City of Heroes (Dark Servants)

In a small changeup, I have to share my opinion on the class defining power of Dark Servant for Dark/Dark Defenders (DDD) in City of Heroes.

Simply put, this is the holy grail of DDD’s. You have put up with some significant challenges and problems with being a jack-of-all-trades but master of none. You’ve had trouble with endurance and being tasked with all of kinds responsibilities, which leave you doing next to zero damage. Sometimes you might have even forgotten about the defense you bring to the table and felt like you weren’t providing as much benefit to the team as you should. Any complaints or concerns you might have had about putting so many hours into your DDD is about to go away.

Everyone loves their primary character and have a desire to sell you on their merits. A few minutes with a couple of Dark Servants and anything I write won’t mean a thing. They sell themselves with the variety and quality of powers. A Dark Servant (Fluffy) is a near clone of their masters. They don’t have all of your powers, being restricted to Tenebrous Tentacles (TT), Twilight Grasp (TG), a trimmed down version of Dark Night (DN), and a highly effective version of Petrifying Gaze (PG). They also have a minor aura of damage that is primarily good for grabbing agro away from their masters. This reduced power set is compensated for by unlimited endurance. The little energizer bunnies just keep going and going.

The one behavior that is sometimes difficult to handle is their desire to jump into a battle before you are ready. Sometimes my Tanker teammates will want to do some herding and Fluffy will use TT and mess up the flow. I just have to be careful and move farther away before the herding starts.

I don’t see much or any benefit out of them using DN or TT, I tend to do my own crowd control, so I’ve probably already lain done a TT or Fearsome Stare (FS). Whatever Fluffy adds to that is rarely helpful. But they do a wonderful job of healing with TG. If I happen to be hit, which isn’t very often, I know that Fluffy will apply one or more often three heals onto me immediately. They definitely do their best to take care of my health. Prior to Fluffy I sometimes had trouble with bosses, particularly ones that heal themselves. I just didn’t do damage fast enough to effectively overcome their defense and heal powers. Now I find myself taking down bosses that are in a perma-hold pattern. It’s almost laughable to see a big tough boss that can’t even move. This doesn’t matter so much from a defensive perspective because they can’t hit me anyways, but it keeps them from healing and that does matter.

I’ve found soloing to be a totally different activity now. I’ve been conditioned to be careful about oranges or above and to avoid groups of 10 or more. Now I only worry about purples and the occasional red boss. The size of the group almost doesn’t even matter anymore. I recently took a room of about 20 yellows and a couple of oranges without breaking a sweat or even being hit.

You can give Fluffy the task of absorbing the alpha strike and know that they will usually survive. Stand near them and grab a few extra heals if you happen to need it because as soon as they are attacked the healing will follow. This allows you to abuse them more than their somewhat meager hit points would suggest that you could.

When soloing I prefer to jump in and do a little crowd control before they start breaking apart. Sometimes I take a hit or two before my powers take effect but Fluffy helps out and I’m back at full health before I can start plowing through the mobs. Plus it provides a bit of excitement to put yourself out front.
Between the four of us hitting with attacks (that also de-buff) and the crowd control I often times don’t even worry about using DN anymore. It is a major endurance drain and I’m not even being attacked, so why bother. If the fight features a boss I’ll start with DN until the fight is under control and then turn it off so that I can pour more endurance into attacks. This is a major shift for someone who used DN in every fight from L4 on.

You can read different slotting advice, but I go with 4 recharges to keep three Fluffies active most of the time. Sometimes I forget or I am delayed by other action, in which case I deal with only having two for a bit. Once I reach 34 I will add an accuracy and endurance reduction. That will make things a bit cheaper and more efficient. I can’t even imagine why someone wouldn’t put six slots into Dark Servant as early as possible.

Now that you’ve reached 32 it’s time to enjoy the DDD as he is meant to be played. Everything you’ve gone through will be worth it. I was close to quitting City of Heroes a few times or at least quitting my DDD. Now I’m excited about playing again and I want to enjoy the character that I’ve worked so hard to create.

Daddy & Donuts

This morning I went to Summer’s school for a Daddy & Donuts get together. For reference, Summer is my girlfriend’s daughter. I think it was a first for both of us. My first time participating in this kind of school activity and her first time having an adult male who was happy to attend.

Summer is a monkey bar fanatic, so she wanted to play with me on them. While we were playing I overheard children asking friends where their father is. Sometimes the answer was the equivalent of, “He wasn’t able to come.” My dad was always available while I was growing up, so it was my first time seeing how sad the no-show dad’s make their children. I can’t help but think that Summer was one of those kids with her Dad, who doesn’t participate very often.

