Rodion

How many times have you been on a task force, and someone asks, “How do I get to Faultline?” One person says to take the train to Skyway, then go south. One person says to use the teleporter to go to your base, or one of the transport hubs on your server. Another person says to just use the Long Range Teleporter (LRT). And then everyone says, “Huh. What’s that?” Or, “I have so many alts I don’t have time to get that.” Well, it takes five minutes or less to get at level 1. It’s the first thing you should do when you create a character. The LRT will take you to the supergroup portal in any zone that you have an exploration badge in. As a bonus, it can also teleport you to your base and Echo Plaza. It has a recharge of 10 minutes. To get it, you need to get all the exploration badges in one zone (which gives you the Tour Guide badge for that zone). Atlas Park is the easiest zone to do this in. (You can also buy the LRT outright from the Pay2Win vendor, but that’s a cool million.) If you have VidiotMaps installed the necessary badge locations are marked on your map. If you don’t, you can create a popmenu (see below) that will show you where all the Atlas Park exploration badges can be found. Note that some of these locations are inside buildings, and the popmenu will helpfully show you the proper doors. You can do this at level 1, even though some of the badges are up high. And you can do this for free, without having to buy a travel power. Take the tour before you do anything else, to avoid advancing to level 2 before you can buy your Amplifiers for the lowest possible price (see below). Go to the P2W Field Agent just west of the Atlas statue in Atlas Park. Get her to show you her wares. Under Prestige Powers > Travel > Jump select either Jump Pack or Steam Jump. Under Prestige Powers > Travel > Movement select one of the runs (my favorite is Athletic Run — it uses a normal running posture). After you install the tourguide.mnu popmenu file and create the macro: Turn on Sprint and Athletic Run. Click the tour macro button to display the menu. Click a menu entry, such as Hero Corps Insider, and a thumbtack will be placed on the map. Go to that location and get the badge. The menu entries are in the order that’s quickest to visit. When you get to a badge that’s up high, such as Silent Sentinel or Top Dog, turn on your Jump Pack or Steam Jump power to jump up. They work for 30 seconds at a time, so don’t turn them on till you need them (they recharge in 30 seconds). Once you visit all the badge locations in Atlas Park you’ll get the LRT and 5 reward merits. Of course, you can do the tour at any time, and it's faster and easier if you've got a flight power. You can unlock teleports to other zones by getting one exploration badge in that zone. You can get these as needed, when you happen to be in the zone for some other reason. Or you can use a supergroup teleporter to go to that zone and then visit the closest exploration badge location. Most of these can be obtained in less than a minute. A flight power is very useful here, as some of these locations are on top of tall buildings that might be difficult to leap in a single bound. Also, be sure to check out this guide for getting around City of Heroes: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/8194-getting-around-the-cities-of-heroes-and-villains/ Finally, when you log out remember to park your character next to the supergroup portal in any zone to get credit towards the Monitor Duty Teleporter and Rapid Response Portal powers. With these, the LFG teleport queue, the Ouroboros portal and the LRT, you’ll have near perma access to a teleport to most any zone. Defense, Offense and Survival Amplifiers You can use the merits you got above to buy something at a merit vendor (there’s one in Wentworth’s in Atlas Park), which you can sell on Wentworth’s to get some influence, which you should immediately use to buy the Defense, Offense and Survival Amplifiers from P2W. If you get these at level 1, they only cost 1,000 inf per hour, for up to eight hours. It’s the best deal in the game for the status protection alone. The price becomes ridiculous at higher levels, so be sure to get these before you go up to level 2. Atlas Park Tour Guide Pop Menu // This shows you all the locations of the exploration badges in Atlas Park. // Copy this text and place it in a file called tourguide.mnu, and save it in your Homecoming // installation folder: // <game install>/data/texts/english/menus // Then start up City of Heroes and enter the following command to add a macro: // /macro tour "popmenu tourguide" // Menu "tourguide" { Title "Atlas Park Tour Guide" Option "Hero Corps Insider" "thumbtack 282.0, 16.1, -891.5" Option "Undefeated" "thumbtack 545.0 58.4 -2307.0" Option "Silent Sentinel" "thumbtack -1168.5 107.9 -1585.5" Option "Observant" "thumbtack -135.5, -94.0, 469.0" Option "Top Dog" "thumbtack 131.0, 319.7, -319.5" Option "Freedom" "thumbtack 126.1, 170.3, -652.4" Option "Patriot" "thumbtack 164.0, -768.0, -673.0" Option "Edge of Chaos" "thumbtack -145.5, -784.0, -902.0" }

