If Ms Ann was a Titan Weapons Tanker...

Ahh... my main.. the first ever forum signature on the left. I super enjoyed the Invulnerability primary set, but I was never terribly happy with the secondary.

So as the title says, what if Ms Ann was an Inv/Titan Weapons Tanker as opposed to her Battle Axe? Time to have some fun with Mid's!

I went ahead and slotted it as if Inf was no object. Since the game isn't live, it's not like Inf matters at this time anyway. So the build is similar to, but slightly better than Ms Ann's sunset build, though marginally.

I left the Dull Pain power up to show you that it's about 20 seconds away from perma DP. With Hasten on, it does indeed achieve perma status, but since Hasten isn't perma itself (it's close, about 18 seconds away), you can't really call any of this actually "permanent." It's fun to try to get there though. Besides, I like to have a little bit of situational flair to my DP clicks.

You can see from the status and misc. buffs that she is a very solid tanker. Similar to her sunset build, there was a lot of focus on building up a bit of Psi resistance.

Sometimes I wonder if I am just overdoing it just a bit with the Psi. Part of the problem is that when you're tough in almost all encounters, and then face a Psychic enemy that cuts you down to shreds, you kind of start to overcompensate in that area. Or at least, I know I did.

If the city came back, yes, I would re-roll Ms Ann, but like I mentioned before, she will likely have something other than Battle Axe. I'm not sure what yet, but Titan Weapons would be a good contender.

Mid's Data Link

Forum Signatures of My Characters

Told ya I was going through some old pictures. I found the forum signatures files. There is an evolution of sorts because the mains will change.. and/or I took some better pictures. Unfortunately, I kind of stopped being too active on the forums for me to continue editing the signature. Hence, why there's really not many images on the Tanker Project Tanks. Also, if I recall, some of the alts were actually re-rolled/deleted entirely for whatever reason. Ah well, so it goes.

So here's a post for the memories:

Updates on the "City of" IP Buyout

I received an email asking if I had any updates about the ongoing talks on the IP buyout.

Nope. No special information here. I know as much as everyone else does. 

I do want to admit that I check the Titan Network forum threads like every single freaking day, several times a day. So if you're looking for updates, it's best to check there too:

• And the Mask Comes Off  
• New Efforts

I am sure when someone hears about something concrete, or if there is news posted up on Titan, that everyone will know and it will spread like wildfire.

Also relevant is this article on MMOGames.com, where they had interviewed Nate Downes right after the big reveal.

Other Speculation

Yes, there is speculation on the whole Nexon doing a hostile take over of NCSoft that may slow down the progress, but meh. Who the heck knows? These business dealings often do not make sense to me. Why wouldn't they bother selling the IP in the first place? Money is important, right? So it boggles my mind. Everything is just speculation.

So right now, no news is good news, right? Just wait patiently folks.

I did recently re-watch the City of Heroes Post-Mortem with Matt "Positron" Miller on YouTube... and he did mention that if it did succeed, and the buyer looked at the source code, that he can't imagine how they'd figure out the code, how the original team was able to make it to work. So yeah, that's a bit worrisome. If it does go through, I hope that they can get some of the original developers back to sort out the mess. I hope the investors have a lot of money!

P.S. I occasionally buy lottery tickets.. and if I won like 100 million bucks, I would spend so much money to get COH back! Fun/funny to think about..

Spiritual Successors

For those who are not in the know, there are several projects under way 

• The Phoenix Project for the City of Titans - unfortunately, I didn't contribute when the campaign was going on. I was in between jobs at the time and it was a little tough to spare some extra cash. I wish they would run another kickstarter campaign. I think I have about $500 bucks to give right now! 
• Atlas Revival Project - This is a team of people building the various CoH neighborhoods in the Unreal 4 Engine. Looks great (pics on Facebook). Looks like they may work with the City of Titan folks since they're both using the same engine. Hope it works out. 
• Valiance Online - I checked out the game in the pre-alpha state.. it's still obviously in development, but what we see now is looking fantastic! It does really have a CoH feel about it. The team is doing a really great job. The other bit of good news is that the game has been greenlit on Steam. 
• Heroes and Villains - I haven't really seen much in terms of new developments. 
• Titan Icon - Basically if you really want to play around with the character creator again and jump around in an empty city for old times sake. 

