LadyCrimson

Pets are the awesome. There are so many moments when my cat/pet is what literally keeps me going, mood-wise. I'm trying to work up the motivation to go to the DMV. I'll probably put it off again...

From the What are you playing thread: Sweeping Wind has become the Frozen Orb for Monks. I've tried/used it for long periods, and it does help if your dps is still low (or enemies are weak), but a troublesome Inferno Elite mob is still going to feel like a troublesome mob. It just increases your overall dps, in a manner of speaking, so mobs die a little bit faster. I tend to prefer more panic button skills than overall blanket dps skills, at least in solo/Inferno. Playstyle. Keep in mind that a Monk doesn't require major dps numbers. What they do need is LoH, resists, and if you can get enough of it, dodge and life regen. Critical Hit Damage/Chance is, of course, nice for any chr, but for Monks, it's not nearly as huge a factor to their tanking survivability (especially solo). My overall build didn't change much...it looks like this now. http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#bUTXgQ!XUd!ZbYbac You can use Fist of Thunder instead of 100Fists, a lot of people prefer that one, but I'm still partial to 100Fists. Heh. I use Guardian Path passive since I dual wield (more/easier LoH that way) and the Dodge boost + speed boost from dual-wielding helps a lot. Shields are not "necessary"...again, playstyle. With the recent patch, 7-strike improved enough I used it over Blinding Flash, although to me it's kind of a toss up. 7-Strike does have the invulnerable aspect, but BF can be used more frequently. Oh...if you use a companion, mobs will all beeline for them when you 7-Strike, like you're suddenly invisible, so that can help get you unstuck too ... although this means sometimes the 7-strikes don't fully hit walking-away enemies, which can be annoying.

I think the game is fun as single-player action-rpg as you're learning the game. I mean, I spent quite a bit of time on it after all, even with the frustrations. It just doesn't have longevity. But if you have a couple friends to play with, that could make it last longer. Do play the demo....and keep in mind that Normal difficulty for most people is akin to super-super-easy. I know, right? It was bad before, but I swear since the patch it's even worse. If you spend tons of time looking, you can occasionally get a "steal" but overall it's crazy.

Wait, wait, wait .... Beckett, Gonzo, Crawford, Punto traded to the Dodgers? Holy heck, I didn't see that coming. Figured they'd pull back the waivers. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised...especially re: Beckett, but ... holy heck, I'm just floored. Well, at least that's one way to reboot a team. ....so now when the Dodgers play the Giants, I'm going to feel all kinds of weird. Hope Beckett/Gonzo don't go on a "happy to be traded" awesome streak and equal Dodgers beating Giants. For me it's akin to, but not quite as bad as if they went to the Yankees....

Indeed. The whole team in general has been on a tear. It's delicious. Today I woke up late and am still puttering around in my loungewear while muttering about the possible dire repercussions of Apple winning their lawsuit against Samsung.

I discovered they're making a game called Divinity:Original Sin (2013). I liked Divine Divinity a lot but never played the later ones. But this new one seems interesting because it's top-down perspective and has turn based combat. The video on their website makes it look "over-bright" (I might need sunglasses while playing) but I'm going to have to keep an eye on it.

Am I the only one who thinks "melee wizards" aren't real melee? I mean, they're using this magical spell with weird claw mark visual effects (that has a bit of a bigger distance range than most actual swords/daggers/claws too) as well as supplemental things like hydra and freezing or whatever. Semantics, I know, but ... At any rate, it's the same as other melee's - high armor, highish dps, LoH, etc. There's several skillset varieties, the "tornadoes" aren't a must.

Watching those Gungam style vids made me go to YouTube to watch a whole bunch of dance fad or TV-show clips. Thanks a lot. Will Smith made me laugh once.

Happy B-Day. Sounds like a yummy dinner and something my hubs would like a lot. Sorry about the family stuff...seems weird that they're only voicing it now and sounds like it's a matter of different social expectations/styles. Hope it resolves for you/there's a solution soon. (Giants baseball) Pence's bunt was a thing of beauty, heh. I absolutely love that Scutaro seems to be doing so well for the Giants. And I love that my home team is giving me something to still cheer for when my Red Sox are trying to set a new record for finding ways to lose ... both on and off the field. I may be a RS fan, but man that Boston media ... they are nutso.

I don't think such builds are impossible, at least thru Act2/Inferno. They have some skills for stuff like that I think. Just depends on the gear check, which is the main problem (hard to find/buy that level of gear sometimes, especially certain classes). Act1/Inferno is so cake and pie now, if you have decent gear. Changed my mind a little. If you can farm Act3/4, the decent rare item ratio is a fair bit better. Not saying they're uber items, but if did a couple "runs" of something you might walk away with something sellable at least. But Act3, while a bit easier than before, is still too slow going for my Monk for MF'ing. So, MF'ing in later Inferno Acts feels better post-patch (Act1 still sucks item-wise most of the time and Act2 is somewhere in the middle). I haven't noticed much "rubber-banding" at all since the patch. I used to get it pretty frequently. Nice to have it be gone.

