Long Hiatus

It's been quite some time since my last post. Let's see, what's happened since my last post?

I've stopped playing City of Heroes. I wasn't really playing it enough to warrant paying for it any more, though I'm glad I was able to experience the new L1-20ish Praetorian content before the account expired. It was a lot of fun and fit perfectly with my alt-itis tendencies. Paragon Studios fleshed out that dystopian world pretty nicely.

I started playing a little Diablo II again. I was figuring out how to set up a virtual CDROM again for my crappy boot disk (so wouldn't have to leave the CD in the drive), when I discovered that it's now available as a completely digital download, and I could convert my CD serial codes into an online Diablo serial codes to use the download. After all these years, I'm free of the CDs at last.

I set up a Sorceress and a Necromancer, and I'm finding I play the Necro a lot more than the Sorc, since you basically walk along and let all the minions do the heavy fighting while you watch. The online people I tried playing with all said the game was tuned a lot harder than before. Apparently there was a ladder reset (rankings reset) at the end of September, and Blizzard took the time to up the difficulty settings.

More than Diablo II though, I've been playing Halo: Reach lately on the 360. The legendary solo mode is Really Hard. You get killed in two shots if you're lucky, one shot if you're not. Minions you can usually mow through become a life and death struggle to defeat. Weapons that you can usually rely on like the Assault Rifle become virtually useless unless you're fighting a basic grunt. Insta-hit scoped rifles become the mainstay of your arsenal, and headshots are pretty much the only way to take things down. At least, until you reach things like Elites whose shields essentially ignore rifle rounds, and Hunters who shrug off a full clip of fuel rods. I've had to rely on things that I usually don't use, like plasma pistol charges, vehicle jacking, and a crazy amount of hand-to-hand. I'll probably talk about it more later on, but for now I'm going to try to finish the Pillar of Autumn level on Solo Legendary. (last one left!)

Upsen.

City of Heroes - Back to Tanking

After teaming up with a bunch of god-awful tanks, all of whom knew nothing about aggro, I decided to start playing a few new tanks of my own, setting aside my other characters for now. (yet again, I didn't make it past 25 on the CoV side :P )

I tried a few different combos and here's the results of that:

An Ice/Fire. This one I haven't really gotten anywhere yet, and is currently sitting at a lowbie L7. I imagine it'll be a nice AOE type like my WP/Fire, except that it gets all kinds of ways to slow down enemies down to my level of regen, instead of the WP way of boosting regen to match the # enemies. This pairing should have no problem with aggro the way I did with WP, where I had to manage it fairly intensively.


An Invul/SS. I started it up cause it's a classic combo for a CoH tank. The tank is actually named Classic Tank. It does tank pretty easily except for a stint in the teens against psionic Aberrant Lost. Its currently up in the low 30s. I dont really expect to see any trouble with it until I get to the 40s and psionics start showing up more commonly. This tank is great for the mid level Task Forces like Manticore and Citadel.


A Dark/Energy. Darks are supposed to be some of the top all-around tanks once they get some IOs and defense. Being a resist set, if you stack that with a good defense, it should be a really good tank. This tank does definitely need a little more management than the invul though. This tank basically survives by using it's health leech power, Dark Regeneration, between taking damage, and if you're not on the ball with the timing, you will bite the dust. The knockback was also sort of irritating, and a bit dangerous if you get KB'ed when you need to hit your leech power, so I fixed it up with a Steadfast Defense IO to prevent it.

I decided to take the energy secondary attack set so I could take advantage of the stuns stacking with Dark's Oppressive Gloom. I've just gotten this tank up to the level where I can take OG (L26) and it works beautifully, with Lieutenants and Bosses getting stunned the way the Minions were before OG. The health loss is is well covered by the leech healing, which is really nice. The mobs wander a bit out of AOE range sometimes, but there's always more mobs crowding in, since I play at -1Lvl x5 heroes solo.

Previously I'd played dark up to 15 as a dark/dark, but I didn't like how it didn't have a quick charging AOE attack. I've also played as dark/fire up to the mid 30s too, but I didn't like that fire didn't have anything to help mitigate damage, which occurs with regularity on a resist set like dark. At the time IOs weren't available though, so today it could have been a different story.

