Monthly Archives: July 2012

End Game Stuffs (as400)

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Morn guys,

As I think most of you know a few weeks back I TRed one of my unloved wf wizards into a drow wizard with the idea of making a big DC caster, he got stoned to 16 and then capped out just in time for me to decide I really don’t like drow as a race…. Or I should say I can’t follow my normal how to build a caster plan do to the weaknesses in the race. I am hoping that a lesser will fix a lot of his issues, but I think low hp is just going to be a thing…. But as I think that out I will talk about it. Right now I want to talk about some gear thoughts.

Back when 400 was a WF I felt that he stumbled into a fairly solid gear set up. He had both the Mabar docent and a Docent of Defiance that he used as his main body swaps. A SFL/+15 int hat covered massive HPS when swaping from Mabar to DoD as well as making his intim good enough to hold everything but the big bosses.

Lets see he also has a skiver, a “clean” lord of eyes stick with the necro focus a pair of cannith crafted booties with a large guild slot and a lot of spell boosting clickies for dps spells. And not a lot else…. Oh a Stormreaver Napkin covers his INT itme for now, Bracers of the Glacier and a Torc more or less rounds out his other gear.

What he doesn’t have is a good set of armor/robes, In fact right now he is using the Infused Chaosrobe which is okay while leveling but not great now that his is working on epic levels. Or any worth wild rings/belt/goggles, so his gear is more or less a clear slate minus the torc and hat. Good thing that spider silk robes that are +3 int aren’t too bad (about ½ mil plat on the AH) then I can get a big int trinket or random drop goggles.

My first thought is with the spell changes I need an elemental boosting item. Looking at my epic spreadsheet I am a seal short of making an Epic Ring of Elemental Essence so a few E Small Problems until that seal drops is do able. Takes about 40 mins to do alone on Epic hard, about 20 mins with help. In the mean time I will dig up one of my Regalia of the Phoenix to cover Firewalls and/or if I stumble into enough war wizards commendations I will get one of their staffs until I get something better. Turns out that Drow burn to death. Who knew?

My next thought is boosting the Necro goodness. Staff of the Necromancer comes to mind as not too hard to farm out. Just mind numbing ransacking of a quick chest on ever guy I have over level 20 until I happen to get one. I hear they are about 1mil plat on the AH. So there is that option too. If only I was less broke….

So lets say I get those two items together and keep racking up the xp and boosting those Necro Dcs I am still lacking a ton of HPs. Fully buffed I think I 400 is at about 400 hp and that is NOT very good at all. So a shroud hp/CordOp item is on the list. Think I have 4-5 scales so I need to hit the shroud/Amrath quests some if I want to make that soonest.

The list goes on but this is long enough for one post. Will try to do a follow up later but if you have any ideas on something I have over looked or gloves/boots/belts/rings/cloaks I might have over looked please use the comments.

❤

The “Pleasure” of Pugging

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I have been simi-busting my hump over the last few weeks working on getting 16 and caught up with Fopo to cap out this life. Saturday morning I am just a little short of 16 and Fopo logs on and sends me an invite. I fumble trying to get my mic and headset going as he explains that he doesn’t think we will be able to team up to finish up much if at all this go around. Bummer. But if we hit we hit, if not I am to 20 alone/with guildies.

Might have to wait (do some end game stuff) and let the wife catch up she is only a few levels behind now. She is 11 to my 16. I am jumping ahead.

So with Fopo’s news I am feeling unmotivated but I have goals to hit if I am going to stay on track.

So I hit the Lfm panel, thinking that maybe I will get lucky and find a group that will be doing the stuff I want to do even if they suck I wont have to count on myself alone to get things done. And you never know when you might jump into a in progress group and jump in just in time for the xp and chests. ☺

As luck would have it, there is a group up hitting GH walk-ups on Elite. I have done most of them solo, but the ones I have left you can just fail do to a poor save or two in a row. So I jump in.

There are lots of deaths (I should say mostly by one first life guy), and I burn threw rezs but xp was still over 1k per min for all the walk-ups. And 1k per min or better is always my goal and even with the -10% we were hitting it. So why not, I think to myself?

