Small Artistic Breakthrough.

Ripping off the grip and endscrew on my Intuos3 grip pen has made my work inside of painter suck substantially less. There might be hope for a comic now that I resolved an issue that’s been plaguing me since purchasing my tablet back, hrm, 4+ years ago.

However, finals are chewing at my legs and sleep. I’m doodling to reduce stress, but I won’t touch Aion until my papers are finished.

Younger Saerkhiya Sketch.

Analysis of Dual Wielding for Gladiators.

You thought I quit this blog, didn’t you? Well, I sorta’ did, but only in order to gather some important data that means something, rather than continually spout opinions that have little worth.

Dual wielding is a weird alternative NCsoft gave to gladiators, given that on paper, they have no business dealing with it since the bulk of their damage comes from skill usage rather than auto-attacking. At the moment, I’m running Xenophon’s Sword/Expert Noble Durable Adamanitum Sword. I basically have the sub-50 fantasy DWing equips and arguably the best you’ll feasibly acquire at level 41+.

Things you need for DW

1. Advanced Dual Wielding I or II. I haven’t sat down to calculate the difference between the two, but you are not required to use II as far as I can tell.
2. An attack speed sword. Dual wielding falls extremely short if it does not have attack speed to back it up. This is the primary turnoff to using DW, simply because through this alone, it becomes unusually expensive. People have been reporting positive feedback without one.
3. 300+ crit. You should have this through basic Gladiator usage.

Positive attributes of DW

1. Quick – Dual Wielding interrupts a lot more than people give it credit for. The fact that you are swinging quickly offers the opportunity to interrupt plenty of mob attacks without necessarily resorting to skill spamming.
2. Plentiful Criticals – Since you usually will have 3-4 more slots to your name, hitting 440 critical is a very feasible endeavor.
3. Skills are not one-handed – Discovered through the use of power shards. All skills use both of your weapons in conjunction, which ensures you will not be hitting as miserably the skills indicate. In addition, if you critical with your first hand, your second always crits.
4. Weave one, get one free – The essence of dual wielding sprouts from the practice of weaving. Dual Wielding is a single attack with two swings, which means that if you cancel after the first attack registers, the second swing will be added for free.
5. Expect Substantial increases from Godstones – The best company for fast attack speed are triggered events, so it stands to reason that godstones are terrific with Dual Wield.

Negative Attributes of DW

1. Less Knockdowns – You lose the inherent ability to knockdown and can only do so through skills that cause stumble.
2. Poor PvP damage – In having two attacks, you essentially filter twice through the PvP damage reduction, making a majority of your attacks extremely weak.
3. No AoE – Dual Wielders don’t get access to those, sadly.
4. Weaker Draining Blow – Draining Blow is the essence of the Gladiator’s impressive grind and a source of mitigating downtime. Unfortunately, because you do less damage in skills and more damage in auto-attack, Draining Blow does not net a copious amount of HP. It is also unlikely that DWs will be able to trigger it every 30 seconds.
5. Expensive – Aion, as we all have come to know it, has a money-sink driven economy, which makes DW relatively unrealistic for many budgets.

Basic Summary.

Dual-wielding is PvE only for the most part. You exchange power in skills for a more steady source of DPS through autoattacking. With investment, it becomes substantially stronger than two-handers in the grinding environment, but is mediocre up until godstones are added. If you’re primarily grinding easy, efficient mobs, DW does have a noticable increase in damage.

Recommend it?

Normal Aion players, no. An attack speed sword at 40 is an unrealistic investment for a reasonable upgrade in PvE grinding speed and the complete obliteration of your PvP career until you return to two-handers. The essential issue with DW is that although it can rip through fortress guards, which would pay the cost if you were left unfettered, you are extremely disadvantaged against other players. However, it is not debilitating to the degree of automatic abandonment, especially when PvE-only areas become your primary focus.

Further Thoughts

I’ve noticed that this article in particular is generating a bit more traffic than usual and I bet that after reading this, you’re probably still pissed because it doesn’t give numbers. Even I am conceding to the truth that this post is largely unfinished after I acquired Draining Blow. It is a skill that gladiators cannot ignore if they wish to expeditiously finish the last five levels of their grind. (I don’t know how high it ranks on the PvP tier list.) I would go as far to say that the pauseless grind is upheld by Draining Blow and Crippling Cut.

