PoliceWoman

2/21/2008

It looks like my scribblings have inspired another player to start blogging their adventures: Navar's villain blog. Cool!

I finally started moving on acquiring purple IO recipes for Police Woman (50 AR/dev); previously I hadn't bothered because until recently you lost their bonuses when exemping down, which I do a lot. I decided the best way would be a combination of bidding at Wentworth's and hunting/playing at level 50. I put up a bunch of lowball bids for purple recipes I was interested in, figuring I'll let these bids sit for awhile to see if anyone bites. Patience is a big money saver and money maker at Wentworth's. Despite bidding at the low end, I still ended up committing about 250M infl in bids; and though I'm pretty ludicrously rich (or at least I thought I was), this still was a pretty big bite out of my net worth. By the end of the night I had netted 3 purple recipes, from the Gravitational Anchor (immob) set, for a total cost of 25M influence -- and I suspect I got these at a "good" price. Purple recipes are expensive! I hope they end up being worth it.

I did a couple level 50 Ouroboros flashbacks; following High Beam's flashback badging guide, I did the Strange Case of Benjamin A Decker story arc (set in the Rikti War Zone) twice; once with enemies buffed and no epic powers allowed, and once with myself perma-debuffed and no temp powers allowed. This went fairly quickly (about 20 mins each run) though I think the last mission, which requires you to get 4 glowies without fighting certain key NPCs, would've been hard without stealth. From this I got the Adjuster, Intrepid, Marginalized, Temerarious (is that even a word?) and Demarcated badges. Also, using the Real Numbers feature I could tell that the perma-debuff is a flat -50% DMG modifier across the board; there's also an ACC debuff but I'm not sure how to read the stats it shows for base accuracy. Also a status protection debuff, I think, but being a squishy I didn't even look at that since I have no status protection to lose.

While hanging around in RWZ I saw a mother ship raid being organized, so I joined in. After clearing the pylons we boarded the mother ship itself, and my team got credit for a bomb, edging me a little closer to that badge, and fought an awful lot of Rikti. We killed a lot and we died a lot. I still had "Ranged DEF" on my combat monitor, which was actually pretty helpful; I could use the combat monitor to tell whether I was standing inside someone's dispersion field (not easy to tell from the visuals when 30 players are present fighting 100 rikti) and I was noticably safer when I did so. I got a lot of merits (of which I have plenty already) and I was kinda hoping this would be a place to get purple recipes (since everything you fight here is 50+) but I didn't get a single recipe drop while there, making me wonder whether you can even get recipes on raids (I never really watched for them before).

After that I did some of the Valentine's Day missions on Astarte (36 grav/emp controller on Protector) with two players from Demolition Girls SG, one of which volunteered to play a villain. We did both Ganymede's and Scratch's story arcs, resulting in the Beautiful badge and unlocking DJ Zero as a contact.

After that I played Rain Dancer (47 storm/archery defender), joining a pickup team that was asking for a "healer" on LBx. The LBxites were making fun of their use of the word "healer"; I asked the team leader if he could use a storm defender, and he seemed willing. It was an 8-player team running level 50 invincible missions in Maria Jenkins' story arc, the one with all the Praetorians. Normally teams that ask for a "healer" are bad news, but this team actually really worked well; it had a tanker, two kinetics (apparently kin doesn't count as "healing") and a lot of damage. I mostly focused on dropping Freezing Rain (for the -RES and some mitigation from knockdown) and using O2 Boost to single-target heal people; we had enough damage that by the time I got my bow out to attack, things would usually be dead. This team basically vaporized Chimera, Malaise, and Black Swan, almost like they weren't there. Diabolique dodged us for awhile by flying away (and she's a dirty cheater, because my Snowstorm is supposed to prevent her from flying) but eventually got chased down and defeated. Our last mission, against Siege, was kind of messy because for some reason the team split up into 3 or 4 parts to click the many glowies; this resulted in about half the team getting ganked by killer robots. Once we regrouped, however, we were able to get the remaining generators, then went to the top of the factory and beat up Siege. Rain Dancer hit level 48 on this team (I ended up adding 3 slots to Temp Invulnerability, which now has 1 ENDRDX and 3 RES SOs), and also got the Shrouded badge from hanging out in Diabolique's dimension.

After that I played Yuki-Onna (35 ice/cold corruptor) on a 4-player Liberty Force SG team doing level 36 missions in Johnny Sonata's story arc, getting her to level 36; I added 2 slots to Sleet (which now has a total of 3 RCHG SOs) and one to Glacial Shield (now slotted with 2 DEF SOs).

2/20/2008

Did some server hopping, starting off playing Astarte (35 grav/emp controller on Protector server) with an 8-player team of Demolition Girls SG. The tanker seemed happy to see me join; it looked like the team was recovering from a wipeout when I arrived. We were doing Cadao Kestrel's story arc for two different players and I think we fought the AV-level Envoy of Shadows four times. We had at least two total wipeouts that I remember. Once, we suddenly walked into the Envoy AV who was just standing in a generic hallway with a couple spawns of CoT; he totally surprised us and had killed half the team before we even realized an AV was on us. The second time, we were going through one of the Oranbega portals which led directly into a nasty fight; with the team split up while trickling through this portal, we got defeated in detail. After a few misadventures in this vein we got our act together, however, and started beating up CoT in earnest, and by the end of the night, defeating the Envoy had become routine.

Astarte vs the Envoy of Shadows

After that team broke up, I played Vesta (16 fire/SS tanker on Triumph server), initially soloing but later joining a 4-player pickup team doing level 16ish radio missions in Skyway City. This was a small but competent team, and got Vesta to level 17.

After that I switched back to Liberty server and ran Schadenfreude (27 AR/traps corruptor) around reading plaques to get the Lorekeeper history badge, which unlocked Archmage Tarixus as a contact. I solo'd several of his missions, until he gave me the Soul Taker badge mission (needed for an accolade), which I'm currently sitting on until I see if anyone I know needs it.

A corruptor was calling out on LBx channel for people to come fight him in Recluse's Victory, so I switched to Police Woman (50 AR/dev) and poked around in RV for a bit. I was using the new combat monitor to watch my stealth, perception, damage bonus and range defense, and it was actually pretty instructive. I can reach the perception cap for a blaster (which I knew) but also found I could reach the stealth cap for a blaster (which I hadn't realized; admittedly, this is much less than the stalker stealth cap). So I experimented with playing "like a stalker", or at least my idea of what stalkers do: shadowing possible targets and attacking when they looked vulnerable.

First I saw a mastermind wandering around with an Arachnos heavy; I sent a Longbow heavy to attack him. The MM sent his pets to attack the Longbow heavy, while flying really high to avoid damage; I figured he had to be out of bodyguard mode, so I jumped out at this point and stunned him with Beanbag, dropping him out of the sky (doing some falling damage) and I finished him off with some followup blasts.

After that, I shadowed a brute for a bit before attacking him. A brute is a tough matchup for me since they heavily resist my lethal damage (even more now that unresistable blaster damage has been cut to 10%) and this one was both slippery and aggressive. I kited around him a lot, but he could both hold/knockback me with Knockout Blow and stun me with something else (maybe a temp power?), forcing me to steadily eat break frees. I damaged him some but not quickly enough; he was able to outheal my DPS. I disengaged after I ran out of break frees; he issued some taunts over broadcast, but it helps to be thick-skinned in zone PvP, so I simply agreed that he was pretty scary. Meanwhile, I ran to Atlas Park to refill my inspiration tray. Returning to Recluse's Victory, I found the brute again, catching him while already wounded from fighting Longbow; admittedly, not a "fair" fight, but "fairness" is mythical in zone PvP. Eating some reds gave me enough damage to outpace his regen and I managed to score a kill. To my surprise, he self-rez'd on the spot; I started shooting him again, but he was too slippery to kill a second time. After fighting him a bit longer, I decided to quit while I was ahead. I never did find the original corruptor, but it was fun anyway.

After that, I joined a fairly bad 8-player level 50 pickup team in Peregrine Island, fighting Malta on an outdoor map. We had no tanker; instead, an illusion controller would absorb alpha strikes with Phantom Army. This was pretty leaky and a lot of damage got through to the team, especially from Gunslingers and Sappers (after I realized this, I started targeting these mobs for Beanbag/Taser/single target blasts). We had two SKs who were much too low, a 4 blaster and an 18 defender; the blaster at least was shooting stuff, but the defender seemed to be on autofollow, never attacking or buffing or even running sonic dispersion. When I asked if this person was AFK, another player said it was his second box; no one else seemed to have a problem with this, so I didn't push it. Anyway, I got to use Vengeance and Resuscitate twice on this mission (plus an empath rez'd some people too). After we finished this mission (which was a heroic level 50 mission), another player was saying we should do his invincible level 50 mission next. That seemed like a really good time to call it a night.

2/19/2008

I started off playing Spacegirl (42 mind/rad controller) on a Numina TF organized on LBx. Team mix was:

MA/inv scrapper
elec/ice blaster
will/SS tanker
will/fire tanker
grav/storm controller
mind/rad controller (me)
ill/rad controller
ill/kin controller

We had a few inexperienced players, one of which had to ask the way to get to Perez Park and Crey's Folly, but seemed to do okay overall. The illusionists sped things up a bit by stealthing the missions that could be stealthed, though we had a couple fatal stealthing accidents, once due to an attack being set on autofire, and once due to a illusion pet not agreeing with the whole stealthing thing. The big bottleneck of the TF was the Defeat 20 Vahzilok in Faultline mission; night was just ending as this mission came up, so we had to wait through a full day cycle before we could finish it. Our balanced team handled fights very well, though, including the final one against Jurassik.

After that, Schadenfreude (27 AR/traps corruptor) started a Steel Canyon mayhem mission and with some alt-swapping and the collusion of an SG-mate I got the Steel Worker badge (needed for an accolade) for both Schadenfreude and Yuki-Onna (35 ice/cold corruptor) and for two of my SG-mate's alts.

Yuki-Onna versus Infernal

After that, I played Yuki-Onna on a 3-player level 35 Liberty Force villain team. We fought hero-level Infernal, who went down pretty easily despite his many Longbow and demonic minions (we had a brute to tank, plus both cold and dark debuffs), then worked through all of Kelly Uqua's story arc.

After that team broke up I played Rain Dancer (46 storm/archery defender) as an SK on an 8-player level 50 Sisterhood hero team doing high difficulty AV missions in Peregrine Island. This was a fairly damage-heavy team with a solid tank and myself and a dark defender for support, and we pretty much trounced all opposition we encountered. We beat up Dominatrix, then shortly after we defeated Marauder, my internet connection went down, which ended the night for me.

