6/3/2009
Spent most of Monday night playing TokyoRose (13 sonic/sonic corruptor), duoing with a friend playing an Arachnos soldier. We did a King's Row mayhem, then my Origin of Power story arc (3 merits), then his Aeon Conspiracy story arc; picked up a third player for the tail end of that arc, where we rescued Amanda Vines, but then smashed all her TV broadcasting equipment. This got TokyoRose to level 15; I took Fly at level 14. I was also a little lucky on drops, getting two Blessing of the Zephyr drops (one TRAVEL, one TRAVEL/END).
Finished Monday night soloing Sabine (8 SS/SR brute) through Hearts on Fire, a lowbie arc that starts out with a goofy Skulls/Hellions romance, but then bad stuff occurs and it becomes ultimately tragic. I really rather liked this story, and I gave it 5 stars.
After that I solo'd through Dungeoncrawl Inc., a single mission story arc that was exactly as advertised, a D&D style dungeon crawl where you fight monsters, rescue damsels, and get loot. This wasn't terribly deep, but was fun, and I gave it 4 stars.
Tuesday night, I played Linda Lightspeed (33 kin/rad defender) on a 5-player LEGION team that did the Pandas vs Rikti story arc. I was the only support character and I find it's pretty hard to keep people alive with just kinetics; I offered to switch to an empath, but people wanted SB and FS more, so this team was all about killing fast and dying fast. We had two wipeouts in the final mission due to overaggroing Rikti in this huge, densely packed room in the Rikti base, but managed to overcome that after we started pulling, and so we managed to finish the arc.
Over the last two days I've also been heavily tweaking my Axis and Allies story arc, for story and balance. I felt like the middle two missions (Dunkirk and Stalingrad) were a little too boring and I got a fair amount of feedback about how annoying it is to find 2 generals on an outdoor map; but I also get a lot of positive feedback on how well the maps match the geography the mission is supposedly set in (war torn France and Russia), so I didn't want to change this. Instead I added some destructible objects to each mission, in an attempt to spice them up; putting piles of explosives labeled "Munitions" in Dunkirk, and some trucks labeled "Troop Transport" in Stalingrad. It's kinda fun blowing up the dynamite and smashing the trucks into smithereens, so I liked how that came out.
I also kept having people say they can't solo the final AV in the "Invasion America" mission. I used to have both Statesman and Maiden Justice (aka Ms Liberty) in the final mission, then I decided Statesman was too hard, so I removed him. Ms Liberty still seems to be too hard for people to handle, though; the key power that makes her too hard is Unstoppable, which basically puts her in godmode for minutes at a time. I did some testing and found that I'm able to solo Ms Liberty (in EB form) with either my main hero (50 AR/dev blaster) or my main villain (50 thug/TA MM), winning about 2 out of 3 fights with some effort; but, they're both heavily IO'd level 50s that I'm very familiar with playing, and I probably couldn't solo Ms Liberty on most of my other toons, so that might not have been a fair test.
There's already 4 Boss allies in the final mission to help out. I didn't want to make the allies EBs or AVs since they would steal the player's thunder, so I tried adding some reverse ambushes to the AV fight: at 50% and at 25% life, an ambush of 5th Column would spawn and run to the player and help against the AV. This seemed to help some, as it would increase DPS against Ms Liberty in the final stages where she starts using Unstoppable; but the friendly ambushes had pretty bad pathing problems and only one guy out of the ambush ever seemed to actually make it to the fight.
Ultimately I decided I just couldn't use the standard Ms. Liberty model any more, and ended up making my own custom AV to represent Maiden Justice, and giving her martial arts/invulnerability, but setting her power levels so that she wouldn't have Focus Chi or Unstoppable, so would be more manageable.
I tested by running through Axis and Allies with Kashira (21 dual blades/ninj stalker) and was able to beat the new Maiden Justice after 2 tries, using 3 of the allies and 6 purple inspirations. Since Kashira was only slotted with DOs, I figure if she can solo Maiden Justice, it's gotta be doable for an average soloer.
I also had someone call me out on the Mission Architect Stories forum for Axis and Allies being "the most villainous arc [he'd] yet played" and "Morally, its the darkest arc [he'd] seen". Initially, I thought, wow, that's awesome! I was hoping to make my arc really villainous! But after a few posts it became clear that he was really upset that the Nazis end up winning the war and crushing all the heroes. This seemed a strange complaint to me, because the whole premise of the arc is that you're a villain who goes back in time to win WW2 for the bad guys; but he was quite upset and wanted me to insert a "ray of hope" showing that the heroes might end up winning in the end.
Personally, I believe that story arcs should let the player win (assuming all missions are successfully completed); I hate when I do everything right in a heroic story arc, but the bad guy gets away because he's scripted to escape, no matter what you do. So likewise in a villainous story arc, I figure the bad guy (being the protagonist) should win; crushing democracy and conquering the World and all that. I definitely didn't want the story arc to end with "And then you conquered the world. But heroes eventually overthrow you / Mender Silos sends people back to fix the timeline and undo all you've done / whatever"; that would feel like cheating the player.
But this guy seemed upset enough by this that I unbent on this long enough to add one line of dialog hinting that one of the heroes was unaccounted for and may have escaped; this would be a fig leaf allowing players who don't really want to conquer the world to think that the good guys still have a chance, while not being so obvious that it spoils the victory of the player who really did want to conquer the world.
Anyway, I finished the night soloing through The Bravuran Jobs on Kashira, getting her to level 22 and SOs. This was a story where you're basically a freelance mercenary acting on tips provided to you by this foreign government; you're not technically working for them, but the implication is that you're doing them favors. I'd tried this a couple times before but always gotten stymied by (what I believe to be) MA bugs that kept me from getting all the way through. The writing was good, the missions were okay; the custom mobs seemed too powerful to me (they all could buff each other, and handed my little stalker her head a couple times); I finally got to reach the final mission, but the briefing hinted that it was a trap and gave me the choice of doing it or not. It didn't seem to make sense to walk into a trap, so I sat out the timer, but didn't get much reward for doing that either. I ended up letting my previous rating of 3 stars stand.
@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 ]
Personally, I believe that story arcs should let the player win (assuming all missions are successfully completed); I hate when I do everything right in a heroic story arc, but the bad guy gets away because he's scripted to escape, no matter what you do. So likewise in a villainous story arc, I figure the bad guy (being the protagonist) should win; crushing democracy and conquering the World and all that. I definitely didn't want the story arc to end with "And then you conquered the world. But heroes eventually overthrow you / Mender Silos sends people back to fix the timeline and undo all you've done / whatever"; that would feel like cheating the player.
But this guy seemed upset enough by this that I unbent on this long enough to add one line of dialog hinting that one of the heroes was unaccounted for and may have escaped; this would be a fig leaf allowing players who don't really want to conquer the world to think that the good guys still have a chance, while not being so obvious that it spoils the victory of the player who really did want to conquer the world.
[/ QUOTE ]
Conquering the world is not the problem. Every big bad, Doctor Doom, Magneto, Darkseid, and so on..., has dreams of world domination. It's that the Nazis win. It's not a simple villainous plot that unfolds. The player takes over the Nazi party and completes Hitler's wet dream. Your victory hinges on the Nazi war machine. Are all the heroes gone cause they were sent to extermination camps? You're not just giving the player a chance to win a mission. You co-opt and corrupt at a much deeper level.
You seem generally intelligent from what I've read, but in this case you seem unable to grasp the moral implications of your story. It's not surprising that a Triumph of the Will style video review sounds appealing to you.
It's not possible to sanitize Nazis enough to have them win even in a silly fantasy game. Or has enough time passed in 3 generations that people have forgotten the horror they perpetrated?
Try this analogy. Would you be ok with a story that sends you back in time to help the Confederacy win and perpetuate slavery? I would hope not.
[ QUOTE ]
You seem generally intelligent from what I've read
[/ QUOTE ]
Thanks! I think. 
[ QUOTE ]
but in this case you seem unable to grasp the moral implications of your story. It's not surprising that a Triumph of the Will style video review sounds appealing to you.
It's not possible to sanitize Nazis enough to have them win even in a silly fantasy game. Or has enough time passed in 3 generations that people have forgotten the horror they perpetrated?
[/ QUOTE ]
Hey, I definitely agree that Nazis are evil. They did some horrible things and we shouldn't ever forget that.
However, because Nazis have become an iconic sort of evil, they are instantly recognizable as villains in any story, and are almost a stock character. They're even quite accepted as stock villains in CoH itself; I certainly didn't create the 5th Column, or Axis America. (Incidentally, the existence of Axis America basically implies that the Nazis won WW2 in their timeline...which is what we are discussing as whether it is valid subject matter.)
I agree that we should not revel in the particularly cruel things that the Nazis did. But in this story arc, the player never is depicted committing an actual war crime, never forced to participate in an actual atrocity. There are no death camps on screen, no instances where you are forced to endure hateful ideology. Everything the player does in the arc is strictly within the "laws of war" -- except for actually assassinating Hitler himself, which most would consider a praiseworthy act.
[ QUOTE ]
Try this analogy. Would you be ok with a story that sends you back in time to help the Confederacy win and perpetuate slavery? I would hope not.
[/ QUOTE ]
I absolutely would have no problem with helping the Confederacy win the war via military means (not sure where you live, but you may not realize how much the CSA is romanticized in the US, especially in the south). However, I would not care to do a story arc where I have to go around acting like a plantation owner and brutalizing slaves and stuff. Helping General Lee win the Battle of Gettysburg is not morally equivalent to that, though.
Let me offer you another analogy: the story arc I've written is loosely inspired by the board game, "Axis & Allies". This is a Risk-like game where you push around little plastic soldiers and roll dice to simulate World War 2. Is it ever acceptable for the player of Germany to win this game?
Another example: "Panzer General" was an extremely popular computer game for quite awhile, where you get to move around simulated Panzer divisions to invade France, Russia and Britain. Is it ever acceptable for the player of this game to win the war?
Yet another analogy: suppose someone wrote a "Cowboys and Indians" story arc, where you help the heroic cowboys beat up the villainous Indians. Now, in the real history, the US Army did some pretty bad things to the American Indians; things that would definitely be war crimes, even genocide, by current standards. Is "Cowboys and Indians" also an unacceptable subject matter?
I think it's great that you care a lot about this subject. I hope some of these arguments might make some sense to you, though.
@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!"
If mars was the person sending the feedback to give heroes a ray of hope, i wouldnt change a thing
/gignore @username is the best feature of this game. It's also probably the least used feature.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Nights_Dawn
Hazy is right
|
Yes your arguments make sense. My apologies, I had forgotten about Axis America. I mostly stopped playing hero side a couple years ago. So the devs commited the original sin. And they're about to commit it again with the return of Reichsman (Nazi Statesman) in the new I15 TFs. I haven't played them on test yet but I trust Venture when he says they are horrendous. (Although he may have different reasons than I would.)
By comparison your arc is a minor transgression, a mere misdemeanor. 
I suspect all this will add to my enjoyment of Tarantino's new WW2 movie, Inglorious Basterds (sic). Seeing Pitt's crew carving up Nazis will be gratifying.
[ QUOTE ]
It's not possible to sanitize Nazis enough to have them win even in a silly fantasy game. Or has enough time passed in 3 generations that people have forgotten the horror they perpetrated?
[/ QUOTE ]
You are correct. But you do know that alot of Nazi were just citizens of Germany that wanted to get ahead in the world? Most of the officers of the German Armed forces were Nazis, even Rommel. No one is sanitizing the Nazis of what they did, but most , even the hardest Nazi hunters, don't want to get the clerk from a villiage office in Saxony, cuase they realized that he was doing a job and wanted get a better life for him and his familiy.
Maybe you didn't know this playing the arc, but in 1939 YOU KILL HITLER. and you are from COH reality which menas you knwo allbout WW2. Which means you get to change the direction of history. Maybe cause you are furher, you realize that genocide isn't in your plans. After all, you don't believe the Jews lost ww1, other things caused it, so YOU don't have the patholigical hatred of the Jews.
[ QUOTE ]
Try this analogy. Would you be ok with a story that sends you back in time to help the Confederacy win and perpetuate slavery? I would hope not.
[/ QUOTE ]
You havn't read up on the US Civil war, really? Because most if not all the Southerns leaders realized that Salvery was a dead end, econmically. But, they wanted the States themselves to decide, when and how to end slavery. The Civil War was about salvery, but through an economic and Constitutaionality question.
damn, goto to go to work.
ok, back from work.
