Author Archives: samiusgurobo

My Dream Rune Arm

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As you know I am having a bromance with the artificer class. I am not planning to leave my wife for Artificer class. But if I hosted a dinner party and she and the artificer class got a little too drunk, dirty smexy things could happen.

That said I still don’t know if it is the final class to build with for Samius over the 18/2 wizard/rogue. One of the main reasons I am holding myself back from becoming the artificer guy is pure removal spells, ie finger, wail, implosion. The ruin arm goes a long way towards making up the lack of removal, but it is not the same, yet.

So how would I fix things? A true removal focused rune arm of course. First of all when I think removal I think PMs so I would think making it few pm like would be easy. Use the necro blot and blast animations for firing off the rune arm. Maybe change the colors just a little and make it more redish over purple over tones, and have the rune arm itself look like it is made of bones. It would need to have a level 5 charge of course.

Have it imbue with say vorpal or manslayer to weapons. The main powers would be a slay living or neg level guard. I like the neg level guard when combined with the second main power, which is when the rune arm is fully charged it would trigger an ability that casts an implosion or the new wail of the banshee spell (add a timer of 30ish seconds before it can be retriggered).

This does two things. One gives Artificers a straight up removal spell/s with a solid DC (rune arm DC are level and Int based), and gives an artificer a reason to stop kiting as stand still in heavy trash combat.

All I know is the arty capstone is real nice but as it does not work with scrolls there is no way except via damage an arty can remove trash mobs.

And once the teck is in place to trigger an event when a rune arm is charged to a given point something happens can make all kinds of fun does X on charge Y events. Like mass repair spells at tear 4 charge, or fire shield % proc at a given point or even different kinds of guards are active at different charge levels say crushing wave while holding a stable charge and freeing ice once at stable+1 level or greater charge.

Lots of possibilities is all I am saying. And to me rune arms are the most fun items added to the game well ever.

❤

All According to Plan?

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So today I called the company I ordered my new trike from and asked them “Where the frack is my bike?” I was told it would be here 4 or 5 days ago. And I am starting to wonder….

An hour later my wife sends me a text message that it would be here after lunch.

Get home, no bike so I start lunch, a 12 oz stake. What? I am a caveman. Stake is every time food, for me. ☺ Sit down and go to town and I hear the sounds of a truck in the yard.

Get the bike unboxed and the driver lets me know that he is glad I called the company as it has been on his truck for 4 days now waiting to be delivered but they refused to let him deliver it with out an appointment and they gave him the wrong number. Even this morning when I called and gave them my number they got it wrong and ended up calling my wife to make an appointment. Some people’s kids, I swear.

So I finish my lunch and ride to work. Should have just had a banana. Took me 10 mins to do maybe 2 miles. Once I got to work it took me 30 mins to get my head and stomach to settle down. Lighter lunches are going to happen from now on.

Day one of riding to work down, just need to ride home now. Hurray? Wish me luck. And maybe I will be in a lot better shape by Gencon.

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The Highs and Lows of Puging

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Anyone that knows me knows that I am not a fan of the pugs. Just to be clear I mean the pick up groups and not the dogs, although I am not a big fan of the dogs either. My son has one named Xander and it is about 600 pounds and like to wake me up on the weekends by crawling onto my pillow and farting, very unpleasant little fracker.

Anywayyyyyy, Yesterday I worked on my second life TR just soloing and watching Doctor Who. Aside: I like David Tenneat as the good doctor the best, and stopped watching the show originally once I heard that he had left the show. But in a “What is streaming on Netflix that I can watch and play?” moment I have become re-addicted to the show even watching the 11th Doctor at work, which I am starting to warm too.

At some point Tobril logs on and askes to get in for xp. And we are off. I help him do a hard Coal Chamber in 27ish mins, which is not bad. As we complete he sees a hard Lob and is gone.

In a weird mood I look at the LFM panel and see a group for an elite IQ boat ride. I dislike soloing protect the NPC quests as it is too easy for the NPC to do something dumb and get killed failing the quest out of the blue. So having a group when running them is nice. Mean while Fopo was in challenge mode earning mats to trade in for xp and renown pots, so I didn’t want to bother him with my sudden want to do the IQ quests. So I joined up with plans to ride the fail train into some kind of xp.

