PoliceWoman

12/7/2007

On Wednesday night I played Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) on a 7 person Hess TF (mostly Sisterhood & friends). The team leader set the restrictions of "no temp powers, no deaths" but we were a bit overconfident entering the first mission, and somehow we managed to aggro most of the warehouse of Council robots onto us, giving us a total party wipeout right off the bat. I'm not 100% sure how this happened, but I think it was a combination of the scrapper and illusion pets pulling adds onto us, plus the tanker being "bugged" so that none of his powers would fire during this huge fight (requiring him to exit the mission while we were fighting..doh!). This caused us to immediately fail the special TF badge restrictions; aside from that, the rest of the TF went very smoothly and we finished it in about an hour. I got a decent amount of prestige (I'm pushing to reach a 1M prestige total, then want to switch out of SG mode to work on influence badges) and a Malaise's Illusions: Chance for Psi damage recipe (sort of unexciting).

After that I played April Fool (50 thug/TA mastermind), malefactored down to 41 to team up with some characters from her old VG that hadn't been around in awhile. We did a bunch of missions in RWZ, which went pretty well; so well that someone commented that "we never used to do this well before!" Frequent and multiple deaths used to be a feature of our villain nights. Not sure if higher levels or more player experience are responsible, or as someone else suggested, the fact that certain other players weren't present to drag us down. I kind of think it was team size; we were only a 3-4 person team that night, so had smaller spawn sizes.

Thursday night I started off with a lot of badge missions; on hero side, Spacegirl (32 mind/rad controller) got the Corruptor badge with a Sisterhood & friends team. On villain side, Yuki-Onna (19 ice/cold corruptor) joined an LHO team that quickly did the Soultaker, Exterminator, and Bad Luck missions; that was really nice.

After that I spent probably an hour agonizing over respecing Kid Valkyrie (50 broadsword/regen scrapper). I kind of suck at playing a regen scrapper, so I wanted to tweak her build to try and make it better. Kid Valkyrie's old build was focused on increasing max HP; I decided to try and switch this around to focus on maximizing recharge. Consequently I dropped Leaping pool (which I only had combat jumping in) and brought in Leadership pool (with 2 powers I can put a LotG +7.5% recharge in, Leadership pool seems like a win when maximizing recharge). I also respec'd in Moment of Glory; I don't really like the power, but it's another place I can put a LotG +7.5% recharge. I dropped the "Slash" power which really seemed like an extraneous and weak attack, and moved "Whirling Sword" from level 38ish to level 18 (I found that when exemping I really missed having an AoE attack). I also generally moved all her slots down to level 32 and below powers (my current thinking is that I will do a lot of exemping in I11 and beyond). I had some friends on wanting to play the monster team, so I didn't get around to fully slotting or testing the new build, but I wanted to be sure to use up Kid Valkyrie's existing free respec, before a new free respec was awarded the next day.

After that I brought on Goshilla (15 sonic/nrg blaster) and joined the Liberty Force monster squad for a bunch of missions in Faultline. Against all odds we saved the suicidal Doc Delilah from hordes of ambushes. We also picked up two fire/rad controllers who asked to join, and their debuffs/buffs/heals were incredibly helpful, and they seemed like pretty cool people who were not fazed by our monstrous ways. The team had a strong showing and was able to stomp level 20ish mobs at a rapid rate, raking in a lot of exp. We finished up the night by rescuing Mr. Yin, getting Goshilla to level 17.

12/5/2007

Started off the evening playing Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) and recruiting a team for some Ouroboros stuff. While getting organized, a Synapse TF called for help with Babbage, so we diverted to Skyway. While there, a player I didn't recognize said "OMG it's Police Woman!" which totally made me feel heroic. Thanks!

We helped beat up the giant mecha and then headed back to the Ouroboros zone to start a level 34 story arc in Croatoa given by Kelly Nemmers. I set the mission parameters to be "no travel powers" and "no deaths" and we ran on Tenacious difficulty. Our team was myself (AR/dev blaster) and two friends from the Sisterhood channel (an ill/rad controller and a TA/archery defender), all level 50 but exemped to 34. Level 34 is a pretty nice level to play at since everyone has their tier 9 power from their primary. I had just respec'd Police Woman to move all her slots to low level powers, so I was really operating at full capacity. I like Croatoa in particular because of the magic salvage, and Police Woman was too high level to do any of the Croatoa content when it was originally released, so it was nice to get to do the missions. (I suspect I may end up getting into the "gotta catch em all!" mentality for the story arc souvenirs.)

