So I have been a fan of the new crafting system for a while now. I have made a lot of little quality of life items. Invulnerability armors at level 1. Vamp (lesser) weapons at level 5. Some catch all tools for oozes, ghosts and dr/silver mobs. And some super specializes tools, tailored down to one quest in the game even. Looking at you Running with the Devils!

So last night Java crossed into level 5 (almost 6 by loging time) and I started the gear upgrade. Got my VoM and Mantle out, the lvl 5 Blademark’s Docent and 3 parts of the Abishai set. Gloves, cloak, helm if you were wondering. Would also do the bracers but didn’t have one in the bank at that moment. And the boot slot is still needed for the anger set, +2 to hit after all. Note to self think about picking up a Morleth’s Docent for be buff use….

Anyway, I took out the Greatsword item (med guild slot) I had set aside to craft (lesser) vamp on and ran to the crafting hall after stopping to add the force damage ritual to it. Added a lesser vamp shard, wonderful level 5 weapon. Hit the guild vendors and bought 4-5 +3 to hit gems. So I had a +3 to hit greatsword of lesser Vamp and +1 force damage. Nothing overly broken. Just a good survivor set up. It plus the Blademark’s Docent gives me good healing against trash with out having to drink pots or spend time to cast a 10-15 point med cure spell. And will help get me ready for the Vampiric Fury Blade waiting for me at level 12.

Forward momentum is a good thing when soloing.

And it rocked, I went through WW on elite solo in about 20 mins with out having to stop to heal.

Oh also I took an old shard of power and made it a trinket with 33% lighting absorption. Makes those lighting bolts a lot easer to take.

I recall out of WW4 and get stuck in a loading screen. Well I have a 10% xp pot ticking, and it has been a while since I have restarted my client. Guess now is as good as time as any to do so.

Get back in and my weapon is now level 7….:(

I know there is a bug where guild slots are bugging out the crafting stuff but I was able to use it until the client restarted. Blast it.

Well back to my level 2 bta +1 holy/icy burst great sword. Speaking of the ice games kinda looking forward to them, pulled a +1 pure good great sword(bta lvl 1) last night. Adding icy burst to it will make a killer twink item. Not that icy burst /holy at level 2 isn’t groovy too but if I had a better level one item I might start banking xp a little sooner….

❤

Over the weekend, Samius did a many ah epic runs including an epic Von6, and two Von1s. The raid went smooth. But the Von1s….

So the first Von 1, was Fopo, Oncler, myself and some puggers (wait I think Miss was there also). Everything was going smoothly, considering some of us started before the everyone was in. And a number of D doors were cast to regroup. Mainly some people wanted to invis past things others want to kill everything. I think we ended up invising most of the way.

The Healer shrines, along with the melee and the other caster. I am still sitting at 1300 sp + full clickies so I am good. We go and kill the kobolds, and the cows. I dd back to shrine. I am the only one to save the shrine so I am moving as fast as I can, invis-ed of course. But the alert starts to grow, green, yellow, orange. And I ask WTF?

And I notice that the healer as ddoored also to shrine. I asked if I was wrong about him already have shrined? And he said, something along the lines of: I assumed you did also so you must know your way to another shine. /facepalm

I inform him I did not need to shrine and tell him to keep moving in to the arena. And I try to shrine. But the 6 trolls following him break off once he is out of reach and come to see me in the shrine. Ding!

And they camp out.

So I rez and run them out of the shrine area and DING!. But they are fair enough away now to rez and shrine up. While I am doing that the clr gets killed in the arena. But fully Sp up again I rez the clr and we move along. Red skulled and all. 😉 And Skunked. Well at least I was, think Miss got a seal he wanted.

Von 1 group 2. Tobril, Fopo and I + 3 puggers. Smooth up to and including the kobolds and cows. I go back to shrine. But no one is ready for the other kobolds to come to life and ding ding ding. I hear a lot of get on the same one. But I guess 2 of our puggers didn’t speak English. Also they released and dropped group, boy! With the clr also empty. Fopo decides to get his FvS to help finish it up. And I talk the wife into raiding the chest as we are all but the end fight away from done.