I played it for about 4 hours, doing 1 run of Act1/Inferno and 1 run of some Act2 areas. On that very limited reference, feels like blue/yellows drop a bit more noticeably from non-Elites but not much more noticeably from Elites. I did, however, have one Legendary drop in Act2 (BulKathos wedding band, sucks). Still get plenty of ilvl58 and below items in Inferno. Still get a lot of low dps items. Difficulty wise, since I don't do massive dps with the Monk, I'd say it feels a tad less difficult overall but it's still a major kiting game for melee. Not sure I like the boosted spell effect graphics, it makes it harder to see/visually distracting. Gems and tomes having a slightly lighter color blue text is actually more annoying for me to differentiate between blue magic items and ones I may not be interested in (gems/tomes)...I'd have preferred they made it a different color altogether, like a pale purple or something. Bottom line: slightly easier difficulty and a lot of pleasant non-combat game interface changes, but items still largely suck and it won't make a huge difference in how many "good" items you'll see. At least if you aren't going to play enough to get anywhere near the max Paragon level. I think I gained 1.6 Paragon levels in that 4 hours.

Go San Francisco Giants!

I think that's what so many are really annoyed with. Jay's attitude overall/the pattern...this isn't the first time he's massed the ire of the fanbase and each time it gets worse (the reaction). Well, that's better than nothing. I wish they'd put it up to 1000 tho. If tomes can go that high, I see no rational reason to not have gems do the same. I'm waiting for them to make MF apply to chests again. I still that was the dumbest thing ever. Walk up to a huge, glowy gold chest and not have your MF apply to it, where all that pops out is a few blues and a gem or two (95% of the time), just like any other lesser chest is just .... bah. The rest....should help with magic finding and other things (I like the AH search changes too) and it's a great list for sure, and if those things are the main things that annoyed you it'll be great. For me it's not enough I think. The area/levels, the dungeons, the game design (boring to repeat 100's of times, short, no reason/desire to replay/make new chrs etc)... it doesn't fix that.

I stayed up late enough for today to become yesterday, so tomorrow is now today.

Hunger Games. Not terrible, but I occasionally felt a bit lost in terms of chr. and environment set-up (haven't read the books). There was never any suspense/interest about the contest because 99% of the contestants were only shown in brief flashes so I felt nothing about them. Visually interesting at times, but failed to make me care about anything.

Nothing myself (not even D3) but hubby has been playing Borderlands 1 again. He's played a few other games since BL1 came out, but he just loves that BL1. I might not have to wait until Xmas to get him to play BL2 with me. Heh.

.... As if the fanboi's didn't have enough reason to hate Jay Wilson already. Blizzard has a PR nightmare on their hands now. http://kotaku.com/5936142/diablo-iii-interview-leads-to-unexpected-facebook-bitching And if you don't know who these people are, here's a helpful pic on that: http://imgur.com/lvWdB Kind of neutral on the remarks themselves (who hasn't had a bitching/moaning session w/friends at some point) but doing it on Facebook, for cryin' out loud...what idiots. Highly unprofessional and in some companies, a reason to be fired. The whole Brevik interview that started it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT_XiT2mifo

Is that 112k while using that one DH crit chance skill? That's a nutty (but cool) skill. I kept having to turn it 'off' before going to shop in the AH because it skewed the comparison stats.

Watching Daybreakers again. Has it's problems but at least it tried to do something a bit different than the usual vampire/horror.

I just noticed this YT "feature" for the first time... (to be fair, that video has sped-up sound, but it's perfectly understandable to the ear)

I think I'm the only one who doesn't care about the Dark Knight Rising. Batman Begins was cool and the Dark Night was ok (the Joker performance was the best thing about it) but left me with no desire to see a third. I like dark, broody films and don't need happy endings (Seven is still one of my fave films ever) but I'm tired of brooding superheros.

Bah, I've been cutting my own hair for 25 years. It's not that hard, unless you want very stylized hair or something. My mom's hairdresser used to tell me I should be a hairdresser. The problem, as mentioned, is that my hair is no longer totally straight. Even tho it's still mostly straight, there's three or four length-spots where it "bends", so if you cut it at those spots, it does weird things. Even having someone else cut it, they hardly do any better. Don't know why it got semi-curly. Must be an age thing. I usually wear it longer now, because of that, but ... eh, sometimes I get a bee up my bonnet.

Pre-ordered BL2 ... other than that, not playing a thing. I still get "into" a few games here and there per year, but overall, the gaming industry has rather lost me. I look sometimes, but almost none of it - big name or indie - is even remotely appealing/my thing. I'm guessing if the industry continues in the directions it's been going, genre/style wise, in about 5-8 years I won't be playing video games at all. :/

Became annoyed with how my hair gets kinkier/curlier every year and totally butchered it one night. Which didn't help, since apparently the kinks start pretty short, so now I have short hair that likes to curl upwards at the ends, causing a crazy, bizarre mess of a head. I may have to completely buzz-cut it.

Ethically it's not cool to hack a site....but I dislike/am tired of marketing gimmicks like that, that "everyone" seems to do these days with every big new product launch (not to mention, I don't care about Mt. Dew flavor #34) so I find the sabotage amusing in a protest-marketing kind of sense. Just seems like a practical joke type thing. But I'm probably morally bankrupt. Most of the fake names aren't actually funny, however.