Scientist_16

I actually liked working with Black Scorpion even if he was an idiot simply because I always read his dialogue in the same rasping voice as Barbaras has from the Bungie game Oni. It improved the overall experience severalfold.

Smashin Fashion
Playthrough Cohorts: @Hostile V, @Geiger Therapy
Arc ID: 99095
Characters Used: Lil Red Hood (Mercenaries/Traps)

Well, this is a feeling of trepidation I haven't felt in a while. It's been a while since I used the AE, much less intentionally picked something bad for the sake of a review. This one even had a little tag from Terminus on the list:
[Note: Terrible. Review-worthy]
Oh, dear.
Now, before we get started, it's no Uniocracy. It's no REALMS OF PAIN, which is still my personal top of the list for 'most painful arc I have ever played'. It's not laughably, entertainingly bad (blood AAHHHHHHHHH).

Clearly, nothing can go wrong here. Might as well relax and start the review.

The contact for these missions is named 'Baron Von Baron' and he uses the Arbiter model, implying some affiliation with Arachnos. Or Legos.


So once again, Doctor Delilah, what was briefly yours, is now mine! There is nothing you can posess which I cannot take away! AHAHAHAH! For the glory of arachnos!

( By the way, what do you think of a City of Heroes Lego set? I think there's totally some potential there. )

Anyway, Von Baron is going to be your best, best buddy through this mission, whether you like it or not. That's because he's the absolute only person in the entire three mission story arc who has anything to say. Anything at all. And all of his dialogue is entirely a single sentence:

"You must go to the Longbow warehouse and destroy all oposition!"

You, of course, are a villain, with no greater aspiration than being an Arachnos lick spittle, so you accept and run off to go destroy everything, lamenting your fate to never be sent on a mission where the objective is to throw an absolutely killer tea party and how no-one ever wants any tea and how much villainy sucks. Von baron chides you to "Come back with your shield or on it" starting you on the epic adventure:

"Goobers Fall:
When Goobers Die"

Not pictured: Me searching, assuming this was some archaic racist slang and finding out it apparently means 'peanut'. Why I didn't know this despite growing up in the middle of Texas I do not know.
(TERMINUS KNOWLEDGE INTERLUDE: It is. It’s a term for wee Scottish lads forced to dance in pubs for a bar’s amusement, coming from the Scottish verb “goub” meaning “to dance”)

COMPASS INFO UPDATE:
Defeat All Opposition -
Defeat ALL Enemies

Yeah defeat alls! Yeaaaaa-
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...7&postcount=66
*girly scream*

;_;

Anyway, here we are in a longbow warehouse. Except it's not full of longbow. It's full of 'opposition', a custom enemy group called 'Garfunkel' with random but decent costumes. There's nothing eye-rending here, just a lack of cohesion in the enemies. More importantly:

Garfunkel. Uh. WHAT? And like I said before. No dialogue. Guess what, that means none in the enemy info panels. Why they're called Garfunkel? Who knows. Who needs plot? Who needs text, for that matter? I'm better than these schmuck writers, I'll tell my Mission Architect story through INTERPRETIVE DANCE.

For a custom enemy group, there's really only two things of note here:

1. These Garfunkel folks LOOOVE Darkness. Every enemy but one has it for at least one powerset.
2. With a single exception, they are all Minions.

The fact that everything here is a minion makes everything a breeze to blow through, even with all the -acc from the dark powers being thrown around, so let's imagine up some backstory and motivations for these poor fools:

Defender: The heart of the team. Lead his allies in a minion rebellion and overthrew the tyranny of the bourgeois Lts and Bosses. Now spends his spare time knitting. Dark/Energy

Bangkok Dangerous: Rival and intelligent foil to Defender, uses energy instead of dark energy. Is a cool loner.
Is also the name of a fairly successful action film. I smell wacky pop culture reference! Energy/Energy

Bio Scrap: Loves curry and engaging enemies hand to hand. Once attempted to combine these two passions, but was stymied by the lack of available weapons-grade curry and frustrations of chefs ranting about how their food is not a weapon. The muscle of the group. Dark Melee/SR

Death Nurse: Remaining remember of the Bosses, defected to the minion rebellion and helped overthrow her kin with her bubbly forcefields. Adds the necessary feminine touch to the team.
(The nurses are seriously rare, I only saw one through the entire mission although I'm told there was another.)

GRIIIINNNNND *ding!*
Clue: "Obliteration! Destroyed All Oppostion!"

Good job, you killed everyone and doomed the revolution. Why, we dunno. Go talk to the contact again. Though you get a 'Booyah!' from the mission exit text box, but that guy's just plain easy to please.

