Erydanus

This I have not observed. The mobs around Blue Steel and to the south seem to be around level 5-7 as I would expect. Now, up north in the red area, especially near the Pwn Shop where the Shining Stars arc gives you a mission to sweep skulls, I have seen level 12-13 Skulls. I thought that was deliberate because the new arcs kind of stretch the zone to be more 7-12 than 5-10. It is still a bit annoying because a certain designer who tended to do a lot of zone tweaking (WW) tends to make smaller pockets of spawns. So while there are some level 10 skulls RIGHT where they're supposed to be, there's only enough for about 1 player and when they get swept they take a while to recover. Meanwhile, all around that area are a lot of +2s and +3s. But saying there are level 15s all over the zone - that doesn't seem accurate to me and I've been running new characters through that zone since the Homecoming relaunch.

One of the stalker ATOs has the power to reset build up. If you're using that ATO, you're going to be able to use the Empower combo more frequently. Since Assassin always gets a build up power in its powersets to supercharge assassin's strike, having it get that on top of the Empower combo seems like double-dipping. Dual blades is highly rated for Stalker DPS, so having Empower combo linked to Build Up (and Placate) was probably a design choice creating a gate to prevent too much double dipping. Likewise with the Sweep combo. Every primary set that is used by stalkers has to have buildup, placate, and assassin's strike. That means that some of the sets are going to be adjusted around those powers replacing other powers. You also should not expect those sets to play the same for stalker as they do for other ATVs because stalkers play differently than other ATs. (Related example: staff stalkers lose the ability to change forms; they're in the attack up form at all times.) I personally think that the implementation wa pretty good for the launch of the set. Because stalkers now do play differently, maybe it could stand to be looked at or the times adjusted, but I'm kind of skeptical. If you think about the usual play of a Stalker, especially when the set was created, it was: Build Up, Assassin's Strike; if they lived, Placate and run away. If they didn't, then the friends may be coming for you (as Assassin's Strike didn't used to do an AoE fear to provide mitigation). So the way the Empower and Sweep combo are linked and branched makes sense: you start either of them and if the hit fails you use Placate to power up more and if it lands you switch to the AoE attack and nail anyone now coming after you. Weaken (debuff) and Attack Vitals (DoT) remain more frequently useable for a stalker who's going into more extended melee combat as they sometimes do now. So that preserves the identity of the set and the stalker gets the rapid attack feel of dual blades.

Phantom army are three spectral blasters who go nuts, run all over the place, and make a lot of trouble. Haunts are too well-behaved shadows that follow behind you and once you start to fight something they kinda go "hey boss we're gonna get in this guy's face for ya." I have no idea what the damage is but the haunts definitely do damage.

Sorry to bundle two bugs into one post but they coincide here somewhat. Bug 1: The cybertech long jacket (at least Male) is missing the ability to tint the inside of the trenchcoat tail directly. However it will pick up colors if you have the setting to copy colors across all slots enabled. Thus, the issue is not that the part is missing color channels, just the ability to select them in the costume editor. This item is basically a cape and needs access to inner primary and secondary color choices. Part: Upper Body -> Jackets ->Cybertech Long *note the relevant part counts as a CAPE just as with trenchcoat tails. However as this is in the jacket section and there's no multiple choice of tails you automatically get the standard matching one with Cybertech Long, and no tail at all with Cybertech Short. (I assume this is why it's not in the Trenchcoat category as it wouldn't match those forms.) Bug 2: There is a related color bug in the costume editor. Sometimes parts lose the selected color as you browse through them and go to the 2nd black and white colors (the 2nd and 9th choices on the top row of the color block I believe). This bug happens when you click on the specific item like Tights and mouse up and down the pop up list. I usually have it happen after moving a dozen lines up or down but not 100% of the time. I've never seen it happen if you restrict yourself to using the forward and backward buttons. Related to this, if you have applied colors across your costume, disabled that (for example to start tinting your hair) often when I pick a new item or change category for a slot, I'll find the default color is off black 1-2 and off white 1-9. If you change to jackets and then pick Cybertech Long it is treated as opening up a whole new category of parts and defaults to the 1-2 and 1-9 colors. WORKAROUND FOR BUG 1: I was able to work around this by saving my costume and editing it in notepad to apply the missing color: Fx Capes/N_Characters/N_Cyberpunk/CapeCyberpunkMale_02.fx Geometry N_Male_Cyberpunk_01.geo/GEO_Jackets_Cyberpunk_01 Texture1 !X_Jacket_Cyberpunk_02 Texture2 none DisplayName P828551227 RegionName "Upper Body" BodySetName Jackets Color1 0, 0, 0 Color2 76, 77, 255 Color3 0, 0, 0 Color4 76, 77, 255 Rows 3 and 4 in this example represent me copying over the proper main and secondary color (darkest Black 1-1 and Indigo Lavender 12-7). The values that were in the file when I loaded it were 31, 31, 31 and 227, 227, 227 -- off black 1-2 and off white 1-9.

