Elimist

I actually like when someone asks. Alot of the time I'll specify at the beginning that they can ask (politely) for SB if it wears off.
I once brought up the fact that (just imagine for a second that it is real) in a real team fight, communication is one of the most important factors in a victory. I was told that I'm stupid, and it's up to the buffer to take care of all his own buffing or he sucks at it. Granted, some people are better than others at just knowing where their powers should be placed, but for others who aren't as good at playing buffers, (I will admittedly put myself in this group, but ya know what, deal with it, I'll play what I enjoy playing with and get better by doing so) there's nothing wrong with the team communicating and throwing out a reminder that their SB/Fort/AB is gone.
My scrapper has alot of recharge. He has a three attack chain, and is soft capped. If I really want to, I can kick back and watch a movie, and then <next target> <autofollow> <1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3> until dead. <next target> <autofollow> etc etc, until mob is dead. I don't even have to watch the screen. For a toon as incredibly low maintenance as that, ya know what? I can look at my own buffs, and give a friendly reminder to the defender that my buff is gone. And I won't feel the least bit like I'm inconvenienced by the fact that I made the high-maintenance support toon's life a little easier.
Look up "team" in the dictionary. I'm sure there's gonna be some form of the word "cooperation" in the definition.

Legit opinion. And I agree. Triumph is starting to annoy me at times. Just sayin, nothin wrong with settin up for success. Everyone hates to fail. And the human element means people get an opinion of whoever ran it, and the opinion sticks. Especially on Triumph, where the small player pool does foster a bit of snobiness. I'll admit, I've been trying to follow my own advice. I tend to form a lot of pugs because I just wanna play with whoever wants to come, if I want a certain quality of toon, I'll specify. Don't usually turn anyone away. Some of my TF's that I don't specifically form to pwn turn out kinda slow. Hence, Tam has little faith in me setting this thing up. . I play a little free and loose, and tend to cannonball sometimes. And my reputation is middle of the road because of it. But I don't mind.
I was watching your slow alienation on Triumph, and I thought it kinda sucked. You got great toons, and you can play em well. I kinda wanted to see you set up some more high end teams so people would know that you know how.
I need to start doing the same, or my reputation is gonna be one for mediocre task forces before long. A few of these master runs, a few good STF's. Maybe lead a MS raid. Just because you know how to run and set up a task force doesn't mean you always choose to max em and take the time to go all ragin bull on it and end up with a -30 minute time.

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Reached my quota of kind words for the year.

<---- Shrugs off most anything. Just not this time.

SB is a much debated power. Awesome? Yes. A must have for a kin? Yes. But the much debated question: Are you a jerk for not using it? Let's delve in

Lowbies: Most lowbies have end issues. Most lowbies have recharge issues. If you find yourself on a low level team, yes, SB as much as you can, as steadily as you can. People will laud you. There will be much rejoicing.

Crappy high level teams: The end is less of an issue, but still, SB alot. Same rules apply.

Decent plow teams: I would say there's no reason not to. You're all together, it's easy to select one team member after another and do a round of SB's. If the toons aren't so tricked out that their speeding and cannonballing around, chances are they can use a bit more recharge. I'd say gaps in SB are easily acceptable, but still a good policy to keep up the buffs

Speedball: Here's where my rant starts. If you're on a superspeed, 30 minute ITF, and everyone is all over the map, chances are any one person won't be SB'd for more than 2-4 minutes of the whole mission. Once the team gathers up, like on the EB mob, or the computer, or at the last mission, SB becomes maintainable. But after someone made an asinine comment about me not doing my job because they hadn't gotten SB for the entire sybil mission, I decided not to touch my SB button at all. Turns out, a lack of SB does not cause fails. In fact, it doesn't even affect you much at all. A bunch of tricked out toons getting FS/SP pulled it off in 31 minutes without SB. Why? Because once you finish a toon and get em to the point where they can solo reliably on task forces, you don't have much in the way of end problems or a lack of recharge, unless you suck at building a toon.
So here's my strategy on these teams. I use my primary powers and throw out a bunch of fireballs and FS, doing damage and buffing damage all over. Screw SB, because you can't keep it up when everyone is scattered, and when everyone is soloing they clearly don't really need it. And then when the team is gathered, I'll throw one out to each member. And when someone says, "SB please," I'll go ahead and give em some extra, because what that says to me is, "Hey, I could use a bit more recharge to hit perma PA/Perma Dom/(insert other useful power here), not "I can solo cysts, but you're ruining this TF because my [Midnight Grasp] isn't charging fast enough, do your job." If a kin doesn't have [Increase Density], it doesn't necessarily mean they're a noob, they might have just built their kin for attack and needed the powerslot. Take that into account and let someone play THEIR toon how they want, especially if it's a firekin that's keeping themselves at damage cap and doing massive damage to entire mobs and is built for a little more attack then support. Enjoy the fact that you've got a 200% damage modifier and shut your mouth.

