PoliceWoman

Thanks for your attention to this problem. I tried testing it some just now, here are some problems I still ran into:

Couldn't use "Dr. Vahzilok" (temporarily using "Doctor Vahzilok" which it allows)
Couldn't use "5th Column" (temporarily using "Fifth Column" which it allows)
Couldn't use "Black Scorpion" (temporarily using "Lord Sasori" instead)

Confirmed OK to use: Manticore, Spider, Statesman, Paragon Police

With some workarounds (as noted above) I was able to get all of my story arcs working again.

I used to think I should stop to rescue the civilians in Atlas Park that were getting their purses stolen. Even when I was level 10 and they were grey to me. Because, you know, they needed my help.

Mon 5/16/2011

Rain Dancer (51 storm/archery defender) joined a 15 player BAF. My Reactive Interface proc'd like mad from my various stormy powers. Will miss it when they tune it down, but yeah, it's pretty abusive the way it is. Got a common reward and up to 87% Judgement exp. I stayed for a second run of the BAF where we had no escapees. I got a Rare reward, Judgement slot unlocked and 5% Lore exp. I converted 13 astrals and downgraded 2 uncommons to make an Ion Total Core Judgement; I felt like the electrical attack was a good thematic match for a stormy.

Spacegirl (52 mind/rad controller) joined a Lambda trial; one of the players persuaded the leader to change this to a Master of Lambda attempt mid-stream. Despite repeated messages that we were now trying for the Master of badge, someone (no one was sure who) used an acid and ruined the attempt. We finished the normal way. I got an uncommon reward and up to 93% Destiny exp.

Kyrie Eleison (22 fire/fire brute) did a Posi 2 TF. Our team was buff heavy and tore through everything quite easily, finishing in 45m 35s and getting Kyrie to level 23. After that Kyrie joined an 8 player pickup team fighting rogue PPD; we had one team wipe, but this mission got Kyrie to level 24.

Strong Woman (51 inv/SS tanker) joined a BAF trial. This was apparently a badge attempt, but somehow no one told me this, so I pulled Nightstar to the tennis courts and immediately ruined the Keep Em Separated part. We did stop all prisoners from escaping, but killed the two AVs just a little too fast (while minions were still up), missing the Strong and Pretty badge. I got an uncommon reward and up to 59% Judgement exp. We had a second try at the BAF, this time with 18 players and only trying for Strong and Pretty; but again, we killed the AVs while spawns were up. The leader had been asking people to stop damage at 5% but it seemed like these directions were largely ignored; maybe some people stopped, but enough kept going that the AVs died every time. I got a rare reward and up to 82% Judgement. After that we did a 10 player Lambda, where I got a rare reward and up to 86% Interface.


Tue 5/17

I was doing some crafting, laying away Kinetic Combat IOs for a rainy day, and ended up claiming 1000 AE tickets (out of ~9600) to buy uncommon salvage, which I felt was way overpriced on the broker. I had tried buying the salvage on the broker for various prices up to 150K with no luck, after which I dug my heels in and decided to buy them for 80 tickets each instead.

Mega (51 SS/will brute) joined a Lambda trial, got a rare reward and up to 87% interface.

Millie Volt (51 elec/elec brute) joined a 14 player Lambda, got a common reward and up to 32% Destiny.

Mystery Girl (51 emp/pistols defender) joined a Lambda trial, got a rare reward and up to 95% Destiny. After that we did a 12 player BAF; it definitely seemed like the smaller league caused us to get fewer spawns for prisoners and reinforcements. We had no escapees despite only having 12 players. I got an uncommon reward and up to 94% Judgement exp.

I made some edits to my Fusionette Incarnate arc based on player feedback, mostly to the final mission, where I tried to add a few more funny lines, added a Positron expy, and changed the custom mobs to have more variety and better names.


Wed 5/18

I was only on briefly Wednesday, but while on, I played Strong Woman (51 inv/SS tanker) on an 18-player BAF. Got a common reward and up to 93% Judgement.


Thu 5/19

Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) joined a 19 player BAF, got an uncommon and up to 66% Judgement exp.

Mega (51 SS/will brute) joined a BAF, got an uncommon and up to 92% Judgement.

Spacegirl (52 mind/rad controller) did a speed LGTF. We finished in a very speedy 20m 4s, a server record speed (as far as I know). I don't think we did anything really unusual, but we had a damage heavy team (I was the only support toon), and incarnate powers are surely making us kill stuff faster. I took the hero 1 DNA and got a Notice of the Well. The same team went on to do a speed ITF in 17m 48s; I took the Ancient Nictus Fragment. Then we did a speed STF; we were going so fast, I didn't notice our team lacked a tank until we were fighting the patron AVs. Our squishy team ended up dodging the patron AVs and Lord Recluse himself a lot, with no one really tanking them, but somehow we pulled it off without any serious problems. Finished in 28m 42s and got a Centriole (boo).

Playing Strong Woman (51 inv/SS tanker) I tried to form a minimum size BAF league to try for the Strong and Pretty badge (which I wanted for Strong Woman since it seemed so appropriate). My past experience with failed Strong and Pretty attempts has been that people usually ignore orders to "slow down damage" and overkill the AVs too quickly, while reinforcements are still up. My theory was a smaller league would have lower DPS, so would kill the AVs more slowly (hopefully with more control!), and would also spawn fewer reinforcements -- both of which should make it easier to get Strong and Pretty.

I wanted a minimum size league, but a couple people showed up at the last minute and I didn't really want to exclude them, so we ended up going with 14. We did a solid job stopping all prisoners; I'm starting to think this phase is easier with fewer people, too. I pulled both Nightstar and Siege to the helipad where reinforcements spawn, and when we got to the final stage, I called on people to slow down damage at 10% (rather than 5% as I've previously seen, hoping to give myself more margin) and to focus on reinforcements then. Despite all this, we still managed to kill Nightstar while reinforcements were spawned; however, the league actually did slow down damage on Siege enough that we didn't kill him in the 10 second window. This caused both AVs to respawn, giving us another chance. On the second try, we managed to line everything up correctly, got the AVs to low life, cleared the last spawn of reinforcements, then killed the AVs. Strong Woman got the Strong and Pretty badge and immediately set it as her badge title; I also unlocked the Judgement slot and got 6% into Lore.

I offered to run another (regular) BAF run, but attrition dropped the league size down to 9, so instead I ran a 9-player Lambda, which got me a very rare reward, Interface unlocked, and 7% Destiny. Did a second Lambda, this time with 8 players, which got me an uncommon and up to 38% Destiny. Third and final Lambda was 8 players and got me a rare and up to 69% Destiny.

I'm really liking the small team BAF and Lambda runs; it feels like they start quicker, have less lag, have less dead weight on them (a friend complained about how people were slacking on the pickup leagues he had joined), and award significantly more exp (a teammate was really happy about getting 31% Destiny exp per run).

With my various goodies I crafted a Cryonic Total Radial Judgement. Truthfully, an 80' cone attack is a terrible choice (in game terms) for a tanker, but I wanted the look & feel of Superman's "ice breath" attack. I haven't figured out what I want for her Interface slot yet; originally Reactive was the clear choice, but with the impeding changes to Interface currently on test server, I'm not so sure what I want to put in that slot now.

(Totally anecdotal)

Last Sunday night, on Liberty server, I deliberately formed a minimum size Lambda trial of 8 players. Partly this was to see if we could do it with only 8, partly this was because I'm kinda tired of joining leagues where we end up sitting around for a long time waiting for the roster to fill up. Once I got 8 people who all claimed not to be AFK, I queued us for the Lambda trial.

This team did 3 runs; on the first trial, we had 8. On the second trial, we picked up someone from the LFG queue, so we had 9. He did fine and got moved into the main team for the third run, where we got another person from the LFG, so had 9 again.

I have no idea how long the LFG people were waiting. I do think it's true that most trials try to fill to the max before starting. But I think this does show that LFG people can be added to a trial even over the minimum required to start.

I feel the greatest tragedy of Paragon Studios' handling of Mission Architect, is how thoroughly they have destroyed player goodwill towards this feature.

Mission Architect should be a crown jewel for City of Heroes. Player-created content -- a unique feature that none of the competition can come close to offering. Granted that probably 90% of this player generated content may not be up to standards, there is still PLENTY of good content created by players that is well worth playing -- easily as much content as in the whole rest of the game put together.

When the feature was launched, there were dozens, perhaps hundreds of players who loved the feature: creating arcs, playing through them, reviewing them, telling their friends, and so on.

Today, there are only a very few die-hards remaining in the "MA community" (if it can be called that). These people once loved MA, spent hundreds of hours playing arcs or working on them, and were ambassadors for the feature, trying to get more people involved in playing and authoring and using the wonderful tools that were given to us. Now these same people are mostly reduced to bitterly hurling angry invective at the devs for their thoughtless destruction of hundreds of hours of player effort. How can people who loved something so much, be turned so totally against it?

My feeling is that this is not because the people who once sang the praises of Mission Architect are somehow horrible and awful people who post horrible and awful words. I really believe this is the direct result of months of neglect and abuse on the part of Paragon Studios. I don't mean this particular bug, though it is horrific and soul-crushing. I refer to a pattern of neglect that has mostly left the Mission Architect feature to rot, with occasional changes that actually make things worse.

I really, really like Mission Architect, and have personally invested countless hours in trying to make good story arcs, helping other people make good story arcs, and compiling lists of good story arcs so people can easily find something fun to play. But even I am having a difficult time recommending that anyone try to use Mission Architect any more.

I feel kind of sad about that.

Tue 5/3/2011

I was near the ticket cap on AE story rewards, so claimed 1000 tickets on Police Woman.

Millie Volt (51 elec/elec brute) joined a Lambda trial. This was slow to start. I did unlock the Interface slot and get 14% Destiny exp, along with an uncommon reward. I used 12 Astrals and downgraded 2 uncommon salvage to craft a Reactive Radial Interface (25% chance of fire DOT/25% chance of res debuff). I also upgraded her Alpha slot to a Cardiac Core Paragon, which gets her lethal resist up to 68.5%.

Marcia Law (27 dp/kin corr) joined a Moonfire TF. The original leader was lower than the TF max and gave the star to a level 50 player; turns out that player was on +4 difficulty. We managed to complete the first mission (against vampires) at +4, then turned difficulty back down to normal. My ISP (Comcast) started flaking out and I disconnected for one mission, then reconnected, then near the end of the TF my connection died entirely. After quite awhile I reconnected right around when the TF finished; I think the team had been waiting for me. I wasn't actually in the last mission, but the game gave me the TF badge anyway, which was nice. This got Marcia to level 28.

I went on vacation at this point and was away from CoH for 10 days.


Sun 5/8
While I was away, the AEnvasion event visited Infinity server, where they played Talos Vice (arc id 338380), one of my story arcs. It was voted best overall arc for the week!


