Category Archives: Uncategorized

Alignment: NG

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In light of yesterday’s blog post were I admitted that ripping the heads off slaves made me giggle like a schoolgirl, I think we need to cover my alignment status. I got a few comments of welcome to the dark side, or embrace your evilness. I am a little surprised that there wasn’t at least one comment along the lines of how I saved them forever or at least until the next run…

But I want to be clear my alignment is NG, for NOT GOOD. Sure I do a lot of things that are nice/good/bad/evil but over all I do, as I like. Some might even call me CN or chaotic neutral; I am big believer do as I like but I do have a few moral issues/hang-ups that keep me from being a bad man in RL right now. All of which would be thrown out the window if I ever got any cool super powers. Oh the villain I would be… Tobril says that if he had super powers he would totally use his powers for good, HIS GOOD! And I can’t agree more.

Sigh…

I just want my name written on the moon and rule the lands with burning death rays. Tell me that you don’t want the same…

I have an argument/question that I will just touch on get you thinking on it and hopefully cover in my in-depth later in a new podcast with Tobril.

Why in most comic books is the economy better then the real world? I think it is because of super villains. Things are always being destroyed and therefor always needed to be rebuilt. So the housing market is always up.

So you see if I had cool super powers and went of the deep end it would be for almost everyone’s benefit.

Back to work, I will have a post tomorrow but will be out most of next week.

<3s

Oh, I Freed the Slaves! Freed them REAL GOOD!

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Work yesterday did its best to kill my sprit and to say I was in a foul mood would put things mildly. I think I was so angry if I was the Red Hulk the normal Hulk wouldn’t have been able to stop me from destroying something…. IDK… Even a few hours of DDo with Tobril didn’t calm me down until what I think will be my 3rd favorite quest from now on!

The House of Broken Chains

Some Spoilers to follow if you haven’t done the quest, but I will try and keep things simi safe.

The point of the quest as you might gather from the title/area is to rescue slaves. There are a splattering of slaves through the quest and a mess of them in the end fight, that you can save for optional xps, as well as a few that you have to save as quest objectives.

To save the optional slaves you must kill a their slave master and use a dialogue option to use one of a few different skills to save them.

I don’t remember if I told you all but the first time Tobril and I did The Lost Thread he was “saving” the slaves and about as often as not he would rip their heads off. So began a running gag. That said we try our hardest to save everyone, well at least until we have the xp then anything goes.

So a few runs back we noticed that my UMD score was high enough to more or less auto free slaves so now it is my job. Well last night we saved everyone except one guy who had an “accident”. I might have tightened the collar and poped his little drow head right off.

But we Freed every last slave and defeated Solul with out killing his slaves. After checking the chest and looking at the quest xp I noticed I could “free” Solul’s slaves not that the quest was over. But there was no point other then fun.

Here the story takes a dark twist and in light of the resent current events might be in poor taste. But you know me; I tell it how it is?

Running to the first drow, I said “I will save you” and ripped his little head right off with my unskilled check. Not going to lie, for the first time last night I smiled a little. And I started to “save” them all. Tobril seeing what I was doing began to chime in on how I am the drow savior and how I am not allowed to give him a hard time anymore as I am clearly a mass murder. And in that moment I fell into a giggle fit. The best 3-4 mins of my day. Just Tobril and I standing in a pile of bodies, some good some bad, but they totally cleaned the anger and frustrations right out of me. Times like that is why I ❤ this game so much.
If you have a problem – If no one else can help – and if you can find them – maybe you can hire the Defense Guild.”

Unlike the A-Team we kill the bad/indifferent/good men/mobs/slaves/bystanders.

❤

Time for Mindless Epic Xps

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Now that I have my 5 epic levels I have been mindlessly grinding out xp for all the twists I want. My go to quests are:

Wizking, about 23 mins on eN for 36k base, 4 k for kill all guardians optional, three 7500ish genie guards and 2300 for looting the big chest. So about 65k a run for about 3k a min. At least 8 chests per run, more often then not 10 per run. Other big perk for me I really ❤ the quest, even when I am mindlessly farming it while watching a show on the other screen.

Snitch, I don’t have an XP break down of this one. It is just my switch it up quest. But right now as I am running loot gems I also am trying for chests per min as well as a good amount of xp. But again it is good fun.

Broken Blades, This is still like 10k a min but as I don’t love the quest I only really do it when Tobril wants to and I am not ransack on the chests.

