ZorkNemesis

February 13

I can't check now, but what do these rollbacks enatil? I played a couple hours on Indom before this went down, does this mean I have to take my Defender through the Talons and Monsters in Cimerora again?

February 12

I know many of us suffer from altitis, and 1,000 slots is a lot of characters. What about the times when you don't have any creative ideas for new characters and just want to play, but you have 30+ level 50 characters to choose from and maybe another 15 or so in-progress. How do you decide who you want to take to the streets with when there's so many options? Sometimes I scroll through my list and wonder who I should bring out sometimes, like trying to decide what other game to play when i'm not playing CoX.

February 12

A thought occured after seeing the screenshots on Reddit. Are the renovated Vanguard compounds going to be applied to mission map variants as well? I know at least three missions in RWZ that take place in the compound itself, along with the one in Dark Astoria. There's also a bunch of outdoor missions in RWZ, will the Architect building also be visible or gone from those too?

February 12

Valentine Tips drop at any point after you're level 20 I think, you don't have to talk to anyone to get them to drop, they drop from anything as long as the event is active. The bigger issue with those tips is that they don't take your allignment into account and you might get tips for zones you can't access (for example, a pure villain can't deliver U'kon Gra'i's letter since both Positron and Blue Steel are in hero zones). Can be an issue if you're stubborn and don't want to flip sides with Null every so often.

February 10

I've seen this one before! I had a random book in the university grow to epic proportions as well. Couldn't tell you what caused it though.

February 10

I don't think such a mission exists. What you might be thinking of is Bobcat who is part of the Power storyline and she's chilling in the strip club side of Studio 55. And yes, it's a strip club, the dancers aren't wearing much of anything.

February 9

The train in the small side room where you get off isn't interractable, go into the main station to get on. If you can't click the main train, wait for the doors to close and try again.

February 9

Both my level 50 tanks use flight, it's not impossible. Hell I also chose powersets that don't like to fly but still made them work (Fiery Aura and Titan Weapon both have very good powers that need to be grounded to use (Burn and Arc of Destrucrion)). I also have a couple flying Scrappers that work; Flight and Savage Leap/Shield Charge feels like i'm dive-bombing targets.

If you want to stay primarily at range and airborne, may I point to Energy Manipulation. One of the powers of the set is just a temporary range bonus that gives you the power to hit things from another time zone and is very easy to make perma'd. It also stacks with the range bonus from your sniper attack and Clarion if you go that route. For primaries I find the best to keep your distance are Archery, Assault Rifle, Beam Rifle, Ice, and Water as none of these sets have PBAoEs while maintaining solid AoE capabilities (though I can't recall if Geyser needs to be used on the ground).

February 8

3 hours ago, Story Archer said:

Is there a link somewhere that shows the actual powers these guys have, their accuracy, duration, etc?

City of Data has detailed breakdowns of each pet and what they're capable of. You can also review the power in-game with a right click and the Detailed Info tab will have a lot of information.

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/entity.html?entity=pets_v_darkservant

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/entity.html?entity=pets_shade

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/entity.html?entity=pets_umbra_beast

February 8

Reminds me of the one time this didn't happen to me. Back on the live days, the ski challet was in beta and the santa gloves/boots were just added. There was an impromptu costume contest in the ski challet. Everyone who was part of it made a santa suit, except for me who took those gloves and boots and made a skiing outfit instead. I won it too, probably because my white and blue stood out among all the red.

February 7

23 minutes ago, StarkWhite said:

I don't really get it, but on the other hand I myself have yelled at people for Speed Boosting me without my consent and causing me to bounce around like a damned pinball, so I'm not gonna judge.

In case you're not aware, Null the Gull has the option to supress movement speed buffs from other players. Speed Boost, Accelerate Metabolism, and a couple others are included.

February 7

If you do pick a partner, you'll get extra lore and the Connected badge if you do all the bonus objectives. While Vince and Lorenz both have similar side stories about finding an amulet or some family sellouts, Maros adds additional story concerning Sharkhead's red/blood coral. Maros will also add another fight with Barracuda partway in so be aware of that. To partner with Maros, you have to have completed his Cult of the Shaper story arc first. Also you will have the option to bring your partner along for the second-to-last mission in the warehouse when you go into the coral itself (this will not be immediately clear in the mission briefing, talk to your partner before starting the mission). Be sure to check the radio just inside each mission before continuing to activate extra objectives.