Let me know if there are other projects in the work if I miss any. 

Other Games in the Meantime

My super duper, awesome, wonderful boyfriend bought me/upgraded my computer for XMas. He's a serious gamer so he took pity on me and helped me out on that aspect of my life. So my gaming life is pretty fantastic. I wish I had this computer around back when CoH was alive. It would have been glorious.

So in the meantime, what games am I playing to get my mind off of CoH?

I'm playing Final Fantasy 14, The Secret World, Champions Online, The Sims 3 (not 4, bleh), Heroes of Might & Magic 3, 5, and 6, and Fantasy Life (one of the most fun game I have played in a very long time!).

Of course, this is if I even have the time to play games. Aside from the usual day job and daily life things, I'm also in the middle of working on a graduate degree so much of spare time is spent on that. In between semesters, however, I do get a little fun in!

Anyways, here's to hoping for some good news soon!

Meet Ambrozia, a Controller!

Sadly, we have another half written post. Ambrozia was a Plant & Rad Controller. Normally, I would shy away from Controllers, but the Rad Emissions secondary was what kept me playing her. I enjoyed it so much with my Corruptor, Thermonuclea, that I went ahead and created Ambrozia after TNuke had leveled up to 50.

In a similar vein to Theophelia (my Grav/Kin), I was only able to keep playing Ambrozia, because I liked the secondary powers so much.

In retrospect (though I had already known it at the time), Controllers do not really fit my play-style. It's generally too slow for me. Certain secondary sets are what saves it for me.

At any rate, I was able to level Ambrozia up to a surprising 35 (based on her CIT profile) before the sunset. At least the plant set had more damage than the Gravity set, so Ambrozia was solo-able sometimes (without wanting to gouge my eyes out due to the usual slow solo-Controller pace). I do recall playing with her in teams quite a bit. Radiation Emissions is just so darn useful.

As for her backstory... I don't remember. I'm not sure if she even had one. Her CIT profile has her with a Science background, so something with that? It's more like the Plant Control was a new set, there were some costume pieces I wanted to try out, and Radiation Emissions was fun and green, so why not? Sometimes characters don't really need a concept to be born.



Much like in Annzebub's post, it looked like I was supposed to post her intended build, which was not uploaded when I started the draft.

However, I just went ahead and built one for tickles and giggles (always fun to fire up Mid's, even though I can't even test it out after building it). Had Ambrozia reached level 50, she would have been shelved and taken out sparsely when needed. With that in mind, her build would have been on the functional, but cheaper side. There are like two purple IOs.. but it's for Confusion, in which I would have operated under the assumption that Confusion purples most likely would be cheap since it is not as widely demanded.

Click to embiggen. 

Not bad for cheap IOs.

If given the chance, would I roll her as she is again? Probably. She would be low on my priority list, however. Basically, my mains are Tanks and sometimes Brutes that I would have multiple alts that I would switch around based on the level needed. Solo projects would be MMs or Scrappers which I would alternate between a high level solo alt and low level solo alt, just to have a little variety in playstyle when soloing. Team projects would be either Defenders, Corruptors, Controllers, or Blasters which I may have 2-3 that I would play, depending on the needs of the team. Dominators, WS, PB, Soldiers, and Widows are played with here and there, just to check it out. I've never really stuck it out with any of these so who knows how I would have categorized them. So basically, Ambrozia would have a lot of competition for my attention. I'd get to her eventually, but not too soon.

Download Mid's Data Link for Ambrozia

Meet Sixty, Kinetics/Psy Defender

Funny, Sixty was one of my favorite alts but I never really posted much about her here. I got her to 50 pretty quickly after I rolled her which was before I started this blog. Once IOs hit the market, I slotted her up very nicely as well and kind of shelved her until needed. She's on of those alts that didn't stay shelved long, so don't feel too bad for her. I played her quite a bit and even considered converting her to a low-hanging-fruit badge hunter when I wanted to kill time. I think she was also my first level 50 non-Tanker.

