Organica

The only time I skip the tutorial is when I'm creating the character for some other reason than actually creating a character to play... which is very rare. But sometimes I just want a name-holder, for example.

Even then, I have characters standing around in the old and the new tutorials who may never finish them. ^_^ One is a name holder for my future staff melee toon.

If I want to play the character then an easy free level is always a good idea.

I love that Doc Quantum mission! I like blowing things up. Also, it's over pretty quickly. ^_^

I have a formerly Council radio mission on one character that I've kept as an alternate farm type mission... only now it's a "defeat Boss_Name" mission. I have no idea who the enemies are at this point, I should check it out.

Speaking of glitches... we had that Nictus Romulus glitch on an ITF last night (we had a Peacebringer on the team). We kept running into him, but the best part was when we zoned into the last mission and waited for the first ambush, there was Rommy charging straight up to the gates to take care of us personally! Lol, such an impatient guy!

I have a level 50 ma/wp scrapper who is a street fighter.
Then I have a level 50 ma/wp scrapper who is an angry ballerina.
Then I have a level 50 ma/wp scrapper who is a Hollywood movie-star wannabe.
They're different! I had to make them all!

I played broadsword/shield to 50 too. But that was an Atlantean knight. I still need a barbarian warror, a dark elf knight, and then there's Medieval Crisis who is many different warrior champions in one -- that was a cheat that allowed me to combine the evil dark knight with the holy valkyrie and the wood elf warrior and the samurai all in one. ^_^
Oh, and there's the broadsword/shield brute, too. Because that's different.
And still... I can't guarantee that I don't need to create another broadsword/shield scrapper.

How can I possibly play all my characters? Paragon must fix this!

First of all -- someone can correct me -- but the attributes you're seeing don't include any global bonuses.

Second of all -- you didn't say if you're 4-slotting or 5-slotting Kinetic Combat, but the important smashing/lethal defense bonus is available for 4 slots so people usually skip the proc... that allows you to frankenslot a different IO for more accuracy/recharge/whatever. "Frankenslot" means to combine different types of IOs, like say a Kinetic Combat and maybe a Mako's Bite and a Crushing Impact -- because you don't care about set bonuses but want to maximize the attributes for that power. With Frankenslotting you can probably get all attributes to green, but you won't get any set bonuses. So a set of 4 Kinetic Combats plus an accuracy/recharge IO from another set is very nice, or two pieces of pounding slugfest is very nice for the 8% regen bonus.

Third -- it's not necessarily bad to boost your damage into the red if you're a damage-dealing AT. ^_^ But if you still have 22.94% accuracy, then yeah, that's not so good.

Don't forget to consider Hamidon Origin Enhancements at level 50, as an extra IO to help round out your numbers.

There's a Bonesnap that is accuracy/rechage, and one of the Hectacombs is accuracy/recharge. I think those are the only melee pieces that boost those two attributes, off the top of my head. Several do accuracy/endurance/recharge: Gladiator's Strike, Mako's, Focused Smite.

If we weren't paying for power sets then you'd be looking at Street Justice and Beam Rifle coming in the new box set expansion maybe due out this Summer, and staff and titan weapons and beast mastery and darkness control would be cool ideas that maybe they could do someday.

How I see it at least.

Being Alive > Looking Good.

I took Frozen Armor on my MM. ^_^

Premium won't allow me to have 80+ alts on one server. Unless I want to manage 40+ accounts. >.>

Heck, they won't even let me have 80+ alts for a single VIP subscription! Those bastards!

Anyway I've actually set up a couple of premium accounts on the side, and two totally freebie ones, just to see how things compare. Life as a premium isn't all that bad. But I likes my alts and incarnate stuff too much.

Did they change something to scrappers?

Um... no?

Well then. Guess my scrappers are as good as they were yesterday.

Very Rare is still Very Rare. I'd expect purple prices to rise from here on out. People still have money to spend, especially if they aren't dropping 2 billion on a Glad Armor, so they'll try to outbid each other on the things that are the hardest to get.

