Tag Archives: Blaugust

Crashlanding

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When I got home from work yesterday I just completely crashed. Went to bed, got woken up for dinner, went back to bed again. Woke up around 22.00 feeling groggy and realizing that I hadn’t even called one of my best friends to wish him a happy birthday. Yeah. I was THAT tired.

Due to this I obviously also didn’t post, which is lame because I feel like I messed up Blaugust right from the start. Then again I hope to grind out two posts today (one in the morning, one in the evening) to make up for it so I can still say I posted one post “every day”. It’s really not that hard to write, but if your body and mind just work against you and the only thing you want to do is sleep it’s really hard to focus on other things.

As far as this post goes, I’d like to take the opportunity and rant a bit about Bard gameplay in FFXIV. I don’t like it at all. I loved the 2.0 Bard. Although damage may have been slightly bad it still gave me the Hunter Archetype to play that I know and love. Now with Heavensward Square Enix turned Bards into semi-casters, completely taking the fun out of the class. If I wanted to cast stuff I would go Black Mage or Summoner, not Bard. It’s really annoying too that you have to work with an immense amount of cooldowns and somehow have to weave those in between casts. It’s losing me tons of DPS time and honestly, I don’t know how to do it better at all. You can’t really move anymore, if you want movement you need to turn off your Wanderer’s Minuet but then your damage drops. It’s sucky. I don’t want to be a stationary caster. I want freedom to move, I want the old Bard gameplay back! And no buffing their shots/damage doesn’t improve the situation at all. Hell, stuff that I normally breeze through on Ninja like Ex-Roulette, Weeping City and Void Ark take me so much effort to do correctly on Bard that I just more or less have given up on playing the class alltogether.
But Sandrian, you say, maybe you just need to give it more time and practice more and then you’ll get better! Ofcourse that is probably the solution. The thing is, I don’t really have the time to practice the class a lot. It’s not something I would want to be doing with the sparse hours of gametime I have during the week. I want to be able to run content and not be frustrated about having to play a broken class. It’s annoying, it puts a strain on me while playing and it makes me want to throw my controller through the room. And it makes me sad, because I used to main Bard but now… It’s just a husk of it’s former glorious self.

I really hope that SE will reconsider the class design with the next big expansion. I want Bard to feel natural to me again since it is one of my favourite class types to play. I guess only time will tell.

Goals for August

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I didn’t do a goals post for July mostly because I had to work so much that gaming, or anything else for that matter, kind of got set on the backburner. Now that we have arrived in August I actually have a bit more time to play again and I dare to set a few goals again aswell.

So what do I hope to achieve in August?!

  • Upgrade my Kannagi in FFXIV. It will only take three more weekly Crystal Tower runs. I should be able to do that, right?
  • Obtain a few more Yo-Kai weapons. Doesn’t matter on which character. I just want more!
  • Level my Warrior on Sarella to 50. I’m very close and those last 5 levels should be doable, especially since I’m also running PotD on her.
  • Get atleast one PotD weapon on Sandrian. I’m doubting between Dragoon or Bard.
  • Finish off Story Mode in Kirby Planet Robobot. This also means getting all the data cubes so I will have unlocked all the extra levels in all the areas! I technically have 2 areas and two levels left for this.
  • Get rank 20 in Hearthstone. A recurring one I know. But one of the goals I set for this year was getting all the card backs.
  • Play some No Man’s Sky when it launches and write about it.
  • Legion events in WoW!

So yeah. Not that many goals, mostly becuase I’m still going to be really busy with work. Regardless of that I did torture myself for this month by signing up for Blaugust again this year. Well torture… I feel like I’ve not been posting nearly enough so I want to use Blaugust to get back into the rythm of posting regularly. So there. I’ll try to turn out a post every single day. I really hope I can do it this time, maybe even more so since it’s a “chillax” Blaugust.

 

 

The Grand Finale – Blaugust day 24

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The grand finale. It’s been a race, it’s been a marathon, but the last day of August (and thus Blaugust) is here.
It has been a hell of a crazy month for me. I landed my first real fulltime job (that will probably end this friday), I’ve had a really busy social life and I’ve had to re-evaluate myself and some of the goals I set while under pressure of time.

