PoliceWoman

The meaning of the "Complex Mechanics" keyword is a little arbitrary. Personally, I tend to use Complex Mechanics to refer to cascading triggered objectives in a mission, or more generally, any combination of Mission Architect elements that, when fitted together, have the end result of making the mission's gameplay seem especially unusual compared to typical content.

It should be noted that it is quite tricky to do something like this, and especially using lengthy sequences of required triggered objectives risks making the mission aggravating to play through. For example, having 10 or more objectives daisy-chained together, forcing the player to backtrack over the mission map repeatedly, often seems cool to an author but is very annoying to a player.

All that said, I find "Complex Mechanics" to be one of the less helpful keywords. While some small number of people may explicitly search for arcs with "Complex Mechanics", I'd wager that a lot more players are searching for "Solo Friendly", "Comedy", "Drama" and similar keywords.

Hope that helps!

9/28/2010

Thursday

Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) helped a Synapse TF defeat Babbage in Skyway City. I also joined a Master of the RSF attempt. Our team mix was:

fire/kin controller
fire/cold corruptor
stone/stone tanker
mind/kin controller
AR/dev blaster (me)
dark/dark corruptor
fire/dark corruptor
fire/rad corruptor

We took things very cautiously, often clearing areas and pulling mobs that we would normally rush on a regular RSF. This was going great until the last mission, where we defeated Numina, then our tanker went linkdead. The team leader called for us all to run away, but one of the controllers got killed by the heroes anyway. The tanker reconnected after awhile and we finished the SF in 58m 9s, with only 1 death total; heartbreakingly close. I got a Centriole.

Thunder Girl (50 hero elec/SR scrapper) solo'd 5 hero tip missions, getting a Coercive Persuasion (CONFUSE) recipe drop.

Fire Maiden (47 hero SS/fire brute) did a speedy ITF in 21m 27s, getting her to level 48, and a speedy Kahn TF in 28m 1s.

Kyrie Eleison (50 vigilante fire/regen scrapper) joined a team preparing to do Katie TF; we killed Eochai while in Croatoa. Had a little trouble in the last mission when Katie aggroed some nearby mobs, but we cleared them pretty quickly, finishing the TF in 21m 53s.


Friday

I sold a Celerity (+stealth) proc at Wentworth's for 250M, easily the best 2 hero merits I've spent so far. (I think the price on these has dropped a bit since then, though.)

Fire Maiden (48 hero SS/fire brute) did a speedy 8-player Manticore TF in 47m 2s.

Some friends came up with the silly idea of an all-force-fields theme team. I rolled up Kelly Greene, a newbie fire/FF controller, and ended up on an 8-player sewer team (all defenders or controllers, 6 of whom were force fields) that fought through the sewers from Atlas Park to Kings Row, then did some radio missions and 2 Atlas safeguards. With soft capped def from multiple force fields, I found I could use Hot Feet and Fire Cages to herd and AoE, despite my low level, which was pretty fun. This got Kelly Greene to level 9.

Did another Master of RSF attempt; I was asked to bring Yuki-Onna (50 villain ice/cold corruptor), and our team was

fire/kin controller
dark/dark corruptor
stone/stone tanker
fire/dark corruptor
ice/ice blaster
fire/kin corruptor
ice/cold corruptor (me)
ill/rad controller

This again went well until the last mission, where we killed Numina, then the stone tanker died after his first burst of inspirations ran out and he forgot to eat more. A team wipe followed, then we all got kinda sloppy and died more, but we ended up finishing in 1h 3m. I got another Centriole.


Saturday

Rain Dancer (50 hero storm/archery defender) joined an 8-player Faathim TF, including one 2-boxed toon that did nothing but sit at the contact (the team leader was convinced this would speed up the TF, but I'm not so sure). Of the remaining 7 players, we had only 2 stormies for support, and sadly the other stormy spent most of the TF dead due to excess aggro. So, light on support and effectively down 1.5 team members, this TF was very slow moving with lots of deaths, and it felt like it took forever, though the clock said it only took us 3h 12m.

I spent some time editing Papers and Paychecks, an AE story arc I'm thinking of submitting to Dr. Aeon's 3rd Architect Challenge. Mostly this involved reading player feedback and adding/revising stuff to make the arc more cool, then playtesting. Fire Maiden (48 hero SS/fire brute) hit level 49 while playtesting this arc.

Finished the night playing Mystery Girl (50 vigilante emp/pistols defender) on a 6 player team doing the new Maria Jenkins arc; we killed Black Swan, Malaise and Mother Mayhem. I also got the new Blindsider badge in a single mission that was jam packed with Seers.


Sunday

The all FF-team got together again, and I played Kelly Greene (now a 9 fire/FF controller), initially on a 6-player team (5 ff defenders, 1 ff controller) doing radio missions in Kings Row, then we added a scrapper and a stalker and did the Rule of Three (Posi 1) TF. I had changed Kelly's costume around a bit to make it look less obviously a Green Lantern ripoff, and ended up with a black and green bathing suit look that got made fun of by teammates for lacking pants; however, for some reason this prompted 2 other team members to change their costumes to not have pants.

Several team members complained that an all-FF TF would be a horrible grind, but it was actually not that bad. Capped DEF meant that we actually survived the ambush in the final mission on the steps of City Hall (something that I can't say for most Posi 1 teams I've been on). We were a little anxious that the evil doppelganger team would be impossible for us to kill (since they, too, would have FFs) but they were almost disappointingly easy. We ended up targeting my toon's evil twin first, because veterans of the fire/rad controller superteam told us horror stories about what the fire control doppelgangers did on this TF. Finished in 1h 14m, which didn't seem too bad. Despite this, the general sentiment afterwards was that FF defenders were stupid and several of the players were going to reroll as cold or stormies instead. Which is too bad. I'm not sure if I will keep my fire/FF or not; she's been pretty fun, but my power selections assume I'm going to be teamed with FF defenders, so I have picked mostly damage powers and hardly any control powers, so if the FF team falls apart, at the very least I'll need to respec.


Monday

A friend asked me for help killing Caleb if he could get him to spawn, and, as Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) I ended up going over to Nerva to try and help spawn Caleb. He gave me the star and I eventually recruited about 10 or 12 players to help spawn him. Our method was to kill ghosts around Thorn Isle by day, then hunt for Caleb at night. We did this for about 4 day/night cycles without seeing any sign of him. After the 2nd night of not finding Caleb, I actually was suspicious because we were doing everything ParagonWiki suggests to do to spawn him, but we hadn't seen him or seen any message that he appeared; so I ended up submitting a petition.

People started drifting away as our spawning attempt didn't seem to have any success; but after the 4th night, a GM actually responded to my petition! He gave me about a minute to gather people, then teleported Caleb right on top of me. We were hungry for blood and Caleb died very quickly, giving us the Hellbane badge. I asked the GM what had happened, and the impression he gave me is that Caleb was up the whole time, which is why we couldn't spawn him -- but he was flying very high overhead somewhere. Our team actually had spent some time flying around in the sky looking for Caleb, but we had never found him. Anyway, everyone was very grateful for the GM's help.

After the Caleb team broke up, another friend kinda goaded me into running an ITF, which quickly filled up. We had 2 lowbie masterminds, so I said we would do a clear-all ITF, though I relented on mission 3 where we just went from general-to-general. Finished in 58m 54s; I tracked my inf gain, and I made 6.4M inf on that TF, not counting drops.

Some of the FF team from before had rolled up new stormy corruptors in Mercy Isle, so I joined them with Water Lily (30 villain rad/storm corruptor), malefactoring down to level 1 to do Kalinda's initial story arc on a 6 player team, which got them to around level 4 before the team broke up.

Finished the night playing Millie Volt (50 rogue elec/elec brute), first on a very fast Kahn TF that took only 22m 51s (which we think is the speed record, at least on Liberty server). We shaved some seconds off the TF time by splitting up for the portals in the second mission, and killing Reichsman directly, ignoring the 4 Pokeball AVs except for the occasional AoE until after Reichsman died.

