While it isn't directly CoX related, I think everyone here can relate.

That's so totally me... guilty as charged.

Nope. Never do that.

*whistles innocently and looks at the ceiling*

Okay, now I'm really torn. Now that I've got my second level 50, do I work on another one of my existing alts, or do I start brand new alt? I've got 5 other alts to work on, and 5 open slots for new alts. Decisions, decisions...

Well, you could be like me....

If you were to make a new one, what would you roll?


As much as I hate the game before level 20, it is kind of nice to have a variety in levels.




Don't suppose anyone would want to help me transfer enough infamy to two chars to get them SO'ed out? I'll pay nicely for it.

Well, Free-Fall did the 2nd respec trial, and is now 39! Only 8 and a half more bars until I can get her some missions....

And I tell you, detonating the Warburg Nuke INSIDE the reactor room is rather spectacular looking.

You really have to wonder how you can detonate a nuke in there without blowing through the ceiling. I mean, it's supposed to be an orbital missile, right? Of course you also have to wonder how I got it into the Praetorian dimension to fire on Infernal...

Hey, I chucked that thing at Tyrant with Zoot. Whatever works ;-)

For some reason I have the mental image of a bunch of panicky "WTF! THE REACTOR'S BLOWING!?!" messages from Free-Fall's teammates.

Well for that matter, look at the robot and merc Mastermind summons...how do the mercs and supplies parachute through 5 floors of a high tech lab?


And there is nothing like forcing your SG into running the TV respec trial, and having the dark servant kill the DD by going after the proximity bomb as the DD and troller go running past.

About the pet detonating the bombs...

Good thing we "ghosted" to the final room in the reactor... I *TOTALLY* forgot about the bombs and reading your post just reminded me of them. That would mean that George* would have detonated the bombs as we ran past them











*George = Free-Fall's pet singularity, as in "I will call him George, and I will hug him and pet him and squeeze him and love him and I will..."

Hehe, yeah. Though it is pretty funny to see. We lost at least half our team to the bombs, otherwise we pretty much just plowed through everything. Then we're all standing around waiting for what we thought would be the last wave. but nothing came, so we continued to wait...a hugging porter was out in the corridor and I found him and kicked his ass and it was a success.


Y'all hear about Recluse's Victory and what all is going on there?

I know its a 40-50 PVP zone and its a Heroes vs Villians setup.

But as for the unique mechanics of the zone, not much. I've heard mutterings that it's going to be the zone to go to get your Villians as heroes and Heroes as villians.

For me, though, CoX is wearing thin. There's nothing to DO outside Missions and there's no incentive to build an economy. So right now I'm loading up World of WarCraft. I bought the game when it first came out, but never installed it. I won't stop playing CoX, but I'm gonna take a break from it, come back when I7 goes online, hopefully get a free respec to tinker with my characters and generally find some stuff to bring me back into the CoX universe. But right now I want to do something other then the tedious missions.

Well with CoX, it's never really been about the missions...it's about the community. I can do the same mission 8 times within 24 hours, and it can be a blast because of the team. It's amazing what finding a great, active SG can do for the experience as well. But there are definitely times when solo, that I get extremely bored with doing mission after mission. Course sometimes solo is better than dealing with moronic PUG's.


As for Recluse's Victory, get this...you go through the 'Ubelman Portal' to an alt reality, where you can do capture the flag type runs to capture bunkers giving you access to weapons. Also, each side will have access to three terminals that give you giant mechs - like giant spiders and the Kronos Titan. Then when things really heat up, States or Recluse will show up to help turn the tide.

No doubt that the community is great, but I'm so sick of battling the forces of good and evil in the same three mission setups. Even in stellar teams, it gets ho-hum after awhile. Especially since most of the people I team with (While great people) tend to just want to farm the same mission over and over again - and that's where I'm getting tired of the game. When you come right down to it, the experience isn't that huge for a game about spandex clad loons. I'm finding more and more I'd love to do something - ANYTHING - besides hunt useless badges and grind missions with even the most well meaning team.

