Monday, May 20, 2013

Where Did I Put Those Training Wheels?

I have PvP on my brain.

Seriously.

After having spent the past two weeks running Battlegrounds (or doing questing in various MMOs), I queued for a Old Republic flashpoint.  Since I'd leveled my first toon strictly via questing and the occasional heroic, I've been taking some time on these alts to explore the different flashpoints in the game.  Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, but since I'd been playing a Rogue for such a straight stretch, I had to change my expectations.

Unfortunately, I didn't change them enough.

I got into the Collicoid War Game flashpoint, which was new to me, and I ended up spending part of the first phase of the game as a keyboard turner.  For some reason my brain thought move = both mouse buttons, whereas on the turret it is move = right mouse button.  When I kept hitting both mouse buttons, I kept getting kicked out of the turret.  That was very nearly a disaster, as the collicoids closed to a dangerous level before I finally started blasting them to pieces.

Okay, that was a new flashpoint mistake.  I could deal with that.

But what I couldn't deal with was that I kept pulling aggro.

I mean, I'm not on my glass cannon gunslinger, merely my Commando running DPS.  I've finally got a rotation down for the Hutt expac changes, but I know that Commandos don't hit quite that hard.  The only thing I could figure was that I was being too efficient with my rotation, which is an artifact of PvP.  You know, the "OMG! OMG!  Quick-quick-quick-hurry-hurry-hurry gotta-DPS-this-Druid-down-before-he-heals-and.....  OH NO A LOCK!  Dump the DoTs and Vanish!!  Hurry Hurry Hurry!"

Yeah, right.  You try doing that in Eye of the Storm.

Spacing out my rotation helped, but it didn't really prepare me for the puzzle part of the flashpoint.  "Over here!" became my name, synonymous with "Over here, Ki!" and "Ki!  Not there, here!  To my right!"  Of course, I had no idea which toon was saying that until I clicked to find the right one.  And then, on the last fight which was a boss fight transforming into another boss fight (think the middle boss transitioning into The Black Knight in Trial of the Champion and you've got the idea), everybody was frantically telling me to move to the middle.

What for, I wondered as I ran up.

Then, WHAM!  The last droid boss dropped in.

Oh.  That's why.

Still, nobody died due to my klutziness.  Except me, who moved over to try to push an elite off a platform and ended up getting blasted off myself.  "Those droids do that," the tank said as I respawned back at the beginning.  

"I noticed that."

By the end of the flashpoint I'd slowed down my rotation enough that I didn't pull aggro* from the rest of the bosses.  But I think I need to do a bit more PvE group content to balance out this PvP attitude I've got going.

Okay, one more and then I shut it down for the night.





*Except for my very first shot at the final boss, which I'd deliberately waited before dropping a Grav Round on it, and of course the boss turns and smacks me.  "Oh, for pete's sake, I only hit it once!" I said in party chat, which elicited laughter.

6 comments:

  1. Congratulations on making it through the Colicoid War Game! :D Definitely one of the more original flash points. Just pray they never make a hardmode version of it, lol.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks!

      I'm not sure how they'd make a hardmode version of the flashpoint without adding more puzzles.

      When I asked in group chat about it and I was told there are puzzles, I asked "What do you mean by puzzles? The Balmorra puzzle difficulty or something else?" Thankfully, it wasn't as difficult as the Balmorra puzzle.

      Delete
  2. I've got to get back in there, left my poor Consular in Nar Shaddaa with that ugly pet all on her own.

    Oddly, even though I don't PvP that was my problem for years. I think I was so worried I wasn't going to pull my weight in the group that I always managed to pull aggro instead. Luckily now everyone outgears me so I'm pretty safe, lol.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, I had that issue in the first few instances I ran. To complicate things, Soul (the silent other half of PC) was a good enough tank that I never had to worry about pulling aggro. Running randoms sure changed my perspective on aggro meters and watching to make sure I don't pull aggro.

      TOR, of course, doesn't have aggro meters, so you have to go strictly by feel. It's a slow process, but the warring priorities of wanting to DPS something down vs. wanting to stay away from aggro makes TOR more of a chess match.

      Delete
    2. What server was your Consular on again? I've got toons on both The Harbinger and Shadowlands.

      Delete
    3. My Consular is on Jedi Covenant. All my Empire characters that I've forgotten how to play are on The Shadowlands, I haven't the heart to go through all the deaths on my Bounty Hunter to learn her again yet, lol.

      Delete