DrMike2000

Your suggestion has a lot of merit, Claws. The main problem I have with it, is that it halts the player in their tracks. They may have just joined an awesome team and paused to train between missions, and really not want to have to deal with the test right now. Its too much like being told to do what you should do when youve logged in to do what you want.

The idea of throwing out snippets of information like the existence of the Shard is a good one though. I just think it would work better if its presented in a way where the player chooses when to read it.

They've got the newsboys near train stations currently, they're used to advertise new stuff, well, Dual Blades and Willpower still. So I guess they could throw out little factoids about the outside world outside the AE building. Just enough to tease the player - "Read all about it! Lava creatures spotted in the Hollows again!" and so on.

Poster adverts within AE would make sense too.
"See the Shadow Shard: Level 40 heores needed at Firebase Zulu" with an image of the Shard in all its Roger Dean glory.
"Vanguard: Keping Earth Safe" and a still of the mothership in the RWZ.
If this redirects a bit of Atlas spam from farm team announcements to "Whats the Shadow Shard?" then thats a good thing.

For teaching about enhancements:
Have a NPC who gives you build advice maybe? A powers doctor/trainer in AE who scans your build and makes simple suggestions.

eg "
you have no enhancements - this is what they are..."
"your enhancements are out of date - this is the rule of 3 levels..."
"youre still using TOs in your 20s - find the origin store on your map..."

But not

"You have Jump kick five slotted!???!" (because I do... I like it! )

He could even speak to you if you walk past and he detects issues: "Unslotted Boy - may I speak to you for a moment?"

Its a lot like your idea of the trainers testing you, but its done more on the players terms, when they have a moment to spare.

Really, one of the best anti-farmspam measures is the newly announced difficulty settings coming in I16. People wont need fillers anymore.

Ive been playing my Claws Scrapper tonight, got him to level 19 and totally enjoying Focus - my first Scrapper with a ranged attack!
(previously played MA/SR and Broadsword/Shield)

Its a great power mechanically, nice damage, good range, knockdown, but one thing bothers me. What on earth am I actually doing?

I slash the air in front of me, make a cutting noise, and a guy 40 fet away falls over a second later. This power mechanic would make sense as a foot stomp and shockwave in a superstrength set, maybe even as a roar of some kind in claws, but this...

Can any of you Claws gurus help me out?
What do you think when you see your character do this?

Im not a fan of this idea. It seems a bit sort of patronising, and would be a source of annoyance to me as a dedicated altitis sufferer.

Also, not everyone who plays this game is a native English speaker, for starters. required text is not a great idea for this reason.

Making it multiple choice means that you can button-mash your way through it, so no-one really learns if they dont want to.

What sort of questions were you thinking of? They'd have to be pretty simple to have an unqualified answer.

e.g.

"Who leads the charge into battle?"
a) Tanker
b) Defender
c) Scrapper
d) Blaster
Has a classical "right" answer (Tanker), but you wont hear that on some of the AT boards here, and not because they are wrong.

Martial Arts and Superstrength are getting some new alternate animations for some powers (but not all).

e.g. Thunder Kick will have an alternate punch animation.
SS attacks will have sleeker less smashy alternatives, more Superman than Thing I guess.

Back Alley Brawler chimes in on this page:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat....part=4&vc=1

Basicaly its punches for MA (YESSS!!) and less brutish Superstrength.

There isn't really any way to tell what's the character and whats the costume at present.

Take the X-Men.
Skin colour is obviously a per-character trait, but what about back detail?

Storms cape in her default costume is just costume, Angels' wings are part of him and cant be pulled off when hes in SG costume mode.

Nightcrawlers "Belt" is a tail - part of him.

Cyclop's "Detail 1" is part of his costume, but definitely shouldn't be removed because its his visor or glasses.

Forge's artifical leg, (if & when they get round to making one in CoH), is part of him.

Best we can do is to do this informally and allow for corrections - save out default male/female and huge versions of the basic team costume and stick them on the SG website for download and personalisation.
And we can do that with the tools we have right now.

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I thought Virtue was home to some of the most intelligent & creative people in this game........

Lets hear your thoughts/questions

I'll start with my own

so how are Io's gonna work in this process....???

are the power's you switch to gonna take the Io
s you had in that power??

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i thought POSI said issue 16 was not going rogue

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To clear up any confusion, Issue 16 should be referred to as Going Rouge, since it lets you tint your powers pink.

Cool! I always find this kind of info interesting. Thanks for going to the trouble to do this.

I've translated these numbers into percentages of each level range to more easily compare the spread between archetypes as they level up:

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
Levels Tank Scrapper Defender Controller Blaster
1 to 10 17.3% 25.7% 12.8% 17.8% 26.4%
11 to 20 16.5% 29.7% 19.8% 9.9% 24.2%
21 to 30 12.7% 24.5% 17.6% 12.7% 32.3%
31 to 40 16.4% 25.8% 17.1% 21.1% 19.5%
41 to 50 17.0% 23.4% 9.5% 24.8% 25.1%
</pre><hr />

The two big trends I see are Blasters giving up when they hit the early 30s, and Defenders not making it into the 40s.

I'm a fourth category.
I've got Group Fly on three characters and planned for more (counting one PB with Energy Flight).

