September 2008

So you think you can Heal

stargrace September 29, 2008 0Comment

Not quite so bad, since there’s another archmage in this scenario with me, I’m rank 6 here again. At rank 6 I have two heals. One does a  very small direct heal for 80 points or so (depends on how many nukes I’ve cast ahead of time) and the other is a 212 HoT (heal over time) that also is dependant on nukes I’ve cast ahead of time. 

While it IS important to land a few dots to up those heals, my number one concern is always watching the health of everyone else. Notice my damage output? This scenario it’s a grand total of 406. Pretty cruddy. We won this one too though. Notice my rank is only 6? Well, heals are not going to bring in huge numbers if that’s all you’re concentrating on. That’s part of playing a healer though. 

There’s a few things to keep in mind, for archmage specifically. Please remember there are different types of healers – archmage is a cloth wearing RANGED healer. That means I’m pretty much never supposed to be in the front line. I hang back, way back as far back as I possibly can and cast my heals from behind everyone else. I can see pretty far away, and make sure to have the healthbars of everyone turned on, so I haven’t had any issue. One thing I made sure to do / change right away is the fact that you HAVE to be able to toggle through friendly targets. This is my Q key, right beside tab which toggles through my evil targets. 

Of course, after a while people realize that the healers have to be taken out, and you’re going to get a good swarm of people on you. My typical responce to this is to dance around and heal myself as long as I can, staying out of range, my back not to the opposing side, and hope that someone on my team will notice I’m getting smacked around and come hit the person while I’m trying to avoid them. Some times it works, some times it doesn’t. Because I stand so far back it’s rare that I get a whole gang of people on me unless I’ve some how managed to wiggle my way to the front by accident. It happens, especially if I’m trying to heal someone whose main goal is to run to the head of the pack and try to play hero by taking on 10 at once. 

I’m not good at figuring out who is who yet, aside from the white lion people and ranged dps because they have lions and bows. I suppose I’m alright at figuring out who the dps casters are for my side at least, but it takes some getting used to. I did three other scenarios, and the heals looked about the same, we did lose, once. Each scenario was with a guild (or it seemed at least) called ‘Raiders’ and I’m not sure if they were coordinating their moves or not, but it was still fun. 

Ah, right. I don’t like pvp. Like I said in a previous post it has nothing to do with not being good at it, because I don’t suck. It’s just not my thing. Despite this post (and the others that will follow) it’s nice to at least take advantage of the rest of my ‘free’ month though before the account expires, and who knows.

What’s Wrong with this Picture?

stargrace September 28, 2008 9Comments

I’m Satia in the list – and the very last column is heals. While I like to think I’m a pretty good healer, I can’t heal an entire scenario all alone….Oh, I’m rank 6 here, and we won. Too bad heals don’t give as much renown points as actual damage does or I might have gotten a higher rank.

Playing My Way

stargrace September 28, 2008 0Comment

(( In an effort to make this game actually fun for myself, I’ve decided to give up playing like everyone else plays, and play my own way. Having a lot more fun with it, and I’ll see how it goes now that I’m not trying to impress anyone, but just have good ‘ol gaming fun the Stargrace method. I rerolled on a roleplay server – Avelorn. If any one is keen on playing with me you’re more then welcome, just drop me a line. )) 

I remember what they said about me when I tried to get work as a swords woman. It ranked along the lines of ‘too small’ and ‘she’d collapse as soon as she lifted one!’ behind the snickers and grimaces. My own parents stood in the background, my father nervously wringing his hat in his hands. He’d hoped to sell me off to some fancy man no doubt, but I had squashed those thoughts pretty quickly one evening when I returned to him after meeting one of his ‘prospects’ and slapped the gentleman’s beard in his hands. He was lucky it was only the beard he lost. 

The problem was one every child experiences. High hopes by adoring parents while my own cries went unheeded. So I rebelled in the best way I knew how. I didn’t even really WANT to lift some ugly sword over my head and swing it, and the crowd gathered was probably right, I WOULD collapse beneath that massive thing, my frail body mushed into the ground. 

I had a secret though. A talent that none of them knew about. I kept it that way on purpose, secluded from prying eyes. I knew the instant my family found out about it that would be the end of my freedom, and oh how I valued that little bit of freedom I had. 

I barely listened to the rest of the meeting. I didn’t care what the outcome would be because I didn’t plan on being around for them to decide. My bags were packed and I was eager to begin my journey on my own. My family had 6 other girls, there is no way they’d even miss me. If anything they’d be thankful to have one less mouth to feed, and when I didn’t contact them they’d assume I was eaten by a harpy or some other creature. Childish dreams at the time, I know. ‘What could possibly go wrong’ was the answer to every worry I had tucked away. Anything for the freedom to make my own decisions. My life, my friends, my career. Whichever path I ventured down I was sure it would be better then being sold off to some stranger. With the dark elves moving further in each day of course I had a little caution – but very little. Time would decide the rest for me.

A little Weekend WAR

stargrace September 28, 2008 11Comments

I haven’t played much WAR, for a few reasons. Most have to do with the game itself. Casualties of War (guild I joined on Averheim) is great – but it’s HUGE and easy to get lost in a crowd. Way too easy in fact. While it’s nice to have so many talented people wandering around, it’s difficult to find a little niche to fit in to. So I decided to play with a friend for a bit who I’ve played multiple games with, and forget about the fact that if you’re not playing this game with a whole crowd of folks it’ll hurt later.

I didn’t enjoy the elves in order at all. The graphics were annoying, the quests were ok but not exciting – so I decided to roll an Ironbreaker on a different server, dwarf of course. I was disappointed to see that Destruction females have 0 tank choices. How kind that the decision to be a tank rests in having a penis (be that in game or in real life). Call me weird, I’m a woman in life and I’d rather play a woman in a game. Go figure. Greenskins have no male / female option, unless I was bugged some how. Anyway I decided I really wanted to be a tank and why not be a dwarf. My friend decided to play a Rune Priest (I think that’s what they’re called) and together we wandered around chapter one. We did our first public quest (and each of us died a few times) the first time I ended up crashing right as the heroic spawned. Great! I figured this might be due to my new graphic card, which had been running pretty swell up to that point. 

Logged back in, everything was alright except I had died at one point or another. 

The dwarf starter quests were a lot of fun. I mean, a LOT of fun. I had way more fun killing snotlings and tipping over barrels and numerous other things then I did when I was running through the elves or even Chaos. Not sure why, it could have been the friend I was playing with. We’ve gamed together so much in the past that it just felt natural, I had time to read quests (though not quite enough to figure out where we were going before he headed off) and it was a smoother transition. 

As of right now my WAR account is cancelled, and I’m still playing on the freebie days. I just can’t find anything that’s going to make me want to keep playing after the free days go by especially since I am not one to want to pvp or rvr 100% of my gameplay. I’d love a small group of people to play with constantly, 5-6 I can handle, 100+ is a little much. We’ll see how it goes.

On a side note: Very glad to see the hide UI command fixed (it toggles it now instead of you having to constantly hold down the buttons). Having the curse client is probably the best suggestion I can give to anyone playing, being able to install your UI mods at the touch of a button and update them is great. 

The gold selling spam was slightly annoying, but I’ve got selective reading and can tune that out pretty quickly. Plus, no one would be sending me tells, since I don’t know anyone on the servers.