what to write..

Well, first group session is done, as is the assignment and one midterm. One midterm to go, group again this Thursday, another assignment to go as well. At the very least, this assignment is almost done. Won't take me long to finish. Did some readings and filling out some of the things that I have to have done for Thursday, 2 chapters read, one left. Atleast it isn't a difficult read, of course, the reading isn't the hard bit, I think thinking is the harder bit, but thought provoking is good...right? Well, sometimes it is anyways, other times it just isn't, but there's not much that can be done about that. So what have I been up to between now and the last time I posted? Studying, assignments. That's most of it. It's the thing I spend the most time doing now it appears. What else? I have been stewing in my own thoughts a lot. Rather a lot of a lot at that. I realize that it isn't the best thing for me to do, but nonetheless, it happens.
I've also designed a few Ravnica decks, few that are doing well so far, I'll see how they go and post them later. You can find them on mtgnews.com if you're really interested though, they're all in the block forum since I don't play T2. Anyways, not sure what I feel like writing really...felt like I should write something though.



~Damon

...

Ok, so I could only identify one of the things that was wrong that I couldn't figure out. As for the rest? I'm not sure. Can't think right now. Food is almost ready though, I can smell that much. Damn, I just ate an hour ago, hungry already. Guess that's what it does to ya after a while. Counsellor appointment tomorrow, group on Thursday, midterm on Friday. What a week this is going to be. The real kicker is that on top of that..I don't really know. I lost my train of thought in the middle of trying to type that sentence and in the 10 minutes that have elapsed, I haven't been able to regain it. So whatever. So sleepy. So tired. I'm losing my mind, and I can't remember what's happened. Maybe this is a sign of something bad. Maybe it's a sign of something else. Somebody help me breath.


~Damon

..

I think I know what it is that's wrong...but I don't feel comfortable writing it down or just telling anyone..


~Damon

And if I should break, if I should fall..

Walked around my good intentions, found that there were none. I blamed my father for the wasted years, we hardly talked, I never thought I would forget this hate, and a phone call made me realize I'm wrong..and if I don't make it know that, I loved you all along, just like sunny days that, we ignore because, we're all dumb and jaded, and I hope to god I figure out what's wrong.

4am, by Our Lady Peace. This song always makes me think that maybe one day, things will be ok between my parents and I. Maybe. Too far into the future. I don't know how many ways I can say I hate them. I would run out of words after a while. Run out of ways to say it because right now, it knows no limits. Maybe moving out and distance from them would do well in fixing things. I don't know, I really don't know. Frankly, I don't care. I want them out of my life, I want them gone from it, so I can live without having them question my every thought and action nonstop. I don't think they even realize what they have done, and still do to me. But of course, because it is a negative comment on them, they'd just block it out, pretend it has nothing to do with them and proceed to blame everything on me as they always do. Used to it by now, most of it just washes over me and frankly I just don't care enough about them to do anything bad to them. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, leaving before they want me to is more than enough, and that is one of my goals. Get a job, find a way to support myself, get a place of my own, find a way to fund my education, and see if things get any better from there.

Someone once said to me that the most dangerous place for me to be was alone. Maybe they're right, maybe they aren't, maybe someone could confirm or deny that for me. Too many someone's. Well, I forget names sometimes, I've never had a good memory, and it's very blatantly obvious. I'm very good at making people want to go away apparently. Human de-magnetism. Yay. Whatever. I am who I am and if that is the effect I have on people so be it. I wish he'd stop calling me already. I hate him. I want him to leave me alone. I want them both to so that I can live my life again.

Enough ranting for now. Maybe. I'm hungry though, so I need food. Food, here we come.


~Damon

Stable, for now

Maybe I am, maybe I'm not. It's been a very very very long few days, but I'm still alive nonetheless. I started another AMV, not everyone's seen my first one yet, that's ok I guess, they'll bug me about it if they really do want to see it. If not, meh, it isn't like it's that great anyways. Perhaps I am a tad harsh on myself. I mean, we are most definitely our own worst critics. All the flaws and mistakes seem to jump out of the screen towards me when I watch it and I can tell where I should change something, but I don't know exactly how. However, I think that even if I did fix every flaw I could find, I would undoubtedly find more because of the simple fact that it is my own work and therefore I could dissect it bit by bit without much trouble.
Nonetheless, less focus on worrying about the flaws of the first and moving onto the second. The first one was using the song My Last Breath by Evanescence, taking clips from X. For this second AMV, I took clips from X as well, except this time to the song Taking Over Me also by Evanescence. I'm at the 1 minute mark of the second one, about a quarter of the way through. Finished the first verse and first chorus, now just have the rest of the song to go.
I'm tired, I don't want to post. I'm going to go curl up in bed and.....something.


