Doc_Hornet

I've run all my squishes (from both accounts) through once -- around thirty times in all -- and am starting on my thirty or so melee toons. I enjoy both "movie features" and the shine hasn't worn off yet.

A few notes:

1) The drops seem to split pretty even across the board (with the proc dropping a bit less frequently). That's one of the reasons I'm running so many. The set makes a good 4 or 5 slot replacement for Postitron's Blast set. Storing them in my base while I decide which toons will get em.

2) Some PUG team compositions breeze through. Others struggle to complete it, especially all squishy teams or all squishy and one scrapper team -- these teams fail to win the arena crowd more often than not.

I've only encountered one PUG team member so far that acted PUGgy: a blaster who spent the entire Roman battle running around Aid Othering team members from his medicine pool instead of ever blasting the bad guys (!). As the rest of us were low damage toons, the fights took forever.

2) Masterminds usually (sorry, Valor!) work pretty well for the Ninja Monkey monkey badge, if they can survive the monkey gas. Especially teams with two MMs.

Hint on entering the Roman arena: put your MM pets on passive/follow and backpeddle away from the minotaur immediately on zoning. Otherwise that first rock quake of his can wipe out your pets. Attack only after the minotaur fires off his rock quake. Keep pets on passive while you circle around edge of arena to attack minotaur from behind. That does a lot to keep them from attacking the angels who should be out of range by then.

3) Stuns, confuses, fears, and holds rarely if ever work on any of the AVs or Elite Bosses in this event. They immobilize a bit easily, however (usually after 2 applications). My Dominators weren't able to contribute very much to any of the runs they make. Occassionally, however, a hold will take. Keep pouring on holds if that ever happends.

Use immob on the AVs frequently to keep them anchored down and prevent them running away ... or running after squishies. A couple squishies spamming immobs should keep them anchored.

4) The fights can last a long time. For squishes, your goal is to conserve your end so you can shoot/debuff/buff. Might as well turn off your toggles, especially def or res ones. They don't do squat with those AVs chucking boulders anyway.

5) Wait until everyone's ready before entering the Roman arena. Some players need to buy insp or set up pets first. Unlike the casino mission, if you enter the Roman arena, everyone gets involuntarily ported in a few seconds after the cut scenes play.

6) ATs/sets of mine that shone: VEAT Huntsman, Rad/rad corruptor, Sonic/Ninja MM, FF/Bot MM, Thermal/Demon MM, Fire blaster, Ill/kin controller.

ATs/sets of mine that bombed miserably: all of my dominators except plant/fire, Poison/zombie MM, Trick Arrow/Archery corruptor. Some of this was in part ot the team composition.

7) Most bizarre PUG team combo that worked suprisingly well: 2 AR blasters, 1 crab spider (me), and a dual pistol corruptor. No aggro control at all, but we plowed through the monkey ninjas pretty awesomely, and didn't do badly on the big AVs either.

Offer a BASE Salvage Inventory Increase +10 (per bin) for 400 PP and I'll jump right on it!

Nice, but suprised not to see any Mecha versions of the backwards articulated legs in the Monstrous lower body pants/boots option sections. At least I don't see any in the promo.

Hopefully they remember to include Mecha arms in the Robotic Arms option section.

I don't see myself purchasing many of the Alignment Switcheroos, but they would come in handy for sideswitching new level 1 VEATs/HEATs (that is, if they work on low level VEATs/HEATs).

9 of the worst hair fads for men of all-time

I think the only one not in the game is the poodle perm.

Wouldn't a simple solution to the Snowball vs. RPer problem be to add it to Null the Gull's option list of rejected powers (like speedboost)?

I really like this Holiday Pack idea (just bought it for both my accounts). I hope that there are similar packs in the future for the Valentines event (toga, sandals, etc.) and for the Roman costume set.

While there are certainly arguments to earning said costume pieces (Baby New Year/Snaptooth is my favorite mission in the game), I very much enjoy the abliity to use winter (and hopefully Valentine & Roman) pieces for character creation right out of the box for new characters created Feb - Nov.

