IsusTrikanda

I remember making my first toon, a blaster, on my hubby's account, with great trepidation, and loving her--and then immediately discarding blasters forever once I found defenders and Tanks.

I remember the first valentine's day event at Pocket D, and the signs that littered the city beforehand.

I remember hopping through the Hollows just after the purple patch, wondering why my baby tank was suddenly less tanky (I really hadn't been playing long at all; it was a while before I cottoned on to that one).

I remember 178 levels of Super Strength (and laughing like a maniac when I got my first Foot Stomp. Foot Stomp is CANDY).

I remember 6 respecs of my dark/darkfender to get her where I wanted her. and I remember running her on the Tyrant mission with that darkfender, a baby empy, and 5 scrappers--the scrappers stood around for a minute asking each other who would be lead tank, and nobody wanted to. I said, fine, I'll be lead tank. They said, but you're a defender! I said, So? And proceeded to tank the mish so that they could all enjoy scrapperlock.

For that matter, I remember tanking Mary MacComber on my darkfender while the tank went AFK, then being told I hadn't been tanking her at all when the tank came back. Well, SOMEONE was holding her aggro and keeping her from killing us all, and it wasn't you.....

I remember all kinds of hard times that were made so much better by having a world where we could be freakin' heroes.

I remember thinking it maybe wouldn't end. seems like only yesterday. <sigh>

I remember the best group of people I ever gamed with.

Zwill, I mostly lurk on threads rather than posting, but you and all the team have been awesome and patient beyond expectation. I've really appreciated most all my Dev interactions, and the stuff the team has put together. The excitement and the love for the genre, and the willingness to engage with the playerbase. Wherever you all end up, I wish you luck and joy and fortune. I'm sure it won't be half so good as you deserve.

This game has been a second family for 7 years and an opportunity to just let go and kick evil in the nuts when daily life gets to be too much. I've found a home here on Triumph, and on Victory, and all the other servers I've got lowbies on. Everywhere I have gone on this game has made me feel at home. It's been quiet diversion when my husband was in grad school and a way of spending time with friends across the state.

I love this game. Friends have gotten bored and moved on, and I still love this game. I've tried a few of the other MMOs, and none of them have come close. This is where I have loved being--where I could be the superhero I choose to be, or the villain that was so much fun (well, except for Sharkhead, but Sharkhead is just depressing). This has been my stress relief, my diversion, and my giggling fun, my family with jokes and love (and punching, don't forget punching).

I'm not sure what direction NCSoft thinks they're going in, but if it doesn't involve the most beautiful, flexible, and super MMO out there, they're going in the wrong one. I can only hope they wake up and take notice.

In case they don't, Thanks, Zwill. Thanks to you, and everyone else at Paragon Studios. And thanks to the great playerbase that made me not ever afraid to join random teams, recruit random people for monster fighting, or take time to help someone out.

Thank you.

Hey, y'all. just got my very first /ice to 20 (played with a couple at lower levels before, but they failed to take off). Today, my baby WP/ice hit 20, and I picked up icepatch.

Um.... is icepatch for tanks seriously bugged right now, or is it *supposed* to toss mobs away from me like bonfire? Didn't find anything in known issues or concerns, however, I'm quite willing to believe it might be an old issue that I'm only just now finding out 'cause this is the first time I've had the power, or it might be seriously borked. The short description says 'knockdown' and not 'knockback', but knockdown doesn't toss guys 15 feet away from me as soon as I lay down a patch.

Thanks for the help--I've been really looking forward to ice patch and if this is working as intended I might end up rerolling her, 'cause suddenly I have to run around and chase all my mobs again. That would make me sad.

(disclaimer in the interests of useful information: I have only tried this out on clockwork so far, because that's what I was fighting in the mission I ran, so apologies if it's only likely to do this with clockwork, although I did find the same effect happening whether they were at level or just below (I tried again with white mobs in case it was just the 'lower levels knockdown becomes knockback' effect). Also, I'm going to work, so I can't answer any other questions til later tonight, but wanted to ask this before I went.)

Thanks again and have a great day!

Going back a bit....

