Fulmens

Uberguy: While these things you say are true... City of Villains was four YEARS ago. Used to be there were no respecs either. . . free, bought,earned, nuttin'. Been a long time since that was true, too.

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Not all attacks are classified quite the way one would expect, and an attack that does split smashing and fire damage types might not even be classed as a "smashing attack" at all; it might be a "fire attack" and go against fire defense,

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Just to extend this: it's not as unlikely as you'd think. Fireball does some smashing DAMAGE but is classed as a "Pure fire" attack for Defense purposes.

You can buy the candy canes on Wents... but you can't get the auras until they open the chalet.

Felecia, I tell people why I'm putting them on /ignore... it is unlikely to change anyone's behaviour, but there's always the chance that it might.

You're playing attention-seeking games, masquerading as useful advice. You're lying AND trolling. Your posts are about as useful as the line "YOU know what you did."

Grats!

... and not just a little energy, either.

We have a tradition of, when you hit fifty, doing a death dive into an Archvillain or something else that will kill you.

... of course debt means nothing BEFORE 50, these days.

I've now got Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, "The Beast in Me", in my head.

I listed something for 190,908,190 instead of 190,908... just AFTER finishing the Inf Destruction Project. Doh.

Minotaur covered it, pretty much.

As mentioned: You have typed DEF on your Stone Brute. If you look at a set with defense buffs it will give either X typed and 1/2 X positional, or the other way around. For a very good example of this, Aegis gives Fire/Cold defense for slotting 3 (with half as much AOE defense) and AOE defense for slotting 5 (with half as much Fire/Cold). If you slot 5 you end up with roughly 4.5% F/C and 4% AOE, if I recall.

I don't remember there being a big En/Neg set to go with the Kinetic Combat and Aegis, but I'm probably just overlooking it.

We only need ONE flavor of the month to break the game; how many Firetanks were there in issue 4?

My guess would be either Dark Armor tanks with Tough and Weave (starting at 60%+ Res to four types and 19% Defense, with a Steadfast), Kat/Dark Armor scrappers (48%+ res, 15% Defense and capped melee/lethal def), or Invuln tanks (near-cap S/L res, 32% "other" res, with Tough Hide, Weave and a Steadfast...around 35% Def to all but psi.)

A couple of Rikti invasions should get you a bubble or two. The MA Stories and Lore forum is full of people who worked hard on their stories and desperately want an audience.

Have you been to the Shadow Shard? Everyone should do it once. (Most people would say "and only once.")

You could log on in the morning and build a Giant Monster Task Force- going from zone to zone, beating down every GM you can find. It's not efficient for XP, but it's fun and it gets you a few merits.

Hydra (Perez)
Babbage (Boomtown)
Paladin (Kings)
Adamastor (Dark Astoria)
Jurassik (Creys)
Lusca (IP) - a lot of people whine about this one, but I think if you're serious about this project you won't stop just because you got to the hard one.

So there's four ideas.

I misunderstood, then.

I'd divide into three categories: Things that give XP, things that give non-XP rewards, and things that don't necessarily give XP, or rewards, but are fun anyway.

The pinball machines in Pocket D could be fun ,and if you set them up so other people can watch but not play until the game is over... keep track of high scores... may not be worth the dev-hours, but it could be fun.

Wow. First reply and I'm going negative already...

There are a [very few] things that count as "puzzles" in this game. You can tell because players have been consistently and extensively complaining about them, and avoiding them, for five years straight. Ever get lost in the Perez maze? Ever look for a mission door that was "under the map?" Ever try to find your way to the center of the Abandoned Sewers?

... oh yeah. The playerbase treated those problems like bugs and developed workarounds.

Same with buying "power 10" enhancements. Same with unlockable stores. Same with missions where you had to travel to the end of a hazard zone, then travel through ANOTHER hazard zone (the old Rikti Crash Site). Same with talk-tos, patrol missions, tricky hunts. In fact, while this may sound bitter, the Architect Entertainment system does seem to give a lot of people what they want: travel six feet and have your critters served to you on a plate.

Matt Miller said something once to the effect of "Ten minutes after a puzzle is introduced into an MMO, there's a walkthrough on the web." It's very true.

