The Old Wound

Ever notice sometimes how things keep cycling? Maybe there's some amount of truth in what they say: Lessons repeat until they are learned. Or maybe you just recognize or make up patterns in life because that's how our minds work - we're pattern-makers, dreamers, shapers, the works.

This little chatauqua is about small lessons from recent incidents in me life.

I got home late last night. Had to stay back late to finish up work. Stumbled back home after a tiring commute, took a bath, and then plopped myself in front of the computer to play CoH. Yes, we’re talking the cycle of obsession here. I needed to get to level 46. Worked really hard through various missions, and fell short of it by midnight. I stayed up until 1am, telling myself just a lil bit more. Still short, only half a bar left. So finally, I had to go sleep. I jump up at 7am and start playing again to finally hit my dream of level 46 before I dash off to work.

*sigh* I'm torn both ways. In a way, I kind of like the obsession. It's proof that I'm really serious this time about getting to level 50. That I will do what I set out to do, that I'm no quitter. And I tell myself that's it, once I hit 50, that's it, I'll crank down the pace again. I'll putz with a kheldian or two, and then just cool it, go do my other hobbies, take a massive break and play a month or two of serious alt-age before doing another character, or by that time, enjoying CoV. I know this will happen because I have played this game long enough to recognize how I usually play, and I don't have a serious need/urge to get multiple level 50s - been there, done that. (Thank you, RoD.)

At the same point, I have this sinking feeling that my body is not going to be able to take the strain of the mind pushing it. :P

My shiny object syndrome is also showing up and saying that there's lots of other things that you could be doing too. Thing is, is it right because 'variety is the spice of life', or is it wrong because 'you can only achieve what you strive to do'?

If I cool it a few days, I know the current group of level 45-46s will have sped up to level 48-49, out of my level range and have no desire to group with me - which will lead me to having to wait for the next damn group of 30s to get up to 40s and re-establish a new group. (This current group isn't exactly very nice on the coherent talk, but we do have a good mix/balance of ATs, if a shortage on defenders.)

No doubt it's because all those who can speak coherent talk have real lives and work, and never make it into the level 40 range where they have to sit and wait to make teams for AVs. Leaving me to group with a less nice ilk. :P At least they don't impose farming or bridging on me - which is what probably 50% of the Freedom people at this level range like to do.

Dunno. Let's sit on this question for a while.

I got into a 3 man av mission hunt. Not very comfortable, a kin def who was the leader (had a wife chasing after him, or so he said), an ill troller I've met before and me. Got Nightstar and Shadowhunter. And while tanking both was ok, with heavy use of unstoppable and praying that there was enough damage to kill them before my crash *just barely or not*... the kicker was attempting to herd wolves. +3 wolves.

Sighs. You'd think I know enough to protest, but I decided to be suicidal and when the leader suggested I go herd a few groups, I decided to entertain him and try. The first round my hp crashed like a rock, he tried to heal me, which sent one wolf on him and I was taunting that one - then the idiot decided to fulcrum shift (on the entire pack which I had only invinc on). Heh. Jeez. The boulders made him a nice little cairn.

Not good lah. I cannot herd reds. Or rather, I can, but my hp will fall like an avalanche and the only way to keep up is to get a dedicated healz0r to follow me around and boost me and heal other me always. OR, I can unstopp and herd like an I4 tanker for about 3 minutes, before getting pasted, or having a downtime of another 1-2 minutes waiting for the crash.

Lessons: I don't know why but I feel this sense of inferiority when this happens. It's like, why are they asking me to do something that I evidently have trouble doing? Is it because they are used to other tanks who CAN do this? This something that I cannot do? What do the other tanks have, that I don't have? Are they going to scorn me (and perhaps, all or most of tanker-kind) because I am a shitty tank?

Or am I just being overly sensitive and not recognizing that they are the ones without a clue, and have an over-inflated idea of just how strong a tank is these days, in I5? Because maybe they don't play tanks, perhaps? And that their only exposure to one are the herding, stacking, massive exploiters, and not the ordinary run-of-the-mill tank?

Dunno. It's something to think about. Why do I have this reaction of feeling inadequate when being asked to do something not really within my capability? Something to do with real life issues, mebbe? Heh.

Let's end on a brighter note. 30 minutes before maint, Haard Boyled wanted to try out arena for the first time, or so he said. He was 45, I was 45, and he had a 43 ill/emp troller along. We did a 'each man for himself' friendly. These two evidently have no fps background at all, cos they tried to play like PvE.

I don't consider myself a good PvP'er. I know I will get owned by the pros. By the master builds with their little tricks and traps. All I have is a little bit of cunning, and a lot of willingness to run the heck away like a wuss when the odds are not in my favor, and striking when it is. (Damn, I'd prolly make a good CoV Stalker, huh?)

