3 Steps to (Almost) Malware-Proof of Your Internet Browsing

Here's the 3 easiest steps to eliminate most threats you'll come across while browsing the web. They're all free.

1. Use Mozilla Firefox.



Yes, I get credit if you download Firefox through that link. No, I don't make a dime from it. But I might get a really cool T-shirt if enough people download it from there. :)

The main reason Firefox is used has more to do with number 2 below than anything else. Firefox has a few things going for it. It's open source, meaning that the source code is visible and changeable by anyone. Instead of a small team at a company working on it, millions can (and do) work to improve upon the software. There's no monetary payment involved, but you'll get credit for the improvement if it's implemented and it looks good on a resume. Since it's quite popular, a lot of web developers will make sure their sites work with it. Did I mention it's free?

2. Install the NoScript plug-in.



Just search for NoScript there and it will come right up. NoScript disables Javascript universally unless you whitelist the site and allow it. It also has the side effect of blocking a lot of ads. Without Javascript, sites cannot just install something onto your computer without you knowing about it. There's a bit of a learning curve to browsing with the plug-in enabled, but it's worth it. These two things will fix half your problems with picking up malware from the Internet.

3. Use common sense.

This is the other half. If you just hit allow all all the time in NoScript, it will be like not even having it. Stay away from sites that are obviously potentially malicious. For example, downloading the latest, greatest single for free from a file sharing site is stealing. Chances are, that free download, isn't really free. (Yes, that goes double for the free porn sites gang.) Those sites make money somehow, and a lot of the time it's by installing tracking and "ad-serving" software on your machine. Or they might just install software on your computer to have it participate in DDoS attacks whenever the site owner wants. This could land you in serious legal trouble. Just don't go there.

It's been awhile since I've posted anything. It's mostly because I haven't really been playing anything. Real life has been kinda crazy. I'm back on overnight shift, but I don't mind it so much since it allows me to do something I like.

My guild is moving towards Guild Wars 2. WAR just doesn't have the population any more, and TOR has been kinda disappointing. Circle of Rage always an Open RvR, large scale guild. Back in the day, we fielded no less than 3 warbands. The WvW in GW2 looks very promising.

So I figured I'd at least post something useful until I have more to talk about. I can do more stuff like this if you all want. Let me know.

The Rise of the Single Healer Groups

1.4.0 brought dramatic increases to personal survivability. While playing the Eternal Citadel, I found that most players could survive a 4 player spike for 10 seconds without a healer. However, most players could not survive a 5 player spike for 10 seconds. So my group started playing with only one healer, and it worked exceptionally well. Having 2 healers in party with one being a dps healer is much safer since the dps healer can rez without costing the group healing, but using only one healer worked out ok for us. I expect to see a lot more DPS Shamans and Archmages in groups.

Also I found that I could not get away with my typical glass cannon spec as a SM in EC after a few scenarios. A lot of players seem to have learned how to focus fire squishy tanks. I ended up switching my renown to Cleansing Wind 3, Reflexes 4 and Futile Strikes 3 and moving to 5 Defensive/4 Offensive Sovereign gear. I will play around with Trivial Blows 3 with a Liniment of Immutable Defiance and see how that works too. Glass cannon tanks will likely be viable in warband play only.

Mythic wanted to tone down the DPS tank. I think they did so with the scenario matchmaking system and the renown revamp. I just get wrecked way too fast to be useful to my group glass cannon in scenarios now. I still have my 2h and my Khaine spec since Nature's Blade is just awesome. Going from glass cannon to survivable cut my damage by one third. It does allow me to now take focus fire and Guard damage at the same time, which I just couldn't survive even with 2 healers on me glass cannon.

Dynamic Assist

The main assist function is a great addition to the game. (If it would only get used in PuG situations it'd be awesome.) I love the versatility of the Assist addon. The biggest problem with these functions is the difficulty in switching target callers should your primary caller go down. I call this static assist. The other problem with this is the enemy finds out who the main caller is and takes him down first, you are going to lose quickly unless you can adapt.

