Proud to be Poo!

Presenting the proud poogle Aggrobot.



Currently level six. I cannot really be bothered to level hard to make a Positron taskforce with someone I don't know, not when there is an Extraordinary Ass Clown event this Saturday. Ass Clowning must be had.

But I am a proud poogle today.

Level five and muddling around Hollows 2, when someone sends me a tell asking if I was looking for a team. I say yes, they invited me, and I went to Hollows. (Quite like Atlas Park and Atlas Park 2.) I realised it was a group of level 15 squishies and a scrapper. They have a mission with Igneous and Circle of Thorns and they needed a tank.

This was rather ridiculous. They could sidekick me to 15, but I have only rock armor, earth embrace, my first attack, and taunt. I would simply get mezzed to death by CoT bosses. I have no enhancements in my slots either -- trying to save up for DOs at 12.

But ok. I told them I would try. So I put on rock armor, and we moved slowly forward. Things went ok -- the empathy could keep up -- when there were no bosses. The moment a boss appeared, I was mezzed, and I died. Two team wipes. A third they ran when I dropped. Finally, they brought in another empath, one with clear mind. And somehow, between the two empaths, they managed to keep everyone alive.

Poogle, the rock-armored only tank, taunting and tanking oranges and yellows, kept alive barely by the empaths' spam-healing. Even then, it was amazing how much 'harder' a tank was compared to scrappers (whose defenses were of course not slotted at 15). Two scrappers (one brought in later) who would rapidly drop to half-point when a boss or lieut started to hit it. Basically naked tank, still able to absorb the hits by sheer hitpoint amount and the base resists in rock armor. Let's not even go into the two blasters; blasters squish.

Actually, you can say this wasn't really the tank doing anything, but the skill in two dedicated empaths. Hurrah for clear mind.

But it was so damn hard to keep aggro, when you're a sidekicked 5 and you can't even punchvoke a thing. Oh well, that is what taunt is for I guess. Messy battles in narrow Oranbega corridors. Yucks.

After that, I got mudpots, and herded a mission. I also died from overherding (Clockworks are bad to herd). Then I mudpotted a few hellions (no skuls in Galaxy City:p) to death and got rid of the debt. And then mudpotted a whole bunch more just for fun. Almost seven now... :P

Mudpots rule, rawr. Go pootanks!

Project Positank!

Today I have decided on a new CoH Project: Project Positank.

It was brought about by this posting

Poor fella. A funny yet horribly typical post about a Positron TF gone wrong. I suddenly have an urge to help that poor girl.

Could I...yes...is it possible for me to tank Positron? Am I tank enough, or will my inherent squishy tendencies overcome my wannabe-tankness and cause me to run away screaming "Acid Vomit! Acid Vomit! Ahhhhh!"?

Project Positank: Make a tank in Liberty and level it up to Positronability by Saturday. Tank for Positaskforce. Endure Acid Vomit.

Juli should pull an alt in Liberty (or make one) and we can Positaskforce together... and see this poster in action.

The question is, what tank? Don't want ice, have one and don't feel very tanky on it. Don't want fire, don't want to hear the squish. Earth and invul left. Hmmm. Earth or Invul? I know nothing about Invul tanks, and I liked seeing Ragnarl mudpot stuff...how about a stone tank? Yes, Juli should pull an alt in Liberty and be my stonetank-RTRL (real time reference library).

Project Positank!

---

Juli might also wonder why I left the group earlier in Infinity. My take on it is basically, if you want to team, we can team, but if you want to solo, I will let you solo.

Now if I group with some random person, and they start running around Hollows casually aggroing and attacking anything they want, without waiting for their team-mate (me), I don't really care that much. It is just some random person. But I know Juli should know better than that. For heaven's sake, she ran a team tank. And a controller. And an empathy Medicbot. She should know running off by oneself to jump into some group, and either fleeing before the battle is finished (because it got too hard), or managing to kill and then instantly running to the next, is not team behaviour.

Like I said, if she wants to solo, she can do it, I am not going to stay grouped at four am to try to chase after her speed-boosted butt with my sprint.

It could be that she was trying to get xp for the poor controller. But I chose to play a mind controller for a reason: I don't need to gain massive xp the same way I don't need to do damage, I like setting up the battlefield, managing aggro, I like to control and debuff. It is pretty meaningless to "get xp" on a controller like that...I have no pets to work towards, remember? My purpose is to be in battle and manage battle.

Mind control might not be the most visible control set, but then, neither are choking mobs. For someone who plays a (choke cough choke) fire controller, Juli seems to be pretty oblivious that I actually contribute something to the battle. And there is the reason why I draw massive aggro. I am a controller. Long after irradiate wears off, in between, I am juggling a bunch of mobs. This is what a controller does, and this is what I like doing. My primary is control, secondary is buff/debuff. If I wanted to do the inverse, I would be a kin defender.

Is it better to stand at a distance, keep a tight control over the mobs I am focused on, or run in and try to buff people resulting in aggro/run away/lose control? It could be argued that with more offense, the mobs would go down faster. But at the same time, there would be 2.5 mobs worth of aggro on the tankfender. Throw a dice. I am a controller/defender. I do not gamble. For me, slow and steady wins the race, so I do not throw dices hoping a one will come up. I calculate a probability distributions and play to that.

Yes, as a mind controller, at level 6, I can control three mobs at one time. But my current build goes for controlling two and debuffing one. So 2.5.

Again, Juli should be aware of what I do as a controller; she should know what controllers do. But I don't understand why she was exhibiting the scrapper-cardinal-sin of running frantically from spawn to spawn "soloing" them as the poor controller chases them, trying to control.

Ironically this is usually a defender chasing after a blaster or scrapper. Now it is a controller chasing after a defender.

A Kin/rad is very much like a blaster, I call it a defaster, a blaster with benefits. However, like a blaster, there is the problem of defenses. Rad/rad? Stand in the spawn and tank all day. Kin/rad? No mass damage mitigation until Fulcrum shift. I could be talking out of my mouth of course, I don't have a Kin up that high.

But I have levelled a Kin/rad up to 10...and initially, I felt invincible too. Spawns of oranges? Har, kill them. Spawns of reds? Har, kill them. Then around 10+, the defender offense doesn't quite size up...but then I was slotting primaries first. It is highly possible that by purely slotting the secondary, blaster with benefits can be achieved.

But we all know, AT doesn't matter, powerset doesn't matter. Slotting doesn't matter that much either. It's the mindset. Rather than try to keep up with someone who just wants to solo her way, I prefer to go to bed.

Rare, Uncommon, Common

Quick one. Just a short commentary on “rarities” and “uncommon” objects. Isn’t it strange human nature to want to chase something rare? The value of it goes up, and so does the demand. It’s like gold. No, it’s more like printed paper money. Or MUD gold. Inherently valueless but the object is afforded significance by a common pool, so then it becomes valuable.

My point? The Calvin Scott TF and the limited edition, Issue 3 souvenir, baby.

Hrmph. No, I don’t really agree with it from a player perspective, because from POV of a singleplayer game, I like all parts of the game to have an equally accessible chance. And CoH appeals because its pace is like that of a singleplayer game, you can pick it up and play, basically.

But because it has multiplayer roots, it must still give the nod to MMORPGs too sometimes, I guess. They’re taking it that way with as much forced teaming as they can get away with, nerfing powersets, and now limited edition souvenirs? I guess from a design perspective, I can understand (but not like) how having change, and purposefully injecting change creates this sense of history and continuity and flow in the overall story of the game.

So that people who have been here don’t get bored of the same-old, same-old. They can talk about the Halloween event of 2004, the WL event of 2004, and count by Issues. Post I2, post I3, PvP in by I4, etc.

No, I will never get a Halloween badge. Wasn’t here for it. Won’t get Cold Warrior either, though I have Frozen Fury everywhere. Somehow these didn’t matter to me because they were one-off events. Special events. Coolness but completely separate, ya know?

But now they are removing something that has previously been in-game. It disturbs me mildly, rocks my sense of balance and my expectation that it’ll alwas be there for me to do.

You know what though? I’m going to learn to fight the urge. I do not have to collect them all. Not even in Pokemon I can collect them all because I am not attending any real-life “events” to unlock speshul islands with speshul pokemon.

I am sorry, Explorer side, but you cannot have them all. I will not cater to the powergamer in me any longer who is screaming from the benches, “Lemme at ‘em, lemme at ‘em, I will level up in 5 days to level 30 so that you can do a Calvin Scott TF before they even finish tweaking PvP on Test.”

And what will I do after I get the souvenir? I will have missed dunno how much rich content during the level 20s. (And dunno how many relevant kill whatever badges, or TF souvenirs, etc, etc.)

I don’t know what the devs are thinking. First the WL (which hopefully States has said they’ve learned from it) and now this. Well, if the goal was to egg people who don’t think their way through these things to higher and higher levels, they’ve succeeded. People will be pleveling their way to catch this rare pokemon and then go, shit, I need to exempl down to do such and such.

A proper reward for reaching a certain level is not by creating rarities, it’s already in place. Hit 30 and you unlock auras and so on.
Rarities just unlock the uglier side of human nature. I have this, and you don’t. Nyah nyah nyah. I want to have it, I want it so bad – who do I have to kill to get it?

I wuz here first, so I am da senior, baby, I have dis kewl stuff and u don’t. Caters to the “I have a level 50 and so I know everything” crowd, doesn’t it?

*sighs* I guess it is an inescapable part of playing an MMORPG. Because the devs know there are sure enough shallow folk out there following the path of materialism and who will chase rarities without even thinking about why they’re doing so, because it’s habit to them. Money money money. Rare cool collectible.

Been there. Done that. Funny how hoarding three subversions and dunno how many sets of seth pales in fun when you run out of friends to play the game with.

This time, I will choose the path less taken.

