Despite my steady whining about Invention stuff, we did play a fair amount over the weekend, both solo and teamed.
On the solo side, Fr. Frank (Emp/Sonic Def) got up to 14-15 (travel power! huzzah!) and got invited onto an SG. Some stray low-level toons — Miss Crackle (Elec/Energy Blaster) and Old Saucy Jack (BS/Regen Scrapper) — sewered their way up to 6. Woe Nellie is getting there, and now that I’ve gotten him through Outbreak, The Wizard Hal (Fire/Energy Blaster) needs some play time.
As a team, Margie and I got Hildy and Torchy both up to 49 — most of the time being Teh Uber against everything we encountered, until the PI Police Mission sent us headlong into a passel of Dark Ring Mistresses who fed us our lunch. Yikes. We also ran Idzune and Unchained Path — I’m not happy with the latter, as I’m sure I’m plenty effective but in a very subtle (slow, debuff, slow some more, hold, slow even further) fashion that doesn’t leave me with a feeling of having rock-em-sock-emed the baddies.
We tried another experimental duo, Winter’s Darts and Winterbound, two fay from the Winter Court here for [backstory pending]. WD’s an Archery/Ice Blaster; Winterbound’s an Ice/something Controller.
Y’know, Archery looks good on paper, and the characters look simply faboo, but the play-feel is just way too wimply. “Twonk” “Twonk” “Twonk” … the damage may be fine, but the sound and visuals are feeble.
Problem is, even though archers are a staple character in comics, they are noteworthy either for clever trick arrows (sorry, that’s the secondary) or for trick shooting — knocking the gun out the guy’s hand (or pinning the guy’s hand to the wall), etc. A simple “twonk” and an arrow sticking through a guy is kind of lame. It would be like creating “box cutter” as a Scrapper set — sure, you could make all the big numbers roll up you want, but a tiny little “snickt-snickt” is not going to be an award-winning play experience. That’s the problems with Archery (and, actually, with Sonic).
Live and learn.
The Winters were the first lowbies Margie had run through the Sewer — she’s a “blast through all the low-level missions” type of gal. She’s curious as to which approach actually levels faster. Sewers provide somewhat uninterrupted melee experience — but there’s the delay for the team to form, the comparative of fragility of some teams, and the lack of mission credit. Missoins give mission credit, but require running all over Atlas/Galaxy and back.
For soloists, I think the Sewers may still be a bit better, but it’s also a matter of play style and interest. If you have a duo, doing Missions whilst taking out groups along the way combines the best of both worlds.