PW's war journal

10/12/2010

Thursday

After some final tweaks, I submitted Papers and Paychecks (arc id 298290) to Dr. Aeon's 3rd Architect Challenge. Hoping for the best.

Star Amethyst (50 hero dark/ice defender) did a quick ITF in 22m 4s, followed by a quick Dr. Kahn TF in 24m 16s.

Rain Dancer (50 hero storm/arrow defender) joined an 8-player AV team that beat up Infernal and Chimera. After the team broke up, I solo'd 2 hero tip missions and the hero morality mission, confirming her Hero alignment and getting 50 reward merits.

Kyrie Eleison (50 vigilante fire/regen scrapper) joined an ITF; we were light on support and died a lot. I used the regen self-Revive probably 10 times in mission 1 alone; the ambush at the end of mission 1 was particularly nasty to us. We had a lot of deaths but also killed a lot of Romans, clearing pretty much everything. Had a team wipe in the last mission on Romulus's second life, but after recovering from that, we beat him up and finished the TF in 1h 29m.

Finished the night playing Strong Woman (50 hero inv/SS tanker) on a 3-player team that did one hero tip mission.


Friday

Made a new costume for Mystery Girl (50 vigilante emp/pistols defender); my original intention was to make some kind of femme fatale look, but this somehow ended up looking like a cheerleader outfit. Oh well. I still kinda like it. She is still missing one Praetorian AV (I suspect Siege), so I got a mission from Maria Jenkins and ended up soloing Infernal as an EB. This took 2 tries; a big damage spike from his axe got me the first try, while the second try I popped a bunch of lucks and managed to whittle him down over time. I was still pretty pleased to be able to beat him as a solo empath defender.

Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) joined a 5-player team for a Brickstown mayhem. We also got to fight Infernal, this time as a Hero. Got the Brickhouse and Vandal badges. This would've completed the Invader accolade, except I already had it from the hero/villain transition.

Shield Maiden (50 villain mace/shield brute) joined a pickup RSF, about half of whom had never done the RSF before. This was kinda messy. The technician was in tower 2 and we freed him and he disappeared; we all thought we were supposed to lead him to the computer and he had gotten bugged somehow, so we petitioned for a GM. Fortunately, a friend told me that you no longer have to lead the tech to the computer, and we simply clicked the computer to complete the mission. I'm sure I must've done a half dozen RSFs since they changed the tech to work this way, but this is the first time it really sank in. During the Vindicators mission we beat up the first group of Vindicators, then nearly had a team wipe while trying to clear the way to the glowy. Everyone died but me, and I ended up running to the door to Ms. Liberty's room and soloing all the Longbow there, then team TPing everyone's bodies to me to get awakened.

In the final mission the team wanted to pull with a snipe. I told them I thought this wouldn't work (the AVs always all come, I said), but we tried it anyway. It actually kinda worked; we pulled Numina solo to the city hall steps, then when she was nearly dead Synapse showed up and we killed him, then the next hero showed up, and we ended up getting them one at a time and killing them. This worked until we got both Statesman and Manticore at the same time, and we couldn't handle the both of them and had a team wipe. On the rematch, we beat Statesman and Manticore, completing the RSF in 2h 0m 29s. I got a Peroxisome. I asked the puller how he was doing it; he was a dark/dark and was using Shadow Meld, Shadow Fall, and the Moonbeam snipe. This is the first time I've heard of Shadow Meld being used in any kind of useful way.

After that I did a Numina TF in 1h 19m but I forgot to write down anything about it beyond that.

Strong Woman (50 hero inv/SS tanker) did 5 hero tip missions with a 3 player team.


Saturday

Millie Volt (50 hero elec/elec brute) joined a 5 player AV team that defeated Tyrant and Neuron.

Blond Justice (50 hero broadsword/shield scrapper) did an ITF in 31m 13s.

Mayday (50 hero fortunata) did an 8-player Manticore TF in 49m 32s.

Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) joined the Hamidon raid, on the Green Assault Team. The raid handled the 75% and 50% blooms pretty smoothly, then powered through the final bloom. We were succesful. I took the 53 merits, though in hindsight I'm not absolutely sure that's a better choice than a random HO. The HO seems better for STFs and RSFs, but 53 merits seems a lot more than the STF/RSF reward.

I hit the influence cap again and emailed myself another 500M inf dividend. This took 12 days, over twice as long as normal; I attribute this to a general fall in the prices of rare salvage, which is what I mostly trade in. Mid-September most rare salvage prices were averaging around 3M inf, but late September and early October, some kind of bubble burst and the average price fell to around 1.5M. I had a decent inventory of salvage purchased at the old price, so I lost some net worth there; but after a quick fire sale and some repricing, I got back into the market at the lower price point.

Teal Serpent (34 villain arrow/traps corruptor) joined a team that fought off a zombie apocalypse in Port Oakes. Then I solo'd 2 villain tip missions, before joining a 3-player team that did 2 rogue tip missions and a rogue morality mission. This left Teal's alignment bars kinda schizophrenic looking, but did get her to level 35. I took trip mine for her level 35 power.

TokyoRose (28 villain sonic/sonic corruptor) joined a 5-player team that ran a few paper missions in Grandville.

Primadonna (50 rogue sonic/kin corruptor) did a Moonfire TF. It was getting kinda late and I was spacing out and pretty inattentive. A teammate called me on it (oops!), after which I tried to wake up and stay focused; finished in 1h 19m, then called it a night.


Sunday

Kashira (32 villain db/ninj stalker) solo'd Have a Blap, Blap, Blappy Day Kids!, an AE story arc where you are investigating the disappearance of a purple dinosaur that hosts a kids TV show. I felt like the characters needed a bit more motivation and there were a lot of cameo appearances by player characters that I don't know and didn't seem to add to the story, so this didn't quite work for me. I gave a lot of feedback to the author, though, since this was an arc intended for Dr. Aeon's Architect Challenge.

Thunder Girl (50 hero elec/SR scrapper) did a Master of STF attempt with a team of:

shield/dark tanker
kat/will scrapper
ill/cold controller
ice/kin controller
ill/rad controller
MA/SR scrapper
AR/nrg blaster
elec/SR scrapper (me)

This went pretty well until the last mission, where we tried to pull the patron AVs and got all 4 of them. The tanker was trying to tank all of them, but Ghost Widow got positioned in a way that the team was getting caught in her AoEs; we all moved around some to try and avoid this, but Ghost Widow eventually got someone, causing us to fail the Master Of attempt. After that we got kind of careless and the tanker got disconnected and we had a few more GW-related deaths. We did finish the STF in 1h 28m, though, and I got a Nucleolus.

Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) joined a clear-most ITF that finished in 55m 11s.

Mystery Girl (50 vigilante emp/pistols defender) joined another Master of STF with a team of:

inv tanker
rad/psy defender
cold/rad defender
emp/pistols defender (me)
ill/kin controller
ill/rad controller
dark/cold corruptor
elec/elec blaster

This was originally intended to be a regular STF, but this team lineup was so support-heavy that I talked them into making it a Master of STF. This was a different team than the MoSTF team I was on earlier in the day, but that other team was also making another try at the MoSTF; I teased them saying that if my team completed MoSTF and theirs didn't, I would never let them live it down.

Our team did fine all the way to the last mission. Against the patron AVs, the rad/psy defender pulled them one by one. Against Lord Recluse, the tanker pulled LR near the blue tower and straight up tanked him there, with me healing him. This all went really well and we completed the MoSTF in 1h 12m. I got a Nucleolus. (The other team did complete the MoSTF successfully too.)

After that, I played Mystery Girl on a LGTF. We mostly cleared missions 1 and 2, then tried to fail mission 3 but it took awhile to get Infernia killed, she really put up a fight. During mission 4 one of our 2 dominators got disconnected, making it hard to hold the green mitos and painful to kill them, but we eventually got them. Cleared the way through mission 5, to finish the LGTF in 1h 29m.

I finished the night soloing Kashira (32 villain db/ninj stalker) through Your Blue Collar Nemesis, an AE story arc about a mad scientist from Praetoria that comes to Paragon City. This was the author's first attempt and it really showed, there were quite a lot of problems. I tried to give some constructive feedback and decided not to rate the arc; he had no ratings on the arc at all and I thought it would be too demoralizing for his first rating to be a low one.


Monday

Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) solo'd the villain morality mission, confirming her villain alignment and gaining 50 reward merits.

Teal Serpent (35 villain arrow/traps corruptor) joined an Ice Mistral SF. Our team was pretty squishy overall, but we had 3 traps toons which was pretty fun; we laid a ton of traps around the AV in the final mission, and the ambushes spawned on them or ran into them with pleasing results. Finished in 1h 34m.

I rolled up a new ice/kin corruptor in Praetoria, in preparation for the kinetic superteam. I made her a re-imagined Mercy Beaucoup (a Canadian themed hero that was originally an emp/ice defender); we're supposed to get to level 4, so I joined a large team running missions in Praetoria. Levels go fast at low level, though, so the new Mercy got to level 7 before I swapped out.

After that I played Fire Maiden (50 hero SS/fire brute) on a speed ITF; we were REALLY speedy, due to high DPS and debuffs, finishing in 19m 52s. Our team was 2 Arachnos soldiers, 1 kin, 1 rad, 2 brutes, 2 scrappers. I didn't get the exact powersets beyond that, though.

Millie Volt (50 hero elec/elec brute) did an STF in 38m 13s and got a Nucleolus. I also bought a Ragnarok (DMG/RCHG/ACC) for 292M and Ragnarok (DMG/RCHG) for 295M inf; not cheap, but not a bad deal. I got them both as IOs, for some reason purple set IOs are sometimes cheaper than the purple set recipes.

Blond Justice (50 hero broadsword/shield scrapper) joined a pickup ITF. I was originally recruited by a friend, but right before the TF started she gave the star to a player I have a pretty low opinion of, which was surprising to me. I decided to just go with it, though we did have the following conversation during the TF:

[Tell] (Friend): I will apologize ahead of time if this is terrible. heh
[Tell] (Friend): (Friend's Spouse) and I got roped into this.
[Tell] -->(Friend): hehe, thanks why did you give the star to (Horrible Player), out of curiosity?
[Tell] -->(Friend): Oh I see
[Tell] (Friend): He was leading from the beginning. He asked me to find people.
[Tell] (Friend): I have more friends apparently :P
[Tell] -->(Friend): It worked, I wouldn't have joined a team led by him
[Tell] (Friend): I wouldn't normally either. Which is why I am apologizing.
[Tell] -->(Friend): haha, ok
[Tell] (Friend): Hopefully we will both be surprised and it will be decent :P

This struck me as being totally hilarious. The new leader asked us to "speed" the ITF, so I went along with this and rushed all the objectives, turning a blind eye to the fact that most of the squishies (including the new leader) couldn't handle a speed ITF and were dying a lot. I was kind of nervous that the new leader might kick me from the TF at some point out of spite (since I had kicked him from a previous TF for being a slacker) but it never happened. In this way we managed to get through the ITF in 38m 1s, which actually wasn't too bad.

Finished the night playing Fire Maiden (50 hero SS/fire brute) on a 3-player team hunting Fake Nemesis in Firebase Zulu. I normally hunt Fakes in Peregrine Island, but according to my teammates, they spawn plentifully around Point Tango, Point X-Ray and Point Sierra in FBZ. They didn't seem to be more frequent in FBZ than in PI to me, but we did eventually get the Unveiler badge, after which I ran around to the explore badges and plaques to get the Freedom Phalanx Reserve accolade.

hey, camo's itfs arent that bad

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nights_Dawn Hazy is right

10/14/2010

Tuesday

Millie Volt (50 hero elec/elec brute) bought an Apocalypse (DMG/RCHG) IO for 332M inf. I'm gradually purpling out some of her powers for extra +rchg. It's a good way to use up excess inf.

Solo'd with Kashira (32 villain db/ninj stalker) a bit. I've been pondering whether to reroll her as a dual blades scrapper, since scrappers seem so much better on teams than stalkers, but I have a lot of scrappers already, so I haven't done this yet. The stealth is pretty nice for soloing. Maybe I just need a respec or something. I did cash in 50 reward merits for 1 villain merit, which I used for 5 random recipe rolls. I got:

Aegis (END/RCHG/RES)
Pacing of the Turtle (proc)
Performance Shifter (RCHG/ACC)
Mako's Bite (DMG/RCHG)
Luck of the Gambler (DMG/END/RCHG)

This seemed pretty unexciting; the Mako's Bite and LotG are the best of the bunch, but are mid-tier in value at best.

Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) joined a speed ITF which finished in 27m 7s. I got an Absolute Amazement (RCHG/ACC) recipe drop, which was nice.


Wednesday

Blond Justice (50 hero broadsword/shield scrapper) solo'd 5 hero tip missions. I originally planned to have her go vigilante (since, after all, she hacks people with swords) but I'm starting to think I'd be better off making most of my toons pure hero or pure villain, for the hero/villain merits.

Kashira solo'd an AE story arc called One Normal Girl, which basically had me following the life story of a new fire-based heroine; the story arc depicted her origin, fall from grace and redemption. It was decently written, but needed a little more material in places, and ultimately it really felt like I was just observing another person's adventures, rather than being a part of the story. I gave it 4 stars.

After that I joined a 7 player team that did 5 Rogue tip missions (I had actually planned on having Kashira stay villain, but this was what the team was doing, so I just went with it). After filling up on fame, I switched to Water Lily (30 villain rad/storm corruptor) to do 3 more rogue tip missions and 1 villain tip mission (my mistake - I accidentally selected the "villain" choice when we were supposed to be doing rogue missions...it was an accident! I'm not really evil!).

Finished the night playing Teal Serpent (35 villain archery/traps corruptor) on a clear most ITF. We weren't really speeding, but I died a lot for some reason. We had a tanker but he was complaining he had some sort of unusual aggro issues, and so the rest of the team soaked a lot of the Cimeroran damage. I got a "you aggro more than me!" from our kinetic, which probably isn't a good thing. The Cimerorans really, really hated poison traps, I guess. Everyone died a lot, though, and we even had a team wipe in the valley of lag in mission 3. We kept moving forward, though, and it was still pretty good exp. Romulus in the final mission ran around a little, but still died pretty quick (we had quite a lot of debuff). Finished in 1h 5m and got to level 37.

<3PW. I am so excited that you quoted me.

10/18/2010

Thursday

Teal Serpent (37 villain archery/traps corruptor) did an ITF in 57m 54s, getting to level 38.

I started a new loyalist dark/kin corruptor with the name "Math Model", basically a geeky pun. I am torn between dark/kin or ice/kin for the kin superteam; both seem like they could be good. Math Model joined a 4 player Praetorian team that got her to level 5. I got to see Belladonna Ventrano (the Praetorian Ghost Widow) in one of these missions; she was very much alive and seemed a pretty cool character.

Water Lily (31 villain rad/storm corruptor) joined a 5 player team doing rogue tip missions; we did 5 missions, then I switched to Kashira (32 villain db/ninj stalker) for another 5 rogue missions. This got Kashira to level 33. Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) also did 2 rogue missions.

Water Lily ended up doing the rogue morality mission to change alignment to Rogue, then crossed over to blue side for a Sister Psyche TF. This finished in 1h 49m and got Water Lily to 32.


