Me and my corny titles. For whatever reason, I got the sudden urge to play a support class. I think it was meeting one too many defenders who speed boosted you once, and then left you to rot, especially WHILE enmired in quicksand from numerous earth thorn casters. Yes, I know sb wears off quickly. Yes, I understand that sb can get overlooked in the numerous icons across one's screen. Yes, I'm perfectly fine with waiting for you to get round to me, as long as you kinda remember I exist after oh...30 mins? I'm not really asking for much...
...just when the invul tank is just running like a stoner in slow motion in front of you, trapped in quicksand and trying to get out, when there are NO enemies left after having killed all of them while enmired, mind you, (would have been much easier to hold aggro un-mired), don't you think you could take a hint? Even if you react about 2 minutes after the fact? I just want to see that you...tried. And it's not as if your end bar has moved, thanks to the few, the proud, on-the-ball defs and the RA and AM buffs that -have- been laid down and maintained.
Which is also another pet peeve of mine. It's so hard to find good defs who take pride in maintaining their buffs, through wind, rain, shine, tank aggro or nothing. When I find an emp who can call for RA, run near (but not BY) the surrounded tank, wait for peeps to gather, and then trigger RA on -everyone-, it makes me weep, it does. Tears of joy, that is.
So often you have the 'healer' wannabes who think that RA is an afterthought, and can only be done in-between fights, forcing people to gathergathergather for 5 minutes before they can trigger it off. And evidently, they are not slotted for recharge at all, since it IS another 15 minutes or more before they remember or have RA up again. And to top it off, they don't heal so gud either.
So, suffering from lack of appropriately applied speed boost, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Granted, so far I've been pulling small teams, maybe due to the fact Infinity is a freaking empty newb server or something, but thing is, I know how to read SB icons and I check my team icon window as often as a rabid ferret on sugar twitches. The moment I don't see those booties, I slap it on.
I want to join a big 8 man team some day. Possibly, I can't maintain it on all of them, but I would give it a shot, staggering it like bubbles. Just turn Herostats on, give each a 30 second leeway time and see if it can be maintained.
Failing which, there -is- such a thing as selectivity. Tanks and blasters tend to really dry up on end real fast. Non-stamina people, another. Certain defenders, especially if the team is heavily leaning on 'em to survive. Stuff like that. And you could always watch and see who in your team really needs it. Situationally.
Like when you see someone held, you slap on ID. (Like I did in my casual pickups.)
Or possibly, just possibly, when you see the poor dumbass tank who waded into the center to tank every god-forsaken CoT in sight for the team, you give him speed boost so he doesn't have to sit there for 30 minutes waiting for the quicksand to wear off, while you sit there staring at him wondering what's taking him so damned long. (sighs)
Maybe my problem is, I'm too polite and too picky to join the ranks of the common peasants who will constantly scream and beg for sb sb plz! I try to trust that every damn AT knows how to do their job, and will have at least a moderate amount of observation skill. Sometimes, I'm proven wrong. *sniffles*
Oh well, but it's a refreshing change zipping around on Rapid Meltdown. You have to be so damn proactive on a deserted server when getting a team. I once resorted to /telling a lone scrapper lft but in a mission by himself if he wanted a kin/rad def to duo with. Very pleasant relationship. Guy was pro and /regen, so a kin makes him a god. Managed to get very far with that. And it was funny, after dunno how many missions we broke the team up to rest, and I was zipping around in a little speed-boosting frenzy in atlas park, he proceeded to tell me after 5 minutes that he missed speed boost already, as it had taken him forever to get from hollows to steel for more DOs. :P Taking over the world, one speed boost at a time. That should be my motto.
Then I bumped into the two herding fire tanks who were playing in Perez. That was hilarious. They were good chaps, didn't sweat it about xp, didn't sweat dying, were pushing it like mad, and never blamed the def, they were glad of any time I yanked them back from dying and didn't mind if they faceplanted from biting off too much. Also the second time when they were herding, I kinda got in the way from trying to rescue them and nearly got myself killed and messed the thing into chaos, but they didn't mind at all.
