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luke was annoying for the first couple movies. he were whiny, flawed and refused to take advice o' those with more experience, to his detriment. yeah, luke has moments o' competence in the first two movies, but those exist as a way to setup and magnify his failures. rey, in spite o' being a junk scavenger on a remote world who ekes out a subsistence existence, is instantly competent/superior at everything. ignore advice o' merlin figure not matter 'cause whereas luke loses a hand and has world shattered, rey frees her boyfriend from snoke, the seeming biggest bad in the galaxy at the time. the comical wide-eyed stares and f'ing threatening luke with a f'ing lightsabre 'cause he won't answer her questions? is a horrible character on many levels, but y'know, 'cause she is cute, she gets a different standard. and is apparent both rey and luke sold their soul to the robot devil blame on the direction, but there is nothing subtle 'bout the luke or rey performances. there were a time when growth were kinda the key to heroic character development, so is not shocking luke takes a long and difficult journey to become more than the whiny youth from episode iv. the problem for rey as a character is she started competent and were intuitive smarter than everybody else around her. in the third movie rey ain't gonna overcome fears or prejudices or failures o' the past, 'cause she don't have any such flaws. kylo has obvious room for growth, but rey? no doubt she will come to terms with her past in the upcoming flick, but becoming even more supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is kinda lame. is the new norm o' lame. ... am gonna offend a few folks with the following observation, but am thinking one unfortunate aspect o' our current culture which has artists and entertainers conscious o' the need to make female characters in all kinds o' mass media more capable, is that too many female characters is being cheated o' a chance for growth. is ok to start weak. is ok to begin a story with a female character who is flawed and ignorant and in need o' help. so cautious o' avoiding damsel-in-distress and double-standard that we end up with rey and wonder woman and ms. marvel being the expected and defensible norm. lame. is ok to have a few super women characters in pop culture and entertainment as we have had many supermen over the years. unfortunate, is a terrible sameness to the predictable competence o' female protagonists nowadays. seeing as Gromnir has complained 'bout the male characters who is instagood at everything and have no real growth, would be unfair o' us to hold back on criticizing the new trend o' 2-d and soulless uberfrau. HA! Good Fun!

I watched the show and I thought it was pretty funny, and a healthy antidote to the twitter mob who get to decide what the right opinion on anything is. Dave Chappelle can do whatever he wants. Permanent immunity, they can't touch him. It would take something out of the ordinary. I so hope he's not a secret pervert. I don't want to lose another Louis CK caliber comic.

Thankfully we don't have that type in our group, well - we all like politics but we get that out of our systems before we actually start - but we do have a couple of people that sit with their fricking smartphones instead. I personally want a maximum of 6 players, it's doable with the right people, but 4 is optimal. Interparty strife can be good though, if it's about their characters arguing, I love when that happens, and I try to use it later to keep things engaging. The arguements between the were-rat hunter, Helmite Cleric and trickster/sorceress in my campaign are hilarious. Mostly thanks to the were-rat player that keeps doing "stupid" things like; Regularly stealing from the Arch-mage contact, getting the trickster/sorceress killed and taking her to a druid to reincarnate her instead of letting the cleric raise her, getting pregnant with a Cambion and being the worst ranger one can imagine that either drives his animal companions mad, trying to genderbend them to suit her deranged sense of... fashion? or forgetting them when they teleport.

A bull was walking in his pasture one day and found a turkey trying to flap his wings and fly into the branches of a tree. "What are you doing?" the bull asked. "I want to perch in the top of that tree but I can't fly that high." The turkey replied. The bull thought for a moment and said "My dung is packed with nutrients you should try eating some" As the bull went on his way the turkey decided to give it a try. He found a huge fresh pile of bull droppings and started to peck away. After a week of this the turkey easily flew to the top of the tree and perched proudly there. And was then shot dead by a hunter. The moral of this story is "Bulls--t might get you to the top, but it won't keep you there!"

Probably a more boring example but Secret Horrors is my favorite ability in the game, especially on a Beguiler: it packs in so much value within half a second and is available early on. Concussive Tranquilizer is up there too. I'm a sucker for disables and interrupts.

Thanks! Body Blows is so useful because a lot of great and powerful abilities target Fortitude. And usually that's a high defense with most enemies. But Body Blows lowers fortitude by 25 points. And you can have it at lvl 1. -25 defense that early in the game is huge. And it keeps being useful because it stacks with MIG and CON debuffs (further reducing fortitude). Oh I forgot one: - Misama of Dull-Mindedness. Great debuff. Is no affliction and thus stacks with those. Tremendous loss of Will and Reflex and also Deflection. Low level, too. Stacks with flail and club modals.

