mousedroid

Finally got back around to that mission, and I beat it without dropping or outlevelling it.

Know what the key to it was? Not temp powers - didn't use any; not accolade powers - didn't even bother toggling them on; not even inspirations, I used four or five blues to build end between domination instances and an occasional yellow, but no purples or oranges. The key was that wonderful little power, Confuse.

Thank you to Groota, and anyone else who clued me in to the fact that EBs don't have high resistance to Confuse. I suffered one defeat right at the start when I tried keeping confuse on Polyphemus without popping domination. The next time, I popped dom, laid a couple layers of confuse on him and then alternated between that and damage to chip away his HP. It got really dicey when I was ambushed by another EB (or maybe boss, I didn't look closely) in the middle of fighting Polyphemus. Fortunately I was able to confuse that guy and somehow keep Poly confused too. Poly took the other guy out and the other guy chipped away at Poly enough that I was able to defeat him without dom, and without him getting in a single hit.

The rest of the mission and the other bosses/EBs in it went much more smoothly using this strategy, so thanks again for the suggestions!

Wishing you luck on keeping the Coyotes, Hericane. As a life-long, dyed-in-the-wool Penguins (and for that matter Pirates) fan, I know how nerve-wracking it can be waiting to see whether you're going to lose your team.

Oh, duh. I knew you could unslot enhancements during a respec, but I forgot that you could save ten of them in your tray rather than just cashing them in.

OK, I might be about to learn something new here, but are you guys saying that you can combine TO/DO/SO enhancements without slotting them first? I was under the impression that the only way you could combine enhancements was to either have two of them slotted and use the combine feature, or have one slotted and stack the other one on top of it.

Also keep in mind that with the full mask option, you can't remove/cover your human ears, which I just don't get.

Hard to say. I'm by no means a marketeer, but I do enjoy the aspect of buying and selling stuff to make my characters incrimentally better. I still haven't become bored with the regular content, but if I hadn't spent so much time at WW/BM and the crafting tables, who knows, maybe I would be.

The origin powers are

Throwing knives - Natural
Apprentice charm - Magic
Taser dart - Technology
Mutagen - Mutant
Traq dart - Science

I've never heard of any of these lighting an oil slick, but the only one I would imagine could is the taser dart?

ETA: Taser dart and apprentice charm both do minor energy damage, and Oil Slick Arrow says that ANY amount of fire or engery damage will ignite it, so it looks like either of those might work.

Yeah, I live alone and I rarely have visitors - many of my friends are ultra-feline-allergic - so my cats rarely have any human contact except me and they head for the hills anytime someone knocks on my door.

Oddly though they will lay on my screened in back porch while my neighbor mows his grass not 4 feet awy from them. I guess they figure if they can't get through the flimsy little screen it'll also keep out the big strange man with his noisey machine of death.

Olivia is quite the rarity. I have heard that upwards of 90% of orange kitties are male.

When I first found my cats, I had no idea what gender they were, so Jonesy's original name was Buffy, and Willow's original name was Xander.

First ever pictures of the two, while they were still living "in the wild":

Xander -----> Willow

Buffy ------> Jones

Yeah, I try to drop missions as little as possible because it feels like just giving up. I'm musch more likely to broadcast for help than to drop a mision. Unless it's a low level mission I've done a dozen times, or it's the like the Defeat the Infected mission where the travel time:reward ratio is high.

I'll definitely try the confuse route. Does confuse affect AVs as readily? I'm guessing no based on my experience with Rommy, but maybe his Nictus buddies clear his mind?

There is a farm I pass on the way home from work that has the world's best sweet corn every August. I don't what they use to grow it, or what variety of corn it is, but I could eat a dozen ears at one sitting. And still have room for their corn.

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Figures. Meh.

*crosses fingers and hopes a dev will answer some of this*

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Figures? Look at it this way - your friends want real numbers to decide whether to play the game or not. What if NC released those numbers and your friends (and other people who see the information) decided, "Geez, that game's dead, it must suck," without ever playing the game to see if they liked it?

Or, what if the numbers were high enough that your friends joined and found they loved the game, but three months from now NC releases updated numbers because someone asks for them, and it sows subscriptions have declined by 5%? Then your friends (and maybe other people) decide, "That game's dying! I'm not palying a dying game any more!"

The upshot of it is, releasing subscription would be of little to no benefit to NC, and would be far, FAR more likely to lead to people drawing their own, likely negative, and probably incorrect conclusions about the state of the game.

There's a 14 day trial - have your friends play it. If they don't like it, they have wasted very little of their time, and none of their money. If they do like it and sign up, then the number of subscribers has just increased, and the game just got a little better.

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I have had 5 cats. All have either been eaten by foxes, mauled by dogs or hit by cars.

