SteelRat

SM has been my favourite melee attack set for a long time simply because of the brutal animations and the wonderful, wonderful noise it makes. No amount of number crunching can come close to quantifying the grin invoking effect those two factors have. My main is a sm / fa brute and playing him is one thing: therapeutic. Incarnate system and ios allows me to deal with that combos failings beautifully, namely recharge, end useage and general squishyness. Im no min maxer, i dont care if ss or tw perform better neither are nearly as much fun imo.

Thanks guys, gals and undecided. Initial reactions were confirmed as correct: the new Dark Astoria content is awesome and I had an absolutely mad time on Sunday afternoon doing some of the Incarnate Trials. Already got the first three incarnate slots unlocked and slotted for Volkanik (who tends to be my main) and they make the joy of Stone Melee on a brute even more therapeutic.

I've also sewn the seeds of imagination since rejoining with the current Mrs Rat, so I'd imagine Paragon will have a new batch of heroes before long!

Playing the tutorial for the first time and initially thinking "I'm not sure I like this".
Seeing a Peacebringer in Nova form for the first time and thinking "What the H is THAT!"
The Hollows pre travel powers.
When PuG teams did stuff other than paper missions
Sunday afternoon Atta runs
When everyone wanted to do Frostie as often as possible
Issue launch lag due to over populated servers
My first old school hami raid. no capes / auras!
Dinging 50 on my first character and making a point of going back to Ms Liberty to level.
Talking random nonsense with like minded pals.

Good times.

Yes. I know. I've been hopping on and off of here for the past 3 years after my initial 3 year spandex-fest, but I'm back.. again. I did play for a bit back in in i17, then again in i20 but for some reason it was never for more than a few hours.

Have to say though, I'm really liking where the game has come since then. Some nice, long overdue QoL features have been introduced, some really good looking new content (really like the look of the Dark Astoria revamp AND gutted I missed Galaxy's destruction!) and I like how the Incarnate system has been developed.

So, if you remember and have fond memories of ever teaming with Volkanik, Sigma Suit, Viking Furnace, Amazon Thunder, Tiger Slash, Illuzi-One, Techno Demon, CyberDeath, Megafone, Luminesque, Tempeste, City Watchman or a veritable bevvy of others then come say hi! Even if you don't remember or don't recognise any of those or the memories of weren't terribly fond, come say hi anyway. Tend to play on Union, but have a couple of toons on Defiant, Virtue and Freedom.

This is news of a stonkingness hitherto unheard of in Paragon.

I maybe able to play this as an MMO now instead of a single player game.

*woots*

I think it's great, and what's great about it is more options. The altists can still get to 50 and retire and start all over again if they want to, whereas favourite characters can be fleshed out beyond that level cap should the player choose as well.

Have done this 4 of my toons so far:

Volkanik: Stone / Fire Brute .. died a couple of times largely because I didn't know what to expect. Didnt have too much trouble with Honouree, but thought Holtz was tricky... then again with /FA toons, I kinda expect to die now and then. No biggie.

Illuzi-One: Ill / Rad Troller. Teamed with a friend playing a fire blaster. Cake. No problems at all.

Arak-Atak: Crab Spider. Solo again, and again no problems

CyberDeath: Bots / Dark MM. Solo again. Managed to pull Honouree out and took care of him fairly easily. Holtz killed me largely due to me not paying enough attention to my bots who managed to KB Holtz into the the rear Rikti portals I'd left there, and agged the whole lot. Combination of all those Rikti + Holtz is what finished me off. Second go I KB'd him into the water underneath the bridge and then the Assault Bot kept him on his back with plasma cannons, and then it was just matter of time. Mopped up the rest of the Rikti afterwards.

I didn't know about Curse of Weariness before reading this thread, and as such didn't know about the V-Merit counter measure. Sure Volks end seemed to deplete rather rapidly which did confuse me somewhat, but Stone / Fire is a bit end heavy anyway, so Consume and blue pills tend to be the order of the day to a degree.

None of those builds have any Purple IOs in them, and I'm by no means an uber skilled player, but I'm at a loss to understand the feather spitting by some. That mission is a little trickier than most, granted but just because you can't just charge in and win after a few button mashes certainly doesn't make it broken.

Incidentally, I didn't think it was that long ago that Defenders and other support ATs weren't generally considered being particularly solo friendly anyway, so is it any REAL surprise that they'd have trouble with a mission like that ?

I've just got back into my old PB after a fair old hiatus and as much as I really want to love it, no matter what I try it always seems to be missing something.

This largely sums up how I feel:

This just in:

"Multi player game contains some content which may require more than one player to complete".

DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM™

Quick shout out to Soul Storm on Union to thank him for organising last night Mother Ship Raid in RWZ. Most fun I've had playing CoH in a while, and harks back to the vibe of the old Hami raids. Lots of banter in broadcast, well organised.. great stuff!

(I was Volkanik the Stone / Fire brute, should anyone have seen me )

I'm GLAD that there is an arc to unlock the Alpha Slot, for all of the reasons mentioned. Not all of my characters will necessarily become Incarnates, largely because of the time to get the drops once they have, and thus not all of them will be doing that arc anyway.

It's a great arc and has some lovely features:

Great Incarnate back story
Being Uber in the first mission and handing every major AV in the game their backsides in next to no time will never get old
Trapdoor has a nice little twist which makes him challenging but not irritating to defeat
The end mission with all those Rikti Portals and two EBs / AVs again, a challenge, but not an irritation.
In all. WIN!

