Tyler F.M. Edwards's Blog, page 54

Heroes of the Storm: My Builds – Abathur

Today, Heroes of the Storm is launching both a 50% bonus XP event and making every single hero in the game temporarily free to play. What better time to post another of my personal builds?

This time, I’ll be looking at everyone’s favourite Zerg, Abathur. Just remember: Sluggin’ ain’t easy.

Abathur is one of the most unusual and challenging characters in Heroes of the Storm. I won’t claim to be an expert, but with much practice, I have at least reached the point where I can play him competently.

Abathur cannot fight directly. His damage and health are all but nonexistent. Instead, he contributes by placing a symbiote into allies to cast abilities through them, by placing toxic nests (landmines) around the map, and by spawning locusts to push lanes. He requires very strong map awareness and decision-making abilities.

A lot of people favour push builds with Abathur, and that’s a strong choice, but it does put you dangerously close to the action, and I find it a bit dull. Instead, I favour a build that boosts his team-fighting capacity, and especially his damage. A build I call…

Assathur:

General thoughts: This build focuses on using symbiote to enhance your fellow heroes.

Abathur has no mana and short cooldowns, so you can use your abilities quite liberally. Stab is your core ability, allowing you to dish out some pretty heavy single-target damage. Spike burst is your AoE, but the cooldown is short enough to can use it on single targets if you think it will help. Use carapace to shield allies when they’re under attack.

Your ideal symbiote target is melee with a strong auto-attack and/or enough toughness to survive in the middle of battle. The range on Abathur’s abilities is somewhat short, so melee heroes allow you to make the best use of them, especially in the early game.

That said, it depends on the situation. If a ranged hero needs your help, help them. You need strong awareness of the whole map, and you’ll have to jump around to wherever needed. Map awareness and snap decision-making — this is the core of Abathur.

You won’t often use symbiote on minions with this build, but if there’s nothing else demanding your attention, go ahead. You can still do some decent pushing with this build.

Use your toxic nests while waiting on symbiote’s cooldown. Use them for map vision by placing them in bushes and other important spots or in lanes to soften up enemy minion waves.

The only time you leave your base with this build is when you want to humiliate the enemy team by slapping their core into submission.

Locusts are another thing that aren’t too important to this build, but stay in one of your outer bases to get the most use out of them. Retreat to another fort or the main base if your location is getting pushed too hard or Nova or Zeratul have found you and are out for blood.

Above all, don’t risk yourself unnecessarily. Locusts help push a little, but it’s not worth putting yourself in danger to maximize their use — not with this build. The nice thing about this build is that, with good play and a little luck, you can avoid dying entirely.

1: Pressurized Glands: Increases the range and decreases the cooldown of spike burst.

I used to favour regenerative microbes on this tier for a really long time, and it’s still not a bad choice if your team has no support, but the healing from it is rather weak, and I’ve come to the conclusion the extra range on spike burst is usually more useful.

It helps you clear minion waves more easily, it allows you to get some use out of spike burst even when you’re infesting a ranged hero, and it’s useful in dense team fights. The reduced cooldown is just gravy.

Also note that spike burst is not stopped by walls like stab or any other skillshot would be. On very rare occasions, you can secure otherwise out of reach kills this way.

4: Adrenal overload: Symbiote host gains 25% attack speed.

Ideally you want to use this on a hero with a strong auto-attack. Adrenal overload on an Illidan, Butcher, or Thrall can get really terrifying.

It also works on minions and mercenaries. That doesn’t come up much with this build, but if you have the chance, infesting siege giants can get interesting.

7: Needlespine: Significantly increases the damage and range of stab.

Stab is your bread and butter damage ability and the heart of this build. Its damage is high to begin with, and with needlespine, it gets quite scary.

10: Ultimate Evolution: Clone an allied hero and control it for a short time. The clone has increased damage and movement speed and access to all basic abilities, but not heroic abilities or talents.

One of Abathur’s greatest disadvantages is his lack of presence in team fights. This talent allows you to address that, while opening interesting options for unique synergies from having two of the same hero on your team. It also has a fairly short cooldown, meaning it’s almost always available when you need it.

However, this ability is one of the main reasons Abathur is such a challenging and unusual hero to play. To effectively use this heroic, you need a basic competency with at least a majority of the game’s heroes in order to both know who to clone and how to play them to best potential once you’re cloned.

Raynor is always a good choice. His strong damage and survivability are always welcome, and it allows you to get double use out of his group buff. Double Jaina is also a strong choice because they can both benefit from each other’s chill effects. If you’re pushing a base, double Hammer is downright terrifying.

It can also depend on your own personal skillset. It’s better to clone a slightly less powerful hero that you’re good at than a superior hero you don’t know well.

There is no single right answer about who you should clone. It all depends on who is available, who you’re good at, and what the situation is.

Because dying as a clone doesn’t count as a hero kill or negatively affect Abathur himself, you can afford to take risks and play very aggressively, but don’t waste your clone’s life too recklessly. Best to get as much use out of it as you can. The lower the clone’s timer gets, the more reckless you can be.

You could also take the other heroic, Evolve Monstrosity. You can do some impressive siege damage with it, but it’s still fairly difficult to maximize its effectiveness, requiring lots of baby-sitting and very strong map awareness, and it’s pretty easy for the enemy team to counter if they’re on the ball.

13: Spatial efficiency: Stab gains an additional charge.

Again, stab is the heart of this build. An extra charge of it is most welcome.

16: Adrenaline boost: Carapace significantly increases the movement speed of its target for a short time.

This another of those talents I like because it has both defensive and offensive applications. The extra movement speed can help a low health ally escape, or serve to close gaps with the enemy team.

20: Hivemind: Symbiote affects a second nearby hero, mirroring the abilities used by the first.

This is another complicated talent. Double spike burst and carapace are easy, but double stab takes some careful aiming. Not too hard once you get the hang of it, but it’s a bit unusual and takes some getting used to. The good news is double stab at level twenty hits very hard, and adrenaline boost applies to both carapace targets.

