Relentless Session 59-60
Two more sessions of about 1.5 hours each, and with most of the team both nights. We would've started Lady Grey last night but the timing just wasnt working out. Next week. So, we ran some more RWZ missions. I was somewhat let-down seeing Nemesis mobs, but .. those spawns with all Fake Nems bosses? Very cool. Coming around the corner, I stopped dead in my tracks. One of the few 'whoa' moments I've had in a long, long time.
Maybe thats what we need. A difficulty setting that spawns all bosses. We'll call it 'Overboard'. Heh.
Relentless Session 61-62
Ran some more RWZ missions the first night waiting for all 8 members to be available so we could form the TF. Formed up the TF at the end of the first night and did the first two missions on the second night with 7 of us. The first mission was awesome ..
L50 and L51 mobs for our L46-L47 team
.. it was sweet. What a blast. Fights that actually lasted more than 5 seconds. Fights that actually required more than half the team being at their keyboards. Fights that actually took a little effort. After 10 levels of wading through mind-numbing and unengaging fights against +2's, we finally got to do something interesting. It's been extremely difficult keeping the team together. We had lost one member to another game, and there's at least two more on the fence. Several others are really getting bored with the lack of challenge. The teams average weekly playtime has plunged from 5 hours to about 1.5 hours.
I expect that running this TF against +4's a few times and then moving onto the RSF will keep things interesting enough to move us to L50. Notice the implication, for a certain class of players that we fall into, the new Issue 10 content itself was not compelling ... but the opportunity to fight +4's and higher is. Some of us want dynamic content, not just more artwork. It was reported that Positron recently stated that there are no (near term?) plans improve the AI. Ok, then give us something we can really sink our teeth into.
Expand the mission difficulty slider.
Relentless Session 63
One of the team members was booted from the TF when zoning into the base, so we restarted. Not a big deal really, since we will plan to finish out our trip to L50 solely on this and the RSF for the higher mobs. Team is just starting to ding L48 now.
Relentless Session 64-65
Ran thru most of the TF against L52 Rikti and handled them easily. The weakened Hamidon spawned at L50, which I'm not sure if thats how he always spawns or if it was the result of someone entering the mission on low difficulty. (Villainous? I forget.)
We blew it on the second night though, the last mission spawned L49's, even both AV's. I was pretty disappointed, but I gotten online late and the team had already decided not to wait for the mission to reset. The AV fights were trivial, neither one lasting much longer than 15-20 seconds.
The team is primarily mid L48. I had hoped we'd be a bit closer to L49 so that most of us would make L49 by the last mission of the RSF. We're thinking that the final safegaurd and maybe two runs of the RSF will bring us to L50.
Relentless Session 66-67
First night we did five paper missions and the Peregrine mayhem mission to finish the +HP accolade. On the second night we started the RSF. L51 Longbow and Malta to our L48/49, so no big deal. We got the temp power and realized it was for 5 hours of real time, and we weren't really interested in doing the next two missions at that point. So, we decided to restart the SF for next week. We'll push through the first four missions the first night to make use of the temp power, and then save the final mission for the second night. Should get better than 7 bubs off the first four missions, which would have most of us dinging 50 near the end. With any luck we'll finish out like we did on the Hero team where the last guy leveled on the Tyrant kill.
Relentless Session 68-69
So, we restarted. Ran the first mission against L49's to speed it up. We wanted to make sure we got to the 4th mission before it got too late in the evening. The second and third were against L51's. The fourth was accidentally L49's, but we didnt reset since the AV's were going to be L51's regardless of setting. We actually wiped on the full group of AV's, largely the result of not paying proper attention. We got it together though and cleaned it up.
Second night we did the final mission. Seven L49's and one L48. No temp powers, no stone tank, no group wipe. In fact, there were only two or three deaths on the team. One was a Power Surge crash, and another was a well timed shot by Statesman. We did use snipe pulls to manage the group. First pull we got Back Alley, Manticore, Citadel, and Sister Psyche. Second pull was Positron and Synapse. Final fight was Statesman and Numina. Those +4 AV's were worth 128k each, leaving most of us at about 1-3 bubs away from L50. Good tactics and good execution made short work of the villain-side 'end game'.
Next week we'll finish our run to L50 on the Respec Trial. Why? Well, we can't really think of anything else. 
Wow, this is pretty cool stuff.
Ex
Awesome reading. My SG is on session 6 or so of a SuperTeam. It's quite a bit of fun, but I hope we can keep it together for enough sessions to make 50. We have done builds heavily dependent on each other, having Kins so no one takes stamina, and things like that. Stacked maneuvers and tactics. Makes things interesting.
