I started Saturday by running the final Lazarus Task Force mission with Megami Hime. This was pretty intense. I was able to withstand waves of 5th Column for most of the arc -- I would sometimes run ahead, aggroing everything in my path, and then stop 2 or 3 groups deeper and just kill everything that came to me, which was usually most of it but might not include all of the first group I'd aggrod. Anyway, didn't matter how many regular 5th I was hip-deep in, at +3/8 it just took a long time to kill. But it was too much for the "helper" EB's -- I rescued Nosferatu, but despite my very best efforts to hold aggro and keep him alive, he died on the very next group. After that I didn't even bother looking for Burkholder, I just went straight for the AV room.
When I got to the big room I mostly just wanted to end it. After killing everything that had followed me in, I flew over to the platform with the three EB's -- Requiem, Maestro, and Vandal -- and went to town. And here is where I started taking massive damage and chewing inspirations. Ultimately I killed Vandal and was working on Maestro when I died, so I hit hospital, stocked up on inspirations again, and went back at it, killing the other two. I tried to clear the room after but wound up dying a second time.
So, what did this prove? I pretty much knew I could run it at +3/8, possibly could do it at +4/8. Probably couldn't do it at +4/8 with AVs, but I'm certain I could handle AVs at +0 at minimum. But I'd never actually done any of that, and I'd always intended to try. Now, I have, probably don't need to try any variations or do it with other characters, but who knows, I may eventually anyway.
I wanted to run the Mender Tesseract and Calvin Scott Task Forces too. I didn't realize that Tesseract is a villain-only Strike Force (and why is she there when hero-side Ouro is completely separate from villain-side Ouro? But yes, I realize Ouro was always kind of a hack job to assemble). Anyway, I switched to Eternal Sweeper and started up the Calvin Scott Task Force, and while I didn't finish it until later in the evening, I'm going to give all my comments about it in one go.
Boy, when they remove a Task Force from the game, is it ever for a good reason. This is without a doubt the worst-written Task Force in the game, and I realize it has a lot of competition in that regard. But consider:
Mission One: Oh, I think someone's messing with my wife's mind. Go check out this Council base, I'm sure it's them!
Mission Two: Okay, it wasn't them. But go check out this rikti base, it might be them!
Mission Three: Oh, it wasn't them either? Well I'm out of ideas. Just kill random groups of villains until you find some kind of clue!
Mission Four: (not counting random chats with Azuria) Hooray, we found a clue that actually explains what's going on! Go stop the villains responsible!
Missions Five, Six (hunt) and Seven: Wow, we solved it! We're so good, we've been asked to investigate this totally random and unrelated threat.
End: Oh wow, the unrelated threat turned out to be related, what random luck! Oh, and when we separated Sister Psyche and Aurora we wound up with fragments of their souls trapped in these crystal shards, and I want YOU to have them! Here ya go!
As a friend said, it sheds a lot of light on what takes place in the middle parts of the first Signature Story Arc... sort of. I mean, the task force kind of involves what happens to Sister Psyche, Aurora Borealis, and Malaise. But only two of the actual missions have anything directly to do with that.
Anyway, I've now run that TF, I can say I've done it. I know what it's about now.
In between the start and finish of the Calvin Scott TF, I alted for a Positron 1 and 2 (and actually went out to see Wreck It Ralph with a friend, highly reccommend this movie!). Greg S was starting up the Posi 1 and I've been wanting to play some of my lower level characters, especially Brute Girl Zero and Stalker Girl One (and Storm Girl Ten, who is only level 6 right now unfortunately). I joined the Posi 1 with Brute Girl Zero and gained a level to 23, then I switched to Rad Girl One for some rad fender support, and ran the Posi 2, which got two or three levels on her (she was 20 to start).
This was all good because I got to play both characters and sort out some things with them such as keybinds, channels, IOing, costumes, etc. I spent a little time after the two TFs finishing some of that up. Rad Girl One is a character I created as part of my "buffbot girls" group several years ago and I'd PL'd her to 20 but I don't think I'd ever actually played her. Not that I haven't played /rads before, of course. But she didn't even have inherent fitness, so when we were done I typed /respec and fixed that.
One amusing thing about the Posi 2 was that we had a scrapper named "Dark Mare" who was a short male toon. He never said anything the whole TF, and I got the strong impression that it was probably a young boy who didn't even realize that he'd named his character after a female horse. Someone said they wanted to make a female alt called Dark Stallion, a joke that likely went over his head. He went afk for several missions and one person commented at the start of the last mission that "Black Filly" needed to show up for the final mission if he wanted any rewards, but he did eventually show up and help us finish.
When I checked his bio, I learned that he was a "trader to both sides". I do not think he meant he was a merchant willing to sell to anyone:
Apart from the unannounced afk, he was a pretty good teammate though.
Later in the evening after I finished the Calvin Scott TF, I joined CA and friends to take down Adamaster (also did this on Eternal Sweeper) and then Travail wanted to start up a Synapse TF. He said this was one of his last TFs, he's being transferred to Japan and may not be able to play for the rest of the month. CA and I both joined -- I was on Brute Girl Zero again, and CA eventually switched to a support character, Jungle Kitteh, since we had several brutes already and a scrapper. Our final team composition was three brutes, one scrapper, and four support, which made Travail very happy because he wanted to beat his record time which was 1 hour 14 minutes. But you're pretty much at the mercy of which maps you get on the kill all's... large maps take longer, and some of them can be very large. So we finished in 1 hour 30 minutes, which is still a very respectable time for a Synapse.
Trav gave partial instructions or contradicted his own instructions at times too. He'd say, "split the team here and sweep around both directions and meet up" but he wouldn't actually say who was to go where, and when I (brute) charged down one hallway (I'm frequently the first to charge in, even when I'm not playing a brute), Trav followed me. Even when I'd wait for him to go one way so I could go the other, he'd often just come back to where I was. He'd also yell "pull to the room door!" and I wasn't always sure if he meant he was doing that or he wanted me or the other brute to do that, and the one time he gave me a specific instruction to get one of the patrol phones at a given location, I was the team member farthest from that phone, and specifically waiting at a different phone that people always forget about, and for once people listened to him and nobody touched the phone that he'd said I was to get for over a minute. Heh. But it all worked out in the end. Brute Girl gained three levels and is now 26, and I had fun playing her.
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