Yoru-hime

Or a villain created specifically for farming: Skulldrudgery

You should ALWAYS thoroughly wash your amplifiers before using them. Every hero lost to unsanitary amplifier usage is just one more completely avoidable tragedy...

Right now it'd be my only L50 Blaster. DP/Ninja with Combat Teleport. I've never had a character hit that Black Widow-style secret agent vibe better.

"There was an AV in my way and I removed it without help from any teammates." I don't really get into the "+X, no insp, no temps, no using your Alt key and you have to have a patch over your left eye or it doesn't count" forum bragging mini-game. There was an enemy blocking my path. I'm standing. He's not. Job's done. I'm off to collect my rewards.

Just posted: Telephone — Today at 8:56 PM @here All shards are available for play. We are still operating on backup networking capability and expect some degraded performance. Global services (such as the AH) may also be slightly less reliable than normal. We'll monitor everything closely and update you when we know more about the return of our primary networking.

Perhaps we should celebrate this grand mess (and test the stability of the new network configuration) with a Mender Derek event. Mender Silos - "What do you mean you just LOST a whole day, Derekl?!? Do you expect me to believe that an intangible slice of space-time is stuck somewhere in the cushions of your couch?"

This feels like a good summary of the day for all of us.

Telephone just potsed in Discord: "Update: OVH continues to work on our issue. We've managed to get Torchbearer up using some backup networking technology. Now that we've proven this method, we're going to finish getting the rest of our cluster set up over the backup. ETA should be just a couple more hours."

I like the idea in general. It's a common enough thing in other games to give an incentive for players to see a variety of content. The WSTs succeed at encouraging TF/SFs that otherwise aren't as commonly formed as the TFC series and ITF/Tinpex (Sutter, Kal, Respec trials). Expanding that to a more generic "Most Wanted List" or "Bounty Hunter's Weekly" might help people see that there's more to the game than they may have realized. It can also be a variety of rewards, not just "more merits". Personally, I've usually got all the merits/influence I need, but I'd love to be able to score some form of extra XP boost to help get a character through the slog of the late 30s and 40s without grinding ITFs or radios. There are some good story arcs in that range but the XP gains while doing them are usually pretty terrible comparatively. I like the idea of including AE as a way to show that there's more going on there than farming. Perhaps as a starting point, pick a Dev's Choice arc per week and have it award bonus tickets.

I use the trams quite regularly as well. If the station is fewer than 20 seconds away, that's my default. LRT and Ouro are more for the "far corner of nowhere" moments. I've never bothered with a base hub. I'm both too lazy to build one and to mess with the passcodes. Getting around is already so easy that I never saw a reason. I prefer chocolate icing on my donuts. Anything with fruity cereal on top will be returned along with a suitable explosive device to purify the source of the contamination.

I also managed to sneak a donation in for a change.

Thanks! I definitely wish for more slots, but I'm in no grand hurry. I suppose could go ahead and level up to get more, but that would mean leveling a Peacebringer. 😰 Err, I mean breaking the challenge. 😉

I've enjoyed this thread. It inspired me to start my own journey through the market. My rules were: No fighting, no drops, no P2W, no XP, just what I can earn off the Auction House starting with ONE Influence. I started up a new character, emailed her exactly 1 Influence and set her loose to see if she could earn a billion. I did make her a PB for the Level 1 Flight. She might be too lazy to fight crime, but she's all for doing things the easy way. She's up to 112 million as of this morning (not counting inventory on hand), and still sitting on zero XP. I have to be careful to avoid that explore badge outside the university so I don't accidentally earn a few points and ruin the whole thing. 🙂 I might bend the rules a little and allow myself the Field Crafter P2W purchase just so I can find someplace less crowded to work. Haven't decided yet. Thanks for sharing.

If your main concern is popup trays, that's at level 4 AND with a travel power. The KR Pocket D entrance is seconds away from the Tram Line with Sprint, pretty sure it's the same in Port Oakes as well. They were put there to be easily accessible to lowbies without further cluttering up AP. I disagree with the idea that even setting foot outside the absolute beginner zone is considered too high a barrier of entry for much of anything, especially something as trivial as Pocket D. If Echo Plaza is that critical, leave up the TUNNEL link full-time. If Null is that important, create a copy hanging out somewhere in Atlas/Mercy/Nova, at least until we can get rid of the stupid thing as a character configuration hack. Interdimensional seagull-god things can be as many places at once as they want. We have ONE entry level zone per side. Trying to shove absolutely everything into it will create a place that many of us just don't want to be, and in many cases already has. We don't need more City of Atlas Park, please.