I recently made a discovery that eliminates the need for using Kismet at low levels. There are three buff powers (Defense Amplifier, Offense Amplifier and Survival Amplifier) that you can get from Pay2Win for 1,000 inf per hour at level 1. These are, simply stated, fabulous. The offense amplifier gives 10% To Hit bonus, +15% damage bonus and 15% recharge bonus. The Survival Amplifier gives bonuses to max hit points, regeneration and recovery. The Defense amplifier gives 7.5% resistance to everything and 5% defense to everything, as well as +4 protection to all status effects. You should definitely send your level 1 character 50K inf and max out on these buffs. These buffs get crazy expensive at higher levels, so be sure to take advantage of them at level 1. Eight hours is a long time at those levels, with the double XP buff. You can easily get to level 22 or 27 before they run out (through DfB, DiB, running PI radios, and tip missions), without having to buy any SOs at all, really. I put in bids on attuned enhancements early on with funds provided by one of my 50s, and can slot attuned IOs (bought through the auction house) that will last forever starting at level 22 and 27, with some very useful IOs being slottable at level 17. I run a lot of content at all levels, and don't feel the need to min-max for level 50+, though I do slot a lot of the IOs others have mentioned to maximize defense and resistance, rather than aiming for tons of damage procs. These characters run ITF, TinPex and incarnate mission content at level 54 without difficulty.

The effects for several of the powers are way too obtrusive. They create large stone objects that completely obscure the target and any nearby characters. The Talons of Vengeance have a power that does this and really despise it. Having a teammate using it on the targets my melee character is engaged with over and over will be very annoying. Two seismic blasters repeatedly hitting targets engaged with melee characters will effectively blind the melee players. I think the lesson from Electrical Affinity should be reiterated: the graphic effects should not be overdone, they shouldn't be too distracting and they especially shouldn't interfere with other players seeing what's going on. Salt Crystals doesn't seem to do anything. There's a sound effect, but no graphics, and the targets seem completely unaffected. Since it's supposed to be autohit I have it slotted with three sleep IOs, no accuracy.

I started making an Archery/Tactical Arrow blaster when when the beta was live, so I had no attachment to the previous implementation. I had played Archery on a Sentinel, and my reaction was kind of "meh," so my expectations were low. But I have to say that I really like Archery/Tactical Arrow. I went with soft-capped Ranged defense with no Fighting pool, and it's a lot of fun. I haven't really soloed, but the character plays really well on big teams, like a 54x8 ITF. I haven't noticed whether Glue Arrow ignites the Oil Slick, but Explosive Arrow does, making those a good one-two punch. I'd post a build, but Mids Reborn says there's no new update. With Lockdown in both Ice Arrow and ESD Arrow (getting the large Ranged defense bonus), bosses are often held with a single shot. Changes like these can really mess up a build (like my Electrical/Electrical blaster, which had to be significantly reworked because certain enhancements were obsoleted), but I have no complaints with A/TA as it stands now.

There is another teleport system which is not mentioned in the base post: the LFG queue. If you are solo you can use the LFG queue to go directly to any TF or Trial contact: select the TF or trial in the LFG window and click "Lock the event for your group," then click Queue. Players in the know use the LFG queue to teleport directly to Imperious, and then get an invitation from the team leader. This way you don't need to go through all the hassles of running to Steel Canyon or Croatoa, through the Midnighter Club to Cimerora. I ran an ITF this morning and most of the participants used LFG to get to Imperious, minimizing the wait. I believe the LFG queue has always worked this way, so the original devs did not consider it an exploit, and neither should the new devs. You can't use it while you're on a TF, so it can't be used to teleport around town during a TF. It's sole purpose is to expedite task force setup. If the devs could do something to make this use of the LFG queue more transparent, that would be great.

It looks like Brutes and Tankers have the same number of targets with Fold Space (both are 16 when I look at the info in the game). For powers such as Proton Sweep Tankers can hit more targets (10) than Brutes (5). When tankers take Fold Space should it have an increased number of targets?

I also dislike location based powers, but with two keybinds you can convert any location-based power to a target-based power and keep the location targeting for those cases when you need it. To target with shift+click you can use something like this: /bind shift+click "powexecname Oil Slick Arrow" To target an enemy (or friend, for that matter): /bind ctrl+1 "powexeclocation target Oil Slick Arrow" Location-based powers are a real hassle to use in the middle of a huge battle, with Nature Affinity powers blooming all over the place, because it's often difficult to track where the cursor is in all that chaos. But the the /powexeclocation command fixes all that. It is a huge quality of life improvement! Given this capability, one could argue that location-based powers are preferable because they're more flexible -- they can be used both ways with a couple of keybind assignments. Now if I could only get the oil slick to automatically catch fire after I put it down...