2/18/2008

Played some on Virtue server as several people I know have been spending some time there. Started off playing Mercy Beaucoup (8 emp/sonic defender on Virtue), first on a pickup team, then on a 4-player Northern Lights team, getting to level 11, training in Combat Jumping and completing an Atlas safeguard to get the first fly pack. Even got to do some mild RP; I expositioned about how I hoped to be a hero to inspire Canadians of all ages, while a female archer teammate grumbled cattily about the sleaziness of Mercy's costume (which is basically a Canadian flag painted onto a leotard).

Also on Virtue I played Police Girl (2 AR/nrg blaster on Virtue, a character I had created last year purely as an imaginary Police Woman sidekick to use in the Comic Book Contest) and joined a pickup sewers team, which swiftly raced her up to level 5. One of the other players complimented me on play skill, which was a bit mystifying, because all I did was shoot stuff with feeble my level 2 powers (all of which were attacks) and not get me or my teammates killed. I can only surmise that current standards for pickup blasters must be very low.

On Liberty I played Schadenfreude (25 AR/traps corruptor), first spending some time in Bloody Bay getting the Shivan Shard temp power and the Gunner badge. While gathering meteor samples a fire/rad controller jumped me, but my FF Generator canceled his holds and let me turn around and hold him with a poison gas trap, allowing me to gun the controller down. A bit later I was fighting Shivans (working on the Woman in Black badge) when a controller/blaster duo jumped and quickly killed me. I ran back quickly and found them still hanging around in the same place, and so I jumped them in turn - first paralyzing the controller with poison gas and web grenades, killed her then turned to knock out the blaster. This was actually pretty lucky; I probably shouldn't have been able to pull a 1v2 like this off, but they were a little slow to react to my full frontal traps assault (and there's an expression you won't hear every day).

A bit later Schadenfreude was a lackey on a 4 player level 33-34ish Liberty Force villain team, doing the Carnie contact's story arc in St Martial where you generally sow chaos between villain factions, followed by an unrelated mission where we kidnapped (i.e. knocked out) a hero-level Luminary. Got Schadenfreude to level 27. There was a robo/FF MM on the team and I put Melee DEF and Ranged DEF on the new "Combat Monitor" and between his FFs, my FF Generator, a little from Combat Jumping, and a little more from a dark MM's Shadow Fall, the combat monitor listed my DEF as ranging between a healthy 31% to a fairly sick 56%, depending on how close we were standing to each other (for overlapping defense auras). I picked up Maneuvers at level 26 to try and stack even more defense.

I also played Rain Dancer (45 storm/archery defender) as an SK on a Lady Grey TF organized on the Sisterhood channel. Team mix was:

fire/nrg blaster
storm/archery defender (me)
2 dominators
fire/rad corruptor
bs/regen scrapper
dual/will scrapper
fire/kin controller

This team was a little squishy but seemed to have overpowering DPS; not only did we have 2 scrappers and a blaster, but also two sets of fire imps and fulcrum shift. My normal attack sequence is Freezing Rain, Aim, Rain of Arrows, but quite often I ended up hitting zero or one mobs with my RoA due to everything being killed before the arrows would hit. We didn't have a tanker, so our fire/kin controller heroically tanked for us, which often would get him beat up but mostly worked otherwise. Our team suffered occasional deaths but killed stuff at a ludicrous rate, so it worked out. We did have some trouble with Penelope Yin aggroing onto us in mission 1; no idea why, but the team decided to kill her off - which failed the mission, but we were still able to advance to mission 2. We had no trouble with the Riders or DraGon's mission. Against Hamidon we had some initial trouble focusing our damage on one target, but once we all agreed to assist one person we mopped the mitos up quickly.

Rain Dancer vs the Honoree

In the last mission neither of the AVs gave us any trouble, and I had a little fun using Hurricane to plow through the mobs of Rikti to reach the generators at the end. Rain Dancer got to level 46 and I added 3 slots to Tactics; so far I put 2 Adjusted Targeting IOs in there, giving her a bonus +2% damage.

I also played Police Woman (50 AR/dev) for a bit, soloing a flashback of Penelope Yin's story arc (which had come out long after Police Woman was level 50). I set "enemies buffed" for challenge settings, and on Heroic difficulty, the buffed enemies don't seem too bad. It maybe raises their level by 1, making the mission effectively Rugged. Since I was solo and moving slowly I watched the Combat window more than normal and I found that, against +0 minions and lieutenants, I was 95% chance to hit even with Targeting Drone off and no IO set bonuses (since I was exemped to 19, far below the level of my IOs), which surprised me. Against +1 minions I was also 95% to hit; against +1 lieutenants it started falling off to 87% to hit. It kind of makes me wonder if I'm overslotted for ACC and ToHit, but I can still miss Captain Mako when he's eluding, so I figure I can't be too accurate yet. (Hmm, maybe I need to fight Mako sometime with Real Numbers on.) Anyway, I solo'd this story arc and rescued Mr. Yin pretty easily; I already had the Rescuer badge from joining someone else once, but I did get the Courageous badge for doing a flashback with enemies buffed, which was the last level 15-19 flashback badge I needed.

2/16/2008

Been sick lately so haven't updated as often. Here's a quick overview of my CoH activities though:

Schadenfreude (19 AR/trap corruptor) mostly lackeyed to Liberty Force villains, getting to level 25 and picking up Stamina, Poison Gas Trap and Hover. I thought Hover was supposed to help reduce trap animations, but I didn't notice any big improvement, and I ended up using a veteran respec to switch to Combat Jumping instead.

Thunder Girl (37 will/nrg tanker) led a pickup team for a bit, then did all the Valentine's Day missions (getting all 5 Snaptooth rewards) and got to level 38, gaining Total Focus. I also slotted Energy Transfer with 3 Touch of Death (Acc/Dmg, Dmg/Rchg, Dmg/End/Rchg) and 3 Crushing Impact (Dmg/Rchg, Acc/Dmg/Rchg and Dmg/End/Rchg) which gives it a net +99.6% damage, +43.6% accuracy, +96% recharge and +38.8% end reduction, along with +2.63% max HP from set bonuses. Later I played Thunder Girl on a 5-player Sisterhood team that beat up the Envoy of Shadows twice.

I played Yuki-Onna (35 ice/cold corruptor) and helped heroes farm Hellfrosts/hordelings in Valentine's Day missions for a bit. I was kinda hoping this would be an easy way for me to get the Coldhearted badge also (needed for a villain accolade), but surprisingly, progress on this badge seemed incredibly slow. Did this for about an hour before it got too mindnumbing.

Brought April Fool (50 thug/TA mastermind) into Recluse's Victory for a couple sessions of PVP. First visit, I bushwhacked a blaster, then later a controller, then got blown away by an ice blaster who caught me too far from my pets. Left after not being able to find any heroes for awhile. Second visit I mostly fought a rad/psi defender and fire blaster duo. Started off mostly losing but turned things around and started winning once I focused on killing the defender first, and especially after I teamed up with a robot/traps MM.

Playing April I also solo'd the Tavish Bell story arc on Ruthless with no travel powers, no inspirations and no defeats. Managed to solo the fire brute elite boss, Arch-A (though I did have to flee once to respawn pets) and got the Troubleshooter, All for One/One For All, Suspended and Uninspired badges.

April Fool vs Arch-A

April also did a villain respec organized on LHO, which had:

ice/kin corruptor
fir/fire brute
dark/inv brute
SS/stone brute
thug/TA MM (me)
fire/will brute

The corruptor and I both got smeared by the Thorn Tree at the end and so ignominiously were dead for most of the final fight, which the 4 brutes managed to finish without any support.

I brought Spacegirl (42 mind/rad controller) out for several monster fights, helping heroes out with Lusca, Eochai and Jack in irons.

I played Flamebait (19 fire/thermal corruptor) on a 7 corruptor team of Demolition Girls SG, which pretty much steamrolled a bunch of villain missions. We got the Agent of Discord badge from a mission, and attempted Ghost of Scrapyard but were unable to overcome all the adds, though did get Hammerhead from killing his minions. Got Flamebait to level 24, training in Acrobatics, Stamina and Assault.

2/13/2008

After the patch I must've spent at least half an hour logging on different alts and looking at the pretty numbers that are displayed for combat stats now. A few key numbers:

- Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster), my main, has +22.5% damage and +80% recharge.
- Olivia Q (50 MA/SR scrapper) has 47% melee DEF, 41% range DEF and 37% AoE DEF. I feel better about respecing Elude out.
- April Fool (50 thug/TA MM) has +61.25% recharge.
- Rain Dancer (45 storm/archery defender) has +41.25% recharge (111.25% when hasten is up).
- Spacegirl (41 mind/rad corruptor) has +43.75% recharge (more when AM is up, but I didn't think to measure it).

Yeah, I like +recharge. Doing stuff more often is good.

The new numbers got me motivated to craft some more IO sets for Mega (50 SS/elec brute), and I bought some recipes and salvage from the Black Market. I found I was short 1 Demonic Threat Report; normally a common and cheap salvage, the Black Market was pretty cleaned out of these. I'm well off enough that I don't mind paying a little markup on stuff I need, so I gradually raised my bid; but when I had a 50,000 infamy bid out for a common salvage that I normally destroy or sell for 100, I decided it was too much. No way was I going to pay 100K or more for one! So I farmed magic salvage, playing Mega on a couple missions from a flashback of the Tavish Bell story arc. While doing this I kept Recharge on my combat monitor; I have a Force Feedback %chance of recharge slotted in Foot Stomp, and whenever it proc'd (which was often) my global recharge would pop from 36.25% to 96.25%, a very nice bonus. I also got a little surprised by the Rage drop, which now (mildly) crashes END; I wasn't expecting it so had all my toggles drop (although not fatally, thankfully). I'll need to get used to watching for it so that I can Power Sink my END back each time. After two missions I got my Demonic Threat Report. Of course when I went back to the Black Market, I had also successfully purchased one for 1000 infamy, too; so I ended up with two. Anyway, I ended up slotting a set of 5 Stupefy into Hand Clap (giving +6.25% recharge) and a set of 3 Performance Shifter into Power Sink (giving +1.88% max HP).

After that I played Astarte (34 grav/emp controller) on Protector server on a 7 player Demolition Girls SG team. Astarte got to level 35 and I picked up Absorb Pain, hoping to use this to save teammates from damage spikes; but the perverse nature of the universe immediately caused our team to start dying horribly anyway. In one case the tanker ran into two spawns of CoT but had forgotten to turn any toggles on; and in a couple other cases a blaster would get separated from the group and aggro roamers or ambushes; and there were a few more fights that just seemed to go sour for some reason. I didn't really get a shining moment where I saved everyone with healing, but I did get a lot of practice using Heal Other and Absorb Pain, when I had been a little afraid Absorb Pain might be a power I would only use once in a blue moon.

After that I played Schadenfreude (15 AR/traps corruptor) as a lackey on a 5-player level 30 Liberty Force SG team. I think they really did speed up exp in the level 13-20 range, because I was LK'd to the highest level team member and we just played normally (nothing PL-ish at all) and I still got to level 19 in short order. I picked up Force Field Generator at level 16 and Flamethrower at level 18.

