PoliceWoman

Wed 1/5/2010

Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) hit the influence cap at the market again. I mailed myself another 500M inf.

Mercy Beaucoup (50 hero ice/kin corr) joined the kinetics superteam for a 6 player Citadel TF, which finished in 1h 33m.

April Fool (50 villain thug/TA MM) did a clear-all ITF that took 1h 10m. I got 6 shards and took the 26 merits reward.


Thu 1/6

Police Woman duoed with a brute to finish the Gangbuster badge, hunting down Marcone Consiglieres in St Martial.

Indigo Ifrit (50 villain fire/rad corr) did an RSF on a support-heavy team. We finished easily in 29m 22s and I got a Nucleolus SHO and 2 shards.

Virtual Girl (18 resistance kat/fire scrapper) solo'd Crow's story arc to level 19.


Fri 1/7

Lady Arachne (50 villain huntsman) solo'd the Ramiel arc to unlock the Alpha slot. I beat Trapdoor by killing all his bifurcations first. In the next mission, I pulled Holtz and Honoree separately. Holtz was no problem, but I popped a Shivan to beat Honoree.

Shield Maiden (38 rogue fire/shield scrapper) did a clear-most ITF 46m 35s that got her to level 40.

Yuki-onna (50 villain ice/cold corr) did an RSF; for all practical purposes we only had 7 players because one brute was very inattentive (he said he was very drunk), missing mission 4 entirely and half of the final mission. Nevertheless finished in 30m 31s. I got 2 shards and took the essence of incarnate.

Star Amethyst (50 hero dark/ice defender) did a Kahn TF in 47m 12s, getting 3 shards and 30 merits.


Sat 1/8

Police Woman got the Arachnos Agent, Black Ops and Web Weaver from being logged out at an Arachnos base; these are the last of the day job badges she needed on red side.

Tour de Force (26 hero ff/nrg defender) joined 4 player team for Ramiel's arc. Of course I'm not able to unlock the Alpha slot at level 26, but I got to team with the person who inspired Tour de Force's creation (due to declaring FF/nrg the Worst Powersets in the Game), so that made it worthwhile.

Maid of Awesome (38 hero sonic/rad corr) did an ITF on +1 difficulty. We were heavy on support but had no real tank; still finished in 45m 43s and got to level 40.

Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) joined a RSF that finished in 29m 37s; I got an Endoplasm SHO and 2 shards.

Shield Maiden (40 rogue fire/shield scrapper) did another ITF, finishing in 44m 34s and getting level 41.

Mercy Beaucoup (50 hero ice/kin corr) joined a RWZ raid. This raid seemed unusually laggy, but our team still got a bomb, 2 merits for the GM and I picked up 603 vanguard merits. I used 150 of these to get a Gr'ai matter, which let me make a Spiritual (RCHG) boost. I'm not sure whether recharge is the best boost for a kin corr (since I have siphon speed), but I figured recharge always helps, and I didn't have a better idea.

Mercy went on to join a Tin Mage TF where the team leader wanted us to spawn 8 HVAS robots to try and kill Director 11 really quickly for the Midnight Dodger badge. This didn't really seem like it would work to me, but I went along with it anyway, because, hey, we'd still complete the Tin Mage TF even if it didn't work. We broke into the Malta warehouse and did spawn the 8 HVAS, but we weren't able to pull Director 11 to the door and ended up fighting him in an open area where a proximity mine eventually hit us, preventing us from getting the badge.

After finishing the Tin Mage TF, we decided to immediately retry it to see if we could do better against Director 11. I was even more skeptical by this point, but I switched to Mystery Girl (50 vigilante emp/pistols defender) for the second try. This time we pulled Director 11 to the door first and trapped him there, spawning the HVAS robots all around him after he got to the door. This actually worked, to my surprise, getting us the Midnight Dodger What Dodges At Midnight badge.

Finishing out the second Tin Mage TF, Mystery Girl went on to do an "all defender" ITF. We actually had one player who claimed he was bringing a defender, but didn't have Cimerora unlocked or something, so we relented and let him bring a corruptor. We were a little worried at the lack of tanking ability, but our 7 defender and 1 corr team actually walked over everything, and it was quite fun. I even got to switch to fire bullets for dps, something I rarely do. Finished in 48m 30s, I got 7 shards and took the merits.


Sun 1/9

Rain Dancer (50 hero storm/archery defender) did an ITF in 37m 29s, got a Coercive Persuasion (Confuse/RCHG/ACC) recipe drop, 4 shards and took the ancient nictus fragment. I went on to join the RWZ raid; this was super laggy. I got 389 vanguard merits and 2 reward merits, and used the vanguard merits to buy a Gr'ai Matter, allowing me to craft a Spiritual (RCHG) boost. Recharge really seemed the way to go for a stormy, for more lightning storms, freezing rain and tornadoes.

Maid of Awesome (40 hero sonic/rad corr) joined an all corruptor ITF, with a lot of the same people from the all defender ITF from the day before. We had expected the corruptor team to go faster because corruptors do more damage, but it actually seemed quite slow, and we found that AVs ran away from us, a problem the defender team didn't have. There were several possible reasons for this, the most likely of which seemed: the defenders had kinetics (always helps for speed) and traps (maybe immob helped?) while the corruptors had 3 darks (I think AVs run away if they can't hit, so triple dark debuffs probably made them sad), and the defenders had more 50s while the corruptors had more lowbies. Nevertheless finished in 1h 2m and got Maid of Awesome to level 41.

Strong Woman (50 hero inv/SS tanker) tanked for a Tin Mage TF. We had a player from Saturday's team who needed Kitty Got Claws for the Master of badge, so we killed Neuron while Bobcat was still over 90% life. This made her pretty mad, but we killed her, finishing in 35m 10s. I got 2 shards and 40 merits.

Having gotten all the villain day job badges, Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) began the ascent back to heroism, doing 5 hero tip missions. I also hit the inf cap again (after only 4 days) and mailed myself another 500M inf.

Shield Maiden (41 rogue fire/shield scrapper) joined a 6 player pickup team. We had a fun fight against Nemesis in the multi-tiered tech Room of Death; one player set off a nuke to make sure we polished them off.


Mon 1/10

Work was canceled due to snow, so I was on CoH a lot.

Virtual Girl (19 resistance katana/fire scrapper) solo'd Aaron Walker's, Penelope Yin's and Dark Watcher's story arcs. The Praetorian story arcs really have massive exp bonuses for completing them, so soloing story arcs from start to finish was surprisingly good exp. I found the Clockwork seers in Penelope's story to be very sad and depressing. Aaron Walker's final scene in Dark Watcher's arc was sad too, but his last program was awesome. This got Virtual Girl to level 21, and I crossed over to the Rogue Isles as a villain. Virtual Girl's character concept is kind of an anti-Crey cyber-terrorist, so villain made sense, and long term she will Go Rogue (since fighting Crey is good! sort of).

A brute was having trouble fighting Lord Recluse in the usurper story arc, and I logged on Schadenfreude (50 villain AR/pain corruptor) to help him. A third player, a MM, also helped, and the three of us were easily able to beat Lord Recluse.

Sarcasm Lass (12 loyalist sonic/mental blaster) joined a 5 player team in Imperial City. We suffered a couple wipes to the Syndicate; those guys are really starting to bug me, they're awfully strong for this level. This got Sarcasm Lass to level 13.

Maid of Awesome (41 hero sonic/rad corr) joined a Moonfire TF, which got her the Slayer and the Silver Bullet badges. Finished in 1h 10m.

Shield Maiden (41 rogue fire/shield scrapper) joined a clear-most ITF; this went pretty quickly, finishing in 38m 39s. I got a Fortunata Hypnosis (SLEEP/END) recipe drop and level 42.

Virtual Girl teamed up with a friend on a lowbie corruptor, which resulted in me forming and leading an 8 player pickup team on villain side, doing 5 rogue tips and 5 paper missions in Sharkhead Island. This got Virtual Girl to level 23.


Tue 1/11

Police Woman did another 5 heroic missions and the hero morality mission. I'm really liking the new "rogue to hero" missions, which try to illustrate how you're gradually becoming a hero. Changing back to hero alignment got Police Woman the Ascended and Come Full Circle badges, bringing her badge total up to 955. This catches me up with I18 badges....I haven't even started in I19 badges yet, and I know there's a lot.

Schadenfreude (50 villain AR/pain corr) teamed up with a couple other players to chase Marcone consiglieres in St Martial for the Gangbuster badge, with a brief detour to Cap au Diable to fight Deathsurge. We had one wipe against Deathsurge due to some AFKs, but got him on the second try.

Idolator (12 resistance fire/psy dom) joined a 8 player Praetorian team. This team started out strong, getting lots of exp, then a couple key players left and we started having team wipes against Resistance and Clockwork. So far I don't consider my dom to be a "key player", but still trying to keep at it to see why people think doms are good; I did manage to get to level 18 on this team.

Tour de Force (26 hero FF/nrg defender) did a Sister Psyche TF. We were way over the cap on defense due to having 2 FF toons, a VEAT and a cold. We had no melee toons, but it didn't matter. Finished in 1h 57m and got to level 28.

An impromptu Hamidon raid was called, and I was a little surprised, but a LOT of people answered the call. The raid needed tankers, so I played Strong Woman (50 hero inv/SS tanker) and got assigned to the taunt team. This was the first time I've played a tanker at a Hami raid, and I was a little nervous but as long as I had an EoE going, I seemed to be fine. This was the raid leader's first Hamidon raid and there was some confusion initially on which tank would taunt which mito, and what we should do when the mitos respawn that resulted in a raid wipe on the first bloom. We eventually settled on the strategy of retreating on each bloom, except the last, which we powered through, aided by several Warburg nukes getting dropped. The raid was successful. I took the 53 merits, and got 3 shards from various mito kills.

Indigo Ifrit (50 villain fire/rad corruptor) did an RSF. Our team was heavy on support and had no problems, finishing in 33m 16s. I got a Centriole.

I made a level 2 peacebringer on Justice server for a silly PvP event, where everyone was required to play a lowbie peacebringer. This sounded stupid but was more fun than I expected; the peacebringer inherent flight made for a lot of aerial dogfights. One player even got a level 10 PvP recipe from a kill.

I've become somewhat disenchanted with Kyrie Eleison (50 vigilante fire/regen scrapper), and specifically her powersets; she has a great look, but it seems like she's really squishy and doesn't do enough damage to make up for it. I ended up transferring her to another server, then restarting the character with the same name and costume, only as an archery/fire blaster. I also considered fire/fire or rad/fire, but decided on archery/fire because it's unusual and looks cool. I still wanted her to have a fiery sword, and I figure a blaster will still be squishy, but should do lots more damage. Solo'd a few of Azuria's missions, then I solo'd Cole in your Stocking, an AE story arc about Christmas in Praetoria where you're working with the Wardens to prevent both the Crusaders and the Loyalists from stealing Christmas. This had some good stuff but was a pretty new arc and needed some editing; I gave it 4 stars. This got the new version of Kyrie to level 5.


Wed 1/12

Mercy Beaucoup (50 hero ice/kin corr) did an Apex TF on a DPS-heavy team. We had a team wipe to the hydra, an epic battle at the Kings Row penny, then wiped repeatedly against Battle Maiden, mostly due to people standing in blue stuff. We had only me and a rad for support and the rad was having trouble staying alive while debuffing Battle Maiden, so it was a difficult fight. People were getting better at not dying to blue stuff over time, though, and we eventually got the hang of it long enough to kill Battle Maiden. Finished in 1h 14m and got 6 shards and 40 merits.

Kyrie Eleison (5 hero archery/fire blaster) led a 5 player team for 5 BNY missions, getting all the mission badges and level 10. I then helped beat up a Winter Lord in Atlas.

Virtual Girl (23 villain kat/fire scrapper) did 5 rogue tips on a 5 player team and the rogue morality mission that converted her to rogue alignment. I switched to Spy Girl (40 rogue MA/ninj stalker) for 5 more rogue tips.

Police Woman (50 hero AR/dev blaster) did a STF that went straightforwardly, finishing in 54m 33s. I got a Centriole and 6 shards.

Mayday (50 vigilante fortunata) solo'd 2 villain tips and the villain morality mission, bringing her back to Villain alignment and getting the Come Full Circle badge.


Thu 1/13

Schadenfreude (50 villain AR/pain corr) solo'd a flashback of Willy Wheeler's arc, which got her the Paragon of Vice badge and the Marshal accolade.

Yuki-onna (50 villain ice/cold corr) joined a pickup LGTF. This mostly went well, until we got to the Hamidon mission, where we kept urging our only controller to hold the green mitos, with no luck. We eventually had to rely on my freeze ray and a fortunata's dominate to stack enough holds to beat the green mitos. A little later a teammate looked at the controller's info and realized he (a mind/emp controller) actually HAD no holds - only fear, sleep and confuse. The controller got rather huffy when this was pointed out, and insisted he did have holds (though he didn't), but they weren't as good because he focused on healing. We had to drop this subject which was clearly making him upset, and simply proceed. Finished the LGTF in 1h 16m and got a Hero 1 DNA and 2 shards.

San Min (50 hero MA/will scrapper) joined a Kahn TF; I broke out a Chun Li ripoff costume and vowed revenge against M Bison (yes, I know it's been done, but it was still fun to do). We finished in 50m 34s, then went into a STF at +1 difficulty. On this STF, Dr. Aeon was weirdly invulnerable even after being hit by the thorn tree power; he suddenly became vulnerable later in the fight, inexplicably. In the final mission we pulled the patron AVs and beat them up, killed the flyer and attacked Lord Recluse and the web device. One defender disconnected in the last fight and we slowed DPS long enough for her to get back in game. Finished in 1h 7m and got a Centriole.

