(no subject)

[geebs]

TV commentary:

Parks and Recreation- Wait, are they possibly getting Anne and Andy back together? I mean, the whole Anne taking bad pictures was a recurring joke this ep, but it seems Mark is reading it as something more. And then Andy finally takes April out to hang at a bar, but then she can't get in, and this somehow freaks him out and he bows out of hanging out. That's kinda weird, because it wasn't in a, "Dang, I can't go to the bars if I'm with April", because April knew of a bar they could go to, and he just basically bowed out of the whole night, as if he thought maybe he shouldn't be hanging out with her, period, because of the age diff. is he that much older than her? Plus, they're about the same maturity level.

So April's sad, and cruel fates, the pic they end up using on the catalog was just a candid one of her and Andy at the picnic just fooling around. Anne sees the pics and is possibly jealous?

The Office- What in the world? So the majority of this ep takes place during happy hour. Well, there was a thing with Michael doing pushups and being all, if anyone can beat him, they can go home early. And Stanley for some reason struggles to do this and manages to do so. Which would make sense in the old days, when he was basically just counting the time. But last week showed that the sales staff are actually into their jobs now due to Sabre's commission policies. So why would he want to go home early now?

Anyways, Happy Hour gets started because Oscar wants Darryl to help him out with the gay guy in the warehouse, and eventually everyone gets invited including Michael. Jim thinks he can use the baby to get out of it, but Pam actually misses the staff, so she jumps at the chance to hang out with everybody. She even invites tall friend whom Dwight likes, and another previously unseen friend who she thinks would be perfect for Michael, since she laughs at everything.

Michael's actually doing pretty well, until Jim for some reason tells Michael about the fix up. So of course Michael stops playing it cool and acting like he thinks he needs to impress Pam's friend and generally making an ass of himself. So much so that he almost gets kicked out by the manager (played by Amy Pietz). So, he's mad about being embarrassed, and acts like a baby, and he's obviously screwed things up with Pam's friend. But somehow, manager chick is actually charmed by him, and he manages to parlay his screw-up into something with the manager chick. Which kinda makes him look like a dick, because he's out with this one chick, and even though it went from good to bad, he ends up picking out some other chick?! Anyways, surprisingly, when he does realize he's hitting it off with manager lady, he doesn't frak it up again and just plays it cool.

As for Pam's other friend from the wedding, despite Dwight sleeping with her and ignoring her afterward and kicking her in the face, she's still interested. Which puts him in quite the sitch since he just made that contract with Angela to have that baby. Angela's interest (or is it just she just wants the baby?) is renewed now that this other girl is interested in Dwight. Dwight is all, the contract is meaningless and tells Angela to hit the road since he finds Pam's friend more suitable. Angela threatens to sue, outing the contract in front of Pam's friend, but somehow that actually doesn't dissuade her from liking Dwight, even going so far as to rap Angela in the head. So, Angela's taking Dwight to small claims court to make him fulfill the contract.

Andy and Erin try to keep their relationship a secret, which of course totally screws everything up, but luckily Andy realizes his frak up in time, and tells the whole crowd at the Dave and Buster's facsimile they were at that he and Erin are dating. Problem solved!

And back to what started it all, Oscar is all sad because warehouse guy hadn't shown up, so Daryl cheers him up, telling him he's too good for warehouse guy anyways. But then warehouse guy does finally show up and Oscar is as giddy as a schoolgirl.

Anyways, thanks to hippieatheart, I was able to learn the intricacies of the assassin class. Its not too shabby, though the shroud mechanic may be a little too complex and too big a hassle for the payoff you get. You prolly don't want them as the only/primary striker in your group. But, since to me ideal group size is around 6, they totally work as "other striker".

