My build is my build, group with me at your own risk. My favourite grouping experience was as a Corrupter in City of Villains, my secondary powers were Kinetics and at level 20 you unlocked a power called Speed Boost.
This power was very useful as it granted targeted allies, increased speed / increased recharge / increased recovery / resist slow effects, as powers go it was an all-round bonus for group members.
However the drawback was that the person using it could not cast it on themselves and being a player that often soloed, I only really took powers that I needed for my build to work. So I didn’t pick this power up when it unlocked on reaching level 20 as it was never needed by me and I had more important powers to unlock.
My teaming experience came in the form of a PuG invite looking for a healer. “I can do that on my head” I thought and joined up with a group of 3 other villains looking to cause mischief. We grouped up and entered a mission and started wailing on the enemies, my heals covering the team in a green glow, no-one dies and we were making good progress.
During the midst of this rant the other two member remain silent, perhaps acclimatised to their friends lengthy outbursts, one goes AFK and asks the team in chat to wait for them to return. Our ranty friend of course doesn’t see this message and charges off headlong into more enemies about 30 seconds away from our static position.
Of course without the rest of the team to back him up he is taking damage as the enemies slowly whittle his health away and the last message I read before leaving the group was him asking for help, then on noticing the last afk message, asking if anyone was back. I nearly doubled up laughing as I left him to whatever doom he’d incurred.
As a warning to others I updated my player listing to reflect that I didn’t have Speed Boost and not to ask for it. This appeared to deter those that only wanted to team for 1 power I could bestow on them and the quality of grouping afterwards was much improved.
So as indicated in the first line, my build is mine to decide what to use or how best to configure my hot bars, so quit telling me how to play my damn character.
P.S I did get Speed Boost after respecing but often kept that same warning message up just to avoid teaming with planks.
[…] Welsh Troll […]
[…] Welshtroll’s Blaugust post on City of Villains grouping brought back good memories. I really loved playing Kinetics anything in that game, and I still miss both it and the earlier City of Heroes despite some very obvious flaws (most. repetitive. MMOs. ever.). Though, I was also a big fan that many of the game’s best support skills were designed without the user in mind, so various superbuffs were for everyone else in your group only. I really miss that aspect of older MMOs, since most newer ones have moved to support/utility roles being baked entirely into DPS, and thus those super awesome group buffs being integral to personal DPS as well. Still, I can relate to Welshtroll’s sentiment: I hate being invited to any group for one reason only. […]