I had been kind of regretting not having Taunt on Millie Volt, since I think she would do a decent job against heavy energy damage AVs like Reichsman, so I ended up using her free respec. I originally had her heavily slotted for recharge (for more lightning rod and energize), with some +lethal DEF. But after playing this build for awhile, I actually thought the DEF was useless, because I was only able to get up to around 20% lethal DEF, and had no DEF debuff resist. In the respec I still focused heavily on recharge, but I switched +lethal DEF for +max HP. So the main differences are: I dropped Weave to pick up Taunt; I changed all my Reactive Armors (+def) for Titanium Coatings (+hp); and I changed my Steadfast Protection (+def) for Steadfast Protection (kb protect). The final build looks like this:

Millie Volt I18 respec: Level 50 Magic Brute
Primary Power Set: Electrical Melee
Secondary Power Set: Electric Armor
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Speed
Ancillary Pool: Mu Mastery

Villain Profile:
Level 1: Charged Brawl -- C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg(A), C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx(3), C'ngImp-Dmg/Rchg(3), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(5), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(5), C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(7)
Level 1: Charged Armor -- TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx(A), TtmC'tng-ResDam/Rchg(7), TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(9), TtmC'tng-ResDam(40)
Level 2: Lightning Field -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(9), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(11), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(11), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(13), Oblit-%Dam(13)
Level 4: Conductive Shield -- TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx(A), TtmC'tng-ResDam/Rchg(15), TtmC'tng-ResDam(15)
Level 6: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 8: Thunder Strike -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(17), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(17), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(19), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(19), Oblit-%Dam(21)
Level 10: Static Shield -- TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx(A), TtmC'tng-ResDam/Rchg(39), TtmC'tng-ResDam(50)
Level 12: Hover -- Flight-I(A), Flight-I(33), Flight-I(33), LkGmblr-Rchg+(33)
Level 14: Health -- Numna-Heal/EndRdx(A), Numna-Heal(40), Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(43), Numna-Heal/Rchg(46)
Level 16: Grounded -- S'fstPrt-ResKB(A)
Level 18: Chain Induction -- Hectmb-Dmg(A), Hectmb-Dmg/Rchg(21), Hectmb-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(23), Hectmb-Acc/Rchg(23), Hectmb-Dmg/EndRdx(25), Hectmb-Dam%(25)
Level 20: Stamina -- P'Shift-EndMod(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(37), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(37)
Level 22: Lightning Reflexes -- Run-I(A)
Level 24: Fly -- Flight-I(A), Flight-I(37)
Level 26: Build Up -- RechRdx-I(A), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg(27), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg/EndRdx(27), GSFC-Rchg/EndRdx(46)
Level 28: Energize -- Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx(A), Dct'dW-EndRdx/Rchg(29), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(29), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(31), Dct'dW-Heal(31), Dct'dW-Rchg(31)
Level 30: Kick -- Empty(A)
Level 32: Lightning Rod -- Armgdn-Dmg(A), Armgdn-Dmg/Rchg(34), Armgdn-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(34), Armgdn-Acc/Rchg(34), Armgdn-Dmg/EndRdx(36), Armgdn-Dam%(36)
Level 35: Power Sink -- P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc/Rchg(36), P'Shift-Acc/Rchg(40)
Level 38: Tough -- TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx(A), TtmC'tng-ResDam/Rchg(39), TtmC'tng-ResDam(39)
Level 41: Mu Lightning -- Apoc-Dmg(A), Apoc-Dmg/Rchg(42), Apoc-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(42), Apoc-Acc/Rchg(42), Apoc-Dmg/EndRdx(43), Apoc-Dam%(43)
Level 44: Ball Lightning -- Ragnrk-Dmg(A), Ragnrk-Dmg/Rchg(45), Ragnrk-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(45), Ragnrk-Acc/Rchg(45), Ragnrk-Dmg/EndRdx(46)
Level 47: Taunt -- Zinger-Taunt/Rchg(A), Zinger-Taunt/Rchg/Rng(48), Zinger-Taunt/Rng(48), Zinger-Dam%(48)
Level 49: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(50), RechRdx-I(50)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Fury
Level 4: Ninja Run

After sleeping on it, I came to the conclusion that it doesn't make sense for Agent Bell (a Longbow officer) to show up in mission 2, which is basically a PPD raid on a Crey facility.

I replaced him with Gordon Stacy (a Paragon Police using a custom boss model) and adjusted his dialog and clue to suggest that he's been corresponding with Arthur Bell. I kind of like this better anyway, because I get to tie in another Crey-related canon NPC, and it avoids the potential complaint that the player might "kill" Agent Bell twice (once here, once in Kelly Uqua's arc).

On the downside, I don't really develop this plot thread beyond defeating Gordon Stacy, so it's more like a cameo than a plotline. Will have to think about whether it's reasonable to add any more support for this thread in later missions.

Also, thanks to twelfth for giving the arc a test run.

Some more edits....

Mission 2:
* Added Tommy the mail clerk as a required hostage, with "Memo to Simmons" as a clue. (To address action items 4, 7, 13)
* Added Agent Bell as an optional boss, with "Bell's Journal" as a clue, mostly for color. In the canon story arcs he's an EB, but I thought an EB might be too hard, so I used a Longbow Officer model instead. (If anyone would have severe heartache over Bell being represented as an ordinary boss, though, let me know.) (To address action items 9, 13)
* Rephrased "Indecent Photocopy" clue, making it a little longer and more dialog-like. (To address action item 13)
* Added "Formal Recommendation" as a mission end clue. (To address action item 13)

Some more changes.....

Story Parameters:
* Changed to "Work in Progress" since I'm modifying it heavily.
* Changed from "Complex Mechanics" (such a boring keyword) to "Canon Related" (since it heavily borrows from the canonical Crey story arcs and TFs).

Mission 1:
* Added Fusionette as a Manticore TF boss (to address action item 9).
* Moved all glowies from "middle" to "back" (formerly were "middle" because of the middle/back spawn point bug).
* Changed all glowies to "do not remove on complete" (in response to player feedback)
* Added "Tommy the mailroom clerk" as a hostage (a new character, to address action items 4 and 7).
* Added a clue for Jenny (to address action item 13).
* Wrote out the text of an actual letter of recommendation as a clue (to address action item 13).


Uh oh! It's the leader of the Manticore TF!


Fortunately, it was just a pickup team.


This should look good in my personnel file!

Issues addressed (9/25):

1. Reduce number of friendly spawns in mission 3 so there are more bad guys to fight. (Glazius)
- Changed 4 "friendly" spawns to be 3 hostages guarded by Escaped Experiments, resulting in lots more mobs to fight.

6. Fix typo in accept message for mission 5. (Rakeeb)
- Couldn't find any typo in this message. Left it alone.

8. Too easy, need to increase challenge level; maybe add an EB? (Rakeeb)
- Left overall difficulty alone due to multiple players saying they think the challenge level is fine.
- Adjusted level range to 33-44 for all missions, to avoid possible boss-only Crey spawns.

10. Reword "Chat with cute coworker" to be less flirty and to make sense for female toons. (Dsarvess Rientel)
- Changed to just "Chat with co-worker".

11. Put a few more minutes on the timer. (several feedbacks)
- Increased mission 5's timer to 30 minutes.
- Rephrased mission briefing to specifically state the time limit is 30 minutes.
- 30 minutes actually feels a little long to me, but it's the next shortest duration after the 15 minutes it was before.

12. Make a custom Automaton group with no Warhulks. (Archdemon)
- I made a custom group excluding warhulks, the mission should only spawn humanoid automata now, at least until Deckard shows up.

Still to do:

2. Change office workers in mission 4 to be initially friendly, but then go berserk after some trigger event. (Glazius)
- initial ideas (not yet added): add a ton of optional allies that betray, plus some ambushes?

3. Come up with an evil but funny Crey plot for the Crey in mission 5 to be working on. (Glazius)
- initial ideas (not yet added): Crey-Z-Glue? Creyola Creyons?
- rework dialog from managers in mission 5 to reflect evil plot.

4. Need another recurring character to help tie missions together. (Glazius)
5. Tie missions together better, currently it's more like 5 individual vignettes. (Rakeeb)
7. Need more characterization for minor characters (other than Jenny). (Rakeeb)

9. Provide more "named" mobs with special info. (Johnni)
- add a named Longbow officer to mission 1
- add a named PPD officer to mission 2

13. Need to add more clues and more writing overall. (PW)

Added: Of Sound Body and Mind (#13107) Rog45-54
A mob lawyer asks you to help execute a late mobster's will.

Source: Dev Choice Suggestion Thread.

Going to work on updating Papers and Paychecks a bit, since I think it could qualify for the specified theme of Dr. Aeon's 3rd challenge.

Compiled list of suggestions from reviews and feedback (so far):

1. Reduce number of friendly spawns in mission 3 so there are more bad guys to fight. (Glazius)
2. Change office workers in mission 4 to be initially friendly, but then go berserk after some trigger event. (Glazius)
3. Come up with an evil but funny Crey plot for the Crey in mission 5 to be working on. (Glazius)
4. Need another recurring character to help tie missions together. (Glazius)
5. Tie missions together better, currently it's more like 5 individual vignettes. (Rakeeb)
6. Fix typo in accept message for mission 5. (Rakeeb)
7. Need more characterization for minor characters (other than Jenny). (Rakeeb)
8. Too easy, need to increase challenge level; maybe add an EB? (Rakeeb)
9. Provide more "named" mobs with special info. (Johnni)
10. Reword "Chat with cute coworker" to be less flirty and to make sense for female toons. (Dsarvess Rientel)
11. Put a few more minutes on the timer. (several feedbacks)
12. Make a custom Automaton group with no Warhulks. (Archdemon)
13. Need to add more clues and more writing overall. (PW)

Just posting this here to keep track of my "to do" list. Happy to take more suggestions from anyone who is interested.

9/23/2010


Tuesday

I hit the inf cap again, which means I made 500M inf in 5 days. I mailed myself another 500M inf as a dividend.