Tour de Force (28 hero FF/nrg defender) joined a 3 player team for a hero morality mission and 4 hero tips, which got her to level 29.

For your consideration:

Teen Phalanx Forever (#67335)
Your young sidekick joins a teen supergroup for adventures and fun.

I had basically the same problem in developing my Axis and Allies (arc #1379) arc. The player (a villain) goes back in time to WW2 and ends up fighting Golden Age Statesman and Maiden Justice.

I started out by using the "normal" Statesman and Ms. Liberty (renamed to Maiden Justice) but ultimately ended up making custom characters with custom costumes. Mostly because the standard models for both Statesman and Ms. Liberty have Unstoppable, which is very frustrating for typical soloers.

ParagonWiki had an image they called "Statesman's 1940s costume" that I used as a pattern. I don't know where they got it.



I couldn't find any reference for Maiden Justice, so I ended up just inventing a costume for her that was suggestive of Ms Liberty's costume without being the same.

I hope that helps!

@ND and @Camo - I didn't know about that feature, I will definitely try that!



1/3/2011

TokyoRose (29 villain sonic/sonic corruptor) joined a Renault SF. We had kind of a weird team mix, with no melee; everyone was a corruptor, defender or mastermind. We saved Barracuda, but then managed to wipe out against the Longbow hunt mission in Agincourt, getting beat up by a spawn including multiple level 33 Longbow bosses. After the hunt, we discovered that two missions had been added to the Renault SF -- or, actually, restored, because they were in the original Renault SF but I guess some bug prevented them from being loaded for, like, the last couple years. In the final mission we managed to get stealth TP'd to the wrong room (a big cave that did NOT have the AV). I didn't have stealth, but I had veteran TP, so I ended up flying to the right room (followed by our thermal who kept me healed) and TPing us there, where we beat up the AVs and won the SF, finishing in 1h 32m. TokyoRose is still level-pacted with another sonic/sonic corr who doesn't play any more, so exp was slow; I ended up going from around level 29.3 to around 29.7 on this SF.

Maid of Awesome (37 hero sonic/rad corr) joined a Manticore TF; we had a strong team and had no serious issues. A couple team members said they liked the red sonic blasts, and a bystander in Ouro complimented me on my costume, which was nice. Finished in 1h 13m and got to level 38.

Continuing my streak of playing sonic blast characters, I played Primadonna (50 rogue sonic/kin corr) on a speed ITF; our team was 5 damage, 2 VEATs and me as kin. Everyone on the team was pretty tough and so we sped through missions 1 and 2 by splitting into 3-subteams that cleared different parts of each mission. Finished in 20m 51s; I got an ancient nictus fragment and 1 incarnate shard. I crafted a Spiritual Core (RCHG/STUN) boost, reasoning that the stun boost will help Screech and Dreadful Wail.


1/4/2011

My AE story arc Talos Vice won the "Best Short Arc" award and was first runner up for "Best Lowbie Arc" in the 2010 Player's Choice MA Awards, which was really nice. The contest organizer emailed me 200M influence as a prize, and a community rep is supposed to give me a costume code at some point as part of the prize as well.

Talos Vice was also reviewed on @Bubbawheat's On Your M-Arc video reviews thread, and he posted a nifty YouTube video of the arc; and I'm pretty biased, but I thought this was really cool. I had tried to make Talos Vice as "cinematic" a story arc as possible, so the video format really works for it. I particularly liked the opening montage with the Miami Vice theme.

Mayday (50 hero fortunata) did the vigilante morality mission, breaking Blast Furnace out of the Zig and changing her alignment to vigilante. He seemed to be coded to not follow unless I dropped stealth, which was mildly annoying. After going over to red side I solo'd 4 villain tip missions.

A friend asked me to bring a tanker to a pickup LGTF, so I played Strong Woman (50 hero inv/SS tanker). We were trying to speed the TF, but our team was really a little too squishy to be able to do this effectively. We suffered a team wipe during mission 2 against the 3 Rider spawn; I think this is because most of the team died to aggro on the way to this room, and so those of us who actually got to the 3 Riders were not sufficient to beat them. Despite being at the HP cap I managed to die ignominiously to these guys due to Pestilence's massive poison debuffs. We deliberately failed mission 3, had a painful Hamidon fight, then stealthed to the end of the final mission to complete the LGTF in 42m 7s. I got a Hero 1 DNA and 4 shards, though in hindsight I should've taken the merits, since Strong Woman already has the uncommon alpha boost.

I liked it quite a bit, though obviously I'm totally biased. I especially liked the opening montage with the title card and Miami Vice theme. The poses and animations your character did while exploring the missions were quite fun, too. Regarding your specific question, I suspect you could trim down the presentation of the mission briefings in your video run-through, just giving the gist of each mission in voice-over, as you've been doing.

Thanks for running this fun event, Bubbawheat. Congrats to the winners, and thanks also to everyone who participated and voted!

1/3/2011

Mon 12/27

Fire Maiden (50 hero SS/fire brute) did an Eden Trial; this went pretty straightforwardly and completed in 41m 3s. 7 merits is kind of a rip-off for this trial, but it was nice to do something different.

Mercy (49 hero ice/kin corr) played on the kin superteam, which did a Lord Winter's Realm event and the Lady Winter mission. After the kin team broke up, I joined a pickup STF. We had one dom who seemed mostly AFK and a scrapper who wasn't really paying attention, both of which slowed us down. In the final mission we pulled the patron AVs 2 at a time, which worked fine. Against Lord Recluse, the tanker asked me to stay with him, as he taunted LR to the blue tower and had me Transfusion off the tower to keep his health topped off while the rest of the team cleared the four towers. I'd never done it this way before, but it worked just fine, completing the STF in 1h 32m. This got Mercy to level 50; I decided to save the STF reward screen while I solo'd the Mender Ramiel arc. I was able to beat Trapdoor by killing all the bifurcations he spawned. Against Holtz/Honoree, I pulled Holtz and killed him, then pulled Honoree but died to him. I beat Honoree on the rematch with heavy inspiration use plus a fulcrum shift from the mob of Rikti around him. Completing the arc unlocked the Alpha slot, letting me finally take essence of the incarnate as my STF reward.

Tue 12/28

Maid of Awesome (35 hero sonic/rad corr) helped a small team defeat a WL in Atlas. I got 2 compliments on Maid of Awesome's name, which was nice. Entering Lord Winter's Realm, we also beat Lord Winter. One team member kept disconnecting; we tried to slow down killing Lord Winter to let her get back online for the kill, but she didn't get back in time.

Yuki-Onna (50 villain ice/cold corr) hunted Marcone bosses in St Martial, eventually joined by another player. This got her the High Pain Threshold accolade (+107 HP). After that I formed and led a pickup ITF that finished in 32m 1s, getting me an Ancient Nictus salvage and 3 incarnate shards. Another friend, also on an ice/cold corr, was having trouble with Trapdoor on the Ramiel arc, and I joined her to help beat up the EBs and unlock the Alpha slot for her.

Sarcasm Lass (9 loyalist sonic/mental blaster) joined a 7 player Praetorian team. The team seemed impressed and amused with how sarcastic I was. This got her to level 12.

Spacegirl (50 hero mind/rad controller) did a speed Kahn TF. We fought Reichsman by pulling all 4 AVs to him and fighting all of them at once. We weren't quite tough enough for this strategy, suffering lots of deaths from AoE, but we nevertheless won in 31m 40s. I got 1 incarnate shard and took the 30 merits. After that, Spacegirl joined an ITF where I ended up with the star due to being level 50. We cleared most, finishing in 59m 47s. I got an ancient nictus fragment and 6 shards, which I used to craft a Spiritual Radial (RCHG/HEAL) boost; this took Radiant Aura from 240 healing every 4.6 seconds to 257 healing every 3.93 seconds. While on this ITF, a friend asked me to lead a pickup Cathedral of Pain trial, which I had to turn down; I like helping people, but cat-herding 24 people through a difficult trial seemed likely to be really unfun.


Wed 12/29

Kyrie Eleison (50 vigilante fire/regen scrapper) joined a 6 player ITF. We had no true tanker, instead relying on myself and another scrapper, but we had cold shields and VEAT maneuvers, which helped; I died only once, tanking Romulus, which is pretty good for me (I'm terrible at playing regen). With no taunter, Romulus ran away from us and died out of line-of-sight of his Nictus buddies, preventing his self-rez and forcing us to kill the nictus AVs instead. We still finished in 43m 46s, pretty good for a short-handed team, and I got an ancient nictus fragment and 5 shards.

Virtual Girl (14 resistance katana/fire scrapper) led a 4 player Praetorian team doing Vagabond's story arc, which impressed me as being pretty cold-hearted. We wiped against the Syndicate twice; those guys seem awfully powerful for their level. Finishing Vagabond's arc got Virtual Girl to level 17.

Rain Dancer (50 hero storm/archery defender) joined a pickup STF that went pretty straightforwardly and finished in 1h 5m; I got an essence of the incarnate, 5 shards.

San Min (50 hero MA/will scrapper) did yet another STF. This team was light on support and had a difficult fight against the patron AVs, suffering a sort-of rolling wipeout as people kept dying and returning. We had trouble with Ghost Widow's heals and Mako's elude, but eventually beat them. The tanker died once against Lord Recluse before we got him under control and killed the red/yellow/green towers. Finished in 1h 13m and got an Essence of the incarnate and 3 shards.


Thu 12/30

April Fool (50 villain thug/TA MM) did a clear-most ITF. We had a pretty bizarre team mix, with 3 tankers and 2 trick arrow characters, but this actually worked much better than I expected; the stacked TA debuffs felt pretty potent. I suffered the only death of the TF during the final fight when my pets aggro'd nearby 5th Column while I was trying to hide from Romulus's self-rez, and got teased for it. Nevertheless finished in 54m 35s and got an ancient nictus fragment and 4 shards.

San Min (50 hero MA/will scrapper) messed around in the ski chalet for awhile, soloing Lady Winter (EB-level) twice, then joining a somewhat disorganized team (we got scattered easily and had lots of deaths as a result) that beat up Lady Winter (AV-level) twice. I decided to use San Min's free respec to get her up to I19 standards; mostly kept her powers and slotting the same, just dumped the fitness pool to take Super Jump, Hover (thinking this will be handy against mitos or flyers) and Strength of Will. I was strongly tempted to switch to fireball in the epic pool, but as a martial artist, the shurikens and caltrops just "feel" like a better match thematically.


Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.90
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

San Min I19 respec: Level 50 Science Scrapper
Primary Power Set: Martial Arts
Secondary Power Set: Willpower
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Flight
Ancillary Pool: Weapon Mastery

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), Mako-Dmg/Rchg(5), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(7)
Level 1: High Pain Tolerance -- Numna-Heal/EndRdx(A), Numna-Heal/Rchg(7), Numna-Heal(9), ResDam-I(11), ResDam-I(11)
Level 2: Cobra Strike -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(13), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(13), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(15), Mako-Dmg/Rchg(15), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(17)
Level 4: Fast Healing -- Numna-Heal/EndRdx(A), Numna-Heal/Rchg(9), Numna-Heal(50)
Level 6: Kick -- Empty(A)
Level 8: Crane Kick -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(17), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(19), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(19), Mako-Dmg/Rchg(23), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(23)
Level 10: Indomitable Will -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 12: Combat Jumping -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 14: Super Jump -- Jump-I(A)
Level 16: Rise to the Challenge -- Numna-Heal/EndRdx(A), Numna-Heal(27), Numna-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(27)
Level 18: Crippling Axe Kick -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(29), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(29), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(31), Mako-Dmg/Rchg(31), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(31)
Level 20: Quick Recovery -- P'Shift-EndMod(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(21), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(21)
Level 22: Mind Over Body -- RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx(A), RctvArm-ResDam/Rchg(33), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(34), RctvArm-ResDam(34)
Level 24: Focus Chi -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(25), Rec'dRet-ToHit/Rchg(25), Rec'dRet-Pcptn(42)
Level 26: Dragon's Tail -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(36), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(36), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(37), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(37), Oblit-Úm(37)
Level 28: Heightened Senses -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(39), LkGmblr-Rchg+(39)
Level 30: Tough -- RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx(A), RctvArm-ResDam/Rchg(40), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(43), RctvArm-ResDam(43)
Level 32: Eagles Claw -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(33), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(33), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(34), Mako-Dmg/Rchg(36), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(39)
Level 35: Weave -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(40), LkGmblr-Rchg+(40)
Level 38: Strength of Will -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A)
Level 41: Web Grenade -- Enf'dOp-Acc/Rchg(A), Enf'dOp-EndRdx/Immob(43), Enf'dOp-Acc/EndRdx(45), Enf'dOp-Immob/Rng(45), Enf'dOp-Acc/Immob/Rchg(45), Enf'dOp-Acc/Immob(46)
Level 44: Caltrops -- CtlSpd-Acc/Slow(A), CtlSpd-Dmg/Slow(46), CtlSpd-Acc/EndRdx(46), CtlSpd-EndRdx/Rchg/Slow(48)
Level 47: Exploding Shuriken -- Ragnrk-Dmg(A), Ragnrk-Dmg/Rchg(48), Ragnrk-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(48), Ragnrk-Acc/Rchg(50), Ragnrk-Dmg/EndRdx(50)
Level 49: Hover -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Critical Hit
Level 6: Ninja Run
Level 2: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 2: Health -- Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- P'Shift-EndMod(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(42), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(42)


There was some PvP action in Recluse's Victory, so I wandered over there with Mayday (50 hero fortunata). The heroes outnumbered the villains pretty badly, so after awhile I switched to April Fool (50 villain thug/TA MM). Most of the villains had bugged out by that point, though, so I ended up in a 1-on-4 situation, which mostly ended badly for me; I died a bunch and got one partial kill (damaged someone enough that an NPC killed them off), before calling it.

