PW's war journal

9/1/2010


Last Thursday

Millie Volt (50 villain elec/elec brute) did 5 rogue alignment missions, then the rogue morality mission that switched her to rogue alignment; two other players ended up joining me for the morality mission. After that, the team wanted to do more rogue alignment missions, and I switched around on alts a bit; did one rogue mission with Primadonna (50 villain sonic/kin corruptor), one rogue mission with Police Woman (50 vigilante AR/dev blaster; I wanted to see if I could get the badge for doing a rogue alignment mission on a vigilante. You can't. I did get Tested the Water though), and two rogue missions with Mayday (50 villain fortunata). A bit later I solo'd Primadonna's morality mission, converting her to rogue alignment as well.

Millie Volt (50 rogue elec/elec brute) joined a Statesman TF; we had several villains on this TF looking for badges, with 3 brutes (including me). Both the other brutes automatically Ouroboros'd out of the first mission to try to get to Peregrine Island, but this ended up stranding them since they ended up in the red-side Ouroboros instance. I had purposely exited the mission normally and flew to the next mission to avoid this. I think they managed to get back to the TF using the Mission Transporter power.

The TF went fine up til the last mission, where we realized we had no source of ID or CM to protect the lead brute from Ghost Widow's holds (we did have a kin but he didn't have ID). We resorted to trying to pull the AVs one or two at a time; our first pull basically failed (getting all 4 patrons) and we had to run, but on the second try we got them.

Against Lord Recluse I asked if I could try tanking him at first, and the team let me. My theory was that Millie has hover and 90% energy resist and END drain resist, so should be invincible when flying against Lord Recluse, since his only range attack is energy/END drain. I found that he could not hurt me, but without Taunt I could not keep Lord Recluse aggro on me despite spamming my own range attacks (Lightning Bolt and Ball Lightning), and LR ended up rushing the people attacking the tower. The invuln brute took over tanking and we finished the STF in 1h 12m. I got a Microfilament SHO.

After that I played Snow Fox, a newbie loyalist ice/cold controller, on a 3 player team in Praetoria. Got a compliment on her costume (sort of a Emma Frost/Snow Queen all-in-white costume), though another person also commented that she and another teammate (dressed as a 007esque superspy in formal tuxedo) looked more like a wedding couple than superheroes. Anyway, got to level 8 before the team broke up, then I finished soloing Praetor White's newbie arc for 2 reward merits.


Friday

I spent some time rearranging all my toons on the character select screen. I have all 36 slots on Liberty unlocked, and previously I had the "most used" toons on the first page, then least used toons on the third page; now, with Going Rogue, I sorted them by alignment, with the pure Heroic toons on the first page, pure Villain toons on the last page, and the Vigilante/Praetorian/Rogue toons somewhere in between.

Mayday (50 villain fortunata) burned 2 Villain merits to buy a Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5 rchg) recipe, then I used up my free respec. The main goal of my respec was to work in the fortunata nuke, which I didn't have before because I thought it would zero my END (annoying on a toggle-heavy character like VEATs are) but I learned it actually does not have a crash at all, which makes it too good not to have. This is the build I ended up respecing to:


Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.803
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Mayday I18 respec: Level 50 Natural Arachnos Widow
Primary Power Set: Fortunata Training
Secondary Power Set: Fortunata Teamwork
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Medicine
Power Pool: Leaping

Villain Profile:
Level 1: Telekinetic Blast -- Dev'n-Acc/Dmg(A), Mael'Fry-Dmg/Rchg(3), Mael'Fry-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(3), Dev'n-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(5), Dev'n-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(5), Dev'n-Hold%(7)
Level 1: Combat Training: Defensive -- LkGmblr-Def(A), LkGmblr-Rchg+(7), LkGmblr-Def/Rchg(50)
Level 2: Subdue -- Dev'n-Acc/Dmg(A), Mael'Fry-Dmg/Rchg(9), Mael'Fry-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(11), Dev'n-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(11), Dev'n-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(13), Dev'n-Hold%(13)
Level 4: Tactical Training: Maneuvers -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(9), LkGmblr-Rchg+(15)
Level 6: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 8: Psychic Scream -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(15), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(17), Posi-Dmg/Rng(17), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(19), RechRdx-I(19)
Level 10: Indomitable Will -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A)
Level 12: Aid Other -- Numna-Heal/EndRdx(A), Numna-EndRdx/Rchg(46), Numna-Heal/Rchg(46), Numna-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(48), Numna-Heal(48), Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(48)
Level 14: Dominate -- Dev'n-Acc/Dmg(A), Mael'Fry-Dmg/Rchg(21), Mael'Fry-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(23), Dev'n-Dmg/Rchg(23), Dev'n-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(25), Dev'n-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(25)
Level 16: Aid Self -- Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx(A), IntRdx-I(29), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(29), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(45), Dct'dW-Heal(45), Dct'dW-Rchg(46)
Level 18: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A), Jump-I(21)
Level 20: Stamina -- P'Shift-EndMod(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(27), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(27)
Level 22: Mask Presence -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(50), LkGmblr-Rchg+(50)
Level 24: Mind Link -- RedFtn-Def/EndRdx(A), RedFtn-Def/Rchg(31), RedFtn-EndRdx/Rchg(31), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(43), RedFtn-Def(43), HO:Membr(43)
Level 26: Psionic Tornado -- Ragnrk-Dmg(A), Ragnrk-Dmg/Rchg(31), Ragnrk-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(33), Ragnrk-Acc/Rchg(33), Ragnrk-Dmg/EndRdx(33), Posi-Dam%(34)
Level 28: Tactical Training: Assault -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 30: Combat Jumping -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 32: Psychic Wail -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(34), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(34), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(36), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(36), Oblit-%Dam(36)
Level 35: Tactical Training: Leadership -- GSFC-ToHit(A), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg(37), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg/EndRdx(37), GSFC-Rchg/EndRdx(37), GSFC-ToHit/EndRdx(40), GSFC-Build%(42)
Level 38: Aura of Confusion -- CoPers-Conf(A), CoPers-Conf/Rchg(39), CoPers-Acc/Conf/Rchg(39), CoPers-Acc/Rchg(39), CoPers-Conf/EndRdx(40), CoPers-Conf%(40)
Level 41: Foresight -- LkGmblr-Def/Rchg(A), LkGmblr-Def(42), LkGmblr-Rchg+(42)
Level 44: Aim -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(45)
Level 47: Tactical Training: Vengeance -- DefBuff-I(A)
Level 49: Resuscitate -- RechRdx-I(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Conditioning
Level 1: Ninja Run
------------


I had also been considering trying to respec into the hero epic pools, which are now available to villains, but I discovered that VEATs actually don't get access to those. None of the villain patron pools really excited me enough to take them, so I just packed my high level power slots with utility powers.

Thunder Girl (50 hero elec/SR scrapper) ran 5 Heroic alignment missions, then spent 2 Hero merits on a Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% rchg) recipe.

Spy Girl (34 rogue MA/ninj stalker) joined a Sister Psyche TF. I quickly learned to target Super Stunners and try to take them out fast, due to their ludicrous END drain; I also stopped at AE buildings frequently to load up on blue inspirations. At one point our TF ground to a halt due to the next "Defeat all Freaks and Soldiers" missions spawning in Precinct 5 (the Praetorian tutorial). I tried using Mission Teleporter to get there, but that didn't work; the team tried logging off/logging on, and that didn't work. Several of us petitioned for a GM and we waited around for about half an hour, before the team leader gave up and quit the TF. The new team leader figured out a way to get us past this though; apparently you can still go to the TF contact and abandon the mission, then take it again, which respawned the mission door back in Paragon City. This let us continue, and we finished Sister Psyche TF in 2h 8m (including the wait), getting Spy Girl to level 35. Much later, I got an email from CoH support complaining that I wasn't online so they couldn't help me. My petition was timestamped 4:02pm; the email from support was timestamped 7:54pm. I'm glad we didn't wait.

Mystery Girl (50 hero emp/pistols defender) joined a Faathim TF; we had a very strong team and Lanaru was a total pushover for us. Finished Faathim in 1h 54m (which is quite fast for a shard TF) and I got an Armageddon (DMG) recipe drop.

Police Woman (50 vigilante AR/dev blaster) joined a Recluse SF. Strangely, although I had serious issues doing some of the Vigilante missions and don't want to convert to full villain, I had no moral issues with doing the Recluse SF. The RSF storyline isn't all that deep and just doesn't seem very evil to me; it's more like challenging the Freedom Phalanx to an arena match in PVP or something. Our team did fine until the last mission, where the team leader asked our fortunata to suicide on the Freedom Phalanx, so that our rad could vengeance/fallout. Aggroing the Freedom Phalanx also lets them cast buffs, though, so this did not end up working out well; our first attack resulted in a team wipe, though we did take out Numina. On our second try, I decided I really wanted to win, so I popped a Shivan, a Vanguard HVAS, Eye of the Magus, then Wedding Band after that ran out. The extra +RES from Eye/Wedding Band helped me keep me (and my pets) alive through the fight and we wiped out all the heroes, finishing the RSF in 36m 20s. I got a Nucleolus SHO, and the Annihilator, Former Servant of Recluse and Former Archvillain badges.

After that, I played Star Amethyst (50 hero dark/ice defender) on a Master of the Statesman TF. The team leader had asked me to play someone who could stealth/TP even without temp powers. Our team mix was:

fire/fire brute
fortunata
fire/rad corruptor
ston/nrg tanker
dark/ice defender (me)
emp/psy defender
earth/kin controller
plant/kin controller

I did have a close call stealthing through the villain respec mission when a red crystal broke my stealth, but managed to survive by chomping some greens. The final mission actually went very smoothly; we killed towers in the order yellow, red, green for some reason, but it worked fine. Completed the STF with no deaths in 1h 6m and got a Membrane SHO, a Gravitational Anchor (IMMOB/END) recipe, and the Master of the Statesman TF badge.

Blond Justice (50 hero broadsword/shield scrapper) did a speedy ITF in 25m 43s, then using the tips that dropped from that I completed 4 Vigilante and 1 Hero alignment mission.

Finished the night doing some badging on Police Woman (50 vigilante AR/dev blaster), getting the Fearsome badge (I think from just staying Vigilante long enough), then running through mayhem missions that I had been saving on alts to get the explore badges in the Atlas, Skyway, Talos and Independence Port mayhem missions. I didn't actually rob the bank, figuring that would be unheroic. I also trapped some ghosts in Port Oakes for the Pirate badge.


Saturday

Millie Volt (50 rogue elec/elec brute) joined a Master of Kahn TF with a team of

fire/rad controller
fortunata
fire/rad corruptor
shield/dark tanker
elec/elec brute (me)
bs/shield scrapper

I found my high energy resist kept me from being seriously hurt by Reichsman's lightning bolt/stun attacks; unfortunately, our corruptor got killed by one of these (I think the first bolt stunned him, then a few seconds later a second bolt finished him off) so we didn't get the Master Of badge. Still finished in 35m 2s.

I found that Millie had sold a Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5 rchg) IO for 175M inf; I had bought this with 2 Villain merits, which had been converted from 100 reward merits and 40M inf, so effectively I traded 100 reward merits for 135M inf, which seemed really good. LotG prices have been falling since I18 came out, though, most likely because they can be acquired through Hero/Villain merits, so making them from Hero/Villain merits and re-selling them might not be long-term profitable.

Mayday (50 villain fortunata) did a rogue morality mission, converting to Rogue alignment. There was some PVP drama on LB channel, some conflict between badgers and PVPers, which led me to poke my head into Recluse's Victory. The badgers had all fled by the time I arrived, but I got to fight some of the PVPers. The villain side didn't seem too organized, but I ran around solo for a bit, scoring a few kills and getting killed a few times, which was fun. My best moment was managing to nail 2 blasters (admittedly, with some help from mobs), though they also killed me at almost the exact same time.

