Ukaserex

It has been a pleasure leading the scheduled UGTs on Fridays and Sundays with you folks.

@Nights Blood, (whom you may know better as White Hariem) would like to start leading these.

So, you all should still be able to get your UGT fix in if you want it.

The times will be the same, as will the location.

After the MSRs in Pocket D, approx. 10:10pm eastern.

This will provide me with a little break from having to be such a horrible person, actually inviting 2 people to help out and not be able to because I'd overbooked!

Now, someone else can be the hero or villain in my place.

I will be forming some UGTs earlier during the week and weekend, but they will be unscheduled as my schedule permits.

Well, I thought some were going to break the server when some of the pacific coast folks got the news. (about your time change)

Although I don't lead them with near your finesse, Noyjitat, it seemed like the right thing for me to do was to continue to lead Sunday nights raid at your old scheduled time.

Should your schedule change -- and you want the time slot back, you have but to ask and it's yours.

Another tip -

if you expect to sell more of these in the future, after a clean, no hassle sale, ask the buyer to post such in response to your thread.

Then, use the same thread to sell the next, that way prospective buyers will know that you're not out to rip anybody off.

Not that it happens that often, but some folks (like me) are nervous about large transactions.

Well, twice, against my better judgement, I ran a UGT and later a MoM. The UGT went quite well, and that MoM was the smoothest I'd ever been on. Even had a couple of unshifted 50s on there - and they didn't do too badly.

I don't think hardly any got caught in the pink stuff for very long. Awesome buffs, thanks a lot!

I just use the random costume creator. I don't really go for a specific look until I decide I want to keep playing them. At that point, I try to keep the colors consistent with the powersets.

Other than that, I don't put much thought into it in the least.

Don't get me wrong, I'd cry like a baby if I didn't have the option.

I'm in Category C.

Well folks, it was fun while it lasted.

I think I'm getting more than just a bit burned out on UGT and leading trials in general. I find myself experiencing more frustration at people just having fun, meaning no harm, but not paying attention.

And it's impacting my enjoyment of the content.

Anyone can make mistakes, I just don't want to overreact and be rude to someone when they do.

This Sunday will be the last scheduled MoUGT run for awhile.

Hey, I know! We'll make a 3rd channel and we'll...

Oh, wait, that's how the second channel started.

This was mostly my fault, Raven. I'd seen you were +1, but didn't think to ask if you were +3, which your character was.

As for the assumption on my part that most knew what to expect, that's on me, too. At least some of it. But, as it was stated, the three reactors went okay, considering we were light on buffs. It was simply the green oblit beam that cost us -- and the defeats from it.

As for the league being solely for beginners - that much has never been stated - although 5 toons without a level shift being on the league is an indication of inexperience, my feeble brain only keeps track of so many people and their alts.

It is just how most of us have gotten our level shifts - baf and lambda ad nauseum. The AVs are easier, so that's what we stuck with. Now, there are more choices, but team composition has to be more selective because of the difficulties in facing 54+2 AVs in UGT and MoM (and TPN to a degree)

Some use CoH Titan and others use Badge-hunters.

http://cit.cohtitan.com/

http://badge-hunter.com/

Both have their pros and cons.

Some use both.

There may even be a way to use the pop menu to assist in tracking. I seem to recall a vague memory of seeing someone post about it.

As for powersets - maybe instead of focusing on badging right now, try a few different powersets and see what you like most.

I've found ice/ice and fire/fire to be very enjoyable for blasters.

I like my kat/invuln scrapper and my fire/fire brute as well.

The ill/rad troller, I have found is easily the solo-friendliest squishy I've got. But, spamming PA every 59 seconds is annoying.

But you are different than me - all of us are different. Try them all, see what you like.

The only difference the AT has made to my efforts at badging has been when there was a specific badge I was after and there weren't enough friends online to help me out.

For example, the AVs in Recluse's Victory. Obviously, even with a heavy, most toons would have a pretty tough time tackling one or more of the AVs (or the Phalanx heroes, depending on alignment) solo. But, I'm inclined to think with a heavy, and an HVAS pet from rwz and a shivan, an ill/rad with perma PA might have a chance, properly played. It would, of course require a good bit of knowledge as to what to expect from the AVs, and be able to defend yourself from would be rep-seekers who have every right to ruin your good clean fun. But, one could argue this would either be doable with any toon, or undoable regardless of toon.

That being said, for badging purposes, I'd go with a tri-form kheldian. When certain badge farm teams form, the leader is looking for balance. Not too many of one AT. Because a lot of players only seriously badge hunt with one toon, switching can be a sore spot for some players. One can argue that a kheld doesn't really do anything better than another AT, but it can do a lot of different things, played well.

The main reason I'd recommend the kheld is that some defeat badges may require higher resistance/defense than your average blaster/defender might have. And the kheld can adapt to just about any tactic.

Just my opinion, though.

And now, I think I see why our playerbase that is unshifted wants to do the harder stuff. Sheer boredom with BAF and LAM. And I really don't blame them.

