Organica

Ran Tina's arc tonight. It was a lot of fun, especially for some members of the team that don't have GR yet and hadn't seen those maps or enemies. Very glad you updated these! For all of their problems, the old Tina and Maria arcs have always been popular -- lots of AVs to fight.

Love the new looks for those AVs too!

Antimatter's Orbital Space Platform needs a window to the stars...

What a fun night! My friend MG came on and we decided to run the new Tina arc, but as soon as the team started forming I got tells from Dechs and Late2Party. It turned out both of them were on Virtue (very convenient!) so I arranged to meet up with Dechs / Defying the Curse by logging into my other account (since my main account was the mission holder for the Tina arc the team was running).

As Dechs had said before, he's already got a pretty good build. He very generously passed up on the five Luck of the Gambler +7.5% defense IOs, the Performance Shifter, the three hami IOs and also the Expedient Reinforcement set. That still meant I handed him 27 purple IOs and a numina unique, heh.

I met with Late2Party / Astral Shadows and handed over two of the Luck of the Gambler IOs and one of the Hami IOs. Then I went back to my team (which had completed 2 1/2 missions without much help from me). Not long after, Valorin / StarShrike came online and sent a tell. He also happened to be on Virtue (you guys made this pretty easy for me) so I handed over a Hectecomb set (5 pieces), three Luck of the Gambler +7.5% IOs, the Performance Shifter proc, two hamiOs, and the four pieces of the Expedient Reinforcement set. Then Astral Shadows and I met in Ouroboros (Astral was in the middle of a Numina TF, I was in the middle of the Tina arc still and headed back from Skyway to Peregrine Island) and I handed over the 5 pcs of Armageddon.

And then my team finished up the Tina arc. I really like how they've updated it!

A very fun evening for me and for the three winners involved I hope too!

Oh, and Dechs promised not only a writeup and picture at some point on his new War Shade build, but also maybe a video. ^_^

Heh. Congrats again!

Yeah okay, that's all the suspense I'm good for. ^_^

First Place = Defying the Curse

(Dechs Kaison! Congratulations!)

It's probably a good thing I did this completely randomly, too. I had no favorite but I might not have selected the author of a warshade guide on my own. But after all, it's a guide on how to play the warshade you've got, not how to purple one out. Just because you can afford to purple your shade doesn't mean you know what to do with it. But I think Dechs does know what to do. ^_^ (Probably better than I do with mine.)

Thanks to everyone who entered! I wish I could afford to purple out eight War Shades, I thought everyone deserved to win.


Again, Dechs, PM me or contact me in game @shinobu or @shinobu Valentine.

Congrats to both of you! Sorry you missed out on the grand prize, but even 1 purple set ought to help out a little! ^_^

PM me on the forums or contact me in-game @shinobu or @shinobu valentine. I'll need to know what server you're on, I'll need to know which set StarShrike wants, and I'll need to figure out the best way to get the prizes to you. (My play time is usually after 4 PM PST to about 9 or 10 PM PST, but I'm on weekends as well.)



Now, I have no idea if anyone's going to even read this within the next hour, but I'm going to try and be a bit cruel and inject a little suspense, even if it's only in my own mind. I'm going to take my evening walk before I announce the winner, in an hour or so. ^_^

And with no further delay, here's our 2nd place runner up:

Second Place = StarShrike!

(Valorin, who gets a choice of 5 pieces Hectacomb or 5 pieces Armageddon)

(Strange how I feel kind of bad the moment I roll the dice -- because up until that point, anyone could win, but once the die is cast I feel bad for the seven who aren't the big winner....)

I rolled for the #1 winner first, then 2nd and 3rd place, but of course I want to announce things in reverse order. ^_^

Anyway! Coming in at #3, for which the reward is 5 pieces of a purple damage set (Hectacomb or Armageddon, whichever one is not claimed by the #2 winner)... we have...

Third Place = Astral Shadows!

(Late2Party, who was fashionably late to the contest but not too late!)

