Iron Eagles II - Defeat is Permanent SG J/H

Next meetup -- Thursday May 20th. 8PM Eastern Time until we get tired, might be all night.

Iron Eagles II - Hardcore SG

Introduction
The Iron Eagles can be understood as a "debt = delete supergroup" or "defeat is permanent supergroup". Heroes have one life to live in service of good. The Iron Eagles don't live for glory, honor, nor pride. Iron Eagles exist to serve the forces of good and to protect the common citizen. Paramount in service will be camaraderie to fellow Iron Eagles.

May your deeds be remembered!

Details

Iron Eagles II is a Justice Heroes supergroup. Following common naming convention of kings and other successors, we added a roman numeral to the end to denote this is the 2nd one. Iron Eagles II is not an RP supergroup though I don't think anyone would think less of you for RPing. Most of the players I know currently in the SG just hang out and shoot the bad guys. If you are interested in joining the Supergroup feel free to fire me a PM in game to @Smurphy - I'm on quite frequently often just to chat and accommodate such invites. Also we have a global channel you can join and ask around. You can join by typing...
/chanjoin "Iron Eagles"

The rules of the supergroup are simple:

Any defeat of any kind, for any reason at level 10 or higher requires removal of that character from the Supergroup. If you are on an Iron Eagle team consider your character defeated on the spot. Sadly, your character won't be able to press on and help with the rest of the mission. You are essentially "dead" to your fellow Iron Eagles. Wish your teammates the best with your last dying breath, remove yourself from the super group, and start a new Iron Eagles (or switch to another) and continue to battle the forces of evil. If you are on a non-Iron Eagles team play as normal: use an awaken/accept a rez/go to the hospital, finish the mission or TF. Do not mention to the team your SG requirements or mention your "death". At an appropriate point excuse yourself from the team and remove yourself from the SG.


Recommended:
1) Any defeat of any kind at any level for any reason count as defeat. Recommended only: If you are defeated at level 1 or accidentally press Self Destruct before level 10 you can get up and keep going.
2) Team with other Iron Eagles. Recommended only: Feel free to team with random players and solo but teaming with other Iron Eagles is highly encouraged.
3) Don't bring in boat loads of Inf and items. Recommended only: You can do such things but keep in mind that some players are specifically not looking to do so.

General Tips

Bad things are going to happen. You will lose a character. I like to keep a mindset where I consider all my characters already dead and I'm just out to have fun and blow up stuff. You will lose character to disconnects, errors you make, errors your teammates make, logging into a Rikti Invasion, Level 50 ambushers in Atlas Park, etc. etc. Stupid things happen.

Play in your comfort zone. Some players prefer more action and risk than others. I know, with certainty, that I will play more aggressively than some of you feel comfortable with. I understand some of you probably won't want to team with me regularly. The simplest way to handle this is encouraging teams to split: something we should be doing anway.

Smaller teams, especially at low levels and in general, are more easily able to survive than larger teams. Also, two smaller teams have more room for players to join in the fun than one larger team. Look to split the team into smaller groups whenever possible. Splitting up the team is arbitrary. Everyone should understand splitting generally good and generally arbitrary. If you want to split the team to avoid a player like me speak up and name some people. Similarly, if you are playing with a specific friend say something like "I'm with Chriffer".

A quick example is a team of 6 is rolling. I'm on the team, you are on the team, and there are 4 others: A-B-C-D. If you want to split up the team you should speak up. "How about we split up the team: Me, A and B form a team and Smurphy, C and D form another." Easy, fast, and simple. If you are "C" and friends with "B" speak up and go together. Iron Eagle players are generally more experienced and understanding than your average pugger (Pick up Grouper --> PuG --> pugger). We know we all want to survive and know the basics of the game and smaller is better. Together, only two spots (8 teamsize max, 6 people on the team) can join in the fun. The team's being split let's 5 + 5 = 10 more players join us when they log in. Also the team split let's you stay more safe and stick with the people who have your style.

