roleki

I don't view that as a 'problem' for Controllers because their Power Boost is almost 25% more effective than what is available to Def/Corr and they can fire it off twice as often. True, Controllers lose some other fancy toys by going with boring old PFM, but they benefit from +Special moreso than a given Def/Corr would and it comes in handy for more than just doubling bubbles.

Defenders get higher base numbers on the +Def bubbles (15% vs. 11.25% on Controllers/Corruptors) and better -Res in Repulsion Bolt (20 vs. 15) and Force Bomb (15 vs. 11.25), so there's that. However... FF Defenders and Corruptors just turn into half-assed Blasters after laying out their bubbles, whereas Controllers can lock down hard targets or otherwise do stuff to neutralize troublesome gits after buffing their teammates. Which is a lot of words to say "Clearly, you want a Fire/FF/Primal Controller because you have good taste and are both spiritually and visually appealing to members of all species."

I wouldn't give up completely on that Defender; unlike most other support sets, Dark Miasma never goes out of style, and Rad Blast is just a fun set EVEN THOUGH IT'S RIDICULOUS THAT YOU CAN MISS WITH X-RAY BEAM HOW THE HELL DO I MISS SOMETHING I AM LOOKING DIRECTLY AT WHEN XRAYS MOVE AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT IT'S A DAMN TRAVESTY IS WHAT IT IS AND WHY THE HELL ANY FURTHER DEVELOPMENT ON THIS GAME CONTINUED WITHOUT MAKING X-RAY BEAM AN AUTOHIT I'LL NEVER UNDERSTAND BUT SOMEBODY NEEDS TO LOOK AT THIS WITHOUT MISSING I MIGHT ADD. But yeah, just set that Defender aside for a bit until you've regained your sea legs on a more-forgiving AT like Sentinel or Scrapper. Myself, if I'm in my cups or what have you. I run a Claws/Willpower Scrapper. Functionally speaking, it's three buttons, very hard to go wrong there, and it actually becomes more effective if you accidentally keep running headfirst into giant mob spawns. Also would suggest getting on more teams, and paying attention to what the other drivers are doing with them. Not everything you see will necessarily adhere to Best Practices, but you'll get a sense for who they tend to target first, from where, and whether they chose wisely in doing so. Chances are, if you join a team, at least one of those people is going to be extremely experienced with the game and very helpful. Frankly, I'm a little jealous of people just coming back to the game and stumbling upon HC as it stands in Page 5. Almost all of the unnecessary garbage that hampered character development has been removed, and you can just... go. Kill Skuls.

Oh, you want authenticity? /jranger

When they are finally implemented on a "back to formula" server, I hope they rename the At "Tuber."

The only 'difficulty' associated with CoH has ever been due to QoL issues. It's fancy rock-paper-scissors, it's not Kerbal Space Program or FTL. I'll never understand people who have nostalgia for level-gated mechanics and forced cooperation, and frankly, I don't want to understand them. And while I may disagree with certain aspects of development and direction on HC, that doesn't preclude me from acknowledging that their version of the game is functionally superior to the few other rogue CoX servers that I've tried, and infinitely more playable than Live was at any point, full stop. And honestly, using the word "fun" as a derogatory term to describe a GAME server seems a refined form of rhetorical self-dick-shooting.

I had a Grav/Dark built to perma-intangibilify Pylons in the RWZ back when they did Zone MSRs on Indom; it was actually intended to combat griefing but soon as I rolled it, they switched to instanced MSRs and the need subsided. But it worked and was actually kind of hilarious. ETA: She was named "Save The Clock Tower" and had a pretty accurate representation of the look of the woman from Back to the Future for whom she was named. I had all her lines macro'd, it was a bona fide work. She's since had a sex change and is patterned after Frank Booth.

I thought this was crazy when I first read it, but yesterday I lowered my Trapdoor clear time by nearly 15s with these little beauties. Hardmode, indeed.

At this point, having Fury go over 85% would ruin my immersion, as I manifest that last 15% physiologically.

Since you've chosen Fire as a primary, it goes without saying that you have no qualms about setting people ablaze in your pursuit of in/justice. But have you ever considered the possibility of also knocking them on their ass while you're setting them on fire? And Fire Imps are great fun while they last, but wouldn't it be much nicer if they were running around with 50+ def to everything but Psi/Tox? Try Fire/FF/Primal. Once it's rolling, it can only be stopped by cutting the power to your computer. Source: I just logged in briefly to get the exact numbers on Power Boosted Imp defense, and once I had confirmed it was above 50, I tried to log out and was knocked out of my chair by an unseen force. That's how much knockdown these things pack.

Hey, you're not nobody!

