Melancton

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All my characters are drowning in respec's anyway, with all the vet specs I've accumulated. And I usually have a couple of respec recipes lying around on this or that alt- they're a very profitable flipping opportunity.

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So THAT'S where they are dropping, instead of on me!

Sardan, you have certainly taken the proverbial ball and run with it. Very fine list of specific search improvements there.

I would not think a lot of these would be TOO terribly difficult to implement; then again, I don't write code. But non-farming players need all the help we can get in forming teams, so I hope the Search Engine System equivalent to Castle or BAB is working on it.

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As we know the AE implementation is extremely flawed because it totally negates the rest of the game content. So what to do?

First and foremost institute a usage limit of AE facilities including the following:

a)Minimum level 20 usage, so it isn't a direct "Farm/PL" methodology, instead players will have to use other means to reach 20 then they may gain access to AE.

b)Put a counter limit on all AE missions. No AE mission can be run by more than 7 groups in a 24hr period. This would reduce running content for "farming/PL"

c)We already have precedent in the reward limitations for TFs, a similar idea could be used for AE. The same AE rerun in a 24hr time period would gain no tickets. If this is implimented then the rewards could be recalculated upwards.

d) Cap the total number of AE missions/arc an account can run in 24hr period. This would dampen the spirits of the AE only crowd who don't explore the rest of the CoX landscape. The idea is to promote CoX gaming not farm/PL playing.

e) Revamp the AE ticket reward structure to provide more specific AE rewards rather than entire gamechanging rewards. With PvP IOs now available, why not AE IOs? AE is supposed to be a total fabrication so allow players to have extra special AE powers, Super Taunt, Super Damage, Super Health, etc.

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Do you think that the issue is "Farming Is So Lucrative, Most Players Now Do It"? Your solutions would seem to help curb that, and seem to have precedents. I had not considered "farming curbs" as such, so this was interesting.

My thought was that the problem has become "The Old Ways of Finding Teammates and Missions Have Been Seriously Affected by AE" and that Modifying the Search Functions for Teammates and AE Missions would be the way to go about fixing the problem.

For me, farming holds about zero attraction, no matter how lucrative it gets, so I had never thought that curbing it, beyond what the Devs are already about, would solve the trouble I am having getting teams up. This presupposes that there are lots of folks, like myself, who would run non-farm missions in AE and out if they could find like-minded folks.

Farming is on the Devs' hitlist, for sure. You may have some good ideas in that regard. I have been thinking about how to get teams going once it is only the hardcore farming types who are trying to farm. The methods for finding like-minded heroes to play good content surely need help in some manner.

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One thing with TA/A is that you're constantly in motion. When you get agro, you're luring the mob into your glue patches. You're constantly aware of where the tank is and what he's doing. Your holds are more useful as 'Oh crap the blaster agroed again' buttons than as, well, the usual holds.

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EMP Arrow is a great hold, especially when preceeded by Power Build Up in the Power Mastery APP. But you spend some time not generating any endurance thereafter. I guess that won't be as much of a problem once I get Conserve Power and fire that off beforehand as well. Otherwise, you have to be wary of running out of End. (I do, but I did not take the Fitness pool. First hero ever I have been able to legitimately skip it on.) I have the Chance of Mag 2 Hold proc in EMP Arrow, and I often see the Tesla Cage pop up on baddies, so I would recommend it.

Acid Arrow and Disruption Arrow do seem to really ramp up a team's damage, and tossing a Glue Arrow on a group before they can scatter helps make for a nice grouping for your debuffs. And Ice Arrow has been the frosting on the cake that has held a Boss (by being the second Hold to hit) on many, many occasions.

Very clicky set, but a lot of fun.

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Besides, not all of us knew to take a certain origin to get an inherent attack that would ignite OSA.

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KHAAAAAAAAAAN!

/kirkoff

One can easily take the position that the High Tech Arrows and High Tech Bow constitute a Technology Origin.

