PW's war journal

6/15/2010

On Monday night, I was asked to kin for an ITF and played Darla Doppler (48 kin/sonic defender) for it. Our team was very heavy on buffers and for most of the TF I was at the cap for resist, defense and damage, which was pretty sick. Finished in 23m 20s and got to level 49. This team went on to do a LGTF in 35m 2s; it only had one controller and one fortunata on it, but that was enough to overcome the mez protection of the (recently patched) green mitos.

I asked around on this team whether people thought a kin defender, kin controller or kin corruptor was best for speed TF runs, since I have one of each (well, 2 corruptors) and have been waffling on which one I want to focus on. Everyone who expressed an opinion thought corruptors were best, mainly for the higher damage rating.

Finished the night soloing Kashira (31 dual blades/ninj stalker) through a couple MA story arcs; first The Do-it-Yourself Doom Army Project, an amusing arc where the local henchmen union helps you recruit a private army to take over the Rogue Isles. I gave it 5 stars. Then I did There Should Have Only Been One, a 1-mission story arc where your mission is to prevent the movie Highlander 2 from being filmed; I thought this was a hilarious idea, but the mission could use a little polishing. I gave it 4 stars.

6/28/2010

My RL has been crazy busy lately, so I haven't posted in awhile. I'll try to catch up a bit now.

Tue 6/15

Spy Girl (26 MA/ninj stalker) did a Silver Mantis SF on +2 difficulty on a 5-player team; took 1h 29m and got her to level 28.


Wed 6/16

Thunder Girl (50 elec/SR scrapper) did a clear-most ITF; due to the original leader disconnecting, we did missions 2 and 3 at +3 difficulty (the setting the new leader was on). Downgraded back to default difficulty for the final mission though. Finished in 1hr 1min.

Psychic Woman (15 mind/emp controller) did a Synapse TF on a full team. We did fine for most of it, but had trouble stealthing the Bertha and Long Tom missions (most of us didn't really have stealth, and just ran past mobs, sometimes dying). Our team leader also disconnected at one point and our new team leader was at +2 difficulty; our team was strong enough to handle this, though, so we left it like that. We were able to beat Babbage without any outside help and finished the TF in 2h 44m. This got Psychic Woman to level 20.


Thu 6/17

Though bargain shopping at Wentworth's, I finally assembled a set of 6 Armageddon IOs, which I slotted in Thunder Girl's Lightning Rod power. I ended up overwriting the set of 4 Eradication IOs that I previously had in that power (it just didn't feel worth using a respec to recover them). This has the net effect of -2.25% max HP, -1.5% range DEF (but still soft capped; she was over the soft cap by a bit), +10% global recharge (now +97.5% total global recharge).

Linda Lightspeed (15 rad/kin corr) joined an 8-player pickup Cap SF. We had 2 team wipes against Attack Leader Zurabsal and his mob of CoT, mostly due to poor tactics (2 tries where some of us rushed them while some wanted to pull). Switching to pulling a few mobs at a time from his group let us beat him. Otherwise went fine, finishing in 55m 15s and getting Linda to level 18.

Star Amethyst (50 dark/ice defender) did a Hess TF at +2 difficulty in 35m 12s.

Finished the night playing Olivia Q (50 MA/SR scrapper) solo for a bit; a passerby complimented me on her background story.


Fri 6/18

Arrow Girl (31 archery/nrg blaster) joined a Manticore TF, which we mostly stealthed, finishing in 47m 14s and getting to level 32, which let Arrow Girl get Rain of Arrows, the main reason to play archery characters.

Psychic Woman (20 mind/emp controller) joined a 6-player team of Demolition Girls SG, an all-knockback themed team, for some missions in Croatoa. All-knockback didn't seem to work that well from what I saw and we had 2 team wipes against Red Caps. This nevertheless got Psychic Woman to level 21. A bit later I joined a pickup team fighting +4 Banished Pantheon; defeating these was slow going but the team praised my healing abilities. This got Psychic Woman to level 22.

Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) joined a Statesman TF where we did OK until we got to the Patron AVs, which we rushed and fought all 4 at once, but got wiped out due to too many people going linkdead at once. On our second try we still had trouble, our tank and scrappers died several times (not quite sure why on the tanks; the scrappers were sub-50 and a bit squishy) which left me kiting Black Scorpion and Captain Mako around for a bit. Despite all this we eventually overcame the patrons and LR himself, finishing in 1h 26m. I got a Nucleolus.


Sat 6/19

Playing Linda Lightspeed (18 rad/kin corr) I duo'd the Skyway mayhem and solo'd Seer Marino's story arc.

Thunder Girl (50 elec/SR scrapper) did a Faathim TF; our team was somewhat light on support (1 tanker, 1 empath, 6 damage) and suffered several team wipes as a result; one against just a big horde of Rularuu, one against Mother Mayhem, and two against Lanaruu at the end. On our third try against Lanaruu I loaded up a full tray of green inspirations in Ouroboros, then flew all the way back to Storm Palace, and used the Wedding Band temp power for extra resists. I ended up using all my greens and narrowly defeating him with myself at very low life. Finished the TF in 4h 30m.

Blond Justice (50 bs/shield scrapper) did a speed ITF in 26m 15s.

Millie Volt (50 elec/elec brute) did a Recluse SF. We did fine up til the end, where it took us two tries to take down the Freedom Phalanx (though we got Numina, Sister Psyche and Synapse in the first attempt). It seemed to us that the "stacked vengeance" trick (involving queueing Vengeance and TPing the victim) no longer worked. Still finished in 45m 55s. I got a Centriole.

Geared up a bit on IOs after that; Millie managed to pick up an Armageddon (DMG/RCHG) from the Black Market for 75M infamy, which was a steal. Slotted sets of 2 Armageddon (+4% recovery), 3 Performance Shifter (+28.11 max hp at level 50), and spent 200 reward merits on a Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% rchg), which I slotted with another LotG (DEF/RCHG) for +10% regen and +7.5% rchg.


Sun 6/19

Millie Volt solo'd the Paragon of Vice mission in flashback, getting the Marshal badge. I also spent some time in Warburg picking up a chem nuke.

Strong Woman (50 inv/SS tanker) joined a pickup ITF. I ended up with the star due to being level 50. The team was rather light on support; essentially 1 tanker, 1 dark, 6 damage. I had to kick one of our scrappers who was obviously slacking, having AFK'd through most of mission 1 (he did not even enter the mission until we were up with Sister Solaris) and all of mission 2 (where he entered the mission but left himself parked at the door). He didn't even notice I had kicked him until 5 minutes afterwards, then seemed very annoyed at me; we exchanged some nasty tells. He claimed both family issues and internet connectivity problems were to blame. The final fight against Romulus was pretty difficult with our team mix, and we had to back off and let the encounter reset once. One of the other scrappers took the initiative to pull the healy nictus away which let us wear down Romulus and kill him. Finally finished the ITF after 1h 41m.

Linda Lightspeed (19 rad/kin corr) joined an 8 player team for mostly newspaper missions and a Founders Falls mayhem; this got her to level 23.

TokyoRose (27 son/son corr) joined a 5 player pickup team that beat up Synapse, wiped to Mynx then beat her on the second try, then beat up Mynx 3 more times and Synapse once more. This got TokyoRose to level 28.

Spy Girl (28 MA/ninj stalker) joined a 3-player team running the Midnight Squad access arc; I got to stealth/TP the team around a lot to speed things up.

Shield Maiden (50 mace/shield brute) did a speed ITF in 28m 54s; a teammate complimented me on her costume.

Blond Justice (50 bs/shield scrapper) did a speed STF in 42m 55s; I got a Centriole.


Mon 6/20

Teal Serpent (31 archery/traps corr) joined a 5 player team fighting Malta; for some reason this just wasn't working well and we died a lot.


Tue 6/21

Mega (50 SS/will brute) got some nukes in Warburg; also got a 38 Numina (HEAL) recipe drop while there. I also solo'd the Soul Taker badge mission in flashback, earning 3 reward merits.

Linda Lightspeed (23 rad/kin corr) led an 8-player team for the new Dean Macarthur and Leonard story arcs, getting 5 merits for each. The game seemed kinda laggy to us and we had a team wipe fighting PPD. This got Linda to level 25.


Wed 6/22

I ended up doing a respec for Spacegirl (50 mind/rad controller). Her previous build focused on recharge; this one I tried to give her more range defense, and picked up Fallout, Total Domination and Mental Blast; I dropped Mass Hypnosis, Levitate and some pool power that I can't recall. Her new build is:

Spacegirl I17 respec

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.707
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Spacegirl I17 respec: Level 50 Mutation Controller
Primary Power Set: Mind Control
Secondary Power Set: Radiation Emission
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Flight
Ancillary Pool: Psionic Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Mesmerize -- 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: Radiant Aura -- Numna-Heal/EndRdx(A), Numna-EndRdx/Rchg(7), Numna-Heal/Rchg(9), Numna-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(9), Numna-Heal(11), Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(11)
Level 2: Dominate -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(13), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(13), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(15), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(15), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(17)
Level 4: Accelerate Metabolism -- Efficacy-EndMod/Rchg(A), RechRdx-I(17), RechRdx-I(19)
Level 6: Swift -- Flight-I(A)
Level 8: Confuse -- Mlais-Acc/Rchg(A), Mlais-Acc/Conf/Rchg(27), Mlais-EndRdx/Conf(43), Mlais-Acc/EndRdx(45), Mlais-Conf/Rng(46)
Level 10: Hover -- Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(19), Flight-I(21), LkGmblr-Rchg+(21)
Level 12: Radiation Infection -- HO:Enzym(A), HO:Enzym(23), HO:Enzym(23)
Level 14: Fly -- Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(25), Zephyr-ResKB(25)
Level 16: Mutation -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 18: Health -- Mrcl-Rcvry+(A)
Level 20: Stamina -- P'Shift-EndMod(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(27), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(46)
Level 22: Enervating Field -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 24: Lingering Radiation -- Acc-I(A)
Level 26: Terrify -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(31), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(31), Posi-Dmg/Rng(33), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(33), RechRdx-I(33)
Level 28: Total Domination -- Lock-Acc/Hold(A), Lock-Acc/Rchg(29), Lock-Rchg/Hold(29), Lock-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(31), Lock-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(34), Lock-%Hold(37)
Level 30: Telekinesis -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 32: Mass Confusion -- CoPers-Conf(A), CoPers-Conf/Rchg(34), CoPers-Acc/Conf/Rchg(34), CoPers-Acc/Rchg(36), CoPers-Conf/EndRdx(36), CoPers-Conf%(36)
Level 35: Fallout -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(37), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(37), Posi-Dmg/Rng(40), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(46)
Level 38: EM Pulse -- Lock-Acc/Hold(A), Lock-Acc/Rchg(39), Lock-Rchg/Hold(39), Lock-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(39), Lock-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(40), Lock-%Hold(40)
Level 41: Mental Blast -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(42), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(42), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(42), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(43), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(43)
Level 44: Indomitable Will -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(45), LkGmblr-Rchg+(45)
Level 47: Psionic Tornado -- Ragnrk-Dmg(A), Ragnrk-Dmg/Rchg(48), Ragnrk-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(48), Ragnrk-Acc/Rchg(48), Ragnrk-Dmg/EndRdx(50), Posi-Dam%(50)
Level 49: Mind Over Body -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), ResDam-I(50)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Containment
Level 4: Ninja Run



I played Schadenfreude (50 AR/pain corr) on a 4 player Ice Mistral SF. We had massive lag in the last mission; it seemed like destroying the pink psychic crystals helped reduce lag, though. My theory is that Ultra Mode must choke on these crystals; maybe they have subtle reflections in their facets or something. Finished in 54m 9s.

Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corr) did a speed ITF in 25m 40s.

Deianira (19 SS/SR brute) finished soloing Seer Marino's arc, getting 8 merits and level 20, then joined a 5 player Cap au Diable SF. We had 3 brutes, 1 stalker and a thermal MM. The MM didn't use his thermal powers much (I finally had to ask him for fire shields in the final mission, which is almost all fire damage) so we were rather light on support. The stalker couldn't quite stealth all the altars in the last mission, so we ended up clearing almost the entire map. Had one team wipe against Bat'Zul (I think because we were fighting him in an awkard location, partly in the lava), but beat him on the second try. Finished the SF in 1h 28m. This got Deianira to level 21.


Thu 6/23

Solo'd Deianira to level 22 doing paper missions.

Star Amethyst (50 dark/ice defender) did an ITF; we had weird lag and unusually long load times when entering missions, with a lot of people disconnecting or mapservering. Though nominally a speed ITF, these delays caused us to finish in 35m 13s.

Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corr) did a speed RSF in 32m 59s; similar lag issues. Got an Endoplasm.