The ability to customize the effects also helped a lot too, since I don't especially like the dark effects and the stealth cloak turning you into a shapeless blob. I set up this tank with a grey-white set of effects that look like hot steam pouring out of the tank, and I named it "Steam Powered Tank".

Upsen.

CIty of Heroes - City of Villains

I've been spending some time playing CoH lately, or rather, CoV - I started two Masterminds using the new demon-summoning primary. The little creatures you summon are surprisingly durable with a good resistance, and the 2nd tier critter has a property of improving the already good resistance. It makes for a pretty easy time keeping them all alive using some secondary powers. In my case I used Pain Domination and Dark Miasma. They have been a ton of fun to play. Previously the characters were either too management intensive. (Necro/Dark for example) or too automatic (Bots/FF for example) There were probably some better combos of powers than the ones I chose, but I like certain combinations of powersets and I feel that certain other ones are so unrelated that they are a little weird for me to play. (Ninjas/Forcefields? Thugs/Dark netherworld powers in the same character?) By about L8-10 I would be falling asleep on my keyboard, unfortunately.

Both MMs are around L20-25, and that also allows me to unlock one of the villain epic archetypes (VEATs) as well, since they lowered the requirement from 50 down to 20. So I have a "Widow Upsen" running around at L12 right now as well, mostly specced for melee. I hear its supposed to play a little like a Claws/Super Reflexes sort, but there is sadly, pretty low defenses at this stage. I don't see where the additional defense even comes from down the tree, that would make it come anywhere close to a /SR. There is a scaling resistance that is straight out of the SR playbook, and I seem to spend a lot of time using that resistance. (I.e., I am hit a lot and the defenses suck) I wonder what the deal is. I guess I could play her on the ranged spec instead and be an extra tough blaster type?

Anyways, since I still don't really like the Villains maps too much, I ended up creating a new defender as well - an Empathy/Sonic. Simple and fun, I ran around a bit and even bumped into Kin Arad online, who I have not seen for ages, and got a little bit of team play in with one of their alts. (so unfamiliar after so much soloing. 8)

So that's basically the last month or so now. One funny thing is now I'm one of the players that is occasionally disappearing to feed the baby and change their diaper, hence the majority of my time spent soloing.

Upsen.

CIty of Heroes - Kinetic Melee powerset

There's a lot of info that was released at the last PAX conference.

There's going to be a Kinetic Melee power set to be added to Tanks, Scrappers, Brutes and Stalkers, as part of the upcoming "Going Rogue" expansion. It's a slightly 'longer range' melee set, probably in the neighbourhood of 10-15 foot range, like many higher tier attacks in the existing melee powersets. (Isn't think a little redundant with Energy Melee? I mean, people are arguing that there is no Kinetic Armor set because there is already a Energy Armor

Also there is supposed to be some sort of modification made to defender Vigilance. Vigilance currently reduces endurance consumption when you have more people in your group. There's a lot of speculation, people are saying it's something that is supposed to help defenders solo a bit better. Probably some sort of damage increase based on team size. :P

Another thing of interest is that they are adding some sort of advancement system for L50 characters, that is going to be called the Incarnate System. I hope this isn't going to be like Everquest's AAXP system where hardcore players had thousands of AAXP and casual players were not acceptable for raiding unless they had x amount of AAXP.

Upsen.

City of Heroes - Free Reactivation Weekend

Speak of the Devil...

Double XP and Re-activation Weekend Starting March 4th!

• Double XP and Re-activation Weekend Start: Thursday, March 4th at 8:59am Pacific Time (11:59am Eastern Time)
• Double XP and Re-activation Weekend End: Sunday, March 7th at 11:59pm Pacific (2:59am Eastern Time)

City of Heroes - Issue 17: Dark Mirror

It looks like there's going to be a graphics rendering update for City of Heroes in Issue 17, coming in April. The details on the COH website show some nicely upgraded screens, but I guess the character models aren't going to be updated, just the scenery.