---

CoH update. Week started, my playtime has dropped to virtual nil again. I managed to egg myself on and clean up the junk in my room and I actually untangled 10 different extremely long wires and set me up my speaker system. Now “Into the West” can echo through the place without me having to be chained to the comp by headphones. Woot, gradual progress, yes. Just a matter of tidying up the wires left.

Since I’ve got so many young brats hitting 20, it’s time for me to go explore the content of it. Back on Ravenhill, the insanely powerful killer. (Actually, it’s still a challenge because I just jump into the whole group, so my hp plummets as I swing and try to kill them all. I wouldn’t even consider doing it on another AT but tank, since doing that would be immediate lemming suicide.)

I hit my first solo outdoor map with the Wheel of Destruction story arc. Wow, it was cool, and I resisted the urge to clear every mob. Didn’t need that much xp. I did find all the pieces though, and took a couple screenies. Shucks, too bad they took it away when I gave ‘em back to contacts though. I wonder if people have ever tried keeping it and taking up a story arc slot? I liked the fire shield especially, and the sword and the fire blast were all quite cool. If it stacked on with Invulnerability, wowzers. And I would have ranged on a scrapper, and a pretty cool extra melee attack. Would make a fairly interesting pvper, I think, or be very useful on TFs. Just like me hoarding the 30 charge special attack wave scrambler to use on the Clockwork King. Very neat. Makes me also wonder if the devs ever thought about such uses and “loopholes” players are bound to find. I’m not even a dedicated loophole finder, but I know there are lots more hardcore than me out there.

Playing to Win

Now here's an interesting article that's written so well that it bugs me. And keeps bugging me. So I have to think about it and talk out to discover my opinion of it.

http://www.sirlin.net/Features/feature_PlayToWinPart1.htm

The other articles are, I believe, worth reading too, though I was focusing on the play to win ones for now.

In a way, it's all undeniably true what he says. That's how achievers/explorer types go all out to WIN.

And in another way, it is chillingly alien and scary to me. The mindset reminds me of an almost autistic way of thinking, very focused on esoteric detail, concerned about split and miliseconds of time, and remembering all sorts of trivia and so on.

Crud, when I put it that way, I'm disturbingly reminded of me and RoD and astral-capable roomfinds, and then it's not so damn alien anymore, is it?

But somehow it's totally disturbing. I think it's the amorality of it. Yea yea, call me a scrub, like 99.9% of the population. You've basically thrown aside everything else in a single-minded effort to excel at one thing, which is winning whatever competition/tournament you have your mind set on, within the legal rules of the game.

And humanity is chock full of a lot more baggage than that. That's why it hangs on your mind and you lose, I suppose. And the 0.1% that can throw away all that, win the contest. But, I wonder, what have they lost for it?

Again, perhaps RoD has taught me more lessons than I give it credit for.

There was a point in time when I was all out focused on winning. I wanted those glory numbers rolling in. Nothing could stand in my way. I wouldn't actually CHEAT, of course, but all those rule-bendings that are well, in the foggy grey area?

What was wrong with losing link on the thief, and logging a mage to go locate items? I mean, you could get away with the same thing if you just ordertalked and asked a mage friend to locate for you, right? Technically, you're still IP 1. Ditto for picking up heals with the same tactic. Especially if the mob is built so that it's unkillable with 200 heals (which is roughly the amount a well stocked thief carries, give or take 50.) That's how everyone plays, it's in the unofficial rulebook.

What about finding hidden keywords by dropping a, dropping b, dropping c, and so on until you got the correct name, thanks to the code which allows for abbreviation? Anyone could do it if they knew how and figured it out, just like I did by myself, right?

What about downloading every smaug area you could get your hands on, and using Windows Find to go pick out specific phrases? Heck, I knew Alexian was cyborging himself more than that, with his own written progs to datamine shit. What about using zmud to map every room possible - and use its search function also?

I type fast. I'm a blazingly fast typer. That wins me trivia contests. So what if I already pre-type the "quest " command and just type in the answer? Precious miliseconds saved. What if I saved myself typing c 'astral' wherever, by making an alias "ast"? Heck, I could make it an "a" alias if I wanted to.

What if I macroed everything in PK? That'll make me faster too.

Well, you get the picture. I could go on for a bit, so could Kelizendis, no doubt. I never stepped outside though. I know there were others who did, who tried to get away with duping, manipulating badly written progs, etc. I dunno if you want to call them external cheats or not, because the usual exploiter frame of mind was that it's in the code, it's legal to exploit the loophole if not patched up, I reported the bug already, etc. But well, if the imms came down on it and said No, and balzhured, then ok, not within the legal parameters.

But while playing within the limits and edging it ever so closely...

(Let us save the other rant for another day - about stupid younger imms who had no clue about these limits because they never actually PLAYED the questing game for real and acted like scrubs and tried to enforce "morality" rules on quests they made, not knowing that they'd never catch everything and would only serve twisted justice at best. End leet questor mini-rant.)

Well, I could be damn ruthless. It wasn't so obvious in normal questing because frankly, all ego aside, I was the best of them, competing against Alexian and Rathain, and when the two of them left, I lorded it for a mighty fine time before Zwanth showed up and I started to tire of the "playing to win" option.

And I never liked RoD PK. Something about the pointlessness of the game for me. Maybe no clear winner or loser per se, just a lot of equipment shuffling as you put it, and temp team tagging and lots of running away, etc. Or maybe because you guys were playing to your own set of little unofficial rules, while my "play to win" rules were basically the "don't die ever, kill others if you can." To me, the non-dying part could be very easily accomplished by running running running from any fight with bad odds which were nearly all of them fleeing fleeing fleeing constantly wandering around away from people until they got tired of it, since a lot of PKers have ADD anyhow, or until I got tired of it and logged off. Oops, end of game. And if you kill others, well, the easiest way to accomplish that is to really be a griefer and whack the smaller badly equipped newbs, you know. No, I can't really play with honour in this sort of unrestricted PK game, while I didn't have the will to play it so seriously that I'd figure out all the counters to PK'ers who wanted to enforce honourable play.

But I was ruthless in arena PK for a bit. Nice small enclosed area, very simple rules. Last man standing wins. I played to win. I made alliances, we ganged up on people. I avoided fights whenever possible to save and conserve heals, Geandakin was the ultimate arena sneak. And I'd murder whenever possible to get those precious extra hp-draining blows in, and jump into ongoing fights to side stab circle somebody so they'd run out of heals faster, etc.

And this one stands out starkly in my memory. An Asc arena pkill, friendly contest, pretty much, but I was playing to win. I'd never won before. You can try all those tricks, but when you're 120 dr vs Rath's 220+ and Alex's 180-190+ and all the other bigger guys out there, well shoot, you're not likely to win cos of sheer maths. But you see, NONE of these big guys were there that time.

I think there was only Viracocha and Daishan as the two biggest, followed by Tiggs and me and the rest of us normals. And those two were facing off against each other, cos they knew each other was the biggest threat.

Tiggs and me allied up, and we sliced through everyone else while the two titans were fighting each other. Oh, and I followed Tiggs, so Tiggs would initiate and tank and I would help out circle. This was just done naturally because he's the better instinctive tank, but as you might have figured out, this would add up to my advantage later on. Tiggs wasn't all out to win that day, so he didn't really mind, I believe.

Back to the clash of the titans. Dai lost. Vira won. But at what cost, yah?

Down to Tiggs, me, Vira. The honourable way would be to everyone ffa, right?

Vira picked Tiggs to target first. I have no clue why this always happens. I was never primary target except in GoC arena'ing, where everyone knew I was loaded for bear. Guess I seemed harmless. Heh.

So the two were fighting each other. I sat around and let 'em fight a bit, thinking my options over. Also conveniently draining each other of heals while I pondered the potential for an act of betrayal. "Accidental" or otherwise. Would that improve my chances of winning any?

(Of course, I wasn't totally amoral, and I'd feel bad if I backstabbed Tiggs then too. He'd never hurt me though, I knew. By the way, I eventually picked up/learned an interesting sort of loyalty from him and Aylssa, we never went after family until everyone else was down, then it was just for fun.)

Face it, Vira was the real threat with his dr. I don't think I could have survived him one on one, I wasn't that experienced at the time. So I went right after his ass. We mercilessly pounced him over and over, Tiggs and I never hit each other.

He lagged for one crucial instant when we both hit him at the same time, double circle, GAME OVER.

Then down to Tiggs and me, we mutually shook hands, said may the best man win, and went at it. As you can guess, it went down to who had most heals, and I was packing while he was sucking fumes.

I won. I got my only real arena PK trophy from that, not inclusive of Deathball.

I played to win. And I did.

But I still feel rather ashamed of it in retrospect because after that, Vira was completely upset. Partially because I think he expected to win, and partially because getting ganged on repeatedly by two people knowing you're doomed is no fun. He was spewing and fuming and going, what the heck was up with you. And at the time I told him, something like, hey no hard feelings, it was just the way it had to be. There was no chance of either of us low dr guys winning if we killed each other and let you rape us, we had to team up on you. Only logical way to go.

He's never believed I'm a gal because of this incident of sheer ruthless calculation. :)

Imo, this is the play to win philosophy epitomized at its finest. Cold hard logic and facts and math. Amoral. Selfish. Almost evil, imo. If I want to win, that's how it has to be, you know? I can't handicap myself and play nice and make people feel good, I wouldn't win like that, period.

You know, after that, I don't think I ever arena pk'ed again without seriously thinking about whether I would act cold and ruthlessly gang someone because the math dictates the necessity to, or play more fairly and for fun and not worry about the win so much. And I played more like the latter version. Scrub, yes! Play-to-winner turned back to a scrub because I felt a lot better about myself, and my reputation and social life felt better playing honourably and fair. Screw winning or even joining Horrorshow. My only participation in it was to try and earn a place for a friend.

That didn't stop my ruthless questing to win in RoD quests and exploration though.

And I carried it to the peak and beyond to learn an important lesson.

Winning and always winning is ultimately hollow.

