Well, since Champion just went down, current update …
I’ve narrowed my playtime to just four characters (which is still too many for quick advancement, but there you go).
Velvet is still my highest, at 11. She’s beginning to get a high enough level that she needs to start adventuring in scarier places, like Steel Canyon, or (again) Perez Park. She’s still a high-power punch-em gal, though she’s now had a couple of very bad team experiences in the Hollows that have given her a bit of debt.
Snipehunter, my previous hard luck case, is up to 9. Been on some good teams with him. The “snipe” power has come in quite handy. Torchielle, his fire-based sister, is up to 7, and I still like her best.
Psi-Clone has been the most fun, though, between his “hey, you, you now hate your fellow bad guy, so go whale on him” powers and his blind and his not-insubstantial spectral damage … plus, in case folks might think he’s a mean SOB, he’s doing heal stuff for parties, too, so that’s all good. Endurance-draining, to be sure, but a good excuse to stay far, far away from the action …
Mission-wise, it’s been a mixed bag past few. Had fun with Avocet on a larger mission, and with a number of Stan’s characters (with a number of mine). Stan and I SKed to Doyce and Jackie last night, which taught us both a lot about the fine art of weakling blaster/controllers and how to support the big guns effectively without being a target yourself.
I’ve had good teams and bad teams, the latter defined as either (a) not well managed, with nobody directing or nobody listening to direction, and/or (b) going up into missions that were way, way, way too overpowered for us, leading to grizzly deaths. And, of course, there’s the definition of insanity, which is trying the same thing twice, thinking the results will be different …
… but when it works — when you battle through, when the plan is followed, when it succeeds even after it all goes to hell, when the bad guys fall like chaff or fall only after repeated, desperate pummeling — then, damn, it works. And it’s a hell of a rush.
No regrets so far.
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***Dave Does the Game
It was fun teaming with you guys! And fortunately one of Stan’s heroes was around to pull my fat out of the fire last night! Now I’m going to need more help than that, though. Flux warned me that I’ll need to assemble a team to take down a heavily-defended Troll base in the Hollows. With luck, a bunch of us will be on when you guys have time to help me.
I had a rather unpleasant team experience yesterday. I accepted a blind invitation, and they kept adding people willy-nilly. Eventually one of these yahoos attacked a purple con, and all seven of us went down in aboyt 15 seconds. Iguess I’ll be a bit more selective in the future!
It’s been fun teaming with Avocet, Lee, Jackie, Doyce, and yourself. A lot of learning from Doyce (including “this is just nuts, lets leave”).
Today I had team from hell.
The defender was cool. Did a lot of group invis which was fantastic for my Blaster. But we had 2 people that thought that they were tanks, and pulled the entire group out of the room instead on 1’sies and 2’sies. As Doyce has pointed out, pulling is the only way to do it. Needless to say, tons of debt.
Zazi Sakurazaki (scrapper) was tough at first (first character so this was the one I learned on), but now she’s great fun to play.
Robenmatsu 3 (tank) is most fun in groups, solo is not as fun. Though I do love having tiny things smacking around big things.
MoFo Firefly (Blaster) has been all sorts of fun. Too bad he got mixed up in a bad team, and acrued lots o’ debt.
Team-wise…I still want to follow what the leader says to do, but…
Today after the first team death, I pointed out that there was a better way to do it…and it went for naught. One more team death later I bowed out.
Side-kicking has been a blast. A good way to see what is comming down the pike. It also shows that a small group can succeed very well if done right. Hech, Tonight Doyce and I were doing good until the room of death (mostly purple, red, and orange).
Avocet…set up a time and we’ll see if we can help you out.
Doyce…For Zazi’s second pool power I took Concealment (I like to be able to go places with out being shot at). So next level Combat Jump and one other.
this is just nuts, lets leave
I need create a macro so I can single-key that. I have run into far too many team situations of that sort, and accruing lots of brown bars in the process … 🙁
kill frosty 3 times in 24hrs.
It is interesting that it scales to the level of the team leader.
the third time through was the second easiest (#1 being with Doyce and Jackie(Gilly & Shadow.Cat)).
I am going to have to get taunt next for Robenmatsu 3.