Why do I bother will all this? Well I have a lot of twits on my want list and I need to both work my way to the destinies I want to twist from as well as earn the points to unlock them. So what is my master plan? I need 18 points to twist in the following 3/3/1

Piercing Spellcraft and Echoes of the Ancestors: Magister are both level 3 twists for 5 more spell pen. If you read yesterday’s post (if not look down) you know I feel like I am real close to where I need to be spell pen wise. 41/42 + 5 = 46/47 and after talking to Tobril he thinks most guys are around 50ish SP on eE so add a +3 pen item and I fail on 1s and 2s. So all I need will be to raise my level a hair via say the Arcane Augmentation 9 via something like Twilight or a epic Staff of Arcane Power.

That leaves me with 1 slot for a level 1 twist like Brace for impact to help with letting me use Yugo pots or Healing Spring for more passive healing.

I have to assume you all have twist plans, want to share them here?

<3s

New Watermarks

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This weekend began what I can only think of as making headway to the new watermarks. Currently Sam has about a 43 Spell Pen and a 50ish removal DC and around 45ish web depending on what is equipped.

I still have a little wiggle room left (mostly with twists and a few minor gear shuffles that would fuck my whole gear setup) but not a ton but I find myself asking, where are the new watermarks? Once I twist in 3 more Spell Pen is that good enough for now? Do I need to get to 55 or 60 necro DC to be super caster man?? I just don’t know…

After this weekend I feel I cover the eH marks just fine. I don’t remember many Spell Pen checks failed on eH and few saves vs fingers/wails/circles mostly high fort save mobs. And I really like how the Nullmagic stuff from Magister is interacting with the mobs even if I am missing the raw damage boosts/SLAs that the Draconic Incarnation had.

eE on the other hand I still feel a little short, I can throw a few un-metaed magic missals and for the most part get lower the mobs SR so I can get through easy enough but then my DCs seem to be hit or miss for mid fort save guys. I am catching about 70% of the mobs in my webs with the DC as is and I have used the Magister boost to raise my DCs by 5, wail, circle, finger and then re-web. So even in places where we have issues I have been able to push through.

We only did one eE this weekend, if I remember right. And that went pair shaped at the end as I tried to kite the end trash as the melee killed the boss hopefully far enough away from the trash that the end boss couldn’t sac a guy and regen to full. We were also a man short so over all I think we did really well.

That said I still think I might need to switch over to PM at some point. The AM is working well for eN and eH but that is not where I plan to spend all my time. I plan to rock the eEs when able and while we are doing well on the weekend when the Brits are on I hope at some point to round out weeknights with channel people. But before that can happen I want to be at the top level and I just don’t know if the Evocation AM can do that…

More or less PM means 3 more to my necro DCs 4 from Int, 2 from Lich and 2 from Yogo pots (I drink very sparingly as I get sneak attacked for tons of damage making it easier for the mobs doesn’t sound like fun times) and +1 dc from Lich. It would also free up a feat…

Currently
Feat: (Selected) Insightful Reflexes
Feat: (Wizard Bonus) Maximize Spell
Feat: (Selected) Past Life: Berserker’s Fury (needs 2b Toughness post 20)
Feat: (Selected) Past Life: Arcane Prodigy
Feat: (Wizard Bonus) Spell Focus: Evoc
Feat: (Selected) Completionist
Feat: (Selected) Greater Spell Focus: Evoc
Feat: (Wizard Bonus) Empower Spell
Feat: (Selected) Past Life: Arcane Initiate
Feat: (Wizard Bonus) Heighten Spell
Feat: (Selected) Quicken Spell
Epic Feat 1: Spell Pen
Epic Feat 2: Spell Focus: Necro

Over the weekend I switched from Greater Spell Pen to Spell Focus: Necro so I could pick up Secondary Spell Mastery: Necro for 2 more DC + the 3 SS Specialist so 5 more overall. But if I was a PM I would have a free feat I could set that last feat back to Greater Spell Pen or set it to epic Toughness or Epic Neco focus, or Spell Focus: Conj and twist in PCasting: Conj for bigger webs … So many options for loosing lots and lots of Force damage… ;’(

Anyway, Do you have any watermarks set for eEs?

<3s

Maybe Magister After All

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So last night Tobril and I finally capped out our epic levels, time to spam Wizking/Von3/Rusty Blades until our eyes bleed or until we are burnt out on them. So never!

Anyway the other day I talked about how I would (currently have) layout Draconic Incarnation with the plan of using it as my EE destiny. But as I have been playing these last few tears of quests, the new stuff on eHard are level 24, some things are not landing as nice as I would like, about 75% hit rate would fall to 405ish on eE. So I have been thinking that I might need to make some changes. Even though some of these last few end fights have ended before they have even started by dumping the different DI attacks.

