Covid And the Plague of Lighthouse Keepers

Hello, everybody. Back again, with more writing exercises and ideas. The last two posts were fairly genteel posts about how to be a great healer in competitive video games. I'd like to take a departure from that to talk about something substantially more serious. However, if you are a competitive gamer that plays Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch, or Team Fortress 2, I highly recommend reading those last two posts.

So, what I'd like to discuss here is a fairly simple idea that I've touched upon already in older posts from weeks ago; Despite the mass communication of the internet, COVID-19 has caused a major disruption in all of our lives, turning us into a plague of lighthouse keepers. 

There are already a lot of people in our communities that don't like to be around others. With COVID, they have an excuse to be even more distant and go even more into isolation than previously before. Here's the kicker; until COVID is dealt a grievous blow, we're stuck in this mode of humanity, which is terrible for our health, well being, and mental health. 

Next, I'd like to go into these details as they pertain to myself. I'm naturally a very outgoing extrovert that likes to be around others. I've been on a leave of absence to be safe and stay away from potential COVID spreaders for two months as I work retail. The only contact I have with people right now is when I talk to my family, when I text friends, when I direct message people on social media, or when I play online video games with voice chat or text chat. Because of all that COVID hasn't really affected me much, but it has impacted me enough for me to take notice and write my thoughts about it in a meaningful way.

You lose a sense of community and mental well being when you're not around people and start spending almost all of your time alone. I'm actually really looking forward to going back to work in June not because I need more money [thank God], but because I'm used to a certain amount of screentime with others, engaging in conversation, and being acknowledged as a person for who I am in my community and workplace. 

Without that I'm a much different sort of person; I stop talking on voice coms and text chat in online competitive video games because I don't see the need for it, I stop direct messaging on social media apps because I think my people need more space away from me, I give my family more space and seclude myself more in whatever ways I can. The question is, is this good for me, and is it sustainable in the long run? What are the ramifications of living life in a lighthouse keeper sort of way? 

For some people, none of this might apply to them because some people naturally don't like to be around others much, and try to spend as much time away from them as possible, as well as saying as little as possible. Obviously, for those people, COVID is helping them out in a societal way. But for the vast majority of the population, they need that social construct in order to engineer their lives in a more meaningful way, myself included. 

We can't all keep going on like this and we know it. I've done really well under the circumstances but the show can't go on. As great as the digital age of the internet is in sharing and communication, it's a piss poor substitute for the real world. And that, essentially, is where the problem of COVID lies therein; it forces us to disperse and stay away from each other, and possibly even stop caring as much as we used to, and instead turn to our own quarantined, lockdown, isolated lives, looking for that spark of inspiration, that zest for life, that we simply can't get anywhere else. 

Still waiting for my saviour,
storms tear me limb from limb

How To Be A Great Healer In Competitive Games, Synergy

In my last post, I went into detail about what it takes to be a great healer in competitive games. Here, I'm going to expand upon the ideas from that, and go into more specific detail about synergy with the characters I play. To keep things short I'll go into the synergy between the healer and only one other character in each game. 

What is synergy? 

Creation of a whole that is greater than the simple sum of its parts. 

In short, this means you, as a healer, can combo with other characters [tanks/assassins/other healers] in such a way, that both you and the other character are that much more powerful [assassins], tanky [can take up more damage without dying, tanks], or durable [ other healers]. Your powers combined with others is so powerful that it is actually one of the most important deciding factors in if your team wins or loses the game. Other than actual skill. 

Now, I'm going to go into quite a bit of detail about synergy with the healers that I play in Overwatch, Heroes of the Storm, and Team Fortress 2. Yall ready for this? 

First, Overwatch. I have 340 hours as a Mercy player and she's the reason why I play the game, because I really enjoy her playstyle, which is sort of campy, sort of like a ninja, and her synergy with other characters is astounding. When Mercy follows a character, healing and damage boosting them throughout the round, this is called pocketing, essentially Mercy is a great character to pocket with because she can use her cadeous staff not only to heal and keep the character she's pocketing alive, but she can also damage boost them as well, increasing their damage by 30% while doing so. Essentially, every time someone doesn't need healing, as a Mercy player, you always want to be damage boosting, in that circumstance. 

