Tag Archives: Rogue

Enter Helper-Woman…

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Back in the old’n days Tobril and I had “helper” alts in different level ranges to help people that have trouble leveling on their own for whatever reason.  Most often, at least for the people that ask me for help, was a lack of focus or enjoyment of quests at a given level range.

Enter classic problem; as you start to play said alt character you start to enjoy that manz and you have a pile of xps just siting there next thing you know you don’t have anyone in range to help next time.

This has only gotten worse as reasons to TR have grown. Lately i have had 3 or 4 people not as much asked for help as kinda hinted around at it and i have had to decline/offer explorer zone help/or hurt their best possible xp as the lowest i had available was a level 20. After 20 i have a slew of alts from 21 -28 so there is not so much an issue as it is before 20.

Okay enter Helper-Woman aka Samdarkai.

ScreenShot00284

She is a Rogue/Pally mix Shadar-kai, 13/2 at the moment although i am debating about taking a few levels as a wizard for some easy boosts. But unlike most of my current design ideas (epic Elite viability) this one has a whole new range of issues, namely a level cap of 18 and balancing the ability to solo any quest from 16 to 20 on heroic elite while also covering any missing skills/abilities that the person i am helping is missing PLUS letting them have all the glory assuming they are playing a future EE alt with the desire to be in the limelight.

In the past some of my “helper” alts were a little quest dominant making some of the people i was helping not feel needed and then it just takes longer for said person to level, which is not part of the plan.

In any case i have now “invested” too much to turn back now, aka tomes and btcoe gear.

Well wish me luck as i try and power this chick to level, do not die in every single level 16 on elite quest, unlike my time with her last night and the night before. 🙂

<3s

My Life So Far, Post U19

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So this weekend was a good one for me to play with the enchantment pass, Tobril was out of town and most of the Brits were out and about when I had free time. So it was solo a lowbe, which I did a lot, or look at fixing some of my men….

McPlunderer took the most work as I ended up swapping 3 levels to Ranger like I talked about last post. Btw sorry for the long break, what can I say I am burnt out after work lately…. Anyway 3 ranger levels are huge. Those few levels grant vital feats to free things up and allowing me to move things around, not for forget that Arcane Archer via a direct class line saves a ton of points as well as freeing up old feats.

I was able to lose Toughness and some other random AA prerequisite feat for Imp Precise Shot, oh and I gained Dodge, which I am not sold on. Overall for 150ish hp I picked up a fair amount of get things done. Deep Wood sniper, at least for this build, is amazing; 2 more sneak attack dice, a ton of healing spell power and another melee attack with bonus [W].

But the assassin tree got most of my points. Assassin’s Trick is mostly useless btw, things that live long enough for it to matter are immune and everything else would be dead had you just attacked for the time to do the animation.

With all that in mind I made a mistake and didn’t tome up (dex) before lessering and had to drop an extra stat point into dex to take extra sneak attack vs adding it to Int. But I was still able to raise my Assassinate DC by 2. Making it 51 unbuffed. Not too bad. Shipbuff, Yugo pot, store pot (?) house D pot, Let measure the Foe build up and a 60+ DC could happen…

As for everyone else?

Java is fine but I am not happy with just fixing his enhancements. Think he might get a TR simi soon. Maybe will use that heart and nab a something unfun to level up and get him back on the completionist train. I just don’t know.

Similar deal with Samius as I have with Java, he is playable but just not as good as I would like. Think I will get into a longer post about spell power/ caster changes but let me just say I used to have unmetaed Magic Missiles do about 35 points per missile to try and proc Shiridi effects now they do about 24 points. That is a lot less damages add in the changes to the Double Rainbow and I am not sure that now is the time for casters any longer.

Okay need to head back to work, talk again real soon.

<3s

Welcome Back Samius, All Your Guys Are Broken!

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I know you all missed me very much and awaited my return with bated breath. Well I to hungered to write for you again.

Okay enough of that shit, to the meat!