The other tricky thing about this talent is that it steps on your ultimate a bit. Both are aides in team fights. It can be quite difficult to determine whether you want to clone an ally or just stick to symbiote, unless you need the specific specialties or utility of a hero (like Hammer for pushing).

However, despite its complications and difficulties, I still think hivemind is the best option on the tier for this build. The power it offers is too good to pass up.

* * *

As an aside, I finally got enough people to use my recruit a friend link to unlock my vulture mount. My thanks to everyone who helped me out with this.

Of course, now Tracer is coming out with another awesome hoverbike mount.

Sigh… you got me hook, line, and sinker, Blizz.

Filed under: Games Tagged: fantasy, guides, Heroes of the Storm, sci-fi

Star Trek’s Spiritual Successors

To be blunt, the Star Trek franchise is, at best, a pale shadow of its former self right now. The new films are keeping the name alive, but not the spirit. There’s finally a new TV series in the works, but while I’ve heard some promising things about it, my expectations remain terribly low, and I’m not entirely sure I’m even going to watch it.

I have ranted before about my complex relationship with Star Trek and my disillusionment with the franchise, but I must confess part of me does miss it. Or what it stood for, at least. As bitter and dysfunctional as my relationship with Trek is, I at least always admired its potential and its ideals, and the world does feel a bit lesser without them.

But there is some good news. Traditional Star Trek may be gone, but its spirit is being kept alive in other forms. I thought it’d be worth taking a look at Star Trek’s spiritual successors.

Mass Effect:

I think Mass Effect, more than anything else, is the franchise that’s kept the soul of Star Trek alive. This feeling has only gotten stronger since Bioware put out a promo for Mass Effect: Andromeda that is basically the opening credits for Enterprise except they replaced the crappy music with Jennifer Hale narration.

The similarities are immediately obvious. Both feature a future where most, though not necessarily all, of our current problems have been solved by technology and enlightened society, and humanity has joined a galactic community of many myriad species.

Cerberus is pretty much a hybrid of Section 31 and Terra Prime. The Reapers have Borg overtones. Krogan are Klingons, and Asari are Betazoids (to the point where Michael Dorn and Marina Sirtis have voiced roles for them). We’ve got Brent Spiner voicing a sentient machine who wants to be more human.

Mass Effect could have done better when it comes to the ideal of infinite diversity in infinite combinations (IDIC), but they at least made an admirable effort toward it, featuring a core cast composed of both humans and aliens, a decent balance of genders, and at least some non-white humans.

They also offer good representation to LGBT characters, which is an area where Star Trek dropped the ball. My version of the story prominently features a mixed race same-sex couple, and it doesn’t get much more IDIC than that.

And of course Mass Effect is filled with moral quandaries the likes of which would do any Trek episode proud.

Heck, Mass Effect even inherits some of Star Trek’s bad habits, like a somewhat bland and safe setting, an excess of filler, and alien races that are usually just weird-looking humans when you get down to it.

Overwatch:

Overwatch may not be about space travel or exploring the universe, but it’s probably the best exemplar out there of the IDIC philosophy, with one of the most diverse casts in gaming (or any media, really).

There’s that same sense of optimism Trek embodied, too. The idea of trying to inspire us to our fullest potential. What was that quote from Winston’s short? Something like, “Don’t see the world as it is. Dare to the see the world as it could be.”

Something like that anyway. That’s pretty much the soul of Trek right there.

Of course this does again bring up the bizarre divide between Overwatch the world and Overwatch the game. The world is this beautiful vision of a better future and the heroes fighting to build and maintain it, but the game is just a pointless murder box. All the story takes place outside the game.

Of course this does have the advantage of letting Trek fans get an IDIC fix even if they’re not gamers. I feel bad for all my non-gamer Trekkie friends who missed out on Mass Effect.

Stargate: Universe:

I considered leaving this out because SG:U has been off the air nearly as long as Star Trek, but I think it deserves a mention.

If you’re craving a story of space exploration, it doesn’t get any better than Stargate: Universe. No other series has captured the wonder and terror of deep space as well. Actually SG:U did a fair bit better on this front than Trek ever did.

Ancient Space:

And we’re back to video games.

Ancient Space is another title that really embodies the mysteries of deep space exploration, depicting a surreal and alien area of deep space and its strange inhabitants.

Actually, the entire game was quite clearly an homage to Enterprise’s Xindi arc and the Delphic Expanse, an idea I whole-heartedly approve of. They even hired John Billingsley to play one of the major roles and had him reference one of Phlox’s more famous lines.

And Ancient Space did make at least some small effort toward a cast with diversity. The main hero is a female scientist, Dr. Willow Burke, and that’s both fairly unusual for a video game and quite a Star Trek-y thing to do.

* * *

I do think it’s interesting how most of what I come up with for spiritual successors to Star Trek are video games. Part of this is undoubtedly due to the fact I spend more time playing video games than watching TV these days, but I think it also says something to how video games are really on the bleeding edge of entertainment these days, how they’re often one of the best places to find daring and cutting edge story-telling.

Filed under: Misc. Tagged: Ancient Space, Mass Effect, Overwatch, sci-fi, Star Trek, Stargate

Age of Mythology: Extended Edition and Tale of the Dragon Thoughts

Age of Mythology was a very important game in my youth. It took everything I loved about the excellent Age of Empires series and spiced things up with the addition of spectacularly powerful god powers and myth units. It spurred an interest in ancient mythologies (especially Norse mythology) that continues to this day.

It deserved to go on to become one of the great franchises of the real time strategy genre, but for whatever reason, it didn’t. It had one expansion, The Titans, and then vanished into obscurity, its vast potential largely wasted.

So I was happy to see Age of Mythology given a second lease on life when it rereleased on Steam as the “Extended Edition,” with updated graphics and full Steam support.

