PoliceWoman

Here's my list of things that will make me pass over or quit early from an arc:

* Arc name or description either explicitly states or strongly implies that it is a farm or test arc.
* Arc name is spelled incorrectly.
* Extreme AVs.
* Mission 1 briefing, the intro to the arc that should establish the background for the story, is only 2 lines long.
* Default names for mission objectives, e.g., "Fred" in navbar instead of "Rescue Fred" or "Defeat Fred".
* Mission 1 map is huge with only one objective to accomplish on it.
* Mission 1 map is huge and defeat all.
* Mission 1 is full of custom mobs that have clashing costumes, no sense of theme, and/or annoying powersets.
* After completing mission 1, the debriefing is only 1 line long.
* After completing mission 1, the debriefing has the contact insult me for failure, even though I accomplished the mission objectives.
* After completing mission 1, it turns out the premise of mission 2 has nothing to do with mission 1.
* After completing mission 1, it just wasn't that fun.

Things that scare me, but could be overcome with good writing:

* Level range is 1-54 for every mission.
* The arc is described as "Part 1 of 3".
* Both "Recommended for Teams" and "Challenging" on the same arc.
* "Origin Story" keyword.
* "A new enemy group is in town!"
* "Collect the 4 pieces of the artifact!"

Thu 4/7/2011

Police Woman (51 AR/dev blaster) did an 11-player Lambda trial of all squishies (no tanks, brutes or scrappers). Despite no tankage we still won. Got an uncommon reward and Interface exp to 53%. Did another run after we filled up to 16 players; we tried doing this with no acid bombs to get the badge. Even using no acid we vaporized Marauder with sheer DPS; despite this, we did not get the "Antacid" badge that is supposedly awarded for this feat. I (and several other players) submitted a petition; so far I've only gotten a "we'll forward this to quality control" form letter. I did get a rare reward (Superconductive Membrane) and Interface exp to 75%. Went on to do a BAF trial where I got a very rare reward (Self Evolving Alloy) and Judgement to 29%. Starting to think naming the actual salvage reward I get from a trial doesn't really mean anything, so I'll just list the rarity from now on.

Millie Volt (51 elec/elec brute) joined a BAF; somehow I got stuck with the star, I'm not quite sure how. We had a high DPS league and prevented any prisoners from escaping, getting the Not on My Watch badge, an uncommon reward and Judgement exp to 38%. Continuing to play Millie, I ran another BAF, getting another uncommon reward and Judgement exp to 54%.

Switched to Star Amethyst (51 dark/ice defender) to do another BAF, getting an uncommon and Judgement exp to 38%.


Fri 4/8

San Min (51 MA/will scrapper) played through part of The Terra Cure, a story about helping Tanya Tyler recover from being Devoured. I liked the sentiment, but the plot didn't do much for me; I gave it 3 stars. I was at the RWZ AE building and joined a BAF trial that was forming in RWZ where we tried to kill all the ambushes for a badge; one team was devoted to adds, and one team to each AV. A new ambush spawned just as the last AV died, resulting in no badge. I did get an uncommon salvage and 17% Judgement exp. After that I joined a RWZ raid; the leader was unable to invite me to the RWZ raid league, though. Possibly their league was already full. I ended up soloing on the RWZ raid for awhile (I seemed tough enough to survive this, but it was pretty poor for vanguard merits), until some people left and I was able to join the league. Got 129 vanguard merits altogether.

Playing Millie Volt I signed up for a BAF run, but the leader over-invited, ending up with 25; two players with very similar global IDs had gotten him mixed up on how many were coming. The leader sent me a tell saying he would quit and make me leader, but this hardly seemed fair since he had organized the trial, so I volunteered to quit instead.

Police Woman (51 AR/dev blaster) signed up for a pickup Lambda. For some reason the league leader wanted to start with only 10 (reasoning the trial would be easier with fewer players, which I think was probably faulty logic). The league was also mostly scrappers with not much support, so I switched to Mercy Beaucoup (51 ice/kin corr) for scrapper support. We actually picked up 4 extra players from the queue upon starting the trial. The league overall was rather inexperienced; my team was on containers and we got 9, while the other team got 3 weapon caches before running out of time. We had no tank and none of the scrappers seemed able to tank, so Marauder ended up beating us up. This resulted in a general rout where someone fled out the front door of Lambda sector, and Marauder chased him out of bounds, causing the trial to fail.

After that, Police Woman joined a BAF trial with 24, but only 22 zoned in (AFKs, I assume). For some reason I got tons of aggro from both AVs and minions, not sure why; ate more death than I'm really used to. Got an uncommon reward, forgot to check exp.

Fire Maiden (51 SS/fire brute) joined a BAF but it took so long to form I got bored and was messing with my printer which was jammed, and I missed entering the trial (doh!!). I joined another BAF after that and was more careful to stay at keyboard. This team was very high DPS and stopped all the prisoners, getting the badge. We had no tanks and so I got nominated to tank the AVs; I was a little worried about this since my fire brute feels squishy at times, but we had really good support so I had no problem surviving. I got a Gluon salvage as a random drop and a rare reward for the trial, as well as 13% judgement exp.

After that I switched to Strong Woman (51 inv/SS tanker) for the next BAF run, figuring, if I was gonna tank, I may as well play a tank. I got to pull and tank the AVs; the AV damage seemed pretty serious (maybe inv is weaker to their damage type than fire? seems hard to believe) but we did fine. Got an uncommon reward.

Blond Justice (51 bs/shield scrapper) did the next run of the BAF trial, getting a Soulbound Allegiance (DMG) recipe drop, a Cytolitic salvage drop and an uncommon reward.

Star Amethyst (51 dark/ice defender) joined the next run of the BAF, but my ISP started acting up, causing me to disconnect 4 times. I missed the entire prisoners phase, but did make it for the final fight, getting a common reward and Judgement to 51% exp.


Sat 4/9

Police Woman hit the inf cap at the market again, sent myself another 500M.

Mystery Girl (51 emp/pistols defender) joined a Lambda trial. I found it was hard to keep people alive because my team was split up all over the place; I ended up just following the blaster who was the leader of my team for the containers and making sure he stayed alive, though I winced whenever a teammate died in some remote part of the facility. Didn't seem much I could do, though. Against Marauder part of my team went after weapon deliveries while the rest were on Marauder, which is different than what I'm used to, but we eventually won. I got an uncommon reward and some kind words for my emping efforts.

Star Amethyst (51 dark/ice defender) did a Lambda trial and got a rare reward.

Mystery Girl did a BAF trial; seemed like an unusual number of prisoners escaped, but not enough for us to fail. I only got 4% judgement exp on this trial, which seemed weird, too; maybe my team was very low DPS. Got a common reward.

Millie Volt (51 elec/elec brute) did a clear-most ITF in 59 minutes; felt guilty during mission 2 when I was running off by myself to the next crystal, managed to get killed and the emp who came to rez me got killed too. Oops.

Police Woman (51 AR/dev blaster) did a Lambda trial. My team was on acids and we got split up very quickly; I tried to rez another squishy who had died somewhere behind the team, and only got myself killed too as a result. Still managed to finish, got an uncommon reward.

Millie Volt did a Lambda trial that went very smoothly and got a very rare reward.

Fire Maiden (51 SS/fire brute) did a 13-player Lambda trial that went smoothly, got a common reward.

Shield Maiden (17 shield/mace tanker) solo'd Dr. Hetzfeld's arc. I laughed at the final mission where Dr. Hetzfeld accidentally orders his cyborgs to self destruct; being a computer programmer in RL, I totally appreciate what happens when you aren't careful about telling a computer what to do. Finishing the arc got Shield Maiden to level 18.

Sun 4/10

Mystery Girl (51 emp/pistols defender) did another BAF trial; got an uncommon reward but missed out on the Empyrean Merit, not enough time since the last BAF run I guess.

