Ever wonder what your stats wouuld be in D&D? Check this out. :) I would be interested in what you guys got too

Physical Test:
http://www.okcupid.com/tests/take?testid=15065983258789143295

Mental Test:
http://www.okcupid.com/tests/take?testid=18114051962113041969


09 Strength
15 Dexterity
12 Constitution
16 Intelligence
16 Wisdom
16 Charisma

Apparently I would make a good Cleric, Wizard, Sorcer, or Bard.

I think I scored a little low on the Charisma score though.

I call Tor that because the enemy AI goes for casters first, with a definate liking for the flavor of a certain Sorceror. What follows is a transcript of a Boss fight from one of my favorite sessions so far.

And never do I want to hear those who shall downplay my use of a shield being a Sorceror.

Yes, I know I get a 15% chance of spell failure (I tested this throroughly), and yes I know I am not proficient with it. But it's so FUN when you can stare down a boss from behind the rim of your +1 Heavy Steel Shield.

A couple nights ago I was running with a group in Shan-To-Kor.... after various mishaps, including but not limited to a total party wipe during the Flame-a-thon area. Well, after we had all rezzed at the shrine, which was a whole nother trial, we proceeded. We get to the boss and our fighter proceeds forward to trigger the final Boss. Well, unknown to us until this fateful moment, half our group was behind the portcullis, leaving Me (Lv 4 Sorc), the fighter (lv 5? Fighter) and I think a lv4 Ranger, in the foul realm of the about to be pwned...

I spend the first 20-35 second trying to get on the archway, so that my frail, but devastatingly handsome, Sorcerer's body doesn't get squished.... little did I know how well that would turn out. I finally get up there and swing around to see the fighters getting pounded on. I launch my first Magic Missile, only to watch in dismay as the Boss turns to glare balefully in my direction. I never realized that the 12 points of damage that my little missiles did would so enrage a boss beyond all reason. So he breaks off from the fighters, who are still wailing away at him I might add for between 15-30 points of damage per hit, and lumbers in my direction.

He gets close and finds he can't melee me, so he bends to pick up a stone to hurl... I dutifully cower behind my shield and to my amazement the missile crumbles and does no damage. So I stand and fling my might missiles back at him, guarding every time he crouches, and it works so much better than my expectations. He falls dead just as I run out of spell points... and I'm still standing amazed that I got through it unscathed.

The moral to this story, boys and girls, is that Sorcerors who decide to wear shields may not be a little off.... ;-)

Well, I bought DDO and have been playing it avidly since Feb 28th, when it went retail. I have to say, I like it alot. It has it's problems, but what gaming group have you ever been in that didn't have at least a few problems?

Character creation is fun, really close to creating a character in classic PnP D&D. It doesn't have the range of character creation options that CoH/V does, but it has a good D&D feel too it. I don't know much, haven't read much, about the Eberron world setting. I'm playing on of my best loved classes, the Sorceror. They handle it fairly well, even though the spell selection is VERY limited for the Sorc. At level 10 you have 4 1st, 4 2nd, 3 3rd, 2 4th, and 1 5th level spell, though you can have 40+% more spell points to use for those spells. Plus as an added bonus Sorcerors cast 10% faster than Wizards and their spells cooldown twice as fast, so can cast them more often.

The game play, I have to admit, is really immersive. Nothing like switching quickly from my staff, which helps empower my spells, to my shield to quickly block incomming arrows, then back again to pump out magical death on the enemy. Things have a very real effect on the enemy, and unlike other MMOs, placement really can mean the difference between living or dying horribly.

On the whole, even though i will still be keeping my CoX account active, I will also be paying for, and playing avidly, DDO.

Anyone who is interested, I play as Torumsie on the Khyber server.

OK, now that I've gotten my mandatory quiz update out of the way, let's get on to the other stuff.

