Mor Wrr Jurnels Plz!!
Iz Missez Dem!
3/9/2009
Work has kept me busy so it's been quite awhile since my last update; this entry will be a little long and a little compressed as a result.
Testing some other villain arcs for merits/hour, Spy Girl (33 MA/ninj stalker) solo'd a flashback of "Forging the Blackwand" (level 29) in 35mins 40sec for 8 merits. Then she also solo'd a flashback of "Kings of the Sky" (level 24) in 18mins 9sec for 4 merits. Both were around 13MPH, not great but not bad.
Several people were complaining on LBx they could never find teams on red side, so I briefly played Schadenfreude (38 AR/pain corruptor) and tried to invite them all to a team. One declined my invite, one joined for one mission, then quit to join an ITF, and one person (another Nazi-themed AR corruptor) actually stayed on my team and duo'd for awhile. This experience kind of soured me on responding to some of the complainers who claim they can never find a team; it seems like they enjoy complaining more than they like actually playing.
Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) solo'd a flashback of "To Save a Soul" (level 45), with players debuffed and no travel powers. This was horribly painful and long; the worst part was two separate "Defeat 45 Carnies in Peregrine Island" hunts that I had to do while debuffed and exemped to level 45. There weren't that many low level Carnies I could find, so I had to linger in Peregrine Island through several spawn cycles to complete each hunt, which was a huge time waster. Turned down 2 team invites while working on this dreadful flashback, which had 17 missions, took 2hrs 56mins, and awarded me a trifling 15 merits. I did get the Reckless and Stemmed badges though.
Blond Justice (41 bs/shield scrapper) knocked out a grey Unity Cure story arc for 10 merits, then burned 120 merits on 6 Pool C rolls, receiving:
1 Celerity (+Stealth) Wentw=3.82M
1 Executioner's Contract (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=5K
1 Expedient Reinforcement (END/DMG/RCHG) Wentw=3M
1 Sting of the Manticore (chance for toxic) Wentw=471K
1 Touch of Lady Grey (RCHG/END) Wentw=52K
1 Touch of the Nictus (ACC/END/RCHG) Wentw=2.78M
Blond Justice (41 bs/shield scrapper) joined an Unyielding ITF with 3 corruptors, 2 brutes, tanker, dominator and me as a scrapper. Despite having near capped defense, I still died a lot due to cascading defense debuffs overwhelming my normal defense totals. We had a lot of players disconnect; the worst it got was during the third mission where all but 3 players were disconnected or AFK and the remaining 3 of us were all melee trying to fight through the valley of lag. Most of the disconnected people came back after awhile though and we still managed to finish in 1hr 39mins.
Samurai-ko (30 katana/will scrapper) joined a Manticore TF of mostly Sisterhood & friends, with a team of 1 controller, 3 defenders, 1 blaster, 1 peacebringer, 1 scrapper, 1 tanker. The tanker wanted to stealth missions, which no one minded, but she didn't actually have the ability to TP anyone, so she asked us to clear the way to help out. As a result, I ended up doing most of the "tanking" while the tanker pounded away at the objective in the final room with abysmally low tanker DPS; several missions the team cleared about 80% of the mission, then the tanker knocked out the last mob in the final room and the mission would end. Despite these hijinks we finished in 1hr 54mins, getting Samurai-ko to 32 and Golden Dragonfly.
Idolator (29 mind/fire dominator) joined a Sharkhead SF with a team mix of 3 brutes, 2 widows, 2 stalkers and 1 dominator. We mostly stealthed this, though it was a bit chaotic because some of us didn't actually have stealth and pretending to be stealthy drew a lot of aggro. Truthfully, the main brute did practically everything in this SF, stealthing to the end and completing objectives, while most of us were just bystanders; brute DPS made this pretty fast, finishing in 40mins 26sec.
Later on, Samurai-ko (32 katana/will scrapper) joined a Katie TF with 3 defenders, 1 blaster, 1 scrapper, 1 defender and 2 controllers, finishing in 25mins 47sec and getting Samurai-ko to level 33. While in Croatoa, the team also knocked out 2 Jack-in-Irons and 1 Eochai giant monster, for an extra 6 merits. After that, Samurai-ko used 160 merits on random Pool C rolls, getting:
1 Dark Watcher (RCHG/END) Wentw=2K
1 Call of the Sandman (chance for heal) Wentw=29K
1 Touch of the Nictus (ACC/END/RCHG) Wentw=1.412M
1 Mako's Bite (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=2.52M
1 Gift of the Ancients (DEF) Wentw=1.36M
1 Touch of Lady Grey (RCHG/END) Wentw=27K
1 Gift of the Ancients (+7.5% run) Wentw=8.4M
1 Trap of the Hunter (chance for lethal) Wentw=422K
Blond Justice (43 bs/shield scrapper) did another ITF, this time with a team of 8 different ATs - a crab, dominator, brute, blaster, controller, tanker, corruptor and scrapper. Finished in 1hr 40mins and got Blond to 44, where she opened an epic pool by taking Conserve Power.
Blond Justice then did a Dr Quaterfield TF, with a team of 2 controllers, 2 scrappers, 1 tanker, 1 blaster (and a couple padders who quit immediately after the TF wsa formed, leaving us with a team of 6). This team was all very experienced and fun people who made this ordinarily dreary TF pretty fun, despite the occasional graphic description of moose anatomy in team chat. Or maybe because of that. In any case, we finished in 4hrs 33mins, getting a huge 111 merits, the Portal Smasher badge, level 45 for Blond Justice (at which point she became exemped to 44) and unlocking both the Rularuu Sword and Rularuu Shield.
Mercy Beaucoup (41 emp/ice defender) attempted an ITF with a team of 1 defender (me), 1 controller, 3 blasters, 1 peacebringer, 1 tanker, 1 scrapper. We were mostly level 40-43 and originally intended to run as a level 43 TF, facing level 43 enemies, but the last person to join was a level 45 causing the TF to spawn level 45 enemies which were +4 to +6 to most of the team. We decided to try this anyway. It went extremely poorly. The blasters tended to attack before the tanker, the tanker complained that the team was going too slowly (but would run around in granite armor with no speed boost). I was the only healer/buffer on the team (the controller was a TA; don't get me wrong, I like TA debuffs, but they didn't help people stay alive) and was going crazy trying to keep people alive through buffing and healing, which was very hard because everyone on the team was taking damage at the same time due to the high level of the opponents and poor aggro control by the team. I didn't have Resurrect as one of Mercy's powers, which normally is no problem since awakens are so common, but my teammates seemed rather disappointed that I couldn't rez them, and I started feeling guilty about it after about the fifth total team wipe. Finally during the third mission the level 45 blaster and the stone tanker both disconnected and didn't come back, which basically left us high and dry, so we called it quits.
Several of the team members wanted to re-try the ITF right away, and I did kind of want to have a better experience, so I agreed to this. I felt like aggro control had been a problem for us, and so I switched to my own tanker, Thunder Girl (50 will/nrg tanker); I don't claim to be an amazing tanker but I felt pretty sure I could do better than we were doing in the previous team. I also basically hijacked the star from the leader of the previous TF, and recruited my own team around the remnants of the previous TF. I ended up with 1 tanker (me), 1 blaster, 1 kin controller, 1 rad defender, 1 scrapper, 1 dark corruptor, 1 cold corruptor, and someone else I forgot to write down. We had no empath this time, but with kin/rad/dark/cold we had much, much more support than the previous run. This went so much better that after the first mission, the team demanded that I raise difficulty from Heroic to Unyielding. Finished that run in 1hr 44mins (a little slow; we cleared more than we strictly needed to) without any serious problems.
Spy Girl (33 MA/ninj stalker) joined a Sharkhead SF with 2 corruptors, 2 stalkers, 3 brutes and 1 MM. We managed to fail the first mission by overaggroing while escorting Barracuda to her goal and getting both her and ourselves killed, but got it right on the second try and finished the rest of the SF in 48mins 34sec without trouble. As a stalker with Recall Friend, I actually felt pretty useful on this SF.
Spy Girl went on to do 4 runs of the Vahzilok Conference flashback (purely for merits), clocking in at 19min 43sec, 20min 16sec, 18min 35sec, and 17min 50sec. She went on to spend 60 merits on Pool C recipe draws, gaining:
1 Numina's Convalescence (HEAL/RCHG) BlkMkt=9M
1 Kinetic Combat (DMG/END/RCHG) BlkMkt=6.1M
1 Sovereign Right (10% pet resist) BlkMkt=3M
Samurai-ko (33 katana/will scrapper) exemped down for a Sister Psyche TF on Rugged. Team was 1 peacebringer, 2 scrappers, 3 defenders, 2 blasters; we had no problems and finished in 1hr 32mins. Spent 40 merits from this on Pool C recipe draws, receiving:
1 Obliteration (ACC/DMG/RCHG/END) Wentw=20M
1 Sovereign Right (5% pet def) Wentw=10K
Fire Emerald (32 fire/fire blaster) did a Manticore TF with a team of 2 blasters, 2 controllers, 3 defenders, 1 tanker. We didn't have stealth so we cleared everything; took a little longer but we had no problems, finishing in 2hrs 17mins and getting Fire Emerald to level 34. During the time she was level 33 I went ahead and burned her 120 merits on level 33 Pool C draws, getting:
1 Edict of the Master (DMG) Wentw=46k
1 Executioner's Contract (chance for disorient) Wentw=44k
1 Gift of the Ancients (DEF) Wentw=1.74M
1 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% rchg) Wentw=60M
1 Obliteration (chance for smashing) Wentw=21M
1 Trap of the Hunter (chance for lethal) Wentw=50K
I was really pleased with this result; the Luck of the Gambler and Obliteration recipes made this a fantastic draw.
Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) joined a "crazy" Imperious TF. This was advertised as a suicide run where the leader recruited only DPS (no "herding tankers" or "pure support" allowed), the TF was set on Invincible, and everyone was encouraged to attack everything in sight, never stopping to rest or anything. Despite (or because of) these rules of engagement, we still got a crew of fairly decent players, but the mix of ATs was of course very DPS oriented, with 3 blasters, 1 scrapper, 1 stalker (quit the TF after the second mission because it was too silly), 1 widow, 2 controllers (I think a kin and a FF, neither of which were especially supporty). Surprisingly, we didn't actually have a team wipe until the second mission. We pretty much zerged everything in sight, hospitalling and coming back whenever we died. I got to use Vengeance a lot and I did enough healing with Aid Other that I got the Doctor badge on this TF. In the final encounter, I was pretty dubious about our chances against the AVs due to our relative lack of debuffs (my Surveillance and Achilles Heel proc were the only debuffs I could see being used). But despite two wipes against Romulus, the lemming horde eventually carried the day, finishing the TF in 1hr 58mins with 156 deaths.
Blond Justice (45 bs/shield scrapper) joined a "speed" Lady Grey TF, with a team of 2 corruptors, 1 warshade, 2 scrappers, 2 blasters, 1 tanker. With strategic teleporting, this went really quickly, finishing in a speedy 48mins 43sec.
Thunder Girl (50 will/nrg tanker) did another Imperious TF, this time on Invincible with a team of 2 controllers, 1 blaster, 1 crab, 1 corruptor, 1 scrapper, 1 tanker, 1 defender. We had no problems and finished in 1hr 16mins.
Samurai-ko (33 katana/will scrapper) led a few Croatoa teams to eventually get to level 35, then did a Numina TF with a team of 2 blasters, 1 tanker, 3 controllers, 1 defender and 1 scrapper; this had no serious problems, but ran a little slow, finishing in 2hrs 41mins.
Star Amethyst (11 warshade) joined a small Positron TF with a team of 1 tanker, 1 scrapper, 1 kin controller and 1 warshade. The kin controller was working hard, but we were still a little light on support and so we died a lot, especially struggling with the Defeat Rollister mission where we had a couple team wipes. Nevertheless got through the TF in 3hrs 54mins and got Star Amethyst to level 16.
Myself and several friends started a sorta-superteam of sonic/sonic corruptors. We had 4 players all doing sonic buffs and attacks. My experience so far is that we melt all enemies due to stacking resist debuffs, and most of the time our own resists were close to the cap (even with no enhancements or training enhancements), but the corruptor resist cap isn't all that high and enough damage still leaks through to occasionally kill us. It's fun though, and I got mine to level 13.
Finally, I played Olivia Q (50 MA/SR scrapper) on a Lady Grey TF with a team of 1 stalker, 2 corruptors, 1 blaster, 1 brute, 2 scrappers and 1 controller. With capped SR defenses, Olivia feels pretty godlike when fighting PvE enemies; nothing seemed able to touch her except Hamidon and his mitos, and in the last mission, despite lacking stealth, I got to run down to the final room and team TP everyone. Finished in 1hr 3mins.
[u]Level updates[u]
Fire Emerald (30 fire/fire blaster) reached level 31.
Kyrie Eleison (21 bs/inv scrapper) reached level 29.
Dreamwind (24 storm/psy defender on Protector) reached level 27.
Millie Volt (18 elec/inv brute) reached level 23.
Morgan le Fay (5 dark/sonic corruptor) reached level 10.
Blond Justice (41 bs/shd scrapper) reached level 45.
Kashira (16 db/ninj stalker) reached level 17.
Idealist (42 fire/thermal controller) reached level 43.
TokyoRose (brand new sonic/sonic corruptor) reached level 13.
[u]Random recipes and purchased recipes (to date)[u]
RANDOM POOL C HERO SIDE:
2 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% rchg) Wentw=60M
1 Numina's Convalescence (+rec +regen) Wentw=35.2M
3 Obliteration (chance for smashing) Wentw=21M
2 Obliteration (ACC/DMG/RCHG/END) Wentw=20M
1 Gift of the Ancients (+7.5% run) Wentw=8.4M
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 Celerity (+Stealth) Wentw=3.82M
1 Mako's Bite (chance for lethal) Wentw=3.5M
2 Expedient Reinforcement (END/DMG/RCHG) Wentw=3M
2 Scirocco's Dervish (chance for lethal) Wentw=3.5M
2 Devastation (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=2.92M
1 Mako's Bite (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=2.52M
2 Analyze Weakness (chance for +ToHit) Wentw=2M
3 Touch of the Nictus (chance for negative) Wentw=1.8M
3 Gift of the Ancients (DEF) Wentw=1.74M
2 Touch of the Nictus (ACC/END/RCHG) Wentw=1.412M
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 Kinetic Combat (DMG/END/RCHG) Wentw=750K
1 Sting of the Manticore (chance for toxic) Wentw=471K
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
2 Touch of Lady Grey (RCHG/END) Wentw=52K
3 Trap of the Hunter (chance for lethal) Wentw=50K
1 Malaise's Illusions (ACC/CNFS/RCHG) Wentw=50K
1 Sting of the Manticore (ACC/INTRDX/RNG) Wentw=50K
1 Edict of the Master (DMG) Wentw=46k
1 Executioner's Contract (chance for disorient) Wentw=44k
1 Stupefy (Chance for KB) Wentw=43K
1 Aegis (END/RCHG) Wentw=41K
1 Call of the Sandman (chance for heal) Wentw=29K
1 Edict of the Master (DMG) Wentw=26K
1 Sovereign Right (5% pet def) Wentw=10K
4 Executioners Contract (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=5K
1 Dark Watcher (RCHG/END) Wentw=2K
TOTAL RANDOM POOL C HERO SIDE: 367.984M infl, 1320 merits, 279K 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
2 Numina's Convalescence (HEAL/RCHG) BlkMkt=9M
1 Kinetic Combat (DMG/END/RCHG) BlkMkt=6.1M
1 Analyze Weakness (ACC/END/RCHG) BMkt=5M
1 Gaussian's Synch Fire Control (RCHG/END) BMkt=4.57M
1 Sovereign Right (10% pet resist) BlkMkt=3M
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: 159.156M infa, 320 merits, 497K 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]
37.22MPH Lady Grey TF: 39 merits in 62.87mins (avg of 4 runs)
35.34MPH 1st villain respec: 15 merits in 25.47mins (avg of 2 runs)
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)
25.52MPH Synapse TF: 57 merits in 134mins (avg of 2 runs)
25.48MPH Moonfire TF: 31 merits in 73mins (1 run)
24.40MPH Dr Quaterfield TF: 111 merits in 273mins (1 run)
22.39MPH Sister Psyche TF: 50 merits in 134.0mins (avg of 4 runs)
22.24MPH Sharkhead SF: 22 merits in 59.34mins (avg of 6 runs)
20.47MPH Manticore TF: 32 merits in 93.8mins (avg of 5 runs)
20.00MPH [u]OFFICIAL BASELINE FOR TASK FORCE REWARDS[u]
19.66MPH Hess TF: 19 merits in 58mins (avg of 2 runs)
19.13MPH Positron TF: 64 merits in 200.75mins (avg of 4 runs) (2 failed TFs not averaged in)
19.07MPH Citadel TF: 40 merits in 125.87mins (avg of 9 runs)
17.80MPH Traitorous Vendetti villain flashback: 1 merit in 3.37mins (avg of 7 runs)
17.74MPH Imperious TF: 28 merits in 94.70mins (avg of 23 runs) (3 failed TFs not averaged in)
17.70MPH Recluse SF: 25 merits in 84.75mins (avg of 2 runs) (took HOs instead of merits; 1 Ribo, 1 Nucl)
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)
17.25MPH Vahzilok Conference villain flashback: 5 merits in 17.39mins (avg of 8 runs)
17.21MPH Silver Mantis SF: 38 merits in 132.50mins (avg of 2 runs)
16.32MPH Numina TF: 36 merits in 132.33mins (avg of 3 runs)
15.92MPH Hit List villain flashback: 4 merits in 15.08mins (1 run)
15.72MPH Katie TF: 9 merits in 34.36mins (avg of 5 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
15.22MPH Rise of the Vampyri hero flashback: 17 merits in 67mins (1 run)
14.46MPH Spy Hunt villain flashback: 10 merits in 41.49mins (1 run)
14.46MPH 2nd hero respec: 20 merits in 83mins (1 run)
13.46MPH Forging the Blackwand villain flashback: 8 merits in 35.67mins (1 run)
13.22MPH Kings of the Sky villain flashback: 4 merits in 18.15mins (1 run)
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)
5.11MPH To Save a Soul hero flashback: 15 merits in 176mins (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!"
Just out of curiosity, PW..in your opinion, what's the best thing to spend merits on for influence/merit, hero or villain at level 50? From your numbers, it looks like you get a lot off of Pool C rewards, am I right?
My strategy has been to mostly spend merits on random task force recipes in the "35-39" range (note: you can roll on this table even at level 33, which is mostly what I do). I've had good luck with this; the "35-39" range has a lot less junk than the "30-34" range, while preserving the chance to hit the jackpot with several big ticket recipes still in the mix.
