I will be traveling on Monday and I can’t promise a post so I am posting one for Monday today.

Nyxianne had a good my.ddo post today Link. And I am going to address the some of these issues from my point of view. It gives me a post and room for a longer comment.

Note: Any use of the word you s below are not meant at you personalty but people in my group.

This is how I play. If you want something you take care of it your own self or you will ask. Not type h in the chat for a haste, manors cost nothing and only take a sec. I will not use my Sp on people that don’t ask. If you don’t have a mic you can type Gh, rage, etc… plz in the party chat but I am not a mind reader.

If you take off then you have everything you need. I haste on me when I need it. You can watch your buff bar well enough to type “h” two seconds after is wears out, you can damn well find me a few secs before hand. Your welcome to say something like on my way back for a haste or whatnot before it expires and I will wait for you. Communication is a good thing, try it.

Now why is that when all through the lower levels you got buffs with no issues or questions?

I expect them to know what buffs they need once they start to get a few levels on them. Starting as low as level 4 now people can have permanent blur from an item. Do you? I don’t know. If you don’t ask for one I assume yes. If not then we are both asses, me for assuming you do and you for not asking me for that buff. Same for any possible Ship buffs (although I can see those if I examined you).

Also I can’t speak for others but a large amount of my time is played with a small group of people. We all know how each other play and what areas we cover each other. Being a smaller group also makes us not want to be a drag on each other. So often we cover our own buffs and heals so no one else needs to. It can be tough on the odd man out that is not used to how we play. I am thinking about Phlor and how he is handling adapting as to how we play with his long ddo break taking him out of practice.

Speaking of being out of practice; right now Tobril has to be feeling the pain of the TR train doing our own thing. He wants to be that haste-buff-CC caster this life, but we are off as soon as we zone in to a quest. Last night he and I joked about how he was going to haste me even if he had to start drinking pots to cast it on me.

On the flip side there are a few buffs that get thrown with no issues, Okay Mass DW/Pro/SR and …. Oh as I said above hastes on me. That is about it. Other wise chime up.

Now if you ask, not demand. I have no issues buffing you. But you should always work on becoming more self reliant.

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I have never really enjoyed melee before. Sure I have liked how some builds do /handle in melee or the rare moment when it all clicks and I find the love. But as the main focus of my build not so much. Which is a strange to write/read as Java has been my (hate) tank many times….. Back during my barb life I did find myself liking how things where playing out but that ended at level 13 or so. That might have been a different story if I had a different base on my Lig2 say a falchon vs maul. But you know I built that maul for when I was a wizard and while I might not see the huge numbers that a X3 crit weapon can bring my maul is super consistent and that is important to me.

Anyway, as it was Thursday aka Fopo’s night in the bowling alley/ teaching raid night, I worked on my pure fighter Samyus. Now he is meant to be a pure AC tank. Epic plate, big LoB tower shield a few stacking dodge bonuses a few epic items here and there and whatnot and I see a nice high Ac tank.

But last night he was level 7. Was because I leveled to 8 as I logged for the night. You can check him out http://my.ddo.com/character/sarlona/samyus/ if I have it set up right. You can see he is not decked out in any thing super uber special. Other then my +6 con ring, which is good but not really super uber special at this level. I once had a pair of RR dex boots level 6. So even before the eyes chain bo bo at level 6 +6 stat items were out there. Then they where super uber special! Most of Samyus’ main gear is crafted. A set of full plate crafted to have invulnerability, a +6 stunning tower shield normally he uses a crafted holy lesser vamp battle axe with a med guild slot sloting a few more points of damage.

But last night I felt tanky. And I was getting into it.

I first started noticing it in the very first quest. Phlor joined me in a zerg Lair of Summing. I knew he was behind me some place but I didn’t really know where. But before I knew it I was at the end fight and yellow or orange skulled. No big. Get in stance and knock the alert down with a few cleaves and great cleaves along with some pot drinking.

