Coyotedancer

Remember that the game is still balanced around SO builds, not what you can do with IO sets and specials.

Yep... I did that with my little Rad Defender, Beans. That and "drive-by" bubbling lowbies in Atlas and Galaxy with Suzume, my FF Defender, back before everyone thought Force Field's shields were LOLTERRIBAD and utterly useless. 'Good fun once upon a time, but I don't really do any of that anymore. People get grouchy about their costumes these days, or they hate the particular buff (Hi, Speed Boost. I'm looking at you-), or they just find any help that they didn't request annoying... Or they're standing too close to the Boots, who'll get bent out of shape if I interrupt their roleplay. So, like TaxiBots and joining teams as a bridge, for me at least, being a Drive-by Defender has gone the way of the dodo. XD

I tend to run most of my support characters with mid-level teams rather than tossing them into end-game smash-fests, so their buffs are needed/wanted a little more than they would be otherwise. Given that, I do use them often, and I just hit the group opportunistically. I don't chase down individual strays. I just wait until there's a pause or a fight in close-quarters or some other natural bottleneck that forces most of the group close together. If you pay attention and can react quickly enough, those opportunities do come up reasonably often and taking advantage of one is a whole lot easier than trying to actively cat-herd seven total maniacs. In my experience, even a not-so-uber group of 30-somethings just ISN'T going to listen when you say "Gather for Buffs"... Ever.

The closest I've come to that are Ivory's ties to Egypt during the New Kingdom period.... She's a Chronomancer from one of the City world's possible far-futures; a professional temporal observer (read: Historical Ethnologist who can actually do live fieldwork with the ancient culture she's studying) from Nova Primeva. Prior to her current assignment in Paragon City during what Ordus Chronos historians have dubbed "The Age of Troubles", she spent five years in Waset (Thebes to those Greek-types who came along later). In-character, once in awhile she'll make the nearly-3500-year jaunt back there to visit friends.... A few of the individuals I've mentioned in the course of her conversations about the place were real people.

'Took Deigan out again last night, to run around for a bit with a very smashy PI radios team... Such Time. Many Arrows. XD

To get the sneaky aspect... Layering the Concealment pool Stealth power with a +Stealth IO like Unbound Leap's (Just dropped into Sprint-) will make you pretty darn stealthy. If Super Speed is your travel choice, putting that on adds even more.

Massive damage would not be a Sentinel thing, generally-speaking... So you might want to look at a tough Blaster build. Use the snipe or the strongest ST blast for that big burst damage effect?

I went ahead and made an Archery/Time Corruptor... Just to see what the combination would play like. 'Tossed her in with Harry to hit the 30s, got her some common IOs and ran around for a bit with a mid-level hero tips team. Verdict? The sets work together just fine. And with all that wibbly-wobbly timey-whimey business she has a lot fewer problems with things running out of the area of effect of her Rain of Arrows than my Archery blaster ever did! So... even if I don't play around with the rest of the Randoms, thanks for the idea and the "random rolling". I've ended up with a pretty entertaining corruptor that I'd never have had otherwise. XD

One of our better four-part teams back-in-the-day involved a Titan/SR Scrap, a Darkity/Dark/Dark Defender, a tanky Shield/KM Brute and a Fire/Rad Corruptor. We never did Morty, but we did manage all of the Task Force Commander TFs.

Eh. My particular favorites are the only ones who get across-the-board T4s over here. (So... at this point 5 of the ones that I consider "finished" 50s, including Harry-) Everyone else? I aim for T3s in all their slots, and only build T4s if they happen to get purple iBit drops somewhere along the way. Typically that means they end up with about an even mix of T3 and T4 powers... Although a few have been unlucky and never got any VR bits at all. They still have all T3s. Unless you're into power-building or playing at the raw, bleeding edge, T3s are more than good enough for... anything, really. So don't stress. XD

Still trying in vain to get rid of that 'dumpster funk' smell that's now clinging to him like a bad reputation, the Circle mage says, "At worst? We find ourselves drifting off and in need of another body. So... add one to the number of kidnappings. body-snatchings and assorted rituals of questionable moral intent plaguing the city, would-be heroes."

For what it's worth, I decided to try out 17655 with Harry, just for a change of pace.... He's Fire/Claws with capped RES, but doesn't have capped DEF... and the map really wasn't tough. The groups are spaced far enough apart that aggro management is pretty easy if your farmer is more fragile or if their build is in not-quite-complete territory. I think the asteroid maps are tougher to juggle with a non-capped farmer, just because it's much harder to manage how many things want to mangle you at any given time.

