Saturday, April 30, 2005
Friday, April 29, 2005
Do u heal???????????????????
Wow, never have I actually gotten so many do u heal tells in one session. I decided to just run my recent game logs through grep searching for "heal" and "emp".
Presenting to you the heal files:
03-05-2005 15:28:31 [Tell]Consuming Flame: u empaht?
03-07-2005 23:55:53 [Tell]King of Too bad: Hi, we're looking for a healer/defender, interested? (Told him I was dark, but he didn't want a dark!)
03-11-2005 15:35:44 [Tell]MAELSTORMM: hi could i get a heal pls
03-13-2005 17:02:45 [Tell]EI-Mu: hello, wanna do 34 respec tf? if u can heal (explained my powers, did the respec and after that did Calvin Scott TF)
03-20-2005 09:01:14 [Tell]Dark Semilla: r u emp.?
03-22-2005 18:22:49 [Tell]Black knight06: empthy?
03-24-2005 16:58:04 [Tell]Cobalt Flash: can you heal?
03-26-2005 03:19:00 [Tell]Night Rain: can you heal?
03-27-2005 02:27:28 [Tell]Inverse: you an emp? want to team for a bit? will sk
04-12-2005 23:30:13 [Tell]Digity: do u heal?
04-24-2005 03:42:52 [Tell]Icieblaze: are you an empathy?
04-27-2005 03:59:19 [Tell]Master puppetz: hey are u emp by an chance?
04-28-2005 20:47:05 [Tell]peacedrone01: are u empathy?
04-28-2005 23:33:06 [Tell]Berlin: areyou an emp def?
04-29-2005 00:32:28 [Broadcast]BlazingInferno: any emps out there 41+ wanan join a herding team (Ninja invite from BlazingInferno -- declined)
04-29-2005 01:04:59 [Tell]Tankem out: are you empath?
And then there was one where they dragged me to the abandoned sewers and dumped me when they found out I wasntemp! But that -- is another story all together!
Presenting to you the heal files:
03-05-2005 15:28:31 [Tell]Consuming Flame: u empaht?
03-07-2005 23:55:53 [Tell]King of Too bad: Hi, we're looking for a healer/defender, interested? (Told him I was dark, but he didn't want a dark!)
03-11-2005 15:35:44 [Tell]MAELSTORMM: hi could i get a heal pls
03-13-2005 17:02:45 [Tell]EI-Mu: hello, wanna do 34 respec tf? if u can heal (explained my powers, did the respec and after that did Calvin Scott TF)
03-20-2005 09:01:14 [Tell]Dark Semilla: r u emp.?
03-22-2005 18:22:49 [Tell]Black knight06: empthy?
03-24-2005 16:58:04 [Tell]Cobalt Flash: can you heal?
03-26-2005 03:19:00 [Tell]Night Rain: can you heal?
03-27-2005 02:27:28 [Tell]Inverse: you an emp? want to team for a bit? will sk
04-12-2005 23:30:13 [Tell]Digity: do u heal?
04-24-2005 03:42:52 [Tell]Icieblaze: are you an empathy?
04-27-2005 03:59:19 [Tell]Master puppetz: hey are u emp by an chance?
04-28-2005 20:47:05 [Tell]peacedrone01: are u empathy?
04-28-2005 23:33:06 [Tell]Berlin: areyou an emp def?
04-29-2005 00:32:28 [Broadcast]BlazingInferno: any emps out there 41+ wanan join a herding team (Ninja invite from BlazingInferno -- declined)
04-29-2005 01:04:59 [Tell]Tankem out: are you empath?
And then there was one where they dragged me to the abandoned sewers and dumped me when they found out I wasntemp! But that -- is another story all together!
Sidetrek: Pining for a PDA
I blame the company. I never had any interest in all these new-fangled mobile devices before - what Bluetooth, PalmOne, Wi-Fi, whatever. None of them can match the power of a real desktop, with a smooth operating CPU processor and the kewlest graphics processing card on the block, after all. All those laymen can pride themselves as being 'techies' cos they use a cell phone with a camera and mp3 player and surf on a little itty bitty screen - but face it, they're working with pathetic resolutions of what? 320x200? What kind of file sizes? RAM?
I'm a geek. A real geek. I can actually assemble my own computer from parts now. I'm never gonna be as well versed in hardware as the real hardware nuts, but hey, I'm not helpless at the hands of some tech guy somewhere and having to bring my computer to a "computer shop" for them to pull open and unscrew the case just to "upgrade" a part. You're playing with pocket calculators really, if you call yourself a techie just cos you own a PDA and can poke it with a stylus. Or download a few third-party programs from the internet for it.
So yea, I wasn't really into the PDA thing. And I hate cell phones. Makes you too accessible.
HOWEVER, the company has somehow decided in its infinite wisdom to offer a one-time lifetime of your service deal - a money subsidy for a PDA to encourage the use of technology. OMGWTFBBQ!!!one!11 You giving me $$$$$ to buy a computer? A toy computer, sure, but you paying for it?!
So suddenly PDAs become a whole heck of a lot more attractive when you can minus a certain sum from the listed price. Essentially half price for low mid-range models, free for the really low range ones, or a bit off the top for the new fangled ones.
But I don't want a new fangled one. I don't want functions barely tried out that don't really work, but just makes techies happy to say, I have this function, I have GPS, GSM or whatever. I don't want a free clunker of a white elephant either.
So that means...RESEARCH! That means making a list of criteria!
And suddenly I know a bit more about PDAs than I originally wanted to:
Do I want some Windows Mobile O/S or Palm O/S? Compare the list of advantages. Yep, looks good. No more turning to the dark side. Gimme Palm O/S.
Do I want to limit myself to a stylus and poking at a screen? No way, jose. I need a keyboard. I don't care how small it is, but I'm a geek, I need a keyboard. I see there are wireless options too, that's good for future upgrades if need be. And the stylus would come in handy for an option if I ever wanted to use it.
I MUST have a bright screen. I'll go blind without it.
No, I'm not gonna use a PDA to play music, that's what my desktop or high-fi system is for, I don't care how cruddy the audio sounds. I want a glorified notepad that I can type on instead of scrawling my lousy handwriting all over post-it notes or an exercise book.
And now I've found one that looks cool.
And Now I Wants It. The Palm Tungsten C. Good reviews in 2003. 2 years to cheapen in price, with perfectly usable utilities.
Except I don't even know whether it's still available here. I must actually go out on foot and look for the damn thing in shops. I can see the price still available on amazon and other US websites, but to order an electronic product from America is almost like asking me to order frozen durian from American, I should think.
It has to be cheaper here. I see an Apr 15 forum post offering a one week old Palm Tungtsen C for sale at $380. That's a good baseline to go from.
But I'm stuck here. Work has to end. Then I can go and hunt it down.
I'm a geek. A real geek. I can actually assemble my own computer from parts now. I'm never gonna be as well versed in hardware as the real hardware nuts, but hey, I'm not helpless at the hands of some tech guy somewhere and having to bring my computer to a "computer shop" for them to pull open and unscrew the case just to "upgrade" a part. You're playing with pocket calculators really, if you call yourself a techie just cos you own a PDA and can poke it with a stylus. Or download a few third-party programs from the internet for it.
So yea, I wasn't really into the PDA thing. And I hate cell phones. Makes you too accessible.
HOWEVER, the company has somehow decided in its infinite wisdom to offer a one-time lifetime of your service deal - a money subsidy for a PDA to encourage the use of technology. OMGWTFBBQ!!!one!11 You giving me $$$$$ to buy a computer? A toy computer, sure, but you paying for it?!
So suddenly PDAs become a whole heck of a lot more attractive when you can minus a certain sum from the listed price. Essentially half price for low mid-range models, free for the really low range ones, or a bit off the top for the new fangled ones.
But I don't want a new fangled one. I don't want functions barely tried out that don't really work, but just makes techies happy to say, I have this function, I have GPS, GSM or whatever. I don't want a free clunker of a white elephant either.
So that means...RESEARCH! That means making a list of criteria!
And suddenly I know a bit more about PDAs than I originally wanted to:
Do I want some Windows Mobile O/S or Palm O/S? Compare the list of advantages. Yep, looks good. No more turning to the dark side. Gimme Palm O/S.
Do I want to limit myself to a stylus and poking at a screen? No way, jose. I need a keyboard. I don't care how small it is, but I'm a geek, I need a keyboard. I see there are wireless options too, that's good for future upgrades if need be. And the stylus would come in handy for an option if I ever wanted to use it.
I MUST have a bright screen. I'll go blind without it.
No, I'm not gonna use a PDA to play music, that's what my desktop or high-fi system is for, I don't care how cruddy the audio sounds. I want a glorified notepad that I can type on instead of scrawling my lousy handwriting all over post-it notes or an exercise book.
And now I've found one that looks cool.
And Now I Wants It. The Palm Tungsten C. Good reviews in 2003. 2 years to cheapen in price, with perfectly usable utilities.
Except I don't even know whether it's still available here. I must actually go out on foot and look for the damn thing in shops. I can see the price still available on amazon and other US websites, but to order an electronic product from America is almost like asking me to order frozen durian from American, I should think.
It has to be cheaper here. I see an Apr 15 forum post offering a one week old Palm Tungtsen C for sale at $380. That's a good baseline to go from.
But I'm stuck here. Work has to end. Then I can go and hunt it down.
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Nerfing
I read the training room posting. My response... "wow".
I wonder why developers never learn. From this game to the other, that nerfing is a bad thing. That developers need to play their own game.
They have barely recovered from the fiasco that was their testing error, a fiasco that any newbie in the game would have spotted -- the fact that nobody, not even the best single target scrapper or blaster, can three blow +4s. Not only have they not recovered from it but went ahead and nerfed regen again, they nerfed SR as well. Above all, they nerfed without warning.
They really should fix things before nerfing. It's no wonder that the community feels very disillusioned.
I don't even play scrappers at all. And I can only blink my eyes in disbelief as they bash regen and SR on the head.
Time to just do something else until the storm dies down, maybe.
I wonder why developers never learn. From this game to the other, that nerfing is a bad thing. That developers need to play their own game.
They have barely recovered from the fiasco that was their testing error, a fiasco that any newbie in the game would have spotted -- the fact that nobody, not even the best single target scrapper or blaster, can three blow +4s. Not only have they not recovered from it but went ahead and nerfed regen again, they nerfed SR as well. Above all, they nerfed without warning.
They really should fix things before nerfing. It's no wonder that the community feels very disillusioned.
I don't even play scrappers at all. And I can only blink my eyes in disbelief as they bash regen and SR on the head.
Time to just do something else until the storm dies down, maybe.
Sidetrek: Guild Wars Retail!
Whee! Glee! Joy! Bounces!
Guild Wars is released. I'm in the game one day early with my beta key, and I must say, it's amazing how cool everything looks once it's all glitzed up. They have a bit more interface and help text on the whole thing, voice-overs on the cutscenes, and so on. I'm kinda glad I skipped the last two beta weekends, because there are some subtle changes which is making exploring the place new again.
I have my Ithas Bow. Glee glee. *kewl lewt eyes shining* Hoody hoo! It's brilliant.
A skale dropped a vial of red dye at initial start, so hopefully dye drops are more common now. I want to have colors!
The only thing I'm worried about is that tomorrow, my beta key might be invalidated and I may need a retail key then. (Yo, Kelizendis, look out for my retail box that should be coming your way via the pre-order? :P)
All I can say is that GW has come just in time, because recent news on the arena front is that superspeed and superjump has been hit by a -50% to-hit nerf. And I shall do like that poster and put my head in the sand for a while, and go play Guild Wars for a bit.
I can certainly cultivate two online games if I play casually. Which is the idea, no getting obsessed with elite guilds, phat loot, and so on. Just have the option of switching games and putzing about with some characters and beget lots of alts and propser.
Guild Wars is released. I'm in the game one day early with my beta key, and I must say, it's amazing how cool everything looks once it's all glitzed up. They have a bit more interface and help text on the whole thing, voice-overs on the cutscenes, and so on. I'm kinda glad I skipped the last two beta weekends, because there are some subtle changes which is making exploring the place new again.
I have my Ithas Bow. Glee glee. *kewl lewt eyes shining* Hoody hoo! It's brilliant.
A skale dropped a vial of red dye at initial start, so hopefully dye drops are more common now. I want to have colors!
The only thing I'm worried about is that tomorrow, my beta key might be invalidated and I may need a retail key then. (Yo, Kelizendis, look out for my retail box that should be coming your way via the pre-order? :P)
All I can say is that GW has come just in time, because recent news on the arena front is that superspeed and superjump has been hit by a -50% to-hit nerf. And I shall do like that poster and put my head in the sand for a while, and go play Guild Wars for a bit.
I can certainly cultivate two online games if I play casually. Which is the idea, no getting obsessed with elite guilds, phat loot, and so on. Just have the option of switching games and putzing about with some characters and beget lots of alts and propser.
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
News from the other Front
After that big fess-up, Statesman posted on scrapper numbers again. This has really got me thinking.
My powerset is supposed to be a very strong solo powerset, secondary only to Rad. What are the limits of my defender, that will cause it to be brought down without fail?
I remember the recent spate of CoT behemoth portal missions I did. These, by the way, spawn endless behemoths until destroyed. Being on tenacious, the portals were red to me, and spawned orange-cons, mostly minions and some lieuts.
Let's see...If I approach the portal right, I can survive about 15-20 +2 minions. Very iffy though, very dangerous. If anything went wrong at all, i.e. if anything bunched up wrongly, or strayed out of the debuff zone, I died faster than I could say "geronimo". So that is about the edge of what is doable. So completely comparable to scrapper stats. at 20+ minions to reliably bring me down.
What about +2 Lieuts? I've fought two +2 lieuts (red con) simultaneously before...wasn't too dangerous but took forever. This is just enough for my holds to cycle. Three +2 lieuts would be a bit too much, but I guess doable. Four would bring me down, but with lots of inspiration popping I could manage it. So I think five +2 lieuts would bring me down without fail.
With inspiration popping, I can do a +2 boss. Two +2 bosses...ummm...I did take on once a +1 Creytank/gunslinger boss pair... It took half an inspiration try and lots of heart pounding action. Two +2 bosses is called suicide.
So we have CoT-styled mobs : 20+/5/2
This basically confirms my suspicion. Near-con minions are aptly named minions. Minions may be eaten by the dozens -- that is the beauty of CoH -- you feel like a superhero. Minion numbers lose at 20+, because nobody except tanks will ready go around tanking or herding that many -- and hold aggro attention.
The boss numbers are also pretty accurate. Bosses are bosses. They are hard, a challenge. One purple-con boss is just about as much as anyone can handle. Invul survives 4 +2 bosses, but that is its tanker set roots showing... needing that many bosses to bring it down does not mean it "thrives".
Now the scary part:
Level 40 tests
Invul +2 hero level Carnival Minions/Lieutenants/Bosses (20+ / 17-20 / 0)
Regen +2 hero level Carnival Minions/Lieutenants/Bosses (20+ / 14 / 0)
SR +2 hero level Carnival Minions/Lieutenants/Bosses (20+ / 15 / 2)
And the test SR isn't even perma-eluded.
What is even more scary:
Invul +4 hero level Carnival Minions/Lieutenants/Bosses (20+ / 14-17 / 0)
Regen +4 hero level Carnival Minions/Lieutenants/Bosses (14 / 4 / 0)
SR +4 hero level Carnival Minions/Lieutenants/Bosses (20+ / 6 / 0)
What this means is, these scrappers can fight a roomful of purple cons solo. As one said, solo an invincible spawn for four people. Something that makes me eek and back away quickly.
I don't really have to point out what is wrong. But I have to point out that some other ATs and powersets can do it. I would propose just fixing it so all ATs can reach this level of competence, and then adjusting the con system. People always like to be improved. A universal con adjustment does not target anyone, just reflects reality.
Dark armor is terribly weak compared to the other sets, but it actually looks reasonable. Except that the endurance issues are annoying for a damage AT. An acquaintance logged his /DA for me. With all his armors turned on he barely broke even on the endurance. Of course no one would turn all their armors on, but a damage class does require endurance for constant damage output (their purpose). But I don't think a /DA is "horribly nerfed/gimp/weak". It's normal, but a normality imposed by endurance issues.
+ + +
I'm strangely, enjoying the post 40s game.
I really hope the devs change all the villain classes to be like the Malta and the Crey. Or the Devouring Earth.
First of all, it would solve herding issues. People herd wolves and freakshow. Why? Because these are stupid I-damage-you style mobs.
People don't herd Devouring earth. The lieuts drop quartz eminators which buff their acc, they drop cairn eminators which buff their damage resistance, and they summon swarms that are autohit and slow recharge. In a normal battle, it is survivable. When you herd...things start getting bad...all those buffs and debuffs pile up...
Crey radiologists throw up RI. Herd them...get twenty RIs thrown on, not feeling too tanky now hmm? Watch the Paragon Protectors go Moment of Glory, zoom around in and out airborne.
Herd Malta? Hey, Z(s)appppppp. Oh noes, toggle drop! Whadya know, you're just a blaster with more hitpoints.
Nemesis have such charming AoEs too. Three regen scrappers barging into a roomful of Nemesis grenadiers faceplant so fast as thirty AoEs hit them, it was B-movie hilarious (except it wasn't polite for me to laugh), and it just proves scrappers are - not - tanks.
In a way, dev test numbers mean nothing. By pure game mechanics, having offense/defense means the sheer ability to survive damage while dealing it. Behemoths aren't very intelligent -- all they stand is stand around and beat at you. Rikti just aren't very scary for mezproof ATs. Carnies are trickier -- see how the numbers change, but I haven't fought too many of them yet to judge.
It's not suprising people just go the herding / farming way.
Any random idiot can charge into a group of mobs and kill things if all they did was throw back damage largely mitigated by shields.
Grouped up with a scrapper to take on some Malta. Originally she got picked up because I asked some people for help with Countess Crey, and then helped one of them with the Madame of Mystery, but three people weren't enough so we picked up more people.
She had the psychic clockwork king mission. We did it twice actually, one for another group member. I'm not sure why people scream so much about him. He seemed pretty much a psychic clockwork pushover. Or maybe...because...people who scream about him are people who are used to charging brainlessly into a mob and whacking at it until it dies, because nothing could ever hurt them...until OH NOES PSI DAMAGE?
And then we agreed to do one of unnamed scrapper's missions. A random little rescue n blahs from boo villain group. Ah, invincible mission setting. Great xp, good challenge for the solo scrapper...except...Malta mission. Oh boo hoo, her style of fighting is charging into everything and whacking away until they die. Got to 42 on it eh?
Even normal people learn that, when you see a guy with a bright blue glowing gun, or any bright blue beams flashing around, in a Malta mission, you make for that guy with the name "sapper". It was pretty amazing that the controller and I would be turning purple trying to hold down the sappers (Oh, but it's set at invincible of someone +2 from me or +1 from the controller.) ... and I can repeatedly teamtalk 'kill sapper', while our scrapper is just scrapper-locked on whatever nearest mob she thinks she is killing. It's ok -- the sapper gets loose, wipes the floors with the squishies, and then it comes for her. (I.e. we die but you die too!) And what do you know, without those shield toggles she's just a bigger squishy, a blaster with more hitpoints. Oh -- no endurance, can't even travel-power out! Or maybe she just died as fast a blaster once her toggles dropped.
I actually find it fun to fight challenging enemies. Challenging -- not hardcore. Tenacious is about as high as I ever want to go. I'd rather see the devs put in more challenging enemies, that require some strategy, situational awareness, and forethought to fight, than just turn up the slider so the balance of "I damage you you damage me" shifts through the con-system.
For a scrapper, it could be something as simple as -- "Can I drop that sapper / keep it knocked down before its drain drops me?". Or "Quartz eminators and guardians must go first, ouch!".
I suspect that is why so many people just end up farming and herding. Rather than having be forced to think, they just want their xp and levels.
It's so very sad when nobody wants to finish the sewers trial, but just want to farm it.
I'm pretty interested in that sewers trial. It took us long enough to coordinate enough to bring down the head, but we didn't clear the room before the timer went up again. I really should respec some time to bring in some useful crowd control powers for these different new enemies, but it'd force me to give up some other very good powers. This is what the game should be about though -- making choices about good powers, challenging enemies, fun trials.
Not...cookie cutter uberpower heroes running around farming and powerlevelling.
My powerset is supposed to be a very strong solo powerset, secondary only to Rad. What are the limits of my defender, that will cause it to be brought down without fail?
I remember the recent spate of CoT behemoth portal missions I did. These, by the way, spawn endless behemoths until destroyed. Being on tenacious, the portals were red to me, and spawned orange-cons, mostly minions and some lieuts.
