11/10/2008
On Friday night I played Idealist (30 fire/thermal controller), initially with an 8 player team of Demolition Girls doing Croatoa missions that got Idealist to level 32 and Fire Imps. This is the first character I've had with fire imps and I'm not quite sure what to do with them yet; I'm much more used to mastermind pets. So far it seems like I just summon them and hope they attack stuff. I've been trying to buff them with fire shield/plasma shield/forge; the shields are no problem, but when it's time to cast a second forge, I find I really can't tell which of the 3 fire imps has forge and which ones still need it. Will have to practice that.
After that team broke up I joined a Katie TF which fielded 5 controllers, 2 blasters and 1 defender, which finished the KTF in 29mins, got Idealist to level 33 and earned me a worthless Executioner's Contract (DMG/RCHG) recipe. Idealist did another KTF on Saturday with 3 controllers, 2 defenders, 2 tankers and 1 blaster, which seemed to have low DPS even though all 3 controllers had fire imps (I guess hurricane debuffs their melee too much), but got Idealist to level 34 and an Induced Coma (ACC/SLEEP/RCHG) recipe. I ended up 6-slotting Fire Imps with the Blood Mandate IO set, which grants +3.75% AoE and ranged DEF.
Also on Saturday I played Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) on a 4 player Sisterhood team doing level 49 missions in Peregrine Island. While I was briefly AFK my team managed to have a team wipe charging into the lab room of death (the tri-level lab room where a ramp leads up into a central killing zone surrounded by higher catwalks full of mobs), and I ended up clearing this room solo (by jumping up to the near left corner of the top catwalk and gradually pulling mobs to their doom, rather than charging in the center), which got me a "Wow, you're good!" from a teammate.
This team eventually grew into a Sisterhood & friends Imperious TF; I switched to Maitresse (37 necro/storm MM) for this. Our team mix was:
ill/rad controller
necro/storm MM (me)
bs/dark scrapper
bs/fire scrapper
warshade
mind/ff controller
ar/dev blaster
night widow
In the first mission we managed to knockback one of the Romans guarding a hostage through the cave wall, either due to my stormy powers or an illusion pet, not sure which. This made it impossible to complete the first mission so we quit the TF and restarted. The second attempt, I was a lot more cautious about using hurricane and tornado (though they're so much fun!) and we got through the first couple missions with no problems. The third mission we somehow managed to pull both Requiem and Romulus and a lot of their friends onto our heads at the same time, and the AVs also ran away from us a lot, aggroing more 5th Column. This resulted in a partial team wipe, but we rez'd and recovered into the fight, eventually beating them. The last mission went near perfectly though and we beat Romulus in a series of straight up fights; Imperious even managed to live to the end of the TF, which I've never seen happen before. We finished the TF in 1hr 53mins, and on the TF we had three level 49s hit level 50, and Maitresse got level 39 (gaining the fun Lightning Storm power) and got a Touch of Death (ACC/DMG/END) recipe.
Late Saturday night I played Spy Girl (8 MA/ninj stalker) and accepted an invite to a 6 player pickup team in Cap au Diable, that jumped into a level 11 King's Row mayhem, which was ultimately a bad idea; we had one level 11 player already lackeying someone else, a level 10 lackeying someone, and me at level 8 fighting red-con stuff with TO enhancements, which meant I whiffed a lot and was easily killed if I drew aggro. The team tried to stay together, and I tried to target through the level 11 stalker to help focus fire and reduce my own aggro; but the Longbow ambushes savaged us pretty badly and we ended up failing the mission, though Spy Girl did get level 9.
On Sunday I gained the Battle Hardened veteran badge (48 months), which unlocks another free character slot (yay!) and the summonable buff pet (haven't tried using this yet). I did another Katie TF with Idealist (34 fire/thermal), with 1 tank, 6 controllers and 1 defender; this team seemed too powerful so the team leader set "enemies buffed, 1 hour time limit" as challenge settings, which we easily accomplished, finishing in 24 minutes and getting Idealist a level 30 Impervious Skin (END/RCHG/RES) recipe.
After that, the team leader and some of the other team members wanted to do what they called a "Katie Apocalypse" TF run -- another Katie Hannon TF, but with "enemies buffed, players debuffed" and on Invincible difficulty. This sounded just crazy enough to be fun, so I decided to try it. I switched to Police Woman (50 AR/dev), figuring her high accuracy (from targeting drone and IO set bonuses) would be really helpful in a "enemies buffed, players debuffed" situation. Our team mix ended up being:
stone/nrg tanker
ill/rad controller
fire/elec blaster
AR/dev blaster (me)
ice/storm controller
MA/regen scrapper
spine/regen scrapper
TA/archery defender
We were a little too light on healing/buffing and too heavy on melee for this to be an optimal team for this task, but doing enemies buffed/players debuffed/Invincible TFs is not an optimal activity anyway, so I wasn't too worried about it. The first few Mary AVs were difficult but doable. On Mary #8 (a buffed level 38 AV with us debuffed) we had a partial team wipe, then recovered and beat her. On Mary #9 (also a buffed level 38 AV with us debuffed) we had a partial team wipe, then recovered from that and had a total team wipe, then came back from that to beat her.
Mary #10 (a buffed level 39 AV with us debuffed) was really nasty, however. We had two total team wipes fighting her; though we had a tanker taunting her, she would frequently aggro on the controllers and blasters and kill them. She did lots of electrical AOEs which are no big deal in a regular Katie TF, but were devastatingly fatal under these challenge settings. We tried positioning so that squishies were not in the expected area of cone AOEs but the loose aggro (one teammate calculated the tanker's taunt was only about 30% effective under these conditions) still resulted in lots of death. I actually started using Phase Shift in PvE to try and avoid electrical deaths, but still ran back from the hospital several times. Finally we got sufficiently annoyed to start breaking out temporary powers to help; I personally cracked open 2 shivans and 1 Vanguard HVAS just on Mary #10, and several other shivans, snow beasts and witches were summoned by other teammates too. This finally was enough to bring down the wicked witch, though it was a pyrrhic victory at best.
Police Woman and lots of help vs buffed Mary Macomber #10
After that, the rest of the TF was a cakewalk. We finished the TF in 1hr 26mins and I got an Executioner's Contract recipe for the trouble. Despite that, the TF was fun, and it's cool to have the bragging rights for accomplishing it.
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
i hope you rp'd that lvl 39 mary and were all like, "this is police woman requesting backup"
/gignore @username is the best feature of this game. It's also probably the least used feature.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Nights_Dawn
Hazy is right
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11/12/2008
On Monday night, I played Olivia Q (50 MA/SR scrapper), soloing a few RWZ missions, then spending some time in Warburg escorting scientists around to get a bio nuke, and finally joining a pickup RWZ raid on the mothership which netted her 224 Vanguard merits and a Platinum salvage drop. I have to say it's really nice playing a DEF capped scrapper on a mothership raid; normally I play a squishy blaster and spend half the raid stunned or dead, while Olivia danced through Rikti effortlessly dodging all their attacks, with an occasional Aid Self to heal back what damage did get through.
Olivia attacking the Rikti mother ship
I was home daytime on Tuesday for the holiday, and spent most of the day playing Spy Girl (9 MA/ninj stalker). I solo'd my way to level 11 doing missions in Port Oakes, training in Ninja Reflexes (the melee defense toggle) at 10, gaining the Bone Collector badge from a mission, and actually managing to solo several elite bosses: Guido Verandi, Emil Marconi and Lt. Blechley. I basically used 2 purples to cap my DEF in each of these fights, plus a yellow or a red for some extra damage; that seemed to be enough to beat a lowbie EB.
I bought a stack of 10 Temp Power: Revolver recipes for 1000 infamy each, figuring Spy Girl really oughta have a gun. I crafted one of them and started using Revolver in her attack chain; this is terrible from a game mechanics standpoint, since it forces a redraw and the attack has an activation time of 2.33 to do Storm Kick level damage, but occasionally alternating kicks with gunplay "felt right" for a Spy Girl. I also wrote a background story for Spy Girl, basically making her a secret agent infiltrating the Arachnos organization. This officially makes her my least evil villain character, bumping my brute Mega (who is only a villain due to child abuse) from that esteemed position. (April Fool, my killer clown, remains my most evil villain.)
A friend playing a 50 ice/kin corruptor wanted to team up with Spy Girl, so I ended up as a lackey on a level 50 Malta mission in Grandville. With TO enhancements I was still pretty squishy, but this went better than expected; speed boost to keep END filled and fulcrum shift to boost damage made Spy Girl actually pretty effective. We didn't have much defensive ability but the corruptor dropped an occasional ice storm when we got in over our head, to confuse the Malta into not killing us. We did have one team wipe when we both got mezd by the Malta at the same time, but otherwise did fairly well, beating the Malta and a Peregrine Island mayhem, and getting Spy Girl to level 12.
After that I solo'd through a King's Row mayhem, then joined a pickup team doing missions in Cap au Diable. We did the mission where we kidnap people and deliver them to Vahzilok surgeons for dissection, which got a, "Wow, this is really evil!" from one player (and I must admit, most CoV missions are Diet Evil at best). This team eventually grew into an 8-player team that did a Skyway mayhem, where we had a wipeout from a Longbow ambush. But we broke out of jail and made it to the bank. The hero sent to stop us was Rosethorn, a spines scrapper, and I teased our spines stalker, who also had "thorn" in his name, that they must be related. He totally played along with this, and when Rosethorn aggroed on us, the spines stalker called out, "Rose! It's me!" Then when we beat her up, he yelled, "YOU KILLED MY SISTER! WHY? WHY?" It was hilarious. Anyway, Spy Girl got to level 16, taking Combat Jumping and Kuji-In Rin (mez protection) along the way.
Later on I solo'd Spy Girl some more, managing to solo an elite boss version of the Facemaker.
Spy Girl vs the Facemaker
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
11/14/2008
On Wednesday night I did a lot of generic IO crafting with Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster), working on crafting badges as I was getting pretty close to the accolade. I started off buying generic IO recipes from Wentworths, but soon abandoned this and simply bought the IO recipes from the workbench because it was more convenient and often cheaper. I still bought salvage at Wentworth's, though, occasionally paying rip-off prices for common tech salvage just to keep going. In this way I got the following crafting badges: Trigger Man, Hired Gun, Major, Lt Colonel, Munitionist, Weaponeer, Vagabond, Charismatic, Battery Powered, Pilgrim, and finally the Field Crafter accolade. The Field Crafter ability of creating a temporary workbench is pretty nice, actually; previously, I had to run to my SG base to craft, or else do both shopping and crafting in Steel Canyon where the Wentworths and University are close together. This also puts Police Woman's badge count to 525.
I also did a Katie TF as Police Woman, on a team of 4 controllers, 3 blasters and 1 defender, blowing through it in 26 minutes and getting a junky Sting of the Manticore (ACC/INTRDX/RNG) recipe for my trouble.
Also on Wednesday night my PvP League team did a couple more matches as part of the wrap-up of the PvP League; sadly, we were the bottom seed team and facing the top seed team, and so this was a pretty ugly matchup. Our first match was:
ill/emp controller
psy/nrg blaster
AR/dev blaster (me)
fire/mental blaster
-versus-
2 fire/nrg blasters
earth/emp controller
mind/emp controller
on the graveyard map. We started off trying to focus on their fire blasters, but this was pretty unsuccessful as the 2 empaths seemed to easily counter the damage we dealt. Then we switched to targeting their empaths; this let us get a couple kills but then their 2 fire blasters spent all their time hunting down our poor controller and keeping her phase shifted out, letting them rack up even more kills. We ended up losing this match 30 to 3; somehow, I got 2 of those kills.
Our second match was:
ill/emp controller
psy/nrg blaster
AR/dev blaster (me)
fire/mental blaster
-versus-
ice/storm controller
emp/nothing defender
grav/storm controller
ill/storm controller
at first on the cage map, which everyone agreed to reset on, then on the container ship map. We started the match trying to target one of the storm controllers, but the stormyness was really disruptive, making it very hard to focus fire, and our team would frequently get debuffed and held to death. Regretfully our team kind of lost heart after the first two minutes of this match, our target caller stopped calling targets (I tried announcing a few targets after I noticed this, but I don't think it helped) and our team generally stopped working as a team, which basically meant we were easy prey for the rest of the match. I did manage to stun the defender once with Beanbag, and unleashed a couple Full Autos into tightly grouped stormy huddles which seemed like it did some damage, but we weren't really coordinated enough to actually kill anyone. We ended up losing that match 14 to 0 (ugh).
After that I unwisely accepted an invitation to a "1 group RWZ raid". I arrived in RWZ to find the "raid" leader was a 46 scrapper and our raid tank was an SK'd tanker, which didn't give me a good feeling, but I was game to try it anyway. Our group filled up to 8 and we launched ourselves at the first pylon; we took it out, but had half the team die despite having a tank, 2 empaths and a rad on the team, which was not a good start. Several team members decided to bail at this point, and the raid leader had the sense to recruit more, and after we got to 2 teams things went a lot better. We successfully cleared all the pylons and assaulted the mother ship; our low numbers meant it wasn't a very high-scoring mother ship raid, and we had a lot of deaths zerging the Master at Arms AV to death, but I got about 96 merits from the raid, 727K infl, and most importantly for me, badge credit for another bomb set on the Rikti mother ship.
Later on I answered a call for help on the Sisterhood channel to take out the Babbage giant monster; I brought Virtual Girl (20 rad/sonic defender) to contribute debuffs and pick up the Clockstopper badge she missed on her last Synapse TF. After Babbage went down, Virtual Girl accepted an invite to a 6-player pickup team in Faultline. The invitation ominously asked me to "heal" for them, which is usually a warning sign, but I like pickup teams so I joined anyway. Our first mission was a Talos safeguard, with mission door way south in Faultline. It was another bad sign that one of the blasters flat-out said she was playing while totally drunk, and most of the team couldn't even find the door (it was south of the Overbrook dam, which you have to go through this Longbow office to get to), but Faultline is kind of a confusing zone so I didn't think too much of it.
When we got into the safeguard mission, though, the team leader made an immediate beeline for the bank, generating a "THE BANK IS BEING ROBBED!" message, while one person was still trying to zone in and the rest of the team was waiting at the zone-in point. At this point I figured I better get my butt over to the bank before everything goes to heck, so I showed up just in time for me and that blaster to get stomped by Silver Mantis AV and some minions. I hit the "go to hospital" to get back to the zone in, then tried to head to the getaway car, but we just weren't organized enough to prevent an AV from getting away, so we pretty quickly failed this mission.
One of our scrappers bailed on the team at this point and I was tempted to follow, but the team leader seemed to understand what he did wrong and admitted fault, so I figured he was still learning (he had no veteran badges at all) so I'd give him the benefit of the doubt. We did a normal door mission against level 23 Banished Pantheon (the team had trouble getting back to the north part of Faultline from the last mission; I eventually just did the veteran Team Teleport to get people to the door, which actually confused some of them). This mission went a lot better and I even got complimented for "good healing", but I was exhausted by the end of it so called it a night.
Thursday night, I started off playing Idealist (34 fire/thermal controller), joining a Katie TF with 3 controllers, 2 blasters, 2 scrappers and 1 defender, which easily completed the KTF in 27 minutes, getting Idealist to level 35 (took Heat Exhaustion at this level) and a Touch of Lady Grey (RCHG/END) recipe. Idealist also solo'd a couple Croatoa missions in Buck Salinger's story arc, and popped into RWZ long enough to join Vanguard. I also crafted 3 Stupefy IOs to put in Flashfire, for a +1.88% HP bonus.
I briefly popped onto Triumph server to play Kid Valkyrie (50 bs/regen scrapper on Triumph) as an exemplar to a couple friends in Demolition Girls SG playing at level 38 in Rikti War Zone, then did one mission as Mercy Beaucoup (35 empath/ice defender on Liberty) with a 5-player Northern Lights SG team doing a level 35 mission against Council in Perez Park. My ISP dropped my connection during this last mission, and I returned to find my team (whose only other support was a trick arrow defender) had suffered a total party wipeout while I was linkdead! Ack! I team TP'd their bodies to safety, and after recovering we finished off the rest of the Council with no problems.
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
11/19/2008
On Friday, Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) did a Katie TF with a team of 3 controllers, 3 blasters, 1 warshade and 1 scrapper, that went routinely, finishing in 24mins, gaining 1.5M influence and a Stupefy (ACC/STUN/RCHG) recipe. Police Woman also got the Dealer badge, for selling a lot of stuff (2000 items) on Wentworths, over the weekend.
Idealist (35 fire/thermal controller) did a Manticore TF with a team of:
will/ss tanker
MA/SR scrapper
bs/regen scrapper
fire/mental blaster
dark/dark defender (AFK'd for entire TF except last mission)
TA/archery defender
fire/thermal controller (me)
DB/will scrapper
Our aggro control was rather leaky and we weren't good at staying together as a team, and so as the "healer" (the dark defender didn't contribute anything, not even entering any missions but the last; the TA seemed like he was doing stuff though, I think he even rez'd me once with Resuscitate), I was kept really hopping. I also found fire imps drew entirely more aggro than I'm used to getting, but don't have pet controls like mastermind pets do; I know people rave about fire imps, but I wonder if I'd be better off not summoning them on big teams. Despite these issues, we pounded our way through the TF in 1hr 44mins, getting Idealist the TF badge and an Edict of the Master (+5% defense).
After that, Idealist was on a 7-player Demolition Girls SG team doing mostly radio missions in Brickstown, then a 28 minute Katie TF (don't recall what I got, nothing good I guess). I did craft and slot a set of 5 Stupefy IOs in Flashfires, giving her a +6.25% global recharge bonus.
Later on Friday night, Spy Girl (16 MA/ninj stalker) solo'd the Paragon of Vice badge mission to get to level 17, and Spacegirl (50 mind/rad controller) joined a Sisterhood & friends Lady Grey TF. Our TF team was:
warshade
AR/traps corruptor
DB/will tanker
mind/rad controller (me)
claw/inv scrapper
fire/nrg blaster
fire/kin controller
sonic/mental blaster
This team was very strong and the TF went quite well. The third mission we didn't stealth and completed it the real way (rescuing all the hostages), and the fourth mission the traps corruptor wanted to TP foe the mitos to their doom, which worked well. We completed the TF in 1hr 45mins; Spacegirl picked up a Perfect Zinger (RCHG/ACC) recipe and about 3.22M infl.
