lolrage

This is what comes of trying to sneak in some Aion at 2am.

Or rather, I started at 12.30am to get in a spot of clam harvesting because for whatever obscure economic reason, that particular crafting resource is selling really well and I need the money bad.

I've got 1/4 of an experience bar to go before level 40, and I had heard that the skill books at that point cost a good 1.2 mil to afford.

Hovering at about 1.1 mil, I thought I'd see how many clams I could pick up in an hour and hope to offload them for about 2500 a piece.

At 1.30am, I'd gotten over 230, which is quite a respectable 570k if I can offload them all in a couple days. Except that out of greed, habit, and a B5 DVD playing in the other monitor, I thought I'd keep at it for a while longer until that episode ended.

Warned by some sixth sense, at around 1.50am, I looked up just as the harvesting progress bar ended to see an red enemy Elyos charging straight at me. Egads, a ranger with a fancy bow.

Having learned from 20 past levels of faceplanting that turning about and running was quite hopeless, I tried the opposite and charged him too. The little squirt kept squirming out of reach and laying stun after stun, slow after slow, immobilize after immobilize on me.

I burned up lesser healing potions to try and break the immobilize (though I admit I didn't have greater healing potions on hand, I don't know if those would break the slow). I used up all four means of regaining hp I had - two skills, two types of potions. I got maybe 3-4 hits in on him, and he got about 30.

I fell over, raging. Seriously raging.

Perhaps it is the accumulated humiliations of twenty levels, where I rationalized it away as a level disparity. Well, I was level 39, this guy was level 44, when I later looked him up on the character database site.

Rationally, it's possibly still quite disparate a match, with me in hopeless gear at that, but this guy only had a gold bow and he was wearing greens and blues at most.

Maybe it's hormones but this particular death really pissed me off. To the point that I marched straight to the auction house and bought a stack of 50 greater healing potions for 56k in preparation for the NEXT time I get jumped.

Then I stared at the highly desirable but VERY EXPENSIVE stone that gives a special skill to gladiators, known as Ankle Snare. It apparently does a 10 second immobilize that is not broken on hit (but can be removed using a potion.) It might possibly help a melee glad catch up to someone trying to kite him, though since I have never used it, I cannot tell how many counters there are for it.

This baby normally sells for millions, though there was one time I saw the price plunge to 280k, but I couldn't even afford it then.

The cheapest it was going for this night was 780k. I had 950k in my pocket.

I stared at it for 10 more seconds, and then I hit the buy button.

Talk about an impulse and rage-driven purchase.

This quite fubars my skill book purchase for level 40 unless I get a couple lucky drops, and if my harvesting venture pans out.

But I am just SO tired of being run around and kited and shot like a pincushion. If it is my latency at fault, then I'm still going to have a problem regardless.

*sighs* Well, I have to work on them one at a time. Next up, somehow obtain 20% run speed boots. That's either group a lot, or pay 500k to obtain the materials needed.

P.S. As an addendum, after re-equiping with my new uber-expensive immobilize skill, I went tearing back to the same spot I died, hankering for revenge and more than 75% sure that I was going to die miserably again.

Another level 44 gladiator was broadcasting the location of a ganker Elyos in the same area. Aha, I think, did he die to the same ranger that offed me?

I get to the nearby town and see the 44 glad standing at the entrance with only half his hp. Then he starts running out of town, a level 50 cleric from a different guild hot on his heels. !!! I tear after the two of them, hoping they will lead me to the bloody ranger and we can all swarm the bastard.

Well, we run past his white-winged corpse. Sheesh. Someone got to him before I did. :(

Then I see another red diamond that indicates another Elyos on the edge of my radar, and so do the other two Asmodians. We tear off chasing it down, and find ourselves in a big old scrum with 5-7 of us, and 3 of them getting the worst of it. With my crap speed, I only manage to do one AoE attack that finishes one of them off, but they had already been quite worked over by the horde.

Not exactly the climatic vindication I had been hoping for, but grrr, better than dying again. There were also a number of other glads in that scrum, a 47, and a 50. I can only hope that my pvp life improves when I get into the 40s range and start accumulating passably decent gear. *mutter, grumble*