In summation:
Have fun and blow up stuff.
Understand bad things will happen.
Split the team often to stay safe and stay comfortable.
Splitting the team is arbitrary, someone needs to speak up to do it, if you have any preference at all speak up.

Iron Eagles will be rolling Thursday, April 22, 8PM Eastern until we get tired.

Feel free to come out and have some fun. On Tuesday we ran until about 10:30. We may have a "late-shift" come out on Thursday who pick up around 11PM Eastern. Here are some reviews of our Tuesday night run:

Mysterious J

Quote:

That didn't go quite the way I expected. I rolled up my character and met Smurphy in J/H Atlas around 7:30 fully expecting to blow through two or three iterations during the evening. I even had a strategy all mapped out: the character's name is Duplicate Lass, and successive iterations would be Duplicate Lass II, Duplicate Lass III, and so on. I would work my way systematically through the ATs and power-sets, so Duplicate Lass is a Blaster: Arch/Dev, Duplicate Lass II is a Controller: Earth/Cold, Duplicate Lass III is a Defender: Cold/Archery, and so on. (Walking the AT tree breadth-first, so the first 60 characters wouldn't all be some variation on Blaster.) Except that by the time 10:30 rolled around and I needed to take a break, Duplicate Lass was level 10, and nobody at all had died on the team. The team grew from the two of us to 7 or 8 characters towards the end, and although we weren't playing particularly cautiously if there were any particularly close calls I missed them... and now I'm starting to get attached to the character. Like I said, not at all what I was expecting. Still, I expect next time out Duplicate Lass II will get her chance.

Bellerophon

Quote:

This was definitely a good time. I had a couple "close calls" but even those weren't terribly close.... I'd be at about half a green bar and pop Earth's Embrace, so it was simple. I have to admit that I'm also surprised that we had zero deaths the whole night, especially since we weren't being overly cautious by any stretch of the imagination. If anything, we were slightly on the reckless side of the scale.

We had fun Like I said in my first post I tend to be a little more aggressive than the normal player. If that's not your thing it will be absolutely no issue to split the team up and let the "crazies" go with me and the "normals" go with you

I can't explain the appeal, but I feel it. A new Iron Eagles character with no enhancements slotted is as interesting to me as one of my tricked-out 50s, even the few with purples.

It seems the spouse has invited guests for dinner. This will impact or preclude my participation, sorry to say. If I can find some time, I will log on.

Another great night of Iron Eagle action. We got up to an 8man team at one point. Before that we had a bunch of lowbies and two level 10-12s or so fighting level 12s. We had a few semi-close calls but no times of outrageous damage. Then two or three controllers joined the team and we got Fortitude, Ice Shields and Force Fields stacking. That made things easy. We kicked butt and lots of people got lots of levels. A death free night.


Next meetup -- Thursday April 29th. 9PM Eastern Time.
You can setup your own meetup times and play whenever you like, of course

Just imagine what we'll be like with enhancements slotted. :P

I had a blast! No, more than that: I had a Freem!

Last night was not quite the best night the Iron Eagles ever experienced. (I apologize in advance for not noting the names of all participants).

While we were discussing forming a team, the highest-level Eagle playing at the moment (a 15 Scrapper) got Issue 17 lag and disconnected while in a crowd of enemies.

Undeterred by this death, the remaining three of us formed a theoretically tough three-Tanker team and set out to cleanse the city -- or die trying!

You will note, when next you log on, that the city is still unclean.

I was on Djinni, my 13 Fire/Dark Tanker, and was joined by TuDiGong the 12 Stone/Elec Tanker and a level 2 Stone/SS Tanker whose name I unfortunately forget. After a prolonged struggle involving FOUR Fedex missions (despite using the new “abandon mission” option AND my once-every-three-days “drop mission” option) we finally did get a door mission to play.

After a few of these, I had reached 14 -- Siphon Life lay tantalizingly just beyond my grasp at 16 -- and the level 2 guy had dinged numerous times. Things were going pretty well; I was kitted out in green DOs, and my lovely Healing Flames was now recharging every 25 seconds or so.