Admittedly, the new graphics don’t make a huge difference. The lighting is a bit more realistic, the water’s a little prettier, and I think the textures are a bit more detailed, but it’s not a major overhaul. The good news is AoM was a very good-looking game in its day, so it hasn’t aged as badly as it might have.

The Extended Edition also includes an extra mini-campaign called The Golden Gift. Apparently this was something Microsoft put out back in the day but which I somehow never knew about. An extra four Norse missions is certainly nice to have, though if I’m being honest it’s not an especially remarkable campaign.

Where things really got exciting was when it was announced there would be an all-new expansion to the Extended Edition: The Tale of the Dragon, featuring the Chinese as a new playable civilization.

I bought Tale of the Dragon immediately upon release, though it took me a couple weeks to actually get around to playing it, having been distracted by other things.

The mysteries of the East:

Tale of the Dragon turned out to be a bit of a mixed bag, but on the whole, I’m happy with it.

First, the bad news.

The new campaign is, well, not that good. Age of Mythology was never a game with especially memorable storylines, but they were at least basically competent. The characters were memorable, if not deep, and the plots were coherent and engaging, if not particularly complex or thrilling.

Tale of the Dragon’s story, though, is clearly the work of amateurs. There are significant parts of it that just flat-out don’t make sense, and otherwise it’s just shallow and uninteresting in the extreme.

It also has issues with polish. There are some significant bugs, and the difficulty tuning is very inconsistent, effortlessly easy one moment and brutally punishing the next.

That said, the mission design is pretty strong, with a good amount of variety. Even with the story issues, it could have been a good campaign with better quality control.

The good news, however, is that the new Chinese civilization is excellent. It carries the otherwise meh campaign and is great fun in skirmishes (and presumably multiplayer, though I haven’t had the courage to attempt that).

The Chinese aren’t wildly different from previous civilizations, but they have enough new ideas and interesting quirks to feel fresh. A lot of their units break the game’s usual rock/paper/scissors rules. For example, their main cavalry unit, the cataphract, counters infantry. Usually, infantry are the counter to cavalry in AoM.

Their myth units and god powers are also for the most part very fun and interesting. I think it’s a good sign that I’ve spent a tremendous amount of time agonizing over what gods to worship because they’re all so appealing.

Also, the Chinese can unleash giant magical monkeys on their enemies.

Giant magic monkeys.

It’s a small thing, but something else I really like about the Chinese is how pretty their towns are. The new developers managed to get some pretty good results out of the game’s creaky old graphics engine. The Chinese buildings are very detailed and just nice to look at.

I generally hold up Blizzard games as the apex of real time strategy, but one thing StarCraft and Warcarft have never captured is the simple pleasure of building and maintaining your own little city. The Age of _____ games have always done a very good job of that, and it’s more true than ever with how aesthetically pleasing the Chinese villages are.

So even with its hiccups, I would definitely recommend Tale of the Dragon to any Age of Mythology fans.

And if you’re not already a fan, pick up the Extended Edition and remedy that situation immediately.

Filed under: Games, Reviews Tagged: Age of Mythology, fantasy, mythology, review

On Romance and Horror

Romance and horror are two genres of storytelling that I would traditionally have told you I don’t like. They just don’t appeal to me. But lately I’ve been thinking that’s not quite right.

As I’ve grown older and more experienced, I’ve come to the conclusion that romance and horror are both genres that I actually enjoy quite a lot. It’s just that my idea of what makes for a good romance or a good horror story are very different from mainstream society.

There’s very little romance or horror that fits my unusual ideals for how they should be executed, and it took me a long time to find any at all. Once I did, I realized I could love them as much as an other style of story. It’s not the genres themselves that bother me, but merely how they tend to be executed.

I thought it’d be interesting to do a post examining what it takes for me to enjoy these genres.

Horror:

With horror, I enjoy a much subtler touch than you normally see in mainstream culture. Most horror that I’ve experienced relies on grotesque monsters, buckets of gore, jump scares, or a combination of the above.

Those all work, but they’re cheap. They’re the path of least resistance. They’re lazy. What I crave is more ambient, more about thought and feeling. To give you an idea what I mean, my favourite literary work of horror is Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven:

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
    And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
    And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
            Shall be lifted—nevermore!

 

I could also draw attention to The Secret World, a game I truly adore despite my normally lukewarm (at best) feelings toward horror. That game has its horrid monsters, its jump scares, and its gorey scenes, but it doesn’t use those things as crutches. TSW’s horror is at its finest not when the Wendigo jumps out at you in the parking garage, but while standing in the woods outside Kingsmouth, looking up at the stars and feeling alone in a hostile universe, or amidst the bright lights and cheery colours of Fear Nothing, reading the anguished words of a tortured child you came too late to save.

With horror, I’m not really looking to be scared. I don’t particularly enjoy fear. It’s already an emotion I have entirely too much acquaintance with.

But what I do like is being unnerved. Creeped out. There’s a certain strange allure to being nudged out of your comfort zone, to being reminded that the universe can be a strange and cruel place.

I’ve been reflecting lately on how fantasy, my favourite genre, and horror are closely related. Fantasy says, “Anything is possible, and that’s awesome.” Horror says, “Anything is possible, and that’s terrifying.”

The horror that I enjoy isn’t about making you jump in your seat or squeal in terror. It’s about mystery and ambiance. It’s about reflecting on how much of the universe we still don’t understand, about hearkening back to when I was a child and I looked into the darkness and wondered what was out there, not entirely sure I wanted the answer.

Romance:

My issues with romance as it is usually presented are more complex.

I’ll grant that a lot of it is just that a great deal of romance is, in my opinion, poorly written. It seems to me as if the golden rule of “show, don’t tell” is almost invariably thrown out where romance is concerned. In literature, it always seems to devolve into lengthy, tedious exposition on the depth and power of the character’s feelings, and romance in other mediums is rarely less hamfisted.

I would really like to see romance focus more on the characters’ actions, and action in general. Don’t just tell me how much they love each other. Show me how they’ll go to Hell and back for each other. Show me how their love strengthens them and makes them better people.

