11/20/2009
Monday night I found that my Black Marketeering had secured Mega (50 SS/will brute) an Apocalypse (chance for negative) and an Apocalypse (DMG/RCHG) recipe, for approx 200M infamy each (which is a lot, but not too bad for this recipe). As a melee character, range attack IOs may not seem that great, but I crafted and slotted them into her Hurl power for the sake of the purple set bonuses. With 4 Apocalypse, she gets +3% max HP and +4% global damage, both good things.
I went on to play Mega on a Cap SF with a team of:
3 brutes (including me)
1 rad corruptor
2 stalkers
The others seemed to die a lot but as an exemped 50 (the others were mostly lower level), Mega was pretty indestructible throughout the SF. We did have Bat'zul and Infernal slug out out for a bit before beating them up. Finished the Cap SF in 44min 17sec.
After that I played Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) on a semi-quick ITF with a team of 5 melee, a kin, a rad, and me as a blaster. This went a bit sloppy and we had a lot of deaths, but still finished in 37min 57sec.
I spent some of Thunder Girl's (50 elec/SR scrapper) merits, paying 125 merits for a level 21 Performance Shifter (chance for +END), which lists at Wentworths for 51M so seemed like a good buy; and another 200 merits for a level 30 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+global rchg) which lists for 55M.
I did some crafting to get Thunder Girl closer to the build I listed earlier; 6 Performance Shifter in Stamina gives her +3.13 AoE DEF and 5 Aegis in Tough gives her another +3.13 AoE DEF, which gets her to a total of 44.67% AoE defense. Slotting the LotG +7.5% rchg in Evasion and a fifth Obliteration (costing me 9M at Wentworths) into her Thunder Strike for another +5% rchg raises her total global recharge to +67.5%.
Tried this out by playing Thunder Girl on a speed LGTF (23min 54sec) and a speed ITF (23min 4sec) which also helped replenish some of the merits I spent.
Finished the night playing Mega on a quick 1st villain respec (9min 6sec) and a quick 3rd villain respec (11min 4sec). I took the respec instead of merits for both trials, for the sake of the badges; now Mega has all 3 respec badges.
On Wednesday night, I played Thunder Girl on a pickup Manticore TF with a team mix of
1 controller (fire/kin)
2 tankers (stone/elec, will/db)
peacebringer
2 scrappers (kat/will, elec/SR)
2 blasters (fire/fire, nrg/nrg)
This TF ran into all sorts of buggyness; ran into lots of level 40 Paragon Protector Elites (we had two team wipes against a spawn that had 2 of these), and the nrg blaster quit after mission 1 (not sure he understood what a TF was) which I think bugged the TF. After mission 2 (a defeat all), we ended up getting the very same mission at the very same door; I had seen this happen last week, too, so I was pretty concerned, but the team wanted to go ahead and do it again. I resolved that I would be willing to do the mission a second time, but not a third; but after we finished mission 2 again, somehow one of the tankers broke us out of the infinite loop by calling the contact and getting the next mission. This was particularly weird because he was NOT the TF leader (he didn't have the star) but the TF started treating him like he was (the controller, who did have the star, couldn't talk to the contact any more, and suddenly we were all exemped/SK'd to the tanker's level of 34). Despite this weirdness, we managed to finish the rest of the Manticore TF, with a total time of 2hr 16mins. This got Thunder Girl the Task Force Commander accolade (+52 max hp).
On Thursday night, I logged in Police Woman to find I had gotten awarded the "Vigilant" badge, which puzzled me for awhile until someone told me it was the "Thanks for not playing CO! badge" which made me laugh. I messed around with tweaking my Teen Phalanx Forever! story arc. Recent AE changes make it so that any enemy group that doesn't have all 3 ranks (minion, lieutenant and boss) gets a heavy nerf to the exp, so I adjusted the "Robotic Teen Phalanx" group (used only in an ambush during the final mission). Originally it was all-minions, but I promoted my robotic Back Alley Boy to be a lieutenant, then added a recolored Siege Android as a boss, which I named "Citadel ME".
A friend was forming a Numina TF so I signed on with Star Amethyst (46 dark/ice defender). Theoretically this was a pickup LB task force, but a lot of people I knew ended up on this TF. We had a team mix of:
2 scrappers
3 defenders (dark, emp, sonic)
1 controller (mind/ff)
1 blaster
This was a very good team, support-heavy with powerful buffs and debuffs; whenever we were relatively close together, I was both RES and DEF capped. We were basically in god-mode and steamrollered over everything, finishing the TF in 1hr 16mins. This also got Star Amethyst the Task Force Commander accolade.
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
11/26/2009
Last Friday night I played Thunder Girl (50 elec/SR scrapper) on a quick ITF (31min 34sec) and a LGTF (31min 0sec). It seemed like the squishy characters died a lot on the ITF; while on these TFs, Thunder Girl got a compliment on her costume and background story. I also bought a couple Luck of the Gambler (DEF) recipes for 7M each, slotting them in Thunder Girl's SR toggles; one of these now has a set of 3 LotG in it, for +1.13% max HP (worked out to 15hp) and the other is up to a set of 4 LotG, which is +9% global accuracy.
After that I started Thunder Girl on an Ouroboros flashback of Maria Jenkins' arc, to work on the Portal Jockey accolade. Solo'd through several of these missions at +0 x6 difficulty, defeating Chimera, Shadow Hunter, Nightstar, Siege, Bobcat, Neuron and Battle Maiden (all as EBs).
On Saturday, Mega (50 SS/will brute) did a (non-speed) Imperious TF where we cleared most mobs that were in our way; still finished in 52min 34sec with no problems; then a speed Lady Grey TF in 24min 44sec, and I switched to Blond Justice (50 broadsword/shield scrapper) for a speed Imperious TF that took 26min 25sec.
On Sunday I played Samurai-ko (42 katana/will scrapper) through a pickup Positron TF with a team of:
2 tankers (elec/dark, inv/SS)
3 scrappers (kat/SR, kat/wp, spine/dark)
2 defender (cold/ice, dark/dark)
1 controller (ill/rad)
The dark defender had to quit partway through, but the rest of us finished in 2hr 53mins without any serious problems. This got Samurai-ko to level 43 and the Task Force Commander accolade. After finishing that TF I spent some time tinkering with a new costume using some of the Martial Arts booster pack set; ended up with a pretty neat looking anime-ish looking outfit:
Samurai-ko
Went on to play Psychic Woman (29 rad/psy defender) on a Citadel TF as part of the Sisterhood Sunday event. Our team was:
1 blaster (archery/mental)
2 controllers (grav/kin, ice/storm)
3 scrappers
2 defenders (rad/psy, FF/psy)
We had no problems and finished in 1hr 38mins, getting Psychic Woman to level 30.
After that I played a rerolled Tehuantl (6 claw/SR brute) on a lowbie villain team running in Mercy and Port Oakes that got her to level 10.
Later I played Mega on another quick ITF (25min 14sec) and Star Amethyst (46 dark/ice defender) on a "kill most" ITF (41min 5sec); this was a pretty fun team and we still finished in 41min 5sec, getting Star Amethyst to level 47. I took "World of Confusion"; it's supposed to be a PBAOE confuse, but I'm not sure whether it is really DOING anything (never see anything actually confused by it). It's a pretty pink energy sphere, though, and matches the rest of Star Amethyst's recolored powers, so...I still kinda like it.
On Monday I mostly played Quick Katie, a newbie plant/kin controller that I started. I've been meaning to get a blue-side kinetic up to decent level; I always have problems staying alive as a kinetic, though, because it demands you move into melee range a lot. I was hoping plant control would help with that. Anyway, I solo'd up to level 6, then a friend was complaining nothing was going on, so I invited him to join me and I ended up starting a team that ran through Hollows missions, defeating both Frostfire and Atta, and getting Quick Katie to level 14.
After that team broke up, I had a break, then came back to play Quick Katie on a pickup team that zerged a King's Row bank mission (messy but we won it). I was complaining that I was the only support character on a team with one tanker and 4 blasters, and a friend ended up joining us with a rad defender which made the team really work better. We did have one team wipe against a +1 Arachnos mission when the team started a fight when only half of us had entered the mission (which earned our hapless blaster a "Your pulling sucks!" from another team member; admittedly, he DID pull a whole roomful of Arachnos onto us); otherwise we did fine, getting Quick Katie to level 16 before the team broke up.
A friend was asking for help with the Envoy of Shadows EB, so I joined his high 30s elec/shield scrapper with Quick Katie and attempted to duo the Envoy. This went poorly for us; we wiped out twice, I couldn't keep the scrapper up even spamming Transfusion, and if I ever caught aggro I was instantly pasted. This is probably more because I was level 16 than anything else, though. I volunteered to switch to Psychic Woman (30 rad/psy defender) and with rad debuffs Envoy keeled over ludicrously easily.
After that I switched back to Quick Katie and ended up forming a pickup team doing missions in Faultline. This team eventually grew to 7 players and we did all of Jim Temblor's missions, then all of Penelope Yin's missions, ultimately rescuing her dad and getting the Rescuer badge. This got Quick Katie to level 20; I ended up taking Speed Boost instead of Stamina, because I'm convinced SB helps more (unless solo, of course). I also got a compliment from a teammate on both the Quick Katie name and her costume (loosely based on Katie Hannon's real costume):
Quick Katie
Looking at these two screenshots, I hadn't realized it before, but apparently I like using long black boots in costumes at the moment. 
Another teammate mentioned that anyone who had started playing fairly recently might not even know what "Quick Katie" meant. This was true; soon the phrase Quick Katie will go the way of Hydra Trial and Winter Lords, known only to veteran players. Nevertheless I find it funny, and especially apt for a kinetic that I hope to run on TFs someday.
I went on to play Blackout Girl (29 elec/elec brute) on a Sharkhead SF; I honestly wasn't a whole lot of help on this, as Blackout Girl is not very stealthy and not very tough. At one point I think I forgot to turn off my elec damage aura while trying to "sneak" through a mission, which ended poorly for me. Nevertheless our team of 6 brutes and 1 fort finished the SF in 24mins 3sec. We then went on to do a 1st villain respec in 8min 37sec, then I switched to Blond Justice for a speed ITF that took 22min 39sec.
I switched again to Mega (50 SS/will brute) to start a speed Lady Grey TF; another friend tried to lure me away to a Numina TF, saying that speed TFs are too boring to read about in my journal. It's true, there's just not much to say about them; another player did send me a tell saying he still liked to read my journal, speed TFs and all, which was nice. I do like Numina TF but I had already committed to the LGTF so I thought it best to stick with it. We finished that in 23min 47sec.
Tuesday night I played Star Amethyst (47 dark/ice defender) on a pickup Justin Augustine TF with a team of:
4 scrappers
2 defenders (dark/ice, emp/sonic)
1 controller (fire/emp)
1 tanker (will/db)
One of our scrappers had just returned to the game after an absence of 2 years and had no idea how to get to the Shadow Shard, then once there had no idea how to get around there. She ended up getting frustrated and quitting the TF. Sadly, a Shadow Shard TF was probably a poor choice for her re-introduction to the game. I could fly and recall friend but the Chantry was so massive that quite often my recall friend didn't have the range to pick up players that were far enough away. This particular TF seemed particularly dreary even for a Shard TF; nothing to do with the team, it was mostly because the TF had many, many "Defeat 50 Rularuu" hunt missions which mostly involved traveling in the shard and killing non-exp-giving mobs. Nevertheless we slogged through the TF in 1hr 49mins for 42 merits.
Over the period of several days I solo'd Idealist (46 fire/thermal controller) through an AE story arc called Captain Skylark Shadowfancy and the Tomorrownauts of Today! This was a pretty fun retro-sci-fi themed story arc where you join an organization of space cadets fighting retro-sci-fi type threats. The story had great atmosphere but was rather long; I ended up playing its 5 missions over 4 separate play sessions, finally finishing Wednesday afternoon. I thought it was quite fun though and I gave it 5 stars.
Also on Wednesday I did some speed TFs; first, a Sharkhead SF on Kashira (30 db/ninj stalker) which finished in 28min 30sec getting Kashira to level 31. Then Mega on a speed ITF finishing in 27min 35sec; this ITF we died a LOT for some reason. I was quite shocked to die a couple times, normally Cimeroran attacks on an ITF just bounce off of Mega. The team leader thought it was a lack of +DEF buffs from Grant Cover, Maneuvers and such. After that we did a speed LGTF finishing in 27min 50sec.
A friend said he was starting a Sister Psyche TF in a few minutes, so I logged on Quick Katie (now at level 20) hoping to join, and solo'd a bit in AE while waiting; this idea never did quite coalesce into an actual TF, though, so I ended up solo'ing my way all the way through my own Teen Phalanx Forever! arc for the sake of testing, exp and tickets.
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
12/2/2009
I had a long weekend for Thanksgiving that I made longer by taking a couple days off. I played a lot of CoH as a result, so this is a little long.
I started Wednesday afternoon finishing playing Idealist (48 fire/thermal controller) through Captain Skylark Shadowfancy and the Tomorrownauts of Today!, a fun retro sci fi arc where you battle the evil Baron Doomsday on the moon and near Mars orbit and stuff. It was pretty long but had a great sense of atmosphere; I gave this arc 5 stars.
On Thursday it was Thanksgiving, and I played A Wentworth's Thanksgiving Day Parade, a fun story about a Nemesis plot to take over the traditional Thanksgiving Day Parade. I thought it started really strong but lost a little steam at the end; it was a fun diversion though and I gave it 4 stars.
People were making noises about how they wanted people to fight in Recluse's Victory, so I brought Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) there and beat a bane, then switched to April Fool (50 thug/TA MM) and lost repeatedly to a rad/psy defender, but beat a scrapper, a cold defender and a tanker, then lost 4 times to a sonic blaster, then got the blaster once and a tanker near him.
I played Quick Katie (my relatively new 20 plant/kin controller) on a Positron TF with a team of:
1 defender (TA/AR)
1 blaster (elec/mental)
3 controllers (plant/kin, ill/cold, ill/rad)
3 scrappers (spine/elc, claw/fire, elec/elec)
I had taken Speed Boost as Quick Katie's level 20 power, and with the new exemping rules I got to use it on this TF, which people seemed grateful for. The blaster seemed AFK for most of the TF, and an aggro magnet the times he was at keyboard; late in the TF I called him on the fact that he was AFK all the time, and he claimed narcolepsy (he falls asleep suddenly and without warning). I wish I was kidding. Our scrappers seemed to die a lot; it didn't seem like we were providing enough support. The defender did a good job of stealthing and recall friending people through the missions that could be, though. Despite all these hijinks we still finished the TF in 2hrs exactly, a very good time for an 8-player Positron TF.
This got Quick Katie to level 22 and I ended up joining a Sister Psyche TF shortly after, with a team of
2 controllers (both plant/kin)
1 blaster (rad/nrg)
2 scrappers
1 tanker (dark/mace)
This team had no problem with the TF, finishing in 1hr 44mins and getting Quick Kate to level 24. A teammate did compliment me on Quick Katie's background story, which was nice.
A bit later I played Spy Girl (33 MA/ninj stalker) on a speed Sharkhead SF (7 players, 25mins 34sec) and a speed 1st villain respec (4 players, 10min 4sec). I spent 40 merits on random recipe rolls, getting a 33 Decimation (ACC/END/RCHG) and a 33 Devastation (chance to hold), which was pretty decent.
I ended up rerolling Kyrie Eleison (was a 40 broadsword/invuln scrapper) to be a fire/regen scrapper. I did this for a number of reasons: I already have a 50 broadsword/shield scrapper, so a second broadsword scrapper seemed too similar; I've grown disenchanted with Invulnerability of late (it's great on tanks, but the lower numbers for scrappers/brutes make it feel weak to me); and finally the new ability to recolor powers let me recolor fire melee/regen to pure white and actinic blue, giving the new Kyrie a very angelic look. I solo'd for a bit, joined a pickup team in the Hollows that wiped 3 times against Outcasts due to overaggro and general ineptness, sidekicked to a friends team in Croatoa that got Kyrie to level 14, and unlocked and did the Fortune Teller mission to get to level 15. So far I'm liking the new build, though I'm normally pretty bad at playing regen scrappers; everything will be going just fine, then, suddenly, SQUISH. I'll need to practice. I have to say that wielding Greater Fire Sword while using Ninja Run looks awesome, though.
As Police Woman I helped a pickup team take down an AV-level Ghost Widow as part of one of the Cimerora arcs. Then I played Star Amethyst (47 dark/ice defender) on a pickup ITF with:
1 mastermind (merc/FF?)
3 scrappers
2 controllers (earth/cold, plant/kin)
2 defenders (dark/ice, rad/sonic)
This wasn't a speed run, we mostly killed everything in sight. The team leader set it as a MoITF for some reason, and we were doing OK on that until mission 3, when one of the other squishies perished in the lag. Nevertheless finished the ITF in 1hr 26mins and got Star Amethyst to level 48.
Went on to do a few speed runs; played Mayday (50 fortunata) on a speed LGTF (24min 30sec), Yuki-Onna (50 ice/cold corruptor) on a speed ITF (29min 16sec) on which I found a level 50 Performance Shifter (chance for +endurance) recipe.
I ended up spending 200 of Yuki-Onna's merits on a Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5 global rchg) which I slotted in her Ice Shield, making a set of 3 LotG for +1.13% max HP.
