Organica

I played an MA/WP scrapper from 20 to 38. Hoping to hit 40 tonight.

I only made this scrapper a week ago. Went to level 8 on a sewer team, then PL'd the character to 20 running PI radio missions with one of my other scrappers.

In contrast to those who strive to get one of every AT to 50, I already have an MA/Invul scrapper at 50 and even have another MA/WP scrapper on the same account at level 25. Don't ask me why. I *like* MA, when it came down to it I went with MA/WP on this one too for concept reasons alone. Would have done SD or something otherwise. ^_^

If the team's doing radio/paper missions there is a zero chance of the glowy granting any special power. Doesn't matter who clicks it in that case. But I generally wait for the team leader/mission holder anyway.

If it's a contact mission, then yeah it could be a problem if someone else clicks and gains whatever prize/reward there might be. But if the mission holder doesn't warn people ahead of time, then it's their fault really.

Scrapper joins team with no tank. Leader says, "Okay, we'll use scrapper tactics."

Scrapper thinks "scrapper tactics" is an oxymoron. Leader says, "Run in and kill stuff!" This scrapper understands!

Scrapper is now level 38. ^_^

I always hated how spines looked. I loved thorns -- I made a plant dom just because thorns looked so cool. Now that I can give that look to a scrapper, I'm actually playing one.

MA on the other hand never bugged me, and I wasn't desperately looking forward to alternative animations... but I like them ok anyway. More choices is good. It seems to me that they replaced the most acrobatic and outlandish (and most fun) MA attacks with punches that were relatively simple.

Anyway I have far too many MA scrappers already, so being able to differentiate them a bit more is cool.

If I'm playing a tank, and there's 2 or 3 groups ahead, I'll pull to a corner. If the enemy is scattered, I'll gather them up.

Other than that, herding, especially the kind where you tell people where to wait and stand around until you're sure they're waiting, and/or pull from further away than the next room, is slowing the team down.

I do understand that on a steamrolling team, the defender or blaster occasionally dies. But scrapper knows that casualties are a part of the business!

I joined another team last night in Bricks that had several different tanks. One asked "herding of steamrolling"? Leader said, "Whatever works for you," but scrapper fired off "STEAMROLLING!" faster. Then added, "Oh yes, but do what works for you." Tank only pulled when it was convenient or situation warranted it. We steamrolled pretty much all night, went from 30 to 35. Scrapper was happy!

That's 20-35 so far this weekend and I still have all of Sunday. Love 2xp weekend!

GREAT TEAM: Friday night. Scrapper is level 20. Scrapper joins team in Talos. Radio mission, set to +1. Enemies are +2 to +3 to rest of team. Scrapper goes from 20 to level 27, in few hours, average half a level per mission. Charge forward! Kill, kill!

Player A wants to up things to +2. "We've all got SO's, we can handle it" (total conjecture, nobody had asked how scrapper was enhanced, but starting at 20, scrapper could not have slotted SO's... although scrapper did, in fact, have a full set of level 20 IO's.)

Enemies are +4. Take too long to kill. Everyone agrees, +1 is best, +2 and +3 to rest of team.

MEDIOCRE TEAM:Saturday. Scrapper joins mission (not radio) team. Run all over city. Enemies are -1 to team, -2 to leader. Perhaps an old contact? All Council, very easy. Enemies die when scrapper looks at them. No challenge. Takes many missions for scrapper to gain 1 level.

GOOD (not great) TEAM: Scrapper joins radio mission team in Brickstown. Enemies are +4 and +5 to scrapper. Tank says, "Wait here while I herd!" Comes back with small group. Tank says, "Wait here again!" "Wait here!" "Don't go past this point!" "Stay in first room!"

Scrapper gets bored. Tank says "Herding is bliss!" Scrapper says, "Actually I find it boring." Tank stops herding, leads entire team into large group of +5 freakshow with 6 boss tanks. Everyone dies. Scrapper last to fall. Used entire inspiration tray. Tank says, "See? Herding is safer!"

Tank pulls groups of sky raiders. Each comes with 1-2 force field generators, which spawn because scrapper is not allowed to run in and kill engineers immediately. +5 sky raiders with force fields, very hard to hit. Scrapper only gains 2 levels in several hours.

MORAL OF STORY: +5 takes too long. Scrapper likes +2 or +3 enemies. Scrapper does not want to wait for tank. No wait! No stop! Run run run! Faster, scrapper, kill, kill!