It is fairly straight forward spell dps, melee dps beat down also but Fopos fvs runs out of sp with all the quicken, mass heals to heal Tobril’s barb vs the single target heal. But as the wife also grabbed one of her clrs healing is in no short supply. Well with scrolls anyway.

Speaking of the wife, she gets the only seal, a SoS. She asked me if I want it. After some debate between her and I we decide it would be best to let Tobril have it if he doesn’t have one. As he is running the raid a lot more then I am. And he ends up with the seal (1 of 4 parts for him 🙂 ).

We ran a lot more epics that night. Including BoB and TTT, most of the fins and I want to say something else but I am drawing a blank… we get 4-5 scroll drops. Most are junk to so so. Tobril gets a bracer of the claw scroll. But I did end up with a the last peace I needed for the epic Blademark’s Docent so it was a good night for me as well.

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Last night, the guys and I got moving on a few different things. I got Samius a Shroud, Healzyounot got a DQ completion and a few other runs not reallying needed a comment. But then we got together for a Vod run.

First of all we had a very blue bar heavy run. 6 arcanes FvS and a Clr, that part was great. But we had some over zealous people and we killed all the trash that could open the way to the raid. Okay reform.

Then as people are getting the archer in place to open the way, one of the puppies hits my computer cord just right and I power down….

A few mins later I get back and want not. And the way is open, and people are waiting for me. We get in and start buffing and I get a message from Tobril. Lost power due to storm.

Lolz, he was our tank. After some texting back and forth he says don’t wait as it could be awhile.

We decide that everyone will Dot Sully up and try to keep her hate moving. Well that worked for about 20 secs then I had the hate. And I was the new “tank”.

Man a capped Air Sorc can do the dps.

I get the healer to move to keep me in her aura and things are going well. I do need her attention however. As my Hps are a lot lower then I would like. No tomes or exceptional and what not. Making my HP about 340 raged. But I have a little DR and good amount of amp helf + items + ship so lights and mods hit for good amounts. Pots are about 50.

So anyway I keep the dots running and scroll myself when I am unsure of healing, ie trash mobs are about. But scrolls allow a concentration check aka “lets not have to make those checks” and I might have gotten killed once or twice.

What I find to be funny is while recovering from death aka letting some other caster take him for a bit as soon as my dots started ticking she came right back.

But we when from 10% to 5% too fast I guess and we had bats, orthons and devils and people started to drop. I should have ran. And kept Sully doted. But I tried to say with the healer. Who was trying to heal everyone got cursed and died. I didn’t last much longer after that. I would say Sully was around 3%. But the other casters had too much to try and handle. I got a res and resed 2 others but it was too little to late.

I think with a little more organization we could of completed no problem. But know what? That was the most fun Vod I have ran. I wouldn’t want to fail again but the raid was full of good people that were willing to push themselves. I respect that.

❤

Last night was fairly disappointing. It begins with me getting home after work and finding my wife in a bad mood. She had a long night the night before, the new puppies kept her up. And then her boss informed her that she needed to put in 5 hours of overtime this week, with the week half over. So her mood is understandable but still her mood effects my mood.

So I get logged in and check the channel/guild and no one is on. Okay, check out the Lfm and not a lot going on either. So I swap to my FvS and do a few Sin runs. And 3-4 runs no belts/necklaces noting of note, just vendor trash and not a lot of worth in plat even.

I even get stuck floating in place one run and get smashed. Grrr. But I keep and eye out for Shrouds and people.

About 8, I see a shroud and get in as the 4th person. The leader a fighter, another fighter, a clr and me. Fair start. But as Java is not a full caster, or even close really, I send a tell to the leader letting him know he will want a full caster. And look at the AH and get my ship buffs. We fill, it didn’t take too long. But I am the lone caster no bard even. Hell we can work with that. I let the clrs know that someone will need to go on portal duty as I can melee them trash down, but it would be better for one of them to spell them to death. One of them says they will try to handle it. And we are off. My 2 min hastes and 4 min rages and we are a go.

