The Queue: Do I really have to come up with a new title every week?

If I didn’t have a new title every week, would anyone notice? If I just copied last week’s header image, would anyone care? I’m gonna have to think, but in the meantime have a look at my new buddy Baa’lial, who is super cute and definitely not in any way evil.

Let’s Queue!

I’m not sure. I have alts I could level, and reputations I could grind, but none of these feel like something I urgently have to do. I’m having a lot of fun in Diablo 4 lately, and as long as I’m having fun, I’m gonna keep at it. That’s the whole point of these video game things we’re all playing, and reputation grinding doesn’t sound like fun right now… so I’ll probably be opting out.

Maybe if it offered Niffen rep, which is something I could really use, but it doesn’t.

Maxroll has some pretty thorough guides — sounds like you want this one about damage stats. But I can give it to you basic-like right here.

Weapon damage is always your biggest thing, because all of your other damage is based on it. Yes, even for casters. After that, look for primary stat — Strength for Barbarians, Willpower for Druids, Dexterity for Rogues, and Intellect for Sorcerers and Necromancers — which is a flat damage increase for the associated classes. From there, you probably want to look for gear that benefits specific damage types you use. It just gets more complicated from there, weighing cool legendary abilities and +skill rank and other benefits. Some of that’s just going to be what you want and what you enjoy playing.

As for Attack Power, it isn’t actually a stat of its own, despite its prominent display on your character sheet. The number you see there is simply the game doing math on the basic stats like weapon damage and primary stat — but it doesn’t take everything into account. For example, my Necromancer could ditch my gloves which give me +3 ranks of Blight for a higher level piece of gear with a bunch of Intellect on it. My gloves don’t have any Intellect right now, so that trade would make my attack power would go way up. But that doesn’t mean it would be better, because I use Blight all the time and that +3 boosts the ability to rank 8, so it hits really hard. Is there a point at which I make that trade-off? Yeah, but I’m not going to make it just because my attack power goes up a bit.

My guild’s Aberrus progress is going pretty well! We’re up to Heroic Neltharion, but we haven’t had the chance to make much progress because we get to him at the end of the night when we’re all tired. We’ve got it down pretty well in Normal, but the damage in Heroic hasn’t let us get very far… yet. We haven’t made many attempts, but next raid night is Monday and we’ll start on Neltharion. It’s always best to go in fresh.

That puts us pretty close to the end of the raid, and when we clear it we’ll probably do some more runs to help everyone get gear as well as do achievement runs on Normal. But at that point we usually take a break until next raid tier. We could probably do the first boss or two in most Mythic raids, but it would be tough and the group of us really aren’t interested in pushing that level content. It’s hard work to do Mythic, even the “easy” early bosses, and we’re here to hang out with friends and have fun, not stress ourselves out with tough content. When we wrap Heroic, we’re winding down for the tier.

If I weren’t healing, I’d DPS — I don’t have the tanking mindset, though I’ve tried to gear for it (at least gear okay for it) as a sort of “in case of emergency, break glass” situation. I understand Prot Paladin tanking conceptually, but have never put it to the test. If we don’t need another healer in the past, I’ve played Retribution, but it’s not my favorite. However, it’s changed a lot since I last tried (during Sylvanas progression), so it’s possible I’d enjoy it more now. The rotation has a lot more variety than it used to, when it used to be get three holy power and hit Templar’s Verdict or Divine Storm depending on whether it’s AOE or single-target and that was it, that was the rotation. Since the revamp there’s more depth there. I play Retribution when I’m out soloing, and while I’m not good at it I think I’m sufficiently adequate if we needed more DPS. Maybe. Probably. Possibly? But I prefer healing.

As to James Spader… well, I just don’t know what to tell you.

Assaults don’t have such a fixed schedule. There’s one every week, and when you complete it, it’s done. At any time during the week, you can go and participate — you’ll want to do activities (killing mobs, doing quests) until you fill the Fyrakk’s Fury bar and defeat a mini-boss. When the event’s over, it should start right back up again for players who haven’t completed it. Fill the bar, defeat the boss, call it a day (or a week as the case may be).

The event only Ohn’aran and Azure Span — you are safe from Fyrakk’s flames in other zones. (Though there is that achievement for getting set on fire.)

That’s gonna depend on you, my friend. Were you having fun in Dragonflight? Or were you canceling because you were tired of it and wanted a break?

I think Dragonflight has been pretty fun, and there’s new content to jump into all the time. Possibly an excessive amount of new content, because I feel like we haven’t had a lot of breathing room, but you won’t lack for things to do. It’s quick and easy to gear up and do whatever you’d like, and there’s tons to explore on the Dragon Isles. Exploration is something the game has been missing for a while, and I think Dragonflight’s done a good job of revisiting the wonder of the game, when you’d wander around without knowing what’s around the next corner.

But there’s something comforting about going back to a game you’re familiar with. Classic has done a good job of recreating the original experience, and Wrath has always been one of my favorites. If you want to go back in time, that’s the ticket.

You’ve gotta follow your heart here. What sounds like fun? Do that.

Before we call it a day here in the Queue, I’d like to point out that our own Ted Atchley has written a sci-fi action thriller called The Key to Reality. All of us at Blizzard Watch are writers, and a fair few of us would even call ourselves professional writers, which is to say we all know that writing is hard work. A lot harder than it looks. You have to stop playing video games to do it, for one. So many kudos to Ted for sticking to this and getting his book out.

If you’re interested in sci-fi, you can check it out on just about any platforms digital books are sold on.

And that is all for now, delicious friends. Take care of yourselves and try to have a relaxing weekend. Sure, not all weekends work out that way, but maybe we can make it happen with the power of mutual belief. It’s gonna be a good weekend! I know it!