Police Woman (51 AR/dev blaster) did a BAF trial and got a rare reward. Also, another player sold me a Numina (+regen/+rec) recipe for 50M inf, which seemed a good deal.

Star Amethyst (51 dark/ice defender) did a BAF trial; we killed Nightstar, but didn't quite kill Siege in the 10s after, so they both rez'd and we had to kill both of them again, with lots of reinforcements on their part. Got a very rare reward.

Mercy Beaucoup (51 ice/kin corr) did a BAF trial; I got two compliments on her character concept. People were careless about sequestration and I got caught in the AoE hold twice. We won, though, and I got a rare reward.

Rain Dancer (51 storm/archery defender) did a BAF trial; the stormy powers were pretty fun against prisoners and adds, but I suspect they were also adding lag, which seemed especially bad this time. Got an uncommon reward.

Millie Volt (51 elec/elec brute) did yet another BAF trial; the prisoner escape phase seemed pretty leaky due to the league being light on control. The AV fight took awhile for some reason also, but we ended up winning; I got a very rare reward.

Fire Maiden (51 SS/fire brute) did another BAF trial. I found burn was terrific for blocking the doors where prisoners arrive at, but I also got confused a lot. Got an uncommon reward.

Police Woman joined the Hamidon raid, which had a really slow start. Interest seemed to be low, probably due to the incarnate trials being really hot right now. We killed monsters to pass the time and I racked up a tray full of EoEs. The raid was desperately short on emps, so I volunteered to switch to Mystery Girl for more support. I was assigned to the range damage team and once we got started, it seemed like we did pretty well. Fought several blooms, then powered through the lsat bloom to kill Hamidon. Merits and shards both seemed unattractive at the time, so I took the HO reward and got a Golgi. Maybe I should've stuck with merits.

Police Woman joined a Lambda trial. We had a messy Marauder fight as the pacification grenades didn't seem to get used very much, but eventually beat him and got an uncommon rewar. This did unlock PW's interface slot, though. I've been avoiding using threads for exp, and have been switching around on alts for trials to try and maximize Empyrean Merits, so this is actually the first I20 incarnate slot I had unlocked.

I switched to Star Amethyst for the next Lambda trial, and somehow got stuck with the star for the League, as the original leader had to log, then gave it to someone else who didn't want to lead and gave it to me. So I started leading Lambda trials. Now that I was leader, it seemed like it would slow the league down if I switched toons for every run, so I ended up playing Star Amethyst on 7 straight Lambda trials, after which I was so tired of Lambda that I switched to running the BAF trial, which I did twice before calling it a night. I got 6 uncommons, 1 common, 2 rares, which seems like a weird distribution considering the common reward was the least likely. Surpisingly to me (but maybe not to anyone else), you get a lot more progress on unlocking incarnate slots if you just play the same toon instead of switching around so much; Star Amethyst unlocked her Interface, Destiny and Judgement slots all in one day, after having nothing unlocked for the week before. I had 43 threads and 58 astral merits by the end. I ended up converting 4 threads and using common salvage to make a Reactive Interface, then converted 6 astral merits and using the rest of my threads to craft a Pyretic Judgement. Though I unlocked Destiny, I can't decide whether I'd rather take Clarion or Barrier.


Some observations I had from leading trials on Sunday:

* I really don't like the waiting time between runs of the trial, where you're just sitting around waiting for the teams to fill up, so I tried to be very aggressive about starting the next trial run each time. (This is perhaps a little hypocritical because I personally like to switch toons for each run...) I did let people reboot their game or switch toons or AFK if needed, but I would start as soon as people got back. This kept things moving pretty well, but on two different runs, I lost a player or two who were AFK for the trial countdown timer. After this happened, I made sure to ask people to announce in league chat if they were going AFK, which I think helped.

* I tried to keep the 2 Lambda teams reasonably well balanced, with a good mix of support, damage and tanking. I felt this was particularly important for Lambda since the teams are split up to chase down weapons and acids, so need to be somewhat independent. But even on BAF it felt worthwhile to balance the teams out since they generally would cover different sectors for the prisoner escape.

* When I switched from Lambda to BAF, I found I was competing with 2 other BAF trials that were forming, and ended up absorbing the smallest of the other two BAF leagues in order to launch. At several points RWZ was so full that it was hard to get everyone in the same instance of RWZ to launch a trial. It definitely felt like the incarnate trials were very popular.

* I probably would not have run 10 trials in a row as just a league member ... being league leader made me feel responsible for the success of the league, though (especially since many league members were friends) so I kept it going as long as I could. I did feel pretty fried after calling it a night. I've half a mind to not do any trials tonight, but truthfully if I log on and friends are doing trials, I'll probably join them. Even though I've done them a lot now, I still think they're fun. (Though it's tempting to squeeze a few ITF runs in, before the WST changes, too....)

[Warning: Totally anecdotal.]

I've mostly been playing trials in a weird, semi-casual way, by which I mean I've played a lot of trials, but I also switched to a different alt for every trial so I wouldn't miss out on the Empyrean Merit. I also didn't want to spend threads on incarnate exp because, hey, you get incarnate exp for mobs! Why would you use valuable threads for that! Net effect is I had none of my incarnate slots (except the Alpha slot) unlocked on any toon until yesterday.

So yesterday I joined FriendA on a Lambda trial that he formed. FriendA led the trial successfully, then had to log for RL and gave the league star to FriendB while I was switching to my next alt. FriendB was like, I don't want to lead -- PW, you lead! So I rejoined the league and suddenly had the big star.

So I led the Lambda trial. I had been on enough of them to know what people were supposed to do, and enough of my team members knew what to do that I didn't have too many problems. After we finished, it seemed like it would be disruptive to switch to a new toon when I was the league leader, so I just stayed on my dark defender and led another Lambda trial. I ended up leading 8 Lambda trials in a row, then I was so tired of Lambda that I switched to BAF for 2 trials (which the players seemed OK with). Unlocked my Interface, Destiny and Judgement slots all in the same day (after not having any yet for the week).

Some observations I had:

* I really don't like the waiting time between runs of the trial, where you're just sitting around waiting for the teams to fill up, so I tried to be very aggressive about starting the next trial run each time. (This is perhaps a little hypocritical because I personally like to switch toons for each run...) I did let people reboot their game or switch toons or AFK if needed, but I would start as soon as people got back. This kept things moving pretty well, but on two different runs, I lost a player or two who were AFK for the trial countdown timer. After this happened, I made sure to ask people to announce in league chat if they were going AFK, which I think helped.

* I personally tried to keep the 2 Lambda teams reasonably well balanced. On Liberty (where I play) having too many support toons on a team doesn't seem to be as much of a problem as reported in earlier posts on this thread; usually I tried to make sure each team would have enough support toons to be viable. I felt this was particularly important for Lambda since the teams are split up to chase down weapons and acids, so need to be somewhat independent. But even on BAF it felt worthwhile to balance the teams out since they generally would cover different sectors for the prisoner escape. I think this largely kept exp even (I would guess I averaged 30% exp per trial); I did not assign anyone specifically to clean up ambushes, people just killed stuff that got near them which was fine by me.

* When I switched from Lambda to BAF, I immediately found I was competing with 2 other BAF trials that were forming, and ended up absorbing the smallest of the other two BAF leagues in order to launch. At several points RWZ was so full that it was hard to get everyone in the same instance of RWZ to launch a trial. It definitely felt like the incarnate trials were very popular.

* There were plenty of times that I would've gladly taken a stalker for the DPS, over a fourth or fifth tanker. Heck, plenty of times I would've taken anything, just to fill a spot; once I had the core members needed to beat an AV or two covered, anything played reasonably competently was acceptable IMHO. There were a lot of trials running and for much of the day it was the leagues competing for players rather than players competing for slots on a league. Admittedly this was a weekend afternoon/evening so maybe a busier time than most.