Yes, if you want to win, you play the game just like that article wrote. You will win.

But what happens after you win? You feel happy. For a brief fleeing moment. And then it's gone like a drug and you want your next fix. You're not happy until you've won again, and then poof, the euphoria and elation is gone again. Back to the glory hunt and the pursuit of victory.

And you climb higher and higher up that hill of mastery, and you find yourself starkly alone at the peak. You are without compare. All those close to you are gathered lower than you, worshipping you with awe. Your image is adulated, not your true self. Yes-men surround you, buttering up your ego. You're a celebrity, a star, an amazement because of your powers and your talent.

And you cringe inside because you know you're not that good. One day you'll lose, and then people will know you for the fraud you are. One day you'll lose, and people will forget your name. But not this day, you can't lose today, you must win, you HAVE TO WIN. (It rips you up inside, seriously, talk about an emotional investment.)

AND GODDAMN EVERYONE WHO CANNOT KEEP UP WITH YOU AND ARE STOPPING YOU FROM WINNING!!!

Bloody teammates. Useless freaking morons. Dead weight. Feel like cutting them loose and letting them drown, but no, you need to drag them around like anchors because you need them to basically add damage and they have to follow you, it's part of the rules of the game to yank these fellows around. OMFG, they are so stupid they cannot even find a portal on their front doorstep so they can retrieve their corpse so we can go on to the next quest mob. And you go apeshit crazy and you start yelling because you're so frustrated and you take it out on everyone.

:P

It happened, you know, more or less. I can't say I'm proud of it.

And nearly the same scenario happened in miniature during Battle For the Galaxy: Natural Selection. Chock full of clan folks who were, naturally, play-to-winners with their special tactics and techniques for better play. Total breakdown over voice comms because everyone was so intent on WINNING and we were, incredibly, losing horribly. Everyone lashed at each other and blamed each other, tempers flared, tantrums thrown. These are 20-30+ something guys, you know. But the immaturity level and the politics out the ass. Hackusations thrown. Rants, back-seat generals and leadership trying to enforce themselves like drill sergeants. Wow. And they couldn't stand losing, so they recruited some Spanish clan players so they could beat the other side and WIN. Yay.

(It's funny how they're all so damn unpleasant to be around because they are so focused on this winning. They can only hang with each other. Even on forum boards, their mindset is all about everyone being noobs and nonserious players, while the only ones worth redemption are those willing to learn their mystic way of play-to-winning and competitive sporty play.)

And remember that high mountain peak? Of course you have peers. They are on other mountain peaks of their own, they are your rivals. They're striving to get higher and find bigger mountains to climb, and you are doing the same thing. No way you can share your secrets. Nope, not talking to anyone...

...Gee, dammit, it's quiet up here...

...And it's getting kinda lonely...

---

I'm not even sure what my point is, but I think I'm trying to grope toward telling people that winning is not all it's cut out to be.

Been there, done that. It's fun for a while, and then you suffer with the loneliness or you burn yourself up and out with hate, jealousy and obsession with competing and winning, and fear of failure and losing.

Maybe you had to have been through similar things before you'll recognize it and understand. Maybe I'm wasting my breath saying this stuff for anyone, and admit that it's just to purge myself of this article.

Maybe it's a guy thing. Maybe the testosterone and the age-old sex drive and hierarchical pecking order of mating is saying that you need to win. No two ways about it. Biologically, it might be an imperative. And that's spread itself to other aspects of life, this needing to win.

Emotionally and spiritually though, I think it's really bad for you, no matter what gender you are.

---

So now I play for the goal of having fun on the journey. I think that's better.

And I think now's a good time to remind myself of it, because CoH PvP is coming, and so is Guild Wars and their PvP which is basically for this subset of hardcore play-to-winners. I'll leave them to it. Either they will eventually have a similar revelation, or they will be happy doing what they are doing. Either way, it's none of my business and I won't stick my nose in it.

Easter Retrospective - CoH

*stretches* So...let's talk CoH. I did mention I binged all freaking weekend, and only rested on Monday to go explore my new found revelation that I can watch dvds on computer. 8)

1) Get a guy into The Core
I was gonna give up. I swear I was pretty damn frustrated because I couldn't find an officer all weekend. I mean, hello, weekend - I'm up in the morning, up at night, up at dusk, up at dawn, up at twilight, up at midnight like a hyper monkey playing umpteen alts and I never catch anyone logging online? What kind of activity or lack of activity is this?! Maybe it's like Asc, you know, helluva solid rep but dying from the inside with activity drying up.

Since I was turning on the computer anyhow to go watch LOTR on Monday, I said, ok, one more time, we'll log on Raggy and scan friends list to see if I see anyone on. Scan scan scan, nothing. Oh screw ittttt... And then I noticed Honeythrasher online.

Oh.

Hrm.

Do I want to? Should I? Do I dare?

Heck, why not. So I sent him a tell and starting talking to him as I was superjumping and bouncing myself all around a skyscraper roof in Talos Island. (I dunno why, but Raggy invites bouncing, something about his small size, maybe.) He's working on his Zookeeper badge.

It goes by fairly effortlessly, he just chats and does a simple interview. Heck, less stressful than a GoC interview, imo, and a lot more give-and-take, was asking him about the SG, play times and AT mixes, and so on.

Apparently, playtime is frequent but erratic, primarily scrappers, blasters, defenders, so a tank is quite welcome (muhaha, good choice of alt there), many like soloing but not adverse to teaming, and activity is log in within 30 days or yer out. Seems nice and casual.

And yep, am now a proud member of The Core.

Woot. Now I just gotta remember to keep playing Raggy every so often and not get totally sidetracked. Can't be that bad. One can only play squishies so long before one wants to be rock 'ard. Cackles.

2) Umpteen Task Forces
Yes! I did do them. I set out to get them done, and I did! *proud* One Positron, and two Synapses. That's like 15+ hours, pretty much.

Unfortunately, Ochre's TF missed Babbage, and so I'm not a totally happy camper. That means either I camp Boomtown and die of boredom (and then from his psychic attacks when I realize I can't solo him if he ever shows)...or I do another Synapse. *sighs* He's lvl 21.5 or thereabouts, so this is my last chance unexemplared. Since I have to team the bastard anyhow, I'm going to do it again. Next weekend, I guess.

3) More altholism
Oh yah, I went hog wild on this. *happy* I made a little kinetics/rad who was quite fun to play. I have designs on The Conglomerate SG, in, I think, the Infinity server. But I'm gonna let this one grow up and see who I meet first. Rapid Meltdown, he was gonna be my initial defender alt to level up to 50 like Raggy the tank, Ravenhill the scrap, Ochre the 'troller and Vesuvius the blaster.

Surprisingly, I logged MedicBot for fun and ended up jumping up a whole bunch of levels, having had the luck/fortune/leadership to find a team with a fire blaster, and then add on a fire tank later and made 'em all go street hunting in Perez after doing one too many Hollows missions. And since we had bubblers fairly often, I was also a rather -bored- bot. And Idolator came along to provide some solid tanking before the fire tank, so we were chugging through xp good. Got clear mind and resurrect. I can't wait for recovery aura, cos that should make me one exceedingly valuable xp leecher to team with. *snicker* Once I get RA, I should prolly go find a Bots SG guy to just invite me in, so I have a bigger pool of random PuG morons to team with.

I showed off my two RP/theme concept characters on Virtue to Kelizendis. Mr. Feng's martial arts skillz seemed to be very hilariously fascinating, though I'm actually not sure the poor boy can do anything besides knock around level 1 hellions. One day I will get him a mission or go solo hunting in king's row to find out. (I do have two dark blasts, one a sniper attack for more leet xp on the WLs, but useful in pulling, no doubt.)

I forgot to show you one more though, Keli. The Greenish Knight. Remind me if you're curious about him sometime.

We had a total blast on Gruthak and Don Chiaroscuro though. Least I did. Call it typecasting, but I can do big burly dumbass ork any day. Very natural for me to roleplay it for some reason, and I can do the orky accent and behavior off the cuff to amuse everyone in the team. Think we amused that controller Nuclear Twinkie to no end.

Some very fun moments:
+ You know, I was so deep into Gruthak that I really didn't have a clue wtf you meant by headjob guy until you had the controller in the team and said it again, and then I was like, oh, I think that's what he meant.

+ Don making Gruthak do the running to get missions, "da jobs," I didn't mind at all since I wanted to get my contact explored fully, and I was on Tenacious anyway for more xp.

+ We went to go beat up some hellions for the first mission cos they were "infringing on the Don's territory", and then while running to the second mission, either an ambush caught up with me or I was running really carelessly and aggied two groups. So I was fighting 'em off, and Don was like, WTF are you doing, you brute. And I explained it off as an ambush from our first attack. :) Was almost like some mob movie.

+ Then out of one mission, since we had the lowbie controller along, I decided to go hit hellions to get the guy some extra xp. And the only mission up was some 'visit security chief' thing, which wasn't my mish, so I couldn't run to talk to the guy anyway. And of course the Don screamed, and I'm like the big dumb brute with a heart of gold trying to be a superhero and stopping this people from 'breaking in and entering stuff', and the Don was like, FINE. Don't expect me to pay your hospital bills if you get into trouble. *rofl*

And then "I got dem boss! I got dem!"
"Good, don't forget my 90% cut."
"Ok."

I wish we logged the chatlog. I forgot to, alas.

+ And then running around in Atlas Park, I run into my usual trouble:
"Why don't dey make stairs in this city, boss?"
"... Just kill people."

+ The zombie mission:
"But boss, dis is a drain."
"Get in." "Just get in before I get mad. You don't want to see me MAD."

And the really hilariously timed serenditious sort of exchange, when we charged into a whole bunch of stinking Vahz, with the expected results...and I managed to get out something like "What's da new plan, boss?" while surrounded by what seems like countless zombies spitting with my hp teetering.

And Don's classic reply. "Run."

