12/12/13

Holiday Raiding

I mean ops. Totally ops.

Holidays are upon us, and we’re in that weird Zone between Thanksgiving and Xmas when people are shopping, cooking, and generally have obligations (myself included).  As such, raiding has been spotty, and we often find ourselves trying to cobble together a group that isn’t ideal.

But, you say, how is this your problem, Njessi?  The answer is that I’m a fucking idiot masochist and accepted an officer position in my guild, despite my best intentions to live as a carefree peon.  Now, suddenly, I’m worrying about shit like rostering and class balance even though I’m not the one who leads or rosters the raids.  I’m clearly insane.

Meanwhile, I’m gearing up my operative healer to heal things in the face.  I’m flailing around for something useful to do with an alt, since I’m still frustrated with marauder being not particularly useful in raiding, outside the blatant face-smashing context.  No other class has clicked quite the way marauder has for me, but I’m still doggedly trying to find a good fit for a respectably useful alt.

And that’s what is happening right now. Not terribly eventful.

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    12/2/13

    Hindsight Is 20/20: Revisiting Class Stories

    As part of double XP weekend, I’ve been leveling a powertech.  Because I played my mercenary as mostly light side, I’m playing my powertech as pretty damn evil, to see a different side of the story.  I’m also playing evil because, knowing what’s to come, I’m a little jaded.

    ***MILD SPOILERS*** Continue reading →

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      11/25/13

      Double XP Plotting And Planning

      Double XP weekend is almost upon us, and everyone needs a plan.

      Which character(s) are you going to focus on?  What are your goals?

      For me, I want to get my 48 operative to 50 and finish Corellia.  I also have a new (evil) powertech around level 15 that I’ll take as far as I can.  I may scrap the idea of the operative since I can easily finish Corellia and get to 50 pretty easily without double xp.  My operative, as I have noticed with higher level toons, always has a full bar of rest xp while my powertech uses up all rest xp within minutes of logging in.

      XP boosts are multiplicative! So don’t be shy about using them.  It’s tempting to think “I’ll save these for when I don’t have an xp boost” but according to “math”, they give you more bang for your buck when used in conjunction with a double xp weekend.  I’ve noticed that as a subscriber, I get enough xp boosts to be boosted the majority of the time – I’ve never bought an XP boost on the cartel market.  Doing the occasional bonus series is good: most of them give the precious 3-hour boost token at the end.

      Little Jedi’s grammy is in town, so I’m pretty psyched about uninterrupted gaming time while Little Jedi and Master Jedi hang out.

      What are your plans for double xp (long) weekend?

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        11/23/13

        Austin Community Cantina

        I went to the Austin Community Cantina last night.  I didn’t take pictures.  I didn’t take notes.  I didn’t ask questions prying for new information.  The  ”real” blogs will bring you all the details anyway.  Why should I work hard when I have a babysitter, there’s free beer, and I’m not driving?

        So, instead of working hard at a “job” that I don’t get paid for, I drank and blathered on and had a fucking great time.  In my semi-drunken stupor, I did pull up the Hall of Shame on my phone and showed several of the devs what horrific things people are doing with those fucking bikinis. I did my due diligence trying to rid the world of bad fashion.  You’re welcome.

        What I learned:

        1. Everyone thinks Quinn is a raging asshole.

        2. Nobody reads my blog, despite the fact that I’ve been writing since launch and there are so few SWTOR blogs out there, period.  Congrats to the 5 of you still reading.

        3. I can’t hold my liquor anymore. Yay getting olde.

        With that, I’m off to nurse my first hangover in quite some time.

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          11/20/13

          Feeling A Bit Useless As Marauder DPS

          Last night was one of those nights where few things were going right.  The biggest problem was that we had 3 melee DPS (2 marauders and a juggernaut) and things were not working.  Usually, the group makeup includes a couple of sorcs or mercs who cover the nagging details and leave me free to simply bash the boss in the face, which is something for which Marauder is well-suited.  Hell, I felt like a freaking hero the other night being able to interrupt and lock down one of those pesky adds all by myself so he couldn’t cast mass-killery1 on the group.  Last night, not so much.

