What I am... used to

BLM WHM SMN SCH THF RNG BRD MNK WAR DRK PLD > 99

What shall we talk about? 

You remember that line in Indiana Jones?  Yeah, I say it more often than I would like usually before I start writing.  It's a way of reminding myself that not everyone has the same perspective yes?  Indeed sometimes it may seem like you are in another country running your bar, exclaiming "you can't treat me like this... I am an American!"  But she kind of chose to run her bar in another country didn't she?  Well that's how I feel sometimes.  

Today I am sitting there watching this squirrel in front of my yard and there he is digging a hole and burying his nut right in front of my face.  Reminds me yet again of what property is.  It's like yeah you don't care if I bury this here plus I am full and if you want it well, take it... but I know you won't.  

Let's see what other philosophies can I espouse today.  Yesterday I went to my sister's house for Thanksgiving and I was reminded yet again of family.  I like them, I really do but sometimes it's like they are from another planet.  There was a time we were all lovey dovey, the more the merrier, mi casa su casa and now... not so much.  

We watched Jurassic something and it was pretty good.  Bryce Dallas is like OMG I want to see her naked.  Did I used to watch too much porn?  Perhaps.  She is looking old though.  And she's probably younger than me and I don't think I look that old but I do feel it a lot.  When I watch TV it feels like all those people are my age, I completely forget whether I look good or if I have a bad reputation or if I can even jog.  I immediately go back to the state of mind that I had when I was at the pinnacle of my existence and start to rate people like I am at my best.  It's weird.  

Today I am having leftovers from yesterday.  I didn't want to eat breakfast since I had a large meal planned so I put it all in the microwave and today I am happy to say it still tastes good.  The microwave is weird though because unlike the toaster, you can dry out your food easily so it's best to throw some water on top of the food before you nuke it.  The bread NEEDS to go in the toaster there is no way that bread can be nuked... word to the wise.  Sour cream is iffy.  Obviously it doesn't go well in the microwave but if it is on the beans already then it doesn't dry out.  

I used the last of the coffee so I put all the rest in the filter and it turned out WAY too strong, so I poured out about two cups of it after forcing down 1 1/2 cups of the too strong stuff and I was prepared to pour two more cups in.  After I poured 1 cup though, it started boiling it in so I waited til it finished doing that and lo and behold, I cup was enough.  

I tried to influence my brother to play Diablo with me online sometime but he is really too busy I think.  His wife has a lot of time to play but thinking about it now, it's a terrible idea.  I don't want to play online with her, that's like sacrilege... unless he plays too.  That reminds me of another time that I played online with a certain Mexican bartender and his wife.  We got along great, until I started shying away from playing with her and then he totally cut off the whole experiment.  Either she complained that I treated her wrong or I don't know what but we were totally playing and talking one day and the next it was like ZIP up that zipper.  I have a tendency to play with people that have girlfriends because I don't feel like there is pressure there but it can totally backfire once a long period of time goes by and ... whatdayaknow... still single.  Yeah, I am always single, always been single, always gonna be single.  

That's what I am used to.  

Your needs

BLM WHM SMN SCH THF RNG BRD MNK WAR DRK PLD > 99

I was unable to watch Alex last night.  

I checked off of Twitter about 5:30pm sure that I would remember to hook up my TV for the show but... nope, nada, 5 hrs later I'm like OH YEAH... 

I have not hooked up cable again.  We had planned to get rid of it and so I disconnected it and then we bought some antenna to get the local stations and it turns out we live FAR away from downtown so that didn't work.  Eventually we went back to basic cable.  I'm not sure if we even get that channel now.  If she gets her own show I might check her out again.  

It's weird because now that I know she's married she doesn't seem to me to NEED the news anymore.  I mean most of the people that do the news are miserable people.  Single people.  We all know that they are missing a cog or two because they want the world to get better and to find evil and to expose corruption and finally get to the day when people don't need to watch the news... but that never happens.  At first it was like "oh good idea, Chris Hayes will do the news he's a friend of Rachel so he will be good" but after a while I realized that he's too happy to do the news.  He's got his wife and two children and works in DC(aka center of the world) and what could be grander than watching him talk about the bad people but he's a reminder of happiness and honestly I think people watch the news to hear bad things.  They want the people to be loose cogs or at least it's more interesting that way.  Erin Burnett is like that, sort of happy but unhappy.  Alex was like crazy animated before and now she seems more happy.   It's like getting laid is murder for your career.  Not because it IS, but because people want you to be interesting and married people aren't interesting.  

