Gromnir

round 7? the sith guy and the female melee combatant who rages once the sith dies? raven and nocturne... or somesuch? we can do it with a burst sage in 208 gear, but our comp is 50 influence. qyzen. can't do it with a heals comp. have to make our comp do damage for his role. we also do damage and kinda spot heal and make liberal use o' the heal pylons. key for us is killing the sith asap and making sure the one controller bot dies instantly when the bots spawn. otherwise, it is a matter o' staying focused on where the melee girl is in relation to the sith. gotta make sure those stun circles pop up between darth and her. burst sage in 216 or better with pretty much all alacrity enhancements is how we were rolling right 'fore 5.0. haven't tried since the expansion. (edit: is actual a smidge easier for us to do as a heal sage for eternal championship and switch our companions 'tween tank and damage.) for Gromnir, the final battle with zoltar results in the most frequent deaths, but only cause t-7/aric jorgan is our typical companion(s) for our knight/trooper characters... level 50 influence from grinding esseles. the entire battle is relative ez, save for the end and only 'cause ranged healers need be teased back into the center o' the arena every time the boss knocks 'em back into the electric field o' death. zoltar is a battle where we need a melee range healer who we can have attack the boss so as to stay in the center o' the arena. we use blizz on more than a few characters, but as he is ranged, he tends to get dead too frequent. oh, and not that anybody cares, but am rank 18 for command thingie and still not set bonus piece. we do have one purple 230 implant, and two pieces o' moddable blue 230 gear. regardless, is gonna be a slow grind. we like doing esseles runs for the refined isotope drops and the speed with which we can finish solo, but is soul numbing and we can't do more than 'bout three or four runs in a row without going robin williams nightmare mode HA! Good Fun!

am admitting that we haven't been grinding all that hard, but am at command rank 12 and we ain't even got a single piece o' gear with a set bonus. two pieces o' blue 230, a bunch o' green 228 (which is worse than our current gear) and then scrap and schematics and ugly shells. am knowing rng can be a fickle mistress, but this is exact why we don't bother with those cartel market crates. the grind is bad enough, but when rng is working 'gainst us, it makes things double frustrating. HA! Good Fun! ps am gonna go crafting route and not sweat the 230 stuff, but is gonna kinda suck if we gotta fight rng all the way to command rank 300.

wine tasters with more expertise tend to take more time than does the n00b. the practiced wine taster realizes a fine vintage will often bloom on the palate whereas the weekend wine aficionado who hits a half dozen napa wineries on a weekend will gargle and spit... or maybe not spit. regardless, is not analogous. saw the opening credits o' a movie and realized it weren't your thing 'cause you is a seasoned film critic? yeah, am baffled by the folks who claim you need play an entire game before judging. is asinine to invest hours, or dozens of hours, into a pursuit one is clear not enjoying. that being said, tutorials is often providing near 0 useful gameplay from which to judge a game. many good games with rudimentary or terrible tutorials. 'course if issues is controls and interface, then tutorial is likely more than enough from which to judge. regardless, a real wine-taster would gargle and spit 'pon gorgon for his temerity. HA! Good Fun!

is kinda on the cheap end, and is maybe too small, but looks ez to clean. https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B00NQ7QFGM?ref=emc_b_5_t 'cause all women love getting kitchen appliances and deep-fried food. ... maybe this is why Gromnir is still single. HA! Good Fun!

*sigh* black talon tactical is, once again, gonna be our grind. get something close to 700 cxp in 20 minutes and can be done solo and need not wait for uprisings. have had terrible luck with crates thus far, but have only reached rank 7 with limited play. a significant portion o' time on-server were nothing other than giving gifts to the new comp on two characters. we kinda hate bt and esseles, but bt, in particular, looks like a good option for pre rank 31 cxp. rush through and kill as little as possible other than champs and bosses. 1800(esseles) to 2100 (bt) cxp in an hour ain't bad. HA! Good Fun!

am disliking baby groot the same way car commercials with puppies and babies annoy us. writer/producer/director is trying to massage our cute reflex and it comes off as contrived and cheap. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgP0aUKlmNw converse, am feeling sympatico with drax. gonna need see how it all balances, but we did like the first iteration. HA! Good Fun! ps is now the season when we can post grinch videos w/o folks raging over out-of-season christmas content.

