The good, the bad, the ugly...
Aug. 15th, 2005 10:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothI got in a wide variety of groups on city of heroes and everquest Sunday.
The good: I literally stumbled across a group streethunting in city of heroes, and joined them with Zakkaye. Got really good xp, and there were some interesting fights (we were pushing outselves), especially compared to...
The bad: ...the group I'd been in earlier. They invited a bunch of level 16s to a level 20 mission. Several of them offered to go get higher level alts. A half hour later, we were almost done waiting for the alts and the replacements for people who'd gotten bored waiting, but the group was level 20-22 (I was sk'd to 21) and the mission went from 'impossible' to 'too easy'. In the first room, there was a glowy that completed the mission, so we didn't clear the rest of the massive map. Total xp gain: maybe 1/4th a bar for almost an hour of waiting around doing nothing.
The ugly: Sunday morning, before going to Tom's game, I logged on to EQ2 briefly to see if I could solo a few contaminated rats (for AQ4 -- I 'bridged' for a different guild doing the quest and got most of it, but have a few things left that they'd done before I got there). I got a level 21 rat, but the rest I found were level 22 or higher, and where the 21 had barely scratched me, the 22 chewed me up before I could barely scratch it. x.x So, I called on my guild to help, and got one volunteer (It's a reasonable xp dungeon even if you're not on the quest), but one person probably wouldn't be enough, so we decided to go start the shiny brass halberd quest instead. That got all four people on interested, so a wizard and three scouts walked into a bar...
Chitter Squeak: 25 troubadour, me.
Glow Bug: 24 wizard, guild officer. Has a greater lightstone, so she actually glows just like a firefly.
Doria Whiskersdottir: 25 brigand, guild officer.
Whisperss: 25 assassin, one of the few people on at the same time as I am when I play during the week.
It says right there in the race info that ratonga don't take last names seriously. }:)
We picked up a healer that someone knew, then glow bug /ooc'd for a tank, and a level 31 paladin responded. That was technically low enough that we'd get quest updates, so we accepted, started the quest, and ran to help him in his ongoing owlbear-slaughtering. Unfortunately, this tank was of the opinion that pulling multiple groups somehow let you kill them faster, even though the few AEs that people have generally only affect one 'encounter' at a time anyway, and it's impossible for a tank to taunt multiple groups. Especially if he switches targets like a weasel on crack, faster than the PARTY FULL OF SCOUTS can get in position to backstab, let alone get an attack off, so that when the attack actually hits he's already moved on to another target, and the owlbear now chewing on the scout is being targetted by no one. And, since he's got a dozen bears around him, no one can tell which bear is attacking who because they're all overlapping.
The first battle was the ugliest... it was instantly obvious that we were screwed, so the tank kept saying 'evac' 'evac' 'evac' 'evac', spamming it. "It's not up," I said. "I'm already dead," said Doria, the other scout with evac. 'evac' 'evac' 'evac' [notices the field of corpses] 'Why didn't you evac'?
Anyway, I wasn't dead -- I'd run away by conventional means in time. I came back at low health and started carefully attacking his target... which immediately turned and started chewing on me. So I ran away again.
'stop running' 'stop running' 'stop running' 'stop running' 'dammit, do i have to explain anti agrro attacks and not running from the healer?'
"Do I have to explain taunting? Why did your target turn to attack me after one attack when I used 'evade' first? And the healer wasn't even THERE." Although, it turned out I was wrong about the second part -- I'd never seen the healer, since she'd been behind me the whole time, but she'd been chasing me after getting back from the revive point.
Anyway, there were a couple more battles that went only slightly better (with only two or three people dying each time) but despite the whole group shouting at him the tank refused to pull less than three groups.
Suddenly, I had a revelation -- we should *ignore* the tank, and target through one of the scouts! That way, we'd get the aggro of that one bear, but we'd also kill it quickly, and we'd all live. I explained this to everyone else, all excited... then realized that I had to leave.
