First off, I wish to say that I'm sorry for being such a poor cabal-mate. For the longest time now I've been dealing with personal matters and real life, and actually wound up forgetting I even had a TSW account. Several months later and a friend is telling me about Tokyo and I remember that oh yeah, TSW was a thing. However, I came back on today and found myself slammed with the same problems that plagued me in the past, even moreso now than before, due to the time spent away:

1) Lack of direction
The main issue I had previously was the fact that, I was never sure what I was doing in TSW. I spent hours trying (and failing) to get into NM groups to get BB...for a build I wasn't even concretely sure about. I can whip up a half-decent set of abilities, but gear? The math for that is beyond me (TSW's formulas and calcuations are a bit much for someone like myself, for whom math is an antithesis.) So I was basically sitting on Bullion without any idea of what I was going to use it on. I knew basics (650 hit, 900 pen) but not the math of how to GET to those numbers.

2) Grouping
LFG channel is basically a one-way ticket for a ride going 250mph into depressionville (if you'll excuse me getting poetic). People want what feels like overgeared or already highly experienced individuals for runs to make them fast, but you need to be able to get groups to get the experience or the gear (the good ol' catch 22). This left me feeling rather down when I realized I was basically stuck running Polaris and Darkness War almost exclusively because I neither had the gear (what people wanted) or the experience (which I couldn't get) for any of the other NMs, besides maybe the first Hell dungeon (I forget the name, with the Tyrant Machine last boss), if I could get a group for that. I long to be able to actually do the NY Raid, but the fact my gear sits all too comfortably at 10-10.1 renders that impossible. Which leads me to the third issue.

3) Timing
I live in California, which is GMT -8. As one might expect, this presents the usual timezone issues. A large chunk of Nine Swords seems to be EU, which made trying to be present for events and regular gatherings difficult because I had to remember to do the -8 and often that placed some events in the early morning or afternoons for me, which during the week was difficult (I have volunteer work interspersed during the morning until around 2pm PST). So often I'd come online only to find a minimum of individuals around, unless it was Raid day, but that was obviously for the raid.

I'm not blaming anyone in Nine Swords, or even Nine Swords itself. The only person to blame here is myself. I still haven't even bought Tokyo yet due to a lack of funds (and the inability to decide if I should purchase the CE version of the issue or not, I'm not sure if it's worth it), which I'll hopefully be correcting soon, but I'm already well behind the curve compared to everyone else. In general I find myself in an odd, uncertain place, and I don't wish to be dead weight to a group that was as nice as yourselves. I'm just not sure what I should do with myself.

I've not been a Sword for long, but here's a few general things that might help:

1) Use a gear planner, so you know what needs to be done. I use this one: http://joakibj.com/tswcalc/#
With that you can set up what you want to get to and it tells you BB fuses and crits you need to get there.

2) With the LFG channel, if you're not sporting 10.5's out the wazoo, dont even try and join any group that is advertizing for 'quick' or any synonym of that. Look for 'relaxed' or similar. Alternatively, join the noobmares channel and try there. Most of the people in there are either lower geared, or are higher geared people looking to help. Use /chat join noobmares for that.

3) The tyranny of time. Being Australian, I understand it too. Not much I can say about that aside from using a time zone calculator and be prepared to have a few early mornings and late nights. I find timeanddate.com helps there.

And I doubt anyone's going to say you're dead weight. Cause even if you're not super active, no-one is dead weight, ever.

1) The problem with a gear planner (and I've tried them) is I don't know the distribution of stats, or rather, the science of how stats SHOULD be distributed. Where should I put most of my Hit Rating? Or my Pen? In my Head Talisman? My Neck Talisman? My weapon? How much is too much?

2) I've tried Noobmares off and on. Perhaps it's more populated now than it use to be?

1: Well, that's kind of the point of gear planners, you don't need to know the science of how stats should be distributed. You already mentioned you knew the 650 hit, 900 pen stats, so you can always just play around with the gear planner to reach those values. Also you already know how much is too much, anything past those values.

But, if you want to be the most efficient about your stats, that's where knowing a bit more can help. My preference is hit on head and wrist talismans, and pen on neck, finger and two minor talismans and crit power on the other (do the crit power talisman last) then Crit Rating on my builder weapon and Crit Power on my Elemental Force weapon. The weapon glyphs vary per build more than the talisman glyphs.

From there, just use drops as you slowly build up your custom talismans to have the proper glyph stats. Also, always upgrade your glyphs to 10.4 before upgrading the talisman.

Claretta's Reaper thread, while aimed at leech healers, is a pretty good read even for DPS since leech healers and DPS prioritize the same glyph stats.

You can find that here.

2: The population of Noobmares fluctuates, so some days you may have issues finding groups and other days it will be easy. Also, if you're not already. I do suggest forming your own groups though and not just asking if there are any groups.

As for the cabal, I'm PST as well and usually see between 3-12 people online at any given time. Weekdays are usually slower than weekends, but there usually are people running stuff a couple nights a week. I also highly suggest scheduling runs on the forums here. You can make a post in the Notice Board saying you want to run something on a day and time and you'll usually get a group, or most of a group. Makes it much easier sometimes.

We also have members who are new to the game and still going though the Kingsmouth and Egypt areas of the story so you're not dead weight at all. And in my opinion, the CE is OK, but not amazing. And you can always buy Tokyo now (or when you have the funds) then the next time you have the money, just upgrade to the CE. Doing that doesn't cost any more money.

MelficeCyrum wrote:1) The problem with a gear planner (and I've tried them) is I don't know the distribution of stats, or rather, the science of how stats SHOULD be distributed. Where should I put most of my Hit Rating? Or my Pen? In my Head Talisman? My Neck Talisman? My weapon? How much is too much?

You should tryout testlive.
There are instructions on the TSW forums for getting it set up.
You can copy a live character over and there is an NPC that provides you with infinite BB, resources, Nightwatch Kits etc. to test different builds. A couple hours futzing on testlive in the Crucible helps me sort things out all the time.

MelficeCyrum wrote: 1) Lack of direction
The main issue I had previously was the fact that, I was never sure what I was doing in TSW. I spent hours trying (and failing) to get into NM groups to get BB...for a build I wasn't even concretely sure about. I can whip up a half-decent set of abilities, but gear? The math for that is beyond me (TSW's formulas and calcuations are a bit much for someone like myself, for whom math is an antithesis.) So I was basically sitting on Bullion without any idea of what I was going to use it on. I knew basics (650 hit, 900 pen) but not the math of how to GET to those numbers.

This is one of the more common stat distributions for end game dps stats.
http://joakibj.com/tswcalc/#weapon=4,0, ... ,0,4,0,0,0

Aberlour has it pretty right, though. His preference is a little different to mine. I have Crit and Crit power on the head, 3/1 Pen and Hit glyphs on the majors and basically 3/1 Hit and Pen on the minors with Crit and Crit Power on the weapons.

But that's cause till recently I wasn't running Elemental Force and I really should reglyph now I am.

And in the mean time the number of NA based players has grown a lot and is much bigger then when you were playing.

As mentioned before, get some cabal NM runs going by either scheduling or shouting out in the cabal chat.
The notice board is there for everyone to use and most of our members are up for ad hoc runs too.