PoliceWoman

11/23/2010

Thursday

Some sort of email rollback occurred overnight, causing some emails to be lost and some to reappear. As a result, the email containing 500M influence I sent to myself on Tuesday night vanished. On the other hand, I think I got emails containing 2 Robusts (the big orange inspiration) and a LotG DEF/+7.5% recharge recipe in return. Not a good trade, really. After verifying that other people were having similar problems, I submitted a petition.

Teal Serpent (45 villain archery/traps corr) did a clear-most ITF on +1 difficulty. Our team was kind of low DPS, finishing in 54m 54s. This got Teal Serpent to level 46. I also did 3 villain tips on a 3 player team.

Thunder Girl (50 vigilante elec/SR scrapper) solo'd a villain tip and a villain morality mission, changing her alignment to villain.

Finished the night fiddling with base editing in my villain group base.


Friday

A friend had reported getting lost inf sort-of restored, but the support staff apparently added influence to one of his toons that was already near the inf cap, effectively wasting a lot of it. To avoid this happening to me, I had my main character Police Woman put up some lowball bids on purple recipes, to get her inf total below 1.5 billion. (I was a little wary of emailing myself more inf until they straightened things out in case of more rollbacks.) By doing this, I picked up a Ragnarok (DMG) IO for 206M inf; not sure I really needed one, but it seemed a good price.

Thunder Girl (now a 50 villain elec/SR scrapper) solo'd Scirocco's patron story arc; the whole goal of taking her villain side was to unlock patron power pools. I rather arbitrarily picked Scirocco as patron because (a) I want his elec patron pool for Thunder Girl, so it made sense to take him as patron and (b) he's the least villainous patron, so it kinda works to have a fallen hero follow him. This was probably a mistake because his patron arc is chock full of EBs. Fortunately I could handle them, but I ended up soloing Silver Mantis, Barracuda, Serafina, Mirror Spirit, Foreshadow, Malaise, Ice Mistral and Scirocco himself as part of his arc. I kind of felt bad about stopping Scirocco's mad plan at the end of his arc; I never read his story in that much detail before, but he wants to rewrite reality to make all villains into heroes, which seems like something my character would actually want to help with. But the script requires betraying him, so that's what I had to do. Got 10 merits out of it, anyway.

After unlocking the patron pools, I partially respec'd (began using a respec but canceled before completing it) just to compare the Mu patron pool against the scrapper fire ancillary pool. Mids seemed to suggest that the Mu patron pool would be better than the scrapper fire epic pool, but the numbers displayed in game were:

Mu bolts: damage 62.56, recharge 6, activation 1.17
Ball lightning: damage 63.81, recharge 32, activation 1.07

Fire blast: damage 77.34, recharge 6, activation 1.2
Fire ball: damage 68.52, recharge 32, activation 1.0

This makes fire still numerically superior to electric, which is different than what I expected (for some reason the Mu patron pool is thought to be better on the forums). I might still end up respec'ing to the electric patron pool for thematic reasons; not absolutely sure though. Regardless it won't be until I19 when I need to respec for inherent fitness.

Tour de Force (20 hero ff/nrg defender) joined a 6 player team that did 5 hero tip missions, getting Tour to 22 and SOs.

Water Lily (36 rogue rad/storm corruptor) joined a pickup ITF. We had a near wipe against the Phalanx computer in mission 3 where all squishies died, but we recovered and continued to the last mission. We jumped from the entrance straight to the AVs. Romulus gave us a really hard time; we weren't really hurting him and we ended up having a team wipe, then had lots of people have to hospital and run back repeatedly. I think this was because our team had a lot of lowbies (including me), and we didn't seem to be working together that well. The team leader seemed particularly exasperated at the lack of support from support toons. I tried using my stormy powers for debuff and heal, but ended up dying a lot too. Finally we kinda restarted the mission by regrouping at the entrance and clearing a path from there to Romulus, then tackling him again; this seemed to work and we finished the ITF in 1h 19m.

After that I spent some time badging with Mega (50 villain SS/will brute), getting exploration badges from all zones accessible on red side, in order to build more teleporters in my villain base. I had upgraded from a rinky-dink teleporter room (2 teleporter capacity) to a gigantic teleporter room (8 teleporter capacity). This wasn't really well-thought out on my part, though, because there just aren't that many places to teleport to on red side: Mercy, Port Oakes, Cap, Sharkhead, Nerva, St Martial, Grandville, Pocket D and RWZ add up to only 9 destinations, and each teleporter can have 2 destinations, so I really only needed 5 teleporters. I didn't really want to redesign the teleporter room again, though, so I ended up just spreading out the teleport beacons so several of the teleporters only go to 1 place.

Maid of Awesome (22 villain sonic/rad corr) duo'd with another player for some rogue tip missions, then did a rogue morality mission to change her alignment.

Some friends were screwing around on Freedom server PvPing in Recluse's Victory, so I joined them with Darla Doppler (49 hero kin/sonic defender) who I had moved to Freedom during the free server transfer period. I got a few kills and died a lot, but we soon had the villains bottled up in their base. Trash talking broadcast on Freedom was pretty vicious (including some from my own team at the villains), but I tried to mostly ignore it.


Saturday

My petition was answered, and I got the 500M inf I lost restored by customer support. They did put it on Police Woman, but fortunately I had spent down below 1.5 billion so had room to take it.

San Min (50 hero MA/will scrapper) started Quest for Magic, a guest author MA arc with the premise that I'm helping some woman get super-powers; I felt this story was not well motivated and not particularly interesting, so ended up quitting after the first mission. This was kind of a shame because the author of this arc actually writes some pretty good comic books.

Mystery Girl (50 vigilante emp/pistols defender) joined a Master of Dr Kahn TF with a team of:

inv/elec tank
bs/inv scrapper
spine/inv scrapper
grav/cold controller
ice/storm controller
kin/? defender
emp/pistols defender
?/? stalker

We weren't too serious about the "master of" part, having agreed to use the Mo settings but not really care if we failed. We actually did fine right up to the last encounter with Reichsman, where Reichsman's horrible lightning attacks managed to stun and kill both the tank and stalker at the same time...I was really quite surprised that the tank got stunned, I had thought invuln tanker mez protection was enough to avoid being stunned, but had 1 CM on him just in case, and he still got stunned. Frustrating. We ended up completing the TF anyway in 45m 36s.

Blond Justice (50 hero bs/shield scrapper) joined a team that did 5 hero tips and a hero morality mission (awarding me a hero merit). Got a compliment on her costume, which was nice.

Primadonna (50 rogue sonic/kin corr) joined a 7-player ITF that finished in 25m 6s.


Sunday

Maid of Awesome (22 rogue sonic/rad corr) joined a Silver Mantis SF. We cleared most of the SF; against the final mission, we split up to defeat turrets on different parts of the Sky Raider helicarrier in order to spawn Duray. Finished in 1h 23m, got to level 24, got a Kinetic Combat (chance for knockdown) recipe drop, and had someone compliment me on Maid of Awesome's background story (which I really didn't think was that good, but I had just written something quickly so it wouldn't be blank).

Two teams were farming EoEs for the Hamidon raid, so I pitched in and helped. Initially I tried helping on Maid of Awesome; earlier testing had made me think you could get EoE drops at low level, but I didn't get any EoE drops, so I ended up switching to Primadonna and got 2 EoEs almost immediately.

