Category Archives: Uncategorized

What a Difference a Helper can Make

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So @tobril finally got all his work and other RL issues under control at least for now. Meaning TR time is upon us. Just in time for my other guy to hit his stride….woot??

Fresh off the tree and simi geared, I nabbed the two good wraps at level 0, Devition and Fernian from one of my bank alts, SamStorage I think. Hope you all saw what I did there.

Side bar, I also have SamStoragetwo and TestArty bet you couldn’t guess what they were meant to do?

Anyway Tobril and I in 5ish hours did what it took me about 8hours to do alone, get to level 6. Stk part 3 was down to 2 mins so that was a big help. But mainly it was just having another person that was in a zerg heavy mood. And we flew. For those on Sarlona lvling alts and what to power along some content join channel /defense and say something. We are using that channel to let people know what is going on and we will take people from there to level along with.

We talked a little (tobril and I) last night about how our two builds complement each other weak times. Example right now with my monk base and melee focus I carry a lot of the quests as tobril is mostly a burning hands build so lots of the quest killing falls to me zerging ahead and holding them off while he burns them and I punch the masses. My base speed allows me to run ahead get agro and pulling levers super easily. But later while I wait for my touch of death to come online he will be landing in Firewall/spam fireball land and he will carry most of the quests. And we will be trading back once we get to fire immune/high dex save land.

I missed having someone to pick up the slack some levels.

Something I don’t miss is not having someone to see weird bugs and fluke deaths. Like last night we were on our last walk down on Information is key I jumped up on the crates to pull that “hidden” level right at the start of the quest when I tried to jump down I had a weird lagy thing where I just thought it was a normal lag spike when I just died. Some how I took 80something points of failing damage getting down from that crate. So for a while again “death to boxes” is my motto as once again they prove they are the most dangerous of all monsters. Some cannot be damaged ever and they kill whenever they wish.

<3s

Incites from a Hard Shroud (WF barb)

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So before throwing my WF barb on the tree of become a helf Saturday afternoon I got in a hard shroud group. Now Darth was fresh level 20 wf barb all str and con he didn’t have the best gear but he was this run away from a TR so who cares…

P1 was great, the clr aura was enough to counter my frenzies. I didn’t have an uber portal beater but I was hitting for 70ish on the first number + the trailing frenzy dice so I was a helper. There was some talk about me being light on HPs vs the other barb in the group think he had like 100 more then me but as he had 2or3 epic levels I felt fairly good on that number still I was around 700 hp, more then plenty for a hard shroud.

Pt2 was also fun I was able to solo down one of the 4 bosses before everyone else had knocked down the other three. Looking at life totals I went to help on the one that that had the next highest HP after nocking down my rages. Don’t need the agro from 2 bosses when it comes time to split. Every thing worked out well as the 2nd guy was prepped as the other teams finished up their mobs. And we all split with no issues.

Pt3 I got to learn the frenzy doesn’t help with throwing damage ☹. Never needed to range on my barb before. Just be happy that I thought ahead enough to bring a thrower. Ended up only solving 1 puzzle as I had no way to open doors, but ran 3 or 4 waters. Barbs are fast. ☺

Pt4 we had issues, make that I had issues, Harry came down and I went all out and I started to notice that the heals were a little slower then I would like and for a lot less then I was cool with. I tried a few secs with my DoD on but that wasn’t enough. So I swapped out to my fleshmaker docent hoping the guards would speed things up or the extra amp would be enough to pull threw but a big meteor storm came in while we waited for healing and both of the groups barbs went down. So my 100 less hps did the same as the other barb. The group thought they were going to have to go to 3 rounds but the dots carried things over and we won in two.

Pt5 was also fun as I took out 2 or the 4 bosses again more or less alone. Think I everyone else was handing out buffs and whatnot. Because once we get started on the main man again I notice we only have 3 main dpsers. Myself, the other barb and a fighter or at least we are the only 3 trying to surround Harry. And again the heals are slow…. But with three people you can’t move out because if there is a hole Harry will take it and kill someone. But twice I got dropped and once the other bard also. The SD fighter didn’t have a ton of problems with hps…. Wonder why???

But even so things where fast it wasn’t a world speed record but it was not overly long either. When for shards of power to be able to make a few items while leveling but the whole raid was shard skunked and after that run I didn’t feel like trying again so I just completed. Chains or Arrowheads in the chests, nothing uber by any means, however I did get a scale in the end reward list so not a waist of time. Just makes things even more clear that WF are not worth playing right now unless your selfhealing.

<3s

Burn you Bloody War Forge!

