Clark_NA

When City of Heroes first began, I create Nightprowl, a Martial Arts/Super Reflexes scrapper. I creates a backstory for her, then later I started expanding on it and ended up with several stories. It's now at a point where one can read through the episodes and not be left with a cliffhanger, and the central aspects of the original story have been concluded, so I figured I would post links to the stories on the CoH forum for everyone to read.

I'm posting links rather than the entire stories simply because each part is around 10,000 words, give or take a couple thousand, making them too big to post in their entirety here.

Episode One:
Birth of a Hero: Nightprowl

Episode Two:
Part 1: Cathy's Night Out
Part 2: Gerald's Search
Part 3: Cat in a Gilded Cage
Part 4: Truth and Lies
Part 5: Nightprowl Unleashed

Episode Three:
Part 1: The Search Ends
Part 2: Life and Death
Part 3: Aftermath

While not part of the above stories, before CoH was released I also wrote Birth of a Hero: Boxcar. Boxcar shows up in Episode Three of the Nightprowl stories and while I do lightly go over who/what he is, his origin story better explains him (I'm not sure if readers would fully understand Boxcar just by reading the Nightprowl stories). If you're confused about him while reading the third episode, feel free to read his origin story as well.

Level 30 Claws/Ninjitsu stalker here, and I've been doing fine accuracy-wise. I'd like to get the 5% drawn weapons buff, but right now I'm not seeing an extraordinarily high number of misses. The toughest mobs I'm fighting are red bosses though; purples can get me whiffing a lot, but that's to be expected. I've got one acc SO in each attack.

I think it might be just the play style of a stalker in general which seems to exaggerate a whiffed attack - when an attack hits you're quickly trying to chain another attack or the mob's dead so you're moving on to the next one, but when one misses you're thinking 'dammit, this guy isn't dead yet and now I have to wait for the next attack to cycle', plus you don't have a whole lot of hitpoints to be standing in front of a mob whiffing your attacks. With the assassin attack dormant for much of a battle (needs placate to cycle, and needs to not have other mobs beating on you) it's hard not to have gaps in your attack cycle until you get to a higher level.

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You know, I still haven't run into any Archvillian or monster that one shotted me unless it was +3 or above. Two shotted yes. If you fight even level or +1 AVs what the heck is one shotting you so often? And if it's one or two AVs in the entire game do you think you could use an orange pill for that one encounter?

I don't know, I hate to sound like a fanboi because there is plenty still wrong with the game and SR even with this buff (cough*tohitbuffs*cough) but for me the one shot scenario is a non-issue. I have never actually encountered it in game and there is an easy and obvious way to prepare for it.

Getting two shotted has been a threat many times however.

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I've been one-shot by:
Bobcat (+1 level I think, maybe +2; I had less than 20 too few HP to take the AoE Alpha)
Clockwork King (even)
Infernal (even)
Siege (+1 level)
Battle Maiden (+1 level)
Neuron (in fact, I was strangely proud that I fought Neuron 6 times and took his alpha all six times. Dirtnapped me at least once on five of those fights, and the only reason I didn't die on the sixth was because I was called in to help out a group who had cleared everything but him, so that Neuron was a few levels below me).

I think Siege is the only one who didn't dirtnap me multiple times (I've only fought him twice). I was never a perma-elude scrapper though, and I didn't take tough; I felt neither fit my concept, so when an AV turned on me I had a much better chance of getting dirtnapped than a perma-elude, tough-toggle scrapper.

I don't care about being one-shotted; that's a badge I wear as a reflex scrapper, and the reason why tanking an AV pre-I5 was such a rush. I could be at full health but know that the next hit might defeat me. The problem for the AV was in getting that one shot in on me. The AV might hit me with the very first attack (Bobcat and Battle Maiden have both done that to me, and Battle Maiden even did it through elude), or it may take minutes to finally land the defeating blow. With today's system, hitting me really isn't a problem for the AV and the attacks still hurt just as much, so that makes it less fun for me. Maybe it's time to re-think AV encounters. Have the AV less tough, but have him spawn with some almost as tough boss to elite boss level 'second and third in commands'.

But we're getting sidetracked if we're talking about one-shots; preventing one-shots is not what this buff was intended to do. If it was, they could just put a cap on SR damage taken. Only 95% of the hero's health at one time, so an alpha would drop you to 5%. This isn't an alpha strike fix, and shouldn't be mistaken as one.

Aside from the fact I don't really want resistance put into in a third of the SR powers, I think the abilities and buffs all archetypes have recieved have been overly complex and gimicky. I prefer the KISS mentality: Keep It Simple, Statesman.

I think we're getting away from the simple mentality. Maybe we should scrap some of these inspirations we've got now. Scrap both resistance and defense inspirations, then do defense and resistance properly. Include a reasonable amount of defense in each set to offset the use of purple and orange insps, and know that the only way you're getting more defense or resistance is to be buffed by another player.

