As you recall, I had punished Quinn by putting him in an embarrassing miniskirt. Imagine my delight when Patch 2.4 allowed us to dye lore gear, and my victory could be complete.
Dear Corso
Dear Corso,
By now you should have been served process that I’m filing for dissolution of marriage in the district of Ord Mantell.
I could say “it’s not you, it’s me” but that would be a lie, because it’s definitely you. Thankfully, Ord Mantell has no fault divorce, so I didn’t enumerate our marital problems in the petition to the court, but I wanted you to know. At least that’s what my therapist says I should do.
Mainly, you’re a chauvinist. At first it was endearing and quaint, but a few months in, suddenly you’re a domineering control freak. It was downright embarrassing to have you question and second-guess every order I give on my ship, like I’m incompetent to make decisions. That’s right, it’s my ship and you work for me. Not my problem that you found that threatening.
Do you have any idea how annoying it is having you hovering on the bridge backseat driving while I’m flying the ship? I think you actually believe the stereotype about female pilots and didn’t trust me not to crash into a moon if you weren’t there to constantly monitor me. Of course I let you fly more often than I did – it was easier than listening to your nervous yammering in my ear.
And you weren’t just controlling and condescending to me! Your sexist behavior toward Akaavi and Risha was making my life hell. I had to stop Akaavi from killing you a good dozen times. Risha was about to marry that noble dude and scoot back to her planet. Do you know how hard it is to find a good mechanic who just wants to hang out in the engine room all day?
Another sticking point in our marriage was your irrational jealousy and lack of trust. I couldn’t have a conversation with another man, even on the holo, without you popping in to chaperone and then grilling me afterward to make sure that there was nothing going on. And, god forbid, I talk to an ex-boyfriend. I’d have to hear about that for weeks. Look, you knew who I was when you married me and the number of notches on my belt. Not even the jedi can go back in time; it’s not like I could un-sleep with them. But you refused to ever let it go. It’s not like I was BSOCKing them after we were married, but to be honest, I was tempted with how you were acting.
And, by the way, watching me while I sleep is creepy. Like sparkle-vampire creepy.
Anyway, I hope you find happiness with someone else, though I’d implore you to get some counseling or therapy so you don’t end up in divorce court again.
Sincerely,
Captain Halleli
P.S. It goes without saying that you’re also fired.
Dear Early Santa Bioware
Hi, Santa Bioware.
Me again. I’m getting my bids in early this year so they can be totally finished by christmas. Ready?
Dyes should be more easily accessible. You guys keep lowering the cost of ripping mods so we can change our outfits more often. But then having freakishly rare and expensive dyes tends to negate that flexibility. Sure, you’re afraid everyone will go black/black and be cool like Neo in the Matrix1. Well if you were so worried about everyone looking the same, why so many bikinis?
- Dyes could be added to collections. Once you get one, you can duplicate it, for a cc fee. Then you’re still getting cartel coins out of the transaction.
- Dyes could be ripped. That way you can keep the dye you love for the next outfit.
- Dyes could be cheaper. Basically dyes could be much more common and easy to come by. Maybe create more crafted dyes. Mostly-cartel dyes is kinda bull.
Adaptive Crafted Orange Gear. There is absolutely no reason NOT to do this, and, as Dr Evil would say, throw crafters a freakin bone.
- “Look” reasons have disappeared. If you want to be a smuggler that dresses like a bounty hunter, there are many ways to do so now: cartel items, rep items, or social gear. The idea that you should look like your class is pretty much out the window.
- Very Little revenue/market share loss. The cartel market has completely dominated the fashion, with a few rep items here and there. Even IF you gave crafters adaptive gear, it’s not like they are going to make more than a ripple on the sea of fashion.
- Armor classes are pretty much disappearing. The latest tier gear is even adaptive.
More Customizations. Come on! Y’all added some stuff with the appearance kiosk and that was IT. MORE.
- Allow new hairdos to be used on all species where it works (not zabrak, but no reason not to allow for mirialan)
- More New Hairdos. MOAR. Come on, pleaaaaase.
- Twi’lek skin colors. There’s no reason why they can’t be just about ANY shade you can imagine. No new art required.
- Miraluka blindfolds. Better, cooler, NEWER.
- New Tats for Rats. C wut I did thar? New jewelry wouldn’t kill anyone.
Balanced Clothing. Let me explain this one. In general, the options are “lots of skin” (such as invisible items or bikinis) or “completely covered” and we’re missing a “some skin” option. I get that the movies had these extremes, but that’s 3000 years from now!
- A sleeveless/short sleeved shirt that isn’t a belly shirt. Like Satele Shan wears. Something that isn’t totally ridiculous on the field of battle.