So, in Overwatch one of the strongest combos to synergize with is the Mercy/Pharah pocket. Pharah is a girl who shoots rockets and can fly in the air. Mercy can use her L-shift to fly with her in the air as well, creating a space force style combination, that, in the right hands, can be downright unstoppable. As Mercy, I want to make sure that Pharah can survive long enough to do as much splash damage with her rockets as possible, so I want to heal her in certain key firefights, and I want to damage boost her accordingly, like when she's hitting three or more enemy players with rockets, raining hell from above, with me beside her, flying around. I've found that every time Pharah uses her ultimate ability, Rocket Barrage, I always want to make sure in that moment that I'm healing her instead of damage boosting, because it takes a second before the rockets start shooting, and in that split second the enemy team can insta-kill her easily.

This is one of the strongest combos in Overwatch but it is beatable. If the enemy team plays a hit scan [like Soldier 76, Ash, McCree, Orisa], or two, sometimes, if need be, they can easily either kill Pharah as she's being pocketed by Mercy, or kill Mercy first, and then Pharah once she doesn't have that Mercy support. However, there are some Pharah players who are so good that they simply won't die to any hit scans, as long as they have the healing/damage boost support, they will always kill enemies. Combine that with a Mercy player who is superb, and you have a combination that is simply unstoppable. The strongest combo in the game. And for me the most fun. Add to that the fact that the combo has a funny name; Pharmacy.

Second, Heroes of the Storm. Varian is the King of Stormwind, from World of Warcraft, the leader of the Alliance. When he goes full tank mode, he uses a sword/shield, can parry attacks, charge to enemies/allies, and he's also super strong, probably the best tank in the game, IMO. My main character is Morales, she's a medic from Starcraft Broodwar. She's basically Mercy/Medic [from Team Fortress 2] but in MOBA form [massive online battle arena, like Dota, like League, what Heroes of the Storm is]. She uses a ranged single target heal that can be empowered with level ups and different talent choices. She has a Safeguard that can throw some shields on allies, an ultimate ability called Stim, where she can power up an ally to give them more attack power, and a Displacement Grenade which she can throw to enemies, displacing their attacking/defensive positions. 

Varian is a high tier hero and Morales is mid-tier because she doesn't have many escape routes and she's easy to kill. However, when you combine Morales with Varian, it is almost unstoppable. She can pocket Varian, making sure he doesn't get low on health. She can grenade any enemies that try to flank Varian or herself. She can stim Varian in a pivotal fight to turn the tide of battle. She can safeguard Varian to increase his defenses in fights. If you're a good Morales and watch your positioning so well that you hardly ever die, Morales will be able to keep Varian alive most of the time. And Varian will be able to tank through most of the enemy team damage, leading to easy, flawless victory. Basically, the strategy is foolproof. I can't even count how many games I've won with this combination with my friend Ip. The classic tank/healer dynamo of Heroes of the Storm, for me.  

Third, Team Fortress 2. If you made it this far, obviously my main character is the Medic ["Ocktober Fest!"]. I have 100 hours on medic and counting. My favorite character to pocket in TF2 is actually the Soldier, which is basically the same as the Mercy/Pharah combo except no flying, no damage boosting, all healing, all ground foot moving, and positioning. 

But actually it might not be the best nor the strongest. If you have a Heavy on your team in TF2, that is the character you want to pocket. The heavy is a tall, fat, gent with a mini-chain gun. He sometimes eats sandwiches to gain health, which he can also throw out to you when you're low on health. The Medic is a German doktor. He's the OG Mercy, meaning he heals with a ranged single target heal. However, he can't damage boost. But, he has the choice of being able to have different weapons in hand 1, hand 2, and a melee weapon. This is where TF2 gets its strategic qualities because the way you customize your weapons options heavily modifies your gameplay and game experience. For simplicity's sake, we're going to say the Heavy and the Medic are both using stock equipment that comes with the game. 

Okay, so the Heavy has the mini-chain gun as his primary weapon and the medic uses the medgun as his primary weapon. Here's where TF2 gets more interesting than Overwatch. The medic's medgun, when fully charged, at 100% makes any character he uses it on invulnerable for 8 seconds. Yes, you read that right. The medic's medgun makes any player he uses it on invulnerable for 8 seconds. This is so strong that it's primarily the reason why I enjoy playing TF2, and it changes the tide of most firefights if used on the right ally player at the right time. 

