Went on our (Margie and my) first Task Force last night, Positron. Pictured, left to right:
- Myself, as Psi-clone (Controller)
- Lee, as Light-Bringer (Peacemaker)
- Boulder Dude. as Mofo Firefly (Blaster)
- (Positron, as The Control Voice)
- Doyce, as Gilly (Tank)
- Margie, as Amorpha (Scrapper)
Now that I think of it, I can’t recall Lee’s character name precisely, 3-odd hours later. More on that below.
So it was a pretty well-balanced team, and, all told, once we shook out, a pretty effective one. Gilly died, um, four or five times, while I got my now-primary role as Empathy Guy (i.e., the team healer) down (and Gilly refined her Tank stuff for the group). Of course, I died in there once. As did LB. As did Mofo (though, to be fair, that was on the way to the first mish). I think only Margie came through unscathed.
And, for all that, everybody dinged. Indeed, PC was just barely at 15 when we started, dinged to 16 midway through, and was about 75% to 17 by the time the TF was over.
(I took Group Invis at the level, which, along with Deceive to soften them up — Murk Eidolons and exploding Embalmed Abominations were the most fun for softening — made me feel like I was carrying my own weight. I’m really not a very good Defender.)
We all got our complimentary SOs at the end, too. I got a very nice lvl 18 accuracy; Margie, I think, got a recharge time.
Three of the group flew; Amorpha and Gilly had Superjump. We did end up criss-crossing several zones, most particularly the Steel Canyon that Positron hangs in, but including Perez, Boomtown, and Skyways. Oh, and the Hollows, once. We fought Vahzilok, Clockworks, and Circle of Thorns (which is, by the end, part of the point of the TF) and in office buildings, caves, sewers, and … hmmmm, interesting hi-tech settings.
Technology-wise it went pretty well. Occasional lag. Margie had horrible performance problems at the very beginning — which turned out to be her thrice-bedamned Norton AV kicking in for its inexpicable Friday Night Magic. I discoed once (during the final photo shoot). Everyone else was, I believe, pretty stable.
Fun time, in sum. A good group to work with, certainly, not to mention entertaining (I wish I’d kept a log of the dialog; Lee, in particular, is a hoot online). And we ended at …
… well, we started at about 7:40, and we ended at …
… um, 3 a.m.
Why, yes, that was only about three and a half hours before I began this post. Welcome to the world of having a four-year-old in the house …
What the heck is a Peacemaker, anyway?
It’s a Kheldian kinda thing, but not a Warbringer, and not necessarily with a Squiddy aspect. Beyond that, I’m not all that worried for a few dozen more levels.
Peacebringer & War-shade are the alien symbiote templates that you can’t have until you have a character that hits 50.
Neither version has to have the ‘squid’ versions or any other forms — you kind of have to decide from the get go if you’re going to focus on the powers within each form (shapeshifting alot — which is what Lee’s “Epoch of Night” Warshade does), or on the stuff you get by staying focused on your human/alien hybrid (which is what his Peacebringer, “Light-binder” does).
Six hours is about typical for the Positron TF is about typical for a group that can’t stealth everything.
And actually — Gilly just stopped dying once I got Unyeilding. 🙂
I think even-level level-ups during the TF helped everyone. Group Invis, your Unyielding, and the one that Margie got, all made the team a lot better than at the outset. Add in learning to work together, and we were much more kick-ass at the end than at the beginning. 🙂
Fun, regardless.
Yes, there are four very different styles of play in CoH:
* Solo
* Duo
* Small team (3-4)
* Big team (5 and up)
Really, it can be a hell of a shock switching to another mode if you play one style almost exlusively.
Solo folks tend to get killed in medium-to-large teams, because they don’t niche-fill, they try to do it all — control aggro, heal, kill, all of it. When in a larger team, finding your niche quicky and filling it is key — you might go seven hours never using four of your powers, but it works.
Duo folks have trouble incorporating larger teams’ members into their duo ass-whupping pattern. This means that what they learn to be ‘doable’ is either surprisingly tough when solo or (b) way too cautious an estimate in a bigger group.
Small group people … well, you don’t see a lot of folks who can manage to do this as their default setting, so I don’t know if there’s a pattern there. What you frequently see in small groups is two “solo” people and a duo, who all basically do their own thing regardless of whatever else is going on. Usually, that can work.
Larger groups is where this fails: once you break into the larger groups, the size of mob factions mean that everyone has to do their niche and do it pretty well, or it’s ugly. Tankers stop really trying to do any kind of damage in favor of holding aggro, et cetera.
((Example: when Hang Time solos, he’s using all of his bag of tricks except one: snipe-pull, blasts of all types, the disorienting head-smash, and the ‘get away’ punches and cones. Nothing much changes in a duo setup, because I’m usually teamed up with one of a couple FF defenders I know, who just let me play the Solo style more effectively. When I gets into a bigger group, (or I’m duo with a tank) I pretty much drop all melee from my attack cycle entirely, and depending on the type of tanker we’ve got, I’m probably dropping my lesser area attacks so I’m not knocking the mobs off of ice and burn patches — conversely, Nova becomes much more useful (and used), and I shift my cycle to focus on “Maximum DPS” instead of “effect”. Shock.Therapy’s shift in play-style is even more dramatic. She can solo quite effectively-if-slowly, but essentially drops almost ALL of her attacks when in big groups; if someone gets close, she Tesla Cages them and goes back to buffs and heals.))
Personally, I try to do lots of different group sizes all the time, so I don’t forget *how*. (I also try to play all the characters kind of regularly, so I don’t forget how to do that, either. 🙂
I really haven’t had a lot of opportunities to do large groups with Strategist. That will be interesting.
I’ve noticed that, within my own more limited gameplay. Margie and I duo a lot, so that influences how we do larger groups, both in tactics and in risk assessment.
Certainly Psi-clone runs very differently solo vs. duo vs. group. Learning that I couldn’t do it all (and didn’t have to) to be effective in a group was one of the lessons from the TF for me.
The tank tactics change, too, as you note. My temptation, soloing/duoing with Velvet, has been to pump up the punches — favoring the offense. In a group, though, a tank’s job is to stand there and take punishment, while the others snipe from the sides. That’s why I’ve been putting more emphasis into defense/Invulnerability of late with her.
You know, your comment about Velvet really explained something about another player for me.
There’s a tanker in the Phalanx… used to be pretty good — I’ve noticed that, in the last couple times I’ve groupe with her, she really wasn’t performing very well in her role.
The thing is, she solos alot. Like… all the time “alot”. So she’s taking more damage then you expect out of an Invul tanker, and she’s focusing on big punches and on single targets instead of moving around.
I had thought that the reason she was now a weaker tanker was because of who she groups with, but I think it’s really who she’s NOT grouping with that’s more telling.
I notice the reverse with Gilly — basically, I only bring her on to group — my punches are HIGHLY focused on ToHit buffs instead of damage, because they don’t piss anyone off if they don’t land. She’s painfully slow to solo with, as a result.
If anything, I need to respec her for more slots in her Invul stuff… that comment helped me realize that too — focus on what you’re going to do with them, and do it.