Quick Katie (50 hero plant/kin controller) did a speedy ITF in 20m 35s, which seemed a very good time.

Mayday (50 rogue fortunata) did a Rule of Three (Posi 1) TF on a 6 player team. A teammate complimented me on Mayday's background story and costume, which was nice. Our tanker had to log during mission 2, but we pressed on with 5 players. In the last mission, we had most of a team wipe (everyone died but me) to the massive CoT ambush that hits you on the steps of city hall; I survived by eating lucks and strategically running away after everyone else was down. We mopped them up on the rematch, and were about to take on the evil doppelganger team (we noticed there were still 6 doppelgangers, even though there were only 5 of us - the mission spawned a clone of the tanker who logged off mission 2) when I had a power outage and lost connection. In fact, my whole neighborhood went dark, which was a pretty spooky feeling; I was a little afraid that a zombie apocalypse might be about to begin. Fortunately, I survived the night and power and internet eventually came back.


Wednesday

I got an apologetic tell from someone on last night's Posi TF saying they waited for half an hour, then finished the TF; I really couldn't blame them, I didn't get internet back til morning so it would've been crazy to wait for me.

Thunder Girl (50 hero elec/SR scrapper) joined a Katie TF. It turns out the team leader didn't have the Katie TF unlocked, so he gave me the star and I ended up starting the TF. Since I ended up with the star, I also ended up telling people (some of whom weren't that familiar with Katie TF) what to do, explaining that we didn't need to clear witches to make Mary spawn, etc. Since Thunder Girl can fly, in the final mission I flew over to rescue Katie's soul, myself. I felt a little guilty that we had some people who didn't know the Katie TF at all, but doing Katie TF the long way is a huge chore, so I ended up speeding everything anyway. Finished in 30m 34s.

Fire Maiden (46 rogue SS/fire brute) solo'd an AE arc called M is for Malta, in which a contact sends you on some missions for fun & profit, that eventually lead you to discover a Malta conspiracy. It was pretty good and I gave it 5 stars; this also got Fire Maiden to 47. At level 47 I slotted 3 sets of 6 level 50 Obliterations (in Burn, Blazing Aura and Foot Stomp), which I had stockpiled in my base; each set gave me +3% dmg, +5% rchg, +1.875% sm/lethal def, all really good things. I also solo'd the hero morality mission, changing Fire Maiden's alignment to Heroic, and joined a "fire themed" (almost everyone had fire powersets) kill-most ITF, which we finished in 34m 47s, very fast for clearing most.

I was messing around at the Atlas Park Wentworth's on Kyrie Eleison (50 vigilante fire/regen scrapper) when the Halloween banners event spawned in Atlas. Someone organized an impromptu raid force to take the banners on; it started off slow, but eventually snowballed into 2 or 3 teams, which were able to take down all 4 banners and the final GM.

After that I solo'd Kyrie through Machina, an AE arc about clockwork and some new custom faction of robots led by an evil villain. The custom mobs were cool looking, but the plot was kinda thin and it kind of annoys me when the story's villain is scripted to escape (i.e., story ends with the player losing). I gave it 3 stars.

Finished the night playing Spy Girl (36 rogue MA/ninj stalker) on an 8 player Citadel TF. I got lots of teasing about the uselessness of stalkers, but tried to prove people wrong by kicking lots of Council butt and stealth/TPing people to objectives. The scrapper who was teasing me the most managed to get killed during the second to last mission (the first death of the TF), so I teased him right back about how scrappers must be more squishy than stalkers. We completed the Citadel TF in a pretty respectable 57m 10s and got Spy Girl to level 37.

M for Malta (#99260) mostly V41-50
While following up some profitable leads from a new contact, you discover a Malta conspiracy.

Source: AE search with "not voted" and "my level" (as a level 46).

As you may know, I have a fairly extensive list of recommended arcs.

But I realize that may be too long, so here are a few that I'd particularly like to call attention to:

All in the Family (#128109)
Freaks, Geeks and Men in Black (#161629)
The Casualties of War (#241496)
The Doctor Returns (#1152)

It was not easy to cut a long list down to just a few entries, and if you asked me next week, I might suggest 4 different arcs, so please don't feel offended if I don't list your arc here.

Personally, I am just glad to see Dr. Aeon initiate something positive for the Mission Architect community.

I sympathize with the people who are annoyed that the issues they want looked at, aren't addressed by this contest. However, I think pouring scorn on this effort is likely to send the wrong message; even if you think it is a pathetic milksop, it is far better than no dev involvement at all. It's like paddling a puppy for bringing your slippers instead of the newspaper. It probably won't get you the newspaper, and will end up making the puppy sad. Granted, an EVIIIIL GENIIIIUS puppy. But still! Don't make the puppy sad!

That said, I hope that this is only the start of more Mission Architect activity from Dr. Aeon and the staff of CoH, and I do hope that more will be forthcoming.

I'm also going to try to participate in this contest (time willing). I also am fully loaded on arc slots, but I don't plan to let that stop me.

9/21/2010


Thursday

Police Woman (50 villain AR/dev blaster) solo'd a flashback of the Carpe Diem story arc, with "no travel powers" and "no inspirations". I managed to beat an EB-level Sea Witch without inspirations through use of Eye of the Magus and Wedding Band. Finished in 20m 46s and got 5 reward merits, and the Seaweed, Correctionist, Desisted and Flat badges.

Followed this with a flashback of the Strikebreaker badge mission (4m 11s for 1 reward merit and a badge) and the Slag Reaper badge mission (also 4m 11s for 1 merit and a badge).

Virtual Girl (6 resistance kat/fire scrapper) was on a 5-player team where it seemed like we fought endless waves of Destroyers in the Praetorian underground. This got Virtual Girl to level 10.

Thunder Girl (50 hero elec/SR scrapper) solo'd a hero tip mission and the hero morality mission, gaining 1 hero merit.

Mayday (50 rogue fortunata) did 6 hero missions (I know, only 5 count, but I still did 6) on a 5-player team. Probably going to have her go all-the-way to hero side at some point. Before doing so, though, I wanted to do some badging, soloing Paragon of Vice in flashback in order to get the Marshal accolade.


Friday

Police Woman solo'd a few more badge missions in flashback, completing Agent of Discord in 2m 39s, Soul Taker in 12m 37s, and Bad Luck in 3m 32s. Soul Taker is a mini-arc with a couple missions, so I tried setting "only AT powers", but I didn't actually get a badge for doing so; only full length arcs give the challenge badges, apparently. This did give me the Repairwoman badge, though, so even the short badge missions count towards total number of flashbacks.

Police Woman also joined a 4-player team doing a Steel Canyon mayhem, where we beat an EB Valkyrie and destroyed enough cars to get me the Impounder badge.

I hit the inf cap at the market again; this time I emailed myself 500M inf, since it seemed like I was hitting the inf cap way too often sending only 200M at a time. (I'm gradually claiming this inf on other toons and using it to buy recipes to IO them out.)

Kyrie Eleison (50 vigilante fire/regen scrapper) solo'd some AE arcs. I first played through Azuria's Pendant, which plays up Azuria losing magic items for laughs; this was fun but not too deep, I gave it 4 stars. Then I played Daytime Divas, a comedy arc where you get invited to an interview on a daytime TV show, and hijinks ensue; I thought this was pretty good, I gave it 5 stars.

Snow Fox (11 loyalist ice/cold controller) joined a 5 player team running Praetorian missions, which got her to level 14.

Police Woman got the Frenzied badge sometime in the afternoon; this gave her a cool mini-build-up temp power, but I really don't want to stay a villain long term, so I immediately ran the Rogue morality mission, changing my alignment to Rogue and getting me the Scoundrel badge. I also did a flashback of the Exterminator badge mission.

Arrow Girl (40 hero archery/nrg blaster) duo'd with a dark defender for a bit against Knives of Artemis, but after 2 team wipes it didn't feel like it was working very well; the dark swapped to a rad controller and things started working a bit better. We ended up completing 4 vigilante alignment missions and the Vigilante morality mission, changing Arrow Girl to a Vigilante.

Quick Katie (50 hero plant/kin controller) joined a 5 player team that did 5 heroic tip missions.

Fire Maiden (44 rogue SS/fire brute) did a clear-most ITF at +1 difficulty, finishing in 47m 2s and getting to level 45. Spent some time slotting IOs afterwards, putting 3 sets of 4 Reactive Armor in her various resistance toggles, for +3.75% smash/lethal defense, and 1 set of 4 Luck of the Gambler in Weave. Then I solo'd a few paper missions and the Peregrine Island mayhem, which got her the last explore badge needed for the Invader accolade. I also solo'd a flashback of the Exterminator badge mission, prepping for the Born in Battle accolade.


Saturday

San Min (50 hero MA/will scrapper) solo'd 4 hero tip missions, on x4 difficulty; but this was a little too hard, I ended up dying twice against massive Malta ambushes, mostly due to sappers.

Thunder Girl (50 hero elec/SR scrapper) did an ITF in 22m 0s.