I personally like to get level 33 IO set recipes, because I like to be able to exemp down to as low as level 30 and keep the IO set bonuses. Random recipe draws are always awarded at a level equal to your character's level (or the nearest to that level the recipe can be), so as a result I try to make most of my random recipe draws on level 33 alts. On villain side, I've been purposely keeping Spy Girl at level 33 specifically for this reason, doing Ouroboros flashbacks and occasional SFs for merits. I was going to have an alt to do the same on hero side, but it seems like I create new alts and level them up to 33 at a high enough rate that I don't need to specifically hold one back at level 33. For new hero alts, I tend to do task forces to level them up, then save up all their merits until they reach level 33, then I use them all on random pool C recipes in a big spending spree.
This of course raises the question of what to do with reward merits on alts that are higher than level 33. Well, I often do another set of random recipe draws at level 41 (which can be used to exemp down into Warburg). Characters higher than that often get merits from ITFs and LGTFs, though, and I've been banking those merits towards purchasing specific recipes, which does let you specify exactly what level you want them at. So far I've bought one Steadfast Protection (RES/+3% def) and one Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% rchg) this way, costing me 325 merits. This method lets you get exactly the recipe you want, but is very expensive (325 merits == 16 pool C recipe draws!).
Of course if you prefer level 50 recipes (and there are good reasons to do so, since they have the highest enhancement bonuses) you can freely use merits for random recipes at level 50, too.
I've been tracking the Wentworth's price of stuff I get both from random rolls and from specific recipe purchases, in hopes of divining which strategy is actually more cost-effective. They're surprisingly close on hero side. On villain side, though, recipes are so scarce that a lot of them are very expensive, so random recipes are quite worth it.
This strategy works for me, but your mileage may vary. Hope that helped!
@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!"
Thanks for posting a Journal again PW. I get to live vicariously through your adventures when I don't have time/energy to play. 
Hopefully when we get the Early American Cardboard Box "decorating" under control Rose and I will have time to play again.....(sigh).
Seriously though, thanks for all the War Journal posts, its always good to see what others think of various play/enhancement strategies (plus its always interesting to see what you are going to write when I *am* actually playing).
3/11/2009
On Monday night, I played Blond Justice (45 broadsword/shield scrapper), recruiting and leading an 8-player team of some friends and some pickup people doing level 44-47ish missions on hero side all night. We mostly fought psychic Clockwork, Nemesis and Carnies. We defeated a psychic Clockwork King AV whose psy attacks were somewhat nerfed by our dark defender. Blond Justice got a compliment on her costume (from a teammate), a compliment on her blindfolded, sword-wielding Justice concept (from a random Wentworths passerby), and had a teammate say that it looked like Blond was "spanking" Ring Mistresses with her sword... and after that comment, my mind was totally corrupted and I found it was really hard for me to see the "Disembowel" animation as anything else. (Sorry, I wasn't able to get a screen shot of this. )
Blond got to level 46 and threw her 3 extra slots into True Grit, making it six slotted. After some debate, I ended up slotting 3 Numina's Convalescence and 3 Miracle into this power, including both the Numina and Miracle uniques, which had the net effect of giving me +32% regen, +27.5% recovery, and +3.75% max HPs. My alternative slotting would've been 3 generic HEAL and 3 generic RES IOs, which would have been infinitely cheaper and given me some extra resists to weird damage types, but would miss out on the regen/recovery bonuses.
On Tuesday night, I got on late and joined a "quick" Lady Grey TF as Mayday (50 fortunata). Our team mix was:
stalker
3 fortunatas
2 blasters
scrapper
kin corruptor
Having only a single kin for support seemed a little dubious to me, but actually the TF went fine, since we stealthed practically all of it, and triple stacked Mind Link and Tactical Training: Maneuvers gave us all a lot of defense.
With stealth and high defense I found myself joining the stealthers to try and accomplish objectives (this is much more fun than sitting at the door, IMHO). In the first mission, I reached Penelope Yin's prison and apparently aggroed far more than was strictly necessary; I thought killing the 2 generators would be enough to free Penny, but ended up fighting the entire roomful of Rikti. This was something I was capable of doing (okay, so the stalker and another fortunata helped some) but took awhile. Killing the special War Mesmerist Rikti seemed to actually free Penny, after which we got team TP'd up to fight the Clockwork King.
The rest of the TF was pretty straightforward; we had some deaths against the Riders and against Hamidon, so I got to use Vengeance and medicine pool Resuscitate a good amount, but the deaths never really slowed us down. In the final mission the Honoree went Unstoppable which caused him to ignore a lot of damage, but I found that psy attacks were still doing full damage, so the 3 fortunata were able to kill him through Unstoppable. We finished the TF in a very speedy 47mins 8sec.
With the recent merit tweaking, the LGTF now seems to be the best merits per hour of any activity, even with the changes that prevent failing more than one mission.
[u]Merit benchmarking since I13[u]
39.18MPH Lady Grey TF: 39 merits in 59.72mins (avg of 5 runs)
35.34MPH 1st villain respec: 15 merits in 25.47mins (avg of 2 runs)
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)
25.52MPH Synapse TF: 57 merits in 134mins (avg of 2 runs)
25.48MPH Moonfire TF: 31 merits in 73mins (1 run)
24.40MPH Dr Quaterfield TF: 111 merits in 273mins (1 run)
22.39MPH Sister Psyche TF: 50 merits in 134.0mins (avg of 4 runs)
22.24MPH Sharkhead SF: 22 merits in 59.34mins (avg of 6 runs)
20.47MPH Manticore TF: 32 merits in 93.8mins (avg of 5 runs)
20.00MPH [u]OFFICIAL BASELINE FOR TASK FORCE REWARDS[u]
19.66MPH Hess TF: 19 merits in 58mins (avg of 2 runs)
19.13MPH Positron TF: 64 merits in 200.75mins (avg of 4 runs) (2 failed TFs not averaged in)
19.07MPH Citadel TF: 40 merits in 125.87mins (avg of 9 runs)
17.80MPH Traitorous Vendetti villain flashback: 1 merit in 3.37mins (avg of 7 runs)
17.74MPH Imperious TF: 28 merits in 94.70mins (avg of 23 runs) (3 failed TFs not averaged in)
17.70MPH Recluse SF: 25 merits in 84.75mins (avg of 2 runs) (took HOs instead of merits; 1 Ribo, 1 Nucl)
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)
17.25MPH Vahzilok Conference villain flashback: 5 merits in 17.39mins (avg of 8 runs)
17.21MPH Silver Mantis SF: 38 merits in 132.50mins (avg of 2 runs)
16.32MPH Numina TF: 36 merits in 132.33mins (avg of 3 runs)
15.92MPH Hit List villain flashback: 4 merits in 15.08mins (1 run)
15.72MPH Katie TF: 9 merits in 34.36mins (avg of 5 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
15.22MPH Rise of the Vampyri hero flashback: 17 merits in 67mins (1 run)
14.46MPH Spy Hunt villain flashback: 10 merits in 41.49mins (1 run)
14.46MPH 2nd hero respec: 20 merits in 83mins (1 run)
13.46MPH Forging the Blackwand villain flashback: 8 merits in 35.67mins (1 run)
13.22MPH Kings of the Sky villain flashback: 4 merits in 18.15mins (1 run)
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)
5.11MPH To Save a Soul hero flashback: 15 merits in 176mins (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!"
3/12/2009
I started the evening playing Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster), joining the 10,000,000 bullet ITF, which was restricted to characters who use guns. It took some time to fill up this TF with gun users, but we finally got started with a team of:
1 AR/fire blaster
5 AR/dev blasters (including me)
1 AR/dark corruptor
1 AR/nrg blaster
I had some misgivings about a TF with 7 blasters and had offered to play a thug MM or a wolf spider for extra buff/debuff, but the team seemed to prefer I bring Police Woman (who, as my main character, is the best slotted with IOs). I thought we would have trouble handling the alpha strikes from big groups of Romans, but it actually worked out pretty well, as we pretty much met all opponents with a hail of AoE that vaporized them before they could seriously hurt us. Caltrops were used to keep hard targets like bosses and EBs at bay. We did have a good number of deaths, especially the AR/nrg blaster, who liked to mix it up in melee range.
We cleared the first two missions with relative ease. On the third mission, we cleared our way up through the valley of lag, tearing apart all the Roman ambushes with automatic fire, and the robots guarding the Phalanx computer were handled by killing them as they woke up, which worked reasonably well. On the final mission, we skipped ahead to the final encounter, where we cleared around Romulus a bit. Our strategy was to try and snipe the Nictus AVs from range, rather than try to tank them all; one of the blasters, however, immediately opened with an AoE LRM Rocket which aggroed the whole spawn and forced us to run. After regrouping, we moved back and started sniping at the healy Nictus from range. I found that I could use Surveillance from far enough away that they wouldn't aggro, so we could even debuff the AVs a little as we whittled away at their health. And 7 blasters + 1 corruptor can lay down a lot of damage even at that range. Comically, though, on two more occasions some blaster got trigger happy and launched another LRM Rocket at the spawn, forcing us to run away yet again, then regroup again. It was even a different person each time it happened, which was kinda funny. Nevertheless we eventually dropped all the Nictus AVs, made short work of the now-solo Romulus, and finished by clearing a bunch of Romans from the towers. Overall we did much better than I'd expect such an unbalanced team to do, finishing in 1hr 38mins, a very respectable time.
After that I joined a Katie TF as Fire Emerald (34 fire/fire blaster). Our team was 1 tank, 2 scrappers, 3 blasters, kin defender and TA controller. This TF ran a little slow; I had some red SOs due to not having upgraded to 35 SOs yet (hadn't done the vendor mission yet), and most of the team was close to the low end of the 30-34 level range, all of which made our DPS a little on the low side. We finished in 39mins 58sec, and Fire Emerald reached 35, where I picked up the Consume power. I also went to Rikti War Zone, where I can buy 35 SOs without doing a mission, and then quickly ran through Levantera's arc to join Vanguard.
Also, inspired by the story of someone going from level 1 newbie to level 50 billionaire in 30 days, I started investing heavily into the market on hero side. Police Woman, my main character for nearly 5 years, has only about a quarter billion influence; the idea that someone can start from nothing and make a billion infl in a month makes me feel like I've been slacking. I used to flip HOs for spare cash in the early days of the market, but had gotten out of the habit when the supply dried up. I threw some initial buy and sell offers for rare salvage and mid-high level recipes on Wentworth's; I don't have a good feel for prices yet, so I'll probably need to feel things out for a bit. I may start tracking Police Woman's infl totals to try and measure progress on this front.
[u]Merit benchmarking since I13[u]
39.18MPH Lady Grey TF: 39 merits in 59.72mins (avg of 5 runs)
35.34MPH 1st villain respec: 15 merits in 25.47mins (avg of 2 runs)
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)
25.52MPH Synapse TF: 57 merits in 134mins (avg of 2 runs)
25.48MPH Moonfire TF: 31 merits in 73mins (1 run)
24.40MPH Dr Quaterfield TF: 111 merits in 273mins (1 run)
22.39MPH Sister Psyche TF: 50 merits in 134.0mins (avg of 4 runs)
22.24MPH Sharkhead SF: 22 merits in 59.34mins (avg of 6 runs)
20.47MPH Manticore TF: 32 merits in 93.8mins (avg of 5 runs)
20.00MPH [u]OFFICIAL BASELINE FOR TASK FORCE REWARDS[u]
19.66MPH Hess TF: 19 merits in 58mins (avg of 2 runs)
19.13MPH Positron TF: 64 merits in 200.75mins (avg of 4 runs) (2 failed TFs not averaged in)
19.07MPH Citadel TF: 40 merits in 125.87mins (avg of 9 runs)
17.80MPH Traitorous Vendetti villain flashback: 1 merit in 3.37mins (avg of 7 runs)
17.71MPH Imperious TF: 28 merits in 94.84mins (avg of 24 runs) (3 failed TFs not averaged in)
17.70MPH Recluse SF: 25 merits in 84.75mins (avg of 2 runs) (took HOs instead of merits; 1 Ribo, 1 Nucl)
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)
17.25MPH Vahzilok Conference villain flashback: 5 merits in 17.39mins (avg of 8 runs)
17.21MPH Silver Mantis SF: 38 merits in 132.50mins (avg of 2 runs)
16.32MPH Numina TF: 36 merits in 132.33mins (avg of 3 runs)
15.92MPH Hit List villain flashback: 4 merits in 15.08mins (1 run)
15.30MPH Katie TF: 9 merits in 35.30mins (avg of 6 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
15.22MPH Rise of the Vampyri hero flashback: 17 merits in 67mins (1 run)
14.46MPH Spy Hunt villain flashback: 10 merits in 41.49mins (1 run)
14.46MPH 2nd hero respec: 20 merits in 83mins (1 run)
13.46MPH Forging the Blackwand villain flashback: 8 merits in 35.67mins (1 run)
13.22MPH Kings of the Sky villain flashback: 4 merits in 18.15mins (1 run)
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)
5.11MPH To Save a Soul hero flashback: 15 merits in 176mins (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!"
3/13/2009
I dove deeply into the morass of Wentworths marketeering last night. As Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster), I tried my hand at flipping rare salvage on hero side; I checked Wentworths 3 times over the course of the evening.
Police Woman started the evening with 245,395,365 influence.
I sold: 7 Photonic Weapon, 18 Positronic Matrix, 20 Rikti Alloy, 10 Essence of the Furies
I bought: 10 Magical Conspiracy, 15 Essence of the Furies, 30 Rikti Alloy, 20 Positronic Matrix
Police Woman finished the evening with 254,502,330 influence. (+9.1M infl)
Not too bad for a first effort.
Heroes were calling for help in Recluse's Victory, so I brought Police Woman into RV to try and help out. I joined up with 3 scrappers and we faced what appeared to be a team of 4 stalkers. The villains were a lot better coordinated than we were; my scrapper teammates had a bad habit of jumping into fights on their own, and the villains would happily triple-team us and defeat us in detail. I got a few kills, but we got the worst of it for awhile, until another blaster showed up and some of the stalkers left, which seemed to tip the balance in our favor. Before long heroes had overrun RV and the few stalkers left switched from actual PvP to trash talking on broadcast (ironically, one even called me immature for asking them to stop the trash talk and come kill us).
This wasn't very fun, so I switched to Mayday (50 fortunata) and came back to Recluse's Victory to try and even things up. Joined a team of 2 stalkers and jousted with heroes a bit; more heroes came into RV after that and we were pretty badly outnumbered. I found that fortunata are not quite as invincible as I had supposed; they seem so hard to hit when I'm on blue side, but while in RV it seemed like a spine scrapper, broadsword scrapper, archery/dev blaster, AR/dev blaster and sonic/nrg blaster were all able to hit me just fine, presumably due to Focused Accuracy and Targeting Drones. I dunno how the sonic blaster kept hitting me; his Shouts, formerly a stupid power in PvP, seemed incredibly strong though.
When I noticed an ill/emp controller had joined the hero side, I switched to Paris Holiday (49 fire/thermal corruptor) hoping to give the villain side some healing support too. I found post-I13 PvP healing to be incredibly difficult, maybe even impossible. I barely notice travel suppression on Police Woman (who has no travel powers) but it was utterly devastating for Paris, who has the pre-I13 PvP travel suite of SJ and SSpd. It seemed like any time I healed a teammate, I would quickly get targeted, movement-suppressed, and killed by a mob of heroes. I couldn't figure out any way to meaningfully contribute as a support toon other than buffing the thermal shields. The ill/emp didn't seem to have these problems, but she was Superior Invis and flying and had fewer people going after her, so maybe that all helped.
Anyway, I eventually got tired of PvPing and switched to playing Millie Volt (23 elec/inv brute), duoing the Origin of Power mission with another 23 brute, then soloing a bit until level 24, where I took Resist Energies (to help against those horrible energy-draining Mu and the negative-using CoT ghosts).
After that I played Mayday on a quick Lady Grey TF with a team of:
elec/stone brute
robo/poison MM
ice/kin corruptor
dark/dark brute
? defender
? blaster
? scrapper
fortunata (me)
We blitzed through it easily in 48min 35sec.
Finished the night checking Wentworth's on Police Woman, with the results described above.
[u]Merit benchmarking since I13[u]
40.44MPH Lady Grey TF: 39 merits in 57.86mins (avg of 6 runs)
35.34MPH 1st villain respec: 15 merits in 25.47mins (avg of 2 runs)
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)
25.52MPH Synapse TF: 57 merits in 134mins (avg of 2 runs)
25.48MPH Moonfire TF: 31 merits in 73mins (1 run)
24.40MPH Dr Quaterfield TF: 111 merits in 273mins (1 run)
22.39MPH Sister Psyche TF: 50 merits in 134.0mins (avg of 4 runs)
22.24MPH Sharkhead SF: 22 merits in 59.34mins (avg of 6 runs)
20.47MPH Manticore TF: 32 merits in 93.8mins (avg of 5 runs)
20.00MPH [u]OFFICIAL BASELINE FOR TASK FORCE REWARDS[u]
19.66MPH Hess TF: 19 merits in 58mins (avg of 2 runs)
19.13MPH Positron TF: 64 merits in 200.75mins (avg of 4 runs) (2 failed TFs not averaged in)
19.07MPH Citadel TF: 40 merits in 125.87mins (avg of 9 runs)
17.80MPH Traitorous Vendetti villain flashback: 1 merit in 3.37mins (avg of 7 runs)
17.71MPH Imperious TF: 28 merits in 94.84mins (avg of 24 runs) (3 failed TFs not averaged in)
17.70MPH Recluse SF: 25 merits in 84.75mins (avg of 2 runs) (took HOs instead of merits; 1 Ribo, 1 Nucl)
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)
17.25MPH Vahzilok Conference villain flashback: 5 merits in 17.39mins (avg of 8 runs)
17.21MPH Silver Mantis SF: 38 merits in 132.50mins (avg of 2 runs)
16.32MPH Numina TF: 36 merits in 132.33mins (avg of 3 runs)
15.92MPH Hit List villain flashback: 4 merits in 15.08mins (1 run)
15.30MPH Katie TF: 9 merits in 35.30mins (avg of 6 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
15.22MPH Rise of the Vampyri hero flashback: 17 merits in 67mins (1 run)
14.46MPH Spy Hunt villain flashback: 10 merits in 41.49mins (1 run)
14.46MPH 2nd hero respec: 20 merits in 83mins (1 run)
13.46MPH Forging the Blackwand villain flashback: 8 merits in 35.67mins (1 run)
13.22MPH Kings of the Sky villain flashback: 4 merits in 18.15mins (1 run)
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)
5.11MPH To Save a Soul hero flashback: 15 merits in 176mins (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!"
3/16/2009
Spent a lot of time this weekend at Wentworth's, working on my new marketeering sideline. Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) started Friday night with 254.502M infl, and over the weekend:
sold:
71 Rikti Alloy
37 Positronic Matrix
20 Photonic Weapon
40 Essence of the Furies
29 Diamond
17 Magical Conspiracy
bought:
49 Rikti Alloy
25 Positronic Matrix
20 Photonic Weapon
45 Essence of the Furies
10 Magical Conspiracy
...and ended Sunday night with 278.916M infl, a net gain of +24.414M over the weekend (about 8M per day). I did sell more stuff than I bought, though, unloading a bunch of rare salvage that I had built up earlier. Flipping mid-value Rikti Alloy and Essence of the Furies really did well for me, and both of them had very quick turnover. My investments at the high end and low end have both gone poorly, however; I'm sitting on around 20 Prophecies that I bought earlier and have psychologically been unable to mark down below 2M infl (since I believe they should be more valuable), so I have sold zero of them and they've been stuffing up my inventory uselessly. I also had bought far too many Diamonds earlier, having set my buy price a little too high, and I ended up dumping them at a low price just to clear inventory.