Body blows is the morning star modal right? Why is it so useful? Damn Boeroer you make me want to try so many builds/abilities ! Never had the occasion to thank you but I always read your posts with interest, thanks for being so helpful and friendly !

- Body Blows (not really an ability but a modal - but one of the most useful effects in the game) - Driving Roar (just sooo powerful and also so cheap). Best with Blood Thirst + Blood Surge. - Whispers of the Wind (especially with dual mortars). Combine with Resonant Touch. - Vanishing Strikes (with high INT and attack speed- because 100% Backstabs and Assassination is cool) - Pull of Eora (the best spell if you like AoE abilities). Especially effective when used with an Imbue **** by an Arcane Archer whose shot has 2 jumps (Watershaper's Focus or Fire in the Hole + Driving Flight): 3 Pulls with tremendous ACC = nobody escapes. - Concelhaut's Draining Touch + Essential Phantom (the combo is just fun and powerful)

I asked Josh on Twitter while commenting on @Decadency's "Thank you" tweet. Decadency then told me that he spoke to @Tenray : his run was finally validated.

Thanks, Boeroer, for taking the moment to point AddAbility out, because I was being a dumbass and going through a full re-roll and level-up over and over to pick my new/editied abilities as I've been doing my cipher mod testing, which has been a huge waste of time because I could just be hacking each ability onto the test cipher with AddAbilityto test it with instead. I'm perfectly familiar with using the console for testing, but it had just never occurred to me to use that command instead of rerolling.

Quite a lush psych soul number with some sweet Eddie Hazel-esque guitar tones to boot.

^^Pumpkin spice dice? Tis the season. I was off last Thursday, Friday and Yesterday. I didn't do jack.

I think the only important decision in that arc is whether you off the traitor or not, and by default the decision is no. So you can safely autocomplete it if you don't feel like doing the flashpoints. I swore never to go back to Umbara after having to run it eleventy billion times for the schematics and the stronghold.

I simply spawn some different enemies somewhere on the map and try stuff out. You can spawn anything with the console using SpawnPrefabAtMouse <prefab name> Prefab names can be found with FindPrefab Characters <search string> . Search string can be "Xaurip" or Skeletal" or whatever the name of the enemy type you wish may contain. You can also spwan NPCs and bosses etc. In case of "Xaurip" you might find "CRE_Xaurip_Champion" and can then spawn it with "spawnPrefabAtMouse CRE_Xaurip_Champion". My first testing is always done with CRE_Dummy. It's a Rhotgast with low defenses but very high health that doesn't move and only does tiny damage. SO you can test stuff out without any worries. See how the mechanics work and so on. You can give yourself any item with giveItem <item name> . Item names can be found with "FindGameData <search string>". Usually the pattern is like this "pistol_U_scordeos_trophy" where the U stands for unique. You can enchant stuff for free if you use FreeRecipesToggle . To open the console look up which key is assigned to the console (don't know which one it is on US keyboards). In order to spawn stuff and all that you'll need to type in iroll20s first to unlock cheats. This will mark your current run as cheated (no achievements, blessings and so on). But no worries: You can simply save your game before doing cheating/testing, go wild and then simply reload the game afterwards: your playthrough will not be marked as cheated then. You can also switch classes and add abilites with setClassLevel and addAbility . Skills: skill , Attributes: attributeScore . You can always use <tab> to let the console guess/complete your command. It's very helpful. You don't need to know the exact names of commands/items/abilites/chars/etc. then, just how they start. I know no better way to quickly yet thoroughly test stuff out.

It's mostly a social thing, honestly. I guess it's hard to grasp the impact it's introduction had if you weren't there when it was introduced. It's also hard to explain when you were there though I gave it a shot earlier in this thread, I believe. But one of the major disadvantages (aside from socializing) was realm reputation, if you were a jerk you'd just not be able to get into groups before long, so communities washed themselves of undesirables quite quickly. With a LFG you just get lumped in with randoms and if the Realm's local jerk joins you're stuck with him (or her). Conversely a good reputation would often just get you invited spontaneously. LFG also promotes group dropping as soon as something doesn't go perfectly, as you'd just queue again (especially if tank/healer) and you'd have a new group before long. Without LFG people are a lot more likely to actually help less experienced party members are finding replacements is a huge pain. This results in a lot less toxicity and people actually learning the ropes. Not to mention that some really get a reputation for mentoring (still miss ya, you shaman that patiently tought me the ropes during all those vanilla dungeon runs) It's kinda like being able to enter a dungeon immediately without having to actually walk there, which doesn't seem like a big deal, but these waits allowed for a whole lot of social interaction and community building (and fun and not-so-fun memories, the corpse run at Blackrock mountain was brutal, and people regularly got lost...). Note that I'm one of those people who is really, really, really, anxious to group up in games until I'm really, really, really, sure I know what I'm doing (which is a hard place to get to without actually, you know, doing it), so one would reasonably expect I'd be all for LFG. I am not (anymore).