A friend asked me to help on an ITF, so I left RV and joined his 6-player ITF with Primadonna (50 rogue sonic/kin corruptor). We had no serious problems and finished in 35m 54s. I picked up 3 tips on the TF, which I used to solo 3 rogue alignment missions (planning to eventually reinforce rogue alignment).

After that I joined a Master of Kahn TF. The team leader asked me to bring a tanker or tough brute, so I played Strong Woman (50 hero inv/SS tanker). We had a small team, only 5 players:

inv/SS tanker (me)
fire/kin controller
fire/rad controller
2 fortunata

A teammate complimented me on Strong Woman's background story (which is really more of a meta-anti-background story), which was nice. Despite being short-handed we did really well, with no serious issues. In the final fight I tried to hold Reichsman very still at the top of the stairs leading up to his stage area, on the far left side; the rest of the team huddled at the bottom of the stairs on the far right, staying out of range of Reichsman's AOEs. We finished in 37m 30s and got the Master of Kahn TF badge.

Kyrie Eleison (50 hero fire/regen scrapper) used up 2 hero merits for another Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% rchg), then solo'd 4 Vigilante alignment missions (planning to switch to Vigilante).

Arrow Girl (39 hero archery/nrg blaster) joined a 3-player team that did 5 Vigilante missions, which got Arrow Girl to level 40. We had some problems with the Assist Freymuth mission, where Freymuth ended up getting killed by enemies. This didn't fail the mission, but instead left it in this weird state where it could neither be completed nor failed. We ended up clearing the whole map, hoping that would finish the mission, but it still wouldn't. Ended up exiting the mission and auto-completing it, which gave me a Vigilante point but no one else on the team got credit (boooo).


Sunday

Police Woman (50 vigilante AR/dev blaster) hit the inf cap again, due to marketeering. I had purposely lowered my total inf on Police Woman to exactly 1 billion back on 8/15 when I was trying to test how much inf you make from ITFs. Hitting the 2B cap on 8/29 means that it took 14 days to make 1 billion inf -- much higher than normal income for me; more than double what I normally make from marketing. I attribute this to Going Rogue coming out, along with the market merge and the reset of all price histories; this all made the markets go crazy, and I've made some good guesses on what to buy and sell, which let me massively benefit from the turmoil. But lest you think I'm some sort of marketing genius, I also screwed up by entering too many zeroes while bidding on a rare salvage, accidentally buying it for 13M inf instead of 1.3M inf. Oops. I'm just glad I didn't try to buy a stack of 10.

After exploiting the markets for a bit, I went to Port Oakes to capture ghosts. At level 50 I kill them too fast even with just Brawl, so I used Ouroboros to exemp down to 19, where I could still beat them up easily but don't instant-kill them. Catching 100 ghosts gave me the Spectral badge. After that I started an Ouro flashback of Faultline in the Sands of Time, which exemps me down to 24; I also set "enemies buffed" for sake of badging. The first couple missions were easy, just clicking glowies.

Some friends logged in and I switched to playing Marcia Law (19 loyalist pistols/kin corruptor) on a 5-player team fighting Arachnos in Praetoria. We got to beat up Dr Aeon and Arbiter Sands, getting Marcia to level 20. Then we all migrated to Paragon City. The storyline for loyalists at this point struck me as particularly stupid; I'm sent to try and stop Tyrant from invading Paragon City? But what if I want to help Tyrant invade? I am a loyalist, after all!

Anyway, after going through the portal to Primal Earth, I got dumped smack dab in the middle of a spawn of Warriors in Talos Island, who immediately attacked me. Just another example of lawless behavior that wouldn't be tolerated in Praetoria. Our team did a few alignment missions in Talos Island; two wimpy hero alignment missions belonging to one of my ex-Resistance teammates, though we also got to do one of Marcia's vigilante missions, where we got to summarily execute some criminal. For some reason the vigilante missions work a lot better for Marcia Law than my real hero characters.

After that team broke up, I switched to Mystery Girl (50 hero emp/pistols defender) and joined a 5-player team that did 2 Vigilante missions and one Vigilante morality mission; got complimented on healing against Arachnos ambushes, which was nice.


Monday

Police Woman (50 vigilante AR/dev blaster) continued soloing her Faultline in the Sands of Time Ouro flashback; I started regretting the "enemies buffed" setting when I started running into EBs, but nevertheless I managed to beat Nocturne, Captain Castillo and Arbiter Sands, completing the arc in 30h 78m (of course, counting all the time I was logged off) and getting 15 merits, the Balancer badge (for 25 flashbacks) and the Bold badge (for enemies buffed level 24).

After that Police Woman joined an LGTF that cleared most of missions 1 and 2, failed mission 3, beat Hamidon then stealthed to the end of the final mission. This took 56m 21s and earned me about 4.9M inf from kills.

Mayday (50 rogue fortunata) joined a Master of Statesman TF with a team of

kin controller
rad controller
emp defender
cold controller
fortunata (me)
inv tanker
stone brute
archery blaster

With cold shields, fortitude and VEAT buffs we were DEF capped for much of the STF. We were doing pretty well until the final mission, where we pulled the patron AVs and 3 of them came, and one of them (I think Ghost Widow?) killed our blaster. Nevertheless we finished in 1h 29m and I got a Nucleolus.

I started a newbie katana/fire scrapper in Praetoria, Virtual Girl (reusing a name I had before), a techy looking character in fluorescent green. Got a costume compliment, and joined a 7 player team fighting ghouls. It seemed like there were endless waves of ghoul ambushes, which I got good at kiting around until Healing Flames could kick off. This got me to level 6.


Tuesday

Police Woman got the Surging badge from logging in; this is really from killing Deathsurge, but a patch today allowed it to be awarded to heroes. I solo'd 2 Hero tip missions (not really sure where I'm going with this, as I can't switch back to hero until I get enough badges), then joined an 8-player Sharkhead SF of mostly scrappers (only 1 poison MM for support). We had a few deaths but managed to finish it in 46m 24s, getting the Leviathan badge.

The same team (mostly) did Ice Mistral SF in 1h 4m, getting the Crystal Keeper badge, giving me a total of 825 badges so far. I also got a comment on Police Woman's "villainous" costume, which looks quite a lot like a Cage Consortium guard. My regular blue uniform just didn't seem right to use in the Rogue Isles.

9/8/2010

Last Wednesday

Primadonna (50 rogue sonic/kin corr) ran an ITF on a 7-player team in 22m 4s, then solo'd 3 rogue alignment missions. Got a Gaussian's Synchronized Fire Control (chance for build up) and a Respec recipe as drops.

Marcia Law (20 hero pistols/kin corr) joined an 8 player team that did 1 vigilante alignment mission, then Sister Psyche TF, clearing some missions and stealthing others, in 2h 5m. This got Marcia to level 23.


Thursday

Police Woman (50 vigilante AR/dev blaster) hit the inf cap again at Wentworth's (so I made 200M inf in 2 days) and mailed myself another 200M inf dividend. I also did some badging, doing a Peregrine Island mayhem for Gate Closer, hitting plaques for Swashbuckler and Arachnos Rising, and killing gremlins and Goldbrickers for Electrician and Fort Knox. I found that despite what the progress bar actually says, all Goldbrickers count for the badge, not just bosses. While hunting in Cap I also stopped to help a team kill Deathsurge.

Marcia Law (23 hero pistols/kin corr) joined a Positron 1 TF, a team of mostly villains with 2 kins. We had a team wipe in the last mission on the steps of City Hall, against the massive CoT ambush, but otherwise did fine, finishing in 54m 46s and getting Marcia to level 24.

Switched to Fire Maiden (36 rogue SS/fire brute) for Positron 2 TF; I had somehow forgotten that I already did Positron 2 on Fire Maiden last week (Going Rogue's side-switching feature has messed up my recordkeeping of which toons have done which TFs/SFs) but we did it anyway. We had some trouble with one brute on the team who liked to run off on his own and solo, and on the last mission we beat Dr Vahzilok but couldn't get the mission to complete, even clearing all the nearby spawns. We were close to giving up but finally caught a stray runner, completing the TF in 1h 17m. This also got Fire Maiden to level 37. I went on to solo 4 hero alignment missions from various tips I picked up; briefly joined a 6 player pickup team to do my 5th hero mission of the day, which was to rescue Sister Jocasta from KoA, but she got killed (I think she died of caltrops, ironically) and then the mission became uncompleteable. The team gave up and wanted to go farm at that point, so I excused myself and solo'd a 5th hero mission on my own. A little later I joined the fire/rad superteam for part of the new Tina McIntyre story arc; we got to beat up a new version of Anti-Matter. I also joined an 8-player Citadel TF that was on +3 difficulty; the team was actually strong enough to handle this, and cleared most of the TF handily. I disconnected during the last mission, but the team was nice enough to wait for me to get back before finishing. Completed the TF in 1h 50m and got Fire Maiden to level 39.

Thunder Girl (50 hero elec/SR scrapper) solo'd 3 hero missions and the hero morality mission, confirming her hero alignment and gaining 50 merits.

San Min (50 hero MA/will scrapper) solo'd 2 hero missions.

Spacegirl (50 hero mind/rad controller) joined a 5-player team doing hero alignment missions; got a costume compliment and did 5 hero tips, then I switched to Rain Dancer (50 hero storm/archery defender) who did another 5 hero tips. I guess I'm really into tip missions right now!


Friday

Police Woman (50 vigilante AR/dev blaster) hit the inf cap again due to marketeering (another 200M in 2 days), mailed myself another 200M inf. I also had been vigilante long enough to get the Fear Incarnate power; I tested it out some fearing Arachnoids while getting a chem nuke in Warburg. It only affects minions, but it still seems kind of fun. Some other heroes were getting Warburg nukes for one of the raids scheduled that night, but were having trouble with villains attacking them, so I joined them and chased stalkers for awhile. I think I killed one (he was slippery, had to run him down in the underground tunnels) and got killed once (triple teamed on the hero-side beach).

Mayday (50 rogue fortunata) joined a speed Lady Grey TF which tried a Hamidon strategy of clearing the yellows and blues, then having 3 fortunata attack green mitos while the rest of the team defeated pylons. Not sure if that actually sped things up or not; we finished in 31m 58s.

Blond Justice (50 hero sword/shield scrapper) did an ITF in 25m 56s and got an Unbreakable Constraint (HOLD/RCHG/ACC) recipe drop. During the final fight LB was exploding with drama, fallout and recriminations from the two raids that occurred Friday night. I had to get heavy-handed with warning and silencing people, which was kind of a pain while fighting Romulus and hordes of Romans through ITF lag.

Star Amethyst (50 hero dark/ice defender) did a Statesman TF. We were fine til the last mission, where we rushed the patron AVs and kinda got off to a bad start with lots of people dying and AVs scattering all over. After recovering from this, we did beat up the patron AVs, but it took awhile; it felt like our team had unusually low DPS. We also had a bad start against Lord Recluse, I think we attacked the red tower before the tanker attacked Lord Recluse, which worked out poorly for us. The tank ended up dying and Lord Recluse went berserk against the squishies; after a few minutes and a few runs back from the hospital, we got the situation back under control and completed the TF in 59m 28s. I got an Endoplasm, and used the tips from STF to solo 3 hero alignment missions.

San Min (50 hero MA/will scrapper) did a Dr Kahn TF; we had a very strong team and knocked it out in 30m 52s.

Thunder Girl (50 hero elec/SR scrapper) did an ITF in 30m 41s.


Saturday

I played Idealist (50 hero fire/thermal controller) on an 8 player team doing hero tip missions in Independence Port; while doing this, we spotted Lusca and took him down, with help from another team or two.

Shield Maiden (50 villain mace/shield brute) did an ITF in 24m 17s, then used the tips from that to do 5 rogue alignment missions.

