Seldom

I just took it as a build thing toward being prepared for all situations. Sure, an invulnerability tank is tough, but if they play a lot of the game, they'll find trying to close their weaker energy/negative energy/psy holes gets more important, the more of the game they play.

It may seem silly on the outset, but when building with IO's it's completely reasonable. You can get 15% damage resistance through IO's to cold/fire easily. But before building toward that, wouldn't it make sense to find out if those are common? Because you could instead go for ranged defense, smashing/lethal defense, or psy defense. (Among many other things)

Sure there are those that build towards a specific situation...like being the awesomest fighter ever vs. Rikti. But does that help you when a buddy invites you to a team fighting council? Or carnies? Or Arachnos?

On dominators, +recharge bonuses are very helpful.

...And luckily for you, mind/ gives some mez sets that are not often used, which means they go for less.

*Call of the Sandman-sleep pretty reasonable, good bonuses.
*Malaise's Illusions-confuse. Good bonuses. I don't bother with the proc.
*Unspeakable Terror/Glimpse of the Abyss-fear. I like glimpse better, unspeakable is cheaper.
*Doctored wounds-heal- put five of this in drain psyche with an accuracy IO, and you'll heal quickly between controls. Gives good enhanced recharge as well.
*crushing impact-melee a good set, though a bit pricier at times.
*Entropic chaos-this one's the affordable ranged +recharge set.

More expensive options:

*Decimation-expensive ranged set.

*Basilisk's gaze-expensive hold set.

*Positron's Blast-Psy scream

*Obliteration-Psy shockwave

I stay at 5 slots for most powers here. Once you get to sets, you can do in 50 slots what you normally do in 6, if not more. The two exceptions I'd say would be Drain psyche, as the 5 slots for doctored wounds doesn't cover accuracy, and Having a 6th slot for contagious confusion's AoE confuse proc is golden. (Admittedly, this takes getting to 50)

Also, if you get to 50 the sleep and confuse sets for purples are actually pretty affordable. I''d put them in the AoE sleep/confuse for maximum effect, with the aforementioned exception of the confusion proc.

*edit* Don't know how I missed the subdue thing-it's an excellent, fast attack. Also, the immobilize is nice. I wouldn't skip it. Psionic lance is good if you can spare slots and put sting of the manticore in it. But I know that's more a matter of taste.

I believe I recall the post. One of the number crunchers looked at all NPC attacks, put them together, and checked it out. But for the life of me I can't find it.

Attacks with smashing/lethal were high up, of course, followed by fire, energy, and psychic. (Psychic turned out to be pretty common, as carnies/rikti/arachnos throw a lot of it around) negative energy was not unusual,(but not everywhere) ice was kind of uncommon, with toxic rarest.

This from vague memories, however.

Team with a kinetics if you can. Free, complete endurance refill with just a tiny bit of coordination, thanks to transference and a surviving straggler. (Usually a boos) Even adrenalin boost takes longer to kick in, due to the -recovery debuff.

Bad Penny is a member of the "Rogue Isle Villains" faction. He is among a pool of villains that can show up.

Yeah, clicking the 'random recipe roll' is actually the exact mechanic as the TF/SF reward gave. Caveat: at 20 merits, not all SF's/TF's give enough for this.

This is part of why the 'random recipe roll' is ONLY given at your actual level; (Or the highest possible if you are higher than that)....because that's the way the old rewards worked. To be able to choose what level the recipe is given would require new tech.

What so many of those reeeeaaaaally hoping for lifetime subscriptions aren't seeing is this: they are basically telling the game honchos they'd love to play the game a very long, extended time, but for less money. The honchos can then look over numbers and see that yes, they have literally extracted thousands of dollars out of longtime subscribers each, thousands of times over. You have just told them you'd be interested in sticking around a while.

Why are they going to settle for a couple hundred when they can get so much more, again?

It's funny to say, but the needs of the company and the desires of the players are antagonistic to a large degree. Players would love to pay less over time. (This is what a lifetime subscription is about. ) The game company would like them to pay more. *cough*boosterpacks*cough* Players want instant 50's, or something as reward. The company wants them to take the time/investment to start from scratch. Players want characters to be able to change powersets. The company would rather they spend all that time starting anew.