After a few runs, the group falls apart and I go to catch up with Tobril as he just jumped on but he has to take off and is checking the AH and making a few trades. So a few mins to level and clean up my pack some before taking another look at the LFM panel. And I see that the leader (a one of his guildies I just ran with) of the my previous group has another group up doing the Attack on Stormreach quests so I jump in with them again and rock thinks. Again there was a racking up of the death counter. Again I am the only one that remains alive for the whole chain but as long as I am netting that 1k/min mark I am happy. Log off around 2 am Sunday mostly do to Tobril getting back on late and we end up talking as I solo the GH walkup again….

I get up early on Sunday and again look at the LFM panel and catch a group for Madstone elite and jump in. Lots of familiar names, and a CtH fan or two as I get a few tells from pug members. Nice smooth run even though we had one guy kinda lost for ½ the quest and our bard getting madstoned and then chain lighting to death as he tried to heal himself. Doh! Most of the group went on to Crucible even and that again had its fumbles, was a good time.

Then spent the rest of the day doing epics and what not with Tobril.

The point is every pug I joined hit the xp/min mark even if they struggled. Might have to open myself back up to doing more pugging, might even play leader some….

❤

Power Leveling Phlor

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One of my many jobs as a guild leader (The DG as a few guild leaders, if Tobril happens to have the leader status) is to help people level as needed. I try to work leveling others into leveling myself to make the best use of my time. Hey look at power leveling day I threw for the guild a few weeks back. We had 5 members go from 1 to 16 in just one day.

But Phlor missed the latest train and now has been leveling on his own as he has time. Thing is Phlor has all of 3 played alts, his main: Phlor (now a Clr third life) and two first lifers Floor and Phloor both about level 16-17ish. To say he is not much of a power leveler is an understatement. His first guild was not the kind of guild he needed to be in. Super slow to level and felt the best way to advance in the game was to loot grind much lower level quests to death. And put a bit of a bad taste in his mouth when it comes to leveling in DDo. This was so bad when we first TRed back when TRing was new he quit. But he is back and is able to stick it out.

Anyway the last few weeks he and I have taken a night and spammed the hell out of a few quests working him up to 8 so he can stone up. If I time it right he will stone about the same time I hit 16 also and I can help him level with Samius.

Happens that last night was one of our power level nights. Also happens that Phlor is now level 6. Not sure what you all do at level 6 but to me that means level 4s on elite and Splinter Skull chain.

By the way my lowbie I have ready and able to help is a bard/fighter/barb mix I set aside with the AC changes, even though I dumped a huge amount of resources into her Ie cove stuf and other mid game items that are now locked onto her. So something will need to happen with her.

So we buff and do a fast Irestone run. Not great xp but fine, she is now starting a streak. And we are off to Tangle Root, when I hear from Phlor some comment about liking low levels for the first time tonight. Think he might be connecting with his new class finally.

We milk the hell out of Splinter skull. Walking down and repeating any of the two part quests we can on hard before wrapping them up on normal and casual. And before long Phlor makes a comment that he only needs 18k to level. And we have 13 mins on ship buffs. He thinks we need to rebuff, but as we are netting more then 1k a min and the last quest will only take 6-7 mins or so I keep us on task. We wrap up splinter skull with more then a min left on the buffs. Lots of time. ☺ But phlor is still 5k short of level 7.

Back to the boat to rebuff and then the Market place for a few of the Sharn quests on hard and normal for the last little push. Have to say I am super pumped when Phlor gets excited to level, he thought at the start of the night that it would be a few days to a week for him to hit 7 on his own. I am so pleased to help him out. It is little things like this that keeps people like Phlor that think their life is too busy (to play a game like this) playing DDo. And as I said before if Phlor gets back the 50% of the time he used to play again then my airship should be maxed out in no time. That guy was always playing pre DDoEU…

Think this is good enough for now.

❤

Gelatinous Cube Fun Facts

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I hate to muddle the odds for other players on contests so I am going to raddle off a few Gelatinous Cube Fun Facts.

One out of ten children in Europe are eaten by a Gelatinous Cube.

Antarctica is the only continent without a population of Gelatinous Cube.

There was once a Gelatinous Cube pope, St. Cornelius Cubious.

