biostem

You shouldn't be taking any single power and looking at it outside of the context of the entire power set, though; Some sets excel *because* of their T9s, others because of some other power(s) or combination of powers, while still others have some other built in mechanism/gimmick. Sure, some of the powers could stand a bit of tweaking, but I don't think looking at them in isolation is a good way to go about it...

So I rolled a staff/radiation scrapper last night, and boy is he fun! I was debating street justice, (and I'll probably still roll on of those), but for now this is my "flavor of the minute". Just a few questions: So I took the staff mastery power, and it seems that body is extra damage, mind is extra recharge, and spirit/soul is end discount. They also cause a slightly different effect when you use one of the finishers. It seems that it may be worth it to just keep the buff on yourself, though. I took the 'gamma boost' passive from rad armor. So the tooltip says it gives both an end recovery and regen boost, but the end part is better if your health is high, and the regen part is better when your health is low. My character is only about level 14 atm, so I just put 2 slots in it, (so 3 total), and was just going to eventually put 3 end mod enh's in that and 3 in stamina. Is it worth it to also slot 3 health enh's? I really like the 'guarded spin' power in staff - it seems to grant about 11% def to melee & lethal - should I slot it to grant even more defense? I left CoX shortly after they added the invention enh's, so my traditional SO slotting for attacks was 2 acc, 3 dmg, and either a rech, end, or so on - would something like 2 acc, 3 def, and 1 dmg or rech be a good choice for this power? Lastly, in reading over some of the newer power sets, I see that some, (like RA), had "+absorb" - does that just take a flat amount off of any incoming damage? Thanks again for all your help!

I would suggest willpower - Wolvie definitely has a stubborn, unstoppable personality...

Thanks for the input! I've watched some vids of both STJ and SF on youtube, and while staff does indeed look quite fluid, I think it's too flashy/break-dancey for what I'm going for. I think I'll roll a STJ/RA when I have time. Still, so many choices!!!

Great! Thank you.

LOL! So noted. Any thoughts on either regarding their in-game performance or gimmicks, though?

Hey gang! So I've been really enjoying my return to CoX after so many years, and while I've been playing several other ATs, I'm thinking of returning to the 2nd AT I ever played - namely Scrappers. I'm very much liking the look of radiation armor, but I'm torn between street justice or staff fighting for my primary set. Any insight or opinions? Thanks!

I don't know if fire attacks would be the best fit. Maybe bring in some attacks from broadsword or savage melee would be a better fit, (only typed fire/toxic).

Really, just a simple "stay put" command/stance would do it. It seems odd that there's a "goto" command, but not a "stop in your tracks and don't move" one. Another option would be to allow us to selectively enable to disable pet attacks/powers...

I'll try the /quit command, as that's the only one I found that matches what I'm after, but it also says ESC should do this as well, (which it does not, and I've tried on multiple machines with different characters). So the /quit command isn't it; it just brings up the logout menu, and even then, it doesn't work from within the enhancement management screen. Any other thoughts?

Heh, was thinking it was more thematic for Doms TBH :p This would probably be the best route to take. Maybe interplay the whip attacks with savage melee. and/or some of the beast mastery MM powers - like you do a generic whip gesture and a lion pounces the target for a quick attack, (then it runs off).

I'll try the /quit command, as that's the only one I found that matches what I'm after, but it also says ESC should do this as well, (which it does not, and I've tried on multiple machines with different characters).

My suggestion is basically this: I have not found any way, via key press, to exit out of any of the menus you can bring up, such as the enhancement management screen. I know it doesn't take long to just mouse over and click exit, but I still think it'd be great if we could simply click escape to get out of such a menu, or otherwise bind some key to perform that command. Thanks for reading!

I, too, am very much in love with masterminds. I only played CoX until around the time the game went F2P. I have a good amount of experience with mercenaries, and a tiny bit less with ninja. I couldn't get into undead, and though bots are fun, it just seemed that every other MM I ran across was playing them too. I'm currently leveling up a demon/dark and a beast/thermal. Dark is very good, but having to worry that your heal, fear, or other control powers may miss is quite annoying. You can mitigate a lot of that with good acc enh's and tactics, but it still feel a little iffy in tense situations. A lot of the powers seem to have longish recharges, too. My beast/therm is still very young, but I like the reliability of the heals, and the shields appear to apply to everyone in a radius, which ia great QoL improvement. While I see your point regarding def vs DR, I still feel that the always-effective DR is a nice "security blanket". Either way, stick to what you find fun!