Out of a bunch of nice features like mailing your alts influence and taking 7 missions at a time instead of 3, I like the Posi change the best.

Positron is going to be cut into 2 Task Forces. About time, that particular task force was absolutely brutal, low level characters forced to fight against no-resist toxic DOT attacks, as well as enemy holds before you get any hold resistance. the second half looks like it's going to take place in the Faultline Dam. Didn't we hear something about a TF in Faultline, way, way, WAY back in time? 8)

I might go back and try this out when it gets released!

Upsen.

City of Heroes - Going Rogue

The upcoming Going Rogue upgrade for City of Heroes got a site update today - they've added in a Dual Pistols powerset, which is available right now if you purchase the upgrade, and a Demon Summoning powerset which is available some time in April.

Interesting tactic, selling packages now, so you can use the powersets, and then releasing the actual upgrade in July with all the maps and story/missions after they're done composing them.

Anyways, the video on their site shows off some really cool looking Gun-fu moves, and the pistols even have slides that cycle back and forth as the pistols fire. I'd comment on the shell casings flying around too, but CoH has always had that nice little feature for their shooty heroes and villains. 8) It would be kind of cool to check these out if there's ever a free play week or something like that in the future.

Upsen.

IO stagnation

I changed some of the plans for Tenmos, my tank.
Gave up on finding Ragnarok IOs and went for a set of Positron's Blast instead. For right cheap too - I spent about 50 million on all 5 of them. I still want the Eradications and the last Obliteration, even though the tank seems to be surviving everything. Except maybe a Mission Architect killer-deathtrap that Mira Moonshadow made from my Renaissance de la Veritas SG. I did last until the rest of the SG team were almost back from the hospital though.

I've been playing a Dark Melee/Shields scrapper and it's at L40 pretty easily. Put together a few decent IOs for him too, to try and cap up the defenses, but I've decided against trying to super-IO him. Its just too time consuming.

Also made a Peacebringer Nova which is about L18.

Tank IO list:

* 1 x Miracle: Heal/EndRdx (40) forget about it.
(have a placeholder Mira H/E/R right now)
* 1 x Reactive Armor: ResDam/EndRdx (40) forget about it.
(placeholder low level version)
* 1 x Apocalypse: Dmg/Rchg (50)
* 1 x Apocalypse: Acc/Dmg/Rchg (50)
* 1 x Apocalypse: Acc/Rchg (50)
* 1 x Apocalypse: Dmg/EndRdx (50)
* 1 x Apocalypse: Dam% (50)
* 1 x Eradication: Dmg (30)
* 1 x Eradication: Acc/Rchg (30)
* 1 x Eradication: Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg (30)
* 1 x Eradication: %Dam (30)
* 1 x Obliteration: Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg (50)

Over 3000 HP now!

Tenmos broke the 3000hp mark today when I got all the Luck of the Gambler IOs that I needed. This is the toughest tank I've ever had in the game so far.

Over 3000 hp, woohoo!

Upsen.

IO Shopping List

Edit March 1st -

Here is the current shopping list. Those purple IOs are currently listing in the 70-100million range each, scary stuff.

Upsen.

• 1 x Miracle: Heal/EndRdx (40)
  (have a placeholder Mira H/E/R right now)
  
• 1 x Pounding Slugfest: Stun% (30) optional*
• 1 x Reactive Armor: ResDam/EndRdx (40)
  (placeholder low level version)
  
• 1 x Apocalypse: Dmg/Rchg (50)
• 1 x Apocalypse: Acc/Dmg/Rchg (50)
• 1 x Apocalypse: Acc/Rchg (50)
• 1 x Apocalypse: Dmg/EndRdx (50)
• 1 x Apocalypse: Dam% (50)
• 1 x Ragnarok: Dmg (50)
• 1 x Ragnarok: Dmg/Rchg (50)
• 1 x Ragnarok: Acc/Dmg/Rchg (50)
• 1 x Ragnarok: Acc/Rchg (50)
• 1 x Ragnarok: Dmg/EndRdx (50)
• 1 x Eradication: Dmg (30)
• 1 x Eradication: Acc/Rchg (30)
• 1 x Eradication: Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg (30)
• 1 x Eradication: %Dam (30)
• 1 x Obliteration: Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg (50)

Slotting +Regen and +Recovery into RttC is strange

There's something buggy about slotting the +regen/+recovery IOs in Willpower's Rise to the Challenge. The amount of health and endurance recovered scales with the opponent you are fighting. At first I thought, oh, maybe it's scaling with the number of opponents! That would be pretty cool, but it wasn't the case.

