Villainish Drift

Drama aside, this weekend was good for precisely one thing: Mistress Macabre, ninja herder extraordinaire and wielder of diabolical traps, went from Threat Level 8 to Threat Level 12 in the course of a single day. This means that she finally has a Jounin to summon.

Let me digress for a moment. One of my two favorite heroes to play is Woods Cutter, a toon that’s generally agreed to be my “main.” He’s a Katana/Regen scrapper, and part of his charm is the visceral thrill of one-shotting minions with his badass uppercut sword attack.

The Jounin? He’s a baby katana scrapper. The first time I heard that distinctive “sshhhing!” sound effect I giggled like a madman. Of course, now I want to get to 24 so I can order two of those guys around. Bwahahaha!

The Mastermind AT is the only reason I picked up CoV in the first place, and it remains my AT of choice even though I have a soft spot for the Corruptor AT as well.

Stormy: Saturday night was Raid Night, and a barely successful raid to boot. Screenies are coming as well as discussing the failed raid a couple weeks ago. It’s hard to describe Yellow Death without screenies.

Rae: Worked Rae most of the time. She’s almost 5 levels from the current cap of 40. I also forgot how bad the mid 30’s slog was, and how time consuming it is. She’s about 2 bubs from 35 and her snipe power. It doesn’t help my xp gain if she’s spending a few hours each day working on badges.

Fire: I broke down, deleted Radiyana and rerolled an ice/fire Domi, aptly named Fire. Hindsight thought of the name Flame, so I dunno. FireVyxen or FlameVyxen. She’s in an SG already, so I think I’ll keep the name. Flame might be something else down the road. I don’t know yet. So far, ice/fire looks like it’ll be a blast to play.

Vyxen: Didn’t get much playtime with Vyxen. She was out long enough to sell enhancements and buy a few before a potential badgering opportunity arose. She’s still hovering at 8, and probably will because I want Rae to get to 40 before the level cap is raised.

In all of my time playing my higher level MM, she’s only faceplanted in an insanely stupid situation, like me seeing a pack of Gold Brickers and having Dark a kill or two away from the badge and getting cocky and faceplanting. Which, for 21 levels, playing a squishie, is very frelling good.

Until last night. The Twinlet and I were running the Dynamic Duo and a fellow SG-mate asked to team up with his stalker. Okay, sure. Plow through a mission or two until we agree to do his. He’s a level above us and set to the same difficulty level as us. Okay, fine. Get in the mission and we see nothing but (to the two of us) red and purple Sky Raiders and plenty of Porters. This means deep purple for our first tier henches and an interesting challenge.

An hour and a half later, the mission finishes, Dark faceplants 4 (or was it 5?) times, Sarge lost it a couple times and I was extremely frustrated fairly early on into the mission when it was apparent that two MM’s and a Stalker spelled disaster.

Part of it was the stalker inherent, part of it was adapting our playstyle on the fly, and dealing with a mob type that is going to be hellish for MM’s in general.

Note to self… when playing MM’s, small teams with Stalkers and Brutes is a Bad Idea.

I finally broke down and tried to find a suitable second costume for Fury the other day since she’s over 20 and has access to capes, so I figured that she should switch outifts.

Boy was I mistaken when I thought I could find something for her to wear. Sure, I’m pleased that she has the original skirts category grandfathered in, but even with that I couldn’t find a scrap of clothing for her to wear that I was happy with. Not a one.

I’m utterly spoiled by the new outfits in CoV, spoiled by the diversity and the fact that you can come up with something that involves little clothing in certain places and yet looks tastefully done. But unfortunately, on the skirts available in CoV, the belts clip into the skirts. Which means all my girls get pants or bikinis with fishnets and boots. Now if they’d make the capes that start at the waist as an option, I’d be happier.

I need to first mention that for some reason I thought the Winter Event ended on January 8th instead of the 2nd. Vyxen v2.0 got cheated out of her jetpack damnit!

