Odds and ends

At some point in the last week or two I completed my silly goal of acquiring all the mastermind pets! I still don't have the final upgrades for my merc/ff yet, but I've seen all those in action so my enthusiasm has waned a little. I'm not really sure where to go for my next project, so I've started up several duos on protector for no good reason other than that I can. Brute + Corr is the name of the game. Pointless screenshots to follow.



Here is my fire/energy brute and son/son corruptor.

I was really surprised at the speed and low end cost of the fire primary - wow! Damge is not as spectacular as the other sets, but boy is it end/speed efficient.

Son/Son also seems to be a great second in a dual - autofire on shriek makes for a handy debuff.



This is my stone/da & rad/thermal pair. Stone is a brute set I've been looking forward to playing for quite a while, and I was not let down. The sheer "smash factor" of stone is awesome, right from the start. Stone does have very high end costs, but somehow it seems worth it when you have 2 attacks capable of one-shotting at level 2 or 4. (4 is a better choice or else your fury building is dependant solely on brawl...)

/thermal is of course the pure-bot type secondary, so I had to do one eventually. And autofire on a rad attack is a nice debuff.


This would be my ss/fire and son/cold. I wasn't particularly inclined to do ss again after having played an ss/ice tank to the mid 30s, but I figured rage made an interesting pair with blazing aura. Fiery embrace + rage will actually allow for some interesting damage #s too, albeit rarely.

I've already got an active rad/cold corr that I'm playing more as a solo blaster type, so I don't feel so bad for just using this one as a backup buffer.


And finally...my dm/fire and dark/kin duo. (You can tell I'm going for rough visual themes with these pairs eh?).

I haven't got a chance to run this pair together yet, as I started the brute a while back and need to catch the corr up 1st. I'm anticipating a very late bloom as far as duos go, as it won't be much of a buff-kill relationship until speed boost at 20. Not sure if I want to take assualt/tac early to offset that or what - the corr here has the build I'm least certain of. I can see how it could be a really fun solo blaster type power combo too.... I may wind up playing them solo and then matching up at 20.

/end pointless screenapallooza and dialogue no one is monitoring.

Fiiiiirrrrrrrrrrre! (and other goodness)

Our trio of mastersmashers hit 32 tonight, and I got to spend about 20-30 mins with each of mine afterwards examining each of the pets and their final upgrades. First off, some screen shots of the fully buffed army:



It may be hard to see everything, but detailed shots of all the buffed pets are out there elsewhere on the net anyway. Graves & Lich pick up nice red eye glow, zoms get red glowy hands. Tier 1 bots look about the same, tier 2s get a little glowy lightning rod thing on their backs. Assault gets a big fatass missile launcher that is kind of hard to miss.

Not sure abouth the mercs, ask PoD.

The breakdown:
Zombies: They use their life drain a lot - it's a great improvement, versus a non mobile enemy their cycle looks like spit/punch/heal rinse & recycle. If the target moves mid cycle, they will often restart on a spit or punch. Basically - if the target is not moving they will use the heal whenever it comes up. Damage on the heal (siphon life) is just barely less than clobber too (and more versus smashig resist enemies), so it's a great addition to their arsenal. I think it was healing them about 79 points.
Graves: They use siphon life very rarely, and apparently only if starting at range - ie right before charging into melee. This needs more testing but that's how it looked to me. In melee they will just cycle the sword attacks - which provides a practically constant damage stream. Damages were something like 44/53/~60/83 versus evens I believe. I did see them both crit, one after the other, for 108/108 with a debuff out at once point. So - definitely an improvement, but I wish they would cycle the heal in combat - with 1 so it healed them about 150 points.
Lich: Well, he basically still sucks, but now he sucks a little less. The upgrade adds Petrifying Gaze (hold) and Fearsome Stare (cone fear), which he appears to just tack on to the end of his cycle - so Life Drain/tentacles/torrent/ / dark blast. Sort of like the zombies, if a target moved he would restart his attack cycle from the lowest available power in that list. Not that exact order everytime, but that seemed to be the gist of it. I do feel that Necromancy has plenty of damage though - so having the lich not be a damage whore (although tents with 3 damages does about 30-40 points after all the ticks) is ok.

