Erratic1

I did not read my own post is what you're saying? Anyone who is not willfully obtuse can see the import of the character to me but even for those so socially challenged they cannot, my telling you it is important to me is all that matters in determining that it is. Get back to me when you are not just objecting to be objectionable.

No. You may not care. Greycat, I, and you don't know how many others do care and we are telling you we care. Now, why do you think your opinion on -=OUR=- characters carry greater weight than -=OUR=- opinions?

I have a good friend, great guy, who, with no insult intended, tends more towards, "bright shiney" in his approach to games--he gets into them, plays for a while, then is off to the next thing. When he heard City of Heroes was back, he came back, brought his wife, played for about four months, and was off to the next thing. That was at release. He's not coming back. And if he does, his character names being lost would be an incredibly rare disappointment (there is one which is based off his last name, which is also a good name to work into any character with a particular theme of power) which would not disuade him. But in all honesty, he is not coming back. Dropping the names of characters on inactive accounts if a very different beast from dropping names from those stilll playing the game. Doubt me? Who is here telling you that? Me or my friend?

I told you why I care. Did you not read my post?

Moreover, you do not get logged out of the game if you are standing in a supergroup base short of the server resetting. Go to your base, get a phone call from a friend about doing dinner. Dash off to meet them then return 3 hours later and your character will remain logged in and have 3 more hours of play without you doing anything. Time active is a dubious metric.

My most recent 50 is a character I made the day after Christmas who hit 50 Sunday before last. He is my 18th character to hit 50. Not a great number but then I take breaks from the game, do not play are often as some, and tend to play multiple characters in a span of time instead of just focusing on one. Since he was created I have probably made a half-dozen other characters and given them some amount of play time including a couple which are in their 40s. Point here being that it really would not be implausible for me to have 1-2 50s per month if I focused and did not take breaks from the game. Let's say I had done that since launch. At four years that would be 72-144 50s. What is your need that I have logged into those characters annually to retain their names? Why is not my ongoing participation in the play of the game sufficient?

My first character on Homecoming, my first 50 on Homecoming, the holder of my global name, and the leader of my supergroup is a level 50 I no longer play. She's okay, not great. Love the bio I gave her, and she and the bio are shown off in the multimedia section. But like I said, I no longer play her. Are you really that much better off that I log her in once per year just to avoid losing her name?

A proxy for a direct record of account activity would be the last time the most recently played character was active.

I disagree, at least partially. A 50 on an actively played account should be inviolable as goes their name. A 50 on an account which has been dormant for long enough (at least a year, maybe two) should be open to loss.

How would you come to that conclusion? It is certainly doable, and I do know people who exclusively play that way. On the other hand, I can say that each of my eighteen 50s was levelled through playing the game*. I can say that as I play my characters up, I see some number of other characters who I keep bumping into along the way who are obviously not taking the insta-route to 50. Though since that is how I play, that is what I am going to encounter. Is there a good way to determine how long it took someone to reach 50 on a character short of having caught them within a short period of them having been created and noticing they went creation to you observing them as being level 50 and it only having been a day or two?

Historically I have taken Tough in the teens, but largely because it was a convenient place to slip it in. Having it and slotting and running it are two different things. Oh...there are also the times I was angling for Cross Punch so needed a second power in the Fighting pool to get there. Super Strength has no area attacks until Foot Stomp, so getting Cross Punch early is a way to get around that. Likewise with Radiation Melee (because Proton Sweep is miserable).

No...just no. Q: When the scrapper does not crit, what happens? A: The Brute is ahead. Q: Is the scrapper going to always crit? A: Possible but increasingly unlikely over multiple hits in a fashion trending towards zero. Q: How does one figure out the average result: A: Simplifying things to make present an explanation, consider only single target attacks. Each attack can either crit (C) or be a normal hit (N). A sequence of attacks then has finite possibilities. For a single attack you have two possibilities: C or N. For two attacks you have four possibilities: NN, NC, CN, or CC. For three attacks there are eight possibilities: NNN, NNC, NCN, CNN, NCC, CNC, CCN, CCC. For k attacks there are 2k possibilities. Q: But the scrapper, when he crits the Brute cannot keep up. A: First, there are plenty of targets which survive a crit. Second, if the scrapper crits he then goes onto the next target. The consideration here is what happens on average over time. Yes, a scrapper can make three attacks and get three crits. If the scrapper has a ten percent chance of getting a crit then one time in a thousand he make a sequence of three attacks and gets those three critical hits. Nice and wonderful, but there are nine-hundred, ninety-nine other times to consider.