I really wish I had increase density so I could spam it on people who cry too much because they didn't build enough endurance reduction or recharge into their speed run toon. In fact, I may just find room for it.

It's not hard to manage the TF that is. It's hard to pull off the numbers with a crappy team, but the TF itself isn't hard to call shots on. And besides, look at the guest list. If I get 3 more solid players, there isn't a team I'd rather take to a master run. Haven't seen Azile around much, but I'd like to get him in on it. Malkore doesn't have an illusion or I'd convince him to make try to make it. But I'm sure we can get 3 more solid players.

Why are you guys anticipating a fail? Illusionists are known for soloing GM's. I took four to a kahn TF yesterday, and we totally smoked it. It's safe, holds aggro like a champ, and 8 of them can hold aggro on a room as big as Shadenfreud's. STF isn't hard. Only issues are Cuda's nuke, Aion's clones, and tree aggro. Patrons aren't really that hard with 24 PA's smacking them, and the same with Recluse.

Lol, Dr G, you caught a bad rap for forming fails, but it's because you're not "mean" and "picky." Learn to say no. Azile told me I couldn't come to a MSTF once, and I didn't get upset. Be picky, and set up for success, and you'll be more popular. You've got great toons and you know how to play em. I'll rip on you a bit for setting up crappy STF's, but I'll never toss you out in the cold and refuse to team with you. I just won't come to your STF's until you learn to be a jerk and tell someone they can't bring their level 45 blaster to STF. I think it kinda sucks that you got alienated from Triumph.
But I'm still obligated to pick on everyone. Lol. My favorite people are the ones who fight back, like Mal and Tam.

Meh, my mistake. Still, with 8 illusionists, i'm pretty sure just about anything in the game is pretty doable. No more slander you rapscallion

How dare you! The thorn tree is weaksauce, the only patron you have to worry about is Cuda, and 8 illusion trollers can easily stay away from her nuke. And Aion's pets have got nothing on 24 different decoys, 32 if you count the decoy phantasms. Quit yer besmirching of my good name. I'm a respected member of this server.

Join two Dr G Statesman-Task-Fails, and you're branded for life.

:O How dare you

Saturday, Nov 13, at 5 P.M. Eastern Time. Get out your illusion controllers, because I'm going to be forming a master STF. Illusion primaries only. Bring whatever secondaries you like. You can send me an email in game, or reply to this post, or both. I also monitor Triumph Watch 2.0 closely, so you can look there to find me over the next few days and add me to globals to make sure we can meet up on Saturday. Otherwise, just send a tell to my global at 5 oclock, or check TW to see when it's starting.

When you make your reservation, please include the following: @Global, Secondary powerset, and level.

50's take precedence of course. I may take a level 47 if we can't get a full team, considering how easily an all illusion team can do this. But you'll be placed on the "backup list".

Guest list so far: Four confident in their schedule. And very solid players. Known Sayaki and Taryn forever, and Anarchy did very well on our Kahn today. Good team. Good secondary balance. Two debuffs, a buff, and a control secondary.
Primary
@Elimist - 50 ill/rad
@Taryn - 50 ill/kin
@Sayaki - 50 Ill/storm
@Anarchy Assassin - 50 Ill/rad
@Snow Globe - 50 ill/emp
Drumroll<-- Tutututtututu @Dragons, coming off the shelf to bring out the 50 ill/rad. THanks Dragons.
It's a special occasion with @Dragons coming back for this, and considering how good he is with his ill/rad, and how many master runs he's got under his belt and what he can bring to the team:
@Strypes will be coming with: 50 Ice troller.

