I finally bought a 3DS and with it Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate. So far the game is pretty great. I love the idea that you don’t level, but just slowly craft better and better items. I also like the idea that different items / equipment sets can be better on different monsters.

So this past weekend was Blizzcon 2014 and the announcement of Overwatch seems to have gone very well.

Last night I started this hunter deck in arena and it’s worked out pretty well so far. Tonight I finished the run with a score of 11-3!

We got our custom Learn By Dying logo into Sc2 due to the new custom logo feature in 2.1 today! The full logo is now the logo for the clan in general and this simplified icon shows up in game. Totally cool!

I tend to do ok as Poppy when I get her in ARAM. Tonights game definitely went ok.

So tonight was the 2nd night of Hearthstone Season 2, my first time playing Sc2 in a long time and a slow, but important day at work!

Today was the first day of the new Hearthstone beta season.

I watch a lot of twitch.tv. This makes sense due to my employer having 3+ games in the top ten at any given moment. I wanted to take a post and point out my favorite streamers and why I like their streams so much. I am going to break this down by game but currently I’m watching more Hearthstone than anything else.

So I’ve been working my way through Diablo 3’s Inferno. I got INSANELY lucky during Act 2 of Inferno when I found… well I found the best bow I’ve ever seen in game period. It sold for 500 mil on the AH and I was able to gear out myself and my wife with some pretty great gear.

This past week I’ve finally started playing sc2 again. I started with 4v4’s winning all 5 placement matches (placing into Diamond) and then losing my first real game tonight. The game I lost was a 3v4 though so I don’t feel that bad about it.

I preordered Bayonetta immediately after a friend told me about how awesome it sounded. I had been a big fan of the Devil May Cry series already so it’s not a huge leap that I would love this game since it seemed to take the same attitude towards gameplay and style.

I LOVED this game. The gameplay is outstanding. It’s just the right length. It has tons of re-playability. It rewards you early and often for good gameplay and the combo/ranking system is easy to understand yet super hard! It’s my favorite out of all of the combat-centric-stylized-combat games I’ve played yet.

The gameplay feels like a fighting game. You have a TON of combos all made up of the two attack buttons (Punch and Kick). Depending on what weapons you have equipped you can do different attacks. Throughout the game you can earn weapons that you can permanently equip. You start with guns on your hands and feet (as you see in the videos for the game) and can earn stuff like a sword, ice skates, shotguns (for hands and feet), a whip, etc. Also throughout the game enemies will drop some really powerful (and often slow) weapons that you can equip and use for a short time.

The dodging aspect of the game is the best part. Hitting the right trigger makes your character dodge an incoming attack. The dodging works great and I never felt like I dodged and got hit during the dodge (Plenty of times when I think I dodged but Bayonetta didn’t start the dodge before being hit but that’s par with the course). The enemies do NOT hesitate in attacking you even if you are dealing with a different enemy. This makes dodging really important. If you are in the middle of a combo and you here the sound of an off-stage enemy shooting you with his angel horn, you better watch for the projectile and dodge at the right time!

Two aspects make the dodging even more useful. If you dodge at the last second (except in the hardest difficultly mode) you start Witch time which is basically this games bullet time. You can hit projectiles back to their shooters, and generally get some big combos off during witch time. You can also keep a combo going during a dodge. If you are trying to pull off a A-A-A-B-B combo and have to dodge during the third A just hold it down and continue the combo after (hopefully during witch time!)

You do have an energy bar that can help you accomplish many times. By default every full bar lets you do a torture attack on an enemy. These attacks DO stop the battle for a second while Bayonetta summons some type of torture device and does major damage to your current target with it. These all require some sort of button mashing or stick spinning (I don’t think it’s too much though) and deal a ton of damage. Your energy goes away a bit every time you’re hit though so pulling these off can be quite tough.

The only other use of energy comes from many accessories that you can buy. Most allow you to hit A+B to use energy to do something, whether it’s make you invulnerable to one hit, or do damage, etc. This combined with your weapon choice provide a lot of options in how you want to play. You can be more offensive or defensive as you see fit.

