Rigel_Kent

FWIW stalkers get snipes in their APPs, and blasters can get LRM. Not sure either AT will meet your "solo AVs" requirement, though.

Don't forget Defenders! The original do it all AT.

2 loading screens, 4 loading screens, 6, 8, or 10. That's really the choice you're looking at. Think of mission number as number of loading screens. Or number of bathroom breaks, since that's all loading screens are good for.

To reduce the number of loading screens, combine as much content as you can into the same missions together.

Lots of tools at your disposal to accomplish this. Front/middle/back placement of mission details can reveal plot bits sequentially, taking the place of loading screens. You can even swap enemy groups mid-mission with creative detail placement. You can make one mission detail trigger the next to appear, or do betrayals, but please playtest that carefully! In-mission dialogue rather than contact monologue reduces the need for loading screens. Clues and detail completion messages are just as good as in-mission dialogue.

If all else fails, pretend your contact is mute after the initial introduction, force yourself to advance the entire plot using in-mission tools, then add just enough contact text before publishing to recap the major points and smooth the transitions.

Just be careful not to make a mission so long that players actually need a bathroom break before the mission's over. Use the smallest map you can that'll just barely hold the details you need. "Filler" details giving out plot bits is better than contact monologue, but keep them optional. Roll yourself a low level petless mastermind to handicap your skill as a veteran player and your knowledge as the mission's designer. Your petless MM should need 15 minutes max to do a stealthy solo speedrun of each mission at +0 level. If mission #1 is nicely trimmed down but you can't fit any more plot into 15 minutes, find a natural plot break to do a change of scenery, begin building mission #2, and repeat the process.

I can definitely confirm, as of today on live servers, Hide still gives customs a big damage buff. A custom boss's Shuriken dealt exactly double the damage it's supposed to.

Removed Hide from one of my arc's customs for precisely that reason. Bad enough the XP is nerfed to hell from Release Captive objectives. I'm not going to make players deal with ranged shuriken DoT one-shots too.

So I was compiling my badge checklist on my level 50 blaster, and noticed something unusual.



This is on my blaster, who has never had Medicine pool, never used healing Day Job powers, and maybe used a Drop of Life a dozen or so times during Valentine's Day events. The only power he has that would significantly be contributing to these badges is Vengeance, from the Leadership pool.

But 7.7M? Seriously?

Has anyone else experienced anything like this? Is it a bug with the badges? A bug with Vengeance? A bug with Drops of Life? Did I overlook some other form of healing? Or are the teams I'm in really that bad?

And if I get the 10M badge, do I get to advertise my blaster in Broadcasts as an Empath with my AoE healing power on auto?

-->

Dual Pistols

Quality of Life

• Power info for Dual Pistols powers displays the info for standard ammunition only. There's no in-game way to see the effects of powers when using cold, fire, or toxic bullets.
• When using standard ammunition, two lines of Dual Pistols combat messages for lethal damage are shown. The spam can be reduced by combining all the standard ammunition lethal damage into one line, then making the other line of lethal damage for cold, fire, or toxic bullets only.

90% is enough to slow most enemies the same level as you to the movement speed floor (10%). Additional slow strength lets you do the same against higher level enemies. Try unslotted versus slotted Tar Patch against +4s and you'll see the difference.

I'll keep it brief since the thread's getting long.

It's a playstyle factor, but I like to put enemies in the slow cooker. Winning is nice but ego tripping is nicer. Rad/Ice would be my pairing.

If you really do want to take AP but not HO, that's fine. It's workable. Perhaps not very helpful on a defender, and I don't recommend it for most players, but workable if you think it suits you.

If possible, use it while Regeneration Aura is running on yourself. Or in an empath duo with the other empath AB'ing you. Health and +regen set bonuses also help. AP makes you immune to heals and Respites but you still regen at a -100% penalty, easily overcome through these methods.

Besides, it might do your playstyle some good to learn survival techniques other than Healing Aura and Respites for a change!

You won't need end redux slotting in AP, so another potential minor upside is that AP instead of HO may free up a slot. If you're using cone blasts a lot, that's another potential minor upside, since hopping into melee for HO+HA and back out again for cone blasts is a pain. A final minor upside is that AP and HO have the same animation speed, so AP frees up more time for blasting (this is the reason I take AP but not HO, incidentally).

Yes, I did die a lot at first, but it's a learning curve. AP rarely kills me now, and when it does, I'm always pretty sure I would've died anyway.

Many states (including NCI's home state, Texas) recognize publicity rights. Publicity rights are roughly equivalent to trademark rights, except they protect a person's name and likeness rather than a logo or other product identifier. This is to prevent you from using someone's famous name or likeness to deceptively promote a product you're selling.

Both trademark and publicity rights are limited to allow non-commercial and fair uses. Otherwise there'd be no parodies or news reporting or commentary on any business, product, or person in the world, ever! City of Heroes unfortunately doesn't recognize those non-commercial and fair use exceptions. Given the cost of litigation, no matter how weak the plaintiff's case (see: Marvel v. NC), I don't blame them. Even with judicial precedent that City of Heroes player content is non-commercial and therefore not trademark infringement (see again: Marvel v. NC), I still don't blame them.

Just another intellectual property chilling effect. Thank Marvel for that.

Just a quick qualitative rundown of Storm powers for ya.

Gale: Enemies will be knocked away from you about the same distance, if they're hit. That's the trick -- Gale is a cone with low accuracy, so it takes accuracy slotting, good aim, and maybe range slotting to make sure everything is hit. Enemies are seriously scattered by Gale only when you hit some targets but miss other targets.