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Okay, so I didn’t want to use bloody in the title but last time I cursed in the title I think a Dev (Jerry) changed it. So I thought why make him work???

Saturday the wife had a birthday party out of town to go to so I got the house to myself to play, have chicken wings delivered and generally not do a damn thing that is actually useful to the household. Well I did put the dogs out when I needed a drink. ☺ aka Project Dps is in full swing.

Darth Samius is now a Helf, 6 fighter, 1, arty, 1 barb and it is working out really well. I grabbed a falchion with a med guild slot and made it Keen for the first few levels. Then around level 3-4 I took a moment to slap maiming on it and life is good so far. Using the Clr dilettante feat my healing is really sweet for the level and soon I should be able to drop 3 ap in to powering up the dilettante feat and be able to use heal scrolls with a fair chance.

The barb interaction is working as expected. Having two rages (barb level + barb past life) means 3+ mins of MORE damage. And that is often the just right amount of time to be raged up for me. 90ish seconds at a time lets me clear a few rooms but doesn’t go so long that I need to pot for healing. And right now wand healing is great! Making plat on a heavy melee alt that wasn’t monk based, color me surprised.

So everything is going smooth right? Well um Tobril may have finally gotten his work RL issues cleared up. To the point where in the hour and change he got to play last night he capped and prepped for xp farming starting tonight. So I need to get Samius ready to go. Thing is I still don’t have a pally build. Sure I have an out line for what I am calling the Catholic Priest. But saying 9/9/2 monk/pally/fighter a build doesn’t make…. Oh well I will figure it out on the run I guess.

If I didn’t have a ton of leveling monk gear btc on Sam I would try more of a tanky build but after seeing the places where Tobril had issues on his sorc frame I think the monk will just do better as I know where it struggles and that is where his sorc frame will pick up the slack.

In any case go by plat sink WF melee and hello to plat earning Helf melee.

❤

Oh ps, using that keen maiming falchion first number crit max so far is 130ish all raged up (spell+feat) + great cleave on one of the priests in Bloody Crypt.

Shatter Shot for the Week

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Like I always do when I have a few topics in mind I want to cover and the choice is one longer topic changing post or a few super short posts I do the former.

Cannith Elemental Weapons:
I left off yesterday talking about looking at the Cannith challenge weapons for my dps guy while leveling. And I have to say I am super impressed with some of the challenge weapons for say an alt that has very little in the way of gear. The really cool thing about them is at their final tear the Heroic level weapons are craft able up to +3. Meaning if your willing to raise the level some you can make a great multi-tasker or if you want to you could lower the min level with a Masterful Craftmanship shard and no other enchantments.

Just a few standout 1-2 potential prefix shards: keen, Ghost Touch, Holy, Elemental Burst…
A few standout 1-2 potential suffix shards: Righteousness, Maiming, 10% Melee Alacrity

Lets look at some examples at level 12 t3:
Elemental Greataxe of Fire
+4, Flaming Burst, Brilliance, Metalline, Cold Resistance, Craftable (+3)
Elemental Khopesh of Water
+4, Icy Burst, Paralyzing, Crushing Wave, Fire Resistance, Craftable (+3)

Add Keen and Maiming…or holy and maiming or Ghost touch and Righteousness

You can get a fairly cool weapon with a little work. I mean add Righteousness Elemental Greataxe of Fire and you have a heroic version of the Epic Antique Greataxe. Dual weald Keen, Maiming, Icy Burst, Paralyzing, Crushing Wave Khopeshs are fairly good too. Or how about holy, maiming, Icy Burst, Paralyzing, Crushing Wave Khopeshs?

Seems good…

My new personal biggest hit:

I was in a pug (I know right?) getting the last 30k xp needed to cap out (so I was still level 18) on my currently wf barb first life guy doing the IQ boat quest. I used my shard of summon beholders once and a while and got one. While fending off one of the waves of attackers my beholder dominated a trash mob, I was mostly raged up ran out of pots a few nights back but I don’t want them taking up backpack space for my TR, cleave or great cleaved with my Maiming cleaver against a human and boon 550 points on the first number. There was a trail of other numbers, but that is my biggest first number yet. I hope to beat it yet this weekend before TRing now that I have the capstone and whatnot for more power!!!!

Well I went longer then I thought I would on those two topics and now that I have dealt with a work fire I forgotten the other topics I wanted to cover…

<3s?

Project Dps, p3

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So I don’t have a full build laid out yet. And odds are I wont. I play kind loose and fast with my builds but I am really warming to that 18/1/1 fighter/barb/arty. As for leveling order it would be arty, barb, and finishing out fighter. Seems simple enough.