Battle Drones: They get a laser full auto. I couldn't tell if it had KB on it or not, but it looked like it did not. The damage is very low - about 2pts per tick versus evens, but it appears to do at least 10-15 ticks. The cone is very thin, but decently long. It won't hit targets far to the left or right of center, but will hit about 3 or 4 enemies deep. A nice addition to their arsenal.
Protector Bots: They get seeker drones and a disorient grenade. The grenades recharge pretty fast, but only do about 30 points to even cons. The disorient from them is not 100% either - both would hit a lt, and he would still sometimes be ok. Their seeker drone usage is strange and erratic, not to mention amusing because they bubble the drones. I couldn't tell how they chose to send the drones to attack or not - sometimes they would just summon them and the drones would follow them around forever, never detonating, other times they would fly off immediately. The drones are -acc, -dmg and do minor energy damage (also might be - something else I forget). They did come much closer to running out of end, and caused me to debate swapping out their 3rd acc for an end reducer. A decent addition, but not as powerful as the grave (or jonin) upgrade. Which I think is just fine because all that aoe adds up real quick especially from the
Assault Bot: Wow. I did not think a ranged mm would be this fun. Woah. Seriously. They get two different rockets - one a standard aoe damage rocket, and the other one that causes a burn patch to appear under each target in its aoe - and these patches stack. Couple that with tar patch (or caltrops, glue + sonic arrow, etc.) and you have some nasty, nasty damage. The recharge on both these rockets is not bad at all - sometimes I saw them come up 2x in the same fight. When the fight lasted that long. Wow, seriously a ton of fun just running around outdoors burning shit up. Even with the acc penalty from gfly I was mincing even con bosses. Can't wait to do some more tomorrow.

tier 3 pets are goodness

No screenshots today, sorry. Not like anyone is watching! Hit 27 on my /dark pair over the weekend and that means - you guessed it! Tier 3 pets. Assault bot is very nice. Lich is, well, lich is a tier 1 or 2 pet really, he's really pretty lame/unimpressive. Sure, this might change with the final buff, but btw. assault/lich/oni with only the level 6 buff, lich loses hands down. With me doing nothing, a lich can take an even LT. Assault bot took a -1 boss. Still, that is fairly impressive either way I suppose. And he does heal himself, which is very handy. Not to mention he gets fear & hold at 32...that should be worth waiting for.

The only real thing wrong with the lich is torrent. It's like gale, only a little bit weaker - and he does it constantly. Unlike other pets which have different AIs at different ranges (basically everything except tier 1 mercs), the lich only has 1 ai - he rotates tentacles (a fairly small cone it seems), torrent, dark blast, and life drain as soon as they become available. Sometimes he'll stand around for 5-10 seconds (hopefully this will go away with 32 buff). Still, even doing nothing is better than using torrent. True, SOMETIMES torrent can be very useful - but that's in the hands of a player - it requires massive micro to be useful on a pet. I guess I could do that...and I'll probably wind up doing that eventually, but...bleh. It's just annoying.

I do understand that the lich is not a damage pet - he is more of a pure control pet like dark servant, with two attacks thrown in (blast & life drain). I'm sure I would love him for his control bonuses if not for the torrent bit...basically his tentacles don't seem to reach much from his default attack range, and I'm not into micro on this guy, so I usually only see one or two enemies immobilized at a time. Still, that is better than no immobilizing. Except for that bit about the knockback...oh, and did I mention the knockback?

Assault bot on the other hand, is a damage pet. With 2 dmg SOs his melee attack hits for 70! His lasers are nice too. I was rather dissapointed to see the short range on his flamethrower cone (think fire blaster, not ar blaster), but all in all I'm very pleased with him. Recharge time on flamethrower also seems very long, but that could just be the AI. All in all, very pleased with him.

Our 3 man team tore through the respec 2x the other day - once at vicious and then again at villanious after we couldn't damage the AV. On villanous we couldn't quite finish either (although we did make it to the AV despite the vines counter bug) - we were doing fine at damaging and surviving the AV but got taken out when the vines and ambush spawned simultaneously. We'll give it another go soon now that we've got commando/lich/assault bot backup...(ok, the lich probably won't help, but I didn't want to make him feel even worse by leaving him out of the list.)

On another channel, I've been working on my plant/fire dom a bit in the hopes of making him not suck (most definitely going to respec him asap). Worked from 14->16 over the last couple of days and I still really don't like him. His damage is very low and his control is subpar (except for Seeds of Confusion which is very good if you like confusion). I will start an ice/thorns eventually, but for now I'm really going to try to stick him out to 32 and see if it becomes worth it at any point.

/darks: 24 and counting

We hit 24 tonight and added our 5th (6th if you count nec spirit) pets to the mix - always a wonderful feeling anytime you get noticeably more powerful. Sure, the tier 2s lose a level, but that visceral satisfaction from the broadsword swings is doubled now, so I think we can call it even. Double bubbles for the pets from the prot bots are also handy - I'm guessing 2 of them nets you about 5-7% defense.


We are having no problems triading vicious, but I'm waiting until SOs to try bumping it up to level 5 (I forget the name). We did Ballista-1 tonight with pretty much no problem and another elite boss last night..the scrapyarder lt whose name I have forgotten - she was also nice and tasty zombie food.

