tpull

Entry 123

Next up on my list is Ironic Twist, my Illusion/Storm Summoning Controller. It’s the first time I see the Apprentice Charm in action, and it’s fairly cool. Inside a warehouse, I use Gale to blow some people back, and they fall on their butts and slide down the ramp, taking me to the bottom with them! Great, now the mobs are also getting the same super powers as the civilians on the street, and can push me aside with ease. A quick level up to 5, and then I’m out of there. I need to have her take Air Superiority, or become a permanent part of a team.

One thing I wish they would change is to simply have Azuria (or whoever your first contact is) give you the mission to go see Wincott in the Hollows. What a waste, making us go to some place like King’s Row just to have to turn around and go back to Atlas to get to the Hollows. As it is, most of my time with Twist is spent watching her run. Good thing I made her costume skimpy.

I log in a few more characters and play just a teensy bit with each of them, until I get to Good Sport! I love his costume, and I like the idea of the archery power sets. He’s deep in the Hollows, and dies just as soon as he starts running. I head back and clear out a mission, which leaves me Frostfire. I get a blind invite, and figure, why not try to ask for them to do this with me? The group is slow to start, and a couple people drop, but the five of us left form a core.

I fear the worst at the start, as the Scrapper jumps into a group of ten bad guys, and promptly bites the dust, along with a teammate soon after. We quickly settle down and get to work. Doctor Jest does excellent heals, and we only have one death for the rest of the mission. I try to stay towards the back, but my Fistful of Arrows does great damage to these bunched-up mobs, and I get a ton of aggro. My Glue Arrow helps us cut them down like a knife through butter, as we work our way to the final bad guy. I’m the most “talkative” on the team, but then, I think I’m almost always the most talkative on the team… My arrows fly almost non-stop throughout. The damage may not be stellar, but I enjoy having at least one character that doesn’t run out of Endurance after just a few attacks. I level up to 10, and we finish right close to midnight. I’ll have to train him up next time. It was a nice finish, and helped me get out of my solo snob mode for the week!

[ QUOTE ]
I've got a much better website for name generators HERE

I use it all the time to generate great names.

[/ QUOTE ]

Umm...
Yeah.

That's the seventhsanctum site, the main weblink which I referenced in the first post:
[ QUOTE ]
Want all the work done for you? Head to Silly Superhero Name Generator

[/ QUOTE ]

Not so much a better site as... exactly the same site, except I referenced the main page, where you have links on the left to help you pick names via options like humor, darkness, technololgy, etc., instead of just the superhero topic you picked.

Heh. Me too.

For some reason the dictionary link didn't show up correctly: dictionary

Entry 122

Onto Victory server! I take Debt Leader out for a spin, she’s at level 12, so I missed out on a Mutation temp power for her, since those go away at level 10. I take a moment out to add some keybinds for Radiation Infection and Enervating Field. It takes all of two minutes before I get a tell asking to team. I like the tells a lot better than blind invites, but my patience is rather short anyway, since I have a defined agenda. I remain polite, and start wondering if I should just /hide all my characters as soon as I log on, or keep a score sheet on which ones are hidden and which ones aren’t. It must be a weird phase of the moon that I’m feeling this anti-social. Even I can tell that I’m unnecessarily grumpy internally. I shake it off and make sure I don’t type in anything rude to anyone while I go about my business. I need to get rid of this gloomy feeling; in the meantime, there’s no reason for me to spread any unpleasantness.

I race down the streets of the Hollows, enjoying the little white lines on the street that seem to be painted just as I reach them. I risk certain death countless times trying to reach my mission deep in the Hollows, and finally a Pumicite ambush from underneath me takes me out. Lovely, Debt Leader is already living up to her name, I’ve died and I haven’t even taken my first mission yet. I was only 300 yards away, too! Ah, luckily I have an Awaken on me. Then I run into some CoT, and that’s all she wrote. Maybe this is why I’m grumpy, I figured this would be a bad day. All right, the hospital it is then, and off to Boomtown instead!

On my mile-long trek through Steel Canyon, I see a Broadcast for the Positron TF, and think, why not? I haven’t gone through an hours-long pain-in-the-neck TF in a while! I join up. After just a few minutes, it becomes apparent that the team lead doesn’t have enough confidence to proceed with a team of five, and I change my mind about devoting all the time to it. I politely take my leave and head to Boomtown after all. I take a long, circuitous route through Boomtown hunting Clockwork, and then go risk certain death again, running past a bunch of purple-cons to get to my next contact.

I get the fortune-teller mission, which means I get to go back to Perez Park, a place I haven’t been to in about a year! I take exactly the wrong route to get to my mission, getting lost amidst the trees. Is it too much to hope that one of the zone redesigns will be Perez? I go finish the mission and tackle a big mob of Vahz, working on getting the badge for Embalmed Abominations before I get sent to the hospital. Knowing that you can’t really die, and that the hospital is a faster way to get to your destination really skews how you play the game. It sounds like fodder for an online cartoon, about a hero who dies on purpose to get where he needs to go all the time. One of the drawbacks of playing CoV for so long, it does tend to make running around before travel powers seem a real drag. If I had as much free time now as I did when I first loaded this game, it wouldn’t be as big an issue, I could just sit back and enjoy the sprinting like I used to. More and more, that seems like a luxury I no longer have.

King’s Row is next, and I run out of Endurance after arresting just four guys. Pant pant. Naturally, the game keeps giving me Accuracy Inspirations instead of blues. I stop using my rad emission powers half the time and just blast away. Afterwards, it’s back to Perez, and I get two missions that mesh together, letting me take out some thugs for the benefit of two mission completions. Then, miracle of miracles, I actually catch a tree just right and hop over the wall into the park! It’s the little things in life that make it all worthwhile.

I level up right on punching a guy in the mouth! Only one level away from Super Speed, which will be great to experience again after the anti-speed-bias that seems built into the design of CoV. I spam my battle cry and trigger the chat ban. I’m the only one on my team! Oh, I hope they change that to apply only to Broadcast. Sometimes I spam my battle cry just to clear out all of the distracting Broadcasts in the first place!

I take a couple of Vahzilok missions next, and they seem to give me relatively little trouble, most likely because of my debuff powers. Just when I think I’ve got everything handled… three yellow-cons finally manage to take me out! Razzin’ frassin’… I jump back in a little early and nearly bite it again, but I manage to hold on long enough to make them pay for what they did to me! I keep plowing ahead almost recklessly though, and some vomit finally makes me go to the hospital.

I complete a couple more missions and head to the store to sell stuff, but I forget there was a horde of Clocks right outside the store entrance, and I run smack into them on my way back to Perez Park. I fire up all my powers and pop all my candy, and take out four of the ten before they get me. Heh. I get back at them by clearing out all the clocks in Perez so I can get the “Around the Bendis” badge. Of course, the only reason I was in the area is because I managed to hop a tree over the wall again, which was great… until I realized I was in the totally opposite side of the park from where I needed to be. I manage to do something new here, I actually complete all of Dr. Trevor Seaborn’s missions. It’s a little out of sequence, though, as the final mission established the upline reporting from the Hellions to the Outcasts, with a hint of something more, while I’ve already done the story arc that reveals their links to the Warriors with someone else. I’m fairly close to leveling, but dinner calls, so alas, no Super Speed for me tonight.

