Category: Gameplay

Some people complain about the “grind” in CoX, running through the 20s-30s — endless repetitive missions, fill-in powers, etc., etc.
I’ve never had much of that problem with duos that click. But the big reason that, since I5, Velvet and P-Siren just haven’t done much anything playwise is, aside from the nerfing of the already-weak FF Defender, they just have a wretched DoT. Really. PS has a snipe. Velvet has SS tanker punches. it’s not that they don’t do damage, is that they don’t do scrapper/blaster-level damage. So doing mishes with them is one demned horrid grind, as Dickens put it.
So, Phalanx Prestige Day today. A little slow starting, but eventually there were the above pair, MacroLass, Sword of Asgard, Avocet, and MassiveImpact. Of those three were tanks. SS/Inv tanks, no less.
On small teams (PS, VJ, ML, Avo), not much problem. But later on we got stuck in this endless Devouring Earth mission. I mean, like a couple of hours worth. Avo had to drop, and so we figured out a way to get ML and SoA on without messing up the SK/RSK stuff too much. And then we slogged through the grind, to mix my metaphors. I almost cried when I realized it had turned into a Defeat All mish.
At long last, we made it. And, to be sure, it wasn’t bad — we seriously owned the place — it was just painfully slow, even with one blaster or one scrapper on the team. No danger of defeat, with all those tanks and a bubbler. Just no danger of finishing too soon, either.
On the bright side, VJ dinged 32, and PS got close.
As it stand, though, that mish exemplified why VJ/PS just aren’t fun to duo, any more than Ho Ho/Peep would be. In a big team, yeah, definitely a blast. On their own, nope.
But they’ll continue to be there for Phalanx Prestige Days. It’s a great excuse to play them.

Previous posts in the SF:  1, 2, 3

Team members of Strike Force Charon:  Mister Ravenous (Brute, CoI), Charity at Home (Corrupter, CoI), Venenata (Dominator, CoI), Barbarity (Brute, Entropy), Face of Destruction (Stalker, ?), Lord Maleficus (Stalker, ?), Black Pharoh (MM, Sanguine Society)

Wrapped up the Virgil Tarikoss Strike Force tonight, in a 2-hour run on the final mission.  Compared to my original experience, it went swimmingly, in part because of foreknowledge, in part because we were a much more balanced (level-wise) team, and in part because, well, we just rocked.  Spoilers below.

The “classic” clever tactic, until recently, was to click on the altars via Invis/Hide, get Bat’Zul and his demons in fighting Inferno and his gang, and mop up the left-overs.  We tried that again this time, knowing that Invis/Hide are now suppressed when you click on glowies.  The first altar worked, but the next two the scouts got swarmed by Hangers-On of Bat’Zul.

So, back to the old-fashioned tactics again.  Maybe.  Someone (Margie?) came up with the idea of trying to taunt/draw/pull Infernal out of the main hallway and into the lava pit room — either to hurt him with lava, draw him from his mobs, or engage him with the Hoi-Polloi of Bat’Zul.  BP tried that, and actually managed to get some of the CoT at the end of the corridor engaged with Infernal and his back ranks — but his zombies also managed to draw aggro, which meant that even after he TPed back
(barely alive), the Legacy Chain and Infernal were upon us.

So, a big, brutal battle, with Ravvy going toe-to-toe with Infernal for a short bit, dropping, temp-rezzing (huzzah), attacking some more, dying when the greens ran out, hopping back from hospital — to find that everyone was dead or out of the room.  Whew.

But, we’d cleared everyone but Infernal and one minion.  And when we deliberately and calmly and bought up Inspirations at the CoI base, and double-buffed our flames outside the mish and in, we basically waded in, wore Infernal down, and beat him.  Huzzah.

(In the first picture, we have a shot of Rav, Barbarity, Mal and one of BP’s zombies, at least, pounding on Infernal.)

Wave attack of Rabble of Bat’Zul took us a bit by surprise, but we prevailed.

Then we started slowly but surely clearing out the Miscellaneous Grunts of Bat’Zul from the arms of the cave around the lava pit.  During tihs time, I finally dinged 20 — huzzah!  That made life a bit easier as well, but we didn’t have too miuch problem.

