Heraclea

Saved for future reference....

Now the first Sentinel I rolled was Water/WP and I liked that combo quite. On Victory I had a Ninja/Poison mastermind. This one struggled. It didn't help that MMs were redside only, making playing though Sharkhead more or less mandatory. Scrapyarder missions were quite tedious on the character. I liked the concept - Amir Al-Muminin, spiritual leader of the Shiyitti Sect - but I lost interest and never got them past 30-aomething. Made one on Torchbearer - this one's beast/time. Beasts are probably the least annoying of the pets, though they are noisy. Being able to level blueside was a big plus. Even so, though I rolled the character back in June I didn't really get interested until recently. Got this one to 50 a couple days ago.

I played for a while at launch. Then it was changed so that sword and shield builds did very little damage, and I very quickly lost interest.

I made Heraclea a tanker because the little pamphlet in the box said that tankers were the class with the most survivability and I wanted more than anything else to avoid frustration.

Well, yes, they are, Every bit of 'challenge' added during the latter part of old live tended to leave melee classes out of the game. Bring a brute to the Battle Maiden fight and you may as well go AFK or die and not bother rezzing. You have nothing to do there. The warning ring mechanic on the BAF raid seems to do only one thing, and that is to punish taunting. You spend most of these boss fights idle and out of range. I grow tired of seeing the characters I enjoy most being made irrelevant by attempts to add generic MMO crap of the sort that frustrated me and made me leave those games. No more such combats and mechanics should be added. I've learned to enjoy New Dark Astoria arcs for what they are. But I always remember now to set difficulty to +0/1 on a +3 level shifted character when facing kinetic Tsoo because I just want to get that part out of the way. I wouldn't dare bring a team to those missions and increase the number of kinetic minions. Not being able to act just sucks the fun out of the game. Forced AFKs just aren't enjoyable. Now tanking is a problem in other MMOs largely because their mechanics make the 'tank' and 'healer' roles indispensable for any team content. And playing the tank or healer means that you are hindered at soloing other game content because of low DPS and low survivability - and in the worst of those games the tank class's armor is meaningless to ranged caster mobs. These mechanics were very bad things because they turned some players into prima donnas and encouraged elitism and gear scores. In our game we don't have those issues, which makes for a much more peaceable and cooperative player base. Tanks are not necessary for hardly any game content; nor are healers. (On the other hand, debuffers are probably the most universally useful group of character classes, and can trivialize most game content.) The great thing about our game is that we already avoid the MMO trinity. Which is why the tanks and heal/buffers we have now don't need to be challenged. I don't favor the importation of cheesy mechanics from other MMOs that add forced AFKs and disengagements and write the melee classes out of the game.

Heraclea on Victory was Invuln/SS; on Torchbearer she's Inv/Dark Melee. This is technically a reboot of another Victory character; Omphale back then was Inv/DM, and the pair had so much more synergy that she rather than my namesake became my goto tanker for master runs and the like. So when I remade Heraclea I went with what I had found worked better. Glad I avoided Super Strength on Homecoming. Baroness Munchhausen was an Electric/Shield scrapper then and is now a Reflex/Katana tanker. Changing a secondary is a lot more frequent than changing a primary. Grandma Gnosis was Ill/Emp back then, and is Ill/Rad now. Other entirely new characters are melanges of old characters. I did not remake Betsy Ross (spines/WP scrapper) on Torchbearer, but her Colonial costumes went to Mother of Vinegar, water/WP sentinel. Both share a concept involving slotting up -recharge procs as well. My electric/electric blaster on Victory was Mayahuel, Aztec goddess of tequila; now she's Yamnaya, Indo-European warrior princess. But the Aztec themes went to Catrina, bio/spines tanker, emissary from the Aztec gods sent to Kill Skuls. There really aren't that many characters that have not changed. Maiden Heaven was then and now a fire/regen scrapper. Lampito is still an axe/shield tanker.

Arnold Schoenberg - Mondestruncken (Pierrot Lunaire)

Frank Zappa - City of Tiny Lights

That is from the workbench, as it said. Were it in inventory, it would have a little blue 1 by it if the recipe was actually there.

Just ran into this bug. Been working the Harvey Maylor storyline on my MM. Got a defeat 20 carnies mish that automatically led to the Vanessa Devore mission. Beat them in a radio. No location or zone given. Abandoned the mission and got kicked back to the street hunt phase. Did that in a tip, again the bug. Autcompleted it to claim my merits.

