Fri 4/15/2011
Police Woman (51 AR/dev blaster) joined a BAF. The leader assigned me, a controller and another blaster to clear reinforcements at their spawn point, but the 3 of us weren't enough to keep up with respawn and we got overwhelmed. Nevertheless we finished the trial; I got a rare reward and went from 20% to 31% Lore exp.
San Min (51 MA/will scrapper) joined a RWZ raid. An electrical storm knocked out my internet for a few minutes, leaving me disconnected on the mother ship, but after internet came back I was able to get back online and finish fighting Rikti for 271 vanguard merits. While sitting in the "bowl" of the mother ship, everyone agreed that we were clearing Rikti noticeably faster due to the Judgement nukes and Lore pets.
Shield Maiden (19 shield/mace tanker) solo'd Neuron's arc in Praetoria, and ultimately turned Neuron in to Emperor Cole like a good loyalist. This got her to level 20.
Strong Woman (51 inv/SS tanker) joined a Lambda. I theoretically was leading my team through gathering acids, but about half the team decided to go a different direction, with messy results for both half teams. Fighting Marauder I think I had aggro about half the time, while our stone tanker had aggro the other half. I found that Marauder can't fly; it seemed to me that I could probably tank him while flying with minimal support if I had to. He throws an occasional Hurl attack, but the smashing damage is negligible to an invuln tank. Got a rare reward, the Synchronized badge, and went from 0% to 23% Interface exp.
Police Woman joined a Lambda badge attempt; we got all the acids and paci grenades and did not use any. We got Marauder down to 50% with 10 minutes left on the clock, but then the raid stalled as reinforcements started to overwhelm us and people started dying off. We basically did no more damage for the next 4 minutes, at which point we decided to use the temp powers to make sure we beat him. Got an uncommon reward and went from 33% to 60% Destiny exp. I did get one badge on this: Unbreakable, for taking 10M damage.
Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) did a BAF and got a very rare reward, and went from 13% to 26% Judgement exp.
Sat 4/16
Mega (51 SS/will brute) broke down a Notice of the Well into shards to craft a Spiritual Core Paragon (45% rchg, 33% stun/heal, level shift). This sped her Foot Stomp up to a recharge of 8.16 seconds. I did a test run through my Attack of the 50 Foot Villain story arc, partly to see how the recharge felt, and mostly for fun.
Spacegirl (51 mind/rad controller) joined a BAF badge attempt. In the final fight the three teams were split up with one team on Siege at his spawn point, one on Nightstar at her spawn point, and my team on adds at the reinforcement spawn point. A lot of people did not seem to be following the leader's directions, however, and Nightstar was killed twice before Siege was at 50% life. The leader asked me to move from the reinforcement spawn point to help the Siege team; when I arrived, I found the Siege team only had 2 people alive and still fighting. I dropped my rad debuffs on Siege but no one was tanking him, so I promptly got clobbered. Eventually someone managed to aggro Siege away from his starting position, at which point we went to plan B and just pulled them to the tennis courts and killed them. Got no badges, but managed to finish at least, getting an uncommon reward and going from 32% to 71% Judgement exp.
Sakura (23 plant/storm controller) did a Sister Psyche TF that finished in 1h 40m and got her to level 26.
Mystery Girl (51 emp/pistols defender) joined a Lambda badge attempt. We had about 8 scrappers and brutes and not enough debuff; managed to get Marauder to around 57% life and could not seem to get him any lower, so we used the paci grenades and won. Got an uncommon reward and went from 94% Interface exp to Interface unlocked and 15% Destiny exp. A teammate complimented me on my healing, which was nice.
Police Woman (51 AR/dev blaster) joined a different Lambda badge attempt; this one had only 6 scrappers/brutes and 5 support. I used surveillance to snoop on Marauder's stats and found that, while enraged, he has 100% smash/lethal resistance and 95% resistance to everything else. This was kind of dismaying as nearly all my damage is lethal (with a little exotic damage from procs). After learning this I started focusing my damage on clearing adds, which I figured was still contributing, while tossing an occasional debuff at Marauder. We got Marauder down to 14% life with 20 seconds on the clock; someone threw a paci grenade at the last minute so we succeeded at the trial, but didn't get the badges. Got a rare reward and went from 60% to 97% Destiny.
Having learned how much lethal was resisted, I switched to Maid of Awesome (50 sonic/rad corr) for the next Lambda badge attempt, and tried to convince other smash/lethal toons to do the same, with limited success; 2 scrappers switched while the other 4 wanted to stay as is. This got us down to 4 scrappers/brutes and up to 9 support or debuff. We seemed to be doing OK, until someone (no one is quite sure who) threw a paci grenade mid-fight and Marauder almost instantly keeled over. This got Maid from 0% to 24% Interface exp.
Stayed for a third badge attempt; we had a lot of people swap in and out, making it take a long time to get started. One person actually got fed up and left because of how long it took. I switched back to Police Woman after someone mentioned we had no blasters, though admittedly I did want the badge, too. When we finally got going our league had 7 debuff toons and had a very strong showing. I focused on killing adds and keeping Surveillance going; we got Marauder down to 5%. We were so close that we fought to the very end, resulting in time running out and no reward. This did unlock my Destiny slot. I decided I could justify using the Ageless Destiny because the buff effect has almost no visible graphics (unlike barrier which is very visible; admittedly, this is probably rationalization...) and converted 40 threads and 20 astrals to make an Ageless Partial Radial Invocation (END/RCHG/debuff resist and incarnate shift). I'm finding that I never have enough common salvage to make anything, but plenty of uncommon and rare, so I have to convert threads/astrals/empyrean merits into commons to make stuff.
I was pretty skeptical of our fourth badge attempt but the leader pulled together a fairly viable league and I wanted to try playing at level 52. It was a good effort; we got Marauder below 50% pretty quickly, but stalled out near the end as 2 people had disconnected. Ran out of time with Marauder at 12% life.
Sun 4/17
Police Woman joined yet another Lambda badge attempt. We had 7 support but only two of them were debuff (rad and cold; the rest were an emp and 4 kin). No scrappers, though, and only 2 brutes (both of which did fire damage). So despite having less debuff than previously, we actually had more real damage. I was feeling pretty useless as a lethal damage character and offered to switch, but the leader wanted me to stay to...use caltrops. He had the strange idea that Damage-Over-Time (including ice storm, rain of fire, burn and caltrops) was the way to beat Marauder. He also tried to organize staggered volleys of Judgement nukes to kill the adds. With this league we had pretty massive DPS which got Marauder to low life and into unstoppable really fast, and won with 3m 35s left on the clock; this got me the Master of Lambda, Lambda Looter, Well-Stocked and Antacid badges all at once (this is probably not working as intended, but since customer support never got back to me about the Antacid badge I should've gotten on a previous run, I'm not really bothered by this). I also got 3 uncommon drops and a rare drop for getting the badges, and the uncommon reward table for the trial itself. I'm still not convinced of the DOT theory; my personal belief is that exotic damage plus multiple fulcrum shifts were what won it for us. Either way, that league dealt with Marauder very effectively.
I hit the inf cap at the market again and sent another 500M to myself; I'm up to about 4.5B inf floating in my email and should probably spend it on something soon, but haven't bought anything shiny in awhile due to being focused on the incarnate trials.
Fire Maiden (51 SS/fire brute) momentarily joined a BAF team, but the leader said he had never run one before and had no idea what he was doing, then promptly recruited 12 damage toons and no support toons. (I love scrappers and brutes, but it really seems like a disproportionate number of those show up to join trials.) I dropped from that league under the pretext that they had more than enough melee DPS already, then joined a Lambda trial instead. This league only had 2 support toons, a FF and a sonic. Despite not having any heals (except self-only heals) we were able to beat the trial, getting Fire Maiden from 31% to 60% Interface exp and an uncommon reward. Went on to join a BAF where my team was assigned to guard the northeast area, but only 2 of the team members actually went that way, so prisoners leaked through pretty quickly; managed to get through that phase, then killed Siege a little too fast and had to re-kill both AVs. Got an uncommon reward and went from 31% to 63% Judgement exp.
Police Woman (52 AR/dev blaster) did another BAF, getting a rare reward and from 31% to 41% Lore exp.
Spacegirl (51 mind/rad controller) did another BAF getting an uncommon reward and from 71% to 82% Judgement exp.
Mon 4/18
Shield Maiden (20 shield/mace tanker) left Praetoria, heading to Paragon City, partly because Marchand suggests good citizens should go there, and partly because I wanted to take advantage of the weekly strike target. I had done only Power story arcs so none of my contacts showed up to say goodbye, which was a bummer (I guess they would only do so if I went red side). Nevertheless I signed on to a 6-player Sister Psyche TF that finished in 1h 32m and got Shield Maiden to level 23.
Spacegirl (51 mind/rad controller) joined a BAF badge attempt that started off well but then everything possible went wrong. Prisoners leaked through and escaped, then on the final fight my team was assigned to kill adds, but for some reason 2 team members went to help the team fighting Nightstar. This left us understrength and struggling to clear the adds until our lost teammates finally realized they were in the wrong place and came to help, after which we were able to beat up the adds just fine. Unfortunately, the teams assigned to kill Siege and Nightstar in their respective spawn points missed the timing and both AVs respawned. They had to kill both AVs again, but the trial ran out of time with one AV at 3% and the other at 1%, resulting in no badges and no reward. On the bright side, I did unlock the Judgement slot and get 34% into Lore exp. I converted 17 astrals to make a Pyronic Radial Judgement (the wide area fireball).
Virtual Girl (43 kat/fire scrapper) joined a Hess TF. We had two masterminds dragging pets through the Council tunnels, which made for rather cramped maneuvering for my scrapper; staying a little ahead of the team seemed to help avoid getting petlocked into a corner, though. Our peacebringer also was helpfully KBing mobs out of my burn patches, but it's built into their attacks and I guess they can't help it. Finished the TF in 48m 25s. Spent some time crafting after that; I was up to 9910 AE tickets banked, and claimed 1000 of them to spend on invention salvage. I used the salvage to make a set of 4 Reactive Armor, which I slotted into Tough for +1.25% defense to energy/negative/smash/lethal.
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
Tue 4/19/2011
Sarcasm Lass (30 sonic/mm blaster) did a Sutter TF. Against the AV in the sewers with exploding zombies, I managed to find a perch on a ledge just past him where I could stand and blast away at him without fear of zombies. In the final mission, our team's high DPS caused us to take down both Durays really fast; they never got a single airstrike off. This got Sarcasm Lass to level 32. I also got a Kinetic Combat (DMG/RCHG) recipe drop somewhere along the way.
Millie Volt (51 elec/elec brute) did a Lambda trial, getting to 73% Interface exp and an uncommon reward.
Mystery Girl (51 emp/pistols defender) did a Lambda trial, getting from 15% to 36% Destiny exp and a common reward. I also converted 11 astral merits to make a Reactive Radial Interface (25% chance of RES debuff, 25% chance of fire DOT).
Fire Maiden (51 SS/fire brute) did a Lambda trial, getting from 60% to 83% Interface exp and an uncommon reward. There's a lot of speculation about how the reward table is decided based on your behavior during a trial, and it does seem like DPS toons average better rewards than support toons, at least for me.
Police Woman (52 AR/dev blaster) joined a BAF badge attempt. We cleared all prisoners successfully, then there was some confusion as the leader appeared to have told both team 2 and team 3 to kill adds at various times, leading to some members of both teams actually going to the reinforcement spawn point. The source of this confusion was the fact that teams 2 and 3 had exchanged team numbers as a result of entering the trial (which seems pretty common; my gut feeling is that it's based on the order people zone into the trial), and the leader continued to refer to them by team number. For this reason, when leading a league I've made a habit of calling teams by the name of their team leader, which is much less ambiguous. Anyhow, we eventually figured out that my team was on Nightstar and both Siege and Nightstar were pulled to the tennis courts where they could both be whittled down together. Once both were at 2% we were supposed to stop doing damage while the reinforcements team finished off the current wave and called an all-clear, after which we finished both AVs off. This got us the Strong and Pretty badge, and Police Woman went from 41% to 52% Lore exp.
The same league immediately went in for a second BAF badge attempt. This time the leader formed us into 4 teams, two of which were half teams of 4 players. We killed Nightstar at her spawn point. For the prisoner phase, my subteam was posted to guard the northwest door, and only two of us actually went there and stood guard by that exit. Nothing ever showed up there; everything was killed long before it reached us, and we again cleared all prisoners successfully. Fortunately I remembered I was sitting on Siege's spawn point and moved away a bit before he showed up. We all then killed Siege at his spawn point, then when both AVs repopped, the leader assigned 1.5 teams to fight each AV at their spawn point. We pretty much blew off the adds; they were allowed to show up at the AV fights to be killed. I think some scrappers were also assigned to disable the guard towers. This strategy was successful and got us the Gotta Keep Em Separated badge. Police Woman went from 52% to 58% Lore exp and I got my first common reward ever on my blaster; I'm sure this is because I was a goalie during the escape phase and didn't get to shoot anything.
The leader of this trial deliberately planned to get Strong and Pretty on one run, then Gotta Keep Em Separated on the second run. I felt this strategy was really successful and seemed a lot less failure-prone than the BAF badge attempts I've been on before, which tried to do all the badges at the same time (but always dropped the ball somewhere).
Wed 4/20
Playing Sakura (26 plant/storm controller) I helped kill the Kronos Titan in Talos Island, then I solo'd some Tsoo in Steel Canyon for Serge's costume mission.
Rain Dancer (51 storm/archery defender) did a BAF, getting the Not on My Watch badge, an uncommon reward, and went from 13% to 24% Judgement exp.
Mega (51 SS/will brute) did a BAF, getting the Not on My Watch badge, a Soulbound Allegiance (chance for buildup) recipe drop, a common reward and went from 15% to 25% Judgement exp.
Virtual Girl (43 kat/fire scrapper) did a Mortimer Kal SF. The first mission sent us to Oranbega, which seemed unexciting, but the next couple missions against the Warriors had interesting new mechanics and seemed pretty cool. I liked the final cut scene where it shows your team (using your characters' actual models) facing off against Positron. After finishing the last mission, the team somehow bugged out and the leader wasn't able to talk to the contact to finish the SF. Having the leader log off/log on seemed to fix this problem, though, and the new leader was able to finish the SF. Total time was 37 min. This got Virtual Girl to level 44 and awarded me a "Flames of Prometheus" temp power, a permanent buff (well...supposedly it disables at level 50) currently worth +33 HP, +10% regen and +3% DMG, which is a pretty good prize.
Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) joined an STF which seemed really easy due to incarnate powers being used. Finished in 38m 18s; I took the incarnate salvage drop.
Finished the night bringing Virtual Girl (44 kat/fire scrapper) back for a clear-most ITF on +1 difficulty. Finished in 42m 2s, got to level 45 and I was very lucky to pick up a Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% global recharge) recipe drop.
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
Thu 4/21/2011
Star Amethyst (52 dark/ice defender) converted 20 astrals to upgrade her basic Reactive Interface (25% chance of resist debuff) to a Reactive Total Radial Conversion (75% chance of fire DOT). I kinda suspect Reactive is the favored Interface for most players, but it really seems to have the most effect, so I've decided to ignore stacking issues for now. Did a BAF trial where no prisoners escaped; got an uncommon reward and went from 20% to 25% Lore exp.
Mega (51 SS/will brute) did a BAF where no prisoners escaped, got a common reward and went from 25% to 36% Judgement exp.
Spacegirl (51 mind/rad controller) did a BAF, got an uncommon reward and went from 34% to 48% Lore exp.
Strong Woman (51 inv/SS tanker) did a supposedly clear all ITF, but in the first two missions it seemed like half the team was deliberately speeding ahead, ignoring intervening mobs. At one point it was just me and one other player trying to clear mobs way behind the rest of the team; I didn't feel like I was doing much good like this, so I gave up and sped with the rest. Finished in 39m 13s, got a Fortunata Hypnosis (SLEEP) recipe drop and took the reward merits reward. With the shards I got, I crafted a Favor of the Well, which I used to make a Spiritual Core Paragon. This drops the recharge of my Foot Stomp from 9.39 seconds (with no Alpha slotted) to 8.16 seconds (with the ultra rare RCHG/HEAL alpha slotted).
Rain Dancer (51 storm/archery defender) did an 18-player BAF which was low on support (only 3 of us). I and a Crab were the only ones guarding our door, but between storminess and AoE, we were able to hold it. The league tried for the Strong and Pretty badge by pulling both AVs to the reinforcement spawn point; we killed Siege, but then reinforcements spawned between killing him and killing Nightstar, so we missed the badge. I did get a rare reward though.
Fri 4/22
I submitted my Papers and Paychecks story arc to the monthly AE author contest run by a Virtue SG. I figure a few more people playing my story arcs would be nice.
Spacegirl (51 mind/rad controller) did a Lambda trial, got an uncommon reward and went from 21% to 52% interface.
Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) did a Master of STF, though we weren't that serious about it. Everyone managed to Ouro out of the second mission with no one actually doing the "Go Home" part; our tanker had to go back to Peregrine Island to finish the mission. A controller somehow died fighting trash mobs in mission 4 while looking for the Security Chief, which ended the "Master of" part of the TF. Somehow the thorn tree power did not disable Dr Aeon's force field until the second use. In the final mission, both our tanker and our emp disconnected while fighting the patron AVs, leaving me dancing around trying to tank Mako and Ghost Widow on my scrapper; somehow survived this due to high defense and good luck. Finished the TF in 52m 32s and took the Essence of Incarnate.
Blond went on to join a BAF trial, getting the Not on My Watch badge, a rare reward and going from 26% to 43% Judgement exp.
Spacegirl (51 mind/rad controller) burned her free respec to dump the old fitness pool, and swapping from the psychic epic pool to the Primal Forces epic pool. I had been kinda underwhelmed by the DPS from the extra psy attacks (especially Psionic Tornado) and kinda like the "pew pew" of Power Blast, which seems suitably Space-y. I also changed from focusing purely on range DEF, to a blended recharge and range DEF approach -- sacrificing some range DEF to try and get perma hasten and perma AM, and thus more controls so less to defend against. Her new build is as follows:
Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.93
http://www.cohplanner.com/
Click this DataLink to open the build!
