Monthly Archives: December 2012

Int or Not to INT, that is the Question!

by

6

So like I said yesterday, Samius is rocking the Draconic Incarnation destiny atm and most likely will for eE content. And I have two very different paths I can take I can go for maxing out my INT via destiny or just nabbing a few points when I don’t have other places to use the points when moving up a level.

I have pictures because I this is a visual medium right?

Here you can see we have +6 int, wings and +3 spell pen but a lot of important ones are 1/3s like “Dragon heritage” and “Energy burst”. I could move a point from “Go out with a Bang” for a rank in “Precise casting” because I can’t get a second rank in “Energy burst” anyway. But that would be a minor shift.

But lets see yourddo shows Samius at 47 int and I am closer to pic 2 with 2 points of Int so I would gain 4 points putting me at 51+ 1 twist (sometime) + 1 exp int slotted some place, +1 litany (sometime) +2yogo pot + 2 store pot or around 58ish int on a fairly stable base, assuming I want to buy store pots…. Higher still if I wanted to go pure Wiz and PM…

Or I could do like what I am doing now only a little more cleaned up:

And live with about a 52/54 int most of the time…

I don’t know what will be better in the long run but I know once I get all my twist unlocked to twist in “Brace for Impact” or Even more Spell Pen, “Echoes of the Ancestors” and “Spell school specialist”

You have thoughts on main Destiny setups let me know! Hell I might fall in love with Magister, don’t think I will but maybe…

<3s

AM Report

by

2

I haven’t done this AM report yet as I felt I haven’t fully explored the possibilities at my finger tips but I am running dry on other topics on my mind besides gear talk and war stories about keeping guildies together when doing quest chains. And of those other two topics the AM bores me the least.

So status update, I am 18/2/4 wiz/rog/epic and AM Evocation Focus, heavy into Force and Electric spells 4 or 5 AP in boosting fire and Acid spells also. Lets see I am working the Draconic Incarnation destiny again Electric dragon path making all that Electric focus work double time.

It is a blast! Plays like a sorc but not hamstrung will at those sorc limitations. Depending on gear sets I can have a 40 Necro DC (I know low for eE but fine for eHs and I have a lot of growing room yet) and a 49 EleLoop/Chain Lighting/Firewall DC. No Save for half/Evasion BS for me.

The best part of the build is the different synergies. The Draconic spell Augmentation ED for example, Electric spells have a [5/10/15]% chance to reduce enemies’ Reflex save by 10 for [10/20/30] seconds. That is a fairly good shot to both stun and/or drop some saves for everyone with a 40 sp ElcLoop. And 400ish a tick from the Energy Vortex while the mob is dotted up with the single target dots and the aoe dots firewall/AcidRain then pop off the Blast and the Breath attack. I am soloing Snitch on my Wiz on eH in for in less then 15mins.

But how much of that is just the destiny? What about just the AM stuff?

Have to say normally my go to spell is Finger, then I web or start to Magic/Chain Missile via the AM clickly. I have found it surprising how often I use the Gust of wind to try and clear a bad aoe and how angry I am when it doesn’t work. It doesn’t seem to hit all the things for me that it seems to clear for them… Having access to Fire Shield for almost nothing makes not having Extend much more bearable.

Do I feel a squishy? A little… Okay sometimes… Mainly when I forget to DW or it gets dispelled or just runs out and I take a million neg levels. Talk about pissed. But for the most part he is fairly robust. The other day I died and was pissed over mic. and Tobril said something, for the 3rd or 4th time this life, along lines how surprised he was that I was as able to keep this build up and running as well as I did. And how he didn’t think he could manage something so out of the box. Like most of the casters on the server he took the easy win and would have trouble if he tried to branch out. I don’t know how true that is but I felt a lot better. Then again every time he dies and I don’t or I end up saving him by mistake, I smile a little. I want the feat to always be in a party members focus orb when they are trying to scroll themselves….