~Damon

Team Spotlight part 2!

Yeah, I know, I really am on an MvC:2 kick. Anyways, I got a bit more time to practice with my teams, and the third team on my hilight reel isn't as low-tier as the others, but it only has 1 top tier and she's a toughy to use unlike some of the others. Before I tell you what the team is, let me just say that it absolutely murdered a Magneto/Cable/Psylocke team today, so that's saying something about it. Psylocke kept Magneto from rushing down and let Spiral do swords, Spiral's swords kept Magneto from punishing Psylocke. Obviously, against Cable, the strategy was different. Anyways, I gave away part of the team already, and seeing as how this is me we're talking about here, you can probably guess who the unnamed person on my team is. Anyways, without further ado, let me unveil the team:

#3. Spiral/Sakura/Psylocke - Yeah, I know, Sakura again. What can I say? I can't use Storm, and Sakura is as good as it gets for my "all-purpose" characters. As you can tell, I like playing characters that are a challenge (a good spiral is hard to come by). Ok, so you play this team in 2 ways, and you have to be able to adapt on the fly as the match goes on because Sakura is the ace in the hole. Spiral builds bar, does chip damage, uses Psylocke to do some heavily damaging combos, and protects Psylocke from pixies and combo freaks. Against Cable, Sentinel and Doom, she can just staying on them with her teleporting and expanding swords. No errant assist calls here, one bad assist call will mean dead assist. This team in particularly does really well against Magneto/Sentinel, even better than Sakura/Jin/Doom, and the thing that this team can do, that that one doesn't is that you can zone Cable with Spiral alone. She can constantly stay out of range of their beams (below Doom, eye level with Cable and Sentinel), chips well, can avoid some hard hitting combos, can avoid being chipped back and the list goes on. Spiral has no bad matchups. In fact, Spiral is a bad matchup for a lot of other characters. The biggest thing here to remember is that Spiral does not really use bar. Her stampede sword is a bad special at the best of times, and hyper metamorphosis is level 3, besides, with Spiral, you shouldn't really be throwing out supers left and right, if you want to throw out supers left and right, play Cable, play Sentinel, don't play Spiral.
Anyways, more on team dynamics. Spiral is set to projectile assist (I know, not gamma, strange at first, I have my reasons which I'll explain in a bit), Sakura to dash and Psylocke to anti-air. The reasoning behind this is simple. When I switch out Spiral for Sakura or Psylocke, Spiral becomes my pseudo-trapper/zoner. A simple trick to do a nice bit of chipping damage is to call Spiral projectile assist and dash forward with Psylocke, lp, crouching lk, if this hits, Spiral swords will hit for 6, dash in again crouching lk, launcher, lp, lk, lp, lk, u+hk, 4 hit psyblade, cancel into butterfly super, right after the super finishes, call spiral *immediately* (as in while you're falling), they will land on the swords (yes, that's right, they CANNOT roll this part if you do it properly) and you can OTG them if they don't roll after the swords (which they won't until they catch onto what you're doing). Now, if they block the first dashing lk, 1 hit light psyblade, crouching lk, weak psyflash and rushdown carefully for a bit, calling Spiral to chip, and alternating between psyblade and dashing kick to keep them guessing which one it is that you'll do. until you hit or chip them to death. If they still have an AAA left, you need to use Psylocke to take out that assist ASAP, let Spiral's swords hit, go into a combo, then call Spiral at combo's end. The swords are not part of the combo so they will do full damage.
With Sakura on point after Spiral's done her thing, you have a TON of options available to you. Fierce Hurricane Kick and Spiral projectile is a good way to zone the opponent and keep them grounded, and if you can keep them grounded and force them to play on a level where Sakura is strongest, they run into problems (Blackheart can't get away from Sakura pressure rushdown if it's played well, Doom and Cable don't do well on the ground against a character who's designed to fight on the ground, what's Sentinel going to do if you pressure him to the point where he can't even get away, and the list goes on). Sakura also benefits greatly from Psylocke AA. Sometimes the problem with Sakura's hurricane kick, shouken air combo is that the hurricane kick only hits once because they aren't high enough or they're too short to be hit twice, if Psylocke AA hits, you can guarantee that the full combo will hit since they start higher than Sakura. I won't go over the merits of Sakura again since I already did that extensively in the other post.
Another aspect of this team is that your opponent will need to adjust to each character individually isntead of just trying to deal with them as a whole. Primarily, the biggest difference between these characters is their moving speed. In fact, the order of this team is made in such a way that the speeds go slow/medium/fast. However, don't let the walking speed deceive you, Spiral and Sakura can close gaps very fast, and if they aren't suspecting it, Psylocke will get in their face before they can blink. The third aspect of this team that I want to discuss is the teleporting. I love teleporting. Anyone who knows the characters I play knows this. I almost always have to have a teleporting character on any team I play. There are 3 very very different teleporters on this team. Spiral and Sakura have the best teleports in the entire game. Sakura's leads to her infinite runaway game, Spiral can appear right above their heads. The teleporting is good for getting out of sticky situations very very quickly, so abuse those teleports to no end, they are the difference between dying and living for a very long time.

