Ever get complimented on your gameplay and it felt great?

[JnEricsonx]

I can think of three times-when my TW/WP brute basically held off every ambush on some mission with everyone else heading for the door, a night when my Dark/Dark controller made most enemies miserable for the team's play, and when today someone commented that my Night Widow "had the heart of a tanker" because I was running into groups after popping Mind Link and going past the Def cap.

[Primantis]

"Wow! I didn't know a Defender could do that!"

 

Never gets old! xD

[seresibyl3]

I love when I play something like Electrical Affinity and spam heals/end to everyone and they say "whoever is healing us deserves a raise" and an sidekicked up MM with a 110 health healing aura says "I'll take large bills please" ...

 

YAH OK BUD. T_T

[ImpousVileTerror]

I've had some people remark on my solo'ing of Death From Below.  Granted, it was with the assistance of P2W Vendor stuffs, so I'm not sure it should necessarily "count."

[EmmySky]

Yesterday someone told me I am "ballsy for a defender".  I had to admit to them that I was, indeed, a peacebringer.  Does that count as a compliment?

 

I did have a buddy request my PB build cuz shes a tank 😁

[Yomo Kimyata]

I like to give compliments easily and often, because, hey, who doesn’t like validation!  My favorite compliments though are people who like my look, or my name, or my bio.  My favorite compliment was from someone who sent me a tell saying, “I’ve been laughing at your SG name for ten minutes and had to say something.”

[Fortuneteller]

Often complemented for my Warshade dance. I do get pretty chuffed when they enjoy the show.

The folks that really deserve praise are tanks and support ATs.

[archaelia]

Yes...it was the best thing I never could have asked for as a returning player; had a string of missions and TFs with a new friend and much higher tier player, while I am a multi-year off/on vet that never really got the hang of the game, but always had *a lot* of fun. Just for context, on old live I mained a Fire/Fire blaster. I tried the Peacebringer thing out but I wasn't nearly dexterous enough with my binds and skills to play that effectively, and she stayed in debt-ville in her 30s.

 

Now with so much abundance of knowledge and documentation of the game, and the amazing guides...when returning to CoH on HC for my first character I decided to re-roll and main that PB--and dive straight into the triforming deliciousness that PBs have become. Fast forward to me reaching 45-50 thereabouts, teaming with this person, I'm thrashing flipping between forms and mostly tanking and blappering everything and out of the blue they just send me a tell, "You're a fantastic kheldian!" I nearly died of happy, literally in the middle of a mob fight. It was the best! Have since rerolled the blaster to 50 as well...now just filling out the ranks of new alts to join my creative family. So many reasons to love CoX...but that aspect of the community is one of my favorites.

[Peacemoon]

To echo above people have a very low opinion of what a defender can do so I do get some compliments when I play mine. Probably because I don’t play in a timid or helpless way. 

 

Peacebringers and Warshades impress me the most. One of those played well will always get lots of good comments. I love the versatility they showcase. 

[Hexquisite]

Never any vocal compliments. But after skillfully leaping into the fray, taking the alpha, and then hammering faces while keeping aggro as everyone else blasts and controls and corrupts and defends and masterminds, I like to think the lack of clearly-deserved praise is due to the stunned silence as my teammates are overwhelmed by the inspiring manner in which I hit things, and then get hit by things.

 

They're too amazed to speak. I don't hold it against them.

[GastlyGibus]

Not a compliment on gameplay, but I was in a costume contest a while ago, and a non-judge player came up to me and gave me 5 million, saying my costume and bio deserved something even if I didn't win. That brightened my day for sure. 

 

Another time I was playing my SR/Kat Tanker, and since the majority of missions were kill-all, I decided to run past spread-out mobs, throw an attack to taunt, and then run to the next group so they'd all come after me. One player remarked "what is that? A drive-by tanking?" He later said I was doing a good job. That was my favorite Manti TF that I've been on. 😄

 

 

Edited June 24, 2020 by GastlyGibus
Typo

[Gulbasaur]

I literally had someone say "whoa" in response to my fortunata. That felt good.

[Carnifax]

1 hour ago, GastlyGibus said:

Not a compliment on gameplay, but I was in a costume contest a while ago, and a non-judge player came up to me and gave me 5 million, saying my costume and bio deserved something even if I didn't win. That brightened my day for sure. 

