Munzok's loot!

I was so excited about the Munzok kill last night, I forgot to post our winnings! I was showing off the Shadow Robe in the dressing room and Onra FD'd me as I was taking the screen shot!

Munzok Down! The Shadow Odyssey Cleared!

Dracos Argent Killed Munzok the Corrupter tonight! The Shadow Odyssey has been cleared!
Just over 21 minutes of fighting I dropped the hammer down for the kill shot!


Post #150!

I don't care what you say...

Pullin' Agro!

So this may be my final post as a hardcore raider, maybe as an EQ2 player. I would hate to say it, as much love as I have for this game, it might be over.

If you've read my twitter posts lately, you may have noticed my anger at SOE due to the upcoming nerfs to Avatar gear. I am not really happy at all and the hardcore raiding community is in pretty much agreement, I have yet to find a hardcore raider say that these changes are even close to acceptable. You can find these raider rants on the official boards and on flames, I don't feel like linking the 50+ page posts because they would just put me in a worse off mood. Maybe later.

Why am I so angry? Avatar gear on test has been nerfed, some of it by 75%! This gear is earned by defeating Avatars, which are aspects of some of the most powerful beings (gods) in Norrath. These fights are generally the hardest, most scripted and take the most concentration to win.

The community mod lady, Kiara seems to think that the gear is still the best gear in the game, as she said to me via Twitter, she's either ignorant or just misinformed. I would hope that she is just misinformed, because there is no way anyone can be this retarded.

To give you an idea how bad this nerf is, I will be replacing some of my current TSO Avatar gear with pieces form past expansions. 2 pieces from ROK and 1 peice from EOF, it's quite sad that I am going as far back as two years and a half years to get items that will get somewhat near the same qulity of what I have now. I am glad I am kind of a pack rat. One item will be replaced by a collection quest another by a drop from a heroic instance. And this is just my "healing" stance set. This does not include my dps sets and variations! That's only if I decide to stay, but I wouldn't be surprised if you end up seeing my toons up on The Bazaar after GU #53 goes live.

What a joke, if you wanted to push your most dedicated raiders away from the game, this is the best way, if you wanted to turn EQ2 in to a causal raiding game, this will probably do it.

Honestly, right now in this part of the expansion, how does our Avatar gear hurt the game? I could understand if this was the beginning of a new expansion, where gear simply gets degraded because new gear comes out. Also there is degradation system in the works for the next expansion. These items will probably will be worth jack at 90 anyway if I understand it, but to gut them right now seems idiotic...

Oh Yeah, we killed Avatar of Valor and Flames last night. There was no excitement in the bids as there usually is when it comes to our Avatar kills, Items were going to almost minimum bids except for one item simply because the nerfs on it will be unknown.

Avatars killed & Lazy Grump

I am feeling kinda lazy today... So I am copying and pasting my last few days of twitter posts. :)

8/16/09 - Killed C:Anashti & won her charm Charm of Anashti. Cleared YIS, Killed Zarrakon. Then did the DD. Cleared Kurns, and EA! 8 shards!

8/14/09 - Killed Avatar of Mischief and the rest of DA killed Avatar of Growth while I was at work. , I hate SOLO leveling alts, 77 Pali LFG. Ding 198 AA on Grump last night!

8/12/09 Avatar of War down ~3:30. PotAO, cleared start to end ~45 mins! Zarrakon dead. Finished Raids in record time! YiS, MMB open tomorrow.

Avatar of Disease, Avatar of Justice Dead.

We killed Avatar of Disease Saturday night. I won the Charm of Bertoxxulous, I took it mainly for the reuse and cast speed along with the 3% trigger chance bonus for my gear.

Last night, we cleared Palace of The Ancient One, Zarrakon's Abysal Chamber, cleared up to Munzok in Munzok's Material Bastion (Apparently, Munzok is still unkillable, months after the zone has been released, wtf is up with that?) and finished the night off with Avatar of Justice.

My alt Grouser won the Hoop of Vampiric Celerity off Zarrakon, puting him steps closer to being the best equiped Templar alt on the server. :)

I posted on twitter a while back asking if anyone knew the lore on Zarrakon and his Abysal chamber, which is by far one of my favorite zones. Who is Zarrakon?

Avatars D.E.D. DEAD!

We killed Valor, War, Mischief this past week. We also killed Ykesha and Anashti in PoA!

We got our monthly plat split, thanks DA and Butcherblock for the 840pp!

And Boom goes the raid!

So tonight we killed Avatar of Health, Flame and Hate. On Health we had a comical kill! At 2% of Grummus's health I cast Verdict an Inquisitor spell, which an Epic mob down to 1hp, Grummus died and at the same time, the faliure effect triggered and killed most of the raid. We also cleared Ykesha's Inner Stronghold, killed Zarrakon and killed half of Palace of the Ancient One, which we will finish tommorow. At this pace we'll have a couple days off this week!

Avatar Kills!

The summer has made me lazy! We've killed a bunch of Avatars since my last update.
We killed; Anashti, Mischief, Fear, Valor, Justice and Tranquility.

Did I spew that? I mean spawn that?

Shenanigans!

So Friday, July 10th was my birthday, I turned 30, ugh. We had a party at my house that involved lots of vodka, Redbull and beer (pong), and then hit last call at two bars (Not quite sure how that happened!). It was a black out drunk that night, and even a week after, I am still hearing stories of that night...