Empowerment Station buffs from an SG base should also give 25' of stealth. I assume it stacks with IO stealth. https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Grant_Invisibility_(Empowerment)

"Owie" - Me, all too frequently

It turns out that Converter RNG is directly linked to forum post count. Therefore any and every post about Converter luck changes that poster's luck, thereby making them look quite foolish. Our devs are tricksy and ebil. They've gotta be to stay ahead of the marketeers. 😄

Sitting on at least one alt idea until this hits live, maybe two. Can't wait. 🙂

Spirit Ward - I like the upfront absorb boost on Spirit Ward and reduced recharge. It feels like it increases the utility past "pet protector". The cost/benefit still feels a bit high compared to a Leadership toggle that can boost an entire team, but it's closer now. I'd still probably lean toward this more on a pet AT or a character that I'm playing with a dedicated partner rather than investing in a power just for throwing it on random teammates. I'm not that familiar with Enflame, so I can't comment there. Arcane Bolt - I'm not a big fan of the randomness of the gimmick (and so tired of golden rings...) but I'd certainly look at it if the build was hurting for attacks. Rune of Protection - Probably about as good as it'll get. I like that it's got increased utility for many builds, though the top-end performance hit for those using it that way is still going to sting some players. The AT balance issues I feel like are being exposed here are probably too big to address with one power or pool (or perhaps at all).

The entire paradigm of "mez is a constant bane to squishies but simply irrelevant to melee" has always felt broken. The melee has never paid an appropriate price for their safety compared to other damage dealers and it's only grown more apparent as that relative safety has morphed into often easily achieved near-indestructability. Seeing it so ruthlessly reinforced just drives it home. I want to believe that the devs have a grander plan in mind than just "We don't care how many build sacrifices you made to get there, Blasters aren't Blasters if they're not getting mezzed. These builds are now Invalid." Can't say I'm seeing it yet, though.

His Complete Newcomer's Guides are like a giant welcome mat to the City. He cared for this community in so many ways and will be sorely missed.

Never mind. Question was already answered

There are lots of problems with the traditional protective T9s. Most of them come down to the problem that the game is simply built wrong for them. Up-and-down defensive powers aren't as beneficial as they look on paper because the game rarely varies the level of damage incoming in such a way as to make them work. If you NEED them, you're likely to still going to need them XX seconds from now, so you're dead anyway. If you don't need them, using them just adds to your risk of death with the crash. With a few exceptions, enemies don't really have enrage cycles or tankbusters and those can generally be managed without something that actively tries to kill you. Even when they do seem useful, the design of the defensive formulas means that the massive buffs many of the T9s claim to offer are rarely realized because they're usually just boosting over softcaps. If you're already at 42% defense, a +5% defense boost and a +50% defense boost are usually indistinguishable in terms of effectiveness and the former is probably pretty easy to get on a permanent basis if you've got a power pick to spend. When it comes to actually changing T9s you hit the problem that the defensive sets are by and large already so good that a T9 worth taking just makes them absurd. While there's a natural impulse to want to make a capstone power awesome, they simply don't exist in a vacuum. Do the defensive sets REALLY need to be any stronger? Are we OK with other powers being nerfed to get a great T9? Personally, I'd say the answer to both of these is "no". Most every melee AT can already be built to be just about indestructible. What more do we really need from a defensive powerset?

Talk away! Either we learn new stuff or we get to watch some gratuitous dev-on-dev violence. Either way, it's a win for the fans. 😄

If I remember right, PVP recipes can start dropping at level 10 in PvE content. I feel like they're rarer than standard rare drops, but more common than purples are at 50. I remember that I lucked into one while running Faultline that helped bankroll the character for a good while. The drop rate is low enough that a 5 minute timer in PvE wouldn't really be noticed if it did exist. Couldn't tell ya about PvP drop rates.