Justaris

I agree with Black_Spectre - this is a good example of /tell overkill. As he said, really the only relevant piece of information, at least for a standard mission team, is the level of the baddies you'd be fighting. Pretty much the only thing I'd quibble with is sending invites to the non-responders - I'd probably just leave them alone, but I can understand where he's coming from. It doesn't take that long to type "No, thanks."

/counter-rant on

I really couldn't disagree with this much more - I think you're wrong on every level here, SatansRobot. If I'm playing a low level character (particularly under level 10, so no debt), then I'll accept blind invites, but just because I'm looking for a team doesn't mean I'm looking for your team.

I don't think a basic tell informing me of what levels we'd be fighting (the basic game plan) is unreasonable. I don't want to join a team that's more than five levels above me where I'll have to wait for a mentor to be recruited (and perhaps cross several zones that are too high for my level, for nothing, if one cannot be found). I may not want to join a team of people I do not know who are several levels below me.

Sending a tell is a basic courtesy to let the other person know what they're getting into. Asking that I be sent a tell is not some kind of unreasonable demand, nor is it a sign that I am 'high-maintenance'. On the contrary, many players who request tells tend to in my experience be more adept, better players rather than 'pains'.

That said, the /tell conversation shouldn't go on for more than a few seconds. I want to know what I'm in for. I don't need need to know what vllain faction, the exact levels and ATs of all team members, etc. That's overkill and I have encountered a few people like that. However, they are the vast minority of those who use the "/tell first" comment.

It is not a pointless gesture and it does serve a purpose. This is especially important if you intend on doing something out of the ordinary (AV battle, TF, trial, etc). Someone who can take a moment and tell me what the plan is is someone who tends to be a better, more organized leader and a better player overall.

/counter-rant off

It may not work for you, and if you don't use it, that's your loss. But I disagree with your blanket statements and value judgments against those who do make use of this valuable tool.

Nice guide - informative, civil, without crossing the line into being a whine. This is very much the mental process I go through on pickup teams, and it's nice to see it so well codified.

There shouldn't be any need to drop the caps, though I use them simply for clarity in posting the binds. How exactly were you cutting and pasting? The most common errors I see with binds are people that put the " in the wrong place or mistype. If you were cutting and pasting, you probably didn't mistype, but you may have mis-selected.

I use precisely these binds, just as represented here, with no problems, but I am interested in what caused this issue for you. It's possible that you may have hit a max character limit on pastes - that's hit a few people before. Are you cutting and pasting these into a text file and using /bindloadfile, or are you pasting them right into your command line in-game and entering them?

The binds I use are rather long, especially the NUMPAD1 bind, with lots of stringed-together commands. I wouldn't be surprised if a paste limit was the culprit.

If you're looking for a site with premade avatars, Zero, I can't help you either. Just about everyone I know on the forums, myself included, makes their own. I'm not sure why you'd want a premade one over a screenshot of your own character or a self-chosen image anyway.

Zero, is your problem that you can't get the image you want online so you can use it as your Avatar, or is your problem that you don't know what kind of picture you want? The first step is really to choose or find a picture - if you don't already have one in mind, I'd recommend just surfing the net for a while, maybe use the Google image search, and find something you like.

Another option is screenshots. Many people take screenshots of their characters in-game and use those - that is where mine comes from, for example. To take a Screenshot, just position your character the way you want and hit the PrintScreen key to take the screenshot. The image will be saved in a subdirectory of your City of Heroes folder, a subdirectory named Screenshots.

If you hold down the PageDown key, you can rotate the view to e your character head-on. This can help with taking good screenshots. Hit PageUp to revert to the normal view when you're done.

Okay, that's two separate issues. Getting an avatar means picking out an image. You don't just sign up on a site and choose from their list of avatars - it needs to be an image that comes from your computer - a screenshot of your character, perhaps, or just an image that you like. As mentioned in the guide on page 1 of this thread, you want it to be no larger than 80x80 and roughly square to avoid distortion when it's used as your avatar.

Once you have your avatar image picked, you need to sign up to a free hosting site. ImageShack is a good one. Once you make a (free) account, upload your chosen image to Imageshack (or whatever other site you choose to go with). Then get the web address of the uploaded image (the URL).

Then come back here, to go the My Home part of the forums, and on the Personal Information, Email, Password line click Edit and add in the link to the image. You now have a forum avatar.

This guide does tell you directly. It has exactly what you asked about - it walks you step by step through how to get a forum avatar.

It would help if you told us where you're having a problem. 1) Are you having trouble choosing an image to use as your avatar? 2) Are you having trouble finding a free site on which to host your avatar image? NOTE: These forums do not host images, you need to find some other site to host your image on and then link to it. That's what all that URL stuff is about. 3) Are you having trouble setting up your avatar settings on these forums once you have an image uploaded to a site?

It's all very well to say "How do I get an avatar fast?", but since this guide in which you're posting has those answers, we're going to need to know where exactly you're having the problem.

A URL is basically a link, an address on the web which leads to wherever your image is stored. As for the answers to the rest of your questions, read this thread. All the steps have already been lined out very carefully in the guide on page 1.