Jumped over to Triumph server to play Tera Watt (50 hero FF/elec defender) on a 5-player team doing AE story missions. We played through Project Z, which seemed to be a somewhat generic zombie/5th Column plot; I gave it 3 stars. Also played Hack!, which had an interesting set up, but was rather incomplete as it was really the lead-in to a live event that occurred earlier in the summer. Still a pretty neat idea, so I gave it 4 stars. Finally we did Manimals of Dr Morrow, which had an evil scientist creating human/animal hybrids; the plot was pretty basic and it seemed like there were an excessive number of masterminds. I ended up giving that 3 stars.

Spacegirl (50 hero mind/rad controller back on Liberty) helped a 4 player team with the hero morality mission.

Marcia Law (24 hero pistols/kin corruptor) joined a 6 player team for vigilante missions; we did 3 but I only got credit for 2 due to an inconvenient disconnect. Did get a compliment on her background story (which I had just written up earlier this weekend) and a couple on her costume (though I think this was mostly because the Praetorian Police costume pieces are shiny and new).

Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) did a 6-player ITF in 25m 46s, then solo'd 1 rogue alignment mission.

Spy Girl (35 rogue MA/ninj stalker) joined a 5-player spy-themed team (well, 3 of us were spy-themed anyway) doing Striga missions. I had gotten the Duplicity temp power for being a rogue for long enough, and this is actually a lot of fun; the confuse effect feels just right for a sneaky Spy Girl type. This ended up growing into an 8-player Moonfire TF; we had no healer whatsoever (well...except triage beacon), just defense from traps' FFG and a VEAT, and some trick arrows for debuffs. Nevertheless we did just fine and completed the TF in 1h 5m, getting Spy Girl to 36.


Sunday

Star Amethyst (50 hero dark/ice defender) joined a 4-player team that did 6 hero alignment missions (I know only 5 count, but I needed to get a morality tip drop), then her hero morality mission. Confirming her hero status earned me 50 reward merits.

I switched to Spacegirl (50 hero mind/rad controller) and did one more hero mission before the team broke up.

Schadenfreude (50 villain AR/pain corruptor) joined a 7-player team which did 3 villain tip missions.

Millie Volt (50 rogue elec/elec brute) joined an 8-player Synapse TF. I probably could've brought someone who got exp for this, but I was interested in seeing how elec armor does against clockwork. We finished the TF in 1h 55m (including beating up Babbage), and Millie's high energy resist and END drain resist made it feel really easy; none of the clockwork could really hurt her at all.

A friend was planning a Cathedral of Pain trial, and asked me to play my dark defender, so I brought Star Amethyst into Warburg and got the 3 nukes; on the last nuke, I got killed by a stalker waiting by the missile launch computer, but he let me kill him back to get the launch code back. I hadn't played dark miasma much in PVP before, and I tried dropping Tar Patch and Ice Storm on places I expected to stand still, in order to detect stalkers; turns out neither of these did any good, since Tar Patch doesn't break hide and Ice Storm needs to hit.

At the CoP trial, I got nominated to be a team leader, which meant I had to temporarily quit my SG and join the Debt Junkies SG (which was hosting the raid). This was kind of a bummer as I had 700,000 prestige; oh well.

My team consisted of 3 defenders (dark, emp, kin), 1 controller (ill/rad), 2 scrappers, 1 blaster and a fire tanker. We were assigned to the east obelisk, and upon entering the zone, we flew over there. When the raid leader called for it, we killed all the mobs around the cube, then killed our obelisk down to about 15% life. When mobs respawned, we were supposed to kill all but one, that we were supposed to leave alive; we were really good at the killing part, not so good at the leaving-alive part. Took about 5 waves of mobs before we allowed any of them to live; I tried marking the one to keep alive with Freezing Ray, which for Star Amethyst encases the mob in a purple crystal.

One of the other teams looked like they were having trouble not destroying their obelisk (i.e., they kept killing the obelisk when they should leave it at low life, but alive). We eventually got all this straightened out and were able to coordinate killing all the obelisks, unlocking the second half of the trial.

The second half went nearly flawlessly; we all spawned Shivans and half of each team was called to set off Bio nukes to buff everyone and everything, then we tore apart the Rularuu mobs and started pounding on Aspect of Rularuu (at which point half the team was told to use the Chem and Nuclear warheads). We had warned everyone to expect the minions to respawn once Aspect of Rularuu got to low life, so we were well-prepared when that actually happened, and rapidly cleared the respawns. Turning back to the big bad guy, the second half of each team set off their various nukes and we smashed the Aspect of Rularuu flat. Total time for the trial was 15 minutes -- at least, according to the trial timer. We easily spent an hour ahead of time organizing teams and cat-herding everyone together, and probably more than that gathering nukes and shivans.

After the CoP trial I went back to doing villain tip missions, initially playing April Fool (50 villain thug/TA MM). I started soloing, but various people kept wanting to join me, so I was up to 3 players by the time April finished her 5 villain missions, then I switched to Schadenfreude and did another 2 villain missions for her. My third team member said something like "I hear you think red side isn't dead" and so I ended up recruiting more, getting our team up to 5 villains and doing another 5 villain missions with Indigo Ifrit (50 villain fire/rad corr), then switching again to do 5 villain missions with Lady Arachne (50 villain arachnos soldier). This all led to my team thinking I was totally addicted to tip missions. Yeah, maybe so.

After the villain team broke up I solo'd another 5 hero tip missions with Thunder Girl (50 hero elec/SR scrapper).


Monday

Police Woman hit the influence cap again (this time 200M in 3 days) and I emailed myself another 200M inf.

Fire Maiden (39 rogue SS/fire brute) joined a 7-player Ice Mistral SF which we completed in 46m. I found I really like Fiery Embrace and Burn (both were buffed in I18), they seem to do a LOT of damage.

Police Woman (50 vigilante AR/dev blaster) did a 7-player Cap SF in 35m 53s, then a 5-player Silver Mantis SF, which was 4 scrappers and me as blaster. One of these scrappers did not actually enter even one of the missions; we knew him, so thought this was weird, but eventually decided to kick him from the team before the last mission, since he really hadn't done a single thing. The rest of us were able to clear the Sky Raiders base's defenses (I recently found out from another friend that you only have to kill the turrets in order to spawn Duray) and dropped Duray even without any support toons. Finished the SF in 49m 33s. This got Police Woman the Binder of Beasts and Pirate Hunter badges (836 badges total now).

Police Woman ended up soloing 5 villain tip missions after that. I'm totally schizophrenic about which alignment to go for; I kinda want Police Woman to be a hero, but the temptation of badges for going all the way to red side is very strong.

Went on to play Fire Maiden on a clear-most ITF on +1 difficulty. We had 1 person mostly AFK for most of the TF; the team leader talked about kicking him but never quite did, instead vowing not to team with that player again (who has a history of AFKing through TFs). Nevertheless, we finished in 1h 7m and Fire Maiden got to level 40.

Fire Maiden also did a 7-player Rule of Three (Positron 1) TF, with a very dom-heavy team, which made the fight against our evil opposites quite crazy. I had assumed the evil clone of our cold defender was the greatest threat, so was trying to kill her, but this was a miscalculation because all the dominator doppelgangers went wild with gremlin summoning and mass confusion. We still won the fight, but it was really messy. Finished TF in 44m 50s.

Some friends who had come back to the game with Going Rogue wanted to play newbies in Praetoria, and we had settled on a theme of "everyone must be a ninja". I had been enjoying another newbie toon who was katana/fire, so I rolled up another katana/fire scrapper to be my ninja toon. To our mutual dismay, I and another teammate had picked nearly identical character names; my toon was "Silk Steel" and his was "Silken Steel". Fortunately, we had different costumes, at least. "I guess this makes us the Steel clan," someone quipped. We had a team of 6 ninja (with a variety of ATs) and worked our way through Praetor White's story arc, then Cleopatra's story arc. This got us to level 10. Of note, we tried to use team TP to complete the Sergeant Hastings (sp?) escort more quickly in the mission to rescue the PPD, but it didn't work, we had to go back and get him.


Tuesday

Spacegirl (50 hero mind/rad controller) exemped to an 8-player hero team doing level 40 hero tip missions. We had a couple team wipes to Malta ambushes due to getting spread out, but eventually completed 2 hero missions; this filled up Spacegirl's alignment bar, so I ended up exiting the team to take a break at that point.

Later, a friend asked me to join his Master of RSF attempt, and to play a debuffer for him. I ended up refusing; talking to him, I figured out his team so far was 1 tanker, 5 scrappers and blasters, and no support, and being the lone support toon on a hopeless MoRSF did not sound like much fun. I felt kinda bad about refusing, but I felt this attempt would be doomed and tried to tell him so.

Eventually he relented and decided to run a Silver Mantis SF, which seemed a lot more doable. I joined this with Fire Maiden (40 rogue SS/fire brute) and we finished in 56m 33s, getting Fire Maiden to 41.

Afterwards, through some trickery with getting another person to invite me in, Police Woman got the Libertarian badge from Fire Maiden's Founders Falls mayhem mission; being a Liberty server supporter, I decided to switch my displayed badge to this. I also did another 4 villain missions, getting me right to the edge of converting to full villain. I also hit the inf cap at the market yet again (this time 200M in 1 day) and emailed myself another 200M inf. The market is just plain printing money for me right now. I'll figure something to spend it on eventually.

San Min (50 hero MA/will scrapper) started soloing through an AE arc called A Fistful of Suziku, a story about a mad science gizmo that starts duplicating people, and takes advantage of the new doppelganger features in AE. I got through the first 4 missions before getting tired and calling it a night; so far it's pretty neat though.

9/13/2010

Last Thursday

I had company over in RL on Thursday night, so was on CoH only briefly, during which time Thunder Girl (50 hero elec/SR scrapper) solo'd 4 hero alignment missions. San Min also finished Fistful of Suziku; it was pretty fun and I gave it 5 stars.

Also of note, my Contact Tree for MA Arcs on the Mission Architect forum got stickied by the forum mods! I was very psyched about this. I'm glad this list is getting used as a resource for people to find MA arcs.


Friday

San Min (50 hero MA/will scrapper) and Spacegirl (50 hero mind/rad controller) both solo'd their hero morality missions, confirming their heroic alignment and getting 50 reward merits each.

A friend was running heroic alignment missions, so I duo'd Fire Maiden (41 rogue SS/fire brute) through 4 hero missions, then swapped to Strong Woman (50 hero inv/SS tanker) for 1 more hero mission.

Police Woman (50 vigilante AR/dev blaster) hit the inf cap again, and I mailed myself another 200M inf. I also finally took the leap and did the villain morality mission, converting to villain alignment. I've been kinda inching up towards this for weeks now, and finally took the plunge because I wanted the extra badges. Thankfully, the villain morality mission didn't require eating babies or anything that I think is really evil (though, I suppose it probably should).

Instantly upon turning villain, I was awarded the following badges:

Night Widow
Wolf Spider Tac Ops
Wailer Queen
Wolf Spider Enforcer
Marshal
Headline Stealer
Born in Battle
High Pain Threshold
Demonic
Megalomaniac
Force of Nature
Invader
Villainous
Dastardly
Descended

...for a total of 852 badges. Interestingly, it awarded me several villain accolades that I technically had not done all the prerequisites for, but it gave me them anyway because I had the equivalent hero accolade (for example, I don't have the Exterminator badge but it gave me Born in Battle anyway, I assume because I have Portal Jockey). It also demoted me from SG leader of Liberty Force (which I had kinda inherited due to the massive idleness of the original leaders).

After turning villain I went to Ouro to start flashbacking the villain badge missions, beginning with the Plague Carrier badge mission, which I finished in 10m 38s and got me 2 merits and the badge. Strangely, I got a tip from a level 15 boss; I had thought only level 20+ mobs dropped tips. Perhaps exemping via Ouro somehow is treated differently.

I played Fire Maiden for a bit, helping people farm EoEs on Monster Island for the Hamidon raid; picked up 3 of them and emailed them all to the raid leader, since I wasn't originally planning on going to the raid. Fire Maiden was only 41 so you can definitely get EoEs at lower than level 45.