I was a bit stupid with converters too. Despite everything TopDoc, Arcanaville and the others said, my response was generally, "It's probably too late for me to get involved." In hindsight I still had plenty of time to buy up cheaper purple and pvp IOs and that would have been a good thing for me to do.

My second mistake was that, because I wasn't paying very close attention to how the things work (I don't even have beta installed), I stupidly placed a lot of lowball bids on purple recipes, instead of the crafted IOs. No real harm, and I was able to buy a few of the ones I wanted anyway after logging in yesterday, but just shows how I really hadn't thought things through at all.

My third mistake was I burned through a lot of merits last night trying to convert a couple of level 30 Numina heal/recharge IOs to the unique. I got one, but I wasted waaay too many merits on the project. It doesn't bother me because I have a couple of thousand merits sitting on vigilantes that had been there for 2-3 years, so I wasn't doing anything else with them. But if I'd played with converters on Test at all I'd have known better.

Now, the good news: I've never sold a purple drop, ever. I craft them and place them in my base. If I've learned anything in this game, ultra-rare purples generally only go up in price. Of course, my main focus is always slotting my characters, so what I mostly had was a nice supply of absolute amazements, soulbound allegiance, etc to play with. I had fun converting all of those into things I'd rather have.

I also had a few cheap pvp IOs lying about that I played with, and I was able to buy some more on the market for sub-100 million influence and play with those. I had fun, and I wound up with a bunch of Panaceas and Glad Armors. I gained five of the level 50 Glad Armor uniques, and also held onto a couple of full five-piece sets of Panacea and one Glad Armor resists. I already had three level 10 Glad Armor uniques in my base and I have a bunch of them on level 50 characters that I can swap out for level 50 versions. And I still have a lot of money so missing out on making even more money doesn't hurt me so much. Also, since I live on the West coast I pretty much had no chance to make the big money anyway. I was even late to the party to buy up anything at really low prices.

But I had fun last night anyway. I was able to fully purple my relatively new level 50 widow in a few hours instead of several weeks. ^_^ It's all good!

Time to check my marketeer! Did I make money this week?







Well hey! I think I made some money!

Your only concern is whether your name will be available each time you transfer. But I've moved certain characters more than once. The game doesn't care if the character's been moved before or was previously on the server you're moving it to -- it only cares that there's an available slot and if the name is free (and if it isn't, it adds a 1 to the name and you're allowed to rename the character).

103. Two Words: Fake Statesmen

104: ...Followed an issue later by a mysterious new contact in Ouroboros named Arnass Tent....

So definitely getting a new MM set tomorrow:

Meme Mastery.

62. Use as the public face for your reclusive one-man, basement-studio death metal band.

63. Have your photo taken with Statesman at the States Theme Park!

63. New winter event: the Stateman luge!

64. Ticket Taker for the Paragon Bus System. Or bus driver, whatever.

65. Demonstration model for any and all new power set animations.

66. Zombie Statesman, new Incarnate Pet!

67. New Pocket D Event: Zombie Statesman vs. Adamastor death match!

68. Your Next Signature Story Arc: Statesman and Ghost Widow, a forbidden romance from beyond the grave.

69. Upgraded Manticore Task Force features dead Statesman as the final AV. No, he doesn't do anything, he's dead. It's still an improvement.

70. New contact for the Undead Statesman Task Force. It's zombieriffic!

71. Fill with helium, replace the Atlas blimp.

72. Use as advertisement to lure people back to the arenas. Come fight Statesman! You can beat him now!

Now if they'd only fix the feet. >.>

Which yes, I know they said they'd do. ^_^

I'm with Sam. People that get nostalgia for the old days don't actually remember what they were like. People quitting over perma-debt, for example. Having to spend day after day after day street hunting in Brickstown because you're out of contacts and leveling is so slow in the 30's. Going without SO's at all simply because you could never afford them at the low levels. The glory days weren't necessarily that glorious.

