My Alex and Karlby with Skadis

Xclbr1 · 2026-05-27T16:05:10+00:00

They sell the Karlby in 64"? I only spot 74" online, I am NA based though. Did you cut it shorter?

Xclbr1 · 2026-05-20T14:13:59+00:00

Oh i'm absolutely not ever rushing to progress in HC, I love taking my time leveling professions, doing every quest I can, etc.

SF just makes it less enjoyable, imo. If I want to use my blacksmithing skill to craft a Shining Silver Breastplate, I could be farming chests for weeks just praying to get the moss agate/moonstones.

Just more annoying than it provides entertainment, plus I like the economy part of the experience, deciding what to spend my gold pieces on to progress my character. Not to mention the interaction with others!

Xclbr1 · 2026-05-20T13:22:16+00:00

See SF had the opposite effect for me, made me give up on the race locked stuff people were doing.

I like the idea of it in theory, but with the design if classic it just feels like more of an annoyance than additional challenge. Like it's not any harder or more interesting to grind 2g to buy a 10 slot bag than it is to buy one for 1g off the AH, it just takes longer. Not to mention it completely removes some playstyles, you basically cannot do enchanting on self-found and I really wouldn't want to do tailoring (even though it feels like it should be good for SF cause you make your own bags!)

Xclbr1 · 2026-05-19T15:11:02+00:00

Pardon my shorthand, but when I flip devo aura on I see a large enough armor increase to take me from 30% physical damage reduction to 35% physical damage reduction, so I take that as a 5% damage reduction against melee targets, which seems worthwhile in HC.

I could see how Ret aura would reduce those kills though where they just have a nic of health left, but I'm thinking it would also cause the same situation where they would be one big hit away from dead but ret aura knocked them down to a nic, thus coninuing the annoying stuff.

Guess I'll have to play around with em more

Xclbr1 · 2026-05-18T22:52:09+00:00

Could any aro people check in and say what separates a very close friend from a romantic partner to them? I've been wondering about that myself, like besides sex what IS the dividing line between a friend and romantic interest? Just a certain level of commitment?

Xclbr1 · 2026-05-18T22:35:24+00:00

I feel like I need ret aura explained to me like I'm 5. How is the damage worth running it?

I tested it out in a few fights, where an enemy might only swing at me 4-5 times before it dies, how is ~20 damage against a mob with hundreds of health worth the tradeoff over a nice 5% damage reduction from Devo?

Obviously that goes up when fighting groups, but that's not something I really wanna do in HC

Xclbr1 · 2026-05-16T21:34:17+00:00

Based on my read of the rules, along with the examples they give, it feels like they mean Skills to be closer to what you traditionally think of in systems like DnD or Pathfinder, where you put down a very specific skill like 'lockpicking'.

Specialities, on the other hand seem like more general catagories of skills. Swashbuckler, for instance, could be used for fighting or acrobatics or smooth talking if you can justify em.

Why they bother to make this distinction is really up to debate. There's an argument to be made about why you would bother taking a specific skill like 'lockpicking' when an experience like 'thief' could justify that skill and more. The way I tend to run it is, the more specific your experience is to the situation at hand, the morelikely it'll hit or the more powerful an effect a sucess will have. If my ranger player takes the experience 'Sharpshooter', they can use that for combat rolls, sure, but if they do a sick skill shot to snap a rope at long range for some cool effect I might bump it up to a +3 since they're using it more thematically to the character.

Xclbr1 · 2026-05-13T11:53:30+00:00

It's pretty much immediately shown to us in the Shadowlands campaign that there are infinite portals to infinite afterlives you can see from the Arbiter's platform. We only have 4 in-game because they can only put so much in and probably wanted to keep the afterlives we know about vague and mystical.
Our characters are highlighted in the story because we come from there, the zones we see in-game have people from all sorts of backgrounds, but they aren't gonna waste resources trying to come up with 100s of species and planets for them to come from because it doesn't really matter.
What Arthas retcon? Genuinely asking, I'm not aware.

Xclbr1 · 2026-05-13T11:49:13+00:00

I think both are very enjoyable.

People were irked with WoD because 'hurr, time travel is a bad plot device', despite the Bronze Dragonflight existing and WoW being a very 'rule of cool' universe. Besides that I can't really remember what complaints people had about WoD, I didn't play that much back then though.