And because EM punchvoke truly sucks at low levels and there were so many zombies and Don's slugs were like hitting for twice my damage, they were all starting to charge past me and at Don...

And I went, "Wow, dis is like dat TV show."

And of course, Don's rejoiner. "No wonder they are attacking me. They want BRAINS."

And mine. "Oh."

*rofl* It was terribly funny. We have to do it again some time. If you don't like AR, think of a different powerset you'd like, maybe. Your vampyre lookalike, perhaps.

Let's see, what other characters did I play. I did a few more of Ravenhill's missions. It's scary. I'm on tenacious and I cut through a whole group of mobs that would take Raggy or Ochre ages. I can see why scrappers go up to invincible for a challenge. In this case since I'm getting challenge by the bucket loads with the other gimpier builds, I'm happy to enjoy scrapper god mode. Even if it usually ends up with me having a sliver of hp at red, standing with the whole group of enemies at my feet. That's the one thing about a scrapper not built to explore the dark control side. You engage, you're there until one of you drops. Running away just exposes your back with no way to fight back. Your chances are better face-to-face, mano-a-mano.

4) Inventory my Characters
Still working on this, I got about 3-4 characters recorded. :/ I might just make more plans on this blog, seems to be the easier, more successful way to make progress.

5) Drool over Test
I did for a while, but stopped to play on Live more. I'll do it after they get PvP up and the Test server stabilizes with the influx of dunno how many bored level 50s from every Live server coming to test PvP and whine about regen.

All in all, I guess I did accomplish what I set out to do over the weekend. Congratulations, Task Force Thursday! Yay, me, myself and I. :P

Upgrades, Upgrades

I hate Dell.

I wasn't going to get a Dell computer. I specifically refused to get one.

But everyone gets Dell, so when I was trying to find a second hand computer, everyone was selling second hand Dells. So I gave in and bought one.

So recently, I decided to upgrade my memory. Dell wants to sell me 1Gb for $600. Eh? I can buy the same memory chips from ebay or just anywhere for $100-200.

But of course, if I use non-Dell memory, there is the problem with warranty.

So now I am vacillating, wondering if I should spend that extra $400 to buy from stupid Dell. Probably not.

Now, I want a new video card too, because my recent video performance shows distressing signs that my video card is starting to slowly bite the dust. I checked my power supply, and see a 250W rating.

250W? What kind of computer has a 250W power supply? Doh.

We all know what is going on of course. Dell makes computer from bad parts and sells it under a brand name for disgusting amounts of money. We all know that, we all refuse to buy Dell.

For $600 I can get new memory, a new power supply, and a new video card. Do I really want to buy Dell? Not really.

I hate Dell. Yes, I do.

Of course, this will have to wait till I pay off my credit card for last month so I get a fresh credit limit to splurge for my computer upgrades. Call it preparing for I4.

By the way, Juli, you should make some kind of archiving for the blog. There are so many posts now...

Easter Retrospective - RL

Hmm, I wish I could remember more often the old saying “Rome was not built in a day.” I find myself always chafing at the thought of slow, gradual progress. I always expect things to get done in a snap of the finger. Impossible things. I should remember that the people of LOTR spent four years working under crushing deadline to produce three films of beauty. And I wither under four weeks? Or worse, four days? *sighs*

Spent nearly all of last night watching the Return of the King extended edition. At the cost of precious hours of sleep again, but I think it was worth it. It’s brilliant, they had more room for short snippets of often funny character interaction, and the Saruman/Orthanc scene at the start is worth the price of admission alone. Man, the power of his –voice-. Oh, and the really frickin’ cool model of Minas Tirith is worth the collector’s edition too. I didn’t get the Gollum model for the Two Towers set, not my cuppa tea, but the Argonath for the first film and this city rules. Heavy weight well-sculpted architecture that could kill someone. :)

I think the real power in LOTR, and one of the reasons why it did so well was because it embraced natural vistas and bigatures that were enhanced by CGI, rather than just glomming it all together from CGI. And getting THE two Tolkien artists to provide the vision had to be a damn good decision. New Zealand’s natural scenery, made cooler through raising it to the fantastic technicolor of Middle-Earth really embodies what fantasy is all about. Larger than life, and heroic, and epic.

And it wouldn’t work without Howard Shore’s phenomenal power for orchestral music score. Through nearly the whole damn movie, his themes are singing over and over. And frankly, while I couldn’t write a note to save my life and my understanding of music is limited to humming melodies, music can still touch me like everyone else. It’s a very humanistic element, and he used also solo human voices in important places to lift that connection even further.

And yes, one is pretty much blubbering by the time the end credits roll and “Into the West” starts playing – especially once you realize that the song was inspired by the struggle of a terminally ill young filmmaker named Cameron Duncan.

I might be a bit morbid thinking on this now, but I think “Into the West” would make a good funeral theme, a nice eulogy to be played over my coffin when I finally go, whenever that is. :) Would be a nifty nod to my love of fantasy as well as something that would just touch heartstrings all over.

Dunno, hearing this story in the appendixes got me to thinking about my own eulogy. Apparently Cameron Duncan wanted to be remembered, that’s why he started making all this short films and everything, and now he is, his story preserved for posterity in the dvd. Do –I- want to be remembered by the whole world? Not really. I don’t lust for fame. It actually would make me feel real uncomfortable if my name was proclaimed from shore to shore. I just want to be remembered by people that I’ve touched personally, I guess. I’m a fairly bad introvert as it goes.

What sort of memorials would I want to leave? Frankly, I also don’t know. I dabble in so many hobbies, so many pasttimes, I doubt I’d ever be able to focus in on one long enough to go deep and produce something solid. In fact, I think once I leave this world, I wouldn’t care what I leave in it, since I’d be gone anyhow.

I think, and am trying to grope towards something here, that maybe for me, it’s not so much the end product that counts, but the journey. It’s not so much about what I leave for other people when I go, but what I’ve done while I’ve been here and how happy with myself, how content I am with the going-ons of my life.

The Tao of Things.

Maybe that made no sense at all, and maybe it had even deeper implications than I thought. But it’s something I need to work through at this point in time anyhow, and it’s all inspired by watching much LOTR and hearing that haunting music.

On a more prosaic note, I did absolutely NOTHING to tidy up my room despite my resolve that I would do something. Oh well. I did make a list, though, of all the stuff that’s not right with my room and needed to be handled at some point. Gradual progress, huh. Maybe another day when I can actually consider lifting the comics from the floor and retrieving the dust covers under the bed and putting them one inside the other.

It’s not the same type of depression I’m used to. Or White Wolf’s Harano of utter despair. It’s not the ‘life is not worth living, the world is going to hell in a handbasket, I’m so miserable and worthless and a failure and a lazy bum and a procrastinator to boot, why bother’ - teary-eyed, shaky emotions, lie in bed and feel depressed about not being able to sleep but unable to do anything else either – kind of depression.

It’s more a blank sort of constant procrastination until I’m not feeling anything any more. Except this untargetted urgency and anxiety at many things being left uncompleted and becoming faintly overwhelming. But thinking about it too much would make one extremely miserable, so you keep it at a distance so you don’t feel anything. And then you search for immersion in games, movies, anything. An escapist, avoidance kind. Hrmph, dunno, maybe it’s not as unfamiliar as I thought.

I’m feeling down partially because I have two very expensive Winsor and Newton Series 7 brushes that I’d like to try out for painting my minis, but I haven’t been able to overcome this miserly instinct to hoard them and not use them. It’s a ten buck brush (US$), I mean, wow. What if I spoil it…what if I’m not worthy of such a high quality brush…I’m regressing back to childhood because evidently, so my parents told me, I have no artistic ability, because my parents have no talent for art as well. A genetic thing, I suppose. So obviously I cannot splurge on myself and buy a good brush to paint well. I must stick to cheapo nylon brushes because that’s all I should paint with. This is very twisted reasoning, I know, but we’re all a little warped somewhere by our childhoods. The paint desk is overrun by too many unpainted minis, it’s like an accusing little graveyard. I suppose having a literal army of un-repainted D&D plastic minis sitting by my keyboard doesn’t quite help either. They look passable to middling ugly, and I –know- I can paint them better, but I don’t seem to be able to do anything about it. Nor had the time or inclination to sit down and paint anything else.

I ought to be more like those insensitive brats online who are full of themselves and have no self-doubt at all. Overflowing with ego. Even after charging endlessly into packs of mobs and trying to pull with Nova. Full of action and fury and ready to lead people to death, doom and destruction. But well, I’m more the type (in real life anyhow) to see it as really really moronic and to sit somewhere not taking the risk to leap in. Maybe that’s why I play scrappers/tanks online, so I can be a hero in my imagination without real harm coming to me.

However, I did get many purple stitches done in my Winnie the Pooh cross-stitch, after finishing some pink flowers. (Did I just say that in this blog…) The frame border is taking on shape after just a few days since Thursday. I have realized that at certain points when one is sitting in front of a computer monitor, it is quite easy to pick up a small piece and start stitching away, as long as you’ve figured out how many stitches you need in a row. One point being watching stuff on dvd. When the pictures are moving too slowly or you don’t really want to see it or you’ve seen it before, but are enjoying the music anyway. And the other point being doing CoH TFs. (Yes, you knew I’d eventually get back to the supposed topic of this blog.)

---

Which brings me finally and in a most roundabout way back to a review of the Good Friday to Easter Sunday weekend, and see how plans made on Task Force Thursday came to fruition.

See next blog.

Sidetrek: Riddick Movie Reviews

I can't say I regretted a moment of my CoH binge all weekend, from Good Friday to Easter Sunday. Unfortunately operating on effectively 4 hour power-naps whenever one felt tired makes one feel more than a little spaced out and airy at 4.45pm on Monday. Yay black Monday blues.