And back when there were no min/maxers leveling as fast as they could? Like the people that built invul tanks and herded entire maps or even zones? PI farms that could get you to level 50 in a day? People farming the Abandoned Sewer Trial, never completing it, just farming for the experience? People using smoke to make themselves invulnerable? Regen to make them unkillable? Burn on a fire tank to herd up entire maps of 5th column puppies and kill them all at once? "Perma 46" characters built specifically for farms?

I don't think things have changed as much as people think. At least, as far as how people want to play the game.

As far as what I'd like to see revamped -- Synapse, for sure. Maybe the shard TFs as well, if they even feel like those zones are worth salvaging. Sure there are problems with Sister Psyche, Citadel, Manti, and Numina, but they don't compare to Synapse.

I certainly don't think they need to remove or replace Hess, that's a fun TF that too few people have experienced because you have to unlock the contact (which only takes half an hour via Ouro). Though I've said before, the giant robot really should come to life and stride across the zone or something. But still, nothing wrong with Hess at all.

Ninjitsu has a clickable status proteciton similar to SR and Shield. It also has a heal, which if you build for defense (it's a positional defense set) you'll only need occasionally. So really, not a clicky-intensive set to me, any more than SR or Shield is. Not like Regen anyway.

There's also some other powers like caltrops, smoke, etc. I haven't used those much.

I'm not sure how staff fighting will be on either... but street justice is a great set for a stalker because so few stalker sets have good AoE damage. I have a street justice/ninjitsu stalker at nearly level 47 now, it's a very fun set.

Mind you, I have a street justice/shield brute at 50 that I love as well, and probably staff will be fun on either AT. I'm not sure you can go wrong either way.

I just realized something else this morning.

Waaaaaaay back when they merged the markets for redside and blueside, I bought a bunch of Soulbound Allegiance (purple pet IOs) before the merge at "cheap" prices. Even then, I was kind of late to the game and the prices were starting to go up. I sold everything a month later and made a little money, probably not as much as I could have with more patience, but I was happy enough. But I saved one set for my then-40ish MM. That set has been sitting in my base ever since, I see it every time I'm looking for other IOs. It was always someday I'll get my MM to 50 and I can finally use that set.

Well, hey! That day has finally arrived. Not sure if it was worth the wait, but whatever!

Friday, 3PM PST
I get home from work. The "no life" static team guys have been going at it all day and are in their early 30's already. Me, I have three goals:

1. Get Mia Nevermore, bots/dark MM, from 46 to 50
2. Get Shinobi Shinobu, street justice/ninjitsu stalker, from 38 to 50
3. Get Earthsinger, plant/fire Dom, from 30 to 50

Naturally, the first thing I do is... create a brand new darkness control Dom. No, I don't know why, I just had the idea for a character named Black Valentine, or Dark Valentine. Which are both taken, of course, so I settle for Ash Valentine.

My only goal for this character is to get them established, maybe gain a few levels, and then leave them for later. But gaining levels in Death from Below is so easy! A single run takes me all the way to 13. Four runs and I'm at 19.5. I join a mission team, I get to 22, I fill out the character with generic IO's, then I join a Sister Psyche, which takes me to about 25.

So that was my Friday night. Not really part of the plan but I had fun.

Saturday 6 AM
I wake up too early but decide to log on. I have my new Dom and I have my other characters that I want to level, so naturally, the first thing I do is...

I create a brand new character on a brand new freebie account.

I really can't explain why I felt compelled to do this; I already have two paid accounts, two premium acocunts bought when they were on saie (2 and 1 characters total), and a completely free account created just to experiment (1 character total). The new character is an arrow/cold domination corr named Twilight Maid. I run through DfB four times and get to about level 18 or 19. It is quite easy to join a DfB team on a chat-restricted freebie account, so I guess that was the point of the experiment, I dunno.