For the Hami raid itself, I was asked to play Mystery Girl (50 vigilante emp/pistols defender) to help heal the tanker team. This was the first time I had been on the taunt team, and it was a pretty interesting experience. We had 6 tankers and 2 empaths; the tankers were placed in a perimeter surrounding the goo, and each tanker was assigned a specific mito to taunt. They were supposed to each eat one EoE for each bloom, to stave off incoming damage. Each of the empaths was assigned to heal 3 of the tankers and to cast Clear Mind on their 3 tankers and the other empath. Since these 4 toons were all positioned quite far apart, this involved a LOT of running around; I was really glad I had Superspeed for this. Despite that, it always seemed like I would have a tanker start taking damage when I was on the other side of Hamidon trying to buff the other empath. I felt guilty whenever one of "my" tankers would die, but it happened; one of the other tankers was really good at jumping in to plug the gap when this happened, though.

The first few blooms of the raid went pretty well, but on the final bloom when the raid leader called for us to fight through, the raid force didn't seem to have enough DPS to actually kill Hamidon, and the tankers holding down the yellow mitos started dying off, eventually forcing the raid to wipe and/or flee the goo. After regrouping at coward's rock, we re-entered the goo and cleared the mitos this time, before finishing Hamidon off. This worked, and I picked the HO reward without really thinking about it (I normally take the merits for this encounter), but I lucked out and got a Membrane, so it worked out fine.

Mystery Girl went on to do an STF which went fine til the last mission. We pulled the patron AVs, and got 2 of the AVs at first, but then Ghost Widow showed up as an add, held and killed the tank. This was my error, I had buffed him with CM before the pull but let them drop when neither of the first 2 AVs were Ghost Widow; I should've probably kept buffing CM anyway. We recovered from this and beat up the patrons, then the flyer and then tackled Lord Recluse. The flyer repopped and aggroed on us while fighting Lord Recluse, but we managed to win anyway, finishing the STF in 1h 18m. I got a Lysosome.

Schadenfreude (50 villain AR/pain corruptor) joined the RWZ mother ship raid; I hadn't played her in awhile, but wanted to bring her in order to work on the supergroup heal badge, and I figured being a corr with AoE heals at a RWZ raid would be ideal for this. We had 1 raid wipe at the center of the ship when 4 Rikti Mages overpowered us at once, but otherwise did OK. Picked up about 400 Vanguard merits, which should be useful in I19.

Maid of Awesome (24 rogue sonic/rad corr) joined a 3 player team that did 5 hero tip missions at +2 difficulty. This got her to level 26.

Thunder Girl (50 villain elec/SR scrapper) solo'd 5 rogue tips and the rogue morality mission, switching alignment to Rogue. I'm planning on moving her back to full hero, though it's admittedly been a lot of work going full circle on alignment.


Monday

Mercy Beaucoup (34 hero ice/kin corr) joined the kin superteam for 3 hero tip missions and some Brickstown radio missions. A defender with transference was on the team, so I gleefully used Blizzard every time it was up, which was quite fun; with Fulcrum Shift, it felt like I was doing crazy damage every time I set this combo off. I got to level 35 and picked up Transference for myself, as well. After the team broke up, I solo'd the rest of the Midnight Squad arc.

A friend wanted to do something, so I switched to Shield Maiden (29 rogue fire/shield scrapper) and I duo'd with his dark defender, doing some of his missions from Miriam Bloechl. We fought a lot of Banished Pantheon which my fire melee was terrific against. I still haven't taken Stamina (holding out for I19) but I experimented with using the Recovery Serum temp power; to my surprise, this power is really good, giving quite a lot of END every time I used it. (Maybe it will be less good once everyone has Stamina for free, though.)

Doing these missions got Shield Maiden to level 30. This seemed like a good time to start using IOs, and I ended up slotting 5 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% rchg) IOs, a Numina (+regen/+rec) and Miracle (+rec), and a Steadfast Protection (RES/+3% def). I know that sounds like a lot of expensive stuff, but I actually got most of them (all the LotGs and the Numina proc) from converting reward merits into hero merits, then spending hero merits on the LotG/Numina recipes. I find hero merits are really efficient for getting expensive rare (but not purple) IOs. I solo'd a few paper missions in St Martial to test the changes; the Numina and Miracle procs really help with Shield Maiden's END problems, and recharge from the LotGs make her attack chain a bit smoother.

I lost an email with 500M inf attached; fortunately I keep track of when I send myself large chunks of cash like that. I did submit a petition and got an email saying:

"I am escalating your petition to a Senior Customer Support Representative to further assist you. Please be aware, however, that there may be a delay in reviewing the issue, based on ticket volume at the time your ticket was submitted."

Which makes some sense because I bet a lot of people were affected by this. Hopefully they'll be able to track this down and eventually fix it.

11/18/2010

Monday

Mercy Beaucoup (31 hero ice/kin corr) joined the kin team doing Croatoa missions. We finished all of Kelly Nemmers' and Buck Salinger's story arcs, beat up Jack-in-Irons and started on Montague's midnighter arc. At level 32 I picked up Blizzard, which worked really great, especially when our defender would transference END back to me. I also got a lot of use out of Vengeance; the kin teams both kill fast and die fast. This all got Mercy to level 34.


Tuesday

On Tuesday night I didn't get on til really late, mostly did some marketeering. I hit the inf cap on my main character again and emailed myself another 500M dividend. It took 16 days to make this half-billion, much longer than usual; the market for rare salvage is still pretty soft, with most items selling for about a third of what they were pre-Halloween.


Wednesday

Thunder Girl (50 vigilante elec/SR scrapper) did a speedy ITF in 23m 24s, getting a Respec recipe as a drop. I would've thought the price of Respec recipes would have gone down due to the devs announcing two free respecs with I19, but no, the market price was still up around 200-250M inf. It baffles me why they are priced so high, but I put in a sell order anyhow.

I was about to join the kin superteam, but their first team was full and fighting a banner event; right around then another friend started forming a Master of the RSF team, knowing that I needed that badge. So I switched to Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) and joined this team, which consisted of:

fire/fire brute
AR/dev blaster
ill/rad controller
rad/dark corr
fire/cold corr
fortunata
dark/elec def
nrg/kin corr

The team was very strong, with nearly all support toons. It's admittedly weird to use a fire brute to tank a Mo-Anything, but the brute was played by our most experienced player, who chomped inspirations in all the major fights. Our rad got a little aggro-happy in the first couple missions but backed off after that, and we had a couple close calls in the final fight when various squishies caught some aggro from the Freedom Phalanx, but no one died and we managed to win the MoRSF in 45m 32s. I got a Centriole, but I didn't really care; the Master of the Recluse SF badge was the real prize.

After that I played Star Amethyst (50 hero dark/ice defender) on a Statesman TF, finishing in 47m 38s. Went pretty smoothly til the last mission; the scrappers kept getting caught in Ghost Widow's cone attacks (I think from standing in the wrong place), but we still beat up the patron AVs. After that we skipped the flier and directly attacked the towers while our tank held off Lord Recluse by flying and taunting. We killed the towers in the order Yellow-Red-Green (skipping blue). There was a scary moment after the third tower was down and we were about to engage Lord Recluse when the tanker died and hospitalled, but I ended up Recall Friending him back and we recovered. Finished in 47m 38s and got a Cytoskeleton, which I tossed onto the broker (they're selling for around 140M).