No one is glorizing the Nazis here. However, one must understand that with the Death of Hitler in 1939, you , the player, will be Furher leading Germany in WW2. You, the player, will decided the fate of war. If any of my villains coudl do this, they would do it with no problems. Germany had the most compnent military in the world at that time, with commanders that were intelligent and very cunning. Im quite certian that my villaisn woudl look at the genocide of the Jews, gypsies, and other 'undisiribles' and see that as a waste of tiem, material, and manpower. And since that villain is the Furher, he/she/it coudl do it, and change history.
Many writer have taken the idea of the Nazi Germany winning the war. Other have writtten what woudl happen if Hitler did die in the Rommel attempt. Another author have written what woudl happen if Lindbergh won the 1940 presidential election and the aftermath of that. I see this as no different.
6/5/2009
Wednesday night, I was just standing around shopping at the Black Market in Sharkhead on Mega (20 SS/will brute) when someone I'd teamed with before recognized me and invited me to a Silver Mantis SF. We had a team mix of:
arachnos soldier
SS/inv brute
SS/will brute (me)
fire/fire dom
robo/dark MM
ninj/ninj stalker
ninj/regen stalker
We used the soldier's VG base to start the SF, and had no real problems except in the last mission where we got a little spread out while fighting the Sky Raiders helicarrier. But we regrouped after we realized this, and smashed enough of the turrets on the lower levels of the helicarrier to spawn Colonel Duray just as we reached the top. We pulled him down to the water level and beat him up there, finishing the SF in 2hr 14mins for 38 merits (17.01 MPH). Mega gained quite a lot of exp on this SF, getting to level 24 and taking Rage and Hurdle as new powers.
Finished the night soloing Mega through the revised Axis and Allies, and confirmed I could solo the final AV, Maiden Justice (formerly Ms Liberty, but I changed her to a custom AV because Ms Liberty was too strong). She spawned as an EB for me while solo, and I used 2 purple, 2 orange and 4 green inspirations, and had some help from 5th Column allies.
On Thursday night I played Star Amethyst (29 warshade), sidekicking to a 4 player LEGION team doing low 40s missions in Peregrine Island; through various dimension hopping we defeated the Psychic Clockwork King for the Emancipator badge, and cleared a map of Hydra for the Multidimensional badge. This got Amethyst to level 30, where I took Twilight Shield (nrg/neg resist) for lack of a better idea.
I then joined a Manticore TF formed on LBx, with a team of:
shield/fire tank
warshade (me)
nrg/fire blaster (quit after mission 1)
dark/dark scrapper
nrg/nrg blaster
shield/SS tanker
grav/rad controller
dark/fire scrapper
Some of the team members didn't seem to understand how task forces worked, and one blaster quit after the first mission due to needing to do other stuff. We were a little light on support classes (just one rad controller, who was a more aggressive tanker than our tankers) but did fine anyway. I got to heavily use Amethyst's ability to stealth/superspeed/TP through some of the stealthable missions; with stealth and recall friend built into the warshade powersets, a warshade seems surprisingly good at this. Finished in 1hr 34mins for 32 merits (20.43 MPH) and got Star Amethyst to level 31.
Finished the night playing Mega (24 ss/will brute) through some architect missions. I solo'd through Curse of the Pharoah's Tomb, which was about archaeologists that dig up an Egyptian King's tomb, and, shockingly, get cursed and are attacked by mummies! The story was a little thin, but the theme was strong and the Egyptian costumes were really very cool. I gave it 4 stars.
A stalker friend joined me and we duoed through Amazon-Avatars, which was about a Knives of Artemis plot to make some of their number get possessed by the souls (and powers) of classical Greek goddesses. This seems exactly the sort of thing the KoA would be into, I thought. The story started a little slow but I like the mythological premise, the dialog was really good and I liked how each of the goddess-avatars had her own personality. I gave it 5 stars.
@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!"
6/9/2009
I started Friday night by joining the Friday Night Kickball PvP event in Pocket D. I was worried there might not be enough people interested (after hearing of abysmal showings at previous events), but was pleasantly surprised to find this event was very heavily attended, with more than 24 players showing up. We initially had 3 team captains picking players from a list, but with the number of people dropping in and out of the event it got really confusing and messed up, and ultimately the event organizer simply decided that we would randomize teams each match instead of picking. I think this was the right call as it got things moving a lot faster.
I played Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) for the first match, where we had a tanker, stalker, 2 blasters, 3 scrappers and a brute on the Perez Park map. I was shocked at the number of meleers (formerly known as lolmelee) present and doing well at PvP. Our team seemed to work pretty well and we won the match; I managed to score 4 kills.
People switched to alts for the second match, so I switched to Yuki-Onna (50 ice/cold corruptor) and ended up on a team with 3 blasters, 3 corruptors and 1 scrapper, on the factory map. I probably spent too much of my time SJing around trying to buff ice shields, since supposedly buffs aren't too hot in the new PvP, but dammit, I had buffs and I was gonna use them! As an obvious squishy, I got targeted some and got to use Hibernate a lot, which does seem really useful; this is the first toon I've taken Hibernate on, mostly because she's the only one that Hibernate makes logical sense on. Anyway, as a result of buffing and hiding, I wasn't attacking as much and only got 2 kills, but our team won anyway.
Third match I played Mayday (50 fortunata) on a team of fortunata, bane, blaster, stalker, 2 scrappers, on the graveyard map. Having high defense still seemed pretty helpful in this match, though it certainly didn't make me unhittable. I managed to score 2 kills and the team came in 4th place.
Fourth match I was back on Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) with a team of 3 blasters, 1 controller, 1 tanker, 1 bane and 1 TA defender on the factory map. Our team was pretty disrupted and died a lot, but I managed to kill-steal my way to 8 kills, my best performance for the night, and our team came in 2nd place.
Fifth match I stayed on Police Woman, on a team of 3 scrappers, 1 blaster, 1 corruptor, 1 brute and 1 tanker in Steel Canyon. I got 5 kills and our team won the match.
Sixth match I was again on Police Woman, on a team of 3 blasters, 2 defenders, 1 corruptor and 1 scrapper, on the Atlas Park map. I got 5 kills and our team came in 3rd place.
During this game I managed to trap a scrapper in one of the little pools next to Atlas Plaza with web grenade, and the -jump kept him from jumping out of the pool so he was kind of stuck there until some other players showed up and chased me off. For some reason this made him really, really mad and he relentlessly harassed me for the next half hour about how mean I was for web grenading him and stopping him from having fun. I tried talking it over with him, but somehow this incident got magnified in his mind until he thought I had been hovering above him while web grenading him for 5 minutes straight (he actually said this). This was particularly weird because my character can't fly, and I don't think I was ever continuously alive for that long during the match, so there's no way he could've seen that. He just wouldn't let it go, and eventually got nasty enough that I had to put him on ignore because he was making me mad. This put a damper on how fun the earlier PvP was, and it was also kind of sad because this player was someone I've teamed with lots before and previously had a high opinion of. Unfortunately, PvP sometimes affects people badly.
After the arena event I accepted a team invite which ended up being an AE farm; I'm not really into farming, but for the sake of being polite I stuck around for one run through the mission before excusing myself, picking up about 1000 tickets.
On Saturday, I played Mega (25 SS/will brute) for a bit, soloing a couple missions in Bloody Bay and picking up a Shivan while there.
Then I switched to Strong Woman (27 inv/ss tanker) for a Hess TF with a team mix of:
warshade
2 regen scrappers
will scrapper
inv scrapper
inv tanker (me)
We did a mix of fighting and stealthing and had no serious problems until the final mission where a nictus crystal spawned smack dab on the place where you normally pull Burkholder to, which made things a little hairy until we took it out. Finished the TF in 42mins 38sec for 19 merits (26.74 MPH), and got Strong Woman to level 28 where I took Rage, and found a level 30 Steadfast Protection RES/+def recipe, which I went ahead and crafted and slotted it, to give Strong Woman an extra +3% global DEF, stacking nicely with Invincibility.
After the Hess TF, Strong Woman accepted an invite to a 5 player pickup team running missions in Croatoa, which got her to level 29.
Later that night I joined an Imperious TF; the team leader asked for a kin, so I played Primadonna (41 sonic/kin corruptor) as a lackey. Our team mix was:
fire dom
peacebringer
2 blasters
2 shield brutes
2 kin corruptors (including me)
With only kinetics for support, we were fast but squishy; this worked fine and we blitzed through the ITF in 53mins 7sec for 28 merits (31.63 MPH), which got Primadonna to level 42.
Spent some time shopping at the black market and ended up 6 slotting Primadonna's sonic nuke with Obliteration IOs, for +3% global dmg, +9% global acc, +5% global rchg and +3.75% melee DEF.
After that I played Millie Volt (33 elec/inv brute) for awhile on a 3 player LEGION team. I spent 40 merits from previous SFs on recipe rolls, getting a 33 Mako Chance for Lethal and a tasty 33 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% rchg) from the deal. Our team ran through the Skip Tracer badge mission and defeated Serafina, getting Millie to level 34.
Joined another Imperious TF late Saturday night; this one was trying to run at level 38-40 so that everyone would get exp, and so I played Maitresse (40 necro/storm MM). Our team was:
SR scrapper
shield scrapper
emp defender
cold corruptor
robo/poison MM
necro/storm MM (me)
fire blaster
We were a little slow moving due to no proper tank and no kinetics, but seemed to do fine. I tried to be careful how much stormyness I unleashed around the scrappers, but had a few moments of unabashed stormyness, especially against the phalanx computer. The final mission we had some trouble with Romulus because he would keep running away from us, due to debuffs or slows or something. We killed the first Romulus, then the second one ran away far enough to aggro more stuff and give us a team wipe. The team thought maybe it was Snow Storm (double stacked between the cold and myself) that was making him freak out, so we tried again without Snow Storm running. He still ran away a lot, not quite sure why; guess he just didn't like our debuffs. Ended up getting him this time, though, to complete the ITF in 2hrs 8mins for 28 merits (13.13 MPH) and getting Maitresse to level 41. I immediately spent 20 merits to get a level 41 Obliteration (chance for smashing) recipe.
On Sunday I solo'd Millie Volt (34 elec/inv) through the Origin of Power story arc (3 merits), then the Midnight Squad story arc to unlock Cimerora (another 5 merits). Also did a Talos Island mayhem which got Millie to level 35, where I took Tough Hide.
On Sunday night, my Teen Phalanx Forever! arc won 1st place in Projectionist's Mission Architect Contest as most enjoyable story arc! He wrote:
[ QUOTE ]
1st place: Teen Phalanx Forever! by PW (Arc ID: 67335)
An absolute blast to experience this arc with the brilliant premise; that you are not even playing your own character. With its well written humor and clever use of AE mechanics, the whole arc manages to be a tribute to your character and to the game itself. ItÂ’s an arc every one of my high level heroes will play. Every mission is a mini-adventure in itself.
[/ QUOTE ]
I was very psyched! There were lots of other winners announced, and Projectionist has promised to create some artwork for each of the winners, which I'm really looking forward to.
On Monday night I ran Kyrie Eleison (33 broadsword/inv scrapper) through The Lost Choir: Chapter One: The Old Testament, an interesting story arc about religion and extra-dimensional invaders. This is part 1 of a massive 3-arc epic; it had a ton of ideas but the plot was fairly confusing. I found the final mission especially cool because both my character and the final end boss were, essentially, angels, fighting on the Atlas Park map. Since we both had wings, I pulled him up into the air and fought a very cool aerial duel near the statue of Atlas. This was such a pretty fight that I ended up spending more time taking screen shots than fighting the EB:
Kyrie Eleison vs Nephilim 1
Kyrie Eleison vs Nephilim 2
Anyway, I gave that story arc 4 stars. I also burned 420 tickets on 6 Bronze reward rolls; the best I got out of that was a Doctored Wounds (HEAL) and another, very nice Steadfast Protection (RES/+def).
After that I played Schadenfreude (46 AR/pain corruptor) on a Recluse Strike Force, with a team mix of:
kin corr
AR/pain corr (me)
sonic/rad corr
sonic/cold corr
mind/ice dom
SS/will brute
SS/stone brute
necro/poison MM
This went extremely well, finishing in 49mins 11sec with Schadenfreude dinging 47 just as the strike force completed. I had to train to 47 before it would let me take the Synthetic HO reward, which was a Centriole. I also had a Coercive Persuasion (CONFUSE/END) recipe drop for me on this mission, along with a fistful of badges. I promptly switched Schadenfreude's badge title to Archvillain.