Fire Maiden (45 rogue SS/fire brute) did an RSF; we had a team wipe against the Vindicators, then our initial rush against the Freedom Phalanx went kind of badly, but on the rematch I popped a Shivan and an Amy (which caused the team leader to laugh, since Amy is such a weird sight on RSF) and we managed to win, finishing in 34m 54s and getting Fire Maiden to level 46. I couldn't take an HO at that level, so I took the 25 merits and the many badges.

Went on to play Fire Maiden on a Kahn TF, during which I took enough damage to get me the Born in Battle accolade. In the final fight we focused on Reichsman first, ignoring the 4 AVs that he summons to his aid until afterwards. We had a strong team and this made the TF went very quickly, finishing in 23m 58s. After that I solo'd a flashback of the Paragon of Vice badge mission.

That night we did the Cathedral of Pain trial on hero side; the leader wanted a heavy debuff team, so I started on Spacegirl (50 hero mind/rad controller), but I got asked to switch to a tanker, so instead I played Strong Woman (50 hero inv/SS tanker). The team I was on ended up being 4 controllers, 2 defenders, 1 corruptor and me as tanker. We were assigned to the NE obelisk, and rather than trying to stop damage at a certain point, everyone was told to start at the same time, but then kill the mobs and obelisk as fast as we could. This seemed to work, even though the first two teams (including mine) seemed to finish a fair bit faster than the third team.

Inside, things got pretty chaotic. We were not using nukes or shivans because I believe the team leader wanted to see if massive debuff would be enough. My team handled mobs easily, but the other two teams seemed to be struggling; both of them wiped out on our first attempt. We regrouped and tried to lose aggro, at one point even exiting the chamber (interestingly, the Rularuu chased us outside), but we never quite seemed to be strong enough to take the final encounter; the other two teams repeatedly wiped out and could not keep up with the spawns of minions. We occasionally made Aspect of Rularuu vulnerable, but it didn't seem like we did enough damage to really dent him. Eventually the raid leader called it a loss (at about 15 minutes left) and people started to leave. My team was still alive and fighting at the time, and as people exited, we suddenly were the only team there, fighting all 3 sets of spawns; we put up a valiant fight but ended up getting clobbered. We all agreed it was a fitting ending. After-action, my feeling is that the team I was on was great; the other two teams needed a bit more DPS and/or survivability.

Later on, Lady Arachne (50 villain wolf spider) did a RSF. The final fight started badly; I was asked to suicide for vengeance, but it turns out no one on the team had rez (except myself, and the dark, who could not rez without a mob nearby) so the fight started with 7 and we had a sort of rolling wipeout; I think everyone on the team died at some point, but people kept hospitalling and jumping back in, so the team as a whole was never actually down. It was messy, but we won, finishing in 36m 6s; I got a Centriole.

I joined a Lady Grey TF where the team leader said to bring "some kind of debuff; surprise me". I decided to play Rain Dancer (50 hero storm/archery defender). I got assigned to get Infernia killed, which took me awhile; the crazy blaster went all Rambo and killed everything nearby, finally had to get more mobs. Hamidon was handled by assigning 3 fortunata to take out the green mitos, while the rest of us took out pylons. This TF ran very fast, finishing in 23m 46s.

Idealist (50 hero fire/thermal controller) ran a Kahn TF that was even faster (by 1 second) than the one I ran earlier in the day, finishing in 23m 57s. Speed runs of Kahn TF seem to have become rather popular.

Mystery Girl (50 vigilante emp/pistols defender) joined an STF. I was kinda tired by this point and playing poorly, and I managed to get myself killed twice from Thorn Tree aggro in mission 3; I managed to get my act together by the final mission, though, where the inv brute who was tanking for us thanked me for "good buffing" against the patron AVs. The brute ended up fly-tanking Lord Recluse, asking us all to focus on the towers (even me, as the empath, though I tried to keep AB and Fort on him anyway, just to be safe). Finished in 58m 37s and I got a Membrane SHO, which was pretty nice (an HO that I actually have use for). Afterwards I spent some time badging, getting the history and explore badges needed for the Freedom Phalanx Reserve accolade (+101 max hp).

Finished the night soloing on Fire Maiden, getting the badges needed for the Marshal accolade and completing the 4th costume mission (though I haven't actually come up with a brilliant idea for a new costume yet).


Sunday

Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) did a flashback of the Skip Tracer mission (10m 10s), then joined a 3 player team doing the Kings Row mayhem mission. The team leader and mission holder immediately rushed to the bank, spawning a gajillion Longbow ambushes that wiped us out; we broke out of jail and cleared more gradually after that, which seemed to work fine.

Schadenfreude (50 villain AR/pain corruptor) joined a 3-player team that did a villain tip mission and a door mission to defeat Devoured Pyriss. This team was a little slow-paced, but seemed to work OK; I also got a compliment on Schadenfreude's "Ilsa of the SS" character concept, which was nice.

Water Lily (30 rad/storm corruptor) joined a 3-player team that did some rogue tips. Got a Luck of the Gambler (DMG) recipe as a drop.

I spent some time editing my Attack of the 50 Foot Villain story arc, since I had noticed the power generator object had been brought back to AE; I use that to represent a nuclear reactor that the player can destroy. Playtested a bit with Fire Maiden (46 rogue SS/fire brute) and also solo'd through an AE arc called The D.O.L.L.S have gone Crazy! which seemed to be about sex androids who revolt against humanity. This was a cute concept but not that well developed; I gave it 3 stars.


Monday

Police Woman ran a flashback of the Portal Hopper, Party Crasher (requiring defeating a Silver Mantis EB, which was fairly tough) and Mage Hunter badge missions, as well as the Midnight Draws Near story arc on "no temp powers, enemies buffed", which gave me the Thief of Midnight, Overhauler (for 40 flashbacks), Fearless and Inhibited badges. About midway through Midnight Draws Near I realized that Midnight Visage (which makes you look like a Midnight Squad member, necessary for some of the missions) is, in fact, a temp power, so might be disabled by my settings. Fortunately, it was still allowed to be used, so I could complete the arc.

I agreed to join a Master of the Barracuda SF. The team leader was asking for debuffers, so I offered to play whatever he needed; he asked for a kin. One other person agreed to play a debuffer, and everyone else insisted on bringing damage, so I was feeling kind of annoyed that I volunteered to debuff rather than play my badging character, but no one else seemed willing to do the same. Our team ended up being:

shield tanker
stone tanker
SR scrapper
regen scrapper
bots/traps MM
sonic/kin corr (me)
ice/ice blaster

The regen scrapper was a notorious AFKer and immediately went AFK after joining. The team leader kicked him from the team after ascertaining he was still AFK once we started the TF. This left us with only 6 players against Master of Barracuda SF, which seemed pretty daunting to me, but I knew several of the remaining team members to be very good players, so I figured I'd see what would happen.

On our first attempt, the shield tanker (despite telling everyone to follow the stone tanker) ran out in front of us and promptly got killed by a lucky shot from Ms Liberty. We restarted the TF.

Second attempt, we did very well, getting to the final mission where we led each of the patron AVs to their deaths, accomplishing this all without anyone dying. Then once Reichsman spawned, we retreated to the hallway outside his room, and fought the many, many waves of 5th Column ambushes; the ambushes seemed to come from both front and back, and we had a tanker on each side of the hall taking these on. After a long, long fight, the ambushes finally stopped and we took on Reichsman. The stone tanker was careful to eat lots of break frees while fighting Reichsman; I tried to keep ID on most meleers, but it was probably useless, I can't stack enough ID to actually prevent his crazy high mag stun.

Unfortunately, we had neglected to tell the MM (who had never done this SF before) that the laser grids are instant death, and he ran into one without knowing any better, dying and causing us to fail the "master of" attempt. Everyone agreed it wasn't the MM's fault because he had clearly asked several times "is there anything I should know about this mission?" and no one thought to tell him about this death trap.

Surprisingly (at least, to me, after my last Barracuda SF attempt stalled due to lack of DPS) the 6 of us were still able to grind down Reichsman's HP to nothing; I'm sure it helped to have a MM to cancel Reichsman's phase shift ability, and traps does a great job of killing AV regen. We finished the SF with a total time of 1h 41m.

Woo! Dr. Aeon still lives! Welcome back

Added: Daytime Divas (#94504) H1-54, but should be H22-54
You agree to an interview on a daytime TV show. Hijinks ensue. Comedy.

Source: AE search filtered by Text=sfma; Length=Medium; status=Final; my level (50).

9/16/2010

I found my notes on that MoSTF!

back on Wed 9/8

Mayday (50 rogue fortunata) did a Master of the STF with a team of:

ill/kin controller
emp/psy defender
arch/nrg blaster
elec/earth dominator
inv/SS tanker
grav/cold controller
fortunata (me)

At the end of mission 1 I exited to Ouroboros - the usual thing to do as a hero, but a mistake as a villain on the STF. Since we were under MoSTF settings, I could not use Mission Transporter or Pocket D teleporter to try to get to the mission, and eventually I just tried exiting to Cap au Diable; I was quite surprised that it didn't kick me from the team, and made my way back to Independence Port via Cap, RWZ, and Founders Falls, expecting to get kicked at each zone line. But I made it back and was able to continue.

