Jophiel, I probably should have typed better last night (in my defense, I was trouncing evil and trying to keep my teammate alive). l2 and l4 were actually L2 (level 2) for Tinuviel and L4 (level 4) for Durak. At some point, I will add a blaster, ERG-1.
Pics look good, Toaster. I wondered what Culex was doing in the box. 
Woohoo, **CandidGamera ** is coming out to play! I should be on tonight after 9pm Central. I’m planning on playing Brainiac4, but if nobody else has a character on who can invite to C.E.C.I.L., I can swap to Super-Collider. I should play him anyway – he’s really close to 14 and Teleport. 
D-Odds, good to hear someone else is trying out rad/rad defender. Super-Collider is fun to play.
My thoughts on rad/rad so far at 13.8…
I recommend both Radiation Infection and Enervating Field – you can turn purples into whites with both running. Watch out for the End drain, though – Enervating Field in particular will run you dry if you try to keep it up all the time and do some shooting. I find myself putting the debuffs on, then running around healing, keeping the debuffs going and rarely attacking. If I am attacking, then either we’re in deep **** or the bad guys are folding so fast there’s no point to debuffing.
Radiant Aura is a must. Healing on you and others is always welcome. I wish there were enhancements for radius. I suggest going with healing enhancements and end reducers in this over recharge reducers. It recharges fairly quickly.
Mutation is somewhat useful – it lets you bring someone back at full strength in combat. This is excellent, but due to the long recharge timer (about 3 minutes, I think), you’ll only get to use it once or twice per mission. Be selective – if the whole party is in trouble and the tank goes down, raise him/her to cover the retreat. If you have a Dark defender and s/he goes down, raise him so s/he can use Howling Twilight and raise the group.
I have both Neutron Blast and X-Ray Beam. Aside from soloing, I find that I can’t keep up my debuffs and still use two attacks. If I had it to do over, I would consider skipping X-Ray Beam and putting additional slots into Neutron Blast instead. Of course, since X-Ray is “rays come from my eyes” it does have the extra coolness factor.
If anyone wants a low level Scrapper to adventure with, look me up as Box Car. He’s a level 4 scrapper katana/super reflexes. Not a member of C.E.C.I.L. since I already have my three members in there, but still up for a Marvel Team-Up now and again. Shoot me a tell!
sniff
I’m sorry to say that poor Culex is…no longer with us. In related news, please watch your brains and make sure they stay with you at all times.
What the? What happened to Culex? Sure, he was a little unstable, but… how’d he go? In a blaze of glory? Dish, Toaster!
I’m thinking Toaster’s clicky-finger meant to delete, say, “Gulex” or some other character, and Culex accidentally vanished into the ether of 1’s and 0’s. D’oh!!!
Mausmagill, I have actually had great luck the last couple of nights with pick-up teams in Perez. The group leader sometimes has to constantly kick/recruit/scold, etc. But if you’re level, say, 8-12, it’s a great hunting ground. Large 6-8 man teams are best.
Anyone check out the CoH site lately? Nifty trailer for City Of Villains! Yay! Coming 2005. Boooo!
But update one, coming soon, looks like it is going to be jam packed with goodies!
Nothing quite so simple. (And nevermind about the whole spiel, he’s back in action like never before, thanks to a handful of us and dying etc. The poor dear.
Caught the virus that turns people into Vahzilak on a mission. We’re talking not only the wasting disease, that gives you 80% endurance only, and very dampened regenerativity of hit points and endurance, so you can’t do much of anything. That coupled with the green gaseous mixture and the cloud of flies like other Vahzilak.
But he’s better now. Took four more successful pictures, too (I really suck at taking adequate pictures for no reason whatsoever), now that it seems others want to be captured on film.
And guys I’ve partied with, sorry if I piss you off by being so gung-ho. Just tell me to ease back on the throttle and I’ll say, only go for the tough guys, or the exploding guys, or the Mortificators, or whatever. I do follow orders very well, but without them, I’ll go for the clumps so I can cone attack 'em while not taking damage despite being aggroed.
I have another character, level 6 or 7, a Blaster named Megs. Only used on demand by others will low level characters. I’m in the process of making Joel Thorton and levelling him up. I’d like them both to be in CECIL if possible. Dark Melee Regeneration Scrapper, is Joel. Won’t give out a level yet for him, 'cause he’s in severe training mode when nobody is on in CECIL. Kinda developed to assist out in CECIL teamings that go on when I’m awake. He should be level tennish by tonight, I hope.
Toaster, do you do anything other than play City of Heroes? I consider 90-120 minutes a day to be extravagant for me.
Won’t be there tonight. San Jose cost me money (well, not really, but they prevented me from winning big) last night so tonight I have to go to ESPNZone and will Tampa Bay to win. 32 oz. beers will be flowing and hot wings will be plenty. I’ll leave fighting crime to Culex, Ryle, Volt Valkyrie, Brainiac4 et al for one night.
Friday night, I’ll probably try to level up my rad/rad defender, who is currently at the tender level of 2 awaiting her first assignment.
I’ll be playing tonight, but may not be playing C.E.C.I.L. characters. I have a buddy coming over for a play date – his machine at home is kind of wimpy, so he’s playing CoH on Dangerosa’s machine for now.
I’m actually playing an invulnerability/superstrength tanker (The American Legend) when paired with him. It’s rather a change for me, since I’m used to staying at range. Having to control mobs on foot at close range is… interesting. I’m using some of the tips **Max Carnage ** posted, which helps, and I do enjoy being able to take an immense amount of hits without getting in trouble.
Any other folks out there care to share tanking strategies with me?
