to Warrior tanking. Except warrior tanking is now plagued by a queue system for their abilities. I jumped on Akarius last night and tried pulling big groups, to see what it felt like. The ability queue is still there, but it doesn't feel as blatant as before.
But as of right now there's one BIIIIIG problem with my druid. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, BUT, I find myself without rage ALL THE TIME, a problem I do not have with the warrior. Maybe this will change as I gain more talents, or as I start critting more, but dangit, was it difficult.
Questing as a tank on a druid though, is...retardedly fun. Questing as a protadin prior to 4.0.1 was....idiotic. It took forever. Post 4.0.1, it's...idiotic. It doesn't seem fair to the rest of the specs, that a tank can do so much damage. Questing as a prot warrior is nifty: you are hard to kill, and you can zip around with charge and intercept, but stuff still takes time to kill. Questing on a DK...is...weird. They have some very interesting resources, and hardy, but they don't necessarily kill things fast enough to make the going faster.
On a druid though...imagine this: you approach 1 mob, you root it to the ground, approach as cat, start killing it FAST, it starts running away and brings 3 more mobs, you turn into a bear, start killing them FAST, they start hitting hard, you rejuv fast and pop back into bear, it goes the mob's way, you turn into a cheetah, and run away.
...It's like a tanking rogue. It's awesome. OH! Except rogues don't turn into mutated sea lions and swim faster. Never mind.
...Druids are OP. More on this class when I level it up. But man...so OP.
Monday, December 6, 2010
Druids part 1- Why not?
Tonight the expansion comes out, and in about 24 hours or so, I should have a druid made, unless something goes wrong with WoW or my internet. Jinx.
I've tried making a druid 3 times now. Twice as a night elf, once as a tauren. All of these were within the year, but not recent enough to benefit from the more recent patches.
There's some few things that have always bothered me about druids.
-The lack of shield. This also bothers me in DKs. Somehow, it always clicks in my mind that a rogue could somehow tank better than a DK. Because they...dodge more? I dunno. But the lack of shields on tanks always bothers me. If they ever took shields away from pallies, it would bother me too.
-The lack of plate. Leather doesn't seem to have as much armor....sure, bear form fixes that, but those two things...I dunno.
-Having to shapeshift. See, I like the idea of shapeshifting...for fun. Not for tanking. It feels....weird. It could be argued that stances are the same thing. But the stance doesn't really change your cosmetic make up...just your repertoire.
-The fact that druids were considered the easy, OP class, aside from paladins. And this held true up to recently. It seems that druid healing is no longer as OP as it used to be. Druid tanking was infamous for being a no-brainer, but also lackluster. I've been reading that where it used to be somewhat difficult to tank mobs with a bear, now it's doubly so. And this particular tidbit fuels my interest.
We'll see how it goes. Right now, I don't even have bear form yet, so I wouldn't even know where to begin, truth be told. We'll see indeed.
I've tried making a druid 3 times now. Twice as a night elf, once as a tauren. All of these were within the year, but not recent enough to benefit from the more recent patches.
There's some few things that have always bothered me about druids.
-The lack of shield. This also bothers me in DKs. Somehow, it always clicks in my mind that a rogue could somehow tank better than a DK. Because they...dodge more? I dunno. But the lack of shields on tanks always bothers me. If they ever took shields away from pallies, it would bother me too.
-The lack of plate. Leather doesn't seem to have as much armor....sure, bear form fixes that, but those two things...I dunno.
-Having to shapeshift. See, I like the idea of shapeshifting...for fun. Not for tanking. It feels....weird. It could be argued that stances are the same thing. But the stance doesn't really change your cosmetic make up...just your repertoire.
-The fact that druids were considered the easy, OP class, aside from paladins. And this held true up to recently. It seems that druid healing is no longer as OP as it used to be. Druid tanking was infamous for being a no-brainer, but also lackluster. I've been reading that where it used to be somewhat difficult to tank mobs with a bear, now it's doubly so. And this particular tidbit fuels my interest.
We'll see how it goes. Right now, I don't even have bear form yet, so I wouldn't even know where to begin, truth be told. We'll see indeed.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Holy....tanks.
I feel like I can formulate an honest opinion about tanks once more.
I've been playing on my paladin, Sigridus, for a few weeks where I took a dive off the deep end and went from level 21 to 45. Pretty good progress.
