Monthly Archives: October 2012

Tools for Power Leveling

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Leveling my dps project Darth Samius has been a bit of an eye opener again. Playing Samius for so long and just having the tools at hand is kind of different then playing someone with more or less nothing. I have done what I want to have in my tool box lists before but maybe this will give a little more insight.

Some setup, currently lvl 10 with 8 fighter, 1 arty, 1barb levels. Main weapons are falchions: +5 acid, +1 holy enfeebling (starting to feel its age) other weapons my lvl 2 +1 holy/icy burst greataxe, Phase Hammer, Shock Everbright club and a holy heavy repeater.

Last night I did a lot of Thrall runs and Threnal east/west part 1s. And let me tell you I really think a maul with holy/everbright with a large guild slot and if I were super lucky adamantine would be killer for this level range. As it was there were lots of times I was trying to kill one kind of mob while surrounded by a different mob type and my weapon would damage the first but not the second. Making the fight go longer and wasting resources.

Starting to feel the lack of fort. I have a Minos in the bank at level 11. And I have the xp banked to take 11 but I want to try and bank as much as I can here because when I start doing Shadow Crypt I want that xp to go as far as possible. Anyway back to the fort, normally I would try to work in say the claw set for some fort at this level or if I had it the Nightforged necklace. But right now I am using the bracers of wind and I am having a hard time swapping them out for anything. Think I could do some major gear swaps loosing the Greater Stalwart Trinket and swap into more fort and Hps but I would loose the Earthen Guard which I really don’t want to do.

Something I am starting to feel that is missing is a big seeker item at least in quests where you can crit. With extend Crit slashing falchions are 15+ crit weapons. That is why keen is so killer on them before your bab is 8 or highter. When ¼ of your attacks try to crit that extra seeker is amazing both to confirm and to the damage. +12 damage every forth swing is tasty.

Last think I want to touch on today is healbot hires. The FvSs are often stronger over all having more SP and HP over their Clr counter parts most of the time. Will often fail you because they often don’t have a second healing spell. And there are times when you need a second healing spell. That said being able to live long enough to cast that spell on you could be super important.

Okay enough for now, Tomorrow might be a total change, as I think I will take 11 later tonight and gear with get a major shuffle.

❤

Feeling Bad, Follow Up

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Hey guys, I am 1/3 back to normal so I guess you all can have a post. I want to do a quick follow up on my last post as I took some flack but got even more support. And I think that Finch_Bloomwhiffler had a great follow up reply and I don’t think I could do much better, but here is a quick 2 cents.

I will say this on the topic and that will be it. Right now there are 3-4 accounts that have earned the bulk of the renown for the DG. Samius alone as almost 7mil and my other “main” alts have numbers around the 3 mil mark each. When your talking about 22mil renown those are big numbers. My.ddo says there are 85 characters in the DG. And I can say 35-40 of those are mine (across 2 accounts). Looking up some of the naysayer’s guilds they are close to our guild level but have almost a thousand members. Divide 1k by 30(for the max alts per account) and you have 33 members more like twice that I would guess. If we were that kind of guild it would be easy to add people because each account is a smaller % of our guild. Right now when we add an account that account is more then a 1/10th of our guild and that is a huge weight to handle with on a super casual time frame.

That said I would like to see a way some way to set the casual guild members to a simi-active status so we could add them willy-nilly, if only to help get them ship buffs a little easier.

Also there was a comment that maybe next time I could do the “right” thing. I think we did do the right thing, but right for my guild and its members. The “feeling bad” I talked about was for allowing Tobril to step up and do the dirty deed of telling our friend no. Because I felt like I passed the buck as to keep my hands clean. That is what I didn’t like about how things went down.

Real post coming soon.

❤

I Actually Feel Bad

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I know, crazy right? I, Samius have feelings? Yes I do. I just keep them in a jar under my bed for special occasions. Also the world is falling apart around us and the EU (<3 you guys btw) just got a Noble Peace Prize for not going to war with each other. Where is the one for the US for not attacking Canada? Hell in a few years I expect to get my own NPP for not killing my stepmother and putting her head on a stick in my front yard. Aka total bull shit. Lets give a NPP to the US armed forces for actually defending the world and keeping the peace…. Anyway with all this craziness around the world, I am going to tell you a story about something that bothered me, yep in was in DDO, because that is where my world is….. I am so part of the problem.

Last night hanging out zerging Thrall with the current xp train and I get a tell from a friend that normally plays on another server. We group up and talk some turns out he has a little side project happening on Sarlona this week thanks to some shared vacation time and this week he would be on a lot.

Very cool!

Do the gear up thing, give him some Cannith shards nothing huge but I hope they will be a help while he gets his footing as he has nothing on this server.