So, going back to our Heavy/Medic combo, the Medic can pocket the Heavy when securing points or pushing the payload. And when the Heavy is surrounded by tons of enemy players, you can pop Uber on the Heavy [it's called uber because the Medic is German], and he can literally mow down the entire enemy team in one fell swoop because his mini-gun has a far range, rapid fast fire, and it's super strong. For me the Heavy/Medic combo is the best combo in pc gaming history. A real bromance to Overwatch's sisterhood of the traveling pants.

That's all for now. There are plenty of other combos in these games, but for me these are by far the strongest that I utilize on a regular basis. Practice finding different combos as healers and you will find that there's almost nothing that can't synergy at least a little bit. You want to find what combos well and what doesn't and be able to see it on the enemy team as well, as this is a very strategic element of playing healers and winning games. 

"Have you tried not dying?"

The Joy of Free to Play

Ah, the joys of the truly free to play game. Lets talk about one of my favorite games for a moment, Heroes of the Storm (Hots for short). Hots is a free to play moba created by Blizzard in 2015 that has micro transactions (mostly for the coolest skins and mounts) but otherwise characters can be unlocked by spending gold in the shop. Gold is acquired by logging in everyday and doing quests, which can earn you from 200 to 800 gold. Each day you get one new quest, thus giving you unlimited (but limited b/c of how the time and respawn of quests work) gold as long as you keep logging in and playing the game.

At first you would think this is time consuming or too much of a hurdle to go through to unlock characters-because of the grind. But no, this grind has brought me joy.

Its been about two weeks since I've been grinding gold and doing quests in Hots to earn the latest character Alexstraza (pictured above), who now costs 10,000 gold (when heroes first come out they are 15,000 gold). Right now I am sitting at about 9,500 gold and it feels great. The work, dedication, craft, and blood of my enemies to earn all that gold is quite satisfying. I don't think I would get this same satisfaction if I played League of Legends of Dota 2, two other popular mobas. Those games are work just to make it through a forty-five minute match. But I digress.

When I unlock Alexstraza in a few days it will be quite the reward. Rewards for playing games is something most gaming companies have to work much harder at. Sure you can earn loot boxes in Overwatch but at the end of the day the skins don't add much. A new character to your roster in a game adds much much more.

Here's a game that does free to play gaming right. I can earn every character through grinding quests and find a ton of satisfaction from it. Beat that EA.  

Heroes of the Storm's Stukov is the coolest support in the game

Tonight I'd like to talk about Heroes of the Storm's latest new hero, Stukov.

Here's his backstory: 

"In the 25th century of Earth's history, the United Earth Directorate Expeditionary Fleet was dispatched to reign in the Terran Colonies of the Koprulu Sector. Over time, these expatriate colonists that were once loyal had wavered in their allegiance, threatening the fabric of government which had been sewn across the galaxy. Of the formidable commanders tasked with this imperative endeavor, Vice Admiral Alexei Stukov was second in command.

During the violent campaign in that system, developments ensued that would eventually cast Stukov in a traitorous light to his superiors. Having been found to be in violation of a direct order to destroy the powerful Psi Disrupter, Stukov was subsequently executed for his disobedience. Unbeknownst to the UED at the time, their ranks had been infiltrated by a powerful shape-shifting alien entity that sought to sow confusion about the importance of Stukov's mission. After his death, Stukov's corpse was later recovered by the Zerg, who sought to infest human leaders and mutate them into leaders of their own colonies. As the first of their attempts to blend their genetics with that of humanity's, the once lifeless husk of Stukov was reanimated into something at once both more and less than human.
The infested Admiral known as Stukov has now entered the Nexus as a formidable melee support, ready to spread his healing pathogens and deadly disease across the battleground." (heroesofthestormgamepedia.com)

And also you should also know his abilities.

Bio-Kill Switch

Cooldown: 16 seconds

Activate to detonate all of Stukov's Viruses. Each Healing Pathogen heals its target for 500 health, and each Weighted Pustule does 100 damage and Slows its target by 70% for 2 seconds.
Can be cast while channeling Lurking Arm.

