User:XT-8147

A bit about me
I'm usually on in the afternoons and evenings eastern time.

I'm an officer in Natural Stoned Killers [NsK].

I need to clean my characters sections up a bit, possibly adding pictures.

And I absolutely HATE American football. Real football (i.e. soccer) I have no current problem with.

Rie Tanaka
Named after my favorite Japanese voice actress, because Nami Tamaki was already taken.

Usual class combos: Necromancer/Monk, Necromancer/Mesmer

Armor: Full 1.5k Scar Armor, dyed blue. Separate head scars for Blood/Death/Curses (use red dye to turn those head scars blue). Alternate foot armor (Bloodstained Boots) for MM or when I want to speed up a well with blood magic, the one energy difference between the foot scar and the boots isn't all that problematic.

I'm going for Fissure armor! Wish me luck and ectos/shards!

Builds I usually play:
 * PvE Blood Spike
 * N/Mo Factions-enhanced Minion Master

Pedro No Es Pequeno
Small explanation: besides the fact that Pequeno really should be Peque&ntilde;o (yay for English character limitation), the name translates to "Pedro is not small". When I made him, I set his height as short as possible so he'd be in denial. This name itself originates from my archer named Pedro that I had back when I still played Champions of Norrath. That was most likely a reference to the character from Excel Saga.

Usual class combos: Ranger/Monk, Ranger/Warrior

Armor: Full 15k Druid's Armor, mask undyed, coat/gloves dyed silver, leggings/boots dyed blue. Separate (1.5k) gloves/boots for swapping in/out superior runes (I usually run two superior runes, I've found that if you stay the hell back like you're supposed to that the health hit really isn't that much of a problem)

Titles I'm going for with Pedro:
 * Tyrian Grandmaster Cartographer (currently at 97.1%! There is light at the end of this tunnel!)
 * Protector of Tyria (Just have Thunderhead Keep left!)
 * Drunkard (a paltry 170 some minutes, as I'm a) poor and b) feel like doing just about anything except idling in town double clicking a stack of ale for hours on end)
 * Skill Hunter (I might as well not even be trying at this, not only have I barely begun but it can't be maxed yet)
 * the Wisdom track (kinda halfheartedly, I haven't been saving gold items found with other characters for him to identify)

I also wish that more of these titles were account-wide. Cartographer and Protector I understand being character-specific though. Also, why isn't there a title track for quest completion? And furthermore, why can I never find a group for Defend North Kryta Province in The Temple of Ages?

Builds I usually play:
 * Quick Shot Gunner
 * Runner (I don't run for money, I just run guildies places (and through Elona Reach on occasion))
 * Beast Master
 * Bunny Thumper
 * Totem Axe Farmer

Past (retired) builds:
 * Mobile Disruption Sniper
 * JI Sniper

A build I threw together on the fly for a pug that worked really well:
 * Hell's Precipice Winter Spammer

Dance The Nite Away
Named him that solely to make fun of the Mesmer's dance.

Usual class combo: Mesmer/Monk

Armor: 1.5k Enchanter's on everything but the feet, Courtly boots for the +15 armor while casting SCREW YOU ANERF. Dyed random colors using the dyes I had available at the time, actually looks semi-decent.

Builds I usually play:
 * My own piece of crap build that needs to be thrown out and redone entirely, possibly integrating some of those fun new skills from Factions

Holy Sheryl
Name intended to have the first syllable of Sheryl stretched when spoken, just for fun.

Class combo: Monk/Mesmer

Armor: 1.5k Ascetic's Armor (Dragon), dyed red, with a set of cheapie Ascetic's Armor (Star) for 55 monking

Builds I usually play:
 * My take on a healing monk
 * 55 monk

I was into the habit of using Rebirth at the exact point in Mantra of Recall's recharge time that Mantra of Recall ends shortly after Rebirth takes all my energy, but then I kinda switched over to a WoH healer *gasp*

Don't let word of this get around too much, but after hating on the skill for so long, I've actually switched over to a Word of Healing build. Despite not really liking the skill much, when you have a skill bar filled with only 5 energy spells, you don't need much in the way of energy management, unless you decide to go crazy replacing your resurrect with Zealot's Fire and heal spamming in AB.