Friday

A friend asked me to help with signature heroes in Recluse's Victory, so I brought Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) to RV. We had a full team with some hangers-on. There was a little PvP early on but it seemed like the more serious PvPers (I saw at least 2) were actually leaving us alone, which was unusually nice. After some pillbox manipulation, we got all the heroes except Synapse; it felt like we spent hours trying to spawn Synapse, only to get all the other heroes instead. Eventually, though, when we were close to giving up, we finally spawned and killed him, completing the RV signature hero badges and accolade.

Millie Volt picked up an Apocalypse (DMG/END) IO for 281M on the market; this was her 5th Apocalypse, so gave her +10% global recharge (total now +72.5% rchg while hasten is down).

Fire Maiden (50 hero SS/fire brute) did an ITF in 22m 40s and got a Hecatomb (chance of negative) recipe drop. I went on to do 3 hero tip missions with the tip drops I got.

Finally I brought Mega back on to help an 8-player team kill Deathsurge in Cap au Diable.


Saturday

Mystery Girl (50 vigilante emp/pistols defender) did a speed Sharkhead SF in 32m 39s.

Indigo Ifrit (50 villain fire/rad corruptor) helped on a Master of the Recluse SF with a team mix of:

stone/stone tanker
fire/kin controller
emp/psy defender
dark/dark corruptor
2 fire/rad corruptors (including me)
dark/inv scrapper
spine/will scrapper

We actually succeeded at the Master of the RSF with this team mix, completing it in 58m 51s. I actually had the MoRSF badge on Indigo Ifrit (and had forgotten); I had played her because the team leader asked for debuff, though. I did get a Microfilament SHO drop, though, which seemed to be going for around 450M at the market, so that was pretty good.

After that another team asked me to play a debuffer for their Master of the Barracuda SF attempt. (In hindsight it would've been so much smarter to make my main badging character a debuffer...oh well.) I played Indigo Ifrit for this as well. Our team mix was:

fire/mace tanker
crab
dark/dark scrapper
DB/will stalker
fire/dark corruptor
spine/will scrapper
fire/rad corruptor (me)
emp/psy defender

We actually weren't playing very carefully, with the tanker setting a pretty aggressive pace and the team frequently getting strung out into separate fights. A corruptor died in the very first mission against some random Longbow, which blew the "Master of" attempt, but we continued anyway. In the second mission we lost track of Mueller (our stealth aura, I'm guessing) and didn't actually take him to the console, so after Reichsman got loose and we were sent to jail, we still had an objective to lead Mueller to the computer. Fortunately, defeating the AV completed the mission anyway. In the final mission we fought Reichsman straight up, with ambushes pouring in; we seemed to have enough support that this actually worked fine. Our stalker did manage to kill all the 5th Column at least once using his temp power, and Reichsman never phased that I saw (possibly the defender temp power was suppressing it). Finished in 1h 36m.

Somehow I immediately got invited to another Barracuda SF right after this (though not a Master Of). I initially wanted to play Police Woman for the badge, but when our team filled up to 8 and we had nothing approximating a tanker or brute at all, I switched to Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) instead, because I figured we needed someone to tank Reichsman. This team mix was much weaker than the previous team; we got to the final mission just fine, but had 2 team wipes against Reichsman (everyone died but me), mostly due to the huge number of ambushes that showed up. I tried moving our team to the hallway just outside Reichsman's room, but we were getting hit from both sides and the squishies kept dying; eventually I ran all the way to a dead end room (the one where you find Ghost Widow) and team TP'd everyone's bodies there. Then I physically blocked the door with my body (Mega is max height so is pretty good for this) and told everyone to stay behind me while we cleared the remaining ambushes. This seemed to work better, and after pounding a very large number of 5th Column, the ambushes slowed to a trickle and we were able to take on Reichsman solo. Finished the SF in 2h 5m.

After that I joined a Lady Grey TF with Spacegirl (50 hero mind/rad controller). This was a pickup team with a pretty weak team mix; I took the last spot on the team, and noticed that before I joined they had no controllers/dominators and just one fort for holds, so I think they would've hit a brick wall fighting the green mitos if I hadn't joined. I was also the only source of healing, other than the frequently AFK storm defender (though in fairness, he also accused me of being AFK at one point; as it happens, I was writing notes). When we actually got to Hamidon, both the stormy and the fortunata were calling for people to assist target through them for mitos, which had comedic results. We eventually got our act together and beat Hamidon, though, and the final mission went without a hitch. We completed the LGTF in 58m 46s.

Mayday (50 rogue fortunata) joined an 8-player team that killed Scrapyard, then I solo'd her hero morality mission, converting her to full hero alignment. Moved her to Fort Trident to start converting reward merits into hero merits.

Thunder Girl (50 hero elec/SR scrapper) solo'd 5 hero tip missions and a hero morality mission, earning a hero merit. I'm thinking of having her Go Rogue, though, to try and get the Mu Mastery patron powers; although I really like Fireball from her current Fire Mastery, I think the elec patron powers might be a better match thematically, and according to Mids they should also do more damage. I have to use up her huge pile of hero merits before I cross over, though.

I got invited to the new LFA channel. I was kind of dubious about this because I've seen a lot of attempts to start a new Liberty channel in the past, but I eventually agreed to join the channel. I turned down becoming a mod for this channel, however, partly because I'm not sure whether it will last, and partly because being a mod for LB is already more than enough responsibility.


Sunday

Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) did a flashback of the Couch Potato badge mission; this took me 13m 17s, but I actually had missed one of the objectives and ended up having to backtrack over the map a couple times, so I'm sure it can be done a lot faster than that. It was worth 2 merits, though, which seemed very good.

I also did a flashback of Dean MacArthur's story arc for the Bane of Ajax badge and 5 merits, and I did it with "No Inspirations" which got me the Unoriginal badge. The elapsed time was 10h 30m, but actually I started it before lunch, then was gone all day, and finished it after dinner, so that time isn't really valid.

Star Amethyst (50 hero dark/ice defender) joined a STF; went fine til the last mission where we had a rather messy fight agaisnt Lord Recluse. The tank lost aggro on LR once and he came and beat on us, then the flyer aggroed on us and killed some people, then the tank died at one point and LR rampaged around some more. But we managed to recover from this and finished the STF in 50m 1s. I got a Nucleolus.

Teal Serpent (38 villain archery/traps corruptor) helped kill Scrapyard for the badge.

Blond Justice (50 hero broadsword/shield scrapper) did a Kahn TF in 24m 17s, then solo'd 2 hero tip missions and the hero morality mission for a bonus 50 merits.

A lot of drama erupted on LB after I silenced a former mod for rude behavior. This former mod logged in some alt account that still had op status, gave his main account operator status, and kicked all the current LB mods from the channel. I tried to keep relatively calm about this, as I was worried I'd do actions I would regret if I lost my cool. But the truth is, I felt pretty bitter and angry about the situation. I had put a lot of effort into trying to do a good job as LB moderator, and I know I've lost old friends and made new enemies in the process. Having a former mod abuse his power because he felt he shouldn't have to follow the rules really made me mad.

I had pretty much gotten reconciled to the idea that I didn't need LB and was better off without it, when one of the other mods asked me to rejoin LB and gave me back moderator status. Apparently the guy who was causing trouble left the channel after his tantrum, and we ended up picking up the pieces after that.

I ended up joining an ITF with Teal Serpent, figuring I could get my mind off of the channel drama with a TF full of mindless killing. We finished the clear-most ITF in 42m 0s and got Teal Serpent to level 39.

10/26/2010

Wednesday

Hit the inf cap again and emailed myself another 500M inf. It took 11 days to make 500M inf this time, a definite slowdown from previous months; in my opinion, this is mostly because of the general decline in the price of rare salvage (which is the main thing I trade in).

Mercy Beaucoup (7 resistance ice/kin corr) joined the kin theme team, running on an 8-player team. I got a couple compliments on her patriotic Canadian costume. Our team was very squishy (we had a good number of support kins but essentially the only support we had to offer at this level was Transfusion) and we had a team wipe against the Syndicate, a team wipe against Resistance, and another team wipe against Rogue Clockwork. Despite these difficulties we leveled very fast and Mercy finished the night at level 15.

After that, Water Lily (32 rogue rad/storm corr) joined an 8-player Cap SF that finished in 44m 23s. We didn't have any serious issues except for pulling Bat'Zul, who has a terrible turning radius and getting him to move where we wanted was like parallel parking a Buick.

Our ninja LB ex-moderator tried talking with me, but he acted totally unrepentant and wanted to know when I would stop oppressing him. I tried to explain that I thought his actions were wrong, but he did not seem to get it; he seemed convinced that I am purposely singling him out because I dislike him on a personal level.


Thursday/Friday

More LB drama as our ninja ex-mod gave himself operator powers again and unsilenced himself. I felt that I had to remove his operator status and silence him again, despite realizing this would cause a fight. This resulted in him eventually giving himself operator powers again and kicking all the legitimate LB mods again, which took some time to fix. On the bright side, I learned a lot about chat channel PVP. I've figured out how he's been giving himself back operator status without it showing up in the chat channel, and various other nasty tricks; it's not exactly secret but I won't explain exactly how here because of the potential for abuse. The chat channel permissions system is pretty terrible and there does not seem to be a good way to stop people from abusing it, once they have gotten operator status and decide to willfully abuse it. Nevertheless I feel morally obligated to stop what abuse that I can.

I ended up restarting Virtual Girl (newbie katana/fire scrapper); I had deleted her to make another alt, then kinda regretted it. Started her in Praetoria again and solo'd up to 4.

Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) did a couple Halloween tip missions with small teams, getting the Secured and Power Hungry badges.

Spacegirl (50 hero mind/rad controller) helped a team fight banners in Steel Canyon and Croatoa; we were able to kill a couple banners but never quite defeated them fast enough to spawn the Greater Aspect.

Primadonna (50 rogue sonic/kin corruptor) joined a clear-most ITF that finished in 1h 6m. In the final mission, this team strangely decided to pull Romulus way far to the southwest of the raised platform, saying that it would avoid the Cimeroran ambushes. This actually seemed to work.

I started Tour de Force (newbie Praetorian FF/nrg defender), mostly to mock a friend who said FF/nrg defender was the worst powerset combo possible. Got up to level 17 doing trick or treating and fighting zombie invasions on a small team. The zombies were utterly horrible at low level, requiring a lot of runs back from the hospital (they seem much stronger than normal lowbie enemies); trick or treating went really well, though, getting us lots of exp. Once I got to DO level it seemed like I was able to DEF cap the shield, SR and ice armor toons on my team, making us pretty invincible.

Millie Volt (50 hero elec/elec brute) did a vigilante morality mission, switching alignment to Vigilante. Thinking she'll eventually go back to Villain, or maybe Rogue.

Quick Katie (50 hero plant/kin controller) did an ITF in 37m 35s. Mission 2 against the Nictus was kinda messy for me and the other squishies, and both I and a plant dominator automatically dropped Carrion Creepers against Romulus at the end without really thinking about it, to the consternation of the team.

Star Amethyst (50 hero dark/ice defender) helped a team defeat the Halloween Jack and Eochai GMs.


Saturday

Police Woman did another 3 Halloween tips with a 3 player team, getting the Artifact Destroyer, Veiled, Arriviste and Meticulous badges. This team had gotten down a rhythm of splitting up to trick or treat until someone got a tip drop, then teaming up to knock out each tip mission. After I got the accolade I switched to Schadenfreude (50 villain AR/pain corruptor) for another 4 Halloween tip missions.

Switched to Triumph server to play Lt. Mary Sue (23 hero emp/AR defender) on a team of people playing AE missions. We played Getting to Know Crey Financial, which was an interesting looking office comedy, but was cut short, leaving the arc incomplete; I gave it 3 stars. We also played The Christmas Zombie Attack, an arc about a zombie apocalypse occurring in Santa's Workshop at the North Pole. This was disturbing but pretty cool; I gave it 5 stars.

After that, Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) joined 3 Master of the RSF attempts in a row, none of which came anywhere close to being successful. On our first attempt, a corruptor died in the first mission to random Longbow while soloing off on her own, which caused us to immediately restart.

Second attempt, we got through the first mission, but on the second mission, people immediately rushed the Kronos Titan even before the whole team was on the map, resulting in the same corruptor dying. It was pretty clear we weren't playing well enough to accomplish the MoRSF, so we pressed on. I think this was a combination of the leader not really knowing how the RSF works, so he gave no directions, and people not really treating the Master Of settings very seriously. The brute who took the Malta gun in mission 2 ended up disconnecting in mission 3, and never came back; during mission 4 we defeated the main group of Vindicators, but decided we could not defeat Ms Liberty without the Malta gun, so we gave up at that point.

The third attempt, I said I would only join if we were serious about trying it for real, and everyone said, yes, really, this time. Once I joined, though, I could see just from looking at the team lineup that we had no real shot, since we only had 2 support toons. I should have either quit or offered to switch to a support character, but due to sheer apathy I ended up just going with it. We actually did better than either of the previous attempts due to playing more carefully, but in mission 4 our stone tanker somehow died to the Vindicators, then in mission 5 we had two team wipes against the Freedom Phalanx before we finally were able to beat them. I think we were playing better on this attempt, we just did not have enough support toons to make it viable. Finished in 1h 21m and got a Centriole SHO.


Sunday

I decided to work on getting a patron badge for Police Woman, so I solo'd Ghost Widow's first story arc for the Spider's Kiss badge and 10 reward merits.

I've been gradually buying purple recipes and IOs for Millie Volt; today I picked up a Hecatomb (DMG/RCHG/ACC) IO for 362M inf and a Hecatomb (RCHG/ACC) recipe for 335M inf.

Water Lily (33 rogue rad/storm corr) did an 8-player Citadel in 1h 31m which got her to level 34, then an 8-player Moonfire TF in 1h 2s.

I've been rather disenchanted with my shield brute, Shield Maiden (50 villain mace/shield brute), because it doesn't feel like she does as much damage as my shield scrapper. In principle they ought to do comparable damage, though, since they're both level 50 and fairly well IO'd out. I asked other people's opinions on shield brute vs shield scrapper DPS, and got mixed responses; some people thought the brute should do more due to fury, some people thought the scrapper should do more due to the higher base damage.

Ultimately I decided to test it for myself. I first brought Blond Justice (50 hero broadsword/shield scrapper) to the Cimeroran wall, moved into a spawn of level 50 Cimerorans for the Against All Odds bonus, then did a Build Up/Shield Charge combination. Doing this, my scrapper consistently hit the minions for 396 damage.

Next I brought Shield Maiden to the Cimeroran wall. I had her stand in the middle of a Cimeroran spawn, letting them swing at her until her fury reached 78% (it wouldn't go higher with me just standing there letting stuff swing at me). Then I hit Build Up/Shield Charge. Doing this, my brute consistently hit the minions for 284 damage.

284 is a LOT less than 396, which kinda confirms my general feeling that my shield brute wasn't doing as much damage. This is a lot less than I would've even guessed, though, because I thought brute and scrapper should be pretty close. For awhile I thought maybe fury doesn't affect Shield Charge at all; I posted on the Brute forum asking about this, but after getting some responses and doing some more testing, I determined that Fury does affect Shield Charge, but Shield Charge has its damage bonus capped at some very low number.