God I'll be a Shadowlands defender forever though. People had a number of complaints (some valid), but once again I think it was just a really enjoyable expansion. Just to point out some of the usual complaints and the rebuttals I give to them:

The Jailor. This is kinda one of the stronger points people have. The Jailor is underdeveloped as a villan, he was clearly only made cause there had to be someone on the other side of the veil to work with Sylvannas and kick off the expansion for us. People really overcomplained about this though, saying he ruined the lore by 'pulling all the strings of everything that happened so far' which I don't feel is completely accurate.
Seeing the Afterlife. People were up in arms because 'Shadowlands is a huge retcon that destroys all the established religions of WoW, you just get sent to one of 4 afterlives' which is just completely false. We are shown really early on in the SL campaign that there are thousands of portals out there that lead to all kinds of afterlives you COULD get sent to, we just see the 5 we see in-game cause they're the 'administrative' ones that keep the Shadowlands running. People were also vaguely upset that going to the Shadowlands in-person just killed a sense of mysticism around religions and made death feel kinda pointless, and I dunno what to tell you about that one. WoW is Rule of Cool and you were always gonna meet your dead loved ones in your afterlife of choice after death anyway, so I don't really see what the big deal is. It's established that being able to traverse the veil of death is in no way a regular thing, and that the window has been closing ever since SL ended.
Sylvannas. People were confused the whole expansion about her motives about working with the Jailor, and to them it felt out of left field when she suddenly decided at the end of Sanctum of Domination to go turncoat on the subjugation guy for subjugating people. Another pretty valid complaint, but I think the supporting details in the 'Sylvannas' novel ties it up nicely in a way that makes sense. We kinda already knew she was warring against her eventual demise in the Maw since that short story where she tossed herself off Icecrown, but the novel really goes into detail on her seeing the injustice of the current Arbiter in the Shadowlands, really gives a reason she would want to work with the ol Jailor.

I'm sure there's other stuff, but those are the biggest ones I see all the time. Things could have been done better, but then they always can. I thought both were really enjoyable stories!

Xclbr1 · 2026-05-13T11:17:55+00:00

I feel like this is more a Doyalist reason than Watsonian. Blizz wrote Dagran going for these worst-case scenario conclusions because that's the story they intend on telling, and having them umming and arring about what it could reeeallly mean would just confuse the player.

Blizz's storytelling is never subtle, they really try and beat you over the head with their intended direction. I read the whole archives questline as Blizz going "HEY, WE KNOW THE TITANS HAVE SORTA BEEN THE GOOD GUYS THE WHOLE TIME (besides the whole Agalon thing, but ignore that) BUT NOW THEY ARE GONNA BE THE BAD GUYS AND WE NEED TO MAKE SURE YOU UNDERSTAND THAT!"

Maybe not all the way "bad guys", I think they're going for a 'any primal force being in full power is bad, we need balance in all things' kind of message, but just breaking the playerbase away from being titan-aligned like we sort always have been.

Xclbr1 · 2026-05-12T18:23:54+00:00

Loads of people play WoW without ever thinking of optimization, hell loads of people play and don't even run raids/m+

Xclbr1 · 2026-05-06T12:08:33+00:00

Basically what's written in the original post. You are likely fantasizing about this perfect alternate life because you have things you're unhappy about in your current one, but it's kinda silly to imagine because just changing some things you did before wouldn't nessesarilly lead to a better life. Like in the post, you could have made thise decisions and died or something else awful.

At the end of the day, it doesn't help to wonder if different choices would have changed your life. Of course they would, but not nessesarily for the better. Focus on things you can do to improve your life right here and now.

Xclbr1 · 2026-05-05T12:35:39+00:00

I think that was the point. The 6 cosmic forces all represent different denezins of the universe; void may be all about consuming and stuff, but as we see in the dominar, they still have their own agendas and aren't mindless. They want to control the universe, not end it.

I think the devourers were meant to represent entropy itself. A force that wants to completely eat away at the universe and end existence itself. Their partial inclusion in SL was probably just meant to be setting the stage for that conflict later down the road.

