Winterminal

The last page or so of posts has been most fascinating to read.

I have played a lot of blasters, but all have been strictly ranged. I generally dislike melee combat and tend to avoid most melee archetypes, but I dislike it even more if I am dying as quickly as my opponents. Unfortunately, that's how I tend to feel when I get in close with a Blaster. Melee exchanges tend to make me feel like "anyone can win, it is just a matter of who lands more attacks." If I am at range, not only do I have strong attacks, but I probably have a couple attacks that will help keep enemies away (Secondary tier 1 powers, patches like Ice Patch, Burn, and Caltrops, ST hold/stun blasts, and even just plain old knockback). My health bar fluctuates a whole lot less if I stay away from the mobs. Overall, the vast majority of primary/secondary combinations will include more ranged abilities than melee/PBAoE abilities, so I would rather just shoot from range as opposed to running in with the express purpose of using melee attacks.

In light of my views on melee, I am a big advocate for change towards crashing Tier 9 attacks. I can think of two situations in which I would want to "nuke:" Either as a panic button when I have been surrounded, or as a way to quickly wipe a spawn. Because of that, I would honestly take either of the suggested changes.

If we up the damage to make the crash worthwhile, that's fine by me, because that means that when I fire it off, everything should be dead.

If we lose the 100% end crash with -Recovery, that's fine by me, because that means I can fire it off and finish off anything that didn't fall in the blast.

In either case, I think the recharges should be reduced.

If you are looking for a computer that you are going to be using for multiple things, CoH only being one of them, then a MacBook Pro will do just fine. I've been playing on mine for over a year, and have had very few issues with it. Granted, I am still on Leopard, which tends to be less buggy than Lion or Snow Leopard, but from what others have said, it is totally manageable. And here's the other thing: CoH will probably be the glitchiest thing on your computer. Meaning the machines run fantastically because the hardware and the software were, litereally, made for each other. When the only thing you have to worry about on your machine is a video game (no worrying about virus software/updates, FAR fewer glitches, etc.), your life gets a whole lot easier.

Felderburg, to answer your question: If you've done a forum search for such a guide and come up with nothing, then odds are one does not exist, probably because only recently (in relation to the game's inception) have NPC parts been ported over in large numbers.

David (Noble Savage) gave a decent explanation of reasoning behind NPC conversions here.

Longbow, IDF, Praetorian Police, Resistance, and Knives of Artemis are all NPC groups for which a PC recreation can come pretty close. And I am sure I am missing a couple.

I use a Dell USB mouse that my office had lying around going unused. It's one of the newer ones, so it has a laser tracker, 2 buttons, and a scroll wheel. Honestly, that works just fine. I suppose if you want something specifically for gaming, sure, go fancy. Otherwise, just get the bargain mouse at the electronic store.

As far as I'm concerned, these are concept fillers for me. I LOVE Afterburner's sound effect and animation. They are absolutely perfect for my rocket-boot-sporting energy blaster, and make me feel like I'm flying at super-sonic speeds (even if I'm not actually). I'm not overly please with the fact that I have to slot it up to reach max flight speed (unlike Fly itself), but I usually end up with one or two slots to spare in my build anyway, so I will be getting a decent amount of mileage out of that power (no pun intended).

I haven't tried Spring Attack yet, but again, I can definitely think of a few concepts that would be glad to have it (i.e. if I had a character on par with The Hulk).

Burnout seems like the min-maxer's power. When I first saw the power's name, I was thinking/hoping for something more, well, speed-related rather than recharge related. Something like a limited-duration large range PBAoE Slow that also made you untouchable, so as to simulate a "so fast you can dodge anything" trait, but that probably would have been broken. As it is, I probably won't take it unless I make a speedster one day.

LRT is, again, great for my teleporter toon, but I doubt I'll be taking it on many other characters. As for the zones you can or cannot reach, I think it will be a benefit more often than a hindrance.

Overall, I'm happy to have them.

I think there is a very high chance we will see something new every week. However, that "something new" could be pretty small. Sure, once a month it'll be a new Signature Story Arc, but otherwise it could be as simple as a new hat.

And I am betting Street Justice will go live when Freedom actually launches (before the end of the month?). With Titan Weapons probably sometime in October or early November.

In any case, I hope this new business venture is successful in that the Devs are able to churn out more stuff, whether it is add-ons, one-offs, new power sets, or costume items.

Yes, it is very cool... but I will probably never see it on one of my characters.

Despite having been around the game and keeping up-to-date on it for over 4 years, my subscription time is only about 28 months. To get the required number of Reward Tokens for access to anything Tier 9 is either around 2 years of accruing monthly Reward Tokens, or over $300 in Paragon Points purchases (which simply is not going to happen). By the time I enjoy the Tier 9 rewards, CoH2 will probably be thriving.

Logically, once the Celestial Armor gets rotated out of Tier 9, it will get put up for purchase on the Market, most likely at a higher price than other costumes. That's just good business: you give the VIPs the shiny stuff first, they run around with the shiny stuff and spread envy amongst their peers, then once it has run its course, you make it available for everyone to purchase and give the VIPs new shiny stuff, starting the cycle all over again.

If the aforementioned happens, I will probably purchase a few pieces from the set. For now though, I am stuck with envy towards the Tier 9 reward holders, and slight disdain toward the powers-that-be for making something like that inaccessible for most players (even if only temporarily).

I used my stocked points on Beam Rifle and the Rocket Board, that leaves me at about 340 I think, and I hope not to purchase much more and survive off the stipend.