Day 1 of U19 for me. Knowing that I would most likely need to use that +20 heart on Samius to get him up to snuff I chose to use McPlunderer as my enchantment test bed. Other then Samius he is currently my top guy for dealing with whatever DDo life throws at me.

Just as a quick reminder McPlunderer is/was my twf/full AA/Assassin 18/1/1 rog/arty/fghr. He was fairly tight. Right around 650 hp fair to solid dps against things looking at him, great dps vs things looking the other way and a fairly high instant kill DC (could be +3 higher as a pure rogue). ☺

Now with the changes I dumped 46 points into the assassin tree however many points it took to unlock arcane archer enough in kensei for my haste boost which I found in acrobat in a way that might be a little more useful… But almost non-left to spend in the Archer tree. Aka my build is shot.

Time to hit the old idea room, aka the pooper. While clearing my mind I hit the wiki like I often do and started to wonder.

Would 3 levels of ranger be worth it? I wouldn’t need to meet the prerequisites for AA via feats any more so the question is can I get everything I “want” from AA with just 3 levels of ranger?

Make arrows, check
Morphic arrows, check
Force Arrows, check
But not slaying arrows…
But you know soul Magic looks real good if you have cocoon twisted in as your healing… Echo of power for 4 -8 and a few bow hits and heal. Loth you might be a lot less scary real soon.

But the other nice thing that happens is you open up tempest and Deep Wood Sniper, which is really what this build is all about big dual welding with a massive ranged option.

As an added bonus I would be able to swap my dilettante feat to Paladin for a huge bonus to saves.. Might have a build for you all in a few days.

<3s

Destiny Planing: McPlunderer

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I got some real DDo time in this weekend, mostly rocking my rogue and I was super pleased. Yes as I thought there is an issue of running out of HPs in some cases but for the most part I felt healing from the healers was about the same as when rocking Darth. As for kills I only looked once at the end of a quest but most of the time I was leading kill counts (the one time that stands out I had 69 kills vs low 20s and high teens) not that kill count is a good judge of dps (2wf and massive sneak attack for the last hit is okay however) but I do know I was assassinating the hell out of trash mobs every time my timer was off cool down and big boss fights were amazing during manyshot bursts. Not that I was quit keeping up with Tobril during his Furyshot bit I expect to more then keep up when I get my own sneakfuryshot!

Anyway I wanted to show you how I am leaning in the destiny department.

 

Planed Fury Path

 

Planed twists at the moment are Grim Precision, Stealthy and Cocoon. Meaning I need 11 total twist points which is not too hard to come by with just low hanging fruit with a little work in the crossover destinies.  Now if I can just make a gear list happen simi soon.

<3s

Gear Up: McPlunderer @ 20

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So Monday night the wife took her Dps/survival build to 20 and a few runs of raiding the giants vault and an explorer or two in the devil’s battle field I had also reached even more epic levels!  Shit, my amazing lvl 12 and 14 gear is not so amazing now….  To the epic sheet and the DDowiki.com!

First thing I did was gather all the bits to make an epic Midnight’s Greetings. This guy is most likely a staple for most of my adventuring. As almost max INT rogue build (1 point went into DEX to hit 21 for future things) the eMG is amazing: +10 uses my slightly higher DEX for hit/dam and a score of other key abilities including a RED SLOT! Like I assume many of you, I started to use a red slot even in my melee builds for devotion to power my healing from the epic destinies. A +10/11 weapon would have a 30/33 implement bonus and that is huge if you’re trying to lessen the use of scrolls and wands; every point counts!

So what else did I grab real fast? At 18 I crafted a 6con/GFL ring with a yellow slot. But my maths were off and it is a lvl 20 item… grumble. But I have it on now. And I was able to slot 6 CHR. By doing that I was able to free up my cloak and belt slot. On the other finger I nabbed a tear 3  lvl 20 Ring of the Buccaneer were I went ahead and slotted Fort to free my helm. While nabbing that ring I also nabbed one of the Treasure Hunter’s Spyglasses that is a tear 3 lvl 20 item and filled its green slot with PRR which does a lot of cool things for my rogue, including cutting back on item swaps for skills. Chasing that thought of reducing item swaps I took my Gnoll Hide gloves and slotted Str and vitality letting me but my +6 STR gloves back in the bank.