Big Questions

I know you’re looking for answers. You’re planning on starting Xenophon’s, or the Asmo equivalent, and you don’t want theory shoved into your face. If you want to hit level 45 in the quickest manner possible by yourself, take Xenophon’s Sword, but be sure to have an attack speed sword at the ready and go straight to the 46 Viragos in Theobomas. If you want to spend substantially less money and be a day or two slower, take Xenophon’s Spear. Don’t go for the sword if all you have is Inferno to back it up, because your damage will not be particularly exciting.

Aion Source doesn’t suck.

Go to this thread for probably better info. Hah.

If you want more positive thinking, here’s an impression.

Something that would be cool.

Elegant skill design is something I love in any game. It’s one thing to have something that is cool, but there’s another thing to have skills that are good but are not broken.

A small eureka moment sparked after my guildmates and I were taking about skills in general. I stumbled, rather promptly, on the idea of turning Siege Breaker into a skill that does more than just wait until, you know, an actual door-knocking. You could give it the ability to break damage shields too to make it a less-dead choice. You don’t necessarily have to buff a single function, but give tools a flavorful and universal revamp.

As of now, I would love to become an expert on skills, but I haven’t really ventured beyond bitching about lockdown even though it is a decent skill with a very good advanced stigma tied to it. I can only recommend that you do not rely specifically on aionarmory to determine your skill build. A lot of their numbers have since outdated themselves, or are largely incorrect when showing later versions of a skill.

Side note, I’m considering using a comicpress space to develop a visual commentary.  In addition, I’m enjoying the netbook and night routine to keep me sane as well as prevent myself from getting into massive amounts of trouble over screaming into vent at three in the morning. Good things might be ahead.

Level 40 is tomorrow. A good time to relax.

Too Busy Playing, but one nugget.

I like Aion. I really do. I like it so much that I play it non-stop. So much that I’ve purposefully neglected my blogging duties to continue grinding. Comparatively, I’m leveling slow. Other people in my schedule range are in their 40s, so to be at 34 is a pretty miserable place. If I were 40 right now, I’d probably be blogging more. Hell, if I found a stable way to milk the trader, I’d be blogging more. I’m neither rich nor quick in this game, mostly because I delegated the duty of alchemy to other players and sticking with cooking, which offers no substantial returns until 395.

That being said, here’s a nugget. Gladiators. Do not look forward to Lockdown early game. If you have a choice between this skill and Severe Weakening Blow, take the latter.

Lockdown is a skill that always dread in MMOs. Skill descriptions in this game have the potential to be exceedingly unhelpful, mostly because there’s no real template for skill descriptions nor terminology to describe the defining aspects and/or requirements. Here’s a few things you probably did not know about the skill just by looking at a stigma calculator.

• Uses the same timer as Body Smash/Weakening Severe Blow.
• Requires you to stand still to activate the skill.
• Bound is a condition that only stops physical special attacks; not a stun, snare or root.

Anyway, I think I’m depleting my damn coffers again. Off to grind mobs.

Headstart begins today, don your-

Functional and fun.

And even though I’ll be in line for about 5 hours, it’s all chill. In the end, I’ll be racing much faster than my other guildmates, who shall soon experience the fury of my inexplicably fast grind.

It’s super-effective!

I CAN EXPERIENCE IT

I laughed some when I saw that pop up, figured it needed to be archived and shared.

Actually, there might be a real, although mostly irrelevant, effect going on. If you have enough tears on the internet, a flame starts. (Cue the pun drums.) This property is often demonstrated on Aionsource, but there was plenty of spontaneous conflagration going on inside of Aion’s twitter feeds and Facebook account after high noon rose with stagnating servers. In the end, very few people will remember this incident, and I graciously accept that most people think like me in acknowledging each launch is probably going to be an hour after the scheduled time. Like my friends love to point out,

“It’s like a DDOS attack every time there’s a launch.”

PALTEK HOLDINGS – THE ONE TRUE ENEMY.

Patent law is rarely exciting, but there are a few occasions where business steps into entertainment-business, waving their acquired patents in hopes of acquiring a settlement.

Enter Paltek Holdings, a company that used two acquired patents to get Microsoft to settle over Halo. Now, they’re using those very patents to attack practically every MMO on the market. I kid you not. Blizzard, Sony, Jagex, Turbine and NCsoft are all being filed at.