All it would do to "add challenge" is make life short, painful and not a lot of fun for melee types.

You know my magi too well. XD

Farming is far from the most efficient way to make money in this game. Marketeering will get you a lot more INF a lot faster. No joking. It's basically an order of magnitude beyond what even the fastest farmers can do. So, if you're really interested in building up a bankroll quickly, that's the way to do it. Farming is more fun than playing around with converters and the Wentworth's interface, but...

They're annoying people "for the lolz"... I don't think that means they have problems. I think it means they're assholes.

As the person who plays creepy Oranbegans, I think I can translate what that unhappy mage had to say about the experience... *picks a moldy banana peel off of his armor* "Dammit... I just GOT this new body, you jerk. And now it's all bruised up. And dusty. AND I landed in the dumpster. THE DUMPSTER! Gah! 'Undignified' doesn't even begin to cover it... And... now you've tossed my lashers into the dumpster, too. *sighs* They're going to sulk, you know. They're going to sulk, and blame me, and probably complain to the Death Mages about 'abuse' and 'poor treatment' and 'workplace safety violations' and Ermeeth only knows what else. You know what? The modern world STINKS. I'm going home. Keep your stupid rooftops!" *stalks off towards the nearest cave door, grumbling something about cleaning rituals and 'never going to get the garbage-smell out of this armor'* XD

Time flies like an arrow... … Fruit flies like a banana. (And yes. There's at least one song by that name. XD)

In before someone comes along and tells you to "Learn to play the Market"... Although that's not actually a bad suggestion, mind... It may not be any fun for most of us to sit around playing "City of Wentworths", but marketeering actually is the most effective way to make money in the game. It's far and away more lucrative than farming, even before the nerf.

I'm not likely to join you... 'Just not my kind of theme, I'm afraid... But purely for fun I DID use the random dice-roller to see what I'd end up with if I did. XD 81 - Corruptor 1 - Archery 83 - Time That actually wouldn't be a terrible character, I suspect. 'Not a combination I've ever had, but not a bad mix at first glance.

As a fellow "mostly solo" player who also sometimes runs with teams, I'd say just jumping into random PUGs that are looking for people on the LFG or channels may be a better bet than waiting around for a group of people who want to form an all-new static group. You meet a lot more interesting people that way, and while you'll definitely see some real disasters on occasion, that's not the norm. You'll also dodge the very real potential issue of never getting to play your static team character because the other members of their group are never around, or are more interested in other alts, or any of a dozen other reasons statics are problematic in the long run.

Eh. I enjoy ship raiding. I really do... And I only bring characters after they're high enough level to have done the intro arc, myself... But raids with lowbies are hardly "always a disaster". As long as you also have a decent number of higher level league members, you'll be fine. Everlasting has 'bring anyone' raids on a regular basis. That said, I'm wary of the instanced version. I've joined several since it was introduced and every time it's had issues with multiple dropped members and completely lost or blown-apart teams... Maybe it's more stable these days. I hope it is. But it REALLY didn't make a great impression. I suspect a lot of us just wrote it off as being more trouble than it was worth as a result. I think I could count on one hand the number of instanced raids I've even seen advertised this year.

The Ways of the Purse (or lack of a purse-) are Many and Full of Questions.

I tend to run Briggs' #2551... Angry Cosplayers in Atta's junkyard troll-cave. It takes me about 45-50 minutes to clear with Harry (Fire/Claws Brute built for speed-) and it tends to get him around 25-30mm as a solo, after selling off everything but the PvP recipes, Catalysts and Purps that I horde to use with my own crew. (Totals would be a lot higher if I didn't keep those. But I know I'll eventually use them. XD) Typically, though, I don't toss him in there alone. Harry is on my secondary account, so I dual-box him with one of my main account's 50s. After sales, I usually end up with a little over 50mm between the two of them that way. (Exact final totals vary with drop luck, of course, but they very reliably come out with 22mm INF each before I AH anything-) The Bloody Rainbow asteroid map is a lot faster to clear, but not worth quite as much INF as the cave, and it's a bit of a pain to dual-box with the multiple-mission format.

The Jackpot neighborhood music from Saint Martial. (Jackpot was Kestrel and Cardinal's base of operations... IC they owned one of the brownstones across from the Giza... so I always associate that music with them.) I kid you not... During the Dark Times? I had that little clip on one of my iPod playlists. 'Made me grin every time it came on.