1: 50 SR scrapper, 50 invul scrapper (s/l), 50 invul tank (s/l), and a regen scrapper that currently has very high positional defenses, despite this being kind of a dumb way to build regen. Oh, and another invul tank, so... that's 4 or 5 depending on how you look at it.

2: working on several more scrappers and tanks... at least 3 that I have laid out the blueprints for, if not fully softcapping, then at least getting close to that.

3. kinda yeah

I have nearly 1.4 billion influence on Infinity, and my only character above 10th level there is all of 22. I almost never play there, but I started marketing to see how far I could get. I think I started early last Spring by buying and vendoring recipes until I could manage to memorize a level 35 heal IO recipe, then I crafted and sold those for months until I decided to get into more profitable set IO crafting and selling.

Granted, it's taken me the better part of a year to get to 1.4 billion, but I don't check that character on a daily basis. If it were my only character and I were logging in twice a day for a few minutes of marketing, I'm sure I could have gotten here in a few months at most.

But the important thing is, I had a few million inside a week. That's enough to buy level 25 generic IOs and you're pretty much set for the life of your character, unless you get to 50 and want to get serious about it.

I do this on my alts on a very regular basis, market enough for a couple of million and buy generic IOs, sometimes by level 17 (level 20 IOs) and then maybe upgrade to level 30 or 35 later on.

I don't care either way, but doing side missions on a team, you really need someone to lead the team, or a full team of people who know what they're doing, otherwise teams frequently scatter or get lost and people start dying.

I was on a team last night running radio missions in Talos. Leader had me pick a mission. When we exited, I had a bank mission coming up, and asked if we wanted to do it. Leader set another person's mission and said, "We'll do the bank after this." So I said sure, and grabbed the bank mission.

After the other mission the leader set my bank mission. One player who had been on the team for at least an hour and a half said something like, "Ugh, bank mission." I said, "Well, that's why I asked before I grabbed it, not everyone likes them."

We enter the mission, except for the one person who complained. He suddenly says, "Well you must have asked hours ago because it's not in my text window. Bank missions are a complete waste of time!" And then he rage-quits.

Funny thing was, we accidentally let one of the villain's henchmen slip past us and before we new it we were being kicked out of the mission for failing. Whole thing took 2 minutes.

I'm always fine with just stopping the robbery and exiting though, if that's what people want. I don't consider that a waste of time -- it's really one of the fastest missions you can complete. Sides are just if everyone wants to do them, most people understand that.

In this thread here...

Wyl posted it in his thread about his daughter's character, of course, but I thought people here would be interested. A fun comic done with Poser.

After running maybe a dozen PI radio missions set for 8 over the last week, today I spent some serious time PLing a couple of other characters and waiting for something good to drop. I've been getting set recipes, but mostly junk. I PLed one character from 8 to 20 and got nothing very interesting... Doctored Wounds triple, couple of similar things, that was it.

Then while PLing a 2nd toon from 17 to 19 (she's pacted, so it took twice as long) -- bang, bang, within an hour I got a Hectacomb and an Absolute Amazement.

So I'm going to bed happy.

Oh, and the appropriate response to this thread is, of course, "BAH! HUMBUG!"

That rocks. ^_^

It occurs to me (and maybe this is why Peterpeter has some listed for a few million) that listing luck charms in the tens or possibly hundreds of millions would be a long, long, long-term strategy for making money off whatever person really decided to buy them ALL.

Way back when, all there was for a level 50 to do was run missions or hami raid. Exempting down to run lower level TFs was an exercise in blind faith, because if you or your exempting partner DC'd, you got kicked from the TF. Hami O's were your only possible upgrade.

These days there are a myriad of IO possibilities for upgrade, not to mention dual builds for twice the fun. Hami is still there, and there is also the Rikti ship raids. There are several choices for level 50 TFs and SFs, most of them quite good. The devs have managed to add a new one just about every 9-12 months. And if that isn't enough, you can run any TF or any mission at any time without worries about juggling exemplars and whatever, thanks to SSking.

There are, however, still only the two multi-team raids available. As much as CoH/CoV is about the journey and not the end game, and is not designed to be a WoW-style "all about the end game raids baby" experience, hami and ship raids are still quite popular (at least on some servers). So I was thinking, is it time to add another raid-style encounter to the game?

This may or may not be in the works with GR. I'd say it's a good bet that GR will include either a new high level task force, or some new kind of high end raid. Thoughts?

1. In theory, GR promised to be co-op without being a "Villains and Heroes are forced to work together" since the whole point of the expansion is neither good nor evil... so a possible task force or raid would involve characters joining together for their own personal motivations.