So the first thing I have been debating is that swap to Magister like so:

null

I personally haven’t played too much with the Sigils but the thought of standing around drawing a fixed aoe it had better killanate the bad men. As far as I know none of these so that. But I do like on paper the Spell Warding/T1 one. Cool down of 30s and lasts for 60, so in long fights you can keep it up. At least according to the wiki, haven’t really used it much yet myself like i said. And as I needed to burn 2 more points in tear1 before moving on to tear 2 seemed like a good time to try it out. For standing fights 10 more PRR might be a good thing to have in my pocket.

Next on the list is SS Specialist, I think I will swap at least one SpellPen feat into another Focus feat to boost those DCs by 4. Necro is the most likely as I can find a spare action point to take Spell Mastery 2 and Necro has shitty SLAs, but Conj seems like a good call also but I would need to dig up 2 more points so I could have a Web SLA… 50+ DC webs for 3 sp…

Spell Pen and lots of INT is a no brainer, I mean more INT is why I might switch to Magister. Less other good stuff to compete…

But the real winners in the Magister ED other then not having a lot of stars to burn points on are Nullmagic Guard/Strike!

Nullmagic Guard: Passive Bonus: When you take damage, there is a [2/4/6]% chance that a burst of antimagic energy expands from your body. Nearby enemies are subject to a Dispel Magic effect, which may strip them of their magical protections, and will render them unable to cast spells and lose [2/3/4] Spell Resistance for [10/20/30] seconds.– ddowiki

Nullmagic Strike: Passive Bonus: Offensive spells you cast, melee and ranged attacks have a [5/10/15]% chance to subject the target to a Dispel Magic effect, which may strip them of their magical protections, and will render them unable to cast spells and lose [2/3/4] Spell Resistance for [10/20/30] seconds. – ddowiki

So if something hits me they and THEIR alias/my hostiles mobs as a fair shot at being dispelled. Render them unable to cast and lower their spell pen? I don’t know about you but I tend to take a lot of hits lately. Mainly once I switched out of heavy armor for Spider +3 int robes. But the real winner is every spell I cast might do the same to every guy that spell hits? So 2 SP magic missiles each have 5-15% (depending on points spent) to do this? Eloop/Chain Lighting, has a 15% (I plan to max this out!) to a few mobs at once? Does that mean the Chain missiles spell should almost always hit a ton of mobs? EE Drow lookout!

So how does that look? Good enough to stay AM? I don’t know yet. But I will find out soon enough now that I am capped.

Patched, Boo or Woot?

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Last night, I run (drive) home, hurry down to my computer room and start the game a patching as I watch some Shameless (UK) via the Netflix. My kind of humor… Anyway patched and off to the races. And while I didn’t get thrown in to any walls or randomly eaten by any floors things were buggy as all hell.

1, First bug of that hit me was the AH missing item levels. But I had seen it on the forums, just didn’t realize it was on live as I was looking at the Lam forums at the time. Overall this bug is no big deal, think they can fix it quickly.

2, The wife is in Evening Star doing some browsing on the AH when she sees some bracers she wants but are too much for her blood. So she wonders over to the one of the brokers and happens to find the exact bracers she wants for broker prices vs AH prices. But can’t buy them. You can put them in the buy box, but you can’t see them in the confirm box even thou if you try to close the window it says you have things in the window and the buy button never becomes active. So she can’t buy them. There is some talk in the advice/general channels about how to still buy things but we couldn’t and after 30 mins trying I was done…

3, Not real sure what was going on but I while doing a set of flagging Von runs for Tobril’s bard, I switched to AS400 for Von3. And I noticed with no changes other then moving the mouse over the icon my Finger DC was jumping around wildly. At least in the mouse tip. Don’t know if it really was changing but going from my normal 50 to 59 and in between in a handful of seconds by moving my mouse is strange.

4, Went back to Sam for XP and DQ flagging and I noticed that my Fire shield cold was down. Cast forget, play some notice that I am taking more damage then I should recast forget, repeat until I finial catch it starting and turning off at the same time. Say something and Tobril lets me know it is bugged…

5, Tobril and I were doing the High Road quests but Lost in the Swamp is bugged so you can’t enter. Meaning we couldn’t start the end quest anyway. In hindsight, I think Tobril might be right last night when he was telling me we were missing a quest, A Stay at the Inn. I had it in my head that was the last quest, its not so here is one of those examples of me being wrong T. Still want to say 98% right all the time bud. Excluding spelling and grammar. ☺

6, this didn’t hit us directly but we heard that GFL is not going in to yellow slots. I am not slotting anything in any epic slots until I know this is happening or not. Don’t see any thing on the Know Issue list…

7, Oh and didn’t the Ice game stuff start yesterday? Didn’t see anything. So I guess not…

Over all I didn’t have too many issues. And as I was getting thrown into a wall or killed by the floor at least once a game session I am glad to see that fixed. I can live with a few new bugs, but some I just don’t understand how they slipped by.. Oh well I still had lots of fun and got lots of xp. Less then 200k to epic cap and destiny grinding can begin!