EQ2 Stuff

Since my last post, we've killed Avatar of War, Disease, Flame and Growth.

Contested Anashti Sul down! ToMC, Munzok's Material Bastion

First we headed to Tomb of the Mad Crusader and wrecked it pretty quickly, not much to say there.

It felt good!

Contested Anashti became a struggle after the proc changes, we spent an hour on her last night and failed taking her down before the end of raid time. Today we changed our strat just a tiny bit and wrecked her on our first pull.

Worst zone ever!

After that, we ventured in to MMB, a zone which I am starting to hate less and less... We killed up to Gozak, and made a couple of attempts on Munzok. Onra won a helm, it's quite shiny, you'll need to check the link out in game to see the apperance!

Avatar of Growth and Mischief down!

Avatar of Growth dropped me a shiny new Symbol of the Faydark! Avatar of Mischief died and dropped a bow for Cylock.

Then we went to palace and cleared instance with a bugged Anashti, re-set the zone and cleared the zone again, two Anashti kills in one night and both dropped the same loot.

Off to Zarrakon for the final raid of the night and smashed his face pretty quickly.

Health, Disease and Flame down, Ykesha drops loot!

Last night we killed Avatars of Health, Disease and Flame! We then cleared YIS, the Crazzel won the Band of Mreeptahp's Fury off Ykesha, with his massive dkp and 100% attendance. Seven people bid max on it, I don't think I will be seeing this ring for a while. :)


Alts:
I wanted to experiment, I used a chunk of my plat split to power level my new alt Pali, Grumbly with collections, from 27, to 57. With a little bit of adventuring I got him to 62 and 35aa last night and bought a full set of master crafted armor and jewelry. I had probably spent over 500plat , buying roughly 150 collections and the armor. I have not bought spells or ca's yet.
I was a little upset that it the power level expiriment didn't level him higher, but I guess I can deal, now I just need to figure out how to play the character, casting order and all that wonderful stuff. :P

One interesting thing I found out about paladins is they have about as many heals as my Inquisitor, save emergancy heals, I could be wrong, but it seems that if you make a gear set more in the line of a traditional healers set, they could fill in as a back up healer.

I should have spent that plat on buying the remaining collections needed for Grump, since he's only a few AA from being from cap and Grouser could use a couple masters. Oh well, 8 more plat splits to go, before the next expansion. :)

Grouser, got his mythical! I know I said in the past that buying updates was cheesy, but since DA will never go back to the hell hole, piece of shit that is Veshan's Peak, ever, ever again. I snagged an update for cheap from a guild that is still progressing from VP.

Sigh.

Avatar of Growth, Crap loot!

It's Friday and I feel like I havn't done anything, EQ2 wise, I have only seen a little bit of the new content for GU52, which was a hanfull of the Kylong Plains quests and one named mob in Kurn's Tower x2 ding 193 AA & server 1st kill shot on Sir Roland. I guess I am going to have to do some reading in lore to find out how or why "Knights" ended up in the Void and are now gaurding Kurn's Tower.

Last night We killed Avatar of Growth with 3x groups, and she dropped some horrid forearms, the rest of the night was "off" even though I did join in on a couple of raids to help Cylock's and Crazzel's alt work on Mythical updates.

The night before we did Palace of the Ancient One up to Anashti, which completly bugged out on us, spawning multiple Void Annihilators and causing us to whipe. Then the encounter never reset! We are waiting for a server reset to put the encounter back to the way it is supposed to be. As soon as some one would revive handfulls of broken encounter adds would rain down and kill them.

I had plans to do an oppinion post of GU52, before the RL issues crept up on me, since I have not had a lot of time to expirment with the changes.

Things I do like so far;

• GPU Shadows! I can now fully take advantage of my video cards in my system! The game looks totally diffrent! It looks like a diffrent game! Even our lower end machines at the store can display GPU shadows and customers have shown interested in the game, because it looks nice.
  
  
• Research Assistants! With Grouser my alt, I can now grab the last master that needed, Unyeilding Benidiction, sure it will take a couple weeks for them to research it. In the past it was near impossible to find, and if it ever hit the market it would be scooped right up.

• TSO Instanced legendary loot on the market! Well, some. at the beginging of the xpac I was dissapointed to see that all the legendary loot from the instances were no-trade.
  
  
• The sky didn't fall with the proc changes! I was scared that these proc changes would make some of my gear completly unusable, mainly my ward gear. It didn't get raped like Overloaded heal did. While not as good as it used to be, pieces like Rune Etched Helm (lonb line for Faded Black Hood) and Hoop of Vampiric are still amazing.

Things I don't like;

• Proc changes for my "Proc DPS" set, no more 17,500+ dps parses. It was all based off "reverse damage" procs and modifying the base damage amount. While I am sure, the set is still capible of doing damage, it will be greatly reduced. I guess I will be able to tell later, when we fight an un-bugged Anashti.

Contested Anashti Down!

We killed Anashti tonight, first pull on an off night!

Wow, Dracos Argent is ranked WW #6...5....

According to Guild Progress, Dracos Argent is ranked WW#5 and of course #1 on Butcherblock!

That's pretty pimp!

Anashti, Ykesha, Avatar of Valor & Justice!

