Blog of Heroes

Still need to do the Final, Last Gasp Attempt at the Caverns of Transcendence with Kazima and Honeygun.
And it would be nice to try Synapse TF with Amorpha and Psi-clone, too. Unless they’ve levelled past it.
Mood: Withdrawal Pains

Late when I got on last night, after Overly Large But Exceedingly Yummy Project Team Dinner. Margie was likely already in bed, or, failing that, being a polite host to my folks (who, ironically, are in Colorado while I’m in California).
So I figured I’d be soloing, and decided to bring in Velvet (after a disastrous late-night soloing with Torchielle the night before).
Ended up on a pick-up team for a good chunk of the time. Very undisciplined (nobody wanted to coordinate starting the attack, and we just continued rolling down the corridor once it started), but we did okay — and Velvet has the highest survivability for that sort of thing. Biggest problem was running out of endurance. Went up a couple of pips, had some fun, earned a tray-full of DOs, called it a night.

Always kind of interesting doing the CoH stuff while on the road — I can still play with Margie as though I were sitting at home. That’s worth the price of admission right there …
… though, of course, the “throughput” in our communication is ratcheted back to “tell” speed, rather than shouting comments back and forth.
Actually spent most of the Velvet/P-siren evening not teamed at all. Margie ran off to help another Alliance member who needed psychic-damage-dealers, so I ran a Family/Council mish with BD’s Mofo Firefly as my backup.
We actually did okay — the lack of bubbles made me realized how spoiled I was having them all the time (I had to run with more of my defenses toggled up, burning endurance like crazy — next level, Stamina!), but we developed some good tactics around “pull ’em back to the corner, bunch ’em up, ice patch ’em, and watch me whale the tar out of them.” Not always pretty, but it worked.
Also learned to appreciate PS’s psionic attack, which (a) has tremendous range, and (b) pulls very little area aggro. As opposed to Mofo’s lightning or my (heh) taunt.
When we exited the mish, I was only 300xp from level, so MoFo and I tackled the big band of Family and Warriors just outside. Ding! 23 for me.
Ran the second mish with P-siren, though she wasn’t there when we went in … and we quickly gained even more appreciation for bubbles. Once she joined us, we made steady (if sometimes chaotic) progress through the ship — noting that it was a “rescue” mish, not a “kill all,” so, when we could, we bypassed mobs.
After that, I went and trained up, and bought up DOs to 25, so I’m ready to kick some serious butt.
Originally I had planned to drop a slot in Dull Pain and another in Temp Invuln, but I’ve been finding Unyielding so valuable (covers all damage types and resists status effects), I dropped them both in there, making it six-slotted. As noted above, when I hit 24 I jump into the world of Stamina.
We had several instances of the “dead man standing” bug, as well as some odd cases where the other players did this “jog in place” animation, even though they said they weren’t. Weird. I also had some cases where I didn’t get a swing animation with a punch, even though I got the sound effects.
Also discovered that I really, truly, absolutely have to be sure to turn off Super Jump between missions. Yikes! Minus 50% TH is murder.
Picked up the Advisor badge for SKing people — which is cool, but so not Velvet. But I ran across the Vigorous badge while jumping between shops to sell DOs, and that’s pretty Velvet all right, so it replaces Pwnz as my handle.
And, cool beans, the shops in IP (the Science one, at least) sell SOs and sell the extended set of DOs, so I could pick up jump and taunt DOs. Nice.
A very successful evening. And it was nice to be able to do it (part of the time, at least!) with Margie.

A weekend of intense play, with long gaps in-between …
Friday night I crashed early.
Saturday night, I got back home at 8:40 or so, and immediately dove into the Consortium Meet-n-Greet. It was actually trememdous fun, even if it meant standing around and chatting, vs. going out and bopping bad guys. Maybe this RP stuff has something to it …

Since both Margie and I were there (as Psi-clone and Amorpha, of course), we were able to slip out a couple of times and bring in alts — Torchielle, in my case; Star Protector and Kazima in Margie’s.
I was actually kind of pleased to see so many folks come to the party, and to have it last so long. I figured it would go maybe an hour; instead, it was still going strong when I wandered upstairs at midnight.
Lots of RL stuff on Sunday, meaning I didn’t get on until just in time to join in the interview of some applicants to the Alliance (again as Psi-clone). It was interesting being on the “other” side of the interview, as we chitchatted on the Team channel (between the interviewers) all sorts of comments, not to mention how we’d deal if the event became a super-hero battle.
After that, Margie and I took Velvet and P-siren out for the first time in about a week, clearing out Family and Council and Sky Raiders in Port Noble. Fun, even if we did go too late …
Ran across some of the infamous I4 bugs, too, including invisible villains (which were present in I3) (“Sky Raiders? Sky Raiders? Where?! And why are you taking damage?”), and villains that wouldn’t lie down and die when dead (though, interestingly, that seems to be an individual thing; folks for whom Velvet saw it didn’t show that behavior to P-siren, and vice-versa).