Shield Maiden (35 rogue fire/shield scrapper) joined a 4-player Ice Mistral. We did fine until reaching the final fight with Archus, which was pretty messy but we eventually won. Finished in 1h 11m and got to level 36.

A couple friends were playing lowbies and asked to join a SG to contribute prestige, so I ended up inviting them to join Suggested for Mature Readers (the personal SG I started recently). After inviting them, I realized how slack I was being to not have an SG base, so I started the shell of a base; managed to build an entrance room, a control room, and a teleporter room with one working teleporter (that only goes to Atlas; I need to get more beacons) before running out of prestige. While doing this, I somehow managed to place my Atlas beacon underneath the terrain so I can't click on it to move it around any more; I had kind of wanted it visible, as a label for the teleporter. I wasn't sure how to fix that, so I ended up leaving it.


Fri 12/31

Police Woman hit the inf cap through marketeerign again, so I sent myself another 500M inf via email.

Yuki-Onna (50 villain ice/cold corr) did an LGTF in 41m 43s, getting a Hero 1 DNA and 2 incarnate shards.

Strong Woman (50 hero inv/SS tanker) did a speed Kahn TF in 34m 28s, getting a Dimensional Keystone and 1 incarnate shard. In the final fight, I tried to herd all 4 of the pet AVs to Reichsman, but I found it hard to get them all to stand close together and stay near Reichsman.

Tour de Force (24 hero ff/nrg defender) joined a 7-player Synapse TF. This went pretty well; no one died at all, and everyone credited the bubbles, which was nice. We fought Babbage but with no tanker, he ran away from us and straight into the drones by the train station, so we missed getting the kill. Finished in 1h 57m and got to level 26.

Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) caught the tail end of a RWZ raid, picking up 78 vanguard merits.


Sat 1/1

Thunder Girl (50 hero elec/SR scrapper) joined a pickup ITF. I got into scrapperlock mode and way overconfident, jumping ahead of the team to attempt to solo the general with the EB spawns in mission 3 and died; that made me slow down a bit. In the final mission jumped straight to Romulus and beat him up no problem, but somehow managed to suffer a near-wipe on the towers. Finished in 56m 42s and got an Ancient Nictus fragment and 3 shards, which I used to craft a Spiritual Radial (RCHG/HEAL) boost; the heal part really doesn't help anything but health, but at least it's something. Playing Thunder Girl since her I19 respec, I'm kind of underwhelmed by ball lightning compared to fireball (which she respec'd out of); numerically they don't look that different, but fireball feels like it hits much harder. Maybe it's because ball lightning is mostly damage-over-time, or maybe fireball just has cooler special effects, I dunno.

Shield Maiden (36 rogue fire/shield scrapper) joined a Citadel TF of mostly melee and kin, which made it very efficient. My rogue alignment made traveling on hero side a PITA, though, and I often was the last person to missions as a result, which I hated. Finished in 1h 14m.

Mercy Beaucoup (50 hero ice/kin corr) joined a pickup ITF; the team leader forgot he was on +2 difficulty, but our team was able to handle the first mission on +2, after which he turned down the difficulty to the default. Finished in 1h 1m and got an ancient nictus fragment and 5 shards.

Mayday (50 hero fortunata) solo'd 4 vigilante tip missions. Mayday isn't able to unlock the alpha slot because Ramiel won't give her missions due to some sort of open story arc that Mayday has leftover from red side, so I'm gradually moving her back to red side to try and clean that up.

Mystery girl (50 vigilante emp/pistols defender) joined a late night Hamidon raid. This was a second attempt after an earlier failed attempt, and had a low turnout. I was assigned to the tank team, with 6 tanks and 2 emps (including me) and despite our best efforts, we died a lot; the low overall raid DPS meant we had to survive a lot longer before mitos were killed. Nevertheless we pressed on (slowly) and managed to clear each bloom (the raid leadership judged we didn't have the manpower to power through the final one) and defeated Hami itself. I took the 53 merits and also got 3 shards from various mitos.

Schadenfreude (50 villain AR/pain corruptor) joined a speed ITF that finished in 23m 5s; I got an ancient nictus fragment and 1 shard.

Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) did an Apex TF in 34m 40s, getting 5 shards and 40 merits, followed by a Tin Mage TF with the same team in 46m 31s, getting 4 shards and 40 merits.

Another player publicly praised my Contact Tree for Mission Architect on LB channel, which was really nice. This even got someone to ask me for a link to it, which hopefully will help steer people to some decent MA arcs.


Sun 1/2

Police Woman got the Demogogue day job badge from lurking around in the Port Oakes SG building. This let me move on to parking on Arachnos bases, which I think will be my last villain day job.

Maid of Awesome (35 hero sonic/rad corr) did a clear most ITF at +1 difficulty. I died a lot early on, before I got used to playing a lowbie with poor IO slotting on the ITF again, after which I did better. We finished in 1h 5m and Maid of Awesome got to level 37. I crafted and slotted a set of 6 Stupefy in her Screech power for an extra 3.13% ranged DEF.

Kyrie Eleison (50 vigilante fire/regen scrapper) joined the RWZ raid; I didn't join a team because I wasn't sure whether the raid was going to work, so wanted to keep my commitment low. The raid actually did work, though, but I ended up continuing to solo, now curious as to whether it was viable. While solo, I had to be really active about hitting stuff in order to score vanguard merits; nevertheless I managed to score 2 reward merits from the GM and 219 vanguard merits from other mobs; didn't get a bomb credit or any shards. It was an interesting experiment, but being on a team is clearly much better for vanguard merits. With the vanguard merits I earned, though, I bought a Gr'ai matter and crafted a Spiritual (RCHG) boost; I keep toying with enhancing defense or something for Kyrie, but it always seems like recharge ought to be better for a regen.

Shield Maiden (36 rogue fire/shield scrapper) joined a clear most ITF that finished in 46m 49s; we had enough +def buffs between cold shields, grant cover from another shield scrapper and maneuvers from a VEAT, that I was way above the soft cap the whole time, and so did just fine despite being a little low. A teammate also complimented me on Shield Maiden's "look" (greater fire sword with pseudo-medieval outfit) while fighting, which was cool. This got Shield Maiden to level 38, where I took One With the Shield for lack of a better idea.

12/27/2010

Wed 12/22

Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) got the Pilot and Brood Leader day job badges from hanging out near Black Helicopters, allowing me to move to my next day job location, the SG office in Port Oakes.

Thunder Girl (50 hero elec/SR scrapper) helped a 5 player team with a Winter Lord in KR. We didn't have any debuff so didn't make any progress initially, until one player switched to a rad, which let us grind the WL down. The team wanted to try Lord Winter with 5; I warned we wouldn't be able to do it, but still went along. After a team wipe, we gave up on Lord Winter.

Mercy Beaucoup (47 hero ice/kin corruptor) did a clear most ITF on a strong team, finishing in 45m 54s and getting to level 48.

Schadenfreude (50 villain AR/pain corruptor) did a clear most ITF in 50m 44s, getting a Numina's Convalescence (END/HEAL) recipe drop, and an ancient nictus fragment and 6 shards which I used to make a Spiritual (RCHG) boost. I went on to do an Apex TF; our team was low on DPS and heavy on support (we had a FF, pain and empath), but people weren't able to stay out of the blue stuff in the final mission, which resulted in tons of deaths that no amount of support could prevent. Nevertheless we finished in 1h; I got 3 shards and 40 merits.


Thu 12/23

Police Woman hit the inf cap at the market again. I emailed myself another 500M inf.

San Min (50 hero MA/will scrapper) played Evolve or Die, an AE story arc where you're Frostfire's parole officer. This arc had a neat custom Outcasts group, but the story didn't really work for me, and a couple of the outdoor missions felt tedious. I gave it 3 stars.

Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) did a clear most ITF 38m 56s. I didn't need the ancient nictus fragment on Mega, so I took merits instead of the incarnate salvage for the first time since I19; got 5 shards as well.

Schadenfeude (50 villain AR/pain corr) did an RSF; in mission 4 we killed Valkyrie before Mynx and ended up having to kill the revived Valkyrie through her Moment of Glory. The final fight against the Freedom Phalanx went really well, though, with no deaths except the person who suicided for vengeance bait. For some reason the team leader had us kill the heroes in a weird order, starting with Numina, Positron and Statesman (I'm used to seeing Sister Psyche as second target). Finished in 32m 11s and got an Obliteration (DMG/RCHG) recipe drop, essence of incarnate and 2 shards. Schadenfreude went on to do a Tin Mage TF in 28m 13s (3 shards) and Apex TF in 29m 16s (got Master of Apex and 2 shards). I'm really liking how her defense-heavy respec has worked out.

Blond Justice (50 hero broadsword/shield scrapper) did a speed ITF in 24m 20s, then helped a small team kill a Winter Lord in Kings Row.

Millie Volt (50 vigilante elec/elec brute) did an LGTF in 37m 57s. Someone on this TF commented on how War was the worst of the Four Riders, which inspired me to say "War! Ungh! What is it GOOD for? Absolutely nothing!" Got one teammate to respond with "Say it again!" I got 5 shards and Hero 1 DNA on this TF, which I made into a Cardiac Radial boost. This took Millie's lethal resist from 58.69% to 62.11%; I had been really thinking Cardiac Radial (END/RES) was the way to go to improve my melee toons' resists, but the numerical difference looks so small. After the TF I did 2 villain tips and the villain morality mission, changing Millie back to villain alignment and getting the Come Full Circle badge.

Bubbawheat, a Mission Architect regular, announced in his video review thread that he would be reviewing my Talos Vice story arc next. I'm pretty excited about it, and I think he's particularly interested in this arc since the TV script style of the story should hopefully make for interesting video. He's even made a graphical logo for it:



Pretty cool. I'm looking forward to seeing the results.


Fri 12/24

Shield Maiden (34 villain fire/shield scrapper) helped a controller kill Tsoo in Steel Canyon for his costume mission. I went on to solo 4 Baby New Year missions and a Lady Winter mission; Lady Winter wasn't as bad as I had feared. I got a respec recipe as a drop, which I sold for 175M inf; I can't believe these are still so valuable considering 3 free respecs were granted for I19.

Maid of Awesome (33 hero sonic/rad corr) joined a pickup Sister Psyche. The mastermind on our team logged out after mission 2, saying he was switching to tanker and we should invite him back (clearly confused over how TFs work); we tried to talk him out of it, but he didn't listen. We never heard from him again. Nevertheless, we cleared most of the TF and finished it in 2h 38m. This got Maid of Awesome to level 35.

Star Amethyst (50 hero dark/ice defender) joined an STF. This went fine til the very last fight, where our tanker and team leader had us attack the blue tower first, and taunted Lord Recluse to us while trying to help kill the tower. Some loose aggro resulted in stray deaths, but we recovered from that and killed the blue/red/yellow/green towers and then Lord Recluse, finishing in 1h 23m. I took an Essence of the Incarnate salvage and got 6 shard drops.

Spy Girl (40 rogue MA/ninj stalker) joined a Numina TF. The team asked me to stealth/TP all the missions that could be stealthed, and so I got to feel really useful (for a stalker). Finished Numina in 1h 17m.

Star Amethyst joined a late night RWZ raid, picking up 561 vanguard merits and 2 shards. I crafted a Cardiac Radial boost (END/RES) which raised her lethal resist from 42.39% to 45.18%, not bad for a defender.

San Min (50 hero MA/will scrapper) solo'd Tales from a Scorched Earth - Kali's Scythe, a post-apocalyptic MA story arc where you've just left a fallout shelter after a massive disaster and are searching the rubble of Paragon City for clues. I thought this was a good story but the last mission was rather tedious due to the layout of the objectives forcing massive backtracking. I gave it 4 stars.


Sat 12/25

Tundra Girl (6 hero ice/cold controller) tried to help with a Lord Winter event, but there were only about 5 players involved; we wiped out and gave up. I helped another 5 player team with Lady Winter instead, which was much more successful and got Tundra Girl to level 8.

Mystery Girl (50 vigilante emp/pistols defender) helped two different blasters beat up Snaptooth for the Baby New Year missions.

Virtual Girl (14 resistance kat/fire scrapper) solo'd Beholder's arc, including Mother Mayhem, who spawned as an EB for me and was pretty cool looking; before this, I had only seen the new Mother Mayhem as a loyalist contact, who you don't even get to meet in person.


Sun 12/26

Yuki-Onna (50 villain ice/cold corr) solo'd the Ramiel arc to unlock the Alpha slot. I beat Trapdoor head-to-head without any trickery, and beat Voltz and Honoree by pulling them one at a time. Yuki's cold debuffs were just that good. After realizing that, I thought, why am I not playing this character more often...so I started on some badging to get her the villain accolades. I had most of the hard stuff completed, just needed to pick up explore and history badges to get the Born in battle (+54hp and +5end), Demonic and Marshal accolades. I also got everything I needed for High Pain Threshold except the Family bosses; I started killing Consiglieres in St Martial to get this, but got bored after killing about 40 of them and stopped.

Tour de Force (22 hero ff/nrg defender) joined a 6 player team for 3 hero tips and 1 vig tip; we had one team wipe against Carnies when we aggroed a bit too much, but otherwise did fine. We also did a level 50's hero morality mission; I had my morality mission by this time also, but worth noting, I couldn't auto-complete mine because the low 20s morality mission isn't the same as the level 50 one. Nevertheless, this got Tour de Force up to level 24.

Mercy Beaucoup (48 hero ice/kin corr) did a clear-most ITF in 45m 33s, getting to level 49.

Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) did a Tin Mage TF. In the final fight, the team had me pull Bobcat away while our tanker and the rest of the team focused on Neuron. Despite normally being pretty tough I found I couldn't tank Bobcat without support, so I resorted to kiting her around while eating orange inspirations and taunting. Once Neuron dropped, Bobcat got even nastier; I brought her back to the team and we killed her, but we had a lot of deaths due to the vengeance effect she has. Finished in 46m 57s and got 4 shards. I spent 16 shards and 150 vanguard merits to upgrade to a Cardiac Radial boost; I didn't have any of the "correct" incarnate salvage, but I figured I'll get more shards than I know what to do with eventually, so no sense in waiting. The Cardiac Radial (END/RES) boost raises Mega's lethal resist from 52.63% to 55.07%, which seemed a little disappointing; I was hoping for a bigger jump in survivability. I'm thinking of building RCHG/HEAL boost and comparing the results.

I've been kicking around ideas for making a new dominator for a few days; I have trouble sticking with dominator toons or even understanding what use dominators even are, so this was something of a challenge. I ended up rolling up a fire/psi dominator, which is probably a horribly common build, but I want good AoE damage to keep from feeling useless. I re-used the name/costume/background story of my last dominator, Idolator, and started in Praetoria where some other friends were running lowbies. We did some resistance missions, fought in one of the protest events (which surprised me by popping up a reward screen at the end; I chose random recipe and got a level 10 generic stun IO recipe, bleh), battled a Winter Lord but got wiped out by level 50 frostlings, then helped the level 50 team that beat the Winter Lord with the Lord Winter's Realm event, which was successful. This got Idolator to level 10 before the team broke up. Later, I wandered over to Pocket D and joined a 7 player pickup Baby New Year mission. We had one team wipe inside the cave from aggroing too many snowmen and red caps, then rescued Baby New Year and escaped, getting Idolator to level 12. This put me at 24 candy canes, and I finished the night opening presents in Imperial City to get a 25th candy cane, just enough to purchase the Naughty halo from the candy cane vendor.

I gave A Warrior's Journey - The Flower Knight Task Force a general tune-up. Major changes include:

1. Reworked missions 1 and 4 (both outdoors missions) to improve pacing. I used a technique that I've seen in other story arcs recently, where you spawn the map empty, then only spawn the relevant objectives. I found this seems to work well to make every mob you fight at least a little more interesting. (To address player feedback that these outdoor missions could become tedious.)

2. Added a new "Peasant" hostage to mission 1, for variety. Since I was already using Wu Yin's model, I made a custom model vaguely based on Praetorian Penelope Yin. (With the arc size cap raised to 200K I have tons of space to burn for frivolous stuff like that.)


Peasant Girl

3. Reworked some of the clues in mission 4 to tie in more closely with the established lore from Going Rogue and the Apex/Tin Mage TFs. This arc can't really ever perfectly match the canon, but thought I'd at least give a shout-out to the established story for Going Rogue.

4. Gave Chimera a couple ambushes to help him in mission 4.

5. Gave Fujineko and Flower Knight some lines to say in mission 5 when taking damage and dying. (This feature didn't exist when I first created the arc.)

6. Added "Oni lord" models to mission 5, mostly because it struck me that a recolored Cyclops really looked right for the part. His unstoppable at low life is kinda annoying, but he's optional and it's the final battle, so I figured that would be OK.


Oni lord

Playtested twice on a 35 fire/shield scrapper (the arc is actually rated for level 41-50) and was able to get through it all just fine.

Here's my votes (warning: opinion follows!)

Heroic:
1. Legacy of a Rogue
2. Made to Wave the Flag

Villainous:
1. Until the End of the World
2. The Do-It-Yourself Doom Army Project

Comedy:
1. Drakule vs the Werewolf Bikers from Hell
2. Too Clever by Half

Original group:
1. Wickerwork
2. New Outcasts

Several of these were pretty tough calls. There's some good material out there.

12/20/2010

Fri 12/17

Shield Maiden (33 rogue fire/shield scrapper) burned 160 merits on 8 recipe rolls, getting a Miracle (+rec) and Numina (+rec/+regen) as the best of the bunch, making this a very good roll indeed. Joined some friends for 1 vigilante mission, though I don't think vigilante missions do anything (either positive or negative) for rogue toons.

Indigo Ifrit (50 villain fire/rad corruptor) did a clear-most ITF in 43m 45s, getting the ancient nictus fragment and 8 shards. I made and slotted a Cardiac boost (END). I honestly don't remember why I thought END was a good idea for a fire/rad; in hindsight, RCHG/HEAL would probably have been a better choice.


Sat 12/18

Spacegirl (50 hero mind/rad controller) did a pickup STF. We had a rather low DPS team and people didn't listen to the leader, who was admittedly a rather bossy empath who didn't use empath buffs (until I called him on it, then he did start putting out CM and Fortitude). This made the TF go pretty slow, but we got our act together in the last mission, finishing in 1h 17m. I got an Essence of the Incarnate and 3 shards.

Shield Maiden (33 rogue fire/shield scrapper) joined a 2 team raid force for the Lord Winter's Realm event. We had some trouble with people not switching to the Winter Guardian (instead preferring to beat on the phased-out Lord Winter), but we still managed to win with 8 minutes on the clock. I got 6 merits, 20 candy canes and a badge. I also solo'd a Baby New Year mission for the Santa boots.

Indigo Ifrit (50 villain fire/rad corr) did an Apex TF. This was fairly bloody, with lots of deaths in the sewers in mission 1 and a messy Battle Maiden fight during mission 2, but we still managed to finish in 37m 33s and get the Master of Apex badge. I also got 7 shards.

Shield Maiden did a Moonfire TF on a 7 player team. We had a good team, but the leader disconnected while entering the last mission. We waited about 10 minutes hoping the leader would come back, then finished. Total time was 1h 10m; I got to level 34 (ended up having some enhancements turn red, and I decided to keep fighting rather than delay the team by leaving Striga to get enhancements, which slowed me down a little) and the Slayer badge. I also got a Basilisk's Gaze (RCHG/HEAL), either as a drop or as one of my earlier random recipe rolls (not sure which) that I managed to sell for 120M; I had no idea those were so valuable. Some time later, the TF leader reconnected, but managed to get the badge despite the TF having ended already.

Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) joined a 7-player team doing the Lady Winter mission. We cleared most mobs and beat up 3 obelisks to spawn a Lady Winter AV, that we killed to get the Cold as Ice badge. It also had a reward menu that looked identical to the Baby New Year mission's rewards. I had already gotten all the badges from that on Police Woman, so I took the candy canes.


Sun 12/19

Shield Maiden (34 rogue fire/shield scrapper) solo'd the second costume mission and the red-side Midnight Squad arc. Got a Kinetic Combat (DR) drop.

Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) did a Master of Apex TF in 31m 44s for 3 shards, and a Tin Mage TF in 30m 31s for 4 shards.

I had deleted my Praetorian ice/cold controller awhile ago because the rush of people playing in Praetoria had seemed to die down, but I kinda regretted it and decided to make Tundra Girl, a new ice/cold controller who started in Atlas Park. I solo'd Azuria's missions and did part of The Blue Devils, an AE story arc, to get up to level 4, then heard a Winter Lord had been spotted in Atlas. I ran over to the Winter Lord and saw a lot of people milling about asking for a team. I did some teambuilding jujitsu by inviting some of the stray players, then dumping the star on a level 50 so the team wouldn't be limited to only level 4 powers. By this time more people showed up and we were able to beat the Winter Lord, then enter Lord Winter's Realm and beat Lord Winter too, though I confess I'm not sure how much DPS I was contributing, considering I was both level 4 and using cold damage, which he probably resists. Still, got to level 5 and the "Lady of Winter" badge, which seemed ideal for Tundra Girl.

April Fool (50 villain thug/TA MM) joined an ITF. I don't normally break out my mastermind for TFs because dragging around an entourage of pets is a PITA on TFs, but since I19 everyone has been doing clear-most TFs, which let my mastermind do a lot better than I expected; I even started to think the trick arrow debuffs were really working. I also got a couple compliments on April's costume, which was really nice. We finished the ITF in 49m 33s and I got an ancient nictus fragment and 4 shards, which I crafted into a Spiritual boost (RCHG). I went with recharge because that seems to help trick arrow the most, and my operating assumption as a mastermind is that my pets are there to die for me, so recharge on pets is good too. In fact, someone on the TF had asked me if I was having trouble with my pets dying, and I had instinctively said "No, doing fine"...and it wasn't until somewhat later that it registered on me that, in fact, yes, my pets were dying now and then. But I didn't care, because I could summon more.

Thunder Girl (50 hero elec/SR scrapper) did an STF. In mission 4, the special power didn't seem to affect Aeon; it either missed or somehow he recovered from it really fast. This resulted in some deaths while we waited for the temp power to recharge; the second shot made him vulnerable again, but late in the fight he became untouchable again and had to be hit a third time. We hadn't seen this sort of thing before and speculated it was because a controller took the Thorn Tree power (normally a tank or brute takes it) and might have different archetype multipliers, but really we had no idea. In mission 5, we killed the red tower, blue tower and yellow tower, then were fighting the green tower when we managed to knockback an Arachnos repairman away from the green tower and onto the stump of the red tower, where the repairman resurrected the red tower (gah!). Half of us broke off from the green tower to kill the red tower a second time. Finally we got both towers down and finished the STF in 1h 4m, getting Essence of the Incarnate and 5 shards.

I spent some time working out in Mids an I19 respec for Schadenfreude (50 villain AR/pain corruptor), then started to do the respec when I realized I had never unlocked a patron AV for her. My respec build needs Scorpion Shield for the lethal defense, so I aborted the respec and started Ghost Widow's patron arc, soloing 5 of her missions before calling it a night.

12/17/2010

Tue 12/14

Olivia Q (50 hero MA/SR scrapper) joined a 6 player team for 3 hero tip missions.

Primadonna (50 rogue sonic/kin corruptor) did a Master of Apex TF in 34m 39s, getting 4 shards.

Mystery Girl (50 vigilante emp/pistols defender) did a Tin Mage TF in 37m 47s; our team was very support heavy and we managed to get through the TF with no deaths, which seemed remarkable. Got 6 shards.


Wed 12/15

I burned Olivia Q's free respec; she had a very old build that needed to be updated to reflect the recent martial arts buffs. I dumped Thunder Kick, Eagle's Claw, Resuscitate and all of Body Mastery, swapping in Cobra Strike, Crippling Axe Kick, Hasten and Weapon Mastery. I swapped all the legacy Fitness powers for Kick/Tough/Weave from Fighting pool, which easily puts her over the defense soft cap. I took Explosive Shuriken for the AoE damage, replacing Energy Torrent; the idea was that the Explosive Shuriken's burst radius would work better for a scrapper than Energy Torrent's cone. Not fully sure whether I like how the change is working out, though; Energy Torrent looked cooler.

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.90
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Olivia Q I19 respec: Level 50 Technology Scrapper
Primary Power Set: Martial Arts
Secondary Power Set: Super Reflexes
Power Pool: Medicine
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Fighting
Ancillary Pool: Weapon Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Storm Kick -- Mako-Acc/Dmg(A), Mako-Dmg/EndRdx(7), Mako-Dmg/Rchg(9), Mako-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(9), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(11), Mako-Dam%(11)
Level 1: Focused Fighting -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(3), LkGmblr-Rchg+(3)
Level 2: Cobra Strike -- Mako-Acc/Dmg(A), Mako-Dmg/EndRdx(13), Mako-Dmg/Rchg(13), Mako-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(15), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(15), Mako-Dam%(17)
Level 4: Focused Senses -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(5), LkGmblr-Rchg+(5)
Level 6: Agile -- DefBuff-I(A)
Level 8: Crane Kick -- Mako-Acc/Dmg(A), Mako-Dmg/EndRdx(17), Mako-Dmg/Rchg(19), Mako-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(19), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(21), Mako-Dam%(21)
Level 10: Practiced Brawler -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 12: Aid Other -- IntRdx-I(A), Mrcl-Heal/EndRdx(36), Mrcl-EndRdx/Rchg(37), Mrcl-Heal/Rchg(37), Mrcl-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(37), Mrcl-Heal(39)
Level 14: Aid Self -- IntRdx-I(A), Mrcl-Heal/EndRdx(23), Mrcl-EndRdx/Rchg(33), Mrcl-Heal/Rchg(33), Mrcl-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(34), Mrcl-Heal(34)
Level 16: Combat Jumping -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 18: Crippling Axe Kick -- Mako-Acc/Dmg(A), Mako-Dmg/EndRdx(23), Mako-Dmg/Rchg(25), Mako-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(25), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(31), Mako-Dam%(33)
Level 20: Quickness -- Run-I(A)
Level 22: Dodge -- DefBuff-I(A)
Level 24: Focus Chi -- GSFC-ToHit(A), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg(29), GSFC-ToHit/EndRdx(34), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg/EndRdx(42), GSFC-Rchg/EndRdx(42), GSFC-Build%(43)
Level 26: Dragon's Tail -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(27), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(27), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(29), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(31), Oblit-Úm(31)
Level 28: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(40), RechRdx-I(42)
Level 30: Kick -- Empty(A)
Level 32: Tough -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), Aegis-ResDam/EndRdx(40), Aegis-ResDam/Rchg(40), Aegis-Psi/Status(43), Aegis-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(43), Aegis-ResDam(45)
Level 35: Evasion -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(36), LkGmblr-Rchg+(36)
Level 38: Weave -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(39), LkGmblr-Rchg+(39)
Level 41: Web Grenade -- Enf'dOp-Acc/Rchg(A), Enf'dOp-EndRdx/Immob(45), Enf'dOp-Acc/EndRdx(46), Enf'dOp-Immob/Rng(46), Enf'dOp-Acc/Immob/Rchg(46), Enf'dOp-Acc/Immob(50)
Level 44: Caltrops -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 47: Exploding Shuriken -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(48), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(48), Posi-Dmg/Rng(48), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(50), RechRdx-I(50)
Level 49: Lucky -- DefBuff-I(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Critical Hit
Level 4: Ninja Run
Level 2: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 2: Health -- Heal-I(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- P'Shift-EndMod(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(7), P'Shift-End%(45)


After respecing I tested by soloing 3 hero tip missions and the hero morality mission, confirming Olivia's hero alignment.


