Monthly Archives: December 2012

2012 Resolution Review

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I had a few loose goals on my list this year and I have to say I did okay this year, but unlike most years I posted them on online where I could easily review them and see how I did really. So if you missed it here is a link to my 2012 resolutions. How did I do? Lets see.

1, Take more time to play the “end game”.
At least in the last few weeks I think I have hit this on the head, well mostly with the brits. Yesterday, afternoon for me we did a few runs on EE on my dps project there were some deaths but we won. Heck the first run even we lost a man (our arcane) but still won out in the end. But even before we started playing with the brits I my tank got a lot of end game time, I powered up an while Samius is busy CC caster and got him working some epics and Butters is always ready for epics.

2, Wrap up Samius’s TRing.
Well for now I am done and I am just grinding out destiny stuff and enjoying the end game stuff. If I decide to do a few more lives I will first burn some +x hearts and get another FvS life if not work on getting 3 total. But MORE HP is where it is at, but Barb lives for for 20 more hp would suck. Although tring would be easier then ever now as the VoD we did this weekend offered up two Tharn’s Goggles. One for me, in my name or I wouldn’t have tried to get it over others that might use it a lot and one for Tobril’s tank. My wife passed it over to him, as that was why we bothered with the raid. I really was hunting for one during all those TR lives and now that I have more or less given up I get one. Oh loot gods; you’re all so funny.

3, More reading,
Think I did well on this one also and I will keep it on the list again this year but with a few tweaks but I will get in to that on Wednesday. But my reading habit shot up a lot compared to 2011. I would have to look at the lists to know for sure but I am up to date in IM for the first time in years. Even picking up a few other marvel books every week and I have been doing about a book a month for the last year. Some have even been educational. Not all but some.

4, New Look for Gencon.
This was two pronged. I wanted to shed a few pounds and grow out my hairs. I have to say for a while I looked as much as I could like my Samius pic as I could. Have to say it was not bad switching to peleo has been a good switch, although the last week I have been a cheating turd, but I am full on starting today again.

So over all I did fairly well. Think having this blog to keep me honest helps but most of my goals were easily met. Next years will need to be a little more extreme!

<3s

Fueling Glinn’s Car

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One of the gifts I got Tobril for Christmas other then this rocking gift (Sorry for the turned view) was an Otto’s leveling box. And with him visiting this week/end we have the chance to power rock the xp in ways we rarely get to do. But Tobril is in this phase right not where he is once again lowing the number of Alts he is trying to maintain in hopes of reclaiming some of his time for real life post new year.

Why does that mean anything? You picked up a Otto’s while costly that is not crazy… Stay with me.

So Tobril has been planning a TR on his FvS, “It is a key role filler” or so he says and has been unhappy with his WF guy for a while. Mostly with the PRR and AC changes that happened a few updates back. But before TRing hid FvS he wants to hit his 20s in the important raids for some key raid loot shots.

Meaning 4 Abbot runs and 3 DQ runs for the both of us and if we are going to DQ the wife will tag along for shots at a torc on her druid (she got one btw). Oh and I might as well bring the piker along, oh and we picked up 2 or 5 people that were willing to pick up bypasses for both Abbots (guess the LFMs dried up some lately??) and 2 that tagged along on those DQs…

I don’t really want to know how much we all spent to make that all happen. Sure I could have switched alts for some of that but Tobril would not have been able to and Samius needs a litany baby!

Something i thought was funny, along the way Tobril looks at me and says, So remember when you said Bypasses would sell like hot cakes like 4 years ago? You were not wrong. And we all giggled.

Side note: I fracked up and bought a recorder at Walmart that I thought I had been looking at on Amazon. But I get it home and start to get things ready to pod and no easy way to move the mp3s off it, aka not the right one. Grrrr! Hope they are willing to return it for credit at least so I can get one that will work like I want it to. If not I don’t know if we will get any pods recorded. I would rather not have to record directly into a PC as I think chilling on the couch would make a better show…. We even tried to get a Hangout running on our phones but that didn’t quite work out either. I hope to figure something out soon…

Well work calls,

<3s

What is MAIN?

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Welcome back world. I know some of you never left but I only post on workdays. Lets me take 20 mins and try and get all the DDo out of my system out of my head so I can get things done. Well that is the goal anyhow. More often then not it just puts some ddo thought into the forefront. Works out today as I am only taking a half day then off to DDo land!

Anyhow, hope your enjoying your holidays. And now I ask What makes a Main?

