Lightbender

My main machine is a desktop and it is my preference. Larger monitor, better sound, more upgrading options. It's also wired and not WiFi, which helps.

I do have a laptop that the daughter uses for CoH if I'm on the desktop, and I also occasionally use it if on the go. Heat issues are my main concern with that machine. The smaller screen also leaves me wishing I had more room for all the UI goodies I want to keep open. But this is the price of mobility.

I just can't imagine needing to play CoH at the dining room table, in the bed, in the laundry room, in the garage, in the hot tub, etc, to make "portable around the house" as a valid reason for me to use a laptop as a primary gaming machine.

It's like asking if you should by a 4 wheel drive vehicle or a 2 wheel drive vehicle. If you don't see a need for a 4WD, you probably will be better suited to go 2WD. Only you can really decided that.

It "can range from mild and requiring no treatment to severe and potentially fatal." (According to MedicineNet.)

I find that "Self Destruct" is the best power to show off to newbies near Ms Liberty, preceeded by shouting out, "Oh God! I chose the wrong power! Learn from my mistakes!!"

OMG, you talking about the really tall one with the big ball and the lame "stone" costume? I know what you mean. I swear, nearly every time I go to level up, he's there. Looking down at me. Staring into my very soul. JUDGING ME. It get's old really. I try to send him tells to bugger off, but I can't target him. Probably a hacker.

Wish he'd go annoy someone else. Perhaps he could have a staring contest with that idiot who does the same darn thing to me when I level up in Steel Canyon.

I would think with the recent Beast Love the devs have shown (please don't read into that), we'll likely see some mundane, giant mundane or fantasy beasts in lore. Perhaps something like Manticores (not the guy), Gryphons and Cows. Giant Angry Cows. That drop "cow-trops" instead of cow patties. Bonus points for giving them a "pained" animation during that process.

If at all possible, scour the forums, ask people with the powersets, ask devs thier concept of "flavor"...

This is still an open wound for me. Like you, I had a character concept shortly after Electric Melee was added: A hovering Electric/Fire brute named Plasma Mephit. It was a tiny demon-like critter with insect wings. Most important, I really loved having him zip around through the air. 4 slotted Hover just to make certain he moved like greased lightning. I found pretty fast that I couldn't summon pets while hovering. It was random and annoying, especially for the fairy pet, but I think I only had the VIP pets, so no big deal.

Going into this, I knew that "Burn" only worked "near the ground" as the description said, so I figured I'd just stick near the ground when I used it. Foolish me for believing the description! It only works if you are ON the ground. And, even if you are webbed to the ground, it only works if hover is turned off (which defeats part of its purpose, btw). Also annoying, but at least it's not like a set defining tier 9 power or anything...

I finally hit 32 after months (I don't "powerlevel", especially in those days) and drooled at the screen when "Lightning Rod" was available. So I hit the power for the first time and... nothing. Tried again and again and it just didn't work. I don't recall exactly why (perhaps someone told me the aweful truth), but I turned off hover and it worked. I read the power over about 10,000 times and it doesn't say a damn thing like "Oh, and for no good reason, you can't be off the ground". Later I found out that the real reason it doesn't work is because it's technically a summon power, like those VIP powers (and Burn). Instead of fixing it, which was possible because some summon powers did work while hovering, someone decided that "it's flavorful". You know, like how fire blasters can't use thier powers standing in water, or ice controllers can't use thier powers in lava, or you can't use O2 boost to repair robots. Or how you can't use Lightning Bolt, Mu Lightning, Ball Lightning and the other 15 or so electric/lightning power off the ground... oh wait, you can.... with the exception of Grounded, which, honestly, also makes about as much sense as "Empty Clips" causing you to be unable to use any more gun powers for 15 seconds because, you know, it's named "Empty Clips". They are empty, duh!

Ok, like I said, still a bit sore. It was months of playing to find out the one coolest power was borked. If anything, try to get a player with the full powersets you want to use to try them while flying to make certain you don't get any nasty "dev flavor/laziness" surprises.

(btw, Lightning Rod still, to this day, says nothing about needing to be on the ground. Burn still says "near the ground". Shield Charge, which was copied code from Lightning Rod, was fixed to work off the ground after beta testing, but someone decided, "bah, LR is flavorful" without wondering what it actually adds to the game. Answer: Nothing. Also, LR tends to be buggy. If you step off a curb or the ground is bumpy, LR might decide that a quarter of an inch is too far off the ground and not fire. Yep, still sore.)

This thread scares me. I haven't dug into the beta forums or tried out the beta. Perhaps I should have, but I enjoy surprises. Well, good surprises. I'm hoping they didn't base the rest of the incarnate path on the current sluggish droprate on shards. (Which shouldn't even exist anymore... Do they?)

Why do we get regular XP when solo? When someone successfully argues that we shouldn't, I'll concede that content like the incarnate system should be multiplayer only. Incarnate XP is nothing more than a continuation of a character's progression after we no longer get regular XP. Saying we can't continue progressing our characters after 50 is like saying we can no longer get regular XP solo after, say, Level 30. The only difference I see with Incarnate vs Regular XP is that one is VIP only. Most free games have a level cap for the free-to-play content. This is ours.