After that I log into my main account and join a Moonfire on my new Dom Ash Valentine. This takes me to level 28. That's still two levels below the Dom I had planned to play to 50, but eh, the goal of getting at least one Dom to 50 is still alive I guess. And I really do need to play Ash long enough to get the crazy barking idiot darkness dog.

(Virtually every team this weekend had at least one of those dogs. I think its barking will haunt me in my dreams.)

Moonfire WST experience is crazy. I switch to my stalker Shinobi Shinobu and run a Moonfire. I only gain one level because I've already run Moonfire this week -- in fact, I think I've run it 4-5 times now with this character, it's a popular TF with our SG because it's a low level TF that a lot of newer players can join, you work towards two important badges in Slayer and Silver Bullet, and unlike Synapse it's only about an hour long.

But this gets Shinobi to level 40. I head to Founder's to start my last free tailor slot mission, and there's a Numina forming. I join that. We do it the slow way --- kill all, even on the stealth glowy mission. This takes me to just shy of 41, which I easily hit hunting Nemesis in PI for the tailor mission.

Some friends ask me to join a Mortimer Kal SF. I start to reply that I don't have any redside toons I want to level up at the moment, but wait! Mia Nevermore isn't a hero --she's a rogue! So I join them. Only five MMs on a team of eight, in caves, how fun! Well, not so much for the non-MMs I suppose. But I get Mia from nearly 47 to nearly 48, so mission partly accomplished!

I don't really like playing MMs. There's a certain amount of chaotic fun in an all-MM team or heavy-MM team, but overall I don't make a great MM. Mia will probably be my only 50 MM ever.

So with that down, I switch to a level 25 arrow/time corr named Chelan and join yet another Moonfire. This takes me all the way to 29. Experience that good is kind of addictive, and I decide that what I really need to do is to play more mid-level toons on more Moonfire TFs. Screw my 3 ATs to 50 plan.

After a break I log in to a level 33 broadsword/shield scrapper named Midieval Crisis. Now, the problem with this character is that it's over 3 years old, and had a build made back when I didn't necessarily know what I was doing. I can't really remember what I thought I was doing, either. I have a set of Kinetic Combat slotted, out of place for a positional defense toon, and I have a bunch of other weird IO choices, and a bunch of stuff I've bought on the market that I don't remember what I was planning to do with.

The thought of playing a badly slotted character drives me nuts. I've been meaning to rework the character's build for a while. So I do exactly that. I create a new Mids build, softcapped but not full of uber-expensive purples or anything. (Discovered the new Mids patch at the same time!) I respec the character and spend a lot of time crafting the IOs I'd bought on the market and transporting IOs via e-mail to my private SG base, and digging IOs our of my base that I can actually use. Then I place bids on the things I don't already have, and finally, nearly 2 hours later, I'm ready to play again.

Not the best use of my DXP weekend time. In fact, it's just about the wosrt use of my time, especially considering that I blew off driving up north to meet some friends because itwas DXP weekend. But I feel better about playing the character. One last Moonfire run of the day, and Midieval Crisis is up to level 36, woo!

Meanwhile the no-life static team guys are all around level 47, after two solid days of playing, and I'm only marginally closer to getting a stalker and/or a MM to 50. But there's still Sunday!

Sunday, 5:30 AM
Wake up, can't get back to sleep, so time for another Moonfire. >.> At this point I've kind of abandoned my original plans, and instead am using the opportunity to get exp on multiple mid level toons. i do some marketing first, then it's off to Striga.

First up, Skura Girl, a sonic/cold corr. Level 23, just high enough to join. I go to 26 during a quick 41 minute Moonfire. Then I switch to Megami Hime, my titan weapons/willpower brute who has been taking a long time to get to 50 since I play too many other characters. I get to 43 and then 44 (and halfway to 45) on another Moonfire, this one in 1 hour.