Rock stars are like this.  You hear that a rock star is married and there go the sales at concerts plummeting.  It's really quite the bane, imo.  Married rock stars, there's no REASON to go backstage and meet them, lol.  Just kidding of course, besides what do I know of rock stars, I've never been to a concert really, let alone backstage.  It just seems to me that married people are too happy to be prima donnas and even though noone likes a prima donna in their personal life, it's kinda what we want to see on TV.  Someone that needs attention.  

Rachel is a perfect example.  She's got that lesbian marriage going so it seems like she is happy but men are like, is she REALLY happy.  That mystery is there egging us on that maybe she might be holding out for true love and maybe she's just doing her college experiment for life?  I don't know.  But it's interesting to watch her and wonder at it.  SECupp was like this.  You wanted her to be single for life but of course that had to end and good for her, she settled, lol.  Must have been hard for her having to pick ONE guy and yet she looks happy I guess.  

Maybe that's not normal though.  Getting to know your newscasters is a bit like playing with REAL people in the holodeck on Star Trek TNG.  You remember Barclay?  He was this timid guy that used real people in the holodeck so that he could control them but in real life he was timid and afraid to hurt anyone's feelings.  That's me.  Oh I'm sure I am hurting people's feelings with this blog but these words are my personal notes, not something that I would tell someone.  

This brings us to Chris Matthews.  I never liked the guy.  What a moron.  Always so interposed and sure of himself.  Over time I realized that he really was a prima donna.  But you know what, and this goes for Lawrence too, he's great at his job.  I will sit there for a short while hoping he won't crash into someone and his take charge attitude and willingness to speak whenever he wants is really what drives the show.  One day he had his wife on the show and I saw it.  The reason he was the way he was.  He totally bows to his wife.  She is the pants in the house and what a relief to finally understand what his problem was and what it is that makes a great newscaster.  

You need to want to get laid.  

Diablo 3 ROS

BLM WHM SMN SCH THF RNG BRD MNK WAR DRK PLD > 99

Diablo 3 is turning out to be much more than your average game.  I have invested TONS of hours now in making those heroes tougher and tougher in gear.  

The way the game works is that the character level maxes out at 70.  After that you must invest time in abilities of which you start out with 3 major abilities per piece and then get up to a max of 4 and rarely 5.  Once you are there, it's time to start to invest in WHICH abilities you want to have most in common because you will be able to, after some gear drops with a set of abilities, to change ONE of those abilities to something that can then be a common among y0ur other items.  The total of your gear is 8 pieces.  Those being helmet, chest, shoulder, gloves, bracers, belt, pants, and boots.  You probably don't want to mess too much with changing abilities until you are a full 70.  The confusing part however is that you will get legendary gear much SOONER than 70 which you then are forced to forgo grudgingly as you level past the items level.  

Now once you reach level 70, it's time to talk to Kamala.  She will give you gear for blood shards and really, to save yourself time and a BUNCH of self-doubt, it's time to DUMP all your gear that is not level 70.  Just do it, because you are GOING to end up doing it anyways.  Dump all your legendaries too because it is WAY too expensive to change legendary gear to suit your needs at this point. 

Next thing is to figure out which rare gear goes with what.  You will notice that some gear allows you to have your critical chance go up and other gear doesn't.  Likewise some gear allows a big boost in armor and other gear doesn't.  Some allows slots to put gems in there and if you picture yourself in the best gear it's best to just stop keeping ANY gear that doesn't have full slots, namely 3 for the chest piece and 2 for the pants, 1 for the weapon and 1 for the offhand item if you don't choose a 2-handed weapon.  These are a must so just throw it away if you can't get those right off the bat.  Now if you get a perfect roll with the other 3 stats then you can roll to get your slot so thankfully Diablo 3 is nice in this respect because you get PLENTY of play room to get the skills you want.  