Why don't we get significantly less regular XP when solo? I'm talking 10th of what we currently get, since IMHO that is pretty comparable to the current solo Shards vs iTrials ratio. Is the current progression with regular XP so utterly borked that folks feel we have to re-invent the wheel? This game always rewarded people for grouping (bonus XP, faster drop rates), and rewarded a player(s) for doing content (mission XP, and more recently reward merits). Why is this so difficult to apply to the incarnate system? Do we have to instead turn a game into a chore? Make it reasonable (not a life-long devotion) for someone to solo, give groups a faster way gain than they would have on thier own, and give the best rewards for the big named content (iTrials). Sound familiar? Ya, it's what we've been doing all along.

I'm just at a loss here. Perhaps I'm just not overthinking this enough or something.

My new characters start out with 20 charges of the Experienced power, because I've been playing forever (I might be exaggerating). I also got like 1 million (again, perhaps an exaggeration) more "charges" bound to my account due to my Super Pack Shopping Spree.

So I used one of the initial 20 charges on a character, which, using my l33t match skills (and checking with my 10 year old daughter who apparently does math stuff at school), left me with 19 charges. I then claimed one of the "Experienced" charges from the packs from the email's "Account Bound" stuff. That left me with.... 19. My daughter says that's not right.

So, I'm probably doing something wrong here. Does claiming them from the Account Bound email actually fire the power off when it's claimed, which would probably have put me over the 1 level of Patrol XP at the time?

Or was it because the character I was playing at the time a stalker? It's because I'm a stalker, isn't it?

I'm not on a Mac since I prefer using real computers (OH NO HE DIDN'T!), but I've done it somewhat randomly as well. Usually happens during an update: After an update, that "CoH now needs to verify all files" or somesuch box pops up. If I didn't notice that box is waiting for me to click "Ok", I sometimes click the "Play Now" button when I see that the update is done and the game still launches. Later, clicking the "Ok" button launches the game a second time.

My daughter has also managed to get two instances to run at once despite the "run multiple instances" being turned off. It's likely due to insanely fast clicking of buttons, as she's six and if she doesn't click the buttons at 10,000x per second, they just might not get the point.

It appears that the "run only one instance" option can be fooled if you launch a second instance before the first fully loads.

My widow tended to have end issues as well, but that was likely due to me dropping too many recharge reductions into the attacks, not enough end reductions and spamming the most end-sucking attacks when a simple little swipe would take something out. When I balanced things back out, I wasn't doing as much damage per attack, but I was able to sustain the damage much longer.

One of the drawbacks of widows + soldiers is that they are stuck with the Brute versions of the Patron Power pools, which (IMHO) generally suck for them. None of thier patrons give out a recovery power, just a bunch of stuff they already can do. While tenuously "flavorful" (ignoring that you can go hero right after gaining the powers), it pigonholes you into what is basically 5 versions of the same handful of powers. Access to the APP's would likely give you choices to something more useful, such as a recovery power.

A few things to remember:

- Directly, shards are only good for your Alpha slot. All the others will require threads. (I believe there is a conversion between shards and threads. I don't know how advantagous that method would be.)

- Tier 4 will require a small hoard of shards. It's not impossible, especially if you are getting notices from the WSF, but it is quite a task to covert shards to enough components to get Tier 4.

- Most posts I read and people I heard from in game state to set yourself to x0+8. The higher leveled mobs don't give enough of a boost in chances to drop a shard to make it worth it, and it's better to kill lots as fast as possible.

- Likewise, what I heard is contrary to Catwhoorg in that it's better to solo than be in a team. Each shard that drops will go to one person and it can't be traded, so they can't be split up later if they all drop on one or two people. The low drop rate on them makes it better to farm at the highest "+ player" difficulty you can on your own than have others with you.

Now, I am biased against the shards method. I'm primarily a solo player myself. I played for months trying to get my shards for even Tier 3 Alpha. I wasn't using an AOE powerhouse that can mow down hoards of minions in a heartbeat. Then, when I finally did a handful of evenings of iTrails, I had unlocked and had Tier 3 in my other incarnate abilities in no time. Tier 4 just required luck in getting the VR drop or a handful of extra rares. Most of my 50s now have at least Tier 3, and that's in about the same amount of time I spent (wasted?) trying to get shards solo.

Again, it's not that the shards route is impossible, and the devs made sure of that. It's just kinda like putting a camel through a needle: You just need to spend the time in grinding the camel down to small enough bits. The shard method for Tier 4 just takes an (IMHO) unreasonably long amount of time farming, especially compared to the alternative.

My suggestion is to see if you can get some iTrials (BAFs and LAMs are great) running in the time you do have to play. If you are focusing on Tier 4, convert merits to threads. While running these, you are also unlocking your other abilities.

My 2 cents, but it's worked extremely well for me.