So the new raid has been out for a while new and we’ve been poking at it for almost all of our raid time since it came out with the exception of one half-clear of Dazar’alor. So far we have managed to kill the first of two bosses and happily actually killed the boss before significant nerfs. Unfortunately those nerfs also came to the second boss so won’t be able to say the same thing there. Still, the nerfs seem quite justified considering the silly setups we’ve seen for some of those early kills.

Still it has been really nice to have a new raid to progress and the bosses are also quite fun on mythic if rather boring and undertuned on heroic which rather surprised me. We actually had a decent amount of wipes on the first boss on heroic due to casts going through at the wrong time but ended up killing the second boss on our first try as if almost all of the mechanics were simply irrelevant—it was a really strange feeling.

On mythic however, it’s the other way around really. The first boss is deceptively simple: play the kicks and dispels correctly and that’s most of what you have to do in order to kill the boss. After that, it mostly comes down to correct timing of cooldowns for the healers and no individual failing too much. Getting all of this clean still took a fair amount of tries for us but once you learn the important parts and don’t stress too much amount the irrelevant bits the boss is rather straightforward to play. I did really like the boss though as it managed to give me several mechanics as a healer that were relevant which is somewhat rare.

The second boss on the other hand seems to have more things that are relevant for the whole raid. You have concerns about correct positioning both for baiting the Void Tears as well as not exploding each other wenn you get the marks and making it in time to your relic. In addition you more phase dependant effects you need to look out for in your positioning.

Uu'nat also has a decent amount of somewhat bursty incoming damage that you need to plan for as a healer, which makes the fight more enjoyable for me though cooldown usage being at times boss health dependent does make timing those cooldowns harder. The boss is fun so far though, even if we are only not so consistently poking at phase two. I’m interested to see how it feels to play phase three.

So we finally have Jaina down—a while ago actually—and it was quite the adventure. I believe we ended up with around 360 wipes, a bit more and two complete resets of progressing (three, if you count the one day of the reset we “killed” her).

The fight is quite the adventure, though phase one—especially with the nerfs—feels somewhat boring. Sure, there is a lot that can go wrong there and one does need to remain concentrated and most of our wipes were probably due to phase one fails but it still doesn’t really feel satisfying somehow. Especially as a healer, I got basically assigned to being a worse damage dealer since the healing requirement is so low. I did get to mind control Jaina’s minions off the ship though, so that was a plus.

The first intermission is the first really tricky part as a healer, since you need to keep a good eye on your group so they don’t die while also focusing on the rather significant amount off ground effects going on so you don’t freeze. Consequently, I belive our healers were the most likely to be frozen in our tries, though that did iron itself out quite well by the end and people getting frozen was more the exception than the rule.

Phase two begins with something of a bang for healers, since all the stacks you gathered in the intermission will keep on ticking. This was also where I got my first chance to do some proper healing as a discipline priest who is somewhat reliant on there being something to damage for my healing. So cooldowns are used and stacks get reset and the group gets to be somewhat stable for a while. After that phase two is in general moderately safe, there are some critical timings with the stack resets and Siegebreaker Blasts where we do use some additional cooldowns, but in general it’s pretty steady going.

The second intermission, in other words the wall and rescuing Nathanos, is mostly also pretty easy going. There are some quite high stacks going on when the intermission starts, but those calm down rather quickly and as a healer I don’t have to concern myself too much with the wall damage and Nathano’s health—or rather, the health of Nathano’s ice block. Consequently, this usually ended up being the place we used our mana potions in order to have as much mana as possible going into phase three which is where the healing requirement for this fight really is at its highest.

Now, phase three. It’s kind of chaotic, especially as a healer that needs to keep tabs on not just the fight mechanics everyone else is dealing with but also cooldowns and making sure they come at the right moment and don’t overlap too much. Since this phase should be quite short if played correctly—it becomes unhealable at some point, so there is something of a damage requirement—most of the healing here is covered by cooldowns which does mean that using those cooldowns at the correct time to maximize their value becomes more important than otherwise. It does make the last phase really stressful not helped along by it being, well, the last phase so it’s the one you get the least practice with but it is also a nice culmination to the fight and does feel fun.

That is in general a good way to describe the fight: fun. Sure, the first phase isn’t overly intersting from a healer point of view but even then I got to mind control people off of a ship which doesn’t happen often. The rest of the fight has a rather good pacing as well, keeping you on your toes pretty much the whole time since small mistakes rather quickly build up to big problems. It’s a really nice change of pace from Uldir and I hope the coming raids will be as good as this one.

The mythic version of the Battle for Dazar’alor was released this week and we’ve gotten a decent start in the raid so far, downing three bosses with good progress on Opulence though unfortunately lag problems prevented me from participating yesterday for a bit.

