Category: Gameplay

Hostess Heroes last night. The Hollows turned out to be a bit more problematic than I thought, for a variety of reasons:

• Full team meant any delays, problems, etc., had more impact. A couple of drops by folks added to this.
• Real Life issues (like getting Kitten to bed, and others for others) meant a lot of standing around waiting.
• More bodies than team slots meant in-game reshuffling and more waiting.
• Early interruption due to other plans/commitments/fatigue.
• Despite having some very intelligent and experienced players, way too much “Hey, let me take the short-cut through Grendel Gulch with my Level 8 character” goings-on, exacerbated by missions that were (literally) all over the map.
• A broad range of character levels (6-10, I think) means running something above Heroic is likely to lead to problems.

That said, it was still a lot of fun, and even those bits didn’t take much away from that. A good evening.

Went ahead and brought Mister Ravenous and Charity at Home over from Virtue to Champion (and the CoI). It’s the third time I’ve done this (I believe I’d originally built him on Champion), but no regrets.
A solid evening of play got us both up to about 8.5. We ran through the Burke path, rather than Kalinda, which made it a bit fresher.
The pair of them work together, and playing a brute just remains plain fun. The comm chatter with them is pretty enjoyable, too.
I look forward to doing more with them and with the CoI.

Last night was the first (monthly?) Knights Night, a Storm Knights gathering, organized by Mal. We had an amazing turn-out — at least a dozen on at one point, and some beyond that, too. Fazenda and Araware got on earlier than I’d expected, did some initial teaming in Skyway; shifted over to a team with Baron Rufus and Silver-Streak, et al., fighting Nemmies and Rikti via Portal Corp (and let me tell you — negotiating through PI at level 16 is a hoot); nearly went to the new dance club; ended up going back to Portal Corp to help Pummelcite’s team take down Psychic Babbage …
… which last was, nearly, a cakewalk. No deaths. No serious injuries. We had more trouble and took more time getting to the dude than actually taking him down. Mal spent more time Deceiving his attendant clocks and getting them to fight one another than we did in finally wiping out Psychic Babbage.
That was helped by having a lot of Controllers — the managed to lock down PB in ice for a while, and Mal even managed to Deceive him briefly — plus three bubblers of various sorts, plus a couple of folks with healing, plus plenty of damage-dealers, plus a strong tank build in Pummelcite. (The pic shows, by the way, from L-R, Starrboy, Kessa, Araware, Fazenda, Mal, Puck Bunny and Noelle Frost — Pummy is on the opposite side of the frozen PB, keeping his attention.)
Both Araware and Fazenda did end up eating dirt some four times over the course of the evening, most often in conjunction with being out of SK range whilst in PI or beyond the Portal. Way too easy to get one-shotted. In at least one case, everyone in the group went down.
It was interesting shifting, in-between battles and missions, between “energy blaster” mode and “heal spammer mode. Tried to use Faz’s “witty banter” keys, which was fun, and I think I managed to contribute pretty well. Early-on tuning of the energy blasts to avoid untoward knockback were countered by ending up on an early team that was riddled with energy blasters — Kessa (NRG/NRG) and another EMP/NRG Defender. Almost seems to be a requirement for the Knights …
It was great seeing the turn-out, and heartened me considerably.
Since the SKs are still in CC with at least some of the CU teams, I did end up hearing more chatter there — and got some nice examples of exactly the sort of thing I don’t miss having during my game sessions. I leave that to the SK management, though — I can put up with it on rare occasions. 🙂
Didn’t get into the Pocket-D club, but it’s going to be convenient having something that bridges Talos, FF, and Kings Row. We already “borrow” the FP porters to get to some of the hazard zones. Between that and Pocket-D, transport time should be even further reduced.
A good evening.

Finally, after way too long, broke out Mister Thorne and Undone for some CoV play. Feeling vaguely guilty, since they are SG leaders and all that.
Hrm. Granted that the super-team of PC/A can spoil one, the DPS for the pair we ran sure felt slow. Nice to see the Mastermind’s Mercs chewing up the competition, but Dark is slooooooooow (which I remember every time I create a someone with Dark Defender powers), and Stalkers are fraaaagile.
It was good to cleanse the palate, and we’re started on a fun story arc (Ghost Widow and Wretch), but I don’t see us shifting our attention away from Paragon as a standard thing, at least not with this pair. Maybe to run out Eliza Dee and Mistress Bacchante, to get them (at 10) up to the other two’s levels (16), then partner swap to see how that chemistry works.

