Me vs. Silent Round I.

I buffed with Life, War, and Item Mastery spells. Armor V and Impen
IV. (I can't cast Impen V yet without buffing Focus/Self yet...)

I chose to buff Life and War so I would have a better chance to hit
Silent's insane Magic D. In retrospect I should probably have chosen
different buffs.

Most Mage vs. Melee battles go - Mages vulns, drains a few times,
finishes with War.

I had problems from the beginning as I couldn't get a vuln to stick.
I did manage to cast Lightning Prot V as he was charging with his
Lightning Atlan, though it did little good vs. the Fire spear he
switched to at the last minute.

I was taking very high damage, even through Armor and Impen. perhaps
I should have cast Fire Prot self then, but he was attacking so fast,
I pretty much paniced and went for drains. Orange Mage is about to
die! Orange Mage needs food... Badly.

Though my initial drains helped me a bit, once he started getting
lower on life, I couldn't get the War in to do the job. His Spear is
just so fast, and he's hitting for an average of 15-20 a hit, as I
recall. Maybe higher.

The match was fun, though I was frustrated at how this little level
42 could beat me so quickly.

My second fight with Chinook and Drake was my favorite. I really had
no tactic other than to try and focus on Drake first, then Chinook.

Drake came in, and I was able to Fire Vuln him. As I remember, I got
a couple drains in, and he left out of drain range while Chinook
started pelting me with arrows. I started doing some slide-casting
which helped me evade a few arrows, and turned my attention to him
hitting him with a Fire Vuln as well. A bit later, Drake charges
back, and I'm able to finish him this time, but Chinook is off and
running around like mad.

I was able to land a drain or two when he stopped to fire, but then
he would run off my radar, heal, and come back.

I was getting low on mana so rather than chase at this point, I
stopped, healed, cast Health to mana, healed, health to mana, healed,
etc.

He came in again, and I tried to hit him with Slowness debuffs.
After about five fizzles, I buff my creature, and finally get them to
stick. I then fumble around my spellbar and find my quickness buffs,
and cast them.

I try to drain stamina and health from Chinook whenever he's close,
and heal myself whenever I get him to run. I am later able to get
close enough to catch a couple of Drains and finish with a Harm IV.

What an awesome battle.

The second match with Silent went much like the first. I used the
same buffs, but didn't even bother with a protection this time as
Silent no doubt buffed two weapons. I feel like this one went a bit
worse than the first, perhaps because of the massive resists I
received from him. That will have to stop very soon.

All in all a great night. I'm looking forward to the next one in
say.. Two weeks?

Monty