After that I did yet another Imperious TF, joining a friend who asked for a rad, so I played Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corruptor). Our team mix was:
fire scrapper
shield brute
kin controller
DA brute
fire/rad corruptor (me)
night widow
plant dom
pain corr
We didn't really stealth, we just rushed and killed everything as fast as we could. Our DPS was quite high so this worked just fine, finishing in 45min 59sec for 28 merits (36.54 MPH).
I finished Monday night letting another friend wheedle me into joining her LGTF. She asked for someone who could stealth past Rikti (trickier than it may sound because the drones have high +PER), so I played Mayday (50 fortunata). Our team mix was:
AR/traps corruptor
fire scrapper
regen scrapper
2 blasters
fortunata (me)
night widow
rad controller
At the Black Market I found I had bought the ingredients to make my sixth Coercive Persuasion IO, which I slotted for an extra +5% range DEF, giving her a 45.55 range DEF (while hidden, but not counting mind link). This let me easily stealth down to Penelope Yin's room in the first mission and team TP people down, as well as stealthily glide around the second, third and last missions. Sadly some of our other teammates were not as sneaky and died a lot trying to emulate the stealthers, and I got immense use out of Mayday's Vengeance and Rez powers. Nevertheless we got through the LGTF pretty quickly, finishing in a very respectable 46min 49sec for 39 merits (49.98 MPH).
@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 think everyone was just tired on the LGTF. I know I was.(fire/rad)
I don't think the spines scrapper realized his damage aura was on when he tried to "stealth".
6/15/2009
Been a while since my last update, so this may run a little long.
Last Tuesday, I played Mega (26 SS/will brute), first joining a pickup team that took down Ghost of Scrapyard for 2 merits and the Hammer Down badge.
After that, I agreed to help a 27 db/da brute who was having trouble completing his Defeat All CoT mission. Looking at his build I could see why: at level 27, he had all 4 Flight pool powers, 3 of the Teleport pool powers, no Fitness powers (no stamina) and no defenses except for the required one he had to take at level 1 and his damage aura power. I could see he had no veteran badges at all, so was probably a new player; I tried to tactfully suggest he take more defensive powers. He sheepishly admitted it was his first character. Nevertheless the two of us were able to duo our way through his mission, for which he seemed quite grateful.
I went on to solo my way through an arc called Through Rose Tinted Glasses, a villainous story where your extremely nearsighted contact is convinced you're a hero, and sends you on purportedly heroic missions while you advance your own nefarious agenda. This started off a little slow but ended up being pretty cool, so I gave it 5 stars.
I started Wednesday night playing Schadenfreude (47 AR/pain corruptor) on a speed Lady Grey TF with a team of:
2 fortunata
AR/pain corruptor (me)
AR/rad corruptor
SS/shield brute
defender (didn't get powersets)
warshade
ice/kin corruptor
This was ludicrously speedy, finishing in 32min 30sec for 39 merits (72MPH).
From there I went to join an Imperious TF as Millie Volt (35 elec/inv brute). Our team mix was:
AR/rad corr
ice/kin corr
blaster (didn't get powersets)
kin controller
scrapper
defender
elec/inv brute (me)
fortunata
The team leader asked if I could tank, and I felt pretty good about being an invuln against the lethal-using Romans, so I said sure. This turned out to be a mistake on my part - an invuln brute, even with Tough, is significantly squishier than an invuln tanker. I seemed fine at getting aggro with my elec melee AoEs, but it was rougher for me to survive the aggro; the +DEF from Invincibility was quickly overwhelmed by the Cimeroran's DEF debuffs, but my total lethal resistance was still only about 65% (even with RPD, TI, Unyielding and Tough all stacked) so I would quickly bleed out unless I burned inspirations or the support people were actively healing me. Part of this was also that I was initially lackeyed to someone who tended not to stay with the group, so I spent much of the first two missions at level 35, which made it harder to survive aggro as well.
The second mission started off with my boss, the fortunata, going off to kill Nictus crystals on her own; this finally got me lackeyed to someone else, so I could play at 49 the rest of the TF. Unfortunately the fortunata killing crystals way in advance of the rest of the team resulted in multiple Cimeroran ambushes triggered on our heads, wiping the rest of the team twice. The team leader ultimately ended up asking us all to just stay dead and let the fortunata solo the rest of the mission. This was pretty ignominious but seemed to work.
The rest of the TF seemed to go more smoothly and we ended up finishing in 54mins 56sec for 28 merits (30.58 MPH) and getting Millie to level 36. This experience kinda soured me on invuln for non-tankers, though; if you can't shake off mobs using pure lethal damage, what good is it? The lackeying issues make me want to stick to 50s on ITFs for a bit, too.
So, speaking of invuln tankers, I decided to switch to Strong Woman (29 inv/SS tanker) for a hero-side 1st respec trial. We had a team mix of:
rad/dark def
emp/elec def
fire/TA controller
fire/SR scrapper
AR/nrg blaster
?? blaster (quit almost right away)
stone/nrg tanker
inv/SS tanker (me)
We started the trial and found the first door mission was bugged out for us, splitting the team into two separate instances. I think because the unknown blaster was on an Architect Entertainment story arc when we started the trial; he ended up quitting the trial and didn't come back. My half of the team completed the first door mission on its own; not sure whether the other half also had to do their mission or were able to piggyback off of our completion. Otherwise the trial went just fine, except for at the very end, when we defeated the last wave of Sky Raiders and the trial didn't complete. Eventually we tracked this down to one loose Sky Raider stuck in the ceiling of the reactor room, who we put out of his misery. Finished in 1hr exactly for 27 merits (27 MPH).
On Thursday night I played Mega (26 SS/will brute) through The Praetorian Invasion of the Land of OZ, a story arc where I help Ozma save Oz from the machinations of Tyrant and a Praetorian Dorothy. This was surreal and cool, and I liked the final battle where you face off against Tyrant and "evil" Dorothy with the help of "good" Dorothy; but the combination of Praetorians, Oz and time travel elements all at the same time, ended up overwhelming my suspension of disbelief. I gave the arc 3 stars.
I then ran Mega through Romulo & Juliette, a story arc very loosely inspired by the Shakespeare play. I didn't think the Romeo & Juliette theme quite worked as presented (the main story ends up being about something else) and I felt there were some plot problems. I gave it 3 stars.
Friday night I had company in RL so missed the PvP event, but I was on long enough to play Schadenfreude (47 AR/pain corruptor) through a speed LGTF. Our team was
3 corruptors (traps, pain, dark)
3 scrappers (DA, 2 regen)
dev blaster
elec/shd brute
...and we finished in 38min 10sec for 39 merits (61.31 MPH).
On Saturday I solo'd Mega (26 SS/will brute) through some Sharkhead missions that got her the Agent of Discord badge and level 27.
After that I joined a Cap au Diable SF with TokyoRose (15 sonic/sonic corruptor) with a team of
necro/pain MM
necro/storm MM
wolf spider
blood widow
db/ninj stalker
sonic/sonic corr (me)
(think there was a seventh, but can't read my scribble of their powersets)
We weren't particularly stealthy so ended up completing most missions the normal way; this mostly went well except for one team wipe in the mission where you fight the CoT Librarian. Finished the SF in 1hr 21mins for 12 merits (8.89 MPH), getting TokyoRose to level 17. I took Disruption Field, which everyone called "the sonic tutu". I started off putting on the stalker but eventually switched to putting on the widow because the widow tended to stay with the team more, and I think it may have been breaking the stalker's stealth.
Went on to join an Imperious TF; the leader initially said I could bring "anything" so I started off bringing Millie Volt (36 elec/inv brute) for a rematch, but when a rad defender bailed on the team I volunteered to switch to Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corruptor). Our team ended up being:
shield tanker
fire/kin controller
2 fire blasters
ice/kin controller
bs/shield scrapper
night widow
fire/rad corruptor (me)
With a solid tanker, high DPS, and both kin and rad buffs, this went really well, though we had a few deaths. I gleefully used Vengeance/Fallout/Mutation every time I could, which earned a "Fallout, hell yeah! That's a good rad!" from one of my teammates. Later on someone asked who was "healer" for our team so they could know who to run to, and although I actually do heal when I notice people being hurt, as a villain I just had to say, Don't count on me, I get too much good stuff from letting you die. Everyone seemed okay with that. We steamrollered over everything to finish the ITF in 52min 12sec for 28 merits (32.18 MPH).
On Sunday I solo'd Mega (27 SS/will brute) through Ashley Porter and the Gorilla War, which was a fun WW2-themed arc where you join the Blackhawk squadron...umm...Blackhorse squadron and battle gorilla warriors and wacky Nazi superscience. This was good fun, though I thought the final mission was a little anticlimactic. I gave it 4 stars.
Then I played Adventuress (21 MA/regen scrapper) on a Sister Psyche TF organized on LBx. Our team mix was:
fire/thermal controller
storm/rad defender
kin/energy defender
2 MA/regen scrappers (including me)
claw/SR scrapper
nrg/ice blaster
kin/psy defender
Running through Wentworth's I got a compliment from a random passerby on Adventuress's costume (admittedly, closer to a wolf whistle, but I figure that counts ), which was nice. We had lots of support on our TF so did quite well. I started off asking for and getting an SK, but my mentor kept going linkdead so I decided to stop pestering him about it; soon leveled up enough to not need one anyway. The other MA scrapper had to quit about 2/3rds of the way through, but we did fine anyway. Finished the Sister Psyche TF in 2hrs 25mins for 50 merits (20.69MPH). This got Adventuress to level 24; I had not really planned her build out in advance, so I haphazardly took Resilience at 22 and Hasten at 22, for lack of better ideas.
Finished the night soloing Kyrie Eleison (33 bs/inv scrapper) through The Lost Choir: Chapter Two: The New Testament, which is the second part of a huge 3-arc epic. The story picks up after part 1 where this massive interdimensional invasion has taken over most of the Earth, and I have to go wake up a Rikti goddess in order to stop them. The plot is very dramatic and worthy of being an epic, but there were gameplay issues that made some missions unfun; mostly hunting for hard to find glowies and other objectives on big maps with poor visibility. I gave it 4 stars. This also got Kyrie to level 34.
@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!"
6/17/2009
Started off Monday night playing Adventuress (24 MA/regen scrapper) and accepting an invitation to a Moonfire TF organized by the same person who led the Sister Psyche TF on Sunday. Our team mix was:
fire/thermal controller
dark/shield scrapper
nrg/nrg blaster
ill/rad controller
dark/sonic defender
ice/storm controller
MA/regen scrapper (me)
This ran pretty well but I noticed early on that I was really gasping for END, which is kinda weird for a regen; looking at my enhancements I realized I still had level 20 DOs for ENDMOD in Quick Recovery and level 20 DOs for ENDRDX in my attacks, which had gone red and were doing me no good. I had upgraded all the damage to SOs when I hit 22 but I think I skimped on the endurance enhancements due to lack of infl at the time. I ducked out to Talos for a couple minutes to upgrade these to level 25 SOs and I was fine after that. Finished the TF in 1hr 16mins for 31 merits (24.47 MPH), getting Adventuress to level 26 and Dragon's Tail.
After that I solo'd Mega (27 SS/will brute) through Becky's Revenge, a fun romp where you help a valley girl villainess wreak her revenge on Fusionette. This was a quick arc with a great concept and had really fun dialog, and I gave it 5 stars.
Tuesday night I played Mega on a quick Sharkhead SF. Our team mix was
3 brutes (including me)
spine/ninj stalker
night widow
One of the players was someone I had put on ignore about a week and a half ago after some PvP drama, but I ended up taking him off ignore, and he graciously apologized for his earlier behavior (which I accepted) and hoped I'd come to more of the PvP events. I was glad this worked out, since he's basically a good guy and we seem to team up a lot.
For the SF itself, I normally play a stalker for "quick" runs for the stealth and defense, but since I was on a level-appropriate toon at the time the SF was announced, I thought I'd give it a try on my brute. I carb-loaded with purple inspirations between missions, which let me fake having stealth (by chomping 3 purples at a time); the widow occasionally firing off Mind Link was helpful too. This mostly worked except for once I got clocked by ambushes in the Defeat Shockstorm mission, though this helped me get a head start towards the next mission.
One of the brutes had to AFK through the last mission, which made me a little nervous as we basically had 4 DPS and no debuff/buff/heal against the final 2 AVs. But we managed to beat Calystix and the Leviathan with pure DPS, finishing the SF in 33mins 33sec for 22 merits (39.34 MPH). This also got Mega to level 28 and Heightened Senses.