Someone was asking on LB for help getting their alignment mission for quite awhile, which caused me to swap to Mayday (50 rogue fortunata) to try and help. This person proved to be a 22 rogue widow, who complained bitterly about how hard it was to solo with his widow. This was kinda surprising to me because I think VEATs are incredibly (almost unfairly) good. I duo'd one of my tip missions with him; he was obviously struggling, but I tried to give him a few pointers (for example, I suggested he run his defensive toggles, which he preferred to leave off because they cost too much END). We did get a tip for his morality mission though, after which I bid him adieu and good luck.

After that I swapped back to Police Woman (now a 50 villain AR/dev blsater), wrote a new "framed, fled to Rogue Isles" background story for her, and solo'd 4 rogue alignment missions to start the way back to redemption. This got me the Well Informed badge. I also joined a 7 player (including 1 toon who was a 2nd box that did nothing but sit at the contact) 1st villain respec, which we finished in 11m 5s. Completing the respec did not give me a badge or a respec (I believe this is because I've already done the 3 hero respec trials) but did give me merits. I also did an 8-player Sharkhead SF with this team, finishing in a speedy 20m 56s.

Kyrie Eleison (50 hero fire/regen scrapper) did an ITF; our team was kinda light on support and it seemed like there was one guy who was pretty much dead all the time. We had one team wipe against Romulus, but got him on the rematch, finishing in 41m 28s.

Olivia Q (50 hero MA/SR scrapper) did a speedy Kahn TF in 28m 57s.

Fire Maiden (41 rogue SS/fire brute) did a clear-most ITF in 43m 18s without any serious problems, getting a Fortunata Hypnosis (chance for placate) recipe drop and level 42.

Mystery Girl (50 hero emp/pistols defender) did a Katie TF. I got a costume compliment as well as sass for being a pistols defender (though I think this was just teasing). Based on our team mix I decided to keep AB on our dominator, which gave him enough recharge to make him perma-dom, which I think he liked. Finished in 21m 1s and afterwards we also tracked down and killed Jack-in-Irons and Eochai.

I stayed up pretty late writing a new, quicky 1-mission AE story arc called Crisis at Talos Towers. The basic idea is that a Rikti dropship crashes into a Talos skyscraper and you have to rescue the police and civilians inside. It's an homage to the 9/11 attacks, and I wrote it because I knew someone was planning on running a team to play 9/11 themed AE missions the next day.


Saturday

Around noon I hopped over to Triumph to join the AE team running 9/11 themed missions. 6 players ran through Crisis at Talos Towers; response was generally favorable, the most critical remark I got was "too short, I wanted more!" which I figure is still pretty good.

We also ran through American Patriot, Defender of Earth, a 2 mission arc where the first mission you're rescuing American founding fathers, and the second you're battling alien invaders. There was some okay writing, but the two missions didn't really logically fit together. I gave it 3 stars. We also did Made to Wave the Flag which is a cool arc where you're kidnapped by Malta and they try to brainwash you; I had played this before and gave it 5 stars.

Returning to Liberty, I solo'd Police Woman (50 villain AR/dev blaster) through flashbacks of the Stone Cold and Bone Collector badge missions, as well as another 4 rogue alignment missions.

Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) joined an 8-player Silver Mantis SF (including 1 contact sitter) of mostly brutes; this was a speed SF where most missions were handled by dragging mobs into each other, to fight each other. Finished in a very speedy 37m 17s.

The Saturday Hamidon raid was forming up; I hadn't originally planned on going, but they needed help, especially damage dealers, so I logged on Thunder Girl (50 hero elec/SR scrapper) to help, mostly because Thunder Girl can fly (helps a ton against mitos).

I got assigned to the "Yellow Assault" team, which was 4 scrappers, 1 stalker, 1 brute, and 2 emp defenders. Our job was to target and kill yellow mitos. While actually doing this, we seemed to get a ton of aggro from cytos, especially after the first bloom at 75% life where most of our team got clobbered. I heard conflicting stories on what happened, but most were saying "tank team dropped the ball". Some said the mitos repopped in slightly different positions, which left the tankers in the wrong positions, while someone else said the tankers' emp had gone afk and let all the tankers die. I'm not quite sure what the truth was.

Regardless, the raid leader called on us to retreat to Coward's Rock and we spent some time regrouping. On our second try things went a lot more smoothly and we did a lot better handling the next two respawns, finally killing Hamidon. Elapsed time from entering the goo to defeating Hamidon was about 40 minutes. I pretty regularly get HOs through STF and RSF, so I chose to take the 53 merits.

A friend insisted I attend a "civil servant" themed costume contest on Virtue on Saturday night. About 3 years ago I had reserved the name "Police Woman" on every server it was available on, so I actually was able to attend as a (level 3) Police Woman. The costume contest was in Galaxy City, sponsored by the American Legion SG on Virtue server, and WOW it was crowded, more people than I've ever seen in Galaxy City. It was actually quite a cool event. I did not win the costume contest, but I got named a runner up, and they gave me 50M infl, plus another 2M inf for answering a trivia question. I couldn't figure out what to do with this inf (you can't send email at level 3); I tried to bid in their charity auction, but it got out of my price range (even with 50M in my pocket). Ultimately, I gave it to my friend who had originally invited me there, and then he emailed it back to me.

Blond Justice (50 hero broadsword/shield scrapper) spent 2 hero merits on a Celerity +Stealth proc recipe; looking at the market value, Celerity stealth procs are a pretty good deal for hero merits, IMHO. Blond Justice also solo'd 5 Vigilante missions; I figure, she chops up villains with a sword....she should be a vigilante.

Primadonna (50 rogue sonic/kin corruptor) did a quick Kahn TF (31m 52s) then a Statesman TF (47m 26s) getting a Nucleolus.

My computer has been making funny grinding noises (I think it's the fan in the power supply) and it's 3 years old, so I decided to buy a new computer, which arrived via FedEx today. My new machine is:

HP Pavilion Elite HPE-300z PC
• Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
• AMD Phenom(TM) X4 965 quad-core processor [3.4GHz, 2MB L2 + 6MB L3 shared, up to 4000MHz]
• 12GB DDR3-1333MHz SDRAM [4 DIMMs]
• FREE UPGRADE! 750GB 7200 rpm SATA 3Gb/s hard drive from 500GB
• Microsoft Office Starter 2010
• Norton Internet Security(TM) 2010 - 15 month
• 1.8GB NVIDIA Geforce GTX 260 [2 DVI, HDMI and VGA adapters]
• No speakers
• LightScribe 16X max. DVD+/-R/RW SuperMulti drive
• Integrated Ethernet port, No wireless LAN
• 15-in-1 memory card reader, 1 USB, 1394, audio
• No TV Tuner
• Integrated sound
• HP USB keyboard and optical mouse
• ArcSoft MediaConverter 3.0
• HP Home & Home Office Store in-box envelope

I had tried to get a good processor, lots of RAM and a decent graphics card, all things that I figure will affect my gaming experience. I found it was MUCH easier to install CoH on Win7 than it was on Windows Vista (which was what my old machine has). Just running around in CoH in "full" Ultra mode it seemed like I got 30fps in outdoor zones, 60fps indoors.


Sunday

Police Woman solo'd the Mask Maker badge mission in flashback.

Fire Maiden (42 rogue SS/fire brute) did an Abandoned Sewer Trial in 29m 19s, getting to level 43, then a speed Imperious TF in 19m 40s (insanely fast). I think our team mix was 1 kin, 1 rad, 6 melee damage. Between foot stomp, burn, fiery embrace, rage and fury, it felt like I was doing massive damage to the hapless Romans, though I also got squished once by an exploding crystal. I did this on my new computer, which maintained 30fps even in the valley of lag on mission 3, though dropped to 15fps when fighting the hordes of Romans atop the towers. Still, not too bad.

Kyrie Eleison (50 hero fire/regen scrapper) solo'd 3 vigilante missions and the vigilante morality mission, changing alignment to vigilante.

A second Hamidon raid was called on Sunday night; they were asking for support toons, so I brought Mystery Girl (50 hero emp/pistols defender). I was again assigned to the yellow assault team, which was 7 scrappers (all willpower or shields) and me as an emp defender. My team did not really seem to take much damage (tank team must've been on the ball that night) so I mostly concentrated on buffing; I kept about 4 Fortitudes going and CM on everyone (we were supposed to CM everyone, even non-squishies, due to the high magnitude of the mito attacks), and threw AB at the main tank whenever I could. This raid went a lot smoother than the Saturday one, probably due to us having more player experience, and we handled the first several repops with no issues. The raid leader was feeling confident and called for us to fight through the final bloom, and this actually worked. Elapsed time was 16 minutes between entering the goo and defeating Hamidon. I again took the 53 merits. I had about 24fps at the raid initially, then I turned everyone's names off to get up to 30fps; in the goo itself I still dropped to about 12fps, but this was with the full raid in view, firing off powers while in ultra mode, so I'm OK with that.

After the raid I did some pretty heavy duty IO'ing for Mystery Girl, slotting 2 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% rchg) IOs, a set of 5 Armageddon, a set of 5 Ragnarok, and a set of 5 Adjusted Targeting, adding +40% global recharge altogether. I'm going for recharge on Mystery Girl since it means more Fortitude, more AB, and more frequent heals. This gives me a total of +150% recharge when Hasten is up; I have about an 12 second gap where Hasten is down.

All this made me feel pretty overconfident, so I solo'd 2 vigilante tip missions (soloing Nemesis with an emp defender seems dumb, but it actually worked okay; I even got the Unveiler badge) and the vigilante morality mission (changing Mystery Girl's alignment to vigilante).

Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) joined a 6-player team that did 3 rogue tip missions.

San Min (50 hero MA/will scrapper) joined the RWZ raid, picking up 574 merits which I used on a Vanguard storage sack.

There was some drama on LB after I silenced a couple people who were spamming the channel. There's more hostility towards me for my actions as an LB moderator than I realized; some people seem to have gotten the idea that I am playing favorites. I guess I'll have to watch out for that, though I think that I silence people on my friends list all the time (because, frankly, a lot of my friends have big mouths). I heard second-hand that there was also drama on Ghost Legion channel (which I had been kicked from some time ago for being an LB mod) where a friend was trying to defend me; I told him not to, because I could take it, but I think he ended up leaving that other channel, which is really too bad.

Later that night I played Silk Steel (11 resistance kat/fire scrapper) on a 6-player ninja-themed team in Imperial City. We did Jessica Flores' story arc; some of the missions were kinda weird, using experimental tech I guess. On the "Manipulate Files" mission we found that the whole team had to actually exit the mission for the mission to complete. We started on Luke Larson's story arc, doing a couple missions from that before calling it a night. This got Silk Steel to level 14.

Hey! Where's the mention of the successful MOSTF where that fantastically talented invuln tanker took on all 4 AVs at once? I think he was Jewish! The same MOSTF where you were rogue and used the obo portal and didn't get kicked from the team. I think that same fastastically talented Jewish tanker told you that wouldn't be an issue. And you were amazed! Shocked! In awe!

Also I read that paragonwiki link on the recluse towers. Looks like it's not a yellow tower, it's orange. So the order should either be blue, red or red, blue. Blue gives extra to-hit and extra recharge. Since we've typically left blue alone it could just be red, orange, green from now on. Blue if you don't want him to hit as often.

And to clarify on the hami stuff, the initial falied evacless in the end was my fault since I was taunt lead and ultimately responsible for everyone on the team. Lessons learned allowed me to correct the 2 or 3 things that went wrong which worked beautifully the next day. Having 4 out of the 6 tankers there that did it the night before helped too. But it was mostly successful because of me. ME!

Carry on.

Yeah, you don't get dropped from the team for going to the other side. I haven't done it during a TF yet (so far I've remembered that Ouro goes to the other side), but after TFs I've Ouro'd out and still been on the team till I quit.