After that I puttered around a bit in the character creator on Virtue server, trying to make a stalker for the latest set of Liberty Force theme characters: Praetorian (evil duplicate) versions of other SG members. For example, I'm assigned to make an evil version of a scrapper in our SG, while the scrapper's player is making an evil version of Police Woman. I made a dark/regen stalker (to be the evil counterpart of the dark/regen scrapper), but I'm thinking I may re-make her to tweak costume settings a bit to be a more evil looking version of the original heroine's costume.

2/12/2008

I started off playing Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) and finishing off the flashback of the Talshak the Mystic story arc that I've been working on for awhile now. I had foolishly set challenge settings of "Players debuffed" and "AT powers only", not realizing how hard this story arc really is. Last time I had managed to defeat Atta as an EB under these settings, so I figured the rest of the story arc should be easier, right? Nope. The next mission was a Defeat all villains on an Oranbega map, chock full of CoT ghosts and Minions of Igneous, that mostly could ignore caltrops and resist lethal. The orange-con CoT ghost demons were especially hard, because their ACC debuff stacked with my self-imposed perma-debuff, to the point where I could hardly hit them even with Targeting Drone. I found myself using the Geas of the Kind Ones and Archmage accolades, a lot, and still got defeated once and had to break out of the Oranbega prison. I also restocked inspirations once (Mender Roebuck will still talk to you while you're on a flashback) which helped but I didn't want to do this too often as the mission was deep in the Hollows and moderately dangerous to run back to. Anyway, I eventually managed to clear this horrible mission, then the next mission was a simple run to the Cavern of Trancendance contact, which allowed me to finish the flashback and earn the Headstrong and Vocational flashback badges. (Interestingly, Talshak counted as a level 15 flashback even though I was exemped to level 14 the whole time. I think Flux and Julius the Troll counted as level 15 also; I'm not sure if this is a bug or is intentional.) I also did some IO crafting that scored me the Master Craftsman badge.

After that, I played my newest incarnation of Schadenfreude (14 AR/traps corruptor), as a lackey in a duo to a mastermind SG-mate for a few missions, getting her to level 15.

After that, I formed and led a Numina TF while playing Thunder Girl (36 will/nrg tanker). Although I made a good-faith effort to recruit pickup people, the team ended up being all people I already knew, which worked out fine. The team mix was:

will/nrg tanker (me)
AR/dev blaster
ice/storm controller
katana/regen scrapper
sonic/nrg blaster

The stormy didn't have O2 Blast, so we really had no "healer". Nevertheless we did fine. I've found that willpower's innate resists and regen means that I can get by as long as I have some sort of support (be it buffs, debuffs or controls) and play reasonably intelligently. On the way to one of our missions in Crey's Folly we ran into Jurassik again, and defeated him with the above team. The storm debuffs nerfed Jurassik enough that he would only hit me once in awhile and I'd regen the health back long before he'd hit me again, and the DPS people wore his health down to nothing, getting us all The Solution badge.

Thunder Girl versus Jurassik

The rest of the Numina TF went pretty well. We fought some and stealthed some. When we had to kill assorted villains all over the city, the scrapper had a list of the zones we needed and rapidly dispatched each team member to the various hunting zones in the right order, which made this phase go by very quickly. I had to hunt Vahzilok in Faultline, which is often a bottleneck but thankfully night was falling just as my turn came up (the Vahz only come out at night). There was a tense moment in the second to last mission when a loose Tornado managed to aggro an entire warehouse of bad guys onto us, but we rallied and managed to outfight them all; I think the Tornado pulling may have even sped up the mission. In the final mission we faced Jurassik again, this time in the dreadful multi-story cave room, and beat him again. All-in-all we finished the Numina TF in 1hr 55mins, much quicker than I expected and probably the fastest I've ever done it.

After that I briefly played Grey Wings (9 archery/fire blaster) on Triumph server a little, duoing the Negotiator badge mission with an exemped scrapper.

2/11/2008

It was double exp weekend and I played a ton; too much to list every single thing, so I'll just go over highlights.

Friday night I played Spacegirl (38 mind/rad controller) on the Lady Grey TF with an 8-player team of Liberty Force SG. Team mix was:

thug/traps MM
MA/ninj stalker
AR/dark corruptor
FF/elec defender
ice/ice blaster
fire/mace tanker
mind/sonic controller
mind/rad controller (me)

This TF was unusual in that we were very low level. At the start, our highest level character was level 47, then we had two 46s and two 45s, and three SKs (including me) who were even lower level. I actually thought TFs usually spawn mobs at the high end of the TF, so we would be doomed because we'd be fighting 51s and 52s, but when we entered the first mission, the mobs were only 47s and 48s. When the highest level character, the defender, leveled to 48, the mobs upgraded to 48s and 49s. I was quite surprised as I thought our team level meant the TF would be an exercise in pain, but our team was really well balanced and with the mobs being comparable in level to us, we easily were able to beat this TF, and all 8 of us got sickening exp for doing so. Spacegirl leveled from 38 to 41 on this TF, picking up Indomitable Will from the Psy epic pool.

I rebooted Schadenfreude, my 5th Column villain, yet again. She was a 33 AR/dark corruptor, but I got kind of bored of that and so I restarted her as a 1 AR/traps corruptor, mostly because I wanted to give traps another try. The first version of Schadenfreude that I made was also an AR/traps corruptor and got to level 41, but I got frustrated with traps at that level so restarted once as a merc/poison MM and then again as a AR/dark corr, before coming full circle to be an AR/traps corr again. Traps has kind of a unique playstyle and so I decided I really do want a representative of this powerset in my "stable" of characters. I did seriously consider making her dark/traps or merc/traps to be a little more powerful, but I ultimately decided that (a) she just needs to have a gun and (b) I hate micromanaging pets. Anyway, double exp weekend was a great time to start a new alt, and I got the newest Schadenfreude up to level 14 with a mix of soloing, pickup teaming, and lackeying to villain SG-mates.

An SG-mate asked for help with the "Defeat Lord Recluse in the Future" mission, and I and several other SG-mates responded. We decided to go with the very silly plan of an all-MM team; normally no one will put up with more than 2 MMs on the same team due to lag issues, but we ended up with 5 MMs and a token stalker. I played April Fool (50 thug/TA MM) and in addition to my regular pets I summoned a snow beast, a rikti drone, a loa bone zombie, and a shivan decimator. I kinda wish I had Gang War and a Vanguard HVAS too, but oh well. The result was pretty spectacular:

5 MMs, 1 stalker and 40 pets vs Lord Recluse

Lord Recluse, despite being an AV and a mastermind himself, never stood a chance.

Wrapped up the weekend on Sunday night playing Goshilla (34 sonic/nrg blaster) on a 4-player Liberty Force monsters team. We battled Jurassik and were able to take him down with only 4 players: a will/mace tanker, a dark/sonic defender, an ice/sonic controller and a sonic/nrg blaster (me). Despite being a giant monster, Jurassik's smashing damage could barely hurt our tanker (protected by sonic shields, dark debuffs and his own res/regen) and our res debuffs from sonic blasts, sonic dispersion and dark simply tore him up, getting us The Solution badge. Ironically, the 3 Jurassik rubbles that spawned after we killed Jurassik were much harder than Jurassik himself, because the Jurassik rubbles spawned at level 40. I was all for letting these despawn, but our tanker was like, I will not run from these stupid rubbles, I'll fight them all night if we have to! So we had to fight them. The 3 level 40 rubbles were more dangerous than the giant monster, but the tanker could still keep up with their smashing damage; unfortunately, we could barely hit them at all since they were +6 to us. I found I could hit them when I did both Aim and Build Up; I didn't do a lot of damage each time, but they didn't regen much either. So we eventually defeated the rubbles after I did three Aim/Build Up/Nova cycles. Did a few missions after that which got Goshilla to level 35, gaining the Howl power.

Misc short takes:

Over the weekend I gained the Ardent (39 month) veteran badge on my account in general.

Yuki-Onna (ice/cold corruptor) leveled from 30 to 35, mostly on pickup teams and once doing a villain respec with Mildly Heroic Evildoers SG. She picked up Snowstorm and Sleet as powers. Snowstorm is okay, I guess; while Sleet is, umm, "leet".

Grey Wings (archery/fire blaster on Triumph) leveled from 5 to 9 on a pickup team, picking up Blazing Arrow and Swift as powers.

Rain Dancer (storm/archery defender) leveled from 44 to 45 doing RWZ missions with Liberty Force SG.

Thunder Girl (will/nrg tanker) leveled from 35 to 36 on a pickup team, gained the Doctor's Ally and Indestructible badges. She spent a lot of time fighting those horrible Nictus crystals and breaking out of a CoT prison.

2/8/2008

I continued working on soloing the Talshak the Mystic story arc flashback with Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster). I was on the Defeat Atta and Guards mission, with challenge settings that permanently debuffed my ACC and DMG, and also restricted me to AT powers only (nerfing my Aid Self and Combat Jumping). Trolls seem to either regen or resist lethal or both, so are pretty hard for me at this level, and on previous nights I'd already died twice trying to do this mission. Thinking about it, I felt like I had died because I had tried to stealth ahead (using a +stealth IO slotted in Prestige Power Rush, which was still allowed despite setting "AT powers only") to the bosses and attack them directly, but whenever anything went sour I had nowhere to run since none of the mission was cleared.

So, changing tactics, I decided to clear the mission, or at least enough to give me a clear escape path whenever anything went wrong. Oddly some trolls in this mission spawned at 12 and some at 15; the low level ones were easy, but the level 15 lieutenants were pretty challenging with the debuffs I had on, usually requiring 2 or 3 inspirations, some kiting, and resting afterwards. This was pretty time consuming but allowed me to make steady progress, and in this way I took out two Atta's guards and finally got to face Atta himself; he was a level 14 elite boss with one level 14 minion with him. I popped inspirations like mad; 2 purples, 1 yellow and 1 red, plus Archmage accolade, to start with, then kited him around a patch of caltrops for awhile, filling him full of bullets as I did so. I popped another 2 purples when the first batch ran out; despite doing all that, I still needed to use 3 greens to keep alive. But I did kill Atta before the second set of inspirations ran down, completing the mission. I thought this would be the end of the story arc, but there was another mission after that, a Defeat All CoT and Igneous in cave. I decided to put that mission off for another time.