Mega also solo'd her way through A Little RnR, a story arc about some rich kids who turn to crime. The RnR gang is a neat idea but needed to be more tightly themed, and there were some plot problems, so I ended up rating it 3 stars.
I also spent some time on Protector server playing Dreamwind (29 storm/psy defender) as a sidekick on a 7 player Demolition Girls SG team, which did a Founders Falls safeguard and some mid 40s missions. We beat up Scirocco as an AV and Countess Crey as an EB, getting Dreamwind to level 30. I took TK Blast as a new power, but thinking that was a mistake as Dreamwind already has way too many attacks, between Mental Blast, Subdue, Will Domination, Psychic Scream, Psionic Tornado and now TK Blast...I really like taking attacks on defenders, I guess. Maybe I'll respec some of those out to get more pool powers at some point.
@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!"
6/23/2009
[Nearly a week of activity - kinda long.]
On Wednesday night I was playing Adventuress (26 MA/regen scrapper) when I was invited to a Citadel TF by the same person who ran the last Moonfire and Sister Psyche TFs that I was on. Fortunately, I like TFs. We had a team mix of:
fire/therm controller
dark/shield scrapper
emp/elec defender
spine/fire scrapper
MA/regen scrapper (me)
shield/axe tanker
ill/emp controller
sonic/dev blaster
This went pretty routinely (Council base...Council base...another Council base) and we finished in 1hr 27mins for 40 merits (27.59 MPH), getting Adventuress to level 27.
I spent Thursday night soloing Mega (28 SS/will brute) through a couple AE story arcs. I first played A Lame Joke which is about a comedian that turns to crime and recruits a bunch of clowns to help out. This arc was full of puns (some good, some groanworthy) but didn't have a lot more to it; I gave it 3 stars.
After that I ran Arachnos Research and Development: A Security Breach, where you're basically an incompetent lackey of a mad scientist, who sends you to fix problems created by his other incompetent lackeys. I liked the mad science theme, but didn't really like the story and was annoyed by the two Defeat All missions. I gave it 2 stars.
On Friday night, I played Kyrie Eleison (34 bs/inv scrapper) through The Lost Choir: Chapter Three: Apocrypha, the final arc of a 3-arc epic about religion, Rikti, and cross-dimensional invaders. This was a decent finish, but it was just one mission and so it didn't really stand on its own as a separate chapter; I think it would've worked better as the grand finale of Chapter Two. The final boss fight was crazy hard, especially with ambushes of minions that would buff him and debuff me. I ended up giving this 3 stars.
I then played Mega through Hero Therapy which had the interesting premise of being a series of sessions with a psychologist who uses hypnosis to guide you through dream sequences, in which you overcome your personality flaws and turn them into strengths. This was pretty cool, but perhaps could've used a little more symbolism to make it especially dreamy. I gave this story 4 stars.
Mega blew 1050 tickets on a couple Silver rolls (to keep from hitting the 9999 cap) and lucked into a Performance Shifter: Chance for END on one of them, which was a nice bonus.
After that I played Olivia Q (50 MA/SR scrapper) through The Revenge of Dr. Radium, where you're supposedly helping Dr. Aeon by gathering items needed to make a super gadget, which he tells you is needed to "Save the World". Spoiler: Don't trust AVs when they tell you stuff like that!! This arc had great characterization but its plot kinda assumes you're gullible enough to fall for this transparent lie, and suffers from the genericness of the "gather X items to activate the Y of Power" plot. I gave this story 4 stars.
Also on Friday night, I joined in for the Friday Night Fights - Ranged Toons Only PvP event. I played Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) throughout, and had a respectable showing. I think each match had 3 or 4 teams, all about 4-5 players in size.
[u]Match 1[u]
My team: 3 blasters, 1 dominator
Map: Lab
Result: my team #1, I got 4 kills
[u]Match 2[u]
My team: 3 blasters, 1 corruptor (one blaster went linkdead early on)
Map: Cargo Ship
Result: my team #2, I got 4 kills
[u]Match 3[u]
My team: 3 blasters, 1 corruptor
Map: Skyway City
Result: my team #1, I got 10 kills (whee!)
[u]Match 4[u]
My team: 1 corr, 1 blaster, 2 widows
Map: Outbreak
Result: my team #2, I got 4 kills
After the PvP event, I played Mega on a 4 player LEGION team for awhile, getting to level 29; then played Tehuantl (28 night widow) on an 8-player all VEAT team for awhile. We had 1 team wipe against CoT and another wipe against Rikti, but overall did well, getting Tehuantl to level 31. I took Mind Link at 30; for a typical VEAT I would've taken it earlier, but being on an all-VEAT team with stacking +DEF made it a lower priority.
I spent much of Saturday morning heavily revising my Axis and Allies story arc after receiving a marginal review. Although of course my initial reaction was more like "Hey, my arc is awesome!", that isn't really the right way to accept a negative review, so instead I tried to politely ask for more feedback on what I could do to make it better. I got some additional input which I think helped me make a lot of positive changes; mainly adding better descriptions to soldiers (adding more historical detail here) and defining special "Wehrmacht" and "Third Reich" factions (to handle the common complaint that 5th Column should be the term for Nazis operating in the US, not in Germany), and changing the final map. I'm still not fully confident in the map, which changed from "Ruined Atlas Park" to "Shiny Steel Canyon"; while it's nice that the new map actually has a map, and you can see better on it, and the terrain isn't quite as broken (messing up ally pathing), it also kinda loses the iconicness of Atlas and the war-torn look and feel. But I decided to go with it for now to see if people like it better.
The MoSTF organized on this forum was about to kick off on Saturday and had a couple no-shows, and I volunteered to help out. The team leader asked me to play Spacegirl (50 mind/rad controller) for extra debuff. Our team mix was:
kin/rad defender
will/SS tanker
sonic/nrg blaster
fire/ice blaster
mind/rad controller (me)
ill/rad controller
mind/emp controller
archery/nrg blaster
The archer remembered Spacegirl from a Shadow Shard TF, which was kinda cool. I wasn't that confident in this team being able to succeed at a MoSTF, but didn't mind trying so I went along with it. Paranoid about playing a squishy, I opened most fights with Mass Confusion to reduce the amount of return fire we got. We got through the first three missions just fine, which is actually pretty good because I've never been on a MoSTF that got past the Thorn Tree without someone dying.
In the fourth mission, the tanker went AFK for a few minutes at the door, but the rest of the team was impatient to find the security key, so we ended up going out hunting. We found the key after defeating only two security chiefs, which was pretty lucky; but as we headed for the door to the interior zone, we realized the AFK tanker's life bar was going down, because some of the ambushes were attacking him! Racing back to the zone in, we managed to heal him up in time. Whew!
Inside the building, we beat up the 4 AVs along the way, but unfortunately Dr. Aeon's alpha strike managed to flatten our tanker almost instantly, which blew the "Master of" part of the TF. Oh well. We resolved to continue on, though.
In the final mission we easily handled the 4 patron AVs and the Flyer, but had lots of deaths against Lord Recluse himself. The tanker tried kiting Lord Recluse around south of the big statue, but this didn't really work; LR would get to a certain range, then suddenly rubberband back to where we were killing the towers. We killed 2 towers, then had a team wipe, then regrouped and were able to finish off the rest of the towers and LR himself. I didn't catch the TF time, but I got a Peroxisome HO as reward.
After the STF, I played Blond Justice (50 bs/shield scrapper) on a speed ITF. Our team mix was:
2 brutes
kin corruptor
ill/emp controller
blaster
2 scrappers
sonic defender
We pretty much blitzed through the ITF, finishing in 47min 36sec for 28 merits (35.29 MPH). Blond spent 200 merits purchasing a level 33 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% global recharge), which I slotted in Grant Cover. This raises her global recharge to +45% overall.
I then played Mega through The Hero Simulator, Chapter 1, the Beta Testers, where you start out as a tester for a "Hero Simulator", which seems to be a lot like Architect Entertainment itself. But your contact, the QA guy, keeps screwing around with the simulation so you end up heroically saving demons from old ladies, and other weirdness. After 3 (intentionally) buggy missions, the contact finally asks you to go arrest someone he thinks is suspicious; but it turns out you get the wrong guy. This story didn't work for me; it felt like a series of random unrelated events. I ended up giving it 1 star.
Late Saturday night, I played Alice Slaughter (32 db/will brute on Triumph). I had noticed there were a lot of Alice in Wonderland themed story arcs in AE, and thought it would be fun to play my Alice themed toon through some of them. I had just barely started on a story arc when I got an invite to a team. I'm a sucker for teaming, so I ended up quitting the arc and joining the 8-player pickup team, which ran through a Talos mayhem and most of Vivacious Verandi's story arc, which got Alice to 34. When I eventually got back to doing AE stories, I ran Alice through Wicked, Wicked Wonderland and Alice in Wonderland part 1 of 2. Both had fun, good looking custom mobs but were pretty light on story, and I rated both of them 3 stars. I really liked the way my Alice character looked while fighting the Wonderland-themed mobs, though, and so I started a thread with screenshots of Alice's Adventures in Architect Entertainment.
Over Saturday and Sunday I played Thunder Girl (50 will/nrg tanker) some, first on an ITF with a team mix of
elec/elec brute
ninj stalker
blaster
widow
rad corruptor
will/nrg tanker
shield scrapper
fire/kin controller
We did mostly okay, though had a team wipe in mission 2 and a near-wipe against the console in mission 3. Finished in 1hr 23mins for 28 merits (20.24 MPH).
On the LGTF we had a team mix of:
2 scrappers (one was bs/fire, other I'm not sure)
?/dark stalker
grav/rad controller
2 defenders (emp/rad, rad/rad)
will/SS tanker (me)
axe/shield brute
One of the scrappers quit the LGTF within 2 minutes of starting the TF, claiming he "had to go". We resolved to press on with 7 players. No one felt confident in stealthing the first mission, so I ended up clearing the way to Penelope Yin and then leading her back. This took awhile, and so the rad defender said she needed us to hurry things up. So we tried stealthing the 2nd mission; unfortunately, most people were not very stealthy (I definitely wasn't, but could just run by the Rikti and not die) and so a lot of the squishy characters died doing this, which I felt bad about. I eventually started following one of the defenders as she tried to "stealth" past the Rikti, taunting Rikti off of them if they seemed to be taking too much fire; this seemed to help some.
In mission 3 we debated whether we would free the captives or get them killed. We felt pressed for time, and so we agreed to get Infernia and Glacia killed (horribly unheroic, sadly), but I think there was some sort of miscommunication because the rad defender again said she didn't have time to do it the "real" way and quit the team anyway. We went ahead and got the two heroes killed, and around this time the scrapper who bailed earlier logged back on and was talking on LBX, and I'm afraid I verbally harangued him on LBX, which I probably shouldn't have done, but I was pretty annoyed because we were now really short-handed, and this wasn't the first time I'd seen him bail on a TF for scant reason. He claimed he had no knowledge of quitting from our TF, blaming "his brother" or maybe "his sister", but I found this pretty unbelievable.
We started mission 4 with a team of 6 and we were all pretty skeptical about beating Hamidon, but decided to give it a try. I taunted most of the Rikti into the goo, then led the charge against the Yellow Mitos, which was no problem for our team; the Blue Mitos were a real problem for us, though, since we had almost no ranged damage (only the emp defender and grav controller, technically). Some of the melee did have range attacks and we all broke out temp powers for range attacks; this was all still pretty feeble compared to even having 1 blaster, but we coordinated fire and it seemed just enough to kill a Blue mito over the heals of the Green mitos. After some patience and teamwork we eventually dropped all the Blues, after which the Greens and Hamidon itself were no problem.
We were kinda tired at this point and for mission 5 I simply ran to the final room with my tanker nonstealth, letting the Rikti attacks bounce off me, and team TP'd everyone there. We beat up Hro'Dtohz without much trouble, but had a marathon battle against the Honoree. Our DPS/debuff was a little light from being shorthanded, and the Honoree went Unstoppable on us 3 times before we finally beat his life bar down to 0. Finished the TF overall in 2hrs 11mins for 39 merits (17.86 MPH). 2hrs isn't all that bad, though it felt much longer; the whole team seemed relieved that we were even able to complete the TF at all.
I cashed in 180 of Thunder Girl's reward merits for recipe rolls, receiving:
1 Devastation (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=4M
2 Touch of Death (DMG/END/RCHG) Wentw=5M
1 Glimpse of the Abyss (chance for Psi damage) Wentw=1K
1 Devastation (chance for hold) Wentw=100K
1 Aegis (+Psi resist/Mez resist) Wentw=1M
1 Aegis (END/RCHG/RES) Wentw=1M
1 Touch of Death (ACC/DMG/END) Wentw=13M
1 Touch of Lady Grey (RCHG/END) Wentw=5K
....a total value of 24.106M infl, or 134K/merit. This is yield is a little on the low side, but I figure I'm likely to use the Touch of Death and Devastation recipes at some point, at least.