9/16/2010

I found my notes on that MoSTF!

back on Wed 9/8

Mayday (50 rogue fortunata) did a Master of the STF with a team of:

ill/kin controller
emp/psy defender
arch/nrg blaster
elec/earth dominator
inv/SS tanker
grav/cold controller
fortunata (me)

At the end of mission 1 I exited to Ouroboros - the usual thing to do as a hero, but a mistake as a villain on the STF. Since we were under MoSTF settings, I could not use Mission Transporter or Pocket D teleporter to try to get to the mission, and eventually I just tried exiting to Cap au Diable; I was quite surprised that it didn't kick me from the team, and made my way back to Independence Port via Cap, RWZ, and Founders Falls, expecting to get kicked at each zone line. But I made it back and was able to continue.

With cold shields, fortitude, mind link and maneuvers, we were all DEF capped the whole time, making things very safe. On the final mission we pulled the 4 patron AVs up to the walkway south of them; had no problems. Against Lord Recluse himself, we killed the towers in the order Blue, Red, Yellow and Green, which seemed to work fine for us. It took 1h 40m but we got the Master of the STF badge. I also got an Enzyme.

I played Fire Maiden (41 rogue SS/fire brute) on a Katie TF after that, which took 25m 59s, then the team spent some time hunting Croatoa mobs for badges. The ghosts took the longest, and we ended up having to wait through the "day" cycle to get enough; two "nights" got us the 333 ghosts needed, though.

(skip to...)

Monday 9/13

Police Woman (50 villain AR/dev blaster) helped a team with Ghost of Scrapyard; I already had the Scrapyard badge itself, but picked up the Strikebuster badge from the strikers surrounding him. A little later I went to RV to help a 4-player villain team beat up the signature heroes. We weren't real strong on debuffs (had 2 scrappers, 1 kin controller and me) and so we died a lot but we eventually beat up all the NPC heroes. I got the Oppressor, Hero Slayer, Interrogator, Deadeye, Uppercut, Breakneck, Destroyer and Blackguard badges from this. The only PC hero we saw was a hapless tanker that we mugged a couple times.

After that I joined a Master of the Barracuda SF attempt. Our team was:

1 blaster (me)
3 scrappers
2 tankers
1 kin controller
1 rad corruptor

The rad corruptor actually wanted to bring a scrapper, but 1 debuff, 6 melee and a blaster didn't seem viable so he got guilt tripped into swapping to a debuffer. Somehow our stone tanker managed to die to a generic Longbow spawn in mission 2 (apparently he accidentally turned off his granite armor while taking an alpha strike), but we were still kinda support light even with the rad and we had a lot more deaths before getting to the final mission, leading someone to say "LOL Mo". We took care of the patron AVs with no problem, but hit a brick wall against Reichsman. As a blaster I got the temp power to summon Dust Devils, which I think is normally the corruptor temp power. I summoned Dust Devils as much as I could, but they seemed kind of useless. I believe the scrappers got the stalker power to kill off ambushes; not sure what the tankers or controller got. On our first attempt against Reichsman, we fought for awhile but got overwhelmed by the ambushes. Trying to stealth back to Reichsman didn't work because the ambushes seemed to still be aggro on us even after hospitaling and returning; we ended up spending some time clearing all the ambushes. Sometime around this time our rad corruptor disconnected and never returned. After clearing all the ambushes, we made another attempt on Reichsman. We could stand up to his damage output when he was alone, but found that the 7 of us remaining were not able to actually kill him; each time he got low on life he would Phase Shift and heal up. I asked the controller to hit him with her temp power, hoping she had the MM power that disables his Phase Shift, but she either didn't do it or didn't get that power. After beating our heads against Reichsman for quite awhile, we eventually gave up and abandoned the SF. My feeling is that we just didn't have enough debuff; from my observation, this is a common problem on SFs that people are doing for badges since I18 came out. Of all the heroes that have "Gone Rogue", very few are defenders or controllers; the great majority seem to be scrappers or tankers. Which kind of makes sense because it's easiest for meleers to solo tip missions, but I think it is leading to some very lopsided SF teams.

I also hit the inf cap again and emailed myself another 200M inf, and solo'd a flashback of the Paragon of Vice badge mission.


Tuesday

I hit the inf cap again and sent myself another 200M inf.

I played Snow Fox (8 loyalist ice/cold controller) on a 6 player Praetorian team of mostly dominators. I had picked up Arctic Air, the ice control toggle that confuses enemies; this is very END expensive at pre-Stamina levels, but I had a teammate say that I was "probably more useful just standing there with the toggle on than the rest of the team," so it was clearly working. This team got Snow Fox to level 11 before breaking up.

Marcia Law (25 hero pistols/kin corruptor) joined a vigilante tip mission team, doing 2 vigilante alignment missions and 2 vigilante morality missions (for other players, but it counted like a vigilante tip). This got Marcia to level 26.

Fire Maiden (43 rogue SS/fire brute) did an ITF in 28m 59s, getting to level 44. I also solo'd an MA mission called Wrath of the Glacier King, which was a 1-mission arc where you fight ice monsters and Canadians; there didn't seem to be a lot more plot than that. I was also a little confused that the Canadian Mounties summoned robots and used laser rifles. I ended up giving this arc 3 stars, which may be too generous now that I think about it.

Mystery Girl (50 vigilante emp/pistols defender) helped kill Ghost of Scrapyard.


Wednesday

Shield Maiden (50 villain mace/shield brute) joined an all-shield ITF team. We had 6 shield scrappers and 2 shield brutes, running at +1 difficulty. We cleared most of missions 1 and 2, went general-to-general in mission 3, and cleared a path up the left walkways in the final mission. We didn't actually have that much trouble despite lack of debuff; a couple of the less heavily IO'd toons died a few times, and I found that my build seems to eat END too quickly (people started dumping blues on me after awhile). Interestingly, after my toggles dropped from running out of END, I was still over 60% defense to all positions, just from Phalanx Fighting, other peoples' Grant Cover, and my own IO bonuses. I was tempted to leave my toggles off to save END, but ended up keeping them on. Anyway, even without debuffs we were able to beat up Romulus pretty handily, finishing the TF in 44m 15s.

Rain Dancer (50 hero storm/archery defender) joined a Kahn TF that finished in 35m 24s with no serious issues. A teammate complimented me on her background story.

Fire Maiden (44 rogue SS/fire brute) did another ITF, in 33m 37s. We had a little trouble positioning Romulus; for a little while he ran out of sight of his nictus and we had to get them together again to let him rez properly; otherwise no issues.

Finished the night soloing. I solo'd Fire Maiden through Until the End of the World, a villain AE arc where you find out about this other villain with serious psychological problems and an unhealthy obsession with building lifelike androids, and end up profiting from his misfortune. This was pretty good and I gave it 5 stars. I also did 3 hero tip missions as Olivia Q (50 hero MA/SR scrapper) and a flashback of the Spelunker mission on Idealist (50 hero fire/thermal controller) to get the Atlas Medallion.

If you keep hitting the inf cap you are more than welcome to e-mail 200 mill to me.

1st. BEAN!!!
2nd. Alms for the poor. *rattles cup*

9/21/2010


Thursday

Police Woman (50 villain AR/dev blaster) solo'd a flashback of the Carpe Diem story arc, with "no travel powers" and "no inspirations". I managed to beat an EB-level Sea Witch without inspirations through use of Eye of the Magus and Wedding Band. Finished in 20m 46s and got 5 reward merits, and the Seaweed, Correctionist, Desisted and Flat badges.

Followed this with a flashback of the Strikebreaker badge mission (4m 11s for 1 reward merit and a badge) and the Slag Reaper badge mission (also 4m 11s for 1 merit and a badge).

Virtual Girl (6 resistance kat/fire scrapper) was on a 5-player team where it seemed like we fought endless waves of Destroyers in the Praetorian underground. This got Virtual Girl to level 10.

Thunder Girl (50 hero elec/SR scrapper) solo'd a hero tip mission and the hero morality mission, gaining 1 hero merit.

Mayday (50 rogue fortunata) did 6 hero missions (I know, only 5 count, but I still did 6) on a 5-player team. Probably going to have her go all-the-way to hero side at some point. Before doing so, though, I wanted to do some badging, soloing Paragon of Vice in flashback in order to get the Marshal accolade.


Friday

Police Woman solo'd a few more badge missions in flashback, completing Agent of Discord in 2m 39s, Soul Taker in 12m 37s, and Bad Luck in 3m 32s. Soul Taker is a mini-arc with a couple missions, so I tried setting "only AT powers", but I didn't actually get a badge for doing so; only full length arcs give the challenge badges, apparently. This did give me the Repairwoman badge, though, so even the short badge missions count towards total number of flashbacks.

Police Woman also joined a 4-player team doing a Steel Canyon mayhem, where we beat an EB Valkyrie and destroyed enough cars to get me the Impounder badge.

I hit the inf cap at the market again; this time I emailed myself 500M inf, since it seemed like I was hitting the inf cap way too often sending only 200M at a time. (I'm gradually claiming this inf on other toons and using it to buy recipes to IO them out.)

Kyrie Eleison (50 vigilante fire/regen scrapper) solo'd some AE arcs. I first played through Azuria's Pendant, which plays up Azuria losing magic items for laughs; this was fun but not too deep, I gave it 4 stars. Then I played Daytime Divas, a comedy arc where you get invited to an interview on a daytime TV show, and hijinks ensue; I thought this was pretty good, I gave it 5 stars.

Snow Fox (11 loyalist ice/cold controller) joined a 5 player team running Praetorian missions, which got her to level 14.

Police Woman got the Frenzied badge sometime in the afternoon; this gave her a cool mini-build-up temp power, but I really don't want to stay a villain long term, so I immediately ran the Rogue morality mission, changing my alignment to Rogue and getting me the Scoundrel badge. I also did a flashback of the Exterminator badge mission.

Arrow Girl (40 hero archery/nrg blaster) duo'd with a dark defender for a bit against Knives of Artemis, but after 2 team wipes it didn't feel like it was working very well; the dark swapped to a rad controller and things started working a bit better. We ended up completing 4 vigilante alignment missions and the Vigilante morality mission, changing Arrow Girl to a Vigilante.

Quick Katie (50 hero plant/kin controller) joined a 5 player team that did 5 heroic tip missions.

Fire Maiden (44 rogue SS/fire brute) did a clear-most ITF at +1 difficulty, finishing in 47m 2s and getting to level 45. Spent some time slotting IOs afterwards, putting 3 sets of 4 Reactive Armor in her various resistance toggles, for +3.75% smash/lethal defense, and 1 set of 4 Luck of the Gambler in Weave. Then I solo'd a few paper missions and the Peregrine Island mayhem, which got her the last explore badge needed for the Invader accolade. I also solo'd a flashback of the Exterminator badge mission, prepping for the Born in Battle accolade.


Saturday

San Min (50 hero MA/will scrapper) solo'd 4 hero tip missions, on x4 difficulty; but this was a little too hard, I ended up dying twice against massive Malta ambushes, mostly due to sappers.

Thunder Girl (50 hero elec/SR scrapper) did an ITF in 22m 0s.

Fire Maiden (45 rogue SS/fire brute) did an RSF; we had a team wipe against the Vindicators, then our initial rush against the Freedom Phalanx went kind of badly, but on the rematch I popped a Shivan and an Amy (which caused the team leader to laugh, since Amy is such a weird sight on RSF) and we managed to win, finishing in 34m 54s and getting Fire Maiden to level 46. I couldn't take an HO at that level, so I took the 25 merits and the many badges.

Went on to play Fire Maiden on a Kahn TF, during which I took enough damage to get me the Born in Battle accolade. In the final fight we focused on Reichsman first, ignoring the 4 AVs that he summons to his aid until afterwards. We had a strong team and this made the TF went very quickly, finishing in 23m 58s. After that I solo'd a flashback of the Paragon of Vice badge mission.

