Stalk_obot_EU

fast.co.uk

they have support in this country who all speak perfect english

no traffic shaping or port blocking (virtually every other ISP does in some form or another depending on time of day now, BE seems to be another that doesnt traffic shape though)

No lock in contracts

they are awesome, my family now have 4 properties hooked up with them, cant recommend them highly enough

Heres a rating site

http://www.dslzoneuk.net/isp_ratings.php

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As knightstalker says there was very little reason to have such sweeping changes in the first place.

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Its Castles testbed for "COH", as in PvP and PvE, mark my words. He just lacked the confidence (rightly so) to push this garbage through onto the PvE game. As they didnt give a poop about PvP players anyway and was too small a demographic to make a huge difference in subs, PvP got the dubious honour of sampling Castles delusions of what "fun" is. It was admitted by Lighthouse (US Board Mod) that the changes were NOT for PvPers and a gigantic poopstorm went off both inside NcNc (as they were named that week) and on the boards, then Lighthouse got "invited to pursue opportunities elsewhere" for his candor.

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in response to "Hows PvP these days" Destroyed

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better word PvP has been supressed!

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Or diminished

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Or balanced

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It's not balanced - yet
And as the devs have said a lot of the PvP changes were for stuff they're adding in the future, perhaps we should wait and see what that stuff is before saying if the I12 adjustments were good or bad

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yeah, you can only expect people to give the benefit of the doubt for so long. Pie in the sky accounts for nothing after 5 years and 2 superhero MMOs on the horizon to break COHs exclusive niche, they want to keep peoples interest they going to have to be a lot more open and forthcoming given how much they have ignored (every single suggestion and feedback in i13 closed beta was ignored) and alienated the PvP population in recent times.

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... difficult tasks for level 50 characters to do that make them more powerful...

[/ QUOTE ] For me that was the most interesting part.

And if they introduce cel shading as anything else than an optional feature I'm gone.

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One of the reasons some people arent trying CO is because of their cel shading graphics so i cross me fingers hope not!

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I dont like cell shading at all but CO looks great, you can alter the settings significantly to just make it look like normal and very awesome GFX, just turning off the borders works wonders.

CO looks very nice and flows beautifully but I wouldnt recommend it for people with a gfx card lower than a 8800gt

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I agree with the OP. Could probably have been put better but I can't be arsed to go on a fact finding mission. 4 second holds are crud. Res to holds is crud. DR is crud. Healing Surpression is crud. Movement surpression is crud.

This all wouldn;t be so crud if we just hadn't had a glimpse of how good PvP could have been and indeed was in this game at one point. I agree that things needed to be addressed but the wrong things were addressed and in the wrong way.

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Thing is it wasnt particularly good prior to i13, it was just so much better than it is now it seems like awesomeness in comparison.

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Higher amount? There is significantly less PvP now than there was prior to i13


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I didn't actually mean a higher amount of players, but rather a higher amount of "viable builds". Don't know if this is how things work in practice, but it's what the changes sound like. I've been strictly a PvE player ever since the introduction of IOs so it might just be me not having a clue.

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to that extent you are indeed correct, mony more builds are viable than previously when it was a majority of fotms, sorry that I took it the wrong way. However variety was emerging post inventions as people were able to make "unusual sets" do weird and wonderful things, even before this I made a point of running severely "gimped" builds just for the hell of it. There were some good ideas in i13 but they were badly thought out, feedback ignored and poorly implimented.

its now just too slow and clunky for me, the pace has dropped and a player can do almost as well standing still randomly bashing powers as actively playing.

PvP in CO is fun, the scenarios you can join while missioning are great and DCU is reported to have open world interactive pvp missions where you have objectives to complete on each side WHILE fighting off other players. If nothing else there are some fun sounding options coming up for pvp superheroes/villains

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jesus, looks like they [censored] pvp too.

(as well as deleting my post that summed up issue 15's complete inadequacies)

What the hell happened to this game? Are they determined to wreck it?