Yesterday (??), Tobril and I were playing. I was leveling Darth Samius (who I am liking a lot but he is not as well rounded in the survival department as I would like if is worlds easier to keep alive then the WF barb version) and Tobril wanted to know why I was really bothering as I Samyus is not as far behind dps wise as I might think and this time could be used to finish fleshing out his gear.

When I said I really like Samyus where he is but he is not really a main for me, he tore into a well though out rant as to yes he IS in fact one of my MAINs.

He started listing gear and some of the gear I have planed. He went on to say how much I play him and how I often say other then X or Y he is more or less the perfect melee (if not character) for me. And the list went on. And I had to agree as he didn’t say anything that wasn’t true.

Then later last night wraping up the last of the flagging quests to get Darth into the Web raid we picked up a channel friend and while my audio was not set up for grouping I caught Tobril’s side of the conversation and something came up about getting me to train on tanking something so some channel would have a worth while tank…

So when does a side project become a MAIN? Is there a time amount? Or maybe it is by gear? I would have said by love before last night and that my MAINs were Samius and Javabot.

But I can’t argue that Samyus is not all that fair behind in the love department. Tobril pointed out that Samyus got my first GS item and not just the first but also the second; maybe the third even… If you enjoyed my segment on DDocast, back when I did them. They his original build and play experience spawned the idea to join the cast to talk about strange builds. So you have Samyus to thank for Cocktail hour also in a round about way.

So maybe he is a main and I should start treating him like one. But to me I will only have one MAIN and that is Samius. Maybe I need a Main, First, Second, Other classification for my alts.

Main- Samius – Full on love
Frist – Java, Samyus – Heavy play simi-loved
Second – As400, Darth, Healz, SamiusJr, Samiusbot – Mild play/ side projects, to fill some roles and general loves
Others – everyone else…. – Who are these guys??

What is your definition of Main, and how many do you have?

<3s

Bring on the Long Holliday

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Alrghty kids, for some the weenend has already started but for me I got 7sh hours to go and then it is on! I took Monday and Wednesday off, work was good enough to let me have Tuesday off and I have half days planed for Thursday and Friday. Which means lots of DDo/family/DDo time.

I am hoping that even with Tobirl on his way to Salina for his normal “Christmas hiding from his family at my house visit” the Brits and I can still get some things done on Saturday and some Sunday morning. Then Sunday afternoon I meet up with the Real Life Defense Guild for a little get together. I don’t get to see some of this people very often although some of us got a nice little pnp game rocking a once and awhile. Or I hope we can get things tolling again post holidays.

Starting Monday, Tobril and I will be in the same house once again and that means MUCH DDo. I also hope to do some pod casting. Most will be recorded for later but I might see if we can do some G+ while we are playing streaming. IDK yet….

So goals for the break, if I don’t set goals then we will end up running un circles like dogs chasing our tails.

Darth Samius, Right now we have a bonus to pre 20 xp so I need to get him rolling in that. Also Phlor sent me his log in info so I want to try and cap out him although if that doesn’t happen it won’t break my heart. But having an alt account healer would be nice. And maybe once I have him capped he will decide to log in more and play more often, we all know how much he loves to raid.

Speaking of raids, I need to do some. All kinds in fact.

I was in an Abbot when the servers died last weekend and I haven’t gotten in one since. I need seals, litany and practice leading goggles the right way. I have gotten people across before but I have seen more people fall threw what I though was a solid floor then I care to admit.

And DQ and I are about to go a few rounds as I am like a shard away from 3-5 DQ epic items I WANT to make even in I need to buy a timer bypass everyday this week I will be getting a lot of completions in!

Finally I got my 5th level in Fatesinger last night soloing Rusted Blades. So now I think I want to just ¾ in a few to unlock the other destinies and earn some fast twist points. I thought I would level 5 my way around but that is a lot of work so scrap that for now and power in the twists as fast as possible while doing things I think are fun good loot. Speaking of I ransacked the Wizking chests last night. Might need to pick another quest for my solo spam….

Anyway, if you celebrate Christmas, Marry Chrstmas! If you don’t, Marry Christmas anyway! But also Merry Whatever else you might celebrate. I expect to be back on Thursday for sure but stay tuned I might have something early for you, who knows?

<3s

Alignment: NG

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In light of yesterday’s blog post were I admitted that ripping the heads off slaves made me giggle like a schoolgirl, I think we need to cover my alignment status. I got a few comments of welcome to the dark side, or embrace your evilness. I am a little surprised that there wasn’t at least one comment along the lines of how I saved them forever or at least until the next run…

But I want to be clear my alignment is NG, for NOT GOOD. Sure I do a lot of things that are nice/good/bad/evil but over all I do, as I like. Some might even call me CN or chaotic neutral; I am big believer do as I like but I do have a few moral issues/hang-ups that keep me from being a bad man in RL right now. All of which would be thrown out the window if I ever got any cool super powers. Oh the villain I would be… Tobril says that if he had super powers he would totally use his powers for good, HIS GOOD! And I can’t agree more.

