Last week-end, following the huge trend, we both tried Hardcore Classic WoW. While we had fun in the starting zones, our nostalgia trip was brutally interrupted by death. I understand the excitement around Hardcore but I personally don’t enjoy to delete a character that I’ve been levelling for hours. I can’t imagine the feeling when your character dies after level 50, I would be devastated.
However, this little adventure made us realise how great vanilla WoW was and how bad retail has become when you play the game the way it was meant to be played. It was a game made by roleplayers for roleplayers while retail feels like a phone game ported on PC.
So, thank you Nostalrius for having made Blizzard consider creating Classic servers. And fuck you, J. Allen Brack, You were dead wrong!
Until now, I’ve absolutely loved questing and levelling in BfA. Upon my arrival in Boralus, I started my adventure in Tiragarde Sound. There was an instant click with the new content, one that I hadn’t experienced in a while. I found myself stopping everywhere to admire the beauty of the landscapes and the details that Blizzard has spent so much time creating. Also, the music is mesmerizing. Every morning, I wake up with the Boralus theme song in my head, a great start for my days.
One of the first quest chains that I did lead me to the encounter with the kraken, Viq’Goth at Anglepoint Warf. I absolutely loved to take part in defending the sea gate. It reminded me of Tethyr, the kraken that attacked Theramore. It already was one of my favourite quests, imagine my surprise when I discovered the leviathan theme in this new expansion. As a huge Cthulhu fan, I was ecstatic.
I also enjoyed saving sailors from the siren songs, uncovering the betrayal of Lady Ashvane, and horseriding in the Norwington Estate,… So many great quests in this zone that are already creating fond memories. With a special mention to the side quests of The Roughnecks. They’re probably my favourite Tiragarde quests, from shaving goats, to gathering honey, and killing wendigos… I had a fun adventure which lead to the meeting of the majestic Wildhammer Dwarf, Boss Tak.
Description: With a performance like that, it’s clear you’re one of the top dogs here. Boss Tak will want to see you. He’s up north checking on one of our camps in Waning Glacier. Head up that way and give him a hand. Oh, and I don’t recommend looking him straight in the eye… or at his feet… or really anywhere near him. Best bet, close your eyes when you’re talkin’ to him. – Wow-pedia
I can’t help but chuckle at this description. What can I say? I have a certain fondness for Dwarves.
Now off to explore Drustvar and Stormsong Valley. The adventure continues…
The first expansion of Grim Dawn is out and it brought a lot of new stuff to this already great Hack’n Slash: new class masteries, increased level cap, 2 new chapters,… You can check the complete list of new features here. After having spent most afternoons of our first week of Halloween holidays fighting our way through the game, here are our thoughts about it:
Sardoken
I had a few weeks of fun last year playing Grim Dawn, but the unoptimized graphic engine broke the game for me. In some zones, the game couldn’t get above 20 fps on a last gen PC with a 1080GTX…
The first thing I noticed with Ashes of Malmouth is that the graphic engine has been updated and never goes below 60 fps no matter the zone. To me, that’s a big green light.
Also, the classes I rolled back then were too squishy (dual handed soldier with 0 physique) or too boring (summoner). This time, like Soforah, I went for a balance between resistance and offense, a Witchblade (soldier + occultist). So far (almost level 40), I’m having a blast. Leveling in heavy armor with a two hand and arc as main skill is insanely fun.
I know that I’m nowhere near the end game and that everything will change in ultimate but leveling is a big part of my experience, I’m not rushing, I’m on holidays and I wanna take it easy 😉
Soforah
Before the release of “Ashes of Malmouth”, I was playing a summoner in Grim Dawn. While I had a lot of fun leveling my character before this expansion, I’ve grown tired of summoning things and letting them do the job for me. Let’s face it, nothing’s more satisfying and rewarding in a hack ‘n slash than smashing all and everything around you with a bad-ass weapon. So, I went for another build this time. No more “cast and run”, but a “come at me bro” type of character that can take quite some damage before dying.
The last time I went for a melee class was in Skyrim and Diablo, and man, did I miss it! I’m having so much fun, I can’t wait to see how my character will perform in endgame content.
At the moment, I’m following a Cadence Witchblade build, partially from a build Sardoken found on the Grim Dawn Forums, the other part by improvising.
Until now I’ve followed most of his advise though… I needed to start somewhere, right? ;-p
Start soldier, rush mastery to blade arc, max it, then rush to laceration, max it. 1 point in blitz for gap closer, then rush to oleron’s rage, max. then pop a point in occultist and max CoF. Afterwards get soldier passives then more points in occultist for the passives as you see fit.
Basically pop CoF and bladearc away.
Start with falconswoop/hawk, then lizard to get kraken. afterwards slowly work ur way up to oleron, getting dryad/assassins blade on the way to level those skill.
Get a high dmg 2hand mace from vendor on a high lvl char , or do the best you can if its ur first char, attackspeed isn’t that important, just high base dmg, a white one is fine. when choosing gear, make sure to get decent armor values and get armor absorption up with scaled hide/field of command. use ectoplasms if you need mana, if its your first char you can farm those from ghosts in A2 spined cave or something like that.
Go all physique early to use high lvl armor/weapon.
At lvl 75 spec to real build. devotions are straight forward and no backward speccing required.
So far, I’m having a blast! I can’t wait to see how this build will work when running higher difficulties, I’ll write a new post with my thoughts and ideas later on.
