Category: Gameplay

Character Updates

Because everyone does one!

  • 50 – Psi-clone – Ran the Shadow Shard #4 the other day. Barely managed to get in the groove with him, alas, it was so short. Wanted to (once again) buy him one of the new leather jackets, but didn’t get around to it. Not likely to come out again any time soon. He was considering taking a sabbatical, turning over control of the CoJ to some other folks for a while, etc. Then Paragon City blew up.
  • 39 – Torchielle – Soooooo close to 40. Wow. Have finally decided on her EPP (I think I decided on Flame, just so I can get Rise of the Phoenix like Hildy has). Still enjoying blowing things up. We’re running on one-step-below-Invincible, which gives us lots of bodies to herd and AoE — and just high enough to get us into trouble once or twice a week (see “Rise of the Phoenix”).
  • 32 – Lynn Calodo – Finally, finally dinged 33. I was going to shift her into the CoJ, and still might, depending on what’s going on with the Boomtown Saints (or, actually, if that makes any difference at the moment). I really hit stride with her last night, taking down DE and Council with aplomb.
  • 31 – Velvet Jones – Now a member of the CoJ. Forgot I’d bought her garish new boots.
  • 28 – Ho Ho – Still an annoying low-damage (but huge knockback) tank (see “Velvet Jones”). I do hope that we see more HH stuff in the coming weeks — she is just not a soloist or even (with a Defender) a duoist.
  • 21 – Fazenda – Um … when’s the next Knights Night?
  • 16 – Mr. Azure – Margie mentioned that we should promote the Azures to be the new heads of the CoJ. That would have been hilarious. Maybe need to play them sometime, though they do best with an audience.
  • 21 – Mister Ravenous – Would like to get back on and play him some more. Maybe tonight? (It will be interesting to see what, if any, dynamic is going on over on the CoV side in reflection of the CoH brouhaha.)
  • 17 – Mister Thorne – Almost made him moderator of both forums. That would have been amusing.
  • 16 – Eliza Dee – I’ve been feeling more Scrappery than Brutish of late, so more Lynn than Eliza Dee. We’ll see when that changes.
  • 10 – Maitre D’mon – If we ever haul out the Devils Food again.

A minor victory

Whilst Margie was out, I finally got Lynn up to 33. It’s been a while — I’ve been using CoH Hero Builder for a bit, and I still didn’t have one set up for her. Did some quick replanning for her later levels, then called it a (way too late) evening.

Munched

Did manage to hop on last night for what was to be Avocet’s fairwell Monday Munchies/CoX appearance. No sign of him, but Ho Ho and Peep and Ginger Snap and (briefly) Bear Claws did get some Striga time in — until (a) folks had to hop off to deal with character-booting brouhaha, and (b) Freedom started mapserving. So folks went off and soloed or did other stuff.

Doyce speculates whether — given changing schedules and interest and involvement — the Hostess Heroes (or Devils Food, for the two times I’ve seen them play) have much future. I hope so, given that they’ve been a light way of enjoying some teaming with good people, but the numbers have been dropping and, honestly, I’m not so dedicated to Ho Ho (or tanking) that I’m going to out soloing or duoing with
her. So we’ll see.

Shadow Shard #4 (at last)

Finally wrapped up Shadow Shard TF #4 (Saga of Lanaru), after about a month off. Baphomet went down quick and hard — despite the final attack being a bit less than well-coordinated than preferable, given that Phred sort of jumped the gun. And Lanaru, after we took care of all his outer circle
of hangers-on, and most of his inner one, was really no big problem. Doyce mentioned it was a 30-40 minute multi-death battle when he last did it — for us, it was more like 5-10 minutes, one death, no worries.

Controllers (cough) rock. We had four of them, many buffs/debuffs/pets, and Lanaru was toast.

Fun times.

In the pic, L-R: (ground) Sword of Asgard, Noelle Frost, Amorpha, Puck Bunny, Monstress; (airborn) Malcalypse, Hang Time, Psi-clone.

The Twinky and the Pumpkins

Light night on Monday Munchies. With Twinkie Kid unable to do Mondays in the future, most likely, Margie and I hopped on as Peep and Ho Ho so that we could show the Twinkie Kid off in style. It was a late start, so a few people had come and gone by the time we got rolling.

Off to Croatoa, forging through content there … and then …

“Oh no! Not the Pumpkins and the Door mission!”

Well, what the heck. The worst that could happen was that we failed.

