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3. Nikki Minaj

2. NSFW

1. Call Me Maybe

Key points: - The Players X type system is translated as “Monster Power” and players creating games with level 60 characters can set it from 0-10 at game creation. You can not tweak it during a game, such as by turning it up before a boss fight. - At higher levels the game difficulty is increased, with correspondingly better experience gain and item rewards. Details are still unspecified on just how they’ll be increasing the difficulty, and on what “better” items means. More, higher quality (Sets/Legendaries) items, higher level items, or all of the above. To unlock the Infernal Machine players will have to gather ingredients from all four acts, so it will presumably not be a short and easy assembly process. (Apparently even longer and more involved than Diablo 2′s Pandemonium Event.) - The Infernal Machine level has “a completely new architecture” (tileset?), but no new bosses or monsters. (Presumably the “uber” bosses will be palette shifted and have some new abilities, but we’ll wait for D3X for entirely new monsters.) - The Infernal Machine reward is a new Legendary ring only available from this quest. The biggest news is that it will DiabloWikiBind on Account. So no trading or selling or gifting, but you can use it with other characters on your account. Other details remain vague, so it seems like we’ll have to wait for the actual patch to find out every last detail and start hunting those new uber rings. It seems pretty likely the ring will be something like the Hellfire Torch, with guaranteed great stats, but enough variability that you’ll probably want to find several of them while trying to get a better roll, and perhaps a roll better suited for each character class.

this thread needs a kitten. http://imageshack.us/a/img707/6931/b7yssz.jpg

anyone still playing? made 60 on hc today for the first time so the game still holds my interest. blizzard announced some 1.05 changes. highlights include nerfing the game even further (25% damage reduction), players X system from d2 to simulate full games while solo (presumably drops will scale with the increased difficulty?) and an uber endgame they havent provided details for yet. i think they went way, way too far with their changes in 1.04. i like the paragon leveling, but the game is all about legendaries and sets now, which has completely and hopelessly broken the sc economy. its interesting learning the hc economy (and finding flawless square amethysts makes me really happy). still no word about 1.1 (pvp arena) yet. several months past release. pretty lucrative beta roll out, blizzard! meanwhile path of exile held their public stress test this weekend. interested to see results, but for a free game they're really doing it right.

http://gifs.gifbin.com/1232109585_dramatic%20cat.gif

http://i.imgur.com/JYFpj.jpg

my mom speaks fluent german and my dad speaks fluent french. i fulfilled my college language requirements with german while getting a minor in latin. unfortunately my ceiling was very likely quite high, but i wasn't immersed in the right environment to take advantage of it. i'd still very much like to learn another language, but it seems daunting. i hope i can shake my qualms and find some inspiration and dedication.

grammar, and punctuation nits unite! you're "head" will literally explode! i was lucky enough to get a very decent grammar education in second grade. i think that only could have been improved by learning a second language at around that age. oh well.

:(

this is great news

i dont understand anything except pass. i don't have extra strength, shape, offense, or defense from what i've already shown. making another call is just making noise because you like the sound of your own voice.

Top Gun director Tony Scott to suicide eta true romance; spy game

paragon experience will keep my interest i think (hope its in 1.04!). i'd prefer blizzard just copy PoE's portal endgame stuff, but i doubt that'll happen. if i can build +MF and +GF just by killing elite packs, i admit i'm prepared for the grind. Seriously about 100K? For a long time tomes of secret were my largest sale item (200k gold for like 350 tomes?) but since then i've upgraded several spots, invested in MF, and done reasonably ok for a casual gamer. I expect to have a few mill for my next upgrade soonish.

anyone still playing? they released some datamined patch notes about 1.04 today. looks pretty awesome if you ask me. kinda wish they weren't nerfing monsters and buffing heroes at the same time, but i guess a higher % of people will be able to feel baller and farm A3. some spoilers from the patch notes:

I wouldn't consider anything but pass. You have no idea even if it's our hand or what strain we might play in or at what level. It's hard to play 3NT or 3Hx when you bid 4C. Maybe defending 3H undoubled is right. Furthermore xxx in H is the worst holding we can have and is another reason why bidding 4C is bad.

im sure someone will think of something more elegant but I'm pretty simple, so I'd just change the format to yyyy/mm/dd