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Don't take your auto powers. No one forced you to take them. I don't particularly like resistance in my /SR, but I dislike having trouble surviving 3 spawns in a row even more. Please, don't take us down with your sinking ship.

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You forgot to quote the part where I suggested two different fixes that don't involve changing three powers (though the 'add resistance as its own power' suggestion would probably require melee and ranged passives to join, making space for a resistance power).

I've said my piece with regards to the addition of resistance to SR and have suggested an alternative. I don't like it as it doesn't fit the SR theme as much as increased defense does.

This isn't about gratefulness; I'll probably be able to play just fine without this sliding scale resist power thing, and after ED nerfs our defense. I just don't believe SR scrappers should be forced to have resistance; it's part of my character's theme to avoid getting hit, not to resist the damage that hits.

I've got an even simpler fix; for ED give class B enhancements the same caps as class A (70% and 100%). There, done, and we didn't have to fool around with adding resistance because the ED caps end up nerfing our defense.

If you want to add resistance to SR, then add it as a power, not laid throughout three powers that you should take to be reasonably effective.

I don't want resistance. If I wanted resistance I would have rolled up an */Invul scrapper, or taken Tough from the power pool.

The whole point of SR is to not get hit. If your testing has finally realized that SR scrappers are underperforming, just add more defense. It's not rocket science. If you really want to use the 40% and 20% sliding scale then do it for increased defense, not resistance.

When a reflex scrapper gets hit, he should get hurt. The balancing point should be that the SR scrapper gets hit less often.

But would you consider someone like Batman a 'hero', or 'just a guy' who has been labelled a hero by others? He's not out for the spotlight or for recognition, he's just very good at catching the bad guys and slipping off into the night to avoid publicity.

I think it's simply the Superman vs. Batman mentality - Superman is a hero - he politely stands in front of the cameras and answers questions and informs the public, while Batman is a just a guy with exceptional skills who does his work by the cover of night and doesn't really have any use for the media. The only reason he uses a hero name is to hide his real identity (and to strike fear in the bad guys).

Thanks for the compliment TimeLord; I'm glad you liked my story. As for what level she was during the story, I decided to use artistic license to allow her to use all the powers she had at the time of my writing of the story (mid twenties) which is why you see use of Combat Jump, Super Leap, and Stealth. I chose 5th column because I just plain love crane kicking them off of their soapboxes, and for the main battle I used the Education Officer because when I did that mission (at level 16) the Education Officer was a level 20 lieutenant and hit like a ton of brick. The mission has since been changed but it was probably my most memorable mission (first purple mob in a solo mission).

But to not derail the thread, I think the "Just a Guy" vs. "Super Hero" can be taken different ways; in one way it could be taken as the hero believing he is superior to those without powers and is helping 'the weak', while the 'just a guy' guy doesn't consider himself any more special than the civilians walking the streets.

I don't see it that way though. I see the 'just a guy' guy eschewing publicity because he sees the act of saving others and defeating bad guys as what is required, and the media means nothing in that respect. The 'Super Heroes' don't shy away from the media as they feel it's a tool to help them intimidate bad guys and boost the spirits of civilians who might want to see the heroes who are fighting to save Paragon City.

There really should be a third class though, the hero who panders to the media; let's call him the 'Pretty Boy Hero'. He's a legend in his own mind and isn't afraid to tell anyone who will listen, but whether he can walk the walk after talking the talk is anyone's guess.

My main character is a mutant so she knows she's not "Just a girl", but she has lived with her mutation for many years before the Rikti attacked and didn't try to do anything 'heroic'.

She tried to hide her mutation and abilities for a very long time, and when the Rikti attacked she figured the humans were just getting what was coming to them. It was only after she found out her best friend was killed by the Rikti when she decided to go to Paragon City to fight crime. She considers 'hero' more an occupation than anything else, but she knows that the occupation of 'hero' is a bit police officer, a bit bounty hunter, and a bit celebrity and she tries to take it in stride.

In my origins story (link in sig) I think I touch upon her views of being a hero in the final section, where she jokes with a friend who calls her by her real name that with the her mask on she Nightprowl, then proceeds to take off her mask in public, and states "Okay, now I'm Cathy." She then goes and helps out the police department's PR director by standing in the background during the obligatory 'after the big bust' press conference for the news crews.

Mine ended up way too long to post here (weighing in at 11,328 words), but you can click on "Birth of a Hero: Nightprowl" in my signature if you want to read it. Here's what I wrote in the 'background' section of my character (paraphrasing, as I don't have the exact text on hand):

Alienated when her then recently grown tail was discovered during a championship soccer match, Cathy Watts became an angry and rebellious teenager. When the Rikti invaded she did nothing, thinking the 'normals' were probably just getting what was coming to them. Only later did she learn that her best friend, the only girl in school who accepted her mutation, had died at the hands of the Rikti. She now dons the mask of Nightprowl, helping where she can.