Barring mental issues, evil kids are the direct result of parenting. Imo. our time working in a juvenile detention facility convinced us otherwise. yeah, most o' the evil kids had terrible parents. and a fair number o' the broken kids were also nuttier than a fruitcake. even so, we met more than a few bad kids in the hall, and we had a chance to meet their parents and lawyers and psychiatrists. before working at juvenile hall, we believed as did gifted-- bad kids is the result o' crazy or bad parenting. experience taught us there is actual bad kids. yeah, previous to a certain age a child's brain hasn't developed the connections to makes good v. bad a fair question. tn is at least partial correct. young kids ain't capable o' being good as they can't genuine understand the concept... regardless o' parents tendency to be projecting qualities onto their issue. as such, early childhood development and kiddie psychology is kinda scary when viewed objective. even so, when we speak o' monsters, am not talking 'bout the broken kids or the young kids who cannot distinguish right from wrong. there is fundamental flawed kids, and those children can come from homes with loving parents who is diligent and conscientious 'bout raising their kids. sure, it ain't common or ordinary, but it does happen. HA! Good Fun!

our main criticisms o' bvs weren't actual batfleck. sure, we were surprised by batman bloodshed, but batman were ok... other than the fact the world's greatest detective were portrayed as kinda dimwitted and suffering from impulse control issues. nope, our issues were with superman and lex luthor. the choice to make lex manic/twitchy were bad. crazy is always a terrible motivation in books and movies. is cheap. "it doesn't need to make sense, because ________ is crazy." supergenius creates doomsday? am thinking even if doomsday had killed supes, lex and lexcorp is gonna have some s'plaining to do insofar as doomsday were concerned. and cavill superman were making us regret a few o' our keanu reeves and jason patric criticisms over the years. mopey and dour superman slouches his way through the film making us wish he had genuine died, but much earlier. but for all our dislike o' supes and lex, we didn't hate the movie. our first viewing were extended cut, and the movie, in spite o' its length, were watchable and moderate entertaining. wonder woman and the other justice leaguers were an utterly pointless addition save for promoting future movies, but such wasted screen time didn't actual hurt the film. we managed to enjoy film a bit even for all its many flaws. HA! Good Fun!

so, knowing how dangerous the edges o' the map in our own galaxy is, a plan to travel for 300 years to a distant galaxy is devised, perhaps to procure unobtanium or somesuch? and considering any intel on andromeda is likely gonna be 600 years old... am not doubting a hidden agenda, 'cause what we know so far would result in only morons or condemned criminals being part o' the operation. HA! Good Fun!

our understanding is batman, the original detective comics character, were unapologetically homicidal. more than one nogoodnik were tossed off a building by old skool batman without a cushy landing spot to break their fall. even so, am admitting we were a bit surprised by batfleck's willingness to violent break from more recent traditions. HA! Good Fun!

dunno. am imagining that being on fire is worse than divorce. choose a) being set ablaze or b) discover your spouse wants a divorce had a doctor friend o' ours once explain to us that burning isn't the worst way to die as such folks invariably go into shock rather quick, but am not certain we believe her. regardless, we didn't suggest death in option (a). cook for a fair bit w/o death strikes us as worse than divorce. ... am also gonna posit having a nightmare child is worse than divorce. we has met parents who got genuine monsters for kids. is hard for us to comprehend the pain o' a loving parent who nevertheless must care for and raise a monster. having to watch most woody allen films? clear am missing woody allen "genius" 'cause his films is kinda the mental equivalent o' chewing aluminum foil for ninety minutes to two hours. arguable worse than divorce. 'course we ain't never been divorced, so... we has drowned. had to be resuscitated and everything. trapped under ice o' a frozen lake and drowned. not a fond memory. *shrug* just giving you a hard time. even as an outside observer, Gromnir is recognizing how bad divorce can be... particularly if kids is involved and custody issues is contentious. is precisely why we would Never do family law. HA! Good Fun! ps but yeah, having an evil kid still has gotta be worse than divorce. *shudder*

again, no sense o' scale. the milky way is so enormous, it is unlikely you can genuine conceive the actual distances involved and the number o' planets it contains. is numbers so large they only got sense o' scale relative to other gross large numbers. you mention the marianas trench? the ocean floor on this planet has been mapped 'bout 5% complete. literal hundreds of billions of stars in this galaxy. by the time this galaxy has been exhausted o' far horizons, the human species will be long dead or evolved into something complete unrecognizable as human anyways. even with ftl travel o' the mass effect universe, you need know where you is going, and once you get there it is gonna take considerable time and effort to explore. ... am not even gonna touch the silly ai paranoia/concerns = racism nonsense. HA! Good Fun!