Got to the last altar, and set things up.  My recollection was that Bat’Zul arose as soon as the last altar was broken.  So we left a stalker back at it, someone at the lava pit end of the entrance hall to pull Bat’Zul in, and everone else stationed further down.

Hrm.  Turned out that the last altar simply triggered another two or three waves of Those Guys of Bat’Zul, which we successfully fended off. That was the cue for the Big Guy to finally appear. 

And, as with the previous attack, it was pretty simple and straight-forward.   Get him out of the lava pit (where he regents and summons imps), and then pound on him a lot.  Good control/debuffing from Ven and BP, good heals from Charity, and lots of punching, and Batz went down pretty darned quickly.

(The Bat’Zul pic shows him where Rav actually knocked him on his demonic ass.  Fun.  He also spent a lot of time wrapped up in monstrous thorny vines.)

SOs all around, a ton of badges, and loud huzzahs.  And pictures, of course. 

After saying good night and all, Rav and Charity went out on a couple of mishes to finish off her run to 20, then we parked them for the evening.

Highest ranked CoV toons.  Makes me wonder what we’ll do with them next.

More fun and games on the Virgil Tarikoss Strike Force, this time with missions 3-5 — Legacy Chain, CoT, and Longbow. Things went overall pretty smoothly with the first one. The second one had a few dire moments when patrols would wander along mid-battle, or when people got a bit overextended — one battle avoided being a TPK only because Ravvy got away at the last second (huzzah for Unyielding vs. the Ruin Mages). My recompense for that one was that a mapserv knocked Rav and Charity out just before the final battle and we missed the mission credit.
The 5th mish is the infamous Never-Ending Longbow Ambushes. The first time I ran this SF, it was an unending nightmare of red and purple mobs. This time it was yellows and oranges with an occasional red boss, but it was still unending and vaguely nightmarish.
Ravvy went down three times (once brought back up by his temp rez power). Others sufferered similarly. And the damned Longbow seemed to delight in hanging out by the front door.
Eventually, we managed to prevail by adhering to a few basic principles:

1. Pulling is good.
2. Corners are your friend.
3. Pulling from a distance to bring them around the corner doesn’t work if you intercept them halfway or stand there waiting for them to shoot at you.
4. Letting all of them concentrate their fire on you by running deep into the advancing wave is bad.
5. Looking around to see what others are hitting on so you can help concentrate fire on those targets is good. (Two mobs with 50% damage have twice the firepower of one dead mob and the other at 100%.)
6. It’s great if the bad guys are all clumped up, so you can be clumped up, too (which means you can concentrate fire and area heals can get everyone). It’s great if the bad guys are all strung out coming toward you, because that means you can defeat them in detail. It’s all good.

I fear Ravvy got a bit pushy about things, and people — some of them inordinately squishy — still seemed determined to . But, at length, we prevailed.
By which time it was a bit late to tackle the final battle against Infernal and Bat’zul. That’s for Saturday evening. Some tactical discussion beforehand would probably not be amiss …

Rebooted the Virgil Tarikoss Strike Force last night with much the same crew, many of them up a level or two. Strike Force Inferno still had a 15-20 spread, but close enough to be able to SK the lowbies.
First mish? Mister Ravenous was pleased to see pleasant shades of yellow and orange, rather than the angry red and purple that dominated last time out. We did suffer a TPK in that first going, against a room that was, in fact, full of reds and oranges and three purple bosses, all of whom annoying decided to come running after us at once. But, aside from forgetting my rez temp power, that wasn’t so bad, and we had cut the group in half and managed the other half easy-peasy. Charity was the resident healer, and did a fine job of it.
The second mish (CoT at the outdoor power station) was handled through wise use of our invisible stalker resources — and we relearned the lesson of pulling the folks you want out to the exterior of the map, rather than going in and dealing with wandering patrols (who always wander by at inopportune times, like when you’re hip-deep in opponents already) and spill-over to neighboring groups.
As mentioned, the level difference made all the difference in the world — especially with the SF being front-loaded as I keep being assured it is. Red bosses I can handle. Red minions with ultraviolet bosses, not so much.
Was still having endurance problems, even with an EndRed DO in each attack, if things went beyond a single mob at a time.. And going up against Ruin Mages, and being the Guy with Status Protection, it wasn’t like I could toggle any of my armor off. I forgot to try Doyce’s trick of auto-firing Brawl — I’ll try that tonight and report back.
By then it was around 9:30p, so we adjourned for the evening. Margie and I re-signed in as Torchy and Hildy and blew up a lot of Council and DE Real Good.