Fri 6/24

Psychic Woman (22 mind/emp controller) joined a Sister Psyche TF. We had some trouble stealthing through missions; at one point half the team had been teleported into a fight while the other half of the TP was still in a fight near the mission door, resulting in some deaths. The emp defender on this TF did not seem to heal very much; I ended up doing nearly all the healing and buffing, and even had to heal the defender, who seemed to draw an unusually large amount of aggro. Finished the TF in 1h 48m and got to level 24.

While checking Wentworth's on Spacegirl, a passerby complimented me on her background story.

Spy Girl (28 MA/ninj stalker) joined a 4-player Sharkhead SF; finished in 37m 44s with no serious problems, and got to level 29. The same team went on to do a 1st villain respec in 12m 36s; for some reason it wouldn't let me take a respec (I guess I must've already done so previously) so I had to take the merits.


Sat 6/25

Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) responded to a call for help on LB, joining a pickup team to take down Jack in Irons and Eochai in Croatoa. We initially had no debuff to speak off and couldn't dent Jack, but one scrapper switched to a rad, after which the GMs became easy.

Linda Lightspeed (25 rad/kin corr) joined a 4 player pickup team that got her to level 26.

Strong Woman (50 inv/SS tanker) joined a level 50 team on hero side. We were initially fighting +2 Nemesis and beating them up handily, which caused the team leader to get a bit cocky and raise difficulty to +4 for the Dreck AV mission. Nearly everyone on our team was lethal or smashing damage (we had a lot of dual pistols, archery, swords) so it took quite a long time to fight our way through the +4 Freakshow, but we finally beat Dreck, after which I called it a night.


Sun 6/26

San Min (40 MA/will scrapper) joined a pickup ITF at +1 difficulty that cleared most missions. We had no tanker, but a storm defender was doing a credible imitation of tanking, which was pretty cool. We had a partial team wipe after killing the first Romulus in the last mission due to a lot of people getting hit by the stun when he rezzes, but managed to recover. Finished in 1h 32m and got to level 42.

Spacegirl (50 mind/rad controller) joined the Sisterhood Eden trial event on a 7 player team. After getting into the first mission, we found the leader was on +3 difficulty. By default the mobs start at level 41, but our leader (and thus our team) was only level 39; as a result, we were effectively on +5 difficulty. We decided to restart the trial on default difficulty; with a level 39 leader this was still effectively +2 difficulty. We had a pretty strong team and broke through the various walls easily, but suffered a team wipe against the Crystal Titan due to massive aggro from the surrounding mobs. On our second try we cleared most of the mobs surrounding the Crystal Titan before attacking him, and this let us beat up the Crystal Titan more easily. Of note, the leader actually furnished the whole team with several Ambrosia each (not sure from where; purchased or a base?) which was a big help. Finished the trial in 1h 14m.

Spacegirl went on to join a hero team that beat up Neuron and fought legions of Paragon Protectors on some alternate dimension, which gave her the Infiltrator badge. I got a Luck of the Gambler (DEF) recipe drop, and got 2 compliments from teammates on Spacegirl's costume and background story, which was nice.

Finished the night playing Yuki-Onna (50 ice/cold corr) on a speed ITF, which took 32m 19s. A teammate suddenly realized that Yuki means "snow" in Japanese, which for some reason was a very profound realization for him. I'm not quite sure what he thought the name meant before that.

7/8/2010

Tue 6/29

A friend asked me to kin for an ITF, warning me it was a weak team; I played Primadonna (50 son/kin corr). Our team mix was a little underpowered (not much debuff) and we ended up using zerg tactics against Romulus, several of us running back from the hospital to jump back in the fight. Despite this we were able to beat the encounter and finished the TF in 1h 4m.


Wed 6/30

Blond Justice (50 bs/shield scrapper) solo'd through Tales of Cimerora: Of Feathers and Fur, an AE story arc where Daedalus sends you to fight various mythical monsters. The story didn't initially grab me, but the custom mobs were very nice looking (albeit had a bit too much stacking debuff). I gave it 4 stars.

Star Amethyst (50 dark/ice defender) joined a Master of the LGTF attempt. On our first try, during the first mission a peacebringer attempting to stealth to Penelope Yin got held and killed. We restarted, then sent just 2 scrappers to deliberately fail the first mission by getting Penelope Yin killed. We cleared our way through the second mission with the Riders, then deliberately failed the third mission. In the fourth mission, against Hamidon, one of the controllers was assigned to target mitos and everyone was to assist through him. Unfortunately, our targeter was unclear on what we were doing, and ended up swapping between 3 different mitos, reasoning he could hold 3 mobs at a time. With no single target to focus on, we didn't kill any mitos before the controller quickly caught aggro and died, failing the Master Of attempt. We decided to continue on, though we switched who we were targeting through. We beat up Hamidon and the Honoree and completed the LGTF in 1h 8m.


Thu 7/1

I joined an 8-player Numina TF; the team leader asked for a tanker, so I brought Strong Woman (50 inv/ss tanker). I was a bit dubious about the necessity of a tank for Numina TF, though the team leader said we didn't need a tank, it would just help. The team was mostly blasters who needed someone to set the pace and soak alpha strikes, so this actually made sense. We finished Numina in 1h 15m; I got a Positron's Blast (DMG/RCHG) recipe as a drop.

During the Numina TF someone was advertising that they'd like to sell an Apocalypse (DMG) IO for 100M inf; this seemed like a good deal, so I immediately emailed him 100M inf, and he emailed me the IO right back. Email attachments are really convenient; I never had to leave the team or meet up with the seller.


Fri 7/2

Strong Woman joined a 6 player team doing Praetorian AV missions in Peregrine Island. We defeated Shadow Hunter, Nightstar, Siege, Bobcat, Neuron, Battle Maiden, Black Swan, Malaise, Mother Mayhem (her psi damage really hurt, owww!), Diabolique (long fight, she kept PFFing and running), Infernal, Dominatrix, Marauder and Statesman. Defeating Marauder got me the Dimensional Warder and Portal Jockey (+94 max HP, +5 max END) badges, and defeating Statesman got me Statesman's Pal. I got a Blessing of the Zephyr (travel) recipe drop along the way.

San Min (42 MA/will scrapper) solo'd through Turg Fiction: Ghost in the Machine, an AE story arc where you're testing an old training simulation and you encounter a heroine who has been trapped in the computer system for years. I wsa dubious about this arc at first, but it grew on me after the first couple missions; it was well-written and had a poignant ending. I gave it 5 stars. The author seemed very grateful for the feedback I left him; I caught some typos that had been there for over a year, despite the arc having over a thousand plays and a Dev Choice tag.

I had a big pile of tickets and made 43 bronze rolls side in the 30-34 range at 70 tickets a pop, using a level 33 hero to get level 33ish recipes. I'm not going to list all 43, but the best of this pile were:

Devastation (ACC/DMG) worth 14M infl
Eradication (ACC/RCHG) 1M infl
Luck of the Gambler (DEF) 30M infl
Steadfast Protection (KB protect) 3M
Crushing Impact (ACC/DMG/RCHG) 1.1M
Reactive Armor (RES/END) 1.1M
Reactive Armor (RES) 1M

That's an average yield of 17K infl/ticket, which is really pretty good. By comparison, buying a rare salvage for 540 tickets and selling it for 3M infl (another good way to spend tickets) is only 5.6K infl/ticket. I used to dislike Bronze recipe rolls because you got so much junk, but I'm starting to believe that they're the way to go.

I joined a Sharkhead SF; the team leader wanted brutes, so I played Mega (50 SS/will brute). She loses a lot of set bonuses exemped down to 30, but still did fine. Finished Sharkhead SF in 26m 29s, then went on to do a 1st villain respec in 12m 11s and a 6-player ITF in 29m 21s.


Sat 7/3

Arrow Girl (32 archery/nrg blaster) joined an 8-player Sister Psyche TF that took 1h 10m, which got her to level 33. I burned her 360 reward merits on 18 recipe rolls, getting:

Expedient Reinforcement (END/DMG/RCHG) 2M infl
2 Numina's Convalescence (HEAL/RCHG) 32M infl each
Stupefy (chance of knockback) 333K
Force Feedback (RCHG/END) 2M
Edict of the Master (5% def) 151K
Touch of Death (DMG/END/RCHG) 1.5M
Luck of the Gambler (DEF/END/RCHG) 10M
Kinetic Combat (DMG/END/RCHG) 66M
2 Mako's Bite (chance of lethal) 209K each
Malaise's Illusions (chance of psi) 300K
Blessing of the Zephyr (KB protect) 50M
Ghost Widow's Embrace (chance of psi) worthless
2 Scirocco's Dervish (DMG/ACC/END) 6M each
Devastation (DMG/RCHG) 2M
Pacing of the Turtle (chance of slow) 1M

...for an average yield of 588K infl/reward merit, which is an exceptionally good result (I normally average around 250K/merit). By comparison, buying a Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% rchg) for 200 merits and selling it for 200M infl gives a yield of 1M infl/reward merit. So probably I should be doing that, but truthfully gambling on random rolls is kinda fun, too.

Thunder Girl (50 elec/SR scrapper) did an ITF in 26m 2s.

Spy Girl (29 MA/ninj stalker) did a 1st villain respec in 14m 28s.

Linda Lightspeed (27 rad/kin corr) joined a 6-player pickup team which did a Peregrine Island mayhem, then after that team broke up, joined an 8-player pickup team doing missions in Nerva, leading up to a Brickstown mayhem where we fought Swan, but couldn't beat her (the clock eventually ran out on us). This all got Linda to level 29.


Sun 7/4

I spent another 700 AE tickets on bronze rolls; best of the bunch were a Steadfast Protection (RES/+3% DEF) (very nice!) and a Crushing Impact (ACC/DMG/RCHG) (kinda okay).

San Min (42 MA/will scrapper) joined a pickup ITF. We were very light on support; basically had a stone tanker, one rad (who could not rez and rarely healed), and 6 assorted damage types. As a result we had trouble beating Romulus in the final mission; we made a few human wave attacks, running back from the hospital each time. One of my teammates noticed that people weren't all attacking the same thing; once we all focused on just killing Romulus, we started to make some headway, and eventually won the encounter. Finished ITF in 1h 18m and got San Min to 43.

Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) joined an STF that was asking for a blaster; this team went smoothly and we finished in 49m 27s. I got a Nucleolus SHO.


Mon 7/5

Water Lily (27 rad/storm corr) joined a pickup villain team that did a Brickstown mayhem, getting her to level 28.

Spy Girl (29 MA/ninj stalker) joined a pickup villain team that got her to level 30.

Deianira (22 SS/SR brute) joined a pickup villain team that did the Dean MacArthur story arc, then the Leonard story arc. While doing the Leonard story arc I saw a brute in Sharkhead asking for help with Protean, so I suggested that the team leader invite her. This brute rubbed the leader the wrong way by asking if we would immediately do her mission (we were all still in the earlier part of the arc) and not really pulling her weight during fights, and there was some sniping in team chat between them, but I think we eventually set her straight. We eventually beat up Protean (allowing this other brute to auto-complete the mission) and finished the arc, getting Deianira to level 26. I think I got 5 merits from each arc.

Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) joined a 6-player Dam Heroes TF (new Posi part 2). We had an unbalanced team, with 1 tanker, 5 damage and no support at all. Fortunately our tanker was pretty durable despite being exemped down to 16, and I made heavy use of Medicine Pool and my hospital day job powers (used the day job Revive power at least twice). We had one team wipe against the CoT where everyone died but me, and I escaped to Assemble the Team and use the day job rez. I thought we might have trouble against the AV at the end, but we actually did fine, finishing the TF in 1h 3m. I got the Dam Hero badge (badge #717 for Police Woman).


Tue 7/6

I spent another 770 tickets on 11 bronze recipe rolls; best of this batch were a Thunderstrike (ACC/DMG/RCHG) (1.5M) and a Miracle (END/HEAL) (750K).

I had been hankering to make another fire armor toon for some time, and finally rolled up a new SS/fire brute. I tried to get the name "Miss Molotov", which I had used for an earlier fire scrapper, but someone else had taken it; so I started a "Pyre Woman", but I didn't really like that name, and ended up getting to level 3, only to re-roll to "Fire Maiden", a name I like better. Fire Maiden managed to solo Kalinda's missions to get to level 5.


Wed 7/7

A friend who plays fire armor toons a lot saw me on Fire Maiden (5 SS/fire brute) and wanted me to team with his level 50 fire/fire brute. I warned him I was only level 5, but he still wanted to do it, and we did a couple paper missions, fighting Council, in Grandville. I didn't really want to be PLed, so I tried very hard to be helpful, attacking stuff fearlessly and pulling when nothing was around. I managed to get myself killed a few times doing this but it made me feel like I was participating. My partner actually was pretty serious about mentoring me as a fire armor brute, saying that a lot of people get discouraged with fire armor due to its squishiness, but that it could be powerful if built and played well, and he gave me some advice on power selection and tactics. We stopped after 2 missions, but just doing that got Fire Maiden to level 12. I also got an Armageddon (chance for fire damage) purple recipe (sickening to get this at level 5) and multiple rare salvage drops; my partner ruefully commented that lackeys always get the best drops.