I’ve talked before about how King and Lionheart by Of Monsters and Men is one of my favourite songs. To me, it’s an exemplar for a better, more dramatic style of romance.

Howling ghosts – they reappear

In mountains that are stacked with fear

But you’re a king, and I’m a lionheart.

And in the sea that’s painted black,

Creatures lurk below the deck

But you’re a king, and I’m a lionheart.

And as the world comes to an end

I’ll be here to hold your hand

Cause you’re my king, and I’m your lionheart.

It is, to my interpretation, all about the strength that one draws from love. About what one can face with their love at their side.

As I’m putting the finishing touches on this post, I’ve just finished rewatching Hellboy II: The Golden Army, and Liz’s decision to save Hellboy even at the cost of everything is, to me, a great example of romance done right. It’s powerful, but not overwrought. It’s hard to defend her decision, but also hard to imagine making any other choice in her place.

Perhaps it’s just because I’m a guy. I have a guy’s vision of what romance should be — involving swords and shouting and epic adventure.

Another major complaint, which I’ve mentioned before, is how romances tend to focus almost exclusively on the beginning of relationships. There are some compelling reasons for this, but it’s still incredibly myopic, and it’s one of the main reasons that romance tends to be arguably the most formulaic style of fiction in existence. There’s only so much variation you can put on infatuation and the honeymoon phase.

I would really like to see more time spent on mature relationships. What happens after the couple rides off into the sunset? Let’s see relationships grow and evolve over time. Let’s see how they shape and change the characters. Let’s see the challenges in each relationship and how the characters overcome them.

I’ve really been enjoying Liv and Major’s tribulations on iZombie. These are two people who clearly love each other with all their hearts, yet fate and cruel circumstance are constantly throwing them curveballs and keeping them apart. But they won’t give up on each other. It’s such a refreshing change of pace from the unbelievably stale formula of most fictional romances.

Even when fiction does present challenges in romance, it’s almost invariably in the form of a love triangle. Basically just more infatuation, but now our hero has to choose between two options! Oh, whatever shall they do!

I hate love triangles. All the same tedious “will they/won’t they” you get stuck with in a regular romance, the same milking, but times two, and you usually end up hating the protagonist. And once again, they’re so. Over. Done.

Ahem, sorry, bit of a tangent, there. My point is that romance lacks variety.

Another angle I’d like to see more of is unrequited love, though it depends on how it’s done. It can easily become overly morose, but it has potential. I’d particularly like to see more of characters who have feelings that simply aren’t returned, and they just have to live with it. That can be an interesting angle for character development. Can be a good way to make a character seem more heroic; if they’re still willing to move Heaven and Earth for their love, even if their love doesn’t love them back, that says more about their character than most anything else.

Fictional romances just seem so incredibly narrow to me. Even in my short and largely empty life, I’ve seen that love is a far more varied and complex thing than fiction tends to paint it as.

…As I’m getting ready to publish this, it occurs to me that I’ve managed to do a passage on romance I like without mentioning James Maxey’s Greatshadow, which is a terrible injustice. It would take me sometime to fully explain all the reasons why it’s my favourite fantasy romance, and this post is long enough already, but I think it’s some combination of humour, unique challenges for the characters’ love, and heartfelt emotion. Regardless, it deserved a mention of some kind.

Filed under: Misc. Tagged: Dragon Apocalypse, epic nerd rant, Hellboy, iZombie, music, poetry, The Secret World, writing

Cheating on WoW: Trinium Wars

Do you ever find yourself thinking, “You know what would make MMO quests more interesting? If they were delivered by a jiggling ass.”

No, me neither.

But clearly someone did. Hence, Trinium Wars, the latest game I’ve checked out as part of my work with MMO Bro.

It is not an experience I’m likely to forget any time soon, let me tell you. Give the article a read, and step through the looking glass.

Filed under: Games, My writing Tagged: Oh god why, sci-fi, Trinium Wars, writing

The Secret World: Home

I’ve done so many posts gushing with praise for The Secret World. There’s really nothing left for me to say that I haven’t already said.

But I’m gonna gush some more anyway.

In the MMO community, you sometimes hear people talking about a game as their “home.” A virtual world that’s particularly special to them, that they will never leave.

Lately it has occurred to me that The Secret World is my home.

Sure, I’ve played World of Warcraft longer, sunk more hours into it. I certainly don’t see myself ever leaving WoW behind. But my connection is to Azeroth, not to WoW as a game. WoW is my least favourite incarnation of Azeroth, by a significant margin.

And WoW doesn’t have the same feeling of belonging. It has a lot of familiarity, a lot of nostalgia, and don’t get me wrong: WoW is a very important game to me, and for all my gripes, it’s still quite special to me.

But it’s not The Secret World.

TSW is a game that gives me tremendous pleasure simply to inhabit. I have so, so many great memories of this game, and many of them are spectacular moments, epic climaxes to brilliantly told story-arcs, but just as many are far more simple: sitting in the woods of Solomon Island and listening to the seagulls, watching the dawn glint off Siren’s Lake, feeling the oppressiveness of the night sky in the grim winter landscape of the Carpathian Fangs.

It’s certainly an odd match. On paper, it’s not a game that would appeal to me. I’ve never been especially fond of horror or urban fantasy, and I think conspiracy theories are ridiculous. It has no Elves, no intricately strange and beautiful non-human cultures to immerse myself in, no dragons or knights in shining armour or any of the things that usually appeal to me. But yet it has wormed its way into my heart all the same.

Somewhere along the line TSW became more than a game to me. Sometime between pursuing Loki into the depths of the earth, trekking through the surreal industrial nightmare of the Hell Dimensions, and delving into the darkest pits of the Dreaming Prison, TSW came to embody a sense of infinite mystery and possibility.

Rationally I know I’ve seen nearly all there is to see in TSW, but after three years of constantly stumbling across side missions and lore honeycombs and rare spawns and weird things I cannot even explain, there’s a part of me that is always going to believe something wonderful — or terrible, or both — might be lurking around the next corner. That there are still mysteries yet to plumb.