On Monday night, I played Milady de Winter (12 ice/emp controller) on a small team Positron TF organized on LBX. Our team mix was:
3 scrappers (kat/SR, claw/SR, spine/DA, all exemped)
1 ice/emp controller (me)
Most stealthable missions, the scrappers simply rushed to the end room, trusting their defenses to keep them alive; unfortunately, I mostly couldn't help with those missions due to squishiness and lack of stealth. On other missions I felt like I got to help a lot, though, as exemped to 15 all the scrappers still took a healthy amount of damage from mobs, which both Ice Slick and the empathy heals seemed very helpful for. One of the scrappers complimented me on "playing my toon well", which was really nice (especially considering I don't play controllers that much). With a small team we finished the Positron TF in a blazing (well, relatively) 1hr 49mins for 64 merits (35.23 MPH), getting Milady to level 16. I took Hasten and Superspeed for her new powers.
After that, I logged on Mega to check the Black Market and found a Rikti invasion in Cap au Diable; I ended up joining an 8 player pickup team to fight the Rikti invaders. When the invasion ended, I picked up a friend on a storm corruptor as a lackey and we duo'd some radio missions in Nerva Archipelago, which got Mega to level 30. I took Kick as a new power, to unlock Tough and Weave.
Finished the night playing Kashira (22 db/ninj stalker) on a Silver Mantis SF. Our team mix was:
merc/dark MM
mind/nrg dom
robo/FF MM
db/ninj stalker (me)
fire/fire brute
stone/stone brute
robo/dark MM
It seemed like the brutes did most of the work on this SF, usually running on their own deep into each mission to achieve the various objectives. They were using a trick I hadn't seen before, herding different factions in each door mission into each other to force them to fight; I had not actually realized they hated each other. As a stalker I tried to follow along with them to help out, but not sure if it was doing much good (as a stalker I don't taunt stuff, but I could stab stuff occasionally) and it was kinda risky; I caught aggro a few times, forcing a run back from the hospital. Anyhow, in this way we got through most of the SF, but just before the final mission, my internet connection suddenly died for an hour, so I missed the SF completion. When I got back, it sounded like some people had wanted to wait for me, but there's no way anyone should wait an hour for a linkdead person, so I had no problem with how it worked out. Kashira did get to level 23 before my ISP died on me, though.
@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!"
6/25/2009
Tuesday night I solo'd Mega (30 SS/will brute) through finishing the Thief of Midnight arc, getting 6 merits. Then I played Schadenfreude (47 AR/pain corruptor) through a speed LGTF organized on Villains of Liberty channel; our team mix was:
ice/nrg tanker
2 scrappers (spine/fire, ?/SR)
night widow
fortunata
3 corruptors (AR/pain, fire/cold, rad/therm)
The team leader was a little dubious on my playing a sub-50 on a speed TF; I offered to switch to a 50, but the leader said it was okay. As a result, though, I tried to both be extra helpful (stealthing to stuff to help out) and extra careful (slamming 2 or 3 purples at a time while "stealthing" because Rikti really could see through my Concealment pool Stealth). I think I did pretty well, outsurviving most other team members and only dying once, in the final ambush of the final mission. We finished in 31mins 21sec for 39 merits (74.64 MPH) and got Schadenfreude to level 48.
After that, someone was offering to invite people to the Tyrant mission on several chat channels, and this sounded like fun, so I swapped to Blond Justice (50 broadsword/shield scrapper) and joined a 5-player team that took down an AV-level Tyrant. Blond got the Statesman's Pal badge from this, and a level 50 Obliteration (DMG/RCHG) recipe dropped for her at the end of the mission, which was pretty nice (6M value at Wentworths).
Finished the night playing Mega on a Sharkhead SF with a team of:
bane spider
fire/rad corruptor
SS/will brute (me)
? dominator
night widow
Most of us were getting exp so we fought our way through most missions, finishing in 1hr 23mins for 22 merits (15.90MPH) and getting Mega to level 31.
Wednesday night, I solo'd Mega through the Midnight Squad story arc, earning 5 merits and unlocking the Midnight Club. Some friends were trying to form a low 40s ITF on the Sisterhood channel for exp, so I switched to Primadonna (42 sonic/kin corruptor) and joined a team of:
earth/sonic controller
plant/TA controller
cold/sonic defender
sonic/kin corruptor (me)
MA/shield scrapper
?/ninj stalker
thug/pain MM
Despite being a 7-player team and having no real "tank" (the scrapper and defender both were tanking for us, kinda), the crazy amount of buff/debuff we had carried the day. Finished in 1hr 22mins for 28 merits (20.49 MPH) and got Primadonna to level 43.
After the ITF I did some IO crafting for Primadonna, slotting 6 Stupefy into her Screech power for +6.25% global recharge, +3.13% range DEF, and 6 Red Fortune into her Maneuvers power for another +5% global recharge, +2.5% range DEF. Global recharge is generally useful for everybody, and I'm also focusing on DEF bonuses for Primadonna because I feel awfully squishy as a kin.
A bit later I did another speed Lady Grey TF organized on Villains of Liberty, this time playing Mayday (50 fortunata) on a team of:
2 fortunatas
2 corruptors (sonic/thermal, nrg/kin)
2 scrappers (?/regen, ?/SR)
brute (elec/SR)
stalker (ninj/DA)
The regen said he didn't have enough time to finish the TF up front, but helped us get it started; he had to leave after mission 3. Otherwise we pretty much stealthed/rushed/sped through the whole thing in 38mins 20sec for 39 merits (61.04 MPH).
After that I switched back to Mega (31 SS/will brute) and cashed in 420 tickets for 6 Bronze recipe rolls; highlights of this draw were another Performance Shifter (chance for END) and a Mako's Bite (ACC/DMG/END/RCHG). Not bad at all. I then accepted a pickup team invite, joining a 5 player team that took down a Hero-level Back Alley Brawler, though afterwards we got greedy and tried to clear his entire ship; the interior was easy, but going to the exterior of the ship, we suffered a team wipe from a huge squadron of angry Longbow chasers and eagles. We went on to defeat a Hero-level Mynx (getting me 3 merits for completing one of Crimson Revenant's story arcs) and a few more missions before calling it a night.
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
6/26/2009
I started out Thursday night playing Mega (31 SS/will brute) through Power Play, a villainous story about mad science and who'll end up in control of an army of robots. I liked that this story had you betraying the contact instead of the more common arrangement where the contact sells you out. The story implied that "I" had a master plan to play the various mad scientists against each other, but this plan wasn't really communicated very well to me, so at times I was confused as to what "my" plan really was. It was still pretty neat though and I gave it 4 stars.
This also got Mega to level 32, where I took Foot Stomp and started slotting some level 35 Kinetic Combat IOs that I had been stockpiling. I had one set of 4 and one set of 3 and some odds and ends, which totaled +3.75% smash/lethal DEF, +3.0% max HP. The Kinetic Combat (DMG/END) recipe seems the hardest/most expensive to get; I decided to try and spend some tickets randomly rolling for that, and I burned about 1000 tickets on Bronze and Silver rolls without getting anything worth mentioning. I might start slotting Kinetic Combat (chance for knockdown) recipes, which are much easier to get, but don't enhance the power's ACC, DMG, ENDRDX or anything, so I'm not sure whether they are worthy of an enhancement slot.
After spending some time fiddling with the Black Market and IO slotting, I signed on with a speed Sharkhead SF organized on Villains of Liberty channel. I played Spy Girl (33 MA/ninj stalker) for the sake of easy stealth, and our team mix was:
3 brutes
fortunata
stalker (me)
crab
The speed SF went pretty routinely and we finished in 29mins 30sec for 22 merits (44.75 MPH). I spent 20 of these merits on a random recipe roll, and got a 33 Numina's Convalescence (+recovery/+regen) which was very sweet.
This team ended up doing a 1st villain respec after that. Several people switched alts for the respec, and I switched to Mega (now 32 SS/will brute). Ironically we ended up with the same team composition:
3 brutes (including me)
fortunata
stalker
crab
....just with different players in each role. We cherry picked the bosses from the first door mission and went directly after vines in the Thorn Tree mission, which let us finish in a ludicrously fast 10min 31sec for 15 merits (85.58 MPH). I debated taking the respec reward for the badge, but decided I'd rather have merits.
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
6/29/2009
When I logged on Friday night, people were asking for help forming a mother ship raid in Rikti War Zone, so I ran Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) over there to help out, joining an 8-player team to destroy pylons and beat up aliens. I personally grabbed a bomb (number 22 out of 25 for my badge progress), got 2 reward merits from the master-at-arms, 312 Vanguard merits for the raid overall, and a compliment on Police Woman's costume.
After the raid wrapped up, it sounded like villains needed help for the King of the Hill PVP event in Recluse's Victory. So I played Yuki-Onna (50 ice/cold corruptor) on a 7-player villain team, that successfully stormed the Atlas statue and drove off the Hero team that was previously holding it. We weathered four or five counterattacks from the heroes; it seemed like blue side had more people, but curiously enough red side had more "support" classes (most of us were corruptors) so we dominated the zone for quite awhile, until a big hero assault pushed us off of the statue. This left the red side team rather scattered and we got defeated in detail for awhile, until we rallied and fought back for a bit, though we weren't able to retake the statue before the event ended.
After the PVP event finished, I went to Triumph server to play Alice Slaughter (34 db/will brute) on my continuing campaign to play Wonderland-themed story arcs. I played Alice in Wonderland (Part 2 of 2), which had cool looking models but not much story; I rated it 3 stars. Then I played Jabberwocky, which had fun clues that each were a stanza from the Jabberwocky poem, and seemed a well put-together single mission arc; I gave it 4 stars.
Finished the night playing Mega (32 SS/will brute) as a lackey on a 3-player level 50s team, which beat an elite boss Lord Recluse and completed a Peregrine Island mayhem. I also did some IO crafting, slotting two more sets of 4 Kinetic Combat into melee powers for +7.5% smash/lethal DEF, and 5 Decimation in her Hurl power for +6.25% recharge.
On Saturday afternoon, I spent some time duoing Mega with a level 34 brute. We did several door missions which went pretty well, until my teammate decided to spend a lengthy amount of time at the Black Market while I waited around. I wouldn't mind this too much, but a friend of mine was having trouble filling a team for Synapse TF, so I excused myself and jumped to blue side.
There, I found that I had hooked up with the second leg of the Task Force Commander Weekend event. Playing Milady de Winter (16 ice/emp controller), we did a Synapse TF with a team mix of:
grav/rad controller
inv/ss tanker
dark/elec defender
will/ss tanker
ice/emp controller (me)
fire/fire scrapper
earth/TA controller
This team was very safe but quite slow due to our very low DPS (the scrapper was on the low end and unSK'd so we essentially had no damage dealers). We had lots of support types so were never in any real danger, finishing the TF in 2hrs 55mins for 59 merits (counting 2 extra from Babbage; 20.23 MPH). This got Milady to level 20, and I took Clear Mind and Fortitude for her new powers. I could've taken Stamina instead, but I opted to take Fortitude because I wasn't having trouble with END management yet, while I consider Fortitude to be close to a godmode power.
The Task Force Commander marathon continued with a Sister Psyche TF. I started off on Milady at level 20, but our team was shaping up to be low on damage again, so I decided to switch to Kyrie Eleison (34 bs/inv scrapper) for extra DPS to help speed things up. I immediately got a compliment on how Kyrie Eleison was a great name for an angelic character, which was nice. Our team mix ended up being:
grav/rad controller
inv/SS tanker
dark/elec defender
ill/rad controller
bs/inv scrapper (me)
We had a minimum size team, but it was a solid mix of ATs and we got through the Sister Psyche TF with no difficulties. The game crashed on me as I exited the last mission, though, so I didn't get an elapsed time on the TF; I did verify I got the TF badge and the merits, though.
I took a break for dinner, but when I got back, the TF Commander marathon was still going, and I ended up playing Strong Woman (30 inv/SS tanker) on a Manticore TF with a team of:
kat/regen scrapper
plant/TA controller
3 blasters (fire/fire, AR/ice, fire/ice)
inv/SS tanker (me)
fire/rad controller
shield/SS tanker
The shield tanker seemed a little shy about attacking mobs, so I ended up charging into mobs of Crey most of the time, despite being sidekicked. We didn't have a proper stealth/TPer so didn't stealth very much (I did pseudo-stealth one mission by rushing to the end, letting Crey attacks bounce off my resists, and using veteran TP) but nevertheless finished without serious problems (other than nearly falling asleep at keyboard due to the late hour) in 1hr 41mins. This earned me 32 merits (19.01 MPH) and level 31.