My computer hated me last night!

Right at the beginning of pulling Anashti in PoAO, my computer crashed. My UPS apparently failed and started beeping like crazy and it shut my computer down.

No record dps for last night on Anashti last night, Boo!
Right at the end of Avatar of Justice my computer decided to crash again. Fortunatly, it was right as the chest was opened so I was able to get the gold! I placed a minimum bid on and won the Charm of the Tribunal to complete my neutral charm set, which will be added to my melee and spell DPS sets.
The only two other charms I would like to get my hands on would be Rodcet Nife (Health) and Bertoxxoulus (Disease), but I am going to wait untill they go to minimum bid.

We headed to Ykesha's Innerstronghold to finish off Ykesha. With that done we headed off to Valor.

We struck down Valor easy and for near minimum bid I got the Server disco on a new BP.

Tonight!

Tonight, we reset and cleared Ykesha's Innerstronghold again, 1st pulling Ykesha!

We then went to Munzok's Material Bastion and cleared up to Umzok, we will clear the rest tommorow night and hit any Avatars that might be up and probably do Palace and Tomb of the Mad Crusader. After raids we hit up Ward of Elements with some of our alts.

Gozak down!

We killed Gozak last night for a server 1st. Munzok remains!

Grats Lilya on winning the Faded Black Hood!

TSO CLEAR! High Parse! War and Mischief!

We killed Ykesha tonight!

We also killed Avatar of War and Mischief tonight!

NEW HIGH PARSE ON ANASHTI SUL!

17.5K+ DPS!

Check out Dracos Argent's websites for more updates!

Lots of Avatars dead!

Seek and Destroy!
Since my last post Avatar of Health, Avatar of Disease, Avatar of Storms died, all on the same night. Avatar of Flame gave us no problem last night which he usually does due to Lava Storm's lag. Instead Anashti Sul's pulls seemed to be at the mercy of server lag, it took a while to kill her, but we did. Tonight a good avatar should spawn, if it does, it dies.

I love the Vudo that you do! :)
New record! I hit just shy of 15k DPS sustained on instanced Anashti, I was at over 24kdps before I died to agro, I tanked Anashti for about a whole second before falling over dead.

WTF, Yes, we're selling loot!
I've been getting a lot (8 today alone) of PMs both positive and negitive about us selling raid loot. We farm instances quite a bit, generally it's only for a couple of items. If we don't have a use for the gear, it goes up for sale. If someone needs the gear and is willing to make a bid, great, if not it's muted, which is IMHO a waste.

Some of our starting prices for end game gear may seem high, but there is no other guild on our server killing end game mobs, which means the gear is fairly rare. For the folks asking about a reserve list of items please send a tell to Gerrod, Onra or Vudo about this, I don't know if it's possible, but it never hurts to ask.

That platinium goes in to funding our guild hall, all potions and poisons and masters. The remaining amount is split among the raiders at the end of the month.

Avatar of Valor, Avatar of Storms & Pimp DPS!

We killed both Avatar of Valor and Storms and then headed to kill Anashti in Palace of the Ancient One with our quickest kill yet! I hit my highest DPS parse tonight on Anashti...

I was second on the DPS parse!
11,000+ DPS!
Unbelivable?

Check out the screen shot below!

Of course you'll have to figure this kind of DPS out on your own! :)

Three more Avatars dead in one day!

Avatar of Below, Growth and War fall to Dracos Argent!

Even though the fights are easy for Dracos Argent, I hate dancing fights. Brell and Tunare both require you to move while you fight them. Spell, Spell, Forward. Spell, Spell, Back. Spell, Spell, Left, Spell, Spell Right. It gets annoying!

We then went to Ykesha's and cleared up to Ykesha and his minions, which we will try to kill on Sunday.

Avatar - Anashti Sul - DEAD!

Avatar Anashti Sul dead to Dracos Argent!

Only Ykesha remains for completion of The Shadow Odyssey, not counting the last two names in Munzok's Material Bastion.

You just can't make this stuff up!

So I am at work, For those who don't know, I work at Area51 Cortland. We sell used DVDs, CDs, Video Games, Table games like Magic: The Gathering, Dungeons & Dragons and Minis. We also have T-shirts & Fantasy Statuary and many other things that If I were to list it would take all day. It's a fun job, I brag about being able to play games all day, hell I have raided Avatars at work before.

We often get our share of unique and wacky customers, "Superman" who is a skinny black guy who thinks he is Superman and dresses up in a custom made Superman outfit, cape and all. The "Preacher" an overwaight head case who walks down Main St. just about every morning with his Mtn Dew bottle shouting what he thinks is God's word, which turns out to be gibberish most of the time. Today an new customer came in, I am going to call him "The Witch"

So an older guy comes in the store a few minutes ago, even before I have a chance to say hello to him, he says "Just here to look at your CDs" He walks over to the DVD section instead of the CD section so that puzzles me a bit. After a couple minutes of looking, he says "Got anything on witches?" I tell him I think we may have Blair witch project in our horror section or Harry Potter in the kid section and walk around the counter intending to help him find it. He looks at me and says "How do I become a witch?"