Okay, I didn't have any particular plan on how to pick a winner in mind, but we have 8 entrants, and as a gamer I have quite a few 8 sided dice (that have been unused for nearly a year since our current GM has failed to schedule any new games -- but that's another story). I even have a PURPLE 8-sided dice, purple gem with gold letters and blue flecks in it, which I believe I picked up at PAX last year (I was there just a few hours on Saturday to wander around and pick up my ring mistress code, then I went off to one of those aforementioned gaming sessions with several sets of shiny new dice. ^_^)

So... in a minute here I'm going to roll three times to determine my winner and two runners up!

Heh, I was thinking that too. I was going over my characters wondering which of them might feel less heroic (or less villainous), and the war shade being a little more cruel just seemed to work. Not to mention, a war shade would be more fun redside than one of my scrappers, I think. ^_^

Woo! Deadline for entries is past!

I'm at work at the moment so I won't really get a chance to pick a winner until sometime tonight, but I think everyone is well qualified! I'll just need to pick randomly from those that entered.

So unless I'm mistaken, we have:

1. Local_Man's warshade Umbra-La
2. FuzzyWonder22's warshade War Wasp
3. Dechs Kaison's warshade Defying the Curse
4. Valorin's warshade StarShrike
5. Redlynne's warshade Ms Terry
6. Wildlight]s warshade Nightcap
7. Mirthra's warshade Kheldian Shadow
8. Late2Party's warshade Astral Shadows

Will post results tonight, if I can avoid logging into Praetoria for a few minutes. ^_^

I didn't plan ahead for anything and so I only got started last night, but I have a MM who is level 45 but only trained to 43, and that's because I could never be bothered to pick a patron and work through the patron arc. I did that once for my brute, I didn't want to have to do it for my MM, for whatever reason. It just didn't appeal to me.

So that seemed like a perfect excuse to go Rogue (and probably Hero after that). Plus, tromping around hero-side with all of my robots sounds like fun. I'll definitely stand out a bit more than redside. ^_^

So with that in mind, I did 5 tip missions last night and am ready to do the rest tonight! Paragon here I come!

Deadline is tonight at Midnight, everyone! ^_^ (PST)

Like others I was lonely in Paragon City last night, because I had to wait for the box to hit the shelves. ^_^ I did a couple of tip missions, those are cool. Then we decided to try out the new Tina/Maria arcs to see Praetoria that way. But we couldn't run them through Ouro because one member of our group wasn't high enough level. I was on a 44 scrapper (Organica actually) and I had Tina as a contact, so we started running missions from her.

!#$!@#$% Tina wouldn't give me the start of the Praetoria arc for nearly 2 hours and 7-8 misisons. I dropped one, but that didn't help. Finally got the first misison in the arc, which has the new clockwork in it but is a normal tech base mission tile set. By then it was 11:40 PM, I had to go to bed, so we didn't get to see anything of Praetoria that way.

I've tried to softcap a regen scrapper. It can't be done, but you can come very close. And it's very expensive and... well, I won't say a terrible build, but it's far from the best way to build your regen scrapper.

I looked at softcapping defenses for an electric armor brute, and I gave up. It was also not worth trying, and not a good build once you got there.

I've softcapped smashing/lethal for both an invul scrapper and an invul tank. Against many enemies you're untouchable. But, of course, you're hardly untouchable against non-S/L enemies. You wouldn't want to try to softcap positional defense on an invul, I think.

I've also softcapped an SR scrapper and two shield scrappers. They're nearly untouchable in most situations.

I have 3 willpower scrappers at 50, and I didn't try to softcap them because it would have been gimping. But they have very good (30%ish) defense, and with everything else they're incredibly tough.

I haven't figured out how you would softcap a blaster or most defenders to all three positions, I usually go for ranged defense only. The exception being my bubble defender, of course. ^_^

Ultimately, you can say "there's lots of defensive bonuses and very few resist bonuses, it's not fair to the defense-based ATs!" But the truth is that very few non-defense ATs can reach softcap to all three positions without really gimping themselves elsewhere. Having played multiple tanks/scrappers/brutes to 50 (and built excellent builds for most of them), I don't find that resist-based toons are remarkably tougher than defense-based toons, or easier to produce a good build with. In fact I've yet to find a non-defense toon that I could softcap defense to all 3 positions (or all types) without seriously gimping them.