After that I joined a pickup 6-player Sharkhead SF with Water Lily (28 rad/storm corruptor). We cleared most missions; we had a lot of disconnects (one MM lost connection and never came back) but managed to get through the SF just fine in 1h 30m. This got Water Lily to level 29.

We missed you at all the Sisterhood Anniversary Events over the 3 day weekend.

It was great fun playing the Dark Astoria zone event with you as Police Woman. I especially liked it when you told Adamastor to

"Give it up Adamastor! We've got you surrounded!"

It was true, we did surround him but he is also about 40 foot tall.

7/15/2010

Thu 7/8

Millie Volt (50 elec/elec brute) did a Sharkhead SF in 26m 37s.

Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) participated in the Help Zebidiah the Zombie Hunter dev-sponsored event. I ended up leading the 4th team to form for this event, which was 2 tankers and 6 damage (no support at all). The event on hero side comprised of finding Zebidiah (an energy blaster) in Dark Astoria and following him around looking for his lost love, Allison, who had been kidnapped by zombies. Considering Zebidiah said Allison had been missing for several days, I was pretty sure she was dead (or undead) by now, but thought it would be undiplomatic to say so. Despite his reputation as a Zombie Hunter, Zebidiah did not seem to really have much of a plan for recovering his girlfriend, except for wandering around Dark Astoria hoping to find her. While following him around we got attacked by waves and waves of zombies; mostly the zombie apocalypse mobs, but eventually escalating to multiple Adamastor monsters attacking at once. I was rather paranoid that Zebidiah would get killed by monsters, so I stuck close to him, using Aid Other whenever he seemed low on life. Other players ranged ahead of the pack, intercepting zombies along our path of travel, but they were spawning all around us, so we all got a lot of zombies. At one point, multiple Adamastors doing Foot Stomp at the same time managed to kill Zebidiah (and also me). I totally thought this would either end the event or spawn an even nastier monster from his corpse, but I managed to Awaken and Resuscitate Zebidiah before anything untoward happened. Eventually we tracked down Allison and they had a happy (sort of) reunion. I wouldn't say it was great storytelling, but it WAS a fun event and helped draw the server community together. So, I thought it was terrific and I hope they do more. I also got a Steadfast Protection (KB protection) recipe as a drop from a random zombie, which was very lucky.

Fire Maiden (12 SS/fire brute) solo'd An Internship in the Fine Art of Revenge, a dev choice AE story arc about helping a novice villain get revenge on the hero that killed her dad. I thought it was quite well written and fun, and gave it 5 stars. This got Fire Maiden to level 13. I went on to solo the Plague Carrier mission.

Star Amethyst (50 dark/ice defender) joined an 8-player Rule of Three (Positron 1) TF. We mostly did fine, though we did suffer a team wipe during the big CoT ambush in the final mission. After recovering, we cleared the ambush, but this didn't seem to advance the mission objectives. Clearing an extra group of CoT under the Atlas statue seemed to do the trick, though. Finished in 1h 5m.

Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) did a Statesman TF with a team of veteran players. Finished in 43m 38s. I think we only had one death, which was self-inflicted in order to get Vengeance. I got a Membrane HO.


Fri 7/9

I started having computer problems; it seemed to work fine in Windows, but entering City of Heroes or Everquest 2 would cause the screen to freeze up, drawing random static and locking up the computer. I'm not a hardware expert, but I guessed this meant my graphics card had died. So I ended up replacing my old graphics card, a GeForce 8600 GT (256 MB video memory) with a GeForce 9800 GT (1 GB video memory). This is a much better graphics card than I had, and was a lot less expensive than I thought it would be; I paid $110 and the store told me there is a $35 mail-in rebate, so effectively $80. I had a couple scary moments when trying to install the graphics card; at first, I couldn't get the old video card out. It took me awhile to find the screw that was holding it in; then took me even longer to realize the 9800 GT required plugging in a lot more power connections than the 8600 GT card (did I mention I'm not a hardware expert?). I eventually got it working, though, and it solved my computer problems. I can run Ultra Mode on higher settings now, too, and with better frame rate. It took me a couple hours to do this, but the end result seemed pretty good.

After getting this working, I played CoH some. Fire Maiden (13 SS/fire brute) joined an ill-fated pickup team; they were in the process of a wipeout when I arrived at the first mission, and then we had another team wipe against Wyvern.

Later I played Shield Maiden (50 mace/shield brute) on a quick Sharkhead SF (26m 13s) and 1st villain respec (10m 58s).

Millie Volt (50 elec/elec brute) joined a 5-player Silver Mantis SF where we tried to stealth or speed everything we could; this went pretty well and we finished in 42m 32s. Millie also picked up an Armageddon (DMG) recipe from the Black Market for only 75M infamy, which I thought was a good deal.

Primadonna (50 sonic/kin corr) did an ITF in 32m 19s.

Linda Lightspeed (29 rad/kin corr) joined a pickup villain team that started on the Darrin Wade story arc, then did the arc that unlocked the Midnight Club, then finally moved to St Martial for some paper missions, a Talos mayhem mission and the Bad Luck badge mission. This all got Linda to level 31.


Sat 7/10

Arrow Girl (33 archery/nrg blaster) did a Moonfire TF. Lots of people had connection issues during this TF, but we pressed on. We failed the Dr. Todd mission when the team got split up and the NPC got killed by an ambush. In the final mission the team got split up again, and we had a team wipe as a result; then the tanker ran ahead of the team and attacked Arakhn all by himself, but got killed by the AV. This resulted in some recriminations and drama between team members, though I managed to avoid getting caught up in that. Once the team was together we did manage to take down Arakhn and complete the TF in 1h 38m.

Spacegirl (50 mind/rad controller) joined a team that killed Black Swan for the Praetorian badge credit. This still wasn't the AV she was missing, so she's still 12/13 on Dimensional Warder. But it rules Black Swan out, at least.

I worked out an extensive respec for Primadonna (50 sonic/kin corruptor) who has needed one for some time; her original build was intended to be effective on Cap au Diable SFs, which I used to do frequently when you got a random recipe instead of merits. So this meant she had a lot of level 23 set IOs; good on a level 20 TF, not so good on level 50 TFs. After I worked out this respec, however, I realized that I couldn't actually do the respec, because I had never bothered to unlock any of the Patron story arcs, and my proposed respec needed 2 powers from Black Scorpion's patron pool.

So I ended up starting to solo Ghost Widow's patron arc; before long a few people joined me and I was leading a 5 player team through the arc. My game crashed right before the final mission against Numina, and the team kinda fell apart while I was disconnected, so I ended up trying to solo Numina. She was a little scary (even as an EB) and had a ton of ambushes, but I managed to beat her, with some heavy inspiration use. This got me 10 reward merits and a respec. This let me respec to the build I had designed, which is as follows:

Primadonna I17 respec

Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.707
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Primadonna: Level 50 Mutation Corruptor
Primary Power Set: Sonic Attacks
Secondary Power Set: Kinetics
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Fighting
Ancillary Pool: Mace Mastery

Villain Profile:
Level 1: Shriek -- 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: Transfusion -- Nictus-Acc/Heal(A), Nictus-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(7), RgnTis-Heal/Rchg(9), RgnTis-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(9), Nictus-Heal/HP/Regen/Rchg(11), RgnTis-Regen+(11)
Level 2: Scream -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(13), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(13), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(15), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(15), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(17)
Level 4: Howl -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(37), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(37), Posi-Dmg/Rng(39), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(39), Posi-Dam%(39)
Level 6: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 8: Super Speed -- Clrty-EndRdx(A), Clrty-RunSpd(17), Clrty-Stlth(43)
Level 10: Siphon Speed -- Acc-I(A), RechRdx-I(19)
Level 12: Combat Jumping -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 14: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 16: Increase Density -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A)
Level 18: Sirens Song -- LgcRps-Acc/Rchg(A), LgcRps-Acc/EndRdx(19), LgcRps-Sleep/Rng(29), LgcRps-Acc/Sleep/Rchg(34)
Level 20: Speed Boost -- P'Shift-EndMod(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(25), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(29)
Level 22: Stamina -- P'Shift-EndMod(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(23), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(36)
Level 24: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(25)
Level 26: Screech -- Stpfy-Acc/Rchg(A), Stpfy-EndRdx/Stun(27), Stpfy-Acc/EndRdx(27), Stpfy-Stun/Rng(31), Stpfy-Acc/Stun/Rchg(31), Stpfy-KB%(31)
Level 28: Inertial Reduction -- Zephyr-ResKB(A)
Level 30: Kick -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(40), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(42), KntkC'bat-Knock%(43)
Level 32: Dreadful Wail -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(33), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(33), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(33), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(34), Oblit-%Dam(34)
Level 35: Transference -- P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc/Rchg(36), P'Shift-Acc/Rchg(36), RechRdx-I(37)
Level 38: Fulcrum Shift -- Acc-I(A), Acc-I(40), RechRdx-I(40), RechRdx-I(43)
Level 41: Scorpion Shield -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(42), LkGmblr-Rchg+(42), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(46)
Level 44: Web Envelope -- Enf'dOp-Acc/Rchg(A), Enf'dOp-EndRdx/Immob(45), Enf'dOp-Acc/EndRdx(45), Enf'dOp-Immob/Rng(45), Enf'dOp-Acc/Immob/Rchg(46), Enf'dOp-Acc/Immob(46)
Level 47: Tough -- RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx(A), RctvArm-ResDam/Rchg(48), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(48), RctvArm-ResDam(48)
Level 49: Weave -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(50), LkGmblr-Def(50), LkGmblr-Rchg+(50)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(21), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(21), KntkC'bat-Knock%(23)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Scourge
Level 4: Ninja Run


I felt really goofy about 4-slotting Brawl and Kick, but it's just for the Kinetic Combat bonuses. This build is heavily focused on smash/lethal defense, which is 48.5% ... 3.5% over the cap, admittedly overkill. I didn't bother trying to adjust the build down to exactly 45% defense, partly out of laziness, partly because that extra 3.5% will help a little against defense debuffs, which Primadonna doesn't resist at all. For most squishies I focus on ranged DEF rather than typed DEF, because it's easier to get good ranged DEF bonuses, but I went with smash/lethal DEF for Primadonna because I figure kinetics toons often need to be in melee range.

Thunder Girl (50 elec/SR scrapper) joined an Abandoned Sewer Trial with a team of 7 scrappers, 1 rad; we pre-arranged that we would split up into 4 sub-teams of 2 each for the shield generators, and that helped us speed the trial along, finishing in 23m 44s.

San Min (43 MA/will scrapper) joined a late night Sara Moore TF. This was actually a really bad idea for me; I said I'd help around 2am, but it took til 2:30am for the team to fill up and get started, and it lasted well into the early morning. I was kinda sleepwalking through the missions by the end. We had a team wipe against Rularuu, and I made an ill-fated attempt to try and stealth the final mission in the dreadful fog-filled cave, but got stomped and had to get TP'd back to awaken. So we had to clear the mission. We finally finished after 3h 7m (putting it a little past 5:30am my time). Not the fault of the team, I just shouldn't have joined a shard TF starting so late at night.


Sun 7/11

Managed to buy a level 50 Blessing of the Zephyr (KB protection) for 45M on red side, which seemed like a good deal.

Millie Volt (50 elec/elec brute) joined a pickup 1st villain respec; though this was "non-speed", we still finished in a pretty quick 24m 50s.

I joined a pickup ITF where I was asked to bring a tanker, so I played Strong Woman (50 inv/SS tanker). The team leader disconnected during mission 2, and the new leader was sidekicked up from 36 which bizarrely made our team level 49 for the rest of the TF (weird logic!), increasing the difficulty by +1. In mission 3, I ended up pulling generals to the bridge to reduce lag and risk, and got complimented on my pulling. I also ended up pulling the AVs down to the Phalanx Computer, which I think may have surprised my team (this is more of a speed TF move, admittedly); we ended up killing the AVs before the computer, which is kind of different, but actually worked well. Finished in 1h 7m; picked up a Prophecy and a Hamidon Goo as drops.

After that Primadonna (50 sonic/kin corruptor) did a speed ITF in 27m 23s and an LGTF in 34m 41s.

