What a beautiful holiday weekend. Great weather, good food, wonderful company and tasty beverages (every grocery store in town had New Belgian beers on sale, now available in cans!). The only hitch was two little thunderstorms that both miraculously timed themselves perfectly for when I was grilling dinner on two separate nights, but at least they helped keep me cool. Between the holiday and coming off a busy week at work I didn’t have time to blog, hell I’m even behind on reading blogs right now, but I did get some gaming time in.
Khem Val Hates Me
So my Assassin has crossed level 20, 22 to be exact at this point, and moved onto Nar Shaddaa. Belsavis was fun, slow to start but I enjoyed it in the end. I got to “enjoy” the greatest affection change I’ve yet to see from a companion: -160 Khem Val for a light side choice, and that was right after we had a little chat about mercy. Sure I could have just dismissed him and avoided the lost but that breaks immersion and cheapens the experience.
Leveling has been proceeding well. I’m still not doing Flashpoints and Warzones, skipping Heroics and Bonus series, and not exploring and I’m almost not out leveling content faster than I can complete it. I still had a quest log full of greens when I finished Belsavis but I’m sitting with proper-leveled quests right now. I still think it’s absurd that I have to skip so much content just to not out level zones; I can’t wait for Guild Wars 2 and their downranking system.
I think I’ve also figured out why the Assassin is clicking so well with me: it plays a lot like a feral Druid. Sure there’s no “John Madden rotation” but the same “feel” is there. I realized it one day when I was thinking: “it’s so nice to have a pocket tank so I can actually shred instead of mangle.” Yeah, so there’s that.
I also gave Commando a try. I had leveled another Trooper through Ord Mantel a while ago and stopped after picking Commando as an AC. I picked it back up last week but it just wasn’t working for me. I’ve always been more of a melee player but can enjoy ranged classes if they’re very mobile, the Commando seems to be just the opposite of that. I’m not deleting this character just yet but I won’t be playing a commando as my healer.
Defying The Cleric
We are go on Rift Lite. I patched up my client and jumped into Rift Lite. Picked a new shard and then created a Defiant Mage and a Guardian Cleric. With the cleric I instantly started falling into my old Cleric ways: Shamicar. The Mage captured my attention though. I never got far with a Mage when I subscribed so I just picked one of the soul templates and went with the flow. My limited previous experience with a Mage was as a Chloromancer so I chose one of the DPS templates, the mobile one, and just fell into it. I was shooting lightning left and right and the next thing I knew a couple of hours had flown by.
The soul templates are a great idea. I was able to just pick it up go without having to worry about exactly how I’m going to spec my character from the start. I can get the feeling of the class first and then take it from there. Sure I’m missing out on the “accomplishment” of unlocking the different souls but that felt more like a grind rather than an accomplishment, especially after they removed the quests in favor of purchasing them.
I’m looking forward to playing some more of the Mage but I might be rerolling the Cleric as a rogue: the other class I have little experience with. My desire to come back with a subscription is only being fueled by the news of a possible expansion, but that’s a discussion for another time.
On A Second Thought…
I miss how all the TV channels used to play old war movies all Memorial Weekend long. It was nice being able to turn on the TV at any time and find either The Dirty Dozen, The Great Escape or Kelly’s Heroes on, but no more. So I decided to jump into some World of Tanks for a WWII fix. And then I looked at my garage: German, German, German, US, German, German, etc. Yeah, maybe rolling around in a panzer isn’t the best way to celebrate Memorial Day. So one match in my Panzer III and I was out.
So that’s about it for last week. Now time to start planning what to do in the recently announced Guild Wars 2 BWE.
The Altoholic 