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The best part? Doing it with someone the first time, and after fighting up the Valley of Lag, you come through the small pass and their jaw just drops. "GIANT ROBOT? COUNCIL? WHAT THE BUDDHA?"
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Honestly there's no situation you face as a villain that isn't made better by adding a giant robot.
Freedom: Blazing Larb, Fiery Fulcrum, Sardan Reborn, Arctic-Frenzy, Wasabi Sam, Mr Smashtastic.
my complaints about the ITF are:
1) the cave mission with the crystals is very repetitive. I'd like the cave to have more variety. The other maps have giant robots and such. This map is just boring
2) the big outdoor missions have a lot of objectives but they don't chain - they just are there (as far as I know). You have to fight the generals but just because. There is no story to it - just a bunch of guys standing around to fight.
That said, it is a fun TF - one of the best. The big outdoor maps are my favorite part. It feels epic
Yeah, the crystal map is the stinkiest. Although it's fun when I peel off and go down a hallway bursting the cysts solo. Kheldians infused me with a strong hatred for cysts.
/signed and thumbs up for all the reasons Sardan stated.
It really is the best TF, for me anyway, with LGTF running a pretty close 2nd place.
Plus, remember the first time you saw the giant robots in the ITF and went o.o?
And then the same thing when you fought Nictus Rommy for the first time?
Yeah, the Kahn TF has nothing like that. Nothing.
I'm not the droid I'm looking for.
MA Arc ID 8121: Rapp'Mas'Ta's War. The Rikti are trying to incorporate sonic effects into their weapons? THAT can't be good. Maybe we should ask them to stop.
There's underlying reasons as to why Cimerorans can go toe-to-toe with modern soldiers and heroes- according to the fluff (whether you like it or not), Cimerora is the source of all the power that became modern superheroes.
Basically, it's magic.
[ QUOTE ]
There's underlying reasons as to why Cimerorans can go toe-to-toe with modern soldiers and heroes- according to the fluff (whether you like it or not), Cimerora is the source of all the power that became modern superheroes.
Basically, it's magic.
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Um, no.
As a cannon junkie, that's just plain incorrect.
Cimerora, as far as we've been told in the game's storyline, has nothing to do with the Box and Fountain on Praxidae, which is where moden super powers come from, immediately speaking.
SPOILERS
If it was, the 5th wouldn't have needed States and Recluse to power their big gold robots.
The devs have made no claims the Cimerorans are anything more than well trained warriors who keep exotic "pets" like Minotaurs and have little healing parlor tricks.
It's suggested, but never expanded upon, that being near the Nictus crystals in the caves make them feel more powerful. Even if it was intended the crystals had some kind of lasting effect and made them tougher, that only explains why my Inv/SS doesn't turn them into a fine red mist with the flick of an index finger. It doesn't dismiss or excuse their crappy iron age wepons from being able to scratch him. And they are specifically stated in game as being "mundane weapons", not special alien weapons, or made by the 5th or any other BS.
END SPOILERS
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General reply:
The ITF is certainly more bearable than the Reischmann one, among others. It has its downsides though. The second mission with the Cysts is one of my least favorite missions in all of CoX. That mission bores the crap out of me every time.
I was on a team once that stealth-ran that mission. I have no idea how they did it; the two Tanks told the rest of us to wait at the door and two minutes later, BAM mission complete. It was wonderful.
I'm guessing Invis and teleport had something to do with that 
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Wow. You just encapsulated all of the reasons why the ITF is my least favorite task/strike force. (Although that being said, I haven't tried the Shard ones.)
1) Wide Range: Which means that just like regular missions and just like saucer raids, you get level 35s who feel entitled to have half the team be level 50s, because they feel entitled to be sidekicked. So recruiting for one, once you get the four level 35-45s, grinds to halt as you try to recruit more 50s.
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Then start your own and don't invite anyone under 45. Or, if you have so many 35s wanting to join, run the thing at 35 and exemp everyone else.
