Month: November 2014

…and I can haz it.  No, seriously.  I play DDO almost entirely with an Xbox 360 controller.

Sure, there are times I need to reach over and hit something with the mouse.  More often than not, though, that’s a “fire and forget” long-duration buff or a short swimming segment.  The best part is it doesn’t interfere with my keyboard mapping, so I can interchange with they keyboard as the need arises – although my keyboard usage has declined to almost exclusively being one-handed running in town while taking a drink or grabbing a bite to eat.

The advantage is unparalleled control of your toon on the battlefield and off.  All movement controls become graduated instead of either/or toggles.  That means if you’re tailing a monster, you can adjust your speed to match theirs rather than “hiccupping” the movement keys.  You’re also not limited to the fixed movement combinations inherent in…

To say that ranged toons don’t get a lot of love either ingame or on the forums would be like saying that Honey Boo Boo is an annoying no-talent brat – in other words, a gross understatement.

I didn’t know about the ranger hatred when I bought Vic her first repeating crossbow, or when I rolled up Char, my ranger AA. In Vic’s case, going ranged was a matter of, “Well, she’s squishy, but hey! I get repeater proficiency free so she doesn’t have to melee!”

(Side note: When I say “ranger,” I’m referring not just to the ranger class, but to any toon that relies heavily on ranged weapons.)

Char, on the other hand, exists solely because I know some AWESOME rangers, and after running with Slvr, Baz, Day, El (where the heck did you disappear to, anyway?) and a few others, I wanted to try some of that…

Bear with me for a few minutes while I digress from all things DDO to talk about an unrelated but relevant topic: wrestling.

No, not those pay-per-view guys who break chairs over their opponents’ heads. REAL wrestling. I spent quite a few years as a newspaper writer and editor working primarily in sports. For about five of those years, I covered the high school wrestling beat, and I knew my stuff – there’s a first-place Keystone Press Award hanging on my wall for my coverage of the 2006 Pennsylvania high school wrestling championships. Many people would probably consider wrestling to be much more of an individual sport rather than a team endeavor, but it’s really not. A wrestler who wins his match nets between 3 and 6 points for his TEAM as well as his personal victory. The team with the most points after all matches have been wrestled is…

I would love to say that I thoroughly enjoy the new hireling AI, but I don’t.

Now don’t get me wrong – the ability to customize your hires’ action slots is sheer brilliance.  That part, I dig very much.

No, it’s their new-found desire to desert their post at every opportunity, burn off all shrines prematurely, and run head-first into traps when you told them to stay put that sets me off.  But venting isn’t the purpose of this post, honest.

The purpose of this post is to share a little tidbit of information I found.  For those who are pulling their hair out at the roots while screaming at the monitor things like “______, you idiot!  I told you to stay put!” I offer the following nugget of advice:

When you summon a hire to your location by clicking the “feet,” there is a five second reset on…