And I am telling you that THIS is the fun part of the game.  It's diabolical but the actual playing is not that much fun at all, the SHOPPING is.  You get to roll roll roll and soon you are out of money and you gotta go hunt things again.  Eons later you will figure out what is the right combo that let's you play on the harder levels.  

The first level you should try at 70 is Torment 1.  It goes all the way up to Torment 6.  If you go online, you find all of these characters that have modded their characters.  They have weapons with 3 slots, rings with 3 slots, even amulets with 3 slots.  Oh I forgot to mention that at level 70 is about the time you should start to worry about amulets and rings.  They are nice but and are very necessary at 70 but before then it's really just up to you if you dabble because you can't craft rings and amulets until 70.  

Ok but I have finally made it to Torment 6 and I am here to tell you it IS doable with just regular equipment even though it seems like impossible to play there(that's what it seemed like to me at first).  

Now, imo(in my opinion) you first need to get all of your gear with your main stat.  There are 6 characters each with their own main stat that gives them more DPS(damage per second) the more their main stat is raised.  For Crusaders and Barbarians it is Strength, and for all characters Strength gives you more armor.  You have to take this into account when you decide what stats to add because if you play the Crusader or Barbarian you will need more Resist All(magic resistance) because they already have a high armor due to their main stat serving both as a damage boost and as armor.  

For Wizards and Witch Doctors their main stat is Intelligence.  This means their DPS goes up the more this goes up and the bonus is that all characters get more Resist All if their intelligence is high so for these characters you will want to add more Armor and not worry at all about Resist All.  You WILL need to take into account Armor though, because getting one-shotted... really happens... alot... and also...  really annoying... so this is why.  

For Demon Hunter and Monks their main stat is Dexterity.  I haven't got my Monk up to 70 yet so no info on him too much but for Demon Hunter their DPS tends to be the highest because they move around the fastest.  People tend to invest more on DPS with these but because of that these tend to be the weakest soloists with the most damage.  It's almost like playing Tetris with the Demon Hunter because you are just tamping down stacks with your long range hits while at the same time trying to stay away from magic and fast mobs which of course is all relative to your difficulty.  You'll have a tough time with Demon Hunter because you won't want to invest in armor OR resist all but you are really going to need to for a while until you figure out the pattern you want to use and what your favorite abilities are.  Once that's done, then you can take stuff away you don't need and then use smoke or vault to leap away and use your slots for damage.  Again this is fun job to play but also rather trying because you are such a lightweight when it comes to damage you can take.  Once you are good you will have insane damage and will be able to post sentries that whittle stuff down in front of you so that you can finish them off so in this regard it's quite a fun time preparing and again, SHOPPING for the gear and such to improve your game.  

That's why I didn't like the game so much at first, was because it really was like Torchstone it seemed but boy now that I see that Torment 6 is possible and that I made it there, I am eager to figure how the other jobs will get there.  

Now I got Demon Hunter at a really nice DPS and it's really fun to play but I can't play much past Torment 4.  You really have to be awesome to go Torment 5 or higher and of course you could MOD(modify your stats by saving your character on a disc and then modifying those stats manually) your game but that's a lot like shouting at darts.  Yeah there's a skill to it, and it's also a bit like slapping ppl.  They do what you want at first but then "whoa where'd everyone go and who are all these new people... they don't seem very friendly... SLAP."  

"...only what you take with you" - Yoda  

My demon hunter needs to figure out how to use sentries and there is a set of gear, Marauder's gear, that if you get all 6 of the pieces, lets you lay down sentries that fire your high damage ammo for no cost which is probably how you survive T6(Torment 6).  

Today I am going to tell you how I got the Witch Doctor to Torment 6.  I had already got my Crusader to T6 but he was doing NO damage hardly and even though I was able to keep mobs(monsters) off the other players I played with online, I sensed that they had figured out a way to do high DPS without being maxed in armor and resist all like my Crusader was, so he needs more work.  

The witch doctor is one that casts all sorts of weird spells like locusts and spiders and bats.  I could explain it more but you will have to try the game out to understand it and learn it all and much of fun of the game is to switch out one skill for another and giving it another go.  Now I can say I have truly spent a bunch of time on witch doctor.  At first I used the azurewrath with the lidless wall which is a cold sword with skull shield.  It looked SO awesome!  It's junk.  Later I went back and tried to up my DPS .  Now this is confusing because while you are upping your DPS you are figuring out which skills are better or more comfortable and trust me on this you should just STOP moving around your skills and get all of your rare gear in order like I am going to tell you. 

