PW's war journal

I think the very top tier will give you +2. We'll find out in the next week or so. A couple of the guys got an extra notice of the well due to a bug so we'll probably find out tonight.

EDIT: Hazy is right (sorry for quoting your sig), the top tier still just yields 50+1.

+2 would have been nice.

Mon 2/14/2011

I'm now reporting level-shifted characters as being "level 51", since they effectively are a level higher for most purposes.

Police Woman (51 hero AR/dev blaster) did a Kahn TF in 26m 38s. I got a Performance shifter (ENDMOD/RCHG) recipe drop, a dimensional keystone, and Assistant badge credit.

Maid of Awesome (48 hero sonic/rad corr) did Kahn TF in 31m 34s; this wasn't as good a team as the previous one and we died a lot. This was the second Kahn TF Maid of Awesome has done this week; I was hoping for the big exp bonus for the Strike Target like before, but wasn't too surprised that you don't get it for the second time. I did get the Assistant badge, though.

Shield Maiden (47 rogue fire/shield scrapper) did a clear-most Kahn TF in 54m 58s; this was her first Kahn TF for the week, so I got a juicy 60 merits and 1956150xp at the end, which got her to level 48.

Mega (51 villain SS/will brute) did an ITF; all 4 of the brutes and tankers on the team were superstrength, so everything we met got flattened by foot stomps, which was fun. We had a kin who didn't SB and rarely fulcrum shifted, despite hints from a couple different players. I finally asked point-blank for SB and got it...once. Gave up asking after that. We cleared the first two missions and sped through the last two, finishing in 37m 36s and getting an Ancient Nictus fragment.

Mystery Girl (51 vigilante emp/pistols defender) did a Kahn TF. We had a stalker disconnect in the last mission, and we waited several minutes before killing the very last AV, for him to return. But when he did get back, he mysteriously quit, we weren't sure why; I almost think the game forced him to quit somehow, maybe due to faction problems.


Tue 2/15

The Strike Target changed to the LGTF, and so Police Woman did an LGTF. We had a very messy time against Hamidon with lots of deaths, but still finished in 33m 42s. I took a Hero 1 DNA and a Notice of the Well, which is what I took from every LGTF unless otherwise noted.

Star Amethyst (51 hero dark/ice defender) joined a very smooth LGTF that finished in 23m 27s.

Fire Maiden (51 hero SS/fire brute) joined an LGTF where there was some drama because one team member had the leader on ignore and the leader was very unhappy about that. Nevertheless finished in 32m 53s without anyone getting kicked off the team or quitting.


Wed 2/16

Blond Justice (50 hero sword/shield scrapper) did an LGTF. I had a moment of coolness during the Hamidon mission where I solo'd all the yellow mitos right before the tanker arrived in the mission and announced that all melee should focus on yellow mitos. Finished in 36m 2s and got a Luck of the Gambler (DMG/END) and a Red Fortune (DEF/END/RCHG) recipe as random drops. I also upgraded her alpha boost to a Cardiac Partial Radial Revamp (END/RES/RANGE/FEAR and level boost).

Mercy Beaucoup (51 hero ice/kin corr) did a speed LGTF in 21m 36s. One thing we did different than previous speed runs I've been on, was that we rushed the Rikti AV and the Honoree in the final mission, fighting them at their spawn point, instead of pulling them. I do think this shaved a minute or two off our time, but is something that only a durable team should attempt.

Mayday (50 rogue fortunata) did a speed LGTF in 20m 7s, the fastest one that I've ever done.

Mega (51 villain SS/will brute) did a speed LGTF in 24m 48s.


Thu 2/17

San Min (50 hero MA/will scrapper) did an LGTF. Both of our controllers seemed to be having trouble; one of them was worried about aggro, and with good reason because he literally died every 2 minutes, I'm not quite sure how. The other one was nominated to target green mitos to be held in the Hamidon mission, but kept attacking Rikti instead. After some explanation, she seemed to get the idea and started holding the green mitos (while the other controller was returning from the hospital) allowing us to finish the LGTF in 35m 11s.

I messed around editing my Crisis at Talos Towers story in Mission Architect. I had some custom mobs representing "fire hazards" and "fallen rubble" and decided to switch them for Minions of Igneous, who looked perfect for representing fire and stone. This lowered my mission's maximum level to 15; previously it was 50, and I'm a little worried it might be too hard for a level 15, which seems borne out by my playtesting so far. Haven't quite figured out how to fix that yet.

Some friends pressured me into running an ITF for them, and I was getting a little tired of LGTF, so I agreed. I played Mega (51 villain SS/will brute) as lead tank, and filled up the team with pickup players. One player wanted to speed the ITF, and no one else seemed to care, so I agreed to speed the TF. This perhaps wasn't the right call as most of the team was pretty squishy, and we suffered a number of random deaths as a result, and about halfway through the TF one of my friends complained that he hated speed TFs. I was surprised by this and said, you should've said something earlier, or run your own TF. He said he didn't say anything when we were talking about it, because he was busy watching TV. This actually made me mad, that someone would ask me to start a TF for them, then purposely slack on it. I ended up threatening to kick him if he watches TV while I have the star. In hindsight, this was an overreaction, but I really thought it was uncool. Despite these hijinks, we still finished the ITF in 26m 38s. I took an ancient nictus fragment.

After that Mega went on to do an RSF with a high DPS team that finished in 26m 21s, which was a new record. I took the essence of the incarnate, which I used to craft a Spiritual Core Boost, progress towards a second boost to combine into the ultra rare.

Rain Dancer (50 hero storm/archery defender) did an LGTF. The team leader showed me a different way to team TP people into the chopper for the Hamidon mission; he had me stand in the center of the ramp leading up to the helicopter, then placing the teleport reticule right under the pilot. This worked this time (and didn't work the next LGTF I tried it on, but it might've been me). I got held a lot in the last mission but managed to survive. Finished in 25m 53s and crafted a Spiritual Total Core Revamp (RCHG/STUN and level shift).

Mystery Girl (51 vigilante emp/pistols defender) joined yet another LGTF. We had an awkward team mix, with 6 damage, with a trick arrow and myself as the only support. It was late and it felt like I was playing really badly, getting nonstop stunned, held, knocked back and even killed; I burned through my pile of break frees really fast. In hindsight, I think my main problem was that Mystery Girl's superspeed/stealth IO isn't enough to sneak by Rikti, and since she's slotted for recharge, she doesn't have the DEF to survive their attacks while speeding by them, or even fighting them with no tanker/controller around. Against Hamidon the leader called for range damage to target through me; I tried to work with this, but it felt awkward because this prevented me from casting buffs or heals. I seemed to catch a lot of Hamidon aggro too, which didn't help. In the final mission, we didn't have quite enough debuff to kill the Honoree before he went unstoppable, but after waiting it out, we beat him up and finished in 39m 53s.

Fri 2/18/2011

Thunder Girl (50 hero elec/SR scrapper) joined a LGTF on +1 difficulty. Due to the hubbub on the forums about speed LGTFs versus rescuing the hostages, we joked around about saving Infernia and Glacia and some of us tried to save them while simultaneously other players tried to get them killed. The team was mostly friends though so we all took this in good humor and no one was really mad about it, and in fact, in the final mission our grav controller managed to Dimension Shift the Honoree, just for laughs. None of us had thought you could even do that to an AV. Despite this silliness, we still finished in 33m 10s.

Schadenfreude (51 villain AR/pain corr) joined an LGTF that cleared the first two missions, then tried to speed through the rest. This took 58m 12s.

Strong Woman (51 hero inv/SS tanker) fought a Rikti invasion in Peregrine Island, getting the Elusive Mind accolade.

Tour de Force (32 hero FF/nrg defender) joined a team getting shivans in Bloody Bay, for no really good reason except the company.


Sat 2/19

After all the debate on the forum, I conceived the idea to form and lead a clear-all LGTF. I played the lead tanker role as Strong Woman (51 hero inv/SS tanker) and we cleared all the way to Penelope Yin (though I said it was OK to team TP her back, since there's not much to fight on the way back), cleared all the way through the Riders mission, and saved all the heroes and hostages in mission 3. The Hamidon mission was pretty much the same as usual, then we cleared a path to the end in the final mission. We had a good team with high DPS and finished in 1h 7m. This was a little more than twice as long as a "speed" TF, but I still thought it was fun, and I needed the prestige and shards; it definitely helped to have a good team, though.

Indigo Ifrit (50 villain fire/rad corr) solo'd a flashback of the Exterminator badge mission (needed for an accolade), then joined a speed LGTF that took 29m 16s.

Yuki-Onna (51 villain ice/cold corr) did a speed LGTF in 21m 52s.

Millie Volt (50 rogue elec/elec brute) did a speed LGTF in 30m 1s.

Teal Serpent (49 villain archery/traps corr) did an RSF, very support heavy with 7 corruptors and 1 brute. Finished in 30m 35s, and Teal hit level 50 on Statesman's death, perfect timing.

Mystery Girl (51 vigilante emp/pistols defender) joined a RWZ raid. The team I was on was really scattered, with some people staying with the raid and others roaming far away, making it hard to keep everyone buffed and alive. Nevertheless picked up about 600 vanguard merits, which should cover Mystery Girl's Gr'ai matter needs.

April Fool (50 villain thug/TA MM) joined an LGTF; got 2 compliments on her background story and a couple remarks that her chat binds were "creepy", which was pretty much what I was shooting for, as April is meant to be a psychotic clown. I was a little worried about playing a MM on a "speed" TF, but aside from dying once on the first mission, I seemed to be mostly okay. For some reason my pets would not spawn during the Hamidon mission, no matter how many times I tried to call them; a teammate said they had seen that bug before too. Finished in 29m 10s.

Kyrie Eleison (36 hero archery/fire blaster) talked to the Latin student to unlock Cimerora, along with 4 others I invited for the badge, then did a clear-most ITF. Got a costume compliment, and we noticed that my character, a fire-using angel all in white, was almost exactly the opposite of another character on our TF, a cold-using fallen angel all in black, which was a funny coincidence. Our team was support heavy which let me survive more than I expected as a lowbie blaster with no defenses. Finished in 43m 37s and got to level 38.


Sun 2/20

Teal Serpent (50 villain archery/traps corr) solo'd Ramiel's arc to unlock the Alpha slot. Trapdoor was not a pushover but not too hard for me. Holtz and Honoree were a little tricky due to Rikti ambushes setting off my traps prematurely, but I eventually wore them down. I played through the whole arc with my RSF reward menu (from last night) still up on my screen, allowing me to take the Essence of Incarnate salvage reward at the end.

Strong woman (51 hero inv/SS tanker) joined a sewer trial; we staretd with 7 but one player almost immediately disconnected and never came back. This left us with a team comprised of a stalker, a peacebringer, an emp who doesn't buff or heal, some damage toons, and me. I was not hopeful for this lineup, but the team actually was quite good at coordinating destroying the shield generators. I died a couple times to the Hydra, mostly my fault because I underestimated how much damage its psi attacks did; after that I finally started to use Elusive Mind, which was a big help. Managed to finish this in 53m 2s; I took the merits.

Fire maiden (51 hero SS/fire brute) helped fight a Rikti invasion in Atlas Park.

Spacegirl (51 hero mind/rad controller) joined an LGTF. The leader wanted to speed the TF, but half the team was really too squishy to survive speeding, so we had some deaths. I was assigned to be the targeter for the green mitos; this worked fine for most of it, but I accidentally targeted Hamidon once (doh! targeting with TAB!) and instantly got both our blasters killed as a result, which I felt bad about. In the final mission, we had one teammate that was absolutely convinced the Dimensional Grounding Ray (temp power from Kahn TF) would debuff the Honoree, and I gave it a try; the other guy was convinced it was working, but I really couldn't tell any difference. Finished in 46m 7s.

People were PvPing in Warburg, so I went there with Police Woman (51 hero AR/dev blaster). I arrived shortly after a 6 player team had chased most of the opposition out of the zone, so I ended up quixotically attacking them 1v6 several times before a couple of them swapped teams to join me. This gave me an emp and a TA for support, which was good for lots of kills and lots of laughs. Some of the PvPers noticed I had no travel powers and was relying on ninja run to chase people down in PvP, which resulted in one person praising my audacity and another person laughing at my stupidity. Heh, it evens out.

Teal Serpent (50 villain archery/traps corr) did a LGTF in 34m 54s.

Primadonna (50 rogue sonic/kin corr) did a LGTF 32m 55s, upgrading her alpha boost to a Spiritual Total Core Revamp (RCHG/STUN, level shift).


Mon 2/21

Police Woman (51 hero AR/dev blaster) joined a pickup Master of the STF team, with a lineup of:

stone tanker
rad defender
kin controller
2 fortunata
fire brute
regen scrapper
AR blaster (me)

I don't think we were too serious about the MoSTF, it was mostly "just in case it happens". Our regen scrapper basically committed suicide repeatedly trying to fight mobs off on his own, which dashed those hopes. I couldn't help noticing our kin never SB'd anyone, not even the stone tank. We pulled the first 3 patrons then rushed Ghost Widow, then the tanker stood up to Lord Recluse straight up, with no support but lots of inspirations. Finished in 1h 8m and got a Gaussian (TOHIT/RCHG/END) recipe drop. I crafted a Musculature boost (not for slotting, a start on a second boost to combine for the ultra rare).

Olivia Q (50 hero MA/SR scrapper) did an LGTF 38m 31s and got an Unbreakable Constraint (HOLD/END) recipe drop. I had been pretty unhappy with Olivia Q's I19 respec, and ended up burning one of her earned respecs to dump fighting pool, which I felt was sucking up all her END, making her unfun to play. The new build is still defense capped but lower END cost with more END tools (bringing back Conserve Power and adding Physical Perfection), with 62.5% global recharge (not counting hasten).


Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.92
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Olivia Q I19 respec 2: Level 50 Technology Scrapper
Primary Power Set: Martial Arts
Secondary Power Set: Super Reflexes
Power Pool: Medicine
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Speed
Ancillary Pool: Body Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Storm Kick -- Mako-Acc/Dmg(A), Mako-Dmg/EndRdx(7), Mako-Dmg/Rchg(9), Mako-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(9), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(11), Mako-Dam%(11)
Level 1: Focused Fighting -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(3), LkGmblr-Rchg+(3)
Level 2: Thunder Kick -- T'Death-Acc/Dmg(A), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx(13), T'Death-Dmg/Rchg(13), T'Death-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(15), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(15), T'Death-Dam%(17)
Level 4: Focused Senses -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(5), LkGmblr-Rchg+(5)
Level 6: Agile -- DefBuff-I(A)
Level 8: Crane Kick -- Mako-Acc/Dmg(A), Mako-Dmg/EndRdx(17), Mako-Dmg/Rchg(19), Mako-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(19), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(21), Mako-Dam%(21)
Level 10: Practiced Brawler -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 12: Aid Other -- IntRdx-I(A), Mrcl-Heal/EndRdx(36), Mrcl-EndRdx/Rchg(37), Mrcl-Heal/Rchg(37), Mrcl-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(37), Mrcl-Heal(39)
Level 14: Aid Self -- IntRdx-I(A), Mrcl-Heal/EndRdx(23), Mrcl-EndRdx/Rchg(33), Mrcl-Heal/Rchg(33), Mrcl-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(34), Mrcl-Heal(34)
Level 16: Combat Jumping -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(23), LkGmblr-Rchg+(45)
Level 18: Dodge -- DefBuff-I(A)
Level 20: Quickness -- Run-I(A)
Level 22: Warriors Challenge -- Range-I(A)
Level 24: Focus Chi -- GSFC-ToHit(A), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg(29), GSFC-ToHit/EndRdx(34), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg/EndRdx(42), GSFC-Rchg/EndRdx(42), GSFC-Build%(43)
Level 26: Dragon's Tail -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(27), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(27), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(29), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(31), Oblit-Úm(31)
Level 28: Lucky -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def(46), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(48)
Level 30: Resuscitate -- Mrcl-Rcvry+(A)
Level 32: Eagles Claw -- T'Death-Acc/Dmg(A), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx(40), T'Death-Dmg/Rchg(40), T'Death-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(43), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(43), T'Death-Dam%(45)
Level 35: Evasion -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(36), LkGmblr-Rchg+(36)
Level 38: Hover -- Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(46), Zephyr-ResKB(46)
Level 41: Conserve Power -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 44: Physical Perfection -- P'Shift-End%(A)
Level 47: Energy Torrent -- Det'tn-Acc/Dmg(A), Det'tn-Dmg/Rchg(48), Det'tn-Dmg/Rng(48), Det'tn-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(50), Det'tn-Dmg/EndRdx/Rng(50)
Level 49: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(50)
Level 0: The Atlas Medallion
Level 0: Freedom Phalanx Reserve
Level 0: Portal Jockey
Level 0: Task Force Commander
------------
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-EndRdx/Rchg(33), Numna-Heal/Rchg(39), Numna-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(39), Numna-Heal(40), Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(42)
Level 2: Stamina -- P'Shift-EndMod(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(7), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc/Rchg(25), P'Shift-Acc/Rchg(25), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(31), P'Shift-End%(45)


Mercy Beaucoup (51 hero ice/kin corr) did another LGTF in 26m 26s; she had already done one, so this got me the Assistant badge.

Police Woman did two more LGTFs, one taking 22m 2s and another taking 23m 48s, taking a hero 1 DNA the first time and merits the second time; I did both these to work on the "help with WST" badges. With LGTF week wrapping up, I found that I have done the LGTF now on every level 50 on liberty except two that aren't getting played much recently. That felt like a lot of LGTFs, and I was ready for a change of pace. I also got the Resolute (75 months veteran) badge somewhere in here, not quite sure when.

Mercy Beaucoup then did a very speedy ITF in 17m 49s. I also learned Daedalus sells inspirations in Cimerora (for heroes; presumably Sister Airlia does the same for villains), something I had not realized before.

Tue 2/22/2011

Police Woman (51 hero AR/dev blaster) did a hero tip, then a hero morality mission for a hero merit. A friend suggested I'd be better off going vigilante to get access to Silver Mantis for this week (since it's much faster than Sister Psyche) but I kinda like the hero merits and Call to Justice power, so I'm currently sticking with hero.

Fire Emerald (29 hero fire/mental blaster) did a Sister Psyche TF in 1h 28m, getting 100 merits and 127K bonus exp at the end. This got her to level 31.

Mega (51 villain SS/will brute) did a 7-player Silver Mantis, one of which was a 2-boxed contact sitter, finished in 34m 1s.

Police Woman did a Sister Psyche TF in 1h 27m; this gives her a fourth Notice of the Well, enough to make the ultra-rare, but I still need a ton more incarnate salvage to assemble all the other components.

Fire Maiden (51 hero SS/fire brute) did some badging to get the SG explore badges for Galaxy, Kings Row and Skyway, then did a clear all ITF. We really cleared everything, mopping up stragglers, clearing a path up the valley of lag and everything; our DPS was simply ludicrous though, so even with clearing everything we finished in only 45m 8s. I'm becoming convinced that Fire Maiden is my highest DPS toon, mostly due to burn and foot stomp.


Wed 2/23

Millie Volt (50 rogue elec/elec brute) did a Silver Mantis SF in 34m 41s; as a brute I was asked to lure mobs of opposing factions together so they would kill each other. This was a little tricky due to how squishy I was while malefactored to 25, but I did fine between Lucks and Energize.

Indigo Ifrit (50 villain fire/rad corr) did another Silver Mantis SF in 37m 35s.

Mystery Girl (51 vigilante emp/pistols defender) joined a clear most ITF that finished in 35m 19s. A corruptor friend kept harassing me for AB, but we had two blasters on the team and I was convinced that AB was better used on them. With the incarnate salvage from this TF I crafted a Spiritual boost (not for slotting, eventually to be combined to make an ultra rare).

Fire Maiden (51 hero SS/fire brute) did a speed Kahn TF in 25m 40s. Our tanker was pretty focused on Reichsman in the final encounter and not taunting the secondary AVs, so I ended up taunting and herding them to the center.


Thu 2/24

Rain Dancer (51 hero storm/archery defender) joined an animal costume themed ITF, in honor of the animal booster pack. I spent about half an hour before the ITF trying to make a decent eagle costume (since Rain Dancer uses the tribal-looking eagle as a symbol) but just couldn't make it work, and for lack of a better idea I made a semi-Egyptian catgirl. At the actual ITF we had a minotaur, a gorilla, a ton of catgirls, and someone brought an amazing eagle costume that I had to run back to a tailor just to copy. Midway through the TF I felt really guilty about plagiarizing a teammate's costume, though, so I changed back to my cat costume from guilt. Our team had a massive amount of AoE and debuff and while fighting Romulus, we killed 2 of the Nictus AVs by accident due to AoE. Finished in 40m 33s and got an Unbreakable Constraint (chance for smashing) recipe drop.

After that Rain Dancer joined a 5-player team that did 5 of the Valentine's Day Snaptooth missions for various costume pieces and badges. On one of these missions, the leader set the mission of a level 50 toon who was on +4 x8 difficulty; everyone on the team but me was killed by redcap ambushes, but I managed to survive them and eventually kill +4 Snaptooth due to hurricane and my high ranged DEF.

Indigo Ifrit (50 villain fire/rad corr) joined a full team on a RWZ raid, gaining 582 vanguard merits, which I needed for Gr'ai matter incarnate salvage.

Virtual Girl (33 rogue katana/fire scrapper) joined a full Sister Psyche TF that finished in 1h 4m, which got Virtual Girl nearly to the top of level 34.

I spent some time upgrading my hero base's teleporter room to the biggest room, then crafted and installed 6 additional teleporters....then realized I didn't have enough control or energy to power any of the new ones, and had used up all my available prestige. So now I have a gigantic teleporter room with 2 working teleporters and 6 large paperweights. Doh.

The market in rare salvage had prices go up to around 4M-5M per item for awhile, which I've been trying to profit on. But looking at the quantity in stock at Wentworth's, I'm thinking the bubble is bound to burst soon, so I'm trying to sell inventory before prices fall. We'll see if that ends up being a good prediction or not.

For some reason I'm not feeling that excited about doing Sister Psyche TFs on all my level 50 heroes, so I've been focusing on running my lower level heroes through Sister Psyche for exp, while high level villains do Silver Mantis. I'm finding that even my toons with 4 Notice of the Well can't make the Ultra Rare alpha boost yet because I need so many other things to make them, so I figure it's not that urgent, and I can catch up my level 50 heroes on Apex TF next week anyway.

Fri 2/25/2011

Police Woman (51 hero AR/dev blaster) hit the inf cap marketeering again, emailed myself another 500M inf dividend.

Mystery Girl (51 vigilante emp/pistols defender) did a Silver Mantis SF on a full team; we stealthed some but had several people new to the SF, so weren't going full-out speed. We had a warshade on our team and encountered multiple level 30 Quantum bosses; since we were malefactored to level 25 for the SF, this meant we were fighting +5 bosses. I assume this is some weird side effect of bringing kheldians to red-side, where they weren't originally supported. In the final mission I used my jetpack to fly around trying to heal people fighting turrets; I found on this SF that I really need knockback protection, will need to be sure to include that on my next respec build. Finished in 1h 5m.

Schadenfreude (51 villain AR/pain corr) did another Silver Mantis SF on a full team in 51m 28s.


Sat 2/26

Police Woman (51 hero AR/dev blaster) crafted and slotted a Musculature Total Core Revamp (DMG/IMMOB); this was previously my "backup" alpha boost, but the +45% DMG on this boost made it better than the one I was using before, another Musculature Revamp that only had +33% DMG. I had enough shards for Favor of the Well, too, but was still several incarnate salvage drops short of completing the ultra rare. I solo'd the Cimerora wall a bit looking for shards, then did 5 hero tip missions.

Mystery Girl (51 vigilante emp/pistols defender) solo'd a couple of Maria Jenkins' missions, defeating Chimera (though it took me two tries) and Nightstar (on the first try), both as EBs. It's kind of silly to solo EBs on an emp defender, but I wasn't doing anything better at the time and thought I'd try it. My EB-soloing strategy was very simple: eat 4 lucks to get to the defense cap, then shoot the EB a lot, especially with fire ammo and piercing rounds (my only debuff), eating a few more lucks or casting Healing Aura when necessary.

Virtual Girl (34 rogue katana/fire scrapper) joined a 7 player clear most Renault SF; one player (I assume a vigilante hero) abruptly quit during the second mission because she "didn't like the villain play style", which I think meant that we were playing more like 7 toons each soloing through the mission, rather than working as a cohesive unit. No one was really offended though, we all kinda shrugged and continued, finishing the SF in 1h 16m.


Sun 2/27

Police Woman joined a clear most ITF finished in 45m 24s and got 7 shards.

Mega (51 villain SS/will brute) joined a 5-player (including 1 contact sitter) speed Silver Mantis SF; I had already done the Strike Target on Mega, but the team needed a brute. Finished in 35m 27s and got the Assistant badge.

Police Woman joined a 7 player Kahn TF that finished in 20m 32s. I solo'd another 5 hero tips, then a hero morality mission for a hero merit.


Mon 2/28

Tour de Force (32 hero ff/nrg defender) joined a Katie TF. Eochai and Jack were up in Croatoa while we were forming the team, and we decided to attack them; despite having a full team, we were light on debuff (only FF and pain for support) and it took us about 12 minutes to kill each of the mobs. This was pretty painfully slow, and I had my doubts that we would be able to beat 10 Mary Macombers with that team, but one person switched from scrapper to a stormy before the TF, after which we were fine; despite lacking a proper tank we still were able to beat Mary 10 times. Mission 2 had changed to a "lead hostage out" mission so we ended up clearing a path to the hostage, then taking her back -- with a scary moment when Amy got stuck on a wall, but we somehow got her unstuck after a few minutes. Had a little aggro on Katie's spirit in the last mission but we were able to clear it and lead her home, finishing in 44m 22s and getting Tour de Force to level 33.

Kyrie Eleison (38 hero arch/fire blaster) joined a Sister Psyche TF; we were playing a little fast and loose, and had a couple people die a lot (though not me, to my surprise, despite being a blaster aggro magnet) but it didn't really slow us down, finishing in 56m 22s and getting Kyrie to level 39.

Mystery Girl (51 vigilante emp/pistols defender) joined a clear-most ITF; we had a very support heavy team, prompting the leader to raise difficulty to +1, but despite clearing most of the mobs we still finished in a speedy 33m 7s. I used the incarnate salvage drop to upgrade my backup Spiritual boost to a Spiritual Radial Boost.

Tue 3/1/2011

The Strike Target switched to Apex TF today and I dutifully did a ton of Apex TFs.

Mercy Beaucoup (51 hero ice/kin corr) did an Apex TF. In the final fight our team was half wiped out when Battle Maiden returned accompanied by clouds of blue death, but we nevertheless beat her and finished the TF in 29m 18s, getting the Master of Apex badge.

Blond Justice (51 hero broadsword/shield scrapper) did another Apex TF in 31m 35s, nothing too notable, got Master of Apex.

Fire Maiden (51 hero SS/fire brute) did another Apex TF on a very high DPS team, knocking out the TF in a speedy 18m 38s. Again got Master of Apex. At this point I stopped tracking which toons got the Master of Apex badge for the rest of the week.

April Fool (50 villain thug/TA MM) did an Apex TF with 2 masterminds; we all thought the MM pets would get utterly wrecked from Battle Maiden's blue stuff, but it seemed like we did okay, finishing in 27m 19s. For my part I pretty much ignored the horrible deaths inflicted on my pets, concentrating on keeping myself alive and occasionally summoning more pets to replace the dead ones. So, pretty much the same as how I play my mastermind in normal gameplay, I guess.