I had that problem before too. I know EXACTLY what happened. You have bound "powexecname teleport" to the shift key only. There is no question this is the case because the reticle activates with just that shift button press. The click is simply a normal targeting click and not part of the bind at all! In my case this heppened because I constantly confuse lbutton and lmouse and misbound it using lmouse. Your bind should work, I'm thinking maybe you had a brain fart and typed lmouse like I tend to. If you rebind it, it should work as desired. If you have any question about this happening, just save your bindings and look at the text file.

I had a problem at first too but the issue was I have 2 installations of the game. I originally installed it to My Documents/My Games/ and the executable and my bind files and wdw.txt and all the stuff that the game runs on are dumped right there. Meanwhile I have folders for other games and an extra folder that says /coh. That /coh folder is a 2nd copy and not the one I'm running. When I put the data folder in there, it didn't work. When I moved it to the higher level it worked fine. Ugh, that folder is a mess I sorta think I may need to do some manual cleanup there.

Factual inaccuracy here I'm going to correct because Someone Is Wrong on the Internet: all your set bonuses affect YOUR PERSONAL ATTACKS in the primary. Any other applicable bonuses like global endurance reduction or recharge reduction bonuses affect your personal pet-specific equipping buffs and your ability to re-summon those pets faster. Plus additional support powers like tactics do affect your summoned pets.

I skimmed this thread and it sounds like people have really heard some bad advice tossed around. Though it is also possible people have misheard the advice tossed around; chat channels tend to go fast and I've witnessed someone only catching literally half the advice given to them which at times is worse than none at all. I'm also a little curious about which servers this kind of bad advice (like three level 50 generic damage IOs... ow) because on Excelsior help channel we do not let this kind of misinformation go by. The key points are: 1. three level 25 IOs are an economical way to max a parameter, like damage, without wasting much to ED's diminishing returns cliff 2. Enhancement diversification is not linked to slotting 3 enhancements, it's by the numbers: cracking 90% for most parameters and 50% for others like defense. 92-94% and 54-56% are the sweet spots. 3. IOs don't expire or need to be replaced so you don't have to worry about upgrading them suddenly, not even at 50. 4. At level 47 you may wish to reslot using level 50 IOs in which case 2 brings you near the ED cliff; especially true for powers like Health and Stamina you normally stick with generic IOs for 5. Many people find it's better to wait until 50 to do sets because the potency of level 50s is so high it adjusts how many slots you need. If you're focusing on just tuning the power (including Frankenslotting) then you know what the sweet spot targets are; most people using sets at 50 overslot powers in an effort to get set bonuses.

