Blue_Yin_EU

OK, 8pm it is then - looking forward to it! Meet at Striga Ferry so we can sort out exemps etc.

Ok cool! Let's talk times - how about 6 pm on Saturday then?

I have a vague idea of doing the Hess Task Force this coming Saturday 24 June, as I have a hero at 23 (Galexis, Fire/Rad Controller) and I've never done that TF before, and people say it's good (plus it's relatively short! ).

If anybody else thinks this might be a good idea, let's try and sort it out here. If there's enough interest I will try and get through the Striga contacts and level up to 25 before Saturday afternoon so I can get the TF.

Any rich villain with a poor hero who would be interested in swapping inf with a rich hero/poor villain (lvl 12) today (Sun 18)?

Are short circuit and transference worthwile?

This may be a dumb question, but one of my chars recently joined a SG, and I also recently got CoV, so naturally I took the opportunity to have a look around the SGs base (lovely!), but I kept getting ejected from it after a few minutes. Is this normal, is there a reason for it, or should I take this to the tech support forum? (I would have asked a SG member but there were none around at the time when this happened.)

TIA

Looking less likely that I'll be able to make it. If I can't good luck to those who are going for it!

My Dark/Dark Defender, Thelema, is definitely interested.

Thanks Maloth, and thanks all for the pointers. I did do a search but for some reason I couldn't come up with anything. (This has happened before, I think the search facility sometimes plays up here.)

PvE mainly - I still haven't really been able to get into PvP unfortunately (or fortunately - CoH already takes up more of my time than is healthy ).

A while ago I played with a troller called Maloth or something like that, and I found his Fire/Rad build inspiring at the time. Now I've gotten round to rolling a Fire/Rad, but I can't exactly remember his build - I know it was based round damage, using Flashfire and Hot Feet and some other things. Maloth if you or anyone else with a similar build is around, can you please advise? TIA

I'm up for it, with a lvl 17 fire/fire blaster, Fire Bird

Forcefields and dark blast are complementary - good choices. I've got a FF/DB in her teens, so not very experienced, but I've got 2 other higher level Defenders, one with DB.

The only real must-haves for Forcefields are the two single-target bubbles that you get early on (against melee and energy etc.) and Dispersion Bubble (the big one you carry around with you - bear in mind you'll need some endurance reduction slots in that power as well as defence slots), from what I've read the other Forcefield powers are a matter of taste - depends on your style of play (also whether you will solo a lot or not). In teams, so long as you keep people bubbled up at all times, you've got pretty free reign as to how you'd like to play.

With any of these buff-type powers, it's a good idea to get into the habit of buffing people up before big fights (even if some of them still have bubbles on) - you can set up keybinds to say "Gather for bubbles!" or whatever; it also helps if there's another buffing Defender on the team (e.g. Kinetics) if the team gets into the habit of doing this. IIRC there are keybinds on the US boards that you can set up to bubble your team quickly.

Dark Blast has a great AoE combo in Tenebrous Tentacles (hold and damage) and Nightfall (damage) - if you position the two cones right (get fairly close for TT then step out a bit for NF) you can do respectable damage to groups of mobs. If you are going to use these two powers a lot you will definitely need Stamina.

Isn't the point that a Tanker is supposed to grab the aggro from the moment s/he gets into aggro range of the mobs, rather than just from the point he or she attacks them? Mobs are supposed to spot the tanker, focus on him, take the alpha strike.

Flight and Leaping are ok, don't require much "maintenance" if you're a team leader.

YMMV, but having to stop and orient yourself for a bad guy (especially in a dangerous area - you don't want SS to autohit purples if you can help it) about 3 times in each zone just gets wearing after a while.

It's fantastic to have a travel power before 14 - with tp friend you can really speed up the levelling process for yourself and others in those early levels. But personally I found it a bit of a drag after a while, and was glad to pick up a real travel power (I actually missed out on IR, which I found annoying for the same stop-start reason, and went down the super-leaping line to get Acrobatics, which makes the life of a Defender who is close to the melee action much easier). The problem is it has to hit, so you need accs in there. Also it's not much use as a travel power in areas where the mobs are much higher level than you. If you don't mind the extra clicking then it should be no problem, but if like me you want to click as little as possible and just travel (e.g. while you are building teams), then it will eventually annoy.