I don't know if its just how I was "raised" in the game, but the layout of my first gaming group is to me how a group should be constructed. 5 to 6 is better than 3 to 4. You can get things done with 3 to 4, but you have to work harder at it. Anyways, we had two defenders, two controllers (of different flavors, so they blended well together), and two strikers. One a ranger, and of course, the other being me as a rogue. Now although "roles" didn't exist back then, the characters basically did fulfill those roles to a tee- the defenders (a solamnic knight and a minotaur paladin) basically went in there and got the enemies attention, dishing it out and taking the brunt of the attacks. The controllers (a white robe and a red-robed fighter/mage) basically thinned the ranks and ran interference. Striker one, the ranger, just went in there and carved things up, leaving me to just sneak in there where I was needed and help finish things off. Heh, we got away without having a leader-role since the GM ran a NPC cleric which basically filled that slot.

Anyways, my point is, I couldn't play the way I did without those defenders and the other striker. We eventually lost the other striker, but with two defenders, one of them could pick up that slack. But yeah, I think the assassin plays best in that sitch. The defenders and controllers doing their part, and a striker kicking ass, with the assassin waiting on the sidelines ready to jump in and use his powers to help take particularly troublesome opponents down.

Now, on to the specifics. The assassin is one of the "softer" strikers, what with only getting 10+con modifier hp to start and only 4 hp per level. But unlike the rogue, he can use military melee (though only those in the light and heavy blade category). Of course, the avenger can use any military melee. I bring those two up because those are the two striker types that play like it. (Rangers/Barbarians and Sorcerers/Warlocks play with their own flavor).

Anyways, while the avenger is akin to a "Holy assassin", he has a totally different feel to the assassin. An avenger is the living embodiment of a deity's desire to smite something. To me he's less about "stealth" and goes more the "Terminator" route, a vicious hound, relentless in its pursuit. Even if the prey knows the avenger is coming, there's a fear there, a feeling of inevitability that the avenger will get it. This is the opposite of the assassin. Even if you know an assassin is after you, you won't know where they are until the blade is entering your chest- all staying stealthy until the last second before teleporting in out of nowhere and killing their target.

Now, the shroud mechanic seems overly complex compared to the rogue's sneak attack, but there's a couple things to remember. One, the rogue can only do melee sneak attacks with light blades (or if they have ruthless ruffian as their rogue tactics choice a club or mace). So he's basically limited to short swords and daggers if he wants to do his damage. Plus, with the shroud system, with the max shrouds you do more extra damage at lower levels than the rogue can do with his sneak attack. Of course, the rogue will be able to hit with his sneak attack more, since he just needs to get combat advantage, and there's plenty of tricks for that. The assassin on the other hand, has to wait around, applying shrouds. I mean, that's no big, since they can do that to anyone within close burst 10, so they can just stay out of the way and hide until they're ready to hit. Of course, while they're farting around doing that, a rogue or avenger could've just gone in and used their tricks and cause prolly more damage in that time than you get for waiting.

So, you prolly don't want to play an assassin unless you want to basically play an assassin. Some people, like me, like that play style. Plus, I've been discussing things in terms of normal combats. An assassin would excel over the rogue in situations where you need to sneak in, kill your target utterly, and get out. Since they're so sneaky and can just hang around all insubstantial with shade form marking their target before going in for the kill. Of course, they would combine the shroud with one of their deadlier encounter/daily powers rather than a basic attack to make sure they take it out in one shot. This is not to say they're helpless if they can't just take the guy out in one shot, since they have more than a few encounter powers to take out groups of minions, and they're not too shabby in a fight either. I mean, as I said before, they can still use the heavier blades, they just don't look as impressive as the other strikers in a straight out fight.

But like I said, its definitely "feel" you're going for if you pick an assassin. Bringing up the above situation again, but with an avenger. The avenger can prolly sneak his way in to, but the end game would look much different. Imagine if you will a god's hand, suddenly appearing, out to end you for your blasphemy. You scream for your guards and run like hell, but his powers prevent you from getting away from him, and certainly before your guards can protect you from him. He's prolly not gonna kill you with the quick finality of the assassin, or even the cheap tricks of the rogue, but he will get you. Its not subtle, but he's not trying to be, he's making an example of you for his god.

