Author Archives: samiusgurobo

How Hard it is…

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I really want to tear into the new Batman film, but as I am sure many of you didn’t see it yet I wont do so. But it is hard not to get into it. So I will talk about what is doing on for me in DDo.

I have been leveling kind of slowly the last few days. I felt that the quality melee soloable level 10-11 quests are kind sparse. Leaving me to run a lot of sands stuff a little under level. I made a pass through the walk-ups keeping my elite streak running. Followed up with me grinding some of those quests into the ground. Getting me to level 13.

But when I tried to step things up to OOB and WizKing I stumbled over and over and over again. Sometimes “I” failed the run and others the quests/lag did me in. Twice in WizKing two arcanes lighting bolted me to death from outside a locked lever room while I was clearing trash. Once I ran past and area of spinning traps and was ¾ up the hallway past them when the trap damage caught up with me taking me from full (400ish hp) to dead. I thought maybe I forgot my Death block item and failed a save but reviewing the log I took a beating from the traps. Btw I never even saw the traps until my ghost ran back to see what traps…

Super cool bugs guys.

Long story short I decided after the 5-6 failed run in a row on elite that I needed to stop banging my head against the wall and make an adjustment. So I turned on some music and stepped things down to hard.

First of all, once you adapt to the xp from an elite streak hard is so so at best. But the quest is super easy allowing you to run 3 runs in the same time it would take to run the same quest twice on elite. I am hoping to return to an elite streak in GH.

I was able to grind out enough xp to make 14 before logging for the night last night. Doing so involved ran sacking the wizking chests and that last run was on elite and it took a long while with a few hireling deaths.

Well that is good enough for now. Look for a bonus post later today. Oh and also incase you missed it there is a new CtH up on the website, ddococktailhour.com

❤

Please join…

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Last night I was just running a couple of sand walkups over and over again. Level 12 now is a little try for my soloing (streak) tastes, but I have been getting by. Any way I get a tell along the lines of “about to start elite Von5 for streak, what to come?”

Now I didn’t finishing my flagging but I looked at his lfm and I remembered a few of those names and guilds so why not. Let him know I need a few mins to flag for the raid. I skipped running von2 because I am dumb. So on casual it should take about 8 mins at most.

The leader replies that they can wait just “PLEASE JOIN”. Warning bells start to go off. But as I was already in von2 I thought what the hell. Four to five mins later I was about to finish Von2 when I get that typical “how much longer?” tell which I replied any moment get started with out me.

Finish up and join in. There were 5-7 others. We had one guy run into a trap, die; get rezed and then recall/drop in the first min of being in. Thanks, guy?

Anyway I learn why I was so badly needed; I was the door opener/trapper with my one level of artificer and my hopefully good skillz. I told them I would try but I make no promises as my few skill points are spread fairly thin but I have a fair search… But I don’t have any issues. Even rolled a 1 on to disarm once and didn’t blow the box so that was a good feeling. But I was running back and forth unlocking this door, working traps, opening that door and back on the traps. I need to refresh my von5 workings.

We keep moving and we get ready to head north. The leader asked who can solo right? I let him know that I could. What I am strong, wise and have a bow. Not to forget my killing/healing skills. But he reminds me of locked doors on the left so I have to go that way… No one can go left I guess so I get the voice and ring and I get assigned the task of handling that side and the raid leader will go the other way. Sure.

Skip to the puzzle/ wheel room and I ask Hey four turns right? And I get a yep. Make the turns and talk to the face. Go threw the first option. And then the second and we are off. I pass back the voice and ring and go on a killing spree. Before long the leader goes something is wrong. Shit, what did I screw up? But after we send the leader up north to check my work turns out that I was fine and the quest bugged out. But he didn’t want to put in a tix and I was burning xp pot and hungry so I bugged out as well.

But it was good to be needed while it lasted. After dinner I checked the LFM panel and saw that he most of that group had a tempest spine run up but was asking for only a healer I almost sent a tell but I decided to bust my balls and run some of the Necro 3 quests and call it a night. Rwar.
So how was your night?