I also noticed other buyers adjusting their buy prices to react to mine (a couple times their buy price would be 1 more than mine) and found myself adjusting my own buy prices in response. It was market PvP indeed!
Okay, on to actual gameplay. On Friday night, I played Kyrie Eleison (29 bs/inv scrapper) on a 1st hero respec, with a team of:
2 blasters
peacebringer
3 scrappers (including me)
emp/ice defender
grav/storm controller
We had no real problems with the respec and finished it in 1hr 17mins; strangely, it awarded 27 merits, which is unlike the other hero respecs which award only 20. Kyrie got to level 31 on this trial and took Build Up at level 30. Kyrie also got a compliment on her costume, and had someone actually recognize what her name meant, which was nice.
On Saturday night I played Blond Justice (46 bs/shield scrapper) on an Invincible-difficulty Faathim the Kind TF with a team mix of:
2 dark/rad defenders
2 psy/mental blasters
cold/ice defender
ill/emp controller
bs/shield scrapper (me)
spine/dark scrapper
Although we had great buffs, and I made sure to SK up, it seemed like the darn Rularuu could still smash me straight through my capped defense. Looking in the combat spam, they still had a good chance to hit me even when I had +90% to +100% defense from stacked Shield Defense, Fortitude, Ice Shields, Shadow Fall and Arctic Fog. The dark scrapper ended up being "tank" for us (his psy resist surely helped) but got caged a lot. We had a team wipe in the second mission as a result of the pure nastiness of the Rularuu, but came back and pressed on. I was actually relieved when the TF switched to having us fight Nemesis, who only have stacked vengeance. Despite this, we had a good team with good players and we got through the TF in 3hrs 24mins, gaining 73 merits, and getting Blond Justice to level 48.
On Sunday morning I played Kyrie again, this time on a Manticore TF organized on the Sisterhood channel, with a team mix of:
3 scrappers (including me)
2 blasters
3 defenders (storm, rad, emp)
We had no problems and stealthed most of it, finishing in 1hr 13mins and gaining 32 merits. Kyrie got to level 32 and took Headsplitter, and I went ahead and solo'd Serafina's vendor mission in order to buy level 35 SOs.
Later that afternoon I played Millie Volt (24 elec/inv brute) on a mid sized team of Fallen LEGION SG (started at 3 players and grew to 6 eventually) doing missions in Sharkhead and Nerva. We did the Agent of Discord badge mission, then had a wipe in a CoT mission where we had overaggroed too much stuff, then another wipe in a Legacy Chain mission in a dangerous intersection where groups aggroed from both sides. Nevertheless it mostly went well and Millie got to level 26, where I took Kick (as prereq for Tough).
That evening I joined a speed run of the Sharkhead SF, playing Spy Girl (33 MA/ninj stalker). Our team mix was:
3 stalkers
1 dominator
2 brutes
2 corruptors
We stealthed pretty much everything and finished the SF in a blazing 33mins, gaining 22 merits. One of the villains who had teamed with me on a lot of SFs invited me to a Liberty villains specific channel, which was really nice of him; villain teams and SFs are hard to get together sometimes, so networking with more villain players seems terrific. I also immediately burned 20 of my merits on a random Pool C roll, and hit the jackpot with a level 33 Miracle (+recovery) recipe, valued at the Black Market at 100M infamy! I greedily squirreled it away for my own use rather than selling it, though.
Spy Girl ran a couple flashbacks for more merits, finishing a Vahzilok Conference arc in 19min 11sec (I was kinda slacking) and a Vendetti Traitor mission in 4min 29sec. While doing flashbacks, Spy Girl had a mastermind ask me if I'd help him fight a Nosferatu AV, which I agreed to. Little did I realize he actually was inviting me to the Mender Lazarus SF; I went along with it, though, and we got started with a team of:
necro/dark MM
robo/dark MM
MA/ninj stalker (me)
We were on high difficulty and scored a lot of exp; I really wanted to keep Spy Girl at level 33 for more merit farming, though, so I used the option to turn off exp when she got to around 33.9. We fought enough Council that I got The Slayer badge. In the first mission, the Nosferatu AV showed up in an ambush and we weren't really ready for him, so he promptly wiped the floor with us. After recovering from that, we beat Nosferatu in a close fight.
In the second mission, the Burkholder AV showed up and promptly killed both masterminds. I slammed a bunch of inspirations and uncorked a Shivan and had a moment of awesomeness as I managed to solo the AV after a hard fight.
The final mission had three Council AVs and we started clearing the floor beneath them when a rabid pet aggroed all 3 AVs onto us and caused a team wipe. After we recovered from that, I managed to single pull Vandal using Spy Girl's Revolver temp power, and we killed him; then we pulled Requiem and got him fairly low on life when a huge Council ambush spawned and wiped the team. We came back from the hospital and managed to finish off Requiem without another ambush, then we attacked Maestro and spawned another ambush which again wiped us out. After we got back from the hospital again, we managed to kill off Maestro without further incident. Finished the TF in 2hrs 3mins and got a measly 6 merits, which seemed a pretty weak reward for the effort required.
[u]Random recipes and purchased recipes (to date)[u]
RANDOM POOL C HERO SIDE:
2 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% rchg) Wentw=60M
1 Numina's Convalescence (+rec +regen) Wentw=35.2M
3 Obliteration (chance for smashing) Wentw=21M
2 Obliteration (ACC/DMG/RCHG/END) Wentw=20M
1 Gift of the Ancients (+7.5% run) Wentw=8.4M
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 Celerity (+Stealth) Wentw=3.82M
1 Mako's Bite (chance for lethal) Wentw=3.5M
2 Expedient Reinforcement (END/DMG/RCHG) Wentw=3M
2 Scirocco's Dervish (chance for lethal) Wentw=3.5M
2 Devastation (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=2.92M
1 Mako's Bite (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=2.52M
2 Analyze Weakness (chance for +ToHit) Wentw=2M
3 Touch of the Nictus (chance for negative) Wentw=1.8M
3 Gift of the Ancients (DEF) Wentw=1.74M
2 Touch of the Nictus (ACC/END/RCHG) Wentw=1.412M
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 Kinetic Combat (DMG/END/RCHG) Wentw=750K
1 Sting of the Manticore (chance for toxic) Wentw=471K
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
2 Touch of Lady Grey (RCHG/END) Wentw=52K
3 Trap of the Hunter (chance for lethal) Wentw=50K
1 Malaise's Illusions (ACC/CNFS/RCHG) Wentw=50K
1 Sting of the Manticore (ACC/INTRDX/RNG) Wentw=50K
1 Edict of the Master (DMG) Wentw=46k
1 Executioner's Contract (chance for disorient) Wentw=44k
1 Stupefy (Chance for KB) Wentw=43K
1 Aegis (END/RCHG) Wentw=41K
1 Call of the Sandman (chance for heal) Wentw=29K
1 Edict of the Master (DMG) Wentw=26K
1 Sovereign Right (5% pet def) Wentw=10K
4 Executioners Contract (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=5K
1 Dark Watcher (RCHG/END) Wentw=2K
TOTAL RANDOM POOL C HERO SIDE: 367.984M infl, 1320 merits, 279K 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=60M purchased for 200 merits
TOTAL PURCHASED HERO SIDE: 99.6M infl, 325 merits, 306K infl/merit
RANDOM POOL C VILLAIN SIDE:
1 Miracle (+recovery) BMkt=100M
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
2 Numina's Convalescence (HEAL/RCHG) BlkMkt=9M
1 Kinetic Combat (DMG/END/RCHG) BlkMkt=6.1M
1 Analyze Weakness (ACC/END/RCHG) BMkt=5M
1 Gaussian's Synch Fire Control (RCHG/END) BMkt=4.57M
1 Sovereign Right (10% pet resist) BlkMkt=3M
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: 259.156M infa, 340 merits, 762K 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]
40.44MPH Lady Grey TF: 39 merits in 57.86mins (avg of 6 runs)
35.34MPH 1st villain respec: 15 merits in 25.47mins (avg of 2 runs)
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)
25.52MPH Synapse TF: 57 merits in 134mins (avg of 2 runs)
25.48MPH Moonfire TF: 31 merits in 73mins (1 run)
24.40MPH Dr Quaterfield TF: 111 merits in 273mins (1 run)
22.39MPH Sister Psyche TF: 50 merits in 134.0mins (avg of 4 runs)
22.24MPH Sharkhead SF: 22 merits in 59.34mins (avg of 6 runs)
21.47MPH Faathim TF: 73 merits in 204mins (1 run)
21.04MPH 1st hero respec: 27 merits in 77mins (1 run)
21.26MPH Manticore TF: 32 merits in 90.33mins (avg of 6 runs)
20.00MPH [u]OFFICIAL BASELINE FOR TASK FORCE REWARDS[u]
19.66MPH Hess TF: 19 merits in 58mins (avg of 2 runs)
19.13MPH Positron TF: 64 merits in 200.75mins (avg of 4 runs) (2 failed TFs not averaged in)
19.07MPH Citadel TF: 40 merits in 125.87mins (avg of 9 runs)
17.80MPH Traitorous Vendetti villain flashback: 1 merit in 3.37mins (avg of 7 runs)
17.71MPH Imperious TF: 28 merits in 94.84mins (avg of 24 runs) (3 failed TFs not averaged in)
17.70MPH Recluse SF: 25 merits in 84.75mins (avg of 2 runs) (took HOs instead of merits; 1 Ribo, 1 Nucl)
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)
17.25MPH Vahzilok Conference villain flashback: 5 merits in 17.39mins (avg of 8 runs)
17.21MPH Silver Mantis SF: 38 merits in 132.50mins (avg of 2 runs)
16.32MPH Numina TF: 36 merits in 132.33mins (avg of 3 runs)
15.92MPH Hit List villain flashback: 4 merits in 15.08mins (1 run)
15.30MPH Katie TF: 9 merits in 35.30mins (avg of 6 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
15.22MPH Rise of the Vampyri hero flashback: 17 merits in 67mins (1 run)
14.46MPH Spy Hunt villain flashback: 10 merits in 41.49mins (1 run)
14.46MPH 2nd hero respec: 20 merits in 83mins (1 run)
13.46MPH Forging the Blackwand villain flashback: 8 merits in 35.67mins (1 run)
13.22MPH Kings of the Sky villain flashback: 4 merits in 18.15mins (1 run)
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)
5.11MPH To Save a Soul hero flashback: 15 merits in 176mins (1 run)
4.68MPH Steal Facemaker's Chemicals villain flashback: 1? merit in 12.82mins (1 run)
2.93MPH Mender Lazarus SF: 6 merits in 123mins (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!"
[ QUOTE ]
Blond Justice then did a Dr Quaterfield TF, with a team of 2 controllers, 2 scrappers, 1 tanker, 1 blaster (and a couple padders who quit immediately after the TF wsa formed, leaving us with a team of 6). This team was all very experienced and fun people who made this ordinarily dreary TF pretty fun, despite the occasional graphic description of moose anatomy in team chat. Or maybe because of that. In any case, we finished in 4hrs 33mins, getting a huge 111 merits, the Portal Smasher badge, level 45 for Blond Justice (at which point she became exemped to 44) and unlocking both the Rularuu Sword and Rularuu Shield.
[/ QUOTE ]
Hehe Mooseknuckles!!!
Thanks, NC Soft, for closing my favorite game ever without warning and with plenty of life still left in it, and thus relieving me of the burden of EVER wanting to buy, try or even hear about another game from your company. Will my decision make a dent, or persuade them in anyway, shape or form? Nope, obviously not. Don't care. NC Soft is dead to me. ~ PsyFox
3/19/2009
On Monday night, I started off playing Samurai-ko (36 katana/will scrapper), duoing the Frontline badge mission with a blaster, which got Samurai-ko to level 37.
I then switched to Idealist (43 fire/thermal controller) and formed an 8-player pickup team mostly doing missions in Peregrine Island. We beat up the Clockwork King for the Emancipator badge and got started on Tina McIntyre's Praetorian story arc, which got Idealist to level 44, where I took Fire Shield.
After that team broke up, I joined a Manticore TF, playing Linda Lightspeed (33 kin/rad defender), on a team of:
peacebringer
4 scrappers
3 defenders (2 kin including me, 1 dark)
This TF went blazingly fast. I picture Linda Lightspeed as being a classic comic-book superspeedster so I was always rushing to the next mission as fast as possible, stealthing to the end, team TPing people there, and urging people to hurry-up. And with double SB, double fulcrum shift and a bunch of scrappers, it felt like we beat up bad guys very fast indeed. One team member described this as "by far the most brutal team I've been on." We finished the TF in 53min 57sec, well below my current average of 90 minutes for Manticore.
Linda started at the bottom of 33 and I turned her exp gain off when she reached 33.9, as I'm thinking about keeping her at level 33 in order to gather merits for random Pool C rolls at that level. With SB and stealth, Linda seems to make all TF teams go a lot faster, so she seems an ideal TF runner for purposes of gaining merits.
Manticore awarded 32 merits, and after the TF, I burned 40 of Linda's merits on Pool C draws, receiving:
1 Devastation (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=2.613M
1 Touch of the Nictus (ACC/END/RCHG) Wentw=1.189M
Getting the Touch of the Nictus recipe motivated me to slot Linda's Transfusion power with 5 Touch of the Nictus (all but the proc) and 1 Efficiency Adaptor (RCHG/ACC), which makes the power +94.1% heal, +79.9% acc, +63.1% rchg and +35.9 endrdx, and gives global bonuses of +1.88% maxHP, +9% accuracy, +5% global heal, and +2.25% maxEND, which seemed pretty good.
On Tuesday night, I started off playing Mercy Beaucoup (42 emp/ice defender), recruiting and leading an 8 player pickup team running door missions. We beat up Countess Crey, had a wipe against Nemesis and another against Council, and got Mercy to level 43.
Late on Tuesday night, I joined a Synapse TF playing Star Amethyst (16 warshade). Our team was:
cold/ice defender
warshade (me)
mind/storm controller
shield/axe tanker
nrg/nrg blaster
bs/regen scrapper
We were a little nervous because we didn't have a "healer" (the stormy didn't take his), but decided to try it anyway. Turned out we were just fine; the defender's cold shields plus cold and storm debuffs nerfed the clockworks into not being very threatening. This TF started pretty late and so I was barely awake near the end, sleepwalking through the last few missions; I think I wasn't playing very well, which probably slowed things down. Nevertheless we beat up Babbage and the Clockwork King and completed the TF in 3hrs 10mins. Star Amethyst got to level 20, taking Gravity Well and Stamina as powers.
On Wednesday night, I started off playing Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster), joining an 8-player pickup team for one Praetorian mission in Peregrine Island. Then I switched to Thunder Girl (50 will/nrg tanker) to join an Imperious TF that was asking for a tanker on LBX. Our team mix was:
1 scrapper
4 controllers (kin, storm, 2 rads)
2 blasters
1 tanker (me)
I had a really tough time keeping aggro on this team, and I felt bad that a couple of the controllers seemed to constantly be dying over and over, and I'm not quite sure why; I tried to use Taunt, Fireball and Whirling Hands to get things mad at me, but the controllers were simply better at dying than I was at keeping them alive. My best guess is that they were sometimes getting separated, and at other times were heavily using AoE immobs (Fire Cages and Crushing Field) which seem to generate a lot of aggro. We also had one blaster who took an unannounced AFK for about half the TF, which seemed a little rude, but returned for the last mission.
In the last mission, our plan was to go straight up the middle. It seemed to me that someone else jumped the gun and pulled Romulus before I (the tanker) could jump in and aggro him, which caused Romulus and his attendant AVs to get scattered around over some distance, making it hard for me to taunt them all. We got things under control after awhile though. The scrapper suggested that I try and taunt the healer Nictus away from Romulus; this didn't seem like it would work to me, since I was tanking Romulus at the time and I figured both would follow me. But I gave it a try and I actually was able to move the healer Nictus away, because Romulus (though still aggro on me) was immobed by the controllers so couldn't move! So the AoE immobs actually helped, here! Anyway, we ended up finishing the ITF in 1hr 49mins. I got a couple moderately nice recipe drops: a level 50 Positron's Blast (DMG/END) and a level 50 Mako's Bite (ACC/DMG/END/RCHG).
After that, I did a Hess TF playing Linda Lightspeed (33 kin/rad defender), on a team of
1 scrapper
2 defenders
1 controller
2 blasters
This went blazingly fast, finishing in 28mins 47sec; Linda's SB and stealth definitely felt like it helped speed things along. I spent 20 merits from this on a Pool C draw, getting a fairly lame Touch of Lady Grey (RCHG/ENDRDX) with a Wentworths value of only 25K. Oh well, they can't all be worth millions!
[u]Market manipulation[u]
Sold:
10 Essence of the Furies (200K to 224K)
10 Magical Conspiracy (177K)
10 Photonic Weapon (949K)
73 Positronic Matrix (150K to 205K)
44 Rikti Alloy (200K to 400K)
Bought:
40 Essence of the Furies (80K to 101K)
20 Photonic Weapon (550K to 608K)
36 Positronic Matrix (76K to 88K)
60 Rikti Alloy (90K to 100K)
I started with 278.916M infl on Monday night, but forgot to write down how much I ended up with on Wednesday night. I think I made a couple million, but most of my profits got reinvested into acquiring inventory. It feels like only a few items move really well for me (Positronic Matrix and Rikti Alloy over these few days) while others languish on my broker for long periods of time; not sure if I should re-price them (losing a broker commission I've already paid) or get out of their markets entirely.