I really enjoyed playing Kinetics. As you know, I typically play as a Tanker in teams, because I like being able to set the pace of the game. I've had random pick-up folks join my team for a mission and promptly leave right after because they could not or did not like the very fast pace that I tanked at. Oh well, different strokes for different folks.

So speaking of which, it's frustrating for me to be on a slow team (or some may call it, playing at a "leisurely" pace) and not being able to do anything about it as a support character or even as a DPS (other than to complain). Not so when I have Kinetics in my pocket. It's just one of those sets that kind of forces the team to move quickly. The Speed Boosts and the Fulcrum Shifts just light fires in people. I loved it! (though I do recall that one time a teammate requested that I do not SB him because it was too much for him to handle. I left that team shortly thereafter.)

And as mentioned, Sixty did not tend to stay shelved long. She was basically my go-to when a support character was needed for whatever TF was going on and that the Tanker role had already been claimed. I actually spent some moola on the girl. Here's her build as of 3/23/10.

Not a bank buster.

And the bits on her survival. Not bad when all the toggles are up. 

She was a huge boon to her teams.

I think this is her first solid build (as of 3/23/10), but I had tweaked her a bit since to include some more purples and PVP IOs. Even so, you know this posted build actually served her pretty darn well and was not terribly expensive either. I think the Kinetics set is just generally cheaper to slot for relative to the others out there.

The poser art that I did for Sixty. I really enjoyed making her textures. 

Her background (taken from what I posted on her in DeviantArt): Her real name is Chloe, she is the daughter of the celebrity super duo, Wonder Lad and Wonder Lass, both of whom are mutant super heroes. When Chloe was born, she didn't have any abilities or physical deformities. After tests were concluded, the doctors told her parents that she was normal. Throughout her childhood, even though her parents showed every bit of love and encouragement, Chloe still felt like she didn't live up to her parents' expectations, that she was a disappointment. (It didn't help that the tabloids often demeaned her due to her lack of powers and being the child of super celebrities after all) So life went on. She was a normal kid with totally abnormal parents. She never really accepted her circumstances. It was after college that she decided to become a reporter so she could be as close to the action as possible.

During her first investigation into the Family and their black market arms dealings, she was set up by them and taken hostage. The mob boss who had set her up was a telepathic that delighted in torturing her mind. In this torture, while she was fighting for her sanity was when her telepathic abilities manifest. After being bottled up for all her life, the trigger that the boss pulled in her mind erupted a psionic blast sending him into a stupor as well as those in close proximity. Because of such, she was able to walk away from the ordeal a bit shaken, but without a scratch and a whole lot happier after discovering that she was a super after all. It turns out that she is rather weak in psionic attacks or mind controlling, but what she lacks from that, she is able to compensate for her advanced telekinetic abilities.

All in all, she kind of has a typical story. I just super enjoyed playing her. Man, I miss this game.

Oh yeah, here's the data chunk for Mid's if you want to check it out, or click here for the data link.
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Meet Annzebub

This post was actually half written in my drafts folder. 

Annzebub: Demon/Thermal Radiation MM

If you can't already tell, she's the ying to Annzilla's yang. I don't think I have much of a backstory for the gal, much like Annzilla. It's more so that she just looks neat and fits a theme. 

I actually don't have any other information on her other than the above. I don't think I played her past level 30 actually. From what I recall, she was really mostly a solo toon and barely teamed at all.. or duo'ed with friends or family. It seems like I was about to show off her intended build in this post, but that screenshot was not downloaded. In the last few weeks, I was able to find some old Mid's files and Annzebub was not among them. Oh well. 

If I were to roll her again, I think I will shy away from the Thermal set. TR is too much H3aL0rz for me. 

I would rather provide the primary support in any other way than healing. There are all sorts of buffs, debuffs, and damage mitigation in the City. Why the heck would I limit myself to mostly just healing? Honestly, if I really wanted to play a healer, I'd start playing WoW or whatever other MMOs that requires the holy trinity (tank + heal + dps = boring!). 

I would rather go for something like Dark Miasma for Annzebub. That still fits thematically and seem way more fun. 

See her CIT profile for the lolz.

Super Duper Old Builds

As you know, I am looking up old screenshots and such. And I found these goofy things.