Let's see...If I approach the portal right, I can survive about 15-20 +2 minions. Very iffy though, very dangerous. If anything went wrong at all, i.e. if anything bunched up wrongly, or strayed out of the debuff zone, I died faster than I could say "geronimo". So that is about the edge of what is doable. So completely comparable to scrapper stats. at 20+ minions to reliably bring me down.
What about +2 Lieuts? I've fought two +2 lieuts (red con) simultaneously before...wasn't too dangerous but took forever. This is just enough for my holds to cycle. Three +2 lieuts would be a bit too much, but I guess doable. Four would bring me down, but with lots of inspiration popping I could manage it. So I think five +2 lieuts would bring me down without fail.
With inspiration popping, I can do a +2 boss. Two +2 bosses...ummm...I did take on once a +1 Creytank/gunslinger boss pair... It took half an inspiration try and lots of heart pounding action. Two +2 bosses is called suicide.
So we have CoT-styled mobs : 20+/5/2
This basically confirms my suspicion. Near-con minions are aptly named minions. Minions may be eaten by the dozens -- that is the beauty of CoH -- you feel like a superhero. Minion numbers lose at 20+, because nobody except tanks will ready go around tanking or herding that many -- and hold aggro attention.
The boss numbers are also pretty accurate. Bosses are bosses. They are hard, a challenge. One purple-con boss is just about as much as anyone can handle. Invul survives 4 +2 bosses, but that is its tanker set roots showing... needing that many bosses to bring it down does not mean it "thrives".
Now the scary part:
Level 40 tests
Invul +2 hero level Carnival Minions/Lieutenants/Bosses (20+ / 17-20 / 0)
Regen +2 hero level Carnival Minions/Lieutenants/Bosses (20+ / 14 / 0)
SR +2 hero level Carnival Minions/Lieutenants/Bosses (20+ / 15 / 2)
And the test SR isn't even perma-eluded.
What is even more scary:
Invul +4 hero level Carnival Minions/Lieutenants/Bosses (20+ / 14-17 / 0)
Regen +4 hero level Carnival Minions/Lieutenants/Bosses (14 / 4 / 0)
SR +4 hero level Carnival Minions/Lieutenants/Bosses (20+ / 6 / 0)
What this means is, these scrappers can fight a roomful of purple cons solo. As one said, solo an invincible spawn for four people. Something that makes me eek and back away quickly.
I don't really have to point out what is wrong. But I have to point out that some other ATs and powersets can do it. I would propose just fixing it so all ATs can reach this level of competence, and then adjusting the con system. People always like to be improved. A universal con adjustment does not target anyone, just reflects reality.
Dark armor is terribly weak compared to the other sets, but it actually looks reasonable. Except that the endurance issues are annoying for a damage AT. An acquaintance logged his /DA for me. With all his armors turned on he barely broke even on the endurance. Of course no one would turn all their armors on, but a damage class does require endurance for constant damage output (their purpose). But I don't think a /DA is "horribly nerfed/gimp/weak". It's normal, but a normality imposed by endurance issues.
I'm strangely, enjoying the post 40s game.
I really hope the devs change all the villain classes to be like the Malta and the Crey. Or the Devouring Earth.
First of all, it would solve herding issues. People herd wolves and freakshow. Why? Because these are stupid I-damage-you style mobs.
People don't herd Devouring earth. The lieuts drop quartz eminators which buff their acc, they drop cairn eminators which buff their damage resistance, and they summon swarms that are autohit and slow recharge. In a normal battle, it is survivable. When you herd...things start getting bad...all those buffs and debuffs pile up...
Crey radiologists throw up RI. Herd them...get twenty RIs thrown on, not feeling too tanky now hmm? Watch the Paragon Protectors go Moment of Glory, zoom around in and out airborne.
Herd Malta? Hey, Z(s)appppppp. Oh noes, toggle drop! Whadya know, you're just a blaster with more hitpoints.
Nemesis have such charming AoEs too. Three regen scrappers barging into a roomful of Nemesis grenadiers faceplant so fast as thirty AoEs hit them, it was B-movie hilarious (except it wasn't polite for me to laugh), and it just proves scrappers are - not - tanks.
In a way, dev test numbers mean nothing. By pure game mechanics, having offense/defense means the sheer ability to survive damage while dealing it. Behemoths aren't very intelligent -- all they stand is stand around and beat at you. Rikti just aren't very scary for mezproof ATs. Carnies are trickier -- see how the numbers change, but I haven't fought too many of them yet to judge.
It's not suprising people just go the herding / farming way.
Any random idiot can charge into a group of mobs and kill things if all they did was throw back damage largely mitigated by shields.
Grouped up with a scrapper to take on some Malta. Originally she got picked up because I asked some people for help with Countess Crey, and then helped one of them with the Madame of Mystery, but three people weren't enough so we picked up more people.
She had the psychic clockwork king mission. We did it twice actually, one for another group member. I'm not sure why people scream so much about him. He seemed pretty much a psychic clockwork pushover. Or maybe...because...people who scream about him are people who are used to charging brainlessly into a mob and whacking at it until it dies, because nothing could ever hurt them...until OH NOES PSI DAMAGE?
And then we agreed to do one of unnamed scrapper's missions. A random little rescue n blahs from boo villain group. Ah, invincible mission setting. Great xp, good challenge for the solo scrapper...except...Malta mission. Oh boo hoo, her style of fighting is charging into everything and whacking away until they die. Got to 42 on it eh?
Even normal people learn that, when you see a guy with a bright blue glowing gun, or any bright blue beams flashing around, in a Malta mission, you make for that guy with the name "sapper". It was pretty amazing that the controller and I would be turning purple trying to hold down the sappers (Oh, but it's set at invincible of someone +2 from me or +1 from the controller.) ... and I can repeatedly teamtalk 'kill sapper', while our scrapper is just scrapper-locked on whatever nearest mob she thinks she is killing. It's ok -- the sapper gets loose, wipes the floors with the squishies, and then it comes for her. (I.e. we die but you die too!) And what do you know, without those shield toggles she's just a bigger squishy, a blaster with more hitpoints. Oh -- no endurance, can't even travel-power out! Or maybe she just died as fast a blaster once her toggles dropped.
I actually find it fun to fight challenging enemies. Challenging -- not hardcore. Tenacious is about as high as I ever want to go. I'd rather see the devs put in more challenging enemies, that require some strategy, situational awareness, and forethought to fight, than just turn up the slider so the balance of "I damage you you damage me" shifts through the con-system.
For a scrapper, it could be something as simple as -- "Can I drop that sapper / keep it knocked down before its drain drops me?". Or "Quartz eminators and guardians must go first, ouch!".
I suspect that is why so many people just end up farming and herding. Rather than having be forced to think, they just want their xp and levels.
It's so very sad when nobody wants to finish the sewers trial, but just want to farm it.
I'm pretty interested in that sewers trial. It took us long enough to coordinate enough to bring down the head, but we didn't clear the room before the timer went up again. I really should respec some time to bring in some useful crowd control powers for these different new enemies, but it'd force me to give up some other very good powers. This is what the game should be about though -- making choices about good powers, challenging enemies, fun trials.
Not...cookie cutter uberpower heroes running around farming and powerlevelling.
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Sidetrek: Hamtaro's Day Out
Ok, mea culpa. I saw my work colleagues sneaking this game onto the computer, and the -sound- which ensued from the CPU was like this insistent meme that wriggled and demanded access into my head. And then I sat down to try it out. Just cos I had a hunch that I would naturally be better at mouse manipulation and hand-eye coordination over the monitor than a lot of them. Gamer gal, no? (Yea, yea, *smacks my ego*, show off.)
Now I've snuck it back home and am compulsively trying to beat my score. (1500, at last count.)
First game, the Leaf Bounce. It's sooo hopelessly addictive, and sooo hopelessly "cute" in that sick Japanese anime (chibi, is that the word for it?) fashion that I think I fall under the category of a sick, sick person. :( See, I can play Escape From Butcher Bay and Vampire: The Masquerade without blinking an eye or even feeling ashamed I have them on my computer, but...*twitch*
Hamtaro's Day Out? I own Hamtaro's Day Out? It's almost as bad as the day I tried Pokemon Blue and Red on the GBA Emulator, and found myself irresistably drawn two-three years later to actually buy TWO Game Boy SPs and Pokemon Leaf Green and Fire Red.
I know the gameplay of these flash games are not original. (Though there's another one, Yetisports, which also looks weirdly cute in a sick way.) But so help me, there's something compulsively addictive about them.
Nooooo.....Save meeeeeeee....
P.S. You should be able to find this game on any decent search engine. Should you desire a faster option (at the risk of selling your soul to have this on your computer), check out briefcase.yahoo.com/khelfums/Flash Games/Hamtaro.zip
Now I've snuck it back home and am compulsively trying to beat my score. (1500, at last count.)
First game, the Leaf Bounce. It's sooo hopelessly addictive, and sooo hopelessly "cute" in that sick Japanese anime (chibi, is that the word for it?) fashion that I think I fall under the category of a sick, sick person. :( See, I can play Escape From Butcher Bay and Vampire: The Masquerade without blinking an eye or even feeling ashamed I have them on my computer, but...*twitch*
Hamtaro's Day Out? I own Hamtaro's Day Out? It's almost as bad as the day I tried Pokemon Blue and Red on the GBA Emulator, and found myself irresistably drawn two-three years later to actually buy TWO Game Boy SPs and Pokemon Leaf Green and Fire Red.
I know the gameplay of these flash games are not original. (Though there's another one, Yetisports, which also looks weirdly cute in a sick way.) But so help me, there's something compulsively addictive about them.
Nooooo.....Save meeeeeeee....
P.S. You should be able to find this game on any decent search engine. Should you desire a faster option (at the risk of selling your soul to have this on your computer), check out briefcase.yahoo.com/khelfums/Flash Games/Hamtaro.zip
Mez farming
Congratulations! You have earned the Entangled Badge. This after 50 minutes of letting an orange-con Rikti Mentalist mez me in a tiny corner of my mission (away from people who might "save" me), leading me to conclude that it is not a "total" counter for 60 minutes of mezzedhood. Otherwise, it could be that I have Twilight Grasp set to auto and this made the Mentalist miss some (but prevented me from dying). That and the fact that the Mentalist eventually ran out of endurance and was starting to mez slower.
Now I just have to leave my setup running overnight, or at least until server maintenance. By the way, I think there is one more damage badge after adamant, but that might require damage taking. Whatever it is, I wish there was a mechanism for donating CABs to villains. :)
Now I just have to leave my setup running overnight, or at least until server maintenance. By the way, I think there is one more damage badge after adamant, but that might require damage taking. Whatever it is, I wish there was a mechanism for donating CABs to villains. :)
Taunt Testing
I admit to being intrigued by a thread occuring in the tanker forums, about how long taunt lasts, and how it interacts with a team, and so on. After all, my base hunches is that taunt works with some form of magnitude, and that you can stack them the same way controller holds stack. But maybe I’m completely wrong and I’m actually wasting my breath spamming taunt when I could be doing something else.
I’d like to make the most efficient use of my time instead of just spamming buttons and run out of end too quickly.
So… any time you and I are bored, Kelizendis, would you like to spare a few characters for the ultimate taunt test?
Some stuff I’m curious about:
Scenario 1:
Say the tanker just runs up to the mobs and stands there. They’ll all aggy to him just because, right? Is tanker hate the biggest? What if I run up one of the other 4 ATs we have access to? Does it depend also on whether the tanker is higher level than the other AT, and within what level ranges does stuff happen differently? Will running back and forth do anything to attract attention, or is standing there in sight range bad enough?
Scenario 2:
Repeat the same thing. Tanker taunts once on entry. Does he keep aggro better, permanently, or only until the taunt duration wears out? How long is the taunt duration? Does it stack if spammed ad nauseam, or only work after the first wears off?
Scenario 3:
Repeat Scenario 2 with a taunt aura instead of taunt. Which in this case, is my DoT mudpots, which isn’t quite like invincibility but will have to do until I get an invul tank for comparison. (And other tanks like blazing aura, burn, and whatever ice tanks had – icicles?)
Scenario 4:
Add both Scenario 2 and 3. Taunt + aura. Is aggy solidly stuck on now?
Scenario 5:
Everything + semi-constant mallet attacks on one mob (minion, lt or boss). Does a mallet hit on one mob exert a pull on a second minion nearby?
Scenario 6:
Everything + mallet attacks on different mobs to spread punch-voke, including mob targetted by the other AT.
The moment we find the point of permanent aggro held, that’s it for the presence of other AT challenge.
Now we challenge with an attack from the other AT. Start with a simple brawl on a minion. (Can try lts and bosses too if we have time.) Stop at whichever point in the scenario is aggro permanently held by the tank, if it can be.
Next challenge: up from brawl to a powerset attack, like a blast or a punch. Try repeat blasting on one mob, versus spreading out the blasts.
[Don’t forget to compare relative levels of tank + other AT with levels of mob. Is it just higher, lower between the two heroes, or is there some kind of relation with the level of the mobs also. –5 vs +5.]
And of course, final challenge: Cone + AoE attacks. First spaced out, and then as fast as the blaster/scrapper can generate them. Just how intense does the taunt-spamming have to be to keep up – or does it need to be fast at all – or can mudpots and simple mallet attacks hold aggro without it?
The two ATs we should really test the most at this point are the scrapper and blaster, since those generate the most hate on damage. Controllers normally don’t have problems, I’ve noticed, since they just need that crucial initial aggro holding, the attention of the mobs look away just for a split second as the tankers run in, then they can lay down their alpha striking hold with no retaliation worries. And if the defender takes aggy from a tank, we have serious problems. Squid-form kheldians, dwarf-forms and other tanks would be interesting to run the test on as well if we have time and are bored.
I’d like to make the most efficient use of my time instead of just spamming buttons and run out of end too quickly.
So… any time you and I are bored, Kelizendis, would you like to spare a few characters for the ultimate taunt test?
Some stuff I’m curious about:
Scenario 1:
Say the tanker just runs up to the mobs and stands there. They’ll all aggy to him just because, right? Is tanker hate the biggest? What if I run up one of the other 4 ATs we have access to? Does it depend also on whether the tanker is higher level than the other AT, and within what level ranges does stuff happen differently? Will running back and forth do anything to attract attention, or is standing there in sight range bad enough?
Scenario 2:
Repeat the same thing. Tanker taunts once on entry. Does he keep aggro better, permanently, or only until the taunt duration wears out? How long is the taunt duration? Does it stack if spammed ad nauseam, or only work after the first wears off?
Scenario 3:
Repeat Scenario 2 with a taunt aura instead of taunt. Which in this case, is my DoT mudpots, which isn’t quite like invincibility but will have to do until I get an invul tank for comparison. (And other tanks like blazing aura, burn, and whatever ice tanks had – icicles?)
Scenario 4:
Add both Scenario 2 and 3. Taunt + aura. Is aggy solidly stuck on now?
Scenario 5:
Everything + semi-constant mallet attacks on one mob (minion, lt or boss). Does a mallet hit on one mob exert a pull on a second minion nearby?
Scenario 6:
Everything + mallet attacks on different mobs to spread punch-voke, including mob targetted by the other AT.
The moment we find the point of permanent aggro held, that’s it for the presence of other AT challenge.
Now we challenge with an attack from the other AT. Start with a simple brawl on a minion. (Can try lts and bosses too if we have time.) Stop at whichever point in the scenario is aggro permanently held by the tank, if it can be.
Next challenge: up from brawl to a powerset attack, like a blast or a punch. Try repeat blasting on one mob, versus spreading out the blasts.
[Don’t forget to compare relative levels of tank + other AT with levels of mob. Is it just higher, lower between the two heroes, or is there some kind of relation with the level of the mobs also. –5 vs +5.]
And of course, final challenge: Cone + AoE attacks. First spaced out, and then as fast as the blaster/scrapper can generate them. Just how intense does the taunt-spamming have to be to keep up – or does it need to be fast at all – or can mudpots and simple mallet attacks hold aggro without it?
The two ATs we should really test the most at this point are the scrapper and blaster, since those generate the most hate on damage. Controllers normally don’t have problems, I’ve noticed, since they just need that crucial initial aggro holding, the attention of the mobs look away just for a split second as the tankers run in, then they can lay down their alpha striking hold with no retaliation worries. And if the defender takes aggy from a tank, we have serious problems. Squid-form kheldians, dwarf-forms and other tanks would be interesting to run the test on as well if we have time and are bored.
The Art of Dancing, Part Zero
Quickie rant: So what is it about blasters who don’t seem to be able to move anyhow? Or at most, if they move, it’s only in one direction…backward. Out. Down the lifts. Stay glued in the back at one spot and apparently root there, standing still because they need to take aim when they shoot? Over and over, even when the mob comes right up to them and proceeds to hug them?
I’m almost always moving on the blaster. I dunno, do you think it’s scrapper reflexes? Or left over from FPS games? If I am ever hit by a melee strike, I know I screwed up somewhere because I should have been running circles around the slow mob AI at the very least. Or ducked behind crates and played here we go round the mulberry bush. Moving doesn’t draw you aggro (except in certain respects like walking up to an unaggro’ed mob completely visible and saying Hi, up yours!), shooting like a madman does. (And makes it so much harder for the tank to take aggro back.)
Take this example which happened a number of times in the TF today:
Tanks are here: XX – surrounded by multiple mobs. =====> I’m over there on the right. One of the less taunted Freaks decides I look more interesting and turn to me and start shooting/or running up to me like a Mac Truck impersonating a drunk elephant.
I’ve seen umpteen blasters just either a) stand there and scream – for heals or for help or for a taunt – while their hp drops to the red and probably to a skull if everyone’s busy, or b) they take off further down the hallway with the Freak lumbering after them and getting into trouble around the corner out of sight.
Where should I run? If the mountain can’t go to Mohammed, then Mohammed better run to the mountain, right?
<============ Take off in this direction, towards the tanks (who are presumbably continuing to try and keep aggro on their clump, do not fire on them or do anything to take additional aggro), leap over the tank’s head and cower in a corner with the tank between you and the nasty mob. (Well away from AoEs landing on the tanks too. If you time it right, anyhow.)
What does nasty mob do? Nasty mob wants to shoot or slice you up, right? Nasty mob is sad you have run out of range of him. Nasty mob charges towards you, and thus, right at the tankers. Before you know it, nasty mob has gotten trapped by the taunt aura oozing off proper tanks who have it on, or has gotten taunted. And you’ve done everyone a favor by contributing to the optimum clump, and the tanker doesn’t have to worry about moving his massive clump to chase you around the corner.
Maybe it’s because I play a short, mostly immobile stoner tank that I can think of this.
Not sure if it’ll work at later levels where I might get one-shot no matter how far I stay out of range, but it’s keeping me alive at level 22, with a far greater survival rate than Miss No-Dark-Armor scrapper and Miss I-Keep-The-Fire-Tanks-Alive-So-I-Must-Be-As-Buff-As-Them rad defender (oh, who was minus Radiation Infection and with choking cloud. At level 20ish The mind boggles somewhat.)
P.S. Thinking up the blog's title encourages/inspires me to try and write a guide one day about the art of moving around in CoH combat. Once I get to the higher levels and see what holds there, and what doesn't. After all, this is a 3D game, make use of the x,y,z space? There's room for chapters on taking and using cover properly, for appropriate pulling, stacking and grouping in corners/cramped rooms/doorways/fences, who to run to for PBAoE stuff, mobs to run towards for to-hit-mob stuff, superspeed hit-and-run for melee'ers, trip mines, proximity bombs, special AI like Morts always starting off towards dead vahz zombies, storm defenders, knock-back users, etc. etc.
I’m almost always moving on the blaster. I dunno, do you think it’s scrapper reflexes? Or left over from FPS games? If I am ever hit by a melee strike, I know I screwed up somewhere because I should have been running circles around the slow mob AI at the very least. Or ducked behind crates and played here we go round the mulberry bush. Moving doesn’t draw you aggro (except in certain respects like walking up to an unaggro’ed mob completely visible and saying Hi, up yours!), shooting like a madman does. (And makes it so much harder for the tank to take aggro back.)
Take this example which happened a number of times in the TF today:
Tanks are here: XX – surrounded by multiple mobs. =====> I’m over there on the right. One of the less taunted Freaks decides I look more interesting and turn to me and start shooting/or running up to me like a Mac Truck impersonating a drunk elephant.
I’ve seen umpteen blasters just either a) stand there and scream – for heals or for help or for a taunt – while their hp drops to the red and probably to a skull if everyone’s busy, or b) they take off further down the hallway with the Freak lumbering after them and getting into trouble around the corner out of sight.
Where should I run? If the mountain can’t go to Mohammed, then Mohammed better run to the mountain, right?
<============ Take off in this direction, towards the tanks (who are presumbably continuing to try and keep aggro on their clump, do not fire on them or do anything to take additional aggro), leap over the tank’s head and cower in a corner with the tank between you and the nasty mob. (Well away from AoEs landing on the tanks too. If you time it right, anyhow.)
