terrycloth (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
terrycloth) wrote2005-04-22 10:15 am
terrycloth) wrote2005-04-22 10:15 am
CoH Update
Right after getting on, I hit a contact and saw I had a timed mission, so I invited a couple people ('everyone level appropriate on LFG') and we headed over to go do it. There was my earth/rad controller, a dark/dark defender, and a fire tank.
The fire tank disappeared mid-zone-transition, but there wasn't anyone else looking for a group anywhere near our level, so after sending invites to three or four blasters and scrappers who weren't looking for a group -- and refused the invites -- we headed on alone.
I have two powers that deal significant damage: fossilize, which deals smashing damage, and flurry, which deals smashing damage. The dark/dark defender had two powers that dealt damage: The default dark weak-ass attack that every defender gets, and Tenebrous tentacles. Both of them deal dark damage.
Guess what two damage types the Spectral Demon Lords that the mission was crawling with are highly (as in about 80%) resistant to? We were only able to overcome their regeneration when I used Enervating Field, which debuffs damage resistance, and more than doubled our damage output. It still took about five minutes per enemy, and this was a timed mission!
Luckily, the first glowy I clicked gave me a temporary power with unlimited charges and a four-day duration, which was a ludicrously powerful dark/smashing melee attack. Think flurry on crack -- where flurry would deal 3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3 to the enemies in this mission, 'black sands' would do 16,16,16,16,16,16,16,16. Against enemies that *didn't* resist it...
So, using the power of the black sands, the mission was cleared with about ten minutes to spare. And then we split up the team, because it was really not a good matchup.
So I decided I wanted a bigger group, and didn't care as much about the levels involved. I invited a bunch of people, and we ended up with a group of 5: 29, 29, 26 (me), 24, 22. I figured the 24 and 22 could sk to the 29s, and I could use my non-hit-based stuff and leech massive XP. "Do I need to invite another 29-30?" I asked. The 29 defender replied, "This group sucks, we can't even sk properly!", and left.
Well, *now* we couldn't. There weren't any more 29-30s to recruit easily, so we sk'd the 24 scrapper to the 29 scrapper, and the 22 defender to my 26 controller, giving us a pair of extra-squishy squishies to support and heal the two scrappers.
It worked better than the first group, although the whole group was always on the edge of TPK. I died once in two hits from a warrior lieutenant (they have a two-hit combo they can do real fast), then made sure to keep them way the hell away from me and/or held from then on. I think we did two missions with this group before most everyone left except for the 22 defender, who followed me up to the top of the volcano on Striga for some reason.
Note that I *hated* the 22 defender by this point, because during the second mission he kept telling people to 'follow me!', while we were still clearing out a room full of vampires and getting our butts kicked.
"follow" We ignore him, because we're fighthing. "follow" "Follow!" "!!!!!!"
"Why?" I ask, running over next to him.
"follow me" he starts running back down the passage we just came from. Note that the room we were in was about half cleared by this point.
"That's back the way we came."
"just follow me!" No one follows. Repeat this sequence for the REST OF THE MISSION, although at one point he said "Look at the map, we missed a corridor!" He didn't stop telling us to follow him back to it after we ended up coming out through it from the other direction, after we ignored him and went forwards, though.
So, I recruited some more people. A 30 controller, a 27 squid (er, peacebringer named 'thesquid'), and I got *back* the 29 scrapper. Creative Sidekicking left me sk'd to the 30 and the 22 defender to the 27, and we went to face a mission full of level 31 freakshow.
The first assault was pure chaos -- TheSquid led off with area-effect attacks, drawing all the aggro and dying right about the time my earthquake went off, which meant all the enemies (except what the scrapper was fighting) were mad at *me* (since the 30 controller was using Mind Control powers that don't draw aggro).
Somehow (green insps and heals from the party) I managed not to die right away, and got all the debuffs up as best I could with the enemies scattered, and we slowly worked through them... until the 22 defender (named Defenderr, by the way) wandered too near an unassuming hole in the floor and enemy reinforcements started BOILING UP OUT OF THE GROUND! Everyone died except for the mind controller.
We slowly started working out a strategy that actually worked against the enemies, though... I gave the peacebringer remedial blaster pulling lessons ('get out of line of sight after pulling things with ranged attacks, so that they have to try to chase you, and we can waste their time with earthquake and caltrops and lingering radiation'), and we lost our scrapper and replaced her with an ice blaster, which helped a lot because that was one less person trying to charge in.
Leaving us with only one. TheSquid. He died a lot -- at least once and sometimes twice in every fight. I'm pretty sure a couple of the deaths were deliberate suicide attempts; I think he was going for the debt badges.
It took a long time, but we finally killed all the freaks, then ran around selling off all the loot and street hunting (greens and greys) in Talos (to clear old street-hunting missions). I got ambushed *twice* by the Circle of Thorns -- basically, every time I accepted a mission, or a mission moved to a new phase, a swarm of CoT minions and lieutenants would run around a corner, or up over a hill, and attack me. Even though the mission I took had nothing to do with the Circle of Thorns -- it was against the Warriors.
I'm guessing they'll keep ambushing me until I lose the Black Sands. What a pain. x.x On the other hand, it means that once I get one of my contacts to the point where I can phone stuff in, I can start griefing in Atlas Park. }:)
After a bit of that (the group helped clear up the ambushes, so we didn't leave purples-to-the-people-who-should-have-been-hunting-there swarming all over Talos) we did another Freakshow mission, which was a lot easier even though it had the same level of enemies.