Fri 5/13

I returned from vacation to find that I had picked up the 78 month veteran badge. This had a patrol exp awarding temp power attached to it; it only has 5 charges, but each charge gives you half a level of patrol exp, with about 2 hrs recharge time. This seems not very useful for level 50s, but has been very helpful for my lowbies so far. I also had hit the AE ticket cap while gone, and claimed 999 tickets.

I logged in right in the middle of the Praetorian Surge event, so I answered the call and fought Praetorians as Police Woman (52 AR/dev blaster), starting in Atlas and eventually moving to Peregrine Island. It was fun to banter with the GMs controlling the event, who did a lot of trash talking in the name of "Emperor Cole". The actual fighting was pretty tedious due to the immense amount of lag. I tried dropping from the league and soloing in hopes of reducing lag; I kinda think leagues cause lag, but it could just be baseless superstition. Many Praetorian characters, set up as Giant Monsters rather than AVs, showed up to fight us. I did this for awhile, but eventually the lag got too annoying and I switched to doing something else. It did not seem like there were any badges or other special rewards (except for some community reps who were giving out gold titles).

Switching to Kyrie Eleison (who I had rerolled as a 4 fire/fire brute), I solo'd a bit in Praetoria, finishing the story arcs for Washington, Cleopatra, Kang, Jessica Flores and Luke Larson. At the end of Cleopatra's arc I decided to save Cleopatra (she did help me save a hospital, after all), which changed my alignment from Loyalist to Resistance. I used the patrol exp temp power liberally. This got Kyrie to level 11.

Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) joined a 16 player BAF, getting her to 54% Judgement exp.


Sat 5/14

Kyrie Eleison (11 fire/fire brute) joined a 3 player team in Praetoria. I got a costume compliment, which was nice. Our third player left mid-mission and the two of us left, a scrapper and myself, wiped out versus Metronome (which seemed to be an all-boss group of Praetorian clockwork) four times in a row; we eventually beat them through careful pulling. The third teammate returned at that point and wanted to do his mission, but he had to go to Neutropolis to talk to the contact to get the mission. We had some sort of failure in communication at this point, where either the guy never got his mission, or never told us where his mission was, or maybe the leader just didn't want to go wherever this mission was; the net result was that we idled in Imperial City for about 15 minutes while the third guy was doing something in Neutropolis. The leader got fed up with this and set a mission om Imperial City, at which point the third guy quit. After this team broke up, I solo'd Chance McKnight's story arc (at the end I decided to help Wu Yin), then Ivy's arc, getting to level 17.

Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) did a speedy LGTF in 20m 27s.

Sakura (27 plant/storm controller) joined a Posi 2 TF, but unfortunately, the leader didn't realize that the Posi 1 badge was required to even start Posi 2. So instead we did Posi 1, which was fine with me too. There was some confusion between people who wanted to stealth the missions and people who wanted to fight their way through; as a result, our team was split up a lot, and we nearly had a team wipe during the Dr. Morben mission since the people sneaking ahead spawned ambushes on the rest of us. Nevertheless we muddled through the TF, finishing in 41m 19s and getting Sakura to level 28.

Mystery Girl (51 emp/pistols defender) did a BAF trial. We had no escapees. I managed to get clobbered by Nightstar's nova, gotta remember not to stand near her. Got a common reward and up to 75% Judgement exp.

Mega (51 SS/will brute) did a BAF trial, again no escapees. Got an uncommon reward and up to 78% Judgement exp.

Strong Woman (51 inv/SS tanker) did a BAF trial. Someone persuaded the leader to try for the Keep Em Separated badge. I got held a couple times by Nightstar because I was afraid to move away from her even when I had two rings on me, for fear of moving her from her spawn point (since she was aggro on me); this got a few people sequestered, but I'm not sure what else I could do. We made it through the prisoner phase and then killed Siege at his spawn point; when both AVs respawned, half of us ran over to Nightstar, but the first person who aggroed her kinda panicked and ran away from her, causing Nightstar to move a few meters away from her spawn point. We weren't sure if this movement was far enough to ruin the badge attempt, so kept going; however, the Siege team was overwhelmed by adds shortly after that, then ran away from Siege, causing Siege to move well away from his spawn point. There was a lot of yelling at that point, but the leader called for us to pull both AVs to the tennis courts, where we finished them off. I got an uncommon reward and up to 44% Judgement exp.

Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) did a speedy STF in 29m 8s. I got a Golgi.

Star Amethyst (52 dark/ice defender) did a 7-player speedy ITF; everyone on the team was required to have Judgement, we wanted to see how fast that made it. We lost a little time in the final mission because we still had 12 traitors left after Romulus died, and had to scramble to find them. Nevertheless finished in a speedy 17m 16s, a very good time for a short-handed team. I took the 28 merits.


Sun 5/15

Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) joined a 7 player Kahn TF. I seemed to generate more aggro than our brute, ended up tanking Reichsman for most of the last fight. Finished in 19m 43s. Blond went on to do a clear-most ITF in 34m 53s, where I took the 28 merits, and a STF. During the patron AV fight in the last mission, it did not seem like either our tanker or our brute were taunting Ghost Widow, so I ended up Confronting her until the team jumped on her; my capped defense kept me alive long enough to survive this. Neither tanker nor brute seemed to want to taunt Lord Recluse either, resulting in LR rushing the team at the red tower. I tried taunting LR away but he smashed me flat just for thinking about it (doh!). Eventually the brute got aggro, which let the rest of us kill towers. Finished in 29m 36s and took an Essence of Incarnate. After that Blond joined a Lambda trial which was a bit of a struggle (we were tank heavy and support light), but we beat Marauder and I got a rare reward and up to 69% Interface exp.

The AEnvasion event had moved to Guardian this week, and I felt like I ought to put in an appearance. I logged in Sun Girl (14 fire/nrg tanker on Guardian who had been offline for a little over 4 years; she has a terrible build based on what I thought was good in 2007) and played two story arcs. The Fractured Dreamer was a story about young mutants being kidnapped for nefarious reasons; I felt the plot was rather disjointed, and the enemies had crazy amounts of END drain (I got to fight both Sappers AND Carnies at level 14). I ended up giving that 3 stars. Powers Division Briefing: Nictus and Nictus Cults wasn't really a story at all, just a showcase for a custom enemy group with a Nictus/Galaxy theme. It was a nice looking enemy group with a good theme, but with no story or dialog at all, I felt I couldn't give it more than 2 stars. This all got Sun Girl to level 16, though who knows when she'll come out to play agian.

Kyrie Eleison (17 fire/fire brute) solo'd the story arcs for Penelope Yin, Mother Mayhem, Antimatter and Dark Watcher. The bonus exp at the end of each Praetorian story arc is insanely large (about half a level), and the stories are pretty neat, so I've really focused on story arcs while there. I really like Penelope's story, her fractured fairy tale is really endearing. In Mother Mayhem's arc, I decided to let Vanessa deVore go, as the lesser of two evils. During Antimatter's arc, I ran across a lab map where the door I needed to go through was blocked (the map showed an openable door there, but the 3D graphics showed a locked door, and I couldn't open it no matter what); I ended up having to autocomplete that mission. The finale of Antimatter's arc, where I saved the reactor from Arachnos, was really pretty cool. In the "moral choice" mission following that, I decided to expose Cole's invasion plans. In Dark Watcher's arc, I really like Aaron Walker's last appearance and his last computer program. The fight at Neuron's tower seemed cool, but was super laggy even when solo. In the final moral choice, I destroyed the Enriche production facility, reasoning that free will was better than having a safe drinking supply. This all got me to level 21 and put me solidly on the Resistance side. I crossed over to Paragon City at that point, and was a little disappointed that despite all the story arcs I had completed, Noble Savage was the only guy who came to say goodbye.

Upon arriving in Paragon City, I almost immediately got an invite to a 6 player pickup team. This wasn't a particularly efficient team (mostly melee and DPS with only a single trick arrow toon for support) but was quite fun as we got into a geeky comics discussion, then several players squee'd at fighting Captain Castillo on the Sky Raider helicarrier, which some of them had never seen before. After this team broke up, Kyrie was level 22 and I upgraded to SO enhancements, then knocked out her level 20 costume mission and struggled with making a second costume that looked good without being too skanky.

Rain Dancer (51 storm/archery defender) joined a single-team RWZ raid; one person was kicked for AFK leeching, leaving us with 7. We still did pretty well, clearing the pylons and holding the bowl of the mother ship for quite some time. I picked up 357 vanguard merits and 2 reward merits for the master-at-arms.

Playing Rain Dancer, I formed an 8-player Lambda trial, intentionally trying to make a minimum size league. Despite pretty much taking the first 7 people who showed interest, I ended up with a good mix of tanking, support and damage. I didn't really do anything terribly innovative, following the normal Lambda routine of clearing the streets, then the courtyard, then the turrets, then splitting up for the tubes and caches (I assigned 4 players to each; our tanker ended up going to the wrong side, so it was actually 3 for caches and 5 for tubes, but whatever, I felt it would be easier to let him keep doing what he was doing rather than get him to come where I was), then fighting Marauder. The tubes/caches part was the hardest, with many deaths due to people getting split up and/or simply clobbered by the mobs guarding each objective. I agonized over this but one of the players said, this always happens (even for full Lambda leagues), and I realized this was true. I did get a compliment for being a really tough defender, which was nice; Rain Dancer is range DEF capped and has good smash/lethal/energy resists, which all helps a lot against Praetorians. Worth noting was that since we were all on the same team, anyone could get paci grenades or molecular acids even if we weren't in the area those objectives were found. Fortunately everyone knew how the temp powers worked, so it wasn't a problem.

On our first run I got to 95% Interface exp, but only got a common reward; 3 players on my team got 10 threads as reward, resulting in considerable gnashing of teeth; supposedly rewards are based on contribution, so getting the "Game thinks you were AFK" reward when you're on a minimum size Lambda league feels really unfair. Despite this, people were willing to try it again. On the second run, we got a 9th player, a controller who must've been single queueing; it was a little messy during the cache/tubes phase again, but we won. I got a rare reward, unlocked the Interface slot, and got 28% Destiny exp. We did a third run, again with 9 players (picking up yet another single-queueing controller), and this got me an uncommon reward and to 59% Destiny exp. I really liked the 8-person format; in my opinion, waiting for a league to fill up is one of the most annoying things about the incarnate trials, but doing this with a single team, it felt much quicker to replace people who left and start up the next run.

After the third run people were tired, so we called it. I converted 27 astrals to make a Reactive Total Radial Conversion (75% chance of fire dot) which I expect to be really nice with Rain Dancer's stormy powers.