And I'd like to add, as of tonight everything listed for prizes is already bought, crafted and sitting in my base, save for 1 piece Expedient Reinforcement and one of the runner up Armageddons. And I'm quite a bit poorer than I was on Sunday, heh. ^_^ (But not poor poor, mind you.) I only used merits to buy one LotG, and I may resort to buying the missing Expedient Reinforcement if a level 30-33 one doesn't pop up over the weekend.

If you feel you qualify, then feel free to enter. Mostly I'd want to avoid handing out first prize to someone who already farms or markets a lot and has plenty of their own cash on hand, you know. As I said, "casual" is subjective. I know I don't qualify, I play too much.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...67#post3110367 Wahoo!

I have nearly all of the purple IOs bought and crafted already. ^_^ I have bids in for the LotG 7.5% and Numina unique, but none filled yet. Might have to buy those with merits, we'll see. Most of the other stuff I still have on hand, I think.

I recently "purpled out" my War Shade, Squiddy Kitty. I posted about it in the Market Forum -- you see, the "casual player" who wants to "purple out" their War Shade has been a kind of running joke with people there for a while. It's shorthand for anyone who wants a dream build without working too hard for it, the person who thinks a top 5% build should be available to anyone. Or at least, them.

Unfortunately, I hardly qualify as a casual player, so while I'm having fun with my War Shade, I failed at "casually" purpling her out. What to do? Well, since I have the money, I want to go one step further. I want to purple out a causual player's War Shade. I want to hand a dream build to someone who could never otherwise achieve it.

Your War Shade, maybe.

So -- you've designed your dream War Shade build in Mids, but you don't have the 1.5 billion plus influence needed to make it a (virtual) reality? No problem! I'm here to help!

Rules:

1. You must have a War Shade level 45 or higher. No Peace Bringers. No regen scrappers. No fire/kins. No, "my War Shade is only 12, but I want to purple him out some day." I'm here to purple a War Shade right now, or reasonably close to right now. (If you're over 45 but aren't yet level 50, you will need a way to store 30 or so crafted IOs until you hit 50.)

2. You must post a picture of your War Shade, along with a short paragraph explaining how you qualify as a casual (and poor!) player, and why your War Shade deserves to be purpled out. And let's be honest, a truly casual player probably doesn't have a level 50 War Shade, and no one needs purple sets to be effective. But I know that there are a lot of poor War Shades out there who deserve to be uber, if only someone would lend them a billion or two!

3. In the interest of fairness, members of Hero Force on Virtue are disqualified. So sorry, but I'm your SG mate, so no dice. And for that matter, the two guys in Paradox Acropolis who only log in once a week, the two or three friends I have in Ultimate Fighting Champions that are mostly taking a long Summer vacation, and all those marketeer people over in Midlevel Crisis on Freedom -- you're all disqualified as well. Anyway if you're in a SG made up of marketeers then you can presumably purple out your own War Shade.

4. Deadline for entry is Midnight PST, Wednesday August 18th. Just after GR hits, right? ^_^ That's a week, that should give people enough time. I'll announce the winner a day or two after that, by Friday at least.

Delivery of prize will be worked out in person if you're on Virtue (or can visit), or via e-mail if you're not -- either e-mailed directly to you or to one of my alts on your server and then handed to you. We can work out details when we get there. (And correct me if I'm wrong, but I can e-mail to a European server, right?)

5. If possible, post a picture of your newly uber War Shade afterwards!

First Place:

There are many ways to build a top-notch War Shade. I'm not going to tell you how to build yours. I do suggest a tri-form build, however. But my own build contains a lot of expensive IOs that probably fit any good high-end build. I will be handing out (all IOs already crafted):

