Man, this sucks. I mean, I’m going on vacation so YAY… but…
The world event! It’s only a week long! I’m not going to finish it!
And, more importantly, Snark Side is recruiting but I’m going to be totally out of game for a week! I’ll be answering recruit questions from my phone…
… from the pool…
… with a beer…
Oh wait, those were my vacations before I had a kid. Now it’s MOMMY SPLASH.
See you guys on the other side.
Unlike last time, I’m actually doing this world event. Well as much as I can before I go on vacation. I’m a little pissed off that it’s gated because then I definitely won’t finish by the time I’m leaving – and it will probably be over when I get back in a week.
Anyway, Dulfy’s guide in hand, I set out to find all the things.
The most fun was when I was following some dude… people who spacebar through the cut scenes would be totally screwed in trying to find this guy. Oh, wait, there are guides. And I used them because, let’s be honest, I suck at directions.
So there he goes… UP…
Um… crap. I alt tab out to Dulfy’s guide which cheerfully says:
So the bounty hunter climbed up..See those crates there? Take a climb!
Take a CLIMB? As if it’s that easy for someone so jumping-impaired as myself. Gulp…
I did manage to vault up there and while it was not on my first… or seventh… try, I didn’t have to yell downstairs “Hey Honey, can you make this jump for me?” so I was not too embarrassed. Until I saw some chirpy asshole scoot up there on his first try like he was a monkey. Haet.
As for rewards, I wasn’t too impressed. I don’t need bowcastthingys, I don’t give a crap about mounts or pets, and fashion-wise I already have a sand people outfit.
I was so wrong to dismiss the sand people outfit! It may be the same model as the original, but it color matches so much better. Less chiquita banana, more badassery. And on the republic side, seeing a color, a real color that isn’t brown or tan or brownish tan, is pretty nice.
The main thing I got to do during this event that I don’t normally do is that, whilst searching for random crates, I wandered around on my speeder through various levels and eventually bumped into the imperial side of things. “Bumped into” being code for “ahhhh holy shit they are AFTER ME!!”
How are you liking the world event?
Things I don’t miss about WOW:
Seriously, I may kick in the crotch the next person who talks about highest theoretical DPS. This concept is ridiculous because it assumes we’re all automatons (or 22 year olds with the reflexes of a coked-out ferret) and will PERFECTLY execute whatever it is. We will never have lag. We will never miss a debuff dropping off. We will never mismanage our mana/energy/photontorpedoes and run out at a crucial moment. Nope. PERFECT.
Well that’s just BULLSHIT. I’m a person, not a theory. And things just don’t work that way. I’m not saying that I need an easier rotation and that I will automatically do better with that, because I’m incapable of the theoretical DPS perfection. I’m saying that different people click with different specs and styles. Something that is difficult for you might be easy for me, and vice versa.
Let me give you an example: in WoW, cat DPS is generally considered to be difficult. There are bleeds to manage and energy and combo points and self-buffs and debuffs and… well you get the idea. However, cat and I always clicked. When I read my first cat raiding guide, upon hitting max level (I think it was 80 at the time), I was just like… oh, I’m already doing all those things, carry on. To me, it seemed so natural. My GM at the time called me a kitteh savant.
Now, shadow priesting? Forget it. In fact, forget anything where I have to string together casts. Even if it’s a 3 button rotation, I will fuck it up. I can’t shadow priest. I can’t boomkin. I can’t elemental shaman. Just terrible.
Enter SWTOR. And as I’m twirling around through the levels with my Sentinel, it is known that Watchman DPS is the raiding spec. Mmkay… So I watchmanned and I was OK. It wasn’t that hard to grasp, but at the same time, I didn’t feel any sort of love.
Due to a bug, I ended up respeccing Combat to try it and, holy shit, it was love. It was like with cat – I didn’t have to really concentrate on where I was in my rotation, I just KNEW. When something interrupted me or knocked me back, I got right back on track and didn’t flail around like LOLWUT? And I kicked some major ass, much more than with Watchman. Sure, watchman may have higher theoretical DPS, but in my hands, Combat has way higher dps than Watchman.
I was reminded of this phenomenon when I was trying (and failing) to do dailies with my smuggler. I had specced scrapper and I was just SUCKING at it. Dying all the time. It felt like I was hitting the mobs with a wet napkin. My companion tank was constantly whining that he was going to dieeeeee – and this was AFTER I re-geared both Corso and Bowdaar. And I couldn’t use a non-tank companion because I needed to be behind whatever-it-is, so I needed a tank to take up the mob’s attention. I always found myself out of buttons to press because it seemed like everything was on cooldown. I just hated it.
So fuck it, I switched to Dirty Fighting. Now, I know that dirty fighting is better for crowds, is more mobile, and doesn’t rely on positional attacks, so it’s already innately much more suited for dailies… but it wasn’t just that. It felt right in a way that scrapper did not. I was specced that way for about 5 minutes and I was already easily adapting to things like not having a gap closer or dealing with groups of various compositions. It was easy. There was no fumbling and pausing like “um, what do I do next?” Oh, and I didn’t die. I pwned.
The point of my dumb story is that if you are sucking at something or you just hate it, ignore the guides and just damn well try something else. It might work!
Vegas Showgirl is NOT an advanced class.