After that I decided to get my MM to 50. I joined an ITF PuG. My friend had been telling horror stories about PuG ITFs on Saturday, but this one seemed to be going well -- until the incarnate leader went afk in the 2nd mission. He never came back, auto-logged out. His friend who he was apparently running the ITF for quit in the third mission. This left us with 3 MMs, two tanks, and a controller -- not a whole lot of non-pet damage, and pets can be a real problem with Rommy. We finished the third misison and discussed whether we wanted to try the fourth. Nearly everyone agreed that it was worth trying, we'd have to clear and separate Rommy from the nicti, but we had two tanks so it was worth a shot. But the one guy who didn't agree simply quit. So that was that -- we weren't going to do it with only five left.

But all of that got me to nearly 49. I join a Moonfire instead. The mission bonus knocks my MM to 50. Woo, one of my goals accomplished!

Then I turned to my stalker, who was 41. I joined another PuG ITF, against my better judgement. And my friend who'd had all the bad experiences with ITFs on Saturday was on the team, so I joked that we were doomed. How right I was! The leader (the only fifty) was running at +2, meaning some enemies were +3 to him and +4 to the rest team. I don't know about you, but even well-slotted characters have trouble against +4 enemies. Halfway through the first mission our brave leader decides that we can't do enough damage, it's impossible for us to finish the TF, and we might as well give up right here. Several of us pointed out that we could turn the difficulty down and do fine, but no, it has nothing to do with the level difference, we just have a bad team that can't do any damage. He declares that we'll finish out the mission and then disband. Two quit immediately. He complained about that, but I don't really blame them. The guy wasn't that bright.

My friend and I finally joined an ITF with actual friends from a global channel, and I gained two more levels to 43 and almost 44. Mission 2 closer to completion. ^_^ ITF with friends > ITF with strangers. I generally had good luck with PuG Moonfires on the weekend, but universal bad luck with PuG ITFs.

I take a break. When I come back, I log onto Shinobi Shinobu again. Almost immediately a friend asks if I wanted to join an ITF, so I say yes. Eh, two in one day, I'm looking for experience not merits. Teaming with friends is always more rewarding. I wound up gaining level 44, 45, and 46.

I also noticed that another friend had the same type of stalker -- street justice/ninjitsu -- but had taken Body Mastery/Physical Perfection, whereas I'd gone the Pyre Mastery route. And I was having all kinds of endurance problems. I'd reworked the build a bit to try and get more endurance recovery, but it was a pretty tight build. Suddenly, I wondered what a stalker with a complete attack chain needed with fire blast and fire ball anyway? Just to mule a couple of expensive purple sets? Uh, yeah... probably better things I could do with my build. I needed to respec to fix some other things anyway, so that was next on my agenda.

But first, a friend was starting yet another Moonfire, so I alted to yet another alt (my level 40 dark/dark corr Alting, in fact!) At the end of that I was 42. Then I reworked my stalker's build, respec'd, shuffled IO's around, and viola! Not only did I fix my endurance problems, but I had slots to use elsewhere and shored up my defenses really well. All around, more fun to play now. One of my concerns was moving the Stalker ATO set from assassin's strike to whirling kick -- I liked having it in assassin's strike, but I really needed to slot a Mako's Bite set there instead, whereas the targeted AoE of whirling kick wasn't granting me any defense from any other set. And actually, the switch worked out really well -- the proc goes off a lot in whirling kick, and usually my assassin's strike is up right after if I want to use it.

I ran five tip misisons and then joined a team for the final "save Croatoa" mission, and the new build played really well. I wound up about halfway to 47. Mission Two: Nearly complete.

Final Scorecard:

Mastermind Mia Nevermore: 46-50
Stalker Shinobi Shinobu: 38-46.5
New Dominator Ash Valentine: 1-28
New Corruptor Twilight Maid: 1-19
Corruptor Chelan: 25-29
Scrapper Midieval Crisis: 33-36
Corruptor Sakura Girl: 23-26
Brute Megami Hime: 42-44.5
Corruptor Alting: 40-42

(Never even logged into my plant/fire dom).