[u]Random recipes and purchased recipes (to date)[u]
RANDOM POOL C HERO SIDE:
2 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% rchg) Wentw=60M
1 Numina's Convalescence (+rec +regen) Wentw=35.2M
3 Obliteration (chance for smashing) Wentw=21M
2 Obliteration (ACC/DMG/RCHG/END) Wentw=20M
1 Gift of the Ancients (+7.5% run) Wentw=8.4M
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 Celerity (+Stealth) Wentw=3.82M
1 Mako's Bite (chance for lethal) Wentw=3.5M
2 Expedient Reinforcement (END/DMG/RCHG) Wentw=3M
2 Scirocco's Dervish (chance for lethal) Wentw=3.5M
3 Devastation (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=2.613M
1 Mako's Bite (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=2.52M
2 Analyze Weakness (chance for +ToHit) Wentw=2M
3 Touch of the Nictus (chance for negative) Wentw=1.8M
3 Gift of the Ancients (DEF) Wentw=1.74M
1 Analyze Weakness (ACC/END/RCHG) Wentw=1.27M
1 Performance Shifter (RCHG/ACC) Wentw=1.2M
3 Touch of the Nictus (ACC/END/RCHG) Wentw=1.189M
1 Entropic Chaos (DMG/END/RCHG) Wentw=1.15M
1 Kinetic Combat (DMG/END/RCHG) Wentw=750K
1 Sting of the Manticore (chance for toxic) Wentw=471K
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
3 Trap of the Hunter (chance for lethal) Wentw=50K
1 Malaise's Illusions (ACC/CNFS/RCHG) Wentw=50K
1 Sting of the Manticore (ACC/INTRDX/RNG) Wentw=50K
1 Edict of the Master (DMG) Wentw=46k
1 Executioner's Contract (chance for disorient) Wentw=44k
1 Stupefy (Chance for KB) Wentw=43K
1 Aegis (END/RCHG) Wentw=41K
1 Call of the Sandman (chance for heal) Wentw=29K
1 Edict of the Master (DMG) Wentw=26K
3 Touch of Lady Grey (RCHG/END) Wentw=25K
1 Sovereign Right (5% pet def) Wentw=10K
4 Executioners Contract (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=5K
1 Dark Watcher (RCHG/END) Wentw=2K
TOTAL RANDOM POOL C HERO SIDE: 370.697M infl, 1380 merits, 269K 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=60M purchased for 200 merits
TOTAL PURCHASED HERO SIDE: 99.6M infl, 325 merits, 306K infl/merit
RANDOM POOL C VILLAIN SIDE:
1 Miracle (+recovery) BMkt=100M
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
2 Numina's Convalescence (HEAL/RCHG) BlkMkt=9M
1 Kinetic Combat (DMG/END/RCHG) BlkMkt=6.1M
1 Analyze Weakness (ACC/END/RCHG) BMkt=5M
1 Gaussian's Synch Fire Control (RCHG/END) BMkt=4.57M
1 Sovereign Right (10% pet resist) BlkMkt=3M
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: 259.156M infa, 340 merits, 762K 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]
40.44MPH Lady Grey TF: 39 merits in 57.86mins (avg of 6 runs)
35.34MPH 1st villain respec: 15 merits in 25.47mins (avg of 2 runs)
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)
25.48MPH Moonfire TF: 31 merits in 73mins (1 run)
24.40MPH Dr Quaterfield TF: 111 merits in 273mins (1 run)
23.62MPH Hess TF: 19 merits in 48.26mins (avg of 3 runs)
22.55MPH Manticore TF: 32 merits in 85.14mins (avg of 7 runs)
22.40MPH Synapse TF: 57 merits in 152.67mins (avg of 3 runs)
22.39MPH Sister Psyche TF: 50 merits in 134.0mins (avg of 4 runs)
22.24MPH Sharkhead SF: 22 merits in 59.34mins (avg of 6 runs)
21.47MPH Faathim TF: 73 merits in 204mins (1 run)
21.04MPH 1st hero respec: 27 merits in 77mins (1 run)
20.00MPH [u]OFFICIAL BASELINE FOR TASK FORCE REWARDS[u]
19.13MPH Positron TF: 64 merits in 200.75mins (avg of 4 runs) (2 failed TFs not averaged in)
19.07MPH Citadel TF: 40 merits in 125.87mins (avg of 9 runs)
17.80MPH Traitorous Vendetti villain flashback: 1 merit in 3.37mins (avg of 7 runs)
17.71MPH Imperious TF: 28 merits in 94.84mins (avg of 24 runs) (3 failed TFs not averaged in)
17.70MPH Recluse SF: 25 merits in 84.75mins (avg of 2 runs) (took HOs instead of merits; 1 Ribo, 1 Nucl)
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)
17.25MPH Vahzilok Conference villain flashback: 5 merits in 17.39mins (avg of 8 runs)
17.21MPH Silver Mantis SF: 38 merits in 132.50mins (avg of 2 runs)
16.32MPH Numina TF: 36 merits in 132.33mins (avg of 3 runs)
15.92MPH Hit List villain flashback: 4 merits in 15.08mins (1 run)
15.30MPH Katie TF: 9 merits in 35.30mins (avg of 6 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
15.22MPH Rise of the Vampyri hero flashback: 17 merits in 67mins (1 run)
14.46MPH Spy Hunt villain flashback: 10 merits in 41.49mins (1 run)
14.46MPH 2nd hero respec: 20 merits in 83mins (1 run)
13.46MPH Forging the Blackwand villain flashback: 8 merits in 35.67mins (1 run)
13.22MPH Kings of the Sky villain flashback: 4 merits in 18.15mins (1 run)
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)
5.11MPH To Save a Soul hero flashback: 15 merits in 176mins (1 run)
4.68MPH Steal Facemaker's Chemicals villain flashback: 1? merit in 12.82mins (1 run)
2.93MPH Mender Lazarus SF: 6 merits in 123mins (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!"
[ QUOTE ]
3/12/2009
I started the evening playing Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster), joining the 10,000,000 bullet ITF, which was restricted to characters who use guns. It took some time to fill up this TF with gun users, but we finally got started with a team of:
1 AR/fire blaster
5 AR/dev blasters (including me)
1 AR/dark corruptor
1 AR/nrg blaster
I had some misgivings about a TF with 7 blasters and had offered to play a thug MM or a wolf spider for extra buff/debuff, but the team seemed to prefer I bring Police Woman (who, as my main character, is the best slotted with IOs). I thought we would have trouble handling the alpha strikes from big groups of Romans, but it actually worked out pretty well, as we pretty much met all opponents with a hail of AoE that vaporized them before they could seriously hurt us. Caltrops were used to keep hard targets like bosses and EBs at bay. We did have a good number of deaths, especially the AR/nrg blaster, who liked to mix it up in melee range.
We cleared the first two missions with relative ease. On the third mission, we cleared our way up through the valley of lag, tearing apart all the Roman ambushes with automatic fire, and the robots guarding the Phalanx computer were handled by killing them as they woke up, which worked reasonably well. On the final mission, we skipped ahead to the final encounter, where we cleared around Romulus a bit. Our strategy was to try and snipe the Nictus AVs from range, rather than try to tank them all; one of the blasters, however, immediately opened with an AoE LRM Rocket which aggroed the whole spawn and forced us to run. After regrouping, we moved back and started sniping at the healy Nictus from range. I found that I could use Surveillance from far enough away that they wouldn't aggro, so we could even debuff the AVs a little as we whittled away at their health. And 7 blasters + 1 corruptor can lay down a lot of damage even at that range. Comically, though, on two more occasions some blaster got trigger happy and launched another LRM Rocket at the spawn, forcing us to run away yet again, then regroup again. It was even a different person each time it happened, which was kinda funny. Nevertheless we eventually dropped all the Nictus AVs, made short work of the now-solo Romulus, and finished by clearing a bunch of Romans from the towers. Overall we did much better than I'd expect such an unbalanced team to do, finishing in 1hr 38mins, a very respectable time.
[/ QUOTE ]
It was great having you there. I was the AR/Fire Blaster, Rayne Firestrom, the one who tried to wrangle you all together in the first place. I must say, you were all exemplary examples of blasters/corrs, and our blapper was a perfect example of one of those as well. I hope soon I can put another AR group together as well. Hopefully you can make it!
3/19/2009
I started the evening playing Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster), responding to a call for help against the Kraken monster in Perez Park. We took the Kraken down with a single team, gaining 2 merits for all involved.
After that I joined a Moonfire TF that needed help starting up, playing Linda Lightspeed (33 kin/rad defender). Our team was:
3 tankers
1 peacebringer
1 scrapper
1 kin defender (me)
The 3 tankers and 1 peacebringer were friends who were originally just looking for a few people to pad the team so they could start the TF, but the scrapper and I wanted to stick around and do the actual TF. Linda could use the werewolves, vampires and merits, and this team could really use a defender (the tankers didn't really need much healing, but the damage and speed buffs helped them a lot I think), so I think this worked out well for everyone concerned. Finished in 1hr 13mins, and Linda got the Silver Bullet badge.
From there I switched to Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corruptor) and joined a Recluse SF that was forming. Our team mix ended up being:
fire/dark corr
MA/ninj stalker
robo/FF MM
dark/dark corr
fire/therm corr
fire/rad corr (me)
SS/stone brute
fire/kin corr
I managed to get myself killed in the first mission trying to solo 2 Longbow chasers while flying over a turret, after which I felt pretty dumb, and in the fourth mission a few of us got caught by the big ambush that occurs right after you beat up the Vindicators, while simultaneously fighting the revived Valkyrie; otherwise things went pretty smoothly. In the final mission we heartlessly made the stalker suicide to serve as vengeance bait, then we popped some shivans and defeated the Freedom Phalanx on our first try. Finished the RSF in 1hr 1min and I got an Enzyme SHO for my trouble.
Finished the evening soloing with Blond Justice (48 bs/shield scrapper), working my way through Maxwell Christopher's Nemesis story arc. After defeating a Nosferatu EB, Blond hit level 49, but I haven't definitely decided what power to take at that level; probably either Grant Cover or Hasten.
[u]Market manipulation[u]
I logged on Thursday night with 259.259M infl, so my cash-on-hand actually decreased by 19.6M over the Monday to Thursday period. Most of this money was not exactly lost, but instead was used to build up my inventory of expensive rare salvage; still a worrisome figure though. Anyway, over the course of the night I:
Sold:
10 Essence of the Furies (196K)
10 Photonic Weapon (963K)
10 Rikti Alloy (203K)
Bought:
20 Essence of the Furies (80K)
20 Military Cybernetic (556K to 606K)
10 Photonic Weapon (550K)
...and ended the night with 258.820M infl. So effectively I lost 439K influence from my cash reserves, but my inventory increased by 20 rare salvage (mostly Military Cybernetics which I spent about half a million each on). I feel like this effectively makes my net worth go up, but it's hard to quantify, as it's not really fair to treat salvage as money until I actually sell it. I should really work on clearing inventory so that I can declare more revenue. And yeah, I've been in too many work meetings in RL this week.
[u]Merit benchmarking since I13[u]
40.44MPH Lady Grey TF: 39 merits in 57.86mins (avg of 6 runs)
35.34MPH 1st villain respec: 15 merits in 25.47mins (avg of 2 runs)
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)
25.48MPH Moonfire TF: 31 merits in 73mins (avg of 2 runs)
24.40MPH Dr Quaterfield TF: 111 merits in 273mins (1 run)
23.62MPH Hess TF: 19 merits in 48.26mins (avg of 3 runs)
22.55MPH Manticore TF: 32 merits in 85.14mins (avg of 7 runs)
22.40MPH Synapse TF: 57 merits in 152.67mins (avg of 3 runs)
22.39MPH Sister Psyche TF: 50 merits in 134.0mins (avg of 4 runs)
22.24MPH Sharkhead SF: 22 merits in 59.34mins (avg of 6 runs)
21.47MPH Faathim TF: 73 merits in 204mins (1 run)
21.04MPH 1st hero respec: 27 merits in 77mins (1 run)
20.00MPH [u]OFFICIAL BASELINE FOR TASK FORCE REWARDS[u]
19.52MPH Recluse SF: 25 merits in 76.83mins (avg of 3 runs) (took HOs instead of merits; 1 Ribo, 1 Nucl, 1 Enzy)
19.13MPH Positron TF: 64 merits in 200.75mins (avg of 4 runs) (2 failed TFs not averaged in)
19.07MPH Citadel TF: 40 merits in 125.87mins (avg of 9 runs)
17.80MPH Traitorous Vendetti villain flashback: 1 merit in 3.37mins (avg of 7 runs)
17.71MPH Imperious TF: 28 merits in 94.84mins (avg of 24 runs) (3 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)
17.25MPH Vahzilok Conference villain flashback: 5 merits in 17.39mins (avg of 8 runs)
17.21MPH Silver Mantis SF: 38 merits in 132.50mins (avg of 2 runs)
16.32MPH Numina TF: 36 merits in 132.33mins (avg of 3 runs)
15.92MPH Hit List villain flashback: 4 merits in 15.08mins (1 run)
15.30MPH Katie TF: 9 merits in 35.30mins (avg of 6 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
15.22MPH Rise of the Vampyri hero flashback: 17 merits in 67mins (1 run)
14.46MPH Spy Hunt villain flashback: 10 merits in 41.49mins (1 run)
14.46MPH 2nd hero respec: 20 merits in 83mins (1 run)
13.46MPH Forging the Blackwand villain flashback: 8 merits in 35.67mins (1 run)
13.22MPH Kings of the Sky villain flashback: 4 merits in 18.15mins (1 run)
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)
5.11MPH To Save a Soul hero flashback: 15 merits in 176mins (1 run)
4.68MPH Steal Facemaker's Chemicals villain flashback: 1? merit in 12.82mins (1 run)
2.93MPH Mender Lazarus SF: 6 merits in 123mins (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!"
I can not believe after reading this thread for a while that My Family and I actually ran into you and became part of the story. You rock!!!
Thank you so much for the help.
[ QUOTE ]
I can not believe after reading this thread for a while that My Family and I actually ran into you and became part of the story.
[/ QUOTE ]
We each have our own story that we are living through, really ... ours happened to cross-over. Thanks for the fun team!
@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!"
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I can not believe after reading this thread for a while that My Family and I actually ran into you and became part of the story.
[/ QUOTE ]
We each have our own story that we are living through, really ... ours happened to cross-over. Thanks for the fun team!
[/ QUOTE ]
By standard crossover comic rules, you should have had to fight each other first (usually due to a misunderstanding) BEFORE teaming up.
3/23/2009
Started on Friday night playing Kyrie Eleison (32 bs/inv scrapper) on a Katie TF. Our team mix was:
2 defenders (cold and storm)
3 scrappers (including me)
1 tanker
We were on Rugged difficulty, had an undersized team and had very little ranged damage which made the witches' hurricane really nerf our DPS. As a result, the first mission was very slow going slogging through the spawns of witches, and had a wipeout against Mary #10, who was +5 to us. We got through it eventually, though, finishing in 1hr 1min and getting Kyrie to level 33. This caused me to burn 120 of Kyrie's merits on Pool C rolls, from which I got:
1 Gift of the Ancients (+7.5% run speed) Wentw=5M
1 Sting of the Manticore (chance for toxic) Wentw=670K
1 Trap of the Hunter (chance for lethal) Wentw=125K
1 Scirocco's Dervish (chance for lethal) Wentw=4.4M
1 Obliteration (ACC/DMG/RCHG/END) Wentw=14M
1 Scirocco's Dervish (DMG/ACC/END) Wentw=9M
This seemed like a decent draw; I'll probably find a home for the Scirocco's Dervishes and Obliteration IOs on some character or another. Interestingly, the Sting of the Manticore and Trap of the Hunter recipes were actually worth something when I checked, whereas previously they seemed like junk drops; I am guessing that the supply of junky recipes is starting to dry up, causing their price to start rising. The value of the Obliteration quad has gone down a lot (it was 20M last time I checked), probably reflecting that the shiny newness of it has worn off as more of them get into circulation.
Also on Friday night I played Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) on an Imperious TF and then a Lady Grey TF with a Whirligig SG team. Our team mix for the ITF was:
3 controllers (emp, kin, storm)
2 scrappers
1 widow
1 blaster (me)
The team was full of experienced and fun players, many of whom had just returned to the game (yay), and we blew through the ITF in 51mins 30sec; I gained 4.983M infl from drops.
For the LGTF our team was:
3 blasters (including me)
2 controllers
1 widow
1 tanker
1 scrapper (disconnected halfway through and didn't return)
We did the LGTF on Invincible and ended up clearing most of the missions the "real way" (i.e., by killing stuff) instead of stealthing them. This plus a server crash during mission 2 made this TF run a little long, but we still finished in 1hr 45mins, and I picked up another 5.446M infl in drops. The Whirligig people were really nice and even invited me to their vent server, where I learned the disconcerting fact that some of the PvPers who abandoned CoH have turned towards cutthroat Internet Scrabble ("the ultimate PvP") as a replacement.
On Saturday I played Kyrie Eleison (33 bs/inv scrapper) on a pickup Hess TF with a team mix of
2 scrappers (including me)
3 tankers
1 warshade
1 blaster
1 storm controller
This wasn't a terribly balanced team but we still did fine. Several people were in the right level range to get exp, so we fought everything for exp rather than stealthing. In the final mission, we even fought our way up the giant robot and attacked Burkholder at his spawn point (something I haven't done in years), rather than pulling him down to the exit as is traditional; as a flying scrapper I went and took out all the antipersonnel guns that pop up if you go up there. We finished the Hess TF in 1hr 9mins and it was pretty fun. I immediately spent 20 merits from my rewards on a Pool C recipe draw, getting a Sting of the Manticore (ACC/INT/RCHG) recipe for my trouble. I thought this was a total junk recipe, but Wentworths was pricing it at 2M infl, which is not bad at all! The last one of these I got sold for only 50K; supply of junk recipes must really be down.
Kyrie Eleison fights Archon Burkholder on the scaffolding around the giant robot
After that I played Millie Volt (26 elec/will brute) on a 1st villain respec organized on the Villains of Liberty channel. Our team mix was:
1 stalker
2 widows
1 dom
1 brute (me)
1 kin corr
I was LK'd to the stalker and as a result I died a lot in the first mission as the stalker was usually off somewhere else, stealthing stuff. Oops. In the final mission we initially started killing vines and ignoring CoT, but this really didn't work, with about half the team dying from loose aggro, and so we switched to clearing out the CoT. With about half the team alive we started trying to clear the vines; we got the number of vines down to 1 briefly, but then the vines started repopping faster than we could kill them (I think because our DPS was low because several people were dead), and before long they were back up to 48. Thorn tree aggro ended up doing most of us in and several of us ended up hospitalling and regrouping. Once we had the whole team alive and together again, we were able to knock out all the vines and beat the thorn tree to complete the respec in 48mins 51sec.
After that I played Grey Wings (37 archery/fire blaster on Triumph) on a Demo Girls SG team doing a Numina TF on Triumph server. Our team mix was
1 scrapper
2 blasters (including me)
2 tankers
1 emp defender
1 TA controller
1 warshade
The whole Numina TF was pretty easy for this team and we finished in a speedy 1hr 7mins (under half my previous average time).
After that I did a Moonfire TF on Liberty, playing Virtual Girl (33 rad/sonic defender). Team mix was:
2 scrappers
3 tankers
1 kin defender
1 rad defender (me)
Some people were wanting exp and so we fought through most of the TF. The most notable thing about the TF is that one of our scrappers got generichero'd right before our eyes while on a mission. Poor Rorschachh was obviously a newbie (he had no veteran badges and said this was his first TF) and very distressed by this (he nearly quit the team in order to go fix his now randomized costume), and so the team commiserated with him and explained what he could do to fix his costume and name; he seemed to calm down and accept things and finished the TF with us. We finished the TF in 1hr 31mins and Virtual Girl got the Silver Bullet and The Slayer badges (I still need to get the history/exploration badges to complete the Atlas Medallion).
