Hyperstrike

You forgot to mention that we'd have to come in to work Saturday while making us move down to the storage room, and grabbing our red stapler Lumbergh.

*Grabs another RottenLuck by the ankles and RP's that he is a drummer in a thrash band, RottenLuck is a drumstick and the floor is his drum.*

Snags a voluptuous female toon to do the "Happy Birthday Mr. President" song for Major T. (Then morphing into a nearly-nude Huge zombie in his lap.)

He didn't say he hadn't tried it. He said that he hasn't done one that's been free of Last Minute Leeches.

Granted the 150 leeches is hyperbole.

Protector did one Saturday. We spent almost 30 minutes thumping GMs and it actually took us less time to beat Hami down than it did to thump all those GMs.

Maybe just a little.

Honestly, I dunno. I spend a lot of time soloing, and when I do team, it's usually with a bunch of Protectorite invaders or the Fire/Rad event.

IDEALLY? As a controller, you want maxed hold/stun/disorient/immob/sleep. Then a mix of Acc/Dam/EndRed/Recharge.
Acc is probably second most important. As, if you don't hit them, you don't do anything.
After that, Damage, EndRed and Recharge are all about equally important. On long-recharging powers (like Ciinders), Recharge is probably MORE important.

For AM, at 50, you can get 99% of what you're taking 6 slots for with common IOs in just 4 slots.

With Hot Feet, some of the tri/quad aspect IOs are expensive, it'll be less cheap to slot up. But, again, HotFeet is one of your primary damage mechanisms, so it's worth it. But going with 5 tri/quad damage IOs and one Dam/rech, you can have Acc/End/Rech above 80% and damage above 99%. And that's just with PBAoE damage IOs. If you dip into slows, your damage will come down

Again, play around in Mids.

Log into a toon in another zone (or create a new one) and send a petition alerting the GMs that your server's AP zone has become a black hole. They're probably going to have to restart the server.

That's actually the fastest way to get attention.

I suggest looking at CMA's guide to softcapping an Inv Tanker. It should be extremely useful.

And yes, you may want to look at a respec eventually. You may want to shift a couple power choices around some. Like the whole Fitness pool. It really makes a lot of difference when exemping down for things like low-level task forces. The Posi WITH Stamina (due to Super Sidekicking exemping) is VASTLY superior to a Posi without it.

Because they're correct.

Thing is, lots of people are happy getting significantly cheaper knockoffs and will go after such when available.

You obviously missed the part about:

Wrecks the market. All you do with this is drive the cost of EVERYTHING up, and all the desirable items are hoovered out and completely unavailable.

We ALREADY have issues with purples and PVP IOs going off-market to be sold for in-excess of the inf cap.

You also, just as obviously, missed the part about:

Creates a dichotomy between players on a budget and players with large amounts of free cash.

Sure, the extra business might be good for Paragon. For a while. But when people realize that you can essentially just BUY everything in-game for cash (not inf), all the people on budgets (who are getting shut out by people who may not care as much but have tons of cash) will bail.

Cue cascading supply failure at this point.

Sorry, you should NOT be able to buy stuff in-game for cash. The boosters are a specific exception. The powers and costume options granted by them are trivial and don't make a massive difference in game play. Being able to come into the game at L1 and plunk down a couple hundred bucks and have the inf to buy 5 purple sets would be unbalancing in the extreme.

This game equalizes based on individual effort. Those who put in the effort get the good stuff. Those that don't, don't.

The minute Paragon starts selling inf, I'm done with the game.

I have a DS/Dark and it's sturdy as hell.
I understand that DS/Thermal is quite nice too.

Neo, as Smersh said, go DOs until you can SO. Then SO until you build up a nest egg. You'll still be disgustingly powerful at this point. Once you IO, you'll be ridiculous.

Also, what server are you on and do you have Monday evenings free?
If the answer is Freedom/Yes, I'd invite you to the Fire/Rad superteam(s) event. And yes, we're running Memorial Day Monday too.

Heck, even if you're not on Freedom, I invite you to roll up a Fire/Rad and come with. This way you can use it as a testbed for your main.

One Fire/Rad by themselves is great. A team full of them will have you cackling like someone whose wits are thoroughly lost. Who needs PL when you have 8 Fire/Rads and can curb-stomp AVs in roughly two minutes?

It's probably because you're getting all those toxins out of your system when you crap your spandex.