Q

Healing Pathogen

30 Mana Cooldown: 10 seconds

Infest an allied Hero with a Healing Pathogen that heals the target for 240 Health over 4.5 seconds. Healing Pathogens can spread to a nearby allied Hero every 0.75 seconds, and a single Healing Pathogen can spread to each allied Hero 1 time.
Can cast it on self, and spread to self.
Cannot spread to targets to whom it has already spread.

W

Weighted Pustule

50 Mana Cooldown: 10 seconds

Hurl a pustule that impacts all enemy Heroes in its path, dealing 20 damage and Slowing by 5%, increasing to 50% over 3 seconds. Deals an additional 80 damage upon expiring or being removed.

E

Lurking Arm

60 Mana Cooldown: 8 seconds

Channel at a target location, creating an area that Silences enemies inside and deals 144 damage per second to them. Deals 50% reduced damage to non-Heroes. Does not cost Mana while Channeling, and lasts until canceled or interrupted.

R

Massive Shove

50 Mana Cooldown: 20 seconds

Extend Stukov's arm. If it hits an enemy Hero, they are rapidly shoved until they collide with terrain, taking 200 damage. Stukov gains 50 Armor while shoving an enemy.

R

Flailing Swipe

100 Mana Cooldown: 80 seconds

Swipe 3 times in front of Stukov over 1.75 seconds, dealing 50 damage to enemies hit and knocking them away. Each swipe is larger than the previous.

Alright now lets talk about his kit. He's technically a healer but his melee damage is pretty strong and attacks moderately fast so you can defend yourself for a while before retreating to fellow teammates. His q key (Healing Pathogen) is a super strong heal once activated with d (Bio-Kill Switch) which will increase the healing by a ton. Its a super strong heal. The kill switch has a long cooldown but if your teammates are smart and don't get hit all the time your heals will always be enough.

One of the strongest tools for Stukov is his e key (Lurking Arm). It silences enemies. This is probably his greatest asset as a support in the game. The fact that he can silence enemies and do it often and its not an ultimate ability is astounding. You have to channel the spell so once you move the silence is automatically turned off. However, if you can cast lurking arm when your enemies are out of position or trying to run away you easily pick them off. Its become one of the coolest and strongest abilities in the game right now. It's super effective!

Weighted Pustule (w key) is a great way to slow enemies to give your dps allies the chance to finish them when they have low health. Its not very strong and the slow is better overtime. Still not bad though.

My favorite ultimate for Stukov is Massive Shove. It has a super short cooldown of just 20 seconds and it pushed an enemy as far as an enemy will go until they hit something like a wall, tower, or other part of the map. He extends his zerg arm super far, sometimes going almost across the map. Not only does it look super cool but it helps get your team in a better position for team fights. If this ultimate is used effectively the enemy team will be one less player during team fights, giving your team the advantage until that enemy hero runs back.

I would say that Stukov is a good healer that can also dish out good dps while also dishing out great utility and crowd control (the silence, slow). Because of this he's become one of my favorite heroes. His play-style can be a bit tricky at first but once you play a few games with him you start to learn that he's most effective when you're always in good positions. Positioning is key with this hero so you can't just run out in the middle of a random fight and hope to come out killing everybody. He's kind of like a healer specialist in a way. He's very unique, and super fun!

Not to mention he's from one of my favorite Blizzard games, Starcraft II. When I found out he was coming to hots (heroes of the storm) I knew he would be some kind of interesting character but I didn't think he was going to be a healer with such a cool kit. Its about time they added a new support hero and I'm glad they did a great job with it. Not to mention his squid skin is just awesome!

For the Queen!

Death of a healer main

So I've been playing a lot of Overwatch and I thought I'd share my experience with you all. I'm at a pretty moderate (but low) level in Overwatch. I'm Silver rank with about 1600 sr (skill rating points) but I've been just 50 points shy of Gold rank (2200 sr) during my first or second seasons. For a couple seasons I didn't even play competitive and now I'm back at it. I've always played competitive as a healer, usually playing Ana, Mercy, Zenyatta, or Lucio with the occasional Symmetra if I feel like I can pull a rabbit out of a hat for a win. But I've come to the realization that in Silver healing is just not worth it. If I wanna win games more I gotta dps (play assassin characters) myself and get those elims for the team. So far it's been working out surprisingly well.