Hostess Heroes on Monday Munchies last night. First part of the evening was running around the low-level zones to pick up the badges and plaques needed for the Atlas Medallion, which I’m pretty sure everyone on eventually got (even those of us, ahem, who didn’t see it when it flashed across our screen).
From there, we headed over to Striga, where we ran both Peep and Ho Ho’s final wedding band mishes, then various and sundry other bits. Okay, ready to be done with Striga now.
Wrapped up with the pair of us and Brownie Points knocking over the last 800 xp Ho Ho needed to level to 27. Which was good enough, save that she’s dead broke and now has some empty and red slots to deal with. *Sigh* On the other hand, she suffered no deaths last night, despite being the sole tank, and continued to hone her Taunting. All of which (both brokeness and sturdiness) is due to her having already invested heavily in SOs.

As part of the Drive to Virgil Tarikoss, Ravvy and Charity ended up running back-to-back Skyway City Bank Robbery Mayhem Missions.
Oh, my. The fun.
Most Mayhems I’ve run in have been a big group, and the mobs have been dreadful. This duo (albeit set on merely villainous) simply strolled through. Travel power to the bank, run in, clear out the guards, take the loot, beat the wimp, exit the bank. Easy-peasy, and many minutes left on the timer.
Through the help of Margie’s maps, we pretty quickly found the side missions for the instance and did them, too — ransack the package, smash-and-grab at the weapons shop, kidnap the dude. On the two mishes we ended up having about 10-15 miinutes, at least, after the primary objective was done, and if we didn’t clear the zone in either case, we came close.
I was amused that if you blow up Stuff next to the law enforcement types, they take damage when it explodes. That makes it easier, in turn, to earn resisting arrest bonuses.
These were the first Mayhem Missions I actually enjoyed. Good stuff.
And by the time it was done, Ravvy had topped 19 (indeed, was 2 pips in), and Charity was just two pips out from level. So I think we’re going to leave it at that until Wednesday with them — since we’ll likely level-plus during the SF, and since we have magical res temp power that is good for 2 days in-game time, and I suspect those will come in hand on the SF, if memory servers.

By the time we finally got on, it was pretty late. Nonetheless, we did the whole Seer Marino / Ghost Widow / Wretch arc, which netted us both DOs and got Charity up to 18. If we can just get Mr. R to 19, I’ll feel more sanguineabout doing the SF next Wednesday …

Hildy and Torchy wrapped up the Croatoa content (except the TF) last night — and, in so doing, each dinged 32 — literally, with the final check-in to the contact. Woot.
(Inferno! Yeah!)
And thanks to T’lauro who jumped in to lend a hand on the second Protect the Henge from the Redcaps mish.

For Monday Munchies, we ended up running with the Devils Food gang. Which had a number of amusing moment, but was more than a bit frustrating:

1. Lag on Freedom was bad. Really bad. I was considering re-booting, but I kept hearing everyone else complaining, so I knew it couldn’t be all my computer’s fault.
2. The DF team (5-7 at a time) was fairly squishy. One brute (Dr. Frankenberry), a couple of Masterminds, a smattering of Corrupters and Dominators — and nothing resembling much of a healer most of the night except Maitre D’mon (Mastermind with Poison secondary, which is pretty piss-poor healing).
   The result was numerous partial or total party kills, and veering away from challenging missions.

For all that, it was, as usual, fun to play with others. And MD got up to 10, which was nice.