Thu 12/16

I've been selling tons of stuff on the market; the craziest sale I had was selling 2 Centrioles for 5M inf each. Normally it's hard to even give those away. It's a really good time to be selling stuff.

San Min (50 hero MA/will scrapper) solo'd a single mission AE story arc called Murder in the RWZ Morgue. This was well-crafted and cleverly used game mechanics to portray a murder mystery and homage to Edgar Allan Poe. I thought the ending could've been a little more dramatic, but it still seemed worthy of 5 stars to me.

After that San Min did a clear-most ITF in 48m 21s, getting 5 shards and an ancient nictus fragment. I crafted and slotted a Cardiac (END) boost.

Mercy Beaucoup (45 hero ice/kin corruptor) did a clear most ITF in 54m 33s, getting her to level 46.

People really wanted to do ITF tonight, and so Strong Woman (50 hero inv/SS tanker) did my third clear-most ITF for the night. A teammate complimented me on Strong Woman's bio, which was nice. We finished the ITF in 40m 10s and I got an ancient nictus fragment, 6 shards and Fortunata Hypnosis (SLEEP/RCHG) purple recipe.

12/14/2010

Thu 12/9

Fire Maiden (50 hero SS/fire brute) joined a very successful RWZ raid, getting credit for a bomb, 2 reward merits, 699 vanguard merits, and 3 shards. Converting vanguard merits to a Gr'ai Matter allowed me to make and slot a Cardiac boost, very helpful as Fire Maiden tends to be an END hog.

Mercy Beaucoup (42 hero ice/kin corr) did a clear-most ITF on +2 difficulty in 48m 13s, which got her to level 44.

Fri 12/10

Schadenfreude (50 villain AR/pain corr) solo'd Ramiel arc, albeit with great difficulty. It took 4 tries for me to beat Trapdoor, and I had to uncork a Vanguard HVAS to beat Honoree. It felt like I wasn't doing a lot of damage and my debuffs weren't that helpful while solo. I really like the idea of Schadenfreude as a pain domination corruptor, but I've been a bit underwhelmed with the pain powerset; she probably needs a respec or something to get stronger.

Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) used 16 shards and 150 vanguard merits to upgrade her Musculature boost to a Musculature Core boost. Most of my attacks were at the soft cap already, but the uncommon boost is supposed to help me push past the soft cap slightly. PW's full auto (with no boost) does 360 damage, with the uncommon boost it does 386 damage; this feels like a worthwhile upgrade. My marketeering caused me to hit the inf cap again and I sent another 500M to myself.

Primadonna (50 rogue sonic/kin corr) joined a pickup ITF. People AFK'd a lot, which slowed us down a bit, but we finished in 1h 13m. I got an ancient nictus fragment and 4 shards, and used it all to craft a Spiritual boost (RCHG). I went with recharge for my kin mostly because I didn't have any better ideas; boosting endurance seems useless when I have Transference, boosting damage seems useless when I have Fulcrum Shift.

Mystery Girl (50 vigilante emp/pistols defender) did an STF. With speed boost and Spiritual boost (RCHG) it seemed like I could keep 5 Fortitude buffs up, which was pretty cool. In the final mission, the patron AVs were no problem, but Lord Recluse smashed our shield brute flat 3 times despite my best efforts; LR's damage profile was very spiky and I just could not heal fast enough. The brute switched to tanking while flying which let us complete the STF in 1h 14m. I got an Essence of the Incarnate and 3 shards. I spent 16 shards to upgrade my Spiritual boost to a Spiritual Radial Boost (RCHG/HEAL).

Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) joined a carefully planned Master of Tin Mage TF attempt. The team leader asked us all to bring the nuclear warhead from Warburg, to use against Director 11. When we got into Director 11's warehouse, the glowies were rapidly clicked, then we pulled Director 11 to the door to fight him there. Our strategy was to simply kill Director 11 as quickly as possible, to make the window for being hit by proximity mines as short as possible; towards this end we all dropped a nuclear warhead and I think someone dropped the bio and chem warhead too. Despite this amount of nukage, Director 11 was impressively resilient and still survived longer than we expected, but we did manage to drop him before any mines went off. The rest of the TF went fairly normally and we finished in 32m 39s for 3 shards and 40 merits. I got the Midnight Dodger What Dodges at Midnight, Kitty's Got Claws, and Master of Tin Mage badges.

After that, the same team did a Master of Apex TF. We avoided activating the police drones, which got me the Arm's Length badge and Master of Apex TF badge. Finished in 30m 9s. After doing both Master-of TFs, Master of Apex is clearly easier to get.

Fire Maiden (50 hero SS/fire brute) did a pickup clear most LGTF in 1h 33m, getting Hero 1 DNA and 7 shards. I upgraded her Cardiac boost to a Cardiac Radial boost (END/RES). I was kinda hoping a END/RES boost would improve her survivability; this pushed her total lethal resist (with Fire Shield and Tough) up to 56%, which is better but I'm guessing will still make her less tough than an invuln or even a willpower tank. Despite that, I'm still really liking her due to the sick damage that Burn/Foot Stomp/Fireball puts out.

Mercy Beaucoup (44 hero ice/kin corr) did a clear most ITF in 38m 0s, getting to level 45.


Sat 12/11

Police Woman wandered around Sharkhead Island solo, killing grey Cage Consortium guards to eventually get the Goon Squad badge.

Switched to Triumph for a bit to play my seasonal character, Mary Christmas (24 hero ice/rad controller) on a 7-player team doing AE story arcs. We first played Dhahabu Kingdom and the Unfathomable Kingdom of Sand, which had a great look and neat plot, but the gameplay needed some tuning; I gave it 4 stars. Then we played the first mission of Vengeful Heart, which had custom enemies that were a confusing mishmash of aliens, robots, zombies and ninja; we weren't excited enough about the arc to keep playing after the first mission. I left feedback complaining about the lack of theme; the author wrote back thanking me for playing but saying "you seem to have really not understood the story." I felt kinda guilty for not giving his story arc more of a chance, so started slowly soloing through it on one of my stalkers, doing a mission here and there during downtime.

Maid of Awesome (31 hero sonic/rad corr) did a Citadel TF. Our team leader was 27 so we were effectively on +3 difficulty. This slowed things down a lot, but we had a strong team so were able to handle it, finishing in 1h 55m. This got Maid of Awesome to level 33. I burned 160 merits for 8 recipe rolls; the best of the bunch were a Kinetic Combat (DER), 2 Positron's Blast (chance for energy), Mako's Bite (DR), Devastation (chance to hold), Impervium Armor (R). I kept most of these but put the Impervium Armor on the broker, where it instantly sold for 20M.

It's a seller's market out there. A shortage in rare salvage pushed prices for many over 3M, some even got up to 10M. I released lots of salvage to the market that I had bought pre-I19 for around 500k, generating a decent profit.

April Fool (50 villain thug/TA MM) easily solo'd Ramiel's arc with her pets and debuffs. Spacegirl (50 hero mind/rad controller) also solo'd Ramiel's arc, but it was slow going against the EBs and AVs. I was able to confuse Holtz to death (or rather, get his buddies to kill him), died once to the Honoree, then broke out a Shivan to beat him on the rematch.

Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) did a ITF in 40m 34s, getting an ancient nictus fragment and 4 shards. From this I made a Cardiac boost (END). She doesn't really have END problems, I just have my eye on the (END/RES) boost to make her tougher.

After that Mega did an Apex TF; I got to be the tank and tried to herd the war walkers as best as I could. Against Battle Maiden things got a little crazy and we ended up zerging her, with people hospitalling and returning as fast as they could. Finished in 42m 7s and got 4 shards and the Master of Apex badge (which fortunately doesn't care if your whole team dies).

I did an I19 respec for Thunder Girl (50 elec/SR scrapper), basically dumping the legacy fitness pool and picking up permahasten, superspeed and confront, while maintaining soft capped DEF. Confront and Fly are somewhat marginal power picks, but I like picturing her as a flyer, and I figure taunting will help once in awhile (there've been times I could've used it to tank the end boss in ITF or STF). I also switched the Blaze Mastery (fire) epic pool for the Mu (electric) patron pool, mostly for thematic reasons. The build is as follows:

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.90
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Thunder Girl I19 respec: Level 50 Magic Scrapper
Primary Power Set: Electrical Melee
Secondary Power Set: Super Reflexes
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Speed
Ancillary Pool: Mu Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Charged Brawl -- Hectmb-Dmg(A), Hectmb-Dmg/Rchg(3), Hectmb-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(3), Hectmb-Acc/Rchg(5), Hectmb-Dmg/EndRdx(5), Hectmb-Dam%(7)
Level 1: Focused Fighting -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(7), LkGmblr-Rchg+(9)
Level 2: Focused Senses -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(9), LkGmblr-Rchg+(11)
Level 4: Agile -- DefBuff-I(A)
Level 6: Build Up -- HO:Membr(A), HO:Membr(13), HO:Membr(40)
Level 8: Thunder Strike -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(13), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(15), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(15), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(17), Oblit-Úm(17)
Level 10: Practiced Brawler -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 12: Combat Jumping -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(31), LkGmblr-Rchg+(46)
Level 14: Fly -- Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(50)
Level 16: Dodge -- DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(40)
Level 18: Chain Induction -- Mako-Acc/Dmg(A), Mako-Dmg/EndRdx(19), Mako-Dmg/Rchg(21), Mako-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(21), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(23), Mako-Dam%(23)
Level 20: Quickness -- Run-I(A)
Level 22: Kick -- HO:Nucle(A)
Level 24: Tough -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), Aegis-ResDam/EndRdx(25), Aegis-ResDam/Rchg(25), Aegis-EndRdx/Rchg(27), Aegis-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(31), Aegis-ResDam(31)
Level 26: Weave -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(27), LkGmblr-Def(29), LkGmblr-Rchg+(29)
Level 28: Lucky -- DefBuff-I(A)
Level 30: Super Speed -- Clrty-Stlth(A)
Level 32: Lightning Rod -- Armgdn-Dmg(A), Armgdn-Dmg/Rchg(33), Armgdn-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(33), Armgdn-Acc/Rchg(33), Armgdn-Dmg/EndRdx(34), Armgdn-Dam%(34)
Level 35: Evasion -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(36), LkGmblr-Rchg+(36)
Level 38: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(39), RechRdx-I(40)
Level 41: Mu Bolts -- Apoc-Dmg(A), Apoc-Dmg/Rchg(42), RechRdx-I(42), Apoc-Acc/Rchg(42), Apoc-Dmg/EndRdx(43), Apoc-Dam%(43)
Level 44: Ball Lightning -- Det'tn-Dmg/Rchg(A), Ragnrk-Dmg/Rchg(45), Ragnrk-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(45), Ragnrk-Acc/Rchg(45), Ragnrk-Dmg/EndRdx(46), Ragnrk-Knock%(46)
Level 47: Electric Shackles -- Lock-Acc/Hold(A), Lock-Acc/Rchg(48), Lock-Rchg/Hold(48), Lock-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(48), Lock-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(50), Lock-%Hold(50)
Level 49: Confront -- Range-I(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Critical Hit
Level 4: Ninja Run
Level 2: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 2: Health -- Numna-Heal/EndRdx(A), Numna-Heal(11), Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(19), Mrcl-Heal/EndRdx(39), Mrcl-Heal(39), Mrcl-Rcvry+(43)
Level 2: Stamina -- P'Shift-EndMod(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(34), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc/Rchg(36), P'Shift-Acc/Rchg(37), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(37), P'Shift-End%(37)



Sun 12/12

I logged in while the scheduled RWZ raid was ongoing, but enough people were wanting to do it that RWZ 1 was full and some people had spilled over into RWZ 2, where they were forming another pickup raid. Playing Strong Woman (50 hero inv/SS tanker), I managed to sneak into RWZ 1 via some Ouro trickery (I kinda think that teleporting to a zone via Ouro can let me circumvent the population limit; haven't tested it enough to be absolutely sure though) and join the ongoing raid. At the raid I got 605 vanguard merits and 1 shard.

After that Strong Woman did a clear most ITF in 44m 53s, getting an Ancient Nictus fragment and 7 shards. From all this I was able to make a Spiritual boost (RCHG). I went for recharge because I'm hoping to get Strong Woman a little closer to perma-dull pain, which I think would have the biggest impact of the possible boosts.

Primadonna (50 rogue sonic/kin corr) did a Apex TF. Did well the first mission, the Battle Maiden fight got kinda chaotic and we had to zerg her with hospital rushes again. Finished in 38m 42s and got the Master of Apex badge and 3 shards.


Mon 12/13

After admonishing some people for PvP trash talking on LB, I decided to just go to Warburg and join the PvP. I managed to kill one player, but died twice to the big team that was there. After that the big team left and I declared victory (admittedly, not too seriously).

Mercy Beaucoup (45 hero ice/kin corr) joined the kin superteam for a Manticore TF. We had a stalker along who helped stealth/TP us around. We had a fair number of deaths (you don't play kin to be safe) and people seemed surprised that I was able to rez people on a kin. I had crafted a temp Resuscitator power and used every last charge on that TF. It was surprisingly useful, though, so I'll probably make another one. Finished in 1h 10m.