I’m not entirely sure how I got stuck with being a Co-GM, but um, I am. And as such, the natural planner in me is getting quite the workout. Take the last few weeks…
One of my main tanks (and one of my raid leaders) is leaving the game because the game isn’t doing it for him. OK, we’ll miss him, but we’re ok, we have 2 full-time tanks left and a part-time tank/dps, and 1 raid leader. Even so, I start thinking that’s not enough roster depth – or enough raid leaders.
Hey, Monkey (one of our raid leaders), how would you feel about being a tank? Leveling one? Ya know, just in case… Anyone else want to lead raids? Oh OK, we got that covered… and then…
Then my Co-GM and her husband (a TANK!) decide to play with cuddly WoW Pandas.
Now I’m in freakout mode. I have just gone from Co-GM to potentially the GM – at least until I find a replacement. It also occurs to me that my Co-GM currently does raid rostering and recruiting, which now need to be done by someone (hint: not me).
Also, now we’re clearly short a tank! Oh wait, that’s right, Monkey is leveling a tank for just such a predicament! And because I was neurotic when our first tank quit, Monkey is already within spitting distance of 50! Whew, crisis averted on that one.
So now we just have to see what we have and what we need to recruit. I have heard rumblings about people maybe changing roles, so I want to nail that down before deciding what we need to add to the roster. In the meantime I’ll remove the “we are not accepting applications at all!” notices from the guild website, but not make an announcement soliciting applications until we know exactly what roles we need.
But wait! F2P comes along. Is everyone going to be still subscribing? Um, dunno. Let’s give them a few days to sort that out before figuring out recruiting needs. And of course there’s still a chance that the pandas will kidnap a few more guildies.
About a day later it dawns on me that my Co-GM also has the mumble server. Oh right, mumble. We need that.
At this point, I have a few gdocs going for planning purposes. One is aptly named “GM Shit” and I take perverse pleasure in doing a strikethrough of the shit I’ve already completed. And all sorts of other checklists. I may be losing my mind.
How did I get stuck with Co-GM-ship?
Remember when I first discovered the boot mismatch for orange armormech recipes (heavy armor, republic)? I didn’t have all the recipes at the time and hypothesized that some boots got “swapped” and went with the wrong sets.
So now that I have all the boots, all the gloves, and most of the belts, I can say with certainty:
Here, let me show you the sets, you’ll see. Keep in mind that I don’t have all the belts so if the belt doesn’t match, it’s probably the wrong one. But hey, we’re focused on boots and gloves, right?
Um, crap. Free to play. Hrm.
So far, I don’t know much. I am clearly keeping my subscription because Raids – I mean Ops, totally ops – are on the subscription model, and HELL NO, I am not giving up my raiding. And, since the guild is built around raiding, probably the rest of them are gonna keep subscribing too.
But… still… I have some concerns. Or annoyances. Whatever.
Therefore I have a list of totally reasonable demands for Bioware. That they’ll never read. Oh well.
How are y’all dealing with F2P?
OK, evil needs a cookie. Seriously.
Let’s check out the romanceable female companions for sith side:
Now republic side…
First, we notice there are no petite Republic chicks. Second, 3 of the first 4 companions on the sithie side are petite ladies (and the 4th is that scary-ass Khem Val).
I think Bioware is trying to send a message, namely that the dark side does NOT in fact have cookies. It’s ok, we on the Republic side will share our cookies. We’re nice like that.
Of course, I’m pretty sure that all the romanceable males on both sides are body type 2. Maybe you can hook up with Lt Pierce (body 3). And I only WISH we could BSOCK Scourge…
Note: I don’t have anything against body type 1! My main is body type 1 (she wasn’t intended to be my main at the start, but I digress).
As you know, I’m a crazy person, and have been gathering orange fashion schematics like a maniac since 1.3 dropped. I have definitely hit the halfway point in the new recipes where my spreadsheet is more green than red, so to speak.
A few of my crazy habits. Don’t try this at home.
When I first started crafting, it was a HUGE money sink. In fact, until very recently, it was still a huge money sink. I had to run dailies just to fund my crafting. When the new recipes came out in 1.3, it was a struggle to snap them up on the GTN and still have money left over for other things (like raiding repairs and augmenting my raid gear). With the average new recipe going for upwards of 25k, and I have to get oh… 200 of them, well that’s ugly.
The rarity of the recipes, however, is the reason why I’m actually able to make money right now. I did manage to snap up some good recipes (some of them cheaply!) by checking the GTN obsessively and running a scattershot of underworld trading missions.
Now I’m able to support myself by making the new gloves, boots, bracers, and belts and putting them up for sale on the GTN. They’re actually selling like hotcakes. Sometimes they come back to me unsold. If they come back more than a few times, I mark them down and they still sell for well over the cost of materials.
So I have some tips for those of you who are tired of doing dailies and want to be self-supporting with crafting.
Variety. I can’t stress this enough. Someone looking for the perfect belt to complete their outfit wants to have a selection of belts. It may be tempting to just crank out 10 of the same thing, if it’s popular, but I’ve found that in any given 24 hour GTN-cycle, there are not 10 people who want the exact same fashion item, regardless of price.
Also, if you have a scattershot variety, you can’t be undersold on every item. If you make 10 of the most popular item, there will be some other jackass who decides to severely undercut you on that one item, and that’s that.
Price To Move. Don’t undersell yourself but don’t get greedy! If it takes more than a few days to sell something, you’re pricing it too high. Better to sell a higher volume at a lower profit margin than to wait for that one big sale. It will never happen.
Happy Crafting!