That is, of course, if you knew beforehand that you would be wanting that Tech Origin Temp Power once you got Oil Slick Arrow. So my Natural TA/Arch tosses knives at OSA, but it does not help.

Still, the TA/Arch is fun, just problematic not to have that taser. But who knew? *sigh*

There have been many threads bewailing changes due to AE. There is no doubt that many dynamics of PUGs, etc. have changed.

How to solve it? I think it is improvements in the various search engines.

There needs to be a way to flag that a non-farm AE team is Looking For More. As it stands, you have to be where the AE team is, listen in broadcast and hope when you join that it is not a Meow team. Either that, or ask a bunch of questions that hopefully get answered first.

There needs to be a way to indicate that you are looking for AE non-farm missions in the search engine. "Looking for anything" could mean missions, task forces, etc. Likewise, if you are wanting to run "regular" arc missions, there should be a way to signal that, and also a way to signal you want to run radio missions.

It would also help if there were more variables for searching the 200,000+ entries in AE. Perhaps also a global Note system for the missions you like that you could call up so that you can run content on all your characters without having to keep a list on paper or whatnot. Sorting the @#$@# from the excellent material (and I have run MANY great arcs) is a challenge. I am weary of slogging through descriptions that turn out to be yet another GREATEST CHALLENGE OF YOUR LIFE or a Farm. (One mish I encountered said that it would continually be republished under different numbers, and to search for it via Author. I presume that is so the Farming Hammer can be dodged. ) What variables would help in searching through descriptions to help spot the good content?

I started up several teams over the weekend, and all of the above would have made things much easier. I write up a Tell on Notepad and send it out to all folks I am trying to recruit, letting them know exactly what is being offered, but that does not happen much coming back my way.

In short, I think that the folks that want to do regular missions, non-farm activities and the like could be brought together if the Find A Member search engine and the AE Search Engine got some upgrades.

Do you think that would solve the current unrest, or should I just write a DOOOOOOOOOM post and be done with it?

Well, it isn't like I did not try. And I did not even know about the announcement.

I did /respec on my Ice/Rad on Saturday, did the slots, repositioned Enhancements and was good to go.

"Respec failed" was the cryptic message I got.

Well, I reasoned that I had gone afk for a RL summons, and perhaps the /respec internally timed out. So I did it again, stem to stern, no interruptions.

"Respec failed."

I am still waiting to hear back from customer support, who kicked it upstairs.

I have a plethora of vetspecs, and I usually enjoy running the Terra Volta drama, so it does not really hurt me there; I pretty well have the hang of using Mids and have rarely had a power disappoint me to where I had to discard it. So I will likely never run out of respecs on all but my first few heroes, (who consumed a copious number as I learned about any number of things the hard way. ) Just an irritant to waste the time.

So I tried to use mine, but "respec failed." Will have to see what is up with that. At least the guy was a lvl 18, as opposed to a 50!

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I love you man!

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What she said.

But alas, I do not have a Fancy Schmancey mouse. But Local Man does.

*Paging Local Man. Please pick up the White Courtesy Phone*

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Another advantage of Snow Storm: it's a guaranteed interrupt for enemies with interruptible abilities. If you open with Snow Storm, the Raider Engineer can't summon an FF generator, the Comm Officer can't summon a portal, and Embalmed and CoT Mages can't become suicide bombers.

This is also true of Radiation Infection, Enervating Field, and Darkest Night.

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I did not realize any of that.

I would infer that such effect continues as long as the baddie is being affected by pulses of Snow Storm?

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Pizza Hut is slicing the "pizza" from its boxes and some store signs. The fast food chain will now brand some stores as simply "The Hut."

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This just in... Tatooine gangster Jabba files suit against pizza giant. Says Jabba, "Jeeska da sookee koopa moe nanya." Film at eleven.

