Author Archives: samiusgurobo

Some Follow Up Anwers

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I posted a projected build for myself this morning of a 18/2 wiz/rog mostlikely as a Pale Master. This spawned a few comments and questions. So let me see if I can hash a few of them out for you all.

The most common two are: Why is Heighten so late (lvl 17)? Why no Spell Pen feats? Lets look at the Heighten question first.

At level 17 when I will take Heighten that will be my 15th wizard level. Which means before then 7th level was my max level spell any way. Aka Finger of Death is as good as it can get and Circle of Death is only 1 behind it. Making my DCs on removal spells almost or just as good as someone that took Heighten sooner.

Spell Pen: You have to know from reading my stuff for a while to know that I have the max number (for past life gains+) of Wizard lives done already. And as a completionest I have already done a FvS life, so I am +7 over a first lifer already. So I am sure that will get me to 20 with just a few enchantments and an item. If I get to epics and have trouble I can swap out the sorc past life and side in the spell pen feat taking the rest post 20. But I don’t think they will be needed. Tobril was telling me just the other day how a 2nd lifer was getting no fail Spell Pen on eE quests with all the feats and a few twists. I am hoping the extra 5 spell pen I have from past lives will do the work of all those feats and some of the epic twists. If not I can do a few mow FvS lives.

Also real fast something I might have said or should have said is this build is mostly to level with. I don’t know if I will stay 18/2 post level 20 or not. But this is a fairly well rounded build for the first 20 levels.

Lets see some other comments….

On Barb Past life: The sooner you take the Barb past life feat the stronger it is in the over all life of a build. 20 hps and a rage is very strong at level 3. Just looking at the planer level 3 I would have around 60 hp with out items, taking the feat is a third more. Be at -11 to -19 a few times and tell me how you feel about having 20 more hp? Barb past live vs toughness: 20 hp now vs 3+1 per level until level 17 the past life is just plan better and having the clickly is an often over looked perk. Be one point short of pulling a lever and know that if you had this you would have gotten it done.

No Extend?: With the changes to extend I don’t take it on new casters. I just don’t. Why do I need it? Haste and Rage were talked about in one comment, But I offen don’t cast them on my casters, unless I am killing mobs via melee or something.

Empower: This is my spell booster for the low levels. Sometimes I just want to cast a spell once and be done. This is how I help make this happen. Its costs are low enough that paying for it is affordable at low levels, I used to use Max Spell but those lifes often took longer to level up due to having to melee more then I liked.

Sorc past life: I am only taking it for prereqs for like Wrath form and if I go Am to use instead of Mental toughness. If it turns out I can’t use it as a Mental Toughness sub (think it can) I will be taking Mental toughness instead.

The last big comment I see again from Malinza2 (lots of good comments btw) is on why not 2 monk over 2 rog. This is a matter of preference. For starters I have never liked how a 2 monk splash looks on casters. You either make life hard on yourself or run a round uncentered all the time. In my eyes two feats are not as good as Rog skills and a d6 the sneak attack for stunned or held mobs, lest not forget alignment restrictions that monks have to follow meaning you can’t switch to N to take less damage at places and take neg levels to use some items. Also for me it comes down to gear. I have lots of gear that plays well for a caster that plays well with rog levels that doesn’t play nice with monk levels. I mean if I am doing a melee build, monk is easy to fit in I have lots of cool wraps and a fair amount of robes, but as a caster I am just better of using a host of other gear.

Would I say run out and build this for yourself? Not really. This is more of a build for me. But I want to share my thoughts and process in the event that it helps others.

Tomorrow that talk on AM vs PM.

❤

Looks like Fat Halflings are Okay by You

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Step two: build layout. Again looking at using a 18/2 wiz/rog PM mostly because I love me some removal spells here are some basic plans. Starting with Stats.

Keep in mind these are 36 point builds on a Fat Halfling Race (aka Dwarf)

Plan A
14 Strength
10 Dexterity
16 Constitution
18 Intelligence
08 Wisdom
12Charisma

Plan B
14 Strength
08 Dexterity
16 Constitution
18 Intelligence
08 Wisdom
13Charisma

Plan A vs Plan B: A has one less Chr but 2 more Dex meaning that there is no starting dex penalty to skills or AC (wanking motion to show how impressed I am with the new AC system) but Plan B will have +1 to Chr skills at odd tome levels ie +1 and +3 so more UMD and Intim aka both good things. Guess my Open lock and ninja skills will eat a -1.