With cold shields, fortitude, mind link and maneuvers, we were all DEF capped the whole time, making things very safe. On the final mission we pulled the 4 patron AVs up to the walkway south of them; had no problems. Against Lord Recluse himself, we killed the towers in the order Blue, Red, Yellow and Green, which seemed to work fine for us. It took 1h 40m but we got the Master of the STF badge. I also got an Enzyme.

I played Fire Maiden (41 rogue SS/fire brute) on a Katie TF after that, which took 25m 59s, then the team spent some time hunting Croatoa mobs for badges. The ghosts took the longest, and we ended up having to wait through the "day" cycle to get enough; two "nights" got us the 333 ghosts needed, though.

(skip to...)

Monday 9/13

Police Woman (50 villain AR/dev blaster) helped a team with Ghost of Scrapyard; I already had the Scrapyard badge itself, but picked up the Strikebuster badge from the strikers surrounding him. A little later I went to RV to help a 4-player villain team beat up the signature heroes. We weren't real strong on debuffs (had 2 scrappers, 1 kin controller and me) and so we died a lot but we eventually beat up all the NPC heroes. I got the Oppressor, Hero Slayer, Interrogator, Deadeye, Uppercut, Breakneck, Destroyer and Blackguard badges from this. The only PC hero we saw was a hapless tanker that we mugged a couple times.

After that I joined a Master of the Barracuda SF attempt. Our team was:

1 blaster (me)
3 scrappers
2 tankers
1 kin controller
1 rad corruptor

The rad corruptor actually wanted to bring a scrapper, but 1 debuff, 6 melee and a blaster didn't seem viable so he got guilt tripped into swapping to a debuffer. Somehow our stone tanker managed to die to a generic Longbow spawn in mission 2 (apparently he accidentally turned off his granite armor while taking an alpha strike), but we were still kinda support light even with the rad and we had a lot more deaths before getting to the final mission, leading someone to say "LOL Mo". We took care of the patron AVs with no problem, but hit a brick wall against Reichsman. As a blaster I got the temp power to summon Dust Devils, which I think is normally the corruptor temp power. I summoned Dust Devils as much as I could, but they seemed kind of useless. I believe the scrappers got the stalker power to kill off ambushes; not sure what the tankers or controller got. On our first attempt against Reichsman, we fought for awhile but got overwhelmed by the ambushes. Trying to stealth back to Reichsman didn't work because the ambushes seemed to still be aggro on us even after hospitaling and returning; we ended up spending some time clearing all the ambushes. Sometime around this time our rad corruptor disconnected and never returned. After clearing all the ambushes, we made another attempt on Reichsman. We could stand up to his damage output when he was alone, but found that the 7 of us remaining were not able to actually kill him; each time he got low on life he would Phase Shift and heal up. I asked the controller to hit him with her temp power, hoping she had the MM power that disables his Phase Shift, but she either didn't do it or didn't get that power. After beating our heads against Reichsman for quite awhile, we eventually gave up and abandoned the SF. My feeling is that we just didn't have enough debuff; from my observation, this is a common problem on SFs that people are doing for badges since I18 came out. Of all the heroes that have "Gone Rogue", very few are defenders or controllers; the great majority seem to be scrappers or tankers. Which kind of makes sense because it's easiest for meleers to solo tip missions, but I think it is leading to some very lopsided SF teams.

I also hit the inf cap again and emailed myself another 200M inf, and solo'd a flashback of the Paragon of Vice badge mission.


Tuesday

I hit the inf cap again and sent myself another 200M inf.

I played Snow Fox (8 loyalist ice/cold controller) on a 6 player Praetorian team of mostly dominators. I had picked up Arctic Air, the ice control toggle that confuses enemies; this is very END expensive at pre-Stamina levels, but I had a teammate say that I was "probably more useful just standing there with the toggle on than the rest of the team," so it was clearly working. This team got Snow Fox to level 11 before breaking up.

Marcia Law (25 hero pistols/kin corruptor) joined a vigilante tip mission team, doing 2 vigilante alignment missions and 2 vigilante morality missions (for other players, but it counted like a vigilante tip). This got Marcia to level 26.

Fire Maiden (43 rogue SS/fire brute) did an ITF in 28m 59s, getting to level 44. I also solo'd an MA mission called Wrath of the Glacier King, which was a 1-mission arc where you fight ice monsters and Canadians; there didn't seem to be a lot more plot than that. I was also a little confused that the Canadian Mounties summoned robots and used laser rifles. I ended up giving this arc 3 stars, which may be too generous now that I think about it.

Mystery Girl (50 vigilante emp/pistols defender) helped kill Ghost of Scrapyard.


Wednesday

Shield Maiden (50 villain mace/shield brute) joined an all-shield ITF team. We had 6 shield scrappers and 2 shield brutes, running at +1 difficulty. We cleared most of missions 1 and 2, went general-to-general in mission 3, and cleared a path up the left walkways in the final mission. We didn't actually have that much trouble despite lack of debuff; a couple of the less heavily IO'd toons died a few times, and I found that my build seems to eat END too quickly (people started dumping blues on me after awhile). Interestingly, after my toggles dropped from running out of END, I was still over 60% defense to all positions, just from Phalanx Fighting, other peoples' Grant Cover, and my own IO bonuses. I was tempted to leave my toggles off to save END, but ended up keeping them on. Anyway, even without debuffs we were able to beat up Romulus pretty handily, finishing the TF in 44m 15s.

Rain Dancer (50 hero storm/archery defender) joined a Kahn TF that finished in 35m 24s with no serious issues. A teammate complimented me on her background story.

Fire Maiden (44 rogue SS/fire brute) did another ITF, in 33m 37s. We had a little trouble positioning Romulus; for a little while he ran out of sight of his nictus and we had to get them together again to let him rez properly; otherwise no issues.

Finished the night soloing. I solo'd Fire Maiden through Until the End of the World, a villain AE arc where you find out about this other villain with serious psychological problems and an unhealthy obsession with building lifelike androids, and end up profiting from his misfortune. This was pretty good and I gave it 5 stars. I also did 3 hero tip missions as Olivia Q (50 hero MA/SR scrapper) and a flashback of the Spelunker mission on Idealist (50 hero fire/thermal controller) to get the Atlas Medallion.

Added: Until the End of the World (#431270) V40-54
You discover another villain's obsession with building lifelike robots, and find a way to profit.

Source: Glazius' CoHMR Aggregator thread.

9/13/2010

Last Thursday

I had company over in RL on Thursday night, so was on CoH only briefly, during which time Thunder Girl (50 hero elec/SR scrapper) solo'd 4 hero alignment missions. San Min also finished Fistful of Suziku; it was pretty fun and I gave it 5 stars.

Also of note, my Contact Tree for MA Arcs on the Mission Architect forum got stickied by the forum mods! I was very psyched about this. I'm glad this list is getting used as a resource for people to find MA arcs.


Friday

San Min (50 hero MA/will scrapper) and Spacegirl (50 hero mind/rad controller) both solo'd their hero morality missions, confirming their heroic alignment and getting 50 reward merits each.

A friend was running heroic alignment missions, so I duo'd Fire Maiden (41 rogue SS/fire brute) through 4 hero missions, then swapped to Strong Woman (50 hero inv/SS tanker) for 1 more hero mission.

Police Woman (50 vigilante AR/dev blaster) hit the inf cap again, and I mailed myself another 200M inf. I also finally took the leap and did the villain morality mission, converting to villain alignment. I've been kinda inching up towards this for weeks now, and finally took the plunge because I wanted the extra badges. Thankfully, the villain morality mission didn't require eating babies or anything that I think is really evil (though, I suppose it probably should).

Instantly upon turning villain, I was awarded the following badges:

Night Widow
Wolf Spider Tac Ops
Wailer Queen
Wolf Spider Enforcer
Marshal
Headline Stealer
Born in Battle
High Pain Threshold
Demonic
Megalomaniac
Force of Nature
Invader
Villainous
Dastardly
Descended

...for a total of 852 badges. Interestingly, it awarded me several villain accolades that I technically had not done all the prerequisites for, but it gave me them anyway because I had the equivalent hero accolade (for example, I don't have the Exterminator badge but it gave me Born in Battle anyway, I assume because I have Portal Jockey). It also demoted me from SG leader of Liberty Force (which I had kinda inherited due to the massive idleness of the original leaders).

After turning villain I went to Ouro to start flashbacking the villain badge missions, beginning with the Plague Carrier badge mission, which I finished in 10m 38s and got me 2 merits and the badge. Strangely, I got a tip from a level 15 boss; I had thought only level 20+ mobs dropped tips. Perhaps exemping via Ouro somehow is treated differently.

I played Fire Maiden for a bit, helping people farm EoEs on Monster Island for the Hamidon raid; picked up 3 of them and emailed them all to the raid leader, since I wasn't originally planning on going to the raid. Fire Maiden was only 41 so you can definitely get EoEs at lower than level 45.