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I find that there are very few foxes, cars, and dogs in my house. Did you never consider not letting your cats outside where all those terrible things could happen to them?

Anyway, my cats are two years old now, so most pictures of them these days involve them sleeping. As a result, I give you some pictures from when they were smaller and friskier:

Willow hiding under an upside down cat bed.

Jones trying to flush Willow out from under the upside down cat bed.

Success!

"I'll get you for that!"

Jones makes a strategic retreat.

"This is how you capture a pillbox."

"Oh, hi there."

A cut scene from Alien - Jones versus the xenomorph.

"Did you find my Stray Cats CD yet?"

"No, look for it yourself."

Only bad experience I can recall lately was a temporary situation on a Posi TF on another server.

We were on the office mission against CoT. On the second(?) floor, there was one of those corridors that splits and loops back together. It was right before the elevators to the third floor. There was a group of mages in the right hand branch of the corridor - we ran into them and they handed our butts to us.

Most of the team wiped, but a few of us made it into the vators. The team leader was either new, or just over anxious and while we were waiting for the others to get back from the hospital he aggroed one or two of the third floor spawns, which proceded to wipe out the rest of us.

The three that wiped on the third floor went to the hospital about the same time the ones who wiped on the second floor ran right back into the killer second floor spawn. Needless to say, they wiped again. When I got back to the mission, I ran ahead and made sure it was safe to go around the second floor spawn by taking a left in the split corridor. It was.

In team chat I said something like, "When you get to the split corridor in front of the vators, go LEFT and you'll miss the killer spawn." I then waited right where I was and watched as the first person to come down the corridor went right and ran right into the spawn.

I said, "No, Player-X, your OTHER left."

As player X went to the hospital, I watched Player Y and the team leader run down the corridor and go right. "LEFT!" I yelled, "GO LEFFFFFT!!!" Too late - two more players off to the hospital.

Eventually the whole team got back to the mission at the same time, and we decided to try to clear that spawn since apparently no one but me could figure out how to get past them by simply not running head-long into them. We succeeded, moved on to the third floor, and with a little difficulty, but significantly more team work we cleared that floor.

When we finished that particular mission, two of the players declared the TF "hopeless" and "a waste of time" and dropped. Another dropped during or after the next mission. By the halfway point we were down to three, but the leader was beginning to listen to strategic suggestions. The rest of the TF went exceedingly well.

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I has it! Today, round about eight months after my fuzzy old friend, Frisk E Cat, passed away, I have acquired awesome kitten power ^_^

Their names are Molly

And Olivia ^_^

They are a pair of loving sisters that I picked up today from a place called Forgotten Felines.

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Providing a home for homeless pets is holy work. Thank you!

Wishing you much fun with your new feline overlords!

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I think I mentioned this one other time, but I got my cats from very close to home - they were born to a feral mother under the shed in my back yard. I adopted two of them myself (two years ago this week as a matter of fact), tok one to the SPCA where she was adopted within 2 weeks, and the fourth kitten to another shelter, but I'm not sure what happened to her. Their mother is still feral, but after trapping her, and having her spayed and innoculated, she has become a real sweetheart and comes to visit me every morning and evening. She even sleeps on my back porch on those bitter cold PA winter nights.

We need a pet pictures thread I think because I don't want to sidetrack BBT's thread with pictures of Willow, and Jones and their mother, Shadowcat.

Origin: Natural
Archetype: Controller
Primary Powerset: Gravity Control
Secondary Powerset: Kinetics
Real Name: Frederick Strauss
Age: 42
Race: human
Hometown: Vienna, Austria

History: Born in 1818, Frederick Strauss was a brilliant mathematician, exceeding even Pascal or Euler. However, unlike his predecessors, Frederick's very brilliance is what caused him to remain unknown. At age 15, while studying at the Universität Salzburg, Frederick discovered a mathematical equation so elegant that it unlocked the very fabric of time. Curiousity got the better of his wisdom, and Frederick stepped into the rift that opened in his boarding house room. He became lost in the fourth dimension.

For more than two decades Frederick lead a solitary existence as he studied time from the inside, searching for a way out of his temporal prison. By the time he finally discovered a formula that allowed him to unwrap time from around himself, Frederick was 41 years old and significantly changed. His mathematical understanding of the fourth dimension allowed him to create localized time distortions with his mind - either speeding up, or slowing down time around other persons and objects. He could even, with great effort, create time warps through which solid matter from another time and place could be drawn or propelled.

