Fun! This was my best character since Maemar! I don’t get to play CF much these days, so I’m thankful for the chance to really come back in swinging with Dungard, and have a good 2 or 3 month go of it. Unfortunately I no longer have the time to play. I started really playing Dungy in November, knowing that I’d have November and December to really put some time in while things at work are slower. When January came on the horizon I thought I’d be able to still get on a decent amount, but it just wasn’t possible. Every time I have gotten on in January I’ve been interrupted by some RL thing about 20 minutes after sign on - which contributed to a fair number of deaths.

Right now I get up at 6a.m to try to spend some time with my 6 month old son before I start my day. I leave my house about 8a.m, drop the boy off at daycare. Then go to train for the upcoming TKD Nationals that are being held in my home-state, at Detroit’s Ford Field. I get done training about 11:00, shower, and am at my desk working by 11:30 (where I also eat lunch.) I power my way through as much desk stuff (including constant phone calls/emails) as I can before I start meeting with clients around 3:00, a process which doesn’t end until 9-10:00p.m. Then I go home, where my wife (who has to get up at 5) is waiting for the only chance she has to really see her husband. I eat dinner, and completely wiped out, I go to bed. This is basically what I do Monday - Saturday. On Sunday I try to go to church, spend time with the fam, and play some music. Oh yea! Music! I also try to get out and play a couple songs at the bar every week - which requires practice time squeezed in wherever I can find it. Short story long, I just don’t have any time to log on until August…

ANYHOW!!!!

The build, my thoughts etc.

Dungard was really a role based character. I wasn’t really intending to play CF when I came up with him. I was chatting with a friend after reading some of my old Heas logs, and I was like, “Dwarves are so much fun!” I sorta got this bug in my head about a bar room brawling dwarf (h2h spec) who grabbed whatever improvised weapon he could find (hour past midnight.) I wrote the role without rolling the character, read it, thought it was really funny, and decided to just play it. One thing lead to another, and along came Dungard.

Sidenote: I’m really bummed the continued story of Dungard’s contest-winning role didn’t get played out. The next entry was going to be about how Marshall BloodFist became a paper pusher, spills ale on his papers, then pounds out his frustration on an orc… oh well.

So anyhow, I didn’t really pick h2h or hour for their strengths, I picked them because they fit the role, then I just filled in around them as best I could. I took mace as my second spec, and was not at ALL disappointed. I’d take it again in a heart beat, and in fact I have an idea for a really strong build for the future involving mace, but that is neither here nor there. For my second legacy I took Greeting the Avalanche. My thought was that I would wear a mark of the crusader and Dern gear, wield an exotic, and be able to bash most anything to death.

This didn’t really work out most of the time. Evade and new dexiness stuff has really dealt a bad hand to that type of character. It will still work, but not nearly as often as it used to. This being my first warrior since they lost haste, and my first character since dex changes I really didn’t have a good feel for what fighting with a warrior is like. Consequently I ate a good 30 deaths. 30 deaths I would NOT eat again now. I guess I just didn’t realize what a difference haste made, and how quickly things can go wrong when you don’t land melee attacks the same, and directed attacks can be evaded. It was just a different formula that I wasn’t figuring out right, and when the fight was close the net result was me losing.

So when the original idea didn’t work as expected, and I wasn’t a Maran yet, and I had eaten like 30 PK deaths, and a bunch of mob deaths and my con was down to the teens already, I was just about ready to give up. But, because I really liked my role I decided to stick it out, try some new strategy and keep on trucking. I’m proud of myself for sucking it up (I’ve never had a character with 30 PK deaths) and things really started to turn around for me.

I won the role contest and got a couple h2h/brawling edges and Whispers. Eventually I took all the regen edges and along with whispers, regeneration was just insane. A lot of times I’d leave somewhere hurt, and by the time I walked to safe place to rest I was already healed up. Coupled with “Battle Tested” my regen time, even on the 1400hp I had was only a few ticks for full health. I could regen as much as 110hp a tick while standing, and as much as 240hp the FIRST tick sleeping. While not always this high, it was consistent enough. Add this to the dragonslayer edge, and I could kill all the dragons in the dragon tower in about 20 minutes.

I also got a lot smarter about using the full range of my spec skills. Boneshatter + vital was great, because I could play the timing. First I’d drop boneshatter down, then I'd wait for a command that lags my opponent two rounds - vital (one round lag for me) - wield exotics - bash. As long as the bash wasn’t evaded or missed, that usually meant death for anything but dagger specs. High dex dagger specs gave me the most trouble, and after having tried EVERYTHING against them, I finally figured out that the best thing I could do was prep like crazy and bash.

FWIW, this is my 3rd h2h spec at hero… and I just really felt like it was underpowered compared to what it used to be. (even after the tone down) I didn’t master ironhands until very near the end of my 250ish hours, and that was with A LOT of ironhands tanking. I think that could use some looking at. *shrug* All in all, I probably won’t be back to h2h again. Mace, yes- Hours, yes - Avalanche, yes - Whispers, yes - H2H, no.

Goodbyes to follow…