Soulwind

You know what's kind of surprised me?

That the all-mighty Ocho has let this thread continue as long as it has.

I figure it's one of two things:

1) Ocho's head has 'sploded from the epicness of this thread . . .

2) Ocho is lying on the floor, curled into a fetal position from the
paroxysm of laughter that has ensued . . .

Not a bad idea. I'm not certain if we really want to add a true AT specific set of IOs into the drop tables (the new recharge-pet and accurate-x IO's are at least usable by a couple of powersets across several ATs), but I'm not totally adverse to it either.

Personally, I've always viewed the Forms power themselves as more or less designed for being franken-slotted.

Nova:
Efficacy Adaptor - End Mod
Efficacy Adaptor - End Mod / End Reduction (and a +1.12% hp bonus)
Adjusted Targetting - ToHit Buff
Adjusted Targetting - ToHit Buff / End Reduction (and a +2% damage bonus)
(optional)
Blessing of the Zephyr - Movement
Blessing of the Zephyr - Movement / End Reduction (and a +3.13% ranged defense bonus)

Dwarf:
Efficacy Adaptor - End Mod
Efficacy Adaptor - End Mod / End Reduction (and a +1.12% hp bonus)
Impervium Armor - Resistance
Impervium Armor - Resistance / End Reduction (and a +2.5% recovery bonus)
(optional)
Level 50 Common Resistance IO
Level 50 Common Jump IO

YMMV of course

Speaking of gamer girls, I was also lucky enough to take one off of the market 10 years ago.

Having someone who not only shares your interests, but shares them to the same degree that you do is both a blessing and (sometimes) a curse

Why just last night, as I went to bed, she was playing Dragon Age. I woke up this morning to "Arrgh, boom, swash, boom, zap" . . . she'd been playing all night. I walk into the living room and she's like "what are you doing up?" and I'm like "honey, it's 6 AM" . . .

Girl Gamers, gotta love em. Just don't let them take over the PS3

Not really an appropriate post for the Suggestion forums though.

Oh, and on a side note, I'd be careful of that "any race" clause.

While most of the cat-girls or cross-dimensional-elf-girls are OK; the hydra-girls, banished pantheon zombie-girls, and viper-girls usually leave a lot to be desired in the relationship department

all of the above.

plus you can use bind_save_file and bind_load_file to save off all of your current key mappings and load them (with or without editing) to a new character.

I keep a "standard" set of binds that I use across all characters in a file that gets loaded first thing for every new toon.

Even as a hater of PvP, I don't really agree with the "incoming" or "ask permission" idea for the PvP zones. I understand the risks in a PvP zone, and I accepted those risks when I came in. I won't whine if you attack me, I won't complain about being killed, and I'll probably just leave until you're gone.

BUT . . .

I do expect a level of decency out of other players (which in my, admittedly limited, experience I don't often see).

I expect that if I make it clear that I'm not interested in fighting you (usually by running away at every opportunity...assuming I make it), that you will leave me alone.

I expect that if I'm OBVIOUSLY involved in something else [ie fighting arachnoids in the tunnels] that you won't jump in and gank me right in the middle of it (at least not more than once).

I expect that if I'm not worth rep (because you just killed me a minute ago) you won't kill me again [or over and over and over again] just because you can.

I expect that if I'm OBVIOUSLY solo (due to you killing me before and me simply going back to whatever I was doing, which obviously doesn't include you), that you won't gank me over and over again or bother with an 8 on 1 gankfest.

However, that's rarely what I encounter when I do go into the PvP zones.

-------

For the record:
My introduction to PvP:

Back in the early days of UO. I'm on an obviously newbie toon (starter gear, no mount, etc). I've just spent the past hour wandering around in the wilderness. I'm literally in the middle of nowhere. Suddenly *BOOM* I'm dead. Mr PvP just hit me with a known exploit/bug that allowed for virtually instant-kill with no chance of reprisal.

Then he loots my body, taking what little in the way of reagents [needed to cast any spells..a mage without reagents is literally helpless], and resurrects me. When I ask him why he attacked me un-provoked (and he wasn't one of the RP "murderers/psychokillers", that at least I might of understood), his response was "I was bored".

