ClawsandEffect

Energy Blast has 3 -4 attacks that will accept Thunderstrike (I would slot Power Push with Kinetic Crash instead, it's pretty cheap as well)

So that's 18 IOs you need to 6 slot all of them. Last I checked Thunderstrikes were going for 2 million to 5 million for the crafted enhancement. Pretty sure you can get the recipes for around 100k each, at which point you just have to take the time to craft them.

You should be able to 6 slot all 3 powers for under 30 million (well under, if you are patient enough to post a bid and wait for a few days for it to fill) If you're level 41, you should have gotten close to that much just by putting stuff on the market (please tell me you didn't vendor every IO recipe you've ever had drop, if you did you flushed millions down the drain, market prices work to your advantage too, not just against you)

The other main problem you are having here is you are doing this experiment with one of the lowest possible damage output characters in the game. A FF/Energy defender doesn't deal much damage because it's secondary is on the low end of defender damage (I think only Assault Rifle and Electric are lower), and your primary isn't giving you any kind of damage boost effects or useful damage boosting debuffs at all. Since your damage output is so low, it is naturally going to take you more endurance to kill a tough enemy. That is a big part of why FF defenders are generally considered one of the more team-based builds.

People are constantly finding exploits that allow you to take a character from level 1 to level 50 in the course of a day.

This is generally a bad thing for a few reasons:

A) The devs do NOT want us doing it. They can, will, and have deleted characters leveled that way, and some egregious offenders have been banned for repeatedly exploiting AE. (It is usually the ones that keep making new exploit missions after getting the previous ones locked or deleted that get banned) If you stumble across one by accident you will most likely be fine, but if you habitually abuse it you could get in trouble with it.

B) After an exploit becomes widespread the market goes crazy for a while. Common salvage starts selling for 10-20x what it normally does because it doesn't drop in AE missions. Also, prices of commonly used IOs will jump because there are a lot of people making a lot of money all at once, and being too impatient to bid a reasonable price they bid a crazy amount, then other people see that and assume that's the going price, and so on.

C) It leads to the creation of "AE Babies". What they are is new players who got sucked into AE when they first start the game and end up with one or more level 50 characters, and know NOTHING about the rest of the game. You'll see things like level 50 characters asking how you get out of Atlas Park, and asking what an enhancement is. They lack common knowledge that they would have learned just by playing the game.

AE Babies are bad for a couple of different reasons.

Their lack of knowledge frequently leads to high level task forces being much more difficult than they otherwise would, because they don't really know how to effectively play their character. A lot of times it also gives them an arrogance that someone with that little knowledge should not have. It's annoying when someone tells you you don't know what you're talking about because they have more level 50s than you do....and they have never been outside Atlas Park.

The other reason is, a lot of CoH's advertising is word of mouth. If someone gets sucked into AE on their first day and gets to 50 in 6 hours, they are going to go tell their friends that the entire game takes place in one building and you can hit the level cap your first day. They also tend to get bored quickly and quit, leading them to tell their friends not to waste their money on that "lame game that only has one thing to do in it". It's pretty obvious why THAT is bad for the game.

AE was originally introduced so that players could tell their own stories in it, and there are a LOT of good stories in there (Check out the Dev's Choice and Hall of Fame arcs, those were ALL made by players). Unfortunately, people figured out you can also use it for PLing, and that's what it became known for. Due to the laziness and impatience in a lot of today's society, many players want to get to the level cap as fast as possible, under the mistaken impression that that is where the "good stuff" is at.

It is a rude awakening when those players spend 50 levels fighting easily killed, nearly helpless enemies and then find out that they not only missed the majority of the game, but they have suddenly gone from easy mode to getting the floor wiped with them, because they never had to learn any tactics while they were leveling. It's funny seeing a blaster repeatedly faceplant against tough enemies and tell you that he's never had this much trouble with anything before. Yeah, pal, that's because you've spent 50 levels doing the CoH equivalent of clubbing baby seals.

AE can be an awesome experience, with some of the best writing in the game coming from other players. But, sadly, it has been very much perverted from it's original intention and gotten a bad reputation. AE itself doesn't deserve the reputation it got, but abusive players ensured that it did.