What does nasty mob do? Nasty mob wants to shoot or slice you up, right? Nasty mob is sad you have run out of range of him. Nasty mob charges towards you, and thus, right at the tankers. Before you know it, nasty mob has gotten trapped by the taunt aura oozing off proper tanks who have it on, or has gotten taunted. And you’ve done everyone a favor by contributing to the optimum clump, and the tanker doesn’t have to worry about moving his massive clump to chase you around the corner.
Maybe it’s because I play a short, mostly immobile stoner tank that I can think of this.
Not sure if it’ll work at later levels where I might get one-shot no matter how far I stay out of range, but it’s keeping me alive at level 22, with a far greater survival rate than Miss No-Dark-Armor scrapper and Miss I-Keep-The-Fire-Tanks-Alive-So-I-Must-Be-As-Buff-As-Them rad defender (oh, who was minus Radiation Infection and with choking cloud. At level 20ish The mind boggles somewhat.)
P.S. Thinking up the blog's title encourages/inspires me to try and write a guide one day about the art of moving around in CoH combat. Once I get to the higher levels and see what holds there, and what doesn't. After all, this is a 3D game, make use of the x,y,z space? There's room for chapters on taking and using cover properly, for appropriate pulling, stacking and grouping in corners/cramped rooms/doorways/fences, who to run to for PBAoE stuff, mobs to run towards for to-hit-mob stuff, superspeed hit-and-run for melee'ers, trip mines, proximity bombs, special AI like Morts always starting off towards dead vahz zombies, storm defenders, knock-back users, etc. etc.
Sister Screw-Up TF
So here I was, putzing around on Vesuvius Mk IV, deciding to do a few missions for a change of playstyle and feeling that sense of obligation to log him and such. I had the LFG team flag up for ages, wondering if I would find a PuG with a good tank that can actually take fire blaster aggro. No one bit.
Did a Striga Isle mission by my lonesome, wow, what a change of pace. I would have blitzed through it as a scrapper, maybe herded it as a tank, or basically just gone through steadily without stopping. As a blaster I was catching my breath (ok, hp, rather) after every group of 3, and playing commando with crates as cover, caltrops, grenades, the works.
It was fun the first room of the ship, got a bit tiring the second, tedious the third, and I was wondering -is there no end?- by the fourth. Made up for it by swallowing 3 lucks, 2 focused rages and basically 5-6 shot nuking the endgame orange Archon Whoever and an orange Sky Raider Captain to death.
Then I said to myself, I think I'm going about this all wrong. I'm level 21, I've done Psyche, my enhancements all look like crap even though I've 200k in my pocket because I'm trying to hang on for SO level, I just need to hit level 22.
How do fire blasters gain xp? Probably like fire tanks. Look for big groups of blues and greens. Aha. Checked up the zone hunting guide, Fautline or Boomtown has up to 19s. Ok, let's take the easier option, dash to Boomtown, and discover that level 18 Vahz still hurt like hell, level 17 clockwork are annoying with their tesla cages, but this little strip at the back full of level 19 blue and green Lost are JUST NICE. 200xp per kaboom cycle.
Ground for a while, got close to within 6000xp of level 22, when I get a tell from someone. Interested in Sister Psyche?
Hmm...Ok, it's 3am in the morning. I went to bed the moment I got back last evening, no clue why, just collapsed and got up at 12 midnight. Do I want sleep or do I want TF? I stated I only had 4 hours and I got an invite. (I figure that would be safe. 7am, give me some room to work with before I really had to dash off to work.)
mystick aura is a scrapper, like level 21 or so, and she puts together this team of 8 people, all of whom are level 23 and lower. I saw a level 20 in there too. And we all charge like nuts into the sewers and the first mission, where we confront level 27 Freaks.
Amazingly, our fire tank is pretty gosh-darned good, and he had 3 defenders supporting him, so he didn't die. Unfortunately me and the other blaster are hitting for like 6 and 7 hp aoes against +6 Freaks. We struggle for a bit before they are all screaming, this takes too long, we must reset the tf, change mission difficulty!!!11one!!
The decision is made and we head off to IP again. We lose 3-4 guys along the way, quit TF and quietly snuck off. I admit I was considering it too, but I wanted to at least watch their faces when they realized the Freaks are still at level 26 or 27.
Scrapper lady mystick reinvites those who stuck around, and pops in a second tank onto the team. I look. Level 26 fire tank, same SG (H.E.R.D.) as the first fire tank. My eyes light up. I beg for a sk from this fella and I get it. Our team numbers 6 now, and mystick is still hanging around.
Now that I have hope, I gently nudge the team into setting off with 6 so that the levels don't increase too much.
And we're off! (And yes, they were screaming again that Oh Noes, they're still level 26, changing mission difficulty didn't do anything much.) But since I was now viewing the Freaks as yellow and orange, suddenly my damage per aoe is now 33 on every Freak.
The two fire tanks are damn good. They're fire/ice with taunts and use 'em. They overlay ice patches and burn, and then I unleash my badaboom. Stuff dies. Before you know it, I hit level 22 - which was my ulterior motive, and head off in between missions to go add some SOs.
Now my damage skyrockets. The tanks are still mostly keeping aggro, which I find quite amazing. I've noted the level 26's build, I want to try it out some day.
Oh, and the funniest part of this TF was that the first tank had to leave midway, leaving the scrapper (DA, and yes, she didn't turn on her armor - guess how many deaths she had in the process) and defender to rival each other in deaths. (The rad gal thought she was a healer and didn't want to let the tanks die, so she jumped right in the center of them and spammed her heal. Right as every Freak in sight shot off AOE grenades at the tanks. OVER AND OVER again despite the tanks telling her not to. I think they eventually gave up.)
And the blaster only had one death versus their repeated 6-7+ deaths.
(And that was kinda sorta intentional. Saw the tank get stunned, all armors off, two Tank Swipers surrounding him and I thought I could fire blast and draw aggro for a moment for him to recover. Well, I did manage it. Kinda. Landed me in hospital before I could chew a respite though.)
Still funny. And we raced through to get it done by my 7.30 am. I'm not used to being the stealth guy on TFs either. But level 22's cloaking device was fun.
Did a Striga Isle mission by my lonesome, wow, what a change of pace. I would have blitzed through it as a scrapper, maybe herded it as a tank, or basically just gone through steadily without stopping. As a blaster I was catching my breath (ok, hp, rather) after every group of 3, and playing commando with crates as cover, caltrops, grenades, the works.
It was fun the first room of the ship, got a bit tiring the second, tedious the third, and I was wondering -is there no end?- by the fourth. Made up for it by swallowing 3 lucks, 2 focused rages and basically 5-6 shot nuking the endgame orange Archon Whoever and an orange Sky Raider Captain to death.
Then I said to myself, I think I'm going about this all wrong. I'm level 21, I've done Psyche, my enhancements all look like crap even though I've 200k in my pocket because I'm trying to hang on for SO level, I just need to hit level 22.
How do fire blasters gain xp? Probably like fire tanks. Look for big groups of blues and greens. Aha. Checked up the zone hunting guide, Fautline or Boomtown has up to 19s. Ok, let's take the easier option, dash to Boomtown, and discover that level 18 Vahz still hurt like hell, level 17 clockwork are annoying with their tesla cages, but this little strip at the back full of level 19 blue and green Lost are JUST NICE. 200xp per kaboom cycle.
Ground for a while, got close to within 6000xp of level 22, when I get a tell from someone. Interested in Sister Psyche?
Hmm...Ok, it's 3am in the morning. I went to bed the moment I got back last evening, no clue why, just collapsed and got up at 12 midnight. Do I want sleep or do I want TF? I stated I only had 4 hours and I got an invite. (I figure that would be safe. 7am, give me some room to work with before I really had to dash off to work.)
mystick aura is a scrapper, like level 21 or so, and she puts together this team of 8 people, all of whom are level 23 and lower. I saw a level 20 in there too. And we all charge like nuts into the sewers and the first mission, where we confront level 27 Freaks.
Amazingly, our fire tank is pretty gosh-darned good, and he had 3 defenders supporting him, so he didn't die. Unfortunately me and the other blaster are hitting for like 6 and 7 hp aoes against +6 Freaks. We struggle for a bit before they are all screaming, this takes too long, we must reset the tf, change mission difficulty!!!11one!!
The decision is made and we head off to IP again. We lose 3-4 guys along the way, quit TF and quietly snuck off. I admit I was considering it too, but I wanted to at least watch their faces when they realized the Freaks are still at level 26 or 27.
Scrapper lady mystick reinvites those who stuck around, and pops in a second tank onto the team. I look. Level 26 fire tank, same SG (H.E.R.D.) as the first fire tank. My eyes light up. I beg for a sk from this fella and I get it. Our team numbers 6 now, and mystick is still hanging around.
Now that I have hope, I gently nudge the team into setting off with 6 so that the levels don't increase too much.
And we're off! (And yes, they were screaming again that Oh Noes, they're still level 26, changing mission difficulty didn't do anything much.) But since I was now viewing the Freaks as yellow and orange, suddenly my damage per aoe is now 33 on every Freak.
The two fire tanks are damn good. They're fire/ice with taunts and use 'em. They overlay ice patches and burn, and then I unleash my badaboom. Stuff dies. Before you know it, I hit level 22 - which was my ulterior motive, and head off in between missions to go add some SOs.
Now my damage skyrockets. The tanks are still mostly keeping aggro, which I find quite amazing. I've noted the level 26's build, I want to try it out some day.
Oh, and the funniest part of this TF was that the first tank had to leave midway, leaving the scrapper (DA, and yes, she didn't turn on her armor - guess how many deaths she had in the process) and defender to rival each other in deaths. (The rad gal thought she was a healer and didn't want to let the tanks die, so she jumped right in the center of them and spammed her heal. Right as every Freak in sight shot off AOE grenades at the tanks. OVER AND OVER again despite the tanks telling her not to. I think they eventually gave up.)
And the blaster only had one death versus their repeated 6-7+ deaths.
(And that was kinda sorta intentional. Saw the tank get stunned, all armors off, two Tank Swipers surrounding him and I thought I could fire blast and draw aggro for a moment for him to recover. Well, I did manage it. Kinda. Landed me in hospital before I could chew a respite though.)
Still funny. And we raced through to get it done by my 7.30 am. I'm not used to being the stealth guy on TFs either. But level 22's cloaking device was fun.
Monday, April 25, 2005
Regen Drama
Heh. So after successfully completing Calvin Scott, I finally had the time to catch up with other less important issues, like trawling the Dev Digest.
I must say the recent drama there is worthy of enshrining somewhere. It’s like a catalogue of human nature and foibles. An epic representation of the phrase “That’s LIFE.”
A whole lot of misunderstandings and people talking off-topic, off-base, about subjects more close and dear to their heart than the thread subject creating a spammed noise that masks a really serious dialogue (giving, taking, sharing) between devs and players.
In the space of one day, thanks to the conversation on the forum boards, a critical bug in the dev’s testing environment was found and tracked down. From pretty much afternoon to late at night. Lots of names were called in the process and an apology was made as well.
So…human.
Yet so right. There’s a certain democracy which is working here, despite all the rough edges. We have players who care intensely, who spend time testing out every statement of the devs and because they live in it, know the environment better than those who just work there, and aren’t afraid to say when something is screwy.
And on the flip side to balance that, we have devs who don’t go apeshit when rough language is used directed at them, who don’t spend their time censoring harsh words to make them feel better, but are diplomatic enough to listen for the facts and cross-check them.
(Of course, there must be a certain humanness in wanting to be proved -right-, on both sides, pushing them along to this narrative pathway to climax.)
And when the mistake is found, States is man enough to publically say that he’s sorry. And thank everyone for helping them track down their bug. What an amazing dev team we have.
I should probably just switch my subscription over to 6 months and save a buck sixty, while showing my support and confidence in the devs. :P If I can get off my lazy ass to do it. (Been telling myself to order some books and stuff from Amazon, but I haven’t even found the time to do it yet. Heh. Even an electronic shop is tedious to patronize, how sad is that?)
I must say the recent drama there is worthy of enshrining somewhere. It’s like a catalogue of human nature and foibles. An epic representation of the phrase “That’s LIFE.”
A whole lot of misunderstandings and people talking off-topic, off-base, about subjects more close and dear to their heart than the thread subject creating a spammed noise that masks a really serious dialogue (giving, taking, sharing) between devs and players.
In the space of one day, thanks to the conversation on the forum boards, a critical bug in the dev’s testing environment was found and tracked down. From pretty much afternoon to late at night. Lots of names were called in the process and an apology was made as well.
So…human.
Yet so right. There’s a certain democracy which is working here, despite all the rough edges. We have players who care intensely, who spend time testing out every statement of the devs and because they live in it, know the environment better than those who just work there, and aren’t afraid to say when something is screwy.
And on the flip side to balance that, we have devs who don’t go apeshit when rough language is used directed at them, who don’t spend their time censoring harsh words to make them feel better, but are diplomatic enough to listen for the facts and cross-check them.
(Of course, there must be a certain humanness in wanting to be proved -right-, on both sides, pushing them along to this narrative pathway to climax.)
And when the mistake is found, States is man enough to publically say that he’s sorry. And thank everyone for helping them track down their bug. What an amazing dev team we have.
I should probably just switch my subscription over to 6 months and save a buck sixty, while showing my support and confidence in the devs. :P If I can get off my lazy ass to do it. (Been telling myself to order some books and stuff from Amazon, but I haven’t even found the time to do it yet. Heh. Even an electronic shop is tedious to patronize, how sad is that?)
Sunday, April 24, 2005
Mission Accomplished
Now what?
Heh. Welp, I took the time to turn the computer off and enjoy half a nice anthology of short stories. Cyber-Killers - sounds like such a pulp SF sort of book, but it has a collection of shorts by a ton of famous authors, Robert Silverberg, Arthur C. Clarke, Paul Anderson, etc. Very nice. Been enjoying anthologies lately, old ones dug out from hidden treasure troves at secondhand bookstores, cheap and full of ancient fantasy and SF goodness. The new novels are mostly unreadable copycat drivel anyhow. And since I've almost exhausted the fantasy line, the dark, cyber, future punk type of SF has been attracting me more and more.
I feel the urge to go play around in CoH. Except now I have this disassociated sense of...great, now what?
For the past two weeks, I've been living and breathing the obsession to reach and do the Calvin Scott TF. I warned myself off it at first, but decided in the end, that nevermind, won't do that much harm on the weekends as long as RL didn't falter by the wayside.
It's done. Serendipitiously, I also picked up a new friend/associate and SG along the way. Nice fellas, a ton of altholics in there. Put an alt in there to mess around too.
So the impetus, the drive, the compulsion has worn itself to an end as needs be. It's not healthy if stretched on for too long (a la a neverending quest for Seth/pops or Everquest uber equipment.) Fun while it lasted, certainly. I have a powergamer's roots, otherwise I'd have never fallen as deeply into RoD's clutches as I did. So yea, it's time for more relaxed sort of playstyle, a loose hopping, perhaps.
Let's take an inventory of the loose ends:
1) Ravenhill has managed his level 24 respec. Against all odds, I thought. We were down to one tank, two scrappers and a grav controller in the reactor room. Had some very narrow scrapes. I'm seriously thinking now that the trick is to leap at them the moment they show up on the catwalks - the first two times we waited for them to come down, and that took up precious time we could have spent whittling down their hp, and once they're so close to the reactor, they tend to ignore taunts for hugging the nuclear core.
And you will not believe how embarassingly long it took for me to get to the TV mission as a superspeeder without hurdle (and no one had recall friend.) Had to explore the damn map on the hoof as it were, and it took two deaths, a lot of stair/catwalk/ramp/pipe climbing and trick jumps, and an intervention at the last by our flying controller to scout out the doorway I could walk through. Of course, I think I took the hard route. The superjumping tank was guiding the other superspeeder on the other side of the map, which I later tried to retrace coming out of TV (and supersped and fell off catwalks halfway through, so there went that idea) and managed to get him through with no deaths - but took almost as long.
So all Ravenhill has is Sister Psyche at some future point, and a lot of putzing around solo on missions until he hits level 25 - at which point, he can cross over to Striga's later contacts, and then the contact tier of 25-29, and then decide if he wants/has room to do the Striga TFs.
2) I'm feeling very ambigious on Ragnarl. Now he's lovable, and I find I have the impulse to keep logging him to stay in contact with the network I'm building on him, and level 32 seems so close to level 31. But I'm fighting with both the impulse to tank (it's so habitual now after god-knows-how-many TFs, and I do like the feeling) and the boredom of tanking (either I tank it successfully, ie, hp bar doesn't shift, I go to sleep, or I'm screaming in pain knowing its too much and I'm gonna die at some point.) And then there is the fear of meeting more plevelers, herders or other such badly typing morons contrasting with the really nice, smart, English-using people I've met too.
There is the attraction of exploring the level 30+ places. I've not been in Crey's, Bricks, or Founder's Falls really properly yet. Except every damn mission seems timed these days, and Rag's contacts are in worser shape than before - thank you TFs. (Where is my stinking flashback mode?!)
3) Ochre. Hrm. Pretty much an unknown. I'm in an unknown SG (if I haven't been kicked) which has a high probability of being filled with moron-types. I will have to take on random pickup teams, and Ochre has low runaway skills (though come to think of it, I have PFF). I haven't done the controller playstyle in a bit though, but the ice/rad and ill/rad is beckoning too - god, I love putting up rad debuffs.
Oh, that reminds me of the incident in the IW SG when I had a rad anchor on a buncha Vahz, and one other controller tried to gale stuff away. Guess which zombie went flying down the sewer slope? Yep. The anchor. MY anchor. Bounce bounce green cloud right into the second group lower down. (All 8 of us were watching in open mouthed horror, I think.) Classic moment. Only had time to type something like urgh, before slapping down on the toggle off button and backtracking hastily from all the vomit and crossbow bolts. Hilarious in retrospect. And we survived too - yay, massive control.
4) Vesuvius. Now he's tempting in a way. I haven't played Cometh The Armageddon (if you don't shoot me down first) glass cannon blaster in a while. Except I don't think I have quite the patience just yet for slow dev blaster stalking of missions, and pickups are gonna be a mixed bag. Again.
5) Some other scrapper. Too many. All too low levels. I can't decide. :P
6) Some other tank. I'm breeding an army of fire and stone tanks. Also low levels. And there is Gruthak, the invul, but not really roleplay mood quite just yet either.
7) Some defender type. Possibility here, but who? Medic the emp? Healhealplzplz? Sighs. Gears the kin? He feels squishy. Dark will have to wait for I4. Storm, no proper storm yet, wait for later when I feel brave enough to take it on. Or bubbler - there was that bubbler/energy whom I can't even remember the name now, or the server.
Decisions, decisions. Maybe I shall just grab some dice and roll for it. Stop thinking and analyzing for once. :)
Heh. Welp, I took the time to turn the computer off and enjoy half a nice anthology of short stories. Cyber-Killers - sounds like such a pulp SF sort of book, but it has a collection of shorts by a ton of famous authors, Robert Silverberg, Arthur C. Clarke, Paul Anderson, etc. Very nice. Been enjoying anthologies lately, old ones dug out from hidden treasure troves at secondhand bookstores, cheap and full of ancient fantasy and SF goodness. The new novels are mostly unreadable copycat drivel anyhow. And since I've almost exhausted the fantasy line, the dark, cyber, future punk type of SF has been attracting me more and more.
I feel the urge to go play around in CoH. Except now I have this disassociated sense of...great, now what?
For the past two weeks, I've been living and breathing the obsession to reach and do the Calvin Scott TF. I warned myself off it at first, but decided in the end, that nevermind, won't do that much harm on the weekends as long as RL didn't falter by the wayside.
It's done. Serendipitiously, I also picked up a new friend/associate and SG along the way. Nice fellas, a ton of altholics in there. Put an alt in there to mess around too.
So the impetus, the drive, the compulsion has worn itself to an end as needs be. It's not healthy if stretched on for too long (a la a neverending quest for Seth/pops or Everquest uber equipment.) Fun while it lasted, certainly. I have a powergamer's roots, otherwise I'd have never fallen as deeply into RoD's clutches as I did. So yea, it's time for more relaxed sort of playstyle, a loose hopping, perhaps.
Let's take an inventory of the loose ends:
1) Ravenhill has managed his level 24 respec. Against all odds, I thought. We were down to one tank, two scrappers and a grav controller in the reactor room. Had some very narrow scrapes. I'm seriously thinking now that the trick is to leap at them the moment they show up on the catwalks - the first two times we waited for them to come down, and that took up precious time we could have spent whittling down their hp, and once they're so close to the reactor, they tend to ignore taunts for hugging the nuclear core.