It turns out that it scales based on the level of the opponent that your RttC hits. If you change the foe group you are standing in, the amount of regen from the IO actually changes too. The higher the foe, the less benefit you get. The lower the foe, the more benefit you get. The biggest differential you can get is your L50 fighting a L1 foe, and you should see what crazy numbers you get. Too bad you can't get those numbers in any useful encounter where you actually need them. In a fight with L54s when you really *need* the boosts, they are only running at about half the effectiveness they are supposed to run at.

Tenmos is L50.

Here's the empirical data (some screenshots follow) :

%/s Numi RTis Numi Mira
Lvl Regn Regn Reco Reco
F.H 0.16 0.20 0.17 0.25 <-- Using Fast Healing as a baseline comparison
---------------------------
L01 0.98 1.23 1.00 1.50
L05 0.92 1.14 0.93 1.40
L10 0.83 1.04 0.85 1.28
L15 0.75 0.94 0.77 1.15
L20 0.67 0.84 0.68 1.03
L25 0.59 0.74 0.60 0.90
L30 0.51 0.63 0.52 0.78
L35 0.53 0.42 0.43 0.65
L40 0.34 0.43 0.35 0.53
L42 0.31 0.38 0.31 0.47
L44 0.27 0.34 0.28 0.42
L46 0.24 0.29 0.24 0.36
L48 0.20 0.25 0.20 0.31
L49 0.18 0.23 0.19 0.28
L50 0.16 0.20 0.17 0.25 <-- This is what you get in Fast Healing.
L51 0.15 0.18 0.15 0.23
L52 0.13 0.16 0.13 0.20
L53 0.11 0.13 0.11 0.16
L54 0.08 0.10 0.08 0.12

If anyone has their +regen/+recovery IOs slotted into Fitness:Health, can you give me the percentages?

Thanks,
Upsen.

Level 1 foes

L25 Foes

L50 Foes (same as slotting in Fast Healing)

L54 Foes

What Numina and Miracle numbers look like in Fast Healing

Almost 50 but not quite

I've been on a merit craze in order to get Invention Origin set enhancements for Tenmos. It's actually coming along - I have just over half the IOs that I want to get, besides the hard to get purple sets I want. I've changed my build around more times than I care to remember - I've even sold off IOs I didn't think I'd need, only to find out I still want them after all in the next version of the build.

I mildly regret giving up on the Willpower/Superstrength version of Tenmos - SS is really the powerhouse offense set for tanks. It just does that much more damage, and gets all this to-hit bonus on top, if I could just live with the rage crashes. I can console myself in that the fire AOEs are a bit better than SS's AOE. Maybe I'll build an Invul/SS later on after Tenmos is completely done.

Double XP Weekend is Over (and a long stupid-team rant)

Double XP weekend is over - I managed to get Tenmos from L37 up to L42. Just 8 more levels before Level 50! Tank offense is pretty pathetic in the late 20s and especially the early to mid 30s, so I am glad that I am past my slow spot there. The 40s move pretty fast for me, now that I have my major attacks all available and slotted up. On my second account, Fires is getting pulled all the way up there too - this is exciting too in that Fires should be my first 50 on that account. Not too bad progress for a level pacted character.



A few annoying things happened that really got to me this weekend, this one being the prime one:

I joined a 8-man group doing missions in Peregrine Island for XP. The problem was that they selected a difficult, ie, SLOW, mission against Carnies, on a high difficulty setting at that. We were something like L35-40 fighting L43 carnies, if I remember correctly.

Carnies, or the Carnival, as you know, are notoriously evil for all of their endurance draining attacks and deaths. You can't herd carnie purples for easy killing, cause when even a few of them die, they drop your endurance bar to zero. Which in turn, results in your own death from the remaining carnies, cause your defenses have all dropped and you have no endurance for keeping your attacks going.