I have realized that my heart still belongs to World of Warcraft, even though I might critique and say goodbye to the game every now and then. I have started a crazy Heroes of the Storm project, that I do want to see through! I’ve gotten better at Hearthstone and have enjoyed playing some Super Mario Bros. on my 3DS again. I have evolved from a hardcore “I want to do it all” player to a more casual one with gaming taking up a much smaller role in my life for the time being. And surprisingly enough I’m more than fine with that.
Looking back to the start of the month, I might have set a bit too ambitious gaming goals for myself. I’ve barely been able to keep up with most of them and I’ve really only done the WoW and Hearthstone ones and I’m cool with that. I will re-evaluate my goals for September in my next post, probably being a lot less ambitious, and strive to complete as much as those as I can. Some will be a repeat performance (like getting rank 20 on Hearthstone), others will be new… But I won’t spoil just yet.

Next to my own gaming and blog adventures I have discovered a lot of new blogs and new people. It’s been a blast reading all of you. Even if I couldn’t actually read ALL of you. You are all amazing people and keep on doing what you’re doing!

I am a bit sad that I didn’t make blogging all 31 days of August. I missed out on exactly seven days. However the reasons that I have been unable to blog all bring smiles to my face and thus it was worth it. Daily blogging might not really be my thing, but I have enjoyed blogging regularly and, by some of the really kind and positive comments I have gotten throughout the month, I think you readers have enjoyed my blog aswell.
I like to keep going strong and blog regularly after the Blaugust madness is over. I really don’t want to fall back to only one or two posts a month, I have way too much to say for that.
For now though. Goodbye Blaugust!

Dance, Dance, Dance – Blaugust day 23

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I’m writing this post feeling super tired. There was a really big dance festival near where I live yesterday and I went there with a good friend of mine and we literally danced the day and night away. I think I’ve been on my feet for about 9 hours, counting the walk to and from the trainstation aswell. I haven’t been this tired in ages and I haven’t felt this great in ages.
The atmosphere was fantastic, the people were great and the music was good enough to keep you on your feet constantly. Which isn’t that hard seeing as there were about 6 stages to choose from. We were really lucky with the weather aswell, it was nice and sunny, not too hot and not too cold. No wind. Barely any clouds. There was beer, there was good food. All in all it was just a great day.

The funny thing is, after everything was over and done and I was laying in bed, the only thing I really wanted was to go home and spend some time behind my PC. Check out the new Diablo 3 season, play some Hearthstone and/or Heroes or just chat with some of my online friends, which I haven’t talked too that much since getting my job. I really needed a day to wind down and just relax with some of my comfortable games. After writing my previous post, and the kind comments I’ve gotten on it, I realized that I’m still able to do all that I want and I should just stress less about everything. It’s not horrible if I miss out on an evening of games because I’m tired. It’s not horrible if I do other stuff. Gaming doesn’t define me, but it’s still my favourite pastime.

Seeing as I’m out of the house/on the road more often I’ve been playing a lot more mobile games. I’ve had the Simpsons Tapped Out installed on my phone since forever and ofcourse there is Hearthstone which I can play on the go. But I also installed Fallout Shelter (and am sucking horribly at it) and the Final Fantasy portal app which comes with a Triple Triad game for free! It has really helped me get better at Triple Triad and I hope I can use those skills to finally get into it in FFXIV.
Speaking of FFXIV. I have utterly failed at all the gaming goals I’ve set there. My WHM is level 46, my DRG doesn’t even have enough esoterics yet to buy her chestpiece and I’ve barely touched the game at all. I guess I’m just a bit turned off by the time that it consumes when the only thing you want to do is run one or two dungeons. I really  need to figure out how to do this without me getting so annoyed with the game that I want to quit permanently, because for that I like the game way too much.

For now though I’m going to get a good night’s sleep and get to work bright and fresh in the morning. So that I can zombie my way through heroic Hellfire Citadel in the evening.

