Kairos posted this on March 12th, 2010.
Categorized as Barad Guldur, Dûrchest, forum, raiding, tactics.
Shorthand Link: http://combo.mmeow.net/h7m
Full link: http://lotro-chronicles.blogspot.com/2010/03/it-hadnt-really-occurred-to-me-before.html
It hadn't really occurred to me before, but I was struck recently by a huge difference between the European (Codemasters) and Stateside (Turbine) forums: there is almost no discussion of tactics on the CM forums. Which is quite strange, when you come to think of it.
By far the most popular sub-forum on the Turbine forums is the one called
"Instances and Raids". Though it shelters a certain amount of grumbling and nit-picking, it also includes a lot of careful and serious debate about the strategy and tactics of the principal raids. Currently, there are several well-established threads about the Barad Guldur 12-man raid; one of them,
"BG Strategy - Gauntlet and Boss 1 (Durchest)" includes 133 posts, many providing either detailed tactical proposals or feedback on possible changes since the latest patch. For a characteristic example of a recent post, see the illustration, above. Read the rest of this entry »
arbitrary posted this on March 12th, 2010.
Categorized as MMOs, Updates, birthdays, bored of raiding, casual play, friends, lotro, personal, random, status, turning 40, warcraft, world of warcraft, wow.
Shorthand Link: http://combo.mmeow.net/h7k
Full link: http://nerfthecat.wordpress.com/2010/03/12/what-im-up-to/
So blogging has fallen a bit by the wayside. I went to London/Reading to visit family and haven’t really got back into a schedule yet.
Add to that a bit of a turn from LotRO – I’ve been there, done that. I have 750 Dol Guldur medallions now and no weapon or emblem decent enough to spend any of them on. I can run through Sammath Gul without standing on a bone pile with my eyes closed. Volume 3, Book 1, was a small distraction – but didn’t do what I wanted it to. We’re raiding Barad Guldur, and making good progress, but raiding has diminished for me somewhat, and I think in the future I won’t be quite so gung ho to go twice a week. Ah yes, the casual vibe has started to catch me…
…I still log onto LotRO almost daily and do some of the daily quests to level up yet another emblem. They’re all rubbish. I feel, as I do it, as if I’m wasting my life. I really hate the LI lottery these days. And then I realise I’m raiding with what I consider rubbish and no-one cares, so why should I struggle to upgrade? Why pursue the Symbol for crafted 2nd Age items, when it may just be a wasted piece of crafting that someone else craves a lot more than I do?
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Goldenstar posted this on March 11th, 2010.
Categorized as Encounters, Skirmishes, Videos, video.
Shorthand Link: http://combo.mmeow.net/h7d
Full link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cstmfeed/~3/kbulwvHOw2Q/
Cefrog encounter in the Skirmish: Rescue in Nûrz Ghâshu. Skirmish ran solo, Tier 1, as a Guardian with an Herbalist soldier.
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Merric posted this on March 11th, 2010.
Categorized as General, Hobbit Rage, Opinion, quests, volume III.
Shorthand Link: http://combo.mmeow.net/h78
Full link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cstmfeed/~3/dEr2zrkiaac/
It wasn’t too long ago that Volume 3.1 (or Volume III Book 1) came out and surprise, surprise; I’ve already finished the Epic Storyline part. I’m sure it comes as no surprise to most of the others who have already completed this Book just how quickly I was able to complete this; especially if you took the rewards that allow you to travel quickly to the next Ranger (the only ones I took were to Forochel and Angmar). If you haven’t done it, don’t worry about this being a “hate” rant, at least it’s not meant to be. I think most of all it was just a surprise. I’ll do my best not ruin anything with spoilers.
My main surprise at this comes in just how easy it was to complete. I guess maybe I’ve just forgotten how it was when I was on the other first books of the Volumes, or that I’m used to something that seems a bit harder and maybe a bit more visually “epic”. However, it’s only in retrospect that I realize the “epic” quality of this quest is not in the visuals, but in the lore. You talk with several “high profile” characters in the Lord of the Rings novels, you re-visit most of the Rangers that you meet throughout Volume 1, and you also run into several other surprises along the way. However, if you have not finished Book 1 or at least gone through the majority of the Angmar books, you might be a little bit lost. I strongly suggest that you do those before heading into this.
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DocHoliday posted this on March 11th, 2010.
Categorized as Book 9, Minstral, Minstrel, Mirkwood, Raids and End-game, Rift, Skirmishes, Warden, epic line, lotro, video, volume 3.
Shorthand Link: http://combo.mmeow.net/h77
Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/challenging-adventures-in-the-rift-skirmish/
Since there are a few skirmish barter items I want from the Rift, I figured I’d go through a couple of test runs and capture them via Fraps and CStats to do some comparisons. I wanted to not only compare the archer to the sage to see how they rank for DPS but also see how things had changed with the new tier 2 drop rates.
A few notes first concerning my soldiers as they are a bit different, which will skew the numbers a bit unfortunately. My Archer (my Warden’s soldier) is only level 60 with mainly level 54 skills available. And my Minstrel has a 63 Sage with primarily level 56 skills.
I ran it first on my Warden and as the following 2 videos will show I really didn’t have too many issues. I was a bit rusty, but for the most part it was rather smooth.