When Tobril says it is Xorian time, I ask Mill to be our 4th while we do some Xorian runs. Of all the words in the world to be able to spell, I can spell xorian first time every time {FML}.

He didn’t want to slow us down while he geared up and with buffing on the boat. But I explain that he would be helping us out so we don’t have to try and use a hire as our fourth and we have 30 shrines so stray spells don’t take people out losing the no death bonus. But the wife let me know that sounding a little rough even for me…. I was talking this guy into helping us while we caught up, right? But hey it is all about my xp at the end of the day, right?

So as Mil gets on the boat, he notices that it is a little plain and offers to smexy things up some…. A little unnecessary as we hope to move up to a bigger boat soon, but if Mil wants a guild invite I have no issues giving him one. Except Tobril and I have been having long talks about both cutting some people to lower the renown loss and adding some people to help with the renown gains. And we already know that there is a timetable on Mil’s project of about a week.

So like any other natural born leader would do in this situation, I pass the buck to someone else to say no, as I keep my hands white and clean. And over voice I say “You will need to talk to the guild leader”…aka Tobril who is in the group.

Who I think summed things up really well, saying yhe effects of adding of another short-term person on guild renown long term would not be helpful in the long term… Mil said he understood, but I just felt horrible. Both for letting Tobril do the deed and that is not how a guild should work in my eyes. I just feel shitty about the whole thing. One quest later and Mil “needed to go” and logged for the night. I hope he really did need to go and didn’t think he was unwanted. But as a couple of guys I wouldn’t say we will ever really know.

So I guess, Mel if/when you read this sometime, Want to rub wieners together? You know as a bonding moment. Not in a gay way…

<3s

Project Dps, lvl 10

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So I was able to power to level 10 on Darth Samius, aka project dps, but now what? Level 10 is where melees take a hard level turn and try to dive on the wrong side of the road. That would be on the left for those of us god loving Americans, on the right for you red coats.

The main body of the xp to be had while keeping up elite streaks are slanted towards those with WoF. For example: Tomb of the Shadow Guard, Shadow King, Shadow Knight, Shadow Lord are by far best quests in that level range for xp per min, but you need massive aoe dps to do it. Cleave and great cleave will not cut it.

So I am down to Co6 and some house D junk quests, but mostly I need to count on Thrall of the Necromancer for most of the heavy lifting. I will need to make those four ranks in my trap skills really work for me. That or use the alt account and make a fast trapper account…. That is a thought; in fact I think my alt account might already have just such an alt. a 9/1 bard/rog…

Well I got stuff to do. Maybe more later, idk. If you have a topic for me to talk about use the comments.

❤

What is the Best thing that “Could” happen to You Today?

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Just close your eyes, not now after you read the post…. Hope I didn’t just loose you all… Anyway close your eyes and picture what would the best thing you can imagine happened to you, what would those things be?

For me I could make a list from unreal to simi likely to likely.

Upon arriving at home I find a crate with a working Iron Man (or Guyver suit) waiting for me at home…

I could stop for gas on the way home and on a fluke pick up a lotto ticket and end up winning huge stacks of money… Not very likely but huge stacks of money wouldn’t suck…

I could get home and find Alyson Hannigan and my wife in bed waiting for me. Fairly sure my heads would explode…. But I would die happy.

See how things are becoming more likely??? Okay not really but I can dream, right? How about we skip about a million billon (Sorry Joe) fantasies and get to some likely ones….

Get approval to attend UI17 on the company dime in Boston. And while I am there get a little tour of Turbine HQ and maybe some sneak peeks and what is coming….Well turns out some of that is happening. As for the sneak peeks that will depend on my friends @ Turbine ☺

Find out that due to some scheduling issues Tobril’s pnp game is off for the night and it is big xp night tonight.

Maybe I could get home and find that my wife was soloing in the U15 stuff and gets her Wall of Wood and I don’t have to help her farm it any more until we do it for the EE version. Man that would be sweet!

Lets see your list.

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In which Sam becomes the Helper

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Last night @tobril and I took level six/seven and returned to the xp hunt. Zerging around Proof is in the Poison and some of the level 5 quests today’s blog post popped into my head.

For the next few levels my job is to lead Tobril through the quest like a puppy and be the bait for the mobs until he can run up and fireball them all to death. Mainly due to the fact that he has less then half of my hp but 100% the blasting power I have right now. 2.5[1d6] to the face per swing baby! Not sure what that means ???? but I know that it is less then 8-9d6 + metas + other boosts…

But leading Tobril around a quest can be a challenge by itself, so I don’t feel too bad.