Fire Maiden (13 SS/fire brute) solo'd through A Penny For Your Thoughts, a Dev Choice AE arc where you help Penelope Yin save the life of the Clockwork King. This was rather surreal with some dream sequence missions, but was well-written and actually pretty cool. I gave it 5 stars. This got Fire Maiden to level 14. After that I joined a 3 player pickup team that did a Skyway mayhem.


Mon 7/12

Arrow Girl (34 archery/nrg blaster) joined a 5 player Sisterhood team. Our initial lineup had everyone but me as support, which meant I was running around with 2 Fortitudes, Speed Boost, Accelerate Metabolism and an occasional Adrenaline Boost. With all these buffs I was essentially in god-mode and ran around tank-maging everything with nonstop Rains of Arrows. We saved some lawyers from being turned to fungus, had a crazy fight against Crey, and fought a bunch of Nemesis. A teammate claimed that PB AOE attacks completely ignore the stacked defense from Nemesis Vengeance, so could be used to take out Nemesis reliably, but I had none of these on Arrow Girl so could not verify this. This was a fun team that got Arrow Girl to level 36.


Tue 7/13

After knocking out the last part of the arc to unlock the Midnight Club, Arrow Girl went into Cimerora and joined a pickup ITF. Our team was a little on the squishy side; we had a team wipe (all except the ice tanker) against the Phalanx computer in mission 3, then I got clobbered twice by ambushes while entering the final mission, then we had more stray deaths from ambushes while fighting our way to Romulus. Nevertheless we were able to beat Romulus and finish the ITF in 1h 32m, getting Arrow Girl to level 37.

I was asked to play a healer for an STF, so played Mystery Girl (48 emp/pistols defender). We did fine til the last mission, where we had a rough fight against the patron AVs; our strategy was to just jump the 4 of them, but we had a lot of loose aggro and so everyone started taking damage at once while the tanker got held by Ghost Widow and was yelling for me to CM him. Had a few deaths here (especially when Scirocco set off his nuke) but I managed to keep the tank alive and got enough CM on him to break the hold, then we wore down the 4 patron AVs. In the final fight against Lord Recluse, the tanker pulled LR to the doors of the tower, where I hung out nearby non-stop healing and buffing him. He was a shield tanker, and being defense based I was worried about the possibility of a lucky shot getting through to him, but he seemed to have enough HP to soak the hits long enough for a heal to land. I did notice he managed to use Eye of the Magus twice in the same fight, which I thought was remarkable; his recharge was buffed very high due to SB and AB. Finished STF in 57m 4s, got a Peroxisome and Mystery Girl to 49.

After that I played Star Amethyst (50 dark/ice defender) on a quick ITF (26m 42s) and a LGTF (30m 3s). We had a corruptor disconnect during mission 3 of the LGTF and never return, so we finished it with 7. We had no controllers or dominators, but managed to beat Hamidon with only defender and fortunata holds. I also found that Hamidon's goo interrupts Recall Friend (when I tried to TP a dead teammate close to a mito in order to Howling Twilight him), which is probably not new but something I never noticed before.

Finished the night soloing Fire Maiden (14 SS/fire brute) through The Lazarus Project, a lowbie MA arc where I foiled a sinister Vahzilok plot. This was quite well written with lots of detail; I gave it 5 stars. This got Fire Maiden to level 15.


Wed 7/14

I played Star Amethyst (50 dark/ice defender) on a Master of LGTF attempt. We were scrapper heavy, had no controllers or dominators, but decided we would rely on my 2 holds, Petrifying Gaze from a dark corruptor, and some epic pool holds from the scrappers. One of the scrappers managed to die against Hamidon while attacking a green mito, which he seemed to feel really bad about (he had expressed doubts about his Super Reflexes being enough to stay alive). The team leader thought maybe he got too close to Hamidon; I think maybe he should've broken and run a little earlier (on MoLGTF I now run away at the first sign I am taking damage, because of the DOT damage and the healing debuff). We finished the rest of the LGTF anyhow, completing it in 1h 4m.

Fire Maiden (15 SS/fire brute) joined an 8-player pickup team doing level 33ish missions in St Martial, including a Talos mayhem. As a lackey, this was quite good exp (though I tried to play the aggressive brute role to make sure I earned my keep) and got her to level 21. The SS/fire powers were really hitting my END bar hard, so it was a big relief to get Stamina at 20.

7/19/2010

Thursday

Millie Volt (50 elec/elec brute) joined a Lady Grey TF. I found that Energize (the new elec armor heal) works even when heal debuffed by Hamidon. We did have 1 team wipe while fighting the green mitos (we had killed 3 already and were pushing our luck I guess), but otherwise did fine. Finished in 41m 50s.

Fire Maiden (21 SS/fire brute) solo'd through The Horrors of Innswich, an AE arc that was a well-written Cthulhu mythos pastiche. I gave it 5 stars.


Friday

Fire Maiden solo'd through a couple more AE arcs; Glory Days, which was a good story but didn't really give the player much of a role to play (you're basically re-living the past adventures of a retired hero). I gave it 4 stars. Then I re-played Unfair Trade since the author had made some changes; this was about doing a favor for a prison buddy and I thought it started off strong but the ending didn't do much for me. I also gave that 4 stars.

A friend asked me if I had extra Kinetic Combats on red side, and I gave him 4 of them for 180M infamy; this was only about half the Black Market price, but I had told him whatever he could pay was fine since I didn't really need to make a profit selling to friends.

Yuki-Onna (50 ice/cold corruptor) did a Recluse SF in 38m 46s and got a Peroxisome. We all noticed load times seemed unusually slow.


Saturday

Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) joined a Manticore TF; I didn't really need the badge, was just in the mood to team. My game crashed on the last mission, requiring me to reboot my computer. I came back to find the team had waited for me before completing the TF, which was really nice. Finished in 1h exactly.

Fire Maiden (now a 22 SS/fire brute) solo'd through Behind the Smiling Spark of Madness, which is about how pop music was leading people into some kind of nihilistic cult. This was actually kind of disturbing, but was a good story and well-written. I gave it 5 stars.


Sunday

I've started using the in-game mail system to mail influence to myself whenever Police Woman (my main character and main marketeer) hits the influence cap. I hit the influence cap selling stuff at Wentworth's again; looking at the timestamps on my in-game email, I last hit the influence cap on 7/14 when I emailed myself 200M influence. So it took 4 days (from 7/14 to 7/18) for me to make 200M influence on the market. I'm sure serious marketeers can do a lot better than this, but this seemed pretty good to me.

Thunder Girl (50 elec/SR scrapper) joined a Moonfire TF of mostly SisterhoodAndFriends, finishing in 1h 12m. I got 2 compliments on her background story from teammates.

Later that night, Mystery Girl (49 emp/pistols defender) joined a Sisterhood team for some Malta missions and battled the Kronos Titan. This team was moderately suicidal, with blasters running off on their own and pulling with Inferno and stuff; someone said they were "keeping me busy" to which I said "it's more fun for an empath when people are taking damage", which probably only encouraged their craziness. I wasn't always able to keep everyone alive, but I had Vengeance/Resurrect, so it worked out OK and was pretty fun overall. I had picked up Power Build Up at 49 and was experimenting with PBU'ing Fortitude/Clear Mind/Adrenaline Boost on blasters; seemed to work nicely.

I forget the character name but Draconis or something like that was a fire blaster too, he said he literally had a death wish so he could use ROTP. He was extremely aggressive, he died and used it once that I saw, and maybe other times that I didn't notice. He was probably only dead for a second, so it'd be easy to miss on the team window.

And yes, fireball is the only way to pull.

7/22/2010

On Monday night, I played Fire Maiden (22 SS/fire brute), duoing some missions in Grandville with a 43 fortunata, completing a Founders Falls mayhem, and getting to level 23.


Tuesday night, I played San Min (44 MA/will scrapper) on a Katie TF, finishing with no problems in 24m 50s and getting to level 45.

After that I did an Imperious TF on Shield Maiden (50 mace/shield brute), finishing in 30m 18s. I also had a random passerby compliment me on Shield Maiden's costume.


Wednesday night, I played Blond Justice (50 broadsword/shield scrapper), joining a force of 2 teams battling Lusca in Independence Port. I got teased on Blond Justice's blondness, but it was all in good fun. We beat up the squid, though his tentacles took a heavy toll on the other toons near me. However, with Blond Justice's soft capped DEF, I was largely untouched.

I was asked to play an empath for a Statesman TF, so I brought on Mystery Girl (49 emp/pistols defender). The team leader thought that empathy/pistols sounded like a fun combo (and it is). We had some stray deaths in the early missions (I think this was partly me being too slow to react, and partly squishies being reckless) and one scrapper who was kind of a slacker, often lagging behind us by a spawn or two, to the point where other team members were commenting on his inattentiveness (not their exact words ). In the final mission we fought all 4 patrons at once and this time I made sure to CM the tank heavily before even starting the fight; then I followed the tanker while he was keeping Lord Recluse busy. There was a slight difference of opinion on the order to take down the towers; the team leader called for the red tower to be attacked first (which is what the team did), but the invuln tanker thought yellow tower should go down first (to leverage his defense). Nevertheless we beat the encounter, completing the STF in 1h 3m. I got a Cytoskeleton HO and Mystery Girl hit level 50. Despite having rolled up a lot of empathy toons over the years (at least 5 that I can think of), Mystery Girl is my first empath to reach 50. I have several stalled in the mid 40s for some reason; I kinda think level 50 teams don't ask for empathy as often as rad, kin and other debuffs.

Finished the night playing Mayday (50 fortunata) on a Lady Grey TF. This team ended up with 3 fortunatas, as one team member was trying to convince us all that fortunatas are the best AT to play on Lady Grey TF, between the VEAT team buffs, the holds for the green mitos, and psychic damage to penetrate the Honoree's Unstoppable. There might be something to that, really. In any case we finished LGTF in 30m 2s, which seemed like a good time.

7/27/2010

Friday

Almost joined a Citadel TF, but we had 9 players due to a mixup on whether one person was definitely coming or not, so I volunteered to sit out.

I joined a Statesman TF instead, playing Spacegirl (50 mind/rad controller). In the final mission, I think I managed to stack enough confuse on Captain Mako to get him on our side for part of the fight. Facing Lord Recluse, we killed the yellow tower first, but repairmen rebuilt it right after we moved to the red tower, so we had to kill the yellow tower again. Finished in 45m 32s with no deaths (though we had not actually set the "Master of" settings, so no badge). I got a Golgi SHO.

After that I played Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corruptor) on a speed ITF, finishing in 24m 31s.


Saturday

I dragged Rain Dancer (50 storm/archery defender) out of mothballs (hadn't logged her in for most of a year) and worked on a respec for her. Previously she was slotted heavily for global recharge bonuses (to make Freezing Rain and Lightning Storm come up as often as possible), but I decided to switch to maximizing range defense instead. This is what I ended up with:


Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.707
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Rain Dancer I17 respec: Level 50 Magic Defender
Primary Power Set: Storm Summoning
Secondary Power Set: Archery
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Leadership
Ancillary Pool: Power Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: O2 Boost -- Numna-Heal/EndRdx(A), Numna-EndRdx/Rchg(3), Numna-Heal/Rchg(3), Numna-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(5), Numna-Heal(5), Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(7)
Level 1: Snap Shot -- 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 2: Aimed Shot -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(13), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(13), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(15), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(15), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(17)
Level 4: Fistful of Arrows -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(17), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(19), Posi-Dmg/Rng(19), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(21), RechRdx-I(21)
Level 6: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 8: Freezing Rain -- RechRdx-I(A), UndDef-DefDeb/Rchg(23), UndDef-Rchg(23)
Level 10: Blazing Arrow -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(25), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(25), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(27), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(27), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(29)
Level 12: Combat Jumping -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 14: Super Speed -- Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(50)
Level 16: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 18: Steamy Mist -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(29), LkGmblr-Rchg+(31), S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(31), S'fstPrt-ResDam/EndRdx(31), S'fstPrt-ResKB(33)
Level 20: Stamina -- P'Shift-EndMod(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(33), P'Shift-End%(33), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(50)
Level 22: Hurricane -- DarkWD-ToHitDeb(A), DarkWD-ToHitDeb/Rchg(34), DarkWD-ToHitdeb/Rchg/EndRdx(34), DarkWD-Rchg/EndRdx(34), DarkWD-ToHitDeb/EndRdx(36)
Level 24: Snow Storm -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 26: Tornado -- ExRmnt-Acc/Rchg(A), ExRmnt-Acc/Dmg(36), ExRmnt-Dmg/EndRdx(36), ExRmnt-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(37), ExRmnt-EndRdx/Dmg/Rchg(37), ExRmnt-+Res(Pets)(37)
Level 28: Maneuvers -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(46), LkGmblr-Def(48), LkGmblr-Rchg+(48)
Level 30: Tactics -- GSFC-ToHit(A), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg(43), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg/EndRdx(43), GSFC-Rchg/EndRdx(45), GSFC-ToHit/EndRdx(46), GSFC-Build%(46)
Level 32: Lightning Storm -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(39), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(39), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(39), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(40), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(40)
Level 35: Aim -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(50)
Level 38: Rain of Arrows -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(40), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(42), Posi-Dmg/Rng(42), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(42), RechRdx-I(43)
Level 41: Conserve Power -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 44: Temp Invulnerability -- TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx(A), TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(45), TtmC'tng-ResDam(45)
Level 47: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(48)
Level 49: Vengeance -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Vigilance
Level 4: Ninja Run


This puts her at 44.5% range DEF, which I figure is close enough; I've had friends say they can't tell the difference between 44.5% and 45% defense. Despite not having Fly or Hover, I decided to ignore melee defense since I figure Hurricane can keep things from getting too close. Haven't tested this build out much yet, still need to do that.