* I probably would not have run 10 trials in a row as just a league member ... being league leader made me feel responsible for the success of the league, though (especially since many league members were friends) so I kept it going as long as I could. I did feel pretty fried after calling it a night. I've half a mind to not do any trials tonight, but truthfully if I log on and my friends are doing trials, I'll probably join them. Even though I've done them a lot now, I still think they're fun. (Though it's tempting to squeeze a few ITF runs in, before the WST changes, too....)

I have basically the same issue as the OP; my main character is a natural AR/dev blaster who is meant to be a highly trained human with some gadgets, so can't exactly throw lightning bolts or anything. This makes me reluctant to take any of the Judgement powers since they are a little too obviously super. I have a lot of other weapon-based characters (with pistols, swords or bows) that are in the same boat.

If the pyronic animation showed my character doing the "throw a grenade" emote, then the explosion, I think I'd be perfectly happy taking it though.

So, I guess I'm hoping they will add some alternate animations someday.

We'll miss you Naa! Best of luck in Real Life!

Equilibrium was definitely awesome, and I've thought about similar character concepts. Personally I would make a Grammaton cleric as a DP/kin corr with (ideally) capped DEF from IOs. Then spend a lot of time using Siphon Speed, Fulcrum Shift, Hail of Bullets...

Wed 4/6/2011

Blond Justice (50 sword/shield scrapper) did a clear most ITF in 48m 46s, picking up a Gravitational Anchor (chance to hold), a Positron's Blast (chance cor energy), and a Notice of the Well. From the various salvage I made a Musculature Total Core Revamp (DMG/IMMOB, level shift). Slotting this boost increased the damage numbers (as shown on the enhancement screen) of Headsplitter from 319.3 to 361.39, and Shield Charge from 294.73 to 333.59. This feels like a worthwhile buff.

Police Woman (51 AR/dev blaster) joined a Lambda trial. This time I was on the team that was killing containment cylinders (or something like that). This seemed to be on a smaller map than the one with the weapon caches, and we finished fast and got teleported to help the weapon cache team. The Marauder fight seemed straightforward and I got the choice of a rare salvage reward; I took a Semi-Conscious Energy (hoping this will be useful). I picked up 5 threads along the way and went from 18% to 41% interface exp.

The same teams wanted to do the Lambda trial again, and I switched to playing Millie Volt (51 elec/elec brute). Most people I know seem to be playing the same character over and over again in the trials, to unlock and slot stuff in their incarnate slots faster, but I've kind of decided to spread it (doing trials) around my level 50 alts a bit. Partly this is because you don't get an Empyrean Merit for re-doing the same trial on the same day (though you get all the other goodies, so that's not a huge penalty), partly this is altitis, and partly I just don't seem to have the "GOTTA HAVE IT, NAO!!" sense of urgency. I do think the incarnate trials are cool, though, so I'm still planning on doing them a lot.

So, Millie Volt did a Lambda trial; I was on the containment team again and found out the containers are apparently always in the same spots. We won the trial handily and I got a rare salvage pick (Ancient Texts), 22% interface exp and 4 threads. The same team tried the BAF trial and the trial kicked the whole league out of the zone shortly after the cut scene (some bugginess, I'm sure). On our second try we were able to do the actual BAF trial, though we had one person drop from the trial before entering (I suspect they timed out on the "enter" prompt) and one person DC'd from the final fight against the two AVs. The accepted strategy seems to involve pulling each of the AVs to the tennis courts, which are a safe spot; one tanker kept trying to tank Siege before he got to the tennis courts (despite instructions) which led to some frustration, but he eventually got straightened out. Finished and got an uncommon salvage pick (Worn Spellbook). I tried to watch Millie's health for this, since I thought an elec armor might do well on these trials (since the Praetorians are very fond of energy damage); I did not take much damage, but I also wasn't one of the main tankers, so not sure if this was conclusive. I did get "ringed" (the Sequestration effect from the AVs) a couple times but never exploded.

After that I joined a different league for another Lambda trial. They said they needed support and had a lot of tanks and scrappers, so I brought on Mercy Beaucoup (51 ice/kin corr). Our 2 teams were kinda unbalanced, with both kins of the raid on my team, and all the rezzers on the raid on the other team. I suggested that we should split the kins so one was on each team, but I suspect the leader wasn't able to figure out how to move people between teams, so we went as-is. This led to some problems when we split up for the containers and weapon caches (my team was on containers). The league leader asked me to show people where the containers were, but unfortunately I didn't really know where they all were (hey, it's only the second day) and it seemed like my team ended up splitting up to try and kill 3 or 4 different containers at once, but most weren't quite tough enough to handle the mobs guarding them. So we had a bunch of deaths, before eventually getting all the containers. Moving on to the Marauder fight, the AV got me with foot stomp once (I think I moved too close to him trying to use my kin powers) and I hospital'd and ran back. Although the hospital is in zone, I found there was some kind of timer that lets you only exit the hospital after a delay; I would guess this is to prevent some sort of suicidal zerg rush. We beat up Marauder and I took a Detailed Report salvage as my pick.

The same league wanted to do another Lambda trial, so I switched to Star Amethyst (51 dark/ice defender), figuring AOE rez ought to be especially good on these trials. When we started the trial, however, we discovered that the leader had accidentally selected the BAF trial instead; this didn't seem likely to succeed (since we were a 2-team league and BAF is meant for 3 teams) but we decided to give it a try. I thought for sure we were going to fail when we reached the prisoner breakout phase and the leader vaguely said "guard the exits"; I kinda thought we needed a better plan to cover 3 exits with 2 teams, but somehow it worked out as people individually moved between the exits to try to balance things out. After that we beat up Siege and Nightstar with no serious issues. I took a Gluon Compound as reward.

That same league tried to do the Lambda trial we had originally intended to do, and we got started, but while fighting turrets on the walls, the server decided to kick us out of the trial. It was late at night by that point so I (and several others) ended up bowing out to head to bed.

Tue 4/5/2011

Issue 20 hit today. The strike target changed to the ITF, but this seemed largely forgotten as people rushed to do the new content.

Sakura (22 plant/storm controller) joined an Admiral Sutter TF; most of the rest of the team were 50s but I figured that since it was a level 20-40 TF, I'd play something that could get exp. The TF opened with a very cool naval battle; I really liked the new map with all the navy ships. We kinda had trouble staying together as a team but managed to make it through the objectives. I had to laugh at the bizarro Fusionette. We kinda zerged the two Durays; we initially were going to kill the Praetorian Duray first, but it seemed like he could teleport around a lot, which was really annoying so we switched to the Primal Duray. It looked like Primal Duray was responsible for calling down airstrikes on us. There were glowing arrows on the ground which I believe were marking airstrike targets. Hover really seemed to help Sakura stay alive against these airstrikes and also the exploding ghouls in the second mission. Finished in 1h 12m, got level 23 and the Land Sea & Air badge.

Millie Volt (51 elec/elec brute) joined a RWZ raid that used the new league interface with 4 teams. I kinda think the "new" team UI is unnaturally large, probably because I'm just used to the old way. This raid went moderately well; there were a lot of deaths but I seemed to do OK, got stunned a couple times from stacking stuns but didn't die (elec armor is nice against Rikti) and picked up 466 vanguard merits.

Police Woman (51 AR/dev blaster) joined a BAF trial. Our first attempt the trial failed to load the first map, which broke up all the teams and required us to unset something on the new LFG tab before we could rejoin. Second attempt we fought our way into the facility, then the raid leader assigned teams by team number to split up to try and fight prisoners. Most of us had no idea what we were doing and so we pretty much immediately let all prisoners go, failing the trial. Third attempt we went back in and the raid leader again assigned teams by team number, but this actually confused us -- it's not real obvious which team you're on (you have to go into the League UI to look) and the team I was on had been team 3 on the previous trial, but was now team 2. So we went to the wrong place for awhile, but eventually this got sorted out and we ended up guarding the right rabbit hole. Once we beat up the prisoners, the leader had people pull Siege and Nightstar to some "tennis courts" in the middle of the compound; apparently this location is a good place to pull them because you don't get turret aggro there. The AVs put some kind of effect on people that encloses them in circles that eventually makes them explode or something; anyone who got two circles around them was told to move away from the raid. We switched between damaging Siege and Nightstar and managed to kill them at almost exactly the same time. Succeeding at the trial got me a fistful of new incarnate salvage: 5 astral merits, a gluon compound, 5 incarnate threads, and a dimensional pocket (selected from the Uncommon reward menu). Also got the Alarm Raiser and Behavior Adjuster badges, as well as 18% Judgement exp.

