Sitriel

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Well, let's just agree to disagree then. If you really want a discussion about the socialized nature of genders etc, we can have that particular nasty bit of feminist discussion somewhere else...

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Agreed. I highly doubt that you could convince me that all differences between genders could be 'socialized away'.

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There'd still be differences, of course. Mainly having to do with breast size and what's dangling (or not) between the legs. But all that [censored] about women being mainly good at caring, having children, etc while men are mainly "hunters", good with mechanics, etc needs to go out the frickin' window - now.

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Well, it's not that easy. Some of that is indeed more thinking in "roles" and that, but evolution has played along as well (surely influenced by prehistorical role allocation - that's how evolution works - but that doesn't make it less real) with the obvious anatomic differences being of only minor relevance as long as we are not talking about progeny. It's more about how their brains and their modes of perception work. I don't want to derail this thread any further by going into too much scientific detail, but it's a fact that genders tend to be more predisposed towards certain activities and occupations just because their brains or their ways of perception support these activities or occupations. (Keep in mind, this is all about statistic averages, so there naturally are mavericks in one or the other direction.)
However, I value these differences and think sexist blabber is basically a waste of energy, be it to talk a away these differences or to keep a particular person "in their role".

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Well, actually most of these differences do have their roots in biology, but that's not really the point. (And I had to make a slight generalization there just to keep my statement at least somewhat concise. )

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Well, let's just agree to disagree then. If you really want a discussion about the socialized nature of genders etc, we can have that particular nasty bit of feminist discussion somewhere else...

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Agreed. I highly doubt that you could convince me that all differences between genders could be 'socialized away'.

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Before this thread existed, you had never considered his sexuality. If it had not existed, you'd probably have started playing him still with no thought to his sexuality. This thread has made you consider his sexuality, and you decided he was bi. That says to me that the only reason you thought Bi fits him is because it's become a popular choice.

I'm not saying I'm right. I'm not saying that's how it IS. I'm just saying that how it appears.

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To be honest I didn't have that impression at all. Who actually thinks about a toon's sexual orientation before he starts playing that toon, especially if the toon happens to have the same sexual orientation as the player?
For me it's 'normal' that all my toons are heterosexual by default, although only few of my toons are interested in that at all, so it's hardly relevant for their roleplay.
So, I think it's only believable that a bi player finds a bi toon in his roster when he thinks about it. This thread might be the cause for putting any thought in it at all, but I highly doubt that it has any effect on the outcome of this thought.

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(If you doubt this just ask your friends if they have playfully or passionately kissed another person of the same gender. You will find by far more women admitting to this than men... and the few men will likely tell you that they were drunk when they did it.)

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Well, you've obviously not met my friends... =)
We're more or less statistically correct (one or two openly [censored], several bi's, and a majority of heteros), but a little less "phobic"...


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That's not too uncommon when you have homosexual/bi friends. Actually, the fact that you have such friends shows that you can't be that homophobic.
Personally, I am fine with bi or homosexual people, although I usually don't mix too well with 'queens' (to put it in words that won't be [censored]) as I find their company arduous at best. (Just to mention, I don't like women with the same kind of 'style' either.)
Well, I used to have an acquaintance who was a little bit 'queenish' which was actually quite funny since he looked like a 250lbs skinhead trucker.
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Male players are a little bit different.

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Not all of them... =)

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Somehow this reminds me of a certain scene in "Life of Brian"...
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(Who would have guessed that men and women are different? )

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As long as you don't go around claiming it's because of biology, honey =)

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Well, actually most of these differences do have their roots in biology, but that's not really the point. (And I had to make a slight generalization there just to keep my statement at least somewhat concise. )
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Most men are heterosexual and many are (at least) a little bit homophobic.

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Aw, that's just because they're scared of their homosexual side... Most people are at least a little bit bi (as evidenced by the number of really macho men who kiss guys when they're really drunk)... =)


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Sure, being homophobic means having a (mild) phobia and in most cases this special phobia can be explained with an uncertainty about the own manliness and/or sexual orientation... which is exactly the reason why some men take their machismo just one or two steps too far... which is why one shouldn't be too surprised when it's a self-proclaimed macho who kisses another man when he is drunk.
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a majority of heterosexual men
a sizeable chunk of lesbian/bi women
a roughly equally sized percentage of heterosexual women (perhaps less if there are many teens on the server)
very few homosexual men
You see, it's very normal that there are a lot more lesbian heroes than male homosexual toons.

