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May 25, 2005

Expanding boundaries

Ran Kazima and Torchielle yesterday, while Honeygun sulked ...

Did some light running around -- cleared out a couple of old missions for Kazima, while we got our duoing up and working. Then Margie suggested we look at helping Dr. Awesome ...

Ended up in a big group of 8 on the "find Patient Zero and the cure to the Vahzilok Plague" mish. Everyone was exemped down to 15-18 or so (K was at 15, T was at 16), and ...

... lots of purple. A bit of red, but lots and lots and lots of purple. Masses of abominations, eidolons a-plenty. The dangers of 8-man teams.

Good teams, though. Cobalt, Healing Rayne, Granite Rock, the good Dr., a few others. In a battle like that, deaths were inevitable, but Torchielle managed to avoid it (Kazima did not). And there was lots, and lots, and lots of XP.

Kazima went from barely 15 to just into 16 for the evening. Torchy went from a half-a-bar-of-debt into 16 to a bubble short of 17.

Good fun, good play.

I've been noodling with ideas of how to do a decent rotation of characters, to make sure our "mains" get most of the exposure, but we get some time in with the others. Trouble is, we already had two pairs of mains. Now it looks like we might end up with three.

Regardless, I plan on keeping an eye out better on the chat lines for groups forming up. Duoing is fun, and our best pasttime, but the social aspect of larger groups and exemp/SK stuff is not to be dismissed.

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Filed under: Gameplay

May 24, 2005

Getting back into the swing

After a long dry spell, we've finally gotten back into the swing of things with CoH -- just in time to head off to California, alas.

Friday night was our Synapse TF for Psi-clone and Amorpha. Went pretty well -- minimal character deaths (and most of those from not paying attention), Babbage went down pretty quickly, ditto CK. Ran about 4½ hours, and no real new lessons learned, except that a discussion of tactics beforehand is probably a good idea, and varying those tactics to keep interest up (esp. when each mish has the same foe and, often, the same map) is an even better one.

Saturday we (briefly) played with Amazonite and Truly Unstable. TU's a hoot to do over the chat boards. And, in one of those "small world" bits, no sooner had I said, "I look forward to meeting you someday" to Liberty Bill, then he swooped past me as I was entering Perez and he was exiting.

(Blink.)

We chatted, then went on, but it was ... odd.

Sunday night was for Velvet and P-siren. Did a Sky Raiders mish (Velvet's), followed by our first Banished Pantheon mish (PS's). An amusing contrast (and one of the plusses/minuses of running with a science/magic duo).

Margie's been feeling less thrilled with PS of late, and so we decided to call in some help on a mission, just to give her additional bubbly goodness to try out.

Ended up running with Avocet (exemped down, until things got hot) and Enyxia (who was new to us, though we'd seen her in the coms for a bit). Timed Sky Raiders mish that turned out to be a bit hotter than expected, leading to at least one or two character deaths before we succeeded (Velvet couldn't quite hold enough aggro, esp. with force fields up and Porters getting past me). Still, fun.

Margie enjoyed playing with another psychic.
Monday night was scheduled to be the Cavern of Transcendence trial -- the last gasp attempt. Margie's been feeling antsy about not running Kazima, and I have ... ideas for Honeygun, so we were ready. Margie did all the planning and coordination of folks, we brought in a ringer to clear the troll caves, and ...

Damn. One person we thought was 15 was actually 16, skewing the numbers on the TF so that we couldn't actually run it. Since we started it late, to accomodate one player, it was even later by the time we determined that, and none of the higher-levels had sometihng in the 12-15 range.

So we had to call it a night. I'm seriously uncertain whether it's going to actually happen; as much as the "Transcendent" badge would be perfect for Kazima, I think Margie wants to run her more. We'll see.

We decided we needed some success for the evening, so Margie pulled out Amorpha, I Psi-clone, and we headed off to ...

Oh. That annoying Skyway mish Amorpha had where the mission door was somewhere below the pavement, but we couldn't find any sort of flood control tunnel or other method of getting down there. Margie'd done a bunch of searching in the sewers, and we'd even had Doyce/Hang Time come and help. Nada.