Heck, I got a lot more than CoH done. The DVD player's still not connected in the new place yet, but I had this sudden revelation that I could watch DVDs on my new computer. (Old laptop just had a crummy CD-ROM drive.) Wanted to watch the LOTR ROTK extended edition and the two Riddick flicks, and ended up picking the latter up first.

See, I wasn't impressed with the reviews of Chronicles of Riddick. It was trash, apparently, so nah, not wasting money. But well, another member of the house loves collecting DVDs, so I'm not arguing if it appears at home one day and I can just pick it up and watch it.

And then I picked up the PC game version of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay - which according to reviews, was great - and may I add my own fervent attestations that it is SUPERB. Hell, I'm playing it over Doom 3. I installed both at the same time and tried both out, and I'm gunning to complete Riddick: EFBB first. It is totally atmospheric, brilliant graphics on the scale of Half Life 2 and better (the PC version, given a presentable GPU card), the story seems nice, and it's well...it's a mix of first person action shooter + sneak game + RPG almost. As in you can talk to a whole bunch of prisoner inmates and they are all perfectly characterized. I have no way to describe it except to say go play it. It's a world unto its own. And it made me a Riddick fan. I want to know more about him cos he's such a cool anti-hero.

I was debating which to watch first. Pitch Black or Chronicles. I decided to go with chronology. Good thing I did. I have as much praise for Pitch Black as I have rants about Chronicles of Riddick.

The good first. Pitch Black is a brilliant sci-fi movie. In the good sense of sci-fi. Which means speculative elements, and solid story and so on. I can see why it has a following. I'm now a fan too.

Ok, I'd admit there are a few elements which are slightly cliched. The predator alien things have been done to death, but it is a classic theme after all, I accepted it in Alien, in Predator, in Warhammer 40K and so on, I can swallow one more.

But it's so much more. It explores human nature very well, and capitalizes on "role reversals." It's a movie that relies on suspense, rather than sheer gross-out horror or random action to move the story along.

I'm desperately trying not to spoil anything, but I must ooze about the climax. Riddick personified a Luciferian devil. It was brilliantly fitting. All the plot threads clicked together so well, even in an admittedly fairly stereotypical setting, that I have great admiration for the screenwriters of this movie. I prostrate myself before them. They know what true Sci-Fi is about. Humanity, basically.

I must watch it again to get the bad taste of the second film out my mouth.

I'm a Riddick fan. Because of the game. And then because of Pitch Black. I did everything in chronological order - game first (prequel), Pitch Black, then the sequel...

I had SUBTITLES on the damn DVD movie. It was the director's cut version which apparently fills in the blanks better. I still didn't 'get' nearly half of Chronicles. I pity the unsuspecting fools who watched it in movie theatres.

It has two redeeming features. It looks visually stunning, the CGI is amazing (almost over-the-top at some points, ala Star Wars-type "I have many powerful computers and a big budget so must crap rendering effects and multiple spaceships for the hell of it") and the action moves along like a Blade movie. Expect much ass-kicking and big flaming explosions.

Second redeeming feature is that it's a good movie for demonstrating how NOT to write a movie, especially a sequel. I could spend fifty thousand words ripping their script, story, and setting to shreds and using it to demonstrate proper world building for novels and movies.

I'm now going to have fun with a rant. Don't worry about spoilers. You still won't understand half of it even when I explain it to you. I still don't.

First criminal rule broken: Never mix sci-fi and fantasy if you don't know what you're doing. You'll hurt yourself.

Shadowrun, Palladium, these things are ok if you have the taste for them. They took choice elements and put them together. Even the Darkover series is more sci-fi than fantasy, and Pern the other way around. And they are an acquired taste, with each book focusing more on various aspects of this world.

In movies though...I haven't found any good redeeming movies of this sort. Number one, fantasy and sci-fi flicks are already hard enough to make and get right. Good fantasy movies can be counted on one hand (including the LOTR movies as three separate ones, perhaps Monty Python), with a bunch more semi-passable ones (Excalibur) and kinda watchable (Willow - didn't really like this, YMMV and Dragonheart - I liked it, others thought it was crap, I'm a sucker for a dragon with Sean Connery's voice) ones. Sci-fi has been around a bit more, so it's better off. There's still a bunch of rubbish more than good films though...

If you MIX the two, urgh. Well, you get as badly laughed at as the D&D movie trying to rip Star Wars - Phantom Menace and the Ewok village off.

Guess what Chronicles of Riddick does immediately?

I suppose some executives must have seen the success of LOTR, and said, maybe we can add this? And that?

Well...you got your crummy FANTASY all over my nice sci-fi flick.

We start with a NARRATION. There be the forces of GOOD, NEUTRAL and EVIL. Except that there's no good in this world. There's just EVIL (Riddick) and STRONGER BIGGER BADDER MORE EVIL (the bad guys) and NEUTRAL.

The evil guys are Riddick, whose actions in the present film consist of going around saving and rescuing people and killing the bad guys, so you had to have watched Pitch Black to know he was supposed to be an evil guy, he's an ex-con who murdered people, you see. And his "love interest" an previously androgynous girl previously known as Jack, now Kyra, as said by the drop dead sex appeal oozing actress pretending to be an animalistic killer and only succeeding in oozing WWF catfight lady.

Oh, and Riddick is revealed to be the lone surviving member of a race called Furyans or Furions, with unimaginable power, except they're all dead, killed by the other surviving member of the race who has turned bad and is Lord Vader/Emperor Palpatine/Lord Sauron/That evil overlord from Willow - oops, wrong movies?

You see, PROPHECY states that a young boy who survived the evil overlord's purge will grow up to depose of said evil overlord. (Henceforth shortened to EO.) EO proceeds to purge and kill all young boys but misses lone survivor. EO finds lone survivor after he has grown up, and is now terrified that PROPHECY will come true. EO tries to hunt down lone survivor through the course of the movie, sending literally armies after him, but of course, EO fails. EO dies as PROPHECY states. This is supposed to surprise or entertain us in some fashion.

The neutral guys consist of these funky people called Elementals. Fire, Water, Earth, Ether, Air apparently, though only one Air Elemental lady ever shows up. She plays the role of narrator/fortune teller/seer/prophecy speaker/time waster/plot device. They apparently do nothing but Watch. And somehow manage to fuss with the balance just watching and talking to both the evil guys and the really evil guys. For some unexplained reason, neither side kills the neutral lady and engages her in dialogues where she proceeds to expound in joyous detail about the scriptwriter's fantasy world.

Oh, and the really evil bad guys? Actually the premise is kind of interesting. Even if it sounds like someone wrote it when they were twelve. Reminds me a bit of Sheol and the Shadowsuckers (in-joke to Kelizendis).

You see, they are some kind of death-worshipping cult army who enslaves people to their side, making them exist as twilight shadows of themselves in a Nazi-esque Star-Wars Stormtrooper army, or turn them into pathetic tormented zombie wretches who are leashed and forced to sniff out living beings in a fairly sinister Nazgul fashion. They come to planets and tell people "Convert or Die." Too bad they never go into detail on the forced conversion process in which people afraid to stand up for their beliefs are /turned/. Because I saw a lot of White Wolf Wraith-like potential.

Apparently the Die part is more nasty. (Or at least provides greater opportunity for CGI effects without giving the movie an R rating for brutal violence, torture or something.) Nope, people who stand up for their beliefs get their souls sucked out by Emperor Palpatine, um..sorry, I keep getting confused, the Lord Marshal. And for those who don't warrant this personal treatment, well, they just get cut down randomly by the stormtrooper army or turned to ash when they release their giant planetkiller bombs. [However, they also forgot to have anyone standing by watching in horror a la Londo Mollari or the B5 crew as they did this. And as everyone knows, without decent human beings expressing shock and horror at billions of people dying, all movie audiences will simply accept it as more flash, boom, bang CGI.]

Here is where the cardinal rule of fantasy is broken. This was established by Tolkien for goodness sake's. If you're going to use fantasy, how about respecting it.

NAMES.

It's not about stringing random syllables together, dears. And yes, symbolic meaning is important, but there's no need to whack us over the head with it either. I can accept things like Hellion Prime (sun) and Crematoria (ashes). It's ok, even if some other critics hated it. At least they sound respectable.

But um...the name of my most evil bad guys are...NECROMONGERS?

I keep seeing fish mongers. That are dead, I suppose.

Either that or I think of Powermonger, the Amiga game that seemed pretty good when I played it then, but has not aged well through time.

Yes, Necrons are copyrighted by Games Workshop, no doubt. (Disclaimer: this is not an intellectual property challenge to them.) How about The Necromium. At least it sounds slightly bit more threatening?

I'm not even going to get into the suspension of disbelief and logic required to accept the existence of their organization. Suffice to say that a motto of "You keep what you kill" does not seem to make for a stable, lawful evil sort of army.

The term "Breeders" is never explained. Does it refer to Riddick soley, because he's some kind of special Furyan who must be 'bred' - nothing of the sort ever happens, by the way, would have been nice to see Vin Diesel's muscled bod like Brad Pitt's Achilles, might have redeemed the movie like Troy. :( All they do is mind-read him. Heck, the blue lipped overlord from the D&D movie, Damodar, did a better ham-fisted mind-rape type scene. (At least he did it to a girl, you know.)

Or is that the general term for all non-Necro(shudder)mongers.

Lensor is also a stupid term. Sensor + Lens? Because it's a plate glass lens-wearing zombie who can Nazgul sniff stuff? Um. Try again. Shame because those zombies -were- cool. Even a non-descriptive term like 'revenants' would have been better. "Set the revenants to hunting and sniffing out the living!" vs "Set the Lensors blah blah" Which would you rather shout? This movie is suffering from a surfeit of capitals.

It's about the sound, guys. It's fantasy. Tolkien the linguist showed you how. Even Games Workshop can do better, with their latinesque Space Marine Brother Chapters and graceful sleek Eldar, wraithbone and Khaela Mensha Khaine and da tuff, 'ard-'eaded Deathskull Orks! Waaargh Grisknakh! It's not just stringing words together from a dictionary. You have to pay attention to the MOOD and ATMOSPHERE and feeling you're generating.

