And that was the hireling Cleric.

Last night the TR group sitting pretty at level 6, decided to hit the level 4s on elite. I suggested starting with one of my favorites Prof is in the Poison.

The wife and Fopo pick up cleric hirelings. Tobril and I go with lots of pots and wands claiming the other will heal us, all awhile assuming that the other person will just let us die. 🙂

We make quick time in the first room, with Fo stopping to get the traps. The wife moving in to room two.

I get across the fire bridge and into the room, just in time to see the Tor’s Clr take a battering of magic missiles. Cry about needing healz, and take a lighting bolt to the face. D E E D, Dead! (I ❤ you “The Gamers”)

About half a second later I see in the general tab Fopo’s Clr shouting something about wanting healed and DING! Let two mins of Fopo yelling at his hireling begin. Lolz, That man lives to yell at hirelings. And when they stand in traps and die it is like his verson of a bitching Mona Lisa.

Fairly quickly, we get to the shrine, everyone gets raised and shrined up. And we get to the room with acid floor and things to jump on with the level that lower a door but shoots grates up all over making a little jumping maze. Well Tobril jumps out to get the level. And he must have stepped in to the acid and took a hair of damage getting started when Fopo’s Clr shot in to the room trying to heal Tobril. Lets just say he didn’t make it. 🙂

Once Fo’s hireling started to go down Tor’s hire shot into the room, I think as a show of hireling loyalty, and died. Lets just say they got dismissed about then. 🙂

Later in a elite Irestone Inlet Fo, basically alone, went to handle the end fight as the rest of us ran to Yaaryar’s spawn point. On the way Fo started where are the heals at his hireling but a second or two later Fo and his Clr Dinged out.

I don’t know. We use the hirelings a lot. I normally let mine camp out away from the fight and go to it or call it when I need healed. I am looking forward to the day casting hires try to stay out of the melee. And/Or the day when casting hires get quicken.

“Can any one heal me? Anyone? Anyone? Where is the Healer any way? Oh shit it is me… Ding!” – Every hiring divine caster ever.

❤

This time of the year my family asks for a wish list from everyoneI don’t think I am hard to shop for, but for some reason they seem to think so. My interests are fairly well known, I think. Um Ddo, Prepping, Dice and um… toys. 🙂

So I thought one I could share my list with you all, and then maybe you all can help me out other ideas and or maybe share some of your own list. I try to give a good range of items price wise, so no one has to break the budget for me. So lets get started.

• Ddo points, is this a no brainier or what?
• Amazon gift cards. I read a lot, and now that my phone has a the kindle reader software I go through the books like mad.
• Netflix I love Netflix. And free months are great months. I use the streaming all the time.
• Iron Man anything. And now that Marvel has a Droid app Marvel gift cards might be cool.
• Tea, I am a huge tea drinker. As I think I told you all I have been more or less pop free for almost a year now. I am kinda a tea snob now. Other then some funds from my tea web site I need an adjustable temp electric kettle that can sit on my desk at work.
• Prep gear. This is my new thing. I can use things from travel med kits to cases of Yoder’s Canned Bacon. Hmmm Bacon. Including stuff like a solar charger for my cell phone, a 400 Watt Power Dome Mini Generator from ThinkGeek to a Berkey water filter from directive21.com. You can never been to ready for tough times.
  And of course items for all my little survival/urban farm projects. Building mats for my chicken coop that I will have next spring, unless I end up moving in the next few weeks.
• But if some one really wanted to get me something from the very top of the old list, the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer is high on the list. I wouldn’t turn down an Ipad either. But this has some of the best reviews I have seen including a personal review from Fopo.

Alright there is my list with some clear wants. What did I miss? Add something I should on my list in comments and same as yesterday I will give one poster 500 TP.

❤ and good luck

The TR group wrapped up our xp grinding. I had a final streak of 186 ish elites. I don’t remember the number exactly, but with the final 100k xp ready I decided to do a Vod and try my luck, but the loot gods weren’t pleased with me. And I got skunked. A newer guildie however got the gloves. And a new person to the raid, who did not want to follow instructions got the goggles. So there were big winners, just not me. 😦

Anyway wrapped up our hunt for xp. And did a few epics just to get the feel of the builds we had made for leveling at epic. The 12/6/2 barb/fighter/rog I had wasn’t bad. Not great. But with the right gear and a little more work fine tuning the build with its PREs it could be real nice.

