1/8/2009
I started off playing Linda Lightspeed (23 kin/rad defender) and quickly got invited to be a sidekick on a 6 player pickup team running level 29ish radio missions in Talos. As I arrived at the mission, the team leader kicked a rad/psy defender from the team, admonishing him that "We wanted a defender, you aren't a defender." The rad/psy had no primary powers except RI and Mutation and of these only used Mutation, so this was somewhat justified, but made me a bit nervous as Linda is my attempt at a kinetics scrapper; so I warned them that "I might not be a defender either." The team leader assured me that I was, since I had Transfusion and Speed Boost and used them both, so I shrugged and decided to give it a try. I did have to warn them that kinetics heals always go off near the tanker, so it would be hard to heal squishies hiding in the back; they seemed OK with this. Though our stormy controller did run hurricane a lot; a great power which I like, but it guaranteed Transfusion would never heal him. Despite the pickuppyness of this team, we did manage to clear several radio missions and they seemed happy with the level of support I was providing, and Linda got to level 24, where I took Jump Kick. I normally like Jump Kick and I wanted it as a prereq for Acrobatics (Linda gets KB'd wayyy too much due to needing to be in melee range) and also wanted another melee attack to feel more scrappery; but between Neutrino Bolt, Flurry, Sands of Mu and an occasional Irradiate, it just never seems like I have time left to insert a Jump Kick into my attack chain, so it feels like a wasted power. May need to respec it out at some point.
After that team broke up I played Schadenfreude (33 AR/pain corruptor) on an 8-player Fallen LEGION SG team, where we did a very long mission to save Mu Mystics from endless waves of Wailers. This mission was easily longer than some Katie TFs I've been on, and we kept repeatedly getting zerged by Wailer ambushes that would often alpha strike someone out with their stacking RES debuffs. It was really good exp though and got Schadenfreude to level 34. I also crafted and slotted some IO sets; a set of 6 Doctored Wounds into Nullify Pain and a set of 5 Doctored Wounds plus one Heal SO into Soothe, which netted me +10% global recharge and +8% to heals. The Doctored Wounds sets were bought off the Black Market (not merits) at pretty reasonable prices (in the 100Ks for each, so probably spent 2M altogether) and got heal and recharge both to the soft cap for the 6-slotted power, which was nice.
After that I joined a Citadel TF organized on LBx. The team leader asked for a debuffer, so I played Virtual Girl (28 rad/psy defender), who already has the TF badge but could use the exp/merits. Our team mix was:
psy/mental blaster
fire/mental blaster
inv/nrg tanker
katana/will scrapper
ice/rad controller
katana/dark scrapper
katana/regen scrapper
rad/sonic defender (me)
Pretty katana heavy, but it worked. We had a lot of DPS and an aggressive mentality and pushed through the TF at an aggressive pace. I did manage to save a blaster from death at the hands of angry Council at one point, earning me a "Thanks Virtual Girl, great heals!" and two different people complimented me on Virtual Girl's background story, which was really nice. We blitzed through the TF, not even really stealthing, just destroying all in our path, and finished in 1hr 45mins for 30 merits (17.14 MPH; an excellent time, brings up my average), and getting Virtual Girl to level 30, where I took Acrobatics.
Finished the evening soloing a little as Spy Girl (33 MA/ninj stalker). Last night I logged out on a timed mission to stop Amanda Vines' radio transmission; it expired overnight, but even though I was logged off, I got 6 merits for completing the story arc that timed out while I was logged off, yet I still got 6 reward merits for completing the story arc, which was nice. This gave me enough to blow 20 merits on a random Pool C recipe draw, which yielded me a stinky Induced Coma (ACC/SLEEP/RCHG) recipe that has an average sale price of 1700 inf at the Black Market. Bleh. Anyway, solo'd Spy Girl's level 30 costume mission and messed around in the tailor a bit before calling it a night.
[u]Merit benchmarking since I13[u]
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)
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)
Numina TF: 13.61 MPH (1 run)
Citadel TF: 13.84 MPH (avg of 4 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)
RWZ raiding: 2.91 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
[u]Random recipe draw results (to date)[u]
Pool C: 56% good (5 out of 9 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 Induced Coma (ACC/SLEEP/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!"
1/12/2009
Thursday night, I played Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) on a Lady Grey TF. Our team mix was:
fire/fire blaster
nrg/nrg blaster
archery/nrg blaster
fire/storm controller
emp/dark defender
stone/fire brute
AR/dev blaster (me)
plant/kin controller
The team leader had us use several interesting speed blitz tactics that I hadn't seen before. In the first mission, someone stealth/TP'd the team to where Penelope Yin was held captive, all except one player who stayed at the door. We freed Penny, spawning the Clockwork King, then the player at the door team teleported the whole team back to the mission door -- and Penny came with the team. This let us get credit for getting Penelope out, then we were able to immediately take out the Clockwork King. I used Surveillance on him and found he has 20% lethal resist and 50% psy resist.
The second mission we were stealth/TP'd to each of the four Rider encounters to take them out. Surveillance showed all four Riders seemed to have 25% smash/lethal/fire/cold/nrg/negative resist, 40% psy resist and 50% toxic resist. The third mission was stealth failed in the fairly normal way, freeing Infernia and Glacia and getting them killed.
The fourth mission the brute dragged all the Rikti onto the mitos to get them to fight, then someone else started TP Foe'ing blue and green mitos out to be swiftly dispatched by our blaster pack, which worked a lot better than assaulting them in the goo. I took a few potshots at yellow mitos also; common wisdom is that they are melee-only, but it seemed like I could occasionally hit them. Looking at my combat spam, I had an 11% chance to hit a yellow mito (though I also have Targeting Drone, Tactics, and big accuracy bonuses from IO sets); I conjecture they may simply have very high ranged DEF. Once all the mitos were disposed of, we made short work of the pylons and Hamidon himself. Surveillance showed the Weakened Hamidon had 85% resist to everything.
We stealthed to the end of the last mission and the brute kinda leeroy'd into the big mass of Rikti in the final room; we eventually pulled Lord of War Hro'Dtohz AV (surveillance showed he had NO special resists) out of the mess and killed him, then defeated the Honoree. Surveillance showed the Honoree had 50% smash/lethal resist, 30% fire/cold resist, 40% energy resist, 20% negative resist, 50% psy resist, 20% tox resist; Unstoppable gave him about +55% to each of these numbers, but we were still able to kill him through Unstoppable. Finished LGTF in 1hr 11mins due to all the speed-up tactics, which seemed like VERY good time; gained 30 reward merits (25.35 MPH), 17 Vanguard merits, 1.48M infl.
Visiting Wentworth's later on Thursday night, I found I had sold a level 30 Pounding Slugfest (DMG/END) for 15M influence. I have no idea why that recipe is so valuable.
I started Friday night playing Idealist (40 fire/thermal controller) on an 8-player team of Demolition Girls SG, mainly doing Praetorian missions for Tina McIntyre in Peregrine Island. We beat up a Shadow Hunter AV, a Neuron AV, Antimatter AV and Bile AV. Idealist got to level 42 (picking up Fireball at 41) and found a Hamidon Goo somewhere along the way.
After that I did a Citadel TF. The team leader had actually asked for a support toon but I really wasn't in the mood to play one; instead I wanted to play Fire Emerald (25 fire/fire blaster). Our team mix was:
shield/fire tanker
fire/nrg blaster
plant/therm controller
katana/fire scrapper
psy/mental blaster
fire/fire blaster (me)
spine/regen scrapper
katana/dark scrapper
Upon seeing our actual team composition I started having misgivings about wanting to play blaster, and another blaster offered to switch to a controller, but the team leader seemed OK trying it like we were. We had very high DPS and our one controller was pretty amazing at keeping us (mostly) alive, so we ended up doing just fine. The tanker generally tried to use herd/AoE tactics to leverage our high DPS but squishy team, which also helped. In the second to last mission we had a semi-wipeout when we ran into the Bulwark EB and his friends, but we managed to combat rez and get back in the fight to beat him. Vandal AV himself was no problem. Finished the TF in 2hrs 18mins for 30 merits (13.04 MPH). Fire Emerald got to level 27 (I took Hasten at 26; she already has SJ as a travel power, but Hasten just seems too good for her); someone also complimented her on her costume and her color choices in it, which was nice.
After that I played Linda Lightspeed (24 kin/rad defender), duoing with a tanker friend for some Talos Island radio missions, getting Linda to level 25. The tanker also generously gave Linda a level 25 Performance Shifter: Chance for END; I tried to refuse this, as it is much, much too valuable, but he really insisted, so I ended up crafting and slotting it into Stamina.
Did a little soloing after that; Virtual Girl (30 rad/sonic defender) solo'd her way through the Return to Vampyr Mountain story arc (4 merits), then found that at level 30, Lars wouldn't give her the story arc to unlock Hess. I may need to do that in flashback later. Blond Justice (32 broadsword/shield scrapper) solo'd her way through the Crossing Over story arc to unlock the Katie Hannon TF; this gave her 6 merits and let her hit level 33, which I decided to celebrate by spending 320 reward merits on 16 Pool C draws. Bizarrely, the merit vendor let me pick level 35-39 Task Force rewards, even though it would give me level 33 recipes. I'm not sure if that is intentional or not, but I chose 35-39 instead of 30-34 in order to filter out some of the crappy level 30 recipes. Here is what I got (all at level 33; Wentworth's price is the average of the last 5 sales when I checked Friday night):
1 Sovereign Right (10% pet RES) Wentw=286K
2 Scirocco's Dervish (chance for lethal) Wentw=3.5M
2 Obliteration (chance for smashing) Wentw=23.6M
1 Touch of Nictus (chance for negative) Wentw=1.82M
1 Positron's Blast (DMG/ACC/END) Wentw=6M
1 Devastation (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=2.7M
1 Aegis (Psi/Mez resist) Wentw=6.05M
1 Expedient Reinforcement (END/DMG/RCHG) Wentw=2.1M
1 Analyze Weakness (chance for +ToHit) Wentw=1.4M
1 Trap of the Hunter (chance for lethal) Wentw=500K
1 Malaise's Illusions (ACC/CNFS/RCHG) Wentw=50K
1 Lockdown (Chance for +2 Mag) Wentw=3.7M
1 Stupefy (Chance for KB) Wentw=43K
1 Aegis (END/RCHG) Wentw=41K
Total market value: 78.89M infl. Averaged 246K infl per merit. Nearly all of the value of this batch was from the two Obliteration IOs; Obliteration is a new and apparently very popular set. Overall I'm pretty happy with this draw; will probably use one Obliteration, one or both Scirocco's, the Positron's and Devastation, and most likely try to sell the rest.
Late Saturday night I ran yet another Citadel TF, this time with Linda Lightspeed (25 kin/rad defender). Our team mix was:
fire/thermal controller
will/SS tanker
kin/rad defender (me)
will/nrg tanker
fire/nrg blaster
katana/regen scrapper
AR/dev blaster
This TF was a little slow to fill up as it was forming late at night, and a couple TFs had kicked off a little earlier. We started with a tanker and 2 support and just needed to fill up with some DPS, so we had faith that we could get something going; we ended up with quite a decent team. Linda has Speed Boost, Superspeed, Stealth and the very useful Summon Teammates temp power from a safeguard (a team TP with only a 5 minute cooldown), so I got to feel pretty helpful, buffing teammates and stealthing missions. We had no serious problems with the TF, though it was quite late by the end and everyone was very sleepy. Finished in 2hrs 22mins for 30 merits (12.68 MPH). Linda got to level 27, picking up Acrobatics at 26, which helped immensely against all the knockback the Council seem to generate.
On Sunday I played many various alts with a Fallen Legion villain team that seemed to be running mid-to-late 30s missions off-and-on throughout most of the day. Schadenfreude (34 AR/pain corr) got to 36 in this way, fighting lots of Wailers and picking up the Anguishing Cry debuff at 35. I'm glad to finally get a debuff power from the pain set, and on paper it seems like this should be as good a debuff as Freezing Rain, but I haven't really gotten a feel for it. Also got Maitresse (39 necro/storm MM) to level 40 and Mayday (38 fortunata) to level 39 with this team, doing various parts of Sister Airlia's story arc.
I also played Virtual Girl (30 rad/sonic defender) on a Manticore TF. Our team mix was
earth/sonic controller
nrg/nrg blaster
spine/regen scrapper
TA/archery defender
dark/regen scrapper
fire/kin controller
arch/dev blaster
rad/sonic defender (me)
This TF went quite well; we had good DPS and good support. The sonic controller was good about buffing; the kin didn't have SB but despite that was still pretty effective, using Transfusion/Transference to help the team (though she had to log off about midway through the TF). We had no serious problems and finished in 1hr 32mins, for 25 merits (16.30 MPH), and getting Virtual Girl to level 31.
I also crafted and slotted a set of 5 Dampened Spirits into Virtual Girl's Radiation Infection for +2% global dmg, +1.8% max end, +5% global rchg (I started out wanting 5 Dark Watcher's, but Dampened Spirits seems much cheaper for almost the same bonuses) and 4 Doctored Wounds into her Radiant Aura, which has pretty inconsequential bonuses until I get a fifth of that set.
Started a newbie elec/invuln brute on Justice along with several friends from Demolition Girls SG; we had an 8-player newbie villain team going for a couple hours which got us through most of Kalinda's story arc, then into Port Oakes where we did both the Atlas and Kings Row mayhems, getting us to level 11.
After that broke up, I logged on Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corruptor on Liberty) and did some tinkering with IO sets. Slotted a Decimation (DMG/END) and a Thunderstrike (DMG/END/RCHG) IO into her Fire Blast, which is now a mix of 5 Decimation, 1 Thunderstrike, putting the power at +96% dmg, +58% acc, +79% rchg, +62% endrdx, which feels pretty good, along with granting a +6.25% global recharge bonus. Solo'd my way through the Ouroboros intro arc offered by the Pilgrim, which earned me 2 merits, and a random passerby in Ouroboros told me Indigo's bio was "awesome" which was really nice. Completing the Pilgrim's arc finally let me talk to the Midnight Squad contact in Cap au Diable and I solo'd my way through the story arc to unlock the Midnight Club, for another 2 merits, and got a Prophecy salvage drop along the way. Apparently the intro story arcs for Cimerora, Ouroboros and Rikti War Zone are all mutually exclusive; you can only have one of those open at a time.
[u]Merit benchmarking since I13[u]
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)
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)
Lady Grey TF: 25.35 MPH (1 run)
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)
Silver Mantis SF: 17.5 MPH (1 run)
Positron TF: 17.12 MPH (avg of 2 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
Manticore TF: 16.98 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
Sister Psyche TF: 16.20 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
Imperious TF: 15.59 MPH (avg of 4 runs)
Numina TF: 13.61 MPH (1 run)
Citadel TF: 13.51 MPH (avg of 6 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)
RWZ raiding: 2.91 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
[u]Random recipe draw results (to date)[u]
GOOD POOL C: 64% good (16 out of 25 rolls)
1 Aegis (Psi/Mez resist)
1 Analyze Weakness (chance for +ToHit)
2 Commanding Presence (ACC/DMG/END) (villain side)
1 Decimation (ACC/END/RCHG)
1 Devastation (DMG/RCHG)
1 Expedient Reinforcement (END/DMG/RCHG)
1 Gaussian's Synch Fire Control (RCHG/END)
1 Lockdown (Chance for +2 Mag)
2 Obliteration (chance for smashing)
1 Positron's Blast (DMG/ACC/END)
1 Scirocco's Dervish (DMG/ACC/END)
2 Scirocco's Dervish (chance for lethal)
1 Touch of Nictus (chance for negative)
BAD POOL C: 36% bad (9 out of 25 rolls)
2 Aegis (END/RCHG)
1 Induced Coma %-RCHG
1 Induced Coma (ACC/SLEEP/RCHG)
2 Malaise's Illusions (ACC/CONFUSE/RCHG)
1 Sovereign Right (10% pet RES) (hero side)
1 Stupefy (Chance for KB)
1 Trap of the Hunter (chance for lethal)
GOOD POOL D: 100% good (2 out of 2 rolls)
1 Devastation (ACC/DMG/RCHG)
1 Mako's Bite (ACC/END/RCHG)
@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!"
1/14/2009
On Monday night I joined a Cap au Diable SF organized on LHO. The team leader specifically asked for a stealther, so I played Spy Girl (33 MA/ninj stalker). This is probably the first SF I've been on where the team wanted a stalker over anything else; the team leader felt stealth was particularly critical for the last mission of the Cap SF. A RWZ raid was occuring at the same time we were recruiting, so the team was very slow to fill, and 3 of us ended up hitting Bloody Bay for Shivan Shards to kill time while we waited for a 4th player. We finally got a fourth player and started the Cap SF with a team of:
mace/shield brute
fire/storm corruptor
MA/ninj stalker (me)
necro/poison mastermind
Not too long ago I had respec'd Recall Friend as Spy Girl's level 18 power, so I was able to stealth/TP people through most missions, and the SF went pretty quickly. I had accidentally left Spy Girl logged off in Ouroboros and was getting random recipe drops at the end of missions due to the day job temp power; these were mostly generic level 30 recipes, but after one mission, I got a level 30 Karma: Knockback protection (black market value=11M infamy) as my day job recipe drop! This made me feel like Ouro must be the Best Day Job Power Ever.
In the final mission I got assigned to stealth click all the glowy altars while the other 3 fought Infernal. I had never actually done this but a friend had mentioned that a short character can hide behind the altar to avoid demon aggro while clicking it, and this technique worked really well for me.
Spy Girl hides behind the altar, avoiding demons
I did also find that touching lava at any point breaks stealth and draws aggro, which gave me a few scary moments running from demons, but I managed to get all the altars and spawned Bat'Zul, who we pulled into the entryway and beat up to finish the SF in 46 minutes (though, this is not counting the recruiting time), gaining 10 merits (13.04 MPH).
After that, I switched to Mega (50 SS/elec brute) and joined an 8-player villain team taking down NPC heroes in Recluse's Victory. I saw a couple player heroes while there, but they seemed to be observing or even helping us with the badging by manipulating pillboxes, so we didn't actually fight. While there we took down Synapse, Positron, Sister Psyche, Manticore and Statesman, gaining the Breakneck, Destroyer, Interrogator, Deadeye and Oppressor badges. These heroes were actually decently tough, especially since we had our powers all I13PVPized, and so a few villain deaths per Hero was pretty common. When we got a respawn of Manticore/Statesman after slaying them once already, the team kinda lost steam as everyone had those badges already and enough people trickled away that we had to stop.
After that I played Mayday (39 fortunata) on a 7 player Fallen LEGION villain team for awhile, doing missions in Grandville. We took out a Hero-level Serafina as part of Scirocco's patron story arc. I got a compliment on Mayday's bio story, which was nice.
After that team broke up I switched to April Fool (50 thug/TA mastermind) and joined a 4-player Sisterhood team for a few missions in Rikti War Zone. We did a few generic Levantera missions, then the last mission of the Strange Case of Benjamin Decker story arc. We were supposed to avoid patrols, but being the uberviolent people we were, we killed a patrol. This spawned a series of ambushes and finally a Security Chief, who we were also supposed to avoid, but killed instead, causing the mission to fail. We also ran through the tail end of April's Welcome to Vanguard story arc, scoring her 3 reward merits. April also got the Zookeeper badge for Rikti monkeys, and a compliment on how her dual pistols looked (I've colored them bright pink and neon green to look like squirt guns).
Finished Monday night by joining an Imperious TF as Mercy Beaucoup (39 emp/ice defender). Our team mix was:
ill/TA controller
emp/ice defender (me)
SS/inv brute
inv/SS tanker
bs/regen scrapper
SS/shield brute
fire/rad corruptor
some kind of ninja stalker
This ITF had many experienced players on it, but had lots of problems; it never quite felt like we gelled as a team. Quite frequently our brutes and scrappers would all head different directions, splitting the team up into 2 or 3 sub-teams and be fighting in different areas. Our tanker was SK'd and didn't have Temp Invuln or Unyielding and consequently had lethal resist of maybe 10%, and he died a ton (in fairness, he said it was his first tanker and he was very open to build advice; I told him I really thought he should get TI and UY). The invuln brute ended up being our "tank", though only a few of us seemed to reliably follow him. Our shield brute was playing as an unSK'd level 46 (later 47), didn't have the power that grants resistance to defense debuffs (because "Grant Cover sucks"), and also had a bad habit of leeroying into his own spawn of mobs to see how tough he was; also died a ton. One player was perpetually distracted by his girlfriend, and another was distracted due to playing at work and had to keep talking to his employees (must be good to be a manager!).
I'm not blameless either; the team leader commented I was the first empath he'd ever seen that didn't have Resurrect, a power I've been avoiding taking because I feel empathy Resurrect is underwhelming compared to other rez powers. Normally this isn't an issue because not many people die, and when they do, you can give them an awaken; but on this team we had tons of deaths and a hero can't give awakens to villains, so Resurrect really wouldn't have helped. I tried to keep Fortitude and AB on people as much as possible, but I fear that with all the deaths and the lack of rez I must've seemed a terrible empath. In the first mission we had a semi-wipe when ambushed at the mountaintop shrine, but completed the mission; the second mission we got split up over and over in the caves of Nictus, resulting in a partial team wipe at one point. In the third mission, right after crossing the first bridge, I swear that somehow every single team member but me was soloing their own personal spawn of Romans, even the squishies; this was messy but we got through it. We had another near-team-wipe fighting the computer console and its robots. The final mission we actually did a bit better and managed to overpower Romulus 4 times (with a few stray deaths). Despite all these difficulties, we finished in 1hr 45mins for 25 reward merits (14.29 MPH), and got Mercy to level 41.
