Your Crowning Moments of Awesome

I figured that, since it looks like the game is closing down for good, it might as well be time to tell our stories of the game. There's a lot on the farewell page about how Paragon City has changed our lives, but that's not what I'm thinking.


I'm thinking of those moments where you do something so irrevocably awesome, you immediately hop on the closest channel and tell people about it. So, what are your Crowning Moments of Awesome?

I'm making one for each of the characters I played extensively.


Clawstriker: (Claws/Regen Scrapper) I was feeling annoyed after a particularly bad attempt at PVP, and so set my difficulty to 8x and jumped in the nearest mission. It happened to be against the Carnival of Shadows. I... actually didn't suck. Turns out that incarnate abilities really add to your survival, especially ones that boost your healing and recharge through the roof.


Ms. Nightshade: (Force Fields/Dark Defender)Coming up with a mids build that both softcapped me, and anyone who was standing close to me.


Jakefrost: (Ice/Ice Tanker) Tanking Ghost Widow in an STF. I actually did better tanking her than Scirroco. Being able to set the difficulty to -1/x8 was pretty fun, provided it wasn't against Carnies or Malta.


Girl Tempest: (Storm/Electric Defender) Don't have much for her, unfortunately. It was pretty cool the first time she used Tornado. Even if it did upset the rest of the team at the flying Freakshow that ensued.


Cardluck: (Illusion/Kinetics Controller)Similar problem. I guess Phantom Army for the first time is his cool moment.


Tekhnesis: (AR/Devices Blaster) I so much wanted to love her, but it's a very annoying combination. Being able to plant a ton of trip mines and then pull a mob over them is always fun, but it gets annoying when one is a lot faster than the others and sets off multiple traps long after he should be dead. Dang latency.


Tankout: (Invulnerability/SS Tanker) Now this is a cool story. I had been running an outlevelled story arc at 4+ difficulty, to try and keep earning xp from it. But, then I left him alone for a while, and when I came back to run tips on him, I forgot entirely about the difficulty. The mission I got was "Rescue Longbow Girl from Arachnos" or something like that. Then I got in, and realized the problem.


I figured "Whatever" and set about smashing the arachnos. Most of the mission I did great in, but just before the room with the captive in it, there was a night widow, or something, whatever she was she had psychic abilities and a smoke grenade. I had to pop unstoppable to finish her, and it was still going when I finished her off. I decided that, rather than wait for Unstoppable to wear off, which could be a while, I'd get it done now. That was a mistake.


Unstoppable crashed near the end of the fight with the guards. I barely managed to finish them, only to realize that rescuing the girl also triggered a very large number of ambushes, and I was practically dead. I tried resting, but only got a little health back before I needed to stop, else be killed by the rock bottom resistances. The longbow girl, despite saying that she couldn't help because she was exhausted, actually did a good job of taking down arachnos thugs. Helped that she was at the same 4+ as they were. I didn't give in, but the sheer number of misses, my low endurance and health, meant that I was likely doomed.


And then I levelled.


Suddenly, the 4+ were 3+, and conning red instead of purple. Now my super inspiration buffed punches were connecting, and I was blitzing everything in my path. That... was a cool mission.


Neuralocke: (Mind/Empathy Controller) Sadly, after Tankout I don't have many other cool stories. Her best moment is split between two.

One is where she greatly outlevelled the sky raiders story arc, so I set difficulty to 8x and enjoyed butchering grey mobs. Not that awesome to speak of, but for someone with little soloing capability, it was fun to watch.


Her other moment would be taking down Ghost Widow solo in the SSA. How could I do this without incarnate powers? By setting difficulty to 8x, bosses on, stealthing most of the map, and spamming confuse on a toxic tarantula boss. Although GW did see me a couple of times, I would always haul tail out of her range ASAP when that happened. She went down, and the tarantula followed.