Hearthstone Arena Run – Blaugust day 21

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Today after a very long time I did an Arena run on Hearthstone again. I picked up a Paladin deck and, with the help of Heartharena.com, managed to put together a fairly decent aggro deck.
I haven’t dabbled in Arena for a very long time. I’m still struggling to learn all the classes in Hearthstone (Paladin being one of few decks I have no experience with) and I’m still not very good at knowing what to do on what turn and when. I have a tendency to either go face too much or clear minions too much leaving me usually with an empty hand or an empty board. This results into many losses on my side.
It’s one of the reasons I choose to focus on Priest and Druid since those are the two decks I’ve been playing the most and feel the most comfortable on. I really wouldn’t know what a good draft is for any other deck, but this week I had no choice since all three champions were ones I wasn’t comfortable on. So I consulted a friend, picked Paladin and went through a pretty long draft phase while tabbing back and forth to Heartharena to see which cards I should pick up. I did that all on Wednesday evening after the raid so I could focus on actually playing the Arena tonight.

The same friend who helped me discover Heartharena has also guided me through this particular Arena run. He is a good player, albeit a little inexperienced with Paladin, and he has been helping me out here and there. With his guidance (and me making misplays here and there) I managed to get this deck to a 4-3 arena run, which is about a 200% improvement over anything I ever did on my own. I got a nice TGT card pack and 75 gold as rewards and overall I feel a bit more confident in playing Arena as a whole.
With my friend guiding me I’ve gained a bit more knowledge on when to trade, when to play certain cards, when to go for face and that brainfarts are seriously bad.
All in all I’m pretty happy with the result though and I think I might want to try my next Arena run on my own. With enough practice I should be able to get a good result eventually right?

Ongoing game issues
Being almost fulltime (and fullitme next week) at work has shown me how utter impossible it is to keep up with two MMO’s and a bunch of other games without some planning. Monday and Wednesday are my WoW nights since I raid then. Tuesday and Thursday should be my FF nights since I plan to coil then. This leaves me with only Friday, Saturday and Sunday for the rest of my games. Which is actually really sucky. It feels like my days and evenings fly by and I can’t get enough time into games for it to be really satisfying. It doesn’t really help that I go to bed at 23.00 every night, but I really can’t stay up longer or I’ll be a zombie at work.
It’s messing with me and making me slightly cranky. I used to have all the time and freedom in the world to do what I wanted and that is gone now. I guess I really need to start planning my nights better or give up on raiding in one of my MMO’s. And I really don’t want to do the second…

Gaming at work – Blaugust day 20

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Seeing as I have been and will be super busy these weeks, I’ve decided to put some time into playing Hearthstone while at work.
Seeing as I work “too fast” anyway it’s not biggie if I take a few 5-10 min breaks playing it. Not only is this better for my general wellbeing (staring at a spreadsheet all day gets kind of exhausting), it also helps me rank up in the game and get rewards, all while getting paid.

It’s a bit tricky though. I have my phone logged in on my secondary battle.net account at the moment and I have no cards whatsoever there. I don’t remember why I logged that account, maybe because I thought it would be fun to get stuff on two separate accounts. I’ll probably switch later tonight. But even on my main account I heavily lack cards. I don’t really play as much as I should (I don’t even have all my classes to level 10 yet) and I’m not really that good at the game, but it’s a nice way to get through the day.

Right now I’m mostly focussing on playing Priest and Druid, which are also two of the shittiest decks to play when you lack cards. They are both control decks and require a sick amount of legendaries to work. Which I don’t have. I hope by battling and unlocking wings in Naxxramas and Blackrock Mountain I will start getting a bit more on par with the rest of the playerbase.

Aslong as I can battle my way to rank 20 every month I’m happy. I love the monthly card backs that Blizzard designs and from rank 20 and up you also get a chest with goodies starting this month! I’m really curious to see what it nets me, although Blizzard already spoiled it a bit by saying they contain gold cards and dust.
I’m not sure if I should focus on another deck instead. I’ve had some experience with Paladin and Mage aswell… But I guess I have more than enough time at work to figure that out!

