EEraids continue

My EEraids group is slowly kicking off and I’m starting to see some regulars and some interest for this, so I’m positive about getting more EE raids run on Orien. But but… this Saturday I wanted to do Deathwyrm. We had done Fire on Thunder Peak twice successfully and I felt it was time to attempt the other one. This week there had been a lot of lag on Orien, and Deathwyrm being famous for lag, I didn’t have high hopes about being able to complete, but as I had been talking about it I wanted to give it a try anyway. Well, result? Attempt 1: Lag freeze in first puzzle room, wipe. Rescued by late joiners. We continue, lag freeze, wipe, get rescued by ppl not in the same puzzle room. We continue like this til the 5th puzzle, and then decide to restart and try a different instance. We did not lag in jump room or during the bone guardian fight, only in the puzzle areas. Second try, diff instance, same result. I decide to record the lag, and I hit record as we lag for the last time before I decided to call quits. The last lag freeze lasted about 10 minutes. See recording below.

“Need” is relative

I have been playing this game for just over 3 years now, and my cleric Thazara has been with me from the start. I decided early on to never do a true reincarnation with her, and I’ve stuck to my decision, even though people have been telling me that I should TR. A day or so ago someone made the claim I’ve heard before “for epic elites you need past lives”. The word that I get stuck on is “need”. Since I started playing ppl have been telling me I need past lives to be any good, or to be useful for anything but healbotting. I wanted to prove them wrong, I took it as a challenge. Since around the time Thaz hit xp cap for the first time (back in spring of 2012), my goal has been to use what ever tools I have available (enhancements, ed’s, gear), except true reincarnation, to make her as good as I can. The way I play her has changed and I found that the latest build is the one I enjoy the most. I can zerg eh’s, and the mobs die, and I found I can even solo some ee’s.

So, when I heard, again, that you “need” past lives to solo ee’s, I said to myself… ok, I’m gonna attempt to solo ee Haunted Halls and see if I need past lives to do it. Well, what do you know, I didn’t. I needed a bunch of raise cakes, some pots and scrolls, but nope, no past lives. I also needed to kite and kill stuff, but again, past lives no.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I know that I cannot reach the same numbers as a multiple TR. Past lives give you bonuses that my Thaz will never have. But, unless you gear your toon well, choose enhancements and other things carefully, and learn how to run quests, the past lives are not gonna help you.

So, here it is the result of my experiment. I had just woken up after ~5h sleep, I could not remember exactly which passage to go… and when fighting the kobolds I could have played much smarter and just killed them off one at a time instead of trying to get as many as possible, and as a result wasting a lot of mana on missing my target. The quest took me 95 min to complete, which includes a bunch of pointless mistakes I made and running around trying to find my way. I used 22 mana pots and 13 raise cakes… so the run was not cheap.

Easter weekend and ddo

Easter Friday and Monday are national holidays in Finland. I still decided to pretty much play my normal hours, except for on Saturday logging on a couple of hours earlier than I usually do. It was a very good Saturday and Sunday for me. On Saturday I got to run with Crush and Deli in Vale and Lords of Dust chain (we were all lvl 18, I was running Maidae), and those guys I just have a lot of respect for, and it pretty much made my day. I did switch to Cerge for my and Osi’s raid night at 9 and we ran eH/eE ADQ, eH CitW, eH FoT, eH/ eH VON, ee Chrono and elite TOD. I was talking to a friend during some of those runs, so I was rather distracted, but I enjoy running the raids and it just feels good having Osi there. ToD did not fill this time, so we short manned it (only 7 ppl) and the run was a bit slower than usually. When Osi logged off, even though I was super tired I still decided to post for Deathwyrm and Firepeak raids, only eN. Deathwyrm has slowly become a pretty routine raid for me, even though I still don’t know the puzzles off by heart. My guildie Jedli has been learning them, and he’s now helping me do them (if he’s online). The run wasn’t super fast, but we completed, and then I posted for Firepeak. The Firepeak run was going annoying. We lacked dps, ppl weren’t listening, and at some point I for a moment feared we were gonna wipe. But we pulled through and completed. I did apologize afterwards for the run to someone.