So Margie petitioned, and, within about 15 minutes, GM_RICHA appeared, a very polite Police Drone. He met us at the spot, and then he descended down through the pavement to the mission entrance. That made it very clear where the access point was -- a drainage entrance multiple blocks away (which is kind of goofy).

The Drone was very nice, asked if we needed any other help, then left.

Old mish. Cleared it with no trouble (fortunately it was a Free Hostage, not Kill All).

Similarly old mish (we just did Synapse, so we're higher than we were) against the Tsoo for me. Then we decided to do the "Board Train" mish that Amorpha had.

It's the first of that type we'd done, and we were depositied in Omicron Park (hmmm -- wonder where that is on the city map) to break up fights between Warriors and Tsoo. Which is fine, except that we got cocky against the whites/blues, and ran into trouble when we hit the worst group, which was large and had two yellow (and powered) leaders, leaving Amorpha dead.

Hrm.

I rezzed her, and we ended up clearing the rest of the park to get rid of the debt.

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May 22, 2005

Yeah, that's what she says her name is, but ...

... I'm pretty sure that's a before, after, and current shot of Velvet. Especially in her new casual duds.

(I drove home Friday from work, for about 3/4 of my trip along C-470, behind a truck that had that third image plastered on it, 12 feet high. And I actually made it home without crashing ...)

Posted by Dave at 8:45 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: True Life

May 20, 2005

Details

I love the occasional detail you can see in this game when you get Really Close Up. As in this shot, where Sister Chinook was up against a wall, and so I got close-in enough that, when I did my various icy goodness, I could see both snowflakes and ice crystals forming in the air around me.

Neat.

(That's Toxic Sister in the background, btw. We call ourselves the Death by DoT Sisters.)

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May 19, 2005

That's my Mom ...

Carey, the Natural (?) Fire/Fire Tanker, as created and run by my Mom last weekend.

And, given the nature of Fire/Fire, a lot more visible in this picture than in any of the in-game action shots.

Mom opined that she thought that might not have been the best of powersets, given the difficulty in seeing what the heck was going on when all the flame armor was up.

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May 18, 2005

City of Villains E3 video

Nice.

Most amusing -- hearing the "standard" sound effects in conjunction with the spiffy CG.

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Filed under: Media

May 17, 2005

Planning of plans

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

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May 16, 2005

Spreading the Cracky Joy

Saturday night, had the Testerfolks and Stan over for dinner with my folks, in part to inaugurate the new Anniversary Grill. Discussion turned, of course, to CoH, which ended up with each of us showing my folks our stables of characters, Doyce giving a demo with Hang Time of how the game works, etc. As Stan put it, it was sort of like

Then, yesterday, Margie got Mom playing, and they ran around for a while on some server or another (while all the others were down). Which was fun to watch.

Later at dinner, the unbidden comment, "That's fun!" from Mom. Heh.

Of course, I haven't gotten any game time for a couple of days ...

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Filed under: True Life

May 13, 2005

Late night runaround

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.

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May 12, 2005

Buying your way to VIPhood

You can now buy the "All the stuff that came in the special edition Collector's DVD CoH" set -- without the CoH disc (but with 30 days free) -- for just $20. In addition to the PvP comic and the Statesman Heroclix, you also get access to an exclusive Cape style, the VIP Badge, and (a-ha!) the Prestige Powerslide travel power -- which I've always wondered about, when I've seen people using it.

Now I know.

Don't plan on getting the package (though the Powerslide would be kinda cool), but now I know.

Posted by Dave at 10:51 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack | Edit
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May 11, 2005

The I5 Rumor Mill

Via Statesman, stuff for I5 ...

skills - unlikely
new zone - likely
new missions & task forces - likely
new power sets - likely
new events - likely

Cool.

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May 10, 2005

Miles away, and yet in the same city ...

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.

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May 9, 2005

Feast and famine

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).

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May 5, 2005

Costume problems - watch out

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’t the best solution, but hopefully Cryptic will have a fix soon.

Knew there was a reason, besides the crowds, for avoiding Icon for a while.

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Arena stuff

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 ...

