Friday Humour: The Future is now

OK we all know Aggro me is out of town for the weekend and there will be no Friday humour so I did all I could to muster up a few sights that I felt had some funny Gaming/non-Gaming entry's.

First off I would like to say we all have an addiction and in one way or another it's a good thing, right? I love playing MMORPG games with my time, hey lest it's not cocaine. If you don't know if your a Gamer/Roleplayer then check here and remove all doubt. Heh it's a very long read though some are quite humorous.

We all know that MMORPG's are gonna change the world but, don't you really want to know how? Read up on theTop 10 Changes MMORPG's will change your future. Common you know it's gonna happen.

Tired of not feeling alive in the virtual world well wait no longer, Virtual mugging... No Really! What will those kids think up next? How bout Virtual Se...ummm Massage?

Macgyver, he's got my vote in 2008. Now seriously what were they thinking? Mr T. for the Win.

To go out with a bang here's a funny little video for all to see. Hell, This goes out to all the D&D, WOW and EQ2 Playahs.

Hope you can enjoy a little stand in while Aggro's away.

I'm a Hero

In my top 10 raid rules I went over Heroic opportunity's (HO) some and I would like to help and stress this more. With the recent Combat upgrades the HO's are more viable then ever. Before it was enough to outlast a NPC's mana though there was some changes to that. Now you can't see some mob's power and two they don't go out guns blasting anymore.

Some of the HO's I will discuss can be very worth while for your group to do them. I have recently taken down two separate EpicX2 mobs with just one group because of the tactics we have employed with HO's. I know there are some great write ups out there but I will make it easier on you to employ a damage tactic, because we all know we want to get the mob dead and done.

Copricious Strike: This one can do High damage fast, the only drawl back to doing this one is the other two that can pop up are Group regen and Group heal. This is where a good Scout comes in handy. Scout starts the HO Fighter Kicks to carry Priest uses chalice (mainly heals) to bring it up. Now if you get Group regen to pop I would say use it at lest once. If the group heal Pops up (Verdent Trinity) then have the Scout try one last time to change it. That is if you don't need a group heal. Very seldom does the Group AC buff pop.

Tears of Luclin: Scout starts, Fighter taunts, Priest uses moon(Shaman usually Wards) Mage's carry the Flame. Now you can get other HO's on this that are nice to do if your careful, such as Ancient demise (this is a AOE). You also can get the best damage nuke HO here but it's rare Past Awakening. PA is a very useful nuke if a group can pull it off, and it's even harder for some fighters because they don't have to many blue fist icons; it is also ORDERD which makes it even harder.

Thunder Slash: Fighter starts HO, Priest Nukes, Mage Carry's bolt then it can start.This one I think is the hardest to pull off if you have more then one fighter in a group. It's difficult because fighters carry over to their Taunts a lot. I would suggest not to use this to much if their is more then 1 fighter in your group. Ancient Wrath is the rare one here and if it goes off it's a Great Stun.

I would suggest using these 3 combinations the most, they are easy and do a lot of damage. They can be done a lot in the span of any even Heroic fight to Epic's and they will help the damage output of any group/Raid.

Now for the hardest part of any HO.... People that actually Start and Carry them, I've ran across people telling me that they do less DPS to help carry or start HO's. That is a lie(cop out) it doesn't take but a few seconds to carry any part of an HO that belongs to your class. I have the hardest times with mage's for some reason. We will get up the the red lightning bolt and it will sit there, to me this means A. They aren't paying attention, B. They are just AFK collecting XP or C. Getting resisted a lot. I have a Conjurer and know it doesn't take much for them to carry that one.

These Icons are the Hardest to carry from what I can tell. Priest eye, Mage flame, Fighter fist, and Scout Cloak. Watch for these and know where yours are, if you know they are gonna pop a lot by the group you are in, wait to use these. Some have long recasts time and there are not to many back ups. One last thing, make sure that your highest damage person finishes the HO's if possible. IE if a Priest finishes Copricious Strike it will do less then if it's a Figher or Scout (in most cases). Better yet just know that if your to finish the HO then finish it with your highest damage CA/spell.

