Monkey_King

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

Will the Alkaloid or rez power from the Master Mind Poison set ever start giving credit for the healing badges or the super group healing badge again?

[/ QUOTE ]

Er. They do give credit.

My 39 Ninja/Poison Mastermind has the first two healing badges. Alkaloid is his only heal- the only possible way he could've received it. And he just received the second one, "Doc", recently.

So Alkaloid, at the very least, gives credit. I don't know for certain if Elixir of Life does so.

[/ QUOTE ]
It ought to. Ressurection powers are the best way to rack up healing credit. Anything that you or your pets do to make green numbers float over someone else's head counts towards your healing badge. The tally is not linked to specific powers, so if there was a temp power that healed others, it would count as well.

If you're finding your progress is slow, it's because only actual healed damage counts. If your target takes 80 points of damage and you toss him a 300 point heal, you only get 80 points towards your badge.

Blood Widows can be extremely nasty if you let your guard down, too. They're no worse than, say, Meat Doctors but they can pack a pretty nasty punch.

Night Widows, however, are "eat your entire inspiration tray" time. That Smoke Grenade of theirs is just beyond brutal.

The intent is probably for Defenders to be way better than Blasters at endurance drain, but you're right. An Elec/Elec Blaster, using his whole suite of endurance-sapping powers, ought to at least take a significant bite out of AV endurance. For that matter, I'm not even sure Defenders can make much of a dent in AV endurance.

Further insights into Fire Manipulation's problems, from my perspective:

Combustion: The activation time makes this risky to use, even moreso because of its lower damage. Most of its damage is DoT, which is bad for the Blaster AT; Blasters are focused on killing things quickly, they cannot wait for long DoTs. And as a PBAoE, it is redundant next to Fire Sword Circle, which is faster, does more damage, and toggle drops. This power needs some serious reworking, as it is too Tanker-centric in its current form.

Fire Sword Circle: As stated before, this is a perfectly servicable power, but the unnecessary lag at the end is murderous. This is a widespread animation bug that affects several sets in the game.

Consume: This ability underperforms compared to similar powers from other secondaries, like Power Sink and Conserve Power. Power Sink does the same thing but includes an extremely useful endurance drain attack, while Conserve Power is risk free for arguably greater endurance conservation.

Burn: Difficult to use effectively for little gain. A Blaster has to go to great lengths to build a strategy around using Burn patches safely, but the damage is too little to be worth all the effort. Risk is greater than reward.

Blazing Aura: Thematically inappropriate for Blasters. Similar powers have damage-mitigating effects - Chilling Embrace slows foes, while Lightning Field can be used to keep enemy endurance bottomed out. A Blaster using this power puts himself at incredible risk for very little additional additional damage output.

Hot Feet: While there's nothing wrong with this power being in the Fire Secondary, it has no business being the 9th power on the list. It can be made genuinely useful, but it should be moved down to a lower slot.

It is also felt by many, many Blasters that Fire Manipulation needs Greater Fire Sword. My personal suggestion would be to delete Blazing Aura - because I guarantee NOBODY will miss it - and reorganize the secondary set to include Greater Fire Sword. This set is sorely lacking in effective melee capability.

I'm not particularly worried. Most of the arguments I see against people switching sides imply a lack of understanding of how the CoX ATs really work. The biggest factors seem to be people thinking that "healers" are better than Corruptors (or all other varieties of Defenders), Brutes are better than Tankers, and that... well, okay, Controllers actually are better than Dominators.

But one broken AT aside, it seems like the only problem will be idiot team leaders making even more ludicrous team composition demands. Stupid teammates are endemic to the nature of the game, and dealing with them is an independent issue from crossover ATs.

Me? What I'd like to see is for all 10 archetypes to become available from the start for both sides. There's less reason to restrict if we're going to be able to switch sides anyway. It'd be a neat reward for having a level 50 on both sides, maybe.

I get the feeling the Freedom Phalanx missions are going to be popular with teams in a way the Praetorians never were. It's certain to be much easier to find a team to whoop up the actual Positron than it is to get help with Anti-Matter.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
A more boring and far more likely guess would be an enhancement store. If I'm wrong, I'll be happily surprised.

[/ QUOTE ]

Nope. Temp powers/buffs.

[/ QUOTE ]
If this means SGs can arm their members with a renewable supply of Blackwands and Stolen SMGs (even if it's just 10 shots at a time) I will be deliriously happy.