On Saturday I played Quick Katie, joining a pickup team running missions in Striga. We had a near-wipeout against the Family, but myself and a scrapper managed a heroic stand that outfought the multiple spawns we had somehow aggroed. I somehow inherited the star after the team leader left, and so I kept the team running in Striga, eventually getting Quick Katie to level 26, where I took Carrion Creepers; I'm still not quite sure what the Carrion Creepers do, but they sure look cool!
Playing the new Kyrie Eleison I solo'd the Midnighter arc, then joined a small raid force that zerged the Kraken in Perez Park for 2 merits and a badge; we had started out almost entirely DPS, which wasn't working well against a giant monster, but thankfully some friendly debuffers zoomed in during the fight and helped us take the Kraken down.
Also on Saturday I solo'd Thunder Girl (50 elec/SR scrapper) through the rest of Maria Jenkins' Praetorian arc, which got me the Dimensional Warder, Statesman's Pal and Portal Jockey badges, along with 36 merits for finishing the whole arc.
Thunder Girl went on to join a speed ITF, where a teammate complimented her on DPS; I'm pretty pleased with her alpha strike of Build Up/Lightning Rod/Fireball/Thunder Strike, which does quite a lot of AoE damage. This speed ITF had some trouble with the final fight, where all the support characters managed to get killed by Romulus, twice; the meleers kept fighting even without support but it seemed like a losing proposition. The squishies came back from the hospital into an ambush by the door; I ended up trying to team TP everyone near Romulus to hopefully rally us. I think this helped. We ended up beating the TF in 28min 46sec.
I had spent some time thinking about Dr Aeon's Architect Challenge, and had an idea for it stuck in my head. Late on Saturday night I took a stab at writing a story arc for it. Finally finished Mistaken Identity (arc id 349473) at about 5am and staggered off to bed. It's meant to be a horror story where you go to the hospital after being defeated...and the doctors won't let you leave. And weird stuff starts happening.
I started off not really liking this story (even though I wrote it) because I felt it was too dark and depressing; I'm not quite sure whether I'll submit it to the contest or not. The theme of Dr. Aeon's contest is "a hero must do something evil for the greater good", and my belief system has a tough time with this concept; how can doing evil actually be the right choice? A statement like "We had to destroy the village to save it" seems crazy to me. Plus, horror isn't my normal thing, and I'm not very good at it yet. Plus, finishing it at 5am, I'm sure I wasn't thinking very clearly when I wrote the last few lines of the story. Some of the player feedback I've gotten so far on this arc has helped me a lot, though. I'm still kind of tinkering with the story arc as I get ideas and suggestions.
On Sunday I played Quick Katie some more in Striga Isle, doing Tobias and Lars Hansen's story arcs to unlock the Hess TF, then doing the Moonfire TF with a friends team of 3 blasters, 2 controllers (a thermal plus me as a plant/kin), 3 scrappers. We had no problems and finished in 1hr 20min. Quick Katie got both the Slayer and Silver Bullet badges on this TF; still need to get the other requirements for Atlas Medallion though.
I played Lt. Mary Sue (20 emp/AR defender on Triumph) on a team of MA fans; we did an arc called Paragon City Beauty Contest which was a single mission on a gigantic office map where the National Organization for Woman was setting bombs and holding hostage the various bikini-clad beauty contestants. There were a few funny lines in this, but there wasn't a lot more to it than that; and having 101 (!) glowies to click was certainly a pain. I gave it 2 stars.
Switched back to Liberty to play Psychic Woman (30 rad/psy defender) on a Hess TF organized by Sisterhood. The team was:
3 scrappers
2 controllers (thermal, kinetic)
2 blasters
1 defender (rad/psy)
We cleared most missions rather than stealthing them; didn't run into any trouble and finished in 1hr 3mins, getting Psychic Woman to level 31.
Also on Sunday I discovered that there is a hard cap on the amount of influence you can have on one character. I was on Police Woman doing my market stuff at Wentworth's, and I did a "get influence" on a slot with 20M influence in it, and the broker slot became empty, but my influence total didn't go up at all. That's when I noticed my influence total of 2,000,000,000 was shaded light blue, like numbers that are at a hard cap. After asking around, I found that, yeah, there IS a 2 billion limit; although there were some tricks to work around it (bidding on imaginary items). So basically I lost 20M influence for no reason. This was annoying, though other people I know said they had lost much more before they realized it, so I suppose it's not that bad, relatively.
Instead of using tricks to save up even more money, I decided this was a good opportunity to start buying up purple recipes for my alts. I resolved to focus on Thunder Girl (my elec/SR scrapper) first, because I like her and play her a lot lately. Over the course of the last few days I bought:
Apocalypse (chance for negative damage) for 120M
Apocalypse (DMG/END) for 151M
Apocalypse (DMG/RCHG) for 156M
Apocalypse (RCHG/ACC) for 150M
Ragnarok (DMG/END) for 120M
Ragnarok (DMG/RCHG) for 111M
Ragnarok (chance for knockdown) for 20M
Ragnarok (DMG/RCHG/ACC) for 111M
Spending all this infl got me down around 1 billion influence again, so I won't have to worry about the cap for a bit. I already had an Apocalypse (DMG) stored in my base, so a set of 5 Apocalypse in Thunder Girl's Fire Blast gives her +3% max hp, +4% global dmg and +10% global recharge. A set of 4 Ragnarok in her Fireball gives her +2.52% fire/cold res and +15% acc.
I tried testing this out, playing Thunder Girl through Matchstick Women, an AE arc about female fire cultists, on x6 difficulty. This was pretty fun, though it seemed burn patches still hit me even through capped defense; had to keep moving to dodge those. I had played this arc before, but this time through there was an extra mission in the middle that gave away too much of the plot and didn't fit well with the rest of the story. I gave the arc 4 stars.
Also on Sunday, Mega (50 SS/will brute) did a speed ITF in 34min 35sec, and Thunder Girl did one in 32min 53sec. Then Mega did a speed LGTF in 31min 31sec.
Kyrie Eleison did a Synapse TF with
3 controllers (sonic, kin, rad)
1 tanker
3 scrappers
which went very smoothly, defeating Babbage (with outside help) and completing the LGTF in 1hr 5min, getting Kyrie to level 19.
I started off Monday messing around killing Romans on the wall in Cimerora, which luckily netted Thunder Girl another Apocalypse (DMG/RCHG) recipe.
Then I played Quick Katie on a Citadel TF with
4 controllers (fire/kin, plant/kin, ill/cold, ill/FF)
1 scrapper (fire/fire)
1 tanker (ston/nrg)
2 blasters (one was AR/MM)
Aside from getting one mob stuck in a cave wall (we eventually got him out by all leaving Line of Sight, which made him mad enough to pop out) we had no problems, finishing in 1hr 17mins.
After that I did a Faathim TF; the team leader asked for a defender, so I played Star Amethyst (48 dark/ice defender) on a team of:
3 scrappers
1 blaster
1 tanker
1 peacebringer
2 defenders (kinetic, dark)
The team leader hadn't done a Faathim TF before and was trying to get me to lead it; I gave some advice but didn't want to take the star as I was only 48 and didn't want to lower the team level. She ended up giving the star to a competent scrapper and things went pretty well after that. I found another Performance Shifter (chance for +END) recipe, and I also noticed that in the Shadow Shard, occasionally people are too far away to Recall Friend; this motivated me to slot some range in it. I also found that recall friend doesn't work inside any of the big Rularuu death stars; some sort of TP protection field in there. I could TP to just outside, though. This TF finished in 2hrs 42mins and got Star Amethyst to level 50.
Finished Monday night duoing Kyrie Eleison (fire/regen scrapper) with a friend playing an archery blaster. We ran through Stephanie Peebles' story arc in Striga, which got Kyrie to level 22 and the Wedding Band temp power.
On Tuesday the patch brought the Winter Event to town (temporarily, anyway) and I got the Festive badge. With Kyrie being angelic-themed, I had her solo the Baby New Year mission 6 times, for the "Miraculous" badge and 25 candy canes that I used to unlock the "Nice" halo aura. I had forgotten that you can't use the halos until you unlock the regular auras at level 30, though. Oh well.
I logged on Spacegirl (50 mind/rad controller) to fiddle with her costuming (tweaked the colors of her powers to be a light blue, a color scheme I was really liking on Psychic Woman; added a sparkly aura) when people started calling for help with the new Winter event. I ended up getting to form a second team for a Lord of Winter raid, and learned a lot about how they work.
This is how the Lord of Winter event works. Opening presents while on a big team eventually spawns a Winter Lord; then if you kill the Winter Lord, it spawns a Big present and a timer that starts ticking down (I think this time delay is meant to let you recruit a raid force). Once the timer expires, you can click the big present to enter a "Lord of Winter's Realm" zone, a snowy farm area with poor visibility. Multiple teams can enter the same instance; I'd recommend bringing at least 2 teams. Another timer is active inside this mission; if that timer runs out, it kicks everyone out of the zone and ends the event. So you have to kill Lord of Winter before that happens. He's really tough (bring several debuffers or you WILL fail) and has a nasty foot stomp (don't stand too close to him if squishy). Whenever his life total decreases by around 25%, the Lord of Winter becomes immune to damage; but also summons a Winter Guardian AV that spawns out in the zone somewhere, but starts running towards the Lord. (To save time, players should go out and look for it, rather than wait for it to run to you.) If you kill the Winter Guardian, then Lord of Winter becomes vulnerable to damage again. He summons 3 Guardians total (becoming immune to damage each time), then you can kill him. Also, while fighting him, lots of Winter pets start showing up; Northern Lights start attacking with energy beams doing -def, and it's quite possible to get cascading defense failure from them.
If you kill the Lord of Winter before time runs out, you get the Lady (Lord) of Winter badge, 8 reward merits and 20 candy canes, which is a pretty nice reward.
Anyway, Spacegirl won the event on her try, then Yuki-Onna on a red-side LoW event that also won (and I decided "Lady of Winter" was a great badge title for her). A little later I tried playing Quick Katie on a LoW event which failed due to not enough debuffing. Then I played Police Woman on a failed LoW event which I knew would fail even before we zoned into Winter's Realm, because we only had 1 team and not enough debuffs.
I saw a lot of people were asking on chat channels to either join a LoW event or were reporting Winter Lord spawns but didn't have the power to beat the LoW event. I was tired of joining LoW events that didn't succeed, so I decided to form my own. Advertising on various chat channels (and insisting that at least some people bring debuffs) I rounded up around 3 groups of players in Atlas Park and we blew through the LoW event with no problem whatsoever, with 9 minutes left on the clock when we beat the Lord of Winter. Someone said "PW leading FTW!" which was a good feeling.
A little later I played April Fool (50 thug/TA MM) on another red-side LoW event that won.
Finished the night playing Fire Emerald (41 fire/fire blaster) on an Imperious TF. I had been told it was a "fun" TF and not a speed one, and they needed DPS, so I brought Fire Emerald, who is both a blaster for DPS and easily my squishiest character. Unfortunately, the team members had a different idea than the team leader and they insisted on speeding through the TF. This worked out pretty poorly for me, as I had no stealth and no meaningful defense, so I died a lot while the team was speeding through missions 1 and 2. This was kind of unfun but I tried to stick with it and not slow the team down. I did better in missions 3 and 4 which were mostly outdoors, giving me a better chance to stay alive against angry Romans. Finished the ITF in 29mins and despite multiple deaths, got Fire Emerald to level 42.
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
12/8/2009
Last Wednesday I played Mega (50 SS/will brute) on a speed LGTF that took 26min 30sec. Then I played Idealist (48 fire/thermal controller) through an AE arc called The Golden Age Secret of the Paragon Society, where you help a retired hero battle a 5th Column plot; this was a fun story with good characterization, but had some plot problems. I gave it 4 stars. I had recolored Idealist's fire imps to be red, white and blue (strictly speaking, they start out white, then I applied a red fire shield and a blue plasma shield), so a patriotic adventure fighting Nazis was especially fun for her; she got to level 49 while doing this.
On Thursday night, I was fiddling with my new story arc, Mistaken Identity, when someone from MA Arc Finder channel asked to join me; so we duo'd much of it. In the last mission, two more friends joined the team. The story really is more geared towards a soloer, so I'm not sure if any of it made any sense to my teammates; after we wrapped up that arc, I started us on A Warrior's Journey - The Flower Knight Task Force, another of my arcs which I thought would be much more team-friendly. People seemed to have fun beating up samurai and ninja, although a scrapper teammate particularly groaned at the large number of caltrops the ninja liked to throw at us (we didn't have a kin to negate this). The empath on our team goaded me to raise difficulty, and I first raised it to +2 x8, then after more prodding they got me to raise it to +3 x8. This was just fine for the first four missions, but made the last mission (which has several AVs) quite hard, and I had to recruit some friends from the Sisterhood channel to help debuff the regen of the two +3 willpower AVs. Once we had some debuffs going, we managed to finish the arc just fine, though, even at the ludicrous difficulty.
Friday night, a blaster was asking for a tanker to help her with a mission in Striga, so I logged on Strong Woman (40 inv/SS tanker) to help clear out a laboratory full of vampires. Got a compliment on her costume while doing so.
After that, I joined a team running speed TFs; the leader asked me to bring a VEAT, and instead of bringing my usual fortunata, I decided to dust off Lady Arachne (48 wolf spider) who had been sitting idle for a couple months. We did a RSF in 38mins 10sec (we got slowed down a bit in mission 1 trying to get the tech past a Longbow ambush; I got a Nucleolus SHO at the end), then a LGTF in 23min 14sec, then an ITF in 25min 18sec (had some trouble getting mission 3 to end, until we finally found a stray cyclops). Three quick TFs in a row got Lady Arachne to level 50. I found it ironic that the game displays "EPIC ARCHETYPE UNLOCKED!" when a VEAT hits level 50. Also, using Surveillance, I found that Lady Arachne, with Venom Grenade and Surveillance, puts out more resist debuff than a rad corruptor using Enervating Field. This, along with her VEAT leadership toggles, makes me want to play Lady Arachne on teams more. I'll need to work on some IO sets for her, though; currently she's running on SOs and generic IOs.
Mostly the same team did a Statesman TF, which I was asked to bring a scrapper on, so I played Blond Justice (50 bs/shield scrapper). Our team was:
3 controllers (fire/kin, 2 ill/rad)
1 defender (cold/ice)
2 scrappers
2 tankers (1 stone/ice, not sure on other one)
The team leader had me try to shortcut the cut scene in mission 2 by exiting mission 1 early and entering mission 2 as soon as it appeared, but he had me go to a particular portal which wasn't the one that the mission actually was at, so I had to scramble to find the real entrance, losing us some time. Somehow we bollixed up finishing mission 2; I think maybe we all exited via Ouroboros and no one completed the "Find the way home" objective. In the final mission we tackled the patron AVs with a frontal assault, fighting all 4 at once while some players dropped Warburg nukes. Then one tanker kept the Arachnos flyer taunted, one kept LR busy, while the rest of us took down towers. We took down 3 towers (skipping the blue one) then Lord Recluse himself, finishing in 46min 44sec. I got a Centriole SHO.
While Blond Justice was out, I burned 3700 tickets that I had picked up on Flower Knight TF for a recipe roll, and was rewarded with a yummy level 50 Numina's Convalescence (+regen/+rec).
Saturday night, I played Kyrie Eleison (22 fire/regen scrapper) on a 4-player Sisterhood fire-themed team that got her to level 23.
A bit later I did a few speed TFs; Spacegirl (50 mind/rad controller) finished an LGTF in 23min 54sec, Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corruptor) did an ITF in 23min 23sec (got a Respec recipe drop that I threw on the broker for a ludicrously high price) and a RSF in 35min 32sec (only had 7 real players with one 2-boxed toon as a "filler"; had a messy final fight where squishies got 1-shotted a lot; got a Nucleolus as reward).
