Author Archives: samiusgurobo

Dirty Trader

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I can work a trade, yep not afraid to hit the forums or keep an eye on the trade channel, but more often then not I tend to just work out deals between friends.

Why? Because trading with a friend means that they are a little stronger and therefor I get a little bit out of the deal by them being able to do a little more. That said more often then not I will just loan or give things for favors down the road… Just try it in Monopoly once and see how angry the other players get later.

Example, the other day I was talking with one of the Brits about gear. I had happened to pull (I think) a +8 chr trinket. At the time no one had a need for it so I put it in the bank to sell or use some place. A few days later said Brit asks if I still have it and what I would like for it in Shroud mats, as that is what he had. I decline to trade instead I give the item to him and he says he owes me one or a second as this is the same person who got that Twilight when I more or less auto passed it the other day.

Sooner or later I always cash in…

Okay not really but you know I try too.

But in the past I have traded overly in my favor, to the point that Tobril has often cried at my mad skillx. But for the most part I try to go out of my way to make sure both parties feel the deal is fair. Long time readers might remember I picked up a Lavender Ion Stone for a set of +2 tomes. When the guy only wanted a single +2 Str tome… Pre +3 store tomes, btw.

I bring this up because I have a debt to pay. But I assume the person I owe wont feel that I owe anything. But I do and I have the payment ready.

I am waiting for the right time to repay this person because well one an offer on this item might come up that I can’t refuse and I wouldn’t want to feel I missed out on a huge score and two this is a simi-specialized item for a specialized build and I am waiting for this person to start one as there as been much talk of doing so from this person.

So I guess what I am saying is if you’re on Salona, have Reds for trade and are slightly foolish let me know. ☺

<3s

EE Alts?

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Yesterday, Tobril and I were talking and as it often does our topic of conversation wondered over into DDo land. We ran down the basic plan for the night (we did a teaching Abbot raid last night for example) then via TR plans for Tobril’s Fvs the idea of the roster of EE capable alts came up. Some how this talk finally got me to understand the logic behind some of the things Tobril has been saying/doing.

His active roster is meant to be EE capable in the role they are intended and he wants to cover what he feels are key/hard to fill roles.

He has:
Tobril – heavy dps/role filler/random light tank (as needed)
Syg – Tank
Holy – Healer/Dps
SQL – Caster/CCer
Tennie – Monk (set at a lvl 20 cap for challenge farming/helping guild with the 17-20 push)

And that is his active roster as I remember it. Which is strange to me. I know he has other guys he enjoyed playing and at least at one time had plans to tweak for todays needs. But even before and durning his massive DDo bender/s he was starting this pull back. Wanting to spend more time doing other things in his day other then work out -> work -> DDo -> Sleep-> repeat.

Got me thinking, what of my active roster to touch up list is currently EE ready or are simi close and what do I need to do to get them EE ready.

Samius – clearly my most EE ready guy, arcane/most traps (Some skill gear wouldn’t suck)
Samyus – Tank – Already has rocked most quests on EE, is mostly geared could use some Web stuff but Epic GH shouldn’t be that much further out…
Darth Samius – DPS – He has a list of wanted gear, but he is far closer then any other of my random DPS guys (has a lot more EEs then i would thing looking at him).
Butterz – Buffer/Trapper – she has like 1 epic level and is hardly in to her first destiny. She just needs played and Xped but I think she could do EE in her role as is. Just everyone else will need to be on the ball as she will not be able to pick up much slack.
As400 – not quite there, will always be second fiddle as long as Samius is an arcane.

Java – on the project list, will TR in to a Druid at some point. So he is just in the oh you need x healed… Sure I got a guy. I hope to that once I am done I can use Java as my EE not arcane caster but I am not 100% sure he will be able to do everything I have planed for him.
How EE ready is your roster? Who needs work? What roles do you feel are important in EE?

<3s

That’s My FAT AXE, SIR!

