Nice look!

Well nice look - for now. Caligno basically is on his fourth look now, going from the body of a high school quarterback, then to a (female) Longbow agent, to an elderly Midnight Club mage, and now to this 4th one (that I tweaked some more to change the face and hair) that I haven't really decided... Maybe a PPD agent. Caligno is basically a "renegade peacebringer" (Here is a screenshot of the costume selection - I keep his former looks as a souvenir, and his bio that explains WHY he changes bodies, and that actually give some insight as to Star-Fall's TRUE origin...)

---Davew

nice

Alyssa hit 49. Just one more to go, then Incarnate stuff!

Gah. I haven't had much time to get online lately. My evenings are being sucked up by other stuff. I managed to at least get the two Valentine's badges last night.

So, does anyone do anything other than Incarnate Trials and Incarnate Task Forces anymore?

I do, but I'm on Virtue!

It depends on the server, really. It looks to me like servers where iTrials muster in Pocket D have serious difficulty getting any Valentine action going, while servers where iTrials muster in RWZ have a more lively Valentine-mission environment. We really need to bug NCSoft to create a special Incarnates-only zone in which people can muster trials without interfering with anything else in the zone. But they keep trying to get people to use the LFG queue individually, which just ain't gonna happen.

---Dave

Alyssa Carson dinged the big one, woo!

Grats on the 50!

One thing that one of the groups I've been hanging with have started doing as fas as I-Trialling goes is not to use the RWZ but Pocket-D, actually. Specifically, the Monkey Fight Club. That way we're not interfering with people wanting to run RWZ content.

I think they should hang out in Warburg.

Well, it has to be a Co-op Zone so that teams can form...the PvP zones are right out, sadly. Otherwise they could just use Recluse's Victory.

There just aren't that many Co-ops, either. You have RWZ and Pocket D, which anyone can enter now (RWZ used to be locked against those below L35). And while Cimerora is still 35+ (so you wouldn't annoy too many people who are trying to level up), it requires access to the Midnighter Club...something not all incarnates have, especially if they farmed up to 50. People did try using Cim or the Midnighter Club as muster points early on, but it was hard to fit everyone in MC even allowing for the unlocking issue (and you can't really exclude the farm-raised incarnates if you want to make the bigger ones work, sadly.).

If Orobouros was co-op it might work okay, but sadly there's two versions of Oro, one for each side. Similarly, while each side has a Hamidon raid zone, they're not the same place so you can't cross-faction on that.

Still, what it comes down to is that other than the Midnighter Club itself, all of the available co-op areas have their own dedicated content, and iTrial mustering will disrupt that. And jamming the Club full of incarnates can mess up attempts to use the Club for transit.

We really just need a new co-op zone with a large capacity that can only be entered by L50 characters, to use as a mustering point for launching iTrials. Make it accessible from the monorail, or from doors next to the Recluse's Victory entries, or whatever.

In other news, the market now has alignment-switch tokens, so you can drop ten bucks to change alignment rather than running eleven missions (which might be a bit difficult if you're playing a support character on a low-activity server). Also, WWD6.

---Dave

Just played through Part 6 of Who will Die...


CALLED IT.

Yet another big deal story where the climax is a cutscene and player input has exactly zero effect on the outcome, whee. I would have much preferred something like the redside part 4, where you could choose to be the active person or let an NPC do it. (Still haven't run the redside version yet, though.)

---Dave

Just played redside. There miiiiiiiight be a twist in SP's death:

HIGHLIGHT to view:
Moments before dying, SP actually releases the bit of Aurora Borealis out of her mind and Aurora2 takes over Wade's lieutenant's body. The end text when you talk back to the Protector says that this part has something "off" about it. SP MIGHT have decided to "mind ride" again, like she did in the past. Add this to the fact that Manticore is said (in the blueside arc) to have a weird blank stare. I thought it was because he just killed his wife, now I'm wondering if SP didn't actually mind-ride Manti there. Wouldn't surprise me if that part is foreshadowing to having SP make a comeback somehow in part 7.)

HIGHLIGHT to view:
Especially if he couldn't man up and shoot SP, she might have taken him over with the power boost and used his body to kill her body.

---Dave

Also possible. We'll know in a month.

I haven't been spending much time on there lately either... could be the general disgruntlement at never being able to recruit backup for the respec.