Now first thing is give all of your items Intelligence.  That leaves 2 or 3 other slots to worry about which is ok since Intelligence usually rolls on the item anyways automatically, but sometimes not.  Now your main DPS, after your intelligence boost, is going to come from Critical Chance and then Critical Damage and then Attack Speed(atk%).  Focus on Critical Chance(crit%) or Critical Damage(critD) only at first because getting Intelligence with one or the other means you can focus on getting the third with no problem.  So if I get a  glove with 4 stats and one of them is intelligence and the other is Critical chance and the other 2 are crap then you still have a chance to re-roll one of those others and get your 3 stats that you want.  If you get intelligence without any of those others, it's time to salvage(throw away) the item.  

The funny thing is some items allow some stats while others allow others.  I will have to address them individually otherwise this will get confusing which is what the game wants is for you to spend a HUGE amount of time figuring this stuff out.  

Gloves get Crit% and CritD and Atk%.  Bracers get only Crit%.  Helmets get Crit%. Weapons CAN have atk% or critD or a tinybit of Crit% but you mostly want those to have a slot so that you can put a gem in there that gives a HUGE amt of critD(yellow gem).  Just do it.  You can add a red gem which will boost the damage a good bit but if you look at your DPS you will see that you should always go for the yellow gem period (EDIT: it turns out that your followers have a max critD so if you recycle your rare rings to your followers,  all maxed out with crit% and critD, you will need to use a red gem on their weapons). This was probably done on purpose so that you would do a red to yellow step and therefore play the game a long while with a red gem in your weapon.  Perhaps you can tell who the new people are online because they have a red gem in their weapon?  Now the offhand weapon is more of a perhaps.  I have noticed that you can add Crit% which is a must have but you can also roll for a slot that allows you BONUS primary stat(depends on your job like before either STR DEX or INT) but it's a difficult call because you get a higher Intelligence and Vitality for it and since you must have Crit% then you either have to settle for whatever else drops or take it and skip vitality, which is your hit points, which are yet another thing you have to figure whether or not you have enough of it.  

I am still working on this so all I am going to do is tell you what I have worked out so far.  I have helltooth gauntlets which together with ONE other item would give me a bonus 500 INT but honestly I have found something else that makes it even worth GIVING UP those 500 INT.  On it I have Crit% CritD and INT. For shoulders and bracers I have Aughild gear which give me nice stats but because I have a Ring of Royal Grandeur, those two get treated like 3 and that is REALLY why I have them because it gives +15% dmg vs Elites while at the same time -15% damage from Elites.  For the belt and chest I have Blackthorn.  After a great many times of coming close and getting the 4 slots needed to avoid those nasty ground effects of plague molten and desecrator, I opted to settle with 2 plus the ring which makes it 3 which give me +10% dmg vs Elites and -10% dmg from Elites, which gives me a total of 25% dmg resistance from Elites which is a nice complement.  This leaves me my pants which are Pox Faulds.  I had Helltooth but once I got these which put out a bunch of AOE(area of effect) damage when 3 or more monsters are around, I kept them and gave up the other.  For my feet I got the illusory boots which allow you walk through those walls the elites like to put up and plus they allow you to walk through those monsters and put up horrify which stuns them all for 2 seconds which again is a nice complement.  Now this item is really hard to get because it, like the Ring of Royal Grandeur, only drops as a result of a Horadrim Cache which you only get after clearing an ACT of all 5 bounties.  And it only sometimes drops a legendary, which might not be this, so it's really rare.  

I have a bunch of stuff that I have salvaged because I have too many characters so a good piece of advice is to start with 3 or 4 characters and have those be complements like a wizard then a witch doctor or a crusader then a barbarian.  This way you can keep good items that you spent a lot of time tweeking and just give it to your up and coming character that uses the same primary stat(statistic).  Part of the fun of the game is figuring out HOW to put rare abilities to good use.  The butchers sickle for instance pulls an enemy up to you 1/5 of the time so I'm wondering why this is so cool and then when I fight the butcher he pulls me in and then SLAMS me with his heavy weapon... good idea yeah?   That's the game.  