Finished the night playing TokyoRose (28 villain sonic/sonic corruptor) on a 5 player team doing missions in Sharkhead, including someone's cape mission and a Halloween tip. This got TokyoRose to level 29.


Monday

Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) did an ITF in 21m 17s, then a Sharkhead SF (technically 6 players, but actually 2 players were 2-boxing so really only 4 of us but 6 toons...not super thrilled about that) in 29m 52s. Mega is pretty tough at level 50 but felt very squishy at the level 30 that the Sharkhead SF exemped us down to; I could really feel the loss of Fighting pool and the IO set bonuses, all of which were higher than level 30. Maybe I should play a different toon for level 30 stuff.

Math Model (13 loyalist dark/kin corruptor) joined the kin superteam for a couple hours; we had one team wipe against Syndicate, but otherwise did very well, getting Math Model to level 16. I've been slotting her dark AoE attacks with ToHitDebuff DOs, hoping that this would help improve our team survivability, but it's really hard to tell if it is making any difference.

Indigo Ifrit (50 villain fire/rad corr) did another ITF with a 7 player team in 21m 46s.

Disillusioned with my shield brute, I ended up transferring Shield Maiden to another server, then re-making her as a level 1 scrapper. At first I made her a broadsword/shield scrapper, because I have some sort of complex about needing to have a weapon on shield toons (shield in left hand and empty right hand just looks wrong to me). But I already have a level 50 broadsword/shield scrapper, so after thinking about it for awhile, I decided it was dumb to have two; so I remade her again, this time as a fire/shield scrapper, partly to use fire swords for the "weapon look", partly because by all reports this is a crazy high DPS combination. Upon arriving in Nova Praetoria, I almost immediately got invited to a lowbie team by someone I don't even know; I joined up and did a few missions, getting to level 7 and making a new global friend. This was pretty cool.

I remember talking with you about the brute vs scrapper on Sunday. The brute has lower base damage, and less +damage from Build up and AAO, but the main thing seems to be the low damage cap on Shield Charge. Because it's a pseudo pet Shield Charge is limited to 400% damage for both brute and scrapper, so the brute can't take advantage of the higher cap they have.

The base damage of a power is 100%, and cap is 400% so that leaves 300%. It's easy for a brute to go over that cap. 78% fury is 156% damage, plus Build up (80%), AAO (55%) and 95% damage enhancement in the power equals 386% damage. So right there you're wasting 86% +damage. That's without outside buffs, and multiplied by the brutes lower base damage.

I think you'll enjoy the fire/shield, I've been having fun with mine. He's only 20 so far and does massive damage. Combined with a purple inspiration, or your FF fender to hit soft cap and he's plenty tough enough to keep going.

I think you'll get your weapons to go with your shield soon. In the thread where they asked for alternate animation ideas, all sword and no sword options were a popular request for fire melee. I look forward to all swords myself.

Regarding Mega's squishiness at low levels, Inherent fitness means we can take fighting on our scrappers and brutes much earlier. I'm looking forward to taking lots of good powers much earlier in all my builds after i19.

10/27/2010

A friend was having trouble with Malta ambushes, so I logged on Mystery Girl (50 vigilante emp/pistols defender) to join her team, which exemped me down to level 40. We participated in a successful banner event, taking down all 4 banners (with the help from another team and maybe some others) and defeating the Greater Mystic Aspect for a fistful of badges, then did some trick or treating in Peregrine Island for awhile.

After that team broke up, I switched to the new Shield Maiden (8 loyalist fire/shield scrapper); a couple friends wanted to team up, and I recruited a few more. I ended up leading an 8-player team doing door missions in Imperial City. Unfortunately we immediately suffered a team wipe to a big spawn of, I think it was Resistance... an 8-player spawn of gold-side mobs is pretty ferocious, and most of us were used to playing aggressively with higher level toons. After some trial and error we got the hang of things and managed to do the whole Cutter Cain story arc and most of Mr G's Eddie Polstra arc. This got Shield Maiden to level 12.

11/1/2010

Wednesday

Teal Serpent (39 villain archery/traps corruptor) joined a clear-most ITF. The team was pretty heavy on support but running at +2 difficulty we still had some random deaths. Despite this it was quite good exp. Finished in 1h 2m and got to level 41, though I didn't take a level 41 power since I hadn't unlocked a patron yet.

Mercy Beaucoup (15 resistance ice/kin corruptor) played on the kinetics superteam. I got a costume compliment from a teammate. At level 16 I took Increase Density and started using this as a regular buff on my teammates, mostly for the energy resist since it seemed to me that a lot of the Praetorian enemies use energy damage. Running on the kinetics team got Mercy up to level 20.

Millie Volt (50 vigilante elec/elec brute) did some solo trick-or-treating in Grandville, running 2 Halloween tip missions and 5 villain tip missions.


Thursday

Solo'd Shield Maiden (13 loyalist fire/shield scrapper) through Transmuter's story arc (2 merits) and Alec Parsons' story arc (1 merit), before joining a 3 player team. I took Kick to begin unlocking the Fighting pool, and ended up adding it to my attack chain (I only had Fire Sword, Cremate, Kick and Brawl); I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Kick doesn't put the shield away, so it didn't cause as much redraw as I feared. (It does put away fire sword, though.) This team was a little slow paced as our thermal corruptor was new and just learning how to play, but it went pretty well. We did have one team wipe against the Syndicate (they're pretty nasty). This all got Shield Maiden to level 16.


Friday

Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) solo'd Timeshift Vietnam 1968, an AE story arc about time traveling back to the Vietnam War and fighting the 5th Column there (?). This was a neat idea and some of the custom mobs looked pretty good, but I never did quite "get" why I was fighting Nazis in Vietnam. I gave it 4 stars.

Mercy Beaucoup (20 resistance ice/kin corruptor) made the jump to blue side, and helped a team fighting zombies in Talos.

Shield Maiden (16 loyalist fire/shield scrapper) solo'd Investigator Whitworth's arc and IVy's arc, getting her to level 18. Soloing the Praetorian arcs is kind of nice, because taking the time to read the contact dialog, the stories there are actually pretty cool.

Thunder Girl (50 hero elec/SR scrapper) did a Halloween tip mission, then joined people running the banner event in Peregrine Island. We had some people attacking mobs when the banners were vulnerable, and I had to get a little bossy telling people what to do. We were ultimately successful, however.

Police Woman attended the dev sponsored costume ball in Pocket D. There was a surprisingly large turnout, probably at least 30 or so people. Since people keep teasing me by calling me a witch, I gave Police Woman a witch costume; witches were actually pretty common at that event, though. Avatea, the community rep, did make a showing and gave away 3 origin pack codes.

Millie Volt joined a Manticore TF; since I was level 50, the original team leader ended up giving me the star to make the team run at the max level. I found that, if I timed Millie's END drain power right, I could drain all the END from a Paragon Protector right before it could use Moment of Glory; this seemed a very useful trick. Our TF kind of stalled when we had to Defeat 20 Crey in Brickstown, but the Halloween banner event had taken over Brickstown so no Crey could be found. We ended up diverting to actually do the banner event, sending 2 team members to each banner until they were vulnerable. In this way we actually were able to complete the banner event with a very small force - basically our 8 player team plus maybe 3 or 4 people who showed up in response to our call for help. The Crey respawned right after the banner event ended, letting us continue. We finished the Manticore TF in 1h 11m (including about 20 minutes delay for the banners).

Police Woman joined a 7-player ITF where everyone had to be in a Halloween costume. We cleared most and completed the ITF in 50m 13s. I got an Armageddon (DMG) recipe drop.

I solo'd some AE story arcs with Spy Girl (40 rogue MA/ninj stalker); I tried the various Guest Author arcs that I hadn't done before. I just didn't like The Great Face-Off (I really dislike "The Great Face" and the way he's written, which I think makes the player seem stupid) or A Little Night Music (didn't make any sense) and gave them 3 stars each. I also did the dev choice arc Welcome to Architect Entertainment, which was pretty good for an early story arc but definitely shows its age; I gave it 4 stars. Between arcs, I also helped a team kill the Halloween Eochai in Sharkhead Isle, and afterwards I logged on Primadonna (50 rogue sonic/kin corruptor) to help kill the Halloween Jack.


Saturday

Police Woman started a flashback of Leonard's arc; I beat the 8 clones to get the Army of Me badge. I didn't set any challenge settings because I figured 8 clones would be rough enough, and indeed, I died once before I was able to get them all.

Mercy Beaucoup (20 hero ice/kin corr) joined a 7-player team that did 2 hero tip missions, getting Mercy to level 21. Mercy also helped a 4 player team (poison MM, me as kin, 2 blasters) beat Babbage in Boomtown.

Primadonna helped with the banner event in Sharkhead Isle, getting badge credit for 2 of the banners and the mystic aspect.

Shield Maiden solo'd Mother Mayhem's arc (2 merits); I loved how completely nutty Praetor Tilman was. Vanessa deVore's tricks were really pretty cool when I faced her, but I ultimately decided to let her go; not sure if that affects anything though. I went on to solo Dr Hertzfield's arc (2 merits) and Bobcat's arc (2 merits). I really liked Bobcat's story, and was strongly tempted to make a "matching outfit to rob the bank with" as Bobcat suggested. This all got Shield Maiden to level 20, and I immediately hopped through the portal to the Rogue Isles, becoming a villain.

Water Lily (34 rogue rad/storm corr) joined an 8-player Synapse TF. This was a very strong team with lots of support; it turned out that the leader had set "players debuffed" among the challenge settings and no one noticed until the Clockwork Lord mission, near the end. (Oh, a few of us thought it was too hard to hit the clockworks, but I think we kinda wrote that off as random chance.) Despite being debuffed we killed Babbage, with some help. In the final mission, we got to face the Clockwork King while debuffed, plus our kheldian caused a Nictus crystal to spawn in the same group as the AV. The leader called on us to kill the Nictus crystal first, then the AV; this actually worked. Finished the TF in 2h 21m and got Water Lily to level 36.


Sunday

Police Woman finished soloing the flashback of Leonard's arc. I managed to solo Protean (though he did Power Siphon me once) through inspirations and lots of kiting. I saved the clone from the fire (not sure what that affects, maybe just the last bank mission) and got the Explosive Finale badge, along with 5 merits. I also hit the inf cap at the black market again, and emailed myself another 500M inf.

I went on to do a bunch of paper missions in Grandville and a Peregrine Island mayhem to unlock Efficiency Expert Pither. Doing 5 of his timed missions gave me the Efficiency Expert badge.

Shield Maiden (21 villain fire/shield scrapper) joined a 6-player team that did the Founders Falls mayhem. After that I tried to get the cape mission from Kalinda, but she insisted on sending me on a level 21 Defeat Burch mission; Burch spawned at level 10 but was guarded by level 21 Longbow. Solo'd my cape mission to get to level 22 and SOs. I have skipped all of Fitness pool on Shield Maiden, hoping to avoid a respec when issue 19 hits, but I have to admit not having Stamina at level 22 is kinda sucking; I've been slotting heavily for ENDRDX to try and manage the END issues, but running and moving slowly (due to no Swift) is really bugging me too.

Millie Volt joined a 7-player Katie TF as part of the Sisterhood Sunday event. We were on +1 difficulty. Being elec armor was really nice against the 10 Mary AVs in the first mission; none of the witches could really hurt Millie due to her maxed energy resist. We had 4 MMs on the team which made the two cave missions kind of a hassle (we elected not to stealth, instead fighting to Amy), but we managed. In the final mission we cleared the way to free Katie, then led her back. While doing so, we encountered a bunch of other NPC witches that we rescued and they helped us! I had no idea these existed, since teams almost always stealth this mission. Fighting there and back was pretty dramatic as ambushes constantly assaulted us. Finished the Katie TF in 50m 59s.

Yuki-Onna (50 villain ice/cold corr) did a 7-player speed ITF in 21m 20s. Mayday (50 hero fortunata) did a speedy LGTF in 28m 7s; we delayed the final fight a bit because one player had gotten disconnected, and by the time he got back, Honoree had used his Unstoppable. Psy damage was able to break through, though.

After that, Yuki-Onna joined a Recluse SF. We had a little trouble in the last mission, where our lone shield brute had trouble staying alive while tanking the Freedom Phalanx, despite having tons of support; defense can be like that, I guess, and using vengeance before the fight doesn't help as much if you're already soft capped. The final fight was kind of messy but we eventually won on the first try, rezzing people back into the fight a few times. Finished in 41m 45s. I got a Golgi.

Mercy Beaucoup helped with a Halloween Jack in Founders Falls.

Fire Maiden (50 hero SS/fire brute) joined a speed ITF that finished in a blazing fast 19m 39s; our team mix was basically 1 kinetic and 7 damage dealers. A teammate complimented me on my toon.

Mystery Girl (50 vigilante emp/pistols defender) joined a Statesman TF; we were very support heavy and got to the final mission with no problems. We beat the patron AVs, and had a moment of confusion when our tanker attacked the flyer, but the team leader had asked us to rush Lord Recluse immmediately, so the rest of us were fighting the red tower. We managed to recover from this quickly and beat the TF in 41m 26s. After that, Mystery Girl helped with Halloween Eochai in Brickstown.

Shield Maiden solo'd 5 rogue tip missions, then a random person in Sharkhead asked to join my team. I decided to drag him into Architect Entertainment, and ended up leading a 4 player team through my Teen Phalanx Forever! story arc, then 3 players through Talos Vice, which got me to level 23. The random person who joined actually said he was inspired to work on "his story arc" (something to do with 5th Column mecha) afterwards, which was kinda cool.

11/16/2010


Wed 11/3

April Fool (50 villain thug/TA MM) solo'd 4 villain tip missions.

Mercy Beaucoup (23 hero ice/kin corr) joined the kinetics superteam doing Stephanie Peebles' story arc in Striga for the Wedding Band temp power. We had one team wipe against Council, partly due to the huge numbers of Council spawns closely packed together, partly because our team got split up. Frustratingly for a kin team, I had to ask the other players for speed boost; after the third time, I gave up and just did without (particularly annoying as I had not taken Stamina due to impending I19 and being teamed with kins all the time). After Stephanie's arc we did Tobias' arc, and a Steel Canyon safeguard, which got Mercy to level 26.

Teal Serpent (41 villain archery/traps corr) did a 7-player clear-most ITF. For some reason this toon seems to draw mad aggro from Romans due to her various traps; I had to force myself to slow down a bit in order to die a little less. Finished in 1hr exactly and got to level 42.


Thu 11/4

Fire Maiden (50 hero SS/fire brute) solo'd some hero tips, then led a team to fight off a Rikti invasion in Atlas (getting Sentry, Chief and 8 bombs), then joined a clear most ITF that finished in 37m 8s.

Shield Maiden (24 rogue fire/shield scrapper) joined an 8-player Silver Mantis SF; we were pretty speedy and finished in 38m 22s, getting Shield Maiden to 25. Followed that with an Operative Renault SF; we got Barracuda killed on the first mission and had to re-do it, then the rest of the SF went fine. Finished in 33m 20s and got to level 26. After that I solo'd the Army of Me mission against the 8 clones, which I defeated through heavy inspiration use.


