Sunday, June 13, 2010

Antec Skeleton Open Air Case

I was at a computer shop today and saw a most awesome computer case. You install the motherboard flat, in the open top half of the case, and the drives and such go into the cage in the lower half. The whole motherboard is cooled by a single 230mm overhead fan that blows air down from the top.

If I didnt' have my new system and case already, I would have seriously considered this case, cause basically this is how I've been running my last computer for the past year or so - open-air and caseless.

This one's called an Antec Skeleton Open Air Case, and you can google for reviews and images here.

$169.99 Canadian though (as pictured below), ouch.

Upsen.

Sunday, June 6, 2010

CIty of Heroes - City of Villains

I've been spending some time playing CoH lately, or rather, CoV - I started two Masterminds using the new demon-summoning primary. The little creatures you summon are surprisingly durable with a good resistance, and the 2nd tier critter has a property of improving the already good resistance. It makes for a pretty easy time keeping them all alive using some secondary powers. In my case I used Pain Domination and Dark Miasma. They have been a ton of fun to play. Previously the characters were either too management intensive. (Necro/Dark for example) or too automatic (Bots/FF for example) There were probably some better combos of powers than the ones I chose, but I like certain combinations of powersets and I feel that certain other ones are so unrelated that they are a little weird for me to play. (Ninjas/Forcefields? Thugs/Dark netherworld powers in the same character?) By about L8-10 I would be falling asleep on my keyboard, unfortunately.

Both MMs are around L20-25, and that also allows me to unlock one of the villain epic archetypes (VEATs) as well, since they lowered the requirement from 50 down to 20. So I have a "Widow Upsen" running around at L12 right now as well, mostly specced for melee. I hear its supposed to play a little like a Claws/Super Reflexes sort, but there is sadly, pretty low defenses at this stage. I don't see where the additional defense even comes from down the tree, that would make it come anywhere close to a /SR. There is a scaling resistance that is straight out of the SR playbook, and I seem to spend a lot of time using that resistance. (I.e., I am hit a lot and the defenses suck) I wonder what the deal is. I guess I could play her on the ranged spec instead and be an extra tough blaster type?

Anyways, since I still don't really like the Villains maps too much, I ended up creating a new defender as well - an Empathy/Sonic. Simple and fun, I ran around a bit and even bumped into Kin Arad online, who I have not seen for ages, and got a little bit of team play in with one of their alts. (so unfamiliar after so much soloing. 8)

So that's basically the last month or so now. One funny thing is now I'm one of the players that is occasionally disappearing to feed the baby and change their diaper, hence the majority of my time spent soloing.

Upsen.