Mixed with this nonsensical 'A' plot is a perfectly presentable 'B' plot about Riddick breaking his nominal love interest (actually, if you watch Pitch Black, he just has this slight soft-heartedness towards children, so there is a perfectly acceptable sentinemal reason without involving romantic love) out of a triple-max security prison and out-smarting bounty hunter mercs to do it. They have to race across the burning surface planet of Crematoria which gets unbelievably hot in the daytime and chars everything to cinders, and terribly cold at night. Just conceivably if you do it just before the sun hits, the contrast between night and day might make it survivable temperature - but it makes for an interesting chase/dash action sequence anyhow.

I wished the movie focused on this plot instead of the ridiculous fantasy elements. It might have been saved from shooting itself in the foot so often.

Gallery of Held AVs?

I am awful. I know.

There is this little boy thing in my that makes me dance around and gleefully spam lalala when I manage to lock down an AV. Then I make multiple screenshots of that Big Bad Villain frozen with its hands in the air and a funny look on its face, while my team-mates are all focused on chopping it up.

I was flipping through my screenshots earlier when I noticed, to my amusement, that so many of them were of held bosses or AVs. sigh

Worse of all, when I was looking at them, I found myself looking admiringly at them, and going "Yay, nice screenshot". Then I found myself unable to resist showing them off.



The clockwork Ice-cube



Hi Evil-Malaise!



Yeehaw!



Hi Hopkins!

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I love my story-arcs now. I really have to suicide more often so I don't outlevel them. Recently, for the first time in a long time, I found my heart beating rapidly as I did a mission. It was a huge Oranbega map with endless miles of crystal lit tunnels.

I entered a doorway, and to both sides of me was darkness.

I turned left, and walked on... and on...it was a tunnel, unlit. I could not see anything.

Then there was a dim glow...and there was...a...portal? As I stood there watching, demons started to pour from the portal.

Here it gets less dramatic as I ran for it and arrested the behemoths that followed :P, then went back and tried to snipe the portal.




But I'm a defender, damn it! I can't make it go boom boom like a scrapper or a blaster can. So more behemoths arrived.

And more, and more, and more. Happily I finally closed the portal and cleaned up the packed room.



Bad behemoths!

Task Force Thursday

Welp, not exactly. More like plotting future TFs on Thursday. Tomorrow is going to be Good Friday, I don't have to work on Saturday, cackles. Three unadulterated days of CoH'ing!

Going to list my plans so I can keep track of them:

1) Get a guy into The Core
Deep-Blue has just bumped his thread today, so I presume this means they want more members. I'll have to log on some early morning and see if I can catch the est'ers online. Decisions, decisions, I have a tank, a blaster and a controller. Who am I most liable to enjoy playing and get to 50 first? Not to mention, most wanted in teams and so on?

Alas, probably Raggy. So I guess he's it.

2) Umpteen Task Forces

I played Bad Punc today, I noticed he's near level 16. That means I better hit 16, get my integration, slot it, and go do Posi.

Ochre and Vesuvius are 19, 20 - that means Synapse for those boyyos.

Guess no one needs Psyche just yet, though Raggy should be in the ballpark real soon. Raggy is nearly 24, so I have to be suicidal and try Terra Volta respec on him at least once.

Ravenhill will take a while, but I should solo him a little more to 24 and do a respec too. In fact, I will probably aim to do the respec on Raven first, so that I have a clue what it looks like and how bad it is before making myself look a fool on a tank.

3) More altholism

Heh, I should also seriously make a defender. Funny how I have one of every type but the def. Wonder if it's a reaction from playing Juli the Cleric for too long, or just a reluctance to figure out so many powers?

It's a shame, but I'm out of slots on Justice. I have one lousy ice/ice named Freeze-Bot, but I want to make a Kheldian warshade on Justice eventually, so I am keeping that slot for it.

The emp/dark is taking a bit too long, and I am NOT playing cleric-y healer to a team of 'yay we hav healr!!one!11!' morons for a while, until my tolerance levels rise to Piffany's saintly standards again. That'll take a while to recharge. Maybe a few months.

I will wait for the dark/dark/darkity ruckus to settle down and all the changes/upgrades/nerfs to balance themselves before playing the dark def.

That leaves the following options, FF:

NO. NO NO NO NO. Sorry, but an FF defender will be played only as an expert class. No more stinking bubbles for a long time until Ochre hits 50. And I have no clue how to smartly deal/work with knockback stuff. Perhaps an FF/energy in the extreme future would be interesting.

Storm: Heh. Sorry, but if I wait a little while more, surely they'll give storm just that bit more loving. I'll play Mr Feng as a theme concept character some time, but I haven't quite figured out how a really good expert stormie plays yet, another expert build for later.

I think I'm left with Kinetics or Rad as defenders that suit my style of play.

Funny thing is, I have a lowbie Kinetics. I have some even more lowbie Rads. But I can't seem to get any inclination to play them. The servers they're on seems too damn quiet or something.

Come on, Kelizendis, pick us another home server besides Justice. I'd might go to Freedom otherwise, and I think you scream that it's laggy too. :P There's Virtue, but I'm scared of hardcore RPers. :P I rather keep it for my theme concept builds.

Maybe I should go lurk in the Supergroups thread and see if there's any recruiting that will help my new baby Kinetics or Rad. :/

4) Inventory my Characters

Need the big picture. Need a spreadsheet. Need to make a head count. Need to figure out who is what level, what AT/powerset, what they are supposed to be doing (whether TF, mission, gain level, etc.).

Muhahaha.

5) Drool over Test

Get on as soon as PvP is more or less stable to try it out at least once. OMGBBQ they haev teh Kill Skuls badge!11one1!1. Blow Skulls up everywhere. Consider doing it on Live so that it'll retroactively work on copyover to Test and later Issue 4 on Live. The costumes are cute, but meh, it can wait until it hits Live.

Sidetrek: Online Comics

I had to share. This is one of the greatest webcomics ever that I just discovered. Heck, it even makes me feel like trying Everquest out, which is just plain nuts when you think about what its endgame is like.

There's something about it that appeals to me though. I think it's a certain kind of fantasy world immersion that RoD had too. A whole bunch of classes, a whole bunch of races, and funky town names and 'game' skillsets that make up a world setting. Kinda like RP set in Shadowport, cosmopolitan sort of fantasy, if that made sense at all. Drow mages, lizard warriors, elf rogues, yadda yadda.

WTF EQ Comic
http://69.57.151.222/index.html

And while I'm listing them, Aaron Williams' Nodwick and Floyd (there's another one of those good dramatic fantasy world serial stories right there) needs to be on the list. Dork Tower, PvPonline, and KoTD.

I must go hunt for more later on. Check out comments when I find 'em.

OMG, make it stop already!

It is raining hard today. And the vacuum tech company hasn't got back to me. So I decided to stay home and do the programming stuff instead. And guess what, I couldn't stop myself from looking at the CoH forums, as usual.

I am so blardy happy. :) NEW TOYS! Too many toys, too few powerslots, too few enhancement slots. Sigh But I could not play with them because the test server was so overloaded.

Seriously though, I don't think the dark powerset needs anymore freebies. There are so many other things to fix. Although Howling Twilight and Tar Patch are such seldom taken powers that it's nice that they got buffed up. Give it to storm.

People will be tripping over themselves to get a force-fielder in their teams now in late game :). Anti-sappage!

Watch for the gazillion FoTM dark defenders to appear now, everywhere. That is how it is. Sadly, watch many of them get plevelled right past my slow, plodding self.

And bad reputation all around of dark defenders. Most of these are the bad blasters who don't want to die anymore or scrappers who think this will be the new elite tank-mage build. Of course you will have "defenders" who think they are just solo blasters in a team.

I really empathise with the older fire tanks.

And still, despite the new wind blowing from another direction, I have people wanting me to be an empathy defender. I am just on perma-hide now. I don't want to get an ulcer.

I can be happily doing my own missions. And every hour or so I'll get some "are u empthy" or "wat r u?". What makes you think I will drop my mission and join you even if I am empathy? Jesus. Since I am a pretty polite person I will respond, and never hear another tell from them. Being snubbed by idiots is just ridiculous.

If I accept some invite, I will have people ordering me what to do what isn't even in my powerset or flying into sulks or what not because I'm not giving them RA and CM or what not.

Heh, just see the sad, drooping, disappointed faces when people invite me, I join up, and they see that I am not empathy (or kinetics, or bubbler). Then they get rude or something. And I CANNOT make everyone NOT die ALL the time in an eight person team on invincible as the ONLY DEFENDER. If anyone dies people blame me?!

I'm just afraid of even being invited into a team anymore.

ARRRRGHHHHH STOP STOP TAKE IT ALL AWAY, MAKE IT STOP! MAKE IT STOP!

CANNOT GIVE RA, DON'T EVEN ASK!

NOOOOOOOOO STOP IT I CAN'T STAND IT ANYMORE!

Perma-hide.

*Wheeze* *Wheeze*. I'm not exaggerating, you know. Level a defender up to the late thirties and see for yourself. Controllers are ok (share secondaries). Blasters are ok by now (idiots are weeded out by the early 30s whee). Any controller that ground its way up to pet-stage is pretty sophisticated. Any blaster that survived to this stage is pretty sophisticated. Except maybe plevelled jobs, but those are bad all around. Seems like all the idiots then go to scrappers and tanks.

I feel bad for the real, good scrappers and tanks out there who are getting black-sheeped by these horrible ones.