After that I switched to Rain Dancer (43 storm/archery defender) and joined a pickup Lady Grey TF that was recruiting on LBX channel. Team mix was:

elec/elec blaster
dual/will scrapper
ill/rad controller
storm/archery defender (me)
kin/elec defender
fire/ice tanker
stone/axe tanker
inv/SS tanker

This TF immediately got off to a rocky start, as the stone tanker was nominated the lead tanker (due to his powersets) but he had never done the LGTF so he led us the wrong direction. On top of that, within 5 minutes of entering the first mission, the stone tanker said he had to log off, and did. Although he was level 50, I got the impression he didn't understand what joining a TF meant. Later that mission, the blaster complained of excessive lag, then disconnected and never returned, dropping the team to 6 players. Nevertheless we pressed on and rescued Penelope Yin, causing hordes of psychic clockworks to spawn. Most of the team started leading Penelope to the mission exit, but the controller hung back to fight the psychic clockworks; since he was my mentor, I stayed with him to back him up. One of our teammates noticed we were lagging behind, so he helpfully TP'd me to him -- and, unluckily, into another ambush of psychic clockworks, who quickly stunned and killed me since I was out of sidekick range. Eventually we all got up to the Clockwork King, however. I unloaded some stormy anger onto the AV and we pretty handily beat him up.

Since we were down 2 players after just one mission I suggested we restart with a full team, but the team wanted to press on. So we started fighting through the 4 Riders mission. After defeating the 1 Rider spawn and the 2 Rider spawn, though, the controller also disconnected. We gave him some time to return but he never came back. This was particularly bad because that only left two level 50s (the two remaining tankers) and three people who needed an SK (the two defenders and scrapper). We didn't really think we could complete the TF at that point, but agreed as a team that we would try to complete the current mission before calling it. One of the low level people had to be unSKd; I was OK with being the unSKd player since it was my mentor who disconnected, but the kin insisted she could still help while unSKd by speed boosting. I didn't really want to take her SK slot and deny her exp (all the SKs were level 42-44 so could not get exp while unSKd) but had to agree that doing this made the most sense for the team. Also one of the tankers broke out a Vanguard HVAS to help with DPS.

So in this way we tackled the 3 Riders room. We tried pulling but ended up aggroing them all (I think one of the players mistakenly charged and brought them all back). We killed the 3 Riders but I think everyone on the team died but me and one tanker. Then we attacked the 4 Riders room, pulling again but getting them all (this time, I think just because they were so close together), and we killed one Rider and almost got another before wiping out. A second attempt at the remaining 3 Riders resulted in another team wipe without knocking any of the Riders out. At this point the team was ready to give it up, but since we were already alive inside the mission through a mix of awakens and self-rez powers, it made sense to give it one more try before calling it. I ran up and pulled a Rider with snap shot, but got all 3 again (in hindsight, I should've tagged a minion first) and got clobbered along with the scrapper. The rest of the team ran away. I went to the hospital and was typing stuff like "Thanks for the team" and had my mouse pointer over "Quit TF" when the surviving teammates started saying things like "Hey, we got Pestilence alone now!" In an instant, our total rout had magically transformed into a clever plan to split up the Riders via retrograde maneuvers. I ran back to the mission and got there just as a second Rider was defeated by the 2 tankers and kin, leaving Famine, the nastiest, for last; but taking them one at a time we were able to beat the Riders and complete the mission. It definitely was a morale booster to call it quits after winning a mission rather than after a team wipe. Although we didn't complete the TF, Rain Dancer did get to level 44; I picked up Power Buildup, which I figure will go well with Aim/Rain of Arrows, a combo I'm using a lot now. Not sure how it interacts with stormy powers.

After that I did a couple missions on villain side with Yuki-Onna (30 ice/cold corruptor) with a 3 player Liberty Force team, before calling it a night.

2/7/2008

Spent all of last night doing the Dr. Quaterfield TF while playing Rain Dancer (42 storm/archery defender). I was player #6 when I joined the pickup team; it took about half an hour to fill the team up so I messed around in the RWZ Icon while waiting and came up with a new costume I liked, mainly using the fancy braid hairstyle to try and simulate a feather headdress, and using one of the longer "pencil" skirts in a buckskin brown color. After some time, though, we finally got moving with the following team mix:

fire/fire blaster
nrg/ice blaster
kat/regen scrapper
fire/kin controller
mind/emp controller
fire/rad controller
storm/archery defender (me)
inv/SS tanker

This sounds like a good team on paper but an accumulation of little things held us back from greatness; the fire blaster was a little too aggressive, the tanker not quite aggressive enough (resulting in the fire blaster dying a lot). The kin seemed terrific, and the emp was decent (she would religiously buff RA/RegenA each time they were up, but would rarely Fortitude despite having the power), but the rad seemed to have his heal on autofire and never used rad debuffs that I saw. The net result is that, at least initially, we cleared missions painfully slowly. Unfortunately, with things moving so slowly, I got easily bored and went AFK a lot, which I'm sure only made things worse.

After a few hours playing together, though, we kinda got used to each others' play styles, and things started moving along more quickly; also, the fire blaster started stealth/TPing us to various objectives which also sped things up. Two players praised Rain Dancer's character concept, and one seemed impressed with the damage from her Rain of Arrows (I recently respec'd into Aim which, with Freezing Rain, makes RoA very good), which certainly felt nice. This all made the TF more fun; but being 24 missions long (with many missions that seem pretty similar) it still felt far, far too long. We had most of a team wipeout in mission #23 in which I primarily blame fatigue, but we got up and kept going and ended up finishing the TF with the whole team intact. The TF complete dialog reported it took us 7hrs, 26mins (ouch!). Rain Dancer got to level 43 and most of the way through that level, as well as getting the Infiltrator badge (for Crey) and most of the Fake Nemesis badge.

April Fool vs Kronos Titan

Net arrow is too much fun.

2/6/2008

Monday night I started out doing the Recluse SF on April Fool (50 thug/TA MM). This was organized on LHO channel and the team mix was:

elec/stone brute
SS/will brute
fire/will brute
dark/dark corr
nrg/kin corr
grav/thorn dom
necro/poison MM
thug/TA MM (me)

This was kind of an unconventional team mix for an RSF as normally RSF teams prefer more corruptors and fewer of everything else. Things looked grim for us early on as our team very nearly wiped out against the Slinger in the Malta mission, but the team started to click in the later missions as we easily manhandled the Vindicators and the Freedom Phalanx. It definitely helped that the team collectively had 6 people with Vengeance (villains LOVE vengeance), several shivans, and someone on the team who clearly wanted to win dropped all 3 Warburg nukes on the Freedom Phalanx. This level of temp power usage resulted in the heroes dying surprisingly quickly. I got about 600K and a marginal Pacing of the Turtle recipe as SF reward.

After that I logged on Thunder Girl (33 will/nrg tanker) and formed a Manticore TF, recruiting people from Liberty Force SG, the Sisterhood channel and some pickup people. Team mix was:

will/nrg tanker (me)
mind/sonic controller
earth/storm controller
ill/emp controller
claw/regen scrapper
bs/will scrapper
elec/elec blaster
fire/fire blaster

I was about to change Thunder Girl's reputation from Unyielding (second hardest) to Heroic (easiest) for the TF, but I had several team members say, screw that! Let's do it on unyielding! And so we did. Most of the team was in the correct level range to get exp from Manticore, except for one exemped hero who wanted infl anyway; as a result, we fought through all the missions and stealthed only one or two. With sonic shields and fortitude on me, I was basically in god mode the whole time (though this was sorely tested a few times when I jumped into groups of +4 mobs spawned for a 8 player team) and the sonic and storm resist debuffs, plus 4 DPS players, made bad guys just melt away. This resulted in ludicrously sick exp for everyone who could gain exp. We did have a few deaths resulting from people overaggroing extra spawns and stuff, but nothing too serious. We finished the TF in 3hrs 5mins and got Thunder Girl to level 35.

After that I played Spacegirl (38 mind/rad controller) for a bit in Rikti War Zone with a 5-player Liberty Force team. We did the final RWZ mission against Hro'tohz (sp?), and for some reason we kept aggroing our nominal allies, Fusionette and Faultline; not sure how that happened, maybe some kind of confusion issue. One of my teammates gleefully killed Fusionette and Faultline for their temerity, after which we had no problems.

Tuesday I spent much of the day respecing Rain Dancer (42 storm/archery defender); the main changes I made were to drop Ranged Shot (a snipe) and replace it with Fistful of Arrows (a cone AoE), move some slots around, and bought/crafted/slotted more set IOs. I focused heavily on +recharge set bonuses since I figure that more frequent Freezing Rain, Lightning Storm and Rain of Arrows are all big improvements. Following a tip I read on the CoH forums, I also slotted a Devastation: Chance to Hold in Lightning Storm; haven't seen much effect from this yet, but having my "pet" randomly hold stuff sounds like it should be awesome.

Joined a couple pickup teams in Peregrine Island after that to try out the new build. First team had a tanker, 2 rads and me, all around level 42, which seemed reasonable except that both rads had a bad habit of charging into unaggroed spawns of mobs (and dying) while the tanker was working on the first group of mobs he had aggroed. I jumped ship from this team to join a level 42-47 team led by a friend, but they wanted to do the level 47's invincible missions. This sounded kind of unwise to me but I went along with it and it actually worked; the team leader had the tanker herd mobs onto a designated ambush spot where a blaster had laid numerous trip mines. Once softened up by the trip mines we'd unleash AoEs on the bad guys and destroy them. I don't think my arrows were hardly hurting the 49s we were fighting (and I said so) but between freezing rain to debuff them and O2 blast to keep the tank alive while he was doing this, I felt like I was still being helpful, which reduced the guilt from the insane exp that I was getting for doing this. Anyway, later that night Rain Dancer also helped a 5-player Liberty Force team take down a level 47 Anti-Matter AV.

I also ran the third villain respec trial on April Fool. The team was organized on LHO channel and consisted of:

fire/rad corr
fire/dark corr
ice/ice dom
necro/dark MM
thug/TA MM (me)

We had a somewhat ignominious team wipe during the Malta mission, which I think was because we kinda rushed forward as if we were brutes but of course none of us actually WAS a brute, and we were on high difficulty, so we got smacked down hard. Normally bodyguard mode protects me in these situations, but I had managed to outrun my pets who were a little slow to navigate the caves we were in. Anyway, we pulled ourselves together and finished the rest of the respec without a hitch. The rad, dark, and TA debuffs pretty well wrecked the thorn tree, so we were able to beat it up even without a brute to "tank". I got a junky Sting of the Manticore Dmg/IntRdx/Rchg recipe as trial reward and earned about 1.3M infamy along the way, but the real prize was the purple Fortunata's Hypnosis recipe I got. Sleep is probably the least valuable purple IO set (the Black Market was listing Fortunata's Hypnosis recipes around 1M-2M infamy while other purple recipes were in the 10s of millions), but this is the first purple recipe drop I had gotten on any character, so I was pretty excited. I'm pondering collecting more of this set and slotting it into April's Poison Gas Arrow.

One of the players on the villain respec talked me into rejoining the LBx channel, which I used to be on, but had abandoned last November due to the immense quantity of highly offensive chatter that was present then. Now LBx is moderated and invite-only. A lot of people now are spamming their anger about the new rules, but I'm cautiously optimistic that maybe this will all work out and LBx can be a nice channel to listen to again. Or it may be that it will crash and burn, but I'm planning on at least giving it a chance.

