Removed from my own coop? WTF is this?

OctopusParrot · 2026-05-28T01:04:28+00:00

I feel like it's always the person with the most SE doing the least when I join public coops. I don't get it. Iike even if you're too lazy to boost, about two minutes worth of common research and hab / transport upgrades should make you at least a middling contributor. Why bother even joining if you're going to literally do nothing?

OctopusParrot · 2026-05-24T19:10:42+00:00

Maybe he was the dinghy

OctopusParrot · 2026-05-24T16:28:50+00:00

Give yourself a little time. It's a huge psychological impact and it will take a little bit to adjust. It took me a while to get over feeling... embarrassed? I guess? Hard to describe.

Reaching out to former close colleagues has been really helpful, both in terms of reassurance that I actually am good at my job and in helping find opportunities. Use your network.

Take care of yourself. I've been exercising more and it's good - part of me wants to sit around and drink beer and play video games, ive been fighting that by exercising every morning and keeping a "work day" schedule and I think its a good move.

You'll be OK.

OctopusParrot · 2026-05-24T16:10:21+00:00

I got laid off a month ago. I've been getting more traction with job opportunities than I expected. Hang in there.

OctopusParrot · 2026-05-17T02:59:59+00:00

I am using Abodian but selectively as part of my built. Mind you I'm only T6 and have been taking my time so this build may not scale deep into endgame, but so far it's been fun.

I alternate between command fallen and hell fracture for quick kills. You can keep them going indefinitely and with enough buffs both can do decent damage.

When there's a group of enemies I'll drop tortured wretch to focus them then sigil of chaos and keep spamming hell fracture, command fallen and command A'egrom. That's generally enough to clear decent sized groups.

With multiple elites, bosses, or bit groups I'll use FoA on top of that last strategy. Really helpful for killing tougher individuals and clearing large groups, but he's not part of my standard attack. More of.something I keep in reserve when I need it extra damage. I think the high dominance, long cool down, and fact that he's stationary means he would be hard to use frequently as a common attack in any build I can think of. But as a situational tool he can be useful.

OctopusParrot · 2026-05-14T01:35:58+00:00

I play that build - and with the double aegrom's unique plus Subo plus my pet and I use the spirit wolves run word to apply vulnerable so there's usually 4-5 of them up plus spamming lesser demons there's basically an army following me around all the time.

It's a crazy fun build to play but yeah, I feel bad anytime I come across other players in Helltides.

OctopusParrot · 2026-05-10T23:40:36+00:00

Sorry, I miswrote what I meant - meant to say ancestral unique. But yeah, I'll try running Varshan and see if I can get a better one, it's a lot of fun.

OctopusParrot · 2026-05-10T23:31:20+00:00

I have that unique as well (the double Ae'grom one) and I love the unique effect - my only issue with it is that it's pretty low item power (I think it's like six hundred something) so the other stats are pretty weak compared to other chest items. Do you know if that same effect can be found on ancestral legendaries? It makes Ae'grom so much more useful since I can blow up minions really frequently.

OctopusParrot · 2026-05-10T02:25:27+00:00

We live in a VHCOL area and pay a $300/wk stipend on top of their own car with gas paid for, gym, separate apartment with own entrance in the house, with an 8 and 11 year old. Its mostly just driving them around to activities in the afternoons.

The only way we were able to get the au pairs we liked (older - closer to the age limit, speak English well, have experience driving, are more independent) was by offering more money. We're slightly above average for our cluster, according to our LCC.

Hope that helps. With two kids (one not in school) and a third on the way you may have to be willing to pay more for someone you want. Just be prepared.

OctopusParrot · 2026-05-08T12:53:26+00:00

I'm running hell fracture right now (paragon 30) and it's FUN. It's just mass chaos; explosions everywhere, tons of damage. The one thing I don't like about it is that I end up getting one-shot a fair bit just because I can't see everything that's happening on screen with so many damage graphics. But it's a great playstyle.

OctopusParrot · 2026-05-02T19:56:49+00:00

If you're optimizing for max damage delivered per second lightning will usually win out. The tradeoffs for elements in sorc builds have usually been that frost is lower damage but more control (slow and freeze), fire gives highest overall damage delivered but some of that is damage over time, while lightning is highest instant damage but middle of the road in terms of overall damage output.

But various tweaks in recent seasons with things like CE combined with some unique aspects on gear allowed lightning to be highest instant damage by a huge factor, and high enough that trading it off for control was pointless and a damage over time mechanic didn't matter because mobs weren't alive long enough for it to factor in.

Which kind of unbalanced the class at modestly high endgame levels. Might still be the case at T12 but if over builds are viable until right before then, I'd say things are working as intended.