And … we didn’t. We owned their big orange heads.

Stuck by the portal, mostly. When the baddies came, Ho Ho would taunt, Peep would do her choking cloud area hold and other aggro-drawing bits, and Twink would freeze some of them in place. Then it was clean up before the next group came along, with Twink doing the direct damage, Peep the DoT, debuffing, and healing, and Ho Ho drawing fire and lopping heads.

Occasionally Twink would jump out and draw a few back to us. That got us in a little trouble a few times, but it made things go a bit faster.

And when the end came — it was completely unexpected. A pretty fast mission, all told. Only 12 got through (and a bunch of those in one clot).

Huh-freakin-zah!

Couple more missions, including one of those annoying save-the-mooses-from-the-witches messes. In the process, we both dinged up to 28 (Whirling Axe, baby!), and had revisited to us how dead broke we both are.

A fine evening, and hopefully an enjoyable au revoir to the Twinkie Kid.

Lollypops Lost

*sigh*

The other weekend transition was Hildy and Torchy both losing their Nemmy staves. I do like the new way of timing these things (in-game time vs. calendar time), and it meant we’d been using them for couple of weeks. It was a nice add-on to my attack chain — a nice whomp of damage with little wind-up.

Ah, well. Sic transit gloria Nemmy.

Tanking

Did the Hostess Heroes last night — a small group, consisting of Ho Ho, Princess Peep, Ring Ding, and Brownie Points (Divinity Chu was on briefly as Margie and I arrived).

I continue to be both frustrated and pleased by Ho Ho as a tank.

On the pleasing side, it’s nice to basically pull aggro off your friends, before they even attract it, and hold it while they carve and blast the bad guys to chutney. When all goes well, Ho Ho sort of calls the tune as to what we’re doing; everyone follows the tank, right? If things go pear-shaped or if the scrappers (cough) go running off on their own and get in trouble, I can usually pull matters back out of the fire.

I think we had one death last night (Peep got a bit too much into the middle of things at the beginning of a melee and went down in a flash). Granted, we did a lot of stale missions, but we also did a number of new ones, with plenty of opportunity for folks to die. They didn’t, and I take at least partial credit for that.

On the the other hand, I’m frustrated by Ho Ho’s inability to be something other than a meat shield. Yes, she can knock folks over with her axe. Yes, she can, given geological periods of time to work in, take down opponents. But by and large, her defining ability is being able to … well … draw and hold aggro without dying quickly.

You see my dilemma.

Honestly speaking? If I were doing the HH again, I wouldn’t roll her up as a tank. At least not Invuln (which I’ve way overdone), but probably not at all. And, also honestly speaking, I’m not going to change. The team needs a tank, I’m not going to PL someone up to 27 any time soon, etc.

Which is not to say by any means that I’m not going to be doing the Monday Munchies thang, nor that I won’t be having fun with Ho Ho. It will just be fun leavened with a bit of frustration. Which, I suppose, is not all that different than it would be whatever the AT I chose. 🙂

Burning adventure

Most of our activity over the weekend was with Hildy/Torchy, Nothing earth-shattering — mid-30s slogging through Crey and Rikti and DE for the most part. Many encounters with Paragon protectors of different flavors and colors (note to selves: a +3 PP needs to be approached — or perhaps avoided — with special care or a pocket full of greens or various rez chits).

Spent a couple of partial evenings teamed up with T’Lauro, too, which added a bit of variety to the proceedings — healing and spot blasting/tanking more than made up for the inclusion of various Quantums on adventures, and the player always being a pleasure to have along.

I don’t know if it’s coincidence or something that just “happens” around this time, but an inordinate number of missions we had over the weekend were timed. No particular problems fulfilling them, but it was a bit annoying to have to go to a particular adventure on a given schedule, or to have to leave a contact uncontacted because the next mish is a timed and one alread has a timer ticking.

By the end of the weekend, we’d both dinged 37. Trying to decide with Torchy whether to go with Fire or Electricity as her Epic Power Pool — either work for her story. Also toying whether to bump some power in order to take Recall Friend, since she now has Invis — which doesn’t explicitly work with her backstory, but which could be made to do so.

“Always save room for Jello”

Mr. R and Charity got onto CoV a little late last night, but things were fairly quiet anyway. We focused on trying to clear out the rest of our Cap Au Diable missions, and nearly succeeded (dinging to 21 in the process, huzzah).