My solution to this problem is what I call Dynamic Assist. I can assist any player in my party simply by pressing a hotkey. No, I don't put 5 buttons on my hotbar to do this. That would be wasteful. This is what I do instead.

Under your key mapping options under the WAR Main Menu (the WAR icon in the top middle of your screen by default), you'll see the default options for assisting your party members. By default, these are set to Shift + F2-F6. By default Shift 1-5 rotates your main hotbar. How many people actually make use of that? (My guess is about zero.) So I made Shift 2-6 assist group member.

With my Razer Naga, it's very easy for me to move, target, and fire off abilities all at the same time. Now I can also assist any party member I want easily. I don't get to use this feature as much as I'd like since I usually end up being the target caller in my parties, but when I'm not, I can assist anyone in the blink of an eye without missing a beat. If you don't have one, you should get one. For $80, it's one of the best things I've done to improve my game.

My New 1.3.6. Build Revisited

So I tried my original plan again. Here's the results. I also changed my UI around a bit. My old one was just awful.



Shhh! Just don't tell Nate about this! Keep this between us ok?

EDIT: So apparently Nate found out about it and this has been fixed for 1.4. Sorry gang!

Explanation of My Newer 1.3.6. Build

This is the promised explanation video for my newer 1.3.6 build. It isn't the greatest quality video out there, but it gets the message across.

My Buffhead2 Settings in Action

If you needed another reason to get Buffhead2, especially with my settings file, watch this video.



The information it gives you easy access to is amazing. Highly recommended for target callers.

Buffhead2 Settings Link

My Newer 1.3.6 Build

I've changed up my standard build a little in light of actually playing 1.3.6. in a live environment. I shot a quick video to show what I do. Note this is NOT an excuse to only use a single build everywhere. A group that can take advantage of Whispering Wind will take me out of this build in a heartbeat.



Explanation will come in a later video.

My Buffhead2 Settings

Buffhead2 is an amazing add-on that a guildmate of mine recently got me to use. Man, that thing is awesome. I don't have to look at the target frame to determine what effects my opponents and group members have. I've set it up so that I see all the major buffs that a character can have on him. This includes detaunts, Guard, Challenge, Distracting Bellow, Immaculate Defense, Absolute Preservation, CC immunites, LotD pocket items, and more.

I've uploaded the file so that all can use it. It only works for Order. The detaunt names would have to be changed to their Order equivalents to work for Destro. You'll need to place it in your WAR directory under user > settings > server name > character name > character name > Buffhead. So for me, it's under user > settings > Volkmar > Tarelther > Tarelther > Buffhead.

SavedVariables.lua file for Buffhead2

This is actually the version I use on my Knight. My SM uses one that filters out most of the Nature's Blade buffs because I really don't need to see those.  I like to see when I've taken initiative though so I know when I can go for the hard spike.

SavedVariables.lua file for Buffhead2 for SMs

It's made a huge difference for me. It makes the information I need to make decisions more easily available.

Props to Ze WAR for his 6v6 guide. Go read it. It's good stuff. I saw his mention of Buffhead2 and knowing how long it took me to setup mine, I figured others would appreciate the shortcut.

Update: Destro version of Buffhead2 settings

New SM Open RvR build with Results.

So yesterday we were bored and decided to go out into the lakes. We were short tanks, so I actually had to spec into an actual tanky type build with a shield. (My knight is almost ready to take over that job though.) I ended up going with a very unusual build. It will look weird, so just go with me on it.

Weird ORvR build

For lower than RR70, don't get Perfect Defenses. Or skip AA and use an armor pot. Adjust as needed.

Another SM was covering Heaven's Blade, so I didn't want to overlap it. We would be fighting against multiple enemies, so the AoE of Nature's Blade was going to be invaluable. I could basically hit an AoE and drain 117 of all stats except wounds from the enemy and buff my group with it. The initiative steal alone is killer. Go check out Blurring Shock's post on initiative.

Just a quick little AJ on some unsuspecting destro there. We got there just in time to save the keep. It's just two bomb groups. It's what we had on at the time. (Ramthorne is Circle of Rage's GM. He's our big strategy guy. He comes up with an idea and I find a way to implement it basically.)