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That’s right folks, thanks to a few good people a now own a Cleaver, Hewer of Suffering on Darth. Thanks to everyone that ran the raid, it was fairly smooth. Thanks to the nice arcane that put it up for roll. And thanks to Sou who was the only one to roll against me, who realized that he was on a 2wf guy and wouldn’t really use it vs my 2handed fighter guy who would use it most of the time. Turns out simply saying “congratz “in party when someone wins a roll might get them to ask a few questions “Why am I rolling?” and “Who am I rolling against?”

Sometimes those are important questions, and I am not just saying that because someone thought about it and removed his roll. But because sometimes we all roll with out thinking or roll when we see other rolling just so we don’t miss out of maybe getting something. But sometimes once you think about it you realize that you don’t really need X or Y and remove your roll and maybe help a Samius out.

First thing post recalling and picking up my end reward was hit an explorer zone and swing at a few guys. In 2 or 3 swings I rolled a crit and hit 999. I wasn’t even axe specked or blitzed or anything. Just a good crit. Drop everything and run (teleport) to a trainer and reset my enchantments from falchion to great axe. As always mess up in some minor way and miss out on some minor thing like 10 more hp…. I took Arty skill boost and human versatility aka wasted points as I will not use the arty +2 when I have my human +4…. Grrrrr. But I can live with that error for 3 days.

Then the group wanted to ToD. Sure I got nothing better to do. Other then grind out the Antique seal until I get one…. I use my new axe as able watching large numbers get a little smaller as I break like no DRs but still the hits are better then my silver/holy falchion due to the much larger base. But I do miss criting on 14+ but 17or 18+ is not bad when your like X5 or X6… Later I will fix LD to be more axe based and will watch the truly big hits roll in.

Whats next?
Int tome and a lesser to redo my skills to try and work in most Rog skills, I will also need the EE Twisting Shade for skills/Exp sneak attack.

Armor I am torn between Cormyrian Red and the Epic Marith Chain. I could use the red in some other places so I am half hoping to stumble into the Chain blank (I have all the other parts).

Goggles have so many good options; Epic Goggles of Time-Sensing vs Tharn’s are the main two in my mind. But there are others.

Amp using the purple gloves and a ToD ring with 20% amp I need to cram in 10% someplace and handle a swap to UMD healing vs Helf Dilly healing and I can swap to Monk for Amp and get 200% amp. As is I am at 150% and that is not bad at all for tanking.

Well this is now a page long so I am going to do a heard break.

<3s

I have a fat axe btw you know you like it.

3967

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Back at the end of September I decided to start a DPS project, over the weekend I was able to cap out that alt’s last epic level and really begin the gear/destiny grind. Wooooo????

I have to say I really enjoyed getting Darth to where he is, leveling this kind of alt is a real eye opener when you build more well rounded guys all the time. Having a guy that says okay I am just full on DPS/AMP and someone better heal me really goes against my grain. Hell even with that as a plan I cheated and still use the helf Clr dilly/a 36ish umd to heal/buff myself. So I only really put my “life” full time in others hands in raids and even then I try and simi look after myself.

Although I think saying and doing this will crush Tobril’s hopes that now that Darth is capped I will put him back in the “other” pile and let him rot; but I want to try and keep in the roster. I do want to have the true dps guy sometimes. So I need to get a huge seeker item someplace (thinking armor atm) and I massive two hander wouldn’t suck.

Anyway the title of today’s post is 3967, this is my current biggest crit to date. I was Blitzing, which I really love btw. I am working my way over to Fury so I don’t get to play in my maxed destiny super often but I was the other day and I was able to get a simi large stack going and I crit a guy on a 19-20 and bam. Not the biggest one I can get with my current set up, I don’t thing. My target wasn’t stunned and I don’t think I had a full 10 stack but still for a +5 holy burst/Vamp falcon min lvl 20, 3967 is a good hit. Better then any crit I have gotten before…. If I can get one of those +10 seeker armors and a big Web two hander I expect to beat that number simi often. But still it is nice to know that any smuck that tries can be a crit monster. Kinda like back when with AC. Just no one bothered to try…. I wonder how many people really care about DPS and how many just think that they have OK DPS and call it a day?