And you will not believe how embarassingly long it took for me to get to the TV mission as a superspeeder without hurdle (and no one had recall friend.) Had to explore the damn map on the hoof as it were, and it took two deaths, a lot of stair/catwalk/ramp/pipe climbing and trick jumps, and an intervention at the last by our flying controller to scout out the doorway I could walk through. Of course, I think I took the hard route. The superjumping tank was guiding the other superspeeder on the other side of the map, which I later tried to retrace coming out of TV (and supersped and fell off catwalks halfway through, so there went that idea) and managed to get him through with no deaths - but took almost as long.
So all Ravenhill has is Sister Psyche at some future point, and a lot of putzing around solo on missions until he hits level 25 - at which point, he can cross over to Striga's later contacts, and then the contact tier of 25-29, and then decide if he wants/has room to do the Striga TFs.
2) I'm feeling very ambigious on Ragnarl. Now he's lovable, and I find I have the impulse to keep logging him to stay in contact with the network I'm building on him, and level 32 seems so close to level 31. But I'm fighting with both the impulse to tank (it's so habitual now after god-knows-how-many TFs, and I do like the feeling) and the boredom of tanking (either I tank it successfully, ie, hp bar doesn't shift, I go to sleep, or I'm screaming in pain knowing its too much and I'm gonna die at some point.) And then there is the fear of meeting more plevelers, herders or other such badly typing morons contrasting with the really nice, smart, English-using people I've met too.
There is the attraction of exploring the level 30+ places. I've not been in Crey's, Bricks, or Founder's Falls really properly yet. Except every damn mission seems timed these days, and Rag's contacts are in worser shape than before - thank you TFs. (Where is my stinking flashback mode?!)
3) Ochre. Hrm. Pretty much an unknown. I'm in an unknown SG (if I haven't been kicked) which has a high probability of being filled with moron-types. I will have to take on random pickup teams, and Ochre has low runaway skills (though come to think of it, I have PFF). I haven't done the controller playstyle in a bit though, but the ice/rad and ill/rad is beckoning too - god, I love putting up rad debuffs.
Oh, that reminds me of the incident in the IW SG when I had a rad anchor on a buncha Vahz, and one other controller tried to gale stuff away. Guess which zombie went flying down the sewer slope? Yep. The anchor. MY anchor. Bounce bounce green cloud right into the second group lower down. (All 8 of us were watching in open mouthed horror, I think.) Classic moment. Only had time to type something like urgh, before slapping down on the toggle off button and backtracking hastily from all the vomit and crossbow bolts. Hilarious in retrospect. And we survived too - yay, massive control.
4) Vesuvius. Now he's tempting in a way. I haven't played Cometh The Armageddon (if you don't shoot me down first) glass cannon blaster in a while. Except I don't think I have quite the patience just yet for slow dev blaster stalking of missions, and pickups are gonna be a mixed bag. Again.
5) Some other scrapper. Too many. All too low levels. I can't decide. :P
6) Some other tank. I'm breeding an army of fire and stone tanks. Also low levels. And there is Gruthak, the invul, but not really roleplay mood quite just yet either.
7) Some defender type. Possibility here, but who? Medic the emp? Healhealplzplz? Sighs. Gears the kin? He feels squishy. Dark will have to wait for I4. Storm, no proper storm yet, wait for later when I feel brave enough to take it on. Or bubbler - there was that bubbler/energy whom I can't even remember the name now, or the server.
Decisions, decisions. Maybe I shall just grab some dice and roll for it. Stop thinking and analyzing for once. :)
Saturday, April 23, 2005
Need help?
Man, I'm growing to HATE this word. More so than defenders hate the phrase 'r u healr?'
Here I am, putzing along on my own aura mission, trying to offload the 4 Awakens I bought for the respec in Atlas Park, and I get a blind invite from a Crimson Flame. who is also in Atlas Park.
He says, oh I have done it, but I will help u. (Notice the 'u', urgh.)
I didn't ask for any help, dammit. Strike one.
I mash Freaks before he even makes it to Talos, and at Crey's, we bump into a fire tank pleveling party while trying to kill Rikti. He joins them and tries to get me invited as well. Everyone's level 30, the fire tank is 38. *sighs* I quit the team, and go to kill my Rikti, and everyone crowds around me trying to 'save me' and kill them.
Max Wilde says, dude we were willing to help u out.
(To myself, I'm like, did I ask for it?)
But anyhow, I thank them for their help and leave.
So why has the word HELP become a euphemism for "I want your mission xp," "I want to leech," "can you pl me plz?" and others such, anyhow?
P.S. Leaving them, I ran into a nice guy recruiting for Calvin Scott and got on it. Now I remembered why I wanted Mineral Armour - a little late now that I'm armed with hasten. Psychic Rikti. Ah well. We've a bubbler, and so many level 50 energy blasters that it's damn hard for me to take back aggro...
Here I am, putzing along on my own aura mission, trying to offload the 4 Awakens I bought for the respec in Atlas Park, and I get a blind invite from a Crimson Flame. who is also in Atlas Park.
He says, oh I have done it, but I will help u. (Notice the 'u', urgh.)
I didn't ask for any help, dammit. Strike one.
I mash Freaks before he even makes it to Talos, and at Crey's, we bump into a fire tank pleveling party while trying to kill Rikti. He joins them and tries to get me invited as well. Everyone's level 30, the fire tank is 38. *sighs* I quit the team, and go to kill my Rikti, and everyone crowds around me trying to 'save me' and kill them.
Max Wilde says, dude we were willing to help u out.
(To myself, I'm like, did I ask for it?)
But anyhow, I thank them for their help and leave.
So why has the word HELP become a euphemism for "I want your mission xp," "I want to leech," "can you pl me plz?" and others such, anyhow?
P.S. Leaving them, I ran into a nice guy recruiting for Calvin Scott and got on it. Now I remembered why I wanted Mineral Armour - a little late now that I'm armed with hasten. Psychic Rikti. Ah well. We've a bubbler, and so many level 50 energy blasters that it's damn hard for me to take back aggro...
Minor Peeves
Meh, I've just been hopping around on Ragnarl, hoping to hear someone putting together a respec or Bastion TF and get invited, but looks like I'm gonna have to bite the bullet eventually and go lead it myself.
Minor Peeve No. 1:
For one thing, it seems like some team leaders/members haven't figured out the one critical rule of having a tank on your team.
(Now, I know a lot of tankers are major egoists, can't do this, can't do that, wait till I finish herding, don't shoot until I give the say so, yadda yadda... Well, I don't have any of those rules. Especially in a mission that is even-con to blue or greens, hell, you can do what the heck you want, it's my own personal challenge to take aggro and keep it. Except...one thing. One itty bitty detail...which is:)
YOU FOLLOW THE TANK. He point man guy. If you want him go somewhere, you point it out before hand, and say, Raggy, can go this way? Shoo shoo (push push). Raggy happy to go dat way.
You don't rush off by your lonesome to go and fight a crowd that is +2 to you (I'm 29, the mobs are 28 +-1 lvls, you're 25-26, figure it out, if you likey the xp/PL so much, better follow tanky) and then when your hp drops, you scream, TANK I NEED HELP, where are u?
Tank was busy having fun herding clumps of Family for you, and laughing at you as you take off in the wrong direction on the map and have your hp plummet accordingly.
A stoner especially has the habit of being real slow. Yea, I don't need rooted, but I don't quite feel like superjumping all over the map trying to babysit your ass. Yer too spoiled by healrz-types who will rush after you to keep you alive - trust me, my emp def will not do something stupid like that. Take some responsibility for actually staying alive by being aware of stuff.
So maybe if I have the little star by my name, then people will figure out that you need to follow me. Tank + Team Leader = you better the heck follow, no?
Minor Peeve No. 2:
People who have all lowercase in their names. (There is a Shift key for a reason. Just be careful not to hit the CAPS LOCK key once and lose sight of it forever.)
People who cannot spell 'you' and persistently use 'u.' (Is it the SMS generation or something that's ruining English with their cellphone code?)
People who lead with blasts and hope/expect the tank will take aggro from them. (Is it so hard to just let the tank do his thang the way he likes? When I'm on any other class, and I have a tank on the team, I always let the tank start. He might do my style of run in and taunt, and that makes me very happy because I can unleash hell. He might run up a bit and taunt, in which case I back off more and wait for the mobs to sorta straggle near him before attacking, or stand there to support him. He might just do the scrapper single-target lock, in which case I back off a LOT and switch to single-target assist on him. I never understand this, I have such an innate sense of self-preservation that I don't start aggro unless I am a tank or scrapper, and prefer to assist through someone. It's not like I'm standing there asleep for 15 mins, y'know. In fact, Raggy is downright hyper and has been yelled at by the rare wussy scrapper for starting fights too early. Can't you wait 5 seconds for him to run up and start?)
What am I hoping for anyhow? If these people have such little pride in their names, and cannot bother to spell 'you', then their English language comprehension is so poor, I doubt they've ever read a guide to tactics. :P Not to mention their situational awareness or caring about it (since they don't care to correct their spelling mistakes/grammar, why would they correct themselves or notice anything wrong in team combat either?)
Minor Peeve No. 3:
/t Ragnarl, Hi, can you help me with such-and-such a mission please?
*sigh* I am too fucking soft-hearted. Any time I hear the word 'help' in a tell, I get all googly-faced and mushy and I say okay to the team invite. I've done it three times already and it's always an exceedingly boring mission with dumbass teammates.
Couple weeks ago, it was some poor stone tank blind-inviting, then begging for help from me for a mission. Was about to quit, when the magic word 'help me please' came up, and I noticed it was the Defeat Villains in Memorial mission...ahh, cape mission. Oh, it's on invincible, no wonder he can't manage. Ok, no probs, help some poor hero get his cape.
The moment I walk in, I do a double take, the guy is level 21, I'm level 26+, the mobs are completely grey to me, and there's like a total of 15 Lost. At most.
(I'm wondering, WTF, my controller could do these numbers, albeit slowly. Oh, and the tank also invited a second 26+ ill controller to help out. So I had to check his powerset. Aha. All attacks, weird power pools, rock armor and mudpots. No root. No freaking wonder he was getting pwn'zored by status-oozing Lost.)
Sigh to myself, can't help just mentioning that root would have helped him here, and then get down to button mashing and mallet smashing. Other controller drops PA to basically clean up the remainder I walked past.
One minute later (or seemed like it), DING and done. Talk about overkill. Talk about sad when you can't even solo the nerfed cape mission. Heck, poor Ochre did it with a hold and air sup ad nauseam - which was tricky when there were groups of 2+ major-ass-kicking-Big-Sword-wielding Lost and not just one guy to whack.
But nevermind, first time was ok. We did a good deed. Guy was grateful. We left. Guy sends a tell wondering if we could take him to Icon. (groan) But he took the verbal instructions about landmarks and NW side of map and go to city rep first quite well, and thanked us again, so ok, not so bad. Just a clueless chap with no vidiotmaps.
Second time was yesterday. "We need help on a mission. It's lvl 27s, 28s, maybe some 29s." I'm 29, so I think, oh, ok, fine. I join two chaps, and start hopping to Dark Astoria.
Then guess what, yes, this ALWAYS happens. The group gets larger. And larger. More and more people are added. I don't understand, this isn't a TF, you don't need 6 people minimum...how come you are getting them when all you're doing is making a mission (invincible at that) you need help on harder?!
Laughable moment occurs: Guy pokes his head in and goes, OMG, they are 24s. RESET RESET.
I blink to myself. I thought you needed HELP on the fucking mission, weren't you killing stuff to see those mob levels, why are you reseting it? are my unspoken thoughts.
Apparently not. The guy prolly just saw the blaster's level (was his mission) and calculated upwards to +2, +3 for the mission difficulty.
I seriously consider if I want to join such a boring grey mission, but I notice the name of the mission and realize it gives the Spirit Warrior badge which I have outleveled the contacts for. Greed makes me stay.
Mission goes by completely uneventfully, except the scrapper leader provides many laughable moments by boggling over the levels of the mobs (24s, 25s, mostly - probably because it's a set mission from the 20-24 contact tier) and predicting it's gonna get harder as we go deeper.
Yes, they are all like 3-4 levels lower than me again, I'm 29 and completely bored and in total safety, and they keep boggling as to why I can run into the entire horde of mobs and not even blink in hp. The level 25 invul tanker has an inferiority complex or something, because she's right up there next to me and trying to take my aggro by taunting. And even though I taunt as well, she gets enough of it to whack her down to half hp. My hp bar barely winks, thanks to stoner and even-level con defense.
Meanwhile, the scrapper keeps predicting doom and gloom, it's gonna get harder, he freaks out when he sees a level 27 Totem, and I'm like YAY something kinda non-grey at last. Heck, nothing even touched the fire blaster (who figured out what I was doing and was very happy fireballing stuff, he didn't have fire breath though, what a shame they don't realize it is one lethal cone aoe) And the scrapper is still at it, believing stuff's going to run down the drain in short order (their hp bars are still perfectly fine since I was tanking everything) when I walk up to the last mob and beat its brains in...and the mission chimes goes, and he's amazed.
And they are all stunned to find out that they got a badge from it. I know, because all of them gasped out on teamchat, I GOT A BADGE.
And here I am thinking to myself, they were lucky it was a badge mission cos that's the only reason I stuck it out. For selfish badge collecting. :P I make a polite excuse and leave, logging off and go watch the animated cartoon dvd, Spawn vol. 2 and it was a lot more entertaining.
Third time's the charm: AGAIN, I get a tell from someone, saying he needs help with a simultaneous fire bomb disarm, could I help? Please? Now I'm actually afk in the bathroom, standing by the tram, but when I get back and scroll up, hoping to find a Bastion TF message, I see that.
Kind-heartedly, I send a tell back explaining I was previously AFK, does he still need help? He says, yes please, so I tell him to go ahead and invite.
Long pause...then I get a team invite from the team leader, which isn't him. It's 'onehotmama' who was the emp def on the second time I helped. *groan* Fine, nevermind. I hop over to the mission. Which by the way, was NEVER put up by onehotmama. It just so happens I was in the same zone as the guy who needed the help and sent me the tell, so I could figure out where it was.
3 simultaneous bombs, 3 members. Just nice, right? Nope, you guessed it. onehotmama sits in IP, when the mission is in Talos, and takes 10 minutes to invite two more people. The clock is merrily ticking away.
"..."
Somewhere in the middle of this I lose my patience. They're all level 27s again, the scrapper whose mission it is was on HEROIC fer goodness sake's, I'm 29, why the heck am I here standing around waiting for people to clump around?
I walk into the mission (which also selects it btw, onehotmama never got around to doing that) and go and amuse myself herding blue and green Family, which doesn't even require my other two armors, just rock and mudpots.
The two scrappers (one whose mission it was, and another who was just invited, no doubt) finally got bored of waiting outside in the mission for onehotmama and the other guy to arrive from IP, and came over to join me in total destruction.
Things go perfectly well, until onehotmama joins the scene with the other controller. Somehow, introducing the emp def causes everyone to waffle off in 5 different directions and lose track of the tank.
See Minor Peeves No. 1 and 2.
I give up and just amuse myself like a solo scrapping tank, herd a bunch of blues and greens, and then slowly mallet 'em to death while potting. They got into big trouble, and the emp def was wondering where I was and 'we need u rag'
Too funny. If you wanted a tank's help, you really should follow the tank. That's my one simple rule. I'm sorry, I will not auto-follow someone with mudpots on and auto-taunt or something. I'm not your pet tank on a leash to auto-taunt things away from you. Not when I'm level 29 and +2 or more levels to the party and the mobs, the only tank (thereby automatically designated main and lead tank - if there was another lead tank, then I would follow said lead tank - like that fire tank burning up Crey, I didn't run off except to save two squishies caught by a second group), you got me here by asking for HELP with a mission and you are practically pleveling off me in safety. And you still want me to chase you around?
I'm glad to protect squishies in my vincinity and I will taunt regularly. Anyone with a minimum of observation skills will notice that the safest place is near the tanker (but away from AoEs hitting said tanker. None from Family, y'know.) Not over yonder in the eastern most part of the map when I'm in the north part or already upstairs with two scrappers. I will not run over to you to pull your ass out of a fire you jumped into yourself by not noticing where the tank was.
It's really funnily sad. :P
I think I should learn to be a bit harder-hearted and not get fooled by idiots who say 'they need help' and then just drag all and sundry into a crummy (reseted) mission. Maybe the next time I see an idiot join, I should just quit the team. Nevermind, I recognize these fella's names now.
Maybe their definition of needing help and mine differs. Need help for me = I tried this mission by myself/ourselves already, and I'm/we're getting mauled, or the code demands simultaneous blinky clicking so I need some bodies please.
Maybe need help for them = i need u to finish mish for me plzplz!!11!one1!
And I'm getting a bit sick of the latter definition.
Ah well, this weekend *prays* Bastion TF!
Minor Peeve No. 1:
For one thing, it seems like some team leaders/members haven't figured out the one critical rule of having a tank on your team.
(Now, I know a lot of tankers are major egoists, can't do this, can't do that, wait till I finish herding, don't shoot until I give the say so, yadda yadda... Well, I don't have any of those rules. Especially in a mission that is even-con to blue or greens, hell, you can do what the heck you want, it's my own personal challenge to take aggro and keep it. Except...one thing. One itty bitty detail...which is:)
YOU FOLLOW THE TANK. He point man guy. If you want him go somewhere, you point it out before hand, and say, Raggy, can go this way? Shoo shoo (push push). Raggy happy to go dat way.
You don't rush off by your lonesome to go and fight a crowd that is +2 to you (I'm 29, the mobs are 28 +-1 lvls, you're 25-26, figure it out, if you likey the xp/PL so much, better follow tanky) and then when your hp drops, you scream, TANK I NEED HELP, where are u?
Tank was busy having fun herding clumps of Family for you, and laughing at you as you take off in the wrong direction on the map and have your hp plummet accordingly.
A stoner especially has the habit of being real slow. Yea, I don't need rooted, but I don't quite feel like superjumping all over the map trying to babysit your ass. Yer too spoiled by healrz-types who will rush after you to keep you alive - trust me, my emp def will not do something stupid like that. Take some responsibility for actually staying alive by being aware of stuff.
So maybe if I have the little star by my name, then people will figure out that you need to follow me. Tank + Team Leader = you better the heck follow, no?
Minor Peeve No. 2:
People who have all lowercase in their names. (There is a Shift key for a reason. Just be careful not to hit the CAPS LOCK key once and lose sight of it forever.)
People who cannot spell 'you' and persistently use 'u.' (Is it the SMS generation or something that's ruining English with their cellphone code?)
People who lead with blasts and hope/expect the tank will take aggro from them. (Is it so hard to just let the tank do his thang the way he likes? When I'm on any other class, and I have a tank on the team, I always let the tank start. He might do my style of run in and taunt, and that makes me very happy because I can unleash hell. He might run up a bit and taunt, in which case I back off more and wait for the mobs to sorta straggle near him before attacking, or stand there to support him. He might just do the scrapper single-target lock, in which case I back off a LOT and switch to single-target assist on him. I never understand this, I have such an innate sense of self-preservation that I don't start aggro unless I am a tank or scrapper, and prefer to assist through someone. It's not like I'm standing there asleep for 15 mins, y'know. In fact, Raggy is downright hyper and has been yelled at by the rare wussy scrapper for starting fights too early. Can't you wait 5 seconds for him to run up and start?)
What am I hoping for anyhow? If these people have such little pride in their names, and cannot bother to spell 'you', then their English language comprehension is so poor, I doubt they've ever read a guide to tactics. :P Not to mention their situational awareness or caring about it (since they don't care to correct their spelling mistakes/grammar, why would they correct themselves or notice anything wrong in team combat either?)
Minor Peeve No. 3:
/t Ragnarl, Hi, can you help me with such-and-such a mission please?
*sigh* I am too fucking soft-hearted. Any time I hear the word 'help' in a tell, I get all googly-faced and mushy and I say okay to the team invite. I've done it three times already and it's always an exceedingly boring mission with dumbass teammates.
Couple weeks ago, it was some poor stone tank blind-inviting, then begging for help from me for a mission. Was about to quit, when the magic word 'help me please' came up, and I noticed it was the Defeat Villains in Memorial mission...ahh, cape mission. Oh, it's on invincible, no wonder he can't manage. Ok, no probs, help some poor hero get his cape.
The moment I walk in, I do a double take, the guy is level 21, I'm level 26+, the mobs are completely grey to me, and there's like a total of 15 Lost. At most.
(I'm wondering, WTF, my controller could do these numbers, albeit slowly. Oh, and the tank also invited a second 26+ ill controller to help out. So I had to check his powerset. Aha. All attacks, weird power pools, rock armor and mudpots. No root. No freaking wonder he was getting pwn'zored by status-oozing Lost.)