That said I am leaning towards shifting back to PM at some point mostly for EEs. I could try going Nerco AM but the clickies are not a good as Evocation and if I am going to lose my cheep damage for DCs I want a fair replacements not bad ones.

In the short term, I want to twist in Brace for impact from the Unyielding Sentinel I think with 40% more fort I could try and use the Yogo pots as long as I fit in some guild fort bonus to help with every damn mob having rogue levels now… On my way over to U.S. I plan to unlock Echoes of the Ancestors Magister and I hope enough points to twist it in. And when I start the EE pass I will see if I need to twist in more Spell pen from whatever other caster ED I am not in at the time or if I can just twist in more INT?

Okay again I am long,

❤

Role Filling

by

3

For the first time in a long time I just can’t point to Grim’s my.ddo page and say see my weekend, so I will talk a little about what we did and I will mix in a little bit of role playing/filling in groups.

As is quickly becoming a thing for our weekends the DG and HoDW got together for to raiding and other epic questing. More raiding this weekend then we have needed to do the last few weeks as more of each guild logged on then normal.

Think we started with the dragon raid, which is becoming our normal jumping off point for the weekend. Which means I am currently needed to change guys from Samius to Butterz to fill the bard mezer role for our team. Which this week really hurt as I would have jumped at the 100K+ xp Tobril reported for Von5. But sometimes you take one for the team and other times someone takes it for you. That is why your part of a team right?

We talk some post Von run and looks like Chrono is up next as we still have more then 6 people sticking around but that means I can swap back to Samius for xps.

Think we broke for lunch around then, when we got back we were able to do some 6man stuff before everyone got back. Think we worked in a DQ, I needed to take a simi long simi afk while people did the 6man. Somehow I was still able to do two rooms in the 4 or 5 min stretches when I was at the keys between my 2 accounts.

Again for the DQ I switched my main account from Samius back to Samyus to tank.

Sunday ToD, Hound, Vod, and started a Shroud over all in all a good day for knocking out raids. For the ToD we Tobril and I talked about who would tank but as no one else was able to heal I tanked and he played his healer. Yes I dual tanked both end bosses and he solo healed the raid. Wasn’t much of an issue. Think we could step it up to hard next time… If someone could use a few heal scrolls for spot healing that is.

Also we had a super fun Hound. The fastest run I ever have seen. The wiki has here DR as 999/epic so if you do more then 999 points of damage per hit say using a Unbridled Fury Epic Moment you can take her down and more or less bypass the quest. Don’t think I would do this every time but for a “Dude, Check this out!” It was amazing to watch!

We also did some role swapping for VoD we planed on hard (which I think is still a little easy for our combined forces) so I brought my tank and again Tobril Healed. This time I think the wife joined him on one of her Clrs.

I guess my point other then doing a weekend run down for Grim so we can keep track of what our two guilds get done together, is to talk a little bit about filling a role. I normally dislike making a build to fill a given role. But I do have a few role fillers. Samyus my tank, Butterz the bard/trapper I do have a few clrs none of which are super healers but one is on the list to speck out even more for healing and removal spells, Samius when all said and done will be our CC/removal wiz for sure.

We all can’t just have dps or flex alts in our tool box, at least not when raiding shortman. Most of the time there is at least one key role that needs to be filled, more often then not more then one. And if you’re a pugger, nothing will build your rep faster then being good at a given role. And if you build your rep in one area then it is often easy to use that good momentum to do other things as well.

I guess there is a third reasoning behind this post: Tobril flag your bard for Von! Samius needs booties and massive xps.

<3s

If I had REAL Talent.

by

2

I was sitting here the other day and the thought hit me, “I want a A.I.M. tee shirt.”

A.I.M. for you that don’t know stands for Advanced Idea Mechanics, they are a think tank/villainous group in the Marvel universe. They have two big “claims to fame” They made the Cosmic Cube which was turned in the Tesseract for the Marvel movies and MODOK (Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing). Feel free to Goggle any of those for more information.

