Fantastic_Foe

So, would the Alan Scott Green Lantern be tech, since he receives his power from a unique device?

You can use tech as the basis, but I wouldn't argue with you if you wanted to use a science background for a Hal Jordan Green Lantern character.

How do you feel about tasering opponents vs. throwing hypos at them? That sometimes makes up my mind.

Along those same lines, what would be Doctor Doom's origin? Since he's the master of science and sorcery, he'd be: Mutation! (The only origin that can use both Magic and Science DOs...)

Thanks for not posting.

The Virtue Strength global is just an idea I had to facilitate tanking. My first char was an Inv/SS, and over the years, I've had some good teamups with similar style tanks. We can't all be in the same SG, or the global friend list is too small for every acquaintance.

I figured a 'themed' global channel might be of use, like a global channel for aquatic heroes, or a global channel for Asgardians, to facilitate teaming and communication beyond SGs and coalitions.

Okay, I'll join in. To be fair, I love PUGs, and I also love bad PUGs, since they make for great memories...

Hey, I have another suggestion. Make a Tank.

What?

I'm just saying that you shouldn't dismiss tanking in CoH out of hand. Fire tanks, for example, are very damage oriented, and hopefully a decent team would understand the difference between a fire tank and a stone tank.

Welcome to the game.

I'll have to say it's not, since I'm unfamiliar with your reference.

In general, a balanced team might perform smoother, but I won't say it performs better. Depending on the team, some tactics might have to be followed, when to pull a large group, when to rush in. Kill the boss first, or kill his minions first,etc.

Sometimes, a team might run across a particular enemy, or numerical odds that they might want to have a different team composition. You might all be packing fire, and run across a boss who ignores fire. Those situations are relatively rare.

SGs are the CoH equivalent. You can also join global chat channels that will get you communication access to other players. Want to fight giant monsters? Your server should have a Giant Monster channel, where monster spotters will report, etc.

Welcome.

Everyone has pretty much answered your questions, I thought I'd put in some random thoughts.

If you decide to be a tank, don't stress out that at the early levels, you don't feel tough. Early on, before you start getting good defense/resistance powers, your only real difference between your tank and a more squishier character is your extra hit points. Later on, you'll get tougher. In fact, depending on the particular tank you are, you'll get very tough.

In any of the characters you make, there are reasonable variations. Don't let anyone give you a hard time if the build you chose to make deviates in some way from some standard vanilla build.

There is a crafting system, largely based on crafting enhancements for your powe. The system was added some years after game launch, and it's not required, as in your characters will still be viable if they are not packing the best crafted Invention Origin enhancements.

I also would recommend trying to solo a bit, to see your own content at your pace. Once you get the hang of the game, leveling can become very fast, and you can miss a lot.

Okay, Soft Cap is not an abbreviation. In general, a soft cap is the reasonable effective limit of something, although you can get more bonuses in case you face debuffs.

For example, accuracy (I know I probably should say to-hit, I will let others correct me) is soft-capped at 95%, since there is always a 5% chance you'll miss. You can rack up more than 95% in case you get hit with accuracy debuffs.

Likewise, you'll never get 100% damage resistance to something, you'll be soft-capped at some lower number (depending on your archetype.)

Are there other specific terms you need help with? By the time ti took to me to write this, someone will point you to a page of common abbreviations, but since you are new, it would be good to hear what other things are obscure or confusing

Nosferatu is extra tough, even as "just" an Elite Boss. He can be soloed, but usually with Shivans. Since you asked, Shivans are temp power pets that you can get for doing a series of tasks in Bloody Bay, the PVP zone that is accessible off of Skyway City.

The task to earn a Shivan is not trivial, but can be accomplished solo (depending.)

Don't give up. I've soloed Nosferatu occasionally by using a LOT of purple inspirations and getting lucky.

That Ouroboros mini-task force is my favorite, the finale mission is great.

Well, if you're going to, I'll also offer up the backstory for my "Kheldian"

Amazing Faux Nemesis is one of the Fake Nemesis battle suits that still thinks it's Lord Nemesis, with the Kheldian Twilight Son trapped in the suit's boiler as the power supply. (How Twilight Son can be in the suit's boiler and be a mission contact in Ouroboros at the same time is of course, easily explained.)

