Monthly Archives: February 2013

The Mast Plan as it is Today

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One of the things I get a lot of positive feed back from you readers on is gear and build thoughts. Well them and tv/movie talk. Know your readers I guess… Anyhow I took 15-30 mins while waiting for an email reply at the office and fiddled with the new Giant Hold gear and my tank. Sure I could have done some “work” but you know, make the day fun when you can. ☺

For the record this gear list is set up for a few things but mainly max out those big hits on Darth Samius and gear out as he is mostly wearing junk/easy to get loots.

Epic Marith Chain: My seeker, Shatter, some DR, and a blue slot (PRR)

EE Bracers of the Twisting Shade: Disable Device +20, Search +20, Exceptional Seeker +5, Blurry, Resistance +7

Together these two items are the cornerstone of my set up. I need to look at the math but I think with a big Int tome and a lesser heart I should be able to work in rog skills, I might have to give up a lot of points in UMD which I will miss but I can live with a it in the middle to high 20s. I just will have to rely more on clicklies.

Now we/I start to add in the gear to finish fleshing out missing abilities like Fort and key stats.

EH(planed)/EE Ancient Band Protection +7, Heavy Fortification, Yellow Slot (Fear Immunity)
EH Dream Visor: Dream Vision +4, Spot +20, Colorless (EXP STR)

Planar Focus: Prowess: Int Str 3

Okay these last three items round out the main DPS bonuses even if that means I need to complete the Purple Knight favor to unlock my axe…

EH (planed)/EE Girdle of Giants’ Brawn: +8 str, green (goodluck+2), colorless (INT)

EH (planed)/EE Helm of the White Dragon Con 8, green (HPs), Colorless (Chr)

EH (planed)/EE Jorgundal’s Collar: Melee Alacrity 14%, Striding 30%, yellow (Feather Fall), Colorless (Chr)

EH Jeweled Cloak: Inherent (10) Elemental Resistance, Spell Absorption (20 charges), Green (Death Block), Colorless (INT)

We leave the Purple gloves on for now, Con, Amp30%

2 pair of GS boots. 1, all HPs! 2, chr skills
Think that covers the main “should be fairly simple grind list”. Don’t think I am using anything that I would need to pull a second copy of before passing it down to Darth I think I am covering every key stat with as many bonuses as I can work in. The only EE item in the list is something that I can get the Brits to help me farm up easily enough I think. Over all everything else is while farming for Xps or other items nab them.

So what did I miss?

<3s

Minor Victories

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So the last few weeks I have a few minor goals. Get Javabot into epics, 4 more red scales to repay Grim, find the Shard of the Red Dragon to make said Red dragon armor, get the Marith Chain blank for Darth Samius and get Samius at lest 3 in every epic destiny. Oh and the best one take back the lead in the niceness war between Grim and myself.

Java has been in epics for a while now. He has done a lot of the Tor flagging quests on EE and has been making his way threw the web flagging. I really do like how he is playing, although I have noticed some loss in over all goodness since moving out of Sentinel and in to GMoFs. All those Hps are gone. ☹ Last life I had started leveling the Exalted Angel destiny but didn’t like it and then TRed before moving out of the divine circle. Guess Java will have to share Samius’ goal of 3 or 4 ranks in all destines fairly soon. I am not sure where Java will land final destiny wise but I can see twisting in a ton of Draconic Incarnation stuff if he doesn’t just land in that destiny.

So the other day due to a client crash the DG/HoDW ended up doing a second Von run for the weekend netting me my 4th bonus red scale to repay the loan from Grim. Took me a week to get them all together and catch her to return them but I finally did last weekend.

Running as many Vons as possible also allows me to keep trying to get a Shard of the Dragon. Which I am rounding 20 completions on my piking account just since the brits joined us and yet to have seen a shard drop.

Darth has it Epic Marith Chain now, I used a few bypass timers I had in the bank and soloed a few hards to get to a 19th and then with the brits we did a 20th and it was in the list. Thank goodness. Now that I have it and the Epic GH gear is around I will need to work out a new gear list and plan out my slotting some before I can really get into using it full time. Right now its equipped and ready to go but I lost my SFL (40 hp) and my heavy fort so until I get the list reworked I need to keep the purple set running.