That night we did the Cathedral of Pain trial on hero side; the leader wanted a heavy debuff team, so I started on Spacegirl (50 hero mind/rad controller), but I got asked to switch to a tanker, so instead I played Strong Woman (50 hero inv/SS tanker). The team I was on ended up being 4 controllers, 2 defenders, 1 corruptor and me as tanker. We were assigned to the NE obelisk, and rather than trying to stop damage at a certain point, everyone was told to start at the same time, but then kill the mobs and obelisk as fast as we could. This seemed to work, even though the first two teams (including mine) seemed to finish a fair bit faster than the third team.

Inside, things got pretty chaotic. We were not using nukes or shivans because I believe the team leader wanted to see if massive debuff would be enough. My team handled mobs easily, but the other two teams seemed to be struggling; both of them wiped out on our first attempt. We regrouped and tried to lose aggro, at one point even exiting the chamber (interestingly, the Rularuu chased us outside), but we never quite seemed to be strong enough to take the final encounter; the other two teams repeatedly wiped out and could not keep up with the spawns of minions. We occasionally made Aspect of Rularuu vulnerable, but it didn't seem like we did enough damage to really dent him. Eventually the raid leader called it a loss (at about 15 minutes left) and people started to leave. My team was still alive and fighting at the time, and as people exited, we suddenly were the only team there, fighting all 3 sets of spawns; we put up a valiant fight but ended up getting clobbered. We all agreed it was a fitting ending. After-action, my feeling is that the team I was on was great; the other two teams needed a bit more DPS and/or survivability.

Later on, Lady Arachne (50 villain wolf spider) did a RSF. The final fight started badly; I was asked to suicide for vengeance, but it turns out no one on the team had rez (except myself, and the dark, who could not rez without a mob nearby) so the fight started with 7 and we had a sort of rolling wipeout; I think everyone on the team died at some point, but people kept hospitalling and jumping back in, so the team as a whole was never actually down. It was messy, but we won, finishing in 36m 6s; I got a Centriole.

I joined a Lady Grey TF where the team leader said to bring "some kind of debuff; surprise me". I decided to play Rain Dancer (50 hero storm/archery defender). I got assigned to get Infernia killed, which took me awhile; the crazy blaster went all Rambo and killed everything nearby, finally had to get more mobs. Hamidon was handled by assigning 3 fortunata to take out the green mitos, while the rest of us took out pylons. This TF ran very fast, finishing in 23m 46s.

Idealist (50 hero fire/thermal controller) ran a Kahn TF that was even faster (by 1 second) than the one I ran earlier in the day, finishing in 23m 57s. Speed runs of Kahn TF seem to have become rather popular.

Mystery Girl (50 vigilante emp/pistols defender) joined an STF. I was kinda tired by this point and playing poorly, and I managed to get myself killed twice from Thorn Tree aggro in mission 3; I managed to get my act together by the final mission, though, where the inv brute who was tanking for us thanked me for "good buffing" against the patron AVs. The brute ended up fly-tanking Lord Recluse, asking us all to focus on the towers (even me, as the empath, though I tried to keep AB and Fort on him anyway, just to be safe). Finished in 58m 37s and I got a Membrane SHO, which was pretty nice (an HO that I actually have use for). Afterwards I spent some time badging, getting the history and explore badges needed for the Freedom Phalanx Reserve accolade (+101 max hp).

Finished the night soloing on Fire Maiden, getting the badges needed for the Marshal accolade and completing the 4th costume mission (though I haven't actually come up with a brilliant idea for a new costume yet).


Sunday

Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) did a flashback of the Skip Tracer mission (10m 10s), then joined a 3 player team doing the Kings Row mayhem mission. The team leader and mission holder immediately rushed to the bank, spawning a gajillion Longbow ambushes that wiped us out; we broke out of jail and cleared more gradually after that, which seemed to work fine.

Schadenfreude (50 villain AR/pain corruptor) joined a 3-player team that did a villain tip mission and a door mission to defeat Devoured Pyriss. This team was a little slow-paced, but seemed to work OK; I also got a compliment on Schadenfreude's "Ilsa of the SS" character concept, which was nice.

Water Lily (30 rad/storm corruptor) joined a 3-player team that did some rogue tips. Got a Luck of the Gambler (DMG) recipe as a drop.

I spent some time editing my Attack of the 50 Foot Villain story arc, since I had noticed the power generator object had been brought back to AE; I use that to represent a nuclear reactor that the player can destroy. Playtested a bit with Fire Maiden (46 rogue SS/fire brute) and also solo'd through an AE arc called The D.O.L.L.S have gone Crazy! which seemed to be about sex androids who revolt against humanity. This was a cute concept but not that well developed; I gave it 3 stars.


Monday

Police Woman ran a flashback of the Portal Hopper, Party Crasher (requiring defeating a Silver Mantis EB, which was fairly tough) and Mage Hunter badge missions, as well as the Midnight Draws Near story arc on "no temp powers, enemies buffed", which gave me the Thief of Midnight, Overhauler (for 40 flashbacks), Fearless and Inhibited badges. About midway through Midnight Draws Near I realized that Midnight Visage (which makes you look like a Midnight Squad member, necessary for some of the missions) is, in fact, a temp power, so might be disabled by my settings. Fortunately, it was still allowed to be used, so I could complete the arc.

I agreed to join a Master of the Barracuda SF. The team leader was asking for debuffers, so I offered to play whatever he needed; he asked for a kin. One other person agreed to play a debuffer, and everyone else insisted on bringing damage, so I was feeling kind of annoyed that I volunteered to debuff rather than play my badging character, but no one else seemed willing to do the same. Our team ended up being:

shield tanker
stone tanker
SR scrapper
regen scrapper
bots/traps MM
sonic/kin corr (me)
ice/ice blaster

The regen scrapper was a notorious AFKer and immediately went AFK after joining. The team leader kicked him from the team after ascertaining he was still AFK once we started the TF. This left us with only 6 players against Master of Barracuda SF, which seemed pretty daunting to me, but I knew several of the remaining team members to be very good players, so I figured I'd see what would happen.

On our first attempt, the shield tanker (despite telling everyone to follow the stone tanker) ran out in front of us and promptly got killed by a lucky shot from Ms Liberty. We restarted the TF.

Second attempt, we did very well, getting to the final mission where we led each of the patron AVs to their deaths, accomplishing this all without anyone dying. Then once Reichsman spawned, we retreated to the hallway outside his room, and fought the many, many waves of 5th Column ambushes; the ambushes seemed to come from both front and back, and we had a tanker on each side of the hall taking these on. After a long, long fight, the ambushes finally stopped and we took on Reichsman. The stone tanker was careful to eat lots of break frees while fighting Reichsman; I tried to keep ID on most meleers, but it was probably useless, I can't stack enough ID to actually prevent his crazy high mag stun.

Unfortunately, we had neglected to tell the MM (who had never done this SF before) that the laser grids are instant death, and he ran into one without knowing any better, dying and causing us to fail the "master of" attempt. Everyone agreed it wasn't the MM's fault because he had clearly asked several times "is there anything I should know about this mission?" and no one thought to tell him about this death trap.

Surprisingly (at least, to me, after my last Barracuda SF attempt stalled due to lack of DPS) the 6 of us were still able to grind down Reichsman's HP to nothing; I'm sure it helped to have a MM to cancel Reichsman's phase shift ability, and traps does a great job of killing AV regen. We finished the SF with a total time of 1h 41m.

9/23/2010


Tuesday

I hit the inf cap again, which means I made 500M inf in 5 days. I mailed myself another 500M inf as a dividend.

Quick Katie (50 hero plant/kin controller) did a speedy ITF in 20m 35s, which seemed a very good time.

Mayday (50 rogue fortunata) did a Rule of Three (Posi 1) TF on a 6 player team. A teammate complimented me on Mayday's background story and costume, which was nice. Our tanker had to log during mission 2, but we pressed on with 5 players. In the last mission, we had most of a team wipe (everyone died but me) to the massive CoT ambush that hits you on the steps of city hall; I survived by eating lucks and strategically running away after everyone else was down. We mopped them up on the rematch, and were about to take on the evil doppelganger team (we noticed there were still 6 doppelgangers, even though there were only 5 of us - the mission spawned a clone of the tanker who logged off mission 2) when I had a power outage and lost connection. In fact, my whole neighborhood went dark, which was a pretty spooky feeling; I was a little afraid that a zombie apocalypse might be about to begin. Fortunately, I survived the night and power and internet eventually came back.


Wednesday

I got an apologetic tell from someone on last night's Posi TF saying they waited for half an hour, then finished the TF; I really couldn't blame them, I didn't get internet back til morning so it would've been crazy to wait for me.

Thunder Girl (50 hero elec/SR scrapper) joined a Katie TF. It turns out the team leader didn't have the Katie TF unlocked, so he gave me the star and I ended up starting the TF. Since I ended up with the star, I also ended up telling people (some of whom weren't that familiar with Katie TF) what to do, explaining that we didn't need to clear witches to make Mary spawn, etc. Since Thunder Girl can fly, in the final mission I flew over to rescue Katie's soul, myself. I felt a little guilty that we had some people who didn't know the Katie TF at all, but doing Katie TF the long way is a huge chore, so I ended up speeding everything anyway. Finished in 30m 34s.

Fire Maiden (46 rogue SS/fire brute) solo'd an AE arc called M is for Malta, in which a contact sends you on some missions for fun & profit, that eventually lead you to discover a Malta conspiracy. It was pretty good and I gave it 5 stars; this also got Fire Maiden to 47. At level 47 I slotted 3 sets of 6 level 50 Obliterations (in Burn, Blazing Aura and Foot Stomp), which I had stockpiled in my base; each set gave me +3% dmg, +5% rchg, +1.875% sm/lethal def, all really good things. I also solo'd the hero morality mission, changing Fire Maiden's alignment to Heroic, and joined a "fire themed" (almost everyone had fire powersets) kill-most ITF, which we finished in 34m 47s, very fast for clearing most.

I was messing around at the Atlas Park Wentworth's on Kyrie Eleison (50 vigilante fire/regen scrapper) when the Halloween banners event spawned in Atlas. Someone organized an impromptu raid force to take the banners on; it started off slow, but eventually snowballed into 2 or 3 teams, which were able to take down all 4 banners and the final GM.

After that I solo'd Kyrie through Machina, an AE arc about clockwork and some new custom faction of robots led by an evil villain. The custom mobs were cool looking, but the plot was kinda thin and it kind of annoys me when the story's villain is scripted to escape (i.e., story ends with the player losing). I gave it 3 stars.

Finished the night playing Spy Girl (36 rogue MA/ninj stalker) on an 8 player Citadel TF. I got lots of teasing about the uselessness of stalkers, but tried to prove people wrong by kicking lots of Council butt and stealth/TPing people to objectives. The scrapper who was teasing me the most managed to get killed during the second to last mission (the first death of the TF), so I teased him right back about how scrappers must be more squishy than stalkers. We completed the Citadel TF in a pretty respectable 57m 10s and got Spy Girl to level 37.

9/28/2010

Thursday

Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) helped a Synapse TF defeat Babbage in Skyway City. I also joined a Master of the RSF attempt. Our team mix was:

fire/kin controller
fire/cold corruptor
stone/stone tanker
mind/kin controller
AR/dev blaster (me)
dark/dark corruptor
fire/dark corruptor
fire/rad corruptor

We took things very cautiously, often clearing areas and pulling mobs that we would normally rush on a regular RSF. This was going great until the last mission, where we defeated Numina, then our tanker went linkdead. The team leader called for us all to run away, but one of the controllers got killed by the heroes anyway. The tanker reconnected after awhile and we finished the SF in 58m 9s, with only 1 death total; heartbreakingly close. I got a Centriole.

Thunder Girl (50 hero elec/SR scrapper) solo'd 5 hero tip missions, getting a Coercive Persuasion (CONFUSE) recipe drop.

