Space_Goat

I vote Gamma Gaia. She just appears to have leadership qualities, and a fine fashion sense.

"The quality of justice is not strained."

Actually, it is. And she's the one who strained it. When she's not helping to overthrow governments and murder "insurgents" in faraway lands for her government, she spend her time in the Rogue Isles, making mayhem for her own personal gain.

Strained Justice

I like the neutral colors, but there's so much colored light in this game, that it usually looks "off" color instead of neutral.

With no ado, here's:

The Despicable Nosehare

...in magenta!

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1st place: Prime Mogul
2nd place: Ellette
3rd place: Fillypad

Congratulations! You've all won a no-prize!

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Hooray! I've always wanted one. And these are especially handsome.

Thanks for another round of good comments and a friendly, fun contest, Nazghul1.

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Here's mine:
The Thorney Thistle

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Cool! I've often tried to find a use for those banded stripes patterns, but never pulled it off.

Presenting: Prime Mogul

He's possessor of the best super powers money can buy.

Hemmingford Smith got tired of amassing wealth. Can boredom become the enemy of evil? Yes! He thought he would let his greatness "trickle down" by finding a mystic who offered real super powers at a premium price.

Prime Mogul

Kicking thugs in the head turns out to be a great diversion!

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A little extra something for you all...

1st place: StarPyre
2nd place: Dragon Fyre
3rd place: Fryer Fry

Congratulations! You've won something slightly more than a no-prize!

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Sweet! Those were pretty much my favorites, too. Nice job, winners!

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Limone –However, I’d change the color of the hat band to match the gloves and shoulders. It looks like you’re using the “sharp” pattern on the boots, but they’re so covered up by the boots themselves, they may as well not be there at all.

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Unfortunately, with that hat you cannot color the headband. The secondary color goes to the under-hair. It's an annoying limitation when you're going for the cool "hat with a face-mask" combo.

Thanks for the nice notes, Naz. I have biases against the armor pieces that I'll have to confront if I want a convincing looking looking War God golem.

I love the Skruller-Scheme for the next contest.

Thanks, Naxghul1. I think context can make a costume easier to understand, so I included it. In most cases, the character name is more than enough context, but I felt like my name was perhaps a bit oblique.

On the palette, I'm somewhat stumped by the two golds. In many contexts they don't contrast with each other enough to use well together. In addition, when used separately it seems like the eye won't notice the difference at all. That said, I was really impressed with how it worked on Dragonpyre posted above.

Finally, I've always wanted to make an orange-dominated costume but never had the nerve before now.

I keep meaning to enter this contest, but I never find time. Well, I finally found time to make The Crescent of Mars -- the impartially destructive avatar of an ancient war god. Luckily, he's fallen under the uneasy control of a down-on-his-luck stage magician. Amos Charles found real magic in a scroll that was officially debunked by the great Houdini, but secretly contained the key to controlling The Crescent of Mars. However, the Crescent's appetite for battle and strife is enormous, and Amos is under a constant strain to find suitable targets for his golem, lest it release it's fury on an innocent populace.

The Crescent of Mars

Rodney the Red - Around the time he hit level 12, he got a Recipe and Salvage on his power tray, and he left it like that.

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Even MOO3 had alot of good points. I think it is more that it got redesigned one to many times and so carried far to much extra baggage. I have MOO3 and still play it occasionally but I'll admit to playing MOO2 more. Still it wasn't all bad and I don't think I would blame the dev team for it failing. They made it into a moderatly functional game from what I suspect was a disaster.

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I guess I have to deamplify my statement. A brief scan of existing reviews on the internet shows that MOO3 wasn't nearly as critically or universally panned as I thought. I'll just paraphrase Dorothy Parker to express my own, personal review: Master of Orion 3 is a not a game to be put down lightly--it should be thrown with great force. Or how about: Master of Orion 3 cannot be properly judged from playing it just once--and I certainly don't intend to play it again.

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Here's his accredited work

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So we have Castle to thank for Master of Orion 3?

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It couldn't be his fault, look he worked on Lost Vikings.


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I love Lost Vikings.