Kyrie Eleison (39 hero archery/fire blaster) duo'd with an emp defender who was trying to go Vigilante, doing 5 vigilante tip missions. Kyrie does lots of damage but has no survivability, while the defender had lots of buffs and heals and not much damage, so this duo worked pretty well for both of us.

Spacegirl (51 hero mind/rad controller) did an Apex TF on a fairly weak team that had been begging for debuffers to join; I and a friend on another rad agreed to help out. In the first mission we cleared through the sewers, which was slower but safer than jumping past the hydra. In the final mission we kinda zerged Battle Maiden; most of the team did not seem to understand the blue stuff was killing them despite being told, but I and the other rad managed to stay alive and keep rad toggles on Battle Maiden; it felt like I was tanking Battle Maiden for most of the last half of the fight as our tanker was dying a lot. Nevertheless we beat Battle Maiden to successfully complete the TF in 46m 54s.


Wed 3/2

Yuki-Onna (51 villain ice/cold corr) did an Apex TF in 25m 10s.

Thunder Girl (51 hero elec/SR scrapper) did an Apex TF in 24m 59s.

Police Woman (51 hero AR/dev blaster) did an Apex TF in 21m 51s. This gave me enough shards to construct my first ultra rare alpha boost, a Musculature Core Paragon (DMG/IMMOB/DEFDEBUFF with level shift).

San Min (50 hero MA/will scrapper) did an Apex TF. It seemed like our tanker was having trouble keeping aggro, or staying alive when he had aggro, and one of our rads had powers colored almost the same as the blue stuff, making it difficult. Nevertheless finished in 26m 23s.

Mystery Girl (51 vigilante emp/pistols defender) did an Apex TF. We had a stone brute tanking for us and it seemed like I just couldn't keep him alive, he kept dying even to generic (albeit level 54) mobs. He did have an alpha boost slotted, so I'm not quite sure what it was; I started feeling bad that I couldn't keep him healed, and started buffing fortitude on him for more mitigation (something I don't normally put on stone armor toons). In the final mission the scrappers just couldn't stay out of the blue stuff, dying a ton. It did not seem like there was much I could do about this, but I still felt survivor guilt for not being able to keep them alive. Despite all this we still finished the TF, in 37m 8s, and I got an Absolute Amazement (STUN) recipe drop.

Kyrie Eleison (39 hero archery/fire blaster) joined a clear-most ITF. I ended up dying a lot due to excessive aggro, and had a scrapper complain that my Burn special effects were making it hard to see. I had picked a brilliant blue-white color which admittedly is pretty blinding; later I ended up making another costume with different colored fire powers in case that comes up again. Finished the TF in 48m 59s and got level 41 and an Apocalypse (RCHG/ACC) recipe drop.


Thu 3/3

Schadenfreude (51 villain AR/pain corr) did an Apex TF in 20m 21s.

Star Amethyst (51 hero dark/ice defender) did an Apex TF in 23m 54s.

I started a new plant/storm controller named Sakura, a name I was quite pleased to be able to get. Soloing lowbie missions got me to level 5. I was struck by how empty the low level zones seemed to be. I am guessing that this is the flip side of the popularity of Weekly Strike Target TFs; there's a lot more incentive to play level 50s now than there ever was before.


Fri 3/4

Police Woman hit the inf cap at the market; I mailed myself a 500M inf dividend.

Mayday (50 rogue fortunata) solo'd 5 hero tip missions.

Police Woman (51 hero AR/dev blaster) did an Apex TF in 20m 52s. Our team got a "you guys rock!" from someone whose last 2 Apex TFs went bad.

San Min (50 hero MA/will scrapper) solo'd 2 hero tip missions, getting a Soulbound Allegiance (DMG/RCHG/ACC) recipe drop.


Sat 3/5

A peacebringer asked Police Woman for help against Captain Castillo, so I exemped down and we duo'd an EB-level Captain Castillo 3 times; he kept running away and respawning as part of the script for the mission. This was very annoying because he respawned at random locations on a HUGE map (the Sky Raider floating base) which resulted in us spending probably 10 minutes searching an empty map for him at one point. We had one team wipe against a Malta ambush that included an elite boss Zeus Titan.

Mercy Beaucoup (51 hero ice/kin corr) joined an impromptu RWZ raid. This was initially just one team clearing pylons, but quickly grew into a 3 team raid. The team leader had us kill 6 grates before clicking any bombs, then 4 of us dropped from the team and each solo clicked a bomb, so as to get more credit for bombs than a small team normally could. I picked up 595 vanguard merits at this raid.

Millie Volt (51 rogue elec/elec brute) joined another RWZ raid, gaining 526 vanguard merits. I used most of these buying the Vanguard storage sack. Millie then did an Apex TF in 22m 49s; I tested standing in the blue stuff in case it was energy damage; I had hoped that Millie (near the energy resist cap) might be immune to the blue stuff, but found it was unresistable "nanite" damage. I took some damage but fortunately didn't die from it.

Mayday (50 rogue fortunata) solo'd 4 hero tip missions.

Virtual Girl (35 rogue kat/fire scrapper) malefactor'd to level 8 to help with an Atlas mayhem, to get the exploration badge. After that I solo'd the villain Midnighter arc for Cimerora access.


Sun 3/6

Fire Maiden (51 hero SS/fire brute) joined a clear most LGTF at +2 difficulty. Our team was very high DPS and I didn't notice we were on +2 until mission 2 when I noticed the Rikti monkeys were red to me. The team leader complained about having to run back to Lady Grey between missions, asking "In the age of phones why must we run back to talk?" I explained this by saying "People keep destroying the cell towers in RWZ thinking it'll drop the mother ship's shields," which got a good laugh. In the Hamidon mission I found Fire Maiden could actually stack holds, between Char and Knockout Blow. Finished the LGTF in 1h 21m, admittedly a long time but it was a fun team. With the incarnate salvage I crafted a backup Cardiac Radial boost (eventually to become a component of an ultra rare boost). I also slotted the Apocalypse (RCHG/ACC) IO found by Kyrie earlier into Fire Maiden's Fire Blast power, making a set of 5 which gives +10% global recharge. After that Fire Maiden joined a speed ITF which finished in a very speedy 17m 16s.

Schadenfreude (51 villain AR/pain corr) joined an RSF team. We were pretty light on support (only me as pain corr and a level 46 cold corr, with 2 brutes, 2 doms, a bane and a blaster rounding out the team). Our first attempt at the Freedom Phalanx we suffered a team wipe without killing any of the heroes, which was rather worrisome, but on our second attempt we beat Numina and Psyche before suffering another team wipe. On the third attempt people got serious and used Shivans and Warburg nukes and we cleared them all. Finished in 52m 58s and picked up a Performance Shifter (END) recipe drop.

Rain dancer (51 hero storm/archery defender) did an Apex TF in 25m 34s. I kinda liked how Hurricane and Tornado worked against the hydra and the animated swords, because you really just want to avoid those; I'm not sure what my teammates thought of the knockback though.

Police Woman hit the inf cap at the market again, and I sent myself another 500M inf. Prices on rare salvage were falling, much as I had predicted, so I was making a tidy sum trading these.

Kyrie (41 hero archery/fire blaster) duo'd another 5 vigilante tips with an emp defender. We were doing great until a tip mission where we fought Arachnoids, which killed me repeatedly with their stacking poison debfufs until I got careful and started pulling them instead of charging into them. We also had a team wipe to Paragon Police during the vigilante alignment mission, but we were able to break the vigilante out of the Zig and both changed to Vigilante alignment. This also got Kyrie to level 42.

Mayday (50 rogue fortunata) also solo'd the hero morality mission, changing to hero alignment. Again. Hopefully for the last time.


Mon 3/7

Mystery Girl (51 vigilante emp/pistols defender) duo'd some of Maria Jenkins' Praetorian missions with a blaster. We beat up Bobcat, Neuron and Battle Maiden. After that team broke up, I joiend a Kahn TF that finished in 19m 25s. In the final fight I tried to stack around 6 to 8 Clear Minds on our tank and brute, to keep them from being stunned by Reichsman's lightning; I think it helped.

Mega (51 villain SS/will brute) did an Apex TF in 25m 58s; our squishies seemed to die a lot in the Battle Maiden fight, though, due to a combination of the ambushes and blue stuff.

Sakura (7 hero plant/storm controller) joined an 8 player Frostfire mission on +1 difficulty; this was fun for nostalgia value (I love the Hollows) and a couple people commented that it was a nice break from incarnate TFs. Our team was damage heavy, and I was the only "healer" with my 1-slotted O2 boost; a lot of people died early on, unslotted O2 boost just isn't all that. Fortunately we had a force field defender who was good about keeping bubbles up, or it would've been worse. Everyone leveled up a couple times through the mission which made things a lot easier too. Team members were wisecracking and uttering "deep thoughts" while beating up Outcasts, leading one player to describe us as "like a team of *** kicking philosophers" which was very funny. I got a costume compliment from a teammate and level 10 from finishing the mission.

Strong Woman (51 hero inv/SS tanker) joined an Apex TF that had been asking for a tanker; I kinda think the team bumped someone else to invite me becaus they really wanted a tanker. We had a mix of novice and veteran players, and in particular our emp and kin had no alpha boost, so were at a -4 level penalty for the whole TF. I was a little worried this team would have trouble, but I tried to explain how the TF worked in detail, and people actually did a pretty good job, letting us finish in 29m 30s and getting several people the Master of Apex badge they were looking for.

Tue 3/8/2011

The weekly strike target changed to Numina/Ice Mistral. I'm kind of "over" the mad rush to get Notices of the Well, and consequently for Numina/Ice Mistral I tried to play toons that needed the badge and/or needed exp.

I ran Virtual Girl (35 rogue kat/fire scrapper) through a Numina TF in 44m 48s, getting to level 36.


Wed 3/9

Mystery Girl (51 vigilante emp/pistols defender) did an Ice Mistral SF in 33m 44s.

Kyrie Eleison (42 vigilante archery/fire blaster) did an Ice Mistral SF in 37m 54s and got level 43. At the very start of the SF I was asked to mission TP to the first mission (way up on Thorn Isle in Nerva) and veteran team TP everyone there, which was a slight speed-up.

Sakura (10 hero plant/storm controller) duo'd the Fortune Teller mission, getting to level 11.

Mercy Beaucoup (51 hero ice/kin corr) did a Numina TF in 48m 40s.

Mayday (50 hero fortunata) did a clear most ITF in 50m 50s, getting an Armageddon (DMG/RCHG) recipe drop.

Indigo Ifrit (50 villain fire/rad corr) did speed ITF in 27m 4s and crafted a Spiritual boost.

Police Woman hit the inf cap at the market, and I emailed myself 500M inf.


Thu 3/10

Kyrie Eleison (43 vigilante archery/fire blaster) did a Numina TF in 54m 30s. Kyrie had already done Ice Mistral, so I didn't get the bonus exp at the end, but she needed the badge anyway and it was still worth exp.

Strong Woman (51 hero inv/SS tanker) did a clear most ITF in 36m 11s, followed by a speedy Apex TF in 23m 33s.

Mayday (50 hero fortunata) did a clear most ITF in 43m 49s.

I did some downtime badging on Mercy Beaucoup (51 hero ice/kin corr), getting all the explore badges for Freedom Phalanx Reserve. When I got the last one I didn't get the accolade, though, and after searching through my badges, I realized I lacked Gearsmasher (I even had Unveiler already). I normally automatically get Gearsmasher just leveling up naturally, but Mercy came over from Praetoria so never fought any Primal Earth clockwork. I'll need to do Synapse sometime for Mercy, which should solve that problem and work towards TF Commander too.

I solo'd Arrow Girl (9 villain archery/TA corr) to level 10; I'm not that excited about archery/TA so far, but getting to level 10 at least let me email myself the 500M inf that a GM had dumped on Arrow Girl as reimbursement for a lost email.


Fri 3/11

Mayday (50 hero fortunata) did a Numina TF 51m 57s. A teammate complimented me on her background story.

Indigo (50 villain fire/rad corr) did a clear most ITF in 44m 48s, which let me craft a Spiritual Core (RCHG/STUN) boost.

Sakura (11 hero plant/storm controller) joined a 6 player team doing lowbie radio missions in Steel Canyon, then we moved to the Hollows and did all of Wincott's and Flux's arcs, culminating in the Frostfire mission. This got Sakura to level 16.


Sat 3/12

Fire Emerald (31 hero fire/mental blaster) joined a 7 player team that did the Frontline badge mission at level 39; this got Fire Emerald to level 32.

Indigo Ifrit (50 villain fire/rad corr) did some badging, picking up enough explore badges to complete the Demonic and Born in Battle (+54hp +5end) accolades. Then joined a 4 player team that beat up consiglieres in St Martial that got her the High Pain Threshold (+107hp) accolade. This got her max HP to 1361.

Millie Volt (51 rogue elec/elec brute) joined a 7 player Numina that finished in 37m 55s. I got assigned to beat up the Council in Boomtown, which resulted in my getting KS'd a lot by 5th Column, even adopting the strategy of not looking for the Council until I was ready to kill them. There was the general feeling that a blaster or other range DPSer would work better for this hunt.

Spy Girl (42 rogue MA/ninj stalker) joined a 3 player Ice Mistral SF with one extra toon as contact sitter. We had no debuff at all, and our team wiped out except for me on the final fight with Archus as an AV and the mad ambushes. I managed to survive and tank him for a time on sheer inspiration power, long enough for our brute to awaken and help pound the AV down despite the lack of debuffs, finishing in 43m 10s. This got me level 43 and a "ur a good player" from a teammate.