why? haven't answered the fundamental question. why would folks leave the milky way? running out of habitable planets and planets capable o' being made habitable, seems mighty unlikely. 100-400 BILLION stars in milky way, and only a mind bogglingly small fraction o' those has got mass effect relays. perhaps in the andromeda setting, the milky way suffers some kinda galaxy-wide disaster 'bout which Gromnir is otherwise ignorant? perhaps we need read more info 'bout andromeda, but am sensing the need for fundamental misconceptions 'bout stars and space to make andromeda plausible. oh, and a new battletech update were made available. looks as if beta is just 'round the corner. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/webeharebrained/battletech/posts/1745111?ref=backer_project_update HA! Good Fun!

we view post count as ribbons o' shame. we would wear 'em on the inside if we could. HA! Good Fun!

turned our turkey breast carcasses, and other turkey leavings, into stock. with all the stock simmerings, our house is more turkey scented today than it were a week ago. haven't decided if the aroma is an improvement over the norm. in any event, stock will become more than a gallon o' turkey soup, which freezes well enough. as such, am gonna continue suffering turkey leftovers 'til 'round christmas. huzzah. last year when we made turkey soup, we went ahead and added egg noodles. am not a big fan o' noodles in our chicken/turkey soups, but we figured we needed a few carbs to turn the soup into a legit meal. we got distracted by a phone call while cooking-- apparently we suck at multitasking. had a 12 oz bag o' noodles and we intended to use 1/2 o' the noodles for 1 gallon o' soup. "bag o'" anything is so unlike Gromnir, but for turkey-leftovers soup, making homemade noodles woulda' kinda defeated the point. *shrug* used the whole bag. last year's incarnation thus became egg noodles dampened ever so slightly by turkey soup. maybe stay away from the noodles this year. HA! Good Fun!

not true. make flag burning illegal is not the same as "take away your citizenship for burning the flag." am personally offended whenever we hear folks advocating for criminalization o' flag burning, but loss o' citizenship for flag burning is whole 'nother kinda wacky. then again, is yet another example o' trump revealing how little he understands 'bout what a POTUS can do in our form o' government. HA! Good Fun! edit: to be fair, the flag burning nonsense from trump is one o' his less dumb twitter moves in recent weeks. trump, in spite o' election victory, is actual not particular popular. didn't win popular vote and a considerable % of folks who did vote for him admit they don't like him. is one o' the least popular President elects... evar. have an unpopular Prez is no surprise given how both hillary and trump were unpopular. the thing is, prohibitions on burning the flag IS popular. more than 50% o' the public would be in favor o' criminalization o' flag burning. the Court and Congress (as a whole) has shown better judgement than the average citizen insofar as attempts to criminalize flag burning is concerned, but if you wanna increase popularity w/o any risk o' having to actual try and get a flag burning amendment adopted, then rail 'bout flag burning is a politically appealing option. twitter nonsense 'bout flags will resonate with average citizen and will distract from some other recent trump nonsense. trump comments thus makes an ugly kinda sense. typical trump.

no idea why there is such a dramatic gulf 'tween 5 and 6. am gonna need see if such gifts have the same influence pay-off as pre-5.0, 'cause even post level 40, the influence gain from a purple 5 and the current orange 6 were 'bout 1:4... which were only a bit different than their basic comm costs (1:3). with how little we play swtor, am glad we used esseles/bt to get at least one companion per character to influence 50, 'cause it clear got more expensive to do so in 5.0. am also relieved we managed to get so many basic comm gift purchases stockpiled pre 5.0. got something approaching 500 blue and purple (each) 5s and ~200 orange 6 for republic memorabilia. given the fact we frequent stop playing swtor for 4-6 months at a time, getting even a couple additional companions per character to max influence were gonna be a chore. excepting the pet comp gifts such as delicacies, the cultural artifact, technology and republic memorabilia were the gift categories we observed providing the most juice per squeeze-- could get love reaction with better than 3/4 o' all comps with the aforementioned. am well stocked, but am also knowing the stockpile is gonna disappear extreme fast. oh well. perhaps it is time to take another break. we do recommend buying the blue rank 5s at 5k per as those are (edit: blue 5s were great pre 5.0. we ain't tested post 5.0) an ideal choice to get you from 20 influence to 40 influence. am suspecting cost changes forthcoming, so might be worth buying a goodly number o' blue 5s before changes is made. is still very expensive to go from 20 to 40 with 5k credits per gift, but... HA! Good Fun!

