Umbral

You could buy 7 random rare recipe rolls, which gives you a chance to get some LotGs, Numina procs, and a number of other quite nice and useful IOs.

Yeah, with random recipe rolls, I've actually managed to get a number of extra expensive recipes. I've got at least 2 extra LotGs, an extra Numina proc, and a number of extra Obliterations of various types. Of course, sometimes you get some complete and utterly useless stuff, so it balances out. Still, the law of large numbers is on your side for the useful stuff.

I live on a college campus. The number of times I've gotten a drunkie fresh from or heading to a bar to say, "Oh my god... I just hit on a dude... I... I complimented his [rear end]... What the hell?..." is rather plentiful. It's always funny.

Not quite. Apparently BABs is experiencing some problems with his previously incredible solution, so he's retracted his statements on the matter. It's nice to know he's working on it. I'm kinda curious as to whether Castle is pushing him to find a resolution, or if the removal of redraw is going to require Castle to remove the redraw "bonus" (5% higher base accuracy) from weapon sets.

Nah, I live in SA and don't have a car so it's a bit difficult for me to get places as such. There would have to be one in SA in order for me to be able to attend most likely.

Considering all of the manly weight lifting type things you guys are apparently into consuming, I'm pretty sure you guys would be amused to see me. I actually get mistaken for a girl at least once every week or so.

I got all of mine by buying them with reward merits. The only IOs I even bother buying outright are PvP and Purple IOs. Personally, I've found this to be much cheaper, but I do a lot of teaming across a large number of characters. By the time a new toon hits 50, they've generally got at 400-600 merits (which translates into a lot of reward rolls).

The difficulty in proving that you are self-aware, even using your claim, is that you can't prove that you think you are self aware. You can say it all day long, and it won't prove anything because you are simply declaring a statement without anything to support it.

How large is "reasonably large?" I've met some people that think that 200 mill is "reasonably large" when that's just large enough to look into IO'ing out a toon honestly.

/threadjack

Bill, I always forget that you're also a Texan until you mention places I recognize. Considering how many other people I've met that are from Central Texas, I really wish we could put together a central Texas meet and greet.

Golden Dragonfly has a .67 mag KB effect. Soaring Dragon has a variable (2.782-4.154) mag KU effect. KB with a magnitude below a certain threshold (presumed to be ~.75) doesn't actually move the target back. It simply knocks the target off of their feet and is commonly known as knockdown.

What you are experiencing, most likely, is the manner in which the purple patch interacts with KB and KU. By attacking a lower level target (or a target that is weak to KB/KU) the magnitude is increased by a specific quantity. If the multiplier is large enough to push the .67 mag KB in GD over the knockdown/back threshold, then the target, which would normally just be knocked off of its feet, would instead be knocked back.

First off, you can't prove self-awareness so simply saying that you are conscious doesn't really mean much (especially since I could write up a program that simply outputs that exact response), especially since it's pretty easy to simply tell something to act in a certain way to emulate self-awareness.

Secondly, a number of psychological schools would actually argue that you are following through on biologically and socially programmed directives. How do you quantify the difference between "learning" and "manipulating information within a database"? There isn't any except that one occurs in a living creature and the other occurs in a computer.

If I saw an SS/DA tank I would "o.O" mainly because that's an impossible combination (it would actually be DA/SS).

I've actually got a DA/EM stunlock Tanker and, honestly, it's not that great. He works incredibly well when fighting hoards of enemies but, when trying to tank a single target, he falls kind of flat. Of course, he isn't IO'd at all, and I predict he would turn into a living engine of destruction if I ever chose to do so.

Well, first things, what's your budget look like? I doubt you'd get much use out of me posting a limitless budget build filled with purple sets if you've only got 200 million to your name. Next, do you plan on attempting to farm with the character at all? AoEs are only useful as set mules in AV specialist builds, but you'd want to include them if you plan on doing anything except taking on single big targets.

