And Now I Must Away Into the Night

This blog rolls strong out of the second week in September. The post count is looking mighty healthy. There are these strange people known as “commenters” hanging around who occasionally say things. I'm feeling pretty good about what I'm writing, for once – think it's getting better, getting stronger, getting easier as I ride the snake. I'm about to call it a night early and head off to the bar. Things are looking good, we are maintaining. So, of course, I'm taking the next few days off. Unlike the past few weeks I don't have much planned. But it's worked wonders and I want to keep a good thing going.

Going to get out, pick some apples, get some cider, enjoy the approaching fall and chill out but nothing's really set in stone. Going to bite into my poor, neglected script and see if I can't put a big old dent in the whole of it. My biggest plans at the moment, because I'm oh so weak, involve playing some Guild Wars. Nope, nothing to do with Reward Points and the like, just some PvE time wasting.

I either want to get my Monk through Prophesies and run around to cap all the elites. Or I want to finish off Nightfall with my Sin and do likewise (I mean, I don't even have Shadow Prison on him yet. This is something I must correct or be unmanned.). Neither one is going to be too difficult since both are on the last stretch of three missions. The Fire Islands the Monk has to deal with are probably going to be longer not just because that's how Prophesies rolls with it but because you're talking about three full missions. The Torrent stuff my Sin has to shadowstep through is harder, in my opinion, but shorter because beating Abaddon is like half a mission and something I've got down to a science at this point. It's getting past the bosses in the Gates of Madness and avoiding TPK from AoE deathblasts in the Gate of Pain that's the sticking point. On the other hand, the last time I ran through the Gate of Madness I completely tore through Shiro like he was a little punk. I was set up to beat him with a B-Surge/Blur bot and a smattering of other nasty hexes spread throughout the party and it was so effective I was able to tank him on my Warrior without a single defensive skill – beyond HealSig – on my bar (I like the killing work. Not so much the punching bag routine.). I wound up pulling him first for some odd reason, though, and that meant I had to run around and cap the shrines with the Lich nuking at my heels. Not the approved way of doing it, but I got it done.

At the moment I'm leaning towards the Sin although I might just wind up doing both and forgetting about the map running and skill capping for the nonce. I mentioned it in passing earlier but I got a look at Critical Agility and just had to try it out. It works, as you'd expect, great. And my Sin's a lot of fun at the moment. I'm running it as a psuedo-tank with Critical-D alongside the armor boosting agility since they both refresh on a crit. And I crit like once every three seconds with my Moebius/Death Blossom with an Impale chaser kick started by Golden Phoenix (needs an enchant which is covered by my buffs), followed by . It's a spinning flower of widespread death on a permanent IAS that's relatively resilient. Nothing too original or fancy but it gets the job done. It's also interested me in the new-to-me PvE only skills. I think I'm going to take a good, hard look at them this weekend, something I've been avoiding for a while.

I've also discovered a new trick with my Heroes. Signet of Disruption and a Mesmer henchie. AI interrupts combined with a reliable, halfway decent hexer means you hear a lot of beautiful clicks.

Anyhow, be excellent to one another while I'm gone. Leave some comments, if you want, I'll be sure to...ignore them until Monday at the earliest.