Before logging for the night we all got our Trs going. I rolled up my Bowonk build, you can find the original build for a clr I have sitting around unloved HERE. And the update I am using HERE.

I learned that I had already made an error. The Barb past life feat can’t be taken until level 3. Guess none of them can be. So much for a straight swap for Toughness on my builds. But it is great come level 3. Right now at level 5, 4 ranger and a monk level I am rocking 150 ish hp, un-raged. Not bad.

That said I did take my first death last night. We were running STK on elite. And we got to the acid traps. The wife and Tobril ran, jumped luck sacked evaded any real damage.

I on the other hand stopped and waited for Fopo to disarm the traps. He thankfully decided to take some rog levels on his barb for traps. But after a few tries, and walking up all the buffs we had available I tried the stop go method. Hit number 2 and 3 for well over 70 points a pop. Went incap for about 3 seconds but a follow up jet finished me.

Tobril, the helper he is, grabbed my stone and ran me past 2 chests and a collectible point. 😥 In all fairness before running past the fire traps he did ask if I wanted to go back. And I said no to keep the xp/per min up. But I am sure now that there were 2 ion stones in those chests with my name on them.

All in all we are making good time. We all all around 5, some a hair behind that, but most around there. We have got a good epic streak going. And a lot more balanced group then normal for us TRing. 2 bowonks, Fo on his Barb/Rog, and Tobril on a new build. I don’t know if he has named it but I am going to call it the Holy Brawler until he posts it with a proper write up. I will say it is doing very nicely so far. I think if his does everything he saids it can do at cap, and it is half as good in the end game as it is doing now, he might have a winning build on his hands. I will let you know when/if he posts the write up.

One last thing. I have 500 Tp for someone that ranks this post and leaves a comment today. I will roll off from possible winners and send out a TP code tomorrow.

❤

I am always surprised when someone asked me for advice and then takes my reply as a personal attack. I am a web programmer in RL, for a simi large company and I handle the full life cycle for our different web programs. One of the things I have learned to do well is ask the right questions to really learn what it is that the requester wants. Sometimes this is easy as the request is fairly straight forward. But most of the time I am asked for X, but they really want something that is mostly X but has a lot of Y and some Z. But with out my prodding at the front end during the planing stage I would have another request on my desk in a few weeks to a month asking to add Y and maybe Z and the protect never really completes. Better to make everyone thing it through really carefully and to do the work just once.

This comes up more often then you would think. Some times I get asked to take a look at builds from you guys. And I am always happy to do so. You can email me samius @ ddococktailhour.com and I will take a look.

And from guildies and other friends. Tobril and I have had more “arguments” via email talking about builds then we have had about every other topic together; Including if girl X is hot or not.

So a friend emails me about building an artificer/ half elf arcane archer. This was my reply:

Why?

Xbows and Arrows don’t mix.

Rune Arms and bows don’t mix.

Now I meant “Why?” from a place of curiosity. Because if it was to have a dominate range build I could half see it see something. Enough ranger for Manyshot, enough monk for Ten Thousand Stars, and the rest artificer. Some kind of punch for ki, Ten Thousand Stars, Manyshot, Ten Thousand Stars swap to a repeater/arm until Manyshot is back or back to punching for ki to start again or using the one of the artificer’s Manyshot thing.

But with out the “why” of a build I can’t help suggest changes or build options.

When I have an idea for a build I talk to Tobril. He is my sounding board. Often he replies like I do, asking pointed questions to get me to think more about what I am trying to do. Sometimes the best thing he can do is call a build a vale build. Meaning content up to and including the vale will be easy. But when the build is really tested past the vale it most likely will fail.

That is the prompt to prove with numbers that it can stand on its own legs. If not then it goes into the scrap heap. I remember back when I was trying to get the Bowonk out. He and I went back and forth for a long time after he said that it might be a vale build.

Not long ago I was re-sharing an updated bowonk build to include 10kS and he replied “Seriously though, I think this design is kinda neat” I think I may have finally won him over.

Now we are talking about another monk/pally build. Hey….

❤

I wasn’t going to talk about this but I am still a little pissed so why not. Last night the TR group ran a shroud. And I don’t think the changes to part 4 are all that bad. Just takes a little bit OF DOING WHAT THE HELL THE RAID LEADER SAYS!!!