In an attempt to fill now empty body slots I grabbed a Drow Piwafwi and my 2/3rds finished CordOp helm. And yes my belt slot is still empty…  And my boots are practically empty. Thing they are dex boots with 20% striding slotted in a yellow slot. AKA junk now.

So I am looking at belts and boots today as well as things that are simi long-term items. I can limp along like normal until more permanent items are ready to go. So I am leaning towards making a list of handy FR commendation items when we start the web flagging as well as a list of GH and High Road items I would like to have as options….

If you had a gear list for an assassin or dps or ranged rogue let me know other wise I know what my left side of my brain is doing as my right side gets some work done.

<3s

More Rogue?

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If you are a regular reader here you know that I have become quite taken with my rogue. In my attempt to cram as much good stuff as I could into the build I had to give up a lot of stuff and as I play it and fall in love with it I wonder if I would like more specialized builds….

So today I am just going to do with you all something I did with Tobril last night while I cleared the nGH zone like a boss and Tobril played Neverwinter like a bitch, aka throw out ideas and see what sticks.

A bigger non-sneak attack dice based build i.e. a STR based build. Maybe something using the Acrobat Pre and a massive stick like a 12/6/2 rog/arty/monk or 12/7/1 rog/monk/ranger? Think the later has been done before but might be good.

I wouldn’t be apposed to a dwarf twf focused dps build. Maybe with ranger or fighter splashed? I could see a 12/8 or 12/6/2 build going less Int and more Str and using the mechanic PRE class to make up for the lesser skill points.

Just remembered something from Lam and dwarfs… Throw your Weight Around…. “Axes: You may use your Constitution modifier to determine the damage you deal with battle axes, dwarven waraxes, hand axes, greataxes and throwing axes.”

The 2 issues I have with my rogue now are low HP and low first number weapon dice. Could a MAX con dwarf two weapon fighting with axes handle both of these issues? Maybe????

Also if you are a long time reader you will remember how much I liked the X/9 rog/monk life I did on Samius. He had fairly good stunning fist DCs, could I make a monk/rog fist build with DCs that land in EE and still have massive amounts of sneak attack dice?

The thought of taking my current build at 20 and lessering out all the twf feats and going ranged all the time is a possibility. Doing so could make room for the rest of the bow feats I am missing hopefully making up for a slower rate of fire with damage vs GTWF… Problem with that is swapping for Assassinating, which is 90% of my fun at the moment.

Speaking of why I like the rog now vs other attempts right now hinges on being a ninja and sneaking around and then assassinating people. Could I really maximize that feeling more then I am? IDK, I am a INT/dex rog now. I can’t really go more INT then I am now and meet the prereqs for Imp Sneak Attack. Maybe if I was a Halfling… But then I would be trading even more HP out…

Other then that dwarf idea (I think a lot of people will try making that Throw your Weight Around work), I think the rest of these plans are not for me… Wonder if an axe thrower with Throw your Weight Around and whirling wrists on an Arty would work…. Never mind that.

Anyway leave comments and ideas in the “you know” what section.

❤

I Love it when a Plan Comes Together

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Queue the Hannibal Smith Gif!
I love it when a plan comes together!

Oh ya ya baby!

Okay no more cheesy Tv quotes, but for you that missed that last one it was from Glenn Geist on Swamp People.

So… What master plan has just started to come together? Well Mc Plunderer build is doing all the things I had hoped. Well that it should be able to do on paper anyway. It would be nice to be able to assassinate with a bow or some other ranged weapon. But being able to two for one when dual wielding is a nice trade off I guess.

But level 16 just happened for me last night and with it manyshot. You know what an extra 9d6 looks like added on to a manyshot burst? Dead things, lots and lots of dead things for as far as your draw distance will allow you to see.

