Godpants

I was on a Hollows PUG with Mr. Bill once. In fairness, the team was doing really well and moving along at a good pace. However, after we all trained up, Mr. Bill made an unfortunate power choice, and we all found out about it at the next fight, and every fight thereafter.

We attacked the next group of enemies, only to find Mr. Bill lagging behind. Team chat in every encounter for the rest of the mission went something like this:

Mr. B: Nooo! Let me pull! I have Teleport Foe!
Mr. B: Nooo! I have Teleport Foe!
Mr. B: Nooooooo!!!

I can understand wanting to try out a shiny new power, but we'd been doing fine without using pulls. It may make me a bad person, but I took perverse enjoyment watching this mini-meltdown.

For standard 1.0 accuracy powers and one even-level SO's worth of accuracy enhancement, here's how your chances to hit break down versus enemies higher than your level:

+1: (1.0 * 1.33) * 0.65 = 0.8645, 86.45%
+2: (1.0 * 1.33) * 0.56 = 0.7448, 74.48%
+3: (1.0 * 1.33) * 0.48 = 0.6384, 63.84%

This information comes from Luminara's elegant guide to the Archery set. Personally, because I can't always control the level of mobs I'm fighting, I shoot for about 1.5 SOs worth of accuracy per power.

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without the innovations of I9 the game would have lost me.

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You say that like it's a bad thing.

I KEED!

I have a L41 DDC that I'm enjoying, although it's a little light on the damage from the primary (if that's the part that sucks for you). Honestly, the big orange numbers simply aren't there, just lots of little ones.

My suggestion is to practice with your two cone attacks, Tenebrous Tentacles and Nightfall. Once you can nail the same group of enemies with both, the damage starts adding up because these AoEs recharge so quickly.

Also, with your Dark Miasma secondary, you should be able to cripple the opposition to give you more time for your DoTs to work them down. Early on, Darkest Night and Tar Patch kept me going.

Unfortunately, Dark Blast lacks a big hitter, but I eventually picked up the snipe. With the amount of to-hit and other debuffs the secondary brings, I can usually fire off a snipe mid-combat without getting interrupted, even solo.

Hope this helps.

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Blasters aren't the problem. Things designed to be fought with personal protection or only on a team are...

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Such as AVs and GMs? CoX is solo-friendly, but I hardly think it's unreasonable that there are some opponents that are best faced by a team.

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Malta used to have a good way to fight them - stay in close range to avoid the nastiest of the attacks. That is now gone, and no proper way to fight them remains.

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Or perhaps the new proper way has not been discovered yet. Good luck with your efforts.

[EDIT]Also, see this thread.

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Until then, I will maintain that there's no such thing as challenge, only enemies that certain ATs cannot fight.

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If you're talking about soloing, then yes, there are some enemy groups or specific foes that will give certain ATs a huge amount of difficulty. It's been awhile since one's popped up, but there have been many threads about soloists (melee toons in particular) getting destroyed by Nosferatu in Mender Lazarus' TF. The usual conclusion to the discussion (besides the snarky lrn2play comments) is that some challenges are best done with a team.

Now, I'm against forced teaming situations as in EverQuest or WoW, where the mobs are so much more powerful than player characters that they require a perfectly organized effort to defeat. However, it's also true that the challenges in CoX were not designed to face an army of one and scale up from there.

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I should also note that he is 22 years old

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Long Rifle.

That's another type of 22.

Is it a Boston Accent?

First, welcome to the game, and I hope you're enjoying your stay in the Rogue Isles.

Second, the "plant bombs" mission involves finding clickable objects commonly referred to as "glowies" in CoX, because the objects themselves glow. They're notoriously hard to find.

However, the glowies also make a humming noise that helps you locate them, so if you have your sound turned down, you might miss one.

As far as suggestions for finding the last bomb go, try looking under stairwells or just inside doorways. Those are areas easy to run past.

Good luck!

Let me clarify. I don't give a rat's rear about belonging to the "in" crowd on our home server, and I think it's one of Justice's good points that you don't have to ingratiate yourself with some clique in order to feel welcome.

If you want to pay someone a compliment, by all means go ahead. There's no need to create a Who's Who on Justice, and the OP gave me that impression.

Must have been too many John Hughes films in my past.

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No offense, but it was not a very good idea starting this thread. Are you going to go in-game and poll all the people that don't go to the forums?

There are alot of awesome player's on Justice. Some who are well named and there are a few that sit back quietly and help, but never get the credit. You are doing nothing but stirring the pot for flamewars and back-biting. A popularity contest on Justice is not needed.