In general, the single most important set bonus that you can have is recharge. Recharge simultaneously helps you attain higher survivability (by letting you use your 4 click powers all the more often) and greater damage capabilities (by letting you use your better attacks faster). After you manage a good deal of recharge (140% global +rech at a minimum), you'll want to start working on cranking out as much defense as you possibly can. +Regen and +hp are substantially less than optimal for a couple of reasons. You're already packing more than 100 hp/sec in damage recovery (including your click powers, obviously). Getting another .67 hp/sec from a set bonus isn't going to do much of anything. For +hp, you've got Dull Pain. With the +hp accolades, you only need a single +hp set bonus in order to reach the hard cap. With just SOs, DP is already packing a 65% uptime. Even if you delay its use to capitalize on the heal, it's highly likely that you'd be getting no benefit from all but the first +hp set bonus more than half of the time. With a decent bit of recharge, you can have Dull Pain recharging fast enough that you can hold off using it for 10-15 seconds and still have it be permanent.

I am deeply and unabashedly insulted.

They've pretty much said it's going to be a single click power that causes mode cycling. It's pretty much the same thing that the Dual Blades attacks do (i.e. being mode 1 for X seconds, if in mode 1, go to mode 2 for X seconds, etc). The problem with incorporating a system in which all character have the ability to do this is that it involves a lot of going in and changing up the powers in question. It's not simply "when this is on, some of my damage is changed to ice!" It's a question of the power checking your mode and then determining that, because you're in mode 2, rather than 1, you'll have different effects that you would otherwise.

Actually, I am a programmer. And, because I'm a programmer, I know that whatever the computer does wrong, it didn't do it wrong because of its own faults. It did it incorrectly specifically because I told it to do the wrong thing. It did exactly what I told it to do. When it ends up doing something that I didn't want it to do, that's not a lack of intelligence on the part of the computer. That's a lack of intelligence on the part of the programmer.

Think of it this way: if you find a person that can multiply together two huge numbers in his head in less than a second without ever being wrong, you would probably consider the person to be rather intelligent. That's the entire issue with savantism and idiot savantism: they're incredibly intelligent in some ways without what we often consider to be the other hallmarks of intelligence. It's a mindless function, but it's being performed with incredible accuracy and speed. Intelligence isn't just measured in complexity of thought. It's also measured in the speed of thought.

This is a massive pet peeve of mine that I really wish people would stop fomenting. It's completely and utterly false that */Regen benefits an inordinate amount from +regen. In fact, it benefits less than any other set out there exclusively because it already has a boatload of damage recovery and damage recovery is simply a linear addition. It's actually more effective to focus on damage mitigation when attempting to optimize */Regen (and */WP) because, by increasing damage mitigation, you're functionally increasing your damage recovery with a multiplier rather than by nickels and dimes. When you've got 100 hp/sec damage recovery, getting another .25 hp/sec isn't going to do much of anything but 1% defense is going to equate to another 1.01 hp/sec.

This isn't to say that you shouldn't take Physical Perfection. You should. It's a decent power, even if it does have base values so low it might as well say "proc mule" in the description. The reason to take it, however, isn't for the regeneration. It's for the recovery and the ability to slot a large number of incredibly useful procs into it.

Well, first things first, we've got to rid of those useless standard cast times. Converting them into Arcanatime, we get 1.452 seconds for Punch, 1.716 seconds for Haymaker, 2.376 seconds for KO Blow, and 1.32 seconds for Gloom. I'm assuming that the precedence of DPA (highest to lowest) is going to be the standard KO Blow>Gloom>Haymaker>Punch since you didn't post damage or any of the derivative information thereof. Also, I'm going to assume you don't really care about Fury generation, but, then again, SS isn't the set to try to generate Fury with (because its attacks are all slow...).

Now, because KO Blow is the high damage power, its recharge is going to be the fundamental operating period we're going to base the rest of the chain around. Essentially, we're going to be using KO Blow and then spend the next 7.76 seconds trying to do as much damage as possible without overstepping our bounds too much. Gloom is, by far, the highest of the DPAs of the remaining powers, so we're going to use Gloom every chance we get. All we have to do now is make sure that we can use Gloom as often as possible within that time period. So, with a little paper work, we get...

KO Blow>Gloom>Haymaker>Punch>Wait(.528 seconds)>Gloom>Haymaker

It's all pretty obvious as to what you choose (the first 4 are just running through the powers according to their DPA) until you get to the last couple of decisions. That short wait is preferential to using Punch again (which would necessitate reordering the attack string segment to Punch>Haymaker>Punch) because Gloom, even increasing its animation time by .528 seconds, still has better DPA than Punch (39.7 compared to 28.7). Haymaker is used rather than Punch because, even though it forces you to wait slightly longer before using KO Blow again, Punch just has such incredibly horrible DPA.