"Uh, Uh... I have no clue" I say caught off guard of the question, "We have these Harry Potter movies right here" Pointing to the kids section. "It's all about kids that go to school to learn how to learn magic". I hold the DVD up to show him and he yells "FAKES" and starts waving his hands like he's casting a spell then he stops mid cast, as the dragon candle holders we have, caught his attention and walks towards the front of the store looking at the statuary and candle holders. He abruptly decides he has to leave and kind of jogs out the door, I say "Have a great day!". On the way out he screams "I PUT A SPELL ON YOU!".

New crazy customer of the day...

Avatar of Health Down. Munzok's is going to send me to..

MUNZOK'S MATERIAL BASTION = WORST RAID ZONE EVER!

Simply put, the effort on mobs does not match the rewards, some of these mobs a drop CRAP loot and are harder than Avatars. Yes, AVATARS are easier than this zone.

These are just some of the quotes of DAYS of working on Umzok.

f'this zone.
Munzok's = HOS 2.0
this zone sucks.
We've killed avatars, yet we can't get past this cock-block mob!
If I go LD it's intentional.
It's ice cream night.
Can we go kill an Mischief? it would be more fun than this.
my dog is puking blood. gotta go.
Oh nos I am going link dead.
Umzok is making me poor, /beg
Can we go kill health, PLEASE!

Patch notes claim that Umzok was nerfed.

Yeah right? LOOK AT THE ZONE AGAIN!

We've officially given up on Munzok's Material bastion.


Oh yeah, we killed the Avatar of Health.

Avatar of Fear, Avatar of Valor Down!

We killed Avatar of Fear tonight, only 4 mobs to go so we can complete The Shadow Odyssey! Valor fell tonight as well!

We also killed Gynok and his brothers tonight as well. Yawn.

We killed a bunch of stuff.

Yeah, so things died and it gave us stuff!

Tranquility, Hate, War... all dead. As much as I love beating up children, Tranquility should be tweaked a bit, It's by far the easiest Avatar, easier than most instanced TSO content.

Avatar of Fear will die tonight! He's finally up on the server, I think one of our members force spawned him, just so he'd be up to kill.

What we have left to expansion completion:

• Avatar of Fear
• Anashti Sul (Contested)
  
• Ykesha
• Gozok
• Munzok

Avatar of Flame Down! Rune Etched Helm FTW!

Flame burns out!
Finally, the Avatar of Flame falls! We killed the Avatar of Flame for a server 1st after two nights of pulling this time, we finally got a lucky pull in at at lucky hour! Grats Ubah & Reddevil on your sever disco's!

Rune Etched Helm!
WOOHOO! I finally got it! One of the best items in the game for a healer! Crazzel, Reddevil, Gerrod, Seijakuri and myself went in and we killed Dreadlord D'Somni. After a year of waiting it's finally mine! I am so happy =). Yes, I know there is a new one from Munzok's Material Bastion, which is way better, but our fury and warden can wear it. If it's a common item, I guess we'll all eventually "upgrade", but I doubt it is common at all.

No Vega NO! :(

Mad Crusader, Ykesha's, Zarrakon and Pimp loot!

We started off the night with Tomb of the Mad crusader, and blew through that fairly quickly.

Then to Ykesha's Inner Stronghold and killed Tyrannus the Dark, which dropped a Templar helm pattren that I scooped up for Grouser. Then we spanked Field General Uktap, earning disco on the Dagger for Foresaken.


We then hit Zarrakon's Aybysal Chamber, killed him and...

Avatar of Mischief, Avatar of Valor and Palace of the Ancient One

We didn't continue with Munzok's last night because we needed to keep on track to keep our normally rotating content up to date.

F.U. Void Annihilators!
We started with Palace of the Ancient One did a full clear on that zone in about two hours. I have really become to hate the Annihilators in the zone, these are non-named (which means they drop nothing but junk loot) mobs that look like giant floating stingrays. The giant floating stingrays of doom have a mem-wipe that generally 1 shots anyone they switch too, it feels like a constant rez fest!

Avatar of Mischief
Even though he's a fairly easy Avatar for us, he's one that I don't like to pull. He can be a real pain in the ass, like he was last night. We did get him in one pull, but one of the first AOE's tagged me dead, reactive up and all. By the time I got up, the group was going low and I didn't have enough time to get everyone up to green before we went splat. Even with us going down we still managed to spank him well under the time limit.

Avatar of Valor
What ever you do, don't heal! For us healers with itchy trigger fingers on the heal buttons this mob is bad. =) He punishes heals by disarming, or de-targeting the target of the heal. This is a mob that am very happy to take off most of my healing gear and go DPS, with the occasional spot heal.

Gearing Grouser!
A little while back, I mentioned I had a Sarnak Temlar alt, Grouser. Last night out of Palace, I was able to pick up the T4 pattern for shoulders and gloves. That makes 4 out of the 7 pieces and the shoulders are the strongest piece! Earlier this week I finished the fabled epic quest, which I am impressed with, because I get easily annoyed with long quest lines.

(whine)
Please, stop sucking Butcherblock!
Yes, I just called out the entire server!
I am not trying to be a jerk, or be on a high horse, but the quality of play has really slacked on our server. There are only a handful the players I will group with outside Dracos Argent who I will do a pickup with. That's pretty sad on one of the most populated servers in the game! I have never been in so many failed pickup groups. I have stopped doing pickup groups... It's so depressing.
(/whine)

Avatars Killed, Munzok's Material Bastion!