I'd say you can successfully do 99.5% of the game's content without set bonuses. Some extreme edge things, like soloing AVs and Pylons, or soloing a high level TF, you are going to need some bonuses for. (Yes, doing that would be considered content, since it is something to do in the game)

The good part of that is that there is nothing that says you HAVE to do any of those things. Those are things the players do who want to push the boundary of what is possible, not things any random player is expected to do.

Personally, I enjoy challenging myself like that, and I know a number of other people who enjoy it as well. But I know just as many that find that stuff boring as hell.

An Invuln/DM tank that is softcapped with 1 in range, and hits S/L resist cap is one of the hardest things in the game to kill.

Especially if you leverage Siphon Life to keep your HP up. On top of that, it is pretty easy to get Dull Pain perma on an Invuln anything (since all versions of it have the same recharge as the Regen version) All you need is 3 slotted Hasten and 55% global recharge and you will have perma-DP ability. Being at HP cap with softcapped defenses and 90% resistance to S/L damage, with a self heal as part of your attack chain will make you virtually immortal when facing anything but Psi damage.

Not anymore. They removed PFF from Controller Patron pools because /Force Field Controllers would be able to double up on it if they left it in.

But yeah, Rikti Drones ignore stealth completely. Upside is, they don't have any more perception than normal mobs, so if you stay 50 feet away from them they won't agro on you.

Snipers are somewhat different. They have gobs of perception (149 feet IIRC), but stealth affects them normally. But with the higher perception they still might see you if you get too close with just stealth and not full invisibility.

There's a faster way to do it I think.

Something similar will work for logging into test. Right click on the desktop icon and click "Properties" It should pop up with the destination of the shortcut. It should say "CoHUpdater.exe". If you edit it yourself and add the "eu" it should work just fine.

For test server or beta server access, you need to add -test or -beta after the CoHUpdater.exe. That works just fine, so this should work as well.

(You'll probably want to copy the whole thing to another icon on your desktop just in case. It SHOULD work, but if it doesn't you'll want a backup)

I knew something was screwy in my numbers, thanks for correcting that.

Tanker SR would softcap on SOs with no pool powers needed to get there. I did the math once, and it ended up being 47% or so just on SOs and the passives and toggles within the set. That's if it follows the same template as Shield Defense. Tanker Shield Defense gives 15% base on it's defense toggles. If SR did the same, plus the passives (which would all be 10% each if it follows the same template as Invuln's passives compared to scrappers and brutes) it would end up softcapping at level 22. Since a tank would have all the necessary powers by level 18, all you'd need to do is hit level 22 and get SO's slotted and you'd be golden.

A scrapper can already softcap with power choices and SO slotting, a tanker wouldn't even need the extra powers.

But.....Tanker SR would SUCK, because all it has is defense. Shield Defense at least has +HP and some resistance. If you run into something that bypasses defense in some way, your tank will be hitting the dirt damn near instantly. (DE Quartz emanators, I'm looking at YOU)

Well, Fire/Rad will be spending the majority of it's time in melee range. With that in mind I would go with Stone Mastery. The whole APP is awesome for a controller.

-Fissure: An AoE that will hit as many targets as Fireball, and will deal similar damage with Containment. It also has a chance to stun, so if you drop Fire Cages and hit the mob with Fissure, you might be able to save Flashfire for the next mob if enough of them are stunned by it.

-Rock Armor: Pretty basic Smashing/Lethal defense shield. It's ugly, but if you want to shoot for significant levels of defense, it's indispensable. Many Fire/ Controllers go with Stone Mastery for this power alone, since so many of the attacks in the game have a smashing or lethal component this will defend against.

-Hurl Boulder: Same as the Stone Melee power. As a Fire/Rad controller, this will probably be the power in the APP that you skip, since a single target ranged attack isn't the most useful thing for you.

-Seismic Smash: Absolutely AWESOME power. It is an Extreme damage attack, and Mids' lists it as dealing nearly 700 points of damage with Containment and slotting. But it gets better still. It is ALSO a Mag FOUR hold, meaning it will hold a boss in one application (and it's a guaranteed hold, not a chance to hold, if it hits they're held)

-Earth's Embrace: Dull Pain clone. A huge heal and max HP boost. It can save your life if you slot it decently, and if you get enough recharge from the rest of your build, you can potentially make it perma (I think, I'm not sure if the recharge is the same as tanker/scrapper/brute/stalker Dull Pain clones. If it IS the same recharge you can have it perma with just 55% global recharge, which you should easily top)

I put together a Fire/Rad build a while back that was softcapped to S/L defense and had enough recharge that AM had maybe a 10 second downtime.