If you want to see just what HO's are made of check this sight out, it's strait forward and has good information. Here's luck to getting your HO's Started and carried!

Do you know where your underwear are?

HA! I knew that'd get you reading. As of late I been feeling quite under the weather call it Zyban and quitting smoke or call it the lack of comments. However, it just seems that no matter what I try and do there is a stumbling block. Zyban don't help becuase in some ways it makes you not care lol.

Lately I've been noticing some new armor's and it's quite nice. I even heard a rumor that LU 14 colors the Chain ebon black.. Damn them! I got myself leather because it looks better then ebon that and it's about 2.5 plat cheaper. It should look rather nicely tinted black I just hope they don't go over board. I've also notice the new griffin NPC's actually got a cool looking Leather, maybe it's around for PC's but haven't seen any yet.

Oh I seen my first piece of Class only armor.. Other then Brawler of course. I seen Shaman gloves for sale, granted they are 41 to wear and suck in stats over the cloth one's I own and they are 31. Funny thought AC is not my biggest concern as a shaman, you'd figure they would put better rounded stats on some of this stuff for Shamans.

I believe they should be putting in crazy items like 25 wisdom 100 power only items.. I'm talking about actual armor piece like shoulders, arms, or helmet. There is a market out there for diversity and they need to get their fashion department in liege with their stat's department and start cranking out some good rare items that have their own paticular look and stats. I want there to be RARE items that aren't only fabled. The label fabled doesn't intrigue me as much as a rare look item in general. The rare item in general doesn't even have to be super ubar either. Who knows the expantion is out and new so I'm sure we will be seeing more then what's on the table right now. I just hope they don't over inflate their stats to soon.

Now here's to hoping Cobalt armor doesn't have the chrome silver look we are already all accustomed to.

Open end Raid rules

Here recently I've sponsored a few open raids. Being's as I don't have a huge guild and I want to get stuff down before it's to trivial I like to have open end raids at the last minute. Seems to me planning these never go as they seem even if you actually have a date and time scheduled. So I usually just throw them together.

I figured I would throw a few more rules out there for people to help them understand open end raids.

Here are my Top 10 Raid rules for Everquest 2

Rule 1. Most things you know about a group don't help on raids...

Rule 2. Know your class and know your spells/CA's. Nothing worse then having a HO sit there for a red lighting bolt... Uh Mage's that means cast a nuke with a lighting bolt icon.

Rule 3. Know what Heroic opportunity's are. If you have ever been there and seen it first hand in a raid. You will feel the sting of failure, especially when the mob is at 1% health; then you realized not a one of the HO's went off over the course of that 10 minute battle... No matter how many times people yell carry the HO. HO's are a strength believe it or not and it's your best weapon since the new Combat upgrades. It only really takes 3 Classes for a good dmg HO to go off you just need to know how to do them.. Read up on them, there are many write up's on how to do them

Note: Here is a quick one. Scout start.. Fighter Kick...Healer heal... Boom capacious spike. This one can do good damage and is a fast one to get off.

Rule 4. On all Raids there is a MT and a MA...Other wise known as Main Tank and Main Assist they mean just that. If you have trouble understanding what they do just by their names (MT,MA) then NEVER NEVER NEVER go on a raid. I don't care how much you need Torig for your trusty Ghoulbane.
Ok, I will be nice and explain: Main Tank is the aggro getter. You know the one that pulls and pisses em off and does the taunting. They will save you from getting beat and in essence keep the raid going. If you take hate from and MT expect to die becuase, I the healer will not save you from your stupidity.
The Main Assist is just that in 90% of the cases you will have this guy targeted. When he finally chooses a mob to kill and calls the kill party Growl then you start to commence DPS. This keeps things in line very smoothly if every one pays attention.
You see here in lies the problem most are so use to assiting the MT that they will never listen or they think they know better.. Even after 10 deaths and a warning of getting booted they will still undeniably target the MT.. Either out of stupidity or ignorance.
(If you have an Enchanter scratch a lot of this) However, I found that a lot of Enchanters still have trouble mezing and charming with out dieing a lot. It seems that the MT,MA works much much better in most raid settings.

