Category: Gameplay

Amusing, in a “WTF” way …
1. Amorpha got the Nemesis Staff (the Lollypop) on Saturday. She has yet to use it. Sunday was all the Respect Trial stuff. Yesterday was folks over at the house.
Tonight, though …
2. So yesterday I thought to myself, “I’d love to do a TF with Amorpha and Psi-clone.” So I researched the time slots available this coming weekend, looked up level-appropriate TFs for our characters, discussed it with Margie, and set up the invitation post for it in the Alliance planning area.
Of course, I completely forgot that we’d done it already.
Oh, well. Should still be fun, and with a different set of characters (besides us), it should play differently.

Friday I played with my various alts on Triumph — taking each out for another spin and getting a feel for them, as well as creating the haughty Amethyst Queen (Broadswoard/Inv scrapper), who would be fun to play “in production.”
Actually ended up teaming up one of them — Captain Antares (Energy/Energy blaster) with another odd group of three or four others (the number varied, which was one of the odd things). That I was the oldest person in the group (older than the total of the others, I suspect) also made it odd. (When anyone asks, “How old r u?” it’s usually a bad sign.) Cap is another one I’d like to bring “live” onto Champion.
Friday night, Margie and I took Kazima and Torchielle out for a spin. Fun. Unlike previous instances, we felt a lot less “brittle” than before, and managed (both duoing and teaming up) to survive and thrive.
The Brunch-n-Brawl on Saturday has already been noted as another K&A show. Again, a lot of fun, some good XP, and some good teaming.
Margie and I got on again in the evening with Psi-clone and Amorpha, at last. We brought in Avocet on a mish (and kudos to him for bearing up with so much exemping down this weekend), then ended up getting pulled into a surprise birthday party for Callypsa. That’s not the sort of RP I usually get into, but it was fun enough, and it introduced PC to Lady Photon, which might develop into something interesting down the line.
Most of yesterday was taken up with errands and house cleaning. We got on by 5, though, to run the TV Respec with Velvet and P-siren, as organized by Ode to Joy. Lord, what a slog. Team of 8, but everything, both prelim and at the reactor, was conning red and purple, and in copious numbers. Velvet was the sole tank — along with one controller (Mal) and one blaster (Avo), and everyone else a defender of some sort (Ode, Sun of Glory, Agent 12, Doctor Rune, PS). Crikey. A couple of deaths, mostly when we managed to aggro the entire control room (due to an anchor who ran riot through the place) and had to duke it out for what had to have been 10-15 minutes. After that, the core was almost anti-climactic. Double-bubble goodness and enough XP to nearly level Velvet. (PS was hampered in levelling by some griefer TPing lvl 52 Nemesis to the Talos train station. Yikes.)
(PB commented that there’d been a lot of griefing over the course of the day. Wonder if the Summer Kids are winding up their stay …)
Afterwards (and post-Kitten), we ended up on an odd team with Dr Awesome, Avo, and Zazi, along with … hmmmm, memory’s faded already. Anyway, Velvet was the sole tank again, and we rolled through some some missions without any real problem, getting Velvet through her last two bubbles to ding 28, the “Rage” level. Woo-hoo.
The irony about Sunday being a Velvet/PS day is that on Saturday night, during our one PC/A team (again, along with Zazi), Amorpha got the Nemesis staff. If we hadn’t had the Respec Trial already planned, we would probably have been focusing on those “mains” — and we will be, for the next couple of days (though we’ll have a late start tonight).

As Dave said before, we dusted off Torch and Kazima today and had some fun. I’ve only run duo with Kazima since the Caverns and was more than a bit rusty. I also realized that since Dave and I duo so much I don’t have a good feeling for how well I play her on a team.
So, I would sincerely like your feedback/constructive criticism on my style of play. And even though running Kazima was the impetus for this post, input on all my characters is welcome.
Thanks!