Entry 121

The second anniversary is upon us, so I decide to make it an annual affair where I log in each and every character I have. This refreshes my memory on tons of power sets and neat/horrible costume designs, and gives me some nostalgic feelings since I’ve been spending all my time on CoV lately.

I log in Tesla’s Prodigy, a hero I’m having trouble with because Electrical Blast and Energy Manipulation are not meshing together the way I thought they would. I am in that awkward place, though, just at the cusp of level 12, where I usually get my travel power and the Fitness line. I’m not sure if I’ll do that here or not, but I’m already feeling the need for Super Speed. And man oh man, does Steel Canyon have a ton of bad guys running around, all red and purple to me! Forget Recluse, we’ve got enough problems keeping our streets clean as it is. Paragon City seems to have just as many crooks running around as the Rogue Isles!

I get a couple of blind invites that I ignore, but I also notice there’s almost zero chatter on the Broadcast channel. I check my powers and notice I already have Hurdle?!? Man, did I make some weird choices when I didn’t know any better. Meh, it may work out great for me here. Instead of doing the Hurdle-Health-Stamina thing, I can easily take Bone Smasher in the middle. Maybe I was thinking that way back when, and I’m just a forgetful genius?

I’ve turned into a team snob at the lower levels for my heroes, in the sense that I want to level up doing my missions, not those of other players. It would be different if we had the auto-complete feature that CoV has for two people completing a mission that’s in both of their mission queues, but there it is. I play my characters in CoV solo because there’s no way to experience much of the content all on one character, and now I’m a solo snob in CoH. As I get higher in level on a character, then I like to join a team and play on the harder difficulty levels, but my experience at the low levels has been too much of a time-waster, in the sense that most people don’t seem to have a clue. I tend to help them out and give them advice a lot, but after two or three missions, I tend to leave, because I’m not really accomplishing my goals with my character. After so many times of this, it sort of felt like I was becoming an online babysitter. Which I’m not averse to doing, but I have to be in the mood. Playing time has been so tight recently, I’d much rather concentrate on my own self-centered desires. I get too many tells, so I just decide to /hide.

It’s weird, most of Tesla’s missions are very old, since I have joined some teams with him in the past, so I’m taking out green-cons and grey-cons for the most part, clearing out my mission queue. I level up on a mission complete anyway, taking out a grey-con! Heh. I run over to good old Ms. Liberty and take Hasten (it feels warranted, and speed fits my electrical concept), stopping to look at all the names of the heroes. I right-click on them, but nobody has bothered to write an origin anymore. Ptheh!

I notice that I have a contact, Tony Kord, and I haven’t done a single mission of his yet. I decline Paco Sanchez’s mission to go talk to the Boomtown security chief, but Tony Kord gives me the same mission! Trying to tell me something? I head back to Wilson Zucco first, wondering which gang he used to be part of.

I can’t sleep tonight, so I log back in as Counterbalance this time, my Natural Scrapper. His Katana attacks are nice, and the relatively new Throwing Knives temp power fits the character well. I ding to level 6, and run back to Blue Steel, one of the characters we wish will get a little more development soon. One of the cool things about having all of these low-level characters, if I don’t have a full hour to play, I can still level one up for that familiar triumphant music.

I finally get the hint that I’m sleepy when I die in a rescue hostage mission. I forgot they changed these so you have to escort everyone out, so after taking on a bunch of white- and yellow-cons, I rescue a couple people, and reinforcements come and own my butt. I go back and get all three hostages, and notice that all of these missing homeless people are chasing me to the entrance with cigarettes in their mouths. I wonder if the Lost gave them those cigarettes…

Entry 120

I squeeze in a precious hour or two over the next month, as business calls for me to go out of town on travel more than ever before. Doesn’t my employer understand I have to remain available to fight the forces of evil? I don’t know how any hero manages to handle a job and fighting crime… wait, I’m evil and fighting the forces of good right now as Necronaut, mostly. Whatever.

I luck into a broadcast announcing Caleb, and join to take him out. Yay, another Monster badge! Then I duck into a mission and sick my zombies on some Council. They are putting the finishing touches on one of them, and I’m basically just running ahead to scout out the next part when I level up to 28. Ah, this is a good day, monsters and leveling, and choosing a new power. I skipped getting some enhancements at level 27 so I could combine them with level 30 SO’s. I head over and load up on accuracy helpers, but run out of infamy after just a few damage enhancements. Broke again! Ptheh!

I take Fearsome Stare, and try it out on my next mission. I miss! My girlfriend is home from work, and comments, “How can you miss staring at someone?” A very good question, I think! My next stare works, and I get to enjoy someone else cowering in fear finally. I’ve lost count of how many opponents have used that power on me. Come to think of it, I think Caleb has that power too. I log out to go have steak dinner! Sometimes real life simply beats out the game…

Nope, I'm in it for the long haul, which means every alt wants badges! I had fun with Martial Master on high speed, with Swift, Sprint, Quickness and Super Speed, plus Teleportation when that wasn't fast enough! I calculate I have just enough characters to keep me entertained for another twenty years, as long as they keep adding content. Of course, I have to consider that if every alt of mine wants badges, maybe Red Haven isn't as much a badge-censored as I am...

Entry 119

Ah, my poor neglected journal, abandoned as I mostly play CoV. I have changed my mind and decided that if I am going to keep the journal going, I really should give at least some detail on my progression. I’ll try to maintain the policy of avoiding spoilers.

My initial goal for CoV was to find an AV and solo him or her, just because I haven’t done that before, not without leveling up a couple times and coming back. I was not able to beat the update that changed AVs to Elite Bosses, though, and I would hesitate to ask a team to just sit around while I see if I can do it, but close friends like Red Haven might arrange something like that for me later, so I keep the dream alive.

I plod along with my Mastermind Necronaut, and grow increasingly discouraged by spelling errors. That’s right, they still bug me, precisely because they are increasing in frequency as I go further along. Its and it’s are jumbled, and ‘e’ is placed after ‘i’ so many times, I start to think a third grader was paid to do the text entry. I despair for any young readers trying to follow the story as they play, for the bad example in a professional product. I have literally never seen a professional product with mistakes like this unless it was an intentional joke. I read on the boards that spelling fixes were a low priority, which I guess I can understand from their viewpoint of what should take precedence, so I stop my bugging of them entirely.

I am now in a different quandary altogether, one that is partly the doing of the developers. The game is more fun when you can find good people to team, and when you can increase the difficulty level to make things more challenging. The way the content is designed, however, I have to keep it at the easiest level and go solo in order to see as much of the content. I miss some anyway as I go, and my other Mastermind, Loser, even misses a badge or two by the time he gets to level 16. (What a loser!)