It’s that feeling of unlimited potential that forms the foundation of all speculative fiction. It’s the driving force in my life. It’s why I became a writer, why my apartment is full of books and action figures and space ships, why I’m a gamer, and a reader, and a fan of movies and TV.

It’s that feeling of possibility that makes the game so enchanting. It doesn’t feel like a game anymore. It feels like a world. A world I do not and may never fully understand, but one which never ceases to fascinate me.

It’s that feeling of possibility that keeps the game interesting to me, that puts a smile on my face even if I’m doing something as objectively dull as repeating Bullets for Andy for the eleventy billionth time (SERIOUSLY ANDY DO YOU HAVE ENOUGH BULLETS YET?).

The Secret World is the best game I’ve played in my adult life. It may be the best game I’ve ever played. There’s a decent chance it may be the best game I will ever play.

Oh, of course it’s not perfect. It’s very good, and a lot of its most glaring flaws have been solved, but it definitely has its annoyances. Ak’ab are still Hell, and Oni are worse. I still want to slap whoever gave the green light to the mob density in Orochi Projects, and I’ve never been fond of silent protagonists. And it has entirely too many horse heads.

It’s not perfect, but nothing is.

And it just clicks for me, in a way nothing else in the gaming world quite does.

It’s home. It’s where I belong.

Filed under: Games Tagged: fantasy, The Secret World

How iZombie Helped Me Win at Diablo III

This is a weird one.

Recently it came to my attention that Diablo III will be adding a Liv Moore zombie pet, along with a number of other new cosmetics. To make things even better, it apparently drops from a rare spawn named Ravi Lilywhite. Clearly someone’s a slash shipper.

This actually isn’t the first bit of cross-promotion between iZombie and Diablo. It’s long been established on the show that Ravi and Major are avid Diablo players, and the game forms a cornerstone of their famed bromance.

Under normal circumstances, I could not be less interested in non-combat pets in games. They’re just not my thing. But I instantly knew I needed this in my life. Even if I wasn’t a huge fan of iZombie, just look at her.

Excitement overwhelming good sense, I initially misunderstood and believed that Liv and the other new cosmetics were already in the game, but they were in fact part of the next patch and still limited to the PTR.

But by the time I figured this out, I was already in the game, and one does not simply log into Diablo and not murder something.

On my adventures, I encountered a blood shard treasure goblin. With a sudden wealth of shards, I asked myself what to spend them on. I have been trying to get Andariel’s Visage for my crusader for a while, but for some reason it occurred to me to try to get a few more pieces of my wizard’s Tal Rasha’s Elements set.

Now, some context. I’ve been working on this set since before Reaper of Souls launched. Two of my three pieces of it were still at level 60 (amazingly their stats still beat most level 70 gear even without the set bonuses). I had never had any real ambition to finish it. I was content with dropping a rainbow of meteors on people.

But hey, why not? It’s not like Kadala ever gives anything good.

More context: In all my time playing Diablo III, I’ve never gotten a legendary or anything else useful from Kadala.

Imagine my shock when she gave me the legs to Tal Rasha’s. That got me the four piece bonus.

I’d gotten a taste. The loot frenzy descended upon me.

I spent all my blood shards, got a few more legendaries, though nothing immediately useful. Apparently Kadala had been saving all her good stuff for that one day all these years.

I decided to turn to the “upgrade rare to legendary” function on Kanai’s Cube, which I had previously ignored save for using it to get the follower legendaries.

Not sure why I haven’t used that more. It’s awesome. I got several more useful legendaries, including some pants that surrounds my character with a near-constant poison damage aura (I extracted and equipped the power via Kanai’s Cube) and some nice boots that double the damage of Meteor, which I don’t cast directly but which Tal Rasha’s Elements casts automatically.

Before anyone brings it up, I know Tal Rasha’s doesn’t include boots, but boots were the last slot I didn’t have a legendary for, so while I was at it, I figured I’d kill two birds with one stone.

The Cube had one final treat for me: The gloves for Tal Rasha’s Elements.

That brought me to five pieces of the set, one piece away from completion and the final bonus: a 500% damage buff for each element of spell I cast, stacking up to four times for a total of 2000% increased damage.

So close I could taste it.

Running low on crafting materials, I decided my best bet would be to farm bounties for the Ring of Royal Grandeur. The Ring reduces the number of pieces needed to trigger a set bonus by one, so that would give me the six piece bonus.

I went on to run quite a lot of bounties in act one and four, those being the only source for the ring. I am not going to run out of Corrupted Angel Flesh or Khanduran Runes anytime soon, let me tell you.

Along the way, I continued to try other methods of completing the set, spending blood shards as I got them and upgrading rares as my depleting stores of crafting supplies allowed.

I got two pieces of the Vyr’s Amazing Arcana set along the way, but I dislike archon builds, so that’s no help.

Because RNG is a cruel mistress, I did have another piece of Tal Rasha’s Elements drop… but it was the helm, which I already had.

It did have slightly better rolls than the old helm, so I equipped it. I then stuck the old helm in Kanai’s Cube and used the convert set item function, which resulted in more pants. No help there. Later I did it again, and got the amulet, which I also already have. However, the amulet was one of the legacy level sixty pieces, so a level seventy amulet was an upgrade.

Night fell, and my time ran short. My last run of act four netted me a legendary ring from the Horadric Cache, and I thought my search was over… but no, it was a different ring. One last run of act one with the bonus up, but the shoulders dropped instead of the ring. I despaired.

I realized I could try the convert set item function one more time if I salvaged some of the less valuable legendaries cluttering my stash. So in went my old amulet, my hope spent.

Kanai’s Cube spit out the belt.

And there was much rejoicing.

Let me tell you: You’d think 2000% increased damage would make a big difference. You’d be right. Before, the highest difficulty I’d managed was around torment III. I can now handle torment VI comfortably, and I could probably go higher — I haven’t done much testing yet.