I really like how the world kind of goes black and white as you enter and leave the time travel missions. It's very minor eye candy but it really gives a good "retro" look & feel.

The story arc went very smoothly. After saving Waylon Crane we easily handled the ambushes, and the mission where we rescued captive Tuatha was greatly simplified by our various stealth powers. We didn't have a true "tank" but phantom army + holds + trick arrow debuffs + full auto seemed to work just fine. We finished the whole story arc in about an hour, with zero deaths. I got the Bow & Arrow temp power, the "Still" badge, and a good chunk of prestige from it. I was hoping this would unlock the Katie Hannon TF contact for me, but I don't think it did; thinking about it, I'm pretty sure Kelly isn't the last contact in Croatoa, but I only saw Gordon Bower and Kelly Nemmers as available Croatoa contacts on the pillar of ice and fire.

I messed around on Triumph server for a bit and got Mary Christmas (ice/rad controller) to level 6 while waiting for the Liberty Force monster squad to log on.

After that I played Goshilla (14 sonic/nrg blaster) to finish up the Positron TF. Our zombie tanker was distraught that his Vahzilok Wasting Disease had faded away overnight; apparently it has a time limit! Who knew? Other than that minor tragedy, we steamrollered the rest of the Positron TF pretty easily. The early missions of Positron TF are really the hardest. Goshilla got to level 15, and I got a fairly pointless fear IO recipe as TF reward; everyone on the team ended up either level 15 or 16 as a result of the TF.

12/4/2007

Mostly played Goshilla (12 sonic/nrg blaster) on the Liberty Force monster squad team. We knocked out a King's Row safeguard mission, then kicked off a Positron TF. Our TF lineup was:

will/mace tanker
another will/mace tanker
stone/SS tanker
dual/will scrapper
sonic/nrg blaster (me)
archery/fire blaster
dark/sonic defender

Our fearless leader, the zombie tanker, went the extra mile by starting the Doctor Vahzilok story arc and deliberately acquiring the Vahzilok wasting disease so that he could have swarming flies surrounding him at all times. This also pretty much flatlines your regen and recovery, which sounds horrible, but he really wanted that authentic zombie feeling. He got exemped down from 16 to 15 to do the Positron TF, and apparently the Vahzilok Wasting Disease isn't one of those things that you lose when you exemp down below the level you got it. (I think I'm pretty good about sticking to a character concept, but I definitely couldn't do something like this.)

Despite my earlier misgivings about the light support on our team, we did surprisingly well, making it through the first mission against the Vahzilok without a single death. (I've been on Positron TFs that gave up during that first mission.)

The second mission against the Circle of Thorns was much rougher, partly due to ACC debuffs from the horrible CoT ghosts, partly because of massive ambushes after rescuing each hostage, and partly because one hostage got stuck in an elevator and required several minutes of pushing and pulling to get him out again.

The third mission to defeat all clockwork in a door mission was a piece of cake by comparison, though after that we decided to call it a night and continue next time.

Goshilla got to level 14 and Super Jump during these missions. I also managed to almost persuade the team on an OOC channel that, since we were heroic monsters, we had an obligation to go out and fight Giant Monsters whenever they appear in Paragon City. Our Frankenstein monster managed to shoot this down when he realized that, "You're just saying that because you're playing Godzilla!"

After the monster team broke up, I played my holiday themed character, Mary Christmas (ice/rad controller), for a few missions and a short sewer run, getting her to level 4. Ice control does more damage at that level than I had heard; but I'm using Chilblain and Block of Ice like blast powers, and slotting them for damage, which might not be Standard Operating Procedure for controllers. Also, 4-person sewer teams just don't seem to work; even with heavy support (tanker, 2 controllers, defender), the big groups of zombies would beat us up too badly.

12/3/2007

Weekend roundup.