 

Another time I was playing my SR/Kat Tanker, and since the majority of missions were kill-all, I decided to run past spread-out mobs, throw an attack to taunt, and then run to the next group so they'd all come after me. One player remarked "what is that? A drive-by tanking?" He later said I was doing a good job. That was my favorite Manti TF that I've been on. 😄

 

 

Simliar to this one. I had a "Great tanking" tell while running on a PuG once which felt great because I don't tank much. We had a lot of AOE so my job was mostly annoying Spawn A (Spines/Bio so jumping in and exploding usually works a treat) and then taunting Spawn B nice and close so the AOE Death Machine could chew them up as well. 

 

Personally I like to call out the "unsung heroes" when playing too. So when my Blaster finds himself happily wading through +4s I'll usually say "I love these buffs & debuffs" since they're usually what's letting me do it. 

 

 

[archgemini24]

I was running a PuG ITF on my Peacebringer not too long ago and had the entire team say something to the effect of "you are a credit to Kheldians as a whole." The investments made into KB-KD IOs paid for itself in that one line, somehow...

 

I was just trying not to scatter everything so my AoEs would not lose effectiveness, but I was discounting the soft-control and mitigation that chain-flopping provides.

[Shred Monkey]

Back on Live I had a traps/dp defender.  Once I joined an AE farm where there was 1 fire brute and a bunch of door sitters (never done an AE mission since, 'cause YUK!).  After running around with the farmer buffing/debuffing I started running ahead, dropping seeker drones to absorb the alpha strikes while I stealthed in to set down a few traps and then soul drain -> hail of bullets to soften up the spawn while they were all bunched up.  All the while I was basically taking no damage.  The farmer watched me do that a few times and asked, "How are you doing that?"

 

 

 

 

[JayboH]

Yes, with my favorite character before shutdown:  Flint Eastwood, a fire/fire scrapper.  Yes, that means enemies run from burn.  I was a big fan of proc damage back when they were new.

 

Anyways, when doing incarnate trials repeatedly, whatever team they would throw me on would immediately overtake the other one when it came to fighting bosses simultaneously.  They would instruct me to shift in League chat from one target to the other (just me, not that I wasn't already doing that on my own.)

 

Eventually they put me on adds because Flint would just tear up stuff crazy fast and everyone knew it from the league chat and doing many trials back to back.  Made me feel like a million bucks because I made that build on my own.  Trials were still fairly fresh at the time.

 

EDIT:  oh, and I don't know if any of you remember this or not, but back then everyone was guessing how drops were calculated and how it tabulated participation for the drops, so it was also highly encouraged to do everything you could during those trials.  I couldn't just sit there waiting for the other team to catch up.  Anyone remember all the discussion about that back then?

 

--

Edited June 25, 2020 by JayboH

[Chance Jackson]

1 hour ago, archgemini24 said:

I was running a PuG ITF on my Peacebringer not too long ago and had the entire team say something to the effect of "you are a credit to Kheldians as a whole." The investments made into KB-KD IOs paid for itself in that one line, somehow...

 

I was just trying not to scatter everything so my AoEs would not lose effectiveness, but I was discounting the soft-control and mitigation that chain-flopping provides.

When i saw "peacebringer" alone i was groaning, then i read the rest & I salute you.

[archgemini24]

23 minutes ago, Chance Jackson said:

When i saw "peacebringer" alone i was groaning, then i read the rest & I salute you.

I have gotten complimented on my other characters before, but the PB compliments will always hold a special place because I can almost feel the resignation from some teams at how messy they think fights are going to be, and feel like they are doing me a favor with a pity spot. Then they see how messy it's not and I can definitely feel the "Peacebringers can do that?!"

 

[Ironblade]

Just recently I was on a Synapse TF with one of my tanks.  We get to the end of it and the team leader sends me a tell, "Thanks for joining.  You were really the linchpin of this team."  Yes, he actually used the word 'linchpin'.  My goodness.  🙂

[Redlynne]

On Virtue, I was playing my Warshade on a Dr. Quarterfield TF attended by The Man Himself™ ... Dechs Kaison ... and he was playing the "actual" Dechs Kaison character (a Robots Mastermind).  At the time, my Warshade build wasn't even "properly finished" after having done a respec, so I had some empty slots(!) and wasn't up to full power ... but I wanted to play the TF (and get all those lovely merits!) so as to finish out my build with the proceeds.  So I'm playing my incomplete and therefore slightly gimped Tri-form Warshade and then during one of the Defeat 150 Hunts a collection of us gather up a pile of Rularuu and nuke them down and I swoop into the mound of corpses, shift to Human form to use Stygian Circle and let rip with my $Battlecry ...