This pertains to Electricity Manipulation. I've got a character that has Avalanche slotted in Lightning Field for the melee defense bonus. When it is converted to Force of Thunder I can no longer slot the same set of IOs on my character because FoT only takes stun sets. Would it be possible to add a minor damage component to Force of Thunder so that I can slot Avalanche in it? Thanks!

When this goes live, what happens when I log in a character that has a knockback IO slotted in Force of Thunder, which will get converted to Dynamo, which does not appear to accept KB IOs?

I have a couple of questions: If I leave a character at the Peregrine base portal, on the roof where it is now, will that character accrue credit toward the base day job if I don't log that character on until the portal has been moved in the next issue? That is, does day job credit get assigned based on your location in proximity to the portal when you log in? Or the location you were at when you logged out? If the former, people should be aware that we should leave characters by portals that won't move, if they're prepositioning characters in order to be sure that they'll have access to the base teleporter as soon as possible. Is there any way for us to test that the Long Range Teleporter accolade is awarded for characters that have the zone exploration badges when the next issue is released? That is, if I've already got the Atlas tour guide badge, will I automatically get the LRT when the issue hits live? One way we could test that is if there was a way to copy characters to the test server. Is that possible now, or it it in the works?

The text description for EMP Arrow is missing a critical word: "This arrow can unleash a massive pulse of electromagnetic energy on impact. This EMP can affect machines, and is even powerful enough to affect synaptic brain patterns. It will incapacitate all foes in its radius. Additionally, most machines and robots will take moderate high damage. Allies in range of the pulse will also [missing word] their resistances to all damage except toxic, as well as be protected from status effects, knockbacks, endurance drain and recovery debuffs. Recharge: Very Long"

I would like to echo the suggestion that Teleport's hover behavior be changed: the few seconds of hovering you get is annoying because it is so slow, but it's not long enough to scope out the area if you need to decide where to Teleport next. My preferred implementation would be as follows: After you teleport you hover for at least 10 seconds, if not longer. If you do anything except Teleport again (move, attack, etc), the hover ends immediately. I always take Mystic Flight these days because you get the free teleport and you don't fall out of the sky when you use it. If the hover is persistent I would be more likely to take Teleport. Yeah, I can always buy a jetpack so I don't fall down, but that doesn't always work thematically. I really like Combat Teleport, especially for characters (including squishies) that have PBAoEs. You could rationalize that it could grant the same level of Defense that Combat Jumping does on the basis that it's harder to hit someone who can pop in and out in an instant. The increased to-hit is also reasonable, akin to the D&D "surprise" bonus. But I'd still take Combat Teleport on my melee characters without the defense bonus (I usually take Combat Jumping to softcap defense). I find the Savage Melee and Martial Combat sets fun because of the teleport, and Combat Teleport would be nice on characters with other powersets. Since not all mobs run at the same rate, Taunting them spreads them out in a long line, and it takes a while to get them to reform around you in a nice bunch for PBAoEs. The very short recharge after three Combat Teleports isn't a problem for me. Martial Combat's recharge is much longer, and I rarely run into it. When I do, I just hoof it. No big deal. Finally, the accolade for long range teleport is great. It's fine that it takes some effort to open each zone. It takes 5 or 10 minutes, and you get 5 reward merits. The only downside is that people with 30 or 40 characters have to repeat the process on every character. Maybe after we've opened a zone on 10 characters we could get it opened for free on the rest of our alts? All in all, with the myriad teleport options available, I won't miss /enterbasefrompasscode.

The game effect of Taunt should be to make the mobs rush and punch the tanker in the face. It seems like a magnetic or vortex effect that sucks mobs in should be a separate power on a AT in which a vortex is thematic. Some of the current tanker AoEs could be candidates for adding an attractive force. However, your basic idea is sound. But rather than Taunt picking up the mobs bodily and dragging them in, it should force them to move within melee range under their own power and attempt their melee attack. Or, alternately, have Taunt impose a very severe range penalty on their attacks so that they have to move into melee range to attack. Doesn't Taunt already do that? If so, maybe increasing the penalty would be sufficient. Admittedly, that would take more time than just sucking them in because mobs have to run into melee range, but it's more "realistic" and in keeping with the basic idea of what Taunt is. Or, if the problem we're trying to solve is preventing other players from knocking mobs away from the tanker, we could consider converting all KB to knockdown on mobs in the immediate vicinity of a tanker, or mobs that have been taunted by a tanker, if that check is more efficient.

What? Donations are already closed!? Take my money! Seriously, thanks for all the work you're doing.