Re: I Don't Need Directions

Relevant link: http://xkcd.com/783/

Dear Randall Munroe, author of xkcd:

When GPSes work properly, they're nice.  However, they don't work properly all the time, and send their unsuspecting users who don't know how to read road signs off on unexpected expeditions, as has happened to my GPS-dependent friends before.  Basically, I left as the last of three cars, an hour after the first car left, and got to our destination first.  One car stopped for food, but the other got massively off track due to over-reliance on, you guessed it, their GPS.

Our electronics-addicted society has forgotten how to navigate using the abundance of information that's conveniently placed EVERYWHERE alongside ALL THE ROADS.  So much intuitively placed documentation should not go to waste.

Admittedly, the signage system isn't perfect, especially around Washington D.C., but in sane areas of the country, it gets the job done.

Your fan and regular reader,

XT-8147

Guild Wars 2 fangasming

So they just had an English demo.  With Ranger gameplay.  Confirming a lot of my hopes about the class.

It was really hard to tell in Guild Wars 1, but Rangers were the very first class that relied a lot upon positioning and agility in battle moreso than just running in all guns blazing.  There were skill types and specific skills that aided this, such as the traps and the elite stance Escape.  For the longest time I used Escape as my elite because I recognized that the rest of my bar was decent damage and support-wise, so I used Escape for defense and to reposition myself during fights.

Rangers in Guild Wars 2 will get damage bonuses and a chance to stun by flanking their enemies, and the different bow types play into your strategy as well.  This really embodies what the Ranger tried to be in Guild Wars 1, but couldn't due to limitations of the engine and mechanics.

One thing I'm sure they'll cover in the months between now and the release is racial bonuses and skills.  They've mentioned racial skills in the past, but haven't elaborated save for an example that only used Warrior and Elementalist because those were the only classes announced at the time.  I'm really having a tough time deciding what race I want to make my Ranger, and knowing about things like this ahead of time will make all the difference.  I don't want to get 50 levels in and then realize I made the wrong race choice and have to start the whole character development process all over again.  I know their whole emphasis is on "no wrong choices", but the wrongness of the choice will be entirely due to play style and not mechanics, and I want a race that will supplement my play style very well.

• Human, well, is what my current Ranger is.  I'm curious what incentives there will be to play a Human character vs. one of the four other races they're adding.
• Norn sounds like it could work well for a Ranger. Basically, combine the pet with the Norn's shapeshifting abilities and some melee weapons.  That sounds like it could be fun.
• Sylvari kind of meshes with the whole point of Rangers: to be one with nature.  Perhaps the least is known about Sylvari since they were born at the end of Eye of the North.
• Charr Rangers were honestly the most threatening of the Charr classes in Guild Wars 1.  Since they used Ignite Arrows, combined with the fact that it was a low level area and you had crap for armor, they really pumped out the damage.  All the other Charr were really just there to get between you and the Rangers, or to prevent you from killing them.
• Asura is absolutely my least likely choice for a Ranger.  Asura just sounds like it would be better suited for a casting class.  Though I do plan to make an Asuran Warrior, just to find a really big melee weapon so I have a tiny character with a huge weapon.  Combine that with their golems and you might actually have a potent melee capability...  Or maybe their golems could be treated like pets and work alongside a pet for an Asuran Ranger?  I dunno.

If it sounds like I regard the Ranger as the best class in Guild Wars, well, that's correct.  Ranger is indeed the best class in Guild Wars.  They're far more versatile than any other class, capable of delivering pressure, sustained DPS, disruption, area control, and more.  About the only thing they can't do by themselves is use skills on allies, but that's what a secondary class is for.  You can play a competent and viable Ranger with no skills from a secondary class.  Once you bring that secondary into play, you get a ton of versatility.  With creative use of your Expertise attribute (moreso at the game's release, it's been nerfed a ton by now), you can do things far better than any other class.

This post will now descend into random notes.

A build I want to put together and try out (once I'm done capturing elites as it requires a Necromancer secondary) involves taking a pet along with the Necromancer's Flesh Golem (and probably Death Nova).  I'm calling it a Corrupted Beastmaster.  Attribute spread before runes 12 Expertise, 9 Beast Mastery, 9 Death Magic.

Arenanet has always loved putting references to all sorts of things in popular culture into Guild Wars, and it shows.  With skills like "For Great Justice!", "Make Your Time!", "Never Give Up!", "Never Surrender!", "It's just a flesh wound.", "The Power Is Yours!", Sight Beyond Sight, and many, many more, it's clear as day.  So, I was looking through GuildWiki a while back and noticed that there's a boss named Grabthar the Overbearing, who drops Grabthar's Hammer.  "By Grabthar's Hammer, you shall be avenged!"  I went and farmed it just for the lulz, even though I don't like its stats (Earth damage, seriously?).