I can’t say enough about how much I enjoyed this game. As soon as Caitlin finishes Mass Effect II I could see myself picking it up again to finish the Non-stop Climax (hardest) difficulty mode. I submitted my Penny-Arcade contest submission for beating Hard but I haven’t heard anything yet about if I made the cut to receive a shirt. I hope I did!

I’ve only played the first level of Demon’s Souls so far but it’s very fun.

I started a Knight Templar and Caitlin started a Thief. Both play very differently and start with different gear / weapons. It’s very clear that the many pre-reviews of this game that talked about the weapon system being fun were pretty accurate.

So far the graphics have been great, the game play is great. The game IS HARD. You die a lot on your way to figuring out how to beat obstacles. I had to give in to some of my OCD and just realize that this was part of the game. The game is made with the idea that you WILL lose all of your souls multiple times while trying to play a level. In a sense the game can be thought of as a Japanese shooter in disguise. You practice and practice at the levels until your skill at the game improves and is able to play it flawlessly. It’s awesome!

The one thing I do think I do well is keep people moving during raids. From the first Karazhan runs I started leading I got a reputation for being very impatient and speed oriented. This wasn’t a goal but I think some usefull tips did come from this.

1) Loot takes FOREVER. Anything you can do to speed this up is good. I’ve trained my tanks currently to run to the next trash and start pulling as soon as enough people are there to take the pull. People move to trash when they don’t want something and wait by the body otherwise.

My guild also uses a Suicide Kings queue so no need to spend time bidding. Pieces that lots of people want are the quickest. Anything you can do to speed up loot will help a lot. If you know only one or two people can use a certain item blatantly ask them (provided your loot system of course) if they want it. This could speed up the process a lot.

2) Explaining bosses is normally the next biggest time waste. When you are running an instance with 80-90% people that have done it before, make the new people read strats ahead of time. Don’t waste time explaining. Explain the fight during the trash up to the boss even. Tell them to whisper someone of the same role. As a raid leader you know who your great players are, so make sure to tell the new people to whisper them with questions. Sometimes I even start at the good player: “Hey, can you tell so and so about the next fight while we pull trash.”

3) Chain pulling. Once your players get used to this you can pull FAST. Never have a tank not pulling something. That’s the rule. When the offtank is free of his current mob have him pull the next group. Seriously. This rule clearly doesn’t apply when trash is hard or new, and your tanks have to be smart. But seriously the only time they shouldn’t pull is if ALL healers have NO mana. Healers will learn very quickly how to sneak drinks in between pulls and mana shouldn’t be an issue. Once you’re good at an instance healers barely go out of mana anyway. Use cooldowns like innervate and stuff when you need to as well. Even as a kitty druid in raids I would just pull stuff to keep the pace up. Once trash is easy treat it as such and don’t waste time on it.

4) AFK’s. Let people AFK whenever. Trash is easy. Make sure people know that you DO NOT want an AFK right before a boss or during boss attempts. Make sure they whisper an officer and of course if too many want to afk at once (especially all of the healers) make sure they go in spurts instead of all at once. AFK’s shouldn’t slow down the raid at all. They don’t need to if you do them right. If you let people take an AFK right before every boss fight? That will slow down the raid a ton.

5) Ready checks. The official /readycheck should be the ONLY ready check needed. Never say stuff like “Is everyone ready?” That only wastes time. Ready check forces a quick answer which is what you need. Asking vocally will only confuse people and make the answer back be very slow. Also asking questions like “Any questions” is better cause a few seconds of silence should be the answer. Waiting for positives takes forever, waiting for the 1 or 2 possible negative is much faster.

Honestly for our raids I follow these guildlines all the time. Even on new stuff. Our raids ussually are very efficient. Steps 1 and 2 are the ones that are saved till later on. When we were ready to finally do Naxx in one 3 hour clear steps 1 and 2 are what brought us under the 3 hour mark. The night you stop taking a long time on loot and boss explanations is the night your raiding time drops dramatically.