On Tuesday night I played Schadenfreude (36 AR/pain corruptor) on a 6-player team of Fallen LEGION SG; we did a Founder's Falls mayhem and some missions in Grandville that got Schadenfreude to level 37 and the Doc badge (for healing; ironically, I got this during a mission where we weren't really getting hurt, and I did no healing except leave the heal spam aura toggle on).
After that I joined a Hess TF with Linda Lightspeed (27 kin/rad defender). Our team mix was:
cold/ice defender
shield/mace tanker
FF/psy defender
earth/rad controller
archery/fire blaster
TA/archery defender
will/fire tanker
kin/rad defender (me)
We were support-heavy and had no problems getting through the Hess TF, stealthing through missions when possible. Finished in 49 minutes for 15 merits (18.37 MPH) and got Linda to level 28, where I took Cosmic Burst, which is supposed to be an amazing attack but so far just seems okay. Maybe it'll wow me more after I get some slots in it.
Finished up Tuesday night on another Imperious TF, this time playing Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster). Our team mix was:
stone/fire tanker
warshade
AR/dev blaster
psy/mental blaster
bs/SR scrapper
plant/kin controller
bs/regen scrapper
MA/SR scrapper
Originally the kin controller was playing a sonic dispersion character, but the team leader (the stone tanker) asked him to switch to a kin. I was rather dubious about doing this with only one kin for team support, but gave it a try anyway. With so little support we quickly racked up player deaths (though I managed to avoid dying myself, the rest of the team died quite a bit, especially our kin and one of the scrapper SKs), probably as many or more than the ITF I did the previous night. But I found that I had a much better attitude about it on Tuesday night, since (a) as a blaster, I don't feel it's my fault when people get themselves killed, and (b) Police Woman has vengeance and resuscitate, which makes player deaths into opportunity! On reflection, though, that it's weird that my blaster can rez and likes it, while my empath can't; thinking about that, I really should work rez into Mercy's build.
I used Surveillance some to snoop on various enemies. Most Romans, even generals and Romulus himself, don't seem to have any base resists; the one Cyclops I spied on had 25% smash/lethal and put up Unyielding and Unstoppable at various times. The computer console had no resists; just a lot of HP, I guess. Requiem, for reasons I don't understand, had 25% fire resist and -25% cold resist; I have no idea why a vampire AV should be vulnerable to cold. The Nictus Essence AVs didn't show any resists on Surveillance, but this seems inconsistent with how hard they are to actually kill; dunno what's up with that.
In the second mission (the Nictus caves), our team leader took the unusual approach of completely ignoring ambushes after each crystal, instead just moving on to the next room. Surprisingly, the ambushes did not seem to find us if we moved forward before they arrived. We did occasionally have to clear them on the way back to explore the next cave passage. The third mission, we pulled all the generals out of the Valley of Lag and down to the bridge, to avoid lag issues, then stealth/team TP'd to the computer console. Quite a few Romans still had aggro on us and followed us there, but we managed to dispose of them and the AVs without much trouble.
The final mission we skipped directly to Romulus because one of the scrappers was almost out of time. We were clearing around Romulus when one of the scrappers unexpectedly aggroed Romulus and the 4 Nictus AVs, throwing us into the final fight. It's a bit surprising to me that we didn't all die right then and there, but we ended up overpowering Romulus through sheer DPS (along with Transfusions from the kin and a few Vengeances from me when people dropped). Our short timer scrapper was able to stay through the AV fight but had to log right after, so missed the cleanup, where we killed another 300 Romans to finish the mission. Completed the TF in 1hr 43mins for 25 merits (14.56 MPH); along the way I gained 4.01M influence and found a purple Coercive Persuasion (CNFS/ENDRDX) recipe [~2.4M infl at Wentworths].
[u]Merit benchmarking since I13[u]
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)
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)
Lady Grey TF: 25.35 MPH (1 run)
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)
Silver Mantis SF: 17.5 MPH (1 run)
Positron TF: 17.12 MPH (avg of 2 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
Manticore TF: 16.98 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
Sister Psyche TF: 16.20 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
Hess TF: 15.53 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
Imperious TF: 15.20 MPH (avg of 6 runs)
Numina TF: 13.61 MPH (1 run)
Citadel TF: 13.51 MPH (avg of 6 runs)
Mender Tesseract SF: 10.71 MPH (1 run)
Cap au Diable SF: 8.84 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
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)
RWZ raiding: 2.91 MPH (avg of 2 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!"
" The invuln brute ended up being our "tank", though only a few of us seemed to reliably follow him. "
wonder who that was? 
----Philly
After that I joined a Citadel TF organized on LBx. The team leader asked for a debuffer, so I played Virtual Girl (28 rad/psy defender), who already has the TF badge but could use the exp/merits. Our team mix was:
psy/mental blaster
fire/mental blaster
inv/nrg tanker
katana/will scrapper
ice/rad controller
katana/dark scrapper <-------(was ME!! )
katana/regen scrapper
rad/sonic defender (me)
1/16/2009
On Wednesday night, I logged in just as the PvPEC Throwdown event was forming up in Pocket D, so I went over there and joined up as Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster). The format was a series of free-for-all arena matches, with all players exemped to level 40. Low scoring players were eliminated between matches.
Our first match had 8 players and was on the Skyway map, with 4 tankers (!), 2 blasters (both AR/dev!) and 2 scrappers. It felt very unusual to have this many melee characters at an arena event; prior to I13, I've only seen this many meleers in arena when the event specifically required everyone to play melee or play "gimp" characters. As in all FFA matches, killstealing seemed the best strategy and as a blaster I felt pretty effective at that; most of my kills seemed to be off of the scrappers, who were noticably easier to kill than the tankers. There was one will/nrg tanker who must've decided I was squishy looking, as he relentlessly pursued me throughout this match, repeatedly trying to Energy Transfer me. At one point I gleefully unloaded Full Auto into a furball of four of the melee people slugging it out on the street; not sure if anyone actually died to it, but it was fun to catch them all in the AoE. I ended up winning this match with a score of 5 kills; second place was the tanker who was chasing me around, who got 4 kills (probably at least 2 of which were me).
Second match we were down to 6 players; some of the previous round was eliminated, but some latecomers were added. We were down to 2 tanks, 1 brute, 1 scrapper and 3 blasters (two AR/dev and one AR/nrg .. I have no idea why AR suddenly became popular in arena). We were on the Perez Park map, a map I have a lot of trouble with usually due to my lack of travel powers (it's hard for me to jump to the treetops from the ground level). Nevertheless I ran around shooting people. At one point I nearly killed the other AR/dev, but she managed to evade me by the simple expedient of ... flying up out of my range. Argh. I did manage to chase down and kill the scrapper a couple times and the blaster once, I think; I didn't really seem to dent the tankers or brutes much the times I went after them. This was a low scoring match over all; I won with 3 kills, and there was a three way tie for second with 1 kill each.
I was given a bye in the third round as people fought it out for the privilege of fighting me (a very weird feeling, as I certainly wasn't ever a high ranking arena player before).
In the final round I got to face off 1-on-1 against the will/nrg tanker that had relentlessly stalked me during the first match. This was a tough matchup for me; it seemed like the resists and regen from willpower would heal him up faster than I could deal DPS, and I noticed he also had Aid Self in his build, in case the other healing wasn't enough, I guess.
Since arena store powers were allowed, I bought an arena fly pack, and had the initial idea to just fly over his head and shoot him, while keeping him web grenaded to the floor. Since energy melee has no range attacks at level 40, I figured this would let me safely rain bullets down on him from above. He anticipated this and had temp web grenades from the arena store, but you only get a very few of these and they aren't very accurate, so that was no problem. The real problem with this strategy is that the arena fly pack only has 2 minutes of charge, and the match was 10 minutes long. On top of that, the arena fly pack uses a horrendous amount of END.
After running myself out of END, I quickly discarded the hover/shoot strategy (probably would've worked if I really had the Hover power, but I don't) and switched to a kiting strategy, where I would constantly run away from the tanker, and occasionally squeeze off Burst, Slug and Web Grenade attacks on him to keep his movement suppressed and steady damage on him. His strategy seemed to be to run and jump at me with Energy Transfer queued and hope he hits. We were on the Perez map again and I started getting pretty good at hopping from the ground level to the treetop level (sometimes aided by a brief squirt from the jet pack). He would periodically hit me with ET and get me to like 40% life, and I would run away, often jumping up to the tree level while leaving him web grenaded below, and Aid Self back to full. My shots would occasionally get him to around 60-75% life, but then he would heal it back; the fact that I had to keep moving and had to steadily web grenade him probably lowered my DPS considerably, but there was really no way I could stand toe-to-toe with him as his melee damage was so much greater than my ranged damage. His EM occasionally would stun me, which was scary as I had not brought any break frees (reasoning that I13 mez is much shorter duration, and with defiance I can still shoot while mez'd, so why worry?), but I managed to evade him for 9 of the 10 minutes. In the last minute of the match I decided to make my move, and chugged all the remaining reds I had and started lighting him up with bullets. I got him down to about 50% life, at which point I hit Full Auto, hoping to finish him off. This ultimately proved a mistake; he rushed me while I was locked in the long animation, and a few heavy Energy Melee hits KO'd me, while my attack wasn't enough to finish him off. This caused him to win the match, 1 to 0. In retrospect, perhaps I should've kept kiting and played for the draw, but that seems so boring, so I'm okay with how it went down.
I'm impressed with how much more effective melee is in I13 PvP, and I'm honestly not sure I can kill a willpower tanker solo under these rules; but then, I couldn't solo a willpower tanker in I12 either, so I guess it's really no different. Fly also seemed surprisingly useful in I13 PvP, though that may be a side effect of the resurgence of melee PvPers who would have trouble getting to a flyer.
Later that night I played Schadenfreude (37 AR/pain corruptor). I acquired and slotted a set of 5 Positron's Blast in Flamethrower (for a +6.25% global recharge bonus) and joined a 6 player Fallen LEGION team doing missions. We had a team wipe in a door mission against a room where we aggroed multiple Longbow spawns, including a Longbow Ballista EB, but after recovering we managed to get past them and take down a hero-level Positron.
After that I played Virtual Girl (31 rad/sonic defender) on a 3-player Sisterhood team, doing a few Croatoa missions to get to level 32 (where I took Mutation), then switched to Linda Lightspeed (28 kin/rad defender) to do a few more missions that got her to level 29.
On Thursday night I started by joining a Sisterhood team on an Imperious TF. I was asked to bring debuffs, so I played Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corruptor) for her first ITF. Our team mix was:
bs/shield scrapper
bs/regen scrapper
TA/archery defender
mind/FF controller
fire/rad corruptor (me)
peacebringer
ice/rad controller
ice/DB tanker
The team leader felt this was a very strong team and set the mission difficulty to Invincible. Despite this, the ITF was very easy for this team, which had tanking, good damage and tons of buff/debuff. We were also very into Leadership; I counted we had 4 stacked Maneuvers and Tactics, and 2 stacked Assault. At one point our pickup controller commented, "I love you, team! Gonna wrap you up and take you home!" We crushed all in our path. We did have occasional deaths (I think most of us were capped on DEF but lucky hits could leak through) which I gleefully capitalized on with Vengeance/Fallout/Mutation. In the final mission, the leader asked us to keep Imperious alive and clear a path to Romulus so that Imperious would help fight the end boss. We dutifully did this (getting all the "traitors" out of the way before the main event), and were careful to keep Imperious from accidentally pulling the AVs at the end; but Imperious had ideas of his own and while we were fighting Romulus he decided to go off on his own and solo some Roman traitors elsewhere. Despite this, we were easily able to overcome Romulus and finished the invincible-difficulty ITF in 1hr 45mins, earning 25 merits (14.29 MPH). Indigo also racked up 4.01M infamy (even with SG mode on), Hamidon Goo, Chronal Skip and Platinum salvage drops, and had one player comment that her outfit "looks awesome" in action.
I also joined a pickup Katie TF with Virtual Girl (32 rad/sonic defender) which went a lot less well. I theoretically was claiming the last slot on the TF, and when I joined we were all in Croatoa except for one scrapper who was in Atlas Park and seemed very confused as to how to get to Croatoa. This scrapper spent the next 15 minutes of our lives being completely unable to find his way to Croatoa. Another player tried to help him by getting him to enter his SG base and use a Croatoa teleporter, but he apparently entered someone else's SG base and got confused. I tried to say, it's a train stop, find the Green Line and it'll go there. This didn't seem to help. Finally our tanker got fed up with waiting and quit to play with someone else. This motivated the team leader to kick the scrapper who couldn't figure out how to get to Croatoa off the team. Said scrapper told our team leader that he hates us and hopes we all die. That scrapper must've had some Gypsy blood or something, because, boy did our TF go poorly.
Fiddling around recruiting for a few more minutes, we finally started the TF with a team of 2 scrappers, 4 defenders, 1 controller, 1 blaster. One of these defenders was only there to start the Katie TF (the original team leader couldn't) and so he immediately quit the team after starting the TF. The remaining 7 of us started fighting witches. The person who inherited the star must have been on high difficulty, because the minions all seemed to be level 36 and the AVs were higher level than I expected. On our team we had 2 rads, 1 stormy and a kinetic, which seems pretty good on paper, but for some reason our team just work very well; whenever we met Mary and a spawn of witches, our team would quickly get spread out all over the place, and with our only healing being Radiant Aura, this made it very hard to heal anyone. Instead, I ended up rezzing a lot of people. Several of us were on the low end of the TF range also; think we had a couple 30s and a couple 32s and 33s. I tried to suggest that one scrapper tank Mary while the other scrapper clears out minions with the other DPS; I feel like this helped a little, but not enough. We suffered a team wipe on Mary 6 (who was level 37, which seems higher than expected) and then two team wipes on Mary 7 (also level 37). It seemed hopeless to get past Mary 7, 8, 9 and 10 so we decided to call it quits.
I went on to solo Virtual Girl's aura mission and level 35 vendor mission from Mark IV, clearing her debt and leaving her at the high end of level 32.
[u]Merit benchmarking since I13[u]
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)
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)
Lady Grey TF: 25.35 MPH (1 run)
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)
Silver Mantis SF: 17.5 MPH (1 run)
Positron TF: 17.12 MPH (avg of 2 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
Manticore TF: 16.98 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
Sister Psyche TF: 16.20 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
Hess TF: 15.53 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
Imperious TF: 15.07 MPH (avg of 7 runs)
Numina TF: 13.61 MPH (1 run)
Citadel TF: 13.51 MPH (avg of 6 runs)
Mender Tesseract SF: 10.71 MPH (1 run)
Cap au Diable SF: 8.84 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
Katie TF: 8.24 MPH (avg of 2 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
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)
RWZ raiding: 2.91 MPH (avg of 2 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!"
1/20/2009
(Long weekend - Long report)
On Friday night I started off playing Virtual Girl (32 rad/sonic defender), leading a 4-player Sisterhood team that did Kelly Nemmers' story arc in Croatoa, earning me 4 reward merits and getting Virtual Girl to 33. At that point I burned 340 merits (mostly from WL farming) on 17 random level 35-39 Pool C recipe draws, and I got (all at level 33):
1 Numina's Convalescence (+rec +regen) Wentw=35.2M
1 Obliteration (ACC/DMG/RCHG/END) Wentw=20M
1 Impervium Armor (+psi resist) Wentw=5.9M
1 Numina's Convalescence (HEAL/RCHG) Wentw=4.66M
1 Mako's Bite (chance for lethal) Wentw=3.5M
1 Analyze Weakness (chance for +ToHit) Wentw=2M
2 Touch of the Nictus (chance for negative) Wentw=1.8M
1 Analyze Weakness (ACC/END/RCHG) Wentw=1.27M
1 Performance Shifter (RCHG/ACC) Wentw=1.2M
1 Gift of the Ancients (DEF) Wentw=855K
1 Kinetic Combat (DMG/END/RCHG) Wentw=750K
1 Sting of the Manticore (ACC/INTRDX/RNG) Wentw=50K
1 Edict of the Master (DMG) Wentw=26K
3 Executioners Contract (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=6K
Total value=78.979M influence (232K infl per merit). The Numina's, Obliteration and Mako's Bite all made me quite happy with this result, despite the 3 crappy snipe recipes.
On Saturday I joined an Imperious TF as Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster). Our team lineup shifted a lot but finally settled on:
katana/SR scrapper
fire/nrg blaster
?/will brute
?/regen stalker
AR/dev blaster (me)
ill/emp controller
AR/rad corruptor
storm/elec defender
We had 4 mentors and 4 SKs, but as soon as we entered the first mission, the stalker (who was also team leader) unSK'd to play at 46, and the even lower level scrapper unSK'd and became the 46 stalker's SK. While I've been on TFs where people wanted to run unSK'd for extra exp, for some reason the way they did it (staying SK'd to 50s until we started, then rearranging into a classic "bridge" configuration) really rubbed me the wrong way. This made me uneasy enough that I told the team that I didn't want to support PLing these two, and I would quit so they could get someone else. In the stalker's defense, he did say he would only do this for the first two missions and would SK up for the AVs; but my feeling is that a -5 stalker and a -6 scrapper contribute almost nothing to a team, so I simply wasn't OK with this set up. It was clear that they wouldn't agree to SK back up to 49, so I thanked them for the invite and quit the TF. They complained I was making them restart the TF, which did make me feel guilty (I don't like quitting TFs), but we were less than 5 minutes into the first mission, so I doubt I inconvenienced them more than they had already inconvenienced me.
When I told some friends about what happened, they sympathized, and suddenly they all wanted to start a new Imperious TF with me. This was awfully nice of them. So I accidentally became leader of an Imperious TF on Tenacious difficulty with a team mix of:
AR/dev blaster (me)
earth/kin controller
night widow
necro/dark MM
fire/traps corruptor
earth/sonic controller
ice/SS tanker
TA/archery defender
We again had a mix of mentors and SKs and people joked around about unSK'ing for extra exp, but everyone was good so I didn't have to kick anyone. We had a lot of support on the team (albeit less common ones like traps, sonic and TA) which really helped us zoom through the TF. The first mission the ice tanker wanted to try pulling the whole mountaintop temple area down to the door we exited the caves from; this actually seemed to work and let us clear all the mobs, then go up and rescue Sister Solaris unopposed. In the third mission we pulled generals out of the valley of lag down to a bridge and killed them there, then skipped ahead to the end. We pulled Romulus down to the computer console area; for some reason he was scared of us (not sure why) and ran away for much of the fight, until we immobed him with web grenades and trick arrows. In the final mission we fought through to the final encounter and simply beat Romulus up. Using Surveillance, I saw that our various debuffs (trick arrows, sonic, traps, dark, and my own achilles heel/surveillance) had managed to drop Romulus to below -100% resistances. We finished in 1hr 30mins for 25 merits (16.67 MPH), and I earned 5.2M influence along the way.
A bit later on Saturday, I did yet another Imperious TF, this time as Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corruptor). Our team mix was:
ice/nrg tanker
fire/rad controller
fire/? blaster
broadsword/shield scrapper
fire/nrg blaster
plant/kin controller
fire/rad corruptor (me)
MA/SR scrapper
With tanker, 2 rads, a kin, and plenty of DPS, this was a very strong team that blasted through the ITF in a speedy 1hr 16mins. Indigo got 25 merits (19.74 MPH), 2.26M infamy and a Hamidon Goo salvage drop.
My SO got interested in CoH again (some kind of horrific guild/raiding drama was occurring on EQ2) and started a newbie plant/rad controller; I mentored down Olivia Q (50 MA/SR scrapper) to help run lowbie missions, and we went through the initial contact's missions, then into the Hollows, where I recruited a 6 player team to run Officer Wincott's and Flux's story arc missions. In my pickup Hollows team we had one complete newbie player (who actually seemed reasonably competent despite that) and 2 players who used to play CoH and recently returned from WoW (which I hope becomes a growing trend). Got my SO's controller from level 2 to level 15 in this way, and Olivia picked up the Weathergirl and Trolls Task Force badges, for beating Outcast bosses and generally hanging out in the Hollows.
Playing Spacegirl (50 mind/rad controller) I caught the tail end of a RWZ raid on Saturday, which involved much dying but scored me 28 vanguard merits.
Late on Saturday night I solo'd a bit with Mayday (39 fortunata), finally knocking out the Choose Your Own Adventure VEAT story arc. Despite this being offered at like level 15, the enemies in this arc scaled up to Mayday's level 39; it was pretty quick (maybe 13 mins) and scored me a hefty 7 reward merits, which immediately made me want to see if I could flashback it for more merits. Alas, it does not appear on the Pillar of Fire and Ice, at least for Mayday at 39. I also checked my 47 wolf spider and she isn't able to flashback it either. Will have to check again if/when I have a level 50 VEAT.
On Sunday I played around with making a few newbie characters on Liberty (yes, I'm a total altoholic), getting a peacebringer to level 5 (via an Atlas Park zombie invasion), soloing an elec/inv brute to 6, and soloing another arachnos widow to 3. I had the idea to make a night widow to compare with my fortunata; though it might ultimately make more sense to just give Mayday a night widow "second build". However, I'm not sure I'd get a good feel for the playstyle jumping into the archetype at high level rather than playing an alt up from level 1. Plus, total altoholic.
