So now we're all back to The Drifting. Since John's brain now has something inside instead of one big block of blank, he may as well write every (?) word down before they evaporate.
But before John continues, he needs to play this song. The reason why being that life would never try to understand you. This comes to mind an article featuring John's fellow otters.
Recently, John L'Otter came across an interesting article featuring Señorita Cruz and the #MeToo movement. Before John continues his post, allow him to point out that complimenting a señorita won't get you into jail because no one has ever complimented Monica Baey while she was bathing. In fact, doing something like this means you're a danger to society and correct family values. But to ask any señorita to translate the video below? It depends on whether you're lowdown enough to ask about that one unwanted word.
Now to be fair, there are two types of men and DC did a very good job of making them well known.
Then you have those who are like John L'Otter.
This reminds John of a weird double whammy of 1981. A few days ago, Mr and Mrs Song announce their divorce. If you think that sounds like Mr and Mrs Smith announcing their divorce, 1981 ended up hitting the fan. An ice fan, to be exact. Now why four numbers were involved in the process is very simple: Song Hye-kyo was born in 1981, ditto for Fan Bing Bing. Quite obviously this was a freak case of freak coincidence, but if only the average casino visitor to Osaka's IR was to be that lucky. Definitely not John, though. Thankfully, there is no news of Wonder Woman splitting from Steve Trevor. It'd be disastrous if S.A.L.T. Entertainment has to announce it because that'd be like what happened to Zatanna and Nick Necro. Okay, that's going too far into the JLD end.
Hopefully, we can get to see a DCEU movie entitled Constantine starring this bloke below as the titular character.
Interesting note: Matt Ryan was also born in 1981.
In other news, John is facing a bit of a mental blank state. Most likely due to too much gaming, John L'Otter is having a few challenges trying to finish the latest edrafted chapter. The reason why being that John ended up making some changes and he didn't want things to end up going... well, berserk.
Hopefully, things can be done by the end of this week. That is, hopefully. For now, John decides to up the existing chapters. Even if it's 4 teh lolz.
On the home front, the numbers game may be getting interesting. Ask any feminist which numbers they hate and chances are that they'd say three, five, and seven. The reason why is that... well, they're quite Christian. Those knowing even a wee bit of Hebrew numerology would tell you that these three numbers are holy numbers. RICE Media is known to be pro-feminism and John recalls this article. While John isn't going to speculate whether the number seven was being used, word has it that it took a girl sharing the same name as Aragaki Yui to show Kim Kardashian how to utilise the kimono properly.
Because this should be seen as some massively positive PR for Singapore, John decides to play the Hebrew numerology game as a form of reciprocation. Actually, he's just doing this for fun.
Since G20 is being held in Osaka, John may as well invoke memories of its local castle.
Speaking of G20, will we see a consensus between the two big kahunas? While a lasting agreement is very unlikely, the chances of a temporary ceasefire are quite another story. Unless Steven Mnuchin would end up looking like Steven Lim, what the Federal Reserve did on the rate cutting might be hinting at something. Albeit no one is saying a permanent deal is possible. In fact, a successful ceasefire this weekend would (and should) be considered a shocker. Then again, the last time a temporary truce was made was N years after the salty Koreans from the north and south made a similar deal 100% immune to torpedo attacks.
As for Abe Shinzo and Xi Jinping, it'd be interesting to see how deep the thaw can go. After all, China and the entire Korean people never have a positive impression on Japan. Trade alone can only go this far since there's no way Trump could stay in the White House beyond 8 years. Long in the face of economic recession, yes. Long enough to create a lasting impact? John doubts so considering any attempt to modify a post-war constitution.
Okay, the next chapter of A Requiem From Winter Past has hit a... well, snag. The reason why?
Apart from procrastination, there's this weird lack of drive. Maybe it's due to too much gaming. Perhaps it's due to this. Mayhaps 'tis a matter of cause and effect. Either way, maybe more blogging can contribute to more writing. Who knows?
Vital announcement: John L'Otter is officially offline in Neverwinter Online
No, this is no #fakenews for your info. You're not gonna see characters like Arylos and Cyrea Durothil in this game. The reason why being that John committed the same mistake of trying new MMOs. However, there's a key difference between this and then. Back then, the gamer is encouraged to log in daily just to get/do some things. Due to John's obsessive tendency to maintain a pointless schedule, John ended up developing an obsessive tendency to see things beyond the very end. It's like being Emiya Shirou in Unlimited Blade Works, just that it's not even one-tenth as awesome.
This time around, the situation changed. Due to considerations involving the need NOT to log in daily just to do the customary stuff, John decided that Neverwinter Online is officially offline for him.
