Paladin

I said it elsewhere, but this is amazing. A new trial, revolutionary buffing system, auras that look like travel powers - you can color me impressed.

Just let me know who I need to send the Cookie Package to in order to get Primal Clockwork on the list of Lore Pets. :P

This looks FANTASTIC!

I'm excited to see more use for Astral and E-merits, and costumes, emotes, auras, etc., that aren't bundled into a super booster. The costume pieces that have their own auras, and the clever auras that can be used for travel powers should give us a break from complaints that all good things are locked behind booster packs.

The only thing I'm a little disappointed is that there are no regular Clockwork lore pets. I do realize that they can't have every NPC faction represented in the game but there's something so unique about those clockwork pieces. It'd be fun to match them with the veteran buff/hologram pets, too.

What do you think? Primal clockwork for lore?

I'll be joining as soon as I log on next. I lean towards RPing in missions, and have difficulty paying more attention towards shooting-the-breeze-in-the-D RP when I'm in game; this is perfect. I'll be recruiting from here first when I gather up people for trials/task forces.

RP Virtue's great for what it is, but it's not solely devoted towards RPers getting together looking to run in-game content. I love lurking and occasionally chatting there, but it's usual function seems to be for RPers to blow off steam OOCly with wacky antics and silly chat. Maybe it's my play schedule but I don't see much recruiting going on there.

There's a "feature" that extends the timer reset trigger to your teammates, not just you. So your whole team can't activate any powers during the window in order for your to swap out incarnate abilities.

I don't know if this has been said to be working as intended or confirmed as a bug, but it's annoying.

A retouching on Medieval armor is overdo - as much as I love me some crotch arrows, the plate armor's just so dated, particularly when you compare it with the roman armor we've received from Cimerora or the Valkyrie pieces. While those pieces fill a niche, the lack of any sort of plate armor or medieval helmets since the game's release is glaring.

I'm disappointed that a clock-face belt is restricted to female characters. There's so much potential wasted in this pack when creative items like this are locked behind character gender.

Can we get a male-version of some of these art pieces, please? These are too good to have them remain locked up.

Some of the most fun I had was during Virtue's Praetorian Surge this Wednesday. I'd like to thank everyone who bore with me while I was RPing in Steel Canyon, and offer up a thank you to everyone for coming together and joining a League - we nearly had 6 full teams at one point, which was a wonderful way to add some additional stress to the test.

Thanks to NCSoft's Corsair for relaying the in character messages as one of Portal Corps' technicians and letting us get into it. Bringing out the zombies with Diabolique and manually shutting them down when she was defeated really added to the whole thing! Seeing all of those AVs spawning right besides the statue in Blyde Square was fantastic, and though the serverside lag was present, the banter and comradery of the event made it easily bearable.

We finally got a chance to pay back Valkyrie and Tyrant for trashing Blyde Square. Poor Dr. Advance was cheering for us from within his bodycast in Steel Canyon's hospital. I'll post some screenshots when I dig through them - it was a great experience. I'm hopeful that we can see more of these sorts of things in the future.

I always thought of Superman as an American symbol, one that was so nicely summed up by the motto of standing for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. Which leads me to another thought, that it's disappointing that characters can't be explicitly American without coming off as shameful or jingoistic to writers and editors. It's a challenge to write a pro-American character that espouses the concept of, say, American Exceptionalism (Read: the concept that the freedoms provided to a hard working people with unique resources can produce exceptional things, and nothing to do with superiority) without propping up a strawmen to tear down. Usually points of pride for Americans in fictional media are often accompanied by points of pride for other countries; it's a nice, rare treat in my fictional story intake to see points of American pride unmolested.

The storyline's a good excuse for Superman to renounce his citizenship in order to avoid it being used by Iran as propoganda of American trouble-making. I also expect him to pick up the mantle of US Citizen again when the ratings call for it. However, I do wish they held enough respect for the character and what he stood for not to go through with this routine.

But, if enough people who thought like I did were buying the comic books in the first place, it wouldn't be happening. Go figure.

I only had success on the 5 Lambda trials I was on last night. Four out of five were full teams arranged by a leader, the other used the LFG system and had about ten people involved. No failures. These successful runs hinged on people being willing to work together and pay attention, and required pro-active leadership - running through instructions beforehand and during the phases of the event.

I'd like to give a shout-out to Annihilius for taking point and leading so many successful runs last night, and for giving so many of us first-time runners an idea of what's needed. The Lambda runs felt more like a Rikti raid than a task force; more "smash" than the grind that it's being made out to be. All in all, it was a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to the BAF tonight.

My favorite thing about CoH? That there is no longer a glaring lack of significant endgame.

Nice thead, Vik.