I never, ever expected to able to finish a full six piece set in this game. I still can’t believe it actually happened. Years to get the first three pieces, then just a day to get the final three.

Praise RNGesus!

I played with the new set just long enough to get a feel for my newly godlike power. Along the way, I found another blood shard goblin. With my wizard fully tricked out, it was back to hoping for Andariel’s Visage.

Kadala didn’t give me that, but I did wind up with a helm that halves the cooldown on Phalanx, which is enough to ensure I’m never without my archers. It might not be 2000% increased damage, but it’s a pretty big performance boost. Zoosader for the win!

And that, friends, is the story of how iZombie vastly increased my performance in Diablo III.

Ravi would be proud.

Filed under: Games, Misc. Tagged: Diablo, fantasy, iZombie, TV

Off Topic: A Plea for Sanity

I really try to avoid discussing politics on this blog. Talking politics on the Internet never ends well, and it kind of goes against the celebration of escapism this blog is meant to be.

But I feel we may be at a tipping point in history, and I feel the need to speak out. I very much doubt my little blog will make any difference, but I have to at least try, if only for my own sanity.

This post is about Donald Trump, but it is addressed to the Democrats, left wingers, and all people of sanity and decency in the United States of America.

Let’s be clear here: Trump is a Nazi.

Yes, I know about Godwin’s Law, and I know the Hitler comparison is ludicrously over-used in discussions of politics. Even my own side is guilty. I mean, Bush was horrible, but he wasn’t Hitler.

But when a candidate has openly advocated for committing war crimes, when he’s said he wants to see anyone who protests or disagrees with him savagely beaten, when he plans to force labels on a specific religious group, when he’s been endorsed by the KKK, when people at his rallies perform the Nazi salute and tell black protesters to “go back to Africa,” the shoe starts to fit.

Now is the time for all people of good conscience in America to unite for sanity and humanity.

That’s not what’s happening.

All I see from the left in America is vicious in-fighting between the supporters of Bernie Sanders and Hilary Clinton.

For what it’s worth, I think Bernie is the better candidate. If I had a magic wand, I’d put him in charge (actually I’d pick Elizabeth Warren, but he’s the second best choice).

But it’s disgusting the way Bernie supporters have demonized Hilary Clinton. Even more so that so many Bernie supporters say they will vote for Trump if Bernie doesn’t get the nomination.

Others say that if Bernie doesn’t get the nomination, they’ll write him in, or vote for an independent, or just not vote at all, but any of those options amounts to a vote for Trump, and you’ll still bear the responsibility for what will follow.

Look, I understand the anger. Corporations have dominated the American political system for far too long. They’ve jeopardized individual liberties. They’ve made a mockery of democracy.

Bernie is offering a hope of breaking that yoke, and that’s a dream worth fighting for. But it isn’t the only thing that matters.

Trump has declared his desire to commit murder of innocent people. I want you to sit back and think long and hard about what it says about you if you’re more concerned about your own political cause than the lives of other human beings.

If Bernie Sanders doesn’t become president in 2016, that will not be the end of the hope for getting big money out of the political system. There will be other chances. Nothing is going to bring back the people Trump is going to kill.

And maybe even that doesn’t move you. You know, I can understand that. I’m not the most altruistic person myself. You might not be too worried about what Trump is going to do, especially if you’re not one of the groups he and his supporters are out to get.

But consider that World War II didn’t end so well even for the people Hitler did like. Plenty of Aryans died for his twisted dream of purity. Maybe you’re not worried about being the next Auschwitz, but you should be worried about being the next Dresden.

And I get that Hilary is not the most immediately likable person around. She’s a career politician, and there’s a lot about her that’s clearly artificial.

But she’s not the spawn of Satan. At worst, she’s a continuation of the status quo, and the status quo has a lot of problems, but it’s vastly better than Trump’s vision of the future.

Her being the consummate politician isn’t entirely a bad thing, either. Whether Bernie wins or loses, he’s created a huge push for social progress, and I think Hilary will respond to that. She’ll do it because it’s popular, not because it’s the right thing, but if she does it, what does her reasoning matter?

Neither can we be sure Bernie would accomplish all he hopes to. There seems to be the belief that if Bernie is elected, he will instantly purge all wickedness from the American political system, and the sun will shine brighter, and everyone will get a pet bunny.

I’m not an expert on US civics, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work that way. He’ll still need to work with an entire political system that is very much against him. I imagine he’d achieve more positive change than Clinton, but I wonder whether the gap is really that big.

Don’t think I’m only picking on Bernie supporters, either. Hilary’s camp has more than its share of extreme views, too. If you’re one of the people calling Bernie a communist, or trying to hold him responsible for some the douchey things people have done in his name (without any prompting from him), or otherwise trying to demonize one of the few truly good and idealistic people in American politics, you are absolutely part of the problem, too.

The fact is they’re both strong candidates. I think Bernie is better, but you could do a lot worse than Clinton. In any other election cycle, this kind of in-fighting might be tolerable, if asinine, but there are bigger fish to fry, people.

Maybe you think I’m being hyperbolic, and I hope I am, but a lot of people didn’t take Adolf Hitler seriously until it was too late. He wasn’t able to unleash the horrors he did because Germany was full of evil people, but because the Germans of good conscience failed to stop him. Don’t let history repeat itself.

If it were only America on the line, I’d say just leave it to its fate — you reap what you sow. But America is a very powerful country, and hate like Trump’s doesn’t stay contained. It will spread and poison my country and many others.

I don’t want to be Poland, so you guys better get your act together.

Filed under: Misc. Tagged: I'm going to regret this, Off topic, Oh god why, politics

Tyler Versus the MMO Trinity, Part Three: My Solution

Over my past two posts on the so-called “holy trinity” of group roles in MMORPGs, I’ve discussed my problems with the trinity, and some of the good times I’ve had outside the traditional role system.