Macroburst: (Radiation/Energy Blaster) Set the difficulty to +4. Enter a freakshow mission. Build Up+Aim+Irradiate+Neutron Bomb+Nuclear Blast. Left me without endurance, but also left the freakshow scattered all over the ground in irradiated heaps, and you know what? It felt pretty much the same as normal missions. I still took a lot of damage, still died quite often, and still had to wait long times between fights. I was really trying to burn of patrol xp there, so I didn't mind the constant dying that much.


Ms Sonix: (Sonic/Sonic Defender) I got into an ITF with another sonic defender, a dark defender, and a radiation corruptor. Really enjoyed seeing those cheating Cimeroran traitors fall like the leaves of Autumn.


Blacklasher: (Plant/Cold Controller) Sadly, the best he's ever gotten was when he got Fly Trap. Meant I could stay permanently in my group build, because all my buffs could go on my pet.


Farley Darknight: (Dark/Dark Scrapper) The day on a Council mission I was trying to burn off my invention powers, and realized that Hand Grenades recieved a hefty buff from Soul Drain. I spent the mission trying to round up as many Council into one mob so I could hit them all with Soul Drain + Hand Grenade + Dark Regeneration + Dark Consumption.


Actually, I have one better: Being the main tank for a large group in a mission. Seriously. It was against Carnies, and most of the group was sidekicked to me. I was actually a better tank than the fire brute (for obvious reasons). Sure, I died a lot, but I would always follow up with Soul Transfer, which had a hefty stun on every carnie in range, making me as good a controller as the actual controller.


Datecrom: (Robotics/Traps Mastermind) If the day I turned difficulty up to 8x permanently doesn't count, then the day I tanked Manticore in a LRSF does.



So, what are your critically awesome moments?

In the long run, this isn't really a big deal and could probably have been done by any class, but I was so proud to once or twice successfully tank Tyrant on my little DM/WP brute. I know this was more in thanks to the wonderful support characters on the magi trial, but it still made me feel awesome

I guess this really isn't a crowning moment but it was just awesome as well, but the first time I used superjump in the game was just amazing. The feel of the travel power made it a thrill to use for the first time, and it's still a lot of fun

EDIT: I forgot to say, the Tyrant fight was specifically important to me because in a previous MMO I used to play that may or may not begin with a W and end in "craft," I would very rarely run through raids on a little deathknight tank. I would get so nervous that I'd usually flinch and close my eyes whenever one of the bosses struck me. So doing something like this successfully in CoH and having it work out was pretty fun

I have two that stand above all others for me.

First with my main and name sake back in Issue 3 or 4: It's really a simple thing, but the first time I ran the Eden trial, and we got through to the final cave and I was told to go grab 'a couple'. Well...'a couple' quickly turned into half the cave. It was the first time I really got a scope for how awesome this game could be. (and it has, all the way to the end for me)

• A lesser moment was going up through the levels the first time largely on Task Forces, where I would join the team at the bare minimum for the TF, and still end up being the main tank.

• Three-man mothership raid
• Two-Man MoLGTF
• 15 minute ITF
• 8 minute 46+ Treespec

Four I can think of off hand, three involving the Paladin.

A long time ago I was passing through Kings Row on my eng/dev blaster and spotted the Paladin. Having never fought him before, I attacked and an intense 1-on-1 battle ensued (this was before the changes to giant monster health regeneration/scaling and back when whirlwind uprooted the character), from which I emerged the victor. Good times.



The second time I soloed the Paladin was on my BS/WP scrapper. Lured one away from the park they gather in towards Paula Dempsey's old location and fought him while using the contact to buy inspirations during the fight. I also used some shivans, a cataphract, and a HVAS to help overcome the GM's regen. I used to have a video of that, but its trapped on my dead laptop for the time being.

I almost soloed the Kraken on that same character using similar tactics (I.E. plop a bunch of summons down to overcome the regen), but could only get him down to about half health (AoE foot stomp knockback slowed the DPS). Still, a fun fight.