I get into the first 5 levels below, but I wanted to note this especially just in case anyone who could change anything was watching. Please, please, please, I'll probably never run the 1-5 arc again I was so annoyed by it but I honestly wouldn't CARE if you'd just fix the 'find contact' window so it actually pointed you at a regular zone contact. I went through big chunks of the game where all it would offer me was David Wincott (didn't wanna do the hollows on that toon), Montague Castanella (even after I'd finished his arc), Jim Temblor (again, I wasn't looking for the hazard arc), and... that was pretty much it. It would be so nice if we could just start working with someone in KR (or steel, or sky, or talos, depending on how many times you run DFB) that WASN'T one of the special arcs or hazard arcs or what-have-you. I've saved Lou the mechanic SO MANY TIMES, but that's 'cause I kind of like doing it. Please let us go ahead and 'find' regular zone contacts!

Now for the first 5 levels: I miss the option of choosing who I wanted to start off with (which, admittedly, meant I used to have way fewer science toons than anything else, but any of my science concepts generally also matched tech or mutation, and skulls and council were fun.

I didn't find the new story arcs to be awful story-wise, but I will pretty much never play them again. I'd rather street-sweep, or run DFB once to get to 5. My general response to the new arcs was, dang, guys. This was so not the lesson I wanted you to learn from WoW. Low-damage toons have a lot of trouble with high respawn rates, especially at level 3: if you're playing a baby defender or a baby controller, by the time you get one group down, the previous one has respawned on top of you.

Lack of door missions might help server load (although if they were really worried they could have LEFT US GALAXY CITY no, sorry, being calm) but it makes it really hard on anyone who only has gale and 2 baby blasts, or a hold, an immob, and a heal, or (from the tank side) one shield and 2 punches. This was one of the most annoying things about WoW for me during the time I played, because there was never space you could declare as 'cleared', and mobs would spawn right on top of you. It was one of the big reasons I came back (okay, I never left, but I did wander a bit )

So yah--it would be nice to be able to choose the early mishes (door missions are tough on server load but a lot easier on my poor graphics card), but I'd be happy to settle for the 'find contact' button finding older contacts once you hit level 5.

(on a completely side note, We already lost Galaxy. Why are we losing Dark Astoria? That's such a great place to go and street-sweep for lvl 20-30 toons. Why couldn't we have a new zone to be the incarnate zone? Or heck, do something with Terra Volta, that place is a ghost town. <sigh> That's a legitimate question, BTW, not just grousing--if anyone knows why they're taking a moody and unique zone and essentially shutting it off for anyone sub-50, please let me know.)

I'm glad to see this thread here--I grabbed the gunslinger pack yesterday pretty much as soon as I saw it, 'cause I have a DP that I wanted to give the chaps, jacket, hat, etc. to... unfortunately, that DP is female. and of all my (mostly) female toons, about the least likely to dress as a cheap dance-hall floozy. I haven't played with the steampunk pack as much, and the female options there were about what I was looking for, but this was very annoying.

Ultimately, with this costume pack and given the historical context of the period, we are being told that women don't get to ride horses (which you could not do in that costume) or wear pants. Men can ride and shoot just fine, but in order to wield guns women have to be... prostitutes.

Now to be clear, I absolutely love the dance-hall-floozy costume. My first comment on seeing the picture was a delighted "I can be a floozy!", and I have at least a couple characters who will probably use pieces of it (although I'd like the veil without that huge bow, personally). But it's not the reason I threw down the points for the set. And it's absurd that, in a game where I have characters who SWITCH GENDERS, and they allow for that to the extent of having gendered badge titles actually change (Ferryman/Ferrywoman of the Damned, for instance, depending on which body is being worn at the moment), those two bodies can't have the same completely reasonable outfit.

If options were to open up--I'd say personally that everything except the bare chest options ought to be open for any body type--we'd see a temporary flood of huge men in tiny bikinis with bustiers as people started to play with it for kicks, and then most of the players would get bored with making the outrageous for no reason other than that it was outrageous, and things would settle down to near-status-quo pretty quickly, but with a LOT more options for people who had a specific concept.