About the half way mark some people start to notice that our leader seams to be pikeing. Maybe it is lag? So we wrap up part 1, and the leader had no problem running to the chest to loot? Okay…

I did get passed a shard of power. One more of those to go. I ask for a little help with the crystal in part 2. I think Java can handle it, but with all the spell changes lately? Java has always been spell dps is a nice trick but not his forte. I don’t think I have not even fixed his enchantments since they split them up, now that I think about it… No wonder his spell damage was so low last night…

We do part 2 and 3 with out much of a problem. I noticed that our brave leader opened underwater chests in part 3 while water was still going out. And people asked him if he was still piking.

Oh and a great shard was passed to me, again many thanks. And one more of them to go.

We buff and move into part 4. Java doens’t run any of the dots atm. With him about to tr giving him dot scrolls feels like they would be wasted. But the party dps is okay not great but okay. It will be a 2 rounder. Another melee and I kill gnolls before going in. About that time I notice that 2 of our melees are not swinging but are surrounding Harry. Our leader is still over by the healers. And out of no were most of the party dies. Yep those 2 melees were Dcing. And damage caught up with us all at once. Two rangers and the clrs and the leader if you could count him lived. So there was still a good chance. Over mic I say to want you want if you think you can finish, Harry was at 20% or so when we all died. A little later the two that Dced are back but didn’t last too long once the clrs took some a fireball or meteor storm to the face. And the rangers where the last two standing. One died and every one cheered on the last man as it didn’t look like he was taking much damage. And our now dead ranger said Harry was at a sliver. But out of the blue the other ranger dropped group. Turns out he released back with the first wave of deaths. And was just still in group. Boo, wipe.

With that sitting in my mouth I decide to log and play with the puppies and watch TV with the wife. So the night wasn’t a total fail on all accounts.

❤

I think I have gotten Sam to the shroud/epic place I want to leave him for a few weeks and now it is time to focus on Java. Last night I started getting my gear in order for his WF FvS life. Hey look I already have a finished a full on CordOp goggles. Nice! Now if I can explain why I knew I didn’t have a complete CordOp on him….Oh well. New mystery, why does he have a never equipped pair of GS goggles in the bank??? Never mind.

Looking for shards and I notice just one normal shard and one greater shard. Oh boy time to grind the shroud….

I do have to make some decisions, both do to the lack of shards and on my large scale supply. I decide to make the first 2 tears of a Air/Air rest/Hp cloak. With the plan to round it out before TRing. 10 plus hps might get some use this life. Where a tear two great sword wouldn’t…

Blanks: I have made a Gs steel great sword already and I am thinking about making a pos/pos maul for abbot runs, if I do that I will need to do so before TRing as abbot comes before shroud.

Speaking of shroud runs. I need to remember to pack a run with as many guildies and friends to pass me shards over the next few days….

But I need to decide what to for that great sword. Bypassing good as a requirement limits the options to Min2, Lig2, Rad2, Steam, 3xpos or a CordOp weapon.

I could go Min2 but I have a min2 staff that will do fine as a catch all. And I can pick up a silver great sword and make a holy/ bane-greater bane for big boss battles.

A lighting 2 might be the right all purpose weapon. But I have lots of lighting 2s…. and while they are fun I might want something else for a change??

I have always been a fan of Rad2 weapons. You kinda control the proc rate (on crit) and extra 4d6 of light damage, on a FvS with the Shield of Condemnation helping out seems good. But how do you build one as most of the end game mobs are immune to fire damage? fire/pos burst/flame blast?

Steam, has the best proc rate at 20% but I can’t even tell you the dice for 12-22.. 2d6+10? Maybe? Its proc rate should be about the same as the Rad2 on a great sword with imp crit better before imp crit. But with out the blinding proc is it as good? Its cold damage should hit more mobs then fire… Holy/ Icy Burst/ Cold Blast doesn’t look to bad. And should hurt most everything fairly well.