Water Lily (39 rogue rad/storm corr) joined an 7 player Ice Mistral SF with one contact sitter, finishing in 39m 40s and getting me level 40. This SF finished on Thorn Isle just as another team was forming to fight Caleb there, so I joined in to take down Caleb, though this took two tries; our first try I think people jumped in before everyone was ready, got beat up, and Caleb escaped to fly around invisibly a bit before we tracked him down to beat him on the second try. After that I did a little crafting, slotting 2 sets of 6 Thunderstrike and 1 set of 5 Thunderstrike for a total of +8.75% range def.

Mystery Girl (51 vigilante emp/pistols def) did a Kahn TF. I got called Carmen Sandiego again (I'm pretty sure it's the red fedora that causes this), which was an unintentional likeness, but I don't want to change Mystery Girl's color scheme because I like it. We had 2 emps on this team and since the other emp was good about keeping AB on our lone blaster, I decided to put my AB on the other emp for the extra recharge. Finished in 34m 32s.

I started a newbie ice/ice dom in Praetoria, my latest attempt to find a dominator that I like. I gave her the name Irena, with concept that she was a Praetorian version of Ice Mistral, and used Ice Mistral's color scheme with the Resistance costume pieces. This combination ended up making her look more like Quorra than Ice Mistral, but I liked the look so I kept it. I decided it would be fun to meet up with the Praetorian versions of the other Arachnos characters, so I started down the story arcs that let you encounter Belladonna Ventrano and Paolo Marino, getting to level 6.

Virtual Girl (36 rogue kat/fire scrapper) helped a couple corruptors with the missions that unlock the Midnight Squad badge.

Yuki-Onna (51 villain ice/cold corr) joined an all-corruptor clear-most ITF. Despite bringing 8 corruptors somehow none of us brought a kin, which made things run a little slow, finishing in 51m 27s. I got a Fortunata Hypnonsis (Chance for Placate) recipe drop.


Sun 3/13

Blond Justice (51 hero broadsword/shield scrapped) has a rare Cardiac boost slotted, but I decided I'd try to switch to Musculature because +damage is sexier than lower end usage. Towards this end, I joined a STF and was in scrapperlock for most of the TF, charging heedlessly into everything and slaughtering it. Our tank disconnected during mission 4 and I ended up tanking all the AVs but Dr. Aeon in that one; fortunately the tanker got back in time for Dr. Aeon since he had the temp power to make him vulnerable. In the final mission, a blaster single-pulled all the patron AVs, then our fire tanker tanked Lord Recluse while flying while we beat up 3 of the towers. Finished the STF in 49m 51s.

Also on Blond Justice I solo'd 2 hero tips and a hero morality mission for a hero merit, which I blew on a pretty junky random roll:

Touch of Lady Grey (RCHG/END) worthless
Ghost Widow's Embrace (chance for psi) worthless
Decimation (ACC/DMG/RCHG) 9M
Luck of the Gambler (END/RCHG) worthless
Obliteration (chance for smashing) 35M

Star Amethyst (51 hero dark/ice defender) joined a clear all LGTF. We had 3 tanks and no kin and clearing all seemed likely to be slow, but we actually had quite a lot of debuff so were doing fine. One of our tankers disconnected a couple times, then finally never came back, and we all joked that we couldn't go on safely with only 2 tanks. The leader wanted to fail the mission with Infernia/Glacia, but our method of failing was to clear every single mob on the way there. I didn't see much point in getting them killed if we were just going to clear the mission anyway, so I managed to talk the team into rescuing the heroes. I ended up tanking Dra'gon somehow while the other two tankers were clearing Rikti, but I managed to survive until our fire tanker noticed the AV and taunted him off. He was actually pleasantly surprised that Dra'gon did fire damage (which he was near immune to); apparently he had only fought Dra'Gon once previously and hadn't noticed then. (I guess practically everyone deliberately fails this mission instead of winning it.) In the Hamidon mission we really took our "clear all" strategy to heart, even clearing all the mobs innocuously standing around in the fields leading up to Hamidon. I was worried this meant we would have to fight giant DE monsters, but apparently those guys are just decorative in LGTF and you don't actually fight them, which was something I hadn't known. We also cleared a path to the end in the final mission, even detouring down dead-end tunnels to get every last thing. This all took awhile but I didn't really mind the kill-all mentality, since I needed the SG prestige; finished in 1h 47m. A teammate also complimented me on my power colorization (everything recolored purple; Star Amethyst was originally a warshade but I eventually realized I just liked the warshade colors, not their actual powers). The incarnate salvage from this allowed me to upgrade her backup alpha boost to a Cardiac Radial.


Mon 3/14

Mystery Girl (51 vigilante emp/pistols defender) joined a Kahn TF, finishing in 35m 6s. This let me craft a Spiritual Core Paragon (45 rchg/33 heal and stun, level shift), my second toon with the ultra rare boost.

Star Amethyst (51 hero dark/ice defender) joined a Master of the ITF attempt with 2 VEATs, 2 defenders (dark and cold), 2 blasters, scrapper and fire tanker. We were a little more careful but not really that much more so than a regular clear-most TF, finishing in 49m 37s and getting the Master of ITF badge.

Police Woman hit the inf cap at the market again, and I sent myself another 500M via email.

Had one of the forum reviewers on the MA Arc Finder channel find my Papers and Paychecks arc after wading through a sea of farms in the MA search tool, then teased me with a complaint that "They're attacking me with fire damage! It must be a farm!" (Turned out this was a Longbow flamethrower.) It turns out she liked it, though, and gave me a positive review.

Tue 3/15/2011

The weekly strike target switched to ITF, and I dutifully did a ton of ITFs. Which wasn't too onerous, because practically everyone likes the ITF.

Fire Maiden (51 hero SS/fire brute) did a clear most ITF in 47m 18s.

Yuki-Onna (51 villain ice/cold corr) did a speed ITF in 18m 31s.

Blond Justice (51 hero bs/shield scrap) did a 7-player speed ITF in 22m 35s; this team was a little slow to kill Romulus due to low overall DPS.

Star Amethyst (51 hero dark/ice def) did a speed ITF in 20m 16s; I ran out of break frees and managed to die a couple times to the Nictus stuns in the final fight.

Rain Dancer (51 hero storm/archery def) did a clear most ITF in 41m 29s.

Sakura (16 hero plant/storm ctrl) tried an AE arc called Hollywood Nocturne at a friend's recommendation; this was a neat mystery, but a hostage in the final mission that needed to be led out kept getting stuck. I reset the mission once but the hostage got stuck again, and I ended up having to abandon the arc. I gave it 4 stars anyway.


Wed 3/16

Strong Woman (51 hero inv/SS tank) did a clear most ITF in 41m 58s.

Mercy Beaucoup (51 hero ice/kin corr) did a speed ITF in 19m 47s. Our tank disconnected on the final Romulus kill, but managed to get back just in time to get credit.

Mega (51 villain SS/will brute) did a speed ITF in 23m 23s.

Mercy Beaucoup joined a 7 player team doing the new Maria Jenkins arc. We beat Bobcat, Neuron, Battle Maiden, Black Swan, Malaise, Mother Mayhem, Infernal, Diabolique, Dominatrix, Marauder, the Statesman's Pal mission (noteworthy that Tyrant is not in this mission any more, now there's some generic boss) and a non-story mission that let us beat Siege. Despite running through nearly the whole arc, I still didn't get the Dimensional Warder badge; I think Mercy is missing some combination of Antimatter, Chimera and Nightstar.

This did finally get my private SG enough prestige (along with some help from a friend who has been tagging some toons into my SG purely to give my SG prestige) to build some control items: a magical orbit thingy and 3 bookshelves, which let me power up all of my teleporters. I still need to work on getting a few more beacons, though.


Thu 3/17

Kyrie Eleison (43 vigilante arch/fire blast) did a clear most ITF at +1 difficulty in 35m 21s, getting to level 45. After that I solo'd 5 radio missions in Peregrine Island and the Founders Falls safeguard.

There was some free-for-all PVP in Warburg, so I went over there with various toons; I tried playing April Fool (50 villain thug/TA MM0, then Mayday (50 hero fortunata) and finally Police Woman (51 hero AR/dev blaster), who did the best of all my toons, probably because of some combination of having spent the most inf on her build, and being the most used to playing her. I killed some people and died lots. For some reason, enemy players seemed really surprised that I stunned them with Beanbag.

Sakura (16 hero plant/storm controller) solo'd Suppression, an AE arc that is basically a Wizard of Oz homage. It was cute and generally okay; I gave it 4 stars. After that I helped a peacebringer duo a level 27 mission with hydra that he was stuck on; they seemed very tough (he was on +1 difficulty and I'm really not that strong yet at level 16) and we had one team wipe, but eventually won. He seemed very grateful for the help and promised to owe me one.

Primadonna (51 rogue sonic/kin corr) did a clear most ITF in 35m 0s. After that I duo'd the Brickstown mayhem with a dominator, which got Primadonna her last mayhem exploration badge and the Invader accolade.


Fri 3/18

Strong Woman (51 hero inv/SS tank) did a speed ITF in 24m 20s.

Police Woman hit the inf cap at the market and I sent myself another 500M.

April (50 villain thug/TA MM) joined an all MM ITF at +1 difficulty. This was initially pretty cool due to the novelty of an 8 MM team, but it bogged down quickly. We had to clear everything in our path due to the pets, and had one player disconnect after mission 1 and never return. Of our remaining team, we had a FF and 2 thermal masterminds, none of which ever buffed (until the very last fight). Neither thermal had melt armor and our traps MM didn't have poison gas trap, so we had very little debuff except my trick arrow and a stormy, despite nominally having 7 MMs with 7 support sets. On top of that half the team were lowbies and a little underpowered as a result. We cleared a path to Romulus in the final mission, but when we attacked him, we seemed unable to make any progress; it looked like Romulus was healing up from our pets, even. We decided to all log out to reset the mission, then have the leader change difficulty to +0. The stormy and I both agreed this wouldn't make enough difference, but neither of us wanted to be a dirty quitter, so we tried it. I attempted to immob the healer Nictus AV and keep it away from Romulus to negate its healing; it seemed very resistant to immob, but I got its aggro long enough for the first Romulus kill, then the healer ran back to Romulus and I couldn't get him away (normally TA is aggro enough, but here I really wished I had taunt). We had another team wipe at that point. We regrouped and decided to try again; this time I gave up on trying to immob the healer and just attacked Romulus straight up, and focusing damage and debuff went a lot better, finally letting us win. Finished the ITF in 2h 48m (ouch).


Sat 3/19

Star Amethyst (51 hero dark/ice def) did a clear most ITF. In the first mission I mistakenly went straight to the top and attacked the minotaur, instead of following the road with the rest of the team; trying to correct by heading back to the team, I managed to pull the minotaur down onto the team and spawn the ambush directly on us. Oops. Aside from that it went OK, finishing in 55m 13s.

Sarcasm Lass (17 loyalist sonic/MM blast) formed and led a 6 player team in Neutropolis, doing Ivy's arc, which got her to level 19.

Mercy Beaucoup (51 hero ice/kin corr) did a speed ITF in 19m 18s.

San Min (50 hero MA/will scrapper) did a speed ITF in 19m 54s.

Millie Volt (50 rogue elec/elec brute) did a 7 player speed ITF in 18m 35s.

Thunder Girl (51 hero elec/SR scrap) did a speed ITF in 19m 19s.

Mayday (50 hero fortunata) did a speed ITF in 19m 9s, followed by a late night impromptu RWZ raid, where I picked up 384 vanguard merits.


Sun 3/20

Spacegirl (51 hero mind/rad ctrl) did a 6 player speed ITF in 21m 10s.

Teal Serpent (50 villain archery/traps corr) did a speed ITF in 23m 40s. I died a lot more than I liked (despite good defense and some lethal resist from Temp Inv), and felt really squishy as a result. I also noticed Romulus killed my FF Generator once, from his nasty AoE. With the shards and salvage from this, I crafted and slotted a Spiritual boost. I'm convinced +RCHG is the way to go for all traps characters.

Fire Maiden (51 hero SS/fire brute) joined an impromptu RWZ raid. I got an Absolute Amazement (STUN) recipe drop from a random rikti, which was pretty awesome, and enough vanguard merits to buy the storage sack.

Virtual Girl (36 rogue kat/fire scrapper) did a clear most ITF in 48m 28s. I was a little squishy but mostly survived; we also had a lowbie dominator along who died a lot more. Carrion creepers from a plant person slowed down our first Romulus kill, but things went fine after that. I hit level 39 on this ITF; 3 levels in one TF is pretty crazy. My SOs went red when I hit 39 which really hurt my performance, though.

Sakura (16 hero plant/storm controller) solo'd Jim Temblor's arc in Faultline, rescuing Fusionette and beating Kurse and Nocturne as EBs. This got her to level 17.

Police Woman (51 hero AR/dev blast) got involved in heavy PvP in Warburg; there must've been 4 different teams duking it out. I managed to form a 4 player team and got some kills. Glue Arrow, Net Arrow and Web Grenade were getting heavily used for movement control. I found Phase Shift to be really frustrating, as I don't have enough burst damage to kill someone before they can phase. The biggest team also had a tanker who kept disrupting me with his taunts, which certainly didn't help. This was pretty fun for awhile, but eventually got frustrating after my team lost some people and got too small to really be effective. The big team offered to merge with mine (down to 2 players by that time), but since they were already dominating the zone it didn't seem fair to join them, so I ended up running around quixotically trying to steal kills for awhile, before finally throwing in the towel and leaving.

Sarcasm Lass (19 loyalist sonic/mm blast) solo'd Mother Mayhem's arc, beating up Wu Yin and Vanessa Devore as EBs. I really like the fight against Vanessa, her illusion powers are sooo cool. I decided to let Vanessa go at the end of the story. This got me to level 20, and I immediately crossed over into Paragon City, changing to Hero alignment.