I've also had an idea for a "Walking Reference" character who just uses skills whose names reference things.  The best class mix for this is Paragon and Warrior, as they have all the shouts, and a good portion of the shouts are references.  We actually have a choice of elite skill, since both "The Power Is Yours!" and "It's just a flesh wound." are both elite.  In fact, the build can be almost entirely shouts.  I currently have it at seven shouts and the stance Bonetti's Defense.  And of course, the only proper weapon to wield with the build would have to be a reference, to which Grabthar's Hammer would work perfectly.  It's not meant to be a viable build anyway.

leet skillz

I went capping a few days ago and again today.  Did Warrior a few days ago, and both Necromancer and Mesmer today.  Today I started at 74k and after spending 20k on cap sigs, money from selling drops (and the gold drops themselves) left me at 61k.  So basically I have enough left to do the remaining 5 professions.  Those profits exclude dye drops, materials salvaged from salvage armors, and runes/insignias on salvage armors, which I haven't taken care of yet because I typically do them in batches.

I've watched two of Arenanet's live broadcasts from Gamescom, and I don't know if I'll watch any more.  The major barrier is language, it's all in German.  Which is to be expected being that Gamescom is in Germany, but still... even watching the gameplay by itself just isn't satisfying enough without being able to understand the guy who's explaining what's happening.

Apparently at Gamescom they announced the Necromancer profession.  The official site hasn't been updated to reflect this at all, so hopefully when Gamescom ends that'll happen.  Also, hopefully after Gamescom they'll put up screenshots of the user interface and detailed explanations of the traits and so forth.  It all looks really interesting, but the videos only show but so much.  I especially want to know what the user interface for a Ranger is going to look like with pet controls and the pet's skill bar.

Of course, I expect that the user interface will be fully customizable like in GW1 where you could move everything around and resize things so it worked for you.  I had to do that so I could heal people.   The default interface is fine for playing most classes with the keyboard or the mouse, but is absolutely horrible for a mouse-oriented player playing a Monk.  The amount you have to move your mouse to heal people is just retarded.  So, if you've seen my screenshots, I've changed it around.  The main point is that the skill bar is vertical, right next to the party window.  This way I can click a health bar, click a heal, click a health bar, click a heal, etc. with minimal mouse movement.  Of course, there won't be a dedicated healing class in GW2, so the point is kind of moot, but I still expect that the interface will be customizable.

I'm wondering about parties in GW2, though.  All the emphasis so far has been on the awesome things you can do with other players without ever forming a party.  To my knowledge, I've never seen people actually partied up.  I'd like to see that interface too.  It'd be necessary for the dungeons anyway, so it's got to have an interface accessible outside of the dungeons.

So, knowing that the game will have 8 classes, and four have been revealed so far (in order: Elementalist, Warrior, Ranger, and Necromancer), speculation is flying around as to what the other four will be.  We already know there probably won't be Assassins, Dervishes, or Paragons, just because the official list of weapon types has been announced for some time now and doesn't contain daggers, scythes, or spears.

However, it does contain firearms.  No class has been announced yet that deals primarily with the firearms, whereas we've got a melee weapon class (that can use bows and firearms), a bow class (that can use melee weapons), and two staff classes (that are probably stuck with their staves).  I feel reasonably safe predicting that one of the classes will be a gunner or a rifleman or something like that.  As for the other three...  it's anyone's guess.  Part 2 of the Combat Developer Notes article says, and I quote:

Choice of profession will of course have a huge impact on how the game plays. There are eight professions in Guild Wars 2, many of which will be familiar to fans of Guild Wars, as well as a few professions new to the Guild Wars world. Each of these professions is roughly categorized by the type of armor they wear: scholars wear light armor, adventurers wear medium armor, and soldiers wear heavy armor. Currently there are three scholar professions, three adventurer professions and two soldier professions.

If I interpret that correctly, then so far we know of one soldier profession (Warrior), one adventurer profession (Ranger), and two scholar professions (Elementalist, Necromancer). This correlates exactly with the three different max armor levels in GW1.  I will infer that the gunner/rifleman will probably be the other soldier profession.  Also, take note that it says there will be "professions new to the Guild Wars world." Given that the four we know of now were all in GW1, it would make sense that the other four are the new ones.  Or will the fifth be Mesmer?  Mesmer was a really neat, though underplayed and undervalued profession, it'd be a shame if they were just forgotten about in the 250 years since GW1 ended.

Hopefully they don't nerf AoE, because that's the one thing I've consistently hated in GW: that enemies move out of AoE and do it so quickly that it's not really worth it to bring AoE.  Meanwhile, I'll be yelling at the henchmen and heroes "move out of the AoE, idiots!"