Sunday I logged at 1pm with the plan to xp my ED’s on Cerge. I posted for eH/ eH VON again, and Osi and Jedli joined me. I was in no hurry to start, I was cleaning my inventory and having a cup coffee, and we slowly filled. I started when I had half a party, and like always I did the voice and the ring. I managed to fall down off the bridge on the left side north, but got back up with my boots of propulsion. And when I was going to talk to the head east, I notice the puzzle isn’t done (person working on it had only gotten 1/3 of the way), so I spend some time working on the puzzle while the rest of the party is waiting south (can’t continue until the head is read). I usually don’t do the puzzle since I have to wiki it and it’s just slow, others are faster. But after a few min I got it done and we were able to continue the raid. I as always asked Osi to do the bases, and he put ppl on fire and ice… I solo ran to air and though I was able to prep and kill the djinn myself, my arrows only showed 0 damage on the pillar, so we had to redo it with more ppl on air.

60th FoT completed

Yes, I’m slow. This raid has been out since epic gianthold came out in U17. In U17.1 the boom was added, and the people who before it farmed it in 10 min started failing. I’ve had bad runs and good runs of this raid. I’ve changed tactics depending on the players. My toons have also been getting better, and I feel confident in a lot of ppl concerning this raid, so most of the time I have no worries. In fact, I don’t like the OP super fast runs, I prefer mixed groups with unexpected outcome. Failure isn’t an option, though, lol. We fight and we die. Very battley.

Anywho. The static group has decided on a static weekly time to run ee FoT and probably for the first time ever we had a full group (12 ppl) of no puggers. I was put on white giant like last time. We have one person per giant and dragon assigned as “keeper” while the rest help prep the one pair at a time, and kill trash. Order is blue-white-black. SR keeps the black dragon. Two weeks ago I kept white giant for myself til the blue pair was killed, then I got some help with dps. It was sort of exciting, he hit me for a lot when I didn’t get out of the way once or twice. No issues there. This week I was assigned white giant again, I hit him with a dot as I’m falling, throw a couple of nimbuses and searing light to follow, but he doesn’t even turn. He’s run off after one of the archers who’s not only hit him, but keeps on shooting him. Said archer brings the white giant back to where he was supposed to be kept and keeps on dps’ing him. I stay there for a bit, just trying to get aggro back, but unless I hit a nice proc of maxed spider venom, I’m not gonna be able to pull aggro from an archer, and probably not even then (my spider venom usually tics for 3k+, my max crit is a bit over 8k). After a while I start feeling completely useless, so I run off to see if I can help somewhere else, I get hit and stoned (breath of silence) and dead. Gee. great. I’m feeling like I’m having a really bad day, so I couldn’t have cared less.

EE raiding

People enjoy different things in game. I love running raids, and have for a long time, but what I enjoy the most are ee raids. After this weekend I have now run all the raids that have an epic difficulty, on epic elite, some more than once. I have run ee VON6 and ee ADQ a number of times, ee CitW and ee Chrono only a couple of times, and now ee MA once (ee LoB once as well). I was supriced at how easy ee MA was compared to FoT and CitW, even though neither of them feel like a struggle anymore. Of course, for a good run you need ppl with dps who know what they’re doing, and this is why I currently do not host these.

Thazara & Osiride in ee Tor

I wanted to make another Thaz solo’s ee’s video, but I was tired after my first day back at work after my vacation. I tried Lines of Supply a few times, only to decide that it was too much work and then gave ee Tor a try. After dying once, I gave up and asked Osi to come help me. We ran main part + black and white dragon as a duo in ~80 minutes, after which I lfm’d for help for the blue dragon.

After watching my footage, I felt that the dragon fights were rather boring, so I left them out of the video. I was tired and unfocused and was playing poorly, as you may notice (if not, then u may notice me complaining about it, lol). I haven’t run ee Tor since U19 was out, and never as a caster so I 1. didn’t know that black giant has a shield against lvl 4 and lower spells, so I can’t do the shiradi thing (spam low level spells), and 2. white giant can’t insta kill you if you’re wearing death block (I was kiting more than spamming spells, because last time I ran this he killed me).

Osi is a completionist with 3x cleric, 3x wizard, 3x sorc and 3x fvs past lives (if I read his forums right). He has solo’d ee Tor before, but since it does take a bit longer than running it on hard, he doesn’t do ee runs that often anymore. Thazara is still a first life, with no past lives of any kind. Osi is a dc caster, Thaz is shiradi.

Enjoy the video.

P.S. Osi has a fascination for Egyptian gods. “Osiride” is the Italian version of “Osiris”, the god of the afterlife and underworld.

Ok, I did it.