Fri 11/5

Thunder Girl (50 hero elec/SR scrapper) solo'd 3 vigilante tips and the vigilante morality mission, changing her alignment to vigilante. My plan is to go red-side to get the Mu Mastery patron pool for more elec attacks.


Sun 11/7

Water Lily (36 rad/storm corr) did a Katie TF in 32m 7s, also got the badge for Jack in Irons while there.

Thunder Girl (50 vigilante elec/SR scrapper) joined a Recluse SF. Had some trouble the first mission when 4 Longbow wardens spawned with Crimson and kept healing him up, forcing us to clear all the Longbow rather than just focus on Crimson. Otherwise went pretty smoothly, even beating the Freedom Phalanx. Finished in 33m 35s and got a Nucleolus.

Star Amethyst (50 hero dark/ice defender) did a Statesman TF in 44m 3s and got another Nucleolus. Something new I learned: I could Recall Friend people into the Thorn Tree room even when they were outside, because I had 3-slotted Recall Friend (with Blessing of the Zephyr). Apparently unenhanced Recall Friend doesn't have enough range for this. Star Amethyst went on to do a speed ITF in 19m 12s.

Mercy Beaucoup (26 hero ice/kin corr) did a Hess TF in 1h 8m; we had a real hard time pulling Archon Burkholder from his catwalk for some reason, otherwise went fine. This got Mercy to level 28.

Primadonna (50 rogue sonic/kin corr) joined a clear-most ITF. The team leader had difficulty at +4 and most of the team was lowbies, and most of the team died a lot; we got about halfway through the first mission, then everyone quit the TF. The team wanted to reform, and I initially refused to rejoin, but finally I agreed to try it again at +1 difficulty. Several of the lowbie players also switched to 50s for the rematch. We had no problems this time, clearing most of the ITF and finishing in 49m 31s.


Mon 11/8

Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) solo'd 2 Peregrine Island mayhem missions, getting the Safecracker badge, and Ghost Widow's 2nd story arc for 10 merits. A friend also offered to help me get the PvP rep badge; I had never been able to get this before, even when I was PvPing heavily, due to PvP rep decaying so swiftly. I'm normally against farming, but there seems no other way to get this badge. My friend ended up logging on players on 2 boxes and we would kill each other every 5 minutes to earn rep. His toons had started at pretty high rep, and after 2.5 fairly boring hours I got to 317.8 rep (starting from 0), after which we took a break.

Shield Maiden (26 rogue fire/shield scrapper) exemped down to team with some level 8s, doing paper missions and the Atlas mayhem. Later, I sidekicked a couple lowbies and did some level 26ish radio missions (turning difficulty down to -1 to keep the lowbies able to hit) and an Independence Port mayhem. This got Shield Maiden to level 27.

Mercy Beaucoup (28 hero ice/kin corr) joined a Sister Psyche TF; the kinetics team had actually already started the TF, but restarted it to include me and another person, which was nice. We finished in 2h 2m and got Mercy to level 29.

I crafted and slotted 3 sets of 4 Curtail Speed in Mercy's main attacks (Ice Blast, Ice Bolt, Bitter Ice Blast), putting 2 damage SOs in the last 2 slots of each attack. This is experimental slotting for me, and is a little underwhelming on damage and recharge for each attack, but does give a total of +3.75% lethal DEF. I figure I will eventually slot Mercy heavily for lethal DEF.

Late at night Police Woman finished off getting the PvP rep badge by killing my friend's two toons over and over again while he was AFK and had a self-rez on autofire. I think this is how people farm for PvP recipes also. Reputation increase slowed to a crawl at about 350 rep, where bonus reputation no longer was awarded, but I finally got 400 rep the Disruptor badge around 4:30am. This kept me up so late I ended up calling in sick to work the next day, something I'm not proud of doing for a MMORPG. I'm grateful to my friend for even letting me get this badge, but I have to say it felt like a horrible way to get a PvP badge. I would much rather get this badge through "real" PvP, but it seems impossible to get this any other way.


Tue 11/9

I started a new toon, Maid of Awesome (newbie villain sonic/rad corr). I'm a little worried that this name is too hokey, but I got a ton of compliments on it already. I solo'd through Kalinda's first story arc, then did a couple AE arcs, A Heartbreaking Story, a Dev Choice which was an okay story but didn't really knock my socks off (I gave it 4 stars) and got about halfway through Learning the Ropes, a decent lowbie arc. This got Maid of Awesome to level 6.

Teal Serpent (42 villain archery/traps corr) did a clear most ITF in 45m 50s, getting to level 43. I crafted and slotted a set of 6 Lockdown in Poison Gas Trap, for +3.75% range DEF and +3% damage.

Fire Maiden (50 hero SS/fire brute) helped a 2-team force beat up Jack and Eochai. The monsters had been fighting each other for awhile, and when we killed them we got the reward merits but no one got badges; presumably because they had inflicted too much damage on themselves already. We did end up finding another Jack and Eochai elsewhere in Croatoa and getting the badges and more merits from them.


Wed 11/10

Mercy Beaucoup (29 hero ice/kin corr) joined the kinetics superteam for 4 hero tip missions, getting her to level 30. I took Vengeance as my level 30 power and got to use it at least 6 times that night; the kin team has a high fatality rate for sure. It keeps things exciting!

Maid of Awesome (6 villain sonic/rad corr) duo'd a few missions in Port Oakes, completing the Atlas mayhem and getting to level 9.


Thu 11/11

Tour de Force (18 resistance ff/nrg def) joined a 7-player team in Neutropolis; we had a cold controller also, so between our buffs the team was at the defense cap. This got Tour de Force to level 20.

Shield Maiden (27 rogue fire/shield scrapper) joined a 6-player Rule of Three TF (Posi 1), finishing it in 47m 7s.

Teal Serpent (43 villain archery/traps corr) joined a pickup ITF; this was kinda slow going and we had a lot of deaths, but we got through it in 1h 9m, getting Teal to level 44.

Maid of Awesome (9 villain sonic/rad corr) joined an 8-player pickup team in Grandville. This was not a very good team, we split up a lot and had a lot of unnecessary deaths. A team wipe in Oranbega put most of our team in the mystical prison, where we suffered multiple defeats trying to break out. I ended up excusing myself after this mission, but it did still get me to level 12 and DOs.


Fri 11/12

Maid of Awesome (12 villain sonic/rad corr) restarted and finished Learning the Ropes in AE; the story isn't that strong, but the individual missions are well designed and give lowbies a really nice intro to various villain groups. I gave it 5 stars. I also played A Death in the Gish which was sorta OK but not too remarkable; I gave it 3 stars.

After that I joined a 6 player team for a Steel Canyon mayhem, then solo'd the Origin of Power arc and Krylov's Vahzilok Council arc. Then I joined an 8-player team doing rogue tip missions; this all got Maid of Awesome to level 19, but despite doing around 10 rogue tip missions, I didn't get any alignment credit for them due to being below level 20.


Sat 11/13

Water Lily (36 rogue rad/storm corr) picked up Midnighter access from another player just finishing the arc on hero side. So, confirmed that a rogue can get the badge from the blue-side arc (just can't actually talk to the contact).

Maid of Awesome (19 villain sonic/rad corr) solo'd Ripping out Reform, an AE story arc where some idealistic police officers try to reform the Rogue Islands Police force, and you crush them. This was pretty well done, I gave it 5 stars. It also got Maid of Awesome to level 20.

San Min (50 hero MA/will scrapper) did a clear-most LGTF in 56m 8s.

Primadonna (50 rogue sonic/kin corr) did a clear most ITF on +2 difficulty in 1h 7m.


Sun 11/14

Maid of Awesome (20 villain sonic/rad corr) solo'd 5 rogue tips, then joined a 5 player team that got her to level 22.

Thunder Girl (50 vigilante elec/SR scrapper) solo'd 5 villain tips.

Fire Maiden (50 hero SS/fire brute) did a speed ITF in 23m 14s.

Indigo Ifrit (50 villain fire/rad corr) did an RSF in 35m 36s, got a Luck of the Gambler (DMG/END/RCHG) drop and a Nucleolus.

Teal Serpent (44 villain archery/traps corr) did a clear all ITF on +1 difficulty in 43m 49s.

Mercy Beaucoup (30 hero ice/kin corr) did a Katie TF in 24m 28s, getting to level 31. Slotted another set of 4 Curtail Speed in Frost Breath, and a Luck of the Gambler (+7.5% rchg) I had leftover (from burning hero merits) in Vengeance.

The last few teaming sessions on the Kin teams have been much better IMO - regarding your Speed Boost comment.

When we did Hess on Monday, I was SB'ed so much (stacked 3 or 4 of 'em), I couldn't control my character trying to pull down the AV from scaffolding above. Everytime I jumped, I'd ended up on the other side of the room in cave.

Don't get me wrong, I'd rather have SB stacked 3 or 4 times than not have it all.

I'm thinking the abundance of speed boost or lack of it is due largely to my big fingers and small keyboard. Half the time I'm trying to siphon speed from my target, and when I hit the SB instead, it just gives it to whoever is nearby, and the opposite is also true.

On the Hess TF, I was playing the brute, so I know in this case, it wasn't me.

Speedboost is not something I think about when I play the grav/kin controller. I'm thinking about holds and hurling interesting objects at the baddies. I try to give it upon mission entry, and before a battle, but if you're already battling, I'm usually trying to hold or heal. For me playing a kinetic secondary is counter-intuitive. The idea of needing to slot accuracies for a heal, after playing an empath just goes against the grain.

I'm basically making myself play one to better understand the set.

For a person that loves binds and macros, I'm surprised PW didn't whip up a quick "SB plz" one. Honestly, on a Kinetic super team you really shouldn't have to but sometimes people just forget or get into a groove.

When I'm kin'ing, SB is put into the attack chain and SB is given out after every other mob. Well, unless one of the mobs took a while.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nights_Dawn Hazy is right

11/18/2010

Monday

Mercy Beaucoup (31 hero ice/kin corr) joined the kin team doing Croatoa missions. We finished all of Kelly Nemmers' and Buck Salinger's story arcs, beat up Jack-in-Irons and started on Montague's midnighter arc. At level 32 I picked up Blizzard, which worked really great, especially when our defender would transference END back to me. I also got a lot of use out of Vengeance; the kin teams both kill fast and die fast. This all got Mercy to level 34.


Tuesday

On Tuesday night I didn't get on til really late, mostly did some marketeering. I hit the inf cap on my main character again and emailed myself another 500M dividend. It took 16 days to make this half-billion, much longer than usual; the market for rare salvage is still pretty soft, with most items selling for about a third of what they were pre-Halloween.


Wednesday

Thunder Girl (50 vigilante elec/SR scrapper) did a speedy ITF in 23m 24s, getting a Respec recipe as a drop. I would've thought the price of Respec recipes would have gone down due to the devs announcing two free respecs with I19, but no, the market price was still up around 200-250M inf. It baffles me why they are priced so high, but I put in a sell order anyhow.

I was about to join the kin superteam, but their first team was full and fighting a banner event; right around then another friend started forming a Master of the RSF team, knowing that I needed that badge. So I switched to Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) and joined this team, which consisted of:

fire/fire brute
AR/dev blaster
ill/rad controller
rad/dark corr
fire/cold corr
fortunata
dark/elec def
nrg/kin corr

The team was very strong, with nearly all support toons. It's admittedly weird to use a fire brute to tank a Mo-Anything, but the brute was played by our most experienced player, who chomped inspirations in all the major fights. Our rad got a little aggro-happy in the first couple missions but backed off after that, and we had a couple close calls in the final fight when various squishies caught some aggro from the Freedom Phalanx, but no one died and we managed to win the MoRSF in 45m 32s. I got a Centriole, but I didn't really care; the Master of the Recluse SF badge was the real prize.

After that I played Star Amethyst (50 hero dark/ice defender) on a Statesman TF, finishing in 47m 38s. Went pretty smoothly til the last mission; the scrappers kept getting caught in Ghost Widow's cone attacks (I think from standing in the wrong place), but we still beat up the patron AVs. After that we skipped the flier and directly attacked the towers while our tank held off Lord Recluse by flying and taunting. We killed the towers in the order Yellow-Red-Green (skipping blue). There was a scary moment after the third tower was down and we were about to engage Lord Recluse when the tanker died and hospitalled, but I ended up Recall Friending him back and we recovered. Finished in 47m 38s and got a Cytoskeleton, which I tossed onto the broker (they're selling for around 140M).

Played Shield Maiden (27 rogue fire/shield scrapper) to team up with a friend who was having trouble finding a team. I ended up forming and leading a 7-player redside team that did 6 rogue tips and most of Leonard's story arc, defeating an AV-level Protean and getting the Explosive Finale badge. This got Shield Maiden to 29 and I made a new global friend.

Another friend wanted to show off the MDK Fallen base, so I went in and visited. It was actually pretty awesome, with lots of large rooms and good looking furnishings and decorations. After touring this base I felt the urge to try and spiff up my personal villain group's base, which has been on the minimum 8x8 size plot with skimpy decor for years; basically I had earned enough prestige to build a little base and never upgraded it since then. I had about 9M prestige to play with and spent abotu 6M of it just upgrading to the maximum 24x28 plot size. I don't really know what I'm going to do with this much space yet, but I figure, I have the prestige, why not max it out. I started fiddling with decorating and ran into some weird but that dropped my remaining 2.6M prestige down to -3.7M prestige....this was rather disconcerting. The SG page still showed 2.6M prestige, but the base editor showed a huge negative number. Logging out and bringing on another character didn't clear this up, but exiting the game entirely and restarting the game eventually fixed it. Whew! It takes awhile to earn that much prestige for a personal villain group.

I added a medical bay, which I didn't have before, but I found I couldn't add anything but the lamest medical equipment since I didn't have any supergroup heal badges. A lot of other base equipment seems to require SG badges as well, which I hadn't really looked into; I guess I have some new goals. I did get to add an Ouroboros crystal to my base, though, and I suspect I can use this to teleport from my base directly to Cimerora or RWZ, which will be very handy. I did some other minor redecorating; I repainted the whole base in a "high tech" theme and changed my SG symbol and colors to make nicer looking banners. Still a lot more to do yet, though.

11/23/2010

Thursday

Some sort of email rollback occurred overnight, causing some emails to be lost and some to reappear. As a result, the email containing 500M influence I sent to myself on Tuesday night vanished. On the other hand, I think I got emails containing 2 Robusts (the big orange inspiration) and a LotG DEF/+7.5% recharge recipe in return. Not a good trade, really. After verifying that other people were having similar problems, I submitted a petition.

Teal Serpent (45 villain archery/traps corr) did a clear-most ITF on +1 difficulty. Our team was kind of low DPS, finishing in 54m 54s. This got Teal Serpent to level 46. I also did 3 villain tips on a 3 player team.

Thunder Girl (50 vigilante elec/SR scrapper) solo'd a villain tip and a villain morality mission, changing her alignment to villain.

Finished the night fiddling with base editing in my villain group base.


Friday

A friend had reported getting lost inf sort-of restored, but the support staff apparently added influence to one of his toons that was already near the inf cap, effectively wasting a lot of it. To avoid this happening to me, I had my main character Police Woman put up some lowball bids on purple recipes, to get her inf total below 1.5 billion. (I was a little wary of emailing myself more inf until they straightened things out in case of more rollbacks.) By doing this, I picked up a Ragnarok (DMG) IO for 206M inf; not sure I really needed one, but it seemed a good price.

