Official Thread for Recluses Victory: PvP Zone
By
Adam7,
Posted on: 2006-05-01 24:15 in Developers' Corner
Gonna have to echo this comment I have seen several times.
THEY NEED TO DO AN EVENT LIKE THIS ON TEST EVERY OTHER MONTH OR SO!!!!!
Some of the key reasons:
* Everyone is pretty much on even footing.
* New players get to test out powers to see what works.
* Being temporary makes it a special event.
* I enjoyed taking people down on the hero and villain side.
* I enjoyed being ganked by good tactics no matter who did it.
* Having no inspirations and no full heal rez really leveled things.
* It was attended by more people than I have seen on-line in a long time - lots of people!!!!!!
The next time you all want to plan one of these .... COUNT ME IN!!!
Had fun but the TP Foe stuff was gettign to me had this one scrapper who had a thing from me kept nailing me so. I was playing a Kinetic Corruptor I found him at a distance and qued up transference and then moved in he then found me and TPed me i arrivved it went off followed buy a S SPeed before he sent me to the hospital. He only tried that one more time before deciding that was not fun. I then stalked him and slapped on some drive by Debuffs S Speed. Found that the big piles of players were to easy to get killed in. I wandereed around and killed some stuff got some INSP so i could last a monemt longer. Then would find the lone hero and go to town. Had this one defender who decided i was an easy squishie and got me once with the help of a scrapper and stoner. Who then broad cast taunted my put down. I replied liek you could have done that solo. I then found said defender and used my Ice to hold her then moved on.
I got tired of squishy insta death. and logged my SS/ELE and went pill box hunting. Since everyone was focused on clashing i would surge and take out a pill box. Even with Fury near max SS could not take out more than two turrets before Surge dropped. I then had to run and wait to recover and come back finish off the third turet and move in on the remaining one with what S/L i had. Possible with out all them shooting to finish off the rest.
Actually toe to toe with a stoner as well not solo but he was attacking and taunting me so I decided to test my self.
So in conclusion I will try RV but only at L50 when i can afford the debt that is this zone and have all my powers. Anything before then will just be frustration.
Pinnacle
Arch light L50 INV/SS
Psiberia L50 Kin/Psi
Screaming Mentallica L50 Sonic/MM
Infinity
Arc Voltinator L50 SS/Elec
Mind Fire Kinesis L50 Fire/Kin
Flaming Screamer L50 Fire/Sonic
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...5-23-53-43.jpg
That's me tanking Mako, Scirocco, and Ghost Widow for, uh, about two minutes before Mako got me.
Had a wonderful time. Rebuilt my first character, someone I have a lot of experience with. It showed... I tried a less familiar character, the only real difference being MA vs BS... and I was noticably less good.
Tried some unfamiliar characters, did okay.
Cranked up a more familiar blaster, and did pretty well, averaging a three kills per death.
Brutes were hard to fight either way, though. Just couldn't cut through the candy coated shell without assistance.
PERC Supporter
La Pucelle (BS/SR)
Miseria Bella (Sonic/Dark)
Wrangler Annie (SS/Elec)
Coldsmoke (Ice/Dark)
Saber Maid (BS/Regen)
and others...
I think the overwhelming concern with this zone is the extreme potential for debt.
I sure hope the Devs notice this as well. I know that I won't be taking my level 40 Corruptor anywhere near RV until he is 50 - whereas my level 50 heros will be in there quite often. I fear this will create the dynamic where RV will be swamped with heros from players that feel the same way.
Nice screenshot, but you really need to shrink it down. I think I could almost make out a character in there. 
To reinforce another poster's point, Soul Transfer is a ton of fun in PvP, especially when you get ganked by a big team of stalkers all coordinating their ASes. Nothing like dying and then suddenly coming back AND dropping all of their toggles and disorienting them long enough to get Cloak of Fear and Oppressive Gloom up. Sometimes I even saved my buildup for that after-death killing spree.