But Frederick's understanding of time was not perfect. He himself was not able to select when in time he reappeared. He was understandably distressed to find that while he had aged only 26 years, the world he returned to was 175 years removed from when he had left. It was 2008, and Frederick was no longer in Salzburg. He was in Paragon City, a city of beings of immense power and immense potential for both good and evil. Alone for so many years, Frederick sought out the companionship of others and was acousted by a group of thugs because of his strange attire and inability to speak English. Locking the street gang in a localized time warp before they could do him further harm, Frederick was assisted by a passing hero. Deciding that he should use his knowledge and control of the fourth dimension to protect other denizens of this beseiged metropolis, Frederick adopted the costumed identity of The Fourth.

Favorite Color: White
Favorite Beverage: Bordueax
Favorite Food: Wild pheasant

Personality Quirks: Alone for most of his life, Frederick is somewhat distant from other people. He lacks social awareness, and his disaffectedness unintentionally comes off as snobbery. Frederick will not use mechanical means of flight, nor will he ride in automobiles because he does not trust anything that requires the controlled detonation of combustible gases.

Other Information I may have forgotten: Frederick's only living relative is his orphaned great, great, great, great niece Anna Winters who is currently enrolled at Paragon University on a gymnastics scholarship.

Yeah, I have to say, as universally well accepted as the calendar wallpapers were - I at least never heard anyone say they sucked, which is a rare thing in this game - I have to wonder why they didn't do it again.

I know the first set was designed around Issues and we haven't had 12 since they came out, but why not do one based around Zones, or one based on the cornerstone heroes or villains?

Was it too much of a drain on resources to have someone put these together? I would think with access to the artwork and a working knowledge of a graphics program it would take all of a couple hours to put these together, if that.

Was it too limiting to the staff? Sure people would've been up in arms if they'd changed the dates of 2xXP weekends, or the Rikti Raids, but did locking themselves into those dates for 12 months or so cause them to reschedule other important things? Did the November Rikti Raids cause I14 to be pushed back a month?

I just can't see any reason not to once again give the players something that they loved as much as they loved those calendars. Unless, the pessimist in me says, they actually have decided to do away with 2xXP weekends and the scheduled Rikti Raids, and they don't want even to take even more flak in light of the recent MA debacle and the pending release of the competion's game.

Diet Pepsi or Diet Coke. Diet Pepsi by about 3:1 though. Occsionally I'll go with Diet Mt. Dew if I am getting weary of colas. Sometimes water, but only if I'm really dehydrated for some reason.

Thanks, that's what I thought. I guess I just couldn't find the right page when I was looking for it this morning.

I don't know why Dominators get such a bad rap. My Dominator is probably my second favorite character, and by FAR my favorite villain. These levels are brutal, but like I said, I went through the 20s and 30s solo like a hot mental knife through butter. Granted, this is the only Dom I've played above lvel 20 so far, but until I hit this wall, I loved her.

Yeah, I can try confusing the mobs to fight the EB, but I have found that to rarely be effective. If I pull one mob over and confuse him, he's usually WAY less effective against the EB than I am. If I find a bunch of them and mass confuse them, one of two of them attack the EB and the rest just wail on each other. If only I could direct them to attack who I want.

I'm hoping the I15 Dom buffs will make this a little less frustrating, although it looks like I'm going to need to respec or at least rearrange my enhancements to get a lot more end reduction in my powers. either than or finally push for perma-dom status; or both.

Is there any way to see what upgrade codes you have applied to your account. I'm talking about the specific numbers 23H1-K324-SF8T-etc. I recently found another copy of the CoH collector's edition DVD set and wanted to e-mail a friend the code to apply to her account, so I scratched off the foil hiding the number. I then got distracted and stupidly left the box right near the one I used to upgrade my account. Now that I am getting around to sending her the code, I'm not sure which box is which.

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I apppreciate all the responses but the jist of the thread was whether anybody cares at all about which SG/VG is ranked first in overal prestige earned and not what your personal prestige totals are.

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Ah, well with that clarification: no.

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Oh. Yeah that wasn't clear to me at all. No, I don't care a whit about that.

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I'm just curious if a SG/VG prestige rank matters to the playerbase anymore.

I know when bases first came out there were prestige wars and if you were #1 in rank for prestige it was a matter of pride.

But that was then. Does anyone still feel the same way?

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It matters to me. I have worked hard to achieve #1 in my SG on Guardian. Of course it would've been even harder if anyone else in the SG was still active. My next goal: #1 in my VG on Virtue (I'm currently #6 I believe).

Happy b-lated b-day, Draxxs.

And Willow, you already gave Draxxs a great present - a "get out of jail free card" for the next b-day or anniversary he forgets.

Probably about 40 hours. This was also when I was in college and I spent an entire night hand-drawing a contour map for a surveying class (freshman pre-req for mechanical engineering). I lived at home, so it wasn't even like I could drop the map off in the morning and go back to my room and crash. I had to go to class the rest of the day and then home for supper with the parents. Plus it was finals week so I still had to study for the next day's exams.