gameboy1234

I'm hoping for a mix, but I'm sure fire will be a common theme.

Fire/Lethal
Fire/Negative
Fire/Smashing/Psi/Cold

Would be a nice combo for the three tiers. Kinda like Bots do a lot of Energy/Smashing now.

Hopefully there's be a bit more customization than just tinting. Have to wait and see, of course, but I doubt they'd bother with it if it was just a tint on the blast powers.

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That is sounding better and better to me. fire/cold and fire/dark with two ss/wp. That might be the ticket.

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This does sound good. The only criticism I'd make is that you only have smashing and fire for offense. Fire is good, but if you happen to run into a foe that's resistant to both smashing and fire, these combos could be a little hard.

I'd consider mixing up the offense. Maybe make one brute Energy/WP, and one Corr Dark/ or Ice/. That'll give you more of a mix and cover more situations.

There's already a fix for this on Test. They busted something else on Test though so it may be a bit before this patch hits live.

Or just "defensive". No need to specify follow, goto, stay, dance or anything else.

In short, it's "follow" that causes the pause, not "defensive." Avoid follow, and you avoid the pause.

It doesn't hurt to make a bind for "petcomall def" to get bodyguard mode.

When I overlayed my Tar Patch (as a Corruptor) on top of a Mastermind's I was teamed with, my graphic was much large (like 2x the size). I see Red Tomax says that they are the same size. I wonder if anyone can actually experiment in the Arena and confirm this.

You have the right idea. -ToHit and +Defense do combine to make you "less hitable." The thing is there's an "always chance To Hit of 5%" so you can never have less than 5% chance to hit.

So, even con minion. They have a 50% chance to hit you. Now subtract your 45% Defense. That leaves 5% to hit. That's at the smallest 5% to hit, so there's no point to pile on more. Hence the term "soft cap." You can't effectively get more defense than that, even though you can still make the Defense number bigger.

So now lets make that minion an AV with a +35% chance to hit you (made up number). Instead of starting with a 50% chance to hit like the minion, the AV starts with an 85% chance. Now your 45% Defense reduces the AVs To Hit to 40%.

That's where more defense, or stacked up To Hit debuff comes in handy. The "soft cap" is actually a minion soft cap. It's not the cap for anything better. Even just a higher level mish and the yellow or orange minions will have +5% or + 10% To Hit you. You need 55% defense to floor the latter. Or a bigass To Hit debuff.

/Traps is good because it does a little of everything. /FF would be tedious for a youngster to play, I think. 8 buffs every two minutes, could be boring.

Traps MM: Summon FFG, you're good to go. Run in, toe bomb, watch stuff die. It would be very similar to a brute.

Pain MM: run in after the /Traps guy, mash heal button.

I see MMs as ideal for both kids. You may have to summon for them.


Then have dad and mom play the cors (or cor and dom). Apply debuffs, heal when needed, focus fire to bring down the dangerous stuff. This should work, although I have no direct experience playing with kids.

I took absolutely everything in /Pain.

1. My primary is Dark/, which is pretty loose, so I had available power picks.

2. More healing is more healing:

3. Soothing Aura heals a little over time. It's a great downtime reducer and will automatically heal lesser damage so I just concentrate on the big stuff. It nearly doubles my AoE healing (do the numbers) and doesn't require that I mash a button.

4. Share Pain is my big heal. When someone takes the alpha and you have to bring them back up fast, Share Pain will do it faster and better. Plus it's a self buff, so why not? Moar damage, pls. I took this early and slotted the heck out of it.

5. Soothe is the stop gap between Nullify Pain and Share Pain. I can use both Share Pain and Soothe on the same target to quickly heal a lot, or I can just use Soothe (which has no side effects) to top off teammates. I slotted Soothe just behind Nullify Pain and Share Pain (and I took Soothe later too, in my 20's. Share Pain I took right away.).

In the Mission Architect, one of the villain groups is "Pets". You can select that group, then there's a customize button that allows you to change some colors.