*Note Phlor bud if you are reading this please load up on pots. If you need the plat for a stack let me know and I will hit my bard and get you a stack on the cheap.

Anyway once the room was cleared I noticed Phlor standing in a corner with his throwing weapon in his hand… Lol, your a nut bud. And I say this for everyone if your not “helping” you need to let the party know your piking or at least hanging back as to try and not make things worse.

A few more runs and we are Bloody Crypt flagged. Rebuff and start Bloody, Tobril on his TRed caster goes east, I take west. Phlor is to help Tobril. After a few moments we are red skulled and I am totally surrounded. It was great!.

Don’t get me wrong, being skulled is shitty, but being able to just stand there and take what every the uber pissed mobs were dishing out was a good feeling. On Samius, I try to kill fast enough to keep the alert down. Or at least have thing under control at all times so going red is not a worry.

Any way that run was fairly smooth. I finished up my side not much after Tobril aka webs and acid ball/wall of fire guy. Not bad for a melee with a holy weapon…

I caught the window and soloed the quest as everyone else did their teaching raid. And while I never got skulled again I adjusted my play style some to try and keep that feeling. It was a little slower. Having to do every myself and it was not 1k a min alone. But it was super fun and better then 500 a min.

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Harassment is according to my dictionary.com is the act or an instance of harassing, or disturbing, pestering, or troubling repeatedly; persecution.

That is a kinda of random way for me to open a bonus post, right?

A few days ago (okay yesterday, This week is moving too damn slowly) in the post “What is the Deal?” I said I was about to report this guy for harassment. And my bud, Cauthey, just replied with a “Were his tells really that harassing?” And I would say yep, according to the definition as I read it.

Now I didn’t give a number of tells this guy sent me or a time span after I declined to trade for his reds. Because I stopped counting after 10 or so tells over 7-8 mins aka “ troubling repeatedly”. Where his tells mean? Not really. A little judgmental but that is fine. Whatever.

Is there a breaking point when polite tells becomes the definition of harassment? Yes and it is different from person to person. I like to think I have a bit of a thicker skin or I have to give some slack because I am that “Samius guy from those pod casts.”

Yes I do get tells about the show, and I love them. Just not every 5 mins from the same guy for a week. But if you want to send a “hey” tell every day as I log on it is cool. Just not every 5 mins, okay?

I am also lucky to have a sounding board normally right here, the wife. And when she says I would have had her report that guy and squelch him if those tells were to her, I know that I am in the wrong and a report is valid.

Now on the other hand I didn’t send my hey back the %&*@ off tell until I was already bothered and annoyed. But once I let him know he was bothering me he stopped. Which is the right thing. If he would have kept it up he would have gotten reported. I am glad I didn’t report him. But he was harassing me and if I did report him I would be okay with it. From the shear number of unwanted tells in that amount of time.

All I want from the seller when I offer a trade is a yes, no or a counter offer. I don’t need a lecture on what the seller thinks is the current market price and how I am a bad man trying to take food from his 14 kids and fat wife.

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I really want to talk about Ddo and try to make a clear point maybe as a teaching moment. But as the only thing I can think of that has happened lately that would work would be Reaver puzzle training and I really don’t want to get in to that.

So instead my top five pieces (that is not super sexiest or anything) of celebrity eye candy.

5- Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts (Iron Man) Can’t say I have really liked her in much else and Lisa Edelstein – Cuddy from House could take this slot. But I have always had a thing for Pepper.

4- Sophia Bush as Brooke Davis (One Tree Hill) Don’t get me wrong. This show is full of eye candy. There is someone for everyone to enjoy. But the Brooke Davis character is something special. And I like Brunettes and Red heads the best, sue me.

3 – Eliza Dushku as Missy (Bring It On) I have seen Eliza in many things. And I have always thought she was amassing. But I really ❤ Bring It On ( “Just what I need” is one of my ring tones.) and it has to be because of Missy.