After that most of the same people attempted the Lambda sector trial. On our first attempt we zoned in successfully, but during the first fight the whole raid got kicked out of the trial and we had to restart. On our second attempt the trial failed to load the map, and we had to reset and reform the raid. On our third attempt, one person was bugged and could not enter, but the other 15 people were able to zone in, and so we ended up proceeding from there. (This sucked for the one person who couldn't enter, though.) This trial had some early fighting, then we entered some other part of the map where the two teams split up to try and steal stuff or sabotage things or something. The team I was on needed to search for "weapon caches", which were destroyable objects guarded by Praetorians. They were stashed all over a rather large warehouse and we mostly stealthed around looking for them. I did manage to kill one weapon cache on my own (I somehow was able to avoid aggroing the mobs guarding it by some combination of smoke grenade and distance sniping) which was kind of cool, but overall these were a pain to search for, and the last weapon cache took quite awhile to find. I got a Pacification Grenade temp power which apparently was transferable, and we were all told to give our Pacification Grenades to one defender who would be in charge of using them to dispel Marauder's rage buff. We then went to some kind of fortress like area where we killed a bunch of turrets, then faced down with Marauder. It looked like he did pretty crazy damage, though I tried to stay well away from him to avoid AoEs. Tons of text kept popping up with helpful hints for fighting Marauder: he's gonna attack, run away now! Hit him with a paci grenade! Etc. Marauder also had this annoying habit of superjumping away, so we had to chase him around a courtyard; I tried web grenading him for the -jump but as a super-AV I don't think he really respected that. We eventually chased him around long enough to kill him. I got an Arcane Cantrip (from the Common reward menu), 2 Empyrean Merits (maybe I got one of these from the previous trial, but this is when I noticed them), 5 more threads, 4 astral merits and 18% interface exp.

My impression of the trials so far are: you need a raid leader to tell people what to do, and you need a raid force that is actually willing to do what the leader says. That seems to be most important of all, if people aren't working together it just isn't going to work. DPS seems particularly helpful to beat the fleeing prisoners in the BAF; I'm told controls and taunt won't stop them, though I'm curious as to whether Hurricane or Force Bubble will block them. Stealth seems helpful for getting the stuff in the Lambda trial. Recruiting the raid force and actually getting into the trial zone seems to be the most tedious part; the trials bugging out repeatedly as we tried to enter was very annoying. The trials generate tons of weird incarnate salvage, which I know are for the new incarnate slots, but it's pretty confusing trying to select something sensible from the reward menu (which is apparently different for each player). These are just my initial feelings; I do think they are cool and plan to do them more.

I have mixed feelings about the new incarnate slots that came with I20. Judgement (the nuke on a 90 second timer) seems the best by far, but I have a tough time reconciling any of the Judgement powers with my main toon's character concept (a natural hero with a gun as her main attack). I guess incarnate content is all about extreme superpowers, but while I could rationalize taking the Alpha slot (which has no visible effect, it just makes you better), I just wouldn't feel right about Police Woman running around throwing fireballs or void clouds or whatever. I have several other toons in the same boat (mostly people with guns or swords who probably shouldn't have this kind of power). Maybe I should just not slot anything in the Judgement slot, but skipping a huge AoE attack that doesn't cost a power pick seems like it would be very limiting. I also have some concerns that giving everyone a Judgement nuke, Lore pets, Interface debuffs and Destiny buffs, will end up making everyone's toons pretty much the same (like when you're on a lowbie team where all 8 people are using Sands of Mu instead of their "real" attacks), but I suppose that's a longer term concern. We'll see how that ends up working out.

Tue 3/29/2011

The weekly strike target changed to Manticore TF and Renault SF, so I did a bunch of those before getting tired of them.

Maid of Awesome (50 sonic/rad corr) did a Manticore TF in 32m 59s for 64 merits and a notice.

Kyrie Eleison (45 archery/fire blaster) did a Manticore TF in 40m 56s, getting to level 46.

Sarcasm Lass (22 sonic/mental blaster) joined a 3 player hero tip team. The leader left for a TF and gave me the star. I recruited up to a 6 player team, but we had no support whatsoever. We had some deaths but managed to finish 5 hero tips, which got Sarcasm Lass to level 23.

Blond Justice (50 sword/shield scrapper) did a 7-player Kahn TF. One scrapper crashed in the final mission and we ended up fighting Reichsman with 6, but he made it back in time for the end. Finished in 31m 37s.


Wed 3/30

Millie Volt (51 elec/elec brute) did a clear most ITF in 45m 5s, followed by a speed Renault SF in 26m 12s for 48 merits and a notice.

Virtual Girl (40 kat/fire scrapper) did a Manticore TF; I ended up on 'point' for most of the fighting since I seemed the most aggressive of the melee. Finished in 56m 55s and got to level 41.

Tour de Force (33 ff/nrg defender) did a Manticore TF. We had one person log off in the first mission and never return; finished in 1h and got to level 35.


Thu 3/31

Sarcasm Lass (23 sonic/mental blaster) did a 6 player Sister Psyche TF, with a tanker, an emp and 4 damage. This went very well and we finished in 1h 36m, getting Sarcasm Lass to level 25. A peacebringer teammate thought my red-colored sonic powers looked like a void slayer's attacks, scaring him briefly, but another teammate complimented me on Sarcasm Lass's name and power colors. After the TF I duo'd in Croatoa with another sonic blaster, finishing Gordon Bowers' arc for 16 merits and level 26.


Fri 4/1

Water Lily (40 rad/storm corr) did a Manticore TF. The Halloween event was active for the weekend and banners in Brickstown blocked our hunt there for 12 minutes. I managed to talk the team into trying to do the banner event (since we were going to have to wait for it to end anyway) and we started actively working on it at the 9 minute mark; we were able to take down 3 banners in the time allowed. Went on to finish the TF in 55m 20s (including the banner downtime) and got Water Lily to level 41.

Millie (51 elec/elec brute) caught the tail end of the Friday RWZ raid and picked up 89 vanguard merits.

Blond Justice (50 sword/shield scrapper) did 5 hero tips in Atlas; between missions I ran into a Halloween Eochai, which I duo'd with a rad controller.

Sarcasm Lass (26) joined a Synapse TF; we had one controller teammate who disconnected repeatedly, then eventually (I assume) gave up trying to reconnect. Despite this we killed Babbage without any help (that I saw anyway) and finished in 1h 38m, getting Sarcasm Lass to 28.


Sat 4/2

Mercy Beaucoup (51 ice/kin corr) formed an 8-player Synapse. I had to miss the first warehouse mission for a minor RL emergency, but got back in time to fight Babbage, who we took down with just our team. Finished in 1h 42m with no deaths (we had a pretty good emp) and the Gearsmasher and Synapse TF badges gave me both the Freedom Phalanx Reserve and Task Force Commander accolades. I also got a level 21 Karma KB protect recipe drop.

Spy Girl (44 MA/ninj stalker) did a 7-player (including 1 contact sitter) Renault SF in 44m 24s, getting her to level 45. I slotted 6 Gaussian in Focus Chi and 6 Red Fortune in Ninja Reflexes for 2.5% melee/AoE DEF and 5% range DEF in set bonuses.

Indigo Ifrit (51 fire/rad corr) did an 8-player (including 1 contact sitter) Renault SF in 40m 51s.