 

Your soul is my chewtoy!!

 

And the very next comment in Team chat is from Dechs Kaison saying, "MFing WS indeed..."

 

---

 

Another one, on Virtue again, was the time I joined a Tanker Tuesday with my Ice/Ice/Arctic Tanker and warned the 7 other Tankers on the team that my build "inhales aggro like a wind tunnel" ... which got the expected "yeah, right" responses from jaded Tankers who were not inclined to believe my warning (they thought I was just boasting).  We choose to run an ITF ... and then for the entirety of every mission of the Task Force ... ALL OF THE AGGRO WAS MINE.  The other Tankers on the team simply couldn't believe what they were seeing.  They were Tankers ... and they couldn't get any aggro!  A couple times, one of the other Tankers would peel off and try to aggro a second group ... and I would just throw a Taunt at that other group and they would IGNORE the Tanker who tried to get their attention and come bumrushing over to me and my dogpile.  When it kept happening, the other Tankers "learned" that I HADN'T been boasting about "inhaling aggro like a wind tunnel" with my build and they basically had to revert to Scrapperlock Mode around me while I kept ALL THE AGGRO.  What surprised them even more was just how ... aggressively ... I was playing, since Ice/Ice on a Tanker doesn't have a Rage crash, but DOES have a defensive "crash" if Energy Absorption isn't kept fed from fresh (live) bodies.  So the pacing that I was setting through this ITF was more like that of a steamrolling Brute than a Tanker, and I was very nearly indestructible while everyone else was left grasping at straws for any aggro at all (I let them have NONE).

 

At the end of the run, there was a near unanimous agreement that my Ice/Ice/Arctic Tanker was the MVP of the run, that we'd completed the ITF faster than they'd been thinking it would (or even ought to) have been run because of my need to stay ahead of the Energy Absorption recharge cycles (and stay "fueled" with endurance and defense buffing), and that none of them had EVER seen anything like the kind of performance I'd been able to put on during that run.  Some of them even admitted to crying about not being able to get any aggro at all during the entire run, and how that was eye opening for them!

 

Good times.  😎

 

---

 

Another incident, still on Virtue, was on a Moonfire Task Force where I showed up with my Storm/Dual Pistols Defender.  Some of the other Players made somewhat elitist comments about how they wouldn't mind "carrying me" through the Task Force since I couldn't really do any REAL damage with my build or anything.  I just politely let them hang their ignorance out where everyone could see it while we waited for the team roster to fill up.

 

The Task Force got started and almost immediately it was kind of obvious that the front line melee monsters were having trouble absorbing all of the incoming aggro in the tightly confined spaces we were breaking into in each of the radar stations.  People were getting frustrated, and I could see where they dynamics were going (people were wanting to quit) so I asked before the 3rd mission if people would object if *I* "took the safeties off" what I was doing and made everyone's lives a lot easier?  There was, of course, some more mocking derision thrown my way (after all, I was a Defender ... what could I do to change the battlefield dynamics?), but the consensus was to let me give it a go and see if we could run more smoothly (with fewer defeats and trouble).

 

You can, of course, guess what happened next.  I toggled on HERDicane (fully slotted up) and proceeded to -ToHit debuff everything into the ground while herding them into groups for the melee monsters to massacre without remorse, pity or a whole lot of need for healing support.  Needless to say, at that point my Storm/Dual Pistols Defender basically "took over" the rest of the Task Force and became the central focus that protected everyone else while they all did their thing from within the safety of my HERDicane aura.  Before we even got to the last missions, I was starting to get tells and team chats asking me what my build was because people had never seen anything like it before, and now they were getting inspired by seeing just how DOMINANT it was in action to want to play a copy of it themselves.  I was even getting such requests from a couple of the melee monsters who had mocked my Defender before the Task Force began who had been insinuating they would have to "carry me" and here I was "carrying" the entire team for them (because they'd demonstrated that they couldn't manage aggro more than once).