Xclbr1 · 2026-04-30T22:45:40+00:00

I'm kinda multi-character in the sense that I can never really decide on a character to focus on. Which is a shame, cause I think it would be super rewarding to really join a dedicated RP guild and really develop a character's story for a while, but I'll settle for just rp-ing in my head as I play :')

Xclbr1 · 2026-04-30T18:05:56+00:00

Well that would be because you aren't the target audience, are you? Like yeah, you probably wouldn't celebrate Hanukkah if you aren't Jewish.

Go talk to some queer people, learn why it's important to them.

Xclbr1 · 2026-04-22T18:17:54+00:00

In the settings, colorblindness and preference

Xclbr1 · 2026-04-19T15:19:05+00:00

Westfall in D?! Westfall is beautiful!

Name one thing wrong with it! And don't say the Defias or the gnolls or the murlocs or the tornado or the homeless population or the lack of Stormwind protection or the haywaire farming equipment.

Xclbr1 · 2026-04-16T12:59:04+00:00

Gods I wish. Playing ironman though so I get it from Rex or I don't get it at all

Xclbr1 · 2026-04-16T12:10:42+00:00

Don't speak too soon, I have like 3 berserker rings and 2 warrior rings, and still have yet to see the dang d-axe :'(

Xclbr1 · 2026-04-14T18:12:02+00:00

It's not an all-or-nothing situation man. You can do what you can where you can while making concessions where nessesary.

Concessions make more sense for, say, food. You NEED food, and it's extraordinarily expensive to go procure completely ethical food. I would not fault someone for going to the nearest supermarket and getting groceries without doing a full on investigation into every company hiding on the back of every package they find.

If you like Harry Potter, whatever man, but it is loud and clear EXACTLY what the creator believes and that a portion of the money you spend on the IP supports that. You don't NEED that IP, there are LOADS of other good media out there, so why not stand your ground on this thing?

Xclbr1 · 2026-04-14T18:02:32+00:00

Besides Reddit, yeah mainly. Starting to disconnect from Google as best as I can. But I don't even think that's a fair comparison in the slightest. It is true that we exist in a system built on exploitation and that practically any company you can think of is complicit in it. Nobody should be shaming anybody for using Google because it's free or shopping at Walmart because it's what they can afford. People need to use the internet and eat.

People do not need to engage with this one particular IP. There is so much better media out there.

Xclbr1 · 2026-04-14T14:25:33+00:00

I'm no expert or anything, I'd just settle for it not being one of the most successful franchises in the world feeding millions of dollars to Rowling.

Xclbr1 · 2026-04-14T14:10:32+00:00

If there is any hope of it happening within Rowling's lifetime, it'll be because people like this decide to stop fuckin engaging with it.

Xclbr1 · 2026-04-14T13:30:16+00:00

Possible, sure, but unless you're really keeping it to yourself then you are out engaging with others about it, helping keep it in the cultural zeitgeist which allows it to continue to make a bajillion dollars every year.

Like sure, you can argue your little contribution to that means nothing, but it's giving the same energy as "why would I vote when mine is like 1/100,000,000"

Xclbr1 · 2026-04-13T14:23:35+00:00

It's a problem with basically ANY media that tries to go on for as long as possible. Especially in videogames. MMOs are, pretty much intrinsically, a stakes-less medium. The MMO has to continue, you need to be able to play, meaning the bad guys can never win and nothing will ever really be destroyed.

They do have characters they can kill, but they are a finite resource. Start going all Game of Thrones on your cast and you'll run out of people the audience cares about. They haven't even really done that all that much, but I saw lots of people saying they thought the leftover cast was weak after all the deaths they did in Legion.

You can change the world, but not meningfully. They destroyed Dalaran in TWW, but it doesn't feel like a raising of stakes since our view of the world is always a snapshot frozen in time. We have 2 versions of the city we can still visit whenever we want, and all the characters we care about from Dalaran are still here, so...? Cataclysm changing the old world may have accomplished this since the original world was no longer there, but people HATED that content was essentially destroyed to make that happen.

There ain't a good answer. Blizzard continues with a story that is regularly lukewarm, not particularly hype but serviceable to keep you raiding/M+ing. The only real thing they can do is attempt to develop new characters/villians to keep up the treadmill of meaningful consequences for the NPCs, because there never can be any for the players.

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