Leveling layout, again this is with the plan of leveling to 20 as a PM.

Level 1 (Rogue)
Feat: (Selected) Insightful Reflexes

Level 2 (Wizard)
Feat: (Wizard Bonus) Empower Spell

Level 3 (Wizard)
Feat: (Selected) Past Life: Berserker’s Fury

Level 4 (Wizard)
Level 5 (Wizard)
Level 6 (Wizard)
Feat: (Selected) Past Life: Arcane Prodigy
Feat: (Wizard Bonus) Spell Focus: Necromancy

Level 7 (Wizard)
Level 8 (Wizard)
Level 9 (Rogue)
Feat: (Selected) Completionist

Level 10 (Wizard)
Level 11 (Wizard)
Level 12 (Wizard)
Feat: (Selected) Greater Spell Focus: Necromancy
Feat: (Wizard Bonus) Maximize Spell

Level 13 (Wizard)
Level 14 (Wizard)
Level 15 (Wizard)
Feat: (Selected) Past Life: Arcane Initiate

Level 16 (Wizard)
Level 17 (Wizard)
Feat: (Wizard Bonus) Heighten Spell

Level 18 (Wizard)
Feat: (Selected) Quicken Spell
Level 19 (Wizard)
Level 20 (Wizard)

Feat order might look a little out of order but what this layout does is allows us to take PM2 right at 14 and at the same time allows us to skip using Vamp form as the last thing you want to do at level 14 is start using a form that explodes when shot by a laser beam.

Also with just a little tweaking (swapping the Focus Feats) or none at all I could go AM and not PM until 20 when Lich form (aka the good one) kicks in. Tomorrow if I have time I will talk a little about maybe trying out AM for leveling up and why I am leaning that way at least until 20.

Finally the Main stat number, Int. Now this is not all fleshed out. Like I could take the epic +1 stat feats post 20 but for the most part this is everything I have or plan to get easily.

INT:
18base
+6level ups
+3enhcancements
+3tome
+2ship
+2yugo
+1litany once i get one (I like the raid)
+3insight robes
+8int goggles or ring
+2lich (going to assume PM at 20 for now)
+2completionest
+6 wizard destiny
+2 int twisted in from 2 other destinies
+1 int twisted Echoes of the Ancestors: Arcane (Magister)
+1 exp slotted some place easy
——
50 int normally running around with just yugo pot

+ 1-3 house D pots as needed (yeah right)
+1 when I find a +4 tome
+2 Store pots
+2 capstone if I go to pure at 20

I could go drow and have +2 more Int or Human and get +1 more. But really until Turbine makes an Int based Gnome I just like the Fat Halfling look. I mean have you seen their beards?

Well those are my thoughts atm, feel free to comment below.

<3s

Would you Still Love Me if I am Not a Halfling?

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Sam is solidly into rank 83, meaning with some luck and Tobril keeping a simi helpful play schedule I think that we could cap out by this weekend. I know that Tobril wants to tree right away again into our “final” builds. He has been chomping at the bit to get back in to the end game. Me? Yes and no. I want to be there and do stuff. But I don’t have a clear plan for my “final” build. But as I type thoughts out may be a clear plan will come together.

I talked a little about Class some last week or the week before and while I haven’t made up my mind 100%. Odds are good that I will be doing some kind of wizard. For now I will assume a 18/2 wiz/rog PM, but is really just an assumption.

Todays thought: all builds start with a race. You can go the other way but the one thing you can’t change right now with out a TR is race.

Options:

Halfling, The normal “Samius” race more nimble but takes on strength and carrying penalties. Also they don’t have cool beards. ;-( But they have glasses! Before the Half elf they were clearly one of the master races. The only ones before that could get some real self-healing via race alone. After a ton of TRs I think I can handle my own heals with out their marks.

Dwarf: Frankly, I am leaning this way. I like the fat Halfling race. More HPs then their thin brothers and in theory a better weapon line…. But mostly they have beards!!!!! And now with show goggles I can have both beards and goggles. Also depending on the enchantment changes and how racial PREs are added one could work in dwarven defender in a PM build some day for even more hps… Sounds sexy.