The people complaining need to lighten up. CoH has five issues of content for you to play with; it's almost a finished game, for all intents and purposes (I say 'almost' because of the lack of 35-40 content to get people over the hump). It was known for a long time that I7 was going to be devoted primarily to completing the villain game.

It's been four months because the bar is set higher. CoH just had to install the 40-50 content at first. Taking all its other updates into consideration, CoV has a lot more to add than just a few new zones and missions. The Patron Powers surely required a fair bit of development, as do the new villain power sets.

Besides, if this were Everquest, you'd have had to PAY for six expansions by now.

I just remembered a couple other ambiguous badges. I'm pretty sure I know how they work, but redname confirmation would be nice. Namely:

Debt badges. There's a popular rumor that there are three debt-repayment badges and thee badges tied to number of deaths. I'm certain that Deathless and the others are epic debt-repayment badges, but can we get this settled once and for all?

Also, the mentoring badges. This one I'm less sure about. Six sidekicking badges, or three SK badges, and three for exemplaring?

Thanks for taking the time out and actually answering all these questions!

So, we obviously keep our badges when we turn good or go rogue. Here's the big question, what about accolades? It would be kind of abusable to have both hero and villain accolades (assuming villain accolades are roughly equivalent to the hero versions) so it's safe to assume they'll be taken away somehow. Do you just flag accolades X, Y, and Z as for one side only, and remove them as part of the trial?

[ QUOTE ]
If Shadow Maul goes, it won't be due to its cone status.

[/ QUOTE ]
Then what will it be due to? I'm not seeing the issue with Shadow Maul. Don't forget that Dark Melee's attack powers are individually stronger than other sets because it only HAS four real attacks, as opposed to the six or seven that other scrapper sets get.

My expectations: the obvious, Confront becomes Placate, Soul Drain becomes Build-Up. I'm thinking Touch of Fear and Dark Consumption will both get the axe. One becomes Assassin's Whatever, the other will be turned into a more conventional attack. All attack powers will get toned down a little from their Scrapper counterparts, since that will put DM Stalkers on even ground with other sets.

Death Shroud is definitely the power getting removed from Dark Armor in favor of Hide. A damage aura is antithetical to the idea of a Stalker. Cloak of Darkness may get changed too, but if there's one set that should provide better stealth than all the others it's Dark Armor. It'll make up nicely for the fact that resistance is worse for Stalkers than defense, and it doesn't reduce downtime like Regen.

As long as it's heroes versus villains, I'll be happy. Some people may like the idea of free for all, but I find it creates an intensely unpleasant environment. Stealthed Ice Blasters are bad enough without also having to worry about Stalkers on top of that, and vice versa.

All this talk of controlling critical points on the map, using heavy artillery, and such... do you think people will actually use any of it? Or will they just splash around in the water having a big mindless brawl like in every other zone?

[ QUOTE ]
For things like History or Accolades, how about a segmented progress bar? eg, "Can someone point me towards the second piece of the Student badge?" This would remove the need to track a lot of progress on paper. Especially with those Praetorians.

[/ QUOTE ]
The Lorekeeper badge actually does have a progress bar. Swashbucker and Technofreak are "secret" badges, though.

I question whether it's such a good idea to award a badge for changing servers. That's just going to encourage a lot of frivolous server transfers, and probably put a lot of undue strain on the servers.

This probably isn't a place to air badge grievances, but: any chance of Veluta Lunata asking for a different badge any time in the future? It's simply not possible for a level 5-10 character to get the ghost-trapping badges on their own, when the ghosts are generally levels 10-15.

The PvP badges are still acting really wierd right now. Is all the text incorrect on the badges, or are they still all being awarded for the wrong tasks? It seems like the badge given for running a PvP patrol mission changes every month.

[ QUOTE ]
Thank you! I'm sure no one meant to be a stickler, they just want to which is true.

Also... I have a few questions.

One (and this has kinda been mentioned already) the story suggests she is Kin/Energy, while the plaque at her statue's feet states she is Emp/Energy. Which is the case?

What is her origin? I've always assumed mutant and I'd like to be sure.

[/ QUOTE ]
The plaque sure makes it sound like Empathy, but Transfusion is pretty glowy. Then again, it doesn't really fit with the rest of her story. Her death definitely sounds Absorb Pain related.

I would be very surprised if she's not a mutant. Nothing extraordinary ever happened to her earlier in life, so it's implied she was just a mutant with dormant powers. Not everyone has their powers from birth, after all.