OK, fair enough (if a little jerky). Well could I at least have a few of my reagents and my one recall rune back so I can get back to town? (remember I'm at least 1/2 an hour slog away from the nearest town..with no equipment/abilities/spells available). His response was, shall we say, not printable here. Followed by *BOOM*, I'm dead again.

Welcome to PvP.

----

For a more recent example from CoH:

I'm on a defender trying to get a shivan. I've finally, after a long set of fighting, worn down all the turrets to near destruction (so I could do the kill them all quick before they respawn tactic).

Assassin strike! I'm dead. OK, rather lame as I'm obviously trying to get a shivan, but a part of the risks in the zone, so I don't complain (out loud at least).

BUT, rather than go on his way, or even use the bunker I've weakened. Mr PvP proceeds to simply kill the turrets (getting at best 1 or 2 exp for them as they are all just a tick away from destruction), so that they'll all respawn, and THEN leaving.

Now, why do that? You didn't use the bunker, you didn't gain anything for it. All you did was prove you're an a-hole who just wanted to ruin what I was doing.

AND, about 20 minutes later - he does it AGAIN [at this point I just said screw it and left].

----

[edited to remove one final comment that came off as a bit too snarky for my tastes]

I like fighting Redcaps...they are so overly dramatic when defeated

Is it possible? Sure. Is it desirable? Less So.

In order to actually soft-cap all three positional defenses, you really have to
limit your power selections and the result is less than satisfactory (at least to me).

On the other hand, it's very easy (albeit kind of expensive) to hit 20-30% Melee and
15-20% Ranged and AoE defense without limiting your build at all. And this is without
even bothering with Tough/Weave...

While you're not soft-capped, those defense levels usually provide more than enough
time to regenerate any damage that comes in, and there's very little that you can't
take on easily enough. [And you've always got MoG for those few times].

[PvE speaking. I have no idea about PvP performance, as I don't PvP]

No, no, no people. Think!

Mender Silos is YOU in from the far future.

He (you) has (have) travelled back in time to stop "The Coming Storm".

You are "The Coming Storm" and you've been leaving messages across
time to prevent you from working with Mender Silos (you) to prevent
"The Coming Storm" (you) . . .

It's not a matter of fear. I'm not afraid of you. And I'm not running away.

I'm leaving the zone because I don't want to PvP. Period.

(Assuming you attacked me. If I just see you off in the distance I'll just be ignoring you and keeping an eye out to ensure you're not coming over to attack me while I'm busy with something else.)

When I'm attacked in a PvP zone, I make a few basic assumptions:

1) You're not alone. I may not see anyone else, but I make the basic assumption that you're either bait or the point man for a full-on 8-1 ganking squad.

2) You are only interested in ganking me over and over again. Never a fair fight, never just leaving me alone to mind my own business, never anything other than trying your best to ruin my play experience.

3) If I make the slightest peep, all I'll get in return is taunting and trash-talk. I won't put up with that kind of talk from folks I know, so why should I put up with it from some snot-nosed little brain-dead twerp living in his parent's basement and getting his jollies from proving how superior he is at killing someone who's not interested in fighting?

Now, they may not be valid assumptions. But all too often they are.

Yes, I hate PvP. I've hated PvP since UO and I'll hate PvP until the day I stop playing computer games. So no, I'm not afraid of you, I'm just not interested and it's simpler to leave rather than have to deal with "you PvP types"

All of my toons use the Vault to one extent or another for storing excess salvage.

I place lower bids early in the toon's career and just wait for them to eventually fill.

Then I put the salvage away in the vault until I actually need it. That way I can usually

avoid most of the "buy it now" overpricing.

Of course, I use the vault access in my base and not the vault reserve buildings (or Pocket-D)

The base access and the reserve buildings/pocket-D access are the same storage area.

Well, it's not actually PSI damage, but with the right coloring you can use Fire Melee as a base for a psychic-melee looking character. And it's a relatively un-resisted damage type.

Fire Melee/Super Reflexes (or Willpower) is pretty brutal and you can easily do the CoH-standard pinkish glow to your defense powers (or go with the no fx version and just concentrate on the melee attacks looking right).