Played Shield Maiden (27 rogue fire/shield scrapper) to team up with a friend who was having trouble finding a team. I ended up forming and leading a 7-player redside team that did 6 rogue tips and most of Leonard's story arc, defeating an AV-level Protean and getting the Explosive Finale badge. This got Shield Maiden to 29 and I made a new global friend.

Another friend wanted to show off the MDK Fallen base, so I went in and visited. It was actually pretty awesome, with lots of large rooms and good looking furnishings and decorations. After touring this base I felt the urge to try and spiff up my personal villain group's base, which has been on the minimum 8x8 size plot with skimpy decor for years; basically I had earned enough prestige to build a little base and never upgraded it since then. I had about 9M prestige to play with and spent abotu 6M of it just upgrading to the maximum 24x28 plot size. I don't really know what I'm going to do with this much space yet, but I figure, I have the prestige, why not max it out. I started fiddling with decorating and ran into some weird but that dropped my remaining 2.6M prestige down to -3.7M prestige....this was rather disconcerting. The SG page still showed 2.6M prestige, but the base editor showed a huge negative number. Logging out and bringing on another character didn't clear this up, but exiting the game entirely and restarting the game eventually fixed it. Whew! It takes awhile to earn that much prestige for a personal villain group.

I added a medical bay, which I didn't have before, but I found I couldn't add anything but the lamest medical equipment since I didn't have any supergroup heal badges. A lot of other base equipment seems to require SG badges as well, which I hadn't really looked into; I guess I have some new goals. I did get to add an Ouroboros crystal to my base, though, and I suspect I can use this to teleport from my base directly to Cimerora or RWZ, which will be very handy. I did some other minor redecorating; I repainted the whole base in a "high tech" theme and changed my SG symbol and colors to make nicer looking banners. Still a lot more to do yet, though.

11/16/2010


Wed 11/3

April Fool (50 villain thug/TA MM) solo'd 4 villain tip missions.

Mercy Beaucoup (23 hero ice/kin corr) joined the kinetics superteam doing Stephanie Peebles' story arc in Striga for the Wedding Band temp power. We had one team wipe against Council, partly due to the huge numbers of Council spawns closely packed together, partly because our team got split up. Frustratingly for a kin team, I had to ask the other players for speed boost; after the third time, I gave up and just did without (particularly annoying as I had not taken Stamina due to impending I19 and being teamed with kins all the time). After Stephanie's arc we did Tobias' arc, and a Steel Canyon safeguard, which got Mercy to level 26.

Teal Serpent (41 villain archery/traps corr) did a 7-player clear-most ITF. For some reason this toon seems to draw mad aggro from Romans due to her various traps; I had to force myself to slow down a bit in order to die a little less. Finished in 1hr exactly and got to level 42.


Thu 11/4

Fire Maiden (50 hero SS/fire brute) solo'd some hero tips, then led a team to fight off a Rikti invasion in Atlas (getting Sentry, Chief and 8 bombs), then joined a clear most ITF that finished in 37m 8s.

Shield Maiden (24 rogue fire/shield scrapper) joined an 8-player Silver Mantis SF; we were pretty speedy and finished in 38m 22s, getting Shield Maiden to 25. Followed that with an Operative Renault SF; we got Barracuda killed on the first mission and had to re-do it, then the rest of the SF went fine. Finished in 33m 20s and got to level 26. After that I solo'd the Army of Me mission against the 8 clones, which I defeated through heavy inspiration use.


Fri 11/5

Thunder Girl (50 hero elec/SR scrapper) solo'd 3 vigilante tips and the vigilante morality mission, changing her alignment to vigilante. My plan is to go red-side to get the Mu Mastery patron pool for more elec attacks.


Sun 11/7

Water Lily (36 rad/storm corr) did a Katie TF in 32m 7s, also got the badge for Jack in Irons while there.

Thunder Girl (50 vigilante elec/SR scrapper) joined a Recluse SF. Had some trouble the first mission when 4 Longbow wardens spawned with Crimson and kept healing him up, forcing us to clear all the Longbow rather than just focus on Crimson. Otherwise went pretty smoothly, even beating the Freedom Phalanx. Finished in 33m 35s and got a Nucleolus.

Star Amethyst (50 hero dark/ice defender) did a Statesman TF in 44m 3s and got another Nucleolus. Something new I learned: I could Recall Friend people into the Thorn Tree room even when they were outside, because I had 3-slotted Recall Friend (with Blessing of the Zephyr). Apparently unenhanced Recall Friend doesn't have enough range for this. Star Amethyst went on to do a speed ITF in 19m 12s.

Mercy Beaucoup (26 hero ice/kin corr) did a Hess TF in 1h 8m; we had a real hard time pulling Archon Burkholder from his catwalk for some reason, otherwise went fine. This got Mercy to level 28.

Primadonna (50 rogue sonic/kin corr) joined a clear-most ITF. The team leader had difficulty at +4 and most of the team was lowbies, and most of the team died a lot; we got about halfway through the first mission, then everyone quit the TF. The team wanted to reform, and I initially refused to rejoin, but finally I agreed to try it again at +1 difficulty. Several of the lowbie players also switched to 50s for the rematch. We had no problems this time, clearing most of the ITF and finishing in 49m 31s.


Mon 11/8

Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) solo'd 2 Peregrine Island mayhem missions, getting the Safecracker badge, and Ghost Widow's 2nd story arc for 10 merits. A friend also offered to help me get the PvP rep badge; I had never been able to get this before, even when I was PvPing heavily, due to PvP rep decaying so swiftly. I'm normally against farming, but there seems no other way to get this badge. My friend ended up logging on players on 2 boxes and we would kill each other every 5 minutes to earn rep. His toons had started at pretty high rep, and after 2.5 fairly boring hours I got to 317.8 rep (starting from 0), after which we took a break.

Shield Maiden (26 rogue fire/shield scrapper) exemped down to team with some level 8s, doing paper missions and the Atlas mayhem. Later, I sidekicked a couple lowbies and did some level 26ish radio missions (turning difficulty down to -1 to keep the lowbies able to hit) and an Independence Port mayhem. This got Shield Maiden to level 27.

Mercy Beaucoup (28 hero ice/kin corr) joined a Sister Psyche TF; the kinetics team had actually already started the TF, but restarted it to include me and another person, which was nice. We finished in 2h 2m and got Mercy to level 29.

I crafted and slotted 3 sets of 4 Curtail Speed in Mercy's main attacks (Ice Blast, Ice Bolt, Bitter Ice Blast), putting 2 damage SOs in the last 2 slots of each attack. This is experimental slotting for me, and is a little underwhelming on damage and recharge for each attack, but does give a total of +3.75% lethal DEF. I figure I will eventually slot Mercy heavily for lethal DEF.

Late at night Police Woman finished off getting the PvP rep badge by killing my friend's two toons over and over again while he was AFK and had a self-rez on autofire. I think this is how people farm for PvP recipes also. Reputation increase slowed to a crawl at about 350 rep, where bonus reputation no longer was awarded, but I finally got 400 rep the Disruptor badge around 4:30am. This kept me up so late I ended up calling in sick to work the next day, something I'm not proud of doing for a MMORPG. I'm grateful to my friend for even letting me get this badge, but I have to say it felt like a horrible way to get a PvP badge. I would much rather get this badge through "real" PvP, but it seems impossible to get this any other way.