I don't do PvP very much either, however I had a blast. I was a little put off with all the Spine Scrappers. Ya get tired of getting immoblized, dying, hospital, immobilize, hospital, dying....blah blah blah. I made about 8 different characters and believe it ornot themost fun I had was with a Mind/Psionic Dominator and an Energy/Thermal Corruptor. There was one Tank, Frank Beard is what I think his name was... we kept putting Fear on each other at the same time and laughing about it. Of course if I came out of it first I couldn't keep him down where he would just take me out in two shots. There Corruptor didn't even have any Mez protection. I'm wondering if extra Running Speeds for SS doesn't give you extra protection or something because out of all the characters I created, he got HELD and died the least. 
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Second of all, where the heck are the villain heavies? I see hero heavy stations everywhere, but I've seen one villain station.
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Straight forward from the villain base in the little park area is one, and there's another about a block east of Bravo in a little empty lot between two buildings. I got that one a lot. Not sure where the third one is off the top of my head.
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Oh, also, lots of pillboxes were bugged.
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There was definitely something weird going on with Golf, maybe a couple of the others too, about it not releasing the current affiliation and switching over properly. Forgot about that.
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You can find all the heavy platforms on the OPs map in the bases. On the Villain side look for the round platforms, on heroes they show as Rectangular ( just like the ones in zone).
We have located the Turret bug and have fixed it, thanks for the input on that!
A_V
My only qualm last night was playing my WS. In any form except Dwarf, I was constantly jousted by Stalkers using Eagle's Claw or Total Focus. In human form I was able to resist some of the damage, but the mez on theses attacks seemed to hit 90% of the time. Every time I heard the attack charge up, I knew I was about to get knocked out and ASd. Not much strategy, the recipe for them was joust > Total Focus > Build Up > Assasin Strike. My only defense was to hope they didn't have fly, because they seemed to see right through my Shadow Cloak and Inky Aspect seemingly had little effect.
While we've got you...
How much Prestige is winning the zone supposed to award? Do you have to be in SG mode to get it?
I only ask because I can't recall EVER being told that I'd been awarded any Prestige.
The most fun I had was as an invisible Ill/Emp troller. I DUOed with a Storm troller. It was fun watching her tank like 10 villains at a time while I buffed her and kept her alive from unseen. Boy those villains sure were anoyed. I've not seen that many villians just run away from "1 lone" squishy before =) Now mind you they did not run because she was that powerful. But the combined anoyance of not being able to hit her due to buffs and debuffs and instantly getting fully healed when they do hit her and her picking them off 1 at a time kinda was more the reason I think... hehehe. Tx for the Fun Kara.
Gotta love hurricanes, fortitude, and clear mind =) ... well love them when they are not being used against me =)
Man, I wish my spines stalker would have come across you two. My 6 slotted buildup + 6 slotted Impale would have been quite fun, all from a distance too
50 EM / SR Stalker
50 Spines / Regen Stalker
50 Claws / SR Stalker
50 DM / DA Stalker
42 DM / EA Stalker
40 Nin / Nin Stalker
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Nice screenshot, but you really need to shrink it down. I think I could almost make out a character in there.
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Sorry, Photobucket shrank it on me. But to the top is Mako, to the rear is Scirroco, and those are Ghost Widow's tendrils holding me.
I'm the SR scrapper in the middle of it all.
PERC Supporter
La Pucelle (BS/SR)
Miseria Bella (Sonic/Dark)
Wrangler Annie (SS/Elec)
Coldsmoke (Ice/Dark)
Saber Maid (BS/Regen)
and others...
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So in light of Recluse's Victory, the I-7 Stalkers, Brutes, and Masterminds, why don't Blasters get Status Resist powers or Defense? Or just more damage maybe. These 3 AT's can out-damage a Blaster, may have great ranged attacks and all of them get the chance at least for Status Resists and Defensive sets. As I said before, 80 feet of Range is not a Defense in PvP.
