After a week of fighting with my computer, I am happy to say that I have managed to get CoV running – just in time for the server to go up 24/7. This is a much happier scenario than me getting WoW up and running to walk around for 20 minutes before having to log off and watching beta shut down and the game go gold shortly after.
What can I say but wow? The graphics are even more gorgeous than Guild Wars. The ragdoll mobs are fun. The map tilesets are all glitzy new and purty. And I can’t wait to see what it’s like eventually with a better graphics processor and the Ageia physics card. It already looks good now, though my speed does crank down dramatically in labs with the heat haze thing going on.
Costume choices make me drool. All the dark darkity bits are there, spikey bits, skull-topped bits, leather and chains, and monstery fur and scale bits. *giggles insanely*
The missions are nice and new, and I do like the newspaper system, it gives a little more choice all around. I like that there are outdoor maps of SMALL size, rather than the endless square expanse of old.
I tried out the Brute AT first, of course. Have to give a nod to my roots, after all. I must say that it is an excellent solo AT, imo. And damn good at street-hunting. The spawns are very nicely placed in Mercy Island and Port Oakes, so to keep me amused between running to and fro from missions, I just started being the big werewolf bully and beating up random guys to show ‘em who’s the new badass in town.
Keeping your fury bar filled necessitates sprinting like a crazy SMASH addict from spawn to spawn pounding away constantly. Very fun. In about 5 hours, I had jumped 5 levels or so. Imo, this is a much faster leveling rate than CoH, possibly because the tank and scrapper has been blended together into an excellent solo AT, the missions are not dotted in nonsensical places too far away, and there is no “level 6” break to Wincott and the stupid Hollows to occupy your transit time.
Alas, the Brute AT may be just that, a good solo class at low levels. Why? I started building this brute the scrapper way, attacks first, and defence second, thought I’d follow primary and secondary theory first. So I do best on hundreds of little blue and white mobs, but not clumped up mobs, just 2-3 mobs per spawn. They can’t shoot me well enough to hurt me bad, but I can pound them into the dust to build my fury until I’m near one-shotting them.
To give myself a challenge during missions, I jacked up my difficulty to malicious, the CoV version of tenacious, and now I get about 5 white mobs to a spawn instead of 3. This is much more challenging for me pre-DOs, because my defence is near-nonexistent, and I tend to get very smashed up before I reach SMASH levels.
After 10 levels of soloing, I decided to go put my LFT flag up and join a team. Oh boy, my first team cheesed me off. And not because they were a BAD team, on the contrary, they were good. They were so good, that I was left feeling absolutely redundant.
Ok, see here, apparently Masterminds are our new alpha strike absorbers, right? They send out the pets. So they suck up alpha. (I hear a Brute can also do this, but this is post-DO and SO, I’m suspecting, because as is, I would get owned trying to take the alpha for a yellow + orange spawn meant for 7 people. Heck, I faceplanted anyhow because I walked up a little too near the frontline and got bashed up.)
Once pets are out there, the Dominators unleash their stuff and hold/confuse while the Corruptors (did I get that AT right?) bring out the buff/debuffs and start blasting away. The stalker is taking out bosses with Assassin Strike and placate by bringing them down to very low hp. Then the scourges start taking place, and before you know it, they are all dead. So where does the Brute come in? *boggle*
If I run in before the pets, I’m going to get very very mad for about 2 seconds before I drop and die. If I run in after, all I get is second pickings after the stalker and the corruptors are finished letting vent their wrath. And I don’t even get my fury half built before scourge has kill stolen me. :P
And to add insult to injury, they then pause to REST and heal up. Ah fuck. My preciously attained one-quarter fury bar (which is also apparently bugged) plunges to nothing while they rest.
I’m not sure if they have a pentad team going on here. I don’t think they do. Everyone and everything is doing damage, and this just makes me unable to build fury fast enough. And I’m still too young to absorb alpha. *sniffs*
I think I’m doomed to soloing. May not be such an unpleasant doom, but there you have it. A lowbie Brute’s not really much to a team. Solo, I understand myself enough that I take it easy on the first mobs. I touch of fear the lt. to take him out of commission, and then I brawl and first attack the minions till my fury climbs and they’re out, then I repeat on the lt, and so on. By the time I hit the inside of the mission and the big boss, I’m boiling over and one-shotting stuff that’s not the big boss.
I guess I need to wait until someone writes a guide on how to team with a Brute. Doesn’t help that different powersets are different. I’m DM/energy aura. So far, this means I build fury rather slowly, and my EA is only defences atm, haven’t picked up much resists yet.
No comments:
Post a Comment