Millie Volt (50 rogue elec/elec brute) did an Apex TF. A coordination mixup in the first mission led to some of us running past mobs in the sewers while others fought them, resulting in lots of deaths. Then in the second mission we again were getting beat up badly by Battle Maiden and the blue fog. Nevertheless we finished in 32m and I got 5 shards and the Master of Apex badge. We went on to do a Tin Mage TF; had a messy Director 11 fight, then I died a lot to Bobcat, but after we killed Bobcat, Neuron and the goliath robots were easy. Finished in 46m 19s and got 6 shards. I wasn't sure how well Millie would do on the Praetorian TFs; as an elec armor, she is often a bit squishier than I'd like. I found that she was amazing against the Praetorian clockwork due to her capped energy resist, but was easily beat up by the toxic monsters in the sewer and by Bobcat, who does lethal damage.

Star Amethyst (50 hero dark/ice defender) did a clear-most ITF. Our team was mostly support and had rather low DPS, finishing in 1h 2m. I got an ancient nictus fragment and 4 shards, which I used to craft a Cardiac boost (END).

Finished the night playing Virtual Girl (13 resistance kat/fire scrapper). I joined a 3 player team that stopped Cutter Cain in the sewers of Praetoria, getting Virtual Girl to level 14.

I think this would be a great idea! Add an incarnate salvage (maybe the rularuu or hami one) to the ticket vendor, with a timed lockout to limit farmability. It would give people a reason to play MA missions while still working towards I19 goals.

I'd kind of like to see incarnate shards drop in MA also, but there would need to be some way to prevent them being farmed. Though, arguably you can farm shards in existing canon content, so maybe that isn't as big a deal.

While I sympathize with some of the sentiments expressed here, I don't think lowering the bar on Hall of Fame is a magic bullet that would cure all of Mission Architect's ills.

If they lowered the threshold to 800 plays, 500 plays, even 200 plays, the order that story arcs are presented in the default search would be exactly the same. The 5-star arcs vaulted into the Hall of Fame would be in exactly the same place in the search -- just below the current Hall of Fame arcs, just above the arcs with 5 stars and slightly less plays. This would give the authors who got recognized a warm fuzzy feeling and another arc slot, but IMHO this would do nothing to address the major problems Mission Architect currently has.

Since I'm on a soapbox already, here's what I think Mission Architect's major problems are:

1. Most players think Mission Architect is for farming. Efficient farms get infinitely more plays than well-written stories. This problem requires changing people's perceptions, and will be hard to solve. Stomping the various exploits as the devs have been doing is good for curbing the bad behavior, but I think the devs also need to do a better job of rewarding good behavior (i.e., more promotion of story-oriented arcs).

2. The players who do want to play well-written stories have a hard time actually finding them. As stated earlier, randomly looking through the current MA search tool results in a lot of farms, unfinished arcs, and low quality arcs. This could be solved by improving the search interface, changing the rating system, clearing out deadwood, adding favorites lists ... many possible ways, really. I created the "Contact Tree for MA" project specifically to try to help with this problem; this only reaches people willing to read this forum, though. The best solutions will require user interface changes that need to come from the devs.

3. Mission Architect is old news now, and no new content encourages you to do MA. MA was so very hot in I14. But now in I19, hardly anyone still cares; players don't go in MA except to farm. We got a few new maps, but aside from that, none of the new I19 features are integrated with MA. As a result, interest in MA is stagnating.

Specific example: I19 makes you go to Ouroboros to do Mender Ramiel's arc, and sends you to talk to Lady Grey in RWZ (from I10) to do a mission for her. Once you have the Alpha slot unlocked, getting salvage to make boosts encourages you to do the ITF (from I12), LGTF (from I10), STF (from I9), RSF (from I7), Cathedral of Pain (from I18), and the Kahn/Barracuda TFs (from I15). Tons of content from previous issues get tied into the current story, but you'll note that none of this stuff comes from Mission Architect or ties into MA in any way. I don't think you can even get incarnate shards in Mission Architect. Everyone I know is hot to get incarnate salvage and craft boosts for their alpha slot right now. Why would anyone want to spend time in MA right now? I love MA and even I have a hard time justifying doing anything MA related until I catch up with the I19 content.


Anyway, that's my opinion on the main things that are holding Mission Architect back. It is such a cool feature - I wish they would do a little more to keep it alive.

12/9/2010

Tuesday 12/7

Blond Justice (50 hero broadsword/shield scrapper) did a Tin Mage TF. We had a strong team and did really well. Against Bobcat and Neuron we tried to kill them roughly evenly (similarly to how you try to kill the spires in the CoP trial at the same rate), getting both of them down to 35% each before actively trying to kill them at almost the same time to mitigate their vengeance powers. Finished in 33m 23s and got 7 shards and 40 merits.

Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) did a Kahn TF at +1 difficulty. I made it through all but the last mission, where I used Ouro, then rebooted the game to try and clear lag. This made the game kick me from the TF due to alignment issues (I think because I was in red-side Ouro for a blue-side TF). I had been rather casual about heading to red side zones while on blue side TFs, will need to be more careful. I gained 4 shards from the part of the TF I got to do, anyhow.

Wednesday 12/8

Due to getting some low votes, my Teen Phalanx Forever! story arc finally fell from a 5-star rating to a 4 star rating (with 932 plays), ending a year-long reign at the top of the 5 star story arcs that aren't already Dev Choice'd or in the Hall of Fame. Due to the vagaries of the AE search interface, this moves it from page 3 of the default search to page 200 or so. This is a little disappointing, as my arc was getting into striking range of the "Hall of Fame" but perhaps not too surprising; it's quite difficult to maintain a high rating under the current system, and quite hard to get people to try story-oriented arcs rather than farms, so I should be happy it lasted as long as it did.

Police Woman joined an Apex TF. I thought our team was a little light on support (1 kin, 1 rad, 1 tank, 5 damage), and we had a tough time with Battle Maiden at the end; we died LOTS and had to zerg Battle Maiden with people repeatedly going to the hospital and then running back into the mission and back into the fight. (The hospital is very close to the mission door, making this semi-viable as a strategy.) I think part of our problem was that people didn't do a good job of staying out of the killer blue stuff dropped by the bad guys, so took a lot of extra damage; some people complained their powers would root them in the blue stuff. Nevertheless we finished in 36m 30s; I got 4 shards and 40 merits, still a good payoff.

Millie Volt (50 vigilante elec/elec brute) did a clear most ITF in 40m 55s. A teammate pointed out to me that you can pretty easily get a Cardiac boost from a single ITF if you have some vanguard merits banked, and so I did exactly that. I took the ancient nictus reward and got 5 shards on the ITF; converted 150 vanguard merits and 4 shards to make the other salvage needed, and crafted a Cardiac boost (END).

This led me to the realization that it's dumb to be saving up incarnate shards the way I've been doing. I've been waiting to do the ITF/LGTF/STF/Kahn/etc. for each toon in order to get the correctly matching incarnate salvage, but I get enough incarnate shards that I may as well convert them.

After realizing this, I had Blond Justice convert 16 incarnate shards, 150 vanguard merits and the Cardiac boost I already had, into a Cardiac Radial Boost (END/RES). Boosting resists on a shield scrapper probably sounds counterintuitive, but she actually gets some resists from Deflection and Tough, and with the Cardiac Radial Boost, this adds up to 37% lethal resist. If I activate One With the Shield, this goes up to 67% lethal resist. I figure this will be pretty nice when stacked with her soft capped defense.

Thanks for the goodwill Teen Phalanx had a good run on page 3, perhaps it's about time for a new arc to take the top non-DC/non-HoF spot for a bit.

No regrets here. Even a 1-star vote puts me one vote closer to HoF

12/7/2010

Sunday

Olivia Q (50 hero MA/SR scrapper) solo'd the Ramiel arc to unlock the Alpha slot.

Maid of Awesome (31 rogue sonic/rad corr) experimented with the alternate sonic animations. I tried them in the tailor and in a mission and I found I didn't really like the alternate animations except for scream and screech; I ended up reverting the shriek and shout animations to the old versions. I also solo'd the hero morality mission, changing her alignment to hero.

Mercy Beaucoup (39 hero ice/kin corr) joined a +2 ITF. We were overbooked with 9 players; an empath dropped so our 4th scrapper could stay, which didn't seem a great idea but we went with it. Mostly did well, though, aside from a hapless VEAT who seemed to die so much that he joked he was only along as vengeance bait. Finished the ITF in 59m 38s, and we spent some time cleaning up the towers after the TF actually completed, where we eventually wiped out due to getting spread out. But this did get Mercy to level 42.

Sarcasm Lass (6 loyalist sonic/mental blaster) joined a 8 player gold team for door missions in Neutropolis and got to level 9.

Mystery Girl (50 vigilante emp/pistols defender) joined the Sisterhood event running the Kahn TF on a 7 player team. Our brute wasn't really aggressive and it seemed like I (a defender) and the fort on our team often ended up jumping into mobs and taking the alpha strike to pull the team forward. I did get a costume compliment from a teammate, and praised for healing and buffing, which were both nice. I got to use my Pokemon explanation for how the Reichsman fight works, and this motivated one of our team members to count the number of facets on the cages containing the AVs, simply in order to pedantically call them dodecahedra rather than pokeballs. We had a long fight against Reichsman due to being short handed, but finally beat him to complete the TF in 1h 17m. I got a dimensional keystone and 4 shards.

Shield Maiden (31 rogue fire/shield scrapper) did a 7 player Manticore TF, stealthing where we could, that finished in 1h 1m. The same team then did a Katie TF. We were rudely surprised to find the second mission now requires leading Amy out, which ate a bunch of our time because we had stealthed to her thinking we could just free her, and now had to clear back out. Finished in 42m 51s and got 9 merits (I was hoping they had raised the merits along with changing the mission to be longer, but apparently not). This did get Shield Maiden to level 33 and a partially slotted Greater Fire Sword.

San Min (50 hero MA/will scrapper) joined a RWZ raid. I got on a 6 player team and picked up 409 vanguard merits and 3 shards, which helped me buy a Gr'ai matter. I got a compliment on San Min's costume, which was nice.

Indigo Ifrit (50 villain fire/rad corr) joined a RSF; the team leader asked me to bring some sort of healing, and I ended up being the only "healer" (the only other support toon was a cold, everyone else was brutes and scrappers). We did fine til the last mission where we wiped out on the Freedom Phalanx, but did get Numina and Sister Psyche on the first try. We were kinda struggling on our second try due to our light amount of support; I popped a shivan and another player dropped 2 Warburg nukes and a shivan, which was enough to squeak out a win. Finished in 47m 59s, got essence of the incarnate and 3 shards.

Mystery Girl joined a pickup ITF that finished in 57m 39s. I got an ancient nictus fragment and 6 shards. After that I joined late on a 2-team Lusca raid that beat him up. I also made a Spiritual boost with the various incarnate salvage I had picked up. My reasoning for this is, you can't go wrong with +RCHG and +HEAL when you're an empath defender. More recharge means more buffs and more frequent heals. And more Hails of Bullets, but the empath stuff is admittedly the more critical.


Monday

Blond Justice (50 hero broadsword/shield scrapped) did a pickup ITF. We cleared most and finished in 58m 26s. We had several brutes, scrappers and tanks, but I was in scrapperlock the whole TF, charging forward the whole time and expecting the team to follow me. Or not, in which case I could solo the next spawn. I don't think it really fully registered on me that we had two tanks that I could've been following until after the TF was over. The fact that the other melee toons on my pickup team were dying a lot while I was totally walking over the Romans gave me delusions of godhood. I'm liking how Blond Justice's respec turned out. I picked up an ancient nictus fragment and 6 shards, and made a cardiac boost. The END from Cardiac is okay, but I'm really working towards the RES boost at the uncommon level, which should help the resists in Deflection, True Grit and Tough. With my defense soft-capped, I figure boosting resistance for layered protection is the way to become even harder to kill. I could've seen Musculature (DMG) or Spiritual (RCHG) to raise my DPS making sense, too, though.

Fire Maiden (50 hero SS/fire brute) did another clear most ITF, with a much higher DPS team that finished in 38m 29s. I got an ancient nictus fragment and 4 shards.

Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) joined a Whirligig team for the Apex TF; our team mix was pretty strong, half support and half daamge, though two players were fighting at -8 due to not slotting their alpha boosts. (We did not realize this until after the TF, though they did notice they were doing almost no damage.) This involved fighting off a Praetorian invasion of Paragon City, which was very cool and dramatic. The first mission had us clearing Praetorian clockwork from Kings Row, then defending the police headquarters (everyone thought Police Woman should get some sort of morale bonus for defending Police HQ) against giant mecha. The second mission had us defending the ruins of Steel Canyon against Battle Maiden and a Praetorian army. Both were action-packed and very fun. Many of the Praetorian enemies seemed to have some kind of power where they drop a big red circle or a patch of cloudy blue stuff, and you have to move out of those areas or take lots of damage. This made the fights much more mobile than normal, and I hopped around like crazy. My team warned me against using Full Auto because it would lock me in place for too long, but I used it anyway (it's too good not to, and I've gotten pretty good at using Full Auto on the run). We ended up kiting Battle Maiden around a lot while killing her various minions, before finally focusing damage on her to win the TF. Finished in 34m 22s and got 40 merits; I was really surprised the TF was only 2 missions, that seemed pretty short. But it was still quite fun. I got the Technophobe, Drone Protector, Warrior Princess and Already Dead badges, along with 2 shards.

The same team then tackled the Tin Mage TF (though the 2 people who forgot to slot their alpha boosts now had them slotted so were no longer at a big penalty). For some reason we were fighting Malta, I didn't quite catch why they would be collaborating with other-dimensional enemies. There were some kind of invisible proximity mines; I was a little annoyed that I couldn't see them despite having capped perception. We ended up kiting some Malta AV called Director 11 while fighting off waves of enemies, then wore down this massive Goliath robot, which was pretty neat. Later we got to attack Praetorian Earth, where we fought both Bobcat and Neuron and 2 of the gigantic robots. There were ungodly numbers of ambushes or something during this fight; I had to run around a LOT evading enemies while fighting the AVs. We beat up Bobcat first and this gave Neuron some kind of super vengeance, but we were able to beat him, then the 2 robots, finishing in 46m 20s and getting 40 merits and 4 shards. Team members who had done it before commented that vengeanced Neuron seemed easier than vengeanced Bobcat, though I have no basis for comparison. I got the Hacker, Army of Neu and Alpha Struck badges.