Rule 5. If your not the Raid leader and you just joined STFU sit back and listen. If you have wisdom then share it with the raid leader but not in raid chat. Problem is everyone has an opinion and when your not the leader it doesn't count, to be fair if you don't like it then do your own open end raids.

Rule 6. Listen to group formation at all times. I don't care if Suzythenecro is your best blood buddy, if you are needed in another group to perform a raid function then move. This is where my suggestion comes in very handy to be able to move a player from one group to another at will. Here is where rule 5 comes into play a lot, if you are to invite people to come to raid it's fine however, don't tell them what they are suppose to do. Let them meet up and then let the raid leader or leaders decide what to do. There is nothing worse then having to tell someone 15 times what to do, then they reply saying your not the raid leader.. When in fact I am.

Rule 7. Keep your eye on raid chat for any changes or update.. If the leader has motioned to do something such as take a break after a kill and retreat then do it. It maybe to set up a plan so, don't go out and Zerg another mob right after especially when he's epic. I'm sure every one in a raid has some experience; though even with a full raid and experience does not a win make, especially now. You have to be on your game at all times.

Rule 8. Never go to a Raid for experience points, go there to help or for the chance at loots. Nothing is more annoying then having someone complain about not getting any or enough experience... Here's one for you nobody cares.

Rule 9. Loot rules are given by the Raid leader not by you. If your in a Guild give your 2cp worth, but on a open end raid just accept it or leave. Most of mine are NBG and /random 100 or /ran 1000.

Rule 10. Know what /random is it's your best friend. I don't know how many times I've already ran across this. It's a pain to explain and you will lose out on your loot if you don't know otherwise. Open end raids don't run on DKP sorry, and I am also sorry but I don't think Mikeehealalot should get 2 pieces of fabled loots just because the random generator said so.
Also If there is a ML that is the Master looter he will collect all the junk and there will be mass rolls at the end of the raid. This is good sometimes because people will stick it out for the chance to win that loot at the end of the raid.

Explanation of /ran 100: There can be a variations of rolling for the highest number. Usually the highest number wins depending on how the rules are set usually people stick to the highest roll wins. The variations can be any number really from 1 to 1million however most in raids stick to /ran 1000. Due to the number of persons and the randomness of two people landing on the same high number is drasically lowered using 1000 or higher, so that there is no extra roll for ties.

Loving CU

There are days when you still have nothing to say like today; being one of them. I've had to stretch lately to find anything of importance throughout the land of Norath. It's kinda hard when I haven't yet got DoF and nothing really new to talk about except the CU.

I've touched on it a tad and I am still loving every bit of it. Even thought sometimes we get our Ass's handed to us by something 7 or 8 levels lower then us it gets frustrating. Like I said I love a challenge. In case your wondering Slayer ring quest is very difficult with low level 40's it's 33 Epic X2.. His cold AOE and Gflux however didn't hold up to well to a full grp of 40's.

My Shaman has since gotten a few upgrades and that it has been very beneficial for power overall. I've done nothing fancy even thought I wish I could come on and say I've soloed a Blue heroics. There has been mostly really fun times.. I missed my heart beating a million miles a minute like in my old Eq1 days.. Eq2 has actually been doing that to me lately.. Not knowing if your gonna win or lose. I just don't and will never understand why some think if they get something with out a challenge and that only takes time they are how do we say? Uber.

Things that I have loved in the recent past with EQlive I love again in EQ2 mainly having to have a stratagem. It's to easy to Zerg and was dull when you had to put forth no effort. Even when I'm ward healing, with a little bit of debuffing it has to be stratagem for each different mob I come up against.. And sometimes even their levels effect what I will be casting.

Be safe and have fun

Everquest 2, combat or not to combat that is the question

Ok now there is double xp for tradeskill better yet was but only till today? I dont know I'm gonna figure it out either way. I am at a cross roads again becuase my Shaman being 40 I need to get upgrade armour. My armour is 42 almost 43 and needs to be 45 to make full set of un-Imbued gear. BLAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Any damn how, if you can't figure it out I'm drawling a blank becuase; I dont get to play EQ2 during the mid week that much ... This sucketh

I guess it's kinda pointless becuase as of today I still like the changes and am loving EQ2. Now if they would only start adding Class specific armour it would be great.

