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July 31, 2005

32! 32! 32!

Got Psi-clone up to 32 (for real, this time), munching through Devouring Earth and Council sorts. Yay!

So now I get my Ultimate Power! My Pet! My ... Phantasm!

Who is ...

... well, imagine the most inept and annoying energy blaster you've ever had on a team. Not a clever, helpful, and suggestable one like Avocet, but a really annoying one who attacks before the team is ready, knocks-back the mobs you've carefully clustered, and then shunts off the aggro onto you.

Hrm.

Actually, the Phantasm is too bad. He does pack a whallop, he's good when the balloon goes up, and he does add to our general firepower. He's also good at tackling the little "debris" monsters, like Rubble. I just wish he understood some basic commands, like, "Heel!" and "Down!" and "Play Dead!" Like a dog.

Hmmm. I'll have to give him a name.

Posted by Dave at 7:55 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Character Design

July 28, 2005

Home again, home again, jiggety-jig

Mr & Mrs Azure dinged 12 tonight (after starting off a pip above 11). Yay. We're both on the Leaping track, but at the last second I decided rather than take Combat Jump (as the Missus did), I went for Jump Kick -- which as one of the more annoying animations in the world, but will be something better for my combat chain than Brawl (it does comparable damage, out of the box, to some of my other kicks).

We're running at Rugged right now, and still managed to make our way through two Marrowsnap iterations full of numerous orange patrols and the Purple boss himself without any deaths or real problems. Well, except for the orange patrol ambush in the lobby the first time we went in.

We continue to enjoy the characters, both for their gameplay and for the RP we can do, tossing out odd questions, malapropisms, and enthusiastic greetings.

Posted by Dave at 11:43 PM | Comments (34) | TrackBack | Edit
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I5 changed changes, Part II

Controllers: A bit of increase in the duraction on AoE holds (yay), and a significant "perma" increase on pets (which sounds keen, but which may lead to some aggro problems).

And a fun review of the I5 power sets.

Posted by Dave at 5:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

July 23, 2005

Manticore

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.

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July 22, 2005

More I5 Dev Comments

The new "organization" of comments seems to be working. At least, I'm seeing more coherent notes and explanations from folks about the different I5 changes than before:

• AoE Limits: The game starts with targets at the center of the effect, or the centerline of the cone, and checks TH on each one, stopping when it runs out of targets in the AoE or when the max number under the new nerfs is reached. So AoEs will continue to center about where told; it's just the fringes that will be most likely to be unaffected.

  Since Taunt is auto-hit, it will affect the targetted mob and the four nearest (since there's a limit of 5).

• Enemy accuracy: AVs will have their accuracy reduced from the current 90% to 75%. Minions won't be decreased because they "already have the worst accuracy in the game."

• Various previously unlisted bits: The Paragon Dance Party will now have contacts that sell Inspirations (which carries the drug analogy perhaps a bit too far). There's now no distinction between Range and Cone Range (a single set of enhancements, which is nice). Enemies (wave/ambush) may follow you through elevators and doors (yikes?!). Various other clarifications, bugs, and stuff worth reading.

Posted by Dave at 10:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
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July 21, 2005

I5 changed changes

Dev feedback to the official I5 threads is beginning to come in.

On Controllers, they're monitoring very closely the assertion that the AoE Duration and Recharge nerfs are too heavy in the face of what a Controller is all about. Statesman says he's doing actual playtest of a Grav/Storm controller.

On Tanks, the Unyielding nerfs are being rolled back somewhat. The Defense debuff will be back at I4 levels. The Energy/Elements resists are being "doubled" (can't recall the fraction they were originally reduced). Other indications, though, are that the Tanker stuff (esp. the aggro bits) are working as intended (to the Devs' minds), and that Tanks that stick around to protect the squishies should be able to do their job.

Also, Taunt may only do five mobs, but it's only five at a time. There's no upper limit (aside from death) to the number of folks a Tank can taunt (Taunt, PAoE, punch-voke) over time.