Someone was asking on LB for help getting their alignment mission for quite awhile, which caused me to swap to Mayday (50 rogue fortunata) to try and help. This person proved to be a 22 rogue widow, who complained bitterly about how hard it was to solo with his widow. This was kinda surprising to me because I think VEATs are incredibly (almost unfairly) good. I duo'd one of my tip missions with him; he was obviously struggling, but I tried to give him a few pointers (for example, I suggested he run his defensive toggles, which he preferred to leave off because they cost too much END). We did get a tip for his morality mission though, after which I bid him adieu and good luck.

After that I swapped back to Police Woman (now a 50 villain AR/dev blsater), wrote a new "framed, fled to Rogue Isles" background story for her, and solo'd 4 rogue alignment missions to start the way back to redemption. This got me the Well Informed badge. I also joined a 7 player (including 1 toon who was a 2nd box that did nothing but sit at the contact) 1st villain respec, which we finished in 11m 5s. Completing the respec did not give me a badge or a respec (I believe this is because I've already done the 3 hero respec trials) but did give me merits. I also did an 8-player Sharkhead SF with this team, finishing in a speedy 20m 56s.

Kyrie Eleison (50 hero fire/regen scrapper) did an ITF; our team was kinda light on support and it seemed like there was one guy who was pretty much dead all the time. We had one team wipe against Romulus, but got him on the rematch, finishing in 41m 28s.

Olivia Q (50 hero MA/SR scrapper) did a speedy Kahn TF in 28m 57s.

Fire Maiden (41 rogue SS/fire brute) did a clear-most ITF in 43m 18s without any serious problems, getting a Fortunata Hypnosis (chance for placate) recipe drop and level 42.

Mystery Girl (50 hero emp/pistols defender) did a Katie TF. I got a costume compliment as well as sass for being a pistols defender (though I think this was just teasing). Based on our team mix I decided to keep AB on our dominator, which gave him enough recharge to make him perma-dom, which I think he liked. Finished in 21m 1s and afterwards we also tracked down and killed Jack-in-Irons and Eochai.

I stayed up pretty late writing a new, quicky 1-mission AE story arc called Crisis at Talos Towers. The basic idea is that a Rikti dropship crashes into a Talos skyscraper and you have to rescue the police and civilians inside. It's an homage to the 9/11 attacks, and I wrote it because I knew someone was planning on running a team to play 9/11 themed AE missions the next day.


Saturday

Around noon I hopped over to Triumph to join the AE team running 9/11 themed missions. 6 players ran through Crisis at Talos Towers; response was generally favorable, the most critical remark I got was "too short, I wanted more!" which I figure is still pretty good.

We also ran through American Patriot, Defender of Earth, a 2 mission arc where the first mission you're rescuing American founding fathers, and the second you're battling alien invaders. There was some okay writing, but the two missions didn't really logically fit together. I gave it 3 stars. We also did Made to Wave the Flag which is a cool arc where you're kidnapped by Malta and they try to brainwash you; I had played this before and gave it 5 stars.

Returning to Liberty, I solo'd Police Woman (50 villain AR/dev blaster) through flashbacks of the Stone Cold and Bone Collector badge missions, as well as another 4 rogue alignment missions.

Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) joined an 8-player Silver Mantis SF (including 1 contact sitter) of mostly brutes; this was a speed SF where most missions were handled by dragging mobs into each other, to fight each other. Finished in a very speedy 37m 17s.

The Saturday Hamidon raid was forming up; I hadn't originally planned on going, but they needed help, especially damage dealers, so I logged on Thunder Girl (50 hero elec/SR scrapper) to help, mostly because Thunder Girl can fly (helps a ton against mitos).

I got assigned to the "Yellow Assault" team, which was 4 scrappers, 1 stalker, 1 brute, and 2 emp defenders. Our job was to target and kill yellow mitos. While actually doing this, we seemed to get a ton of aggro from cytos, especially after the first bloom at 75% life where most of our team got clobbered. I heard conflicting stories on what happened, but most were saying "tank team dropped the ball". Some said the mitos repopped in slightly different positions, which left the tankers in the wrong positions, while someone else said the tankers' emp had gone afk and let all the tankers die. I'm not quite sure what the truth was.

Regardless, the raid leader called on us to retreat to Coward's Rock and we spent some time regrouping. On our second try things went a lot more smoothly and we did a lot better handling the next two respawns, finally killing Hamidon. Elapsed time from entering the goo to defeating Hamidon was about 40 minutes. I pretty regularly get HOs through STF and RSF, so I chose to take the 53 merits.

A friend insisted I attend a "civil servant" themed costume contest on Virtue on Saturday night. About 3 years ago I had reserved the name "Police Woman" on every server it was available on, so I actually was able to attend as a (level 3) Police Woman. The costume contest was in Galaxy City, sponsored by the American Legion SG on Virtue server, and WOW it was crowded, more people than I've ever seen in Galaxy City. It was actually quite a cool event. I did not win the costume contest, but I got named a runner up, and they gave me 50M infl, plus another 2M inf for answering a trivia question. I couldn't figure out what to do with this inf (you can't send email at level 3); I tried to bid in their charity auction, but it got out of my price range (even with 50M in my pocket). Ultimately, I gave it to my friend who had originally invited me there, and then he emailed it back to me.

Blond Justice (50 hero broadsword/shield scrapper) spent 2 hero merits on a Celerity +Stealth proc recipe; looking at the market value, Celerity stealth procs are a pretty good deal for hero merits, IMHO. Blond Justice also solo'd 5 Vigilante missions; I figure, she chops up villains with a sword....she should be a vigilante.

Primadonna (50 rogue sonic/kin corruptor) did a quick Kahn TF (31m 52s) then a Statesman TF (47m 26s) getting a Nucleolus.

My computer has been making funny grinding noises (I think it's the fan in the power supply) and it's 3 years old, so I decided to buy a new computer, which arrived via FedEx today. My new machine is:

HP Pavilion Elite HPE-300z PC
• Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
• AMD Phenom(TM) X4 965 quad-core processor [3.4GHz, 2MB L2 + 6MB L3 shared, up to 4000MHz]
• 12GB DDR3-1333MHz SDRAM [4 DIMMs]
• FREE UPGRADE! 750GB 7200 rpm SATA 3Gb/s hard drive from 500GB
• Microsoft Office Starter 2010
• Norton Internet Security(TM) 2010 - 15 month
• 1.8GB NVIDIA Geforce GTX 260 [2 DVI, HDMI and VGA adapters]
• No speakers
• LightScribe 16X max. DVD+/-R/RW SuperMulti drive
• Integrated Ethernet port, No wireless LAN
• 15-in-1 memory card reader, 1 USB, 1394, audio
• No TV Tuner
• Integrated sound
• HP USB keyboard and optical mouse
• ArcSoft MediaConverter 3.0
• HP Home & Home Office Store in-box envelope

I had tried to get a good processor, lots of RAM and a decent graphics card, all things that I figure will affect my gaming experience. I found it was MUCH easier to install CoH on Win7 than it was on Windows Vista (which was what my old machine has). Just running around in CoH in "full" Ultra mode it seemed like I got 30fps in outdoor zones, 60fps indoors.


Sunday

Police Woman solo'd the Mask Maker badge mission in flashback.

Fire Maiden (42 rogue SS/fire brute) did an Abandoned Sewer Trial in 29m 19s, getting to level 43, then a speed Imperious TF in 19m 40s (insanely fast). I think our team mix was 1 kin, 1 rad, 6 melee damage. Between foot stomp, burn, fiery embrace, rage and fury, it felt like I was doing massive damage to the hapless Romans, though I also got squished once by an exploding crystal. I did this on my new computer, which maintained 30fps even in the valley of lag on mission 3, though dropped to 15fps when fighting the hordes of Romans atop the towers. Still, not too bad.

Kyrie Eleison (50 hero fire/regen scrapper) solo'd 3 vigilante missions and the vigilante morality mission, changing alignment to vigilante.

A second Hamidon raid was called on Sunday night; they were asking for support toons, so I brought Mystery Girl (50 hero emp/pistols defender). I was again assigned to the yellow assault team, which was 7 scrappers (all willpower or shields) and me as an emp defender. My team did not really seem to take much damage (tank team must've been on the ball that night) so I mostly concentrated on buffing; I kept about 4 Fortitudes going and CM on everyone (we were supposed to CM everyone, even non-squishies, due to the high magnitude of the mito attacks), and threw AB at the main tank whenever I could. This raid went a lot smoother than the Saturday one, probably due to us having more player experience, and we handled the first several repops with no issues. The raid leader was feeling confident and called for us to fight through the final bloom, and this actually worked. Elapsed time was 16 minutes between entering the goo and defeating Hamidon. I again took the 53 merits. I had about 24fps at the raid initially, then I turned everyone's names off to get up to 30fps; in the goo itself I still dropped to about 12fps, but this was with the full raid in view, firing off powers while in ultra mode, so I'm OK with that.