I have an inv/ss to enjoy the mobility with Actually part of the reason I thought I'd investigate Stone is because my tanking playstyle tends to have me standing pretty much in one place and busily taunting mobs to me anyway - I'm not much of a hopper-about when tanking.

Blazing Rock is now at 12, but I'm getting into this quandary about whether to go dual or perma.

To experienced stoners out there: just how viable is it to go up to 32 using only the combination of Stone Skin, Rock Armour, EE + Rooted + 3 slotted Health, and none of the other armours? Do mobs that use energy and elemental damage actually do enough damage with those forces to make it necessary to use Crystal and Brimstone at all? Because I'm thinking I might as well just pick lots of attacks (or experiement with pools) if the combo (plus a bit of luck and a few insps) is enough - after all, damage is itself mitigation, and if I can do enough damage from the fire attacks and AoEs I might as well pick them early, and pick all of them, with the added benefit that I will have a viable long "chain" while slowed in Granite (perhaps negating the need for Hasten?)

(The thing is it would be a real shame not to have any of the other armours because they look so cool, but my idea with this build is to be pretty aggressive anyway.)

Thanks for the comments all. Re FS - I tend to use it as an emergency power to keep accidentally aggroed mobs at bay for a while, but it's worth thinking about the idea of being able to hold bosses in the later game, you're right. I just found PG annoying for some reason - I guess, being used to the speed of some controller holds (e.g. Mind, which I'm also playing on and off), the animation/activation was frustratingly long for me - but from a practical point of view you might be right about respeccing it in. I might try it on test.

I have a lvl 4 Stone/Fire Tanker that I rolled a while ago after seeing a great one in action (hi Silentium). Recently got the hots for it again after playing it a bit. Just wondering if anybody had any tips on this combo. So far I've got the Rock Armour, Stone Skin, Scorch and Fire Sword. I'm thinking of taking the Teleport line for travel. Other than that, I'm open - any ideas?

I've been playing my DDD a lot recently, and after a respec at 35 I've settled on the concept of focussing on AoE attacks and Disorientation as the main "themes" of the buld, apart from debuffing mob accuracy (which is of course the number one priority for Dark Miasma and the main secondary effect for Dark Blast).

The DM/DB powersets are so good that it's hard to know what to leave out. In the end, after finding I wasn't using them that much, I respecced out of the single target attacks (Gloom, Moonbeam), which gave me room to add the leadership pool, the bonus of which for Defenders is so good it's hard to pass up. I also decided that since Fluffy would be spamming Petrifying Gaze, I could afford to leave it out (I found I wasn't using it much anyway in the style I was playing). This gave me room to include Recall Friend, which apart from being very team-friendly (even in the later levels, I find), enables me to teleport my Fluffy friend around if need be.

Re the disorientation: after playing around a fair bit, I've found that Howling Twilight 3-slotted with SOs comes up often enough to use fairly regularly in combat, nearly once a battle. The combination of Howling Twilight and Dark Pit is pretty awesome, and I'm looking forward to using Oppressive Gloom to stack the magnitude even higher, hopefully to catch bosses.

My main luxury has been 3-slotting Hover and Fly. I find that 3-slotted Hover is actually so useful in combat that it's worth getting it as early as reasonably possible. As for 3-slotted Fly - well, it just feels great!

Anyway, just thought I'd put it up here for discussion - any comments, insights, etc., would be greatly appreciated!

Exported from version 1.5C of CoH Planner
http://joechott.com/coh

Archetype: Defender
Primary Powers - Ranged : Dark Miasma
Secondary Powers - Support : Dark Blast