- Necklines or low backs. We have gorgeous evening-style dresses that have turtlenecks. This is weird-looking. Why not a simple v-neck?
Better Healer Tools. A girl can dream, right? I have been asking Santa Bioware for this since the beginning.
- Filterable/better debuff display. For cleansing, yo.
- Mouseover Targeting. It wouldn’t have to be a macro. It could be a check box in the preferences “enable mouseover targeting on ops frames.”
No doubt I will think of super-important things I forgot after I hit “publish” but these are my wants… for now.
XOXO me
What are you asking Santa Bioware for this year?
- The #1 request from my SWG days ↩
Hall Of Shame Inductees: No Butts, No Glory
Here are some of the highlights of the newest inductees into the hall of shame.
Send me your screenies if you have a monstrosity you’d like to share. Njessi (at) hawtpantsrepublic (dot) com.
Patch 2.4 According To Me
Yeah yeah, you’ve all seen the patch notes, but these are the awesome things that I care about. So they are more important.
New Operations. This is a big one for me, because I was getting a little tired of the 2 that we have available. Also, nightmare modes of the same old crap aren’t really that awesome. They’re just wipefests on the same thing that you’ve seen for months. Boooring.
New Dailies. I could use a new daily area. Ever since getting max rep with Makeb, I have zero motivation to run those anymore, leaving me with just Czerka to fill the void. I love that Czerka only requires solo quests and the rest can be filled with the group finder, and I hope these dailies are the same way. I absolutely despise cobbling together 4 strangers out of general chat to do the Section X weekly.
Cargo Bay In the Cartel Area. Hawt. It will be a very convenient place to hang out with the GTN, cargo bay, and image kiosk all in the same place. And now that it’s a rest area, no penalty to just log out there.
Belsavis Transporters Linked. This was one of the reasons I hated questing in Northern Belsavis – because once you got up there, you were stuck there until you were done with the damn planet. If you used QT back to civilization, it was HELL to get back to the quest hub. It was transport once, ride through angry Esh’ka to the next transporter, transport again, get eaten by some other creature, drive to quest hub.
Dye Lore And Low-Level Orange Gear. I knew the lore gear was coming, because it was mentioned on the forums, but I was pleasantly surprised about the low-level orange gear. This is going to be great, but not so fun when I swap out my outfit (again) and need to… re-augment.
GTN Improvements. Remembering item information you don’t have to put in the price and duration every time? Yes please. Also sorting by price-per unit will be super-useful.
Treek Conversations Fixed. OK, I confess, this I didn’t really worry about. I got so excited that Treek was NOT Quinn, I hadn’t noticed that she was not actually speaking to me. But now that it is fixed, I want to hear what she has to say.
Did I miss anything awesome? Let me know!
Punishing Quinn
The New 2014 Naga Mouse
Holy shit, guys. Seriously holy. shit.
As I mentioned before, my naga was being a stupidpoopyhead about keys 7-12 at various inconvenient times. So I decided to get the new naga which has changed the design of the side buttons.
The new side buttons are amazing. They project higher from the mouse and have greater distance between them, making it harder to fat-finger an unintended ability that is adjacent to the intended button. They also have slight angles that make them easier to differentiate by feel.
But the real difference is the CLICKING. Instead of a mooshy little button, it’s a firm click (for those of you tech nerds, the side buttons are now mechanical). The only way I can describe the old buttons to a non-naga-owner is… maybe a TV remote control. That kind of squishy feeling where you jam the hell out of the button, not sure where the catch point is where it’s going to fire. These new mechanical buttons, it’s damn obvious when they’re firing. I find myself not having to repeat keypresses on the side buttons.
Testing it out in the field, I found no appreciable difference in DPS. I did find a marked reduction in thumb-cramping and swearing.
My only petty little complaint is that it’s a one-size mouse without those adjustable side panels on the 2012 naga. I’m not sure why Razer decided to get rid of that feature, but it was damn nice to have the smaller mouse size because I have small hands and use a fingertip grip. I’m getting used to the bigger size, and grumbling a little.
This isn’t relevant to me, but may be relevant to you: I’ve heard complaints about the naga and similar mice that there’s no lefty version. Well, apparently this one has a lefty version (finally). You may have a harder time finding bargains on it, but it’s out there.
If you want pictures and side-by-side comparison, Dulfy has done a real review that far exceeds my fangirl babbling. You should check it out.
NOTE: Razer didn’t give me anything. I paid for my new naga like anyone else.
Ashara Zavros Is An Illogical Whiner
Quinn is still my most hated companion of all time, no question. But Tharan may have been bumped out of second place by Ashara. She is such an idiot!
