Shred Monkey

I put them on AH cause I'm too lazy to go to the vendor. Doing everything you described just sounds insane. I mean, I get it. Your playing the game they way they intended when they created empowerment stations and salvage storage for bases, so kudos on that. But it's just simpler to buy salvage from the AH when I want to empower.

I want to emphasize this comment. It's very good advice. The best thing you can do to improve your success is to make sure your attacks do not miss. At this level your strategy should be to win fights quickly and rest between them to get back hp and endurance. Nothing you do at this level in terms of damage mitigation will add up to a noticeable improvement. When you're at a higher level you can start stacking up defenses 2% and 3% defenses to add up to a noticeable improvement. But right now you just don't have enough slots available to you, yet. On the other hand, you do have enough slots to improve your attacks. And adding accuracy gives the biggest boost in performance to a non-enhanced attack. If you really want to improve mitigation, pick up the Air Superiority power from the flight pool. It has a 100% chance to knockdown a target, and with about 50% recharge reduction, you can keep a single target (including bosses) permanently out of the fight. (Also, still need accuracy to not miss your knockdown)

I finished leveling my EM/EA stalker this weekend. As I leveled up, I just took what made sense 1 level at a time. At 50 I started looking at what sets I would need to replace, when I respec'd and things were wildly out of whack. Like... something's missing... Then it dawned on me... I HADN'T TAKEN THE FIGHTING POOL! I got this weird little confused, but in a giggly way, feeling inside. Like... what? Wait... WHAT? What just happened?

Ionic can misfire if your target dies during that long animation... Vorpal and Mighty can potentially miss if you're not in the right spot. Pyronic I'm never worried about misfires. it's just a really quick WWWHAM!!!, and I keep going without missing a beat. I'm not 100% of how this works, but I'm pretty sure what you see in Mid's and in Game as a description of Ionic is not it's actual damage to each target. I think it's summing up it's (3?) jumps to get a total damage. But not every target gets hit 3 times.

Play +4x2 and fly though missions collecting merits. Similarly, there's a lot of cheap run speed boosts in IO sets. I've recently started paying attention to this. I'm surprised how much more fun it is to "race" through missions with high uninterruptable speed. A stalker who can take out a group of 4-5 bad guys in one cycle of his attack chain just sweeps through a mission more like a screaming wraith than a creeping ninja. I know 4x8 is your standard, but if you're not doing AoE damage, why not decrease the spawn size so you get more Reward Merits per enemy decapitated?

While leveling up my /EA stalker, I picked up disrupt just to play with it. I'm curious what others think of this power? I'm playing an EM/EA, so I have the endurance to run disrupt, so no downside there. And I can combine with with Total Focus to perma-stun. I ran some purple patch calculations and determined the duration needed based on my attack chain. And so with just a little +stun enhancement, I now perma-stun +3 bosses. I'm even able to perma-stun AVs when their "Purple Triangles of Doom" are down. (and Nightstar was perma-stunned for the whole fight, despite the PToD for some reason). This has been great against enemies like Carnies and Arachnos who have psi-heavy bosses, or to stop Fake Nemesis and Paragon protectors from using their Phase and T9 powers, etc. I never intended to take disrupt when I planned this toon, but now I'm keeping it. I could see this being used the same way for many other sets that have a reliable stun.

I always suspected that Goldside was the leftovers of the beta version of "CoH2". It just has that feel of an attempt at a "new and improved" sequel that never got fully flushed out. But there was enough good work completed that didn't want to throw it away either, so they put it in an expansion of the current game, instead.

Some (maybe all?) AV's ranged attacks have an enormous range. I've seen Bobcat throw a focus around 200 yards. It's commical because it takes a few seconds long time for the "wave" animation to hit you. I suspect that taunt is working on BM, but she doesn't move because you're not out of range.

This is so true. The game mechanics aren't anti-melee for this fight. The game mechanics show you very clearly where not to stand while give you total control of where she does stand. People are just too lazy or too dense to use the mechanics.

This won't be a 100% conclusive test.. but if you get the same message with all 5 servers, then it's probably flagging the ban filter. You could also try the name with another non-offensive word added.... like "$%#@ Duck" and see if that's still causing the issue. (Apologies to any ducks who found this message offensive).