But in just a few hours we all but locked up level 8, think I am 7 or 8 k short. Tobril is a little further behind. He let a pot slip in New Ringleader and I got way ahead and I am riding out the last few mins of that pot tonight. Then plan to not drink another xp pot until Shadow crypt. ☺

Okay will look at a bonus post later as this was a short one, but if not see you tomorrow. And if you are a voter watch the debate tonight and wish it was a 3way debate. ☹

<3s

Shatter Shot 10/10

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I have a lot of half finished thoughts again today. So Shatter Shot!

Raids for XP Again:
I don’t know about all of you but for me raiding some at level 17-18 was a great way to nab 80-100k per TR run. Between Shroud, HoX, VoD, Abbott, ToD (if you got flagged) one run apiece was often a huge boost to the xp pool.

Now I can’t speak for every server by LFMs for these at level for xp have dried out. Looking at the lfms most people are running the content but they include people with epic levels killing them for any of us that wants to run them for heroic xp.

I would like to see maybe a straight amount of xp assigned to heroic players in said raid even though they are being power leveled as long as they are the level of the raid.

Is EDA more Efficient Token Farming on nE, If less Fun then hE:
Last night the DG had our epic night because the wife asked. And Tobril and I was like hell yes! After a DG, flagging and the raid we all went “What now?”

And the answer was EDA. Tobril and I both brought a piking account each, after all that is what they are for right? So not having run EDA since the change and short man to boot we started on nE. 24-25 mins later each account collected 2 tokens each and some larges were had.

Thinking lets go again, we step things up. 36ish mins we win. All accounts get the same amount of tokens and some larges where had….

Difference was i never felt like we were standing around waiting for mob spawns on hE vs having those feelings on nE…. But lets pretend as tobril claimed we could speed up that normal to 20mins or 3 runs per hour or 6 tokens per account plus fair epic xp and some larges and not shitty loot. VS we tighten up our hE to 30 mins or 2 runs per hour so a third less tokens and shots at those chests.

More Accounts for Me to Abuse:
Right now both Tobril and I run 2 accounts for farming and or quest openers. Last night that was super evident when we passed our alt account tokens over to our main accounts and the wife when “Hey”!

With 3 of us there is no reason that all of us can’t run 2 accounts for pulls, expect the wife doesn’t thing she could, as “It would be too confusing”. So that opens us up to the the option of having a 3rd account on my computer…. My lag my reward right?

Not Enough T1 players in my Guild:
When I evaluate how helpful the people are in my guild I can’t help but use a MtG mindset for scoring people. But not by player power like Magic decks but by play time.

So we have 3 T1 (tear 1) players, Tobril, the wife and myself. We play 20-30 hours a week and renown is weighted very highly in end rewards.

Then we have the T2s, those that play heavily for a few days a month and then they are gone for weeks. I often think of them as renown neutral or some loss.

Then we have the T3s. Those that play a few hours a month, just often enough to never get off active status but are net losses regarding renown.

My thoughts recruit another guild that might have a similar setup. Or might not have the resources to keep up the major costs of a large air ship.

10/11/12:
Have any of you noticed that Thursday is 10/11/12? Just another cool day. Next year look for 11/12/13.

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What a Difference a Helper can Make

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So @tobril finally got all his work and other RL issues under control at least for now. Meaning TR time is upon us. Just in time for my other guy to hit his stride….woot??

Fresh off the tree and simi geared, I nabbed the two good wraps at level 0, Devition and Fernian from one of my bank alts, SamStorage I think. Hope you all saw what I did there.

Side bar, I also have SamStoragetwo and TestArty bet you couldn’t guess what they were meant to do?

Anyway Tobril and I in 5ish hours did what it took me about 8hours to do alone, get to level 6. Stk part 3 was down to 2 mins so that was a big help. But mainly it was just having another person that was in a zerg heavy mood. And we flew. For those on Sarlona lvling alts and what to power along some content join channel /defense and say something. We are using that channel to let people know what is going on and we will take people from there to level along with.

We talked a little (tobril and I) last night about how our two builds complement each other weak times. Example right now with my monk base and melee focus I carry a lot of the quests as tobril is mostly a burning hands build so lots of the quest killing falls to me zerging ahead and holding them off while he burns them and I punch the masses. My base speed allows me to run ahead get agro and pulling levers super easily. But later while I wait for my touch of death to come online he will be landing in Firewall/spam fireball land and he will carry most of the quests. And we will be trading back once we get to fire immune/high dex save land.

I missed having someone to pick up the slack some levels.

Something I don’t miss is not having someone to see weird bugs and fluke deaths. Like last night we were on our last walk down on Information is key I jumped up on the crates to pull that “hidden” level right at the start of the quest when I tried to jump down I had a weird lagy thing where I just thought it was a normal lag spike when I just died. Some how I took 80something points of failing damage getting down from that crate. So for a while again “death to boxes” is my motto as once again they prove they are the most dangerous of all monsters. Some cannot be damaged ever and they kill whenever they wish.