If I requested a color image, would you be willing to also send a scan of the image in B&W, before you colored it? Great work!

+1 I'm dating myself a bit here, but I always thought it'd be nice to have an option to put little status effect icons over the various PC and NPC avatars, instead of the actual power auras/effects...

So I used the /manage command in a keybind to quickly and easily get to my enhancement management screen, but I'm finding I have to still click on 'Exit' to get out of the screen. Is there another key or other command I can make use of to get out of that screen just as quickly? Thanks!

So I've been toying around with various builds and powersets, and was just looking for some feedback from the more experienced Dominator players out there. I messed around with doms to a very limited degree while CoX was still live, but while going over the sets available, dark/earth seemed like an interesting combination to me. That being said, I have some experience with darkness control, but was looking for input on earth assault and/or the combination of dark/earth. Thank you all in advance for any insight you can provide. The biggest downfalls I can see with earth assault is that it mainly does lethal damage, which can be highly resisted, and all the knocks, (up, down, back), may be annoying to teammates. Thanks again!

Not that it's ideal or exhaustive, but you can kind of get a feel for powers in your primary and secondary sets by messing around with the power customization options, (you can at least see the animation and such).

I played CoX from about 2004 to 2009. I bought a CO lifetime subscription when that game launched. Before I get into my opinions on both, I just want to thank the CoH:H devs so very much for bringing CoX back to us! That being said, here are a few of my thoughts, (in no particular order): 1. I very much dislike the early levels in CoX, since you have so few attacks and waiting for a power to come off of cooldown can be quite frustrating. The origin powers and the ones you can get from the P2W vendor can alleviate that somewhat. CO' use of an "energy builder" as your basic attack, generally followed by a spammable/no-cooldown second power keeps downtime to a minimum. The downside to that system, however, is that if you are freeform or otherwise get an even better power later on, (also often with no cooldown), then that earlier power basically ceases to have a purpose. You can basically create a workable "attack chain" with just your energy builder and a solid no-cooldown attack in CO. CoX basically pushes you to create an attack chain or to take powers like hasten to fill the gap. 2. I'm not sure when they implemented the change, but when I left CoX, you basically "had" to take the fitness pool, and you couldn't get your full-on travel power until level 14. In CO, at launch, you basically got your travel power as soon as you completed the tutorial, (around level 4), and you could skip that once you've completed it at least once. This, by itself, made CO's zones feel small. 3. I tend to gravitate toward "pet classes" in any game I play. In CoX, the Mastermind had deep and highly customizable pet controls. CO's are severely lacking, and pets there feel more like an afterthought. I like some of the options they have, (like being able to summon a duo of wolves, and changing their appearance to dino, spirit wolves, bears, etc), but without the tools to properly control them, it's just not as fulfilling. 4. The ability to completely respec your powers in CO means that, other than concept/RP reasons, you can go from a super-strong tank to a fire-throwing glass cannon in only a matter of minutes, provided you have the in-game currency or saved up/store bought respec to do so. In some respects, this is great, since you can realize nearly any build on a single character, (and there are items you can buy in the "questionite store" in-game that improve your "super stats", regardless of which ones you picked), but for the long-term longevity of the game, this can lead to people just sticking to that single character. While the AT/class system in CoX can be restrictive at times, it can also force you to learn how to expand your boundaries and "learn your role" a bit better. 5. As others have mentioned, the enhancement system in CoX allows for greater flexibility than in CO. Yes, you can rank-up powers in CO, and some even have 1 or more nifty other abilities you can purchase, but you could never explicitly affect just 1 aspect of said power, (like range, recharge, etc). 6. One thing which I think is a double-edged sword in regard to CO is the ability to target yourself with powers. This basically means that there may only be 1 "bubble" power necessary in force field, since you can place it on yourself AND your allies. The same goes for most heals - a heal-other becomes a heal-self if you just target yourself or include "targetself" in a keybind. This, coupled with many such powers having no cooldown also means that you can just out-heal most incoming damage as long as you have energy to keep it up, (which isn't hard). 7. Touching on the "double-edged sword" nature of CO, it is really hard to keep an enemy permanently locked down, and this includes taunts. It is quite difficult to keep an enemy's attention in CO, which means that it is difficult for a "tank" to adequately protect their more squishy teammates. This isn't a big deal if you're all playing freeform characters, as you just make sure to take a shield or heal, (unless you;re playing as one of the F2P ATs, which are more restrictive). 8. CO implemented some pretty interesting gimmicks, but didn't seem to really develop or take advantage of them. For instance, there are many destructible objects littered around the game world in CO, and you can lift and throw them depending upon your strength value, (or with a telekinesis power from the mental/psychic tree). The problem is that it's rarely worth the effort, and it's usually more time consuming and does less damage if you try to do this. 9. I'll finish off by talking about "content". I have never run out of content before hitting the level cap when I played CoX, and that's before several updates were released. In CO, if I'm playing a freeform character and want the quests to remain challenging, I'll run out of content in the early to mid 30's, (max level is 40). Sure, I can grind out those last few levels by doing alerts, (queueable instanced quests where you can be placed into a random team), or I can slog it out in Vibora Bay, (the last true expansion they added ages ago, which has many instances that look the same and are quite dull), or just artificially slow things down by doing lower level content. I like that I can choose to stick with or abandon a contact in CoX without worrying that I'll run out of content to run, and I can even change my reputation to make said missions harder or easier as I see fit. Anyway, those are my thoughts...

