Updated Skill Trees

Warning: This blog post is entirely about Path of Exile.  Stop reading now if you're not interested in that.

Grivas

Grivas is my first PoE character.  As such, I got to the middle of the 2nd playthrough and determinded that he sucked.  Worse than that, he sucked and couldn't be fixed without spending a ton of currency on respect points.  So I had stopped playing him.  The problem with early characters in this game is that you don't have a good plan for your path through the skill tree, you just pick up stuff that sounds cool and is close by.  You also don't get enough life.  How badly I had messed up my first character was somewhat obscured by finding a 5 linked chest armor.  I knew I had problems when I couldn't get through the Vaal pyramid without being crushed by the monsters inside. 

However, now with a free respec from release 1.2, I have restored Grivas to a damaging and durable Duelist.  With a sword in each hand he hits quickly and he hits hard.  He breezed through the Vaal temple and took out the Vaal Oversoul without any difficulty.  While I'm very happy to have my first character in a playable state again, I do feel a bit cheezy that I got an achievement for using 4 keystone skills in a single build without working my way up to that organically.

Lady Blabla

I'm going to call this character Lady Blabla in my blog post, but I had to spell her name funny to achieve uniqueness in the game.  This was another mess of unfocused character design.  The fact that I got her through a hardcore league and over level 50 is a sign of how powerful a skill spectral throw is. With a free respec in hand, I wanted to do something different.  So I tried ZiggyD's Mind over Matter, Ethereal Knives Scion.

Even someone who doesn't play this game will probably be able to tell that this skill tree stretches from one edge of the graph to the other while most of the other trees in this blog post are more compact. That's because I need to travel quite a distance to pick up both Eldrich Battery for a huge mana pool and Mind over Matter which uses mana to negate 30% of incoming damage, as long as you have mana available.

Now, unlike Grivas, who is basically a fixed version of his original build and had a full set of gems to use upon respeccing, Lady Blabla had nothing useful for her respec.  The only thing that hasn't made this a completely painful process of working a new set of skill gems to a useful level is something I was using merely for distracting monsters in the original build, Flame Totem.  It's fire is considered a projectile, and I've got lots of projectile speed now to give Ethereal Knives range.  That skill gem spits out fire like some sort of insane flame thrower now.  It's enough to make me want to run a dedicated flame totem build.

Servant of a Burning Fire

Servant of a Burning Fire had to respec because of skill changes, but he plays like he always has.  He's a dual Searing Bond Templar and always has been.  I did however make a mistake and forget to pick up Elemental Equlibrium which makes Searing Bond do even more damage that normal because it is fire damage, but it doesn't "hit" anything.  So chill enemies a bit and then they burn more easily next.  Even with forgetting to pick that up when respeccing and Searing Bond getting an 18% damage nerf across the board, this is by far my strongest character.

Servant of a Frozen Fire 

This character is a bit like Grivas in that the respec helped him become the character I had in mind.  He is also a bit like Lady Blabla in that his skills chosen go from one edge of the graph to the other.  This is more an effort to pick up all the spell-casting nodes from the Templar, the Witch, and the Shadow than the need to pick up distant Keystones.  However, Eldrich Battery is still a fair bit away from Avatar of Fire.

This character had been one that I was going to stop playing because the build, even when it finally started coming together, just wasn't very strong.  It was durable enough to survive maps, but the offensive potential was so feeble it took a long time to clear them.  Now the character isn't as durable, but I can work on that with gear and what I pick up as I continue to level.  Granted, leveling is going to be a slow process since this character is now level 71, but it's still doable as I've got a decently sized map pool.

Yarmilla

This is my summoner witch.  She plays largely the same after the respec, but I did inadvertently make a change.  I dropped some mana regeneration & aura nodes, but I picked up an extra minion quantity cluster of skills without realizing it.  I've respeced a bit further after the free respec to correct this, but I feel like I have an absolute army of undead following me now.  Even though I can't support them at full power for long with the Arc gem any longer, the sheer number of skeletons and zombies available make up for that.  I'll be working on mana regen as I level this character and improve her gear.  Unlike Servant of a Frozen Fire, Yarmilla is only level 68, so just getting her level to equal his would help quite a bit.

