Month: November 2007

Most of us have had bad experiences with pickup groups. My supergroup’s unintentional habit is giving pickup groupmates really terrifying (but rewarding) experiences.

We got our first level-capped characters back before ED, before aggro and target caps. Back then, you herded an entire map and blew it up at once. We knew we were doing it right when everyone simultaneously got graphics error pop-ups because the game could not register that many explosions. We still do this to the extent that we can, fighting as much of the map as possible at once. It saves us the bother of running around, and we win consistently.

When you join our group, we don’t say much. We are all on Teamspeak. We might give you a bit of warning, but we don’t really think about it. We’re used to this. You will be told “stay here,” and off runs someone to pull.

And then someone else. And maybe another. And then someone snipes from the group. And by “pull,” we mean “pull an entire group,” not pull one target. Amidst the ghostly silence, people come bouncing back, followed by an angry horde of werewolves, robots, and fascist vampires. They are following our pullers, so if you peek your head around that corner, they are all heading straight at your face, shooting plasma bolts. Welcome to the team!

: Zubon

We have been playing on Justice lately, because one of our guildmates on Pinnacle has level-capped all his hero slots. Justice is our secondary server, where we try new things or just need the extra slots.

We have visited Justice for evenings in the past, and our current group has survivors from previous expeditions. We spent a week messing with a batch of Kinetics and Radiation Defenders and Controllers, giving us my Controller and Bert’s Defender (both Radiation). Jon’s dragon comes from Fiery Aura Tanker day. We have done several runs with AoE melee characters, and Ham has kept his Scrapper going for this. Adam is the odd man out, focusing on his Warshade, for the simple reason that he had not played one before.

The team works well. We have two sets of rad debuff toggles, which always hit so it does not matter that we are lagging on levels. Jon insists that he is not a Tanker, because fire tanks are squishy, but he does a good enough job of keeping enemies grouped up and off us. Adam and Ham lead the rain of AE damage, with the rest of us contributing as we can. Everyone has some sort of self heal, Bert and I can AE heal, and we have three rezes for the inevitable faceplants.

One fun hobby is multi-herding. Enter the mission and find a good corner, one where the enemies will pile up if they follow you. Send the tank to taunt enemies far down the hall, aggroing everything he can on the way back. Send each of the rads down branching corridors, using the debuff toggles to aggro more chains of enemies. Get around that corner quickly. We now have three times the aggro cap worth of enemies coming for us. That keeps us occupied for a couple of minutes, after which we can finish clearing the map. This scares the heck out of anyone who is not used to teaming with us.

: Zubon

The leader of my first City of Heroes supergroup wanted to try something different, a poor man’s version of what would come to be known as a superteam. “We should all make the same character, with the same look, and they can be like a Borg collective!” Hence the name and the green cyborg look. I was the only person around that night, so we and his wife gave it a shot. Not bad, not great at low levels. Then he swerved to a new theme and quit within a month.

Despite an inauspicious opening, I liked the character. Kinetics is not stellar at the lowest levels, and I forget how I muddled through them, but it soon picks up some rather nice buffs. Once I had Speed Boost, I was off and running. I spent most of the late game with my buddy Tank Unit (also since moved along, to Auto Assault, bless his soul), hitting Fulcrum Shift around his insane masses of Freakshow. Big buffs, big booms.

Continue reading Character Contemplations 3: Assimilation (Kinetics/Psychic Blast Defender)