I also used a free respec for Star Amethyst (50 dark/ice defender), trying to increase her positional defenses. This is the build I came up with:
Star Amethyst: Level 50 Magic Defender
Primary Power Set: Dark Miasma
Secondary Power Set: Ice Blast
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Teleportation
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Leadership
Ancillary Pool: Psychic Mastery
Hero Profile:
------------
Level 1: Tar Patch RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(3), RechRdx-I(3)
Level 1: Ice Bolt Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(5), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(5), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(7), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(7), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(9)
Level 2: Ice Blast Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(9), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(11), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(11), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(13), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(13)
Level 4: Twilight Grasp Nictus-Acc/Heal(A), Nictus-Acc/EndRdx/Heal/HP/Regen(27), Nictus-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(33), Numna-Heal/Rchg(33), Numna-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(33), Numna-Heal(34)
Level 6: Swift Flight-I(A)
Level 8: Shadow Fall LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def(19), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(19), S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(39)
Level 10: Darkest Night DarkWD-ToHitDeb(A), DarkWD-ToHitDeb/Rchg(15), DarkWD-ToHitDeb/EndRdx(15), DarkWD-ToHitdeb/Rchg/EndRdx(40)
Level 12: Recall Friend Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(43), Zephyr-ResKB(48)
Level 14: Teleport Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(46), Zephyr-ResKB(46)
Level 16: Hover Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(17), Zephyr-ResKB(17), Flight-I(27), LkGmblr-Rchg+(40)
Level 18: Health Mrcl-Rcvry+(A)
Level 20: Stamina P'Shift-EndMod(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(21), P'Shift-End%(21)
Level 22: Ice Storm Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(23), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(23), Posi-Dmg/Rng(25), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(25), RechRdx-I(45)
Level 24: Howling Twilight RechRdx-I(A)
Level 26: Maneuvers LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(46), LkGmblr-Rchg+(50)
Level 28: Bitter Ice Blast Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(29), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(29), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(31), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(31), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(31)
Level 30: Aim RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(40)
Level 32: Dark Servant Cloud-ToHitDeb(A), Cloud-Acc/ToHitDeb(34), Cloud-Acc/Rchg(34), Cloud-ToHitDeb/EndRdx/Rchg(37), Cloud-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(39), Cloud-%Dam(39)
Level 35: Freeze Ray Lock-Acc/Hold(A), Lock-Acc/Rchg(36), Lock-Rchg/Hold(36), Lock-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(36), Lock-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(37), Lock-%Hold(37)
Level 38: Assault EndRdx-I(A)
Level 41: Dominate Lock-Acc/Hold(A), Lock-Acc/Rchg(42), Lock-Rchg/Hold(42), Lock-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(42), Lock-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(43), Lock-%Hold(43)
Level 44: Mind Over Body TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx(A), TtmC'tng-ResDam/Rchg(45), TtmC'tng-ResDam(45)
Level 47: Blizzard Ragnrk-Dmg(A), Ragnrk-Dmg/Rchg(48), Ragnrk-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(48), Ragnrk-Acc/Rchg(50), Ragnrk-Dmg/EndRdx(50)
Level 49: Vengeance LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
------------
I don't really have the Ragnaroks or the LotGs listed above, and only partially have the Zephyrs, but I do have a lot of the other stuff, which was enough to get Star Amethyst's standing-around defenses (with Hover, Maneuvers and Shadow Fall on) to:
47% range defense
42% lethal resist
24% AoE defense
16% melee defense
This seemed terrific for a squishy, especially when I can throw down -ToHitDebuff and -Recharge powers at mobs as well, so I'm fairly hopeful for this build.
On Sunday I was on a villain messing around with the Black Market and I saw Deific Weapons priced at 1M infamy; this seemed like a good price (I'm more used to blue-side prices, where I do most of my market manipulation), so I started buying them at 1M apiece. I instantly picked up 10 for 1M, which I thought was pretty lucky, so I put another bid for 10 more. This cycle repeated itself until I somehow ended up with 100 Deific Weapons and my salvage containers, storage vault and personal inventory completely full. I'm kinda nervous that 1M wasn't as good a price as I thought, if I was able to get this many. I sure hope the price goes up now!
I played Star Amethyst (with her new respec build) on a speed ITF (27min 65sec) and a speed LGTF (25min 16sec); I normally find it pretty dangerous to play a squishy on a speed TF, but the high defenses felt like they really helped.
After that I played Kyrie Eleison on a Sister Psyche TF with a team of
2 defenders
2 scrappers
2 controllers
This TF had a character pretending to be Britney Spears, and another one dressed like Michael Jackson; I kinda regretted that my Paris Hilton character was on red-side. Also of note, the leader of the TF was level 23, but the TF spawned at level 25. Strangely when the leader leveled up, the whole team still stayed level 23! We were level 23 for the whole TF, effectively at the old Invincible difficulty. Fortunately, the team was strong enough to handle this, and we still finished in 1hr 59mins, a pretty good time. The high difficulty level was worth mad exp and got Kyrie to level 26.
Finished the night messing around with a couple newbie villain alts, a mace/shield brute and an elec/thermal corruptor. The jury's still out on whether I'll keep them long term.
Monday night I played Kyrie Eleison on a Citadel TF with a team of
2 blasters (AR/nrg, fire/fire)
2 tankers (fire/ss, fire/?)
2 scrappers
1 defender (emp/?)
1 controller (ice/rad)
The leader was pretty good about urging us to stay together, but she also wanted us to wait for everyone to enter a mission before anyone aggroed anything. This wouldn't normally be bad, except that we had a few people prone to AFKing or not being able to find the mission, so we were waiting around a lot, making the TF feel rather slow and dull. Our defender almost never buffed and actually announced she was AFKing and following with healing aura on auto. One of the fire tankers disconnected halfway through the TF and reconnected during the very last mission; not sure if this was lucky timing on his part, or something more calculated. Nevertheless we finished in 1hr 56mins, getting Kyrie to level 27.
Switching to Blond Justice I played through The Patriot Palace Massacre, an interesting murder mystery with a good plot and characterization, but the enemies were too hard and not very fun, and triggered objectives kept me criss-crossing a large outdoor map looking for each newly spawned objective, which was frustrating. I ended up giving it 3 stars. Several friends from Sisterhood channel joined me midway through the arc, and after we finished that arc, I ended up taking a 6 player team into Flower Knight TF as well (only this time on low difficulty). Again we found the db/willpower AVs in the final mission to regen too fast for us to drop them, and some players switched to debuffers in order to help take them down. This ended up motivating me to change their powersets to db/invuln instead of db/will; this raises their smash/lethal resist but cuts their regen (I didn't give them dull pain or unstoppable). Hoping that's a net improvement. Blond Justice spent another 3700 tickets on a recipe roll, this time getting a Numina's (HEAL/RCHG).
Someone was calling for help with Deathsurge on LB channel, and I brought on Blackout Girl (29 elec/elec brute) to help; a full team had formed and we took down Deathsurge with no problems. Then we hopped over to Sharkhead and beat up Scrapyard for good measure. Someone had disconnected during the Deathsurge fight and missed the badge, so the team went back again to Cap au Diable (though several of us switched to get the badge for another alt; I switched to Spy Girl, 33 MA/ninj stalker) and fought a respawn of Deathsurge, before calling it a night.
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
12/14/2009
Last Tuesday night I was only on a short while; I played Thunder Girl (50 elec/SR scrapper) and joined a badging team that was killing Fake Nemeses in Peregrine Island, and we all got the Unveiler badge, which also got Thunder Girl the Freedom Phalanx Reserve accolade (+10% max HP, which was +133HP for her).
On Wednesday night I played Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster), helping a defender friend with some missions in Croatoa, then switched to Quick Katie (29 plant/kin controller) to help a team with one run through a level 50 Council Empire map. They wanted to repeat the Council Empire map a few times, but once was enough for me (I would feel guilty about being PL'd) so I swapped out.
It was the last day of Dr. Aeon's Architect Challenge, and I had ultimately decided that my first attempt, Mistaken Identity, wasn't going to satisfy the challenge; the story was improving a lot, but no one who played it seemed to believe it counted as "doing evil for the greater good", which is the premise of the contest. So at the very last minute I wrote a new story arc, The Destroyer of Worlds, which is about the Manhattan Project and dropping an atom bomb on Japan. I figure killing a hundred thousand civilians in order to end WW2 is a lot more clearly "doing evil for the greater good" than my original idea (which was the rather murky "if you're insane, things that you think are good may actually be evil"), but since I wrote this at the very last minute, it's probably not as polished a story as it could be. Oh well.
Police Woman also picked up the Shop Keeper and Entrepreneur day job badges on Wednesday.
On Thursday night, I played Quick Katie on a 3-player Sisterhood team that ran through the first few missions of the Midnight Club story arc, getting Quick Katie to level 31.
A bit later I joined a speed Statesman TF; the team leader asked for a shield scrapper, so I played Blond Justice (50 broadsword/shield scrapper). This run went remarkably well and we finished in 38min 2sec, beating the previous server record by 4 minutes. In the final mission we killed all the towers except the blue one, then went after Lord Recluse. I don't remember which HO I got; Nucleolus maybe? While running through Ouroboros I got a compliment on Blond Justice's costume, which was nice.
Friday night, Blond Justice did another speed Statesman TF; this time we resolved to use Warburg nukes and shivans to try to beat the last run. We had a team of 2 tankers, 3 scrappers, 2 controllers (rad and kin) and 1 defender (cold). In the final mission, we rushed all 4 patron AVs at once, and I and another player were asked to drop all 3 nukes and a shivan on them; this resulted in the patron AVs getting splattered in a hurry.
Our initial plan against Lord Recluse was to drop the green tower (only) then immediately rush Recluse, with the rest of the team using Warburg nukes and shivans; but when we did this, we couldn't hit him at all. I found I only had 10% chance to hit, even with Focused Accuracy running. So we switched to the yellow tower, dropped it, then went back to Recluse. Now I could hit him 95% of the time, but every hit was for 0 damage (somehow he had 100% lethal resist, maybe other resists too). We dropped the red tower too, but Recluse was still immune to damage; then suddenly he stopped being immune to damage and he fell dead under our attacks. My best theory for what happened here is that Lord Recluse must pop some kind of Unstoppable-like power during the cut scene where he monologues about his evil plan, and consequently cannot be damaged until that power runs out; and we never noticed this before because we never tried to seriously kill him until long after it ran out. In any case, we finished in 34min 13sec, breaking the last night's record; though in hindsight a lot of the nukes and shivans in the final encounter were probably wasted due to Lord Recluse's immunity to damage. This STF finished less than 24 hours after the last one I played; I didn't want to take the merits, so I left the reward window up and logged out, planning to pick an HO later.
After that I played Mega on a speed LGTF (24min 16sec) and a speed ITF (22min 38sec). The speed ITF was different than normal because in the final encounter, the team leader wanted us to kill the Nictus AVs first, not Romulus. This was kind of weird but seemed to work; I'm guessing the idea is that even though the Nictus AVs are tougher, we can kill all the Nictus AVs in parallel, rather than have to kill Romulus 4 times in sequence.
There were PERC reps advertising a costume contest on LB channel, so I brought on April Fool (50 thug/TA MM) and headed to Pocket D. The actual event was a bit underwhelming; a couple people had us line up and I think they probably took screenshots, but they didn't actually say anything other than "We'll let you know in a week". I kept myself entertained by threatening to kill the other contestants in order to improve my chances, and saying that another contestant had "a very pretty spleen, would you like to see it?" Made it more fun for me, anyway.
After that I played Lady Arachne (50 wolf spider) on a speed RSF that finished in 31min 22sec and got me a Ribosome HO. I've been enjoying playing Lady Arachne lately (after a long hiatus) and ended up using her free respec to try and work some set IOs into her build (she previously was running purely on SOs). This is the build I worked out for her:
Lady Arachne: Level 50 Natural Arachnos Soldier
Primary Power Set: Bane Spider Soldier
Secondary Power Set: Bane Spider Training
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Medicine
Power Pool: Leaping
Villain Profile:
------------
Level 1: Single Shot Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(3), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(3), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(7), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(7), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(9)
Level 1: Bane Spider Armor Upgrade S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), ResDam-I(9), ResDam-I(11)
Level 2: Burst Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(11), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(13), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(13), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(15), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(15)
Level 4: Combat Training: Defensive LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def/Rchg(5), LkGmblr-Def(5)
Level 6: Swift Run-I(A)
Level 8: Heavy Burst AirB'st-Acc/Dmg(A), AirB'st-Dmg/EndRdx(17), AirB'st-Dmg/Rchg(17), AirB'st-Dmg/Rng(19), RechRdx-I(19), RechRdx-I(21)
Level 10: Tactical Training: Maneuvers LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(21), LkGmblr-Def(23), LkGmblr-Rchg+(43)
Level 12: Venom Grenade AirB'st-Acc/Dmg(A), AirB'st-Dmg/EndRdx(23), AirB'st-Dmg/Rchg(27), AirB'st-Dmg/Rng(27), RechRdx-I(29), RechRdx-I(29)
Level 14: Aid Other IntRdx-I(A), Mrcl-Heal/EndRdx(37), Mrcl-EndRdx/Rchg(37), Mrcl-Heal/Rchg(40), Mrcl-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(42), Mrcl-Heal(42)
Level 16: Tactical Training: Assault EndRdx-I(A)
Level 18: Aid Self IntRdx-I(A), Mrcl-Heal/EndRdx(34), Mrcl-EndRdx/Rchg(36), Mrcl-Heal/Rchg(36), Mrcl-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(36), Mrcl-Heal(37)
Level 20: Hurdle Jump-I(A)
Level 22: Mental Training Run-I(A)
Level 24: Stamina P'Shift-EndMod(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(25), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(25), P'Shift-End%(48)
Level 26: Cloaking Device LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 28: Surveillance AnWeak-Acc/Rchg(A), UndDef-DefDeb/Rchg(31), UndDef-DefDeb/Rchg/EndRdx(31), LdyGrey-DefDeb/Rchg(31), LdyGrey-DefDeb/Rchg/EndRdx(42)
Level 30: Tactical Training: Leadership GSFC-ToHit(A), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg(33), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg/EndRdx(33), GSFC-Rchg/EndRdx(33), GSFC-ToHit/EndRdx(34), GSFC-Build%(34)
Level 32: Combat Jumping LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 35: Wide Area Web Grenade TotHntr-Acc/Rchg(A), TotHntr-Acc/EndRdx(43), TotHntr-Acc/Immob/Rchg(43)
Level 38: Call Reinforcements ExRmnt-Acc/Rchg(A), ExRmnt-Acc/Dmg(39), ExRmnt-Dmg/EndRdx(39), ExRmnt-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(39), ExRmnt-EndRdx/Dmg/Rchg(40), ExRmnt-+Res(Pets)(40)
Level 41: Frag Grenade AirB'st-Acc/Dmg(A), AirB'st-Dmg/EndRdx(46), AirB'st-Dmg/Rchg(48), AirB'st-Dmg/Rng(50), RechRdx-I(50), RechRdx-I(50)
Level 44: Bayonet T'Death-Acc/Dmg(A), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx(45), T'Death-Dmg/Rchg(45), T'Death-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(45), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(46), T'Death-Dam%(46)
Level 47: Build Up RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(48)
Level 49: Wolf Spider Armor ResDam-I(A)
------------
Of note: This is a "wolf spider" concept build, NOT a typical bane spider build. Lady Arachne has all gun powers and no mace powers (except Build Up...I couldn't resist taking Build Up). Nevertheless, I feel like it is very effective. I ditched Pummel for Single Shot (a power that used to suck but got buffed at some point) and Resuscitate for Wolf Spider Armor (not sure this was a good trade... the Wolf armor gives +3% smash/lethal resist and a little more status protection, but being able to rez is nice). I actually don't have most of the above set IOs yet, but it's something I'm working towards. The use of 4xAir Burst and 2xRchg IOs in her AoE attacks is a little experimental; it's more common for me to slot 5xPositron's Blast and 1xRchg IO, but the Air Bursts give a little +HP and +Smash/Lethal RES (stacking with her armors) and putting 2 Rchg IOs lets me hit the recharge soft cap for each individual attack (while 5xPositrion 1xRchg is only about +64% rchg but each set gives +6.25% global rchg). Anyway, not quite sure whether it's a good idea or not, but I am finding Air Burst to be a lot easier and cheaper to assemble full sets of.
On Saturday I played Quick Katie on a Manticore TF with a team of:
3 scrappers
2 tankers (1 was AFK for pretty much the whole TF)
1 blaster
1 kin controller (me)
1 rad defender
We didn't have any problems and finished it in 58min 5sec; part of this team went on to do a Synapse TF, with a team of:
3 scrappers
2 tankers
2 blasters
1 kin controller (me)
This was a little scary as I was the only support character on an 8 person team, and kinetics isn't really all that defendery. Nevertheless we did fine; I'd like to think that SB to counteract the clockworks' energy drain was helpful. We even beat Babbage with no outside help (I spammed Transfusion for -regen and we had pretty good DPS), and finished in 1hr 40mins.
A friend on the team asked me to trade her 500M infl on blue side, in return for 500M infamy on red side. I have way more money on blue side anyway, so this worked out well for both of us. I used the infamy to try and kick-start my market manipulation on red side, which I had gotten a bit lazy about. I've been finding it a lot easier to skim influence off of Wentworth's than infamy from the Black Market; there just seems to be both more volume and more price fluctuations (at least in the items I usually deal with) on blue side.
The Synapse TF got Quick Katie to level 33. I took the plant pet at level 32...I can never figure out what to do with controller pets, since despite the AT name, you can't control them, but everyone else seems to like controller pets, so I figure I should take it. I also cashed in all of Quick Katie's 340 merits on 17 random recipe draws, receiving:
1 Pacing of the Turtle (chance for rchg slow) Wentw=350K
2 Positron's Blast (chance for nrg dmg) Wentw=5M
2 Gift of the Ancients (DEF) Wentw=3.9M
2 Numina's Convalescence (END/HEAL/RCHG) Wentw=1M
1 Dark Watcher's Despair (RCHG/END) Wentw=20K
2 Decimation (ACC/END/RCHG) Wentw=3.5M
1 Expedient Reinforcement (END/DMG/RCHG) Wentw=250K
2 Touch of Death (DMG/END/RCHG) Wentw=8.5M
1 Devastation (chance to hold) Wentw=10M
1 Mako's Bite (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=1M
1 Sting of the Manticore (DMG/INTRDX/RCHG) Wentw=1.3M
1 Devastation (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=1M
Total=57.72M for 340 merits, or 169.7K infl per merit. This is a pretty low yield (I didn't get any of the big ticket recipes); by comparison, spending 200 merits for a LotG (DEF/+7.5 rchg) selling for 50M has a yield of 250K infl per merit. I still think it's a good gamble over large numbers of merits, though.
Playing Mega (50 SS/will brute) I stomped around the Cimerora walls for a bit; this is sorta farm-y but for some reason feels more fun, at least for short periods of time. After about 15 minutes I lucked into an Unbreakable Constraint (HOLD/END) purple recipe.
