Emgro

Sanity is for the weak. Or at least, it certainly isn't for the Japanese:

Look on this, and despair!

[ QUOTE ]
>_> I was being facetious.

Though, it's really hard to do so in a truly amusing fashion when tired/exhausted. Yay, insomnia.

[/ QUOTE ]

Speaking of facetiousness (faceity?) I didn't think there was a reaction that would be more emo than denying that I was being emo. Except possibly cutting myself.

Also, rolling an MM. I've had enough of Blueside and enough of Corruptors who can't solo well. And I've got Brutes and Doms a-plenty. And while Stalkers are funny, the joke wears off and only the masochism is left after a while. So MM it is. Any suggestions that don't involve Thugs?

[ QUOTE ]
How upset might some of you be if Demons turn out to be critters from the CoT line?

[/ QUOTE ]

Not in the least, if they'd released it six months ago, since a set consisting of nothing but rearranging material already in the game shouldn't take very long.

[ QUOTE ]
I am thinking the 'g' and 'r' are superfluous, Emgro.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hey, I'm sulking under the furniture, not in public. So it isn't emo in the least. Plus, I solved the doughnut issue by hitting potato chips for second breakfast. Not something I'd recommend all the time, but definitely different.

[ QUOTE ]
Gonna be funny when you all STILL cant play doms worth a doo doo

Op, so far all thats proposed is a base damage "buff".The rest is pure conjecture.

[/ QUOTE ]

I play my dom just fine. Admittedly, playing my dom consists of spamming Earth's Wall-O-Holds and Psychic Shockwave over and over and over, but it does kill things dead. Eventually.

Of course they get more play. I for one play almost exclusively short arcs. Why? I don't like to start something I don't get a chance to finish, and I find long arcs have this unpleasant habit of having AVs at the end of them.

Any arc I build (and all I've made so far) have been short because that way it is far easier to balance them. Admittedly, I'm a little obsessed with balance and grammar.

Designers, stop trying to challenge me. There's a little thing called a Fortunata I can use to alter my challenge level. But your "challenging" all-boss spawns are barely a speed-bump to my DM/SD Brute, while they murder the heck out of my lvl 10 controller. A superbly built and IO'ed character can do anything sane this game can throw out; anything built to challenge that character will mutilate everyone else.

Short version: Lengthen your timers, tone down your Mary Sues, and actually put stories into your story arcs.

*wanders in and puts a stamp of disapproval on the thread*

All my doughnuts were taken. True story. In RL. I had a box of doughnuts, but they are gone now. All of them.

*throws a hotdog at Detra, then vanishes under a piece of furniture to sulk*

Welcome to CoX. Now for the questions.

1. You may want both eventually. If memory serves, your other single-target attacks are Proton Volley (a snipe, I'd skip it) and Cosmic Burst (at lvl 18). You only get so many power picks, and you'll want most of your secondary, so if you had to cut something... eh. I'd really lean towards taking both.

2. Super Speed is really kind of annoying in CoV; most zones are rather vertically challenging. Fly is popular because it gets you hover, a very handy power for ranged attackers. However, Super Speed gets you Hasten, and that's not useless either. I'd call it a question of taste, but for your first char, I'd recommend fly. Once you learn all the 2D ways to get places, SS is a lot better.

3. Rad/Rad is quite workable for both solo and group. AM and you anchors obviously give more benefit on a team, but they still are useful solo (unlike bubbles, which are totally useless solo).

4. Stamina is a requirement for nearly all characters these days. Due to most teams post-20 being steamrollers (as in, rolling over enemy spawns without stopping, sometimes without slowing down), you don't have down time between fights. This can force even a more end-conscious character to need Stamina badly.

My advice would be to skip Proton Volley (the snipe) and Mutation (the rez). Power picks are valuable, and your secondary has a lot of good powers. Similarly, decide which AoEs you want; it might be all, might not. I haven't played Radiation Blast since before CoV, so not too familiar with what the AoEs all do.

[ QUOTE ]
Hehe, yeah I read it. I still haven't given up on my Rad/Storm but I started a Fire/Kin and I've been leveling him. He's at like 8 right now and I'm having a craptastical time trying to find groups. It's probably just the empty-ish server I'm on, but I'd rather be on a low-pop server than an overloaded one. I need to find one with a nice middle ground for grouping.

BTW, one thing people never put in their guides (which I wish they would) is how much APPROXIMATELY (I know prices fluctuate like mad) a build will cost after all the various IOs. Like a general range (this is the 5-10mil set, this is the 5-10bil set, etc). Everything seems expensive to me now because my highest char is 22...but it'd be good to have a general idea...

[/ QUOTE ]

Prices vary by server and day of the month, not to mention willingness to economize or get good deals. Are you willing to drop to a lvl 35 Taunt/End Cost IO instead of the 50 since neither effect is important to you, and it still gets you the set bonus? Are you working on getting these sets at low levels or high? How much of a rush are you in? Are you buying them with merits? Are you in a big SG/VG that might provide some of your salvage?

Prices are really variable on a weekly basis within a server, let alone across servers over months.

Nyet. I don't see why I should get less XP for killing clocks in an MA mission than I do killing clocks in a paper or arc mission.