First, she only gives the lowest level of affection for gifts, unless you’re BSOCKing her. Well, as a female, I’m not. I totally would if it would get her to accept my presents with more than a chilly “that’s quite nice.” Dammit, Ashara, stop being so expensive to bribe.
Since my assassin, Raijah, is Light V, I started taking out Ashara during conversations to get affection points for all my goody-goody light side choices. We’ve had a few conversations and she wants to talk again. Righty-o! I will bribe her to 10k if it kills me.
Conversation goes something like this:
***SPOILER WARNING***
Learning To Tank (Har Har)
As you may have guessed from my recent posts, I’m leveling an assassin. Our guild needs tanks, so I figured I’d give it a shot. I put on my big girl pants – well, inquisitor, so skirt – and leveled the crap out of things. Even though it is probably slower, I leveled in tanking spec because that was my goal for endgame with this toon. It is rather fun to know that I’m probably not going to die, no matter how many I accidentally pull. It may take me all day, but with all my mitigation and a healer at my back (first Treek and then Talos), I’m a bit hard to kill.
I’m level 53 now. I am about to hit endgame and I still have no clue what I’m doing.
It’s not so much that I don’t know my rotation. I know my rotation, how to taunt, my cooldowns, my stealth cc, how to position, blah blah. It’s the leading that is causing me panic. I don’t know the flashpoints particularly well and the tank is the one in front. I’m used to being the DPS where I follow the tank and hit whatever the tank has aggro on, and try not to get my face bitten off.
Now I have to learn all these instances. Holy shit.
Thankfully, I have tutors. Three of my former snarkers tank, two of whom have max-level assassin/shadows, and are willing to walk me through it. I like to imagine a devil on one shoulder and… another devil on the other shoulder. And then a third devil on top of my head looking for fleas. Good times.
I queued for a random with two of the aforementioned tanks playing their lvl 55 alts: a healer and a juggernaut smashmonkey. It doesn’t help, by the way, that my health is lower than theirs by a good bit… or that Mr. Smashmonkey is an overgeared aggro magnet.
We got an instance that I fuzzily remembered. Something about rakghouls. I had done this before, but it’s annoying as shit because the trash does all sorts of special things, like exploding or choking you or knocking you back, blah blah. When something will explode at 20%, and you have an overgeared smashmonkey taking its health down in one big stomp, it’s a little hard to get out of the way of the inevitable boom.
Then we got to the cannon part. The cannon! I had forgotten about the cannon. There are waves of disgusting trash that come at you nonstop for a few minutes. I’ve been on the DPS end of this before but not on the tanking end. Now my job was to find where the little fuckers were coming from, gather them in front of the cannon, and let smashmonkey-in-cannon kill them in the face. But not actually let the waves of disgusting rakghouls bite on the healer or the cannon. Easier said than done.
I was glad when THAT was over. I needed a beer or three. The rest was pretty much cake, except I didn’t know where the eff I was going and they had to tell me “no, you go THIS way.”
Apparently, though, raid tanking is a bit easier than flashpoints. I’m willing to try it if we are ever in a serious shortage situation, but I hope it never comes to that. I am far better as a punkass dps following behind someone else who actually has a sense of direction.
Bugs And Technical Difficulties Pwn My Raiding Experience
After croaking last time due to distraction over bad names, I resolved to be a good, competent DPS this time. We were doing 10-stack Dreadtooth, and that is srs bzns.
I was early for the raid because, dammit, I was prepared. Then I managed to step on my surge protector and my PC shut off and I had to reboot. The computer was seriously pissed off and gave all sorts of admonishments that I should turn off windows PROPERLY. Yes, I know, shut up, just load or I’ll be late!
On the first pull, half my buttons on my naga stopped working. Numbers 7 through 12, just dead. Well there goes a significant portion of my rotation. And, of course, I croaked. The buttons came back online, as they always do, for the second attempt. I have no earthly clue what makes them come back. Usually they come back after a combination of reloading the game, reloading the naga software, jamming the buttons repeatedly, and swearing.
Second try, on which we downed him, the boss literally disappeared for me. I had him targeted but was unable to hit him with any ability. So I hit my bloodthirst for the group and after that just sat there as decoration.
I find it difficult to mentally bounce back from frustration like that, and I know that my raiding performance suffered for it in TFB. It’s just such a DOWNER to have shit go all wrong.
Nothing I could do about the disappearing bug. Shit happens. However, I can fix the naga problem by, um, buying the new naga! The 7-12 keys have pooped out on me enough times in the last few months that I can legitimately say that the naga has failed me for the last time. The new naga has a redesigned thumbpad which will hopefully fix this annoying issue. The nostromo is still working beautifully.