On Saturday, Spy Girl made friends with a higher level brute, duoing numerous missions over the course of the weekend; it was kind of cool that this brute would seek out Spy Girl to team up with later in the weekend, because the common wisdom is that no one wants to team with stalkers. This along with occasional pickup teams got Spy Girl to level 23; along the way she completed the Steel Canyon and Skyway mayhems, the Agent of Discord badge mission, and a mission in Siren's Call that got her the Agent Provocateur badge, which I've decided is a perfect badge title for her. Spy Girl took Hurdle at 18, Stamina at 20, and Kuji-In Sha (self heal) at 22. I found stamina for recovery and a self-heal make Spy Girl considerably more effective. Interestingly, even at 23 I still have not taken Assassin's Strike or Placate, the signature stalker powers; instead I've been relying on Thunder Kick/Storm Kick/Crippling Axe Kick and been acting more like a scrapper with stealth. This is probably the "wrong" way to play a stalker, but I am finding it to be a lot more fun to just jump into fights kicking things, than constantly sneak up to set up Assassin's Strikes.
I also had a pretty weird experience where some mastermind I hadn't met kept apologizing to Spy Girl for inviting her to his SG, and apparently he thought someone else in his SG had kicked me from the SG. This was very mystifying to me because Spy Girl has been in my personal villain group that contains only my alts, since level 1. I kind of wonder if someone else had a character named Spy Girl before I did, and that other person is who this guy was really looking for.
I did another Lady Grey TF on Saturday, and the team asked for buffs/debuffs, so I played Idealist (35 fire/thermal controller). Our team mix was:
crab spider
warshade (disconnected mission 1, never returned; later told me she lost power)
night widow
DB/will brute
stone/nrg tanker (disconnected mission 3, never returned)
fire/thermal corruptor
ice/cold corruptor
fire/thermal controller (me)
Despite losing two teammates we were able to fight our way through the LGTF with no serious issues; we purposely failed the third mission to speed things up, and finished in 1hr 39mins. Idealist got to level 37 on this TF, and received a level 39 Decimation (ACC/END/RCHG) recipe as reward; I didn't need this right away and they seemed to be valuable on the broker, so I crafted it and threw it on Wentworths with an asking price of 10M infl.
Rikti invasions were hitting our server periodically throughout the weekend, and while playing Miss Molotov (37 fire/fire scrapper) I fought off an invasion of Steel Canyon. Miss Molotov's fire sword circle and blazing aura AoEs in the middle of a big huddle of Rikti both did a lot of damage and drew a fair amount of aggro; the invasion did get Miss Molotov to level 38, though, where I took Rise of the Phoenix (self-rez) for lack of a better idea. Interestingly, this self-rez can be slotted for damage, and has a pretty high DPA.
A force field defender friend was complaining he couldn't do any damage while soloing, so Miss Molotov joined him as a sidekick to help clear some level 45 missions; the force fields really help Miss Molotov, who feels pretty squishy to me even with fire shield+tough, and the fire melee really helped kill stuff for the defender, so this duo worked well. A couple more people from Sisterhood channel joined us before long, and as a 4-player team we managed to take down an Antimatter AV (though this version teleported away at low life rather than dying) and an Infernal AV (who seemed to have pretty good fire resistance; I think my unslotted Kick was doing better than some of my fire attacks against him).
I spent some time Monday night soloing with Mega (50 SS/elec brute) on the walls of Cimerora. This is basically farming so I quickly got bored with it; however, I did earn 1.58M infamy and a Pangean Soil in the 11 minutes before I got bored and quit.
On Tuesday night I played Primadonna (31 sonic/kin corruptor) on a Cap au Diable SF organized on LHO channel. This was a 4-player team comprised of 2 brutes and 2 kin corruptors, and everyone knew what to do, so we had a very smooth run, finishing in 34 minutes. I got a level 31 Dark Watcher's Despair (RCHG/END) recipe as reward.
After that I joined an 8-player Demolition Girls team running on Protector server. The team was pretty short on support so I played Astarte (46 grav/emp controller on Protector) and was basically the only support person on the team. Naturally the team decided to fight Nemesis, with their stacking vengeance, which kept me pretty busy fort'ing and healing people. This mostly went well, though we did have two team wipes: once when we entered a room and aggro'd 3 groups of Nemesis, mostly due to snipers; and once when the tank went one way and the rest of the team went a different way, which ended in disaster.
A friend had told me that slotting Adrenaline Boost for ENDMOD would overcome the END crash from a nova, and I got the chance to confirm this; Astarte's AB slotted (3 RCHG, 1 ENDMOD) was enough to jump-start a blaster immediately after they Inferno or Blizzard. The team also got to fight and defeat a Nemesis AV at the end of the Nemesis story arc, and also a Black Scorpion AV that we stopped from robbing the Peregrine Island bank. Astarte got to level 47, where I took Maneuvers; I also slotted a 6th Trap of the Hunter IO in her Crush power, giving another +3.13% range DEF. Between Hover, Maneuvers, and IO set bonuses, Astarte's range DEF is up to 21.13%; not SR scrapper level by any means, but hopefully this avoidance will let her dodge some occasional aggro when needed.
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
hmmm, i know a spy girl....
11/25/2008
Last Friday I started playing Vathia (26 fire/ice blaster) on an 8-player pickup team. This pickup team made the classic mistake of running the highest level toon's (a level 31) high difficulty missions, so we were facing level 32-33 mobs when most of the team was around 28-29. I asked for an SK, but even SK'd to 28 I was fighting +5s. Despite having a decent mix of ATs (about half support, half DPS/tanks) we suffered 2 wipeouts; 2 players bailed mid-mission and finally someone stealthed the remaining glowies, which ended the mission and caused the team to break up as everyone decided they had something better to do.
I switched to playing Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) to solo in Warburg for a bit. While rescuing some scientists to get a biological warhead I had a couple of 1v1 fights with an AR/nrg blaster. He liked to Total Focus, I liked to Web Grenade; I managed to win both fights.
On Saturday, Vathia managed to sell a level 10 Karma KB protection IO on Wentworths for 25M infl, which was a nice cash influx. I'm thinking that selling high-demand IOs now might be a good idea before the merit system comes in and everyone can get them easily by earning merits, which I think will cause prices to crash. On the other hand, it's possible that I could be completely wrong and I13 will cause recipes to enter the game more slowly, causing their price to rise. I guess we'll see.
Vathia went on to do a Hess TF with a team of:
ill/kin controller
bs/will scrapper
mind/storm controller
spine/regen scrapper
fire/ice blaster (me)
kin/psy defender
rad controller (linkdead first mission, never returned)
About half the team was in the 25-30 level range, so we were doing this TF for exp rather than farming. We were kinda clumsy about aggroing extra groups of mobs, which caused an immediate team wipe in the first big room of the first mission and a near wipe during the second mission down by the six generators. The middle missions went smoothly enough. In the later mission with 2 computers and a generator to destroy, our stealthers stealthed ahead and got the 2 linked glowies, but didn't have the firepower to take out the generator room with the boss in it. The rest of us nonstealthy types tried to clear a path to help them, but half a team versus a spawn set for 7 players was rough going; then one of the stealthers remembered she could team TP, and she team TP'd us from a fight where we were all half-wounded, into another fight with a couple bosses and a fresh spawn of mobs, which resulted in a team wipe. After recovering from that we finally muddled through that mission and worked our way to the last mission. We pulled down Archon Burkholder to the mission exit, but it was a bit messy and we had a lot of adds come with him; despite this we managed to drop him, finishing the TF in 1hr 52mins. Vathia got a level 29 Celerity +Stealth recipe as reward, which is actually pretty nice.
Also on Saturday, I was browsing through the Cap au Diable Black Market as Lady Arachne (47 wolf spider) when Cap was hit by a zombie invasion, followed immediately (like <1 minute between) by a Rikti invasion; I fought them both. Cap is apparently prime real estate for invaders!
I also solo'd Mercy Beaucoup (35 emp/ice defender) through her Midnight Squad story arc to unlock Cimerora. Soloing as an empath wasn't as horrible as I feared, though I did keep difficulty on the lowest level, and ice blast certainly was pretty helpful for this.
Finished Saturday night doing an Imperious TF with some friends on Triumph server, playing Kid Valkyrie (50 bs/regen scrapper). Team mix was:
fire/nrg blaster
ff/elec defender
stone brute
mind dom
dark/dark defender
robot MM
ill/storm controller
bs/regen scrapper (me)
This team had no serious problems with the ITF; with force fields on my regen scrapper, I felt pretty invincible and frequently charged into mobs of Romans, which seemed to work fine. In the last mission I purposely didn't hide from Romulus when he rez'd, because I was curious if the stun could affect a regen scrapper; Kid Valkyrie's Integration+Resilience were enough to not get stunned by Romulus's rez power, but it did floor her regen each time he did it, so it's probably still worthwhile to hide from him when he dies. We finished the TF in 1hr 19mins and I got a level 50 Time & Space Manipulation: +Stealth recipe.
Sunday, I played Primadonna (31 sonic/kin corruptor) for a bit, first leading a team fighting a zombie invasion in Cap au Diable, then doing a few door missions with a 3-player team of LEGION SG.
Later on Sunday I played Mystery Girl (35 ff/nrg defender) on a Manticore TF organized on LBx channel; our team mix was:
mind/storm controller
inv/mace tanker
earth/rad controller
ice/nrg blaster
nrg/nrg blaster
ff/nrg defender (me)
[one person who padded to start the TF, then immediately quit]
This TF went very smoothly, stealthing most of the missions that we could. We had a good mix of tanking, DPS and support, and finished in 1hr 34mins. Mystery Girl got a level 35 Gaussian's Synchronized Fire Control (RCHG/ENDRDX) recipe.
After that I joined a Sister Psyche TF as Virtual Girl (20 rad/sonic defender). Our team mix was:
ill/kin controller
ill/TA controller
fire/stone tanker
TA/archery defender
plant/thermal controller
ill/emp controller
AR/nrg blaster
rad/sonic defender (me)
This team was so support heavy that the team leader said "We will hold them to death while the blaster kills them." We actually had good DPS despite having only one blaster, due to the extreme amounts of stacking buffs and debuffs, and it was a pretty fun team. Once the blaster commented in response to my "gather for AM" hotkey that he felt like he always had to be in a defender's colon to get the buff; since Virtual Girl is a tech hero, I replied that people should leave her internal organs alone since there are "No user serviceable parts inside". We did have one semi-wipeout when the team got split up during a fight, but otherwise got through the TF quite effectively, finishing in 2hrs 36mins. Virtual Girl got to level 24 (taking Howl at 22 and Lingering Radiation at 24, and upgrading to SOs) and received a level 25 Positron's Blast Chance for Energy damage recipe.
Later Sunday night I played Police Woman in Recluse's Victory for a bit; it seemed decently active with a few heroes and villains fighting it out. I managed to beat a dominator and a spines stalker, but then the stalker got revenge by getting his heavy to blow me away (I must've spaced or something, I was looking at a pillbox and never saw the Arachnos heavy move up behind me). I fought a fortunata for a bit inconclusively, then teamed up with a fire blaster friend (who apologized for killstealing me, A LOT) to fight some more villains before we called it a night.
On Monday night I played Spy Girl (23 MA/ninj stalker), initially fiddling with adding items to my personal villain base. I wanted to add a mission computer so I could start the Silver Mantis SF, but quickly got distracted adding creepy mad-scientist-laboratory furnishings to my control room. I particularly enjoyed the gory body parts floating in dirty jars, and the Jacobs' Ladders that have actual electrical effects. I never did figure out how to make a mission computer, but I did manage to link up with some other friends who were interested in the Silver Mantis SF, one of whom actually had a mission computer. Though, ironically she had to pay rent on her base before we could actually start the SF. Our team mix was:
MA/ninj stalker
sonic/dark corruptor
AR/traps corruptor
fire/kin corruptor
So far I've built and play Spy Girl like a scrapper, not a stalker (I have no Assassin's Strike or Placate yet), and being teamed with 3 corruptors only reinforced her innate scrappyness; I rarely bothered to go back into "hidden" mode between fights, instead just jumping into the next bunch of mobs and kicking them around. I commented that I must be the least sneaky stalker ever, and at one point I found myself herding mobs together for the trapper to blow up with Poison Gas Trap. Despite the fact that this is totally unstalkerlike, I found it to be lots of fun.
Spy Girl faces the Sky Raiders helicarrier at night
Two of our teammates had never done this strike force before, and they were suitably impressed when we got to the last mission and were confronted by the humongous Sky Raiders base. "It's something out of a Bond movie!" said one of them, which made it especially cool for Spy Girl to have to dismantle it.
Spy Girl destroying gun turrets atop the Sky Raiders helicarrier
We fought our way up to the top of the helicarrier and eventually destroyed enough stuff to spawn Colonel Duray. The dark corruptor ended up tanking him (his debuffs generated much more hate than my kicking) but we took him out with no problems, finishing the SF in 1hr 57mins. Spy Girl got to level 25 (taking Caltrops at 24; I took this because I wanted Spy Girl to have gadgets, but these are actually really helpful for mitigating melee damage) and got a Regenerative Tissue (END/HEAL/RCHG) recipe.
After that I spent some time playing Lady Arachne (47 wolf spider) on a Sisterhood team doing level 49ish missions in Scirocco's story arc, which I very rarely get to see (none of my villains have Scirocco as patron and it seems to be an uncommon choice). These missions were chock full of Mu with electrical attacks that drain END. Our brute seemed thankful that Lady Arachne's +DEF buffs helped dodge some of these electric blasts, reducing the amount of END loss. The story arc ended with us fighting the Goddess Hequat, who I've never faced before, and has a very cool custom map. It's supposed to be in another dimension or something so is all shiny and sparkly, and there is a very nifty looking door that blocks the way into her lair. Here's a picture of it:
Lady Arachne at the entrance to Hequat's sanctum
Hequat herself is disappointingly short for an archvillain and a goddess, but I'd never seen her before, so here she is, using some funky Mu attack, in all her dreadlocked glory:
Lady Arachne versus the Goddess Hequat
A bit later on Monday night I played Paris Holiday (49 fire/thermal corruptor) on a Recluse SF organized on LHO. The team sorta warmed up in Recluse's Victory, which was busier than I've seen it in ages - there were at least two big villain teams there and lots of heroes. We were doing some PvP there while the team leader recruited enough to fill the SF team, and I jumped around trying to buff people with thermal shields and heal anyone who seemed hurt. I also tried to drop an occasional Web Envelope or Melt Armor and a few fire blasts to assist on kills; I do think we got a decent number of kills as a team. A couple times a fire blaster locked onto me and blew me away really quickly; I need to work on being more survivable as a support person. (I suppose it will all change come I13, but still.)
After the team filled up we moved back to Grandville and started the RSF. Our team mix ended up being:
ice/rad corruptor
2 fire/thermal corruptors (including me)
AR/kin corruptor
dark/elec brute
SS/inv brute
ice/kin corruptor
SS/inv brute
The first mission we were lucky enough to have the tech spawn in the lab building, so had an easy time getting him to his destination. The next few missions went well. During the Vindicators mission, the team leader suggested an unusual approach to dealing with the Vindicator team; instead of killing Valkyrie twice (once normally, once after Revive/MoG) as most teams do, he had us kill Valkyrie last and then just run away, ignoring the Revived Valkyrie. This actually seemed enough to get credit for killing the Vindicator team even though Valkyrie was still alive. Unfortunately, we didn't plan for the ambush that occurs right after that; the team was spread all over the map at that point and got wiped out. After we recovered from the wipe, though, we cleaned up the ambush and finished off Ms Liberty with no trouble.
In the final mission against the Freedom Phalanx, several people popped Shivans and Warburg nukes, and the ice/kin sacrificed himself for Vengeance. This let us completely steamroller the hapless Freedom Phalanx; the team leader started off trying to call targets, but the Heroes were dying faster than he could name them so the brutes started hitting whatever was handy, which was good enough to sweep the Freedom Phalanx on our first try, in record time. We finished the RSF in 53 minutes and Paris picked up a Centriole SHO as reward.
After that I tinkered with IO sets for Paris a little bit, slotting 5 Undermined Defenses in Melt Armor (for +2% dmg, +7% acc, +1.5% max HP) and 5 Gaussian's Synchronized Fire Control in Aim (for +2.5% dmg, +1.88% max HP) and 3 Titanium Coating in Plasma Shield (another +1.5% max HP), before calling it a night.
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
12/2/2008
Last Wednesday I started by playing Spacegirl (50 mind/rad controller), forming and leading a 5-player Sisterhood team doing Serpent Drummer's story arc in Rikti War Zone, then start on Gaussian's story arc. We beat up Hrodtohz, a Rikti AV, fought corrupt Vanguard (who are darn nasty and gave us a lot of deaths) to save Lady Grey, and battled Lt Sefu, only an elite boss but remarkably hard for being an EB; one teammate called him the "toughest FF defender ever". We had a wipe while infiltrating a Longbow base, but then recovered and defeated a Hero-level Captain Dietrich.
Later on Wednesday I played Idealist (38 fire/thermal controller, exemped down to 25) on a Sister Psyche TF. Our team mix was:
sonic/nrg blaster
fire/mental blaster
grav/sonic controller
ill/storm controller
fire/thermal controller (me)
katana/regen scrapper
spine/SR scrapper
kin/sonic defender
Despite having capped resists, a few of the lower level squishies suffered some stray deaths, and fighting Devastation in a train mission (set on an outdoor city map) resulted in a hugely chaotic melee as we aggroed multiple groups of Freaks. We had plenty of both support and DPS and completed the TF in 2hrs 3mins, getting me a Ghost Widow Chance for Psi damage recipe.
On Thursday I started off playing Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster), first answering a call to assist against the Kraken monster in Perez, which we defeated with a 5 player team; then accepting an invite to a Statesman TF. Our team mix was:
fire/dark scrapper
ice/ice blaster
dark/dark defender
fire/kin controller
emp/rad defender
bs/dark scrapper
AR/dev blaster (me)
stone/stone tanker
Our kin and emp weren't real great about keeping SB/fort up except on the tank (though I did manage to pester them into passing those buffs out during the fight against Mako and the other patron AVs), but we managed to do fine anyway. We had a few stray deaths against Shadow Spider AV for no really good reason, and in the fourth mission we had quite a messy fight against Dr Aeon.
