Which playstyles got you into the 'flow'?

[Canine]

There were times when everything just seemed to go right for me.

When I was concentrating just right, and made the right moves at the right times to be absolutely effective.

Upon further thought, I realised that it was mostly melee playstyles, and mostly tanking where that happened, or where it stuck in my mind.

The main example I recall (but not in any real detail several years on) was being on my Stone/Fire Scranker and somehow being able to keep an eye on *everything* going on - the currently engaged spawn, the health of the team, seeing a spawn about to be aggro'd half a second before the blaster annoyed them and teleporting into the middle of them to grab enough aggro that the blaster wasn't a bloody smear on the wall, etc. etc.  For some reason it all just worked.

I've had times where I've just casually strolled through missions on one of my scrappers facing odds that just ten minutes previously were leaving me twitching on the floor.

I've soloed at my own (casually slow) pace on my Archery/Energy blaster through warehouses of Council goons on Striga where I ended up feeling invulnerable because I was playing smart and to my strengths.

I've been on my Fire/FF controller where I've kept everything locked down being slowly scorched away from below by Hotfeet and Imps.

And on every one of these characters, I've had absolutely miserable days where nothing I did seemed to work.

A memorable situation in a little more detail.

My *Main* character was a Katana/Regen Scrapper.  I had a devil may care playstyle with him, as I'd been playing him since the day before EU launch and knew fine well what he could cope with, what he couldn't and when it was time to faceplant.  I'm on a Shards TF, the exact one of which eludes me, and we're in a cave full of Rularuu.  We reach an intersection and get nailed by two static spawns and (I think) a patrol, and things go wrong pretty fast.  At this point, I should probably add that this sort of inspiration tray loadout (which is culled from the last screenshot I took on the live servers, seconds before they pulled the plug) http://imgur.com/Ey8TGju is entirely typical.  I collected and carried large inspirations 'for a rainy day'.

Well, at that point, it was raining pretty damned hard...

So there's an attempt to pull back to cleared areas, but people are dropping, so I go into berserk mode and hit everything defensive I've got by way of powers as well as large oranges, purples and reds.  Then I start doing what scrappers should.  Target the big threats and work down the list.  Nothing too special, just the usual <grin>.

At some point, the upright and fighting portion of the team becomes me.  I'm popping insps as they arrive in my tray.  I don't know how many of them were passed to me by the faceplanted, and how many were being ripped forcibly off the Rularuu.  Some of the team have hospitaled and are heading back, and a couple are lying on the floor spectating (and probably saving my arse by passing insps)

Eventually I stop getting insps to burn.  Mainly because I've managed to beat down all the Rularuu that are a threat in the area, as the hospital visitors start arriving back in the mission 

I was never good enough to pull off that sort of thing regularly or on demand, but when it worked it felt good <grin>

And to all those who are about to say 'pfft, that's easy, I could have done that easily on my scrapper', I should add that IO's on that toon were present but only in a totally haphazard, non-planned manner.  I took my Issue 5 build and fit sets in that looked interesting where I already had powers and slots allocated.  Rebuilding for IO's was not an option on that character, because to me, at that point, the build was a large part of the character.

[houtex]

Well, I had the slow and low, that is the tempo, Brawling Humiliator.  You set a target, set to follow, he runs up, starts to pummel with Brawl only set to Auto, and wait.  A few punches later, *ding*, next target please (which for me was E, then F, on the keyboard, pretty quick usually.)  He'd spin or jog over, and more pummelling...  Very zen-ish.  If I wanted to talk for a bit, I'd set him on a mob of +4 bosses, LTs and Minions, and then chat while he did the work.   Heh.

I did like my melee characters.  Homeslicer, Thing of Bigness come straight to mind, besides BH there.  They were easy to play.  Wander in, start throwing arms about and hitting things.  Watch your health.  Exit if it got a little dicey... get healed, get back in there, and repeat.  When you level, fix your 'leaks' in the armor.  They were rather straight forward things.