Sigh…

I just want my name written on the moon and rule the lands with burning death rays. Tell me that you don’t want the same…

I have an argument/question that I will just touch on get you thinking on it and hopefully cover in my in-depth later in a new podcast with Tobril.

Why in most comic books is the economy better then the real world? I think it is because of super villains. Things are always being destroyed and therefor always needed to be rebuilt. So the housing market is always up.

So you see if I had cool super powers and went of the deep end it would be for almost everyone’s benefit.

Back to work, I will have a post tomorrow but will be out most of next week.

<3s

Oh, I Freed the Slaves! Freed them REAL GOOD!

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Work yesterday did its best to kill my sprit and to say I was in a foul mood would put things mildly. I think I was so angry if I was the Red Hulk the normal Hulk wouldn’t have been able to stop me from destroying something…. IDK… Even a few hours of DDo with Tobril didn’t calm me down until what I think will be my 3rd favorite quest from now on!

The House of Broken Chains

Some Spoilers to follow if you haven’t done the quest, but I will try and keep things simi safe.

The point of the quest as you might gather from the title/area is to rescue slaves. There are a splattering of slaves through the quest and a mess of them in the end fight, that you can save for optional xps, as well as a few that you have to save as quest objectives.

To save the optional slaves you must kill a their slave master and use a dialogue option to use one of a few different skills to save them.

I don’t remember if I told you all but the first time Tobril and I did The Lost Thread he was “saving” the slaves and about as often as not he would rip their heads off. So began a running gag. That said we try our hardest to save everyone, well at least until we have the xp then anything goes.

So a few runs back we noticed that my UMD score was high enough to more or less auto free slaves so now it is my job. Well last night we saved everyone except one guy who had an “accident”. I might have tightened the collar and poped his little drow head right off.

But we Freed every last slave and defeated Solul with out killing his slaves. After checking the chest and looking at the quest xp I noticed I could “free” Solul’s slaves not that the quest was over. But there was no point other then fun.

Here the story takes a dark twist and in light of the resent current events might be in poor taste. But you know me; I tell it how it is?

Running to the first drow, I said “I will save you” and ripped his little head right off with my unskilled check. Not going to lie, for the first time last night I smiled a little. And I started to “save” them all. Tobril seeing what I was doing began to chime in on how I am the drow savior and how I am not allowed to give him a hard time anymore as I am clearly a mass murder. And in that moment I fell into a giggle fit. The best 3-4 mins of my day. Just Tobril and I standing in a pile of bodies, some good some bad, but they totally cleaned the anger and frustrations right out of me. Times like that is why I ❤ this game so much.
If you have a problem – If no one else can help – and if you can find them – maybe you can hire the Defense Guild.”

Unlike the A-Team we kill the bad/indifferent/good men/mobs/slaves/bystanders.

❤

Time for Mindless Epic Xps

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Now that I have my 5 epic levels I have been mindlessly grinding out xp for all the twists I want. My go to quests are:

Wizking, about 23 mins on eN for 36k base, 4 k for kill all guardians optional, three 7500ish genie guards and 2300 for looting the big chest. So about 65k a run for about 3k a min. At least 8 chests per run, more often then not 10 per run. Other big perk for me I really ❤ the quest, even when I am mindlessly farming it while watching a show on the other screen.

Snitch, I don’t have an XP break down of this one. It is just my switch it up quest. But right now as I am running loot gems I also am trying for chests per min as well as a good amount of xp. But again it is good fun.

Broken Blades, This is still like 10k a min but as I don’t love the quest I only really do it when Tobril wants to and I am not ransack on the chests.

Why do I bother will all this? Well I have a lot of twits on my want list and I need to both work my way to the destinies I want to twist from as well as earn the points to unlock them. So what is my master plan? I need 18 points to twist in the following 3/3/1

Piercing Spellcraft and Echoes of the Ancestors: Magister are both level 3 twists for 5 more spell pen. If you read yesterday’s post (if not look down) you know I feel like I am real close to where I need to be spell pen wise. 41/42 + 5 = 46/47 and after talking to Tobril he thinks most guys are around 50ish SP on eE so add a +3 pen item and I fail on 1s and 2s. So all I need will be to raise my level a hair via say the Arcane Augmentation 9 via something like Twilight or a epic Staff of Arcane Power.

