Last night while the TR train was forming up, Fopo and I ran the GH walk ups again on Elite. This time I was on my fighter. Things were super smooth until Trial by Fire where the mobs switched to trolls and old spiders. Not that the spiders where a problem. But if you didn’t already know trolls tend to hit often and do so fairly hard. Even with a 60 ac I was taking ample damage 30-40 point chunks.

It didn’t take me long to swap to my Hooked Blade with bodyfeeder. But bodyfeeder even on a extended crit Khopesh was not enough. I was slamming pots and eating tasty ham hard core trying to keep up with the damage. It worked out, but it cost me about 50 pots and 6 or 7 hams that run.

So I started thinking…. I could craft a bodyfeeder Vamp weapon. Which is want I really wanted the Hooked Blade to be anyway. But that combo is only available as a Falchion. At least via the Sora Katra crafting. Which by the way, if your playing a 2handed melee you better have a Vampiric Cleaver in your pack! Yes Phlor I am talking to you, at least some. But not as much as say that barb over there, as you have pally healing. 🙂

To the Cannith planer!

It says Bodyfeeding is a level 3 shard. At least that is what the planer that I have here at work says. Lesser Vamp is 3. Full on Vamp is 6. So I can make a level 11 base item or level 17… If only a d4 wasn’t so much better then a d1. 😦

Add in the Masterful Craftsmanship shard and I can lower them down 2 levels but still level 15 is no help at the moment as Samyus is level 13.. So lesser vamp is the play. Think I will need to go Flame Touched Iron to handle DR/good and if I do add a the Masterful Craftsmanship shard I will have a little wiggle room to add an +2 to hit.
3 bodyfeeder
3 lesser vamp
2 +2 ench
=
8*2 -1 -2 = level 13

Not too bad.

I will have to see how much longer I will be in GH. And where I will be level wise when I next feel in over my head. Might have to knock out another 10 divine crafting levels and make that raw level 15 verson. D4 is sooooooo much better then a d1.

❤

This turn on the wheel, Samius is knocking out his rogue life. Manly because I have been impressed with some well and not so well built rogues in epics lately.

I am 9/6 monk/rogue atm and for some reason last night I began to notice the sneak attack damage. Okay I know the reason. Moving out of the sands (away from all the undead) and into Giant Hold and stunning/sneak attack able mods is the reason. But why I didn’t pick it up while doing the Attack on Stormreach stuff? I just don’t know. But now that I see it I like it.

My first number is 40-50 range. Stunned 60-70 but add in the sneak attack dice from a stunned mob and it is almost half again as much damage +30-40 to my normal damage plus a point here and a few points there.

I have never been that impressed with the rogue past level 2. Not having agro (aka control) of the mob for the best dps is a strange idea to me. But I can totally see adding huge amounts of extra damage to a stunned mob. And I am build for stunning atm.

Seeing how this is playing I want to try my hand at a epic ready rogue, I already have everything for 3 epic Midnights. Wonder if there is a way to stay centered as a monk and use them….

❤

Last night I was in one of my moods and logged on later then normal, on to my fighter. Mainly as the wife was playing her first life Sorc and well I just wanted to play my fighter.

Log in to game. Say my hellos, and look at the LFM panel for a group. I said I was in a mood. Turns out Onecler has an LFM up for Von 3 – elite. Just what I am looking for. At least 1 competent player other then myself doing a big xp quest on a setting that will not bork my streak. Win.

I buff and run that first quest per Von3 quest. See that it is active and on hard. 😦 But as I am 12 it wont hit my streak so no big deal. Jump in and the quest is red alerted….. great! Invis and run to the end as fast as I can. I see only one or two mobs along the way. But at the end it looks like an Incredible Hulk mosh pit. In the middle is a lone FvS keeping his red bar up directly via his blue bar. Just as I get in to helping range he falls to incap and then dies. I pick up his stone and get him in range of the shrine and turn to face the horde.

Mean while there is a little kid in group that hasn’t shut up. I don’t think he took a breath the whole time he we in group. I am trying to coordinate with the FvS and whatnot but on my throat mic I can be hard to hear. And before long he recalls out and I am left alone.

So I do what any Defense Guild person should do: Clear the whole mess. Thankfully all I need to handle this pile of green angry turds is at hand. A few healing pots, defender stance, a death ward clickly and my body feeder hook blade/ring of vorpalness. 🙂

Block Block Block Cleave Great Cleave Block Block Pot Block Cleave Great Cleave. For a few mins. Some times heads would roll. Some times they are just slowed real bad but I was gaining enough from the body feeding to slow the hurt but not stop it.

Right before I got the alert to drop to orange I was at 30 or so hp. I had to do some jump pot jump drink dance and block/eat a tasty ham. But I lived. And once the alert dropped to yellow it was all over for them.