Funny thing is, I recently met that blaster who told me I was worthless because I was not empathy/kinetics/force-field and tried to get me kicked off a TF. Except that she's deleted herself and now she is a tank. *Giggle* Probably a bad one. A Tapper. :P

When I see a storm defender or a earth controller, I want to smooch them all over and throw them obscene amounts of influence. Amusingly enough, the only time when people appeared pleased to have chanced about a dark defender (in the past) was when I got into a pickup group ran by a highbie earth controller. He was pleased and went "Whee, dark defender, don't see many of those around". I was even more pleased and replied that I've never seen an earth controller before (Level 3s don't count:P). Earth pets are so cute too. Three poo-tanks running around are cute.

Except that dark defenders are going to be FoTM now, if they aren't already FoTM. Heheheh. :)

Arena on Test!

Holy crud, I wish it wasn't the morning of a new work day, I wanna race back home and test this thing out. I'm reading the changelog on the test server thread and my mouth is dropping right open. :)

Let's see, some goodies I was noticing right off, Tar Patch and Howling Twilight have gotten some more new PvP-related + PvE loving. This is suddenly of interest to me cos I spent yesterday plotting a dark dark darkity def and was going wow, this is like the most versatile powerset ever. Lil bastard can actually be controller, defender, and blaster-leaning depending on what choices you make on this thing, and most were effective too. I wanted those two powers off the bat, but was having a tricky time trying to fit 'em in. This just adds gravy to everything.

SUPERIOR INVIS is now the only invis that can be attacked through. *Cackles insanely* See I knew it was a good idea, now I can be a wuss and still heal people on the illusion/rad and no one can scorn me now for taking it!

Insulation shield got some end drain protection lovin'

I wonder if I can make room for force bolt after all, toggle knockout is fun. :/ but then Ochre is not likely to PvP that much, huh.

Holy crud, click to move? If this works well, it will make running around at low levels a lot less painful.

I will stop drooling now.

PuG Heaven

Had an interesting weekend, especially since I grabbed some leave and played CoH all through Friday to what would be Sunday night est. Resurrected a couple of team toons, namely Raggy and Ochre, as well as met up with the Ass Clowns meet early Sat noon est.

Let's see, where to begin first:

Armoured Frosty was taken up to level 9 in preparation for the Ass Clown get together. Showed up, got the SG invite, and we mission'ed and street hunted till I gained two levels.

I must say the guys who showed up turned out strikingly effective. Maybe it's because we actually had to get a couple damage powers and worthwhile stuff to level productively up to 9, and/or had more powers at this stage. And we were all getting very good at handling aggro and controlled chaos, imo. There was only one team wipe in our clockwork mission at the start, and then we were churning through three Clockwork Princes at a time. Especially with a judicious use of detention field on one boss, and two pretending-not-to-be-really tanks who still split up on each boss and punchvoked or 'controlled' stuff. :P

And frankly by the end of it, I was enjoying myself so much, and when our team numbers dropped to the extent it was 3-4 of us street-hunting skulls...two tanks (ok, scranker and wannabe tanktroller) and a fake def? or a blaster, I forget. The non-real tank remarked that punchvoke was actually pretty good. And I replied, yea, if the tank is willing to use it. And then I actually turned a blind eye to my bio and purposefully punched multiple skulls to get them on my rock armored self so I could scrank away happily.

Darn, I can't be as selfish as I pretend. Especially not when my ego is stroked at being a good tank. :P

Oh, may I also add that our SG colors are freaking hilarious.

Here we are, in our eye-sore glory. :)

---

Quick snapshot, here's the Clockwork Paladin construction I stopped as Bad Punctuation, mentioned a while earlier.

---

I decided to play Raggy and see what I could do about getting a team going. Took a while, but after I got a few members into the mission and they realized that they weren't getting hurt, suddenly all their friends were asking to join also. :/ It's getting to be weirdly common for some reason.

It makes me a little...I dunno, pissed off isn't the word, but more like a mix of sadly resigned, frustrated and disappointed. We all seem so lazy to form good teams. When I get off my butt to put one together, I yank people off the LFG list and more often than not, stuff meshes quite well as long as I follow three simple rules:

1) As close levels as possible. No more than a 3 level difference without sk'ing. Preferably not.

2) One from each AT if possible. Failing which, crowd control and damage dealer.

3) And the more controllers and defenders you get, the more fun and groovy everything becomes.

Why don't more people do this so that I don't have to? :/ Why is it I can sit forever on the controller unwanted, but I personally snatch them up as soon as they show up on LFG? :P
And I'm still scared of sending tanks invites because I'm in terror that they are a scranker.

Here's a bunch of screenies from I don't even remember what random PuG:




Oh and after that fiasco (no, ok, PuG -challenge-) in spectral terror cave, we just wanted to turn brain off, so I logged Raggy again and we had some good fun with Scout Sniper, the only guy with a pretty good brain on his shoulders in that team. Let it not be said that we weren't spreading goodwill and good vibes from PuG experiences. 2000+ debt, and we wiped it out halfway through a single Tsoo mission. Granted, Raggy was 23 on Tenacious, and you two were like level 20. So I was a semi-pleveller! *cackles* Except I had to rely on someone else to do the damage, hem. So not really pleveling.

---

And there was teaming on Ochre. Much pain. Quite a lot of trouble to get a team going, a controller doesn't quite inspire the same confidence as a tank, does it? I find that dual controllers are really the best way to work, usually. As long as both can hit the mobs with holds reliably.

But once we got started, things got chugging. There were two tanks who were pretty much like scraptanks who invited me first. One invul, one fire. Then they said they needed more, so I suggested the other controller LFG. Turned out to be earth. Very good combination since the tanks were doing all the damage and we were just holding stuff in place and doing the buff/debuff thing like a def.

In between missions, we lost the earth controller, and so I looked at LFG and sent a tell to a same level grav-like name controller. He was game, so I bugged the tank to invite him. Tank did. Then it so happened that I saw a def pop up, so I sent the tell while I was at it. Bugged again to invite. Tank did, and I think he got lazy and just made me leader. Sent a tell to me to go invite more if possible. Picked up one more scrapper for that all-star AT team.

Unfortunately, we were so damn leet we charged into the Boomtown mission and destroyed the box of parts before the scrapper made it there from the Hollows. I think he was also from Japan and a worse zoner than Contrition. Then with "Mission Complete" we started clearing the rest of the enormous floor of Clockwork. (That is such a weird mission, that box of parts one. Shows up on the second floor, and there's like four floors of Clocks. And you have to destroy it asap if you don't want 500 gears after your ass once you see it and it triggers.)

I felt bad about it, and he was kinda clueless about the whole thing, didn't know where the door went and so on, and he didn't react the way I would expect most people would. (Like blow up in a hissy fit, cuss up a blue storm, insult my parentage and quit in a huff.) And continued feeling worse and worse while wondering what to do. And he just hung there in team.

So I finally sent him a tell to apologize and say that I was sorry, and that I'd do a mish or two with him later. The tanks wanted to leave for the night, so they were moving fast and bloodthirsty and what not. And he seemed pretty ok with the whole thing. Musta been a Jap, eh? An American faced with that kind of behavior, inadverdent or not, would have put me on a hit list by now, I suppose.

So ended up with taking him along on a bunch more missions, which Hail also showed up for, with the grav controller who stayed around.

Screenies!

Earth controller on my right, the invul/fire tank in there, the fire tank was also there, but he's short and lost somewhere in the mess of clowns, and I can't figure out who the shorter gal in front of me was. I think an emp/dark with more dark blasts than emp powers. But she was pretty handy with heal other.



I only feel sad about this pic for two reasons. One was the poor locked out slow zoning scrapper. The other was that I didn't get this about 2-3 minutes earlier and only remember to take it after the action.

This was all-star goodness. The grav 'troller and me and the two tanks had learned to mesh pretty well by now through the missions, and an extra rad/rad def was gravy on top. And then we got to that big room. In the screenie we were clearing up after something I almost thought would lead to teamwipe. Everything attacked. They jumped from the railing on top, there was a bunch on the same floor as us, a bunch by those staircases, a bunch from the floor below and so on. The tanks were losing hp like mad even through the bubbles (ok, none of them really protect against energy) and the grav and me were sucking fumes on end trying to alternate holds. I was dancing around trying to save end to rebubble. Holds wore off, clocks aggroed on me, (the only flaw these tanks had was that they had taunt yet never used it. Funky, huh? But they were scraptanks and doing main damage after all. Otherwise they wouldn't have needed controllers.) and not even the grav's well slotted O2 and the rad's healing aura was keeping me going, and so I decided to take off to the stairs near the lifts like a good squishy. The others turned to keeping the tanks alive, and I decided I'd risk it and rested on the stairs. Got back end, ran back, flashfired and caged everything long enough for the tanks to recover, and then momentum shifted and we cleaned up. Good stuff. Edge of the seat stuff.



Finally got to level 20 on Ochre too and celebrated the big obnoxious Dispersion Bubble with many screenies and to Kelizendis' resigned amusement...



Also conveniently and craftily tempted a bored yet lazy Contrition from Talos Island into the Hollows...where we hunted Igneous Bosses for the Volcanic badge. Heh heh, and I got pretty good at cinders lottery and herding iggys after a while, and got to see the pet Fluffy, while Contrition sniper elec blasted them all into 700hp+ oblivion. No screenies alas. But I could do it again some time. T'was hilarious after I got the hang of how to wake them, then lure 'em over to piss more off with fire cages (the only one good effect of them being immune to immob). Think I had about 7-8 Magma Lords going after me, with like 40-50 Pumicites (some awakened by teh fluffy) richocheting like insane white marbles around the Gulch. Not being hurt by them was also extremely good.

---

Oh and I played a bit more of Particle Fusion. The Buffer Overrun SG was starting to heat up again with lowbies, but I think they're getting less friendly. Too many members and too many inactives (of which I am guiltily one of them, I suppose) so they can't be bothered to cater to some random toon who shows up after 20 or more days and says hi, there a team going?