I never really want to know….

<3s

Needed to Get my Head in to My Role

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Something strange happened yesterday right before logging off Sunday afternoon. The DG/HotDW failed a quest… Yes that is damn strange for us and after a little thought on my 2/5 hour round trip drive that followed I think I figured out what happened, we had not yet gotten our heads into our roles. Let me explain.

Sunday, morning I wanted to cap out Darth (which we did btw) and did so by running the Druid Deep chain. So I was on zerg keep my Master’s Blitz running as long as possible mod. Tobril for example was on his namesake alt so DPS monky goodness (Not a Bowonk because he doesn’t like the name) Will was rocking the DPS on her Monk… Okay almost everyone was on a high DPS alt…. Then we switch to do a quick EE because this will be the last run that the Wife and I will be able to do.

I swap to Samius, Tobril his Tank and Will her Clr. Closer to our normal party but with Tobril and I flipping roles. Now that Samius is capped and ready for EEs again I think Tobril and I have an unspoken agreement that Sam is our epic caster and Tobril normally does our tanky stuff.

First fight of the quest, I zerg ahead and start insita-killing trash, but due to being in an off destiny things don’t happen as well as it should. Swapping tactics I am CCing and dpsing while watching the battle. I start to notice a few things but nothing overly bad, but clearly not the normal plan/style. The next two fights we start to find our footing a little better I CC a little differently waiting for Tobril to do his intim first. A few fights he intimed just before the trash would have hit the CC and prevented the CC from hitting some trash. But we are finding our grove.

We move on a little more when we get to a fight where there are some perched archers/casters. Here we CC and get things going. He intims I web and then start to get the archers CCed up when ½ the part goes to sleep and then I am stunned and people start to go squish…. There was a few things that happened right there vs how I normally handle things.

First of all most of the time I am the defacto “leader” I am constantly squawking out tactics and how I want things handled. Like I am going to pull back here, lets set up CC, etc. But I see that tactics talk as the “tanks” job at least in 6 mans.

6 man tanking is, to me, a lot different then raid tanking. In raids you are there to tank a few given mobs (most of the time) vs having to tank any given number of mobs at any/all the times.

So in my mind there was a commutation issue that happened. I know Tobril also felt is as there was some comments to that effect that you will see after I explain issue two.
Two, fight positioning. We didn’t set things up in the most tactical ways to use the terrain to make life easier. Which is strange as normally we do much better at that…. In the wiping fight we set up in a position where a few ranged mobs had line of effect on us. Which lead to my death and a few others as those ranged mobs took my sleepy/stunned body as a sign to shoot me. But also they shot up everyone else too at that caster/bard up on the ledge CCed us for his DPS to clean us up.

So as we wiped I asked what hit us with sleep? And I got the reply the bard. Oh,.. “Why didn’t we pull around out of those ranged guys anyway? I normally do?”

Tobril replied with something like maybe you could have commutated that before we wiped. Which I replied setting up the fights is the tanks job…

But I felt my anger rising and decided it was best to go ahead and head out as we needed to go in about 30 mins anyway and that wouldn’t be enough time to try again once everyone ran back as the key to Eveningstar has a stupidly long timer.

So maybe my role needs to be one in at the party level? Or maybe we needed a little warm up quest as we had all had our dps hats on for some simple eHs and switching to our eE set ups we need a little more mental focus? Not 100% sure but I will find out soon enough.

<3s

I LOVE Me NICE Axe!