Meanwhile the guys already in Von3 were wrapping up. ;( but they repeated right after on Elite again. Sans noise machine. It was a super smooth run. That FvS kept making me his Champion but I don;t think I took more then 10 hits the whole run. But once I said my AC was in the low 60s and they are missing me he started blessing someone else and everyone was happy.

It was a rough start, and I was angry for the miss start but that blew off once I won.

❤

The other night one of the people I raid with was talking about how he was working on his Completionst Alt. But he was unsure as to how to level as a Pally. I find this topic intriguing as I am working on Samyus and I have found him to be fairly easy to level so far.

Other then a hand full of runs Samyus has been leveled solo. I used him to catch Tobril up with the group around level 6-7, some Shadow crypt runs, a last stand with Fopo and then a elite run through the eyes of stone chain for Tobril. The rest has been solo, elite streak btw.

Any way lets jump in to gear; +6 Con/Str/Dex items Cannith crafted btw, +5 mithral full plate and tower shield, hold over GS rapier (Ex3 damage, damage, AC) and a GS light pick (Ax3 ..ie haste clicky), Ring of Bad Ass aka Slayer, a Bloody Hooked Blade from the Cauldron of Sora Katra and a trinket he “stole” from Samius Nat Armor +3/Dog +1. There are some other bits and pieces of gear but nothing earth shattering.

He is a Human (travel marks) Fighter Stalwart Defender 2. Defender stance is like cheating btw. You get a ton of damage/Hp/Ac/Hate for -10% speed, yes please.

In combat I have two “modes” Ac which is GS rapier and the Ac trinket, At 12 that is about 57 AC. Not horrible… But thinking about it I need to find a +5 prot item… And I have body feeding “mode” where mainly all I do is swap weapons in to the Bloody Hooked Blade. Normally this means a boss fight or when I feel like I am being hit a little more then I would like.

How this ends up playing is really great. Gather a few guys cleave/great cleave cut off heads or earth grab something, stun one trip another and repeat. If I am taking damage swap to the hook blade and go go body feeder action. Incoming melee damage is rarely more then 15 points at a time so the only worry is from magic spells. Which Ship buffs and pro pots handle nicely for everything else there are Night Shield scrolls (75% via umd) and an upgraded Pale Lavender Ioun Stone. He is still a fighter so a he can use the magical help.

Guess I just want people to know that everyone can be somewhat self sufficient. And that it is not even that costly. I know a year ago if some asked me how to level a melee just to TR I would have said splash 2 to 3 monk or rogue levels. Now? Go defender if you can it is like cheating.

❤

Last night it was just Tobril and I. Phlor was on but he was raiding his little heart out, Fopo was bowling and the wife was “not napping” no matter what it looked like. So in other words no huge xp jumps for the TR train. 😦

But on the plus side, Tobril and I did get an EDA (Epic Devils Assault). He got on his namesake main and I switched to Butterz. After a while of asking around Tobril lets me know we don’t have a CC guy….

Butterz’s Dcs are way low and her Sp bar is just a little bluer then a level 20 fighter. But I do have Samiusbot. He is a first life robot now PM (did the Ench specialized AM before the hold nerf). No green steel, no torc, I don’t even think he has a normal SP item. He does have a 42 int, and some good pieces of loot here and there but he has never been the “big guy” on my to work on list. He gets pulled out to do some epics where I can burn my Sp on wails and Fingers and whatnot. You know scroll farming runs. 🙂

Looking at my spell list I do have dancing ball preped, all right! I do need to do some swapping for mind fog but in hindsight I pulled mind fog because it didn’t work on epic mobs. Wonder if I was blowing a lot of extra SP on a spell that wasn’t working…. Hope the group thought I was casting solid fog now. 🙂

Any way I was rusty as all get out. In fact I kept calling Samiusbot “old rusty balls”. As I didn’t know what spells I had or where they were at on the bars. But to my surprise I didn’t have any issues dancing or wailing really. In fact we only had one issue, and that was during the last wave. After resting I turned off some metas to buff. Yes I know there are quick settings I can use but I haven’t played with them yet so I use the toggle on toggle offs that sit on my bar. But I guess I forgot to turn quicken back on or it did that look done so I move but it really wasn’t done so it didn’t take. I don’t know for sure what happened. But I thought I had my quicken running.

All I know is the clr dropped, party confusion spiked! I took a ton of damage from some casters out side of the disco ball’s range. I cast a neg burst to heal and it didn’t work so I hit the recon spell thinking that I must not have gone into form but that didn’t work either. And before I could recover I took a fire ball to the back hard and died.

I thought there was some confusion before. At some point it was Tobril and one other guy. I got a rez. Healed toggled on quicken and got CC back up. Didn’t think I could cast that fast as a wiz. The bard started CC ing also at the portals, some times he/she got some things. Everyone helped and we all recovered nicely.

