I feel like I failed to take advantage of the double experience weekend on Sunday. I have a lot of characters that I would have liked to get to 50, but instead I focused a bit on my brand new alt that I created on Saturday, then played mostly level 50's the rest of the evening. In a way that was disappointing.
But to start with: all Saturday I had been planning to run Mouse Police through five rogue missions, with the idea that I could turn rogue on Sunday and join a Yin TF, which would yield two badges -- the one for the TF, and also the WST helper badge. Late Saturday night after I got home I realized I'd failed to do this, so at Midnight I logged back in and ran my five rogue tip missions. And then I was so tired that I did something stupid, and logged out right there in Grandville instead of going back to my spot in First Ward where I'm working on a day job badge. I'm not even sure if I can manage two day jobs in the time we have left, but failing to log out in the right place certainly isn't going to help. :(
So Sunday I spent some time working out my new alt's build and then went back to PI for two more runs through Council Earth, which got her to level 40 (I had to begin a third run to hit 40, I was just shy). Then I began IOing her in earnest. But Pyro was working his way through the SSA 2 stories, and I still hadn't done #3 or #4, so when he said he was going to start #3 I joined him. Saturn Princess was still not fully IO'd so I was worried about how I'd do -- and with good reason. I died several times. The problem was we were stealthing missions with malta in them, and A) I didn't have stealth, B) even when made invisible by Pyro I forgot that brutes have a natural taunt aura, so running into guys made me visible to them, C) anytime I was seen I invariably hadn't hit Practiced Brawler and so was mezable, and D) anytime I was surprised I invariably didn't know where the sapper was until I was already at zero endurance.
So, yeah -- recipe for multiple disasters right there. Pyro finally told me to not move while he did everything. Let's not forget, I'm on an SR brute with only about 25% defense or so at the moment, so I'm not very survivable in fights unless I plan them ahead of time -- pop some inspirations, target the sapper first, then I'm probably fine. But I felt less than helpful.
But I learned a few things about my build. Like, for example, that I'd forgot to factor in Titan Sweep into my actual build in mids, even though I had it in-game (and wanted to keep it). Also, flying TW brutes cannot use Arc of Destruction, something I hadn't planned for. This sort of thing isn't insurmountable -- Shinobu Eden, my Super Strength/Invulnerability brute, flies, but I don't hover in combat because I needs mah footstomp. Luckily none of my electric melee or shield defense characters were intended to be flyers, because those sets suffer from the same problem. But Saturn Princess made sense as a flyer, I didn't want to give that up. On Shinobu Eden this meant that I took both flight and combat jumping, along with tough/weave and manuevers, which made it impossible to take hasten. But I managed to make it work for me. In the case of Saturn Princess, it ultimately meant taking tough (need to slot Steadfast Protection and Gladiator's Armor for defense bonuses) but not taking weave, and skipping manuevers but not combat jumping. I still wanted hasten on a TW brute, that's absolutely necessary. And I can mostly fight in hover mode if I don't mind avoiding my T9 power, or I can drop down and fight on the ground and I still manage to have softcapped defense, an absolute must on an SR. And I did all of this mostly without set bonuses, so I was free to slot two purple sets and use sets like Crushing Impact and Scirocco's Dervish that I normally wouldn't use.
Anyway Pyro wanted to read all of the text so it didn't matter to him, but the role of the second banana on one of these SSA's is different, you miss half of the story and they're all about the story. I'll definitely have to run through them again solo.
The run through SSA 2.4 went better because we had a third person and because I switched to someone useful -- Princess Ozma, a very tough tanking brute. This, of course, meant I was playing one of my 50's on a DXP weekend, but I was able to taunt and tank all the ambush waves in the last parts of the story arc, which was a good thing, things might have been much messier otherwise. And I was able to follow more of the story this time, and the ending map is a very cool lab, I took some pictures of it. But it's disconcerting when your leader dies in an ambush, and you finish it off, and it immediately jumps to a cut scene where the last guy is falling dead at the feat of the leader, not you. :D Second banana again, we don't even get support roles in the cut scenes.
