Team Spode

DCUO: Lantern No More Flush with the legendary infusion of station cash that came with the new month, I took the plunge and changed my power set from Hard Light to Mental. Blighted took me through the new loadout, and I was following a Mental Controller guide online at the same time, and wow – this operates so differently. The instant power jolt has a thirty second cool down; it was more like three seconds on hard light. However, that gives lots more time to do debuffs and stuff. My damage is still pretty low – and I think my power output is even lower than it was before. ...

Team Spode completed the Necropolis: Relics of Urgrund last night for the first time as a league, though I think most of the heroes of Team Spode had done it in pickup raids before (not me). The raid is kind of muddled; it all looks just as brown and dull as this screen shot. There are ancient “New Gods” weapons scattered around; DPS who can use those weapons grab them and use them at specific times to stop the bosses from powering up and using punishing attacks. I don’t think we did this very well, but the DPS who joined the raid had enough power to do the burninating and we got through it. ...

Was a huge night for Team Spode in #DCUO – the first night we had enough people on to do a couple operations and a raid without any pickup group members. Seeker Oeru (?), the rage tank on the left, joined us after leveling so very fast to join us. The others in the shot below are, continuing from the left, Stingheal, Lord Spode, Kaptain KY, Blighted Redeemer, TealLantern, Stingharm and Clever Clara, who is sporting a teal and white based color scheme as well :) ...

If you look in the forums for information about DCUO’s tier 5 raid, “Paradox Wave”, it makes it sound like a simple gear check. If you have the gear, you win – and that required gear is much lower than we all have now. Further, there’s an easy and a hard mode to the raid. So, why can’t we win? The basic plot is that Future Luthor actually staged the whole Brainiac invasion so that he could rule the world or something. We’ll come back to that. While the heroes and villains of Earth are trying to save the world from Brainiac, Future Luthor has opened the hellmouth beneath Gotham, and all the alternate realities are colliding. In Paradox Wave, you help alternate Batmans close the hellmouth. In Nexus, you defeat alternate Luthors once and for all. ...

My favorite Greek philosopher? “So Crates”. I’ve been hearing about this feat, “Keep It Safe”, for awhile as various combinations of league-mates tried to do it. 50 points is a lot of points for a feat. It’s simple, really. You just have to carry a crate from the start of the duo instance to the end of the instance without breaking it. However: if the the two players get too far apart, the crate breaks ...

Last night’s endlessly rescheduled Neverwinter foundry night was rescheduled, so it was off to #DCUO . Blighted had suggested a Themyscira Divided run, if I happened to be available, and I suddenly was :) It was a pretty good league turnout for an off night, with Sting, Clara, Spode and Blighted doing feats and instances when I logged in. The TD map was pretty familiar – both iconic solos and the War of the Amazons duos use the same map. The bosses were different, of course. I’m told there’s a variety of possible bosses, and you don’t know which ones you’ll get before you get there. This provides a bit of randomness, and gives you reason to keep returning to the instance – the bosses give out their own feats. ...

It was a fairly eventful weekend in #DCUO – did some sparring target bowling with +John Noll , finally got my Green Lantern insignia from Mogo, and started leveling up a Red Lantern. I’d planned on my red lantern, CieEn Red, to live on the Playstation servers, but discovering that I’d have to re-pay for Legendary status, since it doesn’t use my SOE All Access subscription, was a non-starter. Deleted DCUO off my PS4 and just made the character on the PC. This gave her immediate access to all the skill points earned on both my main, TealLantern, and my villain healer, now passed, unremembered, into the bit bucket Brainiac keeps beneath his throne. ...

Combat Rating – “CR” – in DCUO determines where you can go, what you can do, and what kind of groups will want you. Shouting “103 DPS LF TD” will get you a group in a moment. I don’t know what TD is. I don’t know because I don’t have 103 CR. 105 is the current target; the elites have 107 or more. Every point is incredibly important, and you can upgrade several pieces of gear without seeing any improvement in this vital stat. To bring some clarity to this problem, many independent programmers have published CR calculators, which take your current and future gear choices and explain just how much CR you can get from them – and if they’ll be worth the effort. ...

Soooo…. in DCUO , killing Brainiac was a thing that happened. Which very much confused me. Last night was a feat-farm for Team Spode; we went around doing older raids in order to kill stuff in such ways as to get achievements (feats) we didn’t get before. Feats lead to skill points, and skill points are the alternate advancement points in the world of DC Universe Online. ...

Teal Lantern blasting at something you can't see but would go OOOOOOOO if you could. If only! Today was going to be the day I leveled up enough to group with the league again – without holding them back. I did enough Circe dailies to get a weapon upgrade I could actually use and BAM, CR 100. Stingheal took me on a tour of the duos and dailies in Gotham Under Siege, which Amazons are attacking for no reason I can fathom. I know, the OTHER solo daily would explain it. ...