Sigh to myself, can't help just mentioning that root would have helped him here, and then get down to button mashing and mallet smashing. Other controller drops PA to basically clean up the remainder I walked past.
One minute later (or seemed like it), DING and done. Talk about overkill. Talk about sad when you can't even solo the nerfed cape mission. Heck, poor Ochre did it with a hold and air sup ad nauseam - which was tricky when there were groups of 2+ major-ass-kicking-Big-Sword-wielding Lost and not just one guy to whack.
But nevermind, first time was ok. We did a good deed. Guy was grateful. We left. Guy sends a tell wondering if we could take him to Icon. (groan) But he took the verbal instructions about landmarks and NW side of map and go to city rep first quite well, and thanked us again, so ok, not so bad. Just a clueless chap with no vidiotmaps.
Second time was yesterday. "We need help on a mission. It's lvl 27s, 28s, maybe some 29s." I'm 29, so I think, oh, ok, fine. I join two chaps, and start hopping to Dark Astoria.
Then guess what, yes, this ALWAYS happens. The group gets larger. And larger. More and more people are added. I don't understand, this isn't a TF, you don't need 6 people minimum...how come you are getting them when all you're doing is making a mission (invincible at that) you need help on harder?!
Laughable moment occurs: Guy pokes his head in and goes, OMG, they are 24s. RESET RESET.
I blink to myself. I thought you needed HELP on the fucking mission, weren't you killing stuff to see those mob levels, why are you reseting it? are my unspoken thoughts.
Apparently not. The guy prolly just saw the blaster's level (was his mission) and calculated upwards to +2, +3 for the mission difficulty.
I seriously consider if I want to join such a boring grey mission, but I notice the name of the mission and realize it gives the Spirit Warrior badge which I have outleveled the contacts for. Greed makes me stay.
Mission goes by completely uneventfully, except the scrapper leader provides many laughable moments by boggling over the levels of the mobs (24s, 25s, mostly - probably because it's a set mission from the 20-24 contact tier) and predicting it's gonna get harder as we go deeper.
Yes, they are all like 3-4 levels lower than me again, I'm 29 and completely bored and in total safety, and they keep boggling as to why I can run into the entire horde of mobs and not even blink in hp. The level 25 invul tanker has an inferiority complex or something, because she's right up there next to me and trying to take my aggro by taunting. And even though I taunt as well, she gets enough of it to whack her down to half hp. My hp bar barely winks, thanks to stoner and even-level con defense.
Meanwhile, the scrapper keeps predicting doom and gloom, it's gonna get harder, he freaks out when he sees a level 27 Totem, and I'm like YAY something kinda non-grey at last. Heck, nothing even touched the fire blaster (who figured out what I was doing and was very happy fireballing stuff, he didn't have fire breath though, what a shame they don't realize it is one lethal cone aoe) And the scrapper is still at it, believing stuff's going to run down the drain in short order (their hp bars are still perfectly fine since I was tanking everything) when I walk up to the last mob and beat its brains in...and the mission chimes goes, and he's amazed.
And they are all stunned to find out that they got a badge from it. I know, because all of them gasped out on teamchat, I GOT A BADGE.
And here I am thinking to myself, they were lucky it was a badge mission cos that's the only reason I stuck it out. For selfish badge collecting. :P I make a polite excuse and leave, logging off and go watch the animated cartoon dvd, Spawn vol. 2 and it was a lot more entertaining.
Third time's the charm: AGAIN, I get a tell from someone, saying he needs help with a simultaneous fire bomb disarm, could I help? Please? Now I'm actually afk in the bathroom, standing by the tram, but when I get back and scroll up, hoping to find a Bastion TF message, I see that.
Kind-heartedly, I send a tell back explaining I was previously AFK, does he still need help? He says, yes please, so I tell him to go ahead and invite.
Long pause...then I get a team invite from the team leader, which isn't him. It's 'onehotmama' who was the emp def on the second time I helped. *groan* Fine, nevermind. I hop over to the mission. Which by the way, was NEVER put up by onehotmama. It just so happens I was in the same zone as the guy who needed the help and sent me the tell, so I could figure out where it was.
3 simultaneous bombs, 3 members. Just nice, right? Nope, you guessed it. onehotmama sits in IP, when the mission is in Talos, and takes 10 minutes to invite two more people. The clock is merrily ticking away.
"..."
Somewhere in the middle of this I lose my patience. They're all level 27s again, the scrapper whose mission it is was on HEROIC fer goodness sake's, I'm 29, why the heck am I here standing around waiting for people to clump around?
I walk into the mission (which also selects it btw, onehotmama never got around to doing that) and go and amuse myself herding blue and green Family, which doesn't even require my other two armors, just rock and mudpots.
The two scrappers (one whose mission it was, and another who was just invited, no doubt) finally got bored of waiting outside in the mission for onehotmama and the other guy to arrive from IP, and came over to join me in total destruction.
Things go perfectly well, until onehotmama joins the scene with the other controller. Somehow, introducing the emp def causes everyone to waffle off in 5 different directions and lose track of the tank.
See Minor Peeves No. 1 and 2.
I give up and just amuse myself like a solo scrapping tank, herd a bunch of blues and greens, and then slowly mallet 'em to death while potting. They got into big trouble, and the emp def was wondering where I was and 'we need u rag'
Too funny. If you wanted a tank's help, you really should follow the tank. That's my one simple rule. I'm sorry, I will not auto-follow someone with mudpots on and auto-taunt or something. I'm not your pet tank on a leash to auto-taunt things away from you. Not when I'm level 29 and +2 or more levels to the party and the mobs, the only tank (thereby automatically designated main and lead tank - if there was another lead tank, then I would follow said lead tank - like that fire tank burning up Crey, I didn't run off except to save two squishies caught by a second group), you got me here by asking for HELP with a mission and you are practically pleveling off me in safety. And you still want me to chase you around?
I'm glad to protect squishies in my vincinity and I will taunt regularly. Anyone with a minimum of observation skills will notice that the safest place is near the tanker (but away from AoEs hitting said tanker. None from Family, y'know.) Not over yonder in the eastern most part of the map when I'm in the north part or already upstairs with two scrappers. I will not run over to you to pull your ass out of a fire you jumped into yourself by not noticing where the tank was.
It's really funnily sad. :P
I think I should learn to be a bit harder-hearted and not get fooled by idiots who say 'they need help' and then just drag all and sundry into a crummy (reseted) mission. Maybe the next time I see an idiot join, I should just quit the team. Nevermind, I recognize these fella's names now.
Maybe their definition of needing help and mine differs. Need help for me = I tried this mission by myself/ourselves already, and I'm/we're getting mauled, or the code demands simultaneous blinky clicking so I need some bodies please.
Maybe need help for them = i need u to finish mish for me plzplz!!11!one1!
And I'm getting a bit sick of the latter definition.
Ah well, this weekend *prays* Bastion TF!
Thursday, April 21, 2005
The Prize and Price of Solitude
It is time to spend complete solo time and get away from pickup groups.
I must be one the most anti-social people in this world, because the more I group, the more stressed and cranky I become. And I'm spending too much time grouped on the controller.
Ironically, I have only just upgraded my computer, and now I have a strong urge to play ASCII nethack. Which is what I will do, but when I get the urge to play ASCII nethack, it is a sign that I am suffering from social burnout. So I will, indeed, retreat into my little single-player game of @ hunting the Amulet of Yendor, until I can recover.
I like giant, hectic groups as much as I liked running big mobs in RoD. I can't take too much of it, in the same way. I need to get away from people most of the time, not get together with them. I guess supergroups really aren't for me.
Pickup groups aren't really for me either. I really should play my blasters more and make a few scrappers. I don't have to feel responsible for random weirdos, nor do I feel like taking attitude from them.
In the end, being picked up for a pick-up group is accepting the role as someone's tool. Picking up people for a pick-up is making people into tools. Yesterday, some PB (who has previously asked me if I wanted to team) a few times, asked me to team again. Why not? I joined and he sk'd me, the team slowly built up. Yes, this guy definitely knows what he is doing. Three controllers, two tanks, two damage dealers. This makes up for the innate negative percentages in the kheldian AT and lots of crowd control.
Heh, I went into the mission. Yeah, invincible. One of those eight people invincible teams...again...Max pop max xp. Mm hm. Oh well, whatever, I thought. Then I got really laggy and lost connection. Didn't feel like barging around one of those missions, but didn't really want to just disappear from the team irresponsibly, so I logged back on and asked for a reinvite. Nope, the Pb won't reinvite me and told me to try again later when I don't have lag. Eight person spawn for seven people gives more xp, maybe?
Maybe, but it might be a bit hard to make this controller join in next time to make numbers and buff kheldian status resistance. But that is all right, there are many people around eager to jump into one of those number-churning missions...
Amusingly, just about any team that would invite a controller is either 1) a team that is pretty much doomed and hopes some crowd control will save them, or 2) a professional grind team which needs some form of crowd control for the extreme spawn numbers and con-difference. So I've probably not been able to see any normal players at all.
And after a while, the controller becomes hard, heartless and cruel in a reflection.
"Whoever battles monsters should take care not to become a monster too, for
if you stare long enough into the Abyss, the Abyss stares also into you." -Nietzsche
After a while, all these people you pick up in your group are just names and tools too. Yesterday, I let a certain blaster bite the dust. That was a pretty sad business, in a way. During the last room of that TF mission, when the ambush was sprung from behind, I saw the blaster dying, but I just watched him for ten seconds or so until he bit the dust, then I went over and glaciered/ice-slicked the ambush. Maybe he realised it, maybe he did not. I definitely knew what was going on, and instead of just immediately managing the situation like I had kept doing previously, I just let things take their natural course...
I can be a monster sometimes, when someone who randomly blasts things around without self-control is rude to me. Ironically, I really am a watchtower. Not a foolproof one of course, I miss things, I make mistakes... but if a watchtower is so offensive, then do without one. Oh, did I hear you go splat? Awww.
So at this stage, it seemed to me that I can really just turn my missions to invincible, recruit "tools", grind xp in the way everyone does it until I get pets. Controllers as an AT really grow stronger and stronger as they progress and gain control tools.
But what fun is it anymore, if you just hold your mobs and let your pets chop them up?
I must be one the most anti-social people in this world, because the more I group, the more stressed and cranky I become. And I'm spending too much time grouped on the controller.
Ironically, I have only just upgraded my computer, and now I have a strong urge to play ASCII nethack. Which is what I will do, but when I get the urge to play ASCII nethack, it is a sign that I am suffering from social burnout. So I will, indeed, retreat into my little single-player game of @ hunting the Amulet of Yendor, until I can recover.
I like giant, hectic groups as much as I liked running big mobs in RoD. I can't take too much of it, in the same way. I need to get away from people most of the time, not get together with them. I guess supergroups really aren't for me.
Pickup groups aren't really for me either. I really should play my blasters more and make a few scrappers. I don't have to feel responsible for random weirdos, nor do I feel like taking attitude from them.
In the end, being picked up for a pick-up group is accepting the role as someone's tool. Picking up people for a pick-up is making people into tools. Yesterday, some PB (who has previously asked me if I wanted to team) a few times, asked me to team again. Why not? I joined and he sk'd me, the team slowly built up. Yes, this guy definitely knows what he is doing. Three controllers, two tanks, two damage dealers. This makes up for the innate negative percentages in the kheldian AT and lots of crowd control.
Heh, I went into the mission. Yeah, invincible. One of those eight people invincible teams...again...Max pop max xp. Mm hm. Oh well, whatever, I thought. Then I got really laggy and lost connection. Didn't feel like barging around one of those missions, but didn't really want to just disappear from the team irresponsibly, so I logged back on and asked for a reinvite. Nope, the Pb won't reinvite me and told me to try again later when I don't have lag. Eight person spawn for seven people gives more xp, maybe?
Maybe, but it might be a bit hard to make this controller join in next time to make numbers and buff kheldian status resistance. But that is all right, there are many people around eager to jump into one of those number-churning missions...
Amusingly, just about any team that would invite a controller is either 1) a team that is pretty much doomed and hopes some crowd control will save them, or 2) a professional grind team which needs some form of crowd control for the extreme spawn numbers and con-difference. So I've probably not been able to see any normal players at all.
And after a while, the controller becomes hard, heartless and cruel in a reflection.
"Whoever battles monsters should take care not to become a monster too, for
if you stare long enough into the Abyss, the Abyss stares also into you." -Nietzsche
After a while, all these people you pick up in your group are just names and tools too. Yesterday, I let a certain blaster bite the dust. That was a pretty sad business, in a way. During the last room of that TF mission, when the ambush was sprung from behind, I saw the blaster dying, but I just watched him for ten seconds or so until he bit the dust, then I went over and glaciered/ice-slicked the ambush. Maybe he realised it, maybe he did not. I definitely knew what was going on, and instead of just immediately managing the situation like I had kept doing previously, I just let things take their natural course...
I can be a monster sometimes, when someone who randomly blasts things around without self-control is rude to me. Ironically, I really am a watchtower. Not a foolproof one of course, I miss things, I make mistakes... but if a watchtower is so offensive, then do without one. Oh, did I hear you go splat? Awww.
So at this stage, it seemed to me that I can really just turn my missions to invincible, recruit "tools", grind xp in the way everyone does it until I get pets. Controllers as an AT really grow stronger and stronger as they progress and gain control tools.
But what fun is it anymore, if you just hold your mobs and let your pets chop them up?
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Team Types
I'll work on a proper document later, with good teams as well as the comedic ones, but this is a placeholder to remind me of the thoughts I was having while writing comments.
Good Team Type 1 - The All-Star AT Team (or the Pentad Team)
The standard, one-of-each-AT doing their designed function/role.
Good Team Type 2 - Single AT Teams (or a strong leaning towards it)
Things like an all scrapper team - can you imagine the chaos? You don't need damage mitigation because they all can take damage and deal it, it's just frenzy flying in (hopefully) one direction. An all controller team - ie, massive lockdown, slow damage until post-32, after which, it's no doubt like taking candy from a baby. An all-tank team, nobody drops with decent damage that can take down major stuff, and no one has to worry about aggy holding - bit like a slower, safer scrapper team. All blaster team - bit risky, but apparently it can work also. Deal so much damage the mobs have no time to fight back. Focused fire does wonders after all. And all defender team - debuffs and buffs out the ass, with offensive blasts to do damage, what's not to like?
Good Team Type 3 - Specialist Teams
Builds designed to fulfill some kind of team function, be it meatshield, healer, debuffer, controller, so on, and support each other, usually with leadership abilities, one dedicated teleporter, etc.
Comic Team Type 1 - You Sure That's a Team? (Or Every Man For Himself Solo)
This can work at the lowbie stages where everyone hares off to go massacre street mobs and the xp just rakes in, but in a door mission it can get very laughable. Divided we fall, remember.
Comic Team Type 2 - I Dunno What Dis Button Does (Or, you mean I have (insert skill here)?!)
These should really be player types, since it's usually just one or two players that can screw up a team. That's the tank who won't take/use taunt 'because it makes mobs attack you' and the blaster who just thinks rain of fire looks cool and has neat damage, or the DA or SR scrapper or the Invul/fire/stone tank who never turns a toggle on, even when it would be entirely appropriate to do so - and your end bar is full anyway. The defender who doesn't lay anchors (or promptly kills her own in the next instant) or claims to be a 'healr' and doesn't use a single emp power ever. The controller who just sits there and doesn't hold/debuff anything because he's useless until level 32 and just needs xp now.
Comic Team Type 3 - I Must Pull (Or, Mr Tactician)
Every group. Without fail. Pull the minion. Tank, wait. Don't run in. Seriously, you are aggroing them all. That's really bad. Let the blaster snipe. Stop, go around corner. Ok, blaster, go ahead. Zzzzz...snipe! Whzzzzz, powwwwl, THUD. (Sound of ranged attack - like big boulder or energy blast - squishing the blaster to half hp gone). Pheeeeowl-ding! (Sound of HEALER healing blaster slowly.) Blaster kills minion before minion gets to group. Wash, rinse, repeat. Wash, rinse, repeat. PANIC, they're ALL COMING, OMGWTFBBQ111one11! RUN RUN. Dash into lifts/out of doors. Let everything reset. Wash, rinse, repeat. Tank dies of boredom.
Couple that with player type 2, and you get the puller who uses his body, or the kheldian who uses his aoe knockback in all directions to pull. I prefer the A** Clown Taser Pull.
Good Team Type 1 - The All-Star AT Team (or the Pentad Team)
The standard, one-of-each-AT doing their designed function/role.
Good Team Type 2 - Single AT Teams (or a strong leaning towards it)
Things like an all scrapper team - can you imagine the chaos? You don't need damage mitigation because they all can take damage and deal it, it's just frenzy flying in (hopefully) one direction. An all controller team - ie, massive lockdown, slow damage until post-32, after which, it's no doubt like taking candy from a baby. An all-tank team, nobody drops with decent damage that can take down major stuff, and no one has to worry about aggy holding - bit like a slower, safer scrapper team. All blaster team - bit risky, but apparently it can work also. Deal so much damage the mobs have no time to fight back. Focused fire does wonders after all. And all defender team - debuffs and buffs out the ass, with offensive blasts to do damage, what's not to like?
Good Team Type 3 - Specialist Teams
Builds designed to fulfill some kind of team function, be it meatshield, healer, debuffer, controller, so on, and support each other, usually with leadership abilities, one dedicated teleporter, etc.
Comic Team Type 1 - You Sure That's a Team? (Or Every Man For Himself Solo)
This can work at the lowbie stages where everyone hares off to go massacre street mobs and the xp just rakes in, but in a door mission it can get very laughable. Divided we fall, remember.
Comic Team Type 2 - I Dunno What Dis Button Does (Or, you mean I have (insert skill here)?!)
These should really be player types, since it's usually just one or two players that can screw up a team. That's the tank who won't take/use taunt 'because it makes mobs attack you' and the blaster who just thinks rain of fire looks cool and has neat damage, or the DA or SR scrapper or the Invul/fire/stone tank who never turns a toggle on, even when it would be entirely appropriate to do so - and your end bar is full anyway. The defender who doesn't lay anchors (or promptly kills her own in the next instant) or claims to be a 'healr' and doesn't use a single emp power ever. The controller who just sits there and doesn't hold/debuff anything because he's useless until level 32 and just needs xp now.
Comic Team Type 3 - I Must Pull (Or, Mr Tactician)
Every group. Without fail. Pull the minion. Tank, wait. Don't run in. Seriously, you are aggroing them all. That's really bad. Let the blaster snipe. Stop, go around corner. Ok, blaster, go ahead. Zzzzz...snipe! Whzzzzz, powwwwl, THUD. (Sound of ranged attack - like big boulder or energy blast - squishing the blaster to half hp gone). Pheeeeowl-ding! (Sound of HEALER healing blaster slowly.) Blaster kills minion before minion gets to group. Wash, rinse, repeat. Wash, rinse, repeat. PANIC, they're ALL COMING, OMGWTFBBQ111one11! RUN RUN. Dash into lifts/out of doors. Let everything reset. Wash, rinse, repeat. Tank dies of boredom.
Couple that with player type 2, and you get the puller who uses his body, or the kheldian who uses his aoe knockback in all directions to pull. I prefer the A** Clown Taser Pull.
Intercepted Memo
This is a memo recently intercepted while investigating one of the Council's bases:
"To Archon Burkholder,
Sir, if I may speak frankly, a blind fool can see that there is major trouble coming our way. My base was completely overwhelmed by a single hero, by the name of Ragnarl, I believe. The creature simply strolled past all our defenses without even blinking, and left many broken bones in his wake. If not for my loyal adjutant who pulled me out of the base, and our esteemed doctors and the extra doses of super-serum I was judged worthy of, I would not be here to make this report to you.
I hear that our other bases have reported strange sightings. A bearded dwarf warrior, reminiscient of Norse mythology of old, walking right through grenades, bullets and turret fire bouncing harmlessly off his rocky exterior. Without doubt, that is Ragnarl. Even flamethrowers merely set his beard smouldering as he hacked our computers and rummaged through our supplies with impunity, completely ignoring our attempts to evict him. The men are becoming extremely demoralized. Apparently, he doesn't consider them even worthy of fighting or opposing him, though reports indicate he takes an almost devilish joy in dismembering our Zenith Mechs.
One patrol report suggests he used an EMP grenade on a Zenith Mech (code number #543-1428) on the Bony Morass beaches. As a test run, perhaps? He has not been known to use any since. Or maybe he is saving them up for a real assault on our bases.
One of our salvage crews retreived this recorded footage from an observation camera in Archon Parson's command post.
Optimists would say the dwarf was caught in an ambush. I think the creature just slowed down for fun. Note the Galaxy Adjutant crumpled on the ground, he was knocked out in two swings of the mallet and a single stone fist to the head. As the men in the footage are no longer to be found, I believe it is safe to say they are either in prison, or in a hospital or an early grave.