So far the raid has been rather fun, with overall interesting bosses. There are a couple which are somewhat frustrating to play as Discipline especially on heroic, since there just aren’t those damage spikes which Discipline thrives on healing away—constant slow ticking damage really isn’t a strength. This has already changed to a degree on mythic, with Grong for example having some decent damage spikes on mythic even though the boss felt rather easy to heal on heroic.

This week has also been really nice in regards to mythic+, since the affixes are probably the easiest ones overall and it is kind of baffling to see the difference affixes make. Keys that would have been hell last week are easy this week even though 2-3 levels higher. I don’t really understand Blizzard’s design in this respect, it feels strange to have the differences be so big as to discourage people from playing the content certain weeks.

With regards to big differences, with the new season we also got the new seasonal affix, Reaping. In contrast to Infested, this affix is actually reallyfun. It allows for some strategic play since you need to think about when it gets triggered but the way you deal with the affix—kill a bunch of mobs—is also just simply more fun from a mechanical perspective than trying to control the mobs that heal other mobs. It’s also more interesting to have something hectic happen like a bunch of mobs which need controlling and kicking happen occasionally than just bringing the correct CC to deal with certain mobs.

So far I’m enyoing the new season, hopefully that continues!

For the last few weeks I’ve been playing Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey on and off. It has been mostly a good time with some frustations, mainly centered around the leveling system.

Now, why is the leveling system frustraing? Well, in essence it actually isn’t and does bring something of an RPG-feel to the game which I at least welcome since I tend to like RPGs quite a lot, Arcanum for example being one of my favourite games. The problem comes in how the leveling is interleaved with the questing.

Now, I’m a person who tends to like story in games, even at times when that story might not be particularily well written and so far I have found the story of Odyssey quite enjoyable with some interesting decisions even in the side quests. What however makes me somewhat miffed at times is the game’s tendency to encourage me to ignore the story and go do side activities, be it questing or the like. The most recent and egregious example of this came recently, where I finished some main story related quests and a character told me to meet them later in another area. Now this area is 10 levels above my level and the quest is also marked 10 levels above my level; the main story quest I just completed was of my level. Now they did also point me to some more appropriately leveled main story content though that was already a bit off the path, but completing that went quickly and only yielded a level or so and afterwards also provided more quests that were 6+ levels higher than my level. This is the point where the leveling system starts to detract instead of adding to the game.

Now one could make the argument that these are places where the game designers would have added in filler quests if it were not for the leveling system in order to pad out the play time of the game and actually having the option of choosing the content one does in order to get to progress the story is a better option, but the cynic in me feels these sections are there in order to push people to buy the experience boosts from the in-game store. And even if I were to believe that argument, I feel it falls somewhat flat since wouldn’t it be better in general to just remove the padding alltogether while keeping the optional side content for people who really enjoy the game or the gameplay? I mean, that is all content that I might very well be tempted to return to after I have completed the main story if I enjoy the game, I remember doing this with Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag and Saint’s Row 3 for example. Both were games I greatly enjoyed and consequently I wanted to complete all available content after I was done with the main story. It feels strange that the developers would choose to actually detract from the main story in order to pad something so meaningless as a playtime number for a singleplayer game, especially since that number is already greatly extended for those people that want to keep playing by the side content as noted earlier.

Beyond that though, the only thing that has annoyed me with the game is the somewhat lackluster performance, it only runs at around 60 FPS though the frame times seem to be decent, I at least haven’t noticed any stuttering.

The rest, really, is quite good. I quite enjoy the setting as someone who has been rather fascinated by Rome when I was younger since ancient Greece thematically can be quite similar and having the option again of choosing either a female or male protagonist again was really nice, I really wish more games did that.

The “modern day” story telling has been kept to a minimum so far, which for me is a big bonus since that was something that completely ruined the first game for me and put me off of the series for quite some time. I still can’t quite figure out why they think we’re interested in some random people trying to find some old stuff over the actual main meat of the game, the historical storytelling. Hopefully it is kept to a minimum for the rest of the game, extended segments of that could be something that could really ruin the game for me. Another reason, by the way, why I found Assassin’s Creed: Liberation one of the better AC games, barely any interaction outside of the historical stuff (also the first one with a female protagonist, which is a bonus for me).

While I generally enjoy the game, it is also a game from which I have ended up taking several breaks due to the aforementioned leveling problem which makes me somewhat hesitant to recommend it. Now I have a friend who is also playing the game and seems to be enjoying it just as much as I while not being bothered by the leveling since she likes to do the side-quests and such anyway and if that’s your case then it would definitely be deserving of a recommendation if you like the Assasin’s Creed in general. But if you think that might bother you, it might be better to stay away. Even then, a ancient Greece themed RPG with action combat is already a pretty damn cool game and not something likely to come along anytime soon, so might be worth pushing past that annoyance. That’s my plan at least once I get the motivation to continue.