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Normally I am not a big fan of axes. They have a place in my tool box, but normally I use them at low levels for impressive one shots. But over all axes feel very swingy to me and as I get into the levels I like my damage numbers to be consistent. I like knowing for example with in 8-15 points what my damage rolls are going to be, even if that means I am doing less damage over all. To me it allows me to plan things to prevent “Its him or ME” moments.

I am doing 90s points a swing.
The mob has about X hp left x/90= y swings.
Mob is hitting for Q so I have Q/hp= hits left.
Do I need to move off and heal?

We all have that same mental guess work the methods are not always the same however. Some people (like me) do fast guess work math; others use the seat of their pants “feelings”.

Darth, so far has been a falchon kind of guy. He was when he was a barb and that just stuck around as a fighter. As a Kensei let me tell you criting on a 14 and better is sweet and with all the different prereqs to make kensei 3 happen if the mob can be crit and I roll that 14+ I will crit. But even with a x2 I am getting very large swings, most crits are in the 300-500 range but my biggest so far has been 1693. So there is a little room in the how hard do I hit department.

My plan was simple, farm web for
Breach
And be happy.

But then shards and scrolls started to happen and suddenly an epic Antique in is reach.
Antique
Which is kinda the king of dps DR breakers unless you have a stack of the right temp augments to slot in as needed, which I don’t….

Meanwhile, Tobril has been working on his tanky guy and has been talking up the some of the Axe abilities in Legendary Dreadnought. Namely Headman’s Chop… +1 to the multiplier with axes on a 19-20…

Those two things and the endless web hunting for the Breach made me wonder if a
Axe
wouldn’t be more damage, IF I could live with the swingy nature.

Running a Web last night I pulled (okay was passed) a
Hammer
And it was doing 100-120 a hit before crits, which really is a major step up over my other S&B weapon
other hammer

IDK, what do you think of this on my Kensei?
LD layout

First of all switch to Greataxes so crit range goes back to 18-20 (1×2+1=3) but the crit multiplier gets huger?? With lots of Seeker, Overwhelming Critical, all the Kensei damage boosts I can’t see an easier way to get those massive crits then to switch to the Greataxe… Can you?

Anyway, thanks DDoWiki.com for the images.
<3s

The Loot has been Good Lately, Real GOOD Even

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So I have talked a lot lately about things that happened in my vacation gaming bender but something I have hinted around but haven’t come right out and said is that the loot gods have been simi generous to me for the last week maybe two weeks now. And just as a memory test and hopefully sharing a little hope I am going to list a few things.

Litany – Boom max Int is totally possible for Samius if I was a Drow…. Meanwhile in the land of Hps I will just have to live with a max Int for a non drow/human person. Yep that means I now have both chase items for maxing Int, Litany and a +5 tome.

2 Abbot Seals, in 6 runs (did one last night and the party was mostly skunked) I got these 2 seals and that litany. Now I have one left and a clean Litany. ☺

Shards:
Antique Greataxe
Marilith Chain
Darkstorm Helm
Bow of the Silver Flame
Hell Fire Cross Bow (for the Alt account)

New Seals:
Marilith Chain
Darkstorm Helm

Some of these are real funny as Tobril has been chasing the Dark Helm for a while now and I luck sacked into them either while he was off doing something else like a Web with out me or otherwise not around. Also when I pulled the Helm Shard I went to check my list and mean while the group leader starts sending me tells and saying things in party to the effect that he had need chasing this shard. So when I return and loot the thing, as I didn’t have one, he is a little displeased and takes off taking the other healer in the small pug of melees. But what do I care and me and the other melees rock the quest a few more times with 0 need for a healer. Then last night just because I hadn’t ransacked the chest yet the wife and I did 3 or 4 zerg runs and pulled the matching seal. So looks like As400 will be exchanging his hats after all.

That Hell Fire is now the main weapon on my Alt account arty. It is a little better then the Holy Burst/Righteous that I crafted him up like 10 levels back.

