Muon_Neutrino

Yeah, please don't post the link. I know you said not to click on it, but that doesn't necessarily prevent that from happening by mistake. And if that's any usual scammer site, just loading it could seriously mess up your machine. If you pass it to ncsoft to look at I'd leave the link in, but just for the boards it'd be better off gone.

On another note, dang. Just when I think I've seen the worst english fail in a spam message, they go and top themselves.... That actually looks more like babelfish than the usual merely semi-literate stuff. I would scoff at their apparently serious belief that that message might fool someone, except for the sad fact that, somewhere, it probably did....

One of the things that often gets me to drop a mission is unnecessary gratuitous amounts of traveling. Since I play on an aged laptop, my loading times are annoyingly long. I'm not going to zone 4 times to go talk to some PvP zone representative or a contact whose missions I'm never going to take. I'd actually rather do a 'hunt 50 whatever' in the zone I'm currently in than zone 4 or 5 times even for something as simple as a fedex.

Another one is missions that just take an annoyingly long period of time. Some of the croatoa ones are good examples - finding hostages whose names I can never remember on absolutely gigantic outdoor maps, the 'stop 30 fir bolg' mission (which is both long *and* annoying), etc. Also the 'find bombs and hostages on a giant rogue isles factory map' RWZ mission is a good candidate.

I don't usually drop missions for simple difficulty - I've yet to meet an EB I couldn't kill in some way or another (about the only time I might do that is if I had a hunt where I couldn't find anything that wasn't +6 to me). It's annoying missions more than difficult ones that get the drop. I get little enough playtime as it is to spend it doing something annoying instead of something fun.

I don't actively RP, but I do tend to come up with fairly extensive backgrounds for my characters, and I have toyed with the idea a bit.

Basically, in my own personal imagining of the CoH universe, a decade or so after the end of WWII some US heroes discovered hidden in south america a rogue ex-nazi mad scientist and his experiment to breed a new race of supersoldiers by combining human and animal traits.

It basically started out as an excuse to have part-animal characters, but I got to thinking - if you have a population of obviously animalistic beings, brought back to live in the US in the late 50s/early 60s, might they not face some prejudice? If many had been labeled 'subhuman' due merely to having dark skin, how much more so would beings who actually did look 'subhuman' be denigrated? I decided that these people had faced harassment and racism, and as a result tended even today to live in relatively isolated communities of mostly their own kind.

For those of us who never lived through those eras, it's easy to not realize just how ingrained racist views were (and in many ways, still are). When here there's still so much hatred based on things as mundane as skin color, I could easily see the hatred being much more virulent if the bigoted had actual physical differences to point at. It's irrational as heck, but nobody ever said human beings were rational.

I wouldn't imagine it rising to the level of out-and-out violence, at least not very often, because (as has been pointed out) that'd be a rather dangerous pastime. But I could easily see harassment, exclusion, and general hostility towards those who could be perceived as 'different', especially earlier in the CoH history.

War mace and battle axe are very similar overall. In particular, both sets have exactly the same damage per end, as that is one of the normal balance metrics for attacks. Nearly all sets do, in fact, barring powers that are exceptions to the rules for one reason or another.

I think what you're more thinking of is total end use over time. This is more determined by the interaction of damage and animation time. However, since battle axe and war mace are so similar, again there isn't much to choose from here. Battle axe has slightly quicker animations on its identical attacks, but clobber from mace uses more end than swoop and animates faster. On the other hand, cleave and pendulum do more damage and use more end than their identical animation time counterparts in mace. Overall, mace might be *slightly* lower on end use, but if so, it's by a small margin.

As far as other differences, well first off axe does lethal while mace does smashing. They're both commonly resisted, but I think lethal is probably resisted slightly more often.

Axe, though, has much more consistent secondary effects, having a good chance to knockdown on every attack. Mace has a somewhat more disjointed mix of knockdowns and stuns as its secondary effects, although some of them are guaranteed (clobber's stun and crowd control's knockdown) where axe's KDs are only chances.

Mace probably has somewhat better AoE damage than axe - whirling mace has a bonus 0.14 DS over whirling axe for the same recharge and end, shatter has an (imo) more usable cone than cleave, and crowd control has a 1 foot deeper cone than pendulum as well as a 10 target cap instead of 5. At very high recharge levels axe's higher DPA on cleave and pendulum might close the game somewhat, but overall I'd give the edge to mace.