Caveats:

If you're running Tanker Tuesday, you need a tank.
If you're running a Fire/Rad superteam, you need a Fire/Rad.
If you're a lowbie (sub-20) running around, unteamed, in PI/GV/the RWZ, you need a clue.

Ninja: Natural
Oni: Magic
Rocket Boots and FF Generators: Tech

Take your pick.

If I'm not bleeding, I'm not living.

Yeah, I took mercy on the Tanker Tuesday guys this week and "only" ran at +2x8 because we had a couple lowbies with us (well...they were lowbies when we STARTED).

In offices I don't feel the need for the map so much. Caves, sewers (and Oranbega), it's a must.

Same. About the only time I PageDown is in the aforementioned caves and sewers because all of the bouncy camera zoom as I get near walls or go through doors makes me queasy after a while and gives me a hell of a headache (I already am susceptible to migraines and cluster headaches, so I prefer to avoid that if at all possible).

Usually I'll make sure that there's only 1 or 2 easily killable foes left and jump on the next one (unless I just hit a massive end spike (like Hasten and Rage dropping simultaneously), then I'll huff for a couple seconds then go.

Yes, no, and not knowing what specific etceteras you have in mind, I dunno. I usually make sure they haven't wandered off, or are in need of a rest before jumping in.

Nah, I'll jump into a mob, and usually try to grab most of the mobs around me with taunts. Let them get in close and footstomp to soften them up. After that, is when I prefer the team come in.

The aforementioned early fireball and blaster death happens every now and again with impatient teammates. Nothing I can do there.

Usually if I'm in a group and one of my teammates draws unwanted aggro, I'll taunt and LBE their enemy to try and pull them off.

Okay, I'm normally a slower tank. I'm built to defense cap and still tend to slow down a bit. Mostly because I hate diving in on a pair of +4 mobs and finding out that my teammates weren't ready or have run off in another direction. So I go out of my way and try to coordinate the team a bit.

If this makes me chicken-ish, c'est la vie.

And he raaaan
He ran so far awaaay.



Oh. So sorry! The 80's caught up with me for a second there.

*BACK! BACK I SAY!*

Whew! Almost started daydreaming about big hair, and gallons of Aqua Net!

The three main ingredients in this feces sandwich you find yourself being forced to palate are:

1. Intel Graphics. Even at it's best it was a sub-par solution for this game.
2. Laptops. The majority of laptops out there simply aren't equipped with upgradeable video hardware. Those that are are rather STUPID EXPENSIVE.
3. Toshiba. Some people have luck with them (probably because they're not using them as more than portable web browsers). In my experience, the entire Satellite and Satellite Pro lines are crap. Especially the garbage with the tweaked firmware so you can't apply updates directly from the company that actually provided the hardware.

What do you need to look for to avoid this happening this way?

Your cheapest and easiest solution is to not buy a laptop.

As has been pointed out to you, there are people like Father XMas who have gone to the trouble to put together hardware lists for various reasonable budget levels. If assembling a system yourself isn't your bag, there are numerous reputable vendors out there that'll sell you a system for a relatively modest price and absolutely ROCK in CoH (and other games).

If you REALLY need to keep it portable (a laptop), look for systems sporting non-Intel graphics (and just avoid Toshiba (dropped an extra T there someplace) like the plague.

Note: Such machines are going to be more expensive than your average $600 laptop.

This particular machine will run CoH VERY nicely. And were I in the market for a laptop right now, one would already be on order. But, as you can see, it's about $1600.

For that price, you'd get a desktop machine that sucks it's doors off AND a huge monitor to play it on. And probably still have cash left over.

Normally when I ask people how much they want to spend on a system I ask for two sums.

1. How much would you LIKE to spend? This way it gets us a general price range for a base system that'll meet your needs.
2. How much is the MOST you'd stretch to spend? In other words, if spending an extra few bucks here and there would net you a SIGNIFICANTLY more powerful machine, how much is the max you can spend, reasonably? This way, we can look at upgrades to your base system, or possibly consider more powerful base systems in your price envelope, make some tradeoffs and show you a couple options.

Note: And just so you don't think I'm telling you to spend a couple grand on a new GodBox. You CAN go ultra-cheap and get a desktop box in the $400-600 range that'll play CoH acceptably and not have Intel on-board graphics. Note: You'd likely still have to buy a monitor on top of that but hey...