Virtual Girl went on to do a Hess TF with a team of
2 scrappers
1 tanker
3 defenders (rad, kin, emp)
1 warshade (disconnected)
We sped through this TF, with scrappers splitting up to solo each of the radar stations and rapid stealthing of the rest of the missions. Finished in a blazing 27mins 12sec. I burned 60 of Virtual Girl's merits on Pool C recipe draws, getting:
1 Devastation (chance to hold) Wentw=4M
1 Sovereign Right (ACC/END) Wentw=1K
1 Force Feedback (RCHG/END) Wentw=74K
Late Saturday night I tried out the Mission Architect feature on test server, logging in an ancient level 24 copy of Police Woman who had been logged out for about 5 years and was still wearing PW's original costume. I groaned at the powers I had, powers that I had thought were awesome back in 2004. I was up way too late tinkering with writing my own story arc, "Axis and Allies" (arc #10597 if you want to try it). Here's a screen shot of me testing it:
Police Woman versus Hitler
It's actually a villain story arc where you go back in time to take over the 5th Column and then try to win WW2 for the bad guys, but hero or villain is only a guideline on Mission Architect and you can play it from either red side or blue. I ran through it on an AR blaster, SS brute and broadsword scrapper for the sake of testing, and so I got to shoot Hitler, punch him in the face, and headsplitter him, all of which I enjoyed probably more than is healthy.
On Sunday I logged in to the test server and found someone had played my story arc, wrote me some comments and awarded me stars! It was pretty cool! He did find a couple bugs in my missions where the allies wouldn't help fight, which I fixed. I'm really liking Mission Architect; the main problem I have with it right now is that the file size for a story arc feels very small. A lot of my original ideas for my story arc ended up on the cutting room floor in order to fit the whole story arc in the space allowed. The person who played my story arc seemed to like it though, so maybe it actually benefited from the tight editing that was required.
Also on Sunday I played Mayday (50 fortunata) on a Lady Grey TF with a team mix of
2 blasters
2 scrappers
1 fire brute
1 kin corr
1 fortunata (me)
1 willpower tanker
This was a speed run that was slowed down only by the Honoree when he went Unstoppable; my psy blasts still hurt him while he was Unstoppable but it wasn't enough to counteract his regen. Once his Unstoppable went down, though, the team obliterated him. Finished in 46mins 46sec; I was in SG mode and I picked up 600K infamy and 4140 prestige.
After that I played Apparatchik (16 elec/will brute on Justice) with an 8-player team of Demolition Girls SG on Justice server; as a lackey on a high level team, Apparatchik leveled like mad, getting to 23 before the night was done.
Someone on LBx was asking people to play his story arc on test server, The Chop Shop, and so I tried it out (and he agreed to try out my story arc too). This was a fun mini-arc about fighting Vahzilok on Mercy Island.
I finished the evening playing Fire Emerald (35 fire/fire blaster) on a 6 player team of Liberty Force SG, getting to level 36. This team was pretty cool because not many Liberty Force people have been on in a really long time; it seems like the buzz about I14 maybe is starting to draw people back to CoH, at least for a little while.
[u]Market manipulation[u]
Start:
Friday night, 258.820M infl
Sold:
8 Deific Weapon (4M)
30 Essence of the Furies (197K-248K)
40 Magical Conspiracy (190K-241K)
29 Military Cybernetic (870K-1M)
10 Photonic Weapon (958K)
10 Positronic Matrix (178K)
40 Rikti Alloy (180K-247K)
Bought:
11 Deific Weapon (2.6M-2.7M)
30 Magical Conspiracy (101K-106K)
10 Military Cybernetic (556K)
20 Photonic Weapon (556K-557K)
40 Positronic Matrix (60K-75K)
60 Rikti Alloy (65K-90K)
Finish:
Sunday night, 282.154M infl (+23.334M)
Infl from drops: 10.429M (from 2 TFs)
Infl from markets: 12.905M (from 8 visits to Wentworth's)
These numbers make me wonder if I should bother continuing playing the market. Maybe just plain killing stuff at level 50 is better money and more fun. Then again, I suppose there's no reason I can't do both.
I also got the Day Trader badge for leaving Police Woman logged out at Wentworth's, which seemed pretty appropriate.
[u]Random recipes and purchased recipes (to date)[u]
RANDOM POOL C HERO SIDE:
2 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% rchg) Wentw=60M
1 Numina's Convalescence (+rec +regen) Wentw=35.2M
3 Obliteration (chance for smashing) Wentw=21M
3 Obliteration (ACC/DMG/RCHG/END) Wentw=14M
1 Scirocco's Dervish (DMG/ACC/END) Wentw=9M
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
2 Gift of the Ancients (+7.5% run speed) Wentw=5M
1 Numina's Convalescence (HEAL/RCHG) Wentw=4.66M
2 Lockdown (chance for +2 mag) Wentw=4.6M
3 Scirocco's Dervish (chance for lethal) Wentw=4.4M
1 Devastation (chance to hold) Wentw=4M
1 Celerity (+Stealth) Wentw=3.82M
1 Mako's Bite (chance for lethal) Wentw=3.5M
2 Expedient Reinforcement (END/DMG/RCHG) Wentw=3M
3 Devastation (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=2.613M
1 Mako's Bite (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=2.52M
2 Analyze Weakness (chance for +ToHit) Wentw=2M
2 Sting of the Manticore (ACC/INTRDX/RNG) Wentw=2M
3 Touch of the Nictus (chance for negative) Wentw=1.8M
3 Gift of the Ancients (DEF) Wentw=1.74M
1 Analyze Weakness (ACC/END/RCHG) Wentw=1.27M
1 Performance Shifter (RCHG/ACC) Wentw=1.2M
3 Touch of the Nictus (ACC/END/RCHG) Wentw=1.189M
1 Entropic Chaos (DMG/END/RCHG) Wentw=1.15M
1 Kinetic Combat (DMG/END/RCHG) Wentw=750K
2 Sting of the Manticore (chance for toxic) Wentw=670K
1 Pacing of the Turtle (chance for slow) Wentw=338K
1 Sovereign Right (10% pet RES) Wentw=286K
4 Trap of the Hunter (chance for lethal) Wentw=125K
1 Glimpse of the Abyss (chance for psi) Wentw=104K
2 Force Feedback (RCHG/END) Wentw=74K
1 Perfect Zinger (RCHG/ACC) Wentw=70K
1 Call of the Sandman (ACC/SLEEP/RCHG) Wentw=65K
3 Trap of the Hunter (chance for lethal) Wentw=50K
1 Malaise's Illusions (ACC/CNFS/RCHG) Wentw=50K
1 Edict of the Master (DMG) Wentw=46k
1 Executioner's Contract (chance for disorient) Wentw=44k
1 Stupefy (Chance for KB) Wentw=43K
1 Aegis (END/RCHG) Wentw=41K
1 Call of the Sandman (chance for heal) Wentw=29K
1 Edict of the Master (DMG) Wentw=26K
3 Touch of Lady Grey (RCHG/END) Wentw=25K
1 Sovereign Right (5% pet def) Wentw=10K
4 Executioners Contract (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=5K
1 Dark Watcher (RCHG/END) Wentw=2K
1 Sovereign Right (ACC/END) Wentw=1K
TOTAL RANDOM POOL C HERO SIDE: 398.581M infl, 1580 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=60M purchased for 200 merits
TOTAL PURCHASED HERO SIDE: 99.6M infl, 325 merits, 306K infl/merit
RANDOM POOL C VILLAIN SIDE:
1 Miracle (+recovery) BMkt=100M
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
2 Numina's Convalescence (HEAL/RCHG) BlkMkt=9M
1 Kinetic Combat (DMG/END/RCHG) BlkMkt=6.1M
1 Analyze Weakness (ACC/END/RCHG) BMkt=5M
1 Gaussian's Synch Fire Control (RCHG/END) BMkt=4.57M
1 Sovereign Right (10% pet resist) BlkMkt=3M
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: 259.156M infa, 340 merits, 762K 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]
37.52MPH Lady Grey TF: 39 merits in 62.36mins (avg of 8 runs)
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)
27.06MPH 1st villain respec: 15 merits in 33.26mins (avg of 3 runs)
26.51MPH Hess TF: 19 merits in 43.0mins (avg of 4 runs)
25.48MPH Moonfire TF: 31 merits in 73mins (avg of 2 runs)
24.40MPH Dr Quaterfield TF: 111 merits in 273mins (1 run)
22.55MPH Manticore TF: 32 merits in 85.14mins (avg of 7 runs)
22.40MPH Synapse TF: 57 merits in 152.67mins (avg of 3 runs)
22.39MPH Sister Psyche TF: 50 merits in 134.0mins (avg of 4 runs)
22.24MPH Sharkhead SF: 22 merits in 59.34mins (avg of 6 runs)
21.47MPH Faathim TF: 73 merits in 204mins (1 run)
21.04MPH 1st hero respec: 27 merits in 77mins (1 run)
20.00MPH [u]OFFICIAL BASELINE FOR TASK FORCE REWARDS[u]
19.52MPH Recluse SF: 25 merits in 76.83mins (avg of 3 runs) (took HOs instead of merits; 1 Ribo, 1 Nucl, 1 Enzy)
19.13MPH Positron TF: 64 merits in 200.75mins (avg of 4 runs) (2 failed TFs not averaged in)
19.07MPH Citadel TF: 40 merits in 125.87mins (avg of 9 runs)
18.62MPH Numina TF: 36 merits in 116.0mins (avg of 4 runs)
17.80MPH Traitorous Vendetti villain flashback: 1 merit in 3.37mins (avg of 7 runs)
17.71MPH Imperious TF: 28 merits in 94.84mins (avg of 24 runs) (3 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)
17.25MPH Vahzilok Conference villain flashback: 5 merits in 17.39mins (avg of 8 runs)
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)
14.46MPH Spy Hunt villain flashback: 10 merits in 41.49mins (1 run)
14.46MPH 2nd hero respec: 20 merits in 83mins (1 run)
13.86MPH Katie TF: 9 merits in 38.97mins (avg of 7 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
13.46MPH Forging the Blackwand villain flashback: 8 merits in 35.67mins (1 run)
13.22MPH Kings of the Sky villain flashback: 4 merits in 18.15mins (1 run)
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)
5.11MPH To Save a Soul hero flashback: 15 merits in 176mins (1 run)
4.68MPH Steal Facemaker's Chemicals villain flashback: 1? merit in 12.82mins (1 run)
2.93MPH Mender Lazarus SF: 6 merits in 123mins (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!"
3/24/2009
I started the evening on Test Server 2 playing with Mission Architect. There was a test server patch that broke everything about everyone's mission arcs, so I started editing my story arc (Arc 10579: Axis and Allies) to fix the problems created by the patch, plus make some revisions to try and improve the story. I had learned from the Mission Architect forums that custom characters take the most space in a story arc by far, and based on this, I trimmed a couple custom characters from my second mission. My second mission originally had a minion, lieutenant and boss model for the British, and then another minion, lieutenant and boss for the French, for a total of six custom models in a single mission. Considering the whole story arc is limited to maybe 14 custom models, this was way too much! I deleted both the lieutenant models, which still left a good variety of models on the Dunkirk map, and gave me some space to play with. One of the LBXers who playtested my story arc said he thought the Paragon Police guarding President Truman in the final mission looked a little out of place, and so I used some of my extra space to create a new Secret Service Bodyguard model; these guys look much better standing around the president than either the police or the US Army that I had in the mission already.
I also tinkered with a lot of things that I couldn't get to work right. I tried making the player escort the president out of the mission ("kidnapping" him) but couldn't make it work. I also tried adding Statesman as a boss in the final mission, but some kind of level range conflict prevented this from working.
Anyway, I used some more of my extra space to add flavor text all over the story arc, adding some new clues and NPC dialog, republished the story arc and did a test run through it. I quite like it now.
I got started on creating NPCs for my second story arc, but then I realized I was missing prime time on the live servers and tore myself away to log into the "real" game. Mission architect is way too addicting!
Back on Liberty, I played Kyrie Eleison (33 bs/inv scrapper) on a monster hunting team in Croatoa, that took out Jack in Irons and Eochai for a total of 4 merits. I got the Giant Killer badge, but strangely didn't get Eochai's kill badge; there were two teams there, but it really seemed like my team of 8 should've done enough damage to get badge credit. Oh well. These merits pushed Kyrie over 20 merits, so I burned 20 merits on a Pool C recipe draw, getting an Entropic Chaos (DMG/END/RCHG) valued at 1.4M at Wentworth's.
I solo'd Virtual Girl (33 rad/sonic defender) through a flashback of the Rescue Fortune Teller mission; I had trouble actually finding the darn fortune teller in the stupid CoT cave, so it took me 8min 8sec to finish. I got 1 merit and the Spelunker badge.
I played Rain Dancer (50 storm/archery defender) for much of the night. I first joined a not-very-good 5-player pickup team doing level 50 missions; I particularly remember one controller SK would be AFK half the time, but while at keyboard he would suicidally run into mobs, then be upset we didn't keep him alive. I found this pretty annoying, but I don't like to quit mid-mission, so I stealthed to the last glowy in the mission and clicked it to complete the mission, then excused myself.
A blaster friend invited me to another 7-player pickup team after that, doing level 50 AV missions. This team was a little hectic but fun, and the chaotic nature of our fights made me feel free to uncork some occasional stormy goodness. We beat Nemesis?, Chimera, Nightstar (twice), Siege and Bobcat before we were done. Rain Dancer's Praetorian AV badge meter remained solidly pegged at 11 of 13 thoughout the evening; I have no idea which 2 she's missing, unfortunately.
Finished the night puzzling over a possible respec for Blond Justice (49 bs/shield scrapper). I kinda want capped defenses, good health and regen, high recharge and DPS ... in short, I want it all! But I was having trouble figuring out a good build to accomplish all these goals. A friend who plays an awesome bs/shield scrapper gave me some advice and even sent me a copy of his build, which helped a lot; I took inspiration from this and came up with what looks like a decent build in Mids.
Before I could actually perform the respec, though, I got an invite to help with "an Ouroboros TF". That sounded like a nice change of pace, so I agreed without really asking for details. Turns out they wanted to do the Mender Silos TF, with a team mix of:
2 scrappers (including me)
2 blasters
The team leader started the TF before I could offer to switch to a defender. I felt that without any support toons, we were almost certainly doomed (I remember the Jade Spider being a mega-badass) but I didn't want to have a bad attitude, so I shrugged and said, what the heck. It was actually kind of fun; I very rarely get to do this TF and it was neat to see Manticore helping us out. I found my high DEF made me considerably tougher than the other scrapper (forgot to write down her secondary, but she seemed squishy and died a lot); so I tried to tank some but don't really have any aggro control tools other than hitting stuff really hard. We had one team wipe on the Striga map when we attempted to cherry pick the boss objectives and got too much aggro, after which the team leader made the call that we should clear the way to the bosses, which seemed sensible. In Siren's Call we very nearly had a team wipe against the turncoat version of Manticore; I was shepherding the Vindicators over to Manticore (all 3 of Ms Liberty, Mynx and Swan had latched onto me for some reason) when the rest of my team got antsy and decided to rush the Manticore EB without me. They got him a little below half before dying, then I showed up with 3 allies and wiped the floor with him.
We got to the final mission and started rescuing various signature heroes and fighting elite boss versions of the signature villains. We could not keep the hero allies alive at all though; they were labeled as "Hero" but seemed to die if any Arachnos minions so much as looked at them. I think we managed to simultaneously aggro Ghost Widow and Lord Recluse at one point, though, causing a team wipe; after which the team agreed to call it quits because it was very late.
[u]Market manipulation[u]
Start:
Sunday night, 282.154M infl
Sold:
8 Essence of the Furies (217K)
10 Rikti Alloy (221K)
Bought:
9 Deific Weapon (2.6M)
10 Rikti Alloy (52K)
Finish:
Monday night, 284.566M (+2.412M infl)
My numbers above may look a little funny because I bought 23M worth of Deific Weapons and sold only about 4M of salvage, but somehow ended up with more influence than I started; this is because the 23M were paid out of bids I had left standing on the broker, and not out of my pocket.