More out there over time, I'm sure.

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July 18, 2005

More I5 discussion

The "dev comment" forum posts are up -- each commenter getting to post once, leave space for the devs to react. As such, the discussion is a bit more studied as to the various I5 issues (and informed by an intensive weekend of testing on Test).

My reactions:

• Mission Customization: Good ideas (escorts, rescues) that may suffer from clumsy AI and poor documentation. We'll see.

• Blaster Defiance: As blasters drop below 40% HP, their blasts do more damage. Fun idea, but the cries have gone from "Yikes! Horribly imbalanced! Overpowers the blasters!" to "Yikes! Horribly useless!" Shrug.

• XP Changes: Something you'd think nobody's complain about, except that people manage to somehow -- either dismissing it as unecessary or as evil because it's a reaction to all the other nerfs. My thoughts: unmitigated goodness, and just what the game needs to ease things through the lower levels and create more reward for more even-conning (and now more dangerous) mobs.

• Tanker Changes: A bit miffed over the Taunt limits. More critical are the nerfs to the defenses/resists. Um, like, guys, tankers are supposed to be, well, difficult to damage. And you'd think a power set called "Invulnerable" would be, well, even moreso. From what I read, though, the proposed INV changes -- Unyielding in particular, but all of them in toto -- go way beyond some level of balance and into the nigh-unplayable. Which is bad news for Velvet, I fear.

• Controller Changes: I think the reductions on AoE holds are extreme, too. Fortunately, that doesn't affect Psi-clone all that much, largely because (a) he hasn't taken any AoEs and (b) he's been orienting towards being a confender (or a detroller, or something like that). The only bright spot is that, strictly read, it doesn't look like Group Invis took as big a hit from the nerf bat as Invis or Superior Invis or Stealth (knocks on wood).

• Scrapper Changes: More damage is all good, right? Except, of course, the nerfs to defenses (in particular Lynn's Invuln or Mr. Azure or Amorpha's Regen) make the class much squishier -- closer to a melee version of Blasters with more HP.

• Defender Changes: And there goes P-siren under the nerf bat with changes to all the FF powers. 12.5% vs 20%? Swell. Every little bit will help now, I guess, but I worry that she'll be too vulnerable as a team member. Rrg.

• Power Pool changes: Thank goodness they've nerfed the defense from Hover. I mean, that 5% was such an imbalance to the game ...

I remain guarded optimistic that not everything foretold will come to pass on Live, and that the actual changes will involve an evolution of tactics, not a revolution of some ATs simply not being worthy playing. But ...

Posted by Dave at 5:01 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack | Edit
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Ding, ding, ding went my heart ...

Lynn Calodo dinged to 11, and got invited into the Allies. Now, at least, I can hear the chatter, even if Lynn's not the type to actively go out and seek same. Have to find a way around that.

More importantly, Amorpha and Psi-clone both dinged 30, which feels like a huge milestone (though 32 will be bigger). Did a lot of SKing to higher level folks, which helped (hopefully we each contributed to the causes as well).

For the record, Amorpha beat Psi-clone there by at least 24 hours.

Toyed with the idea of a new costume for Psi-clone, but couldn't come up with something I liked.

Did a respec on Psi-clone, since he had two in the hopper. Dropped (pushed back to later) Rez in favor of Air Superiority, and droped Assault in favor of Tactics. Also dropped Haste (until later) in favor of Maneuvers. Did some play with that pair last night, and it seemed to work well, though Amorpha's such a force of nature it's hard to tell if she's gotten even more lethal.

It's actually an interesting evolution in PC, moving a more away from the Controller side (esp. in groups) and into more of a "Defender in Denial" -- beefing up the Empathy, taking the Leadership pool, etc.

Would have been handy tackling Inferno the other night. Yikes.

As I plotted PC out toward 50, I realized that I needed to take Hasten after all -- I was 6-slotting too many things for recharge. But up until now, I really haven't made use of it.