(And you people have been talking of phailure) Pssh. The only one I haven't teamed with much is Anarchy, but I've seen him around and not found any reason to make a negative note of the name. And I saw him at work on Kahn the other day. So I'm totally comfortable with this team. All good players. And with the potential exception of Anarchy, because I don't know him as well, I'm the only one that is known for scrapper lock. LMFAO. And I can keep it contained for the occasion


Backup (In case a primary can't make it. Will put overflow in here)

Have you ever looked into seeing how the game keeps track of your history plaques? At this point there's really no way to know which ones you're missing. If you have a lot of them, the only way is to either use vidmaps and wiki to make a run for all the plaques you're missing for a badge, or to run grab all plaques on a map, and do it for every map. Both are tedious. Something tells me this may be even beyond you guys, but as I'm not really a programmer I can't say.

If you could pull that rabbit outta your hat, I would laud you copiously for days on end. Personally, tracking my merits would be more handy than influence, levels, powers, (pretty much everything combined with the exception of badges, but badges are still second place).

First off, awesome. I want to make that clear because of what I'm gonna ask next. I hate to sound like that kid at Christmas who says, "Where's the rest?" My brother got his hot wheels taken away on Christmas morning for that one (Haha, that's what you get for shooting me with the BB gun). But I digress. These stat/badge/info trackers can track influence/infamy and things like that. Any thought into including, or is it even possible to include, merits? I'd love to be able to check city tracker and see which of my toons is closest to my next recipe so I can hop on that one for a TF. I've tried keeping track myself on a word document, or better, a spreadsheet, but I'm too lazy to keep updating it. And yes, I realize what just came out of my mouth. But it's true of the rest of ya too, admit it.

Love this program, no doubts about it. It's awesome. I didn't even really use glycerine because I never remembered to open it all the time, and I had to update my badges manually. I'm not quite savvy enough to understand the instructions given on how to update badges already earned on glycerine. Such a pain. Now this does it for me. Just wondering if it'd be easy to add merits into the tracker.

Heh, sure, I'll join in. Define MMO. What is it meant to be? What's the point of it? Even more than the FPS's I think the point of it is to team up with other players and run around our little simulated world together (probably because our real lives just ain't cuttin it). It's fun to get a toon or two that can fight mobs set to x8+4, or solo a GM, but if every casual player/toon can do it, what's the point of teaming any more? If all ten(ish) of my 50s could do that, I'd probably leave and go play Devil May Cry, or Prototype. Cuz let's face it, the graphics are better, there's a story, the characters look cooler than the idiotic toons most of us make (yes, including mine), and..... well, if CoH was single player, it would just overall suck. Oh wait, I forgot about badges!!! Never mind, I could always spend endless hours getting explore badges on all my toons, single player games don't have.... umm..... badges..... oh wait, they're called achievements, I guess they do.......

Man, you're making me look forward to the time 5 years from now where I've finished my toons so I can quit and play better games.



P.S. Xyce wants me to remind you guys that Triumph is dead. (And Tam says get over it)

Shouldn't be too hard. The Sybils and the Cysts are easy, just really time consuming. Illusion is about the safest set to do it with. The only tricks should be getting through the last Robot spawn on the computer, killing human Rommie without using up all your temps, and getting Rommie to kill his own healer. That part shouldn't even be that hard, it's just a question of whether the numbers add up. No real skill involved in that part. The last trick is pulling Rommie to the grass without letting him kill you before you can catch him with PA. I was wondering something on that though, and I may ask my next ITF team to let me try it just to experiment. If you let PA pull Rommie, then run away all the way to the staircase leading back to the door, the PA should rubberband back to you and pull Rommie to the grass without endangering yourself. I haven't played with this much, but from what I have seen, my PA seems to have a pretty long range, as far as what point they rubberband back.
I've seen a video (not sure which issue it happened during) of an ill/rad with temps soloing Jack in Irons. So as long as the healer is gone, Rommie shouldn't be as difficult as that. The real trick will be getting through without dying once.

Been getting distracted with other things. I'm almost set up for this, but I'm gonna save the attempt for when I get my last 2 sets finished. But I'm all set up on temps. All I need is to collect 1 last nuke, the bio.

As for the strategy, my current plan is this:
Mission 1 (Sybils) - Fairly easy. For the most part, the Sybil mobs are far enough away that if you confuse the 3 you need, they will attack only each other, and won't reach out too far. Slow, but simple strategy. They kill each other off, and you might have to finish off one. Rinse repeat until the end. Stay towards the side by the altar to avoid ambush. Gravy.

Mission 2 (Nictus) - Mostly the same strategy as above. Time consuming, and it's doable without using strictly confuse, but if you are shooting for a solo high end TF with 0 deaths, best to stick with the safe bet and confuse while invisible. If you're lucky, one or two of the bosses will focus on the crystal and you'll get it pretty quick.