Now something I have not mentioned is the rings and amulet.  You must get these to have crit% and critD along with main stat. ONce you have these 3 then go for the fourth stat to be either atk% or slot.  Slot is not so great since gems don't give too much stat and atk speed 5% is much better than 200 primary stat which is what one of best gems can give but again go for these only after you have the other 3 and you start tossing masses of stuff away.  

Now much later, you are going to want special rings and amulets.  These have higher stats for INT and VIT but like before you are going to want crit% and critD in there at the very least.  The precious part of this is that you need to PAY a high-value gem to change stats on these.  This gem is worth 900k so it's a very costly roll and one you need to make sure you don't waste because if you roll the wrong stat, can't switch and say you want to change another one.  This is REALLY frustrating right?  But it's also part of the fun because right over here huge decision making going on and over here you are tossing away tons of crap you simply won't settle for that was really useful not long ago.  

So that's my guy. The legendary rings have special abilities ON TOP OF the stats btw, so I have an amulet that makes you immune to poison and a ring of royal grandeur(with crap stats btw but its too hard to get a second one) and regular rare ring that is crap because it has no abilities but is much better than all the legendary rings with crap roles on them.  It has slot and crit% and critD so it's pretty maxed but ideally I would want crit% critD atk% and primary stat, which never happens except maybe on magefist which I have on this one character.  

Now after you have all of that in order, it's time to figure out what to put in your weapon and offhand.  The weapon must have a slot, for the yellow gem that gives a huge critD, so first thing is to decide which stat you are going to give up to roll up a slot.  Usually you want to have INT and VIT because VIT on a weapon is max 700 whereas on other items it maxes at 500 meaning it's more valuable to put it here, yet if you want to deal more dmg you can roll 10% dmg or 7% atk speed which are again a choice but high on the list of choices.  Usually there is an option to roll a resource/second option which is like a regeneration of your ammo.  This depends if you use ammo or if you use abilites with a cooldown.  Abilities with a cooldown have no ammo but you have to wait a while before they recharge and, if they are strong, then you have to wait a LONG while, making them not so attractive to use.  For me I started using the Barber knife.  It has atk% and slot and +10% damage so it has a very high amount of damage which made my DPS number really high and made me happy but I wasn't running at T6 yet, I was only at T4.  Later I found the Royal Grandeur ring all messed up life/second and a life/hit stat that I didn't want on my ring but that I had to settle for.  At that point I tried using the dogs tweek that instead of giving me possible health globes when I blew them up, to give me +10% armor full time.  That seemed to help a lot and then I tried using the dogs with life/hit ability.  Since each dog gave my life/hit stat to me instead of just my one attack giving me life/hit, I got 5 times my normal life/hit which coupled with life/second was now giving me 6 times my normal healing rate.  This was a great idea.  Now with my boots equipped I could run around and horrify, which upped my armor 100% because I chose that tweek of it, and then firebats into a crowd while upped in armor and getting healed by my dogs.  

Things were getting better.  After doing this for a while I decided to change out my offhand item from a shield to more offensive gear since I wasnt actually blocking anything before they died off and sure enough I got immense stats from switching that out.  I was using a rare gear item but then realized I could go in and craft the legendary item I wanted and put it in there instead though it would be more expensive.  So I crafted me a nice item called Spite and it served me for a long time, then the game dropped another mojo item named Manurja or something that coupled with a Manurja dagger(that I didn't have yet) gave me bonus stats similar to armor sets so since it turned out to have good stats that were just as good as Spite and that with one tweek could be better than Spite, I equipped it and hoped the other dagger that made the set would drop so that I could have the 250 INT bonus.  After a while a nice dagger called the Barber dropped(did I say that?)  Before, I was using the one you could create on your own, the Umbral Oath, which was not bad but it didn't have the nice atk% stat available so switching to the Barber was a nice upgrade.  Then one day I got another dagger of reaching or something.  This totally threw me off.