For men, that concept can include other cultures and time periods where dress was not like it is today, or silver-age options, or merely embarrassing body-type issues (uh-oh, I turn into a giant man when I get upset and now I'm fighting crime in the shreds of an evening dress because I didn't have time to change!) (not even going into the continued lack of a huge female body type, as that would require significant extra coding time). For women, that includes a lot more options that DO NOT require you to display lots of flesh or skin-tight clothing. I know it's a long-standing tradition in comics, but some of us would like to make more realistic heroes. If I make a tough-as-nails ex-punk with an Axe, she's not likely to start dolling up in a bustier, but she is likely to have a lot of tattoos. Except that wait, I can't.

This game has more costume options than pretty much any other game ever, and I really really appreciate that your powers are not tied to your outfit (coff WoW coff). I love the costume and character creators, and have made far more toons than I can ever play just so that I can play with the options. But it's absurd that in new costume packs women are not allowed to wear pants!

As for MMs not having female lackeys... I don't generally play MMs (they're a little too much for me to keep track of at once) so I can't say I'd leap on the option to have an all-female destruction machine. But I would darn well love to play alongside one, because, and this is important, it would be AWESOME.

Sorry, that got a lot more rant-y than I meant for it to. I just ...kind of want my points back, frankly. I'll use some of the other costume pieces, sure, but the reason I bought the gunslinger pack in the first place is pretty much invalid as long as any character with a female body type can't wear the chaps. <sigh>

Have a good day, y'all.

*minor thread rez*

Many many on my D4--

--running that huge outdoor redcaps map with a PUG (pretty good one) but someone brought back a spawn of the little devils just as we got hit with the ambush. They were behind me, I went down, healthbars started heading black right and left. popped wakey/bf/blue/med defense, hit howling twilight and fearsome stare, and rezzed my team who then proceeded to wipe the map with them. final word from our leader (a scrapper): 'Dang. I'm going to have to re-think dark defenders.'

--playing my then-level-38 empy, got a tell asking if I'd help out with a mish. sure, no problem--mish comes up and it's the one where you have to beat Nosferatu, so I *book it* to the mission to see a game of health-bar whack-a-mole going on. Team (and AV) are 4 levels above me, I'm trying, but it just doesn't work. team wipes. I tell 'em I'm going to come back with my dark, who has debuffs and furthermore is level-appropriate for the mish. I get back, we've lost a blaster and 3 scrappers, lead is trying to fill. can't find any more scraps or blasters, has to 'settle' for another dark/dark (two of us now), a /kin troller and a /rad troller. he reluctantly lets us talk him into trying it with just the team he has, all the debuffers laughing into their sleeves. Nosferatu is down well before HT recharges, and I have it slotted for max recharge for the debuff...

--Running the Dr. Vazzy mission on my rad/rad, throwing RI and EF, hopping into the spawn, hitting irradiate, hopping out to hit electron haze and send them all flying into a wall, repeat. scrapper playing with us says "&lt;-- thinks rad should be a scrapper set". I replied with, "dude, what are you talking about? Rad *is* a scrapper set!"

--running tyrant mish, set at unyeilding, with my D4, 4 scrappers, and a sidekicked empy who was looking for team. we get in and one of the scrappers looks at team makeup and says, ok, who's playing lead tank? I said, generally I do, leap forward, hit first spawn with fearsome stare and TT and start melting their hitpoints away.

Scrap watches a moment, says, 'good enough' and the carnage kicks in. it was beautiful.

Good guide, and thanks for the info! Worth noting that the psi powers all have a -recharge effect, tho, with the highest effect on the AoE Psy Scream and Psy Tornado. The debuff in a team setting is almost better than the extra damage, and is nothing to sneeze at solo.

Just to nitpick a little bit on an early comment:

[ QUOTE ]
Empathy powers are unique in that they have the smallest number of powers that actually benefit the hero using them. Of the 9 primary powers, only three will help you solo. This compares poorly to Dark's 8, Kinetics' 7, Rad's 8, Storm's 8, TA's 9 and even Force Fields' 6 is surprising. Only Sonic comes close with 4 powers of any use solo. This gives you an idea of just how much the Empathy powerset will be useful to you if you plan to solo. If you know when you pick up the powerset that you will spend a good deal of time alone, then that will help with your power choices. For most of us, we sit somewhere in the middle of the solo-team band, which is why consideration must be given to your playstyle before you begin.