A friend wanted to team up for Rikti War Zone missions, so I played Strong Woman (41 inv/SS tanker) to duo with her defender for the initial "Welcome to Vanguard" story arc. This got Strong Woman to level 42.
Finished Saturday night playing Lady Arachne on a quick Lady Grey TF (24min 38sec) and Schadenfreude (50 AR/pain corruptor) on a quick RSF (38min 4sec, got a Peroxisome).
On Sunday I played Kyrie Eleison (27 fire/regen scrapper) on a 4 player Sisterhood team exemped down to level 15 working on warshade storyline missions; after that team broke up, Kyrie went on to join a pickup team fighting level 33s.
A friend wanted to put together a Katie Hannon TF for Quick Katie (now a 33 plant/kin controller); I was excited to play Quick Katie on "her" TF, which I'm ashamed to admit I haven't unlocked yet (I've been sorta slowly soloing through Kelly Nemmers' and Buck Salinger's story arcs). We had a team of 8, but one person realized he was too low (only level 29) and had to bail, so we ended up going with a team of 7:
2 blasters
2 scrappers
2 tankers
1 kin controller (me)
The guy who had to drop was a rad controller and I was kinda worried that without him we wouldn't be able to beat the Mary AVs, but actually we did pretty well. I tried to focus on keeping SB on everyone, ID on the blasters (to prevent knockback by stormy powers) and transfusion on the AVs, and this seemed to work. I myself got knocked back a lot; I kinda picture Quick Katie doing a lot of Katie TFs for thematic reasons, so I'm going to need to get KB protection IOs at some point. Anyway, we finished in 26min 4sec.
Later that afternoon I played Arrow Girl (38 archery/dev blaster) on the Sisterhood Sunday event, which was a Numina TF. 10 people showed up and we split into two teams of 5; on my team were:
1 kin controller
3 scrappers
1 blaster (me)
I got a compliment on Arrow Girl's costume at the start, which was nice. Later on, Arrow Girl hit level 39 and a lot of her level 35 SOs went red, so I went to RWZ to buy level 40 SOs; while there, a random passerby asked me "Do you find archery fun?" Thinking about it, I replied: "Yes; it's maybe not the BEST blast set, but I like the animations and Rain of Arrows really rocks. Lethal resists are sometimes a problem, but yes, I think it's fun." They seemed happy with that response; I think they were considering making an archery character. Anyway, Numina TF was pretty straightforward for us and we finished in 1hr 45mins.
Late at night I played Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corruptor) on a Recluse SF; the team leader and about half the team were veteran RSFers, while the other half were pickup people with little RSF experience. Our team was:
2 brutes
4 corruptors (2 rad, 1 thermal, 1 kin)
1 stalker
1 fortunata
We had a lot of stray deaths in missions 2 and 3 but mostly dusted ourselves off and kept going. I managed to carelessly get killed by Future BAB in mission 3 by getting too close to him and being hit by a killer Foot Stomp. In the final mission the team leader was a bit dismayed to find that I was the only character who had Vengeance (the typical strategy is to stack multiple vengeances on the team before starting the fight), and consequently asked the squishies to huddle some distance away from the Freedom Phalanx during the fight, and lay down ranged damage from further away. This mostly worked to keep people alive (though we still had some stray deaths; fortunately, this helped feed my Vengeance/Fallout/Mutation engine) but prevented the Shivans we had spawned from getting involved in the fight, at least until rather late. The team leader dropped a couple Warburg nukes on the Freedom Phalanx to make sure they went down, and as a result we ended up beating the Freedom Phalanx on the first try, finishing the RSF in 45mins 6sec. I got an Endoplasm SHO as reward.
I finished the night burning a free respec to tinker with Indigo Ifrit's build; this is what I came up with:
Indigo Ifrit respec: Level 50 Magic Corruptor
Primary Power Set: Fire Blast
Secondary Power Set: Radiation Emission
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Teleportation
Power Pool: Leadership
Ancillary Pool: Leviathan Mastery
Villain Profile:
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Level 1: Fire Blast Decim-Acc/Dmg(A), Decim-Dmg/EndRdx(3), Decim-Dmg/Rchg(3), Decim-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(5), Decim-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(5), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(7)
Level 1: Radiant Aura Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx(A), Dct'dW-EndRdx/Rchg(7), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(9), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(9), Dct'dW-Heal(11), Dct'dW-Rchg(11)
Level 2: Radiation Infection HO:Enzym(A), HO:Enzym(13), HO:Enzym(13)
Level 4: Accelerate Metabolism Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(15), Zephyr-ResKB(15), RechRdx-I(34), Efficacy-EndMod/Rchg(34), Efficacy-Acc/Rchg(45)
Level 6: Fire Ball Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(17), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(17), Posi-Dmg/Rng(19), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(19), RechRdx-I(21)
Level 8: Swift Flight-I(A)
Level 10: Hover Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(21), Zephyr-ResKB(23), Flight-I(23), LkGmblr-Rchg+(37)
Level 12: Teleport Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(25), Zephyr-ResKB(25), TSM'n-Stlth(36)
Level 14: Health Mrcl-Heal/EndRdx(A), Mrcl-Rcvry+(27), Mrcl-Heal(48)
Level 16: Enervating Field EndRdx-I(A)
Level 18: Blaze Decim-Acc/Dmg(A), Decim-Dmg/EndRdx(27), Decim-Dmg/Rchg(29), Decim-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(29), Decim-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(31), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(31)
Level 20: Stamina P'Shift-EndMod(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(31), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(33), P'Shift-End%(33), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc/Rchg(50), P'Shift-Acc/Rchg(50)
Level 22: Lingering Radiation Acc-I(A), RechRdx-I(33), RechRdx-I(34)
Level 24: Recall Friend Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(36), Zephyr-ResKB(36)
Level 26: Fire Breath Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(37), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(37), Posi-Dmg/Rng(39), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(39), RechRdx-I(39)
Level 28: Maneuvers LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(40), LkGmblr-Def(40), LkGmblr-Rchg+(40)
Level 30: Tactics GSFC-ToHit(A), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg(42), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg/EndRdx(42), GSFC-Rchg/EndRdx(42), GSFC-ToHit/EndRdx(43), GSFC-Build%(43)
Level 32: Vengeance LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 35: Aim RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(43)
Level 38: Mutation RechRdx-I(A)
Level 41: Shark Skin S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx(45), TtmC'tng-ResDam(45), TtmC'tng-EndRdx(46)
Level 44: Fallout Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(46), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(46), Posi-Dmg/Rng(48), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(48)
Level 47: Assault EndRdx-I(A)
Level 49: Hibernate RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(50)
------------
I have some of the above IOs (mostly the Decimations and Positron's Blast) but still need a lot of the Luck of the Gambler and Blessing of the Zephyr IOs (something to work towards with merits, I figure). Key differences from her previous build: I dropped Blazing Bolt for Assault (I just don't use Snipe attacks enough to justify having one) and dropped Black Scorpion's patron pool for Captain Mako's patron pool (villain teams often have a lot of +DEF already, so I feel like resists from Shark Skin will contribute more to survivability, plus providing a place to put Steadfast Protection RES/+3% def; plus it's blue! also Hibernate seems really good in PvP and may save me occasionally on SFs).
@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!"
Hey PW, the reward timer for TFs is 18 hours now, not 24. However, that's for merits, I don't know if that applies to HOs or not.
Quote:
Yeah, for HOs it still seems to be 24.
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Originally Posted by Nights_Dawn
Hey PW, the reward timer for TFs is 18 hours now, not 24. However, that's for merits, I don't know if that applies to HOs or not.
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@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!"
Ah, good to know. I haven't done STF much lately, and have only done RSF once or twice total, so I've never run into that problem.
12/22/2009
Last Tuesday the Winter Event got started for real, and the organized villains ran a bunch of Lord of Winter events in a row. I ran the event with Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corr), Mega (50 SS/will brute), Lady Arachne (50 wolf spider; using Surveillance I found that LoW has 70% resist to all, but is affected in a really weird way by resist debuffs, which seem more effective on him than against normal mobs), Schadenfreude (50 AR/pain corr), Spy Girl (33 MA/ninj stalker). Made an attempt with Mayday (50 fortunata) but by this time it was getting late and a lot of villains had left, so we ended up failing the event, running out of time with Lord of Winter at 25% health.
So I switched to hero side, which was still pretty populated at that hour, and ran Star Amethyst (50 dark/ice def), Blond Justice (50 bs/shield scrap) and Thunder Girl (50 elec/SR scrap) through the LoW event. I'm really not quite sure what I'll do with all the candy canes, but I did want to get the badges for most of my commonly played characters.
Late Tuesday night I played Olivia Q (50 MA/SR scrapper) through Breaking the Barrier (And Putting it Back Together), an AE story arc where you deal with these mysterious portals from the Shadow Shard popping up at random in Paragon City, and work with an interesting race of lizardfolk. This was neat, had good writing and cool characters, but I felt the plot was pretty scattered; I ended up giving it 3 stars.
Over Wed/Thu/Fri, I ran a lot of speedy TFs; Blackout Girl (29 elec/elec brute) did a 1st villain respec (11min 14sec) and a Sharkhead SF (26min 15sec) which got her to level 30.
Yuki-Onna (50 ice/cold corr) did a 6-player ITF with 2 corrs (kin and cold), 1 blaster, 2 brutes, 1 tank; we corruptors died a lot (I'm learning how to use hibernation to escape death, but it's still pretty rough to be a squishy on a speed ITF) but we still got through it in 29min 30sec.
Spacegirl (50 mind/rad controller) did a speed LGTF in 26min 45sec.
Mega (50 SS/will brute) did a speed ITF in 25min 3sec.
Star Amethyst (50 dark/ice def) did a speed LGTF in 33min 56sec.
On Saturday, Blackout Girl (30 elec/elec brute) did another Sharkhead SF in 31min 51sec. I'm still not totally sold on electric armor, which seems awfully squishy; I have to eat a lot more lucks than any of the other brutes on these speed SFs. (Though, in fairness, most are exemped from 50 with lots of IO sets.) The previous incarnation of this character was elec/invuln and I'm wondering if invuln was actually better. The SR, shield and willpower defense sets are kinda spoiling me, I guess.
Strong Woman (42 invuln/SS tanker) joined a non-speed ITF where we decided we would "clear most" (i.e. anything that got in the way). This was still reasonably fast-paced, finishing in 47min 44sec and getting Strong Woman to level 43.
Lady Arachne (50 wolf spider) joined a RSF (33min 6sec, got a Nucleolus), then the same team switched to blue side and I played Blond Justice (50 bs/shield scrapper) on a STF (44min 27sec, got a Centriole). The final fight of this STF was a little scary because the tanker dropped against Lord Recluse, who rushed us at the red tower. Playing a scrapper I figured it was my duty to attack him, so I tanked him for all of 4 seconds before getting flattened (soft capped DEF only takes you so far...). The tank got back in there and we were able to recover and finish the fight though.
Finally on Saturday, I finished soloing Quick Katie (33 plant/kin controller) through Buck Salinger's arc, which gave me 12 merits and unlocked her eponymous TF. Burned 20 merits on a recipe roll, getting an Aegis (+mez resist).
On Sunday, I played Kashira (31 db/ninj stalker), joining a 3 player team doing a Steel Canyon mayhem. I thought I needed the badge, but I actually had it already (had just failed to update my notes accordingly), but it was still fun tearing up Steel Canyon. When we exited the mayhem, a Lord of Winter event was about to begin, and people seemed to want to do it. Looking around the big blue present right before entering, I could see we didn't have enough people/enough debuffs to win, but I didn't really want to be seen as a quitter so we went on in and quixotically attacked Lord of Winter for 15 minutes. I think we did actually spawn all 3 Winter Guardians but LoW was at nearly 50% life when time ran out (after people started dying, LoW's regen started to outpace our DPS).
Later on Sunday night, I joined a 3-player lowbie villain team, playing Shield Maiden (a newbie 5 mace/shield brute, and I'm really glad to get this name -- someone else had it until pretty recently, I think). We did an Atlas mayhem, the Loa Bone badge mission twice (I got to make a heroic stand as the other two team members died), and the Plague Carrier mission, which got Shield Maiden to level 12 and DOs before we called it a night. I am actually liking mace a lot more than I expected to; the animations and the damage it deals have a certain satisfying "crunch" to them.
Monday night, I played Mega (50 SS/will brute) on an ITF (26min 48sec) and a LGTF (28min 13sec).
Then I played Shield Maiden a bit more, duoing with the AR/cold corruptor I played with on Sunday night. He complained of being squishy; I tried to encourage him to actually use his cold powers...or to be more accurate, cold power, as he only had Infrigidate so far. Things seemed to go better after he started regularly using Infrigidate (up to that point he was just shooting stuff), so I think that must've helped. We finished Seer Marino's story arc and did a couple missions in Cap au Diable, where we picked up a lowbie VEAT that I knew. We had a couple wipeouts against lowbie Arachnos, and I kinda nagged the other two about not having ice shields/not having Tactical Training: Maneuvers, which was probably not very nice of me, but really, stacking those powers would've made us immensely more survivable. People hate taking team support powers, I guess. Nevertheless we made steady progress and got Shield Maiden to level 14 before the team broke up.
I wrote Shield Maiden a quicky background story, placing her origin as being from the War World as one of Battle Maiden's lackeys. Probably will want to write a better story for her later though.
I finished the night playing through The Consequences of War on Arrow Girl (39 archery/dev blaster). This is a war epic style AE story arc depicting brutal fighting during the Rikti invasion. It's really quite a cool arc with an impressive finale (though I had a tough time soloing some of the Rikti EBs; managed to beat them with a combination of trip mines, Lucks, and determination) but it has kind of a slow start and leaves some plotlines dangling (for a sequel), so I ended up rating it 4 stars.
In other news, April Fool totally won the "Ms Rogue Isles" PERC costume contest, which I'm pretty psyched about. Apparently there is a server-wide finals event in January that I'll need to go to, after filling out some sort of questionaire. I'm eagerly looking forward to answering "in-character" questions for April Fool, who is basically a psychotic clown with "daddy" issues. Should be fun!
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
12/29/2009
Last Tuesday I played Star Amethyst (50 dark/ice defender) on a quick ITF (24min 8sec) and a quick LGTF (26min 35sec). Got a Hecatomb (DMG/RCHG) recipe drop.
Wednesday, Star Amethyst did another quick ITF (25min 39sec), then I switched to Quick Katie (33 plant/kin controller) to do a Lord of Winter event. We only had one team, but had lots of buff/debuff (4 controllers, 2 defenders, 2 scrappers) and so we managed to finish with 1.5min to spare. This got Quick Katie to level 34.
Quick Katie got a costume compliment from a random passerby, then I spent some time crafting and slotting IO sets, mostly getting Air Bursts for AoE powers and Devastation for single target powers, to increase her max HP in hopes of making her more survivable (I find I have a hard time staying alive as a kin on a fast-moving team). Also spent some time helping a newbie who was having trouble figuring out if he successfully purchased and activated the Natural booster pack or not; I eventually got him to check whether he had Ninja Run to determine this for certain.
On Thursday I played Mega (50 ss/will brute) on a LGTF; for some reason our stone tanker deliberately suicided in the first mission by standing right where psychic Clockwork King was about to spawn, for the sake of making his character appear in the cut scene. This seemed pretty silly, but we got through the rest of the LGTF without incident, finishing in 31min 56sec.
After the LGTF, I switched to Quick Katie to fight the Rikti invasion in Atlas Park, then went on to solo my way through the arc to unlock the Midnight club. Quick Katie also did a quick Manticore TF (48min 40sec).
I spent some time soloing Arrow Girl (39 archery/dev blaster) through an AE story arc called Task Force Mutternacht, where you help Agent Indigo with a government cover-up. This story had an interesting plot and great characters and dialog, and I gave it 5 stars.
I found that my pool of tickets piling up at AE was getting close to the cap, so I had Spy Girl (33 MA/ninj stalker) claim 7400 of them and spend them on two Gold recipe rolls. I got a Trap of the Hunter (chance for lethal) worth 1M (boo) and a Numina's Convalescence (+rec/+regen) worth 56M (yay!).
I spent some time tweaking the permissions on my private villain group; I had a couple people offer to join my VG with one of their (untagged) lowbie alts for the sake of earning prestige for someone. "PW Rogues Gallery" was originally only my own alts, so I had previously set up permissions so that every rank could do everything, but this seemed risky if I started including other people, so I adjusted the security settings so that I could safely give other people a "Guest" ranking in the villain group, without allowing them to have the ability to kick me out of my own VG, or access to my stockpiles of enhancements and salvage. I don't think anyone I'd choose to invite to my VG actually would steal stuff from my base, but no one ever expects that sort of thing, so a good security policy seemed wise.
On Friday I played Primadonna (50 sonic/kin corruptor who hasn't been out much lately) on a "kill most stuff" ITF which we still finished in 47min 3sec. We did have a bad team wipe in the last mission, ironically after defeating Romulus 4 times, when the team split up all over the place to kill the remaining Romans.
After the ITF I blew some merits on recipes; Primadonna spent 200 merits on a level 33 Luck of the Gambler (+7.5% rchg), then Indigo Ifrit spent 240 merits on a level 10 Blessing of the Zephyr (KB protection). Crafting and slotting some IOs for Indigo Ifrit got her range defense up to 15.49%; not great, but better than before.