I don't really think they should nerf team size.... My use of #NerfTeamSize is a snarky way to point out that a whole lot of the complaints made in these threads go away if you play on 3-5 man teams... which of course is a very real option to us all.

#NerfTeamSize

This is a perfect comparison. Now lets look at these two powers in actual use. You see, with recharge enhancements, most blasters have their Nukes back up in less than 40 seconds, some sets will have it in less than 30. If there's 6 blasters on a team... that's a nuke every 5-7 seconds (and a fireball or equivalent every 1 second.) On a team like this, the brute will be lucky to hit anything with his Footstomp because much of the time everything will die before the animation is done. It's great if they run ahead pull everything into a tighter spawn, but don't be fooled into thinking you're making a noticeable difference by knocking down three hotdog stands before the tidal wave hits and destroys the entire beachfront. Also, speed run times mean nothing about what we're talking about here. Powers like Team Teleport, superspeed, and general team coordination mean far more than footstomp or nukes on those top times.

When I make an alt, if that alt out-performs my main, it becomes my new main. That said, my fire/energy blapper has been at the top of page 1 for a very long time now. I have some other toons I solo with, but for teams, I just can't find anything I'd rather be playing.

Haven't done anything /EA since coming back so I went EM/EA.

I finally got around to trying out the new energy melee. I build a stalker with the idea that I could do a full attack chain of double-fisted smashes... and to my *SEVERE* disappointment, the quick version of energy transfer is 1-handed... it's not even a fist. In the process of fixing energy melee, ...you took away the best thing about energy melee. PLEASE make an alternate 2-fisted punch animation for energy melee... It can be a duplicate of assassin's strike... just anything 2 handed. I will be forever greatful.

Don't discount this option. Fire/Ninja has one of the top ST DPS chains in the game. Archery/Ninja and DP/Ninja are just plain fun options with great AoE.

Yes... it is.

I agree with this statement. And I agree that their current state of lacking difficulty is not achieving this goal. However, increasing the difficulty isn't the only solution. I look at Seed of Hamidon as being the most thoughtfully developed GM fight, and also the one least able to be solo'd. And yet, generally the only time I see people fighting him is for badges. Most of the time he just sits in zone waiting for nobody to come. However, many people turn out for MSR and traditional Hami fights. The difference? The rewards. If you make the GMs harder, you gotta up the rewards. Make them true gamewide events again.

#NerfTeamSize

I'm not sure the playstyle you're looking for, but both Electric Melee and Shield Defense have teleport AoE attacks in them. If you're looking for more of a support role, the Gravity Control set may fit your theme. It can teleport foes and make them shift to alternate dimensions.

I know when the game first came out, I would always try to stand behind the enemy opposite the tank so I could use backstab (rogue in EverQuest). Now, occasionally when fighting large enemies, I find myself trying to position in one of the "safe" angles and ready to matador away (Monster Hunter World).

I know.. what if there was an organization that hid in the sewers and subway systems? They could give out missions and plot lines that work to their ultimate goal of overthrowing the current corrupt government. They could come with their own hubs of trainers and vendors so that you only need to come out of the sewers if a mission sends you to the above world. But if you're gonna go through all the work, you might as well build a new zone, and maybe even a new topside world to counter-balance the sub terrainian world... maybe call it Preatoria or something that ties into the original game. I bet it will be extremely popular.

There's a lot of really good options in the defense IO set bonuses and antiques to help with +recharge, +resists and +acc... etc. But don't discount slotting for defense. If I'm building soft-capped defenses (and personally, I always am), I use everything I can to get there... then you can strip things back if I find I'm over 45%.

I generally make just a costume that has 1 main color and 1 accent color... and almost every power is colored to be one of those 2 colors. Hair/skin might be additional colors. But that's also my style. I generally choose bold colors and big features so they're more cartoony looking toons to begin with. I also use black a lot to cover up odd clipping and mis-matched textures in my pieces. That said, the one costume I have will get updated constantly throughout the life of the toon. Sometimes drastically as a new idea forms. I've come to accept this so much that I actually now will typically start a new toon with a throw-away name and costume. Then I slowly morph into the concept over time. Usually somewhere around level 35 is when I finally get dialed in. I don't stop editing my costume, but there comes a point where, I end up reverting back to the previous version almost every time.