2 – Jolene Blalock as T’Pol (Star Trek: Enterprise ) This pointy eared girl is a one hit wonder to me. I have seen her in other things. But she has never done quite as well as she did in Enterprise. Maybe it is because she was a brunette?? IDK. And to top it off, the wife and I are re-watching the series and she made a comment about how hot she was. Hot enough to turn straight married women???? Maybe.

1 – Alyson Hannigan (Everything she has ever done) I don’t know if I have said this before, but Alyson may have been my first crush. I had to be 9 or 10 when I first watched “My Stepmother is an Alien” I have crushed on her ever since.

Bonus Creepy Old guy pick – Michelle Trachtenberg – Jenny (EuroTrip) EuroTrip has to be my second or third favorte movie of all time. It or America Pie, what can I say I ❤ me some raunchy teen comedies. Michelle was great in this movie. And I have to say when I watch it I say to myself “WOW!” then I remember that she was Buffy’s kid sister Dawn and I feel old and creepy.

I enjoy doing these lists. If you have one you want me to do use the comments. And if it happens to be a DDo list the better.
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I have a few topics today I want to talk about, But I am not sure if they are deep enough to expand into a full on post. So I will do my scatter shot topic post again today….

If you saw some thing like this in the trade channel what would you do?
Trading 3 red scales (linked) need 5 L scales, 3 L Stones and 2 L Arrowheads. Send tell.

Me? I sent a tell with an offer. I have 1 scale, lots of everything else. I said I could do 1 scale and everything else he needed.

He comes back with that is not good enough. No big deal, I am good with him having a price in mind but I just didn’t have any more scales. So I wished him luck and I was over it.

He however begins to send me tells as reds are worth 800K and scales are worth 200K and stone are 150k. So I was trying to low ball him. And so on and so on.

Until I finally had to stop doing what I was doing, leaving the wife to clean up the quest we were in btw to send him a follow up tell that more or less was: Hey, I think your a lot high on your prices. There is nothing wrong with that, but I said you were to high for me and I wished you luck. Drop it before you get reported. Thankfully that seamed to work.

I watched him spam the trade channel for the next 3 days. Maybe my offer wasn’t as low as he thought.

Is Baby Galactus eating our sun? http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Ev8JGqDO8nk I watched it and a few other videos that popped up while checking it out. My gut says this is it how the end will come. Black balls all over our sun.

With the epic scrolls not dropping in anything but the new content we (Defense Guild that wanted to Epic) spent Epic Tuesday in the Challenges. In about an hour to hour and a half, we had gathered enough ingredients I could get 5-6 tokens. Not bad for a non spaming EDA night.

Comic Book Men and Full Metal Jousting, I am really enjoying these shows a lot. FmJ is cram-packed with lots of action. And it feels more real and less scripted then most realty shows, mostly due to brilliant editing. I am drawn to CBM because I am a fan of Tell’m Steve Dave, one of the many great podcasts on Smodcast.com. But I really like the look and feel of the stash. And seeing some of the things coming in I can see my living room getting a bit of a make over in that nerd comic book sheik.

Okay that is enough for one post.
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Last night when I got home Torrance was logged in and playing. I think to myself “Alright a good night for xp.” And start changing into my after hours, “I don’t need no stinking pants”, lets get comfortable shorts and Iron Man tee! In the 90 seconds it took for me to change and walk back in to the computer/main living room. She had logged. Turned off the lights. Crawled under a blanket and said she wanted to watch a show….

So I fire up Nexflix on my right screen, while starting DDO on my left. I solo a few quests with my fighter as we watch the first ep of enterprise where Brent Spiner guest stared. Side note: Enterprise is my favorite Star Trek. It had everything in my opinion. And it is cold in space! A lot. 🙂

Anyway, I will admit I assumed that she would watch a show and get fired up for xp.