Amazing that you have stuck together all the way through heroes AND villains. Good sg/vg.
Thanks, Stele. Thanks, Ex.
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Amazing that you have stuck together all the way through heroes AND villains. Good sg/vg.
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To be fair, we did have two roster changes over this roughly 1.5 year span. Part way through hero's, one guys work schedule changed and he had to bow out. He's still a member of the SG and plays the game. Then in villains we lost one to another game. In both cases, we were lucky to have an SG member with a toon within a level or two and of the right AT and available at the scheduled timeslot.
I hope your venture works out. I know for us it was a lot of fun, and a very big part of why we're still playing.
Never........
Making.......
A.......
Healing.........
Toon........
Ever........
Again.........
In all seriousness though. It's been a wicked ride. Tonight we finish it.
I've been following this thread. Awesome guys job. Truly something to be commended. This sort of dedication is hard to find.
Good luck tonight and many, many grats!
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Good sg/vg.
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QFT
(The Villian Side Fill in Brute for 2nd half of Team Relentless)
Relentless Session 70
We ran the Respec trial on Relentless. First ding was in the Malta mission, then two more against CoT, and two more on completion of the trial. We cranked it out in about 45-50 minutes. I didnt realize there was only one door mission before the final, so we came up short on XP for three people. We ran a paper and the last member dinged on mission complete.
Summary
So, it was quite a run. We did 70 sessions over ten months. We did every single Trial, Strikeforce, and Mayhem. We did three of the four Patron arcs. We only had one roster change. The average logged in time of the 8 toons was about 187 hours. Thats skewed slightly higher by one guy farming the damage badges. I'd estimate we had about 140 hours of actual playtime.
Roughly speaking, most of us got the three damage badges, three debt badges, one mezz badge, and three infamy badges. In comparison, we died and were mezzed more on villains than heros. Prestige amounts were lower at 250k to 450k, as some of us needed to run out of SG mode at times.
Curiously, levelling villain team felt so much slower, but its hard to quantify it in the numbers. Villains had more sessions (70 vs 64), but typically they were shorter (1.5-2.0 hrs vs 2.0-2.5 hrs). We played the villain team over more months (10 vs 7.5), but we did less content (less SF's than TF's). As a result we were often against lower foes (+1 to +3 Relentless missions vs +3 to +5 Invince TFs). Its a tough call, but basically I have to say Villains was about as fast as Heroes. Certainly not faster, though. One thing was clear. Heroes had about a level advantage in effectiveness. In other words, +3 to +4 gave Villains an interesting fight but Heros needed +4 to +5 to get the same kind of fight.
Lastly, I want to thank every member thats participated. Each one of us has jobs and families and responsibilities that are far more important than an online game, but your dedication and honoring of commitments speaks volumes of your personal integrity. It's just a game, but thanks for seeing it through!
What can I say, we did it....again.
It's been a real privilege playing with you guys and I just want to say thanks. Not just to the members of this team but all of Top Ten. Being a part of this great group of players is what makes the game fun and still has me logging in going on 3 and a half years now.
It's been a long run and while I still game as much as always (maybe more now ) I find myself playing COH less and less. I think the time may be approaching when I will hang up my tights and retire.
For now I guess I'll hang until the end of the year..see what I11 brings. Who knows, maybe OC will come up with yet another cool team concept and we'll all meet up in Outbreak and start the trip all over again.
I think I still have one good 50 left in me.
Grats y'all on a job well done and showing just what kind of great players and ppl r part of Top Ten/Ten Most Wanted
Gratz guys. So are you really going to be playing that team of Peacebringer/Warshades to 50 on Invincible?
The Premise
Two years and one month after Team Invince first rolled out of Outbreak, seven members have reunited to form Team Midnight. In deference to the powerset proliferation of Issue 12, and the new opportunities it affords, we've chosen to create a team based primarily a new powersets. Given how handily we tackled all the content previously, this time we've made no attempt to optimize the team. The selections are entirely per the interests of each player. Further, we've set the roster at seven with one wildcard spot. Our eighth player from the last team still plays regularly, but cannot commit to a regular schedule. We'll fill the wildcard spot with SG members, applicants, or pickups. So, what should we expect? Will seven veteran players be able to push random powersets to perfection? Stay tuned ...
The Midnight Team
Psychic/Mental Blaster - played by the empath
Mind/Trick Arrow Controller - played by the ice blaster
Plant/Kin Controller - played by the earth controller
Cold/Ice Defender - played by the ice controller
Dual/Willpower Scrapper - played by the scrapper
Fire/Fire Scrapper - played by the tank
Dark/Dark Tank - played by the fire blaster
Wildcard - played by ???