The key here would be to dynamically balance damage, defenses, status protection, healing, and so on, as people choose powers - you take melee powers and your ranged damage decreases, you take defensive powers, and your damage drops yet again, (but perhaps melee damage drops at a slower rate than ranged damage). You start taking heals or buffing powers, and both damage and defenses get reduced. The problem would be maintaining that fine balance. As another responder pointed out, you can go full freeform in Champions, and it generally results in high damage, high defense flying bricks that can heal themselves and others, while locking down enemies, summoning pets, and so on...

Beyond the more obvious graphical improvements, I'd like to see either a no-cooldown T1 attack power, (or something like the at-will's that Neverwinter has, just so it doesn't feel like you're sitting there waiting on cooldowns so much). Beyond that, I'd like a bit more customization with regards to pet/minion summons. Perhaps adding more powers to each powerset, to the point where you probably can't take all of them - so make having to decide which ones to take more significant, but still very effective. It'd be great if you could run across another fire/ blaster, for instance, yet have drastically different powers, since there'd be so many good ones. Perhaps something akin to Champion's Power House, where we could test powers on dummies or holograms, before being locked into a selection, would be nice. I like how they added more members to several factions in a later update, (like female skulls, hellions, etc) - but with such a wide selection of costume pieces to choose from, how about mixing it up even more, among NPCs.

Is overcomplicating things by a huge amount. You know what binds I use most often on my MMs? SHIFT+RBUTTON "petcom_all Goto" SHIFT+Q "petcom_all Defensive Follow" CTROL+Q "petcom_all dismiss" ... and the actual button macros the game provides me. The most useful of those is the Shift-and-right-click. I have to left-click to confirm placement, but, it's a LOT faster than moving my mouse to the GOTO macro, clicking it, then moving the target circle to the desired location and clicking again. Control+Q gets a lot of use too, 'cause I don't want to drag my pets through half the zone on my way to the next mission. And the Shift+Q, is just a quick "panic-shift-to-Bodyguard-NOW" control. ... Mind, I have set up far more, and occasionally use it. But I find that just a few, key binds (pun not intended) makes for a much easier, smoother experience managing those pets. I use: /bind numpad7 "petcomall attack aggressive" - makes pets attack my target then switch to any other nearby enemies /bind numpad5 "petcomall follow defensive" - engages bodyguard mode and makes the pets follow me, only attacking if they are attacked first /bind lalt+lbutton "petcomall goto passive" - moves pets to the designated location when I alt-click, and they ignore everything along the way

I feel like an ice blast/thermal reverberation corruptor or similarly specced defender might work. The defender might be a little slow if you plan on soloing a lot, so a corrupter might be better in that case...

First you say "Your opinion is valid. So are ours.", then go on to immediately contradict yourself by saying "Ae spam in chat is harmful". I contend that you are using loaded language by calling it "spam", and further, my experience has not been that chat is flooded with AE or PL request. Is it at all possible that you are subjectively making more of this than it actually is? Perhaps you've had some experience or otherwise detest the act of PL-ing or AE farm missions to such a degree that you simply don't want anyone to partake in those activities?