Above is a shot of the /darks & pets with their usual teaming partner. You can't really tell what any of us look like though because we are in disguise. I was highly amused running around looking like a galaxy. Close ups on costumes below:

/dark duo at 20 and counting

I'm actually surprised at the rate my /dark duo (nec & bot) are moving along. They group pretty much 100% with a friends merc/ta, and the three of them have just been working through contacts at vicious. The fact that we've kept a 2 levels/night average all the way up to 20 really surprised me, and I don't think it will continue. These are not hardcore gaming nights either, usually about 2-3 hours, 4 at most.

Yesterday though we did the 15-20 SF with a friend's nin/ta though, and that probably took at least 3 hours itself. It also netted us a full level. The hardest part was, of course, the AV, but not because he was particularly hard. It was because pets love lava! Well, that and the boss kept running back into the lava so all the melee pets were pretty much instantly wiped (even with putting them on passive and trying to call them back to us). We tried to pull him up towards the entrance, but that was evidently a bad idea as he is too tall to move very far into the passage, but somehow able to fall through the floor. What wound up winning the day for us was, suprisingly enough, net arrow. Yes, you heard me, net arrow! Stacked net arrows from the two /TAs kept him locked in a position out of the lava and we were finally able to fedex the smack directly to his giant burning genitals. I died twice (I was the puller - using dark toggle debuff) and everyone else died once I think. Still, a nice achievement overall - the badge was actually working (it's big!) and we did all get SOs.

I made 34 on KV on Saturday I think after a good power session (3-4 hours maybe) of just plowing contact missions. Why? Because I finally got him respecced! Booyah! I swapped assault/tactics/stealth/rez/antidote for grant invis/invis (will get antidote back at 35) and am really enjoying having invis and not having to worry about excess agro from teleports, etc. Another bonus - stamina is doing fine for me without any excess slotting. I'm getting a lot out of the extra slots from not slotting 3 powers, as well as enjoying the extra ground movement from swift, some self healing (finally!) from health and the obvious advantages of stamina. Soo...yes, I wholeheartedly recommend stamina for a ninja or necro with the poison secondary. I can't say for sure if the ranged MMs would have the same end usage as me, but if they use their poison debuffs as frequently, they probably would.

Boxers move on to tier 2 pets..

Hit 12 last night with my /dark duo - me & my friends Merc/TA are tearing through vicious missions quite well.

Came across something I consider a dev SNAFU though - the only way to get to the Radio contact on PO is evidently through Bocor - so if you choose one of the other two and then hit level 12 (as we did), you miss out on the only PO contact that will go to 14 or 15 (I think...). Frustrating and annoying. But hey, we leveled, life goes on :).

This is my first chance to play with the protector bot, and I'm liking him. True the bubbles aren't much defense at all - posts I've seen suggest 3-4%, but I really hope it's higher. Still, stacked bubbles will net us 6-8% + 2 3 res slotted shadowfalls will be 4-6% or so, hopefully giving the group at least 12.5% taking us right back to where shadowfall was unslotted ages ago....(I think). Fun stuff!

I'm still holding out on playing King Venom (chilling at 32) until they fix the goddam respec trial. Grumble grumble. I can level him just fine as it is, I would just prefer to get my respec out of the way so I can enjoy my new power set up, not ponder how useful it would have been when I respecced at 40. Some sgmates are hitting 35 and 36, should have 40s soon, hopefully I'll be 40 by the end of the year, that's my only vagueish goal with him. I've heard that the 35 power is crap, so I'm bummed about that, but I'll test it on test server at 35 and just hope it's not.

Dual boxing is fun!

I started another duo tonight, bot/dark and nec/dark, and played them up to 8 with a friend's merc/ta. It was fun having the diverse pets, as well as stacking tar pits and darkest nights! We've already turned the missions up to vicious and aren't having any problems.

KV hit 32 a few nights back (the 3rd one in our sg - but by now we've got a 34 or too) and I've had some time to play with the 32 ninja pet buff. Let me tell you - if you thought joey's were satisfying before, just wait until you see them leaping into the air doing Golden Dragonflys all over the place - grace and damage! They look so cool doing it I've been prompted to create some kind of sword stalker, not sure about secondary though...all I know is I don't want SR because SR is boring and doesn't get all their defenses until 35 (YECH!). Although I guess stalkers can skimp on defenses but whatever....

Anyway - 2 caltrops + oni's ring of fire is some nice aoe damage. The trick is to get it all started by having them attack something that won't die right off, like a LT, then switching the targets (say to a boss), all 3 of those will last until the LT dies or they wear off (which is a pretty decent duration - certainly better than the 10 seconds it takes to kill a minion or lt), doing wonderful sprays of tiny numbers and tearing up those enemy feet and hair pieces.