San Min (45 MA/will scrapper) exemped down to a 7 player team doing Frostfire at level 11. We had an exemped down kin on the team also, so I got to have fun skating around with Speed Boost on ice. We ended up doing the Frostfire mission twice, for two different team members who had the mission (one had joined too late to get credit for auto-completing it). I got complimented on her costume, her background story (which I actually had thought was too short), and also had one teammate say "with San around, we could do anything!" which was cool. I got a Miracle (HEAL) recipe drop from the end of one of the missions.

After finishing the two Frostfire missions, some people switched which character they were playing and we ended up doing some level 45 missions in Peregrine Island, doing parts of Tina MacIntyre's story arc and beating an Infernal AV at the start of Maria Jenkins' arc.

I also played San Min on a Sisterhood SG event where we ran Sister Psyche TF (which inevitably got described as "hot Sister on Sister action"). Our 6 player team (which was mostly the same people as were on my previous Frostfire and PI teams) finished the TF in 1h 42m. All this got San Min to level 47.


Sunday

While marketeering at Wentworth's, I hit the infl cap again and emailed myself another 200M infl in dividends. I last hit the infl cap 7 days ago, so that's 200M inf in 7 days (slightly longer than last time, which was 4 days).

Spent most of the afternoon on the Rikti War Zone raids. I played Star Amethyst (50 dark/ice defender) for one run (gaining 393 Vanguard merits), then Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corruptor) for the second run (gaining 492 Vanguard merits). Star Amethyst's dark powers seemed especially helpful, considering Shadow Fall helps against most of the Rikti damage types, and the AoE rez being very good in a raid situation. I ended up spending 500 Vanguard merits from each character to buy the "Vanguard Storage Sack" (+10 salvage capacity). Carrying capacity for salvage seems nice.

Finished the night playing Fire Maiden (23 SS/fire brute) on a 4-player team doing paper missions and a Brickstown mayhem, which got her to level 25.


Monday

Started off playing Fire Maiden (25 SS/fire brute) on a 4-player pickup team; did another Brickstown mayhem that got her to 26.

After that team broke up, I accepted an invite to another pickup team. This went poorly as the team leader was on +2 difficulty but our team could not actually handle this difficulty level. We had 3 brutes and 1 kin; the other two brutes were more squishy than me (and I'm a fire armor brute), and the kin, while good at keeping SB on us, was lackeyed up from DO level so could not actually hit anything with Transfusion to heal us. After two semi-team wipes against +2 Crey (everyone died but me; I survived by eating Lucks and strategically running away) the team kind of got discouraged and fell apart.

One of the other brutes and the kin offered to invite me to a new team, but I ended up switching to Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corruptor) and joining a speed ITF instead, which we finished in 27m 18s.

need moar journal

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nights_Dawn Hazy is right

8/16/2010

Been pretty slack about posting journal entries due to vacation; going to try to catch up some here.

Tue 7/27

I attended the "Tanker Tuesday" event with Strong Woman (50 inv/SS tanker), getting on an 8-player team of all tankers (some were level 50, some were level 1 and not much help, most were in between). We beat up the Clockwork Paladin, then started on Praetorian AVs, defeating Infernal, Marauder, Diabolique, Chimera, Shadow Hunter, Nightstar, Siege and Bobcat. Some of the AVs were a bit of a slugfest (especially Marauder, who kept going Unstoppable, which we tankers couldn't do much about), but we were still able to do it. I crafted an Envenomed Dagger temp power to help debuff, and another tanker was using Melt Armor occasionally.

I tested Rain Dancer's (50 storm/archery def) respec build by trying to solo the Cimerora wall. I found I could do it, though not so quickly as with a scrapper or brute, and a little more messily as storm powers would occasionally knock a minion off the wall. Then I joined a 6-player ITF, which we restarted during mission 1 to add another player. The 7-player ITF finished in 37m 3s. I spent a lot of time hopping around dropping Freezing Rain/Rain of Arrows, and was pretty safe due to my high ranged DEF (and occasionally Hurricane if stuff got too close).


Wed 7/28

Fire Maiden (26 SS/fire brute) solo'd some paper missions, then an AE arc called Paradox: Crisis on Infinite Girls which was all about a time traveling heroine that you run into lots and lots of copies of. This was interesting but confusing, and there were mad ambushes with a bit too much stacking debuff; I ended up giving it 3 stars.


Thu 7/29

I did 44 bronze ticket rolls (3080 tickets total). Best of the bunch were:

Thunderstrike (ACC/DMG/END), (DMG/END) and (ACC/DMG)
Reactive Armor (RES)
Cloud Senses (TOHITDEBUFF)
Karma (KB protect)
Crushing Impact (ACC/DMG/RCHG)
Doctored Wounds (HEAL)

The other 36 recipes I basically deleted or sold to vendors, but despite that, there's enough good stuff among the junk that I still like using tickets for bronze recipe rolls.

Rain Dancer (50 storm/archery defender) did another 6-player ITF in 24m 39s, which seemed very fast for a 6 player team.


Fri 7/30

Spacegirl (50 mind/rad controller) joined a 7-player Rule of Three (Posi 2) TF. Both mind and rad have most of their good powers at low level, so it felt like Spacegirl was really good even exemped down to 16. This TF went pretty well, though we had something of a crazy desperate fight against Cortex near the end, that we narrowly won. Finished in 1h 21m.

Did another 22 bronze ticket rolls (1540 more tickets); best of these were:

Thunderstrike (DMG/RCHG)
Decimation (ACC/DMG)
Kinetic Combat (ACC/DMG)
Doctored Wounds (END/RCHG)
Reactive Armor (END/RES)

I used up San Min's (47 MA/will scrapper) free respec in preparation for I18 and Going Rogue. I forgot to export the actual build (will try to remember to do that later) but basically I tried to maximize smash/lethal defense (got to 44.5%, close enough to the cap) and swapped in Cobra Strike (which will do damage once GR goes live) for Super Jump (but with ninja run, not having a travel power seems hardly noticable). I also purchased a Numina (+regen/+rec) recipe for 76M infl, which seemed like a good deal, and used 200 reward merits for a Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% rchg) recipe, to help complete this build.

San Min then went on a 7-player MoITF (we originally had 8 but one player disconnected right before we started, and the leader didn't feel like finding a replacement). We went really slowly because everyone was afraid of blowing the Master of conditions, even to the point where defenders were told to hang back and not attack. The team kind of stalled during mission 3 when the leader disconnected and the team wanted to stand around by the bridge rather than move on with an even shorter team. I ended up running out of time (had to go to dinner) and had to log off; I felt bad about bailing like this, but we were moving so slowly and at the rate we were going it would've been another 90 minutes probably.

Later that night I played Primadonna (50 sonic/kin corruptor) on a 6-player speed ITF, finishing in 28m 31s. I got an Armageddon (DMG/END) recipe as a drop.


Sat 7/31

Fire Maiden (26 SS/fire brute) joined an 8-player villain team doing door missions in Nerva. We fought Positron AV twice in some brutal fights (he seemed really tough for our team, I even started using Shivans) and Valkyrie as an AV twice. This got Fire Maiden to 28.

I also played Water Lily (29 rad/storm corruptor) on a 6-player villain team that was fighting Calystix and those magical fonts. We had about 3 team wipes until we managed to pull Calystix away from his hordes of minions and beat him up. Also did some missions against Longbow and PPD which got Water Lily to level 30.


Sun 8/1

I hit the inf cap again on Police Woman and mailed another 200M infl to myself.

I did some editing of my Axis and Allies story arc; some rewriting of briefing and debriefing text to better explain things, and replacing some of the recolored PPD, Malta and Crazed models with custom models. Dual pistols got added to the powers you can give AE mobs, so I used those heavily for various military officers. This let me raise the level range back to 40-50; previously I had lowered it to 40-44 so I could use some recolored enemies that only went up to level 44.

Playing Spacegirl (50 mind/rad controller) I helped a Synapse TF team beat Babbage in Skyway City, then joined the tail end of the Hamidon raid. The raid successfully spawned Hamidon but didn't quite have the tactics to take him down yet, wiping out on the "bloom" at 75% health. I noticed that people seemed to have a bad habit of moving next to me and blowing me up due to a contagious Hamidon DOT that wsa on them.

Did another 25 bronze recipe rolls; best of this bunch were

Crushing Impact (2xACC/DMG/END, 1xDMG/END/RCHG)
Positron's Blast (ACC/DMG)
Reactive Armor (RCHG/RES)

Arrow Girl (37 archery/nrg blaster) joined a clear-most ITF on +1 difficulty; finished in 56m 13s and got to level 39.

Blond Justice (50 broadsword/shield scrapper) joined the RWZ raid and got 477 Vanguard merits; I spent 500 to get the +10 salvage storage sack.


Mon 8/2

I spent some time tweaking A Warrior's Journey: The Flower Knight Task Force, heavily reworking the mission where you attack Chimera's secret base, and adding a lot of custom ninja models to both give Chimera's minions some variety, as well as cut down on the amount of stacking caltrops they throw. A couple players joined me while I was playtesting this on +1 x6 difficulty; this difficulty was maybe too hard, we had a lot of deaths.

Playing Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) I joined a group of 2 teams that were I helped farm EoEs for future Hamidon raids, finally ending up with 17 EoEs. I was about to go out of town on vacation, so I emailed these all to the people who were organizing Hami raids.

I played San Min (48 MA/will scrapper) on an 8-player AV team that beat up Diabolique, Infernal, Dominatrix, Marauder and Tyrant. After this team broke up, I ended up leading a 6-player AV team that started from the first Maria Jenkins mission and beat up Infernal, Chimera, Shadow Hunter, Nightstar and Siege.


(I went on vacation to go to GENCON and was away from the internet for almost a week.)


Sun 8/8

Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) joined a Sister Psyche TF. Someone recognized me and complimented me for the AE missions I wrote and the PW War Journal, which was nice. We didn't stealth much of this TF, mostly clearing the way to objectives. We had a tough fight aainst Punkadelic, when the team split up and aggro'd multiple spawns. The leader eventually had to log off and get some sleep; the new leader was only level 24, making the mobs +1 relative to the team. We ultimately finished in 2h 36m.


Mon 8/9

I hit the infl cap again and sent myself an email with another 200M infl. (So, 200M infl in 8 days, 5 of which I was AFK.)

Fire Maiden (28 SS/fire brute) solo'd the Do It Yourself Laser Moonbase Project, an AE arc where you construct a giant laser on the moon and menace the earth. This was a great concept, but I felt the ending could've been a little stronger; I had recruited some minions earlier, so I would've liked to see my army of minions fighting off James Bond (or whatever hero) or something. Admittedly, that's probably hard to do. Anyhow, I gave it 4 stars.

I went on to solo Mystery on the Boardwalk, one of the guest author AE arcs where this annoying lady asks you to help investigate some supernatural incidents. Despite how irritating the contact was, I thought this was a pretty good story, and I gave it 5 stars.

San Min (49 MA/will scrapper) joined a Statesman TF. We had a pretty strong team and finished in 53m 7s; San Min hit level 50 right when we killed Lord Recluse, which felt suitably dramatic. I also got a Nucleolus HO.

Shield Maiden (50 mace/shield brute) joined a 6-player ITF finishing in 31m 12s.


Tue 8/10

I solo'd San Min (50 MA/will scrapper) through most of the rest of Maria Jenkins' arc, beating Bobcat, Neuron, Battle Maiden, Black Swan, Malaise, Mother Mayhem, Diabolique, Infernal, Dominatrix and Marauder (all as EBs) and getting Portal Jockey (+66 max HP, +5 max END). I went on to join a Master of the Imperious TF team with 2 kins, 1 rad, 2 tankers and 3 scrappers; someone from the previous night's Statesman TF remembered me and suggested inviting me, I think. This MoITF was pretty slow going as we carefully killed everything that crossed our path. In mission 3, we handled the Phalanx Computer by clearing all the robots as they spawned (something I almost never see teams do), rather than ignoring them to kill the computer. One of the tankers kept running off on his own and fighting his own spawns, which endlessly aggravated the team leader and eventually got him kicked from the team. The remaining 7 of us managed to slowly but surely finish the MoITF, completing it in 2h 55s with no deaths, and getting the badge.