There is no one 'best way' to go, but your plan sounds workable, EE. I would say that waiting that long for Hasten seems a bit much, though. What level are you now? If you're already in the 30s and you don't have it, then your playstyle probably doesn't require it, but if you're still starting out, you might consider grabbing Hasten much earlier.

Glad you're enjoying your WS. You can definatley get by without any pool powers at all without any significant problem. Probably the single most useful pool power pick would be Hasten.

I'll freely admit that I was dissatisfied with the content and the character creation process in WoW and didn't stay very long, so I'm not going to address any of the WoW stuff since you clearly have more experience in that area.

However, you've made a long, aggressive post defending WoW and then attacked CoH/V content as boring and repetitive and basically said that it's boring/unappealing/whatever. You have no better idea how this game plays than I do how WoW does, and I find your conclusions about the game to be premature and fallacious.

This is not WoW. It was never meant to be WoW. It sounds as if you're heavily invested in that game, which means that you (presumably) enjoy the way it is designed. This game is not designed that way. "Guilds", called Supergroups here, are not mandatory for players to reach the highest levels of the game's content or to get the items/equipment they need to maximize their potential. I personally find this game's system a vast improvment over WoW's, but that's my preference. You do not have enough experience with this game to really make any well-supported statements: you just took a quick look and made some snap judgments.

I'd suggest you abandon your expecatations from WoW and really try to engage this game on its merits rather than looking for WoW-analogues here. That, or if that's asking too much, then by all means go back to WoW.

No, Vampyri and Warwolves are found in many other places besides Striga - that's simply where they're most abundant.

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my lvl 49 blaster has the serch comment "no i dont pl, so dont ask" and i still get ppl asking me to pl them. go figure. oh and annother thing. if your a low lvl and you invite a high lvl character, theyll likely just go, im too high for this group and quit the team.

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Your second point is very closely related to your first.

If you invite me and your team is a significant number of levels below me, I'll assume you're looking for an easy ride - in essence, a PL. That's not cool, and I'll likely quit the team just as you describe. If, however, I get a tell saying "Hey, are you busy? I've been stuck on this mission for a long time and I really need some help" then I'll go help that person/team, at least with that one mission, and try to educate along the way. I won't make a habit of enabling, but a hand up now and again's a good thing.

Oh, and nice necro-posting.

Regarding Ring of Fire... Um... Containment? Not saying it's the gem of the Fire Control set, but it's more accurate than Fire Cages and recharges faster (since it's a ST rather than an AE) and sets up Containment. So, not useless.

And the sweeping generalization about Fitness actually falls apart more often than it holds up, although most characters will benefit from getting Stamina at some point.

Yes, Fitness is nice, but you don't have to take one of the Fitness prereqs at level 6. In fact, I'd argue that you're doing yourself a disservice by doing so, since those powers are a minor quality of life improvement where you could have had an attack to up your DPS or a defensive/mitigating power to keep yourself alive. I generally take one of the Fitness powers when I have nothing spectacular I want to take at the given level - which is usually not at level 6.

So yeah, if the guide is "ALL wrong", you might want to come up with more than that. Have you actually even played either Fire Control or Kinetics before?

Aside from the three Defense SOs slotting Combat Flight, this looks pretty good. Like Hover, Combat Flight's Defense bonus is minimal and those three slots could really better serve you elsewhere, such as in Pulsar, Glinting Eye or even Energy Flight.

Also, I still think Conserve Energy should come earlier in the build. (See comments here about its synergy with Dawn Strike, Light Form, etc). Putting pool powers such as Stimulant ahead of it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I'd move Conserve Energy to 30, Stimulant to 41 and Aid Self to 44.

That's my .02, as always, YMMV.

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I have been contemplating taking the jumping pool for the knockback/rez protection but keep putting it off (having way too much fun dishing out damage even if i get smoked a few times in the process). Now I think that enhancing the combat flight is the solution...would assume that the likely slotting is 3x flight speed for maneuverability but what about end use? Is it high enough to merit end redux?

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Not more than one, particularly if you have Stamina 3-slotted. You will want at least two Flight Speed SOs, however, more likely three. I haven't really played around on test with the difference now that Swift is a factor, you might only need two Flight Speed SOs with Swift.

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Yes you could go with Hasten and Super Speed, but this would be at the cost of what? Leaping Pool? Then plan on spending a lot of time held and knocked back. Makes the need for Breakfrees even more, and without acrobatics, knock back city no matter what. With a recharge on every attack in your chain early on, you will always have an attack ready to strike.

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I can see the merit of the no-Hasten argument, which is why didn't push it too heavily in my original comments. I just have to reiterate that you're not taking Acrobatics until 41 - so that's already a lot of time getting held and knocked back. If you make it all the way to 41 without it, do you really need it at that point? It just seems like you're get more utility out of the SS/Stealth combo, if you intend to keep Stealth.

Alternatively, you might move up Acrobatics considerably, if you feel that it is that important to the build.