This sort of thing can be avoided with enough defense numbers like I did with my SR scrapper a long time ago, but that's not how a Willpower tank works.

So basically we were reduced to doing a couple carnies at a time. You could concentrate 8 people on them and kill them quickly, or you could spread your attack power all over the place and kill them slowly. The group I was with was more of the latter - people all soloing a couple of carnies each scattered here and there. We had enough people that there were Master Illusionists in the mission, summoning xpless minions that we wasted a ton of time on.

I actually went to wash dishes and wipe down the countertop with soap, during one fight, and came back to find them all still standing in the SAME AREA doing exactly what they were doing before. That is how slow each fight was going. They were impresssed by how fast I did dishes, I wasn't impressed with how slowly they were taking down the carnies.

It was a suicide run - heroes were dying off on a regular basis against the carnies, which was stupid, so many deaths were slowing us down, using up our resources constantly reviving the dying. We were in way too far over our heads, but not so far in that it was impossible - it was just mind numbingly slow progress, mission and XP wise.

I protested a couple of times - asked them to pick a saner mission, but they didn't really want to. So the next time I saw a team offer appear on the global chats, I took it and left these people doing their attrition war against the Carnies.

They weren't very happy when I left, and rightfully so for a couple reasons: It was bad form to just leave in the middle of fighting a group, but it was a trash group that was taking forever to kill, and they wouldn't see that it was too much to handle properly. Also I was SKing one of their members - when I dropped the team they went down by a few levels, probably resulting in their quick demise. Though, they were already dying pretty regularly already, at that point I didn't care if they minded an extra death.

Anyways, the end result is that I left, they were pissed off, and I was badmouthed a bit on the "BMT of Champion" global chat. They gave up on the Invincible level mission and restarted the mission on a lower difficulty level, and did fine. I wouldn't have left them if they just did that in the first place. :P Oh well.

I guess the nice term for what they were doing is "Scrapper Lock"

I'm probably not going to get invites from some of those people again, but if they are doing stupid things like that, I dont really want any part of it.

Upsen.

Invention Origin Sets Update

After sinking countless hours into staring at the Mids Planner, even beyond that of my last post, I've got a build that falls part way between the highest possible stats I can find (at the moment), and what I have already purchased or found.

The Kinetic Combat sets I wanted are almost done - just one more piece to go.

I dropped one set of Entropic Chaos - it was much cheaper and actually more effective if I slotted out my Taunt with Mocking Beratement instead of Char/Ring of Fire. The cost for all 6 pieces of Mocking Beratement was actually under 1 million inf, while the Entropic Chaos is sort of unavailable and costing between 2-5 million per piece. I was really happy with that.

Reactive Armor is turning out to be hard to find. They don't list for a lot on the auction house, but there is almost nothing ever available to buy. I might have to do these through the merit system - they are only 50 merits each.

I haven't started on the Level 50 IO sets I wanted. I'll need two full Obliteration sets for offense. I'm using plain IOs right now for my AOE attacks.

Defensively, I need two partial Luck of the Gambler sets and a good number of healing set IOs - Numina's, Miracle, Regenerative Tissue, etc. These look like they are going to be the most difficult part of my build. The auction house sells these things for 25-75 million influence EACH. That to me is jaw droppingly expensive right now, and I will have a hard time convincing myself to spend so much influence on single IOs.

The merits system also has these for 200+ merits each, which means they are still pretty difficult to obtain. I did get one Miracle already for 240 merits a while back, but I'm wishing I knew about some other ones at the time, such as Regenerating Tissue's +end/+regen dual bonus. Perhaps I would have picked one of those first.

Sure I could play the market to get more money but that to me is not why I play City of Heroes. If I wanted to play market buying and selling to make money I'd be better off logging onto my trading account to watch the TSX and Dow Jones, not the Wentworths in City of Heroes. Inf costs 10 bucks for 100 million anyways as the daily in-game spams tell us.

