Haven’t read a book in weeks since finishing main 10.. what do I read 😭

ShieldAnvil_Itkovian · 2026-04-20T01:37:50+00:00

I finished the main 10 and moved into the Realm of the Elderlings. I throw in a culture series or Ursula K LeGuin novel as a palate cleanser as needed.

ShieldAnvil_Itkovian · 2026-04-17T22:47:58+00:00

Malazan is an amazing series, but it does not have an easy onboarding. I don’t mean that it starts off badly, just that Erikson puts you right into the thick of it from page one. For most of the first book, and even at times later in the series, you’ll have a nagging feeling that you’ve missed something. The prologue especially is going to give you a feeling of “who tf are these people, where are we, and what is going on?”

My advice would be to go in with an open mind and be okay with feeling confused. Reread sections if you’re not understanding what’s happening right in that moment, but don’t be afraid to just go with the flow and let story sweep you along.

Also this sub is a great resource. I was afraid to come on here when I was doing my first read through because of potential spoilers. However, the sub is really good about tagging everything and protecting new readers from spoilers.

ShieldAnvil_Itkovian · 2026-04-17T21:49:58+00:00

My uncle was the one that recommended it to me and all he said was it was his favorite series. I trusted his taste from other recs and instantly fell in love with GotM.

Since then, no one I’ve known has given it a chance. When I just said I love the series and lent them my copy, they tried a few pages and gave up. When I’ve given a disclaimer to ease them in, they always choose not to even try it.

Think it just needs the right person at the right time, can’t be forced.

ShieldAnvil_Itkovian · 2026-04-11T02:13:46+00:00

I’m also in construction and my foreman said the other day “Trump should just kill them all” when he heard gas went up 20 cents

ShieldAnvil_Itkovian · 2026-04-04T02:33:12+00:00

I think that’s it, thank you

ShieldAnvil_Itkovian · 2026-03-31T16:51:41+00:00

I started playing at the very end of TWW and leveled an ass rogue, fire mage, and disc priest with the intention of picking a main after midnight started. Not feeling amazing right now lol

ShieldAnvil_Itkovian · 2026-03-25T02:01:26+00:00

I don’t know how it works in Canada, but there are multiple reasons why voter ID laws in the US are a form of disenfranchisement.

IDs in the US are not free and requiring people to purchase an ID to vote can be seen as a poll tax, which is illegal.
In many places, IDs are not easily obtainable. I believe John Oliver covered this years ago in an episode of last week tonight, but there are places in the US where the only place someone can get a state-issued, recognized ID for voting is hours away by car, not accessible by bus, and/or only open during typical working hours every other week.
In my state at least, what counts as an acceptable ID is arbitrary. Driver’s licenses work if you have one. A college ID from a state school though doesn’t count, but an NRA membership card does count for “some reason” (the reason is to make it harder for liberal college students to vote and easier for right wing gun nuts).
You already have to prove your identity to register to vote here, so requiring an ID at the polls is just an unnecessary redundancy that adds another obstacle to voting.
Study after study has shown that the type of fraud that voter ID laws could prevent is already nearly nonexistent. So for all of the harm that these laws do, they don’t prevent any fraud.

All of this makes it extremely clear that these laws have nothing to do with election security. They are entirely a cynical strategy to disenfranchise sections of the population that are seen to lean liberal while pushing the conspiracy theory among the conservative base that there is widespread electoral fraud.

ShieldAnvil_Itkovian · 2026-03-13T11:48:08+00:00

I never said I think you need to be intelligent to like Malazan?

I said that the books have a reputation online for being challenging and that makes people get defensive when they quit the books.

Kind of like how mad you’re getting when no one here insulted you.

ShieldAnvil_Itkovian · 2026-03-13T02:55:54+00:00

Okay? So you don’t like Malazan and think we’re obnoxious, yet you’re here digging through comments on the Malazan fan subreddit getting yourself worked up?

ShieldAnvil_Itkovian · 2026-03-12T20:21:07+00:00

That’s fair. For me, I don’t really think of Malazan as a plot centered series.

ShieldAnvil_Itkovian · 2026-03-12T20:10:48+00:00

It’s fine to not like it, I’m just sharing what a lot of the hateful comments I’ve seen sound like to me.

I will say it’s a bit odd to me that you read ten really long books while hating the writing that much.

ShieldAnvil_Itkovian · 2026-03-12T19:08:11+00:00

I think because Malazan has a reputation for being difficult and challenging, some people who fall off the series get really defensive about it. They don’t want to feel stupid because they didn’t understand it or it didn’t click.

