The extent of my knowledge of Runeterra (setting) is pretty much Arcane and a few casual youtube video browsings.
But Mordkaiser rocks. Sometimes it’s nice to just have a villain who looks at the disappointment of an afterlife after being all 'Skulls ‘n glory!’ in life and goes “No. I will make this mine. Because I can!”
None of this usually-awfully-done “Oh but I’m doing it for a Higher Purpose!” and/or alternatives. Just “I conquered in life, death was outrageously disappointing, so I’mma keep doing what I do best.”
“I was promised paradise in the hereafter, so I built it.”
Deeply appreciate that they took a character who was originally just a series of metal song puns and 4th-wall jokes and made him an existential threat to the world, who terrifies both the living and the dead
(He’s currently in his own little death realm, while a few people in Noxus do war crimes until they figure out a way to not have everyone dead and chained if he ever comes back)
Whoever made it SO obnoxious to get better gear while levelling 60-70, whoever made it so you can only craft three measly piece of correct iLevel gear sub-70 and then you’re just stuffed until 70, AND whoever made every single gods damned obnoxious million-mile aggro crammed Gnoll area in the Azure Span;
There is no language I can use that will sufficiently convey my feelings without putting me on Forum Vacation.
Edit: Why are non-SV hunters so squishy now? Why does my ‘tenacity’ pet, which I specifically swapped to because my Owl was suddenly feeling a hundred times more fragile than before, have the stopping power of a wet paper bag? Why does the game keep swapping Specs around and making them Not Fun to play just as I settle on them AND I STILL CANNOT GEAR UP?!
Why do I fight a DH as a Shaman with equal gear and have no chance of winning because their attacks literally heal them?
Ok big pet peeve: why are simpler classes more rewarding to play? Now, this might be a REALLY FAR OUT IDEA, but I’ve always thought that the more complex a class is to play, the better they should perform. So if a monk or a shaman has like 50 buttons and a demon hunter has 3 and a BM hunter has like 1, should the monk and the shaman not do more damage? What gives here? Why are we catering to people who can’t play the game? I literally read a reddit post the other day where a dude complains about DH being hard.
Yeye sweaty toxic whatever dude, why are these disabled specs so rewarding?
Also why CANT WE HAVE THE HUNTER GUN NOISES??? What’s the big idea here? What the hell happened? Just give me the option, god damn it, it’s not like anyone has to know.
No, I don’t just mean easy to play. I mean that compared to certain other specs, a man without hands could play a BM hunter. There’s a dramatic effect there. Also why are you trying to bait me away from my rant? I was genuinely peeved about this.
Unrelated edit and additional ranting after some consideration:
How dare you tone police me on this? I’ve worn glasses since I was ten years old. I’ve had back issues on account of my height since I was 13. My feet grew weird and I had to get surgery for them. Most chairs don’t fit me, most doorways don’t fit me. I would very much prefer not to be like this and I imagine people like my buddy Nicola who got his hand blown off fighting another country’s war would indeed prefer to still have that hand. And I don’t even want to get into how I had a crisis in my teens where I prayed to Allah he would turn me either straight or white because of the way people treated me at school and at home.
Of course, you didn’t know this, and you can’t know this. But was your first instinct to point out this minute piece of my post because you want a stranger on the internet to be better, or because you don’t like me on account of something Dracthyr-related I’ve said the past? Bitter, petty, weaponised politeness doesn’t interest me brother.
The crazy lesson today is: sometimes, albeit rarely, you’ll meet a person on the internet who is not the cardboard cut-out of some imaginary enemy you’ve conjured to obtain the moral high ground.
Ah, you missed my resurrection. What a shame. Please don’t start with your passive-aggressive remarks again, Oba. We both know how this ends; with you blocking me out of frustration.
I started reading the manga adaptation/accompaniment to Yoko Taro’s SINoALICE mobile game.
While it’s perfectly fine - if somewhat generic action that’s kept afloat mostly by edge with a slice of mystery - the real treat is Yoko Taro’s end-of-volume notes.
More accessible specialisations that are easier to play should always be “competitive” and someone playing those specialisations should always be able to play the latest content without feeling like they’re under-performing.
At the same time, competency should be rewarded and there should be specialisations that reward talented gameplay with higher damage. It’s a difficult balance to maintain and from what I have heard, BM Hunter has been over-tuned in 10.2 to the point where it outperforms more skill-based specs, despite being a very accessible spec.
I’m not all that familiar with the current state of WoW and which specs are more demanding than others, but this is a big issue in another MMORPG, GW2.
Playing an Elementalist in that game, no matter the spec, is often compared to trying to learn how to play a piano, yet even the most competent Elementalist players tend to underperform.
On the other hand, there’s a particular Engineer spec in that game called the Mechanist, which was one of the highest performing damage, healing and support specs in the entire game for ages and its rotation was as simple as mashing 1 non-stop.
In short, sorry for fence-sitting, but balance is important. People playing accessible specs deserve to be able to participate in raids, Mythic+ and PvP and people playing difficult specs should be rewarded for playing their specs competently. It’s just got to be managed carefully, so it doesn’t tip towards “endgame content is only for diehard gamers” or “your skill as a player is irrelevant and shouldn’t be rewarded.”
Of course. Don’t mistake my ramblings for some weirdo desire to keep people away from the game, it’s simply frustrating. And what you say about the BM is not a new thing at all; in most patches BM is a top tier DPS. I’m also quite convinced that BM - a spec that should be the MELEE hunter spec because it has bloody Rexxar on the talent art - was kept from being melee because Blizzard believes there’s a certain fanbase of people who exclusively play BM and will hate/quit the game if BM turns melee or if it becomes any harder to play etc.
Point is, BM is a very, very easy spec to play and has been for ages and has been one of the best performing specs for ages. Exemptions, of course, but as a general rule it has. The mechanist is a great example, actually. You know what I think? I think certain devs play these classes and want them kept overtuned.
If I ever had a gameplay peeve its that despite my love of Windwalker Monk, the complexity and requirements to understand its rotation are not rewarded whatsoever in this game and it frequently sits at the bottom of DPS charts from mid-way into each expansion onwards. WoW quite simply needs a full gameplay tutorial overhaul that teaches everyone how to play their class, use their utility, their general rotation (and then their specialised rotation for each spec) because the amount of people in this game who just click what buttons seems sensible astounds me daily.
I mained elementalist in GW2 back in 2013-2014 (because I was into Avatar at that time). Didn’t do any progression content, just played the story and roleplayed.
The thought of returning to that game feels daunting now. Living World season 2 felt like a very sudden and jarring difficulty spike, and I haven’t even tried Heart of Thorns because I heard it’s significantly harder than the vanilla game.
It also needs a vfx update. The spells don’t feel impactful at all.
Speaking of the Elementalist, I can’t wait to try out the GUN. I hope it’s good. Gonna be like pop blap splat bombaclat breddamon whooooshhhh chbooooooh krghhhhhh innit
Heart of Thorns is significantly harder than baseline GW2. It very much feels like a “hardcore” version that was designed to reward the players who stuck around and mastered the game. Almost everyone who dropped the game and tried to jump back in with the new expansion bounced off of HoT.
It’s also home to the worst designed zone in MMO history, the Tangled Depths.
However, you don’t need to do things chronologically and if you’re willing to skip over HoT, future expansions and LWS content are a lot more forgiving and enjoyable.