Ran a couple of new mission maps for me — the PTS station redress of the Council maps (very, very nice, and it makes me wonder why we don’t see it during the Tarikoss SF) and the Giant Pit map during the Free Willy’s Informant, Ace Whatsisname.

Pretty good fun — the missions were a scosh old, so it was a lot of blue and white, which we basically took at a run. Mr. R determined that the Shivans were basically Jello Salads on the Hoof — a bit fattening if one overindulges, but vigorous exercise can counter the calorie intake.

Yeah, but who’s hunting whom?

A bit after signing on last night, Hildy and Torchy accepted the call into a Kessa mission along with Zazi and T’Lauro. It was the “find the workers and the goo” Rikti mission, and it was all conning around 38. Which was fine, except that H/T are at 35, and there was only one SK slot.

Margie took that, and played the Woefully Underpowered Tanker, still surprisingly survivable. Most of the stuff was conning orange-red-purple to me, even SKed up by Zazi. Things went along smoothly for a bit with Kessa and Torchy alternating booms, but we discovered that if anything went wrong (e.g., two close mobs getting pulled in, or multiple portals opening, or other nastiness), it was a road straight to pavement chewing.

Eventually we realized we were going a bit slowly, and started to hunt for the victims. That still led to problems, as not everyone was stealthy, the Rikti have some high perceptions, and so every now and then someone would all of a sudden go orange-red-yellow-orange-black as they got a bit too close to the wrong group. Even with an added tank (Tankerbabe), we were still struggling and going down too easily.

As time was finally beginning to get low, Kessa called in various Alliance types to lend a hand, though they seemed to spend more time in RP and street fighting than, y’know, actually searching for the last victim?

With five minutes or so to go, Kessa called for everyone to ground on the rooftops (so to speak), while she unRSKed back up to 50 and did a run through of the city, trying to find the last guy (and possibly dragging serious aggro with her, which presumably is why everyone was to ground. We watched her sprint around the map, and with about 20 seconds left — “Found him.”

Everyone raced over, attacking as they arrived, but it was, alas, even with a boom (possibly unSKed), too late, and the mission failed.

Bleah

A couple of notes:

  1. I don’t boom that often when duoing, since it leaves Hildy alone to clean up any survivors. It was interesting using it more as a tactic. It was also interesting that it remains far less effective than I’d hoped, even buffed (though the relative level probably played a role here).
  2. Invis. is a mixed blessing of a power (and, again, one that I haven’t gotten much use of since I took it at 35). On the one hand, it helped with scouting out the city (I spotted at least three of the workers and the drum). On the other hand, it’s still not proof against Rikti Drones, it sucks Endurance like a Hummer sucks gasoline, and it can seriously frell your attack plans if you forget that you have it (vs. Stealth) on. “Why can’t I boom?”

End of the day, Hildy leveled to 36 (during a double-boom attack), and I’m about a quarter pip from it and (despite two deaths) no debt. So all in all, not bad, and a good chance to play with others.

Bits and pieces

Tuesday night, played one Hildy/Torchy mish before my tendonitis started causing me problems.

Last night, had a nummy dinner out with BD and Jackie and Margie, then came back and finally finished a Lynn mish I’d had interrupted three or four times. Oranbega – bleah.

Tonight — I’d been hoping to do more, but Katherine’s VBS thang is having their “big show” tonight, so likely not much. We’ll see.

Continue reading “Bits and pieces”

Double, half, whatever

Double XP Weekend turned out to be less of a CoX-fest than I’d expected.  Part of it was just fatigue.  Part of it was feeling like I just had to be out there maxxing my XP generation every moment, and resenting that feeling.  Part of it was just other things to do.

At any rate, my actual gameplay was no more (and somewhat less, in fact) than other weekends. 

We did get Torchy and Hildy up to 35, a power level, which was nice,  I’m torn between Electricity and Fire for my Epic Pools, and I don’t have a lot of stuff in the sub-Epics that I’m eagerly looking forward to — some nice-to’s, but no must-haves.

Margie got Blue Point to 49 (yow), and pushed her new solo alt, Last Ice Dragon, to 14 (I need to get LID onto my list at the left).

We briefly played with Cetus and Lunulata, getting them both up to 9, with the intent of then pairing them off with Christmas Present and Al McGordo, but that didn’t go very far.  Fact is, it still a slog going through the sub-14 levels, and I just didn’t have the patience for it.  That, and I’m finding the squids less than thrilling (though it’s hard to judge an AT by just a few levels).