[/ QUOTE ]

..ok, kin has 7 solo-useful powers--everything except SB and ID. With you on that one. Storm has 8--everything but O2 boost. With you again. Emp has 3, no question, and I admit I haven't played Sonic enough to be really familiar with it, so I'll freely accept 4 on sonic, and everything TA has, all nine, are quite solo-useful. Never much played a FF'er either, so I'll gladly accept 6 there.

...however, by my reckoning, Rad only has 7 solo-useful powers as well. Mutation and Fallout can each only be used on a fallen teammate or ally... quite useless if you're in a mission by yourself.

And Dark has--again, in my experience--a whopping nine powers of the primary which are potentially useful in a solo situation. Howling Twilight is quite a decent stun/disorient and debuff, and does not require the presence of a fallen comrade to make it useful. Lots of people open with it on larger groups to buy some time for extra shots, and it's got a whopping -regen.

Just adding my $.02 to the previous 'numbers' discussion--Overall I felt this was quite a good guide, but the numbers you were using did tend to distract me from what you were saying. I have an emp/psi that I'm quite fond of, and mostly agree with you, but seeing numbers that quite contracted my direct experience was a little weird.

Thanks again for the guide, and have a good day!

--Isus

Current fave toon: Pony Princess (27 D/D, Triumph)

To knowing the missions: For regular grind mishes, just level and occasionally baddies are good enough ("hey, wanna help me beat up on some lvl 25 freakshow?"). Certain mishes, though, it's very nice to put in the tell--Atta, Frostfire, Dr. Vaz, any TF, etc. These are the ones that most people know, many people really enjoy, some people really hate, and if you note that it's one of these signature mishes ("We're going to take down frosty, want to play?") people both know what they're getting into and know that you're experienced enough as player to realize that those are the big mishes.

Wow, this made me come out of lurkerhood.... Gonna be sort of a reply-to-all.

I have a lot of alts. This leads to a LOT of team invites. I Mostly play with PuGs, and have had some really STELLAR experiences with some of them... others not so much. I will say this: I have never, not once, regretted teaming with someone who took the time to ask first. (okay, there was that once where a lot of the team left in the middle of the Atta mish, but hello, it was the Atta mish, that thing took 3 hours. we recruited, we went on, and we finished the darn mish for the guy who bailed halfway through. Most of the time, if people took the time to ask, they were fine to team with--just a quick /tell of, hey, you wanna help me out on a lvl_ mish? gives me the option to decide rather than just clicking off an annoying box that just popped up. My experiences accepting Blind invites have frequently led to multiple team wipes (generally not the kind where everyone laughs about it either, but the kind where people bail in the middle), my having to exemp unexpectedly (oh, grab the defender! she can exemp down, we really need the help!), or other such annoying nonsense.

I admit it, I use /tell as a test--if they cared enough to read what I wrote in the box, then they're probably going to be good to team with. If, on the other hand, my team search comment says 'Not teaming, comp troubles' and I have it set to 'Do not Accept invites' and I *still* get /tells saying, "can I join your team?" ...well, I was less than friendly to the player in question, tho I did try to be civil. Ask nicely, especially if the team window says "not looking"--for some people (like me) that means, ehh, sure, not searching but i wouldn't mind a team--for some (like my Husband) it means, don't ask me, I'm NOT looking for a team. And since it's the default, well, that makes it a little difficult to tell.

However, I don't tend to worry too much about balancing the ATs/powersets--If I'm on my tank, another tank is great. If I'm on my empy, I won't necessarily worry about recruiting another empy, but my low-attacks empy ripped through a mission with just a controller; likewise a PuG from yesterday with my empy, three blasters and a troller did quite well (only one death, and that was when someone ran straight into a huge mob before i got there). The synergy and overlap will change from group to group, but I have yet to find an unworkable team composition for regular mishes (TFs, ATs, GMs need a little more care; debuffers are key in those cases).

I gotta say, half the joy I find in this game is watching how the powersets work together, both within and between ATs. If I limit myself to just certain 'known' powersets in my teammates, I miss out on a lot of that.