So anyone have an issue with me as a fat Halfling for the long term? Is so you might need to get over it. ☺

❤

There is a Huge Difference

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There is a huge difference between Samius and Darth Samius and playing them over the weekend made that very clear to me.

Samius is fast, highly resistant to damage/spells, extremely capable at selfhealing and can solo almost any quest where massive selfhealing mobs are not rampant. Oh and very dependent on the wide range of items in his TR cache at different levels.

Darth on the other had is slower, attacks and spells hurt him a lot, is a lot better at self healing then some other melees I have had in the past and can solo (healbot) almost any quest where raw DPS wins out as long as the incoming hits are small enough that the healing can keep up.

To make the point I need to rewind back two to my lives on Samius, it was a very similar build to how Sam is now. Monk base, but with fighter levels vs pally levels, and it struggled to solo things like Shadow Crypt and Offering of Blood. In all fairness Darth had issues in Shadow’s end fight also. But that was will saves vs keeping up with the healing via damage.

Now lets fast-forward to this last weekend and those many WixKing runs.

Samius (in 3+ man runs each team was doing a tower) was able to solo a tower, zip down and in to a second tower often catching up to that person before they opened the last door to the genie. And slaying that towers genie and helping that person with the tower boss. And on more then one occasion Sam, caught up with the third tower person in time to help with the tower boss if not the genie. About 10-15 mins completion times.

Darth on the other hand, was able to do two hard runs per trip to the ship, or about 20-25ish mins a run. Stopping to heal up once or twice per tower. Still for the most part he was around a 1k/min.

Why does it matter?

Because real soon I will start talking about my “final” life on Samius, this pally life is the last one I need before I can TR in to a completionest life and a place where I will sit on Sam and catch up on all the end game content I have missed out on while rocking the lives. And I don’t have a clear plan for Sam other then someone with a blue bar and removal spells. But having a list of the other tools in my tool box is important. And right now I have a tank, (working on) DPS, 2 buffers (one barb, one Arty) and a few halfhearted healers. And Java who I think will become a melee dps arty or a druid.

Also I am reminded by something Tobril says all the time. Everyone should have to play an all out melee at least once. Just to learn how to play with the active combat system we are lucky to have in DDo.

Duck and weave. Crit real big.

❤

Weekend Report 10/20-21 p1

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This weekend was a very busy one, for me at least and I think I will be able to tap it for more then one post this week. As most of the time when there are a few days of bonus xps to be had I tend to try and take advantage and level as much as possible. So I have a few play stories and some a bit of a report has how this monk/pally build is working out. I still say this build should be dubbed the Catholic Priest… ☺

But I mostly want to talk about the time we got to spend with Grim and her lot.

Last week or the week before in one of my 3-5 topics too many thoughts at once posts I touched on my desire to expand the guild some, perhaps by a merge of sorts with another guild so we would already have a sub click formed that could play on there own as they wish.

One of my issues with adding new members one at a time is what I call puppy love. That person becomes almost glued to the person that recruited them. And that is often well and good but it tends to make them difficult to play with at times when person X is not around. Or you end up excluding them sometimes due to plans out side of the game or flagging/timers.

Then it hit me Grimorde is on Sarlona and it seems from reading her posts that she and her guild are good people. And my thinking is we might have a fair match between our two guilds, if not for a merge at least for weekend raiding and such.

With a few tells (okay, twitter Pms) back and forth and a skype chat; a window for getting to know each other became apparent, aka last weekend. A private channel was created as a sudo guild chat. Saturday xp happened but no Heros in mass logged on, we did have one join the channel but our levels didn’t line up. Later we learned that Grim was a little under the weather, but we were on for Sunday. Which worked out well as Torrance was out of town on Saturday anyway.

Sunday rolls around and Tor and I align for a WizKing. My alt project as fallen behind Samius and I was playing catch up while Tobril was offline. Also hoping to get Tor back in range of Samius and Tobril, we pulled a head some over the weekend. It just so happened our Heroes to log in and decided they could jump a little content and join us for a wizking.