Tue 11/9

I started a new toon, Maid of Awesome (newbie villain sonic/rad corr). I'm a little worried that this name is too hokey, but I got a ton of compliments on it already. I solo'd through Kalinda's first story arc, then did a couple AE arcs, A Heartbreaking Story, a Dev Choice which was an okay story but didn't really knock my socks off (I gave it 4 stars) and got about halfway through Learning the Ropes, a decent lowbie arc. This got Maid of Awesome to level 6.

Teal Serpent (42 villain archery/traps corr) did a clear most ITF in 45m 50s, getting to level 43. I crafted and slotted a set of 6 Lockdown in Poison Gas Trap, for +3.75% range DEF and +3% damage.

Fire Maiden (50 hero SS/fire brute) helped a 2-team force beat up Jack and Eochai. The monsters had been fighting each other for awhile, and when we killed them we got the reward merits but no one got badges; presumably because they had inflicted too much damage on themselves already. We did end up finding another Jack and Eochai elsewhere in Croatoa and getting the badges and more merits from them.


Wed 11/10

Mercy Beaucoup (29 hero ice/kin corr) joined the kinetics superteam for 4 hero tip missions, getting her to level 30. I took Vengeance as my level 30 power and got to use it at least 6 times that night; the kin team has a high fatality rate for sure. It keeps things exciting!

Maid of Awesome (6 villain sonic/rad corr) duo'd a few missions in Port Oakes, completing the Atlas mayhem and getting to level 9.


Thu 11/11

Tour de Force (18 resistance ff/nrg def) joined a 7-player team in Neutropolis; we had a cold controller also, so between our buffs the team was at the defense cap. This got Tour de Force to level 20.

Shield Maiden (27 rogue fire/shield scrapper) joined a 6-player Rule of Three TF (Posi 1), finishing it in 47m 7s.

Teal Serpent (43 villain archery/traps corr) joined a pickup ITF; this was kinda slow going and we had a lot of deaths, but we got through it in 1h 9m, getting Teal to level 44.

Maid of Awesome (9 villain sonic/rad corr) joined an 8-player pickup team in Grandville. This was not a very good team, we split up a lot and had a lot of unnecessary deaths. A team wipe in Oranbega put most of our team in the mystical prison, where we suffered multiple defeats trying to break out. I ended up excusing myself after this mission, but it did still get me to level 12 and DOs.


Fri 11/12

Maid of Awesome (12 villain sonic/rad corr) restarted and finished Learning the Ropes in AE; the story isn't that strong, but the individual missions are well designed and give lowbies a really nice intro to various villain groups. I gave it 5 stars. I also played A Death in the Gish which was sorta OK but not too remarkable; I gave it 3 stars.

After that I joined a 6 player team for a Steel Canyon mayhem, then solo'd the Origin of Power arc and Krylov's Vahzilok Council arc. Then I joined an 8-player team doing rogue tip missions; this all got Maid of Awesome to level 19, but despite doing around 10 rogue tip missions, I didn't get any alignment credit for them due to being below level 20.


Sat 11/13

Water Lily (36 rogue rad/storm corr) picked up Midnighter access from another player just finishing the arc on hero side. So, confirmed that a rogue can get the badge from the blue-side arc (just can't actually talk to the contact).

Maid of Awesome (19 villain sonic/rad corr) solo'd Ripping out Reform, an AE story arc where some idealistic police officers try to reform the Rogue Islands Police force, and you crush them. This was pretty well done, I gave it 5 stars. It also got Maid of Awesome to level 20.

San Min (50 hero MA/will scrapper) did a clear-most LGTF in 56m 8s.

Primadonna (50 rogue sonic/kin corr) did a clear most ITF on +2 difficulty in 1h 7m.


Sun 11/14

Maid of Awesome (20 villain sonic/rad corr) solo'd 5 rogue tips, then joined a 5 player team that got her to level 22.

Thunder Girl (50 vigilante elec/SR scrapper) solo'd 5 villain tips.

Fire Maiden (50 hero SS/fire brute) did a speed ITF in 23m 14s.

Indigo Ifrit (50 villain fire/rad corr) did an RSF in 35m 36s, got a Luck of the Gambler (DMG/END/RCHG) drop and a Nucleolus.

Teal Serpent (44 villain archery/traps corr) did a clear all ITF on +1 difficulty in 43m 49s.

Mercy Beaucoup (30 hero ice/kin corr) did a Katie TF in 24m 28s, getting to level 31. Slotted another set of 4 Curtail Speed in Frost Breath, and a Luck of the Gambler (+7.5% rchg) I had leftover (from burning hero merits) in Vengeance.

Added: Ripping Out Reform (#1006) V16-19
Idealistic cops try to reform the Rogue Isles Police, but you decide to put a stop to it. Challenging.

Source: AE search, "not voted", "my level" (while on a level 19).

Added: Learning The Ropes (#100304) H1-10
Back Alley Brawler sends you on missions introducing some of the basic villain groups. Introductory.

Source: MA search tool, "not voted", "my level" (where my level = 9).



Regarding Vigilante/Rogue arcs, I'm currently lumping Vigilante in with Hero, and Rogue with Villain. There's not that many Vigilante/Rogue arcs yet, and I believe this follows the example set by the in-game material.

Great job Zaphir! Congrats!

11/1/2010

Wednesday

Teal Serpent (39 villain archery/traps corruptor) joined a clear-most ITF. The team was pretty heavy on support but running at +2 difficulty we still had some random deaths. Despite this it was quite good exp. Finished in 1h 2m and got to level 41, though I didn't take a level 41 power since I hadn't unlocked a patron yet.

Mercy Beaucoup (15 resistance ice/kin corruptor) played on the kinetics superteam. I got a costume compliment from a teammate. At level 16 I took Increase Density and started using this as a regular buff on my teammates, mostly for the energy resist since it seemed to me that a lot of the Praetorian enemies use energy damage. Running on the kinetics team got Mercy up to level 20.

Millie Volt (50 vigilante elec/elec brute) did some solo trick-or-treating in Grandville, running 2 Halloween tip missions and 5 villain tip missions.


Thursday

Solo'd Shield Maiden (13 loyalist fire/shield scrapper) through Transmuter's story arc (2 merits) and Alec Parsons' story arc (1 merit), before joining a 3 player team. I took Kick to begin unlocking the Fighting pool, and ended up adding it to my attack chain (I only had Fire Sword, Cremate, Kick and Brawl); I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Kick doesn't put the shield away, so it didn't cause as much redraw as I feared. (It does put away fire sword, though.) This team was a little slow paced as our thermal corruptor was new and just learning how to play, but it went pretty well. We did have one team wipe against the Syndicate (they're pretty nasty). This all got Shield Maiden to level 16.


Friday

Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) solo'd Timeshift Vietnam 1968, an AE story arc about time traveling back to the Vietnam War and fighting the 5th Column there (?). This was a neat idea and some of the custom mobs looked pretty good, but I never did quite "get" why I was fighting Nazis in Vietnam. I gave it 4 stars.

