Category: Gameplay

Been sneaking odd moments to solo with Lynn (she’s just shy of 26 now), and, esp. since hitting Striga, she’s been getting lots of invites for PUGs. And I usually go ahead and take them, as it’s often at hours that there’s not a lot of Alliance folks on.
THE GOOD

• It’s good eats. Lynn tends to play cautiously on her own, which makes overall XP/min relatively low. On a PUG, willingly or unwilingly, it’s usually faster-moving, and overall XP/min goes up (even with debt).
• Scrappers are usually in decent demand. And I’m often the solo scrapper on a team (and more often than not, the only melee character, which can be kinda dangerous but fun).
• Most PUGs are okay. Some seriously suck, but they are balanced by ones that are really cool. And it’s worth noting that PUGs are often only partially that way — a core of players who know each other and who want to flesh out a team.
• Being a manager at work, I prefer to let someone else make the decisions (assuming they make them competently). For that matter, I never organize a PUG myself. Too many decisions, and not getting paid for ’em.
• Things are always different. The line between “practiced comfortable playstyle” in an established team (or duo) and the boredom of “lather, rinse, repeat” is a fuzzy one, and subject to being crossed based on mood. Running with different players adds some variety.
• There’s always the chance of finding someone you’d like to adventure with again. Hasn’t happened to me yet (not helped by cycling through various alts), but you never can tell.

THE BAD

• No RP to speak of, of course.
• It’s a pain when you get brought in as the 2nd or 3rd player and the leader won’t go forward until a full team of 8 is recruited. (Yes, that lowers overall XP/min.) I like large teams, mind you — while it increases the chances of someone doing something horribly team-killing stupid, it also adds to the flexibility of the group.
• Some leaders can’t lead out of a paper bag, which often as not means that decisions of when to go, which passage to take, etc., get made by the least patient or most rash team player.
• Some players … are just stupid. Or inconsiderate. Or both. They’re the ones that everyone’s waiting for to go off and sell between mishes (every time), the ones who run in before buffs/debuffs/mezzes/planning takes place, etc. (every time), etc. A PUG is something like Russian Roulette in terms of getting these.

THE UGLY

• Team leaders who stand around excessively trying to find an Empathy Defender usually do so because they know they’re going to need one.
• I feel an odd commitment to a team, even if it’s strangers. Which makes pulling out of a disastrous one sometimes difficult … though a trip to the hospital is always a good excuse.

The good outweighs the other stuff, for the moment. I’d rather team up with Alliance folks, but depending on the “kindness of strangers” isn’t a bad approach right now.

Puck Bunny dinged 50 last night in an all-star Psychic Babbage (a fine coincidence of initials there) mission.
(And let me say three things: (1) never seen Babbage drop so fast, (2) it was great that Margie was able to get home just in time for the festivities to start, and(3) it was a fine personal moment having Psi-clone team-Deceive Babbage.)
So, on to the photos:

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Puck dings 50. She was about 40K under the level when we started, but we were able to get here there after the third or fourth mob. There should be several shots of this — I noticed more than one hero sitting out the actual melee in order to point their cameras.

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Multiple teams here, of course, formed by starting a team then sending folks into the mission and dropping there. I was personally privileged to be on the “main” (PB) team, but everyone had a blast.
L-R: Justice Stryke, Unknown Badge, Seventy-Six, Sword of Asgard, Kessa, Puck Bunny (yay!), Hyperthermian, Psi-clone, Noelle Frost, Malcalpyse, Avocet, ShockTherapy, Stateswoman, Li Nakamura, Amorpha.
All of which reminded me of: And there came a day unlike any other, when Earth’s Mightiest Heroes were united against a common threat! On that day The Avengers were born – to fight foes that no single hero could withstand!
I mean, frankly, there’s no threat I wouldn’t stack this 15 up against. Bring on the Rikti Invasion II!

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Focus on Puck, looking forward to … the future? A vacation? FP Tribuneship? A tall, frosty Molson?

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A bit of post-ding hi-jinx. She deserves it.

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Great fun, PB (and BD): thanks for the invite. Hopefully we can get Amorpha and Psi-clone up to there in the not-too-distant future.

The Hostess Heroes Frostfireapalooza last night (we ran through Frosty at least four times) left Princess Peep and Ho Ho less than a pip from 14. So, much contact running and ka-thunking later, we went to be way too late but travel powers (flight and super-jump, respectively). Glee!
Managed to have a pretty solid group last night of 7 or 8 most of the time, even with a few people off and away. Beginning to face some stresses of level differences — at the top, we’re now 14 (going on 15), whereas at the bottom we’re just about 10. That can be gotten somewhat around with SKing (though the travel power thing is going to be a bitch), but it also means that, short of RSKing, the lower-level characters don’t really have missions to offer up (we ended up running some gray/green stuff more than once), and the higher-level ones aren’t always running their arcs through, further limiting mission choice (as I discovered when someone stuck me with the star toward the end of the evening).
It also means new characters are going to need to be run in parallel or in replacement.
And, at the upper levels, we’ve finally come close to running out of Hollows mishes, unless we want to drive toward the Cavern Trial — not something I’d recommend with this particular group.
At any rate, lots of fun. Glad my meeting didn’t run too late.

Margie went to bed early last night, so I focused on Lynn, finally dinging her her to 25 — which, I’m startled to find, is halfway to 50. Huh.
She’s doing quite effectively solo, hip-deep in Striga content (she just graduated to the dude who hangs in the graveyard). I’ve gotten pretty good at hit-and-run tactics for the various hunt missions that come up — get in, take down a few, SJ out before the rest of the eight or nine take me down. It feels kind of slow, but it’s also better than racing back from the hospital.
Siphon Life is my friend.