I spent some time playing Samurai-ko (14 katana/will scrapper), teaming up with my SO's plant/rad controller and inviting some friends from Sisterhood channel and elsewhere to join up. We ended up with an 8-player team heavy on melee characters and kinetics, which made for a very fast paced team. We knocked out Jim Temblor's story arc in Faultline (3 merits), then Penelope Yin's arc (another 3 merits), and part of the Stephanie Peeble's arc in Striga. We beat a Kurse AV, a Nocturne AV, a Silver Mantis AV (in a Steel Canyon safeguard), got the Rescuer and Pwnz badges, and did the cape and second costume missions. After much play on Sunday and Monday, Samurai-ko ended up at level 24. I took Rise to the Challenge at 16, Indomitable Will at 18, Quick Recovery at 20, Mind over Body at 22 (which feels late in the build, but I was with tankers most of the way up to here and other powers seemed more important) and Lotus Drops at 24. I was surprised that Lotus Drops has a slightly different animation than Whirling Sword; similar spin, but seems a little quicker and ends in a different pose.
I did yet another Imperious TF, this time as Mayday (39 fortunata) as a lackey. Team mix was very unconventional:
crab spider
AR/traps corruptor
robo/traps MM
2 fortunata
ill/emp controller
MA/SR scrapper
fire/psi dom
However, we did have capped defense nearly the whole time due to stacked Maneuvers, Force Field Generators, Mind Link, and Fortitude, which pretty well let us walk over everything. We still had people occasionally die (from lucky hits I guess), which let us fire off Vengeance for even more defense, and they'd get rez'd back in so it really didn't slow us down. At one point real numbers reported I had a sickening +177% defense to all positions!
During the second mission against the Nictus crystals, our trappers were very diligent about laying traps, which totally hosed the ambushes after each crystal. Capped defense let us destroy the computer console in mission 3 pretty easily; the waves of animating robots weren't a real threat. Surprisingly, despite the lack of a tanker or traditional debuff sets, we were able to maul the AVs in both the third and fourth missions without serious trouble; the traps and crab debuffs must've been very potent! We got our 300 Romans in the final mission atop the castle walls, rounding them up and genociding them with AoEs. Finished this ITF in a very speedy 1hr 17mins for 25 merits (19.48 MPH), getting Mayday to level 41, where I took Tactical Training: Vengeance.
I also had Mayday pick up the Steel Canyon mayhem exploration badge (via some trickery using a lower level alt to get and start the mayhem, then having someone invite Mayday to it) which got her the Invader accolade, and I 6-slotted her Tactical Training: Leadership power with Gaussian's Synch Fire Control, which gives her an additional +2.5% to all positional defenses.
On Monday I started off playing Spy Girl (33 MA/ninj stalker). Checking the Black Market, I found that I had sold the level 30 Karma (Knockback protection) IO that I had gotten from the Ouro day job for a cool 22M infamy. I felt like I had been getting far more merits on hero side than villain side up to this point, so I decided to explore the possibility of getting villainous merits via flashbacks. With stealth and burst DPS, a stalker seemed ideal for this purpose.
I started off with a flashback of Hurt the Traitorous Vendetti. This was basically a single mission where I had to go in and assassinate a single NPC and his group (usually just one extra minion). Stealthing past everything else, I was able to complete this in 3mins 3sec for 1 merit (19.67 MPH) and gaining the Stone Cold badge. This seemed very good, but I figure there is a random factor due to travel time and searching the cave for the boss time, so I ran it again. My second try took 2mins 47sec for 1 merit (21.56 MPH). This is awfully good, but the game only counts the time between accepting the mission (in Ouroboros) and completing the assassination; if I want to repeat it, it doesn't count the travel time back to Ouroboros. This mission was so quick that my Ouro portal had not recharged by the time I was done; the 5 minute recharge time on the Ouro portal could actually pose a bottleneck. I decided not to consider this as part of my measured time, though, since I theoretically could install a Pillar of Ice and Fire in my villain base in order to avoid that bottleneck.
Next I did a flashback of Steal Facemaker's Reanimation Chemicals. This is also just one mission, but it required clicking 3 glowies and "defeating disciples". I stealthed in and got the 3 glowies, but the mission didn't end. Some ambushes were spawned in response to my clicking the glowies, too. Didn't see any sort of boss, so I decided to take out all the Mortificators, thinking that might be required. To my chagrin, this still wasn't enough. I ended up having to kill every single thing in the entire mission, which took me 12mins 49sec and got me 1 merit (4.68 MPH) and the Mask Maker badge. I probably could do it faster now that I know it's a defeat all, but it didn't seem promising enough to gather more data on.
Next I tried a flashback of the Vahzilok Conference. This was three missions; the first was a straightforward assassination which went quickly. The second required finding and escorting 3 victims to the Vahzilok surgeons across a huge outdoor map, and even has a lengthy cut scene thrown in, so I was pretty worried this would be a time killer. On this particular run, I was very lucky and found one victim very close to the surgeons, and two others close together so I could walk them both over at once; probably most of the time it should take longer. The third mission was also an assassination; it was a huge multi-story office building that took awhile to work through, and the final target was an elite boss Facemaker. I wasn't prepared for an EB (I had forgotten there was one), but managed to narrowly beat Facemaker and a zombie lackey in a close fight. With some inspirations it would've been easy, though. Finished the flashback in 14mins 58sec for 4 merits (16.04 MPH).
Next up was a flashback of the Hit List arc. Again, three missions; a simple assassination, then a kidnapping where you escort the hostage only a very short distance, then the final mission requires killing 3 static objects (in my run, two were guarded by Wyvern, one was undefended; I ignored the Wyvern to kill the file cabinet, then ran away from them), clicking a glowy and assassinating a boss. I lost some time on the first mission when I automatically took the Pillar's teleport to the contact, which is the Radio in Port Oakes, but the first mission was actually in Cap au Diable, so I had to travel overland to the ferry to zone to Cap. With one mission in Cap and two in Port Oakes, zone hopping was pretty much required, which may cause this arc to be slower than others. Nevertheless I completed this one in 15mins 4sec for 2 merits (7.96 MPH), and got the Troubleshooter badge (for Ouro "mending").
After that I played Mayday (41 fortunata) on an 8-player Fallen LEGION team doing missions in Grandville. I tried getting Ghost Widow as a patron AV, but even after I selected her via the Arbiter, she refused to talk to me (I think my Welcome to Ouroboros story arc was blocking the patron story arc). Vengefully killed Ghost Widow as an AV in someone else's patron story arc, as well as beating a hero-level Citadel in another mission.
I solo'd Mayday through a couple old story arcs, getting 6 merits from Marshal Brass's very grey story arc and 2 from the Pilgrim's Welcome to Ouroboros arc (and after I cleared this, Ghost Widow would indeed talk to me again). I spent 80 of Mayday's reward merits on level 35-39 Pool C recipe draws, getting (all at level 41):
1 Analyze Weakness (ACC/END/RCHG) no history for level 41 at BMkt, but level 40 was priced at 5M
1 Obliteration (chance for smashing) BMkt=14.5M
1 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5 rchg) BMkt=80M
1 Siphon Insight (ACC/END/RCHG) BMkt=111K
This was a total value of 99.6M infamy for my 80 merits (1.24M inf/merit), which of course I was very happy with. I went ahead and crafted the LotG and slotted it in Mayday's Combat Training: Defense power, which raises her global recharge to 22.5%.
Late Monday night I played Linda Lightspeed (29 kin/rad defender) as a sidekick on a level 38 team with some friends and mostly pickup people. I got a costume compliment, mostly on her skin tone, which is very tan and has a nice contrast with her brightly colored uniform. We went into a Brickstown safeguard with an 8-player team, with 2 tankers, 1 scrapper, 2 blasters, 2 storm defenders and me. Sadly the stormies were pretty bad about blowing stuff around, and as a kin I really could only heal the melee characters effectively, especially since the opponents we were facing were Nemesis, which squishies really don't want to stand next to. We had a lot of deaths (mainly the stormies and the blasters) but managed to stop the bank robbery and get most of the way through a side mission preventing a store breakin before time ran out. Did a few more door missions after that which followed a similar pattern; I could keep melee alive, but squishies would die, and stuff would get blown around a lot by storms. I tried to educate people a little, explaining how the kinetic heals come from mobs so the stormies should try and heal the squishies, and that uncontrolled knockback makes meleers unhappy, but I don't think much of this sank in. Nevertheless Linda got to level 30 (where I took Increase Density) before we called it a night.
[u]Merit benchmarking since I13[u]
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)
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)
Lady Grey TF: 25.35 MPH (1 run)
3rd hero respec: 21.74 MPH (1 run)
Hurt the Traitorous Vendetti villain flashback: 20.62 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
Synapse TF: 20.16 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
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) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
Manticore TF: 16.98 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
Sister Psyche TF: 16.20 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
Imperious TF: 16.14 MPH (avg of 10 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
Vahzilok Conference villain flashback: 16.04 MPH (1 run)
Hess TF: 15.53 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
Numina TF: 13.61 MPH (1 run)
Citadel TF: 13.51 MPH (avg of 6 runs)
Mender Tesseract SF: 10.71 MPH (1 run)
Cap au Diable SF: 8.84 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
Katie TF: 8.24 MPH (avg of 2 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
Hit List villain flashback: 7.96 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)
Steal Facemaker's Reanimation Chemicals villain flashback: 4.68 MPH (1 run)
Escaped! villain flashback: 4.39 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
RWZ raiding: 2.91 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
[u]Random recipe draw results (to date)[u]
I restructured my random recipe statistics away from "good/bad" (personal opinion) to be based purely on market value, which is hopefully more scientific. Looking at it this way, a few recipes valued at 20M or more skew the average value up a lot. The "average" recipe value about 5M, yet I've only gotten 8 recipes worth 5M or more out of 41 recipes (19.5%). Personally, I'm happy with any recipe I get that is worth 1M or more; 26 out of my 41 draws (63.4%) have exceeded that threshold. So overall I'm quite happy with random rolls.
POOL C HERO SIDE:
1 Numina's Convalescence (+rec +regen) Wentw=35.2M
2 Obliteration (chance for smashing) Wentw=23.6M
1 Obliteration (ACC/DMG/RCHG/END) Wentw=20M
1 Aegis (Psi/Mez resist) Wentw=6.05M
1 Positron's Blast (DMG/ACC/END) Wentw=6M
1 Impervium Armor (+psi resist) Wentw=5.9M
1 Numina's Convalescence (HEAL/RCHG) Wentw=4.66M
1 Lockdown (Chance for +2 Mag) Wentw=3.7M
1 Mako's Bite (chance for lethal) Wentw=3.5M
2 Scirocco's Dervish (chance for lethal) Wentw=3.5M
1 Devastation (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=2.7M
1 Expedient Reinforcement (END/DMG/RCHG) Wentw=2.1M
2 Analyze Weakness (chance for +ToHit) Wentw=2M
1 Touch of Nictus (chance for negative) Wentw=1.82M
2 Touch of the Nictus (chance for negative) Wentw=1.8M
1 Analyze Weakness (ACC/END/RCHG) Wentw=1.27M
1 Performance Shifter (RCHG/ACC) Wentw=1.2M
1 Gift of the Ancients (DEF) Wentw=855K
1 Kinetic Combat (DMG/END/RCHG) Wentw=750K
1 Trap of the Hunter (chance for lethal) Wentw=500K
1 Sovereign Right (10% pet RES) Wentw=286K
1 Malaise's Illusions (ACC/CNFS/RCHG) Wentw=50K
1 Sting of the Manticore (ACC/INTRDX/RNG) Wentw=50K
1 Stupefy (Chance for KB) Wentw=43K
1 Aegis (END/RCHG) Wentw=41K
1 Edict of the Master (DMG) Wentw=26K
3 Executioners Contract (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=6K
TOTAL POOL C HERO SIDE: 158.519M infl, 660 merits, 240K infl/merit
POOL C VILLAIN SIDE:
1 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5 rchg) BMkt=80M
1 Decimation (ACC/END/RCHG) BMkt=22M
1 Obliteration (chance for smashing) BMkt=14.5M
1 Analyze Weakness (ACC/END/RCHG) BMkt=5M
1 Gaussian's Synch Fire Control (RCHG/END) BMkt=4.57M
1 Scirocco's Dervish (DMG/ACC/END) BMkt=2.9M
1 Malaise's Illusions (ACC/CONFUSE/RCHG) BMkt=740K
1 Aegis (END/RCHG) BMkt=130K
1 Siphon Insight (ACC/END/RCHG) BMkt=111K
1 Induced Coma (ACC/SLEEP/RCHG) BMkt=2K
TOTAL POOL C VILLAIN SIDE: 129.953M infa, 200 merits, 650K infa/merit
POOL D VILLAIN SIDE:
1 Devastation (ACC/DMG/RCHG) BMkt=4M
1 Mako's Bite (ACC/END/RCHG) BMkt=2.2M
TOTAL POOL D VILLAIN SIDE: 6.2M infa, 60 merits, 103K infa/merit
@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!"
1/28/2009
I was out of town for the weekend, so missed the whole double exp weekend, but here's what I did the rest of the week anyway.
Over the last week Spy Girl (33 MA/ninj stalker) ran several solo flashbacks to pick up quick & easy merits. An Origin of Power flashback took 14mins 1sec for 2 merits and the Origin of Power badge (8.56 MPH); I kind of thought it would be quicker since it was 5 "talk to contact" missions and only 1 door mission, but that door mission had 10 glowies in addition to killing the boss. Three Loa Bone flashbacks (a simple 1-mission assassination) took 2m47s, 3m20s and 3m 32s, each for 1 merit (avg 18.65 MPH). Three Hurt the Traitorous Vendetti flashbacks took 3m32s, 3m16s and 3m57s, each for 1 merit (avg 16.74 MPH). Two Vahzilok Conference flashbacks took 14m41s and 16m3s, each for 4 merits (avg 15.62 MPH). All this gave me enough merits to buy another random Pool C recipe for 20 merits, and I got a level 33 Impervium Armor (+Psi RES) valued at the black market at 2.12M.
Spacegirl (50 mind/rad controller) joined a successful RWZ raid on Tue 1/20 which ran for 50 minutes (including the time standing around waiting for people to show up, and pylon killing), and netted her 200 Vanguard merits, 2 Reward Merits (for the Master-at-Arms GM; 2.4MPH) and 489K influence.
Samurai-ko (24 katana/will scrapper) finished Stephanie Peebles' story arc and got the Wedding Band temp power; but either I didn't get reward merits or just didn't get a message telling me I got them, not sure which. Don't know why.
On 1/20 I also did an Imperious TF as Mayday (41 fortunata) with a team mix of:
3 scrappers (db/dark, bs/will, bs/shield)
2 blasters (nrg/?, sonic/?)
fortunata (me)
kin/psy defender
TA/arch defender
This archetype mix looked awfully DPS-heavy and support-light, but it worked a lot better than I expected; we had good players and aggressively cleared our way through the TF with no serious problems, finishing in a speedy 1hr 18mins and gaining 25 merits (19.23 MPH). Some of the scrappers were so addicted to killing Romans that we stayed in the last mission wiping out Cimeroran traitors until the whole zone was clear, getting Mayday to level 43. (I asked them why they hated Romans so, and one scrapper shrugged and said "They never shower.") This gave me enough slots to 6-slot Mayday's Tactical Training: Maneuvers with a set of 6 Red Fortune, giving a bonus +2.5% range DEF. Mayday's defenses are now quite close to capped when her Mind Link buff is up.
I messed around starting even more newbie alts, restarting my peacebringer with another name (still only got to level 4) and making another TA/archery defender (got to level 3, but still doesn't seem that exciting to me).
Last Wednesday I did a Citadel TF as Fire Emerald (27 fire/fire blaster) with a team mix of:
will/nrg tanker
spine/SR scrapper
ill/rad controller
spine/regen scrapper
emp/ice defender
plant/kin controller
fire/fire blaster
This was a very good team and we blitzed through the TF in only 1hr 27mins, suffering 0 deaths and gaining 30 merits (20.69 MPH).
Went out of town for the weekend, but got back on Monday to find that Police Woman (50 AR/dev) had been logged out in City Hall long enough to get the City Official day job badge, and this combined with the Law Enforcer day job gave her the Police Chief accolade, which I immediately picked as my new badge title. This puts me up to 537 badges, and also eventually gave me a police baton temp power, though I think I had to log out in city hall one more time before this power appeared for me (with only 1 use, but it was free to brandish it -- a black nightstick looking thing).
I spent some time PvPing in Recluse's Victory against a fortunata and brute. I mostly got beat up (fortunata still wreck me in PvP, though I13 is a little better; now they are merely heavily advantaged, instead of auto-win), but I did get a few kills in, which triggered a pretty typical complaint of "You only killed me because you had a heavy" (conveniently ignoring the fact that I was fighting them 1-on-2).
Went from there to join a Lady Grey TF with a team mix of:
2 fire/fire blasters
MA/regen scrapper
emp/rad defender
AR/dev blaster (me)
stone/SS tanker
fire/kin controller
ice/rad controller
Got an unflattering remark about my costume being stripperific, but I shrugged it off (I like Police Woman's outfit, and I've seen far worse). This was a speed LGTF run that intentionally failed missions 1 and 3 and stealthed missions 2 and 5, completing in a very speedy 59mins for 30 merits (30.51 MPH). Also got 10 Vanguard Merits and 970K infl.
Did a Manticore TF as Linda Lightspeed (30 kin/rad defender) with a team mix of:
fire/dev blaster
bs/shield scrapper
fire/kin controller
nrg/nrg blaster
inv/SS tanker
spine/regen scrapper
dark/dark defender
kin/rad defender (me)
This was a good team that had no trouble with the TF. I got to stealth a bunch of the missions, using Stealth/Superspeed for stealth and the safeguard Summon Teammates power to TP people. Late in the TF we also ran into two Paladin GMs in King's Row, which we decided to kill off for fun and merits. Finished the TF in just 1hr 2mins; counting the two Paladins, we got 29 merits (28.06 MPH).
After that I did an Imperious TF with Demolition Girls SG on Triumph server, playing Tera Watt (50 FF/elec defender). Our team mix was:
earth/fire dom
fire/fire blaster
SS/will brute
ninj/dark MM
elec/nrg blaster
FF/elec defender (me)
inv/axe tanker
plant/fire dom
I had started out wanting to play a blaster but switched to FF defender after seeing how support-light we were. Force fields and dark debuffs kept us at the defense cap, which was enough to get us through most of the TF, with a few deaths from lucky hits. In the final fight against Romulus, I repeatedly tried Detention Fielding the healer Nictus AV; the Detention Field seemed to hit, but it didn't have any apparent effect (did not stop healing, could still attack the Nictus). I also tried using Force Bubble several times; I think this really helped against the Phalanx computer in the third mission, and for keeping the nictus shards and Roman ambushes off of us in the final Romulus fight (they do have range attacks, but the knockback seemed to keep them off balance). Finished in 1hr 47mins for 25 merits (14.02 MPH).
Did yet another Imperious TF, this time on Liberty as Mayday (43 fortunata). We were on Ruthless difficulty and our team mix was:
2 fortunata
thug/poison MM
spine/dark scrapper
fire/dark corruptor
MA/will scrapper
stone/fire tanker
dark/dark brute
We were defense capped from the VEAT buffs and didn't have any serious problems, finishing in 1hr 38mins for another 25 merits (15.31 MPH) and getting Mayday to 44, where I took Aim.
Last night I started off playing with an 8-player mid teens Demolition Girls SG team on Protector server, dusting off Swordswoman (17 bs/fire scrapper that I hadn't logged on in 222 days; had about a level of Patrol exp) and running through the Jim Temblor story arc for 3 merits and getting Swordswoman to level 19 (took Whirling Sword at 18).
Finished last night by playing Samurai-ko (25 katana/will scrapper) as an SK on a Citadel TF with:
fire/regen scrapper (logged off before 2nd to last mission with the intention of returning, but never returned)
dark/dark scrapper
spine/regen scrapper (spent most of TF either lost, AFK or zoning slowly)
katana/will scrapper (me)
archery/elec blaster (logged off before 2nd to last mission, I think out of frustration)
DB/regen scrapper (disconnected after first mission)
emp/sonic defender (claimed to be rusty after 1yr absence, but was actually quite good)
This seemed awfully scrapper heavy, and the team often succumbed to scrapperlock charging into fights or in different directions from each other. Our lone defender seemed pretty good at keeping us buffed and healed and not exploding with anger when we got ourselves killed anyway. Despite these hijinks we got through most of the TF pretty well, until the second to last mission. This was a door mission in Dark Astoria, and we happened across Adamastor GM standing around in the graveyard there. Someone wanted the badge and the team leader decided we should attack Adamastor; however, half the team went ahead and zoned into the mission instead. We found that 3 scrappers and 1 empath is insufficient to even dent Adamastor's health. One team member said he'd switch to a controller to get some debuffs; hitting Adamastor seemed futile, so I backed away to wait until we had debuffs (though another scrapper maintained scrapperlock and continued to beat on the giant monster relentlessly). Unfortunately he never did come back. It sounded like the people who entered the mission were attempting to fight in there, and blaster + mostly AFK scrapper did not do so well. After maybe fifteen minutes, the blaster got fed up with this and logged off. The new team leader recruited some outside help to come fight Adamastor and we finally dropped him after having spent about half an hour messing with Adamastor. We did get the Keeper of Secrets badge and some merits, though. After that, we were left with 3 scrappers and a defender to finish the last two missions; even with a reduced team, however, we were able to make short work of Vandal and complete the TF with a total time of 2hrs 50mins, gaining 32 merits (including the 2 for Adamastor; 11.29 MPH) and getting Samurai-ko to level 27 (took Soaring Dragon at 26).