My favorite 'on rails' character, where when things went so very right it it just felt *awesome*, was Ruby Dawn, my Mind/Emp controller.  She could solo, some, but best on a team, of course, where she became more of a support character with attitude.   She'd lock down everything with mez, and then also buff and heal.  The scrappers and tanks were then free to just pummel the heck out of the mobs.  Juggling that, healing everyone, or just that guy, or clear mind on everyone, keeping an eye on their stats, running to help the ones in trouble, without dyin' myself...  Teleportin' them around ('cause I had six slotted my self TP and could get around a zone in a freakin' hurry and not lose end.. and then bring them along one at a time with my recharge slotted TP Friend...) rezzin' them... The strategy of keeping everyone alive, still locking down things, and the occasional TP or rez...

When I was on, nobody died.  Everyone lived, and we beat the TAR outta stuff.  That was the best.  Hard to do, but when it happened... awesome to be the one doin' it.

Then... there's her evil sister, Cerise Dawn, the Mind/Psi Dominator.  That one was just... strange.  But hella fun.  See, before the 'fren' happened and they made the dominators 'better', I got her to 50 anyway.  But the thing was... it was all about that Domination firing off.  When that happened?  *Nothing* short of an AV or GM could stop her on her roll.  Although EBs were still fun, they stood no chance.  I had a key set up for her that I punched that fired off Domination, and then also in the team and local "Keep up or else."  And off I'd run with her, 'defeating' everything that was in her way.  Even the melee character had a tough time keepin' up with her when she was 'on'.  Which was how I wanted her character to be... malicious and deadly.  Domination rocked so hard.  And near the end I had gotten her 'regular' mode pretty powerful too, which is all the more reason that Domination time was the BEST.

Damn, man, I miss me some CoH.  C'mon NCSoft.  Let me plaaaayyy....

[hurple]

It was fun when everything would go just right... I was playing my Martial Arts / Regeneration scrapper one time.  I was on a team of 8 and we were clearing out one of the 5th column underground bunkers.  I don't remember what level we were, but the baddies were all +3.  We hit the jail and rush the 1st group.  Not sure how, because I was busy fighting, but *every* group in that room got aggro'd and jumped into the battle.  I kept fighting while watching the rest of the team drop all around me.  I distinctly remember thinking, "oh $h!t..." and doubling down on watching my stats.  I hit every boost I had, Dull Pain and Instant Healing.  Then, I just got into a groove... Dragon's Tail, Eagles Claw, Crane Kick, Reconstruction... Dragon's Tail, Eagles Claw, Crane Kick, Reconstruction... rinse, repeat, every Dragon's Tail I watched one or two more 5th column fall.  It went on and on, and the rest of the team was cheering me on from the floor.  Ha Ha!.. Eventually, I actually cleared the room, solo.  At least 4 +3 mobs.  Everything, from my timing to the drops I was getting through the fight was just exactly what I needed to keep going until I was standing there, alone, with a pile of unconscious baddies at my feel. 

[Floride]

Perhaps my longest post yet!

Tanking. I loved Tanking.
When I first started CoX a couple co-workers who played CoX taught me how to tank during breaks and lunches. All we did was talk tanking.
The most important rule they taught me was "The healer doesn't keep the team alive. The tank keeps the team alive. The healer keeps 'em healthy."
BEFORE THE HEALER PATROL RIPS ME A NEW ONE... Realize - If more tanks had been told this, regardless of how debatable the theory is, they'd have been MUCH better tanks!
I know I was.
I built my tanks to withstand and aggro. I slotted taunt into everything, especially AoE's.
I would green-ring my taunt-heavy [Stomp] attack, jump into the center of a mob, and use the mouse to scan the entire room. Watching for enemies, but more importantly monitoring my teammates. The instant I saw squishy grabbing his head convulsing, I'd pull his aggro.
Blasters tended to not even be in the same room with the tank, sniping from waaay back out in the hall. Having a [Taunt] packed with range was vital.
Unslotted scrappers would over-aggro and die alot if unmonitored, And heavily slotted "scranks" tended not to notice when they'd lose aggro of an LT that heads straight for a blaster. A tank needs to monitor his teammates to even notice that he needs to grab that aggro.
The hardest ATs to protect were always the crowd controllers. A lot of times, if a troller, kin, or dom was especially aggressive, I'd let them take point and choose which mobs I'd aggro next. I'd see the creeper vines or fire rings form up around a mob and quickly superjump into their midst and start stomping, then individually [Taunt] the mob's squishy-killers (Sappers, Rikti Magus, Super Stunners, etc) just to ensure aggro, then scan the room for my teammates and monitor them. I was and still am proud of my tanking, and how well I was able to adjust to others' playstyles on the fly.