@Blackbird71 Ugh I feel you. What you're missing is you can save your windows options and leave your UI scaled up permanently. (I mean the game's unreadable until this is cranked to 120% for me). You know when you open up Menu - Options and that big window with tabs opens up, and there's the link to save options right there? The options covered there is like, profanity filter and misc stuff like that. On the window tab [Edit] at the bottom is an option to save window settings. There's also one for chat next to it. So here's my scenario: 1. hit P2W vendor, collect prestige enhancements to slot as I get new powers; sands of mu; nem staff or blackwand; Ninja or beast run and a jumping power. Prestige utility choice: INNER INSPIRATION to start generating medium & large inspirations. Rarely I will take Inner Mutation or Mystic Fortune if thematically appropriate. 2. /loadwindow /loadbinds /loadchat as necessary and then tweak anything that needs adjusting 3. Stand there at the tailor and make any adjustments necessary from costume/powers not coming out the desired color. It's free when you're low level (1-9). 3 B - costume slot 2: same as slot 1 but remove aura/cape/extra fancy bits that might get annoying like giant armored gloves. For example on my "Magician" character this slot loses the top hat. 3 C - costume slot 3, if applicable, simplify outfit more. For example on my "Magician" character this slot ditches the big fancy cape (as well as the top hat) so he's just in the Baron coat 3 D - Costume slot 4, Casual/civilian identity slot 3 E - costume slot 5, alternate outfit. If the main look is basic tights this might be something more casual like a robe; if the main look is casual like a biker jacket & pants, this might be more of a "combat suit" like Stealth, Exoproto, Defense, etc. 3F - costume slot 6, Hammi Jammies (total basic monocolor tights with no cape or sfx for high stress areas like a Hamidon raid.) One extra note about costume tweaking. Because the slots all inherit from your first costume it can actually be more costly to change them later than it would to start from a simple tights setup if slot 1 is really busy. If you've got a helmet, armored top, wings, aura and want a basic costume later it's very expensive because you're not just swapping Tights A to B you're actually changing the head and body modules and so on. So I sincerely do like to reset all the slots to something more basic. This is especially [glow=red,2,300]an issue with Soldiers of Arachnos [/glow]because the way the costume slots works has changed and we are starting with multiple slots and they're pre-filled. Slot 1 is on the NPC costume system, Slot 2 is on the PC system and it doesn't even inherit your height or face correctly. I've had a random look every time. At a cosmetic surgeon (back right nurse in Facemaker, or Trina in Pocket D's Tiki room) you can save costume slot 1, then load it on costume slot 2 with error warnings (you can ignore) to get your face, hair, and proper body sliders copied correctly. Then you need to create your default character look with those updated parameters, save it, and load it on all your other slots to reset them from being the rando design the system gave you. (On the original servers when you unlocked your bonus costume slot on an SoA at level 10, body scale and face copied over correctly to slot 2 and then propagated correctly, I believe. It is very fortunate we get free costume adjustments at low level to correct this system awkwardness.) 4. I might do 1 DFB for the accuracy boost temp power. At this time I'm only ok skipping to about level 5 so I can do radio missions and get the atlas park safeguard/mayhem

I'm sorry you didn't understand what he meant by how he was phrasing it. I can see how it could have been phrased a little better. I think I'm pretty good at sussing out the meaning of things people rush to express, but I'm glad we all understand the point now.

I just want you to know that the original devs DID change the xp curve because 35 to 50 was very bad. When the game launched 40 was the cap so the push from 35-40 was deliberately steep. It's not that bad anymore. It really isn't. I just had a character hit 35 recently and he's already 42 and I haven't done any any trials or TFs. I did do 4 mothership raids to get vanguard merits. But mostly I have just done the story arcs from Vanguard, some paper missions to do a 36-40 safeguard, and started on Tina Macintyre's arc. It's slow but steady solo process. Of course the general solo-ability of the character is a factor, but still, I believe in you!

Yep! It loads now! I'm glad your work can be appreciated by the community now! EDIT: Holy shit Arcanaville is back. You might want to add her to the tracker too. Devs + Arcanaville is a solid package. ;)

WELLL NOW that is really good to know, namely that it can potentially multi-proc.

Yesssss I could team with you and .... I do play mostly on Excelsior but terrifyingly I have a defender on Everlasting.

I actually don't like to give feedback on builds other than tuning powers here and there, and general choices. Lately I've been finding it wearying, so I will not be adding further comments. I'm sure you're well on your path to a solid build or two for your preferred playstyle!