I die a ton to get some debt on Necronaut and slow him down, trying to max out my debt often. I understand the idea of rolling alts, I do that already. I understand the idea of having so much content you can’t do it all on one character, but CoV seems designed poorly in the sense that if I don’t go solo and easy, I will miss way too many opportunities to get a badge. I’m not a badge-(censored) like some people (*cough-Red Haven-cough*), but I like to get as many when I can. I tend to get history and exploration, but pass on things like hold badges and damage badges.

So I am in the weird situation of playing solo and dying on the lowest difficulty setting on purpose a lot, when the real fun in the game is tearing through the game on a hard level in a team. Ptheh! In the meantime, I only get to play once every two weeks because real life gets in the way. I feel like the prisoner who complains the soup was lousy, and then says there wasn’t enough of it.

Edited because someone objected to my joke.

Yeah, I figure Recluse is SO brilliant, he has webs within webs of plans


.... or he is totally off his rocker: "I have these Destined Ones, one or more of which is foretold to be the key to my victory... I will make them obsolete by substituting entirely new threats! Bwah-ha-hah- what? No, Ghost Widow, I haven't taken my medication this morning..."

Entry 118

Forget about regular play, these events keep happening faster than I can keep up! The Christmas season had me logging on tons of alts, heroes and villains both, but there were only a couple of things to do. I decided not to run around town opening presents all day, or trying to get more snow-people badges, but settled for getting tons of jetpacks and free tailor sessions for all my in-game “peeps.”

This time, Paragon Dance Party has been renovated, and it looks great! I have trouble figuring out why Lord Recluse would expend such considerable resources to break the Destined Ones out of prison, and then institute a new plan that would render us irrelevant so soon after. Was he testing us, to see how loyal we were? How could we remain loyal if his success meant we would be meaningless to him? It seems inconsistent to me, but then, he’s been acting a little loony ever since he first got his powers, so what do I know?

I get all the missions done for my main villain, Necronaut, then take Martial Master in and do them for him as well. Red Haven logs on and accompanies me for each of these, and we manage to get CRM in, squeaking by just before the deadline hits. My other alts won’t be getting the toga anytime soon, oh well.

I bug a spelling error, but then there are two spelling errors in the text window after that, and another in the one after that. I have honestly never seen so many spelling errors in my life, in any other game, nor in any novel I have read. It is simply appalling. It’s one thing to type up things in a hurry in an e-mail or on the web, but to have a game like this with so many in it, it actually breaks me out of my immersion and spoils the fun for me. The developers really, seriously need to hire someone who has good editing skills, because CoV is even worse than CoH. Disgusting!

My villain Necronaut levels up to 19 and tries out Bloody Bay, successfully getting all six shards, but he’s not anywhere near as fast as Martial master, he cannot take out all the firebases on his own in time. I recruit another Mastermind, but he is not enough. I get a third player, and we’re still not faster than the respawns, so I pull back to type up instructions to the others, to whittle them down to low health and then move on to the next one, when I am bushwhacked by a hero. He takes down all three of us, swiping my shards, and leaving me out of time to complete the scenario. I figured that might happen if we took too long. Grr. I’ll have to come back with some teammates that I already know, who can help me get it done faster.

Wow. I've got the badge on some of my 20+ characters, but I've never seen so much passion involving some pixels on a screen. I was thinking of printing a picture of it, and taping it on my monitor for all of my characters made before I2, so they would not be jealous of my alts... then I remembered they're all make-believe.

Since this is my first MMO, was there this much passion about some other small virtual thing in another game? Man, I bet I could make a killing on Ebay if I could figure out how to sell Isolator to people who still wanted it...

Entry 117

Okay, I have a small problem. It’s not a real-world problem, and it’s not something I lose sleep over, but it is a game problem. Here it is: my buddy Red Haven was upset about Enhancement Diversification (ED), and was saying he was thinking about quitting. He also thought he would not get City of Villains. This was reinforced when the game finally came out, and there was a little confusion about which box to get, and how the activation codes worked for your account, etc. The company really could have been clearer about things. It ends up, he has the wrong box and cannot participate in the three-day head start, and he is very frustrated. He plans to play for one month of the new game and then drop it. After three or four phone conversations reinforcing this, I have been convinced, so I have basically decided to be resolved to going solo in the new game. For the head start, I make a dozen or so villains, spread out across the servers, and begin to play.

Over the next couple months, Red decides he can live with ED, although he wishes things were a little bit different with it. He also starts to enjoy CoV. Before I know it, he has some extra free time on his hands, and he is playing the heck out of the game, and has a level 40 villain before I can blink. Then he decides he wants to play around with the supergroup (SG) base. Now I have him calling me up, asking to quit my playing plans and switch over to a villain on Freedom and come build up Prestige so he can add to the SG base. “But… I thought you weren’t playing!” I protest. My playing time is fairly low currently, and I just want to log on and play as much as I can. I actually prefer CoH at this point, mostly because of the majority of characters I have developed on it. CoV, however, has better story content, and other attractive things about it. But CRM gets stuck at Eden, because I don’t have the number of hours it takes at a time to do a Trial, and my buddy doesn’t want to play DC for the most part anyway, he watns to play CoV. Plus, when I do get free time, I find out the Eminators are bugged, which makes Eden a breeze, and not worth playing. Ptheh!

I end up going with the flow, which means CRM has out-leveled Eden already, which I was trying to avoid, updates to the game keep changing the rules, some of the enemies, and the plans I had to try out various things in the game are voided because of the changes. To be honest, the game is being updated too quickly for my tastes. I know there are tons of people who have played every aspect of the game and are bored, but I was told that’s the nature of games, even MMORGs, to some extent. Me, I can’t get my characters to the right level in time to try things before the developers change the game and render my plans moot!

I give up trying to have any sort of strategy, and decide I just want to work towards getting a level 40 villain by the time the next update comes out, since most of the new content is for the villains. I’m pretty sure I won’t make it, but Red Haven has at least two level 40s already, and is working on another! We are amazed when we see or hear that people think the game is too hard. We get along fine solo, and tear the game to shreds when we team up. We are both almost in perma-debt intentionally, just to try to experience more content and get as many badges as we can, as we go. It would actually be better for us if Statesman rolled back the last couple of debt changes, so I wouldn’t have to keep breaking character and dying on purpose in the game.

Red stops bugging me after a few weeks, and we start to collaborate whenever we’re both online. We manage to switch between heroes and villains fairly well, and even break out CRM and DC for some missions, and we totally rock. Even with the reductions in my healing power from ED, deaths are very rare, unless we want them! Now, if only I can roelplay a reason to get my “hold” badges…

Entry 116

I log in and have an invite to be a global friend from someone. The name is one I recognize from elsewhere on the internet. It’s my cousin! The one that stayed with me during Christmas, who got hooked on the game, ‘natch. He has a level 17 and a level 4 character already, and he’s playing his level 4. We team up, and I tell him how to get to Croatoa. I found my Fir Bolgs finally, and am working on looking for Red Caps when I come across two devouring Earth in front of a bridge. Someone having a DE ambush? I take out one who has noticed me, and the other just stands there the whole time. I shrug and carry on my search.

