Organica

Decided to play one of my lower level defenders, a 20 ice/ice. Get invited to a pickup team. Leader decides once he's assembled the team, he's going to pass the star to whoever is highest level. This person gets mad, doesn't want star. Leader says we get more experience at higher level, someone else says no you get more experience at a lower level, and they argue for the next 10-15 minutes about it.

Yeah, it looked like a real good team. We wound up setting a mission for the guy who would not be Leader (the actual leader didn't realize we would be the right level even if the mission holder wasn't the leader) and it was set to a very high difficulty. Leader is constantly afk due to phone calls -- I wondered if he wasn't running a business at the same time he was playing. Multiple team wipes, people started dropping, and then suddenly the guy whose mission it is drops too.

At least by this point I'd gained a couple of levels.

So... after that a couple quit, there were only 3 people left. Leader built a new team, then wanted me to get a mission (I was now highest level). We went on to Talos so that I could get a radio mission, I set my difficulty to +1, grabbed a Council mission. Easy, right?

Well, no. The other defender was a dark with no IOs slotted, so his heal missed a lot. I greatly suspect that several other members of the team were also running with no IOs slotted, and some were below level 20 so no stamina... and combine that with multiple mistakes, usually a different person each time, and we had several more team wipes. The leader quit, leaving me in charge. Another had to leave, but the rest of us struggled through the mission to the end... where one lone Council was stuck in the ceiling and couldn't be targeted.

Two of us used self destruct to blow him up.

Later I joined a different team that included the tank from that less successful team... and we steamrolled everything. I gained 3 levels, so my defender is now 25.

Mission team in PI. We steamroll a Council mission, everyone thinks we're the bee's knees and the cat's pajamas. Then we run a Carnie cave mission. Someone says, "Oh great, Carnies!" Two of us reply with various versions of "Oh great." One person says, "I've never fought them." Two people say, "What are they?"

Things go well until we hit the 5-tier cake room. Virtually nobody can fly. Leader and several others jump straight to bottom without warning, aggro a huge portion of the room. Teamwipe ensues.

Go back in, (rushing in before buffs are completed mind you), tank rushes past first couple of carnies to gather a group that continues to grow (troller pets and other teammates attracting other groups). Scrapper goes afk in the middle of a huge battle. Multiple Master Illusionists, including the boss, teamwipe ensues.

Repeat several times. People keep saying, "We have to stick together!" and "Follow the tank!" then the tank superjumps up to a different floor without warning, half the team doesn't know where he is, and people fall into the bottom (which still isn't cleared). Teamwipe.

Finally clear the 4th floor following the tank, then finally down to the bottom level to finish off the boss. Everyone's happy. But why isn't the mission done? I point out that we've never visited the top floor. People are shocked to realized there's a whole floor of enemies left. I try to make sure everyone enters via the ramp so we're all in the same place, but find myself fighting a Master Illusionist near the entrance pretty much by myself while the tank and much of the team rushes to the center of the room to take on a different Master Illusionist.

Teamwipe, tank quits, team leader quits. Rest of team breaks up.

There's a thread on the scrapper boards: "Why I play a scrapper". I came up with another reason today: when the entire team is clueless or can't focus, my scrapper can still kill the bosses and complete the mission, solo if necessary. But I was playing my defender. :/

And I fear we've left several new players with the impression that carnies are impossible and should never be fought.

Oooh! I could recreate my seal clubber character from Kingdom of Loathing!

Well actually I don't have one, and I don't know who would want to recreate a character from a stick-figure MMOG, but seal clubber is one of the classes you can choose...

You should check out this thread over in screenshots and fan creations.

Haven't wiped on a cyst in ages, but then I usually play scrappers who are set to auto-target them when I hit tab, and who can survive long enough to take them down solo if necessary, which on a clueless team it might be.

Tonight I was playing a defender but there was a scrapper on the team who knew to target these things first, and I targeted through him. I think both times they came up, we were the only two people actually pounding on the cyst, but that was enough to take it down.

Mind you, one of those two times we had run straight into a CoT prison room. We did wind up with a teamwipe in that situation, but it was after the cyst and fluffies were dead and it would have happened anyway given how we aggro'd more than half the room. Most of the time I'm on a team that runs into that room, bad things happen. The cyst was just an extra helping of doom on top of an already near-impossible situation.