[u]Merit benchmarking since I13[u]
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)
2nd villain respec: 34.62 MPH (1 run)
Lady Grey TF: 27.93 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
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)
Manticore TF: 20.67 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
Synapse TF: 20.16 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
Loa Bone villain flashback: 18.65 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
Hurt the Traitorous Vendetti villain flashback: 18.34 MPH (avg of 5 runs)
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) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
Sister Psyche TF: 16.20 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
Imperious TF: 16.15 MPH (avg of 13 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
Vahzilok Conference villain flashback: 15.76 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
Hess TF: 15.53 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
Citadel TF: 14.13 MPH (avg of 8 runs)
Numina TF: 13.61 MPH (1 run)
Mender Tesseract SF: 10.71 MPH (1 run)
Cap au Diable SF: 8.84 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
Origin of Power villain flashback: 8.56 MPH (1 run)
Katie TF: 8.24 MPH (avg of 2 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
Hit List villain flashback: 7.96 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)
Steal Facemaker's Reanimation Chemicals villain flashback: 4.68 MPH (1 run)
Escaped! villain flashback: 4.39 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
RWZ raiding: 2.74 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
[u]Random recipe draw results (to date)[u]
POOL C HERO SIDE:
1 Numina's Convalescence (+rec +regen) Wentw=35.2M
2 Obliteration (chance for smashing) Wentw=23.6M
1 Obliteration (ACC/DMG/RCHG/END) Wentw=20M
1 Aegis (Psi/Mez resist) Wentw=6.05M
1 Positron's Blast (DMG/ACC/END) Wentw=6M
1 Impervium Armor (+psi resist) Wentw=5.9M
1 Numina's Convalescence (HEAL/RCHG) Wentw=4.66M
1 Lockdown (Chance for +2 Mag) Wentw=3.7M
1 Mako's Bite (chance for lethal) Wentw=3.5M
2 Scirocco's Dervish (chance for lethal) Wentw=3.5M
1 Devastation (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=2.7M
1 Expedient Reinforcement (END/DMG/RCHG) Wentw=2.1M
2 Analyze Weakness (chance for +ToHit) Wentw=2M
1 Touch of Nictus (chance for negative) Wentw=1.82M
2 Touch of the Nictus (chance for negative) Wentw=1.8M
1 Analyze Weakness (ACC/END/RCHG) Wentw=1.27M
1 Performance Shifter (RCHG/ACC) Wentw=1.2M
1 Gift of the Ancients (DEF) Wentw=855K
1 Kinetic Combat (DMG/END/RCHG) Wentw=750K
1 Trap of the Hunter (chance for lethal) Wentw=500K
1 Sovereign Right (10% pet RES) Wentw=286K
1 Malaise's Illusions (ACC/CNFS/RCHG) Wentw=50K
1 Sting of the Manticore (ACC/INTRDX/RNG) Wentw=50K
1 Stupefy (Chance for KB) Wentw=43K
1 Aegis (END/RCHG) Wentw=41K
1 Edict of the Master (DMG) Wentw=26K
3 Executioners Contract (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=6K
TOTAL POOL C HERO SIDE: 158.519M infl, 660 merits, 240K infl/merit
POOL C VILLAIN SIDE:
1 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5 rchg) BMkt=80M
1 Decimation (ACC/END/RCHG) BMkt=22M
1 Obliteration (chance for smashing) BMkt=14.5M
1 Analyze Weakness (ACC/END/RCHG) BMkt=5M
1 Gaussian's Synch Fire Control (RCHG/END) BMkt=4.57M
1 Scirocco's Dervish (DMG/ACC/END) BMkt=2.9M
1 Impervium Armor (+Psi RES) BMkt=2.12
1 Malaise's Illusions (ACC/CONFUSE/RCHG) BMkt=740K
1 Aegis (END/RCHG) BMkt=130K
1 Siphon Insight (ACC/END/RCHG) BMkt=111K
1 Induced Coma (ACC/SLEEP/RCHG) BMkt=2K
TOTAL POOL C VILLAIN SIDE: 132.053M infa, 220 merits, 600K infa/merit
POOL D VILLAIN SIDE:
1 Devastation (ACC/DMG/RCHG) BMkt=4M
1 Mako's Bite (ACC/END/RCHG) BMkt=2.2M
TOTAL POOL D VILLAIN SIDE: 6.2M infa, 60 merits, 103K infa/merit
@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!"
1/29/2009
Started the evening playing Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) as an exemplar on an 8-player team of Sisterhood & friends running level 45 radio missions in Peregrine Island. This went pretty well overall (earned 1.22M infl over the course of several missions) except we did have one team wipe trying to enter a mission with its entrance on Monster Island; somehow we managed to aggro several GMs to park themselves directly on our mission door.
After that team broke up I played Fire Emerald (29 fire/fire blaster) on a Citadel TF. Our team mix was:
kin/psy defender
3 scrappers (fire/shield, bs/shield, spine/fire)
earth/thermal controller
fire/fire blaster
fire/dark tanker
The spine scrapper disconnected after the first mission and didn't return, but the support types were good about buffing and we had good DPS, so we didn't have any trouble. Finished in 1hr 55mins for 30 merits (15.65 MPH) and got Fire Emerald to 30, where I took Aid Self.
After that I played Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corruptor) on a Lady Grey TF. This took awhile to recruit to a full team, but we eventually got started with something like:
3 blasters
?/rad controller
2 scrappers (?/shield and ?/will)
stone/? tanker
fire/rad corruptor (me)
This was another speed run that failed missions 1 and 3, stealthed 2 and 5 and used TP Foe on mitos in mission 4. One of the scrappers grumbled about how unheroic it was to gank the various hostages that we rescued; I kinda sympathize with this, but as the sole villain on the team I made sure to say stuff like "Muhaha! We've successfully killed another innocent little girl!" Anyway, we had no problems and finished the TF in 1hr 3sec for 30 merits (29.98 MPH).
Finished the night playing Linda Lightspeed (32 kin/rad defender) on an 8-player pickup team running radio missions in Founders Falls. Linda is pretty freshly level 32 so I got to enjoy the benefits of Fulcrum Shifted Flurry...which is still kind of underwhelming on actual DPS, but certainly looks cool (Linda Lightspeed is my attempt at a "speedster" type character). This got Linda to level 33, where I added 3 slots to Fulcrum Shift and burned 160 merits on random Pool C recipe draws from the level 35-39 pool. My 8 random recipes were:
Glimpse of the Abyss (chance for psi) Wentw=104K
Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% rchg) Wentw=33.5M
Force Feedback (RCHG/END) Wentw=234K
Pacing of the Turtle (chance for slow) Wentw=338K
Entropic Chaos (DMG/END/RCHG) Wentw=1.15M
Positron's Blast (DMG/ACC/END) Wentw=6.77M
Lockdown (chance for +2 mag) Wentw=4.6M
Perfect Zinger (RCHG/ACC) Wentw=70K
The LotG is hitting the jackpot, of course, and the Positron's Blast was quite nice too, so I was very happy with this result, which noticably raises my average payoff for random recipes.
[u]Merit benchmarking since I13[u]
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)
2nd villain respec: 34.62 MPH (1 run)
Lady Grey TF: 28.61 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
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)
Manticore TF: 20.67 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
Synapse TF: 20.16 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
Loa Bone villain flashback: 18.65 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
Hurt the Traitorous Vendetti villain flashback: 18.34 MPH (avg of 5 runs)
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) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
Sister Psyche TF: 16.20 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
Imperious TF: 16.15 MPH (avg of 13 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
Vahzilok Conference villain flashback: 15.76 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
Hess TF: 15.53 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
Citadel TF: 14.30 MPH (avg of 9 runs)
Numina TF: 13.61 MPH (1 run)
Mender Tesseract SF: 10.71 MPH (1 run)
Cap au Diable SF: 8.84 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
Origin of Power villain flashback: 8.56 MPH (1 run)
Katie TF: 8.24 MPH (avg of 2 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
Hit List villain flashback: 7.96 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)
Steal Facemaker's Reanimation Chemicals villain flashback: 4.68 MPH (1 run)
Escaped! villain flashback: 4.39 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
RWZ raiding: 2.74 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
[u]Random recipe draw results (to date)[u]
POOL C HERO SIDE:
1 Numina's Convalescence (+rec +regen) Wentw=35.2M
1 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% rchg) Wentw=33.5M
2 Obliteration (chance for smashing) Wentw=23.6M
1 Obliteration (ACC/DMG/RCHG/END) Wentw=20M
2 Positron's Blast (DMG/ACC/END) Wentw=6.77M
1 Aegis (Psi/Mez resist) Wentw=6.05M
1 Impervium Armor (+psi resist) Wentw=5.9M
1 Numina's Convalescence (HEAL/RCHG) Wentw=4.66M
2 Lockdown (chance for +2 mag) Wentw=4.6M
1 Mako's Bite (chance for lethal) Wentw=3.5M
2 Scirocco's Dervish (chance for lethal) Wentw=3.5M
1 Devastation (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=2.7M
1 Expedient Reinforcement (END/DMG/RCHG) Wentw=2.1M
2 Analyze Weakness (chance for +ToHit) Wentw=2M
1 Touch of Nictus (chance for negative) Wentw=1.82M
2 Touch of the Nictus (chance for negative) Wentw=1.8M
1 Analyze Weakness (ACC/END/RCHG) Wentw=1.27M
1 Performance Shifter (RCHG/ACC) Wentw=1.2M
1 Entropic Chaos (DMG/END/RCHG) Wentw=1.15M
1 Gift of the Ancients (DEF) Wentw=855K
1 Kinetic Combat (DMG/END/RCHG) Wentw=750K
1 Trap of the Hunter (chance for lethal) Wentw=500K
1 Pacing of the Turtle (chance for slow) Wentw=338K
1 Sovereign Right (10% pet RES) Wentw=286K
1 Force Feedback (RCHG/END) Wentw=234K
1 Glimpse of the Abyss (chance for psi) Wentw=104K
1 Perfect Zinger (RCHG/ACC) Wentw=70K
1 Malaise's Illusions (ACC/CNFS/RCHG) Wentw=50K
1 Sting of the Manticore (ACC/INTRDX/RNG) Wentw=50K
1 Stupefy (Chance for KB) Wentw=43K
1 Aegis (END/RCHG) Wentw=41K
1 Edict of the Master (DMG) Wentw=26K
3 Executioners Contract (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=6K
TOTAL POOL C HERO SIDE: 206.955M infl, 820 merits, 252K infl/merit
POOL C VILLAIN SIDE:
1 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5 rchg) BMkt=80M
1 Decimation (ACC/END/RCHG) BMkt=22M
1 Obliteration (chance for smashing) BMkt=14.5M
1 Analyze Weakness (ACC/END/RCHG) BMkt=5M
1 Gaussian's Synch Fire Control (RCHG/END) BMkt=4.57M
1 Scirocco's Dervish (DMG/ACC/END) BMkt=2.9M
1 Impervium Armor (+Psi RES) BMkt=2.12M
1 Malaise's Illusions (ACC/CONFUSE/RCHG) BMkt=740K
1 Aegis (END/RCHG) BMkt=130K
1 Siphon Insight (ACC/END/RCHG) BMkt=111K
1 Induced Coma (ACC/SLEEP/RCHG) BMkt=2K
TOTAL POOL C VILLAIN SIDE: 132.053M infa, 220 merits, 600K infa/merit
POOL D VILLAIN SIDE:
1 Devastation (ACC/DMG/RCHG) BMkt=4M
1 Mako's Bite (ACC/END/RCHG) BMkt=2.2M
TOTAL POOL D VILLAIN SIDE: 6.2M infa, 60 merits, 103K infa/merit
@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!"
1/30/2009
Last night I was playing Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) when word came over LBx channel that heroes needed help in Recluse's Victory. So an ill/emp friend and I decided to go to RV and help out. We found the heroes bottled up inside the hero base with a humongous villain force just outside. My friend and I broke our team up and joined the pre-existing hero team (mostly melee/DPS types) and we got to work; I tried to call targets to help focus fire (and I absolutely love Surveillance for this, which paints a huge bullseye on my target along with a hefty debuff) and my empath friend was doing wonderful buffs and heals. We broke the villain siege on the hero base and pushing them back to the City Hall, where we engaged in frenetic dogfighting. I felt pretty good using the now-more-speedy Full Auto to cut down hordes of mastermind pets. I wasn't able to count how many kills I got or times I got killed, but it sure felt like we had turned the tide and the heroes now had the edge. We finally pushed the villains all the way back to the villain base; I think many lost heart and left the zone. Besieging the villain base didn't seem like it would be fun, so I declared victory and left the zone.
From there I went to a Cap au Diable SF. The team leader asked me to play a dominator (not quite sure why, but no one asks for them, so why not), so I brought Idolator (20 mind/fire dominator). Our team mix was:
AR/traps corruptor
rad/rad corruptor
crab spider
dark/fire brute
SS/dark brute
spine/ninj stalker
thug/poison MM
mind/fire dominator (me)
We had several people getting exp so it was resolved we'd fight our way through most stuff rather than stealth. Unfortunately we weren't very good at staying together or working as a team, so this was kind of a mess, with the team occasionally getting split up into multiple fights, or someone jumping into a spawn and dying to the alpha strike before anyone helps them, that sort of thing. We finally tried to get our act together and follow just one brute in order to stay together; this helped, some. We had one team wipe in the mission against the CoT Librarian, and two team wipes in the mission where you kidnap a technician and get hit by Longbow ambushes. We did the final mission by killing Infernal outright, then clearing the way to each glowy and clicking it, then finally trying to pull Bat'Zul up to the entrance where we killed him. Finished the TF in 1hr 50mins for 10 merits (5.45 MPH) and got Idolator to level 21.
I finished the night doing a 3rd villain respec. The team leader asked for a brute, so I played Mega (50 SS/elec brute). Our team mix was:
bane spider
SS/elec brute (me)
fortunata
night widow
SS/inv brute
I offered to switch to a corruptor when the second brute joined, but the team leader felt that 2 brutes and 3 VEATs should do fine, and he was right. We stomped everything in sight without any difficulty whatsoever, completing the respec in 25mins 52sec to get 15 merits (34.79 MPH).
[u]Merit benchmarking since I13[u]
Nictus Insurrection kheldian flashback: 48.33 MPH (1 run)
1st villain respec: 40.91 MPH (1 run)
3rd villain respec: 36.10 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
2nd villain respec: 34.62 MPH (1 run)
Lady Grey TF: 28.61 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
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)
Manticore TF: 20.67 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
Synapse TF: 20.16 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
Loa Bone villain flashback: 18.65 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
Hurt the Traitorous Vendetti villain flashback: 18.34 MPH (avg of 5 runs)
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) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
Sister Psyche TF: 16.20 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
Imperious TF: 16.15 MPH (avg of 13 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
Vahzilok Conference villain flashback: 15.76 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
Hess TF: 15.53 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
Citadel TF: 14.30 MPH (avg of 9 runs)
Numina TF: 13.61 MPH (1 run)
Mender Tesseract SF: 10.71 MPH (1 run)
Origin of Power villain flashback: 8.56 MPH (1 run)
Katie TF: 8.24 MPH (avg of 2 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
Cap au Diable SF: 7.99 MPH (avg of 4 runs)
Hit List villain flashback: 7.96 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)
Steal Facemaker's Reanimation Chemicals villain flashback: 4.68 MPH (1 run)
Escaped! villain flashback: 4.39 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
RWZ raiding: 2.74 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!"
2/2/2009
Friday night, I briefly played Schadenfreude (37 AR/pain corruptor) as a lackey on an 8-player Fallen LEGION doing level 50 missions, in which we fought a Lord Recluse AV, which got Schadenfreude to level 38. I took Painbringer (the final pain power) but haven't gotten to use it yet.
After that I played Samurai-ko (27 katana/willpower scrapper), duoing through Doc Delilah's story arc in Faultline for 2 merits, then doing a few Striga missions.
Millie Volt (a fairly new 8 elec/invuln brute) solo'd through Mr. Bocor's story arc for 3 merits to get to level 9, then joined an 8-player team for a few missions that got her to level 11. Later Millie solo'd the Plague Carrier badge mission and the Hit List story arc for another 2 merits, getting to level 13. I took Temp Invuln at level 10 and Hover at level 12.
Played Blond Justice (33 bs/shield scrapper) on a Croatoa team that killed Jack-in-Irons for the Giant Killer badge and 2 merits, then did the Katie TF (with tanker, 2 blasters, 2 controllers, 2 scrappers, 1 defender) in 28mins 51sec for 7 more merits (14.56 MPH), which got Blond to level 34.
On Saturday I played Fire Emerald (30 fire/fire blaster) on a small Croatoa team which went through Kelly Nemmers' story arc (for 4 merits) and then recruited help to kill Eochai and Jack-in-Irons (another 4 merits).
Idolator (21 mind/fire dominator) joined a Silver Mantis SF with a team mix of:
blood widow
mace/shield brute
thug/traps MM
mind/fire dom (me)
SS/SR brute
fire/fire dom
DB/stone brute
The fire dom seemed to die a lot from fire cages aggro, but I felt like I was doing a bit better, confusing sorcerers, FF generators, and even those nasty toxic turrets on the Sky Raider helicarrier. The leader seemed very knowledgeable. In the final mission we methodically wiped out Sky Raiders and gun emplacements as we worked our way up the helicarrier. We did nearly have a wipeout when the Duray AV spawned on us, but we ended up pulling him down to the waters below, where we managed to finish him off. Finished the SF in 2hrs 28mins for 35 merits (14.19 MPH) and got Idolator to level 24 (taking Telekinesis at 22 and Hasten at 24).
I respec'd Mega (50 SS/elec brute), dropping Handclap (a power which is nearly always bad when I use it) and picking up Resuscitate (a power I probably won't use much, but at least is helpful) and moving a lot of slots around to try and take more benefit from IO recipe sets (mostly purple recipes I don't have yet, but kinda planning for the future). I didn't export an actual build, but I think I have a little more recharge and a little less max health, and a lot of slots with SOs in them until I get the right recipes. I got to try out Mega's new build on a level 50 villain respec, where it seemed to perform very well. Our team was:
bane spider
dark/dark corr
MA/ninj stalker
SS/elec brute
thug/poison MM
We had no problem with the Malta mission. A couple people could stealth the last mission but none could teleport, so I found myself chomping a couple purples and just running, unstealthed, through the mission to the vine room, relying on Mega's brutishness to survive. Once there I team TP'd our other unstealthy player over. Finished the respec in 36mins 57sec for 15 merits (24.36 MPH).
I also organized a late-night Imperious TF, playing Mayday (44 fortunata) with a team mix of:
fortunata (me)
bane
AR blaster
plant/thermal controller
shield/fire tanker
katana/will scrapper
ill/storm controller
stone/nrg tanker
Our average level was a little low (we had a couple 47s and several SKs including me) and our plant/thermal had to log off after the second mission, which slowed us down a little bit, but we managed to get through it. In the final mission we had one tanker on Romulus and one tanker pull the Nictus healer away and killed Romulus in that manner; with our thermal gone we were a bit worried about healing and debuffs, but the bane and stormy did well on debuffs and our +DEF was very high from the two VEATs. I also spot-healed as much as I could with Aid Other, occasionally having to jump between the two tankers to keep them both going. We had a few deaths but were able to beat the final encounter, finishing in 2hrs 7mins for 25 merits (11.81 MPH) and getting Mayday to level 45.
I restarted Kashira, my 10 DB/SR brute who had been sitting idle for awhile, as a DB/ninj stalker, hoping to see if I'd find that more fun. So far it does seem fun. The dual blade combos for a stalker are different than for scrappers or brutes, which is something I hadn't realized, so affects power choices; I ended up taking all three of the early dual blades attacks, partly for a good attack chain and partly for future combos. Got the new Kashira to level 6, picking up 2 merits doing Matthew Burke's story arc.
On Sunday I ran Spy Girl (33 MA/ninj stalker) through a flashback of Krylov's Spy Hunt story arc, which was about six assassination missions and one defeat all, heavily featuring Spetznaz. Finished this in 41mins 30sec for 5 merits (7.23 MPH).
