I Am Not Sly

Okay, so... Dragonsmoke has a secret. I thought both he and I were keeping it pretty well, especially since no one tried to talk to him really.

But Fyre guessed it already. Geez.

Update!

Just to summarize my City of... of late. Some items briefer than others. :)

Vagabond Wizard
I love the RP between DefenderVagz and Lunatrix. We've hit a point where I'm really curious to see what will happen next, and I'm eager to play again. :)

I know the ice shields aren't any fun to look at, but Luna's a freakin' tank with all those buffs. I've added Electric Mastery, so Vagz has a single-target immobilize to throw down now: the same Electric Fence that he spams with gleeful abandon as BlasterVagz. Luna's added Cold Mastery, so in addition to Vagz' three slows, we have another one. With all the talk of caps, I wonder what the bottom is? >:)

A few more levels and Vagz will have armor and Luna will... have another shield. Yikes.

Sounds of Silence
I love the VEATs. When we actually come up against a challenge, we're shocked. I love that! I wasn't going to take Mind Link 'cause I didn't think we needed another defense buff, but the Devouring Earth taught me that sometimes we will. And it gives a huge buff against psi which, you know, very handy. And it gives a to-hit buff. So that's what I'm mainly slotting it for.

Silence can tell the three of them are getting stronger. And now he's discovered that Lord Recluse has been screwing with them. That just firms up his resolve to become the best of the Widows. He's working his way up to... well, it might be obvious, and if it's not... I'm not going to tell you! :-D

Vagabond Blade
After sitting at 48 forever, Fyre and I went on an ITF yesterday (yay for paid days off). She took Evan Caine, that defender everyone's talking about (I teamed with her once before, honest). It was a good strong ITF, and we did really well. Afterwards, I was just over 2 bubbles from level. So we went and smacked around some Praetorians... and Vagz is now Hero of the City twice over.

Shouldn't be too much longer 'til it's three times...

Derick Darklight
Darklight finally made a full-blown appearance last night. Derick was walloped a few times by Red Caps and ended up face-planting a lot. Darklight seized the opportunity to force Derick to the back and take over. Ellianne Sylvanie had a chance to actually talk to him once she realized Derick wasn't in control any longer.

Unfortunately for Darklight, while he's getting stronger, Derick is still a force to be reckoned with. Derick forced the Nictus back down again relatively quickly. Elli almost sounded disappointed... :)

But Darklight's not done yet...

On VEATs

Okay, so to be honest, this'll mostly be about Blood/Night Widows, but in general, here's what I think so far:

Soldiers of Arachnos are awesome, and I wonder how we're able to defeat them as often and as handily as we do. :)

Seriously, if the NPC Soldiers of Arachnos had these powers, all working together, they should be handing our butts to us on a daily... no hourly basis. I love the concept of trained soldiers having powers that buff each other and/or the entire team. It does, however, make them pretty disgustingly powerful, especially when you've got several together.

My biggest problem? There are too many powers I want to take. Maybe it's the "ooh, shiny" of powers I've never seen before, but it seems like there are way more powers I'm going to want than are going to actually be available to me. Like Keen mentions in his blog, I haven't taken a travel power yet. So far, I'm sliding by on the temp power. Originally, I thought teleport would be the way to go, and I'd use Teleport Foe... but I think I used it three times since taking it. So I took advantage of the level 24 respec to get out of it and grab Hasten instead. I'm managing my endurance just fine and finding pauses in my attack chain, so between that and the Widow power that increases my attack rate, I think I'll be doing just fine now.

And ahh... Widow Smoke Grenade. Fyre mentioned this, and it's true: if this was the only Night Widow power I could ever take, I'd still play one. It recharges nice and fast, and having been the victim of this attack so often, I can imagine how frustrated and blind my enemies suddenly find themselves. Mean? Maybe. But they deserve it. >:)

RP-wise, I think I've got interesting story/concept with Sounds of Silence, but I'm running into the same problem I usually do RPing a villain: I'm not evil enough. Sure, when I'm running a role-playing game, I'm playing all the villains, but it's not long-term. Not really. They show, they do evil, they're defeated, new villains next week. They might come back again later, but it's not the same thing.

And the missions make it really hard to play a not-evil villain. I tried really hard with Will, and by the end... well, I was having to re-write mission plots or just run them OOC, knowing Will would never do such things.

I'm trying to make Silence a nice compromise. He's cold and vicious, not reluctant to kill to get to his goals. But deep down, he's still the person he was before Arachnos made him into a Widower, and that's mostly (so far) reflected in his long-term goals and the way he treats his team-mates/allies. I'm having a hard time getting a handle on the team-mates, though. I tried to jump-start us into it by playing off that the three had come to some sort of agreement or pact before they even got started. But that was just a quick and dirty way to get started, and to be fair, I didn't run it past Keen and Fyre before doing it. I'm trying to figure out what kind of people Karma Noir and Operative Lee really are so I can figure out what Silence really thinks of them, but I'm having trouble nailing it down.

Hopefully I'll get it figured out, though. I'm really loving being a Night Widower, but I don't want to be in it just to level a character. I play City of _____ to role-play and tell stories. Really get into a character, not just a "toon".