They gave us potatoes. It's OK to make french fries instead of hash browns, but making vodka is forbidden.

I'll thank them when it stops altogether, but it does seem to be happening less.

Eh, thanks anyway. Glad to see the devs are keeping up with their usual record of fixing the little along with the big, despite the big being quite large lately.

Farmers are evil.

I'm a casual player with 12 50s solidly IOed out on both builds.

I'm a casual PvP'er who violently hates losing.

I'm a casual RPer who cannot spell to save my life.

I'm a farmer who thinks farming is the purpose of the game.

I only farm in the appropriate ways, any other way is wrong.

Eisregen is ALWAYS wrong.

If you're reading this and don't agree, you're as wrong as Eisregen is.

[ QUOTE ]
Now, now, let's not argue over the nekkidness and which movies are better then others when it comes to being unclothed. Rather let us join together to call for even more nekkidness in the cinema.

And to get back to the subject of the thread, I caught the Wolvie movie last night and was fairly underwhelmed. It wasn't the worst movie I've seen, not even the worst X-Men movie I've seen, but it just didn't have much going for it. That having been said it's a perfectly acceptable popcorn movie to go see if there isn't that much else out that catches your eye.

[/ QUOTE ]

Was there nekkidness in Wolverine? Because that's the only thing it'd have going for it, according to the reviews I've heard.

[ QUOTE ]
The markets have been SERIOUSLY destroyed by the MA system's ticket system, and that should be stressed. We currently have...hold on, lemme count...influence, infamy, merrits, tickets...that's -four- different currencies in this game right now, with completely uneven methods of distribution (compare infamy to influence, or merrits to tickets) but ALL come in to play in the markets, where the items one is supposed to purchase with these items is equally available to all methods. This destroys resale values on some items and hyperinflates them on others. It isn't a "DOOOM" message to point this out and ask that it try and be balanced in some way, and quickly.


[/ QUOTE ]

First off, the market isn't destroyed. It is highly unstable and in a state of flux. But as long as buying and selling continues, the market lives. The market you're used to may have been destroyed, but that's something else.

Infamy and Influence operate in different markets; you can't really compare them except for the occasional infamy-for-influence swap. So what you have is more like two markets, with one currency each. If memory serves, neither merits nor AE tickets can be traded, merely the things you've bought with them. So they are a good, not a currency.

Exchange rates will always fluctuate. I'm surprised nobody's brought up the issue of prestige farming, since you can generate vast amounts of prestige simply running an 8-man all-SG team.

I liked the Resident Evil movies. Expected little, got it every time.

At least in the first two. Third was truly horrible.

[ QUOTE ]
"Because good storytelling is timeless."

that's just not true.

read any 19th century classic - they are terrible to read now.
storytelling is a skill and style which develops over time.

[/ QUOTE ]

"Hwæt! Wē Gār‐Dena in geār‐dagum
þēod‐cyninga þrym gefrūnon,
hū þā æðelingas ellen fremedon."

This particular thousand-year-old piece of English literature was recently turned into a movie. A crappy movie, nonetheless. Storytelling hasn't developed all that much; instead, audiences have changed.

You're going to tell me that Milton and Chaucer are unreadable; I'm going to call you illiterate. This isn't something that can really be resolved all that tidily.

Petless masterminds are more useless than "healorz" defenders without attacks. And that's already about as useless as a third nipple on a dude.

[ QUOTE ]
the Mercenary minions from the Knives of Artemis

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
Knives of Artemis

[/ QUOTE ]

In my personal opinion, the Knives of Artemis are overboard all by themselves. Against a steamroller team, nothing stands up for long, but solo they are quite a match.

Kill Defiance.

Reorganize Trick Arrow. Flash Arrow is uncouth.

I don't know about all you special people, but I've been PuG'ing since I first signed on to CoH a few years back, and that represents the bulk of my teams. I rarely solo.

I'm really torn on the AE farming business. A part of me likes leveling quickly. It's a lot more enjoyable to get to 20, grab stamina, and move on to the cool powers. Another part of me hates the fact I can't get a team together to run arcs, whether the normal ones or AE missions.

The farming fad SHOULD wind down. Mowing down walls of Rikti Comm officers or whatever the muppet-of-the-month is going to get old, and once a character hits 26, I can't stand farming them much longer. I just hope other people feel similarly, and that once they get their 50/their third pet and second pet upgrade/their 15th 50 they lose interest in farming without losing interest in CoX as well.

Bizarre and dramatic price increase in common salvage due to lack of normal missions being done is sort of hilarious. Whites sell for more than yellows and oranges.

At the risk of derailing the thread again, I was referring to purposely designing a mission arc to have significantly higher difficulty in the final missions as opposed to the earlier ones.

A lot of people like to end a multi-mission arc with an AV or EB or a really tough fight. It's flavorful. It's traditional, judging by the dev arcs we've been playing for a dozen issues. Very very popular as well, based on many of the MA arcs I've played.

It's also a pain in the backside to get 80% through an arc and run into an unbeatable battle. To find an unmarked EB/AV and be unable to solo it with your Dom/Troller. Etc and so forth.

Backloading the difficulty seems both a good and bad design choice. What're people's thoughts on it both as developers and as players?