Thunder Girl (now a 50 villain elec/SR scrapper) solo'd Scirocco's patron story arc; the whole goal of taking her villain side was to unlock patron power pools. I rather arbitrarily picked Scirocco as patron because (a) I want his elec patron pool for Thunder Girl, so it made sense to take him as patron and (b) he's the least villainous patron, so it kinda works to have a fallen hero follow him. This was probably a mistake because his patron arc is chock full of EBs. Fortunately I could handle them, but I ended up soloing Silver Mantis, Barracuda, Serafina, Mirror Spirit, Foreshadow, Malaise, Ice Mistral and Scirocco himself as part of his arc. I kind of felt bad about stopping Scirocco's mad plan at the end of his arc; I never read his story in that much detail before, but he wants to rewrite reality to make all villains into heroes, which seems like something my character would actually want to help with. But the script requires betraying him, so that's what I had to do. Got 10 merits out of it, anyway.

After unlocking the patron pools, I partially respec'd (began using a respec but canceled before completing it) just to compare the Mu patron pool against the scrapper fire ancillary pool. Mids seemed to suggest that the Mu patron pool would be better than the scrapper fire epic pool, but the numbers displayed in game were:

Mu bolts: damage 62.56, recharge 6, activation 1.17
Ball lightning: damage 63.81, recharge 32, activation 1.07

Fire blast: damage 77.34, recharge 6, activation 1.2
Fire ball: damage 68.52, recharge 32, activation 1.0

This makes fire still numerically superior to electric, which is different than what I expected (for some reason the Mu patron pool is thought to be better on the forums). I might still end up respec'ing to the electric patron pool for thematic reasons; not absolutely sure though. Regardless it won't be until I19 when I need to respec for inherent fitness.

Tour de Force (20 hero ff/nrg defender) joined a 6 player team that did 5 hero tip missions, getting Tour to 22 and SOs.

Water Lily (36 rogue rad/storm corruptor) joined a pickup ITF. We had a near wipe against the Phalanx computer in mission 3 where all squishies died, but we recovered and continued to the last mission. We jumped from the entrance straight to the AVs. Romulus gave us a really hard time; we weren't really hurting him and we ended up having a team wipe, then had lots of people have to hospital and run back repeatedly. I think this was because our team had a lot of lowbies (including me), and we didn't seem to be working together that well. The team leader seemed particularly exasperated at the lack of support from support toons. I tried using my stormy powers for debuff and heal, but ended up dying a lot too. Finally we kinda restarted the mission by regrouping at the entrance and clearing a path from there to Romulus, then tackling him again; this seemed to work and we finished the ITF in 1h 19m.

After that I spent some time badging with Mega (50 villain SS/will brute), getting exploration badges from all zones accessible on red side, in order to build more teleporters in my villain base. I had upgraded from a rinky-dink teleporter room (2 teleporter capacity) to a gigantic teleporter room (8 teleporter capacity). This wasn't really well-thought out on my part, though, because there just aren't that many places to teleport to on red side: Mercy, Port Oakes, Cap, Sharkhead, Nerva, St Martial, Grandville, Pocket D and RWZ add up to only 9 destinations, and each teleporter can have 2 destinations, so I really only needed 5 teleporters. I didn't really want to redesign the teleporter room again, though, so I ended up just spreading out the teleport beacons so several of the teleporters only go to 1 place.

Maid of Awesome (22 villain sonic/rad corr) duo'd with another player for some rogue tip missions, then did a rogue morality mission to change her alignment.

Some friends were screwing around on Freedom server PvPing in Recluse's Victory, so I joined them with Darla Doppler (49 hero kin/sonic defender) who I had moved to Freedom during the free server transfer period. I got a few kills and died a lot, but we soon had the villains bottled up in their base. Trash talking broadcast on Freedom was pretty vicious (including some from my own team at the villains), but I tried to mostly ignore it.


Saturday

My petition was answered, and I got the 500M inf I lost restored by customer support. They did put it on Police Woman, but fortunately I had spent down below 1.5 billion so had room to take it.

San Min (50 hero MA/will scrapper) started Quest for Magic, a guest author MA arc with the premise that I'm helping some woman get super-powers; I felt this story was not well motivated and not particularly interesting, so ended up quitting after the first mission. This was kind of a shame because the author of this arc actually writes some pretty good comic books.

Mystery Girl (50 vigilante emp/pistols defender) joined a Master of Dr Kahn TF with a team of:

inv/elec tank
bs/inv scrapper
spine/inv scrapper
grav/cold controller
ice/storm controller
kin/? defender
emp/pistols defender
?/? stalker

We weren't too serious about the "master of" part, having agreed to use the Mo settings but not really care if we failed. We actually did fine right up to the last encounter with Reichsman, where Reichsman's horrible lightning attacks managed to stun and kill both the tank and stalker at the same time...I was really quite surprised that the tank got stunned, I had thought invuln tanker mez protection was enough to avoid being stunned, but had 1 CM on him just in case, and he still got stunned. Frustrating. We ended up completing the TF anyway in 45m 36s.

Blond Justice (50 hero bs/shield scrapper) joined a team that did 5 hero tips and a hero morality mission (awarding me a hero merit). Got a compliment on her costume, which was nice.

Primadonna (50 rogue sonic/kin corr) joined a 7-player ITF that finished in 25m 6s.


Sunday

Maid of Awesome (22 rogue sonic/rad corr) joined a Silver Mantis SF. We cleared most of the SF; against the final mission, we split up to defeat turrets on different parts of the Sky Raider helicarrier in order to spawn Duray. Finished in 1h 23m, got to level 24, got a Kinetic Combat (chance for knockdown) recipe drop, and had someone compliment me on Maid of Awesome's background story (which I really didn't think was that good, but I had just written something quickly so it wouldn't be blank).

Two teams were farming EoEs for the Hamidon raid, so I pitched in and helped. Initially I tried helping on Maid of Awesome; earlier testing had made me think you could get EoE drops at low level, but I didn't get any EoE drops, so I ended up switching to Primadonna and got 2 EoEs almost immediately.

For the Hami raid itself, I was asked to play Mystery Girl (50 vigilante emp/pistols defender) to help heal the tanker team. This was the first time I had been on the taunt team, and it was a pretty interesting experience. We had 6 tankers and 2 empaths; the tankers were placed in a perimeter surrounding the goo, and each tanker was assigned a specific mito to taunt. They were supposed to each eat one EoE for each bloom, to stave off incoming damage. Each of the empaths was assigned to heal 3 of the tankers and to cast Clear Mind on their 3 tankers and the other empath. Since these 4 toons were all positioned quite far apart, this involved a LOT of running around; I was really glad I had Superspeed for this. Despite that, it always seemed like I would have a tanker start taking damage when I was on the other side of Hamidon trying to buff the other empath. I felt guilty whenever one of "my" tankers would die, but it happened; one of the other tankers was really good at jumping in to plug the gap when this happened, though.

The first few blooms of the raid went pretty well, but on the final bloom when the raid leader called for us to fight through, the raid force didn't seem to have enough DPS to actually kill Hamidon, and the tankers holding down the yellow mitos started dying off, eventually forcing the raid to wipe and/or flee the goo. After regrouping at coward's rock, we re-entered the goo and cleared the mitos this time, before finishing Hamidon off. This worked, and I picked the HO reward without really thinking about it (I normally take the merits for this encounter), but I lucked out and got a Membrane, so it worked out fine.

Mystery Girl went on to do an STF which went fine til the last mission. We pulled the patron AVs, and got 2 of the AVs at first, but then Ghost Widow showed up as an add, held and killed the tank. This was my error, I had buffed him with CM before the pull but let them drop when neither of the first 2 AVs were Ghost Widow; I should've probably kept buffing CM anyway. We recovered from this and beat up the patrons, then the flyer and then tackled Lord Recluse. The flyer repopped and aggroed on us while fighting Lord Recluse, but we managed to win anyway, finishing the STF in 1h 18m. I got a Lysosome.

Schadenfreude (50 villain AR/pain corruptor) joined the RWZ mother ship raid; I hadn't played her in awhile, but wanted to bring her in order to work on the supergroup heal badge, and I figured being a corr with AoE heals at a RWZ raid would be ideal for this. We had 1 raid wipe at the center of the ship when 4 Rikti Mages overpowered us at once, but otherwise did OK. Picked up about 400 Vanguard merits, which should be useful in I19.

Maid of Awesome (24 rogue sonic/rad corr) joined a 3 player team that did 5 hero tip missions at +2 difficulty. This got her to level 26.

Thunder Girl (50 villain elec/SR scrapper) solo'd 5 rogue tips and the rogue morality mission, switching alignment to Rogue. I'm planning on moving her back to full hero, though it's admittedly been a lot of work going full circle on alignment.


Monday

Mercy Beaucoup (34 hero ice/kin corr) joined the kin superteam for 3 hero tip missions and some Brickstown radio missions. A defender with transference was on the team, so I gleefully used Blizzard every time it was up, which was quite fun; with Fulcrum Shift, it felt like I was doing crazy damage every time I set this combo off. I got to level 35 and picked up Transference for myself, as well. After the team broke up, I solo'd the rest of the Midnight Squad arc.

A friend wanted to do something, so I switched to Shield Maiden (29 rogue fire/shield scrapper) and I duo'd with his dark defender, doing some of his missions from Miriam Bloechl. We fought a lot of Banished Pantheon which my fire melee was terrific against. I still haven't taken Stamina (holding out for I19) but I experimented with using the Recovery Serum temp power; to my surprise, this power is really good, giving quite a lot of END every time I used it. (Maybe it will be less good once everyone has Stamina for free, though.)

Doing these missions got Shield Maiden to level 30. This seemed like a good time to start using IOs, and I ended up slotting 5 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% rchg) IOs, a Numina (+regen/+rec) and Miracle (+rec), and a Steadfast Protection (RES/+3% def). I know that sounds like a lot of expensive stuff, but I actually got most of them (all the LotGs and the Numina proc) from converting reward merits into hero merits, then spending hero merits on the LotG/Numina recipes. I find hero merits are really efficient for getting expensive rare (but not purple) IOs. I solo'd a few paper missions in St Martial to test the changes; the Numina and Miracle procs really help with Shield Maiden's END problems, and recharge from the LotGs make her attack chain a bit smoother.

12/2/2010

Catching up from the holiday weekend....

Tue 11/23

Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) got the Crey Employee and Crey Scientist day job badges from being logged out in Crey's Nerva branch office for long enough.

Someone played through my Two Tickets to Westerly arc and got the Rocky Horror reference, and sent me a hilarious feedback of "Brad? Oranbega doesn't have phones, *******!!"

Sent another 500M inf to myself from marketeering. But honestly the black market in rare salvage (what I mostly deal in) has crashed, hard, I believe from AE farming. All common salvage has gone up in price, but I believe rare salvage has gone down, because spending tickets on rare salvage is an easy and profitable way to use them up. My black market interface was getting deadlocked with tons of salvage I had bought and wasn't able to sell due to the price crash; I considered giving up on trading til this passed, but instead decided to go double-or-nothing by buying cheap rare salvage and stockpiling them, in hopes that the price would go up later. I consider this "buying on value" rather than speculation, because I truly believe rare salvage is badly underpriced due to the flooded supply.

Thunder Girl (50 rogue elec/SR scrapper) helped a defender friend who was having trouble with Anti-Matter, then I did 5 hero tips to try and get back to blue side.


Wed 11/24

A friend and speed TF regular was trying to organize a no-holds-barred speed STF, with a team of people who would all use Warburg nukes and shivans. I couldn't decide which toon I wanted to play for this, and ended up getting like 6 warburg nukes before finally settling on playing Star Amethyst (50 hero dark/ice defender) for the debuffs.

Our STF team had a kin, rad and a dark, a tank, 3 scrappers and a blaster. Our support team had a defender (me), controller and corruptor. I think the leader might've preferred 3 corruptors for the extra damage, but hardly anyone had blue side corruptors, so we went with this. Our strategy was to speed every mission, and use Warburg nukes liberally. We used 1 bio nuke on Arbiter Sands in mission 1. Another bio nuke got dropped on Magus Mu'drukan in mission 2 (the first one hadn't run out yet, so we had 2 stacking). A toon not on the TF dropped a bio nuke to buff us just before we entered mission 4, and again right before mission 5. Fighting the patron AVs we summoned shivans and dropped at least 4 Warburg nukes and they melted away so fast I couldn't target all of them before they died. We skipped the flyer and our tanker flew over Lord Recluse to tank him, while we killed the red, yellow and green towers. Then we used chem and nuclear nukes on Lord Recluse and he almost instantly died. Finished in 27m 16s, which seemed crazy fast. (But it did require a lot of leg work getting the nukes ahead of time.) I got a Centriole for my trouble.

Teal Serpent (46 villain archery/traps corr) joined a fairly speedy Recluse SF; I found it a little awkward that I didn't have stealth to get around, and I did die once to aggro, but I figure that isn't bad for a lower level toon on RSF. Finished in 31m 46s, got to level 47 and a Nucleolus.

Indigo Ifrit (50 villain fire/rad corr) joined a 7 player speed ITF that finished in 23m 19s.


Thu 11/25

Maid of Awesome (26 rogue sonic/rad corr) joined a hero tips team in Atlas running against Knives of Artemis and Nemesis at +2 difficulty. This was kinda painful and challenging, but we were strong enough to handle it. Some team members did have this conversation:

[Team] Empath: dont think I've ever used absorb pain this much.. heh
[Team] Teamleader: Glad i can help you more fully experience your powersets

...which I thought was terrifically funny. We did have a team wipe against +2 Longbow (urgh) and had trouble with a Help Polar Shift mission where Polar Shift was killed, making the mission uncompletable. Despite the difficulty, this was good exp and got Maid of Awesome to level 28.

I went on to join a Cavern of Transcendance trial where pretty much all I had to do was stand around and wait to get teleported to the right place, then click. Finished in 17m 19s.

Shield Maiden (30 rogue fire/shield scrapper) joined a Manticore TF but I had to quit right after the Security Chief Manning mission in order to do Thanksgiving stuff. Did get to level 31 though.

Later that night, Indigo Ifrit did another ITF in 20m 54s and Millie Volt (50 vigilante elec/elec brute) did a STF. In the final mission, the tanker died to Ghost Widow and I got to jump in and tank the patron AVs long enough for him to get res'd and retoggled, which was cool. The flyer aggroed on us while we were fighting Lord Recluse which gave us a few hairy moments, but we were able to finish the TF in 41m 2s. I got a Peroxisome.

Maid of Awesome helped a small team beat Caleb in Nerva, then did 1 hero tip mission.

Shield Maiden solo'd an story arc called Legacy of a Rogue, which was a great story where you're asked to take in a dead hero's son as a sidekick, and tons of drama ensues. The arc felt very comic booky and had a rich story background. I gave it 5 stars.

Tour de Force (22 hero ff/nrg defender) joined a team for 3 hero tips.


