Unforeseen Consequences?

Okay, despite all the doom-saying of I5, I can see that people are still going to need a tank on their teams. Because everyone is so much squishier, even if the tank is squishy.

I respec'ed a lvl 10 Gruthak to I5 solidity to try out "gauntlet" punchvoke. That basically meant TI, UY, dull pain and screw all passives. My last experiment with him involved trying to go the super-defensive route by taking nearly everything in his primary and ignoring his secondary, and it just didn't cut it very much. Was pathetic. Just like a bunch of other invuls I've seen going that route with nothing but the first secondary attack and/or taunt. So following Invictus' experience, I took TI, UY, and because of I5, dull pain really early. Then I went hogwild and took every single damn secondary in EM, first attack, second attack, taunt, bonesmasher, the works. Ignored pool powers at lvl 6, I'll just take tp foe at 12, and teleport at 14.

Then I got myself into a pickup team. Yea, he can hold aggro with all that investment in his secondary now. Meaning 85% aggro, rather than 100%. Survivability wasn't that bad, all things considered, granted I had an arrow def on my team and stuff. Couldn't really detect any punchvoke on adajacent mobs, but personally, I've developed a style that means walloping different things, and it'll feel unnatural to only concentrate on one mob, hoping that adajacent punchvoke would work - especially if one good punch means the mob IS called back for sure.

But there's one thing I've noticed as I tanked for big pickups on the invuls, be they smallbie or midbie or even the odd sk'ed highbie one in PI.

It is -doable-. With a tank who knows what he's doing. Especially with defender support, and everyone picks up a defender if they can lay their hands on one...

But it's no longer FUN.

I'm constantly worrying about dying, and that takes attention away from my holding aggro.

I have to keep pulling to corners if the group is too big, or isn't clumped up very well. The alpha strike almost always hurts, I have to trigger off dull pain like after one combustion or firesword circle combo, and then continue, so there's an interruption in aggro hold. And yes, I have had to run unstoppable a bunch of times if the damage is just too insane, which means I am then out of the picture for about 1 min or 1.5 mins because I don't want to risk starting another fight and then dropping out of the picture for good cos of the unstopp crash.

I think I am like one of the big tanky exceptions. Every other tank I've met seems to chant 'herd' as a mantra. It was almost hilarious, if it wasn't such a fiasco. I met this level 30 tank as I got picked up by a lvl 40 warshade on a big 7-8 man pickup team. And he said he just restarted playing, and he wanted to herd as I intiated aggro on one group.

So, let it not be said that I cannot play graciously with someone who communicates, I said, sure, ok, you can do the next group how you like. (He was sk'ed to me at first.)

And we had one emp def on the team, and one kin def. So he was fort'ed, ab'ed to the gills, he dashed around to pick up two groups of Nemesis, and created a nice little herd in a corner. Nova'ed. Beautiful. (Frankly, I was agape wondering how he did it, until I figured it was fortitude.)

Spurred on by his success, he wanted to herd again. (Me, I was just waiting for the shoe to drop.) This time it was the lab room with the 4 lab equipments. So he dashed in, ran around the first two corners, and out of sight - I was wondering if he would dash to the last corners and out of sidekick range...and then promtly die?

Three seconds later, his hp started plunging and he came hot footing it back (speed boost really helped him, else I think he would have had it) with an enormous horde of like 5-6 groups of Nemesis, and TWO Fake Nemesis bosses.

Of course, he had no taunt, and was only relying on his invinc aura, so you can imagine the moment they came within range, some of them switched to me (being one level higher than him) and others went crazy on the defs and kheldians. I ran around madly trying to regain aggro, and realizing I was perilously close to suicide, hit unstopp, but by that time, there was pretty much Total Team Wipeage except for me, the other tank, and one savvy blaster who was waaaay back.

He was real apologetic about that fiasco though, so we went on after picking ourselves up, and he let me take cautious aggro for like a few floors before he starting getting itchy again. Realize this was a Rugged mission to a level 40, so stuff was lvl 42-43, and I was only 38 and he was freaking 37. And he refused to be sk'ed to the lvl 40. (Heck, it wouldn't matter, he didn't try to take aggro.)

Enter new mission - Knives of Artemis. Thankfully, we had a kin def, otherwise I think I might have just suddenly developed a case of wife aggro. Then he wanted to herd again. And he kept up this unceasing demand for "I can herd, give me purples" God, that's so annoying, I had two purples, but dream on if I give them to you. No one did. So he decided to herd anyway.

Guess what he did, he ran around, supported by the defs, picked up like 3-4 groups, then came running back and DROPPED SK. Who gets to pick up the fucking pieces? Me. The blasters and kheldians didn't know what hit them. Their hp plunged, I had to run around, triggering unstopp again, and basically trying to do triage and stop faceplanting. The emp had quit about halfway, so the poor kinetic was trying her very best with green numbers.

The scrapper (also level 32ish, and sk'ed to the warshade leader) dies and just sits there, begging for a rez. From who, huh? The emp is gone. The kinetic is just looking at him. The rest of us are clean out of awakens from all the fiascoes previously. And this is a KR mission, with the hospital 398 yards away.