I repeat, there is major and significant trouble headed our way. We need to be prepared.
Signed,
Archon Salvatore"
Penciled on it is the reply, "Your comments are duly noted. Attached are orders for your new posting. As you may have realized, any heroes will need to go through you to get to our Megamech. Mess up this time and you will have an eternity to contemplate your broken bones in the Ziggurat. A. B."
Hee hee, nope I can't manage a CreyIndustries.com thing all the time, but it was fun to try it out once. As you may have guessed, I have done it! I have opened Ernesto Hess!
And I'm still in the beginning throes of level 29, thanks to mission objectives which don't involve a total "defeat all." Raggy can't sneak, but he can sure make a good attempt while solo. Superjump can get me past a lot of guys unnoticed, and those who do notice, well, they are left in the dust, and I'm not even aware they tried to shoot at me unless I hear the sound. :P
Pic was actually a sneak gone bad. I couldn't resist mauling a Zenith Hoverbot (those mechs must be vulnerable to Smashing, my damage goes through the roof on those things), and that alarmed every mob there or something and they wouldn't stop pursuit. Got to and finished the Archon before I turned around and realized they had all followed me from room to room until they caught up.
Heh, unfortunately for them, I reached lvl 29 a while back, and decided to add an extra slot to my mallets. And changed/fixed the slotting on 'em. Now 5 slotted, I'm afraid to say, it looks like damage is king. Just one acc, one end redux (for maximum benefit and no diminishing returns) and 3 damages on both mallets. I can take out most mobs with two swings, or at most, tickle them with fist and jump kick while waiting for the second attack cycle. And since they are dead so fast, my end does have time to regen back in the downtime that follows.
(I guess when I am teaming, I'm not supposed to be focusing on fast or steady damage anyway, that's the damage dealer's problem. All I need to do is conserve end and save up for those mallet taps to gain attention - and excessive damage has to help taunt magnitude - or to help take a boss down.)
There is a slight gap in my attacks still. Not terribly noticable, but slightly bothersome. It looks like I am going to have to bite the bullet and try hasten eventually in a respec. *cries* Not about to slot recharges, I think with mallet brawl index being what it is, the damage SOs have the most bang for the buck. So that leaves taking a power, or teaming with I4 speed boosting or AM giving people. :P
P.S. Amusingly enough on that last mission, I earned enough influence to get me the Celebrity badge. And it was also coincidentally, the 50th badge, which means Explorer popped right in with it. How fun.
(Someone needs to help me take a screenshot of my badges as seen in the info screen some day. They might look cool from that perspective too.)
Now all I need to do is find time and a team for 1) Hess, 2) Bastion. Preferably before the weekend even. I'm scared, second SG stress test is starting, means the devs are pushing ahead and if they ever get PvP stabilized, they might just open it on Live when they feel they need to.
(Frankly, I think they should take at least one more freaking month on it and get it right, because right now, it's horribly borken (sp. intentional) and needs severe tweaking to make it become fun, otherwise they will have an interesting time when all the PvP outrage threads show up on the Live threads after I4. But I know devs and their sense of 'appropriate' timing.)
"To Archon Burkholder,
Sir, if I may speak frankly, a blind fool can see that there is major trouble coming our way. My base was completely overwhelmed by a single hero, by the name of Ragnarl, I believe. The creature simply strolled past all our defenses without even blinking, and left many broken bones in his wake. If not for my loyal adjutant who pulled me out of the base, and our esteemed doctors and the extra doses of super-serum I was judged worthy of, I would not be here to make this report to you.
I hear that our other bases have reported strange sightings. A bearded dwarf warrior, reminiscient of Norse mythology of old, walking right through grenades, bullets and turret fire bouncing harmlessly off his rocky exterior. Without doubt, that is Ragnarl. Even flamethrowers merely set his beard smouldering as he hacked our computers and rummaged through our supplies with impunity, completely ignoring our attempts to evict him. The men are becoming extremely demoralized. Apparently, he doesn't consider them even worthy of fighting or opposing him, though reports indicate he takes an almost devilish joy in dismembering our Zenith Mechs.
One patrol report suggests he used an EMP grenade on a Zenith Mech (code number #543-1428) on the Bony Morass beaches. As a test run, perhaps? He has not been known to use any since. Or maybe he is saving them up for a real assault on our bases.
One of our salvage crews retreived this recorded footage from an observation camera in Archon Parson's command post.
Optimists would say the dwarf was caught in an ambush. I think the creature just slowed down for fun. Note the Galaxy Adjutant crumpled on the ground, he was knocked out in two swings of the mallet and a single stone fist to the head. As the men in the footage are no longer to be found, I believe it is safe to say they are either in prison, or in a hospital or an early grave.
I repeat, there is major and significant trouble headed our way. We need to be prepared.
Signed,
Archon Salvatore"
Penciled on it is the reply, "Your comments are duly noted. Attached are orders for your new posting. As you may have realized, any heroes will need to go through you to get to our Megamech. Mess up this time and you will have an eternity to contemplate your broken bones in the Ziggurat. A. B."
Hee hee, nope I can't manage a CreyIndustries.com thing all the time, but it was fun to try it out once. As you may have guessed, I have done it! I have opened Ernesto Hess!
And I'm still in the beginning throes of level 29, thanks to mission objectives which don't involve a total "defeat all." Raggy can't sneak, but he can sure make a good attempt while solo. Superjump can get me past a lot of guys unnoticed, and those who do notice, well, they are left in the dust, and I'm not even aware they tried to shoot at me unless I hear the sound. :P
Pic was actually a sneak gone bad. I couldn't resist mauling a Zenith Hoverbot (those mechs must be vulnerable to Smashing, my damage goes through the roof on those things), and that alarmed every mob there or something and they wouldn't stop pursuit. Got to and finished the Archon before I turned around and realized they had all followed me from room to room until they caught up.
Heh, unfortunately for them, I reached lvl 29 a while back, and decided to add an extra slot to my mallets. And changed/fixed the slotting on 'em. Now 5 slotted, I'm afraid to say, it looks like damage is king. Just one acc, one end redux (for maximum benefit and no diminishing returns) and 3 damages on both mallets. I can take out most mobs with two swings, or at most, tickle them with fist and jump kick while waiting for the second attack cycle. And since they are dead so fast, my end does have time to regen back in the downtime that follows.
(I guess when I am teaming, I'm not supposed to be focusing on fast or steady damage anyway, that's the damage dealer's problem. All I need to do is conserve end and save up for those mallet taps to gain attention - and excessive damage has to help taunt magnitude - or to help take a boss down.)
There is a slight gap in my attacks still. Not terribly noticable, but slightly bothersome. It looks like I am going to have to bite the bullet and try hasten eventually in a respec. *cries* Not about to slot recharges, I think with mallet brawl index being what it is, the damage SOs have the most bang for the buck. So that leaves taking a power, or teaming with I4 speed boosting or AM giving people. :P
P.S. Amusingly enough on that last mission, I earned enough influence to get me the Celebrity badge. And it was also coincidentally, the 50th badge, which means Explorer popped right in with it. How fun.
(Someone needs to help me take a screenshot of my badges as seen in the info screen some day. They might look cool from that perspective too.)
Now all I need to do is find time and a team for 1) Hess, 2) Bastion. Preferably before the weekend even. I'm scared, second SG stress test is starting, means the devs are pushing ahead and if they ever get PvP stabilized, they might just open it on Live when they feel they need to.
(Frankly, I think they should take at least one more freaking month on it and get it right, because right now, it's horribly borken (sp. intentional) and needs severe tweaking to make it become fun, otherwise they will have an interesting time when all the PvP outrage threads show up on the Live threads after I4. But I know devs and their sense of 'appropriate' timing.)
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Atlas Park Repository
Made http://atlaspark.atspace.com.
Atlas Park is such an unimaginative name though. How about something more original? "The Ziggurat"? "Terra Volta"? "Clockwork Kingdom"? :/
Atlas Park is such an unimaginative name though. How about something more original? "The Ziggurat"? "Terra Volta"? "Clockwork Kingdom"? :/
Monday, April 18, 2005
Glad I did that...
I really should not have complained, but I was probably slowly but insidiously affected by all the grinding, farming and plevelling going on around me. After fooling around on Assail, I got bored with the controller and had a desire to shoot things, so I logged onto Contrition and did a few random timed missions.
Ironically, it occured to me that the reason why I was in this limbo now was because I was so eager to get on to the next clue of the story arcs, that I stealthed through the click-blinkie parts of them. If I had bothered to clear the maps I would be playing with a brand new set of contacts now.
Anyway, I dislike timed missions. They are no big deal now for me, but I used to dread them beacuse I didn't start slotting my attacks until the early thirties.
This mission started out like the standard timed mission -- Devouring Earth had released mutagenic gas into an office compound, and I had 90 minutes to save the workers. I yawned and went to Brickstown. Then my eyes popped out of my head when I walked into the mission.
The place was really gassed. It was filled with greenish yellow gas. Mould was growing on the walls. This was your standard abandoned office building with a twist...because there were strangely bright green office plants everywhere. And burst pipes spewing waterfalls. And flooded floors. People who've been to Eden would conclude this place was starting to become a miniature Eden conclave.
Peaceful Devouring Earth, roaming the green pastures of the office building?
I took this one with the graphics options turned all the way up.
Oh yes, notice the group channel in those screenshots...more on that later.
Collide says that the Tsoo missions got revamped too. I want to make a new alt, and completely milk all the contacts of each tier dry Ravenhill-style, and make a little database of all missions. This could be tricky for the level 2-4 contacts, which are different for each origin, but it could be done. I should do this once my upgrades are in my computer and I4 is out.
The next question is what AT and powerset I should do this on. Granted, the easiest thing to do would be to make a scrapper for it, but I don't really like scrappers, and I don't have the proactive aggresive personality to play one well. A tanker would definitely work, but it would be a bit boring to just stand there and cut things down one by one. I like ranged, so a blaster would be exciting and fun (AR/dev or Ice/dev), although it would be horrible to be one soloing through some of the missions in the 30s without some form of crowd control. Defenders might work. A kinetics offender could buff itself to blasterish damage...but then there is no damage mitigation either until I get fulcrum shift, so same problem as blasters. A rad/* is most people's consensus. Storms would be fun but it lacks a self heal. Hmmmm!
Well, back to my little commentary on the screenshot group talks.
Juli would remember the GenericHero-fire tanker who wanted to do the Sister Synapse TF at level 20, and cussed her out and quitted when she warned him about taking a SK or getting kicked.
This time, he is back, with his ill-troller buddy. He managed to get his named changed to Flamin Ape. Just seeing the two of them together identified the fellow to me.
I was in Talos, making my way to Founder's Falls, when I got a tell from a Flamin Ape, asking me if I would make numbers. Sigh Another farmer/herder. Very well, he was polite enough to send me a tell, and I could spare a moment. So I let him invite me. But this wasn't a one moment thing, he was still finding people. Once I have identified who he was, I decided I wasn't going to do him that favour...
Call it Karma, or Tao, or the Wheel of Fortune. This is a very amusing reflection/role reversal. Except that we were running a legitimate Taskforce, and I was far more polite quitting the group.
I used to have a bit more respect for people who've had high levelled toons. Call it the age old MMO/MUD level syndrome. You think they've seen more or know more. Not really though...good players come in all ranges. And it's not what they've seen, but their attitude, because with a good attitude everything else comes in time. Everyone starts out kind of newbish -- I remember I kept getting lost/dying on Guernica. Bad attitude, well, that just says something about you as a person.
So I don't really "respect" someone unless I've grouped up with them for some time and see they are good players. Nowadays I pretty much say what is on my mind, or just go off if I can't be bothered. Kicking people, warning people too.
You see...when someone has a certain type of attitude (the F* u type), just because he's not doing it to you, doesn't mean that, under any random situation, he's not doing it to you.
Ok, I have to admit, I'm a bit touchy and defensive on the game nowadays. It's funny in a way. When I'm play a support AT (controller/defender), I get pretty harsh. When I'm playing a tank (or scrapper), I become very pleasant and tolerant. When I'm a blaster I'm pretty much a selfish bastard and don't even care about others. :P
But with this, I resolved that I am simply not going to put up with any dubious behaviour anymore. But herding and plevelling does happen with even people with good attitude or playstyles. I am not going to write everyone off. It is a mathematical set -- Many people with bad attitude herd and plevel. Not all people who plevel and herd have bad attitudes, but some do. Either way, what detracts from my enjoyment of the game, I will keep away from.
And I clicked the Quit button on my SG. As I have learnt in RoD, if you don't don't like what's going on, you can quit. I am not interested in pulling people out and causing drama. If I was in leadership, yes, otherwise I cannot be bothered. If someone can gain two levels in the time I took to log out and log in to make 25 for the Hess TF, yes, they are being plevelled. Drastically. If the orignal vision for the Supergroup has come to this, whatever -- it's not what I subscribed to.
Ironically, it occured to me that the reason why I was in this limbo now was because I was so eager to get on to the next clue of the story arcs, that I stealthed through the click-blinkie parts of them. If I had bothered to clear the maps I would be playing with a brand new set of contacts now.
Anyway, I dislike timed missions. They are no big deal now for me, but I used to dread them beacuse I didn't start slotting my attacks until the early thirties.
This mission started out like the standard timed mission -- Devouring Earth had released mutagenic gas into an office compound, and I had 90 minutes to save the workers. I yawned and went to Brickstown. Then my eyes popped out of my head when I walked into the mission.
The place was really gassed. It was filled with greenish yellow gas. Mould was growing on the walls. This was your standard abandoned office building with a twist...because there were strangely bright green office plants everywhere. And burst pipes spewing waterfalls. And flooded floors. People who've been to Eden would conclude this place was starting to become a miniature Eden conclave.
Peaceful Devouring Earth, roaming the green pastures of the office building?
I took this one with the graphics options turned all the way up.
Oh yes, notice the group channel in those screenshots...more on that later.
Collide says that the Tsoo missions got revamped too. I want to make a new alt, and completely milk all the contacts of each tier dry Ravenhill-style, and make a little database of all missions. This could be tricky for the level 2-4 contacts, which are different for each origin, but it could be done. I should do this once my upgrades are in my computer and I4 is out.
The next question is what AT and powerset I should do this on. Granted, the easiest thing to do would be to make a scrapper for it, but I don't really like scrappers, and I don't have the proactive aggresive personality to play one well. A tanker would definitely work, but it would be a bit boring to just stand there and cut things down one by one. I like ranged, so a blaster would be exciting and fun (AR/dev or Ice/dev), although it would be horrible to be one soloing through some of the missions in the 30s without some form of crowd control. Defenders might work. A kinetics offender could buff itself to blasterish damage...but then there is no damage mitigation either until I get fulcrum shift, so same problem as blasters. A rad/* is most people's consensus. Storms would be fun but it lacks a self heal. Hmmmm!
Well, back to my little commentary on the screenshot group talks.
Juli would remember the GenericHero-fire tanker who wanted to do the Sister Synapse TF at level 20, and cussed her out and quitted when she warned him about taking a SK or getting kicked.
This time, he is back, with his ill-troller buddy. He managed to get his named changed to Flamin Ape. Just seeing the two of them together identified the fellow to me.
I was in Talos, making my way to Founder's Falls, when I got a tell from a Flamin Ape, asking me if I would make numbers. Sigh Another farmer/herder. Very well, he was polite enough to send me a tell, and I could spare a moment. So I let him invite me. But this wasn't a one moment thing, he was still finding people. Once I have identified who he was, I decided I wasn't going to do him that favour...
Call it Karma, or Tao, or the Wheel of Fortune. This is a very amusing reflection/role reversal. Except that we were running a legitimate Taskforce, and I was far more polite quitting the group.
I used to have a bit more respect for people who've had high levelled toons. Call it the age old MMO/MUD level syndrome. You think they've seen more or know more. Not really though...good players come in all ranges. And it's not what they've seen, but their attitude, because with a good attitude everything else comes in time. Everyone starts out kind of newbish -- I remember I kept getting lost/dying on Guernica. Bad attitude, well, that just says something about you as a person.
So I don't really "respect" someone unless I've grouped up with them for some time and see they are good players. Nowadays I pretty much say what is on my mind, or just go off if I can't be bothered. Kicking people, warning people too.
You see...when someone has a certain type of attitude (the F* u type), just because he's not doing it to you, doesn't mean that, under any random situation, he's not doing it to you.
Ok, I have to admit, I'm a bit touchy and defensive on the game nowadays. It's funny in a way. When I'm play a support AT (controller/defender), I get pretty harsh. When I'm playing a tank (or scrapper), I become very pleasant and tolerant. When I'm a blaster I'm pretty much a selfish bastard and don't even care about others. :P
But with this, I resolved that I am simply not going to put up with any dubious behaviour anymore. But herding and plevelling does happen with even people with good attitude or playstyles. I am not going to write everyone off. It is a mathematical set -- Many people with bad attitude herd and plevel. Not all people who plevel and herd have bad attitudes, but some do. Either way, what detracts from my enjoyment of the game, I will keep away from.
And I clicked the Quit button on my SG. As I have learnt in RoD, if you don't don't like what's going on, you can quit. I am not interested in pulling people out and causing drama. If I was in leadership, yes, otherwise I cannot be bothered. If someone can gain two levels in the time I took to log out and log in to make 25 for the Hess TF, yes, they are being plevelled. Drastically. If the orignal vision for the Supergroup has come to this, whatever -- it's not what I subscribed to.
The Ol' Mallet Blues
I'm not really a fan of too much math, but since CoH was going down for maintenance in 10 mins and Ragnarl wouldn't get much anywhere in plodding through Striga contacts, I sat down with a calculator to ponder the slotting of his mallets.
After struggling with brawl indexes and 2 end redux + 1 damage versus 2 damage + 1 end redux, I finally decided they were the same Damage Per Endurance (give or take, to the 3rd decimal place.)
But then, I had to worry about activation and recharge times, didn't I? For the normal mallet, that's 10 seconds.
Then I have to take into account my three other attacks with their own funky slotting... and my brain exploded.
Meh, after sitting down again and thinking really hard about it without too much actual calculation, I think it comes down to personal choice and playstyle.
1) If I slot heavily for end redux, this means my damage per mallet swing goes down, but I'll be able to keep swinging more steadily without worrying about my end bar draining and all those lovely armors going POP. As a stone tank, this would fit the playstyle of standing in a crowd of mobs and just swing swing swing until everything dies, but it'll be slow.
2) If I slot heavily for damage, then my damage per swing goes up. Mobs will die faster, giving me the downtime periods to regen end, but I'll really have to watch how I swing, and time my attacks appropriately.
3) OR I could go for balance more or less, 1 acc, 2 end redux, 3 damage eventually, and sit in the middle of the spectrum.
Just taking me into consideration, option 1 seems more like the team build. I don't have to do colossal damage, but it'll allow me to be very resilient and tanky and keep going and going and going like an energizer battery/bunny.
Option 2 would be durned good for soloing, since me on heroic equals about 3 mobs at a time at most, and that means I want them deaders faster.
But then, you must think about the teammates if you're going to team. There is a bunch of end recovery powers from RA (stop screaming, Kelizendis), AM and eventually transference. If end is not a limit, then surely option 2 will be the more friendly team build since I can do heaploads of damage and still not run out of end.
*ponders*
And there's (ugh) hasten to consider. I don't have it now, but that could change in a real hurry once I get granite armor and realize that I really need a freaking respec bad since my recharge rate has gone to nothingness.
And is it even worth slotting one recharge on my mallets?
1 acc, 1 end redux, 1 recharge, 3 dam eventually? Is that the best? Or is that the lazy man's way out without calculating anything. *sighs*
Tricky. Very tricky.
After struggling with brawl indexes and 2 end redux + 1 damage versus 2 damage + 1 end redux, I finally decided they were the same Damage Per Endurance (give or take, to the 3rd decimal place.)
But then, I had to worry about activation and recharge times, didn't I? For the normal mallet, that's 10 seconds.
Then I have to take into account my three other attacks with their own funky slotting... and my brain exploded.
Meh, after sitting down again and thinking really hard about it without too much actual calculation, I think it comes down to personal choice and playstyle.
1) If I slot heavily for end redux, this means my damage per mallet swing goes down, but I'll be able to keep swinging more steadily without worrying about my end bar draining and all those lovely armors going POP. As a stone tank, this would fit the playstyle of standing in a crowd of mobs and just swing swing swing until everything dies, but it'll be slow.
2) If I slot heavily for damage, then my damage per swing goes up. Mobs will die faster, giving me the downtime periods to regen end, but I'll really have to watch how I swing, and time my attacks appropriately.
3) OR I could go for balance more or less, 1 acc, 2 end redux, 3 damage eventually, and sit in the middle of the spectrum.
