Winterminal

First off, the pics here and in the other thread look amazing! There are a lot of potential costume ideas here.

That being said...

It is times like these that I am glad I am at work when I first read about this stuff, and therefore unable to make impulse buys. In truth, had I been at home upon first reading about this stuff, I probably would have hit "Buy" without a second thought. But since I have had time for a second thought: I am not sure if I will buy this pack, and that genuinely surprises me! I have no concepts (existing or ideas) that will use anything in this pack. I am looking forward to the Murder of Crows CCE, but that's only obtainable through the event.

Thankfully, I have the next month (and another 400 point stipend) to change my mind. Guess I'll have to see what comes out between now and then...

Yes it is a viable set.

The problem with it is that it does not have any strengths like other sets do. Ice has excellent mitigation and ST damage. Radiation and Fire are AoE monsters. Dark and Sonic provide some good debuffs. Most of this cannot be said for Psychic.

Psychic certainly has plenty of ST attacks, but there are few heavy hitters among them; it has no equivalent to Cosmic Burst, Bitter Ice Blast, Blazing Arrow, etc. Granted, you can cycle through the multiple ST attacks quickly, but that still leaves you putting out less damage per attack than other sets.

The only non-nuke AoE attack it has is Psionic Tornado, which is a decently damaging attack with some soft control, but the damage is DoT, which some people aren't a fan of, and it has a longer animation than most. Usually, it is best used as an opening attack to disburse the alpha strike and let the DoT accumulate while you cycle through ST attacks.

Its secondary effect is one of the least effective in PvE, especially at Blaster modifiers. -Attack speed (recharge) does not provide a whole lot of immediately apparent soft mitigation (like Ice's Slow or Dark's -To Hit), nor does it help to defeat your enemies more quickly (like Rad's -Def or Sonic's -Res).

It's hard control is also a tad lackluster. Scramble Thoughts is a pretty good stun, but that's it. Will Domination is a great sleep as long as nobody touches the enemy, which is problematic on teams, and means you have to avoid your own AoE attacks when solo.

The overall problem is there is no one area where the set excels, which makes it hard to justify its shortcomings. Again, it is certainly usable (I have a lot of fun on my Psy/Mental character) but you just have to acknowledge that it won't be as good as most other sets.

While I'm not Cuppamanga, I can all but guarantee your crashing issue is pretty standard. Likewise, if I spend more than a few minutes in the store at any one time, I crash. Granted, I freeze and have to restart the computer, but the bug is in essence the same.

Basically, the client has reached a point where it is pretty much the same as it was, and the the store is accessible and readable, with the exception that you shouldn't spend more than a couple minutes in the store at any one time. Just limit your time in there and you should be fine.

Oh, and welcome back!

If you would rather "just lay down the damage," then definitely go with the blaster.

BR's strength is, as you might guess, ST damage combined with Disintegration. The thing with blasters is that they do so much damage at once that Disintegration isn't given a large chance to spread. My advice is to throw a Range enhancement (or two) in Disintegrate because Penetrating Ray is the only attack you have that has a 100% chance of spreading Disintegration. So you can fire Disintegrate from a long distance and follow it up with your sniper attack without much interruption. Then go to town on the mob with Single Shot, Charged Shot, Cutter Beam, etc. while most of them are disintegrating.

In essence, the set is about killing one enemy at a time, so if you maintain that mentality (as opposed to trying to spread damage equally over the entire mob), you will probably very much enjoy BR.

Great looking base, and a hell of a concept as well! For all that is said about bases requiring a multitude of fixes, I am continuously astounded by what some of our players can do as designers.

/signed.

Though, with the convoluted mess that is the current state of rewards (i.e. transfers at the beginning of a month, tokens at the end of a billing cycle, points rewarded lord-knows-when), I just picture the below scene whenever I think of the billing guys in Texas...

Pretty simple. The IDF boots clearly have some kind of booster attached to them. It would be great if the boosters had an effect while jumping or flying.