In fact, of the games I remember that he's worked on, the only stinker is MOO3, and most are fondly remembered. The biggest problem on the list is his lack of accomplishments since 2005. That's the main problem with working on an MMO, I guess. It just doesn't pad your resume with games.

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The number of complainers sure matters. Its democracy. Majority rules. Anything repeated often enough will be taken as the truth.

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To quote NOFX: Majority rules don't work when ignorance is celebrated.

I think there should be a daily parade in Atlas Park, from The Hollows entrance to the Perez Park entrance, and through the legs of Atlas in commemoration of all the great accomplishments of our game's level 50s. Statesman would lead the way, and Positron would bounce slowly up and down behind, with all the glorious level 50 heroes riding horses and giant robots and big shiny fire trucks.

And there should be eggs. Raw eggs.

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I have not seen it mentionned anywhere so... there

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... That's my pie!

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<ul type="square">[*]Grab HURDLE at level 6. You will probably want this power in any case as it is a basic before you can get Health and Stamina. Place a Jump Enhancement in Sprint and Hurdle.[*]At Level 7, slot both Hurdle and Sprint with one extra so that each has 2 slots. Yes, put Jump Enhancements in both of those slots.[/list]
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It's faster to move the extra slot from Sprint to Hurdle. 3-slotted Hurdle plus 1-slotted Sprint is slightly faster than what you've suggested.

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Why I should care how a set performs in PvP is beyond me.

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It is due to inductive reasoning. If something is abusive against other players, that's an indication that it might also be abusive against mobs.

This inductive step has resulted in a lot of changes to a lot of powers. So when you see or hear that a power is causing a lot of havok in PvP, you should care.

Some of the first heroes to forty were */Fiery Tanks, due to overpowered Burn patches that used to be nearly twice as big as they are now. I think they were initially reduced in size in update 1, but details are foggy.

*/Fiery Tanks received many postitive changes in Update 3. You used to have to use Perma-Healing Flames and Burn(!) patches to protect yourself from many status effects. Status protections, except for Toxic Resistance and Immobilization Resistance, were rolled into Fiery Embrace and Plasma Shield. The Blaster Fire Manipulation secondary took a hit as a result of the changes--they used to be able to get status protection from their own Burn patches, but it was removed.

I believe the game reached its apex of subscribers during August, 2004 with over 180,000 active accounts.

Before Update 1, Bone Daddies were much stronger than they are now. They could shred heroes with a powerful Shadow Maul. Many squishies suffered defeat by standing too close to their Tank.

Early Skull and Hellion missions received spectacular graphic updates in Update 2. They were plain office maps before. Council/5th, and many others have followed suit, with their own special set decorations.

Evasive description mode: Around the time of Update 1 there was a small change made to certain costume options to smooth out suggestive graphical protruberances.

I followed the Solo Controller Project in secret all the way through, and found it fascinating. Great job, and great guide, Ishtar. Here's an addendum I put together from several different sources.

This is a little thumbnail to help you plan your tactics when solo. It's a guide to roughly how many times you have to hit an even-level minion in order to defeat them.

It makes the following assumptions:

Your attacks are five slotted for damage and contain enhancements bought every five levels, starting at level 7. It accounts for the more powerful enhancements you have when you first purchase them, and the weak -1 enhancements you'll have for one level. In order to keep current, you'll need a high-level benefactor. It's been shown that a truly solo character can't quite keep up with expenses, even when scrimping.

All the attacks available to a Controller below level 32 do roughly 1 scale of damage, equal to 2.7778 Brawls. Fire Controllers have two attacks, Fire Cages and Char that do 10% more damage than that, so they can reduce these numbers somewhat if they slot up those two powers.

Boxing is worth 75% of a full hit, and Kick is worth 85%. Flurry is worth 115%. The other pool attacks are all worth exactly 1.

Lieutenants have twice as many hit-points as minions, and Bosses have four times as many. Depending on how fast you can land attacks, the actual number of attacks you'll need to take out Lieuts and Bosses will be further increased by their more powerful regeneration rate and possibly resistances.

The buffs and debuffs you have available are not considered. You'll have to adjust the numbers as you find out how well your buffs and debuffs work.

Without further ado, here are the numbers.