O2 Boost: Grants an ally protection against a few status effects and debuffs, at the cost of losing some of your Vigilance endurance discount (because it heals them, awwww ).

Snow Storm: De-flies enemies in an area effect. Useful to keep fliers from escaping your Freezing Rain. Also has a slow effect, but Freezing Rain by itself should stop enemies from being able to make any meaningful movement.

Steamy Mist: Damage resistance to one common damage type (Energy) plus two less common damage types (Fire, Cold), plus a little defense, plus a little Stealth. Compares very nicely to APP armors, and even stacks with them. The fact that it also helps nearby teammates is secondary.

Freezing Rain: Take it, /bind it to a mouse button combination, and don't look back. Explaining what Freezing Rain does only wastes time you should be using to take and bind it. Do it nao! Slot for anything you like except accuracy and damage. Recharge enhancement brings Freezing Rain up more often, slow movement enhancement keeps targets from escaping Freezing Rain easily, range enhancement lets you use Freezing Rain from further away, defense debuff enhancement helps you and the team hit much higher level enemies.

Hurricane: Autohits enemies that you get close to, inflicting a massive -tohit debuff. The only better -tohit debuff in the game is the Dark Blast nuke (Blackstar). By itself, will floor (i.e. minimum 5% total to-hit chance) a lot of enemies. With Steamy Mist, will floor the vast majority of enemies. The debuff is "sticky" and will keep enemies debuffed for 10 seconds after they're no longer in the Hurricane. In a desperate situation, I sometimes start doing fly-bys every few seconds in a circle around the spawn, or even straight through the spawn, with Hurricane running, and the debuff will persist until I make my next fly-by, giving me time to blast and stuff.

Thunder Clap: Stuns minions (mag 2) in a somewhat large radius around you. Duration is long enough, recharge is short enough, to perma stun minions if you have to. (Though you'll never have to.) Like Gale, lots of accuracy slotting required. Makes a nice assist for random newbies fighting Blood Brothers on the street, since it doesn't deal damage or take XP.

Tornado: Autohit smashing DoT. Eats AVs, GMs, MoG'ing Paragon Protectors, and anything else that foolishly relies on dodging/deflecting (def). Nom nom nom.

Lightning Storm: High accuracy energy blasting pet with a small AoE. Eats AVs, GMs, and closely packed targets against a wall. Nom nom nom.

Although I agree /Fire and /MM top the list of AoE damage secondaries, /Elec is close enough behind that if you decide to hybridize between AoE and single target blapping, /Elec is a good choice.

Lightning Field has the same big radius as Hot Feet (though less damage and no Afraid, -Fly, or Slow effects). Thunder Strike has minor AoE damage in a so-so size radius. The single target blaps are on par with /EM.

I'd like to confirm that non-combat hostages drain XP.

And if it didn't need to be confirmed, I'd like to vent that non-combat hostages drain XP. Ick, this one is so bad I'm not even going to bother updating my other arc for Issue 17.

Looks alright. Watch your endurance as you play; you may find you've overdone it (AM+Stamina+Conserve). If so, shift some slots into Radiant Aura to improve your survivability. Or grab Total Focus for stun stacking with Cosmic Burst.

EM Pulse for end drain is questionable. It doesn't halt targets' endurance recovery, so even if you slot mad amounts of endmod and manage to drain stuff, you're merely delaying them for a maximum of an endurance tick, 4 seconds. Given the other sources of Holds in your build, I think you're better off slotting for hold duration instead of endmod.

Fallout debuffs tohit -30% for 30 seconds. If you have slots left over, tohit debuff slotting in Fallout might provide a little extra safety net.

Try to get some recharge reduction in Irradiate. It animates nice and fast, so it probably won't annoy you to use it 2 or 3 times during a spawn.

Do you need recharge reduction in Stealth?

I'm not sure why pet summoning powers have high accuracy, since it doesn't take a to-hit check to summon most pets.

The Rains' actual attack powers are normal accuracy, 75%, so I slot with the usual amount of accuracy.

Freezing Rain and Sleet are the exception, since the damage is minor, and you really only need 1 tick to stick the debuff. Streakbreaker will get 1 tick to hit just fine.

Biggest con: You can't buff or enhance RoF's movement speed debuff. Bummer, too. What a glorious rebirth it would be for the old school Fire/EM blaster. :nostalgic sigh:

It's my belief that you'll be on a team with a crowd controller often enough to justify having RoF. Either a Fire/Kin farmer, or ... oh, who am I kidding, it's always a Fire/Kin farmer.

Radiation Emission

Balance Issues

• Mutation buffs the target's ToHit, but does not accept ToHit Buff enhancements or sets.

Love Fallout, but it's a shame if you can't get Vengeance in there too.

Lack of Lingering Radiation will provoke build rage. When teams specifically ask for Rad, what they really want is Lingering Radiation to kill some AV's haxx regen. I despise buff/debuff sets being reduced to a single power, but unfortunately, that's the way PuGs roll.

You don't need many single target attacks to make a full attack chain, especially with Hasten and AM. Ranged Shot won't be part of your attack chain, ever (even Fistful does better single target DPS), so keep it only if you really want a long ranged snipe.

Accelerate Metabolism and Stamina and Conserve Power is endurance overkill. You can drop Fitness pool and still have plenty of endurance. Keep Conserve Power for after nuking, as it stretches the 25 endurance from a Catch a Breath a long way. Keep AM for its damage and recharge buffs.

If you free up some power slots, I can recommend Mutation as a solid 90-second buff. Huge +recharge and +recovery, and a serious amount of +dmg and +tohit. Afterwards, there's -dmg and -tohit for 45 seconds, but the -dmg can be resisted, and your RI takes care of the -tohit problem.