zero to geek in point oh nine two five seconds

There've been some extensive discussions on the tanker section of the CoH bulletin boards about their validity after a certain lvl has been reached. Are they really needed? Being a tanker, I quickly stood up and made my voice heard that yes, we tankers are needed. A Hershey's kiss isn't really a kiss until you put it in your mouth. Tankers serve one real purpose, and that's to play jackrabbit. We draw enemy aggro (aggression) and take the beating while the others in your party actually kill off the enemy that's beating on you. So as you can imagine, tanks have an ungodly amount of defensive power. As you've seen in previous posts and pictures, my tank also carries a war mace which deals out a great amount of pain and suffering, but compared to say, a scrapper, tanks are just the guys in the background jumping around, waving their hand, yelling "PICK ME, PICK ME!!!!"

Well, Bos hit lvl 18 the other day and i'm starting to discover that some of these comments about the need for tanks may be true. Defenders and controllers will always need tanks as they have absolutely no defensive power, but they can also deal out damage from a distance. So, to keep the game interesting, I created Stormkiller last night. Storm has the same purpose as my original character, LBG, had and that's as a defender. A defender's sole purpose is to keep your team alive. You are the healer. I've always been a defensive player in life and gaming, so i'm drawn to characters like Storm. Her primary power is empathy which allows her to heal others either as a group or to solo someone out who's having a difficult time. My secondary power is electricity which allows me to deal out some pretty good damage via electric storms and lightning from my hands. I also added the ability to hover which may not sound like much, but it's the beginnings of flying. It's a defensive tactic as i can hover 10 or 15 feet above my melee enemies and not get hit while i deal some electric punishment. this is all very cool, but what was amazing was i reached a lvl 8 last night after only 4 hours of play. It took me the better part of the week to do that with Bos. Now i'm not a powergamer as i enjoy to really play a game and not just advance, but even my party members last night were pretty amazed at the frequency of my lvling.

And to make the game last night even more interesting, the three of us that comprised the party were all defenders, which is somewhat unheard of. Defenders are the most sought after player as they are the ones keeping everyone else alive, but we kicked some serious butt last night and hardly took a ding from any of the missions we completed.

So, the plateau i'd begun to reach with Bos has been renewed by Storm and i may continue to happily pay my $15 a month.