I am glad to say this weekend will start the last destiny push on Samius. I am just a hair short of wrapping up my currently last level in Fury of the wild and will be switching to Primal Avatar to round out its 3 levels and with that I will have at lets 3 in everything. And that is more then enough points to twist in everything I have in mind at the moment (although I would like to twist in wings) Right now I have Specialist (necro), Echoes of the Ancestors Arcane (Magister) and Brace of Impact as my twists. Thinking about swapping Echoes for Endless Faith. As an AM I can run a long time on echos but I have had to drink a pot or 2 in the GH epics to put us over in some places where 10% more sp or a deeper echo pool would have gotten us to the end. Once I get another regen clickly from Abbot or make an Epic SSR or Epic TT so I can carry a second sp clickly then I don’t think it will be an issue. But for now I hope the Int/spell pen loss will hurt less then drinking pots.

And finally the other day, Grim was on her tank and we were about to head in to EE Tor when I asked what weapons are you using. And she links a lot of Eh good weapons. She said she has been sitting on a pile of good loot gen Bswords but she kinda wanted the EE Charoush’s Inferno until she could farm up a Nightmare. Well EE Pop’s fire room has been kicking our butts unless we have heavy evasion group. But once everyone logged for the night I thumbed the AH for level 25 items, just looking mostly. When I see an EE Charoush’s Inferno for a song. I nab it and mail it to her tank. I am so winning again. Best part this is totally a win win for me. She is better geared then she was making my weekend EEs way smoother if she has to tank and she will be looking for a way to repay me to try and get back in the nice off we have going on. I swear I am going to start more of these who is nicer pissing contests. ☺

Oh Sarlona, Your Item Values are Soooo Funny/Sad

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So as you know, unless you have been hiding under a rock or just started playing DDo, epic Giant Hold has been released. And people really like it. Well I do anyway and I see a lot of others running around, so I am going to stick with my people like it.

But I have questioning the prices for some of the loot. As you know or you should from keeping up with this blog (scroll down like 2-3 posts) I am not super impressed with the minor upgrades to the gear in GH. Don’t get me wrong there are some really great winners, but a lot of stinkers. And for some reason we are letting hand full of people control the prices in a super negative way. Now I know there will be some “new” thing inflation but there is a point where people need to just hold on and say wft?

Case and point, EE Dream Visor. Now it is a fairly good item, Dream Vision is +3, 4 or 5 damage depending on what difficulty item you find. But Yellow slots are not as amazing as they were now that false life has moved to the blue slot. Guess you can put your striding in some strange places now if you can’t pull your abbot quiver in 20/40 runs. But other then that I think most yellows will be used for stat boosts.

Anyway I don’t mean to get into the item but what some people are asking for it. There is at least one post looking for 2 Otto boxes. YES TWO aka 100$ US give or take. Amazing…. Almost all the rest of the trade forum/trade channel posts I have seen seem to have landed at about one Otto box… Really? Come one people I understand trying to get the most from what is a good pull from a very hard quest to do on EE, but really? You want a 5K tp cost item for something farmed in game? WOW.

Looking at some other items and just mostly the AH because the trade forums is full of people saying make me an offer and then saying well I was looking for an Otto’s box… Most of the EE items are 2millon plat buyout if they have a buyout, which is the max amount… Are you going to tell me that the GH epics are so tough that any given item in from one of them and yes I mean the bad items, are worth the maxim buyout in the AH? Aka an amount of plat that takes me at least a month to farm up, sure I know I am not the best savor and I take a lot of renown from reward lists but really? A +7 orb with 120 Nullification and a purple & orange slot is worth a month of farming? I am glad I pulled on from the chest on one of the EE runs we did.

I just am shaking my head, but at least I can understand asking for huge amounts of plat. Plat can be farmed in game at least. Last I checked one could farm TP and get to 5k points but that would take a long long time at 200ish a pop TP farming.

Anyway if you have something you are looking for and your on Sarlona keep me in mind, I am willing to help people out and I will kiss you after we make a deal unlike some people…

Oh and a lot of the Eh versions are almost as good as the EE versions with a lot less pain to farm alone or in pugs.

<3s

EE Fun Vs Soloing E Fun

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This weekend was a hard one. The weekend started out running EE GH with the guys in the morning. Doing the flagging quests on EE and whatnot. We had some deaths but as we were just finding our footing it was “all good”. I mean we completed after all, what is a few deaths between frends? Then I went to see my family at a dinner party for my mother’s Bday in Oklahoma City about a 4 hour trip one way… Drove back because of Sunday morning plans and then I jumped back on to DDo for more EEs until I was totally wiped out. Well at least until I got my second wind right before bed time, were I did 30 mins of xp on my Arty.

It just so happens that by doing both a super intense session and then a much more laid back session of play I really picked up on the massive difference of the type of fun I was having.

The EE runs we did were great, high stress massive risk with huge pay offs and good people to have in group. Later that night it was just my robot dog and I doing some Sands walkups/slayer hunting. Aka 0 stress other then it took about 10 times longer to do the walkups then it should with Invisibility porked like it is.