Spacegirl I20 rchg build: Level 50 Mutation Controller
Primary Power Set: Mind Control
Secondary Power Set: Radiation Emission
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Leadership
Ancillary Pool: Primal Forces Mastery
Hero Profile:
Level 1: Mesmerize
- (A) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage
- (3) Thunderstrike - Damage/Endurance
- (3) Thunderstrike - Damage/Recharge
- (5) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge
- (5) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance
- (7) Thunderstrike - Damage/Endurance/Recharge
- (A) Numina's Convalescence - Heal/Endurance
- (7) Numina's Convalescence - Endurance/Recharge
- (9) Numina's Convalescence - Heal/Recharge
- (9) Numina's Convalescence - Heal/Endurance/Recharge
- (11) Numina's Convalescence - Heal
- (11) Numina's Convalescence - +Regeneration/+Recovery
- (A) Ghost Widow's Embrace - Chance of Damage(Psionic)
- (13) Devastation - Damage/Endurance
- (13) Devastation - Damage/Recharge
- (15) Devastation - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge
- (15) Devastation - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/Recharge
- (17) Unbreakable Constraint - Chance for Smashing Damage
- (A) Performance Shifter - Accuracy/Recharge
- (17) Performance Shifter - EndMod/Recharge
- (19) Performance Shifter - EndMod/Accuracy/Recharge
- (50) Recharge Reduction IO
- (A) Malaise's Illusions - Accuracy/Confused/Recharge
- (A) Fortunata Hypnosis - Sleep
- (23) Fortunata Hypnosis - Sleep/Recharge
- (27) Fortunata Hypnosis - Accuracy/Sleep/Recharge
- (27) Fortunata Hypnosis - Accuracy/Recharge
- (29) Fortunata Hypnosis - Sleep/Endurance
- (A) Endurance Reduction IO
- (A) Luck of the Gambler - Recharge Speed
- (19) Blessing of the Zephyr - Run Speed, Jump, Flight Speed, Range
- (21) Blessing of the Zephyr - Run Speed, Jump, Flight Speed, Range/Endurance
- (43) Blessing of the Zephyr - Knockback Reduction (4 points)
- (48) Flight Speed IO
- (A) Blessing of the Zephyr - Run Speed, Jump, Flight Speed, Range
- (37) Blessing of the Zephyr - Run Speed, Jump, Flight Speed, Range/Endurance
- (A) HamiO:Enzyme Exposure
- (21) HamiO:Enzyme Exposure
- (23) HamiO:Enzyme Exposure
- (A) Recharge Reduction IO
- (A) Celerity - +Stealth
- (A) Accuracy IO
- (A) Lockdown - Accuracy/Hold
- (25) Lockdown - Accuracy/Recharge
- (25) Lockdown - Recharge/Hold
- (31) Lockdown - Endurance/Recharge/Hold
- (31) Lockdown - Accuracy/Endurance/Recharge/Hold
- (40) Lockdown - Chance for +2 Mag Hold
- (A) Glimpse of the Abyss - Chance of Damage(Psionic)
- (34) Positron's Blast - Damage/Endurance
- (36) Positron's Blast - Damage/Recharge
- (36) Positron's Blast - Damage/Range
- (36) Positron's Blast - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance
- (37) Positron's Blast - Chance of Damage(Energy)
- (A) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Endurance
- (29) Luck of the Gambler - Defense
- (31) Luck of the Gambler - Recharge Speed
- (A) Endurance Reduction IO
- (A) Coercive Persuasion - Confused
- (33) Coercive Persuasion - Confused/Recharge
- (33) Coercive Persuasion - Accuracy/Confused/Recharge
- (33) Coercive Persuasion - Accuracy/Recharge
- (34) Coercive Persuasion - Confused/Endurance
- (46) Coercive Persuasion - Contagious Confusion
- (A) Luck of the Gambler - Recharge Speed
- (A) Lockdown - Accuracy/Hold
- (39) Lockdown - Accuracy/Recharge
- (39) Lockdown - Recharge/Hold
- (39) Lockdown - Endurance/Recharge/Hold
- (40) Lockdown - Accuracy/Endurance/Recharge/Hold
- (40) Lockdown - Chance for +2 Mag Hold
- (A) Apocalypse - Damage
- (42) Explosive Strike - Chance for Smashing Damage
- (42) Apocalypse - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge
- (42) Apocalypse - Accuracy/Recharge
- (43) Apocalypse - Damage/Endurance
- (43) Apocalypse - Chance of Damage(Negative)
- (A) Ragnarok - Damage
- (45) Ragnarok - Damage/Recharge
- (45) Ragnarok - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge
- (45) Ragnarok - Accuracy/Recharge
- (46) Ragnarok - Damage/Endurance
- (46) Positron's Blast - Chance of Damage(Energy)
- (A) Steadfast Protection - Resistance/+Def 3%
- (48) HamiO:Ribosome Exposure
- (48) HamiO:Ribosome Exposure
- (A) Recharge Reduction IO
- (50) Recharge Reduction IO
- (50) Recharge Reduction IO
Level 1: Brawl
- (A) Empty
Level 1: Sprint
- (A) Empty
- (A) Empty
Level 2: Swift
- (A) Flight Speed IO
- (A) Miracle - +Recovery
- (A) Jumping IO
- (A) Performance Shifter - EndMod
- (34) Performance Shifter - EndMod/Recharge
- (37) Performance Shifter - EndMod/Accuracy
I had some of the purple IOs in that build but was missing many of the more expensive ones, so I claimed 2 billion inf from my mailbox (needed to do this anyway as the mail was getting ready to expire) and put some bids on the market for Apocalypse recipes and IOs. I managed to pick up the Apocalypse proc right away for 255.5M inf, which wasn't bad.
Spacegirl went on to join a BAF trial, where the prisoner phase was very leaky (15 escapees, almost didn't make it). I did find that Mass Hypnosis (which I had just respec'd back into) was helpful for this, unlike Terrify and Mass Confusion which the prisoners don't seem to care about. This trial got Spacegirl from 48% to 55% Lore exp and a rare reward. I think Spacegirl is the only toon I'm really excited about the Lore pets for, since it actually makes sense for her to have killer robots following her around (unlike nearly all of my other toons). After the trial I helped a scrapper who was having trouble beating Trapdoor in the Alpha Unlocked arc, then solo'd 3 radio missions just to see if I could.
San Min (51 MA/will scrapper) joined a Lambda trial. I got overconfident and tried to solo containers and the spawns around them, and promptly died for my trouble, after which I contritely stayed with the team. (San Min's build is heavy on sm/lethal defense which many Praetorians don't care about.) I did get a very rare reward, though, and went from 0% to 27% Interface exp.
Sat 4/23
Police Woman (52 AR/dev blaster) ran around picking up the new Perez Park exploration badges to get the Perez Park Perfection accolade. Seems like there are a few (relatively) new exploration badges in most hazard zones now, that I still need to catch up with. I also did 4 vigilante tips; with new badges available for the villain respec, I figure I should cross over (at least to vigilante) to try and get them. Not sure what I will do with the 18 hero merits Police Woman is sitting on; it would be easy to go up to 20 hero merits and buy a purple recipe, but 20 hero merits for a purple recipe seems like a bad deal. I might try to build up to 30 hero merits and get one of the expensive PVP recipes instead.
Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) joined a Lambda trial; I got separated from the team and got overconfident on containers again (this seems to be a trend when I'm playing scrappers). I did manage to solo one container and its spawns, but died at the second one after I ran out of inspirations. Got a Common reward, the Synchronized badge, and from 0% to 25% Interface exp.
Mystery Girl (51 emp/pistols defender) did a Lambda trial. Despite buffing and healing a ton, I got a common reward and went from 36% to 49% Destiny. Rewards are partly random and partly not, supposedly; it definitely feels to me like support toons get worse rewards than DPS toons, though.
Millie Volt (51 elec/elec brute) did a Lambda trial. My team only had a sonic for support, and a dom on our team complained that we had no heals or buffs. It turned out he did not know what sonic buffs looked like. I went from 73% to 96% Interface exp and got an uncommon reward.
Rain Dancer (51 storm/archery defender) did a Lambda trial, got an uncommon reward and went from 0% to 18% Interface exp.
Shield Maiden (23 shield/mace tanker) solo'd 5 vigilante tips and some of Stephanie Peebles' arc in Striga.
Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) joined a 7-player Master of Kahn attempt that had no problems, finishing in 26m 26s.
Spacegirl (51 mind/rad controller) bought an Apocalypse (DMG) recipe for 300M inf, then joined a Master of Lambda attempt. The leader was very strict about how many melee toons he would allow to join (sometimes it seems like 80% of the players on Liberty want to play a scrapper, tanker or brute on trials) and we ended up with a pretty strong league: 2 tanks, 3 scraps, 2 blasters, 3 corrs, 3 defenders, 2 controllers and 1 fortunata. We easily beat up Marauder despite no temp powers, finishing with a generous 9m 21s left on the clock. I got the MoLambda badges and salvage, plus an uncommon reward and from 52% to 92% Interface (Master attempts seem to be good for incarnate exp since you kill a lot of stuff).
Sarcasm Lass (32 sonic/mental blaster) helped a 5-player team beat up Protean. 3 of us went on to Croatoa for regular missions; we had one team wipe against Tuatha, but we finished Kelly Nemmers' arc and part of Buck Salinger's arc.
Sun 4/25
Teal Serpent (50 archery/traps corr) joined a clear most ITF. Half the team had Judgement and other incarnate powers which seemed very effective against the hapless Romans. Between Clarion, Clear Mind and FF Generator, we had enough mez protection to ignore Romulus' stuns from rezzing. Finished in 42m 14s.
After the TF I did some crafting for Teal Serpent, slotting 6 Stupefy in Stunning Shot for 3.13% range DEF and 6.25% RCHG, and 6 6 Obliteration in Trip Mine for 3% DMG, 5% RCHG and 3.75% melee DEF. This gets Teal up to 45% range DEF and 24% melee DEF.
Sarcasm Lass (32 sonic/mental blaster) solo'd the rest of Buck Salinger's arc except for the Save Salamanca mission. This got her to level 33. I also slotted a set of 5 Positron's Blast for +6.25% RCHG.
Shield Maiden (23 shield/mace tanker) joined a 6 player Sutter TF. Most of the rest of the team was 50 and I was worried about my ability to tank at low level, but did fine most of the TF. The emp occasionally put Fortify on me, which capped my defenses whenever it was up, and we had many blasters who destroyed mobs really fast. Tanking the TF I learned a lot more about how it works than just following someone else. I learned we need to kill Harbinger first in mission 2. In the last mission Jane Temblor managed to hold and kill me (stupid click mez protection is not quite perma for me yet), then I died twice to the twin Durays. We focused on the Primal Duray first, but he teleported all over the place and repeatedly airstriked us, making for a messy fight. Finished the TF in 50m 47s, though, and got Shield Maiden to level 25.
Schadenfreude (51 AR/pain corr) joined a Lambda trial. We had an awkward team mix (4 tanks and 2 brutes out of 15 players) and for some reason most of the league wanted to go after the weapon shipments in the courtyard, leaving no one tanking Marauder, who rampaged through our ranks. The few times a tank would try to stand up to Marauder, it did not seem I could keep him alive with healing (it seemed we had little debuff and people were not using paci grenades correctly). After 2 team wipes I ended up saying I didn't think it was going to work, and quitting the league. Admittedly, Game of Thrones starting on TV right then may have had something to do with this decision.
After the TV show I played Mayday (50 fortunata), joining a pickup team that did a Maria Jenkins mission at +4 difficulty, beating up Dominatrix and Marauder. Despite the high difficulty, we did fine; I think people are used to +4 due to the incarnate trials now.
Spacegirl (51 mind/rad controller) had some bids go through, successfully buying an Apocalypse (DMG/END) recipe for 388M and an Apocalypse (DMG/RCHG) IO for 470M. Joined a BAF where we had no escapees, got an uncommon reward and went from 55% to 62% Lore exp. Spacegirl did a second BAF run where prisoners were a lot more leaky, got another uncommon reward (I don't think the programmers understand the meaning of the word "uncommon") and up to 70% Lore exp.
Switched to Schadenfreude (51 AR/pain corr) for another BAF, no escapees, uncommon reward, went from 0% to 16% Judgement.
Mega (51 SS/will brute) did another BAF. People wouldn't let Siege get to Nightstar before attacking; I ended up pulling the respawned Nightstar to Siege instead. Got a very rare reward and went from 36% to 53% Judgement exp.
Strong Woman (51 inv/SS tanker) did a Lambda trial. I incorrectly assumed people were following me, and I went down the right corridor for acids while the team leader went left. I managed to solo one container and its spawns before rejoining the rest of the team for the remainder of the map. I tried tanking Marauder but got dropped by his alpha strike even after eating 3 Lucks; in hindsight, I should've hit Dull Pain before engaging, for the extra HP. I got a rare reward and went from 23% to 51% Interface exp.
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
Mon 4/25/2011
Mayday (50 fortunata) joined a Master of Lambda trial attempt which succeeded with 1m 53s left on the clock. I got a very rare reward and all the Master of Lambda badges (they still hadn't "fixed" those badges as of that date), and went from 0% to 47% Interface exp. After that I solo'd the 4th costume mission by beating up Nemesis in Eden, and ended up making a vaguely Aquagirl-like costume, thinking that might fit thematically with Mayday's name and psi powers.
Spacegirl (51 mind/rad controller) did a BAF trial. We had no tanker and a brute and scrapper both managed to die attempting to pull Nightstar; I was feeling brave so I tried pulling her with Radiation Infection and managed to survive. We had no escapees during the prisoner phase. I got an uncommon reward and got up to 83% Lore exp.
Mega (51 SS/will brute) did a BAF, no escapees, got a rare reward and up to 63% Judgement exp.
Mystery Girl (51 emp/pistols defender) did a BAF, getting a rare reward (the first ever for my empath) and up to 58% Judgement exp. I immediately used my rare reward and 2 astrals to upgrade to a Reactive Total Radial Conversion (75% chance of fire DOT). I also did a Lambda trial where I died a lot to AoE damage; got a common reward and up to 66% Destiny exp.
Spacegirl did a Lambda, got a common reward and unlocked the Interface slot and got 18% Destiny exp. I'm actually not excited about any of the Interface slot options for Spacegirl; I've been doing Reactive for every other toon so far, but a fire DOT would really mess up Spacegirl's sleeps and maybe even confuses, and all the other Interfaces seem kinda marginal to me. So I've left the slot empty for now.
Schadenfreude (51 AR/pain corr) did a Lambda; got two compliments on having a cool name, which was nice. On this trial we had a blaster who just seemed to follow us around, but never attacked; though occasionally she would complain of lag. Eventually she quit. I got a rare reward and up to 48% Interface exp.
Tue 4/26
Shield Maiden (25 shield/mace tanker) solo'd a vigilante morality, changing alignment to Vigilante, and did soem Striga missions.
Spacegirl (51 mind/rad controller) joined a 12-player Lambda; one player disconnected and never returned, but we managed to kill Marauder with 11. I got an uncommon reward and up to 35% Destiny exp.
Mystery Girl (51 emp/pistols defender) joined a Lambda and got a very rare reward (very exciting, as I had just about resigned myself to always getting uncommons on every support toon) and up to 80% Destiny exp.
Schadenfreude (51 AR/pain corr) did a Lambda, got an uncommon reward and up to 72% Interface exp.
Sakura (26 plant/storm controller) joined a 1st hero respec, which was now the weekly strike target. We had a full team and did just fine, though there was a lot of waiting at the end, as we cleared the waves of Sky Raiders really fast. Finished in 52m 6s and got Sakura to level 27. I took the respec and badge reward.
Sarcasm Lass (33 sonic/mental blaster) joined a Citadel TF on +1 difficulty. We started pretty late at night so I was pretty sleepy by the end, but finished in 1h 7m.
Sarcasm Lass also used 300 reward merits for 15 random recipe rolls on the level 35-39 chart, receiving:
Perfect zinger (R/A) 131K
Numina (+rec/+regen) 111M
Lockdown (chance for +2 mag hold) 19M
2 Devastation (chance for hold) 2M ea
Obliteration (chance for smashing) 20M
Devastation (A/D/R) 3M
Mako's Bite (D/R) 1M
Positron's Blast (chance for energy) 5M
Scirocco's Dervish (D/A/E) 7M
Ghost Widow (A/H/R) worthless
Numina (H/R) 6M
Aegis (E/R/Res) 1M
Siphon Insight (chance for to hit) 1M.
Miracle (+rec) 127M.
I got really lucky on the random rolls, with a total market value of 305M, or over a million inf per merit. I consider anything over 250K per merit to be doing well.
Wed 4/27
Spacegirl had outstanding bids for some purple recipes and managed to buy both an Apocalypse (RCHG/ACC) IO for 401M and an Apocalypse (RCHG/ACC) recipe for 406M. I should probably re-sell the extra one, but I might use it someday so I've kinda squirreled it away for now.
Shield Maiden (25 shield/mace tanker) joined a 6 player Synapse TF. Our team was 4 blasters, 1 scrapper and me. I initially thought this would be kinda scary because we had no heals, buffs or debuffs at all, but actually it went quite well. Tanker-level shield defense, with occasional inspirations, seemed enough to bounce off most clockwork attacks, and being defense based, I didn't get hit by very much END drain. Plus having 5 damage dealers meant I didn't ever have to tank anything for long. A teammate complimented me on herding mobs together for their AoEs, which was nice. We had one blaster quit the TF about two thirds through. Babbage actually was pretty hard; I didn't really think we could beat him with no debuffs but the team wanted to give it a try. I had solid aggro but he would occasionally toss out a Giant Monster level Ball Lightning that killed people who stood near me. I ended up tanking Babbage mostly by using inspirations for about 10 minutes until people responding to our distress calls on global channels came to help. Once a rad arrived, Babbage was pretty much done. In the last mission, however, we were able to beat Clockwork King even with no debuff, through sheer force of damage. Finished in 2h 22m and got to level 27, as well as a level 20 Steadfast Protection (KB resist) recipe.
Another player wrote a hilarious "Iron Chef meets Mission Architect" forum thread which named me an "Iron Architect" for my work in Mission Architect, which was really cool. The post was totally a joke, but I decided to play along with the joke and actually meet the "Iron Architect" challenge, which was to write a story arc that uses the theme ingredient of Fusionette. To answer this I wrote Fusionette Incarnate (arc id 497003), a very silly story where Fusionette is trying to unlock her alpha slot and asks you to help her kill Trapdoor. The "Challenger" architect, another author who has gotten multiple Dev Choice awards, has promised to write a Fusionette story arc too. I don't think the original poster really expected anyone to do the "Iron Architect" thing, so this is kind of fun.
Thu 4/28
Spacegirl (51 mind/rad controller) joined a BAF. People had warned me that BAF was very laggy since the last patch, but I hadn't really fully appreciated how laggy it was until I tried it. Despite the lag we managed to stop any prisoners from escaping. In the final fight, everyone had problems with lag and powers not recharging, and naturally this messed up the timing of the AV kills, so both AVs respawn. Curiously, we killed Siege first, then Nightstar, but Nightstar repowered first, then Siege, despite claiming we didn't kill them within 10 seconds of each other. Which doesn't make any sense, but I guess time no longer works the same way given sufficient lag. We finally beat the AVs on the second try after what seemed like ages; the lag easily made the fight take four times as long as normal. I got an uncommon reward and Lore slot unlocked (doing the AVs twice was worth a lot of exp, at least). I used 40 threads, 20 astrals and miscellaneous salvage to make a Warworks Partial Core Improved Ally (the combo with a Vicki, a battle orb and an incarnate shift).
After that, Spacegirl did a Lambda where the only support was me and a FF controller (who did bubble me, thankfully); everyone else seemed to be tanks/blasters/misc melee. This was a rough trial and we squeaked through with many deaths, but I did get a rare reward and up to 56% Destiny. I burned another 8 astrals and this rare reward to upgrade to Pyronic Total Radial Judgement (wide fireball with a chance of stun). I went with the chance of stun instead of the extra targets with the idea that it might help set up containment.
I switched to Rain Dancer (51 storm/archery defender) for the next Lambda run; by now we were up to 5 tanks, which really felt like way too many (a third of the league?). But people love playing their tanks, I guess. The actual run went basically OK; I got a common reward and up to 45% Interface exp.
After that Rain Dancer joined a very speedy STF. We had no kin on the team but plenty of debuff and damage. The only rough patch was when the brute taking Lord Recluse died, but the next brute took aggro long enough for us to win. Finished in 29m 28s, which seemed a really fast time.
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
Fri 4/29/2011
Several of my AE story arcs had been broken in the recent patch due to the profanity/copyright filter on AE becoming insanely, unreasonably strict. I get the impression that some idiot added a lot of words from the CoH game world to the profanity filter, reasoning that CoH holds the copyright on those. This sounds reasonable at first glance, but the net result is that you can no longer use words like "Paragon City", "Statesman" or "Longbow" in AE missions. Since many AE missions are about the CoH universe, this is really stupid.
Anyhow, supposedly the devs are aware of this problem, but they have chosen not to fix it yet, leaving many of my story arcs broken. I spent some time trying to modify my story arcs to "work around" the insanely aggressive profanity filter.
Fixed my Teen Phalanx Forever! story arc by renaming Dr. Vahzilok (who had a bad name, despite being the completely unmodified Dr. Vahzilok mob in the Vahzilok faction) to be Doctor Vahzilok (perfectly acceptable name!).
Fixed my Talos Vice story arc by changing all members of Paragon Police (apparently anything with "Paragon" in it is profanity) to be members of Talos Vice. The profanity filter was also choking on a Freak Stunner for some reason, so I deleted it as being nonessential.
Fixed my Celebrity Kidnapping story arc by changing the Paragon Police to belong to the "PPD" instead.
I could not fix A Warrior's Journey - the Flower Knight Task Force. Apparently, "Spider" is a bad word, and the main enemy group is the "Spider Clan", which I really don't want to rename since it makes so much sense.
I couldn't fix Papers and Paychecks. "Manticore" is a bad word, and part of the joke of that arc is that you're a villain on Crey's side, fighting the Manticore Task Force, so I really don't want to change that name.
I couldn't fix Axis and Allies.... "Statesman" is a bad word and I renamed him to many other things, but it wouldn't take any of them. Later on I heard that if the filename of your custom mob has a bad word in it (like Statesman), it will trip the profanity filter even if the in-game name of the mob is legal. I suspect this was my problem, since I had a custom version of Statesman (to get rid of Unstoppable).
So, of my 9 arcs total, 3 worked fine after the patch, 3 required some renaming of things to make work, and 3 couldn't be made to work without damaging the story. I'm very annoyed about this and submitted a bug report, as have many other mission architect users, but so far there's been no effective response.
