PC Review: Origin eon-15s

Here's something a little different for you all.

Recently I've been talking about games all this time, but really I feel that it's important to cover the gear that runs them so let's get right to it.

Note: As of my writing this Origin has released a new model of eon-15s. That being said the difference between the new laptop and my current build is almost nothing. The difference between gtx 580m and gtx 675m is actually nonexistent. In fact the 675m is actually the same board as the 580m just running at a 1-3% higher clock speed. So regardless of the numbers this review still pertains to the newer model eon-15s almost entirely.

About 2 months ago my laptop (alienware) of 4 years decided to fry itself into oblivion. It had been a good computer but was definitely starting to show signs of aging. Add on the fact that it was still ruining DirectX 9 in all reality it probably was time for an upgrade, I just needed the right excuse. I had been doing some research here and there till that point, as I knew that my computer would bite the dust relatively soon, and to my dismay nearly every major computer manufacture was peddling what I'd like to call total crap.

If we're looking at just the PC market everything had outdated videocards, small displays, and puny processors. Sure you could get a 750gb HDD, or some form of a SSD, but for my actual work I'm a product designer, so not only do I need something with a quality, high resolution, screen I also need a processor that can render video files with ease and chug through extremely complex computer models without flinching. Those factors alone almost require an ultra high end gaming computer. The final nail in the coffin to mortal PC's is it has to be portable. I do a fair amount of freelance work, so I need something I can just toss into a backpack and go, which means anything larger than 15" is out of the question.

I would love to get a Mac, and as a designer I feel like sometimes it's my obligation to do so, but in this case the Mac just wasn't going to cut it. Most of the programs I run (Guild Wars 2 :D) can only be run on a Windows OS and I wasn't about to go and shell out an extra $300 above the already premium Mac price to install Windows, so I had to look elsewhere.

The list essentially got broken down to boutique premium laptop companies: Origin, IbuyPower, and Falcon Northwest. IbuyPower didn't have the options I wanted, and while Falcon Northwest was essentially identical to Origin I wasn't about to go and pay an extra $800 for some candy paint. The reasons I went this way can be broken down in a simple list:

15" 1920x1080 screen
Full Keyboard (with number pad!)
USB 3.0
i7-2760QM (2.4GHz)
Nvidia GTX 580m
16GB Ram

Does the laptop work? Hell yes it does! The 1920x1080 screen is spectacular, though I've found that in a 15" size I have to set the default web browser zoom to 125% so I'm not squinting to read the text. This is not a bad problem to have. The first thing I noticed with I booted up the laptop was how spectacularly crisp everything is. It's amazing. And having a gtx 580m running in the background means that you can actually play all your fancy games at this high of a resolution and not have to turn down any of the settings.

Starcraft 2 on Ultra? Check

Borderlands totally maxed? Check

Diablo 3 totally maxed? Check

Guild Wars 2 totally maxed? Check (note: GW2 is currently processor locked, so that's actually more of a sign to how good the i7 processor is, but also means that the speeds in GW2 will only get better over time. awesome!)

Even at these settings I'm still getting 40-60 fps in most cases. Could I get higher FPS if I dropped the settings a little? Yes. But there's a certain satisfaction of running a game with everything maxed out that you just can't pass up. Up until this point I had only ever been ruining Starcraft 2 poorly on Medium, it's like I've been living in a cave for the last 4 years and someone finally turned the lights on. I'm never going back.

On more of a physical side, the chiclet keyboard is super nice. It has great tactility to the typing and definitely responds to even my most feverish Starcraft AMPs. (Did I mention if it wasn't for the fact that I work for a living I would probably be a Masters level Zerg?) I would, however, normally use a standard keyboard for gaming, but sometimes you just don't have that option and this one works out great when that's the case. I only have 2 complaints, firstly is the proximity of the F-keys to 'escape.' Given that it's a 15" laptop the board is pretty crammed together and that proximity can make for some annoying accidental key presses if you're not being careful. Secondly is that some genius who designed this board put the SLEEP function key DIRECTLY BETWEEN MUTE AND VOLUME DOWN. Not paying attention when you want to mute an annoying youtube ad? Computer goes to sleep mode. God that's annoying.

All in all it's a great computer. If you're ok parting with over $2k of your hard earned savings you definitely won't be disappointed. You just have to know that the build time can take in the upwards of a month, so even with rush delivery it will take forever to get to you.