The final mission was a bit weird because, while fighting both the Mako and Black Scorpion AVs at once, our tanker apparently got really ill in RL and had to afk for awhile, leaving Taunt on auto; pretty quickly the AVs turned towards the rest of the team, though. We managed to drop Mako and Black Scorpion with our tanker AFK, though it was a bit touch and go. Someone (not the original player of the tanker) stepped in to play the stone tanker while the tanker's original player continued to be sick, and with that person's help we managed to beat the other two patron AVs. After that, the tanker's original player managed to return to keyboard for the rest of the TF.
We killed the Arachnos flyer, then started on the towers. We had a little trouble when the Arachnos flyer very quickly respawned (I don't think it's based on when it is killed, but rather just respawns at fixed times) and aggroed onto us; rather than breaking off to attack the flyer, we chose to simply ignore it and suck up the missiles and troopers it sent against us, and after awhile the flyer seemed to get bored and wandered off (not sure why it does this, but I've seen it before). Our initial strategy was to drop the red tower and the green tower and try to shoot up Recluse (with yellow and blue tower still up), but we were unable to budge Recluse's HP total; I had Hit Rolls turned on in my combat spam, and even though I am highly accurate (due to IO sets and Targeting Drone), I only had a 12% chance to hit, so I think all of us were missing so much that we weren't able to outdamage his regen. After spending several minutes with no progress and some of the squishies suffering multiple deaths, we changed tactics and went back to taking down towers; after knocking down the yellow and blue towers, my hit chance went back up to 95% and we had no problem taking down Lord Recluse after that. Finished the STF in 3hrs 2mins, and I got a tasty Nucleolus SHO out of it.
Friday, I played Fire Emerald (19 fire/fire blaster) on an 8-player pickup team doing radio missions in Independence Port; one of the teammates complimented Fire Emerald on her costume and another complimented her on DPS, which was nice. We did have a wipe during a difficult CoT mission, but otherwise did quite well, getting Fire Emerald to level 20 and Stamina.
After that I played Spy Girl (25 MA/ninj stalker) on a 6-player LEGION/Sisterhood team in Sharkhead Isle, getting the Soul Taker badge from a mission and to level 26, where I took Crane Kick (continuing to see how long I can pass over Assassin's Strike).
After that I joined a hero-side team of Demolition Girls SG, at first playing Vathia (27 fire/ice blaster) as a sidekick for level 36 Nemesis missions, but when a 5th blaster joined the team, I decided to switch to Idealist (38 fire/thermal controller) for the sake of better archetype balance. Vathia got to level 28 and Aim, and Idealist got a compliment on her bio from a random passerby, which was nice. I also slotted a set of 6 Trap of the Hunter in Idealist's Fire Cages power; this halves the DPS from that power, which is unfortunate, but it lengthens the immobilize and gives set bonuses of +1.88% hp and +3.13% range DEF, which hopefully will make up for it.
On Saturday I played Mega (50 SS/elec brute) on a 5-player Sisterhood team on villain side, defeating a Silver Mantis AV, getting beat up by a pair of toxic tarantula bosses (Mega seemed pretty weak to toxic damage) and then beating a Black Scorpion AV.
Later I played Kashira as a lackey on a 4-player Sisterhood villain team. Kashira was originally a 15 ninj/ninj stalker, but she wasn't nearly as fun as Spy Girl (who is also a ninjitsu stalker), so I rerolled her to a dual blade/SR brute hoping the brute style would be more enjoyable for me. She was level 6 while on this team, which faced a level 23 Sea Witch EB. Sea Witch did mad END drain and knockback to our whole team, but we eventually managed to drop her, getting Kashira to level 8.
On Sunday, I started off playing Police Woman as an exemplar to an 8-player Sisterhood team running level 47 missions, then as that team broke up I played Spacegirl (50 mind/rad controller) and joined a bunch of friends to do a Lady Grey TF. Our team mix was:
mind/rad controller (me)
AR/dev blaster
spine/dark scrapper
fire/fire blaster
fire/kin controller
dark/dark defender
ice/storm controller
fortunata
Our scrapper acted as tank for us, which mostly worked though we had a few stray deaths from the general squishiness of our team. We mostly cleared the third mission, saving all the hostages (befitting our hero status!) rather than stealth failing it which seems to be more common these days. Hamidon in the fourth mission was fairly brutal for us, with lots of deaths; our TF leader was actually a former Hamidon raid leader (from way back in the day when Liberty actually had Hamidon raids) and so I made sure to say stuff like "Fire imps are not a hold!" and "Melee out of the goo!" and the like, which got some laughs. The last mission went very smoothly though and we finished in 2hrs 26mins. I got a fairly bleh Call of the Sandman (ACC/SLEEP/RCHG) recipe, but also made 2.75M influence and 32 Vanguard merits over the course of the LGTF.
After the LGTF finished I played Miss Molotov (38 fire/fire scrapper) on a Numina TF organized on Sisterhood channel. This TF had just barely started (maybe a couple minutes in) when I asked about joining, and they were nice enough to quit and restart the TF to include me and one other person. Our team ended up being:
earth/sonic controller
fire/thermal controller
dark/rad defender
cold/ice defender
elec/dev blaster
fire/fire scrapper (me)
We had sonic, thermal and fire shields, along with Shadow Fall, which capped Miss Molotov's resists and gave her decent defense to boost. In fact I was so over the smash/lethal resist cap that I turned off Tough to save END and was still capped on smash/lethal. This let me play especially scrapperly and I strove to channel my inner fire imp when attacking stuff. We easily finished in 1hr 25mins, getting Miss Molotov to level 39 and I got a Gift of the Ancients (DEF) recipe as reward.
Monday night I didn't play too much, but anticipating I13's arrival on Tuesday, I moved my alts around to positions favorable for getting the Day Job that I think best matches each alt's character concept. I also went ahead and purchased another 5 character slots in preparation for making some alts with the new powersets, and tried to reserve some names that I like. I'm certain I'll make an AR/pain corruptor, and might also make a pain mastermind; I am torn between making a broadsword/shield scrapper, or else making another kinetic defender to synergize with the hundreds of other shield scrappers and tankers that are going to be started. Will see what I end up with tonight!
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
<qr> I told you Hami makes me so sleepy....and I miss the rock 
xoxo
Thanks, NC Soft, for closing my favorite game ever without warning and with plenty of life still left in it, and thus relieving me of the burden of EVER wanting to buy, try or even hear about another game from your company. Will my decision make a dent, or persuade them in anyway, shape or form? Nope, obviously not. Don't care. NC Soft is dead to me. ~ PsyFox
12/3/2008
Issue 13 appeared today; a lot of people were having troubles logging in or even getting patches, but I seemed to be lucky enough to avoid these, and so I eagerly logged in and started madly making new alts, including:
* Blond Justice, a broadsword/shield scrapper with a costume patterned after the classical depiction of Justice, with blindfold, sword and weighing scales (or in my case, a shield with the "Scales" logo). I really need to get her the Roman toga and sandals too, to make the outfit perfect. Once I got out of the tutorial I found an immense number of shield-users running around Atlas Park, and almost immediately became dissatisfied with the round shield I'd picked (seemed like 90% of everyone was using a round shield too) and simply had to go to the tailor to change it to a heater shield. I found the new tailor in Pocket D, who is pretty well concealed in the balcony level of the tiki lounge, a location I hadn't even realized existed.
* Darla Doppler, a kinetic/sonic defender in shades of blue and red (to represent the blue shift and red shift of the Doppler Effect). She's actually a remake of an old character I had deleted to make space when we only had 12 character slots; but I figure a kinetic should be perfect for teaming with the huge numbers of shield users that are being created.
* Schadenfreude, an assault rifle/pain corruptor in black leather and jackboots, probably my sixth remake of the Schadenfreude character. Schadenfreude was already a 50 AR/traps, but once pain domination was a valid powerset, it simply seemed that Schadenfreude was too perfect a name to not be a pain user. I purchased and used a rename token to keep the AR/traps Schadenfreude around too though.
Justice is Blond!
I also logged in Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) and immediately was awarded the Force of Justice accolade, which apparently is a new badge awarded for having all the safeguard side mission badges. It doesn't seem to have any special power attached, though. I went ahead and solo'd the last mission in an open story arc I had, the Pilgrim's story arc to join Ouroboros, where you get exemped to 25 and rescue Atlas Park from Shivans, and consequently earned my first 2 Reward Merits.
I simply had to visit the tailor and start using some of the new police uniform costume pieces too. This is what I came up with:
Police Woman I13 uniform
I really, really like the new costume pieces, though of course I'm very biased since I've had a police themed character for 4 years. The shirt is perfect, with the badge and the shoulder patches, and the utility belt looks great. I totally wanted to draw that billy club and wield it on bad guys; and I did see a lot of new "police officer" themed characters being created, usually with mace/shield for the billy club and plastic riot shield look. I suspect we'll have an uptick of police brutality in the coming weeks.
A bit later I helped a small raid of 11 people take down the Kraken GM in Perez Park; over twice as many people answered the call to kill the Kraken as the last time I killed him, which was only a night or two ago, and it's because the Kraken was worth 2 Reward Merits. The raid went on to go after Lusca, but fighting the giant squid seemed like a lot of trouble and I excused myself to return to my rampant altitis.
Blond Justice (new bs/shield scrapper) ended up duoing with a friend who made a mace/shield tanker, running through Atlas Park missions until she got to level 5.
Darla Doppler (new sonic/kin defender) solo'd to 4 then joined an 8-player sewers team that ran about halfway from Atlas Park to King's Row, getting Darla to level 7. The team broke up when a friend of the team leader yelled at him for leveling too fast; the team leader was level 6 by that point and apparently had forgotten to enter a "level pact" with this supposed friend, who basically made him quit the team and reroll his character (in order to get into that level pact). It's just a few minutes effort, I guess, but ouch.
I also played Idolator (3 mind/fire dominator) for a little bit, soloing the Infected mission that Kalinda gives you; apparently that completed a story arc, as it awarded 1 Reward Merit, and got Idolator to level 5. I checked some of the merit vendors and there's pretty much nothing you can buy for 1 Reward Merit at level 5, not even a random inspiration. 
Oh well, I imagine they'll build up after awhile!
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
12/4/2008
I started the evening playing Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster), organizing a 4-player Sisterhood team on an Ouroboros flashback of Jim Temblor's story arc. Our team was made up of 3 blasters and an ill/emp controller, and included a couple of old friends who returned to the game after a long absence; I was glad to see some friends coming back to the game rather than leaving it. We were all exemped down to level 19 and rescued Fusionette twice, and beat elite boss level Kurse and Night Widow Nocturne, completing the story arc in 31 minutes; every team member earned 3 Reward Merits.
After that I played Blond Justice (7 broadsword/shield scrapper), first joining a 7-player pickup team doing a radio mission in King's Row, but various people quitting or AFKing made this team end up being 3 players (two shield tankers and me, a shield scrapper) actually in the mission fighting mobs and 2 players AFK or lost outside the mission. We were able to finish this mission despite this, but after one mission I politely excused myself and went to duo with a friend (also playing a shield tanker), doing a couple more radio missions, an Atlas safeguard, and then wandering over to the Hollows to complete David Wincott's story arc, which earned me 2 Reward Merits.
While training with Ms Liberty, Atlas Park was hit by a huge zombie invasion, and I hacked zombies for great justice. The invasion seemed to last quite awhile and Blond Justice got all 4 zombie badges in this one invasion. After that, I did a level 10 Frostfire mission with a team of 2 scrappers, 2 tankers and 1 stormy defender. Our stormy warned us she didn't have any heals, but none of us really minded, and she seemed pretty good about using stormy debuffs to me. We beat Frostfire pretty quickly and Blond Justice got to level 10. She took Parry at level 8, which has had terrific synergy with the shield +DEF so far, and Swift at level 10.
I'm really pleased with how Blond Justice's look turned out, and I got three compliments on her costume over the course of the night (ranging from an Internet stalkerific "u r sexy" to a more flattering "THAT IS AWESOME! Your costume is perfect!"). I also spent some time writing a background story for her, as a crusading attorney that got attacked and blinded just before a big case against a Family boss, consequently activating her mutant ability; but I'm not totally happy with the story yet (it's workable but lacks panache) so I may do a rewrite at some point.
I finished the night playing my new version of Schadenfreude (2 AR/pain corruptor), doing some of Kalinda's missions with a couple friends and getting to level 4. All three of us were pain corruptors or masterminds, which was an interesting change of pace from City of Shields on the hero side. I'm not totally sold on pain domination yet, because the pain powers don't really seem to help much so far (okay, so we can heal...great..) but I guess at this level I only had Web Grenade and maybe Caltrops from traps, so I haven't seen much of it yet.
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
12/5/2008
I started the evening working on an I13 respec for Police Woman (50 AR/dev). My last respec, late in I12, had heavily slanted me towards PvP (well, as much as an AR/dev really can be), but most hardcore PvPers seem to have rejected I13 and I'm interested in focusing on running PvE content for merits, so my I13 respec drops PvP specific stuff like Phase Shift, Force of Nature and Acrobatics. In return I'm adding back Buckshot (a decent AoE, but I dropped it last respec due to being too short range for PvP) and all 4 Leadership pool powers (I just love these but I had to drop them to get Phase Shift). I also love the idea of the Surveillance power (it seems really appropriate for a gun girl and I like the -RES debuff), so I decided to drop Force Mastery entirely in order to take Surveillance in the Munitions Mastery pool.
Here is what I ended up with. Sorry for the homebrew format, but I don't have an I13-compliant Mids planner at the moment.
1. Burst(6): 4 Devastation (+3% dmg, +2.25% hp), 1 Centriole, 1 Achilles Heel (chance for -res)
1. Web Grenade(5): 5 Gravitational Anchor (+10% rchg, +2.5% fcRes)
1. Sprint(+2): 3 Microfilament
1. Prestige Sprint Surge: 1 Celerity (stealth)
2. Slug(6): 5 Apocalypse (+4% dmg, +10% rchg, +3% hp), 1 Thunderstrike (acc/dmg/rchg)
4. Caltrops(1): 1 Rchg
6. Aid Other(5): 1 IntRdx, 4 Doctored Wounds (+1.26% fcRes)
8. Buckshot(6): 4 Positron's Blast (+1.58% fcRes), 1 Centriole, 1 Range
10. Targeting Drone(6): 5 Gaussian's Synch FC (+2.5% dmg, +1.88% hp, +5% move), 1 Rectified Reticle (+per)
12. Combat Jumping(1): 1 LotGambler (+7.5% rchg)
14. Aid Self(6): 1 IntRdx, 5 Doctored Wounds (+1.26% fcRes, +5% rchg)
16. Swift(1): 1 Run
18. Hurdle(2): 2 Jump
20. Stamina(5): 5 Performance Shifter (+5% move, +1.88% hp, +2.5% dmg chance for END)
22. Assault(1): 1 EndRdx
24. Tactics(6): 6 Gaussians (+2.5% dmg, +1.88% hp, +5% move, +2.5% rngDEF)
26. M30 Grenade(6): 5 Positron's Blast (+1.58% fcRes, +6.25% rchg), 1 Rchg
28. Cloaking Device(1): 1 LotGambler (+7.5% rchg)
30. Beanbag(6): 6 Stupefy (+1.88% hp, +6.25% rchg, +3.13% rngDEF)
32. Full Auto(6): 5 Ragnarok (+10% rchg, +2.5% fcRes), 1 Positron's Blast (chance for nrg dmg)
35. Taser(5): 5 Absolute Amazement (+10% rchg)
38. Vengeance(1): 1 LotGambler (+7.5% rchg)
41. Body Armor(3): 3 Titanium Coating (+1.5% hp)
44. Surveillance(2): 2 Undermined Defenses (+2% dmg)
47. Maneuvers(1): 1 LotGambler (+7.5% rchg)
49. Resuscitate(1): 1 IntRdx
---
91 slots of 91
pools: medicine, leaping, fitness, leadership
This puts my max HP to the blaster cap (including my accolades), my global damage to +16.5% (with Assault, +26.5%) and my global recharge to +87.5%. I tried to work some ranged defense bonuses in, too, but so far they haven't felt like they've helped much. On the other hand I dropped both Acrobatics and an extra slot in Combat Jumping that I previously had a KB protection IO in, and I really noticed getting knocked back a lot. I'm considering shaving 1 slot off of Tactics and 1 slot off of Beanbag, losing me about 5.63% DEF to add back a KB protection IO to Combat Jumping and a sixth slot to Aid Other (allowing 5 Doctored Wounds for another +5% rchg), though this would require me to burn another respec, so not sure whether it's worth it.
I'm also torn as to whether to replace the Range IO in Buckshot with a Positron's Blast (chance for energy), which would give me another +6.25% global recharge and some extra damage (the power is already at the soft cap for damage with the other IOs). More recharge and damage is great, but Buckshot's unenhanced range 40 is very short and the extra range IO feels like it helps a lot too.
I spent some time shopping/crafting some in Wentworth's to fill empty slots in my new respec. Prices on rare salvage have plummeted, presumably due to I13 brainstorms allowing people to convert useless base salvage into cool invention salvage, so it was a good time to be crafting.
After finishing with that, I formed a small team of friends (an ill/emp controller, an ice/storm controller, and me, an AR/dev blaster) to do a flashback of the "Rise of the Vampyri" story arc. This exemped us to level 34 and I set enemies buffed for the sake of a badge. This was a pretty reasonable story arc, with 7 door missions and 3 quick hunts, culminating in defeating the Progenitor Vampire (who was just a boss) and we finished in 1hr 7mins, scoring us each 7 reward merits; no extra merits were awarded for the challenge setting, but we did get the Valiant badge for it. I'm sure there are more efficient ways to rack up reward merits, but I've been meaning to work on flashback badges and story arc souvenirs anyway, so this works out well for me.
After that I briefly solo'd my lowbie brute Kashira (8 db/SR brute) to level 9 and wrote a revised, more action-packed background story for Blond Justice (10 broadsword/shield scrapper) to replace the rather bland one I wrote the day before. (Forgot to screen shot it, I'll have to post a screen shot of it later.)
