When I started this blog 9.5 years ago I didn’t know yet if I would stick to it. Time and again I debated whether a domain made sense or not. Now I decided it’s time to do the jump and not wait until the 10 years are full, so here it is. Battle Stance, formerly known as Armagon Live. The content won’t change, the history is fully imported, just the URL is different. I guess I’ll have to tweak some of the CSS because I’m not yet 100% happy with the theme. Happy reading.
Daily routines
Right now everything could be a little hectic if I do everything that’s available.
- 13:00 EVE servers come back online and the skill spree event is reset. That means log in all the characters and shoot some rats. 6 characters
- 17:00 Roulettes in FFXIV reset, so I can run the level duty again. And possibly the 50+ dungeon one. And MSQ. And Trial.
- 22:00 GC turnins reset and I really want to level up those crafting jobs
And that’s just the fixed hours. In between WoW WQs pop up, missions need to be run, WoW toons want to be leveled…
Random FFXIV bits
The Level 50 Fisherman quest is supposed to be time-consuming, catching a Mazlaya Marlin after a double mooch. I needed 6 catches, that was kinda nice.
The Level 50 Botanist and Miner quests seem to be really annoying, only at fixed times of the day (same zone, but 30 real minutes apart) and I didn’t find more than one now. meh.
Zone design and major cities in BfA
I know this is nitpicky but I’m a little mad every time I log onto a Horde toon in BfA that is not just clicking the mission table on the ship.
Boralus – fly 10s from missions to the portals, even 20s on a horse were fine. It’s also situated on the north end of Tiragarde Sound, so Stormsong Valley is near. And Drustvar isn’t far either. Easy access to the WQs or anything you might need, incl the Horde zones
Azar’Alor – now this is a mess in itself already. Until flying you couldn’t even reasonably get down from the portals to the prof trainers and back up. I mastered the jumps so I could at least get down quickly without dying from fall damage when not on a Rogue. And then the freaking mission table is in another town. WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?
There’s been talk of Horde or Alliance being favored by Racials or Shaman/Paladin in Vanilla. You know what? I don’t care a bit. That’s peanuts. But being mad every day because the ways in the major town are so far, when you don’t even leave the town on some toons? That’s horrible. And I didn’t even mention that it’s in the total south/south east corner, so the way to Vol’dun is damn far and getting to Nazmir is also worse
Small WoW update and spec analysis
In between all the FFXIV crafting and return to EVE I did play a bit of WoW as well.
I managed to get to 120 on Blood Elf Priest and Horde Pandaren Monk at the same day, I guess it was Tuesday as I’d been working on them in parallel. Didn’t do much after the ding, just grabbing a few easy gear upgrades with WQs, easy enough with flying now. They both felt kinda weak while leveling – especially from 117-118 on.
So the only classes I’m missing are:
- Death Knight – Horde 113, Alliance 70
- Mage – Horde 111, Alliance 56
- Hunter – Horde 111, Alliance 100
Joar has an interesting post called Favorite Classes and Specs in BfA and while I counted 18 120s on his sidebar, and I’ve only got 11 I still wanted to chime in.
- Outlaw Rogue – Overall I really like Outlaw better than Combat. Don’t even remember when they changed that, but it’s a little better. It’s the easier spec to play over Assassination, but just a little quicker and more oomph
- Assassination Rogue – I was a big Dagger fan up until at some point in some expansion I didn’t get any daggers to drop in raids, so I went Combat, since then I also like it. I liked Assassination more in BfA, although it was weaker when fighting several mobs
- Elemental Shaman – It was good. Didn’t have any problems, although I also wouldn’t rate it as one of the fastest. It’s definitely more fun these days with the procs
- Affliction Warlock – started this at 110-111 and it was ok but I felt a little squishy and I’m not a big fan of dotting up 5 mobs.
- Demonology Warlock – switched to this at around 113-114 and been quite happy since. I’ve not yet fully mastered it I guess, the random procs still confuse me a little. But overall average and ok. Best of the caster classes.
- Shadow Priest – Ugh. I think this was the only class where I was already dying all the time at 110-113. Nope.
- Discipline Priest – also weak, but a little better than Shadow. WTF, Blizzard? Been healing a few dungeons as well and I find it really hard. I used to love it around the end of WotLK with the 3 last dungeons. The spec felt strong and fun. Now it’s just frantic and I’m not such a fan of atonement.
- Windwalker Monk – Reasonably fun at the start, also had problems with dying from 117ish on. Now with just a little gear at 120 (think around 290 it began) it’s kinda ok. This is funny because the Monk had been sitting at 85-90 for ages because I didn’t have any fun playing. Was that in MoP? Now maybe the 5 years of pause were good, but I enjoyed the journey from 90 to 118. And the last 2 levels were bearable (No pun intended).
- Retribution Paladin – This is the class I leveled first and I think it’s so strong in BfA that I now retroactively (retriactively?) wonder how anyone can play any other class for soloing. Even with mediocre gear I could do the 5man WQs solo and everything else dies in record time. Fun!