There's a lot of insightful advice in this thread; taken to heart, these points can really improve teaming experiences from hesitant or uncertain team leaders. Most people are afraid of failing a task and being blamed for a poor outcome; whether it's a TF fail, a team wipe or just a hiccup, people don't want that responsibility on their shoulders. As the leader, you need to willingly take that on when it happens (it will, at some point - it's what keeps the game interesting still) and then just as quickly get things moving again.

Like in real life, leading is about communicating a goal to your partners and stepping in when it's needed. To that end, let the team know beforehand what you're going to be doing, as well as any trouble spots you anticipate - and ways around them. I run "bring whatever you want, flip out and enjoy" TFs, and was running a Tin Mage the other day with 2 Khelds, no brutes, tanks or defensive buffs; the Khelds were asked to pop into Dwarf and play aggro champions, despite one being more used to playing in Nova. It was a blast, and the few KOs we had were from just goofing around - which is a sign of a fun team.

Some basic knowledge of what you're going up against is important to have, in order to effectively communicate if things sour. Carrying along envenomed daggers, nukes, shivans, etc., for the common -regen light team is a wise course of action. The more you can do to carry the burden without the rest of the team knowing, the more fun the team's likely to have.

Honestly, Zombie, that task force sounds like a lot of fun. The first thing I like to say when leading a task force is that "No deaths" means the team's being overly cautious; it's far more fun to flip out and try something daring than to take things slow, steady, and tedious. It's been my experience that once people know that they're free to try something crazy then they'll just laugh off a defeat - and try something crazy again. I like to think of those players as "Fun Force Multipliers."

84 KOs in an hour is my kind of task force and it sounds like you were doing something right.

Just bring someone with perma-Vengeance along next time. I hear there's a holy knight with it who's usually looking for a team..

Thanks for the upgrade; the game patches and fixes itself much more quickly now, and I haven't had any horror stories like those in the thread. I was hesitant to make the switch given the issues that were posted, but nope: just a download that works like a charm. I appreciate it.

My dual-bladed bull is about to go filet mignons... and bosses, too!

Given that [Return to Battle] provides ten seconds of Untouchable, is it time to revisit Regeneration's [Revive]? It still lacks any sort of Untouchable grace period, making it hazardous to use in 95% of combat situations that are likely to result in a defeat.

It's been so long, I'd almost think the power's glaring flaw has been forgotten.

Thank you so very much. These rewards are exactly what I'd think about when mentioning Veteran Rewards: a small thing, but unique and time saving for the players who've been in the game for a long time.

From the sounds of it it's uncommon, but happening often enough to be a serious problem. Friggin' Taser had success by keeping one teammate in the RWZ, not even entering the mission until the team crashed. The person in the RWZ was still connected and about to enter the mission, preserving the mission until the rest of the team logged back in.

The bug thread is here: http://boards.cityofheroes.com//showthread.php?t=247610

Who knew their love was so strong?

Running a Tin Mage this evening proved to be a simple activity until our team reached Neuron and Bobcat. Whittling down their health wasn't bad, but once one of the lovers were defeated the whole instance was mapserved for all 8 Task Force teammates.

This doesn't seem to only affect one or the other; defeating Neuron or Bobcat first still results in a crash. So far we're up to 3 crashes - one with Bobcat falling first, and two with Neuron (one pulled, one in the thick of everything).

Can someone look into this? I'm starting to run out of "Power of Love" puns.

Thanks!

Edit: Up to 5 Instance Resets, now.

I waited outside in the RWZ while the team triggered the reset inside the mission; it didn't crash the RWZ or my game, but the instance did reset.

Had I the chance to retype the title, I'd rename this "Neuron and Bobcat's Love Conquers Time and Space!"

Our team logged off after filing multiple reports about this. Here's hoping a fix is coming soon for those Incarnate fans.

Just got done with a pick-up Apex and Tin Mage double-feature for 80 merits in around 3 hours. I used to get annoyed with what I thought was an anti-melee bias in the Apex task force but tonight our team was about 4 Scrappers, 2 Brutes, 1 (Radiation) Corrupter and 1 (Radiation) Controller - and we got the Master of the Apex badge from the whole thing.

For those who are having trouble with the Blue Patches, there's a ledge southwest of the Blyde Square statue that you can hide under to keep the blue death from spawning on your characters often - note that characters must be completely under the ledge for this to work, and there isn't enough room for everyone to fit without having some characters peeking out and spawning the Energized Halberd attacks.

The Hydra guarding the Pylons require melee to joust after using two +Res inspirations, but that's not difficult.

It's annoying to see Battle Maiden tearing up Blyde Square so handily after she was such a push over, but after RPing you learn to allow your expectations of Cannon to be somewhat elastic.

I have to excuse myself for today's run. I may be around for this weekend but that might be problematic too. My apologies for the short notice.