Sun 4/3

Helen Highwater (27 storm/psy defender) joined a 4-player team on Triumph server for Sea Change, an AE arc where you get mind controlled by Calystix and are forced to help him (until you break free). I started off kinda iffy on the arc's premise, but it got pretty good near the end. I ended up giving it 5 stars.

Sakura (18 plant/storm controller) joined an 8 player Synapse TF. We had a weird team mix with 3 blasters, 2 VEATS, a kheldian, a scrapper and me. It seemed like one or another of the blasters was disconnected most of the time (rotating among them...must've been some kind of network problem?) and one particular blaster was unusually suicidal, rushing off on his own to attack fresh spawns (usually with bad results). Despite this we finished in 1h 45m, and this got Sakura to level 22. A teammate noticed that I had colored Sakura's tree of life to look like a cherry tree, which was nice.

I had rerolled Shield Maiden to a shield/mace tanker; she was a level 48 fire/shield scrapper before, and although that's a great combo on paper, it just wasn't working for me. It just feels like shield toons need a weapon to match the shield. I was using fire swords to try and simulate this, but the occasional Scorch or Cremate kinda ruined the "look" for me. So I rerolled to shield/mace tanker (a previous incarnation was a mace/shield brute, which I kinda liked until I realized how anemic shield charge is for brutes) and mostly solo'd in Praetoria. At level 10 I joined a 7-player pickup team doing Message Man's random missions; this was a very good team with solid support and decent damage, and got Shield Maiden to level 16.

Police Woman hit the inf cap at the market again, and I emailed myself another 500M inf.

Sarcasm Lass (28 sonic/mental blaster) formed 4 player pickup team in Striga that did Tobias's arc, then Lars' arc, which unlocked the Hess TF and got Sarcasm Lass level 29 and the Slayer badge.


Mon 4/4

It was my birthday and I had taken the day off. I got a lot of nice birthday wishes (thanks all!).

Shield Maiden (16 shield/mace tank) solo'd Transmuter's arc. I decided to save my "squad" rather than go for the glory. Got to level 17 then headed to Neutropolis to start Hetzfield's arc. While doing this I got a level 17 Steadfast Protection (KB protect) recipe as a random drop.

Mercy Beaucoup (51 ice/kin corr) joined a speed STF that finished in 30m 8s. This gave me enough salvage to craft and slot the Cardiac Core Paragon (END/RANGE/RES) boost, which got her to 58.89% smash/lethal RES, which always kinda astounds me because it's more than some of my scrappers get. After that, did a speed LGTF in 20m 45s.

San Min (51 MA/will scrapper) did a clear most ITF in 41m 3s

Sarcasm Lass (29 sonic/mental blaster) solo'd (briefly joined by a brute on some missions) the Keith Nance, Jenni Adair, and Roy Cooling story arcs. These are all relatively new mid-20s story arcs set in Talos Island and seem much spiffier than old story content, with more dramatic choices and interesting game mechanics. I managed to solo Archon Burkholder and Protean as EBs, then repeatedly solo the sky raider EB. The Zeus Titan EB ambush managed to kill me once, though. This got Sarcasm Lass to level 30 and a bunch of badges. I had been pushing to get to level 30 to try and do a Manticore TF while it was still the strike target, but by the time I got to level 30 it was late at night and I ended up just heading to bed. I did slot 2 sets of 4 Devastation and 2 Luck of the Gambler +7.5% recharge IOs (all level 33) for 6% damage, 4.5% max HP, 24% regen and 15% rchg; I was toying with trying to PvP with Sarcasm Lass sometime, since sonic blast is apparently pretty decent in PvP now.

Here's my stab at this challenge.

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

Click this DataLink to open the build!

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 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Vigilance
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 4: Ninja Run
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)



Some notes on this build:

* It's not soft capped on defense. This is because I think you're more interested in damage output than defense. The build still has 32.6% range DEF, 30.1% melee DEF, 28.2% AoE DEF, 43.1% sm/leth RES and +16.9% max HP. When soloing, this is probably fine. You can use Aid Self to fix any damage that leaks through. If you get into a tight spot, a single Luck will raise your range DEF to the cap (the most likely vector of attack when you have Hover and Force Bubble). If you somehow get defeated despite having 3 layers of DEF, RES and healing, you can self-rez. That's more than enough survivability IMHO.

* Despite your focus on solo damage, I still included the ally bubbles (and vengeance) because you'll want to be useful on teams, too.

* I slotted all single target attacks with one damage proc and all targeted AoE attacks with two damage procs. The proc damage isn't limited by Enhancement Diversification, nor is it limited by the rather low damage multiplier defenders normally get. Thus, procs are a way to increase your DPS over that of a typical defender.

* I avoided using purple IOs or hami-Os. I did include LotGs, Numina procs, Steadfast +3% DEF because those are pretty easy to get even for a casual player via hero merits.

* With this slotting the build has +66.3% to recharge (not counting Hasten) and +69.7% damage (counting Assault but not Aim or Soul Drain). Hasten, Aim and Soul Drain all can buff those further, of course. Alpha boost would buff things even more.

* This build is purely a thought experiment and I haven't playtested it any. It runs a lot of toggles and doesn't have much ENDRDX slotted in attacks, so might suffer from END issues, but Dark Consumption should fix that if so.

Hope that gives you some ideas!

Tue 3/22/2011

The Weekly Strike Target changed to the Tin Mage TF, and so I immediately ran a Tin Mage TF on Police Woman (51 AR/dev blaster), finishing in a very speedy 20m 43s and getting 80 merits and a Notice of the Well, which seemed like a big reward for the time spent. (Most runs were a little longer than this though.)

Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corr) did another Tin Mage on a debuff heavy team (2 rad, 2 kin, dark, fort, cold and a single brute). We pulled Director 11 to the door and kinda accidentally got Midnight Dodger badge (it wasn't intended as a Master Of run, we just got lucky and had lots of buffs/debuffs). Finished in 28m 18s.

Maid of Awesome (50 sonic/rad corr) solo'd Ramiel's arc, continuing from the Honoree mission. I again beat up Holtz then lost to Honoree, but beat Honoree on the rematch. After getting the Alpha Unlocked badge, I collected the Ancient Nictus salvage from an ITF reward window I had left up while running through this arc.

Star Amethyst (51 dark/ice def) joined a Tin Mage TF; with a blaster-heavy team and only 2 dark defenders as support I wasn't real sure about this team mix, but it actually went well. Our tank pulled Neuron away without getting Bobcat, and we were able to beat the AVs up separately (though the 2 robots did add onto the Neuron fight). Finished in 38m 12s and crafted a Cardiac Core Paragon (45END/RANGE/RES and +1 level shift).


Wed 3/23

Yuki-Onna (51 ice/cold corr) did a Tin Mage in 26m 32s.

Millie Volt (50 elec/elec brute) did a Tin Mage in 22m 32s. I'm liking elec armor for the Praetorian content, it seems like they're really heavy on energy damage which Millie is nearly immune to. Crafted a Cardiac Total Radial Revamp (END/RES/RANGE/SLEEP and +1 level shift).

Blond Justice (51 broadsword/shield scrapper) did a Tin Mage in 23m 55s; we seemed to have an unusually high number of deaths in the last mission from AoE damage, not quite sure why. Crafted a Cardiac boost, but had totally forgotten I meant to switch her to using Musculature, so this was a waste. Oh well. I ran to Skyway to help with a Babbage sighting, but the initial directions to him were wrong so I didn't get there until after he died. Joined an LGTF that was kinda slow to fill, but finished in 28m 34s after starting. I got 2 compliments on Blond Justice's character concept and one on her costume, which was really nice. I tried to join a Kahn TF that got announced, but the person who announced it had already given up and joined something else, leaving several people looking for one. So I formed a Kahn TF, rounding up the people who had gotten stranded. None of us were debuffers so I asked on public channels for debuff, and we got a stormy, thermal and 2 rads, so had plenty. I got to explain my pokemon theory of how Reichsman works in the Kahn TF, which is always fun. Finished Kahn TF in 24m 4s and I crafted a Musculature (DMG) boost. I immediately swapped out my Cardiac Revamp for Musculature; even though this loses me a level shift and lots of bonuses, I figured this would at least keep me from forgetting which tree of the Alpha slot I was working on.