Fri 11/26

Mercy Beaucoup (35 hero ice/kin corr) joined a 4-player team that did Posi 1 in 43m 54s followed by Posi 2 in 53m 53s. It was a veteran team that went through everything pretty easily; the only difficulty was in the last mission of Posi 2, where we killed Dr Vahzilok but missed one of the mobs in his spawn, so had to hunt for awhile for the last zombie that would complete the TF. This got Mercy to level 36.

Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) did a speedy ITF in 23m 35s; I got a Performance Shifter (END/ACC) as a drop.

Spacegirl (50 hero mind/rad controller) did a STF; we had trouble with the patron AVs in the last mission due to the team not being able to focus on just one target. Got past that only to be squashed by Lord Recluse on our first try; our second try we were able to drop the red, yellow, green towers and beat Lord Recluse. Finished in 1h 1m and got a Nucleolus.


Sat 11/27

Mercy Beaucoup did a pickup clear-most ITF. We had a dreadful stormy who kept knocking mobs through cave walls and away from my transfusion; later in the TF he was clearly AFKing a lot, and I was uncharacteristically happy that he was AFK rather than "helping" us. Mission 3 we went general-to-general, but it was something of a zerg-fest as we had a lot of squishies (including me) who could not survive this. We had a near wipe on the Phalanx Computer where everyone died but a lone scrapper, who managed to heroically finish the computer off. Cleared our way to Romulus in the final mission and finished the TF in 1h 9m, getting Mercy to level 37.

Maid of Awesome did a Posi 1/Posi 2 TF combo, taking 40m 45s and 53m 48s respectively. In Posi 1 we got split up against Doc Buzzsaw resulting in lots of deaths, but recovered; had no trouble with the ambush that's usually a team wipe in the last mission. In Posi 2 we had a close call against CoT but otherwise were fine. I got a Miracle (END/HEAL/RCHG) recipe drop. I went on to do a 7-player debuff-heavy Katie TF which finished in 27m 14s. All this got Maid of Awesome to level 31.


Sun 11/28

Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) joined the Rikti War Zone raid. We were low on support toons at the raid and had a lot of deaths, but I still managed to score 308 vanguard merits while there.

Thunder Girl (50 rogue elec/SR scrapper) did 3 hero tip missions, slowly working her way back to blue side.

Maid of Awesome did another Katie TF, this time with 6 players. We had 1 blaster, 5 support, and no melee; I was kinda skeptical about this team mix, especially with a shorthanded team, but we had so much debuff, we did just fine. Finished in 21m 58s and exited the final mission straight into a zombie apocalypse, which we fought off.

Millie Volt (50 vigilante elec/elec brute) joined a Statesman TF. The leader set it to both "Master of" and +3 difficulty without telling anyone, as kind of a prank, which had me worried because I had the "tank" role. Millie is very nicely slotted but still kinda squishy being an elec armor, so I wasn't sure I could handle that. Fortunately (?) our cold defender died almost immediately in mission 1 after which the pressure was off (no one was that serious about the "Master of") and we actually were able to handle the +3 spawns (though I made sure to buy and eat inspirations whenever possible). I fly/taunted Lord Recluse and we finished in 1h 25m. I got a Centriole.


Mon 11/29

I have my own personal villain group on red side that holds all my villain alts, and it had been eating at me that all my villains that crossed to blue side were effectively shut out, unable to earn prestige or use my own base. Today I finally decided to do something about it, having Fire Maiden (50 hero SS/fire brute) quit my VG and found a new personal supergroup on blue side, "Suggested for Mature Readers", a SG name that I held briefly about 4 or so years ago but abandoned when I found a regular SG. I started moving my ex-villain alts into the new SG, and even had a few of my more regularly played hero alts jump ship to the new SG for the sake of earning prestige.

Fire Maiden started playing an AE arc called The End of Saturday Morning. It had a plot, but it felt pretty thin, mostly an excuse to fight various AVs. This didn't do much for me, so I quit after the first mission.

I started a new alt, Sarcasm Lass, a sonic/mental blaster; I like the idea that both sonic and mental can do debuffs and cone attacks, and sarcasm doing sonic and mental damage appealed to me. Shortly after getting out of the tutorial, a pickup team picked me up, thought my name was funny, and did some missions that got me to level 6.

Thunder Girl did another 2 hero tips and the hero morality mission, switching her alignment back to hero and getting the Come Full Circle badge, the first of my toons to accomplish that.

Fire Maiden joined an ITF with 7 damage and 1 kin for support. We had lots of deaths but I managed to make it through with some heavy inspiration use. Finished in 26m 15s.

Mercy Beaucoup (37 hero ice/kin corr) joined the kin superteam for 2 hero tip missions and a hero alignment mission that confirmed her hero status (earning me 50 merits). Then we switched to RWZ for 2 of Levantera's missions that got Mercy to level 38 and Fulcrum Shift.

An impromptu RWZ raid formed late at night, and I joined with Mystery Girl (50 vigilante emp/pistols defender). Despite being unscheduled, this raid still filled up 2 teams and did very well. I found my Hail of Bullets nuke was especially fun on a RWZ raid, when you're quite often surrounded by mobs. I picked up 434 vanguard merits, which we all figured would be handy for I19.


Tue 11/30

I19 dropped today! I was home on vacation so got on shortly after servers came up. Playing Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) I immediately hopped on board a clear-all LGTF that was forming. I foolishly didn't read the patch notes or the I19 advance info, though, so I didn't realize you needed to do an Ouro arc to unlock the Alpha Slot before you can get any incarnate drops. About half the team had the same problem; what can I say, I19 was new and we were clueless. So I didn't get any incarnate shards at all, but we did finish in 1h 38m. I left the reward menu up hoping I could unlock the Alpha Slot and still claim the LGTF incarnate reward.

So after the TF I went to Ouroboros and started soloing Ramiel's arc. The first mission, where you're eating AVs for breakfast, was really fun, but it looks like all you really need to do is go up to Mender Ramiel and talk to him to complete the mission. I beat up Trapdoor with no problems, but against Holtz/Honoree (both EBs) I managed to beat Holtz, then ran out of Lucks while fighting Honoree and got clobbered. I beat Honoree on the rematch, however, and Minos in the final mission. Worth noting, even though you get reward merits after the final door mission of Ramiel's arc, you must talk to Ramiel to get the Alpha Unlocked badge and the ability to get incarnate drops. (A friend of mine missed this step and didn't get any shards for a whole TF.) After finishing the arc, I was able to take the Hero 1 DNA reward from the reward window (yes, I had to play the whole arc with that stupid window on my screen).

After that, I determined I would run a bunch of my toons through Ramiel's arc to unlock incarnate content for as many of them as possible. I solo'd Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) through the arc with no problem; she had an easy time against Holtz/Honoree compared to my squishy blaster.

Star Amethyst (50 hero dark/ice defender) duo'd Ramiel's arc with an emp defender; I was initially annoyed that my teammate had none of the ally-only buffs (except Resurrection), so was essentially playing a low DPS energy blsater, but after she clearly didn't recognize who half the AVs in the first mission were, I realized she must be pretty new and felt bad for being annoyed. We did manage to pick up a couple more people after the second mission that gave us some more DPS for the final missions, unlocking the Alpha slot for Star Amethyst as well.

Police Woman joined a clear all ITF that took 43m 14s. Tracking inf and shards, I earned 5.55M inf and 6 incarnate shards from killing stuff on this ITF. I also got the Ancient Nictus incarnate drop from the TF reward.

Fire Maiden helped a 2 player team with low DPS kill Trapdoor. With capped fire resist I dragged him down into the lava and melee'd him there; he was taking damage from lava while it was just tickling me. Trapdoor seems particularly vulnerable if you bring him to the lava, as other people have noticed as well; in addition to lava damage, I think it gets him out of sight of some of his helpers, too.

Mystery Girl (50 vigilante emp/pistols defender) joined an 8 player team running Ramiel's arc; this team was very strong causing one person to comment "this team is ridiculous!" and the team leader raised the difficulty to +2 to be more challenging. This unlocked the Alpha Slot for Mystery Girl. One of the team members had forgotten to talk to the contact at some point (it seems very easy to accidentally do this), so we had to redo much of the arc; I switched to Millie Volt (50 vigilante elec/elec brute) for the second time through and unlocked the Alpha Slot for her as well.

Thunder Girl (50 hero elec/SR scrapper) solo'd the Ramiel arc.

A controller was complaining on LB that she wasn't able to do the Ramiel arc, so I offered to help her, bringing on Blond Justice (50 hero broadsword/shield scrapper) to power through. Apparently her previous team had either been unable to get past the AVs or had broken up early. I figured that as long as I was helping, I'd try to help several people at once, so I started recruiting for more, getting our team up to 4 players. I got a costume compliment from one of them, which was nice. However, the person I was originally trying to help couldn't get the mission from Ramiel at all -- she had neglected to buy Going Rogue. So we got through the whole arc but the person I had been trying to help still didn't get incarnate access (though not for lack of trying).

After the Ramiel arc I dragged my team to another impromptu RWZ raid that had formed. There were 5 teams, which was pretty amazing for a spur of the moment raid. I got teased for my "Justice is Blond!" battlecry, with someone claiming I had spelled blond wrong (what, does no one spell it like that any more?). The raid went really well and I got 594 vanguard merits and 2 incarnate shards while there.

Mercy Beaucoup (38 hero ice/kin corr) joined a clear all ITF; as a lowbie kin with a mix of SOs and junky IOs I was pretty squishy and died a lot. I originally was going to play a 50 but thought our team mix could really use a kin (I feel like clear-all TFs go better with a kin). So I missed out on incarnate drops, but I did get a very nice Hecatomb (chance for damage) recipe and level 39, so it worked out fine.


Wed 12/1

I had screwed up Mercy's build early on (I took Swift but not Health and Stamina, so I had neither the old Stamina OR the new Stamina...bleh!) so I used her free respec. Her build is now:

Mercy Beaucoup

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

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Mercy Beaucoup: Level 39 Mutation Corruptor
Primary Power Set: Ice Blast
Secondary Power Set: Kinetics
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Leadership
Power Pool: Fighting

Villain Profile:
Level 1: Ice Bolt -- CtlSpd-Acc/Slow(A), CtlSpd-Dmg/Slow(3), CtlSpd-Acc/EndRdx(3), CtlSpd-EndRdx/Rchg/Slow(5), Dmg(5), Dmg(7)
Level 1: Transfusion -- Heal(A), Heal(7), Nictus-Acc/Heal(9), Nictus-Acc/EndRdx/Heal/HP/Regen(9), RechRdx(11), RechRdx(11)
Level 2: Ice Blast -- CtlSpd-Acc/Slow(A), CtlSpd-Dmg/Slow(13), CtlSpd-Acc/EndRdx(13), CtlSpd-EndRdx/Rchg/Slow(15), Dmg(15), Dmg(17)
Level 4: Frost Breath -- CtlSpd-Acc/Slow(A), CtlSpd-Dmg/Slow(17), CtlSpd-Acc/EndRdx(19), CtlSpd-EndRdx/Rchg/Slow(19), Dmg(21), Dmg(21)
Level 6: Combat Jumping -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 8: Freeze Ray -- NrncSD-Acc/Rchg(A), NrncSD-EndRdx/Hold(23), NrncSD-Acc/EndRdx(23), NrncSD-Hold/Rng(25), NrncSD-Acc/Hold/Rchg(25), NrncSD-Dam%(27)
Level 10: Siphon Speed -- Acc(A)
Level 12: Ice Storm -- Dmg(A), Dmg(27), Dmg(29), RechRdx(29), RechRdx(31), RechRdx(31)
Level 14: Super Speed -- Clrty-Stlth(A)
Level 16: Increase Density -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A)
Level 18: Bitter Ice Blast -- CtlSpd-Acc/Slow(A), CtlSpd-Dmg/Slow(31), CtlSpd-Acc/EndRdx(33), CtlSpd-EndRdx/Rchg/Slow(33), Dmg(33), Dmg(34)
Level 20: Speed Boost -- Zephyr-ResKB(A)
Level 22: Maneuvers -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), DefBuff(34), DefBuff(34)
Level 24: Tactics -- Rec'dRet-ToHit(A), Rec'dRet-Pcptn(36)
Level 26: Vengeance -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 28: Inertial Reduction -- Jump(A)
Level 30: Kick -- Acc(A)
Level 32: Blizzard -- Dmg(A), Dmg(36), Dmg(36), RechRdx(37), RechRdx(37), RechRdx(37)
Level 35: Transference -- Acc(A)
Level 38: Fulcrum Shift -- Acc(A), RechRdx(39), RechRdx(39), RechRdx(39)
Level 41: [Empty]
Level 44: [Empty]
Level 47: [Empty]
Level 49: [Empty]
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Scourge
Level 1: Ninja Run



...which is essentially the same as before, except I dumped Swift and took Kick (thinking about going into Fighting Pool for more defense). I'm still hoping the Curtail Speed sets will become worthwhile once I get enough stacked defense.

After that I duo'd the Ramiel arc twice on red side with another player, once playing Indigo Ifrit (50 villain fire/rad corruptor) with his brute, and once playing Primadonna (50 rogue sonic/kin corruptor) with a different brute.

12/6/2010

Thursday

Star Amethyst (50 hero dark/ice defender) did a clear most LGTF. I got praised twice for healing/defending (our only other support toon was trick arrow), which was nice. I got the impression that the rest of the team played together regularly and were used to more lethality. We did mission 4 slightly differently than I'm used to; the team leader appointed a targeter and on "go!" we all rushed in and killed the mito that the targeter was targeting, then all ran away. A jousting technique similar to what I've seen on MoLGTFs; it helped cut down on player deaths. Finished in 1h 37m and got a Hero 1 DNA and 8 incarnate shards.

Rain Dancer (50 hero storm/archery defender) joined an 8 player team that did Ramiel's arc to unlock the Alpha slot.

Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) joined a clear-most STF which went pretty smoothly. We pulled the patron AVs in the final mission and ended up getting 3 of them on the pull, but were able to handle it. Finished in 58m 26s and got Essence of the Incarnate and 5 shards.

I converted 4 of these shards into a Dimensional Keystone and crafted a Musculature (+33% DMG) boost (my first ever alpha boost), which I immediately started using. Most of my attacks were soft capped at around +93% to +96% damage; this boost pushed them all to around +106% to +113% damage. I spent a lot of time thinking about which incarnate boost to take, and I chose +DMG over +RCHG, +ACC or +END because I've always felt like I needed to do more damage (perhaps fire blaster envy), since damage is a blaster's main contribution. +RCHG arguably helps DPS also, but I already have a ton of global recharge from IO set bonuses, while global damage bonuses are harder to come by; and +DMG helps 1-shotting and burst damage while +RCHG only helps sustained DPS. So, although I've had some very smart friends suggest other boosts, that's why I went with Musculature for my blaster.


Friday

Following I19 the market in rare salvage (the main thing I trade) has been heating up considerably, more than recovering from the previous depression. Stuff I was buying (pre-I19) at 500K and selling at 1.2M jumped in value (post-I19) to 2M-2.5M, and even higher in some cases. I had been betting on this to happen, having bought up a ton of cheap salvage pre-I19 and hoping for the price to go up. As a result, Police Woman hit the inf cap again and I mailed myself another 500M dividend. My best guess for why this happened is: (1) the devs finally closed down the monkey farm, which I believe was flooding the rare salvage market due to the way farmers were spending tickets and (2) everyone is burning their I19 respecs and using up salvage to make new IOs.