February 7

8 hours ago, KITANYA said:

Why Intuition Radial over Musculature Core that has 45 damage?

Intuition Radial offers Damage, Range, and Hold (most Blasters have at least one), along with defense debuff, slow, and tohit debuff which are fairly common debuff effects in a number of Blaster attacks.

February 5

Generally no. There are some powers that give status protections (for instance Burn in Fire Manipulation gives Immobilize protection and Wild Fortress in Plant Manip. has Confuse protection) but a Blaster would usually have to heavily invest in pools for status protections and that's not really viable. Rune of Protection is the best option if you want status protections but it requires two other powers in the Sorcery pool to get and can't be up 100% of the time due to a non-enhancable recharge.

Blaster's best status protection: kill them first. Use your powers to prevent then from acting and kill them before their statuses can go off. Use your nukes to alpha strike, abuse knockdowns if you have them, some sets get weak AoE controls that can help with set ups or when things get hairy. And don't forget that if you do get controled, Blasters can still use their T1 and T2 primary powers and their T1 secondary at any time so you can still fight even if you're encased in a block of ice.

Worst case scenario if you're really struggling, the Defense Amplifier from the P2W vendor gives some status protection. As long as you're not getting focused with controls that they get layered to hell it should give you plenty of leeway to work with.

If you're worried about being knocked over, look into a Blessing of the Zephyr or Karma knockback protection enhancements. You can slot one in a travel power or defense boosting power and knockdowns will never be an issue again. Very, very few enemies do more than Mag 4 knockback so this would cover pretty much anything that isn't Diabolique or a Fake Nemesis.

February 5

Something that kind of bothers me are the rewards for the arcs added to the 15-24 range. Heroes get five badges and two temporary powers from Laura Lockheart and Grahm Easton, but Villains only get two badges from Bane Spider Ruben and Brother Hammond. Why is there such an imbalance in rewards? I know for the heroes this does mean doing each arc twice to get everything but still the Villain rewards get kind of shafted here.

My suggestion: There's a perfect place already to add a branching reward in Bane Spider Ruben for another badge and temporary powers, similar to Grahm Easton and sparing/killing the Tsoo leader. At the end of the arc you are given the option to either hand the Suggestion Engine to Arachnos or keep it for yourself. If you give it to him he'll remark that you still have the psychic damper that you were given early on. Here's what I think: if you keep the engine for yourself you should get the Gifted Speaker badge as usual but get a ten-use temporary single-target Confuse power as a bonus so you can actually use the engine for a bit before it fails as suggested by the writing. If you give Ruben the engine you should get a different badge instead, something related to being unable to be swayed or hypnotized perhaps? You should also get the Psychic Damper as an auto power which can provide some minor Psi defense and some Confuse protection for a few hours in-game.

I know this isn't a terribly big thing but the imbalance of rewards for these four arcs always kind of bothered me. This could help a bit. Thoughts?

February 4

I had a friend of mine try Outbreak, he's only played the game once before where I took him through Destroyed Galaxy (bad idea in hindsight). Outbreak is certainly a better tutorial than Galaxy for sure but there's still a few nuances that don't get well explained however he agrees that it was certainly a better tutorial to start with. He had difficulty navigating at times when it came to the compass telling him where to go, the worst cases where upon exiting a mission there was no prompt to go back to the contact (Coyote in particular) and the compass doesn't tell you where the Contaminated are, I had to point him in that direction since he also is the kind of person to skip through text. I'll run it again myself to compare it to what I remember, but I think it's a good start.

I would also like to point out that he decided to get the Isolater badge. I only told him about it after he started aimlessly KOing dudes after the first two. I'm not sure the game's clicking for him but if he sticks around we might have a future badge hunter in the making.

Whatever popup is supposed to appear upon collecting an Explore badge the first time appeared as a placeholder instead.

February 3

I admit I don't have a whole lot of variety. Most of my level up paths follow the same story arcs and I typically play solo. I do mix up which arcs I play, like sometimes I'll go Hollows while others I play Twinshot. Gold i'll pick a path based on my character headcannon and what they would do for/against Praetoria. It's rare for me to do radios/papers, but I enjoy tips (devs: please add more allignment tips, they're the best villainous content by far) and often run those between major arcs. Occasionally I jump into TFs, I keep the LFG tab open and if I see a shout I'm in to i'll go for it, but I generally don't form teams myself.

