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12 Hours and 20 Minutes from 100 to 110

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That’s the time it took for me to level from 100 to 110 on beta. I can do better than that.

Anyway, related to the Legion leveling dilemma of pure quests versus incorporating dungeons, I did a straight run yesterday from 100 to 110 on my Priest. Here’s the times and rough paths:

10:38 AM: Timer starts at Dalaran, selected Stormheim
12:06 PM: 101
13:12: 102, unlocked both artifact weapons for Holy and Disc, moved to Azsuna (which flows nicely with Enchanting and Tailoring profession quests)
14:40: 103
15:58: 104, moved to Val’Sharah, and restock up on Legion level food and water
17:10: 105, back to the Class Hall to start some player XP work orders (2 hours)
18:10: 106, moved to Highmountain
19:13: 107, back to the Class Hall to redeem and start another set of player XP work orders
20:39: 108
21:45: 109, back to Class Hall to advance class mission scenario
23:01: 110

All of that took around 12 hours and 20 minutes. Ended up dying 4 times overall. Embarassingly enough, my first death was during the initial Shadow Artifact weapon quest. Oops.

Oddly enough, the longest part should have ended up being the 100 to 101 area between unlocking class artifact weapons and moving Dalaran over. I suspect this might even take longer on live.

Speaking of artifact weapons, I lost some major time on the Discipline one because I screwed up the encounter with the Fire boss. Didn’t make the connection that Mind Control was supposed to be used (and I’m surprised that spell didn’t get pruned). That’s why ultimately level 102 took way longer than needed.

High Mountain is actually a tricky zone. It can be optimized more and there were a few Hearthstone tricks I didn’t properly do. Not to mention, the main quest area is on top of a freakin’ mountain with lifts. What is it with Tauren and living on top of giant mountains and using elevators anyway?

I literally completed all of the zone storylines in all of the major areas. I think there was one (or maybe two) of those free form quest areas that I missed out on in Azsuna that I’m going to have to incorporate in my live run. But at 49% into 109, I ran out of zone quests. Thankfully, I still had class quests I could accomplish and a few profession ones remaining.

I did end up having Auto Turn In installed but forgot to install an autovendor addon for trash drops. Ended up having to manually sell items on my mammoth during the dialog based cut scenes (which can’t be skipped). Incidentally enough, those are great times to re-buff yourself with food buffs.

Zoopercat has a post on Ask Mr Robot with some additional detail on Artifact Power and the quests. Since I’m raiding as Holy and levelling as Shadow, my run did not incorporate the use of activating Artifact Power or buffing weapons. I went straight to 110 with a naked Artifact weapon. Between Zooper’s post and my experience, you’re better off investing the AP right away even if you plan to raid as a different spec. You don’t lose that much time or progression and between some of the dailies and other wards, you will catch up quickly on the 2nd weapon anyway.

Last piece of advice, fruit platters are awesome for maintaining energy and alertness. I hate blueberries though.

The Legion Leveling Dilemma

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There’s going to be some general spoilers about Legion below with zone names. No lore or story spoilers though. So be warned.

I managed to get to level 110 on the beta. Elapsed time was 11.5 hours, but that involved actually reading quest text. There are no cinematics implemented in the game yet. In addition, I didn’t burn as many consumables as I could have. I did keep up my old Draenor Intellect flasks and the Empowered Augment Rune. No sprint potions, no Intellect potions, or anything of that sort. I went through Azsuna first, then Stormheim, Val’Sharah, and then Highmountain.

Each zone has a major storyline quest. All of those quests eventually lead to a dungeon quest which awards massive XP upon completion (like 100k+). As I doubt I’ll have a consistent group to do these dungeons with, queueing into them means I’ll be placing myself at the mercy of the other players in that group.

Do I risk the dungeon queue as I level up or do I scout out and knock out the extra side quests in each zone while forgoing dungeons completely?

I’m going to do a dry run Sunday and see what kind of time I can shave off at full speed.

Incentivizing Player Behaviour?