As for when to put in Conserve Energy (assuming the rest of the build stands as-is), I'd bump Combat Jumping, Super Jump and Acrobatics down, taking Acrobatics at 44. Another thing I overlooked the first time - Combat Jumping is way overslotted. The Defense granted is minimal and it's the lowest-cost toggle in the game so two EndRedux is a bit excessive.

[i]Edit: One further note on the Acrobatics issue - it's a supreme protection versus knockback but only a fair protection versus holds, and you can come by the Knockback protection another way, using Combat Flight. Many Fire Tankers already do this with Hover as an alternative to taking Acrobatics and the Leaping pool. Ultimately it's your character to play as you'd like, but as an author of a guide for a human-only PB, you might present both options with their pros and cons.

The cons of Combat Flight being that's relatively slow if not slotted and that it's a type of movement that may take some getting used to - while the pros are that it saves you having to take the Leaping pool for Knockback protection if you don't wish to and you have it from level 10 on. Since all PBs have Combat Flight whether they like it or not, it's something to consider, although some people would understandably prefer not to be hovering all the time.

Acrobatics gives a low-mag hold protection in addition to its knockback protection and you get some minor defense and some significant combat mobility from Combat Jumping, but it eats up one of your power pool choices and costs three power choices including Acrobatics itself. Acrobatics also has a fairly high endurance cost.

Well, overall this is a fair guide to the human-only route, though it's a more a build with an explanation than an actual guide since you haven't addressed all of the PB powers, just the ones you took. Nevertheless, most of your justifications for the powers make sense.

A few things that stuck out to me:

Conserve Energy at 44. You should have had this much, much earlier. This is a ridiculously long time to wait for one of your best endurance management powers. You really should have this no later than level 30 - better yet, right when it comes available at 24. I notice you aren't putting off Stamina... same reasoning applies here.

Stealth. First off, you're taking Stealth but not SuperSpeed. In fact, giving this is supposedly a pseudo-Blapper build, the absence of Hasten is also conspicuous. Furthermore, this many slots in Stealth is just silly. The Defense bonus is negligible and not worth slotting, and Stealth's endurance cost is nowhere near "a lot of end".

Pulsar, as an AOE mez power, has a hefty accuracy penalty. Most experienced PB players recommend 2 Accuracy here to overcome that.

For a very long time, you have Energy Flight as your sole travel power, but you're not slotting it beyond the default slot. You might consider switching the Leaping pool out for the Speed pool and putting some slots in Energy Flight. As late as your get Acrobatics, I can't see it having that significant an effect. Unlike Stealth, Acrobatics does cost a lot of end, and at the point you get it you already have Light Form. Granted, Light Form's hardly suitable for use with every encounter, but if you went 44 levels without mez protection I can't see it making a difference now. If you want to stick with the Leaping pool for Acrobatics, it should really be in the build earlier. Much, much earlier.

That's my initial impressions, anyway. As always, YMMV.

[i]Edit: One further note - the 'outshine Tri-Form builds with ease' bit in the Light Form description is a bit uncalled for. Generally speaking, bashing other people's choices doesn't do much to legitimize your own. Yes, Human-Only builds get more utility out of Light Form since it locks you in human form and naturally the build most suited to play in human form is a Human-Only build. No big surprise there.

Bashing those who don't choose to play as you did detracts from your credibility and adds nothing to your guide. In point of fact, a Human-Only build will outdamage a Tri-Form while in Light Form, but not necessarily overall. I personally prefer to play Tri-Form on both Peacebringers and Warshades, but I respect the choice and the abilities of those who choose to play differently. Something to think about.

Chances are that you have a minor typo somewhere in the binds, either a dropped underscore somewhere, an extra space, or a letter where it doesn't belong. You can select the bind and hit CTRL+C (copy) and hit CTRL+V (paste) in the chat window in-game to get the exact text.

There is no special setting you have to enable, but binds are notoriously easy to mess up since every little detail has to be perfect or they don't work.

For instance, make sure you typed powexec and NOT powerexec. I see that one a lot.

If you weren't going to update the powers in this version, why did you include them? Your description of Gravitic Emanation remains wrong.

When you update the powers, you might also take note of the fact that Stygian Circle recovers health and endurance. While most WS players probably know this, it is not clear from your guide. In fact, the endurance recovery part of the power is at least as important if not more so than the health.

You also spelled several of the power names incorrectly. Normally I try to let sloppy spelling slide, but this could lead to confusion from those who read your guide.

I'm not a numbers guru, but I can tell you that it's significantly more than BuildUp/Aim and not as long as Eclipse.

Perhaps someone else could be more precise, you might pose the question in a new thread on the Kheldian boards if you really want a solid answer.

One common mistake I see is people doing "goto_tray_1"

You might check, just to make sure. goto_tray 1 and gototray 1 are equivalent, but an underscore between "tray" and "1" will mess up the bind.

My guess would be that papa is referencing the very popular Void/Quantum targeting bind. Whether it's there or not I can't say, I'm way too much of a control freak to trust my binds to CityBinder, though I've heard good things about it.

Wrong Forum. Try the Tanker forum, or even Player Questions.