[u]Random recipes and purchased recipes (to date)[u]
RANDOM POOL C HERO SIDE:
2 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% rchg) Wentw=60M
1 Numina's Convalescence (+rec +regen) Wentw=35.2M
3 Obliteration (chance for smashing) Wentw=21M
3 Obliteration (ACC/DMG/RCHG/END) Wentw=14M
1 Scirocco's Dervish (DMG/ACC/END) Wentw=9M
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
2 Gift of the Ancients (+7.5% run speed) Wentw=5M
1 Numina's Convalescence (HEAL/RCHG) Wentw=4.66M
2 Lockdown (chance for +2 mag) Wentw=4.6M
3 Scirocco's Dervish (chance for lethal) Wentw=4.4M
1 Devastation (chance to hold) Wentw=4M
1 Celerity (+Stealth) Wentw=3.82M
1 Mako's Bite (chance for lethal) Wentw=3.5M
2 Expedient Reinforcement (END/DMG/RCHG) Wentw=3M
3 Devastation (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=2.613M
1 Mako's Bite (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=2.52M
2 Analyze Weakness (chance for +ToHit) Wentw=2M
2 Sting of the Manticore (ACC/INTRDX/RNG) Wentw=2M
3 Touch of the Nictus (chance for negative) Wentw=1.8M
3 Gift of the Ancients (DEF) Wentw=1.74M
1 Analyze Weakness (ACC/END/RCHG) Wentw=1.27M
1 Performance Shifter (RCHG/ACC) Wentw=1.2M
3 Touch of the Nictus (ACC/END/RCHG) Wentw=1.189M
2 Entropic Chaos (DMG/END/RCHG) Wentw=1.4M
1 Kinetic Combat (DMG/END/RCHG) Wentw=750K
2 Sting of the Manticore (chance for toxic) Wentw=670K
1 Pacing of the Turtle (chance for slow) Wentw=338K
1 Sovereign Right (10% pet RES) Wentw=286K
4 Trap of the Hunter (chance for lethal) Wentw=125K
1 Glimpse of the Abyss (chance for psi) Wentw=104K
2 Force Feedback (RCHG/END) Wentw=74K
1 Perfect Zinger (RCHG/ACC) Wentw=70K
1 Call of the Sandman (ACC/SLEEP/RCHG) Wentw=65K
3 Trap of the Hunter (chance for lethal) Wentw=50K
1 Malaise's Illusions (ACC/CNFS/RCHG) Wentw=50K
1 Edict of the Master (DMG) Wentw=46k
1 Executioner's Contract (chance for disorient) Wentw=44k
1 Stupefy (Chance for KB) Wentw=43K
1 Aegis (END/RCHG) Wentw=41K
1 Call of the Sandman (chance for heal) Wentw=29K
1 Edict of the Master (DMG) Wentw=26K
3 Touch of Lady Grey (RCHG/END) Wentw=25K
1 Sovereign Right (5% pet def) Wentw=10K
4 Executioners Contract (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=5K
1 Dark Watcher (RCHG/END) Wentw=2K
1 Sovereign Right (ACC/END) Wentw=1K
TOTAL RANDOM POOL C HERO SIDE: 400.231M infl, 1600 merits, 250K 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=60M purchased for 200 merits
TOTAL PURCHASED HERO SIDE: 99.6M infl, 325 merits, 306K infl/merit
RANDOM POOL C VILLAIN SIDE:
1 Miracle (+recovery) BMkt=100M
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
2 Numina's Convalescence (HEAL/RCHG) BlkMkt=9M
1 Kinetic Combat (DMG/END/RCHG) BlkMkt=6.1M
1 Analyze Weakness (ACC/END/RCHG) BMkt=5M
1 Gaussian's Synch Fire Control (RCHG/END) BMkt=4.57M
1 Sovereign Right (10% pet resist) BlkMkt=3M
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: 259.156M infa, 340 merits, 762K 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]
37.52MPH Lady Grey TF: 39 merits in 62.36mins (avg of 8 runs)
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)
27.06MPH 1st villain respec: 15 merits in 33.26mins (avg of 3 runs)
26.51MPH Hess TF: 19 merits in 43.0mins (avg of 4 runs)
25.48MPH Moonfire TF: 31 merits in 73mins (avg of 2 runs)
24.40MPH Dr Quaterfield TF: 111 merits in 273mins (1 run)
22.55MPH Manticore TF: 32 merits in 85.14mins (avg of 7 runs)
22.40MPH Synapse TF: 57 merits in 152.67mins (avg of 3 runs)
22.39MPH Sister Psyche TF: 50 merits in 134.0mins (avg of 4 runs)
22.24MPH Sharkhead SF: 22 merits in 59.34mins (avg of 6 runs)
21.47MPH Faathim TF: 73 merits in 204mins (1 run)
21.04MPH 1st hero respec: 27 merits in 77mins (1 run)
20.00MPH [u]OFFICIAL BASELINE FOR TASK FORCE REWARDS[u]
19.52MPH Recluse SF: 25 merits in 76.83mins (avg of 3 runs) (took HOs instead of merits; 1 Ribo, 1 Nucl, 1 Enzy)
19.13MPH Positron TF: 64 merits in 200.75mins (avg of 4 runs) (2 failed TFs not averaged in)
19.07MPH Citadel TF: 40 merits in 125.87mins (avg of 9 runs)
18.62MPH Numina TF: 36 merits in 116.0mins (avg of 4 runs)
17.80MPH Traitorous Vendetti villain flashback: 1 merit in 3.37mins (avg of 7 runs)
17.71MPH Imperious TF: 28 merits in 94.84mins (avg of 24 runs) (3 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)
17.25MPH Vahzilok Conference villain flashback: 5 merits in 17.39mins (avg of 8 runs)
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)
14.46MPH Spy Hunt villain flashback: 10 merits in 41.49mins (1 run)
14.46MPH 2nd hero respec: 20 merits in 83mins (1 run)
13.86MPH Katie TF: 9 merits in 38.97mins (avg of 7 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
13.46MPH Forging the Blackwand villain flashback: 8 merits in 35.67mins (1 run)
13.22MPH Kings of the Sky villain flashback: 4 merits in 18.15mins (1 run)
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)
7.38MPH Rescue Fortune Teller: 1 merit in 8.13min (1 run)
6.86MPH Nictus Insurrection kheldian flashback: 4 merits in 35mins (1 run)
5.11MPH To Save a Soul hero flashback: 15 merits in 176mins (1 run)
4.68MPH Steal Facemaker's Chemicals villain flashback: 1? merit in 12.82mins (1 run)
2.93MPH Mender Lazarus SF: 6 merits in 123mins (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!"
3/25/2009
I'm sooo hooked on Mission Architect. Spent most of the evening putting together and editing a new story arc on test server, Arc 14434: Netrunner. This is a cyberpunk adventure for blue side, where you go into cyberspace to rescue The Doctor. It's kind of a pastiche of TRON, the Matrix and old cyberpunk RPGs, while simultaneously tying in to some of the existing Crey story arcs. I designed a new "Crey Online" faction and a "Security Consultants" faction (real corporations subcontract stuff out all the time), both factions full of computer programs and cyberspace avatars and stuff like that. I inserted a couple of my alts out of vanity. Virtual Girl shows up because her back story is so closely tied to The Doctor and cyberspace in general. I also repurposed Samurai-ko's costume, recoloring it an electric blue and making it the default model for the "Street Samurai" minion. Ran through the arc a couple times; I'm a little worried that my lieutenants might be too tough, because enemies with build up and assassin strike are quite nasty. But I kinda feel like "Net Ninja" and Matrix-style "Agents" should be tough, so I left them on "hard" mode for now. All in all it was a lot of fun.
I logged onto Liberty kinda late and ended up finalizing a respec for Blond Justice (49 bs/shield scrapper). I ended up with the following build (except that I'm only level 49, and am still short two Luck of the Gambler +7.5% IOs, one Blessing of the Zephyr KB protect IO, and the Performance Shifter: Chance for End IO):
Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.401
http://www.cohplanner.com/
[u]Click this DataLink to open the build![u]
Blond Justice: Level 50 Mutation Scrapper
Primary Power Set: Broad Sword
Secondary Power Set: Shield Defense
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Speed
Ancillary Pool: Body Mastery
Hero Profile:
Level 1: Hack -- T'Death-Acc/Dmg(A), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx(3), T'Death-Dmg/Rchg(3), T'Death-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(5), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(5), T'Death-Dam%(7)
Level 1: Deflection -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(40), LkGmblr-Def(40), TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx(40), TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(42), TtmC'tng-ResDam(42)
Level 2: Battle Agility -- RedFtn-Def/EndRdx(A), RedFtn-Def/Rchg(7), RedFtn-EndRdx/Rchg(9), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(9), RedFtn-Def(11), RedFtn-EndRdx(11)
Level 4: True Grit -- Mrcl-Heal/Rchg(A), Mrcl-Heal(34), Mrcl-Rcvry+(37), Numna-Heal/EndRdx(39), Numna-Heal/Rchg(39), Numna-Heal(39)
Level 6: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 8: Combat Jumping -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), Zephyr-Travel(45), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(46)
Level 10: Active Defense -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 12: Build Up -- GSFC-ToHit(A), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg(13), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg/EndRdx(13), GSFC-Rchg/EndRdx(17), GSFC-ToHit/EndRdx(17), GSFC-Build%(31)
Level 14: Super Jump -- Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(15), Zephyr-ResKB(15)
Level 16: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 18: Whirling Sword -- Sciroc-Acc/Dmg(A), Sciroc-Dmg/EndRdx(19), Sciroc-Dmg/Rchg(19), Sciroc-Acc/Rchg(21), M'Strk-Dmg/Rchg(21), Sciroc-Dam%(23)
Level 20: Stamina -- P'Shift-EndMod(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(23), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(25), P'Shift-End%(25), P'Shift-Acc/Rchg(31), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc/Rchg(46)
Level 22: Against All Odds -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 24: Phalanx Fighting -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 26: Disembowel -- T'Death-Acc/Dmg(A), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx(27), T'Death-Dmg/Rchg(27), T'Death-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(29), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(29), T'Death-Dam%(31)
Level 28: Grant Cover -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 30: Kick -- Acc-I(A)
Level 32: Head Splitter -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(33), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(33), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(33), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(34), Oblit-%Dam(34)
Level 35: Shield Charge -- Sciroc-Acc/Dmg(A), Sciroc-Dmg/EndRdx(36), Sciroc-Dmg/Rchg(36), Sciroc-Acc/Rchg(36), Sciroc-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(37), M'Strk-Dmg/Rchg(37)
Level 38: One with the Shield -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A)
Level 41: Tough -- TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx(A), TtmC'tng-ResDam/Rchg(42), TtmC'tng-ResDam(43), TtmC'tng-EndRdx(43), TtmC'tng-EndRdx/Rchg(43), TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(48)
Level 44: Weave -- RedFtn-Def/EndRdx(A), RedFtn-Def/Rchg(45), RedFtn-EndRdx/Rchg(45), RedFtn-Def(46), RedFtn-EndRdx(48), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(50)
Level 47: Focused Accuracy -- HO:Cyto(A), HO:Cyto(48), HO:Cyto(50)
Level 49: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(50)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Critical Hit
I claimed a veteran reward in order to do the respec. After the respec, Blond Justice's final combat numbers (with normal toggles up) were:
48.58% melee defense
45.95% range defense
40.95% AoE defense
33.09% lethal resist
17.00% global DMG bonus
30.00% global RCHG bonus
So, soft capped to melee and range; close to it on AoE, should actually hit the soft cap if I get the last Blessing of the Zephyr and Performance Shifter IOs; and decent resist, DMG and RCHG (should go up to 45% recharge if I get two more LotGs).
I solo'd a little to test out this build before calling it a night. I really want my single target attack chain to be Headsplitter-Disembowel-Hack-repeat; I can do that when Hasten is up, but have a gap when Hasten is down (which I end up filling with Kick, just for the sake of doing something). Against multi-targets, Shield Charge/Whirling Sword is wonderful. So far, I'm pretty happy with the result of the respec.
@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!"
3/26/2009
Started off playing Kyrie Eleison (33 bs/inv scrapper) on a pickup Citadel TF. Team mix was:
4 scrappers (including me)
emp defender
kin controller
FF controller
I seemed to be the most aggressive/least squishy scrapper, so I ended up mostly tanking, though we did have one scrapper at the low end of the level range who refused SK and would occasionally suicidally charge into mobs alone, usually with fatal results. He was the team leader, though, so not a lot we could do about it. Speed Boost and Force Fields made it pretty easy for me to beat stuff up quickly and stay alive while doing so. We stealthed some of the missions but weren't really good at stealthing (none of the steathy people had TP or even veteran TP), so this sped things up only a little. Still, we finished in 1hr 57mins with no serious problems.
I immediately burned the 40 merit reward on two Pool C recipe rolls, receiving:
1 Scirocco's Dervish (Chance for Lethal) Wentw=4.4M
1 Ghost Widow's Embrace (ACC/HOLD/RCHG) Wentw=680k
After that I logged on Blond Justice (49 bs/shield scrapper) and spent 200 of her merits directly purchasing a level 33 Luck of the Gambler (+7.5% rchg) recipe, currently valued 66M at Wentworth's. Overall I think random rolls are more bang-for-buck than direct purchase of recipes, except for a very few recipes which are valued very highly at Wentworth's. I'm now using my infl per merit measurement to calculate whether something is a good buy; for example, my average (as of today) is 247K infl per merit when making Pool C rolls. Luck of the Gambler (+7.5% rchg) costs 200 merits, which would be 200*254K=50.8M influence; but the market values this recipe at 66M, and 66M > 50.8M, so purchasing the recipe for 200 merits is a "good deal". Most recipes are not a "good deal" to purchase this way -- only the most overpriced ones are.
I crafted and slotted the LotG (+7.5% rchg) in Blond Justice's Deflection power, which increases her global recharge bonus to 37.5%. I stuck a Nucleolus HO in Kick just because I had one laying around, also. At that point a friend invited me to an Imperious TF, which I agreed to; this was a team of mostly Whirligig and PvPers who recently reactivated, with a team mix of:
2 scrappers (including me)
pain corruptor
emp controller
storm controller
cold defender
stalker
Despite my respec, the other scrapper was tougher and more aggressive and so he tanked for us. We were both bs/shield, and both benefited from Phalanx Fighting and Grant Cover; with Fortitude and Cold shields our defense was ridiculous (over 100%). We were running on Unyielding and even with a 7-player team we blew through the ITF easily, finishing in 1hr 16mins. I strategically stopped and started exp gain so as to make Blond Justice ding to 50 while killing Romulus in the final mission, in order to make hitting level 50 feel suitably dramatic. It was a fun time.
[u]Random recipes and purchased recipes (to date)[u]
RANDOM POOL C HERO SIDE:
2 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% rchg) Wentw=66M
1 Numina's Convalescence (+rec +regen) Wentw=35.2M
3 Obliteration (chance for smashing) Wentw=21M
3 Obliteration (ACC/DMG/RCHG/END) Wentw=14M
1 Scirocco's Dervish (DMG/ACC/END) Wentw=9M
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
2 Gift of the Ancients (+7.5% run speed) Wentw=5M
1 Numina's Convalescence (HEAL/RCHG) Wentw=4.66M
2 Lockdown (chance for +2 mag) Wentw=4.6M
4 Scirocco's Dervish (chance for lethal) Wentw=4.4M
1 Devastation (chance to hold) Wentw=4M
1 Celerity (+Stealth) Wentw=3.82M
1 Mako's Bite (chance for lethal) Wentw=3.5M
2 Expedient Reinforcement (END/DMG/RCHG) Wentw=3M
3 Devastation (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=2.613M
1 Mako's Bite (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=2.52M
2 Analyze Weakness (chance for +ToHit) Wentw=2M
2 Sting of the Manticore (ACC/INTRDX/RNG) Wentw=2M
3 Touch of the Nictus (chance for negative) Wentw=1.8M
3 Gift of the Ancients (DEF) Wentw=1.74M
1 Analyze Weakness (ACC/END/RCHG) Wentw=1.27M
1 Performance Shifter (RCHG/ACC) Wentw=1.2M
3 Touch of the Nictus (ACC/END/RCHG) Wentw=1.189M
2 Entropic Chaos (DMG/END/RCHG) Wentw=1.4M
1 Kinetic Combat (DMG/END/RCHG) Wentw=750K
1 Ghost Widow's Embrace (ACC/HOLD/RCHG) Wentw=680k
2 Sting of the Manticore (chance for toxic) Wentw=670K
1 Pacing of the Turtle (chance for slow) Wentw=338K
1 Sovereign Right (10% pet RES) Wentw=286K
4 Trap of the Hunter (chance for lethal) Wentw=125K
1 Glimpse of the Abyss (chance for psi) Wentw=104K
2 Force Feedback (RCHG/END) Wentw=74K
1 Perfect Zinger (RCHG/ACC) Wentw=70K
1 Call of the Sandman (ACC/SLEEP/RCHG) Wentw=65K
3 Trap of the Hunter (chance for lethal) Wentw=50K
1 Malaise's Illusions (ACC/CNFS/RCHG) Wentw=50K
1 Edict of the Master (DMG) Wentw=46k
1 Executioner's Contract (chance for disorient) Wentw=44k
1 Stupefy (Chance for KB) Wentw=43K
1 Aegis (END/RCHG) Wentw=41K
1 Call of the Sandman (chance for heal) Wentw=29K
1 Edict of the Master (DMG) Wentw=26K
3 Touch of Lady Grey (RCHG/END) Wentw=25K
1 Sovereign Right (5% pet def) Wentw=10K
4 Executioners Contract (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=5K
1 Dark Watcher (RCHG/END) Wentw=2K
1 Sovereign Right (ACC/END) Wentw=1K
TOTAL RANDOM POOL C HERO SIDE: 417.311M infl, 1640 merits, 254K infl/merit
PURCHASED RECIPES HERO SIDE:
1 Steadfast Protection (RES/+3% def) Wentw=39.6M Merits=125 (316K infl/merit)
2 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% rchg) Wentw=66M Merits=200 (330K infl/merit)
TOTAL PURCHASED HERO SIDE: 171.6M infl, 525 merits, 327K infl/merit
RANDOM POOL C VILLAIN SIDE:
1 Miracle (+recovery) BMkt=100M
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
2 Numina's Convalescence (HEAL/RCHG) BlkMkt=9M
1 Kinetic Combat (DMG/END/RCHG) BlkMkt=6.1M
1 Analyze Weakness (ACC/END/RCHG) BMkt=5M
1 Gaussian's Synch Fire Control (RCHG/END) BMkt=4.57M
1 Sovereign Right (10% pet resist) BlkMkt=3M
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: 259.156M infa, 340 merits, 762K 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]
37.52MPH Lady Grey TF: 39 merits in 62.36mins (avg of 8 runs)
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)
27.06MPH 1st villain respec: 15 merits in 33.26mins (avg of 3 runs)
26.51MPH Hess TF: 19 merits in 43.0mins (avg of 4 runs)
25.48MPH Moonfire TF: 31 merits in 73mins (avg of 2 runs)
24.40MPH Dr Quaterfield TF: 111 merits in 273mins (1 run)
22.55MPH Manticore TF: 32 merits in 85.14mins (avg of 7 runs)
22.40MPH Synapse TF: 57 merits in 152.67mins (avg of 3 runs)
22.39MPH Sister Psyche TF: 50 merits in 134.0mins (avg of 4 runs)
22.24MPH Sharkhead SF: 22 merits in 59.34mins (avg of 6 runs)
21.47MPH Faathim TF: 73 merits in 204mins (1 run)
21.04MPH 1st hero respec: 27 merits in 77mins (1 run)
20.00MPH [u]OFFICIAL BASELINE FOR TASK FORCE REWARDS[u]
19.52MPH Recluse SF: 25 merits in 76.83mins (avg of 3 runs) (took HOs instead of merits; 1 Ribo, 1 Nucl, 1 Enzy)
19.20MPH Citadel TF: 40 merits in 124.98mins (avg of 10 runs)
19.13MPH Positron TF: 64 merits in 200.75mins (avg of 4 runs) (2 failed TFs not averaged in)
18.62MPH Numina TF: 36 merits in 116.0mins (avg of 4 runs)
17.86MPH Imperious TF: 28 merits in 94.09mins (avg of 25 runs) (3 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)
17.25MPH Vahzilok Conference villain flashback: 5 merits in 17.39mins (avg of 8 runs)
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)
14.46MPH Spy Hunt villain flashback: 10 merits in 41.49mins (1 run)
14.46MPH 2nd hero respec: 20 merits in 83mins (1 run)
13.86MPH Katie TF: 9 merits in 38.97mins (avg of 7 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
13.46MPH Forging the Blackwand villain flashback: 8 merits in 35.67mins (1 run)
13.22MPH Kings of the Sky villain flashback: 4 merits in 18.15mins (1 run)
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)
7.38MPH Rescue Fortune Teller: 1 merit in 8.13min (1 run)
6.86MPH Nictus Insurrection kheldian flashback: 4 merits in 35mins (1 run)
5.11MPH To Save a Soul hero flashback: 15 merits in 176mins (1 run)
4.68MPH Steal Facemaker's Chemicals villain flashback: 1? merit in 12.82mins (1 run)
2.93MPH Mender Lazarus SF: 6 merits in 123mins (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!"
4/1/2009
I was out of town over the weekend, and so wasn't on CoH at all during that time.
Monday night I tried to play with Mission Architect on Test Server but it would crash on me, over and over, when I clicked on the "My Creations" tab in the Mission Architect dialog. I tried moving from Atlas Park AE to King's Row AE, and even moving from Training Room 1 to Training Room 2, thinking that high load might be responsible. No luck, it still crashed. I submitted a couple bug reports.
I did see that lots of Liberty people tried my story arcs and left me some nice comments. My two story arcs (#10579 Axis and Allies and #14434 Netrunner) are both sitting at a 4-star rating. Thanks much! I really need to spend some time playing other people's story arcs in return.