The suprise at the end was cool. I'm very much looking forward to being able to play SSA 2.5, I'm told it should appear in a few weeks just like 2.4 did. That's a bit of good news for the ending of the game at least, if we're able to play through the full SSA 2 story, it's well worth it, believe me.
After that I went back to IOing Saturn Princess and managed to get her fully set up the way I wanted -- I had to rework her build a bit, but I didn't need a respec so that's good. And right after, I managed to join a Penny Yin TF with friends, one of the few things I actually did on a non-50 that I really had planned to do. With the experience bonus I got to level 41 and more than halfway to 42. And she played just fine. In fact, both of our meatshields were women with giant swords, as someone on the team pointed out, so I had to get a picture of that.
After a break I managed to come back in time to join the blueside CoP, first time in weeks that I've caught that. I used Saturn Princess again and again she performed well -- better than my experiences with Swift Sky I think. She's going to be a better TW than Swift Sky currently is. We trounced the CoP and I finished a sliver from 42. It was still early evening, and I had reason to think I'd make at least 42 if not higher by the end of the eveing, but as it turned out I only played 50's after.
For the redside CoP I was planning to bring AE Baby, but this is where I discovered that Mouse Police was parked in Grandville. This made me very upset, so I logged Mouse in immediately, and I decided to run the CoP with her. Afterwards I took her to First Ward and parked her there, of course. The redside CoP took forever to form, it's hard getting enough people to join, but once we'd managed it we slaughtered it in just a few minutes. That's generally how a Cathedral of Pain trial works -- an hour to form, five minutes to destroy.
At this point I was hoping to do some more stuff blueside with one of my less-than-50 alts, but my friends wanted to run a SIlver Mantis. One of the problems with me playing redside is that I only have a few characters as options -- I have four 50's, AE Baby, Mouse Police, my War Shade Squiddy Kitty and my Mastermind Mia Nevermore (who I almost never play). For sub-50's I mostly have a handful of characters that I never play who are probably IO'd with generic IO's if that. I know that many people use SO's to 50, let alone generics that don't expire, but for me I always feel incomplete on just generics, like I'm not pulling my own weight, which usually means being one of the strengths of the team. But then I remembered that Tiffany Blackheart is a vigilante, and she's fun to play so I settled on playing her. And I realized after this that Mouse could get the helper badge on a second Silver Mantis, but I still had my plan to take her rogue and join a Yin. Anyway, Tiffany was perfect for this -- a willpower scrapper with softcapped defense, she can tank pretty well. Even at level 25, with team buffs I was above the defense caps. She did much better than Mouse had done on the same SF several days ago, in the last mission when you're trying to destroy the big guns on the raider platform and you're being swarmed by sky raiders, Mouse ran into trouble and died. Tiffany did not have any problems. People say that a regen always has those "oh shit" buttons when things go wrong, and willpower suffers because they don't have anything to turn to when they're taking too much damage -- but when things go REALLY wrong, a regen can't heal fast enough. Meanwhile, a willpower supplementedd by enough defense is virtually untouchable in most situations -- and the few situations where they're going to get their defense debuffed, such as amid swarms of Cimemorans, a regen would't fare any better anyway.
So yeah, Tiff's incredibly tough. But here I was playing one of my 50's again. But I'm glad I did, every team needs one or two good characters to lean on, especially on a DXP weekend when some people are likely playing without having worked out their build or having taken time to IO.
Right after the Silver Mantis it was 8 PM, so I switched back to Mouse Police and ran my five rogue tips and turned rogue, earning me another badge. I was pretty tired at this point, but a friend was starting up another Yin, so I went blueside and joined it. This earned me two more badges, so I finished the night at 1175.
And I remembered to return to First Ward before logging off. ^_^
The ghost ship was sailing through IP after the Yin TF. I still think it just looks amazingly cool.
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