Why there? I thought it would go better into a faster more spammed attack. As a psi stalker already in melee, if I get a bonus hide I'll probably jump to Mass Levitate if there's a lot of mobs or AS if there's a dangerous foe/boss I need to get instead. I am wondering if I am missing a subtlety here...

Well, with the clarification that Energy Font pulses a stun, and with the suggestion that we try to hit a lot of targets rather than spam single target, wouldn't that imply this set might work well in the AoE stun powers? I mean I could *has a thought, breaks off, checks to see if it can slot into Howling Twilight but finds it can not; too bad because that's a flat mag 2 and a temp pet that adds another mag would be great* er anyway, I could see sticking the proc into an AoE stun power. Say if you use Absolute Amazement the #s you get are: 59% Acc, 33% End, 90% Rech, 102% Stun. But you could yank the Stun mono piece from the AA set out because it's far beyond ED levels and the final bonus from AA is some mez resist. Then if you put the font proc in you get 100% rech and 89% stun. The major set bonuses from Absolute Amazement of 4% recovery, 15% Accuracy and 10% recharge time are preserved. The other thing I considered is a lot of the purples have overlapping set bonuses. Like at a glance it looks like the stun and hold sets are the same, the confuse set has 4% recovery and 10% recharge time ... with enough purple sets you might actually reach the point where you should shift to the ATOs just because you won't get those bonuses (though it would have to be a pretty rich build, I think.)

You're the one who is missing the point. That dude is saying go ahead and slot IOs at level 25 because it gets you in the ballpark of the numbers you'll be getting at 50. At 50 you can do better but it's not worth waiting.

That's really good info about the Energy Font. Thanks so much!