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Thanks to everyone over Twitter and Facebook who were generous enough to provide me with leads. I’ve found a guild to stash myself in. Alas, it’s a guild I found in trade chat (I know, right?), so their requirements on joining weren’t too stringent or anything. As it’s still the offseason, I can see how application processes are relaxed. We’ll see how it works out though. Raid roster is contingent on how quickly players reach max level and are raid ready. Sounds about right.

Anyway, I received an email updated yesterday from Wargaming (the company behind World of Tanks and World of Warships). I played World of Warships for a little while because I’ve always had a fondness for ship-to-ship combat.

Check out their updated player policy:

Effective August 8, 2016, we have an updated Rules and Violations Policy. This policy aims to both reward positive behavior in the community, and deliver meaningful consequences for repeated misconduct.

Players who display consistently good behavior over a three-month period receive a small reward, on top of a chance to win 90 days of Premium account time.

We’ll look at player behavior in three primary areas: chat, forums, and gameplay. Five violations (or “strikes”) in one of these areas will result in permanent restrictions like being banned from the associated chat or forum.

Strikes won’t go away — we will expect players to learn from past mistakes and adjust their behavior accordingly. That’s why we’re encouraging all players to step up, be positive, and don’t strike out.

Now, let’s be real. We know Blizzard’s had issues with player toxicity for a while now especially in both WoW, Heroes of the Storm, and now Overwatch (like that banwave which resulted in errant denial of service attacks on servers recently). But notice how Wargaming’s taking a two-pronged approach here — You’ve got the standard policy of placing restrictions on players with bans on forums or chats, but now you have an incentive focused one where if you’re a productive and positive member, you get a small bonus and a chance at 90 days of premium.

It’s a neat idea though I’m not sure if it would have an effect in any of Blizzard’s games. Though a chance for WoW gametime would be a sweet incentive and bonus. I do think a small amount of currency (like credits in Overwatch or gold in Heroes of the Storm) might be a way to help promote good behaviour though. However, if I feel if someone was going to be a dick, no amount of gold or currency would really stop them. For the rest of us who just stay silent and focus on our own game play, it would be an automatic reward at the end of the season no matter what. I mean really, is 2000 gold enough to stop someone trashtalking mid-game in Heroes of the Storm for playing bad?

Speaking of cheaters, in Counterstrike there are two kinds of servers: VAC (Valve Anti-Cheat) enabled servers and non-VAC enabled servers. If you’re caught cheating, you cannot compete on VAC enabled servers. This would result in cheaters all playing together and against each other on non-VAC enabled servers. I had the humorous thought of Overwatch cheaters being sequestered and isolated into their own queue where they would play against other cheaters. This would keep them away from the rest of the legitimate Overwatch population but at least they would be able to play with their own kind.

Think Wargaming is onto something?

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Time to Get Back on the Saddle

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That was a nice long break from the world of World of Warcraft. After hanging up the staff and robes in January, I feel much more refreshed and invigorated.

The problem?

Looking for a guild. The last time I really applied for a guild was in Burning Crusade and even then, that was more of a short interview. After Burning Crusade, I left and formed Conquest which I held and ran until the start of this year. My era of being GM is over. Several former players have asked if I was going to get the band back together again and I declined. I don’t have it in me to handle all of the responsibility anymore. It’ll be a nice change of pace to just go back and be a normal player again where I can stick to just keeping the raid alive instead of added responsibilities.

Speaking of changes, the new Discipline Priest is neat! It definitely takes some getting used to though. I’m not sure if they’re going to be a staple of healing teams for Legion or not, but maybe they’ll have a place on guilds looking to brute force their way to victory with tons of damage. I tried it out the other week in a raid and I don’t know if Hellfire was just oddly tuned or if was just that unfamiliar with the new Discipline. To be fair, they did nerf and make further adjustments the following day to Hellfire Citadel.

Holy continues to remain a solid fallback option for classic healing Priests. Not having to mess around with Chakra stances is a huge sigh of relief. I liked the mechanic originally when it came out, but now I’m no longer a fan of needless complexity. Let the encounter be the challenge.