Though the “Working Lunch” adventures of the CoJ today — as organized by Margie as of yesterday afternoon — was slow in starting, we eventually had a great group and some fun times.
Dubh Bas was there, so we brought in Kazima and Torchielle. Other CoJ present were Girl Five, Tanker-belle, and Strete. We also had guest appearances from Empty Suit and Black Mynx.
Though we started out in the Hollows on the (perennial) Frostfire mish (that makes BD 49-and-2, I think), most of the time we were over in Kings Row, doing missions there against Vahz and Clocks and Hellions.
Both Kazima and Torchielle dinged (I think everyone who was along for most of the day did so). There was a lot of “rusty with this character, sorry, trying to remember the best tactics to use” around the group, since most of us were running alts that had been in storage for a while. Margie’s going to post separately about Kazima’s tactics.
For Torchielle, I was in hog heaven — lots of big groups of baddies (mostly conning from green to white), held in a nice tight cluster by a couple of tanks. I only rarely felt in too much danger, even after all of our Defenders left. I had much fun simply pouring flames of destruction onto groups and watching tons of damage numbers float upwards (including DoT).
On the way out of one KR mish, I was jumping to the next and saw a bunch of player reticles on an odd street corner. I dropped down — and saw a bunch of folks fighting with a giant clockwork … Paladin. Giant Monster. I’d read about it. Told the team. Broadcast on Coalition Chat. Started chucking fireballs …
And took the worst screen shot evah. Proof off to the right. I was trying to do too many things and having too may keyboard/finger problems. Bleah.
The battle probably took about a minute or two before he got dragged down hard. Didn’t get the badge, but did get about 300-odd XP (not shabby at 18th level) and had a blast (so to speak).
The whole party thing was a lot of fun, and kudos to Margie for organizing it.

Reference material for Lynn. She’s (I’ve decided) a Goth Geek.

Got Psi-clone up to 33 yesterday. First level where, suddenly, we drop out of the “power/2-slots” pattern. Knew it was coming (I have PC planned out to 50), but it was still … somewhat surprising to be offered three slots.
The other thing that’s changed is a more intentional effort by Margie and me over the last week or so to do more teaming outside of our duos. Last night ended up (after some SG Leadership Stuff) doing some missions with Strete and Zazi. It’s interesting the changes in tactics and dynamics (not to mention the difficulty in shouting “Don’t go over there, that wandering Fire Thorn Wielder isn’t by himself!” when two of the four party members are not in the room.
Teaming is slower, but does make the dynamics of different missions a bit more variable. Good stuff. And it makes the Empathy side of things with Psi-clone all the more useful.

… for dinging 50 with Hangtime.

There are folks who are “unlucky in love” — for whom romantic involvements involve going from failed relationship to failed relationship.
It occurs to me I might have some insight into that now — because I am “unlucky in Pick-Up Group.”
Today’s example was yet another PUG in the Hollows with Lynn. Utter disaster. The mobs were conning too high, but that didn’t stop us from going into the breach — complete with an idiot blaster sniping targets in the middle of the massive mobs of trolls.
Three deaths. Yikes.
Finally quit off to the hospital.
Went back to Steel. Managed to kill myself again.
Wandered back from the hospital. Got a tell from one of the guys from the PUG. Felt sympathetic. Should have known better. Teamed. It was the idiot blaster. Who then proceeded to spend all of his time (a) in a store, and (b) afk.
So I dropped the team and sneaked away, then headed onward.
Erased a pip of the debt by the time I was through, but … yeesh.
Perhaps an intervention is in order.
Why do I do it? Because, there have been times, in the past, when I’ve gotten involved in PUGs that were simply faboo. Great times. Great XP. Success after success after success. Play time for as long as I could, levelment and merriment.
It’s the memories of those rare — but real — experiences that keep me coming back over and over again.
Even if I keep having disastrous love affairs PUGs as a result.
Though I did have an earlier good adventure with Lynn that made up for it a bit.

Fun stuff.
Psi-clone and Amorpha both dinged 32 31. And I think we each died only once. It was a pretty bloody TF — most of the characters went down at least once at various times. With the magnitude of the hits that were being dished out, all it took was a couple of hits and some healer inattention and, bam, eating carpet. Throw in ambushes and those horribly persistent Paragon Protectors, and …
Still, it timed out pretty well, and most folks seemed to have fun. I’ll be curious to see how something like this runs under I5.