That leaves me with 1 slot for a level 1 twist like Brace for impact to help with letting me use Yugo pots or Healing Spring for more passive healing.

I have to assume you all have twist plans, want to share them here?

<3s

New Watermarks

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This weekend began what I can only think of as making headway to the new watermarks. Currently Sam has about a 43 Spell Pen and a 50ish removal DC and around 45ish web depending on what is equipped.

I still have a little wiggle room left (mostly with twists and a few minor gear shuffles that would fuck my whole gear setup) but not a ton but I find myself asking, where are the new watermarks? Once I twist in 3 more Spell Pen is that good enough for now? Do I need to get to 55 or 60 necro DC to be super caster man?? I just don’t know…

After this weekend I feel I cover the eH marks just fine. I don’t remember many Spell Pen checks failed on eH and few saves vs fingers/wails/circles mostly high fort save mobs. And I really like how the Nullmagic stuff from Magister is interacting with the mobs even if I am missing the raw damage boosts/SLAs that the Draconic Incarnation had.

eE on the other hand I still feel a little short, I can throw a few un-metaed magic missals and for the most part get lower the mobs SR so I can get through easy enough but then my DCs seem to be hit or miss for mid fort save guys. I am catching about 70% of the mobs in my webs with the DC as is and I have used the Magister boost to raise my DCs by 5, wail, circle, finger and then re-web. So even in places where we have issues I have been able to push through.

We only did one eE this weekend, if I remember right. And that went pair shaped at the end as I tried to kite the end trash as the melee killed the boss hopefully far enough away from the trash that the end boss couldn’t sac a guy and regen to full. We were also a man short so over all I think we did really well.

That said I still think I might need to switch over to PM at some point. The AM is working well for eN and eH but that is not where I plan to spend all my time. I plan to rock the eEs when able and while we are doing well on the weekend when the Brits are on I hope at some point to round out weeknights with channel people. But before that can happen I want to be at the top level and I just don’t know if the Evocation AM can do that…

More or less PM means 3 more to my necro DCs 4 from Int, 2 from Lich and 2 from Yogo pots (I drink very sparingly as I get sneak attacked for tons of damage making it easier for the mobs doesn’t sound like fun times) and +1 dc from Lich. It would also free up a feat…

Currently
Feat: (Selected) Insightful Reflexes
Feat: (Wizard Bonus) Maximize Spell
Feat: (Selected) Past Life: Berserker’s Fury (needs 2b Toughness post 20)
Feat: (Selected) Past Life: Arcane Prodigy
Feat: (Wizard Bonus) Spell Focus: Evoc
Feat: (Selected) Completionist
Feat: (Selected) Greater Spell Focus: Evoc
Feat: (Wizard Bonus) Empower Spell
Feat: (Selected) Past Life: Arcane Initiate
Feat: (Wizard Bonus) Heighten Spell
Feat: (Selected) Quicken Spell
Epic Feat 1: Spell Pen
Epic Feat 2: Spell Focus: Necro

Over the weekend I switched from Greater Spell Pen to Spell Focus: Necro so I could pick up Secondary Spell Mastery: Necro for 2 more DC + the 3 SS Specialist so 5 more overall. But if I was a PM I would have a free feat I could set that last feat back to Greater Spell Pen or set it to epic Toughness or Epic Neco focus, or Spell Focus: Conj and twist in PCasting: Conj for bigger webs … So many options for loosing lots and lots of Force damage… ;’(

Anyway, Do you have any watermarks set for eEs?

<3s

Maybe Magister After All

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So last night Tobril and I finally capped out our epic levels, time to spam Wizking/Von3/Rusty Blades until our eyes bleed or until we are burnt out on them. So never!

Anyway the other day I talked about how I would (currently have) layout Draconic Incarnation with the plan of using it as my EE destiny. But as I have been playing these last few tears of quests, the new stuff on eHard are level 24, some things are not landing as nice as I would like, about 75% hit rate would fall to 405ish on eE. So I have been thinking that I might need to make some changes. Even though some of these last few end fights have ended before they have even started by dumping the different DI attacks.

So the first thing I have been debating is that swap to Magister like so:

null

I personally haven’t played too much with the Sigils but the thought of standing around drawing a fixed aoe it had better killanate the bad men. As far as I know none of these so that. But I do like on paper the Spell Warding/T1 one. Cool down of 30s and lasts for 60, so in long fights you can keep it up. At least according to the wiki, haven’t really used it much yet myself like i said. And as I needed to burn 2 more points in tear1 before moving on to tear 2 seemed like a good time to try it out. For standing fights 10 more PRR might be a good thing to have in my pocket.