That's about all for now, any questions, feel free to ask.


~Damon

Triple post..

Ok, haven't done that in a while, granted my first 2 posts weren't really about anything in particular, or about anything at all. Triple posting..damn. One of these days, I'm going to finally lose it. What then? What happens to me then? What happens to the people around me? I find myself listening to Evanescence a lot when I get this bad. Is that a bad thing? Probably. Although that being said, I don't think I have any music that's good for me when I get this bad. So what is it that I am doing at the moment? Chatting and posting, listening to music. Did some work on the CPS706 assignment earlier, damn it's a hard assignment. Oh well. Not much that can be done about it really. I'll finish it, I have tons of time before the assignment is due (something in the next 2 weeks).
Depression group starts in 2 weeks tomorrow. Fun. I'm sure it'll do me a world of good. Well, I'm not going to put it on the cutting block before going, I'll give it a chance. Then we'll see what happens from there. I'm listening to Away From Me, by Evanescence right now, replaced the CD in my CD player with uhh...Hoobastank's self titled album. I can't even write properly. Can't collect my own thoughts. Nothing, I'm a wreck, I'm a mess. I don't know what's wrong with me, I don't know what isn't wrong with me. Maybe someone can answer me this one. Meh. Even if I'm doing horribly, does it matter? Maybe it does, maybe not. Try, try and try some more. That seems to be all I've been doing, but trying only seems to make things worse. Coincidence? Dumb luck? Not sure. I'm tempted to say it isn't, just that I make bad decisions. Meh. Could be, could not be. Whatever. I can't think, I can't do anything right. Seems like things just keep getting worse.


~Damon
How much more will it take? How much more until it breaks me?

...

I hold my breath as this life starts to take its toll
I hide behind a smile as this perfect plan unfolds
But oh, God, I feel I've been lied to
Lost all faith in the things I have achieved
And I

I've woken now to find myself
In the shadows of all I have created
I'm longing to be lost in you
(Away from this place I have made)
Won't you take me away from me

Crawling through this world as disease flows through my veins
I look into myself, but my own heart has been changed
I can't go on like this
I loathe all I've become

I've woken now to find myself
In the shadows of all I have created
I'm longing to be lost in you
(Away from this place I have made)
Won't you take me away from me

Lost in a dying world I reach for something more
I have grown so weary of this lie I live

I've woken now to find myself
In the shadows of all I have created
I'm longing to be lost in you
(away from this place I have made)
Won't you take me away from me

- Away From Me by Evanescence


The things I listen to...

Hey, what do you know, a post

Ok, so I'm mostly tier-less and that's not exactly a bad thing, and by tier-less, I mean I can now avoid using multiple tier characters and still give tier teams a run for their money. So what are my new mostly tier-less "gem" teams? I've got a few, 3 or 4 actually. I like how they've been playing out and they've even been giving runaway teams a good fight. I'm going to just run down them really quickly.