And that is not using any real special bow and old Turmoil Within and some random loot gen one. I wonder if I could see about talking people that can into some non-epic house C farming for a lvl 16 Earth Bow or if I should wait until I am a little higher with the intent of making an epic version?

All I know is having the option to also be the ranged with all these Juggs and other manyshot builds running around is real nice. And being able to go Slayer Arrows at 20 with a whole lot more sneak attack dice will be amazing dips… as long as I don’t have the agro.

I already am starting to see 2 or 3 more fringe rogue builds in my head, okay maybe less fringe and more shoring up my weaknesses like the lower Hp and the terrible WILL saves.

Overall, I can really see this guy making it into my main list. Well if he stays at or near the same level of fun when playing anyway.

Who knew I loved stabbing people in the guts?

<3s

Stabbing you in your Guts and Picking your Pocket

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So with my Arty at 25 and working on gear, Samius rocking EEs as needed and Javabot working on an item or two, I am mostly in get stuff mode. Except on Mon,Tues, Thrus and Fri days on those days I am all about sticking bitches with pointy things, aka leveling my rogue with the wife’s DPS character.  I will say right off the bat I am loving playing this rogue, but he is level 10 and I can see some weaknesses that I might need to address soon… some how.

Why do I bring it up? Good question. The DG/British Invasion people are debating a TR Weekend now that Otto’s boxes are in the mix again for a fast return to epics (assuming a xp weekend over Memorial Day Weekend). And there are many possible TRs that need to happen or are slotted for characters that want a TR. One of which is one of our group’s assassin rogues. The person I went to when I was planning my Rogue build and she expressed interest in the ins and outs of my build ideas so I thought why not do a little how its working.

So BUILD REVIEW TIME!

I am more or less on the build plan for Mcplunderer which can be seen here.

You do need to do a feat order swap from what I have listed and take Point Blank Shot @ 2 using the fighter bonus feat and wait for Toughness until level 3. I have to say it is fairly amazing to play so far. Every time something comes at me and I bluff them I say, “It wasn’t me!” as I start to stab them for big sneak attack numbers. When the wife looks at me like I am nuts I claim “role playing.”

As for actual game play, I will say it is strange to be on a melee with a maxed out Int and no power attack so damage on guys with out dealing Sneak attack sucks, but I am playing the long game on this one. Even so using I am rocking the Threnalian weapons and not doing too bad. I need to take a look and see if there is a worth wild upgrade out their soon to go farm up…

Things I would change put HP/fort gear higher on the gear list. The wife’s evasion pally has WAY more Hp and better saves and she is using blue slots for PRR and Fort and is wearing all the necessary HP gear. And she seems very stable. While a lot of the time I need to break off and pot/wand/scroll repeat until I can turn and clean up my trash.  Guess I am trying to say I know what Tobril was saying back when he was working on his Rog (that didn’t make it much past 10) about feeling like a glass cannon. Then again I seem to do okay at leveling glass cannons, I had lots of Wizards in my stable at one time…

I think at 14 things will be a lot tighter some gear comes on line then like Black dragon armor and Tome of legends weapons and that will be a huge boost. Think I even have an old Treason some place… Maybe. If I do I can treat it like a mini- Epic Midnights Greetings until 20 rolls around.

Well good enough for now. More on trying to take some advantage of the Otto’s boxes later.

<3s

Wednesday…

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So I was super ready for last night, Tobril has been out for work for more then a week and other then a short phone call driving home from my pnp game I haven’t spoken/gotten to hang out for a while. Also on the none guild night weekdays I have been kinda rudder less, mostly rocking one of the lowbees or doing one or two quests with the wife before she is burnt out. Frankly with out someone wanting something even on the weekends we can be unfocused.

So I had a plan for the night, first it was amazing out so I was going to put a good hour – hour and a half into the green house. Will talk about that in a min. Work a little on a trade list, game with everyone for a few hours and end the night watching a episode of Game of Thrones maybe while reading a comic… aka an amazing night!

So I get home and start to work. After about 30 mins the wife gets home with dinner and wants me to get inside and eat before it gets cold. Oh well, finish what I am doing and clean up the tools for the night.