And, if I can make a suggestion, rather than just broadcasting your recruitment hook, broadcast to organize a series of mission runs that are sponsored by your SG. I
d be more likely to join the Legion of Awesome if they organized a classic Frostfire run and the Legionaires of Awesome on the team displayed some good teamwork and poise at the first Intersection of Doom on the map (just a short ways beyond the initial altar room.)

best wishes

Assuming you are planning on playing your level 26 tech scrapper, I would recommend you try out these things:

Swing by Steel Canyon, there is a university in the southwest corner. There is a short arc available that introduced Inventions (I forget the contact name, it's the dean of admissions, I think.) Ease through that to get an introduction to Invention enhancements.

While you are at the university, see the contact Montague CastelSomethingOrOther. Monty will offer you the midnighter arc, and it's a good one to accomplish.

If you had done any missions that exposed you to the concept of time travel, then you'll have a new power that opens a portal to the Citadel of Ouroboros, which is a floating fortress of time travellers. I always enjoy the Ouroboros introduction arc. If you don't have this power, ask someone to open an Ouro portal for you. Once in the citadel, fly to the top of the fortress' spire to get the exploration badge there which will grant you the Ouro portal power.

Ouro is a very convenient travel hub.

I forget when Croatoa was introduced to the game, but the Croatoa story arc is great, with some tricky missions.

In Talos, there is a new contact near the police station that will offer some extremely new content.

You have outleveled the Faultline content, if you have any characters around level 15, you will find Faultline a lot more fun than it used to be.

Best wishes and welcome back

Welcome man, sorry you're having troubles.

You're downloading 6 years of patches and changes. It won't be that bad in the future.

Okay, I'd recommend turning off Ultra Mode. I'm not even looking at your specs.

I've played the game since before Issue 1 (I can't claim the honor of being in beta though) and I really like CoH. But not because of the graphics. I have my graphics set low, and I like it just fine.

One day, I might upgrade, and then I'll check out the higher end graphical effects, but I prefer performance over polish.

Best regards,

Welcome to the game!

The previous posters have given you good advice on where to go next (Kings Row is excellent, since the mobs are not too large, you can street hunt, and you can get scanner missions to lead to safeguard missions (and their temp power rewards..), but I won't tell you to stay away from the Hollows (but you should team) since I am fond of the Frostfire mission.)

I hope you enjoy AR/Gadgets. I'm currently working on getting my AR/Energy blaster to 50, I'm at 46.75 now, so it'll be soon.

I don't know if I can give you advice on pitfalls, but I can tell you a strategy that works well. Build Up + Full Auto is a beautiful thing. My character, Gotham Gunman, uses stealth to line up enemies to be in the zone of fire, and once build up fires, full auto kills minions dead. When facing LTs with minions, I usually build up, snipe, then full auto, which finishes off the LT, and clobbers the minions.

I like this attack chain so much, I invested heavily in +recharge so it's available quite often.

Good hunting to you

Welcome to the game!

I know you've already gotten some great advice above, but I'll offer advice anyway.

Don't stress out about making the wrong decision in a character, characters tend to get more and more awesome over time, and a mismanagement here or there gets better later.

You're a scrapper on Guardian, that's fine, Guardian has a large enough population to find teams, but isn't too busy (I'm on Virtue myself...)

Scrappers are in general useful and hardy, so don't worry about taking risks.

When you defeat bad guys, besides experience you'll earn influence. It's not exactly money, but it feels like money, it's used much like money. If you are in a supergroup, you also earn prestige for the SG, which is like money that belongs to the supergroup for improving the supergroup base.

When you defeat bad guys, you often get inspirations, enhancements, recipes, and salvage. There is an influence-based economy in the game involving (largely) enhancements, recipes, and salvage. I recommend not worrying about this too much with your first character, other than slotting enhancements in your powers.

By clicking on the enhancements tab on your power bar, then manage, you'll see all of your powers, and slots to put enhancements. You'll see this screen when you level up early in the game during the odd-levels (level 5, 7, etc.)

Each power can have up to 6 slots for enhancements, and enhancements boost an aspect of a power, making it more accurate, more damage, less tiring to use, increasing the chance it'll be available, etc. Don't stress too much on what percentages you are getting initially, just put slots on powers you feel will be important. It's doesn't hurt to to spread slots around at first, later you'll figure which powers need a lot of slots, which don't.

One thing you will learn is that in general, putting three of the same type of enhancements (like three damage enhancements) more or less is the most you want to slot of that type of enhancement.