ST, both sets have roughly similar attacks. Axe has better DPA on everything except clobber, but clobber is so massively good that I wouldn't really give either set an edge here. Axe has better ST mitigation, though, with its consistent knockdowns.

Really, though, there really aren't very many mechanical differences. Mace has slightly better AoE and a somewhat less often resisted damage type, while axe has slightly better secondary effects. They'll both do very well overall, and I honestly would just pick whichever one you think is cooler, fits the concept better, has more interesting customizations, or whatever non-mechanical criteria you might have.

You're welcome.

Yeah, I would hope that we could get some additional input, I'm sure there's at least one or two things that could be tweaked further - there always are. There don't seem to be very many budget builders around, though. Most builds I see on the forums are the expensive kind.

One other thing is that I think I should explain some of the reasoning behind the choices I made. Having the build is only one part - knowing how to get there is the other, and it'll help if you want to tweak it later, or for the next build you make.

There are 4 places where you had 3 SOs in a power, and I replaced them with 2 level 50 generic IOs. The reason for this is that at level 50, 2 generics actually offer about 85% as much enhancement as 3 SOs do, and oftentimes that difference is small enough that the slot you save is worth it (it let me slot taunt up a bit, for example - mostly for the def bonus, but the extra enhancement might come in handy someday too). In the case of buildup, hasten, and unstoppable, you actually ended up with about the same recharge as you started, thanks to the 15% global recharge I added. For resist physical damage, the difference was about half a percent of S/L resists, which I thought was negligible. I didn't do this in tough hide, though, because I was trying to build up defense as much as possible.

One thing you have to watch out for in IO builds is the 'rule of 5' - you can only have 5 copies of any given IO set bonus. In this case, between the 3 sets of reactive armor and the two sets of crushing blow, you have 5 '1.25% energy/negative defense' bonuses. If I had slotted a 3rd set of crushing blow into pendulum, the defense bonus would not have taken effect, which is one of the reasons I used 4 pieces of scirocco's instead.

The other reason I used scirocco's was for the 9% accuracy bonus. The slotting on the attacks has very slightly less accuracy than before, and the 9% bonus makes up for that. I deliberately avoided the pool C (acc/dam/end) recipe, but I think these are still likely to be some of the more expensive recipes used. If you find them hard to find or too expensive, you could instead get a kismet (defense set) 6% tohit IO and put it into tough hide (if you change the other two IOs to level 50 you'd keep almost all of the defense). In that case, I would personally slot pendulum with a full set of multi strike for a small amount of smashing/lethal defense.

Finally, a general tip for buying things on the market, especially the villain market: Don't be afraid to let your bids sit for a few days. This is going to be a gradual process no matter what, and putting out reasonable bids and then waiting can often get you your recipes much cheaper than if you simply kept increasing your bid until you purchase it. Of course, if something doesn't fill after a week, then you probably should bump up your offering price a bit.

Also, don't be afraid to vary the level you bid on slightly. For level 25-32 recipes, for example, the enhancement values vary by less than 5%. If there are some currently for sale at 28, there's no real drawback to putting up some test bids and seeing if you can get those for cheap before you lay out your long term bids. Also, dropping to level 25 will in a lot of cases change the salvage required, and sometimes the new salvage might be cheaper.

Two questions: is your brute already level 50, and do you plan to exemplar often? Level 50 IOs are generally the easiest to find on the market, but the set bonuses won't follow you down if you exemplar. If you don't exemplar much, then we can get level 45-50 IOs, save some time waiting for items to show up on the market, and get higher enhancement percentages to boot. If you'd prefer to keep your enhancement bonuses at lower levels, how low do you exemplar? IOs in the 30-40 range can cover most TFs you might do and still keep decent enhancement percentages, albiet they'll be harder to find on the market.

As for which IOs to look at for budget builds, take a look at this page. Any IO that has a yellow bullseye icon (pool A uncommon) or blue and grey shield icon (pool B) should be cheaper on the market. Anything with a orange bullseye icon (pool A rare), large grey shield (pool C/D), or purple bullseye or hero/villain symbol (purples and PvP) will be much more expensive and should probably be avoided.