Only CW show I still follow is Supergirl, and that's starting to drown in soap opera now as well. Melissa Benoist was well cast, but it's still CW. The Harley Quinn cartoon is brilliant and well worth your time. I guess MOTU is now DC, so I suppose the rebooted She-Ra on Netflix as well.

Now, the MMO that held my interest longest besides CoH was Age of Conan. Let my subscription lapse a couple years ago, though. Mostly the attraction of the world and the lore kept my interest. Had a level 80 of each class. Eventually ran into the wall of choreography in the endgame though.

Winnie the Pooh - Heffalumps and Woozles

Masterminds need these bad.

Level 50 recipes no longer appear available for purchase, at least at a SG crafting station, The salvage for them is present, but the recipe cannot be bought from the table as usual. Have not checked on other characters. The character in the image is level 47 and can equip level 50 enhancements, but the crafting table stops at 45.

I always got the Fortune Teller mission from Trevor Seaborn in Steel. You may be only able to get him if you level 1-6 through Azuria. That gives the 'Spelunker' badge needed for Atlas Medallion. Used to be that getting the mission was a celebrated event and people would even pay you to go on it. Now you just do through Pillar/Ouro, and if you get a large round room on the map you quit and retake it.

While this game was live I would always run into a wall of choreography in team related events in other MMOs that would send me running back here. Elaborate multi-stage encounters where you constantly needed to be aware of some floor circle or blinking light, which was the sign to drop whatever it was you were doing and go do something else. The cat-herding required by these encounters sent people to online voice chats -- then it was Ventrilo -- to keep everybody on the same page. In some stages it was absolutely vital for the success for somebody to do something, but since I was melee DPS that never was me. Tanking was never fun in those games, I learned: difficult to generate aggro, inadequate armor, needing a healer to prop you up. These mechanics typically sent me running home in anger and frustration. Until I had no home to go back to, at which point I slowly lost interest in online gaming. My point is that no other game really has what CoH has.

My favorite -- Primaries, top tier: Radiation Melee, Dark Melee. Both have attacks that help keep you alive; Dark Melee is more reliable, but Radiation Melee gets the nod for a fast recharging PBAoE attack and a damage aura. Have not tried Psi Melee. All of these sets have fast lowbie attacks that Brutes especially benefit from. War Mace is best among the weapon sets, I think. Energy Melee, Super Strength, and Titan Weapons are bottom tier sets for Brutes. Energy Melee was ruined on old live, Super Strength on Homecoming, and Titan Weapons is just too slow to get going: far better on a scrapper than a brute. Secondaries, top tier: Willpower, Bio, Radiation, and Electric. Brutes need sustainability and relief from the endurance mechanic the most urgently of any AT. These armors provide them, with more than adequate survivability in most situations. Electric is a bit of a late bloomer here. Regen works if you are building a character to farm lowbie strike or task forces, but hits its plateau early on and performs poorly in the debuff-happy late game. People will tell you that its deficiencies can be remedied by massive investment in IO sets, but that's just it. You're spending millions to get it to the point where Bio or Radiation are out of the box. Shield Defense is the best of the defense oriented sets, with fun offensive abilities. Lacks debuff resistance. Bottom tier - Super Reflexes, Stone, Invulnerability. Stone must be an absolute pain on a Brute even more so than on a Tanker. Requires a pocket kin to be playable and still you'll need Teleport to get over a curb. Reflexes and Invulnerability are more 'meh' than anything else; unlike the secondaries I recommend, none of these do diddly squat to get you more endurance. Defensive sets like Reflexes are also late blooming, with glaring holes until you get all the pieces of the puzzle in place. And click mez protection is more of an annoyance on a Brute than on another AT.

The Left Banke - Walk Away Renee RIP singer Steve Martin Caro. 😥

Zywiolak - Sol Invictus

16 Horsepower - Black Soul Choir

Super Strength is in a bad state right now because of the rage crash. You'd prefer something like Titan Weapons or Street Justice for a similar feel without the major issue that creates. Radiation Melee will do more for you anyways. You get a very good damage aura in addition to Invulnerability's solid taunt aura. You get a self-heal that isn't as reliable as Dark Melee's, but is still going to help.

The Weavers - Goodnight Irene

Alan Parsons Project - A Dream Within a Dream / The Raven

Another major issue with goldside is that the alignment system there is team unfriendly from the starting gate. Separating the player base and missions into Loyalist and Resistance means that you can't join teams running opposite faction content without a penalty. It was an interesting idea poorly implemented. This is also why mobs that stack debuffs and mez should be avoided as a way of artificially inflating difficulty. That kind of mob punishes you for having a larger team, and devalues aggro attraction especially badly.