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
12/8/2008
Friday night, someone was calling all heroes sissies on LBx for not being willing to come fight in Recluse's Victory, so I decided to bring Police Woman (50 AR/dev) into Recluse's Victory. Ironically, I had just respec'd out all my PvP-focused powers (doh!) but I decided to give it a try anyway. I found the villain in question, a fire/dark corruptor (a powerset you would NEVER have seen in RV in I12) hanging out under the statue of Atlas in RV and attacked him, swiftly defeating him; he complained I used a heavy, a complaint I would normally ignore (since PvP is Not Fair in many ways) but for the sake of getting a better feel for I13 PvP, I sent my heavy away and waited around for him to attack me. We had a series of "fight club" style 1v1 fights. I beat his fire/dark corruptor again (my DPS simply exceeded his ability to debuff me), then he switched to a fire/storm corruptor and we had a series of fights, of which I think I won 4 and he won 3; the times I won, I generally shut down his hurricane/snowstorm with a Beanbag stun and blasted him out. The times he won, his Lightning Storm would generally nail me for damage, a knockback and an END drain (he apparently had it slotted for ENDMOD; the stormy knockback made me really regret respecing Acrobatics and a KB protection IO out of my build) and I'd quickly be out of END and hurting. Finally he switched to an nrg/will brute, who beat me 2 times and I killed him 0 times; the combination of his resists and regen was too much for me to overcome. Even when I shot him up for 2 minutes nonstop while he stood around talking in broadcast, I couldn't seem to kill him.
Anyway, it was an interesting experience and I13 PvP isn't as awful as everyone makes it out to be; though a big part of this, I'm sure, is that AR/dev and all three of the villain builds I fought would've been considered "LOLPVP" in I12, so the "real PvPers" probably would not regard this as a valid test. I hadn't tried out I13 PvP before (either live or on test) and a couple things that stood out to me: I know most powers are supposed to be different in PvP than in PvE, but it didn't feel that different to me. If anything, my AR blasts felt stronger than they were before (probably because smash/lethal resist is so heavily nerfed in PvP now). On the other hand, I had much more resist than I'm used to; although I do have Body Armor (from Munitions Mastery), this is really a trivial amount of resist in PvE, but in PvP I had a +40% overall resist buff from just being in a PvP zone. With PvP diminishing returns, this ended up being something like a 37% resist to all, which made me less squishy than I'm used to. Diminishing returns is very sharp at that point, though; once I used the Archmage accolade when I was getting pounded and it only added another +7% resist on top of that. I also liked how Surveillance's -RES debuff was working for me, it seemed to really help. Overall I had a good time; though I'll caveat that by saying that the I13 PvP changes were almost 100% beneficial for my character, an AR/dev blaster with no travel powers or epic shield (so I have more damage, face less smash/lethal resists, gain more resist to everyone, and can't be movement suppressed), so I'm sure I'm biased.
After that I played Idealist (38 fire/thermal controller) on a 5 player Demolition Girls SG team, running mostly Nemesis and Crey missions and getting Idealist to level 39 and gaining the Doctor's Ally badge (no merits; apparently you get 1 merit if you flashback it, but not if you run it the regular way). I also deliberately dropped Buck Salinger's last mission (Save Salamanca) to see what would happen, and I got 6 merits for completing his story arc.
I played the newest version of Schadenfreude (3 AR/pain corruptor) over the weekend. I found soloing with her to be painfully slow (though I guess I shouldn't be surprised, since this is an empath analog), and I was very tempted to reroll her as a mercenary/pain MM (but decided against it after comparing corruptor pain numbers to mastermind pain numbers on RedTomax). I did manage to solo my way through Kalinda's story arc (earning 1 merit after the Defeat All Infected mission) and get to level 5. I duo'd with a brute on Saturday through my Mongoose story arc, gaining another 1 merit and getting to level 8, picking up Share Pain at 6 and Swift at 8. I took Share Pain (aka Absorb Pain) over Soothe (aka Heal Other), but Share Pain is a little tricky to use; it heals an ally and buffs me (+25 DMG, the same as a small red inspiration), but damages me and makes me immune to heals for a few seconds, and frequently if my teammate was hurt enough for me to want to heal, it would be a dangerous situation for me to hurt myself and render myself unhealable. On Sunday night I joined a SisterhoodAndFriends person as a lackey on a 6 player level 15 pickup team doing the Hit List missions in Port Oakes. We had no buffs, but myself and a pain MM were basically aura-rocking to keep the team healed, and that worked well for the first mission; but the pain MM and our brute left after that, and so the second mission was a lot more bumpy. I found it difficult to keep everyone alive with just healing aura and share pain against +2 Wyvern, and we had 2 wipes before we switched from rushing into mobs to a more careful approach of pulling groups to us, which let us complete the mission. Schadenfreude did end up getting to level 10 though, and that experience motivated me to get Soothe at 10 to improve my teaming capability.
I also played my shield hero, Blond Justice (10 broadsword/shield scrapper) quite a lot over the weekend, forming a pickup team on Saturday to tackle my Defeat Frostfire mission, which got me to level 11. I had fun on the ice slide jousting Outcasts with broadsword attacks.
Blond Justice on Ice!
After Frostfire, I switched to Fire Emerald (21 fire/fire blaster) to join a Sister Psyche TF forming on LBx channel. The team mix was:
MA/shield scrapper
peacebringer
fire/fire blaster (me)
dark/dark defender
rad/psy defender
nrg/nrg blaster
This team was pretty good, though without a proper tank I found I caught a fair bit of aggro from my fire AoEs. The temptation to jump into crowds of Freakshow and Fire Sword Circle was too much for me to resist sometimes, which definitely got me killed a few times; I particularly remember overaggroing against the Freak boss Devastation. Nevertheless, it was fun and we completed the TF in 2hrs 33mins, gaining 40 merits and getting Fire Emerald to 24; I took Aim at 22 and haven't decided what her 24 power will be.
Fire Emerald vs Clamor
Enough people had made positive comments about Blond Justice's costume and concept that I was motivated to enter her in the PERC Mr/Ms Paragon/Rogue Isles Costume Contest. This seemed a hugely popular event, with many, many people hanging out in Pocket D to be judged, many of whom had some really nice costumes. The way it worked it seemed like the hostess would take small groups of heroes into the Vault area to be judged by the 3 judges in stages. Results weren't announced at the event, which was a bit anticlimactic, but apparently they need time to tally up scores and they'll eventually get posted on the forum.
Blond Justice (and some others) at the PERC costume contest
On Sunday, Blond duo'd through the Spelunker mission with a friend who also played a broadsword/shield scrapper, then both of them joined a mid-sized Positron TF that formed on LBx. Our team mix was:
spine/regen scrapper
kin/psy defender
2 broadsword/shield scrappers (including me)
peacebringer
This was a decent team. The kin was especially good; he had SB at 12 and actually kept buffing it on all of us (a huge help for our scrapper heavy team) and when he noticed most of us were being wrecked by the knockdown from Ruin Mages' earthquakes (I think I was the only one with a status protection power at this level, and mine was clicky and not perma yet), he made a point of taking ID at 14 to buff that as well. We had 2 wipeouts on the Defeat Rollister mission due to these heinous Ruin Mages (also the peacebringer was afk for this whole mission which didn't help), but once we got past that, everything else went pretty smoothly. We sort-of stealthed a few missions; no one actually had stealth/TP, but all of us scrappers were overconfident enough to try running past a whole mission full of mobs to reach the final room of a mission and trust that we'd survive, then use veteran team TP (if we had it) and this actually worked more often than you might expect. Parry stacked with shield +DEF toggles made me really hard to hit, and eating a purple inspiration could put me to god-mode levels of defense, which made me feel very overconfident. Here I am rushing the elite boss Cortex and a few of his friends on my own:
Blond Justice vs Cortex
My team showed up a little later to help mop up. We finished Positron in 2hrs 35mins, a pretty respectable time. I gained 55 merits from this, the Gearsmasher badge, and Blond Justice hit level 16, taking Active Defense (mez protect) at 12, Hurdle at 14 and Against All Odds at 16 (which sounds like a cool +DMG power, but I haven't tried it much yet).
I spent some time playing Mayday (34 fortunata) on a 3-player friends team that ran through the Midnight Club story arc, unlocking Cimerora, earning 2 reward merits and getting Mayday to 35; I got another 1 reward merit simply for talking to Imperious after that. I felt Mayday was lacking in AoE attacks, so I took Psychic Scream at level 35. We started working on Sister Airlia's missions in Cimerora, rescuing Ghost Widow at one point, and she became an awesome AV-level pet; but rescuing her also triggered massive Longbow ambushes, including an elite boss and several bosses.
Finally, I also played Idolator (5 mind/fire dominator) on a 4-player Sisterhood team that ran through Kalinda's story arc (gaining 1 reward merit) and Mongoose's story arc (another 1 reward merit) and got Idolator to level 8. I took Swift at 6 and haven't decided on a power yet for level 8. And although I like the name Idolator (I gave her a funny origin story relating to worshipping a golden calf), the team leader said "I must've tried to invite Isolator 4 times before I got your name right". Heheh.
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
12/10/2008
I got online late on Monday night and joined a Citadel TF as Virtual Girl (25 rad/sonic defender). Our team mix was:
sonic/mental blaster
emp/dark defender
fire/ice tanker
fire/nrg blaster (disconnected first mission, never returned)
rad/sonic defender (me)
FF/rad defender
emp/psy defender
spines/fire scrapper
This was a pretty good team with lots of buffs and we had no serious problems, except that all the identical underground Council maps kind of blurred together after awhile (Citadel is really pretty monotonous). We finished the TF in 2hrs 27mins, getting Virtual Girl to 27 (I took Assault as my level 26 power for some extra +DMG to the team) and 30 reward merits. I've decided to start calculating merits per hour for things that are timed; this was 12.24 MPH. The team leader wanted to try some trick where each person quits the TF one at a time to get extra merits, but it didn't seem to work and the TF ended normally.
On Tuesday night I started off playing April Fool (50 thug/TA MM), duoing Ouroboros flashbacks with a kin corruptor who was working on flashback badges and merits. We did Operative Grillo's Crey story arc each time; this was three short missions, each of which could be stealthed. The kin had stealth and I did not, so I would either have to wait for him to get to the end and either complete the objective or TP me (safer but it didn't feel like I was helping much), or else I'd have to rush past the mobs as best as I could without stealth (risky but then I could help in the last fight). We did one run with No Travel Powers and No Enhancements in 16 minutes, one run with AT Powers Only in 10 minutes, and finally one run with no special settings, but the kin wanted to try having me solo the missions while he stayed by the contact to quickly get the next mission, to see if that could speed up the time. I tried loading up on purple inspirations for ghetto stealth but managed to get clobbered by mobs running to the end of the first mission, forcing me to hospital and run back (after which the corruptor decided he'd better help after all), which hurt our time somewhat but we still finished in 15 minutes. We got 1 reward merit for each run, so a total of 3 reward merits in 41 minutes (4.39 MPH).
We agreed that SFs seemed to be better MPH, and I suggested the level 44-50 villain respec could be good, so we ended up doing that with a team of
rad/kin corr
thug/TA MM (me)
robo/FF MM
zombie/dark MM
night widow
I was a little worried that the lack of a brute would be a problem against the Thorn Tree, but actually our debuffs/buffs seemed to be enough to handle the Tree and we had no problems knocking it out, finishing in 24 minutes and gaining 15 reward merits (37.5 MPH).
A bit later I joined another respec, this time the 34-43 hero respec as Mercy Beaucoup (35 emp/ice defender). Our team was
AR/dev blaster
emp/ice defender
kin/psy defender
shield/mace tanker
emp/nrg defender
MA/SR scrapper
ice/db tanker
bs/SR scrapper
This team was extremely good, with a strong mix of offense and support. I tried to bribe the other emp with Fort, CM and an occasional AB into buffing the same things on me, and occasionally was rewarded. Most of our team had Fort and SB for the whole thing and we tore through Freaks like they were tissue paper, leaving us with a lot of idle time guarding the reactor in between spawns. We didn't stealth any of the missions, instead clearing everything in sight for the exp (I think everyone on the team was in the level range to get exp for these) and consequently finished in 1hr 23mins for 25 merits (18.1 MPH), and getting Mercy to level 36, where I put one extra slot into each of Ice Storm, Hasten and Adrenaline Boost.
After that, I randomly got invited to a Katie TF, but when we filled up to 8 players I noticed we had 3 tankers, 3 empaths, a scrapper and a peacebringer as our team, which seemed very poorly balanced to me. I asked if we really thought this team could beat the Mary AVs, and the leader (who was level 30, the min level for the TF) was all like, sure, no problem! Then the leader asked if anyone could actually start the TF and it turned out no one could. This gave me a bad enough feeling about this team that I excused myself on the grounds that a third empath was excessively redundant.
After that I solo'd Spy Girl (25 MA/ninj stalker) on villain side a bit, wrapping up a story arc for 1 merit and beginning another, before calling it a night.
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
12/12/2008
On Wednesday night I started off playing Mayday (35 fortunata) on an 8 player Sisterhood/LEGION team doing Nemesis and shadow shard (via Technician Naylor) missions, and a Brickstown mayhem. Our team was way over the defense cap due to stacking VEAT maneuvers and a FF mastermind, making all our missions pretty easy (barring an occasional lucky hit from the mobs); I think I got to around 110% defense at one point.
After that I played Idolator (8 mind/fire dominator) for a little bit, inviting a pickup pain corruptor to duo with me; but in the one mission we did, it was pretty obvious he was lagging behind and AFK a lot letting me do most of the work. So after the first mission I excused myself and switched characters to Schadenfreude (10 AR/pain corruptor), soloing my way to level 11.
Thursday night, I started off playing Primadonna (31 sonic/kin corruptor), mainly because she had a big pool of "patrol" exp banked, and accepted an invite to a 6 player pickup team. This started off kinda poorly because the leader set a "Talk to Contact" mission as the team goal (not completable by anyone but the leader), and then was unable to change the mission for quite awhile due to some bug involving team members being in different zones and didn't seem willing to just go do the mission himself. The team leader was semi-AFK for awhile, apparently arguing IRL with his spouse. One team member quit the team while we were waiting around and I was thinking about following suit, when the team leader finally got his act together, set a door mission as a new objective, and started recruiting to fill up the team. At that point the team really started working well, completing several missions and getting Primadonna to level 32 (and Dreadful Wail, the sonic nova) before the team leader finally succumbed to wife aggro and had to log; the team did one more mission out of inertia, then broke up.
After that I solo'd a little as Kashira (9 db/SR brute), doing a few missions in Port Oakes that got her to level 10, where I took Swift in preparation for Stamina.
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
12/16/2008
Last Friday I played Spy girl (26 MA/ninj stalker) on a Sharkhead SF. Our team mix was:
crab spider
robo/pain MM
fortunata widow
ice/ice dom
MA/ninj stalker (me)
dark/shield brute
rad/kin corruptor
nrg/kin corruptor
It was kind of cool that we had one of every villain AT on this SF (except 2 corruptors, but no one minds having more corruptors), giving us sort-of a pentad feel. Well, septad plus one. Anyhow, during the first mission I think we tried to get a little too tricky and after we freed Barracuda, someone tried to use veteran team TP to move us all to the final mission objective; this teleported all the players but left Barracuda behind, resulting in Barracuda getting killed by ambushes and causing us to fail the mission. This didn't fail the SF; the contact instead just made us do-over the first mission, and this time we cleared a path between Barracuda and the mission objective in advance, before freeing her. This worked fine.
Most of the other missions went pretty well. I got to stealth the Defeat Shockstorm mission, which is actually kind of tricky because it seems like ambushes are triggered when you cross certain rooms in the mission, and these ambushes completely ignore stealth. Stealthing in, I triggered an ambush and quickly dragged it back to the rest of my team, who swiftly disposed of them. Returning to stealth in further, though, the second ambush jumped me and killed me before I could get away; then continued on to attack my team. The team killing off the second ambush was enough to level up Spy Girl -- self-rezzing me, which let me stealth the rest of the way to Shockstorm! That was admittedly really, really lucky. I used team TP to get everyone else there and we made short work of the boss.
The rest of the SF went smoothly and we finished in 1hr 12mins, getting Spy Girl to level 28 and earning 25 reward merits (20.83 MPH).
After that I joined a level 44-50 villain respec organized on Sisterhood channel; I was asked to bring a brute, so I played Mega (50 SS/elec brute). Our team mix was:
necro/dark MM
crab spider
rad/rad corruptor
SS/elec brute (me)
ice/kin corruptor
Between rad and kin buffs and Mega's rage and fury, I actually hit the damage cap (real numbers showed me +750%, though for some reason I always thought it was 800%) while fighting in the door mission before the main event, which got me a "Nice KO!" from someone who noticed me hitting Malta with a 1023pt Knockout Blow. The whole trial went pretty smoothly and we finished in 25 minutes, earning 15 reward merits (36.0 MPH).
After that I spent some time playing Idealist (39 fire/thermal controller); I finished off soloing the very, very grey (level 14ish) Bonefire story arc, which earned me 7 reward merits, then joined a 7-player Demolition Girls SG team running door missions, and we got to beat an Ice Mistral AV in a safeguard mission. This got Idealist to level 40, and I spent some time crafting and slotting more set IOs; I put a 6th Thunderstrike in Ring of Fire (for a set bonus of +2.5% range DEF), a 4th Thunderstrike in Char (for +7% global ACC), and a 6th Stupefy in Flashfires (for +3.13% range DEF).
On Saturday I played Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) on a Katie Hannon TF organized on LBx. Our team mix was 5 blasters, 2 scrappers and 1 kinetics controller. This was a very ill-fated endeavour; it's tough to use kinetics heals against the stormy witches, so I found myself using Aid Other to heal the other players a lot, and I saw another blaster doing the same. The lightning storms and hurricanes made me really regret dropping knockback protection from my build, and we had a lot of deaths, which made me regret not having Vengeance at level 34; seriously thinking about using the upcoming free respec as soon as I get it. We had a semi-wipeout against Mary 7, after which one of our scrappers bailed from the team, then we had a real wipeout against Mary 9 and two wipeouts against Mary 10. We had a couple runs back from the hospital after which we tried to pull and pick apart small groups of witches from Mary 10's group, which eventually let us succeed. I think this team simply did not have enough support characters, and with no tanker to keep aggro off the squishies, this resulted in lots of death. Once we got past the first mission, everything else was pretty straightforward (aside from our Katie rescuer losing track of her once before getting her back on course) and we finished the KTF in 51 minutes, earning 7 merits (8.24 MPH). I also picked up a Mu Vestment as a drop somewhere along the way.