I dual box a lot, and set up my group of characters so that those on one account have either Recall Friend, Group Fly or Kinetics, ie have some means of ferrying the characters on the other account around.

The characters on Account 2 dont always have travel powers because they always have a partner who can get help them out.

If I'm teaming with anyone else I make well sure its out of my tray before we enter a mission.

I would heartily second the original suggestion and extend it.
- Lose the accuracy penalty.
- Normalise everyone's fly speeds within the bubble to be the same based only on enhancements slotted by the owner of Group Fly.

This would change it from broken to one of those cool flavour powers you could grab for concept, situational utility or just fun.

Here's Fulmen's take on that very problem:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat....=1#Post13608725

And maybe by tinting my ally shields differently from Dispersion Bubble (which makes little bubbles around anyone inside it) Ill be able to see who has shields elapsed on them.

Not that I ever let them drop, of course...

Stick with recoloured Energy.

Neutrino Bolt, XRay Eyes and Irradiate are all kind of light-like.

Electron haze is a bit cloudy.

Neutron Bomb involves throwing a glowing beachball that makes a little mushroom cloud when it lands.

And all thet -Def isnt too hot when you have Aim and Build Up, apart from allowing you to slot certain IOs.

It would be cool if you could set powers to use Supergroup colours.

That way you could change your colours on the fly if you're in a personal SG.

This is a brilliant idea. I really like it.

Just checked on Red Tomax, Blind is just typed Psionic, Spectral Wounds is Psionic and Ranged.

http://www.redtomax.com/data/powers/...lusion_Control

Whether or not that applies to NPCs as well, Im not 100% sure.

Any Mind Control/Illusion Control attack is untyped (ie not Positional), whereas Defender style psychic blasts arent.

If it involves whire radial circles, its untyped. If its got a pink projectile, its Ranged (or AoE for a cone)

The following common enemies use untyped attacks:
Tsoo Ink Men
Lost Rectors (I think - they use a bit of both)
Rikti Mentallists
Carnie Illusionists (but not Ring Mistresses)

These attacks are still typed as Psychic, so Dispersion Bubble, Hover, CJ, manouvres, Weave all count against them since they offer Defense vs Psi.
And the Elusive Mind accolade from Rikti Invasions gives Psi Defence too. So if they're giving you trouble, go kick some Rikti butt this weekend!

No, thats not what im saying.

To be blocked from playing two evenings a week is a mild inconvenience.

To be blocked from playing four evenings a week is a great inconvenience.

My suggestion is to move ONLY the extra mid week maintenance to a different time, NOT the Monday and Friday ones.

Staggered maintenance has been suggested before.

For example, keep Monday and Friday as they are. Move extra mid-week maintenances to midday US time would cause them to occur during evening primetime in India rather than Australia, whilst still occurring during US work hours and away from prime US gaming time (to the best of my knowledge).

This may be a busier time, I dont know. But is it better to mildly inconvenience 30,000 or greatly inconvenience 10,000?

I PM'd a Community rep with this idea in fact, and got no response. I dont see this changing to be honest, but no harm in discussing it.

Thanks for letting us know this is coming.

Thats not a bad idea, Ricktu.

I'm pretty sure that we've occasionally missed either the Monday or Friday night (Aussie time) maintenance. This kind of suggests to me that the twice weekly maintenance is not absolutely necessary. By that I mean its not like the servers are in danger of choking on memory leaks in the next 24 hours if maintenance isn't performed at the regular time, but its more being performed for safety's sake.

So moving the maintenance by a day shouldn't have an impact.
Moving the time forwards by a few hours would just shift the problem to New Zealand, who currently get maintenance from around 8pm to 10pm, if my maths is right.

So your first idea is probably better, making maintenance our Thursday night.

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The Defender has 477.9 health.
He has Tough, which provides 15% resistance to smashing and lethal, and Dispersion Bubble for 10% Defense.
His basic attack is Power Blast, which does 45.31 damage.
His best shot is the same Power Blast, for 45.31 damage.


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Don't you have Power Burst yet?
I'd expect any /Energy Blast Defender built for solo-ing to have all three single target blasts by level 10. Bolt - Blast - Bolt - Burst makes a pretty decent attack chain with a little bit of recharge in there.

Not only will that increase your damage output, it'll drop the incoming damage because of the more reliable knockback (60% per hit) from Power Burst.

EDIT: Great minds think alike, CDN

Bonfire is the best tool bar none for identifying that you need to slot more accuracy in Fire Cages.

Awesome post, Doomhawk! Love it!

I'd love to see an Electrical Control set that revolved around endurance drain rather than just being the same holds with different graphics.
I'm not holding my breath though.

In the meantime, maybe try out a Dark/Dark Defender or an Elec/Elec Blaster as a Controller in all but name? I found both these builds very Controller-y, or Dominator-y in the Blaster's case.

I havent found the Kheldian arcs that gripping.

They definitely feel like "pre-Faultline" material, ie a bit short on character and really just a lot of generic Council maps with a storyline tacked on.

In comparison to the new playstyles offered by Kheldians you're certainly not missing much. If you played your Warshade purely through AE or radio missions you'd still be getting over 95% of the fun of being a Kheld.

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Re: psi resists in Clarity

Increase Density (stackable status protection plus nonstackable smashing/energy resists) works fine.


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An excellent point! I knew there was a precedent for that.