Speaking of tankers, I want some input. When Justice Blues gets to 16, should I give him Taunt or Provoke for his next power. Taunt is more useful for solo, Provoke for team-ups and keeping aggro on me and off the backups. Any suggestions?
Lok
There’s a long thread on (those horrible) official boards at cityofheroes.com about how Provoke is one of the most powerful skills in the game. Even too powerful, with some folks complaining that it needs to be changed. And based on the number of times I got killed when the Nazis made it past you to get to me the other night, I’d lean towards Provoke. But I guess it depends on whether you think you’ll be doing a lot of high-level soloing, or more team leading with CECIL members.
Well Stone gets by on Taunt and Mudpots, which is an area of hot, sticky mud around him that does damage and slows the enemies - and makes them aggro on him too. One downside I’ve heard with Provoke is that if you don’t have really high armor and/or damage resistance you can get killed in a hurry, and then the mobs go after your teammates.
I made a 5th character the other day, named Vahz Subject 86. He’s a science defender, dark miasma/psychic blast. He was an early experiment in Eidolon creation by Dr. Vahzilok, but he rebelled, escaped, and is now on a mission to bring down the Vahz. After that’s done, he’ll have an identity crisis, resolve it after some soul searching, and continue fighting crime. Hmm, maybe I should have put that in a spoiler box…
Anyway, now I have one of each origin and archetype, for all your partying needs.
Okay, I have my third character ready to join the Ranks of CECIL. Her name is Majestyc. She’s a Natural Controller (Illusion/Kinetic). I’m still futzing with her backstory, but as it stands right now, she’s a trained stage illusionist who is avenging her father’s murder at the hands of the Fifth Column.
If I keep the hitting down, I have plenty of defense, being invulnerable and all. I don’t use all of them at the moment,especially when teaming with Ryle’s bubble guy, because they drain the endurance so badly. Makes it hard to hit. But if I am going to be more of a damage sponge, I don’t hit as often and power up the defenses. It is a trade off. Part of being a tank.
Lok
Well, I joined up last night. I’ve got Nightmaster, a Science Blaster. He’s at level 4, and was doing well until I got killed a couple of times last night. Oh well :).
I don’t know if you already do this, but turning off Sprint during battles is a near must for me to keep my endurance around long enough to surive a multiple opponent battle. I’ve heard on the CoH forums (horrible though they are) that Sprinting basically negates endurance preservation enhancements. Given my experiences last night, I can believe it.
Vahz mission in sewers. I got it last level, so the minion mobs were blue and almost always clumped as a Reaver, Cadaver and Embalmed Cadaver. I would try to kill the embalmed first, both to avoid the explosion damage and for the xp. Given the disorient effects on the mace powers, it’s fairly easy to kill them without them getting a chance to explode. Then the zombie (to stop vomit) and finally the reaver. With Sprint running, I was nearly exhausted during the Reaver fight and would sometimes lose defensive powers for lack of endurance. Turning off Sprint left me at about 40% endurance after the whole fight – a huge difference. This is with Pulverize having two slots with Endurance enhancements (both with multiple combines) and one slot of combined endurance enhancement in Bash as well. I’m seriously considering getting Swift (innate run boost) next time I get a power just so I can avoid using Sprint altogether.
Grouping, it’s probably not as important as you mainly need to hold their attention and soak the blows so you can just stop hitting. But, when soloing, you can’t afford to be getting exhausted messages as you try to inflict damage on the Nazis 
Jophiel is exactly right… I just rebuilt my tank (leveling is a LOT faster when you know what is going on), and I noticed that the tank goes through endurance a lot quicker than anything else I have played. I was out patrolling just to grind out a few levels and found things much better when I turned off all defensive powers when sprint was on… and turned off sprint when I turned on the defense to jump some bad guys… of course there pros and cons to this plan… if you run around like an idiot (like me 
) dashing around corners, or jumping over fences without checking for bad guys you can get busted pretty hard before you know you are in a fight…
went from the drawing board to level almost level 6 last night… I think I am gonna like the new, improved Verbena Beast! He is a mutant tanker, ice armor/Battle Axe (I love making the last hit on a bad guy and knocking over a car or something… axes rule)
Yes, Earthfall sincerely apologizes for that last night. He went aggro on the first bad guy he saw, and left the others in the lurch. :wally
BTW, Thanks Jim Beam for letting me follow you to the tram station in Steel Canyon last night. I don’t think I would have survivied.
That all is why I can’t play a Tanker. If I’m in the action, I’m going to be doing more than mostly standing around. Even with my Blaster, I’m really charge happy and run up next to the enemies and stuff. But that’s okay, I seem to do really well as a Scrapper, able to hold purple aggro bosses and stuff with the precious bubbles.
I swear, though, it’s more fun to run around acting like a moron with you guys instead of fighting. Harold and I are really good at that. I think JB wanted to strangle us last night, which is a good thing. I mean, it’s not like he could ever reach. Putting some pics of up last night’s action on my list in a few minutes, and later today I’ll have a set of Harold’s.
Is anybody else having trouble taking in-game screenshots, where all the speech bubbles and text and stuff isn’t on the images? I mean, obviously it’s not a problem for me, I’m using GrabClipSave to sort and label them, I’m just curious if there is some setting in the game regarding it that I was missing.
Oh, and if anybody else is fixin’ to join up with CECIL, you can now send Culex a buzz and I can recruit you in. And I’m always willing to guardian angel low level characters (stand around and watch and kill things if you get hurt and need to run).
Also, Earthfall just has to learn to disengage and follow orders (just back up to stop Following if you are, and click to retarget another, or press Escape to stop targeting one, get close to another, and press an attack to retarget the closest). I managed to survive the purple aggro because I am leet. But I don’t want to do it again.