PS - The other reason I'm posting these images is that in the past I had to compromise on what I captured from the grap spanning builds.  I just realize that if you use the zoom on the browser to zoom out sufficiently, you can actually capture the entire grid in a single screen capture.  Being able to show those in their entirety got me interested in updating them. 

PoE Characters

So, this post won't be to everyone's taste, but I've been really enjoying this game, so here are some of the passive skill trees for several of my characters.

Dual Totem Witch

Ice Spear Crit Shadow (Died in Nemisis when I panicked facing a Storm Herald)

A Dual wielding Duelist, my 1st Character

1 Handed Spectral Throw Scion

A Templar who can't decide between magic and melee.

Hexmaster Witch

Summoner Witch

Generic beat on people with heavy object Maurader, 1st character with which I beat Dominus

Switching over to My New Computer

I decided the best way to make sure I had everything I needed loaded onto my new computer was to move it over to the main computer desk and actually start using it as my primary machine.  I've learned and/or remembered a few things, line you can't watch videos on YouTube without a flash player installed and that I have a speaker wire and a microphone wire plugged into the audio panel on the back of the computer, not two speaker wires.

One of the other things I was doing was setting up my browser the way I liked it, which included a quick link to my blog.  Hence this quick post.

I've been a bad blogger

It's been over a year since I posted to this blog.  I've done things this year, vacationed in Fort Lauderdale and California.  I've had some good chess tournaments.  I went to Gen Con for the first time and loved it.  I just haven't blogged about any of this.

I'm planning on building a new computer running Windows 7 since my old XP machine is going out of support next year, and I really want nothing to do with Windows 8.  Maybe I'll blog in depth about that.

But for now, just a short blog post.

Regan's Brithday

I think everyone had a good time at Regan's birthday party this last weekend.  It was the first time Caroline had been in the states for a family party since starting grad school.  The main reason I'm making this post is that it doesn't seem to be possible to upload animated GIF images to Facebook.  Here's one of Taylor dancing a jig.

Here's another animation of Abby (a.k.a. Sophie) going down the slide.

Diablo 1 vs Diablo 3

So, I played a little bit of the original Diablo this weekend.  This is after playing well over 120 hours of Diablo 3. (D3 from this point on.)  By any stretch of the imagination, I've gotten my money's worth out of D3.  Even if you just counted the time my nephew Blake has played a character on my account, it wouldn't be a wasted purchase.

Also, there is a lot of venom directed at Blizard about how D3 didn't live up to either of the previous games. I can only talk about the original Diablo (D1) because I never played Diablo 2 (D2).  As a game, I don't think there can be any doubt.  D3 has the better gameplay than D1.  The previous games have pixelated graphics and clunky animation.  The action is also very slow, almost painfully slow, in the original game.

However, I also think I know what is missing from D3.  I have no sense of exploration in D3.  The levels seem bland and force me through them in a very linear matter.  In D1, the staircase down to the 2nd level of the cathedral puts you very near the stairs that lead down to level 3.  You are no where near ready to go to level 3 when you find those stairs, and if you go down them, it's going to take a bit of luck to make it back up them.  I like that sort of game design better than always fighting monsters that are "just right" for your level of experience.  It gives you a sense of accomplishment when you can tackle an area that quickly forced you to flee or reload a saved game the first time you set foot within it.