2 tf's and a few emotes, and a new cossie. And NCsoft call that an issue. Cryptic would be turning in their proverbial graves.

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what happened? well COHs 5 year niche is about to be cracked open with a vengence by the guys who made this game with 5 years worth of knowledge of what not to do and better tech on one hand and on the other we have DC with probably the worlds best marketing for a superhero MMO built into their core business.

Now Positron and Castle are cracking up with the stress of trying to (and failing) keep the game fresh and fun. Sooner they are gone the better the future will be for COH

Oh and I suspect cryptic are crying with laughter and releived they unloaded the dead wood when they sold the COH IP to NCsoft.

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On the topic, though: PvP in this game has been rock-scissors-paper since the beginning. It still is like that, but as far as I've understood the I13 "fix" only introduced a higher amount of rocks, scissors and papers.

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Higher amount? There is significantly less PvP now than there was prior to i13

and its no longer rock, paper, scissors (as it was) now its rock, rock, rock

boost range is blasters trump card and there is no corresponding power. The only possible counter is a brute with taunt slotted up for range

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at what harse words since pvp is as dead a dodo

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People keep saying this but I guess I am playing a different game and imagined around 14 vs 14 in RV just the other night.

PvP has changed greatly and it might not be as great as it once was but there are still quite a few people that pvp. Granted it seems to only be in RV though ....

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when the best toon is a ice/ss tank with just jab and rage from secondary and boxing, kick, jump kick and flurry as attacks you know somethings wrong. Diversity and specialisation are punished by an overlying set of "laws" that unfairly punish some sets

"Hi, Im a kinetic defender, motion is my business, watch as my inertial reduction supresses my movement"

"Im a regen scrapper, watch as my regen supresses itself when i go into combat"

"Im a ninjitsu stalker watch as my retsu gives me a whopping 1.3% defence"

The players may be making the best of it but thats what the players have been doing since i4, PvP was ignored from its inception and now its simply Castles Testbed for what he wants to filter across to live PvE. They ignored all of the PvPers in i13 closed beta abd Lighthouse got canned because he admitted the PvP changes were not for PvP players.

On the plus side Champions Online is getting pretty polished now, looks beautiful on high end machines and is fun.

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Very useful info (I didn't knew about #3) and probably some individuals made Avatea totally furious to get her post that as a global cross-section forum announcement.

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You also cant use backspace to reply to them, makes it a bit awkward having to type /t name, everytime

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strange, backspace always works for me

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I am grateful to the people we pay to play the game, And i am sure your not one of the people we pay to play the game. Unfortunatly it seems that whatever anyone says you have a reason to point something out that is not valid to the thread....which if i remember correctly is why banes suck or rather whats wrong with banes?

So i will let you pick on others posts as it is obvious that there is nothing wrong with banes other than the fact they cannot solo on relentless. And leads me to understand that this thread is pretty much a arguement over nothing to do with the original post.

And so that you do not misunderstand me, I am not grateful to you for play testing a game, You had the option to do that as a non payed play tester. It is yours and others choice to play test the game and iron out the bugs, And to assume myself and many others should thank you is nothing more than sheer arrogance.

If you are offended by the above oh well i guess you asked for it.

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They can solo on relentless, as can any AT so your assumptions are wrong. The point is that they are not balanced to the other 3 branches, simple as, expect to see upcoming buffs.

Read what I write because you seem to totally miss the point, no offense but this would seem to be either stupidity or illiteracy on your part (see what I did there, I said no offense so if you take offense thats your problem) To assume I have said something that I havent just shows how immensely arrogant you are, as you admitted you didnt read most of the thread you should have at least had the intellect to read what you were responding to in such a derogatory manner.