Mon 3/20

Maid of Awesome (48 hero sonic/rad corr) did a clear most +1 ITF in 1 hour exactly. We had a kin on our team running Repel nonstop through mission 1, which is a cave mission with lots of confined spaces, so that was...pretty crazy. After a series of polite requests, begging, and threatening, the team leader finally got him to turn Repel off, after which the rest of the TF seemed fine. This got Maid of Awesome to level 50 and I started to solo Ramiel's arc to unlock the alpha slot; I beat Trapdoor no problem, but the Honoree killed me twice before I decided to take a break to do something else.

Mercy Beaucoup (51 hero ice/kin corr) did another clear most ITF in 41m 27s, the third ITF for her this week; not that I really want the Assist badge, but people often ask for a kin for ITFs. I'm tempted to start another kin toon or two, just because they seem so highly desired.

Spy Girl (43 rogue MA/ninj stalker) did a clear most ITF in 40m 8s. I warned the team I was bringing a "useless" toon (single target stalkers seem really ill suited for the ITF) but it actually seemed to work out fine; I wasn't doing any AoE, but it did seem like I was critting more when with the team, and single-target damage worked well on surgeons and EBs. Of course, this is all probably just rationalization on my part to try and justify playing a stalker. Nevertheless, this got Spy Girl to level 44.

Finished the night playing Irena (7 resistance ice/ice dom) on a 6 player team in Imperial City, getting to level 8. One of the team members noted that everyone on the team but one person had the "resistance" hairstyle (including Irena), which gave us all a good laugh. I'm guessing this hairstyle is so common right now just because it's a "new" hairstyle.

Tue 3/22/2011

The Weekly Strike Target changed to the Tin Mage TF, and so I immediately ran a Tin Mage TF on Police Woman (51 AR/dev blaster), finishing in a very speedy 20m 43s and getting 80 merits and a Notice of the Well, which seemed like a big reward for the time spent. (Most runs were a little longer than this though.)

Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corr) did another Tin Mage on a debuff heavy team (2 rad, 2 kin, dark, fort, cold and a single brute). We pulled Director 11 to the door and kinda accidentally got Midnight Dodger badge (it wasn't intended as a Master Of run, we just got lucky and had lots of buffs/debuffs). Finished in 28m 18s.

Maid of Awesome (50 sonic/rad corr) solo'd Ramiel's arc, continuing from the Honoree mission. I again beat up Holtz then lost to Honoree, but beat Honoree on the rematch. After getting the Alpha Unlocked badge, I collected the Ancient Nictus salvage from an ITF reward window I had left up while running through this arc.

Star Amethyst (51 dark/ice def) joined a Tin Mage TF; with a blaster-heavy team and only 2 dark defenders as support I wasn't real sure about this team mix, but it actually went well. Our tank pulled Neuron away without getting Bobcat, and we were able to beat the AVs up separately (though the 2 robots did add onto the Neuron fight). Finished in 38m 12s and crafted a Cardiac Core Paragon (45END/RANGE/RES and +1 level shift).


Wed 3/23

Yuki-Onna (51 ice/cold corr) did a Tin Mage in 26m 32s.

Millie Volt (50 elec/elec brute) did a Tin Mage in 22m 32s. I'm liking elec armor for the Praetorian content, it seems like they're really heavy on energy damage which Millie is nearly immune to. Crafted a Cardiac Total Radial Revamp (END/RES/RANGE/SLEEP and +1 level shift).

Blond Justice (51 broadsword/shield scrapper) did a Tin Mage in 23m 55s; we seemed to have an unusually high number of deaths in the last mission from AoE damage, not quite sure why. Crafted a Cardiac boost, but had totally forgotten I meant to switch her to using Musculature, so this was a waste. Oh well. I ran to Skyway to help with a Babbage sighting, but the initial directions to him were wrong so I didn't get there until after he died. Joined an LGTF that was kinda slow to fill, but finished in 28m 34s after starting. I got 2 compliments on Blond Justice's character concept and one on her costume, which was really nice. I tried to join a Kahn TF that got announced, but the person who announced it had already given up and joined something else, leaving several people looking for one. So I formed a Kahn TF, rounding up the people who had gotten stranded. None of us were debuffers so I asked on public channels for debuff, and we got a stormy, thermal and 2 rads, so had plenty. I got to explain my pokemon theory of how Reichsman works in the Kahn TF, which is always fun. Finished Kahn TF in 24m 4s and I crafted a Musculature (DMG) boost. I immediately swapped out my Cardiac Revamp for Musculature; even though this loses me a level shift and lots of bonuses, I figured this would at least keep me from forgetting which tree of the Alpha slot I was working on.

Irena (8 ice/ice dom) joined a 7 player team in Imperial City. We had no healer or support toons, and fought some Destroyers, who had this deadly combination of dropping burn patches then knocking me down in them. I found Arctic Air to be pretty decent mitigation, and dominator Ice Sword Circle was surprisingly good. Had a moment of coolness where I died just before hitting level 11 for an instant rez. Would've been cooler if I had actually planned it that way, but was pretty nice anyway.


Thu 3/24

Strong Woman (51 inv/SS tank) did a Tin Mage TF in 21m 25s.

Mega (51 SS/will brute) joined another Tin Mage where we were tank heavy; two tanks and me (though one tank was not alpha boosted which seemed pretty bad for this). I was overconfident and ran ahead of both tanks to take Neuron and Bobcat's alpha strike with no inspirations and instantly died (oops). We struggled with the final fight, most of the team dying a lot before we finally brought the bad guys down. Finished in 22m 37s, still pretty quick despite the problems.

Rain Dancer (51 storm/archery def) joined yet another Tin Mage. Somehow this team got to talking about beer; Yuengling (which I've never tried) was recommended, and we all agreed we hated Corona. Finished in 29m 35s.

Maid of Awesome (50 sonic/rad corr) tried doing some PvP in Warburg. This was initially frustrating due to a big, well-coordinated team smashing the rest of us repeatedly; I formed a competing team but we didn't work together very well, and I kept having team members drop from my team and join the winning team, which felt unfair and really made me mad. Eventually the big team left and I switched to Police Woman (51 AR/dev blaster) and ended up playing 3v4 most of the night. The 4 were 3 stalkers and a regen scrapper who apparently weren't teamed (except for 2 of the stalkers) but seemed to only attack me and my team, probably because we were the only ones easy to see. I died some and managed to land some kills a couple of the stalkers; this was kinda rough but still fun for awhile.

Spacegirl (51 mind/rad controller) joined a Tin Mage TF. We had an ugly fight against Director 11 with Malta wrecking most of our team. We had no kin so the Praetorian clockwork slowed us a lot in later missions. Still finished in 28m 43s.

Sarcasm Lass (20 sonic/mm blaster) replayed Fear and Loathing on Striga, an AE story arc where you're advancing Arachnos interests on Striga Isle. This was a fun story with good ties to the canon; I gave it 5 stars.


Fri 3/25

Sarcasm Lass formed and led a 7-player Positron 1 TF, finishing in 37m exactly. We picked up another player to do an 8-player Positron 2 TF, finishing in 42m 42s. This got Sarcasm Lass to 22.

I periodically check for the availability of various words or phrases as names on Liberty, and found that Teenybopper was an available name. I decided a character with this name had to be a minimum height war mace character, and thus Teenybopper (mace/nrg brute) was born. I remember energy aura being a horrible defense set when I first tried it in the early days of CoV. But it's been buffed at least once since then, and there's this whole "Strong and Pretty" meme going on, so I thought I'd give it another try. Solo'd to level 3, then joined a 5 player team til level 7.


Sat 3/26

Police Woman hit the inf cap and I sent another 500M to myself in email.

I joined the Kickball PvP event. Our first match was 6v6 on the city map. I was target caller, but our team wasn't really coordinating well and we were having trouble focusing damage. I felt like I was struggling to keep up with everyone else, which I normally don't have a big issue with. It turns out the matches were being run with Travel Suppression disabled, which meant that everyone else could travel at full speed, but due to the way Arenas work, Ninja Run (which I usually use for travel) was disabled.

Second match was on the Eden map, which was a bad map for me since it's so big, but our TA was good at calling targets and that team worked together really well, so we ended up winning.

I switched to playing Yuki-Onna (51 ice/cold corr) since she actually has travel powers. Due to vagaries of picking teams, the team I was on ended up with both TAs while the opposing team got both emps. We thought this meant we would get crushed for sure, but we actually did very well, winning a very low scoring match on the Cargo Ship (a small map making my switching to having travel powers irrelevant...probably would've been better sticking with blaster for dps), I think mostly because the opposing team was having trouble focusing damage on any one target. Or maybe having 2 emps just dropped their damage too much.

The kickball organizer gave out pretty generous prizes, giving a PvP recipe to every person who attended. I was given a Shield Wall (END/RCHG). There was some dramatic irony as the organizers gave PvP recipes to PvPers who liked to kill their PvP farm toons, then we did a final 6v7 match with totally random teams in Atlas where my team got utterly crushed.

Mystery Girl (51 emp/pistols def) duo'd Siege with a tanker, getting Dimensional Warder. I switched to Rain Dancer (51 storm/arch def) to duo more Praetorians with the tanker, beating Diabolique, Battle Maiden, Marauder, Malaise, Antimatter, Chimera, Nightstar, Bobcat and Neuron, which got her Portal Jockey. Switched to Spacegirl (51 mind/rad controller) for a few more, beating up Battle Maiden and Black Swan, after which the tanker finally got Portal Jockey. We then beat up Malaise, Mother Mayhem, Infernal and Neuron, which got Spacegirl Portal Jockey.

Sakura (17 plant/storm ctrl) exemped to 6 for a few missions in Atlas and KR on a 3 player team, which got her to level 18.

San Min (50 MA/will scrapper) solo'd Blitzkrieg, an AE story arc about a pretty good Malta conspiracy. I gave it 5 stars.

Virtual Girl (39 kat/fire scrapper) solo'd For the Love of Tronn, an AE story arc that was an homage to the movie Tron. The mobs were kinda annoying to fight (a lot of END drain, which sorta made sense) and there were some huge maps that made the middle of the arc feel slow, but the costumes were good and the dialog straight from the Tron movie. I particularly wanted to do this arc because Virtual Girl herself is kind of a Tron homage character (with heavy use of the Circuitry pattern in her #1 costume). I gave it 4 stars.


Sun 3/27

Teal Serpent (50 arch/traps corr) joined a Tin Mage TF; I had brought a traps corr because the leader asked for debuff, but we ended up with only a cold and traps for debuff, no heals at all. I thought this would end badly and offered to switch to kin, but the leader thought we would be fine. We had a team wipe fighting war walkers in mission 1, then most of the team died repeatedly (I died 5 times) to Director 11 from his AoE grenades and proximity mines, which tore apart the squishies on the team. We finally beat Director 11 only after we switched to killing all the Malta minions to clear them out before focusing on the AV. Several of us wanted to quit and restart with a better team mix at this point, but the leader was confident that Director 11 was the hardest part of the TF so we should be fine now. I had my doubts, but our two tanks actually did a good job of splitting the AVs apart in the last mission, with our stoner off-tanking Bobcat and the 2 War Walkers while the rest of the team focused on Neuron. This let us finish the TF in 1h 2m.

Virtual Girl (39 kat/fire scrapper) did an AE arc called Faerie Gold where a routine investigation gets you involved in fighting Unseelie Court fey; this was actually quite good and I gave it 5 stars. A friend also joined me to duo that arc, then asked to play one of mine, so I dragged him through Talos Vice, which he liked. While in the AE building a bystander spotted me and gave me a compliment for having a good Sucker Punch homage costume (I had just seen the movie, and had given Virtual Girl a schoolgirl-with-katana costume just for fun), which I guilty accepted. I got to level 40 doing this and slotted 2 sets of 4 Kinetic Combat in her attacks for 7.5% smash/lethal DEF (which should stack with Divine Avalanche). Common salvage was unreasonably priced so I spent lots of the tickets I had just picked up on random common salvage to build these IOs, then sold the extras for 100k each. Then went on to solo 5 paper missions in Grandville.


Mon 3/28

Maid of Awesome (50 sonic/rad corr) joined a Kahn TF. Our team was very solid with heavy debuff, but we wasted a lot of time on the Atlas Park steps when most of the team ran inside the building before we had fully cleared the first group of mobs with Bad Penny. Otherwise went fine, finishing in 25m 34s.

Mercy Beaucoup (51 ice/kin corr) joined Tin Mage TF. I was the second kin to join and offered to switch, but the team said we would be fine. I should've switched though; the other kin didn't SB anyone initially, and when I asked him for SB, he told me to Siphon Speed instead. I grumbled at this (playing a kin on a team with another kin who won't buff me is a huge pet peeve of mine), but eventually managed to guilt him into SBing me sometimes, and occasionally even other team members. Meanwhile, our sole tanker could not zone into the first mission, or the second mission for that matter, and we couldn't figure out why. I tried zoning out to try and teleport him onto the pilot, which didn't help. He tried rebooting the game twice. He just couldn't enter any mission. Eventually we gave up and proceeded with 7, with one of our 4 scrappers taking over tanking duties. In the final mission I volunteered to pull Neuron (as one of the few ranged toons) and the 1-shot code saved me from dying to his alpha strike; after that the scrappers pounced him like crazed piranha and we beat up all the AVs and won the TF, finishing in 40m 55s.

Tue 3/29/2011

The weekly strike target changed to Manticore TF and Renault SF, so I did a bunch of those before getting tired of them.

Maid of Awesome (50 sonic/rad corr) did a Manticore TF in 32m 59s for 64 merits and a notice.

Kyrie Eleison (45 archery/fire blaster) did a Manticore TF in 40m 56s, getting to level 46.

Sarcasm Lass (22 sonic/mental blaster) joined a 3 player hero tip team. The leader left for a TF and gave me the star. I recruited up to a 6 player team, but we had no support whatsoever. We had some deaths but managed to finish 5 hero tips, which got Sarcasm Lass to level 23.