I also heard a villain complaining on LBx channel that PvP was dead and Recluse's Victory was empty, so I brought Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) into RV to look for them. I ran around RV for a bit killing pillboxes without finding them and surmised they must've left; but a controller who was also killing pillboxes (he had figured farming pillboxes during the Super Bowl was likely to be safe) invited me to team up and work on the pillbox badge. I joined up, figuring, what the heck, I need the 1000 pillbox badge. But I also broadcast on LBx inviting people to join us in farming pillboxes, which I felt would be a sure-fire way to lure some villains into RV to play with us. To my surprise several heroes joined up and we soon had a 7 player team farming pillboxes. I learned a pillbox farming trick, where if your faction has 5 pillboxes controlled, you and a teammate can simultaneously click the two remaining pillboxes in order to score both for badges (normally 6 pillboxes "wins the game" and then the last pillbox won't count). Also, the original villain, a kin corruptor, got wind of our doings in RV and came back into the zone to fight us, and was completely undaunted by the 1-to-7 odds and the fact that we repeatedly killed him. Eventually a brute and a MM drifted in to help him, and we had some fun PvP; I felt a little guilty that the heroes outnumbered them so badly, but everyone seemed to be having fun. We even did some friendly superhero chatter over broadcast (I uttered a few "You won't get away with this!" and "Crime doesn't pay!" lines, and the villains had similar dialogue, "Villainy is victorious!" and "Argh, foiled again!" and the like). I think the corruptor actually enjoyed snaking an occasional kill before getting massively dogpiled. I probably scored 15 or so pillboxes while I was there; only like 0.3 PvP rep, though, sadly, despite getting several kills (most didn't count for rep since they were the same person).
From there I went to join a RWZ raid with Police Woman. I joined near the tail end of the pylon phase, quickly scored a bomb on the mothership, and got 2 reward merits for the master at arms. The raid itself was very light on healing or support types and so was very deadly for us squishy types, requiring several runs back from the hospital. Nevertheless I scored another 256 Vanguard merits (though I don't really have a use for them on Police Woman, other than stocking up for future Vanguard heavies) in the ~35 minutes I was there before the raid ended.
Messed around on Justice server on another lowbie elec/invuln brute with Demolition Girls SG for a bit, then returned to Liberty, originally hoping to join a Faathim TF, but that got canceled and I ended up accepting an invite to another Imperious TF. The leader asked for a tanker, and I decided to dust off Kartikeya (50 inv/fire tanker) who I haven't played seriously in a couple years. Our team mix was:
inv/SS tanker
psy/MM blaster
AR/dev blaster
emp/rad defender
katana/regen scrapper
spine/dark scrapper
rad/ice defender
inv/fire tanker (me)
I was a bit puzzled at being asked to play tanker when we already had one, but figured two tankers was good for split-tanking the final encounter on the last ITF I was on, so maybe that was the idea. I warned the team I was a bit rusty, but I ended up being lead tanker anyway; Tough and IO sets seemed to make me a bit more durable. With 90% lethal resist and moderate defense, I was indeed invulnerable to most of the Romans; though I only had 36% negative resist, so had to watch myself against the Nictus things. We had no serious issues the first three missions, except that the rad defender suddenly quit the team after mission 2 in order to go help a friend with soemthing. Mission 3 I tried to pull the generals from the valley of lag down to the bridge to avoid lag issues, as I've seen other people do; this worked fine for one of the generals, but the second general I tried this with, we killed the general but didn't seem to get credit for it in the mission objectives. I pulled various other stuff around where he was, figuring some escort of his needed to die too, but to no avail; we ended up clearing our way up instead until we got the other two generals. The Phalanx computer was a bit of a mess; I tried taunting the various robots as they animated, and we even killed a bunch of them (they actually seem pretty wimpy, there's just a lot of them) but the squishies still caught a lot of fire from them somehow before we finished off the computer console, maybe due to AoE damage.
In the final mission we skipped ahead to the final encounter because people were getting tired. With the rad defender gone we really had no debuff to speak of; we decided to try split tanking, with me on the healer nictus and the other tanker on Romulus. I found it quite hard to separate the healer nictus from Romulus, since my main aggro tools were all AoE; managed to split the healer nictus off eventually through a combination of single target melee and running around trying to shake them apart. Unfortunately the other tanker got clobbered after awhile (I think due to Unstoppable wearing out), freeing up Romulus and causing a team wipe. After that we tried the snipe-the-healer technique, but we weren't really coordinated enough to pull this off; non-blasters kept creeping up trying to attack with spines or veteran powers and causing the Nictus to heal, and ultimately aggroing the AVs onto us for another team wipe. We tried the split tanking technique twice more, once more with the other tanker on Romulus, then once with me on Romulus, all to no avail. Ultimately it just did not seem like we could put a dent in Romulus's health in the couple minutes that we could stand up to the incoming DPS. I think our problem was not enough debuffs. After several attempts we finally gave up and called it a night.
[u]Merit benchmarking since I13[u]
Nictus Insurrection kheldian flashback: 48.33 MPH (1 run)
1st villain respec: 40.91 MPH (1 run)
2nd villain respec: 34.62 MPH (1 run)
3rd villain respec: 33.16 MPH (avg of 4 runs)
Lady Grey TF: 28.61 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
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)
Manticore TF: 20.67 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
Synapse TF: 20.16 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
Loa Bone villain flashback: 18.65 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
Hurt the Traitorous Vendetti villain flashback: 18.34 MPH (avg of 5 runs)
2nd hero respec: 18.1 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: 15.84 MPH (avg of 14 runs) (2 failed TFs not averaged in)
Silver Mantis SF: 15.84 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
Vahzilok Conference villain flashback: 15.76 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
Hess TF: 15.53 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
Citadel TF: 14.30 MPH (avg of 9 runs)
Numina TF: 13.61 MPH (1 run)
Mender Tesseract SF: 10.71 MPH (1 run)
Origin of Power villain flashback: 8.56 MPH (1 run)
Katie TF: 10.35 MPH (avg of 3 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
Cap au Diable SF: 7.99 MPH (avg of 4 runs)
Hit List villain flashback: 7.96 MPH (1 run)
Spy Hunt villain flashback: 7.23 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)
Steal Facemaker's Reanimation Chemicals villain flashback: 4.68 MPH (1 run)
Escaped! villain flashback: 4.39 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
RWZ raiding: 2.91 MPH (avg of 4 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!"
2/3/2009
Started off running Spy Girl (33 MA/ninj stalker) through a couple brief flashbacks to pick up some quick merits; a Loa Bone flashback in 4m 11s for 1 merit (14.34 MPH) and a Hurt the Vendetti Traitor flashback in 4m 5s for 1 merit (14.69 MPH). I also got a level 33 Scirocco's Dervish (ACC/RCHG) recipe drop for completing the latter mission.
I then joined a Katie TF as Blond Justice (34 broadsword/shield scrapper). Our team had 3 scrappers, 1 blaster, 2 defenders and 2 controllers, and we had no problems with the KTF until the last mission when we realized none of us could fly. I ended up using a jet pack to fly over and rescue Katie, then flying her back. On the way back I flew Katie a little too close to one of the Red Cap ambushes at the mission door, so had to kill a few of those. We finished the TF in 24m 15s and got 7 merits (17.32 MPH). Blond Justice hit level 35, where I took Shield Charge, which is a lot of fun.
After that I briefly played Jaguar Goddess (18 claw/will stalker; for some reason I've really been getting into stalkers lately), soloed the "Hit List" story arc for 2 merits, and got invited to a 7-player pickup team doing Operative Wellman's very cool mission to break villains out of the Zig. We mercilessly slaughtered tons of Longbow while there and broke all the NPC villains out of their cells, but we didn't keep a tight leash on the NPCs and they all managed to suicide into Longbow ambushes, causing the mission to fail. Jaguar Goddess did get to level 19 though.
Spent some time soloing Millie Volt (12 elec/will brute), completing a King's Row mayhem and the Vahzilok Conference story arc for 4 merits and getting to level 13.
Finished the night using a free respec for Blond Justice. Since getting Headsplitter, Blond really had too many attacks (between Hack, Slash, Parry, Disembowel, Headsplitter and Whirling Sword). So in the respec I dropped Slash for Phalanx Fighting for some extra DEF. Her build is now:
Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.401
http://www.cohplanner.com/
[u]Click this DataLink to open the build![u]
Blond Justice I13: Level 43 Mutation Scrapper
Primary Power Set: Broad Sword
Secondary Power Set: Shield Defense
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Fighting
Hero Profile:
Level 1: Hack -- 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: Deflection -- DefBuff(A), DefBuff(7), DefBuff(13)
Level 2: Battle Agility -- DefBuff(A), DefBuff(15), DefBuff(15)
Level 4: True Grit -- Heal(A), Heal(17), Heal(17), S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(25)
Level 6: Combat Jumping -- DefBuff(A)
Level 8: Parry -- Acc(A), DefBuff-I(9), DefBuff-I(9), Dmg(11), Dmg(11), Dmg(13)
Level 10: Active Defense -- EndRdx(A)
Level 12: Swift -- Run(A)
Level 14: Super Jump -- Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(31)
Level 16: Hurdle -- Jump(A)
Level 18: Whirling Sword -- Dmg-I(A), EndRdx(19), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(19), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(21), Dmg(21), Oblit-%Dam(23)
Level 20: Stamina -- EndMod(A), EndMod(23), EndMod(25)
Level 22: Against All Odds -- EndRdx(A)
Level 24: Build Up -- RechRdx(A)
Level 26: Disembowel -- Mako-Acc/Dmg(A), Mako-Dmg/EndRdx(27), Mako-Dmg/Rchg(27), Mako-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(29), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(29), Dmg(31)
Level 28: Phalanx Fighting -- DefBuff(A), DefBuff(31), DefBuff(34)
Level 30: Grant Cover -- EndRdx(A)
Level 32: Head Splitter -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Dmg(33), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(33), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(33), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(34), Oblit-%Dam(34)
Level 35: Shield Charge -- Acc(A)
Level 38: Kick -- Empty(A)
Level 41: Tough -- Empty(A)
Level 44: Weave -- Empty(A)
Level 47: [Empty]
Level 49: [Empty]
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Critical Hit
There's a lot of vanilla SOs in the above build, but that's what I actually have slotted; the build should improve as I get more IOs.
I 3-slotted Phalanx Fighting for defense, but maybe this was a mistake as the +3.75% base defense is unenhanceable; should still help when near teammates, I guess. I also splurged to get the level 30 Steadfast Protection (RES/+3% DEF) recipe, buying it from the merit vendor with Police Woman's merits. This recipe was selling on Wentworth's for 39.6M influence, so buying it for 125 merits gives a yield of 316.8K infl/merit, which felt worth it because it beats my current random recipe average.
After the respec, Blond Justice's standing-around range DEF is up to 33.5% and melee DEF at 26.64%. Still not soft-capped defense, but getting better.
[u]Merit benchmarking since I13[u]
Nictus Insurrection kheldian flashback: 48.33 MPH (1 run)
1st villain respec: 40.91 MPH (1 run)
2nd villain respec: 34.62 MPH (1 run)
3rd villain respec: 33.16 MPH (avg of 4 runs)
Lady Grey TF: 28.61 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
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)
Manticore TF: 20.67 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
Synapse TF: 20.16 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
2nd hero respec: 18.1 MPH (1 run)
Hurt the Traitorous Vendetti villain flashback: 17.73 MPH (avg of 6 runs)
Loa Bone villain flashback: 17.57 MPH (avg of 4 runs)
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: 15.84 MPH (avg of 14 runs) (2 failed TFs not averaged in)
Silver Mantis SF: 15.84 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
Vahzilok Conference villain flashback: 15.76 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
Hess TF: 15.53 MPH (avg of 2 runs)
Citadel TF: 14.30 MPH (avg of 9 runs)
Numina TF: 13.61 MPH (1 run)
Katie TF: 12.09 MPH (avg of 4 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
Mender Tesseract SF: 10.71 MPH (1 run)
Origin of Power villain flashback: 8.56 MPH (1 run)
Cap au Diable SF: 7.99 MPH (avg of 4 runs)
Hit List villain flashback: 7.96 MPH (1 run)
Spy Hunt villain flashback: 7.23 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)
Steal Facemaker's Reanimation Chemicals villain flashback: 4.68 MPH (1 run)
Escaped! villain flashback: 4.39 MPH (avg of 3 runs)
RWZ raiding: 2.91 MPH (avg of 4 runs)
[u]Random recipes and purchased recipes (to date)[u]
RANDOM POOL C HERO SIDE:
1 Numina's Convalescence (+rec +regen) Wentw=35.2M
1 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% rchg) Wentw=33.5M
2 Obliteration (chance for smashing) Wentw=23.6M
1 Obliteration (ACC/DMG/RCHG/END) Wentw=20M
2 Positron's Blast (DMG/ACC/END) Wentw=6.77M
1 Aegis (Psi/Mez resist) Wentw=6.05M
1 Impervium Armor (+psi resist) Wentw=5.9M
1 Numina's Convalescence (HEAL/RCHG) Wentw=4.66M
2 Lockdown (chance for +2 mag) Wentw=4.6M
1 Mako's Bite (chance for lethal) Wentw=3.5M
2 Scirocco's Dervish (chance for lethal) Wentw=3.5M
1 Devastation (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=2.7M
1 Expedient Reinforcement (END/DMG/RCHG) Wentw=2.1M
2 Analyze Weakness (chance for +ToHit) Wentw=2M
1 Touch of Nictus (chance for negative) Wentw=1.82M
2 Touch of the Nictus (chance for negative) Wentw=1.8M
1 Analyze Weakness (ACC/END/RCHG) Wentw=1.27M
1 Performance Shifter (RCHG/ACC) Wentw=1.2M
1 Entropic Chaos (DMG/END/RCHG) Wentw=1.15M
1 Gift of the Ancients (DEF) Wentw=855K
1 Kinetic Combat (DMG/END/RCHG) Wentw=750K
1 Trap of the Hunter (chance for lethal) Wentw=500K
1 Pacing of the Turtle (chance for slow) Wentw=338K
1 Sovereign Right (10% pet RES) Wentw=286K
1 Force Feedback (RCHG/END) Wentw=234K
1 Glimpse of the Abyss (chance for psi) Wentw=104K
1 Perfect Zinger (RCHG/ACC) Wentw=70K
1 Malaise's Illusions (ACC/CNFS/RCHG) Wentw=50K
1 Sting of the Manticore (ACC/INTRDX/RNG) Wentw=50K
1 Stupefy (Chance for KB) Wentw=43K
1 Aegis (END/RCHG) Wentw=41K
1 Edict of the Master (DMG) Wentw=26K
3 Executioners Contract (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=6K
TOTAL RANDOM POOL C HERO SIDE: 206.955M infl, 820 merits, 252K infl/merit
PURCHASED RECIPES HERO SIDE:
1 Steadfast Protection (RES/+3% def) Wentw=39.6M purchased for 125 merits
1 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% rchg) Wentw=33.5M purchased for 200 merits
TOTAL PURCHASED HERO SIDE: 73.1M infl, 325 merits, 225K infl/merit
RANDOM POOL C VILLAIN SIDE:
1 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5 rchg) BMkt=80M
1 Decimation (ACC/END/RCHG) BMkt=22M
1 Obliteration (chance for smashing) BMkt=14.5M
1 Analyze Weakness (ACC/END/RCHG) BMkt=5M
1 Gaussian's Synch Fire Control (RCHG/END) BMkt=4.57M
1 Scirocco's Dervish (DMG/ACC/END) BMkt=2.9M
1 Impervium Armor (+Psi RES) BMkt=2.12M
1 Malaise's Illusions (ACC/CONFUSE/RCHG) BMkt=740K
1 Aegis (END/RCHG) BMkt=130K
1 Siphon Insight (ACC/END/RCHG) BMkt=111K
1 Induced Coma (ACC/SLEEP/RCHG) BMkt=2K
TOTAL RANDOM POOL C VILLAIN SIDE: 132.053M infa, 220 merits, 600K infa/merit
RANDOM POOL D VILLAIN SIDE:
1 Devastation (ACC/DMG/RCHG) BMkt=4M
1 Mako's Bite (ACC/END/RCHG) BMkt=2.2M
TOTAL RANDOM POOL D VILLAIN SIDE: 6.2M infa, 60 merits, 103K infa/merit
@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!"
Oh that is my favorite mission i have played hands down. It really can be quite hard.
2/4/2009
[u]Merit benchmarking since I13[u]
New format: I changed my merit benchmarking format to include the actual merit reward and the average completion time. This is so I can more easily fix my numbers if/when the merit award changes on test get pushed to live. As a side effect, knowing how long a typical Xxx TF takes is kind of helpful for time management.
48.33MPH Nictus Insurrection kheldian flashback: 28 merits in 34.76mins (1 run)
40.91MPH 1st villain respec: 15 merits in 22mins (1 run)
34.62MPH 2nd villain respec: 15 merits in 26mins (1 run)
33.16MPH 3rd villain respec: 15 merits in 27.14mins (avg of 4 runs)
28.61MPH Lady Grey TF: 30 merits in 62.92mins (avg of 3 runs)
27.78MPH Ice Mistral SF: 25 merits in 54mins (1 run)
25.45MPH Sharkhead SF: 25 merits in 58.94mins (avg of 3 runs)
21.74MPH 3rd hero respec: 25 merits in 69mins (1 run)
20.67MPH Manticore TF: 25 merits in 72.57mins (avg of 3 runs)
20.16MPH Synapse TF: 45 merits in 133.93mins (avg of 2 runs)
18.10MPH 2nd hero respec: 25 merits in 82.87mins (1 run)
17.60MPH Hurt the Traitorous Vendetti villain flashback: 1 merit in 3.41mins (avg of 6 runs)
17.34MPH Loa Bone villain flashback: 1 merit in 3.46mins (avg of 4 runs)
17.12MPH Positron TF: 55 merits in 192.76mins (avg of 2 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
16.20MPH Sister Psyche TF: 40 merits in 148.15mins (avg of 3 runs)
15.84MPH Imperious TF: 25 merits in 94.70mins (avg of 14 runs) (2 failed TFs not averaged in)
15.84MPH Silver Mantis SF: 35 merits in 132.58mins (avg of 2 runs)
15.76MPH Vahzilok Conference villain flashback: 4 merits in 15.23mins (avg of 3 runs)
15.53MPH Hess TF: 15 merits in 57.95mins (avg of 2 runs)
14.30MPH Citadel TF: 30 merits in 125.87mins (avg of 9 runs)
13.61MPH Numina TF: 27 merits in 119.03mins (1 run)
11.51MPH Katie TF: 7 merits in 36.50mins (avg of 4 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
10.71MPH Mender Tesseract SF: 5 merits in 28mins (1 run)
8.56MPH Origin of Power villain flashback: 2 merits in 14.02mins (1 run)
7.99MPH Cap au Diable SF: 10 merits in 75.09mins (avg of 4 runs)
7.96MPH Hit List villain flashback: 2 merits in 15.08mins (1 run)
7.23MPH Spy Hunt villain flashback: 5 merits in 41.49mins (1 run)
6.27MPH Rise of the Vampyri hero flashback: 7 merits in 67mins (1 run)
5.81MPH Rumblings of the Past hero flashback: 3 merits in 31mins (1 run)
4.68MPH Steal Facemaker's Chemicals villain flashback: 1 merit in 12.82mins (1 run)
4.39MPH Escaped! villain flashback: 1 merit in 13.67mins (avg of 3 runs)
2.91MPH RWZ raiding: 2 merits in 41.24mins (avg of 4 runs)
PW's recommendations:
I'm sure these will change when the merit rewards are adjusted, but for now, I like
Level 50 hero: Lady Grey TF, 3rd hero respec
Level 50 villain: 3rd villain respec, Lady Grey SF
Level 33 hero: Manticore TF, Synapse TF, 1st hero respec
Level 33 villain: 1st villain respec, Sharkhead SF, Vendetti/Loa Bone/Vahzilok Conference flashbacks
I like level 50 for the infl/infa and chance at purple recipes.
I like level 33 because I prefer to get level 33 IO set recipes.
@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!"
2/6/2009
Tuesday night, I played Kashira (7 db/ninj stalker) for a bit, joining a 5-player pickup team doing level 8-9 paper missions in Port Oakes. We did a fairly messy Atlas mayhem where we came close to a team wipe, but I ended up stealthing to the vault door and team TPing everyone there, which gave us a chance to regroup and win the mission. Got to level 9 on this team.
Played Swordswoman (19 broadsword/fire scrapper on Protector) with an 8-player Demolition Girls team running missions in Faultline. We had one wipe against Arachnos in the "Defeat Nocturne" mission due to smoke grenades blinding us, causing us to stumble into and aggro a couple extra groups of mobs; then beat an AV-level Nocturne, saved Penelope Yin's dad for the Rescuer badge and completing her arc for 3 merits. We went on to have a wipe against Sky Raiders due to overaggroing, beat an Arbiter Sands AV and completed Doc Delilah's arc for another 2 merits. I got the Ouroboros portal power from this story arc, and can activate it to summon a portal, but can't actually enter it due to being below the min level of 25. Did get to level 22 though, taking Stamina at 20 and Kick at 22.
Wednesday night, Police Woman checked Wentworths and I found she had sold a level 50 Obliteration (ACC/RCHG) IO for 18M infl, which seemed a nice windfall. I was rather antisocial that night and just did some soloing, with Kashira finishing Dr. Creed's story arc back in Mercy for 2 merits, and Spy Girl (33 MA/ninj stalker) soloing another Loa Bone flashback (1 merit in 3m 10s) and another Vendetti flashback (1 merit in 3m 6s).
Thursday night, I ended up organizing a level 47 Imperious TF from mostly Sisterhood & friends. I played Mayday (45 fortunata) and our team mix ended up being:
3 fortunata (including me)
earth/sonic controller
necro/dark MM
AR/dev blaster
peacebringer
ice/DB tanker
Our level range was 44-47 with two even lower level people sidekicked up to 45-46. I had to turn away two level 50 people who wanted to join and exemp down; I wanted the ITF to spawn level 47 baddies and was fearful that adding a level 50, even exemped, would mess this plan up (one linkdeath by an exemper or an exempee could do this). I was a little worried that we might be healing-light, but we had capped defense from the VEATs and high resists from the sonic buffs, so I thought we'd be okay. Turns out that in addition to the dark heals and my own Aid Other, the peacebringer had her heal power and the blaster had Aid Other too, so we were just fine.