For your consideration:

Fusionette Incarnate (arc 497003)

http://cohmissionreview.com/2011/05/...tte-incarnate/

Fri 4/29/2011

Several of my AE story arcs had been broken in the recent patch due to the profanity/copyright filter on AE becoming insanely, unreasonably strict. I get the impression that some idiot added a lot of words from the CoH game world to the profanity filter, reasoning that CoH holds the copyright on those. This sounds reasonable at first glance, but the net result is that you can no longer use words like "Paragon City", "Statesman" or "Longbow" in AE missions. Since many AE missions are about the CoH universe, this is really stupid.

Anyhow, supposedly the devs are aware of this problem, but they have chosen not to fix it yet, leaving many of my story arcs broken. I spent some time trying to modify my story arcs to "work around" the insanely aggressive profanity filter.

Fixed my Teen Phalanx Forever! story arc by renaming Dr. Vahzilok (who had a bad name, despite being the completely unmodified Dr. Vahzilok mob in the Vahzilok faction) to be Doctor Vahzilok (perfectly acceptable name!).

Fixed my Talos Vice story arc by changing all members of Paragon Police (apparently anything with "Paragon" in it is profanity) to be members of Talos Vice. The profanity filter was also choking on a Freak Stunner for some reason, so I deleted it as being nonessential.

Fixed my Celebrity Kidnapping story arc by changing the Paragon Police to belong to the "PPD" instead.

I could not fix A Warrior's Journey - the Flower Knight Task Force. Apparently, "Spider" is a bad word, and the main enemy group is the "Spider Clan", which I really don't want to rename since it makes so much sense.

I couldn't fix Papers and Paychecks. "Manticore" is a bad word, and part of the joke of that arc is that you're a villain on Crey's side, fighting the Manticore Task Force, so I really don't want to change that name.

I couldn't fix Axis and Allies.... "Statesman" is a bad word and I renamed him to many other things, but it wouldn't take any of them. Later on I heard that if the filename of your custom mob has a bad word in it (like Statesman), it will trip the profanity filter even if the in-game name of the mob is legal. I suspect this was my problem, since I had a custom version of Statesman (to get rid of Unstoppable).

So, of my 9 arcs total, 3 worked fine after the patch, 3 required some renaming of things to make work, and 3 couldn't be made to work without damaging the story. I'm very annoyed about this and submitted a bug report, as have many other mission architect users, but so far there's been no effective response.

Police Woman (52 AR/dev blaster) joined a 16 player BAF; short-handed BAF trials are all the rage lately due to the excessive lag on 24-player BAFs. The team pulled the AVs to the reinforcement spawn point and we had a rough fight there with the AVs and respawns and turrets, but finally won, getting an uncommon and PW to 83% Lore exp. I used caltrops a lot, having discovered that caltrops with the tier 4 reactive interface is really hot (it procs a LOT...maybe more than it is supposed to).

I took advantage of the cheap server transfers to move Marcia Law (26 pistols/kin corr) from the server I had previously exiled her to, back to Liberty. I had tossed her aside earlier because I felt I had more than enough kins on Liberty, but have recently decided that, heck, I really like kin, and Fulcrum Shift/Hail of Bullets seems like it would be really cool. Joined a 6-player pickup team that did a couple missions in the Ubelmann arc.


Sat 4/30

Marcia Law (26 pistols/kin corr) solo'd the level 20 costume mission, 2 vigilante tips, and a vigilante morality mission, changing her alignment to Vigilante. This got her to level 27. I joined a villain respec (the Weekly Strike Target), but it was a speed run, and I found that without any stealth or defense I ended up dead most of the time and felt pretty useless. At least it was over quick, though, finishing in 14m 38s.

Police Woman (52 AR/dev blaster) did another BAF, got a rare reward and to 95% Lore exp.

Mercy Beaucoup (51 ice/kin corr) did a BAF. This was messy; no one seemed to be tanking and we had lots of death. Nevertheless completed it, got an uncommon reward and to 31% Judgement exp.

Sarcasm Lass (33 son/mm blaster) solo'd the Save Salamanca mission (holding off waves of redcaps), getting to level 34.

San Min (51 MA/will scrapper) joined an STF which ran smoothly, finished in 37m 11s. I took the Essence of Incarnate.

Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) solo'd 5 hero tips and a hero morality mission for a hero merit.


Sun 5/1

Spacegirl (52 mind/rad controller) joined a Lambda trial which was really tank heavy and support light. Managed to win anyhow, got an uncommon reward and up to 74% Destiny exp.

Strong Woman (51 inv/SS tank) did a BAF trial, got an uncommon reward and to 24% Judgement exp.

Rain Dancer (51 storm/archery def) did a BAF. It was very laggy but we managed to have no escapees. I got a rare reward and to 69% Judgement.

Police Woman (52 AR/dev blaster) hit the inf cap at the market, sent myself 900M inf. Joined a 16 player BAF; we had no escapees, I got a common reward and successfully unlocked my Lore slot. Haven't slotted anything in the Lore slot yet because none of the pets really seem "right" thematically for PW; I'm holding out for new pet sets in some future issue.

Virtual Girl (45 kat/fire scrapper) joined an ITF running at +4 difficulty. We were very light on support, with only an empath for support and no debuff at all. We had lots of death and one person disconnected early on and never returned. I got lots of use out of my self-rez. We beat up minions okay, but found it really hard to kill the Romulus AV in mission 3, causing the leader to turn the difficulty down to the default setting for the last mission. Even with minimum difficulty, it took us ages to kill each Romulus in mission 4 due to our lack of debuff and being short handed to boot. I suggested that one of our tanks should pull the healing Nictus away from Romulus, but neither tank seemed willing or able to. Finished the ITF in a grueling 2h 4m, but I did get to level 47 and had a Numina (END/HEAL) recipe drop. At level 47 I could slot level 50 IOs and straight away slotted 4 sets of 6 Obliteration and one set of 5 Obliteration in her various PBAOEs (Flashing Steel, Lotus Drops, Golden Dragonfly, Blazing Aura and Burn) for a total of +25% recharge, +15% melee DEF and +7.5% smash/lethal DEF.

Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) did a Lambda trial, got a common reward and up to 53% Interface.

Mon 5/2

Shield Maiden (27 shield/mace tank) solo'd some missions in Striga for Tobias Hansen.

Mega (51 SS/will brute) joined a Lambda trial which had an unusual method for clearing the zone. The two teams immediately split up at the very start, clearing streets in opposite directions, then clearing towers separately. This seemed to work very well. We struggled a bit gathering acids when the team got split up, but beat up Marauder eventually. I got a rare reward and up to 58% Interface exp.

I had kinda gotten tired of the archery/fire blaster version of Kyrie Eleison, and ended up restarting Kyrie as a fire/fire brute in Praetoria, joining the loyalists and soloing up to level 4. I've been playing lots of fire aura toons lately and I really like the DPS from Burn, but was previously leery about how squishy a fire/fire would be, and ended up deleting a fire/fire scrapper a couple years back. We'll see if I can do better this time around.

I'll probably be online tonight but am going on vacation tomorrow, will be back in about a week and a half. So if you don't see me on CoH, that's why.

I got a little OCD and tried to fix my arcs that have been invalidated tonight. Logically I really should wait until someone in Paragon Studios (whups!! pardon my profanity, I know Paragon is a bad word here) fixes it, but I just couldn't stand to leave the arcs sitting broken for that long.

Here's my experiences:


Two Tickets to Westerly (#374002): still valid, thankfully.

Teen Phalanx Forever! (#67335): "Dr. Vahzilok" was a bad word (even when using the standard Dr. Vahzilok model that is named Dr. Vahzilok). Changing to "Doctor Vahzilok" completely fixed it. Strangely, Clockwork King and Clamor were fine to use, and even the teen heroes were fine.

Talos Vice (#338380): "Paragon Police" is disallowed as an enemy group name due to Paragon being a bad word. I had to move all my cops into another "Talos Vice" faction. Additionally, a Freak Stunner was invalid for some reason, so I had to delete him from my "Perps" faction. That fixed the arc.

Papers and Paychecks (#298290): "Manticore Task Force" is disallowed as an enemy group due to Manticore being a bad word. Part of the schtick is that you're working for Crey while heroes on the Manticore Task Force are trying to mess with you, so I don't want to change this enemy group's name. Left the arc invalid for now.

Fusionette Incarnate (#497003): published after the bad patch, still valid.

A Warrior's Journey - The Flower Knight Task Force (#260284): "Spider Clan" is disallowed as an enemy group due to being a bad word. Is the word Spider entirely disallowed? Anyway, I really don't want to change this name, so left the arc invalid for now.

Celebrity Kidnapping (#1388): "Paragon Police" and "Paragon Heroes" were disallowed as enemy group names due to containing the bad word "Paragon". I changed the custom Police Woman to belong to "PPD" and the custom Unbelievable Man to belong to "Heroes". Changed the name of an objective from "Longbow Patrol" to "LB Patrol" and another one from "Longbow Ambush" to "LB Ambush" (this is never displayed to the end user, but still tripped the profanity filter). This was enough to fix the arc.

Axis and Allies (#1379): "5th Column" is forbidden as an enemy group name. Sigh. Changed to "Fifth Column", which it accepted. "Statesman" is forbidden as a boss name. Tried repeatedly to rename this boss but it refused to take. Left the arc invalid for now.

Attack of the 50 Foot Villain (#363366): still valid.

Mon 4/25/2011

Mayday (50 fortunata) joined a Master of Lambda trial attempt which succeeded with 1m 53s left on the clock. I got a very rare reward and all the Master of Lambda badges (they still hadn't "fixed" those badges as of that date), and went from 0% to 47% Interface exp. After that I solo'd the 4th costume mission by beating up Nemesis in Eden, and ended up making a vaguely Aquagirl-like costume, thinking that might fit thematically with Mayday's name and psi powers.

Spacegirl (51 mind/rad controller) did a BAF trial. We had no tanker and a brute and scrapper both managed to die attempting to pull Nightstar; I was feeling brave so I tried pulling her with Radiation Infection and managed to survive. We had no escapees during the prisoner phase. I got an uncommon reward and got up to 83% Lore exp.

Mega (51 SS/will brute) did a BAF, no escapees, got a rare reward and up to 63% Judgement exp.

Mystery Girl (51 emp/pistols defender) did a BAF, getting a rare reward (the first ever for my empath) and up to 58% Judgement exp. I immediately used my rare reward and 2 astrals to upgrade to a Reactive Total Radial Conversion (75% chance of fire DOT). I also did a Lambda trial where I died a lot to AoE damage; got a common reward and up to 66% Destiny exp.

Spacegirl did a Lambda, got a common reward and unlocked the Interface slot and got 18% Destiny exp. I'm actually not excited about any of the Interface slot options for Spacegirl; I've been doing Reactive for every other toon so far, but a fire DOT would really mess up Spacegirl's sleeps and maybe even confuses, and all the other Interfaces seem kinda marginal to me. So I've left the slot empty for now.