- Balance Druid – Was kinda ok, but a bit slow (notice a pattern? I’m not so good with casters).
- Fury Warrior – I actually have 2 of those and I love them. They’re only one notch below Retri and even with bad gear you don’t feel too weak.
- Havoc Demon Hunter – the class I leveled first in Legion and it felt super strong, basically so overpowered like Death Knights back at WotLK release. In BfA it felt noticeably weaker, but still above average. Had a lot of fun leveling it and am a little pissed how some other classes can feel SO weak compared to others, like this one.
Streamers
A few nights ago I stumbled over this video on YouTube, wasn’t even sure what I was watching before that, but for once the “you might be interested in this” was accurate.
So I watched a Diablo 2 speedrun and thought: I might like this, let’s check some of this guys’ other videos. Then the next day I watched another recording of him doing another speedrun (Assassin) and then I noticed: No, this doesn’t really interest me at all. The speedrunning itself was quite interesting once, but zero interest in watching a third run. The guy seems ok as well, but apparently the first video being live at an event was really good, and when he was doing it with his usual home setup I again noticed that streaming is just not for me. And by that I mean watching, I have no plans to do it myself, it would also probably label me as a proper hypocrite 🙂
First of all I guess it’s people just narrating what they’re doing on stream. Yes, I do sometimes watch Let’s Plays if I’m interested in the game. But unlike with other videos I’m skipping all the time, I’m only doing this for the game and the host needs to be ok. Don’t think I’ve found someone yet who I find awesome.
But I think most of all I really disapprove of this kind of hero worship with people becoming fans (in itself a good thing) but then kinda seem fighting for attention of the host in chat most of the time? Also I mean, sure, give them your money if you do want to support them but if I was sending money or even just subscribing I sure as hell didn’t want to be called out on stream. Take my attention or take my money, but this isn’t giving alms where I expect or even want a huge thanks. Maybe that’s me being weird though.
Another point might be though that I’ve been part of various open source communities and sure, some people who started or lead popular projects are kinda in the spotlight, but I’ve mostly seen them all as peers all the time. They contribute, I contribute. Sure, it may be their project and I just file a bug or fix a typo or even do a feature, but there’s hardly any “Senpai noticed me” going on (not only for me, I know many people see this). So yeah, maybe I’ve grown old and grumpy and it seems I don’t get fandom anymore. This might be true in the case of sports clubs or fainting at a concert because I see the boy group live 😉 I like and even love a lot of things and I’d even sometimes say I’m a fan of X – but maybe I’m just not a rabid fan of anything or elevating any podcast hosts or streamers to any heights and I feel so out of place when watching Twitch channels. Much more because of the viewers than because of the streamers.
Maybe a valid criticism is that I just need to “git gud” to grasp on what high level some of them are playing, but I just don’t care. I know that everyone who even wins at a backyard tennis/soccer/curling tournament is better than I am, but I don’t see a point of accepting their stardom for it? Not sure, maybe it comes back to being involved so much in open source communities.
End of rant, but I’m still confused all around. People did tell me a few times in the last few years I seem to be not so easily amazed by anything. I guess that’s true, but there’s still a lot of things I like doing, and certain games I like enough to be playing them several times per week, and not just because I didn’t think about it and never stopped the routine. I guess I was there with WoW somewhere between 2009 and 2014, just logging in because you log in.
I see this a bit the same with podcasts, but it is kinda different. I try out a lot of different ones and stick to relatively few ones. I seem to be very, very picky about topics, the hosts, and their voices. Any people who know me from Twitter and who know I listen to their podcasts are of course the exception, and I’m not saying that because I’m a nice guy but because I might have known one or two of the hosts even before they started their podcasts, liked the podcast and then also followed and interacted with the other hosts. Also I wouldn’t compare them to celebrities like the big streamers.
One final point, I hate watching e-sports as much as watching normal sports – but not more. I’m happy for people who like it, but if I could mute all your tweets about e-sports in a sensible way, I would. There are a few occasions when I do watch sports. That is the world or European soccer championship, if I am in the mood. One month per 2 years is exactly the healthy dose. I am not rooting for my team at all, but for a different one, fwiw. Also I sometimes used to watch ice hockey, but that’s getting less and less and involves a lot of frustration about the team licenses in the German league. But I’ve been to a lot more live hockey games than soccer games. (5 versus 0 in the last 15ish years).
PS: MrLlamaSC was just an example that happened to make me realize some things. His knowledge of the game is astounding and I can see how you can be a fan and watch him play and be amazed how he’s mastered the game. I wouldn’t even say it’s a less cool skill than playing the world championship in any accepted sport. Probably a lot less profitable, and depending on your view on life, thus a lot less useful 😛
PPS: I also did watch Kripparrian for quite a while a few years back, but I think that was his earlier phase, still playing WoW, and that was mostly YouTube videos with commentary, edited – not real live streaming, but going into the direction of vlogging. Once he went full on streaming and vlogging I kinda checked out pretty soon, but that was also when it was more about Hearthstone and other things (D3 was still kinda ok).