Monday, Dracos Argent cleared Tomb of the Mad Crusader, then ventured out to Lesser Faydark to took out Avatar of Growth. We then hit Zek and took down Avatar of War! We spent the rest of the night working on Avatar of Flame and again he slipped through our fingers.

Last night we hit Munzok's Material Bastion, many of us were un-impressed with the zone design, as it was a copy-paste of Anchor of Bazzul, except with epics! We took out the first three epics in the zone before raid time ran out. So far we've seen some a couple pieces of gear, a nice healer symbol dropped with 5 casting speed and 5 reuse for benificial spells. Hopefully we can make further progression tonight, if not clear the zone.

Avatar of Storms down!

We took out Avatar of Storms last night, Crazzel snagged probably the best healer Breastplate in the game...

Avatar of Justice, The Seventh Hammer Dead, Field General Uktap Dead

We killed The Seventh Hammer; Avatar of Justice last night, I dropped my hammer down and got the kill shot on our Server 1st.

We also killed Field General Uktap last night, after a weeks worth of pulling, we changed out strategy a tiny bit shot and got him on the first pull of the night. Another server first kill shot! The loot is so disappointing that a server first breastplate went to an alt.

Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger!

Dracos Argent server 1st the Ward of Elements x2 raid zone and now we're waiting for the 4x raid zone to come out on Tuesday! While it's fairly easy for our guild to clear, we have yet to see all the loot from the zone so we may farm it in the future!

Anashti from Palace of the Ancient One has been killed twice since my last post. Avatar of Flame evaded us on Monday night and was not around when the server came back up on Tuesday (I don't think we would have had a chance any way) Lavastorm was packed and there were 5 instances of Lavastorm open! Tuesday we killed Spoiled Bristlebane's day by killing his Avatar.

Avatar of War & Growth Down! Zarrakon Bugged out!

Two more contested down for the count! Growth and War down! I'm pretty sure Avatar of Undeath, Anashti Sul will be the next evil Avatar up, but we're still missing a neutral from the current spawn cycle.

Zarrakon is broken encounter which lead to some comedy last night when only a handful of folks could target him. Which kind of puts a halt to gear progression on him until he's fixed.

Want to buy loot rights to Rune Etched Helm! Only three have dropped for Dracos Argent since the release of Shard of Hate the item is heavily wieghted off the easiest named mob in the zone. We can work out a platinum deal or we could possibly trade items that we would normally mute or sell from current raid zones. PST!

Rumor of the Elements of Corruption will be active on Bristlebane Day!

Palace of The Ancient One cleared! Anashti Sul is dead!

Palace of The Ancient One cleared! Another Server first for Dracos Argent!
Anashti Sul is dead to Dracos Argent. Her deity quests are now unlocked on Butcherblock!


Currently, I am just starting the third quest line for Anashti, hopefully I will be completing it tonight!

We then ventured to Ykesha's Inner Stronghold and killed Tyrannus for a server first and I earned yet another Kill shot!

Grats BB and Good luck on the deity quest lines!

Disease, Health and Mischief Down!

Last night was a fun night! we hit up Tomb of the Mad Crusader, clearing it, then headed out to Antonica to kill some Avatars.

Our first stop was to Avatar of Disease, taking him out with Deblin earning Chain Links of Hatred, which is a sick scout BP, Argenteyes won Disease's charm. Then we traveled less than 100 meters away to take down Grummus from the Avatar of Health fight. After a few pulls we killed Grummus and Satarah got the Charm of Health and Crazzel got the Symbol of Growth. A new version of the Staff of Unending Growth, which he has drooled over for the last two expansions. Then we headed over to Rivervale to kill Mischief after a couple of bad starts, we killed him and Vudo walked away with Storm of Healing, which seems to be a nice healing wrist item.

I hope that Avatars continue to drop healing items, last expansion was pretty dry for healing items.

Avatar of Hate, Valor, Tranquity and Storms!

Storms and Tranquility down today, Hate Yesterday and Valor killed on Monday! It's been a nice week for contested content for DA!

Avatar of Growth down

Avatar of Growth dead again! Grats to Cylock on his new BP and Lilya on her charm!

OW!, Oh and a pile of porn!

Ever had one of those days that just start off bad? First things first, I fell out of bed this morning, landing head first, that's on the right side of my head.

The past couple weeks we've had a lot of warm days that melts the snow and has left a nice sheet of ice in our driveway, you know that thick wet ice.

Then I managed to slip and fall on the ice and hit my left side of my head on the car door while opening it, also managing to scrape my knee and elbow on the ice mixed with gravel and during my fall I hurt my chest, head arms and a knee and my neck hurts like hell.

After pulling myself in to the car I sat for a minute to relax and take a deep breath. I started the car and put it in reverse. I am stuck in the Ice, tires are just spinning, after about a couple minutes of going forward and reverse and left and right, I finally found a path out and while in reverse the car starts to slide, stuck again! I manage to find my way out of the ice a bit quicker, but the frustration of the morning is already kicked in. You know when you start yelling at inanimate objects and imaginary people in the sky... The f'bomb was uttered probably about 200 times in a few minute period.

I get to work and sit down and my first customer was one of the local wack jobs, who for some reason hang around Main St. in the morning. This guy was yelling how he got thrown out of the bookstore just down the street. He didn't explain why, but for the next 32 minutes he was very vocal about his fascination with hand cuffs and pepper spray, and uses "non-judicial use" as he called it, he started getting disgusting and I had to ask him to leave.