Thing is they both were super fun and just what I needed from the weekend. The time I got running Epic Elites with the brits/guild this weekend got me totally ready for more of the same next weekend. Were the time before bed gave me time to clear my head before hitting the sack and has gotten me pumped to keep playing him. I really am looking forward to seeing what a fully geared up Arty can do in the end game. I know my off account arty has some good dps for not a lot of work/gear.

Okay, think I am going to call this post with a few questions and a thought:
What kind of style do you enjoy the most?
Do you think that style effects how you think others should play?

I have made a lot of posts in the past about intense xp/min play and a more laid back style of play. But every time I talk about how I enjoy xp/min running I get a huge list of people telling me to relax and take my time. Where when I talk about enjoying a slower pace I get way less replies. Wonder if that is a thing?

<3s

Worth farming for?

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I am not a huge farmer, don’t get me wrong if I want something I will chase it hard until I decide it is just not happening or I find a better replacement. Point I wanted a Breach from Web on my Dps guy. Got the greataxe and said good enough. I am still slowly grinding out the my 20th DQ on that guy hoping almost against hope for that base Marlth Chain to epic up…But is there any real chase items from epic Gh for me?

The main item is the Int Cloak for sure, that is where I want my Int 99% of the time. Happens to have 8 chr and Spell pen (once fully upgraded), Samius current stats wet dream. Although how many more +8 stat items can we have laying around before a +9 happens?

All the other raid loot seems, blah…

The Crucible has the Skullsmasher that I talked about a while back; want one of those for Java for sure.

Madstone has what I think is one of the best items in the set, Girdle of Giant’s Brawn. 8 str and 2 slots… I can make that work nicely.

PoP is kinda a loot fail. Dream Visor has the potential to be really good. Mainly because of the set changes, can I assume this will stack with weapons and ship buffs?

Cry and Discord, Arkat’s Cord is a must have for my Druid. I don’t want to use wraps for Reinforced fists and my as a WF I can’t use an outfit. So this is one of my only options for that kind of boost. Not sure it is going to work even…

Cabal and Feast might be the best solo runs for loot as even the eN one are okay. But I can see hunting up a few pair of wraps for my dogs. ☺ But I could see my PM using the Madstone Orb….

Maze/Trial the Jeweled cloak is not bad at all…

But as always it looks like Tor is where it is at! Almost all the items have uses even if you have to build around them I can see some builds using the Field optics full time and the gloves from the white dragon are sweet also.

The blue dragon has some tasty loot options, including the best rune arm I have seen so far after the unlocked Tovin’s. And I could “could” see myself putting my GS/robe for a blue set if “IF” I got the right blue hat. Maybe. I would have to use an armor with a good PRR…

The black has some good drops also but mostly I want the +1 all stats augment… That would make sloting a lot easier.

Over all the loot is a 7 out of 10. The last gear I was really excited about was the purple set and the EE bastion. Since then the new gear has been fairly flat…

Back to work and mail unloved EE GH loot to Samius on Sarlona.

<3s

Build thoughts for Anne, on the Quick

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*Due to a massive snow storm that hit Kansas work closed early and i was scrambling most of the day and didn’t get this posted. I will be knocking out a proper post for today later but for now…

So I got to catch up on DDocast yesterday and on this weeks show Anne asked for build help for a soloing melee (assumed) clr/fighter/monk(?) build…. And while I should take a few more days to think things over wook is taking a snow day and I just need to put out a blog so instead of writeing about Epic GH like everyone else lets do some build talk! I think you can stay 12/7/1 Anne but you might still need a +1 heart…

First thought is if you’re doing a 1 lvl splash classes that are best are Arty, Fighter and barb. Monk is okay, but these other options are just better. Me I really love Arty for ranged feats and the +1 weapon buff. Hey +1 to hit and damage is amazing and having a lever opener that can die in traps all day long is nice that and she already has fighter levels.

Next is play style, Sword and Board is the nuts for soloing. Add in enough PRR and good self-healing and you may not be the uberest dps but you will get through almost anything. So Defender 1 for sure, taking about prestige classes we don’t want to forget Radiant Servant 2.

So I missed race, TR lives and gear specs so I am just going to be fugue on stats and whatnot and just give out lines for those things. But like many builds this one will be a big amp build meant to last in a fight not finish fast and heal when the fight is done. So Con is more important Str, Chr has double duty for Arcane buffs as well as healing and you will want enough Int for cross-classed UMD and balance, and you need just enough wisdom to cast a owls wisdom if you loose your Wisdom item.