Fire Maiden (47 hero SS/fire brute) did a speedy ITF in 21m 27s, getting her to level 48, and a speedy Kahn TF in 28m 1s.

Kyrie Eleison (50 vigilante fire/regen scrapper) joined a team preparing to do Katie TF; we killed Eochai while in Croatoa. Had a little trouble in the last mission when Katie aggroed some nearby mobs, but we cleared them pretty quickly, finishing the TF in 21m 53s.


Friday

I sold a Celerity (+stealth) proc at Wentworth's for 250M, easily the best 2 hero merits I've spent so far. (I think the price on these has dropped a bit since then, though.)

Fire Maiden (48 hero SS/fire brute) did a speedy 8-player Manticore TF in 47m 2s.

Some friends came up with the silly idea of an all-force-fields theme team. I rolled up Kelly Greene, a newbie fire/FF controller, and ended up on an 8-player sewer team (all defenders or controllers, 6 of whom were force fields) that fought through the sewers from Atlas Park to Kings Row, then did some radio missions and 2 Atlas safeguards. With soft capped def from multiple force fields, I found I could use Hot Feet and Fire Cages to herd and AoE, despite my low level, which was pretty fun. This got Kelly Greene to level 9.

Did another Master of RSF attempt; I was asked to bring Yuki-Onna (50 villain ice/cold corruptor), and our team was

fire/kin controller
dark/dark corruptor
stone/stone tanker
fire/dark corruptor
ice/ice blaster
fire/kin corruptor
ice/cold corruptor (me)
ill/rad controller

This again went well until the last mission, where we killed Numina, then the stone tanker died after his first burst of inspirations ran out and he forgot to eat more. A team wipe followed, then we all got kinda sloppy and died more, but we ended up finishing in 1h 3m. I got another Centriole.


Saturday

Rain Dancer (50 hero storm/archery defender) joined an 8-player Faathim TF, including one 2-boxed toon that did nothing but sit at the contact (the team leader was convinced this would speed up the TF, but I'm not so sure). Of the remaining 7 players, we had only 2 stormies for support, and sadly the other stormy spent most of the TF dead due to excess aggro. So, light on support and effectively down 1.5 team members, this TF was very slow moving with lots of deaths, and it felt like it took forever, though the clock said it only took us 3h 12m.

I spent some time editing Papers and Paychecks, an AE story arc I'm thinking of submitting to Dr. Aeon's 3rd Architect Challenge. Mostly this involved reading player feedback and adding/revising stuff to make the arc more cool, then playtesting. Fire Maiden (48 hero SS/fire brute) hit level 49 while playtesting this arc.

Finished the night playing Mystery Girl (50 vigilante emp/pistols defender) on a 6 player team doing the new Maria Jenkins arc; we killed Black Swan, Malaise and Mother Mayhem. I also got the new Blindsider badge in a single mission that was jam packed with Seers.


Sunday

The all FF-team got together again, and I played Kelly Greene (now a 9 fire/FF controller), initially on a 6-player team (5 ff defenders, 1 ff controller) doing radio missions in Kings Row, then we added a scrapper and a stalker and did the Rule of Three (Posi 1) TF. I had changed Kelly's costume around a bit to make it look less obviously a Green Lantern ripoff, and ended up with a black and green bathing suit look that got made fun of by teammates for lacking pants; however, for some reason this prompted 2 other team members to change their costumes to not have pants.

Several team members complained that an all-FF TF would be a horrible grind, but it was actually not that bad. Capped DEF meant that we actually survived the ambush in the final mission on the steps of City Hall (something that I can't say for most Posi 1 teams I've been on). We were a little anxious that the evil doppelganger team would be impossible for us to kill (since they, too, would have FFs) but they were almost disappointingly easy. We ended up targeting my toon's evil twin first, because veterans of the fire/rad controller superteam told us horror stories about what the fire control doppelgangers did on this TF. Finished in 1h 14m, which didn't seem too bad. Despite this, the general sentiment afterwards was that FF defenders were stupid and several of the players were going to reroll as cold or stormies instead. Which is too bad. I'm not sure if I will keep my fire/FF or not; she's been pretty fun, but my power selections assume I'm going to be teamed with FF defenders, so I have picked mostly damage powers and hardly any control powers, so if the FF team falls apart, at the very least I'll need to respec.


Monday

A friend asked me for help killing Caleb if he could get him to spawn, and, as Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) I ended up going over to Nerva to try and help spawn Caleb. He gave me the star and I eventually recruited about 10 or 12 players to help spawn him. Our method was to kill ghosts around Thorn Isle by day, then hunt for Caleb at night. We did this for about 4 day/night cycles without seeing any sign of him. After the 2nd night of not finding Caleb, I actually was suspicious because we were doing everything ParagonWiki suggests to do to spawn him, but we hadn't seen him or seen any message that he appeared; so I ended up submitting a petition.

People started drifting away as our spawning attempt didn't seem to have any success; but after the 4th night, a GM actually responded to my petition! He gave me about a minute to gather people, then teleported Caleb right on top of me. We were hungry for blood and Caleb died very quickly, giving us the Hellbane badge. I asked the GM what had happened, and the impression he gave me is that Caleb was up the whole time, which is why we couldn't spawn him -- but he was flying very high overhead somewhere. Our team actually had spent some time flying around in the sky looking for Caleb, but we had never found him. Anyway, everyone was very grateful for the GM's help.

After the Caleb team broke up, another friend kinda goaded me into running an ITF, which quickly filled up. We had 2 lowbie masterminds, so I said we would do a clear-all ITF, though I relented on mission 3 where we just went from general-to-general. Finished in 58m 54s; I tracked my inf gain, and I made 6.4M inf on that TF, not counting drops.

Some of the FF team from before had rolled up new stormy corruptors in Mercy Isle, so I joined them with Water Lily (30 villain rad/storm corruptor), malefactoring down to level 1 to do Kalinda's initial story arc on a 6 player team, which got them to around level 4 before the team broke up.

Finished the night playing Millie Volt (50 rogue elec/elec brute), first on a very fast Kahn TF that took only 22m 51s (which we think is the speed record, at least on Liberty server). We shaved some seconds off the TF time by splitting up for the portals in the second mission, and killing Reichsman directly, ignoring the 4 Pokeball AVs except for the occasional AoE until after Reichsman died.

I had been kind of regretting not having Taunt on Millie Volt, since I think she would do a decent job against heavy energy damage AVs like Reichsman, so I ended up using her free respec. I originally had her heavily slotted for recharge (for more lightning rod and energize), with some +lethal DEF. But after playing this build for awhile, I actually thought the DEF was useless, because I was only able to get up to around 20% lethal DEF, and had no DEF debuff resist. In the respec I still focused heavily on recharge, but I switched +lethal DEF for +max HP. So the main differences are: I dropped Weave to pick up Taunt; I changed all my Reactive Armors (+def) for Titanium Coatings (+hp); and I changed my Steadfast Protection (+def) for Steadfast Protection (kb protect). The final build looks like this:

Millie Volt I18 respec: Level 50 Magic Brute
Primary Power Set: Electrical Melee
Secondary Power Set: Electric Armor
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Speed
Ancillary Pool: Mu Mastery

Villain Profile:
Level 1: Charged Brawl -- C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg(A), C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx(3), C'ngImp-Dmg/Rchg(3), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(5), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(5), C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(7)
Level 1: Charged Armor -- TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx(A), TtmC'tng-ResDam/Rchg(7), TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(9), TtmC'tng-ResDam(40)
Level 2: Lightning Field -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(9), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(11), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(11), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(13), Oblit-%Dam(13)
Level 4: Conductive Shield -- TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx(A), TtmC'tng-ResDam/Rchg(15), TtmC'tng-ResDam(15)
Level 6: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 8: Thunder Strike -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(17), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(17), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(19), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(19), Oblit-%Dam(21)
Level 10: Static Shield -- TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx(A), TtmC'tng-ResDam/Rchg(39), TtmC'tng-ResDam(50)
Level 12: Hover -- Flight-I(A), Flight-I(33), Flight-I(33), LkGmblr-Rchg+(33)
Level 14: Health -- Numna-Heal/EndRdx(A), Numna-Heal(40), Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(43), Numna-Heal/Rchg(46)
Level 16: Grounded -- S'fstPrt-ResKB(A)
Level 18: Chain Induction -- Hectmb-Dmg(A), Hectmb-Dmg/Rchg(21), Hectmb-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(23), Hectmb-Acc/Rchg(23), Hectmb-Dmg/EndRdx(25), Hectmb-Dam%(25)
Level 20: Stamina -- P'Shift-EndMod(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(37), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(37)
Level 22: Lightning Reflexes -- Run-I(A)
Level 24: Fly -- Flight-I(A), Flight-I(37)
Level 26: Build Up -- RechRdx-I(A), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg(27), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg/EndRdx(27), GSFC-Rchg/EndRdx(46)
Level 28: Energize -- Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx(A), Dct'dW-EndRdx/Rchg(29), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(29), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(31), Dct'dW-Heal(31), Dct'dW-Rchg(31)
Level 30: Kick -- Empty(A)
Level 32: Lightning Rod -- Armgdn-Dmg(A), Armgdn-Dmg/Rchg(34), Armgdn-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(34), Armgdn-Acc/Rchg(34), Armgdn-Dmg/EndRdx(36), Armgdn-Dam%(36)
Level 35: Power Sink -- P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc/Rchg(36), P'Shift-Acc/Rchg(40)
Level 38: Tough -- TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx(A), TtmC'tng-ResDam/Rchg(39), TtmC'tng-ResDam(39)
Level 41: Mu Lightning -- Apoc-Dmg(A), Apoc-Dmg/Rchg(42), Apoc-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(42), Apoc-Acc/Rchg(42), Apoc-Dmg/EndRdx(43), Apoc-Dam%(43)
Level 44: Ball Lightning -- Ragnrk-Dmg(A), Ragnrk-Dmg/Rchg(45), Ragnrk-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(45), Ragnrk-Acc/Rchg(45), Ragnrk-Dmg/EndRdx(46)
Level 47: Taunt -- Zinger-Taunt/Rchg(A), Zinger-Taunt/Rchg/Rng(48), Zinger-Taunt/Rng(48), Zinger-Dam%(48)
Level 49: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(50), RechRdx-I(50)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Fury
Level 4: Ninja Run

9/30/2010

Tuesday

Millie Volt (50 rogue elec/elec brute) solo'd 5 hero tip missions. I'm gradually purpling her out, with lowball bids at Wentworth's on various recipes and IOs; curiously, sometimes the purple IOs are actually cheaper than the equivalent recipes. I picked up an Apocalypse (chance for negative) IO for 280M and an Armageddon (DMG/RCHG/ACC) IO for 300M; this probably sounds like a lot, but is actually at the low end of the current price range.

Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) did an ITF; we sorta cleared parts and sorta sped through parts, which was a little messy as the team wasn't really set up for speed. Nevertheless finished in 39m 50s and got 4.1M inf along the way. I hit the inf cap again when I visited the market (which means I made 500M in the last 8 days), and emailed myself another 500M inf.

Fire Maiden (49 hero SS/fire brute) joined an STF. We did fine until the last mission. Against the 4 patron AVs, we jumped in to fight them all at once, and the team leader initially called to kill Scorpion, then changed our target to Scirocco, leading to some confusion; then our stone tanker died and immediately blamed the kin for not ID'ing. Some drama ensued as the stoner and kin started yelling at each other, and the kin ended up quitting the TF mid-fight. The stone tanker died again, then also quit the TF, and all this together resulted in a team wipe.