I decided I wanted Quick Katie to run "her own" TF to level up some, so I recruited and led a Katie TF (2 controllers, 1 defender, 2 tankers, 2 scrappers, 1 peacebringer) that finished in 30min 5sec and got Quick Katie to level 35, where I took Transference. I went on from there to lead a 4-player team through the first few missions of the "Welcome to Vanguard" arc in Rikti War Zone.
Late at night I signed up for a Synapse TF with Arrow Girl; we had 7 players but were waiting for our 8th player for a really long time. Supposedly he was level 14 and "really close" to level 15, but after we waited around for about 30 minutes he finally asked us to help do a radio mission to get him to 15 so he could join. The team leader wanted to do this, but I felt this was a very rude thing to ask, especially after already making us wait for so long, so I quit the team.
Instead, I switched back to Quick Katie and joined a Numina TF (3 scrappers, 3 controllers, 1 blaster) which finished in 56min 16sec and got her the Task Force Commander accolade.
On Saturday I played Mary Christmas (21 ice/rad controller on Triumph) for seasonal reasons; I created her 2 Christmases ago and she only comes out around this time of year. I joined a 5 player team doing AE story arcs. First we played through The Freakshow Artz Klub, a very funny story about Freakshow trying to impress art critics with their artistic talents; I gave it 5 stars. Then Fear and Loathing in Striga, an interesting story about Arachnos trying to manipulate events in Striga Isle to gain control; I gave it 4 stars. Then the team wanted to play Papers and Paychecks, one of my story arcs where you hire on as an employee at Crey Industries. I actually had been thinking about unpublishing this story arc as not being fun enough, but the team really seemed to like it; this encouraged me to keep it around awhile longer.
Later on Saturday I played Kyrie Eleison (28 fire/regen scrapper), soloing my way through two Striga story arcs, then joining a 7-player Sisterhood team that got her to level 29.
On Sunday I played Shield Maiden (14 mace/shield brute) on a Lord of Winter event in Cap au Diable, then solo'd my way through The Long Road Back, an AE story arc where you're a villain that gets recruited by the CIA. This arc had some gameplay issues that made it rather tedious, along with a lot of plot threads that never really got resolved; I ended up giving it 2 stars. This did get Shield Maiden to level 15, though.
I played Lady Arachne (50 wolf spider) on a quick LGTF (25min 33sec) and Mega on a quick ITF (23min 18sec).
I was testing some tweaks to my Celebrity Kidnapping story arc while on Blackout Girl (30 elec/elec brute) when a friend asked to team up, so I dragged him through Celebrity Kidnapping, then my Talos Vice story arc, then we did his Crey's Cloning Conundrum story arc (where Crey goes nuts cloning a particular hero).
I started Monday playing Star Amethyst on a quick Statesman TF. Our team was:
2 controllers (kin, rad)
1 defender (dark)
2 tankers (both inv)
3 scrappers
We had a little trouble in the last mission when the yellow tower respawned (probably due to repairmen) but still finished in 45min 26sec. This was Star Amethyst's first run through the STF so I got a bunch of badges, along with a Nucleolus SHO.
Star Amethyst went on to do a 1-team Lord of Winter event; one team member thought we wouldn't make it with only one team, but we had a lot of buff/debuff and actually finished with 2.5mins to spare.
Star Amethyst did a quick ITF after that (22min 39sec), then I switched to Blond Justice (50 bs/shield scrapper) for another STF with:
2 controllers (rad, kin)
1 defender (rad)
2 tankers (stone, will)
3 scrappers
For some reason we had a lot of stray deaths in the final mission, but still managed to finish in 48min 21sec. I got a Cytoskeleton SHO.
After that I switched to Quick Katie and did another ITF. I was only level 35 which was probably too low; despite my best efforts I died a lot. My control powers seemed useless or counterproductive against the Romans, reminding me that I don't like playing controllers on the ITF (something I'd decided awhile back but had forgotten). One of my teammates who plays kinetics a lot gave me some tips for avoiding aggro; in the final encounter, flying over Romulus and staying out of melee range (despite seeming un-kin-ly) seemed to help a lot. This ITF finished in 37min 13sec and got Quick Katie to level 36.
At the market afterwards I noticed that there were no Demonic Blood samples for sale at Wentworths at all, and the last sale was 1M. This seemed a crazy price for a common salvage, but I had 3 in my inventory and decided to toss them onto the broker with a huge asking price to see if I could benefit. I immediately sold 1 of them for 1M infl. There've been stories of market manipulation of very common salvage on the Market forum; perhaps this was an instance of it. We'll see if the other two sell or not.
I also got invited to fill out a web-based questionnaire for the PERC server-wide "Ms Rogue Isles" costume contest, for April Fool, who won the Liberty server costume contest. I had way too much fun writing answers for this. Here's what I wrote:
Quote:
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Q. Tell us your first outing. Give us the details, how did you feel using your powers for the first time, seeing the world around you. We want to live your first experiences. A. As a mastermind, one of my earliest powers was to summon a henchman to do my every bidding! After doing all the usual stuff (making him get coffee, making him wash my car, having him break into vending machines for loose change, yelling at him if he did something without me saying "Simon says") I decided to test the limits of my power, and sent him on a suicidal attack against a giant snake. My henchman died, of course, but I thought his blood sprayed on the pavement in a very artistic way. I realized I had the power of life and death over others! This was a huge responsibility! I resolved then and there that I would only use these powers for the best of reasons. Namely, for my personal gain! And, of course, whenever it would be funny! Q. In the thick of times, a cape can be dangerous; you can be sucked into a jet engine and your cape get caught, thus ending your wonderful career as a superhero or supervillain! But putting capes aside, what about boxers or briefs? We know all that Superman wore those tighty whiteys back in his day, not technically whiteys, more a red whitey, but all the same. So the same question comes to you! Does a superhero/supervillain do better in boxers or those good ole fashion tighty whiteys? A. Well, just look at me and you can see my answer. Obviously, a leotard with stripey stockings is the way to go! (I guess this is closer to "briefs".) Q. Which of the main characters of City of™ can you relate to? Are you able to connect to Numina because you’re arcane and love magic? Perhaps you can relate to Statesman or Lord Recluse, a god reincarnate. Maybe you can relate to Synapse or Ghost Widow? Tell us why you believe you can relate to them. A. Well, I really like Chimera because he's my dad, so of course I love him. Even though he was never around when I was young, leaving my upbringing to a bunch of his ninja minions. I mean who does that! Raised by freakin' ninja?! Do you have any idea what that DOES to a child?! I hate him! I hate him forever! I want to see him die!! Q. What location in the city or isles makes you stop and look in awe? What do you feel when you view this location? Please be specific on location. A. I cannot help but feel a sense of awe every time I see the giant doughnut in Faultline. Such a wonderful engineering marvel! I feel hungry and avaricious every time I see the giant doughnut. I will steal it! It must be mine!! I will booby trap it with explosives and use it like a gigantic bug zapper for hungry cops! Hahahahaha! Q. Hypothetical Situation: Villain, the world is about to be destroyed. And the only way to stop it is if you sacrifice yourself. (There is no way you can stop it by any means of your powers or the world is ending because of you.) Will you give up your own life to save the lives of others? Others including the hero you hate so deeply. Lives you’ve never witnessed, families, and natural life which you despise? Or will you just let the world be destroyed with you a part of it? A. Ohhh I would totally volunteer to give up my own life to save the universe. Only at the last minute, I would be like, PSYCH!! HAHAHA! You didn't REALLY think I would do that, did you? The expression on the faces of the rest of the world would be PRICELESS! And I would laugh and laugh as the universe was destroyed. That would be the BEST practical joke EVER!! XOXOX, April Fool! |
@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!"
For my ranged toons (kin, cold, rad, blaster, storm) I build for softcapped ranged defense (45%).
It makes a huge difference and I find I rarely get defeated on speed runs.
1/11/2009
I've been on holiday for a couple weeks (well, did some work in there somewhere, then got snowed in) so this is a longish update that will gloss over some stuff in the interests of space.
Playing Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) I helped a 5 player team with Jack-in-Irons. Police Woman also did an Imperious TF (36min 17sec). I also was asked to help make a fourth for a 2v2 arena fight. The arena fight was a fire blaster and me versus a fire blaster and a psy blaster; I was the only one without a PvP build (for example, all three of the others had Hibernate and I did not) and consequently the results were pretty gruesome for my team. The psy blaster was especially deadly with mez effects messing me up. I did get one kill in, but mostly people would run away/hibernate whenever close to death. After our first match it seemed like they still wanted to PvP, but no one wanted to be teamed with me, and no one wanted to switch to a non-PvP build. This didn't seem very fun, so I left.
Later during the weekend I played Police Woman on a Sisterhood/LEGION Master of the Statesman TF team. I didn't really have high hopes for this (it's a hard badge to get; I set my personal goal as being "don't be the one who dies to ruin the MoSTF") but wanted to help out a friend who was dying for the badge. We took everything very slowly and carefully, much slower than I'm used to, but probably smart for a MoSTF attempt. Of note: during the 3rd mission (where most MoSTF attempts I've been on have failed), all squishies were ordered to stay on the northern quadrant of the room, to avoid Thorn Tree aggro. This worked quite well. On the 5th and last mission, we had a dark defender go linkdead and we ended up waiting about 15 minutes hoping he'd come back. Then we pulled the patron AVs in small bites (they came 1, 2, then 1), then beat up the flyer, then tackled Lord Recluse himself. The flyer respawned and aggroed on us while we were fighting LR's towers and we were initially indecisive on what to do about it; first we wanted to ignore the flyer and hope it left, but ultimately we decided to switch DPS to the flyer to take it down, then go back to the towers. This ended up working, completing the MoSTF in 2hrs 30mins, getting me a Cytoskeleton HO and the Master of the Statesman TF badge (yay!). This gave Police Woman a total of 618 badges.
Some time after New Year's, Police Woman did an LB-channel ITF (54min 7sec); cleared most, I ended up being puller for the generals.
Playing Lady Arachne (50 wolf spider) I helped a 5 player team with Ghost of Scrapyard. Lady Arachne also bought a Gaussian's Synchronized Fire Control (RCHG/END) for 25M infamy, completing a set of 6, slotted in Tactical Training: Leadership. This gave a tasty +2.5% DEF to all, which puts her ranged DEF at 49% and melee/AoE DEF at 30.5%. A set of 5 Expedient Reinforcement in her Summon Robots power gave her another +3% dmg and +6.25% rchg. Later during the holiday Lady Arachne did a LGTF (30min 30sec), an ITF (29min 51sec), and another LGTF (29min 43sec).
Frustrated with my kin controller, I re-created Darla Doppler, a kin/sonic defender; I had gotten a previous version of Darla to level 22 before deleting her before. I've generally had a lot of trouble (a) keeping my kin characters alive and (b) keeping my team alive when I'm playing a kin, but kinetics seems so powerful that I keep making kinetics characters, hoping to find one that "clicks" for me. Playing Darla a lot and running Positron TF (2h 28m), Synapse TF (beat Babbage with 1 team; got a Rectified Reticle +Per; 2h 19min), Sister Psyche TF (1h 29min), Citadel TF (1h 28min) and Moonfire TF (49min 19sec) has gotten her to level 27.
The price of Demonic Blood Samples went utterly crazy on hero side for awhile, and I ended up hopping on the bandwagon and selling them for 1 million infl each. I even spent about 500 MA tickets to get random common salvage, hoping to get Demonic Blood Samples to re-sell. I dunno exactly why there was such a run on them; my best guess is that someone was trying to corner the market on them.
I came close to the 2 billion infl cap again, so I started buying up purple recipes to use up money. After I got a Ragnarok (RCHG/ACC) for 160M ("cheap" by the standards of purple recipes) I tried to engage in some high-end speculation; crafting the recipe into a Ragnarok (RCHG/ACC) IO, I put it up on the market for re-sale at 290M infl, reasoning there was more than one 300M sale in the market history. So far, this IO hasn't sold; this kinda dampened my enthusiasm for flipping purple recipes and IOs. Despite the huge margin that a 300M sale of a 160M item would give me, I feel better with a steady stream of high volume (if lower priced) items. I also picked up a Ragnarok (DMG/RCHG) recipe for 180M and a Ragnarok (DMG/END) recipe for 160M, but I decided to just craft them and slot them for Star Amethyst (50 dark/ice defender). As the price of Ragnarok (RCHG/ACC) IOs dropped, I ended up buying one for 215M (undercutting my own sale, ironically) and using it instead. I still have some hope that the 290M one will sell...someday.
I also picked up 2 Steadfast Protection (RES/+3% def) recipes off of the Black Market for 17M infamy each, which felt like a good deal (at least compared to their cost in reward merits). I've been crafting those and slotting them on my red-side alts.
I played a bunch of MA story arcs. The Tangled Weave was a very cool alternate starting story arc for lowbie villains, specifically targeting VEATs. It was fun and tied in well with the in-game continuity; I gave it 5 stars. The Better Part of Valor was a neat story that started as a low level investigation and eventually leads up to a confrontation with a mad scientist; I gave it 4 stars. The Hidden Agenda was a conspiracy theory alien abduction sorta arc; had neat ideas but the writing was a bit awkward (author said he wasn't a native English speaker) and I wasn't able to finish it due to running into a giant monster guarded by EBs (the arc is meant for teams), so I left it unrated.
I also spent a lot of time reworking my Axis and Allies story arc (which doesn't seem very popular so far, but I still sorta like it), and I published a new arc, Attack of the 50 Foot Villain, which is a quick romp where the player character grows to giant monster size, then attacks Tokyo. I can't really make someone grow to giant size, so what I did is made a lot of custom characters who were the minimum height, so that they look tiny by comparison.
I played Morgan le Fay (3 elec/thermal corruptor) as a lackey on a couple teams, that got her to level 16. Not sure if she's fun enough for me to keep around long-term, but I like the name, and it feels handy to have a low level corruptor around to join in on lowbie villain teams.
I played Shield Maiden (15 mace/shield brute), duoing with a stalker. Got a costume complement from a passerby. Did a 3-player Skyway mayhem, and a 5 player Cap SF. Joined an AE team that turned out to be farming, then switched to Mercy to do Seer Marino's story arc. All this got Shield Maiden up to level 21.
Mega (50 SS/will brute) did two mother ship raids in RWZ, getting a costume compliment at each one. The first one started out well and turned into something of a zerg rush at the end with lots of deaths; the second one I joined in late and never did get a team, but managed to get a bomb all on my own, tag the AV, and generally survive (despite being solo) by hanging out with the crowd. Mega also did a speed ITF (only 6 players, 37min 0sec).
April Fool (50 thug/TA MM) did a Barracuda SF; got a costume compliment, and I got to mess around with the mastermind temp power against Reichsman at the end. I used it once at the beginning of the fight and never tried using it again; it didn't seem like Reichsman ever used his "phase" power, not sure if that was because I used my temp power, or just luck. Finished in 1hr 5mins. April also spent some time screwing around in Warburg (lost twice to a scrapper, never did quite catch him).
I also copied April over to test server for the PERC server-wide costume contest, which April Fool actually won! So April is now "Ms Rogue Isles" for a year. After winning, I told the judges that "their loved ones would now be released unharmed. Well, mostly unharmed." To celebrate, I played April on a pickup ITF. This team wasn't quite working right; the brute wanted to speed through the TF but no one else had stealth or enough defenses to survive speeding through missions, so anyone who actually followed the leader's instructions would instantly die. In the third mission the leader called for volunteers to pull the generals, and no one else seemed willing so I volunteered to pull (dismissing all my pets and pulling stuff with my uber pistols powers). I actually managed to pull all the generals and AVs successfully. Finished the ITF in 1hr 32mins and got a heal badge, mostly from Vengeance and Resurrect, I think.
Kyrie Eleison (29 fire/regen scrapper) did a Sister Psyche TF (1hr 16min) which got her to level 30. I did the cape mission, which seems to have changed recently (more than one door mission now; uses the new "time vault beneath Atlas Park" map) and the aura mission, which seems the same. Unlocking auras let me add a "nice" halo to Kyrie's costume. A bit later Kyrie joined a Manticore TF (1hr 19min) which got her to level 31 and garnered her 3 costume compliments ("very distracting" was mentioned). This team also encountered a clump of 3 Paladin giant monsters in King's Row (near the mission where you rescue the Councilman); we only had 1 sonic controller for support, which made me dubious about fighting GMs, but the team wanted to try them. We beat all 3 of them without any problem. Later on Kyrie exemped down for a quick 5-player Positron TF (1hr 46min) that got her to level 32. Sadly, one player on this team was a newbie and didn't understand stealthing. I tried talking him through it some, but he still died a lot and eventually quit in frustration.
Strong Woman (43 inv/SS tanker) did an Imperious TF (cleared most, 55min 33sec) which got her to level 44. Tinkering with IOs, I slotted two sets of 4 Kinetic Combat (+3.75% sm/leth DEF each) and one set of 4 Smashing Haymaker (+1.88% sm/leth DEF) in her various attacks. This got her lethal DEF up to 26.25%.
Star Amethyst (50 dark/ice defender) did some badging for the Freedom Phalanx Reserve accolade (+101 hp). I also did a 7-player ITF (22min 29sec) and a Statesman TF (53min 48sec, team had some trouble because the tanker assigned to taunt the flyer didn't have taunt, got a Ribosome).
Quick Katie (36 plant/kin controller) did an ITF where we cleared most (56min 7sec), but the team got split up a lot resulting a lot of deaths. This did get her to level 38 and Fulcrum Shift, but is making me re-think slotting; I originally had her slotted for +max HP, but thinking +range DEF would be better for staying alive. Also did a Numina TF (1hr 8min).