In all seriousness, if you have missed one of these threads involving characters being generiched, do not worry. Another will be along in about a month and repeat each and every argument ever made previously, including folks offering legal advice, and cries of "Tattletale!"

The worst part about all of this is that new players see clones of various comic heroes and conclude that it must be okay to be a blatant copy, especially when the character is a level 50.

One can have sympathy for the creator of a "Thor" who looked nothing like the Marvel hero but rather had red hair and a beard, as in the classic mythologic tales. Reasonable minds can differ there. But the guy in the OP is a clearly out of line. The Generic Sixteen Tons is gonna drop on him, no doubt.

The key for me taking Snow Storm in lieu of Shiver on my Ice/Storm Controller was Snow Storm is autohit. Shiver had to be lined up properly, and even then, there would often be misses. With Snow Storm, everyone around the anchor was affected instantly.

I also stuck a damage proc in Snow Storm as well once I got a spare slot.

This is not to say that I don't use and enjoy Shiver in other builds: my Ice/Ice Blaster used it to great effect, and my Ice/Rad has it on the list to pick up. Shiver is a great power.

The rule of thumb on an Ice/Storm is to take two of the three slowing powers, and for me, it was Arctic Air and Snow Storm.

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man no love for Fire/Emp

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Sure there is, but those guys are so darned HYPER and over-aggressive! They aggro stuff from a mile away, split up and aggro three separate groups simultaneously! Then they run back to you with 3 groups that want to kill you...

Oh, wait, you said Fire EMP.

Sorry.

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go to pocket D and put singy on a pool table and watch the greatest unfold before you.

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Even better do it in the Cyrptic lounge easter egg room in faultline

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And DON'T LISTEN when Singy starts his "Oh, I just don't know how to play very well" line at the beginning. Singularities LOVE to hustle heroes at pool.

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I don't remember WHO on the loading screen, I don't remember the forumite... but it's a rumor and dammit, [u]can't stop the signal. [u]

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Was it... Mr. Universe?

As noted, "support" can mean a lot of different things.

My first controller was Ice/Force Fields. I could protect my teammates with the bubbles. But I was also able to slow down the baddies, make them slip on the ice slick and freeze them solid in big blocks of ice. This was prior to any appreciable temp powers or vet powers, so my damage was diddly. But I was providing a lot of support.

I finally rolled a Trick Arrow/Archery Defender this year. The Trick Arrows mostly debuff the baddies so that attacks hit them more often and harder when they do. I finally got Oil Slick Arrow, which makes them slip, and since I have the Tech Origin Taser, I can ignite the oil slick and damage the baddies as well. My Archery subset also provides some damage, though until I got Rain of Arrows, it was not a whole lot. Still, this hero mostly supports the more powerful attack-oriented heroes, albeit in a different way than my Controller did.

As noted, Empathy provides another form of "support."

So when all is said and done, you may want to try out a few different heroes, Controllers and Defenders, and see what sort of supporting is most appealing to you. For me, it was predominately Controllers, and I have not yet taken an Empathy set. I have taken 5 Controllers and 2 Blasters to 50, but my TA/Arch is on the cusp of 46 and may be my next 50... of course, I also have a Plant/Storm Controller and an Elec/Elec Blaster at the same point, so who knows?

CoH provides tons of variety. Play a few different heroes, since each brings its own wrinkles to the game. You will see what you like fairly quickly if you play a few different ones.

When I was but a Newb, I would go to the Atlas gate in the Hollows to find teamless heroes to form team and smite bad guys. This was because I had no idea how to search, and was shocked when someone out of the blue would ask me if I wanted to team and I did not see them anywhere around. "How did you know my name? How did you find me??" Ah, those were the days.

So when it came time to make the mid-40s push, I found that there were hardly any heroes to be found. At that juncture, I did not know about /hide and such, but eventually found that Portal Court in PI was where I would find them milling about. Good times.