Police Woman also got the Arachnos Official day job badge from hanging out in Grandville. One of these days I'll finally get all these stupid villain day jobs and be able to move back to hero side!

I was asked to play kin for a STF, so I played Primadonna (50 rogue sonic/kin corr). Somehow we ended up with 2 rads and 2 kins, but this usually isn't a bad thing. I inherited the star during mission 2 when the team leader disconnected, and tried to give some directions. We had a messy patron AV fight, but got past it. The tanker had some trouble standing toe-to-toe with Lord Recluse and we ended up teaching him how to taunt from flying. After we tore down the towers, though, the tanker still died a couple times while landing and positioning the AV, causing Lord Recluse to run wild attacking the squishy team members until the tanker recovered. Finally won after 1h 9m and got an essence of the incarnate and 4 shards.

Police Woman joined a clear all ITF which finished in 47m 5s, getting an ancient nictus thingy and 6 shards. Through some miscalculation, this meant I had 2 ancient nictus things, but I think I only needed 1. After that screwup, I started keeping better track of which alts needed which TFs to get incarnate drops.

Mystery Girl (50 vigilante emp/pistols defender) did a clear most STF. This went smoothly with no serious problems. We pulled the patron AVs who came in small easily manageable chunks, killed the flyer, then killed all the towers: red, blue, a break to kill the respawned flyer, yellow, green. Finished in 1h 27m and got essence of the incarnate and 6 shards.


Saturday

Thunder Girl (50 hero elec/SR scrapper) did a Kahn ITF, speeding some parts and clearing others. The final fight got a little crazy with the tank dragging Reichsman around his little platform, while some of us stayed on Reichsman while others focused on adds, but we managed it in 52m 47s and got a dimensional key. (Forgot to count how many shards I got.)

I used up a free respec for Blond Justice (50 hero broadsword/shield scrapper), building as follows:

Blond Justice I19

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.90
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Blond Justice I19 respec: Level 50 Mutation Scrapper
Primary Power Set: Broad Sword
Secondary Power Set: Shield Defense
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Speed
Ancillary Pool: Weapon Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Hack -- Mako-Acc/Dmg(A), Mako-Dmg/EndRdx(3), Mako-Dmg/Rchg(3), Mako-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(5), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(5), Mako-Dam%(7)
Level 1: Deflection -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(13), LkGmblr-Rchg+(13), TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx(39), TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(40), TtmC'tng-ResDam(40)
Level 2: Slash -- Mako-Acc/Dmg(A), Mako-Dmg/EndRdx(15), Mako-Dmg/Rchg(15), Mako-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(43), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(45), Mako-Dam%(45)
Level 4: True Grit -- Mrcl-Heal/Rchg(A), Mrcl-Heal(7), Mrcl-Rcvry+(9), Numna-Heal/Rchg(9), Numna-Heal(11), Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(11)
Level 6: Combat Jumping -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 8: Battle Agility -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(17), LkGmblr-Rchg+(43)
Level 10: Active Defense -- HO:Membr(A), HO:Membr(17), HO:Membr(50)
Level 12: Build Up -- GSFC-ToHit(A), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg(23), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg/EndRdx(25), GSFC-Rchg/EndRdx(25), GSFC-ToHit/EndRdx(31), GSFC-Build%(31)
Level 14: Kick -- Empty(A)
Level 16: Against All Odds -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 18: Whirling Sword -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(19), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(19), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(21), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(21), Oblit-%Dam(23)
Level 20: Tough -- Aegis-ResDam/EndRdx(A), Aegis-ResDam/Rchg(40), Aegis-EndRdx/Rchg(42), Aegis-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(46), Aegis-ResDam(46)
Level 22: Phalanx Fighting -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 24: Weave -- RedFtn-Def/EndRdx(A), RedFtn-Def/Rchg(34), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(43), RedFtn-Def(46), RedFtn-EndRdx(50)
Level 26: Disembowel -- Mako-Acc/Dmg(A), Mako-Dmg/EndRdx(27), Mako-Dmg/Rchg(27), Mako-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(29), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(29), Mako-Dam%(31)
Level 28: Grant Cover -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 30: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(42)
Level 32: Head Splitter -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(33), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(33), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(33), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(34), Oblit-%Dam(34)
Level 35: Shield Charge -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(36), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(36), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(36), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(37), Oblit-%Dam(37)
Level 38: One with the Shield -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A)
Level 41: Web Grenade -- HO:Endo(A)
Level 44: Caltrops -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 47: Exploding Shuriken -- Ragnrk-Dmg(A), Ragnrk-Dmg/Rchg(48), Ragnrk-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(48), Ragnrk-Acc/Rchg(48), Ragnrk-Dmg/EndRdx(50)
Level 49: Confront -- Range-I(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Critical Hit
Level 4: Ninja Run
Level 2: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 2: Health -- Heal-I(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- P'Shift-EndMod(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(37), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc/Rchg(39), P'Shift-Acc/Rchg(39), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(42), P'Shift-End%(45)



The main changes from her previous build was dropping the 3 fitness powers (due to inherent fitness) and replacing them with Slash, One with the Shield and Confront. Slash was nice for filling my single-target attack chain (with Hack/Disembowel/Headsplitter all being slow recharge heavy-hitters, I previously had gaps in my attack chain that I filled with lolBrawl). One with the Shield was something I had previously considered unnecessary, but makes a good mule for the Steadfast Protection and might be a good panic button (stacking resist on top of my defense). Confront I kinda threw in there "just in case" I have to tank AVs or pull or something; not sure how useful it will be.

With this build I'm soft capped to melee and ranged and pretty close to (but not quite at) the cap on AoE, but should do more damage (due to adding an attack) and be more survivable (better slotting of resists).

After respec'ing, Blond Justice went on a LGTF as a test drive, where the build seemed to play pretty well. We cleared most of the LGTF and finished in 1h 18m. We had a little trouble in mission 4 where at one point we weren't attacking the same mito, but that got straightened out. Got Hero 1 DNA and 7 shards.

After that I solo'd the Ramiel arc on San Min (50 hero MA/will scrapper) to unlock the Alpha slot.

Strong Woman (50 hero inv/SS tanker) led an 8 player team through the Ramiel arc to unlock the Alpha slot. Got a compliment on her back story (or, truthfully, lack of one) from a bystander in Ouroboros, which was nice. After finishing the Ramiel arc we did a Statesman TF. This went well until the last encounter, where I attempted to fly and taunt Lord Recluse, but he immediately hit me with his END draining attack causing me to fall out of the sky and detoggle, with lethal results. After being res'd from that I was able to taunt him for the rest of the encounter; the flyer aggroed us while fighting the towers, and I tried to keep both LR and the flyer taunted (my Taunt and Provoke are heavily slotted and have decent range), which seemed to mostly work. Finished in 1h 15m and got Essence of the Incarnate and 2 shards.

12/7/2010

Sunday

Olivia Q (50 hero MA/SR scrapper) solo'd the Ramiel arc to unlock the Alpha slot.

Maid of Awesome (31 rogue sonic/rad corr) experimented with the alternate sonic animations. I tried them in the tailor and in a mission and I found I didn't really like the alternate animations except for scream and screech; I ended up reverting the shriek and shout animations to the old versions. I also solo'd the hero morality mission, changing her alignment to hero.

Mercy Beaucoup (39 hero ice/kin corr) joined a +2 ITF. We were overbooked with 9 players; an empath dropped so our 4th scrapper could stay, which didn't seem a great idea but we went with it. Mostly did well, though, aside from a hapless VEAT who seemed to die so much that he joked he was only along as vengeance bait. Finished the ITF in 59m 38s, and we spent some time cleaning up the towers after the TF actually completed, where we eventually wiped out due to getting spread out. But this did get Mercy to level 42.

Sarcasm Lass (6 loyalist sonic/mental blaster) joined a 8 player gold team for door missions in Neutropolis and got to level 9.

Mystery Girl (50 vigilante emp/pistols defender) joined the Sisterhood event running the Kahn TF on a 7 player team. Our brute wasn't really aggressive and it seemed like I (a defender) and the fort on our team often ended up jumping into mobs and taking the alpha strike to pull the team forward. I did get a costume compliment from a teammate, and praised for healing and buffing, which were both nice. I got to use my Pokemon explanation for how the Reichsman fight works, and this motivated one of our team members to count the number of facets on the cages containing the AVs, simply in order to pedantically call them dodecahedra rather than pokeballs. We had a long fight against Reichsman due to being short handed, but finally beat him to complete the TF in 1h 17m. I got a dimensional keystone and 4 shards.

Shield Maiden (31 rogue fire/shield scrapper) did a 7 player Manticore TF, stealthing where we could, that finished in 1h 1m. The same team then did a Katie TF. We were rudely surprised to find the second mission now requires leading Amy out, which ate a bunch of our time because we had stealthed to her thinking we could just free her, and now had to clear back out. Finished in 42m 51s and got 9 merits (I was hoping they had raised the merits along with changing the mission to be longer, but apparently not). This did get Shield Maiden to level 33 and a partially slotted Greater Fire Sword.

San Min (50 hero MA/will scrapper) joined a RWZ raid. I got on a 6 player team and picked up 409 vanguard merits and 3 shards, which helped me buy a Gr'ai matter. I got a compliment on San Min's costume, which was nice.

Indigo Ifrit (50 villain fire/rad corr) joined a RSF; the team leader asked me to bring some sort of healing, and I ended up being the only "healer" (the only other support toon was a cold, everyone else was brutes and scrappers). We did fine til the last mission where we wiped out on the Freedom Phalanx, but did get Numina and Sister Psyche on the first try. We were kinda struggling on our second try due to our light amount of support; I popped a shivan and another player dropped 2 Warburg nukes and a shivan, which was enough to squeak out a win. Finished in 47m 59s, got essence of the incarnate and 3 shards.

Mystery Girl joined a pickup ITF that finished in 57m 39s. I got an ancient nictus fragment and 6 shards. After that I joined late on a 2-team Lusca raid that beat him up. I also made a Spiritual boost with the various incarnate salvage I had picked up. My reasoning for this is, you can't go wrong with +RCHG and +HEAL when you're an empath defender. More recharge means more buffs and more frequent heals. And more Hails of Bullets, but the empath stuff is admittedly the more critical.


Monday

Blond Justice (50 hero broadsword/shield scrapped) did a pickup ITF. We cleared most and finished in 58m 26s. We had several brutes, scrappers and tanks, but I was in scrapperlock the whole TF, charging forward the whole time and expecting the team to follow me. Or not, in which case I could solo the next spawn. I don't think it really fully registered on me that we had two tanks that I could've been following until after the TF was over. The fact that the other melee toons on my pickup team were dying a lot while I was totally walking over the Romans gave me delusions of godhood. I'm liking how Blond Justice's respec turned out. I picked up an ancient nictus fragment and 6 shards, and made a cardiac boost. The END from Cardiac is okay, but I'm really working towards the RES boost at the uncommon level, which should help the resists in Deflection, True Grit and Tough. With my defense soft-capped, I figure boosting resistance for layered protection is the way to become even harder to kill. I could've seen Musculature (DMG) or Spiritual (RCHG) to raise my DPS making sense, too, though.

Fire Maiden (50 hero SS/fire brute) did another clear most ITF, with a much higher DPS team that finished in 38m 29s. I got an ancient nictus fragment and 4 shards.

Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) joined a Whirligig team for the Apex TF; our team mix was pretty strong, half support and half daamge, though two players were fighting at -8 due to not slotting their alpha boosts. (We did not realize this until after the TF, though they did notice they were doing almost no damage.) This involved fighting off a Praetorian invasion of Paragon City, which was very cool and dramatic. The first mission had us clearing Praetorian clockwork from Kings Row, then defending the police headquarters (everyone thought Police Woman should get some sort of morale bonus for defending Police HQ) against giant mecha. The second mission had us defending the ruins of Steel Canyon against Battle Maiden and a Praetorian army. Both were action-packed and very fun. Many of the Praetorian enemies seemed to have some kind of power where they drop a big red circle or a patch of cloudy blue stuff, and you have to move out of those areas or take lots of damage. This made the fights much more mobile than normal, and I hopped around like crazy. My team warned me against using Full Auto because it would lock me in place for too long, but I used it anyway (it's too good not to, and I've gotten pretty good at using Full Auto on the run). We ended up kiting Battle Maiden around a lot while killing her various minions, before finally focusing damage on her to win the TF. Finished in 34m 22s and got 40 merits; I was really surprised the TF was only 2 missions, that seemed pretty short. But it was still quite fun. I got the Technophobe, Drone Protector, Warrior Princess and Already Dead badges, along with 2 shards.

The same team then tackled the Tin Mage TF (though the 2 people who forgot to slot their alpha boosts now had them slotted so were no longer at a big penalty). For some reason we were fighting Malta, I didn't quite catch why they would be collaborating with other-dimensional enemies. There were some kind of invisible proximity mines; I was a little annoyed that I couldn't see them despite having capped perception. We ended up kiting some Malta AV called Director 11 while fighting off waves of enemies, then wore down this massive Goliath robot, which was pretty neat. Later we got to attack Praetorian Earth, where we fought both Bobcat and Neuron and 2 of the gigantic robots. There were ungodly numbers of ambushes or something during this fight; I had to run around a LOT evading enemies while fighting the AVs. We beat up Bobcat first and this gave Neuron some kind of super vengeance, but we were able to beat him, then the 2 robots, finishing in 46m 20s and getting 40 merits and 4 shards. Team members who had done it before commented that vengeanced Neuron seemed easier than vengeanced Bobcat, though I have no basis for comparison. I got the Hacker, Army of Neu and Alpha Struck badges.

12/9/2010

Tuesday 12/7

Blond Justice (50 hero broadsword/shield scrapper) did a Tin Mage TF. We had a strong team and did really well. Against Bobcat and Neuron we tried to kill them roughly evenly (similarly to how you try to kill the spires in the CoP trial at the same rate), getting both of them down to 35% each before actively trying to kill them at almost the same time to mitigate their vengeance powers. Finished in 33m 23s and got 7 shards and 40 merits.

Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) did a Kahn TF at +1 difficulty. I made it through all but the last mission, where I used Ouro, then rebooted the game to try and clear lag. This made the game kick me from the TF due to alignment issues (I think because I was in red-side Ouro for a blue-side TF). I had been rather casual about heading to red side zones while on blue side TFs, will need to be more careful. I gained 4 shards from the part of the TF I got to do, anyhow.

Wednesday 12/8

Due to getting some low votes, my Teen Phalanx Forever! story arc finally fell from a 5-star rating to a 4 star rating (with 932 plays), ending a year-long reign at the top of the 5 star story arcs that aren't already Dev Choice'd or in the Hall of Fame. Due to the vagaries of the AE search interface, this moves it from page 3 of the default search to page 200 or so. This is a little disappointing, as my arc was getting into striking range of the "Hall of Fame" but perhaps not too surprising; it's quite difficult to maintain a high rating under the current system, and quite hard to get people to try story-oriented arcs rather than farms, so I should be happy it lasted as long as it did.