So once Fopo logged on, I swapped to Samius and we started looking for xp. But not too much xp. I don’t want to pull to far ahead of her after all. So looking at the 5-6s as we are level 7, want to keep that elite streak running, and end up in three barrel cove.

Mean while that first episode ended, and I started the next one. 10 mins into it I hear Torr begin to snore. Nice. 🙂 I knew she was still not 100% back from being sick last week but I didn’t think she was “fall asleep at six sick” as I had to go to bed with out her the last few nights as her internal clock doesn’t adjust to the time change well and she was not ‘ready’ for bed at bed time.

Anyway Fo and I end up doing all of 3BC minus the fire caves and I have to say while the quests are fun to do the xp is just not there even with the streak and the tome.

Now when I am in that “Just enjoy the game” mood I can take 500 a min xp and be happy. As most of the joy comes from playing the game not seeing the xp bar jump up. When I want to see the bar move, watch out. But we zerged last night, sure I was half watching a show but we hauled ass doing the quests. Ghost of a Chance is the only one close to 1k a min. The rest even at full zerg are in the 300-400 a min range. And that is just sad.

I hope xp in some of these often skipped places will be looked at soon. I know 3BC has a lot of issues. No named loot, poor xp, no fast travel options like in tangle root. But the area also has so much going for it. Good story lines as well as different and fun quests. Lets hope that some dev will feel like doing a touch up soon.

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We all have our own leveling style. This weekend I saw some totally valid styles clash. A lot. 🙂

Torrance and Fopo are a clean the dungeon out people. They enjoy playing even if it takes a little longer and the bonus xp for the time is worth it to them.

Tobril on the other hand is xp per min guy. He would rather invis to the end an nab the largest amount of xp he can for the least amount of effort. Even if it means that he has to run the quest again to get the same xp as the first team.

I am a lot more flexible. I can do the Xp per min thing (and I do it often) but I also like clearing out a quest and swimming in the huge payoffs that having all the bonuses brings. To me it is a quest by quest and mod factor thing. I also can be in the mood to just grind explorers/slayers.

So this weekend (maybe Friday? ) we had everyone on line and ready to go. We had a few clashes of play styles while we did Splinter Skull stuff in Tangelroot. The first was Tobril invised and took off and the rest of us started chopping our way through. In a later run I had gotten 2 of the 4 traps before the quest completed. 😦 And after that, I called out that I was hitting the traps, Fopo called out that he was shrining, Torrance also said she was shrining also but she didn’t have her head set on. And Tobril took off and opened up that slightly harder fight then he could handle alone. But he didn’t realized that he was alone until about the middle of the fight.

But I have to say that it was good times. Adjusting your play style to group with your friends is just part of the deal.

Some XP highlights for the weekend: 25 mins for Proof in the Poison for 20kish, 15 mins for 14K in A Small problem, 15 mins for 25k in Bloody Crypt. 30 mins for 35k in STK.

Streak + the big first time bonus + a tome of learning + xp pot (optional) + optional inquest bonuses = big numbers and good times.

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While I was ill I worked on my freshly TRed would be tank. So far the only quests I have skipped doing on elite streak have been the Cartamon chain and Freshen the Air. Every thing else has been elited.

The best quest so far xp wise has been Proof in the Poison. A level 4 market place quest. I used to skip it because it was long and way to expensive to bother with doing. Until Crisis talked me into it right after TRing first was added. And he pointed out the optionals make the quest.

(Optional) Kill Gnaghi Ugnot (25% of base XP)
(Optional) Kill Woathe (25% of base XP)
(Optional) Slay 40 members of the Quickfoot gang (30% of base XP)
(Optional) Slay 100 members of the Quickfoot gang (40% of base XP)

Don’t get me wrong it is still a pain as it seems like every other guy is an CC/magic missile wiz/rog Quickfoot Caster spamming Holds, Hypnos and stun effects. Every group of mobs has at least one grease dog and did I forget the Magic Missiles?

So it can be a challenge.

