In Space, Nobody Can Hear You Scream That You Need Heals

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

From talking with a fellow healer, it has become clear that SOME DPS did not get the following memo:

To:DPS
From: Your Healers
RE: Fire

DO NOT STAND IN THE FUCKING FIRE, KTHX

Ahem. Now, if you’re still having trouble after reading the above informative memo, there are a few things that you can (SHOULD) do.

1. Zoom Your Camera Out

I know your flips and twirls look awesome.  They won’t look awesome when you’re dead because you couldn’t see the fire on the floor.  Zoom out.  Way out.

Can't zoom out far enough? There's a setting for that.

2. Look and Listen For the Clues

I am the worst about playing with my sound off – however, without addons, you don’t get a ton of warning, so listen up!

  • Sometimes there is a big red warning across the screen when the boss is about to activate a special ability.
A totally real screenshot from our last raid
  • Sometimes the boss will SAY something (also will be in your chat log).  Learn what each verbal clue means.

Watch and Listen for these.  Don’t depend on someone else to call them out.

3. Don’t Walk Backwards

You back up slower than you run forward.  Always run forward out of crap, even if you’re running in the wrong direction.1  Usually, you can swing back around to the proper position.

4. Drop Everything and Run

Do not finish that channel or cast.  I don’t care if it’s on an eleventybillion hour cooldown, when you need to run, you fucking run.

5. Use Cooldowns, But Not As A Substitute To GTFO

Using cooldowns is good.  You still have to get the hell out of the fire, fast.  Use them when you’re running out of the fire.  Don’t pop your cooldown and say “don’t worry guys, I’m mitigating the… OW IT BURNS.”

6. Excuses Will Not Save You

You didn’t have lag.  The dog didn’t pee on your keyboard.  Just suck it up and do better next time.

This post is dedicated to Veela.  No, not the one from the Revan novel.

  1. Advanced lesson – mouse turn so you’re in the right direction, fool! ↩

Light Side Choices: Having Your Cake And Stuffing Your Face With It Too

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

OK, this bothers me. Let me try to explain.

Let’s say the empire is building a big bad thing in a museum.  The easiest and most effective way to get rid of the thing is to just nuke the shit out of the museum.  However, there are thousands of years of history, blah blah.  There is a way that it is POSSIBLE to lure the troops out and disable or destroy the thing without destroying the museum.

Now, as you can imagine, the dark side choice is to nuke the museum to pieces while the light side choice is to disable the thing while still preserving history.

But this is a bullshit choice!  The light side option doesn’t actually carry the risk of failure, despite what the NPC’s say.  The reason that you would nuke from orbit is that you aren’t sure that you can do it the stealthy way, and people’s lives are on the line.  There is no chance in this scenario that the light side choice will fail and the empire will be successful in building or using its thing.  You can safely pick the light side choice knowing that the people will be safe and sound even if you take this in-theory risky method.

Would it even be a light side choice if you could fail, leading to the demise of innocent people?  Of course not.  But the way it’s presented, you can absolutely do both successfully: save the people, save the history.  If it’s a choice between people OR history, history becomes a dark side choice.  But if there is a WAY to save both, it’s assumed that you CAN save both.  And that is a faulty assumption.

Relearning To Walk: New Gaming Hardware

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

Note: I didn’t get paid for any of this or get freebie equipment.  QQ.  Photos are from the official product websites.

In the last few years, I’ve been gradually “going geek” and getting more and more sophisticated stuff to feed my gaming habit.  As I get more and more gaming crap on my desk at home, I have to accept that I don’t really have a “home office” that would be considered respectable.

All of my hardware purchases have been to solve a specific problem that I was having with the game… I’d say “wouldn’t it be nice if…” and sure enough there was an app, I mean item, for that.

Vent Push To Talk, I Am Out Of Fingers

Back in the day, I was primarily healing with mouse clicks and modifiers – and as such, both left and right hands were occupied while healing, and I was just OUT of fingers to talk on vent.  I’d have to pause what I was doing, and that’s never any good.  “Wouldn’t it be nice,” I thought, “if there were a foot pedal for that?”

At the time, wow had not come up with their foot pedal.  There was no mmo-dedicated vent pedal.  I did a google search and found the Stealth Switch II,1  based on Stealth Switch 1 that used a foot pedal to close all your windows when the boss comes by. Well that will work just fine.  I’ve been using it for over 2 years now.  The geeky thing is that I have to play barefoot or I botch my PTT.  Overall, though, it was pretty quick and easy to adjust to the change.

I Am Very Right Handed

Hotkeys are supposed to be triggered by the left hand while you use your mouse to do mouse things, especially as a healer to click targets.  But I simply sucked at timing ANYTHING with my left hand.  This is why on a Nintendo controller, the jump key is on the right hand side.  I ended up using modifiers + mouse.  I ran out of buttons on my 3-button mouse, so I bought a 5-button mouse.  When that got crowded, I got a Naga.