I'll be satisfied with just getting these IOs slowly over time - eventually I'll get there. Stuff comes pretty quickly at 50. A few million inf per task force, etc, plus some nice drops, and I'll have those IOs sets complete soon enough.

Upsen.

Mids - CoH Planner

I picked up a copy of Mids and I've been going nuts on a rebuild for Tenmos.

It's a pretty end-game build, except it doesn't use those horribly, horribly expensive ultra-rare purple IOs. However, I really do only have half the influence I need in order to build it. So I guess I'll start slow, on what I can afford first. I've put out bids on Kinetic Combat which people are saying is rare now, probably due to shield tankers, and stuff like Entropic Chaos, Reactive Armor, and Gift of the Ancients, since they reach their max level at 35s and 40s, so I dont have to worry about a sub-standard version of the IO not being L50. These L35-40 IOs are costing me about 90 million influence - pretty much every cent I've earned in the game so far with Tenmos, and transferred influence from other characters I've played. So it's going to be a pretty hefty investment.

Upsen.

omg this is going to cost a LOT

IO set builds versus non-IO set builds - A Side-by-Side Comparison

I did all the levelups for my secondary tank, Fires of Conviction so he is now L35 like Tenmos.

So after all these millions of inf I've spent on IOs, what do I have to show for it? Is it actually worth while to do all this IO slotting? Let's see what these two tanks look like side by side at L35.

Fires has better HP regen and Endurance recovery than Tenmos. (cause Fires has Fitness Pool Health and Stamina.) Fires has way more HP, since he has had time to fully slot his High Pain Tolerance.


Fires has more powers that are optimally slotted - Tenmos will need more slots to get his powers all slotted out properly, and may run into a shortage later on.


Tenmos has somewhat better defenses (about 4% better for all elemental types)

Fires has somewhat better resistances cause he has more slots in Tough.
(5% better Smashing/Lethal)


Attack-wise, Fires is much harder hitting at the moment. A bit lower in accuracy but about 30% more damage, and 10% less endurance used. That's the difference between 4-slotting and 6-slotting.


Tenmos has more accuracy from a Kismet but Fires could slot the same for the cost of a little more endurance use on his status protection.

So, at this moment in L35, the IOs are a mixed bag. I am doing a lot less damage than I should be doing at this time, but I can make up for it using hasten and buildup. I'm also slightly better on the whole with the higher defenses.

Considering that Tenmos is not quite fully slotted out, there is a lot more room for growth. Fires on the other hand, has 6-slotted a good number of powers, meaning they are already at their optimum performance level. Once Tenmos hits 50 and I get him more fully IO-slotted, the differences between Tenmos(IOed) and Fires(non-IOed) should be quite pronounced.

Overall, it is very worth while to slot with IOs.

Upsen.

WP/Fire at 32 and is really coming into his own

Well it is looking like I'm getting to the point where WP/Fire is doing everything I want it to. I'm actually sort of casting about for powers to take at 30, 32 and 35 - I've spent enough time in the Wentworth's that I don't really need to take the Fitness Pool for health and endurance recovery.

So instead of 3 fitness powers, I took Haste at 30, Buildup at 32, and still wondering what I could take at 35.

Incinerate? Not really needed, maybe it would be good soloing damage vs a boss?

Swap out Haste and Buildup and opt for Leaderships?
Manuevers, Tactics and Vengeance maybe?
Hmm, well the Haste is definitely addictive.

38 is Greater Fire Sword and I know I like that one. 41+ becomes territory for Ancillaries. So I'm sort of stuck as to which I should go with. Gotta think about it for a while.

Upsen.

p.s. here is the general build I am following:

Level 1: High Pain Tolerance
Level 1: Scorch
Level 2: Mind Over Body
Level 4: Combustion
Level 6: Indomitable Will
Level 8: Rise to the Challenge
Level 10: Boxing
Level 12: Quick Recovery
Level 14: Tough
Level 16: Fast Healing
Level 18: Heightened Senses
Level 20: Weave
Level 22: Taunt
Level 24: Combat Jumping
Level 26: Super Jump
Level 28: Fire Sword Circle
Level 30: Hurdle
Level 32: Health
Level 35: Stamina
Level 38: Greater Fire Sword
Level 41: Char
Level 44: Fire Blast
Level 47: Fire Ball
Level 49: Hasten

Miracle through Merit System

I picked up a Miracle +Recovery for 240 merits in the Issue 13 merit system - it was pretty pricey considering how many TFs I get to go on right now.

