One of many…. June 23, 2005
Posted by Aaron in : Play , trackbackI’ve not been sleeping well recently, but I was just laying in bed, lights & computer all powered down. Nothing but the sound of A/C quietly moving the air around the apartment while the various splashes and humms of the fish tank keeping its contents alive and struggling with said A/C for acoustical domination of the now darkened batcave. Click, the compressor just clicked in, the breeze has dropped a few degrees while the fish tank seems to have given up on dominance, lets hope its still working on the first task.
But I digress, as I laid there in bed I realized that there was something I’d rather be doing right then, and that is telling a story. I’d ignored that thought as I went to bed because I don’t know that I have any storys that are clear enough in my minds eye to shape into a post. But after pretending not to know why I wasn’t going to sleep, I decided that I’d go ahead and tell a story, anything I could dredge up really…..
Some of you know that I spend a fair amount of time playing City Of Heroes, the rest of you must not be in regular contact with me. I was playing earlier tonight with a merry band of adventurers including 2 Dan’s, 1 Nathan, 1 Mandie, and of course, myself. For those who are curious, yes you probably know one of the Dan’s & the Nathan in the group. At the time, Nathan & one of the Dan’s were out shopping (Nathan had a character with a lot of money, Dan’s character had a need for a lot of money), so I was mucking about in a mission with the other Dan and Mandie. More setup is probably needed before I can tell the story though, Mandie’s character was a controller type, which as you might guess, primarily helps manage the enemy (aka mob) by holding them or otherwise debilitating them (make it easier to hit, etc), but can also give other heroes around her various boosts (heal them, revive them if they die, or make their powers recharge faster and a couple other things). Dan-who-was-present (aka Poly Dan) was running his defender, whose primary skills involve helping other heroes, but can also function as a decent ranged attacker. I was running my Kheldian, which is a reward for maxing out another character. My character can be a ranged attacker with ok defense (aka blaster), can switch to a form which is an awesome ranged attacker with little defense (squid), or can maskerade as a lobster-like critter that has very high defense, hand-to-hand attacks, and generally is used to distract the mob from the heroes that are easier to squish (in this case, Dan & Mandie). Ok wow, that intro took forever, now we are finally getting to the story…
Dan stepped into a cavernous room we’d hadn’t cleaned the mob out of and pointed out that it was an ideal room for me to herd. I agreed & switched to lobster form & went charging in while they waited for me to return to the doorway with most of the mob in the room chasing me. This idea may sound a little crazy, and at times it is very fine line, but if done properly the tank (me) keeps the enemy bunched up and not attacking the squishies who are free to use more powerfull powers that affect multiple mob at once. If done incorrectly, the squishies get attacked after using said powers, and well, squished. In such cases the tanker’s chances can often come down to how lucky they are and how fast they run. I’ve done my share of herding though, so I give all this nary a thought as I charge through taunting the mob into following me, occasionally stopping to hit one to really get their attention. I burst back through the doorway with somewhere between 20 and 30 mob who were of a slightly higher level than myself. Mandie & Dan quickly worked to heal the wounds I’d suffered on my romp, while trying to impair or defeat those very annoyed enemies. It quickly became apparent that I may have stepped a little to close to that fine line that distinguishes a good herd from a bad herd. We had so many that I had to stay in tank form (where I couldn’t do near as much damage) just to keep the large number of mob from wiping the other two out. The other two were doing a great job of wearing them down while keeping all of us alive, but it was a battle of attrition where if any of us used up so much of our energy reserves (aka endurance) that we weren’t able to continue whatever we were doing, it could very likely cause the endevour to fail. My thought processes degenerated to a very stream-of-counciousness attempt to balance hitting the mob against keeping the mob from hitting my friends. Hands racing across the keyboard I triggered power after power…
wait that one has turned towards my friends, taunt him to make him focus on me…
is mire recharged? almost almost….
here is one thats weak, a few hits and I can finish him…
biff, poww…
quick, my health is low, do I try to use a power to heal or use a green [single-use health boost]…?
dan’s endurance is low, toss him one of my blues [single-use endurance boosts], slug the minion who slipped past me and is pounding on Mandie…
The numbers of the mob slowly dwindle as the weaker ones (minions) succumb to our combined firepower. This leaves only the lieutenants and bosses for us to pound on, but at the same time we’re all running low on endurance and I’m running low on inspirations (those single-use boosts). They are weak, but are we any better? I don’t know, I don’t know, one of my teammate’s health bars going yellow informs me that someone has slipped past while I was worried about the final outcome. Someone big enough to deal a good amount of damage…
I spin and blindly hit keys to select the mob thats pounding them, I hit a key and my taunt causes it to turn back towards me, not even waiting for it to lumber the few yards back as it attacks me instead, I return my attention to the shrinking group of opponents in front of me. By now only the strongest of them are left, those that take can take a beating & keep on shooting, punching or vainly trying to slow us down. Even those still standing are in poor shape, I’ve worked hard to spread out my damage dealing to help keep them focused on me, and from the looks of things my teammates have been spreading their attacks out as well. The closest mob faulters, then freezes as one of Mandie’s holds pins him in place, I activate mire (hurts nearby mob while making me more accurate & stronger) and lay in to him with my most powerful melee attack, it knocks him on his back, but he staggers to his feet, bairly alive and still held in place. My follow-up weaker strike finishes him with ease. Things are getting fairly relaxed as there are only one or two left now, seeing his friend drop, the last one. He’s headed in the general direction of another group, perhaps I can get him to come back without catching the other groups attention… no such luck another group of 5 or so mob decend upon us before we can recover, but even in our somewhat drained condition their numbers are not great enough to pose as serious of a threat. A short time later, they are all laying at our feet.
A second passes as everyone catches their breath and silently marvels that we all survived it. Then almost as one we start typing that same sentiment into the team chat. We wait while marvelling and recovering, both in game and in real life. After a bit my heart rate drops back down to where it should be, and my hands stop shaking from the adrenaline. I silently scold myself for almost botching the herding, and for accidentally drawing the ire of that last group that if we’d been able to wait, we’d have mowed through like a scythe. But I remind myself that we did succeed, and after redistributing some of our prized remaining single-use boosts, we jog around a wall to do battle again. We’re grown use to this terror before triumph, to us this is just one of many battles we had and will fight in this make-believe land.
As a side note, I should mention that Nathan rejoined us in time to help fend off that second smaller wave, oh and in case you were wondering, the fishtank is still babbling at me.
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