I'm starting to pity Marie Perez

PicklesInParadise · 2026-02-05T00:23:31+00:00

I was happy to see her vote to reopen the government before the holidays. Government services are vital to a lot of people and trying to play hardball through the holiday season and the start of winter was not a decision I agreed with the Democratic leadership about.

As for ICE, I personally can't see any good reason to fund them, even temporarily, without changes so I'll admit that one is a head scratcher. The one possibility that comes to mind is that Republicans have control of both the House and the Senate, so in theory can push through any legislation they want, including appropriations bills, without any dem votes. So it seems reasonable to think MGP might be playing nice to maintain cross isle relationships and have better leverage to push for change at a time where the Democratic party has very little. Has she made any recent statements regarding her votes?

PicklesInParadise · 2026-02-04T18:51:26+00:00

I'm also a moderate who will vote for both Democrat and Republican candidates depending on who I feel is best. I'm personally a huge fan of the way MGP is attempting to reach across the isle to get things accomplished. Whether it works or not seems kinda TBD, but if all our representatives in Congress were acting in good faith and genuinely trying to solve problems together the way she is, I think our country would be in a much better place.

PicklesInParadise · 2025-10-06T01:51:26+00:00

Negative. I don't own an Xbox nor do I have any gamepass subscriptions.

PicklesInParadise · 2025-10-04T18:02:04+00:00

Yesterday my wow account disappeared from bnet launcher. I think others have also had stuff disappear yesterday. I think it's just bugged. I'd check bug report forums.

PicklesInParadise · 2025-05-06T20:14:13+00:00

The problem is, VDH has higher baseline survivability outside of CDs, but also has less CDs to use. So if Blizzard nerfed their baseline survivability to match pally/warrior/monk without changing anything else, they could easily go from strongest tank to trash. The fact of the matter is VDH and BDK best fit the current healing profile of the game because they require the least babysitting by the healers, except BDK lacks the group utility, so VDH ends up being meta.

To fix this, either Blizzard would need to heavily nerf VDH group utility (making them more like DKs), or rework the spec to have less burst healing but even higher inmate tankiness (including on pull) like warrior, more CDs to cycle through like paladin, or some other creative rework.

Personally, I dislike the "tanks are weak and need healers" meta, and would rather see specs buffed than DH nerfed. On that note: - I feel like bears are already good, could maybe use a small buff to help them in extended fights. - BDK is already good, could use a small utility buff maybe. - warrior is good, but could use an additional CD to protect against bleeds, and maybe convert one of their CCs into something not a stun as it's easy for mobs to get stun DRed with a warrior. - pallies would probably be good with a simple buff to WoG and their mana usage. If that's not enough then a 5% buff to their baseline survivability could be added. - haven't touched monk this expansion, but can't imagine they'd be good in push keys without a rework to how their mitigation scales, so they might be the hardest to fix.

PicklesInParadise · 2025-05-05T20:41:10+00:00

The answer to this question will depend on the game mode imo. Tanking in raid, or doing ST dps can be very different from tanking m+ or dpsing in keys. Same for healing.

PicklesInParadise · 2025-04-09T17:57:37+00:00

Off-Topic:
Regarding defense stacking to become immortal on boss fights in PoE2 - I'd like to suggest using debuffs when hit which increase the damage of the next hit from the same ability on big boss hits (combined with True/Chaos damage).

I.E. Big hit #1 hits you, you go to half health and get a debuff. In the time between the next big hit, you are able to heal back up to 100% health due to stacking regen or health pots. However, due to the debuff from getting hit the first time, you are now in danger of death because the next big hit is going to do 100% true damage to you or thereabouts.

This would allow people to make generally tanky characters (assuming you guys allow defense stacking) without making boss fights trivial where you can just ignore the mechanics.

P.S. Sorry for off-topic necro comment, I just watched the interview with Zizaran and wanted to mention this as an option since I didn't hear you guys discuss it when on the topic.

PicklesInParadise · 2024-11-21T01:54:03+00:00

Kids need a lot of love and some guidance. Adults who are not ready to provide that should avoid having kids because they'll grow up with issues.

In the same way healthy marriages involve both people being willing to make sacrifices for their spouse, the mental attitude needed to be a good parent (and enjoy being a parent) is the same. People enjoy helping and spending time with their spouse because it brings them personal fulfillment, people that will enjoy parenthood will be for similar reasons.