Yeah, the problem is that for paying players there's so many ways to get a respec that there's not a lot of demand for the respec trials. About the only people who need respecs faster than the free ones come tend to be goldfarmers and powergamers who just buy the respec recipes (something else free players can't use). So free players are pretty much the only ones who really have a need for the trials, and even when the trials are the WST the demand just isn't there, especially if you play at times out of synch with the majority.

I presume you've already used your second build?

---Dave

For Moritori, yes (you guys walked me through that). Not on Geiger Girl. It seems like it'd be a tad easier to respec than 2nd build considering how much $$$ gets sucked from your pocket buying enhancements.

Got my Alpha slot slotted and then upgraded once! Woo!

Ended up staying up until 3AM, but I got Server Wench to 50!

---Dave

Played a little today, nothing special, just running around doing tips, hoping to get that crey mission so I can get the mongoose badge.

Got Geiger up to 28... took the power that boosts the 2nd effect of other powers, then (since I didn't enhance anything for a while) just went to the mutie shop and bought a boatload of 30's from the $$ I've been hoarding (thanks dave) to bring her up to 30+.

Before hopping off, I DID sit around and fiddle with additional costume possibilities... being that level 30 is ever so close.

Behold....

Man, Blasters are so much harder to level than scrappers.

Scrappers and Brutes are probably the easiest to solo at higher levels. Blasters do well until the midrange, but then the lack of status protection makes them die too easily, even if you run at -1 Level. Tankers are easy to solo, but annoyingly slow. Stalkers stall out as soon as they hit bosses who can summon help.

---Dave

I always have the lest trouble soloing on Zoot, who is a blaster. He's probably the one who zoomed through higher level content faster than all my others. Hell, he's currently set to solo missions set for 8 people 8-]

Impressive.

They could also use some Decent options for defense.

I'll say again: the best blaster defense is "utterly devastate everything in front of you before they have a chance to fire one shot".

Mob 1: fire Judgement, mop up the remainder with a couple of fireballs

Mob 2: Aim + LRM, mop up the remainder with a couple of fireballs, blaze and other single targets.

Mob 3: Aim, run in the middle with cloaking device on, shoot up Inferno. Hit a couple of Blue inspirations, mop up the remainder with Fireballs.

Mob 4: by that time, Judgement has reloaded...

Defiance (v2) made solo life for Blasters a lot easier. With Power Paladin, if he's stunned, he can at least still use Power Thrust to send a foe flying back, as well as Power Bolt and Power Blast to still hit things.

Hopefully you figured that out?

My first 50 was Power Paladin. And I did it without either version of Defiance. I can solo with no problem with Power Paladin today, but elite bosses tend to be a bit of a problem. Hover helps greatly for blasters, as it allows for "hoverblasting." If you can hover over a foe, they're limited to their ranged attacks. Got even better once stun/sleep/etc. no longer turned off toggles like hover. Cheap, but hey, it works.

Kuros Paladin, a broadsword/regeneration scrapper, was my second 50. I can solo with him with no problem. Scrappers are definitely the solo-friendly AT.

Of my 50s, two are blasters (an En/En blapper and a stealth sniper Archery/Elec), it was just harder to solo them at higher levels. And once you have Judgement, you're not exactly leveling anymore, are you?

That said, Blasters aren't going to get better defensive options, because the whole philosophy behind the archetype is offense. If you want someone with good defenses, you take one of the melee types.

The Epic Archetypes all offer some balance between ranged attacking and moderate defensive powers. Kheldians are essentially Energy Blasters with something like the Energy Aura defense set, while Arachnos Soldiers are Assault Rifle blasters with some armor and Leadership-style buff auras and Widows are Spine Scrappers with some better ranged options later on. I oversimplify, of course, but the blend is there.

Some Scrapper archetypes can become passable ranged attackers in the endgame, though. Several primaries have a couple of decent medium-ranged attacks, and the Epic pools offer a few more. My Claws Scrapper, K-Type, often operates more as a ranged combatant than a melee one these days, thanks to Focus, Shockwave, Eyebeams and Energy Torrent.

---Dave

Played a little bit this morning... mostly badges for GG. She DID finally get the firemans badge. also just now noticed your E-mail Dave... helped me top off Moritori. Took a while, as I tried to save money by using 25's rather than 30's. I think I would have saved money with the 30's.