31 and counting...

So I finally hit 31 last night - leveling has slowed down quite a bit since the only non-hazard mission available to me turned up with a bugged door. My very first newspaper mission in St. Martial happens to have a door that won't open for any reason (yes, I tried reselecting the mission many many times). Joy! I petitioned about it Monday, got a response Tuesday, replied back and still haven't heard from them or had the mission fixed. So I filed a really pissed petition last night. Not normally my style but hey - I want to focus on this character, I want to miss as few arcs as possible, I work and only have about 2 hours a night to play oh, and I'm PAYING for this. So yeah...fix me asshats - just delete the fucking mission from my character, I'm sure it's not that hard. Or autocomplete it for me, I've had GMs do that before and it took all of 1 second.

Other than that, still enjoying the character and very curious about what 32 will bring. Looking forward to char on the oni and more sword swinging knockdown goodness for my joeys. Heck, even crane kick on my lowies sounds good - couple all that KB with oni rain of fire and joey caltrops and ninja MMs are the new illusion controllers with enemies running every which way. I'm surprised to have played a character this far without stamina or hasten - it hasn't been easy and I'm full of annoyance while I wait for end frequently, but I do have 3 more powers...I may drop leadership & rez for stamina, I don't know it's a tough choice.

I've tried soloing with my 15 merc/ff a little bit (I usually bot him and bubble my 15 em/stone brute) and WOW is he slow - at least versus certain enemies. Do not try freak (or CoT I hear) missions as Merc mm if you don't have a damage resist debuff (and still, probobably not a good idea) - the lethal resists on these enemies means we take literally forever to kill minions, let alone LTs and bosses.

The call of alts is forever tempting...but I'm sticking with King Venom until 33 at least - I'm really curious what a pull power ninja primary will be like. Of course, I'm also curious to see the 35 & 38 ninja powers, but we'll see if my patience holds out that long.

One of my new part time projects: nec/bubble x2

Valgriss & V...crap I forgot the female's name. Alas, for it is 3am and I am tired. Anyway, another bot team project, got em up to 6 tonight grouping with a friends sonic/thermal.

I decided that I really should have some alts on a west coast server - Pinnacle is my primary & Infinity is my secondary. I sort of chose them haphazardly and didn't realize they were east coast at the time. Not that it seems to matter at all, but I figured hey - if half the internet dies then I've got backup.

Still a mastermind...

Ok, so I'm still 26. I got my oni a few nights ago and finally had some time to test him out last night, although only in a big (5 mm/2-3 others) group setting. In this context pets seem to pretty much blur together, and it's hard to tell what is doing what. However, I can usually tell when Fred the Oni (his name for now) uses fire breath because the range is huge and bunches of nice little numbers pop up.

First impression of him is not that impressed, but not dissapointed either - I mean I knew what his powers would be ahead of time so it's hard to be let down. However his ai can be frustrating, he loves just standing in place and chaining the obscenely low damage Ring of Fire. This happens at mid-range - at long range he will use his fire blast, but for some reason he forgets about it entirely at mid-range. He will, at least, use Breath of Fire when it becomes available, but it has a noticably long recharge.

I still think he looks badass, even if others hate him. As has been covered in numerous threads, he is also historically/culturally accurate as far as the whole Japanese ninja mythology bit goes. People can dislike him fine, but stop bitching about not fitting in with the ninja idea. Maybe he doesn't fit with your idea of a ninja, but that's not what they were working for was it? :P

I'll leave you with a screen shot of my least favorite current live bug, the mastermind-pet-Cot-portal-overload bug. This is from the aforementioned 5 mm/2-3 extra team I mentioned above. Note that this is only half or 1/3 of the spawn or so, we had already killed many of them (and the portal itself is long dead):

The jury is still out in the case of Ninjas v Almighty Desk:

Mastermind goodness

So I've been playing a nin/pois mastermind (among other things) as my main lately - forcing myself to focus on a single character even! And I'm having a blast. I skipped stamina (for the first time since my first character learned the hard way how necessary it was) and, while limping for breath often enough, am quite survivable and able to solo Viscious (level 3) without too many problems. Scrapyarder lts & bosses are fun though - everyone loves aoe with burn patches!

Then they went and finally fixed pet upgrade enhancing (basically, enhancements had zero effect on powers granted to your pets by the lvl6 & 32 powers - now they act as expected) and life got even better. Now I don't feel that I'm uber or anything, but XP is definitely moving at a good pace - however that is usually the case through the twenties. However, usually I have full SOs at 22 - the pace I am seeing now is about equal to full SO'd-CoH-pre-i5 leveling speed. I can get 2 bubbles in an hour without too much work, 3 if I work at it. Probably more if I try seriously. But more importantly I'm having fun - even though jennys (genins) look like idiot-friendly-smileyass-pansies, they still get the job done and their piddly disorients are welcome CC. Joeys on the other hand are awesome - I love that switch-swatch-snicker-snack sound their swords make like the morbidly obese love butter! I usually team with a ninja/dark and the sound of 4 joey blades snicker-snacking through minion flesh is villianously satisfying.