Anyway I did some looking and found 0 tee shirts for fans of AIM and very few for comic book villains at all.

So if I had any artistic skills at all, I would make my own villainous tees.

Idea 1, AIM
Yellow maybe with black band on the sleeves, AIM logo
AIM
in over the heart area on the front, the back would have in a simple black print “MODOK design team.”

Idea 2, Fin Fang Foom
Color doesn’t matter, Over the heart FFF drawn in flames, On the back would be would be a tall famous land mark in a city where Fin Fang Foom would be perched upon a the rest of the city would be in ruins and on fire. The world never wake a sleeping dragon would be along the top/bottom of the art.

Idea 3, Thanos

Blue with gold or orange bands on sleeves and around the neck. On the back would simply be artwork for a fist wearing the Infinity Gauntlet and the line “To Hold Death Again” Or “For Death, My True Love”

These are just a few ideas. IF you see any shirts with a villain theme let me know. If you are an artist and want to use some of these ideas just let me know. I have a lot more.
<3s

Play Styles for US All

by

4

Yesterday I talked about Xp/min and maintaining a bravery bonus and I got a few comments about how that kind talk/play was horrible. But thankfully DDo is a game that supports many styles of game play. Zerg, BYOH, classic crawl, Role Play, Perma-death, Static Groups, End Game, Raiders and I am sure many more that I don’t come to the forefront of my mind. And DDo supports them all.

There is room for us all, aka today’s Kumbaya moment!

My mood/goals affects my style of play a lot. Sometimes I want xp. And when I do, I want it NOW! And during those times to quote tobril “I get a massive hard on from a huge pile of xp in the smallest possible amount of time…” It can be extremely rewarding to get that huge pile of xp from an elite BB streaked Coal chamber in 23 mins or knowing that in an hour of Litany runs you are now forced to level again for the second time in an night on that 3x TR….

At the same time I have moments when I just want to put on a show/podcast and clear explorer zones all night aka easy, mindless fun.

These past few weekends with the Brits I have been enjoying a much more classic DnD feel. The party/role mix is very Pnp we are exploring (at least for me) new content on the Hardest possible setting on for me an alt that was built to fill a role for the guild that I have grown to really enjoy on its own merits.

It is hard when pugging and you get miss leading information and you go in with X in mind and Q happens…

Like the other day, I wanted to nab some XP on my DPS guy. And see a LFM up for Monastery of the Scorp, Elite the comments were Elite farm, zerg.

I join, buff and I am in the little explorer zone in to the quest in about 2 mins. Get there and no one is even in the zone yet. SO hit the explorers spawn the rare and kill it before anyone else gets in. Once the leader gets to the door he asks can any one open? I say sure and he says let’s go. I jump in, buff and head out. I clear the first 5-6 guys before I notice I am alone and get held and die… Pissed I look around and the leader is at the door but the “clr” gets in and is coming to me. No big. I get a rez and heal up. He gets held as I get tripped by a large hot rock from the sky and we both die to a chain lighting. Two late arrivals show up and ask if we want to restart. I say sounds best and release.

I rebuff and heal up and get back in 90secs at most. The instance is still active but empty. Amazingly the “leader” is out of the quest and waiting at the door. We reset and start off again. The leader says “afk 10 mins, poop” Which I find funny as all hell, as it is something I might say. But not before starting a lfm. The 4-5 of us are off and going. The Rogue (from a guild I haven’t heard any good or bad things about but I know) is being kind of an ass but as he keeps dying in traps and acts like it is first time I give him some slack. Thinking maybe he is just not that familiar with the quest.