The third time I soloed the Paladin was on my SS/WP brute with +2 incarnate powers. The only summon I used for this fight was the incarnate cataphract summon (hooray for -regen). It was intense towards the end since the cataphract despawned with a small amount of health remaining on the Paladin, but I managed to put out enough last moment damage to take it down before the regen could tick.

Agent Tavarisch: Dimension shifting the Hamidon nucleus. Nuff said.

Agent Blake: Soloing Baron Zoria and crew at the end of Twilight Son's arc at +1/+1 on a dark/psi def, only to turn around and realize that I'd managed to keep Cyrus Thompson alive the entire time so he never actually died.

Profiteer: Taking a Mercs/TA MM on an LRSF, and thanks to the sheer arsenal of temp powers she'd collected for 'RP purposes', taking out Luminary with a Revolver, Swan with a Throwing Knife, Valkyrie with a Gabriel's Hammer (kill shot on all three, btw), and then surviving the fight against the Phalanx WITHOUT pets, and bringing so much debuff to the table that we walked all over them.

Soulsteel: Doing the Barracuda SF, back when the MM buff was broken (and not having enough team debuff to make up for it), she pointed out very coolly in-character that it was not a problem. She summoned her bots, threw every dark power she had at Reichsman... and then hit him with the Ace of Spades, dropping his defenses and resistances straight through the floor.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Oh, there was also the "Rise of the Chickens" event I ran with my old SG. The premise was evil chickens, which is awesome. Good times were had.

First of all, I love how this game handles leveling. You can be on your last legs, overwhelmed on all sides, with more ambushes on the way. You keep fighting, popping every insp you have, but know that, inevitably, it will not be enough. but then you level. Both bars refill, any and all mez breaks. It can even bring you back to life. And not only that, but in a brilliant flash of light it turns you into an unstoppable avatar of destruction. Not only is it mechanically awesome in the true sense of the word, it is thematically perfect.

Think about it: How many times have you seen a comic book character pushed against a wall, completely overwhelmed, only to come back stronger than ever and lay a beat down of the ages on whatever threat they were facing?

I cannot begin to count how many times a lucky level has saved my bacon.

That said, here are some of my crowning moments of awesome:

Shadow of Kronos (nin/time/mace MM), my main, inevitably has several. But I wish to talk only about the first and best. The first one happened... I want to say in the low 40's. Not to say he hadn't be awesome before, but nothing on this level. Nothing even close.

Firstly, it was an Arachnos map. Funny how they seem to generate these amazing moments. Perhaps it is because they are one of the few really troublesome enemy groups. Like Malta, they can drain and mez you into a puddle. Unlike Malta, they pack tons of toxic and psychic damage as well.

I was on 0x8, my standard soloing setting at the time. I charge into the first group as normal, and everything is going well, as normal. Then, the Ninjas being insane (again, normal, but not to this extent), they agro'd another group.

Well, no problem! I jump into this fresh meat, the current group no where near done, and start taunting and debuffing them into mush. A few heals, and I was doing good again.

Then they agro'd another group.

Well now, this is becoming rather troublesome. I Chronoshift to fix my waning endurance, and get to work, the first group still mostly standing. I can handle this, I think.

Then another.

Well this is just getting absurd. My genin are dropping and without their buffs die upon summon. I manage to bring them in and buff them quick enough that they live. The Jounin, as usual, are untouched, and the Oni is holding his own. All that is left of the first group are the bosses and maybe some lts.

Then another group.

Just not my day, is it? Distortion field to slow their imminent attack, give me some time to kill off some more in my current groups. The genin that aggrivated them is long since dead and resummoned. I eat some more blues. My health is actually dropping, that never happens! I eat some purples and a green, feed another green to my weakening Oni, and resume debuffing the every growing number of enemies.

By this point I am ignoring everything that isn't a direct threat to me and my ninjas. Chat buzzing? No more chat. Ignoring the map, ignoring the cat trying to get some attention. All I see is endless arachnos. Endless targets.

More were agro'd, I'm sure. But this point any and all new groups made no real impact on the mass of foes before me.