Had the first Official Monday Munchies night. Ho Ho and Princess Peep ding(dong)ed up to 8. I’ve never done low level missions with a full team of solid players, and that plus the jokes made for a very enjoyable time.
Next week — the Hollows. I expect we’ll have the whole zone cleaned up by the time we finish. Certainly we should plow through to Frostfire.
After that, Psi-clone and Amorpha joined up with an elite band — including Emerald Shrike, Avocet, and Seventy-Six — to bring Zephyr-Storm home to 50. Clean and tidy through Dominatrix and Infernal — indeed, it was the first Infernal mish I’d been on where nobody died. And it wasn’t that there was a full-blown Empathy Defender and a Controller with Empathy secondary. I did a fair amount of buffing, but very little healing — the team was that good.
Well done.
UPDATE: Gah! Forgot Puck Punny, even though she’s standing right there in the frelling picture. Sorry, BD.

Hit 47 with Psi-clone and Amorpha last last week. A magic number, to be sure. Margie’s now busy researching the Praetorian arc and AVs to make sure that we know which missions we’ll need to either dial back or get help on (after our last AV encounter).
The march to 50 continues …

Huzzah!

Ended up playing the Woodsman/Eden/Crystal Titan Trial (also here) last night. Loads of fun, helped tremendously by the facts that:

1. Many of the folks playing had already done it, and so had some idea of the pitfalls (I can’t imagine tackling this thing otherwise).
2. Solid team of characters. No weak links. Pesides Psi-clone and Amorpha, we had Hyperthermian, Shock.Therapy (Mal version), Kinetica, Hekuba, Puck Bunny, and Noelle Frost. Not much room for improvement there.
3. DE still aren’t dropping emitters, which made the whole thing a hell of a lot simpler.

he final battle against the Crystal Titan is amazingly short for an AV battle (a good thing, too, since we had only two Ambrosia chits each, and I was busy watching my second one count down to about 5 before CT went down).

The Trial itself is a mixed bag. On the plus side, it’s short — 2-3 hours, I’d guess (the timer on the main mission is 4 hours). The set pieces are damned spooky. The story line is pretty cool. The villain is scary.
On the minus side — only a Devouring Earth fanatic (e.g., Amorpha) would not get tired of the critters after taking out the fortieth or fiftieth group of them. There are a few variation — the Lichen, the two Walls — but mostly it’s all DE, and, in point of fact, all rock/crystal DE.
Net? Absolutely worth doing once. Future repeats are dependent on the quality of the team. And it’s worth noting that varying teams might have varying results — we’d have been in more trouble, for example, without a very solid tank, or without a couple of empathy sorts, or without controllers to lock down the Walls and their spawn — and it would have taken even longer without Heroes That Go Boom, let alone, again, everyone being a solid quality player. Indeed, I’ll be interested in seeing how it plays with the next character I bring in, whoever that turns out to be.
It’s a Level 39-41 soiree, so PC/A had to autoexemp down. No XP, thusly, but good evening entertainment, nonetheless. The only hitch all evening was the “at least one person has to be the right level for the TF to start” maybe-bug, which meant digging up a 39-41 — hence Hekuba, vs Li Nakamura.

I’ve been mostly off of CoV for a month-plus now, due to Margie’s graphic card going kerflooey (to get all technical with you folks). I logged in briefly to get jingle jets, but that was about it, aside from a couple very short solo dabbles.
And y’know what? Not missing it all that much. I guess I’m just a sappy guy who likes to be a hero, rather than a villain.
Granted, CoV the game has some bits that make it superior to CoH — incrementally, at least. But I’m really not pining away for the sense oppressive gloom and doom and blood and pain and general nastiness.
I’m sure that, once we get back into it, we’ll enjoy it more, esp. if we can do more teaming up with people. But, really, at this point it remains a sideline to me, not the main event.
Call me a sucker for blue skies. I never knew you could get S.A.D. from a computer game …