Well, gaming time has gotten extremely short for the last couple of months and if no SG comrades are on, I really was disinclined to try forming a team myself... so I figured that I would just hang out with my Looking For Missions flag on, do a mish and scoot... but now Portal Corps and other locations for congregating were pretty sparse.

Is the "new" congregating area the AE in Atlas?

I would be happy to do (non-farm) AE missions or regular missions, but the Old Ways seem to have changed. And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost...

I form teams when I am going to be on for a bit, but if not, where do you go to find like-minded folks now, so you can be seen as available, chat with them, etc?

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Except when you're fighting AVs, especially ones that have Elude or MoG. Paragon Protectors too. Those are the times you'll wish you slotted the def debuff in FR.

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You still dont need the defense debuff portion slotted

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I don't have the numbers (and y'all haven't shown them), but I feel that slotting Defense Debuff makes a difference, especially against AVs and other hard-to-hit foes. It seems to counter the massive -ToHit from Circle of Thorns and other foes using negative energy types.

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When I use the 3 Lady Greys, I concentrate on Defense Debuff and Recharge, and with the various bonuses I get from other sets, FR always seemed to be up for each new group, or often enough in a long fight to make a difference.

As far as I could tell, my team was hitting well enough to where I thought FR was making a difference, since we typically worked the mobs over. So as a general rule, I do not think that my 3 damage procs were detracting from Recharge or Debuff.

My admittedly anecdotal experience comes from my leveling up, not how my lvl 50 seems to do with all set bonuses in place.

Still, I can see how, if you typically are on a team and you encounter a lot of baddies that debuff accuracy that you might want to max your own Debuff on FR. A good call, Local Man, and another demonstration as to why these boards are so useful.

My personal preference is 4 of the Lady Greys, including the proc, the Impeded proc and the Posi proc. The 3 damage procs have two shots at firing on the group I throw it under, which is a nice damage addition. The bonuses on Lady Grey for the full set are quite fine as well, if the extra damage is not important.

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I have a hard time just watching a hero die, but at the same time I don't want to steal kill. I generally watch for awhile. If the player is low level, they're health is dropping fast, and its obvious they're in over their head I help. If Im on a defender or controller I help without killing. If Im on my scrapper I kill just enough to even the odds. If I see the player took on a mob that's purple to him and out numbers him ten to one, I sit back and enjoy the splat.

To be honest, I probably should just ignore the first situation altogether unless asked to help.

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I pretty well do not help any longer unless I can do it via Heals on the hero in trouble, or tossing an Ice Slick or AoE Hold (that does no damage). Too much furor potential otherwise.

And indeed, there are some folks who get FURIOUS if you heal them before they can die, etc., but what the hey, it did not even cost them any XP or badges, so pardon me and I will move along. The vast majority (99%+) will say "Thanks" in local or via Tell. I always have, since Newbhood and beyond.

I used to bind a key saying, "If you want me to help you take out these guys, hit F8 and I will assist you," so that they could signal if they needed help, but that only worked about half the time, since often the poor guys could not find F8 in time to get help.

Heroes help other heroes in situations that won't rob any XP or badges, even a smidge. The Taxibots were a tremendous help in the Hollows back in the day, porting and rezzing the poor lvl 5s who had to run across the map to the mountains. So I think heals and the like are fine, since there is no harm or foul, but I avoid attacking mobs as a general rule.

My Search Fu worked!

Well...

Maybe I spotted the topic when I loaded up the page to get to the search window.

I cleared out older versions of my heroes to be replaced by current ones. No go.

What is frustrating is that I copied over one guy JUST OUTSIDE of his Cape Mission door, so I could see if the Cape Mission has changed with the new Hero 1 capsule and all. Curses, foiled again.

Plz fix, kthxbai

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Yeah. And I don't care.

omg I did it again!

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Newp, but nice try. Oddly enough "care' isn't a preposition.