A Gelatinous Cube can dig a tunnel 600 feet long in just one night. And eat a hole adventurer in hour…

Every time you lick a stamp, you’re consuming 1/10 of a Gelatinous Cube.

A healthy Gelatinous Cube will eat about 35,000 cookies in its lifetime.

In Tokyo, they sell toupees for Gelatinous Cubes.

Each year more Walmart employees are eaten by Gelatinous Cubes then Target Employees. Not sure what that says about the different chains???

David Bowie once stalked by a Gelatinous Cubes dressed like a giant pink rabbit. And once Bowie became very alarmed when he got on a plane and the “bunny” was on board. He caused quite a fuss.

An estimated 800,000 senior citizens voluntarily offer themselves to a family of Cubes that live in Ireland.

Kevin Spacey’s older brother is a Gelatinous Cube that happens to be a professional Rod Stewart impersonator.

I was going to make up one more but think I want to go ahead and post one.

I will not Murder my Wife

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I ❤ my wife dearly. But last night I sat down to play DDo and asked her if she would mind if I played a little music, no reply. I spent yesterday at work trying to stay awake and get something done so I was drained by the time I got home. But I had a set of quests I needed to do to meet my xp goals and I needed a little pick me up.

I fire up some Everclear, Sparkle and Fade. Yes I am old, and playing Everclear always takes me back to a simpler time and fires me up. Almost 30 secs in I hear, “Do you have to play that?”

Hmm No…. Let me find a different track real fast.. Skip to Heroin Girl.

“Not that.”

Okayyyyy, Skip some more tracks and keep getting shut down. Switch to Linkin Park and get shut down. Then I mix things up with different artists and songs but the results are the same “Not that”.

Finally I hear, “Why don’t you just start a show on Netflix?”

I just want to pump up for the xp. I feel drained from work. But I will push on.

Then she gets a message or email or something on her phone, and she has some current top 100-radio song as her notification song. You know the one, it gets stuck in your brain in 2.4 seconds and you would have to cut out your brain and strain it through cheesecloth to get it out. Turns out she has the whole song as the notice and she lets the hole thing play out……… ;'(

It is like when I play I Can’t Decide by the SCISSOR SISTERS. I wake up in a cold sweat days later with that song still playing in the back of my mind.

So even now I can’t say any of the lyrics to her song other then “Tonights the night, and something something something. Tonights the night……”

But it is stuck in the back of my mind wanting to make me scream. This song could be added to the terrorist questioning sound track along with Barrny and “The song that Never Ends.

Even with all that I was able to get most of my goals done and I am on track for 15 on Friday.

If you see this Honey, ❤ you and this is all BS to be funny for a quick post.

Everyone else (totally true story) ☺

❤

A Night of the Mad Lootz, Yo!

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So epic Tuesday started of well enough, once we started up. Tobril and I headed off to do a DQ. With the changes epic hard is about the right amount of work/challenge for the two of us to solo on melee alts. Turns out we didn’t need to plan on just the two of us as a few more people jumped in as we were flagging. And they joined us for the raid.

We mostly got skunked in the raid chest but it turns out to be a 20th for Tobril and he ended up taking a piece of gear he was missing from his collection. My reward list was fairly solid and I almost took a random drop that looked solid enough to use on an alt or two that is kinda gearless over a chr tome but going a double check that tome was +3 and unbound. Hmmm think that tome might be a little more of a help…

We loose some and gain some as the rest of the mountain time people get logged in as we wrap up a chrono. Stole a cloak scroll from a random trash mob in the sewer. And I picked up a seal I didn’t have so even thou there wasn’t any shards worth anything (think the staff was in the chest..) I was happy.

Moved on to some loot running type epics in hope of getting some more parts for the tower shield by running Lords of Dust and Servants of the Overload. Don’t remember any worth wild pulls seal or shard wise but hey you never win if you don’t try. I did pull a ring with a large guild slot in it ☺ from the reward giver.

I also noticed over the night it seem like everyone in the group pulled at least 2 epic scrolls, one guy got 3 and another 4 I think. Not a horrible pull record from where it was before, now if we can just get some seals and shards…

Then we moved into the FR and knocked out that first chain. After the first three quests we went back and gathered our rewards and got ready for the capstone quest and in my first reward list was a +3 con tome. Winner Winner.