Playing alts on Triumph server, I joined the MA Arc Finder team for three AE arcs: Thriller: Part One where you get to fight a bunch of B-movie horror themed versions of the Freedom Phalanx; this didn't do much for me, and I gave it 2 stars. And Union of the Mask, where Lord Nemesis sends you out to beat up various other villains; this was pretty decently written and I gave it 4 stars. Got partway through Fall of Rapture, an arc about surviving in a post-apocalyptic world ruled by Lord Nemesis and Lord Recluse, I think; I felt pretty indifferent about that arc and gave it 3 stars.
Played Thunder Girl (50 elec/SR scrapper) on a failed LoW event (just didn't have enough people) and a quick ITF (25min 37sec).
@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!"
Congrats on Ms. Rogue Isles.
1/19/2010
Last Monday I played Star Amethyst (50 dark/ice defender) on a Lady Grey TF (21m 26s). For mission 3 I got assigned to team TP people to the helicopter for mission 4, and a teammate told me how to TP people directly into the mission loading screen, and I managed to get it to work; the key seems to be to click the helicopter pilot in the last half of the team TP casting animation.
Went on to do a Statesman TF, also with Star Amethyst. In the final fight the tank assigned to Lord Recluse instantly died to LR's alpha strike or something; I managed to Vengeance/Howling Twilight to get our tank back up. HT drew enough aggro to me that LR killed me next, but getting the tank up got us back in business and we were able to beat the encounter (though the red tower did rez once so had to be killed twice), finishing the STF in 45m 11s. I got a Centriole.
Tuesday, I played Yuki-Onna (50 ice/cold corr) on a LGTF. The team was a bit tanker-heavy, but we still finished in 26m 58s. After that I did some IO crafting and slotted 6 Lockdowns into Yuki-Onna's Spirit Sharks, a power I never use, but at least this got me +2.5% AoE DEF and +3.75% ranged DEF.
After that I played Darla Doppler (27 kin/sonic defender), joining an 8-player team in RWZ. This team already had a kin controller, but it seemed like I was SB'ing and he wasn't, and this irked me enough that I volunteered to switch to my katana scrapper "since we already had a kin". This didn't actually make the other kin start SB'ing; oh well.
Once that team broke up I was shopping at Wentworth's as Olivia Q (50 MA/SR scrapper) when I got invited to a 3-player team doing AE story arcs. The team leader wanted to test his story arc, The Better Part of Valor (helping a cop with a robbery investigation leads into foiling a big plot by a mad scientist), which I had actually already played (and rated 4 stars), but didn't mind doing again. Then I dragged the team through my own story arc, Talos Vice (helping Detective Croquette fight drug dealers), and Galactic Protectorate - 01 (where you help an alternate dimension Freedom Phalanx battle alien amazons who have conquered the Earth; I gave it 4 stars).
Finished the night playing Mega (50 SS/will brute) on a speed ITF; we had a space open so I invited the person who had invited me do AE story arcs to join. I wasn't sure if he had done speed ITFs before, so I warned him that it would be dangerous and that the team was laying bets on how long he'd survive; but he brought a willpower tanker who was pretty survivable and outlived most other team members, so was fine. I did have a moment of coolness fighting the Phalanx computer in mission 3 where everyone else on the team died except me and a scrapper, but we managed to finish the computer off and keep going. Finished the ITF in 29m 50s.
Wednesday night started off with April Fool meeting Niviene (a community rep) and the PERC rep in Pocket D to receive the "Ms Rogue Isles 2009" yellow title, which was pretty cool. None of the other Liberty winners showed up, sadly; I asked around on LB to see if anyone knew if they were around, and I did find out that Ms Paragon City had to work late. They also nagged me into emailing in requests for costume codes (which was part of the contest prize); I ended up asking for the two Carnies costumes and the Knives of Artemis costume. I almost asked for the PPD hardsuit costume, but I'm pretty sure the PPD hardsuit is a male character, so wouldn't look right for Police Woman. I spent the rest of the night wandering around admiring my own yellow title (ah, vanity!) and doing some crafting. I've started buying up every type of level 50 Thunderstrike recipe at the Black Market, with the idea that I'll gradually use them to soft-cap DEF on every red side alt. While doing this, I noticed the recipes were dirt cheap (throwing some money at the broker, I quickly had like 50 or 60 of them), but the crafted IOs sell for like 5-6M infamy; thinking this is a possible moneymaking opportunity on red side.
On Thursday night I bought a Ragnarok (DMG/RCHG/ACC) on blue side for 255.6M; this is more pricy than the other Ragnaroks I've picked up so far, probably because enhancing 3 things is so nice.
My rampant altoholism caused me to roll up a newbie grav/sonic controller. I had been meaning to start a new grav controller or dominator for awhile, just to use Propel to throw stuff at things, and settled on sonic as a secondary, figuring that a controller with RES and mez protection from Sonic Dispersion, RES from an epic pool, and high range DEF from IO sets, would be pretty awesome. I got my newbie controller to level 5, soloing some of the newbie missions and The Hero of King's Row, a lowbie story arc about high school kids, racism and the Council; I liked the arc up to the last mission, which felt unfinished to me. I gave it 3 stars. After getting to level 5, I went to the Controller forum to see if I could find a grav/sonic guide, but searching the forum I only got stuff like:
"What an abjectly sucky combo, on the back of two abjectly sucky powersets."
"Singularity with Disruption Field would look incredibly cool, and yet be incredibly useless."
"Pairing Sonic Resonance with Gravity is just self-inflicted pain, pure masochism"
LOL! I may have to level this alt up further, out of sheer contrariness, just to see if I can exceed expectations.
On Saturday I played Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corruptor) on a LGTF. This was a kill all LGTF (the team leader explicitly forbade failing mission 3 or pulling the AVs in mission 5) but had a veteran crew with a good team mix (dark defender, rad corruptor, 2 controllers, blaster, fort, tanker, peacebringer) and we had no problems at all. Finished in 1hr 7mins.
I'm gradually trying to get high defense on more of my squishy toons, and consequently I used one of Indigo Ifrit's earned respecs to respec to this build:
Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.601
http://www.cohplanner.com/
Click this DataLink to open the build!
Indigo Ifrit respec: Level 50 Magic Corruptor
Primary Power Set: Fire Blast
Secondary Power Set: Radiation Emission
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Teleportation
Power Pool: Leadership
Ancillary Pool: Leviathan Mastery
Villain Profile:
Level 1: Fire Blast
- (A) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage
- (3) Thunderstrike - Damage/Endurance
- (3) Thunderstrike - Damage/Recharge
- (5) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge
- (5) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance
- (7) Thunderstrike - Damage/Endurance/Recharge
- (A) Numina's Convalescence - Heal/Endurance
- (7) Numina's Convalescence - Endurance/Recharge
- (9) Numina's Convalescence - Heal/Recharge
- (9) Numina's Convalescence - Heal/Endurance/Recharge
- (11) Numina's Convalescence - Heal
- (11) Numina's Convalescence - +Regeneration/+Recovery
- (A) HamiO:Enzyme Exposure
- (13) HamiO:Enzyme Exposure
- (13) HamiO:Enzyme Exposure
- (A) Blessing of the Zephyr - Knockback Reduction (4 points)
- (15) Blessing of the Zephyr - Run Speed, Jump, Flight Speed, Range/Endurance
- (15) Blessing of the Zephyr - Run Speed, Jump, Flight Speed, Range
- (23) Recharge Reduction IO
- (27) Recharge Reduction IO
- (34) Performance Shifter - EndMod/Recharge
- (A) Positron's Blast - Accuracy/Damage
- (17) Positron's Blast - Damage/Endurance
- (17) Positron's Blast - Damage/Recharge
- (19) Positron's Blast - Damage/Range
- (19) Positron's Blast - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance
- (21) Recharge Reduction IO
- (A) Flight Speed IO
- (A) Blessing of the Zephyr - Run Speed, Jump, Flight Speed, Range
- (21) Blessing of the Zephyr - Run Speed, Jump, Flight Speed, Range/Endurance
- (23) Blessing of the Zephyr - Knockback Reduction (4 points)
- (25) Flight Speed IO
- (37) Luck of the Gambler - Recharge Speed
- (A) Blessing of the Zephyr - Run Speed, Jump, Flight Speed, Range
- (25) Blessing of the Zephyr - Run Speed, Jump, Flight Speed, Range/Endurance
- (48) Blessing of the Zephyr - Knockback Reduction (4 points)
- (48) Time & Space Manipulation - +Stealth
- (A) Healing IO
- (A) Endurance Reduction IO
- (A) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage
- (27) Thunderstrike - Damage/Endurance
- (29) Thunderstrike - Damage/Recharge
- (29) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge
- (31) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance
- (31) Thunderstrike - Damage/Endurance/Recharge
- (A) Performance Shifter - EndMod
- (31) Performance Shifter - EndMod/Accuracy/Recharge
- (50) Performance Shifter - EndMod/Accuracy
- (50) Performance Shifter - Chance for +End
- (A) Accuracy IO
- (33) Recharge Reduction IO
- (A) Blessing of the Zephyr - Run Speed, Jump, Flight Speed, Range
- (36) Blessing of the Zephyr - Run Speed, Jump, Flight Speed, Range/Endurance
- (A) Positron's Blast - Accuracy/Damage
- (37) Positron's Blast - Damage/Endurance
- (37) Positron's Blast - Damage/Recharge
- (39) Positron's Blast - Damage/Range
- (39) Positron's Blast - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance
- (39) Recharge Reduction IO
- (A) Red Fortune - Defense/Endurance
- (33) Red Fortune - Defense/Recharge
- (33) Red Fortune - Endurance/Recharge
- (40) Red Fortune - Defense/Endurance/Recharge
- (40) Red Fortune - Defense
- (40) Red Fortune - Endurance
- (A) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - To Hit Buff
- (34) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - To Hit Buff/Recharge
- (34) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - To Hit Buff/Recharge/Endurance
- (42) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - Recharge/Endurance
- (42) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - To Hit Buff/Endurance
- (42) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - Chance for Build Up
- (A) Blessing of the Zephyr - Run Speed, Jump, Flight Speed, Range
- (36) Blessing of the Zephyr - Run Speed, Jump, Flight Speed, Range/Endurance
- (A) Positron's Blast - Accuracy/Damage
- (36) Positron's Blast - Damage/Endurance
- (43) Positron's Blast - Damage/Recharge
- (43) Positron's Blast - Damage/Range
- (43) Positron's Blast - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance
- (A) Recharge Reduction IO
- (A) Steadfast Protection - Resistance/+Def 3%
- (45) Titanium Coating - Resistance/Endurance
- (45) Titanium Coating - Resistance
- (48) Titanium Coating - Endurance
- (A) Lockdown - Accuracy/Hold
- (45) Lockdown - Accuracy/Recharge
- (46) Lockdown - Recharge/Hold
- (46) Lockdown - Endurance/Recharge/Hold
- (46) Lockdown - Accuracy/Endurance/Recharge/Hold
- (50) Lockdown - Chance for +2 Mag Hold
- (A) Endurance Reduction IO
- (A) Luck of the Gambler - Recharge Speed
Level 1: Brawl
- (A) Empty
- (A) Empty
- (A) Empty
When complete it should soft cap her range DEF; I'm still missing a few IOs, but even with what I've got, she's up to 39% range DEF.
After finishing my respec I played Kyrie Eleison (32 fire/regen scrapper) on an 8-player Sisterhood fire theme team, knocking out a few missions in Croatoa to get Kyrie to level 33. At that point I spent Kyrie's 340 reward merits on recipe rolls:
1 Impervium Armor (RES) Wentw=10M
1 Obliteration (chance for smashing) Wentw=15M
1 Impervium Armor (+psi RES) Wentw=4M
1 Positron's Blast (chance for energy) Wentw=2M
1 Aegis (END/RCHG) Wentw=100K
1 Trap of the Hunter (chance for lethal) Wentw=300K
2 Lockdown (ACC/END/RCHG/HOLD) Wentw=500K
1 Decimation (ACC/END/RCHG) Wentw=100K
1 Edict of the Master (DMG) worthless
1 Ghost Widow's Embrace (ACC/HOLD/RCHG) Wentw=120K
1 Ghost Widow's Embrace (chance for psi) Wentw=12K
1 Mako's Bite (ACC/END/RCHG) Wentw=1M
1 Mako's Bite (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=1.1M
1 Stupefy (ACC/STUN/RCHG) Wentw=1M
1 Call of the Sandman (ACC/SLEEP/RCHG) Wentw=50K
1 Force Feedback (RCHG/END) Wentw=1K
Didn't get any of the big ticket recipes, so this was a little disappointing. The total yield of 35.783M gave 210K/merit, which is slightly under average.
On Sunday, Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) helped a peacebringer and defender with a Defeat All Carnies outdoor mission; they basically had defeated a Carnie AV with a team, then a bunch of team members left and they still had to clean up the whole map, but their DPS was too low to really do that on their own.
After that, I played Darla Doppler (27 kin/sonic defender) on a 3 player Liberty Force team in Croatoa, getting her to 28; then joined a 6 player pickup AE team, which did some kind of story involving high level undead Hellion girlfriends (I joined this story arc late so had no clue what that was all about...didn't catch the name), then Against the Wickerwork Khan, a story where you travel to "Panda Earth" to battle the Panda-ized versions of the Clockwork King and Penelope Yin. This was totally silly but fun; I gave it 5 stars, which was probably too generous, but oh well. Started on A Good Turn: Lost and Found, which seemed to be about some kind of evil gang of street racers, but by then it was late at night and I had to log off without finishing it.
Monday was a holiday and I played Quick Katie (38 plant/kin controller) on an ITF that cleared most. We had only a cold and myself as kin for support, but this gave us massive +dmg and -res. The team christened itself "team max damage/debt cap" and beat up/got beat up by lots of Romans. It was quite fun and we finished in 42min 32sec, getting Quick Katie to level 39.
I did some crafting, slotting 2 Blessing of the Zephyr in Katie's Hover (+3.13% range DEF), 6 Thunderstrike in her Entangle and Strangler (2x +2.5 range DEF), and 6 Malaise's Illusions in her Seeds of Confusion (+3.13 range DEF, +6.25 rchg, +2.5 dmg). This gets her range DEF up to 26.86%.
I was playing Lady Arachne (50 wolf spider) when I got invited to a 5 player pickup team that wanted to do a level 50 Nemesis mission on an outdoor map at +4 difficulty. I thought this was pretty crazy (level 54 Nemesis hopped up on Vengeance?!), but after some initial trouble we were able to actually do this. It was pretty slow going, though, and after clearing about half of the map, I got kinda bored and excused myself.
Later on, Indigo Ifrit did an LB channel ITF in 43min 29sec, then Darla Doppler did a Moonfire TF (as sole support; 3 tanks, 4 blasters, 1 kin defender) in 1hr 5min, getting to level 30.
Lady Arachne joined an LB channel ITF, and originally the team leader wanted to do a "speed" ITF, but the team (mostly blasters and kins) was really too squishy to survive this, getting through mission 1 only after many deaths, then having a team wipe in mission 2. After that we regrouped and tried to stay together, which helped. We still had 2 team wipes against the computer in mission 3, though part of this was because after people started dying we would come back from the hospital one at a time and attack the computer (which was at very low life) piecemeal, 1 or 2 at a time, while the Phalanx robots were happy to gang-bang each person who attacked. Eventually we beat mission 3 and zerged Romulus in mission 4. Had a semi-team-wipe (but managed to recover as people returned from hospital while the rest of the team kept fighting), then the team leader went linkdead while we were clearing the last few Romans and we waited for him to come back before finishing. Final time was 1hr 17mins. This team made me wish I had kept the medicine pool Resurrect in my build; with no one who could rez on the team, people were constantly having to hospital and run back.
After that Darla Doppler joined an LB channel Manticore TF, with a team of 4 scrappers, 2 tankers, 1 cold controller, 1 kinetic defender. I'm liking the synergy of having a cold and a kin on the same team. Got a costume compliment and a compliment on how Darla's red sonic blasts look (I do think the red circles look cooler than the standard sonic blast). Finished in 53min 32sec and got Darla to level 31.
Mega (50 ss/will brute) did a quick ITF in 25m 51s and a quick LGTF in 29m 22s.
Star Amethyst (50 dark/ice defender) joined an 8-player AV team in Peregrine Island, but this team only did one mission (defeating Diabolique) before breaking up.
Using server transfer tricks I renamed my 31 elec/elec brute to "Millie Volt" (the name I was previously using for an elec/inv brute) and joined a Cap au Diable SF, with a team of 1 night widow, 3 corruptors (dark, sonic, thermal), 1 brute, 1 stalker, 1 MM (dark). This went pretty well; we did a mix of stealthing and fighting and finished in 54m 5sec. After that I spent some time soloing Millie Volt through the red side story arc that unlocks the Midnight Clulb, getting 9 merits and level 32, where I took Lightning Rod. Spent some time at the tailor playing with power colorization; I'm somewhat torn between using pale yellow/white or pale purple/pale blue for her lightning effects.
I also finally sold the Ragnarok (RCHG/ACC) IO that I mentioned I put up for sale in my last update, for 300M influence. I had bought the recipe for 160M infl and probably spent around 4M infl crafting it and 30M infl on the Wentworth's sales tax, so my net profit was 106M infl. This sounds like a lot, but it took 10 days to sell, clogging up one of my auction slots for a really long time. Not sure I'll keep speculating in purple recipes; I kind of prefer trading stuff that has quicker turnover time. Or maybe I can put slow moving stuff on an alt to sell in the future.