Police Woman (52 AR/dev blaster) joined a 16 player BAF; short-handed BAF trials are all the rage lately due to the excessive lag on 24-player BAFs. The team pulled the AVs to the reinforcement spawn point and we had a rough fight there with the AVs and respawns and turrets, but finally won, getting an uncommon and PW to 83% Lore exp. I used caltrops a lot, having discovered that caltrops with the tier 4 reactive interface is really hot (it procs a LOT...maybe more than it is supposed to).
I took advantage of the cheap server transfers to move Marcia Law (26 pistols/kin corr) from the server I had previously exiled her to, back to Liberty. I had tossed her aside earlier because I felt I had more than enough kins on Liberty, but have recently decided that, heck, I really like kin, and Fulcrum Shift/Hail of Bullets seems like it would be really cool. Joined a 6-player pickup team that did a couple missions in the Ubelmann arc.
Sat 4/30
Marcia Law (26 pistols/kin corr) solo'd the level 20 costume mission, 2 vigilante tips, and a vigilante morality mission, changing her alignment to Vigilante. This got her to level 27. I joined a villain respec (the Weekly Strike Target), but it was a speed run, and I found that without any stealth or defense I ended up dead most of the time and felt pretty useless. At least it was over quick, though, finishing in 14m 38s.
Police Woman (52 AR/dev blaster) did another BAF, got a rare reward and to 95% Lore exp.
Mercy Beaucoup (51 ice/kin corr) did a BAF. This was messy; no one seemed to be tanking and we had lots of death. Nevertheless completed it, got an uncommon reward and to 31% Judgement exp.
Sarcasm Lass (33 son/mm blaster) solo'd the Save Salamanca mission (holding off waves of redcaps), getting to level 34.
San Min (51 MA/will scrapper) joined an STF which ran smoothly, finished in 37m 11s. I took the Essence of Incarnate.
Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) solo'd 5 hero tips and a hero morality mission for a hero merit.
Sun 5/1
Spacegirl (52 mind/rad controller) joined a Lambda trial which was really tank heavy and support light. Managed to win anyhow, got an uncommon reward and up to 74% Destiny exp.
Strong Woman (51 inv/SS tank) did a BAF trial, got an uncommon reward and to 24% Judgement exp.
Rain Dancer (51 storm/archery def) did a BAF. It was very laggy but we managed to have no escapees. I got a rare reward and to 69% Judgement.
Police Woman (52 AR/dev blaster) hit the inf cap at the market, sent myself 900M inf. Joined a 16 player BAF; we had no escapees, I got a common reward and successfully unlocked my Lore slot. Haven't slotted anything in the Lore slot yet because none of the pets really seem "right" thematically for PW; I'm holding out for new pet sets in some future issue.
Virtual Girl (45 kat/fire scrapper) joined an ITF running at +4 difficulty. We were very light on support, with only an empath for support and no debuff at all. We had lots of death and one person disconnected early on and never returned. I got lots of use out of my self-rez. We beat up minions okay, but found it really hard to kill the Romulus AV in mission 3, causing the leader to turn the difficulty down to the default setting for the last mission. Even with minimum difficulty, it took us ages to kill each Romulus in mission 4 due to our lack of debuff and being short handed to boot. I suggested that one of our tanks should pull the healing Nictus away from Romulus, but neither tank seemed willing or able to. Finished the ITF in a grueling 2h 4m, but I did get to level 47 and had a Numina (END/HEAL) recipe drop. At level 47 I could slot level 50 IOs and straight away slotted 4 sets of 6 Obliteration and one set of 5 Obliteration in her various PBAOEs (Flashing Steel, Lotus Drops, Golden Dragonfly, Blazing Aura and Burn) for a total of +25% recharge, +15% melee DEF and +7.5% smash/lethal DEF.
Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) did a Lambda trial, got a common reward and up to 53% Interface.
Mon 5/2
Shield Maiden (27 shield/mace tank) solo'd some missions in Striga for Tobias Hansen.
Mega (51 SS/will brute) joined a Lambda trial which had an unusual method for clearing the zone. The two teams immediately split up at the very start, clearing streets in opposite directions, then clearing towers separately. This seemed to work very well. We struggled a bit gathering acids when the team got split up, but beat up Marauder eventually. I got a rare reward and up to 58% Interface exp.
I had kinda gotten tired of the archery/fire blaster version of Kyrie Eleison, and ended up restarting Kyrie as a fire/fire brute in Praetoria, joining the loyalists and soloing up to level 4. I've been playing lots of fire aura toons lately and I really like the DPS from Burn, but was previously leery about how squishy a fire/fire would be, and ended up deleting a fire/fire scrapper a couple years back. We'll see if I can do better this time around.
I'll probably be online tonight but am going on vacation tomorrow, will be back in about a week and a half. So if you don't see me on CoH, that's why.
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
You could always slot your Lore slot, but never summon them - for the Incarnate shift.
Wow, that profanity filter change sounds ridiculous. I wonder what they were thinking with that? Hopefully it gets fixed soon.
Oh, and have fun on vacation.
Tue 5/3/2011
I was near the ticket cap on AE story rewards, so claimed 1000 tickets on Police Woman.
Millie Volt (51 elec/elec brute) joined a Lambda trial. This was slow to start. I did unlock the Interface slot and get 14% Destiny exp, along with an uncommon reward. I used 12 Astrals and downgraded 2 uncommon salvage to craft a Reactive Radial Interface (25% chance of fire DOT/25% chance of res debuff). I also upgraded her Alpha slot to a Cardiac Core Paragon, which gets her lethal resist up to 68.5%.
Marcia Law (27 dp/kin corr) joined a Moonfire TF. The original leader was lower than the TF max and gave the star to a level 50 player; turns out that player was on +4 difficulty. We managed to complete the first mission (against vampires) at +4, then turned difficulty back down to normal. My ISP (Comcast) started flaking out and I disconnected for one mission, then reconnected, then near the end of the TF my connection died entirely. After quite awhile I reconnected right around when the TF finished; I think the team had been waiting for me. I wasn't actually in the last mission, but the game gave me the TF badge anyway, which was nice. This got Marcia to level 28.
I went on vacation at this point and was away from CoH for 10 days.
Sun 5/8
While I was away, the AEnvasion event visited Infinity server, where they played Talos Vice (arc id 338380), one of my story arcs. It was voted best overall arc for the week!
Fri 5/13
I returned from vacation to find that I had picked up the 78 month veteran badge. This had a patrol exp awarding temp power attached to it; it only has 5 charges, but each charge gives you half a level of patrol exp, with about 2 hrs recharge time. This seems not very useful for level 50s, but has been very helpful for my lowbies so far. I also had hit the AE ticket cap while gone, and claimed 999 tickets.
I logged in right in the middle of the Praetorian Surge event, so I answered the call and fought Praetorians as Police Woman (52 AR/dev blaster), starting in Atlas and eventually moving to Peregrine Island. It was fun to banter with the GMs controlling the event, who did a lot of trash talking in the name of "Emperor Cole". The actual fighting was pretty tedious due to the immense amount of lag. I tried dropping from the league and soloing in hopes of reducing lag; I kinda think leagues cause lag, but it could just be baseless superstition. Many Praetorian characters, set up as Giant Monsters rather than AVs, showed up to fight us. I did this for awhile, but eventually the lag got too annoying and I switched to doing something else. It did not seem like there were any badges or other special rewards (except for some community reps who were giving out gold titles).
Switching to Kyrie Eleison (who I had rerolled as a 4 fire/fire brute), I solo'd a bit in Praetoria, finishing the story arcs for Washington, Cleopatra, Kang, Jessica Flores and Luke Larson. At the end of Cleopatra's arc I decided to save Cleopatra (she did help me save a hospital, after all), which changed my alignment from Loyalist to Resistance. I used the patrol exp temp power liberally. This got Kyrie to level 11.
Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) joined a 16 player BAF, getting her to 54% Judgement exp.
Sat 5/14
Kyrie Eleison (11 fire/fire brute) joined a 3 player team in Praetoria. I got a costume compliment, which was nice. Our third player left mid-mission and the two of us left, a scrapper and myself, wiped out versus Metronome (which seemed to be an all-boss group of Praetorian clockwork) four times in a row; we eventually beat them through careful pulling. The third teammate returned at that point and wanted to do his mission, but he had to go to Neutropolis to talk to the contact to get the mission. We had some sort of failure in communication at this point, where either the guy never got his mission, or never told us where his mission was, or maybe the leader just didn't want to go wherever this mission was; the net result was that we idled in Imperial City for about 15 minutes while the third guy was doing something in Neutropolis. The leader got fed up with this and set a mission om Imperial City, at which point the third guy quit. After this team broke up, I solo'd Chance McKnight's story arc (at the end I decided to help Wu Yin), then Ivy's arc, getting to level 17.
Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) did a speedy LGTF in 20m 27s.
Sakura (27 plant/storm controller) joined a Posi 2 TF, but unfortunately, the leader didn't realize that the Posi 1 badge was required to even start Posi 2. So instead we did Posi 1, which was fine with me too. There was some confusion between people who wanted to stealth the missions and people who wanted to fight their way through; as a result, our team was split up a lot, and we nearly had a team wipe during the Dr. Morben mission since the people sneaking ahead spawned ambushes on the rest of us. Nevertheless we muddled through the TF, finishing in 41m 19s and getting Sakura to level 28.
Mystery Girl (51 emp/pistols defender) did a BAF trial. We had no escapees. I managed to get clobbered by Nightstar's nova, gotta remember not to stand near her. Got a common reward and up to 75% Judgement exp.
Mega (51 SS/will brute) did a BAF trial, again no escapees. Got an uncommon reward and up to 78% Judgement exp.
Strong Woman (51 inv/SS tanker) did a BAF trial. Someone persuaded the leader to try for the Keep Em Separated badge. I got held a couple times by Nightstar because I was afraid to move away from her even when I had two rings on me, for fear of moving her from her spawn point (since she was aggro on me); this got a few people sequestered, but I'm not sure what else I could do. We made it through the prisoner phase and then killed Siege at his spawn point; when both AVs respawned, half of us ran over to Nightstar, but the first person who aggroed her kinda panicked and ran away from her, causing Nightstar to move a few meters away from her spawn point. We weren't sure if this movement was far enough to ruin the badge attempt, so kept going; however, the Siege team was overwhelmed by adds shortly after that, then ran away from Siege, causing Siege to move well away from his spawn point. There was a lot of yelling at that point, but the leader called for us to pull both AVs to the tennis courts, where we finished them off. I got an uncommon reward and up to 44% Judgement exp.
Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) did a speedy STF in 29m 8s. I got a Golgi.
Star Amethyst (52 dark/ice defender) did a 7-player speedy ITF; everyone on the team was required to have Judgement, we wanted to see how fast that made it. We lost a little time in the final mission because we still had 12 traitors left after Romulus died, and had to scramble to find them. Nevertheless finished in a speedy 17m 16s, a very good time for a short-handed team. I took the 28 merits.
Sun 5/15
Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) joined a 7 player Kahn TF. I seemed to generate more aggro than our brute, ended up tanking Reichsman for most of the last fight. Finished in 19m 43s. Blond went on to do a clear-most ITF in 34m 53s, where I took the 28 merits, and a STF. During the patron AV fight in the last mission, it did not seem like either our tanker or our brute were taunting Ghost Widow, so I ended up Confronting her until the team jumped on her; my capped defense kept me alive long enough to survive this. Neither tanker nor brute seemed to want to taunt Lord Recluse either, resulting in LR rushing the team at the red tower. I tried taunting LR away but he smashed me flat just for thinking about it (doh!). Eventually the brute got aggro, which let the rest of us kill towers. Finished in 29m 36s and took an Essence of Incarnate. After that Blond joined a Lambda trial which was a bit of a struggle (we were tank heavy and support light), but we beat Marauder and I got a rare reward and up to 69% Interface exp.
The AEnvasion event had moved to Guardian this week, and I felt like I ought to put in an appearance. I logged in Sun Girl (14 fire/nrg tanker on Guardian who had been offline for a little over 4 years; she has a terrible build based on what I thought was good in 2007) and played two story arcs. The Fractured Dreamer was a story about young mutants being kidnapped for nefarious reasons; I felt the plot was rather disjointed, and the enemies had crazy amounts of END drain (I got to fight both Sappers AND Carnies at level 14). I ended up giving that 3 stars. Powers Division Briefing: Nictus and Nictus Cults wasn't really a story at all, just a showcase for a custom enemy group with a Nictus/Galaxy theme. It was a nice looking enemy group with a good theme, but with no story or dialog at all, I felt I couldn't give it more than 2 stars. This all got Sun Girl to level 16, though who knows when she'll come out to play agian.
Kyrie Eleison (17 fire/fire brute) solo'd the story arcs for Penelope Yin, Mother Mayhem, Antimatter and Dark Watcher. The bonus exp at the end of each Praetorian story arc is insanely large (about half a level), and the stories are pretty neat, so I've really focused on story arcs while there. I really like Penelope's story, her fractured fairy tale is really endearing. In Mother Mayhem's arc, I decided to let Vanessa deVore go, as the lesser of two evils. During Antimatter's arc, I ran across a lab map where the door I needed to go through was blocked (the map showed an openable door there, but the 3D graphics showed a locked door, and I couldn't open it no matter what); I ended up having to autocomplete that mission. The finale of Antimatter's arc, where I saved the reactor from Arachnos, was really pretty cool. In the "moral choice" mission following that, I decided to expose Cole's invasion plans. In Dark Watcher's arc, I really like Aaron Walker's last appearance and his last computer program. The fight at Neuron's tower seemed cool, but was super laggy even when solo. In the final moral choice, I destroyed the Enriche production facility, reasoning that free will was better than having a safe drinking supply. This all got me to level 21 and put me solidly on the Resistance side. I crossed over to Paragon City at that point, and was a little disappointed that despite all the story arcs I had completed, Noble Savage was the only guy who came to say goodbye.
Upon arriving in Paragon City, I almost immediately got an invite to a 6 player pickup team. This wasn't a particularly efficient team (mostly melee and DPS with only a single trick arrow toon for support) but was quite fun as we got into a geeky comics discussion, then several players squee'd at fighting Captain Castillo on the Sky Raider helicarrier, which some of them had never seen before. After this team broke up, Kyrie was level 22 and I upgraded to SO enhancements, then knocked out her level 20 costume mission and struggled with making a second costume that looked good without being too skanky.
Rain Dancer (51 storm/archery defender) joined a single-team RWZ raid; one person was kicked for AFK leeching, leaving us with 7. We still did pretty well, clearing the pylons and holding the bowl of the mother ship for quite some time. I picked up 357 vanguard merits and 2 reward merits for the master-at-arms.
Playing Rain Dancer, I formed an 8-player Lambda trial, intentionally trying to make a minimum size league. Despite pretty much taking the first 7 people who showed interest, I ended up with a good mix of tanking, support and damage. I didn't really do anything terribly innovative, following the normal Lambda routine of clearing the streets, then the courtyard, then the turrets, then splitting up for the tubes and caches (I assigned 4 players to each; our tanker ended up going to the wrong side, so it was actually 3 for caches and 5 for tubes, but whatever, I felt it would be easier to let him keep doing what he was doing rather than get him to come where I was), then fighting Marauder. The tubes/caches part was the hardest, with many deaths due to people getting split up and/or simply clobbered by the mobs guarding each objective. I agonized over this but one of the players said, this always happens (even for full Lambda leagues), and I realized this was true. I did get a compliment for being a really tough defender, which was nice; Rain Dancer is range DEF capped and has good smash/lethal/energy resists, which all helps a lot against Praetorians. Worth noting was that since we were all on the same team, anyone could get paci grenades or molecular acids even if we weren't in the area those objectives were found. Fortunately everyone knew how the temp powers worked, so it wasn't a problem.
On our first run I got to 95% Interface exp, but only got a common reward; 3 players on my team got 10 threads as reward, resulting in considerable gnashing of teeth; supposedly rewards are based on contribution, so getting the "Game thinks you were AFK" reward when you're on a minimum size Lambda league feels really unfair. Despite this, people were willing to try it again. On the second run, we got a 9th player, a controller who must've been single queueing; it was a little messy during the cache/tubes phase again, but we won. I got a rare reward, unlocked the Interface slot, and got 28% Destiny exp. We did a third run, again with 9 players (picking up yet another single-queueing controller), and this got me an uncommon reward and to 59% Destiny exp. I really liked the 8-person format; in my opinion, waiting for a league to fill up is one of the most annoying things about the incarnate trials, but doing this with a single team, it felt much quicker to replace people who left and start up the next run.
After the third run people were tired, so we called it. I converted 27 astrals to make a Reactive Total Radial Conversion (75% chance of fire dot) which I expect to be really nice with Rain Dancer's stormy powers.
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by PoliceWoman
...
On our first run I got to 95% Interface exp, but only got a common reward; 3 players on my team got 10 threads as reward, resulting in considerable gnashing of teeth; supposedly rewards are based on contribution, so getting the "Game thinks you were AFK" reward when you're on a minimum size Lambda league feels really unfair.... |
I did a Lambda run with a total of 8 people (min. required) this morning on Stout Ion (my DA/DM Tanker). We actually had a good setup, 2 tankers, 1 Blaster, 1 Corruptor, 1 Dom., 1 Controller, 1 Stalker and 1 Scrapper.
At the end of the trial (a successful one), the other tanker in the team got the "10 threads" table/option.....which is a bummer....no idea how and/or why that'd happen.
Leader of The LEGION/Fallen LEGION on the Liberty server!
SSBB FC: 2062-8881-3944
MKW FC: 4167-4891-5991
Mon 5/16/2011
Rain Dancer (51 storm/archery defender) joined a 15 player BAF. My Reactive Interface proc'd like mad from my various stormy powers. Will miss it when they tune it down, but yeah, it's pretty abusive the way it is. Got a common reward and up to 87% Judgement exp. I stayed for a second run of the BAF where we had no escapees. I got a Rare reward, Judgement slot unlocked and 5% Lore exp. I converted 13 astrals and downgraded 2 uncommons to make an Ion Total Core Judgement; I felt like the electrical attack was a good thematic match for a stormy.
Spacegirl (52 mind/rad controller) joined a Lambda trial; one of the players persuaded the leader to change this to a Master of Lambda attempt mid-stream. Despite repeated messages that we were now trying for the Master of badge, someone (no one was sure who) used an acid and ruined the attempt. We finished the normal way. I got an uncommon reward and up to 93% Destiny exp.
Kyrie Eleison (22 fire/fire brute) did a Posi 2 TF. Our team was buff heavy and tore through everything quite easily, finishing in 45m 35s and getting Kyrie to level 23. After that Kyrie joined an 8 player pickup team fighting rogue PPD; we had one team wipe, but this mission got Kyrie to level 24.
Strong Woman (51 inv/SS tanker) joined a BAF trial. This was apparently a badge attempt, but somehow no one told me this, so I pulled Nightstar to the tennis courts and immediately ruined the Keep Em Separated part. We did stop all prisoners from escaping, but killed the two AVs just a little too fast (while minions were still up), missing the Strong and Pretty badge. I got an uncommon reward and up to 59% Judgement exp. We had a second try at the BAF, this time with 18 players and only trying for Strong and Pretty; but again, we killed the AVs while spawns were up. The leader had been asking people to stop damage at 5% but it seemed like these directions were largely ignored; maybe some people stopped, but enough kept going that the AVs died every time. I got a rare reward and up to 82% Judgement. After that we did a 10 player Lambda, where I got a rare reward and up to 86% Interface.
Tue 5/17
I was doing some crafting, laying away Kinetic Combat IOs for a rainy day, and ended up claiming 1000 AE tickets (out of ~9600) to buy uncommon salvage, which I felt was way overpriced on the broker. I had tried buying the salvage on the broker for various prices up to 150K with no luck, after which I dug my heels in and decided to buy them for 80 tickets each instead.
Mega (51 SS/will brute) joined a Lambda trial, got a rare reward and up to 87% interface.
Millie Volt (51 elec/elec brute) joined a 14 player Lambda, got a common reward and up to 32% Destiny.
Mystery Girl (51 emp/pistols defender) joined a Lambda trial, got a rare reward and up to 95% Destiny. After that we did a 12 player BAF; it definitely seemed like the smaller league caused us to get fewer spawns for prisoners and reinforcements. We had no escapees despite only having 12 players. I got an uncommon reward and up to 94% Judgement exp.
I made some edits to my Fusionette Incarnate arc based on player feedback, mostly to the final mission, where I tried to add a few more funny lines, added a Positron expy, and changed the custom mobs to have more variety and better names.
