arbitrary posted this on May 6th, 2010.
Categorized as Barad Guldur, Dol Guldur, interesting fights, lotro, MMOs, raider, raiding, raids, skills, sociable.
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Full link: http://nerfthecat.wordpress.com/2010/05/06/old-raiders-dont-die/
…they just wipe at 1% (with thanks to Spinks for the ending, I was too lazy to think of one).
Or, can you just drop raiding and not worry about it? I know at least one person who’s happily made the transition that way. I’m vacillating about it.
There’s things I don’t like about the current raiding I do, solely in LotRO, in the Dol Guldur cluster. I’m not overly keen on the radiance gating, I’d rather it was trait-based, or .. hrrm many other proposed systems. I prefer a closed-ish raiding group, but our kin has opted to go for rotations, and a much more broad brush approach.
There’s things I do like about raids in general, and the current one is included in that. I like the social side, the larger group size and chance to group with people I may not group with every night of the week. I like the more interesting fights a raid can bring in (though to be fair, lots of the 3-man instances have some fairly interesting fights in them which probably allow me to display my ‘leet skillz’ more obviously than in the current raid.
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arbitrary posted this on April 22nd, 2010.
Categorized as bored, doldrums, funk, is it me or am I just crap, lifespan, lotro, mmorpg, MMOs, natural lifespan.
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Full link: http://nerfthecat.wordpress.com/2010/04/22/lotro-funk/
I logged onto LotRO tonight, determined to make a triumphant return to the game – to join in with a kin activity and to just knuckle under and remember why I enjoy the game.
It didn’t go according to plan.
I grumped at people, ended up in a smallish but nice group of people, but faced with a really hard fight to be sole healer for. We did fine, until that last fight. Then died. And died again. And it doesn’t really matter whose fault it was because it made me feel like it was my fault. Bad healing situations always do, if you’re a responsible and proud healer. I know it’s not always JUST the healing, but I want to protect the people in my group. That’s why I heal.
So, I ended up feeling frustrated.
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arbitrary posted this on March 12th, 2010.
Categorized as birthdays, bored of raiding, casual play, friends, lotro, MMOs, personal, random, status, turning 40, Updates, warcraft, world of warcraft, wow.
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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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arbitrary posted this on February 22nd, 2010.
Categorized as Barad Guldur, Dar Narbugud, healers, healing, loot, lotro, MMOs, raid healers, raid healing, raiding, raids, social aspects of MMO, why raid.
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Full link: http://nerfthecat.wordpress.com/2010/02/22/why-raid/
Was having an interesting Twitter chat with a kinmate this morning (@sauronsbeagle to give him his due) when we touched on amusing reasons to raid. He’s a Minstrel, I’m a Captain – we both heal in raids. And there’s your context:
I felt my #3 key wasn’t being pressed often enough. The 1st boss and gauntlet make up for that!
Yes, I like to use Gauntlet to bask in the smugness of my 8.3s on-defeat heal. Will go when I break DN* set up.
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arbitrary posted this on February 9th, 2010.
Categorized as book 1, captain skills, captains, lord of the rings online, lotro, oath of the rangers, shield-brother, volume 3.
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Full link: http://nerfthecat.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/captain-awesome-or-is-that-awesome-captains/
Volume 3, Book 1 brings us captains some joy for a change. I was pleased, then dejected, and am now pleased again – pleased enough to blog about the changes as a lifelong lover of Captains (especially my own!).
So, what changes are we getting?
Captain skills requiring an OnDefeat event will now generate an OnDefeat event themselves if they kill a monster.
This is something Turbine have been working to give us for a while, I believe it’s how the mechanic was always meant to work. It seems all our waiting may have finally paid off and we can now chain an on-defeat event by killing something with another one. Won’t happen all that often, but I’m not looking this one in the mouth. A hearty hurrah!
Captain heralds will no longer gain 100% absorption from Shield of the Dúnedain.
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arbitrary posted this on February 5th, 2010.
Categorized as book 1, captain changes, crafting, legendary items, level 64 skills, lotro, Mirkwood, Patch Notes, shield-brother, Skirmishes, volume 3.
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Full link: http://nerfthecat.wordpress.com/2010/02/05/volume-3-book-1/
So, new content is almost upon us and Bullroarer is open for those in the US to go play with it and discover bugs, spelling mistakes, and what they think of the changes.
