Recent Posts

1

Theorycrafting and Class Discussion / Re: Horrific Visions

« Last post by Piralyn on March 30, 2020, 11:46:35 AM »

As Marco notes, it's most useful in the lighter areas, since you will continue losing sanity at the normal rate for the area while eating. If you're still losing 5 sanity a second or whatever in the hard areas, then you're only gaining 50 sanity out of the food due to the time it takes for it to give you sanity. That's not a huge boost. The primary situations I've found it to be useful have been A) I don't feel quite comfortable with the sanity amount I'm going into a mini boss with, but it's close, and using an orb will mean I likely won't get the full 200 sanity from Elite Extermination or B) about to head into a mini boss that Gift is useful/mandatory for (Corrupted blob in Trade or Valley of Wisdom) but the internal cooldown isn't quite up. In that case, it will let you 'tread water' on sanity for a short bit. You'll still have to kill something to proc Gift most likely, but it at least gives you time.

I have, however, found the 20% movement speed food (Baked Voidfin) to be extremely helpful. While you can mount up and move through a lot of the Visions, sometimes the distance between packs is short enough that it doesn't make sense. That +20% movement speed seems to add up a lot of bits and pieces of time throughout a run and the little nudges it can make to when you reach certain points can make Gift or Orb usage timing work out better than without it.

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Theorycrafting and Class Discussion / Re: Horrific Visions

« Last post by jsoh on March 29, 2020, 07:34:48 PM »

K'Babs. Restores 100 sanity if you eat for 10s. 3m CD.

Slightly pricey on the AH, but.. you know..

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Theorycrafting and Class Discussion / Re: Horrific Visions

« Last post by Snique on March 29, 2020, 05:48:10 PM »

Sanity food?

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Theorycrafting and Class Discussion / Re: Horrific Visions

« Last post by Marco on March 29, 2020, 08:59:34 AM »

My notes on five-mask runs:

* With a rank 15 cloak, you do not need to pull quickly or do big pulls.  I never pull more than one trash pack at a time outside of the starting zone, and never pull a trash pack with an elite.  Avoiding mishaps and understanding your mistakes is more important than going fast.

* High-mask runs are generally easier solo or in a group of two.  You have more control over mob positions and burned bridges is less of a factor.  If you do go in a full group, have someone go tank and let that person pull.

* Trash packs do not drain sanity, except by making you run over burned bridges.  Their abilities go after your health, and at five masks they can kill you pretty readily.  Identify casters (especially ones with names like Tormentor or Dominator) and kill them first.  If there are multiple casters, line of sight can often be used to group them up.  You can use purification protocol to stun aberrations, particularly tentacles that will otherwise waste your time by burrowing.

* Elites are trying to drain your sanity.  Every elite has two abilities, one of which is sometimes more subtle than the other.  Pay attention as you fight them; if you have unexplained sanity loss, look them up on wowhead after the run.  For example, the elite before the valley of spirits (Orgrimmar west) has a decimator ability that sends a projectile out and then back.  If you only dodge his charge and not his decimator, you'll lose a ton of sanity with Daredevil active.

* Picking up sanity potions is a pretty big boost.  Doing some lower-mask runs where you try to get all of the chests and odd crystals will help you get familiar with where potions can be found.

* Sanity food can be a substantial boost if you need it.  Try to use it in middle areas or the starting area rather than lost areas, as you'll lose less sanity from sitting for ten seconds.  It doesn't interfere with your food buff.

* Every madness has counterplay, even if it isn't perfect.  Leadfoot is about not moving when you don't have to.  Split Personality is about moving away from walls before it procs and not fighting near walls when you can avoid it.  Molten Feet is about triggering it safely each time it procs, or standing still when you can.

* If there's an elite with an ability that can't be fully countered (like Boundless Corruption with leadfoot, or the elite in the trade district with the channeled sanity drain), try to pull it with Gift active.

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Theorycrafting and Class Discussion / Re: Horrific Visions

« Last post by jsoh on March 26, 2020, 09:41:04 AM »

There was a weak aura that was being shared around a week or two back - I highly recommend getting it.  Specifically it tracks the duration and cooldown of the gift which gives you 15 seconds of corruption immunity.

https://wago.io/14Sz-T-dm

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Theorycrafting and Class Discussion / Re: Horrific Visions

« Last post by ghoselle on March 26, 2020, 09:21:05 AM »

There was a weak aura that was being shared around a week or two back - I highly recommend getting it.  Specifically it tracks the duration and cooldown of the gift which gives you 15 seconds of corruption immunity.  Knowing when that can proc can make a big difference.  Having it off cooldown for Rexxar means that it will likely proc on one of the first 2 boars you kill and you'll be able to kill the rest without losing sanity.  I found that I was paying attention to this cooldown a lot for engaging any of the mini bosses, and that managing it made them much easier.