Irena (8 ice/ice dom) joined a 7 player team in Imperial City. We had no healer or support toons, and fought some Destroyers, who had this deadly combination of dropping burn patches then knocking me down in them. I found Arctic Air to be pretty decent mitigation, and dominator Ice Sword Circle was surprisingly good. Had a moment of coolness where I died just before hitting level 11 for an instant rez. Would've been cooler if I had actually planned it that way, but was pretty nice anyway.


Thu 3/24

Strong Woman (51 inv/SS tank) did a Tin Mage TF in 21m 25s.

Mega (51 SS/will brute) joined another Tin Mage where we were tank heavy; two tanks and me (though one tank was not alpha boosted which seemed pretty bad for this). I was overconfident and ran ahead of both tanks to take Neuron and Bobcat's alpha strike with no inspirations and instantly died (oops). We struggled with the final fight, most of the team dying a lot before we finally brought the bad guys down. Finished in 22m 37s, still pretty quick despite the problems.

Rain Dancer (51 storm/archery def) joined yet another Tin Mage. Somehow this team got to talking about beer; Yuengling (which I've never tried) was recommended, and we all agreed we hated Corona. Finished in 29m 35s.

Maid of Awesome (50 sonic/rad corr) tried doing some PvP in Warburg. This was initially frustrating due to a big, well-coordinated team smashing the rest of us repeatedly; I formed a competing team but we didn't work together very well, and I kept having team members drop from my team and join the winning team, which felt unfair and really made me mad. Eventually the big team left and I switched to Police Woman (51 AR/dev blaster) and ended up playing 3v4 most of the night. The 4 were 3 stalkers and a regen scrapper who apparently weren't teamed (except for 2 of the stalkers) but seemed to only attack me and my team, probably because we were the only ones easy to see. I died some and managed to land some kills a couple of the stalkers; this was kinda rough but still fun for awhile.

Spacegirl (51 mind/rad controller) joined a Tin Mage TF. We had an ugly fight against Director 11 with Malta wrecking most of our team. We had no kin so the Praetorian clockwork slowed us a lot in later missions. Still finished in 28m 43s.

Sarcasm Lass (20 sonic/mm blaster) replayed Fear and Loathing on Striga, an AE story arc where you're advancing Arachnos interests on Striga Isle. This was a fun story with good ties to the canon; I gave it 5 stars.


Fri 3/25

Sarcasm Lass formed and led a 7-player Positron 1 TF, finishing in 37m exactly. We picked up another player to do an 8-player Positron 2 TF, finishing in 42m 42s. This got Sarcasm Lass to 22.

I periodically check for the availability of various words or phrases as names on Liberty, and found that Teenybopper was an available name. I decided a character with this name had to be a minimum height war mace character, and thus Teenybopper (mace/nrg brute) was born. I remember energy aura being a horrible defense set when I first tried it in the early days of CoV. But it's been buffed at least once since then, and there's this whole "Strong and Pretty" meme going on, so I thought I'd give it another try. Solo'd to level 3, then joined a 5 player team til level 7.


Sat 3/26

Police Woman hit the inf cap and I sent another 500M to myself in email.

I joined the Kickball PvP event. Our first match was 6v6 on the city map. I was target caller, but our team wasn't really coordinating well and we were having trouble focusing damage. I felt like I was struggling to keep up with everyone else, which I normally don't have a big issue with. It turns out the matches were being run with Travel Suppression disabled, which meant that everyone else could travel at full speed, but due to the way Arenas work, Ninja Run (which I usually use for travel) was disabled.

Second match was on the Eden map, which was a bad map for me since it's so big, but our TA was good at calling targets and that team worked together really well, so we ended up winning.

I switched to playing Yuki-Onna (51 ice/cold corr) since she actually has travel powers. Due to vagaries of picking teams, the team I was on ended up with both TAs while the opposing team got both emps. We thought this meant we would get crushed for sure, but we actually did very well, winning a very low scoring match on the Cargo Ship (a small map making my switching to having travel powers irrelevant...probably would've been better sticking with blaster for dps), I think mostly because the opposing team was having trouble focusing damage on any one target. Or maybe having 2 emps just dropped their damage too much.

The kickball organizer gave out pretty generous prizes, giving a PvP recipe to every person who attended. I was given a Shield Wall (END/RCHG). There was some dramatic irony as the organizers gave PvP recipes to PvPers who liked to kill their PvP farm toons, then we did a final 6v7 match with totally random teams in Atlas where my team got utterly crushed.

Mystery Girl (51 emp/pistols def) duo'd Siege with a tanker, getting Dimensional Warder. I switched to Rain Dancer (51 storm/arch def) to duo more Praetorians with the tanker, beating Diabolique, Battle Maiden, Marauder, Malaise, Antimatter, Chimera, Nightstar, Bobcat and Neuron, which got her Portal Jockey. Switched to Spacegirl (51 mind/rad controller) for a few more, beating up Battle Maiden and Black Swan, after which the tanker finally got Portal Jockey. We then beat up Malaise, Mother Mayhem, Infernal and Neuron, which got Spacegirl Portal Jockey.

Sakura (17 plant/storm ctrl) exemped to 6 for a few missions in Atlas and KR on a 3 player team, which got her to level 18.

San Min (50 MA/will scrapper) solo'd Blitzkrieg, an AE story arc about a pretty good Malta conspiracy. I gave it 5 stars.

Virtual Girl (39 kat/fire scrapper) solo'd For the Love of Tronn, an AE story arc that was an homage to the movie Tron. The mobs were kinda annoying to fight (a lot of END drain, which sorta made sense) and there were some huge maps that made the middle of the arc feel slow, but the costumes were good and the dialog straight from the Tron movie. I particularly wanted to do this arc because Virtual Girl herself is kind of a Tron homage character (with heavy use of the Circuitry pattern in her #1 costume). I gave it 4 stars.


Sun 3/27

Teal Serpent (50 arch/traps corr) joined a Tin Mage TF; I had brought a traps corr because the leader asked for debuff, but we ended up with only a cold and traps for debuff, no heals at all. I thought this would end badly and offered to switch to kin, but the leader thought we would be fine. We had a team wipe fighting war walkers in mission 1, then most of the team died repeatedly (I died 5 times) to Director 11 from his AoE grenades and proximity mines, which tore apart the squishies on the team. We finally beat Director 11 only after we switched to killing all the Malta minions to clear them out before focusing on the AV. Several of us wanted to quit and restart with a better team mix at this point, but the leader was confident that Director 11 was the hardest part of the TF so we should be fine now. I had my doubts, but our two tanks actually did a good job of splitting the AVs apart in the last mission, with our stoner off-tanking Bobcat and the 2 War Walkers while the rest of the team focused on Neuron. This let us finish the TF in 1h 2m.

Virtual Girl (39 kat/fire scrapper) did an AE arc called Faerie Gold where a routine investigation gets you involved in fighting Unseelie Court fey; this was actually quite good and I gave it 5 stars. A friend also joined me to duo that arc, then asked to play one of mine, so I dragged him through Talos Vice, which he liked. While in the AE building a bystander spotted me and gave me a compliment for having a good Sucker Punch homage costume (I had just seen the movie, and had given Virtual Girl a schoolgirl-with-katana costume just for fun), which I guilty accepted. I got to level 40 doing this and slotted 2 sets of 4 Kinetic Combat in her attacks for 7.5% smash/lethal DEF (which should stack with Divine Avalanche). Common salvage was unreasonably priced so I spent lots of the tickets I had just picked up on random common salvage to build these IOs, then sold the extras for 100k each. Then went on to solo 5 paper missions in Grandville.