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
How many hits to defeat an even level minion.
Lvl #Attacks
1 1.6
2 1.7
3 2.0
4 2.2
5 2.8
6 3.0
7 3.2
8 3.7
9 4.2
10 4.7
11 5.2
12 3.6
13 4.1
14 4.5
15 4.7
16 5.2
17 5.0
18 5.4
19 5.8
20 6.3
21 6.7
22 4.1
23 4.3
24 4.5
25 4.7
26 5.1
27 4.4
28 4.6
29 4.8
30 5.0
31 5.4
</pre><hr />

In the beginning, a controller is a powerhouse! But they quickly become weak as their damage scale ramps down to 55% of Blaster, while enemy Hit Points increase quickly. As soon as you need three hits to defeat a minion, you've crossed a difficulty threshold. At that point, you're looking at over 6 hits to defeat a Lieut, and probably 15 to 20 to defeat a Boss.

The hardest levels, before you get pets, are 9-11, and 13-21. Level 21 would be your nadir, except the acquisition of Stamina around this time relieves some of the pain of needing to land almost seven attacks to down a single minion.

Even the acquisition of SOs can't return you to the glory days of the low levels. Four hits each is still very slow for Lieuts and Bosses.

I find these thumbnails helpful when soloing my controller, because some of my attacks are DoT. If I know I'll need to land four hits to defeat a minion, it potentially saves me from the horror of overkill waste. It also lets me schedule the acquisition of power pool attacks in my build.

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Thank you Teylan and Space_Goat for the comments, I realy appreciate it.

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Thanks for the detailed response.

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FALLOUT: Is the blast radius big enough? It seems like it might be a nice combo with Mutation. The damage is certainly good enough

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I never took this power, but my nephew did and while grouping with him I seen that it didn't do enough damage. It didn't kill even level minions. Plus I think that there was a death maybe 1 time per level max in my groups. Meaning that this power wasn't used enough to take. Like you wrote above, there are a lot of good powers to take and this power is not one of them.

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I've thought about what you wrote above, and its got to be the lack of Build-Up and Aim that makes this power's damage seem so tame. It seems like Flash Freeze, though situational, will be more useful after all.

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Manuevers The defense is ok (10% base) and I truely believe in the more defense the better for this character. I just didn't have enough enh slots to max this power out. The base Defense on this power is the most important thing. Adding DefDuf Enh to CJ is better then adding to Manuevers so I threw what I could into CJ. With Manuevers, Hasten, CJ, RI and EF I didn't get hit that much. The biggest issue fo me was End. This was my first power I would turn off if I was running low on End.
Tactics I believe that this power is a must on a controller or a defender. Nothing pisses me off more then when I miss a Boss on a BoI.

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Thanks. As long as the endurance costs aren't too bad, those powers must work well. I'll have to try them out.

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You asked why I didn't take some of the following powers, here is my reasoning:
Shiver: Lingering Radiation is a much better power then Shiver and they do about the same thing.

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If it is between Shiver and Lingering Radiation, I think Shiver is easier to use, and cheaper.

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Also, Shiver would only be used on AV's. There are a lot of other powers that I can and will use more so I decided to leave this power out of my build.

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I can see how, once EMP and Glacier are slotted, there'd be little use in slowing most things.

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Chilblain What do I need this power for?

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At my level, it keeps me busy, it keeps me safe, and it does decent damage. At your level, it *is* pretty much useless. I'll have to respec it out eventually.

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Space_Goat,
Hopefully, this gives you more of an understanding on how I think and play my character. Plus hopefully it gives you some answers on some of the powers you had questions on.

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Yup. Thanks much.

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This is an Ice/Rad Controller Guide.

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Thanks for the guide. It's very good. Building an Ice/Rad is nerve-wracking. There's no way to do it without missing out on some excellent powers.

I wish I could skip Radiant Aura and Stamina.

Here are some comments.

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Chilblain – Spell Available at Level: 1
Description: Ranged Mod Dot (Cold), Foe Immobilize, -Recharge, -speed
Stats: Acc 95%, Cost 11.5, Dur 10, Act 1, Recharge 4, Range 80
IMPORTANCE LEVEL: 1-2
Enhancement Selection: RecRed, EndRed, Acc, ImbDur, Dmg, IncRng
Note: Good for immobilizing AV’s. My thoughts are this power is a waste.