Then we get to the gravity trap area and he doesn’t seem to know what is going on. We I explain things he goes on about how he just ran the quest last night and he knows what he is doing…

Cool Cool I say and let it go. He does the traps and we move on. About then the leader starts to move and asks me to do the puzzle and lead to the final lever, as I know the quest. I do so also leading people to the water chest. I do the puzzle and start to fall down when the rogue runs back with a shit load of mobs and wipes the party. I jump back up but am blocked by a wall of force…

And he proceeds to bitch out zergers and talking about how people can’t do X and they skulled blah blah blah. I recall and wish everyone luck and say how I thought I was asked to lead so the person crying about people zerging was the zerger… he started a nasty comeback as I dropped.

See how different intentions interacted? I thought we were an experienced group with the intent to zerg, as I learned about the group that had to change to match the group and their needs. While some people had different goals and failed to share those goals it caused the group to struggle in places and then fail.

I think when a lot of people blame zergers on a fail or feel that xp/min is not a fun or valid play style I bet stories like this one come to mind. When a not everyone is not on the same page conflicting styles conflict. However, when people are on the same page, look at one of the old/first few DDoCocktailhours at DDoCocktailHour.com for one time Lessah and I on the Build Guild rocked some XP and you will see how my zerg and her Perma-death style paired up really well. And I know that she loved every min of those quests.

Okay running long, See you all tomorrow.

<3s

I Sepll Godo!

by

4

Reading test

This could be part of my spelling issue. Because this all make total sense to me. Wonder if this might also have a something to do with why most of the time I can tell you a word is misspelled but no chance to tell you how to correct it.

BtW not the real post for today.

❤

Xp per Min

by

9

I was having a brain fart for topics for today’s post so I turned to twitter, hoping for a good jumping off point. And I got a few ideas. Some would take more time then I have to get into and others I just don’t have the desire to become an expert enough to try and write about.

But this one from JafSupO rings true and relates story I wanted to try and cover today but couldn’t find a path to write about it.

“@samiusgurobo at what level does it get more time efficient to forego (elite?) BB to keep up XP/min on N or H, esp for TRs? 14ish?”

This is tough as it really comes down to your play skill, who else you might be playing with and their play skill and the kind of alt your playing.

For me when leveling Samius he was designed to get to 20. He did it alone and he did it in groups. For the most part once the bravery bonus was added I almost never broke streak. I might have cheated around it once or twice. But for the most part 1 to 20 was on streak.

Now I am leveling Darth Samius on the side right now mostly solo although I have gotting in to a few pugs or even a DG group once and a while and by the nature of his design he has struggled to keep a elite streak running. I know I have broken it at least twice now and then restarted it and I tried last night to break it again. But failed to complete the speed/xp runs I was going for.

Missing and Sane Asylum are very good xp/min, assuming you can kill the beholders at the end and know the quest. Darth should have been able to clean house but even with a healbot was having issues alone and just couldn’t get things done. Over and over again while I started to tile hard…

But over all I think any player could keep an elite streak running assuming they have a team with good synergy. Solo it depends on the build and your personal play skill, my guess would be around vale quests maybe the IQ but if your that far solo you can just finish things up on streak.

Example the DG and the Brits have been doing EE Purple Knight favor quests. For the wife and I, some of those runs were our first time in the quest, but the team works so well together we rarely had issues. If we all lived in the same time zone (and merged) I would think we would be one of the “top” guilds on the server fro doing things, our synergy is just that good.

However, Tobril has talked me in to stepping down to a hard streak for epics with the hope, as I understand it, to be level capped at level 25 before needing to do some of the Forgotten Realms quests; so to farm them for destiny xp faster. And so far it seems to be working….

❤

Time for Everyone’s Favorite Game

by

6

Gear Shuffle 12/3 addition! And the crowd goes wild!!!!

What? I can’t be the only person that pictures themselves as game show contestants when looking at gear. I just can’t be….

Last night was a short night for XP and I knew it would be so I had a plan to do some bank work and do some gear sorting on Samius.

