Shred Monkey

Rich people problems.

Just don't make a sequel cause that'll ruin the franchise. Prequel series is ok, but no more movies. Trust me on this.

Going down from 45% to 40% defense doubles the incoming damage. Also defense protects you from debuffs and status effects since they have to pass a hitroll before they affect you. Personally, I'd give something else up to get Rune, not defense.

OK, so first off, I'm not a comic book guy. I can't say I've read any, so this is just a Movie Fan perspective. The MCU movie series, IMHO is the best cinematic experience in existence. About 40 hours of story and characters all tied together into a single world. The first Avengers movie really took the story quality up a level... Civil War raised the bar again with Character complexity. Ragnarok, Black Panther, and Spiderman showed us they could play around with the formula and still deliver progression in the overall story. Then Infinity War + Endgame just gave a huge gut punch to finish off the main story arc. I loved it all... sure I can point to some stuff I don't like, but generally I'm a big fan. I'm working my way though the Netflix stories now. So far I'm impressed with all of them except the Iron Fist. I'm pushing through Season 1, but honestly if it wasn't for a desire to watch them all in order, I'd be skipping this series. After 5-6 episodes it just hasn't drawn me in like the others. The main superhero isn't very interesting. He's supposed to be this ultimate martial artist, but he actually gets beat up a lot before finally winning. His alter ego isn't very interesting. I mean, it's Batman basically, but if Batman was really bad at being Bruce Wayne. The badguys are only badguys because the Iron Fist is fighting them. I'm about 10 shows in, they haven't really done anything bad yet... there's no "coming disaster" that needs to be stopped.. or if there is, I've totally missed it. I was into Agents of Shield for about 5 seasons. But they lost me when they started jumping around in time and space. Agent Carter is on my list to watch, but I haven't seen it yet. Who is your favorite hero? -- Tough one. I'm going to give it to Thor... but mostly based on his performances in the non-Thor movies. Who is your least favorite hero? -- Vision hasn't done much besides come into existence, have 1 moment (picking up Thor's Hammer), and then die. So maybe it's unfair to say him, but I'm not particularly interested in knowing him better, either. Who is your least favorite villain? Ego. Just not interesting. His main purpose in the story is to give Star Lord backstory. Who is your favorite actor? Chris Evens. He does Captian America so perfectly... and that's really important to the success of the series. Who is your least favorite actor? Brie Larson was just awful. Is she supposed to be a robot? Chris Pratt gets old after a while. His jealousy of Thor was funny in concept, but was already old by the final scene of Endgame. What is your favorite movie in the MCU? Infinity War... that feeling of a packed theater dead silent after the movie ended... I mean, people were so shocked they were slow to get up and leave after the credits finished. What is your least favorite movie? Thor 2 - Should have been better... I like the concept, just not executed well. Guardians 2 almost got my vote, but was saved by Baby Groot. I guess the hulk movies are probably even worse than Thor 2, but I really don't think it is fair to count them. OK... 1 more comment. HULK... I could almost put him as both my favorite hero and least favorite hero. I loved him in avengers 1 & 2 and Ragnorok. Was disappointed with him in the early films and hated what happened to his character in Infinity War and Endgame.

On my Elect/DB tank I took both ageless for the debuff resists and rebirth. After some comparison testing against spawns with -defense, I estimate that both kept me alive about the same. But I like that rebirth also works when the problem isn't -defense... such as against enemies with +tohit or with toxic damage. Now I just run rebirth 100% of the time.

Interesting necro thread here... One of the things I like about DB is that it has very good low level attack chains as well. If you do empower > brawl > weaken > brawl... I think you can do this on a scrapper at level 8 or 9 using only the prestige enhancements from the p2w vendor to give the recharge needed. If I recall correctly, I think it's 3 slots in abating strike and 1 each in BF and Typhoon. This is a decent chain to use until you get to the point you can run BF>Attack Vitals. I think the thing that makes DB unique is that while it's ST damage is top shelf, it's biggest hitter (Sweeping Strikes) is a 90 deg cone. You can target a boss, and with a little positioning it's relatively easy to finish all the melee LTs and Minions with just splash damage. I like to have Typhoon's Edge as well to hit things that circle around behind me.