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What? No bi men? At all? =)

(Hm, I might activate my old completely unleveled character, Disco Fever - if anyone would stick it to either gender, it'd be him. And he's got the funky disco powers to back it up!)

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Well, bi men are a problem in a sense. Actually, all male toons I have met were played as heterosexual or homosexual (with the former being a huge majority). Not a single one of them was bi (or at least not to my knowledge). Because of that I would consider them a 'minor statistical deviation' and didn't include them in my list.

Well, I can see this work for /Traps and /FF Masterminds, but other sets might have more trouble. I don't know about /Trick Archery, but I know from first-hand experience that a staminaless build is not doable for /Dark and /Poison without losing a sizeable chunk of your potential.
Heck, with these powersets I manage to drain my endurance despite having Stamina and slotting for endurance reduction.
Other MMs may be content with a more passive role, but for /Dark and /Poison this is just not the most efficient way to go... besides I wouldn't know which powers to take instead of the Fitness pool anyway without further increasing my endurance cost, again increasing the importance of Stamina.

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I am not male, the ego never applied to me at all at any point

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Suuuuuuuuurrre!
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You know someone said that the world's a stage
And each must play a part..

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Wasn't that somewhere in the bible?
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and Spad is right taunt control is what tanks are about.

When i play different tanks i want different challenges!

When i play alongside different powersets i want different dynamics!

And when my Icetank goes and does recluse someone is gonna get owned!

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You are getting no argument from me over any of the mentioned points (especially the last one ).
I love teaming with a friend who is a very gifted tank player. His first level 50 toon was a fire/fire tanker and his most recent tanker is ice/ice and the differences in playstyle are very hard to miss. (The most obvious point being that one has decent AoE damage and the other one can't kill a mob for his life.) Both are great aggro controllers, but the applied methods differ to a vast degree and seem to be quite grotesque in the eyes of other players sometimes.
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A team is a humble team to me, not some God and a few tag along peasants.

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Well, the word "humble" wouldn't spring to my mind, it's more like every team member doing his share is a kind of god in his own right, but other than that I am fine with that statement.

Which is a workaround, but far from a bugfix. Besides, this problem really seems to be related to similar issues without an equally easy workaround (e.g. it's not always easy to predict that the enemy you want to use for Transference is the brute's next designated one-shot-victim).

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der Tag naht sich dem Ende und irgendwie hab ich Plötzlich kein bock mehr auf nen Controller^^

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Den Teil fand ich am lustigsten. Nee, ehrlich, da mußte ich doch mal ganz brav lachen. Wie soll man denn Lust auf einen Toon bekommen, den man nicht spielt?
Ich bin dann doch eher ein Freund des traditionellen Hochlevelns: Man sucht sich ein Team mit ordentlich Dampf dahinter zusammen und holt aus den Toons raus was rauszuholen ist. Gerade am DXP-Wochenende sind die Extra-XP doch mehr (automatisch abfallendes) Nebenprodukt. Die Hauptsache ist doch, daß alte und nicht ganz so alte Freunde fast rund um die Uhr on sind und man mal wieder wirklich gute Teams bilden kann, mit denen man brutalst Spaß haben kann.
Und genau das hab ich mir an diesem Wochenende mal wieder reichlich gegeben und dabei gab's eigentlich nur einen kurzfristigen Ausfall (einen Schlauberger, der mir weismachen wollte, daß MAG 1,45 "ziemlich hoch" sei), aber selbst das war im Zusammenhang eher lustig. Vielen Dank nochmal an alle Beteiligten!
Den krönenden Abschluß haben wir uns dann heute Nacht gegeben, als wir dann noch die Mission von Black Scorpion mit der Basis der Nemesis-Armee in den Shadow Shards gemacht haben. Alberne Massenpulls mit völlig gaga verlinkten Gegnergruppen! Wir haben doch gut gelacht, als ich den letzten Captain eines solchen irren Massenpulls umgekloppt habe und dann plötzlich eine über 100m entfernt stehende Gegnergruppe, die mit dem irgendwie verlinkt war, loslief... und dann noch eine... und dann noch eine, als mein armer, geprügelter Bersi sich eigentlich ganz furchtbar dringend mal hinknien mußte. Gut, daß nur Irre im Team waren, sonst hätte sich ja noch wer beschweren können.
Einziger Nachteil von dem Ganzen ist, daß mein Hals heute etwas rauh ist von dem ständigen Gegratze.