Here's some advice on buying enhancements on a budget, especially since you have no access to the invention system.

1) Replace Training with Dual Origin at L12, replace Dual Origin with Single Origin at L22.
2) Otherwise, replace enhancements only on the 3's and 8's, so that you have a 75% chance of getting a combination to work. Replacing DOs at L17, for instance, means you can't combine the new L20 DOs with the old L15s to get L20+.
3) When new slots open up, fill them with one copy of the best enhancement currently available.
4) NEVER buy enhancements purely for combining to grab one more level's worth. It's a waste of influence if you have an actual budget. Combine drops, and combine at the 3's and 8's, but don't buy a few extra just to keep from being in the yellow.
5) If you're at a 2 (other than 12 or 22) or a 7 and are in a situation where you expect you'll level twice before you get a chance to re-enhance (i.e. if you get onto a large team), go ahead and replace at least the more important enhancements like accuracy and endurance reduction before you head out on the mission.

---Dave

Agreed. Enhancements that turned "yellow" shouldn't be on your priorities list. Those who turned red, though, yes.

My priority (when not dealing with IOs, since those don't degrade): Empty Slot -> Red Slot -> Yellow Slot. In case of ties, Damage -> Accuracy -> Endurance -> Other types (Depending on characters - Controllers would be Holds, tanks would be damage resist, etc)

When making new IOs, I use the same priority, but go with IO level instead of color.

Well, I think here I'll do for Mor what I did with GG.... wait until she moves into lvl 35 country, then wait one round to enhance.

The last 10 or so characters of mine went from 1 to 22 with no enhancements slotted at all. I sold every dropped enhancement and never bought any. The increase training enhancements provide is useless. Dual origin just aren't worth it, and you get through that range so quickly, the influence is better off not being spent at all. Once my character hits 22, though, he gets single origin enhancements.

That's just the way I play, though.

I decided to run around Sirens Call for some reason.... did a few of the missions, sux they don't sell inspirations. also sux that apparently one of the badges is only for bad peoples.

Issue 22 confirmed for March 6, making it the true Super Tuesday.

Here's some fallout I expect to see as either intended or unintended side effects of the announced changes:

* Pocket D or Rikti War Zone (depending on server) will return to pre-Incarnate levels of traffic. I expect the new Dark Astoria will become the preferred muster point for Incarnate Trials, since you can street sweep for threads and iXP while you wait for your league to finish forming up.

* It should be easier to get Death from Below, especially redside, because of a change they've made but not noised about a lot: Archvillains will now spawn for 4-character teams instead of 6. The 6-person threshold for getting extra SO drops is a big part of why people gave up on using the LFG tab (since it's not like a random team is at a disadvantage like they would be in an iTrial), and the lack of a clear lowbie zone like Atlas has hurt DfB'ing in the lower-traffic servers.

* Not only will there be more Stalkers thanks to the changes they're getting, I suspect that once people figure out the DfB issue more of them will return to being villains rather than starting out blueside to take advantage of the ease of leveling up in DfB. There'll probably be entire DfB's made up of nothing but Stalkers and Darkness Dominators....

* People will realize that Coyote-mode characters can catch the new Flying Disc power (okay, not an i22 thing, but coming out this month) leading to playing catch with doggies in the park.

---Dave

Mass Effect 3, Issue 22... busy day for me.

Alpha at tier three, Judgement at tier 2, Interface at tier one. Woohoo incarnate stuff. Did several trials. Was great fun.

Zoot's been on a Master Streak lately. Got him the Master of the Underground couple weeks ago, and in the span of 5 days got him Master Khan, Master Statesman, Master TPN and Master Recluse (Adding to his Master BAF I've gotten on him a while ago). So I'm missing Lady Grey, Imperious (two easy ones), Barracuda, and the trials Lambda (he has Lambda Looter and Synchronized), Keyes (that one's gonna be a bitch to get) and MoM. Though of course with Dillemma Diabolique going live tomorrow that adds another to the list.

Took Derpy Ferris through what I hope will be the last "please take your trials to RWZ2, we're trying to run a" Mother Ship Raid tonight. By next Monday, hopefully they'll have started trialing in DA. Got Derpy almost to L39 over the course of three runs, picked up 2200 Vanguard Merits.