I find tip missions are more challenging then any other repeatable content. Most of them use harder enemy groups, such as Arachnos, Longbow, and Carnies. I've even seen a CoT mission where clearly the enemies were buffed somehow because the took way longer to defeat than normal. As such, running 54x8 (or 54x4 depending what toon I'm on) tip missions is my standard "well, i'm not doing anything else, so I'll do this until something else comes up," option. I like that I don't have to be in a level appropriate zone to do them, so it's a way to do endgame content while hanging in Atlas Park. They're also a source of solo-merits. 40 merits for every morality mission. If you set difficulty to easy you can speed run 11 missions pretty quickly, but probably not as quick as some other merit sources. But yes, to your question, null the gull took their original purpose out of the game.

I've said this before. I absolutely love everything about EM except the performance. The animations are just spectacular. And the sounds are ferocious. I had a brute back in the day who just ran Total Focus > Bone Smasher > Energy Transfer > Bone Smasher > repeat. Nothing but 2 handed animations with big balls of bad@$$ on his fists. As a brute, he was horrible. Fury build up was abysmal and he literally had zero AoE attacks. But man was he fun to watch.

Didn't read through 8 pages to see this if this was mentioned already... But I'll tell you something that really did suck back in the day. When this game was released there was no way to CHANGE YOUR COSTUME! That's right... want to fix something? You have to re-roll. Now THAT really did suck. Although, keep in mind, expectations weren't like today. CoH was the only game out there where there was anything to customize besides your hair style and color ...which was typically covered by a helmet anyway.

This was a good one, btw ...unfortunately got drowned out by the dipping sauce conversation.

Trifecta points for using those 3 persons in a logical sentence.

You do realize you could turn off weave and maneuvers and use something other than agility alpha and it will be exactly the same result though, right?

I went the other way and started making blasters instead of scrappers. And now just recently after I finally built a scrapper to level 50, I decided I preferred my tank that uses the same powersets. What is wrong with this world? (That AoE range and target buff is yummy goodness)

It's as if you only need 7 calendars... 14 if you count leap years. And if you're willing to start you Calendars on March 1 instead of Jan 1 (after leap day either happens or doesn't happen), you can go back to using 7.

OK... I jumped in this little 801 challenge last night to see what the fuss is about. I'm using my elec/db tanker... soft capped defense to smash/lethal and melee. Hardcapped resists to all but negative and toxic. Also has good resists to energy drain which I suspect I was using? I run both tactics and focused accuracy to make sure I'm hitting since I usually use this toon against level 54s. My attack chain is blinding feint > attack vitals combo... and I often throw in a Typhon's Edge after the combo if there's a good reason to. Plus I run lightning field for more AoE. Generally, in a high difficulty fight, I'll corner pull to optimize the Attack Vitals cone. I chose 801.2 at 4x8 as my starting point. My first impression, OH yeah!!! I actually need to use all my incarnate powers and use them intelligently! My primary danger were the Radiation bosses ( ___- maurauder?) because they'd drop my defenses to -50 which opens up the incoming damage by enough I had to lean on rebirth incarnate to keep me upright. Once I learned who they were, I could focus on them with my knocks and kill them first. Thank you for using Elite Bosses. I've done level 54 AVs on this toon, but it's generally a long, boring, fight where I lean on the Incarnate Lore top push me over the threashhold on damage...sometimes twice. The first run, I died a few times learning my limits and the mobs abilities, and I had to do a full retreat a few times as well. I think after that first run I'll be able handle it with no defeats but the 2-hour time limit will force me to keep pushing because it's going to be close if I don't. But this is the level of challenge this game is lacking. Great stuff! My only suggestion would be to make a short version of this. I can rarely play for 90-120 minutes with no interruptions. A 30 minute version would be fun. Although I guess if I was using a team instead of soloing, this would be just right.

This is exactly how I play, too. But I level up my toons and enjoy the ride instead of using a shortcut. It's not that I think you're evil. Seriously, you're probably pretty cool and I'm sure we'd get along great in game. But you can see also that something has been lost here, too, right? In traditional RPGs, reaching the endgame is supposed to be the crowning achievement of a long, and arduous process. The more time and effort you spend, the more valuable that achievement is. Over time you work hard to increase in skill and knowledge while earning your powers and stats in a step by step in a ever-more-difficult progression that yields snowballing rewards of pleasure and self-satisfaction with each glorious victory. IMHO, what CoH was turned into with the creation of exploitable AE content is more like SuperheroSIMs. Don't get me wrong, it's still great. In fact, in my opinion it's the best ever. But you'll have to forgive me that, in it's current form, it no longer meets my definition of the term "Game."

People who insist on butting into other people's conversation to tell them they're using the wrong channel. That REALLY irks me! What kind of self righteous jack*** feels so self important that they think they take in on themselves to be the self appointed police of game's chat channel? I get it if people are fighting, or being vulgar... but if they're joking around and heaven forbid "having fun?" Isn't that why we're here? To have fun? They'll probably stop on their own in 30 seconds, anyway... just let it go.

