Dante

Well I've taken both of mine up to level 11 and 12 so far but don't want to leave anyone behind. (Must admit, it's hard, Thugs/Dark is so beautiful.... ). It would be nice to have another get together soon. What night is good for people?

I have both with a /Dark secondary on both of them. They're both fun but the zombies do tend to be terminally stupid and run off to aggro everything in the room. Thugs at least tend to stick together and blast away making my job a lot easier.

Zombies are kind of more amusing, just for the fun of ordering the undead around and watching them shuffling off to eat some poor miscreant. The fact that they occasionally call "BRAINS....!!!" too is just hilarious and makes me feel like I'm in a George Romero movie.

I'd say try both up to at least level 12 and see how you feel about them. Thugs have less appeal in my book but tend to work better with /Dark as a secondary IMHO.

The suggestions for topics could get quite funny:

1) "I may be part alien, but I'm still human!"

2) "My husband has become a Lesser Devoured but I still love him."

3) "My girlfriend wants me to dress up like Statesman all the time."

4) "My husband ran off with my sister, and she's a mutant!"


But I'm hoping it won't descend into that sort of territory.

My first toon was Katana/DA and I've recently gone back to him. Katana has some very nice animations and is a lot kinder on your endurance than say broadsword. Which is just as well as DA will suck your endurance dry. The trick I find is to treat DA as a Swiss Army Knife and apply the correct combination of toggles for the correct enemy. If you try to have all the armours up all the time, you'll be weezing within a few attacks.

The lack of knockback protection is annoying and more or less dictates taking leaping as your travel power. However, I've become weary of using that recently and instead use hover bound to a mouse button so that I can flick it on or off easily. Plus, with 3-slotted hover and 2 Fly enhancements in Swift, I've found myself overtaking people who are running.

The other thing that I remember from using DA though is that it is one of the few sets the has Psi protection so can come in useful later in the game (although I can't attest to how effective it is myself).

Good luck.

I take exception to all this 'Blasters faceplant regularly' stuff. Let it be known that I'm just as capable of tasting carpet on any other AT.

Blasters: I am the gun. Come pull my trigger.

Sunday 21 January 2007 - Wedding Day Blues
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Running late as usual, The Amber Banshee hurried to the furthest point of Talos Island for the wedding of Coile and Nightsparrow and arrived only seconds before the groom himself turned up. Having spent ages pouring over what to wear, she had eventually decided on wearing the formal tartan of the clan Mackenzie, a gift given to her by her family during her stay in Scotland.

She watched with amusement while Dustine took charge and arranged the well-wishers into orderly rows and stood the bride and groom close to the small, blue flower that Coile was so fond of. Nene opened the ceremony and despite a slight confusion regarding the rings, all went well. Coile’s speech was eloquent and touching, despite his nerves. Nightsparrow was blunt as always but no less emotional. In fact, it seemed like the perfect wedding, right up until the point when the sky filled with helicopters and the sea churned with powerboats bearing the PPD logo. A very rude detective disrupted the wedding, claiming to have a warrant for Nightsparrow’s arrest. There was an uproar amongst the guests, Doctor Temporis perhaps the most restrained of the people demanding the detective’s badge and promising to lodge a formal complaint.

Amber faced off with the interloper, wondering perhaps how much trouble she would get into for making the detective’s ears bleed. Fortunately, the arrival of a very angry Tygerboy proved a useful distraction, his threats to disembowel the detective forcing herself and Dustine to try and calm him. Amber left, scouting the islands to see if she could locate the errant newlyweds who had flown off the moment the detective had made her claims. She returned to the island, slightly out of sync with reality so she could remain undetected. She arrived in time to see Nightsparrow hand herself over to the police and for Coile throw his license into the sea in disgust.

Realising that there was nothing more she could do, Amber returned home despondent and more than a little sad about her own stagnant love life.

I will be on in a few minutes but I'm not sure how long I'll be able to stay for.