Eventually, the dust settled, with me and my ninjas standing amidst a sea of broken and defeated Arachnos.

I checked the map the see where the hell I was, and found it completed. Every single foe between me and the other end of the map was dead. That's when this characters status as my main was solidified, and that is when I decided to run every mission like that.

Because damn, that was epic.

Doing a MoLRSF back in the days when it was hard as ****. With a largely pickup team featuring multiple MMs and Dominators rather than the standard accepted fare of Brutes and Radiation Corrupters.

We go in for the careful pull. We snipe-pull the first Hero... and a few seconds later the entire lot of them come piling in after. What follows was the most intense fight I've been in in my City of Heroes career. I'm spamming all of my powers. My health bar is playing pong. Several times teammates almost go down. But we do it. Somehow, by the skin of our teeth, we manage to beat those Heroes into submission all at the same time.

I've never felt so proud of a group of individual before or since.

Telling two complete character arcs with my creative little circle of friends that are still talked about today. One of them had been foreshadowed for months...possibly years. I still have a Layladoll of that character, sent to me by my friends.

I'll never forget back in i20 beta, I was playing Sheryl Fiero (AR/Dev/Munition Blaster) through one of my first BAFs (may have been the first). While running around during the first phase firing off my attack chain, I somehow landed on one of the War Walkers' shoulders, fired a burst into its back for a kill shot, and rode it down, hopping off just before it landed. It was a moment I've never been able to repeat (for all I know there's no way to land on them in the live version), but it struck me as classic Sheryl style and a perfect movie-quality sequence and made the BAF a favorite I-trial ever since.

- 23 second Pylon time.

- Solo pylon run then holding off Rikti in the middle of the bowl all by myself.

Crab spider completely broke the game for me. Ridiculous damage, awesome support, and superb survivability just made all my other characters look like zeroes.

I'll never forget the awesomeness of the Jinrazuo spider.

***

Not for just me personally, but the Supergroup I used to run with before most folks left, the Wolf-Pack, made a theme team called the First Responders. A group with backstories all based on police/fire/EMS, with power themes based on fire and ice, and snazzy uniforms! It was always neat to see a bunch of folks in color coded trench coats setting fire to injustice! We had several teams over the years, but the First Repsonders were our original, and they definitely stood out the most.

***

As for me, my first level 50 villain was back in i7, he was an Electric/Electric Brute. My favorite part of that combo, at the time especially, was the sweet and delicious effortless beatdowns he was able to put up against even large groups of Malta Operatives. Well, at one point, I'm running with a PuG in one of those lab rooms with the two-floor catwalk, ya'll know the one, that tends to spawn three groups of enemies rather tightly, making it really, really easy to over-enage. Which we did. And this was still in that dark time after GDN and before IOs.

Well the whole team, minus me, wiped there, and I just kept fighting. Some of it luck, some of it stubbornness, and some of it being the combination of digital inspirations and actual inspiration of one of my teammates yelling, "Go Zaragoza, go!" We were right by the elevators, and I could've bailed at any time, but with that, I was determined. The seven others hit the hospital and ran back while I popped Power Surge. When they got back, I had almost, but not quite, finished the group. Power Surge did its standard fizzle, but thanks to the perfectly timed return, I managed to get sweet delicious healing at just the right time.

It's one of the most memorable playing moments for me, not simply because I got to kick some tail (I did!), but because I stood the odds, stood up for my team on account of their inspiration, to that final moment when the cavalry came down. It was a real feeling of "hells yeah, SUPER he---roohhh, VILLAIN!!".

In the Forums my crowning moment was City of Oz which got noticed and tagged by a red name to be saved and brought over to the new Forums when the old ones got scrapped...


In-game I would have to say the time Edie Wyldfire, my Fire/Devices Blaster, somehow managed to survive a team-wipe in the last room of a sewer mission. While everyone hospital ported, she began laying down trip mine after trip mine at the room's entrance. The rest of the team arrived back at juuuuuust the moment she came running around the corner with the offending Council in hot pursuit... the explosions were magnificent... and final.