Heroes Heroes and more Heroes – Blaugust day 19

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I’ve only done two things this weekend. Farm games on Heroes of the Storm and watch the LCS finals weekend for both EU and NA. I’ve cheered my heart out for Origen in the EU finals but alas it was not enough. However I’m more interested in the later game of today, which is CLG vs TSM. As a huge CLG fangirl (Doublelift forever!) I really hope they will finally win a split and qualify for worlds. I’m not sure if I can stay up and watch all of the games, but I do plan to watch atleast untill 1 AM!

As far as Heroes of the Storm goes. I swear the general population on that game is getting more and more dumb. People have no idea how to play together and often wander off solo… Getting themselves killed. It really boggles my mind in what universe you think it’s OK to take on five other poeple by yourself, but I guess in their minds they are invincible and thus should be easily able to do this.
As far as champions go. You can see what is the f2p rotation this week. I’ve had Anub’Arak, Malfurion and Nazeebo in all my games so far. All strong champions if played correctly but unfortunately there’s a lot of people still learning the game right now so I see a lot of horrible misplays… On both sides.

I do notice I get kind of complacent from playing Valla. I’m so used to being in the ranged role that having to play a Melee champion requires me to do a complete mindset switch. Right because of this I’m seriously considering picking up a Melee champion after I get my 100 games on Valla. Looking at the strong champions right now, and not wanting to pick up another Assassin, I will probably get either Leoric or Kharazim. They are exceptionally strong in the meta right now and both look ridiculously fun to play. I still need to play 90 more games on Valla however. She is level 6 now, my account is level 9. One more level should net me a 7 day stimpack aswell so I will definately use that to my advantage.
All in all I’m still massively enjoying myself in this game, even though I encounter a ridiculous amount of bad players. It’s nice getting the tactics down and being able to direct a game and win. Close defeats are more fun than crushes, mostly because you get more experience for your account and hero the longer the game goes, but it feels so satisfying aswell to battle it out untill the bitter end.

So far I have zero regrets starting this project. I do need to figure out however how to balance my job, my heroes time and my MMO’s.. And that’s something I’m saving for a next post!

The Heroes Project – Blaugust day 18

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Before I get to the real point of this post, I need to have a little rant about mothers, kids, and social media.
One of my best friends has a kid. I love the little spawn to death (number two is on the way by the way) and she posts a lot of pictures of her on Facebook and over Whatsapp. It’s not a daily occurrence but often enough to make me roll my eyes a little. But I bite my tongue. There are parents who post much much more pictures of their spawn, often to the annoyance of a lot of people around them.
Now, posting pictures of your 3-4 year old kid is adorable. However making your 3-4 year old kid an own facebook account is where I go “What the hell?!”. Obviously the kid itself is too young to decide on this and knowing who is the mother.. it’s just a way for mommy to whore some more attention. And I feel sick by it. That you whore for attention on your own account is one thing. Don’t use your kid to “ask” for even more. Kids that young have no place on social media and I don’t think it’s healthy for the kid in question to be known on the internet by first and last name on that young of an age. I can only see this go wrong, but I hope that won’t be. Otherwise I’ll feel even more bad for the kid in question…

The Real Subject
Right now that I have that off my chest. Heroes of the Storm. I finally managed to sit down and play for a bit on my main and my project account. Unfortunately I had an unlucky evening with a big losing streak. Out of 7 games played I only won 1. Usually after losing 3-4 games in a row I just call it quits. Losing streaks are never fun, especially when playing ranked games.  Most of the ones for this particular evening were caused by people just being terrible at picking working team compositions and then being even more terrible at the champion they pick. And in Heroes this is as much of a problem as in the other MOBA’s. However where you can more or less carry a game solo on League of Legends if you’re good enough this is just not possible on Heroes. The game is way too team and objective oriented and once you start getting behind it’s really hard to get back and win. Especially on maps like Blackheart’s Bay.
I decided I will do the quests given on my project account, simply to rack up the gold it gives. Which means I will have to deviate from only spamming one champion. I’m still planning to play atleast 100 games on Valla before focusing on a new champ, but I will take some “side trips” to other champions just to get my dailies done.