          Besides interrupting, and single-target-face-bashing, I couldn’t do jack shit – a helplessness that was amplified by the fact that two others were similarly situated.  It was downright disheartening.

          I can’t cleanse.  We stalled out on one encounter because we lacked a non-healer cleanser.

          My aoe is terrible.  We stalled out on another encounter in part because we had only one dps with strong AOE.  (We pondered having one of us respec to Rage, but decided not to.  Having one of us respec would have severely gimped our single-target DPS, which creates more problems than it solves.)

          Melee is generally at a disadvantage in some encounters.  We had issues taking down adds fast enough because of knockbacks that don’t bother the ranged dps all that much.

          I don’t even have a taunt or boss repositioning ability for add control, unlike those cheater DPS juggernauts.

          What I do have is superior interrupting (har har) and a super dps buff.  In 2.5, however, the buff becomes raidwide and can only be used once every 5 minutes.  This means that one marauder will be sufficient, unless you need an ungodly number of interrupts.

          I know that marauder is in a really good place compared to some other classes in terms of dps levels and mobility.  But they sure don’t stack in a raid as well as some other (ranged) DPS classes.

          Whine.

          1. That’s a technical term ↩

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            11/18/13

            Doin’ It Rite: Outfits Showing A Moderate Amount Of Skin

            I’ve mentioned before that it seems like the cartel market releases two kinds of outfits: covered up neck to wrist to toes or beyond skimpy (underboob is not cool).  Well, this time, I think they’ve nailed the ideal balance.  Observe, the Sensuous Dress.

            sensuousdress

            This thing is exactly what I was talking about when I referred to wanting outfits that showed some (but not way too much) skin. It’s elegant and sexy, but has more than two inches of fabric across the chest.  It falls in line with the Naboo outfits worn by Queen Amidala.

            padmeblackdress

            A+ for this one, Bioware.

            (I patiently waited for the price to come down on the GTN before snagging a set.  But it is MINE NOW!  Bwaha… hahahah.)

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              11/14/13

              Suck It, Rep!

              After doing the Section X dailies more times than I care to count, the Voss dailies a few times, and the rest of the dailies in the regular course of making money, I have all the dye kit recipes.  I have champion with Voss, Oricon, and Czerka and Legend with Section X and Makeb (I needed legend with Makeb for other assorted recipes).

              I never want to see Section X again, ever ever.  Here is why I hate Section X:

              • For the weekly, you must complete a 4-person quest where you need exactly 4 warm bodies to complete it.  This is a hassle.  There should be some wiggle room – 3 warm bodies should be sufficient, and that allows a companion to take up the slack of a missing role.
              • There is digging through creature poo.  Well, what else do you think “waste” is?  Digging through feces is one of those things I hated in WoW.  It’s not funny, dammit.
              • X is not a roman numeral in this context.  It’s “Section Ex” and not “Section Ten.”  That’s stupid.  Operator IX is “Operator Nine.”  It is confusing and I do not care for it!

              Time for Bounty Hunter week.  The rep grind is never done.

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                11/12/13

                Able To Enable In-Game CC Purchasing

                So a few days ago I was bitching and moaning about being unable to enable in-game cc purchasing (to get my discount).  I’m happy to report that today’s patch cleared up the problem for me!  Some people are still having issues (according to the threads in the CS forums) and I hope they’re able to access their discount at some point.

                As a side note, while I’m glad it’s fixed, customer service should ALWAYS have a contingency plan for if things don’t go right for 100% of the people.  With EVERY system, someone always falls through the cracks, no matter how bug-free the thing is.  Shit happens, and CS needs to be able to deal with it.  I don’t blame the CS personnel because they’re only doing their jobs.  I blame management for not giving them the tools to actually assist people with these problems when they inevitably come up.

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                  11/9/13

                  Subscriber In-Game Cartel Coin Purchase Discount: A Known Issue And Customer Service Fail

                  Note: Patch 2.4.3 seems to have resolved this issue for me, but not for everyone affected, according to the CS forum.