The assassin is like shadowy death, and you can definitely see those motifs in the assassins' powers. An assassin doesn't mean you're someone good at stealthily killing someone, you're not some common rogue, you're the thing in the shadows that children are afraid of, the reaper come to claim their soul.

I like the paragon paths- like the warlock life-stealer one, there are a couple of paths where you get soul shards that you can spend to get cool stuffs. I also like the epic powers. The assassin's scalpel exemplifies the "perfect one hit kill"- 6w+dex damage, obviously you'd use it with shrouds and get that too, but the key is it increases your crit range to 18-20, is reliable, and you can choose to miss. Why would you choose to miss? Since its reliable, if you "miss", you don't expend it, so you can just wait until you get a crit to use it. Of course, you lose shrouds for missing, but at that level you prolly have something that lets you auto-max shroud them or cause you not to lose a shroud. Waiting for that 18 to 20 would suck, and you'd prolly kill them quicker doing something else, but this way, you don't have to wait until another battle to try out your super massive attack again.

Now, I've been talking about assassins enough, lemme just quickly talk about barbarians. As I said, I didn't think 3/3.5E barbarians were so great. But in 4e they really capture that wild ass-kicker feel. Like I actually think I'd like these more than rangers, particularly in terms of feel.

Both charge in there and carve things up, but the barbarian is wilder about it. Rangers have hunter's quarry, which is reliable and always there. But the whole getting a free attack in addition to the normal stuff you get from criticals seems way more fun. And there's the rages. As I said, rages are way better this time around- before, you got increases to str and con (and the extra hp from that) and a plus to will saves. But you also had a decrease to AC and were basically forced to do nothing but attack, and at the end of the rage you were fatigued.

Rage works differently now. You'll go into a rage by doing some daily power, which usually causes massive damage and other unfortunate effects to your target. But this time, rages just give you extremely useful things like enemies are always granting you combat advantage or take automatic damage just by being next to you, and that lasts until you end it. And there's no "crash" afterward.

Now, rages end if you go into another rage, which does present problems if you want to keep using the previous rage for its particular benefit. But then that means you basically have a daily power sitting there just doing nothing for you since you can't use it lest you lost the benefits you want. Now, the game takes this into account by giving barbarians "rage strike", a 2/day power that lets them channel those unused daily powers into a massive attack. Which is all well and good, but it gets better with the addition of certain feats from primal power that let you forgo some of those Ws to cause ongoing damage, or have the entire attack be close burst 1 (so instead you're doing massive damage to a bunch of enemies, instead of just the one)

Actually, primal power does make barbarians quite the combat monster- as I mentioned before, there's the hide armor expertise feat. Since the barbarians tricks are based on str, con, and cha, you're kinda ignoring the stats that increase AC (dex or int) if you focus on those. Of course, the barbarians are quite hearty and have plenty of things to give them temp hit points (like seriously, it seems like 3/4 of their powers they're getting temp hp when they use them), so that's less of an issue. But barbarians already get an ac bonus for not wearing heavy armor, but add to that hide armor expertise? With hide armor expertise, they can use con instead of dex or int to determine AC, and since they're con is gonna be high, not only are they quite resilient to begin with, you're gonna have a harder time actually hitting them on top of that.

But yeah, two of the new at-will powers they introduce to replace those in phb2? Ridiculous! There's howling fury, where you go in and hit for 1w+str damage, but then howl in a close burst 3 that does your con modifier in thunder damage (3+con if you're raging) to every enemy within the burst. So, since there's no way you should have a con less than 18, you're basically attacking your target as is your wont, but oh btw, every enemy within 3 squares of you is just automagically taking 4-7 damage each time you hit. The other, whirling rend, is equally nice. 1W+str (+dex if raging on a hit) and some other enemy adjacent to you automatically takes your offhand damage, no roll. So both of these, you basically get free damage on people just for attacking some other guy with an at-will power. As I said, basically just charge into the nearest group of enemies and just start wreaking havoc! Its like combining the best parts of the ranger and fighter!