Okay with that aside I want to get to the point of this post. But to be upfront I want to say I know what it is like to not think of yourself and be expected to heal due to your icon.

However, when you join a raid with 16 levels in a divine class and you are asked to heal. Do so or DROP! You can give out warnings that your not much of a healer. And that is fine. I don’t expect you to be flawless. But when I ask can I count on you, and you say something like your my anchor or yes I will keep you up. I expect to be healed. Because if not I can drink pots or scroll myself. You know things that lessen my DPS. No big. But what ever your doing don’t make excuses. Just say sorry and move on.

So last night in this shroud we get to part 4 and we go in round 1, fine. Fairly smooth. Round 2, we go in fight get out (did I say we were down to like 6 people by round 2?) as we were told to move around and avoid the fire balls and such. Some did others did not. Dodging round 2’s fireballs cost me some life and fighting the devils there just were no heals. I drank pots but I couldn’t scroll as I was told they would heal and I raged up. Dead. Wipe. One of the clrs complained he drank 8 pots and used his big trinket. Died with like 300 mana.

Reform and smooth again until part 4, round 2, we were ready to head in as harry just landed. I was at ½ life ask for a heal get it. I am the only one in at the time, and the clr informs me that I am the anchor again. I keep moving, staying away from the blades following me around like a lost dog. But I do have Harry’s complete attention. Fire shield wheres off. About the time he decides to go all meteor swarm/ fireball at me. There was a window I was at around 100 life I back up and drink a silver flame pot and he throws some more fireballs and boom.

I get told that I had 2 heals thrown at me but nothing. Look at my log the only healing I had from the first swing on Harry was my pot. The rest of the melee goes in a little after I die and I am told that one of the clrs is trying to aura heal and shield block. Okay…. And then that clr joins me in part 5. Luckily the group makes it to part 5. Think 4-5 people get to shrine.

Get to part 5 and get started and at about 100 hp I call out for a heals. Like any at all. At 50 hp I leave group and scroll/pot up. Taking the 2 bosses had agro of with me. In part chat one of the clrs inform us that they can’t hear us when we ask for healz. I say, no problem. I will pot/scroll my self you make up my dps while I do so. Someone else asks “If you can’t heal what can you do?“

Found it to be very funny and pissed me off at the same time. Asking Fopo to try scrolling me during the harry fight with his 10 fvs levels I will take his 95% chance vs the divines 100% shitty chance. Looking at the combat log later, I see that Fo and Tobril’s heals (on his bard) where my main healers. I did get some healing from the other guys but not as much as one would thing from mass heals.

Whatever.

I know when on my divines I like to do other things. And calling out for heals is a way to prompt me to hand some out. I am not going to watch others red bars in normal questing. I will throw a mass around me any time I notice that we/I need healed. But if you say something I try hit you asap!

Now in a raid I play a little more healbot. Why? Because I am a horrible healer. So I try extra hard I over heal drink pots left and right burn scrolls whatever it takes to not have a fail on my hands. I don’t want my rep to be shitty healer.

Guess I am not the norm.

❤

There is a lot of talk whether or not using the Invisibility to prevent mobs from attacking extractors in one of the new challenge quests is a cheat. Not going to use the other word, just because.

I don’t feel like it is myself. I was talking with old Tobril and Fopo about it last night while working on more IQ quests.

And Fo was very much yep thats a cheat; until I said one thing. In PnP DnD you can invis objects. That was all it took for him to turn around.

And then the topic shifted to how would we or our Dms handle such an issue. Or how could the DM use there tools to get around the players casting invis on the mining machines.

A key to understanding what options a mob would have at its disposable is to understand what the mob knows. So lets get a short list of what it might know.

!, where the extractor is, or normally sits. I mean these things sit on their island right?
2, for some reason they really don’t like the extractors running. To the point where when one is active your tribe/what ever sends out party after party to see why it is running and to shut the damn things off.
3, I would bet that being it is something they dislike so much they would have tried to remove them, but couldn’t so they must be heavy.

Okay that is a good list. Following that logic I try to put myself in to that mind set. I have just been told that the one of the extractors is running and to go handle it. I get to where the extractor is and it is gone. But it still is doing the thing that pisses me off. Maybe I can hear or smell it.

