I don't need much in life to be happy. Tits, junk food and a stable internet connection pretty much cover all my personal essentials. However, even the world's fastest broadband connection becomes relatively useless when your computer refuses to work.
What a fucking horrible four weeks I've had! It all began with one crash whilst playing Final Fantasy XIV. Black screen, sound loop, the whole thing just died. Never happened before. But after that one incident, I'd crash every single day, without fail. Sometimes right at the Windows logon screen, sometimes after two hours of gaming, but there hasn't been a day without these crashes. Half of the time my computer wouldn't even boot up anymore for hours!
I don't wanna get into the whole shitload of technical mumbo jumbo, but let's just say I've taken the whole thing apart, down to the very last screw, dusted off every last bit with a brush (!), updated every driver, my fucking BIOS, absolutely everything. Found out some crazy shit in the process, as well: My PC refuses to boot up with ATI cards, probably because it's using an Nvidia chipset on an Nvidia-branded board, Claire's PSU can't even power my Nvidia card, because only one of her six-pin power connector thingies is functional, Zotac rip people off by showing images of copper heat sinks on graphics cards, which use cheap aluminium components instead and temperature readings don't mean shit.
Having ruled out faulty memory and having no possibility to quickly replace my PSU and graphics card, I went with the cheapest option: Thermal paste. Under heavy workload, my CPU cores would reach the mid to high fifties. Nothing alarming, but the readings could have been lower, so I put some of that sticky white stuff on there. And the crashes persisted. My GPU, well... MSI Afterburner would read something around 60-65°C when I crashed out and these temperatures aren't even remotely critical. But hey, nothing to lose, right? So I've unscrewed the whole thing, took off the plastic casing and found two grey, tiny booger-shaped objects on my GPU, which must have been thermal paste in ages long forgotten.
Well, to cut the crap... after putting some fresh 20 Pence thermal paste on there, the crashes just stopped and never occured again. I already had my finger on the order button for a new current-gen graphics card! Ironically, MSI Afterburner still reads temperatures of 60-70 degrees when I run games. So according to these readings, nothing has really changed in the temperature department. But there hasn't been another crash all week long, so it has clearly solved my problem. The last time a bit of sticky white goo had such a surprising effect, I ended up getting somebody pregnant.
Oh well. Now I can finally look forward to Guild Wars 2, a least from a hardware point of view. My computer is ready now, recent stress tests have been fine on my end, but I'm faced with a whole new dilemma: I might not choose to be a warrior after all! *queue dramatic pause*
I don't pick my class by what the general public believes to be "most OP". That's something you see on every god damn forum for every god damn game today: Some asshole asking, "What's the most powerful class?" They don't wanna play what's fun or what suits their play style or personality or personal taste, they just wanna play what the cattle thinks is stronger than the rest. God, how much I hate stupid shit like that! You DON'T ask that kinda crap! You don't even ask which class is most fun to play! If you're too fucking stupid to make a decision without random strangers on the internet telling you what to do, then you shouldn't be alive!
Ahem, anyway. You know me. I don't do subtle. I'm in your face, balls out, act first, worry about consequences later. Yeah, sorry about that image. :P My point is - I wouldn't enjoy playing anything casty or sneaky or shooty, because it isn't really my style. I don't solve my problems by sneaking up on them and stabbing them in the back - I roar at them and scare them into submission, then hack them to bits. And in most online games that translates to one thing: Warrior.
And the warrior on Guild Wars is alright. Heck, in many regards he's simply better than any other warrior on any other MMO. As a warrior, I get a bigger health pool than any other class. You know, kinda like WoW before they decided to give identical stamina ratings to EVERYONE, including the fucking mages. As a warrior, I get the best armor. Like WoW before they came up with shit like 50% leather armor bonus talents, mage armor and all that other shit, which completely defeats the purpose of multiple armor types. Best of all, this class actually still deserves its name, knowing how to use just about every fucking weapon there is! If some asshole is running away from me, I can grab a fucking gun and do some god damn damage with it! I absolutely HATED that on WoW! First they made ranged attacks completely useless for virtually anything other than ranged pulls, then they scrapped them altogether with Pandaria and gave me some dumbass throwing attacks, instead. Good job, Blizzard!
On GW2, my ranged attacks are in every way as powerful as my melee hits. I beat the snot out of some stupid thief and when he runs off, I just nuke him with my gun. Some dumbass mage kiting me around a fucking pillar for two hours straight? Not in this game, bitch! And in large-scale pvp I'm no longer forced to jump right into 50 enemy players and get killed in half second, because I can actually attack from a safe distance, just like the fucking mages, hunters and what have you! Yay!
