Shadow#11506: Howdy all, my pseudonym is Shadow, and I am a self-taught computer scientist / engineer who is transitioning into the formal study and research of astrophysics. I am particularly interested in cosmology and the pursuit of an equation/system that can map the expansion of the universe from its origin to roughly the state it is in now. Long term that will require a clarification of what we call "dark energy" -we can measure the rate and acceleration of expansion, but we don't actually know what drives it yet.
Shadow#11506: I guess one "cool" hobby of mine would be playing musical instruments. However, I've been more focused on the science of it. For instance, to facilitate training the ear to recognize particular pitches (vs. just differentiating them i.e., relative pitch), I've written a suite of software packages that trains just that. But that's been somewhat frustrating because A) sufficient time with any fixed number of samples causes you to recognize notes by timbre differences and B) the time sink that is repetitive training. I tend to get bored of things after I've figured them out (which usually happens way way way before I ever master them). Oh well.
Shadow#11506: I've been gaming for as long as I've been able to form and retain long term memories i.e., at least as far back as playing Pitfall on a TI-99, the Bard's Tale on an Apple II and whatever games I could enter in manually from Compute! Gazette on a Commodore 64. lol, can you believe we used to "download" games byte by byte by reading their hexadecimal form from a magazine and entering it manually on the keyboard?
I played the original Legend of Zelda on NES so often I had *every* secret memorized and even hand-wrote a 100% completion guide... instead of doing schoolwork. Same for the original Metal Gear. I ate up every Squaresoft game during the SNES era (guess where my pseudonym comes from?), played through all the blockbuster DOS games (Syndicate, Descent, Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Wolfenstein, etc.,) and dabbled in competitive gaming during the heyday of Supreme Commander.
I played Diablo 1 casually, beating it once I think with the Warrior. I beat Diablo 2 a few times, but most of my time spent was putzing around with the Jamella character editor.
Gaming is a way to obtain the stimulation that my ADD brain needs. It's one of the few things I can hyperfocus on without meds.
Shadow#11506: My favorite games are: Chrono Trigger (amazing story and music, especially for the time), Final Fantasy VI (same), Europa Universalis 4 (now that is a game with *serious* depth), the Halo series (epic story-telling shooter, and the books are fun too :-p), Serious Sam (mindless, hectic twitch shooting), Supreme Commander (grand RTS), Starcraft II (the finest 1-on-1 competitive eSports game in the world IMO), Fallout 3 (epic open-world ARPG), Fallout: New Vegas (same, but with some epic DLCs), Borderlands 1 (Scooter is hilarious btw), and Diablo 3 (fantasy-setting sandbox RPG with a surprisingly complicated set of mechanics).
Shadow#11506: Since late vanilla I've been extremely pragmatic about choosing a class and getting emotionally vested in it. There is way, way too much yo-yo balancing to do that. So I like to play with all of the classes, somewhat as a hedge against having my power taken away, and somewhat because that increases the depth and scope of knowledge required to "master" the game to my satisfaction. Thus extending my boredom horizon.
Shadow#11506: I am in a clan: Strawberry Milkshake. It was founded by some well-known D3 veterans including VocaloidNyan and kpoplobster and quickly became *the* #1 clan in NA. No other clan, not even <Dragon>, was competitive (in terms of #1 rankings in group and solo) until near the mid to later part of Era-2. Now that the meta has been so shaken up by 2.2., we've got a tough fight ahead of us while our top members re-gear to the new BiS.
Shadow#11506: My most embarrassing moments while playing occur after running mooch sader for days on end, and then suddenly sadering for some of the top SM players in high 60s GR... Needless to say there is some swearing in Teamspeak as my mindless mooching muscle-memory drags moltens on top of our WD and through the DPS, splits packs in half and stands around blinding (which I shouldn't be doing in high GR because there is a WD), instead of running ahead to grab more mobs. Shout out to <SM>Tang and <SM>flyingmonkie for having at least some modicum of patience :p
Shadow#11506: My most awesome moment while playing used to happen back in T6 graveyard rifts with Raekor barb when Dreadnought still had the pull. It was quite satisfying being able to suddenly take off and drag half the map around.
Shadow#11506: To be honest, I was originally drawn to the barbarian class back in Vanilla when it was very clear that WW barb was superior to whatever the heck I was trying to do with my monk. So it was a pragmatic decision. I ended up quitting soon after for a year and came back a few weeks before RoS. At that point, I was just having fun with the Barb and lightning proc builds. I became engaged in the Barb forums, somewhat inserted myself into the community, and it stuck.
Shadow#11506: I'm definitely in-your-face with the Barbarian.
Shadow#11506: I'd have to say that Furious Charge has been my favorite Barbarian skill so far. WW is fun, but doesn't feel as brutal as charging.
Shadow#11506: I'm primarily running W6BK2, in anticipation of getting hold of Zodiac when season 3 ends.
Shadow#11506: Don't get me started on chasing a specific item - because that's still a very sore point for a lot of us. BK swords are too rare, and the fact that they roll with a mandatory socket is infuriating. Ancient weapons are one of my major pet peeves with D3 right now. Too much power wrapped up in too rare of a drop, especially for someone who plays all classes.
Shadow#11506: Look, the HotA and Seismic Slam folks have been screaming for viability for a long time now, and I think it's high time that they get it. I think IK6 represents the birth of a glimmer of an idea towards making those skills viable, now you need a Vile-Wards level item to crank their power.
Shadow#11506: If I could change one thing about this class, it would be to revert the broken Area Damage mechanics and return double-dipping to bloodshed, at least while running Raekor. So many good barb builds have come and then been yo-yo balanced into oblivion. I really wish the devs would spend more time listening to what high-level players are saying to them.
Shadow#11506: I'll be honest with you, I can't remember many Barbarian quotes off the top of my head, because I don't pay attention to them. I guess I can most identify with "Bul-Kathos guides my hand", because it reminds me of one of Newton's quotes: "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."
Shadow#11506: One piece of advice that every Barbarian should know: DO NOT GET EMOTIONALLY VESTED IN YOUR CLASS OR BUILD
Shadow#11506: I believe Samir#1547 has earned the dubious distinction of being Meat 'n' Greetable
Shadow#11506: Question to ask Samir: "from your experience, how many Furnaces must drop before one will be ancient?"
Shadow#11506: Screw you Bacon!