As for a fully fleshed out build, there are just too many options for 20 mins build time to really look at in detail.

Well good luck Anne, hope you find something that works for you. Now if you want a 18/1/1 fighter/barb/arty build let me know and I can get you a few plans…

❤

The Night Before U17 Check List & I lose my Mind Again.

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So If I remember right and there is nothing saying that I am, but if I am then right now u17 is being installed into my favorite pastime. And with it there were some simi-massive changes taking place that if you’re like me you need a little reminder to take care of them all.

First thing I did was run through the Lam release notes; the release notes are often the same between Lam and Live. Think that this update will be a lot different then the norm however.

The first stand out was old GH dragon armor will no longer have a decon recipe. So I hit the guys I had old GH dragon armors on and made sure I had already deconstructed them if I wasn’t going to use them.

Old Guild Slots are out. This one I have mixed feelings about. I liked the guild slots, sure there were some flaws but I think had they removed some of the restrictions on what can go where and let people replace the slots before the old timer was done I think that they would be really great. As is I am one of the very few people that bother to use guild slots. So for the last few weeks I have been hitting the AH and buying up any affordable large guild slotted common TR gear slots, ie boots and gloves for me. But I have been looking at just about any item type.

And lastly I took every alt that could run Deal with a Demon and ransacked that quick chest on Elite with the loot bonus and the +2 game boost just like just about everyone else. Having been working on TRs and the like I didn’t have a ton of people that could do so but I had 3 or 4 and I took and hour and emptied that chest on every one of them like I have been every week since I heard that it was leaving. Hell, news that this chest was going was why I started sacking it. I didn’t even know that it was there before that news and had to ask the Brits as to what chest was going. Yep I can be a noob also.

*edited*
There was one other thing i had to remember to do before the new augments took effect, slot toughness in a epic items. Meaning i also had to fill any other epic slots on items that i didn’t want to update to the new versons of the epic slots. In hindsight i should have taken a few mins and looked at all of my epic items that i am currently using. Samius for example has a epic shield that i know i slotted -15% asf but i think there is also a red slot that i didn’t want to add a metal/alignment type to but the spell power might be handy…

I tweeted last night about what I called my senior moment. It was the ddo equivalent of misplacing my hat.

samius

Have you seen my hat? I can’t find it any place I look….

I wanted to take the last few hours of the xp boost that I would be awake and rock some xp on Samiusbot and I did but not as much as I should have because I was looking for my level 11-12 rune arms, having just leveled to 12. Now I have an lvl 7 arty alt I rolled up back when Samius was about to do his arty life just to try and get a feel for the class, and this alt became my “arty bank”. Any rune arms and/or arty scrolls get filtered to this guy. So when I went to look for my missing rune arms I started with him. When they were missing I started running down the other guys that get some play but mostly are used as temp storage and nothing. And hour goes by as I just start hunting at the top of the alt log in list and run down the whole pile. Skipping Samiusbot of course because why would I be looking for rune arms for a guy who just leveled to the point where he could use them? About 9 pm I gave up and decided I would just struggle on with out those rune arms, I mean how bad can it be? So I run down the TR cache. And then as I am moving out dated gear from my pack to the bank I see them all sitting in a little pile. Low level rune arms and below them higher level rune arms. I was so pissed. Most of the night was gone because I am a fool.

Well this is long enough for today, see you in GH tonight!

<3s

Fumblebot, he is a Helper

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I have had a few accounts for a while now, since before F2P. My main account and the boy’s/family account are the two oldest, but now I have access to Phlor’s account and another friend who gave me their account information not long ago. Having an alt account is not for everyone. But with F2P I would suggest giving it a try if only for the low price of 5$ you can have a lot more long-term storage space.

Anyway last night I was soloing along on Samiusbot doing Shadow crypt hard runs using Fumblebot as an opener. When a guildie logs on and starts chatting in guild chat about Fumbles. He thought that his name was spot on for a piker/opener. And it got me thinking; I really haven’t talked about my alt account guys a whole lot.

SteamPower, the first guy on my alt account to get to 20 and now 25. He is flagged for Web, Shroud, DQ and Von but not the Cannith raids or Tod. Will need to fix that soon as I think we (DG/HoDW) are about to run at least Tod a lot more and now I have a desire to run LoB and that will make Tobril happy. And if you have the slots, epic pikers that can do off buffs are welcome, and as an arty he is often very welcome.