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After snarking about the lack of notification about Phalanx Prestige Days, the next one came up yesterday, nicely publicized by Sword and all, and I …
… missed it.
First off, I’d forgotten it was, effectively, a mid-afternoon exercise in this time zone (it’s scheduled starting at 4 p.m. EST). Secondly, I spent from about 2 to 6:30p doing “homework” — a job assignment due Friday that Just Didn’t Happen. That was on top of the five status phone calls over the course of the day (starting at 6 a.m.). Rrg.
Oh, well. There’s always next time. Esp. now that I’m paying attention.
Really need to schedule a CoJ get-together.

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Speaking of soloing, Margie’s got Blue Point up to 34. Yikes. She’s going to ding 50 before any of our other toons, if we don’t get our act together.

Ended up, with various schedules up in the air, running a trio of Storm Knights for the day — Fazenda, Araware, and Doyce on Pummelcite, looking for a TF to do.
Started with Synapse — but quickly learned that Pummy was actually a level two high. “No way I like this TF enough to spend 4 hours not getting XP,” he opined. We stuck with it long enough to get F/A levelled to 20, then …
… hopped over to Sister Psyche. Found a couple of starters (it takes 5), but either the level of one of them, ro the inherent nature of the TF, meant that everything in the mish was +3, +4, or higher. When Pummy had died four times or so, Araware a couple, and Fazenda once — and the bad guys very little at all — we decided to bag it.
Ended up doing various missios in Striga. The “shared mission credit” fix not being in CoH yet (feh!), we did a lot of the same thing, including something like four or boat missions in a row. Which made finally getting a warehouse or two a great relief.
Lots of fun, at any rate, and F/A are well over halfway through 21.
I like Striga. It’s a great zone with some fun story. I just wish there was a store and/or a trainer there.

As we’ve been discussing for eons, trying to shuffle together some of our alts, we’ve had a Long Term Plan to get Torchielle and Hildegard running together. After I noticed the other day that Hildegard was actually within a level of Torchielle — 21 and 22 respectively — so we gave it a whirl last night.
Worked like a freaking champ. Fire tanker locked ’em down, fire blaster burned ’em up. She’d gather up a couple of mobs of white all around her. I’d pop Build Up, then Fire Breath, and …
… she’d pout I hadn’t left anyone for her to hit.
Only off onte to the evening was discovering that I’ve had so little gameplay on Torchy that I’d never imploemented my I6 respec on her (still has Haste 6-slotted). I did so late in the game, and was much happier with the limited results test afterwards.
Those two are definitely a pair to watch.

… we signed on Lynn and Hildegard and seriously bopped on Council in Striga. Felt good.
Working on getting Hildy up to Torchielle’s level, to provide another solid duo (tank+blaster). Lynn’s too much fun as a soloist to tie her down in a group, but having Hildy draw all the aggro in the clusters we encountered (and hold up to it, even though she was two levels behind) was very nice.
Half a pip from 24 on Lynn (which is her Dark Consumption level).

So we sign on as Psi-clone and Amorpha.
So I run across Puck Bunny by accident, and she tells me she’s on her way to a Hami raid. Never done one, but sounded like one of those Experiences One Must Have. I invite myself along.
I lose PB on the way there, and am told which direction to go from the gate. Which, it turns out, is the wrong direction. I’m not teamed, because I know nothing about the whole Hami situation and am either waiting for an invite or waiting to get some clue as to what to do.
Amorpha makes it into the Hive, and is engaged in action, and starts to give me directions of where to go, at which point I get similar directions from PB (who had died and was heading back to the zone) correcting the earlier mistake. (Well, heck, mistakes happen, and I made a few navigational errors myself tonight).
Following instructions, I run across the whole Hami amoeba complex thingie. There are people around, but not sure what’s going on and I come in closer …
… and am one-shotted. Swell.
Fly back from the FF hospital (after first heading in the opposite direction — my aforementioned navigatoin error). On the way, Amorpha (also a neophyte at this) is telling me that there’s some sort of organization to the mass mayhem, and there’s some sort of Illusion Controller group that has a specific role to play. So even though PB finally invites me onto team, I then drop and get onto the Illusion Controller team.
Which was, let me tell you, a laugh a minute, hovering over Hami, dropping Phantom Armies, and listening to banal netchatter.
For, oh, about an hour.
(In retrospect, should have stuck with PB. Or joined the Empathy team and done healing down in the action.)
Got to listen to lots of action for Amorpha. She’s having a tense, exciting time — along with about 11K XP per Mito that goes down (which is about 11K more XP than I’m getting per Mito).
Finally, the Mitos are all down, and things start to get interesting. Big strategic maneuvers. Orders. Counter-orders. Wave attacks of certain ATs.
But we’re reaching the climax. I begin to earn fractional XP as I spam Blinds onto Hami along with similar Hold attacks from other Controllers. Which fractional XP is better than the zilcho XP I was getting earlier. But at least I’ll get big bucks when Hami goes down now, not to mention a Hami-O, right?
Tension mounts. Holds are spammed. Hami’s HP drop. Lag increases. Tensoin mounts some more. Things are just about …
… locked. Frozen. Slowed, halting then …. nothing.
Fucking. Discoed.
Takes about 5 interminable minutes (with Amorpha giving me an HP countdown) for my machine to decide it’s lost its connection, and cycle back to the login screen for CoH. Quickly login to come back to everyone chattering about what Hami-O they got and what they’ll trade for and whew, wasn’t that exciting?
So … 1 death and three hours of my life, in exchange for, oh, about 25 XP.
Frelling swell.

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.