 

The bittersweet irony of that experience was that I'd rolled up that Storm/DP Defender only a couple of weeks before Time Manipulation was announced ... and as anyone who follows my build posts knows, here on Homecoming I've made a Time/Dual Pistols Defender build, but not a repeat of the Storm/Dual Pistols build, because (in my opinion) Time/Dual Pistols is better than Storm/Dual Pistols as a pairing on a Defender.

 

---

 

Yet another incident, which happened on Virtue again, was when I was playing my Hunts(wo)man on a Task Force and we has a Force Field character in the group.  I sent a tell to the Force Fielder saying that the two of us should stick together, because between us we'd defense cap everyone around us (including ourselves) and if anyone got too far out in front of our protective auras, that's THEIR problem.  The Force Fielder readily agreed to my proposal, so the two of us stuck together and everyone who stayed near us had NO PROBLEMS.  A couple of the melee monsters got a little too ambitious/adventurous and got too far out in front of us, promptly faceplanted when they weren't within range of our protection, complained that we weren't supporting them adequately ... and got resoundingly mocked by everyone else on the team for going off on their own and paying the price when they should have known better.  Since everyone else was fine and they only hurt themselves by getting too far out over their skis, the consensus was there was no need to change what we were doing and the melee monsters just had to settle for going at our pace instead of at theirs (because we held all the support that kept them alive).

 

However, we also had an Empathy Defender on the team.  Once the Force Fielder and I teamed up, that basically left the Empath with next to nothing to do, since they were playing as a healbot and reserving all of their endurance and animation time to twitch reaction healing ... that "suddenly" wasn't needed anymore, because everyone nearby to the Force Fielder and my Hunts(wo)man Soldier of Arachnos weren't taking much (if any) damage anymore.  So the Empath was just following us, with nothing to do.

 

So after we got to the next mission, I told the Empath in team chat to feel free to start offending at any time.

 

The Empath just stopped moving.

Stopped.

 

I figured they were trying to process what I'd said and compose a response, so I stopped advancing (which also made the Force Fielder stop advancing too) in order to give the Empath time to type their response without leaving them behind (unprotected).  The answer from the Empath was ... "What did you just say to me?"

 

To which I replied that they may be a DEFender, but they also had a secondary powerset and given how the team was running there was no reason they couldn't start OFFending while they were with us using their secondary.

 

There was another pause ... longer this time ... while I waited for answer.

Finally, after a long delay, the Empath replied in team chat ... "That may be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me."

 

And from then on, for the rest of the Task Force, the three of us (myself, the Force Fielder and the Empathy Defender) were practically inseparable.  Our Empath stopped "flying the gauges" as a healbot and started using their secondary powerset on anything and everything that came into range.  The entire team noticed the increase in tempo and pacing and everyone was a lot happier as a result.  Our Empath started "painting the town red" with contributions to our XP generation ... and was loving every second of it.

 

At the end of the run, the Empath sent me a tell saying that they had never before enjoyed a teaming experience as much as they had on that team, and they were inspired to keep playing their Empath even more now than they had been before.

 

 

 

And all it took was telling a Defender they didn't need to stay in their pigeonhole as a healbot.

Defenders have a secondary.

And they should feel free to use it.

You may be an Empathy primary ... but you can be MORE than just your primary.

 

Feel free to start offending at any time.

 

"That may be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me."

 

 

 

And that was my turn to be the one saying something nice to someone that got them to play their character better in a team, to the benefit of everyone.

And yes, receiving is pretty nice ... but so is the giving, when you can do it.

[0th Power]

When I team with a tank/brute that has that perfect pace (slightly ahead of the group from mob to mob, doesn’t try to herd the map, but positions to pack em close) I make sure to let them know that I appreciate their play. 

[Coyotedancer]

I have a very silly "concept character" named Bahir...

What I wanted, essentially, was a Photonic Sentinel.

 

So I made a human-only perma-Lightform Peacebringer.

 

He turned out to be a heck of a lot of fun to play and I'm very confident about jumping into the middle of things with him, leading to one team dubbing him the 'Fearless Fuzzball of Fury'. 

 

Apparently they'd never seen anyone play a PB quite like that before. 