Finally here's some short gameplay videos I put together to give you an idea of how it generally plays. Even with the FPS hit from xfire both games were still running above 40fps. Totally Stoked.

Borderlands

Starcraft 2

GW2 Building a Mesmer pt.3

Now that you have a good idea of the history of Mesmers, and how Mesmers fit into GW2. It's time to get more analytic around here and go into the gritty details of traits, and builds, and stats. This will most definitely be the longest post of the ones to date, but I promise if you read through it the information will be well worth your trouble.

(Note: I realize it's probably worth mentioning that until Guild Wars 2 actually releases the trait lines will most likely change, so take this information with a grain of salt. Depending on when you're reading this it may or may not be completely accurate to the current state of the game. Because of this I'm going to try and be as general as I can with the builds and trait suggestions. That way if the trait lines change during the course of later Beta Weekend Events, and the eventual Release sometime in 2012, at least some of this information will still be pertinent.)

Starting out, and leveling


I'm a firm believer that when leveling up in PvE you should always put your first five points into the Chaos trait line. Metaphysical Regeneration is simply spectacular for starting out leveling. The regeneration this gives you means that you can run through larger mobs, and even higher level mobs, without having to worry about your health as much. Furthermore, you have the freedom to be a little more careless with the encounters you engage in. If you take an extra hit that puts your health below 75% the regen can almost completely negate the damage you just took.

After those first five points the rest of your point allocation has a lot to do with how you plan to flush out your character. Keep in mind though that until you get to level 40 you'll be limited to 10 points in any one trait line, so at the earlier levels it can be fun to diversify a little (you're somewhat forced to, actually) and find out what some of the trait lines you hadn't been considering have to offer. Once you unlock the major traits at 10 points you are free to change them whenever you're not in combat. Go ahead, experiment around, use all the major traits and find out which ones work best for you. It doesn't cost you anything. One person may really enjoy the traits that give them bonuses for interrupting foes, but if you find that interrupts are a little challenging for you then maybe it would be a better idea to go for some of the passive abilities. A 30% bonus to your Mind Wrack damage can definitely finish off mobs quickly with a well timed spike.

With all that being said though, here's some basic builds I've put together that should serve as a good starting point for pretty much anyone who wants to give Mesmers a try. I feel that there's enough utility and variety here to cover pretty much everything, but if you've got a great build idea that isn't covered here feel free to let me know. I'm always open for ideas and suggestions.

So without further ado, let's get right to it.

The Melee Mesmer
30/30/0/0/10
Primary Stats: Power, Precision
Weapons: Sword + Torch // Greatsword

Many of you have read my previous post about the Melee Mesmer so this may be more of a refresher, but for the sake of completeness I figure it merits including so everything can be together in one place.

Initially I had thought up this as a PvP build. The rational was that the Mesmer has enough survivability and escape options that if you used good tactics it would potentially be possible to stand toe to toe with any class. Furthermore, the ability to use dodge as a method for Illusion generation meant that you could free up some utility slots for escape skills. I still have to do some testing with some of the more specific aspects, especially whether or not the stealth at 25% trait will allow you to survive one of the many "one shot warriors" running around right now or not. The questions is that if a warrior slaps you for a 17k crit, or a serious hundred blades hit, would the stealth override it and negate the damage that goes past 25% of your health? Or would you straight up die? I feel it's worth some looking into, because if you can survive their initial hit then I feel the Mesmer has a distinct chance of taking a warrior on straight up. Though it definitely wouldn't be all that easy and you'd have to be a boss at utilizing Distortion at the right times. It's possible, that in the current meta game a warrior would probably be the hardest 1v1 match up right now (probably for anyone actually).

At any rate, when I thought up this idea I was mainly doing PvE content with my guild I figured I'd branch out a little and see if maybe I could get a Melee idea to work in PvE. And it did. Since most mobs don't have the capacity to one shot you, apart from some bosses, you don't need to slot in as much survivability and can instead focus on increasing your damage output, though having a high vitality and toughness is definitely a good idea. Other things that change in PvE is that you no longer need to focus heavily on traits that drop conditions, or increase mobility since mobs generally don't kite you much. The one issue with this build is that given the prominence of ranged classes right now in GW2 it can be tough getting a hit in before everything dies, which can potentially limit your 'contribution value' for dynamic events. Once ArenaNet fixes Illusionary Leap, and the subsequent swap skill, I don't think that will be as much of an issue though. If it was up to me the range could be increased as well, I feel it's a little short to act as a true gap closer and as it stands right now if I keep running at my target then by the time the Illusion has leapt I'll already be on top of the mob anyway.