And to top it off you can’t keep a hireling alive. I tried, I really did. But my would be helper got him self killed in the fire traps for no reason at all that I could tell. Just ran out and stood there, burning to death. Hirelings should summon with the same (ship) buffs you have on you at the time of summoning. So I dismissed him right away, cleared another room or two and ran back to the start to re-summon him after 5 mins and did the jump off a stack of creates and call trick. He still ran through the fire but lived this time. Only to die later as he ran into some grease in an acid trap trying to unhold me I think and bit it.

Fine I started with 100 pots and 50 hams I will be fine. And I made it. 20 pots and 19 hams left….

But it was 16k plus xp for the final quest Xp. I am not sure how much in optionals but I would guess at least 10k. I know I ranked more then once while doing the quest. Good times.

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My guild, the Defense Guild, has be on the mend member wise for a while now. And we have grown from 3-4 truly active accounts to almost enough to fill a raid. And enough to short man most of them on normal easily enough. But we are short on a few things. Mainly Tanks and Bards. Right now I have the only raid ready Bard in the guild and Tobril has the only raid ready Tank.

As some of you know I have stepped up and capped Samyus (as a Ranger) and TRed him into fighter as my side project for times when Torrance is not in the mood to play. Last life I leveled Samius a lot anyway and ended up capped more then a week before her.

While I was sick I did some stuff with him solo. He his now level 6 with 7 banked. Or is he 7 with 8 banked? I don’t know i was sick, damn it. BTW, Defender stance is really good if you don’t already know. I took a suit of mithral full plate and glued invulnerability on it via the Canith crafting. And took a mithral tower shield and added +6 stunning. And I will say I can wade into a group of mobs and cleave and great cleave and keep myself up with pots. His Ac is not uber right now but at 8 I will keep a set of +5s laying around and try out going into AC mod. If I am 25 right now with out trying I figure that 40 is easily do able at 8.

I am thinking with gear (as full on AC as I can get atm, including a possible 3 piece abishi set, and a planed E Fang with 3 feats (Maybe Sentinel … or maybe stick with my travel marks ) I think a 90+ self buffed is not out of the question.

I don’t have the gear all laid out because until I have it on my guy it is subject to change.

It will be good to have a tank again. I would hate tank on Java in some raids back when he was a Pally. And I had the wiz version a few points short from auto intimidating most of the bosses at the time before he went FvS. I could tank normals as a FvS well enough. But not the biggest guys. And really what the DG needs is a tank for all the raids we want to do often.

Even if I am not the best-est tank ever Horath/Sully tanking and everyone below that should be cake for Samyus and that is what I am looking for at the moment. As for Lob…. Well I don’t know, maybe? Someday. If I ever feel like being a big boy tank. 🙂

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For weeks now my video card has been telling me it is going out. It ends up turning itself off to keep from burning out and dieing.

At first I when this would happen I would just open the case cool down the card with a can of compressed air and then leave the case open while I was playing. Then I started leaving the case open all the time. More air movement is good right?

Recently, I moved the case to the side of the desk and put it on a night table stolen from the bed room hoping to stretch out buying a new one a little longer. This seemed to help a lot as I hadn’t had an issue since I moved it until last night. When I went even more ghetto, I pointed a box fan at it while its case was open.

Yep, I became that guy….

But see I was playing with Tobril, doing Catacombs on elite with our freshly TRed alts. And had just finished downloading the newest Comic Book Men from Itunes. So I had things to do on my computer last night. I couldn’t be down for the rest of the night, right?

I new you would agree. 🙂

So this morning I am looking at new video cards on newegg. Wow, I don’t have 500$ to drop on a fancy new card. Wish I did but I don’t. I can swing 150. Maybe a hair more but not a lot more.

I am leaning towards the ASUS ENGTX550 (Link). Thoughts? Other cards to consider? I will ordering something in a day or two at most so if you know of something better for a better price please use the comments.

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