If I say that I will use the min2 staff for dps when needed to bypass dr. Then we have a few other options. Ice2, smoke2, 3xEarth, Vacuum II??

Thoughts?

❤

I have seen a lot of different posts about how to fix the amount of Xp Trs need to grind out to level. There is the let Trs in to epics at 17-18 and give those quests a fair amount of xp. I like this idea, but that is not the only idea on the forums or in party chat. We have the hard and Elite only camp. The return the under level bonus back for Trs. There is a new one that I just seen today to make a TR count a few levels higher. So a level 1 Trx2 would count as a level 3. there for having to do a level 2 quest.

Me? What do I think? Other then epic at lower levels the idea that I like is my own. Lower the xp total needed, but speed up the repeat penalty of the quests if your a TR or not.

So First time in a quest per life you get your normal 100%+25%(first time bonus). Second time 100% xp. Third time you start giving a repeat penalty, -10%. Forth -20, fifth –40%, -99% from number 6 on. But return to 1.9 xp for +2 point Trs and 2.5 or so for +4 point Trs.

It is simple and clean. Doesn’t hurt first lifers, forces Trs to do a wider range of quests and not more of the same 5 quests until level.

Any way that is how I would handle it.

❤

Ps: double post.

I jumped a round from alt to alt a bit last night. And was on my way out to Sins on my human FvS, McGoogles. I am trying to tighten this guys gear up while I am on this TR down time.

But I am keeping an eye on the LFM pannel for an Abbot. Java was on 19 so I was/am ready to get that 20th. I was about ¾ to the quest when I see one. Grr. Swap, jump in and get assigned Goggles. NP.

We get in and get moving get to goggles and I get lead across. And start to lead the other guy across and I he slows down kinda unexpectedly and nearly falls, once, twice, and third time is the charm and he goes down. 😦

But a re-beat down and I am back in goggles and both me and my partner have the goggles for our own side. But we each pick up another person per side and we have to try to lead this extra person trailing behind. I lose my guy. He said he was half a step behind me but I guess not.

But we complete just fine.

Now for my bitchn. My 20th list was a lot of crap or items I already have. I end up taken a Vile Blasphemy a great item. But I was hoping for a Litany or Wretched Twilight.

Now for something totally different.

A little later in the evening, I get told to get on Samius for a Evon6. So I wrap up my Sins run and jump in we wrap up von5 and boom favor! Nice, first time in von this life. We get in von6 and I am told in channel to disintegrate the pillar when it is time. And I remind the leader that I still have Recon for Tod robot healing….

But Cyclonic Blast should work? Right? It wasn’t a one shot but it worked good enough. Being the only wiz/sorc I got to kite the reavers as I doted the dragon. Took an inferno to the face. I will blame Fopo here as he was calling them out and waited until I was too far out to make it back.

But again a completion. Lost a roll on the shard of the silver cloak. D50 or 100 and I got a 2. But got a 99 on a d99 for the Warding Bracers. I have the scroll and a seal I think. But the big winner was Fopo, finally getting that shard of the dragon. So now there will be more Evon6s for me as he needs 6 more reds…

So all in all it was a good night.

❤

Today I want to share a little internal struggle I am having with Samius’s gear. Right now I am using a Green blade and a Ring of Thelis, to cover my Wizardry, Spell Resistance, Empower II and Greater Arcane Lore needs.

However I have the pages (almost 2 sets 🙂 ) for a Skiver. And that one item would cover every thing but SR. While freeing up a ring slot. A ring slot that I could use to help with my other slots. That is the plus side.

Down side, 200sp 400 sp while finishing out my Sorc life will be tied up in a weapon. I often swap into clickys and having that as my Sp item is just asking for a mistake to happen….

I could dual weld and put it in my off hand but I would lose my shield. Which is now a +2 evocation & 33% electric absorption. Two things my most of my casters can use. And this sorc life is no exception.

The other down side, I would be taking a skiver out of another alt’s hands.

