Roderick

Yes.

Willpower can solo +0/x8 on a SO only build. It relies on its resistance and regen in most situations. The main reason to have +defense on WP is to avoid spikes of damage, like absorbing alpha strikes. The only time you might really need that extra 3% defense is when trying to solo tough targets, like AVs. If you're knocking down and stunning most of your enemies, which you should be doing with Mace, the few that can attack are usually going to miss whether you're at 40% or 45%, and you'll heal back most, if not all, of the damage before the next time an attack actually hits.

The only time I actually worry about getting all the way to 45% is when playing a set with little or no survivability outside defense (Super Reflexes, Energy Aura, etc). If you have a significant amount of resistance, 32.5% is plenty, because like all_hell said, one small purple softcaps you. In fact, if you have a lot of global recharge, you can just rely on Demonic. It's really easy to get, gives 50% S/L/F/C/E/N defense AND resist, and recharges in 12.5 minutes if you have 100% global recharge.

I wouldn't. You make it sound like you need a PVP IO to pull it off, and on WP, the difference isn't going to be enough to justify 2-3 billion Inf or up to a month of A-Merit farming.

If this were my main, and I already had the IO, I'd consider it. But only then.

I think that's a yes.

There's also the titles that go above your name ("The Astounding" and such). I think those are seperate from event titles as well.

You're right. However, with the timer in place, there has to be enough people to do it in one shot. And most trolls and griefers aren't willing to put that much effort into it.

You are probably right, especially in light of the recent server upgrades. However, I have a theory as to why the timer is so long: It's the average amount of time it would take to send X simultaneous costume changes to X players, where X is the zone cap. If I'm correct, that means that, even under the most determined of attacks, a group could not push the server (too far) beyond the point where it's queueing costume changes before it finishes sending the previous ones.

However, I suspect that neither of us are network analysts, nor familiar with CoH's bandwith requirements or availability, therefore, this is all conjecture. And I doubt that a timer implemented for flood control will be removed or reduced without sufficient testing to verify that it's excessive, and I just can't see resources being devoted to something like this that most people would never notice or need.


Concerning the Lost Curing Wand? 3 second recharge. PLEASE.

That is fact. I know people who did it. However, I'm wondering if I was mistaken, and the change only went as far as Test, not all the way to Live. And the Test server is supposedly lower spec than the Live servers, so it stands to reason that it would be easier to crash.

Yes, because the auras don't stream and data (after the first time you see the person); that's all handled clientside. Likewise, the Vickies all have the same costume, and it's saved on your computer in the pigg files. All the server has to send is a short string with the entity ID number and the location.

No, that is only enough to mapserve the zone. However, the issue I mentioned above did include a concerted effort of a larger number of people who not only mapserved the zone, but crashed it. People who were mapserved couldn't log back in, and people trying to zone into that area crashed and logged out. That's what I meant when I said they could crash entire servers. (Note that "Freedom" or "Victory" are NOT servers, they are Shards, and each Shard is comprised of multiple servers.)

Theoretically possible. I've never tried, and I doubt anyone else has either.

Have you ever approached an area with lots of people, and had your computer freeze for a few seconds? That's the server dumping a pile of costume data on you all at once.

If you'd like to see the data that's being sent, just start a demo record (I believe the command is /demostart ) and run around a populated zone for a while (use /demostop to finish). Then, open the resulting file in a text editor. What you'll see is what is sent to your computer.

When you get close to an enemy, there will be one or two lines to spawn the enemy (a NEW command that assigns the entity's number and the class of the entity and sets its location), then a few lines that describe the emote it's doing or how it's moving. A player will have all the same data, but it will be defined by a data chunk which is basically the same as a saved costume file.

And when you approach that player, the server doesn't just send you their costume data, it sends yours to them. If you change your costume, it sends that costume file to everyone who can see you - including yourself.

Using your example of a 48 man league all changing their costumes at the same time, assuming there was nobody else in the area, that would be 48 costumes sent to each of 48 people, totalling 2,304 costume files being sent at once, in addition to all the normal data being sent. If there were more people, the amount of data sent would increase accordingly (adding 2 observers that didn't change costumes would up it to 2,400 costumes sent). If you remove the throttle, at some point, you end up with people changing costumes before the server finishes streaming out the previous batch. That's also why you get temporarily silenced if you send too many things to chat channels too quickly (in part; it's also to stop people from being annoying). In fact, if you've ever heard of a website being crashed by a DoS or DDoS attack (Denial of Service or Direct Denial of Service), that's one method in which it's accomplished (using page requests, instead of costume changes, of course).

The only way I can think of that the timer could safely be removed is if your costume data sent to nearby players contained all five of your costumes. Then, a costume change would just send a single line, same as an emote. However, up to five times the data would be sent when you first see any player, and as someone who can get mapserved just by approaching the market now, I don't think I would like that change.

Because costume changes can crash entire servers.

Some time ago, the timer got reduced (I think it was a dev testing the change on the internal servers, and it accidentally slipped through to Live). When people discovered it, some people decided to test the claim that costume changes streamed too much data if allowed too frequently. A group of 2 or 3 people went to the globe in Atlas while there were a lot of people there and spammed costume changes. Everyone in Atlas was Mapserved shortly after. They were even able to replicate it in relatively low population areas (like in an instanced mission with only one team there). And if I recall correctly, that reduction only bumped the timer down to 15 or 20 seconds, not the 5 or 10 people keep asking for.

If you found a temporary travel power, costume change power, or Microtransaction Power (ie, from a Booster Pack) that doesn't work during the Trials, that is a bug, and you should report it using the in-game /bug command.

If we could make it, I'd probably be willing to try Stone Armor again.

Fixed.

PEBCAK is correct. Otherwise, it would be Problem Exists Between Chair And Ceyboard.

I can also confirm this. While there have been numerous reports over the last few months that the mission has been nerfed, or even removed from the arc, they are untrue. The mission is unchanged, and can still be obtained by new characters (or even by Flashback).