This is what I would consider a budget build - aside from the uniques you were planning to get with merits, almost everything else is pool A uncommon or pool B. For now I used level 30s, but you could do 50s too. While I'm more familiar with the hero market than the villain one, and I'm sure you'll still shell out a decent amount of cash for some of this, I think I managed to avoid most of the expensive stuff. For any unduly expensive salvage, AE tickets work well. I didn't change any of your power choices, but I did move around a few slots.

It's tough to get good amounts of multiple types of bonuses on a budget. In this case, I mostly went for defense - about 15% extra smashing/lethal and 12% extra energy/negative (and as a side effect, you're at about 17% total ranged to blunt psi blasts a bit). There's also 15% recharge, but no real recovery or +end. The net endurance use is about the same as before, but I think that once you get those recovery uniques you shouldn't be having nearly as many problems. Your attacks do have drastically better enhancement values, however. It should be much easier to make attack chains, and they're slightly more endurance efficient as well thanks to having max damage slotting.

Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.621
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Ulfangir: Level 50 Magic Brute
Primary Power Set: Battle Axe
Secondary Power Set: Invulnerability
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Fighting

Villain Profile:
Level 1: Beheader -- S'ngH'mkr-Acc/Dmg:30(A), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/EndRdx:30(3), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/Rchg:30(3), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg:30(5), F'dSmite-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg:30(5), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx:30(7)
Level 1: Resist Physical Damage -- ResDam-I:50(A), ResDam-I:50(7)
Level 2: Chop -- S'ngH'mkr-Acc/Dmg:30(A), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/EndRdx:30(9), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/Rchg:30(9), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg:30(11), F'dSmite-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg:30(11), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx:30(13)
Level 4: Dull Pain -- Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx:30(A), Dct'dW-EndRdx/Rchg:30(13), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg:30(15), Dct'dW-Heal:30(15), Dct'dW-Rchg:30(17), Tr'ge-Heal/Rchg:30(17)
Level 6: Temp Invulnerability -- RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx:30(A), RctvArm-ResDam/Rchg:30(19), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg:30(19), RctvArm-ResDam:30(21)
Level 8: Swoop -- S'ngH'mkr-Acc/Dmg:30(A), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/EndRdx:30(23), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/Rchg:30(23), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg:30(25), F'dSmite-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg:30(25), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx:30(27)
Level 10: Build Up -- RechRdx-I:50(A), RechRdx-I:50(27)
Level 12: Resist Elements -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+:30(A)
Level 14: Hurdle -- Jump-I:30(A)
Level 16: Unyielding -- RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx:30(A), RctvArm-ResDam/Rchg:30(31), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg:30(31), RctvArm-ResDam:30(33)
Level 18: Health -- Numna-Regen/Rcvry+:50(A), Mrcl-Rcvry+:40(21)
Level 20: Stamina -- EndMod-I:30(A), EndMod-I:30(33), P'Shift-EndMod:30(33), P'Shift-End%:30(34)
Level 22: Hasten -- RechRdx-I:50(A), RechRdx-I:50(34)
Level 24: Whirling Axe -- C'ngBlow-Acc/Dmg:30(A), C'ngBlow-Dmg/EndRdx:30(36), C'ngBlow-Acc/Rchg:30(36), M'Strk-Dmg/Rchg:30(36), M'Strk-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx:30(37), M'Strk-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg:30(37)
Level 26: Cleave -- C'ngBlow-Acc/Dmg:30(A), C'ngBlow-Dmg/EndRdx:30(37), C'ngBlow-Acc/Rchg:30(39), M'Strk-Dmg/Rchg:30(39), M'Strk-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx:30(39), M'Strk-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg:30(40)
Level 28: Invincibility -- RedFtn-Def/EndRdx:30(A), RedFtn-Def/Rchg:30(29), RedFtn-EndRdx/Rchg:30(29), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx/Rchg:30(31), RedFtn-Def:30(34), RedFtn-EndRdx:30(40)
Level 30: Boxing -- Empty(A)
Level 32: Pendulum -- Sciroc-Acc/Dmg:30(A), Sciroc-Dmg/EndRdx:30(42), Sciroc-Dmg/Rchg:30(43), Sciroc-Acc/Rchg:30(43), M'Strk-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx:30(43), M'Strk-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg:30(45)
Level 35: Tough Hide -- DefBuff-I:30(A), DefBuff-I:30(45), DefBuff-I:30(45)
Level 38: Unstoppable -- RechRdx-I:50(A), RechRdx-I:50(40)
Level 41: Tough -- RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx:30(A), RctvArm-ResDam/Rchg:30(42), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg:30(42), RctvArm-ResDam:30(46)
Level 44: Weave -- RedFtn-Def/EndRdx:30(A), RedFtn-Def/Rchg:30(46), RedFtn-EndRdx/Rchg:30(46), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx/Rchg:30(48), RedFtn-Def:30(48), RedFtn-EndRdx:30(48)
Level 47: Resist Energies -- ResDam-I:30(A)
Level 49: Taunt -- Mocking-Taunt/Rchg:30(A), Mocking-Taunt/Rchg/Rng:30(50), Mocking-Taunt/Rng:30(50), Mocking-Rchg:30(50)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Fury
Level 4: Ninja Run
------------
Set Bonus Totals:

• 4% DamageBuff(Smashing)
• 4% DamageBuff(Lethal)
• 4% DamageBuff(Fire)
• 4% DamageBuff(Cold)
• 4% DamageBuff(Energy)
• 4% DamageBuff(Negative)
• 4% DamageBuff(Toxic)
• 4% DamageBuff(Psionic)
• 14.9% Defense(Smashing)
• 14.9% Defense(Lethal)
• 3% Defense(Fire)
• 3% Defense(Cold)
• 11.8% Defense(Energy)
• 11.8% Defense(Negative)
• 3% Defense(Psionic)
• 8.94% Defense(Melee)
• 11.1% Defense(Ranged)
• 3% Defense(AoE)
• 1.8% Max End
• 4% Enhancement(Heal)
• 9% Enhancement(Accuracy)
• 15% Enhancement(RechargeTime)
• 5% FlySpeed
• 50.6 HP (3.38%) HitPoints
• 5% JumpHeight
• 5% JumpSpeed
• MezResist(Held) 2.75%
• MezResist(Immobilize) 14.3%
• MezResist(Sleep) 4.95%
• MezResist(Terrorized) 2.2%
• 2% (0.03 End/sec) Recovery
• 10% (0.63 HP/sec) Regeneration
• 5.67% Resistance(Fire)
• 5.67% Resistance(Cold)
• 3.13% Resistance(Negative)
• 5% RunSpeed

I don't have any published arcs, but the arc I've been working on finishing off and on for months now would be heavily impacted by this. Every single mission would lose large amounts of XP - the first since I use large numbers of battle details, the second for an ally that spawns for story reasons once the mission is *already done*, the third for the single non-buffing LT ally you free from her captivity, and the last (longest, and hence normally the most rewarding) for the several allies you lead in getting your collective revenge on the main antagonist.

From the numbers I've seen thrown around, I wouldn't be surprised if the arc as a whole takes at least a 50% XP hit, if not more. The first and last missions for sure won't be offering much XP.

I am indeed somewhat annoyed. If there really is a large problem with allies, then I do think they should try to fix it. But I *don't* think they should rush such an obviously fatally flawed fix out when they've already admitted that a better one is on the way.

I play (for a few more months anyway) on a nearly 4 year old macbook pro using bootcamp and an XP partition. This thing only has a 100gig HD, and when I created the partitions I grossly underestimated the space I would want for games on the windows side. Thus, the windows partition is jam-packed full and I don't have room to add anything new to it.

I already have moved the vast majority of my lesser-played games to an old external HD that I bummed off my cousin, but I still had my CoH install on the internal HD in an attempt to not worsen my already horrendously long load times. However, I don't have room on the HD to download the extra ~1 GB it's looking like issue 17 will require. I've already moved basically everything off except my steam games, and that platform is so rickety and unreliable I don't want to touch it. Especially since I'm going to be getting a new computer this summer anyway, I really don't want to go through all the rigmarole of backing everything up, reformatting, repartitioning, reinstalling both OSes, restoring everything, and dealing with the hassles, mistakes, and minor explosions that would inevitably occur along the way. So, reluctantly, I'm going to have to put CoH onto the external drive instead.

I reallllllly don't want to redownload the entire thing, especially given how hard my college's network throttles bandwidth on anything that even *looks* like a filesharing data transfer. I usually get at most 10kb/s transfer rates for steam or CoH updates - given that i17 is already going to take at least a day to download, I really don't want to tack on the extra week or so to download the rest of it.