Why not give shops where people can unleash their creative side? Custom Costume Pieces? Custom Powers (That act like Temp Powers in that they can't be slotted so things don't go totally insane)? How about the ability to create a secret identity and follow a "Career" path that lead into Missions? At least that way I feel more a part of the world then some gofer for any random joe on the street.




Heh - Giant Mecha Summonables, eh?

Well I won't argue with some of that, and I think that I7 will make you somewhat happier. With the increase in custom costume pieces, such as tuxedos, trenchcoats, so on and so forth. And we might be able to craft temp powers from empowerment stations.

It would be nice if Posi's arch nemesis thing ever became real, where over the course of your hero's career you would get your own rogue gallery. States also has some super secret project for the end game heroes.

That would DEFINITELY make me happy. Especially if you could design said Rogues/Heroes.

Following on the Skulls Backgrounder, they did a new one for Hellions. An interesting note in the "Top Secret" file... (emphasis mine)



Skyway? We all know about Steel, but Skyway is where the Trolls have their raves, not where the Hellions start their fires. Possible future content?

http://www.cityofheroes.com/gameinfo/villa...s_hellions.html

Are there even Hellions in Skyway? I can't remember...

None that I know of. Which is one of the reasons I'm scratching my head on this.

Note that before the fires. there weren't any Hellions in Steel either.

Probably a hint at new content - hell, ANYTHING to get poor neglected Skyway some love.

Just like the Troll AV lurking in The Hollows, according to their backgrounder.

That would be sweet. Then I could potenially have my villains take on their heroic counterparts (or copies of, anyway) to fulfill their bios.

Screw giving Skyway something.

Faultline, damnit! Give us a reason to go to Faultline othr than "Defeat 15 Vahzilok!"

Silly Skyfire, Faultline is a myth.

Well, I actually hope they don't go and add fires to Skyway, and I can't really see them doing that anyways. I'm thinking in the 'article' the mention of Skyway was a typo.

As for the archnemesis/rogues gallery thing...I don't think it would be as customizable as y'all would like. Basically the idea was that you'd get tips about a villain, and as time went on, you would gather enough tips making yourself an archnemesis, meanwhile your nemesis would start to pop up inside mission until the point where you had it with it and you'd set off to take the hugger down, resulting in a short story arc deal. You do this several times with other archnemeses, and then they'd all break out and hunt your ass down.

In other news:

I discovered the joys of the Elite Boss change for Arch-Villains. Had a Nemesis Rex mission yesterday where the "AV" was optional, but 2 of us had no problem tackling him as an Elite Boss. Right now I have Countess Crey on my plate, but I'm looking for a team to take her on. Darn psionics.

I still love the game, but I am starting to get to a point of logging in and thinking "meh, now what?" My scrapper hit 41 last night and I started him on the "Body Mastery" epic pool, so he now has Focused Accuracy. Looking forward to Laser Beam Eyes so I can scrast a bit, and then Energy Torrent which I'm hoping will be fun, as I have fun with it on my blaster. But, other than that, I'm beginning to run into a bit of boredom at times. I suppose part of it could be one of my best teammates, Bluedood, has gotten a Real Life interest that prevents him from being on as often as he usually was. Finding new compatible teammates is difficult for me, because I have a specific style of play I like to follow, and most don't mix well with me.

I still miss the days of the tank bringing stuff into a nice tight group around a corner. I'm not referring to herding the entire map into one spot, but one or 2 groups into a nice tight-knit group so that my blaster can lay down some AoEs, or my scrapper can use his Whirlwing Sword to good effect, etc. Also allows us to be closer together making the PBAoE healers' jobs easier, and PBAoE controllers' holds easier. Since the tank nerf (which I mostly agree with), tanks just don't herd to corners anymore. Try mentioning that in a team and everyone goes ape on ya.

As someone who VERY much wants to play this game, but for reasons of finance, time, and computer power can't...

I envy you all.

Looks like so much fun, though.