But it was great, my DCs hit constantly. I danced and weaved killing trash and leading the kill count 2 to 1 over the other 4 group members. And when the red named boss showed the intim sorc took agro via an intim and then died. There was a dwarf defender that intimed also but I took the hate off him before long and he took that time to run off for a heal from his hire and I tanked the little boss. It was good times.

Even ran through the optional netting myself an extra 900xp and 2 chests for 30 sec of work. But the puggers didn’t make it drow are too hard to kill I guess. ☺

The group decides to move on to Elite Mindsunder, as the leader has all the disks. And we fly through the quest. Again I am feeling good cleaning house even kill the Mindsunder at the end with disintegrates, lots and lots of them. It was fun trying to tell the FvS that we picked up that I had it under control as she yelled at melee to kill the Mindsunder and not the trash she was kitting and begging for a heal to fix her stat damage and the rouge kept throwing cure wands at her. It was quite the good times and I felt like a millon plat.

Then Tobril frees up and we regroup and we do hard Mindsunder as I have a few sets of stones from the xp runs on Samius, Samyus and the 400. And I died like 4 times on Hard in one run. Riding so high to fall so low was a shock to my system. I guess if you’re the best turd in a group that doesn’t make you a gold nugget, just a turd from someone that ate glitter the night before.

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How the Pug Snatched Defeat from the Jaws of Victory, Elite VoD

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Saturday morning I am on Samius and sitting on the last rank to cap out. No guildies or channel people are on. Guessing the domain issue is holding some people at bay. I know Phlor is pissed off and refuses to “hack” his Host file. But I luck out and I don’t have to edit my host file and get on right away. Going to say my ISP is not as shitty as his, although Turbine really?

Okay back to the story. Post people check I hit the LFM panel, hey you never know. I might pug something. Low and behold there is a 1 from full Elite VoD looking for something or an artificer with silver weapons. I have silver weapons and even with out the first time bonus Elite Vod is a ton of XP and is worth doing. The group looks fine. I know a few names, as fair to alright players. And I jump in thinking this is going to make a dent in that last pile of xp.

I get in and the path to the raid is clear, win. And the chest is unopened even. I short wait for someone that didn’t make it into the sub yet and we go. No one types out buffs. After I ask for them 3 times both over mic and in chat. So I start giving out deadly. If someone wants silver they better ask. I am about to shrine when someone hits me with GH and blur. I am only down a little sp so why not just go.

As we start to zone in I start getting tells from people asking for silver…. Great…. There is a time for request people. And that is when the rest of the buffs are being handed out. But I go ahead and hand out silver to people that asked via tells. And we start.

The Orthons go quickly, as the leader starts to tank. For the record I don’t think that the leader should tank in pugs unless that leader has a clear second that can give orders for times the leader is busy.

Any way the raid is going nice and smooth. Sully is falling and those HPs are falling off. The healers are healing nicely and all is well. Until the second wave of Orthons hit at the same time a wave of trash devils hit. And there is no clear trash tank or a second to get people focused. People spread out the healers are over taxed and the CC is shitty. And people start to die. I start to give orders (not that it mattered) and rez people. My stack of scrolls started to drop quickly. Some people started to rack up the deaths. And one guy at least that most Sarlona people would know if I typed it out went afk dead and didn’t say anything in chat so I wasted 4 or 5 scrolls on him (btw he never returned).

But we got things under control and started moving again. And sully dropped and dropped. BBs started going up and I said let me BB as I still have 400 sp and the healers claimed to have drank a pot or 2. But still BBs that were not mine kept going up. And we took a few waves of bats and all was fine. Sully dropped and dropped we had some losses but we still had fair dps. And I started to notice that mine were the only BBs. And that I was siting kinda low. But I saw one of the clrs right behind me casting. Then bang took chain lighting to the face and died and then I saw the mass go off. I don’t know if the clr didn’t have quicken on or was trying to use a scroll or what but the heals just slowed to a crawl and people started to die. Right after I died it was the tank, the bard and an healer. And the take fell. Sully was at that sliver of life that you can’t even see. Someone threw the tank a rez and he he retook agro for a bout 4 secs as buff less and at half hp he didn’t get any heals. The healer died right after and the bard ran around like a little girl and died screaming. Or that was my take on it anyway.