Contact Trevor Seaborn informed me that a local fortuneteller had been kidnapped by the dreaded Circle of Thorns (presumably she was expecting it?), so we headed off to right this wrong. When we finally got to the heart of the cavern and saw the poor girl surrounded by Madness Mages and Spectral Lords, we hesitated -- not out of (justified) fear, but because we learned we might be joined by a fourth Iron Eagle! Reinforcements!

But we then learned it would be a few minutes longer. I suggested we proceed to rescue the fortuneteller. And so we proceeded into the fray.

In retrospect, perhaps we should have been a bit more tactical, as they say. Immediately a large mass of COT began kicking our Iron assets.

Once I got thoroughly debuffed by Spectral Lords and couldn’t hit, I got the bright idea of backing up to get outside the debuff radius and then using my ranged Veteran attack on them -- at least it had a good chance of hitting. As I ran back, the two Stone Tankers went yellow and then red. “RUN!” one of them shouted.

My vet attack missed (of course) and several of the nasties were already entrained in my wake. I fought them for a moment after one of the other Tankers perished, but when the second also went down, I just fled.

Around the corner and down the hall. Oops, stuck on a post sticking out of the wall. Adjust my angle. Still stuck. Back up….COT behind me. Excuse me! Coming through! Shuffle sideways -- free! Hit Healing Flames again. Run to daylight…oops, stuck on a post. Wiggle free. Oops, stuck on a post. Pry myself off and start running again. Take the corner too tightly, stuck on the wall. Hit my last 2 greens. Use the Ghost Slaying Axe on a vulnerable gost…miss. Swing wide, start down the straightaway. Oops, stuck on a post. Healing Flames is recharged! Heal up, break loose, run to…the next damned post.

Eventually I too died -- mostly because of getting hung up on the furniture. I never did like all the stray flanges and projections sticking out on most maps to hook imprecise moving characters.

Ah well. We made them work for it -- I used my Healing Flames at least 5 times during the fight and attempted escape, and it recharged on a 25-second timer, so at least we drew out the agony. :P

Total teamwipe -- all Tankers. Haven’t seen so many wrecked tanks since the battle of Kursk! We’re gonna have to find a new fortuneteller, too.

I remade the same character name because I like it too much to change, and after painfully setting up chat tabs and claiming vet rewards and so on, was back in the game. Got up a few levels but not far; we were helped by that fourth Eagle who joined us just a hair too late to die gloriously for the cause.

Thanks guys, it was still fun, I’m just cranky about being killed by a post.

Late that night, after the others left, I brought out my highest-level Iron Eagle, the 29 Scrapper Zulu Time. Contrary to what you might have come to expect in this tale, he successfully soloed one mission and then teamed with random PUG strangers for another, without coming into danger worth mentioning, and squeezed out about 2/3 of a level. Of course, he’s substantially better-slotted. It was actually a funny group; two Broadsword Scrappers, a Dual Blades Scrapper and Tanker, and a Fire/Kin -- six swords between five characters.

It’ll only take another two sessions or so to get right back where we were. But it was a hard night for the hard corps.

Well, on the positive side, we finally have some names to scream as we hurl ourselves into battle.

I think I'll be letting Issue 17 settle down a bit before hopping on my Eagle. I was having some lag issues all day. I'll be rolling a new Eagle to go along with my 18 or whatever to join up with all the lowbies we will probably have I hope you guys are undeterred and ready to make new, better, stronger Eagles!

I'm back from a weeks computer withdrawl ...

... hopped on last night for a bit... but didn't stay much more than one solo mission ...

getting enough lag and trying to adjust my settings ... got it fairly well set, but a bit laggier than I'm used to on the mouse input especially when clicking the odd power

didn''t want to lose my Iron Eagle tweaking settings so didn't hang out...swapped to one of my many alts

I'll probably pop in and out of my 2 IEs... but mostly wait for a patch or two to really get in and play them... hopefully by the end of the week

Been adventuring again as an Iron Eagle. Zulu Time is now 30(!) and humming along. He ran with fellow Eagle Genkan (from the old SG) to get there.