There is one other problem. I can’t seem to find a guild that’s looking for a Priest :(.

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How has Your Overwatch Experience Been?

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It’s been a few weeks since Overwatch came out. I’ve logged something like 50 hours total since release and it’s been a blast. I didn’t go too crazy on it during the beta because I didn’t want to burn myself out. Have to say though, the game is infinitely more fun when playing with friends as opposed to hitting the solo queue on your own. This is especially true if you happen to be playing alongside players willing to switch to heroes that work well in given situations.

Currently, my hero pool is bolstered by Zarya, Pharah, 76, and Symmetra. You might remember that Lucio was my bread and butter during the beta streams on Blizzard Watch, but I’ve switched over to a more offensive, DPS role.

Why Zarya?

zarya

Those are my stats on my Master Overwatch profile (which should absolutely be taken with a grain of salt). That being said, I’m sure there’s some similarity between that and my official stats on Overwatch. After almost 200 games, it looks like my matches on Zarya have stabilized to an approximately 55% win rate which is what the devs are aiming for (something between 45 to 55%).

Speaking of winrates, Symmetra’s just a beast on defense with a seemingly unsustainable 78% (27 games total) and Soldier 76 right behind at almost 70% (35 games total).

A note on stats

I love tracking my records as much as the next guy because they can paint a picture about your strengths and weaknesses. Without numbers, you can’t measure yourself improving. While many out there will say your personal stats don’t matter, and it happens to be true to an extent, you can’t win a game without eliminating the opposition. In general, the team that can eliminate the other team more often than not will win the match.

(Take that, Sun Tzu).

But what you have to keep in mind is what the stats don’t say. Much of the information is contextless.

As you win games quickly and early, your damage (on average) per game will go down. The hero win rate is based on the one you played the most games with and it does not reflect any hero changes you’ve made that might have had an impact. Maybe you were rocking it as Widowmaker until the other team adjusted to you and then you switched to Reaper to regain momentum.

Let’s talk about the actual damage. Was it meaningful and effective? Did the damage go straight to removing Mercy from play or was it spent mostly on Roadhog who kept hogging medpacks and chugging his gatorade? What damage is relevant and what’s irrelevant? How much of it was absorbed by a shield?

Accuracy is another thing. People who play Junkrat or Pharah understand the concept of “zoning” where you just fire projectiles in a certain area to deny the opposing team from entering it unless they take damage. Common areas include chokepoints or areas near medpacks. You don’t need to score a direct hit if the splash damage is enough to affect them. My Pharah accuracy is 41% largely because much of it is spent prefiring in areas where I think a player is about to run to.

There is definitely more development and work needed to be done in this area, but the existing information is a start. I’d like to see more individual map stats. Do I play better on King’s Row or Hollywood? Does my character matter at certain phases of the match?

Think about DPS meters and logs in WoW and you’ll get my drift.

Back to the original question of why Zarya? I figure she’s one of the more well rounded heroes in the game and can easily slip into any pub game.

Terminology

Pub: A public game that any can queue into. Best known as Quick Match.

Not to be confused with …

Pug: Short for pickup game which is a loosely organized match between a pre-determined roster of players who may or may not know each other well at all.

She can sort of tank in a pinch although she’s not the greatest pusher. Her shielding abilities have the ability to save teammates and yourself during key engagements. Her ultimate is a great trigger mechanism and works alongside other heroes who can follow up on it (because by itself it doesn’t do much damage). Think of Zarya as more of a secondary tank. When she gets charged and goes off, she’ll turn into a wrecking ball with both resilience and staying power.

The problem is that you can get really greedy. Once the shield wears off, if you get focused, you’ll be taken out immediately. You have to recognize when to jump in with a full charge and when to back out back to the safety of your team even if you still have like a 60 charge left.

I’ll write up more Zarya tips later, but if you’re interested in more Overwatch pieces, you can check out my columns here:

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