I want to share a story or two about me and UMD, Use Magic Device. Inspired by a post by wax_on_wax_off and an off comment by my lady love.

I have always use Umd in ddo. The very first Samius had his cross class Umd score maxed and that was just something I always did.

Back when the cap was littler and before there was Trs and greater hearts of wood there was little 28 point Samius. He now lives on Thelanis, well mostly sits on Thelanis just in case….

I remember a lucky Titan raid I ran will the little guy and a pair of seven fingered gloves dropped. I wanted them so badly, in fact they were the reason I ran the raid. Back then he wore armor 100% of the time. Mostly just to be a little different, hey it worked for me. 🙂

Anyway the gloves went up for roll and I won. I was thrilled. I made a comment about how happy I was to pull them for the SPF reduction and pulled off my head set and shared with my wife the good news. Only half paying attention at best I noticed someone was talking a lot and I started to get a few tells. Finally when I went back to the game I was getting bitched at. By a guy named doopelbock. Yep I still remember the name. He also wanted the gloves for the more important reason of HIS umd score. I remember trying to talk to him about how my own umb was quite serviceable and with my new gloves I had a fair shot at heal scrolls (50% or so). But he would have none of it. Before long I realized it was not the merit of my usage but that he wanted them and there for I should have given them to him. Dropped, reported any follow up contact and excluded him from any group I was in.

I told that story because last night the TR group was running some IQ elites. Stuff was hairy for a while. Tobril as the ROUGE (mawhahaha) ended up having to “tank” the damsel in side Jeets. Not enough healing for my barb to take 150 point fireballs, chain lightings, and big scorching rays. My 50 charge stone only lasted for about 20 seconds before running out. Our hireling clr died super quickly and our guildie clr not long after the hireling.

We raised them both, many times in fact. Hell I had a few rezs thrown my way also. But we ended up letting Tobril tank for a bit while I dumped heal scrolls into him. Fopo got all the agro he could and kited until he got all the trash and Tobril got stabilized. And I was able to go in to help with the final big dps push.

Good times. I don’t know if we would have wiped if I couldn’t umd on my barb. His standing umb has him 50-60% on heal scrolls, with a few swaps I am 100% on heal scrolls (including a pair of seven fingered gloves gloves and a HoGF). I mainly use my umd score for fire shield scrolls before raging up or fast travel, but it good to have for when shit hits the fan moments.

The wife watching from the sidelines (she wasn’t playing yet) made a comment about those gloves being worth the asschewing I took so long ago to get them. Thanks Doopelbock, live in a fire. 🙂

I ❤ you UMD.