01 : Dark Blast endred(01) acc(3) dam(7) dam(9) dam(36)
01 : Twilight Grasp endred(01) acc(3) acc(5) hel(33) hel(34)
02 : Tar Patch endred(02) recred(15) recred(15) recred(31)
04 : Darkest Night endred(04) thtdbf(5) thtdbf(9) thtdbf(11)
06 : Hover fltspd(06) fltspd(7) fltspd(17)
08 : Shadow Fall endred(08) damres(11) damres(34) damres(33)
10 : Dark Pit acc(10) acc(13) endred(19) disdur(43) disdur(46)
12 : Fearsome Stare acc(12) acc(13) endred(19) ferdur(43) ferdur(43) ferdur(46)
14 : Fly fltspd(14) fltspd(17) fltspd(40)
16 : Swift runspd(16)
18 : Health hel(18)
20 : Tenebrous Tentacles endred(20) acc(21) dam(21) dam(27) dam(36)
22 : Stamina endrec(22) endrec(23) endrec(23)
24 : Night Fall endred(24) acc(25) dam(25) dam(27) dam(36)
26 : Assault endred(26)
28 : Howling Twilight endred(28) recred(29) recred(29) recred(33) dam(40) disdur(42)
30 : Tactics endred(30) thtbuf(31) thtbuf(31) thtbuf(34)
32 : Dark Servant acc(32) thtdbf(37) thtdbf(37) thtdbf(37)
35 : Recall Friend recred(35)
38 : Blackstar endred(38) acc(39) dam(39) dam(39) dam(40)
41 : Oppressive Gloom endred(41) acc(42) disdur(42) disdur(46)
44 : Dark Embrace endred(44) damres(45) damres(45) damres(45)
47 : Soul Drain endred(47) acc(48) dam(48) thtbuf(48)
49 : Dark Consumption endred(49) acc(50) dam(50) endrec(50)

-------------------------------------------

01 : Brawl acc(01)
01 : Sprint runspd(01)
02 : Rest recred(02)

Good stuff!

My "standard" chain, whether teaming or solo, given a good clump of mobs, is Fearsome Stare - Darkest Night (on lt. towards back) - Tar Patch, then usually Tenebrous Tentacles - Nightfall, etc. Recently I've been playing around with using the combination of Dark Pit and Howling Twilight and then using TT-NF. That way, with TT on top, the total combination is a psuedo hold.

Dark Pit or Howling Twilight on their own aren't that impressive as disorients, but the two together stack to make an awesome, safe disorient that covers nearly everybody (all minions and lts.). In fact I've been toying with opening with these recently.

Another idea I'm toying with is actually putting some damage enhs into Howling Twilight. The TT-NF combo is a pretty good AoE - in combination with a damaging HT, it should bring up arresting efficiency a fair bit

Wondering what "combos" Dark Miasma and/or Dark Blast Defenders favour (and for what situations).

More specifically, I'm curious about what DDDs reckon is the most aggro-free opening combo (in general and/or re. specific mobs, in both solo and team contexts).

This is almost my Thelema's build, only she's hovery-blastery rather than ultra-team-friendly-teleportey like your build. I'm toying with respeccing Moonbeam out in favour of Gloom so I can have a more constant attack chain up (Moonbeam's a great attack, but the anima's too long for the tempo of the character - OTOH, lacking your tp friend, Moonbeam makes my only means of getting mobs into range of HT for rezzing).

I've been convinced by the big DDD guide on the US boards that it makes good sense to slot Fluffy with at least 1 Acc + 3 THDBF, so the -acc component of all his attacks (and aura) stack.

I've just had a bit of a jag with my DDD and I must say it's great fun to play - I like being support, and I've tried Controllers a lot, but while I love having Control powers, I like blasting too, so this combination's great for me.

What I'm looking forward to is using Soul Drain as a precursor to Blackstar (after a good whittling down with a few rounds of Tentacles-Nightfall, of course, all bubbling along nicely in a big, sticky old Tar Patch :-) )

ATM am really getting into the Disorient powers Dark Pit and HT-as-Disorient. Figuring out how to try and get a HT/DP combo - which first, whether or how to "prepare the ground" for it (this differing in team and solo contexts).

[ QUOTE ]

1/3 of your last year spent entirely on a single game is kind of worrying, especially when you consider most people spend around 1/3 of a year sleeping and another 1/3 working.


[/ QUOTE ]

Lol, this sounds about right - well, it sounds like what I'd like to be the case. In fact, if I didn't have to work, I'd be happy to spend 2/3 of my year in the game. As it is, I can only do a few hours every couple of days.

I wonder if there are any MMORPG self-help groups (MMORPGA?)

With my kin/elec I went the Acrobatics route - so from kinetics I missed out on Repel and IR, took the Super Leaping line for travel power, and got Acrobatics.

I cannot recommend Acrobatics highly enough for kinetics as knockback/hold protection (most holds, though not all). CJ also protects against immob. This suite of protection against those common attacks enables you to build up without interruption the "head of steam" you need (stacked siphon speeds on top of hasten, giving you Transference/Fulcrum/Transfusion regularly).