Mercy Beaucoup (20 resistance ice/kin corruptor) made the jump to blue side, and helped a team fighting zombies in Talos.

Shield Maiden (16 loyalist fire/shield scrapper) solo'd Investigator Whitworth's arc and IVy's arc, getting her to level 18. Soloing the Praetorian arcs is kind of nice, because taking the time to read the contact dialog, the stories there are actually pretty cool.

Thunder Girl (50 hero elec/SR scrapper) did a Halloween tip mission, then joined people running the banner event in Peregrine Island. We had some people attacking mobs when the banners were vulnerable, and I had to get a little bossy telling people what to do. We were ultimately successful, however.

Police Woman attended the dev sponsored costume ball in Pocket D. There was a surprisingly large turnout, probably at least 30 or so people. Since people keep teasing me by calling me a witch, I gave Police Woman a witch costume; witches were actually pretty common at that event, though. Avatea, the community rep, did make a showing and gave away 3 origin pack codes.

Millie Volt joined a Manticore TF; since I was level 50, the original team leader ended up giving me the star to make the team run at the max level. I found that, if I timed Millie's END drain power right, I could drain all the END from a Paragon Protector right before it could use Moment of Glory; this seemed a very useful trick. Our TF kind of stalled when we had to Defeat 20 Crey in Brickstown, but the Halloween banner event had taken over Brickstown so no Crey could be found. We ended up diverting to actually do the banner event, sending 2 team members to each banner until they were vulnerable. In this way we actually were able to complete the banner event with a very small force - basically our 8 player team plus maybe 3 or 4 people who showed up in response to our call for help. The Crey respawned right after the banner event ended, letting us continue. We finished the Manticore TF in 1h 11m (including about 20 minutes delay for the banners).

Police Woman joined a 7-player ITF where everyone had to be in a Halloween costume. We cleared most and completed the ITF in 50m 13s. I got an Armageddon (DMG) recipe drop.

I solo'd some AE story arcs with Spy Girl (40 rogue MA/ninj stalker); I tried the various Guest Author arcs that I hadn't done before. I just didn't like The Great Face-Off (I really dislike "The Great Face" and the way he's written, which I think makes the player seem stupid) or A Little Night Music (didn't make any sense) and gave them 3 stars each. I also did the dev choice arc Welcome to Architect Entertainment, which was pretty good for an early story arc but definitely shows its age; I gave it 4 stars. Between arcs, I also helped a team kill the Halloween Eochai in Sharkhead Isle, and afterwards I logged on Primadonna (50 rogue sonic/kin corruptor) to help kill the Halloween Jack.


Saturday

Police Woman started a flashback of Leonard's arc; I beat the 8 clones to get the Army of Me badge. I didn't set any challenge settings because I figured 8 clones would be rough enough, and indeed, I died once before I was able to get them all.

Mercy Beaucoup (20 hero ice/kin corr) joined a 7-player team that did 2 hero tip missions, getting Mercy to level 21. Mercy also helped a 4 player team (poison MM, me as kin, 2 blasters) beat Babbage in Boomtown.

Primadonna helped with the banner event in Sharkhead Isle, getting badge credit for 2 of the banners and the mystic aspect.

Shield Maiden solo'd Mother Mayhem's arc (2 merits); I loved how completely nutty Praetor Tilman was. Vanessa deVore's tricks were really pretty cool when I faced her, but I ultimately decided to let her go; not sure if that affects anything though. I went on to solo Dr Hertzfield's arc (2 merits) and Bobcat's arc (2 merits). I really liked Bobcat's story, and was strongly tempted to make a "matching outfit to rob the bank with" as Bobcat suggested. This all got Shield Maiden to level 20, and I immediately hopped through the portal to the Rogue Isles, becoming a villain.

Water Lily (34 rogue rad/storm corr) joined an 8-player Synapse TF. This was a very strong team with lots of support; it turned out that the leader had set "players debuffed" among the challenge settings and no one noticed until the Clockwork Lord mission, near the end. (Oh, a few of us thought it was too hard to hit the clockworks, but I think we kinda wrote that off as random chance.) Despite being debuffed we killed Babbage, with some help. In the final mission, we got to face the Clockwork King while debuffed, plus our kheldian caused a Nictus crystal to spawn in the same group as the AV. The leader called on us to kill the Nictus crystal first, then the AV; this actually worked. Finished the TF in 2h 21m and got Water Lily to level 36.


Sunday

Police Woman finished soloing the flashback of Leonard's arc. I managed to solo Protean (though he did Power Siphon me once) through inspirations and lots of kiting. I saved the clone from the fire (not sure what that affects, maybe just the last bank mission) and got the Explosive Finale badge, along with 5 merits. I also hit the inf cap at the black market again, and emailed myself another 500M inf.

I went on to do a bunch of paper missions in Grandville and a Peregrine Island mayhem to unlock Efficiency Expert Pither. Doing 5 of his timed missions gave me the Efficiency Expert badge.

Shield Maiden (21 villain fire/shield scrapper) joined a 6-player team that did the Founders Falls mayhem. After that I tried to get the cape mission from Kalinda, but she insisted on sending me on a level 21 Defeat Burch mission; Burch spawned at level 10 but was guarded by level 21 Longbow. Solo'd my cape mission to get to level 22 and SOs. I have skipped all of Fitness pool on Shield Maiden, hoping to avoid a respec when issue 19 hits, but I have to admit not having Stamina at level 22 is kinda sucking; I've been slotting heavily for ENDRDX to try and manage the END issues, but running and moving slowly (due to no Swift) is really bugging me too.

Millie Volt joined a 7-player Katie TF as part of the Sisterhood Sunday event. We were on +1 difficulty. Being elec armor was really nice against the 10 Mary AVs in the first mission; none of the witches could really hurt Millie due to her maxed energy resist. We had 4 MMs on the team which made the two cave missions kind of a hassle (we elected not to stealth, instead fighting to Amy), but we managed. In the final mission we cleared the way to free Katie, then led her back. While doing so, we encountered a bunch of other NPC witches that we rescued and they helped us! I had no idea these existed, since teams almost always stealth this mission. Fighting there and back was pretty dramatic as ambushes constantly assaulted us. Finished the Katie TF in 50m 59s.

Yuki-Onna (50 villain ice/cold corr) did a 7-player speed ITF in 21m 20s. Mayday (50 hero fortunata) did a speedy LGTF in 28m 7s; we delayed the final fight a bit because one player had gotten disconnected, and by the time he got back, Honoree had used his Unstoppable. Psy damage was able to break through, though.

After that, Yuki-Onna joined a Recluse SF. We had a little trouble in the last mission, where our lone shield brute had trouble staying alive while tanking the Freedom Phalanx, despite having tons of support; defense can be like that, I guess, and using vengeance before the fight doesn't help as much if you're already soft capped. The final fight was kind of messy but we eventually won on the first try, rezzing people back into the fight a few times. Finished in 41m 45s. I got a Golgi.

Mercy Beaucoup helped with a Halloween Jack in Founders Falls.

Fire Maiden (50 hero SS/fire brute) joined a speed ITF that finished in a blazing fast 19m 39s; our team mix was basically 1 kinetic and 7 damage dealers. A teammate complimented me on my toon.