Wed 5/18
I was only on briefly Wednesday, but while on, I played Strong Woman (51 inv/SS tanker) on an 18-player BAF. Got a common reward and up to 93% Judgement.
Thu 5/19
Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) joined a 19 player BAF, got an uncommon and up to 66% Judgement exp.
Mega (51 SS/will brute) joined a BAF, got an uncommon and up to 92% Judgement.
Spacegirl (52 mind/rad controller) did a speed LGTF. We finished in a very speedy 20m 4s, a server record speed (as far as I know). I don't think we did anything really unusual, but we had a damage heavy team (I was the only support toon), and incarnate powers are surely making us kill stuff faster. I took the hero 1 DNA and got a Notice of the Well. The same team went on to do a speed ITF in 17m 48s; I took the Ancient Nictus Fragment. Then we did a speed STF; we were going so fast, I didn't notice our team lacked a tank until we were fighting the patron AVs. Our squishy team ended up dodging the patron AVs and Lord Recluse himself a lot, with no one really tanking them, but somehow we pulled it off without any serious problems. Finished in 28m 42s and got a Centriole (boo).
Playing Strong Woman (51 inv/SS tanker) I tried to form a minimum size BAF league to try for the Strong and Pretty badge (which I wanted for Strong Woman since it seemed so appropriate). My past experience with failed Strong and Pretty attempts has been that people usually ignore orders to "slow down damage" and overkill the AVs too quickly, while reinforcements are still up. My theory was a smaller league would have lower DPS, so would kill the AVs more slowly (hopefully with more control!), and would also spawn fewer reinforcements -- both of which should make it easier to get Strong and Pretty.
I wanted a minimum size league, but a couple people showed up at the last minute and I didn't really want to exclude them, so we ended up going with 14. We did a solid job stopping all prisoners; I'm starting to think this phase is easier with fewer people, too. I pulled both Nightstar and Siege to the helipad where reinforcements spawn, and when we got to the final stage, I called on people to slow down damage at 10% (rather than 5% as I've previously seen, hoping to give myself more margin) and to focus on reinforcements then. Despite all this, we still managed to kill Nightstar while reinforcements were spawned; however, the league actually did slow down damage on Siege enough that we didn't kill him in the 10 second window. This caused both AVs to respawn, giving us another chance. On the second try, we managed to line everything up correctly, got the AVs to low life, cleared the last spawn of reinforcements, then killed the AVs. Strong Woman got the Strong and Pretty badge and immediately set it as her badge title; I also unlocked the Judgement slot and got 6% into Lore.
I offered to run another (regular) BAF run, but attrition dropped the league size down to 9, so instead I ran a 9-player Lambda, which got me a very rare reward, Interface unlocked, and 7% Destiny. Did a second Lambda, this time with 8 players, which got me an uncommon and up to 38% Destiny. Third and final Lambda was 8 players and got me a rare and up to 69% Destiny.
I'm really liking the small team BAF and Lambda runs; it feels like they start quicker, have less lag, have less dead weight on them (a friend complained about how people were slacking on the pickup leagues he had joined), and award significantly more exp (a teammate was really happy about getting 31% Destiny exp per run).
With my various goodies I crafted a Cryonic Total Radial Judgement. Truthfully, an 80' cone attack is a terrible choice (in game terms) for a tanker, but I wanted the look & feel of Superman's "ice breath" attack. I haven't figured out what I want for her Interface slot yet; originally Reactive was the clear choice, but with the impeding changes to Interface currently on test server, I'm not so sure what I want to put in that slot now.
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
Fri 5/20/2011
Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) joined a 13 player Lambda. This league seemed to be almost entirely scrappers, stalkers and MMs. A couple players didn't really understand how to use the acids, so we ended up with 4 portals sending reinforcements at us; we won anyway. I got a common reward and to 97% Interface exp. Followed that with a 20 player BAF; we had no escapees but the lag really made it dreary. I got a rare reward and to 82% Judgement exp.
Kyrie Eleison (24 fire/fire brute) solo'd Stephanie Peebles' Striga arc for the Wedding Band temp power, then I spent some time playtesting my AE story arcs, which I had been tweaking to try and get around the hyperaggressive profanity filter. A friend joined me while I was playing through Axis and Allies (I had to rename "Statesman" to "Staatsman" since Statesman was a bad word according to the profanity filter...bleh...) and we cleared the ruined city map I was using to represent Stalingrad, but it seemed our hostage failed to spawn, making the mission uncompleteable. We had to quit, but Kyrie got to level 25, and I proposed to run a TF instead.
So I formed and led an 8-player Citadel TF (though I passed the star to a higher level character before starting, so we could play at level 30); we got a good team together, with a mix of damage and support. We were doing pretty well, but during the second to last mission, someone on LB announced a BAF trial was starting, and our tanker asked, "What's a BAF?" After we explained what a BAF was, the tanker went, "OMG I need that!" and quit the TF to go join the BAF. I really think he would've been better off finishing the TF to get the badge, but oh well. This ended up bugging out the TF, causing the mission to repeat, but I was able to fix it by calling the contact myself (even though I was no longer leader). This advanced us to the final mission, but changed our combat level to 29 (I guess since I was super-SK'd?). We ended up finishing in 1h 12m and got Kyrie to level 26. I had two teammates rave about how much fun it was, which was a little odd because Citadel is one of the more repetitive TFs; I really think they just enjoyed the change of pace from the incarnate trials.
Sat 5/21
Kyrie Eleison solo'd some more in Striga, and fighting war wolves, I found that I really need knockback protection. I used another toon to buy a Blessing of the Zephyr: KB protection using 2 hero merits, which I crafted and slotted into Kyrie's Fly power. Finished Tobias Hansen's arc for 13 merits, then Lars Hansen's arc for 8 merits, getting to level 27 and unlocking Ernesto Hess.
Sun 5/22
Police Woman (52 AR/dev blaster) hit the inf cap at the market again, emailed myself 900M this time. I switched from 500M to 900M so I wouldn't have to do this so often; I would've sent a billion, but the amount of inf you can send via email caps slightly under that.
Shield Maiden (27 shield/mace tank) solo'd in Striga to level 28. I probably should be running the newer story arcs that start in Talos instead, but I keep ending up in Striga with my 20s toons because I want the Wedding Band and the Hess TF contact.
Rain Dancer (51 storm/archery defender) joined a 7-player speed ITF. Our team was kind of support heavy, but our buff/debuff just seemed to make us kill stuff faster. In the final fight, due to weird timing on Romulus's rez, we somehow managed to kill Romulus 3 times and 2 of the Nictus AVs -- effectively beating 5 AVs instead of the normal 4. Finished in 19m 38s. We went on to do an STF (filling up to an 8 player team); this was a little messy near the end, but finished in 28m 2s. I took the essence of the incarnate without really thinking about it, but with her Alpha slot complete, I probably should've taken the HO.
After that, Mayday (50 fortunata) did a speed LGTF in 21m 47s, getting a Hero 1 DNA and a Notice of the Well.
Mon 5/23
Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) joined a 14 player BAF, got a common reward and to 98% Judgement exp. We did a second run, but right before we started, I asked to swap toons, resulting in a mixup where some people quit and some people entered the BAF. We ended up having to restart the whole trial to straighten things out (ack!).
So on the second trial I played Mayday (50 fortunata) on 16 player BAF; no serious problems, I got a rare and to 18% Judgement exp (starting from 0). The leader left and somehow I got stuck with the star. I recruited back up to 12 players and we did another BAF. This seemed to go a little slowly (our DPS on the AVs must've been low) and our main brute claimed he got sequestered like 11 times in one fight. Nevertheless won, got another rare salvage and up to 49% Judgement exp. After that run, some more people left, and we ended up doing an 8-player Lambda. We had no heals but decent debuff; it was a rough time gathering temp powers, but we did manage to get Synchronized, which was apparently the last badge I needed for Master of Lambda. After finishing the gathering phase, we had no trouble with Marauder. I got an uncommon reward and up to 96% Interface exp.
Tue 5/24
The insane AE profanity filter was mildly improved in Tuesday's patch, removing some common words like "Statesman" "Paragon" "Manticore" and "Spider" from the profanity filter. This let me fix all my story arcs so that they can be played again, although I did have to rename "Black Scorpion" in order to republish my Flower Knight Task Force...because apparently Scorpion is still a bad word.
Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) did a STF. Using shards I picked up on this TF, I was able to craft a Musculature Core Paragon (+45% DMG and level shift). Our tank didn't seem too "with it", and in the final mission, after some chaos against the patrons, I ended up tanking Ghost Widow for a few seconds, died, then a fortunata took over tanking Ghost Widow. In the final fight another shield scrapper tanked Lord Recluse, died, then I tanked Lord Recluse the rest of the way. Finished in 36m 33s and got an Endoplasm SHO.
I was waffling on what Alpha boost to craft for Mayday (50 fortunata), and after asking around for advice, finally settled on Cardiac for the ENDRDX, which seems less sexy than +DMG or +RCHG, but Mayday really burns up END fast, so this is probably the right choice. By this time I had enough components to craft a Cardiac Total Core Revamp (END/RANGE and level shift). I am finding that I get enough uncommon rewards from incarnate trials that it feels more efficient to craft the 2nd tier Alpha boost using the incarnate thread stuff (from the trials) rather than the incarnate shard stuff (from TFs). Maybe the 1st tier boost too. Rares and Very Rares seem scarce enough that using Notices of the Well still seems better for those, though.
Mayday went on an Apex TF; we had two tankers, one of which had nothing in his Alpha slot so he was at -4 and died a lot. Had a pretty messy last fight against Battle Maiden (mostly people forgetting they can't stand in blue stuff, I think) but managed to win in 29m 1s and get the Master of Apex badge.
Kyrie Eleison (27 fire/fire brute) solo'd Black as Midnight, an AE story arc where you're helping the Midnighters. This was a very pretty looking arc with lots of interesting ideas, but the story was not very well explained and had me very confused for about half of it. I gave it 4 stars.
Mega (51 SS/will brute) joined a 2nd villain respec, finishing in 16m 10s and getting a Notice of the Well.
I somehow got volunteered to lead some incarnate trials, and so I formed and led a 10-player Lambda trial. This got Mega an uncommon reward, Interface unlocked and 9% Destiny. We picked up a few more players and did a 13-player BAF trial; I got a rare reward, Judgement unlocked and 6% Lore exp. A second run of the 13-player BAF trial got me another uncommon reward and up to 13% Lore exp, then some people left and we finished up with an 8-player Lambda trial, which got me a rare reward and up to 40% Destiny exp.
I ended up crafting a Void Judgement for Mega, coloring it red to steal the idea I had heard from someone else to treat it like my brute's "natural rage". With Interface having been so heavily nerfed in the last patch, I'm not sure which Interface power I want to use; maybe the -damage one. Haven't decided for sure yet though.
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
Thu 5/26/2011
Projectionist, an artist who ran a Mission Architect contest last summer, finished making my prize for that contest -- cover art for an imaginary comic book based on my Teen Phalanx Forever! story arc. I really like it!
That's a 20% scale version of the picture ... the original is huge and has a ton of detail. The arc id for Teen Phalanx is #67335 if anyone wants to try it out.
I wanted to start playing my mastermind (April Fool) again, but with the incarnate trials being very MM-hostile, I decided I needed a respec to make her playable. This is what I came up with:
Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.92
http://www.cohplanner.com/
Click this DataLink to open the build!
April Fool I20: Level 50 Technology Mastermind
Primary Power Set: Thugs
Secondary Power Set: Trick Arrow
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Medicine
Power Pool: Leadership
Ancillary Pool: Mu Mastery
Villain Profile:
Level 1: Call Thugs -- BldM'dt-Acc/Dmg(A), BldM'dt-Dmg/EndRdx(3), BldM'dt-Acc/EndRdx(3), BldM'dt-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(5), BldM'dt-Acc(5), BldM'dt-Dmg(7)
Level 1: Entangling Arrow -- HO:Endo(A)
Level 2: Dual Wield -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(7), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(9), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(9), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(11), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(11)
Level 4: Glue Arrow -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(39)
Level 6: Equip Thugs -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 8: Combat Jumping -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), Zephyr-Travel(40), Zephyr-ResKB(40)
Level 10: Aid Other -- Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx(A), IntRdx-I(13), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(13), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(15), Dct'dW-Heal(15), Dct'dW-Rchg(17)
Level 12: Call Enforcer -- BldM'dt-Acc/Dmg(A), BldM'dt-Dmg/EndRdx(17), BldM'dt-Acc/EndRdx(19), BldM'dt-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(19), BldM'dt-Acc(21), BldM'dt-Dmg(21)
Level 14: Aid Self -- Numna-Heal/EndRdx(A), Numna-EndRdx/Rchg(33), Numna-Heal/Rchg(33), Numna-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(34), Numna-Heal(34), Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(34)
Level 16: Poison Gas Arrow -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(39)
Level 18: Pistols -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(23), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(23), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(25), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(25), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(27)
Level 20: Acid Arrow -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(39)
Level 22: Maneuvers -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(27), LkGmblr-Rchg+(29)
Level 24: Tactics -- GSFC-ToHit(A), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg(36), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg/EndRdx(37), GSFC-Rchg/EndRdx(37), GSFC-ToHit/EndRdx(37), GSFC-Build%(40)
Level 26: Call Bruiser -- BldM'dt-Acc/Dmg(A), BldM'dt-Dmg/EndRdx(29), BldM'dt-Acc/EndRdx(31), BldM'dt-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(31), BldM'dt-Acc(31), BldM'dt-Dmg(33)
Level 28: Disruption Arrow -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(36)
Level 30: Vengeance -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 32: Upgrade Equipment -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 35: Super Jump -- Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(36)
Level 38: Oil Slick Arrow -- Det'tn-Acc/Dmg(A), RechRdx-I(43), Det'tn-Dmg/Rchg(43), Det'tn-Dmg/Rng(43), Det'tn-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(46), Det'tn-Dmg/EndRdx/Rng(46)
Level 41: Charged Armor -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), ResDam-I(42), HO:Ribo(42)
Level 44: EMP Arrow -- Lock-Acc/Hold(A), Lock-Acc/Rchg(45), Lock-Rchg/Hold(45), Lock-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(45), Lock-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(46), Lock-%Hold(48)
Level 47: Gang War -- ExRmnt-Acc/Rchg(A), ExRmnt-Acc/Dmg(48), ExRmnt-Dmg/EndRdx(48), ExRmnt-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(50), ExRmnt-EndRdx/Dmg/Rchg(50), ExRmnt-+Res(Pets)(50)
Level 49: Resuscitate -- RechRdx-I(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Run-I(A)
Level 1: Supremacy
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 4: Ninja Run
Level 2: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 2: Health -- Heal-I(A)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(42)
April was originally built for maximum recharge (which is very helpful for both summoning pets and firing trick arrows), but I completely switched my focus to range defense, which I believe is the key to surviving incarnate trials. (Smash/lethal DEF doesn't help as much because Praetorians have a lot of pure energy attacks.) This build gets me to 44% range DEF; not quite soft capped, but the +4 Praetorians in the incarnate trials need more than 45% defense anyway, so I figure I can eat a luck every now and then, as needed.
I tested this by joining a 24-player BAF trial. This was pretty laggy and I ended up disconnecting in the final fight, but I managed to reconnect and rejoin the league in time to get the reward; a common reward, and 14% Judgement exp.
Fri 5/27
The Praetorian Surge event was occurring on Freedom, and so I logged on a level 1 version of Police Woman on Freedom. I had created this character maybe 4 years ago to reserve the name "Police Woman" on every server that I could. After getting out of the tutorial (woo, level 2!) and into Atlas Park, I fought Praetorians (including several signature AVs) under really laggy conditions. After suffering through massive lag for about half an hour, I got sick of it and went back to Liberty. I did get the Defender of Primal Earth badge, though, and devs announced they had 4000 simultaneous players on Freedom, which unlocked the badge for all.
Back on Liberty, Mayday (51 fortunata) joined a RWZ raid. Our team started out pretty full, but kept losing people for some reason, and we were a 5 player team most of the raid. I ended up gaining 368 vanguard merits; this gave me enough to purchase the salvage storage sack.
Mayday went on to join a 17 player BAF. We had a lot of prisoners escape, but managed to finish. I got a rare reward and up to 69% Judgement exp. After that we did a 16 player Lambda; my team got all the tubes while the weapon cache team was only on 3 caches and were dying lots, and we ended up going to help. I got an uncommon reward, Interface slot unlocked, and 17% Destiny exp. I converted 19 astrals and downgraded an uncommon to make a Reactive Radial Interface (25% chance of fire DOT, 25% chance of RES debuff).
Sat 5/28
Spy Girl (45 MA/ninj stalker) joined a 4-player 2nd villain respec, which went straightforwardly, finishing in 18m 30s. The Weekly Strike Target bonus got Spy Girl to level 46.
Switched to Virtual Girl (47 kat/fire scrapper) for another run of the 2nd villain respec, this time with 5 players (all DPS, no support). Discovered that CoT in Cap au Diable no longer count for the hunt mission. The lack of support made things a little painful but we still managed to finish in 20m 24s, getting Virtual Girl to level 48. I also got a costume compliment from a passerby, which was nice.
Mega (51 SS/will brute) formed and led an 11 player Lambda. I got a common reward and up to 63% Destiny. Did another Lambda run with 9 players, got an uncommon and to 88% Destiny. A third Lambda run with 10 players, got a common reward and Destiny unlocked. Something I noticed while doing these trials: Judgement does not appear to be affected by rage crash (which normally zeroes Mega's damage). This kinda makes sense because Judgement powers are coded not to be affected by damage buffs, and the Rage crash is a type of damage buff. For Mega's Destiny slot, I decided on Barrier for increased survivability, converting 21 astrals to craft a Barrier Partial Radial Invocation (90 sec buff with 1 ally Rez and incarnate shift).
April Fool (51 thug/TA MM) joined a 16 player Lambda, got a rare and 26% Interface exp. I went into the temp power gathering phase with some trepidation, since this is where most masterminds get splattered due to pet aggro and general squishiness, but my high range DEF respec made me very survivable, and I didn't have any problem at all. I did leave a trail of broken and bleeding bodies of pets behind me, but they're only pets, who cares about them; I just summoned more whenever I got to an objective.
Mystery Girl (51 emp/pistols defender) joined a 16 player Lambda, got a common and unlocked the Destiny slot. I crafted a Clarion Invocation, because running out of break frees is what gets Mystery Girl in trouble.
Sun 5/29
Police Woman (52 AR/dev blaster) answered a call to help kill Jack in Irons in Croatoa; this team went on to beat up a Jack vs Eochai fight, which got us merits but no one got badges (presumably they had done too much damage to each other). I also solo'd 2 vigilante tips, and hit the unclaimed ticket cap at AE, so I claimed 500.
Spy Girl (46 MA/ninj stalker) joined an LGTF, which the leader suddenly made into a Master of LGTF. In the first mission I complained that a defender who was trying to stealth through the Rikti was running Oppressive Gloom (which draws aggro), and karma caught up to me as Rikti drones promptly aggroed on me and killed me. It was still the first mission so we decided to restart. On the second try I stealthed to Penelope Yin and used Recall Friend to TP everyone there. Mission 2 we mostly cleared through; mission 3 the leader wanted us to fail it, but only I and a fire brute ended up finding Infernia. We fought for a minute, then I realized no one else was coming, so I ended up TPing some people over (inadvertantly TPing a blaster into a fight once, but he survived it). Mission 4 we carefully took down the mitos without incident, and in mission 5, I was able to stealth to the end and TP everyone there. I have to say I'm really liking Recall Friend on my stalker. Finished in 1h 3m, got to level 47 and got the MoLGTF badge.
April Fool (51 thug/TA MM) formed and led a 15 player BAF; I got an uncommon and up to 32% Judgement. Did a second run of BAF with 12 players; we had trouble keeping the prisoners down, and a lot escaped, but we still finished. I got a very rare and up to 48% Judgement. Lost a few more people due to attrition and I ended up leading an 8 player Lambda next; I ordered a 4/4 split on the temp power gathering phase, but somehow we ended up with 6/2 with only a scrapper and MM (not me) on tubes. Despite this, things went very smoothly, and I got a common reward and up to 74% Interface exp. The high defense build is definitely working, making the incarnate trials quite doable as a MM.
Mon 5/30
Spent some time soloing on Kyrie Eleison (27 fire/fire brute), completing 3 hero tips, 3 door missions, and picking up a Shivan shard (for a rainy day..) in Bloody Bay.