Crafting 35/80
Yay, managed to get the last crafting jobs to 35 today. Begone, old gear. Also took a little time and Gil to put at least some basic cheap materia in them, now that the mats I use for crafting get more and more expensive.
Also Dark Knight is 40 and Paladin 36. White Mage is 62 and I’m going back to the Stormblood zone where it all began, after the excursion to the east. Still 67 on Bard, though.
New Eden calls
A friend of mine started to play EVE a few days ago (someone else goaded him) and all the EVE talk made me log in and actually undock. Also it kinda helped there’s this awesome event going on where you just shoot a few rats and get skill points.
So where do we stand now?
- “Main”: 36m skill points
- Hauling Alt: 5.2m skill points, can fly Minmatar Frigates
- Explorer-themed alt, account 2: 5.2m skill points, can fly Amarr Frigates
- Mining-themed alt, account 2: 5.2m skill points, can fly Caldari Frigates
- Ex-Nullsec alt: 11m skill points, right now in LowSec with assets spread everywhere. Not terribly much in terms of ISK, but not nothing. First foray into a belt to shoot rats went fine, today I lost a Caracal. And I had forgotten to empty the hold. That’s 12m down the drain I guess…
I surely don’t plan to mine, but for now I’m doing some L1 missions and shoot some rats in asteroid belts as long as the event is ingame. I still have 1 PLEX, but I don’t really want to pay for a third MMO.
Alpha access is really nice for this, I can fly some of my ships, do the event, could contract some stuff to my beginner friend. This is free to play done right, although I’ve never regretted giving CCP some money.
Holy trinity, Heavensward edition
Just hit 60 on White Mage after really pushing the last 2 levels and already had my nearly-complete set of 260 Poetics gear ready, yay. Healing is really fun but sometimes stressful. First time in Pharos Sirius for example. Or Titan Hard, depending on the group.
Bard hit 66 and caught up on the MSQ, had to grind out those last 20% to be able to continue. Bardam’s Mettle has one really weird encounter.
I started a Dark Knight and plan to level it at the same time as the Paladin and in the progress get rid of tanking gear below their level. Until I hit 50 and then have to grab the Gunbreaker as well.
Also started a Machinist to get rid of all the sub-30 physical ranged DPS gear for the same reason, until I hit 60 and need to start Dancer.
It’s still funny how I have so far completely avoided playing a melee DPS class (if you don’t count soloing on Marauder/Warrior and Gladiator/Paladin) although that’s my bread and butter in many other MMOs, especially WoW.
Not much progress with crafting, but slow and steady the GC turnins (whenever I get the items or mats for cheap) push the jobs higher. Lowest are Leatherworker/Carpenter/Blacksmith at 32.7 and now I’m trying to catch up to Culinarian (nearly 44).
Author NogamaraPosted on Categories Final Fantasy XIVLeave a comment on Holy trinity, Heavensward edition Blaugust 2019
Although I had a lot of fun doing Blaugust last year – I did 31 posts in August and 52 consecutive days in total, I guess I’m gonna sit out this year. I’m not hyped for anything, I’ve nothing new to say about WoW (continuing to play, even winding down a bit after getting flying, no plans to raid) and FFXIV (ok, it is new to me but everyone else is already finished with Shadowbringers already ( well, everyone except Naithin) and I’ve a few goals but am in no rush) and no new games planned. The SWTOR expansion is supposed to launch soonish, but it’s still too far off to commit.
This wasn’t really a great year overall and I’m not in the mood to commit to anything, although Bronze might be easily doable even with traveling for a few days. Maybe I’ll change my mind last minute as I often do 😛
Anyway, here’s Belghast’s full post and I wish everyone participating good luck and hopefully as much joy as I had last year.
Crafting, Crafting, Crafting
Didn’t have too much time but spent a bit of time crafting. All crafting jobs are now 31+ (nearly 32+) and all gathering ones are 45+. I’ve stopped doing Ixal dailies and am doing only GC handins for now. If only the inventory management was better… then this would be a lot more fun. Also I’m trying not to lose too much money with this, I’ve tried to stay above 2.7m, but today I dipped down to 2.63m. (I know, peanuts, but I really don’t want to spend all my Gil for crafting and so I’m only spending what I’m making while leveling up.)
Speaking of leveling up. BRD is 65 and doing the MSQ in the Azim Steppe, Warrior is 62.5 and I did tank again. WHM is 56.5 and I’ve been doing at least one duty roulette per day, except today.
Still a little unsure about getting crafting gear or if it’s kinda useless pre-50. So far I just spent as little money as possible, only buying upgrades for < 10k per slot and I only spent 2k per materia today for my 4x gathering main hands, before that I only had materia in the shared gear for gathering/crafting. Need to do the 40 and 45 miner quests now for another 2 free Level 45-46 upgrades (got the gloves already).
Author NogamaraPosted on Categories Final Fantasy XIVLeave a comment on Crafting, Crafting, Crafting