Paladins. Where do they stand now? Oddly enough, they stand in a similar place to where they stood before. When it's all said and done, a few tenets still remain true:
1.It's easier as a paladin to sustain aggro (compared to a warrior) in a smoother fashion, but...
2.It's still harder to get aggro back once lost. We still lack abilities that enable an aggro bomb, so to speak. (there IS Holy Wrath, but it is not the same as Revenge on warriors. It is good, better than thunderclap is now, but thunderclap before was better)
3.It's still markedly easier to play a paladin than a warrior.
4. Tanking groups is WAY easier on a paladin.
Now...they took away the 6969 rotation away altogether. There is...a SORT of priority system. Shield of the Righteous has come off the mana cast and was made into a proc of sorts: you have to use certain abilities to generate holy power. At first I thought, well, it's best to generate 3 holy power to get the most bang for your buck. But it turns out that every time you hit the ability, ShoTR will trigger what used to be holy shield. So I guess it's best to just keep that proc up. We'll see.
This time around, when I got consacration, I was bemoaning how much mana it consumes (basically like 1/3 of the mana bar) but you can talent into it and have it just take 1/10 of it, which is much better and puts consacration back into the rotation. Avenger shield is now given to you for a minimal, quite minimal mana rate at level 10. It's basically your pull now, and the cd was lowered to 15 seconds, so it means you hit it as much as possible. Holy Wrath is new, and it's a sort of aggro bomb, but very situational.
Hammer of the Righteous generates holy power and is tied to the GCD, which means you hit it all the time possible, and it costs basically no mana.
...all this geekness.
My main concern is the mana pool vs. aggro, as I have not found an ability, seal or talent that will allow me to replenish mana without sacrificing aggro.
Basically, they have made pally tanks more versatile, less laissez faire, and I can accept that. Tanking on a paladin was markedly lazy when compared to tanking on a warrior. Now, that has changed, for the better I would say. It's still incredibly easier to tank on a paladin, not to mention...paladins feel way less gimped than warriors....Jill keeps bothering me that Im going to want to stay on my paladin...but ...I miss all my situational buttons when I'm away from my warrior! I guess it's why I enjoy my rogue when not tanking so much.
Next week? Druids!
I've been playing on my paladin, Sigridus, for a few weeks where I took a dive off the deep end and went from level 21 to 45. Pretty good progress.
Paladins. Where do they stand now? Oddly enough, they stand in a similar place to where they stood before. When it's all said and done, a few tenets still remain true:
1.It's easier as a paladin to sustain aggro (compared to a warrior) in a smoother fashion, but...
2.It's still harder to get aggro back once lost. We still lack abilities that enable an aggro bomb, so to speak. (there IS Holy Wrath, but it is not the same as Revenge on warriors. It is good, better than thunderclap is now, but thunderclap before was better)
3.It's still markedly easier to play a paladin than a warrior.
4. Tanking groups is WAY easier on a paladin.
Now...they took away the 6969 rotation away altogether. There is...a SORT of priority system. Shield of the Righteous has come off the mana cast and was made into a proc of sorts: you have to use certain abilities to generate holy power. At first I thought, well, it's best to generate 3 holy power to get the most bang for your buck. But it turns out that every time you hit the ability, ShoTR will trigger what used to be holy shield. So I guess it's best to just keep that proc up. We'll see.
This time around, when I got consacration, I was bemoaning how much mana it consumes (basically like 1/3 of the mana bar) but you can talent into it and have it just take 1/10 of it, which is much better and puts consacration back into the rotation. Avenger shield is now given to you for a minimal, quite minimal mana rate at level 10. It's basically your pull now, and the cd was lowered to 15 seconds, so it means you hit it as much as possible. Holy Wrath is new, and it's a sort of aggro bomb, but very situational.
Hammer of the Righteous generates holy power and is tied to the GCD, which means you hit it all the time possible, and it costs basically no mana.
...all this geekness.
My main concern is the mana pool vs. aggro, as I have not found an ability, seal or talent that will allow me to replenish mana without sacrificing aggro.
Basically, they have made pally tanks more versatile, less laissez faire, and I can accept that. Tanking on a paladin was markedly lazy when compared to tanking on a warrior. Now, that has changed, for the better I would say. It's still incredibly easier to tank on a paladin, not to mention...paladins feel way less gimped than warriors....Jill keeps bothering me that Im going to want to stay on my paladin...but ...I miss all my situational buttons when I'm away from my warrior! I guess it's why I enjoy my rogue when not tanking so much.
Next week? Druids!
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