I seriously considered it (after that go-through with you), but decided (based on the same go-through) on Resist Energy …
Actually, what was most interesting about that run-through was that an examination of the requirements helped us understand that going toe-to-toe with yet more groups that would kill us badly (or at least mostly) wasn’t necessary — just battling through to the baddie and downing him.
RTFM.
I sidekicked for a guy a few days ago, and learned a lot. We spent most of the time running right past groups of moronic Trolls who left us alone, enabling us to find the mission objective and drop the hammer on the boss.
I have Monday off, so any time you guys can get together to help with this mission (it might be that Frosty that Stan mentioned–that sounds familiar) is okay for me. If not Monday, late evening is usually when I have time (and when you guys are going to bed, I suppose).
Avo…
Got frosty down…
I wish I could transfer my bubbler over to Champion. I hate being crippled with a lower powered character, although the low levels have the most level up satisfaction per hour.
They do seem to go up faster. 🙂 And I wish, too, that one could shift characters between servers.
I visited Steel Canyon for the first time on Saturday, with Velvet (she was directed there for a contact). It was rather disconcerting going from running around and having street gangs ignore you because they’re grey to running around and avoiding very similar-looking street gangs because they’re orange-to-purple. Eek! Managed to find enough white and yellow to make the run worth it, but it was sobering.
Ian: Bubblers rock. Send tells to Hang Time or Rose.Red and see if I can’t help you get caught up.
Dave: Totally get the thing about the controller. Psi-clone and Rose have a very similar build, I think — sort of ranged vampires 🙂 If you have the secondary I’m thinking of (Kinetics?), look into siphon power to amp up your spectral wounds (and the attacks of your friends) even more. It’s great.
Also, four main character isn’t bad — I’ve got (counts) six, but of those, I’m really only playing four (Hang Time, Rose, Gilly, and Girl Five), and I only play three of those well 🙂 Hang Time hit 28 last night, Rose is at 16, and Gilly’s at 14 (Suuuuper Juuuuump!), which I consider the start of the really interesting stuff, so four isn’t bad.
Eventually, you’ll find your ‘main’ — the one you really sort of prefer a bit, and they’ll get the lion’s share — that’s just my prediction.
Stan: I had Conceal on Rose for awhile (I started playing early enough that I got a free respec on all my characters when issue 3 came out), and if you don’t already have an Invis power (she does), it rocks for moving through bad areas — not perfect invis, where you can sit in a group of purple cons and have a sandwich, but good — if somewhat slow.
Avocet: Sorry I haven’t had a chance to group with you yet — glad Jackie could.
Random comments:
Seeing Girl Five referred to as ‘big guns’ just make me laugh in a kind of sad, regrettable way. I’m not sure I’m ever going to figure out how to play her well — I like defenders — they do a really decent amount of damage for that kind of class — but I don’t think I picked the right version.
Re: Taunt — note that your tanks will eventually also have effects that draw aggro as well — Unstoppable, Chill Armor — pretty much everyone’s got something that ticks off nearby mobs — that + taunt means you hold aggro like fly paper.
Tank Soloing with anything but a Fire/* Tank = not a lot of fun.
Really liked grouping with everyone — really hope we can keep doing that. Really hope that eventually Rose or even HT is the one in the group (so Hang has someone to hide behind!)
Psi-clone has Empathy as a secondary, so he can heal self (and, now, others — which came in handy running around the Hollows on the weekend, but was one more thing for me to juggle in battle — I have a hard time keeping track of my own health, let alone that of others).
Re various levels of characters: it’s all relative. And I am growing painfully more aware how broad the relevance is from level to level (the difference between, having a team leader your level and having one two or three levels higher, for example, and what that does to the bad guys spawned in a mission).
Speaking of whom, my high (low?) point of the weekend was hanging waaaaay back with Psi-clone as Girl Five and Shadowcat and [whichever short character Stan was running] were up front flailing away at the baddies — and suddenly noticing that everyone was orange-red-black and Doyce was messaging “RUN” and hovering down and away at molasses speed until I could drop to the ground and run like hell and get down and elevator and (pant pant pant) wait for everyone to run back from the hospital.
