BurningFist_EU

39,650 words to go.

Chapter 10 is coming on nicely. Gotta love writing in random order

I still need a title though. Anyhoo, I put up my three main character's descriptions up on the excerpt thingy.

For CoX reference: Alexei is an ice Tanker, Novaskaya is a pre-AR AR Blaster (with the Leadership pool) and Sarovitch is a little sharp knife/seediness Stalker.

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Argh my characters are at it again! I was going to introduce the leader of my Thieves Guild as a sinister old man.. but when he opened the door he was camper than a row of tents!

Why do they insist on having lives of their own?

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Heh, he sounds like a great character already

I know what you mean about them having their own lives. My slight plot-device character, the drunk Cossack mechanic I mentioned yesterday, is already in danger of upstaging my other characters.

Thanks for the encouragement Coile
My problem is that I read what I've written and convince myself that I got lucky. It's being out of practice I think, I used to write a lot 15 or so years ago and remember getting over the same bump back then too. This Nanowrimojamaflip thing is a good exercise for getting back into writing I reckon.

Anyway, I'm back underway now. I fast forwarded to chapter 10 where our heroes get up to mischief at the Battle of Kursk. 1200 new words so far and I'm hoping to get another 800-1000 on top of that before bed. I'll easily ding 10k words tonight anyway.

My story seems to be squeezing out one of my favourite main characters. It's getting harder and harder to keep him in the role I originally intended without him turning into a Gandalf type character played by Robbie Coltrane. Looks like I'll have to write him out but I'll try to get him in later on. I like him too much to leave out altogether.

I've also hit a familiar personal stumbling block. Having spent much of yesterday tweaking what I've done and finding that I really like most of it so far, I'm getting a little nervous about continuing in case I can't keep up the quality. It is ridiculous of course as it'll be worse not to finish and besides, the reason I started with this is to find a way past that block and just get on with it.

Anyway, I'm off to see a couple of short films at the Leeds Film Festival now then maybe do some cathartic Bruting when I get back.

The show will go on.

Not many words today but I've made a lot of progress on the overall sweep of the story. Figured out one of the missing characters I needed, he'll be a Cossack who's terrified of horses but can fix anything mechanical. Oh and he'll probably be a drunkard.

I wrote some stuff that'll give a flavour of the climax when I get that far. I'm quite happy that I genuinely hate my baddie. Just a shame I won't be able to play the CoX version of him again after this. He is, not to put too fine a point on it, a [censored].

EDIT: And that's a very bad word indeed.

I put the opening paragraphs up as an excerpt too, there is a bit of ugliness in there but that'll get straightened out later.

Hah! In your face house alarm!

300 more words and I've just discovered how brilliant SS officers are to describe.

People who cannot set house alarms properly should be ritually burgled by the community on the authority of the local magistrate. Hour 3 of the house across the road's almost incessant wailing.

Little progress today I expect.

42,291 words to go.

Chapter 1 is almost done bar some expansion that I can't face at the moment and Chapter 4 is about halfway there. Once I've squared a couple of other characters Chapter 2 will be on the go and Chapter 3 will be when I've daydreamed up another battle scene.

I'm fairly happy that the story I have in mind is starting to divide itself into chapters, for a moment there I was worried it would be one long unbroken slab of story. Still lacking a title though.

I do have one small problem that my main villain won't fit into the main battle in the story very well. The main battle will be WAY COOL though so I'll have to figure a way to get him in there. Oh yeah, and there's no way that what I have in mind will fit into 50,000 words, not without some serious mental editing anyway.

New excerpt up, this time from Chapter 4. It's quite long too but what the hell.

44,777 words to go. A new excerpt tomorrow I think.

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HOW FRUSTRATING!

It's most of the way through day 2 and I still haven't written anything!

I was struggeling to think of a reasonable start, walked the dog, thought of one, got back, was about to write, then my best friend's recently dumped girlfriend rang up. YOu can pretty much workt he rest out. Surfice to say, my day of writing has been brutally murdered! However, I will not sleep until I have written stuff.