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If you plan to solo, taking this power and slotting for damage is effective. It's better than most power pool attacks.

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Frostbite – Spell Available at Level: 2
Description: Ranged Target AoE, Minor Dot (Cold), Foe Immobilize, -Recharge, -Speed
Stats: Acc 65%, Cost 22.5, Dur 10, Act 2, Recharge 8, and Range 80
IMPORTANCE LEVEL: Pre Glacier 3-5, Post Glacier 1-3
Enhancement Selection: RecRed, EndRed, Acc, ImbDur, Dmg, IncRng.
My Thoughts: Works great with Arctic Air at lower levels. Taken out when I respected at level 34.
Note: Good Spell for immobilizing herds for tankers and Rikti Monkeys in PI
Note: DO NOT USE WITH Ice Slick or an Earth Controller who are using Earthquake. EVER!!!!!

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There are three other disadvantages to this power, with the worst one first.

1. Its endurance cost. 22.5 every 10 seconds will drain you quickly.

2. It draws a lot of aggro. Without good teammates it can be a "Defeat Me" button.

3. It requires slotting to be effective, with three +ACC SOs necessary to hit the Accuracy cap.

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Accelerate Metabolism - Spell Available at Level: 4
Description: Close (AoE), Ally, +Dmg, +Recharge, +Recovery, +Res (Effects), +Speed
Stats: Cost 22.5, Dur 120, Act 2, Recharge 9 Min
IMPORTANCE LEVEL: 5+
Enhancement Selection: RecRed, EndRed, Run, EndRec
My Thoughts: 4 slotted RecRed with Perma Hasten will give you Perma AM. Most people 6 slot this power, 4 RecRed and 2 EndRec.

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If you team most of the time, I think 3 RecRed and 3 EndRec is another good slotting strategy. It won't be perma, but you need time to get people to "gather", anyway. The increased EndRec should be much appreciated.

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Fallout – Spell Available at Level: 35
Description: Ranged Extreme Damage (Energy)
Stats: Act 1, Recharge 300, Range 40
IMPORTANCE LEVEL: 1
Enhancement Selection: RecRed, EndRed, IncRng, Dmg
Note: Can only be used when a teammate dies. I think that this spell is USELESS

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Is the blast radius big enough? It seems like it might be a nice combo with Mutation. The damage is certainly good enough.

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TEAM SPEAK:
Do you play with family, friends or SG? Would you rather talk to them thru the computer or type information on the keyboard? If you are like most of us, talking is the only way to go. This is a great time saver to get information to your Family, Friends or SG members while playing CoH or any online game. Here is the Web Link to Team Speak. Team Speak Web Site It takes about 30 minutes to download and setup a team speak server. It takes about 5 minutes to setup a team speak client. Cost to you and your team speak partners is $0.00

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You may need to check with your ISP before setting up a Teamspeak server. Some ISPs are configured so that it won't work. Fortunately, there are many free Teamspeak servers all over the place that you may use.

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I hope that this helps any person that ever wanted to know anything about the Primary controller power of ice and the secondary controller power of Rad. Different people play different styles, so my build my might not fit how you play, but it works great for me. If you would like to find out why I chose some of my powers or why I slotted the way I did, please feel free to ask here on the boards or in the game.

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Could you please comment on your choice of the Leadership Pool? It seems like Shiver, Arctic Air, or Chillblain might have been good alternatives.

When building my Ice/Rad, it makes me nervous to be taking so many powers from my secondary. Are they *really* better than what I can get from my Primary?

I believe the buff lasts 10 seconds. That jives with the scenario you posted, once activation time is considered.

Follow-Up has a 1.6 second activation, so a 10 second buff, with perma-Hasten, buys you just over one second of overlapping "double-buff".

+ -&gt; Buff Effect
X -&gt; Activation
| -&gt; Recharge

Each row is one second.

X
X
|+
|+
|+
|+
|+
|+
|+
X+
X+
|++ (overlap)
|+
|+
|+
|+
|+
|+
+
+
+