Synapse Task Force – Mission Accomplished

UPDATE: Inserted thumbnail pics. Click to see full-size.
Ran the Task Force last night — starting at 7:30p and running muuuuuuch later. Various notes follow:

1. We had a tight, fit team. One crunchy — a tank — plus two blasters, a controller, and a defender. Both the good blend of ATs and the good people behind them made it a successful outing.
2. The plot line focuses on the machinations (so to speak) of the Clockwork King, and many, many, many missions against clockworks. I am officially sick fo the critters, though the payoff set piece of the CK’s lair was excellently creepy.
3. Velvet Jones, the tank, was in her glory most of the time — untouchable, taunting, keeping the mobs under control and pounding away at them. Most fun was, as the balloon went up in each encounter, unleashing a taunt and drawing everyone’s aggro — and lightning bolts. “It tickles.”
   And, in fact, it did. Between Invulnerability powers and Bubbles, not to mention support of the others, Velvet took very little damage, almost never going below 75% HP.
   Much fun. She even got to wear her cape for part of the evening, before various jealous comments prompted her to put it away for a while.

4. The blaster contingent was made up of Avocet and Boulder Dude’s MoFo Firefly. Good blasting was had thereby. Avocet’s Energy knockback was minimal, and his AoE attacks were perfect for wiping out Gears from fallen big clanks. MoFo did well, too, though his Electricity blasts occasionally confused me (OMG, there are clockworks behind me!).
   Both are Ice secondaries, which made for additional Controlling of the mobs.

5. Margie’s P-Siren was one of the unsung stars. While her psionic blasts were effective, but slow, her Bubbles were one of our lynchpin powers. While they were up, Velvet, at least, was in hog heaven. When they were down, it was more problematic. Indeed, the one time Velvet got in real trouble was when we were independently hunting clockworks, and an ambush found her. Had to SJ away at the last second, which, alas, left MoFo, who was coming to the rescue, to bear the brunt of their fury.
   As it was most of the time, though, I was able to leave down almost all my toggles but Unyielding. As long as the bubbles were up, all was cool.
   (And as long as I was running HeroStats, I could see exactly when the bubbles were going down …)
   It’s worth noting that Margie’s organizing the TF was pretty spiffy as well.

6. Doyce’s Rose.Red was the utility player as Controller. His Group Invis was up most of the time, and really helped our defense and attack planning. It also let him scout ahead on mishes that only required limited accomplishments; coupled with Recall Friend, he could sneak up to where hostages or the final bosses were, teleport us in, and we could finish the mish in a quarter of the time of slogging through the whole thing.
   As an Illusion Controller, though, he did an even more useful job in using Deceive to cut down on the enemy numbers, and Phantom Army to add to our strength.
   And his tactical abilities and previous experience on the TF were pretty handy, too.

7. I have no idea how folks do the mission in 6 hours, as some report, let alone the 2½ that others claim. We didn’t race madcap from spot to spot, but neither did we dawdle. We took a couple of levelling and selling breaks, and Margie had one in-mish 15 minute Symantec-induced problem, but generally speaking we moved swiftly and skipped killing all mobs unless the mission demanded it.
   We met at 7:30p, we started at about 8p, and finished a bit after 3a. That makes for 7 hours.
   I refuse to believe anything under 5.

8. TFs are XP-heavy, and this was no exception. Velvet went up 17-odd pips; since she was just barely at 20, that raised her to 21 and most of the way to 22. W00t.
   That came in handy against the baddies; the initial mobs looked an even mix of yellow and white, with orange bosses; changing that down to white-blue with yellow bosses (with the exception of Babbage and the Clockwork King) made the missions a lot easier. And still good eats.

9. Ah, Babbage. Hovering outside one mission, we tackled him head-on. Problem is, even though we managed to knock him down to between 1/3 and 1/2 XP, that took pretty much all the Endurance in the group. Velvet was basically the aggro magnet for him, but eventually she was reduced to watching her End and hitting only when it wouldn’t knock down all her toggles. Eep!
   The battle was also complicated by his running around periodically and so dragging us through mobs of Lost and Trolls, both of which pursued.
   We would probably have ground him down, eventually, but we got kind of tired after a while. A couple of other heroes had spotted us, and, with our permission, launched into the fray, sealing Babbage’s fate. Still great XP, all told.

10. The only deaths that occured were both MoFo’s. The first came when he came racing to Velvet’s “rescue” when she’d been ambushed by clockwork and had dropped down to orange. I was bugging out, but MoFo arrived just in time to get them all on him. By the time Velvet got there, he was toast.
    And, during the Babbage battle, he drew a bunch of fire from trolls. Damn.
    Aside from that, no deaths in-mish, which is pretty impressive.

11. Especially because we couldn’t see. Between shady warehouses, group invis, various auras and bonus effects, and bubbles (double-bubbles plus the big bubble), it was like trying to run around in a pea soup fog.
    Not that I should complain, because all of those effects were affecting the baddies more than me. But sometimes it was sure confusing …

12. The last battle with the CK was almost anticlimactic. He’s tough, but not on a par with Babbage. He just has a lot more friends (which we had to both carefully clear out first and use a gadget we’d received to help keep him from summoning more).
    The initial plan was to super-buff Velvet and let her do a tank pull back to where the rest were all standing (the idea being that she could take a licking and keep running for her life, so to speak). After all that prep just outside of the CK’s lair (“See that? That’s his arm there.”) it turned out that it wasn’t the CK’s lair yet.
    The actual battle with the CK was a lot less, ah, planned — we had the ground selected, but the actual pull back to it was, um, less organized (involving a couple of characters, not the tank, and mad-oh-crap-I’m-orange dashes back to the others).
    Wham, bam, thank you for helping us rid the city of the Clockwork King, ma’am.

Great fun. Went longer than I’d expected (Doyce pointed out that, had we started at 5, we could have wrapped by Midnight. Of course, we’d have had to take 45 minutes or so in the middle to put down Kitten, so …), but I still felt excited and eager by the time it was all over.
Good team. Good experience. Makes me want to do it over again with the next tier of alts in my stable …