Author: admin

I’ve been pondering getting some sort of a TF organized, probably for 10-12 March (weekend after next). I think it’s easier to do on a weekend day/night than trying to get things organized (and finished) on a weeknight (or spanning weeknights).
Possible options:
On the hero side …

1. Positron (lvl 10-15, 3 starters, 15 missions): Big Lungs/Christmas Present (10/11), Ho Ho/Princess Peep (11), Amethyst Crown/Fallen Twice (14/12).
2. Synapse (lvl 15-21, 4 starters, 15 missions, Babbage/Clockwork King): The Azures (16), Fazenda/Araware (17).
3. Sister Psyche (lvl 20-26, 5 starters, 14 missions, Clamor): Torchielle/Kazima|Hildegard (22/22|20)
4. Manticore (lvl 30-36, 7 starters, 10 missions, Hopkins): Velvet/P-Siren (31)
5. Major Flagg/Respec 3 (lvl 44-50, 3 starters, 5 missions): Psi-clone/Amorpha (48)

On the villain side …

1. Virgil Tarikoss (15-20, 4 starters, 6 missions, Infernal/Bat’zul): Ravenous/Charity (16/15)

Hmmm. Actually fewer possibilities than I’d think, given our number of characters. And I suppose that the Respec mish and, perphaps, Tarikoss could be done in a long evening (though Tarikoss took us 6 bloody hours the only other time I’ve played it).
Any of my faithful readers have a preference (based on your availability/interest/stable)? Based on comments here, I’ll organize something in the most appropriate forum.

Tonight was the LE Meet-n-Beat, which very much lived up to its name. The LE focus on PvP in the various zones that allow for that, and sundry Alliance folks (including Psi-clone) joined up to patrol Warburg with them in two teams.
Okay, first off, confirmed every suspicion I’ve ever had about PvP, i.e., unless you’re someone who’s crafted your character for it, it’s pretty much an exercise in frustration. Unless you like getting gacked by high-level stalkers (or are one yourself).
On the other hand, it did allow for play of a scenario that would not be possible (or, if possible, would not be nearly as fun) in a PvE zone, one which has a long tradition in comics history, to wit: Oh my God! Those aren’t the Longbow Elite! They’re evil robots made up to look like the Longbow Elite and designed to assassinate the Alliance leadership!
Hilarity ensued, especially with those of us who weren’t in on the initial plan. And fun for all that. Certainly made the experience worth it.
Outside of that, played the afternoon and night with Mr. Ravenous and Charity, who dinged 15 and 14 respectively. Yay!

Spent most of the afternoon on as Lynn, and, between soloing and PUGging, got her up to nearly 24. She’s great in a group with decent healing and buffing, but remains a bit brittle on her own. Not much to easily do about that, alas.
In the evening we hopped on as Psi-clone and Amorpha. I’ve been feeling apprehensive about playing them, not wanting to deal with AVs and coordination with other heroes and stuff like that. After our last AV battle, I was gun-shy about duoing one.
Instead, we worked on some old story arcs, then tackled our initial AVs with the new Elite Boss settings (with 2 players, we can be up to Rugged, the middle reputation setting, and have the AVs spawn as Elite Bosses).

1. Black Swan: Dark energy attacks in the Necropolis. The latter meant we could hop directly to her and bypass the various Shadows (which were decent but not spectactular eats).
   Came up as a level 48 Elite Boss (orange). And went down, pretty quickly, as same. I had to cast a couple of heals on Amorpha, but by and large Black Swan was a cream puff for us.

2. Psychic Babbage: Psychic attacks in the ruined city. Amorpha had this one in her hopper. He came up as another level 48 Elite Boss (orange) for us. Hopped directly to him (the various clockwork in the city conning blue and white), got all our buffs ready, and … launched.
   As in “ate our launch.” I mistimed my initial hit, so he spent some initial focus on me. My psychic defenses were doing okay, Amorpha started whomping on him, things were …
   Bam. “Gah!” Heal. Heal. Jump. Bam. “Argh.” Oh, and look, Amorpha’s down, too.
   Hrm. Off to hospital. Replan strategy to actually take dude not just seriously, but seriously.
   Go back. Line up. Prep. Fire off my buffs. Gargle chicklets. Tap the Vanguard medal. Twist the Wedding Band. Initially attack with the Phantom Army on the opposite side of Psychic Babbage.
   And the rest was rought but manageable. He wasted his alpha strike on the phantoms, and we may not have locked him down, but we kept him pretty distracted until we could take him down, down, down.