A trio of us played later in the week, and I got Djinni back up to 8 or so. We finally ran the Frostfire that had been interrupted when Justice crashed, and threw in a few Hollows missions for good measure. I'm going a slightly different route with Dark Melee this time, skipping Smite for Consume. We'll see how it works.

Today I came to Justice after a Guardian crash and took Zulu Time out for another spin. While streeting, got invited to a big PUG run by a Fire/Kin with an unimaginative name, set at +2 difficulty.

Heh.

Sounds bad, right?

Sure enough, first mission is Lost, who are at +3 above me. Cave mission. In the first big room, the Inv Tanker aggros a ton of purple Lost bosses and...buys it. One by one, we go down...sometimes in pairs.

Zulu Time, however, was doing fine. When it was down to just three of eight of us, the bosses turned their full psionic fury on me...and I ate a large purple, and fell back up the tunnel, with my teammates screaming "RUN!!!!"

Got clear, teamported everyone to me, and we went in again.

Again, we're falling like bowling pins on League Night.

I had actually taken some damage, so I hit two inspirations this time, and we fell back with two survivors -- and I was one of them.

This was a team with several Blasters and a Trick Arrow Defender and it seemed to be weak on durability and team buffs. The team added a Bubbler (yay!) and then did a Safeguard and defeated Silver Mantis without too much danger, but while looking for the badge I saw a lot of names go red and white, and someone trained a bunch of big purple things toward me and said "I'm out!", and exited.

So I hit the exit button too.

After that, the team decided to got run a Freakshow arc set to +2. I, however, had had enough Deep Purple for the afternoon, especially if everyone was still able to die while bubbled, so I made my polite farewells and escaped with my life.

In fairness to the team, no one told me how to play or minded that I let the tank take point, and they seemed like fine, if occasionally dead, people.

More soon!

Largish groups of Vahzilok at low levels make for a very exciting Iron Eagles run. Ka Phoenix (fire/kin control), Djinni (fire armor/dark melee tank), and T A A R N A (sword scrapper?)(a non- eagle char of an eagle player) ran a couple along with a couple COT annoying caves .

Came very close to a team wipe more than once, but we lived ... Taarna died once in an elevator room full of vahz... i just clicked to door down in time. Multiple toxic vomit cones... yikes. I never did see the point of hitting lowbies with an almost unresisted damage type...

Fun and exciting, there was one point where I almost clicked self destruct just to save the others when I thought we were all going down. Transfusion hitting, a aoe sword swipe and pbaoe ... i think... and the whole group of vahz fell over

Good times!

I had a smidgen of Toxic resistance available on Djinni, the Fire/Dark Tanker -- by using Healing Flames (20% Toxic res for 60 seconds, iirc, on a 40-second recharge -- and it's unenhanced at level 8/9). So I could start the fights with a bit of Toxic res at the cost of not having my Heal up for a scary 40 seconds. And if I spammed it, it would stack to 40% Toxic for 20 seconds or so out of every 60.

I decided to split the difference between heal and protection, and waited until I took about 1/4 damage from the alphas before hitting the heal, so I'd get some life back and still have the resistance for most of the fight. No idea if that was mathematically smart or not.

I also liberally applied purple and orange inspirations, and shared out a few greens here and there.

I definitely noticed some times when Ka Phoenix stayed in the thick of the fight throwing Transfusion despite a perilous life total. I only dropped down to about 1/3 of my life a few times -- we still had a margin of error!

One of the (few) good things about fighting Vazhilok is that you can sort of see disaster coming in slow motion, when a whole big bunch of them start shambling down the hall after a questionable pull. That gave me a moment to hit my inspires and check my ever-changing Toxic resist status just before the storm broke.

My favorite part occurred in a COT cave mission before we teamed up with T A A R N A and fought the Vazh. Ka Phoenix and Djinni were both partially-depleted in health and endurance (maybe down to 3/4 of each, not too bad) and I hit Consume, topping off my end, Healing Flames, topping off my health, and we both hit the boss, who fell over. The exp reward leveled up Ka Phoenix, topping off HIS bars too. Suddenly the sun came out from behind the clouds, birds were singing...well, you get the picture.

