Double XP Weekend

For those of you who don't read the forums, don't read the right part of the forums, and/or don't talk to anyone who does, Double XP weekend is scheduled to start Friday, February 8 and last until the 10th. Fair warning to cancel whatever plans you have for that weekend and camp out in front of the computer.

You Know...

I don't feel like making a real post. I'd rather go get Callie (Elektra Callie [if you don't get it, I'm not going to explain it. Just say it out loud couple of times or something], level 20, elec/elec blaster) up to SO range. So, how about I just tack up another YouTube video and we'll call it a post?






Edit: Bonus!

The Way Things Were

When I bought the game, I bought the Prima guide at the same time. I was unfamiliar with "real" MMORPGs (The Sims Online so doesn't count), and I figured I'd probably need the extra help. The copyright on the book is 2004. It was published a couple of months before I bought the game. The Fifth Column is even in the book, and they were gone before I started playing. The level cap was still 40. The numbers in the book are completely worthless now, but I still pick it up occasionally for some odd reason... say, to get a vague idea of a power I'm not too familiar with. I picked it up tonight because I can never remember what level what power becomes available, and I wanted to know if I could get Inertial Reduction at level 26. So I didn't find that, but I found this on the Fire Blast primary:

"You are able to dish out damage, granted. In the long run, however, it is
not massive damage. You will have access to very few direct damage powers, which
means you will have a tough time soloing groups at the higher levels.... Since
you are not able to heal yourself, it can get time-consuming to stay in solo
combat. If you want to go head to head with villains and be able to take out
large groups with reasonable ease, then Fire Blast is not for you.
Nine times out of ten, you will not deal the most damage in large
groups."

lulz

Hey, Y'all, Watch This! Here, Hold My Beer*.

In general, I play cautiously. I don't like death. Not because of debt. I barely notice the debt. Anymore. It's the frustration of being stopped, and sometimes having to start over again. With Fyre's self-rez, that's not such a big deal. Click, get back up. And, the mobs are handily stunned at the same time. Whee. Yeah, sometimes she just gets dropped right away again. Case in point, the RWZ debt-farm I was on last week, with a team of 6 blasters, a clueless side-kicked tank, and a mostly-afk defender, all fighting Vanguard. Purple Vanguard. Yeah, this is one of those PuGs that you should run from and never look back. But some morbid curiosity kept me in for two missions. Oddly, we did complete the rescue-Lady-Grey mission, without getting Lady Grey killed. Either they've made that mission easier, or it was an honest-to-goodness miracle.

Fyre's pretty tough, though, and I've noticed my cautiousness has slowly diminished. I've caught myself playing "blapper" on occasion. (Clarification: Fyre's still nowhere near being classified as a blapper. Promise! It's only short application of Fire Sword to finish off a mob, or using Combustion and then running back to a safer, more sane and less annoying distance.) It's still been a cautious, steady, yet relatively quick play style.

Until yesterday.

I had a spare hour, so I set myself to the red search flag, cranked up the mp3 player, and logged in to blow some sh-- er, stuff up. Two random-whatever-they-were missions, and the only thing up for scanner missions was Council (bleh), and a random kidnap-- er, rescue mission. Kidnap/rescues bore me. Hostages stop following for no known reason, they get stuck in elevators, they refuse to jump off ledges, whatever. So, the other option was Arachnos. Not my favorite. Half-tech salvage, and worse at high levels, Bane Spiders.

Bane Spider: Assassin Strike!
All but ten of my hit points go away.
Me: ...huh? Ow!
Bane Spider: Placate!
Me: ...son of a--
Two and a half minutes of
pointless clicking and swearing commence while the Bane Spider points and
laughs, then disappears and runs away just as placate wears off, which is
another two and a half minutes of waiting for him to come sauntering back with
the decaff soy latte he wandered off to buy while I hit tab 7,000 times trying
to find him.

So, not my favorite. And the first room there's a Bane Spider minion, and a Bane Spider lieutenant in the same group, and another similar group on the far side of the room, with a Fortunata or two for added fun. They're all yellow and orange, by the way. Fyre runs at Rugged solo. (I probably ought to up that. Except for the odd Illusionist or Bane Spider lieutenant, she never breaks a sweat, or sometimes doesn't even stop forward momentum.) And this is when the evil little light bulb goes off above my head. This room would be perfect to herd, and then Inferno, I think. But, I'm not a tank, I say to me. So?

