Overview
created during
Issue 21,
City of Heroes, 2011-09-27
- Name:
- Walk Softly / @cohRock
- What:
- level 28 magic hero on the Infinity server
- Archetype:
- scrapper: titan weapons / dark armor
- Created:
- ~ December 2011
- Super Group:
- Titanium Debtinators since 2011-12-06
- Battle Cry:
- Desist!
hits since 2012-12-26
last modified 2013-02-07
Commentary
The core fun of Titan Weapons was to show off your huge anime-style axe/sword/club/etc. during battle – a maybe 5-foot tall character wielding a 7-foot weapon. And I screwed it up. By choosing Dark Armor as his protective set, he showed in battle as simply a dark, fuzzy, cloudy, splotch. His weapon was not even visible.¹
When I created him, I knew he would be a splotch once he got the Cloak of Darkness power at level 20. But I was hoping that the business end of his weapon would still show, and that a hint of his Celestial costume backpack (the big metal halo) would show thru, highlighted by the head ring glow of Obsidian Shield. Neither hope was realized. Just .. splotch. Prior to Cloak of Darkness, though, the visual effect of Obsidian Shield + Celestial backpack was kind of cool. I should have taken more pictures to illustrate all this. You see him without any armors. (Ion Quest's first image shows what I mean. In that picture you also see his spines powers. It was sort of unfair that spines would show, but not Titan Weapons.)
Being a splotch and unable to show-off was not the worst part. The attack paradigm of Titan Weapons was based on two succesful weaker attacks, capped off by a then-enabled strong attack. You could not even use a strong attack until the sequence was complete. Other progressive attack sets just made the strong attacks strong, but with the Titan set the good attacks were actually disabled most of the time. And the worst part of all was that the attack window for such an attack was only a very few seconds, then it expired. You would frequently go to activate the power, and by the time you clicked the mouse or pressed the key, it had timed out, and nothing happened.
I did not enjoy playing Walk Softly, both due to self-inflicted compositional problems and the awkward design of Titan Weapons itself.
¹ I learned after writing this commentary that the power customization feature allowed characters to tune how the Dark Armors behaved. I apparently could have set them to show both his costume and his weapon by reducing the Dark Armor cloudiness.
<sigh> – I hate obviating a good rant!