April Fool formed and led a 12 player Lambda trial, unlocking the Interface slot and getting to 6% Destiny. Did a second run of Lambda with 9 players; it seemed like we had a lot of people AFK, which is bad for a 9 player league. I rather punitively moved all the AFK people to the second team (which gave them 0 exp, but they were AFK, so why should they get exp), keeping all the active players on my team. Eventually the AFK people got back from AFK, though, and I rebalanced the teams to be more even. Our 9 player league had no heals (except my Aid Other) and only TA and cold for debuffs, making for a rough fight against Marauder. Our pickup tanker died a lot and I felt really sorry for him; he was very determined and kept getting up and jumping back in the fight, though. I dumped all my inspirations on him to try and keep him alive. Finally finished the trial, and I ended up at 35% Destiny. I burned 25 astrals to craft a Reactive Total Radial Conversion (75% chance of fire dot).
Tue 5/31
I was only on for a little bit, but while I was on, I played Spacegirl (52 mind/rad controller) on an Apex TF, which finished in 23m 48s.
Wed 6/1
Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) formed and led an 8 player Lambda trial. We were support heavy and the Lambda went very smoothly. I got a rare reward, Interface unlocked, and 36% Destiny exp (very tasty!). After that I spent some time recruiting our league up to 12 players for a BAF trial; this took some time as another league was competing for recruits at the same time. Finally when we had 12 players, I started the BAF, but one person was AFK (actually, he had crashed) and so the game decided 11 players can't handle BAF, and kicked our 11 person league back to RWZ, which I had never seen happen before. I ended up picking up the very next person to show up and started with 12. This pickup person immediately said, "12 person BAF? Are you crazy?" which I got a kick out of. This BAF was very successful and we had no prisoners escape (this was a really good job on the part of the league members). I got a rare reward, a Coercive Persuasion (RECH/ACC) recipe drop, Judgement slot unlocked, and 15% Lore exp. I ended up crafting a Pyronic Partial Radial Judgement (wide area nuke with more targets) and a Reactive Total Radial Conversion (75% chance of fire DOT) for my Judgement and Interface slots.
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
Recall Friend on stalkers is great, especially defense based stalkers. Capped stealth, plus softcapped defense means even Ritkti drones are no problem. All of my stalker builds try to fit it in as soon as possible.
Thu 6/2/2011
I hit the ticket cap at AE and claimed 500 tickets.
Rain Dancer (51 storm/archery defender) was on a speed ITF that took 18m 24s (got 26 merits), then an STF that took 25m 1s (a record time; got a Centriole, bleh), then a 7-player Kahn TF that took 16m 1s (got a dimensional keystone).
Rain Dancer then formed and led a 10 player Lambda trial, getting a rare reward and to 86% Destiny exp; followed that with a 12 player BAF trial with no escapes, getting a common reward and up to 21% Lore exp. I had someone praise my small team style for trials, which was nice.
Fri 6/3
I played Olivia Q (50 MA/SR scrapper) on an STF. This was slow to start as we struggled to fill up the team. I briefly tanked Ghost Widow in the final mission when the tank died. The tank died again on Lord Recluse which left the melee scrambling to aggro LR away from the team, but we recovered and finished in 42m 46s. I got an Essence of Incarnate.
A friend was complaining that no one would team with him on red side, so I logged on Marcia Law (28 pistols/kin corr), picked up a third person, and teamed up for 4 paper missions, getting to level 29.
Sat 6/4
I bought the Steampunk pack, because it looked cool, although the only piece of it I've used so far is the sash-like belt with a clock shaped buckle. For some reason I really like that belt.
Kyrie Eleison (27 fire/fire brute) joined a 7 player Sutter TF. Our team kinda struggled against the AVs, suffering a team wipe against Riptide, and 2 team wipes against the matched pair of Durays. We struggled with whether to kill the Praetorian or the Primal Duray first; what finally worked was to chase the annoyingly TPing Primal Duray around and killing him, then the other. Finished in 1h 15m and got to level 29 due to the Weekly Strike Target bonus.
Marcia Law (29 pistols/kin corr) joined another Sutter TF, this one with 5 players. We had 3 kins on a 5 player team, yet I still had to ask for SB repeatedly (I seemed to be the only one who consistently cast it). The leader had never done the TF and our team really struggled due to low DPS and low survivability. We suffered a wipe on generic IDF in the first mission, then to the Captain Stone AV in the first mission, then to Riptide in the second mission (eventually beating him by pulling him into a hallway). One of the other kins found that Repel was surprisingly good against the ghouls that rushed us. We suffered 4 team wipes against the two Durays; our tank had no taunt, making it tough, and we really didn't have enough debuff or DPS to get the job done. Finally gave up after the fourth team wipe. Nevertheless got Marcia to level 30.
Sun 6/5
Kyrie Eleison (29 fire/fire brute) solo'd the Roy Cooling arc for 5 merits and the Helping Hand badge, then the Keith Nance arc for 5 merits and the Fairest badge. This got her to level 30.
Tour de Force (35 FF/nrg defender) joined an 8 player Sutter TF. I originally brought a blaster, but our team was very blaster heavy and support light, and after the previous night's rough experience on Sutter TF I insisted on switching to a support toon. After seeing Repel work well, I found Force Bubble also was very good against the ghoul bombs. This TF went very smoothly, finishing in 48m 1s and getting Tour to level 36.
After finishing Sutter TF I immediately got invited to a 7-player ITF, finishing in 30m 52s and getting Tour de Force to level 37.
Mon 6/6
April Fool (51 thug/TA MM) joined a 16-player BAF trial. For some reason we had 5 tanks, but nevertheless we had no escapes and the trial went well. Got a common reward and to 66% Judgement exp.
I switched to Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) for another BAF run, this time with 14 players. I got a costume compliment from a teammate, which was nice. No prisoners escaped. One of our tankers repeatedly ignored the 2 ring warning and got himself and several league members sequestered multiple times; managed to win anyhow, though, getting an uncommon reward and to 29% Lore exp.
While on the BAF trial, a friend repeatedly asked me to drop from my team to help him with a Master of Barracuda SF run, despite my telling him I was already doing something. This ended up making me mad, and I put him on ignore. Later, after cooling down, I felt I had handled the situation badly, so I took him off ignore and emailed him an apology.
Tue 6/7
Hit the ticket cap at AE again and claimed 1000. Kyrie Eleison (30 fire/fire brute) ran half of Sidekicks Can Be A Pain in the Cape, a story about a kid who wants to be a sidekick and ends up getting into trouble. I felt this story was kind of light on actual writing and badly suffered from "Your Princess is in Another Castle" syndrome, where you keep going places looking for the hostage and it turns out he's not there at all. I ended up quitting halfway through and gave it 3 stars.
Olivia Q (50 MA/SR scrapper) joined an ITF; another MA/SR was on the team and said it was unusual to see two in one place. MA/SRs used to be really common, but I guess it is out of style these days. We sped through the TF and I was asked to team TP in the final mission to Romulus, but ended up doing so to the wrong place (I TP'd next to Romulus instead of before the dance floor), but things worked out anyhow. Finished the ITF in 18m 45s and I got an Ancient Nictus Fragment. I crafted a Musculature (DMG) boost and used it to replace the Cardiac (END) boost that I had previously slotted. My philosophy on alpha slotting has evolved to the point where I think all my scrappers and blasters (basically, toons with high base damage) should have Musculature.
Wed 6/8
Sarcasm Lass (34 sonic/mental blaster) solo'd 2 PvE missions in Warburg, for no real reason; just needed something to do.
Police Woman (52 AR/dev blaster) joined an Apex TF. We had one brute at -4 due to lacking an alpha boost and he died lots. Finished in 24m 41s and got 80 merits, 2 threads, and Notice of the Well.
April Fool (51 thug/TA MM) joined a pickup BAF trial. The leader was only able to recruit to 11 so started Lambda, but had second thoughts and told us all to quit so he could recruit more. It felt like it took forever to start again, between recruiting more people and fiddling with team composition. We finally started the BAF with 15, divided for some reason into 4 teams. The trial was rather chaotic as the leader gave no instructions, so lots of raid members shouted random orders to fill the power vacuum. We somehow managed to win anyhow, getting April a common and to 84% Judgement.
Thu 6/9
Strong Woman (51 inv/SS tanker) joined an Apex TF. I was asked to bring a tanker, and was asked to be lead tanker even though the team already had a tank; the other tanker was admittedly pretty bad, though I did manage to die once myself, to the hydra in the sewers (stupid toxic damage!). In the final fight, our team was just awful at avoiding the blue stuff; at one point 6 of our 8 players were dead to blue stuff. I've gotten pretty good at dodging it and don't think I ever got hit. Finished Apex in 31m 22s and got 80 merits, 2 threads and Notice of the Well.
I switched to Mystery Girl (52 emp/pistols defender) and joined a pickup BAF trial. We had 23 players which made it very laggy. At one point during the prisoner phase I found myself the only one chasing 3 commandos running towards the west exit; this was a bad feeling considering I was an emp defender (albeit an aggressive one). I screamed for help and a stalker came to the rescue (how often do you hear that phrase?) and between us we beat up the fleeing commandos. I got an uncommon reward, Judgement unlocked and 4% into Lore exp. I crafted a Void Radial Judgement (PBAOE nuke with a big damage debuff); mostly I wanted the damage debuff for extra mitigation, and I figured the PBAOE would actually stack well with Hail of Bullets.
I started a new cold/ice defender, taking the name Ice Kate and soloing to level 3 in Outbreak and Atlas Park. Partly this is motivated by cold shields becoming AOE buffs on test server, partly I've wanted a hero-side cold for awhile but never quite got one off the ground.
Virtual Girl (48 kat/fire scrapper) solo'd Scirocco's first patron arc, beating an EB-level Barracuda and an EB-level Serafina, though it took me 3 tries to beat Serafina due to her hurricane, which kept overwhelming my limited knockback protection.
Fri 6/10
I wrote a background story for Ice Kate about mutants and Olympic figure skating, then solo'd Grim and the Green, a dev choice AE arc that proved to be a decent investigation story where you work with the police against the Skulls. I gave it 5 stars. This got Ice Kate to level 6.
Virtual Girl (48 kat/fire scrapper) joined a clear most ITF. I occasionally got overrun by Cimerorans, and my self rez came in very handy; our blasters died lots, though. Finished in 54m 33s and got 26 merits and level 49. I got a compliment on her bio, and also on her survivability ... "for a fire aura toon". (Which I can't really disagree with; most fire aura toons, including some of mine, are really squishy.)
Kyrie Eleison (30 fire/fire brute) joined an 8 player Positron 1 TF. We had a good team mix and fun players who spent most of the TF cracking jokes. At this level I found I had KB protection (from IOs) but no immob protection (both CJ and Burn were taken at some level above 20, ack), so I kept getting trapped by Tenebrous Tentacles (eww). Finished in 43m 15s, got the Positron's Ally badge (I had previously done Posi 2) and got to level 31.
I switched to Sakura (28 plant/storm controller) for a Posi 2 with the same team, but some weird chat problem prevented the team leader from sending me tells or invites, though he could see my tells. The last tell I saw from him was "just a minute" so I patiently waited for 15 minutes for an invite, before I saw him broadcasting to fill the spot I was in. We managed to straighten it out and start Posi 2 after that, and the next time I zoned (into the first mission) I got like 12 tells that had been queued on the global chat server or something. It was very weird. The TF itself was no problem and finished in 50m 46s, getting Sakura to level 30. I also got a compliment on Sakura's name, and chatted for awhile with a teammate on how important it was to get a good character name.
Sat 6/11
Police Woman (52 AR/dev blaster) solo'd 3 vigilante tip missions.
Spacegirl (52 mind/rad controller) joined a 6 player speed ITF, finishing in 22m 33s.
Mayday (50 fortunata) formed an Apex TF that finished in 24m 42s, then used the same team for an 8 player Lambda trial, getting an uncommon reward and to 52% Destiny exp.
Ice Kate (6 cold/ice defender) solo'd some door missions to get contacts and level 7.
Spacegirl joined a pickup Lambda trial. After a long recruiting period, we finally started, but the leader disconnected somehow as the trial began and got left out of the trial, and didn't seem able to rejoin. Did the run with 14 players, got a rare reward and Destiny unlocked. I also got a compliment on Spacegirl's bio.
Sarcasm Lass (34 sonic/mental blaster) joined a 4 player hero tips team that eventually grew to 8 players. I got 2 compliments on Sarcasm Lass's costume, which was nice. We did 5 hero tips and a hero morality, getting Sarcasm Lass to level 35. I switched to Kyrie Eleison (30 fire/fire brute) for more, and we got caught in a nasty 5th Column crossfire that resulted in a near wipe, but managed to finish 3 more hero tips before people got tired. This got Kyrie to level 31 and I picked up a new global friend.
Sun 6/12
Police Woman has gradually been converting reward merits into hero merits, and today I spent 30 hoarded hero merits on a level 10 Gladiator's Armor (resist TP/+3% defense). By my calculation, spending 30 merits on 15 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% rchg) is probably a better value, but I had lots of LotGs and zero Gladiator's Armor, so I ignored the math. I don't even have a build that uses a Gladiator's Armor, though, so I'm not quite sure what I'll do with it yet. Probably stash it in base storage for a rainy day.
I played Police Woman through a vigilante morality mission, converting her to Vigilante alignment. I mostly did this to pick up a few of the villain badges they've added since the last time Police Woman visited red side; mainly the red side respec badges, but there's probably a few more. I also broke down and crafted a Pyronic Radial Judgement (the wide fire nuke) for her; I had been avoiding judgement powers because they were "too super", but finally rationalized it as being "no worse" than Warburg nukes, which I don't seem to mind using.
I hit the inf cap at the market again and mailed myself another 900M inf.
Playing April Fool (51 thug/TA MM) I formed and led an 8-player Lambda; we picked up a 9th person via the LFG queue. This team had some decent players but was rather squishy and we really struggled to get the temp powers; we actually ran out of time during the temp power gathering phase, after getting only 8 acid and 6 grenades. I initially called on people to kill Marauder directly and ignore adds, but we ended up getting overrun by adds. The players had a lot of courage and kept valiantly zerging back into the fight but at our best we only got Marauder down to 80%. We switched to focus on killing adds, and got enough extra temp powers that we were able to close all the doors, but we weren't able to make another valid attempt on Marauder before time ran out. So we failed the trial, but all the killing did get April up to 60% Destiny exp and we picked up some astrals along the way. In hindsight, I think we needed more tanking or healing or both; our brute was plenty brave in assaulting Marauder but we couldn't keep her alive against him, and as a result Marauder could mow through us with impunity. Oh well.
After that, I ended up rolling our team into a BAF league that was forming, which ended up starting with 22 players. We had no escapees; I got a common reward and up to 99% Judgement exp
Finished the night playing Police Woman (52 AR/dev blaster) on another Apex TF (for badge credit towards Assistant), finishing in 29m 48s.
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
Mon 6/13/2011
Ice Kate (7 cold/ice def) joined a 6 player team running level 13 missions. We had both sonic and cold shields on the team, making us really tough. Finished the Clockwork Captive story arc, which got Kate to level 12 and DOs.
Yuki-Onna (51 ice/cold corr) did a speed RSF; for some reason the leader packed the team with colds, and we went with 4 colds and 1 kin for support. Seemed to work fine and we finished in 24m 46s; I took the Essence of Incarnate.
Rain Dancer (51 storm/archery def) joined an 8 player Lambda; I got a common reward and Destiny unlocked. I got the league star dumped on me at that point, and ended up recruiting up to 16 players and running a BAF. We had no escapes, I got a rare reward and to 36% Lore exp. A second BAF run with 15 players got me a rare reward and to 52% Lore exp. There was some drama over who was guarding which door, but it didn't seem too serious. I got some praise for leading, which was nice. I crafted and slotted a Rebirth Partial Radial Invocation (heal/regen/incarnate shift), figuring a self-heal with some regen was ideal for a defense capped stormy.
Tue 6/14
Kyrie Eleison (31 fire/fire brute) solo'd a few missions in Croatoa.
Mayday (51 fortunata) joined an all veat ITF; our lineup was 6 soldiers and 2 widows. We cleared most of the missions; I noticed one of the soldiers really liked going off to solo by himself, which usually ended in him dying. Finished in 51m 57s (not particularly speedy, but the team seemed to have a good time) and took the Ancient Nictus Fragment as reward.
Police Woman (52 AR/dev blaster) joined a speed Kahn TF, finishing in 18m 24s for 40 merits and a Notice of the Well.
Star Amethyst (52 dark/ice def) joined a speed Kahn. One rogue player accidentally went to the red-side Ouro, delaying us a bit. Finished in 21m 13s and got 40 merits and a Notice of the Well.
April Fool (51 thug/TA MM) joined a 17 player BAF, got a common reward, Judgement unlocked and 8% Lore exp. I crafted and slotted an Ion Judgement (the basic electric nuke), mentally picturing it as being a deadly joy buzzer.
Ice Kate (12 cold/ice def) solo'd The Hollows: Parapsychologist, a pretty good AE story where you help Talshak the Mystic investigate a kidnapping by the CoT. I gave it 5 stars.
Wed 6/15
Police Woman (52 AR/dev blaster) joined an STF. We had a few delays as a rogue player managed to Ouro to red side, and the leader was a rogue so had to travel the long way between IP and PI. Plus, in the last mission, both the red and the yellow towers respawned; it seemed to me that our force fielder was using Force Bubble to keep minions away from the tower we were working on, and this did seem like it was helping at the time, but I suspect this meant the repairmen were kept on the periphery of the force bubble and never got killed, so when we left, they came back and fixed the tower. The FF ended up dropping Force Bubble and we killed the towers again, finishing the TF in 48m 19s; I got a Centriole.
Mystery Girl (51 emp/pistols def) joined a pickup Hami raid. It had sounded like they were short on healers, so I brought an empath, but I ended up getting assigned to the green team which was all controllers and didn't need much healing. I ended up using the league interface to target tanks that were taking damage in order to run around healing them; I think this actually worked pretty well. The raid was rather slow paced but methodical, and we ended up winning, powering through the final bloom with the help of Warburg nukes. I got a Lysosome as reward.
Kyrie (31 fire/fire brute) solo'd Buck Salinger's arc in Croatoa for 12 merits, unlocking the Katie TF. I also hit the ticket cap at AE and claimed 1000 tickets.
Fri 6/17
I server transferred Darla Doppler (49 kin/sonic def) back to Liberty from being exiled on Freedom. Until recently I had been a big believer in kin corruptors over kin defenders, but my thinking has changed, and I want to give a kin defender a try in the current endgame. My main reasons are: most endgame content is on leagues or 8 player teams, and a defender's better buff numbers will help more here; the sonic blast debuffs are more powerful on a defender, and on a big team this will be a bigger contribution than higher personal DPS; and finally, defender epic pool shields + defender tough + cardiac boost could get a defender close to the resist cap on a "squishy".
So I respec'd into the following build:
Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.942
http://www.cohplanner.com/
Click this DataLink to open the build!