With such high defense and high resists we had an easy time with the first two missions. Since all 8 of us were getting exp, we took our time and probably cleared more than was strictly necessary. At the end of the third mission one of the fortunata proposed that instead of pulling Requiem and Romulus down to the computer console, we instead team TP to them. This seemed pretty crazy, but it actually was a lot of fun! It would've been suicide on some ITF teams I've had, but we had so much buffs that we were able to slug it out, beating up both AVs and their massive entourages. Jumping down to finish off the computer console was almost anticlimactic.
In the final mission we cleared our way to the final encounter, then went straight up the middle to engage Romulus and his Nictus friends. We got off to a bad start when our tanker got dropped by a lucky shot and Romulus started to run away from us, losing line of sight from the Nictus AVs and aggroing some nearby 5th Column that we hadn't bothered to clear, but we were able to get the tanker back into the fight and drag Romulus back to the center and finish him off 4 times for the win. Finished in 1hr 43mins for 25 merits. This run confirmed that ITF spawns baddies at the level of the highest character on the team, and also confirmed that level 47s still drop purple recipes, as I got an Armageddon (DMG/END) recipe from one. Mayday also leveled up to 47, where I took Aura of Confusion; so far I don't like this power at all, because I thought it would be a non-aggroing ranged AoE just like Mass Confusion, but actually it's a PBAoE centered on the caster, which feels much harder to use.
Finished the night playing Mayday on a friend's 3-player villain team doing missions in Grandville and Nerva, and completed the Kurrekt Diplomacy story arc for 2 more merits.
[u]Merit benchmarking since I13[u]
48.33MPH Nictus Insurrection kheldian flashback: 28 merits in 34.76mins (1 run)
40.91MPH 1st villain respec: 15 merits in 22mins (1 run)
34.62MPH 2nd villain respec: 15 merits in 26mins (1 run)
33.16MPH 3rd villain respec: 15 merits in 27.14mins (avg of 4 runs)
28.61MPH Lady Grey TF: 30 merits in 62.92mins (avg of 3 runs)
27.78MPH Ice Mistral SF: 25 merits in 54mins (1 run)
25.45MPH Sharkhead SF: 25 merits in 58.94mins (avg of 3 runs)
21.74MPH 3rd hero respec: 25 merits in 69mins (1 run)
20.67MPH Manticore TF: 25 merits in 72.57mins (avg of 3 runs)
20.16MPH Synapse TF: 45 merits in 133.93mins (avg of 2 runs)
18.10MPH 2nd hero respec: 25 merits in 82.87mins (1 run)
17.80MPH Traitorous Vendetti villain flashback: 1 merit in 3.37mins (avg of 7 runs)
17.65MPH Loa Bone villain flashback: 1 merit in 3.40mins (avg of 5 runs)
17.12MPH Positron TF: 55 merits in 192.76mins (avg of 2 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
16.20MPH Sister Psyche TF: 40 merits in 148.15mins (avg of 3 runs)
15.84MPH Silver Mantis SF: 35 merits in 132.58mins (avg of 2 runs)
15.76MPH Vahzilok Conference villain flashback: 4 merits in 15.23mins (avg of 3 runs)
15.75MPH Imperious TF: 25 merits in 95.25mins (avg of 15 runs) (2 failed TFs not averaged in)
15.53MPH Hess TF: 15 merits in 57.95mins (avg of 2 runs)
14.30MPH Citadel TF: 30 merits in 125.87mins (avg of 9 runs)
13.61MPH Numina TF: 27 merits in 119.03mins (1 run)
11.51MPH Katie TF: 7 merits in 36.50mins (avg of 4 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
10.71MPH Mender Tesseract SF: 5 merits in 28mins (1 run)
8.56MPH Origin of Power villain flashback: 2 merits in 14.02mins (1 run)
7.99MPH Cap au Diable SF: 10 merits in 75.09mins (avg of 4 runs)
7.96MPH Hit List villain flashback: 2 merits in 15.08mins (1 run)
7.23MPH Spy Hunt villain flashback: 5 merits in 41.49mins (1 run)
6.27MPH Rise of the Vampyri hero flashback: 7 merits in 67mins (1 run)
5.81MPH Rumblings of the Past hero flashback: 3 merits in 31mins (1 run)
4.68MPH Steal Facemaker's Chemicals villain flashback: 1 merit in 12.82mins (1 run)
4.39MPH Escaped! villain flashback: 1 merit in 13.67mins (avg of 3 runs)
2.91MPH RWZ raiding: 2 merits in 41.24mins (avg of 4 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!"
2/9/2009
On Friday night I joined a Rikti War Zone raid as it was just forming, playing Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster). Including the recruiting time, pylon clearing time, and fighting on the mother ship itself, I was there for 51 minutes. I used Surveillance to determine that pylons have 20% RES to all but psi. It was a very successful raid, and I got badge credit for a bomb, 2 reward merits for the GM, and an impressive 599 Vanguard merits.
After that I switched to Rain Dancer (50 storm/archery defender) and joined an 8-player LEGION SG team hunting Praetorian AVs; we did this for a couple hours, defeating Malaise, Shadowhunter three times, Mother Mayhem, Diabolique, Chimera twice, and Black Swan. Rain Dancer's badge meter said she was on 11 of 13 Praetorians both before and after this run; I have no idea which two she's missing. Along the way I did pick up 5.9 million inlfuence and a level 50 Performance Shifter: Chance for END recipe (which I immediately crafted and slotted). A random passerby also complimented Rain Dancer on her biographical story, which was nice.
Friday night, I solo'd a bit with Millie Volt (13 elec/inv brute), knocking out Krylov's "After the Wall Fell" arc for 5 merits and a King's Row mayhem; on Saturday I played Millie a little more, joining a 3 player LEGION team which eventually got her to level 15. I took Fly as Millie's level 14 power; she probably could've gotten by on the jetpack a bit longer, but I just picture her as innately being a flyer.
I also started a newbie inv/SS tanker on Friday night; the recent buffs have rekindled my interest in invulnerability. I got the name Strong Woman and gave her a primary-color, Silver Age heroine sort of costume. I quickly got invited to a 4 player team of level 2-3s who didn't speak very good English, but were decent players. We ran a few door missions which got Strong Woman to level 6. Later in the weekend Strong Woman joined a 4-player Hollows team that got her to level 8.
On Saturday and Sunday, I played Idolator (24 mind/fire dominator) on mid-sized LEGION teams running mid 20s door missions in Sharkhead. We did have one wipeout in a Tsoo mission where we were fighting one group of Tsoo and a patrol surprised us from behind; but once we got back from hospital we mopped them all up with no problems. This all got Idolator to level 27; I took Terrify at level 26, which is a nice AoE control and kinda works well with Fire Breath as they are both cone attacks. We also completed Darrin Wade's story arc during this time, getting the Thief of Midnight badge and 5 reward merits.
Later on Saturday, I joined an Imperious TF with Blond Justice (35 broadsword/shield scrapper). I was a little shy about joining as a mere level 35, but no one seemed to mind. Our team mix was:
night widow
spine/SR scrapper
bs/shield scrapper (me)
arch/nrg blaster
ill/FF controller
elec/stone brute
fire/therm controller
mind/kin controller
We ran the ITF on Rugged, but with force fields, thermal shields and speed boost, we had no trouble whatsoever with the TF, completing it in 1hr 33mins for 25 merits. Blond Justice leveled up to 37 and got a purple Unbreakable Constraint (RCHG/ACC) drop, which was really nice. Justice is traditionally a Roman goddess, so I immediately went to a tailor and made her a Roman armor costume; I didn't like the overly ornate look of the Roman swords or shields, though, so I kept the plainer straight longsword and heater shield.
On Sunday I logged on and a friend immediately told me about a Lady Grey TF he had joined that still had room, so I signed up for that. I played Mayday (47 fortunata), and our team mix was:
fire/kin controller
stone/SS tanker
fire/nrg blaster
TA/arch defender
fortunata (me)
dark/kin corr
kin/dark defender
warshade
We were running on Invincible, so I decided I definitely needed an SK, which I got. The 45 warshade didn't ask for one, which I didn't think much of, but I decided to keep quiet to avoid drama; eventually he SK'd up after we had a team wipe. We had a surprisingly high number of deaths for some reason, especially from our controller, who would pretty reliably let me Vengeance every time my power recharged. As a villain I had no idea what support ATs we had except for our corruptor and the TA defender whose arrows were pretty visible; I eventually deduced that all our hero support were kins. Speed boost was nice, but I'm not sure having 3 kins did us much good over having one. I also got to use Aura of Confusion a lot (due to the extra aggro our team seemed to be drawing), which helped improve my opinion of that power quite a bit.
In our first mission we cleared to Penelope Yin then purposely got her killed, though we were a little clumsy about it, suffering a team wipe ourselves before we could actually get the NPC to die. We went on to the second mission where we sort-of stealthed it, and by sort of I mean stealthy people snuck ahead and nonstealthy people tried to emulate this by sneaking past the Rikti, but instead dying to aggro. We muddled through this mission, then started the third mission with clearer directions for the non-stealthers to not run in and get killed. Unfortunately the stealthers had a lot of trouble locating the two prisoners, and so the non-stealthers eventually got impatient and started clearing out Rikti, until we ultimately found Infernia and Glacia and again deliberately got them killed.
The fourth mission against Hamidon was kind of a mess; we didn't seem to have a real plan, but instead we all just sorta did our own thing (some herding Rikti, some fighting Rikti, some shooting mitos, etc) and hoped for the best. I decided I would assist-target off the blaster and shot whatever he shot, and I think a few more team members decided to do this too, so the blaster ended up taking point on target selection, which let us focus fire enough to knock out all the mitos and win this encounter.
After that the fifth mission was relatively straightforward; someone did manage to stealth to the final encounter and teleport the team over, then we knocked out the two AVs with no trouble and the blaster and I blitzed the generators while hopped up on +DEF from mind link and inspirations. Finished the LGTF in 1hr 42mins for 30 merits, and Mayday hit level 48. This gave me enough slots to 6-slot her Mind Link with Red Fortune IOs, which dropped Mind Link's recharge to 3mins 4sec (with 1min 30sec uptime) along with set IO bonuses of +2% dmg, +5% rchg and +2.5% rng DEF.
After that, I almost joined a Moonfire TF, but while it was still organizing, a friend of mine began organizing a Numina TF. I could use both TFs but would rather run with friends, so I apologetically dropped from Moonfire to jump to the Numina TF. I played Blond Justice (37 bs/shield scrapper) and this was a Sisterhood & friends team with a team mix of:
2 AR/dev blasters
2 peacebringers
rad/dark defender
grav/kin controller
bs/shield scrapper (me)
ill/rad controller
As solo meleer (unless you count PBs), I took point and aggressively charged into various spawns of enemies. This probably resulted in one wipeout we had due to overaggroing several spawns of Nemesis, and it also swiftly taught me how hideously nasty DE quartz emanators are for defense based characters; they seemed to completely cancel Blond's shield defenses, resulting in at least three deaths for me. Despite occasionally having to rez me, the team was doing fine, and we got through the TF in 1hr 57mins for 27 merits. Blond hit level 38 on this TF, as well as getting the Task Force Commander accolade (+HPs). I agonized over what power to take at level 38; I wasn't excited about One With the Shield, and I originally wanted to take Kick (as a prereq for Tough and Weave) but the bonus you get from Weave (+3.75% DEF) seems so small for a 3 power investment. I ended up taking Maneuvers (+2.27% DEF), which is a smaller bonus and a little more END, but is instant gratification. I'm still not sure if this was the right call.
[u]Merit benchmarking since I13[u]
48.33MPH Nictus Insurrection kheldian flashback: 28 merits in 34.76mins (1 run)
40.91MPH 1st villain respec: 15 merits in 22mins (1 run)
34.62MPH 2nd villain respec: 15 merits in 26mins (1 run)
33.16MPH 3rd villain respec: 15 merits in 27.14mins (avg of 4 runs)
27.78MPH Ice Mistral SF: 25 merits in 54mins (1 run)
25.45MPH Sharkhead SF: 25 merits in 58.94mins (avg of 3 runs)
24.76MPH Lady Grey TF: 30 merits in 72.69mins (avg of 4 runs)
21.74MPH 3rd hero respec: 25 merits in 69mins (1 run)
20.67MPH Manticore TF: 25 merits in 72.57mins (avg of 3 runs)
20.16MPH Synapse TF: 45 merits in 133.93mins (avg of 2 runs)
18.10MPH 2nd hero respec: 25 merits in 82.87mins (1 run)
17.80MPH Traitorous Vendetti villain flashback: 1 merit in 3.37mins (avg of 7 runs)
17.65MPH Loa Bone villain flashback: 1 merit in 3.40mins (avg of 5 runs)
17.12MPH Positron TF: 55 merits in 192.76mins (avg of 2 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
16.20MPH Sister Psyche TF: 40 merits in 148.15mins (avg of 3 runs)
15.84MPH Silver Mantis SF: 35 merits in 132.58mins (avg of 2 runs)
15.77MPH Imperious TF: 25 merits in 95.11mins (avg of 16 runs) (2 failed TFs not averaged in)
15.76MPH Vahzilok Conference villain flashback: 4 merits in 15.23mins (avg of 3 runs)
15.53MPH Hess TF: 15 merits in 57.95mins (avg of 2 runs)
14.30MPH Citadel TF: 30 merits in 125.87mins (avg of 9 runs)
13.73MPH Numina TF: 27 merits in 118mins (avg of 2 runs)
11.51MPH Katie TF: 7 merits in 36.50mins (avg of 4 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
10.71MPH Mender Tesseract SF: 5 merits in 28mins (1 run)
8.56MPH Origin of Power villain flashback: 2 merits in 14.02mins (1 run)
7.99MPH Cap au Diable SF: 10 merits in 75.09mins (avg of 4 runs)
7.96MPH Hit List villain flashback: 2 merits in 15.08mins (1 run)
7.23MPH Spy Hunt villain flashback: 5 merits in 41.49mins (1 run)
6.27MPH Rise of the Vampyri hero flashback: 7 merits in 67mins (1 run)
5.81MPH Rumblings of the Past hero flashback: 3 merits in 31mins (1 run)
4.68MPH Steal Facemaker's Chemicals villain flashback: 1 merit in 12.82mins (1 run)
4.39MPH Escaped! villain flashback: 1 merit in 13.67mins (avg of 3 runs)
2.78MPH RWZ raiding: 2 merits in 43.19mins (avg of 5 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!"
I know for a fact that the blaster in that LGTF was not a fire/eng, but a fire/elec >.>
For mind-link, I went 5 red fortune + 1 rech from the adjusted targetting set. You can get +range def elsewhere.
I refigured all my merits per hour calculations, using the new merit rewards in today's patch. Here's what I came up with:
[u]Merit benchmarking since I13[u] (recalculated for 2/10/2009 patch)
40.91MPH 1st villain respec: 15 merits in 22mins (1 run)
34.62MPH 2nd villain respec: 15 merits in 26mins (1 run)
33.16MPH 3rd villain respec: 15 merits in 27.14mins (avg of 4 runs)
27.78MPH Ice Mistral SF: 25 merits in 54mins (1 run)
26.46MPH Manticore TF: 32 merits in 72.57mins (avg of 3 runs)
25.52MPH Synapse TF: 57 merits in 134mins (avg of 2 runs)
24.00MPH [u]OFFICIAL BASELINE FOR TRIAL REWARDS[u]
22.40MPH Sharkhead SF: 22 merits in 58.94mins (avg of 3 runs)
20.25MPH Sister Psyche TF: 50 merits in 148.15mins (avg of 3 runs)
20.00MPH [u]OFFICIAL BASELINE FOR TASK FORCE REWARDS[u]
19.90MPH Positron TF: 64 merits in 193mins (avg of 2 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
19.70MPH Vahzilok Conference villain flashback: 5 merits in 15.23mins (avg of 3 runs)
19.66MPH Hess TF: 19 merits in 58mins (avg of 2 runs)
19.07MPH Citadel TF: 40 merits in 125.87mins (avg of 9 runs)
18.31MPH Numina TF: 36 merits in 118mins (avg of 2 runs)
17.80MPH Traitorous Vendetti villain flashback: 1 merit in 3.37mins (avg of 7 runs)
17.66MPH Imperious TF: 28 merits in 95.11mins (avg of 16 runs) (2 failed TFs not averaged in)
17.65MPH Loa Bone villain flashback: 1 merit in 3.40mins (avg of 5 runs)
17.39MPH 3rd hero respec: 20 merits in 69mins (1 run)
17.21MPH Silver Mantis SF: 38 merits in 132.50mins (avg of 2 runs)
15.92MPH Hit List villain flashback: 4 merits in 15.08mins (1 run)
15.22MPH Rise of the Vampyri hero flashback: 17 merits in 67mins (1 run)
14.79MPH Katie TF: 9 merits in 36.50mins (avg of 4 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
14.46MPH Spy Hunt villain flashback: 10 merits in 41.49mins (1 run)
14.46MPH 2nd hero respec: 20 merits in 83mins (1 run)
12.84MPH Origin of Power villain flashback: 3 merits in 14.02mins (1 run)
9.60MPH Cap au Diable SF: 12 merits in 75mins (avg of 4 runs)
8.78MPH Escaped! villain flashback: 2 merits in 13.67mins (avg of 3 runs)
8.57MPH Mender Tesseract SF: 4 merits in 28mins (1 run)
8.00MPH [u]OFFICIAL BASELINE FOR STORY ARC REWARDS[u]
7.74MPH Rumblings of the Past hero flashback: 4 merits in 31mins (1 run)
6.86MPH Nictus Insurrection kheldian flashback: 4 merits in 35mins (1 run)
4.68MPH Steal Facemaker's Chemicals villain flashback: 1? merit in 12.82mins (1 run)
2.78MPH RWZ raiding: 2 merits in 43.19mins (avg of 5 runs)
?MPH Lady Grey TF: 39 merits in ?mins (0 runs) (4 runs pre-2/10/09 discarded as bad data)
PW's commentary:
The Kheldian story arc got nerfed hard. But we knew that had to happen.
Villain respecs weren't changed, and thus remain one of the best time investments for merit reward. Of course, the difficulty of recruiting 4 villains to work together keeps this from being abused much. I have Ice Mistral SF as being good MPH also, but this might not be accurate, since I only have data from 1 run which was on an exceptional team.
Lots of buffs to TF rewards, increasing the value of most of them. Manticore and Synapse TFs particularly stand out as being good merits per time.
They increased the merit reward for the Vahzilok Conference story arc, which is going to make it my new favorite villain flashback to solo when nothing much is going on.
I threw out all my previous data on Lady Grey TF because many of them depended on deliberately failing missions, which in the current patch will no longer give you full merits. They simultaneously raised the merit reward for the LGTF, though, so even with the change to how failed missions are handled, I still think LGTF may be a good way to get reward merits.
@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!"
2/11/2009
The Valentine's event started on Monday and I had Blond Justice (38 broadsword/shield scrapper) run through the Ganymede story arc with the help of a stalker sidekick I had picked up in Pocket D, gaining 2 reward merits, but the stalker had to go before we could do his Scratch missions to unlock DJ Zero. So from there I went to join an Imperious TF with a team mix of:
3 blasters (fire/nrg, fire/fire, archery/mental)
3 defenders (emp/psy, dark/rad, rad/ice)
will/SS tanker
bs/shield scrapper (me)
It had been a rough work day for me and I had consumed a couple White Russians to unwind, so this TF went by in a blur. The team was quite strong, though, with a good mix of buffs/debuffs/tanking/DPS; we had no serious problems and finished the TF in 1hr 22mins, getting Blond to level 39. I also got a purple drop, a Fortunata's Hypnosis (SLEEP/ENDRDX); not the most amazing purple recipe, but not bad at all.
After that I wandered back into Pocket D and hooked up with a team repeating level 8 Snaptooth missions, purely for the mission rewards. Having unlocked various costume options, I went to the Pocket D tailor and gave Blond Justice a toga & sandals costume. I also used her extra level 39 slots to 6-slot Red Fortune into her Deflection toggle, giving her an extra +2% dmg, +5% rchg and +2.5% rng DEF in IO bonuses.
I also did some Snaptooth missions on Triumph server as Alice Slaughter (31 db/will brute on Triumph), helping a friend to farm red caps. We did the mission 6 times with a mid-sized team to get the red cap badge, which is hard to get on the villain side; this also got Alice all the Valentine rewards and also unlocked the red cap daggers for her (not sure if I will use them or not, but they look neat).
Finished Monday night playing Millie Volt (15 elec/will brute on Liberty) trying to solo the Defeat Terrigol mission. This didn't go very well; I was on Vicious difficulty and died twice versus a red-con CoT ghost lieutenant who hit hard and debuffed hard. After hospitaling again, I went to one of the Pocket D bartenders and bought a full load of purple and yellow inspirations which let me finally kill the ghost and finish the rest of the mission.
Sometime on Monday night (maybe it was midnight? not sure) all my alts started getting the Tried & True badge (51 month veteran).