Posted by Dave at 6:08 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack | Edit
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July 17, 2005

Sound SFX

What they look like (and descriptions of the sounds). Consensus of the folks I've heard (heh) is that the powers are keen but the fx aren't.

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July 16, 2005

Running with the big dogs

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.

Posted by Dave at 6:41 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Edit
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July 15, 2005

Coming changes and associated threads

Huge slew of "consolidated discussion" threads for I5 changes, for your info:

• XP Changes: "No experience debt until level 10; half experience debt in missions; experience awards for defeating enemies level 25+ increased." Sounds encouraging.

• Mission Customization: "Many existing missions have been updated with hostage escorts, friendly heroes who fight by your side, villain wave attacks and more." Sounds interesting.

• Sonic Powers: Blast, Debuff. Sounds (heh) fun.

• Blaster changes: "Blaster hit points increased. Overall increase in the damage output (and thus survivability) of Blasters." Sounds like better days for blasters.

• Max targets: "Set a maximum number of targets that can be affected by most offensive powers: AoE Debuffs, Ranged cones, and Melee AoE (PBAoE) are set to 10. Some Large PBAoE (like Nova) are set to 16.
  Melee Cones are set to 5. Ranged AoE damage powers are set to 16.
  Taunts (including Tanker inherent Taunt - 'PunchVoke') is set to 5." Sounds questionable. Intent is to reduce herding, which is probably good, but if it hurts abilities while in actual melee, it's not so good. The numbers seem pretty decent to avoid that second possiblity, though -- except that the Tank Taunt seems way too low (unless we're talking about *just* Punchvoke, as opposed to the Taunt power or the Taunt aura from INV, etc.); that's going to definitely hurt Tank abilities to protect the party.

• Controller changes: "Controllers will do double damage to a target (non pvp) that is Immobilized, Disoriented, Slept or Held. ... Controller AoE Holds, Disorients and Sleeps (and a few others like Quicksand and Ice Slick) recharge times have been doubled and duration cut in half. AoE Immobilize and Phase Shift powers were not affected. ... Controller Pets ... can no longer stack. ... Illusion Control/Phantasm can still summon multiple decoys; always summons 3 Decoys." Sounds irksome. As a controller, I don't particularly care about doing damage as much as controlling. Reducing AoE far outbalances the extra damage done during.

• Villain powers: Reduced Lt./Boss/Elite Boss Accuracy (ToHit). Reduced Boss Accuracy (ToHit). CoT minion and power changes. Sounds "meh." Nice, but not compelling.

• Instant Healing: "Changed Regeneration/Instant Healing from a Toggle Power to a Click power. Gave it a new animation so it activates faster." Lower END, higher recharge time. See also Integration nerf.

• Scrapper Changes: "Scrapper damage increased for all powers." Sounds scrappery!

And many more (than I have time to go through right now).

Posted by Dave at 10:33 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack | Edit
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July 14, 2005

Marvel and Microsoft

Marvel has signed up with Microsoft to develop a Marvel-oriented MMO (as opposed to a MMORPG?) for the XBox 360.

(via Scott)

Posted by Dave at 7:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
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Croatoa backstory

New Paragon Times article lays the groundwork for the new "spooky" zone in Ish 5. Sounds fun.

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Transmogrified

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.

Posted by Dave at 6:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
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July 13, 2005

A nice set o' updates

Update to the live servers today. A fair number of items, but here are two that deserve major highlighting:

Fixed bug that made it impossible to target enemies through some open doors.

Most frustrating. Bug. Ever. Thank God it's fixed.

All Task Forces and Trials will now accept any player who has reached at least the minimum level of the Task Force or Trial to play it. Players above the maximum level of the Task Force or Trial will be auto-exemplared to the highest level of the Task Force or Trial. They will remain exemplared until they are no longer a member of the taskforce or trial.