To the good people at the Legacy of Magic guild, thanks for all the help given. The same goes for the guild alliance, in particularly the occasional raid in instances like Fangbreaker Island and Cradle of the Death God where frustrations tend to be a consistent fixture due to time and practice not readily available to this typing critter.
The most American game ever?
How American is modern-day America? Whenever we talk about rights, the left got a problem with religious liberty while the right got the same problem with gender equality. When it comes to justice, freedom of choice is basically about choosing between your POC neighbour and your other neighbour's unborn child. Like how Emiya Kiritsugu understood a righteous God more than Kotomine Kirei despite being an atheist, it's possible that he also understood America more than the typical American despite being... well, a Japanese.
This comes to mind a question: Is every brand of American creativity a case of Hollywooding every possible thing under the sun, moon, and stars? After all, the X-Men series was effectively Marvel retelling the civil rights movement with names like Purifiers, William Stryker, and salty Korean involved in the entire process. Okay, not the salty Korean but you get the drift. And it's not as if the right is more correct than the left.
Thankfully, things may not be the case here. While it's very likely that Hollywood ended up winding up the conservatives via works like Noah and Mother! like Cristiano Ronaldo winding up Wayne Rooney more than 10 years ago, there's something about DC which doesn't feel that... well, socio-political.
To be fair, John was first acquainted with Marvel. In fact, it's very likely that John knows more about Deadpool compared to Deathstroke. And yes, that part proved to be one of those quirky moments involving the famous Marvel-DC rivalry with Captain Marvel saying Shazam! as another such moment. It wasn't until he got his paws on DC Universe Online that things change.
In America, it's always either you choose the left or right when it comes to utilising the controversial parts as fuel for creativity. Use the conservative bias of others and you'll be called a war hero. If it's the other way around, you're a superhero. Choose both and people won't respect an ally of justice.
Not so for DC. In this sense, they're more daring than Marvel. A classic example of this would be the Gorilla Grodd where Darwinism wasn't the best way to save the world. Actually, it is never the correct way.
Then you have DC angering PETA and radical feminists via Poison Ivy.
At the same time, it remains to be seen whether DC will be sued for demonising sin and beings with horns.
No need for the daily log-in
One of the key aspects of DC Universe is that you don't have to log in daily to get stuff. That's good news for John since he doesn't have a normal human being's ability to manage time. Simply put, John would be given more time and space doing his own stuff albeit only in theory until proven 100% true. Of course, exceptions do exist. Like the Bonus Stabiliser weekend event.
This resulted in the line separating the casual gamer from the more hardcore type. The latter has got no problem gaming more often while one wouldn't see the former logging in on a daily basis. Effectively, this is the Daybreakers' way of saying "you have a choice and we're not going to play mind games just to make sure you log in on a daily basis". This is NOT to say that other MMOs are operating like a dictator. After all, you're still given the choice whether or not to do so. But did DC Universe make things easier? The answer is yes. At the end of the day, it takes a visual creature to understand another visual creature.
Some tips (?) for the casual gamer
Is gaming addiction a psychological disorder? Apparently, the WHO assumed the role of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung by saying yes. Be it psychology or psychiatry, Freud or Jung, gaming can easily turn a hobby into something else truly scary. At the same time, however, this also brings forth the question of whether the Korean remake of Scary Movie has anything in common with the fact that Taeyeon got groped years ago. Seriously, the groping part was real because John L'Otter does have the memory of a Manchester elephant.
This is not to say the Daybreakers at Daybreak are a bunch of charitable ladies and gentlemen. No one should ever say retrenchment in Singapore is a myth just because retirement in Singapore is... well, a myth since expiry age is more real than retirement age. In other words, Daybreak has been doing the very same things Singaporean employers have been doing since day one. At the end of the day, it's very likely that the Daybreakers were merely thinking out of the box in terms of business decisions. But that's good enough for the typical Korean and pseudo-Korean.
When it comes to pre-30 level content, you're most likely going to experiment with stuff just to see what works for you. This results in the AI fairly easy to take down. Case in point: Running around with a rifle here involves bringing down a non-boss target in a matter of shots numbering less than 5 or so. At the same time, an effective AoE close range attack is more than enough to wipe out any mob. The real challenge comes once Batman and his dual-faced (ex) BFF requests your aid in bringing down Danny DeVito and a kleptocrat (Note: The correct definition of a kleptocrat is unrelated to a Democrat in the same way kleptocracy is unrelated to democracy). That'd be when your combat rating goes like 40 or so after your character's level hit the ceiling. But even then, that's only two one-shot quests given. Simply put, what are the things you can do post-level 30? This is where the one-player instance raid content comes in.