<3s

Int or Not to INT, that is the Question!

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So like I said yesterday, Samius is rocking the Draconic Incarnation destiny atm and most likely will for eE content. And I have two very different paths I can take I can go for maxing out my INT via destiny or just nabbing a few points when I don’t have other places to use the points when moving up a level.

I have pictures because I this is a visual medium right?

Here you can see we have +6 int, wings and +3 spell pen but a lot of important ones are 1/3s like “Dragon heritage” and “Energy burst”. I could move a point from “Go out with a Bang” for a rank in “Precise casting” because I can’t get a second rank in “Energy burst” anyway. But that would be a minor shift.

But lets see yourddo shows Samius at 47 int and I am closer to pic 2 with 2 points of Int so I would gain 4 points putting me at 51+ 1 twist (sometime) + 1 exp int slotted some place, +1 litany (sometime) +2yogo pot + 2 store pot or around 58ish int on a fairly stable base, assuming I want to buy store pots…. Higher still if I wanted to go pure Wiz and PM…

Or I could do like what I am doing now only a little more cleaned up:

And live with about a 52/54 int most of the time…

I don’t know what will be better in the long run but I know once I get all my twist unlocked to twist in “Brace for Impact” or Even more Spell Pen, “Echoes of the Ancestors” and “Spell school specialist”

You have thoughts on main Destiny setups let me know! Hell I might fall in love with Magister, don’t think I will but maybe…

<3s

AM Report

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I haven’t done this AM report yet as I felt I haven’t fully explored the possibilities at my finger tips but I am running dry on other topics on my mind besides gear talk and war stories about keeping guildies together when doing quest chains. And of those other two topics the AM bores me the least.

So status update, I am 18/2/4 wiz/rog/epic and AM Evocation Focus, heavy into Force and Electric spells 4 or 5 AP in boosting fire and Acid spells also. Lets see I am working the Draconic Incarnation destiny again Electric dragon path making all that Electric focus work double time.

It is a blast! Plays like a sorc but not hamstrung will at those sorc limitations. Depending on gear sets I can have a 40 Necro DC (I know low for eE but fine for eHs and I have a lot of growing room yet) and a 49 EleLoop/Chain Lighting/Firewall DC. No Save for half/Evasion BS for me.

The best part of the build is the different synergies. The Draconic spell Augmentation ED for example, Electric spells have a [5/10/15]% chance to reduce enemies’ Reflex save by 10 for [10/20/30] seconds. That is a fairly good shot to both stun and/or drop some saves for everyone with a 40 sp ElcLoop. And 400ish a tick from the Energy Vortex while the mob is dotted up with the single target dots and the aoe dots firewall/AcidRain then pop off the Blast and the Breath attack. I am soloing Snitch on my Wiz on eH in for in less then 15mins.

But how much of that is just the destiny? What about just the AM stuff?

Have to say normally my go to spell is Finger, then I web or start to Magic/Chain Missile via the AM clickly. I have found it surprising how often I use the Gust of wind to try and clear a bad aoe and how angry I am when it doesn’t work. It doesn’t seem to hit all the things for me that it seems to clear for them… Having access to Fire Shield for almost nothing makes not having Extend much more bearable.

Do I feel a squishy? A little… Okay sometimes… Mainly when I forget to DW or it gets dispelled or just runs out and I take a million neg levels. Talk about pissed. But for the most part he is fairly robust. The other day I died and was pissed over mic. and Tobril said something, for the 3rd or 4th time this life, along lines how surprised he was that I was as able to keep this build up and running as well as I did. And how he didn’t think he could manage something so out of the box. Like most of the casters on the server he took the easy win and would have trouble if he tried to branch out. I don’t know how true that is but I felt a lot better. Then again every time he dies and I don’t or I end up saving him by mistake, I smile a little. I want the feat to always be in a party members focus orb when they are trying to scroll themselves….

That said I am leaning towards shifting back to PM at some point mostly for EEs. I could try going Nerco AM but the clickies are not a good as Evocation and if I am going to lose my cheep damage for DCs I want a fair replacements not bad ones.