Sometimes 2 teammates knew about the surprise spawns in a TF, sometimes 7 of them did. Tanking for both situations required very different techniques. Tanking with 2 tanks took a TON of adaptation. Tanking with my PB crab-form even required me proving to many teammates that it WAS indeed a tank. Tanking a zone event was super fun and super hard, pulling aggro for all equally, teammates and non-teammates alike. The playstyles and AT distributions were all over the place.
Quickly and successfully adapting to fit the TEAM'S playstyles was my best "flow".
BTW - There are few moments worth more than that post-TF moment, when your wheeling-dealing at Wentworths and hear that old familiar "ding". You look down at your chat window, and see a kin from the TF sending you a tell.
He's totally blown away at how he didn't die once and was even able to punch the snot out of the AV while standing right next to you!
Then you hear another "ding", you look up, and in the middle of your monitor is a Global Friend Request. And you can't stop smiling.

Best. Moment. Ever.

[Drauger9]

My Claws/Fire brute, I'd been farming for hours one day. In a really good mode when I eventually realized. I had been head banging for awhile, while I was farming.

A lot of my support characters, My ill/kin troller, running this one mission where there was two enemy spawns next to each other. We'd already wiped to them once because they was around a corner. So the second time, I group invised the team, Then held one mob as we rounded the corner while they took care of the first one.

My plant/ice troller, I noticed a blaster attack an enemy group off to the side. So I buffed the team, seeds of confussion the mob, vines and sleet took care of the mob in no time.

Of course, can't post in a thread like this without mentioning my favorite AT master minds. I was on my Bots/Dark tanker mind. The tank was tanking 2-3 mobs. When someone pulled the AV. I grabbed agro and tanker mind the AV until the group finished off the mobs and the tank took agro from me.

[HEATSTROKE]

 In all honesty could play anything at anytime. I was always that guy that would get whatever the team needed to be successful and enjoy doing it.

[Canine]

In all honesty could play anything at anytime. I was always that guy that would get whatever the team needed to be successful and enjoy doing it.

I had a lot of options to pull out when I saw a need, too.

But I was specifically talking about the times when rather than just playing a character, it all gelled and you were totally effective, more so that usual, and not necessarily for any reason that you could define.

Whether it was Defendering and keeping an Idiot Scrapper(tm) alive regardless of the idiot crap they did, Tanking and spotting (and intercepting) trouble before the blaster caused it, controlling and keeping every sapper in the 8 man spawn locked down at all times, Scrapping and doing (and surviving) insane things etc. etc.

As I type this, I notice that all the examples I mention are CoH, rather than CoV.  Fits with my experience of CoV teams usually being a group of individuals rather than a team, I suppose.  Also with me being predominantly a CoH player rather than CoV.  Didn't stop me having 8 out of my 25 characters be villains, but it's obvious where my allegiance lay.  (I'm also annoyed that it took me 15 minutes to remember where I left my damn Sentinel+ files...)

Also, please note, Idiot Scrapper(tm) is not a pejorative.  *ALL* scrappers were idiots at their core.  All that varied was how well hidden the underlying idiocy was.  Not usually very well...  <_<  >_>

[HEATSTROKE]

I was specifically talking about the times when rather than just playing a character, it all gelled and you were totally effective, more so that usual, and not necessarily for any reason that you could define.

That would be hard for me to define.. I pretty much always thought I was totally effective 

[Aggelakis]

*ALL* scrappers were idiots at their core.