After a moment I got a tell from the leader asking me if I knew what happened and I gave my quick summary of the heals slowed to a crawl and we died. Back on the boat and after I dropped group filling up as I let the auto attack kill the training dummy I got a few follow up tells from the former leader. He said that the healers refused to use pots.

I am cool with that but if they said something I would have healed myself and I could have scrolled the tank I think long enough to finish it. But no commutation kills groups more then any raid boss. Also in hindsight if that one dps (who had an Esos) would have returned I think we might have had the extra dps to but us over but like I said it was right there. Hell if one of those divines doted sully vs throwing BB after BB on top on my BBs it would have been enough.

I don’t know. There were a lot of things that could have fixed things. But I think if there was more helpful commutation and less unhelpful chitchat I think we would have won.

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Werds that Suck!

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Language is a funny thing. It only works when people share the meaning of the words we use. Tobril and I use a short hand while driving, as I am not super good with right or left directions (Just part of how my brain is wired). So we have a system using the turn signal for following directions aka up or down and follow the arrow. It works because we share meaning/experience of those words. But if I told you to go to X Street and go up with out that meaning would you know what I meant? I don’t think so. This will make sense soon, stay with me.

Yesterday I told a story about how I spent Wednesday night tilting. And I quoted Tobril saying, “I will stay in.” He commented on that by saying he felt that he was not helping as much as the wife and or I. And could best help by keeping the quest alive while people filled back up and jumped back in. Granted that is a fine motivation and some times even worth wild tactic. But the truth is DDo players say some things that piss me right off. “I will stay in.” is one of them.

My issue with “I will stay in” comes from the meaning I take away from hearing those words post wipe. Try to follow this train of thought. I just died. (While I don’t take deaths as personally as others I really don’t play to die. I do enjoy pushing myself but I expect better of myself at all time and don’t really expect to die.) And I hear “Hey we all just wiped, so I will stay here and you go lose more XP so I can get as much as I can. Thanks. You might as well ask me for my TPS reports.

Like I said above I know what he Tobril was thinking, because he told us. But that is not how I heard things. I don’t really have a fix. Other then slow counting to ten after someone says something that hits your anger button. And ask yourself what did they really mean?

Any way some other things that ddo players say that get my goat:

“I just want a completion.” Aka I have giving up on trying and now let just finish so I can be done.

“I don’t think we can.” This one pissing me in pugs not from friends or guildies, because pugers have no biases other then perceived one by class break down to judge what we can do.

“X class/player is not DPS” Again, perceived bias.

“”X is over powered” I have never seen a compelling argument for what is over powered in dnd or ddo. Now before playing DDo, MtG was my game of choice and I still think a lot like a Magic player. Damage spells, Removal spells etc… And we had a banned and restricted list in tournament play. How did I know those cards belonged on that list? Numbers and math. There is a card Sensei’s Divining Top and when it was tournament legal it dominated decks. Such a large number of decks used it that it was like the rules were changed to four tops and 56 other cards in a magic deck. Something like 90some% of decks were using four of that card in their decks and 100% of the top 24 in the different Pro tours. The only other card that was as damaging back then was Umezawa’s Jitte. So popular that some decks ran copies just to kill the other players copies. So numbers and math proved that something was too good. There are no clear numbers as far as I know in DDO. There is nothing saying 60% of all epic kills are from Wail or 70% there are X number of 95% ac tanks and quests that they do they complete 99% of the time.

Any way I have gone long. Use the comments to let me know what werds that you hear get thrown around DDo that pisses you off a little.

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Tilting Wednesday

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I think I may have made an error going drow on for my special wizard project. Or my run at tilting may have put me in a funk, I don’t know yet. This is how I spent last night.

I log on straight onto As400, Wednesdays Fopo bowls so for now I plan to use that night each week to level my TRed and Stoned wizard back to 20. And I start to buff, when I see Tobril buffing his FvS to heal a LoB. And he sends a tell that once the Lob is done he wants to switch for xp.