I planned out and executed a free respec for Police Woman (AR/dev), in anticipation of another free respec being awarded next week. Major changes: with the introduction of Ouroboros, I expect to do a lot more exemplaring. Consequently I moved every single enhancement slot to a power I get at level 32 or earlier, so that I can maximally benefit from them; my level 35, 38, 41, 44, 47 and 49 powers are all 1-slotted now. I dropped Sniper Rifle; even with 5xSting of the Manticore it was too slow to use in combat and it's been bad as a pulling power despite the range, due to the knockback. I finally dropped Smoke Grenade; I really used to like this power, but I'm no longer certain it has enough effect to be worth applying any more. To replace these powers I took Maneuvers (putting a LotG +7.5% recharge in it) and Health (currently with a health SO, but I plan to put either a Numina or Miracle unique IO in it, if I ever find one). This gives me all 4 Leadership powers and all 4 Fitness powers, which may be overkill, but they're each pretty nice powers. I moved Vengeance from level 30 to level 35 and moved Taser from level 35 to level 30; since picking Taser up in my previous respec, I've found stacking Beanbag/Taser to be a really good way to control bosses, so wanted it to be earlier. I increased Targeting Drone to 6 slots and Tactics to 5 slots; currently have them loaded with SOs, but planning to get ToHitBuff IO sets to put in them (both were 3-slotted with Cytoskeleton HOs before). Also, another trick I learned was to slot a Celerity: Stealth IO in the default slot of a Prestige Power Sprint; I can now toggle on my prestige power sprint, then immediately turn it off again, to activate stealth for 2 minutes, at no endurance cost and requiring no power picks or enhancement slots (other than the default one I wasn't using anyway).

I burned about 40M influence buying and crafting IOs to help support this build, and still have another 40M or so worth of bids outstanding on Wentworths for more stuff I'd like. I've been hoarding this money long enough, I figure it's about time to spend it.

After this respec, I did a level 50 pickup team for awhile (fighting Malta and Carnies), did the Mender Lazarus TF (fighting 5th Column ... yay! I love shooting those guys), and solo'd the Lars story arc in Striga Isle, which I *think* unlocked Ernesto Hess as a TF contact for me, but I'm not absolutely sure. I got a few badges for doing that story arc with no travel powers and no deaths, also; the Lazarus TF tried to do it with no travel powers, no inspirations, a time limit and 5 or less deaths, but we exceeded the death limit (tons of ambushes) and didn't get any badges as a result.

I found Police Woman still mostly plays the same, but I kind of regret dropping Smoke Grenade (there've been a few times I was just standing around waiting for my team to engage a spawn where I could've been lobbing smoke grenades; it's a debuff, even if it's a small one) and I totally grumbled that the Lars story arc from Ouroboros exemped me down to level 29 (I had targeted my build to be optimal when exemped to level 30, Siren's Call level, and my IO set bonuses shut down at level 29 or below).

Spent some time on Triumph server, where my level 13 fire tanker joined a Cavern of Transcendence trial team. Unfortunately, after waiting ~15-20 mins for the team to fill up to 8, the leader suddenly realized that, hey, none of us have this trial unlocked! Grrr. I gave the leader a few more minutes to try and work out a solution for this, before excusing myself; I hate to bail on a team but it was clear that we just weren't getting anywhere.

I played Alice Slaughter, my newbie dual blades/willpower brute, a lot this weekend. I soloed some, joined a pickup team for awhile, and was a lackey on a Demolition Girls villain team for awhile. This was actually a lot of fun, and Alice got from level 3 to level 12 over several play sessions. I really like the dual blade animations and combo system. Still not quite sure what I think of willpower yet; it's neither wowed me nor gotten in my way. Though in fairness, I've taken more attacks than defenses so far, and so haven't seen all the stuff willpower can do yet. Also, I need to practice Lewis Carroll quotations to give Alice a few more silly catch phrases. "Off with their heads!" is her current battlecry.

Played Spacegirl, my mind/rad controller, on a level 29-31 team for awhile, finishing the Kelly Nemmers story arc in Croatoa. Got a couple weird new recipes: Force Feedback (knockback/damage) and a Gaussian's something, and got Spacegirl to level 32 and Mass Confusion (fun!).

Started a grav/kin controller on Protector to duo with my SO who wanted to try (surprise) a dual blades/willpower scrapper for a bit. We got to level 6 just running missions for our first contact.

The Liberty Force monster squad got together and ran some missions where I played Goshilla, the sonic/energy blaster. I did get level 12 and bonesmasher and am now unwisely running in to bonesmash stuff; this has gotten me in trouble a couple times (e.g. running in to melee a ruin mage, who sets off an earthquake to leave me falling down repeatedly while CoT beat on me). Starting to think I should've taken Amplify instead. We were a full team for much of the night, saving citizens and scaring/confusing pickup team members; got the Spelunker badge and completed a King's Row safeguard. One problem we have is that we're really support-light (typically we have something like 3 tankers, 2-3 scrappers, 1-2 blasters, 1 defender) which works most of the time but occasionally gets us stomped flat (mainly if we over-aggro or get hit by ambushes). This might just be typical of I11 teams though, which I'm sure are all very melee-heavy due to the new powersets.