I also spent some time on Protector server playing Astarte (33 grav/emp controller) on a 6 to 7 player Demolition Girls SG team. We spent most of our time doing missions in Croatoa, and Astarte got to 34. I put her 3 new slots in Gravity Distortion Field (AoE hold), Wormhole (AoE disorient) and Singularity. I considered putting all my slots in the pet, but I figure I want to max out my personal control ability before making the pet better.

Played Yuki-Onna (29 ice/cold corruptor on Liberty) as an LK on a Liberty Force villain team, where we mostly worked on Ghost Widow patron missions. We got to see a pretty cool office map set in the "SERAPH" building in Paragon City which I'd never seen before; not sure why it isn't a map in general circulation. Ended up getting Yuki-Onna to level 30; haven't trained yet, but will probably get Benumb.

Finally I had Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) attempting to solo an Ouroboros flashback of Talshak the Mystic's story arc. For challenge settings I made myself perma-debuffed and AT-powers only. This wasn't too bad until I got to Defeat Atta and Guards, a mission I had quite forgotten was in this story arc. Trolls are already pretty hard for me to fight, since I think they have lethal resist, or regen, or maybe both; stacking a perma-debuff on me is making it really, really hard. I can't break out a shivan or a nuke while under AT-powers only. So far I've died twice trying to solo this mission, and I've logged myself off while still in the Hollows with Defeat Atta as the last mission in the flashback. I probably should give up and restart the story arc with easier challenge settings, but I'm hoping there is some correct load of inspirations I could bring into the mission that would make this possible to do. We'll see.

2/4/2008

On Friday night I played Flamebait (17 fire/warmth corruptor). The all-corruptor villain group she's in already had a full team going when I logged on, so I started a second team and picked up other VG members as they logged in. This started off poorly; I began working on Seer Marino's story arc in Mercy Island, and the first corruptor I invited took an extended AFK autofollowing me and the second one had her game settings messed up somehow so needed several minutes (outside the mission) to fix her UI. This basically left me (a fire/thermal with a team support-oriented build) to solo against groups of Arachnos spawned for a 3-player team. I didn't die, but it was very slow going; I ended up kicking the AFK player from the team to make spawn size smaller, and once the other player arrived at the mission things started going better.

More corruptors joined us before long, getting the team up to 5-6 players which made things move along pretty well; with thermal, sonic and cold shields we were all little mini-tanks. The AFK player I had kicked came back after awhile and asked to rejoin, but during a later mission we misplaced a hostage and after searching the mission found the hostage following our AFK player, who had quietly gone AFK and autofollow on me again; but, his character had gotten stuck on a sewer pipe. I maneuvered his toon around the pipe and led him and the hostage to the mission exit, after which I had to kick him off the team again in order to set the next mission. Other than that things went pretty well and Flamebait got to level 19, picking up Blaze at 18 and putting a couple slots in it.

One particularly cool mission was the one where you stop Amanda Vines from broadcasting her news report, by destroying these various power generators. One of the generators is placed at the very top of a skyscraper and one of the players wanted to stand on top of it while we destroyed it. This sounded fun so I stood on top of it too. The resulting explosion threw us flying from the top of the skyscraper to the very edge of the zone! I wish I had gotten a screen shot of that. It was a great ride, and I'm totally doing that again next time I do this mission.

On Saturday I burned some influence crafting IO sets for Thunder Girl (33 will/nrg tanker). Both Energy Punch and Bonesmasher are now slotted for 3xTouch of Death (Acc/Dmg, Dmg/Rchg, Dmg/End/Rchg) and 3xCrushing Impact (Dmg/Rchg, Acc/Dmg/Rchg, Dmg/End/Rchg), which enhances each power by +98.2% Dmg, +40.4% Acc, +94.1% Rchg, +35.9% EndRdx, right at the soft cap for both damage and recharge and with about an SO worth of accuracy and endurance reduction each. This also increases her max HP by +5.25% from set bonuses, a very nice benefit for a willpower tanker. I ran Thunder Girl out to Bloody Bay to restock on Shivans (actually working together with a brute to take out a pillbox to process the meteor ore) and played some on pickup teams.

Playing Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) I ran several flashback story arcs. Each time I did Officer Wincott's fairly quick story arc in the Hollows. I ran this once with a 5-player Sisterhood team while perma-debuffed, no inspirations allowed, and a 2hr time limit, getting us all the Bronze Medalist, Venturous and Cliche badges. I also did this same story arc twice while solo: once with foes buffed, 1hr time limit, no temp powers for the Silver Medalist, Audacious, and Diminshed Badges; and once with AT-only powers and no enhancements, for the Contributor and Lessened badges. The perma-debuff didn't actually seem all that bad; no inspirations is a tougher challenge setting, IMHO. Foes buffed did not seem too bad, they were a little tougher but not a lot. AT-only powers kinda sucked because I am very used to having Aid Self to fall back on whenever I get hurt. No enhancements probably sucks when exemping to higher levels, but at 14 was not that different than the values it exemps you to anyway. Having Targeting Drone at this level was immensely valuable for accuracy though. Each run through this story arc took only about 20-22 minutes, whether solo or teamed; it really IS quick. This now gives me all the level 1-14 flashback badges; next I'll move up to level 15-20 flashbacks.

Ran the Manticore TF on Protector server while playing Astarte (31 grav/emp controller on Protector) with a full team of Demolition Girls SG. Team mix was:

ice/ice tanker
fire/nrg blaster
nrg/nrg blaster
claw/regen scrapper
ice/storm controller
grav/emp controller (me)
ice/emp controller
kin/sonic defender

This was quite a strong team and despite our highest level character being only 33 at the start, we had no trouble with the TF. We started the TF with only 7 players but when the kin defender logged in after we had done only 1 mission, we all agreed to reform the TF to include her. Astarte got to level 33 during this TF; I got Singularity at level 32 but split my new slots between Gravity Distortion Field and Heal Other, which I felt like I use more. I'm not really used to controller pets (my other controller is mind/*) and it was hard for me to tell if Singularity was .. well .. doing anything. Unlike my thug mastermind there's no "pet control" window that pops up for Singy; and while I can see April Fool's thugs drawing their guns and shooting stuff, Singy doesn't have very obvious animations. He just seems to follow Astarte around and .. umm .. throb or something. Singularity is supposed to be a good pet though so maybe I just need to watch him more carefully to tell what he actually does.

Later I played Rain Dancer (41 storm/archery defender) on a 5 player team of Liberty Force SG. We took out the psychic Clockwork King, getting the Emancipator badge, before moving on to a portal corp mission on some kind of alternate world filled with Nemesis. I managed to kill myself by dropping Snowstorm too early on a big spawn of Nemesis; without a tanker on the team, this was like AoE taunting them onto myself. After that I got more careful and let the peacebringer or the blaster absorb alpha strikes, feeding them an O2 Blast to keep them alive before dropping Freezing Rain onto the bad guys. This worked a lot better. Got Rain Dancer to level 42 but I haven't figured out where to put her new slots; I'm thinking about respecing her to drop Ranged Shot (a snipe that I very rarely use) for Fistful of Arrows, and maybe moving some slots around in her stormy powers.

Finished the weekend playing Yuki-Onna (29 ice/cold corruptor) on a 5 player villain team of Liberty Force SG in Grandville. We defeated an AV level Countess Crey and did the Mage Hunter badge mission. It sounded like the team was getting smeared before I arrived, but things went pretty well while I was there. I honestly think this was due to the cold shields; cold domination feels like a more aggressive version of force fields, which I rather like.

This is April Fool fighting Hamidon with the Biggest Net Arrow Ever

Before you ask, I don't know why I needed to immobilize something that doesn't move. It sure looks cool though!

2/1/2008

Started off doing some IO crafting on Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster), getting her the Mystically Powered badge for making generic level 35 EndRdx/EndMod IOs. While I was crafting someone asked me for help against giant monsters in Croatoa; I didn't need the badges but thought it would be more heroic to go help out. So I joined the 8 player pickup team and knocked out both Jack and Eochai.

After that I formed a 4-player villain pickup team while playing Yuki-Onna (28 ice/cold corruptor), doing some Diviner Maros missions and some newspaper missions. This mostly went well, though I couldn't keep a brute on the team so I ended up leading from the front for most of it, pulling mobs onto the team.

A bit later I played April Fool (50 thug/TA mastermind) on a Lady Grey TF organized on LHO channel. Our team makeup was:

ice/psi dom
will/SS tanker
fire/fire brute
nrg blaster
thug/TA MM (me)
rad defender
emp defender

and one other person who I forgot to write down. This went pretty well; had a few deaths here and there but I don't think we ever had a complete wipeout. I only died once, against the 4 Riders (one of them smacked me hard when I had bodyguard mode down). We fast-tracked the DraGon mission by getting Infernia and Glacia killed (which, as a psychotic clown villain, I was all in favor of) and pretty efficiently tore down the weakened Hamidon. For some reason the team wanted to kill yellow, then green, then blue mitos, in that order; usually teams I've been on wanted to do yellow, then blue, then green. Not sure why the change; maybe yellows first because they're on the outside edge, then greens next because they heal. I have to say it's nice to be able to hang back and send minions into the goo to do your dirty work. In the final mission, we took down the Rikti AV with no problem; the Honoree got his Unstoppable-like power going, so took a long time to beat down, but we eventually got him. After the Honoree went down, the tanker launched a frontal assault on the shield generators on the left side, while the brute rushed the shield generators on the right side; some team members followed each one. We hadn't really discussed it, it just sort of worked out that way. With Rikti ambushes swarming in, I punched my Demonic accolade and popped a couple purples, then helped the tanker take out the two left generators; the other side was cleared just as fast and we quickly beat feet back to RWZ on Mission Complete. It was a good TF; I got a silly Trap of the Hunter recipe as reward, which is kinda bleh, but I also scored 3M infamy, which was nice.

After that I played Grey Wings (4 archery/fire blaster on Triumph) on a fairly inept sewers team. When I joined there were 4 players deep in the sewers and they recruited 4 more who were in Atlas Park; I ran over to the sewers in time to see the first 4, trying to fight back to the entrance, get wiped out. The new recruits arrived and got bored waiting for the first 4 to get back from hospital, so aggroed some stuff and got wiped out; I took a few shots and killed some Vahz, then ran away like the cowardly blaster I am. One of the new guys who died, a blaster with a rooster-like costume, wouldn't go to hospital (claiming his load time on zoning is too long) and asked another team member to go buy him an awaken. This other team member went to Atlas Park looking for a vendor and could not find anyone who sells awakens. I tried to tell him to see a contact but the rooster told him to see the Superpowered Field Trainers, who I think sell TOs but not inspirations, so this didn't go well; the rooster finally gave up and went to hospital and I guess the personal shopper guy got lost on the way back. Meanwhile, one person quit the team and the other 5 of us got bored of waiting for these two, and started fighting stuff in the sewer. We killed some stuff, then decided to work our way back up to the sewer exit to pick up our two lost lambs. But once we got to the sewer exit, people wanted to go train (myself included, having gotten to level 5), and at that point it really seemed to be a good time to make excuses and leave the team.