Or at least, they hadn't seen one do that and survive. I got some "well dones". XD

 

(And yes. Bahir has a collection of KB-to-KDs in his build. I'm not a monster. )

 

 

Edited June 24, 2020 by Coyotedancer

[Doc_Scorpion]

2 hours ago, Redlynne said:

Defenders have a secondary.

And they should feel free to use it.

<nods>  All of my Defenders are built to be Offenders at need.  They're much more fun to play that way.

Back on Live that confused/annoyed people (of which there were more than a few) who equated "Defender" with "healbot".  Of course, that wasn't helped by the not insignificant number of Defenders who were healbots.  But there were also many who welcomed it.  A good Offender is much more than a low-rent blaster.

Which leads to my story...

Double XP weekend, and I'd been pushing hard to get the Doc (a rad/rad Offender then and now) through the 40's.  I'd gotten up on Saturday morning, and ended up on a team that was more or less stable for about six-seven hours.  Got several nice compliments for knowing when to heal/debuff and when to blast.  I really needed to take a break and get a shower, some calories, and bit of quiet time, and said so in team chat.  They told me to write down the names of X, Y, and Z (all members of a particular supergroup that were running the team) and message them when I got back and they'd re-invite me.  Thought they were just being nice, and thought nothing more of it.

Told 'em it would be an hour or so and logged.

Got back on after about an hour and a half and sent a /tell to X.  No response.  Then to /Y.  No response.  Then to Z - and got an immediate team invite.  When I expressed surprise that a slot was immediately available (remember, Double XP weekend)...  "Oh, we've been playing a seven person team hoping you'd be back soon".

[JnEricsonx]

1 hour ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

<nods>  All of my Defenders are built to be Offenders at need.  They're much more fun to play that way.

Back on Live that confused/annoyed people (of which there were more than a few) who equated "Defender" with "healbot".  Of course, that wasn't helped by the not insignificant number of Defenders who were healbots.  But there were also many who welcomed it.  A good Offender is much more than a low-rent blaster.

Which leads to my story...

Double XP weekend, and I'd been pushing hard to get the Doc (a rad/rad Offender then and now) through the 40's.  I'd gotten up on Saturday morning, and ended up on a team that was more or less stable for about six-seven hours.  Got several nice compliments for knowing when to heal/debuff and when to blast.  I really needed to take a break and get a shower, some calories, and bit of quiet time, and said so in team chat.  They told me to write down the names of X, Y, and Z (all members of a particular supergroup that were running the team) and message them when I got back and they'd re-invite me.  Thought they were just being nice, and thought nothing more of it.

Told 'em it would be an hour or so and logged.

Got back on after about an hour and a half and sent a /tell to X.  No response.  Then to /Y.  No response.  Then to Z - and got an immediate team invite.  When I expressed surprise that a slot was immediately available (remember, Double XP weekend)...  "Oh, we've been playing a seven person team hoping you'd be back soon".

My first and only Defender is a rad/rad, recreated from my original Defender back in the day. 

[TheOtherTed]

The best compliment I got 1) was shared with a scrapper, and 2) almost got me killed.

 

I was playing my TA/Archery defender "Street Justice" (well before the powerset was released).  I can't remember if it was on Triumph or Virtue.  Full team of 8, no idea what the mission was, just that it involved Freakshow.  Lots and lots of Freakshow.  The team is cruising along, when an elevator dropped us into one of the hottest of hot door situations I'd ever seen.  Several instantly died, the team leader sounded the retreat, and that left my character, one scrapper (I'll call him "Random Man" - so sorry I forgot the name), and one rad (?) defender.  The rad stuck very close to the elevators - my guess is she wanted to leave, but was overcome by morbid curiosity.

 

The scrapper was doing what scrappers do.  I popped some defensive insps and threw out every arrow I had, then played "distraction" for Random Man (i.e., running around like an idiot with a train of Freaks on my tail).  No idea how much time passed - it felt like a lot - before the leader said "Get out of there!  There's too many Freaks!"  At which point the defender said, "Not for Random Man and Street Justice."

 

I wanted so badly to type "Damn right!" in chat, I even hit "Enter" to start typing.  That's when I realized I was deep in the red.  After spouting a quick "wwwaaasssddd", I managed to pop a green just in time.

 

Then the rest of the team showed up.