This took forever to learn, I’ll be honest.  I started out just using 2 of the side buttons in the same positions as those on my 5-button mouse (in the photo below, that would be 3 and 6) and gradually added hotkeys as I started feeling more comfortable.  I used the little “trainer” stickers for weeks.  When they fell off, I put on my own stickers, which were cut-out bits of fuzzy Dora the Explorer stickers (shh don’t tell).

I Am Literally Not Using My Left Hand, Except To Move Around

I was using my left hand to wasd, and that’s about it, because you never know when you have to move, gotta keep the fingers in the right place.  For those who are going to say “NOOB, don’t keyboard turn” I say – YOU try to move around with the mouse while you’re also selecting heal targets with said mouse.  So shut it.

Enter the Nostromo, my newest toy.  I can use my left thumb to move2 leaving the rest of my fingers free to do STUFF.  In this case, cooldowns.

It wasn’t as steep a learning curve as the naga.  It wouldn’t have been a learning curve at all if I had chosen not to use the thumbpad to move.  Training myself to thumb-move instead of W to go forward took about a week.  I hit dailies pretty hard to practice before the next raid, and I died a lot by effing up my buttons and targeting (or autorunning into a pack of mobs and forgetting how to stop).  Since the buttons are configurable (you can map to any key) I went through quite a few configurations (and deaths) before settling upon one that would not cramp my hand.

As for You…

There is no “right” gaming peripheral, and nobody needs them to be competitive.  But if you start noticing an inconvenience in your setup and saying “wouldn’t it be nice if” and you have some cash to spend, see if there’s an item to solve your specific problem.

BUT FIRST… do your research!  I cannot stress this enough.  For example, I have small hobbit hands.  The gaming pad that one of my (male) guildmates uses is WAY too big for me to comfortably use.  Read reviews, look at videos that describe the features, and see if it’s right for you.  Test out the peripheral at a store, if you can (Fry’s sometimes has the geekier things, whereas it’s unlikely you’ll find these at Best Buy).

  1. Apparently it’s now obsolete, and there’s a Stealth Switch 3! ↩
  2. I actually popped off the thumbstick (which is a feature, not me just breaking my toy) and use what was underneath – a plain old D-pad like on the old-school Nintendo controllers ↩

Three Months In

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

OK, Kris has a topic.  Y’all should pay attention.

Write your own “Now That The Game Is 3 Months Old…” post and leave a comment here if you do.

Fortunately, I can look back on the blog and see what happened in the last 3 months.  I’m such a slacker.

1.  I surprised myself with class choice

The most important decision I made, game-wise, was changing my main from a healer to a melee dps.  At first, I was apprehensive about doing something new, but it all worked out (after a few hiccups).

2.  I got a new gaming system

About the end of January, my computer dropped dead in a spectacular fashion.  I got a real gaming rig, my first real gaming pc that is made specifically for gaming.  It has a transparent case, 3 fans, and red lights.  It’s pretty and I feel spoiled having it.  It also decreased my load times, which made me more willing to take random trips to Nar Shaddaa for shopping purposes.

3. I got into orange gear, hardcore

I didn’t expect to be able to really custom design my outfits but yes that was possible through the magic of synthweaving (and the poor, tolerant husband making me all sorts of armormech stuff).  Right now I may look like a clown, but in a few months that will be just a distant screenshot, like 80’s hair.

4. I raided

I guess that should be “I hit 50 and raided” but really, I was always going to hit 50, eventually.  Raiding with the Snarkers has been awesome.  We may not be hard core pwning nightmare modes, but we are having a lot of fun.

5. Companions!

I didn’t really expect to be as “into” companions as I was (as we all were).  We got sucked into their personalities and formed strong opinions about them.  We got the -1 of Shame (often). We BSOCKed them, or tried.  It’s great to have a butt for all your jokes who isn’t a real player who might be offended or insulted.

6. We compared notes

The great thing with a story is that it’s interesting, and you want to share it with people, same as you would want to share if something cute/funny/etc happened to you in real life.  The best part is comparing outcomes when you answered the same story differently.  “Oh really? I chose option 3, and Satele Shan scolded me for half an hour.”

A Second 50 (No, I Will Not Heal Your Raid)

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

I dinged 50 on my smuggler a few days ago.

(On Belsavis bonus series, after finishing Corellia)

Now, I did not expect to have a second 50 so quickly because hell, I’m no powergamer.  However since I main-changed when my smuggler was already level 38, it didn’t seem like THAT big a haul to get those last 12 levels.

I was filled with a sense of relief and accomplishment and at the same time… a bit of apprehension.  See, I am trying DPS for the first time and just loving playing my Sentinel.  But I know what happens when you HAVE a healer and the raid NEEDS a healer.  You gotta step in or the raid won’t happen.  I don’t want to be put in that position.  Much easier to say “sorry guys, don’t have a suitable character/offspec” than to be a huge jerk and say “I DON’T WANNA”.

You know what sucks (and this has happened in WoW) is healing progression raid night on your main, and then ending up healing alt night on your offspec because there aren’t enough healers.  Alt night is for doing different stuff!  Burnout imminent!  But, again, I’d be a big fat jerk if I said “I am NOT offspeccing, just CANCEL alt night.”