I would leave the investigation up to you about the details of the patent, but essentially Paltek is using two extremely general patents to extract money out of a genre that has enough competition as is. Hey, they got Microsoft to settle. These other companies will buckle, right? (I might dredge up the patents and analyze them later, but I’m a bit sleepy right now)

Hopefully not. On one end, yes, these companies are businesses and  should go for the cheapest way out, which would probably be a settlement. However, as an entertainment function, there needs to be a clear distinction that games should be unfettered by patents and focus more on intellectual property, much like how the entertainment industry functions. I hope that these cases will be used throughout the history of law to ensure that the sanctity of our pass-time doesn’t have to jump through any more hoops. The ability to transmit and replicate an environment is a common action, after all, yet it has a patent. Should we have to go back to the patent holder to get permission to use one of the basic methodologies in game design? Of course not.

However, the law is slow and thoughtful. We’re going to hear about this case again in a couple of years perhaps, and by then, we might’ve forgotten. It’ll give me time to cool off and ponder, but hopefully Paltek Holdings loses harshly and disintegrates underneath the pressure of their opposition.

http://economy.kansascity.com/?q=node/3863

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/turbine_soe_blizzard_others_sued_patent_infringement

The One-Week Construction Job – Guild Management

As OB came to a close, I realized that I was the only one in my group with enough time to be a guild leader. As a result, I’ve been drilling away at potential guild spaces since my current webspace is using an extremely outdated version of MySQL and has no chances of being changed due to being shared with my dad’s stoic, but working, code.

Originally titled Mithril, Paksigue is a casual guild soon to be planted on Azphel. However, we’re not carebears. There’s a certain sub-group of casuals that enjoys the harsh environments of a highly contested cluster, but doesn’t have the numbers to pull any kind of raid on a consistent basis. I personally do not want to manage a business, but I understand that, ideally, the guild leader role requires some administration, effort and altruism in order to keep the denizens happy. My parents work as managers for their respective companies and have been kind enough to pass off this nugget,

“Managing is making people do what they don’t want to do.”

Brrr. Luckily, Aion is a game and people are here on the basis of their own entertainment. I don’t really have to manage people, but rather, manage myself in order for this guild to remain a success. I admit to a lot of faults, mostly spouted from points of frustration and sleepiness, but they’re uninspiring comments nonetheless. Being an overall cool person will be my ticket to success, but as you can tell from the flavor of this blog’s history, I derive humor from sarcasm and rage. Consequently, that makes me an asshole when I’m not funny.

Anyway, enough about management philosophy, here’s the list of things I need to do before launch starts.

• Replace the current Paksigue banner. (Getting a feel for mmoguildsites layout potential.)
• Develop a reasonable criteria for what Paksigue wants in a recruit.
• Be less of a douche, or be hilarious on every turn.
• Work on the comic.

These take precedence over my opinions in the long run. I’m sure all who played OB had a blast or hated it and have since moved on to other games. The internet won’t die if I don’t talk about how much I love crafting and how deliciously solid Aion is.

Israphel – Phutanari – Chanter.

That’s me, going into your zergs, pulling the squealing puppy out of the rear end and kicking his ass with my glorious Sailor’s Staff.

Okay, so I only pulled off that feat once, and against an assassin that clearly forgot that poking rear is a way to win.

I’ve been playing a lot. We’re talking about waking up at 9 and playing straight till 2 in the morning. Writing is not my strong suite right now, so bear with me as I remain silent until the beta ends.

Lag is a mysterious bastard.

Don’t worry folks, this isn’t another source-worthy bitch-and-moan session. Rather, I am acknowledging the terrible lag now that I have come in contact with it.

When I came home and gave it a whirl, the world chugged to sluggishness. Then, suddenly and miraculously, it fixed itself. For a good six hours, things were flying. Terror struck again and now I’m here, telling you. It’s clear that this issue can be fixed and at some point was fixed like magic, but the source of the lag is clearly coming from some evil entity, rumbling underneath the servers.

Either way, I’m optimistic. It’s not like NCsoft doesn’t know how much shit they’re in if this continues into retail. In the meantime, I need some pictures of Lani to enjoy while the lonely hours pass.

Edit: Holy crap, they fixed it for me.