Either way I've still been having fun with this build. It definitely gives the Mesmer some good straight up damage potential. It also feels like something you shouldn't be doing, which I really like.


The Condition Mesmer
10/0/30/0/30
Primary Stats: Toughness, Vitality
Weapons: Staff // Scepter + Pistol

Without question I was using a build like this for much of my leveling. Back in my WoW days I had fantasies of playing a warlock, but for whatever reason I never stuck with leveling one up much past the 50s. This build definitely feels like it fills that void. It's got some serious survivability (so much so that I could even argue that with some minor tweaking it could be great in PvP) you just have so much toughness. It can, however be rough starting out because it won't be until you get to lvl 60 where your toughness will start to contribute towards your condition damage. But after that point you get some serious damage output. It's pretty stupid actually. Though, even at low levels (~25) I've soloed champion mobs with some effective use of kiting.

Something worth pointing out is that you absolutely have to get Illusionary Elasticity. Remember the primary staff attack is actually a bounce attack, so that extra bounce means more conditions on your foes or an extra might on an ally. Also because of this if you're soloing mobs it's actually a good idea to try and stay just outside of melee range that way the bounce of your staff will bounce off of you as well and really mess some stuff up. You don't really have to worry about getting hit because with all that toughness you've been stacking you're going to have a lot of damage reduction.

As a final note I've got a plan to play around with Decent Into Madness in PvP. On paper it sounds like it could make for a lot of fun. There's enough height in the Battle of Kyhlo that you could easily take fall damage when you initiate on someone. Land on someone's face with a surprise chaos storm and then start wrecking. It might work?

The Healing Mesmer
10/0/30/30/0
Primary Stats: Healing, Vitality/Toughness
Weapons: Staff // Scepter + Focus

ArenaNet lied. There are totally healers in GW2 and I feel like there's a lot of merit to the healing Mesmer. If you're running a lot of dungeons, or dynamic events you can help out a ton of people given that there's no upper limit to how many people can currently benefit from the Phantasmal Healing, they just have to be in range.

With the right Phantasm generation skills you could essentially keep regeneration up 100% which is super awesome in fights that have constant DoT pressure such as the Lovers in Ascalon Catacombs. You just have to make sure to take Persisting Images, that way your Phantasms will actually stay alive long enough to help. I also recommend going with ranged Phantasms, they tend to do a much better job of not getting dead.

Then if you want to further go crazy with the healing you can take advantage of mantras, which are super fun by the way, as a way to actually heal your party. It takes a little bit of planning, but since the Mesmers have mantras up the wazoo you can really start going crazy with the healing. And with a mantra for a healing skill combined with being able to trait most mantras to activate twice it can get totally nuts. Heal yourself, heal your party. Interrupt the boss, heal your party. Remove your conditions, heal your party. Kill a mob, heal your party.

Talk about Synergy! I Love It! It's like being a freaking priest. A confusion generating, damage dealing, phantasmal arcane death priest. Totally Boss.

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And there you have it. Hopefully by now you'll have some ideas on how to go about playing a Mesmer, or maybe I just confused you even more. Heck there's so many options that honestly I don't even know which way I'll end up going in the end, but that's half the fun. The ability to have so much diversity in one class is simply amazing. And that's what makes GW2 worth playing. Regardless who you are there's guaranteed to be a class that fits your play style.

Have fun out in Tyria my Mesmers! From here on out Madame Valerian will be on Sorrow's Furnace. Don't be a stranger!

GW2 a Mesmer's Role pt.2

Previously I went through a small history on Mesmers and Guild Wars so in part two of this Mesmer bonanza I'm going to look at the new Mesmer and how she fits into GW2 ecosystem.

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If you're part of the 13% of the Guild Wars 2 population who's already decided that a Mesmer is the class for you then that's awesome. I'm glad you're here. But maybe you're on the fence and haven't decided? Maybe you previously played a heavy class and are considering changing it up with a caster this time. Maybe you really love casters, but are put off by the complexity of a Mesmer? Worry not weary traveler by the end of this you'll have a better idea of what a Mesmer is and be fully capable of experiencing one of (IMHO) the most rewarding classes in GW2. So hang on to your butts kids because we're going for a ride.