Von Baron sees that we have returned and congratulates us.
"Great Job! You are well on your way to becoming a true Evil mastermind!"
Woohoo! We're gonna be masterminds! Except for Red, who's already a mastermind. She'll be a double mastermind. She'll summon mercenaries riding on top of bots. It will be glorious.


ON TO MISSION 2

'Go forth and destroy' . . .Okay?
'Go forth and destroy' I heard you the first time.
Compass :'Destroy All' Yes, I got that.
'Defeat all enemies!' AAAARGH

In the council cave base: Longbow! Defeat them all.

[Team] Patchwork Shift: I am losing faith in the creator's storytelling abilities.
[Team] Lil' Red Hood: DEFEAT ALL
[Team] Patchwork Shift: It's like that one game.
[Team] Lil' Red Hood: YOU HAVE DEFEATED ALL
[Team] Lil' Red Hood: YOU ARE SO MIGHTY
[Team] Lil' Red Hood: GO DEFEAT MORE
[Team] Geiger Therapy: No no no.
[Team] Geiger Therapy: DESTROY all.

And so on. Seriously. Look.


See this picture? Now look at it for five to ten minutes as you tap your 1, 2, 3 keys in sequence.
That's this mission. The only way to escape without chewing a leg off is to have someone to talk to. Conversational topics pursued through the course of the mission:

Who would win: The Incredible Hulk Vs. Kira from Death Note

Valkyrie on Miss Liberty lesbianism

Homosexuality and tolerance in Paragon and the Rogue Isles

Ways to assassinate superman

And and insightful discussion on economics, particularly the actions taken during the current administration, the bailouts, actions by banks following said bailouts, John Stewart's opinion on the matter, and our eventual decision to simply bum money off team member Hostile V following the revelation that he had won $500 dollars in a recent lottery.

Mission Exit: "Good job destroying"

TO MISSION 3!

Holy genre shift, batman! We're mixing up the whole game here!
We still have to kill everything on the map, but now we're restricted to level 10 for the duration!
Von Baron, why?! It SUCKS being level 10! Being a lego man, you may be unaware of this, but in this simple act you've reduced my move pool to several traps of dubious usefulness and cut my squad of trained minions to just enough for a doubles tennis match. Is this some sort of artistic decision? Is this an Ourobouros story in disguise, and we must now go defeat a warehouse full of Infected to set the time stream right again? Is there a flesh eating nanovirus that we have been exposed to by longbow soldiers? Did Dr. Nerf burst through, ambushing us with his deadly Nerfbots, and dip the entire team, one by one, in a deathtrap full of steaming liquid nerf? Just what exactly happened here?!”
"Kill Em"
Oh screw you, mate.




JERK MOVES: -2 (DEFEAT ALL. DEFEAT ALL. DEFEAT ALL.)
INCOHERENCY: -4 (No text outside of your contact, who just urges you to kill things)
IRRITATION: -3 (Enemies and powersets chosen completely at random.)
COMPLETABLE: -1 (Totally completeable, probably solo-able.)

FINAL ANGRY METER: -2

This managed to annoy me, surprisingly. It's like Sephiroth Run Down without the charm of having EBs to fight and you're expected to do it three times. Worst of all...
I just plain can't make this funny. It's three defeat alls, one custom group with a weird name and no reason for pointless destruction. I'd assume it was a farm of some sort if not for the weird minions-only mission in the beginning. This is the sort of mission the incredible hulk would write: It's three solid missions of 'HULK SMASH!' and doesn't even have the good grace to be entertaining.

*Blows dust off an old, old topic*

Hey, all. I've got some good news and some bad news.

The bad news is, TerminusEst13 has stated that he really has no interest in returning to City of Heroes anytime soon, if ever. Even before that, he'd commented that he wasn't really enjoying the humor writing that he did for Zero Stars.

The Good news is that I've finally got a Level 50 Hero to go with my 50 Villain, so I have an alt on either side that has no fear of debt. And I don't have plans to leave City of Heroes anytime soon.

So, what does this mean? It means that Zero Stars has a chance to revive, like some sort of freakish garbage phoenix. But it won't do that unless I can get some help. I need fodder to review, and I might need a teammate to help me fight through the extremely difficult enemies that some arcs seem to love.

Zero stars may return, but I need help. Any takers?

My bane/Huntsman is named Operative Frieschutz and desperately needs a bio rewrite, since her proposed alternate never materialized and I haven't been able to quite fit the 'Magic Bullets' concept with the spray of shot that the huntsman does.

Depending on what the Mutation pack contains, I may make a crab spider Dr. Octopus homage. I don't know if I'll go 'Operative' or 'Dr.' for his prefix though.

Cross linked for posterity:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...postcount=1015

Golbez is from Final Fantasy IV. You're thinking of Garland from the first Final Fantasy, who had the narmy "I, Garland, will knock you all down!!" line.