I know you can use an existing live server install to create a test server install without redownloading a vast amount of files. What I don't know is how I'd have to modify that procedure to use a live server install to create another live server install and ensure that the OS knows where to look for it afterward. Are there any more tech savvy users out there who would be able to give me some pointers? I'd like to start the predownload sometime soon so as to beat the rush, but obviously I can't do that until I have room for it.

For me, budget is about 50mil or even less. If you stick to solely pool A uncommons, generics, and pool Bs, then barring the occasional piece of rare salvage (which you can get with AE tickets) you shouldn't ever need to spend more than a couple hundred K on a recipe, and less than 100K on the majority of them. You can't really get any strong set bonuses that way, but even just frankenslotting is a massive boost over SOs. And even some yellow uncommon sets have decent bonuses, like smashing haymaker, red fortune, and multi-strike (which I am using to softcap my shield tanker for dirt cheap).

One thing nobody's explained yet is exactly *why* power boost has this limitation. It's actually due to a rather obscure quirk in the CoH powers engine, and is neither fixable nor arbitrary.

Resistance effects are a multiplier on damage. Thus, deep in the guts of the power engine, resistance buffs and debuffs are actually damage effects - and *must* be, since they do their work by multiplying the incoming damage by a (either larger or smaller than 1) number. Thus, both resistance effects and damage are increased by the same class of buffs. So, in actuality, resistance enhancements and damage enhancements boost the *exact same thing* - different powers are simply flagged to accept one or the other type. You can actually see this in hami-os - if you manage to slot an acc/dam, dam/mez, or dam/range into a power with enhanceable resistance, it'll enhance it (by 33% to boot!), and if you slot a res/end into a power that deals damage, it'll enhance that damage by 20%. This is due to an inherent limitation in the powers engine, and would take a lot of work to fix.

So what does that mean for power boost? Well, obviously, resistance boosts being affected by damage buffs/slotting is not exactly what the devs want - especially given the magnitude of damage buffing some powers can hand out (imagine if a resistance based tanker's shields suddenly offered an extra 300% of their base effectiveness when he was fulcrum shifted!).

Thus, you somehow have to stop these resistance effects from being affected by damage buffs. There are only two ways to do this in the powers engine as it stands: mark the resistance effect itself as immune to boosts (which also makes it unenhanceable), or make the power as a whole immune to outside buffs.

So, if you want a power to have an *enhanceable* resistance buff, the entire power *must* be marked 'immune to buffs' in order to prevent the resistance component from being increased by damage buffs on the player. *This* is why a few powers, like the ice shields, fail to benefit from power boost - since the resistance offered by the shields is enhanceable, they must be marked as immune to buffs. Power boost not boosting them is a regrettable but unavoidable side effect. Thankfully this doesn't affect very many powers, since most powers with enhanceable resistance don't also have attributes that power boost would normally enhance.

The only powerset that really has wind themed powers in this game is storm summoning (gale, hurricane, tornado, plus the rest of the set is nicely compatible with a wind theme even if the individual powers aren't wind themed), so you're looking at a controller, defender, mastermind, or corruptor.

Ice control has two sorta-wind themed powers - arctic air (PBAoE slow/confuse toggle) and shiver (cone slow). Ice blast has frost breath (sorta wind themed) and two weather themed rain powers. Fire blast also has a breath power and a rain. Those are the only sets I can think of that can go with storm summoning that also have any even vaguely wind themed powers.

Ice blast, electric blast, ice control and earth control are nicely thematic sets to match with storm, regardless of whether they have any wind-themed powers or not. Be warned though that electric blast is not the most powerful, and ice and earth control are very low offense control sets (albeit with good control).

If you're mostly looking for AoE carnage, any combination of fire/, plant/, /fire, /psi, and maybe /thorny shoud be pretty decent. I'm not familiar exactly how their relative power levels break down at the highest levels of investment, but they are all sets which are strong at AoE.

Plant has probably the single best AoE control in the game in seeds of confusion - and that one also clumps up foes and gets them to weaken each other. It also has carrion creepers to dish out some extra AoE damage (which will be perma on a high recharge build) and the AoE immob for plant does twice the usual damage (making it a useful AoE attack).