I encounter my first Fiend, and think his attack animations are great! I have fun fighting him, and can only wish that we could have some of those animations for ourselves. Two swords for a power set… My cousin arrives and we do a couple missions, and the ghost contact won’t hand out any more until I’m level 30. I feel like I’m underage all of a sudden: “I’m only 28! Waaah!” I am still amused that I can “call” a ghost, but then I can “stun” a ghost opponent with my Thunder Kick, and that’s always fun to watch.

My cousin decides to log on his second character, but I lose him, and I’m guessing it’s to a disconnect. I end up with a Circle of Thorns mission where you search for 16 books, which is not as bad as it sounds. The map is neat, and the Thorns are hard because there are so many ghosts, and I can’t do as much damage to them as I do to solid people. Although, I do laugh as I make them dizzy with my Thunder Kick, and I also drag out my Holy Shotgun Shells, and I imagine that even a ghost can be surprised! Imagine if you’re fighting melee and you only feel a little hurt from a kick, and then this martial artist suddenly breaks out a shotgun that really, really hurts! Heh.

I logged on just after 9:00, planning to leave at 11:00, but of course, I always end up in a groove, with missions so close and/or tempting, or easy to finish, that I fall into the old, “Just one more…” trap. For instance, I have three contacts all close by in IP, one of whom gives me a hunt Freaks mission, while another tells me to break up a meet that also has Freaks in it! I can kill two birds with one stone. When the server was buggy the other night, I had lowered the difficulty setting, and I haven’t changed it yet. Partly because I just plain forgot, but also because I don’t want to level too fast still. With this mission, I can take out Freaks and have them count towards another mission, but without getting extra xp for them other than the normal mission complete bonus. I love that!

In Talos, I pick up the last Freaks by whomping on some greys, still trying to avoid too much xp. I am not as bored on the Heroic setting as I had been afraid, it feels okay to almost effortlessly breeze through some missions, just enjoying the camaraderie of my cousin for a while, and not worry if something in real life distracts me. It’s like going out for a leisurely stroll after dinner. Before I know it, though, it’s midnight, and I gotta type this up fast before I forget details and go to bed. Work is in a few hours!

Why thank you, sir!

Entry 115

Tonight was probably one of the most frustrating nights I have had in the history of the game. Dark Astoria calls to me, with a mission to help the Circle of Thorns and stop the Banished Pantheon, and I die a lot. At first I think it’s because the Spectral Daemon Lords are just too tough because their accuracy debuff makes me miss too much while they pound me into oblivion, but then I notice all of the lag.

Oh my goodness, does lag have an effect on the game! I die eight times before I realize that if I want to pass this, I’m going to have to bite the bullet and change the difficulty setting. I go down to heroic level, reset the mission… and die twice more! I’ve got everybody I can find knocked out, and wondering when this mission will end, because the lag is actually tossing me halfway across the map sometimes. In the middle of all of this two different people almost simultaneously finally invite me to a Respec. I apologize and explain I’m in the middle of a very tough mission, and they’re cool about it, while I go in and change my setting to ‘not looking for team.’ Then, when I think I am searching for some hidden, last holdout villain, after 8 deaths… I have my first mapserver disconnect since I can’t remember when. Grr. I think I am through playing for tonight.

The next night is much better! I gather a team for the Respec in Independence Port when I notice that Luska is up. We all run over to join in the fun, but nobody is attacking yet. I slowly draft more members, and the latest one charges in immediately! I send a broadcast to the leader of the other team, on the opposite side of the Monster, to let him know my side just engaged, and we start in on the tentacle beating. My buddy logged on as Taenia to help out, but said he was not going to participate in the Respec. He hangs out anyway, so we have a good team and almost no problem with the Respec.

After everyone else has gone their own way, I take MM II back to Striga to finish all of the regular missions from my contacts. Now all he needs is to do the Task Forces there. With all of the temp powers we get, I remember that group of players who wanted to only use “natural” powers like Brawl and not too much else to level up. If there was some sort of freeze on my abilities for any reason, I still have a Wedding Band, the Rune of Warding, Holy Shotgun Shells, a Warwolf Whistle, and Electromagnetic Grenades! Temp powers are just plain fun. I’ll do the Task Forces when I have more time, but for now, I head back to Croatoa.

My plan is to finish Croatoa tonight, but I am sidetracked. I have a hunt 10 Fir Bolgs mission in a particular area of the zone, and I keep coming up dry. Nothing but Warrior Tuatha as far as I can see. Then I land in a rarely-traversed part of the woods, and come across Jack of Irons, a Monster! I had not seen him before, but a broadcast only nets me two allies, so I brush off my rusty invitation skills and gather a full team of eight. We tackle him, but I bite the dust near the end, so my team has to finish him off for me as I try not to smell the Tuatha droppings. Such is the life (or occasional unconsciousness) of a hero…

Entry 114

At level 26, MM II takes Focus Chi, because I just can’t go any longer without it! It’s like a breath of fresh air to finally have it available. I stay in Croatoa and do missions, and end up gaining a level as I knock out a bad guy at the end of a mission. It is so cool to see and hear the level-up music followed immediately by the mission-complete music! I have a new mission that recommends I take a team for, but I haven’t really needed to do that yet, so why bother? Oboy, it’s one of those that requires at least two people. I call Red Haven, and he logs Zedd in to come help, but he can’t get there and set up in time, so the mission fails.

I call back the contact, and he tells me my interference stopped them anyway?! What a gyp! There are never any negative consequences for failure in this game. Just once I would like to see an alternate storyline for your character, like something bad happened that otherwise wouldn’t, and you unlock a special “uh-oh-I-better-fix-this” mission. The mission failure means nothing to me, I’m gaining xp too fast on Unyielding as it is. I like to read the story text, and even though I’ve read through most of it once already, it helps me to remember it if I read it two or three times. I can’t really drop the difficulty level, because I’m afraid it will turn into a too-easy grind. Other archetypes might force me to go easier, but a second time around on MA/SR, I’m pretty much an expert with all the hours I’ve logged on the power sets, and I have trouble going any easier. Zedd apologizes, but I tell him it’s no biggie. Instead, I spot Sally and run off and smack her upside the head with my foot! Does that make me a bad person?

I am trying to figure out the best way to track badges. I want to get as many story arc badges as I can, but I haven’t found the best way to set up a tracking system that I can consult while I’m actually playing. I leave Croatoa to consult some of my old contacts, and some of them won’t give me any of their missions already. Ptheh! I get one old story arc that I manage to get a Souvenir for, at least. I head in to the various missions, and encounter green-, blue-, and white-cons, just about as if I was still on the easiest difficulty level. Oh man, what a snooze-fest! I just can’t lose, and go through the motions. I am hanging out mostly because I want someone to invite me to a Respec mission, and I slum in Independence Port (IP) for a while looking for able bodies. Red Haven and I talk about good keybinds and discuss good global chat channels to join, and just generally shoot the breeze while we play.