To rub salt into the wound, the other invul tank decides to sit at level 30, conveniently forgetting to ask for any SK. And when I offer one to him, he says, no, I can take the hits. (Hello, no, you are surviving because -I- am taking the hits. And when I don't take aggro from you, the poor fucking blasters and kheldians are the ones taking aggro from you and getting stunned and otherwise beat on, mutilated and gang-calropped, so I am compelled to take aggro.)

I do a few groups like this, with him disrupting my pulls, and otherwise adding a bit of chaos, while the scrapper is still sitting sk'ed to leader and dead. And I can't take it any longer and open my mouth to suggest that the other tank gets a sk from the warshade leader. Warshade drops scrapper sk, offers it to tank, who refuses.

We go through a couple more groups, our coordination deteriorating, morale sinking, as the other tank is busy lecturing the scrapper on rezzing, while determinately not taking any aggro. We get a couple of faceplants and teamwipes as the other tank keeps biting off more than he can chew. There is one VERY satisfying moment, when he draws in too many knives, our speed boost wears off, a bunch of blasters and kheldians bite it, my unstopp hasn't recharged, and the other thing I can do is charge forward holding as much as aggro as possible before dying. Shortly after, the def hits the carpet, the warshade's down, the last blaster is in full retreat, and the other tank is now finally the center of attention. And he says, run, I'll hold them back! I sat and watched from my happy viewpoint on the floor as his hp plunges in about oh, 7-8 seconds, as he panics and starts running full tilt backwards, and goes out of sight screaming @#$)(*# and DIES.

Then there was the scrapper who apparently came back from an extended, unannounced afk...Finally got convinced to go to hospital and come back. Then he runs straight into the heart of combat, not very observant about his lack of sk, and dies, and proceeds to curse and swear at the warshade...U DID THAT ON PURPOSE. You dropped as I ran in!!@!! It takes the combined efforts of the warshade, the other tank, and a couple other remarks from the rest of the team, to convince him that the sk had been dropped waaay earlier on. (All this while, the other tank still hasn't accepted sk from warshade.)

After this little amusing party, I send a private tell to the leader, saying 'I confess I'm a little irritated by (name of tank) not taking sk.' Leader finally manages to convince the dumbass herding tank that he needs to take the sk to finish the mission. He does so. 5 mins later, he mutters about having lag and bad connection and that he may drop out. 2 mins after that, he does indeed drop off the team. For good.

The scrapper gets his precious sk back. To add further insult to injury, he gets himself hurt, and then after all the mobs are cleared, he goes 'healz', 'heal me'. The kinetic can't even be bothered to say anything to the fucker, and neither can I.

The rest of the mission goes smoothly without further faceplanting (except for one blaster who thought he could invis to the end, nope, knives see invis apparently) but very slowly and painstakingly. To survive, I keep having to taunt 5 back around a corner, but most of the time, the whole damn group comes anyhow. Thankfully, once they are clumped, my defence is up, the kinetic finally has one person to focus on, and we complete the mission that way.

Warshade goes sheeesh, when the mission is finally done, and takes a graceful bow out to go to sleep. I also scarper the heck out of there.

And all this for what? My xp bar didn't move very much more than me soloing a mission. And I was considered on the low side of the scale, since we had like 3 lvl 40s, if you ignore the leeching other tank.

And it -is- dangerous even in a properly responding team. In the earlier Nemesis mission, it was my turn to take aggro, there was a void in a circular clump of Nemesis, it was a spread out clump, but tight enough that combustion would reach all of them...So I thought I would run in, combust, and take aggro that way.

Well, I ran in, I got blasted at by ranged damage from all sides, triggered fire sword circle when I should have triggered dull pain, and went to red hp in 2 seconds, and dead in another 2 seconds. The emps didn't have time to even react. Another guy in the party (either a blaster or kheldian) said 'whoa.' You can guess stuff went to hell in a handbasket shortly after.

The other tank was scrapper-locking on a tiny subset of mobs. Leaving the rest of them to lay low a defender and the odd blaster in short order (after all, if an invul tank couldn't survive the alpha, there must have been more than sufficient damage in that group to one shot a squishy), the void crippled the kheldian and so on. Luckily the other emp was alive, backed out, tp'ed me out and rezz'ed then ran back to support. Giving me enough time to hit all armors, unstopp, and charge back out there to grab more aggro. Total casualty rate: 3 members of the team lying dead, not inclusive of me, since I got rezz'ed.

Granted, because of the half-debt in missions, I was out of debt by the time we cleared that group and the one below it.

Still, it's like wow, dangerous in the extreme. There was really no warning. The damage just ripped right through me. Apparently my ranged defence was really low in that spread out clump, I may have had a few unlucky dice rolls, and I made the mistake of chaining two AoE attacks instead of inserting dull pain, which meant I was inactive for the precious seconds needed to survive...

Which leads to the question, and my point of writing this...WHY DO I BOTHER? Why should anyone bother with big team missions any more?

It's painful, it's long, it's hard, you have to put up with morons, for not very much reward. I can get equivalent or just slightly less xp in much LESS time soloing a mission by myself.

This may indeed be -the- unforeseen consequence of I5. More people soloing, much smaller teams, and less big pickups as the fun has gone out of it. You have to be organized like some kind of squad now to do a big pickup well, there's not much random fun 'owning' the mobs type of chaos now. No more, "Woot, we pwnz! We rockz0rs!". More, "if we don't wanna die, everyone better do stuff this way, eh?"