Since it had an ability that gave "grasp of the dead now has raining corpses" on it, it was of course a MUCH better weapon because now I would be able to use grasp of the dead with TWO abilities.  The only drawback was that I wasn't using grasp of the dead and, to use this, I would have to LEARN to use it.  

In the game, you get 6 active abilities(you push a button to use them).  Luckily you can put them on any key you like but there are a BUNCH of them total and each ability has 6 MORE tweeks you can use to tweek each ability which makes it interesting to try things combo'd with something else, PLUS you get 4 passive abilities you can choose from like 20.  These abilities tweek you or your active abilities FULL TIME assuming they are relative. 

My routine goes like this:  I order up some dogs with summon zombie dogs.  Now, I used to use poison dogs with the "poison dmg reduces dmg 20%" ability but now I don't do that although it is a safe way to go on higher levels.  

I use corpse spiders.  These things are nice since they attack from long range and since it takes a while for the little spiders to find their prey and attack 3 times before they disappear, they are good for keeping chains going from one group to the next.  I use the cold ones that slow so that they serve as sort of a tank when I am exploding my zombie dogs.  Yes, I use sacrifice.  It's evil to sacrifice others but it's very satisfying too.  I used to use the option that gave a chance to leave health globes since that helps everyone in the group but now I use the one that gives 5% bonus damage per dog which with 4 dogs gives a long 30 seconds of +20% damage.  That's a lot.  Once I explode the dogs I send in the Piranha wave that also gives bonus damage to enemies getting bitten by Piranha, aka +15% more damage.  At this point, I can either toss more spiders or use firebats.  Firebats do a lot of damage since they use up mana(high damage ammo).  Corpse spiders don't use mana.  But the bats are short range so I have to get in close so to do that I have to prep with Horrify.  This stuns nearby mobs for 3 seconds but also gives me 100% armor for 8 seconds since that is the tweek I chose.  Now this doesn't give me too much time to use Firebats but usually I am using it behind my dogs so it's rather safe unless there are too many monsters, which happens a lot nvm if there are elites running around using their ground effects to make me run around like crazy.  

So that's it. The passives I chose are the one that gives 20% more damage but cost 30% more mana.  This is a non-issue since I use the tweek for firebats that has higher initial mana cost but no fueling cost.  This means I can use it and then just hold it down and mana will continue to refuel while I continue to use firebats.  I can't start and stop it of course because I will run right out of mana but if I am careful I have all the mana I need and I get the 20% more damage tweek for all of my use. The next passive is either the 15%  less damage to me and the dogs or the poison one that gives 20% less damage for 3 seconds after I hit them with poison damage.  This is nice when I use poison option firebats but those run me right out of mana so it's iffy.  This works great with locusts since the whole time they are doing DOT(damage over time) they are keeping that elite at -20% damage(20 seconds=huge) but I can't afford to use a locusts button when I have the summon zombie dogs button(qvv). The next two passives(there are only 4) each give me one extra zombie dog, one gives a dog plus 50% damage to their dmg and the other gives a dog plus 30% movement speed to you when the dogs are out and you are not in combat.  This last option plus the illusory boots are what makes this job so incredibly useful even at high levels because I am literally flying around the screen when the dogs aren't fighting.   This makes it useful also for running away sometimes especially when you run into the SECOND set of elites which really is just ridiculous and yet you ask yourself HOW? 

How does someone survive this?    

And like Ramirez would say "with Faith Heart and Skill... in the end... there can be only one".  So it's important to remember that this too, this ridiculousness is indeed something that serves if not you then the one that conquers you or the one that conquers him ... or her ... or IT.  

So then I upgrade my dagger, yeah?  Way back there I got this dagger that now allowed me to use Grasp of the Dead with an extra tweek.  So here I am trying to get by without my extra 15% damage from the Piranha wave by switching that out to grasp of the dead which will now have two tweeks on it.  I have to say it was nice for a while.  I began to use the slow effect of grasp of the dead and at the same time that the guys in the area were slowed, corpses would rain down on them along with their attack speed being slower or something.  Bunches of effects yeah?  But sadly,  I was used to pushing things back with my piranha wave which was my goto button when things got close.  This was not like that at all.  I was now much more inclined to run around but instead of having a bunch of foes pushed back all in front of me, now some of them here or there would surround me and attack me from behind which was frustrating.  What was also frustrating was that I saw my DPS drop.  Instead of a nice 1 million damage or 1.2 or so I was down in the 900k's.  And I could really tell that I was taking longer to kill monsters though I was surviving them much more now.  I was now able to go into Torment 6 and survive there somewhat, especially since I was using the zombie dog option that gave life/hit for each of their hits but I was still getting one shotted often because those pesky monsters at that max level... they tend to hit hard, lol.  Horrify works nice but use it to stun them for 2 seconds and then 20 seconds later that cooldown timer reset can't come around soon enough and here they come.  It was a tenable excuse for saying I could survive T6, but I couldn't really survive T6.  