Not true. Magnificent was a blender at her core. Point her at things that fell over and she'd make chop suey out of them until there was nothing left. Didn't need babysitting, just needed more dudes. MORE DUDES. WHY ARE THE DUDES ALWAYS GONE? (Because you defeat them, Maggie.) WHY ARE THE DUDES ALWAYS GONE? (Because they go away when you defeat them.) WHY?

[Angel Phoenix77]

Not true. Magnificent was a blender at her core. Point her at things that fell over and she'd make chop suey out of them until there was nothing left. Didn't need babysitting, just needed more dudes. MORE DUDES. WHY ARE THE DUDES ALWAYS GONE? (Because you defeat them, Maggie.) WHY ARE THE DUDES ALWAYS GONE? (Because they go away when you defeat them.) WHY?

I agree with Agge, with not all scrappers are idiots, when I played scrappers I was usually the last to on a near-teamwipes. It just depends on how someone plays them and if they put the effort and solo; so they know what scrappers can or cannot do. This is how I learned how to play as scrappers. Was I perfect, no however, I never got above the 1st debt badge on scrappers.

[Reaper]

*ALL* scrappers were idiots at their core.

You must have been playing with the wrong scrappers.  Most of the scrappers I played or ones that played on my team would be the least of anyone's problems.  Of course you had the occasional yahoo who would agro more than they could handle, but for the most part, scrappers could hold their own and in many cases, be the last ones standing.

[Inc42]

For a long time my role in the game was damage. I could do ranged damage, melee damage, did not matter, but ask me to do anything else and it would be dooming the team to failure. I decided to focus on this and spread myself out to be able to cover any role, and made characters for those purposes. Once I figured out the more support roles like tanking, healing, buffs that is where I began to truly find my groove, where time ceased to pass and everything was coming up me. Some of my favorite moments were on my empathy/archery defender, who almost never drew her bow because I would be constantly handing out buffs and heals to the team, or my kinetic/ice defender, who sometimes would use his ice attacks, but they were never slotted for damage, just slows. The same with my stone tank, who's job was to taunt and survive, damage inflicted was just a bonus.

I have seen countless play styles, some of which blew me away. I met one person in the game (and then later in real life because it turned out he worked for the same company I did at the time) who went by Buckyball. He was a storm defender, dont remember the secondary, who ran nothing but Whirlwind, Hurricane, and Super Speed, and he could herd entire maps into corners with speed and skill that was a sight to see. His play style constantly was getting him kicked from teams because he wouldnt explain what he was doing, but those that gave him a chance never could regret it.

[Alanj95]

Being a Mastermind the proper way.
The proper way is focusing more on buffs, debuffs, and pets when choosing powers, and hanging back in combat, making sure everyone is properly buffed or debuffed, letting my pets do damage.
I am going to be sure to roll a Robotics/Pain Domination Mastermind with select powers from Leadership, Flight, and Teleportation...or the closest I can get, should CoH not come back intact.

[Clave Dark 5]

Not to sound too general, but I had to have this sort of "I am a leaf on the wind"* experience with every character I played or they got dumped/ignored by probably level 15 or so.  If they didn't seem to work well out of the box, I had others who did or were getting higher already or what have you that were clamoring for my attention.  It's true I too experienced this more often playing melee, but I did get it from MMs (probably my second-runner ups in this category), Corr's a couple of 'Trollers and - much to my shock - even my first Tank, made like YEARS after I had started playing (explained by the fact I mostly stuck to red-side).

The kind of feeling I really enjoyed - in hindsight - would be those "Oh $*&@! I'm gonna die OMG OMG OMG!" battles were I just barely made it by thes kin of my teeth, doing my best to keep my head above water and actually managed to.

*Often leading to the same end Wash had, yes...

[hurple]

Not to sound too general, but I had to have this sort of "I am a leaf on the wind"* experience with every character I played or they got dumped/ignored by probably level 15 or so.  If they didn't seem to work well out of the box, I had others who did or were getting higher already or what have you that were clamoring for my attention. 

I was generally like this as well.  I was most definitely a "concept" player, in that all my characters had a specific concept behind their creation and most were based on one of the archetypes common in comics.  I had the super-spy spy, Ace Andrews, the patriotic hero, Sentinel Valor, the "Superman," Dynamo, the shrinking hero, Dr Dragonfly, the crazy anti-hero, Wendigo, the out-of-time futuristic sci-fi hero, Scott Comet, etc. 