12/6/2010

Thursday

Star Amethyst (50 hero dark/ice defender) did a clear most LGTF. I got praised twice for healing/defending (our only other support toon was trick arrow), which was nice. I got the impression that the rest of the team played together regularly and were used to more lethality. We did mission 4 slightly differently than I'm used to; the team leader appointed a targeter and on "go!" we all rushed in and killed the mito that the targeter was targeting, then all ran away. A jousting technique similar to what I've seen on MoLGTFs; it helped cut down on player deaths. Finished in 1h 37m and got a Hero 1 DNA and 8 incarnate shards.

Rain Dancer (50 hero storm/archery defender) joined an 8 player team that did Ramiel's arc to unlock the Alpha slot.

Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) joined a clear-most STF which went pretty smoothly. We pulled the patron AVs in the final mission and ended up getting 3 of them on the pull, but were able to handle it. Finished in 58m 26s and got Essence of the Incarnate and 5 shards.

I converted 4 of these shards into a Dimensional Keystone and crafted a Musculature (+33% DMG) boost (my first ever alpha boost), which I immediately started using. Most of my attacks were soft capped at around +93% to +96% damage; this boost pushed them all to around +106% to +113% damage. I spent a lot of time thinking about which incarnate boost to take, and I chose +DMG over +RCHG, +ACC or +END because I've always felt like I needed to do more damage (perhaps fire blaster envy), since damage is a blaster's main contribution. +RCHG arguably helps DPS also, but I already have a ton of global recharge from IO set bonuses, while global damage bonuses are harder to come by; and +DMG helps 1-shotting and burst damage while +RCHG only helps sustained DPS. So, although I've had some very smart friends suggest other boosts, that's why I went with Musculature for my blaster.


Friday

Following I19 the market in rare salvage (the main thing I trade) has been heating up considerably, more than recovering from the previous depression. Stuff I was buying (pre-I19) at 500K and selling at 1.2M jumped in value (post-I19) to 2M-2.5M, and even higher in some cases. I had been betting on this to happen, having bought up a ton of cheap salvage pre-I19 and hoping for the price to go up. As a result, Police Woman hit the inf cap again and I mailed myself another 500M dividend. My best guess for why this happened is: (1) the devs finally closed down the monkey farm, which I believe was flooding the rare salvage market due to the way farmers were spending tickets and (2) everyone is burning their I19 respecs and using up salvage to make new IOs.

Police Woman also got the Arachnos Official day job badge from hanging out in Grandville. One of these days I'll finally get all these stupid villain day jobs and be able to move back to hero side!

I was asked to play kin for a STF, so I played Primadonna (50 rogue sonic/kin corr). Somehow we ended up with 2 rads and 2 kins, but this usually isn't a bad thing. I inherited the star during mission 2 when the team leader disconnected, and tried to give some directions. We had a messy patron AV fight, but got past it. The tanker had some trouble standing toe-to-toe with Lord Recluse and we ended up teaching him how to taunt from flying. After we tore down the towers, though, the tanker still died a couple times while landing and positioning the AV, causing Lord Recluse to run wild attacking the squishy team members until the tanker recovered. Finally won after 1h 9m and got an essence of the incarnate and 4 shards.

Police Woman joined a clear all ITF which finished in 47m 5s, getting an ancient nictus thingy and 6 shards. Through some miscalculation, this meant I had 2 ancient nictus things, but I think I only needed 1. After that screwup, I started keeping better track of which alts needed which TFs to get incarnate drops.

Mystery Girl (50 vigilante emp/pistols defender) did a clear most STF. This went smoothly with no serious problems. We pulled the patron AVs who came in small easily manageable chunks, killed the flyer, then killed all the towers: red, blue, a break to kill the respawned flyer, yellow, green. Finished in 1h 27m and got essence of the incarnate and 6 shards.


Saturday

Thunder Girl (50 hero elec/SR scrapper) did a Kahn ITF, speeding some parts and clearing others. The final fight got a little crazy with the tank dragging Reichsman around his little platform, while some of us stayed on Reichsman while others focused on adds, but we managed it in 52m 47s and got a dimensional key. (Forgot to count how many shards I got.)

I used up a free respec for Blond Justice (50 hero broadsword/shield scrapper), building as follows:

Blond Justice I19

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.90
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Blond Justice I19 respec: Level 50 Mutation Scrapper
Primary Power Set: Broad Sword
Secondary Power Set: Shield Defense
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Speed
Ancillary Pool: Weapon Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Hack -- Mako-Acc/Dmg(A), Mako-Dmg/EndRdx(3), Mako-Dmg/Rchg(3), Mako-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(5), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(5), Mako-Dam%(7)
Level 1: Deflection -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(13), LkGmblr-Rchg+(13), TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx(39), TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(40), TtmC'tng-ResDam(40)
Level 2: Slash -- Mako-Acc/Dmg(A), Mako-Dmg/EndRdx(15), Mako-Dmg/Rchg(15), Mako-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(43), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(45), Mako-Dam%(45)
Level 4: True Grit -- Mrcl-Heal/Rchg(A), Mrcl-Heal(7), Mrcl-Rcvry+(9), Numna-Heal/Rchg(9), Numna-Heal(11), Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(11)
Level 6: Combat Jumping -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 8: Battle Agility -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(17), LkGmblr-Rchg+(43)
Level 10: Active Defense -- HO:Membr(A), HO:Membr(17), HO:Membr(50)
Level 12: Build Up -- GSFC-ToHit(A), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg(23), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg/EndRdx(25), GSFC-Rchg/EndRdx(25), GSFC-ToHit/EndRdx(31), GSFC-Build%(31)
Level 14: Kick -- Empty(A)
Level 16: Against All Odds -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 18: Whirling Sword -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(19), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(19), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(21), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(21), Oblit-%Dam(23)
Level 20: Tough -- Aegis-ResDam/EndRdx(A), Aegis-ResDam/Rchg(40), Aegis-EndRdx/Rchg(42), Aegis-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(46), Aegis-ResDam(46)
Level 22: Phalanx Fighting -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 24: Weave -- RedFtn-Def/EndRdx(A), RedFtn-Def/Rchg(34), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(43), RedFtn-Def(46), RedFtn-EndRdx(50)
Level 26: Disembowel -- Mako-Acc/Dmg(A), Mako-Dmg/EndRdx(27), Mako-Dmg/Rchg(27), Mako-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(29), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(29), Mako-Dam%(31)
Level 28: Grant Cover -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 30: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(42)
Level 32: Head Splitter -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(33), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(33), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(33), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(34), Oblit-%Dam(34)
Level 35: Shield Charge -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(36), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(36), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(36), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(37), Oblit-%Dam(37)
Level 38: One with the Shield -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A)
Level 41: Web Grenade -- HO:Endo(A)
Level 44: Caltrops -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 47: Exploding Shuriken -- Ragnrk-Dmg(A), Ragnrk-Dmg/Rchg(48), Ragnrk-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(48), Ragnrk-Acc/Rchg(48), Ragnrk-Dmg/EndRdx(50)
Level 49: Confront -- Range-I(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Critical Hit
Level 4: Ninja Run
Level 2: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 2: Health -- Heal-I(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- P'Shift-EndMod(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(37), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc/Rchg(39), P'Shift-Acc/Rchg(39), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(42), P'Shift-End%(45)



The main changes from her previous build was dropping the 3 fitness powers (due to inherent fitness) and replacing them with Slash, One with the Shield and Confront. Slash was nice for filling my single-target attack chain (with Hack/Disembowel/Headsplitter all being slow recharge heavy-hitters, I previously had gaps in my attack chain that I filled with lolBrawl). One with the Shield was something I had previously considered unnecessary, but makes a good mule for the Steadfast Protection and might be a good panic button (stacking resist on top of my defense). Confront I kinda threw in there "just in case" I have to tank AVs or pull or something; not sure how useful it will be.

With this build I'm soft capped to melee and ranged and pretty close to (but not quite at) the cap on AoE, but should do more damage (due to adding an attack) and be more survivable (better slotting of resists).

After respec'ing, Blond Justice went on a LGTF as a test drive, where the build seemed to play pretty well. We cleared most of the LGTF and finished in 1h 18m. We had a little trouble in mission 4 where at one point we weren't attacking the same mito, but that got straightened out. Got Hero 1 DNA and 7 shards.

After that I solo'd the Ramiel arc on San Min (50 hero MA/will scrapper) to unlock the Alpha slot.

Strong Woman (50 hero inv/SS tanker) led an 8 player team through the Ramiel arc to unlock the Alpha slot. Got a compliment on her back story (or, truthfully, lack of one) from a bystander in Ouroboros, which was nice. After finishing the Ramiel arc we did a Statesman TF. This went well until the last encounter, where I attempted to fly and taunt Lord Recluse, but he immediately hit me with his END draining attack causing me to fall out of the sky and detoggle, with lethal results. After being res'd from that I was able to taunt him for the rest of the encounter; the flyer aggroed us while fighting the towers, and I tried to keep both LR and the flyer taunted (my Taunt and Provoke are heavily slotted and have decent range), which seemed to mostly work. Finished in 1h 15m and got Essence of the Incarnate and 2 shards.

12/2/2010

Catching up from the holiday weekend....

Tue 11/23

Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) got the Crey Employee and Crey Scientist day job badges from being logged out in Crey's Nerva branch office for long enough.

Someone played through my Two Tickets to Westerly arc and got the Rocky Horror reference, and sent me a hilarious feedback of "Brad? Oranbega doesn't have phones, *******!!"

Sent another 500M inf to myself from marketeering. But honestly the black market in rare salvage (what I mostly deal in) has crashed, hard, I believe from AE farming. All common salvage has gone up in price, but I believe rare salvage has gone down, because spending tickets on rare salvage is an easy and profitable way to use them up. My black market interface was getting deadlocked with tons of salvage I had bought and wasn't able to sell due to the price crash; I considered giving up on trading til this passed, but instead decided to go double-or-nothing by buying cheap rare salvage and stockpiling them, in hopes that the price would go up later. I consider this "buying on value" rather than speculation, because I truly believe rare salvage is badly underpriced due to the flooded supply.

Thunder Girl (50 rogue elec/SR scrapper) helped a defender friend who was having trouble with Anti-Matter, then I did 5 hero tips to try and get back to blue side.


Wed 11/24

A friend and speed TF regular was trying to organize a no-holds-barred speed STF, with a team of people who would all use Warburg nukes and shivans. I couldn't decide which toon I wanted to play for this, and ended up getting like 6 warburg nukes before finally settling on playing Star Amethyst (50 hero dark/ice defender) for the debuffs.

Our STF team had a kin, rad and a dark, a tank, 3 scrappers and a blaster. Our support team had a defender (me), controller and corruptor. I think the leader might've preferred 3 corruptors for the extra damage, but hardly anyone had blue side corruptors, so we went with this. Our strategy was to speed every mission, and use Warburg nukes liberally. We used 1 bio nuke on Arbiter Sands in mission 1. Another bio nuke got dropped on Magus Mu'drukan in mission 2 (the first one hadn't run out yet, so we had 2 stacking). A toon not on the TF dropped a bio nuke to buff us just before we entered mission 4, and again right before mission 5. Fighting the patron AVs we summoned shivans and dropped at least 4 Warburg nukes and they melted away so fast I couldn't target all of them before they died. We skipped the flyer and our tanker flew over Lord Recluse to tank him, while we killed the red, yellow and green towers. Then we used chem and nuclear nukes on Lord Recluse and he almost instantly died. Finished in 27m 16s, which seemed crazy fast. (But it did require a lot of leg work getting the nukes ahead of time.) I got a Centriole for my trouble.

Teal Serpent (46 villain archery/traps corr) joined a fairly speedy Recluse SF; I found it a little awkward that I didn't have stealth to get around, and I did die once to aggro, but I figure that isn't bad for a lower level toon on RSF. Finished in 31m 46s, got to level 47 and a Nucleolus.

Indigo Ifrit (50 villain fire/rad corr) joined a 7 player speed ITF that finished in 23m 19s.


Thu 11/25

Maid of Awesome (26 rogue sonic/rad corr) joined a hero tips team in Atlas running against Knives of Artemis and Nemesis at +2 difficulty. This was kinda painful and challenging, but we were strong enough to handle it. Some team members did have this conversation:

[Team] Empath: dont think I've ever used absorb pain this much.. heh
[Team] Teamleader: Glad i can help you more fully experience your powersets

...which I thought was terrifically funny. We did have a team wipe against +2 Longbow (urgh) and had trouble with a Help Polar Shift mission where Polar Shift was killed, making the mission uncompletable. Despite the difficulty, this was good exp and got Maid of Awesome to level 28.

I went on to join a Cavern of Transcendance trial where pretty much all I had to do was stand around and wait to get teleported to the right place, then click. Finished in 17m 19s.

Shield Maiden (30 rogue fire/shield scrapper) joined a Manticore TF but I had to quit right after the Security Chief Manning mission in order to do Thanksgiving stuff. Did get to level 31 though.

Later that night, Indigo Ifrit did another ITF in 20m 54s and Millie Volt (50 vigilante elec/elec brute) did a STF. In the final mission, the tanker died to Ghost Widow and I got to jump in and tank the patron AVs long enough for him to get res'd and retoggled, which was cool. The flyer aggroed on us while we were fighting Lord Recluse which gave us a few hairy moments, but we were able to finish the TF in 41m 2s. I got a Peroxisome.