Yeah, then you start playing and you make your first char and you're driven to level up and it takes up all your free time to get to that next level to get that next power or enhancement slots. Then you go and make another char and want to level it up and so on and so forth and before you know it you've invested thousands of hours into 12 characters.

Then you wish you sometimes never got started in the first place. XD



And in other news, all you anti stalker folks can be happy...one shotting is going to be removed from PvP. As if this is a huge surprise, but I guess we'll have endless rants about two shotting now.

Though if you ask me, storm fenders and trollers deserve to be one shotted in PvP.

The end to one-shotting is a joke. As you said, it'll just be two-shotting now. AS followed by brawl....

Not a big deal to me, though. I just don't do any of the PvP stuff.

Actually it isn't a complete joke, and it will actually spare trollers and defenders from their immediate demise - if the stalker isn't using inspirations. If you manage to get out of melee range fast enough following AStrike, it would require the stalker to get back into melee range to finish you off with whatever attack. In that same amount of time you could pop a few respites or a teammate could heal you.

The only stalkers that really are not affected by this change are claws and spine stalkers because they have a ranged attack, allowing them to follow up in an easier and quicker fashion.

It's still a poor solution to a problem that can't really be resolved, anyway. Players will still whine about being "one-shotted" in PvP. If you don't want to be attacked by other players, then don't travel through PvP zones. They aren't required, so if you don't like it, why are you there?

Now, what I don't like about it if you are a PvP player is that some ATs really are boned when it comes to PvP survivability. I know my defender would just get laughed at in PvP because he can't do anything to defend himself from any one of the following:

- Greater damage than he can heal himself.
- Any status attack (holds, mostly).
- TP Foe (another can of worms).
- Any foe that can reasonably heal itself.

My defender has pathetic damage, no holds, no defenses, and since the great endurance "tweak" can no longer pull off his master trick of draining endurance to drop toggles, etc. Thus, the usual result is my defender (if he ever is in a PvP zone), gets TP'd to a foe, held, then dead. If I manage to break free, the damage output from the foe is usually much greater than I can overcome with transfusion. Attacking is no help because of the pathetic amount of damage he does. Flying/running away is useless because he just get's teleported back again.

Now, that's using a specific AT with a specific build. There are, of course, builds that survive quite well in PvP, but these are usually not the ones getting one-shotted.

I do have one beef with PvP, though, that I seriously think should be looked at. Stalker's hide. The defense bonus still seems in-place even after they are visible. A recent playaround with a Stalker in Bloody Bay that had 5 of us going after one Stalker, we could not hit him, ever. Even after his hidden AS on one of our teammates, and he's shown to us in all glory. We never hit him. It was not because of super reflexes (he wasn't super reflexes to start with), but 6-slotted defense in hide. IMO, the defense from Hide should disappear as soon as your character appears.

Now, I just avoid the PvP zones. I'm still trying for the 5-hour badges when I'm really bored, but mostly given up on them because they are hopelessly bugged (my Warshade has spent close to 8 hours in Bloody Bay and still doesn't have the damn thing).

My overall point is - and I got a bit sidetracked - I don't think the "one-shot" fix will really fix anything. Just cause further complaints that the fix isn't working. Players will still complain about "unfair" PvP tactics.

There is nothing wrong with hide in PvP. It only gives a large defense bonus when you are 'Hidden' and at that for most sets it is AoE defense. When you are not 'hidden', the defense from it is on level with that of stealth or combat jumping. The stalker most likely had used a few lucks, or was just plain lucky...I've had similar things happen with heroes not being able to hit me thanks to just their unlucky rolls.


And taking a defender into Siren's solo and expecting to be any sort of threat is like running up to an elephant with a butter knife and thinking you'll kill the damn thing.

I don't think it really matters if the defender is solo or not. My point wasn't about being solo or teamed. It was just the survivability of a defender in a PvP environment. If teamed, there's less chance of problems for the defender, but you can bet the defender/controller/blaster will be the first targets of choice by many enemies that can one-shot.