Guess I am saying if I am saying anything is with some team work and a little prep work, even first life gimps can get things done.

❤

Last night Fopo and I on our off Train TR Alts decided to get a little xp. Looking at the list we both needed Last Stand.

I popped over to the Clr vending machine and got a fresh level 11 guy so I wouldn’t have to try and use tasty hams to stay healed up as well as throw the occasional heal or mass on the drow.

Things went sure well until the third round when the clr decided to stand on top of the guy that can’t die or else we fail. Hence forth I will call him Bob, the guy that can’t die not the clr. Clr took about 3 lighting bolts with out time to help himself out and died. I jumped over intimidated the group and pulled them away from Bob and drank pots and whatnot. I was left with 30 ish Hp and no pots when Fopo to regained control. Bob was at a sliver, and as I was trying to make my way to the shrine with my clr (never used it before so did KNOW where it was) the final boss spawned and while Fopo was able to keep the final boss off Bob. All the little zombies didn’t have any issues one shotting Bob. Fail

We try again, this time with Fopo in charge of the clr. About the same results except out of pots I died during the third round, after the clr and right before Bob. Fail.

Starting to get a little pissed at this point, but we mixed it up a hair. And I took on more of a true tanking role during the attack waves. Any time I was off intimidate timer I jumped over to Bob and got back on timer and pulled of any mobs around. Fopo was better able to control the clr and watch out for Bob while clearing trash that way. And I was able to negate most of the damage coming in via spamming ele pro pots, night shield scrolls, and using cleave and great cleave with my vamp sword while surrounded to more or less heal myself.

I hadn’t felt so good not killing mobs in a long time.

❤

I feel compelled to talk about a little movie news. There is a new Ninja Turtles movie on the way. Hurray! I love the turtles. I grew up with the cartoons and the movies. And I liked them all. They did go down in quality until The newest movie “TNMT” but I still loved all the turtle movies. Yes even Turles in Time.

Now there are a few controversial stories floating around with the new movie starting with the title change, Ninja Turtles. Right now we are loosing the Teenage Mutant parts of the title.

I don’t mind loosing the Teenage part of the title. At least two cartoons runs and four movies I am good with them growing up a little. And to be honest I think of them more as Mutant Turtles or Ninja Turtles.

My issues with some of the news stories is that Bay might be making them Aliens. Come on. I know that “rebooting” the title is all the rage right now. But do we really need a reboot on the Turtles? And why does “rebooting” have to start with the origin story? Lets say a reboot always has to include the origin story why do people feel like they have to play with it? Isn’t there a point where you play with the origin to the point where your no longer talking about the same character?

Lets play with some famous Origin stories and you tell me if they are the same character.

The Wayne’s don’t get shot and killed. Do we still have Batman? What if they drove home that night and got in a car crash due to daddy Wayne having one two many cocktails while they were out? Would batman be all about stopping drinking and driving?

Uncle Ben doesn’t die? Tony Stark sends an employee over seas to do the work and looses an employee in an attack. Super man lands in Communist Russia and is raised by the state?

Origin stories matter. Now if Bay wants to make a movie about fighting toads from outer space I would be all over it. He can even use the Battle Toads platform and I will be all over it. But you have to stay true to the core source material.

If you look at the comic book movies that didn’t do well they are the ones that broke away from the source material. Ie the first Hulk and the first Punisher movies come to mind. The second FF movie and while Spider man 3 did okay it moved away from the source a lot and did way less then the first two. And while it was not a Comic movie per say, but the Last air bender movie was based on the best cartoon in the last 10 years. But got away from the source and sucked hard core.

Anyway lets hope Internet out cry is enough to keep Bay true to the Turtles.

❤

I guess I have not been totally clear. In part because of the resent changes to xp and possible bonuses to xp. And because my old clear head phones died. And now I have to use my throat mic. Which I like, btw, but can be unclear. As my new “diet” works out I hope to get a little better fit and clean up the audio enough to be clearer with out having to repeat everything 2 or more times.

So in a nut shell this is how I plan to level. I will open up the quest log. Find all the quests possible at my level -2, and then decide if those quests are worth doing. Things like Titan pre quests and last X number of mins are a normally a no. Chains that have pain in the ass bits, but over all are good xp wise or loot wise make the list. And if the wife or another group member wants to do something then it makes the list.

No repeats, unless the quest is great xp per min, super fun or has killer loots. Like say Shadow Cypt, Litany of the Dead or Enter the Kobold.

I also like to have a clear area to hit. Say the walk ups in the sands. Like last night. I was not feeling super chatty, in fact I was tired as balls. Just wanting to hang out. 🙂 Do a little work on my Fighter but mostly hang out. But the team came together so I swapped to Samius. Tobril said he was on his way to do Maraud the Mines up so we all tagged along.