❤

Some “What If”s for You

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Last week I answered some What if/make you think like questions from Goggle. Today I want to give you some to answer.

What if you woke up and you were your main alive and well in DDO but you don’t know for sure what would happen if you died. Would you still quest? If yes above, at or below level?

What if due to a fluke your main always has plat maxed out at the plat cap no matter what you buy. How would that effect your play?

A smexxy one: Think everyone knows the “Marry, Frack, Kill” game lets play one. Jailor from Tod, Sor’ jek from SoS, and Anur-Shub the Hellion from the shroud. Then once you finish what does that say about you?

Turbine as added a new feature for your own sound track for bard songs as long as those songs are on your computer and in a common file format. What songs do you change and to what?

One more….

You win a contest from Turbine for a million dollars. But to claim your prize you have to agree to a full make over DDo style where you look just like one of the raid bosses for a full year, also they are going to make a TV ad featuring you getting that make over because you love DDo that much. Would you do it?

Just some fun thoughts to think about.

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Epic Thoughts..

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So last night was my guild’s “Epic night” and we ran a lot of epics. And I have to say I had a lot of fun. One of the things we did was vons 1,3,4 on Epic normal. Von 3 got skipped because it only opens on normal normal for some reason… Anyway as things progresses in Von3 we were finishing up and the Marut died super quick and Tobril and I kinda looked (if you can look via on screen alts) at each other and said okay we need to step things up to Ehard. And that spun off into a little decision about Epic quests being too easy now that I guess is happening on the forums.

So this is how I feel in a nutshell. To me they feel about right. If I wasn’t fairly well geared out or a little less skilled I might have issues on Enormals. And I see that in some of out more casual guildies. Not that they can’t do the quest. But instead of feeling like someone is directing them via verbal commands they can do their own thing and try to help in there own way. Where before we did have to give a lot more “Do X now!” instructions.

Newly 20+ people need some place to go to keep moving up in the game. And before the Xpac they had to limit themselves to the easier epics as long as some one more experienced was willing to help them or raiding… I would have never taken a fresh 20 (non-guild) in to say epic DQ or Wizking pre Xpac. Right now I might, if I am feeling social, take a Defense channel person or maybe even throw up a LFM…

Well I could.

Don’t judge me!

Okay most likely not…. But i could.

Now I haven’t done a ton on Ehard as we are still mostly just feeling out the different EDs and how they are playing with a scale. But the Few Ehards I have done fell slightly harder but not to bad and the one or two Eelites I have done feels about the same as the old Epic setting. But for the extra time to complete right now (some DG people are just now level 21) Enoramls and Ehards will become our norm for a while. But if you were running the old epics then the EE setting holds the same challenge.

Lastly I will say I really enjoy the fact that people can short man epics with out too many issues. I know that some people will have issues but for the most part it is very doable for everyone. And I like that.

Having the option to grab a friend and knock out almost any epic with out worrying too much about party makeup is nice, just to hang out and feel like forward momentum in the end game is still happening.

❤

Being Tanky, Samius Style?

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I said yesterday that I would talk a little today about how Samyus has been playing. Also I want to talk a little about his gear and setup. So lets just jump in.

EDs, Right now EDs are the real deal when it comes to tweaking out post 20. Sure we have two more feats slots to fill out and a few stats points to assign. But the real power post level 20 is in those EDs.

At the moment I am level 4 in the Sentinel line, with some in Flowers and Juggernaut. Sentinel is right what I needed. Good Damage negation via a funky life shield stance, lots of extra dps with the different extra weapon damage and most importantly for me great self-healing. Finally!