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I agree. One of the features that drew me to Justice and keeps me here is that the "in" crowd is much less catty than elsewhere.

Seconded. Also, once you get to SO levels of enhancement, Build Up will be available frequently. I have a L38 DB/Nin stalker, and I appreciate the utility DB brings as well as its damage. Between the Sweep and Attack Vitals combos and One Thousand Cuts, I can keep enemies on their backsides while doing damage along the way.

Throw caltrops on 'em when they're down for extra bonus fun >

This is an excellent guide, but I wonder what you think about the Medicine pool. Shield Defense lacks a self-heal, although it has lots of other tools to avoid or reduce damage. Still, if you're going to alpha tank full-team spawns of +5 enemies, I think a way to restore your hit points would be useful.

Redside, one of the major complaints against Electric Armor and Energy Aura was that the sets lacked self-heals. Granted, brutes have lower starting defenses number than tankers, but what do you think?

Keep up the great work!

I really like Jawbreaker, especially with the "crunch" sound effect. Also, when short toons use that power, it looks like they're smacking the enemy in the junk.

By the way, that skull is all that's left of Numina's dad. Gross.

Go. Hunt. Click skulls.

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i hope you come back. and i hope you still make hero con. its wouldnt be the same without the crazy cat lady...

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She hasn't left yet, you vulture. What? Waiting for the reading of the last will and testament?

Anyway, regardless of who does or does not get your stuff, best wishes for the future, Manoa.

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Hero contacts on the other hand make me hope that the trigger for "Going Rogue" will be us strangling them to death with their cellphone chargers.

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Sounds fun, but you'll have to run seven missions for them before you'll be able to access the charger.

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Yeah, a lot of the people we used to hang with have left over the years. A lot have also been banned. I wonder, though, if anyone ever misses me

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We can't miss you if you won't go away

I remember some of these same complaints being directed at scanner/newspaper missions as well. For a long time, it seemed all I could find were teams grinding paper missions - endless herds of Council and Freakshow. Content designed as filler appeared to be displacing the main part of the game.

One reason was convenience. Newspaper/scanner missions don't require you to change zones, and they're quick, efficient means to XP and drops. AE shares these features, with the potential of having more entertaining stories than the filler missions.

What got me out of the scanner mission rut was joining one of my server's global channels. I found out there was lots of other activity other than the filler mission grind, and I had more fun.

So, my suggestion is to join a channel and not to be bashful. Even a comment along the lines of "Who wants to do something beside AE missions?" might help you find a team. Also, AE is the shiny new feature right now. After it matures a bit, you'll probably see teaming activity even out.

Good luck.

Thanks for clarifying, and I now perform a 180 and agree with you.

Except the bit about Fury
But that mechanic just isn't to my tastes.

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As far as people blaming death on "lack of tankage" or complaining about a brute or tank not using taunt, you probably need to learn to survive on your own instead of depending on other ATs and people to protect you.

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I disagree, because teammates should try to assist one another. Of course, no tank, brute or other AT can save someone who's playing like a moron, but for my part, a team should be more than eight people soloing on the same map.

To play: Tanker. Chasing Fury annoys me, and multiple brutes on a team makes it worse.

To team with: Assuming competence (yeah I know what they say about "assume"), probably a tanker again, although players of both ATs can really become prima donnas. In my opinion, a tank is better life insurance for a party, whereas DPS is a dime a dozen.

As others have said, an intelligent player trumps all, though.

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Do the Reapers, Mortificaters, etc have some sort of AoE power that boost the perception range of the zombies?

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No, they have normal perception, but they'll alert the mobs around them if they're attacked, just like any other enemy. The alert may be enough to bring the zombie horde down upon you, but if you can pick off one of the "brain trust" and run, the zombies will eventually forget what happened and return to their meditations.

The other posters here have offered good advice, so I will add a couple minor tips. First, you may want to try slotting Short Circuit for damage predominantly. It does just a hair less total damage than Ball Lightning, although it's all DoT. Make sure you enhance the END mod in SC enough so that it will drain your foes when combined with Power Sink, and then invest in increasing its punch.

Second, I'd recommend against opening up a fight with AoE attacks, unless someone else has control of the aggro. You may draw too many attacks your way, but if you can pull it off, more power to ya.

Good luck!

The weekly sewer hunt sounds great, and are there any plans to introduce something similar for villains?

There may not be a concentrated pile of foes to defeat as in the Paragon sewers, but I've heard of people doing street-sweeping runs to scour Mercy Island with success.

Such an event for redside could be fun and might draw additional players to the Rogue Isles as well.

Good luck!