Gamer Community

[Abraxas Winterlight]

ok, downloaded the public test for wow (took all friggin night) & got in this morning (kinda)

New UI is up, along with the talent trees & new glyph system

Professions dod NOT transfer so you have to buy all your professions back (uber expensive)

no mods
I miss my mods

& this is the PTR, not the beta, so none of the cataclysm world changes nor flying in old world works (though it appears droods are bugged & CAN fly out there, or at least assume flight form)

 

[Homburg]

yeah, my skill. I just got my pally up to tanking gearwise (well, working on it) & was wondering how you like it

Prot at 80 is easy mode. When I first got into prot I would wander around and find mobs with enormous hit point totals and see if I could solo them. When I soloed Orbaz Bloodbane (422k hp), I decided that I'd had enough of this particular trick.

Last night, doing the Lich King fight on 10-man, our MT died while I had two shambling horrors on me. I had to pick up the Lich King and keep the horrors engaged long enough for them to battle rez the MT. Fun times, and only really an experience you can have as a tank.

DPS in raid mode is dull for me. I do it in ret when my guild needs me, but otherwise don't sweat it. I'm happy to DPS in dungeons, but that largely for change of pace. I couldn't really imagine playing a DPS only toon like a hunter or warlock at this point. Out of all my alts, the tanks are what I keep coming back to.

My big advice is to pick up Power Auras. I have three that are basically critical to me. The first tells me if Righteous Fury is down. It's all too easy to forget to put it back up when switching specs, so I have a nice visual reminder. It also tells me when Sacred Shield is down while in combat. Sacred Shield is a useful spell, and will help keep you alive. Lastly, it also tells me when Divine Plea is down. Divine Plea should be up constantly in every fight, and you definitely want the glyph for it. Power Auras is set to let me when it is down.

The downside is that Power Auras can be daunting to set up. If you do decide to get it, and I wholly suggest it, send me a PM and I will see about getting my settings copied for you. PA is set up so that you can copy and paste someone else's settings for a given aura. It is VERY handy, if only because you get an example of how to do it.

The biggest complaint on tanking? Fuck, it's hard to get shields. I finally got the shield off of heroic mode airship fight in ICC after using the same shield out of normal mode Halls of Reflection forever. Wow, thinking about it, those are the only two shields I've had past the Titansteel shield I made for myself. Only two ilevel 200+ tank shields I've seen drop too.

 

[Abraxas Winterlight]

I hear you about the shields. I am currently using Royal Crest of Loradaeron (drop off last boss in CoS) & have had no luck with that shield in HoR (I hate HoR)

I'm still not geared well enough for ICC, & need lots more practice tanking before I get there, but I got a start here

Armory Link

(I'll try & log out in my protection gear so you get a good look)

 

[Homburg]

I hear you about the shields. I am currently using Royal Crest of Loradaeron (drop off last boss in CoS) & have had no luck with that shield in HoR (I hate HoR)

I hate HoR with a flaming passion. The shield dropped the very first time I did HoR and I've not seen it again. I've successfully done Heroic HoR all of twice, and both were as DPS. Never successfully tanked that place. Every time I go in my group composition is horrible.

I'm still not geared well enough for ICC, & need lots more practice tanking before I get there, but I got a start here

Bind a second set of Strafe Left and Strafe Right keys if you haven't already. I use U and O. The Marrowgar fight will require you to side step rapidly while tanking, so having a second set of strafe keys is VERY handy if you use your left hand for hotkeyed spells.

Other than that, the fights aren't all that complex to learn. And your gear is not horribly far off. While I see a lot of PUG's wanting something stupid like 5.6k GS for ICC, I was tanking the early stages fine at 5k GS even. It's just a little tougher on the healers. I've tanked all the way through the Lich King (again, haven't successfully killed the bastard, but sure as hell tanked him fine) at a whopping 5.2k GS.

Armory Link

(I'll try & log out in my protection gear so you get a good look)

You aren't doing too badly. Keep up with the Liandrin's stuff. The 2 and 4 set bonuses are brilliant. It killed me to give them up to go for my tier 10 stuff. And the tier 10 bonuses are blah, especially the 4 set bonus.

I wore the necklace you've got now for a LONG time. Didn't upgrade it until I got the drop off Marrowgar. Anything Liandrin's will last you a good while too. The cloak you've got rocks, and I would suggest the frost emblem tank belt. It's the best you'll see for, well, I'm still wearing it. The Corroded Key rocks dead hard too. Still using it, and the trinket from Ony. I also like the frost emblem gloves instead of the Lightsworn stuff. I'm not a fan of Lightsworn though.

