We see a LOT of Santa Claus hero characters running around Atlas Park this time of year.
( But I think they have it all wrong... )

Merry Christmas, everyone. :)

I am a 42 mo veteran and had heard of people soloing tfs, particularly Positron since it doesn't have an AV.. and I decided to try it myself, as a challenge. I enlisted Sofacat, my 44 db/wp scrapper and did it over a period of 3 days. It was painful at times, esp in the horrible Rollister mish (yuck!) and also when I almost finished the second last mish (a densely packed defeat all) and my pc BSODed thanks to Vista. So then I had to re-do the entire mish which was super frustrating :P Anyway, I am glad I persevered and succeeded :-)

Okay, I was absent for awhile, I didn't even know Traps became a Defender primary. I've had a Traps mastermind, and enjoyed the set for support, but how the heck do you play it as a primary?

I'd love to hear your experiences, because I have a few concepts (Traps/Ice), I'd like to know if I'd be actually helpful to a team, or if it'd be a joke to try.

Do the veteran's awards only get handed out on regular business days?  I was due to get my 60-month on the 19th, which was Saturday.  I suppose if I don't log in and receive it tomorrow (Monday), I'll contact support.

Exercise: Winter break has started for dance class and I'm taking it as an opportunity to challenge myself on that exercise goal. Today I started practicing my footwork while walking to other parts of the same floor of the house, and am planning to keep doing that (stairs are kind of out) whenever I remember. This is bellydance so it's not really a challenge to move through the house this way; if any neighbors happen to see in the window, they'll think I've joined the Ministry of Silly Walks.

Diet: Honestly, still not so good. I'm getting some more protein but not-very-proteinated pizza is still a major part of the diet. 4 carbonated drinks this week, so that's on the decrease but I want to do better than that.

Sleep: This week kicked my butt again, and I have yet more medication changes to try to help. I think the major barriers are a job for the prescription side of things, so I'm going to drop this out of my goal categories for the time being. If mindset and/or willpower play a more obvious role in the future, I can always add it back in.

Skin Care: 2 servings of water in the past week and getting more determined to increase that as I see my skin breaking out again. Regular moisturizing still isn't making the eyelids and under-eye skin stop being dry and flaky; I'm tempted to put the moisturizer jar in a plastic baggie to prevent messy explosions and just carry it in my purse.

Greetings, heroes!

Tomorrow night starting at 8pm EDT/5pm PDT the crew of the Galactic Pelican will be on a Winter Event spree in Atlas Park, starting with the usual Present-clicking, frosties-clearing to summon a Winter Lord. We welcome and encourage any of you who would like to join us, as we'll go through the zone event at least twice.

We usually run a full team, but for Monday night we'll split up and host multiple teams so everyone gets their chance for the rewards.

We begin gathering at about 7:50pm EDT. Meet us behind City Hall starting close to 8pm if you want to be included on the hunt. If you show up late, I will be on either Subliminal Zeus or Sunwind Striker, so send me a tell and I'll get you on a team.

See you there tomorrow night, and The Lord Winter won't know what hit him!

Fellow villains and evil-doers!

I wish to move myself, a Fire/Rad Corrupter, from Liberty to Justice or Triumph... but my name has been taken by some no-good heroes on those servers!

I globally contacted the Justice owner, but the Triumph owner gives no /getglobalname return... very odd (so I cannot contact them). Jaunts across the way being free now, I'd like to take that opportunity whilst available, and who knows if I will hear back from the name-holders before the end of the opportunity, so I am most likely due for a rename.

I am the villainous version of Virtue Rad/Rad Defender Burning Skies, a messenger sent to the past to try to get Earth residents to clean up their polluting ways and prevent nuclear destruction of the planet. No one believed me, of those that listened. I was shamed and scorned, mocked and ignored. So I set to scorch the earth myself!

Anyhow.

I implore your assistance in coming up with a new designation for myself. I would like to have some allusion to my past heroic self in this name. My Fire blasts are the same irradiated green-yellow that my Radiation powers are, and this is my appearance.

Does anyone have any tips or tricks to share for getting a gold-medal time on the Winter Event ice-chute toboggan run thing in Pocket D?  Does it just come down to having Super Speed or getting a Speed Boost and having the luck to not skid off the chute at any point while cornering?  Picking up again from last year's practice, I've been able to get my time down to around 54 seconds, but cutting the last few seconds to get the time down to under 50 is just killing me.  Just wondering if there's something "obvious" that I'm missing as a way of imparting some momentum down through my character's feet to keep him/her firmly on the track.  