Next on the list is SS Specialist, I think I will swap at least one SpellPen feat into another Focus feat to boost those DCs by 4. Necro is the most likely as I can find a spare action point to take Spell Mastery 2 and Necro has shitty SLAs, but Conj seems like a good call also but I would need to dig up 2 more points so I could have a Web SLA… 50+ DC webs for 3 sp…

Spell Pen and lots of INT is a no brainer, I mean more INT is why I might switch to Magister. Less other good stuff to compete…

But the real winners in the Magister ED other then not having a lot of stars to burn points on are Nullmagic Guard/Strike!

Nullmagic Guard: Passive Bonus: When you take damage, there is a [2/4/6]% chance that a burst of antimagic energy expands from your body. Nearby enemies are subject to a Dispel Magic effect, which may strip them of their magical protections, and will render them unable to cast spells and lose [2/3/4] Spell Resistance for [10/20/30] seconds.– ddowiki

Nullmagic Strike: Passive Bonus: Offensive spells you cast, melee and ranged attacks have a [5/10/15]% chance to subject the target to a Dispel Magic effect, which may strip them of their magical protections, and will render them unable to cast spells and lose [2/3/4] Spell Resistance for [10/20/30] seconds. – ddowiki

So if something hits me they and THEIR alias/my hostiles mobs as a fair shot at being dispelled. Render them unable to cast and lower their spell pen? I don’t know about you but I tend to take a lot of hits lately. Mainly once I switched out of heavy armor for Spider +3 int robes. But the real winner is every spell I cast might do the same to every guy that spell hits? So 2 SP magic missiles each have 5-15% (depending on points spent) to do this? Eloop/Chain Lighting, has a 15% (I plan to max this out!) to a few mobs at once? Does that mean the Chain missiles spell should almost always hit a ton of mobs? EE Drow lookout!

So how does that look? Good enough to stay AM? I don’t know yet. But I will find out soon enough now that I am capped.

Patched, Boo or Woot?

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Last night, I run (drive) home, hurry down to my computer room and start the game a patching as I watch some Shameless (UK) via the Netflix. My kind of humor… Anyway patched and off to the races. And while I didn’t get thrown in to any walls or randomly eaten by any floors things were buggy as all hell.

1, First bug of that hit me was the AH missing item levels. But I had seen it on the forums, just didn’t realize it was on live as I was looking at the Lam forums at the time. Overall this bug is no big deal, think they can fix it quickly.

2, The wife is in Evening Star doing some browsing on the AH when she sees some bracers she wants but are too much for her blood. So she wonders over to the one of the brokers and happens to find the exact bracers she wants for broker prices vs AH prices. But can’t buy them. You can put them in the buy box, but you can’t see them in the confirm box even thou if you try to close the window it says you have things in the window and the buy button never becomes active. So she can’t buy them. There is some talk in the advice/general channels about how to still buy things but we couldn’t and after 30 mins trying I was done…

3, Not real sure what was going on but I while doing a set of flagging Von runs for Tobril’s bard, I switched to AS400 for Von3. And I noticed with no changes other then moving the mouse over the icon my Finger DC was jumping around wildly. At least in the mouse tip. Don’t know if it really was changing but going from my normal 50 to 59 and in between in a handful of seconds by moving my mouse is strange.

4, Went back to Sam for XP and DQ flagging and I noticed that my Fire shield cold was down. Cast forget, play some notice that I am taking more damage then I should recast forget, repeat until I finial catch it starting and turning off at the same time. Say something and Tobril lets me know it is bugged…

5, Tobril and I were doing the High Road quests but Lost in the Swamp is bugged so you can’t enter. Meaning we couldn’t start the end quest anyway. In hindsight, I think Tobril might be right last night when he was telling me we were missing a quest, A Stay at the Inn. I had it in my head that was the last quest, its not so here is one of those examples of me being wrong T. Still want to say 98% right all the time bud. Excluding spelling and grammar. ☺

6, this didn’t hit us directly but we heard that GFL is not going in to yellow slots. I am not slotting anything in any epic slots until I know this is happening or not. Don’t see any thing on the Know Issue list…

7, Oh and didn’t the Ice game stuff start yesterday? Didn’t see anything. So I guess not…

Over all I didn’t have too many issues. And as I was getting thrown into a wall or killed by the floor at least once a game session I am glad to see that fixed. I can live with a few new bugs, but some I just don’t understand how they slipped by.. Oh well I still had lots of fun and got lots of xp. Less then 200k to epic cap and destiny grinding can begin!

<3s