I've taken a liking to Dwayna's Kiss though. It can easily be the largest heal in the entire game. I remember one AB where the blood necro on our team had a couple hexes and several enchantments on him (some courtesy of me), he started getting focus-fired, I hit Dwayna's Kiss, and he got healed for around 400 health, counting divine favor.

Bob The Victorious
Bob is possibly the best name ever. He's Bob The Victorious because Bob The Warrior, Bob The Fighter, and Bob The Gladiator were already taken. He's a hammer warrior because I like to play the builds that aren't the most popular.

Usual class combo: Warrior /Monk

Armor: 1.5k Canthan, dyed red.

Builds I usually play:
 * Friendly Neighborhood Hammer Tank
 * Farming build

He's now fully ascended and has all of his attribute points. Woohoo! I found a good balance for my tactics level that would allow me to have 16 hammer and be able to put juuuuuust enough into prot to reduce Rebirth's skill disable from 10 seconds to 9.

His weapon is a Victo's Maul that I had lying around. I liked the look of the Summit Hammer he had before that better, but oh well. I actually want a Mursaat Hammer for him, just because I like the skin.

Before he got Gladiator's armor, he had a problem whereby high enough death penalty would prevent him from using "For Great Justice!" or resurrecting people. I had solved this at the time by carrying a crappy white staff on my weapon switch that added extra energy. While I still do carry a crappy white staff that adds extra energy, I now use it for acheiving two Rebirths in quick succession. Rebirth one dead party member with hammer active, queue up a switch to the staff. Once the staff has been switched to, use second Rebirth. Fairly simple to get the hang of and it helps get the party back up faster after a wipe.

Arcanist Michelle
My elementalist! Named after a character in a story I wrote about some mages (to put it simply). She's finally ascended and is in Droknar's Forge.

Side note: I ascended with the same build I play normally, listed below. Even got the fast kill bonus.

Armor is 1.5k Archmage's Canthan Armor. Dye mix is 3 blue + 1 silver, not quite what I was looking for but every attempt to make it better just made it worse :(

I estimate my target skill bar to be something like one of these:

Rebirth seems like a waste of energy on an elementalist and I don't really want to spare the attribute points to make Restore Life viable, hence I stick with Resurrect.

She uses Flint's Wand and Flint's Artifact.

I love using slow hexes to cause AoE scatter. Normally it would be bad to do this, but they barely go anywhere when they're slowed by 66%.

I've noticed that all the slow hexes available under Water Magic are fairly effective at aggro management. There have been multiple cases of enemies charging right past the warriors in the party to get to me/the monks, only to be whacked by one of my slow hexes, then they seem to retarget to whatever is nearest, which is the warriors. When I can time Glyph of Lesser Energy->Ice Spikes correctly to do this, it works quite well. Against single enemies that are already moving towards the party, Shard Storm is much more effective and efficient.

I've also noticed that as a water mage, I have yet to be interrupted by a ranger enemy. Mesmers will still interrupt me, and Elementalists will still knock me down during my casting times, but I have yet to get hit by Distracting Shot or Concussion Shot while playing as a water mage, even with all henchmen.

I realize that by reading this character list you may have noticed that all of my characters typically have a Monk secondary. I much prefer having an easily reusable resurrection spell to a single-use "must kill a boss to use again" signet.

Arcane Ritual
My ritualist. Hasn't done much so far, I really just wanted to create her.

PvP Character
Currently my PvP character is my touch ranger, Taunting Stick. I'm finding PvP in Factions to be a lot more interesting and attention-grabbing than Prophecies PvP ever was. Maybe because there's things to do while you kill the enemies and actual rewards for doing it, so there's a lot more strategy to it than just "take a damage build and hope you win and if you lose the rest of your team was noobs".

Though lately I've been monking more in AB than anything else. Being a monk seems to make me an aggro magnet, but oh well.

Other stuff
I might write random articles from time to time that have no real place on GuildWiki other than my user page. They'll be listed here.

Skill reviews
Every arbitrarily-lengthed time period, I'll pick a skill, use it a bunch, and write up an article about it explaining strengths/weaknesses, good synergies with other skills, possible party builds, etc. This is because I have too much time on my hands.


 * Escape

Party Build Ideas

 * Synergy with Brambles

Token User Page Links

 * Elite Skills

Random stuff

 * "Ni!" - Sleep deprivation combined with habitual reading of talk pages.
 * The Art of Skill Bar Organization - I attribute writing this to boredom.