Friday
Mostly badge and accolade hunting for Psi-clone and Amorpha.
Saturday
Did some PUG work with Big Lungs. I’m not at all happy with the Sonic/Sonic combo — it’s okay, but boring — but I really like the way she looks (more than just the, um, obvious), so I’m loathe to get rid of her without something to replace her powers with instead (Storm Controller?). PC/A bits in the afternoon. Nada in the evening, due ot other commitments.
Sunday:
Morning: Recreated Fr. Frank on Virtue. I’d have done it on Champions, but I really didn’t want to let go of anyone there — neither my sadly-neglected CoV toons, nor my lesser-used CoH alts (incl. Big Lungs, who is surprisingly popular in PUGs).
Ended up with Fr. Frank in a PUG sewer crawl, and levelled to 6 by Noon. Nice to be appreciated. 🙂
Afternoon: Phalanx Prestige Day started off slowly, but ended up with a group of 8 (incl. a couple of Allies) doing the Croatoa TF — which took us 3 hours, rather than the 90 minutes forecast, but was still short. Velvet and P-siren dinged to 31. Velvet had the only death in the TF, I believe, a catastropic endurancde failure leading to complete toggle drop and many, many, many lightning strikes.
Evening: Malta-stomping with PC/A and Hype and Noelle. Ended the evening at 46.4, which is none too shabby.
It was interesting — PC/A have a very careful, refined, controlled set of Malta tactics, which were utterly useless with the rambunctious quartet we ended up in. Lots of thrills, chills, and a few face-plants (and exercise of my Rez) for everyone but me. I need to seriously consider respeccing into Clear Mind — this is the first time I really regretted not having it. That, and carrying a lot of Break Frees.
Fun times.

For whatever reason, Psi-clone and Amorpha did hunting tonight, to support going after two likely Accolades — Freedom Phalanx Reservist (+10% HP) and Vanguard (1/25min secondary effect boost).
Ended up with the FP Reservist for each of us, after some badge hunting and lots of crisscrossing PI searching for Fake Nemesis. Yay.
Vanguard’s basically waiting for a stint in the sewer network for us, hunting down 100 Lost bosses.

Helped Hyperthermian get up to 50 last night. In the process, Psi-clone and Amorpha hit 46. (Which is a lot easier to do when you’re fighting purples most of the evening). Puck Bunny, Li, Lil Tessa, Shock, and Mal were along for most of the ride, and Sword of Asgard hopped in on the last mish.
No big problems, as far as that goes, except for when we went up against Psychic Babbage. Hype went down three or four times, which usually triggered a few other deaths in the crowd as the critter turned its attention to us. I managed to avoid more than one death — I think A went down twice.
With the volume of XP being generated, though, it was hardly a disaster.

Lessons learned:

1. Anyone may ambush. Even, say, Carnies. And unlike usual encounters, where you can set up and be ready and have some “frighteningly effective” scrapper to draw enemy fire, in an ambush they come right after your sorry squishy ass, Healing Aura and Green Chiclets notwithstanding.
   (Yes, that means Psi-clone is that much slowed on his march to 50, dagnabbit.)

2. If you’re going to join a PUG, it’s better to be the highest level person rather than the lowest level person. Especially if it means most of the bad guys are blues and whites, with an occasional yellow. Good eats, heroic stances, and not much chance of face planting even when everyone else is trending orange and running away (or just out of a bad melee and charging forward to the next rather than resting first).
   (Yes, late night — later than I really wanted, but couldn’t quit the team in mid-Frostfire — fun with Amethyst Crown, who dinged 14 — in time to get a travel power to replace the soon-to-be-out-of-gas jingle jet.)

Dinged 45 with Psi-clone and Amorpha (despite one irksome disco-induced face-plant). Yay!
Hard to believe we’re on the Final Five …

It’s always interesting when I play CoH with Margie while on a business trip. We lose the “bandwidth” of immediate verbal communication, but we’ve done this stuff with these character for so long, we know the drill, and a few quick keybinds (“Gather for Invis …” + “Ready!” + “Hey, look at that &target!”) fill in a lot of the gaps. We know our tactics, we know each other’s powers and so forth, so easy-peasy. Sure, it’s more difficult to type “HELP!” than to shout it across the room when something goes south, but the team status bar shows that, too.
Nevertheless, it’s still a lot more fun with Margie in the same room.