Posted by Dave at 10:14 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
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SS/SJ news

The Devs agree that the SS/SJ Acc debuf is a problem -- though not enough of a show-stopper to delay Issue 4 (huzzah). So they are experimenting with some stuff:

The Accuracy debuff, though only equal to Flight, has negatively impacted players' gameplay. I challenged myself and our team to come up with a possible alternative to a flat out debuff - and yet still address the PvE and PvP issues with both powers.

Our solution: suppression. When someone attacks, they temporarily suppress their speed or leaping - making them temporarily vulnerable to attack (and we've removed the accuracy debuff). We're playtesting it internally now and we hope to get it up to the Training Room server for your input ASAP.

The rest of the Statesman post has some interesting info on what the Devs consider as challenge/fun design goals. While one may debate over the particulars of how they go about those goals, that (a) the goals are articulated, and (b) the Devs are willing to change their course when things don't work are both to their credit, and to the advantage of the game.

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Filed under: Resources & Rules

May 4, 2005

Status check

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.

Posted by Dave at 10:22 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Edit
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When first I practice to Deceive

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.)

Posted by Dave at 10:11 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack | Edit
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Issue 4 is live!

Per Doyce, LJ CoH, and just about everyone else who wasn't stuck on a phonecon whilst repairing their Firefox installation ...

Funny stuff is going on ... and me stuck at the office, dammit. :-)

Although -- Margie tells me that most of the servers are showing as "Down" or "Unknown" -- except the Test Server, which shows as doing just fine. Heh.

As for actual rules changes, I've mentioned some here previously, but a few other items gleaned here and about:

1. Costume/appearance sliders are available to all characters via Icon. Just send money ...

2. Knockback! For (well, against) heroes!

3. Lots of new status effects for villains. Various new power protections from same. Lots of power changes, enemy power changes, enough other crap to apparently render every guide up on the boards obsolete ...

4. Coalition Chat! That should help the Alliance of Champions quite a bit.

5. PvP Arena yadda-yadda-yadda.

6. Experience distance/map/mission limits yadda-yadda-yadda.

7. Construction on University Campuses has begun in Steel Canyon and Founder’s Falls. This is for an upcoming game feature.

Specific power changes that will be affecting me and mine (cut-n-paste text from Doyce):

* Defenders and Controllers will now drain more Endurance when using powers that drain Endurance. [Cool. Endurance drains rarely seem to have much effect -- when's the last time you saw an enemy running out of endurance? That may change now.]

* Super Reflexes/Focused Fighting now offers resistance to Confuse. Super Reflexes/Focused Senses now offers increased Perception. [OFFICER is happy. In a robotic sort of way.]

* Empathy/Clear Mind now offer resistance to Fear and Confuse, and grants increased Perception. [I look forward to this.]

* Modified powers that protect you from controlling effects. They will all now generally improve over level. Mez Protection Powers scale more effectively over level. [Excellent.]

* You can now attack targets while Superior Invisibility is on. Superior Invisibility is the only self toggle invisibility power that allows you to attack while it is active. [Hmmmmm ...]

* Fixed taunt powers so they will cause fleeing villains to return, unless they are affected by a Fear power. [Cool.]

* Lots of improvements to Jack Frost. [Sister Chinook looks forward to it.]

* To Hit debuff (50%) to SJ and SS yadda-yadda-yadda. [Since I always toggle this stuff down in combat, not something that at the moment affects me.]

In general, looking at the list of bug fixes, there's not a lot in the level <20 that's being tweaked -- some, but most of the "problems" are in the higher-end powers, which may explain my general lack of sympathy to the "OMG THEY NERFED THE POWER I BUILT MY HERO AROUND THE BASTARDS!" crowd.

Now ... if I can just think of a reason to sneak home ...

Posted by Dave at 1:05 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

May 3, 2005

City of Statistics

Some CoH stats:

More than 10 million characters were created in City of Heroes, of those 10 million:

o 27 percent were of mutant origin
o 24 percent were of magic origin
o 18 percent were of natural origin
o 16 percent were of science origin
o 15 percent were of technology origins

The 10 million characters created in City of Heroes is equivalent to the combined populations of Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston and Philadelphia.

And that's not counting all the citizenry wandering around the Manhattan-sized burg. As one commenter put it, "I think that explains why every good name I think up is taken."

And there's more ...