They decided to come back for more.

Yeah, it didn't work too well for them. Especially since we had oil to work with now. So we repaired up the doors, and flew over to Reikland noticing it's in danger of being captured. We ride up to the south BO since is the best place to defend in that zone.

They tried to push in and failed.

We notice Kadrin Valley in trouble, so we go grab a BO there. No opposition, so we came back and did the same thing again. Surely Destro would be defending it this time.

Nope. They wouldn't push in this time. They brought a lot more for round 2. Notice that we pushed out and wiped them this time.

Here's how we did it. After noticing it's a stalemate for 7 minutes, someone mentioned trying to push out on them. The longer we stayed in there, the more chance more opposition would show and wipe us out. They were stacking the door pretty heavily, so we had to clear those stairs in order to have a chance. We had all 4 Swordmasters build up to perfect balance and hold it for Gusting Wind. We waited 30 seconds to wait out any possible immunity timers. All 4 SMs hit Gusting Wind at once and it cleared the stairway. It's easy to block or parry 1 Gusting Wind, but the odds of blocking/parrying 4 isn't so good. We pushed out and had all the tanks (except me, since there were two tanks in my group) hit Immaculate Defense. Everyone else dropped morales at the same time. When the initial morale dump was completed 10 seconds later, I used Distracting Bellow on the remaining enemy and we cleaned them up.

The reasoning behind the build was purely to take advantage of the initiative steal of Nature's Blade. We were heavy on BWs. BWs get more bonus from critical hits than other DPS, so it only made sense to try to capitalize on it. Also the group was incredibly squishy, so I had to make the most of my Challenge ability to help ease the burden on healers by maxing out my avoidance. Forceful Shock was just used to snare and punt away tanks who were guarding enemies.

Next time I'll try to show a different warband make up from 3 bombs. We were just farming the zerg. It's what we had at the time. Against real opposition, we would have gotten rolled and fast.

Low level SM guide to RvR

I had some requests on the official forums for a low level guide, since all my current stuff is endgame related. So I put this together really quickly. The audio quality isn't the greatest, and it's a little out of sync by the end, but it gets the information out there.

I didn't realize I could go for 20 minutes straight talking about the SM. It's a small file, only about 12 MB.

Enjoy! Let me know what you think.

Low Level SM guide

Superior Mindset or How to Defeat the Flank

Kudos to Super Effective. Rather than allowing herself to be spawn camped by a "superior" force, she decided to take matters into her own hands and turn around a Nordenwatch that was going badly. She did not give up.

Today I felt like I mattered. Faced with yet another Nordenwatch spawn point farm I went around and joined 2 other players in capping Lighthouse and Fortress. When we get to Barracks I start reading complaints about how people "haven't had a single heal since the beggining of teh SC QQ". Since we were done capping anyways, I bravely rode my steed headfirst into the red multitude and kicked them with my new morale 4 goodness and started healing away. Sure enough, we drove them back and ended up winning it. It's not like I was the only healer because I wasn't, and I wasn't near the top of the healing chart. But my efforts made a difference. We capped the flags for time enough to swing the points in our favor and eventually kept enough people up for us to drive them back.

It sounds like you picked up reinforcements when you ran into them with the morale 4. I'm not sure if they came in from another direction but for the purposes of this exercise, I will assume they came in from behind the enemy from the Fortress and the enemy noticed the flank in time to react to it. (A flank really only works if you can get it off without being noticed, against a poorly organized group, or with some clever strategy.)

What the enemy force should do in this case is push all their forces into the weak side of the flank (side that's easier to kill, not necessarily the side with fewer players), even if that means temporarily giving up the objective to prevent the wipe. Once the weak side is taken out, they would turn around and push the strong side. In order to stop the flank from working, they must eliminate the weak side before the flanks collapse on them.

