User:Queen of Spades/Bor Dammerung

Bor Dammerung, Dark Knight /
Bor D was my first character. My kids said, "Dad, you won't understand how to play complicated RPG characters like casters. Be a Warrior, all you have to do is just run up and whack dudes with a sword." That made sense to an FPSer like me.

The name sounds exotic, but I couldn't think of a good name when I decided to to try this game for the first time. I was just bored, Damn Bor-D.

I picked War/Nec because my oldest son said, "If you are going to be a warrior, you are supposed to be a monk secondary, cause that's what everyone else does." ---> Yeah, right! We'll see about that. >:(

I found my best damage combo with Mark of Pain and Flurry. I use Insidious Parasite for healing, Bonetti's Defense for...well, defense and energy regen, and Plague Touch to pass the blindness off to the baddies. I always load either Watch Yourself or Shields Up for team defense, because Bor Dammerung is always looking out for his soft target teammates, not being that Leeerrooooy warrior/monk that we have all learned to hate. And I always throw in Rez Sig for good measure. "Plays well with others." And with this build, I rarely even have a sword skill (sometimes, you just gotta have Final Thrust), so all my attrib points are in Tactics and Curses, so I do some pretty heavy damage in the right situations, while having decent defense and heal.

Things to do with my Dark Knight:
 * Experiment with Death attributes instead of Curses. I am interested in trying out Soul Feast for huge heals, and maybe that will allow me to use more warrior skills for damaging the bad guys. It's a thought, anyway...

Industry Leader
As far as I know, I started an industry from scratch--well, a niche industry. Specifically, leading PUGs through ascension missions for pay. From first hand experience, I knew how many times I had failed the same mission. Even when I learned how I was supposed to do it, I still couldn't seem to pull it off. Once my guild leader and I passed those missions with our first characters around the same time, we were called on to help other guild members and friends thru the same missions, meanwhile getting pretty decent at the missions.

Eventually I noticed how many people stand around in, say, the Thirsty River mission outpost saying, "LFG that doesn't suck like my last 10 groups." (I figured there was a good chance that they were the proverbial "pot calling the kettle black".) Or, "Please, somebody help me, I have failed this mission 15 times in a row, I am about to delete this crappy game!"

I had previously noticed that certain players would hawk their services "running" people through certain missions for pay. I figured there would be people willing to pay me to (a) LEAD, not run, them through the mission, and (b) TEACH them a strategy to beat the mission to help them play it better in the future. And I have made some pretty decent plats doing just that, and more often than not, get some great compliments after leading a PUG to victory that they had nearly given up hope of achieving. Many will say afterward, "Well, I would not have paid to be run through a mission, but the way you do it, you taught me a lot, and it was worth it!"
 * Whisper me ingame if you think this might be of some service to you.

and Finally, a Paladin /
There is a great guy in our guild that was the first runner I knew, Tau Deathbringer. He started spending money like crazy, and I wondered how he got it. I went "farming" with my guild leader in the desert, and on my best day, I got like 3K in 2 hours, because of having a partner and at least a hench healer, if not another hench. I felt rich. Then this runner, Tau, says, "I don't farm anymore, I just run." I asked if he could teach me. Yeah sure. So we spent about 1/2 a Saturday, and he taught me everything he knew: it didn't take. I guess it was the War/Nec business. Or just that I was a newb. So I switched 2ry prof to monk, and got the skills he used. Still an utter failure. So I just resigned myself to scrounging for the odd mission-leading score, and developed other characters (which see).

Then a few months later my guild leader, now named Marie Amaranthine, said I needed to learn to run. I said, "You too? Get off my case, I can't run and I can't farm! But I can fight and lead and teach. Leave me alone." But I guess that by that time the experience on this character and my three other characters all came together to gel into a great learning experience. Marie spent about 2-3 hours with me at most, and I was a running fool!

I now had a source for some relatively quick and easy money, so I got excited about playing warrior again and trying new things.
 * Next on my list is actually fighting with Bor D as War/Mo and learning to solo farm with War/Mo. What is this world coming to? War/Mes, anyone?