Also, a huge gripe I have playing as a Ranger in GW1: I use a flatbow.  Typically either Drago's Flatbow or the Forgotten Flatbow, though I have an Elswyth's Recurve Bow and a custom-made Vampiric Shortbow of Fortitude available for different situations.  Flatbows have the best range with the fastest fire rate, but aren't terribly accurate unless you bring Favorable Winds, which has been stapled to my skill bar for years.  If you're on top of a hill and the enemy is at the bottom, you get even more range.  So, quite often, I will find myself a mile or so away from an enemy filling it with arrows.  With all the heroes and henchmen just standing around not doing anything until the enemies get close.  Why should I have to sacrifice the superior range of my weapon just to get them to attack?

LubricatedApe

I mean, GreaseMonkey.

I wrote another script, this time for YouTube.  Here's the story.  I was on my subscriptions page when I noticed the navigation bar at the top.  My first thought was "hey, it's nice to actually have these links visible where they can be easily clicked instead of having to click on my username first!"  Then, I thought "it'd be nice to have that navigation bar on the rest of the site."

I started writing JavaScript, and victory was had.  It adds the navigation bar to video pages, channel pages, the video editor page, and the main page.  If you're on your channel or on the video editor page, those items show up as selected, just like all the others do when you're on their pages.  Essentially, this brings the navigation bar to the rest of the website.  I know there are other pages, for instance group pages and opt-in pages for various things YouTube is testing like their HTML5 player, but they're so obscure and hard to find that they might as well not exist.

Finally, intuitive navigation returns to YouTube.  It's kind of sad that websites these days are "improving" by becoming harder to use and obscuring critical functionality.

Anyway, here's the script.  The bar takes a little bit to appear on the pages it has to be inserted on (at least on my computer), but this is normal and to my knowledge can't be sped up.  I don't know if it's because of how I generate the extra markup or what, but it is what it is, and it works.

And here's the Blogger navbar tweak script I wrote a few posts ago.  Seems like I'm scripting a lot of navbars lately...

I could have sworn they disabled this...

In Windows XP Service Pack 2, I could have sworn they disabled the at command.  Having it enabled allows any random user on your computer to escalate themselves to the user SYSTEM, which has absolutely full control over everything and can do things Administrators can't.

I was dicking around and decided to try to escalate to SYSTEM for the lulz.  Imagine my surprise as I went into the command prompt and typed the following:
at \\XT-8147 21:29 /interactive cmd.exe

And then a few seconds later, a command prompt pops up with SYSTEM's priveleges.

I'm running Windows XP Service Pack 3.  It was installed immediately after SP2 was installed, immediately after a virgin install of SP1 from a CD.  Due to Microsoft's infinite wisdom, you have to do it that way (probably not if you get the standalone installer, but it's not like they make that easy to find).  At any rate, I've disabled it now.

The average user might not see the point, or even the necessity, but regardless, if you're still running Windows XP, it's an important thing to have disabled, and disabling it is simple if you have Administrator privileges:

1. In the Control Panel, go into Administrative Tools, and open Services.
2. Scroll down, select Task Scheduler, and double click it.
3. In the dialog that comes up, change Startup type to Disabled, and then click the Stop button.
4. Once that's done, click OK, then close the services window.

There are videos on YouTube showing off this exploit.  You should heed any rational computer expert's advice and never run this command ever except to show people and then reboot to revert back to your regular account (or, you can use it responsibly to go in and disable the vulnerability).  It's more applicable if you're using Windows XP in an environment where you have a restricted account, like possibly at work.  Just for kicks, I tried the same command in my VM of Windows 7, and it specifically gave me an error message saying it wouldn't run it due to a security problem.

Edit: By the way, the "penis" reaction was me trying to click the edit link and missing. lol

Guild Wars ramblings

So, after getting Signet of Spirits on my rit and setting up a spirit spammer build on her, which was really the entire reason I made her, I've set up a spirit spammer on my ranger now.

It's not that spirit spamming doesn't work on a primary rit or anything.  It works beautifully.  The issue is unlocked areas of the game.  My rit has very few, whereas my ranger has been everywhere.  I'd been kind of skirting around that issue for a while when farming items for Nick, but this week's item is deep in Factions, and much further into the campaign than I've gotten my ritualist.  It just wasn't feasible to get her there.

So, as I said, I've set up my ranger with a spirit spammer build now.  It's kind of weird to be playing a ranger while using only rit skills.  The ranger's primary attribute, Expertise, works beautifully with the build since it reduces the energy cost of all the binding rituals.  Now if only Expertise could be reverted back to its original functionality so it would reduce the cost of all non-Spells, so Armor of Unfeeling would be reduced as well.