Here's a few of my most awesome moments, though not really restricted by character. All of these were on the Justice server.

1) Fighting most of the Freedom Phalanx and Vindicators (Albeit one at a time) in AV form alone on my bots/traps Mastermind and beating all of them except Statesman. Heck, I even was able to take on Ms. Liberty and Mynx at the same time and still won.

2) Even though I don't PvP often, there were two specific moments of PvP awesomeness. With the first, I took on 3 tanks at the same time with the same Mastermind on the roof of City Hall in Recluse's Victory and defeated them effortlessly even though they kept coming back. I really did feel like an unstoppable supervillain then. Likewise, I dove into a brawl in Warburg after being summoned there by a friend and completely wiped out everyone present, including the friend. He tells me he still tells people about that today.

3) Leading the defense of Mercy Island against the Praetorian Hamidon invasion. I kind of fell into the leadership position of the league and quickly snapped up everyone I could that was participating. When things started getting hairy, I started calling out priority targets and we managed to beat the invasion back. I'm still proud of the fact that I was able to help everyone pull that off.

4) This one is one of the oldest ones but I think it's the most iconic one for me. Way back during Issue 1 or so, I was around level 33 or so on my blaster and had just exited a mission in Perez Park. Now, keep in mind that this was back in the days when Hydra hunting in Perez was a big thing. As I went towards the center of the lake, I noticed a bunch of very high level (For the time. They were around level 38) 5th Column soldiers standing there with a lot of low level players gathered around them at a relatively safe distance, though occasionally one got too close and got mauled. They were definitely someone's ambush that was left behind.

I realized that as long as those 5th Column were around, a lot of new players were going to have a rough time. Not only that, but there weren't really many high level players that passed through the area and channels didn't exist for people to call for help yet. I knew what I had to do, even though I was vastly outgunned.

I told the players present that I would take on the 5th Column soldiers and prepared for battle. I hit every single inspiration in my tray and jumped into the fray. Every single lowbie joined in as well. They couldn't harm the soldiers but they were certainly trying. All that ended up happening was that the stakes rose considerably. If I fell, the 5th Column would easily slaughter them all. Using every trick and tactic at my disposal, I did what I could to keep the soldiers focused on me, even though my health suffered for it. Finally, I prevailed.

The funny thing is that after it was over, one of the lowbies said "That was easy!" That person had no idea how close we were to failing but I was okay with that. All that mattered was that they were safe. I felt like a hero that day, having made the streets safe for younger heroes to patrol, allowing them to eventually become full-fledged protectors of the city. That moment, I think, was what really made it clear to me what being in a city of heroes is all about and ultimately helped hook me into the game for good.

Night Widow - When the Reichsman SF (Barracuda's? I forget right now) was initally released and those ambushes were crazy as all hell, the group was getting swarmed, so I ran back to the choke point and started spamming my AoEs. Held the hallway full of Arachnos for the duration of the fight and kept on going, was awesome.

Dark/Dark Defender - Soloing a Kronos GM. <3

Without a doubt, my crowning moment in the game was waaaaay back in I2-ish era, I was taking out Quarry's solo on Monster Island on my kin/psy defender. This was obviously back before Giant Monsters got uber-buffed to their current state but it was still a lot of fun being a defender and taking out a Giant Monster solo. I believe (though could be mistaken) that I'm the only person to solo a giant monster with a defender. Like I said, however, I could be mistaken on that.

That was a long time ago... Gawd, I love this game...

(I just re-read a thread on the boards from just before I3 went live where I discussed this with some other kin defs from that time. Good memories!

All things fade and I've had many moments before, but here's a recent one I can easily remember.

Just days before the announcement I was playing my current fave Controller, Poltergeist Prince (Storm/Elec) on an eight-man PUG. We were running through a Orebanga (sp?) map that was experiencing that weird portal bug thing where sometimes you stepped through it and it took you to another portal, not the one your team-mates came out of. So our team was split about evenly and we thought we might try or fight our way back together... or maybe some players just rushed on thinking everyone was behind them.