MM II joined a Super Group (sg) the other day, and I spot my sg leader online, and in IP! There is at least one other sg member there as well, I figure one is sidekicked to the other. I send a tell asking to help me start a Respec, and then they can drop. I just want to see how far I can get solo while on Unyielding. The sg leader tells me he’s putting a team together for missions right now, and advises me to form my own group. I go my own way, but decide I want to help Red Haven build Prestige for his sg instead. So, a handful of minutes later, I quit, and send a tell to my buddy, who is playing CoV at the moment, to invite MM II to his sg when he gets a chance.

Oh, now my old sg leader wants to talk to me! He asks why I quit, and I explain that sg members help each other, and he was not willing to help, even the first time I ask for a little favor. I also mention whenever I ask my friend for help, he does if he can. He is a little upset at this, and says they had partially started a mission, etc. I respond simply that he could have invited me to the team, let me take the star for a moment and start the Respec, then kick the others and they could reform. It would take less than a minute, and he was even in the same zone already.

I am also thinking to myself that my friend would have just told me to hold tight for five or ten minutes while the team finished their mission, and then he would help, but this guy just gave me a negative response. It was not a mean “no,” and I understand his perspective, but I have higher expectations of any sg members I might team with, so I just explain that I am going to join my best friend’s sg instead, and wish him peace. I don’t mind his team doing their thing, and he obviously thought it was too much of an inconvenience, but I’ve done more for total strangers in the game than he was willing to do for me, which tells me he was not as interested in building friendship in the game as he is in building Prestige for his new base. I’m not upset about any of this, but my personal standards are high, and if I am willing to stop in the middle of my play and go help some poor sap beat down Dr. Vahz, even though it takes me a couple zones out of my way and I get no benefit from it, I tend to think sg members should be willing to do at least the same if they are already in the same zone. Now, would I feel the same way while playing City of Villains…? On my final mission for the night, I have to defeat Iron Hand, a Freak Tank. I beat him and get the mission complete, and just as I click on the ‘Exit’ button, he rezzes. Gah! If I was slower on the button, I could have given him the beatdown twice!

Yeah, I considered that, but I really wanted to six-slot FA, and if I move it down, I won't be able to do that anymore. My PvE inclinations still tend to trump other thoughts.

FYI, for those that follow the guides, as of 1/30/2006 I have updated mine for the upcoming Issue 7, made it ED compliant, and included some PvP notes in the latest entries.

Martial Arts / Super Reflexes - The Advanced Guide

For those that follow the guides, I have updated mine for the upcoming Issue 7, made it ED compliant, and included some PvP notes in the latest entries.

Martial Arts / Super Reflexes - The Advanced Guide

At last, here is a more “traditional” build that allows for you to take all nine of the SR powers, slot pretty much everything to the max, and have some additional fun with PvP hints along the way. This build is based on MM II, a mystical duplicate of Martial Master, who tok a couple divergent turns in his growth.

1. The Build
2. Build Order Reasons
3. Power Pools
4. Crippling Axe Kick vs. Other Attacks
5. Slotting Choices
6. Keybinds


1. The Build:

Exported from version 1.4D of CoH Planner
http://joechott.com/coh

Archetype: Scrapper
Primary Powers - Ranged : Martial Arts
Secondary Powers - Support : Super Reflexes

01 : Focused Fighting endred(01) defbuf(3) defbuf(11) defbuf(11)
01 : Thunder Kick acc(01) dam(3) dam(5) dam(7) endred(15) recred(27)
02 : Storm Kick acc(02) dam(5) dam(7) dam(13) endred(17) recred(25)
04 : Focused Senses endred(04) defbuf(13) defbuf(19) defbuf(19)
06 : Focus Chi recred(06) recred(31) recred(33) thtbuf(33) thtbuf(34) thtbuf(34)
08 : Crane Kick acc(08) dam(9) dam(9) dam(15) endred(17) recred(25)
10 : Practiced Brawler recred(10) recred(33)
12 : Combat Jumping defbuf(12)
14 : Super Jump jmp(14)
16 : Hurdle jmp(16)
18 : Health hel(18) hel(21) hel(21)
20 : Stamina endrec(20) endrec(23) endrec(23)
22 : Quickness runspd(22)
24 : Cobra Strike acc(24) disdur(34) disdur(43) disdur(46) recred(48) recred(50)
26 : Crippling Axe Kick acc(26) dam(27) dam(29) dam(29) endred(31) recred(31)
28 : Dodge defbuf(28) defbuf(37) defbuf(37)
30 : Lucky defbuf(30) defbuf(37) defbuf(40)
32 : Stimulant inttim(32)
35 : Evasion endred(35) defbuf(36) defbuf(36) defbuf(36)
38 : Elude recred(38) recred(39) recred(39) defbuf(39) defbuf(40) defbuf(40)
41 : Aid Self inttim(41) inttim(42) hel(42) hel(42) recred(43) recred(43)
44 : Focused Accuracy endred(44) endred(45) endred(45) thtbuf(45) thtbuf(46) thtbuf(46)
47 : Conserve Power recred(47) recred(48) recred(48)
49 : Agile defbuf(49) defbuf(50) defbuf(50)

-------------------------------------------

01 : Brawl Empty(01)
01 : Sprint Empty(01)
02 : Rest Empty(02)


2. Build Order Reasons

14 – I love Super Jump, but if this is your only way to get around, it’s good to have a friend in the Shadow Shard with Recall Friend or Group Fly or something!

16 - Hurdle is taken here instead of Swift to maximize my jumping ability, used in conjunction with Super Jump.

22 - Notice that Quickness now has to come at level 22 instead of 30. This is because of the absence of Hasten in this build now. The extra speed helps you to close to melee faster and move around indoors faster, but the key is that without Hasten, you will need Quickness to have all your attacks recharge faster, to help you have a full attack chain as soon as possible.

24 – Cobra Strike here so you can have it available in Bloody Bay for PvP (some people prefer two Accuracy Enhancements, as opposed to two recharges). If you don’t care for PvP, I actually left this power out my second time around and took Agile sooner, which allows for you to have all three of your passives with their stacking resistance by level 30 (many SR players prefer to have all three passives by 30). This also allows you to take another attack, either Dragons Tail or Eagles Claw, or even Laser Beam Eyes for range, which can also come in handy in PvP. If you want to PvP and do skip Cobra Strike, as I did for this sequel character, Laser Beam Eyes is a good choice to get at those pesky Storm Controllers, and also provides a way for you to hit at people when you can’t keep them staggering next to you, dizzy from a Cobra Strike.