So, one time, early on, I decided to create a speedster.  Now, how could I make a speedster in a game where *any* toon could have super-speed?  I never could answer that, but I created the character, Aeon, and started playing him.  This is well before power proliferation gave us some great choices for melee, so I chose Dark Melee, since it was the closest to "just punching things" available at the time (I think now I would go with kinetic Melee instead) and chose Quick Reflexes as secondary.  I played the character up to about level 15 but it never quite clicked as a "speedster" to me and I abandoned him. 

Then came Oroborus. And, not long after I was reading a Geoff Johns penned Flash comic featuring Zoom and it gave me an idea for his concept.

He was still a "speedster" but his powers came from an accident during the creation of Oroborus.  I re-wrote his origin so that he was one of the scientists tasked with unlocking the secrets of the "Oroborus Gem" but, thanks to an unspecified accident, whenever he touches a fragment of the gem is knocked out-of-phase with the normal time-line.  He moves, and ages faster than "ordinary" people.  But, during that time, whenever he touches an "ordinary" he would "steal" a day from their time-line and add it to his own. 

So, I piced the belt with the gem in it, colored the gem the same as one of the crystals in Oroborus and changed the color of the Dark Melee "smoke" to match (thus *finally* getting a concept-worthy explanation of the "smoke" effect) and set about playing him again.

This time the concept and character meshed perfectly and I kicked ass with him all the way to 50. 

He went from abandoned to one of my favorites with just a change in concept and origin.

When the game restarts, though, I'm gonna have to hop on early and get him a better name.  Ha Ha Ha!

Unrelated, but this is funny and I want to share.  I had another character, a nuclear blaster whose costume contained a fin on his head (like The Ray).  During one TF another player kept making fun of him for it (calling him Captain Rooster and such).  It was funny for a bit but I finally got tired of it and responded... "Okay smarty-pants, you think you're so bright... If I didn't have this fin then how would I steer when I fly?  huh?  Answer that one!"

Amazingly, that stopped the jokes...

[Ironwolf]

I loved PUGS.

I would join a team - the worse the better and just find the rhythm to how they played. I would then fix what was broken or help the person or persons who played silly. That was my joy, finding the rhythm of success in the group.

[Waffles]

Solo

+1 x8

No bosses

Jump in, eclipse, double mire.

Let the slaughter begin.

[doc7924]

I remember once playing my BS/Regen scrapper - before Ed and all that and having IH as a toggle and all my heals with 6 heath SOs and having like 220% health regen.

And then soloing a simple mission and dying like 15 times, LOL

Nothing was going right and the more mad I got at dying - the more stupid mistakes I made and died even faster. I just logged off in disgust for like two days. And this was before the debt cap so I probably had like 20 or 30 million debt by then.

But on t he flip side - I never liked tanking and the few times I tried it I never got past like level 20 or so. But then I made a stone tank - which was a god back in those days - and then after I got the hang of tanking I made other ones and got real good at it and then tanks became my main toons for like two years. My fire/shield and electric / shield being my two best ones, especially farming.

[Brightfires]

I think I had the most fun soloing with my Stalkers...
When I was alone, I could set challenges for myself like perfectly stalking a particular room (That meant assassinating every goon in there, one at a time, without alerting any of the others to my presence- Which was easier said than done in some rooms and with some enemy factions). I could go along at my own speed, without having to worry about keeping up with a team, and I didn't have to worry about accidentally assassinating anybody's debuff anchor or favorite Confusion target. Soloing also meant that I actually got to read the mission text, which is something I was never given the time to do when running with anyone else.

That said, I also loved running iTrials, particularly with my "crazy Death Mage" Dark Defender. Unlike a sane support character, he spent all of his time on the front line with the tanks, brutes and scrappers. I'd made him tough enough to handle that, specifically so he could stay close in with the melee types and keep them in his heal and Shadowfall radius... And so that all the goons would be clustered close enough to hit with Howling Twilight, which he used as an offensive power.