Mon 3/28

Maid of Awesome (50 sonic/rad corr) joined a Kahn TF. Our team was very solid with heavy debuff, but we wasted a lot of time on the Atlas Park steps when most of the team ran inside the building before we had fully cleared the first group of mobs with Bad Penny. Otherwise went fine, finishing in 25m 34s.

Mercy Beaucoup (51 ice/kin corr) joined Tin Mage TF. I was the second kin to join and offered to switch, but the team said we would be fine. I should've switched though; the other kin didn't SB anyone initially, and when I asked him for SB, he told me to Siphon Speed instead. I grumbled at this (playing a kin on a team with another kin who won't buff me is a huge pet peeve of mine), but eventually managed to guilt him into SBing me sometimes, and occasionally even other team members. Meanwhile, our sole tanker could not zone into the first mission, or the second mission for that matter, and we couldn't figure out why. I tried zoning out to try and teleport him onto the pilot, which didn't help. He tried rebooting the game twice. He just couldn't enter any mission. Eventually we gave up and proceeded with 7, with one of our 4 scrappers taking over tanking duties. In the final mission I volunteered to pull Neuron (as one of the few ranged toons) and the 1-shot code saved me from dying to his alpha strike; after that the scrappers pounced him like crazed piranha and we beat up all the AVs and won the TF, finishing in 40m 55s.

Added: Faerie Gold (#95553) H25-30
Settling a miners strike leads to conflict with the Unseelie Fey.

Source: recommended by MA Super Team

Added: Blitzkrieg (#3416) H45-54
Crimson asks for your help investigating a deadly Malta conspiracy.

Source: CoHMR Aggregator (a review thread)

March 2011 update.

Thought I'd update this (albeit rather late) ... for SCIENCE!!

As of March 24, arcs with 100 or more plays, 5 stars or higher and not HoF or DC:

Arcs Published Pre-15 (6/29/2009) - 8
Arcs Published Post I-15 - 7

Total Number of arcs out of 70,930 arcs - 15

Put another way: .0211% of the arcs in the system have more than 100 plays while still maintaining a 5 star rating.

Percentage of current HoF Arcs Published in 4/09 - 86%.

It is worth noting that we picked up a new Hall of Fame arc since the last update. It is widely considered a farm arc, though there is a thin veneer of story. Very thin.

I cannot explain the sharp uptick in the 100 or more / 5 stars or higher count from the previous month. It is possible that I am measuring this differently than WN did; I simply counted all the arcs that match the criteria on pages 3 and 4 of the default search (none were apparent on the next several pages). Alternative hypotheses include: 5-star rating cartels, loss of interest on the part of griefers, or maybe people are actually playing good arcs and rating them highly. (You pick your preferred explanation. I cannot verify any of them.)


History
May - 12 (11/1)
June - 14 (11/3)
July - 14 (11/3)
August - 11 (8/3)
September - 11 (7/4)
October - 10 (8/2)
November - 13 (10/3)
December - 10 (7/3)
January - 7 (3/4)
February - 8 (4/4)
March - 15 (8/7)

It seems to me the main difference here is between a subset of people who believe the rating should be used to judge the quality of the arc, versus a different subset of people who believe the rating should be used to help/hurt the relative standing of the arc in the search tool.

Since the motivation for assigning the ratings is completely different in these two cases, it seems unlikely that we will be able to persuade each other that This Way is Right or That Way is Wrong. So perhaps it's best to let that argument go.


I do think this further highlights what I consider to be the biggest problem for Mission Architect: namely, how hard it is for a casual player to use the AE search tool to find a story arc they would enjoy. Right now it's all too easy to randomly stumble across farms, broken arcs, or low quality arcs, which then steers people towards Dev Choice arcs and (occasionally) 5-star arcs, artificially inflating the importance of Dev Choice or 5-star status.

Some simple ways to improve the search engine commonly used on other media sites (note, not exhaustive):
* "If you liked this arc, you might like these arcs: XX, YY, ZZ" feature.
* In-game "favorites" lists or "theme" lists, and the ability to browse other users' lists.

If it were easier to find good story arcs, it would increase the number of casual players willing to use AE to play story-oriented arcs, and would mitigate all ratings issues (whether ratings inflation or ratings griefing).

Tue 3/15/2011

The weekly strike target switched to ITF, and I dutifully did a ton of ITFs. Which wasn't too onerous, because practically everyone likes the ITF.

Fire Maiden (51 hero SS/fire brute) did a clear most ITF in 47m 18s.

Yuki-Onna (51 villain ice/cold corr) did a speed ITF in 18m 31s.

Blond Justice (51 hero bs/shield scrap) did a 7-player speed ITF in 22m 35s; this team was a little slow to kill Romulus due to low overall DPS.

Star Amethyst (51 hero dark/ice def) did a speed ITF in 20m 16s; I ran out of break frees and managed to die a couple times to the Nictus stuns in the final fight.

Rain Dancer (51 hero storm/archery def) did a clear most ITF in 41m 29s.

Sakura (16 hero plant/storm ctrl) tried an AE arc called Hollywood Nocturne at a friend's recommendation; this was a neat mystery, but a hostage in the final mission that needed to be led out kept getting stuck. I reset the mission once but the hostage got stuck again, and I ended up having to abandon the arc. I gave it 4 stars anyway.


Wed 3/16

Strong Woman (51 hero inv/SS tank) did a clear most ITF in 41m 58s.

Mercy Beaucoup (51 hero ice/kin corr) did a speed ITF in 19m 47s. Our tank disconnected on the final Romulus kill, but managed to get back just in time to get credit.

Mega (51 villain SS/will brute) did a speed ITF in 23m 23s.

Mercy Beaucoup joined a 7 player team doing the new Maria Jenkins arc. We beat Bobcat, Neuron, Battle Maiden, Black Swan, Malaise, Mother Mayhem, Infernal, Diabolique, Dominatrix, Marauder, the Statesman's Pal mission (noteworthy that Tyrant is not in this mission any more, now there's some generic boss) and a non-story mission that let us beat Siege. Despite running through nearly the whole arc, I still didn't get the Dimensional Warder badge; I think Mercy is missing some combination of Antimatter, Chimera and Nightstar.

This did finally get my private SG enough prestige (along with some help from a friend who has been tagging some toons into my SG purely to give my SG prestige) to build some control items: a magical orbit thingy and 3 bookshelves, which let me power up all of my teleporters. I still need to work on getting a few more beacons, though.


Thu 3/17

Kyrie Eleison (43 vigilante arch/fire blast) did a clear most ITF at +1 difficulty in 35m 21s, getting to level 45. After that I solo'd 5 radio missions in Peregrine Island and the Founders Falls safeguard.

There was some free-for-all PVP in Warburg, so I went over there with various toons; I tried playing April Fool (50 villain thug/TA MM0, then Mayday (50 hero fortunata) and finally Police Woman (51 hero AR/dev blaster), who did the best of all my toons, probably because of some combination of having spent the most inf on her build, and being the most used to playing her. I killed some people and died lots. For some reason, enemy players seemed really surprised that I stunned them with Beanbag.

Sakura (16 hero plant/storm controller) solo'd Suppression, an AE arc that is basically a Wizard of Oz homage. It was cute and generally okay; I gave it 4 stars. After that I helped a peacebringer duo a level 27 mission with hydra that he was stuck on; they seemed very tough (he was on +1 difficulty and I'm really not that strong yet at level 16) and we had one team wipe, but eventually won. He seemed very grateful for the help and promised to owe me one.

Primadonna (51 rogue sonic/kin corr) did a clear most ITF in 35m 0s. After that I duo'd the Brickstown mayhem with a dominator, which got Primadonna her last mayhem exploration badge and the Invader accolade.


Fri 3/18

Strong Woman (51 hero inv/SS tank) did a speed ITF in 24m 20s.

Police Woman hit the inf cap at the market and I sent myself another 500M.