Fire has hot feet for good passive AoE damage, and high damage pets. Bonfire can also be used for its DoT (about 60% that of hot feet) if you are willing to keep spamming fire cages for the -KB (which also will add a bit of damage, especially proc'd). Less control than plant/, but with permadom flashfire should last long enough. The purple build up proc in fire imps would also be quite good, if the devs fixed the bug that kept it from working (has that been fixed? don't remember).

/Fire has two pretty good AoEs, and fiery embrace is a strong damage boost (especially on a high recharge build, and when combined with fire/ and hot feet). Fire also has strong single target damage.

/Psi has quite good AoE damage - while psi shockwave still comes late and isn't as good as it used to be, psi scream is now worth using and the rest of the set isn't too shabby. Not as good of single target damage as fire, but much better than it used to be. The set also has drain psyche for some interesting health and endurance related trickery. No damage boosting powers, though.

/Thorny is a bit of an odd duck. It has a good PBAoE and two cones (one melee, one ranged), and thorntrops can also be used as an AoE DoT if you have something to keep the foes in place. It also has aim for an occasional damage boost. The set is hampered by some long animations, though, and has only average single target damage. You also have to deal with redraw. This isn't really a popular set, and I don't know how well it stacks up at high recharge levels.

Of these combinations, fire/fire and fire/psi might also be able to do AVs at high enough levels of investment. You'll have to talk to someone more familiar with high end dominator IO builds for the fine distinctions of which of these is most powerful, however. I would still imagine that any of them ought to work though.

Well, I can't really help you with the uber high-end build as I usually use cheap builds, but I can tell you now that you're likely going to want a different primary if you want to solo AVs. Plant/psi would be an AoE monster in regular play, but plant/ is not very suited to fight AVs.

Soloing AVs on a dom is very difficult - basically because they're nearly immune to mez, and doms don't get the passive mitigation necessary to survive against an unmezzed AV. The only way I've ever heard of doms soloing AVs is to get a mega global recharge build and getting the cycle time on their ST hold down low enough to overpower the purple triangles. However, in that case, the cast time on the hold becomes very important - a difference of a second in cast time could make the build twice as expensive (if it is possible at all). Plant's hold has a 2.07s cast time - it's going to make this much harder. Generally the thought is to use mind/ or fire/ primary, as those two have much faster casting holds (1.1 and 1.07 seconds, respectively).

As for the secondary, /psi doesn't have the best single target damage, but it does have drain psyche to slow the AV's regeneration (it shouldn't floor a level 50 AV, but it'll chop it down to perhaps a quarter of its normal value). With a mega recharge build it should be perma, so I think /psi should be able to do it - but you'd probably want to ask those who have done it.

So, long story short, plan on getting hasten and as much global recharge as you can possibly manage, and consider using fire/ or mind/ prrimary instead of plant/.

The reason benumb doesn't have any allowed enhancement sets is that the types of debuff the power does aren't enhanceable. Benumb does -damage (which isn't enhanceable), -regeneration (also can't be enhanced), -special (can't be enhanced), and -end (which is normally enhanceable, but here is only present in a tiny token unenhanceable 5% amount for flavor). For all of these effects except for the token -end, enhancements that boost them don't exist. So there are no IO sets that fit this power, because IO sets fall into specific categories and this power doesn't have effects that fit any of those categories.

TL/DR version: yes, spore burst can, but not as well.

Long version: The AVs in the LRSF have, like the vast majority of AVs, just the basic boss sleep protection. Neither spore burst or mass hypnosis will sleep them with one shot, but both will do so under domination. Thus, it is certainly possible to sleep the AVs with it.

However, it won't do as good of a job. In many ways, spore burst is the second best control set sleep, after mass hypnosis. It has a better duration than salt crystals and is ranged, and it doesn't have the annoying tiny tick of damage that lets the enemy shoot at you before the sleep is applied like flash freeze. It also has half the recharge of those two powers - in fact, the same recharge and duration as mass hypnosis. However, what it doesn't have is mass hypnosis' lack of aggro (it also has slightly shorter range). This will make using it to perma sleep the phalanx considerably more dangerous to the dom. As well, plant control lacks the backup tool of mesmerize - this power allows a mind dom to spot sleep (in a single shot, even outside of domination!) any AVs that the AoE sleep misses. Without that tool, again it becomes a more dangerous task.

So, yes, my guess is that under domination you probably could keep the phalanx slept with spore burst (ain't tried it myself of course). I'm guessing it would be considerably more difficult and dangerous, however.