Blond Justice (50 sword/shield scrapper) did a 7-player Kahn TF. One scrapper crashed in the final mission and we ended up fighting Reichsman with 6, but he made it back in time for the end. Finished in 31m 37s.


Wed 3/30

Millie Volt (51 elec/elec brute) did a clear most ITF in 45m 5s, followed by a speed Renault SF in 26m 12s for 48 merits and a notice.

Virtual Girl (40 kat/fire scrapper) did a Manticore TF; I ended up on 'point' for most of the fighting since I seemed the most aggressive of the melee. Finished in 56m 55s and got to level 41.

Tour de Force (33 ff/nrg defender) did a Manticore TF. We had one person log off in the first mission and never return; finished in 1h and got to level 35.


Thu 3/31

Sarcasm Lass (23 sonic/mental blaster) did a 6 player Sister Psyche TF, with a tanker, an emp and 4 damage. This went very well and we finished in 1h 36m, getting Sarcasm Lass to level 25. A peacebringer teammate thought my red-colored sonic powers looked like a void slayer's attacks, scaring him briefly, but another teammate complimented me on Sarcasm Lass's name and power colors. After the TF I duo'd in Croatoa with another sonic blaster, finishing Gordon Bowers' arc for 16 merits and level 26.


Fri 4/1

Water Lily (40 rad/storm corr) did a Manticore TF. The Halloween event was active for the weekend and banners in Brickstown blocked our hunt there for 12 minutes. I managed to talk the team into trying to do the banner event (since we were going to have to wait for it to end anyway) and we started actively working on it at the 9 minute mark; we were able to take down 3 banners in the time allowed. Went on to finish the TF in 55m 20s (including the banner downtime) and got Water Lily to level 41.

Millie (51 elec/elec brute) caught the tail end of the Friday RWZ raid and picked up 89 vanguard merits.

Blond Justice (50 sword/shield scrapper) did 5 hero tips in Atlas; between missions I ran into a Halloween Eochai, which I duo'd with a rad controller.

Sarcasm Lass (26) joined a Synapse TF; we had one controller teammate who disconnected repeatedly, then eventually (I assume) gave up trying to reconnect. Despite this we killed Babbage without any help (that I saw anyway) and finished in 1h 38m, getting Sarcasm Lass to 28.


Sat 4/2

Mercy Beaucoup (51 ice/kin corr) formed an 8-player Synapse. I had to miss the first warehouse mission for a minor RL emergency, but got back in time to fight Babbage, who we took down with just our team. Finished in 1h 42m with no deaths (we had a pretty good emp) and the Gearsmasher and Synapse TF badges gave me both the Freedom Phalanx Reserve and Task Force Commander accolades. I also got a level 21 Karma KB protect recipe drop.

Spy Girl (44 MA/ninj stalker) did a 7-player (including 1 contact sitter) Renault SF in 44m 24s, getting her to level 45. I slotted 6 Gaussian in Focus Chi and 6 Red Fortune in Ninja Reflexes for 2.5% melee/AoE DEF and 5% range DEF in set bonuses.

Indigo Ifrit (51 fire/rad corr) did an 8-player (including 1 contact sitter) Renault SF in 40m 51s.


Sun 4/3

Helen Highwater (27 storm/psy defender) joined a 4-player team on Triumph server for Sea Change, an AE arc where you get mind controlled by Calystix and are forced to help him (until you break free). I started off kinda iffy on the arc's premise, but it got pretty good near the end. I ended up giving it 5 stars.

Sakura (18 plant/storm controller) joined an 8 player Synapse TF. We had a weird team mix with 3 blasters, 2 VEATS, a kheldian, a scrapper and me. It seemed like one or another of the blasters was disconnected most of the time (rotating among them...must've been some kind of network problem?) and one particular blaster was unusually suicidal, rushing off on his own to attack fresh spawns (usually with bad results). Despite this we finished in 1h 45m, and this got Sakura to level 22. A teammate noticed that I had colored Sakura's tree of life to look like a cherry tree, which was nice.

I had rerolled Shield Maiden to a shield/mace tanker; she was a level 48 fire/shield scrapper before, and although that's a great combo on paper, it just wasn't working for me. It just feels like shield toons need a weapon to match the shield. I was using fire swords to try and simulate this, but the occasional Scorch or Cremate kinda ruined the "look" for me. So I rerolled to shield/mace tanker (a previous incarnation was a mace/shield brute, which I kinda liked until I realized how anemic shield charge is for brutes) and mostly solo'd in Praetoria. At level 10 I joined a 7-player pickup team doing Message Man's random missions; this was a very good team with solid support and decent damage, and got Shield Maiden to level 16.

Police Woman hit the inf cap at the market again, and I emailed myself another 500M inf.

Sarcasm Lass (28 sonic/mental blaster) formed 4 player pickup team in Striga that did Tobias's arc, then Lars' arc, which unlocked the Hess TF and got Sarcasm Lass level 29 and the Slayer badge.


Mon 4/4

It was my birthday and I had taken the day off. I got a lot of nice birthday wishes (thanks all!).

Shield Maiden (16 shield/mace tank) solo'd Transmuter's arc. I decided to save my "squad" rather than go for the glory. Got to level 17 then headed to Neutropolis to start Hetzfield's arc. While doing this I got a level 17 Steadfast Protection (KB protect) recipe as a random drop.

Mercy Beaucoup (51 ice/kin corr) joined a speed STF that finished in 30m 8s. This gave me enough salvage to craft and slot the Cardiac Core Paragon (END/RANGE/RES) boost, which got her to 58.89% smash/lethal RES, which always kinda astounds me because it's more than some of my scrappers get. After that, did a speed LGTF in 20m 45s.

San Min (51 MA/will scrapper) did a clear most ITF in 41m 3s

Sarcasm Lass (29 sonic/mental blaster) solo'd (briefly joined by a brute on some missions) the Keith Nance, Jenni Adair, and Roy Cooling story arcs. These are all relatively new mid-20s story arcs set in Talos Island and seem much spiffier than old story content, with more dramatic choices and interesting game mechanics. I managed to solo Archon Burkholder and Protean as EBs, then repeatedly solo the sky raider EB. The Zeus Titan EB ambush managed to kill me once, though. This got Sarcasm Lass to level 30 and a bunch of badges. I had been pushing to get to level 30 to try and do a Manticore TF while it was still the strike target, but by the time I got to level 30 it was late at night and I ended up just heading to bed. I did slot 2 sets of 4 Devastation and 2 Luck of the Gambler +7.5% recharge IOs (all level 33) for 6% damage, 4.5% max HP, 24% regen and 15% rchg; I was toying with trying to PvP with Sarcasm Lass sometime, since sonic blast is apparently pretty decent in PvP now.

Tue 4/5/2011

Issue 20 hit today. The strike target changed to the ITF, but this seemed largely forgotten as people rushed to do the new content.

Sakura (22 plant/storm controller) joined an Admiral Sutter TF; most of the rest of the team were 50s but I figured that since it was a level 20-40 TF, I'd play something that could get exp. The TF opened with a very cool naval battle; I really liked the new map with all the navy ships. We kinda had trouble staying together as a team but managed to make it through the objectives. I had to laugh at the bizarro Fusionette. We kinda zerged the two Durays; we initially were going to kill the Praetorian Duray first, but it seemed like he could teleport around a lot, which was really annoying so we switched to the Primal Duray. It looked like Primal Duray was responsible for calling down airstrikes on us. There were glowing arrows on the ground which I believe were marking airstrike targets. Hover really seemed to help Sakura stay alive against these airstrikes and also the exploding ghouls in the second mission. Finished in 1h 12m, got level 23 and the Land Sea & Air badge.

Millie Volt (51 elec/elec brute) joined a RWZ raid that used the new league interface with 4 teams. I kinda think the "new" team UI is unnaturally large, probably because I'm just used to the old way. This raid went moderately well; there were a lot of deaths but I seemed to do OK, got stunned a couple times from stacking stuns but didn't die (elec armor is nice against Rikti) and picked up 466 vanguard merits.

Police Woman (51 AR/dev blaster) joined a BAF trial. Our first attempt the trial failed to load the first map, which broke up all the teams and required us to unset something on the new LFG tab before we could rejoin. Second attempt we fought our way into the facility, then the raid leader assigned teams by team number to split up to try and fight prisoners. Most of us had no idea what we were doing and so we pretty much immediately let all prisoners go, failing the trial. Third attempt we went back in and the raid leader again assigned teams by team number, but this actually confused us -- it's not real obvious which team you're on (you have to go into the League UI to look) and the team I was on had been team 3 on the previous trial, but was now team 2. So we went to the wrong place for awhile, but eventually this got sorted out and we ended up guarding the right rabbit hole. Once we beat up the prisoners, the leader had people pull Siege and Nightstar to some "tennis courts" in the middle of the compound; apparently this location is a good place to pull them because you don't get turret aggro there. The AVs put some kind of effect on people that encloses them in circles that eventually makes them explode or something; anyone who got two circles around them was told to move away from the raid. We switched between damaging Siege and Nightstar and managed to kill them at almost exactly the same time. Succeeding at the trial got me a fistful of new incarnate salvage: 5 astral merits, a gluon compound, 5 incarnate threads, and a dimensional pocket (selected from the Uncommon reward menu). Also got the Alarm Raiser and Behavior Adjuster badges, as well as 18% Judgement exp.

After that most of the same people attempted the Lambda sector trial. On our first attempt we zoned in successfully, but during the first fight the whole raid got kicked out of the trial and we had to restart. On our second attempt the trial failed to load the map, and we had to reset and reform the raid. On our third attempt, one person was bugged and could not enter, but the other 15 people were able to zone in, and so we ended up proceeding from there. (This sucked for the one person who couldn't enter, though.) This trial had some early fighting, then we entered some other part of the map where the two teams split up to try and steal stuff or sabotage things or something. The team I was on needed to search for "weapon caches", which were destroyable objects guarded by Praetorians. They were stashed all over a rather large warehouse and we mostly stealthed around looking for them. I did manage to kill one weapon cache on my own (I somehow was able to avoid aggroing the mobs guarding it by some combination of smoke grenade and distance sniping) which was kind of cool, but overall these were a pain to search for, and the last weapon cache took quite awhile to find. I got a Pacification Grenade temp power which apparently was transferable, and we were all told to give our Pacification Grenades to one defender who would be in charge of using them to dispel Marauder's rage buff. We then went to some kind of fortress like area where we killed a bunch of turrets, then faced down with Marauder. It looked like he did pretty crazy damage, though I tried to stay well away from him to avoid AoEs. Tons of text kept popping up with helpful hints for fighting Marauder: he's gonna attack, run away now! Hit him with a paci grenade! Etc. Marauder also had this annoying habit of superjumping away, so we had to chase him around a courtyard; I tried web grenading him for the -jump but as a super-AV I don't think he really respected that. We eventually chased him around long enough to kill him. I got an Arcane Cantrip (from the Common reward menu), 2 Empyrean Merits (maybe I got one of these from the previous trial, but this is when I noticed them), 5 more threads, 4 astral merits and 18% interface exp.

My impression of the trials so far are: you need a raid leader to tell people what to do, and you need a raid force that is actually willing to do what the leader says. That seems to be most important of all, if people aren't working together it just isn't going to work. DPS seems particularly helpful to beat the fleeing prisoners in the BAF; I'm told controls and taunt won't stop them, though I'm curious as to whether Hurricane or Force Bubble will block them. Stealth seems helpful for getting the stuff in the Lambda trial. Recruiting the raid force and actually getting into the trial zone seems to be the most tedious part; the trials bugging out repeatedly as we tried to enter was very annoying. The trials generate tons of weird incarnate salvage, which I know are for the new incarnate slots, but it's pretty confusing trying to select something sensible from the reward menu (which is apparently different for each player). These are just my initial feelings; I do think they are cool and plan to do them more.

I have mixed feelings about the new incarnate slots that came with I20. Judgement (the nuke on a 90 second timer) seems the best by far, but I have a tough time reconciling any of the Judgement powers with my main toon's character concept (a natural hero with a gun as her main attack). I guess incarnate content is all about extreme superpowers, but while I could rationalize taking the Alpha slot (which has no visible effect, it just makes you better), I just wouldn't feel right about Police Woman running around throwing fireballs or void clouds or whatever. I have several other toons in the same boat (mostly people with guns or swords who probably shouldn't have this kind of power). Maybe I should just not slot anything in the Judgement slot, but skipping a huge AoE attack that doesn't cost a power pick seems like it would be very limiting. I also have some concerns that giving everyone a Judgement nuke, Lore pets, Interface debuffs and Destiny buffs, will end up making everyone's toons pretty much the same (like when you're on a lowbie team where all 8 people are using Sands of Mu instead of their "real" attacks), but I suppose that's a longer term concern. We'll see how that ends up working out.

I don't know about your sword toons, but couldn't you just pretend the big judgement attacks are coming from your gun? Or go void/ion and RP that it's some super grenade?

I also l o l'd when we failed what is basically the easiest part of the BAF

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nights_Dawn Hazy is right

The Empyrean Merits are only rewarded for a successful Trial run...so yes you got 1 for the BAF and 1 for Lambda

Congrats btw

Wed 4/6/2011

Blond Justice (50 sword/shield scrapper) did a clear most ITF in 48m 46s, picking up a Gravitational Anchor (chance to hold), a Positron's Blast (chance cor energy), and a Notice of the Well. From the various salvage I made a Musculature Total Core Revamp (DMG/IMMOB, level shift). Slotting this boost increased the damage numbers (as shown on the enhancement screen) of Headsplitter from 319.3 to 361.39, and Shield Charge from 294.73 to 333.59. This feels like a worthwhile buff.

Police Woman (51 AR/dev blaster) joined a Lambda trial. This time I was on the team that was killing containment cylinders (or something like that). This seemed to be on a smaller map than the one with the weapon caches, and we finished fast and got teleported to help the weapon cache team. The Marauder fight seemed straightforward and I got the choice of a rare salvage reward; I took a Semi-Conscious Energy (hoping this will be useful). I picked up 5 threads along the way and went from 18% to 41% interface exp.