I switched to T5 and after getting my ass kicked all day, I realized how it had trained me well.  I was able to float across the screen oh wait, I forgot to mention that I next got dropped the Anessazzi Blade.  Yeah, it's a nice blade.  It stuns things when you summon your zombie dogs and since I was used to waiting for the counter to be up and then exploding and then summoning a new set of dogs to tank and everything would stun for a moment while I attacked them and moved on, I was much better at T5 with the new blade that basically just told me to FORGET THAT grasp of the dead mess I was trying and get back to explode(+20dmg) > summon dogs(stun) > piranha/move them back(+15dmg) > firebats (high dmg ammo) > horrify(stun) about halfway before summon dogs is about to finish its cooldown. It was a real nice improvement from what I was doing before which was probably mostly being done on T4 but I can't remember.  

Now, another mojo dropped which was Zunimassa string of skulls which was nothing special unless you had the set of which this was the first piece so I didn't even consider putting it on but, after a while of fighting, the Homonculous dropped.  

This was a game changer.  

This item's ability was to summon a zombie dog every 4 seconds.  What a stroke of luck that I was using summon zombie dogs already right?  Unlike grasp of the dead that I had to learn to use I already had this skill well in hand.  But wait, what's this?  I now didn't NEED to summon zombie dogs!  That's right!  Spare button! What to use, what to use, what to use, I was all afternoon trying out things to use on that button.  Oh sure I couldn't use the tweek of life/hit from the dogs since they turned out to just be vanilla dogs but it turns out that they still did tanking(taking damage from monsters so that they wouldn't attack me directly) just fine.  I tried out Spirit Barrage and really enjoyed using it.  When it came to elites, especially when there were 3 of them, I would target the weakest one and finish him off.  Often from way across the screen when I didn't want to get close enough to use firebats, I would corpse spiders until they were about half health and then spirit barrage them the rest of the way.  In fact it was a really goto spell on things that liked to run around the screen like flying animals and burrowing frogs and such.  

But since I have that +20% dmg passive, that ups your mana usage 30%, I was still using up a lot of mana and basically running out.  So I tried to use Soul Harvest which basically gives you a 10% intelligence boost.  It was NICE... then it was meh.  Really nothing to write home about, I got used to it for while but I couldn't really see a difference.  I even used that Totem Pole thingy but it takes WAY too long to cooldown and gives +30% dmg for about 20 seconds then wait another 120 seconds on cooldown(= not worth it).  

Then I tried Locust Swarm.  What a godsend.  It was perfect.  It gave a huge amount of damage over time at a huge mana cost but who cares once I realized how great it was on elites.  I basically go around doing my pattern like I said before but now instead of sometimes summoning dogs then exploding them once a minute or so, I could explode dogs every 20 seconds or 15 if I was in a hurry for only 15% dmg boost and then I piranha and horrify etc, but now I look for elites or large mobs and STING with Locust Swarm and wait and run around and the whole battle is over in like half the time.  It was quite ridiculous.  I am now on T6 doing my combo and just patiently waiting for spiders and locusts and dogs to do their job and soon enough... battle done.  

You get it now BATTLE DONE?  Glad I could help... 

PS: I finally figured out how to use grasp of the dead, I replaced the firebats button with it and changed out my nice high damage dagger The Barber to the Grasp of the Dead one and now I basically just infect stuff and slow them down and wait for locusts and spiders and dogs to finish them off slowly.  It's very hands off but somehow the battle is done faster and with less risk to me. 

Why the need?