So yah, at some point I ended up standing there over the prone bodies of my half of the team, with my HP bar looking about one sneeze away from joining them, facing a whole lot of angry orange- and red-con CoT. Holds, Jolting Chains, pulling out the Ghost-Slaying Axe when appropriate, clicking what Insp's I still had... and I noticed that a lot of the CoT were already low on HP too so I started concentrating my efforts and was seeing results and somehow wasn't dying.

At one point, one of the prone players says "Go Prince go" which was nice. I survived and got rid of over half the CoT in my area before the rest of the non-dead team-mates came around a corner. What really impressed me is this troller of mine doesn't have any sort of uber-build or anything, mostly just things taken for fun and slotted with IOs.

I love electric control. It can hold off basically anything indefinitely. Drain a whole group in five seconds flat while perma-mezzing them at level 20 is an amazing thing. It does pay for this with a lack of damage, but hey, that's what epic pools are for.

I have only 1 real accomplishment that I feel I can brag about:

When I was badge-hunting, I liked doing a lot of things the "right" way. So when I decided to go for the pvp badges, I jumped right in. I had a build not made specifically for pvp, and as often as not, I got my butt handed to me. But after a few weeks of a few hours here, a few there, I got myself that 400 rep. Just me in RV, sometimes teamed with others, often against superior numbers, grinding out pvp kills. The best part: it was fun as hell.

On a semi-related note: I'm trying to decide where Topher's resting place will be, if it comes down to it. I'm trying to think of someplace specifically that has to do with badge hunting, but atm I'm stumped.

Solo, sub-1:00:00, MoITF on two characters.

Soloed the following on my DM/SD:

Adamastor
Babbage
Kraken
Kronos Class Titan
Eochai
Jack in Irons
Paladin
Winter Lord

Missing only Lusca and Jurassik, mainly because it is a pain to fight Lusca and a pain to find Jurassik. Lusca takes FOREVER! I started once and got fed up after taking down 3 or 4 tentacles. Additionally, I've faced the following AVs, though not all were +4:

Anti-Matter, Arbiter Sands, Barracuda, Battle Maiden, Bile, Black Scorpion, Black Swan, Bobcat, Captain Mako, Chimera, Countess Crey, Diabolique, Dra'gon, Dreck, Ghost Widow (hard), Gyrfalcon, Ice Mistral, Infernal, Jade Spider, Lord Recluse, Magus Mu'Drakhan, Malaise, Marauder, Nemesis, Neuron, Nightstar, Requiem, Romulus Augustus, Schadenfreude, Scirocco, Shadow Spider, Shadowhunter, Siege, Silver Mantis, Psychic Clockwork King, The Honoree, Tyrant, Vanessa DeVore, and Wretch.

I've tried to solo most of the major level 50 TFs with him. I've had the most success with the ITF and the Reichsman TF. Before the HO nerf, I was working on a solo +4 MoITF.


On villain-side, my other character (TW/Elec) has beaten Caleb, Deathsurge, and the Ghost of Scrapyard. I haven't switched either character over to the other side, so they haven't got the chance to fight other GMs. With careful inspiration usage, he probably could do the LRSF (I've been the last one remaining on a team wipe, and managed to kill two Heroes before the team respawned), though I never tried to solo it with him.

Eons ago, tanking Mother Mayhem on my BS/DA scrapper because 90% of tanks were invuln back then. Tanking and thriving.

I've never really been into PVP, so naturally I never had any builds designed with it in mind. Still, I somehow won the scrapper tournament the Paragonian Knights held in Virtue one summer. Again, on my BS/DA.

As soon as Going Rogue came out I scrambled to get my Mercs/Poison MM blueside to badge hunt with my redside friends. We effortlessly pulled off a Master of Khan on a team of all squishies.

Again on my Mercs/Poison, charging into mobs with a boss or 2 a couple levels higher without bodyguard and surviving. The only attack I have on there is brawl.