26 – Crippling Axe Kick makes my fourth attack, and with Quickness and a recharge in each power, you have a good attack chain (although I did notice at this level before a recharge is put in it, you might have a one-second gap in the attack chain at first).

32 – Stimulant is taken over Aid Other because you probably won’t be a key factor for healing, but you could un-freeze a teammate at a critical moment.

41 – Aid Self makes a much better match for SR now than Tough.

49- Agile (hey, something has to be last!) takes a backseat to Cobra Strike if you PvP out of sheer utility. In my experience, the stacking damage resistances have limited ability to help out in a tough situation, since if you’re that far in the red, I’m usually going to take a dirt nap at that point anyway. That said, I took this at level 24 and planned for Laser Beam Eyes at 49. I had much greater utility with Cobra Strike when I used it in conjunction with TP Foe.


3. Power Pool Discussion

Fighting: I tried Tough and it ruined my taste for the build structure if I took Kick before level 30. You get a taste for damage resistance now through your passives, so the more experience I have with this idea, the less it seems you have room for it in the build.

Medicine: I wanted to fit another utility power in the build, and this worked well. If I had left it out, I would have room for some other things, though. Dropping these two powers, I could have taken Hasten and another MA attack.

Flight: Air Superiority still makes for a good control power in place of Thunder Kick here.

Leadership: For PvP, some people take Maneuvers to get Tactics now, to stack the Perception bonus of Tactics with Focused Senses in order to detect Stalkers and other stealthed opponents. These would go in place of the Medicine Pool, but it is hard to fit them in earlier in the build unless you are willing to put off other things that I would prefer to have. I’d rather just pop an Accuracy Inspiration, myself, or team with someone else who has taken Tactics.


4. Crippling Axe Kick vs. Other Attacks

CAK comes in handy in PvP and PvE both for knocking those pesky fliers out of the sky, and matches up nicely with Super Jump, if you use the keybind below to auto-jump, follow your opponent, and then launch your attack.

You can have all four of your primary MA attack powers by 24 (technically by level 18, if you wanted it that early), without having to wait until level 28 for Dragons Tail. I found the combination of TK, SK, CK, and CAK to be fun, and not nearly as boring or slow as I was initially afraid it might be.

Dragons Tail if less useful than it used to be, in part because there is a limit to the number of opponents you can agro at a time. Also, the enemy AI has been updated, and some opponents now stand off and used ranged attacks from a distance more often, where they used to fire off a quick shot and then close for melee. The Knockdown often does not work on an AV, as well.

Eagles Claw is a slow animation. The only improvement I ask for in the set is to speed this one up just a tiny bit. CAK actually fits in slightly better for dps, and makes sure you don’t have too many slow animations in your attack cycle.


5. Slotting Choices

Here I went with the more “traditional” build structure of having an Endurance reducer in the three toggle defenses, and I managed to put slots in every conceivable place that I wanted them.

Slotting CAK for a Slow or two might dovetail quite nicely if you took Weapon Mastery instead of Body Mastery, and used CAK in conjunction with Web Grenade.


6. Keybinds

/bind numpad1 "powexec_name Focused Fighting"
/bind numpad2 "powexec_name Focused Senses"
/bind numpad3 "powexec_name Evasion"
/bind numpad4 "powexec_name Brawl"
/bind numpad5 "powexec_name Combat Jumping"
/bind numpad6 "powexec_name Super Jump"
/bind numpad7 "powexec_name Focused Accuracy"
/bind numpad8 "powexec_name Conserve Power"

/bind v "++autorun$$powexec_name Super Jump$$++up"
/bind decimal "target_friend_next"
/bind numpadenter "target_friend_next"
/bind ` toggle_enemy_prev
/bind g "target_enemy_near$$follow"
/bind k "powexec_name Sprint"


That brings us up to date for Issue 7. Comments are always welcome, and I hope this is useful to you.
May your health points never run out.

It’s time for double your update, because I’m actually going to give you two builds for an update! The first build preserves the character concept of my first MA/SR Scrapper, Martial Master, and the second build presents something a little more “conventional,” and also covers PvP, for those who have an interest in that. Note that the original build, even though it is wasteful in its slotting due to Enhancement Diversification (ED), is still actually viable in game play. I did not die even once after ED came into effect. Still, people like to be optimal, so here we go:

1. The Build
2. Build Order Reasons
3. Power Pools
4. Thunder Kick vs. Crippling Axe Kick
5. Slotting Choices
6. Differences from the Original Build
7. Guidelines for this Guide


1. The build:

Exported from version 1.4D of CoH Planner
http://joechott.com/coh

Archetype: Scrapper
Primary Powers - Ranged : Martial Arts
Secondary Powers - Support : Super Reflexes

01 : Focused Fighting defbuf(01) defbuf(5) defbuf(7)
01 : Thunder Kick acc(01) endred(3) dam(7) dam(11) dam(23) recred(29)
02 : Storm Kick acc(02) endred(3) dam(5) dam(17) dam(23) recred(29)
04 : Focused Senses defbuf(04) defbuf(15) defbuf(17)
06 : Focus Chi recred(06) recred(37) recred(37) thtbuf(37) thtbuf(42) thtbuf(43)
08 : Crane Kick acc(08) endred(9) dam(9) dam(11) dam(15) recred(27)
10 : Practiced Brawler recred(10) recred(36)
12 : Hasten recred(12) recred(13) recred(13) recred(46) recred(48) recred(50)
14 : Super Speed endred(14)
16 : Swift runspd(16)
18 : Health hel(18) hel(19) hel(19)
20 : Stamina endrec(20) endrec(21) endrec(21) endrec(43)
22 : Cobra Strike acc(22) disdur(25) disdur(25) disdur(27)
24 : Teleport Foe inttim(24)
26 : Teleport rng(26) rng(43)
28 : Dragons Tail acc(28) endred(31) dam(31) dam(31) dam(34) recred(40)
30 : Quickness runspd(30)
32 : Eagles Claw acc(32) endred(33) dam(33) dam(33) dam(34) recred(34)
35 : Lucky defbuf(35) defbuf(36) defbuf(36)
38 : Elude recred(38) recred(39) recred(39) defbuf(39) defbuf(40) defbuf(40)
41 : Dodge defbuf(41) defbuf(42) defbuf(42)
44 : Focused Accuracy endred(44) endred(45) endred(45) thtbuf(45) thtbuf(46) thtbuf(46)
47 : Conserve Power recred(47) recred(48) recred(48)
49 : Agile defbuf(49) defbuf(50) defbuf(50)

-------------------------------------------

01 : Brawl Empty(01)
01 : Sprint Empty(01)
02 : Rest Empty(02)


2. Build Order Reasons

The build order is “rigid” up to about level 24, and then becomes rigid again from 30 on up for three reasons: optimal time to take a power, slotting numbers, and PvP (feel free to ignore this part if PvP is not your thing).