Macs do things a mite differently than PCs in this regard. On a mac, sometimes a bunch of different files and substructures (that on a PC would be right out in the open in the program's directory) are hidden inside the program's icon. To access these, right click on the program's icon (in the finder applications section) and select 'show package contents' (that's what it calls it in 10.4 anyway). This will pop up a new finder window. In CoH's, navigate to Contents->Resources->transgaming->c_drive->coh->Missions and you should see your storyarc files. If you want to manually edit them you just right click on them and do Open With->TextEdit.

Caveat: all this info is based off the last CoH version (i15, I think) that was compatible with osx 10.4. I don't have any more recent versions of CoH on this computer since it stopped working on here after i15. If they've changed anything since then, the exact info may not be completely correct anymore. However, the general idea of going into the package contents to find it should still work - you might just have to look around a bit.

My existing characters probably won't make very much use of the full side-switching mechanic. Most of them were made before we knew about the possibilities, and their stories weren't crafted with that knowledge in mind. Given that, most of them have stories that aren't very open to the possibility of completely changing sides.

I'd be making more use of the vigilante/rogue alignments, I think. Several heroes would likely go vigilante in order to be able to rampage around the rogue isles a bit, and some of my less flat-out evil villains might go rogue and occasionally visit paragon in a less violent manner.

Where these features would really come into play for me would be with new characters. Many for whom side-switching wouldn't even come into the story would still start in praetoria before moving to their appropriate side, just for the new low level content and ability to start as any AT, and some concepts are rattling around in the back of my head for full fledged villains/heroes who would start out on one side and then change over.

I've been meaning to try this arc for a while now, and I got around to it yesterday. I definitely enjoyed myself, and I thought it was good, but there are some things that tossed me for a bit of a loop. So, without further ado, some comments on the specific missions, and then I'll talk about the arc overall.

Mission 1:
For a while I was thinking to myself 'this map is too big', but that was only until I realized exactly which map it was - definitely a good choice. It still feels a bit on the large side to me, which could be a problem in terms of finding objectives - I ran across one conspirator ally before I found der Führer, so if there were any more optional objectives I never saw them. Given the unique setpiece at the end, though, having the map be too big is definitely the lesser of two evils.

In the mission complete clue, the use of $archetype seems a bit jarring to me. Do any characters in existing game canon ever use the names of the ATs? I don't recall it. To me that feels like more of an out-of-game term, and it felt a bit odd to see it used in an in-universe manner. That may just be personal preference though.

Mission 2:
The use of council robots as 'panzers' gave me a good laugh, I had a blast luring one of the generals over to a column of them and watching him get pounded. I also thought it was nice that some of the NPCs recognized me - I actually wish that happened more often during the arc, especially for characters like generals who ought to know stuff like that. It really helps establish the whole 'you are an evil overlord' vibe.

Mission 3:
This map felt a bit on the empty side, although that may just have been a function of my forgetting to change the difficulty settings off the default (haven't played this character in a good while). As someone else mentioned, while I liked the use of large, noticeable destructibles for the command posts, the fact that this map already has some trucks as part of the scenery did lead to some false positives. The other thing was that the trucks look awfully modern and non-military. While I doubt there's much you can do about that, it's still something I noticed.

Mission 4:
I don't have the pathological hatred of 'red atlas' that some do, but it is kinda annoying at times - mostly because it chokes my aged, decrepit computer down to about 8 fps. Hardly your fault, but you might want to be aware of the effect this map can have on older machines. It definitely is the appropriate setting, though.

One thing I noticed: General Patton's faction is listed as 'council empire'. I didn't notice any similar lapses on other bosses, but I wasn't specifically looking, so you might want to give them a check.

I very much liked the ability to rescue a bunch of 5th and have them follow you around as you rampage through the place. Again, this really helps reinforce the feeling of you as the leader of the evil empire. The difficulty levels of maiden justice and statesman seemed OK to me - they spawned nearby each other, so I just popped domination and a medium purple and bumrushed em in sequence. Maiden justice went down to my army of pets quickly, and I had time to jump in and start whaling on statesman before my purple even ran out. I think I might have gotten lucky, though, because I was able to hold them both part of the time, so I guess I caught them with the triangles down (hard to see those things in the heat of the fight, especially with how choppy it was). I think I used a couple of reds, a green or two, and that medium purple.