Went through the third Shadow Shard TF yesterday, wrapping it up in 4-odd hours, despite various crashes and Real Life interruptions. Like the last time, it went pretty smoothly if …
… well, fact is, it’s a pretty awful TF. You spend a lot of time jumping (literally or figuratively) around the Shadow Shard. You spend way too much time doing the same “Hunt 50 Servants of Rularuu” and “Fly over and click the glowie,” etc. Very few “missions.” And the final payoff is … meh.
Psi-clone and Amorpha had actually already done it before (we dinged 48 on it), but we pretended RP that we really hadn’t (since the alternative would have been weird). PC only died once, and that was when my machine hung up mid-battle.
Good group — PC/A, plus War Bones, Noelle Frost, MacroLass, Sword of Asgard, and Hang Time — which made it all worthwhile.
(Over in the pic, Psi-clone is wearing his “Silver Age” outfit. Ick. It is now returned to the bit-bucket.)
Given the large numbers of AVs in SS #4, we’re going to hold off on that one until the AV regen stuff is fixed.

Hostess Heroes last night focused on the Sister Psyche task force.
Last time we’d tried this — with Pummelcite, Fazenda, and Araware — the Freaks handed us our hats, with our heads still in them. This time, we just rolled the damned thing, to the point that we were basically sprinting from encounter to encounter and being a bit shoddy with our alpha strikes. Even with frequent interruptions/AFKs, mission lags, and discos, we went from around 7 to 11, stealthing what we could (even with the “hey, invis gets suppressed when you click a glowie, doesn’t it?” new feature.
Even Clamor, one of those ostensibly unstoppable AVs, went down fast hard (thanks in no small part to Peep’s Rad — but at one point she and the Blasters had her held, fergoshsakes — see the pic to the right).
(I had an even better picture up against one of the Freak bosses, all of whom were decked out with loudspeakers and other fun, noisy bling, but taking it crashed my session, alas.)
Ho Ho and Peep both hit 24 (and, nearly 25), plus two +3 SOs and an evening of fun.
Others on the mission: Bear Claws, Twinkie Kid, Brownie Points, Ginger Snap.
I find it noteworthy that a “goofy” SG is just so kick-ass. Granted, we’re not running around on Invincible, but it’s noteworthy that good players (and well-played toons) make such a difference.

Margie was burning a couple of freespecs last night (prior to new ones being issued today), and she was doing it with Blue Point (47) and Amorpha (50), so it took her a while. I amused myself with Lynn, and was pleased that I could handle clusters of 3-4 orange CoT without much in the way of white knuckling. She may be on her way toward being and A.F.R. …
After that was all done, we hopped over to CoV, pulling out Mister Ravenous and Charity at Home. I continued to have toon-switching crashes (with subsequent file verifications), as well as the irksome “Lose global chat while zoning” Known Issue during the evening. (Had that with Lynn and Mr. R — in one case, it actually trashed the channel selections for one of my tabs. Might be worthwhile checking that for all my channel-based tabs.)
Still, eventually ended up on a team with Venenata and Barbarity, later with Mastadon Rex (“City of Brutes!”), and saw a couple of other folks on (a lot more people than the previous evening). That led, in turn, to my First Mayhem Mission, featuring a bank robbery in Skyway City.
A few observations:

1. Fun! A roller coaster ride of things to Smash.
2. Way too many cops. Didn’t get to smash enough things because of all the yellow and orange SWAT teams and Longbow types around. Yeesh. I mean, why don’t we see that sort of presence in Skyway most of the time?
   Indeed, we had a slew of character deaths and rezzes and the like.

3. We had problems with keeping the team together, not helped by Mr. R going to smash a truck, only to find it was the way he’d arrived and zoning out for a minute. *sigh* But lesson learned: stick together!
4. Interesting tension between “smashing things buys you time” for the timed mission (taking down a group of cops gives you 30 seconds for “resisting arrest”) and wanting to get straight to the mission (because, damn, there were plenty of cops inside).
5. Of course, if you go to hospital, you end up in jail. Which was fun, but time-consuming.
6. Lots of patrols/ambushes, esp. inside the bank. This was like a heist mission on steroids.
7. The super-hero to defeat wasn’t all that tough. A red AI spines scrapper. Ho-hum. We smashed.

Ultimately, we failed the mish (we got in, got the money, took down the hero, but didn’t either exit or zone out before the timer completed). Ah, well. Still, hella fun, and I look forward to more.
The Prima PDF guide for I7, btw, has maps for the Mayhem Missions. Worth peering at.