Thumbs up for ”O Brother, Where Art Thou” meme

That makes good use of the own IP then. You'd only have to cramp the current pillars mechanics of miss/graze/hit/crit/inspirations/afflictions/stats/skills into a different setting which used to have its own rules - or quickly reimplement and fit the AD&D rules to the current game engine which is maybe intertwined with the rest. It all makes perfect sense, doesn't it? Wait... Now that I thought about it for a fraction of a second: it totally doesn't! 😜

The answer is, as ever, moar C2H5OH. For house Inrokini!!!! 🤘

Edit: oh wow I totally had a brain fart and got carried away - messing up Helwalker/Ascendant with Streetfighter. Forget what I was rambling about down there. I'll let it sit here because there might be some tips that still are worth reading (like Thunderous Report, switching times, destroying loot with Essence Interrupter and cramping up enemies etc.). Just remove all the Monk talk! Easy! Sorry, it was early and I only had 4 hours of sleep. Jeeeez! ----------weird shyte starts now--------- The best dps will still be with dual mortars. At least if you can hit several enemies at once. INT (and other influences on AoE size) are important here. Duality of Mortal Presence (INT) boosts this a lot. So I'd always take it even if the burning lash of Turning Wheel doesn't apply to ranged weapons in the vanilla game (Community Patch mod corrects this so you can profit from the burning lash). Once you get Thunderous Blows + Hammering Thoughts PEN shouldn't be an issue. Also because mortars have pierce/slash damage. Fire in the Hole jumps with the AoE (!). And of course you don't lose dps by switching. That's 2.5 seconds of doing 0 damage and 2.5 seconds that get shaved off your "Heating Up" status. Enduring Dance will make sure you don't feel the ACC malus of mortars too much. Then Stunning Surge has a high chance of critting (again if you can hit several enemies at once). This means you can use it indefinitely with mortars if you can target several weak mobs at once. So: Pull of Eora and a tank (immune to push/pull effects) are the best friends of a mortar Monk(/something). You can start the encounter with Arkemyr's Dazzling Lights from stealth in order to lure enemies to one spot, then drop Pull of Eora while closing in with the tank (if it's an something/Trickster he can also be the one who uses Dazzling Lights). And then just use Stunning Surge on that crowd. Usually you get full focus right after one or two Surges. Also great that firih the opening shot from stealth will give you -85% reload time which means you can fire two Stunning Surges right away in a row and get ascended asap. Also try Flagellant's Path with dual mortars. It skips the reload and only has recovery... Another Blunderbuss that is worth considering - especially for the opening shot - is Kitchen Stove. It has the enchantment "Thunderous Report" which is a very high dmg cone attack (1/encounter). This alone (when placed smartly) can be enough to fill your whole focus and ascend you. Of course against single targets the mortars stink a bit. Against single targets Essence Interrupter is decent. One of the best options. BUT: it still destroys the loot if the enemies get turned into a summon on death. That's why I don't use it most of times. A neat alternative are St. Omaku's Mercy and Veilpiercer - if you tend to crit a lot (Enduring Dance!). You need to pick the enchantment that omits recovery 60% of times on crit. This can lead to great single target dps. Red Hand is also good. BUT: my go-to weapon against single enemies as a ranged Monk is the Long Pain. They work with two weapon style as well, have very high ACC and dps and do crush dmg (complements piece/slash just lovely). With decent action speed they even take less time to summon than switching does. So I would start with mortars and fire at cramped up enemies. Once only singular enemies are left I'd summon the Long Pain and finish them off. ---------------- Manmanman... but still: keep the mortars. With Crippling Strike and especially Arterial Strike (+2 PEN) and Toxic Strike they are great! But only if you have good INT. You can make them work better with Aloth's Armor and a ring of overseeing and the ring of the marksman. Valid alternatives to Essence Interrupter are still St. Omaku's Mercy/Veilpiercer. Rogue/Cipher has good ACC (especially once Borrowed Instinct is accessible) and ok crit conversion. If you are a Dwarf I also think Amiina's Legacy is very good. Even if you are not one - but then it's even better.