Hmmmm, your build looks disturbingly like mine except I took the concealment pool rather than medicine. I tried using Aid Self but I just found I was getting interrupted all the time. Plus, due to having Aid Other, I used to get distracted looking at the team box to see who needed healing rather than knocking the snot out of the guy in front of me. I get greater utility out of Invis/Stealth for positioning before sleeping the entire spawn.

As for Shriek/Energy Punch, a lot of the sonic powers have a painfully short range so even though I'm not one for keeping the tier 1 blaster powers, I have with mine as Shriek and Scream are the only ones with a decent range on them, handy for getting runners or knocking off those last few ticks of HP. That said, as you're going for a blapper build, Scream should do that job for you nicely.

I think it might be a little while before we're in a shape to take each other on, last I looked Primal are around 10 - 12 and the Dragons are level 20 odd so it would be a bit mismatched. Plus, we should bear in mind that not everyone is keen on PvP so it might not be a team event. For a VG in its infancy, we might be jumping the gun here a little.

That said, I can't deny that one of of the reasons that I've wanted to play as Stalker is because I got fed up with being ASed by them in Siren's. I'm sure that one night someone may well challenge the Lady to a match while in PD. I'm pretty certain she'd say yes.

I'm not sure if I'll be around on Monday so have fun if you do meet up again. It'd be good to sort out another date to meet up soon so any suggestions are welcomed for a good time. We may even wish to take advantage of the double XP weekend when it rolls around.

I'm normally rubbish at forum roleplay as I never post fast enough to keep up with everyone. But this could be a great concept. Just as long as we don't descend into Jerry Springer territory (or maybe we would want that!)

Last night on patrol…

The Amber Banshee joined her fellow Militia members for patrol duty. Together with Force Commander, The Portent, Silver Steel, Masked Angel and a surprise addition of Dragonfly , they were able to foil a bank raid by the Tsoo while hampered by a sudden attack by Arachnos.

Things appeared tense between Dragonfly and Masked Angel, the latter only just recovering from of broken ankle that had put her out of action for a while, forcing her mother to step in for her. Amber was pleased to see her again and the two briefly discussed an offer to move into the Crimson Archer’s block of flats in Talos Island. During the bank raid, Dragonfly appeared to transform into a winged version of herself and speak in a strange, oriental language. When questioned, she blamed the pair of reunited swords that she carried and took great pleasure in showing off their powers.

A hunt for technology stolen by the Lost revealed a cave full of Rikti leading Force Commander and The Portent to ruminate on links between the two, including the possibility that they were one and the same, a thought that disgusted Amber.

Angel’s swollen ankle forced her to retire, Silver Steel and Force Commander departing as well, the latter dressed ready for the Casino. The remaining team were joined by The Crimson Archer before travelling to Striga Isle to suppress more Council activity. During their hunt, Dragonfly revealed that she was engaged in legal action with Coile , who claimed to have ownership of her sword, a treasure she refused to give up. She then began a vitriolic attack on Nightsparrow and the impending marriage at which point Amber decided to stand up for her friends. The Portent attempted to placate them both but a brief argument ensued ending with Dragonfly accusing Amber of taking sides and calling her a half-breed. The last insult hit particularly deep, since Amber has only just discovered her Fae heritage. She took out her anger on a bunch of Banished Pantheon shamans before retiring for the evening, feeling bruised in body and spirit.

Apologies for the sudden disappearance earlier, I got royally zapped with several disconnects in a row. Still, another good time and a couple of successful Mayhems too. I'm all for RP outside of missions too (although I admit, I do enjoy the banter as we're beating the snot out of our foes...) so I'm happy to go with that. This Crey facility sounds good, it could be a nice place to visit to jog some of our characters' memories which seem to be a bit hazy.

I'll next be around on Wednesday if people will be around like last week. Could I suggest a possible level cap of around 10 - 12 for next time or are we happy to just keep going? I figure if we have some people over 10, we can Lackey those of our team who are a little lower.

