Returning Player Diary

I would love a tasty oven-baked Dessert Shrike, actually. Mhmmm.

Quote:

Originally Posted by EarthWyrm But I do understand that there is an internet rule that any bad idea must be presented by someone at least twice a year to remind everyone who hasn't already read every previous thread on the topic precisely why the idea is bad.

Just out of curiosity, I took a quick spin through the patch notes. I think the last major change to Task Force difficulty settings was Issue 17, which was indeed two years ago, as Organica said. Apparently we've learned an important lesson here today: it takes more than 2 years for new changes to sink into my head. So apparently I still have a long time to wait before I get the hang of Incarnate salvage/xp/merit whatevers.

Oh, but more recently it looks like they changed things so that Death From Below and other "challenge trials" ignore the difficulty settings.

Anyhow, I have a lot of sympathy for anyone who is confused about the connection between task forces and difficulty settings. Or anything else for that matter. The less I play, the more sympathy I have.

All of my knowledge comes from running lots of TFs and none of it from actually reading documentation or testing stuff, so it's certainly a good idea to double-check anything I say.

Also, I have to cop to the fact that the same day I posted a small rant here about speed TFs, I ran a Manticore and people wanted to speed it... so we finished in 30 minutes, which is very fast. But, y'know, Manticore. No reason to take it slow on that one.

So I didn't do much marketeering over 2xp, being somewhat obsessed with leveling Cathode Ray (hello, level 40!)

Logged in my market guys this am and fussed around for a while. Ray had a bunch of overpriced PvP IOs in his inventory- i left them up over the weekend to see what happened- a couple sold, but I still had a few left.

As my recipe supply had dried up I hadn't been burning converters at my usual rate I found myself with a surplus, so I tried a new wrinkle- in-set conversion.

I took a couple of not that great IOs (a cheapish Javelin Volley and a so-so Fury of the Gladiator) and converted them, hoping to get one of the really good sets. The RNG was with me and they both came out Shield Walls- one TP res, which I left alone, the other one of the not that great ones, def recharge I think?
Anyway, did an in-set conversion...and got another TP Res!

Whoohoo!

Okay time to list- last 5 were all 310, so I went fairly lowball at 244. It was taking a chance, as bid creeping is way more common with purples and pvp IOs than with regular junk, but it was still a fine profit even considering the extra converters I'd had to burn.

That was this morning.
Just logged in to mess around with Ray's enhancements while my son watched a show and found this:




One, probably an expensive typo.
Two, probably not.
Three?

Someone REALLY wanted them some teleport resistance!

Great way to start the day!

Someone stocking up on them in preparation for I24 maybe?

Holy.

PANCAKING.

CRAP!

Wanna throw 300 mil my way?

Quote:

Originally Posted by EarthWyrm But I do understand that there is an internet rule that any bad idea must be presented by someone at least twice a year to remind everyone who hasn't already read every previous thread on the topic precisely why the idea is bad.

and while I have all my stuff open, here are a few other random screens from the past week or so:

A character I particularly liked:



proof any idea you have, someone else has also had. Logged in Ray a while back and this is the first thing I saw, standing right in front of me. Same idea, even the same title, just different execution:




got a laugh out of this guy's inventive shield scrapper:



Not the best lighting, but I ran a Yin with this fellow, who had one of my favorite aquatic themed characters:

I've seen Weapons Grade Hugs around on Virtue.

Cookie Prince is awesome.

Haha! Nice to 'meet' you. =D

Great look, I really liked the colors.

and continuing synchronicity, I picked a random SNL off Netflix last night and its digital short was the Michael Bolton skit featured in your sig. =D



Okay, ran another TF, which raised some interesting questions for me.

It was a Yin, on Psicops my psi/psi blaster.
I got into it the way I usually do these days- checking the market with my LFG tab open. I like Psi, he made it to 25 before my hiatus and I'd be playing him more now if I wasn't lying low waiting for the I24 blaster improvements. As a result of the long layoff I don't really remember how to play him, and his weird mix of long and short range attacks is constantly throwing me off. Drain Psyche is great, but I haven't gotten it slotted out yet.