Mystery Girl (50 vigilante emp/pistols defender) joined a Statesman TF; we were very support heavy and got to the final mission with no problems. We beat the patron AVs, and had a moment of confusion when our tanker attacked the flyer, but the team leader had asked us to rush Lord Recluse immmediately, so the rest of us were fighting the red tower. We managed to recover from this quickly and beat the TF in 41m 26s. After that, Mystery Girl helped with Halloween Eochai in Brickstown.

Shield Maiden solo'd 5 rogue tip missions, then a random person in Sharkhead asked to join my team. I decided to drag him into Architect Entertainment, and ended up leading a 4 player team through my Teen Phalanx Forever! story arc, then 3 players through Talos Vice, which got me to level 23. The random person who joined actually said he was inspired to work on "his story arc" (something to do with 5th Column mecha) afterwards, which was kinda cool.

I like the idea behind this contest and the amount of detail given to how scoring will be done.

One concern I have is that it will be pretty hard for a lot of people to allocate 2 story arc slots to writing a new epic story for this. But it is a contest for epic length stories, so maybe there is no getting around this.

I want to chip in for the prize pool, will see about taking some screen shots later. Best of luck!

Added: Relativity Be Damned (#177370) H5-54
Save Albert Einstein from interdimensional threats.

Source: AE search tool with settings "not voted" and "my level" (at level 21).

I played through "Timeshift Vietnam 1968"....it seemed like a pretty cool premise and I had been meaning to try it for some time. Here's some more detailed feedback:

Mission 1:

Briefing needs commas in various places.
Accept message should be customized.
I'm skeptical of the level range of 1-54. Custom groups are usually very difficult at level 1. Recommend you set to something like 25-54.
Pretty neat premise that is presented for the mission, though. Shouldn't the arc be "heroic" or "vigilante" rather than "neutral"? There is little motivation for a villain to try and save an alternate universe from their alternate self.

The mission entry popup places me in Saigon in 1968. In our historical timeline, the Fall of Saigon was in 1975. Perhaps this has been accelerated due to the divergence in the timeline though. A "mission begins" clue to this effect would help set the stage.

Are you sure the Viet Cong Commander's uniform is right? I'm admittedly not that familiar with this time period, but a cursory web search seems to show VC officers uniforms were dark green, not this mustard color.

Sometimes you write "Viet Cong" (in the mob names) and sometimes "Vietcong" (the custom group name). You might consider standardizing how you write this (admittedly, this is nitpicky).

Tank Driver's description is still just "to do". I like how the Marines battle the VC, it's a good effect.

The Marines seem friendly to me; I guess this seems natural if you are a US player, but is there a good reason for this? The "evil me" in this timeline apparently supports the VC, wouldn't it be more natural for the Marines to shoot me on sight?

The Advanced Weapons are just a crate; wouldn't it be better for it to use one of the Weapon Racks graphics?

Inexplicably, there are 5th Column in Saigon? There really needs to be a clue explaining why they are here!

Viet Cong Assassin has a ninja-to, maybe should have a machete instead?

Parallel You?'s enemy group needs to be capitalized.

Why am I destroying the Time Portal? Aren't I the only the time traveler here? Or if not, there needs to be a clue explaining this. Though, thinking about this, maybe the alternate me is also traveling through time, since my toon wouldn't have been alive in 1968. The situation is rather confusing, could use some explanation in the form of clues.

The guards on the Time Portal say:

[NPC] Raserei Ubermenschen Fist: What is going on? I just saw Police Woman run through the Time Portal. Isn't that him over there?

"him" is the wrong pronoun for my character.

At the end of the mission, have I really corrected the time stream enough? The VC are still in Saigon several years early, presumably due to use of weapons.

Thinking about it, should you have some VC models that actually use advanced weapons? Like VC with laser rifles or something.

Debriefing: "There is another task I must ask of you" ... this paragraph seems like it belongs in mission 2's briefing, not mission 1's debriefing.



Mission 2

"5th Columns" should be "5th Column's" (in briefing, nav bar text, objectives).

Advanced Weapons in this mission uses a different graphic than in mission 1. (Not really a big deal, but maybe they should be the same.)

I understand what you're trying to do with the VC dialog of:

[NPC] Viet Cong Infantry: *speaking vietnamese*
[NPC] Viet Cong Grenadier: *speaking vietnamese*

....but since they don't really say anything meaningful, I may as well ignore this dialog. You might consider giving them some real dialog for the player to read, perhaps annotating it with < > marks to show that it's in another language. e.g.:

[NPC] Viet Cong Infantry: <Be on the lookout, that hero turned against us!>

Destroying the fifth Weapons Crate I get two clues at the same time, "A strange canister" and "5th Column data canister".

Initially I thought I got it from the last crate, but maybe I actually got it from the 5th Column Advisor (I did kill him right before the last crate, maybe the notification of the clue was a little late).

These two clues appear to be redundant, saying essentially the same thing; consider cutting one of them. Additionally, I think it would be better if the clue actually told you what was inside the canister, rather than telling you to bring it back to Timedrift for investigation; having the player find out directly is better for player involvement.

I'm almost disappointed that there were no evil android versions of me in this mission, when they were heavily mentioned just before this mission. I guess you don't want to overuse the doppelgangers, though; it would diminish their impact.


Mission 3

In the briefing, why won't Timeshift tell me who this "very important man" I'm rescuing is? Shouldn't I know who to look for? (Later: I noticed I had "A hundred influence bill", perhaps this is meant to be the Green Beret's portrait. That is actually kind of cool.)

"Rescue the Green Beret" is both the mission nav text and the sole objective; maybe reword one of them so that it isn't so redundant.

Just how did my interfering in Saigon cause this Green Beret to be captured, anyway? And if it did cause him to be captured, wouldn't the more logical course of action be for me to use time travel to prevent his capture, rather than use time travel to attack a heavily guarded prison camp?

The Green Beret's uniform looks very strange to me. I think maybe his whole uniform should be green, not just his cap. Also, he states that his rank is Commander. This isn't a valid rank for US Army Special Forces.

Rescuing the Green Beret completes the mission. Since this is a rather large outdoors map, having only 1 thing to do on it seems wasteful; I basically stealthed to the Green Beret, rescued him, and the mission was done. The look of the river map with heavy forest is cool for the setting, but the way the mission is explained, it's not clear to me that it's actually connected to the plot at all? It seems like the only plot effect is that I get to kill sometime while the contact does the real work (this kind of diminishes the player's role). I hesitate to suggest cutting this mission, though, because it really has a nice "look" and I like the "100 inf bill" clue.

Some of the stuff in the mission 3 debriefing looks like it should be in the mission 4 briefing, as it explains the upcoming mission rather than recapping the previous mission.


Mission 4

OK, I like the idea of stopping a 5th Column superweapon, but this whole mission is a rather jarring change in tone from the previous missions set in Vietnam. Basically, most of the movie has been about the Vietnam war, but the last reel of the movie seems to have been swapped with a James Bond movie.

Are we still in 1968? Or are we in 2010 but the alternate universe? It's not really clear.

Consider batching the objectives "Destroy Android 1, Destroy Super Android, Destroy Android 2" into just "3 Androids to destroy".

I destroyed Android 2 but it didn't actually complete the Destroy Android 2 objective; consider making this objective "only boss required".

I found Parallel You; why the "captured floating" animation? This usually suggests magical containment. I think "captured, hands on head" or "hands up" would make more sense when held by 5th Column. Freeing her really should give me some sort of clue, like "Parallel You's Story".