Also, it's Vahz, as in Vahzilok, not Valz.
[/nitpick]

I kind of like them. . .

Oh holy what. These numbers are impressive. Am I doing this right?

Demon numbers selected by old screenshot and may not be accurate to reality (There don't seem to be any numbers for Mids or red tomax) and I'm going off old screenshots, so bear with me.

http://img638.imageshack.us/i/cityof...100423121.png/
http://img706.imageshack.us/i/cityof...100423123.png/

Demons have (apparently) a base of about 23% to smethal. Using World of Pain (I plan for my demon summoner to be /pain, I think that Thermal gets even better numbers) I can get about 17% resistance.
Slotting 'Sovereign Right: Resistance bonus' and 'Expedient Reinforcement: Resistance bonus is ten each, 20% more resistance.
On top of that, Ember Aura appears to grant 10% more resistance, (Presumably) Unslotted. Already, that's 70% resist. All for only two IOs.

Alternatively. A x/Bubbler MM with Edict of the Master and Call to arms (Thugs, Necromancy, and Demons all have a power that will let you slot both of these IOS.)
Deflection Shield, Dispersion bubble, Insulation Shield, and Maneuvers, all with three +def IOs at level 50 gets 17.8 from the Deflection and Insulation bubbles, 11.9 from dispersion, and 4.16 from maneuvers.
17.8 + 11.9 + 4.6 = 34.3. Add in the extra 10% from the two IOs, and you can hit 44.3 res for all pets within your dispersion bubble, 25 feet. That's very nearly defense cap.


This is giving me an insecurity about my Merc/Traps. Or I'm bad at math. Either is bad.

Hmm, all right. I'll leave little sparky in place and see what might be better shuffled around for AoEs.

Thank you for the compliment on my avatar.

So, I've been playing a Sonic/Elec defender lately, and I've just hit level 41 with her. I picked the power combination in an attempt to play a character that was difficult to solo to promote me teaming more, and at that she's succeeded admirably. The current build she has gives her most of sonic (Did not take sonic repulsion or sonic cage) and both Assault and Tactics from the leadership pool. I didn't take either Ball Lightning or Short Circuit, and didn't take Thunderous Blast (I'm toggle-heavy and the crash is too painful.)

My question is twofold. Have I shot myself in the foot and given into the 'defenders are healorz' mentality by focusing on team buffs to the point where my blasts are anemic? I do have both ST blasts, aim, and the snipe, but I mostly find myself firing Sonic Siphons and locking down lts with Tesla Cage more than I blast for damage.

Alternatively, I've been considering dropping the voltaic sentinel and Power Sink in favor of Aid Other and Aid Self. The sentinel's been kind of meh for me, and I think that some healing might go well with all the +res I can throw out.

Am I too defendery? Not defendery enough? Doin it wrong? Does Volt. Sentinel just suck?

Just fishing for opinions here.

Alas, no more concrete additional info on the Syndicate. They do seem to be using a list for semi-cliche bits of badassery though. Dressed in black and Badass Longcoats, using katanas, More Dakka SMGs, and motorcycles if that old release is to be believed.

Not necessarily a bad thing, though.

Do we have any info on whether this is Working As Intended or an unintended side effect?

I haven't played Dual Pistols post-beta so I can't comment as to the relative strength-weakness of the power and whether a buff is needed, however, having a critical/bonus damage that triggers if the enemy is below a certain HP threshold (5%?) and a little popup that notes that it's happened (Executed!) would be very cool and thematic for the power.

However, Corruptors are one of the classes that get access to dual pistols, so there might be the issue of there being some overlap between this and scourge.

Requiescat in pace. In the spirit of not speaking ill of the dead, there's some discussion of Renaming the Macekre trope on TVtropes.org.

I can't claim to be familiar with any of his works, but if you feel strongly about the issue and are already a registered Troper, please feel free to drop in on the Macekre discussion page and contribute to the impromptu voting.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/remarks.p...e=Main.Macekre

Hit level 50 as a hero for the first time today, bringing my Katana/Willpower scrapper to 50 Duoing AV Vanessa DeVore with @Hostile V, a friend of mine.

I'm not really all that social in game, but I still wanted to shout out and thank everyone in the community. Virtue really is the best server I could ask for. I hadn't made a thread for either of my two previous 50s, so I figured it was high time I popped in and said thanks.

Most of you probably don't know who I am, but in the event that this ends up in the hands of someone who knows me: Thanks a lot!


Demon Slayer Yuki, level 50 Katana Willpower Scrapper, 'The Schoolgirl in Blue'
Sable Tentacle, level 50 Dark/Dark Corruptor, 'Cyborg Purple Freakshow'
Lil' Red Hood, Level 50 Mercs/Traps Mastermind, 'Fairy Tale Crime Boss'

All thank you from the bottom of their heart!

*applauds*