Wormhole is one of my favorite powers in terms of sheer fun. I have had a lot of problems with things getting shot all to heck with it despite trying to fly up and mess with the angle so as to try to slam them point blank into the floor and not spray them. I haven't reached it on my reroll of my original Grav controller yet but I was going to experiment with the Knockback to Knockdown IO you get from the summer blockbuster. If it works the way I expect it does, it will cause mobs to be teleported and land in a pile, fallen down and not sprayed. The real benefit from Wormhole to me was not to control mobs in the sense of delaying them coming to my groups but to drop them into damage patches and to feed my tank fresh meat. She'd put down her fire & ice patches and want more; actually the team I ran with had a lot of GTAOE so when we finished off the group we initially engaged, I'd try to grab a group from the side to exploit those damage fields still being in play. I remember an Eden Trial where the team was so vicious I was just literally throwing mobs at them like branches into a woodchipper. Wormhole was a foe delivery system! Dimension shift has changed since I last played but I would only ever use a phase shift in 1 circumstance: the team is about to be wiped and we need to intangibilize the foes and withdraw or regroup. Phase shifts just piss everyone off, at least it's now a toggle. I have always skipped this power. Lift has been changed since I played. Lift now specifically receives an extra damage packet if you use it on someone affected (not currently HELD by, AFFECTED by, like the slow effect is still on them) Gravity Distortion. That raises its usefulness above the immobilize. However, I took Crush anyway because I slot it as a (dot) blast. Honestly its biggest value is it is a mag FOUR immobilize which is pretty much there to make a boss take containment damage. The immob duration is fine out of the box ... so blast slotting is fine. Death is the strongest control. Except for Freakshow and Cimmerorans, as they self rez and have rezzers, respectively. Propel also gets this bonus "impact" damage and now has a small AoE knockdown and knockback effect that simulates the effect of a large object flying at 1-4 people. Crushing Field. Mmm it's damage is pretty low. All the controller AoE immobs are except plant's, it's double the other ones. If you look at Mids the baseline damage is 9 1/2 for Crushing Field vs 31 for Crush and 50 for Lift. When something does 1/3 of your basic damage the return on slotting it for damage is pretty questionable. On historical live I desperately slotted it for damage - I think I used Peroxisomes - and a damage proc maybe and it still just ... wasn't good for damage and ate up 6 slots. It's a great tool, especially since I run Grav/Rad so planting everything in lingering radiation/enervating field/radiation infection and locking them in place with an immob is hugely helpful. As to gravitational anchor's proc well ... maybe? is it really that helpful to have a rando mob be held by the immob? If you have the $ and want the set for its bonus I mean sure. I just would 3-slot or 4-slot that thing now (probably frankenslot it) and put my eggs in another basket. If you find you do spam it constantly a damage proc might be worth it to you. I think the main value of the AoE immob is keeping things in a spot so your acid mortar, poison trap, seeker drones, trip mine, and time bomb are all hitting them. Speaking of which after you place all that hardware, maybe you can wormhole the mobs onto them? If the knockdown conversion IO works like I think it will, that should be EFFING DEVASTATING. And by the way, there's your AOE damage that you're not coming into yet. At the end of the day Gravity is a single target damage focused set. Your secondary and your epic pool are gonna be where the AOE comes from. With Lift and Propel we can do single target damage that blows us way ahead of any other controller; great soloing, less valued on a team. But not without its place. One more thing about Singy. Singy has Crush, Lift, and Gravity Distortion and has them at approximately double the damage of a controller (because he doesn't get containment) and will spam them. The reason I said slot 3xDmg 2x Hold 1x Acc while leveling is that having your mini me out is a lot off extra damage and also sets up a lot of control. Since you just got it and have probably not slotted it up yet, you can do a little experiment to check one thing. Don't put any accuracy in Singy at first and put his combat log in a window tab by itself so you can see it later. And then see if Singy misses with any of his attacks. Ever. Because there was a group of us that had a suspicion that Singy only needs accuracy if you're fighting +3s and higher, or foes that debuff accuracy or have super high defense. But that could certainly have changed. But this is why I think at 50 a really good combo is 3 peroxisomes, 1 acc, the Edict chance for buildup, and 1 defensive IO (def or res, your preference). The other issue is your epic pool. If you go with a Patron pool you can also put those pet defense aura procs in your Arachnos minion and they'll share its protection with Singy because, again, having slotted those globals it counts as a set bonus and the aura is on YOU not them. Edit: let me clarify this I realize I was sounding like he was auto-hit or something and that's not the case; I was just trying to be dramatic. The thing is, two of his powers are 90% accuracy base and back when, we thought he had like a 10-20% innate accuracy buff which puts him over the cap so that he'd only be missing on those attacks on the 5% auto-miss chance if he was fighting up to say about a +3 or fighting heavily buffed foes (more likely I think). Lift is baseline accuracy so 75%+ a possible pet innate accuracy boost = you're still only rarely missing even level foes. But anyway this is why I think you only need 1 acc in him and then it doesn't have to be the first thing you slot.

Yeah and if you have memorized at least the 25-30 IO sets and outfit your alts with a complete set of 25 IOs and just level 25 IOs, you'll save about 8.2 million from 22-42 just on what you don't spend on SOs.

