BardicKnowledge

I started with White Mage, and drew Berserker for the Water Crystal. I'll update both Facebook and here as I progress throughout the summer. Beating Garula w/ White Mages is actually very simple, it just takes some time. Everyone in the back row, 4x Protect, and once he starts to counterattack, only your flail wielder (which should be Bartz, as his STR is naturally higher than everyone else's) strikes.

Justin, as Zircon points out, you are not a professional...but I think he'd agree with me in saying you certainly could be. You consistently have the absolute best orchestral intuition I've ever heard. Most people have to make their way through a full book or two to get anywhere close to where you are in terms of orchestration.

I just signed up for this, with Berserker Risk. I am hoping to draw a multi-purpose class for my 4th character if I get stuck with three Berserkers. The best three jobs (for general utility with three Berserkers) are probably Chemist, Blue Mage, and Mystic Knight, yes?

I'm very partial to Crusader of Centy for Sega Genesis, a great action RPG with a fun elemental combat system.

Hmm seems like a good idea -- I am going to try this soon...

How is everyone enjoying the new 2.0.5 patch and anniversary bonuses to drops? My Holy Crusader is going to have to change, it seems -- Fist of the Heavens --> Divine Well and FotH --> Retribution both got significantly nerfed. I am hoping to explore a Shield Bash build once I get a 2H weapon to replace my Darklight... Was anyone else significantly affected?

A dude from the League general forums -- tempnamesr780978 -- made an excellent list about why the jungler isn't visiting you. Read below, especially if you play jungle yourself, haha.

I'm a musicology graduate student at the University of Minnesota, and am happy to do an interview if you like. Hit me up at @BardicKnowledge on Twitter or DM me. In any case, 1) My first encounter with game audio coincides with my first encounter with games themselves -- a Dig Dug clone from the early 1980's named "Digger" for an old model IBM XT. I can still clearly recall the BGM from that game. To put the time in perspective, that computer had 512 KB (yep, kilobytes) of RAM. 2) I've been a fan of game music since #1, above. 3) The younger brother of a personal friend from high school introduced me to the site in 2002. I lurked for a while and joined the forums in fall of 2004, my sophomore year of college. 4) Many of us are avid board game and card game players as well. The forums themselves are a non-musical example of our collective culture...what exactly are you trying to reach with this question? 5) Game audio has greatly affected my life -- my professional career revolves around it, and I have made a great number of friends because of a common interest in VGM. Similarly, I've a number of good friends in the OCR community, for which we all have game audio to thank. One warning: I'd suggest that "game audio" does not represent a singular culture. It transcendes genre in the same way that film audio does. Even across a single film franchise -- for instance, the Marvel Cinematic Universe -- the audio can vary wildly. No one would ever mistake Alan Silvestri's orchestral score to Captain America: The First Avenger for the rock-heavy soundtrack to Iron Man, for instance.

I felt that Silvestri's score to Avengers remains the best MCU score -- though admittedly, it had more work to do than the others as well since it joined disparate characters with differing themes across various musical genres. Music the Captain America: Winter Soldier wasn't as memorable, save for when it quoted the original Cap film. It's a great film nonetheless though, and I think it does a fantastic job of expanding what's possible in the Marvel world.

The biggest things to prevent yourself from ending up in Brad's situation: **Minor Spoilers for people who have not played the game at all** 1) Make absolutely certain to get the Destruction Sphere treasure from Besaid the very first time you are there. You MUST get it before leaving Macalania for the first time (yes, you can walk all the way back there, it just takes forever) 1a) Similarly, if you want it before Dark Valefor, collect the second Overdrive for Valefor before leaving Besaid also. 2) Get Yojimbo and finish the Cave of the Stolen Fayth events as you pass through the Calm Lands for the first time. This means that you must have at least 200,000 Gil (closer to 250k is better) when you arrive there; plan accordingly. 3) Get the Sun Crest IMMEDIATELY after beating Yunalesca. As long as you do that, you'll be able to do everything else at your own pace.

Brad and I tried a Leona + Blitzcrank lane, which was hilarious -- permanent stunning. If you got caught once, you died, period.

One of the timbres sounds very much like material from Seiken Densetsu 3, which is what gets my vote for the inspiration.

They can't be all that rare -- I have seven or eight Adventurer's Journals lying around in my stash, waiting for me to find the plans for Pender's Purchase.

You're missing out on the most complex ATB combat system ever used in a Square jRPG by skipping FFX-2 -- the ways in which each attack chains to the next across characters and jobs is very, very slick...not to mention that each job has a different-length ATB bar and each action takes a different % of that bar, etc. I admit the plot is sort of happy-go-lucky Charlie's Angels ish, but it also does a good job of exploring Spira post-Yevon once you get past the cheesiness. I would be totally down with an FFX-3 assuming that this collection sold well, incidentally.

The Lightning rune on Blessed Hammer appears to be the best spender the Crusader has thus far -- soon I will hit 70 and know for sure. That it's 10 or 20 Wrath cheaper than the other options makes a strong case for it being the best though. Crusader potentially has a lot of burst DPS potential via +100% Crit Damage and +80% Crit Chance effects on skills for short periods of time but will likely work best in a group as a massive tank with a passive block rate of 75% that skills can boost to 100% for moments you need it.

Legendary crafting is sick -- keep the salvage around and you won't regret it. Are you sure you found a legendary crafting _recipe_ and not a new type of legendary crafting _material_ such as the Adventurer's Notebook? If the blacksmith won't learn it and it says "Plan: <item name>" then either you need to train him or wait until Tuesday, when you can train him above level 10.

^You mean XIII-2, not XII-2 (I wish, haha). Did you play FFXII, Brad? The combat system there would be right up your alley, I'd think. Also I plan on playing as little blitzball as possible -- once I unlock Wakka's weapon / overdrives / Sigil I'm out. The minigame I'll lose all my time to is X-2's Sphere Break (hooray, math!)

Wow crazy, definitely going to finish levelling my Witch Doctor then. I'll have three characters up to 60 for the expansion release!

FFX-2 is the ATB bar system, Brad. And I should note that despite the hate it receives, FFX-2 has the very best, most complex of those systems ever implemented by Square Enix.

I wrote up some analysis of the soundtrack for Polygon, but will wait to see how much of it they used before posting it all here. Short version for now: I like almost all of it except for the battle theme, which feels over-orchestrated for the purpose of making it very obvious in comparison trailers that there is indeed a difference. Edit: And as Brandon points out, this sucks, because you hear the battle theme more than any other track.

In case you haven't seen them, the 4.4 patch notes! http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/patch/patch-44-notes?ref=rss&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter#patch-Lich-Bane I cannot think of any character that would bother picking up Lich Bane at this point, incidentally. Deathfire Grasp is now better in every conceviable instance, IMO -- even on LB heavy characters like TF and Fizz.

I was online Saturday from 8 until 8:20 or so, and then Addie asked if we could play through more of Diablo...so I bailed on all of you, given that only one other person was online. I'll try to be free for games this Tuesday!

Hey junglers, read this: http://cloth5.com/optimizing-damage-minimizing-damage-taken/ Or alternatively, the summary is as follows: Assuming you have only single target damage in the jungle, you save a lot of health attacking the smaller critters first in golems, wraiths, and _especially_ wolves. The little guys do a lot of damage compared to their max HP, so you are always ahead to clear the small ones before the large jungle creep.

I will do my best to play a game or two tonight with all of you!

Done! Good idea.