I took a collection of players that were mostly plus 1, 2 or 3 +3s and the rest unshifted on a BAF, that went well.

Some of us had done a Keyes earlier, when a couple of folks on that props list above that weren't ignoring each other may have started to do so. It still succeeded, and although our league was light on heals, I figured we'd be ok. And I think we would have, except - just like in MoM, and UGT, and Apex, we have some players that simply cannot stay out of a specific area.

I know that anyone can get caught once or twice, because sometimes you can get held, and the oblit beam hits at the same time. Not much one can do about that. But, some of these folks just need more than a "stay out of the green". For whatever reason, it seems some players don't trust the leader, and want to know why. Some players require structure and need to know who's accountable for this task and that task. Even if the league really doesn't. There could be a number of causes - I suspect that if the oblit beam were red, folks would have an easier time. Maybe they think green is good. <shrug> In any event, that was an abysmal failure. Particularly frustrating when you see plenty of time left to take out a bag of HP, and then you see that bag get bigger because some folks had lag, got distracted by kids, or something - and then don't understand that some players are really quite driven to excel - not just succeed barely, but expect things to be well done. I certainly want things to be done well. But, I have to realize that Liberty has several tiers of player skill levels. And the term skill level isn't entirely accurate, because some players are exceptionally skilled, but also may be at work, taking care of children, or married to a spouse that doesn't understand that you never knock - you just slide the food under the door.
/end digress

After the keyes, we had too many to do a LAM - yet many wanted to do a MoM. I explained the purple patch, and one fellow said to me, who cares? Let's just have fun. So, I figured if I'm gonna blow a trial, I'll do one I've already got macro's for.

It was really ugly. None of the tanks were equipped for the IDF, or the AVs. Somehow, we got through the first one, despite a much longer than normal battle. We worked our way to the pair of AVs, and got by the self-repairing, though that was looking scary - seems that the fight took so long, a lot of us had run out of temps. But, we finally got him down, but ran out of time against the second.

The IDF were camping against the scrappers I'd assigned to the regen lichen, and that's all it took to let the AV to regen from 10% back up to about 40%, and from that point, we rallied back, and then suffered a Lethal Force. It would seem a lot of the folks had more fun losing than winning, but I could be wrong. To be honest, I never expected to get that far.
But, yours truly got his blaster from +1 to +3, plenty of time for Friday's scheduled run.

I had to cash in a couple of threads for it, but now I can work on my invuln tank and emp until Friday.

Sadly, the bulk of our players on Liberty do not take the time to learn about things like the "purple patch". It'd be a good thing if they knew more about it, but I guess when you bring math into a game, it takes the fun out for some.

I want to thank those of you that have stepped up and started leading these bafs and lams. I sure hope the next issue or two will have some more elementary trials for the players to do, because I'm sure most of us are really quite tired of them.

Cheers!

Because of the silly SOPA politics, I'm unable to use my usual resources to find this out.

There are a couple of History badges that I'm trying to get.

One is Arachnos Rising. The character I want it on is a Vigilante. Except for the one in Warburg, I've clicked on all of the plaques, but I see no progress meter under History, or Closest to Completion.

Does my character have to be a full villain to get this?

Or is there some other detail that I'm missing?

Thanks.

Thanks.

Ugh, politics. I could not possibly care less about that issue. It'll never pass as is.

Ok, if I'm reading you correctly - you're voluntarily blocking our access to the site because of this political fiasco? One that's not even remotely likely of passing?
Congressmen look at you tube, FB and other sites just like the rest of us. They'd be more likely to vote themselves a pay cut than let that piece of legislation pass.

I realize that these two sites are essentially the same thing.

But, the interface for Paragon Wiki is so much nicer and easier to find what I'm looking for, I try to avoid CoH Titan in favor of the simplistic Paragon Wiki. Today, I go to learn about some things redside, and there's some announcement about SOPA. I already know about this, and could really care less to read more about it. Is there any way I can get the current link or redirected to the crisp, clean Paragon Wiki interface instead of the unfamiliar CoH Titan one?

I ask here, as opposed to there, because of the clumsiness of the CoH Titan forum, wanting me to log in and all that jazz.

Thanks.

Thanks for your replies.

Voltz, you and HP have probably led more trials and tfs than any other 25 people on the server combined. (at least PUG trials) I don't think that the same folks leading more baf/lam/keyes is the problem.


It may help the symptom, but not the problem. Like any server, we have pacific coast folks who are just sitting down to play when East Coast players are logging off. I think a lot of the issues could be solved with a higher population. Sadly, that brings other issues that can be even more annoying.

For right now, I'm going to continue to do the UGT, and do it the way I always have. Those on my global list will get invited first, then those in Pocket D, and then from global channels.