The 5 or 6 of us get started and things are going well. A little quiet however, and I start chatting with the wife and end up slipping into just doing the quest mode. Next thing I know we are at a lever. Having just done 7 or 8 wizkings the day before on Samius I was on ¾ auto quest solo my side mode. Ask the wife to get topped off so I can hit the level. Saying that is most likely trapped. I have to say didn’t even think of the other people in the quest maybe being able to disarm the traps, pulled and died….

Egg all over my soul stone.

Oh well, odds are good on elite I will not be the last death and we move on. Just we get going again I start to get an ear full from the wife. “If you want to play with these people, slow down and play with them!” She was not pleased with me for a while after that.

Heeding her words I slowed down and started chatting, turns out that they have a vent service they use explaining the quiet. And the rest of the run goes fairly smooth. Thankfully someone else made and error and took a death so I wasn’t the only one. ☺ But it was real close to being solely my bad at a loss of that xp.

The kicker is had I not been with the wife I would have used my brain some and used my arty dog to get the lever and wouldn’t have had that death either…. Oh well.

Post wizking, we leveled to 20+s and switched to raids. Tobril had logged on by then and so had I think Grim’s “the Misses” so we were 7. So we did a little get to know you Eh Chrono. Very smooth run if very loot dry. And after reading Grim’s post this morning I guess we pleased the healer by not needed lots of healing. Say what you like about Samyus (my Tank) but I got that bitch to take as little damage while maintaining as much hate as I could with the least amount of work as possible. And he does well as a tank. Remember if I switch to the defender destiny I can heal myself in an Eh Chrono ☺

There is much talk about what is next… And we end up doing a Vod as not everyone is flagged for the rest of the raids. We now have the homework task of flagging those we want to take for those raids. Think my Alt account arty is about to get his flag on this week too.

Post Vod Grim and the Misses take off, while we swap around to EhDA… I use Java to “heal” the party but at one point some ends up saving me as my concentration slips and I am too slow on the heal button. Damn mass heal being just tooo slow even quicken some times.

Over all I think we all left for the night pleased with each other, but a little unsure of how to proceed. Think next weekend will be a little more telling, as we will be able to knock out some more raids and later that night I found some nice ice breaker questions to get the conversation rolling.

Wow that was really long, hope it was worth the read.

❤

In Need of a Jump Start

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I have been sick the last few days and other then the first day, today has been the worse day. Think mainly because I am a little more clear headed today then I have been. I was in a fog most of the week.

The first day when I felt up to it I sat at the computer and played Darth Samius. Slow and steady I powered through some quests. It helped take my mind off my body like it always does. I think part of my ddo addiction is due to the fact that I can fall into the world and it helps with the pain in my head from my normal migraines. If it can handle them then a few body aches and other effects of being ill are easy. Guess I am saying DDo is my Nightquil/Main Pain Reliever.

Yesterday, at work I was in a daze most of the day. Sure I got a few things done including a few my.ddo blog updates but mostly I was a zombie. Trying not to move my much, as my eyes were so tired I couldn’t focus. I should back that up by saying my eyes are not as strong and most people’s, meaning that I have a tendency to slip in to an exophoria state. When I was about 11, my eye doc taught me some tricks to handle my weak eyes but it takes effort and will.

Exophoria, is just a tendency for our eye/s to get lazy and not look at what the other eye is looking at. It happens to us all sometimes. Mostly when we are tired. If you ever have had a moment when you saw two slightly overlapping things in your vision then you had a moment of exophoria. For me I have to work for my eyes to focus 24/7 when I don’t things go pear shaped.

Btw, if you like those Stereogram Posters (those hidden 3d ones) they work by tricking your eyes in to exophoria state.

Anyway, I think being out of head made the day go fairly fast. But today I am more in my right mind, meaning that today is crazy slow and being even more tired is really playing with my vision. Add in that I am maybe at 60% of normal and normal is not always easy to handle I am very blah…

I have tried the normal, rock out bands to light a fire. Nothing. Trying to double down on work and nothing. Just need today to be over so I can get logged in and take my mind off my aches and pains.

Okay, back to the grindstone. Oh hey if you have a sure fire way to get the day moving again use the comments.

Thanks and <3s

Tools for Power Leveling

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

❤

Feeling Bad, Follow Up

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

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

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

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

Real post coming soon.

❤

I Actually Feel Bad

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

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

Very cool!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

<3s

Project Dps, lvl 10

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

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

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

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

❤