Could well be since it's all about time frames and triggers being applied within a given time frame.
I don't know Oil Slick first-hand, but I think it is possible that there is a similar problem, i.e. an animation starts before the time expires (on the player's PC) but the trigger is not recognized in time by the server.
This seems to be the problem for any power that has an 'expiring origin'. So, e.g. Syphon Power never fails when used on a dying enemy since although the debuff is probably not applied to the enemy anymore the origin of the damage buff aura is the caster himself. However, the origin of the summoned Extracted Essence is the defeated enemy and there seems to be a time window where you can still execute the power since the body is still there on your PC, but by the time the trigger reaches the server the body is already despawned on the server (though it may still be visible on your PC). As animations are client based they are still shown (such as the rez animation from Extracted Essence), but since there is no valid 'origin' anymore on the server, the effect is denied.
I guess it would be possible to code something, so that the server accepts triggers for a short while after his internal clock says 'time expired' to counteract transmission delays. However, I don't have the slightest clue if this would have to be coded as a kind of 'priority order' into the powers in question or as a kind of 'waiting period' into their targets. The former seems to be more complicated, the latter more time consuming.

I have to agree with Hammerfall and MaXimillion here. IMO soloing with a squishy blaster is all about taking out the opposition fast as your options for defense and healing are quite limited and sniping from afar and staying out of range is not alway efficient or even possible. A few friendly EM punches go a long way towards this goal.
In my experience blapping is actually more dangerous in a large team than solo or in a small team as enemies tend to be tightly grouped around the tank and the sheer amount of AoE damage there can kill you very fast if you are not careful.

An invul tank not able to tank against anything that's not purely S/L damage?
Heck, this weekend my invul brute had to tank Mu and PPD Peacebringers (energy damage), PPD Psi Officers (well, as the name says...), Carnies (psi and dark plus endurance drain), CoT (any damage type), Longbow (massive -res) and a truckload of psi/dark/energy/etc. Heroes/AVs, all with a little bit of support from corruptors. If I had only known that I was not supposed to be able to do that...
But seriously, although tanking S/L mobs is definitely easier than tanking a psi-damage Hero and his friends I am far from being outmatched or unable to tank in those cases. And I can only speculate on how much more a well-built tank with defender-support could have taken.
Somebody who thinks a tanker should be able to tank almost anything without support seems to have some problem with his ego. I can only speak for myself, but one 'strong man' enabling 'easy mode' for the whole 8-man-team without any need for support is not my type of game. Perhaps it's easier for me as huge fan of CoV to accept (and enjoy) that "the team is the tank", meaning that hit points, armours, buffs, debuffs, control and heals all work towards the survivability of the designated aggro-taker (if one is available) and the team as a whole. And in my eyes an invul tank with resistance, defence and a hp-self-buff is a good start to begin with be it with or without Rikti roaming the land.