I bought some temp powers just to have emergency stuff. I remembered that Haard was an invul scrapper, so I needed Brawl installed. I looked at my very full power trays and there was virtually no room. Dayum. And there was no extra key on my keyboard nearby (already using z, t, and shift-e already)…So I made the best decision possible, I swapped Scorch (1st early attack) for Brawl. I figured, well, that extra lick of damage is not going to do much in pvp anyhow.

It was a friendly, so we were chatting around, waiting for more to join if any. And Kitty, the controller, was going, oh no, tanks are very hard to kill. So I said, really? I thought it was a matter of just brawling their toggles off. (Ie. I gave them all the stuff they needed to kill me.) Not to mention, invuls were recently nerfed, apparently for pvp balance too.

Heh. I think it just goes to show that a certain amount of player instinct is essential. I opened a can of whoop-ass on the two of them and got away with a lot. They musta really been casual players, because they just tried to close and engage and hit like fighting mobs.

Checking out the arena forums for fun, I see the latest ‘tactic’ for those guys is to go into whirlwind which has no suppression. My tank build isn’t specially pvp built, but I still sprinted and jousted. It’s just an instinct. :/

Being a friendly, I decided to fight fair at first and go for the scrapper, since 2 on 1 on a non-set-up for pvp controller would be terrible. So I jousted, and poor Haard kept trying to close in on me, and I spammed brawl as fast as possible, while interspersing some incinerates and greater fire swords, and the odd block of ice hold. (Muhaha. That is a really good power for whooping casuals who are NOT expecting it.) Of course, the moment the poor guy’s unyielding fell off, I heard the hold kick in and you got a bunch of free hits in. That leads to him panicking, trying to retreat and so on, and an invul scrapper has unfortunately less hp than an invul tank, so he dropped quite handily. (And I was /fire damage too.)

Scrapper down, turn my attention to Kitty who was also trying to whack me down. Poor squishies, of course, have a serious mez weakness. Drop one block of ice, and oops. Done for. (Which shows you that they were not really serious pvpers because a serious pvper would have a near full rack of break-frees, and my cheesy tactic would have gotten nothing on ‘em.)

They decided to gang on me, which I didn’t mind, and tried the same thing again. I don’t know if they were really brawling. I don’t think so, because my toggles didn’t really fall off. I know Kitty never ran in to brawl. Haard may have been too distracted by his own toggles dropping to. They got one lucky hit on my unyielding in, and I got held by Kitty. I happen to have one break-free in my rack (always keep one for emergencies, and I’m going to stock up on more now that I’m trying to solo sappers), so I hit that, got free, and then hit unstoppable. (Another solo sapper-killing last resort trick I learned.)

Now I have three minutes before I’m paste and doomed, unless I break off and run. So screaming vengeance and dull-paining (it must have been depressing for them to get me down to ¼ hp, and have 974 hp come screaming back up), I knock Haard around until he’s down, and then I run Kitty down also.

They respawn, and I get the heck out of dodge before they come back. :P Ok, so some people can call it cheap. But really, do you wait around knowing unstopp is going to drop? You run the freak off, and people who want to knock you down had better come chase you and pull you down the hard way. I fly off into the trees, drop into some obscure corner of canopy, and then put on stealth suit. :P

Judging by how hard it was to see Kitty before she pulled her PA out (she must have been sup invis, I would guess.), stealth in trees would prolly make me very hard to find, unless someone was patently after my ass and willing to systematically comb through canopy.

As I guessed, Haard and Kitty didn’t have that kind of patience. Not when it was a free for all. They went at each other without my interference, and I had all the time in the world to wait for unstopp to crash, to rest, and to turn toggles back on.

Both of them were at about half health when I came back to find them, and do you think I can resist such tempting targets? Hee. Alexian didn’t call me bloody vicious in the arena for nothing. My favorite thing to strike is two people entangled in fighting each other, and not concentrating on others.

(I would make suuuucch a piss-people-off Stalker. It’s a good thing I don’t really get kicks on making people angry or unhappy. It makes me feel sheepish, actually. I like moral, ethics, fairness and honour. It’s just that in a ‘fight,’ this kind of stuff tends to go out the window if you want to win. Pragmatics and logic says so – which is another thing my mind is pretty good at. And this is where all the bad blood comes in. Outnumbering people, ganging, yadda yadda.)

So yeah, I swooped up on Haard again, knocked him silly and flattened him with greater fire sword, and walloped Kitty also. They come back screaming for blood now, and I have to fight ‘em off without unstopp having recharged. This time I have to use 3 medium green inspirations or more, but they don’t really touch my toggles (I really don’t understand why. Do I have that good defence? I don’t think so. Bloody Invinc.) They get me very close to red, maybe 1/5 hp left, when the match ends. :P

Final score. Me 6, Haard 1 (musta got in one on Kitty) and Kitty 0. And so I stand there without dodging and let them kill me after the match. :P

Actually, blasters are probably good pvp’ers if they know how to play. I can’t dodge their ranged attacks like I can a scrapper’s. And their secondaries can whack my toggles right off. It’s just they have to take the risk of coming up close to the tank and getting held and then squished on. :)