On Sunday, I solo'd Mega through The Hero Simulator: Part 2, a story arc where you investigate a shady robotics company involved in sabotaging Architect Entertainment missions. This story was okay; I gave it 3 stars.
After that I saw a friend playing a lowbie brute, so I switched to Terrific Woman (10 SS/SR brute) to duo with her. We knocked out my Council Cargo story arc, defeating an elite boss Lt Blechley for 4 reward merits, then picked up a corruptor and helped her defeat an elite boss 3K Kelvin. We eventually grew to a 5 player team that got Terrific Woman to level 13; I took Swift at level 12.
Later on Sunday night, I played Spy Girl (33 MA/ninj stalker) as a lackey to another stalker doing a Founders Falls mayhem mission. We thoroughly plundered Founders Falls, clearing all the side missions, getting the explore badge and robbing the bank.
Then I joined a friend on a team in Peregrine Island, playing Rain Dancer (50 storm/archery defender) on a 7-player team fighting Praetorian AVs. We had no melee characters so I got to cut loose on stormy madness, which is great fun to inflict on unsuspecting AVs. We beat up Dominatrix, Marauder and Tyrant, all AV-level, and got the Statesman's Pal badge.
I finished the weekend playing TokyoRose (17 sonic/sonic corruptor) on a Cap au Diable SF. Our team was:
ice/cold corruptor
2 wolf spiders
SS/inv brute
sonic/sonic corruptor (me)
db/ninj stalker
We had two flavors of shields and no healing, so got to buff everyone so they felt really tough (until they ran out of hit points). We got through most of the missions fine in this way, with a few occasional deaths. It seemed like the sonic debuffs and the venom grenades from the spiders made all the enemies just melt; we steamrollered over the Infernal and Bat'Zul AVs very quickly as a result. Finished the SF in 1hr 1min for 12 merits (11.80 MPH) and got TokyoRose to 18, where I took Health.
@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!"
7/1/2009
On Monday, the I15 update hit, and I spent much of my evening updating my story arcs to be I15 compliant.
Of my story arcs, the most dramatically impacted by I15 was Celebrity Kidnapping, which begins with a jailbreak from the Zig with help from the Family. Prisoners had been removed as a valid enemy group in I15, and it appeared some bug prevented Family from spawning in the level 30-39 range (even on villain side). I ended up having to bring back my custom "Convicts" faction with 2 orange jumpsuited prisoners, and create my own custom "Family" faction with a minion, lieutenant and a boss, who I tried to make look like existing Family mobs. This felt like a waste of arc space, but seemed necessary as I could not spawn the normal Prisoners and Family any more. Taking a suggestion from a reviewer, I also added "Unbelievable Man" as a new boss that spawns on your way out of the final mission, after you run off Lois Watson and her assistant Jimmy. An awful lot of stuff spawns on your way out of that mission already, but I think the hectic finale feels true to the "heist" genre.
Teen Phalanx Forever! worked pretty well right out of the box; I15 gave me a little extra space, so I added an extra model to the final ambush against the final AV. I15 deleted all "0 star" ratings, which suddenly catapulted Teen Phalanx to 5 stars and a decent position on page 2 of the search tool, which was quite nice. I was disappointed my other arcs didn't move up in rating as a result, but it's probably fair -- Teen Phalanx is definitely the best of my arcs right now.
Axis and Allies also worked fine after I15, and gave me enough extra space for me to re-add the American Sergeant to the US Army faction. I also tinkered heavily with custom power selections, giving Arctic Air back to the Russian generals (at some point they lost this due to power tweaking by the devs) and giving Unyielding to Maiden Justice (she seemed way too easy to beat if you could perma-knockdown her, but I previously couldn't give her Unyielding without also giving her Unstoppable). I almost changed all of my femme fatale contact's dialog into using a cheesy German accent (due to a player feedback) but a sanity check from MA Arc Finder channel persuaded me that this would be a dumb idea.
I15 also gave some built-in keywords that you could use to categorize your arcs, which I really like. Celebrity Kidnapping and Teen Phalanx Forever! are now both labeled Solo Friendly, Complex Mechanics and Comedy, while Axis and Allies is Solo Friendly, Custom Characters, Take Over the World. I spent some time testing all the arcs to make sure they were still functional, running Mega (33 SS/will brute) through the two villainous ones and Terrific Woman (13 SS/SR brute) through Teen Phalanx (which got her to level 14).
After messing with Mission Architect for a good long time, I signed on with an all-corruptor "Bison" (really Barracuda) Strike Force forming on Villains of Liberty. I played Schadenfreude (48 AR/pain corruptor) and everyone kept telling me how appropriate a name my character had for this SF. Our team mix was:
ice/cold corr
ice/rad corr
AR/pain corr (me)
AR/kin corr
ice/kin corr
fire/therm corr
dark/kin corr
rad/rad corr
We ran through the SF really fast (we had six people who didn't know how the SF worked, but the two people who had run it before were calling the shots) so I didn't quite get everything, but the plot seemed to be that we stole some stuff and end up letting Reichsman loose from a Freedom Phalanx super-prison. Reichsman looks just like M. Bison from Street Fighter, which is why everyone was calling it the "Bison SF". Schadenfreude being a card-carrying 5th Column member, I tried persuading my team to give up on that loser Lord Recluse and join up with Reichsman instead; no one went for it, though. The story kinda scripted us into opposing Reichsman for no really good reason. We ended up fighting Ms Liberty, Numina, a 5th column AV who ripped off my name (Schadenfreude), all four villain patron AVs, and then finally Reichsman himself. We had 8 corruptors and sickening amounts of debuff, but even so, Reichsman was pretty darn tough. I heard another BSF team running at the same time could not dent his HPs. My team was able to wear him down, despite him occasionally phase shifting or something insane like that, and completed the SF in 1hr 9mins for 20 merits (17.39 MPH; this seemed a really low reward for the effort involved) and the Arbiter badge. Schadenfreude hit level 49 along the way.
After the BSF I spent some time crafting IOs for Schadenfreude, slotting 6 Gaussian's Synchronized Fire Control into her Tactics (for +2.5% global DMG and +2.5% DEF to all positions) and 5 Positron's Blast into her Buckshot (for +6.25% global RCHG). This puts her base ranged DEF at 9.25% and her base recharge at 46.25%.
On Tuesday night, I played Dreamwind (30 storm/psy defender on Protector server) as a sidekick on a 7-player Demolition Girls SG team running Praetorian AV missions. We had two tankers for awhile, but when the higher level tanker left the team, the other one refused to tank since the mobs were +6 to +7 to him. As a stormy, I offered to try tanking, and so I rushed a mob with hurricane on. This resulted in the tanker telling me that I "suck" as a tank because I was blowing things around. I was rather stung by this, so I suggested that he should take an SK (we had several level 46-47 players on the team, but he was playing at 42) and actually tank for us. He still refused to take an SK, but seemed to be guilt-tripped into actually trying to tank for awhile. I was annoyed enough by this that I considered leaving the team, but the team leader told me she "talked to" the tanker, and I wanted to beat up the Praetorian AVs, so I ended up staying. We beat up Chimera, Battle Maiden, Diabolique and Nightstar; this got Dreamwind to level 33. I took Lightning Storm at 32 and slotted it up some.
After that team broke up, I spent some time on Mega (33 SS/will brute) cashing in merits and tickets for recipes and turning them into IOs, which I've been squirreling away in my little base. 120 reward merits turned into 6 reward rolls, and I got:
Touch of the Nictus (ACC/END/RCHG) BlkMkt=5M
Obliteration (% of smashing) BlkMkt=10M
Aegis (+psi RES/mez resist) BlkMkt=1M
Devastation (% to hold) BlkMkt=4M
Ghost Widow's Embrace (ACC/HOLD/RCHG) BlkMkt=1K
Numina's Convalescence (+recovery/+regen) BlkMkt=51M
The Numina's unique was clearly the prize of this set. I crafted it but need some more slots before I can effectively use it. I also burned about 9000 tickets on Silver rewards, at 525 tickets a roll. Technically Bronze have a better payoff per ticket, but I just didn't want to have to deal with deleting a ton of junk recipes. From this I got:
Neronic Shutdown (HOLD/RCHG)
Obliteration (DMG/RCHG)
Impervium Armor (END/RCHG/RES)
Siphon Insight (ToHitDebuff/END/RCHG)
Eradication (ACC/RCHG)
Scirocco's Dervish (DMG/RCHG)
Shield Breaker (ACC/RCHG)
Performance Shifter (END/RCHG)
Luck of the Gambler (DEF)
Ghost Widow's Embrace (ACC/RCHG)
Ghost Widow's Embrace (END/HOLD)
Call to Arms (ACC/DMG)
Analyze Weakness (ACC/DefDebuff)
Obliteration (ACC/RCHG)
Pounding Slugfest (DMG/END)
Basilisk's Gaze (ACC/RCHG)
Basilisk's Gaze (RCHG/HOLD)
Aegis (END/RCHG)
I didn't take the time to price all these, but I was happiest with the LotG, the Obliterations, the Eradication and the Scirocco's Dervish, which all seem like recipes I might actually use. I spent quite a lot of time buying salvage and crafting IOs. For some of the common arcane salvage, though, the Black Market price was so high that I found it worthwhile to go buy arcane salvage rolls at the Ticket Vendor for 8 tickets a roll; pretty much all the arcane salvage is super-inflated in value, so even if it took me ten rolls to get, say, an Alchemical Silver, the extra salvage I got was still worth something.
@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!"
HAHAHAHAHA. I thought when i said who shoudl tnak, and i said a blue shield, thta it was OBVOIUS this was humor.
I love how someone elses humor gets confused. The difference in tanking +5 to +6 enemies is what? I was offered an sk that brought me only to fight +5s and no one else offered. Then, you obvoiulsy either didn't read the entire exchange. I am sorry for my attempt of humor was not to what you are accustomed too.
As for the stormy scatter trick, I remember saying that is not tanking, but it works. Tanking is enitrely differnt from what hurricane stormies, and icepatch blasters do. Different Idea. Tanking is when the tank controls the aggro of the enemeiy whiel lessening if not commpletely keeping the team green, thru him/her it being a meatshiled. what stomies do is change then enitre battlefield by moving the pices to diffent positions. So that was the entire point i was making. Does it work? yep, esepcailly works on nemesis where tanking can be somewhat diffcult.
You were annoyed? I was annoyed to the pint of dropping the team when i get a teel about stop being an [censored], when i am thinking the entire tanking/stormie thing was funny.
So what would you do? beg for an sk that gets you closer to the level?
Holding 100% aggro applies to maybe 1% of game content and doesn't constitute my idea of tanking. It's just taking the alpha for the other 99% of game content.
Regardless of what tanking is, PW is doing more for that team than said tanker, who sounds like a dead weight. And I would imagine she's more stunned by the tank telling her what she's doing is not tanking when the tank could just step up and do it.
I do not doubt PW was doing more then me on the team, as I said I was fightng +5 to +7s with or without an sk during most of the missions. My point of contention is that PW took the entire conversation entirely differently from the way it was intended. For that I am sorry.
7/9/2009
[Long - been awhile since my last update]
On Wednesday 7/1 I joined an Imperious TF with Samurai-ko (39 katana/will scrapper) as a sidekick. Our team mix was:
thug/dark MM
?/storm corr
dark/dark stalker
widow
SS/shield brute
kat/will scrapper (me)
TA/archery defender
warshade
This team didn't feel like it had quite enough support (I like dark, storm and even TA, but for some reason it wasn't quite adding up), and as a result the TF was a bit of a slog. At some point I died in mission 1 and embarrassingly found out that I had the TA defender on ignore; he had been trying to give me a rez arrow (aka Awaken) when he found that out. I had ignored him earlier in the week after he had dumped a dozen or so lines of macro'd spam to LBX channel; it wasn't anything serious, so I took him off ignore. It was slow going and we had a team wipe in mission 3 against the Phalanx computer. I had a moment of glory where I was the only team member alive, hacking away at the computer, for half a minute as robots zapped at me; they eventually dropped me when the computer had like 200 health left. After regrouping we managed to take it down, though. In the final mission, we had two straight wipes against the first Romulus, then dropped the first Romulus and had another team wipe against the second Romulus. We just didn't seem to have enough damage mitigation to stand up against AVs with lots of Nictus and Romans attacking at the same time. Our zerg tactics eventually overwhelmed the AVs, though, and we finished the TF in 2hrs 29mins for 28 merits (11.28 MPH), getting Samurai-ko to level 40.
