MaHaBone23

You gotta post your build, friend. It's hard to advise when we don't know what you have for End Reds and End Mods.

Earth/Storm is a great combo. My fave. atm, and the only combo I've ever been tempted to write a guide for.

Two great KD powers - Earthquake and Freezing Rain. With a few slots and proper timing, you can keep cycling these pretty much indefinitely on a mob.

Two Slows- Snowstorm and Quicksand, just in case anyone had the foolish notion of trying to run away from the Earthquake/Freezing Rain Permaflop. Plus a nice defense debuff to boot.

Stuns, oh the stuns! Stalagmites + Thunderclap will stun damn near everyone, including bosses. Plus Tornado has a chance to stun. Throw Cages on them so they don't wander off.
Throw in Fissure from Stone Mastery for a Stun so deep, you can go make a sandwich while your team mops up the drunks.

Tornado makes a great Oh Shi-! panic button!

Most Fun - Ill/Storm

Most useful on a team - Plant/Therm

Most brutal on my video card - Fire/rad

Best for when you want to see absolutely, positively every nasty in the room look "Falling-Down Drunk" - Earth/Storm

Best Pet - Earth

Best Primary - don't ask me to pick
Primary I just can't get into, no matter how hard I try - Mind
Primary I should give a second chance - Grav
primary I most frequently see abused by new players - Fire (seriously, they're all attacking you because YOU SET THEIR FEET ON FIRE)

Best Secondary - rad or storm
Secondary I hated for the longest time, and now love madly - Storm
Secondary I'm falling in love with all over again - rad
Secondary I should love, but just haven't rolled the right toon - kin
Secondary I just can't get into, no matter how hard I try - TA or Sonic
Secondary I avoid like the plague - FF
Secondary I most frequently see abused by new players - Storm

My First 50 - Ice/Rad
My Latest 50 - Ill/Storm
My next 50 - Earth/Storm, although Fire/Rad is fast becoming a contender

Ill/Storm is just plain bananas fun. Probably dangerous in the hands of a novice, but you sounds like you know what you're doing. Plant/Storm probably won't be as wild and unpredictable, but it would be a more solid, lock-down style of play.

Earth/Storm also has alot of great synergies. Some of the most fluid synergies in the game, imho. Not very potent for damage, at least not at first, but if you're teaming alot, you can pretty much shut down multiple groups and let the damage dealers mop up for you.

Also, what server do you play on? Virtue, in my experience, is very accommodating and patient with new players. Freedom is... less so.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Oh, here's another one- Accuracy and ToHit. If I am buffing/debuffing toHit, I am effecting Accuracy.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, Accuracy and ToHit are separate quantities that, together with the target's defense, are used to determine your end HitChance. ToHit has nothing to do with Accuracy, Accuracy has nothing to do with ToHit, and neither of them will be the exclusive decider in your end HitChance.

[/ QUOTE ]

Again, I am invoking K.I.S.S.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
For example, a certain power lists a "5% STRENGTH against attacks." What is "strength"? Does it make my character STRONGER (ie. do more damage?) No it means increased DEFENSE. Call it DEFENSE, not STRENGTH. Never call it anything BUT defense.

[/ QUOTE ]

There's a fundamental difference between a power that offers 5% smashing defense, and 5% smashing defense strength. The first increases your defense to that attack type by 5 percentage points. The second increases your ability to use powers that offer defense against that attack type: it increases your defensive powers by 5%.

In other words, if you have a power that offers 20% defense to smashing_attack, and you get another power that offers 5% defense to smashing_attack, your total defense is 25%. If on the other hand the second power offered 5% strength to smashing_attack, then in this case (with a lot of caveats I'm skipping for simplicity purposes) your total defense would be 21% (20 * 1.05).

List the power being referenced above and I'll see if its using the terminology correctly or not.

There's a lot of crazy terminology that isn't proper, I'll grant that. But in many cases the difference in terminology signals a real distinction.

In your example, such a power *does* make you stronger. It makes your ability to use defensive powers themselves stronger. This distinction occurs many times in the game: there's a huge difference between movement increase (increasing your base movement velocity) and movement strength increase (increasing the value of your movement buffing powers) for example.


Basically: some things buff you. Some things buff your powers that buff you. That's the oversimplified distinction between buffing Strength and buffing Attributes directly.

[/ QUOTE ]

Wow, that is just horrible (the system, not your explanation.) I am totally invoking the K.I.S.S. rule here. Convolution like this only alienates new or casual players.