I wonder if the donuts are needed to lure the fathers into showing up, or whether it’s a bonus? I’d like to believe that it’s just a happy bonus. Krispy Kreme probably sees it as a great marketing opportunity.

It’s been many years since I spent any significant amount of time at an elementary school. Probably back in college helping my mom in her kindergarten class. I’m surprised that I still feel comfortable in the school environment.

In the fall I will be attending the parent/teacher conferences, which should prove valuable. My experience with teachers is that they want your support in helping your child to learn and they want you to respect them and the job they are trying to do. I respect and am in awe of the job that teachers are able to do, which is probably why I’ve always had great relationships with them.

Skydiving Followup

So much for making a post every Friday! I guess my brain doesn’t work on a schedule. I envy artistic people that can write constantly and produce unique art.

Continuing from two weeks ago, my skydiving team finished first in our division. A nice finish, but not as impressive as finishing third in a higher division last year. This time I filled the role of coach, so there was some extra pressure on me, but my team was able to jump out to a big lead on the first jump and the rest of the day was comfortable. It was cool that my Dad was on the team, so I helped him win a gold medal as well.

We made one error by calling our team Aerofiles (spelling error was NOT my fault, I swear). Replace the A & r and you end up with another word that is not flattering.

I'll have to see if I can find any team pictures, otherwise I'll grab something from the video and post it. The slower pace of a pickup team was great as compared to the highly competitive team I was on last year, so I'd say I made the right choice during the off-season.

BLUE SKIES!!!

Friday Thoughts

My friend John is fond of saying that I need to realize that I'm not a blogger. But I seem to have this stubborn thought that I can do everything. Which leaves me as a jack-of-all-trades instead of being really good at one or two things. It also leaves me with a very full schedule. The only thing I've conceded I'll never be good at is golf, but that doesn't mean I don't hit the links on occasion. I'm rambling toward an explanation of why this post is labeled Friday Thoughts instead of something more specific: I'm following John's advice to try for one post a week and Friday seems like as good a day as any. You never know the posts might have the impending weekend optimism.

In my mind I’ve been fluctuating on writing a couple of different posts, since I want to discuss my new life (which is almost literally true) since starting a new relationship in December, but given the timeliness of my weekend activities I’ll go there and come back to how life can change so suddenly.

My friends would never consider me a social butterfly. I tend to have a lot of trouble with groups, particularly when I’m with acquaintances versus close friends. Despite this discomfort I somehow end up organizing group outings. This has happened for whitewater rafting trips, ski trips and the most recent occurrence is the organization of a team for a skydiving competition that happens tomorrow.

Side note: I recently learned why I have some of the social trouble that I have, which I may end up going into greater detail in later post. But I will say that knowing is much better than being confused and frustrated.

How does a social misfit end up as an organizer? Did I start doing in a proactive way to overcome what I originally diagnosed as shyness? Is my desire to participate higher than my fear of organizing? Is it because my quiet nature leaves me out of the planned activities of other people? The potential answers seem to provide conundrums. I’m quiet so I have to be very social to compensate? That doesn’t make any sense.

As background, a skydiving competition typically consists of a four person team and a videographer who captures the jump for the judges to review on the ground. I’ve had to call and email about a dozen people to try and find a fourth person to complete the team. I have a year’s worth of competition skydiving under my belt, so the competition itself isn’t a concern to me. Now that the team is completed I feel liberated and I’m very much looking forward to an activity that I was dreading just a few hours ago.

I’ll let you know on Monday how the competition turns out. I don’t know what division we will compete in, but we’ll crank out some good jumps and come away with some entertaining video.

Final note, I’d really like to thank the few people who have arranged activities and let me tag-a-along without all the organizer responsibilities. The list is small enough that I can actually list them here, how sad is that.

Thank you John for organizing a bowling team last summer, I only wish I lived in Irvine so that I could participate more often. Although in 2007/8 I will probably get that wish, so we can try for another league.

Reuben, you handled softball organization duties faithfully year after year, and I thank you. Although I suspect you only included me because I was willing to stand on the pitchers mound and try to dodge the bullets that came back at me. :-)

War Games

I was sitting in the theatre, waiting for Meet the Fockers to start and along with a litany of reviews and newspaper advertisements, I saw an advertisement for Medal of Honor Pacific Assult. It's the latest first person shooter game that promises even more in-depth and realistic action. I will grant that the video shown of the game was spectacular and seeing it on a huge movie screen only added to it's impressiveness, but it brought up another thought. Why do people, 15-30 year old males most likely, want to be immersed in war so much?

Typically war games focus on World War II, I guess it has some of the most memorable stories and is long enough ago that people remember it, but the negative aspects aren't as fresh in their memory. I wonder if people who actually lived through the storming of Normandy have any interest in playing war games? My gut instinct says, “No.” Thankfully, I've never been in a war situation, I'm not sure how I would react, but I can't believe it would be an enjoyable experience and most likely not one that I would feel the need to relive through video games.