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2) Unique Enemies: Yes, but stupid ones. By level 35, I've gone toe to toe with demons, monsters, and renegade gods capable of threatening all life on earth with a stray thought. Now, I face the ultimate enemy: a primitive barbarian in scraps of leather, with a chunk of metal in each hand. The idea that Cimeroran Traitors are a level 35-50 villain group annoys the heck out of me. Sure, go ahead, invoke the supposed magic that they're using, that isn't referred to anywhere in-game. Go ahead, somehow convince me that Roman legionnaires were all trained to Batman-like levels of physical prowess. Uh, no.
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Just like Malta, Knives of Artemis, Bane Spiders, Nemesis soldiers, Chimera's ninjas, Battlemaiden's goons...shall I go on? End-game enemies with no powers aren't unique to the ITF.
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4) Few Mezzers: But tons of mobs with AoE heals, and every lieutenant or above is immune to mez. Combine this with ...
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Uh, get somebody to pay attention? The Surgeons can be killed in two seconds by a blaster who is paying attention. Furthermore they're not immune to mez, I've held the Cimeroran bosses when they were alone, easily. They are only immune to standard herd-and-control tactics.
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5) Melee Centric: Did you know that Arachnos Soldiers are weak to melee? Cimerorans tear my Bane Spider character up, even on lowest difficulty settings. The stacking -def(all) from all those spammed Broadsword attacks makes Cimeroran Traitors just about the only enemies that threaten my bots/FF mastermind, too. Let me guess: you're a tank with a resistance-based primary?
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So...not only are they strong against fire/kins and fire/psis, they are also strong against otherwise unkillable masterminds and VEATs...come to think of it, I've seen quite a few "farm build" brutes and scrappers dropping dead on the walls of Cimerora. Good job devs.
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6) Enemies that are "just right"? Are you including that one spawn of 8 overlapping elite bosses?
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A spawn that doesn't drop dead in three seconds, but doesn't include an AV with a bazillion hit points that two-shots your tank and needs 3 rads to take down? Yep, that spawn is just right.
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7) Co-Op: Is over-done. Holiday co-op missions were an interesting change of pace. The RWZ was an interesting idea that has gone on too long, and officially exhausted all of my interest in co-op content. The ITF is, in my opinion, already over the line, and all the more so because in this game, "co-op" seems to always mean "villains get to be heroes."
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Heroes outnumber villains. The ITF gives villains the opportunity to run a TF without setting it up a week in advance. Although it would be nice to have co-op content where everyone gets to be morally grey...and villains profit.
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Or that cave where every 3rd spawn is a team-wiping Nictus crystal.
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You would think, that after the first time one of those things blew up in your face, people would learn to keep an eye on it and back off when its health gets low?
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9) Very Little Travel: We villains are spoiled; we take this for granted.
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Grant Naylor called, he wants tickets to the Johnny Sonata concert.
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And much rather run the LGTF, which has much more interesting enemies than either of the above and uses a much more interesting variety of combat tactics, like the cumulative Four Horsemen fight and the mini-Hamidon raid.
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You want to talk team wipes, how about that final Horsemen fight huh? Everyone is feared, no one has end, and everyone's recharge is floored. Or how about that mini-Hamidon raid, which I'm convinced was only thrown in to show off the new Hamidon, and gives you an obnoxiously flashy temp power. And let's not forget the fun of waiting around for Infernia to shut up and then searching that obnoxious map for hostages. Oh yeah, and the Honoree...an archvillain who has never been mentioned before (comics don't count), is barely mentioned on the TF, is never mentioned again, and requires a temp power to defeat.
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
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I was on a team once that stealth-ran that mission. I have no idea how they did it; the two Tanks told the rest of us to wait at the door and two minutes later, BAM mission complete. It was wonderful.