I don't consider myself a huge MLS fan by any means, but in the past three or four weeks I've attended two FC Dallas home games and frankly have found it to be tremendously enjoyable. I suppose as far as Americans go I come from a totally unusual family of soccer fans, but as someone who played soccer fairly competitively for about 15 years and coached for several more and has a mom from just north of Munich who supports FC Bayern pretty strongly I think I offer a fresh American perspective on the game. Yes, Americans aren't as passionate about soccer as others in the world. I think there are lots of reasons for this, including other sports paying more money to its most elite athletes. I don't think necessarily there is anything wrong inherently with America's best athletes pursuing other more lucrative endeavors, and I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with soccer not getting the spotlight it perhaps deserves. I can say, though, that if you are a soccer fan and have easy access to one of our bigger cities that 1) there is high level soccer likely available, 2) you can have a lot of fun building an evening around such an event and 3) the argument about not being able to insert commercials into televised soccer games hurts the entire sport tremendously and seems to actually have a lot of traction. If you enjoy soccer, I suggest you go to a good MLS game. The atmosphere will likely be tremendous, and while the level of play might leave a bit to be desired, I think the pros outweigh the cons. Just my $0.02.

As usual with those types of lists, the title should be "50 pictures of random women who may or may not be associated with sports. some quite hot, most pretty average; some previously famous which is why we're including them in the list even though they aren't hot or at best they were hot once but now they're kinda old and definitely losing it quickly" List doesn't include Layla Kiffin, who seems an obvious addition and I don't particularly follow or care about who dates or marries who.

So we essentially reached the same conclusion: stacking lots of MF is much, much better than running with 0 MF (shocking, I know). So further research would have to be done to determine 1) if the guaranteed rare can ever drop in the place of a non-guaranteed rare, 2) if getting 5 stacks+running to the next champ pack takes longer than clearing high density areas and restarting and 3) if 75% additional MF on top of 400 base MF exceeds any losses from 1) + 2). Agree MF swapping is bad. I did it in D2 because it was as simple as hitting w, and I know people have written macros that blizzard apparently has deemed OK, but it's just a stupid part of the game that needs to be fixed.

Also to add: Blizzard has made a statement about wanting to fix MF gear swapping (either manually or through a macro). There will likely be changes to how swapping MF gear works and there's some info from I think Bashiok on the d3 forums about possible scenarios, but MF is almost certainly going to be MORE valuable after the changes. So if you roll good items with top end MF, hang on to it or at least get a premium for it now.

I'm not familiar with any research done on MF with that high a number of MF (I assume they were swapping or had ultraelite gear) but my guess is with that much MF the extra 75% is less important (ie you're still dropping lots of ilvl 63 and 6-property rares). And like I said, the guaranteed rare you get from 5 stacks is NOT affected by MF at all, so getting 5 stacks and running long distances to more packs of champs/uniques/bosses is less efficient than stacking a lot of MF and quickly clearing high density areas, especially if that guaranteed rare is dropping in lieu of a rare that would otherwise drop (and is affected by MF). None of this is my research, but it comes from a fairly reliable source and a good player who posts a lot on 2p2. He collects data about the number of attributes (4, 5, or 6) that his rares drop using the item name glitch. He counts guaranteed rares only as those that drop 1 rare with 5 stacks and non guaranteed rares as those that drop with <5 stacks (though I think the last item to drop is always the guaranteed rare. I assume this is verified but don't think he used it, for accuracy purposes). I'll quote his original hypothesis, his data, and then a cliffs of his conclusion and you can decide for yourself. He runs with like 180 base MF I think. 07-21-2012, 05:05 PM Someone else - 07-21-2012, 05:22 PM: Original guy - 07-21-2012, 05:28 PM: His conclusion, yes lolsmall sample size so we can't draw conclusions with a huge amount of confidence, but there is clearly a trend - 07-26-2012, 01:41 AM: Conclusion - 07-21-2012, 05:11 PM Cliffs: If you have good MF gear and good gear in general and can farm Act 3, it is much better to do the high-density places quickly and efficiently, then restart and repeat. Running from pack to pack just wastes time, as the guaranteed rare from 5 stacks is WORSE on average than without 5 stacks. If you have 0% MF, you very likely are better off getting 5 stacks and clearing the whole act, because that guaranteed rare is more likely to be a 6-attribute rare than it would otherwise. Obviously if you don't care how many attributes your rare has, the point is moot. Source if you want to read relevant responses and see more discussion: link

I also really like the currency system on PoE, and trading is pretty well done. I knew about the new endgame and skimmed some youtube vids about it a week or two ago. If anyone is interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97SskaQuijo

I'd pass 2♣ Edit: Oh double is penalty. That doesn't seem as good, but fine. N needs to do something better than double 3C then pass throughout.