Stack

I bid 180m!

[adjusts monocle, top hat]

Because that's what billionaires do?

Any notes on the revised Ancillary and Patron Power Pools? The plans have changed a few times; what's the latest? EDIT: I see you've covered that. Thorough!

Also, has there been any news about the OS X client?

Actually, it sounds sort of redundant to me.

You have a reliable, perma-able Mag 4 AoE Stun in OG and Fault. Having more won't help you against anything but EBs, and then only when their purple triangles are down.

Tank Stalagmites are very different from Controller/Dom Stalagmites - they do more damage but only have a chance to disorient. Consider it an AoE attack first and foremost, like a Fireball you need to be near the ground to use.

The Nunja is praying for all of you filthy pirates today.

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I don't think XP itself is going to be an offline reward. It sounds more like its a variant on explore badges, except you have to be at the spot (offline) for a significant amount of time to earn it.

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Good point. And this encourages players to stay invested in the game; they'll play their alts more while waiting, and they'll come back to check in on unplayed alts to see their progress.

Now that's how you supplement a short guide. Good on you, HBS.

Keep in mind that if you activate Aim before RoF, the +toHit buff wears off on RoF at the same time that it wears off on you. You'll have about eight seconds of super-accurate fiery death, followed by a lot of plain old normal fiery death. It's still important to slot for accuracy.

To be completely honest, I'm not sure what the point of the "become a fan of" pages are, either. Facebook shows you your friends' recent activity on the main page when you log in, and sometimes it tells me that my friends have become fans of Apple or Barack Obama or whatever, so I guess that's a little bit of good publicity.

But I think the main point is to give people a way to show their friends what they're into. It's an identification thing.

It's not going to double the server population, but it might get a few people talking, and it makes people feel good when they get to talk about stuff they like.

Not very "effective" in any sense, as you indicated, but harmless, fun, and at a low cost to the devs.

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That is assuming that you consider all those millions of users to be actual distinct users.

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The vast majority probably are - Facebook is kinda militant about rooting out fake accounts and killing them off. Whether or not they're active users is anyone's guess.

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It does not seem like an effective form of advertising. I also said that if they don't spend much effort on it, then fine. Doesn't change the fact that I find the idea, and the sites themselves, to be silly and pointless.

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Okay. 138 million Facebook users disagree with you. And 955 of them as of this post don't seem to think it's a "complete waste of time" to push the "Become a fan" button on the page that Koschej took a few minutes to make.

Also, why does everyone think this is a City Vault replacement? They don't have anything in common, except that if you asked for a description of both they might share the word "social." The City Vault is a much, much, much bigger project in scope than this Facebook page; it would be a full-fledged web application.

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I can't express how silly this is. Yes, I am thrilled that CoX is doing more to get its name out there. Facebook though? Facebook and Myspace are abominations.

Personally, I have never seen any Facebook or Myspace site that didn't look like crap. They are always either completely bland, or have so much CRAP all over them, that you can't see anything useful.

Hopefully no one at NC^2 is spending much time working on this. I think it is a complete waste of time. Unless they have decided to completely scrap the Vault. Then they might as well have some other community site.

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I'm really loving the irony of someone who runs around in a computer game pretending to be a superhero with incredible powers being "above" Facebook and MySpace users.

I guess we all have to be better than someone else.

Seriously, it probably took Koschej about ten minutes to set up an account and another ten to write the copy for the page. Even if you "cannot abide" looking at a website, there are lots of people who can.

It's free and it's fun. Why are you mad again?

Edited - sorry, see above post

Are you serious?

Setting up a "Become a fan of..." page on Facebook takes about ten minutes.

It's not a Facebook application. It's a special page where people can press a button to show that they like something, and where they can meet other people who pressed the same button. You seriously find this offensive?

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How do you use the "Masking" feature?

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it was encouraged to create a Facebook profile for your character, as I have done. That was what we meant when we say a "masked" profile.

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Ah. Thanks for the explanation!

But IIRC, fictional accounts of any kind are explicitly against Facebook's TOS, so they're likely to be removed if someone reports them.

You might not want to encourage this as a feature for legal/publicity reasons.

How do you use the "Masking" feature?

More information about how powers work and a user-friendly improvement to costume creation interface, two changes that will make the game better for everyone?

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Actually.. it's more like a 58% chance to stun a Lt, assuming a mag 2 stun is sufficient.

You've got a 25% chance to stun him on the first roll - if this occurs the 2nd roll doesn't matter. The 75% of the time that the first roll doesn't get him, the second roll still has a 25% chance to stun him. You're more than twice as likely to stun lts and minions with PSW during domination.

The opposite effect occurs with bosses. Instead of doubling the mag, you get two activations at the normal mag. The mag 2 stuns have to stack in order to stun the boss, so you've got about a 6.25% chance - 25% of 25% - to actually stun them with PSW.

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A mag 2 stun is not sufficient to mez a Lieutenant. With rare exceptions, Lieutenants have 2 points of inherent mez protection. You'd need both rolls to stun one, since they would need to stack to push Lt. stun protection into the negatives (thereby causing the stun to take effect).

Other Mag 2 stuns (Dark Pit, Oppressive Gloom) affect minions only.

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Great guide! One thing I noticed you didn't comment on, is how during Domination the chance for Immob in Subdue and the chance for Stun in PSW roll separately.

That is.. rather than an 80% chance for mag6 Immob in Subdue during domination, it's two 80% chance for mag3 Immob's in Subdue.