The same teams wanted to do the Lambda trial again, and I switched to playing Millie Volt (51 elec/elec brute). Most people I know seem to be playing the same character over and over again in the trials, to unlock and slot stuff in their incarnate slots faster, but I've kind of decided to spread it (doing trials) around my level 50 alts a bit. Partly this is because you don't get an Empyrean Merit for re-doing the same trial on the same day (though you get all the other goodies, so that's not a huge penalty), partly this is altitis, and partly I just don't seem to have the "GOTTA HAVE IT, NAO!!" sense of urgency. I do think the incarnate trials are cool, though, so I'm still planning on doing them a lot.

So, Millie Volt did a Lambda trial; I was on the containment team again and found out the containers are apparently always in the same spots. We won the trial handily and I got a rare salvage pick (Ancient Texts), 22% interface exp and 4 threads. The same team tried the BAF trial and the trial kicked the whole league out of the zone shortly after the cut scene (some bugginess, I'm sure). On our second try we were able to do the actual BAF trial, though we had one person drop from the trial before entering (I suspect they timed out on the "enter" prompt) and one person DC'd from the final fight against the two AVs. The accepted strategy seems to involve pulling each of the AVs to the tennis courts, which are a safe spot; one tanker kept trying to tank Siege before he got to the tennis courts (despite instructions) which led to some frustration, but he eventually got straightened out. Finished and got an uncommon salvage pick (Worn Spellbook). I tried to watch Millie's health for this, since I thought an elec armor might do well on these trials (since the Praetorians are very fond of energy damage); I did not take much damage, but I also wasn't one of the main tankers, so not sure if this was conclusive. I did get "ringed" (the Sequestration effect from the AVs) a couple times but never exploded.

After that I joined a different league for another Lambda trial. They said they needed support and had a lot of tanks and scrappers, so I brought on Mercy Beaucoup (51 ice/kin corr). Our 2 teams were kinda unbalanced, with both kins of the raid on my team, and all the rezzers on the raid on the other team. I suggested that we should split the kins so one was on each team, but I suspect the leader wasn't able to figure out how to move people between teams, so we went as-is. This led to some problems when we split up for the containers and weapon caches (my team was on containers). The league leader asked me to show people where the containers were, but unfortunately I didn't really know where they all were (hey, it's only the second day) and it seemed like my team ended up splitting up to try and kill 3 or 4 different containers at once, but most weren't quite tough enough to handle the mobs guarding them. So we had a bunch of deaths, before eventually getting all the containers. Moving on to the Marauder fight, the AV got me with foot stomp once (I think I moved too close to him trying to use my kin powers) and I hospital'd and ran back. Although the hospital is in zone, I found there was some kind of timer that lets you only exit the hospital after a delay; I would guess this is to prevent some sort of suicidal zerg rush. We beat up Marauder and I took a Detailed Report salvage as my pick.

The same league wanted to do another Lambda trial, so I switched to Star Amethyst (51 dark/ice defender), figuring AOE rez ought to be especially good on these trials. When we started the trial, however, we discovered that the leader had accidentally selected the BAF trial instead; this didn't seem likely to succeed (since we were a 2-team league and BAF is meant for 3 teams) but we decided to give it a try. I thought for sure we were going to fail when we reached the prisoner breakout phase and the leader vaguely said "guard the exits"; I kinda thought we needed a better plan to cover 3 exits with 2 teams, but somehow it worked out as people individually moved between the exits to try to balance things out. After that we beat up Siege and Nightstar with no serious issues. I took a Gluon Compound as reward.

That same league tried to do the Lambda trial we had originally intended to do, and we got started, but while fighting turrets on the walls, the server decided to kick us out of the trial. It was late at night by that point so I (and several others) ended up bowing out to head to bed.

Thu 4/7/2011

Police Woman (51 AR/dev blaster) did an 11-player Lambda trial of all squishies (no tanks, brutes or scrappers). Despite no tankage we still won. Got an uncommon reward and Interface exp to 53%. Did another run after we filled up to 16 players; we tried doing this with no acid bombs to get the badge. Even using no acid we vaporized Marauder with sheer DPS; despite this, we did not get the "Antacid" badge that is supposedly awarded for this feat. I (and several other players) submitted a petition; so far I've only gotten a "we'll forward this to quality control" form letter. I did get a rare reward (Superconductive Membrane) and Interface exp to 75%. Went on to do a BAF trial where I got a very rare reward (Self Evolving Alloy) and Judgement to 29%. Starting to think naming the actual salvage reward I get from a trial doesn't really mean anything, so I'll just list the rarity from now on.

Millie Volt (51 elec/elec brute) joined a BAF; somehow I got stuck with the star, I'm not quite sure how. We had a high DPS league and prevented any prisoners from escaping, getting the Not on My Watch badge, an uncommon reward and Judgement exp to 38%. Continuing to play Millie, I ran another BAF, getting another uncommon reward and Judgement exp to 54%.

Switched to Star Amethyst (51 dark/ice defender) to do another BAF, getting an uncommon and Judgement exp to 38%.


Fri 4/8

San Min (51 MA/will scrapper) played through part of The Terra Cure, a story about helping Tanya Tyler recover from being Devoured. I liked the sentiment, but the plot didn't do much for me; I gave it 3 stars. I was at the RWZ AE building and joined a BAF trial that was forming in RWZ where we tried to kill all the ambushes for a badge; one team was devoted to adds, and one team to each AV. A new ambush spawned just as the last AV died, resulting in no badge. I did get an uncommon salvage and 17% Judgement exp. After that I joined a RWZ raid; the leader was unable to invite me to the RWZ raid league, though. Possibly their league was already full. I ended up soloing on the RWZ raid for awhile (I seemed tough enough to survive this, but it was pretty poor for vanguard merits), until some people left and I was able to join the league. Got 129 vanguard merits altogether.

Playing Millie Volt I signed up for a BAF run, but the leader over-invited, ending up with 25; two players with very similar global IDs had gotten him mixed up on how many were coming. The leader sent me a tell saying he would quit and make me leader, but this hardly seemed fair since he had organized the trial, so I volunteered to quit instead.

Police Woman (51 AR/dev blaster) signed up for a pickup Lambda. For some reason the league leader wanted to start with only 10 (reasoning the trial would be easier with fewer players, which I think was probably faulty logic). The league was also mostly scrappers with not much support, so I switched to Mercy Beaucoup (51 ice/kin corr) for scrapper support. We actually picked up 4 extra players from the queue upon starting the trial. The league overall was rather inexperienced; my team was on containers and we got 9, while the other team got 3 weapon caches before running out of time. We had no tank and none of the scrappers seemed able to tank, so Marauder ended up beating us up. This resulted in a general rout where someone fled out the front door of Lambda sector, and Marauder chased him out of bounds, causing the trial to fail.

After that, Police Woman joined a BAF trial with 24, but only 22 zoned in (AFKs, I assume). For some reason I got tons of aggro from both AVs and minions, not sure why; ate more death than I'm really used to. Got an uncommon reward, forgot to check exp.

Fire Maiden (51 SS/fire brute) joined a BAF but it took so long to form I got bored and was messing with my printer which was jammed, and I missed entering the trial (doh!!). I joined another BAF after that and was more careful to stay at keyboard. This team was very high DPS and stopped all the prisoners, getting the badge. We had no tanks and so I got nominated to tank the AVs; I was a little worried about this since my fire brute feels squishy at times, but we had really good support so I had no problem surviving. I got a Gluon salvage as a random drop and a rare reward for the trial, as well as 13% judgement exp.

After that I switched to Strong Woman (51 inv/SS tanker) for the next BAF run, figuring, if I was gonna tank, I may as well play a tank. I got to pull and tank the AVs; the AV damage seemed pretty serious (maybe inv is weaker to their damage type than fire? seems hard to believe) but we did fine. Got an uncommon reward.

Blond Justice (51 bs/shield scrapper) did the next run of the BAF trial, getting a Soulbound Allegiance (DMG) recipe drop, a Cytolitic salvage drop and an uncommon reward.

Star Amethyst (51 dark/ice defender) joined the next run of the BAF, but my ISP started acting up, causing me to disconnect 4 times. I missed the entire prisoners phase, but did make it for the final fight, getting a common reward and Judgement to 51% exp.


Sat 4/9

Police Woman hit the inf cap at the market again, sent myself another 500M.

Mystery Girl (51 emp/pistols defender) joined a Lambda trial. I found it was hard to keep people alive because my team was split up all over the place; I ended up just following the blaster who was the leader of my team for the containers and making sure he stayed alive, though I winced whenever a teammate died in some remote part of the facility. Didn't seem much I could do, though. Against Marauder part of my team went after weapon deliveries while the rest were on Marauder, which is different than what I'm used to, but we eventually won. I got an uncommon reward and some kind words for my emping efforts.

Star Amethyst (51 dark/ice defender) did a Lambda trial and got a rare reward.

Mystery Girl did a BAF trial; seemed like an unusual number of prisoners escaped, but not enough for us to fail. I only got 4% judgement exp on this trial, which seemed weird, too; maybe my team was very low DPS. Got a common reward.

Millie Volt (51 elec/elec brute) did a clear-most ITF in 59 minutes; felt guilty during mission 2 when I was running off by myself to the next crystal, managed to get killed and the emp who came to rez me got killed too. Oops.

Police Woman (51 AR/dev blaster) did a Lambda trial. My team was on acids and we got split up very quickly; I tried to rez another squishy who had died somewhere behind the team, and only got myself killed too as a result. Still managed to finish, got an uncommon reward.

Millie Volt did a Lambda trial that went very smoothly and got a very rare reward.

Fire Maiden (51 SS/fire brute) did a 13-player Lambda trial that went smoothly, got a common reward.

Shield Maiden (17 shield/mace tanker) solo'd Dr. Hetzfeld's arc. I laughed at the final mission where Dr. Hetzfeld accidentally orders his cyborgs to self destruct; being a computer programmer in RL, I totally appreciate what happens when you aren't careful about telling a computer what to do. Finishing the arc got Shield Maiden to level 18.

Sun 4/10

Mystery Girl (51 emp/pistols defender) did another BAF trial; got an uncommon reward but missed out on the Empyrean Merit, not enough time since the last BAF run I guess.

Police Woman (51 AR/dev blaster) did a BAF trial and got a rare reward. Also, another player sold me a Numina (+regen/+rec) recipe for 50M inf, which seemed a good deal.

Star Amethyst (51 dark/ice defender) did a BAF trial; we killed Nightstar, but didn't quite kill Siege in the 10s after, so they both rez'd and we had to kill both of them again, with lots of reinforcements on their part. Got a very rare reward.

Mercy Beaucoup (51 ice/kin corr) did a BAF trial; I got two compliments on her character concept. People were careless about sequestration and I got caught in the AoE hold twice. We won, though, and I got a rare reward.

Rain Dancer (51 storm/archery defender) did a BAF trial; the stormy powers were pretty fun against prisoners and adds, but I suspect they were also adding lag, which seemed especially bad this time. Got an uncommon reward.

Millie Volt (51 elec/elec brute) did yet another BAF trial; the prisoner escape phase seemed pretty leaky due to the league being light on control. The AV fight took awhile for some reason also, but we ended up winning; I got a very rare reward.

Fire Maiden (51 SS/fire brute) did another BAF trial. I found burn was terrific for blocking the doors where prisoners arrive at, but I also got confused a lot. Got an uncommon reward.

Police Woman joined the Hamidon raid, which had a really slow start. Interest seemed to be low, probably due to the incarnate trials being really hot right now. We killed monsters to pass the time and I racked up a tray full of EoEs. The raid was desperately short on emps, so I volunteered to switch to Mystery Girl for more support. I was assigned to the range damage team and once we got started, it seemed like we did pretty well. Fought several blooms, then powered through the lsat bloom to kill Hamidon. Merits and shards both seemed unattractive at the time, so I took the HO reward and got a Golgi. Maybe I should've stuck with merits.

Police Woman joined a Lambda trial. We had a messy Marauder fight as the pacification grenades didn't seem to get used very much, but eventually beat him and got an uncommon rewar. This did unlock PW's interface slot, though. I've been avoiding using threads for exp, and have been switching around on alts for trials to try and maximize Empyrean Merits, so this is actually the first I20 incarnate slot I had unlocked.

I switched to Star Amethyst for the next Lambda trial, and somehow got stuck with the star for the League, as the original leader had to log, then gave it to someone else who didn't want to lead and gave it to me. So I started leading Lambda trials. Now that I was leader, it seemed like it would slow the league down if I switched toons for every run, so I ended up playing Star Amethyst on 7 straight Lambda trials, after which I was so tired of Lambda that I switched to running the BAF trial, which I did twice before calling it a night. I got 6 uncommons, 1 common, 2 rares, which seems like a weird distribution considering the common reward was the least likely. Surpisingly to me (but maybe not to anyone else), you get a lot more progress on unlocking incarnate slots if you just play the same toon instead of switching around so much; Star Amethyst unlocked her Interface, Destiny and Judgement slots all in one day, after having nothing unlocked for the week before. I had 43 threads and 58 astral merits by the end. I ended up converting 4 threads and using common salvage to make a Reactive Interface, then converted 6 astral merits and using the rest of my threads to craft a Pyretic Judgement. Though I unlocked Destiny, I can't decide whether I'd rather take Clarion or Barrier.


Some observations I had from leading trials on Sunday:

* I really don't like the waiting time between runs of the trial, where you're just sitting around waiting for the teams to fill up, so I tried to be very aggressive about starting the next trial run each time. (This is perhaps a little hypocritical because I personally like to switch toons for each run...) I did let people reboot their game or switch toons or AFK if needed, but I would start as soon as people got back. This kept things moving pretty well, but on two different runs, I lost a player or two who were AFK for the trial countdown timer. After this happened, I made sure to ask people to announce in league chat if they were going AFK, which I think helped.