On Thursday 7/2, I played Mega (33 SS/will brute) through Aeon's Nemesis, a pretty fun story arc where Marshal Brass hires you to look into the shady stuff he thinks Dr. Aeon is up to, especially related to AE itself. I had trouble finding all the glowies in one of the missions and had to restart the arc once, but the story overall was pretty neat (if a little confusing). I gave it 4 stars. This got Mega to level 34.
I went on to accept an invite to a 4 player pickup team led by a mastermind who had a fun "mad scientist" attitude, who complimented me on Mega's background story. We did several regular missions and a Talos mayhem.
I had Friday off for the holiday, and played a lot of CoH. I first signed on with a friend for a Dr. Kahn TF on Triumph server, playing Kid Valkyrie (50 bs/regen scrapper) with a team of:
will/nrg tanker
sonic/MM blaster
cold/sonic defender (no shields)
fire/nrg blaster
bs/shield scrapper
bs/regen scrapper (me)
sonic/elec defender
ice/nrg blaster
When I saw we only had a sonic defender and a buff-less cold defender, I remembered how tough the Barracuda SF was and I told my friend that, although I was happy to try this, I thought we were toast. She assured me that the hero TF was much, much easier than the villain SF, and it was true. Despite being light on support, we got through the TF in 51mins 45sec for 20 merits (23.19 MPH). I was struck by how much the final encounter reminded me of Pokemon; Reichsman has a bunch of AVs trapped in little pokeballs, and periodically he yells, "I choose YOU, Countess Crey!" and an AV comes out of the pokeball to try and kill us.
Also on this TF, I had a total stranger recognize Kid Valkyrie from Teen Phalanx Forever!, and tell me he loved the story arc, which was totally awesome!
Speaking of Teen Phalanx, I found a 2 week old email in my "spam" mailbox from the organizer of Projectionist's Mission Arc Contest asking me for details about what kind of art I'd like for a prize.... gahh! Stupid spam filter! Anyway, I asked him to make a picture of the Teen Phalanx in some sort of action scene, and he seemed to like this idea; I ended up mailing off to him the .costume files for the various Teen Phalanxers.
A little later I joined a Sister Psyche TF on Liberty server as Milady de Winter (20 ice/emp controller). Our team mix was:
shield/mace tanker
bs/shield scrapper
earth/TA controller
bs/will scrapper
ice/emp controller (me)
grav/rad controller
dark/dark defender
elec/elec blaster
This seemed a pretty strong team, and we were doing pretty well, but during the second mission the tanker, who was the TF leader, said "AFK a second" and then never came back. We finished the whole mission, then waited for him; since he was the TF leader, we couldn't get the next mission, couldn't kick him, and since he was inside a mission, the game would never idle him out. After about half an hour, we were all fed up and quit the TF. This seems to be a recurring thing with this person (he was also the scrapper who bailed during the first mission of an LGTF I was on) and several of us vowed never to join a TF led by this person again.
The whole thing took about an hour; those two missions did end up getting Milady to level 21, however. I'm not quite sure whether I will stick with her; I have trouble getting into controllers (and dominators, for that matter) because it just doesn't feel like the control powers do enough to be worthwhile. I do like being able to throw down ice slicks, but the ice hold and immob seem soooo low on DPS.
I played Mystery Girl (35 ff/nrg defender) for a little bit; she had been sitting on the bench for a couple months, but I got interested in force fields again and ran her through the Midnight Squad arc to unlock Cimerora, and started buying some IOs, figuring I'll try to raise her ranged DEF.
Then I played Alice Slaughter (34 db/will brute on Triumph) on a 6-player villain team for a bit, that did a Brickstown mayhem and got Alice to level 35, where I took Hurdle. I'm so totally used to having Swift and Hurdle (as prereqs for Stamina) that I find it hard to get by without them.
After that, I joined a Dr. Kahn TF on Liberty server; the team leader specifically asked for a scrapper (this almost never happens) and so I played Blond Justice (50 bs/shield scrapper). Our team mix was:
2 blasters (nrg/nrg, fire/nrg)
2 controllers (ill/kin, ill/rad)
2 defenders (emp/psy, cold/ice)
1 tanker (shield/nrg)
1 scrapper (bs/shield, me)
With this team lineup it made sense why they wanted a scrapper, as the only one of the basic ATs they were missing. Anyway, this team handled the TF pretty easily and I got to explain my Pokemon theory to the people who were fighting Reichsman for the first time, which was fun. We finished in 54min 58sec for 20 merits (21.83 MPH).
After that TF wrapped up, there was a mother ship raid starting up in RWZ, and I joined in with Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster), picking up bomb #23 for her badge progress, and gaining a fistful of Vanguard merits. I have over 3000 now, I should probably burn them off using Vanguard heavies more often.
After the raid I played Strong Woman (31 inv/SS tanker) on a Katie TF, with a team of
2 tankers (will/axe, inv/SS)
2 blasters (AR/dev, psy/fire)
2 defenders (storm/archery, TA/archery)
2 controllers (mind/storm, fire/kin)
This ran a little slow, 41min 56sec, but otherwise seemed fine, getting us 9 merits (12.88 MPH). Strong Woman got to level 33 (think I took Kick at 32, to open Fighting Pool) and two compliments on her origin story, which is basically a pastiche of other typical origin stories tied up into a joke. I like level 33 recipes, so after the TF I cashed in all of Strong Woman's 300 reward merits for random recipe rolls, getting:
1 Stupefy (chance for KB) Wentw=100K
1 Impervium Armor (RES) Wentw=3M
1 Edict of the Master (DMG) Wentw=0
1 Devastation (chance for hold) Wentw=1.5M
1 Lockdown (chance for +2 mag) Wentw=2M
2 Glimpse o the Abyss (ACC/FEAR/RCHG) Wentw=300K
1 Aegis (END/RCHG) Wentw=100K
1 Mako's Bite (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=500K
2 Positron's Blast (chance for energy) Wentw=3M
1 Miracle (+recovery) Wentw=80M
1 Touch of the Nictus (ACC/END/RCHG) Wentw=1.5M
1 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% global rchg) Wentw=60M
1 Scirocco's Dervish (chance for lethal) Wentw=1M
This seemed like a very good recipe draw (156.3M infl worth for 300 merits = 521K infl/merit, over double my usual average). The level 33 Miracle and LotG were the big prizes, of course; their market value was 90% of the value of the whole draw.
Strong Woman also had a few tickets kicking around in her inventory; cashed in 525 of those for a silver reward roll, getting a Touch of Death (DMG/RCHG). Not bad.
On Saturday I only played briefly, playing Spy Girl (33 MA/ninj stalker) on a speed Sharkhead SF, with
2 brute
3 stalker
1 rad corruptor
1 crab
finishing in 31min 16sec for 22 merits (42.22 MPH). I used 20 merits for a random recipe roll, getting a Decimation (ACC/END/RCHG), which I'll probably use on some character or another.
Sunday, I was playing Mega (34 will/SS brute) on some story-oriented missions, starting on Tales of Croatoa: A Rose by Any Other Name. While there, another brute struck up a conversation with me and I ended up agreeing to quit my arc and join her team for a story arc (teaming is more fun than soloing, after all). This turned out to be a farm mission where you fight an immense number of minotaurs hanging out in the city streets; I'm not that into farms, but this other brute seemed nice and I felt it would be rude to suddenly bail. So I ended up helping clear most of this mission before excusing myself. There were these medical lab things placed in the middle of spawns, which seemed to buff +END; a farming trick, I guess. This one mission got Mega to level 36; farming is pretty crazy exp. I took Tough at 35, figuring I'll need it eventually for those nasty Romans on the ITF.
On Monday, I tried to play Tales of Croatoa: A Rose by Any Other Name again; Mega had outleveled the arc, which was set for 25-34, so I tried playing Adventuress (27 MA/regen scrapper). Some sort of bug caused all the ghosts in the second mission to spawn at 34 (the high end of the level range), and my scrapper (at least this one) can't handle +7s, so I ended up quitting the arc again and restarting it with Spy Girl (33 MA/ninj stalker). The arc was actually quite a well-written, moody investigation into a past tragedy, and involved most of the magical factions that hang out in Croatoa. Despite the bug I had run into, I liked this story arc a lot and gave it 5 stars.
After wrapping that up, I played Blond Justice (50 bs/shield scrapper) on a speed ITF with a team of:
brute
2 controllers (plant/kin, ill/rad)
dominator
3 scrappers (bs/shield, db/will, db/SR)
defender (kin/sonic)
The brute and scrappers basically blitzed all objectives, with the squishies trying to keep up without dying (I felt a bit bad that they would die a lot due to all the stray aggro). In this way, we finished in 33min 25sec for 28 merits (50.27 MPH).
After that, a villain team was looking for more buffer/debuffers, so I played TokyoRose (18 sonic/sonic corruptor) as a lackey on a mid 40s villain team, doing the PvE arc involving Fortunata Amelee. We did well against most of the enemies, but got stopped cold by an AV level Swan; unfortunately, her psy damage utterly ignores sonic shields. We ended up inviting a 47 brute to help us take down the level 44 Swan.
On Tuesday night I worked out a respec for Spy Girl, slotting up IO sets to increase her basic defenses. This is the design goal I was working towards (I got most of these IOs, but was unable to acquire some of them as of yet):
Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.401
http://www.cohplanner.com/
[u]Click this DataLink to open the build![u]
Spy Girl I15: Level 33 Natural Stalker
Primary Power Set: Martial Arts
Secondary Power Set: Ninjitsu
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Teleportation
Power Pool: Fighting
Villain Profile:
Level 1: Thunder Kick -- 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: Hide -- DefBuff-I(A)
Level 2: Storm Kick -- T'Death-Acc/Dmg(A), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx(7), T'Death-Dmg/Rchg(9), T'Death-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(9), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(11), T'Death-Dam%(11)
Level 4: Crippling Axe Kick -- T'Death-Acc/Dmg(A), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx(13), T'Death-Dmg/Rchg(13), T'Death-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(15), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(15), T'Death-Dam%(17)
Level 6: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 8: Danger Sense -- RedFtn-Def/EndRdx(A), RedFtn-Def/Rchg(17), RedFtn-EndRdx/Rchg(19), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(31), RedFtn-Def(31), RedFtn-EndRdx(31)
Level 10: Combat Jumping -- Zephyr-ResKB(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(21)
Level 12: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 14: Ninja Reflexes -- DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(19), DefBuff-I(21)
Level 16: Focus Chi -- GSFC-ToHit(A), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg(27), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg/EndRdx(29), GSFC-Rchg/EndRdx(29), GSFC-ToHit/EndRdx(33), GSFC-Build%(33)
Level 18: Recall Friend -- Zephyr-ResKB(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(33)
Level 20: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A)
Level 22: Kuji-In Sha -- Numna-Heal/EndRdx(A), Numna-EndRdx/Rchg(23), Numna-Heal/Rchg(23), Numna-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(25), Numna-Heal(25), Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(27)
Level 24: Kuji-In Rin -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 26: Caltrops -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 28: Boxing -- Acc(A)
Level 30: Tough -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A)
Level 32: Eagles Claw -- Acc-I(A)
Ended up with 38.95% range DEF and 40.74% melee DEF while hidden; not quite soft capped, but much better than before. I took the respec'd Spy Girl through a spin of Can You WIN the Internet?, a humorous story arc with the fun premise that you're taking down the various Internet bad guys, like gold sellers, spammers, message board flamers, and so on. This mission also featured some very disturbing catgirl prawn. It was pretty fun, but I thought it needed a little more; I gave it 4 stars.
Wednesday night, a friend seemed to be having trouble forming a Sister Psyche TF, so I jumped on that bandwagon, playing Milady de Winter (21 ice/emp controller). We eventually got a full team of:
dark/psy defender
fire/elec blaster
ill/rad controller
ice/emp controller (me)
storm/elec defender
will tanker
plant/sonic controller
dark/shield scrapper
We had five defender/controllers, none of which had the same support set, which I thought was really cool. I don't see a lot of dark defenders around any more, and watching her made me want to start one of my own (ack altitis!). With this much support, a tanker and a sprinkling of damage, we easily handled this TF, finishing in 1hr 59mins for 50 merits (25.21 MPH). This got Milady to level 24; I took Stamina at 22 (had taken Fortitude at 20 because I think Fortitude is Just That Good) and Shiver at 24 (still not sure how good this power is).