On Tuesday night, I started off playing Kashira (9 db/ninj stalker) as a lackey on a 5-player LEGION team doing level 20 missions for Seer Marino. Our team was 2 stalkers, 2 dominators and 1 VEAT, and so we were very squishy and had no healing or support to speak of. So we had a lot of stray deaths and even one wipeout against a tough group of Arachnos. And on top of that, one of the team members kept calling my character "Shakira", and seemed to expect me to go into some kind of Latin dance number. Nevertheless, Kashira got to level 11 before the team broke up, then solo'd the rest of the way to level 12. I took Combat Jumping at 10 and Swift at 12 and upgraded all her enhancements to DOs.
After that I joined a 7-player Demolition Girls SG team on Protector for a few missions; that Protector team seemed light on support so I dusted off Dreamwind (a 22 storm/psy defender on Protector that I hadn't played in many months) to try and help out. We did some of the later Faultline story arc missions, fighting Nocturne, Arbiter Sands and Captain Castillo AVs; despite my best efforts I couldn't seem to reliably keep our shield tanker alive with my O2 boosts and had to frequently rely on hurricane to debuff (which I hope helped the team more than it annoyed them; at one point it let me briefly tank an AV long enough for a scrapper to come help). I also tried using O2 Boost to counter the blindness from smoke grenades, since +Perception was added to O2 Boost a few updates ago; it seemed to take two O2 Boosts to unblind someone, which is a little disappointing, because applying two O2 Boosts to each player seems like more trouble than it's worth to counter a smoke grenade. After finishing in Faultline the team ran through Ganymede's story arc, gaining me 2 merits.
I logged on Thunder Girl (50 will/SS tanker on Liberty) and poked around Wentworth's for a little bit placing some bids. I had seen a willpower tanker build with softcapped defense posted on the tanker forums, which sounds really powerful, so I'm starting to think about a respec for Thunder Girl (who has capped max HPs but still feels squishy against big alpha strikes), but I need to pick up a lot of recipes before I can come close to matching that build.
Finished the night soloing a little with Strong Woman (8 invuln/SS tanker on Liberty), getting her to level 9 and the Negotiator badge.
[u]Merit benchmarking since I13[u] (recalculated for 2/10/2009 patch)
40.91MPH 1st villain respec: 15 merits in 22mins (1 run)
34.62MPH 2nd villain respec: 15 merits in 26mins (1 run)
33.16MPH 3rd villain respec: 15 merits in 27.14mins (avg of 4 runs)
27.78MPH Ice Mistral SF: 25 merits in 54mins (1 run)
26.46MPH Manticore TF: 32 merits in 72.57mins (avg of 3 runs)
25.52MPH Synapse TF: 57 merits in 134mins (avg of 2 runs)
24.00MPH [u]OFFICIAL BASELINE FOR TRIAL REWARDS[u]
22.40MPH Sharkhead SF: 22 merits in 58.94mins (avg of 3 runs)
20.25MPH Sister Psyche TF: 50 merits in 148.15mins (avg of 3 runs)
20.00MPH [u]OFFICIAL BASELINE FOR TASK FORCE REWARDS[u]
19.90MPH Positron TF: 64 merits in 193mins (avg of 2 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
19.70MPH Vahzilok Conference villain flashback: 5 merits in 15.23mins (avg of 3 runs)
19.66MPH Hess TF: 19 merits in 58mins (avg of 2 runs)
19.07MPH Citadel TF: 40 merits in 125.87mins (avg of 9 runs)
18.31MPH Numina TF: 36 merits in 118mins (avg of 2 runs)
17.81MPH Imperious TF: 28 merits in 94.34mins (avg of 17 runs) (2 failed TFs not averaged in)
17.80MPH Traitorous Vendetti villain flashback: 1 merit in 3.37mins (avg of 7 runs)
17.65MPH Loa Bone villain flashback: 1 merit in 3.40mins (avg of 5 runs)
17.39MPH 3rd hero respec: 20 merits in 69mins (1 run)
17.21MPH Silver Mantis SF: 38 merits in 132.50mins (avg of 2 runs)
15.92MPH Hit List villain flashback: 4 merits in 15.08mins (1 run)
15.22MPH Rise of the Vampyri hero flashback: 17 merits in 67mins (1 run)
14.79MPH Katie TF: 9 merits in 36.50mins (avg of 4 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
14.46MPH Spy Hunt villain flashback: 10 merits in 41.49mins (1 run)
14.46MPH 2nd hero respec: 20 merits in 83mins (1 run)
12.84MPH Origin of Power villain flashback: 3 merits in 14.02mins (1 run)
9.60MPH Cap au Diable SF: 12 merits in 75mins (avg of 4 runs)
8.78MPH Escaped! villain flashback: 2 merits in 13.67mins (avg of 3 runs)
8.57MPH Mender Tesseract SF: 4 merits in 28mins (1 run)
8.00MPH [u]OFFICIAL BASELINE FOR STORY ARC REWARDS[u]
7.74MPH Rumblings of the Past hero flashback: 4 merits in 31mins (1 run)
6.86MPH Nictus Insurrection kheldian flashback: 4 merits in 35mins (1 run)
4.68MPH Steal Facemaker's Chemicals villain flashback: 1? merit in 12.82mins (1 run)
2.78MPH RWZ raiding: 2 merits in 43.19mins (avg of 5 runs)
?MPH Lady Grey TF: 39 merits in ?mins (0 runs) (4 runs pre-2/10/09 discarded as bad data)
@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!"
2/12/2009
I started off playing Samurai-ko (27 katana/will scrapper) on a Moonfire TF. Our team mix was:
bs/shield scrapper
fire/nrg blaster
grav/kin controller
plant/rad controller
fire/fire blaster
katana/will scrapper (me)
dark/dark defender
A couple early deaths persuaded the level 23-24s on the team to take SKs, and we had some initial confusion over which scrapper the team would follow (I had assumed I was on point since I was the highest level, but the other scrapper kept going a different direction despite being my SK; since he had the star, I decided to follow his lead). After we worked out those issues, though, the team was very strong and we pounded our way through the TF in a speedy 1hr 13mins for 31 merits. Samurai-ko leveled up to 29 just as the TF ended, and got the Slayer and Silver Bullet badges from the many vampires and werewolves in this TF. I took Heightened Senses at 28. The shield scrapper also complimented Samurai-ko on her build and how tough she seemed; Samurai-ko is only using SOs, though, so this is really all Divine Avalanche plus natural regen/resists from her Willpower.
After that I joined a Positron TF, playing Linda Lightspeed (33 kin/rad defender). Our team mix was:
2 fire/fire blasters
stone/axe tanker
will/SS tanker
fire/kin controller
peacebringer
kin/rad defender (me)
We started Positron on Invincible difficulty; I asked if that was intentional and didn't get a response. So we went to the first mission and against the first group of level 17 Vahzilok we immediately had a total party wipe. At that point the leader said he had forgotten to change his difficulty, and we disbanded the TF and reformed it at Heroic difficulty. Even so, the tankers (who were both level 50s exemped to level 15) did not seem to understand how much weaker they were at level 15 and tried to herd several spawns of Vahzilok together, causing another team wipe during the first mission. The willpower tanker gained an appreciation of how squishy he was to toxic damage; he still wanted to herd, but at least herded smaller groups at a time. I still felt rather guilty that I could not always keep him alive against the Vahzilok (though he was fine against the clock and CoT); at level 15 it felt like my Transfusion recharged very slowly compared to how fast damage would come in. Thankfully, the blasters were very good about avoiding aggro, so I didn't have to heal them much at all (nearly impossible with Transfusion anyway).
The stone tanker seemed rather more clueless; despite acknowledging the willpower tank was lead, he would wade into other groups of mobs and get himself killed. After the fourth mission, he announced, "I need to log for a bit, back in an hour," which I thought was a pretty inconsiderate thing to do during a long TF. He never did come back, which is probably just as well. After the fifth mission the controller disconnected and never came back, leaving me as sole support toon on the team.
We were down to 5 players facing spawns set for 7, but things seemed to actually speed up a bit at that point; the remaining 5 of us were working together a bit better (though I think one fire blaster was getting exasperated at the peacebringer KBing the tanker's neat little herds) and I stealth-TP'd the team through some of the missions that could be stealthed. With SB and high DPS we were able to clear the final four Defeat All missions pretty quickly, though we did have one more team wipe in the last mission (again against Vahzilok; I really think they are the toughest enemy type in CoH). Finally completed the TF in 3hrs 3mins (not counting the first failed TF), for a yummy 64 merits; Linda got the Gravedigger and Soulbinder badges from the various Vahz and CoT.
I immediately cashed in 60 merits for random Pool C recipe draws on the 35-39 table, and got the following:
1 Positron's Blast (DMG/ACC/END) Wentw=7.64M
1 Devastation (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=2.92M
1 Call of the Sandman (ACC/SLEEP/RCHG) Wentw=65K
This is only a 177k/merit yield, but I like both Positron's Blast and Devastation, so I was still happy with this result.
Finished the night respecing Thunder Girl (50 will/nrg tanker), but I'm still missing a bunch of the IOs she needs, so her build is still kind of a mess and not worthy of posting. The major changes are that I dropped Fire Blast for Melt Armor (not sure if this is a good trade since Melt Armor is long recharge and not a huge debuff, but I figure Melt Armor can also serve as an extra AoE taunt), and Fast Healing for Weave (hate to lose Fast Healing, but I need Weave to try and raise her overall DEF). With the haphazard IOs I had lying around, Thunder Girl is now slightly below the tanker HP cap and has standing-around lethal defense in the high teens. Hoping to raise both these values as I acquire more IOs.
[u]Random recipes and purchased recipes (to date)[u]
RANDOM POOL C HERO SIDE:
1 Numina's Convalescence (+rec +regen) Wentw=35.2M
1 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% rchg) Wentw=33.5M
2 Obliteration (chance for smashing) Wentw=23.6M
1 Obliteration (ACC/DMG/RCHG/END) Wentw=20M
3 Positron's Blast (DMG/ACC/END) Wentw=7.64M
1 Aegis (Psi/Mez resist) Wentw=6.05M
1 Impervium Armor (+psi resist) Wentw=5.9M
1 Numina's Convalescence (HEAL/RCHG) Wentw=4.66M
2 Lockdown (chance for +2 mag) Wentw=4.6M
1 Mako's Bite (chance for lethal) Wentw=3.5M
2 Scirocco's Dervish (chance for lethal) Wentw=3.5M
2 Devastation (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=2.92M
1 Expedient Reinforcement (END/DMG/RCHG) Wentw=2.1M
2 Analyze Weakness (chance for +ToHit) Wentw=2M
1 Touch of Nictus (chance for negative) Wentw=1.82M
2 Touch of the Nictus (chance for negative) Wentw=1.8M
1 Analyze Weakness (ACC/END/RCHG) Wentw=1.27M
1 Performance Shifter (RCHG/ACC) Wentw=1.2M
1 Entropic Chaos (DMG/END/RCHG) Wentw=1.15M
1 Gift of the Ancients (DEF) Wentw=855K
1 Kinetic Combat (DMG/END/RCHG) Wentw=750K
1 Trap of the Hunter (chance for lethal) Wentw=500K
1 Pacing of the Turtle (chance for slow) Wentw=338K
1 Sovereign Right (10% pet RES) Wentw=286K
1 Force Feedback (RCHG/END) Wentw=234K
1 Glimpse of the Abyss (chance for psi) Wentw=104K
1 Perfect Zinger (RCHG/ACC) Wentw=70K
1 Call of the Sandman (ACC/SLEEP/RCHG) Wentw=65K
1 Malaise's Illusions (ACC/CNFS/RCHG) Wentw=50K
1 Sting of the Manticore (ACC/INTRDX/RNG) Wentw=50K
1 Stupefy (Chance for KB) Wentw=43K
1 Aegis (END/RCHG) Wentw=41K
1 Edict of the Master (DMG) Wentw=26K
3 Executioners Contract (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=6K
TOTAL RANDOM POOL C HERO SIDE: 219.54M infl, 880 merits, 249K infl/merit
PURCHASED RECIPES HERO SIDE:
1 Steadfast Protection (RES/+3% def) Wentw=39.6M purchased for 125 merits
1 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% rchg) Wentw=33.5M purchased for 200 merits
TOTAL PURCHASED HERO SIDE: 73.1M infl, 325 merits, 225K infl/merit
RANDOM POOL C VILLAIN SIDE:
1 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5 rchg) BMkt=80M
1 Decimation (ACC/END/RCHG) BMkt=22M
1 Obliteration (chance for smashing) BMkt=14.5M
1 Analyze Weakness (ACC/END/RCHG) BMkt=5M
1 Gaussian's Synch Fire Control (RCHG/END) BMkt=4.57M
1 Scirocco's Dervish (DMG/ACC/END) BMkt=2.9M
1 Impervium Armor (+Psi RES) BMkt=2.12M
1 Malaise's Illusions (ACC/CONFUSE/RCHG) BMkt=740K
1 Aegis (END/RCHG) BMkt=130K
1 Siphon Insight (ACC/END/RCHG) BMkt=111K
1 Induced Coma (ACC/SLEEP/RCHG) BMkt=2K
TOTAL RANDOM POOL C VILLAIN SIDE: 132.053M infa, 220 merits, 600K infa/merit
RANDOM POOL D VILLAIN SIDE:
1 Devastation (ACC/DMG/RCHG) BMkt=4M
1 Mako's Bite (ACC/END/RCHG) BMkt=2.2M
TOTAL RANDOM POOL D VILLAIN SIDE: 6.2M infa, 60 merits, 103K infa/merit
[u]Merit benchmarking since I13[u]
40.91MPH 1st villain respec: 15 merits in 22mins (1 run)
34.62MPH 2nd villain respec: 15 merits in 26mins (1 run)
33.16MPH 3rd villain respec: 15 merits in 27.14mins (avg of 4 runs)
27.78MPH Ice Mistral SF: 25 merits in 54mins (1 run)
26.46MPH Manticore TF: 32 merits in 72.57mins (avg of 3 runs)
25.52MPH Synapse TF: 57 merits in 134mins (avg of 2 runs)
25.48MPH Moonfire TF: 31 merits in 73mins (1 run)
22.40MPH Sharkhead SF: 22 merits in 58.94mins (avg of 3 runs)
20.25MPH Sister Psyche TF: 50 merits in 148.15mins (avg of 3 runs)
20.25MPH Positron TF: 64 merits in 189.67mins (avg of 3 runs) (2 failed TFs not averaged in)
20.00MPH [u]OFFICIAL BASELINE FOR TASK FORCE REWARDS[u]
19.70MPH Vahzilok Conference villain flashback: 5 merits in 15.23mins (avg of 3 runs)
19.66MPH Hess TF: 19 merits in 58mins (avg of 2 runs)
19.07MPH Citadel TF: 40 merits in 125.87mins (avg of 9 runs)
18.31MPH Numina TF: 36 merits in 118mins (avg of 2 runs)
17.81MPH Imperious TF: 28 merits in 94.34mins (avg of 17 runs) (2 failed TFs not averaged in)
17.80MPH Traitorous Vendetti villain flashback: 1 merit in 3.37mins (avg of 7 runs)
17.65MPH Loa Bone villain flashback: 1 merit in 3.40mins (avg of 5 runs)
17.39MPH 3rd hero respec: 20 merits in 69mins (1 run)
17.21MPH Silver Mantis SF: 38 merits in 132.50mins (avg of 2 runs)
15.92MPH Hit List villain flashback: 4 merits in 15.08mins (1 run)
15.22MPH Rise of the Vampyri hero flashback: 17 merits in 67mins (1 run)
14.79MPH Katie TF: 9 merits in 36.50mins (avg of 4 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
14.46MPH Spy Hunt villain flashback: 10 merits in 41.49mins (1 run)
14.46MPH 2nd hero respec: 20 merits in 83mins (1 run)
12.84MPH Origin of Power villain flashback: 3 merits in 14.02mins (1 run)
9.60MPH Cap au Diable SF: 12 merits in 75mins (avg of 4 runs)
8.78MPH Escaped! villain flashback: 2 merits in 13.67mins (avg of 3 runs)
8.57MPH Mender Tesseract SF: 4 merits in 28mins (1 run)
7.74MPH Rumblings of the Past hero flashback: 4 merits in 31mins (1 run)
6.86MPH Nictus Insurrection kheldian flashback: 4 merits in 35mins (1 run)
4.68MPH Steal Facemaker's Chemicals villain flashback: 1? merit in 12.82mins (1 run)
2.78MPH RWZ raiding: 2 merits in 43.19mins (avg of 5 runs)
?MPH Lady Grey TF: 39 merits in ?mins (0 runs) (4 runs pre-2/10/09 discarded as bad data)
@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!"
2/13/2009
Started off playing Mayday (48 fortunata) on a Recluse SF of about half Sisterhood and half various LBx types. Our team mix was:
4 fortunata (including me)
AR/rad corruptor
robo/storm MM
mind/thorn dominator
fire/dark corruptor
We were a little unsure whether this would work without a brute, but with capped defenses and good debuffs we had no problems with any of the early missions, only running into problems in the final showdown with the Freedom Phalanx, where our first two assaults were soundly defeated without us taking down even one of the Heroes. VEATs are pretty awesome, but a resist-based brute to soak up Hero damage would've been a big help here.
We had the mind dominator try sleeping the heroes with domination, but this didn't seem to work (I think this is because our initial attack caused Numina to start buffing Clear Mind on the other heroes).
The team decided to move to Bloody Bay for a Shivan run; we sampled meteors and then worked together to knock over a pillbox. Returning to the mission, we cracked open a bunch of Shivans, made someone suicide for stacked Vengeance, then made another assault on the Heroes. This time we got Numina, Sister Psyche and Positron; the team leader called for us to run away at that point (half the team was down). After the team regrouped, we summoned another round of Shivans and made another assault, which finally cleared the rest of the Heroes. We completed the RSF in 1hr 49mins, including the run through Bloody Bay. I took the random HO reward, which seemed like a better deal than 25 merits; though I'll use the 25 merit value in my data collection. Got a Ribosome, which is one of the most valuable; I don't really use those, though, so it'll likely end up on the Black Market.
After that I played Millie Volt (15 elec/will brute) on a Cap SF. This team was very slow to get started; we had to wait about 20 minutes for a very slow loading player to switch alts then travel from Nerva to Cap. We finally got moving with a team mix of:
blood widow
elec/inv brute (me)
mind/thorn dom
fortunata
thug/traps MM
fire/therm corruptor
SS/inv brute
This SF went pretty decently well. We had a moment of confusion at the start of the third mission when some team members stealthed ahead while the rest of us started fighting near the entrance; unfortunately, it seemed all the level 20+ mentors were stealthing ahead and the level 15-16 lackeys were the ones fighting level 20-21 mobs, so this did not go well. Once we recovered from that and got our plan straight, things went better; honestly the fort and dom did most of the SF, stealthing and completing the objectives for several of the middle missions, and grabbing all the glowies in the final mission. We tried to get Bat'Zul and Infernal to fight each other, but they got distracted or something so we ended up jumping in to knock out first Bat'Zul, then Infernal. Finished the Cap SF in 1hr 3mins for 12 merits. Millie hit level 17, taking Unyielding (for status protection) at 16.
From there Millie went to Pocket D and finished the night running Valentine missions, sidekicked up to some level 43ish heroes. We completed both the hero and villain story arcs for the Beautiful badge, and one run through Snaptooth which got Millie to 18 (and Health) and unlocked the Toga costume.
[u]Merit benchmarking since I13[u]
40.91MPH 1st villain respec: 15 merits in 22mins (1 run)
34.62MPH 2nd villain respec: 15 merits in 26mins (1 run)
33.16MPH 3rd villain respec: 15 merits in 27.14mins (avg of 4 runs)
27.78MPH Ice Mistral SF: 25 merits in 54mins (1 run)
26.46MPH Manticore TF: 32 merits in 72.57mins (avg of 3 runs)
25.52MPH Synapse TF: 57 merits in 134mins (avg of 2 runs)
25.48MPH Moonfire TF: 31 merits in 73mins (1 run)
22.40MPH Sharkhead SF: 22 merits in 58.94mins (avg of 3 runs)
20.25MPH Sister Psyche TF: 50 merits in 148.15mins (avg of 3 runs)
20.25MPH Positron TF: 64 merits in 189.67mins (avg of 3 runs) (2 failed TFs not averaged in)
20.00MPH [u]OFFICIAL BASELINE FOR TASK FORCE REWARDS[u]
19.70MPH Vahzilok Conference villain flashback: 5 merits in 15.23mins (avg of 3 runs)
19.66MPH Hess TF: 19 merits in 58mins (avg of 2 runs)
19.07MPH Citadel TF: 40 merits in 125.87mins (avg of 9 runs)
18.31MPH Numina TF: 36 merits in 118mins (avg of 2 runs)
17.81MPH Imperious TF: 28 merits in 94.34mins (avg of 17 runs) (2 failed TFs not averaged in)
17.80MPH Traitorous Vendetti villain flashback: 1 merit in 3.37mins (avg of 7 runs)
17.65MPH Loa Bone villain flashback: 1 merit in 3.40mins (avg of 5 runs)
17.39MPH 3rd hero respec: 20 merits in 69mins (1 run)
17.21MPH Silver Mantis SF: 38 merits in 132.50mins (avg of 2 runs)
15.92MPH Hit List villain flashback: 4 merits in 15.08mins (1 run)
15.22MPH Rise of the Vampyri hero flashback: 17 merits in 67mins (1 run)
14.79MPH Katie TF: 9 merits in 36.50mins (avg of 4 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
14.46MPH Spy Hunt villain flashback: 10 merits in 41.49mins (1 run)
14.46MPH 2nd hero respec: 20 merits in 83mins (1 run)
13.76MPH Recluse SF: 25 merits in 109mins (1 run) (took a Ribosome HO instead of merits)
12.84MPH Origin of Power villain flashback: 3 merits in 14.02mins (1 run)
9.92MPH Cap au Diable SF: 12 merits in 72.6mins (avg of 5 runs)
8.78MPH Escaped! villain flashback: 2 merits in 13.67mins (avg of 3 runs)
8.57MPH Mender Tesseract SF: 4 merits in 28mins (1 run)
7.74MPH Rumblings of the Past hero flashback: 4 merits in 31mins (1 run)
6.86MPH Nictus Insurrection kheldian flashback: 4 merits in 35mins (1 run)
4.68MPH Steal Facemaker's Chemicals villain flashback: 1? merit in 12.82mins (1 run)
2.78MPH RWZ raiding: 2 merits in 43.19mins (avg of 5 runs)
?MPH Lady Grey TF: 39 merits in ?mins (0 runs) (4 runs pre-2/10/09 discarded as bad data)
@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!"