* I tried to keep the 2 Lambda teams reasonably well balanced, with a good mix of support, damage and tanking. I felt this was particularly important for Lambda since the teams are split up to chase down weapons and acids, so need to be somewhat independent. But even on BAF it felt worthwhile to balance the teams out since they generally would cover different sectors for the prisoner escape.

* When I switched from Lambda to BAF, I found I was competing with 2 other BAF trials that were forming, and ended up absorbing the smallest of the other two BAF leagues in order to launch. At several points RWZ was so full that it was hard to get everyone in the same instance of RWZ to launch a trial. It definitely felt like the incarnate trials were very popular.

* I probably would not have run 10 trials in a row as just a league member ... being league leader made me feel responsible for the success of the league, though (especially since many league members were friends) so I kept it going as long as I could. I did feel pretty fried after calling it a night. I've half a mind to not do any trials tonight, but truthfully if I log on and friends are doing trials, I'll probably join them. Even though I've done them a lot now, I still think they're fun. (Though it's tempting to squeeze a few ITF runs in, before the WST changes, too....)

For antacid you have to get gather all 10 and then not use any. If you had all 10 and still did not get the badge then it is a bug. People have reported getting all 10 of each and using only one pacification grenade and still not getting antacid, so there is a known bug involving the badge.

Mon 4/11/2011

Police Woman (51 AR/dev blaster) used 40 threads and an arcane cantrip to make a Reactive Interface; then another 10 astral merits and a dimensional pocket to upgrade this to a Reactive Radial Interface. After some initial testing on hapless Outcasts in Steel Canyon, I really like it; the proc seems to go off quite a lot.

Sakura (23 plant/storm controller) solo'd some missions for Stephanie Peebles in Striga.

Virtual Girl (41 kat/fire scrapper) did a clear-most ITF. On the team was a fire aura brute who died a lot more than me. It seemed like Divine Avalanche (which gives a hefty melee and lethal defense buff) was really helping my survivability (well, along with cold and empathy buffs; but the fire brute had those too). Finished in 43m 34s; I got a Coercive Persuasion (CONF/RCHG/ACC) recipe drop and hit level 43.

Fire Maiden (51 SS/fire brute) did an ITF; after the last run I wanted to compare my fire brute's survivability. I was tank for this team and seemed to do just fine, though I'm fairly heavily IO'd and was getting incarnate buffs from teammates. Finished in 35m 55s with no problems.

Spacegirl (51 mind/rad controller) did a Lambda trial. Our league was very low on support, resulting in lots of death, but we managed to win. Got an uncommon reward and up to 21% Interface exp. Followed that by a BAF which was even lower on support (basically the same league with an extra team of non-support people!) We had a lot of prisoners escape. I found that Spacegirl's confuse and fear powers did nothing to the Prisoners (booo), but hold and sleep could work. People were careless about the sequestration effect from the AVs and a lot of people got held. We just barely squeaked in under the 10 second window to kill both AVs. I got a meager 11% judgement exp and an uncommon reward.

Mystery Girl (51 emp/pistols defender) did another BAF where we were low on support. I had two tanks and a brute on my team, and I could not seem to keep any of them alive against Siege and Nightstar; they would all routinely get 2-shotted by the AVs despite my best efforts. Felt bad about this, but I think our lack of buff and debuff was a factor. (I did try to Fortitude these guys whenever possible, but it wasn't enough.) The league leader wanted to try for the Strong and Pretty badge and assigned people to various responsibilities; my team was assigned to focus on the AVs but one blaster took off to kill adds for exp. We ended up not getting the badge but completed the trial. This got Mystery Girl's judgement exp up to 26%.


Tue 4/12

Sarcasm Lass (30 sonic/mental blaster) joined a 6 player hero tip team. During a Council mission we had an ambush of all void seekers which scared our warshade (but we managed to beat them).

Police Woman (51 AR/dev blaster) did a BAF trial where no prisoners escaped. I got the Not on My Watch badge, moved from 58% to 72% Judgement exp and got an uncommon reward.

Star Amethyst (51 dark/ice defender) did a BAF trial. Again we prevented any prisoners from escaping; Tar Patch was a big help. Went from 1% Lore exp to 11% Lore exp and got an uncommon reward.

Mystery Girl (51 emp/pistols defender) did a 22-player BAF trial, again got Not on My Watch. Went from 26% to 40% Judgment exp and got a common reward.

Mega (51 SS/will brute) did a BAF trial. A teammate told me he thought it was good that I was switching around rather than just grinding one toon to the finish. Again got Not on My Watch (and this time I noticed that getting this badge also gives a bonus arcane merit and common salvage drop...nice!). We also tried for the Strong and Pretty badge, with the tactic of pulling both Nightstar and Siege to the spawn point for adds. The trial was unusually laggy, making it hard to coordinate; we killed Nightstar too early and both AVs repopped. Then we killed both AVs again, but people didn't wait to kill the adds before the AVs died, so missed the badge. But I did get a rare reward and judgement exp up to 15%.

The same league (minus some people leaving) did a Lambda trial. All the tanks somehow left between the previous trial and this one, which made me the tanker. Several people wanted to try for the Master of Lambda badge (no acids, no paci grenades) but we had very little support, which made me pretty nervous about tanking that. I and some others managed to talk the league out of trying for it. The league leader told everyone to give me the paci grenades, the first time I've had to be responsible for them; I found that each time I used one, I had to re-add the power to a tray. I was pretty worried Marauder would smash me flat and ate a lot of oranges, but managed to survive just fine off of the kin heals we had. Got an uncommon reward and Interface exp to 15%.

Millie Volt (51 elec/elec brute) did a speed ITF in 22m 57s.

On hero side I noticed I finally got enough prestige for my private SG to upgrade to bigger control unit, letting me run all my teleporters. I was still missing some beacons, though, so I logged on Kyrie Eleison (46 archery/fire blsater) to run around getting explore badges in Founders Falls, Eden and Pocket D to complete the full set of beacons.

Police Woman (51 AR/dev blaster) converted 9 astral merits to make common salvage for a Reactive Total Radial Conversion (75% chance of fire proc). Slotting and testing this, it seems to go off a lot and do decent damage. I'm really liking it so far.

Spacegirl (51 mind/rad controller) joined a BAF, but the league ended up with 25 so I volunteered to sit out. Spent the time soloing Shield Maiden (18 shield/mace tank) on Bobcat's arc. Bobcat's arc is not really heroic (or villainous) drama, but she's well written and a lot of fun. Got to level 19 on that. By then the BAF I had dropped from was starting a second run and had some space, so I rejoined with Spacegirl; karma was good and I got the Not on My Watch badge, 20% judgement exp and a Very Rare reward.


Wed 4/13

I found out that I had won Tourette's Challenge, which was to produce the highest possible DPS build for a FF/nrg defender. This is what I came up with:

Tour de Force I19: Level 50 Science Defender
Primary Power Set: Force Field
Secondary Power Set: Energy Blast
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Leadership
Power Pool: Medicine
Power Pool: Speed
Ancillary Pool: Dark Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Deflection Shield -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(33), LkGmblr-Rchg+(33)
Level 1: Power Bolt -- Dev'n-Acc/Dmg(A), Dev'n-Dmg/Rchg(3), Dev'n-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(3), Dev'n-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(5), ExStrk-Dmg/KB(5), ExStrk-Dam%(7)
Level 2: Power Blast -- Dev'n-Acc/Dmg(A), Dev'n-Dmg/Rchg(7), Dev'n-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(9), Dev'n-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(9), ExStrk-Dmg/KB(11), ExStrk-Dam%(11)
Level 4: Energy Torrent -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(13), Posi-Dmg/Rng(13), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(15), Posi-Dam%(15), ExStrk-Dam%(17)
Level 6: Hover -- Zephyr-ResKB(A), Zephyr-Travel(39), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(40)
Level 8: Insulation Shield -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(42), LkGmblr-Rchg+(43)
Level 10: Power Burst -- Dev'n-Acc/Dmg(A), Dev'n-Dmg/Rchg(17), Dev'n-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(19), Dev'n-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(19), ExStrk-Dmg/KB(21), ExStrk-Dam%(21)
Level 12: Dispersion Bubble -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(23), LkGmblr-Rchg+(23)
Level 14: Fly -- Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(43)
Level 16: Assault -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 18: Aid Other -- Numna-Heal/EndRdx(A), Numna-EndRdx/Rchg(43), Numna-Heal/Rchg(45), Numna-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(46), Numna-Heal(46), Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(46)
Level 20: Aim -- RechRdx-I(A), AdjTgt-ToHit/Rchg(40), AdjTgt-Rchg(42)
Level 22: Aid Self -- IntRdx-I(A), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx(25), Dct'dW-EndRdx/Rchg(25), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(31), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(31), Dct'dW-Heal(33)
Level 24: Maneuvers -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(34), LkGmblr-Rchg+(34)
Level 26: Repulsion Bomb -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(27), Posi-Dmg/Rng(27), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(29), Posi-Dam%(29), ExStrk-Dam%(31)
Level 28: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(40)
Level 30: Super Speed -- Clrty-Stlth(A)
Level 32: Force Bubble -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 35: Explosive Blast -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(36), Posi-Dmg/Rng(36), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(36), Posi-Dam%(37), ExStrk-Dam%(37)
Level 38: Vengeance -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 41: Dark Consumption -- P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc/Rchg(42), P'Shift-Acc/Rchg(45)
Level 44: Dark Embrace -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), ResDam-I(45), ResDam-I(50)
Level 47: Soul Drain -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(48), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(48), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(48), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(50), Oblit-%Dam(50)
Level 49: Soul Transfer -- Mrcl-Rcvry+(A)
------------
Level 2: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 2: Health -- Heal-I(A)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- P'Shift-EndMod(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(34), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc/Rchg(37), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(39), P'Shift-End%(39)


A more nicely formatted version (with Mids-importable data link) can be found here. I made some mistakes like slot a Miracle unique in a rarely used power. Several FF/nrg builds were submitted, but after extensive testing, Tourette decided my build was closest to what he was looking for. The prize was 10M inf or 2 hours of PLing, but I have ludicrous amounts of in-game money and don't believe in PLing, so I asked him to play one of my mission architect arcs instead. He agreed to do so.

While chatting online, another player told me that I was an inspiration for how to play nicely with others, which I thought was really sweet. I'll have to remember that, next time I get really mad at someone else.

Police Woman solo'd a hero tip, then the morality mission to rescue a bane spider from Grandville (I know this is the longer one, but I think it is cooler and more heroic than the evil twin morality mission). I liked the performance of my reactive interface so much that I burned 9 Empyrean merits to craft the ultra-rare Reactive Radial Flawless Interface (25% res debuff, 75% fire DoT). I then joined a Lambda trial. A friend had told me about this awesome map for finding weapon caches and containers in the Lambda trial:



I was on the weapon cache team and ended up splitting off to look for weapon caches on my own, and managed to find and solo 2 weapon caches with judicious use of Smoke Grenade and range attacks to avoid aggro. Went from 16% to 33% Destiny exp and got a common reward.

I hit the ticket cap in AE (which is 9999 unclaimed tickets) and claimed 999 of them to make some space.

Star Amethyst (51 dark/ice defender) converted 24 astral merits to make an Ageless Radial Invocation (END/RCHG/debuff resist). Decided to go with the debuff resist rather than the recovery buff, because the first click gives you a nice END boost anyway, and I'm hoping the debuff resist will prove useful against stuff like caltrops, Mask of Vitiation, CoT ghosts, and stuff like that. I joined a BAF trial which took a really long time to form, and ended up going with 22 players. No prisoners escaped. I found that Blizzard/Ageless was a workable combo. I went from 11% to 20% Lore exp and got a rare reward that let me convert another 8 astral merits to upgrade to an Ageless Partial Radial Invocation (END/RCHG/debuff resist and incarnate shift).

Police Woman joined a BAF trial. The leader asked us to try for Strong and Pretty; my team was assigned to clear minions, but our team was kinda split up and so we didn't have enough damage to keep them clear. Went from 72% judgement exp to unlocking judgement and 7% lore exp; also picked up an uncommon. I'm currently trying to resist slotting a Judgement power since none of them look "normal" enough for Police Woman's theme...but the Judgement nukes are awfully good, and the temptation is strong.

Mystery Girl (51 emp/pistols defender) joined a Lambda trial that took a really long time to form. Did really well on exp though, going from 41% to 74% Interface exp and getting an Uncommon reward.


Thu 4/14

Police Woman did another BAF trial, getting the rare reward and Lore exp to 20%.

Millie Volt (51 elec/elec brute) did another BAF trial, getting an uncommon reward and going from 79% Judgement to Judgement unlocked and 2% Lore. I used 19 astral merits, 2 empyrean merits to make an Ion Total Core Judgement. I picked Ion because it matches Millie Volt's electric powers, but wow, Ion is totally broken to do way too much damage. The first hit seems to be a reasonable damage number, but the chain lightning hits do around 1900 damage which can't possibly be right.

Spacegirl (51 mind/rad controller) did a BAF trial, going from 20% to 32% Judgement exp and getting an uncommon reward. I also turned down a blind global friend invite, which I think hurt the feelings of the person asking me (he didn't send me a tell before the invite, but he did after I turned it down). This person was in the same league as me, but we didn't team that much, weren't really close and hadn't really talked about it all. But I kinda regret making him feel bad, so I wonder if I should've just accepted it.

Mystery Girl (51 emp/pistols defender) did a Lambda trial; our team had a scrapper who was AFK for most of the trial, and had people who didn't back away when Marauder's Nova Fist was announced (resulting in LOTS of damage), but we still managed to finish. Went from 74% to 94% Interface exp and got an uncommon reward.

As someone who can hardly remember where I put my car keys on occasion, the map of where the containment chambers and weapons crates will come in handy, thanks!