As for MoM, I'm just going to chalk that last failed attempt as a reminder of the purple patch. I knew about it, but hadn't realized just how truly ineffective a non shifted toon would be. I certainly wouldn't take a level 46 on a Statesman tf if there were no sidekicking feature, why would I do so on a trial?
So, Tax, I think your feedback to me was spot on. As for being flabbergasted, I wasn't. I was incensed at whoever took the des rez. We would have won that trial were it not for that bad judgement on the part of an unknown player. (At least that part of it, anyway.) The 3 minute finale is far easier than the first part because melee folks can continue to wail away without having to dodge pink.
Yet, the reason it came so close to the wire was undoubtedly a lack of dps, no doubt because there were several unshifted folks.


Overall though, as leader of any trial I form, I reserve the right to "take pity" on those non-shifted toons that belong to players that have given a tremendous amount of their time, support and knowledge to the server overall and to me specifically.

Names that come to mind -- and who doesn't want props? In no particular order:

@Mystic Fortune
@Cinder Frost
@High Voltz
@Heavenly Perverse
@Lumberjack Jill (call him LJ!)
@Letroy (A Debt Junkie will always be welcome! Best SG ever.)
@Xtreme Raze
@FlyingCodeMonkey
@Brightfires
@Wulfrich
@RavenLord
@Karmaa
@Energizing Ion - Probably the kindest, most generous with his time.
@PW
@Noyjitat
@Hazygreys - if he ever comes back.
@Tax E - gotta look out for the hami-raid leader
@Daleaha

The sad part, I can't take 'em all on one trial, some of them are ignoring each other.

Oh, this week, I may be acting kind of loopy in game. I'm painting parts of the house, and the fumes are ....pervasive.

This is certainly not a new issue. It's been discussed at length in other areas of these labryrinthine forums. On some servers - players that are level 50 are told they cannot participate in certain trials because of a lack of level shift.

The Avatar from the UGt spawns at level 54(+2)
All AVs(and bosses in the phase 4) from the MoM spawn at level 54(+2)

So, a level 50 is effectively trying to help clobber a level 56.

If it's a scrapper, this is doing about 15% of a scrappers normal damage, while a 50+3 is going to dish out about 65% of normal damage.

So basically - 50% less effective than a +3 for pretty much every AT, except those that heal without needing an NPC target.

As most of you know - I place more stock in who the player is behind the screen than in the toon. If I know you've done a given trial before, and based on repeated trials with you, I don't mind if you bring a base 50, provided we don't have too many other level 50s. A line does have to be drawn somewhere, though.

For the most part, many are willing to switch. I am thankful for that.


There are two sides to this issue. It's not often that Liberty has enough people to do two different trials at the same time. As a result, we have level 50 toons that "fill out" the league. After all, 15% of a damaging attack is 15% more than zero. So, I let the unshifted folks play.

The alternative is either to wait, and wait, and wait to see if any more friends log in and to spam the global channels or not do a trial at all.

I don't know about most of you - but I'd rather take the chance on a trial than not do one. I'd rather risk the 50 minutes on a non badge ugt for around 12 astrals and 2 emps, and a likely random uncommon drop along with the rare/very rare reward table and 60 threads as opposed to running a BAF for 6 or 7 astrals and an emp and a random reward table.

That being said, I feel I owe it to our server to take into account the feelings and thoughts of those who are trying to get to +3, as well as those who already are, but still need some rares and very rare salvage to get their slots to the 4th tier.

I've always tried to cap the number of non shifted to 5, but I'm second guessing that now, based on some feedback I've gotten.

If it's up to me, I'll run MoM and UGT all day. I am so weary of BAF and LAM. Particularly LAM. But, I can't do these alone.

As a compromise, because I know what it's like to want a badge and feel like you can't get it, I'm going to restrict the Sunday MoUGT runs to level shifted toons only. I don't think that's too restrictive. I place that same restriction on myself for doing a mere BAF/LAM.

As for the MoM trials, it's really such an easy, fun trial - I don't concern myself with badges for those. I'm just not going to run them if everyone on the league isn't at least +1. If you're on the league, and you want to do the MoM trial, switch if you must, I'll wait.




My reasoning is that after some constructive criticism, it's just not fair to me, or anyone else on the league that has put the time in.

To help ease the pain of this for you folks that are still trying to get iXP, do we not recall the days when we'd let Nightstar and Seige respawn on purpose, so we'd get more adds to get more iXP?

Mondays: I've already posted elsewhere that at 10pm (central) I'd lead two of these. I'd already stated that at least half the league must be +3, and the other half +1.

Thursdays: Will farm iXP on BAF 6PM central until just enough time is left to do it properly and get the emp merit for completing it.

Fridays: After the MSR, approx. 9:15 pm central, Regular UGT - anyone can come, as long as we have 5 clarions that are t3 and t4 (at least) and at least one kin, one emp and one +3 tank and no more than 5 unshifted 50s.

Saturdays: iTrials - will try to do all of them throughout the day without conflicting with the hami raid.

Sundays: After the MSR, approx. 9:15 pm central, MoUGT Level shifted only.

Obviously some of you may have strong opinions one way or another. Feel free to share your thoughts.

Just remember PW's words -- Trial forming > lftrial

Well, I'll give my own feedback. This build is awesome!