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After thinking about this overnight, the best way to address this PvP shortfall of Blaster's is to make all the current powers have 50-60% more base Range. This amount of Range would make Blasters harder to spot in a PvP setting and buy them one or two attacks if they are crafty about it, which is kind of the way you play a Blaster in PvE. At the same time this added Range would have a minimal effect on PvE since we now have "Maximum Number of Targets" and if you pick the wrong Mob you pull the whole group no matter what. Also most Ranged PvE Mobs have 120 meter attacks anyway. And maybe Blaster PBAoE's need to hit harder or with Status Effects. I am thinking of Electric Blast/Electric Melee which has very few ranged attacks.
Anyway, I made several Blasters to test during the Recluse's Victory event and they battled almost entirely in Melee. And Caltrops did not offer any defense to Stalkers when I used them.... used them alot too on the Archery/Devices I was testing and they are not working like they do in I-6. Targeting Drone also seems very weak buffing for Archery even fully slotted so it may be bugged or Nerfed into uselessness.
I do think that a 50-60% boost in Blaster attacks would give Blasters the same sneaky type of Ranged gameplay in PvP that they have in PvE. Try it and see.
Quixotik
"I did not say this. I am not here." -Guild Navigator
Regarding blasters... one of my friends was fiddling with a stealthy PvP version of one of his regular blaster characters and noticed an amusing consequence of the one-shot code. Defiance at 1 hp makes for a very nasty surprise. If you can get a shot in before the followup shot lands, of course.
Are we supposed to be able to hurt the Signature Characters (Statesman, et. al.)? On wednesday, I was on in a fairly busy shard of RV, where the villains drastically outnumbered the heroes. As a result, the villains would rack up heavy majority of pillboxes in short order, and the Freedom Phalanx would spawn to try and even the odds.
I encountered Positron most often, Manticore a close second, Statesman on two occasions, and Back Alley Brawler once.
These NPC's were getting *swarmed* by villains. Despite that, I don't think I ever saw any of the Phalanx NPC's take so much as one hit point of damage.
I can understand that these NPC's are supposed to be ungodly tough, sure. Lots of hit points, strong defenses and/or resistances, probably some self-heals or Dull Pain equivalents. No problem with that.
But when they can wade through a crowd of twenty villains, half of them brutes with built-up fury bars and hopped up on accuracy buffs or inspirations, and their HP bar doesn't even *flicker*? That seems to be too much.
- Isaac
Most often online as: Onmyouji (Triumph, Defender), King Kaizoku (Virtue, Mastermind), Sister Samedi (Freedom, Scrapper), G1 Shrike (Pinnacle, Defender), Kinetic Rex (Virtue, Blaster), El Santo de Aguilas (Virtue, Peacebringer), Hecate (Exalted, Controller), The Mask of Legend (Exalted, Scrapper), and Star-Ranger Green (Exalted, Corruptor)
I agree. The Signature Characters were way too strong. The whole RV event was a ton of fun though. I had a great time in general.
PvP Reclaimators:
0 HP and 0 End = not well thought out... why I played a BS/Regen so much. 
Besides a team with 2 Emps that have Recall friend nullify the penality.
Heros/AVs:
Posi is overpowered... for a defender... but at least one defender is.
Back Alley Brawler/Statesman 1 shotting everything but a Brute running unstop... is... um... funny.
Manticore is ANNOYING!
Lord Recluse was a joke.
Scirocco was a joke.
Black Scorpion was a joke.
Mako is apparently very resistant to slows... when his HP gets really low he runs around more than Diabolique while 2 shotting almost everyone.
Ghost Widow needs to be nerfed. I'm not kidding. She seriously is the toughest of them all. One shot holding (the animation for that hold is SWEET though) a tank through Unyielding + Unstop then one shotting is dumb. Her Dark Regen puts her in Hamidon class.