Oh here is a side point. Unless Soloing or working with someone that is able/wanting to do the invis thing I tend to clear to the end. If the team is strong like say my TR team, I like to spread out and nab all the xp possible in the shortest amount of time. Like in Tear, we broke into 3 teams. A, worked on the main quest, B went to do the optional that they could, C did the same as B. Which netted us all more xp. Areas of Assault on Splinterskull are the exception not the rule.

We (those that joined Tobril) started to split up. There were 3 teams again. I went one way to clean up optional, Tobril went for the end, everyone else other optionals. In just a few mins Tobril finished the quest. Wam. Bam. Think we netted a few 100s in optionals before the quest finished. No real point in clearing after that…

So we moved on to Purge the Fallen Shrine. Also a fast run but behind us. Then Raid the Vulkoorim, and then An Offering of Blood.

I don’t want to think about the time wasted on the order we did those quests in. Maybe if I wasn’t feeling so lazy I would have got my guys moving in an time effective way. Such as:

Purge the Fallen Shrine
(Maybe the The Chamber of Kourush, and The Chamber of Rahmat if we didn’t all solo them for ease)
Maraud the Mines
An Offering of Blood
Raid the Vulkoorim

That would have been a big circle, with no huge areas of back tracking. Thankfully to everyone we made good time in the quests so time lost out side the quests were not horrible. But we finished Offering of Blood with 30 secs left on my XP shrine…

❤ me long time.

As some of you know I did some work on my gear before TRing this last time. Mainly to take advantage of Ring of the Stalker and boost my AC up a hair more.

I have to say it is working out well. My Amp at level 12/13 is good enough that jerky ticks for 4, the jungle cloak for 10, and lesser Vamp for 2. BTW how I am getting lesser vamp into my weapon set atm is thanks to a Vampiric Fury Shortsword. Not something I use all the time, but I do use it often enough to be happy that it has a slot in my inventory.

Having the different kamas for head cutting time is real good. I mean come on who doesn’t want a weapon set like this at level 12: +5 vorp holy, good burst, greater disrupt and +5 vorp acid, acid burst, earth grap?

So over all I am super pleased with the set up. At 12/13 I have a 60ish AC. More if I can remember to use a shield scroll the damage is not much worse then wraps a d8 vs 2d6 But my normal wraps at this level are vamp stone dusts so having the other effects like Holy and Acid bursts makes up for a little smaller base damage.

I found a trick if you want to use your fists there for keeping your Tod and Stunning Fist open and yet add that Vorpal effect from the ring. Dual wield something, have your ring on use a scroll (ie scroll and kama) and notice that once you have a scroll in hand your fisting again. Notice that heads fall off as you can’t get swapped back to the other weapon set do to lag. Sure you loose having weapon effects in your hand at least until ToD rings but having your stunning and Touch back might be good enough? And you get to keep that off hand weapon equipped also. So in my case Amp or Ac as needed.

Talk about a bad paper cut. Now I just need a way to staple guys to the ground…..

❤

For the last few week I have had an idea bouncing around. And I hate to pick on Phlor, but as he is the inspiration for these thoughts, well screw him, he is going to get a little good heart-ed fun poked his way.

When last I was able to really play the TR train was around level 11. There is the core Fo, Tor, and myself. And the extras Tobril and Phlor. Phlor is leveling up some alts while he wraps up some raid completions and gets someone up to bring along when people want to raid or epic.

The thing is Phlor feels squishy. And he kinda right to feel that, as he is a first life (I have to assume 32 point) Paly with limited gear and twinking gear. Add in some issues with being rusty from lack of play, and trying to play other games on the side as well.

That said the man has a fair pool of people to help with that as well as a lot of his gear that is twinkable is quite good. And with a little work I don’t think he will have any issue with play rust.

But some how I keep catching him in the back of the party with his shield out and a thrower in his hand. WTF? Your a melee class, with melee gear the Wizard casts web and gets in there melee you had damn well be in there too.

So I have been thinking about a Halfling Thrower Build. Here is the rough rough rough idea.

Monk 12/fighter X/ Pally/Rog/Ranger 0-2

Goals: 10kS, GTWF aka Fists/bad touch (may involve earth stance + jidx), Imp Precise Shot, Weapon Specialization, and if needed go extreme aka Kensei 1 (Star)

The nice thing about this build is with a lesser (or a few feat changes) it can be swapped in to a good end game build. No matter how uber you make throwing star damage it is just not going to be good end game damage compared to a good set of wraps and ToD. But it would be a “fun” build.

I tell Phlor if he wants to play a back of the group dps/variable build to roll up one of my Bowonks. Even first life they are solid. But the idea of making a star throwing build amuses me. 🙂

More on this build as it develops.

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