Later on Saturday I played Idealist on a small team Positron TF. Our team makeup was:
bs/shield scrapper
2 fire/thermal controllers (including me)
elec/elec blaster
This seemed a decently balanced team, though none of us had stealth ability which slowed us down a bit. The other fire/thermal controller seemed very heal-focused (he only had Char from Fire Control, the rest of his powers were thermal) so I tried to focus on controlling and buffing, with only an occasional heal to help. We got through most of the Positron TF without too much trouble, but about 2/3rds of the way through, our blaster had to leave. Unfortunately the blaster was easily doing as much DPS as the rest of our team, and the three of us remaining were faced with slogging through 4 Defeat All missions in a row at the tail end of the TF. Our DPS was sadly very low; our scrapper only had 2 real attacks (Hack and Parry) and /thermal doesn't get any +dmg or -res at level 15 so the other controller and I were contributing pretty minimal DPS (I guess maybe I was doing marginally more since I also had Ring of Fire). We all started heavily using veteran attack powers (Sands of Mu etc) and temp powers (I broke out the Iron Blade temp power from a Croatoa arc); it was still something of a slow grind, and it ended up taking us 4hrs 15mins to complete the TF, earning 55 merits (12.94 MPH).
After that the other two Posi TFers wanted to go straight into a Synapse TF, and I figured, what the heck, so I asked to join also. Eager to do some actual damage and get some exp for a TF, I switched to Blond Justice (16 broadsword/shield scrapper) and joined the team, which seemed to be comprised of mostly LBx personalities. Our team makeup was:
shield/nrg tanker
ill/thermal controller
fire/nrg blaster
fire/thermal controller
2 broadsword/shield scrappers (including me)
dark/SR scrapper
This team had high DPS and good support and as a result went much faster. The only problem we seemed to have was running out of END (since most of us were pre-stamina). We beat up Babbage with a little bit of outside help, and finished the whole TF in 2hrs 30mins, earning 45 merits for the TF and 2 merits for Babbage (18.8 MPH). Unfortunately, the two characters that just did Positron TF immediately before Synapse TF only got half merits for the TF, apparently due to diminishing returns; I kind of think this is a bug, and I've heard of it happening to people before. Luckily for me I had switched alts, though, as Blond Justice got the full merit award, along with hitting level 20; I picked up Whirling Sword at 18 for some AoE damage and Stamina at 20.
After that Blond Justice solo'd Serge's mission to get a second costume slot, and worked on some door missions to improve her contacts, which got her the Plague Stopper badge and level 21.
Sunday I played Darla Doppler (7 kin/sonic defender) with a 5-player Sisterhood team doing King's Row radio missions, which got her to level 10; I picked up Combat Jumping at 8 and Swift at 10.
Over the weekend I played Schadenfreude (11 AR/pain corruptor) some, briefly joining a team for half a mission before having to run to do errands, then later on soloing Angelo Vendetti's story arc against the Council Vampire. I managed to solo the elite boss vampire at the end, earning 2 merits for completing the story arc and getting to level 12. On Monday the Winter event started and Schadenfreude did the Baby New Year mission 4 times, getting all 4 of the rewards, getting the Cold Warrior badge, and hitting level 14, training in Hurdle.
With winter officially starting on CoH, I broke out a holiday-themed character I made last year, Mary Christmas (15 ice/rad controller on Triumph server); I sidekicked to a scrapper friend I had on Triumph, duoing through some Talos radio missions and a couple Croatoa missions, getting Mary to level 19 (picking Swift at 16 and Hurdle at 18).
I briefly brought on Virtual Girl (28 rad/sonic defender) to help a 5-player Sisterhood team take down Jack in Irons, which earned me 2 merits.
Finally, I was struck with altitis and created a newbie dark/psy defender, Sheila Shadow (though I'm not 100% sure I like this name), with costume patterned after a cartoon character that I hope is obscure enough nobody will have a problem with it. Got into Galaxy City just in time to see some LBXers taking down a Winter Lord; I took a pot shot at it with a psy blast just before it died, which didn't get me the badge, but it did get me a whopping 1 exp, 1 infl, and 2 reward merits. I guess even scratching a giant monster with any attack is enough to collect 2 merits. A level 3 scrapper friend wanted to run Baby New Year missions for candy canes, so I ran over to Pocket D and before long we had a 5 player team of mostly Sisterhood types, beating up low level snowmen and Snaptooth. Three Baby New Year missions got Sheila to level 7 before I had to call it a night.
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
12/17/2008
I spent most of last night running Baby New Year missions, mostly on Sisterhood and friends teams, for various alts. Idolator (9 mind/fire dominator) has a demonic looking costume, so I simply had to get her the evil halo. After running 5 Baby New Year missions and taking the 5 Candy Canes reward each time, I went to the candy cane vendor and bought the "Naughty" halo for 25 Candy Canes. But when I went to a tailor to try it out, I couldn't find it! Despite the vendor telling me a new costume piece was unlocked, it seems you need to have completed the "aura" mission (not available until level 30) before you can actually use the halo costume pieces, which was rather disappointing. Nevertheless, the BNY missions on a large team were really good exp, and Idolator's 5 runs got her to level 16 (picking up Fire Blast at 10, Hover at 12, Fly at 14, and Mass Hypnosis at 16).
After sort-of unlocking the naughty halo for Idolator, I also ran a couple BNY missions with Spy Girl (28 MA/ninj stalker) and Thunder Girl (50 will/SS tanker), unlocking the Santa boots and gloves pieces for them both and getting Spy Girl to level 29.
After that team broke up, I ended up joining a Citadel TF organized on LBx channel with Idealist (40 fire/thermal controller). Our team mix was:
dark/sonic defender
ill/rad controller
fire/thermal controller (me)
ill/emp controller (disconnected mission 2, never returned)
2 fire/mental blasters
katana/will scrapper
psy/mental blaster
Although someone commented on the lack of a tanker, we seemed just fine without one, with a good mix of DPS and support. Citadel is kind of a boring TF since all the maps and enemies look pretty much the same, but several team members had stealth powers which let us speed through many of the missions. We finished the TF in 1hr 57mins, flawlessly with 0 deaths, and gained 30 merits (15.38 MPH). I picked up a Soul Trapped Gem salvage along the way, and the Citadel badge was enough to give Idealist the Task Force Commander accolade (+5% max HP), which was really nice.
I did a little IO shopping after that, crafting and slotting 4 Undermined Defenses into Idealist's Melt Armor power, which gives her set bonuses of +2% global damage, +1.8% max END and +7% global accuracy. I then solo'd her (very grey) level 24 Sky Raider Secret story arc, gaining 5 more merits, and killed some Nemesis to complete Carson's level 40 costume slot mission, in anticipation of the next day's free costume token awards.
Personal merit analysis since I13
Since I'm recording my merit gains and TF times, I thought I'd keep a running total of the average merits per hour for things I do. While the numbers I quote here are very precise, this isn't highly scientific because of my low sample size. I'm also ignoring lots of factors like team size, archetype balance, mission difficulty level, and so on. And finally I can calculate story arcs I do via flashback (since it gives me a timer) but not story arcs that I just normally complete through regular play, or giant monsters that I help kill, since neither of those has a good way to measure their time.
With all those caveats, this is how I've done so far in I13!
3rd villain respec: 36.75 MPH average (2 runs)
Sharkhead SF: 20.83 MPH (1 run)
Synapse TF: 18.8 MPH (1 run)
2nd hero respec: 18.1 MPH (1 run)
Positron TF: 17.12 MPH average (2 runs)
Sister Psyche TF: 15.69 MPH (1 run)
Citadel TF: 13.81 MPH average (2 runs)
Katie TF: 8.24 MPH (1 run)
Rise of the Vampyri arc: 6.27 MPH (1 run)
Jim Temblor arc: 5.81 MPH (1 run)
Operative Grillo arc: 4.39 MPH (3 runs)
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
12/18/2008
Started off last night playing Mercy Beaucoup (36 emp/ice defender) as an SK on an Imperious TF. Our team mix was:
spine/dark scrapper
ill/kin controller
fire/elec blaster
necro/dark MM
inv/SS tanker
emp/ice defender (me)
MA/regen scrapper
ice/ice blsater
This was a fairly difficult team to keep alive. Both scrappers and the fire blaster were hyperaggressive players who happily would run ahead of our tanker to attack groups of Romans before anyone else, or even different groups of enemies than the rest of the team, and the controller wanted to run unSK'd at a very squishy level 45. More than once, our team was split up into three separate fights. As the empath, this all kept me really hopping, and the Romans hit really hard, so we had a fair amount of death. I was tethered to the tanker via SK and resolved not to feel guilty about anyone who purposely got themselves killed due to not following the tanker or attacking new spawns out of my line-of-sight. I did try to keep even our most suicidal teammates alive as best as I could though; speed boost from the controller let me keep Fortitude on both blasters and both scrappers (our tanker didn't really need it to stay alive, except very occasionally against the negative energy users) which I think helped both keep them alive and keep them overconfident. Cascading DEF debuffs from Roman alpha strikes could still occasionally kill them through Fortitude, though. Despite the stray deaths, we never had an actual wipeout and the hyperaggressivity actually helped speed the TF along, causing us to finish the TF in a very respectable 1hr 16mins, earning 25 merits (19.74 MPH) and getting Mercy to level 38 (where I took Stealth; I was tempted to take Resurrect because I felt bad about all the deaths, but the empathy Resurrect is underwhelming compared to other rez powers). I carelessly commented to the fire blaster (a friend) that it was unusual to be on a team where she wasn't the most suicidal team member, which prompted the regen scrapper to announce "I'll die right now to prove I'm the most suicidal!" ... and he immediately rushed into a spawn and suicided against Romans. As h34l0r for the team I should probably be mad that they were making me look bad, but I actually found it pretty funny; scrappers can be like that.
After the ITF I did a few Baby New Year missions with a 6-player Sisterhood team; at first I played Yuki-Onna (50 ice/cold corruptor) exemp'd down to 44. Our tank was SK'd up to 39 and immediately died facing the first group of +6 Winter minions, causing an instant team wipe; our team ended up switching alts around a bit to make it work better. I switched to Schadenfreude (14 AR/pain corruptor) and lackeyed up to 43 to provide some extra healing, and reshuffling alts got our tank up to 43 as well, at which point the mission was a lot more doable. Did Baby New Year twice, getting Schadenfreude to 16 (where I took Conduit of Pain, the pain rez; haven't used it yet but it sounds fun). Oddly I didn't get any candy canes when I selected the "5 Candy Cane" reward at the end of the mission; someone told me this happens sometimes with villains, but I was able to get candy canes with my dominator earlier on, so I'm not sure what really causes that bug.
Later that night I played Blond Justice (21 broadsword/shield scrapper) for a bit, finishing off the grey Bonefire story arc and earning 7 merits, then accepting an invite to an 8 player pickup team. This was admittedly not a very good team, mostly scrappers and blaster who liked to charge into spawns and only one support person (a SB-less kinetic). We had a lot of deaths and one near-team-wipe (everyone but me, the kin and one other died) against a big spawn of Council. I tried to sneak in a little tactics by tagging mobs with Mutagen before anyone could frontally assault them, then hiding behind a corner to pull mobs to the team; I think this helped a little. I like pickup teams so this was still fun and I managed to get to level 22 (training in True Grit) before calling it a night.
[u]Merit benchmarking since I13[u]
3rd villain respec: 36.75 MPH average (2 runs)
Sharkhead SF: 20.83 MPH (1 run)
Imperious TF: 19.74 MPH (1 run)
Synapse TF: 18.8 MPH (1 run)
2nd hero respec: 18.1 MPH (1 run)
Positron TF: 17.12 MPH average (2 runs)
Sister Psyche TF: 15.69 MPH (1 run)
Citadel TF: 13.81 MPH average (2 runs)
Katie TF: 8.24 MPH (1 run)
Rise of the Vampyri flashback: 6.27 MPH (1 run)
Jim Temblor flashback: 5.81 MPH (1 run)
Operative Grillo flashback: 4.39 MPH (3 runs)
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
12/22/2008
Last Thursday I started off playing Idolator (16 mind/fire dominator) on a 6 player team running Baby New Year missions, which got her to level 17.
Then I played Blond Justice (22 broadsword/shield scrapper) on a Sister Psyche TF; our team mix was:
ice/sonic controller
broadsword/shield scrapper (me)
fire/regen scrapper
peacebringer
emp/nothing defender
The empath was technically rad blast, but only had the starting power and never attacked; he was very healing-focused, even offering to turn his maneuvers off to "save END for healing" (we talked him out of it). He was pretty good at healing and even buffing though. The controller was also good about keeping sonic buffs up, and with 2 scrappers for damage we made quite a good team. We did have a couple minor delays, once when the leader went linkdead (leaving me as leader on my Rugged difficulty) and once when the defender unexpectedly AFK'd for about 10 minutes due to some doggy-related disaster (we were able to finish the mission without him but not get the next mission until he returned and exited the mission). Despite these delays we still finished the TF in 2hrs 14mins, earning 40 merits (17.91 MPH). This also got Blond Justice to level 24, where I finally took Super Jump as a travel power.
Blond Justice vs Clamor
After that I spent some time soloing with Spy Girl (29 MA/ninj stalker); visited a tailor to give her a "winter" uniform (white outfit using the holiday costume pieces) and soloing my way through the Seaweed badge mission, Lorenzo Ansaldo's story arc (1 merit) and Captain Petrovich's story arc (3 merits).
Friday night I was only on briefly. Idealist (40 fire/thermal controller) participated in a Winter Lord kill (gaining 2 merits) and Kashira (10 db/will brute) managed to solo a vampire EB to complete the Angelo Vendetti story arc (2 merits).
On Saturday, I solo'd Blond Justice (24 broadsword/shield scrapper) through her Clockwork Captive story arc; it was all level 14ish and very grey, but still gave her 7 reward merits.
Then I did a Cap au Diable SF as Schadenfreude (16 AR/pain corruptor). Our team mix was:
necro/pain MM
AR/pain corruptor (me)
stone/db brute
claw/regen stalker
spine/regen stalker
We had a messy second mission against the CoT Attack Leader as we overaggroed a bunch and died a lot, but got through it. And we ended up clearing the entire last mission as mobs were positioned close enough to the glowy altars that the stalkers couldn't safely click them. Nevertheless finished in 1hr 10mins, earning 10 merits (8.57 MPH) and getting Schadenfreude to level 18, where I took Flamethrower.
Later on Saturday I did an Imperious TF; the leader asked for a defender, so I played Rain Dancer (50 storm/archery defender). Our team was:
will/db tanker
will/stone tanker
fire/fire tanker
storm/archery defender (me)
sonic/elec defender
bs/regen scrapper
AR/dev blaster
ice/kin corruptor
This seemed pretty tanker heavy but worked out OK. During the first mission one of the tankers tried herding a whole room of Romans together, but there was enough loose aggro that this resulted in a partial team wipe (just the squishies; the tankers seemed fine), so we didn't try to herd after that. In the last mission the scrapper had to quit suddenly (not quite sure why, he just had to go). We also aggro'd Romulus and his crew of AVs by accident; but, one tanker grabbed Romulus and another one tanked the healing Nictus and it was a little chaotic but we beat them all up, finishing the ITF in 1hr 44mins for 25 merits (14.42 MPH).
On Sunday I solo'd Idolator (17 mind/fire dominator) for a few missions in Cap au Diable, getting her to level 18 and Health.
I also popped over to Triumph server for a bit, playing Grey Wings (35 archery/fire blaster on Triumph). As an angelic-themed character, I decided to work on getting candy canes for a halo. At first I formed a 3-player pickup Baby New Year team around level 33-35, but then (unwisely) consented to merge with another 2-player team that was a level 38 and his sidekick, so we ended up with a 5-player team running level 38 missions where only one person was actually level 38. This was fairly disastrous; our 38 was a brute, but too squishy to survive, and my sidekick was a tank in his late 20s, but I could only SK him to level 34 so he was also too squishy against level 39 enemies, and I was dropping Rains of Arrows and other AoEs so would quickly die if our tank and brute did. We nevertheless muddled through to complete one BNY mission after great pain and hardship, after which I decided to try my hand at soloing the Baby New Year mission. As an archery/fire blaster, Grey Wings has no real defenses except killing stuff first; but she does do a lot of damage, so was able to take out the BNY mission spawns pretty easily, even bosses, in her alpha strike. This didn't work well against Snaptooth, who is an elite boss, but I loaded up on inspirations in Pocket D before attacking him each time. Eating 3 purples and occasional greens as hits leaked through seemed to do the trick, though he still had enough HPs that the first batch of purples would wear out before I could kill him and I'd either die (if I was careless) or need to click another batch of purples; plus I'd have to click blues because I'd be gasping for END from nonstop attacks. About half the time I died and half the time I narrowly killed Snaptooth, but in this way I managed to solo 4 Baby New Year missions and collect the 25 candy canes needed to unlock the "Nice" halo, which I immediately added to Grey Wings' costume. I found that the halo barely clipped with the top of the winged headband costume piece, so I found it necessary to switch the winged headband for a more understated metal tiara. I also managed to hit level 36 by doing this.
Later on Sunday I did a Sharkhead SF as Spy Girl (29 MA/ninj stalker). Our team mix was:
fortunata
robo/poison MM
night widow
db/will brute
MA/ninj stalker (me)
This was an extremely efficient team that stealthed through nearly every mission; I got to stealth/team TP a couple times myself. In the last mission we didn't bother clearing the room at all and instead launched a frontal assault on Calystix, which isn't a way I've ever done it before, but it actually worked and let us finish the SF in a speedy 44mins, earning 25 merits (34.09 MPH) and getting Spy Girl to level 30, where I finally took Placate.
