Choosing A New Path | Assassins Creed 4 Black Flag

This is more or less a free form ramble talking about Assassins Creed 4 Black Flag. These are just the pure raw thoughts I had about the game so please excuse the bad grammar and spelling :) and spoilers.

So I have officially finished the single player campaign of Assassins Creed 4 Black Flag and HOLY SHIT what an amazing game. Almost a year before when Ubisoft first announced the game I was some trepidations about the idea and having still going through Assassins Creed 3. But this game has eased all that by delivering a great story, fun gameplay and an ending that really hits you here (I am pointing at my chest).

Now for me a judge of a great Assassins Creed game is when you the player end up getting lost in the world for hours on end. I haven't did that since AC2!!! In AC2 I spent soo many hours in Venice Just ridding the gonala listening to Dreams of Venice by Jyper Kid. In AC4 the first city you arrive in, Havana, I immediately got immersed in the world taking in the sights sound and atmosphere. First 6 hours of me playing was just me walking around doing random stuff and with the soundtrack....usted esta en la habana!!!!

Gameplay wise there is nothing much to say other than Ubisoft always deliver. Combat is solid similar to AC3 same goes with the freerunning. I like they put an effort to have more stealth options into the game since I myself is more of a stealth style gamer. For example I was sailing in the Jackdaw and saw in the distance a very high level man o' war (I didint know I can do this) instead of fighting him head on I decided to swim to the ship and capture it myself with out killing any of my crew. That was amazing!!

Now the Assassins Creed franchise has always been known for great storytelling. The story of Edward Kenway was no exception. With Edward through a series of circumstances he ends up being embroiled into the secret war of the Assassins and Templar. But the real meat with the Edward story is his motivations. His motivations stems from his desire to have a good life for his wife Caroline as we see in his flashbacks and it is that what drives him to seek wealth and fortune as a pirate and how it conflicts with the ideals of both Templars and Assassins. 90% of the story you are not an Assassin which is a refreshing take on the franchise. As you play the game you end up having this 3rd party perspective that brings in those shades of grey and the Templar Assassin conflict is not all black and white. 

Edward's blind and selfish motivations to pursue the observatory and its power is what ultimately led to the deaths of many friends around him from his pirate accolades to the Assassins. My favorite part of the story is when Mary (a.k.a Kidd) died and that when the hammer fell on Edward. As her death lead him to a deep drunken depression and hallucinations seeing all the people who had suffered because of him. Now here is where you get a great use of the phoenix metaphors personified. After going through his depression he finally realized the consequence of his actions and now vows to right his wrong and reforge him self choosing a new path and thus becoming a true Assassin earning the respect of both Assassins and Templars.

The ending was a sweet, sweet ending with having learned his wife Caroline died 2 years prior. Edward was greeted with his daughter now for him to raise her and take care of her. It may be short but that scene alone you can see how much the character of Edward have grown as he meets her daughter for the first time. With combination with the song Anne Bonny sung made it a nice heart warming ending. (Not going to lie I had Man Tears!!!). As we near the end it comes full circle as we are then taken back to the Theater Royal as shown in the beginning of AC3 as we are introduced to a young Haytham Kenway.

Concluding this ramble Assassins Creed 4 Black Flag has taken its place for me as one of the best AC games I had played second to AC2. It offered a satisfying chapter to the Kenway family saga it offered a nice swan song for Desmond in the modern day (Yes I know did not talk about modern day that much). You can see this game as a transitional period as we move from the Desmond era to the Juno era and as I anticipate what will be the next chapter in the Assassins Creed universe.  

Borderlands 2

So I have been playing Borderlands 2 a lot and I decided to consolidate all my builds for all my characters. What I love about this game the most it the level of customization you can do with your character skills how each build will bring a different strategy. Borderlands 2, in my opinion, is not all about the guns and equipment. It is the skills and actually knowing how those skills work that can bring interesting synergy with the guns and equipment so you can become an unstoppable force in the battlefield. So lets get on with it.

MAYA THE SIREN

GOD MODE

This is the standard build I use most of the time for both solo and team play with one point into res. The idea with this build is pure damage and survivability.  By putting in points into minds eye, wreck and reaper coupled with converge and sub-sequence I can control enemies in the battlefield and increases Maya's firepower and damage per second greatly, which can be used in two situations. I can either Phaselock a stronger enemy and kill him in the duration of the Phaselock, or lock a random opponent, kill them and sub-sequence will move to the next enemy and I can rinse and repeat, granting her an extremely fast killing speed.

With survivability part this is where the gear comes in normally I see people running with the Bee shield which gives you a high amp damage to your guns. It is powerful but only when your shields are fully charged and when there is a lot of enemies shooting at you it is kinda hard keeping that Bee shield up. So instead of the Bee I use the Sham which is an amazing shield which can absorb bullets and add them my own with absorb chances ranging from 80%-95%. With the Bee shield I do use it on higher difficulties and against Raid Bosses, but most of the time for mobbing I go with the Sham. With these two shields I see it as either wanting to be a godly killing machine only when your shields are fully up or be a killing machine consistently while staying alive.