Mesmers, an Introduction

Mesmers are casters and as such they aren't specifically designed to stand on the front lines and deal with their foes directly That being said, they sure do have plenty of ways to evade, redirect, interrupt, and avoid damage. I've even made an argument for their viability in melee before. But in their purest form Mesmers are actually unique form of hybrid support class. I feel that best way to put it is as follows.

The Mesmers' primary role is to prevent their foes from fighting effectively and to increase the effectiveness of their allies.

Though their support methods can be strange at times primarily Mesmers function to distribute boons, spread conditions, interrupt attacks, or trick foes into killing themselves. There's a number of different ways Mesmers can achieve this goal and Illusions are definitely one of my favorite.

These are not the Mesmers you're looking for

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Illusions are amazing. Illusions deal damage, cause conditions, and can buff your allies. They love distracting enemies, and they're more than willing to die in order to save you. Through traits Illusions can be augmented to do any number of awesome things. Some Illusions even tank damage for you. And the best part is you don't have to get your hands dirty to use them.

Say your party is getting annihilated by Ettins? A timed diversion will interrupt their attacks and prevent them from doing anything for another second. Plenty of time to send them to the grave. Or you could change it up and run for the hills while your Illusions act as a distraction to help you escape. OR you could start the fight entirely differently. Summon the Illusions first and then make your party invisible and sneak up on the Ettins. Kill em before they saw it coming! That'll show those pesky Ettins!

The options are endless. I love having options. The problem is, for a new Mesmer, understanding how to make sense of all this madness. There's currently 17 different skills that create Illusions. Many of them are bound to weapons, but plenty of them are utility skills? Mesmers have a TON of utility skills. Heck, you could fill your bar with just Illusions and still have some leftover. So how do you even make sense of all this?

Well here's a good rule of thumb I've developed.

Focus, Focus, Focus


Find a play style you like and focus on it. Despite what your mother always told you. Do put all your eggs in one basket. Don't diversify your portfolio. Specialize on one thing and do it right. If you're ok at everything, you'll be great at nothing. Be great, be amazing, be spectacular! As an example, if you find yourself always rushing headlong into fights then pick skills that work for you. Fit in skills that stun, stealth, interrupt, and daze. Make sure that your foes are attacking you for as little time as possible. That way you can stab them in the face without retaliation. Lovely!

And when in doubt. Turn it into a moa. Everyone loves roast moa for dinner!

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Originally I had only planned to make this a two part series, but in my writing, rewriting, and revising, I realized that I had enough different content to merit a third part! Lucky you! So stay tuned, next time I'll be looking at how to maximize your Mesmer and even give you some build suggestions as you level through Tyria.

GW2 Rumor to start your week

File this under 'unsubstantiated rumors' but I figure I'd bring it to your attention all the same.

Usually the first thing I do when I get up is check Google reader and get up to date on what's rumor milling around the internet and surprisingly the things have been relatively quiet these days. That was until I loaded up the GW2 beta client and it started downloading something.

See for yourself.

Noted, the download was pretty small. Somewhere in the realm of 35-40mb. And the content text from last week's Stress Test hadn't changed, but could this be a sign of an upcoming Beta Weekend Event? Possibly. We do know that during the first BWE the beta clients from earlier were updating as much as 2 days before the client was released to the public and we also know that ArenaNet has stated that they're aiming to have a BWE once a month. While last Monday's stress test was fun and all it wasn't a BWE, and factor in that there's only one weekend left in May, so if ArenaNet want's to keep up to their word it reasons to believe there's a good chance of a BWE this coming weekend.

Though, as I'd mentioned at the start, this is all just unsubstantiated guessing.

In the meantime you should go check out GW2Guru. There's an awesome post showing all the armor sets we know of. It's great eye candy.

UPDATE: There was a post on the GW2 Facebook a little bit ago regarding BWE and their frequency. I think this part gets to the point:

"We're going to adhere to a monthly schedule as much as feedback and development allow, so it may be a little more or a little less each time, depending on how things progress. For now, we will have more information on upcoming Beta Weekend Events and stress tests as soon as we're able, and we thank each of you for being an important part of the creation of Guild Wars 2. ~RB2"

So while it's possible that there might be a BWE this coming weekend, I'm definitely not going to get my hopes up.