City of Villains
I started playing this Beta around the first of October. I fell in love with the Mastermind, mainly because there is no real healer class in CoV. The mastermind has henchmen which can be summoned to do my will. The secondary consists of mainly Defender primaries, with a few new ones added in. You get 3 levels of henchmen. The first and starting level equates to Minions, the second to Luets, and the 3rd to Bosses. At level 26 you get access to you "Boss" level Henchan, and at that point you have 3 "Minions", 2 "Luets", and the 1 "Boss". For each henchman beyond 1 of a given tier they are summoned at a -1 to your level, so with 3 tier 1s they are all -2 to your level, the 2 tier 2s are -1, and the 1 tier 3 is the same level as you. You also get powers from your Primary which are used to "Upgrade/Enchant" your henchman. They can each be upgraded twice, and each time adds powers and abilities to your henchman.

My second favorite is the Brute archetype.... and their philosophy is SMASH!!!. Their inherent ability is called Fury. And each time they initiate an attack, or an attack directed at them is initiated, their Fury bar goes up. As the bar goes up their damage is buffed by up to 200% above base when at full Fury level. So at 1/2 Fury you are already getting the benefit of 100% damage increase for all your non-aura attacks. Their primaries mainly consist of Tanker secondaries with a couple Scrapper primaries thropwn in for good measure. Their secondary is the Tank Primaries and Scrapper secondaries. Their damage, unlike everyone else, can be buffed up to a maximum of 850%. This makes them a good class to play if you like a fast paced game, though you still have to balance your Fury and health.

The class I was most disappointed with were the Corruptors. As a whole they are Defenders flipped backwards. Their primary set is Blaster primaries mainly and their secondaries are Defender primaries. They are not healers, especially with Enhancement Diversification. But they are not the same glass canons that blasters are in CoH. Their buffs are about 80% of the effectiveness of Defenders, or around controller effectiveness. And their blasts are about 75-80% of the damage of Blasters, or a little more than Defenders. What balances them somewhat is their inherent abilities. The name is Scourge and that's what it does. When a targetted mob goes below 50% health they are within Scorge effect range. Once that happens the Corruptor has a chance to hit for a critical with that attack, doubling the damage done. The lower the health, the greater the chance of Scourge.

Dominators are beefed up controllers and Stalkers are assassins. I think you would prolly like the Stalker class, Oz. THEY are the glass canons of the CoV realm. They have a Hide ability which almost makes them undetectable, and their Assassin Strike, which they get at 6, can easily 1 shot mobs... and sometimes heroes in the PvP zones.

Well, there's my small recap of CoV. :-P I hope I didn't bore you to tears with it.

So I'll start this update with a quiz I found on xanas's LJ.

You fit in with: Humanism Your ideals mostly resemble that of a Humanist. Although you do not have a lot of faith, you are devoted to making this world better, in the short time that you have to live. Humanists do not generally believe in an afterlife, and therefore, are committed to making the world a better place for themselves and future generations. 0% scientific. 60% reason-oriented.

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

Hmm.... I have to say I don't find this a surprise. Kind of interesting but not surprising. lol

Well I've been with Frito for about a month and a half now and I am about halfway through my training. My training mainly consists of sitting with associates for specific groups on Monday and Friday and then taking normal calls I've been skilled on on Saturday and Sunday. So far I've learned 3 groups worth of skills, with 4 more to go. One big problem coming up is that one of the groups I still have to learn supports around 1800 applications and gateways for our corporate users. The other problem is that most of THOSE users are located in New York, so always a bit touchy. lol

I've not been on CoH for almost a month now, mainly moving. With alot of the changes going on I have decided I will probably be taking about a 6 month hiatus from CoH and playing EQ2 for awhile with some of my other friends. I don't mind the changes, really, but I am mainly wanting a break for a bit so I can come back with a fresh perspective.

On the moving front I am now working on unpacking our boxes. In about 2 weeks we've almost got half of our boxes emptied. A MUCH bigger apartment and we still have plenty of stuff to over fill it. lol I still have all my books/dvds/games to unpack, so most of what's left is mine of course. I get m y cable internet installed on 9/12 so I'm hoping that goes well. SBC doesn't service this area, for phone OR dsl, so instead of going with the universally reviled Verizon DSL service in this area I went ahead and decided on Comcast Cable. The upside is that I went ahead and got digital cable too while I was at it.