But, it was a short TF, I didn't feel like switching chars, and so I signed up.

It ended up being one of those teams who has that one mouthy, aggrivating player who always has a better idea and isn't shy about telling everyone else how bad their plan is. Everyone else was cool, so I figured I'd ride it out. Team composition was weird- all scrappers, brutes & stalkers with one corrupter and my blaster.

First mission, wall to wall purples and reds.
In keeping with my new vow to never do a PUG tf on anything but base difficulty I make note of the fact and suggest we back out and dial it down. Mouthy guy insists we'll be fine, and rather than just quitting outright I decide to hang around for the first mish so I can at least get some xp for my trouble.

Things go predictably, that is we struggle through a couple of spawns with a handful of deaths. No debuffs, no healing, no appreciable buffs. I felt pretty useless, plinking away at reds and purples with my so-so slotted attacks.

So about the third spawn Super Mouth figured out that we should re-set. He's going to get his level 50 emp, he says, and then everything will be fine. The stalker also logged to go get a controller. We reconvened at Yin, reformed, and started over.

And things went well. As much grief as the "we need an emp!" crowd (somewhat deservedly) gets, it was a huge improvement on this particular team. A little control, backup heals, not crazy difficulty and suddenly our melee-crazy crew was cruising along.

Super Mouth may have been irritating, but he did know how to play an emp- he made a much better healer than he did a brute. And given the Freak-heavy makeup of the TF you've *never* seen a team respond to the command "Gather for RA!" like this one. =P

So, after the reset it went about like Yins go- fun, pretty quick, good xp.

But I had the lingering feeling my blaster simply didn't bring much to the team. Damage, sure, but not enough to balance out the babysitting he needed- the melee guys were doing as much or more while mostly taking care of their own survival, whereas if I did *too much* damage I was suddenly in a world of trouble and it took all the resources of our emp to keep me from faceplanting.

Maybe this is just because over the years I've mostly soloed anyone who *could* solo, reserving teaming for 'support' ATs. My 50 fire/ice blaster for example hasn't ever to my recollection been on a team. My ar/dev has been around long enough that he did a lot of teaming back with my original group of CoH friends, but from roughly level 29-50 it was solo all the way.

And solo I like my blasters fine- you're playing against the game, if you mess up it's nobody's problem but your own. On a team though, I like to be useful and helpful, and I didn't feel like either on this run.

To comtrast, Ray is very useful and helpful- he may do mostly single target damage, but he does a LOT of it, and all his rad debuffs make life easier for everyone else. My tank Crafticus isn't much for offense, but he keeps the attention of enemies so everyone else can go to town without having to worry. The utility of my various dominators, controllers & occasional defender speaks for itself. And my melee guys are fairly survivable and self sufficient- when I team them they're able to do their damage without needing much babysitting.

I have another blaster around the same level as Psi, my fire/fire crazy 88'er Burn Rate. She sort of has to team, having absolutely *zero* survival skills, but being so ridiculously offensively oriented I feel like she's worth the bother everyone else has to take keeping her alive. As her /search comment says, "pure AoE damage machine".

Psi, I felt like and oldschool stalker- just taking up a space while everyone else did the work.


Maybe he'll improve with a few levels and more slotting under his belt, we'll see.

Ray is pushing 41 and I've started messing around with possible 'final' builds- here's a thread with my very rough preliminary draft.

Got up early this AM and ran him through a couple of tip missions.
I've pushed his difficulty to +2/x0 which he can handle without too much trouble- I do need to pay attention (adds are a problem), but I get the feeling I can bump it higher without inviting disaster. He absolutely melts single targets, as long as I keep the spawn sizes down he should be fine. So, the exact opposite of my other favorite characters, who thrive on huge low-ish level spawns.


Everyone was still sleeping, so I switched over to my fire tank for a little MA farming- I'm thinking of messing around with his build next, so a little bankroll building seemed to be in order. His slotting is a mess, a total patchwork thrown together while I was leveling him, but capped fire resistance and a pretty decent selection of AoEs + Burn makes him a solid performer on fire farm maps.