So I just had an odd team breakdown moment, and I wanted to take the opportunity to poll the comm about the situation that caused it . . .

I was playing an AR/Traps corruptor on Triumph (a redside ghost town at the best of times), and had teamed up with a Dark Brute to run radio missions. They had all gone fine, and we had seemed pretty well in synch with only occasional strategizing required. I should probably mention that I'm used to playing with familiar LJ teammates much of the team, where a basic follow-the-leader, one-group-at-a-time strategy is pretty consistently followed. And even more of the time I'm playing in a duo where we have nearly identical play styles, and can more or less read one another's minds in terms of strategy, so I occasionally err on the side of too little communication when PUGing.

( The saga continues . . . )

I rolled two Radiation Emission characters, one Rad/Ice Defender and a Grav/Rad controller, which I enjoy very much so far (I have a thing for Rad, rolled several Radiation Blast toons before).

The Controller just hit lvl 12, but my Defender is lvl 30 now and I need some advice for Em Pulse. I'm not sure if I should take it, it's special against Robos what is nice for sure, but I doubt I'll fight many Robos.

The Controller is running with an Cold/Rad Defender, the Defender with an Ele/Ele scrapper.

So my question is: does it any good besides being uber against Robos? Is it worth to take, just nice to have or a must-have?

Thanks for any advice in advance.

I'm currently building a Crab Spider VEAT that won't be taking any of the Crab attacks.

Crazy, I know, but there's a story reason for it (I have 3 other Crab toons that take full advantage of the attacks, pets, or little of both).

He joined Arachnos to pay off his bills and be able to legally blow stuff up.

But he was assigned to a supply base and was bringing and sending equipment to bases all around day in and day out.

Kinda like an Arachnos version of a convenience store delivery man; forever putting stuff on the shelves and taking down what's no longer usable.

But he worked hard, and after years of getting nowhere he was finally promoted to be a Crab Spider! :D

. . . .And was promptly assigned to another supply base.

Worse, his Crab Armor isn't even armed with the basic weaponry they get; it's loaded with low-grade low-yield gravity beams to assist in lifting crates.

. . . .at least his paycheck is better.

Anywho, that's why he'll be a Crab with no backpack attacks. He'll be taking nothing but the rifle attacks, Crab secondary and all 3 pets available to Crabs.

I've got the majority of what I want him to take planned out in Mids, but what I need help with is a couple powers.
How well would a Wolf/Crab build function with Combat Training: Defense (3 slotted with Karma) and Fortification 4 slotted, or trading CT:D for Pummel, and shifting 2 slots away from Fort so Pummel can have 4 Mako's Bite and the Pounding Slugfest: Chance for Stun proc.

The tightness of the build requires not taking Bayonet, which isn't too much of a loss for a ranged Wolf build; my Wolf/Bane toon is doing quite well without it and having his own Pummel on Auto (I love the Webby'nade, Venom'nade, Frag'nade, Heavy Burst combo, it makes so many mobs melt!).

But I'm not sure what would provide a better mostly-solo/light teaming toon, the melee attack or extra ranged defense.

I follow this comm pretty closely, but I don't read the live forums. This seems like the kind of topic to get brought up on the boards, but instead of just hearing a bunch of wailing, I'd rather read the more sophisticated speculation of, well, you guys.

We've seen powerset proliferation, and we've played with non-standard NPCs in MA, but I want to know: If you could make a character with any powersets for your primary/secondary, what would you pick? And more curiously, do you think it would completely hose the game balance, or turn out to be unplayable?

Personally, I'd love to make a Martial Arts/Energy Blast character and be the king of knockback. But completely abandoning a secondary pool would leave me squishy and vulnerable, perhaps debilitatingly so.

(In a more realistic world, I wouldn't mind seeing some Scrapper primaries adapted to fit the Blaster secondary motif)

Is it just me or do your SG mates feel like,... more like real friends and family than a lot of your real life people you know? Or am I playing to much?

Hi! Just as a fyi, I changed one of my globals from @also crantz to @oxomoco, so if you see that asking stupid questions, the response isn't 'stupid n00b', it's 'stupid crantz'*

Off to find the global name post.