A lot of huzzahs for this one, too. It will make it a lot easier to build TFs, for folks to retrospect back to catch content again, etc. The only drawback I can think of is that it now enables bands of very-high-levels to TF lower without getting level-appropriate people involved. Will this reduce the impetus for that sort of -- well, exemplaring that the IC explanation implies?

There's also this:

The /hide and /ghide commands are no longer linked. /hide makes you appear offline to others in local chat. /ghide makes you appear offline in global chat. The commands are canceled by /unhide and /gunhide respectively.

That's probably a good thing -- lets you fine-tune your visibility a bit. I don't do a lot of hiding/ghiding, but I've done a bit of it, and it's nice to be able to do it more cleanly.

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Creeping upwards

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.

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July 10, 2005

Ch-ch-changes

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.

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July 9, 2005

Old pair, new results

Since Honeygun's disappearance, we've been tentatively duoing Kazima and Torchielle -- to very mixed results.

The problem is, both of us are damage-dealers -- scrapper and blaster -- and both of us draw a lot of aggro, one-on-one. Which is great for Kazima, since she's an Invuln Scrapper. Not so good for Torchielle, who's a Blaster, and whose flame attacks are aggro-pulling to begin with, and often AoE. The Energy Manipulation secondary helps (as a "keep away from me!" knockback/disorient sort of thing), but not nearly enough. Plus, she was an Endurance hog.

Margie burned her free Kazima respec last night, beefing up some of the latter's defenses, complete with plenty of bite-me auras. I re-evalled some tactics, after not having played her for a while.

We went back into a Tsoo door mish which kicked our asses last time. Mostly even-level mobs, with occasional variation +/-1. But, aside from a few major flurries, we actually did okay. Kazima did the original rushing, drew what aggro she could, played the field to catch strays; Torchy did a few pulls, focused on her single-target attacks off Kazima, saved the AoE when the baddies were fully engaged, and usually only had to deal with one mob on her at a time. Hell, I actually saw some mobs do the run-toward-me-then-go-back-to-the-glowy-scrapper deal, which was awfully nice.

Result: tentative approval of the duo. We're going to have to be careful, and they may still be better suited for teaming up with others, but I'm pleased.

Hmmm. I have a real yen to touch bases with Kinetica to find out how she deals with being a squishy blaster.

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July 7, 2005

Malta meal

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. :-)

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Clothes horses

Both P-siren and Velvet got costume changes last night. No pics thereof, for some reason, though.

Velvet went for a "classy" costume (as defined, of course, by her). I actually think it looks pretty good, a combo of stylish and some little accents that tie into her "regular" costume. I replaced the slot I'd redone for her swim suit pics, since I wasn't ever able to get together with the swim suit issue photographer.

Yeah, I could have used that money for an SO or two. Oh, well.

P-siren went for something more casual for her second outfit.

General fun running around mish-cleaning with Avocet and Phed-X last night. Stayed up too late.

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July 6, 2005

Velvet Respec Redux

I never did do the Velvet respect I was talking about a month ago. Just never got to it.

But running around with her last night with Avocet and P-siren (and sucking wind on End and not doing a lot of actual damage) made me reconsider -- especially with the Hess TF coming up this weekend (and having seen how Hyperthermian went through that).

Part of the problem I have is the conflict between being a damage-dealer and being a damage-taker. As a tank, my priority should be the latter, locking down the mobs and letting other folks pick them off.

What gets in the way of that a bit, mentally, is that when duo with P-siren, the numbers change. Her bubbles reduce my vulnerability dramatically (I usually don't have to run with TI up, just Unyielding, esp when I'm in the Big Bubble), which makes my relative lack of damage dealing more irksome. It was very refreshing running with Avo last night, as mobs got cleared much more than 50% faster than just the two of us.