I would actually focus on Endurance reduction just as much as recharge. You really want to be able to run both Hot Feet and Choking Cloud and still use your powers. (The Chance for +2 mag hold from the Lockdown set is a godsend in Choking Cloud). Hot Feet, Choking Cloud, Radiation Infection and Enervating Field, plus your APP armor, and any other toggles you may want to run will burn a metric crapton of endurance, so if you don't focus on end reduction/recovery you're going to find your end bar running dry in any fight that lasts longer than a minute or two.

For the kat/regen you want recharge, recharge, recharge, defense, and some more recharge.

For a non-Katana, non-Broadsword Dark Armor character, typed defense will work better, because you can get more defense for fewer slots expended. (positional defense is usually found in the 6th slot of a set, while typed is usually found in the 4th)

I can see needing help for The Honoree, but Trapdoor was a pansy.

Just pull him out of the room into the cave and he gets out of range of his bifurcations' regeneration boost, and he turns into a kitten. Without that insane regen rate he's pretty easy to kill. You can also pull him into the lava below the platform and it damages him enough to overcome his regen rate if you are attacking as well.

I didn't have any major issue with it. What mission are you stuck on specifically?

Pretty much this. You can earn up to 3 in a 2 day period if you stick to the 20 hour turnaround strictly.

Note: If you earn a Hero or Villain Merit and then change alignment to Vigilante or Rogue, you will lose that Merit, so if you decide to change alignments make sure you spend them first.

I thought it was full crafting cost not including what you paid for the recipe and salvage. Be kind of screwy if they gave you full price for SOs and shafted you on the more expensive IOs. (More expensive as in they cost more than SOs)

Edit: Didn't realize you played on Pinnacle AlbinoBull. That's my home server, shoot me a tell in-game if you need any real time help, my global is @Claws and Effect. Also, I take it from your character named Vege-Might that you are an Aussie? (or possibly a Kiwi, pretty sure they sell it in both countries)

No, it just isn't referring to the right thing.

Hero and Villain Morality missions give you 50 merits the first time and an Alignment merit every time after that. Vigilante and Rogue Morality missions give you 50 merits the first time, and 60 merits each time after that if you want to stay a Vigilante or Rogue. Since you don't get Alignment merits for being one of the in-between alignments, they just give you a few more Reward merits instead.

As far as cross-faction goes. How does it make any sense at all for heroes and villains to help each other get even more powerful? If anything the heroes and villains would be trying to STOP each oter from becoming Incarnates, not helping with it.

I soloed it pretty easily on most of my characters that have done it. Haven't tried my defender yet, but I'm not anticipating any undue problems.

I've commonly seen them used by tanks who are tanking Recluse on an STF with no support. If you use large inspirations you don't have to carry as many to stack them up. Since 1 large one = 4 small ones, it makes sens to use the bigger one to save yourself tray space.

Pretty sure he knows that. I read it as him wanting to respec so it becomes inherent on his characters, as most or all of them probably have it as a pool.

Judgement will probably be in i20.

They may do a mid-issue patch to give us the rest of the Alpha slot, not sure. Otherwise it will be in i20 as well. As far as exactly when that will be, I don't know.

I expect them to start giving us more than one Incarnate slot per issue, because I don't see them making us wait for 3+ years to get all of it. If you look at the tree it is in 6 tiers. It would be reasonable to expect seeing 2 and 3 open up in i20, 4-5 in i21, 6-7 in i22, and the last one in i23. I'm not anticipating having to wait until i29 to get the last slot.

I could be wrong, but the way the tree is set up would suggest that's how they are going to do it.

That's because everyone on the team is killing just as many as you are and it doesn't have to be your kill to have one drop for you. Confirmed that last night.

Cottage Rule wouldn't necessarily apply. If Shiver still slowed them, no matter what else it may do, it isn't changing the basic nature of the power. If it remains a cone slow power, it's still basically the same power, even if they add a pulsing sleep to it.

Conserve Power being turned into a self heal didn't break the Cottage Rule because it still gives you an endurance discount when you use it, just like it did before.

The term is "node"