I love my Blasters too and Fire/Energy is a good combination. A little more control than Fire/Fire and good for opening with impressive AoEs and then finishing off with single-target blapping. Once past SO level the damage you can do is awesome. Large spawns are a joy as they all fall down at once.

However, Sonic/Energy is still my favourite. The sheer amount of control you can apply to a situation is great and if you're with a team that understand soft controls like Knockback, Disorient and Sleep, you can be tremendously useful. This is even before you take into consideration the -Res that's already been mentioned in the blasts. The only downside is that you will be single-target focused so it can be easy to become overwhelmed if solo but then that's when the control powers come in most useful. The animations are a little 'rooted' but still not as bad as say 'Flares' from Fire Blast so I believe that they're liveable with. I've heard that the Nuke is one of the best in the game as well as it disorients anything that survives so the end crash might well be survivable. I'll find out in two levels time.

Good luck in choosing, being a Blaster is like being a gun and the joy is in pulling the trigger.

I was anticipating Monday myself but it depends on who is available and when.

Happy Birthday!

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Maybe after he settles with married life he becomes too boring. One can always hope

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Wait until the issue where he is accused of polygamy.

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I can see the headline now: "I Married A Philandering Mutant!"

/e facepalms...

Well I dunno, there's that dodgy looking reporter that hangs around Pocket D all the time chatting up superheroes... Looks mighty suspicious to me....

Another nomination for Nightsparrow for all of the reasons already mentioned. It's been going for a while now and always comes across as a work motivated by passion for their characters and the people they interact with. It's always a joy to see another instalment posted.

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Dark Rose Tara is a Thugs MM and you didnt introduce her to the Gang? *heartbroken*

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No, she's Necro/Dark but let's just say that fighting the New Mafia in Siren's has made me want to try a Thugs MM. I considered a FF secondary but after trying it on test I found it too 'hands off'. I prefer the involvement on /Dark. I've tried all of the MM secondaries at some point and /Dark still feels the 'strongest' to me in terms of team and solo support (personal opinion only).

I'm currently considering the same sort of build, a Thugs/Dark with Leadership pool as this would appear to capitalise on the strengths of the Thugs primary. Are the Leadership powers really not worth taking? I'm probably going to be giving up my Pistol attacks to get them so I'd be interested to know the comparative benefits. I always figured I'd be too busy with the /Dark support to be able to contribute much in terms of damage. Is this true?

Btw, while we're here, Thugs seem to be described as having no resistances to anything, is this a problem? What do they excel in?

As always, thanks.

I will be around on Wednesday evening after 8 but I'll probably be in training with my other RP group. If I get a spare moment afterwards, I will pop over for a few hours.

Just a quick question, are we encouraging alts in the SG at all? Given how well we have been doing, I'm currently trying to resist the temptation of remaking my mastermind so that she can join in.... Argh...!

Hi folks.

I have a level 20 Necro/Dark Mastermind and recently the behaviour of my undead minions has been starting to bug me. I use the exremely useful keypad control system and tend to order them into melee (as they're often reluctant) on either an agressive or defensive stance, chosing a location on which to fight. However, whenever one of their foes decides to flee, the whole bunch of them ups and runs after them, inevitably aggroing the rest of the map, a situation which often results in instant death. This of course is not made any easy by the fact that I have to be close to them to be able to fire off my heal.

Is there any way in which I can order them to a location to fight and get them to stay there without them running off or do I simply have to order them back the moment any of my foes look like they're about to do a runner (often there is no time to do this)?

I do use tar patch as much as possible but it's not always up for every fight and some foes seem to be remarkably resistant to slow effects.

Any advice would be gratefully received. Thanks.

Well last Wednesday seemed to go fairly well and we kicked a few Snakes around. We've put in a level cap of 6 until Monday (I know some are over) but I expect we'll all catch up next time.

I'm still 50/50 on whether I make Monday but I'll do my best to do so.

Sounds good to me, I will be around from about 6pm.

Monday is always favourite for me although there's only a 50/50 that I'll be around next Monday (8th).

I will be around all night tomorrow (Wednesday).