After recovering from this, the 6 of us remaining decided to press on. As a fire brute without taunt, I didn't feel I had a realistic chance of tanking Lord Recluse, but the invuln brute was willing to tank for us. We pulled the patron AVs one by one, killing them off, beat the flyer, then attempted Lord Recluse. The inv brute tried flying and taunting Lord Recluse while we attacked the red tower; we had 2 more team wipes, then the inv brute found a sweet spot to hover at, where Lord Recluse spent most of his time climbing the terrain rather than attacking. The flyer also respawned and aggro'd onto the team during this time, but we tried to just ignore it (though a few people were killed and had to run back). This seemed to work and we beat up the red, yellow and green towers, before taking down Lord Recluse himself. Finished in 1h 20m; not a very good time, but with a short-handed team, I thought we were doing well to complete the STF at all. I got a Centriole (bleh).


Wednesday

Rain Dancer (50 hero storm/archery defender) joined an ice/cold/storm themed ITF. We had 1 ice tanker and 7 defender/controllers of various flavors of storm or cold; this left us a little light on damage, but we were soft capped on defense and had a ton of debuff. With only one meleer on the team, I felt pretty free to unleash stormy chaos on most everything we encountered, and our DPS was low enough that I could actually land my debuffs and hit things with Rain of Arrows before everything died, which was fun. Finished in 51m 17s.

After that I played Teal Serpent (32 villain archery/traps corruptor), exemping to a friend's lowbie villain team doing some level 4 missions in Mercy and some level 17 missions in Cap. I ended up SGinviting some of the lowbies so they could use the teleporters in my villain base. We did a Skyway mayhem that got Teal to 33, then an Atlas mayhem where we managed to get wiped out by Longbow ambushes, but broke out of jail and robbed the bank anyway.

10/7/2010

Thursday

Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) joined a 7-player team for an Independence Port mayhem mission, clearing most of it.

Millie Volt (50 rogue elec/elec brute) joined an 8-player Sister Psyche TF which finished in 1h 31m. Elec armor was really nice on Sister Psyche TF, due to high energy resist and END drain resist, especially against the Super Stunners. Afterwards, I solo'd 3 hero tip missions.


Friday

Mayday (50 rogue fortunata) solo'd a flashback of the Exterminator badge mission.

Spy Girl (37 rogue MA/ninj stalker) joined a pickup clear-all ITF of mostly lowbies. I was actually a bit embarrassed to bring a stalker (I'm not sure stalkers are all that helpful on ITF) and almost played a blaster instead, but the team leader said a stalker would be fine. I tried to make myself useful by targeting surgeons and taking them out first. This team was not especially optimal and we suffered a team wipe at the end of the first mission to the Nictus ambushes, but after that we did fine for the rest of the TF, though in the final mission we found that Romulus ran away from us a lot, I suspect because we had no tanker or brute. I tried to get our MM to use Provoke on Romulus; either he didn't do this or it wasn't enough to keep him from running. Nevertheless we won, finishing in 1h 47m; we had gone out of our way to kill just about everything. This got Spy Girl to level 39.

Millie Volt (50 rogue elec/elec brute) did a Statesman TF. We didn't have a tanker; instead, the team leader was going to tank on a peacebringer. As a brute, I was his backup in case that didn't work out. The leader asked me to take the glowy in mission 3 because he couldn't activate it while in White Dwarf form, so I did; I'm not really used to having that, though, so I messed up when using it on mission 4. I activated the temp power, then attacked Dr. Aeon, and apparently it doesn't work if you do that; you have to hit Dr. Aeon first, then use the temp power. After the temp power recharged I hit it again and we beat Dr. Aeon.

In the final mission, the peacebringer did fine tanking the patron AVs and the flyer, but his idea to tank Lord Recluse didn't end up working out; he tried flying above Lord Recluse and taunting him with range attacks. His range attacks weren't enough to keep aggro, though, and Lord Recluse began attacking the rest of us at the towers; I ended up jumping in and taunting Lord Recluse away. With Hover, Taunt and capped energy resist and END drain resist, Lord Recluse couldn't really hurt me (as long as I stayed out of his range, anyway). Finished the STF in 1h 11m and got a Ribosome SHO.

After that, I solo'd the Hero morality mission, which changed Millie Volt's alignment to Hero.

I also joined a speed Hess TF. The team leader was actually 3-boxing to get extra merits, something I'm not really thrilled about, but she basically did the whole TF for us, between stealthing/TPing/knowing where to go next, so I can't really complain. Finished in 28m 15s.

Primadonna (50 rogue sonic/kin corruptor) did a quick ITF in 22m 54s.

I made a "business suit" costume (similar to the Crey agent outfit) for Spy Girl (39 rogue MA/ninj stalker) and spent some time playtesting and tweaking my Papers and Paychecks AE story arc.


Saturday

Police Woman picked up the Smuggler day job badge (from hanging out by Rogue Isles ferries) and the Profiteer accolade, making 902 badges total.

Spent some time playing Helen Highwater (26 hero storm/psy defender on Triumph) on a team of AE enthusiasts; we played an arc called A Wake for Dead 6, which is basically a series of flashbacks establishing the background story of a ghostly hero. This had some interesting story mechanics (phrasing all the objectives and dialog like a story that the contact is telling you) but was pretty confusing at times, too. I gave it 3 stars.

Some people were complaining on LB that they can never find any defenders to play with, so they die a lot; I ended up logging on Rain Dancer (50 hero storm/archery defender) and exemping to their 5 player level 39 team, and we did 4 hero tip missions. From observing this team, I actually think they needed a tanker more than they did a defender; our pistols blaster routinely would jump into mobs and use Hail of Bullets as his opening attack, so it wasn't that surprising that he died a lot. I spent my time trying to show the team how cool stormies are.

Teal Serpent (33 villain archery/traps corruptor) did a 4-player Cap SF. We had a team wipe against Attack Leader Zurabsal due to getting massive CoT aggro while fighting him, but otherwise did fine. Cleared most of the last mission, defeating Infernal and all the demons down the various tunnels to the altars, then beating Bat'Zul to finish in 41m 58s. After the SF, there was a zombie attack in Cap, and we fought them for awhile; using traps against them was fun, since they would spawn right onto them.

Later, Teal Serpent also did a 7-player Sharkhead SF. During the first mission we got split up and someone team TP'd, which left Barracuda by herself, and she died to Longbow aggro, causing us to fail the mission. The SF lets you try it again, though, and we succeeded on the second try. We had one person disconnect and another person quit along the way, but still finished in 47m 6s and Teal got to level 34.

After that, Teal Serpent also did a 1st villain respec. The team wasn't really well-equipped for stealthing/speeding missions, and so we had a team wipe while trying to do that on the first door mission against the Hero attack leaders. One player had to quit for RL and kinda bugged our SF, causing the first mission to seemingly repeat. Some team members wanted to go ahead and redo the mission, but I managed to talk them into exiting the mission and all talking to the respec contact, and one of them was able to do so, advancing us to the final mission, which got a little messy but we got it done. Finished in 22m 38s.

Primadonna (50 rogue sonic/kin corruptor) did a 6 player Katie TF. We started off well, but Mary #9 decided to run away from us. We gave pursuit and killed her, but this left the team rather strung out over a long distance, and so Mary #10 spawned when we were not really organized, and wiped us out. After recovering from that, we finished the KTF in 48m 43s without any further problems.

Primadonna also did a Statesman TF, which went fine til the last mission. Our shield tanker was tanking all 4 patron AVs and I was trying to stack ID on him while still doing other buffs and attacks, and he got held by Ghost Widow even through 6 stacked IDs on him, which felt pretty unfair; the mag on that hold is ridiculous. Nevertheless we beat them, the tanker fly-taunted Lord Recluse and we killed Red/Green/Yellow towers before killing Recluse, finishing in 50m 18s. I got a Nucleolus SHO.


Sunday

Primadonna joined an 8-player Dam Heroes (Positron 2) TF on +1 difficulty. We had a team wipe against Rollister in the last mission due to aggroing multiple CoT spawns, but otherwise did fine, finishing in 1h 25m.

Arrow Girl (40 vigilante archery/nrg blaster) did a clear-most ITF on +2 difficulty. This team was quite strong and we handled the +2 difficulty with no problem at all. At one point the empath used Secondary Mutation and turned into a monkey, just in time for one of our dominators to die. This didn't seriously slow us down, I just thought it was funny. Finished in 1h 11m and got Arrow Girl to level 42.

Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) did a speed ITF in 23m 24s, followed by soloing 2 villain tip missions. I originally thought I would turn Mega into a rogue, now I'm thinking she will confirm being a villain instead; mostly due to the lure of tasty villain merits. Plus, I've already moved 2 brutes from villain to hero side.

Speaking of, Fire Maiden (49 hero SS/fire brute) did a Statesman TF on which she hit level 50. Of note, mission 2 in Recluse's Victory finished weirdly; the designated person to finish the mission had already entered the building leading towards the exit, before Viridian died. As a result, he didn't get credit for the "Go Home" objective and we seemed stuck on the mission until he re-entered it and retraced his steps some, which finished the mission. We made up some time in mission 4, however, where the Real Security Chief was in the first mob we fought. Finished in 47m 41s and got an Endoplasm SHO.


Monday

Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) solo'd 3 villain tip missions.

Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) joined a pickup ITF on +1 difficulty. I had drunk a couple White Russians so was pretty tipsy and warned the team I might not be playing well, but actually, I don't think I died at all, despite playing very aggressively (e.g. I attacked Romulus when it looked like no one else would). Maybe I play better while drunk. Finished in 51m 13s.

Mystery Girl (50 vigilante emp/pistols defender) joined a 4-player flashback of the Maria Jenkins arc. We did the whole arc, beating Chimera, Nightstar, Bobcat, Neuron, Battle Maiden, Black Swan, Malaise, Mother Mayhem, Diabolique, Infernal, Dominatrix and Marauder, and I got 21 reward merits for the flashback, which took 1h 11m altogether. Also got badges for the new Seers and Praetorian Clockwork. Mystery Girl is still missing 1 Praetorian AV, which I believe is Siege; he didn't appear in the new Maria arc at all. Apparently he appears in some other mission now.


Tuesday

Millie Volt (50 hero elec/elec brute) did a 4-player Citadel; we had 2 padders who quit immediately after the TF started. This left us with an all-villain team of 2 MMs, 1 brute (me) and a fortunata. We had no serious issues, finishing in 1h 12m.

Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) did a 7-player ITF. This team just didn't work that well; the AT mix looked OK on paper, but our squishies died constantly to the Cimerorans. The 3 melee were pretty durable but we basically had no support since everyone else was dead all the time. We had 2 team wipes against the final Romulus encounter, because the debuffers kept dying. We ended up methodically clearing all the Cimeroran ambushes before attacking Romulus, and I pulled away the healy Nictus for a bit to make things easier. Finally finished this in 1h 2m.


Wednesday

Mega solo'd another 5 villain tip missions. Had some technical issues with some of them; in the Summoned Dagger of Caernoz mission, the triggered Caernoz spawn ended up spawning behind me; since I was past him, I ended up clearing the entire rest of the mission while looking for him, before finally finding him at the front door. Then on the mission where you fight dozens of Miss Thystle clones, I killed the Thystle from Earth 5, from Earth 99 and the original Miss Thystle, but none of them seemed to count for the objective. This left the mission in a broken state and I ended up auto-completing it.

Finished the night doing some IO slotting for Mega. I replaced the 2 sets of 6 Mocking Beratement in Taunt and Provoke with 2 sets of 6 Perfect Zinger; this basically trades 5% recharge for 1.25% lethal defense, 5% damage and 20% regen. I also replaced the set of 4 Eradication and 2 Scirocco's Dervish in Foot Stomp with a set of 6 Obliteration, which trades 2.25% HP, 10% regen, 3.13% energy DEF for 3% damage, 5% recharge and 1.875% lethal defense.

This gets Mega's lethal defense up to 40.52% on her own; not quite soft capped, but a little closer, and with layered resistance/regen/HPs from willpower, this feels pretty good.

It was my ITF and honestly I didn't notice a difference. I think PW's drunk all the time.

Novel idea - drink and play. I may have to try that sometime.

If I remember correctly I think Protector has it in the play bylaws that you cannot be sober to play over there. I could be wrong. It was during a black-out so ...