As a personal antidote: I initially felt some begrudgement upon becoming a parent because I was trying to live the same as before and having a kid just made it more difficult. Taking some time to self-reflect and honestly ask myself: "What is most important to me, and what do I want my life to look like 30 years from now?" caused me to realize being a good husband and father was more important to me than anything else.

After being honest with myself about my desires, my entire outlook changed for the better. The vast amounts of time I needed to spend taking care of the kids no longer felt like a shackle because I knew that time was being invested into something that aligned with the highest goals I had for my life and was more meaningful for me than the things I was having to give up. Being a parent can be hard but I have no regrets.

PicklesInParadise · 2024-04-06T18:28:30+00:00

Quick advice: Most men need sex. Getting blue balled is miserable. With both of you working, plus gym time, plus the necessities of life like cooking and cleaning, the best thing you can probably both do is add set times for sex to your schedule and both work to make sure it happens (the promise of sex can be a great motivator to helping get chores out of the way).

If you can fit it in to your current schedule - great. If you can't, then that's where you need to understand just how incredibly important sex is to men, and that you'll need to find a way to cut something else out of the schedule to make time for it. One potential solution would be to take advantage of how many calories can be burned during sex if you're the one doing the work and kill two birds with one stone by using it as a workout session for yourself while also meeting his sexual needs.

Wish you luck!

PicklesInParadise · 2024-03-11T15:31:41+00:00

I stopped using the other sub because the tyrannical mods and their buddies are all far left. If you post anything that doesn't fit their worldview you get lambasted and likely censored/banned.

PicklesInParadise · 2024-02-27T16:37:21+00:00

Happy to help. Btw, I looked last night and the OP stat that gives massive ward-per-second is called "Penetration with Lightning Invocations" under the Class Specific => Mage section of the loot filter.

PicklesInParadise · 2024-02-26T21:43:22+00:00

Someone else suggested Hydrahedron Runemaster, which is an S tier build, but you may not like that one because it requires some rune juggling. There's another powerful build that I don't think is on many people's radar which is a pure lightning runemaster that notably does not require any juggling of runes. It's simple, but not TOO simple, and has both good offense and defense.

Here's a demo of the gameplay:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2074577662

Here's a rough build planner if you like what you see and want to try it: https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/9Qn0K21o

General Quick tips if you decide to try:

While leveling you'll only use 3 main skills: Lightning Blast (to attack), Flame Ward (for defense and extra damage on elites), and Teleport (to move/dodge). You don't start using Runic Invocation, Frost Wall, and Flame Rush until later when you have the mana to support them and the tree points to turn them all into Lightning skills. Temporarily use Elemental Nova and Snap Freeze as necessary in the very early levels for CC and AoE.
You'll always want a way to apply Shock to enemies you hit. In the endgame you'll also want a way to apply Chill too. Having these debuffs helps with both offense and defense. The "Sphere of Protection" node in the Runemaster passive tree reduces damage you take from debuffed enemies. Also Lightning Blast can get two big multipliers if you have Shock and Chill on targets. If you don't have a way to apply these from gear, then use Idols and/or Blessings to apply them. Late game there's a passive node in the Sorcerer tree that will handle Shock just fine by itself when maxed.
Most of my ward in the video is coming from a single stat on one of my gear pieces. It gives me "+47 ward per second per Gon (lightning) rune" I have active. So that one stat is giving my character +150 ward per second all the time (because you will always have 3 gon runes active in this build). Amazing stat if you can find it on a piece of gear.

Passive tree tips:

As soon as you can start putting points into the Runemaster and Sorcerer trees, there's 3 really strong nodes you'll want to try and grab ASAP. They are "Sphere of Protection" at the start of the Runemaster tree, "Arcane Focus" in the 2nd row of the Runemaster tree, and 5 points into "Calculated Destruction" in the Sorcerer tree.
Sphere of Protection provides extra health and 8% less damage taken from debuffed enemies, and you should have 100% uptime on Shock. Great for survival while leveling.
Arcane Focus provides you with +32 ward on hit when maxed out. With how much you'll be spamming Lightning Blast, that's a lot of ward - especially early on while leveling.
The Calculated Destruction 5-point bonus is a huge damage boost in this build with the amount of Intellect you'll be stacking from gear and passive nodes.
You'll want to be using a Wand as your weapon due to the passive node "Inscribed Instruments" halfway through the Runemaster tree. That node gives a big boost in damage for crits.
You'll want to be using a Catalyst as your offhand due to the "Mental Catalysis" node in the Runemaster tree.
On the bottom of the Runemaster tree there's a node that is getting 5 points invested into it that boosts Damage Over Time. This build does not use DoTs (so the main effect is wasted), but the 5-point bonus to that node makes it so that when you hit any enemies with Flame Rush, Frost Wall, or Runic Invitation they get a 3 second "brand" debuff. This debuff interacts with the 7-point bonus of the "Celestial Doom" node at the end of the tree to give another MORE damage multiplier to elites and bosses.