1. Sakura/Jin/Dr. Doom - This team is to deal with Sentinel/AAA. I know, it's a bit of a broad way of putting it, but that's basically what it's for. Jin is the answer to the AAA both when he's in play and his AAA. If the AA in question is Cable, Jin is brought in safely as soon as possible to kill Cable before he has a chance to get in to do some real damage. The purpose of this team is not to transform Sakura into Dark Sakura as soon as possible. In fact, ths team works better with normal Sakura on point rather than putting Doom on point to build meter. Both Sakura and Jin are heavily underrated and that works to this teams advantage very nicely. Normal Sakura has answers to triangle-jumping and flying Sentinel in the form of her Shinkou Hadouken (remember, the normal one goes at an angle, not straight) and if an errant AAA is called, she can do the guard break glitch with her Shouken cancelled into a Shinkou Hadouken. Combine that with Doom rocks and DHC into Blodia Punch is one very very dead assist. Also, if you DHC into Blodia punch and they're far enough away, you can pull of the Guard Break glitch on the Blodia punch leading to not only a dead assist but a very hurt point character (Doom rocks obviously to keep them from doing anything to you).
Why do I say this team is strong against Sentinel? Because while Sakura stops Sentinel from flying, Doom forces Sentinel to take to the skies. The idea is to force the Sentinel player to try to adapt strategies mid-fight, using 2 characters that are used so rarely that there's no real set strategy to going against them. Jin assist may not have the same kind of power as Captain Commando's Captain Corridor, but the Saotome Dynamite gives you an answer to triangle jumpers, along with Sakura's Shinku Hadouken. The lack of Captain Commando or Blackheart hurts this team when trying to deal with Storm or Spiral, but I'm going to be very blunt here, Storm and Spiral give every character trouble and have no bad matchups at all. None. The only thing you can really do is punish with Doom rocks and Dark Sakura (I know, I just said that this team functions better with normal Sakura, but sometimes, Dark Sakura is just a necessity).
As for Cable, while this team doesn't have the best answers to Cable, it has 3 very good ones. Jin's Anti-Air assist has 1 frame invincibility, so if he thinks that he can chip Sakura from upclose with AHVB, pull out that Jin assist, block low and send him to the other side of the screen (Sakura crouches under AHVB if it's too close, her height makes her *perfect* for dealing with most tier characters). When Jin's on point, You lose a bit of power for dealing with Cable, but hopefully, you'll have dealt with the Anti-Air assist (You did take it out with a DHC Blodia punch and that's why Jin's in right?) which gives you a pressure chip trap game up close that's only really rivalled by Strider/Doom, Sentinel/Doom and Bison/Doom (the characters that actually do something to you while Doom rocks are there). Not bad huh? Remember that Jin chips on *every single flaming attack*. So his fierces and roundhouses combined with Doom assist is a ton of chipping damage on anyone, especially someone huge like Sentinel. Speaking of Sentinel again, Sakura can also infinite Sentinel to build 5 bars, super and DHC to Saotome Cyclone to knockout Sentinel (about 72 hits to kill). Doom can also keep Cable grounded which means dead Cable.
Like I said, biggest advantage to this team is that your opponent *will* underestimate you. Sakura and Jin are *hard* to play well, they aren't the scrub characters that everyone thinks they are. They aren't comboless, they just aren't combo machines. The combos you can pull off are short and sweet, and they HURT. Don't ever underestimate the: lp, lp, Saotome Cyclone, OTG Saotome Dynamite cancelled into blodia punch, d+hk cancelled into Blodia Punch. It's 3 bars, but it hurts. A lot. Even a basic Sakura air combo takes off about 40-50% from Sentinel, and that's no easy feat in and of itself.

That was a mouthful...ok, onto team 2...