So I played the good def, buffing, transfusing when I could, irradiating when they had aggro, yadda and also provided taxi service via tp, siphon speeding to AP, tp, zone, speed and tp again and so on. And it was mooost satisfactory when the weaker tank (no temp protect and triyng to herd hellions, no combat jump, etc) who was accustommed to dying, went very very near to a sliver of RED hp and he said "Goodbye cruel world"...and my tranfusion landed in time, I irradiated to take some aggro off, and proceeded to transfuse him up to full health from near death. Muhaha.
The difference a defender makes. IF IF IF the damn def is on the ball. And not snoozing off in some corner thinking he can leech xp just cos he has an emp powerset and everyone liketh a 'healer' in their mission for simple morale boosting and placebo effect. Not me. I want to see the def DO something, even if it's blast. Preferably maintain a buff. Or actively DEBUFF. Or yes, even heal.
You know, you wouldn't believe the amount of 'rads I've seen, who don't take RI. Like...wtf? The shining debuff of rad and it's not taken? Sighs. Of course, they have the wimpy, end-sucking area heal instead.
Last Rapid Meltdown story. I trained a blaster to heel. I really did. Rofl. Had a timed mission, so I pulled a team from nowhere, a scrapper, a blaster, and a ff def who had more offensive blasts and no insulation shield (but at least she had deflection, so okay). Alas it was outcasts, so insulation would have come in really handy, but nevermind.
The first time we met outcasts, I urged the scrapper in, I was healing 'round the scrapper, and the two mad blasters (def included) started firing at everything, stealing aggro willy nilly, getting return fire and of course, proceeded to run around like mad chickens far away from the outcasts and then attempted to dash out the door and failed. :P
So I tp'ed 'em back to the hospital and had THE TALK. Everyone know how my heal works, right? Transfusion = melee heal. You need to stand near the enemy and stick close together, preferably near the scrapper...
I didn't belabor the point, figuring that they'll eventually figure it out or hit the debt cap. I used positive reinforcement, every time they clumped up together, even when they didn't need it, I shot off transfusion the moment it recharged so they'd have an idea what the green rings and glowy numbers were, and how large an area it'll hit.
The def caught on faster, and starting hanging near the scrapper. They were kinda not too sharp. And they had this most frustrating habit of:
a) not hanging near the enemy at all, just standing far far away but still suffering severe ranged fire damage, and eventually face planting
b) running near the enemy for like 2 seconds, instinct kicking in and running away screaming like a little girl again - result: I expend end to see my transfusion miss them cos they dashed away while speedboosted (remember I keep buffs on).
c) doing this while split up in three different directions, forcing me to do triage and distracting me from the main scrapper guy
or d) proceeding to kill very rapidly the last remaining outcast, the only time they are clumped up together usually, just with the 'appropriate' speed for me to land transfusion just to see the bastard die and my green swirlys appear but with no numbers. *sigh*
It ended up being me, the pathetic (albeit forcefielded) defender doing the pull with siphon speed/power or the first rad blast, because personally, I felt more equipped than the others to handle the tanking mindset. For one, after seeing them pull, I was the only one who knew how to get the fuck out of sight. For another, I decided to forcibly but silently demonstrate to them how I could transfuse heal myself back to perfect health just by sticking my ground in the face of the enemy. And I could run near the scrap as well.
But guess what, after like one hundred outcasts, nearing the end of the mission, the blaster who had faceplanted like 3-4 times, finally started getting it. And then started to hang near an outcast, and start shooting from like point blank. As usual fire blasters absorb the most aggro, but her hp never dropped to orange, let alone red, again. Thanks to now learning to be in transfusion range, and trusting the slow but regular pulse of transfusion.
Good blaster! Heel! That's a good girl... Good blaster!
The End. :)
Just you watch, the more dumbass blasters I see, the more I'll be inclined to play Vesuvius again just to be one less moron.
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