I switched back to Yuki-Onna and joined a 3-player Liberty Force villain team. We did a mission where we had to fight a level 29 Calystix AV. Calystix spawns a lot of helpers and the three of us (a dominator and 2 corruptors) couldn't seem to really dent him before his helpers overwhelmed us; we wiped out twice against him. The dom switched to his 31 MM and LK'd the other corruptor, and being higher level and less squishy helped enough for us to take Calystix down. Did a few more paper missions after that, getting Yuki-Onna to 29 before I called it a night.

1/31/2008

I started off playing Mary Christmas (14 ice/rad controller on Triumph) to help a level 23 scrapper friend against Captain Castillo EB. Castillo had an engineer minion with him, so they had two FF Generators, plus Castillo was throwing smoke grenades; the cumulative effect was that the scrapper's accuracy was floored so she couldn't hurt him at all while solo. Adding myself and an empath made Castillo a lot easier to hit, between fortitude and radiation infection. After that we ran through the rest of the scrapper's Faultline story arc. In the last Faultline mission we ran into Captain Castillo again; the empath had dropped by then so it was just me and the scrapper. Rad Infection (admittedly with no DefDebuff slotted) wasn't enough to allow us to hit, and we ran out of yellows before we could drop him, so we just saved Penelope Yin (completing the mission) and let Castillo live. (Or, ran away from him, depending on your point of view.)

After that I did some extensive rummaging through Wentworth, buying and crafting several IOs for Thunder Girl (32 will/nrg tanker). I slotted two sets of 3 Touch of Death into Energy Punch and Bonesmasher (gaining +3% HP, raising her max HP from 1780.4 to 1821.6) and 2 Scirocco's Dervish and 3 Multi-Strike into Whirling Hands (gaining +0.945% fire/cold resist, +10% regen, and increasing the native recharge in Whirling Hands from 38% to 87% while keeping damage at the soft cap).

After slotting the new IOs I started a mission team; initially it was just me as tanker and 2 scrapper SGmates, but I recruited heavily from Sisterhood channel and LFT pickups and the team rapidly snowballed into a pretty good 8-player team. We fought our way through the Rogue Robots story arc (which was pretty amusing because we had a robot-themed scrapper on the team), followed by a mishmash of other door missions. We had one wipeout deep in Oranbega while rescuing a stage magician's convention. When entering a small room with a huge CoT spawn on the left, and another huge CoT spawn on the right, I charged the spawn on the left, thinking we could leave the ones on the right alone. Of course, with fire imps and scrappers on the team there was no way to NOT aggro something that close. I probably should've pulled rather than charged. We ended up with five or so ruin mages which rapidly wiped out the rest of my team; I survived by burning strength of will and some inspirations, though the grav powers of the ruin mages made me retreat in super slow baywatch movement mode, until I ran into the other survivor of the team wipe, an ice/storm controller who had been linkdead when the fight started and was running up to help out. The two of us made a stand against the CoT still chasing me at the time, and we turned the fight around as people got back from hospital. The rest of our missions went pretty well otherwise; at one point I took 3 timed missions from 3 different contacts simultaneously, and we easily completed all 3 within the time limits without serious trouble. Thunder Girl got to level 33 on this team.

I'm finding Strength of Will to be really good so far. I normally don't like the tier 9 godmode powers due to the horrible crash at the end, but SoW is a weaker godmode (maybe like punching 2 oranges) and has a gentler crash (with Quick Recovery and Stamina I hardly notice the END drop).

1/30/2008

I spent Monday night soloing Thunder Girl (31 will/nrg tanker on Liberty). I handled a Talos safeguard, then happened into a Rikti raid on Talos Island which I joined; fought enough Rikti off to get to level 32 and Strength of Will (which I haven't tried yet, but sounds powerful).

Started a new archery/fire blaster on Triumph server; weird powerset combo, I know, but I was kind of picturing a winged angel with a bow and a fiery sword. All the obvious angelic names were taken so I named her Grey Wings, giving her a grey costume and wings to match; I thought she looked pretty cool shooting a bow. I solo'd all of Azuria's missions, getting to level 4.

Tuesday night I played Astarte (30 grav/emp controller on Protector) on a 6 player level 30-33ish team of Demolition Girls SG. We did mostly Croatoa missions and a Talos safeguard, getting Astarte to level 31.

Later I switched to Yuki-Onna (27 ice/cold corruptor on Liberty), LKing first to a 3 player level 37 team, then later LKing to a 4 player level 44 villain team, both Liberty Force SG. With Arctic Fog and Superspeed I had enough stealth to get around Nerva and Grandville with no problem. The cold shields really seemed to help the will and fire brutes I teamed with, and stacked with the +DEF of ninjitsu stalkers and the FF Gen of the traps MM I was with. I got to level 28 and took Frostwork for my new power, which made the brute on the team really happy (Frostwork raised his max HP from 1445 to 2060, and made his Healing Flames, based on his max HP, really good). Most cold corruptors don't seem to take the shields (selfish PvP builds I guess) but I am finding them to be really nice on a team.

Oh, and tragically I was eliminated from the Forum Queen game in round 1. Ahh, so fleeting, fame! As the 49th runner up on the Miss America pageant says (or would say, if they televised her), it's an honor just to be nominated. Thanks anyway to the 15 people who voted for me.

1/28/2008

Someone nominated me for Forum Queen! Wow, I had no idea this contest existed. The competition looks really tough (a lot of well known forum posters there), but thanks much for the thought!

On Friday night I played Flamebait (15 fire/thermal corruptor on Liberty) with an all-corruptor team from Demolition Girls SG. We did the Seer Marino story arc which went pretty well with the exception of one buggy defeat all mission which we had to abandon (we think one mob must've been knockbacked through a wall and unkillable as a result). The END-draining Mu were a big pain for us also. Got Flamebait to level 17 though, and picked up Super Jump at 16.

Played Thunder Girl (30 will/nrg tanker on Liberty) a fair bit, first joining a 4-player team of Those Who Wield Power SG for the Warriors story arc that leads up to the Redeemer badge, then later forming a couple pickup teams in Croatoa that went really well, finishing off two Croatoa story arcs, and getting the badges for killing witches, Red Caps and Eochai. Got Thunder Girl to level 31. Also, I originally regretted taking Build Up at 30, but after playing with it for awhile, I'm starting to like it; hopefully it will be even better once I get the higher level energy melee attacks.

On Saturday I played Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty) in Recluse's Victory, grabbing a heavy to take down some pillboxes for the badges. While I was fighting a pillbox, an ice/rad corruptor got the drop on me and blew me away; I simply was too slow on the uptake and took too much damage too fast. After hospitalling I congratulated him in broadcast and went back to attacking pillboxes. He attacked me twice more while I was attacking pillboxes, but I was more alert and web grenaded him down long enough for my heavy and I to tear him apart. He demanded I admit that he would win if I didn't have a heavy, and although I was tempted to trash talk (I had little sympathy for him since he attacked me when I had a heavy clearly visible), instead I affably agreed that he had already killed me when I had a heavy. Later, the ice/rad dueled a fire/ss tanker and I agreed to watch without intervening, but after he beat the tanker he immediately switched to attacking me, so I killed him again, though I missed him enough that I asked if he had popped an accolade or a fistful of purples or something. He said he'd show me what he did, and jumped me a fifth time, dropping rad toggles on me and killing my wounded heavy; I ran into a crowd of nearby Longbow to aggro them onto him, then with their help gunned the ice/rad down. This sent him into a screaming rage and he hurled invective at me via broadcast for about five minutes. I was a little shocked because it was someone I've teamed with on villain side before; sadly, a lot of people don't have a very sporting attitude in PvP. So I urged him to switch to decaf and left the zone.

After that I joined a "Hess-a-thon" coordinated on Sisterhood channel. This involved running six instances of the Ernesto Hess TF in parallel, with each player logging in different alts to join each team, then each player would (mostly) solo one of the TF instances. I solo'd with Olivia Q (50 MA/SR scrapper) and finished up my instance of the TF early, and another player was having connection issues so I solo'd a second instance as Police Woman. For our trouble we each got 6 draws from the TF recipe pool (although some people were 2 boxers who got twice that); the only two noteworthy recipes I got were an Impervium Armor: Resistance and a Mako's Bite: Chance for Lethal. I also got the TF badge for Thunder Girl and Goshilla, who had never done the Hess TF before.

As Spacegirl (37 mind/rad controller) I was a sidekick on a level 50 team in Rikti War Zone, doing Borea's missions on invincible, led by one of the more crazy suicidal scrappers I've seen; this team went really well though, and got Spacegirl to level 38. Picked up EM Pulse, which seemed like a nice space agey power, though I haven't used it yet.

Finally I played Schadenfreude (31 AR/dark corruptor) as a lackey on a 5-player level 43ish Liberty Force villain team. Most notable was our fight against Ghost Widow, as one of the villains was betraying her in order to qualify for her patron powers (which makes no sense but it's how patron powers work). Ghost Widow was an AV and pretty nasty and some of the other villains couldn't resist dropping Ouroboros portals all around her to draw fire from the team (since we knew this exploit would be going away soon). This totally backfired though because Ghost Widow heals using Dark Regeneration; with 1 brute, 2 stalkers and 3 Ouroboros portals in melee range of her, this basically meant she healed to full health every 30 seconds. After beating on her ineffectively for about five minutes, we changed tactics; pulling her away from the Ouroboros portals, one of the stalkers hit the ninjitsu elude power and started tanking her, while the brute and other stalker moved back and were using what few range powers they had, while the mastermind and I laid down range attacks as well. I also spammed Twilight Grasp and the mastermind laid poison gas traps to try and kill her regen. Although any plan involving a stalker tanking an AV seems fundamentally flawed, this actually worked; with no one in melee range but a stalker in elude, Ghost Widow couldn't really heal, and we beat her up to complete the story arc.

1/25/2008

Started off playing Thunder Girl (29 will/nrg tanker) on a partly pickup, partly Sisterhood 8-player team that did level 30ish missions in Croatoa. We seemed to handle everything pretty easily. Got the Bane of Danaan badge and reached level 30. Trained in the Build Up power, but so far I'm not sure I like it; maybe I should have (finally) taken Fast Healing, or started on Fighting pool instead.

Switched to Astarte (29 grav/emp controller on Protector) on a 8-person Demolition Girls SG team that also did level 32ish missions in Croatoa. We did pretty well, but during the "Save Salamanca" mission, myself and some of the other squishies occasionally got alpha-striked to death by Redcap ambushes that spawned right on top of us (ouch!); it may be worthwhile to learn their spawn points and avoid them. Along the way we encountered Jack in Irons and beat him up with just our team, gaining the Giant Killer badge. Astarte reached level 30 and trained in Recovery Aura.