Debriefing: wow, why the gigantic yellow letters all of a sudden?

No souvenir?




Summary:

I liked the look & feel of the Vietnam missions and the Viet Cong enemy group. The first 2 missions made sense; mission 3 had a cool premise but needed more to do and was not strongly tied to the main plot. Mission 4 was really different in tone, seemed like it was from a different story. Never really explained why the 5th Column was supplying weapons to the Viet Cong.

10/27/2010

A friend was having trouble with Malta ambushes, so I logged on Mystery Girl (50 vigilante emp/pistols defender) to join her team, which exemped me down to level 40. We participated in a successful banner event, taking down all 4 banners (with the help from another team and maybe some others) and defeating the Greater Mystic Aspect for a fistful of badges, then did some trick or treating in Peregrine Island for awhile.

After that team broke up, I switched to the new Shield Maiden (8 loyalist fire/shield scrapper); a couple friends wanted to team up, and I recruited a few more. I ended up leading an 8-player team doing door missions in Imperial City. Unfortunately we immediately suffered a team wipe to a big spawn of, I think it was Resistance... an 8-player spawn of gold-side mobs is pretty ferocious, and most of us were used to playing aggressively with higher level toons. After some trial and error we got the hang of things and managed to do the whole Cutter Cain story arc and most of Mr G's Eddie Polstra arc. This got Shield Maiden to level 12.

10/26/2010

Wednesday

Hit the inf cap again and emailed myself another 500M inf. It took 11 days to make 500M inf this time, a definite slowdown from previous months; in my opinion, this is mostly because of the general decline in the price of rare salvage (which is the main thing I trade in).

Mercy Beaucoup (7 resistance ice/kin corr) joined the kin theme team, running on an 8-player team. I got a couple compliments on her patriotic Canadian costume. Our team was very squishy (we had a good number of support kins but essentially the only support we had to offer at this level was Transfusion) and we had a team wipe against the Syndicate, a team wipe against Resistance, and another team wipe against Rogue Clockwork. Despite these difficulties we leveled very fast and Mercy finished the night at level 15.

After that, Water Lily (32 rogue rad/storm corr) joined an 8-player Cap SF that finished in 44m 23s. We didn't have any serious issues except for pulling Bat'Zul, who has a terrible turning radius and getting him to move where we wanted was like parallel parking a Buick.

Our ninja LB ex-moderator tried talking with me, but he acted totally unrepentant and wanted to know when I would stop oppressing him. I tried to explain that I thought his actions were wrong, but he did not seem to get it; he seemed convinced that I am purposely singling him out because I dislike him on a personal level.


Thursday/Friday

More LB drama as our ninja ex-mod gave himself operator powers again and unsilenced himself. I felt that I had to remove his operator status and silence him again, despite realizing this would cause a fight. This resulted in him eventually giving himself operator powers again and kicking all the legitimate LB mods again, which took some time to fix. On the bright side, I learned a lot about chat channel PVP. I've figured out how he's been giving himself back operator status without it showing up in the chat channel, and various other nasty tricks; it's not exactly secret but I won't explain exactly how here because of the potential for abuse. The chat channel permissions system is pretty terrible and there does not seem to be a good way to stop people from abusing it, once they have gotten operator status and decide to willfully abuse it. Nevertheless I feel morally obligated to stop what abuse that I can.

I ended up restarting Virtual Girl (newbie katana/fire scrapper); I had deleted her to make another alt, then kinda regretted it. Started her in Praetoria again and solo'd up to 4.

Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) did a couple Halloween tip missions with small teams, getting the Secured and Power Hungry badges.

Spacegirl (50 hero mind/rad controller) helped a team fight banners in Steel Canyon and Croatoa; we were able to kill a couple banners but never quite defeated them fast enough to spawn the Greater Aspect.

Primadonna (50 rogue sonic/kin corruptor) joined a clear-most ITF that finished in 1h 6m. In the final mission, this team strangely decided to pull Romulus way far to the southwest of the raised platform, saying that it would avoid the Cimeroran ambushes. This actually seemed to work.

I started Tour de Force (newbie Praetorian FF/nrg defender), mostly to mock a friend who said FF/nrg defender was the worst powerset combo possible. Got up to level 17 doing trick or treating and fighting zombie invasions on a small team. The zombies were utterly horrible at low level, requiring a lot of runs back from the hospital (they seem much stronger than normal lowbie enemies); trick or treating went really well, though, getting us lots of exp. Once I got to DO level it seemed like I was able to DEF cap the shield, SR and ice armor toons on my team, making us pretty invincible.

Millie Volt (50 hero elec/elec brute) did a vigilante morality mission, switching alignment to Vigilante. Thinking she'll eventually go back to Villain, or maybe Rogue.

Quick Katie (50 hero plant/kin controller) did an ITF in 37m 35s. Mission 2 against the Nictus was kinda messy for me and the other squishies, and both I and a plant dominator automatically dropped Carrion Creepers against Romulus at the end without really thinking about it, to the consternation of the team.

Star Amethyst (50 hero dark/ice defender) helped a team defeat the Halloween Jack and Eochai GMs.


Saturday

Police Woman did another 3 Halloween tips with a 3 player team, getting the Artifact Destroyer, Veiled, Arriviste and Meticulous badges. This team had gotten down a rhythm of splitting up to trick or treat until someone got a tip drop, then teaming up to knock out each tip mission. After I got the accolade I switched to Schadenfreude (50 villain AR/pain corruptor) for another 4 Halloween tip missions.

Switched to Triumph server to play Lt. Mary Sue (23 hero emp/AR defender) on a team of people playing AE missions. We played Getting to Know Crey Financial, which was an interesting looking office comedy, but was cut short, leaving the arc incomplete; I gave it 3 stars. We also played The Christmas Zombie Attack, an arc about a zombie apocalypse occurring in Santa's Workshop at the North Pole. This was disturbing but pretty cool; I gave it 5 stars.

After that, Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) joined 3 Master of the RSF attempts in a row, none of which came anywhere close to being successful. On our first attempt, a corruptor died in the first mission to random Longbow while soloing off on her own, which caused us to immediately restart.

Second attempt, we got through the first mission, but on the second mission, people immediately rushed the Kronos Titan even before the whole team was on the map, resulting in the same corruptor dying. It was pretty clear we weren't playing well enough to accomplish the MoRSF, so we pressed on. I think this was a combination of the leader not really knowing how the RSF works, so he gave no directions, and people not really treating the Master Of settings very seriously. The brute who took the Malta gun in mission 2 ended up disconnecting in mission 3, and never came back; during mission 4 we defeated the main group of Vindicators, but decided we could not defeat Ms Liberty without the Malta gun, so we gave up at that point.

The third attempt, I said I would only join if we were serious about trying it for real, and everyone said, yes, really, this time. Once I joined, though, I could see just from looking at the team lineup that we had no real shot, since we only had 2 support toons. I should have either quit or offered to switch to a support character, but due to sheer apathy I ended up just going with it. We actually did better than either of the previous attempts due to playing more carefully, but in mission 4 our stone tanker somehow died to the Vindicators, then in mission 5 we had two team wipes against the Freedom Phalanx before we finally were able to beat them. I think we were playing better on this attempt, we just did not have enough support toons to make it viable. Finished in 1h 21m and got a Centriole SHO.