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Depending on build, many Tankers and Scrappers can just pound the crystals, ignore the squids and lobsters and move on before the ambush catches up. Leapfrogging with two, the mission can potentially be completed in the time it takes a Tanker to defeat 5 cysts.
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Just like Malta, Knives of Artemis, Bane Spiders, Nemesis soldiers, Chimera's ninjas, Battlemaiden's goons...shall I go on? End-game enemies with no powers aren't unique to the ITF.
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Malta has tech, they just don't look like it. Post 45 they should be mostly Titans and powered armoured troops, not blue cowboys.
The Knives have tech too. They should really be sporting energy blades/bolts and have some high tech equivalent to caltrops.
Nemesis has tech. It just looks like it's old fashioned. He should be using more Automatons and less foot soldiers post 45.
Chimera and his ninjas are garbage IMO and don't belong post 40. Same goes for Battlemaiden's warriors.
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Just like Malta, Knives of Artemis, Bane Spiders, Nemesis soldiers, Chimera's ninjas, Battlemaiden's goons...shall I go on? End-game enemies with no powers aren't unique to the ITF.
[/ QUOTE ]
Malta has tech, they just don't look like it. Post 45 they should be mostly Titans and powered armoured troops, not blue cowboys.
The Knives have tech too. They should really be sporting energy blades/bolts and have some high tech equivalent to caltrops.
Nemesis has tech. It just looks like it's old fashioned. He should be using more Automatons and less foot soldiers post 45.
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Regardless of what they "should" be using, Malta and the Knives of Artemis use highly-trained operatives with mostly the same "tech" my blaster had at level 4. Malta have a few extra gadgets specifically designed to neutralize heroes, and big robots 'cause they're cool. Knives have...mad ninja-chick skills and fancy goggles.
And how do you know the Nemesis foot soldiers aren't more advanced automatons, and he just wants you to think they're not as part of some plot? Huh? Huh?
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
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Great points made. I agree - This is my favorite TF, second being LGTF and third STF.
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Same.
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For me, currently the ITF is the pinnacle of TFs in the same way the Faultline arcs hold the title of best zone content for story and gameplay in the game.
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Agreed as to both. Can you imagine how often Posi would be run if it were shortened to 4 well designed missions? 
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I think if it got an overhaul it would get a lot more play.
However, I'd rather see work put in to the STF, LGTF and the i15TF. I work hard on my characters, and I like to play them at their prime at level 50, and have teammates at their prime, not auto exempted down to level 10 or 20 when everyone is crap.
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[/ QUOTE ]I'd rather the work go into the Posi TF first, so new players don't join their first TF and say "What the [censored] is this [censored]? Screw TFs!"
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Sorry about bringing the discussion back to this, but I'm forced to agree. My first TF was a Posi TF, and after a while it got so tedious I simply dropped out and wondered why people love those damn TFs so much. Months later I ended up in an ITF, and now I'm hooked on them.
It makes sense that all the hugely epic stuff shows up as end-game content, but how'd you ever know that if your first time with TFs is utterly horrible? From the looks of it, only the Quarterfield TF manages to be more bland and tedious.
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I was on a team once that stealth-ran that mission. I have no idea how they did it; the two Tanks told the rest of us to wait at the door and two minutes later, BAM mission complete. It was wonderful.
I'm guessing Invis and teleport had something to do with that
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Tanker/Brute "stealth" technique: a slow jog, middle finger extended, toothy grin, followed by smashing crystals.
Mission Complete.
Villains: Annie Alias, Dr. Amperical, Shade Golem, Knight Marksman
Heroes: The Clockwork Mime, Soccerpunch, The Fissioneer, Samurai Houston, Oversteer
Join The X-Patriots on Virtue!
The ITF is my favorite TF in the game for a simple reason:
Miniobjectives. There are things that simply have to be done, X number of mobs that have to be defeated, bosses that have to be fought. You can't sit at the door and stealth your way past the entire damn thing, get the hostages killed, stealth/tp to the end and fight the AV... You actually have to fight.