Personally, I do not think this would overshadow the Rocket Boots. The IDF boots are noticeably larger, have boosters placed in different locations than those of the Rocket Boots, and (based on the default coloring) would most likely emit a differently colored flame/afterburner effect.

The one obvious problem with this is the orientation of the boosters: they are perpendicular to the bottom of the foot, and in flight a character's feet tend to be pointed behind them, which means the booster effect would fire at an illogical angle so as to simulate flight. To fix that, the booster effect can be adjusted to fire at a more logical angle, or just let the player justify it how he/she will. After all, the Rocket Boots look quite illogical when used in the default flying pose or the flypose2 emote.

Anyone else out there who would like to see a little more out of these awesome boots?

Depends on what kind of player you are. If you usually prefer to stay at range, and don't plan on using Electricity Manipulation's melee attacks that much, then yes, it is a good combo. But if you lean towards "blapping" then no, I would not do it.

Beam Rifle is a weapon, which means it will have to be redrawn after every non-Beam-Rifle move you execute. If you stay at range, that means little because you will probably hit Build Up and/or Aim and just go to town with the gun. But if you get in close, you will have gaps in your attack chain between the electric punches and your beam rifle shots which, for a blaster, can be very detrimental to our thin hides.

Basically, Elec has enough utility to make it useful to a ranged player, but if you are going to go for its melee attacks (which are, admittedly, its strength) I would reconsider.

And if you are going to reconsider rolling a Corruptor, I strongly suggest a "passive" secondary set. Of the two you mentioned, Rad falls in this category, Time does not. For Rad, you can launch Accelerated Metabolism, kick on Radiation Infection and Enervating Field, and throw a little Lingering Radiation their way, then go to town with the gun. Time is a bit more like Kinetics in that you will be using buffs/debuffs far more often, and therefore have to redraw the Beam Rifle A LOT. If you don't care about that, go for it, but if you don't like constantly pulling your gun back out of its non-existent holster, I suggest a different choice.

And of course, welcome back!

Not sure about power picks, but as for a costume, I made one inspired by the newer Tron Legacy look. I used the IDF hat and Detail 1, Overguard for Chest and Legs, Resistance Chest detail, IDF shoulders, Resistance gloves (because the IDF gloves make the hands the same color as the glowy part, which doesn't really work), Perplex pattern on Legs, and Rocket Boots.

Though I am a good 14 months away from the Streak Path Aura (damn Reward Token gating...) I imagine that would look conceptually fantastic with slotted up Swift.

I've flown a few times while dreaming, in a few different locales. Except I have only ever flown about as fast as I could run (which is still a good pace, since I am/was a sprinter). And I think I had a dream ONCE where I was Cyclops, haha.

Tokens are being awarded at the end of a billing month, which seems strange, but that is currently how they are doing it. If your account renews on the 15th of every month, you will get a Token on the 14th of every month. In other words, say you pay for your 25th month of subscription on October 15th, you will receive your 25th reward Token on November 14th.

Character Transfers appear to be awarded on the 1st of every month, regardless of renewal date. I received mine on the 1st, though that doesn't prove much since my renewal date is on the first. But it seems many others were reporting receiving them on the 1st as well.

Edit: I'm just going to assume "Checking of Updates" had no effect.

Try closing the NCLauncher, going to Applications, and opening City of Heroes directly. This should open the NCLauncher automatically and then immediately launch the game (which, in your case, would trigger the update process). See what happens.

I made a Dark/Dark blaster, just now at 28. I prefer to play at range. Been interesting so far...

I am a big fan of the changes they made to Blaster Dark Blast. While hover-blasting, I find "cornering" mobs with Umbral Torrent followed by Tenebrous Tentacles to be extremely effective. The hold is nice for taking out pesky LTs, the damage over all isn't bad, and Life Drain is great fun.