I never at any point said anyone should be thanking me, I did some significant testing in beta, caught a number of quite nasty bugs including the ability to impersonate all of the developers which was quite amusing. However the majority of what I did was intensive balance bursts but that catches only so much, my goal wasnt to fix bugs, my goal was personal intellectual curiosity and I was level bumped for the vast majority, i played them all at each increment for a decent amount of time and /bugged a fair amount but that is nothing in comparison to someone getting in and playing the game 1-50 as that is what needs to be done to show how they function at every single stage. There were people who played and leveled the characters from 1 to 50 on test where they get no benefit whatsoever, there are people who truely work hard to get the game right for release, I dont know their motivation but Im not going to invest that much resource into a non benefit environment but im grateful to those who do as its their datamined performance that shows where they lie. Anyone who invests time on test to play on test is a better man than I and you really shouldnt underestimate their contribution to a smooth live experience.

In my opinion you shouldnt be grateful to the developers, you give them money every month for a very enjoyable job, you are their customers, they are grateful to you. The point is there are unpaid people who go on test, are on test not just in betas, open or closed, but several times a week making the game that much better.

Just to make this clear for you as its obvious you have reading comprehension issues, I didnt play on test, I did my own thing and I certainly dont expect appreciation but with access to the closed beta forums I was privy to the work of a lot of people and I am very grateful to these individuals.

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playing on test may indeed spoil it for the people that do it but without them it would be a considerably longer time untill you got to see them in light of day on live. You should be grateful for the free service they provide for your gaming experience

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Good grief.

Playing on test doesn't achieve jack squat other than e-peen inflation.

Testing on the test server, reporting bugs, working with the devs...etc. Those are the folk who should be "thanked".

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actually its through general playtesting that the bugs are found and noted, if people didnt play on test then they would have a significantly buggier launch. It only takes on person "playing" on test to find a game breaking bug.

Testing and playing on test are not mutually exclusive.

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Oh and playing on test only spoiled it for yourselves, Rather than enjoying something thats new and interesting your already moaning on whats bust. There's no need to blame devs or to nit pick others posts, There is alot of that on this thread and some people made valid points yet a couple keep talking in circles.

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playing on test may indeed spoil it for the people that do it but without them it would be a considerably longer time untill you got to see them in light of day on live. You should be grateful for the free service they provide for your gaming experience

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Actually you said they "suck" which is slightly stronger than just "underperform compared to the others".
However, I can not agree that Banes underperform. If anything they are late bloomers which is probably the reason why so many people don't see their strengths.
In the end their armour totals are nothing short of impressive and most enemies feel the pain when they are permanently under Surveillance (or even stacked Surveillance from multiple Banes just about to strike from stealth... yuck!).
Their animations seem a bit longish, but that's basically it.

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Having extensively tested all veats upt to and including lvl 50 during closed beta in a myriad of builds with top IO specs I can can say that banes underperform in their current incarnation in comparison to the other branches.

Their animations are fine, their attacks are fine, their damage mitigation is lacking, widows have significantly more defence and crabs have great huge globs more resistence. Can this be worked around to have a good functioning toon? Yes but the other branches dont need to work so hard. At the very least 7.5% def to melee should be dialed in to bane armour upgrade due to their melee centric setup.

Just before live when they had a 20 second placate which served as additional (unusual) mitigation and damage increase they were up their with the others, now they do lag behind.

put your e-peens away

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eh, been a long time since we have seen real fixes and rebalances going in the game, its usually AT wide band-aids like defiance 2.0, its great and all but its only served to make the highest performing blasters extend their lead over the lesser sets.

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That's not very true. With Newfiance I've found my ice/nrg blaster actually to be weaker than before (I was good at riding defiance, 1 shotting stuff helps to stop incoming damage tbh). While my recently made archery/psy blaster can achieve almost a permanent 50% damage buff from level 4, effectively giving him Damage DOs already. Archery, a fast but relatively weak set, is probably the set which benefitted the most from newfiance, not ice or fire.