And maybe I can dig up a seal for that Great Axe and then pull a Cleaver, Hewer of Suffering then I can go all Axe for my dps guy and rock a larger crit number if I loose critting on like a 14. ☹ Btw my shitty +5 Holy Burst Silver epic Falcon of Vamp got a few 1300+ crits so far now. And one 1693ish crit. I feel like a real dps alt now. Sure I need a healer to keep me alive on anything harder then eHs and my saves are shitty and around 800ish Hp I am not super uber in the hp department…. Where was I going with this????

Oh and now I have everything but the base item to make an Epic Marilith Chain for Darth, But I am also less then 10 reds and a few coms away from a FR red set so it is a race to see what Seeker +10 armor I can make first.

Okay that helps some, time to focus down and finish this project that my boos wanted done by the start of the new year, that he has given me 6ish months to work on so far and I figured that would take 18 months…. Yeah that is my life right now.

<3s

Lets all Cry about My Web Fail

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Some time this post Christmas pre New Years we had the DG/HoDW teamed up for stuff. When there are 7 or more of us we do raids and when there are 6 or less we EE or xp/gear farm something fierce. Just happened that we had 8, I think, so raids it was. We did the normal runs, Von, ToD, Chrono whatnot until it was back to Web time. Loaded for bear and with our last run a win we had a simi-clear plan and a certain we will totally win attitude.

We had a death or two from legs but the taking down Loth in the start was fairly quick and worked well. I was incharge of Anna. No offence to Tobril but NPCs go out of their way to piss him off, which he takes out on all of us. ☺ SO when able someone is in charge of watching Anna. And we were off. All was well and good.

We did have an issue with Anna getting stuck in a spot and called a DM to fix her. Thankfully it only took a few mins to get a Dm and he was quickly able to help us.

Our shrine use was way better then our first run, even better then our second as Anna shrined where I asked and didn’t zerg off into mobs before popping a shrine, so everyone got to use the first shrine vs having to spawn a second to allow everyone to shrine up.

The fights went very well and we all thought we had this one everything was going our way.

At the end we pulled and cleared trash really well. But we skipped knocking down Loth the second time; I think we will apply the beats from now on. We clear all the keepers other then the Necro, I am sitting at the top ready to go. The wall falls and I run threw the world goes pear shaped and everyone on the top island is ported the point where we first free Anna. Anna is with us and at the 75-80% mark. But we didn’t win and we needed to clear the keepers again but this time with the increased spawn rate. ☹ But we are DG we can do anything. I guess we were also Heroes of Dragon Wrath but you know. WE ARE DEFENSE!

We re-gather and re-shrine, pulling Anna along for a shrine. We push on, hard core play mode ON. Loth was doing a number on our blue bar people (this is the main reason we will beat down from now on) but we pull everything together the wall drops, again we rush threw, pear shapes happen everyone on the top island again is ported but no Anna….

In goes a Tix… Things take a little longer this time, but 10 or 15 mins of waiting and Anna pops to the start point again as if she got killed. Great! A few mins later the same DM shows up but after much talking (Tobril got the feeling that the DM was looking for an answer) turns out we were hosed and there was nothing he could do.

Just to be clear here i think the DM did everything he could but there was just nothing that he could do…

We tried a third time but we where mostly morally beaten by then. And we didn’t have the will to really push on for what we “knew” would be a lost cause.

So what do I think happened? Well back when that DM first moved Anna I think it some how “broke” her. Either the game still thought she was back at the spot for completion reasons, or the DM when moving her did something that changed her ID. Idk the programing behind it, but after the wins we had the over the last week I know there was nothing that we did wrong on our end. I just would like to know that yes this is a thing and if something happens to Anna next time and a DM needs to intervene not to bother as it will/could break the quest.

<3s

Resolutions 2013

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So once again it is time again to layout a few simple goals and for the most part not bother with any of them. Well F that! I did fairly well last year and this year I will try and do as well.