Every week, you can complete up to 5 (if John remembers correctly) tier 1 single-player raid instance queue. This would drop a weekly reward box per run (note that weekly loot doesn't drop more than once in any specific raid). In fact, it's possible that the weekly reward box would drop in any instance raid from single player to the eight-player format. While the loot tends not to be at the higher end (at least for the single player ones), sometimes Harvey Dent does win the coin toss in the form of better gear instead of base decoration items. At the same time, better gear has a higher drop rate when it comes to winning any boss fight and completing the raid. This means you'd get at least two loot drops instead of one once per week. It depends on how many bosses you have to fight.
This gives casual gamers something to do without risking their daily schedule or whatever stuff they plan to do within the current 24 hours. Only have time for 15 minutes or so? Just run a single-player raid. If you're good enough, 15 minutes shouldn't be a problem. Have time for more but not wanting to screw up your time management? You can run just about any combination of single-player and two-player content (note that DCUO's equivalent of a dungeon crawl involves at least 4 players). Maybe 3 or 4.
Now it must be stated that DCUO involves a lot of grinding. While this is something other MMOs would always do (especially the F2P ones due to a business model concept very different from their subscription payment counterparts), there's something tactical about DCUO when it comes to getting things done. It's not that significant on a pre-30 level basis since combat for John was more about messing around with the controls without getting knocked out. Unlike Neverwinter where the combat system thrives on creating and maintaining the dps momentum, combat in DCUO involves harder-to-kill AI and knowing what to do when something like zerging comes. As a result, dps pace is more about the cards you have than the cards you play. In turn, this makes the combat pacing slower.
So does that mean you won't die that easily? It depends.
The art of counter-attacking
Counter-attacking is a matter of tactical art. Whatever this means. It's like Jon Snowgate trying to make Middlesbrough great again ever since Jeor Moggamont became a part of northern history. You can't win games by relying on attacking teams like Barcelona. Because it's not going to work once Martin O'Neill parks his Irish bus. And you know it's going to happen.
Pre-30 level difficulty wise, breaking free from control effects shouldn't be an issue since it wouldn't happen that often. And by that, it still happens often enough. A taste of what it's like on the higher end would be running the raid version of bringing down Mr Sinestro. That'd involve a two-player run plus the sexiest Canuck alive wearing green. Or at least something like that.
The so-called control-breaking involves pressing only one key. Namely, Shift. Needless to say, you can tweak the key binding settings to suit your style. So being too used to playing Neverwinter shouldn't be an excuse. After all, you can change from Shift to Tab.
Why John mentions this is very important: Your next move after control-breaking will affect the offensive momentum. In tactical speak, it's called staging a counter-offensive. For John, a jailbreak counter-offensive involves a two-attack sequence intended to nuke the surrounding enemies. More specifically, it's Vortex Trap>Karmic Backlash. Works well so far if John says so himself.
A tip for Jon Snowgate(?)
The final part involves something John L'Otter discovered post-level 30. If he remembers it correctly, that should be somewhere while busting Danny DeVito at level 43 (i.e. applicable only to him and the kleptocrat for now).
At this point, John has devised a simple way of right clicking. Initially, holding down the right mouse button would result in the rifle firing an endless barrage. Then the fun part arrived: Holding down the forward button and backward button. The latter would result in either a backflip barrage or mortar shells raining down like fire, fury, and brimstone. As for the former, it's rolling forward and firing a short barrage of artillery resulting in the target being stunned.
The backflip barrage is not just a simple jailbreak tactic. Moving forward after that, pulling off a Vortex Trap>Karmic Backlash would be 100% doable. It's like Jon Snowgate staging a counter-offensive by breaking up play at the defensive area only to play a swift two-pass move. First pass backwards and a long pass forward. To pull that off, however, the backline needs to have nerves of Teesside steel. So will Dael Fry be our Boy of Steel?
Raining down mortar fire, fury, and brimstone has to be the worst way to play football. The number one rule to the classic British strategy is this: You don't have to try it in order to knock it. One might say it's a miracle for John to fall asleep only after 45 minutes of Martin O'Neill's British football when Aston Villa was still in the top flight. Which was exactly what happened. John means the sleeping part, not the miracle. But if Jon Snowgate got no choice but to defend his Winterfell... well, beggars can't be choosers. Last time John did a check, a certain Mr Lee was still sighted in the city of Bristol.
John believes Ryan the Shotgun is still around. Just sayin'.