Plenty of other near-death excitement this last weekend, but that was some of the best. And it made me glad I had range on my psi abilities, and, thanks, Jackie, I can now use that 11 range enh on my Deceive …
Oh, and Deceive doesn’t draw any aggro, which so rocks.
Doyce:
With Roben Sunday I tried too different ways to pull aggro to pull off the lower level folks.
1: Run in concealed and pop
Stan:
Highly recommend the Guide to Guides post on the CoH forum: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=905711&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1#905711
Especially stuff like this pulling guide:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=682105&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1#Post705286
Note that I was really misusing Taunt for pulling — it’s not great for that, because you’ll almost always get a couple of guys, since it’s designed to be an area thing that keeps bad guys focused on you in a brawl. Still, it works for generally pulling in smaller groups than getting the whole room: unless you can get a blaster to snipe one for you.
It is possible to successfully wade in and just wipe everything out — you have to have the right ATs for the job, though. I prefer to control the fights a bit more than that. That said — I’m over-careful by most folks standards.
(But I haven’t earned any of the Debt Badges, either. 🙂
Dave: totally get what you’re saying about the Empathy set and healing in general. Jackie plays a great healer… seriously, she’s awesome — with her around I can tank with a BLASTER. Me? I… really don’t do them well (ask Stan!). I try, but I basically suck at it — I have a Force Field Defender (Human Shield) on Triumph that I play when Champion goes down and it is SO much easier to ‘do his job’ in a group and still fight. FF stands both for “force field” and “fire and forget”. 🙂
Note: On that pulling guide, you’ll have to scroll up to the start of the post. No idea why.
Try this link instead. (The prob was the “post” anchor at the end.)
And that’s a very interesting guide. I’ll have to keep some of that in mind (and hope I don’t get any lame puller-wannabes on the mish with me … 🙂 ).
Also:
For blasters no AoE or blasts that do knockback.
Learned that one Sunday too.
Yup. Or, rather, some powers that don’t knockback and that don’t have AoE. 🙂
Oh, I love a little AoE — you can do a GREAT DEAL with AoE.
At the right times.
Same for knockback — most every attack Hang Time has does knockback at some percentage — it’s my version of crowd control, actually.
But it is why I fly… hit them from above so it’s knock-down instead of knock-back 🙂
Also worth noting that, when the guide was written, Taunt was a single-target power, and it’s now an area-effect thing, which doesn’t work for pulling single-targets worth a damn, excep under situations when *anything* would work pretty well.
Would you believe I bought a kitchen timer to keep track of when my bubbles would run out on my FF Defender? It’s a struggle for awhile until you can use SO enhancements, but once you’re there, the Endurance problems all by disappear. Problem is, bubblers get a little boring to play at the higher levels because you’re basically a gimped Blaster that occasionally tosses out a shield to someone.
On the other hand, everyone loves bubblers.
As for Naivety, I wonder if I should reroll the character. I’m getting the sense that you guys already have some very similar Controller builds in the group and she’s a Mind Control / Kinetics Controller. Would you prefer someone with a Force Field secondary if you’ve already got enough healers and buffers around to group with?
I don’t know that there’s enough consistent clumping of players here to make shaping a character around it worthwhile — but a healer/buffer/bubbler is, as you say, always welcome.
Bah, I’ll just continue playing with what I’ve got, then.
Though it’d be nice to have a bubbler. 😉
A: I don’t think I see a lot of mind-controllers at all… unless you mean ‘illusion’.
B: Rose tends to group with her SG, so not much overlap with her there.
C: Play who you want — it will all fit.
Definitely not Illusion Control. Mind Control is perhaps the “best” control set, but that also makes things mighty boring to play. The power set is almost entirely Mezzes, Holds, Confuses, and Fear. No pets at all and I’m somewhat disappointed that they didn’t change the Mass Confusion power at the end to something that appropriated mobs to be your pet. It would have been fitting.
Figure it was the kind of power set (along with Teleport) that would befit a high Psyche Trump Artist.
Added Puck Bunny to Champion.
7th Grav, Bubbler.
Last seen with Sister Chinook, and P-Siren.
And much fun to run with her today.