Now, we reach the end of this long journey as I outline my personal plan for how to “fix” the trinity.

For some crazy reason I decided to do all three of these posts at once. It’s well after midnight, we’re approaching hour three, my fingers are sore, and my brain is fuzzy, but Hell, let’s do this.

First, some caveats:

I was hesitant to do this for a very long time because I don’t like playing armchair game designer. Well, actually, I like it a lot, but I don’t like the risk of being seduced by the idea that I actually know what I’m talking about, or giving anyone the idea I think I’m better than I am.

I am not a professional game designer. I know this. I’m not going to pretend I can do a better job than they can, because I can’t. This seems like a good idea to me, but what do I know?

And I really doubt anyone particularly wants to hear my pie-in-the-sky ideas for how games should be designed, hence why I haven’t done posts like this before now. But if I’m going to talk about the trinity, I think this is a necessary part of the discussion.

Second, I want to stress once again that variety is what I want. What I’m about to outline is a solution to the trinity. It is not the solution to the trinity. I obviously think my idea is good, but I wouldn’t want to see it become the only system used by MMOs. I want a mix. Some games with traditional roles, some with softened or modified roles, some with no roles.

That said, this is a plan that I believe would solve most of the problems with the trinity while preserving much of its virtues. Your opinion may vary.

On with the show!

Where Guild Wars 2 failed:

Unfortunately, Guild Wars 2 has become the poster child for trying to break the trinity. I say “unfortunately” because they did an awful job of it. Of all the games I’ve played with no trinity or a relaxed trinity, GW2 is the only one that fails to provide fun group dynamics. Ironic considering how much of a selling feature it was.

Things are supposedly a bit different now that raids are in, but at launch, Guild Wars 2 essentially eliminated tanks and healers. This solves some problems, but it also made pretty every class play mostly the same. It made a lot of things into mindless zergs, and combined with dungeon design that wasn’t sufficiently removed from that of trinity games, it was just broken as all Hell.

But there are lessons to take from Guild Wars 2’s failure. They were in the right neighbourhood, but they chose the run path.

You see, they got rid of the wrong roles. Tanks and healers are fine.

I say it’s DPS that needs to go.

Death to DPS:

Wait, what?

Tyler, you want to delete the overwhelmingly most popular MMO role? The one you play the most? Are you high?

But think about it. There’s method to this madness.

Imagine what happens when DPS is no longer a dedicated role. You no longer need to tune healers and tanks to have lower damage. In a world where no one is a DPS, everyone is a DPS.

That immediately solves the problem of it sucking to solo as a tank or healer.

Then think about what group compositions look like in this hypothetical game where there are only two roles, not three. When you can only include tanks and healers in your group, the responsibility is much more shared.

This solves the problem of the disproportionate sharing of responsibility. It’s not just one tank and one healer. There’s several of each. That glorious double tank run I had in SW:TOR? That could be the norm.

In such a paradigm, if you screw up and get yourself killed as a tank, it wouldn’t be a guaranteed wipe. The other tank(s) would pick up the slack.

I don’t know about you, but that sounds tremendously appealing to me.

Similarly, this makes forming groups a lot easier. Tanks and healers obviously wouldn’t be a rarity, and in theory, such a system could be balanced to no require rigid party compositions. We’re getting far into the hypothetical here, but I think it could be the case that if you have more tanks, your party takes less damage and needs fewer healers, and if you have more healers, you can restore more damage and need fewer tanks.

This would necessitate softening both roles a bit. For example, healers couldn’t simply spam heals all day. They’d need to mix both heals and damage.

This would require slowing down the pace of both heals and damage. Not slowing combat altogether. You know me; even the standard 1.5 second global cooldown feels sluggish to me. But tanks don’t need to be losing half their health every few seconds. There should be time to recover from a mistake, and on the flip side recovery from bad play shouldn’t be one click a way. Healing is at its best when it’s a tug of war.

I’d put heals on cooldowns or otherwise limit them. Not heavily — healing should obviously be a core part of playing a healer. But it shouldn’t be all you do. Like the devoted cleric in Neverwinter, there should be a degree of adaptation based on the needs of the moment. Sometimes it’s about healing. Sometimes it’s about pouring on the damage.

I’d also like to see a little less emphasis on straight up healing and more on buffs and utility. I like The Secret World’s take on buffs — short duration, dramatic effect — and I’d like to see more of that.

So under my hypothetical design, healers would perhaps be more accurately described as support. They keep their parties afloat through a broad toolkit of heals, buffs, and damage.

As for tanks, I’d soften their role a bit, too. I’m not sure I’d do away with aggro mechanics altogether, but I don’t think tanks should be expected to hold aggro on everything all the time. I’d probably make taunts an emergency cooldown rather than a bread and butter ability. Combat need not be total anarchy, but there should be some unpredictability to it.

Slowing down incoming damage supports this, as well. With mobs delivering hits that aren’t so massive, healers (or supports) can take a few hits without collapsing, and combat can afford to be a little less carefully choreographed.

Aggro mechanics are one of those things about the trinity that are painfully artificial, so I’d put a greater emphasis on tanks controlling enemies directly through slows, stuns, pulls, knockbacks, and abilities that manipulate the battlefield. Let them physically impose their will on enemies.

By softening the roles this way, you’re providing everyone a broader experience of combat. Everyone is, one way or another, interacting with enemies, delivering big and satisfying attacks, and aiding their team in a crucial way. At the same time, distinct roles aren’t gone entirely. There’s choice and variety.

It even solves the realism issue to some extent. With multiple tanks, it’s at least somewhat plausible that they could hold off enemies from their weaker team mates. Not because Orcs are magnetically attracted to dudes in plate for some reason, but because they form a physical barrier around their allies. I think I could suspend my disbelief for that.

It’s probably not as simple as I’m making it out to be, but to me, a two-role system seems like an option that avoids the worst flaws of the trinity while still offering much of its benefits.

* * *

Thus concludes my epic series on the trinity. My duty as an MMO blogger is done. Agree or disagree, I hope I’ve at least provided some food for thought, or entertainment value.