I suppose Dark Melee with some recoloring might work pretty well too, but I haven't tried coloring DM yet (not sure if you can completely remove the shadow-y undertones).

For the most part, my toons are all unique. I have a few with the same name on different servers, but none are exact copies of each other.

I've got Dr. Deuterium over on Protector who's a Rad/Rad Corruptor at lvl 34 or 35. I enjoyed playing him enough that I remade him as a Defender over on Guardian.

My Robots/Traps mastermind on Protector (who's already been rebuilt 3 other times with different secondaries) will be getting created again once Going Rogue comes out.

And a few others, but pretty much all of them are in the same pattern (recreating between blue and red sides). I don't think I've got any exact duplicates.

Hey, if you had to run around in a toga or a silly armored kilt all day, you'd hit hard too.

Go over to the Technical Issues forum section.

There's a big detailed thread of how to correctly configure Radeon cards
to work right with CoH.

It's stickied right up at the top, from Bill Z Bubba.

I haven't read through it in a long time, as I don't use Radeon cards, but
if I remember right Bill talks about exactly the issues you're seeing and how to fix them.

I have, at last count, 14 tankers.

2 have tough. 0 have weave. 14 are perfectly capable of being primary tank for a team.

There are no "required" powers in the game other than the forced pick of your 1st secondary power.

Fitness pool gets an "almost required", especially for tankers, but even it can be worked around without too much trouble.

It seems to me that either you've got unreasonable expectations from the early days when a tank could /em newspaper while holding an entire map's worth of aggro, or you've got a very out-of-date build that skipped "worthless" powers that aren't "worthless" anymore.

I'd suggest heading over to the Tanker forum and posting your build, you'll get plenty of advice (and probably some criticism so be sure and pick up tough hide first )

On a side note: the ITF can be very difficult for any toon that uses Defense as a major component of thier mitigation. Those Romans pack a nasty defense-debuff effect.

Mouseover doesn't work in this game.

However, for easy buffing, here's my bind setup:

I use numpad1-8 to select each teammate (I use numpad9 to do a general "friendly" targetting for non-teammates or for pets, etc). Then I use all the outer numpad keys bound to a specific buff.

So to buff teammate #1, I just hit numpad1 and then whichever buff I want to place.

---

/bind numpad1 team_select 1
/bind numpad2 team_select 2
/bind numpad3 team_select 3
/bind numpad4 team_select 4
/bind numpad5 team_select 5
/bind numpad6 team_select 6
/bind numpad7 team_select 7
/bind numpad8 team_select 8
/bind numpad9 target_custom_next friend alive notteammate

/bind numpad0 powexec_name "(BuffName1)"
/bind decimal powexec_name "(BuffName2)"
/bind numpadenter powexec_name "(BuffName3)"
/bind add powexec_name "(BuffName4)"
/bind subtract powexec_name "(BuffName5)"
/bind multiply powexec_name "(BuffName6)"
/bind divide powexec_name "(BuffName7)"

(for most toons this is more than enough and I often use divide,multiply,subtract to activate the veteran reward attack powers)

I keep this basic setup in a bind file, make the buffname replacements as needed and just do a /bind_load_file c:\cohbinds\teambuff.txt on each new character.

Here again you seem to be confusing what "Defense" means.

Mostly you appear to be viewing Defense as "I didn't get HIT".

Now, with some powersets (and/or concepts) that's the case. Like most Super Reflexes type characters (not all of them of course, but most SR toons tend to go with the "dodge-type" concept).

But, for other types of defense there's the "I didn't get HURT" idea. This is basically what Invulnerability (which gets as much of it's protection from defense as it does resistance) uses. The attack hit me, after all I didn't dodge out of the way, but it just didn't hurt me at all - hence the defense part counts as 100% Invulnerability to that attack.

Typed Defense really shows up in this light better than Positional. Take an Ice Tank for example, that bullet (smash attack) bounced right off of my ice armor (smashing defense roll), but that fire sword just melted through my armor (fire defense roll).

Basically, most everything you've asked for is ALREADY in the game, it's just a matter of viewing it in the right perspective.