3. Dominatrix: Grav controller in a warehouse. We’ve been on a dozen missions against her, and they’ve never been very life and death. In this case, she conned as a level 49 elite boss (red). And, after warmup on all her BDSM punks, it was not a very big deal.
   Had her locked down, had her distracted, had her taken care of without a lot of pain and anguish.

Good times. We discoed after that, which we took as a sign that we should call it an evening.
The elite boss versions are giving smaller XP, of course. But as long as we don’t die trying to duo them, we should be okay.

Late afternoon soloing with Lynn. Got into a PUG that showed promise, but turned into a minor fiasco. Way too many people with knockback blasts, which meant …

1. My chance of lining up anyone for the Shadow Maul cone dropped to nearly zero.
2. My chance of hitting anyone more than once without running after their flying body dropped to nearly zero.
3. The chance (in the large city map we were on) of taking out one group without throwing someone back into, thus aggroing, another group, dropped to nearly zero.

Managed to not die for most of the mission, at which point — the one sane person on the team (besides me) having discoed, I took my leave. Not something I do lightly in mid-mission, but the chance of it being finished any time soon seemed very slender.
Ran over to Striga later. Perfected assassin/ninja tactics with her doing various hunt missions (having found her oddly fragile vs. Warriors as yet). Managed to get out of debt, and nearly to 23.
With Margie, after dinner, ran Mr and Mrs Azure. Dinged 16 with them both, which means Integration for me (yay). Rediscovered along the way how nasty Abominations are en masse, and determined we’d rather lose XP by letting the Mrs. confuse them (esp. the Embalmed) than lose XP via debt.
That minor hiccup aside, I was very please by how we did with them, again. They have many of the strengths of the PC/A team (not surprising, as they have very similar power sets).
Engaged in witty Azure banter, but the Coalition channel remains intermittent — occasional flurry of traffic, with lots of dead silence in-between.

Ran the Faathim Saga (Shadow Shard #3, I believe) tonight. Took much less time than expected — we started rolling aorund 8, and were done by a bit after Midnight.
A lot of the TF is “defeat 50 X in Shard Zone Y,” which wasn’t all that exciting. There were a few “regular” missions.
The climactic battle was … well, not all that challenging.
On the other hand, it was a great group — Shock.Therapy, Hyperthermian, Psi-clone, Amorpha, Puck Bunny, Li Nakamura, Kinetica, Kessa. Any time spent with that group is well worth it — and when we encountered resistance, we blew through it.
PC and A both dinged 48. No more sidekicking! Since we were 47 and we had 50s in the group, most of the opposition were purple and red, which helped the XP gain for us.
And, for the record — Fly is definitely the way to go in the Shard. (Recall Friend was pretty damned useful, too.)
A nice evening.

Last night was Monday Munchies. We had a team of 7-8 most of the evening, and did passably well. Aside from one near-TPK, in fact, the missions went pretty smoothly (at least as far as my tank was concerned). We suffered significantly more casualties traveling through the Hollows to our missions than otherwise. Hrm.
No Controllers, which, in a group that size, is odd.
Ho Ho‘s attack chain started getting wonky mid-evening, which I eventually realized was because my temp lowbie power had gone away, leaving me with two slow axe chops and Brawl. Battleaxe does some nice damage (and amazing knockdown/back), but it’s sloooooow (and endurance sucking). I was toying with using my next level for another attack, but I think I’m going to stick with Taunt (control!) and maybe slot some recharge speeds instead.
In other news, Lynn is a desperately short distance away from dinging 22. She’s running in Striga at the moment. After some painstaking and difficult soloing of the first ship mission, she got pulled into a PUG of 8 on the same mission, which was basically a non-stop wading through Council (and which netted much XP).
Still need to get her into the new Alliance “Allies” group.
And did some brief before-sending-Margie-to-bed Ravenous/Charity, noodging closer to 14 and travel powers. Just too damned fun.