Well, assuming that we're operating off of the conclusion that all of the data we've found is correct rather than believing what is probably a completely inaccurate myth, Gambler's Cut is going to have slightly lower DPA than Sting of the Wasp but it's going to be substantially faster. Within the confines of an attack string (such as GD>GC>SD>GC, which would be optimal for pure DPS), you'd want to use GC rather than SotW simply because both powers have DPA substantially below GD and SD, to such an extent that using SotW is actually worse than GC, especially when you start putting procs into the power in question (which would benefit GC by about a third more, allowing the power to pull ahead anyway).

And the idea that Energy Blasters are there to dish out damage and shouldn't be bothered to minimize the negative side effects of their knockback is what makes a vast majority of the "I'm an Energy Blaster/Stormie. Deal with it." crowd be seen in the exact same way.

It's not a question of who has the right to tell the other what to do. It's a question of whose responsibility it is to prevent it from being a problem in the first place. That responsibility lies squarely with the individual with the control over the knockback in the first place. Acting as if Scrappers are at fault because they are attempting to get the users of KB to uphold their responsibilities in the first is simply conceited.

Of course, but if you simply ignore them and walk away, you can't communicate the inordinate amount of disgust you have for them at that moment.

Now we're just going to get into a semantic debate on what is the appropriate definition and use of the term intelligent as it applies to both sentient and non-sentient objects and whether a balanced comparison can ever actually take place between the two.

Intelligence could just as easily be defined as "does exactly what it's told as quickly as possible without erring" as "figures out what you meant in the first place". The first would most likely be deemed functional intelligence (because it's based around operating upon a command) whereas the second would be inferential intelligence (because you don't need to spell everything out, the intelligence fills out everything that isn't stated). Each is simply emphasizing the strengths of one and the weaknesses of the other.

The simple answer is because Aion's engine (both graphical and gameplay) makes dealing with the problems native to those features to be more easily overcome.

1. Cross-platform MMO (Yun suggests NCsoft never considered it before Aion which doesn't ring true) - The biggest problem here is that CoX's UI is, by it's very operation, not console friendly. By the time players are in their 30s, they've got more powers than a normal controller has buttons. Aion requires substantially less than CoX in the way of control complexity by the very nature of its combat system (linked combos, automated basic attacks, etc).

2. New underwater zone (plus swimming abilities) - Aion doesn't have to deal with quite the same diversity of player backgrounds and powers sources as CoX, not to mention that all players have, fundamentally, the same modes of transportation. The problems in developing an underwater zone for CoX aren't present in the ability to generate the zone. They exist in the need to plausibly incorporate the zone into the game universe while maintaining some level of verisimilitude and consistency with the rest of the game.

3. Purchaseable home spaces (we called them "apartments" back in the day) - There's no reason I can recall why this couldn't be done for CoX. Players can already create private SGs that amount to as much. All it would require to do so for everyone would be allowing players to have a private base and an SG base (which is just setting up another database and determining access and availability).

4. Visual enhancements - We're already getting this. Going Rogue is coming with the new "Ultra" graphics setting. Of course, CoX has already gotten a good deal of upgrades to the graphics engine over its lifetime, so I'm not sure why you think CoX is being left out.

New weapons sets
5.1. Whips - BABs has gone over the reasons why Whips are a bit unwieldy to operate with within the confines of CoX, though, apparently he's gotten past them since we're getting the Hellfire Whip with Demon Summoning in Going Rogue. If you're wanting more general Whip use, then it's not altogether out of the realm of possibility for one to be developed, though I'm rather sure that Castle has some other ideas he'd like to implement first (psychic melee please?).

5.2 - Crossbows - Depending on whether you think it should be its own powerset or simply a customization option for Trick Arrow and Archery, the question boils down to, is it really necessary? Not many super heroes use crossbows in the first place (I can think of at least 3 heroes that use bow and arrow off the top of my head but none that use crossbows), and it would require a great deal of effort to come up with a completely new suite of powers (one for each power for each body type for each transport mode = ~81 animations for a single powerset (if I got the numbers right)), not to mention requiring new models for the crossbows. For a medieval inspired game, especially one that uses substantially fewer animations for each specific action, it makes a lot more sense to add crossbows than it does for a superhero game.