I think I'm gonna give up playing healers in Overwatch for a while. At least until I get to platinum or higher. The main reason for this is because other people that play dps at this level just aren't good enough. They don't play the game enough to really know how the characters work or how to work best and effectively with a team. Sometimes you have a team that likes to spread out, well you gotta act accordingly. Other times you got a team that stays together through it all, and you gotta act accordingly for that too.

So yeah, dps has been really working out for me. Right now my roster includes McCree, Soldier 76, Pharah (been using her a lot, she wrecks hard in low elo), Mei (she also wrecks hard in low elo because she's hardly ever picked), and Reaper (because of the buff and because I hate Winstons). I'm thinking about adding Genji and Sombra to this list too because I feel like with my skills I could really do well with those characters. For a while I was practicing dps a lot in Quick Play to work on my aim with all these characters but now I'm using that training in real competitive matches.

I still get losses but now when I lose I don't feel the same way as when I was healing. Usually I still do great even when I lose, its a different kind of loss, not as bad feeling in a way. I'm thinking Sombra could become like my main because I like how she has so many tools at her disposal and how she's like a poker (just runs in, shoots a bit, and then runs out). I feel like I could excel in that play-style. As for right now though I'm happy being on the frontlines with the team getting elims and paving the way to victory.

I still play the occasional tank here and there but now with competitive my attitude is that you gotta pick your character fast and everyone else fills after that. It was the same with my healers. If I really wanted to play Ana or Mercy I had to pick them super fast after loading game screen. The thing is that most people just fill roles so if you just pick what you want super fast chances are you'll get to play whatever character you want.

The game's become more of a "play what you want" game for me whereas before I was being strict and reducing myself to saying "ok, I gotta play a healer because I'm a super good healer and we won't win without me healing". That's a fair assumption to make because in silver I've seen some of the worst Mercy's and Ana's ever but at the same time even if they're a bad Mercy they're still getting some healing done. And if I'm dpsing there's a higher chance of victory. So it's not a bad trade off.

So yeah, there it is everyone. The death of a healer main. Rip. It was fun. I'll be back to Ana and Mercy when I'm higher up the ranks. Until then I'll be tearing it up in low elo.

I don't like Lucio (in Heroes of the Storm)

I figured here would be a great place to rant about how much I dislike Lucio in Heroes of the Storm. He was recently added to roster, this week I believe. I'm actually annoyed that Blizzard is adding Overwatch characters into Heroes of the Storm when they clearly don't fit in a moba (massive online battle arena games, like League of Legends and Dota 2). I figured it was okay to have Tracer because she's a killing machine in Heroes but when they added Zarya I figured that they've gone too far.

Well now they've added Lucio. When I found out I wrote about his kit (which you can read here) and was excited to see how he would turn out in moba form. Then I finally got around to playing him and I was not pleased. I actually haven't been upset about a video game in a super long time. Yet, here I am. I should go to Blizzard HQ and protest. People are out here protesting the Muslim ban and Trump and I'll be protesting against Blizzard for terrible game design. Jokes aside I do think Lucio is a complete bore to play. Definitely a failed attempt at innovative character design.

It's not the fact that he's bad at what he does. He passively heals okay, and he can speed boost the team out of fights quickly. Not only that, but his sound barrier can even win team fights. However, my biggest complaint (and the most important imo) is the fact that his sound wave gun is a freakin' pea shooter that can barely kill an enemy hero with hardly any health points left. There are times when you'll be chasing any enemy hero with a sliver of health, only to find out that they got away because your gun is just so pathetically weak.

That's my main problem with him. If they gave him more damage I'd be cool with his design and that would be that. The fact that they gave him no damage is a mystery to me because in Overwatch he is a killing machine support like Zenyatta. You can even shoot Pharahs out of the sky once you get good enough with his sound wave gun.

Just a short little rant. Usually I love everything Blizzard touches and creates. Here, they messed up big time on one of my favorite characters. Shame on a gaming company!