Sell enhancements you can't use, or don't want to vendors. Until you learn about the market (heroside is Wentworths, Villainside is the Black market) I'd recommend selling any white or yellow salvage to vendors, but keep the red ones, which are worth millions. Once you get comfortable with the markets, you'll be able to decide how you want to sell your salvage, to NPC vendors or to players in the consignment system.

Once you hit level 6, you'll be able to choose from power pools, as was said above. Power pools are just general purpose powers that everyone can use, and that includes the travel powers in the game.

It never hurts to take powers from the Fitness pool, which can offer Stamina at level 20 (if you've taken two prerequisite powers.) I recommend you build your first character with Stamina, later on, you can try to build characters without the benefit of Stamina. If your scrapper has the regeneration powerset, you can skip Stamina, as long as you have the Quick Recovery power which acts like it. (But having both is very nice too.)

I often think it is better to experience the game first hand painfully than read all about the game, the enemies, the zones, and not be surprised.

Again, welcome to the game,

Assuming you have published the mission, custom foes do drop tickets, unless you have removed any of their base powers as part of the customization.

Even if you add every other power in a set to the custom critter, if you remove one of the pre-selected powers for the powerset, the critter now offers up 0 xp, influence, prestige, and tickets.

Everyone knows that Victor Von Nemesis had a lab accident while at Doomstadt University, that forced him to live in a steam-powered armored enclosure. His negligent lab partner, Heath Horizon, was not punished by the university thanks to some sizable hush money, and the fact that Victor had always been a bit of a tool.

Anyway, now Lord Nemesis spends most of his time trying to conquer the world, or trying to launch the accursed Doctor Horizon's science building, the Beanstalk, into space.

'nuff said.

(On a more serious note, I think the creators of Lord Nemesis are Jack Kirby and Stan Lee... seriously. Armored European madman genius with robotic duplicates? Really? )

Well, you can create an alt at anytime...

At 50, you have the ability to create an alt from the unlocked archetypes...

And, you can continue to play your 50. The only real difference between playing your 50 or a character under 50 is that you no longer gain XP, and your powersets are now defined and enhanced.

Except that you can try out a second build for the character. And you can respec. And you can work on adding IO enhancements. And you can try using IO sets. And you can try to complete sets. And you can try to frankenslot IO sets to boost aspects of your powers. And if you must, you can try to accumulate ultra rare, very powerful IO sets.

You can beef up on temp powers from safeguards.

You can explore. Not everyone has seen Faathim the kind, and I stumbled upon him by accident (since I have never done a Shard Task Force...)

You can go through missed content or favorite missions using Ouroboros, and you can use Ouroboros to artificially set your level low, to match a zone.

If you have an dark knight urban avengery type and you want to patrol Kings Row, using Ouro to lower your level so the Skulls can pose a challenge and give you prestige/inf is not a bad option.

Or join up with a lower level team. Thanks to the new SSK, you'll be at the level of the leader of the team, but you'll be extra, since you'll be able to use powers available 5 levels above your effective level.

Since it sounds like you have an RP background, work that angle.

You don't have to roll up an alt (although that's a fine option...), but you might have to work a bit harder to motivate yourself to play your 50.

I have a handful of chars I'm actively playing, with 50 in mind, but I have a larger set of 50s that I cycle through, because I enjoy playing them. The game does not end for your character at 50, unless you choose that.

Good hunting.

It depends. As the team is gathering, I might check out a player's bio if they have a cool name or costume. I am more likely to check out a support character to see what their support set is rather than assume H34LZ0r... I want to avoid killing rad anchors, watch for debuffed foes, etc and knowing the powers in play helps.

I guess my playstyle might be influenced by what I see, but that's usually influenced more by a bio that says:

I kil all teh time, biyathces!

than badge setups or even powerset choices.

If someone clearly has an RP bio, I might try to interact with them in a thematically appropriate way.

If someone is acting crazy, I might check the badges to see if it's 98% AE related.

I usually don't change my behavior if an inexperienced person is getting us all killed, or a longtime vet. If we are needlessly getting killed and it's not fun, I might act one way, if the team is having a fun time, or acting like brave heroes against horrible odds, I might act another. That's more based on the team attitude and if I think we might overcome the bad guys with epic momentum.

What you do is not wrong, and you are already aware that what you see in the info fields might misrepresent the real situation, so that's good.