About this event:
Instead of grinding characters that I eventually wont like... I've I found the ones I do like and will level them. I also found some builds to just not be my style. I played sets I don't have the patients to level... but will grind through them now knowing the end result.
About the only other thing I can suggest is that the devs make an event like this more often or even set up another test server that is like this. This had to be one of the best times I've ever had in CoH/V.
Currently roleplaying, badgehunting, and laughing at the PvPers of CoX. lol, PvP.
Truedusk - Human Rogue
What's really sad about the signature characters is, they can't even kill each other. Watching 25 villians AND Lord Recluse attack Stateman and STILL not budging his health bar is just ridiculous. After being one shotted by Statemans footstomp the villians backed off just to watch Lord Recluse Vs. Stateman and Manticore. Never did their health bars get below 95%.
Also, tried to kill another bubble defender, this time with my brute. 3 slotted ACC's in all attacks, 3 to hit debuffs in BU, and tactics from a MM on my team. Didn't hit the Bubbler once. So i took 6 yellows i had gotten from killing wardens, hit BU and hit the bubbler 1 out of 6 attacks. They need the 2 min recharge penalty MM's got. Flat out ridiculous!
Johnny Rocket said:
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<ul type="square"> [*]I think people like playing heroes better. Every RV instance I entered was easily 70% hero / 30% villain. Villains got trounced every time, which got very frustrating after a while. Heck, in RV 17 there were enough heroes to camp in front of the villain hospital just out of drone range, and hold all the villains in place while the rest of the heroes captured all the pillboxes over and over. I thought I was in EverQuest for a minute.[/list]
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While it's more common, it's not universal. This morning, RV ... 2, I think, but I honestly didn't check ... anyway, it was about 90% villains, 10% heroes - yes, we heroes were outnumbered nearly 10:1.
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<ul type="square">[*]Stealth (even slotted) is pretty much useless. Players seem to see right through it.[/list]
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Yes and no.
Where I was this morning, neither side seemed to be running much Tactics. My Empathy defender (/Mind, IIRC, but I didn't take ANY attacks I could avoid, so I honestly don't know) had Stealth and was rarely seen (unless he got CLOSE to theenemy, like when using Resurrection).
Flipside, most people never saw the Stalkers until I slapped 'em with Clear Mind and hovered close overhead (running Tactics, natch). Well, they never saw the stalkers until post-AS, anyway. ^_^
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<ul type="square">[*]Any build without stamina (not including masterminds) seems pretty much gimped, even with one end reduction in every power.[/list]
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I tend to agree, actually. I think END-reduction Enhancements need to be bumped to a better Schedule. Something that gets them to 40% or 50% each as of SOs, I'd say - even if you suffered pretty harsh ED after just the ONE or TWO of them.
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I'm sorry the observations are all negative, but in two nights of gameplay, it's been nothing but punishment. I'm sure there's going to be a chorus of players ready to tell me what I'm doing wrong now.
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You did nothing wrong. I'm willing to bet you were on the seriously-outnumbered side every time, though.
Toomanyalts said:
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I played a brute, Corruptor and a Dominator. All copies of characters I have on live now cause I wanted to see what they would be like late game... SUHWEEEET!!
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For that, alone, I love the RV event. It's letting me test some of my concepts and builds out at a L40 stage, and MAN-o-man, some SUCK ... some ROCK ...
I'm lovin' /Regen now (Hero version, at least). Made me a DM/Regen Scrapper last night, and while he was thin on OFFENSE ... almost NOTHING could kill me (unless they one-shot-ed me, or managed to slam a Mez through the many layers of resistance). And if it did - I'd get right back up and hit 'em back! It was great ... best role for him against bunkers turned out to be pseudo-tanking, though. Almost as good as a Stoner for keeping a turret occupied and surviving the experience.
Can anyone tell me where the mission contacts are in RV? Level 50 heroes are supposed to be able to do PvP missions in RV so they can earn the badges, right?