Spy Girl vs Calystix
Villain teams were spawning Winter Lords in Cap au Diable, and farming WLs has become a popular way to get quick merits, so I thought I'd at least give it a try. I played Primadonna (32 sonic/kin corruptor) and joined a team for exactly one hour, and earned 36 merits in that time (36.0 MPH), also getting to level 33. I cashed in 20 of these merits for a random Pool C draw, and got a disappointing level 33 Induced Coma (Chance for Recharge) recipe.
Primadonna vs Winter Lord
I switched to Police Woman (50 AR/dev) to attack Winter Lords on hero side as well, to see if it was any different. I didn't have a team but followed people who were running around in Atlas Park to find WLs, and picked up 12 merits in 10 minutes (72.0 MPH, but low sample size). A friend invited me to team at level 25, and I debated continuing farming (it was so lucrative!) but farming seems rather anti-social, so I switched to Blond Justice (25 broadsword/shield scrapper) and joined a 5-player team doing radio missions in Talos Island. While in a safeguard mission we ran into a Silver Mantis AV, and despite being rather scrapper heavy (3 shield scrappers, 2 non-healing stormies), we managed to take her down.
Blond Justice vs Silver Mantis
[u]Merit benchmarking since I13[u]
All purely my experience - your mileage may vary
WL farming hero side: 72.0 MPH (10 mins)
3rd villain respec: 36.75 MPH average (2 runs)
WL farming villain side: 36.0 MPH (60 mins)
Sharkhead SF: 27.46 MPH average (2 runs)
Synapse TF: 18.8 MPH (1 run)
2nd hero respec: 18.1 MPH (1 run)
Positron TF: 17.12 MPH average (2 runs)
Imperious TF: 17.08 MPH average (2 runs)
Sister Psyche TF: 16.80 MPH (2 runs)
Citadel TF: 13.81 MPH average (2 runs)
Cap au Diable SF: 8.57 MPH (1 run)
Katie TF: 8.24 MPH (1 run)
Rise of the Vampyri hero flashback: 6.27 MPH (1 run)
Rumblings of the Past hero flashback: 5.81 MPH (1 run)
Escaped! villain flashback: 4.39 MPH (3 runs)
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
12/25/2008
On Monday, Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) got the Patroller badge on login (apparently awarded for being logged off). I determined I'd spend some more time farming Winter Lords for merits in order to get a more accurate measurement (I only had a sample size of 10mins); this showed it was so lucrative in terms of merits/hour that I spent even more time doing it. Over several days of hunting WLs in Atlas Park, I logged a 1hr 49min session where I gained 104 merits, a 29min session gaining 16 merits, a 48min session gaining 48 merits, a 28min session gaining 20 merits, and a 35min session gaining 28 merits (overall rate of 50.5 MPH for hero side WL farming). I spent 200 of these merits purchasing a level 28 Luck of the Gambler (+7.5% rchg) recipe; I wanted the lower level recipe for the sake of exemping. I also used Police Woman's Surveillance power to learn that Winter Lords have 20% lethal resist and 30% cold resist, and I could stack Achilles Heel procs and Surveillance to do a total of 34% resist debuff on my own; this seemed great against monsters.
On Tuesday night I played Schadenfreude (18 AR/pain corruptor) some, forming a small team (eventually filling up to 6 players) and doing some Cap au Diable missions, a Skyway mayhem, and then heading to Atlas Park to do the Seer Marino story arc. We did have one wipeout against those nasty END-draining Mu, but managed to save Ghost Widow and get Schadenfreude up to level 20 and Stamina. A little after that team broke up, Schadenfreude ended up joining a friend's Silver Mantis SF, with a team mix of
necro/dark MM
AR/trap corruptor
AR/pain corruptor (me)
robo/FF MM
rad/therm corruptor (no shields)
fortunata
fire/therm corruptor
This was a strong team, though it was quite late by the end and I was slowing down with sleepiness; nevertheless we got through the SF in 2hrs exactly, earning 35 merits (17.5 MPH), and got Schadenfreude to level 22, where I took Enforced Morale; not sure this is a good power, but it just seems very thematic for the pain set.
On Wednesday I briefly played Shadowveil (a 7 dark/psy defender; previously known as Sheila Shadow, but I decided I didn't like the name and paid for a rename token) as a SK on a 3-player Sisterhood team doing Steel Canyon radio missions, getting to level 8 and Shadowfall.
Then I joined a St Martial SF as Mayday (37 fortunata). Our team mix was:
spine/ninja stalker
stone/elec brute
3 fortunata
We didn't technically have a "healer" but had plenty of +DEF from triple stacked Maneuvers and Mind Links, so did fine. Our leader had us speed through the "destroy network" missions by only blowing up psionic crystals and the mission boss, then asked me to stealth/veteran team TP the team to Archus, the AV in the final mission, which we were able to defeat despite his mad ambushes mostly because of our capped defense. Finished the SF in 54mins and gained 25 merits (27.78 MPH).
Also on Wednesday I joined a friend who wanted to demonstrate the Nictus Insurrection kheldian-only flashback, which has a surprisingly high merit reward for a story arc. This flashback exemped us down to level 45 and was mostly stealthable, with one defeat all and one elite boss, Nosferatu. We had a team of 2 blasters, 1 peacebringer (2-boxed and left sitting AFK at the contact to get the next mission faster) and 1 TA defender, and knocked this flashback out in 36mins, receiving 29 merits (48.33 MPH). I also picked up a rare Diamond salvage.
I also burned Police Woman's free respec to make some minor tweaks to her build; adding a KB protection IO to Combat Jumping and a sixth slot to Aid Other, at the cost of one slot from Stupefy and one from Tactics, losing me some global ranged DEF. Highlights of her build include 92.5% global recharge, capped HPs, 27% global damage (including the Assault bonus), 8.5% range defense, and roughly 13% resist to fire, cold, smash and lethal. Still no travel power; but her Sprint (clocked at 33mph via real numbers) is nearly as fast as Fly. Her build now looks like:
Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.401
http://www.cohplanner.com/
[u]Click this DataLink to open the build![u]
Police Woman I13: Level 50 Natural Blaster
Primary Power Set: Assault Rifle
Secondary Power Set: Devices
Power Pool: Medicine
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Leadership
Ancillary Pool: Munitions Mastery
Hero Profile:
Level 1: Burst -- Dev'n-Acc/Dmg(A), HO:Centri(3), Dev'n-Dmg/Rchg(3), Dev'n-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(5), Dev'n-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(5), Achilles-ResDeb%(7)
Level 1: Web Grenade -- GravAnch-Immob(A), GravAnch-Immob/Rchg(7), GravAnch-Acc/Immob/Rchg(9), GravAnch-Acc/Rchg(9), GravAnch-Hold%(11)
Level 2: Slug -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(A), Apoc-Dmg/Rchg(11), Apoc-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(13), Apoc-Acc/Rchg(13), Apoc-Dmg/EndRdx(15), Apoc-Dam%(15)
Level 4: Caltrops -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 6: Aid Other -- Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx(A), Dct'dW-EndRdx/Rchg(17), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(17), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(19), Dct'dW-Heal(19), IntRdx-I(21)
Level 8: Combat Jumping -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), Krma-ResKB(21)
Level 10: Targeting Drone -- GSFC-ToHit(A), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg/EndRdx(23), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg(23), GSFC-ToHit/EndRdx(25), GSFC-Build%(25), Rec'dRet-Pcptn(27)
Level 12: Buckshot -- HO:Centri(A), HO:Centri(27), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(29), Posi-Dmg/Rng(29), Posi-Acc/Dmg(31), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(31)
Level 14: Aid Self -- Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx(A), Dct'dW-EndRdx/Rchg(31), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(33), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(33), Dct'dW-Heal(33), IntRdx-I(34)
Level 16: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 18: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A), Jump-I(34)
Level 20: Stamina -- P'Shift-EndMod(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(34), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc/Rchg(36), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(36), P'Shift-End%(36)
Level 22: Assault -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 24: Tactics -- GSFC-ToHit(A), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg(37), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg/EndRdx(37), GSFC-Rchg/EndRdx(37), GSFC-ToHit/EndRdx(39)
Level 26: Cloaking Device -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 28: M30 Grenade -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(39), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(39), Posi-Dmg/Rng(40), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(40), RechRdx-I(40)
Level 30: Beanbag -- Stpfy-Acc/Rchg(A), Stpfy-EndRdx/Stun(43), Stpfy-Acc/EndRdx(45), Stpfy-Stun/Rng(45), Stpfy-Acc/Stun/Rchg(45)
Level 32: Full Auto -- Ragnrk-Dmg(A), Ragnrk-Dmg/Rchg(42), Ragnrk-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(42), Ragnrk-Acc/Rchg(42), Ragnrk-Dmg/EndRdx(43), Posi-Dam%(43)
Level 35: Taser -- Amaze-Stun(A), Amaze-Stun/Rchg(46), Amaze-Acc/Stun/Rchg(46), Amaze-Acc/Rchg(46), Amaze-EndRdx/Stun(48)
Level 38: Vengeance -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 41: Body Armor -- TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx(A), TtmC'tng-ResDam/Rchg(48), TtmC'tng-ResDam(48)
Level 44: Surveillance -- UndDef-Rchg/EndRdx(A), UndDef-Rchg(50)
Level 47: Maneuvers -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 49: Resuscitate -- IntRdx-I(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- HO:Micro(A), HO:Micro(50), HO:Micro(50)
Level 2: Rest -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 1: Defiance
I ended up paying 5M infl for the level 16 Karma (KB protect) and 32M for a level 50 Luck of the Gambler (+7.5% rchg), both of which I thought were bargains. I wanted the level 16 Karma for exemping purposes, and threw a level 30 Karma (KB protect) that I had previously acquired back on the broker with an asking price of 20M (consistent with the last 5 sales history, but a huge markup over what I paid for the level 16 IO).
I also played around with the tailor some, giving Police Woman a khaki-colored uniform (more of a rural sheriff look) and Mega (my max size 50 SS/elec brute) a holiday themed costume. Mega actually looks quite humorous stomping things while in a Santa suit; here she is stepping on some Carnies:
These boots are made for walking
On Thursday, Police Woman took a break from the mad Winter Lord farming to, ironically, do a Katie TF. The leader was on Invincible for some reason, and we just sorta rolled with it. Our team was 4 controllers, 3 scrappers and 1 blaster (me). We had one total party wipeout against Mary 10, who was a +5 AV to us; after the wipe, one of the controllers quit, but the remaining 7 were able to wear down the AV and complete the TF, though it took 51mins to get our 7 merits (8.24 MPH). Unfortunately, both KTFs I've been on since I13 have been quite slow, skewing my data collection. I did pick up another rare Diamond salvage, though.
After that I played Blond Justice (25 broadsword/shield scrapper) on a Citadel TF. This looked grim when we were initially forming, as we started with 3 scrappers and no other interest for quite awhile, but suddenly a lot of people joined at once, and we ended up with a pretty decent team of:
claw/dark scrapper
broadsword/shield scrapper (me)
fire/shield scrapper
plant/nothing controller
will/mace tanker
earth/storm controller
arch/dev blaster (disconnected early and didn't return)
emp/nothing defender
We had an immediate wipeout in the first mission as we frontally assaulted a huge room full of Council, but after recovering from that initial wipeout and arranging for some sidekicking, the team really clicked and started doing well. The empath defender was quite good for being a non-attacker, and was very vigilant about keeping Fortitude and RAs up and saving us scrappers when we got especially suicidal; Fortitude, Shield Defense and Parry capped my DEF against these guys, making me very overconfident.
About a third of the way through the TF, my terrorist cats managed to pull down our Christmas tree in RL somehow, making a godawful racket and scattering pine needles and ornaments everywhere, and I had to miss a couple missions cleaning up the mess. And late in the TF our earth controller kinda got lost on the way to Dark Astoria, ending up in Atlas Park for a long time (not sure why; maybe chasing WLs) before joining us on the last mission. Despite these hijinks, we managed to beat up Vandal and complete Citadel TF in 2hrs 50mins (not counting the long start-up time), earning 30 merits (10.59 MPH) and getting Blond Justice to level 27 (took Disembowel at 26 and slotted it; fun!).
Blond Justice & friends take on Vandal
After that I played Spy Girl (30 MA/ninja stalker), accepting a random invite to a Sharkhead SF. Our team ended up being:
wolf spider
robo/trap MM
elec/elec brute
fire/elec dom
MA/ninja stalker (me)
stone/elec brute
fire/kin corr
plant/thorn dom
We started off killing a Winter Lord we saw in Sharkhead for 2 bonus merits, then went into the first mission. Being a Spy Girl, I quickly ran ahead and scouted out the locations of Barracuda and the portal objective; meanwhile, the rest of my team frontally assaulted the first spawn and suffered a total wipeout. At that point we realized that the team leader was on Relentless difficulty, causing our mostly late 20s team to be fighting level 33 mobs. We decided to quit and reform the SF at lower difficulty.
On our second try, I again found Barracuda and the portal objective, and used my mayhem Summon Teammates power to TP the team to Barracuda, who we rescued and then escorted to the objective. I got a "You rock, Spy Girl! I don't care what they say about stalkers!" from a teammate, which was really cool! After that I really had no choice but to stealth/TP everyone through the Shockstorm mission; this was tricky because of the 2 ambushes triggered by stealthing, forcing me to chomp purple inspirations to be able to team TP while under attack, resulting in my TPing the team into the final room where we fought Shockstorm, his buddies, and 2 Longbow ambushes, all at once; we were doing well though and managed to beat them all in a close fight. I also stealth/TP'd everyone to Calystix in the final mission, where we beat up Calystix but then wiped out against the Eye of the Leviathan on our first attempt; but beat the Eye on our second attempt. I've been using the heck out of the Summon Teammates power from the mayhem mission (it seems to be much faster recharge than the veteran Team Teleport). I may need to respec Spy Girl into Recall Friend when it's gone. Anyway, we finished the Sharkhead SF in 1hr 10mins (not counting the first failed SF), earning 25 merits (21.43 MPH) and getting Spy Girl to level 31.
After that, a couple of the Sharkhead SF team members invited Spy Girl to come along on an Ouroboros SF they were starting, the one to assassinate President Marchand for Mender Tesseract. We did this on Invincible difficulty with a 30 minute time limit and it was really fun. I'd never done this before; it was really cool to face (spoiler!) both Miss Liberty and Ms. Liberty. I like all the old-style civilian outfits in the last mission too. Through some stealthing and some fighting we finished this SF in 28mins, earning 5 merits (10.71 MPH).
Spy Girl vs Ms Liberty
On Thursday night, as Primadonna (33 sonic/kin corruptor) I joined some villains who were trying to start up a WL farm in Cap au Diable. There seems to constantly be WL farming in Atlas Park, but they are much less common on red side due to lower population. Cap au Diable is also kind of a pain to maneuver around due to the varying terrain height. Nevertheless we managed to get things going and I picked up 54 merits in 66mins (49.09 MPH).
After about an hour of WL hunting, I heard someone on Sisterhood channel was complaining no one would team with his new blaster due to the mad WL farming. Though WLs were very lucrative, it seemed silly to be farming when someone was looking to team, so I left the WL farm and started Terrestrielle, a brand new earth/kin controller, to team up with the newbie blaster, along with another friend from Sisterhood channel. We cleared an Atlas Park mission and a couple King's Row missions, and Terrestrielle ended up getting to level 6 before I called it a night.
[u]Merit benchmarking since I13[u]
All purely my experience - your mileage may vary
WL farming hero side: 50.5 MPH (218 merits in 4hr 19mins)
Nictus Insurrection kheldian flashback: 48.33 MPH (1 run)
WL farming villain side: 42.86 MPH (90 merits in 2hrs 6mins)
3rd villain respec: 36.75 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
St Martial SF: 27.78 MPH (1 run)
Sharkhead SF: 25.45 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
Synapse TF: 18.8 MPH (1 run)
2nd hero respec: 18.1 MPH (1 run)
Silver Mantis SF: 17.5 MPH (1 run)
Positron TF: 17.12 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
Imperious TF: 17.08 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
Sister Psyche TF: 16.80 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
Citadel TF: 12.74 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
Mender Tesseract SF: 10.71 MPH (1 run)
Cap au Diable SF: 8.57 MPH (1 run)
Katie TF: 8.24 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
Rise of the Vampyri hero flashback: 6.27 MPH (1 run)
Rumblings of the Past hero flashback: 5.81 MPH (1 run)
Escaped! villain flashback: 4.39 MPH (3 runs)
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
12/29/2008
Last Friday night, I started off playing Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster), accepting an invitation to a pickup 3rd hero respec trial. Our team mix was:
shield/dark tanker
2 fire/kin controllers
rad/rad defender
2 warshades
peacebringer
AR/dev blaster (me)
This was a strong team and we had no problem getting through the trial; we would finish each wave of Rikti off and be left with minutes to spare before the next one. Finished in 1hr 9mins for 25 merits (21.74 MPH); I also gained 1.47M influence and 18 vanguard merits, and got a purple Fortunata Hypnosis: Sleep recipe along the way.
I tried the new ski slope in Pocket D for the first time; it's actually pretty fun! I got the bronze medal (Surefooted badge) on Police Woman's first try, just using Sprint with no buffs. This gave me a false sense of confidence; I soon found it was a lot harder to get the higher ranked badges. I found this Skiing Guide to be helpful for optimizing my ski route; managed to get the silver medal (Agile badge) after adopting a few of its techniques. The very best time I could get on my own was 51.5 seconds, though. A friend finally helped buff me with Speed Boost and Inertial Reduction, and this let me hit 48.25 seconds for the gold medal (Speeder badge).
I played Schadenfreude (22 AR/pain corruptor) quite a bit, finishing off the Seer Marino story arc (gaining 5 merits). Schadenfreude led a 4 player Sisterhood & friends villain team on Friday through a cape mission and the Strikebreaker badge mission, and part of Darrin Wade's story arc, getting to level 24, where I took the Stealth power; and also an 8-player team (some Sisterhood, some random LFT people) which did mostly Sharkhead/Nerva missions. We also did a Independence Port mayhem, which is usually horribly fatal on a big team, but our team clicked together so well that we had a great time, clearing nearly the whole map and 3 side missions, racking up lots of extra time, before finally getting around to knocking over the bank to win the mission. That team got Schadenfreude to level 27, and I took Assault at 26 for some extra DPS buffage.