I hope someone has a good idea... but I don't.

No, EIGHTEEN billion inf will vanish into the abyss !

I'm in favor.

Dooo eeeet.

Issue 10 beta test, the Rikti ended up camping the hospital, because it was where all the heroes ended up . You'd come out of the hospital and there were like a hundred bigheads nailing you on the spot.

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so far we have... indifference, sarcasm, and "stupid" ... i was hopeing for something a bit more constructive from the Def forum

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you may have an unrealistic view of this forum, and perhaps of the entire internet.

I keep SWEARING to do another sample character for semibroke, midlevel IO use.

In the meantime:

Spend less, get more with this:

https://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat...&PHPSESSID=

Earn more with these:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat....=1#Post11108689

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat....&PHPSESSID=

Note one big thing in that last guide: the difference betwen play time and wall-clock time. If you place a bid, log out, and come back the next afternoon, you've got like 18 hours of wall-clock time and zero minutes of playtime.

Oh, one general guide to the market that will help:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showf...1#Post10399961

With the market: SPECIFICS change. Hamidon goo was 4 million, then it was 200K, then it was a million. Res/Def IO's went from 60K to several million. Uncommon salvage is no longer vendor trash. GENERAL RULES are pretty constant. Leave bids for a while and you can get bargains. Check the price of the recipe + ingredients + crafting versus the cost of the crafted item. There's usually more supply of the top-level recipe, but it usually costs a LOT more than any other level.

It uses the best available option. A Rikti blast is Energy, Smashing, and Ranged. If you have 25% Smashing, 10% Range and 19% Energy you get to use the 25% Smashing.

Here's where I mention something that's complex, that you didn't ask about and that you may know anyway. Defense is "out of 50" in PvE. That is, critters have a 50% "Base To Hit" times some multiplier- an even-level archvillain has a 1.5 multiplier, while an even-level minion has a 1.0 multiplier.

Defense takes off the "Base To Hit". So 40% Defense means that a even-level minion has (50-40) * 1.0 = 10% chance to hit you. An even-level AV has (50-40) * 1.5 =15% chance to hit you.

The (Base To Hit - Defense) can never go below 5%.

There are a few exceptions which have higher Base To Hit, like Rikti Drones. You'll learn to hate them.

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Generally [IOs are] better than SOs (though not by that much).

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I'm going to have to disagree with that, partially. (And here's where I overcommunicate.)

Generic IO's are not much better than SO's, this is true.

There are a couple levels of improvement that are possible from here on up:

The first is "Frankenslotting" with set IO's. A set IO will generally improve more than one thing (for instance an acc/dam improves both accuracy and damage.) Keeping with that example, it will give you a little more than half an acc and a little more than half a damage- about 2/3 of each. So if you slot three different acc/dam from three different sets, you get "two accuracy, two damage" in three slots, saving a slot. You can get about two "extra slots " into a power this way.

There are some cheap sets out there, because they have terrible set bonuses. Nobody really wants "1.5% debt reduction" or "1.65% sleep resistance." You can use these cheap sets to get improved performance for only a little bit more than the cost of SO's. One example of a cheap set.

The next step is where you can start spending big money. If you have a set that DOES give you good benefits- like Crushing Impact- the price tends to have two commas in it. That is a lot of money. However, if you hit someone and they had a Crushing Impact in their pocket, you can SELL it for a price with two commas in it.

As mentioned, those are not big bonuses- 5% recharge, 7% accuracy in that case- but if you slot it in Thunder Kick, Storm Kick, Eagle's Claw, and Boxing you have almost a full SO of extra accuracy, and half an SO of extra recharge, in all your powers.

There are increasingly higher levels of IO which are slightly better and much more expensive. One way of thinking of them is "an excuse for level 50's to keep playing and getting more powerful."

ooch.

DrMike said
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You can't design anenemy who does normal levels of smashing damage to an Invulnerable tank without them also doing 10 times base damage to a Blaster, which is crazily overpowered.

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I think at one point high level Longbow Nullifiers had unresistable -resist grenades. I think they've been changed.

Ideas presented without proof can be dismissed without proof.

They're bombing my city. They're shooting my friends. What else can I do but take up my weapons and fight?