Oh, here's another one- Accuracy and ToHit. If I am buffing/debuffing toHit, I am effecting Accuracy. I understand that there are some powers that can be slotted for both accuracy and ToHit debuff (Dark Melee for instance0 but if Accuracy, Accuracy Buff and Accuracy DeBuff were listed in the alphabetically (ie, right next to each other) it would be much easier for new players to compare and appreciate the distinction, and thus, learn and enjoy the game faster.

[ QUOTE ]
Let me try this again...it's basically only a re-skin of the MM's pets...nothing to do with changing powers of any sort. The same powers they currently have with new Skins to help create new concepts and such.

[/ QUOTE ]

Don't forget, every single pet has three looks based on upgrades. They look one way freshly summoned, then their appearance changes after the first upgrade, and again with the second upgrade. And of course, what if you do the second but not the first upgrade? That's potentially 4 different looks for every single pet in the game. How is a Skull going to look upgraded? Or a KoA or Malta?

Man, I'd be happy if I could just spec primary/secondary colors for my pets. Red for my /pain, black for my /dark, or hot pink gang colors for my Castro Street Thugs!

Found another one-
Damage Resistance
aka
Resist Damage
aka
Resistance Buff

Stop letting interns and co-ops write copy!

[ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
Another example- I was shopping for Endurance Modification enhancements. That's a good name for them. They help you recover endurance, but they also help endurance-draining powers perform better. After much searching, I finally found them, under "RECOVERY." Some vendors sell them as "ENDURANCE MODIFICATION', others as "RECOVERY". The same exact enhancement. Same origin and everything.

[/ QUOTE ]

Technically, those enhancements have two properties. They have a buff the Endurance Strength (there is that Aspect again) wich governs End Drains and Refills. They also buff Recovery Strength, which governs, well, recovery.


[/ QUOTE ]

Isn't that what I said?

[ QUOTE ]
badges for the sake of badges.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's pretty much 99% of the badges in the game.

Team leaders definitely deserve a badge. That is alot of thankless work. My only concern would be lamers begging for the star so they can "work on their badge" and then going afk or ignoring team chat. nothing kills a team like the star going to the wrong person.

the Snare one drives me nuts. It seems almost misanthropic to slap a whole new term on something that has been known as "Immobilize" from day 1. Was this some disgruntled employee's subtle last laugh on his last day of work?

Confuse/Disorient/Stun is another one. I know Disorient = Stun, but by definition, something that is disorienting is usually more confusing than stunning.

And as much as I can appreciate the cute names for SOs, the charm wears off fast. Trying to distill meaning from it is a chore when you're trying to slot up and get back to your team. Scanning the list for that right shade of teal for the enhancement you want is also a lousy way to organize information.

To not sounds like a complete grump, I actually love how the vendor system at AE sells enhancements. It's very easy to zero in on exactly what you want (so long as it's not an End Mod enhancement ;-P)

This is something that has always irritated me about the game, and as more bells & whistles get added, the problem seems to get worse and worse. I think there is a real issue with information/terminology within the game and how information and items are tree'd in menus.

For example, a certain power lists a "5% STRENGTH against attacks." What is "strength"? Does it make my character STRONGER (ie. do more damage?) No it means increased DEFENSE. Call it DEFENSE, not STRENGTH. Never call it anything BUT defense.

Another example- I was shopping for Endurance Modification enhancements. That's a good name for them. They help you recover endurance, but they also help endurance-draining powers perform better. After much searching, I finally found them, under "RECOVERY." Some vendors sell them as "ENDURANCE MODIFICATION', others as "RECOVERY". The same exact enhancement. Same origin and everything.

It's just sloppy and amateurish, really. It hurts the flow of game and makes it much much harder for new players to learn the game. I remember when i first started playing, it took me a little what to grasp the difference between Damage Resistance and Defense. How much harder must it be for new players when the game keeps mixing up the terms?

Pick clear, sensible terms and STICK TO THEM.

Perfect! Thanks!

I've been looking around (with no luck) for a guide to unlocking costume parts. I see a lot of people strutting around with some sweet gear on, and I'd love to know how to get it for my own toons. Task Forces, veteran rewards, recipes, anything and everything. Does such a guide exist?

I have the same problem. i have "Warmth" bound to a costume change, but my costume switches well before the green & orange flash of the power.

There's a Power Ranger-themed SG on Virtue (Envy Rangers, iirc) who have some really great costume change key binds. In the one I saw, the character arrives in civies, strikes several poses (looked like the first couple of beats of /e warmup, all while belting out their "power activation mantra" in local) then changed costume in a flash of fire. It was timed pretty perfectly, so it looked extra sweet.

Does it matter where in the keybind the CC part is? Will it come later if placed at the end of the bind? Can you bind multiple emotes to a single bind that would run in sequence, or plant delays in a keybind that will help calibrate timing?