I think the predominance of lesbian toons over male homosexual heroes is quite easy to explain:
Female players (who are a minority anyway) tend to have no major problems playing either gender with either sexual orientation, because they tend to be less homophobic than their male counterparts. (If you doubt this just ask your friends if they have playfully or passionately kissed another person of the same gender. You will find by far more women admitting to this than men... and the few men will likely tell you that they were drunk when they did it.)
However, many female players favour playing female toons (at least as their main toons). So, this leaves us with many heterosexual heroines, some lesbians and bi-women and a few men from which even fewer are homosexual.
Male players are a little bit different. (Who would have guessed that men and women are different? ) Most men are heterosexual and many are (at least) a little bit homophobic. So, we have a sizeable chunk of men with female toons, but these female toons are very likely bi or lesbian, because (as mentioned above) many men are somewhat homophobic and couldn't bring themselves to roleplay a toon that is attracted to men even if that toon is female. So, their female toons are lesbian or at least bi (mostly without ever roleplaying anything else but being lesbian). Likewise, for the mentioned reasons male toons played by heterosexual male players tend to be almost exclusively heterosexual. Add to that that many male players wouldn't risk looking less "manly" by impersonating a homosexual toon (because many men are alway "deerstalking" if you catch my drift ) which is only counteracted by some male players who impersonate homosexual heroes for fun and there are not many players left who would roleplay such a hero.
So, to summarize the above-mentioned I would expect the following "toon population structure":
a majority of heterosexual men
a sizeable chunk of lesbian/bi women
a roughly equally sized percentage of heterosexual women (perhaps less if there are many teens on the server)
very few homosexual men
You see, it's very normal that there are a lot more lesbian heroes than male homosexual toons.

Yes, it happens and if my observations are correct it does happen regularly if you try to extract the essence of an enemy corpse that was just about to despawn.
So, it's a bug that can be compared to the bug that lets a kinetic fire Transfusion/Transference just when an opponent dies without triggering the heal/endurance effect (but triggering the aura animation).

The good news is that this build doesn't look too bad so far. The bad news is that you should have tried building your WS for level 50, because that's the point where you see if your slotting is good or not (because it's quite likely that you may wish for 10 slots more... at least ).

Some remarks about your build so far:
Before slotting Nova forma for things like fly speed I would consider slotting Sunless Mire and Black Dwarf Mire first (1 Acc, 3 Rech), because with a double Mire the fun is tripled.
Make sure to allocate a few slots to Stygian Circle in the course of the following levels. EndRed, EndMod and Rech is a good mixture to convert your WS into a perpetuum mobile.
The other human powers are not really interesting since you will hardly use them anyway.
With only one slot in Black Dwarf form you might want to make it a Res enhancement. You won't use a lot of powers as Dwarf, but it's a nice shelter when you need one.
Your nova attacks look good. Just add a little bit of recharge to AoEs and you are fine.

So, just try a build for level 50. If you follow the general guideline to pick and slot powers that make the Nova form more powerful you can't go that wrong.

YAY! Wenn man jetzt noch bedenkt, daß jedes unserer Photos mindestens zehnmal so toll ist wie die von anderen Leuten, sieht das ja schon gar nicht mal so schlecht aus.

Well, yes, that's exactly the point: After the first wave of attacks there is usually only one or two mobs left standing, because minions tend to be eradicated very quickly by that massive onslaught. That's expecially obvious on CoT maps: Those narrow corridors are just perfect to keep all possible victims inside the AoEs and cones and by the time I have reached the Lt./Boss to start juggling him the rest is more or less dead already.
So, with enemies dead or under control there is not much left to heal for me.

And on another issue: Bruiser + Noxious Gas = unfair
You want to use this when you are greeted by the 'welcome commitee' after entering a mission and in every boss/EB/AV-fight.

Looking at the build there are some things that catch the eye:
First of all I find the pets' slottings a little bit odd but I guess this will be sorted with IO sets.
You triple-slotted Hover before Fly? I don't see why you would perma-hover, so I would rather have a faster travel power.
You seem to plan on playing some kind of machine-gun-debuffer with Envenom and Weaken slotted heavily for recharge. I don't know if this could work given the endurance cost, but feel free to try. I'd rather have one more accuracy in both powers... especially Envenom since it's a defense debuff and you might want to debuff someone with higher defense.
And as said before I doubt that you will profit more from Maneuvers than from Assault. Your Enforcers' Maneuvers is thrice as good as yours, so it's not that likely that you will notice a difference while a 10.5% damage buff is nothing to sneeze at... but maybe that's just me and my aggressive mindset.

Looking at the build there are some things that catch the eye:
First of all I find the pets' slottings a little bit odd but I guess this will be sorted with IO sets.
You triple-slotted Hover before Fly? I don't see why you would perma-hover, so I would rather have a faster travel power.
You seem to plan on playing some kind of machine-gun-debuffer with Envenom and Weaken slotted heavily for recharge. I don't know if this could work given the endurance cost, but feel free to try. I'd rather have one more accuracy in both powers... especially Envenom since it's a defense debuff and you might want to debuff someone with higher defense.
And as said before I doubt that you will profit more from Maneuvers than from Assault. Your Enforcers' Maneuvers is thrice as good as yours, so it's not that likely that you will notice a difference while a 10.5% damage buff is nothing to sneeze at... but maybe that's just me and my aggressive mindset.