Now that I've done this, there's two things that can happen a lot more quickly and efficiently.  First, I have one more elite skill title left (the Elonian one), and second, I really need to finish War in Kryta so the Kryta zones will revert to their previous spawns.

For the skill title, I need money.  Each Signet of Capture is 1k at a skill trainer (this cost starts lower and gradually increases, maxing out at 1k), and I have 85 skills left to cap (140 total, minus the 55 I already have).  After having done some farming earlier this morning, I'm sitting at about 77k, which is pretty much in the threshold where I'll make the rest of the required money as I go along.  The farming I did, after the farming for Nick, was to get the materials necessary to craft several Powerstones of Courage, which are a consumable item that's basically a reset button.

Seriously.  It removes all death penalty for all party members, then gives all party members a 10% morale boost.  This is precisely what I need for the War in Kryta.  If it's going to be cheap with its spawns and enemy skill sets, I'm going to be cheap with my tactics.  The only real problem is the materials required for a single Powerstone of Courage.  I need Granite, which is balls easy to get (HM Hulking Stone Elementals cough up enough of it to go into the countertop business), and Glittering Dust, which is more difficult.  I don't know of a single enemy that has Glittering Dust as its primary material drop.  I've been farming undead, which do drop it, but their primary material drop is Bones.  Glittering Dust is almost easier to get by salvaging it from things like Luminous Stones and Spider Webs.  The only reason I stick with the undead is because they're low level, thus, the farm is easier.

And yes, a spirit spammer can solo farm pretty much anywhere in the game.  I'm preparing to take my ranger into the Underworld so I can get the sole remaining pet he doesn't have in his menagerie: the Black Widow.  You can just barely fit Charm Animal into the build, so theoretically it should work.

Lots of people have tons more money in-game than I have, but... I've been spending money like fucking crazy, so I haven't really had the opportunity to stockpile it.  Once I'm done with the elite skill titles, the only money titles remaining are Drunkard, Party Animal, and Sweet Tooth, which I haven't actually invested any money into yet.

I'm feeling a little more optimistic about vanquishing areas on Hard Mode now.  I just vanquished Plains of Jarin with no trouble.  While yes, it is a 4-man area, the same tactics I used are applicable to real areas.  Also, maybe now I can go back and grab Eastern Frontier and do more work on vanquishing in Tyria.  Since I last tried it, I've gotten way more skills, and developed a lot better tactics for HM, so hopefully I'll be able to get somewhere instead of stalemating on the first group of Grawl.  I'll hold off on doing the remaining Kryta areas until I've done the rest of the War in Kryta, but I can hit everywhere else.

Seriously, why didn't they make an easier toggle for that than having to finish an almost impossible series of quests?  I can make progress with Frozen Soil in my build, but I hate that I have to bring it to get anywhere.  I still need one of the ritualist skills that kills an allied spirit (preferably nonelite, I like running burnpoison).  If all else fails, Summon Spirits can get it out of the way.

Once I have my Powerstones, I'm going to use a tactic I found on the GuildWiki article for A Little Help From Above, which makes the quest a bit easier but requires a death.  Once you get the key you need to get, the road you had to pave to get to the enemy is now populated with hidden White Mantle groups that pop up as you approach them.  This can be avoided entirely by exploiting how resurrection works.  The only res shrine in the zone is in the safe area where Livia, Zinn, and Blimm are, which is precisely where you need to go after getting the key.  So, after getting the key, go suicide on the first White Mantle pop, res back in safety, pop a Powerstone, and continue with the quest.  Like I said before, since the whole quest line is so cheap, there's no reason to not be cheap right back at it.

Sometimes I think game designers believe that challenge should be instilled through added tediousness.  If they believed otherwise, the groups here wouldn't be as follows:

• All are higher level than the party, which affects the damage equation in their favor
• All groups are at least 10 enemies in size
• A good portion of the enemies have resurrection skills (as much as I exaggerate it, it's not every single one.  It's more in the range of 30-40%)
• The enemies' profession combinations and general builds are not predictable based on their name, unlike everywhere else in the entire game.
• They're balanced for groups of 8 humans, but the area is only accessible from an area which is balanced for a group of 6.  The only way to get a group of 8 there is to start from Temple of the Ages.
• The Temple of the Ages henchmen are level 15 and are thus little more than a liability, which is no doubt contributing to my frustration.  If they can force them to level 20 with better skill sets in Hard Mode, why can't they do the same here?
• Getting a decent party of 8 humans is very difficult these days.  Most people either go by themselves with three heroes and four henchmen, or with another human and six heroes.

I had a whole rant in here about pulling enemies that I extracted and turned into an article in my userspace on GuildWiki. Thank me for this, as this post would have been much longer with it present.

My Best Effort Yet

81% is just before the SP phrase at the end of Twin Solo. I was so close.

Certainly better than failing in the intro at 1-5%...