In the short term, I want to twist in Brace for impact from the Unyielding Sentinel I think with 40% more fort I could try and use the Yogo pots as long as I fit in some guild fort bonus to help with every damn mob having rogue levels now… On my way over to U.S. I plan to unlock Echoes of the Ancestors Magister and I hope enough points to twist it in. And when I start the EE pass I will see if I need to twist in more Spell pen from whatever other caster ED I am not in at the time or if I can just twist in more INT?

Okay again I am long,

❤

Role Filling

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For the first time in a long time I just can’t point to Grim’s my.ddo page and say see my weekend, so I will talk a little about what we did and I will mix in a little bit of role playing/filling in groups.

As is quickly becoming a thing for our weekends the DG and HoDW got together for to raiding and other epic questing. More raiding this weekend then we have needed to do the last few weeks as more of each guild logged on then normal.

Think we started with the dragon raid, which is becoming our normal jumping off point for the weekend. Which means I am currently needed to change guys from Samius to Butterz to fill the bard mezer role for our team. Which this week really hurt as I would have jumped at the 100K+ xp Tobril reported for Von5. But sometimes you take one for the team and other times someone takes it for you. That is why your part of a team right?

We talk some post Von run and looks like Chrono is up next as we still have more then 6 people sticking around but that means I can swap back to Samius for xps.

Think we broke for lunch around then, when we got back we were able to do some 6man stuff before everyone got back. Think we worked in a DQ, I needed to take a simi long simi afk while people did the 6man. Somehow I was still able to do two rooms in the 4 or 5 min stretches when I was at the keys between my 2 accounts.

Again for the DQ I switched my main account from Samius back to Samyus to tank.

Sunday ToD, Hound, Vod, and started a Shroud over all in all a good day for knocking out raids. For the ToD we Tobril and I talked about who would tank but as no one else was able to heal I tanked and he played his healer. Yes I dual tanked both end bosses and he solo healed the raid. Wasn’t much of an issue. Think we could step it up to hard next time… If someone could use a few heal scrolls for spot healing that is.

Also we had a super fun Hound. The fastest run I ever have seen. The wiki has here DR as 999/epic so if you do more then 999 points of damage per hit say using a Unbridled Fury Epic Moment you can take her down and more or less bypass the quest. Don’t think I would do this every time but for a “Dude, Check this out!” It was amazing to watch!

We also did some role swapping for VoD we planed on hard (which I think is still a little easy for our combined forces) so I brought my tank and again Tobril Healed. This time I think the wife joined him on one of her Clrs.

I guess my point other then doing a weekend run down for Grim so we can keep track of what our two guilds get done together, is to talk a little bit about filling a role. I normally dislike making a build to fill a given role. But I do have a few role fillers. Samyus my tank, Butterz the bard/trapper I do have a few clrs none of which are super healers but one is on the list to speck out even more for healing and removal spells, Samius when all said and done will be our CC/removal wiz for sure.

We all can’t just have dps or flex alts in our tool box, at least not when raiding shortman. Most of the time there is at least one key role that needs to be filled, more often then not more then one. And if you’re a pugger, nothing will build your rep faster then being good at a given role. And if you build your rep in one area then it is often easy to use that good momentum to do other things as well.

I guess there is a third reasoning behind this post: Tobril flag your bard for Von! Samius needs booties and massive xps.

<3s

If I had REAL Talent.

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I was sitting here the other day and the thought hit me, “I want a A.I.M. tee shirt.”

A.I.M. for you that don’t know stands for Advanced Idea Mechanics, they are a think tank/villainous group in the Marvel universe. They have two big “claims to fame” They made the Cosmic Cube which was turned in the Tesseract for the Marvel movies and MODOK (Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing). Feel free to Goggle any of those for more information.

Anyway I did some looking and found 0 tee shirts for fans of AIM and very few for comic book villains at all.

So if I had any artistic skills at all, I would make my own villainous tees.

Idea 1, AIM
Yellow maybe with black band on the sleeves, AIM logo
AIM
in over the heart area on the front, the back would have in a simple black print “MODOK design team.”

Idea 2, Fin Fang Foom
Color doesn’t matter, Over the heart FFF drawn in flames, On the back would be would be a tall famous land mark in a city where Fin Fang Foom would be perched upon a the rest of the city would be in ruins and on fire. The world never wake a sleeping dragon would be along the top/bottom of the art.

Idea 3, Thanos

Blue with gold or orange bands on sleeves and around the neck. On the back would simply be artwork for a fist wearing the Infinity Gauntlet and the line “To Hold Death Again” Or “For Death, My True Love”

These are just a few ideas. IF you see any shirts with a villain theme let me know. If you are an artist and want to use some of these ideas just let me know. I have a lot more.
<3s