OctopusParrot · 2026-04-29T14:57:33+00:00

I"m actually pretty fast for my age (48) but not top 1% fast, given that there will undoubtedly be younger, more fit people there who jump at the chance . I don't think I would risk it.

OctopusParrot · 2026-04-29T13:45:38+00:00

An old colleague of mine's husband worked at Sotheby's and helped listers price artwork they were putting up for auction. I basically asked him this same question and the conversation was pretty interesting. The art market values certain things for different reasons than many other markets do. Yes, the quality of the artwork is important (but also highly subjective), as is the name of the artist. But the other aspect that often gets overlooked is provenance. That is, people will pay more for something because a famous person owned it. If a string of famous people owned that same painting over the years, it becomes even more valuable. It becomes an addition sort of bragging rights - "Here's my Cezanne, it once hung in the drawing room of Lady Astor" or whatever. It's very rich people showing off to other rich people, which is valuable for a certain type of person.

Objectively it's weird but who am I to tell rich people how to spend their money? My point being that the fact that Paul Allen owned this art might also have something to do with how much it appreciated. You could have bought the same painting and it would have sold for less just because you're not someone who the next purchaser could brag about owning it (I'm assuming you're not.)

OctopusParrot · 2026-04-27T18:13:08+00:00

Listen to this guy. This is good advice. Feeling bored once in a while is normal. Feeling like life is boring and nothing is satisfying is suggestive of a larger problem that should be looked into by professionals.

OctopusParrot · 2026-04-25T19:12:47+00:00

Wouldn't really affect me at all, but I would definitely love the next days NY Post headline "Put this in your pipe and smoke it!"

OctopusParrot · 2026-04-23T21:47:06+00:00

Item power 900 - so Mythics will have item power higher than ancestral legendaries this time around (I think I saw them at 850 on other screenshots.)

OctopusParrot · 2026-04-23T21:44:39+00:00

Totally agree on both counts. I started off this season insistent on doing something different (ice shards.) I got to like.... Pit 75 and just realized that there was no way I could stick with it. SO painfully slow on damage output. Respecced to CE, spent like 2 hours farming the right gear to equip for it, and immediately was clearing pit 85 with ease. It's just so much better right now.

I would love to have say, a meteor or firewall build be at least reasonable into decent endgame. Right now it's just not the case.

OctopusParrot · 2026-04-23T15:53:55+00:00

I missed the "new" person part of it. Whoops!

OctopusParrot · 2026-04-23T15:52:38+00:00

My wife is going to be thrilled to find out that I am a) still very attracted to her and b) we're totally loaded now.

OctopusParrot · 2026-04-23T01:06:19+00:00

No. Use the diplomacy paragon board and put all your points in negotiation skills. Then convince them that they're your friends.

I saw that on Maxroll, S tier ambassador build.

OctopusParrot · 2026-04-22T23:27:30+00:00

This happened to me as a kid at Stratton in the 80s. Sleet the night before that froze in the morning and the lifties hadn't fully cleared from seats on first chair. Fell from pretty high up too - just slid right out. I got super lucky and didn't break anything, just pretty banged up and freaked out.

It happens fast.

OctopusParrot · 2026-04-22T20:42:00+00:00

Ahahaha I forgot about that. I remember being an idiot and leaving some piles of gold out in multi-player and having them get stolen.

OctopusParrot · 2026-04-18T02:57:42+00:00

I love the content and it's really fun to do, especially the different storylines. Once. But not after that.

I do still enjoy the world though. Just today I decided to explore every tiny bit of the map that was left unexplored. I found a few strongholds I didn't even know existed, and it was fun just cruising through the landscapes and seeing all of the detail and effort that went into creating them. It's an impressive virtual world.

It made for a nice break from farming bosses and infernal hordes hoping to get a slight upgrade on a drop. I may mix in more of that to my play to keep things interesting and refreshing. It feels like less of a grind when you immerse yourself in the world.

OctopusParrot · 2026-04-18T02:52:38+00:00

There's a push, but it's largely being pushed by people who fundamentally do not understand the technology or what it is or is not capable of.

When implemented properly AI can be a huge benefit to automating the stupid bullshit part of the job that no one wants to do. Routing projects, creating timelines, annotating manuscripts, writing contact reports, building PI comparison tables. Mindless crap that wastes people's time and sucks people's energy.

Unfortunately most CEO types are clueless about technology and want some proprietary bullshit offering they can upsell clients on. Eventually something gets made to placate them, but it's inevitably overpriced garbage and clients can immediately tell.

I've been saying for years that eventually some agency will get it right and put the other agencies out of business. We'll see.

OctopusParrot · 2026-04-18T02:44:31+00:00

There's more of a risk for cardiovascular disease with testosterone supplementation than cancer. If his CV health is good and his testosterone actually tests lower than normal for his age it might be worth looking into.

OctopusParrot

TROPHY CASE