After the raid I did some pretty heavy duty IO'ing for Mystery Girl, slotting 2 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% rchg) IOs, a set of 5 Armageddon, a set of 5 Ragnarok, and a set of 5 Adjusted Targeting, adding +40% global recharge altogether. I'm going for recharge on Mystery Girl since it means more Fortitude, more AB, and more frequent heals. This gives me a total of +150% recharge when Hasten is up; I have about an 12 second gap where Hasten is down.

All this made me feel pretty overconfident, so I solo'd 2 vigilante tip missions (soloing Nemesis with an emp defender seems dumb, but it actually worked okay; I even got the Unveiler badge) and the vigilante morality mission (changing Mystery Girl's alignment to vigilante).

Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) joined a 6-player team that did 3 rogue tip missions.

San Min (50 hero MA/will scrapper) joined the RWZ raid, picking up 574 merits which I used on a Vanguard storage sack.

There was some drama on LB after I silenced a couple people who were spamming the channel. There's more hostility towards me for my actions as an LB moderator than I realized; some people seem to have gotten the idea that I am playing favorites. I guess I'll have to watch out for that, though I think that I silence people on my friends list all the time (because, frankly, a lot of my friends have big mouths). I heard second-hand that there was also drama on Ghost Legion channel (which I had been kicked from some time ago for being an LB mod) where a friend was trying to defend me; I told him not to, because I could take it, but I think he ended up leaving that other channel, which is really too bad.

Later that night I played Silk Steel (11 resistance kat/fire scrapper) on a 6-player ninja-themed team in Imperial City. We did Jessica Flores' story arc; some of the missions were kinda weird, using experimental tech I guess. On the "Manipulate Files" mission we found that the whole team had to actually exit the mission for the mission to complete. We started on Luke Larson's story arc, doing a couple missions from that before calling it a night. This got Silk Steel to level 14.

I could not think of any 9/11 themed arcs that I know of ... so I decided to write one.


Crisis at Talos Towers
Arc ID: 448216
Level range: 43-49

A Rikti dropship has struck the Talos Towers, causing massive structural damage and setting them on fire. First responders attempted to evacuate the building, but have themselves been trapped by the fire and debris. They need a hero. Can you help?



It's a quickie 1-mission arc, kinda thin on plot and has not been playtested by anyone but me, but it should be on-topic. Not sure if I will keep it published long term, though, since it's really just for this particular date.

Added: A Fistful of Suziku (#440157) H40-54
A cloning device creates flawed duplicates of yourself and your contact.

Source: recommended in MA Arc Finder global chat.



Re-added: OMG, it's the LOLBAT! (#337435) H35-40
Villainz are in ur city breaking ur lawz. Can I haz help?

Source: previously on this list, recently reappeared in AE as mysteriously as it vanished.

9/8/2010

Last Wednesday

Primadonna (50 rogue sonic/kin corr) ran an ITF on a 7-player team in 22m 4s, then solo'd 3 rogue alignment missions. Got a Gaussian's Synchronized Fire Control (chance for build up) and a Respec recipe as drops.

Marcia Law (20 hero pistols/kin corr) joined an 8 player team that did 1 vigilante alignment mission, then Sister Psyche TF, clearing some missions and stealthing others, in 2h 5m. This got Marcia to level 23.


Thursday

Police Woman (50 vigilante AR/dev blaster) hit the inf cap again at Wentworth's (so I made 200M inf in 2 days) and mailed myself another 200M inf dividend. I also did some badging, doing a Peregrine Island mayhem for Gate Closer, hitting plaques for Swashbuckler and Arachnos Rising, and killing gremlins and Goldbrickers for Electrician and Fort Knox. I found that despite what the progress bar actually says, all Goldbrickers count for the badge, not just bosses. While hunting in Cap I also stopped to help a team kill Deathsurge.

Marcia Law (23 hero pistols/kin corr) joined a Positron 1 TF, a team of mostly villains with 2 kins. We had a team wipe in the last mission on the steps of City Hall, against the massive CoT ambush, but otherwise did fine, finishing in 54m 46s and getting Marcia to level 24.

Switched to Fire Maiden (36 rogue SS/fire brute) for Positron 2 TF; I had somehow forgotten that I already did Positron 2 on Fire Maiden last week (Going Rogue's side-switching feature has messed up my recordkeeping of which toons have done which TFs/SFs) but we did it anyway. We had some trouble with one brute on the team who liked to run off on his own and solo, and on the last mission we beat Dr Vahzilok but couldn't get the mission to complete, even clearing all the nearby spawns. We were close to giving up but finally caught a stray runner, completing the TF in 1h 17m. This also got Fire Maiden to level 37. I went on to solo 4 hero alignment missions from various tips I picked up; briefly joined a 6 player pickup team to do my 5th hero mission of the day, which was to rescue Sister Jocasta from KoA, but she got killed (I think she died of caltrops, ironically) and then the mission became uncompleteable. The team gave up and wanted to go farm at that point, so I excused myself and solo'd a 5th hero mission on my own. A little later I joined the fire/rad superteam for part of the new Tina McIntyre story arc; we got to beat up a new version of Anti-Matter. I also joined an 8-player Citadel TF that was on +3 difficulty; the team was actually strong enough to handle this, and cleared most of the TF handily. I disconnected during the last mission, but the team was nice enough to wait for me to get back before finishing. Completed the TF in 1h 50m and got Fire Maiden to level 39.

Thunder Girl (50 hero elec/SR scrapper) solo'd 3 hero missions and the hero morality mission, confirming her hero alignment and gaining 50 merits.

San Min (50 hero MA/will scrapper) solo'd 2 hero missions.

Spacegirl (50 hero mind/rad controller) joined a 5-player team doing hero alignment missions; got a costume compliment and did 5 hero tips, then I switched to Rain Dancer (50 hero storm/archery defender) who did another 5 hero tips. I guess I'm really into tip missions right now!


Friday

Police Woman (50 vigilante AR/dev blaster) hit the inf cap again due to marketeering (another 200M in 2 days), mailed myself another 200M inf. I also had been vigilante long enough to get the Fear Incarnate power; I tested it out some fearing Arachnoids while getting a chem nuke in Warburg. It only affects minions, but it still seems kind of fun. Some other heroes were getting Warburg nukes for one of the raids scheduled that night, but were having trouble with villains attacking them, so I joined them and chased stalkers for awhile. I think I killed one (he was slippery, had to run him down in the underground tunnels) and got killed once (triple teamed on the hero-side beach).

Mayday (50 rogue fortunata) joined a speed Lady Grey TF which tried a Hamidon strategy of clearing the yellows and blues, then having 3 fortunata attack green mitos while the rest of the team defeated pylons. Not sure if that actually sped things up or not; we finished in 31m 58s.

Blond Justice (50 hero sword/shield scrapper) did an ITF in 25m 56s and got an Unbreakable Constraint (HOLD/RCHG/ACC) recipe drop. During the final fight LB was exploding with drama, fallout and recriminations from the two raids that occurred Friday night. I had to get heavy-handed with warning and silencing people, which was kind of a pain while fighting Romulus and hordes of Romans through ITF lag.

Star Amethyst (50 hero dark/ice defender) did a Statesman TF. We were fine til the last mission, where we rushed the patron AVs and kinda got off to a bad start with lots of people dying and AVs scattering all over. After recovering from this, we did beat up the patron AVs, but it took awhile; it felt like our team had unusually low DPS. We also had a bad start against Lord Recluse, I think we attacked the red tower before the tanker attacked Lord Recluse, which worked out poorly for us. The tank ended up dying and Lord Recluse went berserk against the squishies; after a few minutes and a few runs back from the hospital, we got the situation back under control and completed the TF in 59m 28s. I got an Endoplasm, and used the tips from STF to solo 3 hero alignment missions.

San Min (50 hero MA/will scrapper) did a Dr Kahn TF; we had a very strong team and knocked it out in 30m 52s.

Thunder Girl (50 hero elec/SR scrapper) did an ITF in 30m 41s.


Saturday

I played Idealist (50 hero fire/thermal controller) on an 8 player team doing hero tip missions in Independence Port; while doing this, we spotted Lusca and took him down, with help from another team or two.

Shield Maiden (50 villain mace/shield brute) did an ITF in 24m 17s, then used the tips from that to do 5 rogue alignment missions.

Jumped over to Triumph server to play Tera Watt (50 hero FF/elec defender) on a 5-player team doing AE story missions. We played through Project Z, which seemed to be a somewhat generic zombie/5th Column plot; I gave it 3 stars. Also played Hack!, which had an interesting set up, but was rather incomplete as it was really the lead-in to a live event that occurred earlier in the summer. Still a pretty neat idea, so I gave it 4 stars. Finally we did Manimals of Dr Morrow, which had an evil scientist creating human/animal hybrids; the plot was pretty basic and it seemed like there were an excessive number of masterminds. I ended up giving that 3 stars.

Spacegirl (50 hero mind/rad controller back on Liberty) helped a 4 player team with the hero morality mission.

