Currently, I'm working on my project of getting Guernica to 50. Grinding is much easier nowadays, with the mission bonuses. People, despite the nerfs, still want to fight +4s. Last night's team was no different, except that we managed to pull it off. One stone tank, two kinetics defenders, a force field and an empathy controller. Oh, and a fire/kin SBer. I was mid-levelled in the group and I was fighting +5s. It was a wonder we could hit, but stacked tactics and irradiate went a long way. Five bars in three missions, amazing. The Infernal mission yielded most of the xp and was pretty insanely fun too. In fact, a +5 Infernal gave me so much xp it was shocking.
This wasn't your random "stand around and heal" team either. Nowadays it's all different. Nobody cares if you blast if they are alive. In fact, people enjoy the steady damage input the defenders output, because everyone doesn't have that much damage anymore. Blasting is normal, the real xping teams, where xp flows like water, are run by generally experienced and enlightened players who will just as happily kidnap rads as they kidnap empaths, to beat down AV after AV. Now that everything is harder, the pretenders are revealed to be what they were. They are still trying to do high levelled missions and failing miserably, while screaming for "find us a healer!". The min-max mission grinders just adjust and continue.
And Plevelling is still happening, in a softer manner. Someone will inevitably invite along some lowbie character to be sidekicked up. I see a lot of fire/kins, ill/kins, and stone/fires. *polite cough* I know what they are doing...I just pretend not to see because I need the xp, and it's somewhat a softer form of plevelling. If they are useful they stand around and SB me (I like SB), so that is ok. If they aren't they leech. There was one who just whined about making us teleport her around, never once passed me SB, and generally died every two spawns -- not because she was trying to contribute and got hit -- but because she tossed bonfire below the tank. This is generally a bad idea when the tank has three spawns stacked on top of him. She probably confused bonfire with ice slick. She then whined some more about dying. I felt like slapping her because everyone else was already generously giving her a huge share of the xp (because she's the tanker's girlfriend, *sigh*); you can sk them up and give them free xp, but you can't teach them to play.
Other than this, I am trying to get over my thin-skinnedness and get down the the Arena nights. The regulars are complaining about people who sign up and don't appear. Whoops, I'm one of those people. But there is some strange barrier that is stopping me from just jumping on test arena. I think it's the inner competitive freak in me. I don't want to be thrashed mercilessly and laughed at for being N00b. But the irony is of course, if you never get thrashed mercilessly, you won't learn. That happened in RoD, and it has to happen everywhere. I recalled dying multiple times every fight when I started RoD pk, but my clan leader just kept tossing me more eq from his infinite storage. Jim was a great guy, one of the last great pkers of that era when people were leaving RoD for MMOs.
So my project: start going to arena nights in the evening, and grind a bit every night.
* * *
Nevertheless, I feel like I'm heading for some sort of depression of the late. Partly RL-related. Bigger things like when I didn't get into grad school (though to my surprise I found it didn't really matter than much to me) and have to find a new job (which is the main thing). Small things like finding out I have to pay IRS $800 more in taxes outside of normal withdrawing and trying to force myself to write that check, because if I don't they'll eventually get me. Or my stupid radiative transfer code that's been taking four days to run and still hasn't finished. It seems like I'm getting jammed in my life and it's reflecting in my entertainment.
Then there's the gaming part, which is of course a big part in my life. I hate standing around being a buff-spamming squishy. But acc debuffs are just about dead until I7. Fact is, nobody in a grind team wants to fight anything lower than +3s. Debuffs just weren't great once the cons got to the purple end. Buffs are more reliable. If you took damage, you got healed. You got resists. Defense buffs were worse off, but being put on the toons, they weren't double-scaled, just single-scaled. Still very weak now but will be better in I7. But if you want to grind in the deep purple range, you jolly well just get a stone tank and pump him up.
Yes, it's STONE tank, not any other tank and certainly not an ice tank. I had an exempted blaster laugh at me during a TF when we were fighting redcaps. In the first spawn, a couple of bosses did that dagger total focus thing on me and I nearly died in the alpha. Taunted and hibernated in a hurry. "Those things sure hit hard", I commented. The blaster made fun of me and said he noticed I was an ice tank. Yay, that explains why everything hits hard, I'm just squishy? I just tanked 10 Mary Macombes non-stop in the first mission, and now I make the comment on Redcaps hitting hard, I'm suddenly "of course" gimp. If it was a fire tank making that statement he would have agreed, and ice > fire nowadays. Some people are still trapped in some delusional other-dimensional CoH.
I consider it really insulting a BLASTER dares to laugh at me for being squishy. I have twice a blaster's hitpoints and infinite times a blaster's defense (a finite number divided by zero is infinite, right?).
But if I took that tank to do the type of mission I was doing with Guernica, that tank would really have just faceplanted at every spawn. XP uber alles, all the non-"top" builds be damned style of missioning.
There has to be some kind of compromise. I like to think I have builds that do that. I've never had a complaint that my mind/storm or my earth/TA doesn't control well. The only complaint is that if they want to grind, they are going to get some stone tank with attending harem of defenders, and they just want me to have the so-called "useful" secondaries. Between the completely clueless bunch who screams healzor non-stop and the min-max grinders, I'm just stuck to soloing my own missions.
But I can't really stand playing in the other spectrum either. I know it doesn't bother anyone else in my SG. But it bothers me because I am not a pure RPer; I have a very strong powergaming streak that is only expressed through an idiosyncratic RP style. What's worse than a tanker can't even be bothered with aggro? An exempted level 50 tanker, to whom debt doesn't matter, and can't even be bothered with aggro either. I really have no idea how some people have no sense of shame. Obviously even though you are "squishy" compared to a stone tank, you are less squishy than the real squishies. How can anyone have no sense of shame when their teammates are getting hit, when they know they can take those hit with greater ease. Even scrappers can feel that sense of obligation, a lot of them have a squishy-bodyguard streak. If a tanker pretending to be a scrapper doesn't even do that, then they aren't even scrappers...they are less than scrappers. Heck, even blasters run around with the medpool zotting teammates and helping out with holds. I'm talking about the AT that has the highest incentive to play selfish.
I find myself somewhat frustrated by the semi-clueless tank too. But at least it is just frustration not a negative feeling, because you really can't expect casual players to be that into the game to know what to do. Especially when they model their play after some kind of less-than-scrapper. Turn on your aura! Don't go off to one side soloing your own mob without making sure the main bunch of mobs are trained on you. Why not stay inside the main bunch and taunt the runner to you?
And. Seriously. Run. Your. Armour.
No, really. There's a reason why you have a primary full of armours.
Run it.
Arrrrgh!
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