After that I played Mercy Beaucoup (8 emp/sonic defender on Virtue) as an SK on a 4-player Northern Lights SG team which did a level 12ish King's Row safeguard.

Finished up soloing a few of Thunder Girl's old missions to clear them out of her mission queue.

1/24/2008

I started off playing Yuki-Onna (27 ice/cold corruptor) and solo'd the IP mayhem mission, then joined a 3-player Liberty Force villain team as a lackey, doing level 35 missions. We did Technician Naylor's rather creepy but fun story arc where the story tries to make you think that you're really a replicant/Nemesis automaton. Got the Portal Hopper badge doing one of these missions.

Later I logged on Thunder Girl (27 will/nrg tanker) and, as a sidekick, I joined a level 30-31ish pickup team led by a blaster I met last weekend. But before we started the first mission, the team leader needed to go, and gave me the star before leaving. This put me in the weird position of being team leader while much lower level than most of the team. I decided to roll with it, and recruited more players, some from the Sisterhood channel and some from the LFT tool. It was tough finding a mission suitable for our level (mine were obviously too low level) but after clearing a couple old missions belonging to the highest level players, we settled into a steady diet of level 31 radio missions in Brickstown. This went really well and Thunder Girl got to level 29 in this way. I agonized over which power to take at 28; I was pretty sure it would be an attack, since Thunder Girl had too few (she still had sands of mu in her attack chain) and was torn between Bonesmasher (which seems highly recommended) and Boxing (which leads to Tough). Ended up going with Bonesmasher because it seemed more fun, while Boxing's animation feels very wimpy to me.

After that team finished up, Thunder Girl got randomly invited to a Sky Raiders respec trial. Team mix was:

dark/nrg defender
2 emp/psy defenders
emp/nrg defender
grav/kin controller
dual/will scrapper
claw/regen scrapper
will/nrg tanker (me)

Most of us were level 28-31 with a level 33 and a level 37, which made me a bit worried because I thought the enemies would all spawn at the top end of the trial's level range. The team leader had us exemp down the higher level players to around level 29-30; I didn't think this would work, but it actually did, and we were fighting mostly level 31 enemies for the whole trial. Our DPS seemed pretty low, which made guarding the reactor core a bit hairy, since it was hard to clear each entire spawn of Sky Raiders before the next one would appear. But with 4 defenders we were really hard to kill, so we still did okay; they also were putting Fortitude on the reactor core itself to make it hard to damage. We completed the respec trial, and I went ahead and took the respec reward for the sake of getting the Received the Stalwart Medallion badge, along with Transmogrified.

1/23/2008

Started off by respecing Spacegirl (37 mind/rad controller), dropping leadership power pool for more archetype powers. I love leadership but fighting Rikti I found that Spacegirl was constantly getting slept/held/stunned then having to re-activate rad debuffs and leadership toggles. So I dropped Maneuvers, Tactics and Vengeance and replaced them with Confuse, Mass Hypnosis and Mutation. I often have aggro problems playing Spacegirl, so I hoped Confuse and Mass Hypnosis would give me some lower aggro control options. I put a set of 5 Malaise's Illusions in Confuse and another set of 5 Malaise's Illusions in Mass Confusion. Since I already had 3 sets of 5 Decimation (in Mesmerize, Dominate and Levitation...what? I'm supposed to slot these with hold and sleep? damage is a control too!) and a set of 5 Positron's Blast (in Terrify), this actually would've given me six +6.25% recharge bonuses, which is over the cap of five of one type of bonus. So I used the respec to pull the Decimation IOs out of Levitation and replaced them with a set of 6 Thunderstrike IOs, which actually has some nice bonuses: +2% recovery, +7% accuracy, +4% movement speed, +2.5% ranged DEF.

After that I joined a level 36-40 Citizens Elite Force team fighting Freakshow and Carnies. I'm liking the effects of the respec so far; I found the single target Confuse very useful, and I still got held/stunned/slept frequently by these enemies, and it was nice to not have to burn ~6 seconds of animation time reactivating toggles each time. The team mostly did well, but did have one wipeout, when the tank decided to charge the center of the circus tents (aggroing 3 spawns of level 42 Carnies). After that I asked for an SK; up to that point I hadn't asked for an SK since there were also unSKed level 36s on the team, but we were doing level 40 Invincible missions, and I really needed the mind controls to hit.

I switched to Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) and agreed to help a 47 controller with her Infernal mission. The controller recruited like five level 50s to help her out, and even on invincible this only made the mission about level 49, so we beat up the demons pretty easily.

I sort of helped a tanker in Demolition Girls SG do a Positron TF; she actually wanted to 2-box the TF with a pocket empath, and my contribution was limited to logging on Mary Christmas (14 ice/rad controller on Triumph) to help start the TF, logging out until the last mission, then helping with that last mission. The other player seemed to prefer soloing the TF and just needed help to form the TF, so I decided not to feel guilty about getting the TF badge this way.

Playing Thunder Girl (26 will/nrg tanker on Liberty) I got invited to a level 26-29 pickup team by a nice AR/dev blaster I met over the weekend. This team had an unconventional mix of 3 tankers, 2 scrappers and 3 blasters, and although I was the lowest level I got nominated lead tanker. But despite the lack of support we did pretty well; in hindsight, I think this was because we were mostly facing Council and Sky Raiders that do lethal damage, which the tankers were strong against. After some people switched out of the team I ended up with the star and picked a CoT mission, which started off badly (I seem to be pretty weak against the CoT ghosts with their dark damage and acc debuffs) but got better after I recruited an emp and a kin and some more damage to the team. Got Thunder Girl to level 27.

Later that night Thunder Girl joined a level 33 pickup team in Croatoa as an SK; this team was kinda marginal, a couple team members didn't seem all there and/or didn't listen to the team leader (who was a pretty cool fish-person that constantly called the rest of us "mammals", much to my character's consternation). We did run across Sally though, which got Thunder Girl the Believer badge.

After that team broke up, Thunder Girl helped an 8-player Northern Lights team fight the Kronos Titan in Founders Falls. We had a well-balanced team and easily stomped the giant robot without taking much damage, getting the Mistress of Olympus badge.

I finished the night soloing on Yuki-Onna (26 ice/cold corruptor), doing a newspaper mission that got her to level 27.

1/22/2008

I had a long weekend and played a lot of CoH, so fair warning, this is really long.

On Friday night I played Flamebait (12 fire/thermal corruptor) with an all-corruptor Demolition Girls team. With tons of AoE and buffs and debuffs we blasted through CoV villains, including the Plague Carrier badge mission and the King's Row mayhem, and Flamebait got to level 14. Later on Flamebait hit level 15 on a semi-pickup team run by a Liberty Force SG-mate.

Played Spacegirl (36 mind/rad controller) in Rikti War Zone with Liberty Force mixed hero/villain teams several times over the weekend, getting her to level 37. The most dramatic mission was to "Save the World" at level 49 with a ragtag band of 2 blasters, 2 stalkers, a tanker and me as a sidekick; in the last room we fought AV-level Hro'tohz, triggering massive ambushes, including an AV-level Nemesis that our heroic schoolgirl stalker tried to off-tank. With me as the only support person I really couldn't keep up with both healing the team and doing something about the nonstop incoming ambushes, so we defeated Hro'tohz then wiped out, then regrouped to kill Nemesis and then wiped out to ambushes, then finally got the 4 generators in the last room. I've kind of decided that for backstory reasons, Spacegirl should spend most of her time fighting Rikti, but she draws a lot of aggro and gets mez'd a lot. I'm pondering respec'ing out of leadership (currently every time I get mez'd, I have to break free, then reapply Enervating Field, Radiation Infection, Maneuvers and Tactics) for some additional Mind Control powers, probably lower aggro stuff like single-target Confuse and Mass Hypnosis.

I heavily played Thunder Girl (18 will/nrg tanker), first getting her Shivans in Bloody Bay (never know when those will come in handy), then forming a pretty good 8-player pickup team to run through the Faultline story arcs, which got her the Rescuer badge (unlocking Yin's store) and finishing Doc Delilah's story arc which got her the Entrusted with the Secret badge. Reached level 20 in this way, and joined a Sister Psyche TF with Sisterhood SG (and some pickup people). Team mix was:

fire/elec blaster
sonic/nrg blaster
AR/nrg blaster
nrg/nrg blaster
earth/kin controller
illus/kin controller
will/nrg tanker (me)

I wasn't really sure about having 4 blasters and only kinetics to keep them alive, but it actually worked really well, as the blasters were good about not getting aggro. With such a damage heavy team we blazed through the TF in about 2.5 hrs; Clamor just melted under the blaster+kinetic firepower. This got Thunder Girl to level 23. Later that weekend I helped a Sisterhood blaster with a 2-glowy click mission, joined a so-so pickup team, then formed my own large pickup team, getting the Pwnz badge and reaching level 25. I met a lot of cool players who I plan to keep an eye out for in the future.

Thunder Girl also joined a Citadel TF with Sisterhood SG (and some pickup people). Team mix was:

ice/rad controller
3 scrappers
dark/psy defender
sonic/sonic defender
sonic/nrg blaster
will/nrg tanker (me)

The sonic blaster quit the TF before the first mission; he was 25 and we kind of think he quit because we asked him to SK (presumably he wanted to leech exp at the low end). I was also 25 but I was happy to take an SK to be a tougher tank. Anyway, this went really well; the sonic buffs and rad/dark debuffs made everything we faced really easy. The scrappers frequently did run off and do their own thing, but they (mostly) seemed to survive doing this and weren't hurting the rest of us. On the way to one of our missions we ran into Adamastor in Dark Astoria and took him down with just our team, getting the Keeper of Secrets badge. We easily beat Vandal in the last mission, finishing the TF and getting Thunder Girl to level 26. It drives me crazy to not have Swift on characters (I feel so slow) so I ended up getting Swift at 22, and once I started that, I figured I may as well get Health at 24 and Stamina at 26, which is now way too much +Recovery; but it's nice to not worry about END, and lets me start getting some END-sucking powers next. Maybe Tough? Not sure whether I need it.

Playing Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corruptor) I joined a Recluse Strike Force organized on LHO. Team mix was:

2 invuln brutes
2 rad corruptors (one of which was me)
1 kin corruptor
1 cold corruptor (no shields except frostwork)
1 dark mastermind
1 dual/will stalker

Stalkers are normally scorned on RSFs but the one we had really worked at being useful, painting the first mission and stealth/TPing the team around. Our kin corruptor had an interesting habit of charging into mobs and alpha-striking them -- and surviving, I have no idea how. (Most kins I've seen seem very squishy.) We got through most of the SF pretty easily, only having trouble in the last mission where we had one wipeout against the Freedom Phalanx, though we took down Numina and Sister Psyche first. After regrouping we finished off the rest of the Freedom Phalanx and completed the SF.