I was EXTREMELY disappointed to discover the Streak Path Aura gated behind Reward Tokens. Then I discovered that it will take me 15 months stipend, $225 worth of purchased points, or some combination of the two before I can get it. Whatever level of disappointment is above "EXTREMELY," I'm there

I can personally vouch for Ice, Fire, Energy, and Psychic (although some of Psychic's alternate animations look a little weird), having hover-blasted with all four power sets. But in reality, any ranged set works from the air (though you will get less use out of a few PBAoE powers like Electric's Short Circuit and Radiation's Irradiate). So, Dual Pistols will work from the air, but the goofy looking animations combined with the fact that you will have to get in close to use the not-too-shabby Hail of Bullets makes running a DP Hover blaster sort of pointless.

Since you seem to want to try Dual Pistols, if I were you I would first roll one and grab a jet pack some way, or quickly level up to level 4 and grab Hover/Fly, and then try using Dual Wield from the air, to give you an idea of what it looks like. If it doesn't bother you, then you have nothing to worry about. If it does bother you, well, pretty much any other primary will work while Hover blasting.

It is the secondaries that you will have to be careful about, since those tend to carry a bunch of melee powers, but I have very easily worked around those on all of my Hover-blasting concepts, mainly by taking the support powers available in the secondary, and then filling out my build with Pool powers and/or Ancillary Powers.

Agreed. As always when this issue comes up.

This game starts at character creation/customization. And we are getting more options added to that very frequently i.e. by making a one-time small Paragon Point purchase, you can gain access to capes/auras at level 1, as opposed to waiting until level 20/30, respectively. To be adding options like that one, which had been requested by players for quite some time, and then not allowing customization for the rest of a character's powers throughout his/her career, is illogical.

MMORPG: Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. Players want to play the character first, then the content. At a certain point, it does not matter how much content you have in a game if a player cannot create the exact character they want, and that usually includes having the color of their Ancillary Power Pool defense power match the powers they are shooting at their enemies. Few people want to be surrounded by lavender electricity while firing yellow-white lightning bolts from their hands.

If you want to put off pool power customization, give the players a few more flypose emotes and a "No FX" option for Hasten and Super Speed, and I bet you can temporarily satiate the majority. And if you want to be sticklers about the colors of Patron Power Pools due to the fact that they are tied to the lore of certain signature characters, that's justified I suppose. But Ancillary Power Pools need to be color customizable because from the view of any player, new or veteran, it looks like an unfinished job.

With the two combos you pointed out, there really won't be much of a difference. Your ice/ice character will probably open up with a hold or two, maybe an immobilization, and then go to town with mostly ST blasts. Your Beam Rifle/Devices character will probably open up with Trip Mines, Smoke Grenade, and Caltrops, and then go to town with mostly ST blasts.

I can vouch for Ice/Ice being a beast, and a very survivable one at that. My main and favorite character is Ice/Ice. Beam Rifle seems like it will also be a damage dealing beast (you really don't even need Disintegrate except on Bosses+), and Devices will offer a decent measure of protection as long as you slot it well (Slow in Caltrops, -To Hit in Smoke Grenade).

NewScrapper, if you don't play ranged archetypes much, then skip it. You gotta remember, the sale is 20% off, i.e. 160 points off, i.e. about a $2 discount. This isn't like the character transfer bundle for 1600 and they've knocked off a zero.

Believe me, I hear ya: it's a new shiny plaything, it looks pretty cool, a lot of people are running around with it, blah blah blah. But be a smart shopper. If you aren't going to get a decent amount of mileage from it, don't get it.

I am the opposite of you: I don't play melee much. So when Street Justice and Titan Weapons come out, unless I think up a great concept/idea/combo that I want to try, I won't be buying them, no matter how cool they may look.

I am all for giving Paragon Studios my money so they can continue to prosper, but I intend to spend on things I will use, as opposed to something that is cool in theory but that I will not necessarily end up using.

There were errors for Leopard, Snow Leopard, and Lion users up until a few days ago.

Now, there are almost zero text errors for Leopard users, a few left hanging around for Snow Leopard, and Lion is catching the brunt of it because Lion has been out for so short a time, and most likely lost or renamed a few fonts in the upgrade process from Snow Leopard. For now, I'm sorry to say, all you can do is do your best to figure out what everything is, and hopefully a fix will be patched soon.

I'm with Nalrok, let it run. What may have happened is during those stalls/errors where progress seemingly halted for a moment (I had the same stalling issue occasionally) the calculations were still being made, but incorrectly. If it goes past 3 gigs, then yes, unfortunately you will probably have to reset, as painful as that is to type.

Just FYI in case you are unaware, if you log in to Exalted with a generic character of your choosing and type "/getglobalname Taxibot Belle" you'll see who (i.e. the global name of the player) took your name. It usually appears as a notification along these lines:

"@GlobalName is either offline, hidden, or does not exist."

If the name is available, the alert will return with the same character name you entered. For example, if I wanted to see who had "NailMan," typed in the command, and it came back with "@NailMan is either..." the name "NailMan" is actually available.

That goes for anyone. On any given server, you can find out who has a character name on that specific server by typing that command (/getglobalname character name).

Just be prepared for a boat-load of disappointed frustration when you find out a name you really want is owned by "@Trial85023." (Yes, I'm speaking from personal experience...)

In before mod deletion?

I'm looking forward to seeing it in-game, whenever that is. Though, I doubt I'll purchase it, never been much for melee.

I was really hoping to land:
-Winter
-Vox

Both were, unfortunately, already taken. To those who got there first, kudos. However, at the moment, I am not yet sure how much time I'll be devoting to playing on Exalted. So for what it is worth, I hope the names went to people who intend on taking those characters to their utmost potential. (As opposed to a player creating a character with the name simply to keep anyone from getting the name of their character from another server.)

Thanks Geko. Worked like a charm.