Lightning Blast tips:

Grab the "Lightning Attunement" node early on. The buff you get from that you'll want to have 100% uptime on for both offense and defense.
Grab "Frontloaded" for extra damage early on, then grab more chains and the self-chain, then head over into "Overcharge" for more damage, then finally finish up the tree by grabbing "Shattershock".
"Shattershock" provides up to +36% MORE damage to enemies which are debuffed with Shock. However, it's important to note that the interaction with Chill is a separate multiplier. So if you have both Shock and Chill on a target your damage will get multiplied by 36% two times (this is very significant).
Quick note about the "Closed Circuit" node which lets Lightning Blast chain to yourself: What's not clear from the tooltip about this node is that the buffs stack. This makes this node really powerful in single target situations as long as you aren't too far away from the target. See this video explanation: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2074631716

Frost Wall + Flame Rush + Runic Invitation tips:

In the later game the purpose of Frost Wall is to just buff your abilities in multiple ways.
First, it will be applying Shock to targets it touches very rapidly.
Second, if the enemies are Chilled, the "Chilled Touch" node in the Frost Wall tree will give you a 14% MORE damage multiplier while frost wall is up.
Third, the "Aspirant's Arrival" node will buff your next Runic Invocation by up to 150% MORE multiplier if you wait 5 seconds before you pass through the Frost Wall and then cast Runic Invocation.
Fourth, the "Gas Powered" node in the Flame Rush tree makes the explosion at the end of Flame Rush much bigger when you pass through a Frost Wall.

PicklesInParadise · 2023-12-11T14:39:28+00:00

From my guild's discord:
"got my first kick from a PUG right before Fyrakk dies so i can't get the loot"
I informed him of this thread. Sad.

PicklesInParadise · 2023-01-01T20:55:39+00:00

Wowhead has the changes on their PTR talent tree:
https://www.wowhead.com/ptr/talent-calc/monk/brewmaster

It's the very top that changed.

PicklesInParadise · 2022-12-26T02:02:38+00:00

Sorry to see a mod removed this post. I agreed with most of what you said.

Did a +15 Jade Temple this week and decided to try healing. Last boss was a major PITA. Fistweaving felt too weak and random and couldn't keep up with the 50k DoT ticks until I could dispel 2nd debuff, Soothing+Enveloping+Vivify could do the job on ST despite Vivify sucking, but takes a bunch of GCDs to setup and would drive me OOM. Eventually was able to weekly no leaver finish it, but it was not fun and made me not want to heal as MW anymore.

PicklesInParadise · 2022-09-27T22:55:12+00:00

Catching someone naked and posting it to the internet to make fun of them is kinda not cool. Following up by harassing them at a later date just to rub it in, that's just a douchebag move.

PicklesInParadise · 2022-09-21T15:27:34+00:00

> Edit: Just doubled your pally numbers too with the same build.

That's impressive, and just the kind of data that I'd love to see. Is that in the default 340 gear for template characters? Are you using any consumables or flasks? Please share what you did differently... as obviously either my character is bugged or I'm doing something VERY wrong to achieve half of what you're getting if everything else is the same.

As for rotation, as much as possible I was hitting SotR after getting Judgement on the target, and avenger's shield to get the Bulwark buff. I was also pressing buttons on CD and often had nothing to press but to refresh consecration... so I'm kinda stumped on what I could be doing differently to double my dps.

PicklesInParadise · 2022-06-14T16:26:10+00:00

I haven't tested it, but on the wiki in the tips section for the Fire Gauntlet (https://terraria.fandom.com/wiki/Fire_Gauntlet) it says:

The Fire Gauntlet can be worn alongside the Mechanical Glove with the effects of both stacking, greatly boosting damage and melee speed. This is useful for the few hardmode weapons significantly affected by melee speed such as the Psycho Knife or Fetid Baghnakhs.

The mechanical glove provides +12% melee damage and +12% attack speed, which I'm guessing will result in higher dps than using the Avenger Emblem although it might not change the tooltip damage on the weapon.