There's no other customizations. No weapons, no changing faces or hair styles or size, nada. Just colors. This is MA only, not anything special on Test server or anything you can access in game for your toon.

It's true that you can edit some pets in the MA. Whether we as players will get customizable pets... I'd be surprised if the player base got power customization but MM pets were left out.

You can turn some of the plates of the Assault Bot colors. The result looks quite nice, a good combination of color and metal. The bruiser, you can adjust his hair color, shirt color, pants color, and boots color. There was no way (that I saw) to access or color the upgrades. Assault Bot and Bruiser were the only two that I played with.

I saw no way to apply patterns, or chest emblems. A bit of a bummer, that.

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Awesome power I agree...but the wind-up is very cartoony.

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Just imagine hearing "IT'S CLOBBERING TIME!" during the animation.

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Yeah, I agree, KoB is awesome. It's great for the SS set.

JB can go jump in a lake. Seriously, why do people even respond to his nonsense?

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BTW, I think you did the right thing by skipping the personal attacks, but you could go either way.


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Just to clarify, he can have it both ways. Take the personal attacks at low levels. Then around level 24, once you have SOs and the second Prot Bot, use your second build and spec out of the attacks.

I did that the second time I leveled my Bots/FF and it worked out really well. I skipped my travel powers, got the temp travel ones, and then at 24 swapped the two personal attacks out and got my travel powers. Sweet.


BTW, if you do skip Stamina, you do NEED the two EndRedux in Equip Robot and Upgrade Robot.

I have a level 41 Dark/Pain that I like a lot. Dark/ is nice because it has Tenebrous Tentacles which locks down mobs. This is great solo or teamed. And the debufs Dark/ provides are nice too. Two big cones gives it some decent AoE performance.

Dark/ is also really loose. I took the first two attacks and the two cones, and I'm pretty sure that was it. /Pain you pretty much have to take every power, so Dark/ is a nice complement in that respect.

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and 2 kids, aged 8 and 10.

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I think these two will be your focus.

Mastermind's in bodyguard mode can also be easy to explain.

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This is a good point. Over on the MM forum some of are recommending two MMs and two something else. It might be good to give the MMs to the youngsters and let the adults run the other ATs. Of course with four computers in one spot everyone can take turns with each AT too.

Thugs/Traps, Thugs/Pain, Fire/Dark Corruptor, and some sort of Dom, Fire/Energy maybe.

Thugs for the overlapping leadership, and ranged shooty is good. Traps and Pain provide both support, buffs and debuffs. Fire/Dark for the big AoE and huge debuffs and lockdown in Fearsome Stare. The Dom locks everything down so the AoE from the other three can do it's job.

Or 2 Corrs and 2 MMs, or....


I like /Dark on the Corr, if you like /Dark (and you should). The Heal is bigger and so is Tar Patch.

I'd go one Thugs/Traps, one Thugs/FF (or /Pain), one Fire/Dark corr, and one Kin of some sort, maybe Ice/ or AR/ (or Rad?). Or consider a Dom or a Brute. The lockdown from a Dom would be great with three other classes piling on the AoE.

Traps is almost as good as /Poison for AV, and with Fire/Dark you'll right up there. /FF means almost no damage. /Pain is good at healing and later can Buff and Debuff big time. The Corr adds the really big /Dark. After that take whatever tickles your fancy. You can all still take leadership.

Not too bad. Here's a few things I noticed.

1. Consider taking your personal attacks. At low levels Bots/FF is known for it's slow damage. Adding a couple of attacks in there will speed things up.

2. Consider getting more Def in the bubbles earlier. You want at least 2 Def in them by level 22, and that probably means 3 slotted. This goes for Dispersion Bubble too. Slot this up right away.

3. Stamina is not needed for Bots/FF. Handy, yes, but you can survive without it, and it's a whole three power picks and a whole pool. There's a LOT of cheap +Recovery available in Def (Bubbles), Health (the Medicine Pool, which you have) and Pets. You can get the +Recovery in the IOsets and skip Stamina. On the down side it's kinda tough until you get at least +10% or so.