2. Raids are for lewt. CoH/CoV has mostly supplied this via merits and special costumes or enhancements (and special merits that allow you to buy special costumes and things). I know some people hate unlockable costumes and we don't really need yet another form of ticket/merit/money/whatever, but if they were to put a new raid of some sort into the game, SOME sort of special compensation should be awarded.

Just curious what people think of this. Speculation is fun! Personally I'd like to see both 1 new high level TF and 1 new raid with GR. They did that with RWZ, and both work pretty well in my opinion, both are fun to do. As for what kind of raid you might design, I got no idea, but I bet the devs have at least talked about it/considered it.

Well for what it's worth, here's my MA/Invul build for Shinobu Dragonheart. I really like playing this character. ^_^

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.401
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

shinobu dragonheart: Level 50 Natural Scrapper
Primary Power Set: Martial Arts
Secondary Power Set: Invulnerability
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Medicine

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Storm Kick -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(3), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(3), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(5), P'ngS'Fest-Acc/Dmg(5), P'ngS'Fest-Dmg/Rchg(43)
Level 1: Resist Physical Damage -- RctvArm-ResDam(A), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx(7), RctvArm-ResDam/Rchg(7), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(43)
Level 2: Temp Invulnerability -- RctvArm-ResDam(A), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx(9), RctvArm-ResDam/Rchg(9), RctvArm-EndRdx(11)
Level 4: Thunder Kick -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(11), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(13), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(13), P'ngS'Fest-Acc/Dmg(15), P'ngS'Fest-Dmg/Rchg(43)
Level 6: Dull Pain -- Dct'dW-Heal(A), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(15), Dct'dW-Rchg(17), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(17), Dct'dW-EndRdx/Rchg(19)
Level 8: Hover -- Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(19)
Level 10: Swift -- Flight-I(A)
Level 12: Focus Chi -- GSFC-ToHit/Rchg/EndRdx(A), GSFC-ToHit(21), GSFC-Rchg/EndRdx(21), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg(23), GSFC-Build%(46), GSFC-ToHit/EndRdx(46)
Level 14: Fly -- Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(23)
Level 16: Crane Kick -- KinCrsh-Dmg/KB(A), KinCrsh-Acc/KB(25), KinCrsh-Rchg/KB(25), KinCrsh-Rechg/EndRdx(27), KinCrsh-Acc/Dmg/KB(27), KinCrsh-Dmg/EndRdx/KB(46)
Level 18: Health -- Mrcl-Rcvry+(A), Mrcl-Heal(29), Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(29)
Level 20: Stamina -- P'Shift-End%(A), P'Shift-EndMod(31), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(31)
Level 22: Unyielding -- RctvArm-ResDam(A), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx(31), RctvArm-ResDam/Rchg(33), RctvArm-EndRdx(33)
Level 24: Resist Energies -- RctvArm-ResDam(A), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx(33), RctvArm-ResDam/Rchg(34), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(45)
Level 26: Dragon's Tail -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(34), Oblit-%Dam(34), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(36), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(36), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(45)
Level 28: Invincibility -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def(36), GftotA-Def/EndRdx(37), GftotA-Def(37)
Level 30: Boxing -- Dmg-I(A)
Level 32: Eagles Claw -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(37), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(39), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(39), Hectmb-Dmg/Rchg(39), Hectmb-Acc/Rchg(40)
Level 35: Tough Hide -- LkGmblr-Def(A), LkGmblr-Rchg+(40)
Level 38: Resist Elements -- RctvArm-ResDam(A), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx(40), RctvArm-ResDam/Rchg(42), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(45)
Level 41: Tough -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), ImpArm-ResDam/EndRdx(42), ImpArm-ResDam(42)
Level 44: Aid Other -- Heal-I(A)
Level 47: Aid Self -- Dct'dW-Heal(A), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx(48), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(48), Dct'dW-Rchg(48), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(50)
Level 49: Weave -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def(50), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(50)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Critical Hit

@shinobu and @shinobu valentine
usually on every evening.

Ditto! Very happy that I'm getting decent recipe drops again. I ran 2 missions set for 8 last night, and I got nothing earth-shattering but at least I got a nice supply of drops. I know that if I keep doing that, I'll get something good eventually. ^_^

Heh, I did that sorta too. Made a new character, skipped the tutorial, and before I gained any experience I added a second costume and bought a jet pack in FBZ. I was a little disappointed that nobody asked me how I got my jet pack when I joined a sewer team later....