RNG Achievements. A rant

Achievements for me are a love hate thing. I love them because it's a fun way to know how much of a game I've finished. I hate them because it's a terrible way to remind me how much of a game I haven't finished. Thanks Xbox for eternally changing (ruining?) the way people play games.

Why do I bring this up? And what's the significance of RNGs here? Well it's taken me quite some time to get around to it, but I've finally queued up Borderlands in my wait for my next Guild Wars 2 hit (tip of the hat to Ravious over at Killtenrats for helping me realize I'm a GW2 drug addict), and generally Borderlands is 100% superfun. I grew up on Diablo so dungeon grinding and loot whoring is familiar territory for me. Also I sure do love me some good ol fashioned FPS frag fests. Borderlands delivers on that end, completely. So combined all that together and you've got yourself a recipe for one awesome game, and it is awesome. The killing, murdering, exploding, hilarious vulgar humor, and spectacularly great gun design.

But then they just had to go in and add totally retarded achievements. I've probably killed the entire Claptrap population twenty times over and I have yet to get all my goldfish, or panties, or pizza, or oil cans, or .... whatever. Heck I'm certain I've made the Hyperion corporation mine out an entire sector of space to build, and rebuild, all the Claptraps I've blown to bits over my search for stupid robot fish. The worst part is that even after you've collected all your pointless 3D glasses they continue to drop. It's like the Claptraps, even in their death, continue to taunt me, "Look, here's some more 3D glasses! Too bad what you really need is our panties!" The worst part is, naturally, that there's no Achievement tracker. I don't even know, for certain, if I've already collected all the panties I need and since they keep dropping I keep picking them up because maybe with the next one I'll finally ding the achievement over and be done with this torment in RNG robot hell.

Oh yeah, on a final note, I hate you stupid robots in Portal 2. Why can't you be better at rock-paper-scissors. I swear from now on I'm sticking to fantasy titles. It's obvious robots aren't good for my health.

Server Psychosis

The internet is going crazy. They can't get their fix of digitized mayhem, gore, loot and gold. If you know what the significance of the number 37 is then you're right in the middle of it. The Lord of Terror is causing devastation and death and there's nothing you can do to stop it. Barred on the other side of the wall, helpless, hopeless and filled with desperation.

It is happening now, it has happened before, and it will surely to happen again.

We've all been there in the past, when the servers crashed. Feverishly smashing 'log in' and hoping that the servers had fixed themselves in the 5 seconds since the last time and instead, without realizing, guaranteeing that our focused DDoS attacks would keep Blizzard down even longer. Kotaku summed it up nicely earlier today, and the gravity of the situation persists. This is, as it stands, not just a problem with how Blizzard has decided to structure their servers for Diablo III. It's a problem inherent in the online gaming world, and the problem is not going away. There is an extreme demand for online gaming, and the demand is growing, as casual games attract larger and larger markets the entry point into "gaming" has become so accessible to anyone that it's entirely possible your next door neighbor is cursing Error 37 right along with you.

Page Questing

I feel like I'm on a quest, but all the objectives are hidden. I have this overall goal, talking about gaming, or MMOs,  or something... Though, there aren't exactly any flagstones that say what to do, so I'm just going to talk about whatever I feel like, and maybe it'll be worth reading (maybe not... either way the content will probably be interesting). Hopefully I can keep this updated with some kind of frequency.

I sure do play enough games, mostly MMOs but I'm also huge into StarCraft, as well as various FPS titles (Portal, TF2, Borderlands, Halo...), so I'll probably have a little bit of a unique gaming perspective given that I pretty much try to play everything I can so long as it's fun. I've spent the most of my time divided between WoW and Guild Wars, but my entire highschool life was deep in StarCraft: Broodwar and Warcraft3 so I have a fairly good grasp of the RTS genera as well, especially on the competitive end.

Recently I'm starting to lean heavily towards Guild Wars 2, so that's definitely going to be a primary focus around here once it goes live. It's an awesome game, definitely go check it out if you haven't already. Though if that's not your fancy don't worry I plan to discuss a lot more than just GW2.

Deckard Cain said it best, "Stay a while and listen."

You might get rewarded.