Same with Psy Shockwave, rather than one 25% chance for mag4 Stun in PSW, it's two 25% chance for mag 2 Stuns. This is why sometimes you get "DOMINATION!" over a lt's head, they don't get stunned by Psy Shockwave. (Limitation of the "critical" code which they essentially used here. This is partly why the devs don't have "multi-crits", multi-Scourge works fine but it's a different code.)

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Oh, gross. So PSW's stun utility actually decreases when in Domination? If I'm understanding you correctly, you go from having a 1/4 chance of stunning an Lt. to a 1/16 chance.

EDIT: Grammar fix

It's interesting that NCSoft came up with a story to go along with Powerset Proliferation. They've never bothered to concoct a backstory for new sets in the past.

What does it all mean? Any theories?

This guide is great! I'd pieced some of it together myself from Wayback caches, but you've done a much more thorough job.

I think -renderthread 1 is on by default now on machines that support it.

Does RoA get the 500% damage cap for blasters or the 400% cap for pets?

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Stone Prizon- I am not a fan of immobilization at all. Mostly because there is not an enemy I've seen that doesn't have a long ranged attack... meaning these powers get you killed and do nothing to protect your team, making powers like this skippable. But for an earth/storm they're not only skippable, but a really... REALLY... REALLY bad idea! Why? You've already got quicksand and snow storm to slow your enemies to a crawl so they are your immobilization power. Immobilization powers also stop knockdown which is the bread and butter of an earth/storm. As I've said to controllers I've teamed with who insisted on ruining my earthquake/freezing rain combo with their immobilization powers "Would you rather have them immobilized and still killing you or on their backs and helpless?" If they insist on doing them after that I typicaly quit the team.

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It's also good for knocking fliers out of the sky (although you can use Snow Storm too) and keeping AVs from running.

The -knockback is situationally useful for Hurricane, Tornado, and Lightning Storm.


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Stone Cages: Please see Stone Prizon for my opinion on this. There's only one time when I wish I had this and that's when fighting slow immune enemies (werewolves). Some people will take this and slot it for damage. That is a mistake. If you take this tactic, please, whenever you're in debt and your team is wiped, think of me and how I said "I told you so"

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Werewolves are immune to immob.

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Animate Stone- The worst pet in the game. Horrible attack speed, low damage. It's meant to be a tank and it can take a good amount of damage but I've never seen it hold aggro at all. But, any pet is worth taking.

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In my opinion, Stoney's best use is to take the alpha strike when Stalagmites isn't an option (e. g., mezzing bosses) and you can't cast around a corner.

You're right that he doesn't hold aggro very well. This is because he lacks AoEs. His attacks do have a built-in taunt, though, even if they only affect one target at a time.

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Gale- You take this because you have to. I can count on one hand how many times I've used it. I've got too many other powers to focus on than this which is a pretty crappy power in my opinion. People will tell you it's good for gathering enemies up and keeping them in your holds. I've never had a problem with either of these things.

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Gale is situational and requires slotting to effective, but sometimes it works when nothing else does. One of its more common uses is to keep a boss off his feet - they're not inherently immune to knockback.

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Hurricane- Well, plus side is that it has a massive -acc debuff on it. That's all the good I can say about it. I never took it and even if I had I can't think of a time when I'd have needed it.

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Hurricane has a number of uses:
- keeping enemies away from squishies/yourself
- pushing escaped mobs back into your QS/FR/VG/EQ
- just plain pinning an entire group of enemies against a corner

I don't run Hurricane all the time like some other people, but it's definitely a power you should take and use at least situationally. The -acc is huge - it makes a BIG difference against mobs you can't control for whatever reason.

It also has a -range effect.

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There are shorter shortcuts commands:

/search -- brings up the search window/find window (anyone a team can use the /search command to find other teammates.

/i playername -- invites someone to a team

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I like /sea.

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Here's the first tip I give to new players. When you create a character, don't even bother with costume creation - skip right through it.

When you get to name selection, brainstorm for a while to come up with a cool name. Try a bunch of different things. Don't get discouraged when everything's taken - keep trying stuff. Once you find one that works and that you're happy with, you'll be sitting in the tutorial with a generic looking character with a good name.

Logout - go to character selection, delete the character you just made and design costume that matches your cool name.

I firmly believe that the naming part should come before the costume creation - there's a bigger shortage of names than costumes, and nothing is more frustrating than spending half an hour designing an awesome costume for a character you intend to name "Firehawk", then having to name him "xXLord IceCubeXx".

So my advice: Get the name first, then spend the time on the costume. It's a lot easier to come up with a character to match a name than to be put on the spot trying to match a decent, superhero-sounding name to a character. This frustration is why people end up with crappy names that they aren't happy with.

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This is exactly what I do every time I roll up a new hero. Well phrased.

Also, welcome to the forums.

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Slotting advice:

Tar Patch:
3 Recharge, 3 Slow.


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Just to emphasize, adding the slows to Tar Patch is a must if you fight on anything other than Villainous. TP will work fine without slows on even-cons, but once you get into the +2-3 realm, it won't keep those higher-cons in the area reliably without slow enhancements.

You don't have to six-slot TP right away, because there's going to be oodles of powers in Fire/Dark that need slots in the early game, but you definitely want it sixed before you get out of the late 20s.

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Agreed, although I wouldn't put more than two slow SOs in it.
With one slow SO, you're at the runspeed slow cap for +2s, at -78% for +3s, and -58% for +4s.
With two, you're at the cap for +3s and -75% for +4s.

One is enough for normal gameplay, but two is a nice-to-have if you team a lot.

Man. It's been about two years since I've *really* played my first 50, a DM/Regen. This post takes me right back to what CoH felt like to me back then.