Even in the camps, I don't feel like there is any sense of exploring the town.  There is only one path that gets you from one end of town to the other, and if you follow it, you'll see everything and everybody there is to see in town.  I decided to wander, and there was a kid selling black market items, but he charged you just to take a look.  I didn't have much cash, so I decided not to even see what he had to offer.  I also had found some magic staves that took up more than half my inventory space.  I wanted to keep the staff of healing, but sell the other two.  However, the blacksmith wouldn't buy them.  I had to wander to the outskirts of town, where I found the witch Adria (Who also plays a large role in D3, to say anything else would provide spoilers.)  I was able to sell the staves, and upgrade my weapons and armor a bit.  In D3, the merchants will buy just about anything I might care to sell, but they don't pay enough money to make that even remotely worthwhile.  If it weren't for the crafting system in D3, it would be more effecient to just toss items you weren't going to use on the ground than to go through the trouble of taking them back to town.

Another game design element that I didn't really care for now that I've compared old and new side by side was all the mini-quests that string together to make sure you always know you're making progress along the main story line.  In D1, I need to kill the butcher, and I know he's somewhere inside the cathedral, but you're not really sure how far down into the depths of the old cathedral you'll find him.  However, the internet is far more prevalent than it was when D1 was release, and at the slightest bit of confusion, players would have been ducking out of D3 to check an online player's guide.

I feel like I'm rambling on a bit, so I guess I need to wrap this blog post up.  I think what I'll finish up with is my impression that while the gameplay of D3 is far superior to that of D1, that there were some real misses in terms of game design around linearity and difficulty.  However, what was really lost between D1 and D3 is the atmosphere of the game.  Playing old D1 again, I really felt like I was exploring a town that had come under assault and a creepy old church.  In D3 the atmosphere of the old cathedral and Leoric's manner are good.  However, in the rest of the game, the atmosphere leaves a lot to be desired and the different areas feel like a very generic implementation of level design.  Even though the gameplay is light years improved in D3 comparred to D1, I can't ever shake the feeling that I'm playing a game in D3 like I could in D1.  The antiquated graphics and speed of D1 would eventually remind me that I was playing a game, but I always know I'm playing a game in D3.  I fun game to be sure.  One I'm going to play after I post this blog entry, but not a game that immerses me in the game world.

Unexpected development

I came home last night to find a downed tree limb in my driveway.  Other than my roses, I don't think any damage was done.  I wasn't at home, otherwise, this would have wiped out my car!  Here are some images.

This was a picture I took last night when I got home.  I thought it was a pretty good picture at the time, but I've got better now that the sun is up.

 Here's a shot of the end of the limb hitting the porch.  It looks like it just barely missed the house.

 Even with my 18-55 zoom set to 18mm for maximum field of view, I had to go to the edge of my yard to get the whole limb in the frame.

 Here's one of the damaged tree.

And here's a look at my driveway from the back of the house.

I certainly wasn't expecting this when I came home from pool last night.

Problem Solving

So, when you come up against a problem you don't know how to solve, how much background information do you need to be confident that you can locate and understand the information needed to actually solve the problem?  I'm going to use installing a SATA hard drive into one of my computers as a case in point.

I actually physically mounted the drive a few days ago, but I had forgotten what a SATA power cable looks like and consequently installed a drive without plugging it in.  This morning I opened the case back up and attached the power cable.  However, still no luck with the computer recognizing the drive.  After reseating the cables and trying the other SATA connector on the computer's motherboard, I started looking at the OS level (Ubuntu Linux) for reasons why my drive wouldn't be recognized.

After looking at a few different forums, I saw that someone had said something about telling the BIOS to enable SATA support.  So I rebooted the computer and went into the BIOS setup.  Now, anyone reading this far is either saying SATA, BIOS, what are all these acronyms?  Or they already know without me having to explain.  So that's probably one level of knowledge that was needed to even attempt to solve this problem.  However, going into the BIOS, I didn't see anything useful which led me to search for the manual for my motherboard on the internet.

I'm not sure if it amazing or predictable the number of computer component manuals that can be found on the internet.  It's probably a cost saving measure for manufactures to some degree.  Anyway, I'm reading along when I notice that my motherboard only supports SATA up to 1.5GHz when I installed a 3.0 GHz drive, maybe that's the problem.