Just a few years ago video games had a blocky, cartoonish look to them and it was very clear that you were playing a game. The processing power, particularly in video cards, has allowed for an entirely new generation of games to be created. The new games often look like a quality CGI generated movie and the quality has been improving at an amazing rate. When you put a person into a uniform, like in football games, they are already becoming photo realistic. I've done a double take a few times on live, real football games when I thought I might be viewing a video game.

There are aspects of human beings, such as facial features and little details of hair, skin and weight are very hard for video games to replicate, but given time they'll reach full realism. What happens then? Can we continue to train entire generations of kids how to kill scores of human beings and not expect Columbines and maybe worse? In my view, if we are going to allow video games to become real versus cartoons, then we should at least consider the lessons that they teach.

Car Dream

Last night I had a dream that I'd like to share. It starts with me pulling into a convenience store parking lot. The parking lot is empty, but I'm in a hurry and pull into a handicap parking space so that I can rush into the store. I'm not in the store very long, but when I come out I am shocked to discover that someone has been "working" on my car's engine.

I start to protest to the mechanic, but without saying a word he points at a sign next to the handicap sign. I don't remember the sign being there when I went into the store, but it appears to be a contract that is activated by a person parking in the designated spot.

I go back to the mechanic and tell him to stop working on my car, but he seems to have already finished whatever he felt needed work. I see a bucket with oil and a few small parts like nuts and bolts, but no other signs of this work. He hands me a bill for $2,100 and requests payment.

I thought maybe the mechanic was trying to punish me for parking in the handicap spot so I start to bargain with him and offer a few hundred dollars (similar to what I think the fine might be). But he is insistent on getting the full amount. After some negotiation, his brother shows up out of nowhere and warns the mechanic that Dad would kill him if he didn't get the full payment. I don't remember all the details, but I more or less spent the rest of the dream negotiating with this pair.

There were a few unusual things about this dream. First, I never park in a handicap spot, it's just not something that I would ever consider doing. Second, I woke up twice from this dream and both times proceeded to immediately go back into the dream and pick up where I left off. I can't remember the last time I continued a dream in this manner.

A friend mentioned that the car represents my life, so maybe I feel that people are messing around with my life. Or maybe I just feel out of control of my own life. Any opinions?

Fear

I was recently reminded of this quote, so I thought I would share:

 "I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. ... It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. ... You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you."

    - Pi Patel, from "The Life of Pi" excerpts from chapter 56

Paperwork ... when less is more.

I've been falling into a web of paperwork for many years. Based on some of the paperwork that has been surfacing recently it would seem that I started to lose control sometime in the mid 90s. Which would indicate that it started with my first job. Sometimes the physical evidence points to what should otherwise be an obvious conclusion. Your first job is when you start paying for all your monthly expenses and sign up for extra credit cards. Plus you are getting a paycheck on a regular basis.

With my first job I also felt a sudden need to grow up. I was an adult and to me that meant responsibility, including the dutiful handling of paperwork. I wasn't really taught anything specific about handling paperwork, but I did observe my parents handling the issue by storing everything. Perhaps they tossed papers on occasion but I only saw the storing part.

Aside from the mess that is periodically created when the mass of paper breaks free, I have several concerns about how to handle it. In the face of uncertainty, the status quo wins and consequently I've spent more than ten years accumulating a variety of different paperwork. This includes bills, receipts and supporting paperwork for things like the house, car, taxes and other possessions.

I'm concerned about throwing away paperwork that I might need someday. Not one really tells you what paperwork should be kept or for how long. Plus, I've heard so many stories about identity theft that I'm concerned about people rooting through my trash.

To resolve the first concern I started a google search, asking how long I need to keep different paperwork, the only consistent answer seems to be that tax relevant paperwork needs to be kept for 7 years. No more, no less since extra information can sometimes be subpoenaed by the IRS and cause more problems. Opinions on other kinds of paperwork ranged from just long enough to ensure that your payment was received, to three years for anything.

I’ve made the personal judgment that I will keep taxes for 7 years, insurance information for as long as the policy is active and anything else for just long enough to confirm the information on the paperwork is correct.

To resolve the second concern I now crosscut shred any document that might have even a marginal value to nefarious folks. This takes extra time and is somewhat of a pain, but the extra comfort is worth it.

After years of learning how to store things and organize my life it is nice to get rid of things and simplify my life. It’s a strange joy to let go possessions and I’m already starting to extend this idea to other areas of my life. Ten years of gathering paperwork and other material possessions doesn’t clear up in a weekend, but I’m on a better path now.