*I will cry if you say this.

In my free transfer induced glee, I logged in to check my Virtue characters and there are several villains I'd like to transfer. Here's the problem: Where do I put them?

Widow Gabrielle (50 NW) is moving to Infinity so I can get in on Pentacle goodness.

Operative Hesson (33 CS) and Electric Play (25 COR) could both get me a leg up on doing high level content with friends. I've rolled characters on each side for every server but the only ones I've leveled very far are both sides on Virtue and red on Liberty.

So, friends, what servers look good to people who've also played with me (@Captain Bishie) on Virtue? Or are there any servers where people who like to team in the 6:30pm-10:30pm EST range are wanting for DPS?

ETA: Looks like Justice for OpHess and Triumph for Elec, based on the amount of activity said to be on those servers. Thank you, hive mind. ^_^

From the boards:

( Merry Happy! )

Now I can finally move some characters en masse like I've been wanting! Happy holidays, everyone!

Comments open at the city_of_heroes post here.

From the boards:

( Merry Happy! )

Now I can finally move some characters en masse like I've been wanting! Happy holidays, everyone!

Hey guys..
I won't get into the long boring detail of my RL friends leaving the game and leaving me all alone... but now I'm look for a new SG(s).
I've been playing since a few months after the game launched and am very good with support type characters, decent with tanks/scrappers.
Most of my toons are on Triumph right now, but in the last 6 months I've made a couple on Freedom and want to continue with those toons as well.
My play times are erratic and it's difficult for me to schedule time aside right now for things like TF's due to my work and school schedule. I'd like to join SG's that are fairly active and are constantly looking within their own SG first for teammates.

I do have a couple villains, yet haven't played much of it in the last year or so due to my RL friends just wanting to play heroes.
I have 1 lvl 50 villain on Triumph... but am more interested in getting into villains on Freedom. So if u have a good VG group on that server, I may be willing to join with my lowbies.

global: @bothsides

Thanks!

The hubby found this. Cracked me *up*

Ascendant-Os

So I was in Kenya for work purposes. Long story, and that's beside the point anyway. The point is, maybe I'd been away from the game a bit too long, because in the middle of one of the marketplaces, I make a sinister discovery...

( Some archvillain's got a lot of 'splainin to do... )

Exercise: None. >.>

Carbonation: 7 carbonated drinks over the past week. Unhealthy crutch is unhealthy. On Saturday I even picked a carbonated drink without thinking about it, then realized what I was doing right after I took the cap off. That was a kick in the pants.

Diet: Still not good. Way too much carb, not enough protein.

Sleep: Improving greatly - weekends excluded, heh - but this is probably more due to new medication kicking in than to any effort on my part. I actually feel tired when I'm supposed to. This is nice.

Skin Care: Moisturizing regularly but still dry on my eyelids and just below the eyes. Didn't drink any water at all over the past week; this may be part of the problem.

I noticed a definite improvement in mood over the course of the week and got a lot of stuff done today after having vegetated for at least a week and a half, so I'm hoping that was the bottoming-out and things will get better from this point on. My resistance to caffeine is still holding, even when I'm desperate for something fizzy and haven't brought any of my own pop to work, so I'm optimistic that once the other changes become habit I'll be more resistant to lapses if/when I have more happy fun depression time.

Lady Grey Task Force
Level 45-50, Apocalyptic badge and 37 merits.

9pm ET/6pm PT. More info here.

See you there!

Tonight at 9pm ET/6pm PT I'll be hosting a:

Lady Grey Task Force
Level 45-50, Apocalyptic badge and 37 merits.

I dunno who I'll be bringing yet, but I'm leading toward Spente le Stelle, my 47 Rad/Pain Corrupter.

Meet in the bay by the shooting range. It has target practice dummies! (Also, Serpent Drummer.)

If you want Vanguard merits, make sure you've done Levantera's first mini arc; it shouldn't take you more than 10mins. I'd like to get rolling close to time, so start arriving 10-15mins before go time.

This is a co-op TF, so both factions welcome. It's a pretty heavy endeavor tho', so I hope to see a mix of support and damage on the team.

No sign-up required, but it does require 8 to start. Feel free to comment. Come get yer fill of Rikti!

x-posted to city_of_heroes