I'm strongly hoping to get my oni tonight and can't freakin wait. Although the news that it's going to cost us $800 to keep our $2000 car running is morbidly depressing. Sigh. Well at least the oni is enough to keep me thinking too hard about that. Still depressing though. Sigh. Yarrrr! Ninja snacks!!!

Our SG base is coming along - although everything is morbidly expensive. Obviously, morbidly is the word of the day. Everyone scream and jump around like a public exibitionist! It costs something like 800-900k to get a medical teleport up and functioning. 150k each for 3 rooms - control, energy and medical, then 225k for the energy generator, 150k for control computer & 10k for the med teleporter itself. All these so lowbies without travel powers can get back to the missions they died in. Hmmm, doesn't seem quite worth it does it? Consider that we have had an active SG since the 1st night of the 3 day head start and that most of us are in our mid 20s now (8-10ish of us) plus several teens and you begin to see the quandry a small SG made up of just say, friends or family would be in. RETARDED! And I mean that in the most mentally handicapped sense of the word - not this crazy party/hiphopspeakin where retarded is a good drunken time had by all. I'm talking non-pc morally offensive to make fun of RETARDED!

Anyway, on with life.

Head start weekend!

I was very excited to finally get some live CoV characters off the ground! While my friends pretty much focused on a single character for the weekend (and are all around 18-19 as a result), I opted for an alt or two. So my main is The Burning Bush (plant/fire dom), and currently only 14. I've also got a 10 dark/ice corrupter and a bot duo of a 12 em/earth brute & 12 merc/ff MM.

Even though I played through the newb levels many many times in Beta, I'm still having a blast. True, I'd be much happier if I could actually afford DOs at 12, but hey, eventually. There are apparently at least 3 different level 6-12 contacts in PO, and I still have yet to manage not to outlevel one - so the amount of content available to newbies is nice. The newspaper missions definitely add to that - especially with the timed saved by not having to run to contacts in the weird layout that is PO.

The near total lack of defense that comes with I6/Cov is amusing - MM ff bubbles only provide 9% base, and I suspect rock armor is only around 10% - needless to say, even with rock armor + bubbles, I get HAMMERED by +1 minions. It is rather amusing. Not that I am choosing to fight +1s - but doing two person missions at heroic turns up quite a number of them. The worst was a mission with TWO even con hellion bosses right next to each other. The complete lack of fire defense/res for a stone brute at level 11 meant a few deaths and trips to buy insps, it was painful and hopefully a bug - two players at heroic should NOT be expected to be able to deal with two bosses that can't be split.

PO is not the easiest place to get around, the different vertical tiers + mob spawns can make it very difficult until you learn you way. It seems much more dangerous than SC/KR/Skyway, but that could just be because it has been a long time since I ran around in those zones young and unprotected. CAD is pretty much a deathtrap pre-travel, so that mission The Radio gives out that sends you into CAD should be delayed as long as possible, unless you are sure you can make it there safely it is asking for debt.

Stalkers face very tough choices heading up to 16ish - if they want build up to be better able to one shot bosses they either have to neglect the second defense, the second attack, or delay travel till 16 - ouch! Definitely a tough choice, I think I'll be delaying build up on mine.

We got our villain group started up - Go Team Evil! The amount of prestige it costs just to get a functional hospital is amazing, but it looks like it should be affordable inside a week or two. Last I checked we had the medical room, one hospital machine, and the energy room, sans generator. We still have to buy the control room, control machine & generator machine - generator is 255kish, the others I don't know.

Now back to the hum drum week and only an hour or two to play per night, if I'm lucky.

brief ED testing

Respecced a few characters over on test recently:

39 fire/stone - I can still solo EVEN spawns with 1-2 bosses in Eden, so I suppose that still means I'm over where the Devs want me. However - I rely heavily on inspirations to do this.
*The damage on the tanker aoes was always low, but now it is low to the point where I'm tempted not to take it. Luckily on this tank there is nothing else worth taking, so I suppose I'll hold on to it.
*End usage seemed ok, especially considering I was running BA, FS, PS, acro, CJ, & tough. Consume every 90 seconds or so meant I only had to pop a few blues per fight.
*Overall, I've survived multiple burn nerfs (finally got rid of it - only 5 useful powers in fire primary now!), res cuts, tough/weave nerf & end cost increase, etc. So, it can't get that much worse right? :) He'll survive.