So my hall for the night was 2 +3 tomes, a large guild slot ring one good Chrono scroll and some random Web scroll. All in all: Mad Lootz Yo.

Btw, I am watching Breaking Bad (it is a new show to me, Netflix streaming Ftw) so Yo might work its way into my writing some…

So <3s Yo!

Current (DDo) Dilemma

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Jumping right in, I have lots of TRing wraps on Samius. May have touched on that yesterday??? Anyway I have noticed a lack of oomph this life mostly do to the lack of assistance. And now I want to work on my top-level wraps and I am unsure what to do.

Just to give you an idea of how my wraps are laid out atm,
Fanged/Devotion – lvl 0
Lesser vamp (small guild slot)– lvl3
I have some dps unbound wraps in the 2-7 range for more damage/less healing times.
Holy/lesser vamp (Med guild slot)– lvl7 these are my main wraps until 12 where my vamp Stonedust wraps fire up.
Endless Light wraps – lvl 8 these are for the training dummy and the occasional undead thing.
Those named metal aligned/Gp wraps from Shadow crypt
Vamp wraps (Med guild slot)– lvl 9
(lesser)Vamp Stonedust wraps lvl 12

And that is it until level 18 where I have Tod rings (baring glowball killn wraps) but only one is used for damage atm and that one is holy burst. I would burst another ring but I have a hard time taking off my Ring of the Stalker…

You all see my issue, right? I don’t have a weapon power boost from level 12 on. Now for a long time Shroud weapons were the best around but that is no longer the case, and never was the case for monks….

So here is my dilemma, what will boost me the most that I can swap into as soon as now, level 14?

Of Vampirism is a must as it is 80% of my healing in quests, but what to I add to boost the power?

Holy is a clear option, bypassing good DR and a fair amount of damage vs a lot of DDo mobs is solid.

Elemental (aja Acid or Elec) burst is another option.

But there is more to things then throwing damage at mobs. I read a good forum post a while back about using weapon debuffs to good effect. So something like Cursespewing or Roaring is a fair option maybe.

IDK, if you have any comments, well there is a comment box.

❤

Do Clothes Make the Man?

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One of the many things I like using a Monk shell when I TR is or was that getting a fair AC that mattered and that it didn’t come from armor. Which was good because until level 16 when my full out amp dragon touched armor came online the armor slot was for what ever hit my fancy.

I have crafted robes/outfits of Invulnerability at level 0, Life shield of Invulnerability not too much later. I have a few other options lying around like Life shield of False Life and plain old Greater False Life all with med or better guild slots of coarse. I also have some Garments of bigger fists for times when I want to use a stance other then earth.

On a side note, i would totally do the starter rag thing if they had guild slots on them…

But with the changes to the dragon scale armors I have been looking at burning some of my saved sets.

I have been collecting scales for years. Using them very sparely. In fact before last night I only used one set ever and that set is still sitting in Healz’s bank in case I decide to TR him. I have at least one set from each of the GH dragons. In the case of black I think I have 3 sets which is good as I think black is one of the better sets now.

Back to burning a set I did as part of a giving myself a little reward for sticking to my guns and getting Sam to 14 before logging last night. I felt even if I just use it from 14 to 16 for the next 3 lives it will be worth it. But I think I will get more use out of it then that.

Lets just look a little at the black set incase your not up to speed on the changes.

+8 armor, Haste Guard, Armor-piercing 10%, Relentless Fury, and Greater Acid Reist…

Breaking it down:
+8 armor vs the Jidz’s +5 wow all of 3 more AC so what is that .01% less hits?

Haste Guard, Money! If we all get hit now at least there is a chance to get hasted and kill the guy hitting me a little faster.

Armor-piercing 10%, I don’t know about you but I really see the difference in my incoming damage from before every monster had a way to bypass some fort. Now it is my turn.

Relentless Fury, to me this is the big one. The reason I am willing to give up Life Shield. So as long as my level is at or below the quest I should nearly always have the 5% bonus to damage while solo or shortmaning content as the CR of the mobs is always above you if your around level. Sounds kinda sexy to me.