                  So, I bit the bullet and purchased 450 cartel coins with my credit card on the website in order to access my in-game discount.  After the transaction was complete, I went to enable the in-game option, only to have the popup that I must buy cartel coins with my credit card in order to do that.  I had a receipt and the cartel coins were on my ledger page, so obviously the purchase went through.  I tried refreshing, logging out and back in, closing and reopening my browser.  Nope, no luck.

                  I called customer service and I am beyond livid.  Apparently this is a “known issue.”  Now, customer service surely doesn’t think “it’s a known issue, we’ll fix it later, go away” suffices for an answer when there’s real money on the line.  Oh, apparently it does.

                  • Customer service was not able to manually enable my in-game cartel coin purchasing ability.  You’d think that would be an option, with me on the phone able to give consent and security question answers.
                  • Customer service was not able to give me the discount to simply purchase the cartel coins out of game.  Again, it should have been possible to take my credit card information over the phone and purchase a pack at discounted price.
                  • Customer service gave me the unhelpful answer that it would be fixed at some point, and that I had until November 30 to access my discount.  Never mind that over the holidays MANY of us don’t have access to the game (hence why I was taking care of it today).
                  • Customer service could not tell me that it would be fixed before November 30.
                  • Customer service could not assure me that I would be able to access my discount if this issue is not resolved in time.

                  I’m shocked, appalled, and in a rather foul mood over this.  I never would have purchased the 450 cartel coins at full price (especially since the small pack has a lousy cartel to cash ratio) for any reason other than to access this discount.

                  I posted in the bug thread but I’m rather demoralized.  In general, I have been pretty squealy pleased about cartel stuff.  But this is just unacceptable.

                  (To add insult to injury, my husband was able to successfully enable his in-game cartel coins no problem, on the same damn credit card.)

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                    11/5/13

                    Cartel Coins In-Game And The Subscriber Discount: Of Course There’s A Catch

                    Hey look, the in-game cartel coin purchasing thing is live!  I’m ready to get my big cartel coin pack at 50% off, yo.

                    Starting today, you can purchase Cartel Coins from inside the game!

                    No need to log out. Now you can purchase Cartel Coins directly from the Cartel Market.

                    To celebrate this launch, Subscribers save 50% on their first in-game purchase of Cartel Coins through November 30th! …

                    PLEASE NOTE: To get started, you must opt-in for in-game purchases of Cartel Coins by visiting your Cartel Coins Ledger and have made at least one purchase of Cartel Coins through the SWTOR.com web site using a Credit Card:

                    • From the SWTOR.com home page, click “MY SWTOR” → “My Account” → “Cartel Coins”
                    • If you’ve never made a purchase of Cartel Coins through the web site, you will first need to do so by clicking “Buy Cartel Coins.” You will then be able to opt-in for in-game purchases of Cartel Coins by clicking “Enable.”
                    • If you’ve made at least one purchase of Cartel Coins through the web site, you will be able to opt-in for in-game purchases of Cartel Coins using your existing Credit Cards by clicking “Enable.”
                    • Paypal and Boku payment methods are not supported for in-game purchases of Cartel Coins. If you’ve purchased Cartel Coins through the web site using only one of these payment methods, you will need to make another purchase using an accepted form of payment to opt-in for in-game purchases of Cartel Coins.

                    . . .

                    What the fuckcrap?  First, I’d better get my shit together in the next 25 days, or I’m out of luck on the discount.

                    But the part that super-sucks is that I have to first buy cartel coins at full price to access my discount at all.  I call bullshit.  There is no earthly reason why I can’t input my credit card number on a website WITHOUT making a purchase – well there are two reasons that I can think of.  One: shoddy programming (haha, that has happened).  Two: greed. I’m going to say it’s likely number two.

                    My plan: buy the tiny cc pack of 450 for $5 to get my credit card in the system (even though it has a crappy cash-to-cc ratio).  Then use my discount in-game to buy 5500cc for $20 ($40 half price).  That leaves me with 5950cc at a price of $25.  Not terrible, but NOT the 5500 for $20 that I was expecting.

                    Edit: A twitterati pointed out that if you’ve bought cartel coins before as a paypal customer, you will still have to buy yet another full-price pack to get access to your discount.  That’s even worse, because you’ve already done a purchase and you’re getting screwed because of your method of payment.

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