Basically, the joining point is that moth the company and the players want the players in the game. After that, while the players are often trying to get stuff faster and more easily, and pay less money, the company is trying to slow the player down, lengthening stay and find new ways to get the player to spend more.

Anywise, the company already did something like this; the had a special offer where if you paid a larger amount for a year, they give a discount. That's as far as it went. Why? Next year they want pay again.

Ed and Willy nonchalantly stepped up to the consoles...subject to the new 'sound discipline' program, they would have to listen to random music tracks for the next 12 hours.
Little did they know, all tracks were Celine Dion hits, covered By "BLAHPUNK & H1Z B4ksTr33TGuYZ"

If I am a winner, I permit NC Interactive, Inc. and NCsoft Europe Limited to use my name, likeness, photograph, hometown, and any comments that I may make about myself or this contest that I provide for advertising and promotional activities. I also certify that I am at least 13 years of age and am eligible to participate in this contest.

....?

Redside has concise, diverse stories and missions. Redside has archetypes with a wide range of roles and abilities. Redside has easy travel. Redside has a unique atmosphere.

...and people are complaining about it because of its market? C'mon. Firstly, villain archetypes don't need IO's to function well and be fun. As a rabid inventor, I know the bonus in performance those shinies bring. But with as many villain alts as I have, I can truthfully say they can be plenty fun on 'merely' SO's. Yes, the smaller supply makes it easier for 'flippers' to do their thing. So ignore them. Put up bids for what you think you'll want in advance, the niches fall over eventually. Play AE arcs, so when you need salvage NOW, you can grab some for tickets. Keep a few of everything in the vault/storage/BM slots.And the expensive stuff? Play, and when you find expensive things, sell it well and the profit can be traded for a desired expensive thing.

Seriously guys, the market is just a darned bad reason to avoid the redside. There are too many good stories and builds to enjoy to skirt all that content over your bid for that uber recipe taking forever to come in.

As a side note, if your main draw is to make a survivor that isn't a tank there are some other very sturdy possibilities, though not all heroic:


Dark Melee/Stone Brute
Robotics/Forcefield mastermind
Illusion/Forcefield controller
Crab Soldier of Arachnos

Stone armor is always tough, so that ones's a bit obvious. Most masterminds can be extremely hardy, so forcefield on top of many primaries will be hardier still. Bots give more shields, and help with healing, so if you take a patron shield, medicine, and even the fighting pool, your character is tougher than a tanker with an army to boot. Illusion control gets an army of literally unkillable pets that take all the aggro, so they can be tough as well. (The more the pets are up, the tougher they become, so +recharge is nice.) Adding forcefields with personal forcefield makes them even more survivable, though they lack extreme firepower. Crabs get dull pain, resistance to all damage, high firepower, defenses that make them hard to hit as well as some spider backup to share aggro.

*Tanker walks into room, taunts*
enemies pound away at tank, he yawns, reads morning news.

*Dominator walks into room, hits domination, throws controls around*
enemies stand helpless, the dominator checks his email

*Tanker takes intimidate, invoke panic, stun, then tries to control a group*
enemies flinch, wobble, then get back to pounding away at the tanker

*Dominator throws out a bunch of attacks, finishing with a control power*
enemies get hurt, but bear down on the withering dominator before he can finish them all off, his controls coming too late to stop all the damage

There's toughness, then there's 'tough to beat'-ness.

Doms are the latter. They need to do things their own way, however.

I'm up for the next run. (With the aforementioned Mind/psi dom)

By the way, there was another thread organizing the same strike force, with a rundown of strategy. I guess they did it:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...ight=barracuda

Not sure if that's pertinent, but there it is.

Oy. Work took longer than I hoped, so I obviously didn't make it. Hope the rest of you had a successful go at it.

Fleeting: if you don't like this topic, it's best to leave it be, not to change the subject. If you were to make a thread on a particular playstyle, and somebody didn't like it, that wouldn't be a good reason to derail your thread to something they enjoyed. The purpose of this thread was simply to discuss the reasons why some players prefer a certain portion of this game.

Back to the original subject:
I do appreciate the way redside tends to end with more bossfights, actually. The way most Elite bosses still carry purple triangles makes it a bit harsh on dominators, but with the recent upgrade it's still doable for them. I teamed up to 50, so I've been flashing back through all the stories I didn't get to read or try. Starting at the earliest, and working my way up, I have to say the progression feels pretty good story-wise. You start out being the flunky, but get more and more respected as the levels go up.