20 to 21 I felt a real shift in power back to Tobril in quests and I have Finger, Circle, Wail and Power Word for instant kills so things are dying well enough for the most part. But I still feel like I have to go back to web and laying down damage spells like WoF, Acid Rain and spamming my force SLAs when my big spells are on cool down…

Over all I blame the fact that he has big boy gear ready and waiting at level 20 and I am still using my same leveling gear on Sam. Don’t get me wrong my gear is really good pre 20 but post 20 I start to fall short. Or at least compared to my counter part who was gearing up while I took a year to TR…

Hence the game show….

Yesterday, I started a simple spreadsheet (falling in ❤ with Google Docs) with just a list of my gear slots and the gear that are in those slots and a rough plan for some of those slots.

Some of these slots have been fixed for so long I hate to try and change them my Min2 helm, CordOp bracers and Torc are key items. For now other key staples are the Stormreaver Napkin and my new Epic Ring of Elemental Essence/GFL slotted.

The one quest the DG ran last night was a Eh Small Problem where we pulled the missing seal that I was hunting for As400, but now that Samius has the needs for it the game puts it in the chest… ❤ you too loot gods… I believe in DDO so DDo believes in me. You can call me Samius Gurobo, high priest of the DDo loot gods.

My belt slot is currently a ToD belt but I can now change it to a Cannith con belt with a guild slot and gain some max SP with a guild slot. My main trinket was a Epic Dragon Eye but my new ring covers the 200 Sp so now I can nab one of my t3 Spy Glasses and have my extra +2 Int on all the time for DCs. Before I had to use my Rad 2 rapier for that INT, meaning if I wanted to use my big shield and wanted my DCs boosted I lost my potency items so I was swapping super often and I felt died one to many times to umd lag deaths….

So that opened up room to use a Blade of the High Priest(ess) for my not elemental casting needs. Sometime in the last 2 weekends one of the Brits pulled one that they didn’t have a need for and decided to give it to me as I might have a use for it. Winner winner!

I still have a few slots to play with and some staples will need to go sometime to make room for bigger and better toys as the levels roll in. But for now I feel a lot better. As I work through the epic levels and different destinies my gear will be a moving target but it feels good to be working gear again vs working XP all the time. A new challenge, or an old challenge revitalized I should say…

<3s

Keep the Faith

by

0

Sometimes you see everyone around you pulling the good stuff. Your glad for them you are really. But you also have a little ping of jealously thinking “Why not me?” Where is my plat lootz?

I am telling you keep the faith and stop expecting to get anything that is when you will get the pulls.

A few weeks back I pulled a +4 to 5 INT tome and I thought my luck was burnt for a long while. However, if you look over at Grim’s page, you will see a run down of what is becoming one of the weekend runs of a Eh dragon raid once again short man (this time with a channel tag along) and I was able to pull a +4 to +5 con tome from the not epic chest. Wow…

Now Sam is rocking +5 Int and Con tomes. Lucky guy.. 🙂

Since pulling that first tome, Tobril has gotten at least 3 pieces of the EE loot we have earned. The brits as a team have gotten 3 or 4 pieces. One was very kindly handed to me to make us all stronger over all, again thanks Grim. But for the most part the wife and I have been coming up dry in the loot department.

But then out of the blue, bam! PHAT LOOTS all in caps. So you can’t lose the faith, just keep pulling chests.

While I am talking about getting good chests the timers for the optional to farm for the Wall of Wood on Ee is stupid short. Maybe there is a trick to it other then taking six max DC/spellpen PMs in there and just circling and wailing everything in sight but I don’t see it right now. And a list of chests for just screwing around randsacking for high value vendor trash in case people forgot (I did) is that underwater clam shell in the Black lock on E elite. Talk to the guy, invis, open the first door, invis, run, open the next door, jump in the water loot and recall. Seems fairly quick. Don’t know the level of the chest but I would bet at least 20 for any epic right?

Note to self: learn more about chest levels and blessing…

Need to get back to work <3s kids.