Maid of Awesome helped a small team beat Caleb in Nerva, then did 1 hero tip mission.

Shield Maiden solo'd an story arc called Legacy of a Rogue, which was a great story where you're asked to take in a dead hero's son as a sidekick, and tons of drama ensues. The arc felt very comic booky and had a rich story background. I gave it 5 stars.

Tour de Force (22 hero ff/nrg defender) joined a team for 3 hero tips.


Fri 11/26

Mercy Beaucoup (35 hero ice/kin corr) joined a 4-player team that did Posi 1 in 43m 54s followed by Posi 2 in 53m 53s. It was a veteran team that went through everything pretty easily; the only difficulty was in the last mission of Posi 2, where we killed Dr Vahzilok but missed one of the mobs in his spawn, so had to hunt for awhile for the last zombie that would complete the TF. This got Mercy to level 36.

Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) did a speedy ITF in 23m 35s; I got a Performance Shifter (END/ACC) as a drop.

Spacegirl (50 hero mind/rad controller) did a STF; we had trouble with the patron AVs in the last mission due to the team not being able to focus on just one target. Got past that only to be squashed by Lord Recluse on our first try; our second try we were able to drop the red, yellow, green towers and beat Lord Recluse. Finished in 1h 1m and got a Nucleolus.


Sat 11/27

Mercy Beaucoup did a pickup clear-most ITF. We had a dreadful stormy who kept knocking mobs through cave walls and away from my transfusion; later in the TF he was clearly AFKing a lot, and I was uncharacteristically happy that he was AFK rather than "helping" us. Mission 3 we went general-to-general, but it was something of a zerg-fest as we had a lot of squishies (including me) who could not survive this. We had a near wipe on the Phalanx Computer where everyone died but a lone scrapper, who managed to heroically finish the computer off. Cleared our way to Romulus in the final mission and finished the TF in 1h 9m, getting Mercy to level 37.

Maid of Awesome did a Posi 1/Posi 2 TF combo, taking 40m 45s and 53m 48s respectively. In Posi 1 we got split up against Doc Buzzsaw resulting in lots of deaths, but recovered; had no trouble with the ambush that's usually a team wipe in the last mission. In Posi 2 we had a close call against CoT but otherwise were fine. I got a Miracle (END/HEAL/RCHG) recipe drop. I went on to do a 7-player debuff-heavy Katie TF which finished in 27m 14s. All this got Maid of Awesome to level 31.


Sun 11/28

Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) joined the Rikti War Zone raid. We were low on support toons at the raid and had a lot of deaths, but I still managed to score 308 vanguard merits while there.

Thunder Girl (50 rogue elec/SR scrapper) did 3 hero tip missions, slowly working her way back to blue side.

Maid of Awesome did another Katie TF, this time with 6 players. We had 1 blaster, 5 support, and no melee; I was kinda skeptical about this team mix, especially with a shorthanded team, but we had so much debuff, we did just fine. Finished in 21m 58s and exited the final mission straight into a zombie apocalypse, which we fought off.

Millie Volt (50 vigilante elec/elec brute) joined a Statesman TF. The leader set it to both "Master of" and +3 difficulty without telling anyone, as kind of a prank, which had me worried because I had the "tank" role. Millie is very nicely slotted but still kinda squishy being an elec armor, so I wasn't sure I could handle that. Fortunately (?) our cold defender died almost immediately in mission 1 after which the pressure was off (no one was that serious about the "Master of") and we actually were able to handle the +3 spawns (though I made sure to buy and eat inspirations whenever possible). I fly/taunted Lord Recluse and we finished in 1h 25m. I got a Centriole.


Mon 11/29

I have my own personal villain group on red side that holds all my villain alts, and it had been eating at me that all my villains that crossed to blue side were effectively shut out, unable to earn prestige or use my own base. Today I finally decided to do something about it, having Fire Maiden (50 hero SS/fire brute) quit my VG and found a new personal supergroup on blue side, "Suggested for Mature Readers", a SG name that I held briefly about 4 or so years ago but abandoned when I found a regular SG. I started moving my ex-villain alts into the new SG, and even had a few of my more regularly played hero alts jump ship to the new SG for the sake of earning prestige.

Fire Maiden started playing an AE arc called The End of Saturday Morning. It had a plot, but it felt pretty thin, mostly an excuse to fight various AVs. This didn't do much for me, so I quit after the first mission.

I started a new alt, Sarcasm Lass, a sonic/mental blaster; I like the idea that both sonic and mental can do debuffs and cone attacks, and sarcasm doing sonic and mental damage appealed to me. Shortly after getting out of the tutorial, a pickup team picked me up, thought my name was funny, and did some missions that got me to level 6.

Thunder Girl did another 2 hero tips and the hero morality mission, switching her alignment back to hero and getting the Come Full Circle badge, the first of my toons to accomplish that.

Fire Maiden joined an ITF with 7 damage and 1 kin for support. We had lots of deaths but I managed to make it through with some heavy inspiration use. Finished in 26m 15s.

Mercy Beaucoup (37 hero ice/kin corr) joined the kin superteam for 2 hero tip missions and a hero alignment mission that confirmed her hero status (earning me 50 merits). Then we switched to RWZ for 2 of Levantera's missions that got Mercy to level 38 and Fulcrum Shift.

An impromptu RWZ raid formed late at night, and I joined with Mystery Girl (50 vigilante emp/pistols defender). Despite being unscheduled, this raid still filled up 2 teams and did very well. I found my Hail of Bullets nuke was especially fun on a RWZ raid, when you're quite often surrounded by mobs. I picked up 434 vanguard merits, which we all figured would be handy for I19.


Tue 11/30

I19 dropped today! I was home on vacation so got on shortly after servers came up. Playing Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) I immediately hopped on board a clear-all LGTF that was forming. I foolishly didn't read the patch notes or the I19 advance info, though, so I didn't realize you needed to do an Ouro arc to unlock the Alpha Slot before you can get any incarnate drops. About half the team had the same problem; what can I say, I19 was new and we were clueless. So I didn't get any incarnate shards at all, but we did finish in 1h 38m. I left the reward menu up hoping I could unlock the Alpha Slot and still claim the LGTF incarnate reward.

So after the TF I went to Ouroboros and started soloing Ramiel's arc. The first mission, where you're eating AVs for breakfast, was really fun, but it looks like all you really need to do is go up to Mender Ramiel and talk to him to complete the mission. I beat up Trapdoor with no problems, but against Holtz/Honoree (both EBs) I managed to beat Holtz, then ran out of Lucks while fighting Honoree and got clobbered. I beat Honoree on the rematch, however, and Minos in the final mission. Worth noting, even though you get reward merits after the final door mission of Ramiel's arc, you must talk to Ramiel to get the Alpha Unlocked badge and the ability to get incarnate drops. (A friend of mine missed this step and didn't get any shards for a whole TF.) After finishing the arc, I was able to take the Hero 1 DNA reward from the reward window (yes, I had to play the whole arc with that stupid window on my screen).

After that, I determined I would run a bunch of my toons through Ramiel's arc to unlock incarnate content for as many of them as possible. I solo'd Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) through the arc with no problem; she had an easy time against Holtz/Honoree compared to my squishy blaster.

Star Amethyst (50 hero dark/ice defender) duo'd Ramiel's arc with an emp defender; I was initially annoyed that my teammate had none of the ally-only buffs (except Resurrection), so was essentially playing a low DPS energy blsater, but after she clearly didn't recognize who half the AVs in the first mission were, I realized she must be pretty new and felt bad for being annoyed. We did manage to pick up a couple more people after the second mission that gave us some more DPS for the final missions, unlocking the Alpha slot for Star Amethyst as well.

Police Woman joined a clear all ITF that took 43m 14s. Tracking inf and shards, I earned 5.55M inf and 6 incarnate shards from killing stuff on this ITF. I also got the Ancient Nictus incarnate drop from the TF reward.

Fire Maiden helped a 2 player team with low DPS kill Trapdoor. With capped fire resist I dragged him down into the lava and melee'd him there; he was taking damage from lava while it was just tickling me. Trapdoor seems particularly vulnerable if you bring him to the lava, as other people have noticed as well; in addition to lava damage, I think it gets him out of sight of some of his helpers, too.

Mystery Girl (50 vigilante emp/pistols defender) joined an 8 player team running Ramiel's arc; this team was very strong causing one person to comment "this team is ridiculous!" and the team leader raised the difficulty to +2 to be more challenging. This unlocked the Alpha Slot for Mystery Girl. One of the team members had forgotten to talk to the contact at some point (it seems very easy to accidentally do this), so we had to redo much of the arc; I switched to Millie Volt (50 vigilante elec/elec brute) for the second time through and unlocked the Alpha Slot for her as well.

Thunder Girl (50 hero elec/SR scrapper) solo'd the Ramiel arc.

A controller was complaining on LB that she wasn't able to do the Ramiel arc, so I offered to help her, bringing on Blond Justice (50 hero broadsword/shield scrapper) to power through. Apparently her previous team had either been unable to get past the AVs or had broken up early. I figured that as long as I was helping, I'd try to help several people at once, so I started recruiting for more, getting our team up to 4 players. I got a costume compliment from one of them, which was nice. However, the person I was originally trying to help couldn't get the mission from Ramiel at all -- she had neglected to buy Going Rogue. So we got through the whole arc but the person I had been trying to help still didn't get incarnate access (though not for lack of trying).

After the Ramiel arc I dragged my team to another impromptu RWZ raid that had formed. There were 5 teams, which was pretty amazing for a spur of the moment raid. I got teased for my "Justice is Blond!" battlecry, with someone claiming I had spelled blond wrong (what, does no one spell it like that any more?). The raid went really well and I got 594 vanguard merits and 2 incarnate shards while there.

Mercy Beaucoup (38 hero ice/kin corr) joined a clear all ITF; as a lowbie kin with a mix of SOs and junky IOs I was pretty squishy and died a lot. I originally was going to play a 50 but thought our team mix could really use a kin (I feel like clear-all TFs go better with a kin). So I missed out on incarnate drops, but I did get a very nice Hecatomb (chance for damage) recipe and level 39, so it worked out fine.


Wed 12/1

I had screwed up Mercy's build early on (I took Swift but not Health and Stamina, so I had neither the old Stamina OR the new Stamina...bleh!) so I used her free respec. Her build is now:

Mercy Beaucoup

Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.803
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Mercy Beaucoup: Level 39 Mutation Corruptor
Primary Power Set: Ice Blast
Secondary Power Set: Kinetics
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Leadership
Power Pool: Fighting

Villain Profile:
Level 1: Ice Bolt -- CtlSpd-Acc/Slow(A), CtlSpd-Dmg/Slow(3), CtlSpd-Acc/EndRdx(3), CtlSpd-EndRdx/Rchg/Slow(5), Dmg(5), Dmg(7)
Level 1: Transfusion -- Heal(A), Heal(7), Nictus-Acc/Heal(9), Nictus-Acc/EndRdx/Heal/HP/Regen(9), RechRdx(11), RechRdx(11)
Level 2: Ice Blast -- CtlSpd-Acc/Slow(A), CtlSpd-Dmg/Slow(13), CtlSpd-Acc/EndRdx(13), CtlSpd-EndRdx/Rchg/Slow(15), Dmg(15), Dmg(17)
Level 4: Frost Breath -- CtlSpd-Acc/Slow(A), CtlSpd-Dmg/Slow(17), CtlSpd-Acc/EndRdx(19), CtlSpd-EndRdx/Rchg/Slow(19), Dmg(21), Dmg(21)
Level 6: Combat Jumping -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 8: Freeze Ray -- NrncSD-Acc/Rchg(A), NrncSD-EndRdx/Hold(23), NrncSD-Acc/EndRdx(23), NrncSD-Hold/Rng(25), NrncSD-Acc/Hold/Rchg(25), NrncSD-Dam%(27)
Level 10: Siphon Speed -- Acc(A)
Level 12: Ice Storm -- Dmg(A), Dmg(27), Dmg(29), RechRdx(29), RechRdx(31), RechRdx(31)
Level 14: Super Speed -- Clrty-Stlth(A)
Level 16: Increase Density -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A)
Level 18: Bitter Ice Blast -- CtlSpd-Acc/Slow(A), CtlSpd-Dmg/Slow(31), CtlSpd-Acc/EndRdx(33), CtlSpd-EndRdx/Rchg/Slow(33), Dmg(33), Dmg(34)
Level 20: Speed Boost -- Zephyr-ResKB(A)
Level 22: Maneuvers -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), DefBuff(34), DefBuff(34)
Level 24: Tactics -- Rec'dRet-ToHit(A), Rec'dRet-Pcptn(36)
Level 26: Vengeance -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 28: Inertial Reduction -- Jump(A)
Level 30: Kick -- Acc(A)
Level 32: Blizzard -- Dmg(A), Dmg(36), Dmg(36), RechRdx(37), RechRdx(37), RechRdx(37)
Level 35: Transference -- Acc(A)
Level 38: Fulcrum Shift -- Acc(A), RechRdx(39), RechRdx(39), RechRdx(39)
Level 41: [Empty]
Level 44: [Empty]
Level 47: [Empty]
Level 49: [Empty]
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Scourge
Level 1: Ninja Run



...which is essentially the same as before, except I dumped Swift and took Kick (thinking about going into Fighting Pool for more defense). I'm still hoping the Curtail Speed sets will become worthwhile once I get enough stacked defense.

After that I duo'd the Ramiel arc twice on red side with another player, once playing Indigo Ifrit (50 villain fire/rad corruptor) with his brute, and once playing Primadonna (50 rogue sonic/kin corruptor) with a different brute.

Added: Legacy of a Rogue (#459586) H25-29
A retired hero asks you to take a young hero as a sidekick. Drama.

Source: 2010 Player's Choice nominee

This was very well written.