Schadenfreude (51 AR/pain corr) did a Lambda; got two compliments on having a cool name, which was nice. On this trial we had a blaster who just seemed to follow us around, but never attacked; though occasionally she would complain of lag. Eventually she quit. I got a rare reward and up to 48% Interface exp.


Tue 4/26

Shield Maiden (25 shield/mace tanker) solo'd a vigilante morality, changing alignment to Vigilante, and did soem Striga missions.

Spacegirl (51 mind/rad controller) joined a 12-player Lambda; one player disconnected and never returned, but we managed to kill Marauder with 11. I got an uncommon reward and up to 35% Destiny exp.

Mystery Girl (51 emp/pistols defender) joined a Lambda and got a very rare reward (very exciting, as I had just about resigned myself to always getting uncommons on every support toon) and up to 80% Destiny exp.

Schadenfreude (51 AR/pain corr) did a Lambda, got an uncommon reward and up to 72% Interface exp.

Sakura (26 plant/storm controller) joined a 1st hero respec, which was now the weekly strike target. We had a full team and did just fine, though there was a lot of waiting at the end, as we cleared the waves of Sky Raiders really fast. Finished in 52m 6s and got Sakura to level 27. I took the respec and badge reward.

Sarcasm Lass (33 sonic/mental blaster) joined a Citadel TF on +1 difficulty. We started pretty late at night so I was pretty sleepy by the end, but finished in 1h 7m.

Sarcasm Lass also used 300 reward merits for 15 random recipe rolls on the level 35-39 chart, receiving:

Perfect zinger (R/A) 131K
Numina (+rec/+regen) 111M
Lockdown (chance for +2 mag hold) 19M
2 Devastation (chance for hold) 2M ea
Obliteration (chance for smashing) 20M
Devastation (A/D/R) 3M
Mako's Bite (D/R) 1M
Positron's Blast (chance for energy) 5M
Scirocco's Dervish (D/A/E) 7M
Ghost Widow (A/H/R) worthless
Numina (H/R) 6M
Aegis (E/R/Res) 1M
Siphon Insight (chance for to hit) 1M.
Miracle (+rec) 127M.

I got really lucky on the random rolls, with a total market value of 305M, or over a million inf per merit. I consider anything over 250K per merit to be doing well.


Wed 4/27

Spacegirl had outstanding bids for some purple recipes and managed to buy both an Apocalypse (RCHG/ACC) IO for 401M and an Apocalypse (RCHG/ACC) recipe for 406M. I should probably re-sell the extra one, but I might use it someday so I've kinda squirreled it away for now.

Shield Maiden (25 shield/mace tanker) joined a 6 player Synapse TF. Our team was 4 blasters, 1 scrapper and me. I initially thought this would be kinda scary because we had no heals, buffs or debuffs at all, but actually it went quite well. Tanker-level shield defense, with occasional inspirations, seemed enough to bounce off most clockwork attacks, and being defense based, I didn't get hit by very much END drain. Plus having 5 damage dealers meant I didn't ever have to tank anything for long. A teammate complimented me on herding mobs together for their AoEs, which was nice. We had one blaster quit the TF about two thirds through. Babbage actually was pretty hard; I didn't really think we could beat him with no debuffs but the team wanted to give it a try. I had solid aggro but he would occasionally toss out a Giant Monster level Ball Lightning that killed people who stood near me. I ended up tanking Babbage mostly by using inspirations for about 10 minutes until people responding to our distress calls on global channels came to help. Once a rad arrived, Babbage was pretty much done. In the last mission, however, we were able to beat Clockwork King even with no debuff, through sheer force of damage. Finished in 2h 22m and got to level 27, as well as a level 20 Steadfast Protection (KB resist) recipe.

Another player wrote a hilarious "Iron Chef meets Mission Architect" forum thread which named me an "Iron Architect" for my work in Mission Architect, which was really cool. The post was totally a joke, but I decided to play along with the joke and actually meet the "Iron Architect" challenge, which was to write a story arc that uses the theme ingredient of Fusionette. To answer this I wrote Fusionette Incarnate (arc id 497003), a very silly story where Fusionette is trying to unlock her alpha slot and asks you to help her kill Trapdoor. The "Challenger" architect, another author who has gotten multiple Dev Choice awards, has promised to write a Fusionette story arc too. I don't think the original poster really expected anyone to do the "Iron Architect" thing, so this is kind of fun.


Thu 4/28

Spacegirl (51 mind/rad controller) joined a BAF. People had warned me that BAF was very laggy since the last patch, but I hadn't really fully appreciated how laggy it was until I tried it. Despite the lag we managed to stop any prisoners from escaping. In the final fight, everyone had problems with lag and powers not recharging, and naturally this messed up the timing of the AV kills, so both AVs respawn. Curiously, we killed Siege first, then Nightstar, but Nightstar repowered first, then Siege, despite claiming we didn't kill them within 10 seconds of each other. Which doesn't make any sense, but I guess time no longer works the same way given sufficient lag. We finally beat the AVs on the second try after what seemed like ages; the lag easily made the fight take four times as long as normal. I got an uncommon reward and Lore slot unlocked (doing the AVs twice was worth a lot of exp, at least). I used 40 threads, 20 astrals and miscellaneous salvage to make a Warworks Partial Core Improved Ally (the combo with a Vicki, a battle orb and an incarnate shift).

After that, Spacegirl did a Lambda where the only support was me and a FF controller (who did bubble me, thankfully); everyone else seemed to be tanks/blasters/misc melee. This was a rough trial and we squeaked through with many deaths, but I did get a rare reward and up to 56% Destiny. I burned another 8 astrals and this rare reward to upgrade to Pyronic Total Radial Judgement (wide fireball with a chance of stun). I went with the chance of stun instead of the extra targets with the idea that it might help set up containment.

I switched to Rain Dancer (51 storm/archery defender) for the next Lambda run; by now we were up to 5 tanks, which really felt like way too many (a third of the league?). But people love playing their tanks, I guess. The actual run went basically OK; I got a common reward and up to 45% Interface exp.

After that Rain Dancer joined a very speedy STF. We had no kin on the team but plenty of debuff and damage. The only rough patch was when the brute taking Lord Recluse died, but the next brute took aggro long enough for us to win. Finished in 29m 28s, which seemed a really fast time.

May I present to the judges for consideration:


Fusionette Incarnate
by @PW
Arc ID: 497003
Keywords: Solo Friendly, Magic, Comedy
Length: Medium (3 missions)
First Published: 04/28/2011
Description: Oh hi! You remember me, Fusionette, right? Well I just got Going Rogue and am trying to unlock this darn alpha slot, but I can't solo this stupid Trapdoor guy. Can you help?


Design notes:
* This is a fairly silly story, which I felt was dictated by the Theme Plot Element of Fusionette. I considered trying to make a dark and angsty Fusionette to play against type, but ultimately, the essence of Fusionette is her iconic status as a goofy aggro magnet. Thus, despite Fusionette being rather overdone, it felt more natural to follow her traditional characterization.
* This approach admittedly has some risks as it does not allow for a lot of character development, and comedy can be hit-or-miss based on the audience. However, comedy lends itself to the short 3-mission format I selected, which also allowed the arc to be more rapidly constructed within the rigid time frame allowed.
* Comments and feedback would be welcome!

Thu 4/21/2011

Star Amethyst (52 dark/ice defender) converted 20 astrals to upgrade her basic Reactive Interface (25% chance of resist debuff) to a Reactive Total Radial Conversion (75% chance of fire DOT). I kinda suspect Reactive is the favored Interface for most players, but it really seems to have the most effect, so I've decided to ignore stacking issues for now. Did a BAF trial where no prisoners escaped; got an uncommon reward and went from 20% to 25% Lore exp.

Mega (51 SS/will brute) did a BAF where no prisoners escaped, got a common reward and went from 25% to 36% Judgement exp.

Spacegirl (51 mind/rad controller) did a BAF, got an uncommon reward and went from 34% to 48% Lore exp.

Strong Woman (51 inv/SS tanker) did a supposedly clear all ITF, but in the first two missions it seemed like half the team was deliberately speeding ahead, ignoring intervening mobs. At one point it was just me and one other player trying to clear mobs way behind the rest of the team; I didn't feel like I was doing much good like this, so I gave up and sped with the rest. Finished in 39m 13s, got a Fortunata Hypnosis (SLEEP) recipe drop and took the reward merits reward. With the shards I got, I crafted a Favor of the Well, which I used to make a Spiritual Core Paragon. This drops the recharge of my Foot Stomp from 9.39 seconds (with no Alpha slotted) to 8.16 seconds (with the ultra rare RCHG/HEAL alpha slotted).

Rain Dancer (51 storm/archery defender) did an 18-player BAF which was low on support (only 3 of us). I and a Crab were the only ones guarding our door, but between storminess and AoE, we were able to hold it. The league tried for the Strong and Pretty badge by pulling both AVs to the reinforcement spawn point; we killed Siege, but then reinforcements spawned between killing him and killing Nightstar, so we missed the badge. I did get a rare reward though.


Fri 4/22

I submitted my Papers and Paychecks story arc to the monthly AE author contest run by a Virtue SG. I figure a few more people playing my story arcs would be nice.

Spacegirl (51 mind/rad controller) did a Lambda trial, got an uncommon reward and went from 21% to 52% interface.

Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) did a Master of STF, though we weren't that serious about it. Everyone managed to Ouro out of the second mission with no one actually doing the "Go Home" part; our tanker had to go back to Peregrine Island to finish the mission. A controller somehow died fighting trash mobs in mission 4 while looking for the Security Chief, which ended the "Master of" part of the TF. Somehow the thorn tree power did not disable Dr Aeon's force field until the second use. In the final mission, both our tanker and our emp disconnected while fighting the patron AVs, leaving me dancing around trying to tank Mako and Ghost Widow on my scrapper; somehow survived this due to high defense and good luck. Finished the TF in 52m 32s and took the Essence of Incarnate.

Blond went on to join a BAF trial, getting the Not on My Watch badge, a rare reward and going from 26% to 43% Judgement exp.