Some time back, like maybe last week, I got a (as in 1) use of Lay on hands. With my current level of Chr (12) and my amp it does a staggering 19 hp of healing. I am right there baby! But over the weekend I opened up Light the Dark and it is amazing! With my amp as is I get around 350 hp back and if Tobril is standing near by I want to cut myself as he is getting 725 or so, what a dick. With that being so helpful I took all the ranks I could in Endless lay on hands and would take more if they would give them to me. Four hits and I remax up my hp and the regen of hands its not too bad. I even was able to play Medic in an eN DQ raid (3man) thanks to Light the dark. Think I might have used 1 silver flame pot while the party ran to me before using my aoe heal. It has been super helpful and is saving me a ton is pot costs. Which is good as I ma super broke atm.

I am really looking forward to taking Purify/Anoint weapon. I will need to make a new Efang or two to slot with more metal types but that is okay to have the best one handed tanking weapon ready to go for every boss.

Think I have talked about my Twists before so I will be quick, but Running with Wind has been great. More movement allows me to stay in Stance and stay with the group. From Juggernaut I have twisted in Legendary Tactics. Making my Stun DCs good enough for a lot of stuff with out a stunning 10 item. Hoping to pull one of those new rings soon. Or I might break down and start running Lob to make a trash shield.

I had planed to twist in Momentum Swing but after trying it out the 5[w] doesn’t grow as you spend points just its recovery chance and threat range. Which makes it good and all but I just don’t know if it is twist worthy atm…

I would try for Flyby attack because it would look cool. But that is a lot of work for a not of payoff. Healing Spring from Shiradi Champ and or Fast Healing from Fury of the Wild looks sweet but do I need more healing? No, well not yet anyway…. Anyway if you have any ideas for what else to twist in let me know.

Anyway gear is fairly simple, got my Purple set which is good. But I am thinking about fitting in the abiashi set of (bracers, boots and cloak) for normal play. More dps is more better, right? And now that I have my head better around the Ac changes my bracers of wind that was 4 ac is now 1% dodge bonus for a groovy 8% dodge. Wow! So netting 3 dps and what 3 ac might be worth losing 1 dodge and blur. Tobril can cast that Shit on me again. Or I can make a blury HP GS goggles netting a Displacement clickly.

We have been splitting end game nights between epics and challenges for Mats, most of us are just hunting tokens to slot things but upgrading things has been taking some mats as well. It has been a few weeks since I raided other then DQ 2-3 manned. I think that there might be some Defense Short man Vons happening soonish so that will be fun too.

Well back to work.

❤

When all else fails, pug?

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I think you all know that I have been working on the TR thing with Samius for a while now. And for the last few lives I have had Fopo as my leveling partner. And it works out well for us. This life he opted to use his stone and take a few weeks off to explore the new stuff. I can’t do the same with my stone as I used mine to rush through a TR on one of my Wizards. But before I go down how I am unhappy with how my new wiz is working out; let me just say it leaves me leveling Samius alone.

All has been going well enough solo. Levels 1-11 have been fairly quick even though I have been taking time to run the new stuff also on my “tank.” Which might be tomorrow’s topic… However, getting to level 12 has been a task, mainly because I insist on keeping up my elite streak as well as doing things that are not so easy to solo. And that has made my week-weekend very hard.

I ran a Shadow Crypt flagging quest solo each night I played ddo over the week, surprisingly the swim and forced to split up quests were the easiest to do this life. Sometimes I really miss firewall.

With a happy skip in my step I went to solo the crypt on Thursday. Every thing is going super smooth. I get all the gears even. The path to the flag is not super easy but I find it soon enough and clear my way to the final fight. Where I get my head handed to me. I get the boss to around 20% and he ports out and makes his copies. I have learned however how to tell the copies from the original. The copies have about a 1/3 of the HP of the boss so die a lot faster. As they all spam dispels and hold spells you want them dead as fast as possible. So once you turn back to the boss he ports out and starts the loop again. That first time I DDed back twice using the trinket up to shrine and try again before I realized I had been in that quest for more then 2 hours. Most of that time was in that end fight. Finally I just put my head down and let the vamps have me just to be out of the quest.

Friday was a lot like Thursday, but I only had the 8 gears to open the way to mister vamp dick and his path to him was a lot easier. But the end was very close to the same.