Overall: I rated this 5 stars in accord with my practice of rating either 5 stars (if I like something) or not at all (if I don't), but internally I ranked it as 4ish.

As I mentioned, my playthrough wasn't such that I could give much feedback on the mobs - it's pretty apparent that base difficulty is too low for a level 50 dom, and everything was either encased in ice, running away very slowly, or dead too fast for me to get a good look.

So, mostly my feedback has to do with feel and story. And the big issue I have with the story is the character's abrupt elevation to führer. Simply put, it just doesn't make any sense to me that Schadenfreude is so willing to put you, someone who she doesn't know and had just recently recruited to help her, in charge. There's no setup at all - the initial briefing makes it sound like you're helping *her*, and then bam, you're in charge of the whole shebang. I think there needs to be some explanation of *why* Schadenfreude is so eager to go along with this whole state of affairs.

It makes more sense from the 1938 end - if Schadenfreude really has set you up as the instigator for this military plot, it doesn't feel too far fetched that you could end up in charge afterward. And making the player the ultimate mastermind and leader definitely has an attraction to it - it's a good idea. But having it come at the player completely cold, and with such an incongruous reaction from Schadenfreude afterward, just doesn't feel right to me. There don't need to be any major story or mechanical changes, just some revamped briefing and debriefing text for the first mission would probably do it. Just set up the elevation beforehand, and give Schadenfreude a plausible reason to want you in charge.

The other story-type issue I have is that the arc focuses so closely on the historical, *real-world* events of WWII. However, we know that in the CoH universe there were tons of super-related aspects as well - but these don't come into the story at all until the last mission, and even then only as two heroes guarding the president. It just seems sorta lopsided that the arc basically ignores that entire side of the CoH version of the war.

I know you mentioned that you originally wanted to have things like dawn patrol members protecting the dunkirk evacuation, soviet heroes at stalingrad, more heroes in atlas, and whatnot, and I definitely think that playing up that part of the CoH version of WWII would definitely be a good idea. I know you don't have space to add extra customs at this point, but I would certainly look at this again once GR gives us extra room.

The last possible issue I have with the story is that the dialogue makes it sorta feel that you're an 'absent dictator' - it does feel a bit weird that you could seriously maintain control of this empire (not necessarily in the 'directing the war' sense, but more in terms of being the 'leader' and keeping loyalty) if you're only popping in every couple of years at critical points. The idea of changing these critical events to change the outcome of the war is definitely a good one, but I might consider a slightly different tack for some of the briefings.

Perhaps (and this is a pretty nebulous idea) you could write them to make it seem more like you're staying there for longer periods of time, write things so that some time has passed in between the missions, etc? Something to give the impression that, while the missions are the only events you'll actually play through in the arc, your character is actually doing more stuff behind the scenes? This would definitely help, I think - while it wouldn't do anything particularly for the abruptness of your elevation, giving the impression that your character has been doing all sorts of things as the Führer (and doing them well) would help explain Schadenfreude's and the troops' continuing loyalty (and your enemies' fear) in the later missions.

After all that, I do have to mention the things that I especially liked. The trick of triggering patrols of friendly troops off the defeat of bosses does a very good job of setting the scene. It really helps avoid the sense that you're an isolated actor by allowing you to explicitly see the consequences of your acts (where normally you'd only get to read about them in a debriefing). I think it works a bit better in the second mission than the third, mostly because the third mission is so big, but it still is very effective.

Also, allowing you the chance to collect entourages of rescued allies is another very nice mechanic. Again, it really reinforces the feeling that you're in charge of an *army* and empire, not just a lone super.

Finally, the arc is nicely evil. I definitely think that having the player unambiguously win in the end is a good thing. There aren't that many arcs that let villains be really evil, and the whole 'take over the world' theme is a mite difficult to have as part of a 'canon' story, which makes it perfect for AE. There doesn't need to be any 'ray of sunshine' at the end - the player just conquers the world.

Overall, the premise and the mechanics of the missions themselves are spot on. The story is also pretty good, but there just are a few nagging issues that it probably would be good to look at.

Are you planning anything specific to use the extra GR space on? A 5th mission might not be amiss, considering the scope of the story. There's a map involving the coast of grandville that just cries out for a beach invasion mission of some sort.