This was how one used to show off their builds. I don't quite remember when Mid's Hero Builder started, but I feel like they only came to the public's radar when IO's became a reality when you actually need to use tools to manage the increased complexity of the game.

Based on the image properties data, these images were created in 2006. Lol, good times.

Disco Fever Queen (8/20/06)

Ms Ann (5/15/06)

Sixty (6/28/06)

Theophelia (5/15/06)

Thermonuclea (8/20/06)

Zetsumei (8/20/06)

Annx (8/20/06)

The Stars of Virtue SG

After taking an extended break from COH (around 2009-10ish?), I came back to Virtue and looked for a new SG. I joined the "Stars of Virtue" for a period of time. Ultimately, they were too small, too new, and did not have the membership or activity to sustain the SG. Here's a picture for the memories.

I'm sure I wasn't much help, as I believe I was transitioning to a new job at the time and could not dedicate much time to the group.

About Supergroups/Guilds

I've learned from experience in CoH and in other games that it helps if you join the same group as someone you know IRL, particularly the group is already established. When you join the group, there's a vetting process, for both sides. Just because a group is large and well known, doesn't mean that it would be a good fit for you as a person and a player. It's sort of like looking for a new job in that respect.

A funny example would be that time I joined an "all girl" group. I thought it would be cool to get to know other girl-gamers like myself, but did not realize that the whole "all girl" thing only applied to one's character. Lots of pink and chat had so much "hugs" and "teehees" and /giggle and stereotypical things that goddamn tweens would do. They also didn't have a vent server. And ultimately, I found out that it was mostly a bunch of dudes with female characters with the breast slider on max, RPing as what they think women would be like. Yeesh.

My perfect group would be an active and friendly smallish-medium group that is established, but growing and are open to new members. The size is dependent on the actual activity of the group. It could be small but very active, or medium and mostly active. Teams and events getting filled up with group members is what makes or breaks a guild, I think. And like I mentioned, it helps if you were introduced to the group through an existing member that you know personally. But as long as they are open to new folks and want to help them, then why the heck not?

Some History on my Fan-Made Trading Cards

Back when I was playing, one of the things that kept me going was making trading cards for my characters. I got to play around with Photoshop and get to continue the fun outside of the game by creating a little something for myself. 

I am going through all my archives of content and found the ones that started it all. The trading cards for the Legends of Victory.. a SG that consisted of me and my two younger brothers. Ha!

View the deck here. I'll post up some others as soon as I find them and organize them.

Major Nostalgia

It started when I received an email from Brinkster about how they will be discontinuing their free hosting service and provided instructions on how to save the data. I had forgotten that I even had an account there.

I fired up the old site.. and low and behold, it was an old CoH site with instructions on how to use GuildPortal that I had made for my SG at the time. There was also my little RPish site, the one that served as the fake storefront for my "Comic Shop." I do have a few dummy domains lying about, and will have to see about uploading all the content there.. or somewhere reliable for fun and prosperity. You can imagine who wary I am of having another entity to save these things for me.

After all that, I became curious about CoH. Obviously, I knew that the game had closed its doors and that several projects were in the works to be a successor of sorts.

So I checked with old reliable, the Titan Network... and found this bit of news... And the Mask Comes Off and the companion post New Efforts!

Dang. That is great news.

Yeah, yeah, it's not like it's definitely going to happen, but this is the first real glimmer of hope.

Honestly, I think if the most recent effort doesn't work out, I also feel like it another group will try. It will get to the point where NCshit will have to give in eventually, even if it's ten years out. I think the CoH community is that persistent. What we ultimately get again might not be the original, but it will be something.

So with that little glimmer of hope, I started looking at this website, my old builds, screenshots... and everything. And damn, the memories came back in full force.

I really, really, really hope that the latest efforts will work. If it does, I will be back. I'll re-roll most all of my toons (probably not Ms Ann.. because well, BA is fine, but I need more damage =X).

In the meantime, please indulge me a little as I go through my nostalgia. I will be posting things soon. I figure why not? This is a great place to keep everything. Since Google owns Blogspot, hopefully, the likelihood of it shutting down isn't too great. I just want a place to hold my memories.