What's Up

Okay, so I can post pictures and video, but why not sound? Because I'd really like to inflict on everyone else What's Up, by 4 Non Blondes, the infinitely annoying 90s song that's now stuck in my head because of the post title.

Anyway.

Hey, I made a tank. WP/SS. Since everyone's seen her and played with her now, I can talk about it. Alastrina Sylvanie. "Alastrina" means "defends mankind," in Celtic, and seems pretty appropriate for a tank, and for the freedom-fighter bent of her character. "Sylvanie", by the way, is also Celtic, meaning "of the woods," but in this case, I'm just duplicating the name from Ellianne Sylvanie, my deleted elvish archery blaster. To make things easy, she'll be refered to as Trina from here on in. Thanks to one of the longest lasting PuGs ever-- even if half of it: Keen, Mason, and myself, wasn't exactly a PuG-- she's about four bubbles into 21. In lower levels, she was almost deleted. I remember one notable PuG where about every group was a death. Probably, though, the levels of enemies was too high, and the team just wasn't up to the challenge. Her survivability is much better now, possibly in factor to DOs and more primary powerset powers. I can't wait to see the numbers from Rise to the Challenge with SOs. I love watching the regen numbers climb while she's in the middle of a group of enemies.

But how am I doing with playing a tank? I have no idea. Honest. Half the time in that PuG, we had three tanks. No, really, three tanks. Part of the time, two. Only toward the end was Trina the only tank. And then we were fighting enemies that were white and blue con to me. No one has yet said, "lol, lrn2ply, n00b," so maybe I'm doing okay. Taunt. I<3 taunt. Really. I don't understand how a tauntless tank would work. Get a spead out group together? Taunt. Get that Sky Raider Porter off the Peacebringer? Taunt. Get that next group that someone agroed too early? Taunt. The main problem I see at the moment is she only has two attacks from her secondary. Luckily, I have two vet powers: Sands of Mu and the Nemesis Staff, to fill in for "real" attack powers. At the moment, I plan to get either Foot Stomp or Knockout Blow at 22. Foot Stomp concerns me a bit because of the knockback. But Super Strength has a considerable amount of knockback, so I'm just going to have to suck it up and deal with it, I guess. In the lull of new power choices at between 26 and 32, I plan to pick up Swift and Health. I have no need for Stamina, with Quick Recovery. Her endurance bar barely moves, even with somewhat heavy use of the notoriously end-heavy vet powers.

Mo hit 29. Yay. I cannot empath for more than one person for more than a couple of hours. I forget to blink. She'll probably (finally) get another attack power at 30, bringing her to three attack powers.

Callie's at 39. I still love blasters. That's really the only thing I have to say about her powers. Except I am debating on her Epic powers. Well, not which epic to pick. Electric Mastery, no question. But she still has 2 powers in her secondary that look mildly interesting, Thunder Clap and Shocking Grasp. Thunder Clap is a no-damage disorient. I've had bad experiences with disorients, though, so I don't know how well it would work. Or how often I'd use it. Shocking Grasp is a high damage melee hold. How many holds does a blaster need, though? I already have Tesla Cage, which I'm very happy with. From the epic, I want Static Discharge, just because it looks so gosh-darned cool, and the electric armor, the name of which escapes me at the moment.

RP-wise, she's... okay. She's a girl from a small town, with powers that at home pretty much got her ostracized. Now she's in a big city, with a lot of strange things going on. She's understandably overwhelmed. At first, I tried to throw a lot of "..." and "uh" and "um" into her speech to show she was uncertain and a little timid.

(Slight aside: I think I over-subtle myself sometimes when it comes to RP. Okay, I know I do. I've said before that I can't bring myself to do melodrama [or at least not much, and not intentional], and I also have a problem with using a sledgehammer to get my point across, unless and until it's absolutely necessary. Sometimes, that doesn't make too much difference. Maybe it's an unimportant point, or just background. Example: when Fyre first started in the Isles, I made a point to only have something like, "smiles slightly," or "gives a bit of a smile." She was very unhappy, but she's not the type to drag around in sweats and unwashed hair and wallow in her depression. In that case, it was just background noise, and reinforcing a pretty obvious point. Other times, I think my point and my purpose was completely lost, because I let it be.[Aside to the aside: except for still being "stuck" in the Isles, Fyre is quite happy, thankyouverymuch])

As an unintended side effect to a conversation with Vagabond, Callie has made a real effort to be more sure of herself and her powers. She still slips back into being overwhelmed on occasion, and she probably will for quite awhile yet.

Back to Trina, for a minute, her RP sucks. Considering that the marathon PuG, I was almost all OOC, even though there was prolific use of (())'s on the team on occasions. I just cannot take RP serious from someone on a PuG who says something like, "let us pwn these hellions, lol." No, that wasn't used, but that was an example of PuG RP. To actually be IC, I image Trina speaks somewhat formally, with little humor. She takes things seriously. There is little grey in her black and white views, I imagine. There is little-to-no "anti" in her "hero." Given that she's hit 20, and nearing SOs, I expect her to stick around for awhile, so there will probably be some RP chances in her future. I'm interested to see what she's going to be like. And, no, I don't actually know, and won't until she does start talking for herself.