Sounds fun!
Unfortunately I don't know the Thugs/Poison combo first-hand as I have both sets on separate toons (Professor Lente Bots/Poison, Papa Sang Thugs/Dark), so I don't know how much healing is needed for the thugs in that case. Professor Lente and Papa Sang certainly don't throw heals like cheap confetti. Actually, both wouldn't have too much time for that as they are busy controlling/debuffing the enemy and juggling him with Air Sup.
As you may guess I like minimizing incoming damage... partly by maximizing outgoing damage. Well, I think concerning heals I am just a disbeliever. They are nice to have around, but overall they have less impact on my success than raw damage, buffs, debuffs etc... with the notable exception of my dark brute and my fire brute who both rely on their self-heals for maximum performance... although in their case it's again the brutal damage output I am after... Awww, hell!
And I have to agree that /poison is one of the best if not the best single target debuffing sets. You can reduce many EBs to mewling-kitten-status and solo them with ease.

Oh, sonic/sonic is a fabulous aggro magnet, although it should be somewhat better now that Disruption Field draws aggro to the allied anchor. With a sonic corruptor and a kinetic corruptor in the team a brute has to work double-shifts to keep the aggro.

And yes, Fire/Stone should be a nice fighting volcano.

Natürlich tun wir das. Aber unsere Überlegenheit nicht zu demonstrieren würde ja so etwas wie *verzieht angewidert das Gesicht* Bescheidenheit bedeuten.
Allein bei dem Gedanken daran wird mir ganz komisch im Magen.

Das bringt uns aber im internationalen Wettbewerb nicht nach vorne! Paaaaniiiikkk!!!

Hallo, ihr Lieben, ich wollte doch mal auf diesen Link hinweisen. Da kann man sich mal ganz bequem angucken, mit was für Pappnasen man eigentlich tagtäglich spielt.
Natürlich sind die US-Server weit vorn, was die Zahl der Photos angeht und die englischen Server sind auch recht zügig angelaufen, aber daß uns jetzt schon die Franzosen abhängen, kann ja gar nicht angehen!
Also: Postet mal lustig eure Bilder auf der Seite, damit wir auch ein bißchen Präsenz zeigen. (Ihr braucht die dafür nur auf eurem PC; gehostet werden die auf dem CoHFaces-Server.)

Ah, I see you like the masterbrute playstyle! It's my favourite, too.
With all the /poison debuffs I never need a self-heal when I am soloing (I find more green candy than I can use) and when I am teaming there is some sort of healing/damage mitigation around so I, again, don't need a self-heal.
Btw. what kind of brutes do you know? I know that most brutes take Taunt very late (if they do at all), but auras are great fun with fury. When my elec/elec brute did his first PI mayhem mission and one of the PPD-peacebringers tried his strongest attack, the Inascendent Strike, for 22 points of damage and my Lightning Field directly answered with a tic for 47 points of damage (closely followed by a deadly Thunder Strike) I laughed so hard that I wasted almost a minute of the time limit because I couldn't fight anymore... ignoring the tickling from those peacebringers' attacks.
And I have to agree that Maneuvers is only good as 'icing on the cake' if you already have lots of defense. It completely pales before the thugs' equivalent and doesn't make any difference at all while Assault does it's job as usual.

It would be a strange kinetic corruptor that lets you come out of a mob looking like after an Unstoppable crash. Aid Self is most definitely not needed for such a duo. Actually, I didn't need it even without a corruptor, perhaps because I could spend those two power picks for powers that let me receive less damage in the first place.
Aid Self is for hardcore PvPers and that's it. For anything else it's a symptom for lack of aggression. Lack of aggression leads away from the dark side of the Force and as villains we don't want that.
So, about when to take Lightning Field: By the middle to late 20ies you should have room for it and the ability to draw the most profit from it.