Spacegirl (51 mind/rad controller) burned her free respec to dump the old fitness pool, and swapping from the psychic epic pool to the Primal Forces epic pool. I had been kinda underwhelmed by the DPS from the extra psy attacks (especially Psionic Tornado) and kinda like the "pew pew" of Power Blast, which seems suitably Space-y. I also changed from focusing purely on range DEF, to a blended recharge and range DEF approach -- sacrificing some range DEF to try and get perma hasten and perma AM, and thus more controls so less to defend against. Her new build is as follows:

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.93
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Spacegirl I20 rchg build: Level 50 Mutation Controller
Primary Power Set: Mind Control
Secondary Power Set: Radiation Emission
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Leadership
Ancillary Pool: Primal Forces Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Mesmerize

• (A) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage
• (3) Thunderstrike - Damage/Endurance
• (3) Thunderstrike - Damage/Recharge
• (5) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge
• (5) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance
• (7) Thunderstrike - Damage/Endurance/Recharge

Level 1: Radiant Aura

• (A) Numina's Convalescence - Heal/Endurance
• (7) Numina's Convalescence - Endurance/Recharge
• (9) Numina's Convalescence - Heal/Recharge
• (9) Numina's Convalescence - Heal/Endurance/Recharge
• (11) Numina's Convalescence - Heal
• (11) Numina's Convalescence - +Regeneration/+Recovery

Level 2: Dominate

• (A) Ghost Widow's Embrace - Chance of Damage(Psionic)
• (13) Devastation - Damage/Endurance
• (13) Devastation - Damage/Recharge
• (15) Devastation - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge
• (15) Devastation - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/Recharge
• (17) Unbreakable Constraint - Chance for Smashing Damage

Level 4: Accelerate Metabolism

• (A) Performance Shifter - Accuracy/Recharge
• (17) Performance Shifter - EndMod/Recharge
• (19) Performance Shifter - EndMod/Accuracy/Recharge
• (50) Recharge Reduction IO

Level 6: Confuse

• (A) Malaise's Illusions - Accuracy/Confused/Recharge

Level 8: Mass Hypnosis

• (A) Fortunata Hypnosis - Sleep
• (23) Fortunata Hypnosis - Sleep/Recharge
• (27) Fortunata Hypnosis - Accuracy/Sleep/Recharge
• (27) Fortunata Hypnosis - Accuracy/Recharge
• (29) Fortunata Hypnosis - Sleep/Endurance

Level 10: Enervating Field

• (A) Endurance Reduction IO

Level 12: Hover

• (A) Luck of the Gambler - Recharge Speed
• (19) Blessing of the Zephyr - Run Speed, Jump, Flight Speed, Range
• (21) Blessing of the Zephyr - Run Speed, Jump, Flight Speed, Range/Endurance
• (43) Blessing of the Zephyr - Knockback Reduction (4 points)
• (48) Flight Speed IO

Level 14: Fly

• (A) Blessing of the Zephyr - Run Speed, Jump, Flight Speed, Range
• (37) Blessing of the Zephyr - Run Speed, Jump, Flight Speed, Range/Endurance

Level 16: Radiation Infection

• (A) HamiO:Enzyme Exposure
• (21) HamiO:Enzyme Exposure
• (23) HamiO:Enzyme Exposure

Level 18: Mutation

• (A) Recharge Reduction IO

Level 20: Super Speed

• (A) Celerity - +Stealth

Level 22: Lingering Radiation

• (A) Accuracy IO

Level 24: Total Domination

• (A) Lockdown - Accuracy/Hold
• (25) Lockdown - Accuracy/Recharge
• (25) Lockdown - Recharge/Hold
• (31) Lockdown - Endurance/Recharge/Hold
• (31) Lockdown - Accuracy/Endurance/Recharge/Hold
• (40) Lockdown - Chance for +2 Mag Hold

Level 26: Terrify

• (A) Glimpse of the Abyss - Chance of Damage(Psionic)
• (34) Positron's Blast - Damage/Endurance
• (36) Positron's Blast - Damage/Recharge
• (36) Positron's Blast - Damage/Range
• (36) Positron's Blast - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance
• (37) Positron's Blast - Chance of Damage(Energy)

Level 28: Maneuvers

• (A) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Endurance
• (29) Luck of the Gambler - Defense
• (31) Luck of the Gambler - Recharge Speed

Level 30: Assault

• (A) Endurance Reduction IO

Level 32: Mass Confusion

• (A) Coercive Persuasion - Confused
• (33) Coercive Persuasion - Confused/Recharge
• (33) Coercive Persuasion - Accuracy/Confused/Recharge
• (33) Coercive Persuasion - Accuracy/Recharge
• (34) Coercive Persuasion - Confused/Endurance
• (46) Coercive Persuasion - Contagious Confusion

Level 35: Vengeance

• (A) Luck of the Gambler - Recharge Speed

Level 38: EM Pulse

• (A) Lockdown - Accuracy/Hold
• (39) Lockdown - Accuracy/Recharge
• (39) Lockdown - Recharge/Hold
• (39) Lockdown - Endurance/Recharge/Hold
• (40) Lockdown - Accuracy/Endurance/Recharge/Hold
• (40) Lockdown - Chance for +2 Mag Hold

Level 41: Power Blast

• (A) Apocalypse - Damage
• (42) Explosive Strike - Chance for Smashing Damage
• (42) Apocalypse - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge
• (42) Apocalypse - Accuracy/Recharge
• (43) Apocalypse - Damage/Endurance
• (43) Apocalypse - Chance of Damage(Negative)

Level 44: Energy Torrent

• (A) Ragnarok - Damage
• (45) Ragnarok - Damage/Recharge
• (45) Ragnarok - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge
• (45) Ragnarok - Accuracy/Recharge
• (46) Ragnarok - Damage/Endurance
• (46) Positron's Blast - Chance of Damage(Energy)

Level 47: Temp Invulnerability

• (A) Steadfast Protection - Resistance/+Def 3%
• (48) HamiO:Ribosome Exposure
• (48) HamiO:Ribosome Exposure

Level 49: Hasten

• (A) Recharge Reduction IO
• (50) Recharge Reduction IO
• (50) Recharge Reduction IO

------------
Level 1: Brawl

• (A) Empty

Level 1: Containment
Level 1: Sprint

• (A) Empty

Level 2: Rest

• (A) Empty

Level 4: Ninja Run
Level 2: Swift

• (A) Flight Speed IO

Level 2: Health

• (A) Miracle - +Recovery

Level 2: Hurdle

• (A) Jumping IO

Level 2: Stamina

• (A) Performance Shifter - EndMod
• (34) Performance Shifter - EndMod/Recharge
• (37) Performance Shifter - EndMod/Accuracy

I had some of the purple IOs in that build but was missing many of the more expensive ones, so I claimed 2 billion inf from my mailbox (needed to do this anyway as the mail was getting ready to expire) and put some bids on the market for Apocalypse recipes and IOs. I managed to pick up the Apocalypse proc right away for 255.5M inf, which wasn't bad.

Spacegirl went on to join a BAF trial, where the prisoner phase was very leaky (15 escapees, almost didn't make it). I did find that Mass Hypnosis (which I had just respec'd back into) was helpful for this, unlike Terrify and Mass Confusion which the prisoners don't seem to care about. This trial got Spacegirl from 48% to 55% Lore exp and a rare reward. I think Spacegirl is the only toon I'm really excited about the Lore pets for, since it actually makes sense for her to have killer robots following her around (unlike nearly all of my other toons). After the trial I helped a scrapper who was having trouble beating Trapdoor in the Alpha Unlocked arc, then solo'd 3 radio missions just to see if I could.

San Min (51 MA/will scrapper) joined a Lambda trial. I got overconfident and tried to solo containers and the spawns around them, and promptly died for my trouble, after which I contritely stayed with the team. (San Min's build is heavy on sm/lethal defense which many Praetorians don't care about.) I did get a very rare reward, though, and went from 0% to 27% Interface exp.


Sat 4/23

Police Woman (52 AR/dev blaster) ran around picking up the new Perez Park exploration badges to get the Perez Park Perfection accolade. Seems like there are a few (relatively) new exploration badges in most hazard zones now, that I still need to catch up with. I also did 4 vigilante tips; with new badges available for the villain respec, I figure I should cross over (at least to vigilante) to try and get them. Not sure what I will do with the 18 hero merits Police Woman is sitting on; it would be easy to go up to 20 hero merits and buy a purple recipe, but 20 hero merits for a purple recipe seems like a bad deal. I might try to build up to 30 hero merits and get one of the expensive PVP recipes instead.

Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) joined a Lambda trial; I got separated from the team and got overconfident on containers again (this seems to be a trend when I'm playing scrappers). I did manage to solo one container and its spawns, but died at the second one after I ran out of inspirations. Got a Common reward, the Synchronized badge, and from 0% to 25% Interface exp.

Mystery Girl (51 emp/pistols defender) did a Lambda trial. Despite buffing and healing a ton, I got a common reward and went from 36% to 49% Destiny. Rewards are partly random and partly not, supposedly; it definitely feels to me like support toons get worse rewards than DPS toons, though.

Millie Volt (51 elec/elec brute) did a Lambda trial. My team only had a sonic for support, and a dom on our team complained that we had no heals or buffs. It turned out he did not know what sonic buffs looked like. I went from 73% to 96% Interface exp and got an uncommon reward.

Rain Dancer (51 storm/archery defender) did a Lambda trial, got an uncommon reward and went from 0% to 18% Interface exp.

Shield Maiden (23 shield/mace tanker) solo'd 5 vigilante tips and some of Stephanie Peebles' arc in Striga.

Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) joined a 7-player Master of Kahn attempt that had no problems, finishing in 26m 26s.

Spacegirl (51 mind/rad controller) bought an Apocalypse (DMG) recipe for 300M inf, then joined a Master of Lambda attempt. The leader was very strict about how many melee toons he would allow to join (sometimes it seems like 80% of the players on Liberty want to play a scrapper, tanker or brute on trials) and we ended up with a pretty strong league: 2 tanks, 3 scraps, 2 blasters, 3 corrs, 3 defenders, 2 controllers and 1 fortunata. We easily beat up Marauder despite no temp powers, finishing with a generous 9m 21s left on the clock. I got the MoLambda badges and salvage, plus an uncommon reward and from 52% to 92% Interface (Master attempts seem to be good for incarnate exp since you kill a lot of stuff).

Sarcasm Lass (32 sonic/mental blaster) helped a 5-player team beat up Protean. 3 of us went on to Croatoa for regular missions; we had one team wipe against Tuatha, but we finished Kelly Nemmers' arc and part of Buck Salinger's arc.


Sun 4/25

Teal Serpent (50 archery/traps corr) joined a clear most ITF. Half the team had Judgement and other incarnate powers which seemed very effective against the hapless Romans. Between Clarion, Clear Mind and FF Generator, we had enough mez protection to ignore Romulus' stuns from rezzing. Finished in 42m 14s.

After the TF I did some crafting for Teal Serpent, slotting 6 Stupefy in Stunning Shot for 3.13% range DEF and 6.25% RCHG, and 6 6 Obliteration in Trip Mine for 3% DMG, 5% RCHG and 3.75% melee DEF. This gets Teal up to 45% range DEF and 24% melee DEF.