Well one bonus I have liked and forgot to mention, DFC is actually hard and fun... Though they still need to fix the Pretorian Guards.

Combat changes View 2

I spoke a little yesterday when the Combat changes began on how my Shaman faired against Solo's and Heroics. Now I would like to touch on a few other points.

After I went out and I soloed around to get use to my Shaman I decided I would group. Now, I love to group that's what I do. I join them or make them I'm not down on solo to much. This first group of mine was as if we were all Ebayers.. I felt like a level 36 newb, which was really fun to try and learn what pisses off NPC's, what I could do to garner or lose hate. So this group and I ran around EL killing all sorts of stuff just to see what we could and couldn't. Luckily we didn't have to much trouble killing anything however, there was trouble with hate from all the casters. The tank had decent enough taunts and was doing everything a good tank could do to get and keep hate, that was just not enough. Though it was adventurous and fun, sometimes it was a pain and I'm sure it was a pain for the tank because after that group I decided to get on my 39 Guardian.

Here is where I once again decided to test my might on evens and a few yellows SOLO's of course. I faired well considering and didn't have to much trouble in a group setting either. I joined a group well at first I just joined a cleric friend of mine to take down a green named heroic in EL. This Bee was green and mean, needless to say a level 40 cleric and 39 guardian couldn't duo a 33 heroic Named. It was somewhat disappointing, though I felt a sense of glee knowing that there will be more named spawns up because high levels will not go round and solo them for loots. Groups will now get a chance at named and for me that was what made all the difference. Anyhow when we went off to kill more then two in a group pull it was a bitch. I would use all the taunts in me, I would taunt everything as soon as it would pop. I would AOE the bitches with hate and still nothing. Now I lost a good taunt for a apprentice taunt AOE and this was a big hindrance considering my new AOE taunt was well... New. But even still my other two single taunts one was master2 upgrade and the other was adept 3. There was no way in hell I was ever able to keep full hate on me with out casters getting one to go hit on them at least. Oh well were all still learning right.

I came to the conclusion that more named would be up for groups when I went to my newb fighter on the Island. One thing I noticed more then the fact that Newb Island is now pretty much 98% soloable and much much easier then back at release, is the fact that there were 5 er 6 named up. I've never seen a named on the island and there were aprox 30 newb on at that time so I figured I could solo. Now back in the old days..(lol) I was level 6 but actually level 8 trying to take down a level 5 named heroic. It would most likely be taken down solo. Nope even on the Island named creatures require at least 3 persons to survive and kill. Over all I still like the island though in a way it kind of sucks that the only real newb experience you will get in EQ2. Unlike EQ1 every new city you make a newb in has it's own boundaries and fun built right in.

So after I did all that in the span of a day er two... Can't quite remember it was all a blur. I decided to actually start playing the game again and to stop judging. I love the new changes just about all of them.. Despite that there are a few things I don't like there is a lot more that I do like.

My Point of View 1

There have been many times in my EQlive career I would see a change and it went one of three ways.

A. I would love it and be happy that it was there. Such as the First round of Caster Changes on EQ live.

B. I would hate it every bit of it, nothing about it would be good for how I seen the game. I.E. The addition of the POP expantion books. Hell POP it's self.

C. I didn't really care. I'm a Conjurer and the Ranger got an update to his Spells.. Really didn't care.

Well Here we are in what I will call the first update out of Beta along with the first expantion (LU13). I know, I know everything is always constantly changing and for that I'm grateful. I want to first say that the LU13 is an A. in my book. Just about every bit of it and I will tell you why.

I am only going to comment mainly on my 40 Shaman. I will throw in my perspective of a 40 Guardian and 41 Monk. O and my newb I made just to see what was up with the island with the changes. As far as any Mage feedback Aggro Me has a better view point there.