I managed to do Ogrimmar 5 mask as ~471 tank - I ended it with over half sanity, the get out of jail still left, and I used a sanity orb before Thrall despite being at 80% sanity.  I did get  lucky with Twilight Devastation procs (turns out as tank, they almost 1-shot the boars; so of 6 boars across 2 fights, 3 died to TD+cleave.)

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Outside Azeroth - General Chatter / Re: Finished playing...

« Last post by Marco on March 26, 2020, 09:19:36 AM »

Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair.  This is a side-scrolling platformer intended to evoke Donkey Kong Country (with some residual style elements of Banjo-Kazooie), with a side 3D exploration/puzzle game.  The bulk of the game consists of 40 smallish levels, which you can run at will just for completion, or for five collectible coins per level (typically requiring a bit of sleuthing or a mild challenge).  The difficulty of these levels varies, but can be adjusted using "tonics" to make them easier or harder in specific ways.  Checkpoints are reasonably frequent, and you are allowed to skip to the next checkpoint after enough failures.

There is also a longer and more difficult "Impossible Lair" challenge.  This level contains no checkpoints and the difficulty cannot be adjusted, but you can accumulate up to 48 points of armor (basically screwup allowances), mostly by completing the aforementioned small levels.  I tried this a few times with 45 armor and got about 35% of the way through on my best try.  It's likely that I could get through this with enough practice, but I lost motivation.

The game is visually attractive and has decent music.  There isn't normal voice acting; instead there are these stylized noises that characters make when they speak as in Banjo-Kazooie.  The general tone of the game is comical but there weren't any laugh-out-loud moments.  Overall, I found the game pretty enjoyable for the 35 hours I played it.

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Theorycrafting and Class Discussion / Re: Horrific Visions

« Last post by Marco on March 26, 2020, 08:22:55 AM »

The Drag boss has a tree stump next to his encounter area, which blocks void torrent.  Melee can run around it during the cast; it makes the fight take a while, but with minimal sanity loss.  Weirdly, it does not block player line of sight, so casters can continue DPSing during the cast, and pet classes can just set up opposite the tree stump from their pets and do the whole fight standing still.

On Umbric (back in Stormwind), toys no longer seem to stop his ice storm after he teleports, but class abilities like totems still seem to work.

I've started running Purification Protocol on every character who runs visions, since stunning aberrations can effectively neutralize a lot of mob packs.  On Rexxar it's good for stunning his boars, particularly when he summons two at once.  Some people prefer Reaping Flame for its ability to delete mobs (particularly casters who can stun or fear you), but I find that avoiding the 45s cooldown is an extra thing I prefer not to have to think about.

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Outside Azeroth - General Chatter / Re: Discount deals on games

« Last post by Marco on March 23, 2020, 11:21:05 AM »

Watch Dogs and The Stanley Parable are free on the epic store until March 26.

Watch Dogs was a major release, although I remember people being disappointed in it.  The Stanley Parable got rave reviews but is more of a concept game.  (Fittingly, I can't figure out if I have played The Stanley Parable or not.  I definitely played an partial version of it that was available for free years ago.  Steam says I own it but haven't played it.)

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Outside Azeroth - General Chatter / Re: Hearthstone (and battlenet desktop)

« Last post by Snique on March 23, 2020, 07:38:34 AM »

Lots more interesting info in the Q&A, summary here: https://www.hearthpwn.com/news/7314-ashes-of-outland-community-q-a-demon-hunter-card

From a game design perspective, they clarify that they felt both Acolyte and Spellbreaker were too powerful for neutral cards and they look mostly to neutrals for Hall of Fame rotation. That's interesting and I can see that philosophy. Edwin is still a potential HoF candidate but they feel like the current year's cards happened to synergize well with it (many cheap cards) and that might not be true in future years.

It looks like Priest is going to focus this time on Nether Dragons but that likely means it'll be weak until at least one more set is revealed.

Some subset of the new class Demon Hunter will become basic once this year is over; some of its cards will rotate out.

All PvE content this year will be free.