The fire tank disappeared mid-zone-transition, but there wasn't anyone else looking for a group anywhere near our level, so after sending invites to three or four blasters and scrappers who weren't looking for a group -- and refused the invites -- we headed on alone.
I have two powers that deal significant damage: fossilize, which deals smashing damage, and flurry, which deals smashing damage. The dark/dark defender had two powers that dealt damage: The default dark weak-ass attack that every defender gets, and Tenebrous tentacles. Both of them deal dark damage.
Guess what two damage types the Spectral Demon Lords that the mission was crawling with are highly (as in about 80%) resistant to? We were only able to overcome their regeneration when I used Enervating Field, which debuffs damage resistance, and more than doubled our damage output. It still took about five minutes per enemy, and this was a timed mission!
Luckily, the first glowy I clicked gave me a temporary power with unlimited charges and a four-day duration, which was a ludicrously powerful dark/smashing melee attack. Think flurry on crack -- where flurry would deal 3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3 to the enemies in this mission, 'black sands' would do 16,16,16,16,16,16,16,16. Against enemies that *didn't* resist it...
So, using the power of the black sands, the mission was cleared with about ten minutes to spare. And then we split up the team, because it was really not a good matchup.
So I decided I wanted a bigger group, and didn't care as much about the levels involved. I invited a bunch of people, and we ended up with a group of 5: 29, 29, 26 (me), 24, 22. I figured the 24 and 22 could sk to the 29s, and I could use my non-hit-based stuff and leech massive XP. "Do I need to invite another 29-30?" I asked. The 29 defender replied, "This group sucks, we can't even sk properly!", and left.
Well, *now* we couldn't. There weren't any more 29-30s to recruit easily, so we sk'd the 24 scrapper to the 29 scrapper, and the 22 defender to my 26 controller, giving us a pair of extra-squishy squishies to support and heal the two scrappers.
It worked better than the first group, although the whole group was always on the edge of TPK. I died once in two hits from a warrior lieutenant (they have a two-hit combo they can do real fast), then made sure to keep them way the hell away from me and/or held from then on. I think we did two missions with this group before most everyone left except for the 22 defender, who followed me up to the top of the volcano on Striga for some reason.
Note that I *hated* the 22 defender by this point, because during the second mission he kept telling people to 'follow me!', while we were still clearing out a room full of vampires and getting our butts kicked.
"follow" We ignore him, because we're fighthing. "follow" "Follow!" "!!!!!!"
"Why?" I ask, running over next to him.
"follow me" he starts running back down the passage we just came from. Note that the room we were in was about half cleared by this point.
"That's back the way we came."
"just follow me!" No one follows. Repeat this sequence for the REST OF THE MISSION, although at one point he said "Look at the map, we missed a corridor!" He didn't stop telling us to follow him back to it after we ended up coming out through it from the other direction, after we ignored him and went forwards, though.
So, I recruited some more people. A 30 controller, a 27 squid (er, peacebringer named 'thesquid'), and I got *back* the 29 scrapper. Creative Sidekicking left me sk'd to the 30 and the 22 defender to the 27, and we went to face a mission full of level 31 freakshow.
The first assault was pure chaos -- TheSquid led off with area-effect attacks, drawing all the aggro and dying right about the time my earthquake went off, which meant all the enemies (except what the scrapper was fighting) were mad at *me* (since the 30 controller was using Mind Control powers that don't draw aggro).
Somehow (green insps and heals from the party) I managed not to die right away, and got all the debuffs up as best I could with the enemies scattered, and we slowly worked through them... until the 22 defender (named Defenderr, by the way) wandered too near an unassuming hole in the floor and enemy reinforcements started BOILING UP OUT OF THE GROUND! Everyone died except for the mind controller.
We slowly started working out a strategy that actually worked against the enemies, though... I gave the peacebringer remedial blaster pulling lessons ('get out of line of sight after pulling things with ranged attacks, so that they have to try to chase you, and we can waste their time with earthquake and caltrops and lingering radiation'), and we lost our scrapper and replaced her with an ice blaster, which helped a lot because that was one less person trying to charge in.
Leaving us with only one. TheSquid. He died a lot -- at least once and sometimes twice in every fight. I'm pretty sure a couple of the deaths were deliberate suicide attempts; I think he was going for the debt badges.
It took a long time, but we finally killed all the freaks, then ran around selling off all the loot and street hunting (greens and greys) in Talos (to clear old street-hunting missions). I got ambushed *twice* by the Circle of Thorns -- basically, every time I accepted a mission, or a mission moved to a new phase, a swarm of CoT minions and lieutenants would run around a corner, or up over a hill, and attack me. Even though the mission I took had nothing to do with the Circle of Thorns -- it was against the Warriors.
I'm guessing they'll keep ambushing me until I lose the Black Sands. What a pain. x.x On the other hand, it means that once I get one of my contacts to the point where I can phone stuff in, I can start griefing in Atlas Park. }:)
After a bit of that (the group helped clear up the ambushes, so we didn't leave purples-to-the-people-who-should-have-been-hunting-there swarming all over Talos) we did another Freakshow mission, which was a lot easier even though it had the same level of enemies.