It was pretty ghastly when someone asked on Help if they should just wait for level 50 to even begin using enhancements. Someone a couple weeks ago who was DFB/PLd to 50 did in fact not slot enhancements to 50. This is no different than having no equipment at all when playing a WOW type game. DFB does grant a temp power choice at the end and "accuracy" buff is one of the options. This is enough accuracy to carry you to within striking distance of SOs as it lasts a week or until level 22. A few select accuracy DOs in powers that need them should let you get to 22. 20 to 22 might be a little rough but if you are this poor it will be ok, it's just two levels; maybe drops will carry you. At 22 raise funds in any of the ways outlined above such as selling salvage; another possibility is if you got any set recipe drops, then they might be worth selling on the AH. Most attack, heal, defense, and resist recipes sell well even as low levels (because the AH scales them up to the higher levels most people want). I did a cost breakdown between the cost of a full set of SOs at 22 (about 875K at store price) and crafting IOs (2.1million). Though 2.1 mil might sound like a lot you don't have to come up with it all at once. Back in the day we did not have instant SO sets until we were well established and carrying our lowbies. Often we'd just have accuracy and end mod to start and pick up more enhancements as we went along. There's nothing wrong with buying or crafting what you can and filling in as you play, just try to be thoughtful about what you slot first. And you can use some of your dropped SOs as filler; SOs at that level don't sell to vendors for that much. But focusing on IOs will really help you save money. (Now I've had people be very disdainful of this cost savings saying that any 50 should be crapping out money like mad: but I think they missed the point this is how you save money as you get to 50 in the first place! And not everyone is interested in farming. A lot of people want to get to 50 and then do story arcs they've missed and so on!) My full guide on the cost effectiveness of IOs and crafting them is here: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/index.php/topic,3042.0.html and Zolgar did a guide to starting money for enhancements here: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/index.php/topic,3135.0.html This whole situation with people feeling really poor reminds me a lot of RIFT. In that game you get a lot of leveling gear through gameplay and seldom need to buy any gear; money is used for very little beyond teleport fees and skill training. It's easy to completely ignore making any money. But, when you get to level 50 and want to buy a level 50 fast mount, you find out they cost 50 gold. The typical player who has never tried to make money only has 5 gold and they're shocked. But the reality is that if anyone picks up basic foraging skills as they exit the tutorial they'd have 2-3 gold worth of materials to sell just from the 10 minute walk from the starting area to the main city. I literally had 10 gold at level 5 on one character because the AH was out of low level mats that day and my stuff sold high. In TEN minutes I was richer than half the population of new 50s. So the moral of the story was: if you put in 0% effort during gameplay from 1-50, you'd arrive at 50 with almost no money, but if you put in 1% effort during gameplay you'd arrive at 50 with a fair amount of money; and that's true of City as well. If you just take a few minutes now and then to sell your items, perhaps go so far as to figure out if a recipe would net you more money from selling it crafted. Nothing even complicated, just selling a bit now and then.

Veluta Lunata, by the way, no longer has any prereqs. I saw she was in Find Contact and teleported right to her.

Hold on this isn't an issue with my computer's DNS service needing to restart. Your website has literally never loaded for me since you got it and the machine has been rebooted many times. Isn't really the situation that my [really large employer]'s DNS is not updated with your website's address? If that's the case isn't it more of a problem with your domain name registrar not sending out the entry properly? I tried to look up the IP address using MX Toolbox and it says "Unable to resolve "www.cityofplayers.com" to an IP address." I also tried keycdn and it also said "Hostname did not resolve any IP." (https://tools.keycdn.com/geo?host=cityofplayers.com ) There was another random service I tried that did find your entry. So it's out there - but not consistently. So it's not just my workplace's DNS not finding your website. I'm giving this info to you - do with it what you will.

I like the set overall. It took a bit to clock that it is Psi MELEE and not Psi Blade. I wouldn't want it split though, it's a nice variety. Mental Strike is complete ass. I know it's one of those weak/fast filler attacks and the damage numbers are good on paper, but there's something "off" about this one. I can't put my finger on it but it feel disruptive to use it. I think I'm going to replace it with Air Superiority. It'd be nice if it did something like the TK equivalent of Parry from Broadsword but like maybe 5% instead of Parry's 15%?. Maybe the issue is in the animation. On stalker, the Assassins Psi Blade feels more touchy than any other assassin's strike I've used. It almost seems to self-interrupt a lot. I'll go to use it and the camera will start to pivot and the power use will cancel and I'll be "wut? WUT?" At first I thought I was hitting the power while still moving but I've been watching it and I've been at a complete stop when I hit the button and it still fails sometimes. If there's some factor AS powers use to check, this one needs loosening up by a second or something like that. I'm not sure how much damage the insight DOT really is. I've just been trusting it's worthwhile and when Insight shows up I try to use several attacks and end with Greater Psi Blade since it terminates insight and when that happens Lockout begins. I definltely enjoy how GPB turns into "Insight Strike!" Boggle is supposed to contribute to triggering insight, because attacking a foe who you have confused has a greater chance. But in practice it doesn't seem so helpful. Maybe Lockout could be removed by using the set's build up move Concentration? Maybe attacking a boggled foe would give a chance of ending lockout early? Does it bug anyone else with two TK knockup moves, neither of them has any -fly?