Liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnn! Also Linamin! You better come back and get the Hybrid slot! I love you too buddy and I know we will stay in contact irl. And whenever I need to laugh or smile, I can just remember your "ouchypants!" 
~*~Madame Pistacio~*~
Guardian of CHRYSALIS
Victory Limitless- /chanjoin "Victory Limitless"
P.E.R.C. First Chair- P.E.R.C. Site, Victory Over Hamidon
Guardian of CHRYSALIS
Victory Limitless- /chanjoin "Victory Limitless"
P.E.R.C. First Chair- P.E.R.C. Site, Victory Over Hamidon
Newest event- The Great Makeover
Gah! Hybrid slot! I suppose I need to get that too.
Horatus - lvl 50 Fire/Elec Blaster
Dude... go play that Water Blaster. It is a GREAT Blast set. One of my favorites, and I say this as someone that has tried almost all of them. And yeah... I'll help you with Hybrid as well. My Peacebringer is still working on his, and he was my second 50, he deserves that before he can't get out and around anymore.
You still playing ToR? I hope so. I've been doing the "free to 15" stuff a bit while waiting for it to go F2P, and now this NCSoft debacle makes it easier for me to check it out (can't afford/justify more than one sub). It has some decent legs for alts, more incentive than I've seen in a few other games, anyway, even if it isn't as open and freefrom as CoH is. Seriously... you can make any concept fly in CoH, and do homages to any variety of genres.
In WoW or LOTRO, you're... in that world.
Guide: Tanking, Wall of Fire Style (Updated for I19!), and the Four Rules of Tanking
Story Arc: Belated Justice, #88003
Synopsis: Explore the fine line between justice and vengeance as you help a hero of Talos Island bring his friend's murderer to justice.
Grey Pilgrim: Fire/Fire Tanker (50), Victory
Yup GP, it has spoiled me in that was as well (the 'any background' bit).
Arc #6015 - Coming Unglued
"A good n00b-sauce is based on a good n00b-roux." - The Masque
Ive been on an extended semi-sabbatical from CoH for about a year, playing other games, having a life, recovering from a flood, and preserving my wrists from The Carps as much as possible, though I have kept my subscription so I feel very angry and betrayed by NCSoft, as I think we all do, for killing (from what little I can tell) is a profitable game. But besides the anger, Im gonna miss the game, and especially the people, very, very much.
And you helped show me how to make beelions on the market, along with a few others. We didnt always agree, but you are definitely one of the most accomplished leaders Ive met in gaming and IRL. You really showed me some fun times, and I respect your skill and knowledge above anyone else in the game. Raids like clockwork, even when I leeeroyed at inappropriate times, even when I zigged when I should have shut the heck up. You made the game tons of fun for literally hundreds of people, probably thousands, with PERC, Costume Contests, PvP, PvE, and Forum organized events, Lam/BAF/MOM/Hami/etc. raids, and tons of other stuff Im forgetting. Your analytical skill is really fine-tuned, and you gave me so many invaluable tips, I cant begin to estimate. Thanks for having me at your wedding, thanks for putting up with me and my coffee highs, and thanks for greeting me with an extended, Liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnn! whenever I popped on channel. Hugs forever.
The game. My first goal was simple. I wanted to FLY. Free, 3D, open flight. And when I got in the game, I raced to 14, and I FLEW. I didnt care that everyone said it was too slow, cost too many slots, you couldnt fight in Fly, hell I got to 6, and got HOVER. WOOT! I spent hours Sunday mornings hovering around, at like 6mph, collecting badges, pew pewing with my (pathetic) archer (suboptimal! Lethal damage! Why not a Fire blaster??!!). Raced to 14, got fly, what a feeling of freedom! Linarra is my main, she rocks, and she still looks almost exactly like she did when I rolled her up. When I got her to 50, I ran with a veteran group, and one of my fondest memories ever in gaming was when running a simple Family farm with a Stone tanker name F.A.T.E., a legend in my mind, and a few others, I dropped a Rain of Arrows at just the right time, and when all of the mobs silently fell over, he turned in my direction and said in chat, What was That?? and I just said, That is the Magic of Archery, and I got a bunch of Lols back. Ill always take pride in wowing, just a little, one of the more respected players in the game when I was just a wee semi-n00b.
After that, I played, experienced a variety of things (I was excited to be on a 7-person Baka Rad team that dropped Lusca (6+1 Bomb) never had a clue about the power of concentrated debuffing til then!). I learned how to run the Mystical, Magical AT that was the Ill/Rad (I named mine Liberal Media Elite, costumed as an homage to Stephen Colbert, one of my favorite costumes ever), (and after thinking for so long that it was really, really hard to play, I realized Ill/Rad usually made the game easysauce!!).