I like to fight. Yes, the TF can be finished fast by a steamroller team, but there still has to be fighting. That's why I TF.
I like the Nictus cave. I don't like stealth or speeding it, I like to clear the entire thing. I would like, for once, to be on a team that clears every single map of this TF. I'm just funny that way.
I do agree that the idea of soldiers with swords being able to go toe to toe with level 50 heroes and villains is just ludicrous. The EB monsters at least make sense.
Together we entered a city of strangers, we made it a city of friends, and we leave it a City of Heroes. - Sweet_Sarah
BOYCOTT NCSoft (on Facebook)
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Governments have fallen to the power of social media. Gaming companies can too.
I like the ITF. I was on a six-man ITF team last night, and for once we ran it from front to back... just kill everything in front of us. I suspect this was less a conscious choice of style of game play and more the results of a tanker who had a hard time thinking any other way. This is because, when we reached Rommie the first time, we charged right in and took on two AVs at once (which only led to a few deaths and not a full team wipe). Then when we got to the final mission we just charged up lag hill as if there were no other way to do it, and when we got to the platform we didn't bother to clear anything, we just charged the main platform, rounded everyone up, and before it was even 100% clear went straight for Rommie.
After the first team wipe, we actually discussed strategy. (Let someone pull the healing nictus away). After the second team wipe, we actually decided to clear out the sides so we wouldn't have so many friends coming to help him. ^_^ Someone said "I don't think we have enough DPS to do this," and I had to roll my eyes, since we hadn't actually attempted much of a real game plan at that point. Anyway, we did manage to finish it off after all.
But despite that I actually enjoyed doing the mission in a straight-ahead bash & smash style for once.
my lil RWZ Challenge vid
This would be my my favorite TF if I didn't always end up on teams that fail it.
I understand that it doesn't seem to be a big deal to most people these days, but some how what ever PuG I end up on, We almost always fail. I have actually had teams that win far less than 50% of the time.
"Where does he get those wonderful toys?" - The Joker
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I like the ITF. I was on a six-man ITF team last night, and for once we ran it from front to back... just kill everything in front of us. I suspect this was less a conscious choice of style of game play and more the results of a tanker who had a hard time thinking any other way. This is because, when we reached Rommie the first time, we charged right in and took on two AVs at once (which only led to a few deaths and not a full team wipe). Then when we got to the final mission we just charged up lag hill as if there were no other way to do it, and when we got to the platform we didn't bother to clear anything, we just charged the main platform, rounded everyone up, and before it was even 100% clear went straight for Rommie.
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Except for that last part, that's the best way to run the TF in my opinion. I really dislike stealthing or porting past the opposition to the end. The huge battles are so much fun even in spite of the Valley of Lag.
Definitely need a plan with Rommie, however (unless you have two /kins and two brutes, then you can just mop the floor with his face)
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But despite that I actually enjoyed doing the mission in a straight-ahead bash & smash style for once.
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It's great, isn't it 
Quote:
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Originally Posted by eltonio
This is over the top mental slavery.
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[ QUOTE ]
I do agree that the idea of soldiers with swords being able to go toe to toe with level 50 heroes and villains is just ludicrous. The EB monsters at least make sense.
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This isn't new though. If you create a character who is human and natural origin... this is what you are. That's been with the game forever.
You ARE fighting through an awful lot of them, and I think that's the justification. They may be mundanes, but there's an army of them vs. your 6-8 supers.
Villains: Annie Alias, Dr. Amperical, Shade Golem, Knight Marksman
Heroes: The Clockwork Mime, Soccerpunch, The Fissioneer, Samurai Houston, Oversteer
Join The X-Patriots on Virtue!
[ QUOTE ]
This would be my my favorite TF if I didn't always end up on teams that fail it.
I understand that it doesn't seem to be a big deal to most people these days, but some how what ever PuG I end up on, We almost always fail. I have actually had teams that win far less than 50% of the time.
