User:XT-8147

A bit about me
I'm not on nearly as much as I was before my 10 month absence from the game, but I'm usually on in the evenings/early mornings Eastern time.

With my Dervish getting r1 Survivor, I now have seven level 20 characters. I swore I was tired of levelling up characters, but... the Nightfall classes are so fun!

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.

Fissure armor checklist:
 * Required:
 * 60 platinum - check
 * 350 Tanned Hide Squares - check
 * 35 Elonian Leather Squares - check
 * 105 Globs of Ectoplasm - have 25
 * 105 Obsidian Shards - have 94
 * Extra:
 * Tinted Spectacles (to look cool) - Need to farm Asura points, will buy once I have ectos/shards
 * 2 Perfect Salvage Kits (for transferring old runes/insignias) - will buy once I have ectos/shards
 * 4 red dyes (duh) - will buy once I have ectos/shards, if I haven't gotten four from drops by then

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/Ritualist, Ranger/Monk, Ranger/Assassin

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)

Pet: Level 15 Aggressive White Moa.

Max titles obtained:
 * Legendary Cartographer
 * Protector of Cantha
 * Protector of Tyria
 * Elonian Grandmaster Cartographer
 * Canthan Grandmaster Cartographer
 * Tyrian Grandmaster Cartographer

Titles he has displayable: (current progress)
 * Sunspear Castellan (rank 8)
 * Slayer of Wurms (rank 5)
 * Mighty Lightbringer (rank 4)
 * Companion of the Kurzicks (rank 3)
 * Not Too Clumsy (rank 3)
 * Stealth Agent (rank 3)
 * Gutsy Delver (rank 3)
 * Seeker of Wisdom (rank 1)
 * Treasure Hunter (rank 1)
 * Adventurer of the North (rank 1)
 * Kind Of A Big Deal (rank 1)

Titles he's going for: (current progress)
 * Protector of Elona (13/20)
 * Drunkard (653 minutes)
 * The elite skill tracks (not a lot)
 * The Guardian tracks (a few Tyrian, none elsewhere)
 * The Vanquisher tracks (a few Tyrian, none elsewhere)

Holy fuck thank you Arenanet - Wisdom and Treasure Hunter tracks now account-wide, yay! Now we just need Sunspear and Lightbringer to be account-wide. Best birthday present ever and almost makes up for nerfing pet corpses on my birthday a few years back. Did you have to nerf HFFF though? I just got good at it :(

Builds I usually play:
 * Arrows of Doom - I've found it works really well alongside an orders necro, Distracting Shot was dealing 65 damage easily. Marauder's was over 100.  Crushed Jennur's Horde with a party set up around orders, basically myself, Aidan, Koss, Jora, and Devona, then Livia running orders and two monk henches.
 * Beast Master

Past (retired) builds:
 * Resilient Barrager
 * Mobile Disruption Sniper
 * JI Sniper
 * Quick Shot Gunner
 * Bunny Thumper
 * Runner
 * Totem Axe Farmer (I got my totem axe, lulz)

Pet levelling build:
 * Team - Evolve a Dire Pet

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 (doesn't typically use her secondary)

Armor: 1.5k Kurzick armor, dyed red, with a set of Spectacles that I ground the hell out of the Asura title track one night to get. Also has a set of cheapie Ascetic's Armor (Star) for 55 monking

Builds I usually play:
 * healing. duh.
 * 55 monk

All the crap that was here about my old monk build and whatnot... I tried to play that build again recently, out of curiosity, and could not figure out how on earth I made it work before.

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. One Stonefist insignia, the rest Survivor.

Current build:

Retired Builds:
 * Friendly Neighborhood Hammer Tank
 * Farming build

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, but thanks to the wonders of random number generators, I can never get a decent one to drop.

He also carries a crappy fire staff with an innate Energy +10 on it so he can weapon switch for two quick Rebirths.

I did tests at the Master of Damage for the three variations of this KD chain build I've run so far (FGJ!, Berserker Stance, and Backbreaker/Staggering Blow), and this version edges out Devastating->Fierce->Heavy->Crushing ever so slightly in terms of overall damage and DPS. It was sad to see "None Shall Pass!" go, but I barely used it as it was. The change to Berserker Stance simply put FGJ! to shame. Even with Backbreaker needing as much adrenaline as it does, Berserker Stance still charges it before it ends.

Arcanist Michelle
My elementalist! Named after a character in a story I wrote about some mages (to put it simply).

Armor is 15k Sunspear armor, Survivor insignia, dyed blue. I celebrated getting her to Kodash Bazaar by buying her a Vabbian Glacial Eye. Now she has one of each of the eyes from all three continents, all with the same rune/insignia (Superior Water/Survivor), so I can swap around between them on a whim and the only thing that changes is the looks. Whee.

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. Since I picked up the game again, I'm taking her through Nightfall, despite my ranger being my cartographer/skill hunter.

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

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 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 also farm with her every now and then using a Mist Form build.

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.

Arcanist Chris
Originating from the same story that Arcanist Michelle comes from. She used ice (hence being a dedicated water mage), and he used fire.

I'm also going for LDoA on this character, just because I can.

His skill bar currently looks like this (although I haven't set his secondary yet):

I'll be taking him to post-searing (because perma-pre is boring), so I'll be choosing a secondary with post-searing in mind. But while I'm in pre, I want to go charm a bear.

Factions Characters
I don't really care for either of the Factions classes, or Factions PvE for that matter. Cantha is too hard to navigate and you can't go 5 feet without getting attacked by 20 level 24+ enemies that all explode upon death.

That said, I'm giving a concerted effort to try out the assassin primary right now.

B K Ni Maru Ichi
Named after the messier code of the main character from Darker than Black. He was kind of an assassin, he had daggers, so... yeah. They were on cords and he channeled electricity through them, but whatever. Currently level 11 with a monk secondary for repeatable rez.

Cpt Stabs A Lot
A mule.

Erikkson The Cursed
Named after a character I played in a message board rpg. He was a wheat farmer with a scythe. Lots of back story. He is now a Survivor, thanks to insight scrolls, the igneous summoning stone, and those 13 pushover level 20 snow wurms outside of Boreal Station.


 * Faithful Intervention + Illusion of Weakness for tiered emergency self heals
 * Heart of Fury for an attack speed increase, can time Eternal Aura to keep it up longer
 * Avatar of Balthazar + Eternal Aura for full-time armor boost/movement speed boost
 * Undead haet Avatar of Balthazar's holy damage

Aytwon Forsevin
Paragons are pretty fun.

Recreated with a better name. If you don't get it, say it out loud and look at my username.

Hi There Whats Up
Currently a PvP Warrior running Hamshower.


 * Replaces res sig for glyph of sacrifice for AB
 * Full radiant insiginas and a +5 energy inscription are necessary to get the energy needed to chain Hamstring and Meteor Shower.
 * The glyph must be precast.

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.
 * Skill Wish List - It started as a way to bring more Monty Python and the Holy Grail references into Guild Wars, and then evolved into fixing every frustration anyone ever experienced.
 * Sandbox - Random build inspirations or what have you.
 * Userboxes - various ones I've made, free for the taking.