So I do a little more internet research which indicates that things still should just work even if the drive can pump out data faster than the motherboard can read it.  Good, no messing with jumper settings.  So that was another thing I didn't know when I started trying to make my drive work, but it was a potential wild goose chase.  Thankfully I recognized it as such before I started going through my boxes of random computer components looking for a jumper I no longer needed.

Back to the manual, I find the section I needed, finally, in the On Chip ATA menu, you have to set it so that both PATA (a.k.a IDE) and SATA are both supported at the same time.  So there's another level of knowledge needed.  I had been in the BIOS and looked at all the settings I could potentially change, but that one didn't jump out at me as the one I needed to change.  Maybe it should have, after all, ATA is very similar to SATA in name.  However, since it didn't, it was back to the manual for me.  (And why the %*&! isn't this the default setting?  The motherboard should be set to detect everything it could possibly support unless you tell it you aren't running a specific type of device.)

Back to problem solving, the ultimate issue wasn't what I expected it to be, it wasn't even the 2nd thing I looked at.  On top of that, I didn't recognize the actual solution until I got more information by reading the manual.  It also took a fair amount of time.  I started baking a loaf of cornbread when I realized that it wasn't just a matter of poorly seated cables, and I heard the timer going off just as I was saving the BIOS settings to turn on support for both PATA and SATA at the same time, which was 40 minutes.  However, I never really thought I wouldn't be able to get the drive working.  I was sure I knew enough to find the solution.

I'm sure having assembled 3 computers from parts was a big part of why I felt confident I could get the new drive working, but other than checking the cables that wasn't what got the drive working.  Check the cables, see if someone else had the same problem, RTFM is a pretty basic set of troubleshooting steps., but I don't think that would have been enough without a 20 year background in working on and with PCs.  What makes me keep thinking about this is that there isn't one specific thing I could point to which would be the key piece of information I needed.

New Blog for 3 things learned in a day

Posting a month's worth of this at a time produced a "drinking from a firehose" effect.

Check it out!!

http://threethingslearned-eric.blogspot.com/

I'll try to get caught up to the current date in a few days. (While trying to avoid a "drinking from a firehose effect".)

Things learned in August, plus a little of July

Aug 31

• There is a book called how to read a French fry.
• Loading people onto a plane at random works better than loading by blocks. (link: http://www.linkedin.com/news?actionBar=&articleID=739022568&ids=0TczsScj8VcPsIc3oNdjcOejcTb3wUcj0McjwUdyMTcPoUcPoVcPsIe3oRcz8MejcT&aag=true&freq=weekly&trk=eml-tod-b-ttle-4)
• I had a pinhole leak in one of my pipes in the downstairs shower. (Fixed now, but I have to do something about the hole in the ceiling and the water damaged drywall.)

Aug 30

• One of the arguments for cutting Pell Grants is that they just encourage colleges to raise tuition.
• Viking cues (my 1st cue was a Viking, sadly lost) went out of business for a while but has reopened.
• Algae that live on coral produce a chemical that effectively works as sunscreen for the coral.

Aug 29

• I seem to have a slow leak above the basement shower. Need to call a plumber.
• Jim Morrison’s dad commanded an aircraft carrier.
• There is a Shiraz restaurant right at Hourstbourne & Shelbyville.

Aug 28

• I can still brake and run an 8-ball rack.
• An emperor penguin washed up in New Zeland, which is very rare last happening 44 years ago. (Said penguin is on his way back to antartica after recovering surgery to remove 3 lbs of sand from his stomach.
• A school superintendentLarry Powel gave back his 267K/year salary to have more money to use for school projects.

Aug 27

• DiOrio’s pizzia is tasty. (Good cheese, really liked the sauce, crust on the thin side, in between thin crust and hand tossed.)
• Testor’s company was once the world leader in balsa wood use. (I bought some model paints of theirs today.)
• Rafa has a book out. (My mom is already reading it.)