Along with the shield there are class mods I use to help amplify her skills.  I use a number of different mods for her the main ones are the Legendary Siren mod, Legendary Binder mod and the Legendary Cat mod. Each Legendary Class mod will give you +5 points on 5 different skill depending on the class mod. But the main one I use is the Legendary Cat mod as it gives +5 on accelerate, minds eye, wreck, foresight and reaper as well an added bonus of additional high SMG damage.

Now this is where the guns come in to play. With the siren she is the most proficient, if not the best, user of sub machine guns. With the added Legendary Cat mod it can have damage bonuses up to +129%!! There is a lot of good sub machine guns out there from the Lascaux to the Bitch. But to truly see her power with SMGs it is with the Sandhawk. The Sandhawk is a unique gun in that is fires a spread of about 8 bullets in a pattern similar to a hawk flying at the cost of 1 and the damage is applied to all 8 bullets instead of being spread out. This gives the Sandhawk a x8 damage multiplier.

Speed Run / Deal with the Devil

This build serves two purposes the first one being the speed run build. The build is very similar to the God Mode Build but added points to Fleet. It is a very basic skill when the shields are down you gain an increased movement speed. With 5 points into that skill you gain 50% movement speed. It is fast but when you add a Breakneck Banshee Class mod it will give you +6 into fleet giving the siren 110% movement speed!! As well if you add the Rough Rider shield which is a unique shield as it gives you 0 shield capacity granting the siren that 110% movement speed all the time. This works well when you are trying to do a speed run where you can just run past enemies to the objectives and/or bosses at a shorter amount of time.

The second part of this build is the deal with the devil build. In this build I have also put in 5 points into Immolate what that does it give the siren 50% fire damage to your guns when you are in fight for your life. If you combine that with an Unyielding Banshee Class mod with +6 points into Immolate it will give the siren 110% burn damage. It doesn't end there!!! The Unyielding Banshee Class has a second purpose as it decreases the siren's health significantly and if combined with the Hoplite shield it can further decrease your health to 0. Now you might be asking why would I want to have 0 health?! What that does it tricks the game in thinking you are in fight for your life thus giving you that 110% bonus. Once its 0 you can switch to the Bee and to a fire weapon and you gain a huge boost in fire damage as high as 1 Billion!!!! 1 BILLION!!!!!!! This is the ultimate glass cannon you get an insane amount of power but at the price of your health. Hmm...Faust should be proud!

Digistruct Peak Build

This was a recent build I made in the wake of going through Digistruct Peak. Digistruct peak is a challenging course for both solo and team play. In team play I usually team up with a Commando, Gunzerker and another Siren. As powerful as all of us were getting through ultimate bad ass level enemies after ultimate bad ass level enemies was extremely difficult. So there was one skill in the very end of the Ward tree that I did not consider, Thoughtlock. What that does is that whenever I Phaselock an enemy it now causes them to switch sides and turn against their allies durring the duration of the Phaselock. It does not sound much but when you are in a situation where your fighting 2 scorchs or fighting the 4 assassins all at once having one of them fight for us gave our team the short bit of respite and time for us to quickly regroup and counter attack. As with the other skills I have kept full points into cataclysm for the extra damage and when combined with converge and suspension it is great in drawing agro away from us as enemies will converge into the Thoughtlock target and thus having all of them fighting each other in one area.

I WILL DRAW THE AGRO!!!!!!!!!

I am taking a page out of my psycho krieg and thought of a crazy idea of Maya dealing with the agro. This is build is survivability at its fullest. This build puts full points into kinetic reflection, recompence and chain reaction. Kinetic reflection is a kill skill where every time you score a kill you gain the ability to deflect bullets back to the attacker and with 5 points into that you gain a 100% deflection chance as well as 50% damage reduction. Recompence is Harmony based skill where if you take health damage you have a 50% chance of dealing equal damage to your attacker. With chain reaction its a skill where you have a 40% chance of having bullet ricochet and hit nearby enemies and as with drawing agro this is very helpful. In order to make this build to work you are going to need 2 shields the Sham or the Antagonist. The Sham as discussed before has a high absorb chance making great for agro dealing but the Antagonist is where you get the most synergy with your skills. The Antagonist is a seraph shield that deflects with increased damage towards nearby enemies, increased damage reduction and to top it of it launches homing slag balls to its attackers. This is an amazing shield with deflection damage up to 800% and damage reduction up to 50% combined with kinetic reflection and recompense and with the added slag damage you can kill nearby guys with out shooting your gun.

As amazing this may all sound this is a more skilled based build and that you need to constantly scoring kill to gain those kill skills. You will need gear and guns that are high damage such as the Legendary Cat mod, Florentine SMG which has both slag and shock damage,  the Bitch SMG, and last but not least the Grogg Nozzle or the Rubi pistols for its healing properties.

That does it for Maya soon I will post all my builds for Zer0 and Krieg later on.