2/16/2009
On Saturday, I played Police Woman (50 AR/dev) on a 7-player LEGION team for a few level 50 missions in Peregrine Island.
I played a newbie dark/sonic corruptor for a little bit; I've never really done sonic dispersion before and I thought dark blast might be a way to get a self-heal without resorting to medicine pool (which I like, but I do it too much). I got the name Morgan le Fay and tried to give her a sorceress-like costume. I solo'd some, then joined a 6-player pickup team for 5 Valentine's Day missions in Pocket D, which got her all the Valentine badges and level 5. The hero team seemed pretty happy to have Morgan's super-low level villain missions to quickly blow through, in order to unlock DJ Zero as a contact. This also scored me 2 reward merits for Scratch's story arc.
I also started yet another newbie kheldian; I really have a tough time getting into these, yet I feel some kind of moral obligation to keep trying. This one was a warshade, and I managed to sign on with a lowbie Valentine's Day villain team. This team was a couple stalkers, a dominator, and me, a kheldian; as a result we were rather squishy and got wiped out by Red Caps a couple times. Nevertheless we managed to beat Snaptooth a few times, getting my warshade to level 4.
I played Kashira (12 dual/ninj stalker) for a bit too, soloing the Plague Carrier mission, a King's Row mayhem, then joining a 3 player pickup team which ran through the Hit List story arc, getting Kashira to level 13 and earning 4 merits.
On Sunday I joined a Lady Grey SF, playing Mayday (48 fortunata). Our team mix was:
fire/thermal corruptor
2 ?/willpower scrappers
stone/? tanker
dark/dark brute
fire/kin corruptor
fortunata (me)
?/? blaster
With the new penalties for failing TF missions, we did the full version of the first mission, clearing down to Penny and rescuing her, battling ambushes while leading her out, and fighting the Clockwork King AV. The second mission we sorta-stealthed to each Rider spawn and took it out. The third mission we had some confusion as to whether we were going to complete the mission or purposely fail it; multiple stealthers ran around the mission, some trying to achieve the mission goals and some trying to find Infernia/Glacia and get them killed. Meanwhile all the nonstealthy people decided to join in the fun by simply clearing their way into the mission. I decided I'd work towards completing the mission, trying to save the various prisoners; the Rikti drones could see through my stealth, but my high range DEF helped me dodge them anyway. After going about the mission in this chaotic way for several minutes, we eventually came to the consensus that we were closer to completing the mission than purposely failing it, so we ended up killing the AV and leading the heroes out, finishing it the "real" way.
The fourth mission was also pretty chaotic; we didn't seem to have a real gameplan, everyone just sorta superjumped/supersped around shooting/punching mitos. Somehow this worked and we beat Hamidon. The final mission I stealthed to the final room and team TP'd everyone there, except for the blaster who must've been AFK with TP prompt on. We ended up beating the two final AVs with 7 players, after which we blitzed the 4 generators and completed the TF. Total time was 1hr 33mins for 39 merits; this seems a really good merit/hr yield, especially considering we weren't playing particularly optimally. Mayday got to level 49, where I took the Resuscitate power. Single-target Confuse was also tempting, but I decided rezzing would probably be more useful for high-end villain/co-op content.
After that, I played Idolator (27 mind/fire dominator) on a 5-player LEGION team doing Sharkhead missions for a bit, then eventually joined a Sharkhead SF, with a team mix of:
sonic/rad corr
nrg/will brute
mind/fire dom (me)
grav/psi dom
mind/thorn dom
rad/rad corr
robo/pain dom
We didn't bother stealthing much, instead preferring to simply clear things out of our way; this took a little longer but it worked well and we had no problems. Finished in 1hr 30mins for 22 merits and got Idolator to level 29. I took Levitate at level 28, then burned a respec to move slots around, dropping all my slots from Flares (which is kind of a marginal attack) and moving them around so I had at least 1ACC 3DMG in every other attack.
That night I played Blond Justice (39 broadsword/shield scrapper), forming and leading a 7-player team of mostly Sisterhood & friends with some pickup people. We did a mix of Founders Falls radio missions and some missions from contacts against Nemesis and Carnies; also 2 Brickstown mayhems where we got to fight and defeat Ice Mistral AV both times (though she debuffs and is quite tough). A teammate also complimented me on Blond Justice's character concept and look, which was really nice. Blond Justice got to level 41 on this team, where she took Kick (took awhile for me to decide this; decided to work on getting Weave over opening an Epic power pool). At level 40 she also got the "Justice Incarnate" badge, which I decided was perfect for her character concept.
[u]Merit benchmarking since I13[u]
40.91MPH 1st villain respec: 15 merits in 22mins (1 run)
34.62MPH 2nd villain respec: 15 merits in 26mins (1 run)
33.16MPH 3rd villain respec: 15 merits in 27.14mins (avg of 4 runs)
27.78MPH Ice Mistral SF: 25 merits in 54mins (1 run)
26.46MPH Manticore TF: 32 merits in 72.57mins (avg of 3 runs)
25.52MPH Synapse TF: 57 merits in 134mins (avg of 2 runs)
25.48MPH Moonfire TF: 31 merits in 73mins (1 run)
25.16MPH Lady Grey TF: 39 merits in 93mins (1 run)
20.25MPH Sister Psyche TF: 50 merits in 148.15mins (avg of 3 runs)
20.25MPH Positron TF: 64 merits in 189.67mins (avg of 3 runs) (2 failed TFs not averaged in)
20.00MPH [u]OFFICIAL BASELINE FOR TASK FORCE REWARDS[u]
19.78MPH Sharkhead SF: 22 merits in 66.75mins (avg of 4 runs)
19.70MPH Vahzilok Conference villain flashback: 5 merits in 15.23mins (avg of 3 runs)
19.66MPH Hess TF: 19 merits in 58mins (avg of 2 runs)
19.07MPH Citadel TF: 40 merits in 125.87mins (avg of 9 runs)
18.31MPH Numina TF: 36 merits in 118mins (avg of 2 runs)
17.81MPH Imperious TF: 28 merits in 94.34mins (avg of 17 runs) (2 failed TFs not averaged in)
17.80MPH Traitorous Vendetti villain flashback: 1 merit in 3.37mins (avg of 7 runs)
17.65MPH Loa Bone villain flashback: 1 merit in 3.40mins (avg of 5 runs)
17.39MPH 3rd hero respec: 20 merits in 69mins (1 run)
17.21MPH Silver Mantis SF: 38 merits in 132.50mins (avg of 2 runs)
15.92MPH Hit List villain flashback: 4 merits in 15.08mins (1 run)
15.22MPH Rise of the Vampyri hero flashback: 17 merits in 67mins (1 run)
14.79MPH Katie TF: 9 merits in 36.50mins (avg of 4 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
14.46MPH Spy Hunt villain flashback: 10 merits in 41.49mins (1 run)
14.46MPH 2nd hero respec: 20 merits in 83mins (1 run)
13.76MPH Recluse SF: 25 merits in 109mins (1 run) (took a Ribosome HO instead of merits)
12.84MPH Origin of Power villain flashback: 3 merits in 14.02mins (1 run)
9.92MPH Cap au Diable SF: 12 merits in 72.6mins (avg of 5 runs)
8.78MPH Escaped! villain flashback: 2 merits in 13.67mins (avg of 3 runs)
8.57MPH Mender Tesseract SF: 4 merits in 28mins (1 run)
7.74MPH Rumblings of the Past hero flashback: 4 merits in 31mins (1 run)
6.86MPH Nictus Insurrection kheldian flashback: 4 merits in 35mins (1 run)
4.68MPH Steal Facemaker's Chemicals villain flashback: 1? merit in 12.82mins (1 run)
2.78MPH RWZ raiding: 2 merits in 43.19mins (avg of 5 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!"
2/17/2009
Started Monday night playing Mayday (49 fortunata) on a Lady Grey TF organized on LBx. Our team mix was:
2 blasters (fire/?, nrg/?)
stone/? tanker
?/stone brute
2 fortunatas (including me)
dark/regen scrapper
earth/kin controller
This was a speed run with lots of stealthing. The first mission we were team TP'd to Penny, freed her, then team TP'd back to the door to fight the Clockwork King. The second mission, we were TP'd to each group of Riders to fight them. The third mission we deliberately failed; it seems one failed mission is allowed without a loss of merits. The nrg blaster disconnected after the third mission and didn't return. On the fourth mission, the fire blaster TP Foe'd mitos out of the goo, where we quickly disposed of them, and the fifth mission we were stealth/TP'd to the final encounter, which we had no problem with, even down a player. We finished the TF in a very speedy 46min 47sec for 39 merits, and the mission bonus for the last mission caused Mayday to hit level 50, my first VEAT to hit 50.
After that a friend invited me to a 6-player team running level 50 missions in Firebase Zulu, which seemed like a different and fun thing to try. I played Blond Justice (41 bs/shield scrapper) as a sidekick, hoping to make progress on unlocking the Rularuu costume items. FBZ seems less painful to get around in now that they added a jetpack vendor. As a scrapper, I took point inside the various cave missions, and I found out that Rularuu are quite nasty against shield defense, since they have tons of DEF debuffs (making me easier to hit), RCHG debuffs (slowing my attacks, and even worse, my mez protection clicky) and holds (the slows made me very vulnerable to these). They also have a very long aggro range (probably sniper level perception) and we had one team wipe in a large cave where 3 separate Rularuu spawns jumped in to get us. Nevertheless it was fun and we knocked out four or five missions, and Blond got credit for 8 Overseers.
After that team broke up, Spy Girl (33 MA/ninj stalker) solo'd a couple flashback missions. Knocked out a Vahzilok Conference flashback in 17min 2sec for 5 merits. I also tried a Breakout at the Zig flashback. The first mission was an easy glowy-click. The second required me to break into the jail and rescue 3 villains, then fight my way back to the mission entrance while under heavy fire from Longbow ambushes; this was hard but pretty fun (lost one villain NPC, but got 2 out, which counted as a win). The third mission required defeating all Longbow on a huge ship, though, which took a long tim and felt rather tedious. Finished the flashback in 41min 36sec for 8 merits.
I spent 20 of these ill-gotten merits on one Pool C recipe draw, and got a near-worthless Executioner's Contract (DMG/RCHG) (3K at Black Market). Oh well, can't always get lucky on these!
[u]Random recipes and purchased recipes (to date)[u]
RANDOM POOL C HERO SIDE:
1 Numina's Convalescence (+rec +regen) Wentw=35.2M
1 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% rchg) Wentw=33.5M
2 Obliteration (chance for smashing) Wentw=23.6M
1 Obliteration (ACC/DMG/RCHG/END) Wentw=20M
3 Positron's Blast (DMG/ACC/END) Wentw=7.64M
1 Aegis (Psi/Mez resist) Wentw=6.05M
1 Impervium Armor (+psi resist) Wentw=5.9M
1 Numina's Convalescence (HEAL/RCHG) Wentw=4.66M
2 Lockdown (chance for +2 mag) Wentw=4.6M
1 Mako's Bite (chance for lethal) Wentw=3.5M
2 Scirocco's Dervish (chance for lethal) Wentw=3.5M
2 Devastation (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=2.92M
1 Expedient Reinforcement (END/DMG/RCHG) Wentw=2.1M
2 Analyze Weakness (chance for +ToHit) Wentw=2M
1 Touch of Nictus (chance for negative) Wentw=1.82M
2 Touch of the Nictus (chance for negative) Wentw=1.8M
1 Analyze Weakness (ACC/END/RCHG) Wentw=1.27M
1 Performance Shifter (RCHG/ACC) Wentw=1.2M
1 Entropic Chaos (DMG/END/RCHG) Wentw=1.15M
1 Gift of the Ancients (DEF) Wentw=855K
1 Kinetic Combat (DMG/END/RCHG) Wentw=750K
1 Trap of the Hunter (chance for lethal) Wentw=500K
1 Pacing of the Turtle (chance for slow) Wentw=338K
1 Sovereign Right (10% pet RES) Wentw=286K
1 Force Feedback (RCHG/END) Wentw=234K
1 Glimpse of the Abyss (chance for psi) Wentw=104K
1 Perfect Zinger (RCHG/ACC) Wentw=70K
1 Call of the Sandman (ACC/SLEEP/RCHG) Wentw=65K
1 Malaise's Illusions (ACC/CNFS/RCHG) Wentw=50K
1 Sting of the Manticore (ACC/INTRDX/RNG) Wentw=50K
1 Stupefy (Chance for KB) Wentw=43K
1 Aegis (END/RCHG) Wentw=41K
1 Edict of the Master (DMG) Wentw=26K
3 Executioners Contract (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=6K
TOTAL RANDOM POOL C HERO SIDE: 219.54M infl, 880 merits, 249K infl/merit
PURCHASED RECIPES HERO SIDE:
1 Steadfast Protection (RES/+3% def) Wentw=39.6M purchased for 125 merits
1 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% rchg) Wentw=33.5M purchased for 200 merits
TOTAL PURCHASED HERO SIDE: 73.1M infl, 325 merits, 225K infl/merit
RANDOM POOL C VILLAIN SIDE:
1 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5 rchg) BMkt=80M
1 Decimation (ACC/END/RCHG) BMkt=22M
1 Obliteration (chance for smashing) BMkt=14.5M
1 Analyze Weakness (ACC/END/RCHG) BMkt=5M
1 Gaussian's Synch Fire Control (RCHG/END) BMkt=4.57M
1 Scirocco's Dervish (DMG/ACC/END) BMkt=2.9M
1 Impervium Armor (+Psi RES) BMkt=2.12M
1 Malaise's Illusions (ACC/CONFUSE/RCHG) BMkt=740K
1 Aegis (END/RCHG) BMkt=130K
1 Siphon Insight (ACC/END/RCHG) BMkt=111K
1 Executioners Contract (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=3K
1 Induced Coma (ACC/SLEEP/RCHG) BMkt=2K
TOTAL RANDOM POOL C VILLAIN SIDE: 132.056M infa, 240 merits, 550K infa/merit
RANDOM POOL D VILLAIN SIDE:
1 Devastation (ACC/DMG/RCHG) BMkt=4M
1 Mako's Bite (ACC/END/RCHG) BMkt=2.2M
TOTAL RANDOM POOL D VILLAIN SIDE: 6.2M infa, 60 merits, 103K infa/merit
[u]Merit benchmarking since I13[u]
40.91MPH 1st villain respec: 15 merits in 22mins (1 run)
34.62MPH 2nd villain respec: 15 merits in 26mins (1 run)
33.48MPH Lady Grey TF: 39 merits in 69.89mins (avg of 2 runs)
33.16MPH 3rd villain respec: 15 merits in 27.14mins (avg of 4 runs)
27.78MPH Ice Mistral SF: 25 merits in 54mins (1 run)
26.46MPH Manticore TF: 32 merits in 72.57mins (avg of 3 runs)
25.52MPH Synapse TF: 57 merits in 134mins (avg of 2 runs)
25.48MPH Moonfire TF: 31 merits in 73mins (1 run)
20.25MPH Sister Psyche TF: 50 merits in 148.15mins (avg of 3 runs)
20.25MPH Positron TF: 64 merits in 189.67mins (avg of 3 runs) (2 failed TFs not averaged in)
20.00MPH [u]OFFICIAL BASELINE FOR TASK FORCE REWARDS[u]
19.78MPH Sharkhead SF: 22 merits in 66.75mins (avg of 4 runs)
19.66MPH Hess TF: 19 merits in 58mins (avg of 2 runs)
19.13MPH Vahzilok Conference villain flashback: 5 merits in 15.68mins (avg of 4 runs)
19.07MPH Citadel TF: 40 merits in 125.87mins (avg of 9 runs)
18.31MPH Numina TF: 36 merits in 118mins (avg of 2 runs)
17.81MPH Imperious TF: 28 merits in 94.34mins (avg of 17 runs) (2 failed TFs not averaged in)
17.80MPH Traitorous Vendetti villain flashback: 1 merit in 3.37mins (avg of 7 runs)
17.65MPH Loa Bone villain flashback: 1 merit in 3.40mins (avg of 5 runs)
17.39MPH 3rd hero respec: 20 merits in 69mins (1 run)
17.21MPH Silver Mantis SF: 38 merits in 132.50mins (avg of 2 runs)
15.92MPH Hit List villain flashback: 4 merits in 15.08mins (1 run)
15.22MPH Rise of the Vampyri hero flashback: 17 merits in 67mins (1 run)
14.79MPH Katie TF: 9 merits in 36.50mins (avg of 4 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
14.46MPH Spy Hunt villain flashback: 10 merits in 41.49mins (1 run)
14.46MPH 2nd hero respec: 20 merits in 83mins (1 run)
13.76MPH Recluse SF: 25 merits in 109mins (1 run) (took a Ribosome HO instead of merits)
12.84MPH Origin of Power villain flashback: 3 merits in 14.02mins (1 run)
11.54MPH Breakout at the Zig villain flashback: 8 merits in 41.6mins (1 run)
9.92MPH Cap au Diable SF: 12 merits in 72.6mins (avg of 5 runs)
8.78MPH Escaped! villain flashback: 2 merits in 13.67mins (avg of 3 runs)
8.57MPH Mender Tesseract SF: 4 merits in 28mins (1 run)
7.74MPH Rumblings of the Past hero flashback: 4 merits in 31mins (1 run)
6.86MPH Nictus Insurrection kheldian flashback: 4 merits in 35mins (1 run)
4.68MPH Steal Facemaker's Chemicals villain flashback: 1? merit in 12.82mins (1 run)
2.78MPH RWZ raiding: 2 merits in 43.19mins (avg of 5 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!"
Gratz on the 50 VEAT PW!
@Aoide Muse
Arc IDs: #3571 Digital Love, #182068 The Rikti Roll, #334016 The Null Earth Saga: A Reflected Web
1/7/2009
Logged on Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) to discover she's been idling in the police station long enough to get the Law Enforcer day job badge. Moved her over to the city hall to work on the City Official badge. It's kind of dumb to gain badges for being logged out, but I really want the Police Chief accolade and the police baton that comes with it.
I played Spacegirl (50 mind/rad controller) on a Rikti War Zone raid. Got on an 8-player team and the raid went really well. Starting from the time I joined the team, and including standing-around-getting-organized-time, pylon killing, and fighting on the mother ship itself, the raid took 50 minutes. In that time I picked up 339 Vanguard merits, 2 Reward merits (2.4 MPH), and 1.82M influence; a pretty good haul all around. I probably died 4 times (these raids seem much more deadly for squishies than brutes) and got the Deathless (debt), Vanguard Recruit and Mercenary (day job) badges. I immediately spent 500 merits on the +10 salvage capacity "bag" and 50 merits on the Vanguard chest detail; I figure Spacegirl is the type who would have a Vanguard costume.
A little later I played Mercy Beaucoup (38 empathy/ice defender) on a Numina TF organized by Northern Lights SG. Our team mix was;
sonic/sonic defender
elec/dev blaster
MA/regen scrapper
TA/archery defender
katana/DA scrapper
warshade
emp/ice defender (me)
This was a strong team and we had no serious problems during the TF. The team leader did set a 2 hour time limit just to give us some time pressure, and at one point someone asked, "What's this timer that's ticking down on my screen?" I joked that "When the timer runs out, Jurassik will kill a kitten!" And so in the last mission we swiftly beat down Jurassik and raced around the huge 5-layer wedding cake cave looking for "the mob that has the kitten". We just barely beat the clock, finishing in 1hr 59mins, earning 27 merits (13.61MPH) and making the world safe for felinekind.
After that I messed around soloing Spy Girl (32 MA/ninj stalker) for a bit, freeing Amanda Vines and getting timed mission to stop Amanda's radio transmission; since Spy Girl is really a "good guy" infiltrating Arachnos, I decided to let the radio transmission "slip through" by ignoring the timed mission, instead running through a Talos mayhem mission. Umm, yeah, she robbed a bank, but it was to protect her cover! Really!
[u]Merit benchmarking since I13[u]
Deleted WL farming since it's no longer available
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)
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)
Numina TF: 13.61 MPH (1 run)
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)
RWZ raiding: 2.91 MPH (avg of 2 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!"