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If you're stuck with the start write something from the middle that you've already got a good idea about. It all has to be written so you don't have to start writing at the beginning.

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Looking good so far mate! Just don't forget to add zombies, clowns, ninjas, pirates, naked women, and maybe dinosaurs before you're done. Can't BELIEVE so many "serious" writers miss something so obvious

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Hehe thanks. I have to be honest, I can't promise most of that stuff but there are cool things ahead provided motivation/procrastination over other things holds out. I really want to give a clue about the middle section but if I gave it away I'd have a negative modifier to all subsequent motivation checks.

46,339 words to go...

47,717 words to go.

I've got most of the first battle scene nailed (how close to the actual beginning it is is yet to be determined) and have made a good start on the opening. Some of the descriptive feels a bit fattening at the moment but I'm not going to start picking at it at this stage. My plan is to just let the words come as they come and then fix the nasty bits in a week or two by mounting a Stalinesque purge of adjectives.

Against all reason I've signed up for this too. I blame it on a bad night's sleep and too much coffee this morning.

Short of anything resembling a proper idea, preparation or indeed motivation it looks like I'll be painfully dragging out a CoX toon's backstory to 50,000 words. Or maybe a lot less.

Anyway, Gibbonici's the name and thanks to the power of procrastinating over something else, I even have an excerpt up.
49,513 words to go.

I have a real love/hate relationship with AR. I just can't get on with the fact that its best actual rifle attacks are so very underwhelming a lot of the time due to so much lethal/smashing resistance out there. Sniping an even level Longbow minion for less that half his health is always a bit disappointing. Not to mention frightening when the rest of the spawn come running/flying in with all their various attacks and synergies.

Web Grenade/Ignite + Flamethrower is often the only thing you have I find and it's starting to get a little old now. But hey, that's what alting is for

Maybe the Inventions system will let AR slot enhancements to do different types of damage? That would make the set as good as it should be.

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Ignite - Creates a static patch of flame. Useful for blocking things like stairs, doorways, and other things, but Caltrops will do the job too. Also has a fear component that will scatter carefully herded mobs, so not the best. Flamethrower has better damage and is much more useful.

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Ignite AND Caltrops is what you want. Grab a bunch of bad guys, drop your 'trops on them and then show them the light in the form of superheated petrochemical gel courtesy of Ignite. And then Flamethrower the remains.

Plus, Ignite recharges so fast you can lay another patch on the screaming, burning survivors if you want to be even less heroic about it.

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EMP doesn't drop toggles if you have AM running, as you still get a slither of end back

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I didn't mean that it did, I was just warning about mobs that can toggle drop with stuns and sleeps etc. EMP is an awesome power and the end penalty isn't much of a problem even with AM down if you're careful. With most mobs pacified for a considerable distance it's pretty easy to conserve end on attacks.

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A SR scrapper is always going to get mezz'd less, and end-drained less, and slowed less, simply because they get HIT less.

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Furthermore, SR's mez protection is an easily perma-able clicky as opposed to Regen's droppable toggle. Plus Practiced Brawler doesn't make you look like a fairy, unlike Integration. It does have a slightly annoying rooting animation, but it looks cool so thats OK.


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So who would you send in to fight a Malta Sapper in issue 7?

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The same as I'd send before I7: [garyoldmaninleon] EVERYBODY!! [/garyoldmaninleon]

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First there is no anchor. Then there is an anchor. Then there's none.

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Hehe, very true. After about level 35ish in half-decent teams it gets even more Zen: there is no target. Rad debuffs are so slow to apply that by the time they've kicked in the spawn has already been wiped out.

With Nucleopatra I mainly use the debuffs against AVs (where they are very handy) and other strong boss types. The rest of the time I'm using Choking Cloud and Oppressive Gloom from the Dark Epic pool to lock mobs down and out of the fight.