I forget all the different kinds of mobs that spawn, I only ran it like 2-3 times. But we have to allow that according to PnP some of the mobs don’t rely on sight as strongly as we do. Gnolls for example use their noses a lot. Earth Ellies or Mud men (I remember them attacking me once) might have tremor sense.

So an invised extractor might make them start to hunt around for it just as quickly as not.

In come quests the mob casters pass out buffs like Displacement and Deathward. Why couldn’t they pass out see invis or True seeing? The way those mob casters dispel in every quest now, like it is going out of style, tell me they wouldn’t dispel the hell out of that extractor.

So is invising a cheat? I don’t think so. Until mobs have the smarts to respond better to some of the player tactics I might put it in the cheesy pile.

❤

I want to share a story or two about me and UMD, Use Magic Device. Inspired by a post by wax_on_wax_off and an off comment by my lady love.

I have always use Umd in ddo. The very first Samius had his cross class Umd score maxed and that was just something I always did.

Back when the cap was littler and before there was Trs and greater hearts of wood there was little 28 point Samius. He now lives on Thelanis, well mostly sits on Thelanis just in case….

I remember a lucky Titan raid I ran will the little guy and a pair of seven fingered gloves dropped. I wanted them so badly, in fact they were the reason I ran the raid. Back then he wore armor 100% of the time. Mostly just to be a little different, hey it worked for me. 🙂

Anyway the gloves went up for roll and I won. I was thrilled. I made a comment about how happy I was to pull them for the SPF reduction and pulled off my head set and shared with my wife the good news. Only half paying attention at best I noticed someone was talking a lot and I started to get a few tells. Finally when I went back to the game I was getting bitched at. By a guy named doopelbock. Yep I still remember the name. He also wanted the gloves for the more important reason of HIS umd score. I remember trying to talk to him about how my own umb was quite serviceable and with my new gloves I had a fair shot at heal scrolls (50% or so). But he would have none of it. Before long I realized it was not the merit of my usage but that he wanted them and there for I should have given them to him. Dropped, reported any follow up contact and excluded him from any group I was in.

I told that story because last night the TR group was running some IQ elites. Stuff was hairy for a while. Tobril as the ROUGE (mawhahaha) ended up having to “tank” the damsel in side Jeets. Not enough healing for my barb to take 150 point fireballs, chain lightings, and big scorching rays. My 50 charge stone only lasted for about 20 seconds before running out. Our hireling clr died super quickly and our guildie clr not long after the hireling.

We raised them both, many times in fact. Hell I had a few rezs thrown my way also. But we ended up letting Tobril tank for a bit while I dumped heal scrolls into him. Fopo got all the agro he could and kited until he got all the trash and Tobril got stabilized. And I was able to go in to help with the final big dps push.

Good times. I don’t know if we would have wiped if I couldn’t umd on my barb. His standing umb has him 50-60% on heal scrolls, with a few swaps I am 100% on heal scrolls (including a pair of seven fingered gloves gloves and a HoGF). I mainly use my umd score for fire shield scrolls before raging up or fast travel, but it good to have for when shit hits the fan moments.

The wife watching from the sidelines (she wasn’t playing yet) made a comment about those gloves being worth the asschewing I took so long ago to get them. Thanks Doopelbock, live in a fire. 🙂

I ❤ you UMD.

Some times you get home from work, take your pants off and run to your computer to play some Ddo. Along the way you happen to make eye contact with the wife and boom. There goes your plans.

Sure they say all the right things, like “No go ahead and play.” or “I’m good, you can go ahead and play.”

But don’t let yourself be fooled. We know that look means trouble.

If I spent the night working my Sam’s butt off earning xps, I might wake up like old shorty Bobbit. Calling 911 and trying to stop the dogs from enjoying a unpleasant doggy treat that was little Sam.

No, there will be no Ddo in my house on nights when my wife has that special twinkle in her eyes.

Normally that look involves a shitty day at work, that I can do nothing about but I rolled well on my “Read wifes mind check” and learned that little Qwynn took a little nibble of the new couch. The one the wife hunted for weeks. And ended up having to order and waited weeks to get. So there was some unpleasantness there. But that is easily enough to fix, as we did buy the extra special warranty. A phone call should get us on the to be repaired list.

A follow up roll had to deal with the boy and not turning in all of his homework, still. And I am going to leave it at that. Although on last nights House, Chase said his interest in medicine came from being locked in a study with nothing else to do for hours but read his dad’s old medical books, and he is a TV doctor. Hmmmm, interesting thought…..

