BellaStrega

... a single shot from a sapper on a /DA scrapper is noticeable?

... and cloak of darkness?

How is this a problem?

What does mating have to do with what she said?

I'd put /DA one notch higher too, because of Oppressive Gloom or Cloak of Fear.

I had a mostly easy time with sappers before they added end drain resistance, and they're a complete joke now.

Invuln has a rougher time, with a much lower resistance - but invincibility, if it's saturated, can help. Still, you probably shouldn't be spending time rounding up mobs when you could just two shot the sapper asap.

Er, that's what I just said. It's just separating bludgeoning damage out from slashing and piercing damage, that's all.

I feel your pain. Too many fights were on a razor's edge of "get it right or die" at launch. They got the Wrath heroics better right off the bat.

And the new difficulty options in CoH are pretty nice. Way more flexible than ever before.

No, it's a fallacy to argue that since it's been done that way for centuries, it's the right way to do it.

Maybe, but you're not exactly telepathic, are you? Perhaps you're reading too much into what you're responding to.

Like the above paragraph, where you said that she was acting like he was the only person to ever do that. She wasn't acting that way at all. She protested his usage, but I somehow doubt that it was his usage that made her disagree with that particular kind of usage. Was it necessary to bring it up in this thread? Probably not. In a conversation actually focused on that topic, I'd say that both "she was acting like he was the only person to do that" and "reading too much into what you're responding to" are both ways to derail* a discussion. Since this is a derail of a derail, it's not so important.

* Actually, so is "Then go do important work and stop talking about this."

To be fair, the "If you care about civil rights, then stop doing whatever it is you're doing right now and go be an activist" argument is kind of ridiculous. Not that I neg repped you for that.

Also, I've had that one used on me in forums centered around activism. WTH. I just know I don't take it as a comment in good faith ever at this point.

I didn't say there was - I don't think it's really much of a problem going the other way. It is nice when your holiday gets acknowledged, but at the same time a lot of people celebrate Christmas. I've only heard complaints about happy holidays and the so-called war on Christmas from people who celebrate Christmas.

But I don't think Sam was actually coming from that direction, even though he referenced it.

Yeah, this is what I do.

No, I'm saying that getting offended over "happy holidays" is stupid, because there is no such thing as a war on Christmas. I find it simply impossible to believe that "happy holidays" is hurtful or insensitive, not in the same way as using insulting gendered or racial language. "Happy holidays" has been a fine usage for a very long time until someone got their nose out of joint because it was being used in place of "Merry Christmas" at some stores, and it's not even remotely plausible that any of those stores were trying to stamp out Christmas.

Also, Sam and I took that conversation private and we're all good.

This is kind of silly. While it's good to work against inequality (activism, etc), it's inane to assume that just because someone is on a gaming forum right now that they never do anything. It's also inane to expect anyone who has strong feelings about inequality to devote themselves 24/7 to fighting that inequality.

Also, appealing to the fact that something's been done a certain way for a long time is a fallacy, since the problem is that it's been done badly for a long time.

If it's on, it's just a forum game. If it's off, it's still a way for people to leave unattributed remarks on your control panel.

Some people:

Not everyone played those instances on normal (at least in Wrath). They were not well-designed in TBC, since you needed revered reputation and - yes - the mobs were unbalanced, and the drop tables were mostly the same as the non-heroic versions. They corrected this to some extent by reducing rep requirements to honored (which made elitist players cry), but the heroic/normal design was further improved in Wrath, with no rep requirements to get in and completely separate drop tables. And yes, it does sell the same instance twice, but so what? I mean, we're talking on a forum for a game where people would run the same task force and still do run the same maps over and over again to farm. If there's a way to make the content last longer, use it.

And "unbalanced beyond belief" is a huge exaggeration. You should try that on someone who hasn't done heroics in both expansions and is probably predisposed to hate WoW anyway.

They're not saying baseball bats aren't lethal, but lethal damage in this game is slashing and piercing-type damage, and crushing damage is more like baseball bats, punches, and maces.

Yeah, I agree with this. It apparently hurts some people in their souls to see it aired, though. Most of my recent neg rep comments were about airing neg rep.

I only think one crossed the line, though. The others are just, you know, fighting the powah or something.

Both you and Arcana have good points.

I don't think there is or should be any guarantee that stupid comments won't get aired, although some are just too stupid to even acknowledge...and some are either fair, or a matter of disagreement. For people who think I'm running around posting about every single neg rep I receive - I'm not. It depends entirely on the content.

It's not unnatural and forced, certainly not moreso than using masculine pronouns to refer to men and women. I find it unnatural and forced to refer to women as "he" or "him." At best it's unfamiliar usage.

"If he were a woman." Talk about cumbersome and unnatural.

And I didn't say that every word you utter has to be mindful of everyone else's sensitivities, but when you deliberately choose to not give a rat's *** about any particular person's (or a group of people's) sensitivities, it does kinda send a message, you know?

Also, how your statement comes off "to you" is not how it comes off "to everyone."

Hahaha. "War on Christmas". Epic bull ****. It doesn't exist, and there's not a damned thing wrong with saying "Happy Holidays" if you're not oversensitive and defensive about your cultural preferences not being central to everyone.

This is not without controversy, largely due to the assumption that masculine is the default for person. "He", "him", and "his" are never gender neutral, even when they're used as gender neutral pronouns. There's a reason many businesses and style guides have shifted to other, less androcentric pronoun usage - and "they/their/theirs" is not universally considered grammatically incorrect.

I think it's appropriate to point out that your use of language excludes women. You can justify it, but I'll just point out that masculine pronouns were defined as gender neutral in a time period that was pretty thoroughly sexist, and linguistically excluding women was simply one of the milder ways that exclusion occurred. There's no reason to continue reinforcing that exclusion.

Well, I do think that WoW has been upgraded quite a bit more than CoH, and I think Cataclysm is a much deeper overhaul than we'll see with Going Rogue.

I believe this requires going through the front and middle ranks, and since you have to go through them, might as well kill on the way.

True, I didn't try to say it was a completely new game.

I know that they added new graphics capabilities in the two expansions - in the first one, I could turn all my settings to the new maximum and still play. I don't know how the second one may have changed because I got a new computer shortly before Wrath.

I also know that CoH's minimum requirements changed at CoV launch, and possibly a second time.

Yes, this is also true.


WoW's not an anomaly. Blizzard's games have typically been exceedingly popular. An anomaly in the sense of outdistancing every other MMO? Yeah, I'll grant that, but WoW's popularity was not a surprise:

Common sense has no objective standing. It's like art, in the eye of the beholder. My niece makes claims about common sense that are clearly assertions that we should all be telepathic and clairvoyant, and possibly precognitive, when someone does something that makes her mad. I've seen people claim that common sense means that experiences I've had in real life with real people could not have possibly happened. And I don't mean supernatural stuff, I mean just everyday stuff.

No, not really. I just suck at resisting the impulse to write responses.

True that.

Haha. Yeah, all good points.