Patch 8.1 is upon us since yesterday which I think makes for a good opportunity to talk about some of the changes.

It’s a bit of an odd one, since it somewhat significantly changes class balancing and some abilities while some guilds are still progressing in Uldir, making the experience for the latecomers potentially more difficult which makes me somewhat unsure of how I feel about this. The most prominent example would probably be Zul, since with Rogues getting changed basically because of that fight it does make the fight somewhat more difficult to execute—we still killed the boss easily enough but the fight did last a bit longer than before.

There is also somewhat of a hidden boss buff for Zek’voz, at least in guilds that have a Discipline Priest. Because Evangelism now has a slightly longer cooldown—15 seconds longer, from 75 seconds to 90 seconds—it is no longer ready for every dance on mythic, I ended up with it on approximately 10-15 seconds of cooldown remaining when I wanted to use it. This makes the fight require slightly more coordination between healer cooldowns for guilds still progressing there though the fight is easy enough that it shouldn’t be a real problem anyway. Beyond that the change to Evangelism didn’t really feel noticeable to me since I usually wanted to use it in conjunction with Rapture anyway which has a 90 second cooldown, making the change somewhat moot. Mentally though, the difference is suprisingly big and does mean I’ll be a little more careful of using the ability opportunistically.

In general, I think the nerfs to Discipline felt manageable, it’ll take some time to get used to for sure and the increased mana cost of Power Word: Shield might actually mean that our gearing priorities change slightly against haste since one of the big benefits of haste was being able to blanket the raid quicker which is now much more mana intensive. The general reduced throughput isn’t really something I felt in fight though it was somewhat apparent on the healing meters on all bosses except for G’huun oddly enough. It could just be that it was a off-night for me as well, so I guess we’ll know that better once the next raid comes out.

Now there were some other moderately interesting things in the patch as well, for example the continuation of the war campaign though I haven’t really had the time to take a poke at that yet. Another big change was now crafted BOP items require skill in that profession in order to be used; this was hotfixed to only apply to new recipes coming with the next raid but it’s still an interesting change. It means it will no longer be possible to pick up a profession, say tailoring, craft some fancy pants in the first raid week or two and then drop tailoring and learn a more useful profession like alchemy since those fancy pants would end up being unusable after unlearning tailoring. This seemed to be mostly popular in the higher end guilds so it shouldn’t affect most players but is a somewhat interesting change nontheless.

Another thing of note was the addition of achievements for completing all mythic+ dugeons in time on +10 and +15, unsurprisingly this was bugged. Now unfortunately we didn’t have quite as much time as hoped last week so we were aware that we wouldn’t be getting the +15 achievement, but we also didn’t get the +10 and for some of us it was even displaying zero progress towards completing the achievement. Hopefully this ends up being fixed shortly, would be rather annoying to have to hunt for keys for the dungeons again. Especially so since we can no longer delete keys, run a dungeon and get a new set of keys which was possible up until the patch hit.

Just a minor side rant, that’s one of those changes I find somewhat hard to understand and I’m hoping a question to that get answered on Friday. I understand that it was technically a unintended consequence of the buggy keys in the first week of BfA with them carrying over from Legion that lead to this but it was something that in a sense was actually a very useful feature to people who prefer playing with a set group. We only have five keys per week we can use and getting unlucky can very realistically mean we don’t see a dungeon at all in a given week. This was annoying enough before from the perspective of Raider.io/Wowprogress score since trying to push that was the primary reason we kept doing mythic+, but it’s even more of a problem now with the defined seasons from Blizzard and actual in-game rewards tied to them. Simple bad luck could mean missing out on those which I don’t find a particularily good design decision especially since they now intentionally patched out something that alleviated that problem.

Beyond that though, I honestly can’t quite say what the patch brought since quite frankly the game isn’t holding my interest quite as well as it was in Legion which I find very unfortunate. It’s a hard thing coming from the (subjectively) best expansion to one that just overall feels meh. I’m not even necessarily saying anything is completely broken it just doesn’t feel motivating or inspiring and just that tad bit more boring than what came before and that’s enough for it just to feel bad.

The next raid will hopefully fix that a bit with some actual new interesting content to do and as far as timing goes the holiday season is about the best time of the year for the game to feel a bit boring since usually there’s enough other stuff going on so that one doesn’t notice that too much.

Here’s to better times for World of Warcraft in 2019!