If he wasn't one of the local crazy guys that wonder the street for no apparent reason I would have called the police.

Lunch time, I put one of the micro-wave burgers in and set it for the recommended two minutes, well about forty seconds in to the cooking I hear a loud POP! The burger literally exploded in side of the micro wave.

Game over man, Game over...



A little Jack Black and Lonely Island... 'Cause it's funny and I need funny right now.

If I didn't need help I wouldn't be f*cking standing here!

So yeah, the day just keeps getting worse, At about 1:50, I decided to go take a quick bio, it was a #1 so I didn't even think about locking the door, I should have. Sorta.

I heard someone come in the store as I was doing my business so I quickly finished up, shook it off and washed my hands. I walked out of the bathroom while drying my hands and there's an older lady, probably in her mid 40's. I ask if she needed any help and yelled, IF I DIDN'T NEED HELP I WOULDN'T BE F*CKING STANDING HERE!

Other than being shocked at her yelling at me there was a pile of porno DVDs sitting on the counter. She claimed that her son, who is a minor, purchased the Adult DVDs at our store and demanded to speak with the owner and all that jazz that unhappy customers do.

Attempting to be as nice as possible I explained to her that we don't sell porno, never have sold porno and pointed out that our store is pretty kid friendly as we sell Video games new and used, Magic the Gathering, D&D and Yu-Gi-Oh! (Our store's website is here! Yes, Gerrod* I will be doing work, eventually today!) Still unconvinced, she demanded that the money be returned, the employee who sold him the porno be fired. Since Gerrod was working the day she claimed her sone bought all the porno, I jokingly said I would gladly fire my boss. I explained that we've never sold porn, never will sell porn, seemingly convinced she finally left with her pile of porn.

I still hurt, but it's not as bad as the time I twisted a testicle...

* Gerrod is the owner of Area 51 the store I work at and is also one of the guild leaders of Dracos Argent. I have raided at work.


A song for Gerrod...

Avatar of Health Down & War down!

"My boner wont go down!"

Avatar of Heath "dies" to DA! Actually we didn't kill the Avatar of Health, we helped Rodcet Nife kill off Diseases' ugly puss ridden giant buddy Grummus, while Health was fighting Disease. It is not an easy encounter, with Butcherblock's lag, but it's one heck of a fight. I don't quite understand why we lost faction with Health, since we were helping him rid Norrath of Disease's presance. Anyway, Crazzel won the charm of Rodcet Nife, the best healer charm. One down seven to go 'till I will be able to get mine. :)

Grummus dead!

We also killed Avatar of War last night, and Argenteyes got some silly caster BP that is like amazing or somthing and his DPS went up bunches.

Valor & Disease Down!

Last night we took Avatar of Disease and Avatar of Valor down with ease and earned some decent loot. I picked up Valor's charm for minimum bid, simply to complete a set so I would get +10 base heal and have an additional lotto heal proc when I am in DPS mode. Also I know I am going to be one of the last of the healers to complete the amazing Avatar of Growth and Avatar of Health charm combo, it's my own fault really. I went nuts early on to get my 6 piece TSO set and have replaced almost every slot in my inventory except for an earring and my Weapons, Trixy Cane and Star of Malice.

From Valor I also picked up a Master 1 Repent for my 80 Templar alt Grouser. Yes, I have two clerics. Why? Grouser who is a Sarnak was originally intended to become the Inquisitor for DA and was named Curmudgeon. Due to time constraints it would have been easier to betray and level Grump than Curmudgeon.

Sometime in October of last year I got a visit from a GM while sitting at the broker, some one Butcherblock petitioned the characters name as "a sexually offensive act" and when it means an "irritable and complaining person". I was more amused than anything that some one thought it was offensive and a GM bought it, I picked Grouser as Curmudgeon was hard for some to spell anyway.

Down, Down, Down we go, no where to stop...
I finally decided it was time to buy the Ethernaught's collection for both characters, I figured that I could get away spending at least 500 plat and had a nice chunk left over. So I bought two sets at roughly 180 each. After that I decided to go hunting for blue shinies, and I picked up quite a few, but I needed a bunch more and even though most blue shinies are pretty plain jane my completest addiction kicked in and I kept spending platinum until I was down to a meager 10 plat on each toon.

Three Avatars down in one night! Growth, Storms and Hate

Tonight was a great night for Dracos Argent! We took down Avatar of Growth, Storms and Hate all down!

Look at my new charm!

Valor Down, Post #100!

Post #100!

Valor down, Server 1st!

I was able to get my Set Shoulder on Thursday, which made my 6 piece set!

Avatar of War down.

We killed Avatar of War last night. Yay...

I got my set pants the other night, from Gynok. One more piece to go, shoulders.

Zarrakon's going to give them to me tonight!

Yeah... Happy Erollisi/Valentine’s Day!

Crazzel in rat form and Onra in the Purple Void Armor!

Avatar of Hate down again!

We took down Avatar of Hate again last night, Cylock picked up a pretty cool helm for minimum DKP. Then went to give Avatar of Health a try while we waited for the timer on Zarrakon reset.