Just taking me into consideration, option 1 seems more like the team build. I don't have to do colossal damage, but it'll allow me to be very resilient and tanky and keep going and going and going like an energizer battery/bunny.
Option 2 would be durned good for soloing, since me on heroic equals about 3 mobs at a time at most, and that means I want them deaders faster.
But then, you must think about the teammates if you're going to team. There is a bunch of end recovery powers from RA (stop screaming, Kelizendis), AM and eventually transference. If end is not a limit, then surely option 2 will be the more friendly team build since I can do heaploads of damage and still not run out of end.
*ponders*
And there's (ugh) hasten to consider. I don't have it now, but that could change in a real hurry once I get granite armor and realize that I really need a freaking respec bad since my recharge rate has gone to nothingness.
And is it even worth slotting one recharge on my mallets?
1 acc, 1 end redux, 1 recharge, 3 dam eventually? Is that the best? Or is that the lazy man's way out without calculating anything. *sighs*
Tricky. Very tricky.
Hess TF (Incomplete)
This is incomplete. I only remembered to take screenshots halfway. So this must be done again...which I do not mind at all. It is a great TF.
Some missions, then
Ernesto Hess:
We need more details on this giant Zenith Mech, Task Force Riddle. The Council's robots are already a significant threat in their own right! If they're getting bigger and better, we need to find out how!
I got to admit, you're made of sterner stuff than most heroes. You may beat the Council yet!
I'm about to send you into the Council's most secret stronghold, Task Force Riddle, but first I want to improve our communications. The Council's radar stations are preventing me from contacting you by cell phone. If we're to continue, I need you to take out those radar stations. I want to be able to keep tabs on you.
[Take out four radar stations]
Ernesto Hess:
Good work, kids. Now I can contact you wherever you are. And the Council will be scrambling to get their communications network up again; that ought to keep them out of our hair.
Some people I know would be very interested in all this info you collected along the way. Don't worry; I'll make sure it gets to the appropriate individuals.
I won't forget your valor, Task Force Riddle. I'll remember each and every one of you.
[Now you can call contact]
All right, Task Force Riddle, the scientists have given us the location of ARchon Burkholder's giant robot factory. It's within Mt. Richardson itself. You're going to have to infiltrate it. Now listen up: I need the location of the pending attack. And I also need you to take out the base's main gnerator, to buy us some time.
"Find info on robot attack"
And then the defeat Burkholder mission.
Some missions, then
Ernesto Hess:
We need more details on this giant Zenith Mech, Task Force Riddle. The Council's robots are already a significant threat in their own right! If they're getting bigger and better, we need to find out how!
I got to admit, you're made of sterner stuff than most heroes. You may beat the Council yet!
I'm about to send you into the Council's most secret stronghold, Task Force Riddle, but first I want to improve our communications. The Council's radar stations are preventing me from contacting you by cell phone. If we're to continue, I need you to take out those radar stations. I want to be able to keep tabs on you.
[Take out four radar stations]
Ernesto Hess:
Good work, kids. Now I can contact you wherever you are. And the Council will be scrambling to get their communications network up again; that ought to keep them out of our hair.
Some people I know would be very interested in all this info you collected along the way. Don't worry; I'll make sure it gets to the appropriate individuals.
I won't forget your valor, Task Force Riddle. I'll remember each and every one of you.
[Now you can call contact]
All right, Task Force Riddle, the scientists have given us the location of ARchon Burkholder's giant robot factory. It's within Mt. Richardson itself. You're going to have to infiltrate it. Now listen up: I need the location of the pending attack. And I also need you to take out the base's main gnerator, to buy us some time.
"Find info on robot attack"
And then the defeat Burkholder mission.
Explorer Euphoria
*stretches* Wheeeee. In a really good, bouncey mood because of the past two successful TFs we managed to churn through. First Sister Psyche, and now Moonfire. Managed to pick up good random teammates. (Oh, and after that, we managed to get on a Transendance Cavern trial with Star Control's SG - Instant Heroes (In Training) and that was kinda fun too, in a, wow, normal PuGs would never be able to churn up this kind of strategy way.)
As you may have noted in my previous post, I'm feeding my need for explorer recording and storyline by working on Striga Isle's story and faithfully (insanely) typing in every word the contacts say. (From many many screenshots.)
I first got the idea because I wanted to record the Striga Isle contacts for posterity with Ravenhill and I started copying everything the first two contacts said. (Irritating, third contact won't cough up anything until level 25.)
And I thought I'd give it a try with Moonfire also. Worked well. Screenshots caught most of the stuff, I missed a few of the early clues cos I wasn't thinking about it then.
When we do Hess, I'd appreciate if you could screenie the stuff the contact says too, pre-mission, mission text and post-mission accept text. :)
As you may have noted in my previous post, I'm feeding my need for explorer recording and storyline by working on Striga Isle's story and faithfully (insanely) typing in every word the contacts say. (From many many screenshots.)
I first got the idea because I wanted to record the Striga Isle contacts for posterity with Ravenhill and I started copying everything the first two contacts said. (Irritating, third contact won't cough up anything until level 25.)
And I thought I'd give it a try with Moonfire also. Worked well. Screenshots caught most of the stuff, I missed a few of the early clues cos I wasn't thinking about it then.
When we do Hess, I'd appreciate if you could screenie the stuff the contact says too, pre-mission, mission text and post-mission accept text. :)
Spoiler: Moonfire TF
Moonfire Task Force
Moonfire: I have been watching this little island for some time, heroes, and I am greatly troubled. I fear that the heinous crimes of the Council (and of those they have allied themselves with) may spell the destruction of this entire planet, its people, and all its glorious mysteries. I must beg you to help me. Perhaps together, we can stand between this Earth and the coming disaster.
(Agree to form a task force)
Moonfire: Before we begin, know that I am not of this world. Or, not entirely. This body was born here, yes, but there is much more to me now. You see, my body was fused with the life force of a Kheldian, a wise but short-lived alien race. In a very real sense, there is more to me than just a single soul. If we continue, you will learn things that are secret to most humans. I must be able to trust you.
You will earn my trust if you can journey into Vampyr Mountain and take down a clutch of vampyri. Only true heroes would risk such a feat.
A code name seems in order. I like the sound of Task Force Astral.
1)Defeat all vampyri in cave - Striga Isle
Moonfire: Thank you, my friends. I suppose I can trust you now. Remember, what you learn from me is not for other ears. I will tell you of the villainies of the Council, and most particularly, those of the wicked Arakhn.
---
Moonfire: You have earned my trust, and it is only fitting that I reward you by disclosing one of my secrets. Like me, Arakhn is only partly of this world. Her body is human, but the life force that guides her is that of a Nictus. The Nictus are ghastly creatures, the dark and twisted cousins of my race. Yes, the Kheldian legacy is fraught with misery and war. A war that has, most regrettably, come at last to Earth.
(Learn about the Kheldian War)
Moonfire: I have sensed a vast build up of Nictus energy in a nearby cave complex. Go there. I believe we will gain a clue to Arakhn's most recent plans.
2)Defeat all villains in cave – Striga Isle
Moonfire: The cave was full of war wolves? Strange. I have observed them for some time, but I have not yet determined their origin. They are like the beasts of this world's legends, and yet they are also strangely familiar to the part of me that is Kheldian. Perhaps this flask you found can help us solve that mystery?
Clue: Flask – This flask contains an inky coil of vapor that seems to writhe with a life of its own.
---
Moonfire: I have the greatest fears about the contents of that flask you found, Task Force Astral. Before we proceed, my theory must be confirmed. There is one on this island who is wise in the ways of all things. Take the flask to her, my friends. Perhaps she will be able to confirm my dread suspicions.
(Confirm Moonfire's suspicions)
Moonfire: I can only hope the contents are not what I fear them to be.
3)Take flask to Stephanie Peebles
Stephanie Peebles: All right, let's see that flask. Oh. Oh my. The darkness within this bottle is a life form of some kind. No. It is a fragment of a life form. A scrap of living energy, full of malice and hunger. I can only guess at the power of a full specimen of the species. I'm glad this is merely a piece of one!
If you are willing, I will craft a simple spell to put this energy under your control.
[You received Nictus Fragment.]
Moonfire: So. My worse fears have been confirmed. Within that flask, heroes, is a fragment of a Nictus! The cruelest race my galaxy has ever known, the sworn enemy of every right-thinking Kheldian! Be thankful that it is not a full-bodied Nictus Stephanie Peebles has bound to you. Be thankful, Task Force Astral, but also be afraid.
---
Moonfire: Listen, heroes, and you will hear a terrible tale: the history of the Kheldian race. You see, the Nictus and the Kheldians were once one people. Our lives were brief – ten years by this world's reckoning – but we were content. Or so we imagined. There were those among us who wanted more.
They became the Nictus. They learned to envelop other Kheldians, drain their life force, and thus become immortal. Inevitably, war followed. It is a war that has brought us halfway across the universe, to this unspoiled and beautiful planet. Perhaps it is foolish of me, but I hope to bring it to an end.
(Help Moonfire end the Kheldian War)
Moonfire: There are Kheldians still living on this planet in their natural form, though most of us have chosen to fuse with a human, like myself. I can only assume there are Nictus still living here as well. That flask you found contained a fragment of such a creature. Perhaps in another of Arakhn's strongholds, you can learn more.
4)Defeat Archon Fontain & his men – Striga Isle (6 hostages to rescue)
Moonfire: So, Arakhn and the Council are using Nictus fragments to fashion their Galaxy troops. And when something goes wrong, however slight, the merger results not in a powerful solider, but in a bestial war wolf! How disgusting! Listen, heroes. When I became fused with a Kheldian, it was with my full knowledge and consent. Indeed, that is the only way that such a permanent merger is possible, either for Kheldians or for Nictus. But it seems that the Council is able to force these mere fragments on their recruits. I cannot imagine anything more diabolical! Nor can I doubt that Arakhn is behind it all.
Task Force Astral, I believe Arakhn has met her match!
---
Moonfire: If those men you saved are correct, there is still another perisoner in the Council's clutches. This Dr. Todd they spoke of must be rescued. I don't know whether Arakhn plans to infuse him with a Nictus fragment, as she tried to do to those recruits, or whether she has some darker purpose in mind. But I am certain her plot must be stopped. Go and interrogate Arakhn's soldiers, Task Force Astral. Perhaps one of them can tell us where Dr. Todd is imprisoned.
(Interrogate Arakhn's soldiers)
5)Interrogate agents on Striga – Defeat 20 Council
Moonfire: I know Arakhn's cruelty, Task Force Astral. I know what she is capable of.
[On one of Arakhn's officers, you found a set of orders.]
[The coordinates seem to be accurate. You have stepped right into a Council base.]
6)Rescue Dr. Todd
Moonfire: The device Dr. Todd described is a thing most horrible, Task Force Astral. I have told you that the Nictus once fed upon other Kheldians. What I did not tell you was how. The Nictus scientists developed a powerful energy transfer device that could rip away a Kheldian's life force, even at a distance of light years. This terrible weapon is the reason we Peacebringers have resolved to destroy all Nictus, wherever they may be. If Arakhn plans to recreate this device, she must be stopped! Immediately!
You are remarkable heroes. With your help, I shall triumph over Arakhn at last!
---
Moonfire: If Arakhn truly intends to replicate the machine that allowed the Nictus to feast upon the Kheldians, it will be disastrous. There are hundreds of Kheldians living on this planet, and millions more in our home galaxy. In an eye blink she could murder us all!
Dr. Todd mentioned another facility where he was briefly imprisoned. I want you to go there and see what you can learn. If you find anything of note, please take it to one of this world's wise women. Her name is Dr. Ann-Marie Engles.
(Investigate the other facility)
7) Defeat all villains in base – Striga Isle
Moonfire: It has been a long time since I have been this badly shaken, Task Force Astral. Please, help me end this dreadful plot!
[You hear the hiss of perfectly tuned machinery.]
[You found a schematic] Clue: Schematic – You recovered these plans from one of Arakhn's bases. They seem to describe a machine with vast energy transfer capabilities.
8)Take schematics to Dr. Engles – Skyway City
Dr. Ann Marie Engles: Hmm. I'm afraid your friend, Moonfire, is mistaken. These schematics do not describe any machine that sucks energy. On the contrary. They describe a machine that transmits energy, directly into a human body. I think this machine is what allowed Arakhn to force those Nictus fragments on her recruits. What's worse, these plans describe how to make the machine stronger!
I believe this Arakhn plans to permanently merge living Nictus with hundreds of Paragon citizens. The machine would allow her to do this without the host's participation or consent. We would become creatures like her, twisted by evil, able only to serve as vessels for our Nictus masters.
Moonfire: So, Arakhn plans to plant the remaining Nictus within Paragon City's people? And she has found a way to make the merging permanent without their consent? Her evil can pain me, Task Force Astral but it can surprise me no longer. She must be stopped. For the good of humanity, and that of the entire universe.
---
Moonfire: I have a plan I would like to share with you, Task Force Astral. It is a bold one. I intend to use Arakhn's plot against her, but it will require knowing the names of her intended victims. Do you think you can get that information for me?
(Locate the names of Arakhn's intended victims)
9) Defeat Archon Salvatore & his men – Find list of names
Moonfire: If we can figure out who Arakhn plans to infect with her Nictus invaders, we can get to them first, and lay a pretty trap! While you're there, it would behoove you to take out a few of her men. The more we can weaken her power, the better the next phase of the plan will go.
Moonfire: Look at this list of names, Task Force Astral. Arakhn hopes to force permanent mergers with Nictus upon many of this city's greatest people. This cannot come to pass. Now that we know her intended targets, I will rally the Kheldian Army, know far and wide as the Peacebringers. We will set a trap for Arakhn's Nictus.
---
Moonfire: I want to bring the Kheldian War to a close once and for all, and to do that, I must end the Nictus threat. I intend to use Arakhn's plan against her, and lay a trap for her Nictus brethren. I want you to seek out Arakhn's stronghold. Then you must defeat her, while I gather the forces of the Kheldian Peacebringers. My bodiless brothers will go to her intended victims, and ask permission to protect them from the Nictus. And then they will wait.
When you defeat Arakhn, I have no doubt her loyal minions will put her plan into effect, sending the Nictus into their intended hosts. But each Nictus will be surprised by a Kheldian lying in wait, within the very body they had planned to assume. There we will defeat them, once and for all.
(Track down Arakhn)
10) Interrogate agents on Striga – Defeat 20 Council
Moonfire: I know this sounds dangerous, but it is the only way. If we do not stop the Nictus once and for all, Arakhn may develop an even more twisted plot. And that plot might succeed.
[One of Arakhn's soldiers gasped, 'All right, hero! I'll tell you what you want to know!']
Clue: The soldier's story – One of the Galaxy archons gasped, 'I'll tell you what you want to know. Arakhn is a cruel mistress, anyway. She is concerned not with the needs of her soldiers, but only the survival of her precious Nictus!'
11) Defeat Arakhn – Striga Isle
[You see a shadow flit across the ceiling. A trick of the light? Or something else?]
Moonfire: Wonderful job, Task Force Astral! Wonderful! You delayed Arakhn's plan long enough for my people to lay a trap for the Nictus she intended to force upon human hosts. Some of the people we protected even invited the Kheldians to remain. I have no doubt they will become some of this world's greatest heroes.
As for the Nictus, I believe we have vanquished all of them, or at least weakened them greatly. I suppose it is possible that some of them may have fused with their human hosts, but I do not believe it is likely.
Moonfire: I have been watching this little island for some time, heroes, and I am greatly troubled. I fear that the heinous crimes of the Council (and of those they have allied themselves with) may spell the destruction of this entire planet, its people, and all its glorious mysteries. I must beg you to help me. Perhaps together, we can stand between this Earth and the coming disaster.
(Agree to form a task force)
Moonfire: Before we begin, know that I am not of this world. Or, not entirely. This body was born here, yes, but there is much more to me now. You see, my body was fused with the life force of a Kheldian, a wise but short-lived alien race. In a very real sense, there is more to me than just a single soul. If we continue, you will learn things that are secret to most humans. I must be able to trust you.
You will earn my trust if you can journey into Vampyr Mountain and take down a clutch of vampyri. Only true heroes would risk such a feat.
A code name seems in order. I like the sound of Task Force Astral.
1)Defeat all vampyri in cave - Striga Isle
Moonfire: Thank you, my friends. I suppose I can trust you now. Remember, what you learn from me is not for other ears. I will tell you of the villainies of the Council, and most particularly, those of the wicked Arakhn.
---
Moonfire: You have earned my trust, and it is only fitting that I reward you by disclosing one of my secrets. Like me, Arakhn is only partly of this world. Her body is human, but the life force that guides her is that of a Nictus. The Nictus are ghastly creatures, the dark and twisted cousins of my race. Yes, the Kheldian legacy is fraught with misery and war. A war that has, most regrettably, come at last to Earth.
(Learn about the Kheldian War)
Moonfire: I have sensed a vast build up of Nictus energy in a nearby cave complex. Go there. I believe we will gain a clue to Arakhn's most recent plans.
2)Defeat all villains in cave – Striga Isle
Moonfire: The cave was full of war wolves? Strange. I have observed them for some time, but I have not yet determined their origin. They are like the beasts of this world's legends, and yet they are also strangely familiar to the part of me that is Kheldian. Perhaps this flask you found can help us solve that mystery?
Clue: Flask – This flask contains an inky coil of vapor that seems to writhe with a life of its own.
---
Moonfire: I have the greatest fears about the contents of that flask you found, Task Force Astral. Before we proceed, my theory must be confirmed. There is one on this island who is wise in the ways of all things. Take the flask to her, my friends. Perhaps she will be able to confirm my dread suspicions.
(Confirm Moonfire's suspicions)
Moonfire: I can only hope the contents are not what I fear them to be.
3)Take flask to Stephanie Peebles
Stephanie Peebles: All right, let's see that flask. Oh. Oh my. The darkness within this bottle is a life form of some kind. No. It is a fragment of a life form. A scrap of living energy, full of malice and hunger. I can only guess at the power of a full specimen of the species. I'm glad this is merely a piece of one!
If you are willing, I will craft a simple spell to put this energy under your control.
[You received Nictus Fragment.]
Moonfire: So. My worse fears have been confirmed. Within that flask, heroes, is a fragment of a Nictus! The cruelest race my galaxy has ever known, the sworn enemy of every right-thinking Kheldian! Be thankful that it is not a full-bodied Nictus Stephanie Peebles has bound to you. Be thankful, Task Force Astral, but also be afraid.
---
Moonfire: Listen, heroes, and you will hear a terrible tale: the history of the Kheldian race. You see, the Nictus and the Kheldians were once one people. Our lives were brief – ten years by this world's reckoning – but we were content. Or so we imagined. There were those among us who wanted more.
They became the Nictus. They learned to envelop other Kheldians, drain their life force, and thus become immortal. Inevitably, war followed. It is a war that has brought us halfway across the universe, to this unspoiled and beautiful planet. Perhaps it is foolish of me, but I hope to bring it to an end.
(Help Moonfire end the Kheldian War)
Moonfire: There are Kheldians still living on this planet in their natural form, though most of us have chosen to fuse with a human, like myself. I can only assume there are Nictus still living here as well. That flask you found contained a fragment of such a creature. Perhaps in another of Arakhn's strongholds, you can learn more.
4)Defeat Archon Fontain & his men – Striga Isle (6 hostages to rescue)
Moonfire: So, Arakhn and the Council are using Nictus fragments to fashion their Galaxy troops. And when something goes wrong, however slight, the merger results not in a powerful solider, but in a bestial war wolf! How disgusting! Listen, heroes. When I became fused with a Kheldian, it was with my full knowledge and consent. Indeed, that is the only way that such a permanent merger is possible, either for Kheldians or for Nictus. But it seems that the Council is able to force these mere fragments on their recruits. I cannot imagine anything more diabolical! Nor can I doubt that Arakhn is behind it all.
Task Force Astral, I believe Arakhn has met her match!
---
Moonfire: If those men you saved are correct, there is still another perisoner in the Council's clutches. This Dr. Todd they spoke of must be rescued. I don't know whether Arakhn plans to infuse him with a Nictus fragment, as she tried to do to those recruits, or whether she has some darker purpose in mind. But I am certain her plot must be stopped. Go and interrogate Arakhn's soldiers, Task Force Astral. Perhaps one of them can tell us where Dr. Todd is imprisoned.
(Interrogate Arakhn's soldiers)
5)Interrogate agents on Striga – Defeat 20 Council
Moonfire: I know Arakhn's cruelty, Task Force Astral. I know what she is capable of.
[On one of Arakhn's officers, you found a set of orders.]
[The coordinates seem to be accurate. You have stepped right into a Council base.]