It was going to be a Psi-clone/Amorpha duo night, to finish up the Sands of Mooooooo, but we ended up getting invited onto a team with Liberty Bill, Malcalypse, Seventy-Six, Kessa, Kinetica, Shock.Therapy, etc. (composition varied over time) that was doing some higher-level content, including some Portal Corp. adventures and a big Carnie hunt.
Whew! The first PC adventure was pretty straightforward and unthreatening, zapping Proteans off in some forest. The Carnies adventure was an outside map timed mish, and we dawdled a bit much early on — the final few minutes were a non-stop dash and blast and punch and …
Well, that one failed, and there could only have been some hapless Carny lurking somewhere. Frustrating.
The third adventure was fighting Inferno through the Portal. The final battle was the huge, bloody affair — engage the bad guys plus destroy the portal plus take down Inferno. The AV was tossing around 1000-hp-plus axe blows, and I think everyone in the group died at least once during the battle. Amorpha went down four or five times, one-shotted (she also had been on the magic portal, the main attacker of it, and went down when it exploded). I got tagged by a couple of folks once and went down. Folks were popping tabs of all colors, including rezzes.
Everyone ended up in debt. I’m about 9k, and Margie’s, um, about 48k.
As to tactics during that final, bloody melee — yeesh. Shock was doing the main high number healing, but there was too much for her, esp. with rezzing and tping bodies out of the battle zone. I threw up Assault, occasionally pulled up Phantom Army, and just concentrated on my Empathy secondary, practically as fast as stuff came up.
Glad I was there — and glad everyone was there, because everyone contributed at the end.
By end of night, PC had gotten up to about 5.5 pips into 29. Amorpha was at over 7, but all the rest of hers were brown.
Good, exhausting stuff.
Now, if Katherine had slept in beyond 6:30a, it would have been a nearly perfect evening.

Psi-clone and P-siren ran the Terra Volta Respec Trial last night. Started late (9:30), but it only ran about two hours.
The team pretty much rocked. Once we knew each others’ capabilities and tricks, there was no question. Three Scrappers, two Defenders (Agent Seven on Empathy with me as spot backup, P-siren on Bubbles), a Blaster, and a Controller.
The nice thing was, though we didn’t feel regimented, we all had pretty decent discipline, and there were no running-off-and-causing-deaths errors I might have expected. Indeed, no deaths at all. Professional.
Group Invis once again showed it’s Da Bomb, and its application worked with with the various other bubbles and buffs from the Defenders. For the actual reactor protection, Phantom Army was also pretty handy. Deceive was good vs. Sky Raider engineers (and the team was pretty good about respecting that), but there weren’t a lot of those.
I ended up — aside from the Invis and PA and Empathy stuff, just doing a lot of singleton controls, my specialty. Worked pretty well, actually. A bit of jack-of-all-trades, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
I even got to bop folks with the Sands of Mu.
First try-out of the new auto-exemp system. The interesting thing about it is that auto-exemped team members can, themselves, SK someone within the team. That means that your teams are a lot more likely to be closely packed in level rather than scattered across the TF/Trial range.
For us, that also meant not a lot of XP. Most of the bad guys conned green and white to me (SKed to 33), with a fair number of blues and occasional yellows. That contributed to the low body count, too, no doubt.
Biggest drama of the night was Margie’s system once again deciding to do a full Norton AV scan at 10:30p or so, right in the middle of the frelling reactor defense. She was so frustrated she cycled the power on the damned thing and got back in after about 10 minutes of keyboard pounding. Memo to self …
Anyway, all went well. Psi-clone dinged up to 29, and I think PS dinged to 28. Velvet hasn’t done the Respec trial yet, so that’s on her docket.
And what’s the respec plan? Frankly, I’m not sure. PC actually still has his free respec from May. Fact is, looking at his powers, there’s not one in there that he doesn’t use, and only one bubble he seriously regrets. The only thing I wish he had — see Sands of Mu, above — was a permanent decent melee power. I suspect he’ll go for Air Superiority, given that he already flies, but I don’t really see a power I’d be willing to skip so far to get it, so I may go for it next rather than Tactics.
Fun night, to which was added, pre-Trial, running around and getting plaques for the “Intellectual” badge, which I think will be what stays up for him for a while (unless I get ambitious and go for the Authority badge).
UPDATE: Agent Seven’s assessment here. Personnel notes (hee!):

Psi-Clone: Graham Thorne. Entrpeneur, venture capitalist. Mental as well as support abilities. Leader of Consortium of Justice but willing to dirty hands when the need arises. Sound tactical skills, but verbose tendencies.