I head to Sleeping Dust on elite, I’m level 16 I will be fine. Sure, I will. To be fair, gathering the books was simple enough if time consuming. Managed to take the longest possible route to find the books. It was long enough that Tobril was able to finish Lob and jump in while I was rescuing the spider queen. Up to and into the final fight everything was going well no spiders killed, and I was feeling fine. Spin the wheels and started Doting the final boss. And he turns and Delayed Blast Fire balls me. Ouch. Heal. Disintegrate (save) 199 points of damage. Frack me! Heal. Feeblemind(fail the save with a realty low number 2ish), DBF. Heal? Nope Int is 1. Disintegrate to finish me. Really?

Tobril is on his level 16 fighter and is doing well enough (I say frack the spider chest) until it is just him and the main boss. 4 times in a row I saw that boss dance him in a row. The tables had totally turned vs all those epic runs we have done. So I burned a rez cake (I have a stack of 5 from a loto or something) jump out and Dot the jerk and he turns and Feebleminds again which of coarse I fail again and follows it up with a Disintegrate again which I again pass for enough HP to kill me out right. Grrr.

Rez a third time and Tobril keeps the agro and the jerk dies. Wow…

The wife joins us for xp and we move down to Orchard quests aka the right level of quests to be doing at 16 while maintaining our elite streak. There is a hiccup in Flesh makers and Tobril’s fighter becomes a lighting rod after he clears his side of the lighting machine. Run him to the shrine and the rest of the quest goes fairly smoothly other then I get knocked off the top by the boss air elly and take 3 or 4 ball lighting in the bum as I try to climb the later back up and die. Tobril’s heal bot decides to rez me while the wife solos the air elly.

Decide I am meant to die every quest so I don’t bother to go back to the boat and head to Ghosts. Which goes smooth until the end fight. And even then almost got him when we start to fall. Once we are all dead I hear, “I will stay in” from Tobril. Which right after dying is not something I want to hear. And it pushes me a little more over the edge. But I still have 2 cakes left. I rez, cast DD and take a disintegrate to the back before I can get in. The wife rezes and pulls the beholder to the other side of the room before she gets anti magiced to death. I decide to rez and get out as the beholder is on the fair side of the room and tobril is not that far I could nab his stone. But I wasn’t watching my timers and DD was on cool down still. Frack Me. I totally dance and move until my spell is off timer. Shoot to the far corner of the room DD and disintegrate to the back again.

Growl, I go a head and release just thinking of what a waist this run is turning into. Fill up and head back out to save my people. While falling I decide to try to both kill the beholder and save the party. I wall and disintegrate him (yes two can play that game) Nab Tobril’s stone but I get slowed and doubled slowed via an ice storm. Get in an antimagic zone and can’t get out and once again I get disintegrated to death.

I say good night and log. I look over and the wife self rezed and starts to get here self killed. I ask why if she was going to rez why didn’t she do so while I was still down there so one of us would have been able to take the agro and the other finish it? And I am told if I had an idea in mind I should have told here earlier. Because I knew she was going to rez at some point???

So frack it, I sit down and watch Horrible Bosses and Colombiana. Thankfully there is a hand job joke in Horrible Bosses that put a smile on my face and turns my mood for the night around. Have to say I really liked both movies and am tempted to buy them now.

Any way my comment about picking drow being an error is all about HPs. I have a 14 base con, tried a 16 but didn’t have the points but I have a +3 con tome, +6 con item and a SFL item and I only have around 300 hp. My wife’s wizard has almost 500 but she has toughness, the barb past life and I only have the one toughness and only one less DC. I know at 18 my hps will be much better but will I ever get there if I tilt out every week do to getting oneshotted due to crappy HP? How do bad players do it all the time?

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I need a Kiter….

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Last night was “epic night” and as so the guild tries to make an effort to run some things together. And we have settled into a kind of pattern, of ToD and then a few epics. Tobril gets off work nabs a fast bite to eat and gets on around 7ish my time (aka our starting time), about 15 past the hour a guild tod forms and pugs out the last slots. Our guild can bring 7-9 people if the active players all long on. We could almost fill a raid alone if all of simi active members got on too but not quite….