So, I pop a purple, a yellow, and a red, and run through both groups and back around the corner. They take a shot or two, but no one follows me. Huh. Another little light bulb. I throw on Blazing Aura, and they all follow me back though the room. I duck around the corner, wait for them to pack in, hit Build-Up, Inferno... and the room is clear, and I'm nowhere near dead.

I herded with my blaster.

It was a fluke, right? Halfway through the mission, I did the exact same thing. Same results.

Yeah, I'm probably not the first person to think of this. I'm more than likely not the first person to do this. There are probably some people who can do it with a 8-person-team-size-set-at-Invincible spawn. Whatever. It was fun, it was out of character, and I'm probably gonna do it again.



* Much more likely to be wine, cognac, or a margarita. At the time, Sobe Life Water.

Fyre's Enhancements, as of 12-28-07

Okay, so I did try to do this last week, but Blogger was being a jerk about uploading pictures, and I gave up.

I listed Fyre's set bonuses once before, mostly to help me keep track, but that was a couple of months ago, and there have been several notable changes since.

This is what she had when I made this post in September:

Positron's Blast
+2.5% recovery
+1.58% fire and cold resistance
+9% Accuracy (in all powers)
-6.25% recharge time (in all powers)
+3.13% toxic resistance
Devastation (1)
+12% regeneration
+2.25% maximum health
Devastation (2)
+12% regeneration
+2.25% maximum health
+3% damage (in all powers)
-3.3% duration of hold time
Sting of the Manticore
+12% regeneration
+.95% energy and negative defense
+3% damage (in all powers)
+7.5 recharge (of all powers)
+3.13% toxic resistance
Scirrocco's Dervish
+10% regeneration
+3.15% negative energy resistance
+9% accuracy (to all powers)
Ghost Widow's Embrace
+5% run speed
+1.88% maximum health
+2.25% maximum endurance
+2.5% hold duration
+3.13% psi resistance.

This is now:



You can see that since, I've finished my second Devastation set, adding 3% damage to all powers, and lessening hold time by 3.3%.

In the week since I took those screenshots, there's been only one addition, an additional Ragnarok IO, Damage/recharge/Accuracy. That's 3 set bonuses now from that set:
4% Recovery
2.52% Fire and Cold Resistance
15% Accuracy
This includes the Chance for Knockdown Procedure IO, that provides a 20% chance to knockdown targets.

I added four of the six Aegis: Resist Damage set, giving her:
5% Run Speed
1.58% Fire and Cold Defense
2.5% debt protection
Most importantly from this set, though, is the set's Unique enhancement with is a Psionic/Status resistance, which provides a 3.0% bonus to Psionic Resistance. In addition, status effect resistance is increased by 20%.

I added the Chance to Heal Self from the Entropic Chaos set in her Ring of Fire. When it hits, it only gives a +60 HP. BUT. With the new Defiance, that's one of the powers I still use when she's held, slept, mezzed, whatever. In those cases, that little boost to her HP is pretty helpful.

In Hover, there's a Luck of the Gambler, Defense/Increase Recharge. That gives a +15.9 Defense increase, and a 7.5% recharge time boost to all powers. There's also a Karma: Knockback Protection, that provides 4 points of knockback protection. Now, I don't know how "points" are assigned to knockback powers. But I know that she's had two of those CoT Earthquake things stacked on her, and stayed standing. I'm happy with that.

In Health, I slotted a Miracle: Recovery, which increases endurance recovery by 15% for 120 seconds. Since Health is a passive, (I'm pretty sure) that's 120 seconds off, and 120 seconds on.

Prestige Power Rush (the Veteran Reward Spring power I use) has a Celerity +Stealth slotted in it.

There's still room for some partial sets, namely in Combustion. I plan on finishing my purple set, but each of those recipes cost somewhere between 20 and 30 million, on average, and take another 8 million for ingredients. Which is why I should be playing, and not posting.