5 pieces Hectacomb (all but the Damage IO)
5 pieces Armageddon (all but the Damage IO)
5 pieces Apocalypse (all but the Damage IO)
5 pieces Ragnarok (all but the proc -- although I can't remember why that is)
5 pieces Absolute Amazement (can slot in Gravatic Emanation)
2 pieces Soulbound Aliegiance (slots nicely in Dark Extraction, 16% hp regen)
4 pieces Expedient Reinforcement (slots w/above in Dark Extraction, 6.25% recharge)
5 pieces Luck of the Gambler: 7.5% global recharge (level 30-33)*
1 pc Numina's Convalesence +regen/+recovery (level 30-33)*
1 pc Performance Shifter Chance for +endurance (level 30-33)*
2 pieces Steadfast Protection 4 points Knockback Protection
3 pieces Nucleolus Exposure (good for those 1-slot-only attack powers)
5 (or 6) pieces Obliteration (level 30-33)* (if needed for build)

If you can't use all of that to produce a nice top-end build, then you're doing something wrong. ^_^ I'm willing to help with other set IOs you might need to finish off the build too, within reason. I think I've covered nearly all of the really expensive pieces you'd want though.

*I buy and slot set IOs in the 30-33 range. This allows me to exempt down to at least level 30 and still be very effective -- and the difference between level 30 and level 50 IOs is not really that great. If you really must have level 50 IOs instead, we can probably work something out (for the Oblit and Expedient Reinforcement sets at least). But I won't have them on hand, I'll need time to purchase them.

2nd Place: 5 pieces Armageddon or 5 pieces Hectacomb, your choice.

3rd Place: 5 pieces Hectacomb or Armageddon (whatever isn't taken by 2nd place finisher)

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Bear in mind that I'm essentially picking someone at random from the available entrants, but a good picture, good story, and a clever name won't hurt. (Better than "Squiddy Kitty" at least! ) I will probably select those I like best and then come up with some random method for choosing a winner. Draw from a hat, roll dice, I dunno.

I'm pulling down bids here and there, stuff I don't expect to fill or sell anytime soon, but I'm going to leave most of what I have up. As RagManX said, I can afford to lose stuff if that actually happens. Won't hurt me much.

I'm actually working on my plan to purple someone else's casual War Shade. ^_^

I'm not sure exactly what contest I should hold... maybe have people post a picture of their warshade (level 50 or close to it) and a short paragraph about why they qualify as a casual player and why they deserve, nay, absolutely need to have all those shiny IOs. ^_^ Then maybe I'll pick out the best and figure out how to choose a winner from there.

Based on my own build I'm thinking... 5 sets of purple IOs (5 pieces each) -- all four damage types and stun (Absolute Amazement) which can be place in Gravetic Emanation, 5 Luck of the Gambler 7.5% global recharge IOs, and then maybe a few other goodies like a Numina unique (doesn't everyone need one?) and, I don't know, an Oblit set (at least 5 pieces), couple of Nucleus Exposures, couple of Steadfast Protection KB protection IOs, Performance Shifter Chance for Plus Endurance... that should get anyone well on their way to an awesome tri-form War Shade build no matter how they assemble it.

All crafted and ready to deliver. ^_^ I'm working on that part now.

I should probably post something in the Kheldian forum when I'm ready.

So... if I failed at "casually" purpling my War Shade, does it count if I purple some random casual player's War Shade?

I think I might make that my next project. ^_^ Hold a contest or something.

Picture, for what it's worth. ^_^

Was on a team tonight with a Peacebringer. Some people were asking about the difference between the two, and someone began explaining how high-end War Shades required a lot of expensive IOs but could be deadly awesome.

"I have the IOs," I said. "Can't vouch for how good my playstyle is." Although I've been playing War Shades a while, I think I'm okay at them. Reading through Dech's guide was like, yeah, I do that, yeah, I do that too....

So then this other guy kind of ignores my comment and keeps talking about what a "high end War Shade" could do, how complicated they were to play and all. He says, "They like to go for as much recharge as possible, so they can have perma Eclipse."

"Yeah, I'm at 183.75% global recharge," I said. That was the end of him telling me what a "high end War Shade" was like. ^_^

...I hit 50 on my War Shade Squiddy Kitty on Sunday, and promptly slotted 5 sets (5 pieces each) of purple IOs! (More than 5 actually; I have 2 pieces of the pet IO slotted as well).

So I've now purpled out a War Shade. What's left? Other than GR, of course.

I'm not sure how much more powerful I feel with the new sets, but I found I could have 3 pets out at once, where i couldn't do that before. And Hasten is perma'd I think.