I recently read through the proposed concept for how they are handling this, and it doesn't sound like a wonderful save to me. *IF* you're character's health goes from 100% to 0% in "a fraction of a second" it stops at 1%. That's the only time it kicks in. I suppose if you're fast enough to react and can hit the green skittle inspiration in time, or a teammate can hit you with heal, this will be OK. BUT, it doesn't seem to take into consideration DoT or the unlikely scenario if you go from 100% to 0.5% in "a fraction of a second." Nor does it seem to work if you were just unfortunate enough to, say, be dropped from a rooftop by someone using TP foe, take 2 points of falling damage, and then AS'd by the stalker at the bottom. A difficult setup, but rest assured I'm sure we will hear about it.

The good news is, it will apply in PvP and PvE. Thus, squishies getting one-shotted by AVs or Shadow Cysts may not occur as often.

After *FAR* too many Warburg missions, Free-Fall has finally dinged to 40!

Here she is in her new "civilian" looks, relaxing in Pocket D.



Now I can finally get her some missions...

Grats again!


And boooo, no I7 on test til the end of the month probably. Though it appears that Masterminds will be getting a buff/tweak, though geared towards PvP, but will have affects on PvE. I guess that's good news for those of you who play them.

(Nekrosys laughs maniacally at that Mastermind buff news)

I wouldn't get too excited just yet. There have been many, many items that the devs have implemented that they view as positives for specific AT's, but then the fandom feels rather different - such as defiance and vigilance.

One person over at the CoH board made the comment that they hoped it was like a taunt or confuse like power with henchmen. Where only a particular henchman could be attacked - resulting from a taunt,, or your reticle would go random and some foes would con as friendly and others as foe.


And in other news, it also appears that the patron powers are not as one dimensional as I feared. Posi revealed one of the powers from Black Scorpion - a nullifier mace...however, the effect would vary from AT to AT.



I wonder if this means if you pick Mako, you could fling sturgeon spirits instead of shark spirits...

Kidding!

Hurray Level 20!

New costume and EVERYTHING!

But it says I got something called the spells of power, and I want to put a cape on The Protagonist(it said you may now access COV_DVD_EDITION_CAPE at tailor).

So, what menu do I find the cape under, and what are the spells of power?

Also, Pic of Protagonist's new costume:

This is where he goes all god-mode on everybody.

Have to go and do a specific mission to actually get your cape. At least on the CoH side of things. Since my Stalker is nowhere close to cape-age, I'm not entirely sure if it's the same.

To unlock the cape, you have to go back and talk to Kalinda (or now in some cases, Burke). She'll send you on the way to get your cape. It's like 2 and a half missions - half because you are sent to talk to a guy first, then you actually do missions. Last mission is what earns you the cape.

When the cape is available to you, the options to modify it will appear under the bottom of the regular costume options.

And Spells of Power is a Salvage Item.

So I've learned taking a dominator into a zone like Siren's without a good team...is probably the most masochistic thing you could ever do. People wonder why all you see is stalkers and brutes in places like Siren's... It's because you can't compete with a group of solo stalkers or a small team of em for that matter.

This isn't a stalker bash by any means, because it's not a problem of the AT. But rather the players. In a PvP setting, a dominator would, and should be a stalker's best friend. Not only do you increase the odds of a stalker doing a successful AStrike, but stalkers can crit on held foes without being in hide. However, between the heroes beating you down every 30 seconds because you are the only thing they can see and you have no back up to help you survive, and between stalkers showing up every time you get a hero held - then proceeding to AStrike it and get the kill... There is simply no way for a corruptor, dominator and in most cases a mastermind to survive.


And on a similar note... hug the 'Reformed' badge.

@Stalk-obot on the EU Defiant Server

For the stalker who you couldnt hit he was probably a SR which has the best def in the PVP zones and is hard to hit with the 50% acc modifier in PVP as opposed to the 75% from PVE, that or was a ninja blade as divine avalance stacks def at an alarming rate. Hide is not a great defence and when hidden with 3 +3SOs the def bonus is only 11.88% and is much less when unhidden but I dont have those numbers to hand.