There’s not TOO much different, but there’s definitely changes of interest. The preliminary release notes can be read here – they’re not that long, so I suggest you go read through them all.
Headline stuff seems to be level 64 skills, 2-man skirmishes, new crafting recipes for certain crafts, and you can add notes to friend/ignore lists (so a year on you may remember why you ignored someone – something we were discussing only the other night). Oh +fate/+will food in the crafting stuff. Will have to hunt down my cooking friends!!
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arbitrary posted this on January 29th, 2010.
Categorized as Barad Guldur, Dol Guldur, lotro, Raid, raids.
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Full link: http://nerfthecat.wordpress.com/2010/01/29/barad-guldur-second-peek/
A week or so ago, 8 brave (or foolish) adventurers of assorted classes popped into Barad Guldur, the 12-man raid in Mirkwood, to have a look. We killed a very few things and got over-run. But then, there were only 8 of us.
Now the kin is ready to send in reinforcements, and last night we had our first 12-man foray. We made progress, we got up some stairs! This is harder than it sounds, but makes me laugh cos it ties in with my general reticence about stairs vs escalators. The repair bills were high, but it was new, and fun.
I won’t write too much about it, again, I don’t want to spoiler people. It’s just nice to have had a look, and I’m sure I’ll occasionally reference our progress through it.
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arbitrary posted this on January 7th, 2010.
Categorized as chances to drop, forums, gamer superstition, information, instances, loot, lotro, sammath gul, superstition, swag, symbol of celebrimbor, tactics from forums, trez, turbine.
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Full link: http://nerfthecat.wordpress.com/2010/01/07/its-because-we-stepped-on-a-bone-pile/
In my trawling of the Turbine forums of late, I spent some time in the Instances and Raids forums. I was mostly there to look up combinations of classes that have worked in Sword-Halls hard-mode to see if there were any surprises (I think our most surprising has been capt-capt-warden, surprising due to lack of dps, not lack of anything else – both capts were healing-specced). So I went, and I looked, and of course I got drawn in to reading some other threads.
Now, I don’t tend to forum-browse all that much. I visit the Capt forums for debates on sword/shield vs halberd/greatsword and other Capt-specific areas of interest. I also don’t like to know too much about an instance or raid before I go to it and have some experience in it, so I don’t visit that specific forum area very often. When I do, I check out all the threads of interest.
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arbitrary posted this on January 5th, 2010.
Categorized as captains, class forums, confidence, Dol Guldur, dungeons, faith in class, forums, healing, instances, lotro, main healing, Mirkwood, sammath gul, sword halls, turbine, warg pens.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://nerfthecat.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/captains-can-heal/
I say this, tongue firmly in cheek, as an unapologetic healing Captain. Without bragging, I’d say we’re up there as primary healer if specced the right way and playing with a sympathetic group that understands how to make things easier for me (ie. assisting with the on-defeat heals, understanding I can barely heal myself and that healing them costs my morale).
I assume most Captains know they have this capability and those that don’t need to spec as main healers have a more hybrid approach to tackling back-up healing. Which is why it surprised me to read this thread over on the Turbine Captain forums. It starts with a simple enough question about the Dol Guldur cluster of instances – how does Captain healing fare in them?
It’s even a good question. Siege of Mirkwood brought some changes, new legacies, combat and power things to get used to. We know how we managed in the Mines of Moria and Shadows of Angmar content, with a new expansion, we want to know what’s changed with regard to healing.
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arbitrary posted this on December 30th, 2009.
Categorized as computer games, Dragon Age, entertainment, lotro, update.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://nerfthecat.wordpress.com/2009/12/30/quickie-another-update/
I will really return to the blog soon, just stuff keeps getting in the way. Expect talk about the new Dol Guldur instances, daily quests, alts, Bioware and SW:TOR, and Dragon Age.
So here’s what I’ve been doing over the holiday break:
1. Finished Dragon Age as human mage. Satisfying, but started over again immediately as Dalish rogue. Unsure whether to go dual-wield or archer, any thoughts/recommendations accepted!
2. Run Sammath Gul (6-man) numerous times, both with additional healing help and as main healer. I had my faith in my skills both damaged and then restored by fine-tuning of tactics. Who knew? Tactics can help ;p
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