Police Woman joined an Apex TF. I thought our team was a little light on support (1 kin, 1 rad, 1 tank, 5 damage), and we had a tough time with Battle Maiden at the end; we died LOTS and had to zerg Battle Maiden with people repeatedly going to the hospital and then running back into the mission and back into the fight. (The hospital is very close to the mission door, making this semi-viable as a strategy.) I think part of our problem was that people didn't do a good job of staying out of the killer blue stuff dropped by the bad guys, so took a lot of extra damage; some people complained their powers would root them in the blue stuff. Nevertheless we finished in 36m 30s; I got 4 shards and 40 merits, still a good payoff.

Millie Volt (50 vigilante elec/elec brute) did a clear most ITF in 40m 55s. A teammate pointed out to me that you can pretty easily get a Cardiac boost from a single ITF if you have some vanguard merits banked, and so I did exactly that. I took the ancient nictus reward and got 5 shards on the ITF; converted 150 vanguard merits and 4 shards to make the other salvage needed, and crafted a Cardiac boost (END).

This led me to the realization that it's dumb to be saving up incarnate shards the way I've been doing. I've been waiting to do the ITF/LGTF/STF/Kahn/etc. for each toon in order to get the correctly matching incarnate salvage, but I get enough incarnate shards that I may as well convert them.

After realizing this, I had Blond Justice convert 16 incarnate shards, 150 vanguard merits and the Cardiac boost I already had, into a Cardiac Radial Boost (END/RES). Boosting resists on a shield scrapper probably sounds counterintuitive, but she actually gets some resists from Deflection and Tough, and with the Cardiac Radial Boost, this adds up to 37% lethal resist. If I activate One With the Shield, this goes up to 67% lethal resist. I figure this will be pretty nice when stacked with her soft capped defense.

I smiled as I read the second to last entry, but for clarification I only counted the facets because by calling the cages pokeballs you piqued my interest, both in pokemon and geometry!

12/14/2010

Thu 12/9

Fire Maiden (50 hero SS/fire brute) joined a very successful RWZ raid, getting credit for a bomb, 2 reward merits, 699 vanguard merits, and 3 shards. Converting vanguard merits to a Gr'ai Matter allowed me to make and slot a Cardiac boost, very helpful as Fire Maiden tends to be an END hog.

Mercy Beaucoup (42 hero ice/kin corr) did a clear-most ITF on +2 difficulty in 48m 13s, which got her to level 44.

Fri 12/10

Schadenfreude (50 villain AR/pain corr) solo'd Ramiel arc, albeit with great difficulty. It took 4 tries for me to beat Trapdoor, and I had to uncork a Vanguard HVAS to beat Honoree. It felt like I wasn't doing a lot of damage and my debuffs weren't that helpful while solo. I really like the idea of Schadenfreude as a pain domination corruptor, but I've been a bit underwhelmed with the pain powerset; she probably needs a respec or something to get stronger.

Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) used 16 shards and 150 vanguard merits to upgrade her Musculature boost to a Musculature Core boost. Most of my attacks were at the soft cap already, but the uncommon boost is supposed to help me push past the soft cap slightly. PW's full auto (with no boost) does 360 damage, with the uncommon boost it does 386 damage; this feels like a worthwhile upgrade. My marketeering caused me to hit the inf cap again and I sent another 500M to myself.

Primadonna (50 rogue sonic/kin corr) joined a pickup ITF. People AFK'd a lot, which slowed us down a bit, but we finished in 1h 13m. I got an ancient nictus fragment and 4 shards, and used it all to craft a Spiritual boost (RCHG). I went with recharge for my kin mostly because I didn't have any better ideas; boosting endurance seems useless when I have Transference, boosting damage seems useless when I have Fulcrum Shift.

Mystery Girl (50 vigilante emp/pistols defender) did an STF. With speed boost and Spiritual boost (RCHG) it seemed like I could keep 5 Fortitude buffs up, which was pretty cool. In the final mission, the patron AVs were no problem, but Lord Recluse smashed our shield brute flat 3 times despite my best efforts; LR's damage profile was very spiky and I just could not heal fast enough. The brute switched to tanking while flying which let us complete the STF in 1h 14m. I got an Essence of the Incarnate and 3 shards. I spent 16 shards to upgrade my Spiritual boost to a Spiritual Radial Boost (RCHG/HEAL).

Police Woman (50 rogue AR/dev blaster) joined a carefully planned Master of Tin Mage TF attempt. The team leader asked us all to bring the nuclear warhead from Warburg, to use against Director 11. When we got into Director 11's warehouse, the glowies were rapidly clicked, then we pulled Director 11 to the door to fight him there. Our strategy was to simply kill Director 11 as quickly as possible, to make the window for being hit by proximity mines as short as possible; towards this end we all dropped a nuclear warhead and I think someone dropped the bio and chem warhead too. Despite this amount of nukage, Director 11 was impressively resilient and still survived longer than we expected, but we did manage to drop him before any mines went off. The rest of the TF went fairly normally and we finished in 32m 39s for 3 shards and 40 merits. I got the Midnight Dodger What Dodges at Midnight, Kitty's Got Claws, and Master of Tin Mage badges.

After that, the same team did a Master of Apex TF. We avoided activating the police drones, which got me the Arm's Length badge and Master of Apex TF badge. Finished in 30m 9s. After doing both Master-of TFs, Master of Apex is clearly easier to get.

Fire Maiden (50 hero SS/fire brute) did a pickup clear most LGTF in 1h 33m, getting Hero 1 DNA and 7 shards. I upgraded her Cardiac boost to a Cardiac Radial boost (END/RES). I was kinda hoping a END/RES boost would improve her survivability; this pushed her total lethal resist (with Fire Shield and Tough) up to 56%, which is better but I'm guessing will still make her less tough than an invuln or even a willpower tank. Despite that, I'm still really liking her due to the sick damage that Burn/Foot Stomp/Fireball puts out.

Mercy Beaucoup (44 hero ice/kin corr) did a clear most ITF in 38m 0s, getting to level 45.


Sat 12/11

Police Woman wandered around Sharkhead Island solo, killing grey Cage Consortium guards to eventually get the Goon Squad badge.

Switched to Triumph for a bit to play my seasonal character, Mary Christmas (24 hero ice/rad controller) on a 7-player team doing AE story arcs. We first played Dhahabu Kingdom and the Unfathomable Kingdom of Sand, which had a great look and neat plot, but the gameplay needed some tuning; I gave it 4 stars. Then we played the first mission of Vengeful Heart, which had custom enemies that were a confusing mishmash of aliens, robots, zombies and ninja; we weren't excited enough about the arc to keep playing after the first mission. I left feedback complaining about the lack of theme; the author wrote back thanking me for playing but saying "you seem to have really not understood the story." I felt kinda guilty for not giving his story arc more of a chance, so started slowly soloing through it on one of my stalkers, doing a mission here and there during downtime.

Maid of Awesome (31 hero sonic/rad corr) did a Citadel TF. Our team leader was 27 so we were effectively on +3 difficulty. This slowed things down a lot, but we had a strong team so were able to handle it, finishing in 1h 55m. This got Maid of Awesome to level 33. I burned 160 merits for 8 recipe rolls; the best of the bunch were a Kinetic Combat (DER), 2 Positron's Blast (chance for energy), Mako's Bite (DR), Devastation (chance to hold), Impervium Armor (R). I kept most of these but put the Impervium Armor on the broker, where it instantly sold for 20M.

It's a seller's market out there. A shortage in rare salvage pushed prices for many over 3M, some even got up to 10M. I released lots of salvage to the market that I had bought pre-I19 for around 500k, generating a decent profit.

April Fool (50 villain thug/TA MM) easily solo'd Ramiel's arc with her pets and debuffs. Spacegirl (50 hero mind/rad controller) also solo'd Ramiel's arc, but it was slow going against the EBs and AVs. I was able to confuse Holtz to death (or rather, get his buddies to kill him), died once to the Honoree, then broke out a Shivan to beat him on the rematch.

Mega (50 villain SS/will brute) did a ITF in 40m 34s, getting an ancient nictus fragment and 4 shards. From this I made a Cardiac boost (END). She doesn't really have END problems, I just have my eye on the (END/RES) boost to make her tougher.

After that Mega did an Apex TF; I got to be the tank and tried to herd the war walkers as best as I could. Against Battle Maiden things got a little crazy and we ended up zerging her, with people hospitalling and returning as fast as they could. Finished in 42m 7s and got 4 shards and the Master of Apex badge (which fortunately doesn't care if your whole team dies).

I did an I19 respec for Thunder Girl (50 elec/SR scrapper), basically dumping the legacy fitness pool and picking up permahasten, superspeed and confront, while maintaining soft capped DEF. Confront and Fly are somewhat marginal power picks, but I like picturing her as a flyer, and I figure taunting will help once in awhile (there've been times I could've used it to tank the end boss in ITF or STF). I also switched the Blaze Mastery (fire) epic pool for the Mu (electric) patron pool, mostly for thematic reasons. The build is as follows:

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.90
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Thunder Girl I19 respec: Level 50 Magic Scrapper
Primary Power Set: Electrical Melee
Secondary Power Set: Super Reflexes
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Speed
Ancillary Pool: Mu Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Charged Brawl -- Hectmb-Dmg(A), Hectmb-Dmg/Rchg(3), Hectmb-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(3), Hectmb-Acc/Rchg(5), Hectmb-Dmg/EndRdx(5), Hectmb-Dam%(7)
Level 1: Focused Fighting -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(7), LkGmblr-Rchg+(9)
Level 2: Focused Senses -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(9), LkGmblr-Rchg+(11)
Level 4: Agile -- DefBuff-I(A)
Level 6: Build Up -- HO:Membr(A), HO:Membr(13), HO:Membr(40)
Level 8: Thunder Strike -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(13), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(15), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(15), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(17), Oblit-Úm(17)
Level 10: Practiced Brawler -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 12: Combat Jumping -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(31), LkGmblr-Rchg+(46)
Level 14: Fly -- Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(50)
Level 16: Dodge -- DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(40)
Level 18: Chain Induction -- Mako-Acc/Dmg(A), Mako-Dmg/EndRdx(19), Mako-Dmg/Rchg(21), Mako-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(21), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(23), Mako-Dam%(23)
Level 20: Quickness -- Run-I(A)
Level 22: Kick -- HO:Nucle(A)
Level 24: Tough -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), Aegis-ResDam/EndRdx(25), Aegis-ResDam/Rchg(25), Aegis-EndRdx/Rchg(27), Aegis-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(31), Aegis-ResDam(31)
Level 26: Weave -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(27), LkGmblr-Def(29), LkGmblr-Rchg+(29)
Level 28: Lucky -- DefBuff-I(A)
Level 30: Super Speed -- Clrty-Stlth(A)
Level 32: Lightning Rod -- Armgdn-Dmg(A), Armgdn-Dmg/Rchg(33), Armgdn-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(33), Armgdn-Acc/Rchg(33), Armgdn-Dmg/EndRdx(34), Armgdn-Dam%(34)
Level 35: Evasion -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(36), LkGmblr-Rchg+(36)
Level 38: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(39), RechRdx-I(40)
Level 41: Mu Bolts -- Apoc-Dmg(A), Apoc-Dmg/Rchg(42), RechRdx-I(42), Apoc-Acc/Rchg(42), Apoc-Dmg/EndRdx(43), Apoc-Dam%(43)
Level 44: Ball Lightning -- Det'tn-Dmg/Rchg(A), Ragnrk-Dmg/Rchg(45), Ragnrk-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(45), Ragnrk-Acc/Rchg(45), Ragnrk-Dmg/EndRdx(46), Ragnrk-Knock%(46)
Level 47: Electric Shackles -- Lock-Acc/Hold(A), Lock-Acc/Rchg(48), Lock-Rchg/Hold(48), Lock-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(48), Lock-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(50), Lock-%Hold(50)
Level 49: Confront -- Range-I(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Critical Hit
Level 4: Ninja Run
Level 2: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 2: Health -- Numna-Heal/EndRdx(A), Numna-Heal(11), Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(19), Mrcl-Heal/EndRdx(39), Mrcl-Heal(39), Mrcl-Rcvry+(43)
Level 2: Stamina -- P'Shift-EndMod(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(34), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc/Rchg(36), P'Shift-Acc/Rchg(37), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(37), P'Shift-End%(37)



Sun 12/12

I logged in while the scheduled RWZ raid was ongoing, but enough people were wanting to do it that RWZ 1 was full and some people had spilled over into RWZ 2, where they were forming another pickup raid. Playing Strong Woman (50 hero inv/SS tanker), I managed to sneak into RWZ 1 via some Ouro trickery (I kinda think that teleporting to a zone via Ouro can let me circumvent the population limit; haven't tested it enough to be absolutely sure though) and join the ongoing raid. At the raid I got 605 vanguard merits and 1 shard.

After that Strong Woman did a clear most ITF in 44m 53s, getting an Ancient Nictus fragment and 7 shards. From all this I was able to make a Spiritual boost (RCHG). I went for recharge because I'm hoping to get Strong Woman a little closer to perma-dull pain, which I think would have the biggest impact of the possible boosts.

Primadonna (50 rogue sonic/kin corr) did a Apex TF. Did well the first mission, the Battle Maiden fight got kinda chaotic and we had to zerg her with hospital rushes again. Finished in 38m 42s and got the Master of Apex badge and 3 shards.


Mon 12/13

After admonishing some people for PvP trash talking on LB, I decided to just go to Warburg and join the PvP. I managed to kill one player, but died twice to the big team that was there. After that the big team left and I declared victory (admittedly, not too seriously).

Mercy Beaucoup (45 hero ice/kin corr) joined the kin superteam for a Manticore TF. We had a stalker along who helped stealth/TP us around. We had a fair number of deaths (you don't play kin to be safe) and people seemed surprised that I was able to rez people on a kin. I had crafted a temp Resuscitator power and used every last charge on that TF. It was surprisingly useful, though, so I'll probably make another one. Finished in 1h 10m.

Millie Volt (50 rogue elec/elec brute) did an Apex TF. A coordination mixup in the first mission led to some of us running past mobs in the sewers while others fought them, resulting in lots of deaths. Then in the second mission we again were getting beat up badly by Battle Maiden and the blue fog. Nevertheless we finished in 32m and I got 5 shards and the Master of Apex badge. We went on to do a Tin Mage TF; had a messy Director 11 fight, then I died a lot to Bobcat, but after we killed Bobcat, Neuron and the goliath robots were easy. Finished in 46m 19s and got 6 shards. I wasn't sure how well Millie would do on the Praetorian TFs; as an elec armor, she is often a bit squishier than I'd like. I found that she was amazing against the Praetorian clockwork due to her capped energy resist, but was easily beat up by the toxic monsters in the sewer and by Bobcat, who does lethal damage.

Star Amethyst (50 hero dark/ice defender) did a clear-most ITF. Our team was mostly support and had rather low DPS, finishing in 1h 2m. I got an ancient nictus fragment and 4 shards, which I used to craft a Cardiac boost (END).

Finished the night playing Virtual Girl (13 resistance kat/fire scrapper). I joined a 3 player team that stopped Cutter Cain in the sewers of Praetoria, getting Virtual Girl to level 14.

I've got the temp rez on a few characters too, it's quite handy. I plan to take it on all support toons without in set rezzes. I'll likely craft it for a few non support types as well.