[/ QUOTE ]
You know, I've been on PUGs that had 50% level 50s, the rest lackied level 35s, with no regard for mix of ATs, and I have yet to fail it or even complete team wipe. I can only shudder at what the PUGs you must have been on were like!
Quote:
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Originally Posted by eltonio
This is over the top mental slavery.
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[ QUOTE ]
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4) Few Mezzers: But tons of mobs with AoE heals, and every lieutenant or above is immune to mez. Combine this with ...
[/ QUOTE ]
Uh, get somebody to pay attention? The Surgeons can be killed in two seconds by a blaster who is paying attention. Furthermore they're not immune to mez, I've held the Cimeroran bosses when they were alone, easily. They are only immune to standard herd-and-control tactics.
[/ QUOTE ]
Not to mention that, with an Illusion controller, every Immunes Surgeon in a spawn becomes another healer for your team. Watching four or five Surgeons standing around a Scrapper healing and CMing him while he tanks four Minotaurs and a general is worth the price of admission.
And if you don't have an Illusion controller, well, you fall back on the first rule of facing mixed spawns: The healers die first. They're physically weak and they don't have any attacks worth noting. Shoot for the green glow.
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5) Melee Centric: Did you know that Arachnos Soldiers are weak to melee? Cimerorans tear my Bane Spider character up, even on lowest difficulty settings. The stacking -def(all) from all those spammed Broadsword attacks makes Cimeroran Traitors just about the only enemies that threaten my bots/FF mastermind, too. Let me guess: you're a tank with a resistance-based primary?
[/ QUOTE ]
So...not only are they strong against fire/kins and fire/psis, they are also strong against otherwise unkillable masterminds and VEATs...come to think of it, I've seen quite a few "farm build" brutes and scrappers dropping dead on the walls of Cimerora. Good job devs.
[/ QUOTE ]
It's called 'tactics'. Your character is weak vs. melee? Then you want to keep your targets at range. Blasters have been learning how to do this since CoH was released. Having opponents that make you think about the way you fight, rather than just wading in and doing damage, is a refreshing change.
"But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed, analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses."
-- Bruce Leverett, Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers
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Honestly there's no situation you face as a villain that isn't made better by adding a giant robot.
[/ QUOTE ]
QFT
Quote:
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Originally Posted by eltonio
This is over the top mental slavery.
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[ QUOTE ]
5) Melee Centric: Did you know that Arachnos Soldiers are weak to melee? Cimerorans tear my Bane Spider character up, even on lowest difficulty settings. The stacking -def(all) from all those spammed Broadsword attacks makes Cimeroran Traitors just about the only enemies that threaten my bots/FF mastermind, too. Let me guess: you're a tank with a resistance-based primary?
[/ QUOTE ]
My bots/ff mastermind can steamroll Cimerorans on Ruthless.
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6) Enemies that are "just right"? Are you including that one spawn of 8 overlapping elite bosses? Or the long path going up the hill that tends to drop three spawns on you at a time
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Good times, good times.
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7) Co-Op: Is over-done.
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Yeeeeah... kinda with you there.
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Or that cave where every 3rd spawn is a team-wiping Nictus crystal.
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Tactics Tip: don't stand next to the crystal when it's almost destroyed. Move outside melee range and have the ranged characters finish it off. No one dies.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by eltonio
This is over the top mental slavery.
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My only complaint about the ITF is merit farmers who rush through it. But that's a small price to pay.
The best part? Doing it with someone the first time, and after fighting up the Valley of Lag, you come through the small pass and their jaw just drops. "GIANT ROBOT? COUNCIL? WHAT THE BUDDHA?"
--NT
They all laughed at me when I said I wanted to be a comedian.
But I showed them, and nobody's laughing at me now!
If I became a red name, I would be all "and what would you mere mortals like to entertain me with today, mu hu ha ha ha!" ~Arcanaville