Interestingly enough, I get a bunch of invites there by turning seek team on. I got into a team faster over LFG than asking over SG. If that isn't warped I dunno what is. Frostfire mission, and the guy actually sent a tell to ask if I was interested. Good stuff, another wild 6 man team where everyone was all there and all star except for the insanely suicidal warshade named Minimee, but that's a story for some other time.

No screenies, oh well.

Sidetrek: Pooey

Bah. Everything goes down at once. Server maint on CoH side is taking up the alloted two hours for once. Tell you we're spoiled by them usually only taking 30 mins.

So I think, hrm, it's GW beta weekend anyhow, let's go log in there. Whooof. They seem to have added a ton of changes cos when I log on the necro, I have to download about 2987 files. 12% done. Sniffles.

And guess what, everything will be up at the SAME TIME and I'll have trouble deciding what to play.

Ah well, I think I shall just go to sleep and sulk. ;p

The Journey and an Unexpected Reward

Or a post in three parts...

Part One; on Juli's dream toon

After reading what Juli wrote, I began wonder what AT that might really mesh with her.

Idea one -- Fire/energy tank
Tough like a tank, yet not so tough. The tradeoff is higher playspeed. Good damage to Lts and bosses with energy melee. In a team, able to take on the traditional tank role for a change of playstyle.

Idea two -- */SR scrapper
God-mode most of the time, but now and then...squished. Hard to survive in lower levels though, unless Juli gets it all the way up to Elude.

Part Two; on the journey and not the destination

Currently, my defender is 35, and I feel a lot like an odd-ball amidst everyone who is rushing ahead with the numbers game. Everyone in massive groups, rushing around trying to crunch as much xp as they can.

I log on. Someone asks me if I want to do a respec. After the TF, someone from that group asked me to do a TF. After the second one, someone from the second group asked me to do a respec. No thanks. After declining and just idling around, someone I've met earlier wants me to herd. After that a pickup group eight strong grinding invincible missions.

All I want is to just idle in my own missions, admire the artwork, and take screenshots. Slowly plod through my story-arcs and read the clues. Some of the story-arcs are getting really nifty. No more the "kill blah and blah". The missions are more obscure. "Meet blah", or "Stop blah". Sometimes you enter the mission thinking it is going to be something and it turns out different. I shall not post spoilers. :P

Yep, I see people I've grouped at my range now racing ahead to 40+. I don't care. Just don't expect me to do the same, or even want to do the same.

What is there to do once you have finished your rat race to 50, I want to ask these people. And just being level 50 or owning a level 50 doesn't mean I respect anyone.

I was sniping sorcerors in Talos last night when an 20some scrapper stopped by and in a sarcastic indignant tone asked me what a level 35 was doing fighting level 20+ mobs. Sorry, wrong class for plevelling, heheheh. If I wanted to plevel someone, I would get on a spines scrapper or fire tank (not that I have one) and herd up a mission, together with a few bridges. I told her I was badge hunting sorcerors and there was plenty of spawn to go around (run along now, a. I kill runners so they don't aggro onto passerbys / b. I don't recall level 20s ever liking sorcerors / c. there's no way I can herd up and kill all the mobs in Talos depriving others of xp on a defender)

I can't really blame her. This xp-grind thing is getting prevalent.

I like to stand around my missions and take pictures of the artwork. I love the Oranbega missions. For others, it is 'I hate CoT missions because the map is so big'.

The worse thing is, I know I will eventually have to group as I reach the next tier. I like small groups or relaxed groups, but I can't stand the idea of rushing through all my missions with xp-grind-maxers (everyone around me?) and missing all the fun just when the stories get interesting.

So I guess I will solo along for a long as I can, until I can't, then just go onto another alt. I have already decided that my fascination shall be a mind/kin controller. The next question is what server to put it on.


Part Three; on unexpected rewards

I had given up hope of getting the War Wall Defender badge. My contacts just refuse to give me that mission, and I had dinged 35. I was doing what I thought was my last random mission of that tier with Ohm's Law, an SG colleague, in Dark Astoria. After the mission, we were commenting on Moth Cemetary and I mentioned the two very beautiful sites there. He wanted me to show him where they were so I brought him to what I term "the mausoleum" and "the dead tree path".

Then we saw It. A Giant Monster. Not just any giant monster, but A Giant Zombie. Named Adamastor. OMGWTFBBQ! We had to kill it! I mean really. Here we were, just bouncing around Moth Cemetary when we bumped into A Giant Monster Zombie.

I did my setup and Ohm's Law began blasting away, but we were squishy and that giant zombie hurt us bad. I could keep up with healing but we were not doing damage.

So we rounded up two scrappers who were in the zone, one of which was 45, and together we brought down the Zombie. And we got a badge! Woo hoo!

A beautiful cap to the whole series of events was when I called my contact for that DA mission, she gave me the War Wall Defender mission.

Side note: I was kind of amused when the other level 36 scrapper asked me for RA quarter-way through the fight when I had Darkest Night and my pet out, and was spamming Twilight Grasp (the animation of which is completely different from healing aura). I can tell a DM/ scrapper from a spines/ scrapper from a MA/ scrapper, a /Regen scrapper from a /DA scrapper from an /SR scrapper, just from their attacks and the aura around them. I count myself pretty durn ignorant about scrappers, but I sure wouldn't ask a MA scrapper to do a spine burst.

Level means nothing. If Juli plays for breadth rather than depth, nothing detracts from her as a player. I am more impressed by the well-played and the knowledgeable than a little number denoting your "level".

Altholic

Hi, my name is <insert random alt name here>, and I am an altholic.

The last post set me to thinking really hard about a whole bunch of CoH issues. I don't know why, but somehow, I find myself playing broad instead of deep. Instead of one or two alts gaining massive levels, I'm well on my way to a horde of level 7-14s spread across every server.

Maybe I haven't quite found my dream AT combination yet. Hence the exploration.

I like the DM/Inv. It's extremely powerful. But I seem to have dug myself into a pit there because I want Ravenhill to go through every story arc and so on. So he's in perma-debt. It's not as if it's hard to work off, seriously, but it's getting a bit tedious to shadow punch, smite, shadow punch, shadow maul my way through every mission. The mobs don't even have a chance to show off their cool unique powers because unyielding keeps me upright, I'm right in their face for no ranged attacks, and my melee > their melee. He's fun in his own way. But in small doses. That's fine, that's how this alt is going to be.

The other DM/Inv then gets boring to play because it's 8 levels below the other, with significantly less damage. He feels gimp by firsthand comparison. And bleh, if I go scraptank, then I need companions who know how to play well and do damage. And PuGs are only so so at best.

Oh, and my team builds are too terrible to play right now cos I need teams to play. And if you play at my unearthly hours, there are NO teams. Period. I either see no one LFG at the same level, or a bunch of blasters or scrappers with scary names. And I don't like teaming when my debt depends on random people. Poor tank, poor controller.

Blaster is off taking a break and hoping to get in on a Synapse TF on the weekend. And I blastered myself to boredom a while back anyhow, so a break is good.

So now I'm trying random forum board supergroups in the hope that I'll make a bunch of friends first. :P

Grammar Police is interesting since there's pretty much no one online when I am. But a spine/regen is the epitome of solo minion-killing leveling king. Bad Punctuation is a scrapper, but he's so much more like a fire tank, that it gives me a different flavor than the uber singletarget DM/Inv. I'm terrified when I attack yellow +1s, because I know they'll whack me too fast for me to handle. (I cannot wait for my first uber regen power, Integration.) Even-cons are a challenge. But blues and greens, muhahaha, watch my xp rate soar to the skies.

I only wish his draw animations weren't so slow. I can see he has a lot of potential, even for PvP, but I know I'm going to be outdrawn by people who have faster animations than he has. :P

So yea, I've been spending more and more time on him. Best thing is, he can solo and he can team. I don't have a crucial need to finish his contacts in any semblance of order - it was a surprise when I recognized my first story arc by yanking the Cloak of Bitter Grace out of a safe. And spelunker got covered grouping with my SG leader. Who is currently 5 levels below me. Heh.

And I stumbled on the Clockwork Paladin construction today too, and got the Knight Errant badge for helping stop it. Much fun.

Perhaps he will be the one to make it out of the level 20 something hole. Maybe. I think part of the problem is that I want to do TFs for a bunch of my alts. So I will have to stop and wait for a weekend or a day off to actually get into a proper time zone, and then there goes half the day. :P

Perhaps I shouldn't obsess over -anything- with Bad Punc, and just take it as it comes. If I outlevel Posi, then so be it. I will exemplar some time, my connect isn't that bad, just need to find someone reliable for the same thing, or just wait for flashback. It's worth a thought.

And the second guy I've been playing for fun. Armoured Frosty. Struggled up to level 8 by killing repeated skuls in KR. You know, at these low levels, I don't understand how those scrankers get off killing stuff. With my two lame attacks, and brawl, I had a hole in my attack cycle a mile wide. I wanted to team and leech off a group SOOO bad. I resisted the temptation.

Then because I couldn't take it any more, I took a serious look at my planned build. Was going to go for rooted, then stealth for uber-unkillability and play with invis and phase shift later on for selfish, gay, gimpy fun. But besides the sheer senselessness of a phase shifted scranker, I don't think it would really do that much good.

Gave in and took Air Superiority. I'll give up invis and phase shift and go for fly much later on. Rooted and stealth can move backward.

Now the build feels better. Three attacks, and they cycle quite well. Sorta midway between a normal 1, 2, 3 cycle, and the DM style cycle of 1, 2, 1, 3. Roar. Fear the scranker. Heh heh.

And I'll try to meet up with the rest of the Ass Clowns and make friends there. Who knows, if they do decide to make a serious SG, I might try another build there and get that alt up higher teaming too. I'd definitely make a tank or a scrap though. I like the melee punch. Perhaps a fire/fire tank. :) Those are supposed to rise in levels real quick, right? Or I could try the sheer hardness of MA/SR, the two scrapper powersets I haven't tried yet.

:( I am a terrible altholic...

Eh heh heh heh heh.