User:130.58

Formerly known as anonymous user 130.58.235.187.

Me
I am a Computer Science major with an interest in robotics and distributed systems. My current research and thesis topic is network RAM for clusters. I'm also interested in security, but haven't really had a chance to study it.

I play Guild Wars fairly obsessively whenever I can, which, during the academic year, means that I end up playing sporadically, at best. While I like PVP and dabble in it, I'm mostly interested in exploring the world and creating the most stylish characters.

My primary hobby, however, (sorry, Guild Wars) is playing D&D with my friends. I've GMed several Eberron campaigns over the last few years, though I'm thinking of moving to using the Iron Heroes ruleset with a homebrew world.

My Guild
My original guild was the Seven Seas Socialist Party, a tiny guild created by a group of friends at Swarthmore College. Our other dream was to do piratical things, such as dancing jigs, saying "Yarrr!" a lot, keel hauling Charr, and doing our "Pirates Rock!" musical number in towns. Since most of the players became inactive (and there were like six to begin with), I found myself a new home...

The Elite Danger Society, a wonderful group headed by none other than Gares Redstorm. I absolutely love it. We talk a lot and go on exploratory adventures and do the elite missions and relentlessly mock the game AI.

My Characters
In order of creation...



Akasha The Shadow /
History: ''Akasha has had many forms since I first created her for the public alpha preview, where she explored the world a lot and managed to scrape together enough materials to make herself some fancy boots, then spent the last hour of the game PVPing, where Akasha, two Rangers, and a Warrior racked up 37 consecutive victories in the random arena (I played a healer with lots of Soul Reaping). I did the same thing during the beta previews, pretty much. When the game was actually released, I focused on Blood Magic with some secondary healing. I soon got tired of just manipulating hit point totals, however, and, thus, Akasha was reborn as a Necromancer/Mesmer. I tended to use Illusion Magic heavily through most of the game, but really fell in love with Curses and Inspiration as I went through the campaign.''

Akasha specializes in Curses, using them for both direct damage and weakening the enemy. Pretty much all of my PVE builds use Spiteful Spirit (even my MM build), but I tend to prefer Feast of Corruption in PVP. Akasha pretty much always has high Soul Reaping and Inspiration Magic for energy management.

Akasha's primary weapon is a Defensive Wicked Staff of Fortitude, dyed a beautiful shade of silver. Together with her Necrotic Tunic, this gives her 15 more armor than most Necromancers, particularly against elemental attacks. Fanatic's Gloves and Bonelace Leggings provide additional defense against archers, and Bloodstained Boots assist her in creating minions and wells. I dyed the set using blue for the extremeties and silver/blue for the main body, and am quite proud of how carefully chosen peices from different armor sets ultimately ended up looking much better - not to mention working better, too! - than any full set of armor in the game.

* See my common builds for Akasha.



Amelyssan The Shade / (/) (/)
History: ''I originally created Amelyssan because I found that the Necromancer's early-game solo potential was quite limited. I love the Necromancer class, however, so I made her a Warrior/Necromancer. She originally used Mark of Pain for damage and Parasitic Bond for healing, but I later switched to mostly running a pure warrior with Plague Touch, since so many Tactics skills are just too great to pass up (I was rather infatuated with "Victory is Mine!" for the longest time). I love Mesmers, too, however, and made sure to equip her with a modest selection of Mesmer skills when she gained the ability to change professions. Since coming to Cantha, however, Amelyssan has learned the arts of an Assassin and scored some fancy Kurzick armor during her travels.''

I rather like the warrior's defensive abilities, particularly skills like Defy Pain. An oft-neglected application of his skills is party buffs, however, so I try to bring skills like "Shields Up!" and Protector's Defense on missions to show other people how handy they can be. I usually spec Amelyssan as a sword warrior, prefering Dragon Slash or Auspicious Parry as my elite. I also run hammer builds at times, mostly using the area-effect knockdown power of Earth Shaker to disable entire groups at a time.

* See my common builds for Amelyssan.



Aeryss The Serpent /
I primarily use Barrage and Judge's Insight with Aeryss, though I often run trapping builds with her as well. I created Aeryss mainly because I like the feeling of power one gets from having a very long-range bow, wanted a second character who could lay down a perpetual storm of area-effect damage, and wanted to blow 100k on some really fancy armor. One of my favorite things about being an archer is collecting bows for multiple situations. Since she's all about range, all of Aeryss' bows are flatbows. A silver Zealous Ascalon Bow is her primary weapon. There's almost nothing more ego-inflating or gratifying than seeing a ranger Barrage a horde of undead and do over 200 points of damage per arrow.

Aeryss is an inactive character.

* See my common builds for Aeryss.



Ryoko The Scorpion / (/)
Ryoko is my Assassin character. I dislike the reputation assassins have in PVE, but have played with enough to say that, mostly, it's pretty well-deserved. Since attacking without using attack skills is pretty much equivalent to sitting around twiddling your thumbs, all of my Assassin builds try rather fastidiously to avoid this. As such, I favor skills with low energy costs and recharge times, or skill-recharging skills like Assassin's Promise or (gasp!) Flourish.

A long time ago, Ryoko was also a fairly capable archer, using Critical Strikes to power her attacks. Now she is mostly a teleporting stabby murderer. Which is the only right way to play an assassin, really. I've explored the bulk of Cantha with her and often do PVP as well.

* See my common builds for Ryoko.

Anneth Arcane /
Lots of time spent as various kinds of secondary mesmer naturally made me want to create a mesmer primary, of course. Anneth fills that role quite excellently. Still working on getting her through Factions and getting her some nice armor, one Wastrel's Worry/Power Spike combo at a time.

* (Builds here later)



Tears of Autumn
Having played a monk a bit in PVP, I found I rather liked it. Tears of Autumn was my PVE monk character. I soon found that I didn't actually like being a healer for more than three minutes at a time, however, and that Smiting Prayers were a bit of a disappointment and too similar to the powers my other characters were throwing around. So I discontinued her.

Things in my namespace:
 * builds
 * sandbox (feel free to play in it)