Aug 26

• Japanese PM Naoto Kan is stepping down after 15 months on the job.
• Huricane Irene may hit the Jersey Shore, among other places. (And the MTV show Jersey Shore is being called Macaroni Rascals in Japan, which has nothing to do with a hurricane.)
• A bomb was detonated in the Nigerian UN building today.

Aug 25

• Steve Jobs stepping down at Apple.
• Object which is most probably a Jupiter mass chunk of diamond orbiting a pulsar.
• Warren Buffet investing in BofA.

Aug 24

• Why quilts matter should start airing on KET2 on 9/5.
• Samsung Cites Kubrick's '2001' Film as Prior Art Defense Against Apple's Injunction Request. (I’m not even sure what that’s about, but I like the headline.)
• Banks create money when they issue loans in a fractional reserve system. (I already knew that, but now I understand it again.)

Aug 23

• Lybian rebels took control of Quadafi’s compound today.
• KBR wants an employee who sued over rape to pay their $2 million court bill.
• Homemade goat cheese doesn’t really taste like feta.

Aug 22

• There really is head shaving organized on St. Patrick’s day under the name of St. Baldrick’s day. (I thought my nieces were making things up.)
• There is also a St. Balderic who founded any abby in France in 7th century.
• The method for loading by Explicit ID changed between ParAccel version 2.5 and 3.1. (Set the seed to zero, load by explicit_id, and PA will set the new seed value appropriately.)

Aug 21

• There is a product known as: Castelll Morella Spanish ash coated hand poured goat cheese. (Not sure about the ash, but the rest sounds good.)
• http://www.coldbacon.com/cheese.html is a repository of cheese information.
• Lybian rebels have entered Tripoli.

Aug 20

• Cowboys and Aliens has been a disappointment at the box office, but I enjoyed it.
• Lucy Lawless got the role of Xena pretty much by accident.
• There was a mathmetician, David Hilbert, whose claim to fame was leaving the 20th century a list of 23 difficult to solve problems. (Some were solved quickly, some are still worked on today.)

Aug 19

• The British consul building in Kabal was attacked by gunmen.
• High frequency trading requires supercomputers to look for inconsistencies in the market and exploit them. (The inconsistencies may only last for a few seconds.)
• Estonia has the highest per capita wealth of the former Soviet republics.

Aug 18

• A bus carrying Israelis to a resort city was attacked by gunmen today.
• Nevin Shapirio claims he funneled cash, cars, and hookers to Miami college football players. (He is currently in jail for orchestrating a Ponzi scheme.)
• Shawn Johnson is recovering from major knee surgery.

Aug 17

• Rick Perry also does not believe in human caused climate change. (This guy is not going to be one of my favorites.)
• Two guys in England got 4 years in jail for suggesting a place for people to go riot even though no one (except the police) showed up.
• Monkey Picked Oolong tea tastes a lot like Iron Buddah Oolong.

Aug 16

• Rick Perry called the quantitative easing policy treasonous.
• China’s population now eats about 110 lbs of meat per person a year, about half of what the US population eats per person.
• My parents were among the last 28000 houses to have power restored.

Aug 15

• 128,000 houses out of power at the worst point after the storm.
• Time Warner wants to buy Insight.
• There is a restaurant that serves an escargot lollipop.

Aug 14

• Taggart’s Ice Cream parlor in Canton OH makes a milkshake (The Bittner) with ¾ pound of vanilla ice cream.
• The guy from Hootie & The Blowfish (Darrious something) is now a country singer.
• The alert siren in Hikes Point got blown down in the storm.

Aug 13

• I don’t have enough flashlights.
• Chatanooga billiards club is a good place to play pool.
• There are over 400 Firehouse Subs locations now.