The nerf on Soul Shattering Band from a 10% stone skin to a 5% was noticable, for the first time on a Zarrakon fight, I was running low on power and had to use some tricks to stay at my comfort level of power. Previously, just wearing Soul Shattering Band would keep me and my group at full power during the entire fight and it was a constant flow of power.

Watch out Below!

Avatar of Below down! It is a couple days late reporting on taking down the "giant dwarf", we took him down and scored some more nice tank loot for Cylock. It is Another server 1st, World wide 6th and another kill shot for me. Unfortunately we really did not get any decent screen shots so there is nothing to post.

Disease down yet again! Gynok gave me new loot!

Disease Cured?
(ugh these titles get worse every time)
Last night we killed disease, to our surprise we found that SOE ninja'd in a new AOE which we didn't expect, or we would have killed him on our first pull! After we figured out what needed to be done to beat him, we took him out with ease. Another Avatar killshot for me and a new BP for Onra!


Tomb of the Mad Crusader!
We took down the entire zone in less than an hour, they really need to put smart loot on Xebnok and Gynok pattrens ffs! Alts that don't get much play have helms already! Anyway I picked up a new belt and server disco from Gynok. (image coming soon)

Ykesha's Inner stronghold!
After a silly bumpy start in YIS, we cleared up to Tyrannus the dark to try to figure how to kill him, we spent a couple of hours trying to figure him out and I think we may be able to get him tonight.

Yeah, we rule. Avatar of War and Tranquility defeated!

War and Peace?
We beat both the Avatar of War and Avatar of Tranquility last night. The former was a server 1st and yeah, I got the kill shot. Both of these kills earned some nice loot and further our goal as one of the (EQ2Flames) top world wide raiding guilds for this tier.


I just hope some of the more unique avatars start spawning so we can get some time on them to kill.

Avatar of Hate Down Server 1st!

Another avatar down, this time we killed Avatar of Hate. We got him just before magic hour and got some good loots. A server 1st for DA and a world wide kill #8, putting us on EQ2 Flames's list of awesomeness once again! Earlier in the day we ripped up Tomb of the Mad Crusader killing everything in record time, Gynok is officially a wuss at this point.

Tonight we take on Zarrakon once again, it's going to be fun!

Zarrakon Server First, Growth Down!

Last night we had a great raid night! We took Zarrakon down for the server first and I got the kill shot! (I love them kill shots!) What's odd is that he seemed damn near impossible last week, our best pull was getting him to the 50% mark, but this week he seemed much easier. I think because our attempts were before the "nerf". The fight lasted a little over 8 minutes. It's too bad his loot sucks. (for now!)

I belive our Zarrakon kill puts us in the top 10 World wide.

One of the Avatars I hate to the most was up, Avatar of Growth. While Growth is fairly easy, we took her down on the third try, I hate this avatar HATE it. Ultimma got a nice BP off her, that is going to hit the nerf bat soon...

Safari for Windows is actually good!

I normally would not use an Apple product, save for an iPod, but today I was prompted to download Safari for Windows, Apple's internet browser. I am really impressed. While it doesn't seem to have the plug in support as Firefox, but it is surprisingly fast and it has cool RSS support which is pretty cool for all the blogs I read.

Give it a try. Let me know what you think!

Steady progression

Palace
We've been progressing nicely over the last week. We've taken down Pentaclypse and his void brother Utraclypse on different runs and Mynzak twice, legitimatley, we're not wiping the adds or what ever the bug is that resets the encounter.

Burning DKP!
I picked up some "loot for later" in Palace as well, as it is being upgraded on test at the moment (test items posted).The Bangle is pretty wicked, once it hits live, an extra lotto cure and heal bonus is always nice. it's too bad it's not base heal amount, oh well. :)


Vegaxe and Cylock have picked up thier shoulder pattrens off from Mynzak, I can't wait to get mine.

Avatar of Growth Deflowerd, Gynok x2 killed!

So tonight was a crazy busy night! We killed the Avatar of Growth tonight (I got the kill shot!)

Grat's Crazzel on the Charm, and Mordrulle on the Spirit Draining Wristguard!

Then we headed off to ToMC to kill Gynok before our timer expired on it and we spanked him on our first pull. We reset our timers and cleared the zone again and took down Gynok again on our first pull. From Gynok to Gynok was took us about a half hour! The zone is officially on farm status! Oh and on our Second Gynok kill Satarah got the server disco Bjorn's Wistle!

Then we headed out to Palace an killed Switchmaster, before the end of our raids.

Gynok Moltar Dead to Dracos Argent!

It's a couple days late posting this news, but we took down Gynok and his brothers in the Tomb of the Mad Crusader Tuesday night, it was a server first for DA. I got the kill shot with Verdict!

Butcherblock lag & Reverse Damage

Surprise! You're lagged!
Something needs to be upgraded on Butcherblock, the constant server end lag is getting almost unbearable. I can understand high populations area having lag, but when you are in a raid instance for example Palace of the Overlord and another raid enters a separate instance causing the whole server to stop for over 5 seconds while they enter the zone, it's just annoying.