<3s

Incites from a Hard Shroud (WF barb)

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So before throwing my WF barb on the tree of become a helf Saturday afternoon I got in a hard shroud group. Now Darth was fresh level 20 wf barb all str and con he didn’t have the best gear but he was this run away from a TR so who cares…

P1 was great, the clr aura was enough to counter my frenzies. I didn’t have an uber portal beater but I was hitting for 70ish on the first number + the trailing frenzy dice so I was a helper. There was some talk about me being light on HPs vs the other barb in the group think he had like 100 more then me but as he had 2or3 epic levels I felt fairly good on that number still I was around 700 hp, more then plenty for a hard shroud.

Pt2 was also fun I was able to solo down one of the 4 bosses before everyone else had knocked down the other three. Looking at life totals I went to help on the one that that had the next highest HP after nocking down my rages. Don’t need the agro from 2 bosses when it comes time to split. Every thing worked out well as the 2nd guy was prepped as the other teams finished up their mobs. And we all split with no issues.

Pt3 I got to learn the frenzy doesn’t help with throwing damage ☹. Never needed to range on my barb before. Just be happy that I thought ahead enough to bring a thrower. Ended up only solving 1 puzzle as I had no way to open doors, but ran 3 or 4 waters. Barbs are fast. ☺

Pt4 we had issues, make that I had issues, Harry came down and I went all out and I started to notice that the heals were a little slower then I would like and for a lot less then I was cool with. I tried a few secs with my DoD on but that wasn’t enough. So I swapped out to my fleshmaker docent hoping the guards would speed things up or the extra amp would be enough to pull threw but a big meteor storm came in while we waited for healing and both of the groups barbs went down. So my 100 less hps did the same as the other barb. The group thought they were going to have to go to 3 rounds but the dots carried things over and we won in two.

Pt5 was also fun as I took out 2 or the 4 bosses again more or less alone. Think I everyone else was handing out buffs and whatnot. Because once we get started on the main man again I notice we only have 3 main dpsers. Myself, the other barb and a fighter or at least we are the only 3 trying to surround Harry. And again the heals are slow…. But with three people you can’t move out because if there is a hole Harry will take it and kill someone. But twice I got dropped and once the other bard also. The SD fighter didn’t have a ton of problems with hps…. Wonder why???

But even so things where fast it wasn’t a world speed record but it was not overly long either. When for shards of power to be able to make a few items while leveling but the whole raid was shard skunked and after that run I didn’t feel like trying again so I just completed. Chains or Arrowheads in the chests, nothing uber by any means, however I did get a scale in the end reward list so not a waist of time. Just makes things even more clear that WF are not worth playing right now unless your selfhealing.

<3s

Burn you Bloody War Forge!

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Okay, so I didn’t want to use bloody in the title but last time I cursed in the title I think a Dev (Jerry) changed it. So I thought why make him work???

Saturday the wife had a birthday party out of town to go to so I got the house to myself to play, have chicken wings delivered and generally not do a damn thing that is actually useful to the household. Well I did put the dogs out when I needed a drink. ☺ aka Project Dps is in full swing.

Darth Samius is now a Helf, 6 fighter, 1, arty, 1 barb and it is working out really well. I grabbed a falchion with a med guild slot and made it Keen for the first few levels. Then around level 3-4 I took a moment to slap maiming on it and life is good so far. Using the Clr dilettante feat my healing is really sweet for the level and soon I should be able to drop 3 ap in to powering up the dilettante feat and be able to use heal scrolls with a fair chance.

The barb interaction is working as expected. Having two rages (barb level + barb past life) means 3+ mins of MORE damage. And that is often the just right amount of time to be raged up for me. 90ish seconds at a time lets me clear a few rooms but doesn’t go so long that I need to pot for healing. And right now wand healing is great! Making plat on a heavy melee alt that wasn’t monk based, color me surprised.

So everything is going smooth right? Well um Tobril may have finally gotten his work RL issues cleared up. To the point where in the hour and change he got to play last night he capped and prepped for xp farming starting tonight. So I need to get Samius ready to go. Thing is I still don’t have a pally build. Sure I have an out line for what I am calling the Catholic Priest. But saying 9/9/2 monk/pally/fighter a build doesn’t make…. Oh well I will figure it out on the run I guess.

If I didn’t have a ton of leveling monk gear btc on Sam I would try more of a tanky build but after seeing the places where Tobril had issues on his sorc frame I think the monk will just do better as I know where it struggles and that is where his sorc frame will pick up the slack.

In any case go by plat sink WF melee and hello to plat earning Helf melee.

❤

Oh ps, using that keen maiming falchion first number crit max so far is 130ish all raged up (spell+feat) + great cleave on one of the priests in Bloody Crypt.