Angry smuggler is angry.

Fortunately, guild is awesome and understand that, while we need to do what is best for the raiding team and take turns at healing when we are short a healer, that I am not necessarily the only “go to” person for that role just because I’ve done it competently in the past.  They understand that I’ve put in my time healing for years and years and deserve a break. Which is why I love them.

Patch 1.2: Want And Do Not Want

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

Patch 1.2 is bringing a lot of fixes to annoying bugs and stuff, but also some serious changes and rebalancing.  In no particular order, I’m especially excited about some of the changes, and especially hateful of others.

Want:

Fashion

Strip all the mods from purples (like Columi gear).  Do you understand how dorky I look in my columi gear?  REALLY DORKY.

Augment Slots In Crafted Oranges.  Not only CAN I strip my mods out of my columi gear and put it in oranges, but there will actually be a stat bonus for doing so if there’s an augment slot.  I will re-craft all the things!

Synthweavers Make Some Augments.  O RLY?  This just keeps getting better and better.

Moddable Belts and Bracers.  Orange legacy gear?  Whatever.  Orange legacy belts and bracers?  GIMME.  (I might add that for my highest level legacy gear, the moddable belt is a LEAF BUTT.  I wish I were joking.)

Sentinel Stuff

Force Kick doesn’t cost focus.  One would think that I would be smart enough to save one lousy focus in case I need to kick.  I am not smart enough and missed an interrupt.  This change is for idiots like me.

Dispatch can be used on targets at 30% health rather than 20%.  Well good.  I mean, the Columi set bonus buffs Dispatch and really it’s a craptastic bonus if dispatch can be used 1/5 of the time (and pretty much not at all on trash/adds).

Smuggling (Healer)

You can now have 3 stacks of upper hand.  Um, yes.  As mentioned before, it’s always good to keep one stack up at all times to get the passive healing bonus, which means you have 2 more stacks to play with instead of just 1.

Duration of Upper hand increased.  Yay!  Now the stupid thing won’t fall off just as I’m about to use it.

Do Not Want:

Removal of Giggle from Smuggler (upon Upper Hand proc).  Ok, guys, seriously, how the fuck am I going to know if it’s procced?  The awesome indicators on the UI, har har?  Gimme mah giggle back.

That dumb legacy stuff.  I won’t rehash, I got a link.

Why Can’t We Have…

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

– A hood down option.  After all, the hood is pushed down by lekku and some hats.1

– A stealth action bar.  We get an automatic cover action bar.  Why not a stealth bar?

– Companion mission completion popup boxes hidden during combat.  The companion missions go into “pending” while we’re in a cut scene, why not also during combat?

– Companions depositing materials in inventory without a popup box, for that matter.  When they craft stuff, it just appears in inventory without fanfare.

– Companions coming back from missions putting stuff directly in the cargo hold.  They can take stuff OUT of the cargo hold.  Why can’t they just stuff our crafting materials in the cargo hold (if we tell them to)?

– Companions go mail stuff for us.  They travel to exotic places to get us things and deliver the stuff to us wherever we happen to be.  They can vendor our crap.  But dropping off a package at the post office is too hard.

– Teleport back to ship.  We can teleport to the fleet or to another point on the planet, but not to our own ship.  Our companions can teleport back to the ship!

– Crew Quarters on the jedi ship.  OK, T7 doesn’t need to sleep. Possibly Scourge either.  And Doc can sleep in the captain’s quarters (ahem).  But what about Kira and Rusk?  Do they sleep out in the hall?

What’s on YOUR wishlist?

  1. I am really hoping for this in the “customize” feature in 1.2 but I’m not holding my breath. ↩

Being A Good Person Is Not Enough To Be A Good Jedi

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

As you might have read, my main is now my Jedi Sentinel.  I’m playing her as a basically good person… which leads to many dark side choices.  Hooray for the Jedi Code.

So far, she’s gotten darkside points for:

  • Covering for a friend (who would have bad stuff happen to him if she had not)
  • Stating (truthfully) that all the evildoers in a particular quest had been killed (rather than, I suppose, giving a self-important lecture about how revenge is wrong.)
  • Failing to be a huge tattletale to the Jedi Council (at least 3 times, by my count)
  • Stating she will protect her padawan from the Sith (buh?)
  • (Spoiler) Marrying/Kissing/BSOCKing Doc. Now, I get that Jedi aren’t supposed to form attachments but still… Dark side? Really? It ain’t killing an orphan.

I mean… I understand why I’m racking up the dark side points for killing assholes because Jedi are big into redemption and crap.  But getting dark side points for doing normal human actions, based on a desire to help (not based on selfishness), that kind of stings.  OK, the stuff with Doc, that’s selfish, oops.

I know that Anachan and others have talked about anti-military bias in the available choices.  Have you come across Light Side/Dark Side choices that you find difficult, odd, or inconsistent?