SerialBeggar

I made the mistake of joining a Numina TF last week. Geez! What a pain it was during the series of hunt missions. We got stuck with three zones where an Event started just before we got to them which added a 15-20 mins wait for each. Not a big deal, but we were in a groove. The team knew what they needed to do, went to do it and then got hit with a dead stop.

I have The 10th Victim on Triumph.

I'm going to suggest either a Blaster or Scrapper. They can solo pretty well and if you team, they have the most basic of expectations from the team, ie straight damage. The other archetypes come with more complex expectations. If you haven't played a MMO before, you may want to have some time to observe what they do first.

For example, if you're playing a Tank, many teams expect you to lead the way. They may wait for you to set the direction and pace of the team. You'll be expected to dive into the every batch of foes, whether you think you're able to survive or not, to grab and maintain all their attention on you. And if things go bad, if necessary, you're expected to hold the line and be the last to run or be the one to die so they rest of the team doesn't have to.

A Controller has two roles, primarily to control the flow of battle and secondarily on team maintance. An experienced Controller, once you have enough powers, may be able to handle the tanking (ie manage the foes) for the team. As such, when you're on the team with a Tank, you'll be expected to understand when to use your controls so as not to hinder or negate what the Tank is doing. Oh, and if your team has another Controller, try not to mess up what they're doing too. You'll be using your controls to neutralize enemy movement and impede their ability to fight. And while you're doing all that, you'll also be expected to buff your team mates (ie boost their stats so they'll be more effective and/or keep them alive) and/or debuff the foes (ie lower their stats to handicap them).

A Defender also has two roles, primarily with team buffs and enemy debuffs and secondarily, damage. A Defender's buffs and debuffs are stronger than a Controllers. There's also a bit more variety. A team usually has higher expectation for the Defender to keep them alive and may play more aggressively with one on the team. You'd need to develop the ability to have an overall awareness of the battle field, an understanding of what the other archetypes are doing, an understanding of the special abilities of the different types of foes, and finally a quick reaction time to deal with it all. Note, a well slotted and well played Defender can do some light tanking and controlling for the team. Of course, don't forget that you're expected to deal out some damage. A defeated foe can't hurt your team.

Images of all the enemy NPCs (with transparent backgrounds):
- group shot with minions, lieutenants, bosses, Elite Bosses, and Arch Villains/Heroes
- individual: casual stance facing forward, facing angled to one side
- individual: menacing stance facing forward, facing angled to the one side


Eh. You can toss in a few images of civilians too.

If you're not in too much of a rush and you have characters that you don't play a lot with, use them to put in the low bids. This way, you don't clog up your Market slots on the character that you're playing. If they have enough Inf, you can bracket a range of levels with bids.

Also, if particular Sets strike your fancy and you think that you may want to use this Set for other characters in the future, buy extras now so you won't have to wait again next time.

So far I have only used this Vet reward perk on one character, a Fire/Energy Blaster. I always take Flight with my characters (except for the Warshade who couldn't) and Air Superiority is the core of my close proximity defense. However, */Energy includes Power Thrust which served well enough that I deemed Air Superiority not necessary in this character's case. Although, I am missing a guaranteed -Fly for my bag of tricks.

Tangent:

For my Ice/Dev Blaster, I chose the Electrical Mastery epic pool. The Static Discharge attack synergizes very well with Frost Breath since they're both cones. Static Discharge does slight less damage than Frost Breath, but it has a much wider cone. It's a quick one-two punch that seriously damages everything in front of you. On teams, I have been able to get the entire spawn to turn around to check me out even after the Tank has them taunted. I always felt a little underpowered with */Dev, but Static Discharge changed the game for me.

Talos Island and Independence Port are the 20-29 zones. At level 30, your contacts should be giving you introductions to the contacts at Bricks Town and Founders Falls, the 30-39 zones. These are the regular city zones.

Striga Isles (accessible via Ferries at IP and Talos) is also a 20-29 zone. Croatoa (accessible via Greenline(?) Tram) is a 25-35 zone. Striga and Croatoa have self contained zone story arcs like The Hollows zone.

In addition, if you haven't yet, you may want to do the Midnighter's Club introductory story arc to open the Cimerora zone. I forget what level you can start doing the intro story arc, 20+ or something. However, the Cimerora zone is not accessible until you're 35. The Midnighter's contact is in the University at Steel Canyon, you should see him in your Contacts window.

And speaking of 35, you'll want to head over to the Rikti War Zone to do the intro story arc there to get your Vanguard badge so you can start earning Rikti Merits. You can get to the RWZ via the Vanguard DPO buildings (there's a teleport portal in them) which are found at Founders Falls, Peregrine Island and some lowbie zone that I'm blanking on right now.

You can take a trip to Perez Park to test it out. Stand in the middle of a large group of Hellions or Skulls and activate Frozen Aura. Since they're all grey, your accuracy shouldn't be a factor (other than the ever present 5% chance to miss). See how far the power has an effect by which foes are put to sleep.

In my opinion, "speed LGTFs" and "speed Edens" are the most unsatisfying TFs to be part of. There are rooms with wall to wall mobs who are fairly easy to fight with a full team, and you're just throwing all that XP and loot away.

In the beginning, origin didn't mean much to me. I'm not a role player. I just cycled though them with each new character. Then came Vet attacks and I prefer the Nemesis Staff way more than the Black Wand. So this limited me to Natural, Science or Tech. After a while, I have settled on Tech because the little origin ranged attack Taser hold is more useful than the others (DOT Throwing Knives or Tranqualizer sleep Darts).

Did you take a break or something? You don't qualify for the 54 Months Vet Reward yet (see Eislor's post above)?

You just need more game time. After a while, you'll recognize the pattern of where spawns will be in a particular room. The hostages are a bit tricker though, but you'll still figure them out too.

The difficult ones to find are the patrols. Not only do they move into rooms you've already checked, but they're not always on the ground. They like to hop up on things, so you need 3 dimensional awareness and do a lot of Tab-targeting. I have found them up on the warehouse rafters.

On a similar note, there are the runners. They take some damage and bolt from the fight. If you're busy with a large spawn, you might not notice one leaving a room. Then after you moved on, they wander back into what you thought was a cleared room. With time, you can learn to handle this too by recognizing which enemy group have a tendency to run around more than others and then keep a mental count or be extra watchful for where everyone is.

Hey, I found his name to be Louis Train.

I remember him. He won for the Most Humorous category in the First Costume Contest. Unfortunately, the relevant old COH web site pages didn't get copied over for the current site. I ran across him once. If my memory is correct, it was Triumph, near the Crey's Folly gate at Bricks. He had the gold title, which was the first use of these titles. I gave him an attaboy.

I don't see why this would be difficult to pull off, especially now with the current always-level-34 spawns of Mary and company. With 8 Blasters, there should be enough time for your Nukes to recharge. You could even use 2 Nukes per spawn: one as the spawn materializes and a follow up for any that zipped out of range. Hmmm, speaking of which, would it be better to engage the spawn at the spawn point or hide behind the ruined structure and hope for a neat corner clustering? Or do both, ie send out a sacrificial Nuker at the spawn point while everyone else is hidden?

Handling Mary shouldn't be that difficult either. Almost all Blasters have an Immob and once she'd pinned down, her Hurricane's effect is negated. Your only problems would be Lightning Storm, Gale and her Electric Blast. If you all don't stand in a clump, ie spread out or keep mobile, you can avoid or at least minimize personal aggro and incoming damage. Well, there is still the endurance drains, but with good consistant damage output, you guys can take turns to Rest.