The time price of this Enh was basically the level up process from L14-L30:

1. Positron Task Force
2. Synapse Task Force
3. Babbage during Task Force
   
4. Petition to get back bugged half of merits for Synapse Task Force
5. Sister Psyche Task Force
6. Citadel Task Force
7. Hess Task Force
8. Freaklympics Story Arc
9. Ring of Peebles Story Arc
10. Lusca Monster in Independence Port.
    
11. Kraken in Perez Park
    

Here is the end result - an extra 0.25%/sec of endurance recovery. Between this and Performance Shifter chance for endurance, maybe I can skip Fitness Pool on Tenmos.

One neat little thing about it - it doubles up when you cross a zone line, like the way you can double up buffs like Speed Boost or Force Fields etc. (cause the game loses track of who buffed you the first time) The doubled up time is 2 minutes, so it is pretty wow. :D


Upsen.

Cyborg pack and Self Destruct

I was thinking of picking up the booster pack that includes the self destruct power, so I looked around to see if anyone had said anything about it. Basically the power is somewhat less powerful than a blaster tier 9 and has an hour recharge.

Why am I thinking of getting it? I dunno really, Self-destruct means I should get a self-res power to match it, and I typically don't take self-res powers. I'd screw up my power selection, to be honest. Also how often would a tank need self-destruct? Maybe on my scrappers or something. It would make for a nice M-66 style character.

Alternatively I could put it on my second account and drag em around as a vengeance target. :D

Recharge	Very Long (60min)
Effects	PBAoE 40ft
	Extreme DMG(Smashing/Fire)
	Knockback
	Self defeat

I also saw some funny things about it on the forums, mainly about people hitting the self-destruct by mistake.

Quote:
Countless times i say "Gather to Accelerate Metabolism" only to explode myself right after instead...

Accelerated yourself a bit too much?
You're supposed to let some of that radiation out, you know...

I do wish that the plaync store would get a shopping cart going, it is a pain to have to do all these little pack purchases seperately.

Upsen.

City of Heroes - Tenmos and LxH

Couple things - I transferred my old WP/Fire tank over to Freedom so I would work on the WP/fire more on Champion. I have him up to L29 now, which is not very fast, but considering I've been playing him level-pacted, ie, half xp rate, its not too bad I guess. I need to get him onto a xp-able Hess TF before he turns 30.

The paired tank has sort of fallen by the wayside as things get more and more hectic when teaming, and teaming is where you get some of the better xp. I've stripped the IOs I've slotted in him and put them on a lowbie scrapper that I've started building. The scrapper is for those days where the tank is just going too slowly by himself - something to do some fast and furious killing.

The Scrapper is Love x Hate - another one of my frequent re-rolls. I picked the name cause of this anime a while back called School Days.

Aren't they such sweeties?

Turns out that it was a Japanese dating simulator computer game and it was remade for the Playstation 2 in Japan under the name School Days: LxH. These are the sort of story games where you make decisions for the main character at certain points, and the outcome could be good or bad (or just different) depending on what you do. Some of the paths take some pretty evil turns and there are scenes with kitchen knives and saws in it.

Cute yet sexy girls with knives

So anyways, LxH (the scrapper) is a dual blades/willpower modelled after Saionji Sekai, using tanto blades as her kitchen knife.

Hmm, I guess there are similarities

Don't mess with my heart or I will mess you up

I pacted her with Kinetic Lass, which is yet another reroll for Lass. They're at L10 now. This level pact stuff is pretty neat, I wonder when I will get to 50 on one of these pacts. Pacts made the early TFs more worthwhile XP wise, but I can imagine how it will slow things down in the 30s-50s.

Ok, I guess that was more than a couple of things. :P

Upsen.

Every time you delete a hero they are dragged into a Freedom Corp back room and killed.