Certainly some people like to load out their characters at low levels, but I do actually make it a habit when grouping with people (TFs and missions) of checking out what powers they have. Most people I observe do not have ATOs loaded in the level 1-35 range. That is not how you do calculations. One actually can consider every possibility and sum them up. There is a field of math called combinatorics involved in doing precisely this. Any two ATs can be compared for damage dealing. It is silly to maintain otherwise.

Which was factored in by multiplying the previous result by the crit rate since If your base damage is 100, 10% of the time you crit for double, then your end result is 90% of the time no crit, so 100 damage and 10% of the time you get 200. But 0.9*100 + 0.1*200=90+20=110, which is 1.1. In fact, I was generous because the crit rate against minions is lower. The scrapper can get lucky--that is the nature of probability. Sometimes he will hit the entire spawn for a crit and kill them all. On the other hand sometimes he will get no crit at all. In fact, that result is more likely. None of that prevents being able to calculate average results. And yeah, I love leading with Crowd Control on my WM/Nin scrapper in hopes of the crit bonanza. Well, not really hope when Ninjitsu gives a considerable boost to crit chance from stealth via Shinobi-Iri.

Yeah, at low level Tough and Weave are endurance sinks and likely so poorly slotted that unless you are literally being beaten to death regularly, probably you should delay taking until later.

I have yet to find a Dom I could take all the way to 50. Gotten into the 40s before but always burned out on the characters. Maybe it is that failure which has me looking to do the unusual (and without having done the usual), but I have had fun playing Plant/Savage up to near 40 so far and the idea comes to lean more heavily into melee. However, there are the usual issues of crowd control and not being able to take a hit which argue strongly this is not a wise path. If things are sufficiently controlled and I avoid being exploded, willl the following...well, not be godly but at least largely survivable?

I am not sure what contortions one would have to pull to push to 75%. It is not that much more but I note on my War Mace/Ninjitsu scrapper his currently planned S/L resistances reach 61% as I was more focused on getting his defenses into the 50s and perma-Hasten.

A low level Brute will do more damage than a Scrapper and hence rest less because they get 2% more damage per point of Fury and build to a roughly functional cap of 85 fury, for a total of 170% more damage. Energy Punch for a Scrapper deals 79.83 base, and 48.38 base for a Brute. Stick in damage enhancements to get to +95% damage and the Scrapper is at 79.83*1.95=155.67 damage. Likewise the Brute can slot the same but also is going to get another 170% to his damage via Fury for a total of 265%. That puts him at 48.38*3.65=176.57. Factor in crits and the scrapper get 10% more to be at 171.237. That is still behind the Brute. The Brute is not going to be able to stay at 85 Fury indefinitely but he has equivalent defenses and more hp, meaning he by default can spend more time being beaten on than the Scrapper. So long as you are not killing 3 things then resting, rinse repeat but rather progressing until it becomes unhealthy to continue on, the Brute will kill more. Perhaps not a lot, but more. So again, if you were resting all the time with the Brute, you would be resting all the time and then some with the Scrapper. And all the blather about approaching 50 is aside as we are discussing your comment about 1-35 play.

That was aetheral addressing a Regen build. You cut off this first sentence in the paragraph: My response to you was about what you were addressing, Street Justice/Shield on a Brute--"I played a Street/Shield Brute and Shield was terrible 1-35. I was constantly low on health and low on endurance." So, what is not true?

I said before IOs got factored in and you're not going to have Darkest Night at any point between levels 1 and 35. Edit: The thing I do not like about the power is that because it radiates from what you drop it on, things at range are not affected. Great solo though, especially when using corners to herd. But in a group your anchor is at risk of being killed (though in a group you probably don't care). Build a Rad Tanker who used it to wonderful effect.

The only difference defensively between a brute and a scrapper before IO sets get factored is the brute has higher hit points. Otherwise, the powers give the same amount of defense and resistance. Endurance recovery works identically. If you were resting all the time on a brute then you would have been resting all the time on a scrapper. Probably moreso on the scrapper because the brute, having gotten fury up, should be doing more damage going from spawn to spawn.

Defense debuffs have to land in the first place, but yes, once they start landing Ninjitsu will lose defense faster than SR will. But SR will presumably be taking more damage and not have a heal up its sleeve. If I were not so lazy (well, wrapped up in planing stupid Dominator tricks) it might be worth modelling.

Pure awesome!

Ohhh, is that permission to pull one out?