I5 on Test

24 July, and I've found a renewed interest playing CoH, to a certain extent. Rags is fun, and I tried out I5 for a quick half hour, but the thing that has renewed my interest is a theme-based, well-named new tank.

I got a whole bunch of wargames rules this month, and I'm busy building terrain enough to get some games going. Amazing what some foam and glue and sand and black/white primer can do...

And one of my most favorite fluff - story and background - is warhammer 40k. So then the idea struck me. What if I made a space marine in CoH? Muhaha. He'd have to be huge and have a robot armor body, which is one of my fav looks. What about his chapter? I tried diff colors and the best seemed to be a sort of army green. Woot, I could be a dark angels guy then, another fav of mine. He needed a good name, latin, of course and i found a great poem - Invictus. Obviously that name was taken all over, so I used the ol' Terminus Est trick and behold, Invictus Est was born, the Undefeated.

Heh, in fact the only time I faceplanted was foolishly joining and trying to tank for a +2 8-man team.

A space marine had to be either a scrap or tank, of course so i looked at the weapons and decided that Invictus was more a Stand Fast and lay about type. Maybe I'll make another 'rine with claws space wolf style some day. But Invic was gonna be a tank. Invul was obvious, the rest of the armors were too intrusive. And between a common axe versus a sword of fire, not to mention i have a stone/axe dwarf already, /fire it would be.

He is fun. The current invul is so forgiving on resists that i could take 2 fire attacks, air sup (jump pack assault marine!) and taunt, working with only temp invic and unyielding in the primary.

This makes him very close combaty with faster attacks than /stone, so tired of those hammers, and he can still be a functional lowbie tank. I find myself much more adept with punchvoke after practice with the other tanks and /fire has a nice 'voke. A third attack at low levels really helps the monotony.

You know, they say I5 is going to nerf tanks. I'm actually not freaking out over it so much. I tried raggy on test and his smash lethal def still seems fine with 6 SOs. Of course a stoner is a regen tank to a certain extent. And I'm glad to see they didn't touch granite. For the cost we pay, i certainly think granite deserves to be the king of resist and defence.

Part of the reason why I'm doing this invul is to see if I can feel a difference playing normally and solo vs the mass herding of hundreds which is kinda dumb. And i like the I5 xp boost.

And I admit to feeling a kind of relief about the taunt nerf. It's so about time that a single man aka The Tank doesn't carry the team. Suddenly aggro has become everybody's business and not just shoot and wait for taunt to rescue yo ass. The sooner people learn this the better, imo. And then multiple tanks would be valuable for breaking up fights into two clumps, controllers get to do stuff, defenders especially empers can do something instead of being bored off their butts with a so-called 'good tank' in the team. And then a good tank would have to master the art of the taunt and punchvoke, knowing how to hit stuff to regain attention, rather than just tauntbot.

Frannkly the only thing i worry about is the ability of the nerfed guys to solo missions, cos some do that. It's tedious to get a team at high levels.

But it'll be refreshing to finally get rid of the 'fuck you, tank, do your job and taunt' mentality. Let's let tanks do their best in trying to take the -majority- of the damage, but you guys are in a combat situation too, so expect to get hit.

Defiance for blasters sounds interesting though apparently implentation needs some help. Maybe they should increase range as well as damage so they can run away and shoot. :)