Sunday

I decided to work on getting a patron badge for Police Woman, so I solo'd Ghost Widow's first story arc for the Spider's Kiss badge and 10 reward merits.

I've been gradually buying purple recipes and IOs for Millie Volt; today I picked up a Hecatomb (DMG/RCHG/ACC) IO for 362M inf and a Hecatomb (RCHG/ACC) recipe for 335M inf.

Water Lily (33 rogue rad/storm corr) did an 8-player Citadel in 1h 31m which got her to level 34, then an 8-player Moonfire TF in 1h 2s.

I've been rather disenchanted with my shield brute, Shield Maiden (50 villain mace/shield brute), because it doesn't feel like she does as much damage as my shield scrapper. In principle they ought to do comparable damage, though, since they're both level 50 and fairly well IO'd out. I asked other people's opinions on shield brute vs shield scrapper DPS, and got mixed responses; some people thought the brute should do more due to fury, some people thought the scrapper should do more due to the higher base damage.

Ultimately I decided to test it for myself. I first brought Blond Justice (50 hero broadsword/shield scrapper) to the Cimeroran wall, moved into a spawn of level 50 Cimerorans for the Against All Odds bonus, then did a Build Up/Shield Charge combination. Doing this, my scrapper consistently hit the minions for 396 damage.

Next I brought Shield Maiden to the Cimeroran wall. I had her stand in the middle of a Cimeroran spawn, letting them swing at her until her fury reached 78% (it wouldn't go higher with me just standing there letting stuff swing at me). Then I hit Build Up/Shield Charge. Doing this, my brute consistently hit the minions for 284 damage.

284 is a LOT less than 396, which kinda confirms my general feeling that my shield brute wasn't doing as much damage. This is a lot less than I would've even guessed, though, because I thought brute and scrapper should be pretty close. For awhile I thought maybe fury doesn't affect Shield Charge at all; I posted on the Brute forum asking about this, but after getting some responses and doing some more testing, I determined that Fury does affect Shield Charge, but Shield Charge has its damage bonus capped at some very low number.

Finished the night playing TokyoRose (28 villain sonic/sonic corruptor) on a 5 player team doing missions in Sharkhead, including someone's cape mission and a Halloween tip. This got TokyoRose to level 29.


Monday

Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) did an ITF in 21m 17s, then a Sharkhead SF (technically 6 players, but actually 2 players were 2-boxing so really only 4 of us but 6 toons...not super thrilled about that) in 29m 52s. Mega is pretty tough at level 50 but felt very squishy at the level 30 that the Sharkhead SF exemped us down to; I could really feel the loss of Fighting pool and the IO set bonuses, all of which were higher than level 30. Maybe I should play a different toon for level 30 stuff.

Math Model (13 loyalist dark/kin corruptor) joined the kin superteam for a couple hours; we had one team wipe against Syndicate, but otherwise did very well, getting Math Model to level 16. I've been slotting her dark AoE attacks with ToHitDebuff DOs, hoping that this would help improve our team survivability, but it's really hard to tell if it is making any difference.

Indigo Ifrit (50 villain fire/rad corr) did another ITF with a 7 player team in 21m 46s.

Disillusioned with my shield brute, I ended up transferring Shield Maiden to another server, then re-making her as a level 1 scrapper. At first I made her a broadsword/shield scrapper, because I have some sort of complex about needing to have a weapon on shield toons (shield in left hand and empty right hand just looks wrong to me). But I already have a level 50 broadsword/shield scrapper, so after thinking about it for awhile, I decided it was dumb to have two; so I remade her again, this time as a fire/shield scrapper, partly to use fire swords for the "weapon look", partly because by all reports this is a crazy high DPS combination. Upon arriving in Nova Praetoria, I almost immediately got invited to a lowbie team by someone I don't even know; I joined up and did a few missions, getting to level 7 and making a new global friend. This was pretty cool.

Thanks for trying Papers and Paychecks! I'm glad you enjoyed the dialog and all the little extras; now that we have 200K to play with, I tried to pack the arc with content.

Regarding the recurring mailroom clerk, one of the previous complaints I had was that there weren't enough common threads through the mission other than Jenny herself, so the mail clerk was one of the things I tried adding to address that. You are right that his reappearances (along with Jenny's career track paralleling the player's) may seem a bit too coincidental; I'm hoping that having more recurring characters outweighs that though.

Regarding the "success" track actually leaving the player as a pure villain with no redemption, this is certainly true. I was trying to make the last mission seem like one of the canon "morality" missions. I thought the "morality mission" angle, along with the player trying to "go straight" at the beginning, made this arc fit the "Going Rogue" theme pretty well. It is possible that giving the player a choice will end up disqualifying the arc; since it is not guaranteed that someone is redeemed. Though, in this scenario, arguably someone has "fallen". Hard to say; I guess we'll see what the judges think.

Anyhow, many thanks for giving the arc a try, and for the comments!

New test:

Level 50 mace/shield brute.
AAO off.
No build up.
Shield Charge into level 50 Cimerorans with 0 fury = 153 damage.



Level 50 mace/shield brute.
AAO off.
No build up.
Stand in Cimeroran mobs and let them swing at me until 78% fury.
Shield Charge onto level 50 Cimerorans = 263 damage.


So fury does help.


Level 50 mace/shield brute.
AAO on, about 7 mobs around me.
78% fury.
Shield charge onto level 50 Cimerorans = 284 damage.


Level 50 mace/shield brute.
AAO on, about 7 mobs around me.
78% fury.
Build up & shield charge onto level 50 Cimerorans = 284 damage.



My damage bonus according to the in game Combat Attributes monitor is 199% with AAO and 78% fury, 279% with AAO, 78% fury and build up. This seems strange because this should be well below a 400% damage cap.

Could it be the damage cap for the pet that does the actual Shield Charge damage is only around 200%?


This is making me think that shield charge may actually much better on a scrapper than a brute, due to the higher base damage.

I always assumed Shield Charge was affected by the brute fury bonus, but I started watching the numbers more carefully and am starting to think maybe it is not.

My test:

50 mace/shield brute moving to the middle of a spawn of Cimerorans on the wall in Cimerora. Against All Odds (1 level 50 END RDX IO) is on. Shield Charge (6 level 50 Obliteration IO) to attack the Cimerorans.

I seem to consistently hit the minions for 284 damage regardless of whether I attack immediately (with low fury) or wait for fury to build up to 78% while the Cimerorans attack me.

Am I doing something wrong? Or is Shield Charge really not affected by fury?

Added: The Christmas Zombie Attack (#353610) listed H1-54 but should be around H25-54
Battle a zombie outbreak at Santa's workshop. Holiday.

Source: MA Super Team

After spending some time poring over the arcs that I've played and are actually eligible, here's my nominations:

VILLAIN
410418 The Do-It-Yourself Doom Army Project

HEROIC
384776 Made to Wave the Flag

COMEDY
340316 Drakule vs. The Werewolf Bikers From Hell

SHORT
379488 Storming Citadel

LOWBIE
375018 A Hero in Need...is a Friend Indeed!

ORIGINAL GROUP
346904 Against the Wickerwork Khan


Some of these were pretty close calls. There's actually been quite a number of good arcs published since the cutoff date.