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Adarel posted this on March 11th, 2010.
Categorized as CStats, General, LM, Lore-Master, combat, loremaster, lotro, miss chance, physical resist, resistance, tactical resist, testing, theorycrafting, vol3 book1.
Shorthand Link: http://combo.mmeow.net/h72
Full link: http://lotroreporter.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/lore-master-resistance-changes-testing/
In the latest book update, Turbine made some changes to the levels of resistance that mobs have. They seem to think that a 10% miss chance is perfectly acceptable before resistance reduction stats and legacies are taken into account. I don’t necessarily disagree if we are able to make up the difference with gear and maybe virtues or traits. However, I’m not sure that is quite possible.
The LM community on the official NA forums are rather perturbed by the fact that Turbine really gave us no warning about this and seemed to be unaware of the “resistance bug” for ~2 months (the bug being that resistances were much lower than they had intended). I would think some very simple combat parsing would have shown this problem immediately. I truly wish the LOTRO community had more tools at their disposal for judging DPS, misses, resistances, and various other variables. If so, it would have been obvious at least to us even if the developers were out picking wildflowers.
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Scott posted this on March 10th, 2010.
Categorized as Age of Conan, MMO Gaming, Whatever, lotro.
Shorthand Link: http://combo.mmeow.net/h6e
Full link: http://pumpingirony.net/2010/03/10/its-alive/
Three months and one week after placing the order for all the parts for the new PC, it’s finally working!
Other than the Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OS, it’s decidedly a last-gen (ie. DirectX10) system for now. The new DX11 cards were tempting but I’m simply not willing to spend that much just for a video card any more. On a side note, I find it interesting that when I was younger and living paycheck to paycheck I had no problem sacrificing and saving up for the brand-new hardware and now that I can afford it without batting an eyelash, I have a difficult time justifying it. My PC gaming is pretty much relegated to MMOG’s only now, and I think 2009 painted a grim picture for how I am feeling about the MMOG genre as a whole in its current state. At “bleeding edge tech” prices, a DX11 card just isn’t worth it for MMOG’s alone, to me.
This PC has been nothing but trouble from the moment it was assembled, so it was with great joy Monday afternoon when it finally booted up and Windows 7 was installed. After installing drivers and a few other applications, I naturally set out to get my MMO on. Age of Conan was first since it had less updating to do than LOTRO, which took all night to finish updating through two expansions and content patches.
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DocHoliday posted this on March 10th, 2010.
Categorized as End Game, Equipment, Minstral, Minstrel, Mirkwood, Raid, Raids and End-game, Warden, epic line, gear, legacy, legendary items, lore, lotro, radiance, sto, threat, volume 3.
Shorthand Link: http://combo.mmeow.net/h6f
Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/03/10/back-from-a-short-absence/
So real-life has been a bit of a drain lately for me and I’ve been very quiet of late both here on my blog as well as in-game. It is a combination of a bunch of different things, but much of it will pass here soon.
So to re-cap on a few things, I did want to comment on some LOTRO items and also some non-LOTRO ones that were of interest too.
My in-game activities have been rather enjoyable, just limited after my fun in Volume 3. I’ve been playing much more on my Minstrel lately and have quite enjoyed not only soloing through content in war-speech but also running the various Mirkwood instances as a healer. I did notice more of my skills being resisted but really didn’t seem to be too big of a problem, but it was good to see that it has in fact been changed as commented on by CStM and confirmed by the devs on the forums as well. On a more positive note, I think I’m getting pretty close to having enough tokens for the radiance sets on him but will probably take a few more runs through SG. My legendary items still need quite a bit of work although I have a couple that are somewhat promising. I do have some of the legacies that help out on the resists, so I may actually play around with leveling them up instead of just leaving them at rank 1. Sadly, outside of the Volume 3 activity I really haven’t been on my Warden too much outside of an SG run or two. She still is 2 pieces from being eligible for BG, so a few more SG runs are in my future. And for those of you that actually do have your BG armor sets, there will be a change made to the set bonus as commented on the forums. Essentially the current bonus is broken (not that a 5% chance shield mastery will debuf your target was all that exciting) and will be changed to a 10% chance to provide a 10% melee damage bonus for the Warden. I’m glad they’re looking at those bonuses and that is a better bonus, but I would’ve loved a 10% threat bonus!
Up on the Warden boards there a pretty detailed discussion on threat. from precise blow and comparing it to damage done. Essentially numerically comparing how much threat was done to counter a certain amount of damage. The numbers worked out to about 1750 damage (or ~100DPS, which is pretty darn low) to counter the threat from a single precise blow, which does seem to indicate that you do need to work and continually apply our ToTs to keep ahead of DPS classes.
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Merric posted this on March 10th, 2010.
Categorized as General, birthday.
Shorthand Link: http://combo.mmeow.net/h5v
Full link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cstmfeed/~3/CUxkwwkE36o/
A very Happy Birthday to one of my favorite Hobbits in the world! Today is Goldenstar’s birthday! And although a team of ponies could not drag out of me just how old she is, let me state that she is younger than me and that’s all that matters! She is both a wonderful mother, an incredible wife, and the best friend anyone could hope for. She is an amazing woman and the source of all the happiness in my life.
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