Elad, this is one of those turn-over account guys. Elad is a drow ranger and is all over the map gear and set up wise. JP the accounts original owner had Elad at the cap back when the cap was 16 and simi well geared for back in the day but now is mostly junk geared. The wife took over the account capped him and flagged him for the raids that she wanted a piker around for her pulls. Mostly Devil Assault solo but she also brings him in DQ, Von and some other no flagging raids.

Fumblebot is a xp capped shadow crypt opener. He was built wrong however, but at the time he was what I needed. I was leveling up Darth Samius and I knew I could do most if not all of the flagging quests on a pure melee. But I wouldn’t be able to finish the fight in the capstone alone. So enter Fumbles a level 7 wizard to do the last fight. He is as gear out as I could make him at level 7 and as he jumped levels his gear upgraded a lot until he is were he is now. He runs the quest on elite and then recalls and drops group while the real alt runs threw the empty quest and finishes up. The Fumbles runs back to the boat and chills. I need to set him up to open bloody crypt and Thrall of the Necromancer for fast leveling, but for now he is mister shadow crypt and/or can do the flagging quests for those that can’t.

Rollin Thehay, is a bard/rog SS build that I plan to park around level 14/16 to help with orchard quests. Someone that can sing the elementals in fleshmakers would make soloing it easier again and I just don’t have someone that can fill most of the buffing slots at that level. But right now she is xp capped at level 10 as she is my Thrall of the Necro helper even if she currently can’t open.

What I need is to get an arty or a sorc/rog parked for Thrall, Stk and WW part3 runs those are quests that I like to use as farming points for some lives.

Well work is being a bear so I need to get moving. Do you have any piking accounts? If so what are the meant to do?

<3s

Summoners

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Looking over my epic bits spreadsheet I have realized that I have two “summoner” items ready to go, more or less, the Wolf Whistle and Roderi’cs Wand. To me this items scream “summoner” but we really don’t have a “summoner” in ddo, or do we?

At first when I realized that I had these items ready to go I thought to myself, “Got to get my Arty capped, ASAP!” The wand makes total sense as my Arty uses his dog, Robutt, in battle. Robutt, btw comes from the classic short story by Isaac Asimov “A Boy’s Best Friend” so no dirty jokes or reporting me for using “butt” in a name.

The Epic Thaarak hound would make a killer summon once the flame turret as more or less out lived its main usefulness.

But then last night I was working on Javabot, who made it to level 21 over the weekend, if you were wondering. And the first thing I did once stepping into some quest alone was summon Fin Fang Foom, the dryad and called my cat gold seal hire. Aka I summoned an army.

And I really don’t have room to fit in augment summoning into Java’s build but I could push it into Samiusbot’s build….

Unless the feat stacks with the granted feat from the wand, which I don’t think it does, giving Java the wand is just a better idea.

As for the wolf whistle, I think atm it is still best to remain on Samiusbot’s gear list. That poor bot doesn’t have an torc yet so he might even leave it on for the slots post 20 until an torc comes on line???

Anyway what do you think?

❤

EE Skullsmasher

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So a little while back I was talking about level 20+ weapons for Javabot to rock while in animal form. In that post I said there wasn’t much of anything in epic GH that I was that impressed with at least for Java in weapon form, Then later that day I was looking at the ddowiki, as I often do when I need to be inspired, and I happened to find myself at the list of level 25 weapons in the game and started checking them our. When I got to the Skullsmasher I was floored.

I will put a copy of the image from the wiki on my Gdrive so you all can check it out. If the image becomes broken at some point in the future the ddowiki link is here.

Skullsmasher EE

So lets check it out:

+7, Cool I can use all the help in the to hit/damage department I can get.
Intim +20, Well Java won’t be intimidating all the time, but as a S&B build with max ranks I could sometimes intim for lesser trash and the off boss like Sully in Tod?
Sup Ribcracker: An on crit effect for 13d8 is not too shabby to bad it only crits on a 20.
Red slot: Not a bad think to have in a weapon.
3.5[d6], Not amazing damage for an EE level 25 weapon, but its fine….

Now if we glue the wolf form stats to this thing we get a monster.

The base dice becomes a d10 and the crit profile becomes 19-20 X3 then we take the dice multiplier and glue it on to our wolf stats aka 3.5[d10] 19-20. That is amazing damage. It is a whole multiplier stronger then any web weapon and some of us are killing ourselves for the right web weapon.

That Ripcracker looks a lot better on a 19-20 that becomes 17-20 with Imp Crit but remains on a x3 weapon…. Add in holy burst via tod ring, a d10 frost (cold breath) and maybe shocking burst via a second tod ring and you have a big dps weapon. Way better then I first thought.

You spot any hidden sleeper eGH items for you?

❤