Anyway I had just finished my dinner and checked the time. Raid time. Logged on and saw that the Tod was up and was Tobril and Phlor and better then half full with puggers. Well I nabbed two slots for the wife and I. Knowing she was bringing her monk. I asked what Tobril needed/wanted me to bring now that my tank has his ring I can be flexible for the group. “I need a kiter” he says.

Hmmm, Now I have backed up once or six times. And every time I have been called to run I get a BB off and wing and some times I run enough to get a second wing off and some times not but I normally last about 30-40 secs once called to kite. But sooner or later everyone is a kitter had to have a first proper go, right? Guess last night was going to be my time.

Now I have 2 people that might be able to kite flagged. Javabot my melee FvS and Samiusbot a PM wiz. Java runs ToD from time to time has boots and hps. Samiusbot is flagged so I can use Yoguo pots and not much else. He happens to be flagged because you have to do all 4 flagging quests to get the favor for those pots… But has little to no gear. Don’t get me wrong for a first life and next to no work he is good enough but I wouldn’t want to take him into ToD. And I don’t want to be the guy banished because he doesn’t have boots or anything.

So Java it was. Turns out starting out as the kiter a lot easier then being the back up. My last loop however my last BB was not quite in the right spot and one shadow drifted to the top of the stairs. I was about to pick it up when Tobril said not to bother and about 10 secs later we won. Once again Java didn’t get his belt. I am starting to think that it has been removed from the loot tables, or is it when I step into the raid with him. I see it all the time on other alts. Oh well.

So being a little late to the party let me fill a role that I hadn’t gotten to before. Maybe I shouldn’t talk it up a whole lot because then Tobril will ask me to kite more often and tank less. But I think once As400 is flagged and booted up again I will try to tank the shadows on him. And that sounds like a lot of fun.

❤

Raiding as an Artificer

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Raiding as an Artificer is a lot different then normal questing and challenge running is a lot different still. This weekend I got to try both raiding on my artificer and challenges (both epic and none epic).

Things I learned:

Even my sorc felt less squishy. In a raid group where there are people assigned to heal the party often over look the artificer. I guess, they are over looked as WF arties are so good at healing themselves and I guess the fleshy arties are rare monsters. I learned to life with a heal scroll in my hand any time I was not standing with the melees. The killer is the only time I died in an elite Vod we ran over the weekend I was both with the melees and standing in an healing aura and died waiting for a mass that never came….

Preping all the weapon damage buffs kills your other spell options. I don’t know about you but on my lvl 18 arty losing Radiant Forcefield and Prismatic Strike for silver and align weapons really hurts. And pulling a six level spell for Deadly often means putting your healing in someone else’s hands when it comes to that red bar.

Also you need to expect that people are dumb. Yes even other arties. At one point I heard, “Sam, can you re silver me?” I say sure and cast silver on that person (happened to be Fopo). Before too long Fopo sends a tell “Silver plz not cold iron”. I don’t even have cold iron prepped. So the other arty (who didn’t buff anyone that I know of) had to cast over my silver. With what happed to be a useless buff, almost harmful buff at that.

Sooner or later everyone wants something, just try to be super clear and flexible to giving buffs. People will have the wrong weapon out when they ask for a buff or die and need rebuffed. And you need to be able to help them out when it happens.

As for challenges you are great. The things that make you needed and wanted in raids weaken you in challenges. But swapping in to a casting, soloing layout is pure gold. Don’t get me wrong weapon buffs are important, but a good BBer that can also heal a tank while not burning SP to dps bosses is huge. More then one run I went after and killed the dragon and then ran back to the group in time to help fopo tank and kill the boss spawn. Then returned to clearing trash with the remaining sp.

The last big thing I think I learned this weekend is a pure arty is a lighting rod set on fire and doused in an acid bath aka no evasion so so at best reflex saves is a killer. Find room for more then just the normal 30 fire/cold/elc/acid/sonic and pro of the same. Find room for those 33% fire and elc absorption item/s.

But I really love the class, to the point that I am thinking of returning to it and not the Wizard post Completionest feat…

❤

Hard Core Leveling Day

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Saturday was the first Defense Hard Core leveling day. We had more or less 6 guild members play from 10am to about 9-10 pm with two half hour food breaks. The idea was xp per min baby.