Ah, South Africa! I had the chance to go there recently for residency, but the wife couldn't go and I didn't want to be gone that long without her. That's some new age fare on that menu, I tell you what! ...But I'm down with veggie burgers. However, the crowd for Labor Day wants meat, and so that's where we're going with our menu tonight.

Grilling. Had to scale back on how much I'm making because our party has been whittled down from 11 to 7. I cut the brats, corn, and kebabs but still have wings, kielbasa, and both beef and pork ribs. Veggies? Veggies? We don't need no stinking veggies.

For the 40k lovers out there, prepare to have your pants blown off.

Speaking of Firebrand: quick reminder that Scion of Flame + Spirit of Decay + Bleak Walker's FoD will lead to +3 PEN with Firebrand. And plenty of lashes of course. Eternal Devotion adds its lash to direct damage spells as well (not DoTs). Unfortunately Fury's passive doesn't work with Firebrand (the weapon). Some smaller tricks for spell casters (including Druids): using Griffin's Blade for enhanced spell damage (10%). Chanter/Druid can use Shasha's Singing Scimitar to boost spell damage. It gives you +2% shocking lash per accumulated phrase (universally - also works for spells). The action speed bonus which stacks with phrases as well is also universal and works for spells. You can combine both in a dual wielding setup for more spell dmg and casting speed (Hound's Speed from Griffin's Blade only works for the weapon though ). I like Bellower/Druid for this. You tend to accumulate phrases with Bellower anyway and the PL bonus works well with the additive dmg bonus of Griffin's and then the added lash (up to 12% at 6 phrases). Troubadours and Beckoners can get to 14% (muticlasses) because they can collect 7 phrases due to their increased invocation costs. Troubadour's also nice because he can accumulate the phrases a lot faster. Wizard/Druid can bind Blightheart and add 10% corrosive lash to ALL spells (not only Wizard's). Paladin/Wizard can bind Blightheart and combine 10% corrosive lash + 10% burning lash from Eternal Devotion for their direct damage spells. Oops - no Druid involved. Not really Druid-exclusive but also works with Druids.