Darla Doppler I20: Level 50 Science Defender
Primary Power Set: Kinetics
Secondary Power Set: Sonic Attack
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Fighting
Ancillary Pool: Electricity Mastery
Hero Profile:
Level 1: Transfusion -- Numna-Heal/EndRdx(A), Numna-EndRdx/Rchg(3), Numna-Heal/Rchg(3), Numna-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(5), Numna-Heal(5), Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(7)
Level 1: Shriek -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(7), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(9), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(9), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(11), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(11)
Level 2: Scream -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(13), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(13), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(15), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(15), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(17)
Level 4: Howl -- Det'tn-Acc/Dmg(A), Det'tn-Dmg/EndRdx(17), Det'tn-Dmg/Rchg(19), Det'tn-Dmg/Rng(19), Det'tn-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(21), Det'tn-Dmg/EndRdx/Rng(21)
Level 6: Siphon Speed -- Acc-I(A)
Level 8: Combat Jumping -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 10: Siphon Power -- Acc-I(A)
Level 12: Speed Boost -- Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(A), Zephyr-ResKB(29)
Level 14: Increase Density -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), GA-3defTpProc(27)
Level 16: Super Speed -- Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(25), Zephyr-ResKB(33)
Level 18: Inertial Reduction -- Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(29)
Level 20: Amplify -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(23)
Level 22: Kick -- ExStrk-Dmg/KB(A), ExStrk-Acc/KB(23), ExStrk-Dam%(25)
Level 24: Shout -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(27), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(34), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(37), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(40), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(42)
Level 26: Transference -- P'Shift-EndMod/Acc/Rchg(A), P'Shift-Acc/Rchg(31), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(31)
Level 28: Siren's Song -- LgcRps-Acc/Rchg(A), LgcRps-EndRdx/Sleep(31), LgcRps-Acc/EndRdx(33), LgcRps-Sleep/Rng(34), LgcRps-Acc/Sleep/Rchg(34)
Level 30: Tough -- RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx(A), RctvArm-ResDam/Rchg(42), RctvArm-ResDam(43), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(43), RctvArm-EndRdx(43)
Level 32: Fulcrum Shift -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(33)
Level 35: Screech -- Stpfy-Acc/Rchg(A), Stpfy-EndRdx/Stun(36), Stpfy-Acc/EndRdx(36), Stpfy-Stun/Rng(36), Stpfy-Acc/Stun/Rchg(37), Stpfy-KB%(37)
Level 38: Dreadful Wail -- Erad-Dmg(A), Erad-Acc/Rchg(39), Erad-Dmg/Rchg(39), Erad-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(39), Erad-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(40), Erad-Úm(40)
Level 41: Thunder Strike -- Erad-Dmg(A), Erad-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(42), Erad-Acc/Rchg(46), Erad-Dmg/Rchg(46), Erad-Úm(46), Erad-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(48)
Level 44: Charged Armor -- RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx(A), RctvArm-ResDam/Rchg(45), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(45), RctvArm-ResDam(45), RctvArm-EndRdx(48)
Level 47: Weave -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(48), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(50), LkGmblr-Def(50)
Level 49: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(50)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Vigilance
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 4: Ninja Run
Level 2: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 2: Health -- Heal-I(A)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A)
I switched from my normal attempts to soft cap smash/lethal DEF to instead soft-cap ranged and energy DEF, reasoning that these are much more prevalent on incarnate trials. For the same reason I took Charged Armor as my patron shield, since it gives smash/lethal/energy resists. This build gives Darla a total of 45.39% range DEF, 44.46% energy DEF, 20.71% lethal DEF, 33.19% energy RES and 66.52% lethal RES. I was pretty pleased by these totals; I have scrappers less durable than that.
Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) joined a 23 player BAF. Out of these 23 players, there was only one support toon. We had lots of death but succeeded. I got an Uncommon reward and to 37% lore. After that I split off and tried forming my own Lambda, but after asking around for awhile, I could only get 3 players.
I proposed we switch to a Posi 1 TF, which 3 players was enough for. Surprisingly, there was tons more interest in Posi 1 than in Lambda. Or perhaps not surprisingly, a lot of people are tired of incarnate trials. I switched to Ice Kate (12 cold/ice def) and formed an 8 player team. We had no heals but O2 boost from a stormy, but lots of defense from my cold shields and a FF toon. Despite this, we flew through Posi 1 in 42m 5s. Everyone was very psyched, and wanted to do Posi 2. So the same team started Posi 2; we had a couple near wipes against CoT near the end (I think we were getting tired) but finished in 49m 58s. This all got Ice Kate to level 19.
Sat 6/18
Millie Volt (51 elec/elec brute) joined an 16 player Lambda, got a Very Rare and to 54% Destiny. After that we did a 20 player BAF. We had no escapees, but I did get confused and got to punch people a lot; didn't manage to kill anyone, though. Got an uncommon and 13% Lore.
San Min (51 MA/will scrapper) solo'd Vernon Von Grun's Extraordinary Extradimensional Excursions, a funny AE story arc where you're helping a mad scientist explore alternate dimensions. There were some AVs but nothing I couldn't handle. I gave it 5 stars. Visiting Wentworth's I found I had sold two Ragnarok IOs that I had totally forgotten about for 1.3B inf, which hit the inf cap for San Min and I had to mail myself another 900M inf before claiming.
I like to hit level 50 doing something cool, so Darla Doppler (49 kin/son def) formed an STF that I ran at +1 difficulty. We had a strong team so I set it as a Master of STF, but told everyone we weren't serious about it. Due to these settings I think I really ended up running a MoSTF where everyone was exemp'd to 49 but the TF was at level 51 (from my +1 difficulty) so effectively it was a +2 MoSTF. Fortunately, we were pretty awesome so this did not slow us down very much, though we did have a couple deaths from the security forces in mission 3 that prevented the "Master of" badge. One scrapper reported that exemping to level 49 disabled all his incarnate powers, but the rest of the team still had them, which was very weird; at a teammate's suggestion, he toggled on/off the Walk power, which brought his incarnate powers back. Also, I hit level 50 on mission 3; trained up before the next mission, but the team was still exemped to 49 for the whole TF. We finished the STF in 46m 10s and I got a Nucleolus.
After that Police Woman (52 AR/dev blaster) formed a Kahn TF. The team killed the Kronos Titan while waiting for the last few members to finish another TF. The last two people were someone I actually invited, and his friend; it turned out this "friend" was someone I normally would never team with, but I felt it would be too rude to refuse to include him, so I went with it. He was mostly okay, except in the very last mission, where as tanker he seemed completely incapable of getting aggro from Reichsman. I could even see him doing the "taunt" animation, but Reichsman just seemed to ignore him; I have no idea why. Fortunately this did not slow us down. Finished in 24m 21s and got 20 merits. (I had already completed Kahn TF as WST and was doing it for badge credit now.)
Kyrie (31 fire/fire brute) joined an 8-player Sister Psyche TF. We were very DPS heavy, with only a stormy and a VEAT for support. We had a messy zerg-fest on Devastation (just a Freakshow boss, really), which was really my fault because I just jumped onto Devastation without any preparation, and the rest of the team followed me, which the 3 or 4 large groups of Freakshow in the area seemed to take issue with. Over the course of the TF, we also got to enjoy the benefit of 3 Nictus Cyst Crystals courtesy of our peacebringer. Nevertheless we finished in 1h 43m, a pretty decent time, and got Kyrie to level 33.
Sun 6/19
Darla Doppler (50 kin/sonic def) solo'd Alpha Unlocked. It took me a long time to defeat Trapdoor and the Honoree, but I managed to eventually wear the EBs down; between Transference and Transfusion I never ran out of either END or health, and my high energy defense prevented them from being any real threat to me. After getting Alpha Unlocked, I joined what I was told would be a pickup Lambda, but the leader somehow selected BAF instead. We had 14 players and I got an Uncommon reward and 22% Judgement exp; after that we actually did a Lambda, with 15 players, and I got a Common reward and 35% Interface.
April Fool (51 thug/TA MM) joined a 20 player BAF, got a common and 22% Lore. I also messed around renaming April's pets; the Larry/Curly/Moe thing seems all-too-common for MM pets, so I ended up renaming them after characters on Gilligan's Island. I tried to set it up so that the Arsonist would be Gilligan.
Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) joined a 16 player lambda, got a common and 51% Destiny.
Police Woman (52 AR/dev blaster) formed another speed Kahn TF. Some of my teammates complained they took tons more damage than normal, but I couldn't see any obvious reason why. Nevertheless finished in 25m 27s; I took a Dimensional Keystone (not that I really need one since I have the tier 4 Alpha I want already, but figure it may come in useful someday).
April Fool joined an 8 player Lambda. We were very light on debuff, with only me (a trick arrow) and maybe some VEAT debuffs on the team. We did have an emp and a FF on the team, but the FF was a little spotty on buffing and the emp never buffed at all. The leader originally didn't want to split the team to gather temp powers, for sake of team survivability; I didn't really think this was a good idea (you really need the bonus time from doing both sides simultaneously) but went along with it, mostly. One tanker split off anyway, to try and solo the other side. When we had gotten 7 caches and 1 acid with only 1 minute left on the clock, I gave up on the "following orders" thing and switched to help with acids; I saw the leader getting acids too, so I think she had the same idea and just didn't say anything. This was enough to let us collect all 10 of both. Against Marauder we got him down to about 40% life, then seemed to hit a brick wall as the team was unable to stay alive against the adds (despite both emp and FF on the team!), then finally ran out of paci grenades while trying to zerg Marauder with lots of hospital runs. We started collecting paci grenades one-by-one from the weapon deliveries, but ended up running out of time, failing the TF. This got April to 99% Destiny; I tried to stay in the Lambda sector to solo my last 1% Destiny, but the trial kicked me out once I dropped from the team. Oh well!
Also on Sunday, the AE Invasion event on Freedom server played my Teen Phalanx Forever! story arc, among others. My arc was described as "a lowbie-friendly arc that is rich in details, background, characterization, dialog, and action" and was voted the best arc of the day, which was really nice.
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
Mon 6/21/2011
Darla Doppler (50 kin/sonic def) joined a 16 player Lambda. I was the only support toon, but we had 4 tanks, 4 blasters and 3 scrappers. I questioned whether we had enough debuff to succeed, but went ahead with the trial. It seemed to me that we had a lot of people who were AFK through much of the trial. The power gathering phase was very messy, lots of deaths; at one point I had to remind a tanker to turn his toggles on, and people on the side that finished first ran to stand in the cut scene even though the other side still needed help. There was a lot of general stupidity in the Marauder fight; people died to nova fist repeatedly (and unnecessarily), people failed to use acids to close doors, and we actually ran out of paci grenades and had to send people to gather more from the weapons deliveries. I madly spammed transfusion (not only for the heal, but for the regen debuff) while trying to SB both teams. It looked pretty doomed, but we actually managed to win with 1 second left on the clock, very dramatic. I got an uncommon reward and up to 68% Interface exp.
Wed 6/23
Kyrie Eleison (33 fire/fire brute) did a Manticore TF. We had a high DPS team with good support and despite clearing most missions (since most of the team was getting exp) we tore through the TF very quickly, though I didn't get the exact time. This got Kyrie to level 34.
Spacegirl (51 mind/rad controller) joined a Tin Mage TF which went pretty straightforwardly. Afterwards I crafted a Diamagnetic Interface (chance of -ToHit) and a Clarion Destiny (mez protect). I normally prefer Reactive Interface, but wanted to avoid damage procs that might break sleeps; as a rad she already has -regen covered, so -ToHit seemed a good debuff to layer with Radiation Infection. And getting mezzed is the bane of my rad characters (as it drops all toggle debuffs) so Clarion seemed a good choice.
Thu 6/24
Kyrie Eleison (34 fire/fire brute) solo'd a couple AE arcs: In Poor Taste, which was a joke arc about CoH mobs that have terrible names (I gave it 4 stars) and The Internet is for Pwn!, where you meet an "Internet" contact that is meant to be like "The Radio" and "The Television" from CoV (also gave that 4 stars). I also hit the unclaimed ticket cap and claimed another 1000 tickets.
Fri 6/25
Darla Doppler (50 kin/sonic defender) joined an ITF that finished in 25m 49s; I took the ancient nictus salvage. After that I formed a Lambda trial. It felt like it took ages to get enough players to try this, but finally kicked off with a 10 player league; it went fine, got an uncommon reward, Interface unlocked and 2% Destiny exp. I picked up a few more players and immediately ran a 12 player BAF. We had a brute AFK for most of the trial that I ended up exiling to be solo on team 3. I got a common reward and to 49% Judgement exp.
Sat 6/26
Ice Kate (19 cold/ice def) started soloing an AE story arc called Fresh off the Flier, which is an alternate CoV starting arc intended for lowbie villains. It seems well-written and does a decent job introducing lowbie villain factions, but doesn't actually seem that different than the normal PvE lowbie arcs. Got about halfway through before taking a break.
Police Woman (52 AR/dev blaster) joined an STF. We had a team wipe to Dr. Aeon due to either not using the temp power that breaks his force fields, or maybe it missed; won the rematch. In the last mission, we had a messy fight against the 4 patron AVs as the flyer aggroed us mid-fight and people kept dying to it. Finished in 55m 28s, got 37 merits, a Notice, and an Endoplasm.
Sun 6/27
April Fool (51 thug/TA MM) joined a BAF trial; this league took ages to form, finally kicking off with a full 24 players. We seemed very leaky on prisoners and had a rather chaotic fight against the AVs, but eventually won. I got a rare and to 38% Lore exp.
Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapped) joined a 15 player Lambda, got a common and to 65% Destiny.
Millie Volt (51 elec/elec brute) joined a 16 player Lambda. Against Marauder I tried fly-taunting him; this seemed to work really well, he could only occasionally throw a big rock at me. I don't think I ever saw Marauder nova fist while I was flying and had aggro, though he did move around agitatedly while trying to get at me, which might have been annoying for the meleers. Strangely we had 3 tanks on the trial, none of which really tried to take aggro from me. I got an uncommon and to 72% Destiny.
Sarcasm Lass (35 sonic/mental blaster) joined a clear most ITF; we were pretty low on support, with a tank, a rad and 6 damage. We had a team wipe at the end of mission 1 and a near wipe on the PC in mission 3. It took awhile to grind down Romulus in the last mission, but we eventually beat him, finishing in 56m 52s. This got Sarcasm Lass to level 37.
Shield Maiden (28 shield/mace tanker) solo'd Lars Hansen's arc for 8 merits, unlocking the Hess TF.
Mon 6/28
Primadonna (51 sonic/kin corr) joined a debuff-heavy STF team that finished in a speedy 27m 48s. I got 37 merits, a Notice and an Essence of the Incarnate.
Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corr) joined a debuff-heavy RSF that finished in 25m 41s, getting 25 merits, a Notice and an Essence of the Incarnate. Used this to craft a Spiritual total core revamp (45% rchg, stun, level shift).
Rain Dancer (51 storm/archery def) did a 6-player speed ITF in 17m 28s.
Tue 6/29
Issue 20.5 dropped today and the first thing I did was play Police Woman (52 AR/dev blaster) on a 24-player Keyes trial. My first impression was that the trial was really complicated. We had to gather power cells and activate computers on each of three different buildings (called "reactors" by the game, which I think is a misnomer; these would be cooling towers in a "real" power plant). The process for gathering the power cells and activating the computers was slightly different for each reactor, and the last 2 involved dragging Antimatter (the AV) around to various workstations before they could be activated. In the meantime, we were getting bombarded by some kind of zone-wide area damage, which seemed to hit us with a big packet of damage every minute or so. The 8-player team I was on had no support toons; my medicine pool powers seemed to be the only healing on my team. We suffered a lot of attrition due to this constant damage. Finally after activating everything on all 3 reactors, we got to fight Antimatter. He had some power that entangled people in red or blue spheres, and we were supposed to avoid players of the opposite color (or take damage), while avoiding standing in big green circles. Also Antimatter would periodically run to a new spot and regen most of his life by using some machines that we had to destroy. This whole thing was very chaotic, but the leader kept us moving forward, and we eventually won. Surprisingly, there was very little lag, despite the complexity of the map and having 24 players on the league. I got a common reward and the Keyes technician badge. I also crafted the basic Longbow Ally; I'm pretty excited about having non-Praetorian pets for the Lore slot.
I was enough of a sucker that I decided to do the Keyes trial again, this time on Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper). This went much smoother because there was a lot more support and healing on this league (which was also 24 players). Also the players did a better job of staying together for mutual support. What seemed insanely complicated on the first run started to make sense on the second run, and we completed it pretty handily. I got a rare reward and to 41% Lore, 69% Destiny; it's noteworthy that Keyes mobs give exp to both incarnate trees. Though it seems longer and I only got about 4% to each.
Blond went on to do a 24 player BAF. No prisoners escaped. We had high DPS and in the final fight, the respawned Siege seemed to die almost instantly (while Nightstar was still at 70%), and so he respawned again, but we evened them out again and won the trial. I got a very rare reward and to 45% Lore (again, only 4% exp..hmm..maybe an artifact of the big league size). A teammate also complimented me on her origin story, which was nice.
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
Quote:
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Originally Posted by PoliceWoman
I was enough of a sucker that I decided to do the Keyes trial again, this time on Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper). This went much smoother because there was a lot more support and healing on this league (which was also 24 players). Also the players did a better job of staying together for mutual support. What seemed insanely complicated on the first run started to make sense on the second run, and we completed it pretty handily. I got a rare reward and to 41% Lore, 69% Destiny; it's noteworthy that Keyes mobs give exp to both incarnate trees. Though it seems longer and I only got about 4% to each....
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What no mention of who led this awesomely successful trial?
jkBut seriously the keyes definitely requires more teamwork/communication than the other two (at least at this point)...just glad it was successful
And I was curious how the iXP worked in there; EI already had all slots unlocked so I was wondering if you could say "iXP go to x slot" or something but having the iXP split amongst two of the slots isn't but so bad.
With Interface and Destiny usually done before Judgement and Lore, most of the iXP will go towards those slots but....still nice to know
Leader of The LEGION/Fallen LEGION on the Liberty server!
SSBB FC: 2062-8881-3944
MKW FC: 4167-4891-5991
Quote:
I totally agree. I did get the master badge in 6runs, first two times was to get a feel for it. 3rd, 4th, and 5th runs required the need of Ultimates and a small league. Also IMHO, I find the Electric tanks to be the best use in this trial to move Anti-Matter around the Reactors.| But seriously the keyes definitely requires more teamwork/communication than the other two (at least at this point)... |
SG mates, and ventrilo were used. Full tray of medium/large greens help.
Largest and Most Active Group on Exalted! Daily Teams, events, raids, trials, task/strike forces! /chanjoin OOCIC - 7Servers, 20bases, 8 bases in top 100! - We have ventrilo and forums!
Quote:
Dang got the Master of KIR already? |
Originally Posted by Its_Me_Matt
I totally agree. I did get the master badge in 6runs, first two times was to get a feel for it. 3rd, 4th, and 5th runs required the need of Ultimates and a small league. Also IMHO, I find the Electric tanks to be the best use in this trial to move Anti-Matter around the Reactors.
SG mates, and ventrilo were used. Full tray of medium/large greens help. |
Congrats heh...I need to get with you and your teammates.... >_>
Leader of The LEGION/Fallen LEGION on the Liberty server!
SSBB FC: 2062-8881-3944
MKW FC: 4167-4891-5991
Wed 6/29/2011
Mayday (51 fortunata) joined an 8 player Sister Psyche TF. Our only support was a cold (with no shields), a TA, and my VEAT buffs; our only heal was my Aid Other. Despite this, we still did really well, finishing in 1h 23m.
Rain Dancer (51 storm/archery defender) did a speed ITF in 18m 32s.
Thu 6/30
Ice Kate (19 cold/ice defender) solo'd an AE arc called Strike! where I was basically sabotaging a pro-Scrapyarder labor movement. The motivation for this was weak (it was a villainous arc but I wasn't really "getting anything" out of doing this) and the situations weren't very believable, but the dialog was pretty fun. I gave it 3 stars. After that I joined an 8 player Synapse TF; we had a debuff heavy team that handled everything pretty well. We beat Babbage easily, then had to wait awhile for a disconnected player to get back before finishing the TF. Took 2 hours exactly and got Ice Kate to level 23.
Darla Doppler (50 kin/sonic defender) joined a BAF trial. This league was very slow to form but the leader insisted on filling every spot. Went fairly routinely, got an uncommon reward and to 56% Judgement exp. I converted 18 astrals to make a Cardiac Radial (END/RES) boost; astrals seem plentiful enough that I didn't mind squandering some to make my Alpha boost.
Schadenfreude (51 AR/pain corr) joined a Keyes trial. This also took a really long time to form, and the leader again insisted on filling to 24, but at the last minute someone quit so we started with 23. The leader also picked the wrong trial and mistakenly started a BAF. After sitting through the recruiting phase and the cut scene, the general sentiment was to just finish the BAF. We had no escapees, but messed up the timing on the AVs, who respawned once; we killed them again to finish the trial. I got a rare and to 25% Judgement. After that we actually did the Keyes trial. I hopped around a lot trying to heal everyone on the league; I couldn't really keep everyone alive, but I feel like the healing helped a lot against the constant pulse damage, as well as Antimatter's damage to the tanker. We succeeded, I got a rare and to 31% Judgement and 78% Interface.
Spacegirl (53 mind/rad controller) joined a team that was forming for Apex, but couldn't get enough people, so settled for an ITF. The leader set it for Master of ITF but we weren't too serious, and after someone died in mission 2, we just kept going. Finished in 26m 55s; I took the Ancient Nictus Fragment.
[I was AFK over the weekend for a holiday trip.]
Mon 7/4
San Min (51 MA/will scrapper) joined a speed LGTF. We had one person who was AFK when we started the TF and we finished the first mission before he got back. As a flying scrapper and the only melee damage (aside from a tank) I managed to solo all the yellow mitos in mission 4, then all the generators in mission 5. Finished in 22m 2s, I took the Hero 1 DNA and got 3 incarnate shards. (Going to try and count shards gained on TFs when I remember to, as another metric.)