But the question becomes what weapon? I mean if your Kensei you have to pick one, right?

Well sort of…. You have to pick a type of weapon. And all the best 2 handers for max dps are slashing weapons so that is easy. But remember you can reset enchantments every 3 days so switching from say a falchion while leveling to a great axe because you have an epic one at 20 and then back to falchion after pulling a Breach, The Dividing Blade works.

So my current plan is big two handers with the plan to at least tear two my green steel falchion blank as holy/good burst giving me a res clickly if needed. Meaning I need to run the shroud some…. Well once and get passed power shards. Have to see about getting some guildies together or hitting up some of my Sarlona buds…

Basic leveling gear should be fairly simple, I might take the time to casual run Threnal chain for a cloak and maybe a few look for the blood rage but other then that I think most of my misc gear should work to power him up.

Although with Mabar is right around the corner an a few epic cloaks of night might need to be farmed up. As well as some leveling robes of night, think they have the night shield clicklys…

Well assuming I don’t decide at the last sec to go dual wielding heavy picks and cashing in some tome pages for Deathnips….

Also I am looking a little at the elemental weapons via the Cannith challenge system and some of them look fairly solid at T2 and T3…..

<3s

Project Big Hits, p2

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So we know fighter will be the main class in my Darth Samius build. So to me the next big call is race and splash levels….

To me race and splash levels are very close things. You wouldn’t want to splash sorc on a Horc melee build would you? Not unless your trying to be very funny…. And frankly you not that funny, so stop trying.

So options:

Horc, the clear winner in 2 handed dps, when that is heavy action boosted focused.
Helf, the clear winner with the most options…. And the strongest race right now.
Human, a very solid choice not as strong as Horc but I would say in the top 3 races in the game right now.
Dwarf, Very solid if you plan to use axes and combat skills. You could do worse also cool beards…. ☺
Halfling, who doesn’t love them? And with fighter as the base finding some feats for the healing marks might be a fair way to go. But they are not the strongest melee race…
Are there other races?
Elfs would be good if you want to use race weapons they get a falcon line, very nice but down con…. ;’-(
Drow, nope.
Oh WF…. They went from a powerhouse race to meh in one update. Sorry your heals suck, you lost your immunities, armor is shitty and more. There is just no reason to play WF unless you’re an arty right now.

So in my mind it is between Horc, Helf and dwarf with Elf maybe poking its head into the race as I am leaning at using a falcon over the greataxe. But really it comes down to who can heal the easiest and that at least for now is the Helf via the dilettante feats.

The Helf has a lot of other things going for it atm, human amp and human versatility are huge, throw in human adaptability and you have the best of the human options.

As for the splash…

To me there are 4 main options.

2 rog, skills (mainly umd) which will let us lesser at 20 to adjust the stats and let umd take over for healing freeing up the dilettante feat for something else and evasion.

2 arty, same skills as above but gives most of the key xbox feats so giving a ranged option with little work. We loose evasion however. But we can go xbow and shield when needed or rune arm for a little more ranged dps.

2 monk, we decide not to worry about umd and will stay clr dilly wise but gives fists for some fights, as well as evasion. But mainly 2 more feats to play with.

Or the one I am leaning towards atm, 1 barb 1 arty. You loose rune arm use from the 2 arty splash but gain fast movement and another rage (assuming I take the past life barb feat {I totally will}) and +1 more to power attack I will be losing do to my race and main class picks.

As always let me know what you think via the comments.

❤

Project Big Hits, p1

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So after much thought I am leaning towards fighter base at least 12 most likely 18 levels for Darth Samius. I think most of you know I like options and what melee class has more options open to it then fighter? There is an argument that could be made for monk, but lets sit them aside for now.

Fighter over barb:

Not rage dependent. – Rage is the bread and butter of the barb class. Pure number breakdowns are putting fighters about 10-16 points behind barbs per swing assuming everything is equal. But I have been reading lots of people pointing out that the math guys are forgetting the openings on the fighter feats allowing for (g) weapon specialization feat line, and Kensei pluses and room for the other great combat feats. So the numbers might be smaller. Where barbs pull back out a head is that Frenzy/Great Frenzy combo for another fireball (6d6) on top of the few point lead that fighters pushed to catch up on….

Flexible – As I kind of said above all the extra bonus feats allow me to pick and choose more combat feats to add to my arsenal. I could for example go slashing weapons and make use of both the two weapons and two handed fighting styles. Or trick out with other combat feats like Imp Sunder and Stunning blow all awhile-keeping toughness feat as well as others. 10 bonus feats are nothing to laugh at.