Over all, you're making some good choices in gear. Keep it up, and you'll do fine. I didn't look at your spec, but so long as it is not too awful crazy you'll be fine.

 

[Abraxas Winterlight]

I love doing dailys as a prot pally. you just gather up every mob on the screen & mow them down.

I figure about 2 more pieces of badge gear or some lucky icc 5 man drops & i can start trying to tank raids.

may try & do the weekly as OT this week & see how it goes

 

[Homburg]

I love doing dailys as a prot pally. you just gather up every mob on the screen & mow them down.

I figure about 2 more pieces of badge gear or some lucky icc 5 man drops & i can start trying to tank raids.

may try & do the weekly as OT this week & see how it goes

YEah, that was my basic take. Coupla more piece of Liandrin's and you're good. I'd be hitting Pit of Saron like a madman. Scourgelord Tyrannus drops some nice kit, with Rimefang's Claw being right up at the top of that list, as well as a BP that would be a massive upgrade. Loads of good ret stuff in there too.

I've run Pit of Saron again and again and again getting my guildies geared. The only downside are those damned five-man pulls on the big ramp after Garfrost. Wow, those suck.

 

[Abraxas Winterlight]

aye

I wants the axe for my Ret set.

My DK has that axe & two Rimefang's Claw

you ever do Garfrost with a shadow priest in the group? makes it a cakewalk.


heroic Halls of Reflection has a nice as hell tanking axe off the second boss

Falric's Wrist-Chopper

may be worth the pain to get that for my pally since I am not running ICC

 

[John Doe]

So is it just me or is endgame always about building armor sets and increasing faction rep? I don't know if that would be enough to hold my interest. I love to level.

 

[Abraxas Winterlight]

kinda yeah.

I'm working on my lowbie druid today.

doing all the low level dungeons at the correct level to do them is a blast

 

[Primalex]

If someone is interested in a Civ V review, give me a call. I can't get the motivation to write it just to see it go under all the WoW postings.

 

[Homburg]

aye

I wants the axe for my Ret set.

My DK has that axe & two Rimefang's Claw

you ever do Garfrost with a shadow priest in the group? makes it a cakewalk.


heroic Halls of Reflection has a nice as hell tanking axe off the second boss

Falric's Wrist-Chopper

may be worth the pain to get that for my pally since I am not running ICC

Yeah, add in a DK and you're set on those pulls.

I still can't make HoR work though. I don't think I'm quick enough on target selection or something.

--

So is it just me or is endgame always about building armor sets and increasing faction rep? I don't know if that would be enough to hold my interest. I love to level.

Yeah, that's pretty much it, along with raiding. It holds my attention to an extent, but leveling is admittedly more fun. I'm really looking forward to Cataclysm for the simple fact that it's going to change the leveling game top to bottom.

--

If someone is interested in a Civ V review, give me a call. I can't get the motivation to write it just to see it go under all the WoW postings.

I'm interested.

 

[Abraxas Winterlight]

I still can't make HoR work though. I don't think I'm quick enough on target selection or something.

it's probably a combination of factors. everyone has to be doing exactly what they are supposed to do, & taking the mobs down in the right order.

In a PUG, it just takes one idiot to wipe it, & since you can't get back in, it is a wipe when someone dies.

 

[Homburg]

Well, not trying to shift blame off of myself, but I do keep getting horrible group composition. The last time I went I had good comp by class, but two of the members should never have gotten into heroic HoR, as they were both fresh 80's.

Also been in group where it was me, a healer, and 3 rogues. Wow, that was painful. I like rogues, but I want somethign with AoE capability in there.

 

[Primalex]

Okay, Civilization V.

Appearance:
It does feel somehow like Windows 7. It has a widget-like appearance, you can switch between one showing you tech progress or cities or units.. for some strange reason you can't move them around or have them all open at the same time.

The commands went to the left side of the screen. No idea why. Doesn't hurt though.

3d graphics are fine. It doesn't cause a mess, it looks good - of course, it doesn't serve any real purpose but at least it doesn't make things worse.

It comes with DX9, 10 and 11 compatibility.

The fullscreen mode is unusual - you can still use the second monitor as dual-monitor, the game doesn't leave the primary monitor and won't show you the task bar either (until you force it by tabbing). Unusual, but handy, as I can write this while playing the game ;-)

The intro doesn't play on my system for some reason, just stays black. No idea why. But you can skip it.