Spacegirl (53 mind/rad controller) did a speed Kahn TF in 18m 26s. I took the Dimensional Keystone and got 2 shards. I broke down 5 empyrean merits and 4 uncommons to upgrade my tier 3 pet to a Warworks Core Superior Ally (Vicky and ACU with bonus damage). Empyrean merits are arguably more valuable than astrals, but none of the stuff on the Ouro vendors is really a must-have for me, so it seemed worth it to break some down into threads to make a better pet.
Rain Dancer (51 storm/archery defender) did an Eden trial on a 7-player team; we were very support heavy with no damage toons. During the initial hunting period, I got to rescue another defender who got in over his head fighting DE, which was fun. We gathered about 3 ambrosia each, smashed through the various walls, rescued the NPC heroes and battled the Crystal Titan. I feel like Hurricane was helpful for keeping the DE ambushes off of us at the various walls; we had no scrappers or brutes so hopefully the knockback wasn't too harmful. Finished in 35m 51s and got a Notice, 14 merits and 1 shard. This gave me enough shards to finish my Spiritual Core Paragon boost (45% RCHG/STUN/HEAL and level shift).
Police Woman (53 AR/dev blaster) hit the inf cap at the market, I mailed myself another 900M. Spent some time exploring Boomtown, picking up the I19 explore badges there and getting 5 merits for the Boom... Goes the Town badge. I also hit the ticket cap at AE sometime over the weekend and claimed 1000 tickets.
Kyrie Eleison (34 fire/fire brute) started Heart of Talos: A Warriors Task Force, an AE arc which seemed to be about a Warriors plot to extract magical artifacts from ancient Cimerora, but I ran into some Cyclops EBs that I couldn't beat while solo. I ended up quitting the arc without rating it; I figure Cyclops are probably fine for a TF level arc, and I do have other toons that could solo them, so I didn't think it would be fair to downrate it. Instead I went to Brickstown to solo my level 30 costume mission.
Tue 7/5
Kyrie Eleison joined a 5 player team doing hero tip missions in Talos. I got a costume compliment from another player, who really liked how my aura looked with my costume. I was the only melee toon on this team so I was the "tank"; as a low level fire aura toon on a level 50ish mission, I was a little squishy, and I managed to get beat up by Longbow once (due to their massive -RES debuffs) but mostly did OK otherwise, with a lot of help from the emp and kin toons. Finished 5 tip missions before the team broke up, then I solo'd a hero morality mission, gaining 50 merits.
Schadenfreude (51 AR/pain corr) joined a Keyes trial. Recruiting this took awhile; I suspect the complexity and/or risk/reward for Keyes scares people off. Started with 13 players; I spent a lot of time jumping around healing like crazy. I saved some people from pulse damage and disintegrates, but missed others. The leader tried to get us to coordinate the bunker kills for a badge, but we never did get the timing down. I got stuck in a green circle when Antimatter did his Time Stop ability, which got me killed; I learned, however, that his Time Stop seems to be linked to his life total hitting 75%, 50% or 25%, so can potentially be predicted. Succeeded at the trial and got a rare reward, and to 37% Judgement and 84% Interface (approx 6% to each). I got both the Ironwoman (take 1M damage) and Medical Specialist (heal 3M damage) badges while on this trial.
After that, we did a 12 player Lambda. The leader had us clear only the minimum necessary to unlock the doors, then we skipped clearing the courtyard or turrets and went straight inside to beat the guard and gather temp powers. This saved us some time, but made for a messy fight at the end, since the courtyard was still fully populated. I was assigned to a subteam that was supposed to kill reinforcements for the extra astral merit, but it was hard to tell the reinforcements from the courtyard spawns, and we closed all the doors which stopped any more from spawning, so we ended up only killing 25 before Marauder was defeated. I got a common reward and to 92% Interface. There's reports circulating that incarnate exp has sharply decreased since I20.5, and based on my experience I think it's true; not quite sure if it's a bug or "working as intended".
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
Quote:
It's a bug.
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Originally Posted by PoliceWoman
There's reports circulating that incarnate exp has sharply decreased since I20.5, and based on my experience I think it's true; not quite sure if it's a bug or "working as intended".
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Gratz on 16,000 views PW! Nearly 4 years and close to 10 issues later and you are still going strong.
/gignore @username is the best feature of this game. It's also probably the least used feature.
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Originally Posted by Nights_Dawn
Hazy is right
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Wed 7/6/2011
Sarcasm Lass (37 sonic/mm blaster) joined a 6 player clear most ITF. Our team was pretty weak and suffered a near-wipeout rescuing Sister Solaris at the end of mission 1 (only 1 scrapper survived), then an actual team wipe on mission 2 to one of the ambushes. The team leader disconnected at the end of mission 2 and apparently went to bed, which caused the other support toon on the team to also decide to go to bed. This left us with a team of 2 scrappers and 2 blasters; despite this, the team wanted to press on. So we started mission 3, had another team wipe on general #3, at which point the other blaster quit. We fought a little bit more but we were pretty doomed at that point (if not earlier), and ended up abandoning the TF. Sarcasm Lass did get to level 38 though.
Darla Doppler (50 kin/sonic defender) formed a 9 player Lambda trial, getting an uncommon reward and up to 14% Destiny exp; followed by a 15 player BAF, getting a very rare and up to 64% Judgement exp.
Thu 7/7
Kyrie Eleison (34 fire/fire brute) joined a 3 player team for some Rikti missions. The tanker was an old friend who had recently reactivated for a couple months; despite claiming he was rusty, he still seemed to be doing fine at tanking. This got Kyrie to level 35.
I started a newbie rad/dark defender in Praetoria, solo'd the Praetor White arc up to level 4, but kinda lost interest in her; she ended up getting deleted to make room for more altitis.
I rearranged my hero-side base a little to add another workshop room, where I put a vault and some more storage for salvage. This is mostly to stockpile excess salvage from my marketeering exploits.
April Fool (51 thug/TA MM) had been sitting at 99% Destiny exp for about 3 weeks; it seemed dumb to run another Lambda for that last 1%, so I spent 1 thread for incarnate exp, unlocking the Destiny slot, and crafted a Rebirth Invocation (the most basic healing Destiny). I figured AoE healing would be good for a mastermind since I would heal all my pets, too, but I dunno, maybe Barrier would've been good too.
Tour de Force (37 FF/nrg defender) joined a 4 player team for 4 hero tip missions, getting her to level 38.
Fri 7/8
Ice Kate (23 cold/ice defender) joined a Sutter TF. We had a pretty well balanced team, and it felt like my cold shields were helping; however, even with the AoE buffing change, I found that I needed to buff individuals quite a lot, due to the team getting spread out. We had a lot of debuff and the AVs dropped fast. I got a compliment on Ice Kate's name, and also to level 26 (getting a big exp bump due to the WST bonus).
Darla Doppler (50 kin/sonic defender) joined a 5 team RWZ raid which was very successful. The raid was in the bowl of the mothership before I realized I wasn't getting vanguard merits, because I had never unlocked Vanguard (doh!). I ran back to base and quickly did Welcome to Vanguard before returning to the raid. Even having missed most of the raid's Rikti kills, I still ended up with 282 Vanguard merits.
Schadenfreude (51 AR/pain corruptor) did an 18-player Keyes trial. We had a good mix of support and damage, and tried for both the bunker buster and avoids the green stuff badges, but missed both. I found that I couldn't keep disintegrated people alive, and people kept getting hit by the green blasts, even me. I got a common reward and up to 42% Judgement and 97% Interface exp. We went on to do a 14 player "quick" Lambda trial. "Quick" meant killing the minimum number of street mobs and skipping all the turrets and courtyard mobs; we also deliberately left 5 doors open to ensure we got the 30 reinforcements astral merit. I got a rare reward, Interface unlocked and 3% into Destiny. I got stuck with the league star somehow, and we went on to do a 13-player BAF, which went pretty well. I learned that my Enforced Morale wasn't enough to block sequestration. I got a common reward and up to 51% Judgement exp. Afterwards, I crafted and slotted a Reactive Total Radial Conversion (75% chance of fire dot). Finished the night on an clear most ITF at +2 difficulty. I got a compliment on Schadenfreude's character concept, which was nice. Finished in 43m 11s and picked up an Ancient Nictus Fragment and 6 incarnate shards.
Sat 7/9
Spacegirl (53 mind/rad controller) helped farm EoEs for the Hami raid, then I played Mystery Girl (52 emp/pistols defender) on the actual raid. I was assigned to the tank team that was taunting mitos; normally I've seen 2 defenders assigned to this, but this time I was the only one, which kept me running around a LOT. I think we were a little short-staffed; the leader very nearly canceled due to low turnout, though we got up to 34 players at the high water mark. Both Clarion and Superspeed were very helpful for this. I noticed that some tanks didn't eat EoEs, either because they were too macho to need them, or simply forgot; regardless, they ended up needing a lot of heals. Despite this, the raid went surprisingly well, though we took the cautious route and cleared all mitos of all blooms due to our overall low DPS. I got a Golgi HO.
Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) joined a 16 player Lambda; this was slow to form, but went OK once we started. Got an uncommon reward and up to 77% destiny. The same league did another Lambda run, but a lot of people switched and others joined in, leading some confusion sorting out who was on our league and who wasn't. I switched to Darla Doppler (50 kin/sonic defender), we ended up with 15 players (we had more than enough to fill the league and were turning people away, then one person suddenly bailed just before we started), but had lots of debuff and Marauder went down fast. Got a common and up to 22% Destiny. Went on to do a BAF trial; the leader recruited up to 24 players, which took a really long time. But the BAF went well, no prisoners escaped and I got a common reward and up to 70% Judgement exp. I ended up crafting a Reactive Interface (25% chance of res debuff).
Police Woman (53 AR/dev blaster) joined a 8 player Mortimer Kal SF. I had done this once before, but it was awhile ago and I had forgotten how cool the missions were. We had a strong team and despite killing most everything, finished in 35m 29s. I got a notice, 44 merits, the Promethean badge and the Flames of Prometheus temp power. I did some testing and confirmed that Flames of Prometheus did absolutely nothing for me at level 50. I think I can turn it in for another notice or something, but haven't bothered yet.
Sun 7/10
Schadenfreude (51 AR/pain corr) joined a 5 player Mortimer Kal SF. This one we did for speed, finishing in a speedy 19m 23s. We had a little trouble with Positron in the final fight, but one player uncorked a Shivan and it didn't take long after that. Got 44 merits and a notice.
Mon 7/11
I hit the unclaimed ticket cap in AE and claimed 1000 tickets.
Mystery Girl (52 emp/pistols defender) joined a 12 player Keyes trial. We coordinated for the Bunker Buster badge by splitting into 3 teams with only one person attacking each door of a bunker until it was very low life, before breaking them all down. Then we tried maneuvering around Antimatter to avoid Obliteration, but this didn't seem to really work. We had two leaders who were shouting conflicting directions, which didn't help. I felt like I was taking a lot of Antimatter damage, probably due to standing in the wrong place and getting caught in his AoE. It also felt like people liked to run away from me when at low life; I know they weren't really running from me, but instead were hiding from damage, but it was still aggravating. Completed the trial and got a common reward, up to 7% Lore exp and the Bunker Buster badge.
Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) joined a 14 player lambda, got an uncommon (forgot how much exp). I inherited the star and started a 12 player BAF. I ended up kicking and replacing someone who left RWZ to sell while I was trying to start the trial. This was perhaps a little cold, but I hate waiting. (And you can sell to vendors in RWZ, besides.) The resulting BAF was a bit messy with a lot of prisoners leaking out the northeast corner (this area seems to often be lightly defended, maybe due to being farther away). We also had a bad pull of Siege, with several pullers dying. But managed to finish, getting a rare and up to 51% Lore exp.
Tue 7/12
Darla Doppler (50 kin/sonic defender) joined a 24 player BAF; it was very slow to form and start. Prisoner phase was rather leaky, and at one point I found myself alone chasing 3 commandos across the map. Still managed to finish, got a rare and up to 76% Judgement exp. Followed that with a 16 player Lambda and got a common and up to 29% Destiny.
Police Woman (53 AR/dev blaster) joined a 7 player 3rd villain respec (the new WST). One player crashed repeatedly trying to enter missions, which looked frustrating. We ended up clearing a path through the tunnels to the tree, then wiping out all the CoT and stuff before getting vines. Finished in 32m 21s and got a notice, 30 merits and the Thorn Usurper badge.
Kyrie Eleison (35 fire/fire brute) solo'd the Midnighter arc for Cimerora access.
Wed 7/13
Kyrie Eleison joined a clear-most ITF. We had a tanker and another brute, so I didn't have to tank, but I felt a little squishy anyhow as the Cimerorans would beat me up any time I got over-aggressive. Finished in 48m 59s and got to level 36.
Thu 7/14
Police Woman hit the inf cap due to marketeering and I mailed myself another 900M infl. Then I joined a Keyes trial that was attempting to go for badges. We had a very weird team mix, with 3 tanks, 3 brutes, 2 scrappers, 1 blaster, 1 rad and a filler player who didn't really play. I offered to switch to a defender but was turned down; the leader really wanted me to get the badges, which was nice. Due to the lack of support, though, the constant damage wore us down and everyone died a LOT. We damaged Antimatter down to 10% life for the badge, which caused the pulse to start hitting really hard, enough to drop a squishy to 1HP. We carefully tried to Coordinate door busting, but missed that badge, not sure why. We also tried avoiding the green spots, but someone got caught a green spot during a time stop, which messed that up. So we missed those badges, but did get the Antiantimatter badge; I also got an uncommon reward.
Police Woman went on to do another 3d red respec (for the Assistant badge credit) on a 6 player team, finishing in 11m 24s.
San Min (51 MA/will scrapper) solo'd an AE arc called An Uncivil War: Preclude, where you're trying to stop a villain who gets ahold of nuclear devices from Warburg. This arc got off to a good start with some decent drama, but the final mission felt too tedious to me and left some loose ends. I ended up giving it 4 stars.
Fri 7/15
Mega (52 SS/will brute) solo'd an AE arc called Gladiators of Venus, where you're captured by aliens and have to fight in the gladiator pits. This had a great story and some terrific supporting characters, but was badly marred by one of the recurring villains who was described as an alien monster, but always spawned as a grey-con 5th Column robot. I really liked this story, but could not get over this stupid robot that kept spawning. I ended up giving the arc 4 stars.
Darla Doppler (50 kin/sonic defender) joined a 21 player BAF, getting an uncommon and to 82% Judgement. Went on to join the RWZ raid, which went very well; I got 707 vanguard merits and bought the storage sack. I also upgraded her Interface to a Reactive Partial Radial Conversion (25% chance of res debuff, 50% chance of fire dot).
I joined a Keyes trial team that didn't get enough people to start; after that broke up, Police Woman joined another 3rd villain respec, with a 5 player team, finishing in 10m 27s. This got her the Backup (10 assists) badge.
After that I switched back to Darla and led a 6 player speed Kahn TF (19m 51s), then an 8 player STF. Our fire tanker got END drained by Lord Recluse repeatedly, leading to some stray deaths, but we ended up beating him, finishing in 33m 31s. Finished by leading an 8 player Lambda trial; we observed that with only 8 players there was no incarnate exp bug (it was almost certainly related to having multiple teams). Got a common reward and up to 52% Destiny.
Sat 7/16
Police Woman solo'd an Ouroboros flashback of the Clockwork Captive arc at +1 difficulty; this took 53m 36s and awarded 13 merits.
I re-started Tehuantl (a catgirl based on Meso-American jaguar mythology) as a blood widow; I was torn on what AT to make her, but a claws-using VEAT narrowly beat a claws brute mostly because I like the VEAT teamwork abilities. Solo'd the starting VEAT mission and Kalinda's arc to get to level 4, then solo'd SaveJenna Claure, a 1 mission AE arc where you rescue a kidnapped person. There was really not much story to this arc; I gave it 2 stars and some hopefully constructive feedback.
Sakura (30 plant/storm controller) finished a very grey Stephanie Peebles arc; I got 15 merits but did not get the Wedding Band temp power.
Police Woman (53 AR/dev blaster) joined a 13 player Keyes badge attempt. In the final fight we were trying to avoid the green spots, but this cut our DPS a lot, and lots of people got disintegrated and died (which heals the AV). We ended up running out of time, failing the trial. We did a second Keyes attempt with 13 players, where we managed to get Bunker Buster but missed the green stuff badge; I got a common reward. A third Keyes attempt with 12 players finally netted us the Avoids the Green Stuff badge; I also got a rare reward. My general strategy on the green stuff was to stay away from other players (since green stuff is centered on a player), watching for the Obliteration message, and being ready to move, while laying down range damage. Pretty basic stuff, but it took some practice to get it down.
Mega (52 SS/will brute) helped duo Mender Ramiel's arc to help a corruptor friend unlock his Alpha slot.
San Min (51 MA/will scrapper) did a 7 player ITF in 23m 34s, getting an Ancient nictus fragment.
Darla Doppler (50 kin/sonic defender) formed and led an 8 player Lambda. I felt bad for an inexperienced blaster who had joined us, who died repeatedly; I tried to assign her to stay with a thermal, but this didn't work well as they got separated too easily. Finished successfully though and got an uncommon and to 85% Destiny exp. Afterwards, I recruited a few more and started a 12 player BAF trial. We had a lot of new players who weren't that familiar with the trial, but made it to the 2 AV stage where we wiped out to Siege/Nightstar combined. People running back from the hospital got mauled by the waves of adds that were piling up, and eventually both AVs ran back to their spawn point. I called for people to pull the AVs back to the tennis courts, but this proved futile as the large number of adds kept murdering the pullers. We finally assaulted Siege at his spawn point to try and clear some adds, then I tried to get people to pull the AVs back to the tennis courts to fight them both, but only Nightstar made it there. We ended up running out of time. In hindsight, it felt like we went into a downward spiral from the first wipeout; we probably needed more debuff and/or more AoE to keep the number of adds down. We failed the trial, but Darla still got to 94% Judgement exp.
Sun 7/17
Police Woman joined a 4-player team that was repeatedly doing the 3rd villain respec for Assistant badge credit; we did one run in 14m 15s, then another run in 15m 44s.
Tehuantl (4 widow) solo'd City of Ho Ho Ho, an AE arc that was basically just a team-up with the author's avatar. I gave it 3 stars. This got Tehuantl to level 5.
Tour de Force (38 FF/nrg defender) joined a RWZ raid. Playing a FF defender felt pretty nice on this; with my bubbles becoming AoE buffs, I could now soft cap everyone. Tour got to level 39, got 484 vanguard merits and a tasty Numina's Convalescence (+regen/+rec) recipe drop.
Darla Doppler (50 kin/sonic defender) did a speed ITF in 22m 32s, taking an ancient nictus fragment as reward.
Dusted off Teal Serpent (50 archery/traps corruptor) for a speedy RSF. Coincidentally, we had 3 traps characters on the team, so we all had capped defense from the FF Generators and pretty solid debuff. I helped set the various bombs in the towers on the first mission, which was a little scary. Finished in 26m 5s and took an Essence of Incarnate.
Mon 7/18
Millie Volt (51 elec/elec brute) joined an 8 pl Lambda. We were light on debuff (only a kin and a stormy who had trouble staying alive), and ended up running out of paci grenades while fighting Marauder; ended up having to smash about 3 more weapon crates in the courtyard, but we won. I got a rare reward and unlocked the Destiny slot. I converted 15 astrals to make a Barrier Core Invocation, before realizing that wsan't what I wanted at all. Ended up converting another 10 astrals and 5 empyreans to make a Barrier Partial Invocation (DEF/RES/Ally rez/incarnate shift); I figure I'll save the other Barrier for later, if and when I can upgrade to the T4 Barrier. Elec armor can be a little squishy, so I chose Barrier for use as a panic button.
A traps corr friend asked to team, so I helped him with 3 rogue tips. I got to use the Barrier rez. We also did his rogue morality mission, where his traps helped a lot against the waves of ambushes.
Tue 7/19
I hit the unclaimed ticket cap and claimed another 1000 tickets.
San Min (51 MA/will scrapper) did a speed ITF in 25m 17s, getting a notice and an ancient nictus fragment. At the end of the mission we somehow killed Romulus and his last Nictus at the same time, causing the mission to complete, but then Romulus suddenly rez'd. So Romulus was alive after the mission was over, which was quite weird. We killed him again, just because.