2. Bison or Sakura/Thanos/Jin or Psylocke or Captain Commando or Cyclops - Sakura and Jin are for the same reasons above, but Bison+Thanos is really a sight to behold. The traps and combos you can pull off using Thanos Capture assist with Bison's psycho field and psycho shot are really something to see if you ever get a chance to. Because of Bison's basic ground combo, you can actually keep them pinned in the death sphere indefinitely if you don't throw the Nightmare Kneepress but replace that with a psycho shot. The death sphere hits them while they're still stunned from the psycho shot and you can then repeat the cycle. If you pause for a second after the death sphere hits, you'll reset the combo. It's a fast and effective way to build meter while keeping them pinned down. When you've had enough of bouncing them around like that, finish them off with Bison's horrendously damaging psycho crusher air combo. If you want to DHC out into Thanos, use his SOUL super because power orb is too slow to hit, they can roll out of Space, and reality...well, they're in the air, reality isnt going to connect, and they can roll it too if on the odd chance it does. Any of the anti-airs work with this team really, Cyclops works well with Thanos, but Bison thrives more on Psylocke, Captain Commando or Jin. I'd just pick whichever anti-air you feel best with on that day. Cammy is good too, but she can't chip like Psylocke, Commando, Jin or Cyclops can so she's a tad wasted on this team. Hell, even Dr. Doom would be good in the last slot, up to you which you like really, but the team shines with just Bison and Thanos.
The only problem that this team runs into is that it has NO answer for Magneto's and Storms short of the anti-air assist, and before you say anything, I'm dead serious. Cable isn't a problem because Bison can rape beamers with Thanos assist (ever teleported and had Cable start AHVB...only to get caught by bubble and be proceeded to be combo'd for his bar? It's funny to watch). This team however, has next to no answer for Spiral. Short of Captain Commando AAA. But if you're playing this team against Spiral/Sentinel/Storm, you're just asking to get your ass handed to you on a stick anyways. But if you are brave enough to try, get in Spiral's face, and when you see Sentinel assist, teleport, go after Sentinel and don't let up until Sentinel is gone. Spiral and Storm are going to give you problems out the wazoo anyways, you need to drop them the moment they show a face as an assist, especially Storm. Bison can't handle Storm runaway, so get ahead in life as soon as you can and force them to come to you instead. Against the tier-less teams, this team is just power ontop of power, ontop of power. Jin instead of CapCom for non-tier, CapCom or Cyclops against tier, Psylocke is good whenever. The trick to this team is to never ever *ever* let up one you have an offensive edge. It's not as strong as Bison/Doom, but Bison/Thanos has many offensive options and Thanos is a really strong character when he comes into play (again, not the same calibre as Doom, but these are mostly NON-tier teams).
Swap Bison for Sakura when you run into huge tier team issues, Sakura is better equipped to dealing with them, although the above team will work better against tier than this one, this one is...a very good non-tier team. Pushing Bison and calling AA leads to a Nightmare Kneepress combo followed by multiple power balls on the assist taking it out very quickly. This team can trap, but remember, there's no Doom, so smart playing is required to be good with this team. Against Cable, if he's on his last bit of life and you can't teleport out of the way of an AHVB fast enough, you might want to consider Air PC IMMEDIATELY DHC into Soul. Since Soul's star up is instantaneous, you can grab Cable out of the AHVB sometimes, either way, Bison takes more damage than Thanos. So sometimes, bring him in to take a small combo. But unlike the team above, this team has no way of dealing with Spiral and Storm short of the AA. Also, be careful of Sentinel, Bison isn't the fastest nut to be dealing with Sentinel and Thanos is a MASSIVE target for Sentinel rushdown. This team has the tools to fight Sentinel, but they aren't as great as other answers and it's very difficult to play against him at the best of times as is. Unlike the Sakura/Jin/Dr. Doom team, this team cannot combat flying Sentinel from the ground, and keep him pinned down from above. So you're going to be relying a LOT on mind games and capitalizing on every single missed opportunity. You don't get many chances against Sentinel, don't pass them up (and I can't iterate how important it is to take out his AAA at the first possible point in time to do so, removing the AAA makes the fight a lot easier as you can now take the fight to him without worrying as much about being blown out of the sky). Be careful about calling Thanos. Try not to make it so that your opponent can take advantage because Thanos is a massive target.

Yes, I have a few more teams in the works, but I don't want to unveil them until I've played them a bit more and tuned them a bit. The 2 above I've played a bit, had a chance to test and try things out, and they've proven effective. I'm working on a few other teams at the moment, but like I said, I won't unveil them until I'm ready and am satisfied with them. Anyways, not much else I wanted to post right now, just felt like ranting a bit..


~Damon
If I go crazy then will you still call me superman? If I'm alive and well will you be there holding my hand?