Another lag area that needs to be fixed are mobs that actually create lag, until the other day I have rarely seen this happen, but with less than 50 people in The Thundering Steeps including our raid, fighting The Avatar of Storms was almost impossible. During the fight he summons several mobs that are "Storms" at the same time, I have seen 20 of them at a time spawn during the encounter. In the previous tier they were trivial annoyances that are killed as part of the encounter, they usually die in less than 10 seconds after they spawn. But on Sunday it was a diffrent story, as the waves of the storms would spawn, the server would just lag out, causing several people to go link dead or lag out the zone to the point where the mobs have free reign on the players while they were still waiting for the clients to catch up. When a mob causes a a packet loss during an encounter there has something to be done on SOE's end. Please ftlog upgrade your servers!

Reverse Damage!
Was originally inspired by our fury Vegaxe's addiction to DPS. He found during Trakanon that he could do 7k+ dps on the mob using his AA ability and gear that has reverse damage procs on it. The gear specifically is what I am going to discus here, some of it can only be obtained on raids, but there are options you can use outside of raid.

In a raid setting you need to proc the gear, a way of taking lots of damage little damage, fast, to accomplish this you need a fight that has lots of AoEs (Such as Trakonon) or you need something like Mortal Coil.



I put on a player in my group who is going to take a bit of damage and since I am usually in the mage group, I put it on our "20k Warlock", Mordrulle, our Wizard, you look at him funny and dies Argenteyes or Gerrod an illusionist who fires off spells like a machine gun. These guys are pretty much the best when it comes to blowing shit up, they make healing a challenge.

Sometimes I am placed in the off-tank group during Gynock Moltar in Tomb of the Mad Crusader, which I place it on Onra our almost un-kill-able Shadow knight (Deathknight for you WoW folks out there, which btw have been in EQ2 since launch).

While the actual share pain proc will very rarely save players from being one shot killed, it does help ease the healing of a player who spikes or takes lots of damage over time. Now that you are sharing their pain, you need a way to protect yourself, while taking this damage. I use Soul Shattering band which will stone skin the incoming damage, as long as it procs, which it does constantly. You can also use gear with "Dispersion" or "Templar's Dispersion" these are generally on the market you can do a search for those in the ability field of the broker, most of the Dispersion pieces are mage wearable only, while the "Templar's Dispersion" pieces are for Pali's, SK's, Templars and Inquisitors.


So now that you've got your source of damage, and protection from that damage, now it's time to redirect that damage, the easiest way to do this is with a couple consumable items. One is a food called Magma Fish Reduction it will do 50+ damage every time you are hit, for 30 minutes. Another consumable item is Thorns potions, they can be expensive and only last for 2.5 minutes, but they can do a simmilar amount of damage to Magma Fish Reductions if you keep them on auto consume during that big fight.

Next you'll need some gear, Items with Mutagenic Burst are a good to start with, as the damage increases for each piece you equip. Divine Light items such as the Signet and Buckle of Light and Darkness are decent as well, but the ring being level 69 will get resisted more on mobs higher level.

Make sure to bring your spell critical damage up and base spell damage up because the damage on items and procs from the consumable items can critical! Items that increase spell damage are like the Bloodthirsty Choker. There are others out there, check the Void Shard brokers up in Moors of Yakesha as some classes may have shoulders that have spell bonuses of up to 8%

With only using one Mutagenic Burst Item and the two consumable items described above, my DPS from the procs has been over 1.3k dps on some fights!

A couple days ago...

I snagged this screen of Xanadu, I don't think it has 4%heal crit on it I think it's only 2% I will get an updated screen later.

I got me a shiny new purple helm, which brings my TSO Inquisitor set up to 4 pieces. With 4 pieces, they add a nice HP boost to the group as well as a nice chunk of DPS, but I think it is still bugged and wont provide bonuses after 10 meters.


Later that night, I picked up a wrist and with that I was at 100% self buffed heal crit. So I decided to remove the AA's from my heal crit, which drops me down to 86%. I also removed my intelligence line, which I mainly took for the cast speed, but with my items and raid buffs I was already past the point of diminishing returns, the sixteenth of a second I was shaving off my group heal didn't warrant all the ponts spent in the casting speed line.

So I started putting things back in to DPS.

I picked up E:Yalp, Overwhelming Arms and Fanatical devotion as new AA lines although I am going to re-do that tree when I build up some more plat because took the group buffs thinking that the added % to mitigation would be decent, but now I think it's a waste of AA when I can have the points somewhere more important.

I pulled out my DPS gear that had been sitting in my bags unused for almost 2 and a half months and modified my DPS set some to include some new gear, and went to town on some training dummies to test the items I have.

During our raid in Palace, I was in the range of 4.8k to 5.5k dps on "palace trash". Which I was pretty happy with, but with a couple items I know I can improve that DPS.

Oh, Sweet I am #1 world wide for inquisitors on HP! But I don't remember setting my toon to anon.. :)

Wow, it's been a while! TSO - Avatar of Disease Down, Again!

I hope everyone had a happy holiday season! I haven't posted in quite a while, I am going to post a little more often now that the holidays are over. Anyway, we killed the Avatar of Disease last night and look what Mordrulle discovered:



He seemed a little bit harder this time, not because he was harder, but things (his script) seemed a random this time. We wiped a few times to odd bad luck, for example when his big failure AoE hit on the pull before the curse was applied or when the curse would disappear off people and was not being re-applied, but it was still a fun fight. We also made it on the EQ2 Flames world wide progression list at #6 (Although we had already killed him on December 16th, 2008).