Oddly, even a Brute running Unstoppable isn't immune. I got hit for over 1600 damage through Unstoppable and my toggles by one of the signature hereos, which was really frustrating. Oddly, later my Corrupter survived two, nearly three hits from Back Alley Brawler, but I'd hit him with about 30% worth of attack debuffs.
Also, one thing that was extremely annoying on one of the instances of RV last night was one or two people walking around in PFF with some sort of Repel power on, and just wading in and being an unhitable pain to everyone. I couldn't hit them with Rage, an Uncanny Insight and 2 ACCs, and I saw only one other person manage to hit them before being pushed away. Most often they'd be pushing someone into Longbow spawns or towards signature heroes.
Lord Recluse was also not despawning at all in one instance. He sat around for the hour and a half I spent in the instance, and I'd occasionally run and hide near him when someone repeatedly kept following me. At one point I think I saw up to three Corrupters buffing him and just waiting for people to try to attack them, which was kind of funny. The zone reset multiple times and he just continued to stand around, sometimes with his own contingent of Bane Spider Commandos behind him.
Confuse is confusing.
"So, what do you want? A Be-Able-To-Hear-Things Award?" - Skwisgaar Skwigelf
"im sorry that at lvl 40 you still dont know how to play your toon. have fun with your brute " - focusinc
My Toons
OK, there are some things we haven't tested yet.
Take a look at this zone writeup.
Particularly this bit:
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Once a side has captured 6 pillboxes and wins the round, a timer clock of 5 minutes starts. This is hunting time.
Winners: you get double temporal points for each enemy slain- now is the time to bring that up to 1000, which will gain you a Temp power Robot when the game resets.
Losers: The battle is lost but not the war- you have the ability to reset the clock and position yourself for the next battle. Killing 100 things (enemy, critters, and turrets) not only gets you straight up temporal points values, but also resets the clock. Remember, if you have 1000 points when the temporal reversion happens, you too get a temp power Robot.
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My emphasis. If the losers defeat enemy players OR 'critters' OR turrets, and do this often enough to get 1000 points (should be possible, given enough timer resets) then they can get the temp power pet too.
So maybe the next time a side loses, there should be all out NPC slaughter, just to see what happens.
I've PMed Archon Voss to ask about the definition of 'critters' here, btw. I think it means NPCs, but I could be wrong.
EDIT: The splendid Archon has responded:
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Sorry- Critters is an in house term. yes all NPC's, IE longbow and Arachnos. the trick is to defeat 100 total "things" and this will automatically reset the clock. "things include NPC's enemy players, and Turrets.
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So, the more the losing side keeps resetting the timer, the more time the winning side will have to take down the remaining AVs/heroes. Hmmm....
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Can anyone tell me where the mission contacts are in RV?
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There aren't any. 
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Level 50 heroes are supposed to be able to do PvP missions in RV so they can earn the badges, right?
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They can go to Warburg now to do that. The max level for Warburg missions has been set to 50 with I7.
I, too, had a blast...eventually....and I don't even like PvP.
Nor has my mind been changed, this was a one-up event, and I don't expect to be doing RV in the future....for one thing, it was boring if you don't like PvP, there was literally nothing to do but PvP, take Heavies, and take pillboxes.
That being said, as a special event, I really, really enjoyed it. I even took a day off work so that I could spend many hours at it. (I missed the CoV Beta due to being halfway around the world at the time.)
My observations:
Hero turrets followed me into the Hospital when I died. Villain turrets next to City Hall (was it Bravo?) spawned over my toon, which was in the cockpit the first time, and I had a heck of a time getting out. Once I did, I learned to stand outside the cockpit to "take" the pillbox, and everything else worked just fine from then on, so it wasn't a big deal.
Some of the time, Heroes vastly outnumbered Villains. However, when I first started Wednesday afternoon, Villains vastly outnumbered Heroes, about 4 to 1. I quickly got tired of it, and created a villain just so I could have some fun.