Well I will try it out tonight. And if it works out really well I will let you know.

❤

How Hard it is…

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I really want to tear into the new Batman film, but as I am sure many of you didn’t see it yet I wont do so. But it is hard not to get into it. So I will talk about what is doing on for me in DDo.

I have been leveling kind of slowly the last few days. I felt that the quality melee soloable level 10-11 quests are kind sparse. Leaving me to run a lot of sands stuff a little under level. I made a pass through the walk-ups keeping my elite streak running. Followed up with me grinding some of those quests into the ground. Getting me to level 13.

But when I tried to step things up to OOB and WizKing I stumbled over and over and over again. Sometimes “I” failed the run and others the quests/lag did me in. Twice in WizKing two arcanes lighting bolted me to death from outside a locked lever room while I was clearing trash. Once I ran past and area of spinning traps and was ¾ up the hallway past them when the trap damage caught up with me taking me from full (400ish hp) to dead. I thought maybe I forgot my Death block item and failed a save but reviewing the log I took a beating from the traps. Btw I never even saw the traps until my ghost ran back to see what traps…

Super cool bugs guys.

Long story short I decided after the 5-6 failed run in a row on elite that I needed to stop banging my head against the wall and make an adjustment. So I turned on some music and stepped things down to hard.

First of all, once you adapt to the xp from an elite streak hard is so so at best. But the quest is super easy allowing you to run 3 runs in the same time it would take to run the same quest twice on elite. I am hoping to return to an elite streak in GH.

I was able to grind out enough xp to make 14 before logging for the night last night. Doing so involved ran sacking the wizking chests and that last run was on elite and it took a long while with a few hireling deaths.

Well that is good enough for now. Look for a bonus post later today. Oh and also incase you missed it there is a new CtH up on the website, ddococktailhour.com

❤

Please join…

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Last night I was just running a couple of sand walkups over and over again. Level 12 now is a little try for my soloing (streak) tastes, but I have been getting by. Any way I get a tell along the lines of “about to start elite Von5 for streak, what to come?”

Now I didn’t finishing my flagging but I looked at his lfm and I remembered a few of those names and guilds so why not. Let him know I need a few mins to flag for the raid. I skipped running von2 because I am dumb. So on casual it should take about 8 mins at most.

The leader replies that they can wait just “PLEASE JOIN”. Warning bells start to go off. But as I was already in von2 I thought what the hell. Four to five mins later I was about to finish Von2 when I get that typical “how much longer?” tell which I replied any moment get started with out me.

Finish up and join in. There were 5-7 others. We had one guy run into a trap, die; get rezed and then recall/drop in the first min of being in. Thanks, guy?

Anyway I learn why I was so badly needed; I was the door opener/trapper with my one level of artificer and my hopefully good skillz. I told them I would try but I make no promises as my few skill points are spread fairly thin but I have a fair search… But I don’t have any issues. Even rolled a 1 on to disarm once and didn’t blow the box so that was a good feeling. But I was running back and forth unlocking this door, working traps, opening that door and back on the traps. I need to refresh my von5 workings.

We keep moving and we get ready to head north. The leader asked who can solo right? I let him know that I could. What I am strong, wise and have a bow. Not to forget my killing/healing skills. But he reminds me of locked doors on the left so I have to go that way… No one can go left I guess so I get the voice and ring and I get assigned the task of handling that side and the raid leader will go the other way. Sure.

Skip to the puzzle/ wheel room and I ask Hey four turns right? And I get a yep. Make the turns and talk to the face. Go threw the first option. And then the second and we are off. I pass back the voice and ring and go on a killing spree. Before long the leader goes something is wrong. Shit, what did I screw up? But after we send the leader up north to check my work turns out that I was fine and the quest bugged out. But he didn’t want to put in a tix and I was burning xp pot and hungry so I bugged out as well.

But it was good to be needed while it lasted. After dinner I checked the LFM panel and saw that he most of that group had a tempest spine run up but was asking for only a healer I almost sent a tell but I decided to bust my balls and run some of the Necro 3 quests and call it a night. Rwar.
So how was your night?

❤