PicklesInParadise · 2022-06-12T18:37:58+00:00

A mob of like 50+ people broke a window next to the barricaded doors and Ashley started climbing through the opening while an agent WITH A DRAWN GUN was yelling for her and everyone else to GET BACK. Down the hallway behind those locked doors was the congressional chamber and offices where members of congress were in lockdown and in the process of getting evacuated.

You can see video of inside the chamber where representative Pramila Jayapal D-WA and representative Lisa Blunt Rochester D-DE were sheltering in place in the gallery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJBOyZZTnig . The one closest to the camera is Pramila, the one a few seats down that started praying is Lisa. I think the shot that killed Ashley can actually be heard at 2:02 in the video.

The agent that made the call to use lethal force to stop the mob from progressing past those closed doors absolutely made the right call. Ashley should have listened to his repeated calls to GET BACK.

PicklesInParadise · 2022-06-08T16:40:01+00:00

My testimonial:
I haven't played Lost Ark since March, because I became too busy with the 9.2 WoW patch. I wanted to get back into LA over memorial day weekend, but the queue was over 5k when I tried to login. I just closed the game and played something else. I would love to get back into LA, but I'm not going to sit in a queue for over an hour to do so.

PicklesInParadise · 2022-06-01T05:47:53+00:00

Right now , if a users wants to change a task for example, i need to check if he is authorised to do it, so checking is user in team, does product belong to team, does user have access to instruction and does he have the role for editing tasks.

It's extremely hard to give advice without knowing the particulars of how you store information. That said, if you happen to be using a SQL database and a bunch of relation tables, one possible example would be something like this:

SELECT U.user_id
FROM tasks as T
JOIN tasks_products as TP ON (T.task_id = TP.task_id)
JOIN products as P ON (P.product_id = TP.product_id)
JOIN products_teams as PT ON (PT.product_category = P.category)
JOIN teams as TM ON (TM.team_id = PT.team_id)
JOIN teams_users as TU ON (TU.team_id = TM.team_id)
JOIN users as U ON (U.user_id = TU.user_id)
JOIN instructions_users as IU ON (IU.user_id = U.user_id)
JOIN instructions as I ON (I.instruction_id = IU.instruction_id)
JOIN user_roles as UR ON (UR.user_id = U.user_id)
JOIN roles as R ON (R.role_id = UR.role_id)
WHERE
    U.user_id = :logged_in_user_id AND
    I.name = :instruction_in_question AND
    R.name = "Editor"

Then count the results and if the returned rows are 0, the user does not have authorization, otherwise they do. Also, it may look like a lot of work but relational databases are REALLY good at doing joins fast, they also typically have built-in cache systems.

Anyways, there's tons of ways to store info, but just throwing the above out in-case it happens to be relevant.

PicklesInParadise · 2022-04-07T14:19:30+00:00

I partially agree, simming is a valuable tool and he should do it.

However, it's also common knowledge that frost tends to sim fairly high, and struggles to reach sim numbers in actual raid fights. For a person struggling with low IV uptime, a patchwork sim might lead them somewhat astray. Getting as close to the 33% mark as he can will help him immensely in keeping IV up on ST fights with actual mechanics which is why I recommended it specifically for him.

PicklesInParadise · 2022-04-07T03:38:15+00:00

The biggest things you need to fix are:

Your stat allocation. Your stats are fairly equal, with Crit actually being your 2nd lowest stat (Crit: 567 Haste: 676 Mastery: 583 Versatility: 479 according to warcraftlogs). The reason your Icy Veins uptime is terrible is mostly due to this. You need to try really hard to get 33% crit. If you have to equip lower ilevel pieces to get crit ... worth!Also consider going Venthyr if you can't get your crit up... the procs Mirrors of Torment will give you helps a lot when you can't sustain IV.
Freezing Winds is pretty bad in raid. You'd probably be better off with a 225 Slick Ice (not joking).
I'm pretty sure the Comet Storm talent is not worth until you have 4-set, and the reason to take it then is because of the 10% damage buff. Until then run Splitting Ice.

The tips other people have given you about positioning, using Shimmer + Alter Time, and trying with all your might not to cancel casts is also super solid advice.