Aug 12

• fg %[job #] pulls a job back into the forgeground. (The % is the key.)
• Birmingham is England’s second largest city. (About 500,000 larger than Manchester.)
• There is a book dedicated to competitive scrabble players. (http://www.amazon.com/Word-Freak-Heartbreak-Competitive-ScrabblePlayers/dp/0142002267)

Aug 11

• The IRS is going to start collecting cost basis information from mutual fund managers.
• The beginnings of trench warfare began in the US civil war.
• There is a really long live version of The Chambers Brothers Time Has Come Today (http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DuHfB63ln1Ig&h=mAQCmOrK1AQA-7-PN7B1tnug6aDSfXPUUcQ7fTJo3KKyoEQ) on uTube.

Aug 10

• Sarcophagus is Greek for flesh eating stone.
• Myoglobin is similar to hemoglobin, but is found in the muscles. (It’s not good if found in the blood.)
• Some HIV positive people have started getting tatoos (like the biohazard symbol) to advertise this fact.

Aug 9

• The Fed is going to keep interest rates low for about two years.
• London has brought in 10,000 police to try to prevent rioting tonight.
• Swearing will allow you to keep your hand in a bucket of ice cold water than would otherwise be possible. (However, the more often you swear on a daily basis reduces this effect.)

Aug 8

• The stock market had one of it’s worst days in history. (5.6 on the Dow Jones)
• London is experiencing it’s worst riots in 25 years
• CRPG Adict made a new post on 8/6.

Aug 7

• Ip Man was a Wing Chun martial artist and instructor of Bruce Lee. (Also a very entertaining movie.)
• An executor does things like cancel credit cards and collect any monies owed to the deceesed along with dividing up possesions according to the will.
• The last of my barbs died while I was away this weekend.

Aug 6

• There is a concoction known as stain paint.
• There is a purple people bridge connecting Cincinnati to Newport.
• There is a new provost at Xavier.

Aug 5

• There was a celebrated sniper called California Joe during the Civil War. (Although he may have been all or mostly hype. He was discharged for poor vision and senility about a year after enlisting.)
• The Mid Ohio Business Objects Users Group (MOBOUG) meets quarterly.
• Teachers and Professors tend to do better with large cash gifts (better = saving instead of spending) than do most other professions.

Aug 4

• About 3.5 million millionaires in the US.
• Mike Tyson and Snookie rumored to be DWTS contestants.
• Asian tiger mosquito probably made its way to the US in used tires.

Aug 3

• Dwarf Fortress got a write up in the New York Times.
• A woman in Sydney had a device removed from around her neck which may or may not have been a bomb.
• HMU means Hit Me Up; texting lingo for “call me”.

Aug 2

• Derby winner Ferdinand was slaughtered in Japan after failing as a stud horse.
• Tesla Motors is selling a luxury EV for about 50K.
• Under pressure (behind) soccer goalies tend to dive right.

Aug 1

• MTV went on the air (err, cable?) on this day 30 years ago.
• Fall River Manufacturing will make items out of anything from plastic, to carbon steel.
• There is an awesome video of 2 chess pieces being milled on You Tube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXUHZxweBcw&feature=related

July 31

• APA anual dues are now $25 a year instead of 20.
• The local NPR station airs a program from Radio Netherlands Worldwide called Earth Beat on Sunday nights. (I thought they just pulled from BBC broadcasts.)
• BBC’s Nut Brown Ale is pretty tasty.

July 30

• Chip was invited to Sarah & Richard’s wedding during the time I lent him my copy of The Watchmen. (Graphic novel)
• Buckheads at the Gardner Lane shopping center seems to use a custom video/audio program for the restaurant. (Mostly Queen and AC/DC while we ate there today.)
• The Thundercats reboot has received good reviews by friends and family.

July 29

• Amy Winehouse may have died after going cold turkey.
• Boehner’s debt bill got out of the house today.
• Mauritian noodles look a lot like Ramen.

July 28

• The Durbin ammendment of the Frank Dodd financial reform act goes into effect Oct 1 modifying the way credit card fees are charged.
• There is a severe drought in the horn of Africa (Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya), the worst in 60 years.
• Glen Beck compared the Norwegian Youth Labor Party camp to the Hitler youth. (While sponsoring vacation liberty schools this summer for US children.)