The Queue: On holiday

Once again we’ve come to another holiday — at least if you live in the States. For Canucks like myself it’s just another Monday. Although last week we had a holiday and y’all didn’t, so I guess we’re even.

I will miss the ability to sleep in though.

While I try and get a few more minutes of sleep, it’s time for — The Queue!

Nazgrim would follow orders like the good General he was. Unfortunately, when he tries to kidnap Anduin, Xuen intervenes and bats him around for a while. He eventually would let him go, but not before Nazgrim was made to look foolish.

I’ve never done a lot of modding of my games. I know that sometimes there are some amazing quality-of-life things out there, but for the most part I’ve kept things factory standard. So this exact situation hasn’t happened to me — however — I have managed to create it piecemeal with cheat codes!

It’s been a long time, but young Cory used to use cheat codes all the time in games. Until one day I was taking my army of Cobra cars around in Age of Empires and laying waste to whatever fool stood in my path, and I realized that I wasn’t having any fun. I needed the possibility of losing to feel like I was spending my time well. Insofar as playing video games can be considered using my time well.

I will still save and reload sometimes though, I’m only human.

I get the trepidation to start over as well. There are so many games that I would replay if the beginnings weren’t there. If only they had a chapter select system like DVDs where I could skip over a boring/annoying part of the story and get a reasonable amount of player progression while doing so. Maybe not the ultimate you searched every nook and cranny and spent an hour grinding boars power levels — but what a player would reasonably have gotten while adventuring.

I’ve also just hit a new best for a Diablo season!

I’ve reached 100 and have started putzing around with the true endgame system of incremental loot upgrades to get slightly stronger. Which have been… fine. With more grinding, I can almost get all of the seasonal objectives complete, but I still can’t even put a scratch in the Echo of Lilith’s paint job, so I assume that I also couldn’t handle the extra fancy versions of Andarial or Duriel.

I like the new Tempering system for leveling and just messing around, but I’ve had to throw away possible upgrades because I just can’t get the right Tempering affix applied to my gear — which doesn’t feel great. I know that they don’t want Tempering to be just another affix reroll system like Enchanting is, but when I have five possible options and all I need is “do lots of damage to enemies right next to you” and I hit Temper five times and each time it gives me “do lots of damage to enemies three zones away from you” it kinda feels bad.

I’ll keep going, I’m sure this time I’ll manage to complete the season journey, even if I have to beg in Trade Chat for a super-geared person to carry me through the Lilith fight. Maybe I’ll make a Necromancer and take advantage of throwing wave after wave of skeletons at the problem until it goes away…

What do I look like, a Manbearchicken biologist?

I’m sorry to say that while you can choose to play your Tanks slower, I don’t know that there’s one that would fit that bill right now. Maybe Death Knight but even then that’s just an assumption based on things I’ve heard the class talking about and less first-hand knowledge.

I think that the problem is just that every GCD should be filled to keep the threat off of some of those hard-hitting classes and if you’re not filling in the downtime with damage spells you run the risk of falling behind.

I find that there are definitely times on Guardian Druid where I can tab out and check things on Bluesky. Still, I’ve also dealt with groups where if I’m not actively watching the Mage or Retribution Paladin to see when they burst into flames/sprout wings then I run the risk of them dying to pulled aggro. I’m basically mashing on Thrash the whole time with Mangles and Mauls thrown in for good measure. Which only happens faster when I hit Incarnation. If it’s not pushing damage abilities, it’s working in Ironfur or utility spells. Which is the playstyle that I’ve found suits me best. I’ve tried making caster classes, and they never seem to stick. I’ll always find myself back on my melee characters.

Today’s Bacardi is ready for his close-up! He’s also wondering why I keep putting a camera in his face and making pspspspspsps noises so he’ll actually look anywhere near it. There are so many discarded shots of him looking anywhere but a cute direction. I’m sure if you give him a boop and a pspspspspsps he might get you some better gear for your vault, but only one thing this week, there’ll be a lot of useless things he brings too.

Today’s Anna Earworm™: Vacation

Have a great day off if you get one! Help make Anna’s day off better by asking her lots and lots of questions!