English. Go figure.

;shrug

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I was referring to breaking another English rule, not ending a sentence in a preposition...

See if you can spot it.

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Yeah, but the preposition thing isn't a hard and fast rule. Neither is not starting a sentence with a conjunction.

Actually, here's a list of seven outdated grammar rules which includes both of the above. Yeah, I went there.

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Which brings to mind something Churchill said. Supposedly an editor had clumsily rearranged one of Churchill’s sentences to avoid ending it in a preposition, and the Prime Minister, very proud of his style, scribbled this note in reply: “This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.”

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Looking at slotting Acid Arrow with the procs from Posi's Blast and/or Shield Breaker. Do they work and if anyone has gone this route, is it advisable?

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Yes, yes and yes if you have the slots to spare. Pack it with procs. Posi's Blast, Shield Breaker, Lady Grey's and Achilles' Heel.

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I seriously considered the procs, but for me, the bonuses from the full Lady Grey set seem to be more helpful overall than the potential for additional damage, etc. (Obviously, the Lady Grey proc is there either way.)

Now, on my Stormers, I use the 3 damage procs in Freezing Rain since they have two shots at firing per application. I was under the impression that they only have the one shot to fire with Acid Arrow, when initially applied. Is that correct?

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Since the bug looks to be with us for awhile, I finally rolled up a character named Chat Bug.

I'm sort of disinclined to believe my second radio mission: "Chat Bug sought by authorities."

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Don't leave us in suspense... I am sure you came up with an appropriate Battle Cry!

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And I agree with you on Troy's writing for the comics - "Smoke and Mirrors" had to be my favorite of the bunch. Now that Paragon Studios has David Nakayama on the payroll, they should have him team up with Troy and start putting out comics again!

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See, that was also part of my Modest Proposal--- Hickman and Nakayama was the team I wanted to see going forward. And clearly, I was not alone in those sentiments.

So, okay, maybe it should be a series of graphic novels as opposed to a regular publication on a timetable.

I am sure many folks have cool characters with great backstories... but could we translate those into a comic without the results being the same as the last two CoH comics? Bless their hearts, those guys can come up with good stories, etc., but the pacing and the dialogue they came up with... let's just say it shows that it ain't easy to do it well.

I could name quite a few CoH "amateurs" such as yourself that ought to be recruited for marketing and other duties, having proven their skills in well-received efforts. Captain Dynamic and "I'm a Hero/Villain" were clever, but for me, the message ought to be "fly, blast, deflect bullets, punch, shoot, burn, freeze, mesmerize and do lots of other cool things as a superhero!" Maybe it's just me, but your videos convey that message wonderfully, in a motif that is appropriately exciting, ominous and exhuberent.

Since the only reward you get is for folks to say they like them, it is most fitting to say I like them.

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Those have been out for a couple of months now... also, if you swing by the Rooster Teeth website, they have an outtakes video there as well.

Ever since they showed these, I've been curious how effective it was as a marketing strategy - got us great exposure because the Red vs Blue contingent is huge, but not sure how many of them decided to give CoH a go as a result.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

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I would like to know how well they worked, too. Same with the "I'm a Hero/I'm a Villain" campaign. As humor goes, they had merit... but attracting folks to play the game... I dunno.

Quite frankly, your preview videos are what I would think would be the sort of thing that would attract gamers to want to play. The Invasion and the Midnight Hour ones were quite intriguing, exciting and looked cool, which is the message we are trying to get across... right?

So if I were to suggest that you get the gig for the next ad campaign, I am afraid it would go the same place the "Let Troy Hickman Write the City of Heroes Comics Continually" suggestion went.

Now if the those ad campaigns were referenced by thousands of new subscribers as being why they signed up, well shut my mouth, but if those had been MY only exposure to CoH, never woulda happened for me.

But I recently saw a CoH ad on Scott Kurtz' PvP, and I heartily concur with that placement.