Speaking of Valla, I’m on 5/100 games now.
I’m still of the opinion that she is a great champion to play, albeit somewhat squishy. Her kit is good and I’m very fond of champions who have ways to escape when things get tough. I do notice the meta changing. With the latest three champions all being melee/warrior oriented I feel like Valla is in a tighter spot than she has been. Both Leoric and Butcher have a way to stick to champions aswell as the newly released Monk Hero: Kharazim. Right now I think they are all a bit broken in the sense that they all have a really great kit for getting in range of champions and they all have ways to have incredible self sustain, which makes them almost impossible to deal with. It also means that support champions are a bit obsolete healing wise. I guess Tyrande can really shine at the moment with her stuns, since the only way to stop these new champions is by CC’ing them…
It also makes me think about maybe picking one of them up after I do my 100 games on Valla. I’m usually not too fond of melee characters (Illidan being the exception) but I think I owe myself to atleast pick either Butcher, Leoric or Kharazim up. Just because they seem like powerhouses right now and a musthave for anyone who wants to play Heroes seriously.
With the weekend infront of me I should have some more time to play all my games, so this naturally includes Heroes aswell. I hope I can get up to 20/100 games on Valla. I’m not gonna set it as goal, but it is what I’m aiming for right now.
I’ll keep you guys updated!

Ska time! – Blaugust day 17

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Every now and then I am in a silly mood and I need to listen to some British Ska. I really love the genre for it’s wackyness and am heavily disappointed I wasn’t around when it was a big thing. So for tonight I’m just putting on some Ska and have a happy evening. Which also includes Hot Butter – Popcorn, which seriously cheers me up after having a few crappy days.

All sillyness aside. There has been so much drama in my WoW guild the past week that I’ve lost all the will to log onto anything at all. People are annoying and take things the wrong way, and it’s causing all kinds of crap. Add to it that I’m tired from work and all I want to do in my free time is lay down and sleep.
It’s bumming me out. It’s getting in the way of my plans and it’s frustrating me. The only game I get some stuff done on is Hearthstone since I play that at work during offtime. This week’s brawl is amazing btw but that’s something different.
So yeah. Gaming wise everything has been slow. I’ve only been raiding with my WoW guild and other than that I’ve mostly been vegetating infront of my PC watching streams and random Youtube movies.
Before I descent into melancholy I will leave you all with one of the most brilliant comedians to have graced this world in the past 40 years. I hope my next post will be better!

Raidleading… Again! – Blaugust day 16

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Yesterday evening I found myself once again in an awkward position. I seem to attract that a lot. Maybe because I can’t seem to keep my nose out of stuff that’s not entirely my business. I just really don’t like it when I’m a part of something that doesn’t work because of people being stupid.
We have basically two leaders in our guild at the moment and they can’t stand eachother. They are usually fighting and bitching and it influences the raid massively. One is a rager (he has a really bad temper) and will shout at everyone including himself. The other one is slightly autistic and not fit to be leader material in my opinion. I used to be the third leader, but due to circumstances I shed the officer mantle and just went back to being a raider.
Now, yesterday evening we had the usual attendance drama. People accept calendar invites and then either show very late without notice, or don’t show at all. This has been an ongoing issues in our guild and yesterday Leader number 2 was sick and tired off it and logged off. After a lot of talking back and forth I got him to log back on again, albeit very grumpy.

From that point I decided to take up the raidleader mantle again. Our guild just needs someone to speak up on Teamspeak, to coordinate the group and the invites and to just make sure raiding is being done in a decent atmosphere.
I think I succeeded in that last night where there was for once no drama or bitching. We downed the five bosses we are familiar with, even getting someone entirely new to four of them through. People got loot, we wiped a few times, there were some laughs and it was all fine. But only because I once again decided to step up and step in. No one else in the guild can be bothered to do so and I hate it when there are minor issues that would prevent a raid from happening.

Our GM (who is retired and no longer counted amongst leadership) was already mocking me for stepping up again. Saying “I never change” and he is probably right. However I wouldn’t have to step up if we had competent leaders who would do their job properly. But I guess I’m once again going to be the officer without an officer title. Simply because I just can’t sit idly by watching needless drama happen.
And because when I lead, there is no drama, no shouting, no crying and no grumpyness. I feel like I can make a raid fun to be in, even for myself, and I guess that’s what matters in the end. Right?