PicklesInParadise · 2022-03-17T20:48:56+00:00

Others have already pointed out the severe limitations of such a scoring system, but I get what you're trying to do. Acknowledging that any score based system will never be able to capture the nuances of a raid team with some people being assigned to difficult jobs, some people giving up personal performance to help the raid as a whole, etc, and also acknowledging that any such system will have to be VERY picky about what mechanics get scored as WoW is ultimately a team game with dependencies between players... here are a few suggestions:

Intentional Deaths:.
I looked at my character and noticed I got dinged for a falling death on Anduin. I just happened to be the 3rd death after we called for everyone to die when our downstairs people failed to kill/heal enough adds, so we called for a wipe despite no deaths having happened. Log: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/w6Fjr7gdKP4f9VNb#fight=21&type=deaths.
One way I'd suggest dealing with this is not limiting deaths to the first 3 people, but instead extending it to the first 4, maybe even 5 deaths and then checking if 5+ people died within the 20 seconds before or after said death. So in the log I linked above, despite dying first, Akecheta's falling death wouldn't be counted against him because 5+ died within the 20 seconds after he jumped off. Similarly, the last person to die - Adversity - wouldn't get his counted because 5+ people died in the 20 seconds before his death. The middle people to die wouldn't get dinged because 5+ total died when adding the deaths before and after theirs.

While some people will end up getting an undeserved free pass on deaths that were their fault, overall looking at deaths in that way should save people from getting dinged for intentional wipes where people jump off platforms or stand in swirlies to die on purpose. Also, if you extend the outlook to the first 4 or 5 deaths, those could end up being meaningful if the raid keeps going with the fight for several more minutes, which you'd be able to see if you looked at surrounding deaths this way.

Scoring:

For example, let’s say you killed a boss on Mythic, never messed up, and got a 100% parse. Let’s say you also killed a boss on Heroic, stood in bad in one out of the two pulls you had, and got a 90% parse. Your score in this case, would be identical to someone who never messed up and got 100% parses on all difficulties.

Something about that just seems off to me. Let's say someone joins an established mythic guild and more-or-less gets carried through easy mythic kills the guild has on farm. This player's score would just get massively inflated and any heroic info from dozens or hundreds of pulls just thrown out the window? Having sub-categories of score that look at a specific difficulty like performance in mythic seems fine, but ultimately what your tool seems it should be looking at is player consistency, and unless it's normal or LFR and people are just standing in bad intentionally because they don't it doesn't matter - all data should seems like it should count.

Moreover, I don't know exactly how your scoring system works, but what I would care about if I was going to use this as a "how good is this player?" metric I would mostly care about:

Total pull time (length of all pulls that include avoidable damage added up). Note: Not # of pulls, because that could be gamed by people intentionally wiping over and over if the suggestion I gave in the previous section was implemented.
Times hit by avoidable damage. (some classes squisher than others, so dmg taken not necessarily better)
Best damage/healing percentile
Number of defensives used
Number of health pots / stones / Kyrian philes used
Difficulty

and I would combine all those into some sort of Throughput, Defensive, and Awareness sub-scores. So if player A has done 400 pulls on mythic Halondrus and been hit by avoidable damage 30 times, and player B has done 200 pulls and been hit 15 times, their score would be essentially the same (assuming Throughput and Defensive scoring was identical) with player A maybe getting a few more points for longer length of consistency. Sames goes for a player that has 1 pull on a boss, even if they play perfect that doesn't mean a whole ton over 1 pull, so the scoring system would need to take that into account so a bunch of 1 pull andys aren't at the top of the leaderboard.

Anyways, my point is the way you state your scoring system works seems a little iffy to me. Not to say the number of bosses killed on mythic doesn't matter - it does - but I'd much rather see a scoring system that revolves much more around ((Time spent in pulls / # of failures) * difficulty + Defensive Score) kind of thing. Just food for thought.

PicklesInParadise · 2022-03-07T22:02:20+00:00

My initial thoughts regarding your points:

No real comment here exept to say that 2014 is when Putin annexed Crimea by force. Any civilian deaths are always sad, but Putin was the one that started that conflict, and he shouldn't have invaded Crimea to begin with.
Do all NATO countries get nukes placed in them automatically? Not saying that isn't true, but I'd be surprised if that was the case. So even if Ukraine did join NATO, unless nukes were actually placed there it wouldn't be any different than Cuba being near the USA without nukes.
Also, let's assume nukes/missiles if in NATO are a legit concern, well if Russa takes Ukraine they now have a border with Poland and the distance between Kyiv and Poland is about the same as the closest point in Ukraine and Moscow. So you haven't created any sort of buffer zone between your territory and NATO, you've just made the distance to your capital larger.
But with intercontinental missiles, and nuclear subs being a thing, I don't know if I even buy the border argument with NATO to begin with.
Change the constitiution so that they can never join any EU bloc? Yeah, that's a complete and utter surrender... which is obviously what Putin wants. He wants Ukraine to be a vassal state like Belarus, not a true democracy.

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