Saturday morning thought I would be able to pull off a win first thing, I didn’t.

Frustrated, I stole my son’s account for a few hours buying him Vet2 and making a new wizard. I have done this quest with hirelings before so having myself at the keys should work even if I am level 7, right?

Fumblebot, simi geared up was ready to go for it. I am not sure how much plat I dumped into him but a lot and he still only had 3 or 4 slots used, but good enough for a burn them in a wall of fire quest. And he ripped that quest a new one. All gears only took a few mins. Had a few close calls when I realized that I didn’t take the enchantment that took his WF ASF to 0% and failed a roll to repair myself. But I had wands and pots ready and was able to recover well enough. I ran out of juice burning the lords, but thanks to the recharge to 12 sp thing I was able to backpedal and ray things down. After all that I fully expected Mister Vamp Dick to roll over to Walls and Scorching rays but he didn’t and I spent a long time trying to end that fight just off the shrines. Until I fumbled hard and got swarmed to death. Samius tried to go in and save him. But the kids laptop is just not able to handle a build as complex as Samius with how the bars are laid out let alone everything else.

So we pop out and try again. This time with a stack of store bought greater pots. Did you know that normal majors are level 9? I didn’t. So take 2 with the wiz. Things are going well again, I have all the keys again and a simple path so no issues. Get to that end fight and I just didn’t have the spell dps. I DDed and bought a shrine and redid my spells boosting the number of damage spells, as I had used all of them already. But still DPS fail. Degusted I log and play with the dog out side, a little later I log back on and play in the realms to help a guildie for his first time.

Sunday, I happen to see a group for Church and the Cult or some level 9 on elite shit. I resolved to not fail Shadow crypt again solo I thought maybe if this group is not shitty I could use them to do it. As they were not horrible players, that is what I did. I ¾ soloed zerged that quest and then when the pugs do that “What are we going to do now?” thing I talked them in to doing the Shadow. Only one guy ½ knew the quest, never tried with out a path solver so had no idea how to run it himself and I ended up leading the group but we got all the gears we needed in 9 rooms I think and DDed and took east three times and boom! 54k xps in 15mins. Would have been a great run if wasn’t for all the fails before it.

So there you have it. An example of how when all else failed I pugged. See I can play with others. Well use others. ☺

❤

Samius Answers: What ifs from Goggle

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I am in a hurry to knock out today’s post. I have to leave early today to take care of some issues with the repairs on my bike. So instead of taking time to think of a topic and then write something I just Goggle-ed “what if questions” And will cherry pick a few and answer them from my point of view.

What if Quagmire actually had a spin off?
That would be great. Quagmire is totally my favorite character on family guy. Don’t think I would be a weekly watcher, but I would tape 5-10 of them at a time and do a little mini marathon watching.

What if you were rich?
I will change things to suddenly rich because I have plans for that and not what if I was always rich. Anyway I would pay everything off and fix things up that need work. Then I would set up a trust and better collage fund for the kid. Oh as a side effect of becoming 100% debt free I would guess my wife would quit her job and find something to do that would make her happier then her current job. Now assuming that my new found wealth leaves more wiggle room then that I would like to buy an RV and travel around, blogging/podcasting my little heart out.

What if I you died right now?
Well setting aside my religious believes I would say my office would have a bit of a freak out. And then my wife would follow along the suddenly rich plan – the RV and travel plan.

One more… If you could pick a super power to have what would it be?
I know it is a simple one but one of my favorites. Think I would like to teleport stuff, including myself. Baring that one I would like to have “pleasure” vision. I think that I could do a lot with a few well-timed blasts of pure “pleasure.” ☺

I feel like I need some ddo themed questions but I would have to make them up myself and that doesn’t sound fun. Use the comments and leave me one up and next week I will try and answer them.

❤

The Better Part of Valor?

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When do you give up? For me I give up when I stop having fun trying to win. Not before. But I have seen a few groups lately quit on me early. And a few try and grind on past the point of helpful.