Getting 300M infl from selling this puts me close to the 2B infl cap again; I'll need to find some more stuff to buy.
IO sets for more alts, or 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!"
2/2/2010
Long; catching up after a couple weeks.
Tue 1/19
Quick Katie (39 plant/kin controller) joined an ITF formed on LB (but with lots of speed players); finished in 28m 56s and got to level 40.
Police Woman traded 300M infl to a friend for 300M infamy. Also bought a Ragnarok (DMG) on blue side for 200M; crafted and slotted for Star Amethyst (50 dark/ice defender), making a set of 5 Ragnarok for +10% global rchg.
Blew some merits to help IO up Lady Arachne (50 wolf spider). Slotted 3 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% rchg) in various DEF powers, 6 Expedient Reinforcement in her Summon Arachnobots power (+3.13% rng DEF), and two sets of 3 Miracle in Aid Other and Aid Self (+1.88% max HP each).
Millie Volt (32 elec/elec brute) joined a 5 player villain team doing level 44 missions in Grandville, picking up the Founders Falls mayhem badge and making a new global friend.
Psychic Woman (31 rad/psy defender) joined a 3 player Positron TF (bs scrapper, kin controller, me as rad defender) that finished in 2h exactly, getting Psychic Woman to level 32. This is the first time I've seen a team do the Rollister mission by running to the very back of the mission, then working our way back out; an obvious improvement in hindsight, but it never occurred to me before.
Wed 1/20
Millie Volt (32 elec/elec brute) solo'd through In Pursuit of Liberty, an origin story for a newbie heroine related to Ms Liberty. I had played through this a couple times before and gave it average marks, but the author had made a lot of improvements since then; this time through I gave it 5 stars. Then I solo'd a Talos mayhem, getting Millie to level 33. At that point I burned 140 reward merits on random rolls:
1 Dark Watcher's Despair (RCHG/END)
1 Touch of Lady Grey (RCHG/END)
1 Decimation (ACC/DMG/RCHG) BlackMkt=5.1M
1 Sting of the Manticore (DMG/INTRDX/RCHG)
1 Obliteration (chance for smashing) BlackMkt=20M
1 Numina's Convalescence (HEAL/RCHG) BlackMkt=5.5M
1 Touch of Death (DMG/END/RCHG) BlkMkt=8.8M
...a yield of 281K infa/merit, a little above average. I also bought 7 Silver reward rolls at 555 AE tickets each, getting:
1 Pacing of the Turtle (DMG/SLOW) BlkMkt=1K
1 Kinetic Combat (chance for KD) BlkMkt=12K
1 Touch of the Nictus (HEAL/RCHG) BlkMkt=333K
1 Gift of the Ancients (DEF/END/RCHG) BlkMkt=1K
1 Devastation (ACC/DMG/END/RCHG) BlkMkt=9M
1 Numina's Convalescence (END/HEAL) BlkMkt=5.5M
1 Obliteration (DMG/RCHG) BlkMkt=1M
for a yield of 4K infa/ticket.
Psychic Woman (32 rad/psy defender) joined an 8-player Manticore TF (2 scrappers, 1 rad controller, 2 emp controllers, me as rad defender, 1 dark defender, 1 blaster); we had some messy stealthing that resulted in a few deaths but still finished in 1hr 2mins.
Thesia (a relatively new 5 grav/sonic controller) joined a small team (hovered around 3 to 4 players) that had a couple wipeouts against Clockwork due to overaggro. I found it was quite hard to keep a team alive with sonic shields and Aid Other. Nevertheless got to level 11 and had someone compliment Thesia on her costume.
Star Amethyst (50 dark/ice defender) joined a Master of the Dr Kahn TF team (2 scrappers, 2 tankers, 1 fire/kin controller, 1 ill/rad controller, me as dark/ice defender, 1 blaster). We played it very safe and won in 46m 50s. One player disconnected during the final mission and came back after the mission completed, but still got the Master of the 5th Column badge on returning (I think maybe because we hadn't called the TF in yet, but not sure).
Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corruptor) joined a speed LGTF. We messed up the first mission when the person assigned to TP people back to the door ended up getting TP'd to where Penelope was held captive; after some confusion, we ended up purposely getting Penelope killed to fail the first mission. We had some teammates who weren't really familiar with speed TFs who ended up having some trouble (dying a lot, not sure what to do). I got nominated to target mitos in the fourth mission to help out. We still ended up completing the LGTF in 35m 13s. Despite failing both missions 1 and 3, we still got 37 merits; I thought there was a penalty for failing multiple missions in a TF, but maybe not. Still seems faster to complete mission 1 than fail it, though.
Mega (50 SS/will brute) spent some more tickets on level 35-39 Silver rolls at 555 tickets each, hoping for Kinetic Combat recipes. I got:
1 Touch of Death (DMG/RCHG) BlkMkt=5.1M
1 Dark Watcher's Despair (chance of slow) BlkMkt=100K
1 Entropic Chaos (DMG/RCHG) BlkMkt=5K
1 Sovereign Right (ACC/DMG) BlkMkt=10K
1 Luck of the Gambler (DMG/END) BlkMkt=25M
1 Force Feedback (chance of +rchg) BlkMkt=1K
1 Scirocco's Dervish (DMG/END) BlkMkt=100K
for a yield of 7.8K/ticket (mostly due to the LotG).
Somehow I sold the Sting of the Manticore (DMG/INTRDX/RCHG) recipe I got the day before for 25M infamy. This was surprising because I had previously considered it to be worthless.
Mon 1/25
Played Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) on a Master of the Dr. Kahn TF (1 kin controller, 1 shield tanker, 1 stone tanker, 2 blasters, 2 scrappers, 1 rad defender). We had one false start because the team leader forgot to set the "Master" settings on the TF, then got going. There was some drama between the team leader and the stone tanker as the stoner was more aggressive about moving forward than the team leader wanted, but this got worked out without serious problems. The stone tanker also asked for ID against Reichsman in the final mission, which I thought was odd, but it looked like Reichsman's lightning actually could stun him through his normal mez protection. Using Surveillance I could also see that I was debuffing Reichsman's resists by 34% (between Surveillance and an Achilles Heel proc), compared to the rad's 30% (from Enervating Field), which seemed cool. Finished in 38m 45s and got the Master of the 5th Column TF badge, badge #619 for Police Woman.
After that I played Darla Doppler (31 kin/sonic defender), joining an 8 player LEGION team mostly fighting Crey. At some point the team leader left and gave me the star; I ended up picking radio missions at +2 difficulty, until we hit a messy Arachnos mission where we suffered lots of deaths. This left us somewhat demoralized and the team broke up after that. I need to remember +2 Arachnos are much harder than +2 Freaks. This still got Darla to level 32 and Fulcrum Shift, though.
Mega (50 SS/will brute) joined a 6 player speed (sort of) ITF. The scrapper on the team died a lot and ended up quitting the TF after the first mission. The rest of us were still able to finish the TF in 32m 9s, though, which is not bad for 5 players.
Tue 1/26
Thunder Girl (50 elec/SR scrapper) joined a speed ITF that finished in 24m 57s; I don't remember anything about it except that I was in scrapperlock the whole time. After the TF I checked Wentworth's, where I found I had sold 20 Demonic Blood Samples for 20M infl, and bought 20 more Demonic Blood Samples for 100K infl. Normally I wouldn't bother mentioning day trading stuff but this just seemed a crazy price spread for a common salvage.
Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corruptor) joined a clear-most ITF that finished in 46m 57s, then Strong Woman (44 inv/SS tanker) joined a clear-most ITF that finished in 42m 21s and got her to level 46. Whew! That's a lot of ITFing.
Wed 1/27
Strong Woman (46 inv/SS tanker) joined a Lady Grey TF with mostly Whirligig players. We cleared some, failed mission 3, stealthed some; finished in 44m 3s. One controller got disconnected in the final fight and ended up missing the merit reward. 
Fri 1/29
Olivia Q (50 MA/SR scrapper) solo'd through Galactic Protectorate Part 02, part of a lengthy series about an alien invasion. The story didn't do much for me (I felt it suffered from "middle book" syndrome) but everything in the story still seemed to work and made sense, so I still gave it 5 stars.
Thunder Girl (50 elec/SR scrapper) did an ITF in 25m 50s, then a LGTF in 31m 44s.
Helen Highwater (24 storm/psy defender on Triumph) joined an 8-player Demolition Girls team doing Colleen Nelson's missions; Helen got to level 25.
Sat 1/30
Millie Volt (34 elec/elec brute) joined a 4 player LEGION team; we did some of Crimson Revenant's missions, defeating Mynx as an EB and Back Alley Brawler as an AV, getting Millie to level 35.
Played TokyoRose (24 sonic/sonic corruptor) on an 8-player villain team for awhile, getting to level 25. I'm not sure sonic dispersion is actually fun (does not seem like there is enough to do?) but the team seemed to like the sonic buffs and debuffs a lot. One of our brutes said he needed TokyoRose to follow him around for the rest of his career so he could be tougher and do more damage all the time.
Strong Woman (46 inv/SS tanker) did an ITF in 37m 12s, getting to level 47. Thunder Girl (50 elec/SR scrapper) did another ITF, clearing most, in 58m 47s.
Sun 1/31
Thesia (11 grav/sonic controller) joined a Positron TF (peacebringer, elec/dark tanker, me as grav/son controller, sonic/arch defender, dark/rad defender, sonic/mm blaster). With tons of sonics we had lots of wavy lines on the screen at all times. I was envious of the sonic defender's buff graphics, which looked like captured moonlight, compared to Thesia's rather dull grey buffs (somewhat later I ended up changing my power colors as a result). We had a few people AFK for part of the TF, but still finished in 1hr 57m, getting Thesia to level 17.
Darla Doppler (32 kin/sonic defender) joined an 8-player Sisterhood team that beat up Black Swan. Got to level 33 and cashed out 320 merits for random recipe rolls, getting:
1 Obliteration (ACC/DMG/RCHG/END) Wentw=25M
1 Ghost Widow's Embrace (chance for psi) Wentw=22K
1 Gift of the Ancients (DEF) Wentw=512K
2 Aegis (+psi resist) Wentw=3M
1 Gaussian's Synchronized Fire Control (RCHG/END) Wentw=10M
2 Impervium Armor (+psi resist) Wentw=4M
2 Aegis (END/RCHG/RES) Wentw=600K
1 Touch of Death (ACC/DMG/END) Wentw=5M
1 Freebird (+stealth) Wentw=5M
1 Stupefy (ACC/STUN/RCHG) Wentw=500K
1 Touch of Death (DMG/END/RCHG) Wentw=8M
1 Aegis (END/RES) Wentw=250K
1 Devastation (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=1.8M
for a yield of 223K infl/merit, on the low side of average. Darla went on to do a Katie TF; our team had 2 rads and a kin so we walked all over it, finishing in 19m 41s and getting Darla to 34.
Millie Volt (35 elec/elec brute) joined an ITF formed on LB. The team started out mostly squishies with me as only melee, which made me kind of nervous about how squishy elec armor would be against Cimerorans; I was relieved when an experienced (and higher level) tanker joined the team. We cleared most and finished in 40m 53s. Millie still felt rather squishy (especially compared to my elec/SR scrapper or inv/SS tanker); I need to invest in Tough and some IO set bonuses.
Someone was offering the mission to defeat Antimatter (needed for Portal Jockey but often hard to get) on the speed channel; I joined with Star Amethyst to get credit for this.
Police Woman picked up the Dimensional Explorer day job (for being logged out in the shadow shard) on this day, also getting the Traveler accolade as a result; these were badges #620 and #621 for her.
Mon 2/1
Started Water Lily, a newbie rad/storm corruptor with aquatic themed costume and power colors. The rad blasts have tiny bubbles in them that made me think that coloring them blue would make them look like water. Solo'd Breakout and some of Kalinda's missions to level 3, then played through Mercytown, a fun lowbie AE arc where you work for Dr. Krylov; I gave it 5 stars, and this got Water Lily to level 5.
Quick Katie (40 plant/kin controller) joined a clear-most ITF formed on LB, finishing in 48m 19s and getting to level 41. I couldn't decide between the fire or psy epic pools, so ended up postponing the decision til later by taking Vengeance at 41 instead.
Kyrie Eleison (33 fire/regen scrapper) helped a friend defeat the Envoy of Shadows, then ran a few missions on a small team.
TokyoRose (25 sonic/sonic corruptor) lackeyed to a 7-player team doing the Black Scorpion patron arc. The invuln brute leading the team complained incessantly about how badly they had nerfed invuln and how he constantly ran out of END, got beat up too easily, etc., until he sheepishly realized that he had let all his SO enhancements go red. TokyoRose got to level 26 on this team.
Finished the night playing Idealist (49 fire/thermal controller) on a Master of the Dr Kahn TF (1 traps defender, 1 scrapper, 1 kin controller, 1 thermal controller, 2 blasters, peacebringer, stone tanker). We were poor about aggro control in general, and the defender especially was surprisingly aggressive for being on a "master of" attempt, often jumping in to take alpha strikes from mobs. The defender was the team leader so I tried to tactfully explain that this was dangerous behavior; I mentally imagined that some squishy would zerg into a big spawn of mobs, fail the TF, then blame me for not healing them. In the third mission the peacebringer (who I thought would be useless and spawn cysts for us, but was actually quite good) had Grant Invis'd us all, so that we could stealth to the back of the mission, but the tanker forgot to turn off mud pots so ended up getting in a fight. This ended up stringing the team out so that some people made it to boss in the back of the mission, while other people (including me) were stranded mid-way as their invis ran out. The peacebringer came back to invis us again, then said "Go!" after invising us; unfortunately our defender took this as the signal to attack the mission boss, promptly getting herself killed (and failing the "master of" attempt). On the bright side, she did not yell at me for not healing her from the other side of the map. We had previously agreed to finish the TF even if someone died, but nevertheless the tanker nearly bailed on the team to join another Master of the Dr Kahn TF that wsa forming. We managed to guilt trip him hinto staying until the end of the TF, though. We ended up finishing the TF in 1hr 23mins.
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
2/4/2010
On Tuesday night I joined an ITF as Yuki-Onna (50 ice/cold corruptor), but right after the TF started and before I got into the first mission, my ISP died on me and didn't come back til the next day. Spent the night offline, working out a high defense respec for Yuki-Onna using Mids; this is what I came up with:
Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.601
http://www.cohplanner.com/
Click this DataLink to open the build!
Yuki-Onna respec: Level 50 Science Corruptor
Primary Power Set: Ice Blast
Secondary Power Set: Cold Domination
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Leadership
Ancillary Pool: Leviathan Mastery
Villain Profile:
Level 1: Ice Bolt -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(3), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(3), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(5), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(5), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(7)
Level 1: Infrigidate -- HO:Lyso(A), UndDef-DefDeb/Rchg/EndRdx(42), Achilles-ResDeb%(46)
Level 2: Ice Blast -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(7), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(9), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(9), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(11), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(11)
Level 4: Ice Shield -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(33), LkGmblr-Rchg+(33)
Level 6: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 8: Freeze Ray -- Lock-Acc/Hold(A), Lock-Acc/Rchg(13), Lock-Rchg/Hold(13), Lock-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(15), Lock-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(15), Lock-%Hold(17)
Level 10: Glacial Shield -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(34), LkGmblr-Rchg+(34)
Level 12: Ice Storm -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(34), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(36), Posi-Dmg/Rng(36), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(36), RechRdx-I(37)
Level 14: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 16: Combat Jumping -- Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(A), Zephyr-ResKB(17), LkGmblr-Rchg+(27)
Level 18: Bitter Ice Blast -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(19), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(19), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(21), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(21), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(23)
Level 20: Stamina -- P'Shift-EndMod(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(46), P'Shift-End%(50)
Level 22: Hover -- Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(23), Flight-I(27)
Level 24: Arctic Fog -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(25), LkGmblr-Rchg+(25)
Level 26: Maneuvers -- RedFtn-Def/EndRdx(A), RedFtn-Def/Rchg(29), RedFtn-EndRdx/Rchg(29), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(31), RedFtn-Def(33), RedFtn-EndRdx(42)
Level 28: Benumb -- Acc-I(A), RechRdx-I(46)
Level 30: Tactics -- GSFC-ToHit(A), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg(31), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg/EndRdx(31), GSFC-Rchg/EndRdx(40), GSFC-ToHit/EndRdx(40), GSFC-Build%(42)
Level 32: Blizzard -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(37), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(37), Posi-Dmg/Rng(39), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(39), RechRdx-I(39)
Level 35: Sleet -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(40)
Level 38: Heat Loss -- P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc/Rchg(43), P'Shift-Acc/Rchg(43), RechRdx-I(43)
Level 41: Shark Skin -- ResDam-I(A), ResDam-I(45), S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(45)
Level 44: Hibernate -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(45)
Level 47: Summon Coralax -- BldM'dt-Acc/Dmg(A), BldM'dt-Dmg/EndRdx(48), BldM'dt-Acc/EndRdx(48), BldM'dt-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(48), BldM'dt-Acc(50), BldM'dt-Dmg(50)
Level 49: Vengeance -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Scourge
My previous build was heavily focused on +dmg and +rchg; this one is more oriented towards ranged defense. I also got rid of Super Jump in favor of Hover, because hovering is really good when you have high range DEF and low melee DEF. With Ninja Run, "real" travel powers seem kind of unnecessary. I also swapped the shark hold power for Summon Coralax, mostly because I never use the shark power and maybe I'd actually use a pet power, and the pet IO sets give some nice bonuses. I couldn't squeeze Aim into the build, which I regretted a bit, but I didn't have anything else I was willing to give up for it.