Also after spending all Sunday afternoon Christmas shopping, I started an ice/rad controller on Triumph, a girl in a Santa suit named Mary Christmas. (I was just so amused by this name that I couldn't resist making someone to use it.) Got to level 2. We'll see if the holiday spirit motivates me to play her any further.

11/29/2007

I started off playing Amethyst Star, my level 19 warshade on Protector server, where for the past month I've been gradually running a Synapse TF (at the rate of a couple hours a week) with a full team of the Demolition Girls SG. I'm not really a big fan of kheldians (my main character has been level 50 for years, yet Amethyst Star is my highest level kheldian to date) but being on a big team seems to make being a kheldian much nicer due to the synergy bonus from the dark sustenance inherent. The TF finished up this session, defeating Babbage (with considerable outside help) and the Clockwork King. Amethyst gained level 20 (and Stamina!) and got one of the new recipes for TF reward, a level 21 "Dark Watcher's Despair (Recharge/End Reduction)". This is apparently a tohit debuff set recipe. I think warshade blasts actually debuff tohit, so I might be able to make and slot this.

After the TF the team reformed and did a couple more missions. They seemed to believe that on 11/30 everyone would be awarded one costume change token per costume slot (I kind of vaguely remember this was how previous costume change tokens worked) so made a point to unlock the level 20 costume for everyone, and one of the Demo Girls generously gave me a set of Halloween salvage to unlock yet another costume slot. I unlocked costume slots for a few other alts on Liberty to prepare for tomorrow also, and I messed around in the costume interface a bit; I really like the new hairstyles, and plan to use several of them. I particularly like Serrated Sugar, Feisty and Divine.

After the team on Protector broke up, the "monster squad" team on Liberty was just getting started, so I brought on Goshilla (level 9 sonic/energy blaster) and ran through some lowbie missions. At some point a random mind/FF controller started sending us tells asking if he could join our team, and so we invited him; unfortunately, we had established that none of the monsters could really talk, and so I felt a bit guilty that we could only answer his perfectly reasonable queries of "Where's the next mission? What's up now?" with growls, shrieks and roars. That might have scared him off; or maybe he really did "have to gi" in the middle of a mission. Anyway, the monsters mashed their way through a lot of missions and Goshilla got to level 11. I normally suck at playing */nrg blasters, dying repeatedly because I'm used to the more controlly style of */dev blasters, but the fact that nearly everyone else had made a scrapper or tanker (this seems to be the story of I11) allowed me to unleash my sonic blasts while staying very safely behind a wall of meleers. I'm thinking I should take Bonesmasher at level 12, though, so I'll have to integrate more blapping into my playstyle soon.

After the monster team wrapped up, I logged on Spacegirl (level 31 mind/rad controller) and joined a pickup team being led by a level 30 tanker SG-mate for a few missions, and finished up the Alexander Pavlidis story arc to get the Redeemer badge.

11/28/2007

Issue 11 came out today and seems to be a huge hit. An enormous number of new characters have been created (almost all scrappers and tankers to use the new sets) and there were two instances of the Ouroboros zone when I tried it.

I first brought on Police Woman and immediately got awarded the badge that unlocks Ouroboros (presumably due to spending time in RV, completing the Ubelmann arc, doing Portal missions, or a combination of all three) and several costume slot options for the Nemesis, Council and Family style rifles. I briefly checked Wentworths and noted that the new super-rare purple recipes were selling for around 20-60M infl, decided against shopping for anything like that on the first day (though probably there's money to be made here for someone), then ran to Icon to try weapon customization.

The Steel Canyon Icon was packed, probably with people doing the exact same thing, customizing their weapons. I gave Police Woman the "military" style rifle, which most closely resembles the M16M203 that I picture being Police Woman's preferred weapon. This looks kind of small in her hands compared to the ginormous old assault rifle, but is a much more realistic looking gun. After that, nothing would do but for me to run around shooting hapless grey-con mobs in Steel Canyon and Talos, to see the new weapon and the faster AR animations. Burst is noticably faster; not sure I can tell the 0.2 seconds shaved off of the other powers, but I'll take it on faith that it's there. The new Buckshot sound has to go though; whereas before it was a pleasing shotgun blast sound, now it has a puny coughing sound, more like a gun with a silencer.