Spy Girl (31 MA/ninj stalker) solo'd through The Twisted Tongue, about a Freakshow plot to make everyone talk like Freaks. This was a cute idea but the story didn't fully grab me; I gave it 4 stars.

Fire Maiden (28 SS/fire brute) solo'd through Grim Riddles where you're facing off against a manic clown who leaves riddles that you need to solve. I thought this was a great idea, but the riddles didn't quite make sense to me, and I thought the ending was a little weak (no riddles!); I gave it 4 stars.

Arrow Girl (39 archery/energy blaster) replayed Real Afterlife, a story where you foil a CoT plot with the help of War Witch; it was better than before, but the excessive number of defeat all missions got to be a little tedious. I gave it 4 stars.


Wed 8/11

San Min (50 MA/will scrapper) joined a team hunting Fake Nemeses in Peregrine Island, which eventually got her the Freedom Phalanx Reserve accolade.

Spy Girl (31 MA/ninj stalker) solo'd The Doctor Returns, a story arc where you foil a Crey plot to replace heroes with mind-controlled duplicates. This was well-written and had a neat ending; I gave it 5 stars. Spy Girl also solo'd Blowback, where you foil a Malta conspiracy to work with the Rikti; this was also quite well-written and I gave it 5 stars.

Arrow Girl (39 archery/nrg blaster) exemped down to a 7-player team doing the Frostfire mission at level 9. I guess I have a soft spot in my heart for Frostfire, it's sort of nostalgic for me. We beat up Frostfire no problem. A teammate also complimented me on Arrow Girl's background story, which was nice.

Spacegirl (50 mind/rad controller) joined a Statesman TF; we had a team wipe at Dr Aeon during mission 4 due to loose aggro, then in mission 5 we had a semi-wipe when the Arachnos flyer aggroed us while we were fighting the patron AVs. I explained to our tanker how to taunt Lord Recluse while flying to avoid a lot of his melee damage, and he seemed to really like that trick. We finished the STF in 1h 11m; I got a Nucleolus.

Fire Maiden (28 SS/fire brute) solo'd through Fantasy Quest: Chapter 1 Into the Darkness, a short AE story arc which was, indeed, a rather generic fantasy adventure. It was ok for what it was, but didn't really have that much content; I gave it 3 stars.

Blond Justice (50 broadsword/shield scrapper) joined a Moonfire TF which finished in 1h 6m. For reasons I don't understand, one player quit the TF just 1 minute before we completed it; this kinda bugged out the TF, causing the final mission to repeat. We still got the merits and the badge, though. Some of the players reportedly did the final mission a second time, but didn't get more merits for doing so.


Thu 8/12

Primadonna (50 sonic/kin corruptor) joined an ITF which was basically 7 scrappers/brutes and me as a kin. Normally ITFs have more debuff than this, but actually it worked fine, finishing in 24m 52s.

San Min (50 MA/will scrapper) joined a team doing AE story arcs. I specifically asked whether they were doing stories or farms, and was told they were doing stories, but of course it turns out they wanted to do a farm. We did The Mission to End All Missions, which seemed to just be an outdoor map full of Egyptian-themed lieutenant mobs using the claws powerset. I did one run through the farm map just to be polite, then excused myself from the team.


Fri 8/13

Fire Maiden (28 SS/fire brute) joined a 4 player pickup team; this team wasn't very good, but did end up getting Fire Maiden to 29.

After that I was soloing through some of my own AE story arcs for fun when a friend asked to join; we duo'd through Celebrity Kidnapping, then the team ended up snowballing into an 8-player team that I led through Teen Phalanx Forever! and Talos Vice. This was nice as the players on the team gave me some good ratings that helped bump them up a bit higher in the MA search tool (especially Talos Vice, which got bumped from a 4 star average to a 5 star average).

Strong Woman (50 inv/SS tanker) did a clear-most ITF in 1h 8m, then Police Woman (50 AR/dev blsater) joined a Statesman TF, but I lost internet during mission 2 and it didn't come back until the next day.


Sat 8/14

Fire Maiden (29 SS/fire brute) solo'd some missions in Sharkhead to get to level 30, then briefly joined a team to beat up the Ghost of Scrapyard.

Spacegirl (50 mind/rad controller) joined a Master of Imperious TF where the team leader wanted to 2 box; this seemed crazy for a "Master of" attempt so I ended up quitting, then they reformed without the 2nd box and wanted to invite me back; I rejoined, but then the game crashed, and by the time I got back they had filled the team and started. It took me a long time to load back into the game, though (I had to completely reboot the computer) so it was pretty understandable.

Instead I ended up joining a 7 player team in Grandville with Fire Maiden and getting to level 32. I also solo'd Big in Sumeria, an AE arc that is a hilarious 1-mission Ghostbusters spoof. I gave it 5 stars.

Someone wanted to run a villain respec; I played Spy Girl (31 MA/ninj stalker) and we knocked out a 5-player villain respec in 10m 24s.

I played Lady Arachne (50 wolf spider) on an ITF, finishing in 24m 28s. A teammate complimented me on her biography, which was nice.

Finished the night soloing various AE arcs on Spy Girl. Healing the Lame was about fighting heroes with dumb character concepts, but didn't have a lot more to it than that; I gave it 3 stars. Nuking the Fridge I don't really remember anything about, except I gave it 3 stars. Adventures in Babysitting has you bodyguarding a young girl who gets involved with the CoT; it was OK, I gave it 4 stars.


Sun 8/15

Hit the influence cap again while trading at Wentworth's and mailed off another 200M infl to myself. So, 200M infl in 6 days this time.

Star Amethyst (50 dark/ice defender) joined a Sara Moore TF. This team was very strong; one blaster said he could never use LRM Rocket because we killed too fast for its activation time. I tried to use my 2 holds to keep Fake Nemeses from using their phase-out power at low life. I got a Doctored Wounds (HEAL/RCHG) recipe as my only notable drop. We finished in 2h 14m for 64 merits.

Teal Serpent (31 archery/traps corruptor) joined an 8-player villain team that ran through the Midnighter arc. Our team was very high DEF between my FF Generator and some VEAT maneuvers. We had a close call against some Rikti, but successfully completed the arc to get Midnight Club access and 9 reward merits.

A couple friends were arguing over whether speed ITFs or clear-all ITFs were more efficient for exp, and I proposed to resolve it by running one speed ITF and one clear-all ITF and comparing results.

I played Mega (50 SS/will brute) for the speed ITF, and our 8 player team finished in 24m 6s. As a level 50 I can't earn exp, but I tracked influence gained, because I figured that would be much the same. I gained 1,706,048 infamy on the speed ITF (not counting drops of any sort) or 70.7K inf per minute. I partly screwed up this result because I was in SG mode the whole time (which eats infl) and I had also hit the hospital upon dying in mission 2 and missed the mission complete bonus. I also got an Armageddon (DMG/END) recipe, which was a nice bonus.

I then played Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) for a clear-all ITF. Our 8-player team finished in 1h 8m and I earned 4,567,903 infl, or 67.2K inf per minute. I also screwed this result up somewhat because my game crashed during mission 1, causing me to miss a lot of kills and the mission 1 mission complete bonus; and the new leader as only level 49 which skewed the mob levels until he hit level 50. We also technically did not clear all of mission 3 since I pulled generals down to the bridge to avoid lag (a common practice even on clear-most ITFs). Still, 67.2K inf/min is pretty close to 70.7K inf/min, so both methods seem pretty good. I also got a Coercive Persuasion (CONF) recipe on this TF; 2 purple recipes in one day is really lucky. I also ended up mailing about 700M infl to myself to get down to exactly 1 billion inf on Police Woman to more easily measure how much infl I gained, which will probably mess up my future inf calculations. I was going to mail all my inf to myself, but I discovered the email system limits you to mailing less than a billion inf at a time, something I hadn't known before.

Mystery Girl (50 emp/pistols) joined the Sunday RWZ raid; I tried to keep Fortitude and Clear Mind up on as many people as I could, which I hope helped, but we still had some lowbie squishies who instantly died any time a Rikti looked at them. Nevertheless the raid seemed very successful; I got 2 bomb credits (one player eager for the bomb badge got a second bomb near the end of the raid after he figured out his timer had expired), 2 reward merits for the Master-at-Arms, and 543 vanguard merits, of which I spent 500 to get the salvage storage sack.

Mystery Girl went on to solo Developer Distress: Save the Secrets of the Architect System, a 1 mission AE arc where basically you are rescuing various CoH developers from the 5th Column. The idea is cute, but there's really not much more to the arc than that; I gave it 3 stars. Soloing an emp defender usually isn't that great an idea, but I needed to finish a story arc to get the Mission Architect accolade; I found that the best way for me to solo was to stealth into the middle of an enemy group (with stealth/superspeed), then Power Build Up/Hail of Bullets (seemed to kill most minions), then mop up with other pistols attacks. This was slow going, but worked.

Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) joined a Statesman TF. We had a couple people from another server who questioned why we took out the yellow tower early; the Liberty natives all thought the yellow tower buffs Lord Recluse's accuracy, but the other two said blue tower does that, not yellow. I was inclined to agree that the yellow tower buffs accuracy, but I used Surveillance on Lord Recluse to check, and it turns out the blue tower does give +30% ToHit to Lord Recluse. This seems good to know for DEF-based tankers; previously we would take out the yellow tower first for those guys, which with this new info doesn't make sense at all. Anyway, we finished in 1h 9m and I got a Centriole (boo!).

8/18/2010

On Monday, Going Rogue/I18 showed up a day early, which was pretty cool. I didn't have any open character slots on liberty (although I got awarded 2 slots, I actually have the max 36 slots unlocked already so I can't add more) so I couldn't make a Praetorian alt; I figured I'd wait for free server transfers to be enabled and use that to make room.

Instead, I started off by playing Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster), trying to playtest Teen Phalanx Forever!, one of my AE arcs, to make sure the new issue didn't break something. Got most of the way through when a friend asked me to help his (mostly his SG) team with the Statesman TF.

We had a decently balanced mix of archetypes on the team, and the STF went well up to the last mission, against the 4 patron AVs. On our first try we jumped all 4 AVs, but the tanker got killed somehow and despite getting rezzed things got a bit out of control and we ended up wiping out. Second attempt, we tried pulling a patron AV to a little niche in the near right corner of the plaza where the AVs are standing; this started off OK with just one AV, but then all the other patron AVs started showing up and joining the fight, which caused us another team wipe. Finally we just cleared the walkway leading up to the patron AV area, then pulled the patron AVs from a considerably further distance away, which worked fine.

Once we beat the patron AVs we cleared the Arachnos flyer (twice, as it repopped right after the first time) then tackled Lord Recluse and the WEB device. The tanker used a jetpack to taunt Lord Recluse from a flying position; as the tanker was shield defense, he asked us to kill tbe blue tower first. We ended up killing them in the order blue, yellow, green, red, but it probably would've made more sense to go blue, red, yellow, green. It worked anyway, and we completed the STF in 1h 41m. It had been <24 hours since my last STF so I couldn't take an HO; I started off thinking I would leave the reward menu up and claim an HO when the timer expired, but I wanted to play Police Woman more, and I soon got sick of looking at the reward menu so finally just took the merits to get the window off my screen.

I started finding "tips" as drops from mobs and started doing some of the tip missions. I found I could get tips from Cimerorans on the Cimerora wall, but could not actually use tips in Cimerora, which was weird. I also found I could get tips from grey Family mobs in Independence Port (even though they weren't worth exp, being level 20+ is apparently enough).

The tip missions were actually pretty cool. I hadn't really tried them before, and I liked the idea of choosing from a couple possible options, and getting a different outcome as a result. I had heard the tip missions were just glorified radio missions, but all the ones I did had a little more complexity than that, with two or three things to do in each mission, sometimes chained together in interesting ways. I'm sure it will all get old once I've played each of the tip missions 20 times, but right now they seem really cool. I did the max 5 missions, selecting the "Hero" choice each time, figuring I will start off reinforcing my "Hero" morality (though switching to Vigilante for the extra badging opportunities IS pretty tempting).

I got a ton of badges along the way, including Agent of Order, Judge & Jury, Ear to the Street, Walking the Path, Tipped Off and Eye of the Storm, all for Going Rogue related actions.

I switched to Fire Maiden (32 SS/fire brute) and did 5 tip missions on red side, this time picking "Rogue" each time. I like brutes so I'm thinking I may make Fire Maiden my first toon to change to blue side.