Back to the wife; She and I spent the night on the couch watching TV mostly via Netflix streaming.

Last week I was hunting for something new to watch while mindlessly grinding xp; and I was clicking around the shows that Netflix has to stream and I remembered that Walt Flanagan from TESD podcast, was talking up Storage Wars. Netflix has it to stream, why not give it a chance?

Because it is super additive, thats why, take it from me if you don’t want to get sucked into a show don’t watch.

So last night I went to watch something else but with in 5 mins of reading between lines like “Why are we watching an Surviverman we have seen 100 times, when there are Storage Wars we haven’t seen?” I ended up took the hint and swapped to Storage Wars instead. And there went the night. At least until House had ¾ recorded.

Storage Wars is one of those shows that should have a warning “Time Machine”. 20 mins turns in to 5 hours so fast it makes your head spin. It has great characters that you hate/love, and you need up yelling at the tv to bid or to stop. It is great.

Anyway no Ddo talk today. Maybe if no one messes up today I can run some raids and earn some xp tonight.

❤

To say I was on a bit of an xp bender might not be 100% correct. I sat in my game chair long enough I might have grown into it some. There was much grinding. I earned way over 1millon xp this weekend.

So Fo, the wife and I are not slow. We move along the quests at a fair pace. And then on the weekends I solo a lot of content in the AM while they are off line. My whole goal is to keep up rank wise. Torance is on a first life. Fo is on a second life. So I could cap them both with the xp l already have. 🙂

But I had ulterior motive, Tobril started his TR about 2-3 weeks before I did. Fo started about a week ahead too, but I caught him. And I have been pushing to catch up.

Friday night we did. 🙂 Thank you litany. You might not have dropped any named loot, but you are xp per min. And I ❤ you. Why can’t there be more quests like you.

So I gathered up the TR teams and formed them into one team. Saturday morning I sat in the game chair at 8 am and around midnight I crashed for a few hours and was up by and playing by 9. And we pushed some more.

I didn’t cap out yet. But now I have xp for 19, rank 91 I think. Vale mostly emptied. Reavers Refuge (all but SOS) IQ started. Every thing on elite. My elite streak is around 180. I think by the time I do a few raids, finish the IQ it should be TR time.

It was a good time. And Tobril, who has been running a hard streak, got to see what an elite streak can do. He made the comment along the lines of WOW that is what it is like to see a bar move again. 🙂

❤

Before we get to the meat of the story. It is 11.11.11 aka Veterans’ Day/Remembrance Day for our friends over seas. The freedom we have to play a video game and talk about it like it is important, is insured by the service of out vets. Take a second and think about that and if you can thank a vet.

It also happens to be the last Binary day for a very long time. I don’t think you will see another, unless you got some mad blood sucking skills and can avoid the sun or know a good cyro place and are willing to take a long nap.

Now with that out of the way, Pay to Win?

So in my want to get my belt all crafted up I took my pile of TP and tried to pay to win. I hit the Ddo store and filled up on essences; lessers, greaters, a few crafting xp pots and about 100 +10% boosters. even used Tolero’s 5% off the cart code and bought more then I thought I would need. I spent then equivalent of 30$ in Tp, about 3000 Tp. In my mind if I spend that amount of cash I should win, right? What does a class cost? 1400 Tp. And I see that as a win vs grinding out a ton of favor. 🙂

Well I didn’t get in range of 100. I did gain about 13 levels in an hour. Burned a ton of my non-store reserves. And ended at about level 74. Not close enough to try for the Health +6 shard.

Following the idea that you could keep going. And that 3k TP amounts to about 10 levels it would cost me at least 50$ to get in range to try. With a 6000 tp package.

I don’t know that I would call that P2W, but I can see how others might. If I wanted to I could have broke out the credit card and kept going but why?

I am glad the option is there. If I was in striking distance, it would have been great to get there. And I have been in the spot where I wanted a certain ability. Back when I was making all my alts ghost touch of Everbright weapons I ran out of law essences and got mad that I miss calculated my needs.

Anyway. Just wanted to share that little story. And to say hell if someone wants to pay that price to win, let them. That is just a raise for my home boys at Turbine.

I found a crafter that can make what I want and am paying him essences to hook me up. Now that is pay to win. 🙂

❤