I was able to "create a new story" without going to "My Creations", though. So I made a jailbreak style mission set on the Breakout map, as the first mission of a third story arc, which I'm tentatively calling "Celebrity Kidnapping". Made a couple characters for a new "Paparazzi" enemy group (illusion/ninjitsu ... it makes sense, really! wish I could make them do the camera emote, though). My test run through the first mission went pretty well, but when I tried to edit the story arc to add more missions, CoH crashed on me again, at which point I gave up and went back to live servers.
Back on Liberty, I joined a couple friends on a 5-player pickup team, playing Samurai-ko (37 katana/will scrapper); my friends gradually logged off and I ended up inheriting the star, and we ran a few more mid-late 30s missions before calling it a night.
The dev warnings of an incoming free respec made me want to burn the free respecs my alts currently have, so I started Tuesday night by doing a respec for Spacegirl (50 mind/rad controller). I did not actually change any of the powers that Spacegirl had, but I moved slots around and changed which IO sets I was using. I mainly was focused on increasing global recharge bonuses, and this is the build I came up with:
Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.401
http://www.cohplanner.com/
[u]Click this DataLink to open the build![u]
Spacegirl respec: Level 50 Mutation Controller
Primary Power Set: Mind Control
Secondary Power Set: Radiation Emission
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Speed
Ancillary Pool: Psionic Mastery
Hero Profile:
Level 1: Mesmerize -- Decim-Acc/Dmg(A), Decim-Dmg/EndRdx(3), Decim-Dmg/Rchg(3), Decim-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(5), Decim-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(5), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(7)
Level 1: Radiant Aura -- Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx(A), Dct'dW-EndRdx/Rchg(7), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(9), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(9), Dct'dW-Heal(11), Dct'dW-Rchg(11)
Level 2: Dominate -- Decim-Acc/Dmg(A), Decim-Dmg/EndRdx(13), Decim-Dmg/Rchg(13), Decim-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(15), Decim-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(15), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(17)
Level 4: Radiation Infection -- DarkWD-ToHitDeb(A), DarkWD-ToHitDeb/EndRdx(17), DarkWD-ToHitdeb/Rchg/EndRdx(19), DarkWD-Rchg/EndRdx(19)
Level 6: Hover -- Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(21), Flight-I(21), LkGmblr-Rchg+(50)
Level 8: Swift -- Flight-I(A)
Level 10: Confuse -- Mlais-Acc/Rchg(A), Mlais-EndRdx/Conf(23), Mlais-Acc/EndRdx(23), Mlais-Conf/Rng(25), Mlais-Acc/Conf/Rchg(25), Pplx-Rchg/Conf(27)
Level 12: Accelerate Metabolism -- Efficacy-EndMod/Rchg(A), RechRdx-I(27), RechRdx-I(29)
Level 14: Fly -- Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(29), Flight-I(31)
Level 16: Health -- Mrcl-Rcvry+(A)
Level 18: Enervating Field -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 20: Stamina -- P'Shift-EndMod(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(31), P'Shift-End%(31), EndMod-I(33)
Level 22: Levitate -- Apoc-Dmg(A), Apoc-Dmg/Rchg(33), Apoc-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(33), Apoc-Acc/Rchg(34), Apoc-Dmg/EndRdx(34), Apoc-Dam%(34)
Level 24: Mass Hypnosis -- FtnHyp-Sleep(A), FtnHyp-Sleep/Rchg(36), FtnHyp-Acc/Sleep/Rchg(36), FtnHyp-Acc/Rchg(36), FtnHyp-Sleep/EndRdx(37)
Level 26: Terrify -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(37), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(37), Posi-Dmg/Rng(39), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(39), RechRdx-I(39)
Level 28: Lingering Radiation -- Acc-I(A)
Level 30: Telekinesis -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 32: Mass Confusion -- CoPers-Conf(A), CoPers-Conf/Rchg(40), CoPers-Acc/Conf/Rchg(40), CoPers-Acc/Rchg(40), CoPers-Conf/EndRdx(42), CoPers-Conf%(42)
Level 35: Mutation -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 38: EM Pulse -- UbrkCons-Hold(A), UbrkCons-Hold/Rchg(42), UbrkCons-Acc/Hold/Rchg(43), UbrkCons-Acc/Rchg(43), UbrkCons-EndRdx/Hold(43)
Level 41: Indomitable Will -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(45), LkGmblr-Def/Rchg(45), LkGmblr-Rchg+(45)
Level 44: Mind Over Body -- TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx(A), TtmC'tng-ResDam/Rchg(46), TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(46), TtmC'tng-ResDam(46)
Level 47: Psionic Tornado -- Ragnrk-Dmg(A), Ragnrk-Dmg/Rchg(48), Ragnrk-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(48), Ragnrk-Acc/Rchg(48), Ragnrk-Dmg/EndRdx(50)
Level 49: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(50)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Containment
I admittedly am missing over half of the purple IOs and all the Blessing of the Zephyr IOs in the above build, but I do have the Luck of the Gambler, Decimation, Positron and Miracle IOs at least. It gives me something to work towards for Spacegirl, though; and the purple IOs for mez are usually a bit cheaper to acquire, so might be attainable.
There was a lot of noise on LBX channel about griefers attacking a RWZ raid that happened on Tuesday night. One of the mods was kicking griefers off of the LBX channel, and others were complaining that this was a harsh punishment. I didn't witness this RWZ raid myself, but in the truest traditions of the Internet, I'll express an uninformed opinion anyway: I think the channel mod was well within her rights to kick out people who were deliberately and maliciously trying to ruin the play experience of 20 other players. The community should condemn such behavior.
In any case, there was much drama on the channel about that, then someone tried to lighten the mood by starting a "fun" Katie TF. I signed on for this with Virtual Girl (33 rad/sonic defender), and we ended up with a team of:
2 scrappers
tanker
storm controller
rad controller
blaster
rad defender (me)
peacebringer
This team first beat up a Jack-in-Irons monster for 2 merits, then started on the Katie TF. Mary Macomber wasn't too bad since we had lots of debuffs, but she kept running away a lot, which apparently is a new and annoying habit she's developed recently. We had an extra group aggro on us as a result, but we handled it fine. In the final mission Amy briefly broke off from her rescuer to aggro on one of the Red Cap ambushes, but we beat up the ambush and got her to the finish line. Finished the TF in 30min 53sec. I ended up turning off Virtual Girl's exp gain to keep her at level 33; I'm thinking I'll keep her at that level for random recipe rolls.
After that I joined a Numina TF with Fire Emerald (36 fire/fire blaster). This TF took awhile to fill up a team, but we eventually ended up starting with:
scrapper
4 blasters
rad controller
peacebringer
I had to AFK a bit to deal with Symantec customer support; the current virus scare had caused me to resubscribe to Norton Antivirus, but even with a receipt from their online store, Norton Antivirus wouldn't recognize I had a valid subscription. I tried using their online tech support, and started out at #270 in the queue (I guess a lot of people were doing Antivirus stuff that night due to the virus scare) and finally worked my way up to #1 in the queue while the Numina TF was forming. By the time the tech support guy had fixed my problem, the team had filled up and finished the first mission. I did help with the rest of the TF, though, which went pretty straightforwardly (stealthed most missions, split up task assignments for the various hunt missions) and we finished the TF in 1hr 23mins.
Along the way somewhere I had a Respec Recipe drop for me, which I put up on Wentworth's and very quickly sold for a cool 40M infl. I have no idea why these are so valuable when the front page of CoH clearly says they're awarding free respecs any day now, but I'm happy to sell them and cash in.
[u]Market manipulation[u]
Start:
Monday night, 286.966M infl
Sold:
4 Deific Weapon (3.95M-4M)
20 Magical Conspiracy (203-232K)
9 Positronic Matrix (100K)
10 Rikti Alloy (184K)
Bought:
20 Magical Conspiracy (101K-106K)
30 Positronic Matrix (20K-70K)
20 Rikti Alloy (20K-21K)
Finish:
Tuesday night, 301.037M infl (+14.071M)
I've been kinda lazy lately on marketeering and a lot of my broker slots seem stuck or slow moving. Prices for two of my most frequently traded items, Rikti Alloy and Positronic Matrix, seem to have plummeted, leaving me with lots in inventory and wondering if I should sell them at the current price point or store them away until the price rises again.
[u]Merit benchmarking since I13[u]
37.52MPH Lady Grey TF: 39 merits in 62.36mins (avg of 8 runs)
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)
27.06MPH 1st villain respec: 15 merits in 33.26mins (avg of 3 runs)
26.51MPH Hess TF: 19 merits in 43.0mins (avg of 4 runs)
25.48MPH Moonfire TF: 31 merits in 73mins (avg of 2 runs)
24.40MPH Dr Quaterfield TF: 111 merits in 273mins (1 run)
22.55MPH Manticore TF: 32 merits in 85.14mins (avg of 7 runs)
22.40MPH Synapse TF: 57 merits in 152.67mins (avg of 3 runs)
22.39MPH Sister Psyche TF: 50 merits in 134.0mins (avg of 4 runs)
22.24MPH Sharkhead SF: 22 merits in 59.34mins (avg of 6 runs)
21.47MPH Faathim TF: 73 merits in 204mins (1 run)
21.04MPH 1st hero respec: 27 merits in 77mins (1 run)
20.00MPH [u]OFFICIAL BASELINE FOR TASK FORCE REWARDS[u]
19.74MPH Numina TF: 36 merits in 109.4mins (avg of 5 runs)
19.52MPH Recluse SF: 25 merits in 76.83mins (avg of 3 runs) (took HOs instead of merits; 1 Ribo, 1 Nucl, 1 Enzy)
19.20MPH Citadel TF: 40 merits in 124.98mins (avg of 10 runs)
19.13MPH Positron TF: 64 merits in 200.75mins (avg of 4 runs) (2 failed TFs not averaged in)
17.86MPH Imperious TF: 28 merits in 94.09mins (avg of 25 runs) (3 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)
17.25MPH Vahzilok Conference villain flashback: 5 merits in 17.39mins (avg of 8 runs)
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)
14.46MPH Spy Hunt villain flashback: 10 merits in 41.49mins (1 run)
14.46MPH 2nd hero respec: 20 merits in 83mins (1 run)
14.23MPH Katie TF: 9 merits in 37.96mins (avg of 8 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
13.46MPH Forging the Blackwand villain flashback: 8 merits in 35.67mins (1 run)
13.22MPH Kings of the Sky villain flashback: 4 merits in 18.15mins (1 run)
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)
7.38MPH Rescue Fortune Teller: 1 merit in 8.13min (1 run)
6.86MPH Nictus Insurrection kheldian flashback: 4 merits in 35mins (1 run)
5.11MPH To Save a Soul hero flashback: 15 merits in 176mins (1 run)
4.68MPH Steal Facemaker's Chemicals villain flashback: 1? merit in 12.82mins (1 run)
2.93MPH Mender Lazarus SF: 6 merits in 123mins (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!"
4/2/2009
Started the evening on Test Server playing with Mission Architect some more. I got some feedback that my "Netrunner" arc (#14434) was too hard, with one person complaining about the END drain my Crey Online minions were putting out, and the Agents two-shotting him (guessing this was Focus Chi/Crane Kick/Storm Kick or something similar). So I nerfed some of the mobs in this mission; switched the generic minions from electric blast/melee to energy blast/melee to get rid of the END drain, and downgraded the Agents from "hard" primary to "standard" primary, which gets rid of Focus Chi and Crane Kick. Also switched the male Agent from martial arts to super strength, to mix their attacks up a little.
I also had someone suggest that Statesman should really be an enemy you fight in the final "Invade America" mission of my "Axis and Allies" story arc (#10579); previously I had President Truman cry out "Statesman, where are you?" when he is captured, but Statesman never shows up. It makes sense that if the President is hiding in Paragon City, the City of Heroes, then there should be costumed heroes there defending him; so I bought the Freedom Phalanx and Vindicators enemy packs from the ticket vendor, and added a Statesman AV and Ms. Liberty AV (renamed to "Maiden Justice", the WW2 era Ms Liberty). I was pretty worried that this would make the mission too hard, though, so I deleted two of my ambushes and inserted three additional 5th Column bosses as allies you can recruit to help against the AVs. I kinda liked how adding these allies worked out; after I rounded some of them up, I really did have a 5th Column army following me around beating up the American soldiers, which felt much more like the "Invade America" scenario that I had envisioned.
The heroes were still pretty seriously badass though, even on heroic where they spawn as EBs. I was able to beat them up with my level 50, purpled out version of Police Woman; but seemed to consistently lose against them (even with allies) with my very old level 24 version of Police Woman (who admittedly is horribly slotted because she's a copy from Issue 4, when it made sense to 6-slot for damage). I finally decided to make Statesman and Maiden Justice "optional" objectives instead of required ones, because I really wanted to make sure characters with non-optimal builds could still reasonably solo the story arc. I may need to do more balance tweaking later though; I'm considering downgrading both Statesman and Maiden Justice to the wimpy versions you run into during the Mender Silos TF, though I'm worried that these would be a total pushover for an 8-player team.
I also spent some time tinkering with the start of a third story arc, based on breaking a celebrity criminal (Paris Holiday, the Holiday Inn heiress and reality TV celebutante) out of jail and holding her for ransom. I messed around with replacing most of the spawns on the Breakout map with patrols of Paragon Police (enemy), Longbow (enemy), Prisoners (rogue) and Family (allies - helping you break Paris out of jail). It takes a little while but the patrols eventually cross paths and start blowing each other away, which I like; kinda shooting for a prison riot setting while you go in and break out the hostage. After the breakout mission I made a simple mission where you pick up some ransom money, then I tried to create a mission where there's a John Woo-style standoff culminating in a big shootout where all your allies double-cross you while police and paparazzi simultaneously start rushing you. Not quite sure this is working the way I want it yet but it's fun to test so far.
Anyway, so yeah, I'm totally hooked on Mission Architect. It is still pretty crashy though, and after about the sixth crash I swapped back to live servers.
Back on Liberty, I messed around with Wentworth's for a bit before signing on with Villains of Liberty team that ran a bunch of speed trials and TFs. First I played Primadonna (33 sonic/kin) on a 1st villain respec with a team of
brute
pain MM
fort
2 kin corruptors (including me)
1 rad corruptor
We blitzed through the respec, rushing the Longbow bosses in the second mission and ignoring the CoT in the final mission to go directly after the vines. Completed the respec in a blazing 13min 40sec.
We went on to do a 3rd villain respec, on which I played Mayday (50 fortunata). Our team grew to:
2 brutes
3 kin corruptors
1 rad corruptor
2 fortunata (including me)
This trial was also raced through with blinding speed; even with a Defeat all Malta mission we completed this respec in only 14min 36sec.
Finally I played Mayday on a Lady Grey TF with mostly the same team, though our AT mix was now:
2 fortunata (including me)
2 brutes
1 tanker
1 rad corruptor
1 kin corruptor
1 scrapper
We did all the usual speed LGTF tricks, only even faster than normal: stealth 1st mission and team TP back to door; stealth to each rider encounter in 2nd mission; purposely fail 3rd mission; everyone simultaneously took out the mitos of their particular flavor in the 4th mission; stealth to final encounter in 5th mission and someone took out all the generators while we were simultaneously killing AVs. We had a strong team and everyone knew what to do, and this let us complete the LGTF in 32min 48sec, which is a ludicrously fast time, definitely the quickest one I've been on.
Finished the night crafting a few purple IOs I had purchased on the Black Market. Coercive Persuasion, the confuse purple, is pretty cheap compared to the other purple recipes (since no one wants it) and I was able to assemble and craft a set of 5 for Mayday's Aura of Confusion power, giving her a +4% global DMG and +10% global RCHG bonus.
[u]Merit benchmarking since I13[u]
39.61MPH Lady Grey TF: 39 merits in 59.08mins (avg of 9 runs)
36.54MPH 3rd villain respec: 15 merits in 24.63mins (avg of 5 runs)
34.62MPH 2nd villain respec: 15 merits in 26mins (1 run)
31.73MPH 1st villain respec: 15 merits in 28.36mins (avg of 4 runs)
27.78MPH Ice Mistral SF: 25 merits in 54mins (1 run)
26.51MPH Hess TF: 19 merits in 43.0mins (avg of 4 runs)
25.48MPH Moonfire TF: 31 merits in 73mins (avg of 2 runs)
24.40MPH Dr Quaterfield TF: 111 merits in 273mins (1 run)
22.55MPH Manticore TF: 32 merits in 85.14mins (avg of 7 runs)
22.40MPH Synapse TF: 57 merits in 152.67mins (avg of 3 runs)
22.39MPH Sister Psyche TF: 50 merits in 134.0mins (avg of 4 runs)
22.24MPH Sharkhead SF: 22 merits in 59.34mins (avg of 6 runs)
21.47MPH Faathim TF: 73 merits in 204mins (1 run)
21.04MPH 1st hero respec: 27 merits in 77mins (1 run)
20.00MPH [u]OFFICIAL BASELINE FOR TASK FORCE REWARDS[u]
19.74MPH Numina TF: 36 merits in 109.4mins (avg of 5 runs)
19.52MPH Recluse SF: 25 merits in 76.83mins (avg of 3 runs) (took HOs instead of merits; 1 Ribo, 1 Nucl, 1 Enzy)
19.20MPH Citadel TF: 40 merits in 124.98mins (avg of 10 runs)
19.13MPH Positron TF: 64 merits in 200.75mins (avg of 4 runs) (2 failed TFs not averaged in)
17.86MPH Imperious TF: 28 merits in 94.09mins (avg of 25 runs) (3 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)
17.25MPH Vahzilok Conference villain flashback: 5 merits in 17.39mins (avg of 8 runs)
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)
14.46MPH Spy Hunt villain flashback: 10 merits in 41.49mins (1 run)
14.46MPH 2nd hero respec: 20 merits in 83mins (1 run)
14.23MPH Katie TF: 9 merits in 37.96mins (avg of 8 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
13.46MPH Forging the Blackwand villain flashback: 8 merits in 35.67mins (1 run)
13.22MPH Kings of the Sky villain flashback: 4 merits in 18.15mins (1 run)
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)
7.38MPH Rescue Fortune Teller: 1 merit in 8.13min (1 run)
6.86MPH Nictus Insurrection kheldian flashback: 4 merits in 35mins (1 run)
5.11MPH To Save a Soul hero flashback: 15 merits in 176mins (1 run)
4.68MPH Steal Facemaker's Chemicals villain flashback: 1? merit in 12.82mins (1 run)
2.93MPH Mender Lazarus SF: 6 merits in 123mins (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!"
4/6/2009
On Thursday night I played Schadenfreude (38 AR/pain corruptor) on a 4 player villain team with Fallen LEGION SG. We did a few missions, beat up a Silver Mantis AV and got Schadenfreude to level 39.
After that team broke up I played Blond Justice (50 bs/shield scrapper) for awhile, soloing through the Eternal Nemesis story arc and beating up a Nemesis EB for 19 merits.
