Birdy isn't a favourite of mine but the song title fits so well with this blog entry I couldn't resist. So recently I ran tower of frost and was fortunate enough to pick up a whirling words rune arm. With at least 3 characters expecting to run through 1 or more artificer's lives I found a character who could use it and took it out to play. And I have to be honest it has totally blown me away in comparison to the other rune arms in game. Normally I would not be impressed by a named weapon and in fact I would not be writing this if it performed like so many other rune arms. So what makes this weapon a little bit special?
He was only a 2 book giant
Firstly it's accuracy, so many other rune arms seem to miss or only 1 item hits out of a tier 5. Whirling words will hit with up to all 5 "books" giving a consistent level of damage that has taken down all the rares in Gianthold. At base damage each book does between 23 and 184, however depending on the build you will get much higher scores. Now I didn't screen shot one kill in Gianthold of Chief Ugh but it read book 1 175, book 2 137 book 3 critical 425 and th Chief was down. Now considering the fact I have a reasonable heavy repeater and use a hireling cleric along with my Iron Defender Gianthold has become rather tame.
Shame I can't knock out people with a book or two
I have also tested Whirling in the Desert specifically to use it against the undead. As we know skeletons are a nightmare to ranged weapons and I hate repeater versus bone combat. But with Rune Arm Imbue Bludgeon IV doing 2 to 12 damage per bolt it sort of makes up for the issue. The issue then becomes one of selecting the right repeater but as I tend to carry 5 or 6 around at any one time I can usually find the right one for the job. And recently my guildie got hers which we took into epic devils assault (on casual so she could get use to the charge and fire), she has not really been able to get into rune arms but seeing a stream of books hitting monsters seems to have helped her.
Give me renown now please
The question is now what is the right augment to put in the Green Slot? I have a list to go through but if people have suggestions then please put them in the comments as I tend to go with my gut and not the maths. And speaking of maths yesterday Sunday 5th March finally got to guild level 65, which when the guild is just 2 accounts and one of us having a real life to deal with isn't too shabby in my mind. What was funny though is that on a guild renown bonus weekend, whilst doing epic casaul, my guildie picked up 2 legendary victories in the end chest. She had a major elixir going so that covered 20k of renown in one go. Made the last bit a lot easier so my thanks to Arlacay and all the other toons in the guildie that are on her account.
Enjoying a night sky
Finally nothing to do with the rune arm but just to agree with Gamer Geoff about something DDO excels at and that is skies and other background items. I have played a lot of games since Space Invaders came out and my early favourite was Defender but over the years and the hundreds of different games I have played the imagery in DDO has always been most excellent. Been playing last 9ish years and gone through 30 or so other games but this one has lasted longest.