My stalker is a somewhat unique concept and hide is my only defence as have just that and Entropy sheild from the Energy Aura secondary powerset and if I get hit I get hit hard so its not hide that was the issue. Suffice to say it has served me well as have racked up over 1500pvp points (Thanks cryptic for periodically deleting my score so i kept my interest, sadly this bug has been fixed now) I can run flight, stealth, hide and entropy simultaneously with no endurance degredation so that should i need to drop and run ss is already on, entropy protects me well from troller effects and I am rarely caught, it benefits from being maximum resistance from the word go so just a couple of end reds are required there.

I have next to no defence but thats because I built him as a striker not a scrapper, I also didnt want any further end draining toggles as always had this build in mind.

Some of the pool powers were took at different times and slots placed at different lvls but this is how his powers stand at the moment. It looks crap but I think most who I have fought will say that it works effectively

Oh and I do know that the 4th damage slot does next to nothing but its that extra little bit that counts in pvp

---------------------------------------------
Exported from Ver: 1.7.5.0 of the CoH_CoV Character Builder
---------------------------------------------
Name: Name ?Stalk-obot
Level: 32
Archetype: Stalker
Primary: Spines
Secondary: Energy Aura
---------------------------------------------
01) --> Lunge==> Acc(1) Acc(3) Dmg(3) Dmg(19) Dmg(29) Dmg(31)
01) --> Hide==> EndRdx(1) DefBuf(5)
02) --> Barb Swipe==> Acc(2) Acc(5) Dmg(11) Dmg(31) Dmg(31)
04) --> Spine Burst==> Acc(4)
06) --> Assassin's Impaler==> Acc(6) Acc(7) Dmg(7) Dmg(15) Dmg(15) Dmg(17)
08) --> Build Up==> Rechg(8) Rechg(9) Rechg(9)
10) --> Entropy Shield==> EndRdx(10) EndRdx(11)
12) --> Hasten==> Rechg(12) Rechg(13) Rechg(13)
14) --> Super Speed==> EndRdx(14)
16) --> Placate==> Rechg(16) Rechg(17) Rechg(19)
18) --> Hurdle==> Jump(18)
20) --> Impale==> Acc(20) Acc(21) Dmg(21) Dmg(27) Dmg(27) Dmg(29)
22) --> Health==> Heal(22) Heal(23) Heal(23)
24) --> Stamina==> EndMod(24) EndMod(25) EndMod(25)
26) --> Stealth==> EndRdx(26)
28) --> Hover==> EndRdx(28)
30) --> Fly==> EndRdx(30)
---------------------------------------------
01) --> Sprint==> Empty(1)
01) --> Brawl==> Empty(1)
01) --> Assassination==> Empty(1)
02) --> Rest==> Empty(2)
---------------------------------------------

the hero builder here is useful in running through a concept and checking the numbers too, they may not be 100% but it gives you a good idea.

http://home.comcast.net/~SherkSilver/index.html

Definitely an interesting build, but in PvP as a Stalker, it's definitely doable..especially with superspeed and spines. EA is awesome for PvP with all the resistances entropy shield provides.




Another note: I really don't like people who are level 20 and above and don't understand how to use the team search window. I can't say the number of times I am soloing on a mission and I get a tell 'Hi, is there room on your team for...?' Like the fact that my name shows up in blue and other people show up in grey in the team search means nothing.

PH34R TEH MIGHTY BOSS_NAME!!!

Oh crap!
It's Player_Name, can't we work something out?

I had a mission recently with tons of Wefer Jaegars. They would all shout "TEXT" when they saw me.

One more "buggy" picture...



It's Archon Archon Manuella! The Archon Archon so nice nice, they had to name him twice, twice!

I keep trying to get on, but the updater keeps giving me this weird message that says "Unknown message: patchwork 20"

I even tried reinstalling the freakin' thing, but to no avail.

Anyone know how to solve this problem?

Mmm. 'Fraid not... Never heard of that.

New screenshot time...

Amazon Grace meets her twin!!!