34 ma/da - Luckily this char was already build without hasten, and only had 4 slots in stamina, so no loss here and I swapped thunder kick for CAK. The damage boosts on CAK, CK & EC were night, too bad they came with a recharge increase. End usage here is pretty bad - 3 shields + CoF, CD & Acro mean I use lots of blues. I have end red in all my attacks too.

33 ice/ss - I really don't notice the defense hit much. Why? Because my defense was already horrible! I'm debating finally getting rid of icicles, the damage is just so bleh now without 5 slots + rage. However, it is still the only aoe I have, and for the amount of time it takes me to kill bosses now (still less time than my fire/stone though), I figure that it will knock off half a mininos hp or so. I do of course miss my hasten - luckily rage is just about perma with 3, and hibernate is up often enough to protect me during the rage drop.

Gladiator arena matches are amusing! Now what they really need to do is make every single enemy in the game available to use in the arena like so and you'll have a real pokemon thing going here. As it is right now it looks like only 29ish enemies are available out of how many? Must be at least 100. Each one of them is a unique and special snowflake and would be fun to muck with in the arena. Even more so if I could directly assume control over one of them and use their powers...mmmmmmm tasty.

CoV stress test weekend

I probably spent more time than I should have on the CoV beta this weekend, thanks to it being open both days. Luckily, I have a wonderful wife and she is still talking to me :).

The (short) results:

Brutes: This is where most of the old tank players, and many scrappers as well, will wind up. Brutes are just a ton of fun start to finish. The whole idea of "hulking out" - doing more damage the more you hit and get hit, just plays out very well. They do get the auto-hit aoe taunt that tanks have (but no multi-target punchvoke - they only auto taunt the single target they are attacking), but I'm not sure how many will take it... Playing a brute will get you killed more than you think, but you'll have a blast dying.

Corruptors: A very wide variety of builds are possible with the corruptors, and it is going to make for a complete grab bag of what you get when you invite one to your team (assuming you do random teams...). Do you get a gung go blaster with no buffs - or a buff oriented offender type? Somewhere in between? Fun stuff, lots of tough build decisions. /cold and /thermal both look to be great sets.

Dominators: Of all 5 archs, doms were the ones that I noticed my end bar the most on. Too early to say if it is a real problem or not - but doms definitely "feel" like their powers are a bit on the end heavy side. I was able to find ways to play with the other 4 archs where I had no downtime at all in a full group, yet on my dom (ice/thorn) I was very frequently ooe. Getting arctic air probably didn't help that :P. Overall though, going to be very interesting having a pet on a damage dealer, and having raw damage with control. Nevermind that with containment some controllers can do very impressive damage...

Masterminds: I've decided that I'm done testing masterminds, I have a good idea of how they will play (for me), and don't see the devs making any major changes anytime soon. My main suggestion/want was to get a "real" archetype power with a noticeable effect, as opposed to supremacy, which is very much in the background in the same way as punchvoke is for a tank - you just don't notice it (although the tank's is very noticeable in a group). It seems that all our pet dmg/acc was balanced entirely with supremacy in mind, so it doesn't feel like any kind of bonus at all, but just rather what we should have in the first place.
I think a lot of people will be dissapointed with the power level/kill speed of masterminds in general - don't get your hopes up too high - think defender (not offender!) killing speed with the survivability of a defense focused scrapper. I know that sounds weird, but that is about how I felt. The pets do very little damage, but it adds up over time and is done in a way that allows you a great deal of safety. However - if your pets and resummons die, you are pretty much toast.
Bottom Line - play a mastermind if you are happy having a low degree of direct involvement in a fight, but really adore the concept of micromanaging pets. I was really excited about them to start, and I will still have 1 of each primary, but my excitement has cooled a little after seeing the mid 20s game.

Stalkers: They feel to me like the blasters of CoV - the glass cannons if you will. Why? Because they specialize in a melee range snipe that can sometimes one shot (or one-two) a boss. Some sets have had aoes removed (claws - spin) and others have none at all (energy - no whirling hands), so for the most part stalkers are single target based. I really do wonder why they left spines in though, it doesn't fit very well - I'm guessing they just didn't have anything else ready. Definitely play your stalker through to 8 or 10 before you give up on them - they really don't blossom until you see build up + assassin strike in action. Plus, having full stealth with no movemen penalty at level 1 is incredibly handy.

Enjoying the sunset

There are certain characters of mine that just won't last (in the sense of holding of being fun for me to play at all) past ED. In the same way all but 2 of my controllers were rendered uninteresting and unfun to me by the pet & control nerfs of I5, ED is going to neuter most of the rest. Luckily, I was somewhat prescient and the last few alts I have made have been no-hasten, 3-4 slotted stamina types.

These I believe will survive:
*34 ma/da: thankfully CoF is my main defense and it won't be losing much more of its power at 3acc/3end slotting
*28 ar/ice: she was never very powerful, but I hadn't yet slotted more than 4 damage in any attacks, so she won't lose much on that end - she might even gain from the end reduction. That being said, she is a pretty slow killer and not much fun to play at the current pace she moves, solo at least.
*32 spines/dark: only 1 slot in my defense thus far, he was built to play with my bubble bot! So he'll lose some damage off ripper and the two auras, but that will be survivable. Although it does make me a little sad inside since the only reason I made him was to watch him stand around with the double auras eating up blues. Heh. At least I fell in love with ripper along the way so I'll be able to get some enjoyment out of that.
*24 sonic/elec blaster: Another pretty slow mover, he relies heavily on the sonic cone sleep. None of his attacks have more than 3 damage in them, and stamina only has 2-3, so he alone will make it through unscathed. Again, not an incredibly fun character but at least he won't change so much.
*42 Earth/kin: Losing hasten is going to hurt pretty bad, but I think he'll be survivable because of siphon speed. Right now he mainly survives off of aoe immob + FS + fireball containment damage anyway, the pet being rendered somewhat superflous (sp?). So I'll feel the hasten hit VERY strongly (ohhh useful aoe control how I miss thee - although it is true earth was hit less than fire/grav/etc.), but I think he'll still be playable as a dominator.

Now for those I suspet are going to be rendered up into soap:
*The rest of my controllers: Seriously. Unless they pretty much completely undo the aoe control nerf, what is the *#$$ing point? I have no idea what game they are playing in their internal testing, but a power I can only use every few minutes that lasts 10-15 seconds or so..wow, gee how is that fun? Even mog/unst/etc lasts for several minutes so you get some mileage out of them... I'll probably try respeccing my ice-rad back to a pure arctic air/choking cloud build, and that would be functional if I had a permanent tank partner. Ahh, ifs.
*My regens. Wow. 3 slotted integration and 3 slotted fast healing (might as well throw 3 slotted health in there!) for teh winz0rz eh? Of course I'll 6 reconstruction, and probably 4 tough and weave, maybe that will bring me up to par. I doubt it though, I've run some respec tests already and was pretty depressed at the result. Nevermind the fact that we get no more perma-dp - which really does piss me off. Those powers were designed to be perma-able with 6 slots from the beginning, and I'm fine with that. But, like I said, I abhor situational clicks self-buffs. I really hate the i5 IH, and I'm going to like it even less when I don't have hasten to make it useful once in a while. Yay for teh a$$rapeage!
*My poor ice/ss tank: Wow, I'm going to be running with a whopping 22% def vs everything but psi! That's freaking awesome. That is LESS than (or very close to) the base defense used to be pre-i5. I can't even begin to say how insulting that is. So, yeah, that is pissing me off. And then the hasten nerf is going to fry my 3 attack SS chain and perma-rage (evidently it only has about 5 sec downtime with 3 recharges though, so this sounds doable). Then again, with all the free slots from my defenses I guess I can take another attack or two! *vomit*

There are more but I'll delay the rest of my whining.

Now on to some positive: CoV is starting off with these nerfs in place, so you won't notice it so much! Plus, it doesn't have a tank class (just 2 different scrappers) or a real defender (just a blaster with weakish debuffs), so there won't be so many defense oriented types to complain! But seriously, CoV is shaping up to be lots of fun, even if only because of all the new content and powersets. None of them have the same constant heroic/powerful feeling that I felt playing my characters for the first year or so of CoH. Almost all have moments of heroicness/villainy - getting a good rage run on a brute (even though the damage boost was just lowered) or seeing a bunch of scourges go off on a corrupter, anytime you use domination, when you get a nice crit on a stalker than almost one-shots a boss, and when you see your new pets for the first time on an MM. However the feeling of "I am actually more powerful than a horde of enemy minions" is much less prevalent - maybe that is for the best?

I don't know, I for one loved the fast paced play of CoH, that was one of the many things that set it aside (and above!) the rest of the MMO crowd for me. A newbie (friend,wife,etc.) could hop on and actually make some progress at any point in their characters career. Yes, min/maxers could do much more than this - but is that really wrong? Learning the ins and outs of a power set and using it to the best of your ability? Not to mention the system was relatively easy to understand. The new enhancement system just crys out irrational (why can you slot something that won't noticeably affect a power????).

Uhh, ok ending on a positive note - CoV: good all around, can't freaking wait.

CoV NDA lifted!

Ok, so the CoV NDA was just lifted today, so that means I can actually start my new blog out with something positive! And here I thought I had at least another week or two to just bitch about how little fun CoH is these days compared to the *yawn* "Good old days." Well, I'm tired right now, but I'll just say that CoV will be worth picking up, and will keep me hooked on the Co[X] for another 6 months or so at least.

Here is a nice shot of my necro minions doing what any good minion should - my taxes! Wait, I thought villains weren't supposed to do taxes? Well, mine does, but only because zombies file taxes so insanely poorly it wastes the IRS massive amounts of time trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Eventually they find they have wasted days on it only to realize that a) I'm a villain and b) I'm dead so c) I really wasn't going to pay anyway.

Why?

So why a Co[x] blog? Because I realized that a lot of the things I want to talk about are CoX related, and I have no one near me in the real world who gives a pinched shit about it. So, I figured that out in the infinite bleakness of cyberself that such people exist, and might even be interested in whatever I have to rant about.

My CoH background: I started in the pre-order beta, and only made a few characters to level 12 or so (grav/storm and dark/dark I think...), and I only got to see a little bit of the Rikti Invasion. But it was still fun! I was a student back then, so I had an inordinate amount of time to play (because I did my work so efficiently and all ;) ), and I was/am a full time confirmed altaholic. I hopped back and forth between characters for months, unable to decided what to make my primary. My oldest character still remaining is Edge of Reason, a BS/Regen I started first week and played up to 19 or so.

At some point in there I figured out that controllers were CoH's pet class, so I instantly rolled up a few. More background: I am a pet WHORE. Every mmorpg I have played I gravitate towards the pet classes and stay there. 53 Necro in EQ, 42ish bonedancer in DaoC, and an alt of every other pet possibility at lesser levels. In fact, the only reason I played DaoC was for the possibility of a multi-pet class (bonedancer) - one which completely did NOT live up to the expectations I had for it.

My first controller was King Lobster, fire/storm. He made it up to about 16 or so until, when grouping with a friend (ill/emp), I saw PA in action and realized that ills got their pets 14 levels earlier than fire. So, an ill/rad [Man from Room X] was born. I played this character pretty solid up through 35, constantly TFing (I think I did Bastion 4 times in one day at some point) for the cash to buy encs. Man I do not miss those days of not being able to afford full enhancements! Although CoV is due to bring those joys back soon... :) Anyway, around 35 I realized I had enough spare cash to start funding some alts, so I moved back over to King Lobster and played him with a group of friends (Adeptus Astartus SG, now all but defunct, but 2 or 3 of us are still around) pretty solid to 50. I *think* I hit 50 on November 14th (No, I'm not a total tool - I remember the exact date because it was my birthday!).

I should mention that I had/have a second account, which was originally for my wife. She got bored around lvl 10-14ish though, so I took over the account and started filling up those slots since I had already used up all 8 on pinnacle. I had also figured out the powerleveling/9 level thing at some point, so I was looking forward to using the second account to help new alts along (because I'm impatient and spastic and usually too bored to play chars below 22 ;) ). So you can tell I have zero problems with powerleveling - as long as you do it yourself and keep fucking quiet about it. Beggars of any form will always be trash, and PL beggars are the worst. I especially have zero problem with PLing if you've already put in the time to get one 50 and play through every ounce available content (I even started documenting all the missions...yes I know I'm scary) at the time. No, I STILL haven't done a single shadow shard tf, I was never that motivated - especially with my 50, once a char hits 50 they are pretty done for me. Sure, I did 20 or 30 hami raids, but that was mostly to farm hami's for my 47 ;).

The highest char on that second account is Devil's Luck, a 47 fire/ff I pretty much pure PL'd to 32, and then solo'd and used to pl other chars from there. I've also got (in order of creation): a 35 ice/rad, a 42 earth/kin and a 33 grav/storm. There was a fire/kin that got deleted around 27 too. So, when I say I'm pretty confident about my knowledge of controllers (barring mind/! I readily admit that I have little desire to play a mind and only know about them only from extensive teaming with them). I've also got a 39+ fire/stone tank, a 38 dark/dark (gotta collect all the pets! ;) ), 34 ma/da, 34 human form warshade, 38 ice/nrg blaster, 27 ar/ice blaster, 22 earth/axe tank, 31 bubble/rad def, 33 elec/dev blaster, 24 sonic/elec blaster and a 32 spines/dark scrapper I'm moderately working on now.

Now that I'm out of school and working full time (and married!), I have much less play time, so my characters aren't exactly rocketing up the charts like they used to but, for the foreseeable future, this is still my game of choice. Especially when CoV hits. I won't break the NDA, but I will say that I think people will be relatively pleased. If there was a second charge for CoV, I would cancel my CoH accounts and just move to CoV.

That's the basics of my background, a bit wordy for a first blog, but we'll see where it goes from here. I'll be primarily ranting about the City of ... world, but I'm sure some other stuff will be creeping in from time to time.