---Dave, leaving Pinkemina in Dark Astoria tonight to see if she materializes in the Echo, or in Atlas tomorrow.

When I got done grabbing all the Badges I could safely grab with GG (including dying repeatedly on Styga isle trying to sneak past the vampires into the base), I started running missions from the guy in the Independance port hospital lobby. So far I've thrwarted nazi time travel, was introed to croatoa's mayor, and now am preventing stuff from falling into the wrong hands. Basically it's wasting time until LvL 30.

Still need to get her backup for that first oroboros task force.... took Mor countless tries to take that jerk out, and she's a stalker.

I stayed Beta Spoiler-free of i22, only looking at some of the promo stuff...


DAAAAAAAAAAAAAYM. We went from Zombie Apocalypse to Chtulhu realm. IDW's Infestation just got into CoH!

Ran the 1st arc with Zoot, I will admit having a "jaw drop moment" when I saw friggin' TALONS OF VENGEANCE in there. And they're taking over the Knives of Artemis like they did with the Carnival of Light in the First Ward. If the zone didn't scare me, this did. Yikes.

No kidding. Gonna take one of my low-activity-server 50s into DA tonight and start working through it "fair" (I did a walk through on beta with my L53 pimped out Incarnate). Ia ia annat....

---Dave

Guess who just got a new costume?




BTW... crew goons are a phenominal pain in the backside when you can only find them +3 and higher above your ranking.

Hunt missions are always a pain. They start getting assigned when you're too low level to survive facing them, and they keep getting assigned even after you've outleveled all the groups in the zone and the whole mission is an XP-less waste of time aside from the completion bonus.

Sometimes, though, you can speed it up by knowing where to find the enemy type in another zone, assuming it's not a "Defeat N (faction) in (zone or specific neighborhood)". For instance, the L20 villain-side costume slot mission involves fighting Family, and suggests you go to Sharkhead...where they're all above L20. But if you go to Port Oakes instead, you can usually wipe out the required number of Family as L5-9 weenies in a few minutes.

But then there's the Croatoan missions where you need to defeat faction members in a neighborhood where they're rare...right next to one where they're dirt-common but don't count towards your total. So you need to aggro a mob and run for the border, so you can kill them on the right patch of dirt and get credit.

---Dave

Yeah... by the time I got the lvl 20 costume change for both of them, I was well powerful enough to take out all the Tsoo infesting Steel Canyon. I DID consider running through Talos for the Freaks.... but then I wouldn't get any of the XP or monies for them. Out of thoes I had to kill, they where certainly not a problem. Thing is since coming up with the new design for Geigers Getup, I've been anxious to get her a new slot (since she can actually pay for it).

With the Ritiki I thought it'd take forever, being all I could ever find was that heavily armed group of lvl 33+'s in that lot. Upon scouting Crey's folly however, just to the right of the entrance, you have Ritiki monkies running all over. Yeah, their still a good couple of levels over me... but they are a helluva lot easier to kill.

No frikking way was I going to take out Devouring Earth in the warzone... I ported over to Talos, was ambushed by a boulder and shroom, and then just flew on in and nukes a bunch of em by Dark Astoria.

Crey.... outside of Brickstown and Folley, I can't think of any other places I've found them. So... twas a matter of hunting them down and trying to take their arses out. Only this time I knew which of the targets to hit first (the damn medics). I did earn some serious XP (and take serious damage towards my badge) in taking out 33-35's. Them mech suits being a serious pain.

I think Moritori will wait until she gets to Lvl 35 before heading out on both. Doesn't necessarily need and aura, and I don't know of any new costume design she'd need (except maybe ninja).

On characters who don't really need new costumes, I sometimes use the extra costume slots to make up entirely different characters who would have the same powerset. Why level up a second Claws/Elec Brute when Carnivore X has a spare costume slot? Since you normally don't see your own name in play, you can pretend you're playing the other character (so long as you're not trying to RP).

---Dave

The Alt-power slot would be handy for that. If you can have a different epic power(?) per-slot, that would make things verry interesting for Moritori. On one path, her magic abilities are supressed and she sticks with the ninja stuff, on the other.... she's got the spawn thing going.