Rant Overtones /on

I was on Javabot helping the wife with xp before she TRed last weekend, and we were in a hard or elite shroud. And things where going fine parts 1,2 and 3 weren’t bad, if a little longer then necessary. Although we learned that we had a few newer people that only had 1 or 2 completions under their belts but the other “healer” was not one of them.

Part 4 starts and 3 or 4 people die right away, pre harry mind you someone wailed and took off pulling blades and a ton of people ran out of heals and into the blades. What do you do? I shrugged and assumed they were the new people. And went on. Turns out that they were not the only new people as chatter quickly turned into guess this is a fail talk. And people started to pull out. Before long there was 6 of us left in and Harry was falling, End of round one and we are looking good for round 2 Harry was about to port out and I get hit by a blade from behind just as I take a meteorstorm to the face and die casting a heal on my anchor. Once I am down the other healer recalls out as he is empty and is not drinking, (totally understandable) but why have pots if you don’t use them?

Next example, Again last week sometime Tobril and I are helping Torrance to cap out so she can TR and we have just done all the ToD flagging quests on Elite and now it is time for New Invasion. I need a moment to hit the head and they can start with out me, as I am just here to help her/favor. When I return I jump in and catch up I take the portal and die… They didn’t take the portal, I guess the portal red skulls people so they are taking the long way. Didn’t know… But we suffer on. After they save me that is and we keep moving. Get to the end fight when I finally figure out that we are on Elite still and we are going to have a long fight here. But we are Defense there is nothing we can’t do??

Five or six tries later totally nude with the boss at a sliver each time we wiped, we ran out of time. If he didn’t reset right away or if falling back down counted as being down we would have won but as it was we failed. And it was tough.

I have written before about knowing when to call something. But we all missed that one. But hey I was having fun and how great would that story had been if we pulled it out on that 6th try? Really great.

❤

Looking for a Pair of Ladies

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Couple seeking DDo playing ladies, Minimum age 40.

No that is not a crazy looking for love ad. But during last nights taping of CtH, Lessah said if I could find two ladies that are active playing DDO over 40 she would come back to DDO.

So long story short that you should be able to play any time now, if you are or know any female gamers (40+) let them know I am looking for them. So we can get Lessah back full time!

❤

Ps Real post coming soon.

Look at all the People I didn’t Kill Today

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So like many of you Tobril and I have been playing in the new stuff when we decide to work on our big kids, while the drops are “hot”. Last nights Epic night was no exception. After the bulk of our “Epic Tuesday” was done (DQ 6man and the raid) we moved on to the new stuff. I know it didn’t feel super epicy to me either but as I wrapped up my silver flame favor on Samyus just moments before running to the 6man for a flagging completion and I was super excited to take my much more self-healing fighter into anything. So new stuff was good enough for me.

Anyway Tobril and I have been doing all these new quests and when it is time to save the slaves I let Tobril “save them” mostly so I can mock him as he rips their heads off in his futile attempt to save them.

It never fails to make me smile when the Lawful Good monk/fighter/pally in his all his glory goes to pull apart a slave collar and ends up ripping the poor guys head off, killing him in the most horrible manner I can picture.

Then after seeing how well his last attempt worked out, said “hero” steps up to a new slave that just saw his buddy die at the hands of this “hero” and allows him to try again. Most likely killing him in the process.

Rinse and repeat.

Maybe it is the sadist in me but I can’t help and picture Tobril stepping up to the drow and saying, “Your turn.”

The slaves, “Humm no thanks. Your not really good at this “saving people thing” are you?”

“Well look at all the people I didn’t kill today.” Waving his hand around in a general manner….

The drow looks a round and sees the dead bodies of his former slave masters that moments ago Tobril punched to death, as I hid behind my shield and intimidated the masses into trying to get me, as well as a slave or two that might have been fighting along side its former master and the still warm body of the slave he just “helped”. And thinking, “Well one way or another I won’t have to wear this collar any more…”

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