I logged on and started to do what any one would do after the change look at all my spells in my 3 open hotbars. There were big holes in my hot bars now being filled with new spells that are old, I would never use unless I mentor.. I picked all my [+] to make sure I was set then my Swashy buddy who only played 30 min started in. He was kinda mad telling me how he was WAY nerfed and he can't solo a blue solo mob anymore without almost die'n. I was curious to this fact thought in all fairness I can heal and protect myself while doing good HO's. So at this time being 37 I went out to deep Zek and found myself a blue con with an arrow up he was equal to me 36^. I waxed his ass faster then you could sit down after a morning prayer in church on a Sunday. Luckily my Swashy friend actually went back through his spell book and found that he can employ new tactics. This is from a solo stand point if you didn't notice and usually I don't solo... It's boring, meek, and only good when waiting for your grp to form. (sorry just my opinion)

Now I turned over to our basic world wide channel in Faydark the Heritage channel and I could swear everyone was gonna quit the way they were talking... OMFG they all were crying that they were (Way Suk). I didn't worry to much really I was just watching feedback only 30min after a patch went live.... Boy was that scary. Anyhow the Main complaint was we can't or better yet they can't solo Heroics any longer especially Green Heroics. So I wanted to see what they were all swimming in. I went to TS and found a butt load of stuff turned green again on me.. (Yeah for me! A larger range of kills, to anyone that didn't notice this is great and I tell you why really fast treasures drop more frequently on Greens) OK any way I ran off to some green centaurs and they were Heroic I was able to drop one really fast but that was with a quick HO that included centaur Bane nuke. Sadly I had to run and Laughed and was thinking to myself there is gonna finally be risk vs reward in this game. I love it, Heroic's should be just that Heroic.

Stay tuned I will keep this one going because I have a lot to say.

Where's the BEEF

So SOE where is it? Yeah I give them props for making a change that I wanted. I will say that the way things are now are 40% in the right direction. However, I don't mind a challenge as I've mentioned a few times here and there it's what makes the game for me.

Now onto the BEEF, by beef I mean details in weapons and armours. I still see people running around in the same look with the same min/max procablity gear and there is no substance to it all. I finally broke down and decided to not use my Armourer to make Feysteel for my Shaman. It was a hard desistion but I wanted to have a unique look, the Feysteel dropped chain I have is a red tinge but has no extra nuke or heal and it's stats are not that much less then the Feysteel made by players. However, it's still not really that rare of a look kinda looks like this Iksar. I don't understand how hard it would be to make even subtle changes like in the old pictures you can find here. Make some armour different colors, shit at lest it's some what of a change from the norm. Make weapons look different too while your at it, and don't make a kick ass sweet looking weapon like the PGT or Ghoulbane into any other sword a newb can get. I mean it was a kick in the nuts when I seen a lvl 10 sporting a Ghoulbane esk looking sword. I know it's not the same sword but the look is also a reason to sport something.

Ok I understand those that RP or play the game min/max don't care but it would be a lie to say Vanity is not apart of this game. I will give up a look for far better stats in most cases however, I like originality over it all. I don't mind looking like everyone else up to lvl 20 hell even 25 but after 30 and on into the 50 and 60 there should be a wider range of armour to choose from. So don't worry about pushing another expantion or adventure pack until you start fixing loot tables full of semi rare drops to rare drops... I don't care if I will never see any of the uber loot gear but I do care that it's there if I want to work for it. As far as the rare harvested stuff that is less rare now... Thanks a fucking lot. It's rare and hard and not cheap for a reason, and that is about as getting different to someone or some newb_01 your gonna get now it's even less of a range. Please stop just handing us over everything we can get in a few days play. Make somethings difficult(read as* not time consuming rather puzzling) and rewarding so that when you earn an item you know that you earned it.

Here's another question where is this armour at? It's funny if you look through all those old pictures of things that never made it into live.

Bullshit

Ok I just spent the later part of an hour typing shit and this Blogger reset and wiped all that I wrote..

Quick rehash: I have been busy, dont got time to type, Love the new changes especially /Duel

That is all