Ahh yes, Vyxen v2.0. I deleted her and rerolled her as a Bot/Dark MM. So I now have two toons of the same exact flavor. My crazy reasoning? One of my Bot/Dark MM’s is strictly for duoing with the Twinlet, once we found two toons that we were comfortable playing together and I love the combination too much to be limited to casual play with her. So I did what any crazy person would do, rolled a second toon for my casual/frequent gaming.

Mind you Bots work surprisingly well with Mercs, and Dark is a damned useful secondary for managing pets’ health, not to mention Shadow Fall, which is turnng out to be a very handy group stealth power. Need to remember to slot a defense or two in that puppy. The speed penalty is better than that of Stealth. Dark can move around fairly quickly with SF on and sprint turned off. She also has Swift, but since I’m still unsure on taking Stamina on her, and might slot end reducers into her toggles, Swift is a good choice. And one less toggle on via Sprint to manage endurance with.

I was working on Vyxen v2.0 on Friday and ended up in a pickup group for faster xp and one of the twits who clearly didn’t know much about anything equated /Thermal with Healer as well as me and my MM secondary of /Dark. Let me mention that MM’s are not Healers. Nor are Corruptors. So what if the MM Dark secondary is exactly the same as the Dark Defender Primary? That doesn’t make MM’s Healers. It means I choose to macro-manage my pets instead of having to toss a moderate heal to each of em. Individually. Times the 3 bots I have now, and up to the maximum of 6. Er 7 once Dark/Vyxen each hit 38. I almost forgot about getting Dark Servant as the last /Dark MM power. Doeth on me.

But this pickup group is the same group that when they asked if I “really was a girl” and I replied in the affirmative did this:

Whatever. In the end, not the brightest group.

Going back to the Dark/Sarge duo. Dark’s now a few bubs from 18, and we got Sarge up a level or 4 over the weekend. I think from 12.something to 15, but I can’t remember offhand. We’ve also managed to run Dark’s missions and now Sarge’s with the difficulty cranked up with relative ease. I keep forgetting that what’s spawning white/yellow for me is spawning red/purple to the Twinlet, which is how easy and how well this duo is working together. No owner deaths (so far *crosses fingers*), and the occasional pet death. Soon they’ll balance out and wind up the same level. I’m certain that the third first tier hench is available at 18 *whimpers*, or at least that’s what my memory tells me.

I need to remember to change Dark’s bot naming scheme now that I have Vyxen following the scheme where the pet’s name is the first part of the Vyxen family names and the “Vyxen” part showing under the pet name (pet owner names now show up under the pet’s name so a pet name of Azhure will look like Azhure Vyxen).

Rae, darling Rae graduated to 32 last night and has her true pet, a giant Venus Fly Trap. That one’s a bit interesting as you don’t always see what damage the pet’s putting out, but the beastie will immobilize, has a ranged thorn attack and a melee attack that looks and sounds like it’s chomping on something. I can’t wait to see how well it does with more than 1 damage slot in it.

One of these days I need to sit down and write a plant/fire blastroller, er dominator guide. Why? Because I don’t think anyone else has, and because I keep tossing it about in the back of my mind.

Rae’s still hovering on 31 with a few bars to go til she dings 32 and can get her second pet power.

Dark graduated from 15 to 16 and I’m finding I like the combo of bots/dark for a MM a lot.

Vyxen graduated from 10 to 11. Bots/Poison isn’t appealing to me that much the more I play with it.

I’m liking the versatility of /Dark overall, I like the fact that I can heal myself as well as my bots in one go. Drawback to that is that if it misses target, there is no heal. Again, a tradeoff with a single target heal is that it’s exactly that and I would have to spam it 6 times (potentially) to heal each of my bots.

But I just realized how damned cool my naming scheme looks on Vyxen. I may just have to blow her up and rebuild her as Bot/Dark in the very near future.