Personal Note: Check with Flag Waver concerning 401K status.

P-Siren: Accent denotes possible Ukranian lineage. Remember to check Phalanx files regarding citizenship status. Abilities include protective energy fields as well as mental capabilities. Competent work…..little chatter….solid team member. Adequate.
Fun.

Amorpha dinged to 29 last night — which is, suddenly, astonishingly (to me, at least) close to the golden level of 30.
Good Lord. I remember when Level 30s were like demi-gods. And here we are, just about there. Psi-clone is about two pips from 29. Velvet and P-siren are down at 27.
Next thing you know, we’ll be taking casual saunters about Peregrine Island or something.
Also inducted one of my first “outsiders” into the Consortium last night. Went well, and it’s kind of nice to see it taking on people beyond just our circle of friends and the occasional Alliance alt.
In the course of last night’s adventures — which went way too late, largely due to our inability to say no to a timed mish — PC picked up the Sands of Ur, or something like that, which basically gives him Shadow Maul for four (calendar) days. Which was, frankly way too much freakin’ fun (PC’s inability to do more than Brawl feebly being an ongoing sore point for me — yes, I know, I’m not meant to be a damage-dealing crunchy, but being able to do a bit more than I can now would be awfully nice).
And, my, haven’t those Circle of Thorns types suddenly grown? Yikes.
That also opened up a third power tray for me. I now have five temporary powers lurking about — wedding ring, wolf whistle, cryo armor, electromagnetic grenades, and now the sands for a few days — since I tend to hoard the things (I tend to forget them in combat, and when I remember them, I tend to not want to use them in case I “really” need them next encounter).
We finished up the Striga Council arc, which would have been far more impressive had we not already (with both pairs of mains) run the Hess TF. But it was still nice to clear it, and move on.
I was a bit shocked to see on Margie’s contact/origin/level cheat sheet that we actually are beginning to outlevel the contacts in IP, and already have the ones in Talos. Which is a shame, because Talos is a great place to hang — between the close proximity of the shops to each other and the train station, and the trainer just down the stairs from the station as well, it’s sort of the people-watching Picadilly Circus of Paragon, and if I park a character there, I almost certainly will run into an Alliance member in the following fifteen minutes.
But we continue to improve. And, with the temp power burning a hole in my pocket (“only three days left!”), we’ll probably be doing a lot of focus on PC and A over the next few evenings.

Did the Hess TF again this weekend, as organized by Avocet, and participating, this time, Velvet and P-siren. Along for the ride were Aerobolt, Granite Rock, Fixette, WillO’Wisp, and Lunar Lupun.
Initial organization with these things was chaotic, as folks couldn’t make it, folks dropped, the SK/Exemp questions nagged, the lack of scrappers concerned, etc. (Yes, Avo, it’s often an hour before TFs actually take off, though 30 minutes is usually a more common lag.)
Once we got going, though, and got used to each others’ capabilities, it went remarkably smoothly — despite the fact that everything was purple to both PS and me, PS couldn’t actually hit anything for damage, and I barely could. On the upside, PS’s bubbles were a key defense (despite everyone running away when it was time to reapply), and I was able to draw fire briefly with taunts (without being able to further hit well, it was hard to hold the aggro).


The upside to all of this was that both of us dinged twice — and that was from just into 25 for Velvet and dinging on the TF completion. And we all got out before the Giant Robot blew up. Spiffy.
(Our tactics in the Robot Chamber — just stay on the first level and draw everyone down to us — worked great. We probably should have jumped to the bottom sooner, but by the time we drew Archon Burkholder to us, we were able to pretty effectively gang up on him and take him down.)
Good group, overall, and much fun. Wasn’t up to doing Bastion (a *real* slog) after that, as most of the group did. Went off to Talos, and made some serious investments in SOs.
And, yes, the Velvet respec seemed to work well. I ran with full defense most of the time, and only had End problems when I forgot to drop Super Jump before entering the mish.
And I got KO Blow, which actually did do some damage to the mobs, so I didn’t feel completely useless.


UPDATE: After dinner and some other mishing, ended up running Truly Unstable with Fallen Twice. Duoing with two Defenders is an interesting challenge, but between Margie’s kinetic mojo and my radiation buddies, we did pretty well.
And playing TU on the coms is always a lot of fun.