I joined a 4-player Northern Lights SG team with Olivia Q (50 MA/SR scrapper), and we did a new story arc from Daedalus which apparently involved fighting an AV-level Ghost Widow, then saving Cimerora from Malta. Being soft capped on DEF was really nice against both Ghost Widow (to dodge her heals) and sappers.
Hunted Winter Lords with Virtual Girl (27 rad/sonic defender) for a little bit (forgot to measure merit progress though) before accepting an invite to a 4-player pickup team which did a few Talos radio missions, which got Virtual Girl to 28, where I took Super Speed; Virtual Girl already has Super Jump but I was thinking Super Speed maybe made more sense for her. For the short term, though, having both SJ and SS does seem to help with chasing WLs in Atlas Park.
Sunday night some villains organized WL hunting in Nerva, so I joined that for a bit; first playing Primadonna (33 sonic/kin corruptor), but level 33 felt a little low for bouncing around Nerva, and it felt like we needed more debuffs, so I switched to April Fool (50 thug/TA MM). Did this for 52 minutes before the hunt ended due to attrition, gaining 18 merits in that time (20.77 MPH). This is pretty low compared to hero side; I think it's because we only had a few villains doing it, so we weren't generating WLs very fast.
I spent a lot of time soloing with Blond Justice (27 broadsword/shield scrapper) in Striga Isle, as I wanted her to be able to unlock the Hess TF. I solo'd through Stephanie Peebles' story arc for 9 merits and the Wedding Band power, then Tobias Hansen's story arc for 4 merits, the War Wolf Whistle, and level 28, where I took Grant Cover. Grant Cover gets a bad rap because it doesn't help your own DEF, only your teammates; but I like the resistance to DEF debuffs (I really notice when my DEF goes down from lethal attacks) and it's actually much better DEF (well, for your team) than Maneuvers, which is a power I like anyway.
I was working on Lars Hansen's story arc when I heard on LBx that someone had formed a Hess TF team but had somehow failed to actually include anyone who could talk to Ernesto Hess, so was asking for help. I offered to help with this since I was just about done with the story arc; a quick Defeat 15 and autocompleting one door mission finished Lars' story arc (netting me another 4 merits) and unlocked Ernesto Hess for me. So from there I went straight into a Hess TF, with a team of:
peacebringer
dual/SR scrapper
spine/regen scrapper
grav/FF controller
AR/nrg blaster
grav/kin controller
fire/dark tanker
broadsword/shield scrapper (me)
I had to sit out the first mission because I had ordered takeout from a restaurant sometime earlier that I really needed to pick up. I don't really like slacking on a TF, but resolved not to feel too guilty since they wouldn't have been able to start the TF without my help. Got back in time for the second mission and the rest of the TF went quite smoothly. Most of us were either in the right level range to get exp, or were uberviolent scrappers prone to kill enemies on sight (or both!), so we cleared lots more bad guys than was strictly necessary to accomplish each mission; this was fun though. The final mission got pretty chaotic; I think someone was supposed to pull Archon Burkholder but ended up dragging the AV all over the place aggroing most of the Council in the big robot construction area, which quickly turned the final fight into a gigantic brawl. The good guys won, though, finishing the TF in 1hr 11mins, for 15 merits (12.68 MPH), and getting Blond Justice to level 29.
Finished the night playing Spy Girl (31 MA/ninj stalker), mostly lackeying to a brute friend in St Martial and Nerva, which got Spy Girl to level 32 and Eagle's Claw. At that point I felt I had too many attacks so decided to use her free respec to drop Crane Kick (I love Crane Kick on my MA scrappers, but for some reason the knockback is really annoying to Spy Girl) and add Recall Friend (her mayhem mission Team TP temp power finally ended and stealth/TPing has been really cool). I don't have all the IO sets I want for her yet, but after the respec, I'm working towards the following build for her. (Still no Assassin's Strike or proper travel power, so I don't recommend this build to everyone, but it works for me.)
Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.401
http://www.cohplanner.com/
[u]Click this DataLink to open the build![u]
Spy Girl: Level 32 Natural Stalker
Primary Power Set: Martial Arts
Secondary Power Set: Ninjitsu
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Teleportation
Villain Profile:
Level 1: Thunder Kick -- Mako-Acc/Dmg(A), Mako-Dmg/EndRdx(3), Mako-Dmg/Rchg(3), Mako-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(5), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(5), Mako-Dam%(7)
Level 1: Hide -- DefBuff-I(A)
Level 2: Storm Kick -- T'Death-Acc/Dmg(A), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx(7), T'Death-Dmg/Rchg(9), T'Death-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(9), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(11), T'Death-Dam%(11)
Level 4: Crippling Axe Kick -- Mako-Acc/Dmg(A), Mako-Dmg/EndRdx(13), Mako-Dmg/Rchg(13), Mako-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(15), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(15), Mako-Dam%(17)
Level 6: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 8: Danger Sense -- RedFtn-Def/EndRdx(A), RedFtn-Def/Rchg(17), RedFtn-EndRdx/Rchg(19), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(31), RedFtn-Def(31), RedFtn-EndRdx(31)
Level 10: Combat Jumping -- DefBuff-I(A)
Level 12: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 14: Ninja Reflexes -- DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(19), DefBuff-I(21)
Level 16: Kuji-In Rin -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 18: Recall Friend -- IntRdx-I(A)
Level 20: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(21), EndMod-I(27)
Level 22: Kuji-In Sha -- Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx(A), Dct'dW-EndRdx/Rchg(23), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(23), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(25), Dct'dW-Heal(25), Dct'dW-Rchg(27)
Level 24: Focus Chi -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(29), RechRdx-I(29)
Level 26: Caltrops -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 28: Smoke Flash -- Acc-I(A)
Level 30: Placate -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 32: Eagles Claw -- Acc-I(A)
[u]Merit benchmarking since I13[u]
All purely my experience - your mileage may vary
WL farming hero side: 50.5 MPH (218 merits in 4hr 19mins)
Nictus Insurrection kheldian flashback: 48.33 MPH (1 run)
3rd villain respec: 36.75 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
WL farming villain side: 36.40 MPH (108 merits in 2hrs 58mins)
St Martial SF: 27.78 MPH (1 run)
Sharkhead SF: 25.45 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
3rd hero respec: 21.74 MPH (1 run)
Synapse TF: 18.8 MPH (1 run)
2nd hero respec: 18.1 MPH (1 run)
Silver Mantis SF: 17.5 MPH (1 run)
Positron TF: 17.12 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
Imperious TF: 17.08 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
Sister Psyche TF: 16.80 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
Citadel TF: 12.74 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
Hess TF: 12.68 MPH (1 run)
Mender Tesseract SF: 10.71 MPH (1 run)
Cap au Diable SF: 8.57 MPH (1 run)
Katie TF: 8.24 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
Rise of the Vampyri hero flashback: 6.27 MPH (1 run)
Rumblings of the Past hero flashback: 5.81 MPH (1 run)
Escaped! villain flashback: 4.39 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
12/30/2008
Logged on Primadonna (33 sonic/kin corruptor) to spend some of her ill-gotten merit gains; I like level 33 recipes in general, so I'm thinking I will try and use merits on random rolls at level 33 when possible. The common wisdom is that the trial recipes (Pool D) are much more likely to be good than the task force recipes (Pool C), so I spent 60 merits on two Pool D draws. (I could've sworn they used to be 25 merits per Pool D draw, but the merit vendor clearly listed them as 30 each.) I got a level 33 Devastation ACC/DMG/RCHG and a level 33 Mako's Bite ACC/END/RCHG, which both seemed like good recipes. Checking the Black Market, the Devastation recipe was averaging 4M infamy, while the Mako's Bite was averaging 2.2M infamy; so, I only got 103K infamy per merit I spent, which actually seems pretty low (the marketeer forum seems to value reward merits around 245K influence). My feeling is that the price is probably depressed due to lots of people buying random Pool D draws. But they still seem good recipes, so have some intrinsic value.
I also ran an Imperious TF as Mega (50 ss/elec brute). Our team was (best guess on some of the heroes, I couldn't see their powers directly):
2 fire/kin controllers
fortunata
archery blaster
elec blaster
SS/elec brute (me)
kin/dark defender
regen scrapper
This set up seemed to make me the tank, so I tried to fill that role. My first charge into a group of Romans resulted in an ignominious defeat; they have a heck of an alpha strike, and I felt pretty squishy despite having 60%ish lethal resist from elec armor and Tough. Maybe I should've played a tanker instead, but I kinda wanted the infamy, and Mega does much more impressive damage. All three of our support teammates seemed to be kinetics, albeit reasonably decent ones; this didn't help our team's survivability much (we had lots of random deaths), but multiple Speed Boosts and Fulcrum Shifts boosted our DPS through the roof. I spent a lot of time at the +750% damage cap, which let me do multiple 1200 point Knockout Blows and a steady stream of 500 point Foot Stomps. I don't know the right path to optimally clear the ITF cave missions, so I took a couple wrong turns, but we got through the first few missions just fine. Against Romulus and the Nictus AVs in the final mission our strategy was to clear the surrounding area, then go straight up the middle with a frontal assault on Romulus. I got dropped early on during this fight, but the team knocked out the first Romulus without me, giving me time to Awaken and rejoin the fight. We finished the ITF in 1hr 24mins (a pretty decent time) and earned 25 merits (17.86 MPH).
[u]Merit benchmarking since I13[u]
All purely my experience - your mileage may vary
WL farming hero side: 50.5 MPH (218 merits in 4hr 19mins)
Nictus Insurrection kheldian flashback: 48.33 MPH (1 run)
3rd villain respec: 36.75 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
WL farming villain side: 36.40 MPH (108 merits in 2hrs 58mins)
St Martial SF: 27.78 MPH (1 run)
Sharkhead SF: 25.45 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
3rd hero respec: 21.74 MPH (1 run)
Synapse TF: 18.8 MPH (1 run)
2nd hero respec: 18.1 MPH (1 run)
Silver Mantis SF: 17.5 MPH (1 run)
Imperious TF: 17.34 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
Positron TF: 17.12 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
Sister Psyche TF: 16.80 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
Citadel TF: 12.74 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
Hess TF: 12.68 MPH (1 run)
Mender Tesseract SF: 10.71 MPH (1 run)
Cap au Diable SF: 8.57 MPH (1 run)
Katie TF: 8.24 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
Rise of the Vampyri hero flashback: 6.27 MPH (1 run)
Rumblings of the Past hero flashback: 5.81 MPH (1 run)
Escaped! villain flashback: 4.39 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
[u]Random recipe draw results (to date)[u]
Pool C: 0% good (0 out of 1 roll)
1 Induced Coma %-RCHG (bad)
Pool D: 100% good (2 out of 2 rolls)
1 Devastation ACC/DMG/RCHG (good)
1 Mako's Bite ACC/END/RCHG (good)
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
1/5/2008
I had much of last week off from work for New Year's, so played a lot of CoH. So this is report is pretty long.
On Tuesday I started off playing April Fool (50 thug/TA MM) on an Imperious TF. Our team mix was:
plant/thorn dominator
ill/rad controller
thug/TA mastermind (me)
nrg/regen stalker
?/? blaster (disconnected before entering first mission, never returned)
dual/stone brute
dark/dark corruptor
plant/kin controller
Most of the ITF was pretty routine; the only thing of note was that the team leader had to relentlessly harange the kin to get him to SB anyone but the brute. The net result was that the kin would SB the brute and the team leader ("just to shut him up" according to the kin). Having established that complaining was the only way to get SB, I started a series of exaggerated histrionics, at one point even demanding that he SB each one of my minions. I got an occasional SB out of this, which was an improvement over no SB.
In the final mission we killed Romulus twice, but the second time he died out of LOS from the other Nictus AVs so he stayed dead, leaving us with 2 Nictus AVs to fight, who are much harder to kill. We eventually ground down one of the Nictus AVs but were left with the final Nictus, which was the healer, and we found we couldn't out DPS the healing in a straight up fight. We eventually had everyone back away from the healer Nictus and shot at it with long range attacks; this seemed to be making some progress, but was kind of slow going (no blaster), and so I cruelly suggested that my stalker lackey (who had no range attacks) die to provide vengeance. He actually went for this, and the vengeance indeed sped things up. We ended up finishing the ITF in 2hrs 25mins (a little long, but we were down one player and had issues in the final mission) for 25 merits (10.34 MPH). I also got the Paradigm badge for mentoring, which was nicely ironic since I had sacrificed my hapless lackey's life to save a few minutes of my time; though, this is admittedly consistent with April's modus operandi.
April also wandered into Recluse's Victory for awhile, where I bushwhacked a defender and killed him; a tanker tried to save the defender and got glue arrowed into one of the shallow pools of water near the Atlas statue, where I eventually managed to kill him too. Trick arrow seems pretty cool so far in I13 PvP! I then agreed to a "duel" with an ill/rad controller, who messed me up with a confuse and we jousted for a bit until he won, barely. I just ran around after that, got killed by a blaster, and killed a defender a couple times until he pleaded to be left alone because he "just wanted to farm". I was feeling softhearted and was inclined to leave him be, but I figured a villain would need to get something out of the deal, so I offered to leave him alone if he would reveal his favorite flavor of doughnut, which I thought would be a suitably April Foolish demand. He admitted his favorite flavor was the kind with vanilla sprinkles, and so I left him alone; though I felt a little weird and creepy afterwards, upon realizing I had basically extorted personal information from someone over the Internet.
Winter Lord farming seemed to be going on nonstop in Atlas Park and I jumped in with one character or another at various times. I recorded 3 sessions of WL farming: 40 merits in 47 minutes, 32 merits in 25 minutes, 12 merits in 11 minutes (overall average now 52.98 MPH). I really did more WLs than that, in downtime between teams, but I got lazy and stopped recording the data after awhile, rationalizing that WL farming will probably go away soon anyway.
On Wednesday I logged in Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) and did some marketeering and crafting. I finally sold my level 30 Karma: KB protection IO for 20M infl, and replaced it with a level 15 Karma: KB protection that I bought for 5M infl, so the net effect was that I upgraded my KB protection (the level 15 KB protection is better IMHO because I can exemp down to 12 and still benefit) and got paid 15M infl for doing so. I also started converting all the useless base salvage in my inventory into brainstorm ideas; you do these at the crafting workstation using the "Convert" recipes. I crafted 598 brainstorms from base salvage, and it all counted towards invention crafting badges, which was pretty cool.
I played Mayday (38 fortunata) on a 2nd villain respec with a team of:
night widow
spine/ninj stalker
dark/dark corruptor
dual/stone brute
ice/kin corruptor
fortunata (me)
nrg/will stalker
This was a very strong team and we blew through the respec in 26 minutes, gaining 15 merits (34.62 MPH).
After that I played Schadenfreude (27 AR/pain corruptor) on an 8 player team of Fallen LEGION SG, picking up the Thief of Midnight badge from a badge mission and getting to level 28, where I took World of Pain, which seems like a very nice buff. You cast it like an RA or AM style buff, and it gives your whole team +11% to ALL resists, +16% to DMG, +10% to hit. The RES buff isn't as good as Fortitude's DEF buff, but RES is probably more useful than DEF since a lot of villain teams are soft-capped on DEF due to VEATs now, and WoP being an AoE means it's easier to use, can help more teammates, can help YOURSELF, all things that Fortitude lacks. On the downside, it's not up all the time (much like RA or AM), so is going to require some recharge slotting.
On Thursday I played Schadenfreude some more, this time on a 7-player Sisterhood/LEGION team. We did a bunch of missions, the high point probably being a Talos mayhem on Relentless difficulty. That should be suicide on such a big team, but we handled it, even beating up a hero-level Back Alley Brawler. Fought a zombie invasion and a couple Winter Lords too. Schadenfreude got to level 31. I took Soothing Aura at 30; I didn't really want to like this power, since it's basically an aura rocking toggle, and aura rocking is kind of lame, but I felt like I should try it to see what it's like. At level 30, 1-slotted with a Heal SO, it was healing about 40 health (about 25% of my 6-slotted Nullify Pain) every 2 seconds, without me having to do anything but leave it on; so I get the effect of an extra Nullify Pain every 8 seconds, with zero animation time (I can be shooting my rifle the whole time while spammy green numbers pop over my head). Unfortunately, this seems good enough that I should keep it, maybe even slot it up. It is spammy as all heck though, especially if you stand near a mastermind's pets.
I also played Idolator (18 mind/fire dominator) on a Cap SF, with a team of:
mind/thorn dominator
blood widow
mind/fire dominator (me)
elec/kin corruptor (seem AFK except for the first mission and the last mission)
thug/pain MM
elec/will brute
Idolator can fly and so was able to easily scout out the attack leader on the Hell Forge map and soften up his group with some targeted Confuses, which I think helped a lot; that fight often turns sour due to the crowded spawns around him. On the mission to kidnap the tech we had two total party wipes from the hordes of Longbow, but managed to get through it. In the final mission I found I was actually able to confuse the Hero-level Infernal into killing all his friends, then we killed Infernal himself. We didn't have stealth capability so we ended up clearing the whole final mission, going down every arm of the big spiderlike room to get each glowy, then finally spawning and fighting Bat'Zul head-on. I found that with domination on, I was actually able to confuse Bat'Zul! And with the other dominator, we were able to occasionally stack enough holds to hold him! I think Bat'Zul did occasionally break out of the status effects but about half the time he was too messed up to effectively fight us. With all this, the Cap SF ended up taking 2hr 2mins, gaining 10 merits (4.92 MPH) and getting Idolator to level 20.
After that I spent a little time soloing with Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corruptor); I originally wanted to unlock Cimerora for her, but Ashley wouldn't talk to her at all, so I thought I must have unfinished story arcs somewhere else. So I ended up soloing in Rikti War Zone; since I remember the Midnight arc blocked me from unlocking Vanguard on another toon, I figured maybe Vanguard arcs block the Midnight squad too. I completed Levantera's Welcome to Vanguard story arc for 3 merits and the Strange Case of Benjamin Decker for another 2 merits. Ashley still won't talk to Indigo, though, so I must still have unfinished business somewhere.
On Friday I started off crafting IOs and brainstorms with April Fool (50 thug/TA MM), getting the Craftsman badge.
Then I played Fire Emerald (24 fire/fire blaster) on a 5-player Sisterhood team; we had a couple wipeouts against huge spawns of Council, but got through a few missions and got Fire Emerald to level 25. At one point when our defender logged off I switched to Shadowveil (9 dark/psy defender) and sidekicked up, so we'd have some healing, and got her to level 10, where I took Psychic Scream (mostly for it's value as an AoE recharge debuff).