At that point I decided to try the Ouroboros thing. The badge had come with a temp power that transports you to Ouroboros. Instead of directly teleporting you (like the Pocket D and Base Transporters), it opens up a portal which you have to click on. I'm guessing so this is you can take your friends with you.

[SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER]
Ouroboros seems to be set in some Shadow Shard like dimension. The flavor text from the contacts I met was really cool, and hits a lot of the best and brain-boggling memes of time travel -- the contacts act like they know you, then realize you're meeting them for the first time. I'm convinced that Mender Lazarus is intended as a reference to Heinlein's Lazarus Long -- the kilt is a dead giveaway! And I love the introductory missions. I was SO psyched to be fighting 5th Column again! Sure, the Council have almost the exact same weapons and tactics, but the Council feel like moderately lame generic GI Joe type villains, while traveling back in time to fight jackbooted Nazis is pure awesomeness. Also, I went D'OH at the second mission where you fight Contaminated. I spent easily 3 months in Recluse's Victory hunting these guys down 1 at a time to get Isolator. Now you can hunt them down by the score in these missions.
[/SPOILER]

After that I logged in April Fool to try costume options for her too. April Fool is a thugs/TA mastermind, so the costume interface actually allows her to customize three weapons: left pistol, right pistol, and bow. I played with weapon options for a bit, but couldn't decide between the tech-y pistols with glowing laser sights, or simply coloring the regular pistols unnatural neon-green and pink colors to look more like squirt guns. It also wanted to charge me like 2M infamy to change a single costume (April Fool doesn't have costume change tokens banked, unlike Police Woman), so I decided to wait until costume change tokens are awarded before messing with this further.

My SG was starting to log in at this point and the consensus had somehow converged on the brain damaged idea of making new characters based on a theme of heroic monsters. So I created Goshilla, a heroic giant lizard. I once made a villain Goshilla on another server, thinking it would be great fun on mayhem missions, and decided to re-use the idea, as it was the best monster concept I could think of. I had considered making Goshilla some sort of rad defender, but ultimately decided to make a sonic/energy blaster (I just couldn't picture Godzilla being the "healer" for a team; while Godzilla as blapper kinda works). Fire blast might have made sense too, but I liked that all the sonic attacks are emitted from the character's mouth, and sonic blast has some Godzilla-like sound effects. After entering the tutorial, I was immensely gratified to immediately get a tell asking "Are you a radioactive dinosaur?" and being able to reply with, "Yes, yes I am." (Trivia: the name Goshilla is originally from a very, very old Atari game from my misspent youth called Crush, Crumble and Chomp, where you played movie monsters attacking a city.)

Unlike most of my other new characters, I skipped getting the Isolator badge (Contaminated were running scared in Outbreak last night) and just ran through the tutorial and got into Paragon City as quickly as possible. There, Goshilla teamed up with a shovel-wielding zombie, a werewolf wielding a bone, a demon with dual blades, a Frankenstein monster with dual blades, a Bigfoot, a mutated fruit bat, and a hapless human dual blades scrapper that we somehow got as a pickup person. This poor human scrapper, despite being named Silent something, was the only team member who could talk in an intelligible language; the rest of us were making bizarre roaring, shrieking, or grunting sounds. This team was incredibly good cheesy fun and I got Goshilla to level 8 before we broke up for the night.

After that I could no longer resist the impulse to make a dual blades/will power character, so I started Alice Slaughter (an evil, knife-wielding Alice in Wonderland) as a newbie brute on Triumph server. This was actually pretty fun, though I think I enjoyed watching the dual blade animations executed by a knife-wielding little girl in a blue dress and pinafore a little *too* much.

Here is my attempt:
Police Woman #37

It took a long time to get it right, but it was a ton of fun making this.

[ QUOTE ]
Since the contest seems to be geared towards screenshots and not original art, I think I'm going to sit this one out.

Of course, if the comic creator guys are interested in 3D works or slick comic-style art for their tutorials and web samples, I can be bribed... *cough*

Art samples are located at both my website and my DA account, listed below in my signature. /grin

[/ QUOTE ]

Wow, that is some awesome work. Cryptic should totally add "commissioned portrait of your main character by Douglas Shuler" to the prize packs!