The forward roll tactic is arguably the fun part. Positionally speaking, this could be seen as the advanced version of Oda Nobunaga's 2nd Amendment tactics. How this works is very simple:
1. Stand and fire.
2. Hold forward while the artillery is still going off.
3. Move accomplished, target stunned.
4. Pause for a split, then perform step 2 again.
5. Once close enough, do a Karmic Trap (i.e. Vortex Trap>Karmic Backlash area nuke).
Steps 1 to 3 should be enough to take down any lower level target. At most, just right-click to pop an arching shell to end that fellow. In terms of crowd clearing, that'd be steps 1 to 5.
For Jon Snowgate, that'd look like securing possession via the backline with the midfield covering the defensive space in front. Sounds like a defensive tactic? Just play the ball forward to the midfield without the need to launch the Anglo-Saxon cannons. Once the midfield receives the ball, control the game with it via one-quarter of the pitch. Compact approach, yes. Long ball strategy, no. There's a reason why we need to secure the presence of Marcus Tavernier and Lewis X-Wing. As for George Jr, just plaster him at the other side of the midfield since Tavernier is a lefty. As for the Karmic Trap, that requires Huge Jordan and Big Bad Britt. Oh wait, would that be overly cavalier? Maybe Jon Snowgate should opt for a 4-4-2 since formation doesn't tell you anything beyond possibilities of approach.
P.S: Switching off now. And two more videos from DCUO and John's personal favourites.
Finally, a new PC had arrived. Simply put, John L'Otter is now back and... well, returning to his otter self. Come 1st June, the Great English Bash will be on. And that's not considering the Europa League finale as well. So yeah, it's truly the Great English Bash. Not to be confused with the Great British Bash featuring two English teams, one Welsh team, and either team from the Scottish capital of Scottish football. Bummer that Brendan Rodgers chose not to stay a wee bit longer despite the presence of Stevie G at the other side of Old Firm.
Hopefully, John can restart his history engine. After all, Johnny Chinese has yet to reach its end. Thankfully, John doesn't have to namedrop politicians at least for the next part. Don't thank John for this, go thank the ex-boss of the U.S before the bossed became the boss.
In other news, Koutetsujou no Kabaneri might have given John some inspiration. Unlike Monica Baey versus NUS, this one may be for real. That is, a maybe.
If this goes ahead, it means there's a need to tweak things.
What this post is all about
In a past post, John mentioned something about fighting Arcturia. But there's a problem. While John didn't recall Arylos having the need to move and fire (seriously, it's like Rapid Shot all the way), fighting the same person with a Sentinel barbarian ended up the other way. Literally. This was further confirmed by a fellow guild alliance member where said member mentioned that he/she couldn't win the fight with a Soulbinder warlock.
The reason behind this annoyance was due to two factors:
1. Arcturia could conjure black holes on the ground at an insanely high rate.
2. She could also conjure black briars from the ground to drain your AP gauge 100%.
Factor 2 meant slowing down the dps momentum since you'd either need a daily power to deal large bursts of damage or keeping you alive. Factor 1 was the reason why it's very easy to lose the fight. The black hole wasn't intended as a dps move, but rather as a foolproof strategy to break up the dps momentum so that she could dictate the dps race instead of you.
This resulted in a weird situation where melee and healing classes were effectively screwed. For healers, the dps wouldn't be high enough since fighting Arcturia has been all about dealing more damage than her at a faster rate. As for melee classes, the butterfly cloud would just pull off an insanely high level of damage over time. This also meant the melee dps momentum would break as well. To summarise why Arcturia seemed to be unplayable unless you go in with a party, her gameplay mechanic hinged on high dps and the ability to reverse the flow of damage dealing via disruption attacks.
Which now comes to why Arylos could pull off a victory despite the obvious. There are only two possibilities.
1. The devs reviewed the difficulty level. In fact, they've been doing this since mod 7 and we're already at mod 16.
2. Either nothing much or nothing was changed. In short, there's a way to prevent her from pulling off her WMD (i.e. Weapons of Mass Disruption).
More than one way to do it?
The most straightforward way to complete the Arcturia boss quest would be getting one to two players to form a party. In fact, that's how John managed to seal the coup. More specifically, it's Sentinel+Warlock (Hellbringer?)+Arbiter cleric.
The reason why a three-member party should be good enough despite the difficulty level in any private instance being scaled according to the party size is very simple: Combat advantage and Arcturia's abysmal defence. In fact, John originally intended a tank+ranged dps two-member party since he's not thinking about whether a third alliance member would volunteer to help. Suffice to say, the first few tries while going solo didn't work out at all. Let alone not working out fine. This resulted in doing a lfg involving one warlock and an Arbiter cleric.
Because John has to work tomorrow, John is gonna make this short. Hopefully, that is.
Not exactly foolproof (?)