And after playing mostly squishy damage-dealing ATs, I rolled up a Stone/Stone tank for Hami raid support and it became my 2nd favorite AT ever. Screen-shaking, Rock-fist punching, Yellow-Mito-aggro-holding, Hami-taunting, I loved being an important cog in the wheel from misc. damage dealer to Main Tank was a heady shift of responsibility, and though I failed plenty of times, the wins always made up for it.
But I regret: No SS tanks/brutes. No Invuln or Super Reflexes anything. No regen scrappers, only one scrapper at all. No dominators. No L50 corrs. My Water blaster is L1. No Plant anything. Never got a Hybrid slot (might try for this still). No stalkers. No crabs. Never got to really, really work on my base. I have about 100 purple IOs sitting in my base, about 1000 high money IOs sitting there, another 500 or so recipes on characters, waiting for the rest of the ATs I wanted to create someday.
The Devs, to their credit, made the game easier and easier to **play**, while giving us harder and harder challenges to face, which is so weird for MMOs, from what I hear. No loot?? But thats a time sink! Make travel FASTER??? But its a time sink, more money! Make the characters stronger with stuff like IOs?? Faster leveling?? No real Death penalties?? Thats crazy! A rudimentary, but VERY flexible, and simple to learn, keybinding language?? Unheard of! Spend SO MUCH MONEY on a Costume Creator????? HOW many emotes, HOW many belts??? Where is the profit in THAT!!???!? But in these cases, and innumerable others, they gave us, as much as possible, in my opinion, the characters WE wanted, the heroes and villains of OUR imaginations.
And the funny thing is, (having only played one other game may make this of limited validity), when we got faced with a new enemy, I didnt ever feel weakened by a stronger foe in this game, while in others, I have repeatedly gotten the feeling that a new foe has seemed to bring, You think youre strong, with the best gear in the game HA! You guys SUCK! from the Devs in those games. I felt there was a challenge, but the essence of the challenge seldom **invalidated my heros strengths**. All I can say is Wow, what an accomplishment. Thank you, devs for helping us realize some of our wildest, weirdest, funniest, best characters, in a game and an environment that is unlikely to ever be matched.
There are a lot, lot, lot of people to mention, so I apologize if I dont name you. Im just going to mention a couple by name, but know that I consider you all good friends and I appreciate you making my gaming experience here great. All the people Ive interacted with, esp. on Vent, have really made my first MMO experience, and my longest (by far) videogame experience, really amazing.
First, Madame Pistacio, you are awesome. You are an amazing person, and a great friend. You really took me from being a clueless rookie n00b to a slightly less clueless, Veteran n00b.
Masque Dude. Seriously. What the. You are almost unhealthily level headed. Which is why I think we got along so well, because with a few exceptions, usually when I had too much coffee (see above), I think we both kept our stuff together. I think one of the greatest things Ive seen in gaming was the leadership you (with the help of others too many to mention, including MP) showed in the PvP Bootcamp effort to teach more people the ins and outs of Team PvP. All the late night arguments, the kvetching and yelling and arguing, in spite of all that - it was an unmitigated success in my opinion, and though lots of people helped, you really were the person that held it together and kept a solid vision for the project. I hope you take pride in your role in that, and know that you made the game a lot more fun for a lot of people, including me.
Not Putzing shes no longer in the game, but she actually introduced me to MP and Masque, among many others, got me to go to my first Hami raid, and saved me from leaving the game very early in my career because I hadnt tried the group thing much til then. I have to mention her, because I would never have had as much fun in the game had she not saved me from myself.
Memphis Bill He was one of the first people I gfriended, and we played together for a time, he showed me early on how to play a character well, and support the team and later he showed me how to make lots of money on the markets as well, without exploiting, being a jerk, or shafting people. Im glad to see he will be around at the end with the rest of us.
A shout out to Death Conqueror (DC), who passed away not too long ago. He showed me how to tank by example, and I learned to tank Hami from him. He will always be the quintessential Tanker to me. I wish I had had more time to continue his example.
So many others I cant begin to name. In-game friends, Vent friends, all of you are awesome. The game brought us together. Its such a wide-ranging game that I think it gathers people from many backgrounds, and I dont know if this group of people could translate to any other existing game, though I wish it could. It met a lot of differing peoples gaming needs, and I cant imagine another game filling all those niches.
Its heartbreaking to know this place will be gone soon, because it holds a little part of each person that visited here. To me, Paragon City represents a place you can imagine yourself as something different than your real self, and then be that alter ego in a way no other MMO, or videogame, or even computer simulation for that matter, has ever offered. You could go from a Man build Human, to the most impossibly fantastical iteration of a 2-legged humanoid imaginable and hang out in Pocket D, or smash Hamidons face, with everyone else. Ill be sorry to see that disappear. I may post more, but this will likely be my longer bye post.
Thanks for a great game to the devs and to the players. You have given me a lot I can never repay. I call you all my friends. And I'll see you in the Next One!!
Arc #6015 - Coming Unglued
"A good n00b-sauce is based on a good n00b-roux." - The Masque