Eliza Dee has been starting and aborting the same Vaz mission, oh, four times now.  I really need to spend some time with her.  And with Lynn, who has similarly started and aborted the same CoT mission a similar number of times.  Frustrating.

Matched set

While the Double XP Weekend has been a bit of a bust for me (more on that later), this particular double-up has been kinda fun.

I do like the revision on the “temp power” stuff, so that the Nemmie Staff sticks around for 3 days in-game, which means if you have to be gone for a long weekend, it doesn’t vanish, and if you aren’t running your character constantly you still get a decent run with it.  It divorces in-game from out-of-game, which is always a fine idea.

Hildy and Torchy haven’t played Volley-Mob with anyone yet, but I’m sure we’ll give it a try before the Nemmy Staff goes away.

Devs are Just Plain Folks on Live

Someone suggested that the Devs have various cheat codes that let them tap into God Powers while playing CoX.  Positron replies:

When we play on the development servers or Training Room, sure… but when we play on Live servers even we dont get any special commands or cheats. We level up just like the rest of you… I know I will be on with my Dominator a bunch this weekend.

Someone questioned Posi’s veracity about being a Dominator, to which he said,

Level 37 Fire/Energy… finished the second Respec trial last night.

And when asked about whether the trial was tough …

 I think I died 3 times on the final mission, all to the Thorn Tree itself, and I had a full Domination bar at that point too. Once we got to the point where we were all attacking it (Brute, MM, Dom, Corr), it went down pretty easy, and no one died… unlike the first Respec trial, where we had multiple TPKs in the final room.

Cool.  Somehow good to know the Devs endure TPKs, too.

Obligatory what-I-did-last-night post

Not much, to be honest. Got a late start, and Margie was making noises about heading to bed early, so I got on as Eliza.
Overall, not very satisfying. Took a mish, got bugged by an invite which I eventually took when I got killed (damned zombie vomit). The PUG was tackling the “drop off the Outbreak virus” mish, and we started pretty well, but about half the team kept churning (and not for the better) and I eventually went down twice before finding the last glowie. “Thanks for the team” and off I went.
At least I dinged up to 15.
And … still no decision about how we’re going to take advantage of Double XP Weekend. Though Jackie was making noises about some sort of TF/SF on Saturday night. I’d suggested that, actually, thinking of the ginormous XP that SFs usually generate — but it occurs to me that hitting the level cap will have twice the effective effect, so maybe that’s not so hot of an idea.

Mayhem Multiplied

Got on early yesterday afternoon with Eliza Dee, and shortly thereafter got a tell from Grellim, offering to team. We ended up doing the Skyway Bank Robbery mayhem mission, and it was a freaking blast. We did the bank, both side missions, and literally cleared the zone of anything that could be punched, burned, shot, or otherwise taken down. I mean, a good half-hour to forty-five minutes of non-stop (except when I had to catch my breath) action, and most of a level for Eliza.
Thugs are fun, and the Gang War power is just too much enjoyment to watch. Margie’s previously commented, with Day Old Shelf, that Masterminds rock on mayhem missions, and throwing in a Brute to take care of particularly problematic opponents works great.
Last night was Villains Night, and Jackie had been trying to get a SF organized. Alas, some SG Leadership / Coalition barriers interacted with annoying base zoning problems to keep things from starting up without losing at least one player. So we bagged that and just went out missioning — including, eventually, the same mayhem mish (Ravvy got it). Good fun, again, if not quite as well organized (a group of 8 on a mayhem mission is almost sure to eventually turn into a group of 3 and a group of 5, don’t ask me why). Ravenous and Charity both ended up withe better part of a level in XP for the night.
Still haven’t decided what/who we’re doing for Double XP Weekend.

Lack of Virtue

I’ve started toying again with Eliza Dee (the Virtue instance of her) as another character to do solo stuff with.  I burned my I7 respec to fix her (lack of) Fly problems, and was all ready last night to do a bit of playing around with her.

Unfortunately, Virtue has evidently been flaky as hell the last couple of nights, and I was mapserving every few minutes (and I wasn’t the only one).  It would recover on its own, but then go down again.  The only time it didn’t happen was while I was on a mission (though I mapserved getting the mish, thrice getting there, thrice getting back, and once again while clearing it).

Those problems have now (according to CuppaJo) been cleared up.  So … good.