6)Rescue Dr. Todd
Moonfire: The device Dr. Todd described is a thing most horrible, Task Force Astral. I have told you that the Nictus once fed upon other Kheldians. What I did not tell you was how. The Nictus scientists developed a powerful energy transfer device that could rip away a Kheldian's life force, even at a distance of light years. This terrible weapon is the reason we Peacebringers have resolved to destroy all Nictus, wherever they may be. If Arakhn plans to recreate this device, she must be stopped! Immediately!
You are remarkable heroes. With your help, I shall triumph over Arakhn at last!
---
Moonfire: If Arakhn truly intends to replicate the machine that allowed the Nictus to feast upon the Kheldians, it will be disastrous. There are hundreds of Kheldians living on this planet, and millions more in our home galaxy. In an eye blink she could murder us all!
Dr. Todd mentioned another facility where he was briefly imprisoned. I want you to go there and see what you can learn. If you find anything of note, please take it to one of this world's wise women. Her name is Dr. Ann-Marie Engles.
(Investigate the other facility)
7) Defeat all villains in base – Striga Isle
Moonfire: It has been a long time since I have been this badly shaken, Task Force Astral. Please, help me end this dreadful plot!
[You hear the hiss of perfectly tuned machinery.]
[You found a schematic] Clue: Schematic – You recovered these plans from one of Arakhn's bases. They seem to describe a machine with vast energy transfer capabilities.
8)Take schematics to Dr. Engles – Skyway City
Dr. Ann Marie Engles: Hmm. I'm afraid your friend, Moonfire, is mistaken. These schematics do not describe any machine that sucks energy. On the contrary. They describe a machine that transmits energy, directly into a human body. I think this machine is what allowed Arakhn to force those Nictus fragments on her recruits. What's worse, these plans describe how to make the machine stronger!
I believe this Arakhn plans to permanently merge living Nictus with hundreds of Paragon citizens. The machine would allow her to do this without the host's participation or consent. We would become creatures like her, twisted by evil, able only to serve as vessels for our Nictus masters.
Moonfire: So, Arakhn plans to plant the remaining Nictus within Paragon City's people? And she has found a way to make the merging permanent without their consent? Her evil can pain me, Task Force Astral but it can surprise me no longer. She must be stopped. For the good of humanity, and that of the entire universe.
---
Moonfire: I have a plan I would like to share with you, Task Force Astral. It is a bold one. I intend to use Arakhn's plot against her, but it will require knowing the names of her intended victims. Do you think you can get that information for me?
(Locate the names of Arakhn's intended victims)
9) Defeat Archon Salvatore & his men – Find list of names
Moonfire: If we can figure out who Arakhn plans to infect with her Nictus invaders, we can get to them first, and lay a pretty trap! While you're there, it would behoove you to take out a few of her men. The more we can weaken her power, the better the next phase of the plan will go.
Moonfire: Look at this list of names, Task Force Astral. Arakhn hopes to force permanent mergers with Nictus upon many of this city's greatest people. This cannot come to pass. Now that we know her intended targets, I will rally the Kheldian Army, know far and wide as the Peacebringers. We will set a trap for Arakhn's Nictus.
---
Moonfire: I want to bring the Kheldian War to a close once and for all, and to do that, I must end the Nictus threat. I intend to use Arakhn's plan against her, and lay a trap for her Nictus brethren. I want you to seek out Arakhn's stronghold. Then you must defeat her, while I gather the forces of the Kheldian Peacebringers. My bodiless brothers will go to her intended victims, and ask permission to protect them from the Nictus. And then they will wait.
When you defeat Arakhn, I have no doubt her loyal minions will put her plan into effect, sending the Nictus into their intended hosts. But each Nictus will be surprised by a Kheldian lying in wait, within the very body they had planned to assume. There we will defeat them, once and for all.
(Track down Arakhn)
10) Interrogate agents on Striga – Defeat 20 Council
Moonfire: I know this sounds dangerous, but it is the only way. If we do not stop the Nictus once and for all, Arakhn may develop an even more twisted plot. And that plot might succeed.
[One of Arakhn's soldiers gasped, 'All right, hero! I'll tell you what you want to know!']
Clue: The soldier's story – One of the Galaxy archons gasped, 'I'll tell you what you want to know. Arakhn is a cruel mistress, anyway. She is concerned not with the needs of her soldiers, but only the survival of her precious Nictus!'
11) Defeat Arakhn – Striga Isle
[You see a shadow flit across the ceiling. A trick of the light? Or something else?]
Moonfire: Wonderful job, Task Force Astral! Wonderful! You delayed Arakhn's plan long enough for my people to lay a trap for the Nictus she intended to force upon human hosts. Some of the people we protected even invited the Kheldians to remain. I have no doubt they will become some of this world's greatest heroes.
As for the Nictus, I believe we have vanquished all of them, or at least weakened them greatly. I suppose it is possible that some of them may have fused with their human hosts, but I do not believe it is likely.
Saturday, April 16, 2005
Color me Surprised...?
Today, I gave in to my urge and created a DM/DA scrapper. The uber-gimp scrapper, according to everyone screaming on the boards. The scrapper community is up in arms, complaining that they are broken, they are nerf and useless, and that they are gimpy, that they deserve more.
I was curious and decided to make that gimpy, useless scrapper.
After half an hour of playing, I reached level 4. This little scrapper shreds through everything. It even has a small AoE, where I line everything up in a cluster, and shadow-maul them. I have a screenshot of me shadow-mauling four Skuls in one go.
I am truly puzzled. What are these scrappers complaining about? Never would I have dared to take on an yellow mort, two white reapers and a white cadaver in one go. And surviving (with a tiny bit of hp. The reaper missed. I didn't.)
As for endurance problems? My blasters run out of endurance all the time, without even having shields. My controllers run out of endurance without even being able to kill anything. My defenders run out of endurance. My tanks run out of endurance.
I think scrappers expect to be everything in a neat package. They want to tank like tanks and do damage like blasters. However, they are made to be mid-range. To be able to take decent damage and do decent damage -- though now they are doing a lot of damage. They don't want the limitations that are put upon other ATs to be placed upon them. They want to have no downtime, and keep killing, without getting hurt at all.
Because, seriously, soloing this scrapper is ridiculously easy compared to the other ATs I have tried. For good reason of course -- the scrapper is designed to be a solo AT. That is good enough. For those people who want to take on seven-player spawns and spam the forums whining about nerfs... they need to make a controller or a defender. Play it. Then go back to their scrapper. And they will realise what a cakewalk it is to be a scrapper.
As for the complaint about some controller builds being able to do invincible missions -- there is the consideration of how long it took them to get there, in contrast to something that is viable straight out of the box.
I was curious and decided to make that gimpy, useless scrapper.
After half an hour of playing, I reached level 4. This little scrapper shreds through everything. It even has a small AoE, where I line everything up in a cluster, and shadow-maul them. I have a screenshot of me shadow-mauling four Skuls in one go.
I am truly puzzled. What are these scrappers complaining about? Never would I have dared to take on an yellow mort, two white reapers and a white cadaver in one go. And surviving (with a tiny bit of hp. The reaper missed. I didn't.)
As for endurance problems? My blasters run out of endurance all the time, without even having shields. My controllers run out of endurance without even being able to kill anything. My defenders run out of endurance. My tanks run out of endurance.
I think scrappers expect to be everything in a neat package. They want to tank like tanks and do damage like blasters. However, they are made to be mid-range. To be able to take decent damage and do decent damage -- though now they are doing a lot of damage. They don't want the limitations that are put upon other ATs to be placed upon them. They want to have no downtime, and keep killing, without getting hurt at all.
Because, seriously, soloing this scrapper is ridiculously easy compared to the other ATs I have tried. For good reason of course -- the scrapper is designed to be a solo AT. That is good enough. For those people who want to take on seven-player spawns and spam the forums whining about nerfs... they need to make a controller or a defender. Play it. Then go back to their scrapper. And they will realise what a cakewalk it is to be a scrapper.
As for the complaint about some controller builds being able to do invincible missions -- there is the consideration of how long it took them to get there, in contrast to something that is viable straight out of the box.
Friday, April 15, 2005
Go Task Force Vision!
Yay. Perhaps it -is- possible after all. Looks like the pst to est night crew is of greater intelligence/teamwork ability than the asia-pacific-aussie night crew. *weeps for this side of the globe*
Maybe it's because during my night times, all the adults on the other side of the world are WORKING, leaving me to play with the unemployed, the high school students, college fellows who stayed up the whole night and now have a hangover to boot, and so on. :(
Gonna be a little tricky to keep having to do it my weekend mornings and/or on off days, but heck, if I have to do it that way, I will.
See, like right now, just as I finally cracked open my Natural contact and was upgrading non-power 10 SOs (swoons, I actually have SOs in STAMINA now. And taunt and superjump and stuff), I got a blind invite. I know, I know, I should have declined it, but I was just being masochistic and I had no intention of actually doing whatever they wanted to do anyhow.
Accepted to see the mission set was Defeat 30 Family in Independence Port and the level ranges from like 27-31 and the leader picks up the 5th guy who was begging earlier in Steel Canyon for a TF (at lvl 30) who then promptly goes 'AFK, 1 min'. I wait for about 2 minutes, having fun picking out my SOs and wondering when the leader will get around to saying anything and wondering if the numbers of Family will actually drop. Then, I can't take it anymore and ask 'Hi guys. What's the plan?'
More silence, the others are busy talking about where they stay (one is in Illinois) and suddenly the team leader says 'bs, 8:37' and puzzlement springs up, and it turns out he clicked on a pedestrian who said the current time was 8:37 and he refutes that because it's not 8:37 where he is, it's noon and so on. (I'm still half in my enhancement management screen, cuddling up to Christine Landsdale.)
Couple minutes later, the lvl 30 scrapper in Steel Canyon is still there, and afk. And the team leader finally asks 'gee guys, what'd you want to do? mishs, hunt, or something?'
...
Silence for a while, then the other tank suggests 'hunt in tv' 'you can get 200 a kill there'
This suggestion is lost in the subsequent conversation half over broadcast to some others and half over teamchat about where everyone's hometown is.
I finish up with my non-power 10 SOs and decide that I've been masochistic enough for the day. So I develop a sudden case of hem, 'wife aggro' and need to urgently log.
*sighs* I think I'm soloing my nights.
Contrast that to the Sister Psyche TF we managed to build up. Sheer luck, maybe, but I'm grateful for it. Talk about a case of everything going right.
First, the ghost ship appears and my greed for spectral passengers lead me to make the acquaintance of the fire tank Gnorsomething (the spelling of his name escapes me) who was a fairly solid chap. (For one thing, he didn't go apeshit blaming others when he died from aggroing too many spirits and I was stuck in combat with a Lt. and didn't want to leave it to try and rush to him.)
Then we try and look for more fellows to recruit, and the first LFG guy I send a tell to, says YES immediately to the TF offer. That was Toxic Illusion, another very skillful player. Ill/rad, I think, with all the handy dandy invis scouting/tp utility TFs really like.
Now we're two tanks and two controllers strong. Good crowd control, now for the damage. The damage part was a little tricky because every guy I sent a tell to, had no time, but I got some really polite friendly refusals so everyone was happy.
So the next step they say, is to ask the guys on the TF already if they have friends who want in. And ooh, looks like they do. By the time everyone stops recruiting, we are 3 scrappers strong. Heh. And I feel like we may as well pick up a defender since we're 7 men strong anyhow. Conveniently, Queen Anuba pops out of a mission by then and pops on in - check powerset, lol, empathy without even asking for it. That'll make the fire tank happy. And RA always makes me happy. :P
And with the exception of the poor guy whose connection/computer couldn't take the special FX of a swell 8-man strong team working in unison (OMGWTFBBQ, team work is actually happening, I thought this wasn't supposed to happen)...
Task Force Vision ROCKED the TF in 3.5 hours. From 2.30 - 6.00 with time for quick breaks in between and one longer reboot break. Muhaha, my guess was good, after all. (Told them to anticipate 4-5 hours, but hopefully we might make it in 3.5 hours.)
Between Raggy's SO'ed S/L armors/resists and Assail and Toxic's storm and rad debuffs, those poor Freaks didn't even stand a chance of hurting anyone, let alone faceplanting someone. And Gnosh's burn and ice patch mashed all the minions completely, stuff was ice cubed and slicked and held all over, and the two scrappers were all happy mauling stuff in complete safety. As luck would have it, they were of the domesticus or feral type, so they proved great in the second line of defense protecting our squishies. Our empath was bored through most of it, with little healing and more buffing going on, which imo, is how things should be. But of course, the few times stuff looked like it was going to go a little downhill with people's hp dropping to half full, green glowy numbers showed up and saved the day. (Emp is great for last resort saving and constant buffing. It's too bad so many people want 'healrz' and rely on what should be last resort healing as their support crutch.) She even felt guilty about not shooting much, which we all hastened to assure her we didn't mind at all. (Talk about insane levels of maturity on this TF.) But I still saw a lot of rad debuff bubbles from her rad blasts as time went on too.
Ah, euphoia. This is how great teams should be. And it was pickup, pretty much. Just wisely picked, lucky-as-hell pickup.
This is what makes CoH great. And since the weekend is coming up, I'm going to try and see if I can bring my original plans to fruition.
Sister Psyche is done. Next up, in order, Moonfire TF - Arakhn must fall, Hess TF - muhaha, I wanna see the best tf evah, Bastion TF - nooo, they are changing Bastion's name in I4, and then hopefully Calvin Scott TF - if they don't sic I4 on live too soon.
(Prays that the devs will not be hasty and spring an ill-formed, laggy, crashy arena on people too soon, without even balancing PvP. I hope. Who knows what they will do. :( Give me time to hit lvl 30 something and do Calvin Scott! :P)
Now, I would be happier on Moonfire if I could hit level 28 and pick up crystal armor. Then maybe -some- of the freaking Galaxy blasts wouldn't be so annoying.
I'd need to dig through Striga contacts to get the Hess contact, so that's what I'm going to do to churn up to 28 from 27.
By the time I'm done with Moonfire, I should be lvl 29-30, in time to scrape by Hess, and maybe hit lvl 31, then that will put me in max range for Bastion (or Citadel), hit lvl 32 and pick up *swoon* granite and then see if Calvin Scott still exists by then. :P
Oh, and it occurs to me that when I was the TF setter, I had it on Heroic. That might have explained the sane spawn sizes (for an 7, 8-man team) and of course, I personally like tanking blue to yellow cons. Complete guaranteed safety for a stoner with debuffs, I hate people whiffing endlessly at purple mobs, I don't need that leet xp, thank you, I just want to get the freaking TF done fast. :P
Maybe it's because during my night times, all the adults on the other side of the world are WORKING, leaving me to play with the unemployed, the high school students, college fellows who stayed up the whole night and now have a hangover to boot, and so on. :(
Gonna be a little tricky to keep having to do it my weekend mornings and/or on off days, but heck, if I have to do it that way, I will.
See, like right now, just as I finally cracked open my Natural contact and was upgrading non-power 10 SOs (swoons, I actually have SOs in STAMINA now. And taunt and superjump and stuff), I got a blind invite. I know, I know, I should have declined it, but I was just being masochistic and I had no intention of actually doing whatever they wanted to do anyhow.
Accepted to see the mission set was Defeat 30 Family in Independence Port and the level ranges from like 27-31 and the leader picks up the 5th guy who was begging earlier in Steel Canyon for a TF (at lvl 30) who then promptly goes 'AFK, 1 min'. I wait for about 2 minutes, having fun picking out my SOs and wondering when the leader will get around to saying anything and wondering if the numbers of Family will actually drop. Then, I can't take it anymore and ask 'Hi guys. What's the plan?'
More silence, the others are busy talking about where they stay (one is in Illinois) and suddenly the team leader says 'bs, 8:37' and puzzlement springs up, and it turns out he clicked on a pedestrian who said the current time was 8:37 and he refutes that because it's not 8:37 where he is, it's noon and so on. (I'm still half in my enhancement management screen, cuddling up to Christine Landsdale.)
Couple minutes later, the lvl 30 scrapper in Steel Canyon is still there, and afk. And the team leader finally asks 'gee guys, what'd you want to do? mishs, hunt, or something?'
...
Silence for a while, then the other tank suggests 'hunt in tv' 'you can get 200 a kill there'
This suggestion is lost in the subsequent conversation half over broadcast to some others and half over teamchat about where everyone's hometown is.
I finish up with my non-power 10 SOs and decide that I've been masochistic enough for the day. So I develop a sudden case of hem, 'wife aggro' and need to urgently log.
*sighs* I think I'm soloing my nights.
Contrast that to the Sister Psyche TF we managed to build up. Sheer luck, maybe, but I'm grateful for it. Talk about a case of everything going right.
First, the ghost ship appears and my greed for spectral passengers lead me to make the acquaintance of the fire tank Gnorsomething (the spelling of his name escapes me) who was a fairly solid chap. (For one thing, he didn't go apeshit blaming others when he died from aggroing too many spirits and I was stuck in combat with a Lt. and didn't want to leave it to try and rush to him.)
Then we try and look for more fellows to recruit, and the first LFG guy I send a tell to, says YES immediately to the TF offer. That was Toxic Illusion, another very skillful player. Ill/rad, I think, with all the handy dandy invis scouting/tp utility TFs really like.
Now we're two tanks and two controllers strong. Good crowd control, now for the damage. The damage part was a little tricky because every guy I sent a tell to, had no time, but I got some really polite friendly refusals so everyone was happy.
So the next step they say, is to ask the guys on the TF already if they have friends who want in. And ooh, looks like they do. By the time everyone stops recruiting, we are 3 scrappers strong. Heh. And I feel like we may as well pick up a defender since we're 7 men strong anyhow. Conveniently, Queen Anuba pops out of a mission by then and pops on in - check powerset, lol, empathy without even asking for it. That'll make the fire tank happy. And RA always makes me happy. :P
And with the exception of the poor guy whose connection/computer couldn't take the special FX of a swell 8-man strong team working in unison (OMGWTFBBQ, team work is actually happening, I thought this wasn't supposed to happen)...
Task Force Vision ROCKED the TF in 3.5 hours. From 2.30 - 6.00 with time for quick breaks in between and one longer reboot break. Muhaha, my guess was good, after all. (Told them to anticipate 4-5 hours, but hopefully we might make it in 3.5 hours.)
Between Raggy's SO'ed S/L armors/resists and Assail and Toxic's storm and rad debuffs, those poor Freaks didn't even stand a chance of hurting anyone, let alone faceplanting someone. And Gnosh's burn and ice patch mashed all the minions completely, stuff was ice cubed and slicked and held all over, and the two scrappers were all happy mauling stuff in complete safety. As luck would have it, they were of the domesticus or feral type, so they proved great in the second line of defense protecting our squishies. Our empath was bored through most of it, with little healing and more buffing going on, which imo, is how things should be. But of course, the few times stuff looked like it was going to go a little downhill with people's hp dropping to half full, green glowy numbers showed up and saved the day. (Emp is great for last resort saving and constant buffing. It's too bad so many people want 'healrz' and rely on what should be last resort healing as their support crutch.) She even felt guilty about not shooting much, which we all hastened to assure her we didn't mind at all. (Talk about insane levels of maturity on this TF.) But I still saw a lot of rad debuff bubbles from her rad blasts as time went on too.
Ah, euphoia. This is how great teams should be. And it was pickup, pretty much. Just wisely picked, lucky-as-hell pickup.
This is what makes CoH great. And since the weekend is coming up, I'm going to try and see if I can bring my original plans to fruition.
Sister Psyche is done. Next up, in order, Moonfire TF - Arakhn must fall, Hess TF - muhaha, I wanna see the best tf evah, Bastion TF - nooo, they are changing Bastion's name in I4, and then hopefully Calvin Scott TF - if they don't sic I4 on live too soon.
(Prays that the devs will not be hasty and spring an ill-formed, laggy, crashy arena on people too soon, without even balancing PvP. I hope. Who knows what they will do. :( Give me time to hit lvl 30 something and do Calvin Scott! :P)
Now, I would be happier on Moonfire if I could hit level 28 and pick up crystal armor. Then maybe -some- of the freaking Galaxy blasts wouldn't be so annoying.
I'd need to dig through Striga contacts to get the Hess contact, so that's what I'm going to do to churn up to 28 from 27.
By the time I'm done with Moonfire, I should be lvl 29-30, in time to scrape by Hess, and maybe hit lvl 31, then that will put me in max range for Bastion (or Citadel), hit lvl 32 and pick up *swoon* granite and then see if Calvin Scott still exists by then. :P
Oh, and it occurs to me that when I was the TF setter, I had it on Heroic. That might have explained the sane spawn sizes (for an 7, 8-man team) and of course, I personally like tanking blue to yellow cons. Complete guaranteed safety for a stoner with debuffs, I hate people whiffing endlessly at purple mobs, I don't need that leet xp, thank you, I just want to get the freaking TF done fast. :P