Kyrie Eleison (36 fire/fire brute) joined a clear most ITF. We only had a kin for support, and I was pretty squishy whenever I got ahead of the 50 brute who was really tanking. Finished in 43m 4s and got to level 39.
Schadenfreude (51 AR/pain corr) joined a 13 player Lambda, getting an uncommon and to 12% Destiny.
Wed 7/20
April Fool (51 thug/TA MM) joined a 23 player BAF. Despite a pretty bad team mix (6 tankers, 4 MMs, and some other stuff) we succeeded with no prisoners escaping, getting April a rare reward and up to 55% Lore exp. Incarnate exp was noticably better due to a patch that fixed the bug with how it was being shared on leagues.
Schadenfreude joined a 14 player Keyes trial that was going for badges. It was an open league and we picked up a 15th person on entering the zone, but the league pretty ruthlessly kicked him, fearing that he would screw up the badges. (I actually voted against kicking him, but was clearly outvoted.) We got the Bunker Buster badge, but people were very bad at avoiding the green spots, so we missed getting that. This was the first league I've been on that had two "healers" (me and an empath); we tried keeping people from being disintegrated but with only limited success. The hardest part for me is figuring out who is actually being disintegrated in time to heal them. Finished successfully and I got an uncommon at up to 66% Judgement and 22% Destiny (a net gain of 15% and 10%, respectively).
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
Thu 7/21/2011
Darla Doppler (50 kin/sonic def) joined a 24 player BAF; suffered from sloppy pulling of AVs and people careless about rings, with about six different people getting sequestered. We missed the timing on killing Siege and Nightstar and both revived and had to be killed again. All this extra killing did unlock my Judgement slot and got me 24% Lore exp, plus a common reward. I crafted an Ion Core Judgement. Followed that with a 16 player lambda, got an uncommon reward and Destiny unlocked.
Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) joined a 14 player Lambda, got an uncommon and Destiny unlocked. I crafted a Rebirth Partial Radial Invocation (heal/regen/incarnate shift).
Police Woman (53 AR/dev blaster) joined a speed ITF, finished in 19m 42s and got a notice and 52 merits.
Spy Girl (47 MA/ninj stalker) played Facing the Darkness, a decent AE arc about the influence of the Nictus in ancient Cimerora. I gave it 4 stars.
Fri 7/22
San Min (51 MA/will scrapper) joined a 13 player Lambda, got a rare and to 73% Interface; then a 16 player BAF. This trial used the "choke points" strategy (covering the north and south walkways) which seemed a decent strategy but we still had 2 runners get away. We also had a lot of sequestration; I even got sequestered once. Got an uncommon and to 48% Judgement.
April Fool (51 thug/TA MM) joined a pickup 23 player BAF using the LFG queue; I had noticed two competing ones forming and figured I would join whichever started first. This ended up making me the league leader upon entering and I had to transfer the star. No escapees, but it was very laggy. Got a common and to 73% Lore exp.
Schadenfreude (51 AR/pain corr) did an 8 player Lambda; I was a little worried we didn't have enough debuff (had only me, a FF, and a couple VEATs for support) but we easily outdamaged Marauder's regen. Got an uncommon and to 61% Destiny.
Police Woman joined a 5 player 1st villain respec. The leader was level 29 and we had a tough time fighting level 33ish COT in Nerva, but we found the CoT in Cap au Diable also counted for the hunt mission. One person disconnected repeatedly due to a bad wireless connection and ended up quitting. We were worried the door mission might be level 33, but it actually scaled down to level 29, so was no problem. We cleared the first door mission and stealthed to the tree on the last one; cleared CoT and vines both, finishing in 40m 1s. This got me the Thorn Robber and Questing (for having 1000 badges) badges.
Sat 7/23
I hit the inf cap while marketeering again and mailed myself another 900M. I now have a little over 8 billion influence floating in my mailbox and am having to gradually claim the older emails to prevent them from expiring. I'm not quite sure what to spend all this influence on; IO money for future alts, I suppose.
Tehuantl (6 widow) solo'd Tutorial Arc 3: Dark Harvest; this was a well-written AE arc about a Council plot against the Kheldians. It was moderately hard at level 6, but got me to level 7. I gave it 5 stars.
Police Woman did a clear most ITF on +2 difficulty; we had a weird team mix with 3 tankers, 1 blaster, and our only support toon was a stormy. We had a rough fight against Romulus but managed to prevail, finished in 53m 49s and took the 26 merits.
Tour de Force (39 ff/nrg def) joined a clear most ITF. We had kinda low DPS (which sadly FF does not help with) and took 1h 1m to finish; this got Tour to level 41.
Sun 7/24
Police Woman joined a speed ITF; one player was AFK for the first mission, then had to quit due to girlfriend aggro, but the rest of us finished in 19m 16s.
Darla Doppler (50 kin/sonic def) joined a clear most ITF. I got an Unbreakable Constraint (HOLD) recipe drop; someone else got an Armageddon recipe, and everyone congratulated the lucky people who got purple recipes. This made another player mention they got an Armageddon last week; I informed him that a week ago was beyond the statuatory limit for gratsing. Finished in 1h 3m and got an Ancient Nictus Fragment, a notice of the well and 3 shards. I crafted a Cardiac Total Radial Revamp (END/RES/RANGE/SLEEP/level shift) which puts Darla's smash/lethal resist to the 75% cap, and her energy resist to 37%. I really rather like the idea of hitting the resist cap on squishies, which has made defenders a lot more attractive to me (since they have the best multipliers on resist powers).
Police Woman exemped to a 5 player team doing level 17 missions in Praetoria. We had a partial team wipe against Praetorian clockwork, but otherwise did quite well; we beat the timed 2 minute Kill 80 clockwork mission with sheer DPS, which I don't think I've managed to do before. The team leveled up to 19 in the process, while I picked up the Marked for death (kill Syndicate) and No Authority (kill Praetorian PD) badges. A bit later I wandered around collecting all the explore badges in Neutropolis.
Blond Justice (52 sword/shield scrapper) crafted a Radial Rebirth Epiphany (Heal/Regen/Incarnate Shift/120 second duration), then joined a 24 player BAF, picking up a rare salvage and getting to 68% Lore exp.
Schadenfreude (51 AR/pain corr) joined a 17 player Keyes via LFG tool; I knew one was forming at the time so queued up just as they were starting. They had two pre-made 8 player teams, and did not mind my joining, but I ended up being solo for the whole trial. I made a conscious decision to completely ignore gathering temp powers and focused only on healing people; it felt like this was helpful. I got a common reward and to 85% Judgement, 74% Destiny.
After that Schadenfreude joined a 7 player ITF. On this team was another AR/pain corruptor, the only other one I've ever seen. Cleared most and finished in 48m 50s, picking up an Ancient Nictus Fragment, a Notice and 4 shards.
Tour de Force (41 FF/nrg def) joined the Sunday RWZ raid, picking up 461 vanguard merits.
Yuki-Onna (51 ice/cold corr) joined a MoITF attempt, but the leader had miscounted and invited 10 people, so I and another player volunteered to drop out. I ended up joining a normal ITF, finishing in 51m 48s and getting an ancient nictus fragment, a notice and 5 shards.
I hit the unclaimed ticket cap at AE and claimed 1000.
Mega (52 SS/will brute) joined a 15 player baf. We had only 1 rad for support on the whole league, and it was a struggle to bring down the AVs. Due to the lack of support, I got a lot of use from the Barrier destiny power and Strength of Will (the willpower tier 9 power). It took awhile but we eventually won; I got an uncommon and to 44% Lore exp.
Mon 7/25
Sarcasm Lass (38 sonic/mm blaster) joined a Manticore TF. One blaster dc'd early on and we slowed the pace hoping she would return, but never did. Finished in 1h 5m and reached level 39.
Police Woman joined a speed ITF that finished in a blazing fast 15m 47s. The things I noticed we did that were unusual were: me and a brute were assigned to clear the last sibyl room in the first mission while the rest of the team got the earlier sibyls; and in mission 3, the two of us were assigned to attack the second general while the rest of the team attacked the first general.
Yuki-onna (51 ice/cold corr) joined an RSF with a very strong team, finished in 24m 25s, the fastest I've ever done; I think incarnate powers and good debuff both helped here. I took the essence of incarnate.
Wed 7/27
Spy girl (47 MA/ninj stalker) joined an RSF; the team was already mostly formed, with all the basics covered, when I joined, so no one seemed to mind a stalker tagging along. Finished in 29m 37s and got a Lysosome SHO and the RSF badges.
Police Woman joined a Tin Mage TF; we tried for the Midnight Dodger badge. We missed clicking all the glowies within the time limit, then rushed Director 11, but took way too long to kill him (we had very little debuff) and so didn't get the badge credit. We did get Kitty Got Claws for the team. (I actually already had both badges, but didn't mind trying for them for others.) Finished in 21m 48s. It apparently had been awhile since I had done a Tin Mage TF, since I've never seen 10 threads as an option on the reward screen for Tin Mage; 10 threads sounded good to me, so I took them. I also got a Notice and 80 merits from it being the WST.
We tried another Tin Mage TF and Midnight Dodger attempt; I switched to Yuki-onna (51 ice/cold corr) for buffs and debuffs, but we missed getting the badge again. Finished in 21m 5s, and again I got 10 threads, a notice and 80 merits
We did a third Tin Mage/Midnight Dodger attempt; I switched to Rain Dancer (52 storm/archery def). This time we had no tanker or brute, but lots of debuff. Unfortunately our lack of taunt caused Director 11 to run all over his stupid warehouse, so we still didn't get the badge. Finished in 24m 32s.
Rain Dancer went on to join a 20 player BAF, getting a very rare and to 72% Lore. I used this to upgrade her to a Rebirth Radial Epiphany (the tier 4 heal/regen/incarnate shift Destiny).
Thu 7/28
Schadenfreude (51 AR/pain corr) joined an Apex TF. We had kind of a bad team mix, with 3 VEATs, 2 scrappers, a blaster, a dominator and me. We had no one who could taunt, and no support except for me and the VEATs, resulting in lots of death throughout the TF. We were particularly confused in the sewers, where the leader told us to go after the pylon but most of the team stopped to kill hydra; and also had a lot of deaths due to people standing in blue stuff for too long. Despite these hijinks we still were able to finish in 41m 28s; I took the 10 threads.
Kyrie Eleison (39 fire/fire brute) did a clear most ITF in 34m 25s, which got her to level 40. I crafted and slotted 3 sets of 4 Reactive Armor for a total of 3.75% smash/lethal/energy/negative defense; this is still a pretty tiny amount of defense (fire aura starts with none to build on) but I figure it will add up eventually.
Yuki-Onna (51 ice/cold corr) joined an insane speed ITF. We only had 6 players but somehow finished in 13m 19s. This was a recordbreaking time for us, by a lot. Our team mix was 2 brutes, a blaster, 2 cold corrs and 1 kin corr. Our theory was that we had great buffs/debuffs and the 6-player team meant fewer bosses spawned.
Fri 7/29
Schadenfreude (51 AR/pain corr) joined a 16 player Lambda, getting an uncommon and Destiny unlocked; then a 16 player BAF, getting an uncommon, Judgement unlocked, and 12% into Lore. I crafted a Barrier Partial Radial Invocation (def/res/1 Rez/incarnate shift) and a Pyronic Total Radial Judgement (wide fire nuke with a chance of stun).
Police Woman joined a Master of Barracuda SF attempt. We had a 5 player team: a traps, a rad, 2 blasters and a VEAT. In the final mission we cleared 5th Column ambushes for 20 solid minutes before confronting Reichsman. We had no tank and no method to prevent Reichsman from going unstoppable, so we sawed away at his HP and used incarnate pets and regen debuffs whenever possible. This took a really long time, but we finally beat him with no deaths in 2h 4m, getting the Master of Barracuda badge and 30 merits.
Sat 7/30
I noticed Darla Doppler (51 kin/son defender) had not gotten around to making a Destiny, so I crafted a Barrier Radial Invocation (defense/resist/1 rez), figuring those were all things kins can't normally get.
Spent some time chasing explore and history badges on Mystery Girl (52 emp/pistols defender), which got her the Portal Jockey accolade.
Marcia Law (30 pistols/kin corr) joined a Positron 2 TF. We had a full team, but one player left due to his wife having a baby, which seemed like a pretty good reason to log off to me. I got called on ripping off Judge Dredd's "I am the law!" battle cry; I need to think of a better one. We had a good team mix, and I noticed the 7 of us left were seven different ATs (a mix of hero and villain ATs), and we pretty much steamrollered over all opposition. Finished in 56m 30s and got Marcia to level 31.
I hit the unclaimed ticket cap at AE and claimed 1000 tickets.
I dug Fire Maiden (51 SS/fire brute) out of mothballs after 75 days idle; I had forgotten how fun she was. I started to form a Lambda trial, but another person was forming one at the same time, so I merged my league with his and we did two Lambda trials. I got a rare and a very rare, unlocked Interface and got 18% into Destiny. I crafted a Reactive Total radial Conversion (75% chance of fire DOT). I inherited the league star at this point and started running BAF trials. I tried using a new strategy to speed up the BAF trials: instantly queueing for BAF again as soon as everyone exited the previous BAF, and telling anyone who wanted to join to solo-queue for BAF. I feel like this really worked well; normal BAF leagues seem to take 10 to 20 minutes between runs, but using this technique, we only spent about 2 to 4 minutes in RWZ before starting the next run. It was probably a little frustrating for people who wanted to switch toons between runs (though it was still possible to do this, if you were quick) but it felt like a huge speed improvement. Using this technique I was able to run 7 BAF trials in a row, getting 4 commons and 3 uncommons and unlocking both Judgement and Lore. 4 players on the league said they liked the instant queue method and felt it was much faster. I crafted a Cimeroran Total Core Improved Ally (Cimeroran boss, centurion and incarnate shift) and a Pyronic Radial Judgement (wide area fire nuke).
Fire Maiden went on to do a speed ITF; we had a very high damage team with good debuff, finishing in 14m 24. I took the ancient nictus fragment.
Sun 7/31
Fire Maiden (52 SS/fire brute) bought an Apocalypse (DMG/END) for 555M, completing her set of 6 in Fire Blast. This adds 5% Psi defense, but more importantly reduces the END cost of the attack. Looking at her current build, in hindsight I realized that slotting a Numina's Convalescence (+regen/+rec) unique in her self rez was nearly useless; will have to fix that in a future respec someday. I solo'd 2 hero tips and a morality mission for a hero merit.
Yuki-Onna (51 ice/cold corr) joined a 16 player Lambda, getting an uncommon reward and 43% Interface exp. After that I joined a Tin Mage; there were no other support toons but me, and we had issues with heals. I had offered to switch to a kin but the leader preferred a cold; no one else was willing to switch despite the team having 2 tankers, a stalker and 2 scrappers. We had a messy fight against the AVs in the final fight, with several people having to hospital, then zerg rush back in. Nevertheless we won, finishing in 26m 29s. I got 10 threads, 40 merits and the Accomplice badge.
Ice Kate (26 cold/ice def) joined an 8 player Citadel, finishing in 1h 7m and getting to level 27.
Blond Justice (52 sword/shield scrapper) did 2 BAF trials. Our tanks were kinda slow so I tried pulling the AVs, successfully pulling Nightstar but getting clobbered by Siege. I got a common and a rare and unlocked Lore.
Yuki-Onna did two Lambda trials, getting 2 uncommons, Interface unlocked and 24% Destiny.
April Fool (51 thug/TA MM) joined a 22 player BAF. The leader didn't give much direction and a lot of people got sequestered; I got a rare and 98% Lore. I used 1 thread for exp to unlock Lore, then crafted a Carnival Partial Core Improved Ally (dark ring mistress/seneschal/incarnate shift)
Yuki-Onna joined the RWZ raid, which was "robot themed", but sadly I had no robots to summon. Another player complimented me on her background story, which was nice. We had so many buffs that I was at the hard cap for defense and resist, but it was also horrendously laggy, making it hard to fight. I did pick up 460 vanguard merits though.
The Sisterhood SG ran my Two Tickets to Westerly AE arc as their Sunday event, which was really nice, and I got some positive feedback from them.
Tehuantl (8 widow) solo'd Mr. Bocor's story arc in Port Oakes for 1 merit, getting to level 9.
Fire Maiden joined a 16 player Lambda, getting a very rare and to 76% Destiny.
Police Woman joined a Tin Mage TF. Our brute seemed pretty shy about tanking, then died, so we had a lot of death against Director 11 before beating him. In the final mission our stalker team TP'd us right on top of Neuron and Bobcat, which caused all squishies on the team to die instantly; I hospital'd but managed to die twice to War Walker aggro. Despite this we managed to finish the TF in 22m 10s; I took the 10 threads.
Mon 8/1
Star Amethyst (52 dark/ice defender) joined a 20 player BAF, getting an uncommon and 45% Lore. I switched to Mega for another BAF; I pulled all the AVs and got complimented for good pulling, which was nice. I got an uncommon and 65% lore. At that point I inherited the star for the league and ran 3 more BAF trials using my new instant-queue technique for fast turnaround; at one point people were complaining their lore pets were not up from the previous run. I didn't time the runs but that must mean they were taking less than 15 minutes. I got 2 uncommons and a very rare, unlocked Lore, and crafted a Carnival Total Core Improved Ally (dark ring mistress/strongman/incarnate shift).
Yuki-Onna (51 ice/cold corr) joined a 16 player Lambda, getting an uncommon and to 53% Destiny.
Police Woman hit the inf cap at Wentworth's and I mailed myself another 900M.
Tue 8/2
Star Amethyst (52 dark/ice def) joined a 24 player BAF; I disconnected at the start of the prisoner phase, but was able to log back in and rejoin before prisoner phase ended. I got an uncommon and to 65% Lore.
Spy Girl (47 MA/ninj stalker) joined a speed STF. I sorta got a pity spot, I had asked the leader what he needed for the STF and he asked me what toons I had that needed the badge, then said to bring the stalker since it was unlikely I would get her onto any other STF. Nevertheless I felt like I was helping; AoE damage isn't too important for STF, since mainly you just need to kill the AVs (possibly this is just wishful thinking, though). I had to detour a bit due to Spy Girl's rogue alignment, but I knew the shortcuts between IP and IP, so didn't let this slow the team down. Finished in 25m 53s and got to level 48.
Somehow I got nominated to lead incarnate trials after that, so I switched to Yuki-Onna (51 ice/cold corr) and led 2 Lambdas and 4 BAFs, getting 4 commons and 2 uncommons, unlocking Destiny and Judgement and getting 5% into Lore. I used the instant-queue method for quick turnaround on trials. On one BAF I asked people to try the "choke point" method, just as a comparison test. I assigned 1 team to guard the north walkway and 2 teams to guard the south walkway; it seemed like the north side had an easy time, while the south side had a lot of guys leak through. The general consensus was that guarding doors was better, so I went back to that. After the trials I crafted a Cryonic Core Judgement, mainly for thematic reasons (since Yuki-Onna is a snow spirit); for the same reason I can't easily justify crafting Reactive for Yuki-Onna since it's got a fire DoT. I wasn't sure which Destiny I wanted, but finally settled on Barrier Radial Invocation, mostly for the ability to rez teammates.
I hit the unclaimed ticket cap at AE and claimed antoher 1000 tickets.
Wed 8/3
Star Amethyst (52 dark/ice def) joined a 24 player BAF, got a rare and to 92% Lore.
Rain Dancer (52 storm/archery def) joined a 24 player BAF, got a rare and to 94% Lore.
Police Woman (53 AR/dev blaster) joined a 1st villain respec, finishing in 9m 24s and getting a notice and 28 merits.
Fire Maiden (52 SS/fire brute) joined an STF. As a fire brute, I had originally figured I was DPS, but we had no tank and I was the only brute, so I ended up being "tank". We rushed the 4 patron AVs, which I survived through heavy inspiration use, then I used fly/taunt to tank Lord Recluse while the team killed towers. The leader wanted us to kill only the yellow and green towers, leaving the red and blue towers up. I landed after the green tower went down and got instantly killed by the angry Lord Recluse, but I hit my self-rez and was able to tank him for the rest of the fight (I think debuffs got locked onto him after that, making it easier to survive his damage). Finished in 28m 20s; I took the Essence of Incarnate.
@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"
I'm having similar issues with my arch/TA corrupter on triumph. Judgement slot may remain open for now as Athelfleda is just an archer, an exceptional archer, but still its all in the arrows. MOAR CHOICES for the rest of us.