Combat:
You can't stack military units any longer and you can't stack civilian units either - huge change, which takes a bit to get used to. You can move through a (friendly) unit though, as long as the unit doesn't end its movement where another unit is. You can't stack units in a city either. So you only have one unit as garrison. But this is not a problem, as all cities have intrinsic defensive capabilities now. You can't capture any place without resistance now.

This sounds terrible at first, but is really great. The balancement is very well made. You can't capture a mega city just with one cavalry unit riding in, yet the defense of an unprotected city is no danger for a determined force.

And terrain has now a huge effect, besides the usual +25% here or there. A well placed city or fort multiplies the difficulty for an enemy force - a city next to an impassable mountain means any attacking force is just cut down - there is no space for them to attack. A narrow passage between a mountain and the sea means you have to send your units through one by one...yeah, we are talking 300 here, baby.

Before attacking you get a good overview about the probable result and all modifiers in place.

Barbarians are a HUGE PAIN IN THE ASS. There is a switch that allows you to make them more aggressive, no idea what happens then and I don't intend to figure it out. On difficulty King (5/7) I already lose more units to barbarians than to all world powers together. Sending a settler unprotected a distance of 5 turns? Forget it.
The problem is not that much their strength, but that they spawn fast and of course always there, where you don't want them and that you need to dedicate units just for hunting them.

Diplomacy
You can't trade technology any longer. You can have now a mutual research agreement though, which, when not cancelled will allow both parties to purchase a technology for gold after several turns.

I like this change, too, you can't suck the technology out of another player now by force or diplomacy.

Besides the world powers there are also city states now. They just own one city, don't expand and have a small military force. They give you missions and grant you time-limited benefits for completing them - some donate military units, some increase your culture and you get access to their strategic ressources.

Their purpose seems to be to help with non-domination victories. But of course feel free to just squash them like the world powers ;-)


Social policies have now a tech tree! You don't have a hard switch like Despotism or Democracy, but several social basics that you can expand upon. For example. Honor or Freedom. The more you increase them, the more benefit of a certain kind you get. For example, the first level of Honor gives you +25% strength against barbarians. Then you can expand this with warrior codex, warrior chaste and finally volunteer military, each "rank" giving you additional benefits. Freedom can be expanded with constitution, free speech etc. So you can pick the social norms you desire for your civilization.


I think these are the most important changes to Civ IV. If you don't mind the Steam platform it requires, it is imho a must have, even if you own Civ IV.

 

[Recidiva]

I like Civ V, but my true love is and forever shall be Alpha Centauri. Locusts of Chiron FTW!

Playing Runes of Magic, total Warcraft clone, but...with a lot of really good ideas and...free. Yay!

 

[Loradai]

hubbie and I have been trying Lord of the Rings Online, it has been alot of fun, also nice that it is free to play. I suggest trying it out if you like MMOs

 

[Primalex]

hubbie and I have been trying Lord of the Rings Online, it has been alot of fun, also nice that it is free to play. I suggest trying it out if you like MMOs

I have a lifetime account. It's imo the second best designed MMO out there. (WoW is #3).

 

[Abraxas Winterlight]

It's looking like 4.1 is going live tomorrow

(WoW patch)

this is the new talents & Glyph changes, & LOTS of class changes!

Link to class changes HERE

 

[Primalex]

Trying Elven Legacy now. Damned, it's tough. Reviews warned me that it's not for beginners, but I'm not - thirteen years of turn based strategy. But on normal difficulty I already have to restart each mission several times. One mission I had to cancel after the fucking very first turn, because I moved my archers a bit too much to the front and they got immediately slaughtered by the enemy AI. Grnmghph.

 

[kiss_of_sin]

Does anyone play on xbox? i play alot of first person shooters, like mw2, halo 3 odst and reach, i play some rpgs like fable 2 and soul cal 4 .....

 

[Primalex]

I did it - I bought a game just because of its tag lines.

 

[Homburg]

It's looking like 4.1 is going live tomorrow

(WoW patch)

this is the new talents & Glyph changes, & LOTS of class changes!

Link to class changes HERE

Boy, is it ever a change.

On the upside, we utterly ravaged Sindragosa on our first try tonight, and made it farther than we had previously on the Lich King, so it is not terminally broken.

 

[Abraxas Winterlight]

Headless Horseman is running like brewfest. Que up & have a 1/day shot per toon at getting the mount.

 

[ImOnIt]

Got the ZG tiger mount today <3

 

[Abraxas Winterlight]

Got the ZG tiger mount today <3

*jealous*


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