Sarcasm Lass (32 sonic/mental blaster) solo'd the rest of Buck Salinger's arc except for the Save Salamanca mission. This got her to level 33. I also slotted a set of 5 Positron's Blast for +6.25% RCHG.

Shield Maiden (23 shield/mace tanker) joined a 6 player Sutter TF. Most of the rest of the team was 50 and I was worried about my ability to tank at low level, but did fine most of the TF. The emp occasionally put Fortify on me, which capped my defenses whenever it was up, and we had many blasters who destroyed mobs really fast. Tanking the TF I learned a lot more about how it works than just following someone else. I learned we need to kill Harbinger first in mission 2. In the last mission Jane Temblor managed to hold and kill me (stupid click mez protection is not quite perma for me yet), then I died twice to the twin Durays. We focused on the Primal Duray first, but he teleported all over the place and repeatedly airstriked us, making for a messy fight. Finished the TF in 50m 47s, though, and got Shield Maiden to level 25.

Schadenfreude (51 AR/pain corr) joined a Lambda trial. We had an awkward team mix (4 tanks and 2 brutes out of 15 players) and for some reason most of the league wanted to go after the weapon shipments in the courtyard, leaving no one tanking Marauder, who rampaged through our ranks. The few times a tank would try to stand up to Marauder, it did not seem I could keep him alive with healing (it seemed we had little debuff and people were not using paci grenades correctly). After 2 team wipes I ended up saying I didn't think it was going to work, and quitting the league. Admittedly, Game of Thrones starting on TV right then may have had something to do with this decision.

After the TV show I played Mayday (50 fortunata), joining a pickup team that did a Maria Jenkins mission at +4 difficulty, beating up Dominatrix and Marauder. Despite the high difficulty, we did fine; I think people are used to +4 due to the incarnate trials now.

Spacegirl (51 mind/rad controller) had some bids go through, successfully buying an Apocalypse (DMG/END) recipe for 388M and an Apocalypse (DMG/RCHG) IO for 470M. Joined a BAF where we had no escapees, got an uncommon reward and went from 55% to 62% Lore exp. Spacegirl did a second BAF run where prisoners were a lot more leaky, got another uncommon reward (I don't think the programmers understand the meaning of the word "uncommon") and up to 70% Lore exp.

Switched to Schadenfreude (51 AR/pain corr) for another BAF, no escapees, uncommon reward, went from 0% to 16% Judgement.

Mega (51 SS/will brute) did another BAF. People wouldn't let Siege get to Nightstar before attacking; I ended up pulling the respawned Nightstar to Siege instead. Got a very rare reward and went from 36% to 53% Judgement exp.

Strong Woman (51 inv/SS tanker) did a Lambda trial. I incorrectly assumed people were following me, and I went down the right corridor for acids while the team leader went left. I managed to solo one container and its spawns before rejoining the rest of the team for the remainder of the map. I tried tanking Marauder but got dropped by his alpha strike even after eating 3 Lucks; in hindsight, I should've hit Dull Pain before engaging, for the extra HP. I got a rare reward and went from 23% to 51% Interface exp.

For your consideration:

Papers and Paychecks (#298290) (rogue alignment)

Tue 4/19/2011

Sarcasm Lass (30 sonic/mm blaster) did a Sutter TF. Against the AV in the sewers with exploding zombies, I managed to find a perch on a ledge just past him where I could stand and blast away at him without fear of zombies. In the final mission, our team's high DPS caused us to take down both Durays really fast; they never got a single airstrike off. This got Sarcasm Lass to level 32. I also got a Kinetic Combat (DMG/RCHG) recipe drop somewhere along the way.

Millie Volt (51 elec/elec brute) did a Lambda trial, getting to 73% Interface exp and an uncommon reward.

Mystery Girl (51 emp/pistols defender) did a Lambda trial, getting from 15% to 36% Destiny exp and a common reward. I also converted 11 astral merits to make a Reactive Radial Interface (25% chance of RES debuff, 25% chance of fire DOT).

Fire Maiden (51 SS/fire brute) did a Lambda trial, getting from 60% to 83% Interface exp and an uncommon reward. There's a lot of speculation about how the reward table is decided based on your behavior during a trial, and it does seem like DPS toons average better rewards than support toons, at least for me.

Police Woman (52 AR/dev blaster) joined a BAF badge attempt. We cleared all prisoners successfully, then there was some confusion as the leader appeared to have told both team 2 and team 3 to kill adds at various times, leading to some members of both teams actually going to the reinforcement spawn point. The source of this confusion was the fact that teams 2 and 3 had exchanged team numbers as a result of entering the trial (which seems pretty common; my gut feeling is that it's based on the order people zone into the trial), and the leader continued to refer to them by team number. For this reason, when leading a league I've made a habit of calling teams by the name of their team leader, which is much less ambiguous. Anyhow, we eventually figured out that my team was on Nightstar and both Siege and Nightstar were pulled to the tennis courts where they could both be whittled down together. Once both were at 2% we were supposed to stop doing damage while the reinforcements team finished off the current wave and called an all-clear, after which we finished both AVs off. This got us the Strong and Pretty badge, and Police Woman went from 41% to 52% Lore exp.

The same league immediately went in for a second BAF badge attempt. This time the leader formed us into 4 teams, two of which were half teams of 4 players. We killed Nightstar at her spawn point. For the prisoner phase, my subteam was posted to guard the northwest door, and only two of us actually went there and stood guard by that exit. Nothing ever showed up there; everything was killed long before it reached us, and we again cleared all prisoners successfully. Fortunately I remembered I was sitting on Siege's spawn point and moved away a bit before he showed up. We all then killed Siege at his spawn point, then when both AVs repopped, the leader assigned 1.5 teams to fight each AV at their spawn point. We pretty much blew off the adds; they were allowed to show up at the AV fights to be killed. I think some scrappers were also assigned to disable the guard towers. This strategy was successful and got us the Gotta Keep Em Separated badge. Police Woman went from 52% to 58% Lore exp and I got my first common reward ever on my blaster; I'm sure this is because I was a goalie during the escape phase and didn't get to shoot anything.

The leader of this trial deliberately planned to get Strong and Pretty on one run, then Gotta Keep Em Separated on the second run. I felt this strategy was really successful and seemed a lot less failure-prone than the BAF badge attempts I've been on before, which tried to do all the badges at the same time (but always dropped the ball somewhere).


Wed 4/20

Playing Sakura (26 plant/storm controller) I helped kill the Kronos Titan in Talos Island, then I solo'd some Tsoo in Steel Canyon for Serge's costume mission.

Rain Dancer (51 storm/archery defender) did a BAF, getting the Not on My Watch badge, an uncommon reward, and went from 13% to 24% Judgement exp.

Mega (51 SS/will brute) did a BAF, getting the Not on My Watch badge, a Soulbound Allegiance (chance for buildup) recipe drop, a common reward and went from 15% to 25% Judgement exp.

Virtual Girl (43 kat/fire scrapper) did a Mortimer Kal SF. The first mission sent us to Oranbega, which seemed unexciting, but the next couple missions against the Warriors had interesting new mechanics and seemed pretty cool. I liked the final cut scene where it shows your team (using your characters' actual models) facing off against Positron. After finishing the last mission, the team somehow bugged out and the leader wasn't able to talk to the contact to finish the SF. Having the leader log off/log on seemed to fix this problem, though, and the new leader was able to finish the SF. Total time was 37 min. This got Virtual Girl to level 44 and awarded me a "Flames of Prometheus" temp power, a permanent buff (well...supposedly it disables at level 50) currently worth +33 HP, +10% regen and +3% DMG, which is a pretty good prize.

Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) joined an STF which seemed really easy due to incarnate powers being used. Finished in 38m 18s; I took the incarnate salvage drop.

Finished the night bringing Virtual Girl (44 kat/fire scrapper) back for a clear-most ITF on +1 difficulty. Finished in 42m 2s, got to level 45 and I was very lucky to pick up a Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% global recharge) recipe drop.

Fri 4/15/2011

Police Woman (51 AR/dev blaster) joined a BAF. The leader assigned me, a controller and another blaster to clear reinforcements at their spawn point, but the 3 of us weren't enough to keep up with respawn and we got overwhelmed. Nevertheless we finished the trial; I got a rare reward and went from 20% to 31% Lore exp.

San Min (51 MA/will scrapper) joined a RWZ raid. An electrical storm knocked out my internet for a few minutes, leaving me disconnected on the mother ship, but after internet came back I was able to get back online and finish fighting Rikti for 271 vanguard merits. While sitting in the "bowl" of the mother ship, everyone agreed that we were clearing Rikti noticeably faster due to the Judgement nukes and Lore pets.

Shield Maiden (19 shield/mace tanker) solo'd Neuron's arc in Praetoria, and ultimately turned Neuron in to Emperor Cole like a good loyalist. This got her to level 20.

Strong Woman (51 inv/SS tanker) joined a Lambda. I theoretically was leading my team through gathering acids, but about half the team decided to go a different direction, with messy results for both half teams. Fighting Marauder I think I had aggro about half the time, while our stone tanker had aggro the other half. I found that Marauder can't fly; it seemed to me that I could probably tank him while flying with minimal support if I had to. He throws an occasional Hurl attack, but the smashing damage is negligible to an invuln tank. Got a rare reward, the Synchronized badge, and went from 0% to 23% Interface exp.

Police Woman joined a Lambda badge attempt; we got all the acids and paci grenades and did not use any. We got Marauder down to 50% with 10 minutes left on the clock, but then the raid stalled as reinforcements started to overwhelm us and people started dying off. We basically did no more damage for the next 4 minutes, at which point we decided to use the temp powers to make sure we beat him. Got an uncommon reward and went from 33% to 60% Destiny exp. I did get one badge on this: Unbreakable, for taking 10M damage.

Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) did a BAF and got a very rare reward, and went from 13% to 26% Judgement exp.


Sat 4/16

Mega (51 SS/will brute) broke down a Notice of the Well into shards to craft a Spiritual Core Paragon (45% rchg, 33% stun/heal, level shift). This sped her Foot Stomp up to a recharge of 8.16 seconds. I did a test run through my Attack of the 50 Foot Villain story arc, partly to see how the recharge felt, and mostly for fun.

Spacegirl (51 mind/rad controller) joined a BAF badge attempt. In the final fight the three teams were split up with one team on Siege at his spawn point, one on Nightstar at her spawn point, and my team on adds at the reinforcement spawn point. A lot of people did not seem to be following the leader's directions, however, and Nightstar was killed twice before Siege was at 50% life. The leader asked me to move from the reinforcement spawn point to help the Siege team; when I arrived, I found the Siege team only had 2 people alive and still fighting. I dropped my rad debuffs on Siege but no one was tanking him, so I promptly got clobbered. Eventually someone managed to aggro Siege away from his starting position, at which point we went to plan B and just pulled them to the tennis courts and killed them. Got no badges, but managed to finish at least, getting an uncommon reward and going from 32% to 71% Judgement exp.