There are many different kinds of intelligence; consequently, there are also many different kinds of stupidity. there has been so many overreactions to the election. who did trump "play like a fiddle"? trump played a small portion o' the total electorate, but with historic low democrat vote participation, all trump needed were a relative small portion o' voters to be swayed by his tune. keep in mind that as little as a day before the election, we heard all kinda stories 'bout how the republican party as a whole would need to overhaul their message and their strategies. *chuckle* 'course a day after the election and it were the democratic party that sudden need to embrace change. trump beat hillary clinton. is difficult to imagine a republican candidate who would fail to beat hillary clinton in 2016, and yet trump almost pulled off such a feat. trump lost the popular vote but nevertheless managed to barely beat a democratic candidate for President whose campaign endured the kinda scandals which in an ordinary year woulda' doomed a run at the oval office. based on exit polls, a large % o' trump voters didn't much like trump. nevertheless, as 'tween hillary and trump, the typical republican saw trump as the lesser o' two evhuls. did trump play the ordinary republican? didn't seem so. republicans, as much as they disliked trump, saw more o' their interests (money) align with trump than hillary, and the prospect o' a polar shift in the Supreme Court also scared more than a few. many republicans were annoyed by trump fiddle playing, but hillary set their teeth on edge. weird election. typical overreactions. keep in mind that the rather considerable number o' republican Congressmen who were nevertheless against trump, still managed to get reelected. 'tween trump's failure to get popular vote win, and the substantial success o' republicans-opposed-to-trump gaining reelection, is gonna be hard for trump to convince Congress he gots a mandate from the people which would spark newfound Legislative action, with trump piloting the bold new course. play like a fiddle? yeah, trump played some folks. not many. in an ordinary year, not near enough woulda' been played. the press and pundits will overreact, but democrats and republicans will look largely the same in the next few years precisely 'cause o' how few folks swayed by trump's fiddling. nevertheless, am suspecting the trend o' washington largely ignoring the white working class is gonna change. the white working lower middle-class is shrinking, but it is clear such people will vote and those votes can alter the course o' elections. HA! Good Fun!

can't muster the energy to play swtor at the moment. we did manage to purchase a bazillion or so republic memorabilia companion gifts with comms before 5.0 went live, so we can get the dvl chiss jedi companion to influence 50 on at least a few characters as soon as she becomes available. whatever. HA! Good Fun!

(images) HA! Good Fun! (images) HA! Good Fun! Well, a bullet to the chest doesn't leave you screaming. you don't think more than a few o' the victims o' castro were screaming? those who went down in the boats castro sank at sea or those who watched family members killed before getting their own bullet were no doubt stoic and silent. *chuckle* HA! Good Fun!

HA! Good Fun!

You have to hand it to him, he's the first troller in chief we've ever had. I seriously doubt he cares about the validity of these statements, he just does this as a tactic and to mess with the media. He seem to want to be Putin lite (lite because I don't see that he will ever carry similar respect). HA! Good Fun!

he was on barney miller for 8 years. kids these days. ah well. is too bad. 71 isn't all that old nowadays.

bought eight or so steam games, including xcom2 digital deluxe for $26. ... not playing anything though. gotta find a more comfortable way to sit at our computer while our ribs heal. big p#$$%. HA! Good Fun!

the one and only time you will ever see Gromnir quote frasier. Daphne: I don't see what's so hard about telling Roz you were wrong. Frasier: You don't understand. It's not the same as Dad being wrong, or your being wrong. I have a degree from Harvard. Whenever I'm wrong, the world makes a little less sense. HA! Good Fun!