Velvet and Amorpha ended up being picked up to run in a Malta warehouse mish. Kinetica, Shock Therapy, Malcalypse, and Puck Bunny were all along for the ride.
First time out with Velvet’s new build, and between all the support powers and my being 3-4 levels below the baddies, it’s difficult to tell how I did with it.
But I had fun, I got some complements, I got some laughs, I got some +6 SOs and a lot of XP, so what the hell. 🙂

Consider this an open planning spot for the Hess (Burkholder’s Bane) TF that Avocet is coordinating this Sunday.
On board are:
– Velvet Jones, Inv/SS Tank (25 – or will be by then)
– P-siren, FF/Psi Def (25)
Velvet’s more than willing to do the tanky stuff, but at 25 she’s going to be entry level for the TF, unless SKed up.

“Interesting ritual, James. Very creative. Now PUT ME DOWN!”

Ten hours — with breaks — of task forces against the Council: Hess TF and Citadel (Bastion) TF. Started at about 1 p.m., finished the the second up around 11 p.m. or so. Took a dinner break, Kitten break, etc., inside, but pretty much took up our Saturday.
On the other hand, dinged Psi-clone and Amorpha two levels. On Hess, we were joined by Hyperion, Synoptic, Shock.Therapy, and Leroy Jones. On Bastion, we were again led by Hype and Syn, along with Kinetica (exemped down, dropped midway through), Puck Bunny, and Shock.Therapy (who also dropped midway through).
Biggest goof: during the climactic battle in Hess, not firing up a couple of the cool temp powers (Wedding Ring, Cryo Armor, Wolf Whistles, Electromagnetic Grenades) while we were being cut to shreds. Died three times in that final scene, including staggering out the emergency hatch, dead.
The two TFs are similar enough (and Hess is probably the better one) that it was a shame to run them back to back that way — sort of ended up feeling “Oh, no, not another Council mission/map/mob again” — but it was good people, good fun, and, as noted, good experience.
Might give our alts a bit more time at bat this coming week, though.

After staying up way too late last night, we managed to ding Psi-clone to 26. He also picked up the “Slayer” badge for all the Vampyri he’s done in. Woo-hoo.
Also, in afternoon play, dinged Sister Chinook to 11 and Lynn Calodo to 5.

So, according to Margie’s exhaustive research, you can only have three open defined story arcs going on at a time. Various assignments from various contacts can be one-off sorts of things, or they can (and usually do?) lead to story arcs.
(A story arc is a series of encounters — sort of a like a TF over time — that lead to a final big encounter. Frostfire is the climax of a story arc. Dr. Vahz is the climax of a story arc. Etc.)
Again, it seems you can have only three of these open at a time. If your pool of three is full, contacts simply won’t introduce new story arc assignments, which, obviously, impedes your access to content. You can still usually get contacts, and assignments, but they won’t be the “big” ones (unless you tag along with others).
So what Margie and I have been doing for the past couple of days with our main pairs — Amorpha, Psi-clone, Velvet, P-siren — is clean up all the old, outstanding story arcs we had hanging fire. This was initially provoked by P-siren not being able to get the Stephanie Peebles story arc (wedding ring, I believe). We went to each contact that we had an incomplete bar on their display and pinged them for any ongoing missions. If we still got one (which, if it was just generic, we wouldn’t have gotten at our levels), we took it.
It’s dull, boring, grinding work (for CoH play, that is). I mean, it’s fun — for a while — to one-shot or two-shot baddies, or just waltz past grey clocks and vahz to get to the bosses. But when you get a “defeat all” mish in there, it’s a pain. And there’s no XP or Influence to be had, only, at the end of some arcs, an aging DO.
And, to be honest, after you’ve graduated from bopping Tsoo, beating up on them hour after hour is like sitting through driving school …
Some of it we did solo, others we teamed (just for efficiency on defeat-all, since only Amorpha’s a fast damage-dealer of that group, though it was amusing conjuring up Phantom Army in the middle of a group and have them actually taking folks out in a shot or two).
But … it’s done. So now we can go on to some new stuff. Yay!
(Memo to self: go through this routine with all characters as they get around level 20. And finish arcs as you go ….)