Saturday 29 May 2004

Pic of the day: Good vs evil: The duel! Screenshot from City of Heroes, of course. My character to the left. ^-^

CoH: Winterlord

Posting some fluff to catch up. Actually I mostly wanted to post the screenshot, I kinda like it. It catches the atmosphere quite well. The atmosphere of soloing, that is; team battles tend to be big and chaotic and full of special effects. They also are less personal. I am quite a bit more cautious when I fight alone, as I take it kinda personally. In a team, there are so many uncertain factors, you get used to the occasional defeat. Not that defeat is necessary unless you use bad tactics. But people generally use bad tactics (if at all), so that's a moot point.

Anyway, yet another new character. Winterlord is the ice equivalent of Emberlord, whom I have presented before. Not quite as handsome, but still very much so, don't you think? I put quite a bit of effort into making good-looking avatars. It's not like you can change them on a whim, after all.

I considered calling him "Frostlord", but it did not sound right. It sounded too ambitious, conveying the wrong meaning. I meant the kind of frost you find on the ground, which looks a bit like frosting on a cake. In Norwegian we use a separate word ("rim") for this, which does not mean all manner of cold too like frost does. But Winterlord is OK too. It suits a guy with pretentions of becoming a minor deity. Also it runs easily off the tongue. It is a handsome name.

***

It is surprising, but even fairly early in the game the two tankers play a bit differently. Even though they have the same primary power set (invulnerability), the different secondary powers invite different tactics. Fire does damage over time, although only a short time. Ice slows down. On higher levels, ice tankers will get powers that are similar to controller powers: They can freeze a villain to a standstill and even make an area hard to advance for enemies. But every cold attack you land on an enemy also slows down all his activities. He not only runs slower, he will attack more rarely. In contrast, fire powers are, well, firepower. So an ice tanker may spend more time taking down the enemy, but he doesn't get hurt more, since they attack less often. He may even get hurt less; can't say that for sure yet.

Also experimented with an all out fire/fire tanker. Wow. Those tankers are a bit like blasters when they take the damage aura. You really burn through the enemy ranks ... but you also really burn through endurance. But I knew that already from teaming up with them; their blue bar is almost always low and they take frequent rests. I'd say a fire/fire tanker is probably the best tanker for soloing, but in a team I would rather have an ice tanker, slowing down the enemy. And so, I intend to be one.

There is a new newsgroup in town, alt.games.coh. The regulars there are gradually drifting towards making their own supergroup (guild) on the Protector server, or perhaps appropriate one of the existing guilds. So I started Winterlord on that server, with the purpose of making him my group-oriented character. Tankers are almost always in high demand, only exceeded by empathy (all healing) defenders. And tanker is close to the character concept I use to play the longest in other games: Paladin in DAoC, Crusader (or similar homemade class) in Morrowind, magic-augmented fighter in Daggerfall. I guess that's just the kind of guy I am ... or rather, would like to be. Especially when I can look this good! ^-^