And when we got everyone out and healed, we went back and cleared the room anyway. ^_^

If the whole team targets the cyst right away, not a problem. If you let it spawn a lot of fluffies first, big problem. If it's +3 to most of the time as well... then yeah, it's a mess. But if I'm on your team that won't happen. If it does, I take the blame. ^_^

I really like the challenge they represent. I didn't like it when they removed the difficulty on voids and quants, they're hardly a threat to a kheld these days at all. But cysts, you have to be prepared to target them immediately and kill 'em before they can build up steam. That's fun.

Was on a low 30's team in Croatoa Friday. We were steamrolling. We got the mission with the red caps and several hostages that you have to escort, outdoor map, on a hill... someone said it was a teamwipe mission, which it often is. We go in, find the first hostage, dive in... and bam! Teamwipe. Leader decides to drop the mission. Not that it really mattered much because all of the missions in that arc involve red caps and many of them have ambushes. But we did okay on the rest of them -- very good in fact.

Saturday, same toon, different team. Mid 30's in Croatoa. We have an ice tanker who takes a lot of damage, and a scrapper who dies multiple times (VERY squishy). The other scrapper was fairly squishy too. I'm busy hitting my heal (dark defender) as often as it pops up. At the end of the mission, after dying again, the scrapper says we need to turn up the difficulty. So the leader does, and guess which mission is next?

I hesitate to warn people that we're likely facing a team wipe, but then the leader (who keeps checking paragonwiki for details on the missions) says that there are multiple ambushes for each hostage. I say yeah, it's easy for a team to wipe in this mission. But in we go, locate a hostage, and all descend upon him. People die. I manage to survive and rez them. Somehow we rescue the hostage, survive the ambushes, and start to lead him out. But the tank insists on running straight into every group of red caps we see on the way out.

And... that works remarkably well, actually. It means we move slow and steady and don't get spread out. We do the rest of the mission that way, and only come close to a full team wipe once.

At another point, I think it was the team from Friday, we spot Jack in Irons and decide to take him down, then look for Eochai and find him and Jack (another one) fighting up North where they always are fighting. No less than 3 members of the team (me included) logged in second accounts to help our low-30's team separate the two GMs and take them down. ^_^

So far I played a new scrapper on Freedom from 1-10 Thursday night, then Friday and Saturday I took my dark/dark defender Dark Girl Four from 22 to 35, and then Sonic Girl Seven from 35 to 38. No complaints.

Best advice I can give you is download MIDS planner and play around with it a bit, and look at builds for similar sets posted to the forums, and then decide what you really want to accomplish with your sets. That makes it easier to figure out what sets to use.

For example, you might just be building for good damage/accuracy/recharge in each attack and lots of global recharge... or you might be building for good or softcapped Range Defense (softcap is 45%). Those two goals might lead to very different builds.

I was teamed with a Doc Holladay (spelled wrong I know) the other day, but unfortunately he was empath/energy, not empath/DP. I said with that name he desperately needed to be empath/DP.

I prepared for this weekend by not logging in to some of my marketers for as long as 29 days.

Oh wait... that's not being prepared, is it?

Well on a couple of marketing toons I put in bids for some blaster damage sets a week or two ago. I did find out last night that one particular Devastation IO, I'm selling from four different characters at the same time. So... not really planning things out that well.

I expect I'll make good money anyway. I went through all my marketing toons last night to make sure they all had fresh inventory for sale.

If you exemplar to 30, then you get to use your level 35 power but level 34 or 35 IOs will be no good, so far as I understand it.

My advice is to keep your 33 IOs.

Scrappers. Especially my /invul scrapper, soft-capped for smashing/lethal, wading into an entire room of Council set for 8 people. And then crane kicking them around the room.

Inferno on my blaster. This is one of only two toons I have with extensive purple sets (defined by me as more than one 5-piece damage set). Massive recharge, I can chain two single target attacks plus fireball, can toss out rain of fire every group if I like, and inferno every other group. Tons of fun!

I was on a team last night with this character and flew down a hall and around the corner expecting an empty dead end (we were spread out and searching for what was left) and I flew straight into an entire group of enemies by accident. I hit buildup, aim, and inferno... and they all died. One of my teammates had followed me around the corner and said, "Wow, was that you?" That character's name, by the way, was "Unimpressed".

Immediately. I have renamed toons to a name that I'd deleted seconds earlier, I'm pretty sure. That's faster than you could possibly make the new toon.