Mission 3 (Generals/Computer) - Once again, just use the general mobs to kill the generals with confuse. Easy. Hard part comes in during the computer/AV fight. What I'd do is throw down debuff on the computer, and start whacking away. It'll take a while, but save the PA for when the Mechs start waking up. If you're going for the 0 death goal, I'd kill off the spawns with PA, then go back to working on the computer. Stock up on defense insp before mission start, and that should take care of the last spawn long enough for you to take a few out so PA can hold them. Medium risk on this part, but manageable. The trick comes in when killing the AV's. If you have enough recharge, and you use the [Vanguard Medallion], I'm thinking you should be able to confuse Reqiuem to help you kill Rommie. And then, I'm thinking save enough V merits for two heavies. Use one on Rommie in mission 3, then go to RWZ to grab another for mission 4. I think an ill/rad with Reqiuem helping and a heavy should be able to kill off human Rommie without using all the other temps you'll need later.

Mission 4 (Nictus Rommie) - After crunching some numbers, I think Rommie is perma-confusable with my final build. If you can perma confuse him, he will kill his own healer. And his spawning nictus. And..... whatever that other one is. That leaves him vulnerable, and he's just a normal AV. Still difficult, but with all your pets/nukes, he should be doable. V-Heavy should be able to catch the aggro that Rommie tries to throw at you in those few seconds when PA is respawning. I'd clear the side first, and pull him. But that's tricky, because the only way to do that is obviously to aggro Rommie, and you have to time it right to get him down there, then pull out PA to grab him. Personally, I'd rather not take on the ambushes. Ill/rad is great, but against big mobs, I'd rather not chance it. Not really where it shines.

Anyway, I'll post my results when I actually get around to doing this in the next few weeks.

Yeah. Overall, being able to stack is way more important than what your procs will do for you.
But anyway, just came down with my third case of infected tonsils/swollen lymph nodes this year. Find out whether or not I get them yanked on Friday. Won't see me around much, and this post will stagnate for a bit.

Two more purple sets needed on my ill/rad, and then I'll be doing the ITF challenge. Soloing it. Wondering what more I need? At the moment, I've collected:
3 nukes
(Working on Vanguard HVAS)
Shivans
Wolf pet
Backup radio
Envenomed dagger
(Working on Amy)
Hyper Phase (Just in case)

Attempting it with 0 deaths.

This build phailed. For anyone curious as to why, I'll explain two things. Link minds isn't affected by power boost. So that drops the defense. The second this is a personal preference.
I'm a firm believer in building your toons however you like, however it's fun for you, as long as they're "good." But in my opinion, this build defeats the purpose..... no, not purpose. It defeats the nearly godlike potential a mind dominator has (or any dom really)
I have just enough recharge for perma-dom in this build. But after playing with this build for a while, it became clear that with more recharge, I could lock down more mobs faster. This become necessary both because this build doesn't really soft cap you, and because it defeats the purpose of soft capping. If one mob is swinging away at each other, and the next is totally held helpless, and your mass confuse is recharged by the time you're ready for the 3rd, well, you won't even be getting swung at much. And you're more useful as a team build. Also, I learned more about controlling AV's and have even gone so far as to start a guide on the subject. And knowing what I know now, going for recharge on a dom is much better. My new build has almost no defense, but has 188 global recharge. Basically, I can stack over mag 90 confuses, without PB or Megalo activated. No way to even do the math on those two powers affects. But it's staggering what they can do, especially together. So, that being said, I went for virtually no defense, and ridiculous recharge.

This build phailed by the way. Issues with link minds not being affected by PB, not to mention that it defeats the purpose of a dom. I'll explain more in my main thread. Started under my global.

Decided to compile the things that seem to be scattered in one easy guide on controlling AV's. (Yes it's very different from controlling normal mobs) It's far from finished, and will take some time, since I have other priorities in game as well as real life, but if you'd like to see what I have so far, and contribute, I'll link it.
Bah, too lazy to link it right now, though I had it in another tab. Just search for my global. If you're confused on how to crunch the numbers or how to figure out if you can do it, hope it helps you. If you're already good at this kind of thing, any feedback to make it better is appreciated.

Ah yeah, I see. Just a though. And yeah, I have a dm/sr build that's soft capped. It's easier, I was just curious if it was possible.