Sakura (23 plant/storm controller) did a Sister Psyche TF that finished in 1h 40m and got her to level 26.

Mystery Girl (51 emp/pistols defender) joined a Lambda badge attempt. We had about 8 scrappers and brutes and not enough debuff; managed to get Marauder to around 57% life and could not seem to get him any lower, so we used the paci grenades and won. Got an uncommon reward and went from 94% Interface exp to Interface unlocked and 15% Destiny exp. A teammate complimented me on my healing, which was nice.

Police Woman (51 AR/dev blaster) joined a different Lambda badge attempt; this one had only 6 scrappers/brutes and 5 support. I used surveillance to snoop on Marauder's stats and found that, while enraged, he has 100% smash/lethal resistance and 95% resistance to everything else. This was kind of dismaying as nearly all my damage is lethal (with a little exotic damage from procs). After learning this I started focusing my damage on clearing adds, which I figured was still contributing, while tossing an occasional debuff at Marauder. We got Marauder down to 14% life with 20 seconds on the clock; someone threw a paci grenade at the last minute so we succeeded at the trial, but didn't get the badges. Got a rare reward and went from 60% to 97% Destiny.

Having learned how much lethal was resisted, I switched to Maid of Awesome (50 sonic/rad corr) for the next Lambda badge attempt, and tried to convince other smash/lethal toons to do the same, with limited success; 2 scrappers switched while the other 4 wanted to stay as is. This got us down to 4 scrappers/brutes and up to 9 support or debuff. We seemed to be doing OK, until someone (no one is quite sure who) threw a paci grenade mid-fight and Marauder almost instantly keeled over. This got Maid from 0% to 24% Interface exp.

Stayed for a third badge attempt; we had a lot of people swap in and out, making it take a long time to get started. One person actually got fed up and left because of how long it took. I switched back to Police Woman after someone mentioned we had no blasters, though admittedly I did want the badge, too. When we finally got going our league had 7 debuff toons and had a very strong showing. I focused on killing adds and keeping Surveillance going; we got Marauder down to 5%. We were so close that we fought to the very end, resulting in time running out and no reward. This did unlock my Destiny slot. I decided I could justify using the Ageless Destiny because the buff effect has almost no visible graphics (unlike barrier which is very visible; admittedly, this is probably rationalization...) and converted 40 threads and 20 astrals to make an Ageless Partial Radial Invocation (END/RCHG/debuff resist and incarnate shift). I'm finding that I never have enough common salvage to make anything, but plenty of uncommon and rare, so I have to convert threads/astrals/empyrean merits into commons to make stuff.

I was pretty skeptical of our fourth badge attempt but the leader pulled together a fairly viable league and I wanted to try playing at level 52. It was a good effort; we got Marauder below 50% pretty quickly, but stalled out near the end as 2 people had disconnected. Ran out of time with Marauder at 12% life.


Sun 4/17

Police Woman joined yet another Lambda badge attempt. We had 7 support but only two of them were debuff (rad and cold; the rest were an emp and 4 kin). No scrappers, though, and only 2 brutes (both of which did fire damage). So despite having less debuff than previously, we actually had more real damage. I was feeling pretty useless as a lethal damage character and offered to switch, but the leader wanted me to stay to...use caltrops. He had the strange idea that Damage-Over-Time (including ice storm, rain of fire, burn and caltrops) was the way to beat Marauder. He also tried to organize staggered volleys of Judgement nukes to kill the adds. With this league we had pretty massive DPS which got Marauder to low life and into unstoppable really fast, and won with 3m 35s left on the clock; this got me the Master of Lambda, Lambda Looter, Well-Stocked and Antacid badges all at once (this is probably not working as intended, but since customer support never got back to me about the Antacid badge I should've gotten on a previous run, I'm not really bothered by this). I also got 3 uncommon drops and a rare drop for getting the badges, and the uncommon reward table for the trial itself. I'm still not convinced of the DOT theory; my personal belief is that exotic damage plus multiple fulcrum shifts were what won it for us. Either way, that league dealt with Marauder very effectively.

I hit the inf cap at the market again and sent another 500M to myself; I'm up to about 4.5B inf floating in my email and should probably spend it on something soon, but haven't bought anything shiny in awhile due to being focused on the incarnate trials.

Fire Maiden (51 SS/fire brute) momentarily joined a BAF team, but the leader said he had never run one before and had no idea what he was doing, then promptly recruited 12 damage toons and no support toons. (I love scrappers and brutes, but it really seems like a disproportionate number of those show up to join trials.) I dropped from that league under the pretext that they had more than enough melee DPS already, then joined a Lambda trial instead. This league only had 2 support toons, a FF and a sonic. Despite not having any heals (except self-only heals) we were able to beat the trial, getting Fire Maiden from 31% to 60% Interface exp and an uncommon reward. Went on to join a BAF where my team was assigned to guard the northeast area, but only 2 of the team members actually went that way, so prisoners leaked through pretty quickly; managed to get through that phase, then killed Siege a little too fast and had to re-kill both AVs. Got an uncommon reward and went from 31% to 63% Judgement exp.

Police Woman (52 AR/dev blaster) did another BAF, getting a rare reward and from 31% to 41% Lore exp.

Spacegirl (51 mind/rad controller) did another BAF getting an uncommon reward and from 71% to 82% Judgement exp.

Mon 4/18

Shield Maiden (20 shield/mace tanker) left Praetoria, heading to Paragon City, partly because Marchand suggests good citizens should go there, and partly because I wanted to take advantage of the weekly strike target. I had done only Power story arcs so none of my contacts showed up to say goodbye, which was a bummer (I guess they would only do so if I went red side). Nevertheless I signed on to a 6-player Sister Psyche TF that finished in 1h 32m and got Shield Maiden to level 23.

Spacegirl (51 mind/rad controller) joined a BAF badge attempt that started off well but then everything possible went wrong. Prisoners leaked through and escaped, then on the final fight my team was assigned to kill adds, but for some reason 2 team members went to help the team fighting Nightstar. This left us understrength and struggling to clear the adds until our lost teammates finally realized they were in the wrong place and came to help, after which we were able to beat up the adds just fine. Unfortunately, the teams assigned to kill Siege and Nightstar in their respective spawn points missed the timing and both AVs respawned. They had to kill both AVs again, but the trial ran out of time with one AV at 3% and the other at 1%, resulting in no badges and no reward. On the bright side, I did unlock the Judgement slot and get 34% into Lore exp. I converted 17 astrals to make a Pyronic Radial Judgement (the wide area fireball).

Virtual Girl (43 kat/fire scrapper) joined a Hess TF. We had two masterminds dragging pets through the Council tunnels, which made for rather cramped maneuvering for my scrapper; staying a little ahead of the team seemed to help avoid getting petlocked into a corner, though. Our peacebringer also was helpfully KBing mobs out of my burn patches, but it's built into their attacks and I guess they can't help it. Finished the TF in 48m 25s. Spent some time crafting after that; I was up to 9910 AE tickets banked, and claimed 1000 of them to spend on invention salvage. I used the salvage to make a set of 4 Reactive Armor, which I slotted into Tough for +1.25% defense to energy/negative/smash/lethal.

An update.... got the Master of Lambda badge finally. Team was:


League members

Our support was 1 cold, 1 rad, 1 emp, 4 kin. This was a lot less debuff than my last few attempts but a lot more damage, especially fire damage (both brutes and 1 tanker were doing fire damage) and psi damage (3 forts). I started out thinking 4 kins didn't seem like a good idea but in hindsight the fulcrum shift + fire melee + burn was probably insane damage. Despite less debuff, the +damage made this attempt go MUCH faster than the other attempts I was on.


1% life left. Note time and how little debuff we had

I was able to confirm that you get all 4 badges for doing it the "Lambda Looter" way (get everything, use nothing). This also gave me 3 bonus uncommon salvage drops and 1 bonus rare salvage drop.



Badges!


So I was previously thinking massive debuff was the way to go, but after this trial, I now am more of a believer in exotic damage + fulcrum shift + some debuff.

Tried MoLambda trial repeatedly tonight without too much success (thanks Wulfrich for leading btw!), but thought I'd share some stuff I learned in case it helps anyone. All this data gathered via Surveillance (a fun power if you are snoopy by nature).


This is what Marauder's HP and regen look like:


Marauder HP



This is what Marauder's resists look like when he's enraged (Berserker Rage is what the paci grenade suppresses, I believe).


Marauder resists while enraged

Berserker rage helps against all damage types (including psi and toxic), Damage Resistance only applies to smash/lethal. This makes him immune to smash/lethal damage when enraged, which is depressing when your attack set is smash/lethal. Procs will still hit him though. I like that my Surveillance debuff actually seems worthwhile. I want to claim credit for all the Reactive interface debuffs too, and the Achilles Heel debuff, but the truth is I'm sure several people on the league must've had those.


This is the closest our league got to completing the trial:


1 second left on the clock

So close. Anyway, I hope this helps someone.

Mon 4/11/2011

Police Woman (51 AR/dev blaster) used 40 threads and an arcane cantrip to make a Reactive Interface; then another 10 astral merits and a dimensional pocket to upgrade this to a Reactive Radial Interface. After some initial testing on hapless Outcasts in Steel Canyon, I really like it; the proc seems to go off quite a lot.

Sakura (23 plant/storm controller) solo'd some missions for Stephanie Peebles in Striga.

Virtual Girl (41 kat/fire scrapper) did a clear-most ITF. On the team was a fire aura brute who died a lot more than me. It seemed like Divine Avalanche (which gives a hefty melee and lethal defense buff) was really helping my survivability (well, along with cold and empathy buffs; but the fire brute had those too). Finished in 43m 34s; I got a Coercive Persuasion (CONF/RCHG/ACC) recipe drop and hit level 43.

Fire Maiden (51 SS/fire brute) did an ITF; after the last run I wanted to compare my fire brute's survivability. I was tank for this team and seemed to do just fine, though I'm fairly heavily IO'd and was getting incarnate buffs from teammates. Finished in 35m 55s with no problems.

Spacegirl (51 mind/rad controller) did a Lambda trial. Our league was very low on support, resulting in lots of death, but we managed to win. Got an uncommon reward and up to 21% Interface exp. Followed that by a BAF which was even lower on support (basically the same league with an extra team of non-support people!) We had a lot of prisoners escape. I found that Spacegirl's confuse and fear powers did nothing to the Prisoners (booo), but hold and sleep could work. People were careless about the sequestration effect from the AVs and a lot of people got held. We just barely squeaked in under the 10 second window to kill both AVs. I got a meager 11% judgement exp and an uncommon reward.