Tuesday night, supposedly character transfers were working, so I transferred one of my less played alts, Deianira, off to Champion server. Deianira1 showed up on Champion server, but weirdly, there was still a Deianira on Liberty, only with no costume. This seemed pretty buggy. I ended up deleting the ghost Deianira from Liberty server, which opened an "Available" slot for me to make a new character, a level 1 pistols/kin corruptor that I named Marcia Law (which I thought would be a great "Loyalist" name). I joined a 4-player team of Liberty Force players who had returned to the game for Going Rogue, and found they were all Resistance aligned, and I got to make fun of them because all their stinky Resistance contacts were in hard-to-get places, while the Loyalist contacts were right out in plain sight. We worked out an arrangement where we would alternate Resistance and Loyalist missions. It felt kind of weird to be shooting at PPD officers as a Loyalist, but I guess the game rationalizes this as "infiltrating" the other side. We all rolled our eyes at the "pick flowers for Marauder's girlfriend" mission, which seemed very un-Praetorian.

We had some people join the team and others leave, and I eventually got Marcia Law up to level 10 before the team broke up (after 2 straight team wipes against huge mobs of Syndicate...the missions in the new expansion seem to spawn HUGE groups of mobs). I logged off to switch characters, thinking I might make a Resistance alt, but when I got back to the character select screen, I found that the ghost of Deianira had reappeared in my #36 character slot, and Marcia Law had vanished from my character select screen. I restarted the game a couple times to see if that would fix it, but it stayed like that; really buggy. I heard other people were having similar problems with ghosts of deleted characters, and this scared me off from trying to do any more server transfers or making any more Praetorian alts. Which is really a shame because the new Praetoria areas look really cool.

Instead I switched to Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) and did another 5 Hero tip missions. This let me get another tip that gave me a Morality mission, which allowed me to "reaffirm" my Heroism, giving me 50 reward merits, the Made A Stand badge, and the Resolute badge (putting me up to 726 badges).

8/23/2010


Before I forget, here's the respec build for San Min (50 MA/will scrapper) I mentioned earlier:

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.707
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

San Min respec: Level 50 Science Scrapper
Primary Power Set: Martial Arts
Secondary Power Set: Willpower
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Fighting
Ancillary Pool: Weapon Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Storm Kick -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(3), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(3), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(5), Mako-Dmg/Rchg(5), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(7)
Level 1: High Pain Tolerance -- Numna-Heal/EndRdx(A), Numna-Heal/Rchg(7), Numna-Heal(9), Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(9), ResDam-I(11), S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(11)
Level 2: Cobra Strike -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(13), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(13), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(15), Mako-Dmg/Rchg(15), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(17)
Level 4: Fast Healing -- Numna-Heal/EndRdx(A), Numna-Heal/Rchg(17), Numna-Heal(19)
Level 6: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 8: Crane Kick -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(19), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(21), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(21), Mako-Dmg/Rchg(23), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(23)
Level 10: Indomitable Will -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 12: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 14: Combat Jumping -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 16: Rise to the Challenge -- Numna-Heal/EndRdx(A), Numna-Heal(27), Numna-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(27)
Level 18: Crippling Axe Kick -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(29), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(29), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(31), Mako-Dmg/Rchg(31), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(31)
Level 20: Quick Recovery -- P'Shift-EndMod(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(33), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(33)
Level 22: Mind Over Body -- RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx(A), RctvArm-ResDam/Rchg(33), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(34), RctvArm-ResDam(34)
Level 24: Focus Chi -- RechRdx-I(A), Rec'dRet-ToHit/Rchg(25), Rec'dRet-Pcptn(25), RechRdx-I(42)
Level 26: Dragon's Tail -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(36), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(36), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(37), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(37), Oblit-%Dam(37)
Level 28: Heightened Senses -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(39), LkGmblr-Rchg+(39)
Level 30: Boxing -- Empty(A)
Level 32: Eagles Claw -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(34), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(36), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(39), Mako-Dmg/Rchg(40), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(40)
Level 35: Tough -- RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx(A), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(42), RctvArm-ResDam(42), RctvArm-EndRdx(43)
Level 38: Weave -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(40), LkGmblr-Rchg+(43)
Level 41: Web Grenade -- Enf'dOp-Acc/Rchg(A), Enf'dOp-EndRdx/Immob(43), Enf'dOp-Acc/EndRdx(45), Enf'dOp-Immob/Rng(45), Enf'dOp-Acc/Immob/Rchg(45), Enf'dOp-Acc/Immob(46)
Level 44: Caltrops -- CtlSpd-Dmg/Slow(A), CtlSpd-Acc/EndRdx(46), CtlSpd-Rng/Slow(46), CtlSpd-EndRdx/Rchg/Slow(48)
Level 47: Exploding Shuriken -- HO:Nucle(A), AirB'st-Dmg/Rchg(48), Det'tn-Dmg/Rchg(48), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(50)
Level 49: Stamina -- P'Shift-EndMod(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(50), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(50)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Critical Hit
Level 6: Ninja Run


It's meant to be soft capped to smash/lethal defense and it comes very close (at about 44.5% defense). I actually executed this respec at level 48 and I had put off Stamina til 49 in the build (figuring Quick Recovery would be enough) but found I actually was gasping for END until I hit 49; probably due to running Tough/Weave and having lots of attacks. May make it harder to exemp down. Seems fine at 50 though.


Wednesday

A friend was trying to organize a Cathedral of Pain trial on hero side, and asked everyone to bring shivans and nukes. I had a shivan shard and the chem and nuclear nukes already, so I went to Warburg (as Police Woman) to get the bio nuke for completeness. I saw a couple other people hunting for scientists and nukes as well, but resisted the impulse to attack them.

On the actual Cathedral of Pain, we had 3 teams gathering in a SG base and used a raid teleporter to start the trial. I've never actually tried this event before, and had not really researched it, so I was actually surprised to find ourselves in the shadow shard. Fortunately, I had a jet pack temp power ready. Our team was assigned to the southeast monument, and we moved there and killed some Rularuu hovering around a giant stone cube, then killed the obelisk down to about 30% life. There was some kind of status meter with 3 horizontal bars on it, that I believe was indicating the relative health of the 3 obelisks. We had to kill some respawns and eventually got the go-ahead to kill the obelisk; it was important to kill them all at almost the same time.

This got us into a high vaulted chamber full of more Rularuu mobs and a gigantic Aspect of Rularuu. We were told to spawn Shivans and half the team was instructed to set off their bio nukes to buff us, then we started clearing mobs. I think Aspect of Rularuu was only actually vulnerable to damage when all the mobs were dead. Once we cleared the various minions, we all pounced on Aspect of Rularuu himself. Being naturally snoopy, I used Surveillance on him; I remember he had 64K max HP and pretty high regen, but didn't get a good look at his resists or other stats. We all set off our chem nukes to try and debuff him, then pounded away at his hit points. We got him down to about 10K HP when minions started respawning. Things got pretty chaotic at that point and about half the raid got surprised and killed by the respawn, and I think a lot of people were still pounding away at Aspect of Rularuu, who was immune to damage and healing fast. The raid leader got the survivors to get back on clearing minions; by the time we cleared the last one, Aspect of Rularuu had regenerated to 32K HP. But once he was vulnerable again, we were able to finish him off, to win the CoP trial. Elapsed time was 16 minutes, and I got the Power Liberator and Pain Killer badges, 6 reward merits, and a temp power called True Furnace (basically a +10 END buff) for about a week.

I went on to solo some tip missions as Police Woman, choosing Vigilante because I want access to the Rogue Isles for badging purposes, but some of these were pretty conspicuously unheroic, making me feel dirty about doing them on a hero. Nevertheless, I completed 5 Vigilante missions.

I also solo'd Fire Maiden (32 SS/fire brute) through one of Crimson Revenant's arcs, defeating Mynx as an EB and getting 4 merits, and did 5 Rogue tip missions. The Rogue morality missions are mostly about being selfish and making money, so I didn't have nearly as many compunctions about doing them, especially on a villain.

Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corruptor) helped some heroes take down Deathsurge for 2 merits.

I started Parapsychic, a new mind/psy dominator in Praetoria, picking Resistance initially, and joining a 4 player team for missions that got her up to level 7. I used the Carnie Ring Mistress costume code that I previously got in a costume contest to make her look like a Carnie running around mind dominating stuff; this kinda worked thematically, what with Vanessa deVore and the Carnival of Light being part of the Resistance. Not real sure whether I will keep this character, though, dominators don't seem to work well with my play style.


Thursday

Playing Police Woman, I did 5 more alignment missions. I couldn't stomach the Vigilante choice on 2 of the tips, so I chickened out and ended up getting 3 Vigilante and 2 Hero fame for the day. That sort of wastes a day's progress, but it seemed like the right thing to do.

I joined a 7 player Praetoria team with Parapsychic (7 mind/psy dominator), got up to level 10 before we suffered 2 straight team wipes against the Syndicate (these guys seem nasty!), which caused me to volunteer to switch to Marcia Law (10 pistols/kin corruptor) for some extra healing. That seemed to help, we did better after that; got Marcia to level 12 before the team broke up.

I discovered where Fort Trident was, and started buying hero merits on all my toons. My reasoning is that you can buy a Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% rchg) recipe (auction house price around 150M infl) for 2 hero merits OR 200 reward merits. So 1 hero merit = 100 reward merits = 75M infl. So, trading 20M infl + 50 reward merits (equivalent in value to 57.5M infl) for 1 hero merit (equivalent in value to 75M infl) is a good deal. Although, thinking about it, now that you can buy LotG recipes through Fort Trident, I bet the price on them will fall. By my calculation, however, this trade will still be a good deal until such time that the LotG (DEF/+7.5% rchg) recipe falls under 80M infl on the broker. I feel pretty safe taking that bet; even if I'm wrong and the price plummets to that level, I figure the hero merits will still be useful for buying recipes for my own toons.


Friday

Water Lily (30 rad/storm corr) helped some heroes take down Scrapyard for the badge. Schadenfreude (50 AR/pain corr) helped some heroes with the Bone Collector badge mission. Starting on this day and throughout the weekend, I saw a LOT of heroes roaming around the Rogue Isles for badges.

Fire Maiden (32 SS/fire brute) did another 5 Rogue missions and then completed the morality mission that converted her to Rogue alignment. The morality mission felt really epic to me, leading a girl through the sewer system while battling ninjas, and great dialog from the various NPCs. Fire Maiden also did the story arc to unlock the Midnight Club, which got her to level 33.

I brought on TokyoRose (28 son/son corr) briefly, to join a Steel Canyon mayhem for the explore badge; we beat up Valkyrie as part of our getaway.

Spy Girl (31 MA/ninj stalker) did 5 Rogue alignment missions.

Fire Maiden (33 SS/fire brute) did an 8 player Cap SF in 1h 5m, doing a mix of stealthing and clearing; then did a Synapse TF in 2h 19m, beating Babbage along the way, which got her to level 34.

Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) did another 2 Vigilante missions, then traded in the 2 Hero merits I'd built up so far for a LotG (DEF/+7.5% rchg) and did the Vigilante morality mission, which was OK but didn't feel as cool as the Rogue morality mission. This converts my main character to Vigilante alignment and gave me the Above The Law badge. Sneaking into the Rogue Isles proper, I got the Grass is Meaner badge for even entering the Rogue Isles, then I went and collected all the explore badges in Mercy Island, Port Oakes and Cap au Diable, which got me the Adventurer (750 badges) badge.

Marcia Law (12 pistols/kin corr) briefly joined a 3 player team fighting Destroyers in the Underground Imperial City. We had one team wipe against them. The lowbie Praetoria monsters overall seem a bit nastier than the standard mobs.


Saturday

Police Woman completed collecting explore badges in Nerva, St Martial and Grandville, and all the history plaques in the Rogue Isles. This puts her badge total at 804. I kinda want more badges, I'm a bit hesitant to go all the way; converting to full Villain, robbing banks, and fighting the Freedom Phalanx, all seem pretty far over the line. I noticed there were some red-side day job badges that are new (or at least, not previously available to heroes), so I'm trying to leave myself logged off there. I also went to the Facemaker and made an "evil" costume for Police Woman to use while roaming around red side.

Star Amethyst (50 dark/ice defender) helped some villains with Jurassik for the badge.

Police Woman joined an Imperious TF, finishing in 30m 50s; I got a reward window at the end of the TF for some reason, with merits being the only option. Don't think I've seen that on previous ITFs, so not sure what that's all about.

