Dollymistress

So. This contest...

Where? I can't see anything on the site that's apparently for the UK.

Justin TF completed in 1:20. Thank you to the peeps who stayed. We lost one early then another late, so six in the final team. Yay!

The only genuine gripe I can think of is if Castle tries to sneak in a Fitness pool nerf as part of the change, arguing that the effects of Health/Stamina should be lower now that every single character has them. Then he promises that the new Incarnate slots will enable people with fully-slotted Health/Stamina to get back to their previous level of Regen/Recovery.

Castle is kewl, but he can also be sneaky like that sometimes. The effect would be people refusing to respec ever again, etc etc. Much DOOM would commence.

Yeah I know I'm biased because I have never forgiven the Psy Shockwave nerf and still feel a little bit sad whenever I notice how I'm barely using the power anymore and instead clunking around with the bulky vuvuzela that is Psy Scream.

Besides this, the only problem is if you want to completely rethink your build(s) due to the change, you're faced with the tedious and respec-numming process of cycling out 10 of your Enh at a time, to clear your slots and replace them with new stuff.

Personally I think I'm just going to build Recall and Stealth into a lot of alts as a quick and easy upgrade. Maybe Aid Self. Maybe drop Patron powers and switch to new pool powers. Who doesn't like TP/Stealth?

I'll give Whirlwind to my Weather Corr, too

I like the idea, but it will give me a big headache. A lot of builds are based upon broad assumptions of what's available. With Fitness changing, it's not just a case of respeccing and adding 3 more powers with 1 slot to each. In some cases it means re-thinking whether you want to trade off some old slotting to give more to the new three powers (which has a knock-on effect to IO set choices), or even completely re-think the whole build because with 3 extra powers you can build something entirely different from the ground up.

I guess this gives me a chance to redo my ancillary choices at the same time. I'm now glad I haven't done anything with the new ancillary pools yet otherwise this would be yet another overhaul.

Some of my 20 level 50 alts will be very happy. For example I can finally make room for both fire shields on my two Thermals. My main will LOVE the change - I can now give her Hasten, Recall and Phase Shift to make her even better (Doll 1 has always been about 8 seconds from perma-Dom. Now she'll be there easily. Maybe I'll run a MoLRSF finally!).


For others I'll need to revisit whether I really want to keep my Patron powers, especially the pets (where I still have them). I think both my Kheldians are going to have a stroke from even more powers with no slots to use on them, heh.

I'm going to be tempted to take defence powers on each alt so I can slot more LOTGs. But seriously, I have some alts who I play about 1 day per year for a costume contest. After 4 years, I just don't feel the need anymore to absolutely min/max each alt with purples, PVP IOs or the best possible ancillary pool powers. Everything I have is fully IOed with proper sets and has been since about 6 months after IOs arrived or (for anything I rolled later) 1 month after they were created.

Time to break out another spreadsheet and log in/out on each alt to check their powers, I think...

Dr. Q was filled and took us 3:30 to complete

Almost the same time as my Faathim TF run. Faathim was shorter but there was more travelling, whereas I could just leap off a cliff in Firebase Zulu to TP back to Dr Q easily.

Yay to everyone who took part. Hoping to run Justin tonight then join the Sara TF on Wednesday.

Well I have flight and Vet TP. Still takes me forever to travel around the shard zones.

What's wrong with 4-5 hours? I want to fight a lot and earn money to get the Leader badge. I'm only about 40m short of it now.

I will be running a Dr. Q on Sunday. I think I will start forming at 5pm EST then hopefully we will begin about 6pm at the latest. I would like it to be done in 4-5 hours

I have a team of 3 so far if anyone else wants to come along please send me a global sometime on Sunday or post here and meet me at the contact at around 5pm.

The Preatorian Vanessa and Belladonna are also fun fights. Vanessa is practically a mini-Hamidon

I vote for more of these type of fights, especially the ones where you think you're going to be in for a real hard time until suddenly at 50% or 25% HP the EB concedes or falls unconscious.

The Devs haven't really scratched the surface of fun or bewildering enemy fight mechanics. I'd be up for things like a mini version of Lord Recluse from the STF, where you need to damage things around the boss to make them beatable (the Rogue morality mission does this in a small way).

Bosses who ask riddles before you can beat them. Bosses who force your controls to reverse so up is down, etc...bosses who turn off all the lights in the map suddenly, bosses who stop you using inspirations or change you into a banana for 5 seconds (hitting you with a "weaponised" version of the devolution power). Bosses who grow to the size of Faathim and need ot be defeated one limb at a time...

All sorts of fun. Bosses who in one way or another require a little lateral thinking to defeat. Of course, we have lots of this in the larger-scale content (Thorn tree, Reichsman, Lusca, Crystal Titan, Hami etc) but some smaller-scale versions would also be nice.

I can see that this is exactly what the Devs are trying to do with Preatorian missions. It works really well, the only problem bieng that any veteran player breezes through the "gimmicks" like a freight train.

If you confuse one while dying does that mean *you* take a bite?

The Ghouls, Arachnoids and Snakes should go bowling together.

If I'm being serious, my inspiration tray will be 12 Lucks 2 BFs and 6 Enrages. Before I jump into a fight I'll use 4 Lucks, 1 BF and 2 Enrages then replenish as the first lot runs out.

With Demonic Aura up as well, I have 4 cycles of near-invincibility. Since my main is a Dom, Domination will be up by the second round if I am in danger of being mezzed.