Some folks seem to be having problems with the new costume sliders, incurring costs they didn’t expect (immediately upon going into the costuming).
It doesn’t sound consistent, and there are conflicting reports of whether it happened on Test or not, but CuppaJo suggests:

After you make changes to the body sliders (Even if this is a NEW character and you are still in the character creation area) close the physique window before moving on to something else or leaving Icon.

If you go back to Icon do NOT open this window.

Repeat – After making body changes, close the body window, and do not re-open it.

I know this isn

I am amused by the number of people posting who are discovering that they really aren’t having any fun in the Arena or with PvP. Which, I suppose, makes some sense, since the folks who were really burning for that feature probably went onto Test and don’t have anything new to say.
That said, I’m equally amused that I’ve seen several folks complaining about hovering blasters sniping down at them, that somehow this isn’t terribly sporting and they should come down and “face me like a man.”
Heh. Isn’t that the point of having Hover as a blaster? Or of being a blaster in the first place?
Sounds like there’s a fair amount of auto-Taunt that comes with that Hover power …

Hmmm. Lots more Enemy status stuff, it seemed, as we ran into our first big Tsoo group tonight under Ish 4. Yellow Ink Men, Sorcerers, even toggle knock-down by Ancestor Spirits — it was a pretty brutal combat that took out (or drove off) Amorpha, Zazi, and Psi-clone twice, before we called in Avocet for help (thanks, Avo).
It might have been just the concentration — a good dozen or more of those guys, two, three, four sorcerers (more than PC could control), etc. But I got knocked down a lot more, our toggles got knocked down a lot more, and it was all in all a nasty brawl.
Of course, PC also dinged to 21, so that was good. Fully slotted the rest of Group Invis, so the 20 second delay between it going down and my being able to throw it again should be a lot shorter.

Okay, I’ll admit that Psi-clone is a Deceive junky. It’s never-ending fun for him to tweak with the baddies’ brains, especially when it means that they’re busy attacking their friends, or (with Tsoo Sorcerers) actually healing people on your side.
But best thing going yet … started fighting with Sky Raiders tonight. Discovered that when a group is attacked, an Engineer in the group immediately sets up a Force Field generator for a Dispersion bubble.
Except, if Psi-clone turns him first, not only does the guy still do it, but the bubble works on behalf of the heroes — as long as the Engineer stays Deceived. Yeah!
Hey, look, Ma! I’m a Bubbler! By proxy!
(Actually, it’s also kind of funny to see the guy build an FF generator, and then immediately attack it.)

While Margie was pushing a new scrapper through her paces yesterday afternoon (possibly as a partner for Sister Chinook), I was busy letting Velvet stretch her legs.
Ended up in a pick-up team, which gets a definite C+ — nobody on the team was stupid, but nobody was very disciplined (no “Ready,” no planning/coord). The roster kept changing, too — I was on for about 4 hours with them, I think, and only two others were constants; the rest came and went. The Team Leader didn’t have any hesitation about simply inviting more folks in, and we were running at 8 members (with all the villain pop implications of that) most of the time.
Funniest moment was our second door mish, which turned out to be Lost in Steel Canyon. First hallway, blue-white. Piece of cake, and someone complained as to whether we could do a real mission next time, in a difficult zone, for decent XP.
Shortly after that, we had our hats handed to us. Pull too many high-level orange-red Lost, and the team is goin’ down, clown.
I’m rather proud that Velvet managed, despite a mediocre Healer, to avoid dying, despite, oh, three or four near-total-party-kills in that particular “low-XP” mission. I kept a good eye on my HP, as well as that of others, and didn’t hesitate to pound F6 and advance to the rear.
Discovered the fun of range-taunting. Get a controller that has an area slow/knockdown sort of power. He sets that up. Velvet stands at the edge and just taunts, drawing all fire from those who are in it or are still on the far side. This lets the blasters (of which we had several) to their thing without taking big hits from the nasty ranged weapons.
It works great — if you have a decent healer.
Eventually we cleared that mish, and moved back to IP, a Sky Raiders mish. Started out yellow-white, progressed to yellow-orange (and another NTPK, as we all managed to attack a big cluster of them in an open office atrium from multiple sides — which meant they had us surrounded, not the other way around), and eventually ran into a room that was full of red-purples for me — and I was the highest in the group.
It was getting to be Kitten dinner time by then, a couple of others had left, and I didn’t see how we were getting any further. So I departed as well.
Managed, mostly through that “low” Steel mission, to rack up about 6 pips for Velvet’s march to 23.
I considered, afterwards, if I should have called on some friends pr SG companions (incl. higher level ones) to lend a hand. Honestly, though, I didn’t feel good enough about the team to put other folks in that kind of danger. But something to consider next time.

Tackled Dr. Vahzilok last night with a large group. Much fun. Different play for Psi-clone, who got to be more of a supportive controller than team leader (which was kind of nice, even if the sewers are absolutely ruining his good clothes).
That, in turn, was an extension of the next chapter of the Skyway Rec Center thread, which involved a very fun “discover the body” bit, in which I enjoyed playing Velvet.
Big groups in both cases, which was a refreshing change, if a bit difficult to manage. Since they were all good players, though, it worked out nicely. P-Siren dinged up during the adventure, and PC went up multiple bubbles.