It’s been a while

Wow,  life came at me for a bit there.

I’ve made some in-game accomplishments, primarily 2 GM Cartographer (still have Tyria to go) titles and I’m up to “I Have Many Leather-Bound Books” now. I also have nearly enough booze for Alehound.

In other news, I think I’m going to reformat Chronicles. I have so much I want to tell, but I’m not necessarily writing it in a linear fashion, either on paper, on my compy or in my head. I’m thinking of going with a timeline with links approach. I’m gonna mull over that for a bit.

Legendary Delver

I earned Legendary Delver this weekend polishing off the rest of my EotN titles (thank you EotN title weekend). I did a few CoF runs for cash and deldrimor points, but it was less than efficient and the groups were less than effective. I then turned my sights to slaughtering snowmen. This worked much more quickly. I found a group with a permasin and everything looked up from there.

I am 2 titles away from I have many leatherbound books. I’m not sure at this time which 2 titles those will be, or when I’ll earn them. I’m trying to farm to get more lockpicks so I can do chest runs. I have about 1/2 as much alcohol as I’ll need for Incorrigable Ale Hound and I should have what I need by Christmas. Throwing my focus into vanquishing/mapping will move things along at a steady pace. That is prolly the way to go.

I’ve been playing a N/Rt build as of late that focuses on healing. I’ll post more on that when I find time.

That’s it for now.

Secret Agent & Slayer of All

I added two more titles to my character today. After finishing up yet another HM Hero’s Handbook I was able to acquire enough points to put me over the top on my Ebon Vanguard title. Shortly thereafter, I joined a PUG (Pick Up Group) and did a Norn Farming Run to acquire the last of the points I needed for Norn.

This puts me up to 17 maxed titles. I plan on doing Snowman runs and helping people in HM dungeons until I reach my r10 Deldrimor (55k to go).

From there it is back to vanquishing and mapping. Charmaine (my Ele) is moving through Nightfall at the moment capping elites. I plan to take her to EotN to do some farming. I’m going to need lots of golds to identify, lots of gold to buy lockpicks and, well, lots of stuff generally. I’m opening every chest I see but my picks are disappearing faster than I can buy them. Perhaps I should open more normal mode chests and make good use of my 55% retention rate rather than my 25% rate in hard mode.

Next stop, Deldrimor and one campaign vanquished & mapped for 20 titles and Many Leather-Bound Books

Blood Build

I’ve been playing around with a build lately that I really enjoy. It is based around Vampiric Spirit.

Air of Superiority (Asura) Vamp Spirit, Vamp Gaze, Angorodon’s Gaze, Blood of the Aggressor, Foul Feast, Optional (I use Sig. Lost Souls, Well of Blood or a condition transfer skill for this spot), Rez.

It works out pretty well. I wear armor with Purity, Recovery and Restoration runes (decrease condition durations). This, a condition transfer skill (like Plague Sending) and the 20% chance of Air of Superiority removing all of my conditions allows me to keep energy up (Angorodon’s Gaze) and remove conditions from the party.

The 4 Life Steal skills are the main damage sources. I’ll assume you know how to point and click Additionally, Vampiric Spirit provides nice regen to offset any degen you suffer from hexes or, more importantly, the conditions you are pulling from your allies.

It doesn’t kick out a lot of damage, but the damage is consistent. You handle most of your own healing and take some of the pressure off of the monk with condition removal. It’s a fun build to play. I vanquished a couple of areas using it the other day.

Enjoy.

I’m Very Important

I’m officially Very Important.

I finished my HM Dungeon book today with a PUG doing Vloxen Excavation. We were actually quite effective, with exception of all they complaining…

I bought my Asura title with the proceeds from my HM book. My next goal is to do 2 more missions in HM and then complete a second HM Mission book to afford about 42k to max out Ebon Vanguard. I’m about 3k away from my Norn title, which will work itself out…or I can farm for it. and I’m about 70k or so away from my Dwarven title, which will also take care of itself once I get started murdering all of those snowmen to get their goodies.

After these 3 titles, I’ll be moving on to Vanquishing like it is my job.

Huge Update

There was a huge update today in GW. Lots of skill revamping and, in my opinion, some nice changes.

Ursan finally got the nerfbat hard. As an elite form with a 60 sec downtime, it pretty much made all of the 5-man Ursan builds useless. I guess people are going to have to do things the old fashioned way by using balanced builds (or gimmick builds).

I’m sure the changes to UW also helped to nerf ecto farming there even more (though I don’t farm that area, so I really can’t say how it was affected).

The following changes affect me, and therefore I’ll discuss them a bit more at length:

• Life Transfer: decreased recharge to 20 seconds. Functionality changed to: “Also hexes foes adjacent to target (6..12 second). Causes -3..8 Health degeneration. You have +3..8 Health regeneration.”
• Order of Undeath: increased recharge to 15; decreased Energy cost to 5. Functionality changed to: “All but one of your minions die. If that minion is non-Elite, it deals +5..30 more damage, has +5..20 Health regeneration, and attacks 33% faster (20 seconds).”
• Pain of Disenchantment: decreased casting time to 1 second; increased recharge time to 15 seconds. Functionality changed to: “Target foe loses 1..3 enchantments. Removal effect: that foe and all adjacent foes lose 10..100 Health.”
• Vampiric Spirit: functionality changed to: “Steal 5..50 Health from target foe. You have +5..10 Health regeneration (10 seconds).”

I’m very happy about Life Transfer. I enjoy the AoE nature of this skill and it is now considered the elite version of Suffering, rather than the elite version of Life Siphon. Spread the Degen around!

I’m very upset about Order of Undeath. Rather than it’s very effective previous use of dealing X extra damage (like the other Orders skills) for each minion and dealing you health damage, this new version gives you one weak berserking minion. It doesn’t add any armor to the minion (who is very likely to be below 20th level) and the regen barely counters the degen of the minion. You waste an elite that requires a second animate skill, when you can just as easily take a Flesh Golem. The damage output is comparable and you can enchant and put weapon skills on the Golem.

Pain of Disenchantment. This looks like fun. An elite enchant removal skill that also deals AoE. It’ll go great with Defile/Desecrate for quick AoE damage and enchant removal. I’m looking forward to playing with this skill.

While it does mess up one of my fun builds whereby I am an AoE life sucker…. I kind of like this version of Vampy Spirit better. It works well on a bar with other life steals and adds regen (a saccer’s best friend next to low max health). I’m looking forward to dusting off my old Medusa build to play with this one.

Other than these skills, the PvE skills I usually use haven’t changed much. Most of them received boons and the ones that were nerfed were only slightly so. Most of the PvE skills that received boons got them on the lower end of things, which doesn’t affect me since I’m r8 or better in all of those titles. It is nice for people who aren’t whoring for titles (like me) so they can have a higher benefit at lower ranks in the titles.

That is it for now I guess. More updates as I mess around with these changes. Feel free to post your comments as well.

-Belzan