Easier to selfheal. – This is a huge part of why I am leaning this way and goes along with reason one; Not being raged based means that if I need to use a scroll or wand mid combat I don’t have to worry about unraging to do so.

Easy Fighter Haste boost – I know I could grind a million twist points and twist in a haste boost or I could just be the class that gets them and not have to worry about that. I am not sure I could work in the full line for 10 Ap but I might find away. You never know.

If I lived in a world where I could trust someone else to heal me 100% I think I would go 18/2 barb/fighter but as is the 18/2 fighter/x just seems a better fit.

❤

IP, The Big Hits Project

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This weekend I really worked on leveling up Darth Samius. I went from 13 to 18 and I learned a lot of things.

1, WF suck right now. Like a lot. Immunities are a joke as “magical” stuff still gets you, so um everything. Healing is a joke as they changed the WF friend line to make the later part of the line work better but makes you spend 3or4 points to get to the same pre change 1 point effectiveness. Meaning that the main healing my WF had (a lesser vamp sword from attack on stormreach) heals for 0 per hit….. I went ahead and made a vamp only greataxe and it only heals in small bursts for 1-2 even though it shows 1-3 on every hit.

2, I really dislike relying on others for HP care, even hirelings. See the last half of the above paragraph. Trying to be at least ½ under my own healing I downed more then 200 repair pots in the first 5 quests on Friday. Then I said F it and started to use a few pocket hires. Even so I still drank another 200+ pots over the weekend, very pricy….

3, Maiming is not as bad on a high crit range weapon as one might think. I happened to have a Maiming Clever sitting in my backpack. I remember buying it off the AH thinking it was a clean Bloody Cleaver for next to nothing. Then once I saw it in the mail I realized that it wasn’t want I thought it was so it sat taking up space. Then I started working the IQ last night I remembered the human bane part of the cleaver and thought why not try it??? By far the best numbers of the weekend where happening.

I have broken 400 before but that is around my best personal best. I mostly build for high normal numbers and consistently. Java for example does between 88 and 92 points every hit, but only crits for 150 or so. This barb so far is all over the map, hitting from anywhere between 30-100 on normal swings. Lots of that is how raged up I am and what weapon I am using. Remembering to down a rage pot every 90 secs can be a challenge. And using the right weapon for the mob is key. I saw a lot of 430+ crits vs mobs with some kind of DR making my numbers yellow; who knows if I would have hit harder earlier if I had the right DR breaker in my hand at the time….

4, Might need to find a few mad greataxes and I need to look in to heavy picks (if I want to dual weld.. @Tobril keeps telling me that THF is the best for big numbers right now when working in EDs. But as I plan to TR into something else once I hit 20 and fight my way back up before getting into EDs on this guy for sure. I wonder if I would be better for heroic levels to dual weld and then do some switching around for EDs when I get there……

And there are always khopeshs and axes… Need to do more DPS reading to find the right weapon type for me.

Anyway <3s

Side Project, Darth Samius is ON!

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Something I have been thinking about for a long time is how to make an anti Samius for my Darth Samius build as well as something I can do in my spare time while waiting for Tobril’s Real life to settle so we can xp things together for a spell.

And then yesterday I saw Ambitious’ blog post How to Ungimp Yourself, watching his video I became inspired to make a full on huge hitter dps build. I have a few guys that hit simi hard. But normally I am more about consistently then the one big swing, unless I am on a caster then that is a different story. So I don’t really have a huge hitter on that level.

So lets change that. To do so I will need your help. With build ideas and tweaks to the one I come up with.

The base, I have an level 13 – xp for 14 first life barb that I will cap out in my spare time while Tobril’s work keeps him from our planed TR time. I swear things were easier with Fopo, he didn’t have a real life that got in the way of my game time 3-4 days a week. Even though he is married with two kids. Hope his ddo break is almost over.

A Barb past life will be a boon to any alt and a name change will set him right up.

Other then that I have nothing set in stone. No build ideas or a real list of must haves although after playing with the barb as is; not WF might make the list. I have little to no gear yet for this guy. But I will flag for shroud and gather a few sets of shards for GS crafting post TR. Unless you guys shoot me an item that I could use this go around then I will get what mileage out of it that I can.

Anyway it is a short one. Seen in your heavy hitter builds and let me see if I can get those huge numbers.

❤

Internet Rule # 34.2

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If something is, then there is a pony of it.

A few weeks ago I started reading the rules of the Internet for inspiration in general. And read that one and instantly started looking for a Samius-pony. But the internet failed me. No Samius-pony.

Until @Clankenbeard saw my tweet and now:

SamiusPonyTime

The internet is once again complete, for now!