Okay, given that Velvet is now 24, and will be at 25 with another night of play, here's what I'm looking at (from CoH Planner):

01 : Jab acc(01) dam(3) dam(17)
01 : Resist Physical Damage damres(01) damres(5) damres(7) damres(11)
02 : Punch acc(02) dam(3) dam(17) dam(19)
04 : Dull Pain recred(04) recred(5) recred(7) recred(19) recred(15) recred(15)
06 : Combat Jumping endred(06)
08 : Unyielding damres(08) damres(9) damres(9) damres(11) damres(13) damres(13)
10 : Taunt tntdur(10)
12 : Swift runspd(12)
14 : Super Jump jmp(14)
16 : Health hel(16)
18 : Invincibility defbuf(18) defbuf(27) thtbuf(27)
20 : Stamina endrec(20) endrec(21) endrec(21) endrec(23) endrec(23) endrec(25)
22 : Temp Invulnerability endred(22) endred(25)
24 : Boxing acc(24)
26 : Tough damres(26)
28 : Weave defbuf(28)

I actually just changed that from the respec I'd suggested previously, not maxxing out RPD in favor of slots (recharge) to Dull Pain (on 2 minutes, off 90 seconds); eliminating Haymaker (sigh) in order to more quickly get through the Fighting pool (and its defense boosters), and adding a couple more slots to Invincibility. I also take Health rather than Hurdle, at BD's suggestion.

Still sucks wind, Endurance-wise, though, and still is weaker to Elements/Energy. And the combat damage is no better (a bit worse, in fact). On the other hand, it still gets me Invicibility, it gets me to 98% damage resistance on lethal/smash (hitting the 90% cap) by the time its up to this level.

(All the above numbers are with even-level DOs; I can selectively SO some of them, too, but I haven't fine-tuned things quite to that level.)

That 98% may be overkill with Invincibility (at least for big mobs). If I go back to Haymaker, that sets me up for either taking the fighting things thereafter, or else going with Tough Hide and Rage.

The key to this build seems to be going for the Invincibility, but it would be nice to beef up the damage a bit, assuming that I'm going to be bubbled (I hope).

Continuing to ponder (and read).

Posted by Dave at 6:04 AM | Comments (22) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

July 5, 2005

Hess TF (Avocet)

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.

Posted by Dave at 11:21 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

Best NPC line of the night

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

Posted by Dave at 11:18 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

Mr. and Mrs. Azure Go to Paragon

Margie and I have finally gotten around to doing a husband-and-wife team -- Mr. and Mrs. Azure. He's an MA/Reg Scrapper, she's a Mind/FF Controller, and together THEY FIGHT CRIME.

Actually, they have a rather fun backstory, but for the moment they just appear to be super-spy agent types who engage in the sort of romantic byplay and rhetorical quipping of Nick and Nora Charles and similar husband-and-wife teams. (I actually have another pair in mind, but I don't want to belabor the matter too much.)

(While I'm sure someone will draw a parallel to Mr. and Mrs. Smith, it's completely coincidental. The Thunderclaps were an earlier version of this duo/concept.)

We spent a fair amount of time over the weekend running this pair, getting them up to 8. Lots of deaths -- hey, I'm playing a scrapper -- but so far I'm pretty pleased by how its going.

Actually, in some ways, this pair is the opposite of Psi-clone and Amorpha, power-wise at least. Mind and Illusion Controllers are pretty similar, power-wise (though having the bubbles vs empathy does make a diff), and DM and MA Scrappers have a lot of close parallels as well. A very different dynamic, personality-wise, but from gameplay I can understand what Margie's doing, and she can follow my own issues and problems, and we both have ended up advising each other on character builds.

Next thing up for them will be getting them into the Alliance (since I think their chatter will be the most fun with them). I'd been planning on bringing them into the Consortium, just for sake of ease, but Margie was mentioning going in as Allies. Either would work; we'll see.

And, hrm, yeah, we need to get some pics posted ... (we did get some nice tells about their matching uniforms while we were running about yesterday).

More info on our weekend gameplay here

UPDATE: Hess and Citadel TF story written up here.

Posted by Dave at 11:20 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Character Design

July 3, 2005

That'll maybe get it out of my system for a day ...

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.

Posted by Dave at 8:51 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay