/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.