Finished the night playing Mega (36 SS/will brute) as a lackey on a 6-player Liberty Force coed hero/villain team running AE missions in Rikti War Zone; later in the evening I switched to Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) to ensure we'd have enough mentors. Twice we tried running through Relativity be Damned but kept restarting because we would invite a higher level character, then would want to make the high level person the leader and restart the arc so it'd spawn at their level. Eventually we gave up on that arc and did Quest for the Coral Horn, instead, followed by Batteries Included. This team was pretty fast paced so I didn't catch a lot of the story; Quest seemed fun enough to give 4 stars, but I really didn't read enough of the clues or the plot for Batteries to know what was going on, so I left that unrated. This did get Mega to level 37, whereupon I slotted two sets of level 40 Reactive Armor IOs I had crafted ahead of time, into Mind Over Body and Tough, for the sake of more +smash/lethal defense.
@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 ]
7/9/2009
After that, a villain team was looking for more buffer/debuffers, so I played TokyoRose (18 sonic/sonic corruptor) as a lackey on a mid 40s villain team, doing the PvE arc involving Fortunata Amelee. We did well against most of the enemies, but got stopped cold by an AV level Swan; unfortunately, her psy damage utterly ignores sonic shields. We ended up inviting a 47 brute to help us take down the level 44 Swan.
[/ QUOTE ]
That must be one super awesome Brute that helped you! I wonder who that was? *cough*Camo Fire*cough*
Ty so much again PW! That tf was fuuuuuuun!
@Tax E - RIP CoH 2012
Tax has the best quotes ever
PW,
Didn't you also play Death to Disco! during this time period? I was really happy you enjoyed all the improvements.
WN
Check out one of my most recent arcs:
457506 - A Very Special Episode - An abandoned TV, a missing kid's TV show host and more
416951 - The Ms. Manners Task Force - More wacky villains, Wannabes. things in poor taste
or one of my other arcs including two 2010 Player's Choice Winners and an2009 Official AE Awards Nominee for Best Original Story
6/1/2009
I spent Friday night playing Tehuantl (26 night widow) on an 8-player all VEAT team, running missions in Sharkhead Isle that got Tehuantl to level 28, where I took Tactical Training: Assault.
Saturday morning I spent some time farming the Cimerora walls with Blond Justice (50 bs/shield scrapper), mostly to test how much the Romans could debuff her defense. Blond is soft capped on defense with about 50% defdebuff resist, and the Romans on the wall never seemed to get her below 41% defense, which seemed pretty good. I lucked into getting an Unbreakable Constraint (chance for smashing) recipe while doing this.
After that I played Milady de Winter (8 ice/emp controller) on a 5 player pickup team doing radio missions in King's Row. We had a wipeout fighting Circle of Thorns due to overaggro at a deadly intersection in an office map, but otherwise did pretty well; I eventually inherited the star due to attrition and recruited some more people I knew to join up. This team got Milady up to level 12; remembering the amount of sass I got on my emp defender who didn't have Resurrect until level 41, I went ahead and took Resurrect right at level 10, then Ice Slick at level 12.
When that team broke up, I solo'd April Fool (50 thug/TA MM) through Tidebringer, a high level villain arc where you fight this nautical-themed hero with ghost pirates as minions, and stop the hero from completing an evil ritual to destroy Sharkhead Isle. This was a well written story, and I gave it 5 stars.
A friend on an ITF team was asking for help to fill the team and get it started, and the team wanted a debuffer, so I played Yuki-Onna (50 ice/cold corruptor). The team decided to do it on Invincible difficulty, and had a team mix of:
2 tanks (one of which quit right away)
1 fire scrapper
1 night widow (was AFK for the first 2 missions)
1 dark corruptor
1 cold corruptor (me)
1 dark defender
1 storm controller
One tanker quit as soon as we formed the team (not sure what he was thinking) and our VEAT took a lengthy unannounced AFK, so we were left with 6 players to do the first mission. We beat up the Romans and freed Sister Solaris, but for some reason no one actually would lead Sister Solaris to the final objective -- everyone got too focused fighting the kheldian ambush; I got killed trying to get Solaris's attention, and we eventually suffered a completely avoidable team wipe. We hospitaled and regrouped, and I eventually lured Sister Solaris to the altar to complete the mission.
The surviving tanker suggested that since we were down to 6, we should quit tne TF and reform with a full team, but the controller was like, I'm not coming back if we quit. I was inclined to agree (it was really pretty ugly so far), so we decided to press on with 6 players. (Hey, it made sense at the time.) The night widow came back from AFK late in the second mission and complained that we hadn't made enough progress so far, which was met with resounding derision from the rest of the team.
During the third mission for some reason while we were fighting the Phalanx computer and the horde of robots, someone pulled the Romulus AV on top of our heads at the same time, causing a semi-wipe. We managed to overcome this and muddle through the rest of the ITF, though, completing it in 1hr 53mins and gaining 28 merits (14.87 MPH).
I switched to Mega (19 ss/will brute) and solo'd through Seer Marino's Oh Wretched Man! story arc, which for some reason I really like; though I really shouldn't like it, because I hate those stinking Mu and their END drain. Nevertheless got through it for 6 reward merits and level 20. I then solo'd the AE arc Fighting Freedom where you basically grief a teen supergroup that has stirred up enough trouble in the Rogue Isles to annoy Arachnos into retaining you as a hired killer. Good premise, good looking enemy group, and chilling description of what happens to the captured teens, but a little thin on gameplay content in the last few missions; I gave it 4 stars.
After that I joined a Statesman TF as Thunder Girl (50 will/nrg tanker). Our team mix was:
fire scrapper
ice/storm controller
fire blaster
archery blaster
will tanker (me)
2 rad/sonic defenders
ill/rad controller
I was a bit nervous about this as I'd never played tanker on the STF, but I'd been meaning to do it for the sake of badgy completeness. Someone wanted us to try for MoSTF, which I didn't think was likely to happen and one of the blasters scoffed at the possibility, but the leader went ahead and set it for 0 deaths just to try. This was promptly spiked when one of the squishies died to the ambush in the first mission; this was almost a relief, as it reduced the pressure. I think we needed to set "no temp powers" for it to have counted anyway.
With Thunder Girl's defenses near capped (about 40-42% to most damage types) I was quite comfortable tanking everything in the first 4 missions without hardly a scratch; having 4 debuffers certainly helped for that too though. In the third mission I tried taunting the thorn tree, because I had heard this can help protect your squishies from death, but I found that I couldn't even target the thorn tree while vines were up -- so that didn't work out as well as I hoped. I made sure to stand in front of the thorn tree and kill all the vines in front of it; not sure if that helped or not.
The fourth mission we were very lucky and got the key from the first security chief we found, and easily manhandled Dr. Aeon. In the final mission, the patron AVs were no problem at all; Mako died without a fuss (4 debuffers...) and I kited Ghost Widow around so she never got a heal off. Ghost Widow never hit me with her uber-hold, either; I had raised my dark DEF up to about 40% thinking that would help for ITF, and I like to think that helped stop her dark holds, too. I had stockpiled break frees for that fight, but found I didn't need to use any of them.
The Arachnos flier was no problem either, and I was generally feeling good about how things were going until I stepped up to face Lord Recluse himself, who promptly smashed me in maybe 2 hits. Res'd and fought and died, hospital'd and fought and died; Lord Recluse just didn't seem to notice any of my defense or resistance. I got targeted with some scorn for being "just a willpower tank" at this point, but tried to let that slide. One of the rads decided to tank LR instead, using toggle debuffs to pull him into the sky and trap him in geometry. This seemed kind of ignominious, but I didn't really want to kick up a fuss, since it was working. We destroyed the 4 towers, but then found LR was so stuck that we couldn't get him back down again. So some of us ended up flying up to where he was pinned and fighting him there; poor scrapper spent most of his time trying to SJ up to where we were. It was definitely a situation where Fly was the right travel power to have.
We finished LR off and completed the TF in 1h 20mins; Thunder Girl got a fistful of badges and a Nucleolus SHO.
After that, Thunder Girl promptly got invited to an ITF, and I thought, what the heck, it'll help salve my wounded ego from not being able to tank Lord Recluse. So I joined up and our team was:
2 blasters
1 kin defender
1 earth/therm controller
1 shield scrapper
2 will/nrg tankers (including me)
1 invuln tanker
I'm really not quite sure why we needed 3 tankers, and was tempted to offer to switch to something else, but the team leader was enthusiastic about my powersets (apparently he had a will/nrg tanker too) so I stuck around. The invuln tanker tended to like to herd and the scrapper had a habit of going off and soloing stuff away from the team (he must've taken out half the cysts in mission 2 on his own), but overall it worked fine and despite the tanker-heavy team balance, we got through the ITF in a very respectable 1hr 16mins, for 28 merits (22.11 MPH).
Sunday it seemed I just couldn't get away from the ITF, as I joined a speed TF team. The team leader asked me to play something survivable with high damage, so I played Blond Justice (50 bs/shield scrapper). Our team was:
1 will brute
1 shield brute
1 rad corruptor
1 ninj stalker
1 fire blaster
2 shield scrappers (including me)
We had one person or another sitting at the contact most of the time while the other 6 of us blitzed the missions. We were very support light (with only 1 rad corruptor, who was the contact sitter for a couple of the missions, so no support) and essentially operated as six soloers that were vaguely soloing near each other. We raced to each of the sibyls in mission 1, each of the nictus crystals in mission 2, and each of the generals in mission 3, ignoring all the stuff in between with our high defenses. This didn't seem like it should work, but it totally did. We finished the ITF in 32min 31sec for 28 merits (51.66 MPH). I also had a very nice Hecatomb (DMG/RCHG) recipe fall in my lap during this TF.
Several of the same players went on to do a speed LGTF, and we recruited a few people to fill up the team. I stayed on Blond Justice and our team became:
2 shield scrappers (including me)
2 fire blasters
1 plant dominator
1 poison MM
1 fire brute
1 dark defender
Several of the squishies died a lot, which I felt guilty about, but the melee element steamrollered ahead regardless, finishing the LGTF in 42min 47sec for 39 merits (54.70 MPH).
A friend wanted to do yet another ITF that I let myself get drawn into; he wanted to make a team with a max level of 45 so that everyone would get exp. I started off wanting to play Idealist (44 fire/thermal controller) but when I saw how melee-heavy our team was, I switched to playing Primadonna (40 sonic/kin corruptor). Our team was:
shield brute
kin corruptor (me)
cold defender
emp defender
ice blaster
regen scrapper
fire scrapper
ninj stalker
This team got through the ITF with no serious problems in 1hr 19mins, getting Primadonna to level 41 (haven't figured out what new power to take) and 28 merits (21.27 MPH).
We then swapped around alts for another LGTF, on which I played Schadenfreude (45 AR/pain corruptor; someone has also told me there is a 5th Column NPC on test named Schadenfreude now, which is going to be weird). Our team mix was:
cold defender
inv tanker
stone tanker
shield brute
ice/storm controller
pain corruptor (me)
kin controller
ninj stalker
We didn't do this TF for speed, instead doing everything the "real" way, by rescuing Penelope Yin, Infernia and Glacia and clearing all the Rikti that dared stand in our way. This took a bit longer (2hr 3mins) but was still quite fun. Schadenfreude hit level 46 and got 39 merits (19.02 MPH).
After having done ITF twice and LGTF twice in one day, I was pretty burned out on TFing, so I switched to soloing MA arcs.
Blond Justice (50 bs/shield scrapper) solo'd through a MA arc called Return of the Three Fold King, which was about stopping an evil ancient mystical king from coming back and taking over the world. The plot was pretty formulaic and the missions were not too exciting, so I could only give that story 2 stars.
Over the weekend I played Sabine (a new SS/SR brute) off and on. Duo'd for awhile with a newbie corruptor who said he was just starting CoH and had come over from WoW, which I thought was totally awesome. He was really impressed by Mission Teleporter and veteran Team Teleport, which I used to get him to the Defeat All Infected mission quickly. Despite being new, he was actually quite a good teammate.
Later on Sabine (at level 7) solo'd Bricked Electronics, a story arc I've run before, where Mark Freeman sends you up against Goldbrickers and many adventures ensue. I had previously rated this 4 stars, but on this run-through the story seemed so much more polished and fun that I upped my rating to 5 stars. This also got Sabine to level 8 and Knockout Blow.
@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!"