Marcia Law (24 hero pistols/kin corruptor) joined a 6 player team for vigilante missions; we did 3 but I only got credit for 2 due to an inconvenient disconnect. Did get a compliment on her background story (which I had just written up earlier this weekend) and a couple on her costume (though I think this was mostly because the Praetorian Police costume pieces are shiny and new).

Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) did a 6-player ITF in 25m 46s, then solo'd 1 rogue alignment mission.

Spy Girl (35 rogue MA/ninj stalker) joined a 5-player spy-themed team (well, 3 of us were spy-themed anyway) doing Striga missions. I had gotten the Duplicity temp power for being a rogue for long enough, and this is actually a lot of fun; the confuse effect feels just right for a sneaky Spy Girl type. This ended up growing into an 8-player Moonfire TF; we had no healer whatsoever (well...except triage beacon), just defense from traps' FFG and a VEAT, and some trick arrows for debuffs. Nevertheless we did just fine and completed the TF in 1h 5m, getting Spy Girl to 36.


Sunday

Star Amethyst (50 hero dark/ice defender) joined a 4-player team that did 6 hero alignment missions (I know only 5 count, but I needed to get a morality tip drop), then her hero morality mission. Confirming her hero status earned me 50 reward merits.

I switched to Spacegirl (50 hero mind/rad controller) and did one more hero mission before the team broke up.

Schadenfreude (50 villain AR/pain corruptor) joined a 7-player team which did 3 villain tip missions.

Millie Volt (50 rogue elec/elec brute) joined an 8-player Synapse TF. I probably could've brought someone who got exp for this, but I was interested in seeing how elec armor does against clockwork. We finished the TF in 1h 55m (including beating up Babbage), and Millie's high energy resist and END drain resist made it feel really easy; none of the clockwork could really hurt her at all.

A friend was planning a Cathedral of Pain trial, and asked me to play my dark defender, so I brought Star Amethyst into Warburg and got the 3 nukes; on the last nuke, I got killed by a stalker waiting by the missile launch computer, but he let me kill him back to get the launch code back. I hadn't played dark miasma much in PVP before, and I tried dropping Tar Patch and Ice Storm on places I expected to stand still, in order to detect stalkers; turns out neither of these did any good, since Tar Patch doesn't break hide and Ice Storm needs to hit.

At the CoP trial, I got nominated to be a team leader, which meant I had to temporarily quit my SG and join the Debt Junkies SG (which was hosting the raid). This was kind of a bummer as I had 700,000 prestige; oh well.

My team consisted of 3 defenders (dark, emp, kin), 1 controller (ill/rad), 2 scrappers, 1 blaster and a fire tanker. We were assigned to the east obelisk, and upon entering the zone, we flew over there. When the raid leader called for it, we killed all the mobs around the cube, then killed our obelisk down to about 15% life. When mobs respawned, we were supposed to kill all but one, that we were supposed to leave alive; we were really good at the killing part, not so good at the leaving-alive part. Took about 5 waves of mobs before we allowed any of them to live; I tried marking the one to keep alive with Freezing Ray, which for Star Amethyst encases the mob in a purple crystal.

One of the other teams looked like they were having trouble not destroying their obelisk (i.e., they kept killing the obelisk when they should leave it at low life, but alive). We eventually got all this straightened out and were able to coordinate killing all the obelisks, unlocking the second half of the trial.

The second half went nearly flawlessly; we all spawned Shivans and half of each team was called to set off Bio nukes to buff everyone and everything, then we tore apart the Rularuu mobs and started pounding on Aspect of Rularuu (at which point half the team was told to use the Chem and Nuclear warheads). We had warned everyone to expect the minions to respawn once Aspect of Rularuu got to low life, so we were well-prepared when that actually happened, and rapidly cleared the respawns. Turning back to the big bad guy, the second half of each team set off their various nukes and we smashed the Aspect of Rularuu flat. Total time for the trial was 15 minutes -- at least, according to the trial timer. We easily spent an hour ahead of time organizing teams and cat-herding everyone together, and probably more than that gathering nukes and shivans.

After the CoP trial I went back to doing villain tip missions, initially playing April Fool (50 villain thug/TA MM). I started soloing, but various people kept wanting to join me, so I was up to 3 players by the time April finished her 5 villain missions, then I switched to Schadenfreude and did another 2 villain missions for her. My third team member said something like "I hear you think red side isn't dead" and so I ended up recruiting more, getting our team up to 5 villains and doing another 5 villain missions with Indigo Ifrit (50 villain fire/rad corr), then switching again to do 5 villain missions with Lady Arachne (50 villain arachnos soldier). This all led to my team thinking I was totally addicted to tip missions. Yeah, maybe so.

After the villain team broke up I solo'd another 5 hero tip missions with Thunder Girl (50 hero elec/SR scrapper).


Monday

Police Woman hit the influence cap again (this time 200M in 3 days) and I emailed myself another 200M inf.

Fire Maiden (39 rogue SS/fire brute) joined a 7-player Ice Mistral SF which we completed in 46m. I found I really like Fiery Embrace and Burn (both were buffed in I18), they seem to do a LOT of damage.

Police Woman (50 vigilante AR/dev blaster) did a 7-player Cap SF in 35m 53s, then a 5-player Silver Mantis SF, which was 4 scrappers and me as blaster. One of these scrappers did not actually enter even one of the missions; we knew him, so thought this was weird, but eventually decided to kick him from the team before the last mission, since he really hadn't done a single thing. The rest of us were able to clear the Sky Raiders base's defenses (I recently found out from another friend that you only have to kill the turrets in order to spawn Duray) and dropped Duray even without any support toons. Finished the SF in 49m 33s. This got Police Woman the Binder of Beasts and Pirate Hunter badges (836 badges total now).

Police Woman ended up soloing 5 villain tip missions after that. I'm totally schizophrenic about which alignment to go for; I kinda want Police Woman to be a hero, but the temptation of badges for going all the way to red side is very strong.

Went on to play Fire Maiden on a clear-most ITF on +1 difficulty. We had 1 person mostly AFK for most of the TF; the team leader talked about kicking him but never quite did, instead vowing not to team with that player again (who has a history of AFKing through TFs). Nevertheless, we finished in 1h 7m and Fire Maiden got to level 40.

Fire Maiden also did a 7-player Rule of Three (Positron 1) TF, with a very dom-heavy team, which made the fight against our evil opposites quite crazy. I had assumed the evil clone of our cold defender was the greatest threat, so was trying to kill her, but this was a miscalculation because all the dominator doppelgangers went wild with gremlin summoning and mass confusion. We still won the fight, but it was really messy. Finished TF in 44m 50s.

Some friends who had come back to the game with Going Rogue wanted to play newbies in Praetoria, and we had settled on a theme of "everyone must be a ninja". I had been enjoying another newbie toon who was katana/fire, so I rolled up another katana/fire scrapper to be my ninja toon. To our mutual dismay, I and another teammate had picked nearly identical character names; my toon was "Silk Steel" and his was "Silken Steel". Fortunately, we had different costumes, at least. "I guess this makes us the Steel clan," someone quipped. We had a team of 6 ninja (with a variety of ATs) and worked our way through Praetor White's story arc, then Cleopatra's story arc. This got us to level 10. Of note, we tried to use team TP to complete the Sergeant Hastings (sp?) escort more quickly in the mission to rescue the PPD, but it didn't work, we had to go back and get him.


Tuesday

Spacegirl (50 hero mind/rad controller) exemped to an 8-player hero team doing level 40 hero tip missions. We had a couple team wipes to Malta ambushes due to getting spread out, but eventually completed 2 hero missions; this filled up Spacegirl's alignment bar, so I ended up exiting the team to take a break at that point.

Later, a friend asked me to join his Master of RSF attempt, and to play a debuffer for him. I ended up refusing; talking to him, I figured out his team so far was 1 tanker, 5 scrappers and blasters, and no support, and being the lone support toon on a hopeless MoRSF did not sound like much fun. I felt kinda bad about refusing, but I felt this attempt would be doomed and tried to tell him so.

Eventually he relented and decided to run a Silver Mantis SF, which seemed a lot more doable. I joined this with Fire Maiden (40 rogue SS/fire brute) and we finished in 56m 33s, getting Fire Maiden to 41.

Afterwards, through some trickery with getting another person to invite me in, Police Woman got the Libertarian badge from Fire Maiden's Founders Falls mayhem mission; being a Liberty server supporter, I decided to switch my displayed badge to this. I also did another 4 villain missions, getting me right to the edge of converting to full villain. I also hit the inf cap at the market yet again (this time 200M in 1 day) and emailed myself another 200M inf. The market is just plain printing money for me right now. I'll figure something to spend it on eventually.

San Min (50 hero MA/will scrapper) started soloing through an AE arc called A Fistful of Suziku, a story about a mad science gizmo that starts duplicating people, and takes advantage of the new doppelganger features in AE. I got through the first 4 missions before getting tired and calling it a night; so far it's pretty neat though.