I also wouldn't mind eventually seeing the new winter storm effect (as a permanent toggle) for sale. (Since it debuted this year, I wouldn't expect it for sale this time around.)

Thanks, Geronimo, for posting that. After over 25 years in uniform and a few assorted Iraq tours, I've recently had to make the difficult transition from military to retired military. (Dopey doctors, anyway ... grrr!) To those of you still serving and those that have served in the past, thanks! Catch you at down at the local VFW!

Love the Brain Jar piece. I've already used it to re-costume one of my characters that had the old exposed brain hair style.

I do have one small issue with it (the same I have with the new animial pack heads as well). I wish we could enlarge them with the head scale sliders. Both the brain jar and the animal heads seem too small proportionally to body torsos.

Sounds great! Just to avoid confusion, what time is the posse forming up?

The Liberty Lost Project

This post may or may not be of interest to anybody, but with Freedom hitting the live servers, I thought I'd wrap up this project up and report.

Just prior to Going Rouge's launch, I'd finished up my previous project of levelling up all of my hero alts to 32 (and their tier 9 powers). To celebrate Going Rogue and side-switching, I came up with a new project: the Lost Liberty Project. The premise (included in most of their character bios):

My least favorite AT is Tanker for a very specific reason. It isn't so much the watching-paint-dry speed of its attack damage (although that makes playtin the AT miserable). It's the fact that if you're the only tank on the team (the usual situation), then whether you have the star or not, you're the de facto team lead. I hate, hate, hate that aspect. If I'd wanted the star, I'd have started my own team.

If there's more than one tank on a team, then you're pathetically redundant defensively and offensively you contribute the attack capabiities of wet cardboard. The only times I've enjoyed playing a Tanker have been "Tanker Tuesday" events where everybody's wet cardboard and equally redundant. Misery loves company.

As far as powersets go, I have one of every powerset (except MM Ninja, Battle Axe, Fortuna-build) up to at least level 30. I like to rotate my toons and level them up together through the same missions to see how the different ATs and powersets compare in the same situation. It's suprising how many times a mission that's tough for a "good" powerset will be a piece of cake for a "weak" powerset.

I don't really have any powerset I particularly dislike except Devices and Stone Armor (hate Granite and Root mechanics -- a Tank's damage is already glacial ... let's make his movement glacial, too!).

Speaking generically (as different power sets can kick a particular character up or down this scale):

FUNTASTIC
=========
1. Peacebringers (human form)
2. Brutes
3. Scrappers
4. Blasters
5. Masterminds

ENJOYABLE
=========
6. Soldiers
7. Dominators
8. Stalkers (when solo, meh if teamed)

MEH
=========
9. Warshades
10. Widows

TEDIOUS
=======
11. Corrupters
12. Defenders

TORTURE
=======
13. Controllers
14. Tankers

Thanks again, Ukase, for orgainizing the event yesterday. I had a lot of fun on the two Posi TFs and Synapse!

Next Saturday, right? I should be able to jump onboard.

Raven Lord was playing Siberian Storm-Lord, the ice tanker tiger toon, iirc.

Thanks for the great time!

Sounds great! Hope to make a couple of the runs. BTW, Uk, everytime I see your name, I can't help but think of Gary Grant's line in The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer:

"Mellow Greetings, Ukey-Dukey!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBmeOzSzKoY

Finally found a name for my new Victorian-era Steampunk heroine (yay, new booster pack!) but only after a lengthy winnowing. The following steam-theme names have been put back into circulation:

• Steamstress
• Steamboat Dreamboat
• Hedda Steam
• Boilerplate Kate

Steamstress got rejected because everytime I saw the name, Elton John's "Tiny Dancer" ran through my mind (" ... steamstress for the band...").

We really did run out of XP!

7th Anniversary? The phrase "Seven Hills of Rome" comes to mind. Just a thought.
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I like the Shootout at the O'Kahn Corral name.

Valor, if you're talking this Friday, i.e., tonight -- tha'ts fine if after 5pm (1700) Eastern time or later, I just probably won't be online to sign up this afternoon in the interim.
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