Disclaimer: This plan may or may not work. Whatever you'll see here would be a case of theory based on personal observation. If you don't feel like testing it. you can just put up a lfg request. In fact, that's what guild alliances are there for.
Fighting Arcturia is effectively a case of coming up with the correct strategy. Unless you can come up with an effective damage dealing strategy, any moment of tactical brilliance will be nothing more than a moot. Since it's impossible to break her dps momentum, the only way is to break her disruption game. Which of course is something easier said than done.
But before that, it's highly advisable to summon a ranged dps companion. If your companion is either melee based or healing based, chances are you're screwed. Especially the former. John tried that. It didn't work at all. If possible. summon a level 25 Batiri Runt. For a green rank dps companion, that son of a batiri does have a very good dps game against bosses since Chief Killer could be unlocked without upgrading it to blue. If for some reason you don't have one, summon any green rank dps companion so long it's a ranged dps type. Wayward Wizard would be a good budget choice since you only need at most 50K astral diamonds to upgrade. Since Siege of Neverwinter event is now on, you can also choose to do five daily event quests in the siege warzone to get a Neverember Guard Archer. And besides, that one is auto-bind unless you get her via the event box costing 7 medals each.
The funny thing about using a ranged dps companion is this: There's actually a decent chance of Arcturia being kited away from the butterfly cloud. At least this would be the case for that son of a batiri. But it's very likely that any ranged dps companion could pull it off since it'd be terribly stupid to see your plan falling apart just because you don't have that one in a million companion. This isn't a joke. John actually tested it accidentally since the Cambion companion was doing effectively nothing due to being inside the butterfly cloud.
Once you get the companion part working, then you have to reconfigure your move set. Feats be damned, just go for effective single-target high damage output. There are two ways to do it. The most straightforward way would be putting her under the dps pressure cooker. Moves like Magic Missile and Rapid Shot are examples of dps pressure cooker bread-and-butter. But since not every class can thrive on a rapid-fire strategy, an alternative would be going for high one-shot damage, after which you just use a single-target at-will to take her down. A good example of that would be Brazen Slash where it's fast to come out and highly damaging for an at-will. In fact, John wouldn't be surprised if any fighter build can pull it off in any fight since there are now plenty of AoE options available. One-shot damage game is particularly important for any tanking build here since the high damage options available are severely limited. In fact, using Come And Get It would be the dumbest thing any Sentinel could do in this fight. And John was actually dumb enough to do that and equally dumb enough to realise a few days later that this was nothing less than a stupid strategy. So what if his Sentinel got the Extended Unstoppable feat? That didn't stop Arcturia.
Below are recommendations for those who want to experiment on their light bulbs like an Edison. Note that John is only going to put 1 daily, 1 encounter, 1 at-will, and two class features as examples here:
Sentinel: Crescendo (highest damage daily power), Primal Fury (no cooldown so long you got enough Rage), Sentinel's Slash (use Sure Strike if under Unstoppable), Steady Rage and Threatening Presence (for aggro pulling)
Justicar: Divine Judgement (highest damage daily power with fast startup animation), Bane (even better if you got Baneful Strikes feat), any at-will power apart from Radiant Strike post-Sacred Weapon, Binding Oath+Aura of Vengeance (for maximum damage reflect)
Vanguard: Blade Rampart (since the butterfly cloud auto-damages anybody within range), Anvil of Doom (magnitude 680), Brazen Strike (insanely high damage for a fast hitting at-will), Combat Superiority (higher Constitution=more AP generated+Blade Rampart)
Soulbinder: Brood of Hadar (insanely high damage escalation), Harrowstorm (continual damage so long the soul sparks keep coming), Essence Defiler (refer to Harrowstorm), Prince of Hell (because you most likely need that 2.5K armour penetration)
Devout: Guardian of Faith (only if you got Persistent Guardian Feat), Exaltation+Geas (20% damage bonus+damage reduction debuff+Blessed Armaments feat), Sacred Flame (because it's the only useful damage at-will for Devouts), Pilgrim's Light (contingency tactic since your companion would most likely get knocked out a few times), Towering Light feat (if you want to take risks by reducing the frequency of healing to the minimum. Not recommended unless you got Exaltation)
Oathkeeper: Either Divine Judgement or Sanctuary (depends on whether you're a risk taker since this one is a healadin), Banishment>Sacred Weapon>Divine Fulmination (endless damage spam), Guarded Prayers (in case you need to pop a healing potion for whatever reason).
P.S: Ending this now. Yes, John knows it's abrupt. But seriously, he doesn't blog for a living because he's just another otter albeit being a sea otter instead of a river otter.