Did a level 34 villain respec as Mega (50 SS/elec brute). Team mix was:

robo/trap MM
SS/elec brute (me)
fire/rad corruptor
thug MM
claw/ninja stalker
fire/ice dominator

Had a few deaths against the Thorn Tree but nothing too serious, and we finished the respec pretty quick (40 mins or so).

Short takes:

I played Goshilla (34 sonic/nrg blaster) a couple times on 5 or 6 player Liberty Force teams, mostly fighting Freakshow. I'm kinda getting a rhythm of how to use her nova power to blow stuff up.

Played Yuki-Onna (26 ice/cold corruptor) as a LK on a level 33 Liberty Force villain team for a bit.

Did a level 50 flashback with April Fool (50 thug/TA MM) on a 3 player Liberty Force team with challenge settings that got her the Divided Mastery and Marginalized badges.

Played Rain Dancer (41 storm/archery defender) as an SK on a 6-player level 49 Liberty Force hero team for a bit.

I played Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) on a RWZ raid, getting another giant monster and another bomb, and finally getting the Master at Arms badge.

1/18/2008

Wednesday night I started off running Rain Dancer (41 storm/archery defender) on an 8-person team of mostly Sisterhood running low 40s missions in Peregrine Island. We were defender heavy so did well, except for one time when we overaggroed several groups of Carnies and most of us got held and beat up.

After that I played Schadenfreude (30 AR/dark corruptor) on a Liberty Force villain team doing low 30s missions in Nerva. We started with 4 villains and gradually built up to an 8 villain team as people logged in and joined either at our level or lackeying up; this was pretty cool because teaming on villain side is pretty scarce at times. We had a tough brute backed up by a lot of corruptors, so steamrollered door missions for awhile, getting Schadenfreude to level 31. After an hour or so of this, about half the level 30ish people had to log off, leaving us without enough mentors, so we switched alts around (I switched to Yuki-Onna, 24 ice/cold corruptor) so that we could continue the villain team at the mid-high 20s level. This went mostly well, though we did have one mission against hordes of Freakshow where about half the team was killed and the dominator was saying, "Maybe we should run," and yet none of the survivors wanted to be the first to run, and so we stood and fought and beat the Freakshow, just barely.

After that team broke up, Yuki-Onna was pretty close to leveling, so I solo'd radio missions in Sharkhead for a bit until I got level 25. After training to 25, I saw the Ghost of Scrapyard near the Arbiter and a team of villains fighting him; I jumped in and started ice shielding the players and attacking Scrapyard. The villain team invited me and we took down Scrapyard, getting the Hammer Down badge.

After we defeated Scrapyard, the villain team leader said, hey, we were about to do the Sharkhead strike force, want to come along? At that point it was 1:30am and much too late to start a strike force..... buuuuut, I had the next day off (due to snow) and I like TFs, so I (unwisely) said sure! Our team mix was:

robo/traps MM
thug/TA MM
dark/regen stalker
rad/rad corruptor
ice/cold corruptor (me)
mind/nrg dominator
ninj/ninj stalker

Some of these characters were also on the Silver Mantis SF I had played Yuki-Onna on, so it wasn't totally a random pickup. Since I was just barely at the minimum level for this SF, I asked for a LK, though I think we must've been at high difficulty since things were still pretty high level even lackeyed. We did fine though. I started off feeling fine, ice shielding or ice blasting eerything in sight; we probably took a little longer than necessary on some of the early missions since people wanted to completely clear missions for extra infamy. I got really tired near the end though, and, embarrassingly, actually dozed off and slept through one mission (doh!!), but fortunately woke up and got to help on the last couple missions. In the last mission we took down Calystix surprisingly quickly, though the waterspouts knocking us back was kind of annoying. The big eyeball thing was a little harder but went down after not too long. Got Yuki-Onna to level 26 and received a Positron's Blast (dmg/acc/end) recipe for reward.

On Thursday I had the day off so mostly goofed off playing CoH all day. Started with some crafting with Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster), gaining the Blinding badge for making some kind of level 10 IOs.

Then I played Thunder Girl (15 will/nrg tanker), soloing the Spelunker badge mission and the Bonefire story arc, which got her to level 16, before joining a 7 player pickup team doing level 18ish radio missions in Steel Canyon. I was backup tanker behind a higher level stone tanker, and our team leader was an AR/dev blaster who was pretty good about pulling. We fought enough CoT that Thunder Girl got the Soul Binder badge, did a Skyway safeguard and got the explore badge there, and by the time the team broke up Thunder Girl got to level 18, having picked up Fly at 16 and Whirling Hands at 18, which I took so that I'd have some AoE; the animation does look weirdly abbreviated right now, though I think a fix is on test for this.

Later on I played Police Woman on a Rikti War Zone raid, scoring another bomb and another giant monster worth of progress towards RWZ badges (which seem slowww going). Not sure yet what to do with all these merits I'm piling up.

After the raid I switched to Spacegirl (35 mind/rad controller) who I ran through the "Welcome to Vanguard" story arc; I kinda think it makes sense for Spacegirl to spend most of her time fighting, well, bug eyed aliens. I invited a couple Liberty Force SG-mates and some pickup people to make a pretty good team. Met a competent will tanker and archery blaster. We had a 50 scrapper and a 42 thermal corruptor who willing to exemp down to join us; not quite sure why, but maybe they were just happy to have a team instead of soloing, and they were definitely a help. In this way Spacegirl got to level 36.

After that I played Astarte (28 grav/emp controller on Protector) for awhile on a 5-player team of Demolition Girls SG, doing level 32ish missions in Croatoa. This went pretty well and the tanker even complimented me on how well I was keeping the team alive (though, in fairness, I wasn't healing hardly at all -- keeping Fortitude on the 3 characters who drew the most aggro was mostly enough), which felt pretty good, but naturally this caused the gods of irony to spawn a level 32 ambush directly on my head to keep my hubris down. Anyway, we did some more Croatoa missions and Astarte got to level 29.

Later I played April Fool (50 thug/TA mastermind on Liberty) on an 8-player team of mostly Liberty Force doing level 50 missions in the Rikti War Zone. I thought it was really fun to mix and match heroes and villains here; we had MMs, tankers, blasters, a corruptor, a stalker and a defender all on the same team. We also invited a couple heroes from Sisterhood channel, and I got to spend several missions threatening to turn Action Panda into panda pie.

I wrapped up the night playing April Fool on a 5-villain Ouroboros flashback with some challenge settings which got her the Proportional Supremacy and Silver Medalist badges. Earned a lot of infamy, also; got 3.7M infamy from killing stuff in missions and about 6M infamy from selling stuff on the Black Market, which seemed a little ironic since selling stuff is a lot less effort. Killing stuff is definitely more fun though.

1/16/2008

Started off playing Schadenfreude (30 AR/dark corruptor on Liberty) on a 4-person Liberty Force villain team; did a couple missions in Nerva. I was excited to actually be teamed up with another AR/dark corruptor, normally a much scorned build! She was even also vaguely Nazi-themed, though her background story was more like a cross between the Girl Scouts and the Hitler Youth.

After that I saw some friends on Virtue server so I switched to Mercy Beaucoup (5 emp/sonic defender on Virtue), who I had created months ago but had been idle for a long time. Was on a 4-person Northern Lights hero side team for a couple radio missions, then joined an 8 person pickup team for a few missions, getting to level 8. It seems really hard keep people alive at this level, even with heal aura and heal other; probably because I had weak (TO-slotted) heals and everyone has weak defenses, yet people don't really adjust to this, so they do stuff like run into mobs of Vahzilok to cast AoEs, drawing enough aggro that there's no way to save them. It was an interesting change of pace from what I normally do though.

After that I played April Fool (50 thug/TA mastermind on Liberty) on a 3-player Liberty Force villain team doing a level 50 Flashback of Tavish Bell's story arc. Our team mix was:

nrg/nrg brute
nrg/ninj stalker
thug/TA mastermind (me)

This was a pretty short story arc with only magical enemies that an SG-mate was using to farm arcane salvage. We handled the story arc pretty easily, and though I didn't get any meaningful salvage, I did get some decent infamy, and picked up the Shared Victory, Bronze Medalist and Demarcated flashback badges from the various challenge settings the leader had set.

1/15/2008

I started the evening playing Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) on an 8 person Sisterhood team doing level 50ish missions in Peregrine Island; mostly radio missions with a few Portal Corp missions mixed in. We had a spine/dark scrapper as "tank" and good damage and support, and pretty much destroyed everything that crossed our path. Along the way I lucked into a Magical Conspiracy salvage drop from some kind of arcane (non-Council) werewolves.

After that I switched to Spacegirl (34 mind/rad controller) for a Mender Lazarus TF with the Northern Lights SG. Our team mix was:

dark/SR scrapper
MA/regen scrapper
kin/elec defender
mind/rad controller (me)
ill/emp controller
nrg/nrg blaster

In the first couple missions we had some trouble staying together, resulting in some deaths. Also, I in particular had aggro control issues. I had gotten really used to dropping rad debuffs almost immediately in a fight, but in this group everyone else was pretty single target so this caused me to get myself killed a couple times; my own fault, and eventually I realized I needed to switch tactics and open fights with controls instead of debuffs.

Around the middle of the TF, however, the team got really focused and stayed together well for the emp and rad aura heals and beat up lots of fascists. In the last mission we faced three Fifth Column AVs and their hordes of minions. In previous TFs I've been on, things have always gone to utter chaos at this point, but on this one we hid near the entrance of the big room and the defender flawlessly pulled the minions a few at a time, then the AVs one at a time. This let us keep much better control of the mega ambushes that the AVs spawn when they are low on life, and we finished the big fight with relative ease. This also got Spacegirl to level 35; after some internal debate, I decided to pick up the Vengeance power (instead of Mutation, which would've also made some sense).

After that I switched to playing Thunder Girl (15 will/nrg tanker) and joined an 8-player team for the Frostfire mission. I thought this was a pickup team, but it turns out the team leader had played an alt with Thunder Girl on yesterday's Positron TF and remembered me, which I thought was pretty cool. The team had a good mix of damage and support and we pretty well sailed through the whole mission without too much trouble. So far I'm pretty impressed with how resilient willpower tanks are.

After that I played Rain Dancer (41 storm/archery defender) on a 3-defender team doing a Defeat All Crey mission. We had a storm, a kin and an empathy defender; I started off being worried that my stormy knockback would be bad for the kin defender, but it seemed to work out OK. With no melee on the team (well, unless you count the kin) I got to unleash the full stormy arsenal, keeping Hurricane up full time, pseudo-tanking at times, and generally abusing mobs with Hurricane/Lightning Storm/Frozen Rain/Tornado/Rain of Arrows. I also picked up a couple Decimation recipes from Wentworth's which let me complete two sets of 5 Decimation, giving Rain Dancer an extra +12.5% in recharge bonuses.