Just had to say it. I had a great time on Thursday. Having Troy playing as ColdFusion made a big difference in the team dynamic. It's also nice to see our characters rounding out as they go up in level. We are getting a nice mix of control and damage going, too. Mr. Eclipse is dealing some nice holds now and Radiation Infection is a noticeable debuff. Cadabra is doing some nice damage now and that Touch of Fear power is proving very useful. Having a Tank is also a nice touch, as ColdFusion is adding some aggro control that's going to be useful and keep Cadabra out of the hot-seat for a portion of the fight. Watching Cadabra and ColdFusion go to work was great.
On top of that, the post-respec Galvanic Guardian is a damage machine now. I'm seeing a side-effect of the Electrical attacks is that they have a chance of returning about 1/2 the endurance cost for the power when it hits. This helps his blue bar a lot in sustained fights. It also is useful because when Hasten is up (which it is a fair amount of the time), he has a non-stop attack chain between Charged Bolts, Lightning Bolt, and Ball Lightning. Zapp is nice for pulling and as a filler when other stuff is recharging, but the long animation time and fact it can be interrupted makes it used a bit less than other attacks once we get rolling. The new Defiance really favors a fast attack chain, and being able to 2-shot minions with a fast 1-2 attack chain is great. It's a BIG change of pace to sit back and just plink away, but the ability to watch the fight unfold and select targets accordingly is really neat.
I'm really looking forward to us hitting Level 15 on the characters, as that will open up Faultline and it's mission arcs to us. Lots of neat missions there with AVs and some great story-lines. Also, it has a selection of enemies that will be easier for us to handle. Vahz (that we fought a lot of early on) just utterly and completely suck. They do a lot of toxic damage that just about nobody resists, and the Reapers and Mortifactors have that dart attack with a big -Recharge effect to it. And that cleaver HURTS when it connects. And the Eildolon are plain nasty as well with the debuffs and stuns. Easy to see why people dislike them. We actually did very well considering the hordes we faced. In Fauline, you fight some Vhaz, but mostly Lost (who deal a lot of Smashing/Lethal that Ice Tanks have strong defense against) and some Arachnos (again, Ice Tanks do pretty well). As long as we don't get overwhelmed with too many opponents, we should be good there.
That brings me to another assessment of the team's development. We are going to be most effective vs fewer but stronger opponents. Cadabra has some great attacks, but the one AoE is only a short cone with Shadow Maul (discounting Death Shroud). ColdFusion will pick up Whirling Hands and Icicles (maybe), but neither are "knock your socks off" AoEs. Mr. Eclipse has some nice control elements and group effects, but AoEs aren't his thing either really. And Galvanic Guardian has Ball Lightning and Short Circuit (melee PbAoE), but again, neither are "uber" AoEs. What our foursome does have is some great single-target capability. That means that we'll do much better against say 6 +1 con enemies than we will 9 even-con ones. I was pulling missions one up from Heroic to get more enemies. Next time I'll bump it up one more for less enemies, but harder ones. Should suit our group much better and make missions smoother.
Anyway, all said, Thursday was a hoot. We are all finding our groove and it's going to be nice to watch our prowess grow as we level and our characters flesh out more. Good stuff. Really good stuff.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Great Tight Night!
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2 comments:
Yeah, I was pretty happy. With Troy whipping out the foreground tanking, it allowed me two things. It allowed me to take an extra second here and there to size upboth of my cones to hit more than one NPC at a time. Before I thought that was a problem in my play style vs. my screen POV. Now I relaize that much of it was the rate at which I was trying to both get in the mix and keep a little aggro when I could. It also allowed me a little jump around in the group to get to a few more important NPCs. Sure, that kept me out of range here and there for heals, something I'll keep an eye on, but it was something I hadn't been able to do before (both because of running back to hit single targets and because our previous missions were a lot of indoor stuff 2ith little room to jump).
I like what Eclipse is doing. I wasn't able to say that befor beyond cool factor because as we'd all been logged i together, I couldn't much see the functional difference. Thuirsday, when Eric got on a little late, the difference from before to after was enormous. Thank you man!
GG, respec'd or no, I knew was going to love the new version of blaste defiance. On Fjord, it's completely changed how he chooses groups solo and on team. And for him, it's still pre-new respec I have planned. Yowsa!
I had a lot of fun guys. For the record, when you all let me go to bed, it was the first good night's sleep in several I'd gottne. Thank you.
Don't overly worry about heals, as the /Radiation secondary has a PbAoE heal, but it's a relatively weak one as far as the support secondaries go. /Radiation is primarily a debuffing set, with Radiation Infection and Enervating Field as the 1-2 punch for the set, it's great. Seems to me that Eric (like all of us) is working to balance and find synergy between the primary/secondary for his powerset. Given that, focus on your own playstyle/development as we all tend to take cues from each other well. Eventually we'll get to the point where we are all playing to our strong suit at the same time (like we did with Caca/Mantlet/Orleans).
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