Currently feeming for new books though. I finished the new Harry Potter and the new Raymond E. Feist. Waiting on the next Wheel of Time (Knife of Dreams, Due out Oct 11th), the next Sword of Truth (Phantom, Due out March 20th), and the next Feist book (Flight of the Nighthawks, unknown release). I've devoured Mercedes Lackey's books, only need 6 more to complete my collection of her books. I'm currently rereading Talion: Revenant by Stackpole. I wonder if he has as much problem with us rereading his books, since he thinks we're stealing from him if we shop at used bookstores. ;-)

Well, I hope things are going well for everything else, sorry I've been out of contact for awhile.

BTW, fall out in wonder, I have finally decided to create some icons for myself. Go me! :-P

OK, finished my first day at work and it went phenominally. I will be working 7am-4pm Monday and Friday with a 1 hour lunch, and 7am-7pm Sat-Sun with no lunch hour, lunch ordered in. I don't mind working through the weekend because that means my first check from them will be for 3 days, which really works for me.

I've got a huge workload in front of me though. The Frito-Lay and Pepsi Business Apps account each have over 600 different proprietary pieces of software I will have to start getting acquanted with and everything. I LIVE for this shit though. Challenges are something that have been sorely lacking lately in my professional life.

The grounds are beautiful too, they recently got an award for it and I can see why. Ther landscaping is wonderful and they are situated right next to a small lake where it would be good to have lunch during the day and such.

And the amazing thing... for the first time in a LONG time I'm going to be working with people who are happy to be working where they are.

Well, enough for now. I will let you get to your regularly scheduled evening activities.

I know it's been a long time since an update, but alot has been going on so there's been little time really. Well here goes with current updates.

We will be moving soon to Carrollton Park Apartments off of Kelley and Frankford. Trying to get out of the shithole we are in now and into a better area/neighborhood. The current apt is an 830 square foot 2bd/2bth and will be going up to $725/month after our current lease is up in August. The new apt is 1116 square foot 2bd/2bth and is $740/month. MUCH larger and a much better complex. We look forward to starting to actually work out in the facilities and actually doing things again instead of staying holed up in our apt most of the time because we don't feel comfortable in the area.

Second huge thing is that I just landed a new job, at PepsiCo doing Help Desk Support. I went from my $10/hour Data Entry job to this new one at $17/hour. This will be a HUGE thing to help us get our debts and bills under control. My car just got paid off so that helps tremendously also. Plus the new job is off of Legacy and the Tollway, only about 7 miles from the new apartment, so that will be hella convenient.

Other than that we are just working on packing and such. We are going to hire movers to move everything. After getting them for our last move I don't think we will be moving without the aid of movers again. ;-)

Well, that's the end of my rambling for now.

I just managed to get ahold of an Alice Cooper discography. Damn does that take me back. Especially the albums Trash and Hey Stoopid. Listening to them up up here while working lets me actually think about the lyrics and realize that those 2 albums really had an impact on my life. Much more than I ever would have realized because it wasn't something I really thought about at the time I was listening to it. Alot of the songs on those 2 albums really hit home for me.

I never saw myself as being a particularly morose teenager, and I was into alot of the things most teenagers were into at that time. Though I liked Glam and Hair bands more than alot of the harder stuff from the then current crop. Also listened to Rush and Styx, and a polyglot of older artists. :-) Moody Blues and Neil Diamond to name a few of my more eclectic tastes.

I've moved much farther afield as I've grown older though. Listening to alot of punk now, AFI, Bad Religion, New Found Glory and others. One of my current favorite bands if Authority Zero, I've actually BOUGHT both of their albums. lol, which for all you who know me, you realize what a huge thing that is for me.

But I've noticed while listening to music at work that music sets a certain subconscious mood. The punk that I usually listen to set a kind of energized lethargy, if that makes any sense. As I'm listening to alot of the older stuff I used to listen to around the late 80s, early 90s, I notice that I'm alot less lethargic. Very strange thing, but shows me how much I am affected by music and songs as I go along.

I realize this is my first posting, and it shan't be my last. Those who know me thanks for the support and friendship. Those who don't, welcome and pull up a chair, it's DEFINATELY bound to get interesting.