When I thought about recording my gaming, I wanted to make a video of Thaz soloing ee Impossible Demands. Why? Because I wanted to show people that you don’t need to be a multi-TR to solo stuff. And that even clerics, who a lot of people think of as only healers, can rule the scene. Well, I was excited and pleased with my video, so I shared it in the channels and with my friends. While I got a lot of good feedback, one friend of mine told me I should try something harder, because ID isn’t really impressive. The reason I picked ID was because it wasn’t really a challenge to me. It’s short and I knew I could solo it easily. The quest I really wanted to solo was Tracker’s Trap, the first quest in the Storms Horns chain. I had tried it a few times before, always getting stunned and dead. After 3 manning most of it the other day, and us doing really well with the right tactics, I was inspired to try and solo it again. Yes, I’m talking epic elite, because epic elite is where it hurts.. a lot.

We’re getting better at it; ee FoT

I should probably soon stop writing blogs about ee FoT, it’s becoming a drag? Lol. I’ve done a few of these already (blog posts about ee FoT), but as I want to document the good runs somehow, here I am writing about ee FoT again. As I’ve been trying to max favor on Thazara (currently 4938, only missing to 6 star challenges), I wanted to run everything on elite/ epic elite. My first few times in ee FoT was after U17, when cap was still 25, and the runs didn’t go so well (see Trying FoT U17.1 epic elite). When this group I’ve now been running with was suggested to me, I was happy to tag along, even only to healbot in a group that didn’t need a healbot. Oh, if you didn’t know, the runs are byoh. I throw cocoon when needed, but everyone’s supposed to look after their own health. 🙂 Yup, my fav type of play.

This Tuesday (Dec 18) we were back at it, we actually started almost on scheduled time this time (normally we wait almost an hour for ppl to show up), and we were a few ppl short of a full party, so a few spots were open to pug. The run it self was pretty good. Crush dc’d just as we were about to start, and it took him too long to get back, so we went without him. 1-2 ppl died when we were prepping the pairs, and then when it was time for SR and TO, someone pulled SR on the party and we got boomed. 2 more ppl died. I strangely took very little damage even though I got boomed 3 times. Something like 200hp /boom, which I healed up. I was fully buffed up, though, and wearing ring of djinn and pale lavender ioun stone. The run took 30 minutes to complete. Here are the screen shots.

EE FoT run No 5

There was a time when I was an ee FoT virgin. There was also the time I tried to pug it, and the party was horribly massacred (we did fine until TO + SR). Things have changed. From from getting kicked from Gimpfest to getting declined by Matrix, I have become a regular of “the Blacklisted Slackers”, and I’m pretty proud of it. The group has so far done 6 ee FoT’s, I have been in the last 5, as I missed the first one. The first two were a bit of a struggle, while the 3rd was excellent (less than 30 min completion). The 4th run was for me too messy to even write about, even though we completed. We were missing too many of our regulars and ended up filling out with pug. The 5th run was run yesterday, and after an initial restart because of lag, and a miss on killing one of the dragons too soon, it was a pretty good run. I was determined to kills as much trash as possible, so I was running around looking for stuff to kill, while casting cocoon at ppl in need (a few times someone just dropped in 2 seconds, so didn’t get a chance to heal them). I was competing with Klorox for kills, and he beat me with 1 (12 vs 11). 😛 Run took 36 minutes (and I didn’t die!).

OnMouseOver again for picture info

U20 is here (warning spoilers)

It’s been a busy and stressful week for me, on Monday I did a little bit of xp farm on Maidae and ran 2 raids with Matrix, and on Tuesday U20 was out. After getting home from work I updated and logged on Maidae to check her, before I had to leave for swim practice. Getting home again, I logged on Thaz, and barely got into the game before I got a party invite from Osi, and him telling me he was gonna do the new quests ee. I dropped what ever minor plans I had, to tag along. We started with Brothers of the Forge. A new lvl 28 quest in House Cannith, which makes it the highest level quest currently in game.

Aramania and Vilapy was also invited to run, and we 4 manned the quest. Everyone else in the group was multiple TR’s (Osi and Vilapy completionists), and me, on my 1st life shiradi cleric. Safe to say, in a lvl 30 quest, I was doing the least amount of damage of the party, but I’m pleased to say, 1. I didn’t die, 2. I managed to get 7 kills, and 3. I managed to get the killing blow on a red named scorpion. \o/