I think....maybe what the Devs need to do, is instead of allocating a certain number of "total toons" for each iteration of RV, they need to split it and have a certain number of Heroes and a certain number of Villains, set at half and half. If the limit for a zone was (for example only) 100 toons, then only 50 Heroes or Villains could get into the zone at one time. This way, there could still be large discrepancies, but not as large as we were seeing this whole event. It would help temper the extremes without preventing them entirely.
I originally created my main, Linuial, as an emp/rad def, thinking that with all the PvP, a "healer" would be welcome, but it was not so. Even her teammates totally ignored her instead of trying to keep her alive for the heals. So I gave up on that idea, and went for toughness afterward.
I enjoyed it partly because I'm such an altaholic, and getting the chance to see some characters at lvl 40 was a lot of fun, and very instructive, too. (Maybe something like this, as a temp event, could be arranged for the future...it might help guide some of us in how we choose our builds in early lvls if we could actually see how the toon is going to work at higher levels, without just plugging in a hero builder and slavishly following it. A "time travel" TF, perhaps? That could be a LOT of fun....and an alternative to hero builders.)
I enjoyed it, because I already have a lvl 41 character, a claws/regen scrapper, and when I recreated him, I was able to play him just as I'm used to. There really is a difference in playing a character you have grown into, the Devs are completely right about that, I heard other players saying the same thing. It didn't hurt that he was already a pretty solid character from the PvP standpoint, and that claws has gotten a nice "fix" with this issue.
I enjoyed it, because even though my WS is only lvl ten, and it took me about two hours to get him set up, slotted (DARN the devs for giving Science Enhs names that have nothing to do with their functions, the only enh set that are like that!), and get my binds set up and working properly (and I was told that WSs can't PvP), he actually did very well indeed, as well as my claws, in fact. Once I'd been irritated by a couple of Brutes, Knightmare started hunting them....and it was lovely to see them running for their lives, not to mention faceplanting.
I enjoyed it, because despite not being the "uber" kind of player, I'm much more rp oriented, it was very nice to hit on the "uber" combo of inv/fire tank and Caraphract. Teaming was....not working well, my teammates had the tendency to run off solitary over and over again. But the team of tank and heavy worked wonders. I think it drove the stalkers nuts....for six hours, I held Alpha, and even the Stalkers couldn't get rid of me. Over and over again, I took Alpha, and then nothing anyone could do could get me off it, except the sig AVs. When they finally showed up, I just moved me and Big Red (yeah, I named him) off to one side, a large number of heroes arrived to fight the AVs, and after the AVs left, I moved back, and still defended Alpha, even without any guns.
And that is precisely why I am going to suggest a new AT: the Puppetmaster.
Several ATs have "pets", and they can be great, and they can be a great irritant to teammates, especially when they can't be controlled, or are blocking doorways and the like. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the same situation I had with Big Red....an AT whose raison d'etre is to be a "machine operator". An operator for one pet, and one only, but an uber pet. Like the Cataphract. There's a certain skill in learning to use the pet controls, and learning how to place the pet in the right position for attacks, and moving him around, much like what you see with dog agility. I'd love to be able to explore that further, as a full-time AT. Say, you start out with a small pet, and as you level, you gain hp and strength, but your pet grows with you, and most of the powers you pick up along the way go to your pet, not to you. Maybe you get more controls with higher levels, too. I'll have to think about it...I think there's a lot of potential there.
I didn't like being constantly faceplanted by Stalkers, against whom I had no protection (other than with the tank/heavy combo).
I didn't like being ganged up on by 10 enemies all at once.
All in all, I did enjoy it, because of the exceptional situations above, not because of the PvP.
I'll [i]almost certainly[/i] be happy with I7....."SOON(tm)"
Too bad "Maturity" isn't an Enhanceable power.
Anybody with a bow is okay in my book. ;-)
@Linuial
Starfire/Hellfire
Liberty, Infinity & Protector