February 2

Stalkers are about subtly and assassainations. A morningstar or hammer really isn't the best for trying to be unnoticed as they're heavy, clunky, and messy. Of course we might get them repurposed for Stalkers, but Mace and Axe are very much not "stealthy" weapons.

February 1

Here's a thought, to better give new Heroes a nudge toward explore badges and get that popup sooner, can we potentially have the Rookie badge taken from Echo Atlas and have it placed on Ms. Liberty's feet in modern Atlas? Maybe exchange another badge in the process like Hero Corps Insider or Silent Sentinel. Villains and Goldies have an explore badge pretty much as they leave the tutorial, but the closest badge to new Heroes is at the top of the statue which isn't somewhere people would think to go first.

January 31

So I know this isn't part of the tutorials you're going through, but seeing as how Twinshot and Dr. Graves stories are meant to be expanded tutorials of sorts, would it be possible to expand their level ranges for all three arcs so that you can do them at any point between 5 and 19? As it is now if you reach level 10 and haven't started the first arc you get locked out of all three arcs for whatever reason, and the same for not starting part two before 15 locking you out of part three. Seeing how easy it is to level from 1 to 10 in about an hour, especially if you're being pulled into DFB runs, missing out on those stories can hurt a fair bit.

January 31

1 hour ago, Project said:

This is absolutely amazing - there are more people online now than the last couple of months of live 😮

How did this happen? :O

The news of NCSoft officially licensing the servers got a lot of attention across gaming news sites. In addition there's a major update set to release in a few weeks so there's understandably a lot of hype at the moment. It got me back in the game after a little over a year off, that's for sure.

January 30

According to City of Data, Haunted applies a Taunt effect to Darkness Control shades, as well as Shades spawned by Drudges and Maestro (The Aeon SF version has Shades of some kind) so that they will prioritize the Haunted target.

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=temporary_powers.temporary_powers.haunted&at=controller

January 30

I had an idea for a Knights powerset for Mastermind a while ago. It came up in a weekly discussion topic when one of the HC team was posting them. Here's what I had for each power if I recall.

1. Crossbow - Basic crossbow shot for lethal damage. Same kind as CoT guides or Luddites

2. Summon Squires - Calls up to 3 Squires. The first Squire wields a sword (lethal damage and -def), the second a club (smashing damage and stun) and the third is an archer who keeps his distance. 1st upgrade adds new attacks, 2nd upgrade gives them a shield (melee defense) and more attacks (the archer gets AoE shots)

3. Aimed Crossbow - Slower and stronger

4. Train Knights

5. Explosive Crossbow - exploding crossbow shot for AoE damage, see Battle Maiden's crossbow attacks in Maria Jenkins' arc.

6. Summon Knights - Call up to 2 Knights. They look after their squires and cover them with their shields. 1st Knight has sword and shield, second has a mace and shield. The shields give them melee defense and give ranged defense with training. Training and upgrading grants new moves with some focus on team support (Grant Cover and maybe something like Centurian's command shout that removes statuses)

7. Crusade - Temporarily buffs pets somehow but I don't think I actually had an idea as to what.

8. Summon Champion - Calls a Champion who wields a Titan Weapon sword. He is tanky and taunts foes. Training and upgrading adds new attacks.

9. Upgrade Knights

January 30

If I recall, when you're Hidden nearly all auras from your secondaries that would affect foes are suppressed until you do something that would un-Hide you. Also Stalker auras don't have a taunt effect in general as it would mess with their playstyle of stealth and assassaination. Very hard to stab someone in the back while you're keeping him busy shouting obscenities about his mother.

January 30

I have a Radiation/Regen Sentinel which is quite fun. Difficult to kill but I also attriubte that to my attack cycle having two PBAoE Knockdowns (Irradiate and Engulfing Darkness slotted with chance for KD procs) followed up with the nuke giving things less chance to fight back. Off the top of my head I believe I only skipped the Rez power but I did so without realizing that it can be used while alive and haven't gone back to see if it's worthwhile which it probably is.

Reconstruction isn't great. It gives the Toxic resist but is on a slower cooldown than Healing Flames, plus the heal doesn't account for your max HP boosts and feels less effective as a result. It's still good to have but it's pretty underwhelming when you have the absorbs and high regen rates healing you up anyway.

But i'm no expert, if someone else wants to tell me i'm wrong let me know.

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