I do flanks all the time. My guild calls one the Hammer and Anvil strategy. We used it mainly in the city prior to version 1.3.5. Since that content is no longer in game, it won't hurt to share that strategy now. :) We would park 1 group at 2 different objectives consisting of 2 tanks, 2 dps, 2 healers OR 3 tanks, 1 dps, 2 healers. These are the Anvil groups. The other two groups would be parked in between the two objectives and consist of usually 1 tank, 3 dps, 2 healers. These are the Hammer groups. Once an enemy force commits to hitting an objective assigned to an Anvil group (the perceived "weak" group, but actually harder to kill, so it's the strong group), we'd take our Hammer groups and smash them from behind where all their healers just happen to be sitting most of the time.

Basically, it's convincing the enemy to beat on our tank groups while our DPS groups burn them down. The only way to beat that strategy to engage the Hammer before it reaches the Anvil. It also gets into the enemies' heads making them think that they can't even beat our "weak" group. (In actuality, what they perceive as the "weak" group is actually the strong group.) Once you break them psychologically like that, it's easy to turn the fight around and win, as Sara noticed in her Nordenwatch.

Nice work Sara.

2 handed tanking example - ToVL Boss 5

I took some video of my group's Vulture Lord run this week. This one took an hour between solo purgers and crashes, so we called it after this one.



Those who say the Swordmaster is weak are misguided. When people begin to realize that Elves in general are quite selfish, I think they'll be seen a bit differently. People ask for more group friendly abilities and that's not what Elves are in this game. My build for tanking is focused solely keeping myself up without overburdening healers and putting out as much DPS as possible while doing so to hold threat. This allows my DPS to go full blast without worrying about stealing hate.

If a Swordmaster dies to anything, it's usually his own fault. This is especially true in PvE.

2 tanks, 2 healers, 2 DPS is dead...at least for Lost Vale.

I logged into WAR after getting home last night, and I was told that I was needed to tank a Lost Vale run to get some gear for a Witch Hunter who just joined Circle of Rage, my guild on Volkmar.

Here's how it went down. I left the sound in for the first boss since there's useful information about the fight in it, but the rest, you probably don't want to hear it. :)




Moral of the story, high DPS covers a multitude of sins, at least in WAR.

I can't think of a good soundtrack to put with it, so any suggestions are welcome.

How to solve the color puzzle on boss 7 ToVL everytime with no mistakes in 3 easy steps.

At the beginning of the puzzle, 6 players each have a debuff that can be 1 of 3 colors. There are always two of each color, 2 Red, 2 Green, and 2 Blue. If two different colors meet, one of them is removed according to a set pattern. If two of the same color meet, one of the players is killed instantly. For the purpose of this solution, knowing the exact removal pattern is not necessary.

Step 1. Have a red, green, and blue come together. Two of the colors will be knocked out, leaving two of one the colors, referred to as the duplicated color, and one of each of the two remaining colors, the unique colors.

Step 2. Have the unique colors each go to a different duplicated color. This will leave the duplicated color and one of the two unique colors.

Step 3. The two remaining colors come together to solve the puzzle.

Example. After step 1, you have 2 blues, a red and green left. The red should go to one of the blues and the green to the other. This will leave a blue and either a red or green. The final two colors come together to finish the puzzle.

No more wiping to the colors on this fight. Get it done!

On the coordination of CC.

This is major difference between the good premades and ok ones.

It's actually pretty simple to kill someone in this game. DPS > HPS = person dead. As most learned in 6v6 scenario the Ironclad, you can't just focus fire someone and kill them if the opposing team is at all decent.

In order to kill someone you need to stop the opposing teams healing and mitigation. For example, silencing a healer gives you 4 seconds to kill someone. Knock backs are best used to negate the effect of guard, separate a player from the tank guarding them.

One thing you will often hear in a good premade is one player silencing one healer while a second silences another. (Knockdown or stagger works here too, but I have a silence as a SM, so I use that). In a typical scenario, you've dropped the effective healing output of the opposite team in half which should give you enough time to drop any DPS. The healers will then try to rez which stops healing for another 3 seconds (4.5s if you disorient the healer). Focused Mind is good for getting rid of the silence to save a wipe. Usually the team that gets the first kill is going to win the engagement.

Brute force does not win at the highest levels of the game. Timing and finesse do.