I'm curious what the exploit was as well. The power was explicitly designed to let you juggle an enemy. I guess the exploit had something to do with knocking an enemy up into something, but that's easier to do with knockback.

The power is still usable, but it's more of a pain in the butt now; now you'll have to find a corner to throw people into before you can juggle them.

Your knockup throws the enemy 10 feet away? What powers are you using? My Dominator uses Levitate religiously, but I've never known it to move the enemy much farther from where he was standing. More like his up and down flight arc curves a little bit based on which direction his limbs are flailing in.

Giving it some thought, it has to be a bug. It's okay for a Defender to be shoving people around with Hurricane, but put a similar tool in the hands of a Tanker, and I'm seeing some abuse.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Natural heroes get a bonus with the Stolen SMG. Tech folks get bonuses with High Explosives. Blackwand gives bonuses to Magic types. Minor Mutation is more effective for Mutants. The Psionic Activator is more effective if you are a Science origin.

[/ QUOTE ]

Huh...I can't remember seeing any of those but the SMG.

[/ QUOTE ]
The Blackwand is a reward for one of Archmage Tarixus' story arcs. The Psionic Acitvator is from one of the many "beat up Aurora Borealis" story arcs, given by what's-her-name, the hero hater in Nerva. Dunno about the Minor Mutation or High Explosives, though.

If it's an intended change, I don't think I like it. You shouldn't have to be Natural origin just to play a non-gimped Assault Rifle user. While it's a nice gesture, it's only going to serve to severely limit player choice. You think non-Empathy defenders have problems getting teams now, wait until only one origin gets a bonus to healing powers.

"ur not mut we need mut hlr" *kick*

Can't think of any reason why Whirlwind would suddenly knock back instead of up. Levitate, Disembowel, and Jump Kick all knock up despite ragdoll physics being in place. Enemies don't quite go straight up and down, but it's close enough.

Considering the hideous endurance cost on Whirlwind, I can't imagine why they would feel changing it to knockback would be necessary from a balance perspective. Yes, it's some mad soft control, but not even a Regen scrapper is going to be able to keep that going for very long, much less attack while doing so.

I certainly hope they do something with flight speeds. Thanks to ED, players no longer have the option of maxing out their flight speeds - it's impossible to hit the cap now. Really takes a big bite out of Hover as well. Considering the insane movement ability one can get out of Combat Jumping/Super Leap and Hurdle, taking the alternate approach of slotting the heck out of Hover shouldn't be penalized.

Statesman did say they were looking at doing something for Hover/Fly way back when ED first hit. It's anyone's guess when they'll get fixed, though. From what I've gathered, these changes take months to implement internally with all the multitasking going on.

Nobody has any representatives, apart from Castle, last I checked. Frankly, I'm not going to get my knickers in a twist over it. I'd just as soon the devs spend the bulk of their time working on the game. It's phenomenal that we get as much feedback as we do, but they do have stuff to get done during the day.

Definitely one of the "Light" bosses. All the Legacy of Light wear white and gold, and only the bosses have capes.

These guys seem like they could potentially be a pain in the butt for some magic-based heroes. Defintely one of those 'shades of grey' type organizations. I'm surprised they don't get on Azuria's case more often, the way her vault is a revolving door.

Did they do some datamining on the Villain badge? When I went to go look at the fixed badge bars on test, Apis Queen had just a little bit over half her bar filled. On live, my Longbow bar is nearly full, and I know for certain I haven't killed that many Longbow in the intervening days. Granted, I went tearing through Agincourt briefly, but I couldn't have gotten more than 50.

Maybe I'm missing something here... but isn't 5% pretty trivial in the grand scheme of things?

[ QUOTE ]
It's the same Jenkins, he even reconizes you from the last Breakout mission. Appearantly you aiding him in detonating the bomb has moved him up in Arachnos. I love that little touch, it's so nice to see someone used again. I wish we had more stuff like that. Like some low level gang leader you beat up coming back as a member of the Council or something like that.

[/ QUOTE ]

I would like to see more of that. The only recurring character I've noticed has been the Superfreak, who shows up at least two more times after his story arc.

Also, I'm beginning to suspect that they'll make just anybody a Huntsman. I'm guessing the Wolf Spiders just have a high turnover rate, and a Huntsman is just anybody who manages to survive long enough to get a promotion.