Shred Monkey

AH.. wasn't aware of that... I just noticed everything at 54 instead of graduated like the normal RWZ and assumed it was my settings. Thanks.

On a side note... if you lock the team, you can generate an MSR instance solo. It sets the whole zone to your current difficulty setting. It's the only way I know of to "street sweep" and see exclusively +4 spawns. I do this sometimes I'm waiting for something interesting to show up in LFG.

Yeah... at this point, I'm in favor of every toggle power having a "no visible change" graphical option.... including invis/stealth/hide. Let us see our costumes.

I've seen several examples of what people are calling "crawls" where people play story arc content together for a pre-scheduled time without 2xp on characters. I think sometimes they implement some other rules like not sharing influence or enhancements from your high level alts. That's good advice there. I'm 100% certain that you'll find like-minded people to team with. I spend most of my game time soloing my level 50 min-maxed toons... but when I see a low-mid level story arc team forming, and I have the time, I grab an alt and jump on it.

I like this option better than turning off XP.

When I solo content, I always do story arcs. I usually look for story arcs I "less familiar" with for variety. I read the descriptions (something it is inconvenient to do when teamed). It appears to me that there's an overlap of 1 level when you move from one contact group to the next, so there's rarely a situation where I'm out leveling an arc before it's over. I should back up a minute and say I start this at level 22 after I do a respec into IOs. I generally race to 22 using 2XP, DFBs, and Positron TFs, with a little street sweeping mixed in. Before 22 you probably do out level some story arcs with just the XP in the arc itself if you don't turn of XP. The stories are interesting, but I am also always tweaking/testing builds and powers, so that's another aspect of the game that holds my attention. Also, I usually play in short sessions these days. Logging in for 20 minutes to run 1-2 missions is pretty normal... and getting pulled away mid-mission is common as well. I prefer not to do that on a team, which is another reason I solo a lot.

I won't like your post and ruin it for you.

Who? If you had to choose one person, the best answer to that question is probably Stan Lee. Personally, I'm ok with his contribution to the genre.

To be honest, I never understood these posts. When I'm on a team, I just focus on my job. I never look over the shoulder of my teammates to see if they're doing theirs. Sometimes I look at cool costumes, and I always notice cool names. Backstories, too if I have the time before the mission starts. But once we enter combat, I'm either looking for the biggest threat, or I'm hitting the biggest threat. If I'm losing endurance or hitpoints too quickly, I adjust my pace so I pull less agro. Then, if needed, I address the problem in my build later. If a teammate is losing HP too fast, I try to see what enemy is giving them trouble, and I move that to the top of my biggest threat list so I can be a better teammate. I don't blame everyone else on the team. And I can honestly say as long as COH has been in existence, I've never, looked at a teammate's build in game to critique what they did wrong. If I was on a team with the worst built toons in the game I wouldn't know it. And, I probably would be having fun.

Unless the team lead designates not to follow the tank, my default is to follow the tank. And to be honest, if I was a tank and the team lead said not to follow the tank, I'd politely leave the team... because why else am I there except to soak up the alpha and draw things together to make it easier for the team?

My basic "monkey" costume is barefoot for this reason. As I begin to accessorize I often settle for something armored and colored black to hide it's failings, but footwear mismatch is a serious issue with this game.

Ironically, given the title of this thread, the reason to go with dark blast and dark melee? ...it's heal.

I was going to say DP/Martial as well. That PBAoE slow and Ki Push do a lot for keeping things out of melee ...and I love the animations. It's a little slower solo then most of my toons, but it's still a lot of fun on teams.

Don't underestimate the power of Batman's dark forebodingness.

I always figured CoH2 development wasn't 100% canceled. It was stopped with only 20 levels completed and turned into what we commonly refer to as Gold Side now.

Until you get your destiny incarnate slot, the best mez protection on a blaster is ranged defense...and then staying out of melee. If you get range defense up to 45% then most mez attacks will miss you 95% of the time. You use break frees when you do get hit with a mez. Also, knowing which enemies are using the mez attacks so you can kill them first helps as well. Also... you may want to check out the Dominator AT. They have mez protection when domination is up. With enough global recharge you can make domination permanent. I have no experience with them so I apologize if I'm mis-stating something about them.

I did some experimenting with changing the Alpha slot and Interface slot on my Shield/MA tank. Soloing on 4x8. Ultimately what I'm seeing is that those 2 changes alone to get me back up to hitting 95% of the time. When I switched my alpha back to musculature it actually went much quicker. The difference being that I rely heavily on buildup+shield charge+dragon's tail to take down the minions and LTs. Having +dam in my alpha dropped the spawn on the 2nd shield charge with more reliability than having more +acc. I think the best way to avoid missing when solo is to just spread out the spawn a bit. If you are missing, then move away to fight them a few at a time until build up is ready again.

Ice/ and Beam Rifle/ both have high dps ST chains and a ranged nuke. Archery is also nice with it's short recharge nuke from range. For secondary it doesn't matter that much. I took /devices because it gave me everything I needed in 2 powers which left lots of room for pool power options. /TA, /Energy, /Plant all have useful "at range" powers.

Paralytic interface incarnate has -defense. Not sure it it's worth much, but neither are the other interface procs... might be worth a try.

It's been mentioned above, but I'll add my personal experience with Shield/MA is both that it's survivability is way beyond any threats I've run into, but it is also has respectable damage output as well. I really like how you can quite easily push defense bonuses up to the incarnate level soft-cap. It's also visually fun to play. The MA kick animations with a shield on your arm looks very super-heroic.

Clearly the solution is to add more knockback to your powers to disrupt their formation.

I think by definition, farming is earning rewards in the most efficient method. Even if they make changes to disrupt the current "best" farm, the farm changes to the next best method and continues. But I also believe the market is the fastest way to earn influence. Especially if you're accounting for direct time of putting in only 20 minutes a day flipping stuff.

And as I recall, somewhere around level 43-45 the influence starts coming in much faster then the levels so you'll end up catching up on your SO's once you hit that point. I've not played an SO build in a long time and there's been changes since then, but I imagine there's still a tipping point on that scale. before you hit 50.

Also, generic Invention Origin enhancements work just like Single Origin enhancements, but they never go red. You can buy a level 25 IOs for 50K-100K at the Auction House and slot it in place of an SO. It will never decrease in power, it never goes "red" and you never need to upgrade it.

What we have today is a traditional dungeon crawl. It's a tried and true gaming concept that works. I don't think you could pull them out and replace them with a more traditional building map. However, the mayhem missions give a good model on how to do this properly. Start the mission outside and down the street, then fight your way to the door and then storm the building. Apex and Tin Mage pull this off very well also.