After midnight, we're gonna let it all hang down...
Midnight Session 1
We started in Atlas at L2 rather than Outbreak. Two SG members filled the wildcard spot, first a fire/kin then later a grav/ff. One guy was late getting on, so we hit the sewers until L5. He then joined us for a door mission, and we all moved to the Hollows as L5-6 about 40 minutes after start. We ran the FrostFire arc on heroic, and concluded the evening with FrostFire himself at a bit over two hours after start and at L10-11. It was good fun, but we probably shouldve bumped up the difficulty. The inspiration combining and level up bonuses are awesome and really keep you moving. The Hollows redesign is also a nice improvement.
We're Baaaaa-aaaaack!!!
Midnight Session 2
The fire/kin joined us for the first half of the evening. We ran three radios on Rugged, and then the Kings Row safeguard at L13. We formed up the Posi TF before the fire/kin had to leave, and loaded out our slots with DO's. By the end of the third mission, we were L16. That's rather disappointing, because if I've counted right there's another eight door missions that we'll have to do while exemplared.
At this point, five hours play time or six hours logged in time, we're ahead of Team Invince by a fair amount (L16 vs L11). We'd been running against much lower foes this time (+1+3 vs +4+6), so I found myself wondering if it was a difference in xp/hr. Then I was reminded of the XP curve changes. I'll have to dig those up. It may be more practical to run the zone arcs instead of TFs so we can avoid the auto-exemp issue now. In particular, Faultline's got AV's we can do that weren't available previously.
NM.
Masterminds annoy everybody, sooner or later. Heck, Masterminds annoy themselves.
-ShadowsBetween
Midnight Session 3
During the weekend, 2-4 of us cleared the next seven Posi TF missions leaving the last one for team night. Yes, I'm aware of the TF spawning changes. Pfft. On team night, we all logged in and completed the final mission for the TF badge. We moved over to Faultline, and got eight bubs in the first mission. Man, it was nice to see that XP bar move again. Set to Rugged, we did all of Jim Tremblor's arc, and all but the last mission of Penelope Yin. The AV fights were fun, but easier than I had expected. We finished the night at L19.
The first mission, 'lead Fusionette out' was amusing. Having done RWZ several times recently, I was in the habit of just continuing on once Fusionette was found. If you've done RWZ, you know what I mean. So, playing the tank, I just kept forgin ahead. The teams yelling 'Lead her out! Lead her out! Oh noes, the tank's got scrapper-lock'. Yeh, oops.
The teams consensus is to skip the original six TF's because of the capping issues. They're far too long with the new XP curve, and so force you into too much time spent exempt. In our opinion it just makes more sense to go back and hit them sometime after we've fully outleveled them. We'll stick to the zone specific arcs and so I'm curious to see if we'll have any gaps in content that way.
Midnight Session 4-5
The first night we finished Penny's and Delilah's arcs. We were making about 5 bubs every 20 minutes. It was around L20 that I noted I had forgotten to buy DO's at L17, but at that XP rate it wasn't worth it to waste the teams time to slot up. I have a set of L25 IO's premade and stored for L22. Unfortunately, it got late and we stopped about 5 bubs from L22 after the 2nd mission of Agent G's. So close!
To add insult to injury, I wasnt able to get on at the normal start time the next night. The team advanced Agent G's arc through the tunnels, one of my favorite aspects of the Faultline missions. The blending of the tilesets almost makes you forget whether you're in an instance or not. I got on and made L22 just before the first AV. There was no time for enhancers, so I did without .. reds, all of em, for two AVs. We finished the night with one or two missions left in Agent G's arc at L22-23. Next week, we'll wrap up Faultline and move to Striga.
Midnight Session 6-7
We skipped a week due to schedules. Once we got back to it, we knocked out Faultline taking down all three AV's at once and then moved onto Striga. In Striga, we did the arcs for Stephanie, Lars, and Tobias. I think we outleveled Long Jack before finishing Stephanie, which is a shame since it means we missed the AV, Maestro. Looking forward, we'll probably skip Moonfire and just jump to Hess.
I believe most of the team finished at L27, my toons currently showing 20hrs logged in time. Note, that includes downtime in between combat for training, hancing, and waiting for people to log in. We were pulling about 13 bubs/hr for most of these two sessions. Not surprisingly, L22+ has seen a marked improvement in speed (and enjoyment). Damage is picking up, I can kinda tank, and the Plant troller is really having at it.
Relentless Session 57-58
Ran some RWZ missions. Sorry, I dont have anything interesting to add.