I played Mercy Beaucoup (43 emp/ice defender) on an 8 player pickup team for awhile, which mostly went fine, though some of our team members were annoyed by the amount of radial knockback our peacebringer was dishing out. Nevertheless got Mercy to level 44 and picked up the Multidimensional badge. I burned Mercy's free respec in anticipation of I14, changing her build to:
Mercy Beaucoup respec: Level 48 Mutation Defender
Primary Power Set: Empathy
Secondary Power Set: Ice Blast
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Teleportation
Ancillary Pool: Psychic Mastery
Hero Profile:
Level 1: Healing Aura -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(3), EndRdx(3), Heal(5), Heal(5), Heal(7)
Level 1: Ice Bolt -- Acc(A), RechRdx(7), EndRdx(9), Dmg(9), Dmg(11), Dmg(11)
Level 2: Ice Blast -- Acc(A), RechRdx(13), EndRdx(13), Dmg(15), Dmg(15), Dmg(17)
Level 4: Heal Other -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(17), EndRdx(19), Heal(19), Heal(21), Heal(21)
Level 6: Swift -- Run(A)
Level 8: Hurdle -- Jump(A)
Level 10: Combat Jumping -- DefBuff(A)
Level 12: Fortitude -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(23), RechRdx(23), DefBuff(25), DefBuff(25), DefBuff(27)
Level 14: Clear Mind -- Range(A)
Level 16: Freeze Ray -- Acc(A), Acc(27), RechRdx(29), Hold(29), Hold(31), Hold(31)
Level 18: Recovery Aura -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(31), RechRdx(33)
Level 20: Ice Storm -- Acc(A), RechRdx(33), RechRdx(33), Dmg(34), Dmg(34), Dmg(34)
Level 22: Hasten -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(36), RechRdx(36)
Level 24: Super Speed -- Run(A), Run(40)
Level 26: Super Jump -- Jump(A), Jump(43)
Level 28: Bitter Ice Blast -- Decim-Acc/Dmg(A), Decim-Dmg/EndRdx(36), Decim-Dmg/Rchg(37), Decim-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(37), Decim-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(37), Dmg(39)
Level 30: Acrobatics -- EndRdx(A)
Level 32: Adrenalin Boost -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(39), RechRdx(39), EndMod(40), EndMod(40)
Level 35: Recall Friend -- IntRdx(A)
Level 38: Resurrect -- RechRdx(A)
Level 41: Dominate -- Acc(A), Acc(42), RechRdx(42), Hold(42), Hold(43), Hold(43)
Level 44: Mind Over Body -- EndRdx(A)
Level 47: Regeneration Aura -- Empty(A)
Level 49: Aim -- Empty(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Vigilance
The major change in this build is that I ditched Absorb Pain and Stealth, replacing them with Resurrect and Recall Friend. I finally gave in and added Resurrect because I had simply been on too many teams which looked at me funny for being an empath without rez. I also had purchased a stealth IO which let me drop the Stealth power; replacing it with Recall Friend seemed to make sense since it would let me stealth/TP deep into missions, or on a team wipe I could run away and TP/rez.
On Friday, I ran through a couple Mission Architect arcs on Test Server and tried to rate them. I also solidifed my third story arc and published it as Arc 20161: Celebrity Kidnapping. I really like how this arc turned out and I even found room to insert Police Woman as a vanity enemy in it (don't worry, she's meant to be a "normal" person so is only a regular boss, not an AV). I did find it necessary to nerf my Paparazzi cameramen from illusion/ninjitsu to illusion/regen though; stealth-strike spectral wounds was just too nasty.
Back on Liberty, I ran Spy Girl (33 MA/ninj stalker) through a Vahzilok Conference story arc in a fairly lazy 21min 17sec, but this gave me enough merits to buy a Pool C roll, getting a so-so Sovereign Right (ACC/END) recipe, Black Market value of 220K.
I also found that Spacegirl (50 mind/rad controller) had picked up enough Fortunata Hypnosis purple recipes at Wentworths to 5-slot them into her Mass Hypnosis, giving her a +4% global recovery, +15% global ACC and +10% global RCHG bonus. I kinda want to get her a set of the Unbreakable Constraint purple recipes too, but those are way more expensive than the sleep recipes (which were extremely cheap for purples).
I was offline Saturday and got back late Sunday night. I played Rain Dancer (50 storm/arrow defender) for a little, attempting to solo Neuron as a +1 elite boss, but without much luck; I could debuff him pretty well with hurricane and snowstorm, but he would run away from my tornados and lightning storms and my toggles plus his electric attacks quickly drained all my END away, so I wasn't able to sustain fighting him for long enough to drop him.
Gave up on that and switched to Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) to play on an Imperious TF organized by a friend. Our team mix was:
fortunata
dominator
stalker
kin controller
scrapper
2 blasters (including me)
kin defender
I thought this team was a little light on support and offered to switch to a defender, but the team leader was bloodthirsty and really preferred the extra DPS so we went like this. It turned out fine; even the lack of a real tank didn't seem to slow us down. In the second mission, the team leader had the unconventional idea of killing the shadow cyst crystals first, using their explosions to do even more damage to the spawns around them; this kinda worked. In the third mission we cleared the first few generals, then got team TP'd to a location where we launched a frontal assault on Romulus and Requiem (rather than pulling him down, which seems to be the "normal" way); this actually worked fine. In the final mission, Imperious ended up following us to the final encounter and aggroed all the AVs a little early, but we were ready for it and our high DPS let us repeatedly smash Romulus flat. Finished in 59min 23sec.
I'm getting a little bored with taking detailed market manipulation notes; the prices fluctuate too much for my sale prices to feel very meaningful long term. Nevertheless I'm still playing the market, and made about 5.774M infl flipping salvage at Wentworth's since my last report; I also made 3.73M infl playing at level 50 on the aforementioned ITF.
[u]Random recipes and purchased recipes (to date)[u]
RANDOM POOL C HERO SIDE:
2 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% rchg) Wentw=66M
1 Numina's Convalescence (+rec +regen) Wentw=35.2M
3 Obliteration (chance for smashing) Wentw=21M
3 Obliteration (ACC/DMG/RCHG/END) Wentw=14M
1 Scirocco's Dervish (DMG/ACC/END) Wentw=9M
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
2 Gift of the Ancients (+7.5% run speed) Wentw=5M
1 Numina's Convalescence (HEAL/RCHG) Wentw=4.66M
2 Lockdown (chance for +2 mag) Wentw=4.6M
4 Scirocco's Dervish (chance for lethal) Wentw=4.4M
1 Devastation (chance to hold) Wentw=4M
1 Celerity (+Stealth) Wentw=3.82M
1 Mako's Bite (chance for lethal) Wentw=3.5M
2 Expedient Reinforcement (END/DMG/RCHG) Wentw=3M
3 Devastation (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=2.613M
1 Mako's Bite (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=2.52M
2 Analyze Weakness (chance for +ToHit) Wentw=2M
2 Sting of the Manticore (ACC/INTRDX/RNG) Wentw=2M
3 Touch of the Nictus (chance for negative) Wentw=1.8M
3 Gift of the Ancients (DEF) Wentw=1.74M
1 Analyze Weakness (ACC/END/RCHG) Wentw=1.27M
1 Performance Shifter (RCHG/ACC) Wentw=1.2M
3 Touch of the Nictus (ACC/END/RCHG) Wentw=1.189M
2 Entropic Chaos (DMG/END/RCHG) Wentw=1.4M
1 Kinetic Combat (DMG/END/RCHG) Wentw=750K
1 Ghost Widow's Embrace (ACC/HOLD/RCHG) Wentw=680k
2 Sting of the Manticore (chance for toxic) Wentw=670K
1 Pacing of the Turtle (chance for slow) Wentw=338K
1 Sovereign Right (10% pet RES) Wentw=286K
4 Trap of the Hunter (chance for lethal) Wentw=125K
1 Glimpse of the Abyss (chance for psi) Wentw=104K
2 Force Feedback (RCHG/END) Wentw=74K
1 Perfect Zinger (RCHG/ACC) Wentw=70K
1 Call of the Sandman (ACC/SLEEP/RCHG) Wentw=65K
3 Trap of the Hunter (chance for lethal) Wentw=50K
1 Malaise's Illusions (ACC/CNFS/RCHG) Wentw=50K
1 Edict of the Master (DMG) Wentw=46k
1 Executioner's Contract (chance for disorient) Wentw=44k
1 Stupefy (Chance for KB) Wentw=43K
1 Aegis (END/RCHG) Wentw=41K
1 Call of the Sandman (chance for heal) Wentw=29K
1 Edict of the Master (DMG) Wentw=26K
3 Touch of Lady Grey (RCHG/END) Wentw=25K
1 Sovereign Right (5% pet def) Wentw=10K
4 Executioners Contract (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=5K
1 Dark Watcher (RCHG/END) Wentw=2K
1 Sovereign Right (ACC/END) Wentw=1K
TOTAL RANDOM POOL C HERO SIDE: 417.311M infl, 1640 merits, 254K infl/merit
PURCHASED RECIPES HERO SIDE:
1 Steadfast Protection (RES/+3% def) Wentw=39.6M Merits=125 (316K infl/merit)
2 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% rchg) Wentw=66M Merits=200 (330K infl/merit)
TOTAL PURCHASED HERO SIDE: 171.6M infl, 525 merits, 327K infl/merit
RANDOM POOL C VILLAIN SIDE:
1 Miracle (+recovery) BMkt=100M
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
2 Numina's Convalescence (HEAL/RCHG) BlkMkt=9M
1 Kinetic Combat (DMG/END/RCHG) BlkMkt=6.1M
1 Analyze Weakness (ACC/END/RCHG) BMkt=5M
1 Gaussian's Synch Fire Control (RCHG/END) BMkt=4.57M
1 Sovereign Right (10% pet resist) BlkMkt=3M
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 Sovereign Right (ACC/END) BMkt=220K
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: 259.376M infa, 360 merits, 720K 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]
39.61MPH Lady Grey TF: 39 merits in 59.08mins (avg of 9 runs)
36.54MPH 3rd villain respec: 15 merits in 24.63mins (avg of 5 runs)
34.62MPH 2nd villain respec: 15 merits in 26mins (1 run)
31.73MPH 1st villain respec: 15 merits in 28.36mins (avg of 4 runs)
27.78MPH Ice Mistral SF: 25 merits in 54mins (1 run)
26.51MPH Hess TF: 19 merits in 43.0mins (avg of 4 runs)
25.48MPH Moonfire TF: 31 merits in 73mins (avg of 2 runs)
24.40MPH Dr Quaterfield TF: 111 merits in 273mins (1 run)
22.55MPH Manticore TF: 32 merits in 85.14mins (avg of 7 runs)
22.40MPH Synapse TF: 57 merits in 152.67mins (avg of 3 runs)
22.39MPH Sister Psyche TF: 50 merits in 134.0mins (avg of 4 runs)
22.24MPH Sharkhead SF: 22 merits in 59.34mins (avg of 6 runs)
21.47MPH Faathim TF: 73 merits in 204mins (1 run)
21.04MPH 1st hero respec: 27 merits in 77mins (1 run)
20.00MPH [u]OFFICIAL BASELINE FOR TASK FORCE REWARDS[u]
19.74MPH Numina TF: 36 merits in 109.4mins (avg of 5 runs)
19.52MPH Recluse SF: 25 merits in 76.83mins (avg of 3 runs) (took HOs instead of merits; 1 Ribo, 1 Nucl, 1 Enzy)
19.20MPH Citadel TF: 40 merits in 124.98mins (avg of 10 runs)
19.13MPH Positron TF: 64 merits in 200.75mins (avg of 4 runs) (2 failed TFs not averaged in)
18.11MPH Imperious TF: 28 merits in 92.76mins (avg of 26 runs) (3 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)
16.84MPH Vahzilok Conference villain flashback: 5 merits in 17.82mins (avg of 9 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)
14.46MPH Spy Hunt villain flashback: 10 merits in 41.49mins (1 run)
14.46MPH 2nd hero respec: 20 merits in 83mins (1 run)
14.23MPH Katie TF: 9 merits in 37.96mins (avg of 8 runs) (1 failed TF not averaged in)
13.46MPH Forging the Blackwand villain flashback: 8 merits in 35.67mins (1 run)
13.22MPH Kings of the Sky villain flashback: 4 merits in 18.15mins (1 run)
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)
7.38MPH Rescue Fortune Teller: 1 merit in 8.13min (1 run)
6.86MPH Nictus Insurrection kheldian flashback: 4 merits in 35mins (1 run)
5.11MPH To Save a Soul hero flashback: 15 merits in 176mins (1 run)
4.68MPH Steal Facemaker's Chemicals villain flashback: 1? merit in 12.82mins (1 run)
2.93MPH Mender Lazarus SF: 6 merits in 123mins (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!"
[ QUOTE ]
3/23/2009
The Whirligig people were really nice and even invited me to their vent server, where I learned the disconcerting fact that some of the PvPers who abandoned CoH have turned towards cutthroat Internet Scrabble ("the ultimate PvP") as a replacement.
[/ QUOTE ]
ROFL <3
2/20/2009
Tuesday night, I played Thunder Girl (50 will/nrg tanker) on a friend's 8-player team, mostly doing Unai's Portal Corp missions. We swept the Banished Pantheon dimension clean twice, killing enough masks to get Thunder Girl the Banisher badge.
After several of the level 50s logged off, we found ourselves with several sidekicks and too few mentors, so we swapped personnel around to try and make things work. I switched to Blond Justice (41 bs/shield scrapper) and we reformed into a 6-player team in the low 40s. We attempted an invincible level 43 Founders Falls safeguard, and found ourselves fighting a level 45 Dr Quatrexin AV with a tanker, 4 DPS and a TA controller. This didn't go well and Dr Quatrexin spanked us badly, even with several of us repeatedly hospitalling and running back into the fight. After about 4 deaths each, we decided to just let him go, failing the safeguard. I felt like our problem was a lack of support, so I switched to playing Mercy Beaucoup (41 emp/ice defender), which seemed to help immensely; we did a few more radio missions at the same difficulty with no problems, and even defeated an AV-level psychic Clockwork King.
Later that night I joined a Recluse Strike Force as Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corruptor). Our team mix was:
2 SS/inv brutes
rad/therm corruptor
dark/therm corruptor
fire/kin corruptor
fire/rad corruptor (me)
fortunata
mind/psi dominator
The RSF was pretty straightforward with this team mix. In the final mission, we defeated the Freedom Phalanx on the first try, with occasional deaths, but not enough to slow us down as we battle rez'd the fallen back into the fight. Finished in 1hr 30sec and I got a Nucleolus HO.
I was at home sick on Wednesday, and played a lot of CoH. I started off soloing with Kashira (13 db/ninj stalker), then got invited to a 4-player pickup team doing door missions; it started off slow moving, but we picked up the pace after a few missions, added some players (I got the team leader to invite a couple people who were LFT on LBx), and got good exp. This got Kashira to level 16, where I took Build Up.
Played Strong Woman (9 SS/inv tanker) for a little bit, accepting a pickup invite to a 3-player Hollows team; but the leader went AFK and the other player suddenly had to log out, so I found myself soloing in the Hollows. Nevertheless got to level 10, where I took Taunt. I know some tankers don't like Taunt, but I love it on all tankers. The way I see it, it's an auto-hit AoE soft control with a very fast recharge; as good or better than most control powers.
I joined an ITF with Indigo Ifrit, with a team mix of
fire/mental blaster
grav/kin controller
fire/kin controller
bs/shield scrapper
emp defender
fire/rad corruptor (me)
shield/mace tanker
crab soldier
We had very high DPS, a tanker and decent support, and so we quickly powered through the ITF in 1hr 17mins with no problems, gaining 28 merits. I also got a level 50 Gaussian Chance for Build Up recipe drop.
I also rerolled my peacebringer (who I simply couldn't get into; got to level 4 and ran out of steam) into a new broadsword/invuln scrapper. I named her Kyrie Eleison and gave her a shining angel sort of look. Her career began rather ingloriously as she joined a sewer team that promptly got totally wiped out by the first sewer spawn. After hospitalling, the team reformed into a 3 player mission team that ran through the newbie door missions, gradually increased in size to a 6 player team, then did missions in the Hollows. We finished David Wincott's story arc for 2 merits and Flux's story arc for 7 merits, doing the Frostfire mission twice. The second Frostfire run was more difficult; our empath had logged after the first Frostfire mission and so, light on support, we got wiped out by Outcasts. Our tanker volunteered to swap to a plant/emp, which let us finish the mission with no further problems. After the second Frostfire, the team broke up and I moved over to Pocket D and did a few Valentine's Day missions, completing Ganymede's story arc for another 2 merits and beating Snaptooth to unlock costume parts. After all that, Kyrie finished at level 14.
On Thursday night, I played Samurai-ko (29 katana/will scrapper). Having gained the vampire and werewolf badges on an earlier Moonfire TF, I did a flashback of the fortune teller mission for the Spelunker badge, then picked up the explore and history badges to get the Atlas Medallion accolade. I then went on to form an 8-player pickup team in Striga Isle, where we completed Tobias Hansen's story arc for 9 merits and part of Lars Hansen's arc. This got Samurai-ko to level 30; haven't figured out what power to take at 30 yet.
After that I joined a 1st villain respec, playing Primadonna (33 sonic/kin corruptor). Our team mix was:
2 dominators
2 brutes
1 widow
2 kin corruptors
The first hunt was no problem; the second mission against the various Longbow bosses was kind of messy as the team didn't really make any effort to stay together, but we eventually assassinated all the bosses. The final mission we were stealth TP'd to the final room. The team wanted to ignore the CoT and immediately start clearing vines, but we ended up aggroing most of the CoT and having to kill them anyway. Nevertheless we finished in 28min 56sec, gaining 15 merits. I also had a level 33 Force Feedback: Chance for Recharge recipe drop for me. I immediately spent 20 merits on a Pool C recipe draw; this time I got a level 33 Numina's HEAL/RCHG, Black Market price 6.8M, a good result.
Finished the night fooling around in Recluse's Victory as Mayday (50 fortunata). I have yet to figure out how to kill fortunata in RV, so I thought maybe playing a fortunata would help me find out what they die to. At various times I attacked a blaster and a scrapper; neither of them seemed able to seriously hurt me, as I dodged nearly all their attacks and could heal back the ones that leaked through. But I couldn't seem to kill them, either, before they either phase shifted or simply ran away.
[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 Numina's Convalescence (HEAL/RCHG) BMkt=6.8M
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: 138.856M infa, 260 merits, 534K 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]
35.34MPH 1st villain respec: 15 merits in 25.47mins (avg of 2 runs)
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)
17.99MPH Imperious TF: 28 merits in 93.38mins (avg of 18 runs) (2 failed TFs not averaged in)
17.80MPH Traitorous Vendetti villain flashback: 1 merit in 3.37mins (avg of 7 runs)
17.70MPH Recluse SF: 25 merits in 84.75mins (avg of 2 runs) (took HOs instead of merits; 1 Ribo, 1 Nucl)
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)
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!"