Wednesday night, I was able to get back on, and used a free respec to make Yuki-Onna match the above build (minus one BotZ knockback protection IO, several LotG DEF/+7.5% rchg IOs, and most of the Gaussian's set).
Then I played Lady Arachne (50 wolf spider) on a speed ITF (26m 7s) and a speed LGTF (24m 1s), both of which went very well.
The same team swapped to hero side for an STF, on which I played Star Amethyst (50 dark/ice defender). We finished this in 41m 54s and I got an Apocalypse (RCHG/ACC) recipe (Yay!) and a Centriole SHO (boo!).
One of the team members was a moderator on LB and managed to talk me into becoming a moderator on LB, too. I'm not sure how good an idea this was; from my experience, all moderators who actually moderate people on LB rapidly get called fascists or worse and get chased out of the channel. But I'd like to see things improve on LB, and so it makes more sense to try to help. I did say that I'd like clear guidance on what is/isn't allowed on LB, so that moderation is even-handed and people can't play mommy-daddy between the strict and the easy mods; apparently these rules don't exist yet but are being worked on, maybe as an output from the What do you think of the LB global channel survey. People on the LB channel seemed to react positively to me being made a moderator of the channel; hopefully they'll feel the same way if and when I start actually using moderator powers.
Finished the night playing Millie Volt (36 elec/elec brute) on a pickup ITF. The team leader wanted to clear most, though we had one corruptor who kept thinking it was a speed run and running way ahead of the rest of the team. The rest of us stayed together pretty well though and beat up lots of Romans. Finished in 49m 45s and got Millie to level 38.
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
2/8/2010
Thu 2/4
Played Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corruptor) on a clear-most ITF formed on LB (49m 28s).
Wielded my mod powers on LB for the first time; a couple players were having an extensive discussion about farting and pooping on LB, which I just didn't think was appropriate subject matter. I gave a verbal warning, which one person heeded and the other one did not, so I silenced the one who kept on about it. After about 10 seconds I unsilenced him again, but then he started spamming the LB channel with "poop" messages, which made me and another mod both silence him again. This was kind of awkward because it was a guy I normally like, but he was throwing a serious tantrum and I didn't see anything else I could do and still pretend to be a moderator.
Solo'd Olivia Q (50 MA/SR scrapper) through an AE arc called The Alien Tyrant, a sequel to another arc where aliens invade the earth; in this story you go to the alien homeworld and overthrow their evil emperor. It was pretty good but needed a little more material in the middle missions, I thought; I gave it 4 stars.
Fri 2/5
Played Mega (50 SS/WP brute) on a speed ITF (24m 27s), then Yuki-Onna (50 ice/cold corr) on a speed LGTF (23m 59s).
Played Thesia (17 grav/sonic controller) on a Synapse TF of mostly Whirligig players, with a team of 3 controllers (fire/kin, fire/emp, grav/sonic), 1 defender (rad/ice), 2 blasters (arch/?, rad/nrg), 1 scrapper (?/shield). Our team was heavy on support and debuff, and was able to beat Babbage without any outside help, and finished the TF in 1hr 42m. This got Thesia to level 21. Though we had speed boost on this team, it still seemed like a good idea to take Stamina at level 20.
After that I played Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) on a Statesman TF of mostly Whirligig, with a team of 1 defender (cold/?), 3 controllers (ill/rad, ill/emp, ?/rad), 3 blasters, 1 scrapper. Seemed weird to be doing this without a tanker (most STFs I had done recently had 2 tankers, which I also thought was weird initially) but the controllers felt confident that Phantom Army could handle it. Did fine up to the last mission, where we tried having Phantom Army tank Lord Recluse; this worked most of the time, but there was some downtime where no PA was up and Lord Recluse would run hog wild. We ended up zerging down the towers (hospitalling and rushing back a few times) which was messy but ended up working. Finished in 1hr 1min and I got a Centriole SHO.
Darla Doppler (34 kin/sonic defender) solo'd through Kelly Nemmers' story arc in Croatoa for 7 merits.
Blond Justice (50 bs/shield scrapper) joined an Abandoned Sewer trial with 5 scrappers, 1 blaster, 1 shield tanker, 1 rad controller. It's been a long time since I've done this trial; I remember when it used to be a favorite PLing tool. We split up into 4 teams to take down the shield generators; this seemed effective and we finished in 33m 41s. Not bad for 29 merits.
Sat 2/6
Kyrie Eleison (33 fire/regen scrapper) joined a Moonfire TF (3 defenders, 2 controllers, 2 scrappers, 1 blaster); finished in 53m 47s, no serious problems, got some badges (unlocking the Atlas Medallion accolade) and hit level 34.
Darla Doppler (34 kin/sonic defender) duo'd with a brute through an AE arc called Drakule vs. The Werewolf Bikers from Hell. This was a hilarious send-up of Underworld, World of Darkness and that whole genre of stories. I had a great time and gave it 5 stars.
Strong Woman (47 inv/SS tanker) joined a defeat-most ITF (52m 22s) that got her to level 48.
Sun 2/7
Darla Doppler (34 kin/sonic defender) did an Ouro flashback of the fortune teller mission for 1 merit and the Spelunker badge, to get the Atlas Medallion accolade. Then I exemplared to a level 9 Hollows team that was recruiting on LB, and had fun speed boosting them through lowbie missions. Somehow they were still running out of END; I tried telling them that turning Sprint off in combat would be a good idea. Our empath also claimed that her keeping Healing Aura on autofire was hard on her END bar; I tried telling her that maybe healing when needed would be better, but got told that "healing on auto is best for big teams", to my amusement. Despite these hijinks, I still really like pickup Hollows teams..... it's CoH in its purest form. This also got Darla to level 35, where I took Vengeance as my new power. Because Vengeance makes bad teams good.
I wielded my tyrannical mod powers on LB again, this time warning and then silencing someone for excessive sex talk. I'm not a prude, really I'm not, but lengthy discussion of underaged people having sex is over the line, IMHO. After 10 seconds I unsilenced him again; he seemed to have no ill feelings over it. Though my offender from Thursday just had to say "poop" on LB just to try and needle me; I knew he was just trying to get my goat, so I turned a blind eye to it.
Thunder Girl (50 elec/SR scrapper) did a clear-all ITF with Whirligig (52m 40s).
Police Woman (50 AR/dev blsater) did a clear-most STF with Whirligig (3 blasters, 4 controllers, 1 defender). We ended up using Phantom Army to tank again, but this time it went much more smoothly; Lord Recluse was dazzled by the PAs the whole time and never bothered the team. Finished in 1hr 9min and got another Centriole SHO.
Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corruptor) did a speed ITF; we had a team wipe in mission 2, not really quite sure why (OK, we were split up and all over the map, but that's not abnormal for a speed ITF), but after hospitalling and returning we still finished in 25m 59s.
Kyrie Eleison (34 fire/regen scrapper) joined a speed Hess TF (5 scrappers, 2 emp defenders), finished in 33m 11s.
I also spent some extensive time writing, testing and finally publishing a new AE story arc, Two Tickets to Westerly (arc id 374002), a low level story arc where a Skulls girlfriend asks you to help find her boyfriend, who has gone missing after trying to leave the Skulls gang. It's my attempt at Dr. Aeon's Second Architect Challenge, which requires you to write a level 5-10 arc about someone who loses their powers; I've published it a lot earlier than the contest deadline, in hopes of getting some player feedback to help shape the story arc and make it better.
@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:
Oh PW, you know I love you
|
Originally Posted by PoliceWoman
2/8/2010
I wielded my tyrannical mod powers on LB again, this time warning and then silencing someone for excessive sex talk. I'm not a prude, really I'm not, but lengthy discussion of underaged people having sex is over the line, IMHO. After 10 seconds I unsilenced him again; he seemed to have no ill feelings over it. Though my offender from Thursday just had to say "poop" on LB just to try and needle me; I knew he was just trying to get my goat, so I turned a blind eye to it. |
thanks for joining us on those TFs PW. it was good fun. We had some communication issues with our PAers on that first STF. they were dropping them at the same time so when LR decided to hit hazy and kill him we weren't prepared. the second one we took better care to stagger the PA and it was nice.
and that lone defender is cold/rad
So cold it's rad!
/gignore @username is the best feature of this game. It's also probably the least used feature.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Nights_Dawn
Hazy is right
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I'm getting chilly and that ain't cool!
2/10/2010
Monday
Started the night joining a contest for best "bio" in Atlas Park. I decided to bring Spacegirl (50 mind/rad controller) and her humorous origin story of a hyperspace traffic accident involving a collision between her dad's flying saucer and a Rikti battle cruiser. The contest took awhile (I'm sure a lot of reading by the judge was required) but Spacegirl was fortunate enough to take 2nd place and a 25M infl prize. If I remember correctly, first prize went to an angelic hero, and third prize to a cold-themed science hero.
Spent quite awhile fiddling with edits and testing of Two Tickets to Westerly, the AE arc I'm trying to polish up for Dr Aeon's Second Architect Challenge. I'm liking how this story has come out so far, and I think the gameplay seems to work OK despite how tricky it is to balance an AE arc for real lowbies (the contest requires the arc be level 5-10).
Played Thesia (21 grav/sonic controller) on a team running door missions in Talos Island; we did the Steel Canyon and Independence Port safeguards, as well as the Pwnz badge mission. Thesia got a costume compliment (I was worried that her costume was too plain, but I get a lot of people who say they think it looks very comic booky) as well as getting to level 23.
A friend invited me to a Citadel TF with mostly Whirligig players (2 blasters, 2 defenders, 3 controllers). I played Psychic Woman (32 rad/psy defender), who already had the badge but could use the exp. Finished in 1hr 12mins, got to level 33, and lucked into an Obliteration (ACC/DMG/RCHG/END) recipe drop.
Upon hitting level 33 I cashed in 260 of Psychic Woman's reward merits for random recipe rolls, receiving:
1 Lockdown (ACC/END/RCHG/HOLD) Wentw=1M
1 Trap of the Hunter (chance for lethal) Wentw=500K
1 Pacing of the Turtle (chance for -rchg) Wentw=125K
1 Sting of the Manticore (chance for toxic) Wentw=50K
1 Mako's Bite (ACC/END/RCHG) Wentw=2.6M
1 Devastation (DMG/RCHG) Wentw=1.2M
2 Obliteration (chance for smashing) Wentw=27.5M each
1 Touch of the Nictus (chance for negative) Wentw=150K
1 Aegis (END/RCHG) Wentw=250K
1 Touch of Death (ACC/DMG/END) Wentw=4.5M
1 Scirocco's Dervish (ACC/DMG/END) Wentw=5M
1 Gaussian's Synch FC (RCHG/END) Wentw=10M
This is an average of 309K infl/merit, which is a little above average; the Obliteration and Gaussian recipes were most of this value. It might actually be a better value to buy rare recipes directly with merits now, but I kinda like the lottery ticket feeling, I guess.
Tuesday
I got the Honorable veteran badge (63 months); this comes with the "Reveal" power, though I haven't really tried using it yet. Police Woman also got the Duelist day job badge (for being logged out at the Arena) and the Gladiator accolade.
Darla Doppler (50 kin/sonic defender) joined a Numina TF which was a mix of friends and pickup people (3 blasters, 1 controller, 2 scrappers, 2 defenders); finished in 52m 15s without any problems and got Darla the Task Force Commander accolade.
The same team (except for one player who was replaced) went on to do an ITF. First mission went fine, then the leader (our "point" scrapper) had to quit the TF to help his mother (who apparently got her car stuck in the heavy snow in RL). Losing our point scrapper actually caused our TF to slow down a lot; the other scrapper gamely tried to take the point position, but was a 30s shield scrapper so had trouble standing up to the Cimerorans (who, with their DEF debuffs, are quite mean) and got smashed flat a lot. The player who inherited the star seemed AFK a lot and was another kin who would only SB if asked (for some reason this particularly annoys me when I'm playing a kin and SBing the whole team). It felt like we progressed through missions 2 and 3 quite slowly, even having a near-wipeout against the Phalanx computer in mission 3, except for 2 blasters who managed to take down the computer while everyone else was dead. Nevertheless we finished in 1hr 1min and got Darla to level 36.
After that I did yet another ITF, playing Millie Volt (38 elec/elec brute) with a mostly Whirligig team that cleared all. Finished in 47m 17s and got Millie to level 39. I went on to solo Millie through the first Scratch mission in Pocket D; she'll probably need to link up with a hero sometime to finish the Valentine missions.
Finished the night soloing Olivia Q (50 MA/SR scrapper) through Galactic Protectorate - 03, a sequel in a series of AE arcs about fighting an alien occupation of the Earth. This part kinda rubbed me the wrong way by making me part of a military attack on a hospital (a war crime; would be fine for a villainous arc, but uncool for a hero) and the custom mobs had a few too many annoying powers. Ended up rating it 3 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!"
Gratz on your 63 months!! Definitely a milestone in and of itself. 
@Tax E - RIP CoH 2012
11/16/2009
Last Thursday I played Pyre Woman (16 fire/SS tanker) for a couple missions on an 8-player Sisterhood SG fire-themed team, which got her to level 17. Also on Thursday night, Jello Shooters Radio gave my Talos Vice arc a glowing review on their AEntertainment Tonight show; I enjoyed the DJ doing a dramatic reading of my story arc description, and how much they got into the Miami Vice vibe that my story was trying to set up.
On Friday night I played Thunder Girl (48 elec/SR scrapper) on a speedy Lady Grey TF; we got a bit overconfident in mission 2 and had a team wipe against the 3 Riders spawn, mostly due to Famine draining us all dry of END. In the final fight we had one controller who was linkdead, so we purposely delayed until he reconnected before finishing the TF, to make sure he got merits. Finished in 49min 29sec and got Thunder Girl to level 49, where I took Lucky. Lucky is a good power for SR, but I had respec'd Lucky out of my build earlier and penciled it back in for level 49. Because of the way you only get 3 slots at level 50, my level 49 power needed to be something that doesn't need many slots. (i.e., NOT Fireball, which I had moved down to level 47 in my respec.)
On Saturday I played Lt. Mary Sue (17 emp/AR defender on Triumph) on an AE team of story arc fans. The team leader decided we would try random arcs that had 5 stars but less than 100 plays, to test whether they "really" deserved 5 stars or not. First we played Metabolic Invation Arc (sic), which technically had a story about how some mad scientist was turning Paragon citizens into dogs and badgers (or "Bagers", as the story called them), but the Defeat All on an outdoors map made it awfully farm-y. I gave it 1 star, though I was tempted to give it another one due to at least trying to have a plot, but couldn't quite justify it.
Next we played Paragon Science Fair which was actually a pretty cute story arc about a bunch of mad scientists holding an unconventional convention. Most of the story was pretty fun, but I felt like the final mission (where Nemesis shows up and tries to take over) didn't fit well with the rest of the story. I gave this story 4 stars.
Then we played Challenge of the Splendid Pals part 1, a story arc that was an homage to the old Superfriends cartoon. This wasn't terribly deep but it was a fun guilty pleasure interacting with the various Superfriends and Legion of Doom knockoffs. I gave it 4 stars.
Late Saturday night I solo'd Blackout Girl {28 elec/elec brute) through The Descender, a story arc where you find out that you're the prophesied messiah of this underwater race of fish-people that have been enslaved by the Coralax for millions of years. You become their leader and take over the world. This was actually pretty cool; some of the missions needed a little more detail, though, and the final mission was much too hard compared to the earlier ones. I ended up dying 5 times battling Lord Recluse (even as an EB, with lots of fish-people allies on my side). I ended up giving it 3 stars; would've given it a bit more (the story was cool and I learned a lot about Coralax) but the last mission was just too hard.
Sunday afternoon I started off tinkering with Wentworth's and invention sets. Star Amethyst (45 dark/ice defender) finally picked up the sixth piece of the Cloud Senses set (which I slotted into her Dark Servant power) and the sixth piece of the Lockdown set (which I slotted into her epic Dominate power), each of which gave +3.75% range DEF. I'm focusing her IO sets on +DEF to make her a bit more survivable in the late game TFs, and I figure it'll have good synergy with the -ACC from dark miasma.
I briefly joined a Moonfire TF that Sisterhood SG was organizing as a SG event. 9 people showed up for this event, though, so we had too many for a single team; and Moonfire needs 6 to start, so we didn't have enough for two teams. The 9th person to show up had never done the Moonfire TF, though, so I volunteered to drop out so that he could play. I ended up getting on an Imperious TF instead, which finished in 26min 14sec and got Star Amethyst to level 46.
I also played Thunder Girl (49 elec/SR scrapper) on a speed Lady Grey TF which finished in 23min 48sec, and another Imperious TF which wasn't exactly a speed TF (we didn't Defeat All, but we did clear everything that got in our way) but nevertheless finished in 42min 51sec. Thunder Girl hit level 50 just as Romulus was defeated in mission 3.
Finished the evening playing Arrow Girl (38 archery/dev blaster) on a 6 player Sisterhood & friends team doing door missions mostly fighting Rikti and Crey.
@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!"