4 - Focused Senses is taken at level 4 instead of Agile because of PvP. FS has a Perception bonus that helps you to detect characters that are using Hide or another stealth power. If I was only doing PvE, I would have put Agile there and delayed FS until at least 22, because the combination of MA/SR is such a big Endurance hog. At the lower levels, it is more important to have melee protection and to be able to fight, and you would have FS for many levels where you really couldn’t use it for long before running out of energy. Pant, pant…

6 - Focus Chi is taken at the earliest possible moment, partly because you want it early, but also because I’ve put it off before in experimentation, and it takes longer to defeat your enemies without it. The to-hit bonus and the damage bonus are simply too good to pass up. I see a lot of builds that put this off until level 24 or 30 or something, and in my opinion, that’s a big mistake.

8 - Crane Kick is taken here to give me a third attack and flesh out my attack chain quickly.

10 – Practiced Brawler is the best status protection power in the game. I see this power put off for later in builds too, but 10 is the best place to get it, because level 10 is when you really start to encounter things like Eidolons, who can stun you easily if you don’t have protection. After level 10, I constantly encountered enemies who had stunning or disorienting powers, and was thankful for PB every step of the way. It is also hard to explain how wonderful it is to avoid Knockdown and Knockback, and stay in the fight to finish it quicker than if you had to get up off the floor all the time. I’ve been on Task Forces where everyone else was complaining bitterly about the Knockdown, while I silently kept pounding away at the enemy.

12 – Hasten is mandated here at this point, to get a travel power at 14, the earliest you can get it.

14 – Super Speed. Time is money, and this saves me a bunch of time. I always get a travel power by 14 on every character.

16 – Swift mandated for Stamina at 20.

18 – I switched Hurdle for Health this time around, because of a previous Issue update that increased the healing power of Health. I dropped Hurdle instead of Swift because I do indoor missions a lot, and do not jump around quite so much. Swift adds more speed more often in those situations.

20 – Stamina. I tried to hold off, I really did, but it is such an irritation with MA/SR. I broke down my second time through and got it here again as well. Even with reduced performance from ED implementation, it still helps a ton and is worth getting here.

22 – Cobra Strike is even more useful than my description in the original guide, if you do PvP. In my experience, a lot of opponents spend all their time running away from you. This power stuns them and keeps them around to whomp on. If you hit each time, you send someone to the hospital in the time it takes you to hit three of your other powers.

24 – TP Foe is taken here for PvP, but also so I can get Teleportation next. Super Speed has some limitations on these maps, and TP helps me greatly.

26 – TP is great for movement in PvP as well. One opponent used it constantly to escape my clutches, and I ended up using it quite a bit whenever things looked bad for me.

28 – Dragons Tail has a not-often-mentioned secret: it helps against Taunt in PvP. Good teams will Taunt you a lot, but you can still hit whoever you want if you have DT. It activates when you hit the button, and since it’s an AoE attack, if you happen to be next to a defender instead of the Tank that’s Taunting you… also, if you can manage to get yourself surrounded by ten to twelve opponents, knocking them all down and/or back is a wonderfully fun sight to see.

30 – Quickness is pretty rigid here, because the next few powers I take as soon as they are available. If you don’t have Hasten, I would actually recommend you get this sooner. It is taken here for PvP: in Warburg you are capped at level 40, which means if I take it after that level, I don’t get its benefits when I PvP. You will need Elude to PvP, and you want it up as soon as possible, which means you want the extra Recharge from Quickness. With it, things like Caltrops and Quicksand don’t bother me.

32 – Eagles Claw, the final attack. I want to take it as soon as it is available, and slot that puppy up. The Disorient can come in handy in both PvP and PvE.

35 – I need some AoE protection, but I tend to dislike running a ton of toggles. Elude is used for the really tough stuff, so Evasion would only have been used for best protection effect from levels 35-37, whereas Lucky is always active helping me. Also, the three passive powers, Agile, Dodge and Lucky, each have damage resistance that stacks. As your health goes down in a fight, these powers give you damage resistance just like Tough does, and the protection grows the lower your health drops. Having all three together maximizes this new protection.

38 – Elude is a jewel, and I think the recharge time is just few seconds too long these days. It is very hard to be effective in PvP when this power drops on you. Hope you are not the center of attention when that happens!

41 – Dodge gives you 5% base protection from melee attacks, and also stacks for the damage resistance. Gotta have it.

44 – Focused Accuracy is taken here specifically because I wanted to six-slot it, and still be able to have three slots available for each of my last two powers as well. I hate to miss, so I love this power.

47 – Conserve Power (CP) is pretty much mandated if you plan to use Focused Accuracy a lot. It also helps mitigate the Endurance crash from Elude. I usually try to hit CP just before my crash, so if I still have to be fighting, I can pop an Endurance Inspiration and keep fighting.

49 – Agile completes my passives and my damage resistance ability, and I didn’t even have to take Tough!


3. Power Pool Discussion

The Epic Power Pool is mostly a matter of personal choice. The Body Mastery Pool is usually the most popular, and I took it here. For the other Power Pools, the old guidance is still good except for these comments:

Hover – some people like to three-slot this and move fast in the air, since Quickness will also add to your airspeed.

Tough – not nearly as useful as other choices. I tried a build variation where I took Kick early. It messed up my choices, and it still took me until level 28 or 30 before I could fit Tough in. In my opinion, this power is just not worth it, compared to the other useful things you could have in your build. Aid Self is a lot better for MA/SR.


4. Thunder Kick vs. Crippling Axe Kick

Changes in MA have increased the base damage of Crippling Axe Kick (CAK), and reduced that of Thunder Kick (TK). For Martial Master, I love the five powers he originally had. You could try to just take Storm Kick when you start out, and leave aside TK until you can take CAK. That could make for boring fights, although the new temporary power that characters will get until level 10 might ameliorate some of that.

My preference would be to take TK anyway, and just Respec out of it later. The Respec is a way of life now, as opposed to something you “might” want to do. Almost everyone uses at least one, if not for mistakes, then just because he wants to change something for PvP, or he has changed his mind about something. Whenever you do it, switching out TK for CAK is about the same damage per second (dps), but you have to realize that you will end up with three slow-ish attacks: CAK, Eagles Claw, and Crane Kick.

If you exemplar a lot, you might miss TK as well. A good alternative is to take Air Superiority if you’re going to get Hover or Fly. You can get that at level 6, and it has good dps. That leaves you with a couple attacks, and you can still take CAK later. In PvP. You can use CAK to cancel out an opponent’s ability to fly away for a couple seconds, which can be useful.


5. Slotting Choices

Because of my play style, I have to caveat some areas where I have deviated from the “optimal” build.

In Focused Fighting and Focused Senses, I did not include a fourth slot for Endurance Reduction. This is purposeful, as I always come across a ton of Inspirations, and figure I might as well use them. With the implementation of ED, I have found that with Stamina, Conserve Power, the minor Endurance increase when using Elude, and the Endurance Reducers in each attack all help me to manage my Endurance drain okay without those two slots. Most builds would recommend you have them, though.