1, Focus more on work at work. I know this one is super ironic as I start out every morning at work with my blog post and plan to keep doing so but a lot more time then I would like, I feel my mind wonder to this gear list or this build. And from those thoughts to lets just take a peak at the forums and then I spiral out of control. Ending up only getting 4-5 hours of work done in my 8-hour day. I can do better then that.

2, Keep reading but add in more learning materials, thinking one “thing” a month. One of the things I feel hampers me from ever leaving this dead end job is I spend my time working (mostly with old tools/teck), playing DDo or generally enjoying my free time. I need to get at least get a better idea of what is out there, even if that is all I learn….

3, leading again. Finally back to a real DDo goal. For a long time now I have used the early failures of the F2P groups as my excuse not to lead groups any more. And to be fair that time really left a nasty taste in my mouth. But I have been in the leadership role more and more lately be it leading the DG/HoDW team ups or even a raid or two. And while I don’t really like it, there are things that need to be done. At least on Sarlona some raids have completely dropped off the raidar (see what I did threre? ☺).

4, Be more grateful when the loot gods favor anyone, something I think a lot of people could work on. I like most people want things. Oh I love things. So when someone else gets things I get a little jealous and want them to give me their things. Sure I can be glad for friends and channel people but often I just want MORE STUFF for myself so even if I do feel happy for people I also have that hit of jealously. And I don’t think I can cut the jealously but I can try and be happier for others.

5, Be more forgiving in game. I am often quick to anger and long to cool down, at myself or others. A few quick examples (who doesn’t like a few short stories?):

Last weekend I burned a few bypasses with Tobril on Abbott runs, mostly to get his last few in for a 20th list before he TRs his FvS. The runs were mostly good but I don’t think we won goggles on the first try even though we were in the same room talking and planning out the path. So the other day when I saw what looked like a few good people leading one I was unsure if I wanted to give it a try. But I did and while it was filling a person (a reader here) sent me a tell and we talked back and forth. It so happens that we ended up in Ice. But almost at the end this person shot the island a little too far and I didn’t make it. Causing us to wipe ice, causing us to have to re-beat down. We happened to be the only room that failed. Had my partner and I not been joking and having a good time I would have been very pissed. Which was not needed and would not have been helpful. Instead we joked about it and it so happened that I got my Litany! So totally worth it!

One more, last afternoon I lead a CitW raid. Just on normal as I am still getting my bearings in the quest and I was super upfront as to my lack on knowledge of the raid, but I had a basic plan and was willing to take any input if anyone had any. And way the raid went really well. I even had a Twilight drop for me. With out really thinking about it I kicked it over to one of the Brits who had said he was looking for one when we started first learning the raid, THE 7 OF US. And he happily looted said item and life was good. Well as the group disbanded one guy asks if any named loot dropped? I say yeah a Twilight dropped. Then he asks, who looted it. I said the Brit’s alt name looted it expecting that to be it. And he points out that it is not in the loot list. I take a look as the wife and I were also talking about the stick and I ended up pulling up the wiki page on it for us to look at because it was not in the list. Then he says “Didn’t if fall in your name, Sam? Its cool if you kicked it to a guildie or something.” And I said yes it did and I passed it really with out thinking. And he goes Oh one of those groups; at least it was a completion…. And I got pissed. Not a sec ago he wanted to be sure it got looted or seeing if we got skunked and then it became he wanted my loot. I know color me ironic, but I don’t think I deserve anyone’s loot even if I want it… His little comment pissed me off had the Brits also not been logging off just then as it was getting on for them it would have made a real unfun play time for us for the next couple hours. Instead I took a break to calm down, thinking about it now I am a little pissed. See why I need to learn to let this kind of thing go? In hindsight maybe I should have rolled it off but like I said it was mostly with out thought and the Brits and I have been coming up together in this content even short manning the raid a time or two depending on wither you count tomorrows post as a win or not..

Anyway time to go. Hope you have a few resolutions on tap for the New Year and I hope you all have a good one.

<3s

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