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.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

Do They Know It's Christmas Dogs

Jingle Cats

Oranbega Island Pictures

This is unquestionably the coolest mission map I've ever seen. The mission comes from Mage Hunter Zahara... I think. I was going to look it up in ParagonWiki before I posted it, so I could let you know the exact name of the contact, the levels you can get it, all that important stuff. But. ParagonWiki is down at the moment, so that's all the information I can give. It's CoV, and if I had to guess, I would say the contact is levels 40-45. If you get the chance, take it, or go along with someone else. No, there's no badge, but it's more than worth it. I'm going to post entirely too many pictures, but it's just that cool.

This is Lilitu. She's not exactly your friend in this mission, or even your ally. But she will kill enemies around the place where you set her free. She won't follow you. Probably, if you look at her wrong, she'll kill you anyway. This the only time it's safe... sort of... to get close to her.

Fyre and Will and the "boys," and the imps.

Pictures

Story-wise, there's a lot of stuff going on. Mason's alive, E's awake. Tons of complications there. Jez and "B" have been busy. But, I don't feel like getting into any of that. So just look at the pretty pictures instead.

E and the boys, and an imp, in one of those fun Oranbega graphics glitches. And the bubbles.

Okay, what's wrong with this picture? (Hint: the Lasher has a book.)

I would duck if Jez came after me, too.

Fyre in Peregrine Island. She almost looks calm and peaceful. Except for the flaming eyes.

Inside the one of the missions in the Natural origin Atlas mini-arc.

Atlas Park, in Recluse's and Aeon's perfect future, in Statesman's Task Force.

Fyre and that damned Arachnos Flyer.

Oh hai!

Blood Crucible iz in ur warehouse, stealin ur hurricanes... Okay. I'll stop now.

Troll party in the Hollows. And why can't we sit like that?

Jez, after killing a Banished Pantheon mask.

More YouTube

I'm too tired for a real, productive post, and I forgot this one last time. This one's not game-related.

The End of Ze World
Warning: Language not suitable for children/work.

Videos and Links

They took down the servers in the middle of the afternoon to fix an issue where Tankers created before i5, who have never respec'ed, lost Taunt. How can you have never respeced since ED? Anyway... Since play-time was interrupted-- /em runs off to check the server status page
Oh, right. Links.

In fact, I'll save you a trip on the YouTube ones. I'm not posting the Dance Gun, or the Boom one, or the real well known ones, because you've probably already seen them. But here are some others.

This one's old, but still one of my faverites. Partly for the song, but the video itself is just good.




These next three are absolutely the best editted videos I've seen. The amount of time that must have went into them boggles the mind. The first is supposed to be the first that was made, and the maker said the second two are much improved, but even the first is amazing.

Dies Irae




Princess of Dusk




Night Prayers




What if the City of Villains trailer was filmed on Freedom?




This was one of my favorite TV shows when I was a kid.


Paragon's Greatest Hero


Short, but good.
Paragon Television



This isn't a video, but it's funny, anyway. Makes me think of Rosie and her love of history.
World War II as PvP

I've never taken a name straight from here, but it helps spur ideas, at least.
Seventh Sanctum Name Generators

Mo's name came partly from here. It's impossibe to read unless you select it all, or get rid of the background.
Dictionary of Faery Names

In case your villains need inspiration:
Peter's Evil Overlord List

And finally, the anti-Lolcats (warning, language not suitable for children):
My Cat Hates You