Later on I played Blond Justice (29 broadsword/shield scrapper), successfully soloing a Baby New Year mission, gaining level 30 (where I took Build Up), and Kelly Nemmers' Croatoa story arc for 4 merits.
Late Friday night I played Darla Doppler (10 kin/sonic defender) on a Positron TF organized on Sisterhood channel. Our team mix was:
shield/fire tanker
plant/thermal controller
kin/sonic defender (me)
sonic/mental blaster
rad/rad defender
Although this was a good mix of archetypes on paper, our level spread was not good. The blaster was the highest level character at level 14 and the rest of us were all level 10 or 11, and we immediately had to face medium-large groups of level 15-16 Vahzilok. This did not go well; even sidekicking the tanker up to 13, we weren't able to stand up to the Vahz for any length of time. We cleared 2 spawns of Vahzilok but suffered maybe 4 team wipes in the process, and we decided it wasn't worth continuing at that rate. So we abandoned the TF. But since we mostly knew each other, we re-grouped and did some radio missions in King's Row, which went a lot more smoothly and got Darla to level 13 (picking up Speed Boost at 12). With most of the team at 13-15 we felt like we were strong enough to do the Positron TF now, but it was 3AM by that point so everyone was too tired and we called it a night instead.
On Saturday, I played Blond Justice (30 broadsword/shield scrapper), duoing the story arc to join the Midnight Squad with a dark defender. This went pretty well; we even kept that suicidal Lady Jane from getting herself killed, getting Blond to level 31, 3 reward merits for the story arc, and I stumbled over a very nice level 31 Gaussian's Chance for Build Up recipe, which I'll probably end up using at some point. While in Perez Park curing Lost we stumbled across the Kraken, and so I recruited a 6-player team that took the giant monster down for another 2 merits, before heading to Steel Canyon to talk to the Latin student to enter the Midnight Club. It seems that talking to the Latin student is the critical point for unlocking the Midnight Club; a blaster who was teamed only for that part of the story arc also got the badge allowing entry to the Midnight Club when I talked to the Latin student. I still had a small team at that point (4 players, later dwindling to 3) and we did a Croatoa mission, then the Serafina and Penny Preston missions to unlock the level 35 SO vendors, before the team broke up.
I've been continuing to struggle with making a kin character that I really like, and so I started up yet another lowbie alt, a kin/rad defender by the name of Linda Lightspeed. She's loosely inspired by Flash-type speedsters (even has a red uniform, though that's the extent of the costume similarity), which people usually make into SR scrappers but I've always thought should really be some sort of kinetics. With this in mind, I drew additional inspiration from Luminara's kinetics scrapper guide, and decided to focus on melee attacks -- I know that sounds dumb, but I've always envied the Tsoo NPCs who seem to be MA/kin or katana/kin scrappers, so I thought it would be a fun experiment. I took rad blast instead of her recommended pick of dark blast, though; this was for no good reason except that rad blast is more shiny. Anyway, this concept was surprisingly fun to play. I went directly into a sewer team, where I hid behind a couple tankers using Transfusion to keep them healed. I heavily used Sands of Mu and Brawl for my initial melee attacks, though I was forced to take Neutrino Bolt at 1 (though this is actually nice to spam at low levels to debuff DEF and let my Sands of Mu hit) and Irradiate at 4 (not a melee attack, but it's melee range at least, and the alternative was Repel, which is totally anti-melee). I took Flurry at level 6, to fit into the "speedster" concept; and at that point I wasn't sure I needed any more melee attacks, since Neutrino Bolt/Sands of Mu/Flurry is already enough attacks to keep me fully occupied. The sewer team eventually dwindled down to 3 players (2 tankers and me) and suffered a wipeout about halfway to King's Row, from which I hospital'd and trained up to level 7.
At level 7 I went into the new Hollows and joined a friend who was leading an 8-player pickup team there, doing Meg Mason's missions. We almost immediately got completely stomped by a huge CoT spawn including 3 Madness Mages, whose earthquakes and holds seriously wreck lowbies with no status protection. We suffered 3 straight team wipes; I talked the team into letting me pull (with Neutrino Bolt), and got 2 good pulls and then one that had all 3 bosses that gave us another team wipe. One controller had a nasty habit of holding/immobing my pulls while they were incoming to us; I can't say for sure, but this might have contributed to the bad pull. This process cleared enough mobs, though, that after regrouping we were able to beat up the remaining CoT. After that things went pretty well and we did many more missions, mostly in the south part of the Hollows, and gained a lot of levels. At level 12 I took Speed Boost, and we added another kinetic who also had Speed Boost, and after that we simply wrecked all the mobs in the missions we did. Finally ended the team with Linda at level 14, where I took Superspeed (of course). I was near the top of level 14 so I decided to try and solo a Baby New Year mission. Fighting the elite boss Snaptooth was quite painful; even popping inspirations, Snaptooth just barely managed to KO me while he was at a sliver of life. But it turns out even after I died, my Irradiate's DOT was still ticking and killed Snaptooth for a double KO! And the exp leveled Linda to 15 which auto-resurrected her, which was pure awesome! That let me finish the night on a high note.
Sunday, I played Mega (50 SS/elec brute) on Vaxin's Rikti War Zone raid. These raids are usually horrifically dangerous for my squishy characters, but Mega's energy resist lets her shrug off most Rikti damage, so I had a good time gleefully stomping aliens left and right. I clocked the time I spent; including the whole pylon clearing phase, I was on the raid for 35 minutes, during which time I earned 174 Vanguard merits (approx 300/hr), 2 Reward merits (for the master-at-arms monster) and 326K infamy (approx 560K/hr). This felt like a better than average RWZ raid, though.
I also played Linda Lightspeed (now a 15 kin/rad defender) on a mostly Sisterhood Synapse TF; our team mix was:
shield/fire tanker
kin/rad defender
fire/shield scrapper
kin/psy defender
ill/rad controller
plant/thermal controller
I got a compliment on Linda's bio, which was nice (I had written a quickie story about a horrific tanning salon accident that gave her light-based powers). With my "scrappy" build, I ironically had more attacks at 15 than our real scrapper (who was exemped down to 20; think his main fire attacks were higher), which was amusing. The other kin gratifyingly was passing out SB too, and with both of us SBing we had none of the END problems typical of a Synapse TF (with END-draining clockworks and pre-Stamina characters). The double SB, rad debuffs, thermal buffs, and a solid front line of melee, let us easily tear through the clockworks and complete the TF in good time. We were even able to defeat Babbage with minimal outside help (I think we could've beaten him with just us 6, but some bystanders pitched in too). Finished the TF in 2hrs 11mins, got Linda to level 19, and counting Babbage, we earned 47 merits (21.53 MPH).
Later on Sunday I played Blond Justice (31 broadsword/shield scrapper) on a pickup Manticore TF. Our team mix was:
storm/elec defender
fire/nrg blaster
will/axe tanker
broadsword/shield scrapper (me)
earth/storm controller
grav/storm controller
nrg/nrg blaster
AR/nrg blaster
I had some misgivings about this team because before we started the TF we attacked a Winter Lord in Brickstown and seemed unable to defeat it, and unable to even stay alive against it. All three support characters were stormies and none regarded themselves as healers; two had O2 Boost and never used it, the other one actually had Aid Other and used it once in awhile. I like storm summoning, though, so I wanted to give it a chance; on the actual TF we seemed to do fine, though. We did have one stormy who was rather ill-behaved, hurricaning directly through a herd of mobs the tanker had gathered together, and refusing to stay with the group at other times. One of our blasters was pretty clueless too, not knowing how to get to various zones and confused as to why she wasn't getting exp (she was exemped down from the mid 40s), but at least she seemed to know what to do in a fight. Despite this we muddled through the various kill-all missions. The later missions were taken care of mostly by stealthing, and since I didn't have any sort of stealth I kinda mentally switched off for this part of the TF as I ended up left at the mission door while the stealthers did their work. In the final mission we weren't able to explain to our blaster how to use her veteran team TP power to get the team to the last room, but someone else was able to grant invis the rest of us so we get to the final AV fight. Finished the TF in 1hr 25mins, got Blond Justice to 32 (and Headsplitter, yay!) and 25 reward merits (17.65 MPH).
[u]Merit benchmarking since I13[u]
All purely my experience - your mileage may vary
WL farming hero side: 52.98 MPH (302 merits in 5hrs 42mins)
Nictus Insurrection kheldian flashback: 48.33 MPH (1 run)
3rd villain respec: 36.75 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
WL farming villain side: 36.40 MPH (108 merits in 2hrs 58mins)
2nd villain respec: 34.62 MPH (1 run)
St Martial SF: 27.78 MPH (1 run)
Sharkhead SF: 25.45 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
3rd hero respec: 21.74 MPH (1 run)
Synapse TF: 20.16 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
2nd hero respec: 18.1 MPH (1 run)
Manticore TF: 17.65 MPH (1 run)
Silver Mantis SF: 17.5 MPH (1 run)
Positron TF: 17.12 MPH (avg of 2 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
Sister Psyche TF: 16.80 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
Imperious TF: 15.59 MPH (avg of 4 runs)
Citadel TF: 12.74 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
Hess TF: 12.68 MPH (1 run)
Mender Tesseract SF: 10.71 MPH (1 run)
Katie TF: 8.24 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
Cap au Diable SF: 6.74 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
Rise of the Vampyri hero flashback: 6.27 MPH (1 run)
Rumblings of the Past hero flashback: 5.81 MPH (1 run)
Escaped! villain flashback: 4.39 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
1/6/2009
I started the evening playing Schadenfreude (31 AR/pain corruptor) on a 1st villain respec organized on LHO. We had a team of 1 crab spider, 3 corruptors and 4 brutes, which made quick work of the trial, completing it in a mere 22mins and gaining 15 merits (40.91 MPH).
Schadenfreude went on to join a 5-player Fallen LEGION SG team running mid 30s missions in Nerva and St Martial, which got her to level 33 (I took and slotted up Full Auto, yum!) and the Exterminator badge.
After awhile the team reconfigured to doing low 40s missions in Grandville; even with pool power stealth I didn't really feel safe running around Grandville as a low 30s corruptor, so I switched to Spy Girl (32 MA/ninj stalker) who has better stealth, and lackeyed up to 43. We did a few missions in Grandville that got Spy Girl to 33 before the team broke up. Spy Girl went on to solo Willy Wheeler's very grey story arc to gain an extra 6 merits.
I like level 33 recipes (since you keep the set bonuses when exemped for Siren's Call, Citadel TF, Hess TF and Sharkhead SF) and had accumulated some merits, so burned 60 of Schadenfreude's merits and 80 of Spy Girl's merits on random level 30-34 Pool C draws. I got the following from my 7 draws:
2 Commanding Presence (ACC/DMG/END) [Black Market=3M each]
1 Scirocco's Dervish (DMG/ACC/END) [Black Market=2.87M]
1 Decimation (ACC/END/RCHG) [Black Market=22M]
1 Aegis (END/RCHG) [Black Market=130K]
1 Malaise's Illusions (ACC/CONFUSE/RCHG) [Black Market=740K]
1 Gaussian's Synch Fire Control (RCHG/END) [Black Market=4.57M]
All these were level 33 except the Commanding Presences, which were level 30. The Black Market prices are the average of the last 5 sales for all the recipes except for the Commanding Presences; being pet recipes, I thought they were totally junk, but their average sale price was 2M and listing them on the Black Market I instantly sold both of them for 3M infamy each. I assume that masterminds must be snapping them up, making them actually valuable on red side; probably they are total junk on blue side. I was really happy about the Decimation recipe, which is quite expensive; though I plan to have some alt slot it, instead of selling it, since the Decimation set is useful for its global RCHG bonus. I also use the Gaussian's set a lot so I'm sure I'll use the Gaussian recipe somehow. Overall my payoff on these 140 merits was 259K infamy per merit, which is pretty good; definitely the value of the Decimation skewed the payoff up though.
Finished the night playing Linda Lightspeed (19 kin/rad defender) on a Sister Psyche TF. I was 1 bubble away from level 20 with some patrol exp when I heard about the Sister Psyche TF, and so I speeded through 2 radio missions in Steel Canyon to hit 20 (picking up Stamina), after which I joined the TF as a sidekick. We did the TF on Tenacious difficulty, and our team mix was:
earth/kin controller
storm/elec defender
MA/regen scrapper
kin/rad defender (me)
stone/fire tanker
psy/mental blaster
I got two small compliments on Linda's bio (the tanning salon accident is just a funny origin I think) which was nice. I kept SB on everyone which seemed to make everyone happy, especially the stone tanker; sadly I didn't get SB in return from the other kin, but I figured maybe he didn't have SB when exemped to 25 (or at least pretended not to). It was a fun team with fast paced fighting and lots of joking around and we all had a good time; the Freakshow never really had much chance against us, as we had good DPS and good buffing. We started rather late at night and so the TF didn't finish until quite late, but we did finish in 2h 40mins (estimated; didn't see a TF result dialog box) and got 40 merits (15MPH). Linda Lightspeed got to level 23; I slotted SOs, but postponed deciding on a level 22 power until sometime when I was more awake.
[u]Merit benchmarking since I13[u]
All purely my experience - your mileage may vary
WL farming hero side: 52.98 MPH (302 merits in 5hrs 42mins)
Nictus Insurrection kheldian flashback: 48.33 MPH (1 run)
1st villain respec: 40.91 MPH (1 run)
3rd villain respec: 36.75 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
WL farming villain side: 36.40 MPH (108 merits in 2hrs 58mins)
2nd villain respec: 34.62 MPH (1 run)
St Martial SF: 27.78 MPH (1 run)
Sharkhead SF: 25.45 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
3rd hero respec: 21.74 MPH (1 run)
Synapse TF: 20.16 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
2nd hero respec: 18.1 MPH (1 run)
Manticore TF: 17.65 MPH (1 run)
Silver Mantis SF: 17.5 MPH (1 run)
Positron TF: 17.12 MPH (avg of 2 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
Sister Psyche TF: 16.20 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
Imperious TF: 15.59 MPH (avg of 4 runs)
Citadel TF: 12.74 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
Hess TF: 12.68 MPH (1 run)
Mender Tesseract SF: 10.71 MPH (1 run)
Katie TF: 8.24 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
Cap au Diable SF: 6.74 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
Rise of the Vampyri hero flashback: 6.27 MPH (1 run)
Rumblings of the Past hero flashback: 5.81 MPH (1 run)
Escaped! villain flashback: 4.39 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
[u]Random recipe draw results (to date)[u]
Pool C: 62.5% good (5 out of 8 rolls)
2 Commanding Presence (ACC/DMG/END) (good on villain side)
1 Decimation (ACC/END/RCHG) (good)
1 Gaussian's Synch Fire Control (RCHG/END) (good)
1 Scirocco's Dervish (DMG/ACC/END) (good)
1 Aegis (END/RCHG) (bad)
1 Induced Coma %-RCHG (bad)
1 Malaise's Illusions (ACC/CONFUSE/RCHG) (bad)
Pool D: 100% good (2 out of 2 rolls)
1 Devastation ACC/DMG/RCHG (good)
1 Mako's Bite ACC/END/RCHG (good)
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
11/7/2008
On Wednesday night I started off soloing with Spy Girl (my new 6 MA/ninj stalker), doing door missions in Mercy Island and Port Oakes to get to level 8, training in Danger Sense (the range/AoE defense toggle).
Then I did a Katie TF as Mercy Beaucoup (34 emp/ice defender), with a team of 4 controllers, 2 blasters, defender and warshade; this was straightforward, finishing in 28 minutes and getting Mercy to level 35 and a Glimpse of the Abyss (ACC/FEAR/RCHG) recipe.
After that I played Idealist (28 fire/thermal controller), forming a pickup team that grew to 7 players; we did the Tobias Hansen story arc in Striga Isle, and killed enough vampires doing this to get Idealist the Slayer badge and to level 29; also lucked into a Deific Weapon salvage drop.
On Thursday night I started off soloing Idealist through Lars Hansen's story arc, to unlock the Hess TF, and an old grey Pwnz badge mission. I'm starting to really like the Fire Cages power, which I originally was pretty prejudiced against due to the number of fire controllers and dominators I've seen die due to aggro from using Fire Cages; it recharges really quickly (compared to, say, Terrify) and does not-too-bad damage over time.
Then I switched to villain side and solo'd with Mayday (33 fortunata) for a bit; a friend asked to join me, then he had a friend who wanted to join, and suddenly I was leading a team. We did some level 33 missions in St Martial, then several mid-40s villains joined us and we ended up with an 8-player team doing level 48 missions in Grandville. Among these villains we had 5 VEATs and 2 trappers, and between stacked Maneuvers, Mind Links and FF Generators we were all running at +100% DEF to everything, which two team members described as "easy mode". People could still get killed through this much defense (due to dumb luck and low resists), but it was pretty easy to be dismissive of most of the enemies we fought. We defeated a Silver Mantis AV and a Black Scorpion AV, and I picked up a Prophecy salvage drop and got to level 34 before the team broke up.
I checked the Black Market and found that Mayday had managed to sell a level 30 Entropic Chaos recipe for 26M infamy, a terrific windfall; I splurged on IO set recipes, buying and slotting a Devastation (DMG/RCHG) into her Dominate, making a set of 4 which gives her +2.25% max HP, as well as a set of 5 Gaussian's Synchronized Fire Control into Tactical Training: Leadership, which gives her an additional +5% movement, +1.88% max HP, +2.5% global dmg. This put Mayday's standing-around damage bonus at +28.5% (including the bonus from TT: Assault).
Finished the evening playing Idealist on a pickup Hess TF. Team mix was:
2 spine/regen scrappers
2 fire/thermal controllers (including me)
psy/mental blaster
TA/rad defender
This was a very strong team due to high DPS and lots of buffing; with double fire shielded regen scrappers leading the way, not a lot of healing was required by the controllers. Even clearing most missions for exp, we finished the Hess TF in 1hr 10mins, getting Idealist to level 30 (where I trained in Assault; I'm addicted to buffs) and getting me a level 30 Call of the Sandman Chance to Heal recipe.
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"