In fact, I'm certain of it. You see, I have the name "Mouse Police" on every server save Champion (grrr, /em shakes fist at Champion's Mouse Police). At least once I bought a transfer for a blaster on Pinnacle with a name I didn't like, created a character with the same name on Freedom (to force a name change), moved her to Freedom, then deleted the Mouse Police holder character I had there and immediately renamed my transfered blaster Mouse Police.

On another occasion (very recently) I deleted my holder Mouse Police on Justice, then immediately transferred the Mouse Police I had on Pinnacle (the original) to Justice. Name was free for the taking, of course.

And I think I went back to Pinnacle and created a new Mouse Police to keep the name right after that.

Congrats!

From the picture you can probably tell it was listed more than 8 million and less than 10.1 million. I think I tried a 2 million and 4 million bid before that.

I'm not sure how high I might have bid, but given that it was exactly what I wanted and another was probably going to be a very long wait (and I'm still bidding on another), I would have gone quite a bit higher.

So I joined an ITF last night. PuG, 7 villains and 1 hero, a blaster (and no, not dual pistols).

Leader starts TF. Blaster asks what we're doing. At least one other player states that we are not doing an ITF, and when the leader points out that we are, there's a reply like, "We're out after this." Oooh, this looks like it's going to be fun.

Only partway into the first mission, blaster is asking if we're done yet. Leader explains that there are four missions.

Leader DC's, comes back, but the blaster is now in charge. He also has to lead the oracle to where she needs to go. This takes several minutes of explaining and coaxing.

After mission, blaster asks if we're done. "Do I get the roman armor now?" No, there are three missions left. It takes a couple of minutes for the leader to lead the blaster back to Imperius and convince him to set the next mission.

Second mission. Blaster: "Are we done after this?" /em sighs. Blaster dies once for every cyst killed, because he insists on standing next to them when they explode. Leader explains that they explode and squishies should not stand near them. After about the 10th death, blaster says, "I'm squishy, lol." But he does not change his approach at all. Blaster also dies at least a half dozen other times, usually due to the ambushes (this was not a speed run). After nearly every death blaster asks for a wakie inspiration, despite being told repeatedly that there were no other heroes and the villains couldn't hand him one.

At one point blaster levels. People congratulate him. His response: "Oh? Did I level up?"

Blaster exits mission while still dead. He asks for a wakie. He's told to hit the hospital, after which the leader begs someone to teleport him to Imperius so that he can set the next mission.

Blaster: "Do I get the armor after this mission?" No. The ITF is four missions long. This is only the third mission. Someone says, "Don't make me turn this Task Force around!"

Fourth mission: Blaster: "This is the last mission? Is it short?" Another teammate: "If you want a short task force, you should try the Quaterfield TF in the shadow shard."

I should point out that our blaster wasn't the only person who'd never done an ITF and who was dying repeatedly. He just died more often and was a lot more vocal. So when someone said, "I think with THIS team, we should just fight our way there," everyone agreed.

After Rommy rezes for the second time, our blaster says, "Man, this guy Is tough!" After he rezes for the third time, one of our other newbies says in amazement, "He keeps coming back to life!!

We still finished in 1:21. No one had quit. Several people on the team said, "NOW you get the Roman armor!" They had to explain how to do that, of course.

Blaster: "You villains are all good guys!" Well, maybe not, but my fellow teammates and especially the leader need to be congratulated on their great patience. And I hope the (obviously young) blaster enjoys his Roman armor.

The main distinction being where you can slot a given IO -- BoZ slots into any pool travel power, so it's easy for anyone to use. Karma slots into defense I think, so it will go into Hover or Stealth pool powers. Steadfast, being a resist IO, probably is more difficult for some ATs to slot.

I think they all grant 4 points KB protection, if I remember correctly. If you pick up tough for any reason, then go with the Steadfast.

Jack kicked my puppy.

He kicked everyone's puppy.

For several days I've had bids on two Siphon Insight accuracy/endurance/recharges in the 35-44 range for my 43 (now 44) MM. I suppose these are pool C's and midlevel range so yeah, I know that they're going to be hard to get, especially redside. But tonight a level 38 crafted popped up...

...and I was the first one to ever buy one.

That kind of illustrates for me how woefully inadequate the redside market is. I know they're a "newer" recipe, but still...