Before I logged off back in Temple Street, they'd already kicked the tank. }:P
The good: I literally stumbled across a group streethunting in city of heroes, and joined them with Zakkaye. Got really good xp, and there were some interesting fights (we were pushing outselves), especially compared to...
The bad: ...the group I'd been in earlier. They invited a bunch of level 16s to a level 20 mission. Several of them offered to go get higher level alts. A half hour later, we were almost done waiting for the alts and the replacements for people who'd gotten bored waiting, but the group was level 20-22 (I was sk'd to 21) and the mission went from 'impossible' to 'too easy'. In the first room, there was a glowy that completed the mission, so we didn't clear the rest of the massive map. Total xp gain: maybe 1/4th a bar for almost an hour of waiting around doing nothing.
The ugly: Sunday morning, before going to Tom's game, I logged on to EQ2 briefly to see if I could solo a few contaminated rats (for AQ4 -- I 'bridged' for a different guild doing the quest and got most of it, but have a few things left that they'd done before I got there). I got a level 21 rat, but the rest I found were level 22 or higher, and where the 21 had barely scratched me, the 22 chewed me up before I could barely scratch it. x.x So, I called on my guild to help, and got one volunteer (It's a reasonable xp dungeon even if you're not on the quest), but one person probably wouldn't be enough, so we decided to go start the shiny brass halberd quest instead. That got all four people on interested, so a wizard and three scouts walked into a bar...
Chitter Squeak: 25 troubadour, me.
Glow Bug: 24 wizard, guild officer. Has a greater lightstone, so she actually glows just like a firefly.
Doria Whiskersdottir: 25 brigand, guild officer.
Whisperss: 25 assassin, one of the few people on at the same time as I am when I play during the week.
It says right there in the race info that ratonga don't take last names seriously. }:)
We picked up a healer that someone knew, then glow bug /ooc'd for a tank, and a level 31 paladin responded. That was technically low enough that we'd get quest updates, so we accepted, started the quest, and ran to help him in his ongoing owlbear-slaughtering. Unfortunately, this tank was of the opinion that pulling multiple groups somehow let you kill them faster, even though the few AEs that people have generally only affect one 'encounter' at a time anyway, and it's impossible for a tank to taunt multiple groups. Especially if he switches targets like a weasel on crack, faster than the PARTY FULL OF SCOUTS can get in position to backstab, let alone get an attack off, so that when the attack actually hits he's already moved on to another target, and the owlbear now chewing on the scout is being targetted by no one. And, since he's got a dozen bears around him, no one can tell which bear is attacking who because they're all overlapping.
The first battle was the ugliest... it was instantly obvious that we were screwed, so the tank kept saying 'evac' 'evac' 'evac' 'evac', spamming it. "It's not up," I said. "I'm already dead," said Doria, the other scout with evac. 'evac' 'evac' 'evac' [notices the field of corpses] 'Why didn't you evac'?
Anyway, I wasn't dead -- I'd run away by conventional means in time. I came back at low health and started carefully attacking his target... which immediately turned and started chewing on me. So I ran away again.
'stop running' 'stop running' 'stop running' 'stop running' 'dammit, do i have to explain anti agrro attacks and not running from the healer?'
"Do I have to explain taunting? Why did your target turn to attack me after one attack when I used 'evade' first? And the healer wasn't even THERE." Although, it turned out I was wrong about the second part -- I'd never seen the healer, since she'd been behind me the whole time, but she'd been chasing me after getting back from the revive point.
Anyway, there were a couple more battles that went only slightly better (with only two or three people dying each time) but despite the whole group shouting at him the tank refused to pull less than three groups.
Suddenly, I had a revelation -- we should *ignore* the tank, and target through one of the scouts! That way, we'd get the aggro of that one bear, but we'd also kill it quickly, and we'd all live. I explained this to everyone else, all excited... then realized that I had to leave.
Before I logged off back in Temple Street, they'd already kicked the tank. }:P