4. Take Aid Other earlier -- it's really handy when you still have only one Prot Bot.

5. Personal Force Field is not really needed. Delay this as long as you like. 49 or never is ok. Do NOT slot this. There's no point. Maybe one Recharge, or two IOs for the bonus. No more.

6. Tactics is nice around level 18 or earlier, where your pets start to summon at two levels below yours. Move this up if you can.

7. There's no Def in Hover worth buffing. Go for two Fly speed instead, they're nice. The -KB is ok.

8. Group fly is a huge accuracy debuf. Run this and teams will kick you. Just saying. Also, Assault is not really worth it for Bots, imo

9. The Wide Area Web Grenade IS worth it. Get it. Power Boost and Scorpion Shield are good choices too.

There's Merc/TA, which goes well thematically too. There's not that many Stormies out there either. I bump into some, bot it doesn't seem often. Maybe Zombie/Storm or Ninja/Storm.

The default button "Follow" in your tray does NOT set bodyguard mode. It sets Aggressive stance for some reason.

To fix this, right-click on the Follow button in your tray, and choose Edit from the pop up menu. Backspace over the word "Agressive" and type Def in it's place. There must be a space between Follow and Def. The whole command should look something like this: petcomall Follow Def

The guns are handy as you level. I took the first two attacks and didn't regret it. You may wish to use your second build later to remove one or two of those attacks.

Nothing from your /Pain Secondary is skippable. I delayed Soothe and took Share Pain because it was larger. Nullify Pain is the small heal, and Share Pain is the big one. I did eventually pick Soothe, later in the 20's, just because two heals means more healing.

From Thugs you must of course take all your pets and their upgrades. Oh, and Gang War.

Stamina will be required for this too, I think. Leadership is good but not absolutely required. However Tactics is quite nice.

Your travel power is skippable. Make sure to get the Temp Travel powers, and don't forget to buy Jet Packs in Grandville.

Bots/FF. Untouchable and full of awesome sauce.

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Hm, I'm pretty sure there's no cutscene during the TF, but the SF has one. I think I know what thing you're referring to here, though...

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Yes, sorry. I've never adopted the whole 'call it this on one side, but this on the other'.

I wasn't sure which side the cutscene took place on, but it's the one where you're rendered unconscious.

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Definitely red-side SF. That cut *was* noticed. Everyone commented when I ran with the team in open beta.

I liked:

1. The better camera angles. Some cut scenes are just weird. This one is able to focus even on just a part of the scene. I liked where it just shows Reischman's (sp?) feet as he gets released from confinement. That was a very nice transition scene there. In fact, I don't remember the camera cutting around at all before.

2. The letter boxes as the scene ends. That was news. Nice work too.

Generally, I think part of the "story" aspects that people seem to miss in CoH is due to lack of nice cut scenes. I hope you do more like this, the game really needs it.

I'd love to see us be able to add cut scenes in the MA too. Just a thought.

Yup, that's how it works.

I wish it weren't though. I think having to do the relatively boring Newspaper mishes before getting any stories is pretty bogus, and one of my big complaints about red side.

I'd like to see the devs modify that. Have your broker introduce your first story-arc contact right away. I think that would work well and also relieve a lot of the tedium of what is often considered to be a paler red side experience.

Oh, well I can dream can't I?

Yeah, if it's working for you as is, great. I think I noticed my Prot Bots running out of end after going to RWZ at level 35 and doing some of Borea's street sweeping missions. Back-to-back Rikti spawns drained my Prot bots dry.

The keypad binds, described in the guides that are sticky at the top of these forums, are awesome. I bind a few common commands, but keep the keypad binds around for fine control if I really need them.

This cuts down on screen real estate too, since my tray is full as is. I wouldn't have room for 9 macros in my tray.

I think you have the right option. I'm sure it used to hide pet names completely. But it seems now to work as you describe. Maybe we should bug this.