After eating I get logged on and start working on a trade list. That lasts for like 3 mins. There is nothing more boring then making lists of stuff I am willing to trade…. There needs to be a better way. In retrospect I think I might use my piker account to make a private party and just start linking things and then copy the chat list one time per char and then edit the list in post vs trying to list everything by hand. Might try that soon.

So I wait for tobril, I run the ship and redo any buffs that need added. Seems like my part time job any more. I say to the wife didn’t I just do this? She replies that she did a bunch last week and it was not her turn. When I reply I guess with the two of us playing most of the time I guess that is just how it is… Speaking of she noticed that we were super close to 80 but just the two of us can’t make much in gains vs the renown loss need to play more I guess.

Anyway about 630 my time I get a text, Stuck at work. Hope to be on later – Tobril. Hmm, well at this time the wife wants to do something but again we are rudder less. I want to work on my Rogue, he is ready (and took) level 8 but there are just a few more 5s I want to BB real fast. But I could use the last hour of the day and get some more work on the Green house done. So we shift gears and head back out side.

Green House update: the end cap walls are framed up and I got a door poorly hanged we shifted it slightly as to have a little more room around it for the chickens tracker thing I plan to work on next. We get the tarp I plan to use as a floor down and all I have left b4 laying the plastic is getting the inside laid out/filled and pinning the walls down so I don’t have huge sails in my backyard. Tonight I buy a water trough for my fish tank for watering and my aquaponices setup.

Anyway as dark falls we head back in, no Tobril the wife is done and is ready to watch TV with the boy. So I am in solo/pugville so I solo the last of my 5s and take 8.

About nine I log for the night and watch ep 5 of Game of Thrones and hit the sack. Have to say I don’t feel as satisfied as I would like but as it is Thursday I can’t complain much.

<3s

I like Mondays

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Well I like Mondays after work anyway. Mondays for me is Samius time, not that every other moment of my life isn’t Samius time… But Monday is really Samius time. I don’t have any other plans and can just be care free with my play.

Last night my Monday was spent in game, it was too cold for a nice bike ride or working on the green house. Give me 2 or 3 days of fair weather and I will knock it out and get my grow beds rocking. So my in game time was more or less split between my Arty and my new rogue build. And they couldn’t play more different even though they are very similar.

My starting plan was to start on McPlunderer and hit Ghost of a Chance until I was burnt out. I logged on my alt account and shared the quest using him to open the quest. Don’t under value the helpfulness of an opener. I was almost to the quest, 3bc is a big open explorer with no ports after all, just then the wife says, “Lets do something.”

I say sure and inquire what she wants to do. After watching her switch alts for 10 mins while I just wonder around the explorer zone she finally decides she is willing to play her clonkish alt so I can use Samiusbot.

We do a few runs in the House J graveyard, about the time I remember how to play Samiusbot well, she is ready for dinner and thinks she is done for the night. I tell you there are not a lot of builds out their with a greater ability to change combat styles mid stream then a (simi-well equipped) WF Arty…

Also it was nice playing the arty in a quest where invis wouldn’t have worked anyway so I didn’t miss it. But I would love for it to work again…. In any case I got to use my new mace a lot and still got to rock my Xbow. Took me awhile to get in the swing of things with all the different layers of defenses the Arty has, Stoneskining the turret while I lit the funeral pyres in Beyond the Grave was a big help once I remembered I had those spells…

Anyway post dinner, I was back on McPlunder who doesn’t have the option to be good at ranged damage yet, but he will… So for Ghosts he was using his heavy pick and shortsword. The guys were tough enough that I could play with the bluff skill and got to see my sneak attack damage for a change. I can really see those sneak attack d6s doing their job as I climb the ranks some. Think once I get a little higher and start grouping more then I will really like this guy a lot. Right now I am wondering how come he is not stunning everything! Blinding weapons can not come soon enough.

All right you all! Hope you all had a good Monday and remember only 4 days left until the weekend.

❤