By slotting attacks for -def and using Aim it's quite amazing (nerfably so I fear) how many you can hold and disorient, provided you can survive those first few seconds until the CC and OG ticks kick in of course. I usually run in with the Tanker and fire Aim (if it's up) and Irradiate (3x defdebuff, 2x acc) as soon as I reach the spawn just to make sure the first few ticks are as effective as possible. After that I use my attacks (defdebuff slotted) to make sure they remain as susceptible to the auras as possible. With a bit of practice and care you can lock down whole spawns of adds using this tactic, and if things start getting out of hand, well you've always got EMP

Of course anything that drops toggles is bad news so you have to be careful with mobs that have stuns, sleeps or holds. Oh and those Nemesis Jaeger contraptions are to be kept as far away as possible because they'll chop the [censored] out of you almost instantly.

I have no idea how well this would work in PvP though. Laughably poorly I imagine.

Took this screenie a few days ago and it came out pretty well.
Choking Cloud FTW!

I can recommend Cobra Strike, it's amazingly useful for taking an opponent out of the fight for a while. Slotted with a couple of Disorient enhances it'll last long enough to dispatch two guys before your Cobra Struck guy comes round.

As ToughGuy says the Fighting pool isn't that great for an SR Scrapper, besides which you can get an epic pool instead between 41 and 50. Most Scrappers seem to go for Body Mastery for the Focused Accuracy (very nice for spotting Stalkers), but Weapon Mastery gives you Caltrops (always good to have) and Shuriken (surprisingly underrated IMO). Darkness Mastery has some nice control too with a hold and an AOE immobilise, as well as a couple of blast type attacks.

I run both Choking Cloud and Oppressive Gloom with Nucleopatra, and back them both up by slotting Irradiate with -Def. I've also started slotting my other attacks with a bit of -Def too. After the first tick of CC and OG the result can be quite hilarious.

I do get End issues in long fights with both debuffs running but Stamina makes it manageable, and with all the held/stunned fools in the vicinity Dark Consumption should help with that.

One thing though, Oppressive Gloom does damage to your Hit Points for each of its victims and although it's not very much it can really add up if you're affecting a lot of mobs for a long time, so you might be using the Rad heal a bit more often. It's not a deal breaking issue mind, but it's worth considering if you think you might have End issues.

That said, the only time I've seen my Health go down a lot solely due to OG was in Perez Park while bullying Hellions.

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For some people there is the option of rezzing at SG base too..

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For sure, and I'll be doing that and loading up on insps while I'm there. As I said, the episode that got me out of PvP was in November and we had no med facilities in our base then.

Still, teleporting people out of their own hospital shouldn't be possible. Hell, teleporting people out of their side's base/safe zone shouldn't be possible. I'm just surprised that it's still doable after all this time.

It doesn't work if you have no insps left (which doesn't take long in PvP) and no mez-protection. On that last occasion I logged out and in again and got out of the zone under PvP protection. It comes to something when you have to use an exploit just to leave a PvP zone

I say teleganking got me out of the PvP habit because I fully intended to go back after levelling up a couple of munchkinised PvP characters and getting a regular team together, but I got distracted by altitis. I still want to get back into PvP but I'll be taking nothing that doesn't stand a chance against hospital camping telegankers.

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Overall I try to be tolerant to any behaviour because those things pass.

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Teleganking out of the villain hospitals was happening last November and it's what put me out of the PvP habit. It's a bit disappointing to hear that it's still happening as I'm wanting to get back into it.

The annoying thing with it is many builds have absolutely nothing they can do against it and getting TPed from the hospital, ganked, getting TPed from the hospital, ganked over and over again is no fun at all. Especially when you just want to get out of the zone having accepted defeat 10 minutes ago...

I was kinda hoping this flaw had been fixed months ago.

Curses! I can do nothing remotely TF-like this Sunday due to having friends from across the land up for the annual gathering.