It's a little outdated, but my spreadsheet says I have 83 level 50 characters spread across Indom and Excelsior with a combined 2578 vet levels. I have another 56 non-50s at an average level of 9; some are placeholders, others are just stalled out somewhere in the middle. As far as why I have so many alts, it varies. Sometimes I'm sitting there and a name pops into my head, so I'll log in and nab it, then eventually I'll think of a character to build around it. Other times I'd think of a build I'd like to try, and just wing it from there. Sometimes, it's a combination of both. I also like to have multiple characters that would align with my state of mind and abilities, in relation to what I've consumed that day/evening. That's why the Claws/WP that I'm *not* in love with has more vet levels than the Ice/TA that I *do* love: quite often, I find myself in a situation where I want to play CoH, but I only have about 3-button-clicks of mental/physical dexterity available. Don't worry, I rarely PUG.

That's about as good a description of Dark Melee as any, at least on a Scrapper. Despite the numbers looking like crap on paper, in Mids, in the Enhancement Management screen, in Combat Attributes, in the Combat Log, in the floating indicators during combat - hell, even when using the target's health meter as a gauge - Dark never gives you that feeling of assurance that success vs. the enemy is inevitable. One minute you're surrounded by fully armed and operational apes, making little orange numbers in the single- and low-two digits, next thing you know you're the only one standing amongst a pile of corpses. It's like Scrapperlock: The Powerset, and probably best not to look too deeply into it.

I think they are steering towards "any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental." They generic'd my Plant/Thorn DOMinator "Vine Diesel" within 10 minutes of its creation but I appealed to the powers what was and got the name back. I wasn't so much upset that Vine got generic'd as I was that THAT character is the one that got hit, and not something like Embarrassing Wetness or Missionary Physician, or any of 300 other characters who have inspired audible groans in voice.

My dedicated farmers rarely get purple drops; doorsitters seem to get them like crazy. I run my 50s through Council farms to get catalysts real quick, and I get most of my purple drops that way.

I've never seen it explained why Jack takes Slow SOs/IOs, but not Slow sets.; I've always assumed there was something related to balance behind the omission, but I've never seen what, specifically, would have been out of balance if Jack took procs. Maybe the -Rech proc?

Jack Frost is no slouch, and Ice/ is a really fun set, if you like your tactics layered and appreciate soft control/mitigation.

I'll never understand the greed that leads to such a scenario in any video game, let alone THIS video game. There's only so much shit you can buy in CoH, and the vast majority of shit you can buy in CoH is shit nobody WANTs to buy in CoH. As an occasional farmer, I've got about 90BN in resources in CoH across two accounts; that is a pittance compared to what people who are purposely attempting to accumulate inf are sitting on. I wouldn't be able to consumet90BN in inf if I played 24 hours a day, let alone the hour a week I play anymore. There's only so much shit to BUY. So while I understand that many scenarios can lead people to accumulate Scrooge McDuck levels of inf, I'll never understand WHY they bother.

I'll never need to buy another Winter Pack again, but I feel bad for new players or players who didn't realize the Winter Packs wouldn't go on sale this year. Seems arbitrary and barrier-ish to me, but what the hell do I care, I've got mine.

When you PL your own characters, the doorsitters usually generate a lifetime supply of common/Uncommon salvage. Just throw 10x or 30x of each of them in the AH (but don't list them) and you'll always have salvage to spare.

Disappointing.

How long are you letting these bids marinate before calling them unfilled? I don't doubt the market has been janky lately, but I can't help but wonder if there's some less-nefarious, more-technical reason for it, considering it seems to be happening on the stuff that historically has the most movement. Then again, those are exactly the things some nefarious buttholes would try to manipulate, so, who knows. Of course, if you just farm a little every week, you'll rarely ever traffic in the AH, and you can safely glide past market shenanigans, no matter what hole they're coming out of.

NosFeraTu, madre?

Something important to keep in mind, while most people loitering around AE are there for PL/farming, some people use AE for the stories, and some AE farms aren't necessarily for PL/inf. I park all my 50s in PocketD, and run through Council farms just to pick up a catalyst. So it'll look like there's a Fire/Traps Controller or a Beam/TA Corruptor or whatever emerging from a farm, UT really, they just dipped in to kill a couple mobs and get their catalyst for the day.

Jack Frost has grown on me over the years; used to be he would freak out at the sight of a burning Oil Slick, but now he's been re-coded to actually hang around and take swings at things, I have come to appreciate his "Alright, who else wants an ass-beating?" ethos. I will forever mourn Singularity 2.0 (the version that was prevalent for most of Live). I suppose the 'black hole' effect on the HC version is kind of cool, but I would trade that in a heartbeat for the old-school impervious, inscrutable Singularity that would survive pretty much anything but the defeat of its summoner. An injured Singularity used to MEAN something - you knew you were in the deep stuff if your Singularity was getting nicked. Now it just means you missed a minion somewhere. Sad. As for pets I don't like... Fly Trap. The only occasion it ever arrives in time to actually contribute to the defeat of a mob, is if you summon it in the middle of the mob you're fighting. Otherwise, it's only good as an indicator of how far you've traveled since you summoned it. Fly Trap, you've got more legs than any other pet, how are you so fucking slow?