More danger lurks ahead for the Iron Eagles!

The real danger mission with taarna was one of mine we ran while you walked your dogs. We went in and did it. It was spawned for 3 I'm pretty sure... with just the 2 of us.

Next time we should get you in the door first at least.

I'm used to being in the thick of things from running my first /kin controller to 50... that especially backing 2 melee types, that way I get the transfusions and power siphons.

I'm usually good at watching everyone's hp bars from running an empath to 50 the slow way, but sometimes forget to watch my own! Though, I'm relearning thatskill in the eagle play.

It really does add a sense of urgency not allowing for death!

(edited in: The game's recent tendency to not take mouse clicks on my inspiration tray has also increased the "excitement level". It often seems to take about 3 for them to go off. Its very disconcerting to click and insp...wait a sec or two... go back to attacking... only to find the purple or green never actually went off...that happened more than once last night for me)

Is there a particular evening in the week you guys play, or specific playtimes ? Who to contact in game to get an invite in Iron Eagles II ? This looks really fun !

So far we've been meeting whenever we see each other on Global. :P But the tradition used to be Thursday evening and we've still tended to be more active then.

I will PM you.

Next meetup -- Thursday May 13th. 8PM Eastern Time until we get tired, might be all night.
You can setup your own meetup times and play whenever you like, of course

I'll be rolling a new character. My other one is still alive so don't worry I know a few other people will be bringing lowbies as well. If you want to give this a try feel free to come out. Shoot me or Sailboat a tell, a PM, or post here, or just show up in /chanjoin Iron Eagles

That's tonight! I'll be there with bells* on!

*Actually, DOs. We ran a little last night and I got Djinni to level 12, so at last I can slot enhancements that'll help a little. I probably have enough cash to do it too, just barely.

Also I went ahead and used a poor man's respec (the alternate build) to drop Blazing Aura (as I had been pondering out loud). Couple of reasons behind the decision -- it was costing me a lot of endurance; I doubted I would have the slots to improve it much until later in the build anyway (defenses and some of the click powers are more urgent priorities) and, to be frank, the damage it was doing was iffy (granted, unslotted and very low level). The downside of this is that I will be less effective at attracting aggro away from fellow hardcore characters until I put it back into the build in the 20s. The upside of THAT is that I'm sort of fragile still, and attracting all the team's aggro is not always survivable until I get more defenses and better slotting. Hopefully we can thread the needle and keep everyone alive until this Tanker is strong enough (and same goes for the other baby Iron Eagles Tankers we've been raising).

Running the Frostfire arc on hardcore at levels 10-12 was epic. Especially the few times my Fire/Regen scrapper was knockbacked in a second pack and I felt my heart beating anormaly strong for a PvE game... Or that time our group was fighting some mobs left behind, and Smurphy and I running forward just saw a big double pack behind a corner : without thinking both at the same time, he threw his dark toggles, I jumped into it and we started fighting. But the toggle got loose and mobs started to spread all around us beating on us. We had to retreat progressively while fighting, managing to keep our lifes mid/high and getting back to our teamates. Those were some intense moments.

To anyone looking for something different and wanting to add something spicy to their CoX PvE experience, I strongly suggest the next Iron Eagles II meeting

Thursday was fantastic. We all flew along the levels. Very enjoyable and Frostfire was a piece of cake. One person disconnected as we started fighting Frostfire. We mauled the pack and didn't even notice he wasn't moving.

Tonight we had an impromptu team that got up to 5 people. Levels flew along. The only even close to "close-call" was me due to player error/stupidity. I backed up, ate my candy tray, exited the mission for a second, slapped myself, went back into the mission and all was good. Good to be reminded now and then not to be an idiot.

We were discussing difficulty settings and I was talking about how "95% chance of success isn't good enough for Iron Eagles". Of course, while I'm typing the Outcast I Darkest Nighted started running, aggroing guys at me, who leave toggle range and aren't debuffed like everyone else. I start getting shot at and not by enemies who have -40% ToHit.