April (50 villain thug/TA MM) joined an all MM ITF at +1 difficulty. This was initially pretty cool due to the novelty of an 8 MM team, but it bogged down quickly. We had to clear everything in our path due to the pets, and had one player disconnect after mission 1 and never return. Of our remaining team, we had a FF and 2 thermal masterminds, none of which ever buffed (until the very last fight). Neither thermal had melt armor and our traps MM didn't have poison gas trap, so we had very little debuff except my trick arrow and a stormy, despite nominally having 7 MMs with 7 support sets. On top of that half the team were lowbies and a little underpowered as a result. We cleared a path to Romulus in the final mission, but when we attacked him, we seemed unable to make any progress; it looked like Romulus was healing up from our pets, even. We decided to all log out to reset the mission, then have the leader change difficulty to +0. The stormy and I both agreed this wouldn't make enough difference, but neither of us wanted to be a dirty quitter, so we tried it. I attempted to immob the healer Nictus AV and keep it away from Romulus to negate its healing; it seemed very resistant to immob, but I got its aggro long enough for the first Romulus kill, then the healer ran back to Romulus and I couldn't get him away (normally TA is aggro enough, but here I really wished I had taunt). We had another team wipe at that point. We regrouped and decided to try again; this time I gave up on trying to immob the healer and just attacked Romulus straight up, and focusing damage and debuff went a lot better, finally letting us win. Finished the ITF in 2h 48m (ouch).


Sat 3/19

Star Amethyst (51 hero dark/ice def) did a clear most ITF. In the first mission I mistakenly went straight to the top and attacked the minotaur, instead of following the road with the rest of the team; trying to correct by heading back to the team, I managed to pull the minotaur down onto the team and spawn the ambush directly on us. Oops. Aside from that it went OK, finishing in 55m 13s.

Sarcasm Lass (17 loyalist sonic/MM blast) formed and led a 6 player team in Neutropolis, doing Ivy's arc, which got her to level 19.

Mercy Beaucoup (51 hero ice/kin corr) did a speed ITF in 19m 18s.

San Min (50 hero MA/will scrapper) did a speed ITF in 19m 54s.

Millie Volt (50 rogue elec/elec brute) did a 7 player speed ITF in 18m 35s.

Thunder Girl (51 hero elec/SR scrap) did a speed ITF in 19m 19s.

Mayday (50 hero fortunata) did a speed ITF in 19m 9s, followed by a late night impromptu RWZ raid, where I picked up 384 vanguard merits.


Sun 3/20

Spacegirl (51 hero mind/rad ctrl) did a 6 player speed ITF in 21m 10s.

Teal Serpent (50 villain archery/traps corr) did a speed ITF in 23m 40s. I died a lot more than I liked (despite good defense and some lethal resist from Temp Inv), and felt really squishy as a result. I also noticed Romulus killed my FF Generator once, from his nasty AoE. With the shards and salvage from this, I crafted and slotted a Spiritual boost. I'm convinced +RCHG is the way to go for all traps characters.

Fire Maiden (51 hero SS/fire brute) joined an impromptu RWZ raid. I got an Absolute Amazement (STUN) recipe drop from a random rikti, which was pretty awesome, and enough vanguard merits to buy the storage sack.

Virtual Girl (36 rogue kat/fire scrapper) did a clear most ITF in 48m 28s. I was a little squishy but mostly survived; we also had a lowbie dominator along who died a lot more. Carrion creepers from a plant person slowed down our first Romulus kill, but things went fine after that. I hit level 39 on this ITF; 3 levels in one TF is pretty crazy. My SOs went red when I hit 39 which really hurt my performance, though.

Sakura (16 hero plant/storm controller) solo'd Jim Temblor's arc in Faultline, rescuing Fusionette and beating Kurse and Nocturne as EBs. This got her to level 17.

Police Woman (51 hero AR/dev blast) got involved in heavy PvP in Warburg; there must've been 4 different teams duking it out. I managed to form a 4 player team and got some kills. Glue Arrow, Net Arrow and Web Grenade were getting heavily used for movement control. I found Phase Shift to be really frustrating, as I don't have enough burst damage to kill someone before they can phase. The biggest team also had a tanker who kept disrupting me with his taunts, which certainly didn't help. This was pretty fun for awhile, but eventually got frustrating after my team lost some people and got too small to really be effective. The big team offered to merge with mine (down to 2 players by that time), but since they were already dominating the zone it didn't seem fair to join them, so I ended up running around quixotically trying to steal kills for awhile, before finally throwing in the towel and leaving.

Sarcasm Lass (19 loyalist sonic/mm blast) solo'd Mother Mayhem's arc, beating up Wu Yin and Vanessa Devore as EBs. I really like the fight against Vanessa, her illusion powers are sooo cool. I decided to let Vanessa go at the end of the story. This got me to level 20, and I immediately crossed over into Paragon City, changing to Hero alignment.


Mon 3/20

Maid of Awesome (48 hero sonic/rad corr) did a clear most +1 ITF in 1 hour exactly. We had a kin on our team running Repel nonstop through mission 1, which is a cave mission with lots of confined spaces, so that was...pretty crazy. After a series of polite requests, begging, and threatening, the team leader finally got him to turn Repel off, after which the rest of the TF seemed fine. This got Maid of Awesome to level 50 and I started to solo Ramiel's arc to unlock the alpha slot; I beat Trapdoor no problem, but the Honoree killed me twice before I decided to take a break to do something else.

Mercy Beaucoup (51 hero ice/kin corr) did another clear most ITF in 41m 27s, the third ITF for her this week; not that I really want the Assist badge, but people often ask for a kin for ITFs. I'm tempted to start another kin toon or two, just because they seem so highly desired.

Spy Girl (43 rogue MA/ninj stalker) did a clear most ITF in 40m 8s. I warned the team I was bringing a "useless" toon (single target stalkers seem really ill suited for the ITF) but it actually seemed to work out fine; I wasn't doing any AoE, but it did seem like I was critting more when with the team, and single-target damage worked well on surgeons and EBs. Of course, this is all probably just rationalization on my part to try and justify playing a stalker. Nevertheless, this got Spy Girl to level 44.

Finished the night playing Irena (7 resistance ice/ice dom) on a 6 player team in Imperial City, getting to level 8. One of the team members noted that everyone on the team but one person had the "resistance" hairstyle (including Irena), which gave us all a good laugh. I'm guessing this hairstyle is so common right now just because it's a "new" hairstyle.

I'm afraid I don't agree with this. Granted that each person can use their rating to vote however they want, in my opinion, the purpose of rating an arc is to rate the quality of that arc. To feed false information into the database (whether 5-starring arcs that don't deserve it, 1-starring arcs that don't deserve it, or even refusing to rate arcs that you think are low quality) in an attempt to game the system essentially negates this purpose and further contributes to the general sense that the ratings system is meaningless.

While I'm sure there are plenty of arcs that got undeservedly low ratings from "griefers", there are also lots of arcs that have undeservedly high ratings from people who rate only 5 stars. I'm sure most people who have played AE arcs extensively will have run into 5-star rated arcs that just aren't that good. The MA Super Team even had a game targeting these for awhile, "Make It or Break It". I choose not to contribute to exacerbating this problem.

Personally, I think it's valid to rate story arcs anywhere in the range from 1 star to 5 stars based on quality, and I've tried to rate the arcs I play accordingly. I've tried to be thick-skinned about low ratings from other players and distinctly remember thanking reviewers for a 2-star and a 3-star rating on some of my arcs....after all, regardless of rating, they at least were willing to spend the time to try something I had written.

There are definitely a lot of people who believe you should only rate 5 stars or leave arcs unrated, so as not to "hurt" the chances of the arcs you play. I don't agree with this philosophy (in my opinion, the idea smacks of the 5-star cartels that were prevalent when AE first opened), but it has become very prevalent on this forum. I can distinctly remember a couple of angry tirades I received for rating someone's arc "only" 4 stars. When I get these, I try to remind myself that people invest a lot of their work and spirit into their story arcs, so are naturally very sensitive about them.

But yeah, it can be a turn-off.