Frankly in contrast to the OP, I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE the arc, and will enjoy on each character that I complete it on. It's definitely preferable to using merits to buy it. Just another grind for a currency of another sort and absolutely no fun at all.

As for having to do stuff to unlock stuff, my only minor gripe is having to do the cape mission before you can do the aura mission. Few of my characters have capes anyway. At level 30, if I haven't done the cape mission, I'd still like the option of doing the aura mission independantly.

After a lengthy MSR last night on Union, my main Brute, Volkanik got just 2 shards. Tried to run an LGTF, but switched to my Ill / Rad, Illuzi-One because of team composition, and got 6 shards and the Hero 1 DNA component. Will probably run RWZ arcs with her tonight to get more V-Merits.

I initially thought the drop rate was a little low, but in retrospect I think it's about right. I do TEND to solo largely because I got fairly ticked off with standing around for hours trying to make a team or look for one, and once I found one it was full of clueless cretins or chest beating l33tists, but since GR finding teams has gotten a whole lot easier. I believe CoH has always been a game that favoured teams, and it makes sense therefore that teaming up will have the appropriate benefits.

Whilst everyone pays their money to play how they like, I think people who are pathologically solo players are really shooting themselves in the foot and missing out on the "point". Certainly since I've put more effort in the "Multi" part of MMO with COH, I've gotten a whole lot more out of it.

If the Incarnate system is a means to encouraging TFs and teaming, then I think it's a Good Thing™

Since I resubbed I haven't seen that much lag strangely enough, and tonight since the move across the pond I haven't seen much difference either. Only minor hiccup was a mapserver disconnect at the beginning of a Safeguard Mission, but I think that was local because everyone else was already at the bank by the time it reconnected.

As for the SteelRat_EU possibility, I'm completely fine with it. I don't really see it as "losing my identity" because, well, my identity is included in there, and not many people know me anyway (at least not who still play). Definitely not worth leaving the game over, and that's for sure.

Whilst I agree with what Carni and Monkey Spirit are saying, I'm not entirely sure those situations are restricted to Praetoria. I think perhaps it's exacerrbated by the fact levelling tends to be faster at the lower levels, so it takes less to out level contacts at level 12, than it would do at level 40 for example.

I gave up a long time ago trying to do any of the storylines unless I was more or less a solo character, because a) team leaders only ever seemed to pick their own arcs, and b) all 80% of PUGs ever seem to do anyway are radio / paper missions. And that's outside of Praetoria.

Wow! Now there's a blast from the past. Fond memories of Sunday morning teaming with Cunundrum amongst one or two others.

They're all coming out of the woodwork!

Just a quick thanks to you lobby for this. My Crab sat at lvl 46 for ages because I just couldn't get the motivation to play him solo. I'd heard all these stories of Crabs being teh aw3s0m3, but just wasn't getting it. Until I respecced into the build that you're using. At first, I was dubious because there was no self heal. Then I played it and realised, you don't NEED to heal if the mobs hardly hit you anyway!

Now I'm absolutely loving it. Sensibly priced IO sets, insane amounts of +DEF from the toggles and pet damage, and playing it seems to be a sea of orange numbers.

I've been playing through the RWZ arcs, and got to the second or third Dark Watcher one. Rounded a corner, into a room with 3 very closely packed spawns of Nems, and I was expecting a vengeance based insta death.. but no.. survived with half a health bar and a purple insp, and the whole lot mown down in about 30-40 seconds. Just. Awesome. Most fun I've had with a toon on this game for a VERY long time.

Thanks again!

Just thought I'd give a quick wave. Been back about a month now, and absolutely loving the game again. There's been a fair few QoL changes since I've been away, and of course all the new powers goodness! I never expected to enjoy the side switching with GR as much as I have, and the way it's been implemented is fantastic. Some of the dialogue in the missions have had me laughing out loud at the monitor as well.

Usually play on Union as SteelRat, Volkanik, Arak-Atak, Techno Demon, R. Jannel Palvanov, CyberDeath, Forgotten Hero amongst others, and occasionally on Defiant as Tiger Slash, Amazon Thunder, Luminesque, Man-Tiger and Tempeste.

Largely playing solo at the moment, but always up for team play and the odd TF / SF

Bashing Rikti never gets old, but more than that these kinds of community events are what MAKE an MMO. They're generally only a pain if you're pathologically insistent on soloing. I won't be taking part in every one, sure, but I know I'll be looking forward to the sky turning green between mission instances!

+1 for Crab Spider love. Pet based Ranged AoE +DEF monster of Doom.

I think the mere fact we're still voicing our concerns 2 years after the Brighton offices were closed and yet the situation remains largely unchanged speaks volumes about not only Paragon Studios attitude towards the EU, but also how short sighted they are by regularly giving a raw deal to such heavily devoted players.

The EU may not have a "critical mass" of a player base, but until NC took over, it certainly used to have. I also remember not 2 or 3 years ago going to a Memorabilia where CityOf had a stand as part of the "Draw the World Together" charity and it was jam packed with people not only trying to get their characters drawn, but also people walking out of the show with conspicuously visible COV boxes poking out of the top of plastic bags. ( I also seem to remember catching sight of a particular pony tailed goatee bearded chap with a "Dante" name label fighting his way through the crowd ).

Poor server connections, no shelf presence and the same old "we're looking in to it" BS that we've been expected to swallow is what has caused the lack of EU players, not the other way around.

Perhaps GR and the graphics update is going to be enough to bring back previously disillusioned players like me, but NC is really going to have to up its game if it plans to keep them.

I'm back too..

I heard some stuff about customising powers, villains with reformed characters and heroes being naughty!

What did I miss :P