Fire Maiden (34 SS/fire brute) joined a Sister Psyche TF, where I got called "crazy" for charging into groups of Freaks; later revised to merely "really aggressive". That's a good thing as far as I'm concerned; IMHO, melee toons should be aggressive, to keep the team moving forward. We were light on support (technically we had 3 support toons, but only one was really actively supporting) and had a lot of disconnects, and for awhile our team got de-leveled to 24 due to the star falling on a lower level toon. Had a team wipe on the mission with Pine and his files, when we were split up, had aggroed a lot, and had an ambush hit us at the same time. We also ran into a lot of the new Super Stunner mobs, who seem to do horrendous END drain. Nevertheless we finished the TF in 1h 54m, getting Fire Maiden to level 35.

I joined a mostly villain Master of the Statesman TF; I was asked to bring a kin, and ended up being the only hero on the team as Quick Katie (50 plant/kin controller). The rest of the team was 3 masterminds, 2 brutes, 1 fortunata and 1 stalker. I was kind of dubious about this team makeup (especially the masterminds, whose pets seemed to constantly draw random aggro), but seemed to mostly do OK. I was kept pretty busy keeping SB on everyone and ID on the masterminds. No serious issues until the last mission; we pulled the various patron AVs and managed to beat them, but against Lord Recluse himself, the lead brute got all his END drained by LR which detoggled him. I was trying to tell him to move to one of the towers so I could transference his END back up (I knew I could not hit LR himself with Transference or Transfusion), but I don't think he understood in time, and he ended up getting killed by Lord Recluse. Things went kind of haywire after that, and LR went hog wild, resulting in several more deaths before we got things back under control. We did end up finishing the STF (but not the Master Of part) in 1h 21m; I got a Centriole.

Primadonna (50 sonic/kin corruptor) did 5 Rogue alignment missions, and Schadenfreude (50 AR/pain corruptor) did 2 more Rogue alignment missions, before I called it a night.


Sunday

Schadenfreude did another 3 Rogue alignment missions, then I started to have the opposite of my earlier moral compunctions; the Rogue missions were not evil enough for Schadenfreude, who is basically a jackbooted fascist.

I switched to Spy Girl (31 MA/ninj stalker) and did 5 Rogue alignment missions and a Rogue morality mission (the same ninja related mission I did earlier) to convert her to Rogue faction. I also used her free respec to rearrange her powers and slots; she's still on ordinary SOs, but martial arts getting revamped in I18 meant I really wanted to swap some powers around. This is her build now:


Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.707
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Spy Girl I18 respec: Level 31 Natural Stalker
Primary Power Set: Martial Arts
Secondary Power Set: Ninjitsu
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Teleportation
Power Pool: Leaping

Villain Profile:
Level 1: Storm Kick -- Acc(A), EndRdx(3), Dmg(3), Dmg(5), Dmg(5), RechRdx(7)
Level 1: Hide -- DefBuff(A)
Level 2: Crippling Axe Kick -- Acc(A), EndRdx(7), Dmg(9), Dmg(9), Dmg(11), RechRdx(11)
Level 4: Ninja Reflexes -- DefBuff(A), DefBuff(13), DefBuff(13)
Level 6: Swift -- Run(A)
Level 8: Focus Chi -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(15), RechRdx(15)
Level 10: Danger Sense -- DefBuff(A), DefBuff(17), DefBuff(17)
Level 12: Recall Friend -- IntRdx(A)
Level 14: Combat Jumping -- Krma-ResKB(A)
Level 16: Kuji-In Rin -- RechRdx(A)
Level 18: Cobra Strike -- Acc(A), EndRdx(19), T'Death-Dmg/Rchg(19), Dmg(21), Dmg(21), RechRdx(23)
Level 20: Kuji-In Sha -- Heal(A), Heal(23), Heal(25), RechRdx(25), RechRdx(27)
Level 22: Hurdle -- Jump(A)
Level 24: Stamina -- EndMod(A), EndMod(29)
Level 26: Crane Kick -- Acc(A), EndRdx(27), Dmg(29), Dmg(31), Dmg(31), RechRdx(31)
Level 28: Caltrops -- RechRdx(A)
Level 30: Smoke Flash -- Acc(A)
Level 32: Eagles Claw -- Acc(A)
Level 35: [Empty]
Level 38: [Empty]
Level 41: [Empty]
Level 44: [Empty]
Level 47: [Empty]
Level 49: [Empty]
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Assassination
Level 6: Ninja Run



After doing this respec, I joined a 7-player team doing both parts of the new Positron TF. This immediately caused me to regret postponing Stamina to level 24; I originally thought Kuji-In Sha (the self-heal) at level 20 would be more important, but honestly, exemped down to 15/16, I needed endurance a lot more than I needed a self-heal. On both parts of the TF I spent a lot of time stealthing around and TPing people places (I picture Spy Girl as being an infiltration expert, so I purposely took Recall Friend at a low level to let her stealth/TP teams around), which I think helped. We had a kind of messy fight in the Dr Morben mission when we were fighting while split up, but we managed to beat the nasty ambush on the steps of Atlas Park very solidly, and defeated the evil doppelganger team with only one loss. Finished Posi 1 in 47m 25s. Posi 2 went even more smoothly, finishing in 42m 56s and getting Spy Girl to level 33.

Finished the night playing Marcia Law (14 pistols/kin corruptor) on a 7-player team. In a flash of insight, I suddenly realized Increase Density is really useful in Praetoria, where a lot of mobs do smashing and energy damage (especially kin melee mobs), so I started buffing our melee teammates with ID to help their resistances. This team went pretty well and got Marcia Law to level 17 before we called it a night.

8/24/2010

I logged on after dinner, apparently having narrowly missed some kind of LB channel drama and/or PvP-related drama. I got invited to join a new invitation-only channel, LBnoBS, which was created by a former LB mod. I was initially skeptical about this idea (it seemed identical in concept to Liberty's Channel, another invitation-only channel founded by a former LB mod intended for general use by Liberty, and I said so) but ended up agreeing to join. I kind of think it will suffer the same problems Liberty's Channel has experienced (namely, low population and consequently low usage), but I figure I'll give it a chance.

I solo'd Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) through a Villain alignment mission in Grandville that didn't sound too villainous, getting the Inquisitor badge. I'm still sort of tip-toeing around the idea of staying heroic versus getting more badges; I'm kind of leaning towards backing away and returning to Hero alignment. I just don't like the idea of my main character going full-out Villainous.

Spy Girl (33 MA/ninj stalker) joined a Katie TF, finishing in 24m 20s. Ninjitsu's lack of KB protection kinda sucked against the stormy AVs in the first mission; I even had 1 KB protection IO slotted, but it wasn't enough.

Schadenfreude (50 AR/pain corruptor) joined a group of villains and rogue heroes in Recluse's Victory killing the signature heroes for badges. We had 1 blue-side player working with 9 red-side players to manipulate the various pillboxes to respawn the signature heroes, and dragged any hero NPCs we didn't need to the security drones to get rid of them. At one point some of my teammates asked me to ghide because they were worried people on my gfriends list would see me in RV and come after us (I think this was somehow connected to whatever channel and PvP drama had occurred earlier), but I said, "There's 9 of us, we should totally just kill them if they come over," after which they kinda backed off. I'm admittedly pretty easygoing about killing/getting killed in PvP zones; I suppose most other people don't like getting PvP'd while they are badging, though. In any case, after a lot of pillbox manipulation, we got all the various signature heroes; I got the Oppressor, Uppercut and Blackguard badges.

Mystery Girl (50 emp/pistols defender) joined a 3-player team doing Vigilante alignment missions. I'm sure it sounds strange for an empath to go Vigilante, but I figure that all my blue-side toons that do "lethal" damage should go Vigilante just on general principle; and doing the tip missions with a team helps my empath a lot. We did 5 Vigilante missions (we were kinda low DPS so I got to go crazy with Hail of Bullets and other gun fu attacks), then the team wanted to do the Vigilante morality mission; I had filled up Mystery Girl's fame at this point, but didn't have enough faction to do the morality mission yet, so I switched to Arrow Girl (39 archery/nrg blaster) to help with the "kill Ghost Widow" mission. We did okay until we left the sewers into the Faultline area, at which point we had our kheldian go linkdead while me and the defender got smeared by a Longbow warden with mind control powers. I hospitalled and ran back; the defender was still lying dead there and asked me to try and clear the mobs so he could awaken. Right, solo the mobs that just gave us a team wipe. Fortunately I was ready for the mezzes this time (chomping on some purples and break frees) so I was actually able to do it. This let us complete the mission, after which we called it a night.

Drama schmama. You didn't miss much. It was me trying to have a little fun and it was taken the wrong way.

RV is PvP first, badge second. With that in mind, though, I've found if you ask anyone "griefing" you in PvP to stop and let you badge they will usually leave you alone. Thats on Liberty atleast, and not counting a few bad apples.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nights_Dawn Hazy is right

8/26/2010

On Tuesday night, Police Woman (50 vigilante AR/dev blaster) joined a red side team that killed Deathsurge. This gave me 2 reward merits but no badge; according to the devs, some red-side badges only award if you go all-the-way to Villain, which I am reluctant to do.

Fire Maiden (35 rogue SS/fire brute) joined a blue-side Dam Heroes (Positron 2) TF, which turned out to be with the fire/rad superteam; I was teamed with 7 fire/rad controllers, though one had to quit midway through. Stacked AMs made us pretty godlike and we smashed through the TF in 59m 59s, getting Fire Maiden to 36.

Marcia Law (17 loyalist pistols/kin corruptor) joined a 5 player team doing mostly horrifically evil Resistance missions set in the Underground. The team was mid-team-wipe against TEST mobs when I arrived, then we later had 2 more wipes against waves of Clockwork that were assaulting some sort of prepared defensive position that we were supposed to be guarding. This all got Marcia to level 19.

Schadenfreude (50 villainous AR/pain corruptor) solo'd through 3 Rogue alignment missions, then I started the morality mission to convert to Rogue. During this morality mission I had a change of heart and decided not to go through with it. This was because the morality mission gave me lines like, "You want me to kill a bunch of innocent civilians just to consolidate your power? NO WAY!" (Then I was supposed to kill the people who gave me the mission.) And, well, I don't picture Schadenfreude having a problem with killing innocent people; in fact, she'd probably like it. So I ended up bailing on the morality mission because it wasn't evil enough. I realize this is probably dumb since I had to do 10 alignment missions to get to that point (because I thought it would be neat to be able to use pain domination on blue side), but it seemed more important to stay true to the character. So I guess Schadenfreude will end up staying Villain alignment, and I'm going to have to put more thought into which alts I decide to "go rogue" with, so I don't keep having this problem.

Instead I decided to start Millie Volt (50 villainous elec/elec brute) on Rogue alignment missions. Millie's background story is that she became a villain by default due to demonic possession, but isn't really inherently evil other than that, so I felt it would be easier to justify her going Rogue. Millie did 5 Rogue alignment missions, got an Absolute Amazement (chance of to hit debuff) purple recipe drop, and spent 1 Villain merit to buy a Kinetic Combat (DMG/END) recipe. Most people I know don't seem to have a high opinion of spending 50 reward merits and 20M infl to buy Hero/Villain merits, but I'm still kind of thinking it's a good way to get selected recipes that are otherwise overpriced (stuff like Luck of the Gambler and Kinetic Combat).


Wednesday night, Police Woman again joined a red side team to kill a monster, this time the Ghost of Scrapyard. This actually did award me the Hammer Down badge.

San Min (50 heroic MA/will scrapper) solo'd the Statesman's Pal mission, defeating a Tyrant EB. This mission was the last mission of Maria Jenkins' old story arc, that I still had in my queue; it awarded 36 merits on completion. Interestingly, despite being the old story arc, I encountered 2 "Seekers" that looked like new Going Rogue mobs.

Thunder Girl (50 heroic elec/SR scrapper) solo'd two Hero alignment missions.

I saw someone recruiting for Manticore TF, so I switched to Spy Girl (33 rogue MA/ninj stalker) to join that. I used Hide and Recall Friend to help stealth the team through several of the missions. Interestingly, one of the final missions was to Talk to Ms Liberty in Fort Trident, clearly different than before. The TF leader was a former villain that was ineligible to enter Fort Trident; however, he found he could still talk to the Ms. Liberty in Atlas Park and have it count. Finished the TF in 59m 49s.

Primadonna (50 villainous sonic/kin corruptor) joined a 7-player ITF, finishing in 25m 23s. I got a set of 3 tips from the TF, and solo'd 4 Rogue alignment missions as a result (getting my fourth tip from one of the other missions). Primadonna is kinda neutral selfish, so I figure I can justify her Going Rogue.

Getting tips from doing speed ITFs seemed to work so well, I ended up playing Mayday (50 villainous fortunata) on another ITF, this time an 8-player team that finished in 23m 54s. Mayday's back story actually has her being a protege of one of the fortunata that joined Rogue Arachnos, so it makes perfect sense for her to Go Rogue. I used the tips from that to solo 3 Rogue alignment missions, before calling it a night.