Lets see we had the wife on a 3x plus TR, Tobril and myself were on 2nd life guys, two first life premium accounts (one played by my son and not dual boxed by myself) and Tim who was already level 4 on a 3x+ TR but had to take longer breaks for travel and stuff.

Our goal was level 8 so we could all stone up. With 3x Trs in the group 552,500 was needed to reach level 8. At 1k per min that is 9.3 hours of game time. Thankfully we did better then that most of the time. Other then one window farm of Delera’s 4, which if we were thinking at the time we wouldn’t have needed to do so, there was no cheesyness. Elite streak and everything.

So by the end of the day we had taken 4 or 5 alts from 1 to 16. Man it was tireing. I can’t understand how people do it every time they level an alt. If that was how I did it I would hate leveling up alts too. There is just no time to enjoy life in that pure xp pure min life. And I like zerging and going fast, but I need down time too.

Some reflections….

Boy I knew I missed wizarding, but I didn’t know how much. There is something to be said about run, orange skull gather, acid ball, fire ball, acid blast repeat while laughing that you have almost 100 hp and living life on the edge.

Looking at some of the Open Beta comments I might need to Tr As400 again and return him to more of a melee wizard over a big DC caster or lesser him from a pure Pale master instant killer back to Hold/web Am. 😥 Didn’t really enjoy having to play the hold guy when epic were hold and melee beat down fests. Looks like that might be how it happens again. Looks like challenges might become my way to farm of tokens.

Trying to lead a noob through Irestone is not fun. At one point I told Remm (my son) that there was a chest straight ahead that was cleared, get it and run right back to me. About a min later I was running across the dungeon trying to save his butt from dieing while he was incapped. Straight according to him was a slightly to the right and directly in to a pile of mobs. But he said it looked clear to him until they jumped him. Mister full ranks in spot, I don’t think so…. But over all he did well and I think he really loves having a level 16 arty. The kid will run slayers all day if you let him. And now that he had Gh, the vale, and reaver’s hide-de-hole to explore I think he will be super pleased. And we might all see him solo cap out from explorer zones….

However much not fun leading a noob through Irestone wasn’t having that noob trap was even less fun. Instructions of come and stand on me ended up with him running past me and into the traps to die a lot. 😦

But over all I think leveling day was the best day of Ddo some people have had in a long time. The shear feeling of accomplishment from taking a TR from 20 to 1 to 16 in one day is huge for some people that only have none or only one capped alt. And for my son this is now his highest level guy. And he played it to 16 even if he got a bit of a boost from the xp stone he did it.

Thanks Turbine. Now fix the AC and the Hard to Kill and we are good.

❤

Scatter Shot of a Night

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I started off last night with the wife and Stiner doing elite Acid Wit and being asked to help finish it off as they had been working on it for almost an hour. It is easy to forget how long that quest can be. So I jumped in buff less but ready to go. Luckly for me they had all but the end fight done so it took me 5 mins to get 11k. For them I bet is was not as nice. Then they split up. Stiner needed to go and the wife after the drag on she just had wanted to get her get gear on. She had just greatered her very first alt she created one that has been left forgotten since the level cap was 16 until now.

So abandoned, I sent out the Fopo signal. And waited. Turns out Fopo was out with the wife and would be a while. So I got a jump start on my dual boxing/Wednesday project of leveling both a TRed Wizard and dragging around a new Arty on my son’s account. Level 3 now in about 2 hours of work. Not to bad.

Finally, Fopo logs on and we knock out a few Litany runs before it is time for him to go. Inching towards taking level 18. Must be strong and wait but man I am ready to burn threw the levels.

When he goes the guild decides after some chit chat to do a Vod real fast for xp for the wife. Tobril even gets me a Artificer. And that was a double edge sword. On the good side I got good on my weapons. On the bad he wouldn’t shut up. To the point where I sent tells to Tobril asking him to say something. But he didn’t he just tried to talk over the artificer and did some times. Others not so much. All I have to say is if you think that you can more or less solo everything then stop grouping and do it. Else let the others play too.

After words I was talked in to doing some challenges again for xp. Unlike most challenge runs I stayed on my tank and did some tanky things. Have to say I like playing him out side of raids more then I should.

So there you have it. A night with a little bit of everything. Tonight however had better net me some xp and level 18 or else.

❤