Thoughts?
❤

Finally! Man that last level was tough. Lots of raiding, lots of grinding out a handful of quests. I will say the new lord of eyes chain was a nice change up. One or two of them was fair xp per min… Not great, but fair. Capped up on Wends and Epics on Thursday. Good times.

Last night I logged on and sent out in channel greetings. And got a “Sam, VOD?” from Oncler. If you don’t know him, I know I have used his name a few times, he can be a little rough around the edges but once you get to know him he is great. You know that little switch that keeps you from telling some one how it is? He doesn’t have one. And he has some ideas of what is good and is very vocal about those ideas. But if you put your pride aside and take what he is saying to heart then you will become a better player. Thankfully I don’t get dressed down toooo much…:)

So any way we do a Hard VoD, got passed a set of Gloves of the Glacier, that happened to come from Oncler. I can swap into them on longer boss beat downs. Just to stretch the Sp a little more. Lost the roll for Tharns Goggles again think I rolled 9 on a d100. 😦

Did a tod run. Did pick up a ninth Trophiy of War and got passed a Gilvaenor’s Ring. It will let me craft Shocking Burst or on it for a little extra dps for my next few Trs. You know Oncler hooked me up with that ring too….I hope that doesn’t mean we are going steady….

I finished off the night with a Epic Crono. Was told to go to town on the Conjoined Abishai Devastator. Everything was going fine until it went white dragon and iced the ground. Our main tank didn’t have a FoM and wasn’t able to attack for a bot. And it takes off right too me. I am trying to move and scroll myself all while sliding along.

For some reason the party seems to be moving after me. WTF. Let me turn this guy away. And I hear. “Sam just die! Before it Infernos and we wipe ”

Guess someone didn’t know who I am I get moved around and I yell stop following me. I will handle the agro until the tank can get it back. And the party does and I keep the Devastator on me, scrolling myself as the healers must be thinking if they don’t heal me I will die. I never saw them heal me during that fight anyway.

The tank regains agro as I let the dots fade. And I move out of the danger zone with no problems. Wait for the tank to call out for dots again and we complete with no deaths.

Easy as pie. Not one of the group that had run with me all night had a problem with how I handled things. A pugger did. Oh well. We won and I got passed a Shard for a Diabolist’s Robe. Rolled and lost a Time blade seal in the bank so when its shard went up I didn’t bother. Let the guy who won the seal have it.

I hope tonight to get a few more epics and a shroud in, sitting on number 7. 13 more until TR time baby!

❤

I have been debating the possible gear layout for Javabot as a pure 20 FvS. Most of it is fairly straight forward. Hate, DR, Amp and what not. But there is a question about Sp regen items. Mainly do I need a CordOp item if I already have a Torc?

This is not a normal question. At least not for me. It takes many tries to get a Torc from the DQ raid. And building a CordOp item is often a lot more feasible then waiting out a torc. But what if you already have a Torc?

So I look at my practical game play. Samius has both a Torc and a CordOp item. Depending on the style of play each life I have found that I may or may not need both the CordOp and Torc at the same time.

Example: Most of the monk/caster lives I didn’t use both at the same time. I might start/shrine with my CordOp on as it is a huge boost to my Sp pool. But after buffs swap it out for a Jidz. Most of those builds didn’t have mana issues with just the Torc for sp regen. But they also had fist of light to help with the incoming healing.

But now say I am going to be a lot more caster stay out of the fight I want ever hit to have a fair shot at netting me some Sp. So for Say the Sorc life I am doing both.

Now something I just now thought of is making a par of swap in boots. Say full on guards or guards+ sp that are CordOp. Places when I need to swap in special boots are normally places where I don’t need the cordOp chance for Sp. Those are normally Boss/end fights of places with crazy incoming burst damage from spells. That would let me make a “permanent” HP- GS goggle and cleans it.

Oh by the way, if you don’t do the DdoCast thing I think I recall Glin saying that Mabar is coming back and I am thinking a full on Cloak of Night might make the cloak slot….

Please debate, it is going to be a bit before I go for Java’s TR so lots of time to go over feed back.

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