Sonic Woes

Heh. I went and played my earth/sonic guy again just for fun. His playstyle is ridiculously different, yet the same as the tanks. He's all about control, but he can handle insane +2 to +4 lts. and boss levels...he just cannot handle a mass group of minions. The complete opposite of lowbie tanks, who are best off massacring big minion groups of blue/greens that can't hurt 'em.

It was really refreshing to go hunt down the -red- areas of galaxy to go after vahz mortificators, eidolons and reapers. It's like suddenly, the light dawns...AHHH, so that's what these regions are FOR. For controllers with containment boost to totally dominate spawns of 1-3 mobs. Lol.

I hit level 6 solo, and was working my way through to level 7, getting bored enough to set the LFT flag on. Unfortunately, no one bit. Duh? Maybe it's the server. Some are not very groupy. So finally when I hit level 7, I gave up and said, fine, time to MAKE my own team, because there was like a lvl 8 tank lfg, and a 7 def lfg, and so on.

Happens the moment I decide and start sending tells, the same people have also decided to group up. There's a little confusion, then we decide to merge teams into one massive team of 7-8. And then we charge through the hollows.

Controllers are ridiculously still effective at things +2 to them. We were killing 8s and 9s. This would normally give me heart attacks as a tank at lvl 7. But plunk down quicksand, stone cages (sidle waaaay back out of firing range) and look for bosses/lts. to lockdown. And this gave the lvl 9 pb lots of room to just fire at will without the irritating knockback, and bang, much things died.

I don't know if it was the looping sound bug or what, but shortly after the first few missions, the two tankers disconnected and never came back, one after the other. On purpose? I dunno. Every time I drop offline, I always come back, so as to show people that I respect the team, and only quit after saying a proper goodbye. There has been one time after I dropped off that I never got a reinvite or a reply after sending a tell to the leader, but welp, that's the leader's choice or he missed both of them or whatever. Point is, you come back even if yer lagged to death, whenever you can get your comp behaving. Bah. I don't know what's with 'em. At least take pride in whatever you can do, even if yer nerfed and feel inadequate.

I think these guys just aren't true tanks. It's true what they say, you can ALWAYS tell a tank in another AT's clothing. They are always leading. :P

I ended up starting fights after the tankers seemed leery of it (which I don't blame 'em, since the spawn size was evil, but in a group with so many defs - had an ff'er and an empath and even-con, I would at least -try- to start the run in...and failing which, I would taunt to a corner, or even say, ok, maybe we should pull, or something...)

Tanks are tactical leaders. Of course you don't have to be a drill sergeant and general all-in-one, and say things like, OK BLASTER PULL NOW, everyone STOP, wait HERE, now GO. That cheeses me off. But a good leader knows how to suggest things in a manner that's not offensive, but persuades people to go do stuff. Things like, "Ok, let's try this. What if the blaster does this, scrapper does yadda yadda, and so on." "Oh, that didn't work so well, how about this method..." "Maaaybe that's not such a good idea, but ok, we'll give it a shot and see?"

Groups are always looking for a leader. Of course leading is difficult much of the time, if you have some weird pickup group that acts like a herd of cats, but it's nice when you can do it unspoken and the people react well together.

Anyhow, my post is entitled Sonic Woes. Let me get to my point. I finally hit lvl 8 with this nice group, and following my build, I picked up Sonic Barrier. *gulp*

I asked everyone if they could stand the animation, they all seemed like they've never heard or seen it before, and wanted it, so I shielded all of them. Oh my god. I just figured it out. The one who suffers the most is the sonic'er.

I tried to suppress extra player fx, but SHIT, I realized, these are MY effects on 7 people, so of course it doesn't suppress. And these were 7 mad people running around shooting stuff, with me as a sleepy player in the NIGHT, with the weird sound effect too...*gurk* *psshew*

Damn, but I was the one who suddenly felt like my brain was going to explode and develop a serious headache if I didn't stop very very soon. I didn't have such a bad reaction the first time on the Posi TF with it, but this time, it was not very nice. Maybe I was concentrating really hard on it or something. So once the mission ended, I had to leave my carefully formed team and beg off due to RL. *sniffs* Oh well, it was midnight and time for bed anyhow.

I'm going to be much happier once the fix for the sonic animation comes in. And I hope the fix WORKS.