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I cant help the deficiencies in your playstyle and archery, a lethal damage set does not get the most out of defiance 2, 50% buff on small damage is not as good as a 25% buff on a big damage low resistent set. Defiance 2 wasnt just the stacking damage buff, it was a straight 12.5% damage on ranged attacks too which benefits bigger damage attack much more than low ones. Oh and fire blast is a faster firing set than archery and far superior damage too but blaster forums are thataway

funny thing is that bane placate is bugged, its supposed to get a 20% tohit buff for 10 seconds after being used, this de-scales according to mob and class that its used on, the higher mob you placate the less of a tohit buff you get which is counter to needs

eh, been a long time since we have seen real fixes and rebalances going in the game, its usually AT wide band-aids like defiance 2.0, its great and all but its only served to make the highest performing blasters extend their lead over the lesser sets.

besides which, EM is where the rest of the stalker sets should be, not the other way around. Stalkers are a flawed and badly designed AT which needs each of their sets reworking properly to bring any semblance of balance to bear.

They need to add in a significant portion of toxic damage to the lethal sets to raise their game post 40 as that is where a huge segment of the problem is, badly designed mobs. If they gave the lethal sets a big buff to bring in some sort of parity (like 30% damage increase, numbers pulled out of my [censored]) then they would rampage the pre 40 game and lol while farming carnies. Realistically the post 40 mobs need real design work to fix the game but this isnt likely to happen sadly, giving toxic damage to stalkers would address this and is thematically feasable.

its a huge buff to EM and spines (spines for aoe crits), next to nothing for ninja blade and claws as a 0.1 increase to the damage modifier increases massive damage much more than the uber weak damage of other sets.

To be honest these AT wide band aids really need to stop and focus shifted to powerset issues, anyone who claims EM needed a damage boost is a fool and 11% increase in EM damage goes a lot further than ninja blade before laughing at how drastically the damage falls off post lvl 40 with all the lethal resistent mobs. (Oh and bonesmasher, a power available at lvl 2 for EM does 91% of ninja blades lvl 26 power, thats just sad)

its undoubtably better now

sadly it looks worse than dogpoop, really cheapy and tacky, it should have had tank treads or a new gfx entirely

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AFAIK, bosses are meant to be tough for most ATs... not that they are, but they're supposed to be

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Certainly the case with Crab Spiders, so there's some consistency there. I just find it odd how he wants to solo on the highest difficulty possible before saying the class is decent. By that criteria very few ATs are up to any sort of standard.

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Actually every AT is perfectly capable of running at highest level difficulty (possibly with the exception of khelds ), every AT has some real gem sets. Every powerset is another matter

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I said:
Domi style. Where do i say they get mez-abilities? Style as in ranged/melee, low HP, moderate/average defence,

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Not picking your comments apart but Night Widows have the best defense in the game bar none including tanks

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And whilst the list of Crab perks that you have listed sounds good, there are also perks on the Bane side that the crab does not have i.e. criticals, placate, extra defence to all through cloaking device. So it is all relative to what is more attractive to your playstyle and your power choices.

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Crabs can get stealth and a stealth IO which isnt far off the pathetic defence numbers of cloaking device, banes however cant dial in the massive resistences of fortitude. Crabs damage and mitigation tools are far superior to banes and can have perma 6 pets out which do massive amounts of damage, they are a blasterscrappermind, if you are trying to extoll the benefits of banes you dont want to be making any comparisons to the other veats

Bane are fun, banes are lacking in comparison to the other 3 branches

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Did devs ever stated or explained what the 'role' of a Bane will be? Kheldians were pretty straight forward (jack of all trades), widows tend to go domi style.

Bane more sounds like a defender with limited MM abilities.

edit: btw, i dont see a dullpain power as heal. Just a health-panic button, so i dont see it as 'valid' defense point.

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its not very good for a panic button as the animation is massive, after injecting yourself you get to stand there beating yourself on the chest ala integration, I think it was a mini (or full) unstoppable before it went to beta