Posted by Dave at 3:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
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The Old Order Changeth

When I got home last night, Margie was busy running Toxic Sister, trying to get her to level to Sister Chinook so we could try that combo.

I'd reached one of those decisions I never realize I've reached until the cusp comes and went ahead and (sniff) deleted Selene (after passing on her worldly possessions ot Toxic Sister. She was the second character I did, but she just wasn't working for me.

Then I rebuilt onto Champion Suzy Atom, the Inv/Energy tanker I'd played with on Infinity, and went around trying her out. I'd done some research and come up with most of the build I wanted for her, at least in the first dozen levels or so. And I had a lot of fun up through Kitten's dinner time.

Well, Margie swung by and saw what I was doing. And when I said that Suzy would be good to duo with a squishie, if she had a character in mind, she built on to Champion Star Protector, a Dark/Storm defender. And while I was up seeing Kitten to bed, got him levelled up to Suzy. Then we spent the evening carving through Hellions like butter.

I think the team-up is going to work.

The second half of the evening was getting into some Consortium play. Suzy and Star were out levelling in front of Galaxy City HQ, when I spotted someone whose name was familiar ...

Ah. That someone, Synoptic, had applied to join Consortium, with a fun backstory, and with Hyperthermian (whose player I know) vouching for her. Now I've been assuming that most of the applicants I get are alts, so I was kind of thinking Synoptic was an alt of Hyperthermian's character -- but, it turned out, not, as Hype's player not only chatted with Margie while I was chatting with Synoptic, he later joined us (as did Avocet, making it quite a party).

Suzy said a few things, went inside, and Psi-clone made a hurried appearance. We RPed the interview more than I was expecting, and, in the end, enlisted Synoptic as a new member. Woo-hoo.

Still have no idea who she is, though I now know more of who she isn't. The "faces behind the masks" aspect of CoH is always kind of interesting to me.

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Filed under: Character Design

May 2, 2005

Eight is not enough

Rrg.

Somehwere, somehow, I got the impression that server transfer might be on the table for Issue 4 -- shifting heroes between servers. But it now doesn't look like that's the case (or, at least, I can't find any reference to it).

I'm sure there's some very good reason for that, but it's irksome. Because it means that if I want to (a) play some of the alts I've rolled up lately and am intrigued by, and (b) play with the friends and groups on Champion that I'm used to, I need to (c) free up some slots on Champion.

Who's staying ...

• Velvet Jones - No chance. She's a fixture. And fun. And she just picked up a new casual outfit from Icon.
  
• Psi-clone - Again, definitely staying. Way too much of an investment. And I like the powers. And he's making a name for himself.
  
• Torchielle - I like her. I like the power set, the look, the character. She's staying.

Who's (probably) staying ...

• Truly Unstable - Fun. Crazy. Rad/Rad. Short and frenetic and oversexed and going insane. What's not to enjoy?
  
• O F F I C E R - Also fun, and doing pretty well, even if I'm just not Scrapper material as a player.
  
• Sister Chinook - I got inspired as to Ice as Margie was looking at some guides, so I'm going to give SC (who I like, visually) another chance.

Who's (probably) going ...

• Honeygun - If I want a blaster, I'll go with Torchielle. I've decided that AR/Dev is just too annoying as a power set.
  
• Selene - Trying a respec on her, but it might be easier just to do something different altogether. If I want a scrapper, I have OFFICER.

Who's (probably) coming ...

• Molly Magpie - Grav/Bubble. She's fun, she's sweet, she's enjoyable to play, I like her visually ..
  
• Taste of Honey - Honeygun's "replacement." She went down into the caverns ... and came back ... changed ...
  
• Suzy Atom - The power-packed mighty maid of, um, mighty power. Perky. Inv/Energy Tank.

Those are the three alts I generated that I've been thinking of the most, which makes them most likely to come on board. Though, as you can see, I have three of them, and only two "sure" slots to replace. Yes, that is a problem.

And this doesn't even count the "Mr. & Mrs. Thunderclap" pair that Margie and I want to play, or the Princess Kittenyboo I have in mind.

And that doesn't mention the question of how to find time to do all of these concepts justice ...

I'm sure I'll think of something.

Posted by Dave at 9:17 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack | Edit
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Tempting fate

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.

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