BLM WHM SMN SCH THF RNG BRD MNK WAR DRK PLD > 99

When I lost my job, I wondered if I was being railroaded into quitting.  It reminds me of  Tom Cruise's character in Edge of Tomorrow when he was too chicken to fight and then he gets railroaded into serving with the grunts who ARE willing to fight.  There are many moments in that movie when my mind turned to my own life to wonder if I should act against others.  

That is the definition of evil, to act against others.  There is a book in the Bible called Acts that pretty much defines what evil is yes?  

So thinking what you want is fine.  You wonder if such and such should be hung by the flagpole or tormented until his last days or maybe you wonder if he would be better off as a woman... that's all fine.  At the bar, you could time your clock to how many times people would show up to "play" at provoking you.  If it got boring, it was time to talk to your sister even though she was married or talk to her husband or stand too close to her or maybe bump your beer mug into a bandmember's wife's head.  

I once saw that happen and I was so distraught that I ran up to the bar manager's face and howled at him about it to which he promptly ignored me and said "it happens".  In retrospect, I probably didn't show him enough respect but frankly it never crossed my mind that I was doing anything to him.  I wanted someone thrown out and I perhaps went about it the wrong way.  

I wonder about what the "proper" way of "handling" it is sometimes.  But honestly all of these "lessons" remind me that no matter what people do to provoke you, the law is paramount.  Thoughts and accidents and one-time bumps or coughing are all legal ways to express your disrespect or general demeanor towards a person.  

But remember this, you are ALL protected by our laws. To ACT against others is illegal. Illegal things are WHY we have police and are WHY we all sleep safe at night knowing that we all share an understanding of community.  When something is illegal it is an attempt to define for everyone what evil is.  

I still don't see how bars are allowed to exist next to parking lots, mind you, but that's getting me sidetracked.  

At work, I was harassed over and over again.  I had to wonder at it often because it started with few people and then it turned into a horde.  Was it my friends at the nightclub that gave me a bad reputation with the good people?  Was it ACTUALLY my friends that wanted me gone from their nightclub since I wasn't buying drugs or scoring prostitutes?  Was it some old girlfriend with her own agenda about how I left her or how I left things?  Was it the government and their aliens that wanted me to leave the city knowing that it was time for me to put my considerable intellect to proper use?  Was it my brother and sister?  Did they finally have enough of me intruding into their lives even though for me it was their safety that I worried and worry about?  

That's the nature of witches.  Someone out there wants you to step down and if they attack you from godknowswhere, they can be at it all day and night and you are forced to simply wonder at a solution.  And what if I acted against one of those people I mentioned?  Well, then it's ME guessing who did something wrong while at the same time ACTING illegally, that is, they wrong me but it's ME that is evil.  

So time went by at work and I became more and more humble.  Squirming at my desk wishing they would stop would be the best way to describe what my existence was during that time as they continued to propogate hate and I was forced to wonder at what the cause was and who was doing it and how I could make it up to them for making them feel bad.  

It's sort of like a rape victim's syndrome where everyone knows she is evil but despite wanting to pick up a pitchfork and voodoo mask, she squirms, hoping there is some other way people will allow her to feel what she feels... without scaring them.  

I wondered often about ending their jobs.  Obviously, if I acted against them by reporting their behavior it would mean the end of their jobs and after putting up with it for a long time, I did report it once and their answer was to move the person to another team.  Later, he was promoted to a specialty team.  

What precedent do think that set, criminal behavior rewarded with promotion?  

I wondered if it was actually worth it to cost someone their job which was one of the best jobs in the city.  Literally all you did was answer people's questions and get paid for it.  You had medical insurance, dental insurance, two weeks paid days off that you could choose to use literally at any time because your job had so many people that they figured in people's willingness to use their days off.  You could even feel safe at work because you had security sitting there at the front door warding off anyone that might come to bother you at work.  And yet I wondered if REALLY I could do this, cost someone their job just because I couldn't put up with a little disrespect.  

Of course, sitting here now wondering about it, I wonder if they would have felt any regret if they heard that I quit.  It occurs to me now that even on that final day Human Resources was asking me to quit for some reason.  I figured it had to do with unemployment insurance and that they didn't want to have to pay it, but... it still puzzles me.  

Why did they need me to quit?