Mystery Girl (51 emp/pistols defender) did another BAF where we were low on support. I had two tanks and a brute on my team, and I could not seem to keep any of them alive against Siege and Nightstar; they would all routinely get 2-shotted by the AVs despite my best efforts. Felt bad about this, but I think our lack of buff and debuff was a factor. (I did try to Fortitude these guys whenever possible, but it wasn't enough.) The league leader wanted to try for the Strong and Pretty badge and assigned people to various responsibilities; my team was assigned to focus on the AVs but one blaster took off to kill adds for exp. We ended up not getting the badge but completed the trial. This got Mystery Girl's judgement exp up to 26%.


Tue 4/12

Sarcasm Lass (30 sonic/mental blaster) joined a 6 player hero tip team. During a Council mission we had an ambush of all void seekers which scared our warshade (but we managed to beat them).

Police Woman (51 AR/dev blaster) did a BAF trial where no prisoners escaped. I got the Not on My Watch badge, moved from 58% to 72% Judgement exp and got an uncommon reward.

Star Amethyst (51 dark/ice defender) did a BAF trial. Again we prevented any prisoners from escaping; Tar Patch was a big help. Went from 1% Lore exp to 11% Lore exp and got an uncommon reward.

Mystery Girl (51 emp/pistols defender) did a 22-player BAF trial, again got Not on My Watch. Went from 26% to 40% Judgment exp and got a common reward.

Mega (51 SS/will brute) did a BAF trial. A teammate told me he thought it was good that I was switching around rather than just grinding one toon to the finish. Again got Not on My Watch (and this time I noticed that getting this badge also gives a bonus arcane merit and common salvage drop...nice!). We also tried for the Strong and Pretty badge, with the tactic of pulling both Nightstar and Siege to the spawn point for adds. The trial was unusually laggy, making it hard to coordinate; we killed Nightstar too early and both AVs repopped. Then we killed both AVs again, but people didn't wait to kill the adds before the AVs died, so missed the badge. But I did get a rare reward and judgement exp up to 15%.

The same league (minus some people leaving) did a Lambda trial. All the tanks somehow left between the previous trial and this one, which made me the tanker. Several people wanted to try for the Master of Lambda badge (no acids, no paci grenades) but we had very little support, which made me pretty nervous about tanking that. I and some others managed to talk the league out of trying for it. The league leader told everyone to give me the paci grenades, the first time I've had to be responsible for them; I found that each time I used one, I had to re-add the power to a tray. I was pretty worried Marauder would smash me flat and ate a lot of oranges, but managed to survive just fine off of the kin heals we had. Got an uncommon reward and Interface exp to 15%.

Millie Volt (51 elec/elec brute) did a speed ITF in 22m 57s.

On hero side I noticed I finally got enough prestige for my private SG to upgrade to bigger control unit, letting me run all my teleporters. I was still missing some beacons, though, so I logged on Kyrie Eleison (46 archery/fire blsater) to run around getting explore badges in Founders Falls, Eden and Pocket D to complete the full set of beacons.

Police Woman (51 AR/dev blaster) converted 9 astral merits to make common salvage for a Reactive Total Radial Conversion (75% chance of fire proc). Slotting and testing this, it seems to go off a lot and do decent damage. I'm really liking it so far.

Spacegirl (51 mind/rad controller) joined a BAF, but the league ended up with 25 so I volunteered to sit out. Spent the time soloing Shield Maiden (18 shield/mace tank) on Bobcat's arc. Bobcat's arc is not really heroic (or villainous) drama, but she's well written and a lot of fun. Got to level 19 on that. By then the BAF I had dropped from was starting a second run and had some space, so I rejoined with Spacegirl; karma was good and I got the Not on My Watch badge, 20% judgement exp and a Very Rare reward.


Wed 4/13

I found out that I had won Tourette's Challenge, which was to produce the highest possible DPS build for a FF/nrg defender. This is what I came up with:

Tour de Force I19: Level 50 Science Defender
Primary Power Set: Force Field
Secondary Power Set: Energy Blast
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Leadership
Power Pool: Medicine
Power Pool: Speed
Ancillary Pool: Dark Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Deflection Shield -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(33), LkGmblr-Rchg+(33)
Level 1: Power Bolt -- Dev'n-Acc/Dmg(A), Dev'n-Dmg/Rchg(3), Dev'n-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(3), Dev'n-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(5), ExStrk-Dmg/KB(5), ExStrk-Dam%(7)
Level 2: Power Blast -- Dev'n-Acc/Dmg(A), Dev'n-Dmg/Rchg(7), Dev'n-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(9), Dev'n-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(9), ExStrk-Dmg/KB(11), ExStrk-Dam%(11)
Level 4: Energy Torrent -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(13), Posi-Dmg/Rng(13), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(15), Posi-Dam%(15), ExStrk-Dam%(17)
Level 6: Hover -- Zephyr-ResKB(A), Zephyr-Travel(39), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(40)
Level 8: Insulation Shield -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(42), LkGmblr-Rchg+(43)
Level 10: Power Burst -- Dev'n-Acc/Dmg(A), Dev'n-Dmg/Rchg(17), Dev'n-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(19), Dev'n-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(19), ExStrk-Dmg/KB(21), ExStrk-Dam%(21)
Level 12: Dispersion Bubble -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(23), LkGmblr-Rchg+(23)
Level 14: Fly -- Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(43)
Level 16: Assault -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 18: Aid Other -- Numna-Heal/EndRdx(A), Numna-EndRdx/Rchg(43), Numna-Heal/Rchg(45), Numna-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(46), Numna-Heal(46), Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(46)
Level 20: Aim -- RechRdx-I(A), AdjTgt-ToHit/Rchg(40), AdjTgt-Rchg(42)
Level 22: Aid Self -- IntRdx-I(A), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx(25), Dct'dW-EndRdx/Rchg(25), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(31), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(31), Dct'dW-Heal(33)
Level 24: Maneuvers -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(34), LkGmblr-Rchg+(34)
Level 26: Repulsion Bomb -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(27), Posi-Dmg/Rng(27), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(29), Posi-Dam%(29), ExStrk-Dam%(31)
Level 28: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(40)
Level 30: Super Speed -- Clrty-Stlth(A)
Level 32: Force Bubble -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 35: Explosive Blast -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(36), Posi-Dmg/Rng(36), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(36), Posi-Dam%(37), ExStrk-Dam%(37)
Level 38: Vengeance -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 41: Dark Consumption -- P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc/Rchg(42), P'Shift-Acc/Rchg(45)
Level 44: Dark Embrace -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), ResDam-I(45), ResDam-I(50)
Level 47: Soul Drain -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(48), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(48), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(48), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(50), Oblit-%Dam(50)
Level 49: Soul Transfer -- Mrcl-Rcvry+(A)
------------
Level 2: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 2: Health -- Heal-I(A)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- P'Shift-EndMod(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(34), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc/Rchg(37), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(39), P'Shift-End%(39)


A more nicely formatted version (with Mids-importable data link) can be found here. I made some mistakes like slot a Miracle unique in a rarely used power. Several FF/nrg builds were submitted, but after extensive testing, Tourette decided my build was closest to what he was looking for. The prize was 10M inf or 2 hours of PLing, but I have ludicrous amounts of in-game money and don't believe in PLing, so I asked him to play one of my mission architect arcs instead. He agreed to do so.

While chatting online, another player told me that I was an inspiration for how to play nicely with others, which I thought was really sweet. I'll have to remember that, next time I get really mad at someone else.

Police Woman solo'd a hero tip, then the morality mission to rescue a bane spider from Grandville (I know this is the longer one, but I think it is cooler and more heroic than the evil twin morality mission). I liked the performance of my reactive interface so much that I burned 9 Empyrean merits to craft the ultra-rare Reactive Radial Flawless Interface (25% res debuff, 75% fire DoT). I then joined a Lambda trial. A friend had told me about this awesome map for finding weapon caches and containers in the Lambda trial:



I was on the weapon cache team and ended up splitting off to look for weapon caches on my own, and managed to find and solo 2 weapon caches with judicious use of Smoke Grenade and range attacks to avoid aggro. Went from 16% to 33% Destiny exp and got a common reward.

I hit the ticket cap in AE (which is 9999 unclaimed tickets) and claimed 999 of them to make some space.

Star Amethyst (51 dark/ice defender) converted 24 astral merits to make an Ageless Radial Invocation (END/RCHG/debuff resist). Decided to go with the debuff resist rather than the recovery buff, because the first click gives you a nice END boost anyway, and I'm hoping the debuff resist will prove useful against stuff like caltrops, Mask of Vitiation, CoT ghosts, and stuff like that. I joined a BAF trial which took a really long time to form, and ended up going with 22 players. No prisoners escaped. I found that Blizzard/Ageless was a workable combo. I went from 11% to 20% Lore exp and got a rare reward that let me convert another 8 astral merits to upgrade to an Ageless Partial Radial Invocation (END/RCHG/debuff resist and incarnate shift).

Police Woman joined a BAF trial. The leader asked us to try for Strong and Pretty; my team was assigned to clear minions, but our team was kinda split up and so we didn't have enough damage to keep them clear. Went from 72% judgement exp to unlocking judgement and 7% lore exp; also picked up an uncommon. I'm currently trying to resist slotting a Judgement power since none of them look "normal" enough for Police Woman's theme...but the Judgement nukes are awfully good, and the temptation is strong.

Mystery Girl (51 emp/pistols defender) joined a Lambda trial that took a really long time to form. Did really well on exp though, going from 41% to 74% Interface exp and getting an Uncommon reward.


Thu 4/14

Police Woman did another BAF trial, getting the rare reward and Lore exp to 20%.

Millie Volt (51 elec/elec brute) did another BAF trial, getting an uncommon reward and going from 79% Judgement to Judgement unlocked and 2% Lore. I used 19 astral merits, 2 empyrean merits to make an Ion Total Core Judgement. I picked Ion because it matches Millie Volt's electric powers, but wow, Ion is totally broken to do way too much damage. The first hit seems to be a reasonable damage number, but the chain lightning hits do around 1900 damage which can't possibly be right.

Spacegirl (51 mind/rad controller) did a BAF trial, going from 20% to 32% Judgement exp and getting an uncommon reward. I also turned down a blind global friend invite, which I think hurt the feelings of the person asking me (he didn't send me a tell before the invite, but he did after I turned it down). This person was in the same league as me, but we didn't team that much, weren't really close and hadn't really talked about it all. But I kinda regret making him feel bad, so I wonder if I should've just accepted it.

Mystery Girl (51 emp/pistols defender) did a Lambda trial; our team had a scrapper who was AFK for most of the trial, and had people who didn't back away when Marauder's Nova Fist was announced (resulting in LOTS of damage), but we still managed to finish. Went from 74% to 94% Interface exp and got an uncommon reward.