Did a couple of ticket capped runs, hopped out and filled up my inventory with bronze rolls from my perferred level range, 35-39. Deleted the junk, spent a bit collecting salvage for the rest & logged off when my son wandered out of the bedroom. Will log in tonight for the crafting and listing- lots of 5-20m IOs- I'm interested to see how many I'll have to sell to match the profit from converting one purple.

Hoping to pick up a TF tonight, Ray is starting to run a little low on merits & I need them to keep a healthy supply of Converters.

Could you always just make a supergroup whenever you wanted?

I dimly recall having to have other members or something....but maybe that was another game?

Anyway, was doing some converting and ended up with two Ragnaroks that weren't super valuable. Rather than burn more converters, I figured I'd save 'em for Ray's final build, but I didn't want to run around with them clogging my tray for another ten levels. Solution? Super Base!

I was in City Hall going for the day job badge so I hopped over to the registrar guy to see how many people I'd have to bribe to sign my charter or whatever....imagine my surprise when he just let me fire up a SG!

Well, hot dang!
Got my base license (and what exactly is the point of that, anyway? it didn't cost anything that I noticed, and in spite of some folderol about "filling out the paperwork" I didn't have to do anything but click the dialog box), turned half a billion into prestige to give myself something to work with and hopped over to slap a quick base together.

This project undermined my intention to catch on with a TF, but I did manage to help out a team battling a Chronos Titan in Founders. Picked up a badge and a couple of merits for a few minutes 'work'. While I was there I hopped by the tailor & picked up the 'hunt Nemesis' mission.

Off to Peregrine, where the nemesis were numerous as well as red and purple conning. Gave me a happy flashback to the days of herding them around the warehouse by the ferry with my buddy and our two regen scrappers.

I approached a big spawn of reds with trepidation, but figured with a little inspiration I could handle it. Popped a big red and a big purple, dropped my debuffs, slowed them and went to town.

They went down MUCH easier than anticipated- I was sort of jazzed for a serious fight, but one Disintigrate + Overcharge cleaned out most of the spawn. Hurrah for inspirations!

Cruised around mauling more spawns- purple Fake Nems hold no fear for Ray, although I was unpleasantly surprised to discover their Force Bolt blasts right through his Karma -KB. 25k exp each, not a bad payday given how fast he can burn them down even with their cheaty little "unaffected" trick.

A low key night, but a fun one.

Yeah I remember thinking, "What kind of idiot would waste influence buying prestige?"

Well, I do it all the time these days.

You do still get a 20,000 influence prestige bonus for your first 15 new members I believe.

Yeah I burned a few billion Inf on prestige for my base. Of course these days I mostly just use it to store enhancements.

And don't forget that in the bad old days of base building everything was HUGELY expensive. From the plot, to energy and control items, to rent.

everyone in the household has been sick the past few days, so not much playing to report.

I ran two Yins, one on Ray for the merits (he needs more converters again) and one 'speed' Yin with Mr. Ikebana, who's costume I was messing around with when the call went out.

Y'know, there's not much difference between a 'kill all' Yin and a 'speed' Yin, time wise. I guess we shaved off a few minutes from the last mission, skipping the hallway, but......*shrug*.

Both were fun, so whatever.
It's the weekly strike thingie, and I was startled by the MASSIVE exp bump Ray got- something like 950k? Nice! Plus 40 merits, which was enough to net another Hero merit.

the only other thing I did was catch on with a level 47 tips team last night for a few missions before bed. One of the team was a new Nature Affinity character, and WOW is that a gorgeous, relaxing powerset! The little green mushroom oasis with its pleasant chiming sounds & floating motes of light, the leafy Absorbing shield...just a wonderful set to team with.

I really like the way Absorb works. Ray, being a ranged type, went through most of the evening with about 1/2 his health bar filled with Absorb, which emboldened me to be a little more aggressive.

Ray's 42 going on 43 now, and I'm still really enjoying him. I may just shelve everyone else until I get him to 50- I find myself having to talk myself into playing anyone else anyway, I may as well give up and just get him to the cap.