It depends a bit at which level you are looking. Generally: Berserker/Fury can be very strong - especially once you get Blood Thirst. Nature's Terror + Relentless Storm (supported by an initial cast Plague of Insects do all trigger Blood Thirst on kill. Also all your elemental spells will have +3 PEN (Berserker Frenzy + Fury passive). That makes the build very good on PotD right from the start (both obtainable at lvl 1). If you go melee with Lord Darryn's Voulge and Deltro's Cage your Storms will have +5 Power Level and Nature's Terror still +2. Supported by Blood Thirst your Carnage will apply a ton of Static Charges in an AoE. It's an offensive beast but you have to heal him with party member (Berserker Frenzy hurts and Fury can't have Rejuvenation spells). And/or use Savage Defiance (but comes a bit late). This build would not spiritshift. DoT + Blood Thirst is a very effective combo. You can also use Whispers of the Endless Paths + Taste of the Hunt. The healing is still only applied once but the DoT (which is quite potent) will get applied to all enemies in the cone. This can lead to even more kills which will trigger Blood Thirst. Just a variant to Lord Darryn's Voulge. Also works with Barb/any other Druid. Another nice alternative is Helwalker/Druid. Especially if you cast a lot of DoTs. Here I would pick a Nature Godlike Ancient on the Druid part and the Spine of Thicket Green as weapon with the +3 to Beast PL. The high MIG and INT from Helwalker boost your DoTs as does the +1+1+3 Power Levels. You will be casting DoTs mostly. But it's also a great healer. If you want a superb healer you can use the same combo but with a Livegiver instead of a Ancient. Enchant the Spine with +2 PL to Rejuvenation instead, spiritshift right at the start of combat (+7 Power Level to Rejuvenation) to cast healing over time in advance. After the shift your PL will drop to -1 PL which is not too bad. You can also cast some Dots at the start of combat and only shift if you feel the need for healing. Choose cat form since it can cast very fast (Cat Flurry). The high MIG and INT of Helwalkers combined with the Power Levels do immense healing. Another good healer+support is Livegiver/Priest of Eothas with the Spine again. You will have a ton on spells in general but the best part is: shift to Cat form and dish out +7 PL Rejuvenation. Once you shift back do +2 PL Restoration spells with the Priest side. The PL malus for Rejuvenation after switching doesn't apply to your Restoration spells. If you are looking for a very sturdy melee druid based on Spiritshift: Goldpact Knight + Bear form is very sturdy due to the immense AR (Gilded Enmity +4, Exalted Endurance +1, Bear Form +2 + several paladin passives) and the healing. The damage output is good due to Wildstrike + Flames of Devotion + Sworn Enemy. Eternal Devotion also applies to spells by the way. And lots of support capability of course With the Community Patch you can combine Barbarian/Stag Form for dual Carnage. It's not super OP but great fun. If you pick Spirit Frenzy you can stagger opponents twice (double chance) per hit. The cumulated AoE dmg is nice. If you combine it with Blood Thirst (cast some long lasting DoT spell and then go melee) you can destroy entire mobs quickly. In an unmodded game the Stag form is crap though. For a Shifter of course the Rogue is another obvious option. Wildstrike + Sneak Attack and Deathblows is a good melee combo. Especially as a Cat you can do enormous melee dps. Don't forget to cast some supporting spells before going into melee. Honorable mention goes to Arcane Archer + Fury. The jumps of the Fury attacks don't work with Driving Flight (you might want to skip that) but they are not affected by the accuracy malus. And every jump (so, basically two attack rolls) will trigger an Imbue spell. You can use that to apply damage + double Imbue:Web at the enemy (later also double Imbue:Pull of Eora) and then nuke the immobilized/cramped enemies with spells and attacks. The double appliance of web /pull makes sure that every enemy gets affected. Also nice: Bleak Walker/Fury. With Scion of Flame, Spirit of Decay and Heart of the Storm you get +3 PEN for your FoD attacks which will pack a punch even against high AR foes. At the same time you can cast spells as usual. Eternal Devotion works with spells as I said. There are a lot more variants. It really depends on the role your character is supposed to play. Even a summoner centered Chanter/Ancient is very good in some cases because he can have summons on the field all the time and can boost several summons (Wurm, Drake, spores) with Wild Growth which makes them very sturdy (indef. duration of Wild Growth). A Bellower isn't the type of chanter that comes to mind when thinking about summons, but his PL bonus makes them last a long time and Wild Growth on then makes then tanky. Since he can't put out chanter summons as quickly as as a Troubadour he can fill the gaps with spores. If you like summons it's quite nice. And of course there is single class: Fury with Dual Mortars and Avenging Storm is devastating. That's because Blinding Smoke on Hand Mortar triggers Avenging Storm, too and Fire in the Hole jumps (incl. AoE). Gun-Fury basically. Also a SC Nature Godlike Ancient with Spine of Thicket Green is very good with all Beast DoTs. So is SC Fury with Deltro's Cage, Darryn's Voulge and other elemental PL boosts with Maelstrom (and other elemental spells). Spiritshifting is not very great on its own as a SC druid though.

Alcohol and self hatred fueled my completion of Pierce's recruitment PVP quest. Finished up KOTET and am nearly done with Iokath then it's on to Ossus and some story flashpoints that I never finished. I don't see the point of trying to upgrade my gear from 248 since the next update is next month so I'll probably try to finish a Jedi Shadow run next. I mean, he's already level 70 but is still on Coruscant. I did too many heroics and ran Esseles a few times too many but I get like 11k rep per with Qyzen so it's tough to pass on.

The upshot of this is that I've just learned CP2077 can have a female player character. I am pleased.

I also think that the opening and the early game of PoE is the best part.

2020 is shaping up to be a fantastic year theoretically, for me, at least: Baldur's Gate III? Yes, please. I'll try some of that! Realms Beyond! I was an avid backer, Josh Sawyer will design the lich tower. Who doesn't want a turn-based massive SP 3.5 galore CRPG? and now, Amplitude has announced Humankind, as a true competitor to my beloved Civilization series. They did a fantastic job with their latest 4x game. Here's a little teaser:

Up on his site now http://www.jasonseow.com/#/poeportraits/ www.jasonseow.com/s/JS-Portrait-Pack-082019.zip

OMG no!!! I hate turned based. I wouldn't want a turned based only game... there's always baldurs gate 3 if PoE3 becomes turned based. Still would be depressing

Only if it's on GOG I will.

Got some terrible news. My dog Sunny Smiles has Cushings Disease. It can be managed somewhat with medication but her life expectancy is 12-14 months. She's only 8 (give or take). No one is guaranteed tomorrow as we all know. We have to enjoy the time we have.