But what sounds great on paper, isn't very fun to me in the actual game. First of all, my gun is so incredibly powerful, it completely defeats the purpose of using melee at all. Sure, there's gonna be some sophisticated battle strategies, especially in pvp, where one may be well-advised to switch from a gun to a blade, but 90% of the time the gun is your best bet. Think about it: Sit back, shoot the crap out of a baddie and watch him die before he gets anywhere near you or jump the baddie, take damage as you fight him and end up getting attacked by his friends. Why would I want to hit a guy in close combat and lose health when I can do the exact same amount of damage with a gun, yet take absolutely no damage in return?
My other gripe with the warrior is how dual-wielding swords is absolutely lame. I prefer swords to maces and axes and I prefer dual-wielding to two-handers, but my weird adrenaline-fuelled flurry charge attack thingie aside, sword skills simply aren't fun. I get harmstring. Really? I can just shoot a guy if he runs off, I can unlock perks that make me run faster than anybody else when I use melee weapons, I get a charge attack... when I only have five attack hotkeys, then I don't want one of them to be fucking harmstring! Then I get a ranged attack with a bleed DoT. Did I mention I can use a fucking GUN? Why do I need a ranged attack for my sword? A warrior can be specced to cause bleed stacks with just about every fucking ability there is, so why do I need a ranged attack, which does exactly that? It makes no sense! And then there's Riposte. You know, stand still for five seconds, anticipate a melee attack and retaliate it. Stylish. So how does that help me against mages, rangers, anyone not stupid enough to frontally attack a fucking warrior in melee?
Sometime during the last stress test, I rolled a guardian. Basically, to "not get all hooked on my stress test warrior, only to lose him at launch". He doesn't get to dual-wield, so I wasn't interested in him as a main character. But... well, then I found this two-handed sword, which was the size of a medium airplane. And on top of the twohander I get a magical aegis. You know, some cool, glowy shield made of magical energy or some crap that will block attacks even while I'm two-handing it?
My first impulse was to say, "But he's a tank!" As in, tough cookie who can dish out absolutely no damage. But there's no holy trinity in GW2, no dedicated healers, damage dealers or tanks. The damage I cranked out with this guy was in every way as impressive as my warrior's. The main difference being that all my skills were actually fun to use! I get to whirl around with my sword and hit everything around me, even at a distance. I get to range-snare a guy with one of my attacks and, if I use the same attack again within ten seconds, pull the poor sucker towards me, much like a Death Knight on WoW. I get to teleport to my enemy to set him and everyone around him on fire. I get to summon ethereal weapons, which function like invulnerable battle pets and aid me in combat. Why the FUCK would I want to be a warrior?
Right now I'm only seeing one potential issue with this class, which I'm going to look into during tonight's stress test: I don't get to use any actual ranged weapons. I have a bunch of awesome gap-closers, which should theoretically be enough to fight rangers and casters in pvp, but any warrior fighting a frost mage on WoW will know that three or four gap closers mean absolutely nothing when game designers use "rock-paper-scissors" as an excuse for lousy balancing. Even if pvp feels fun against single enemies and there won't be any 40+ minutes kite-around-the-fucking-pillar scenarios, I'm not sure a guardian would be all that useful in a large-scale battle. When virtually every other class around me can use ranged attacks and I'm almost purely melee-based, then I'll be doomed to watch people shoot each other whilst waiting for an opportunity to swing my sword without drawing focus fire from 50 people.
Seeing as there is no actual endgame and the real meat and bones in GW2 is pvp, I want to be absolutely sure that my class won't just frustrate the crap out of me in that particular regard. So tonight I'm gonna set up a guardian for pvp. Maybe I'm paranoid for no reason, which will set my decision in stone. But if I'm not enjoying this guy in pvp, then... hoo boy! Ranger? I'd miss the heavy armor and I will always prefer melee over ranged attacks, but they get the cool pets and all.
Speaking of cool pets - look at him!
I can't wait for him to move in with us. Though I'd best be prepared to move him back to the shop whenever the landlord pays us a visit. They've been cool with snakes, cats and bearded dragons so far, but I'm not sure he's gonna enjoy a massive monitor chilling out in our living room. Gonna be fun having two hungry cats and one huge-ass lizard sitting in the kitchen and waiting for breakfast every morning, though.
Regarding names - how about Barry? Barry the bosc? That's also the name of the fat kid on American Dad. Good morning, USA!
-Cat
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