Dark Manipulation is not my style AT ALL. But I'm a sucker for themes, so I went with it. Penumbral Grasp is being abused, and to great effect. I haven't touched the melee attacks (Sands of Mu takes care of anything in close range). Soul Drain and Dark Consumption are reserved strictly for teams or if I clearly have the upper hand. I have a feeling the next few levels will be very slow, but I plan on taking the Soul mastery PPP, which should fill out an attack chain.

I've said it before: I am thoroughly disappointed at the melee/PBAoE focus of Darkness Manipulation, and I hope it does not serve as a stencil for future Blaster secondaries. While melee has it's place on blasters, I'd much prefer a power set like Ice, Mental, or Energy, where there is a decent balance between utility powers and melee/PBAoE powers.

No no, that's normal. Despite being called "City of Heroes" the Quicklook will include that "Beta" in there. Mine says practically the same thing, except it is at 4.07 GB.

First, when you open up the NCLauncher, does City of Heroes come up under "Installed?" If it does, I recommend clicking the triangle to expand the menu and double clicking "Check for Updates." If it fails to update and you are greeted with an error, try the "Repair" option.

If City of Heroes does not appear under "Installed," nor does it appear under "Not Installed," say so and we'll move on from there.

I'd say it is an absolute fact that many people will not receive their points on their billing dates because Zwillinger specifically said that returning the points to rolling over on actual billing dates would be a gradual process, performed over the next few months.

I believe you misunderstood what I meant, TrueGentleman. As I said, I agree that people are perfectly justified in complaining about getting their points later than their renewal dates. (Though I do not see much point to it.) What was unjustified was complaining at 11am of October 12 that the points had not been awarded yet. That is just impatience.

If UPS had told me that I was to receive a parcel on October 1st, and then later told me that, due to their own internal error, I would not be receiving my parcel until October 12th, you can bet that I would be annoyed. But, come October 12th, I would be unjustified in complaining at 11am that I had not received my parcel because UPS never gave me an exact time of day for delivery, and therefore I could not rightly be upset unless I failed to receive my parcel on the 12th.

Of course, all of this is moot because it seems like everyone got their points yesterday, as promised.

I gotta speak up about the constant mention of Dark Pit here: I would not rely on it, as it tends to be an atrocious power. With a base accuracy of only .80, a horrendously short duration, and an unjustifiably high endurance cost, it is the weak link in the set and unfortunately the only ranged option outside of Penumbral Grasp. It is a shame they didn't upgrade it when porting it over...

As for the "highest DPS attack chain" question, that is hard to say because Beam Rifle can vary. Your DPS will be much higher if you achieve Disintegration Spread within the first attack or two than if you don't. Also, you will get much more out of Cutting Beam while at a distance because a 60ft cone gets quite wide at it's max range.

At the end of the day, the two sets contradict each other.

Beam Rifle is not only entirely ranged attacks, but it also encourages ranged combat with a sniper that gives 100% chance for Disintegration Spread, and a longer-than-average cone attack. While you can use most of Beam Rifle's attacks while in close-range, your DPS from Beam Rifle alone will most likely be higher by staying at range.

Darkness Manipulation is almost entirely based on close-range tactics, with 7 of 9 attacks being either melee or PBAoEs. Thus, you'll get far more mileage out of Darkness by staying in close.

In short, you get the most out of Beam Rifle by staying at range, and you get the most out of Darkness Manipulation by getting in close. Therefore, the time you spend getting in and out of close range is, in turn, taking away from your DPS of one set or the other. So while the combo is doable, you will be fighting against your ultimate objective (high DPS) by attempting to use both sets simultaneously.

Bear in mind that it is highly likely that you will be awarded these points at the exact time that you originally activated your account, which could be why some of you have yet to see your points.

It could also be a trickle-down effect, where they make it easier on the servers by awarding points to a set number of accounts every *insert measure of time here* throughout the day.

All in all, we do not know, and while we all want our points, we really cannot expect to hear anything from support/community management, nor get angry about it, unless there are still some of us who are point-less after 11:59pm PDT.