I've never met *any* EB in the game that can overcome those tactics. Maybe 1 in 100 will get a really lucky hit in but beyond that, the fight is over. Even AVs only land 1 blow in (roughly) 10, maybe fewer.

This is why I get annoyed when I'm fighting an EB and some other squishy on the team gets taken out in 2 seconds. That's just plain laziness.

The Hospital/Asylum is in the BAF?

Srsly?

But...but...

North vs. South???

Well I was sorta disqualified, which was fine I knew I was being a bit risky

Avatea was nice and gave me a title on my main, since everything was badge-related on the night.

I think people missed a trick with not awarding anything to the female who looked exactly like a ghost, had a hand print on her chest and wore the title "Ghost Touched". How that one was judged inferior to a Pirate wearing the "Piratical" badge will be analysed by experts and moderators for some years to come.

The males were spot-on though. The moment anyone saw the small horse jockey, standing in a Ouroboros portal, wearing the title "portal jockey", there was no doubt of the final outcome. I was relieved for the male/female split when I saw that guy (think it was 4shes? Not totally sure I was tired at the time heh).

Buckle up bonehead, you're going for a ride

I never even knew about the new Siege or the side missions. All I did was finish the new Maria arc then defeat Anti Matter.

Then run the old arc and defeat Nightstar + Siege for the badge.

As a mind/psi Dom I can understand the trouble some people have with both Nightstar and Siege. On both I had to use my favourite tactic where I pile on Lucks and Demonic aura to whittle their HP down to about 10% before I am defeated, then QUICKLY get back to them with another batch of inspirations (by which time they're at about 40-50% HP) and finish the job on my second attempt.

The only truly annoying thing for me was that I got Siege from the old arc, then quit the arc, THEN wondered where the badge was. I had to then do the old arc a *second* time (darn hiding wolves!) to get "Old Nightstar".

Oh well. I just keep telling myself I still need the Leader badge so repeating missions is a good thing

I would like it a lot more if:

(a) Siege was in it
(b) Nightstar counted for Dimensional Warder
(c) There were two Seer missions instead of one, to hlep with the Seers badge.

But yes, it is awesome. I really enjoyed it, especially the parts where I was given a tough ally to help beat up the bosses.

With extremely high regen (i.e. high enough to get you from 1 HP back up to full HP before you are hit again) it is possible to farm much faster for this badge, because there is no limit on the damage you can take in a single hit.

E.g. a regen scrapper with 1000-1500 HP can rest in front of a Rikti Boss, get hit for 3k damage in one hit (single damage type) then heal back to full ready for the next blow.

A GM checked the logs, confirmed we deserved the badge, and awarded it to all of us. Within about 6 hours.

Yay GMs.

The badge I treasure most is Heat Seeker, from the Arachos Flyer. This is because that badges represents a lot of fun, hard work and history:

A month after Issue 7 appeared a gang of villains got the badge. It was the first time I met Threnody (Bronx) and I was sad since I only missed it by a few seconds because of a very slow load. I ended up camping the spawn point for hours on end each day for a couple of weeks after that, but had no luck.

I spent two weeks on the Test Server studying the Flyer(s), after server resets. I mapped the routes, published the maps for players and spent long long days watching for it to spawn on Champion. I evne had a "Flyer Hunter" costume!

I invented the rumour that the Flyer was exploitable, to try and get the Devs to fix it. At the one year anniversary of Issue 7 I pushed for a fix to the Flyer and made the top item on the community digest. Ghost Widow promised to implement a fix, and it was done in a month.

When Issue 9 appeared I was bored one day at camped the GV Tower force field. All of a sudden the Flyer appeared and I fell INSIDE the tower. I was stuck there for 5 minutes before finding a way out, by which time it was too late to defeat the Flyer

After being so obsessed for a long time, one morning I simply logged into GV, found the Flyer, grabbed a quick team and FINALLY defeated it.


The badge I dislike the most is the Master of the LRSF. Not simply because I don't have it. More because I felt it devalued the normal LRSF badge, which I was really proud of back in Issue 7-9. Also, I know for sure that I've done it with no temps or deaths on a team several times, but those were all before the badge existed. Same for the MoLGTF.

While I was afk my cat jumped on to my keyboard and soloed the CoP in 1 minute and 32 seconds.

I was going to reward him but I saw he used a Shivan so instead I told him to do it again. Then he looked puzzled and fell asleep.

Well no LGTF this weekend, but got MoKTF instead.

Try again next week?

After grabbing every Heroside badge I could lay my hands on, I went for one bonus badge - MoKTF!

It was a long 4 hours. I started with no knowledge of the TF at all but quickly learned form the first run that unlike other Master runs, this TF doesn't really have any wildcard threat that gives it an element of luck. LRSF has the final battle and pulling/sleeping AVs, STF has the wacky Lord Recluse of Doom and the Thorn Tree, LGTF has Hami.

I think so long as the team is fairly competent and takes care not to die stupidly, MoKTF isn't too bad. Reichsman really did NOT want to die in the last mission - it took us 2 minutes to grind down his final 50 HP!

Still, the attmepts were:

1st - death on 4th mission when someone dced while scouting
2nd - death in City Hall
3rd - death on 4th mission when ambush appeared at door and blindsided someone
4th - death in first group (lol)
5th - victory!

For the fourth and fifth runs Kahlan joined the team. So yeah, I cheated

I think I embarassed Kahlan with too much praise but it's a fact that when he is on a team with me my HP never drops below maximum even if I am being smacked in the head by Statesman.

Anyways...YAY!

I rest in front of a +2 CoT Guide. Does about 1050 damage per hit, 1 hit every 10 seconds.