I waited until level 36 to put a second recharge slot in Practiced Brawler. Your defenses ensure you do not get hit as often with status effects anyway, I had only one in it before and never had a problem. I put a second slot here because perma-Hasten went away.

Hasten has six slots for recharge??? Yup. I just want to have Elude ready again as soon as humanly possible, and to be honest there are only a couple other places to put them at this point, anyway. Note the gains from six-slotting really are minimal, though. A lot of people consider it a gross and insulting waste of limited resources.

Stamina has four slots of the same enhancement. For your earlier levels, you won’t spend all your time having a +3 SO in every slot. Having a fourth slot will often be useful from level 20 until you can have +3s in all your slots. That said, this technically might have been better used for an Endurance Reducer in FF or FS.

If you like PvP, you might consider finding an extra slot to put into Cobra Strike for Recharge, and maybe a Recharge or an Accuracy Enhancement to add to TP Foe.


6. Differences from the Original Build

I dropped Recall Friend because at the higher levels, I just was not using it that often. It did not fit in well with a Scrapper, except for my character concept. With Issue 7, defenses from every SR power will now scale up. In Statesman’s words, “your defense powers will work equally well against a Boss or any critter up to 5 levels higher than you, as it does for an equal level minion.” I snatched up FS to replace Recall Friend. Its Perception bonus helps make it more useful than taking Evasion.

Practiced Brawler is taken much earlier than the original level 22. That was a no-brainer.


7. Guidelines for this Guide

Please keep in mind that there are players who have successfully done MA/SR without taking Stamina. It can be done. Some players have no travel power at all, and most take just one. For me, I find good utility for these, and life is a pain without them (and TP Foe and TP proved to be a great help in PvP, more than I first realized). These choices helped to dictate much of my build structure.

Another important point is that this build is still offense-centered. The point is to knock the bad guy out as soon as possible, and reduce the number of enemy hits coming at you. (I probably would have personally added the defense slots to FF and FS even later than this build shows, personally). Damage is still king, and notice that I still manage to leave out Evasion, so I am not taking all of the SR powers.

If you do not like PvP, you might put off getting TP Foe and TP, and take your passives sooner. It can be advantageous to maybe take Agile and Dodge in their place and have your damage resistance capability maxed out that much sooner. I liked having TP available sooner.


Next entry, I will have an additional build that may be even better for PvP, has only one travel power, and takes some of the passive defenses sooner.

Entry 113

The karmic tables have turned today! I log on just on the off chance I might find a team to help me with Maestro, and I find a couple Blasters. We can’t do quite enough damage by ourselves, so I find A Defender who turns out to be an Empath, who helps keep us alive and buffs us just enough so we can take him out. Then I head for the movies in real life.

When I get back, I have more than an hour of spare time for a change, so I log in and go crazy in Croatoa, getting farther with MM II in the missions than I have with Ultra Meltdown. I also gather my first pickup team in ages, and I can’t remember the last time I had a team this good. The Spines Regen dies once in the beginning, but only because the Defender wasn’t right behind him to back him up at that particular moment. The fourth member of our group was not quite as efficient, but not so much that you would notice it a great deal. It was obvious that the two others each had a level 50 character already and knew what to do!

We rocked through a couple missions on the Unyielding setting and tore through them faster than five year olds open Christmas presents. As we exit, I ask if there’s time for one more, but even as I’m typing, the Defender, Impair, says, “More, please!” I jump to get another mission, and we fall into CoH zen, ripping up the enemies like they were barely even there. I crack my jokes, and as I’m typing out a long response, I notice that the damage rate may be slowed, but these guys are good enough that I could technically stop fighting and just type out jokes all night, and we would still be just fine. Global friend invites ensue, and I stay up past my normal “better log off, because you have to go to work tomorrow” bedtime, but I was tempted to stay on forever, we were in the perfect zone. Fate intervenes, and the connection drops as we exit a mission. It’s not worth it to log back in just to let them know I’m leaving anyway, so I figure they’ll be able to guess that I had a disconnect. About time something happened to make up for all those solo defeats I’ve been having lately.

The next night is just a couple missions, and nothing worthy of note happens. I notice I haven’t done the first Respec yet, so I try to use the team search feature to post that I need to do that, but I get no takers. I’m not used to using that feature, but I figure I’ll need to go hang out in Independence Port to really get a bite on that one. I’m so used to making sure everyone on the team is level 24, but I’m ready to try it with different levels for the team involved, just to mix things up a bit, see if that makes it more difficult.

Entry 112

I’m getting a lot of invites to teams when I play, but real life ensures that I’m never on for more than an hour at a time, so I have to decline them all. MM II heads back to Striga to do some missions there, and has the worst luck ever! My setting is on Unyielding for MM II, so I was planning to have him die a couple of times. With new content like the PvP zones and Croatoa, I want to experience all of the new content as much as possible, but I’ve only gone through Striga twice, so it’s still pretty fresh to me too. I die more than ten times!

At first I jump into some Warwolves, and later I tackle ten white-con Banished Pantheon. I get eight of them before I get knocked out, but I’m noticing something peculiar. This character has better defenses than I’ve ever had before with SR. At this point I have Focused Fighting and Focused Senses active with Agile, and I notice almost no difference in hits whether my toggles are active or not. Striga was great because all of the missions are in the one zone, but I spend most of my time heading back there from the hospital in Talos! Granted, teams are recommended in Striga, because the group spawns are so big, but I can’t wait until Issue 7 is released and defense scales against higher-con opponents, it is genuinely needed.

I run another test against just a couple of Warwolves, and they manage to hit me almost every time, forcing me to rest after taking out just two of them. I even get knocked out once on an indoor mission, which almost never happens anymore, but I did head for the Boss before dispatching a couple of minions that I could have gotten before attracting the big cheese’s attention. So that one was just my own fault. Still, SR is really lackluster in the mid-20s, and it’s nice to know that the set has been looked at and will get some improvements. It may actually become the flavor of the month, if it works well with the changes.

I’ve been trying to find a way to fit Tough in, just because I have yet to take that power, but with all of the changes to the game, its benefits might not be worth it at this point. I’ve already been slowed immensely by taking Kick instead of fitting in Focus Chi by now. Without Hasten, I still don’t have a full attack chain as well, so my decision to take Focused Senses still feels wrong at this stage. I feel the need to take another attack and Focus Chi next, but I’ll only get one choice! Eh, the Perception bonus of Focused Senses means that FS was kind of mandatory at this point, though, to participate in PvP, but I would not have bothered with it yet in PvE. I also suspect I would not have been knocked out so much if I had Cobra Strike, as I did with Martial Master all this time. Even with all that said, Martial Master did most of his leveling before the difficulty slider was introduced, so MM II is handling things quite well at Unyielding, at least with the indoor missions. Next, I plan to hunker down and stop jumping into overwhelming odds in Bonny Morass to test my lousy defenses, and work on getting rid of my debt, since I just hit the cap for this level!