The minor qualm is that the villain is backbiting vs. villain groups most of the time. I hope they add more actual factional conflict, especially some without Longbow.

I understand the idea of widening availability, I'm just wondering if it's a good idea. The reason? Arachnos troops have a forced respec; for those familiar with this mechanic, it's fine. For somebody who just started the game, and barely got a handle of the game in a couple weeks' worth of time, it could be daunting and confusing.

Likewise, the kheldian require familiarity with various roles, as they can switch from pure squid blaster, to big lobster tank, to an amalgamation of scrappers, defenders, and blasters. Somebody who got a character to 20 probably hasn't had enough time tinkering with the game to know how to use the different powers and roles well.

*cough*

To the whole 'redside is tougher' thing, I'd agree, to a point. There are some things I'd definitely say make that true, but blue has trying sides as well.

Redside:
Mayhem missions: lots of ambushes, which if handled hastily can group up into team-wipe sized longbow squads. Limited time from the get go, and no way to regain time via breaking things after the bank. Far tougher than the blue equivalent.

Buying high-demand recipes. Fewer players mean fewer suppliers, so the prices are high.

Profiting from undesired recipes. In my experience, villains seem to know which sets give the best bonuses. The sets that don't will not sell.

Story Arcs: from 30 to 50, it's difficult to find an arc that doesn't end with an EB/AV/Hero fight. There are also several even as early as Port Oakes.

Undersized strike force teams: many of the villain strike forces have a finale that is far more complex that just an AV, so finishing with less than the full starting group is tough.

'Epic' pools: The patron pools have a story arc requirement, rather than simply hitting the correct level and choosing a power.

Finding teams: this is less of a problem than people say, in my experience, but requires more action than simply setting a 'LFT' flag. The people who are on are less often on a full team, and seem rather accepting.

Enemies: Villains face tougher foes faster, and more consistently. They fight the same groups heroes do, but with tougher additions, (Cot get confusing/slowing/debuffing enemies, Freaks get mresurecting foes, etc.) With the addition of the new groups (Longbow, PPD) that carry potent buff/debuff enemies alongside high damage and good survival.

Harder blueside:

Profit from high demand sets: villains just pay more.

Enduring story arcs: they go on some time, and often send characters to many areas in order to complete tasks that can be highly repetitive. The finale is usually a couple lines of dialogue, so the sense of gratification from the finale is lessened.

Enduring task forces: They may be easier to finish at the end, but man does getting to that end take time, lessening the sense of movement through the story.

Soloing: the of the hero archetypes, 5 out of the seven are designed to work best on a team.

Flexibility: I don't know why, but it's just easier to 'go with it' villainside, as far as team builds go. I just meet a lot of heroes who have a set formula they stick to.

Mein Brüts:

EM/Dark
Made in the heyday of energy melee's fast and furious almost broken goodness, this still packs a punch. Energy melee always has the stun chance, predictable in two, somewhat reliable in three, with crazy burst damage. This works great for mitigating /Dark's lesser defensive values, killing or stunning most everything. Add in a toggle stun, and you can keep 3 bosses stunned at once. Fear on top makes this my favored brute SMASHtroller. Careful, as this is has the most masochistic play at times, with a toggle that hurts you and a heavy hitter that hurts you, both used consistently. Oh, and get +recovery pronto. I run 10 toggles, so endurance is always in need.

Fire/Fire
Burny. Fiery embrace gives bonus damage to fire attacks, so having a primary full of fire helps. And burns. Did I mention burning? This build burns things well. Not too tankerly, you can still take armies of enemies that think they can best you and hold their feet to the completely unproverbial fire. Oh, and if you can get an immobilize down, buildup+fiery embrace+burn is gold.

Elec/WP
Electric's AoE's benefit most from up close mob packing. As does willpower's +regeneration. So, pack them in and they all die faster as you die slower. It works.

War Mace (or pipe wrench, club,shovel,sledge, whatever you choose)/WP
This one's in bloom still, but it's great for the 'ordinary person who's just crazy about bashing stuff' vibe.

Dark/Stone
This one's still in infancy, but I foresee good things. +Endurance to augment stone's costs, and a heal to layer atop its very good protection. Plus I love how dark/ looks with stone armor turned into shadowy onyx crystal armor.