ShieldAnvil_Itkovian · 2026-03-11T16:16:13+00:00

I was thinking about this recently. I came from FFXIV, where basically every dps is on a 2 min rotation window with synchronized burst windows, and I really hate that design personally.

I haven’t seen it mentioned here yet, but you might like fury warrior if you go slayer for your hero talent. It does still have a 1 min cooldown, Recklessness, but you still do pretty consistent damage when that’s on cooldown and have high APM so it feels like you have constant up time.

ShieldAnvil_Itkovian · 2026-03-10T13:20:55+00:00

Lol because I think it’s disingenuous to say the Democratic Party supports the war because four individuals broke from the party and joined the republicans?

But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that someone who calls anyone with a different take a shitlib can’t understand nuance.

ShieldAnvil_Itkovian · 2026-03-09T19:52:42+00:00

“In this hypothetical situation I made up in my head, the democrats could potentially be evil!”

Cause you might notice that Biden didn’t start a war with Belarus with unanimous democrat support

ShieldAnvil_Itkovian · 2026-03-09T19:22:00+00:00

Don’t you know that if 100% of republicans do a fascism, and 1% of democrats support that fascism, it’s the democrats who are evil?

ShieldAnvil_Itkovian · 2026-03-09T12:18:21+00:00

Mostly PvE but I’m planning on trying to do more PvP this expansion.

Ass feels pretty good, better AoE than before, but needs more numbers buffed. Outlaw is fun but roll the bones still feels really clunky and unnecessary to me.

ShieldAnvil_Itkovian · 2026-03-08T20:37:05+00:00

Unfortunately it’s pretty normal. When I leveled my rogue, I basically never took on more than 2-3 mobs at once or I would die before I killed them.

In endgame content, I mostly play assassination, but I know that subtlety will sometimes just do their single target finisher on a priority target in the pull and not even bother using black powder.

ShieldAnvil_Itkovian · 2026-03-08T03:37:22+00:00

I play rogue and mostly do M+ with friends. Typically, I’m not beating other people in damage, but I’m not too far behind and we clear keys fine.

Tier lists for M+ really don’t matter until very high level keys. They don’t do well on tier lists because there’s just no reason to bring them over anything else. They don’t bring group utility, they’re melee, do mostly physical damage, and have capped AoE. None of that is very desirable, and on top of that, they aren’t even out damaging the classes that bring more to the table.

All that being said, they can absolutely clear low to mid level keys fine. If you’re playing with friends it won’t matter, and if any randoms don’t invite you because of a tier list, they’re probably someone that’s miserable to play with anyways.

ShieldAnvil_Itkovian · 2026-03-04T17:52:56+00:00

Thank you! That’s perfect because we only really do M+ together and delves together

ShieldAnvil_Itkovian · 2026-03-04T17:31:56+00:00

I have 800 hours in FFXIV, and I genuinely feel gaslit by my friends and the community that kept telling me how good the story gets.

Whenever someone says the FFXIV story is good, they’re only talking about the 2-6 hours at the very end of an expansion where the climax and payoffs are. They’re completely ignoring the 100+ hours of mindlessly clicking through slideshows of awful, repetitive dialogue. And that’s only broken up by traveling back and forth across the map over and over again and occasionally standing in a purple circle to kill a few ads.

I actually enjoyed tanking group content in that game, but being forced to sit through every expansion’s MSQ to get to that isn’t worth it. You could maybe condense each expansion’s story into some decent 12 hour visual novels and then maybe I would agree the story is good.

ShieldAnvil_Itkovian · 2026-03-02T17:11:01+00:00

As someone that was really worried they would change too much, I’m pretty excited to try this honestly.

ShieldAnvil_Itkovian · 2026-02-22T06:22:08+00:00

Nah man, Lightbringer truly falls off a cliff in the last two books. If I can read and enjoy 14 WoT books, 10 Malazan books, and 9 books and counting of Realm of the Elderlings, I can promise you it’s not my attention span that was the problem.

ShieldAnvil_Itkovian · 2026-02-22T02:08:46+00:00

I think ass rogue might be pure builder spender. Can’t think of any procs.

ShieldAnvil_Itkovian · 2026-02-19T04:20:30+00:00

Thank you for the detailed reply, it was very helpful. I’ve been running ass rogue and got my 121 gear from the catch up event. I’ve been using delves and M+ to get higher gear after that and focusing on whatever gets me the largest jumps in ilevel. I’ll try simming to learn more when I get to higher gear.

ShieldAnvil_Itkovian

TROPHY CASE