While you’re reading epic rants on traditional MMO design by yours truly, why not check out my latest article on MMO Bro: The Case Against MMORPG Button Bloat.

Filed under: Games Tagged: epic nerd rant, Guild Wars 2, Star Wars: The Old Republic, The Secret World, video games

TSW and Heroes: Adaptation

I’m not sure if it’s the result of boredom, burn out, or pure coincidence, but lately I’ve found myself exploring new builds and playstyles in both Heroes of the Storm and The Secret World.

Jack and Jill of all trades:

Of course, experimentation is part and parcel of the Secret World experience, but lately I’ve been doing more of it than usual.

I’m not sure what prompted it, but I suddenly got it into my head that I wanted to be able to fulfill all three group roles on both my endgame characters, the Dragon and the Templar. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been running so many more dungeons since the group finder launched.

See, up until now, I had consciously limited myself to two roles per character, DPS and something else. My Dragon was a healer, my Templar a tank. Partly this was because the work required to build and maintain three different group builds and gear sets was daunting, and partly because I wanted to maintain distinct character identities despite the game’s lack of classes.

But I came to the conclusion I could maintain character identity as long as I kept their builds distinct, and with gear so much easier to acquire now, it didn’t seem like such a mountain to climb, though it still took a few days of hard grinding.

At the same time, I’ve also been adjusting some of my old builds to further clarify the fantasy of each character. The fact I almost never play anything harder than elites makes it a bit easier to be creative with builds, rather than having to min/max.

Essentially, I’ve decided that my Dragon uses magic and swords, so everything should focus on that. His blade/blood solo build and blood/elemental group DPS build remain unchanged, but increasingly I’m using a blood-focused build to heal rather than my traditional fist weapons (though I doubt I’ll ever abandon them completely). His new tanking build uses swords and chaos magic.

My Templar, on the other hand, is a direct sort. Firearms and hammers all the way for her. This meant throwing out her old chaos/hammer tanking build for a new hammer-centric build with shotgun thrown in as the second weapon for funsies.

This took quite a bit of experimentation to get right. Hammer isn’t the best main weapon for a tank, and constantly getting groups with 10.9 DPS didn’t help matters any. However, I think I’ve now settled on a set of abilities and a playstyle that’s functional, if not entirely optimal.

And I do enjoy the new build. TSW’s abilities get a lot of flack for having dull animations, and that’s not entirely undeserved, but hammer abilities have a great weight and power to them.

That left a healing build for her, and since I wanted to focus on guns, that meant it was finally time for me to try leeching.

I’ve always been interested in leech healing, as I am in anything that hybridizes healing and damage, but the guides made it sound very complicated, and I just never found the motivation to get around to it. Until now, that is.

My leech build will probably still need some polishing — I think I need more heal rating — but I have successfully healed a run of Hell Fallen elite.

It’s interesting — I’m still making up my mind on it. On the one hand it’s hard to argue the appeal of keeping your group alive while also dishing out the big crits and pretty damage numbers. However, I do find AoE healing frustrating, the “oh ****” buttons don’t seem as effective as those of other healing types, and it is mainly a lot of Anima Shot spam. So much Anima Shot spam.

On a related note, I briefly tested my build on some random Tokyo mobs, and I was once again reminded that Anima Shot is basically the “I win” button for solo content in TSW. As my Templar continues to struggle in Tokyo, I am now strongly considering swallowing my pride and just making a solo build that incorporates assault rifles.

I don’t even know how much I’ll use these new builds, but it’s nice to at least have the option, and it felt good to break out of my rut and explore the ability wheel again for the first time in quite a while.

Young women who blow up things with their brains:

There has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth over Nova’s recent rework in Heroes of the Storm. I’ve voiced my share of frustration myself — just looking at how many cool toys she lost was horrifying, and most of the Novas I’d seen since the change struggled badly to accomplish much of anything.

I was so dismayed I pretty much gave up on playing her altogether — I had never done so with great frequency, despite my fondness for the character.

But then came the day when I had daily quests for playing as both an assassin and a StarCraft hero. Dreading what was to come, I reluctantly selected Nova, cobbled together a new build focused around Pinning Shot, and queued up for a match.

I lost my first match, but it didn’t seem to be my fault, and I still needed at least one StarCraft match, so I tried again, and things went better than expected.

Much better.

I went on to have one of my most dominant performances ever as Nova — or any hero, for that matter. I ended the match with a takedown/death score of 47/2.

This was both more takedowns and fewer deaths than anyone else on my team, and nearly half of those takedowns were cases where I had landed the killing blow myself.

It’s not even as though the enemy team was exceptionally bad (I had a similarly dominant performance immediately afterward, but that can be accounted for by the enemy team’s Illidan feeding us easy kills the whole match). Watching them, the only obvious mistake I saw them making was that they didn’t do much to try to counter my Triple Tap.

I’ve played several more matches as Nova since, and while I haven’t won them all, I have maintained a fairly healthy win ratio, had strong personal performances in nearly every match, and often dominated completely.

I have no idea why this is. I’m not sure what it is I’m doing that’s making such a difference. But somehow I’m better at Nova now than I ever was before, despite the fact she appears crippled on paper.

Meanwhile, with a different character but the same voice actress, I also decided to finally try this teleport build for Li-Ming that seems so popular.

It’s interesting. The extra AoE is nice, and there’s a certain Leha-esque madcap recklessness to it that’s very appealing. “I have one of the smallest health pools in the game, but I’m going to go toward enemies, rather than away! Wee!”

On the whole, though, I think I like my usual Magic Missiles build better. Safer, saner, and from what I’ve seen slightly more powerful.

I will, however, take the teleport build when I get Infernal Shrines. You need all the AoE you can get on that map.

* * *

Fun fact: Apparently it’s been three years to the day since I posted this. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Filed under: Games Tagged: fantasy, Heroes of the Storm, sci-fi, The Secret World