People asking to Doorsit. Skipping the game's content by powerleveling toons using a specialized build and special AE farm map is bad enough, but I understand it from a "I enjoy the min/max" mindset. But having a total stranger power level you using their toon and map? Even though there are people happy and willing to do it, that's just a whole other level of wrong in my mind.

Yesterday this happened twice to me. I went into the PI police station and when I respawned inside, I was inside the floor. I could move around and click things, but my camera was stuck at floor level and too close to my character to see it. I could tilt my camera up and see the room, or down and see through the floor to the bottom of the world. I couldn't jump. I couldn't zoom out my camera. I could port out of the zone, but then I was stuck in the floor in a different zone. Quitting to the change character screen and coming back on the same character didn't fix the problem. I had to quit to desktop and restart the game to fix.

I really liked my Elec/DB tank in this level range. The task forces tend to have energy damage types (Freakshow and Clockworks) so you do well there. And the empower->weaken->repeat attack chain can be done at a very low level with just prestige dam/rech enhancements and standard IOs. It's very endurance efficient, too if you throw a brawl between each combo. Having a Damage Aura helps you grab group agro, and at those levels, people actually appreciate a good tank. I remember running synapse while leveling up and despite hating that task force, I was actually stoked about how perfect my toon was for running it.

Agree with the above comments... I'd go for 45% ranged defense first. The 2 unique global enhancements (mentioned above) are both in the resist damage sets (Steadfast Protection and Gladiator's Armor) that give +3 defense to all. So pick these up and slot them... usually in tough.. .if you are getting tough, you might as well get weave as well. You don't even need to be running tough to benefit from the +6 defense total... just have them slotted. For straight ranged defense here's some other places to look: Thunderstrike in ranged attacks Artillery in targeted AoE Mako's Bite in Melee damage Numina's Convalesence in heals

Ah.. the age old question. "How do you define winning?" Is it, I can solo 4x8 ITF in under 60 minutes? Is it I bring the most (damage/support/taunt/control) to a team? Do you want to run MsLTF solo? or as a team in under 15 minutes? Do you want to maximize inf/min? ..or xp/min? Do you want to maximize fun? And what the heck does that mean? Ok.. that's the qualitative discussion... let's talk quantitative.... and by gosh if we're going to do this right, we need visual aids. Take a look at the graph below. I would propose that most of these questions bowel down to this model. As you increase Damage you decrease Surviability. And as you increase Survivability, you decrease Damage. But the relationship is not a straight line it is an arc where at the highest extremes you give up a lot of one to gain a very little of the other. And similarly, there is a point on the curve where you have the best of both worlds, maximizing the area of the rectangle defined by this equation: Awesomeness = Damage X Survivability Damage is pretty easily quantifiable, although there are a few variations. Solo damage is not the same as Team damage. AoE damage is not the same as Single Target damage. And damage to a -1 Pylon is certainly not the same as damage in a 54x8 double spawn of Arachnos. Survivability is more complicated. Again there's a difference between team survivabilty and solo survivability. You can quantify incoming damage that is mitigated with formulas and and calculations. Some people have done this quite well. But how do we account for enemy makeup, soft controls, hard controls, movement, and range? We also need to get a fix on mitigation from damage. My tank can stand in the middle of a spawn of 54x8 badguys all day without taking a scratch, but my blaster can flatten that spawn in under 5 seconds. So do we care at all about mitigation? What about AV fights. That same blaster has solo'd Babbage GM (with no -regen) but even level Infernal will beat him if no inspirations are used because he just hits too hard. But with inspirations the fight will be under 2 minutes long, so who cares if i burn 2-4 inspirations out of a tray of 20? The tank will take 7-10 minutes but not need inspirations. I think the best test is purely empirical. Someone comes up with a challenge, and we try it. If we can't do it, we tweak our builds until we can. Then someone comes up with a new challenge, and we try that. Continue forever or until we get bored and or split into multiple challenge trees.

You should talk to this guy...

I'm not enough of an expert on this subject to even know how to phrase this question appropriately... but if you extrapolate that out, doesn't that infer that there's more <name of internet resources> consumed by fake identities/bots would wide then by real people? ....like... A LOT more? Come to think of it.... I'm relatively certain that I'm real.... but how do I know *you* are real? Because, there's good reason to suspect not. Also, I've got this aunt who needs your help to move her monies to your country.

I delete them and disable them, not because I don't use them, but because they get in the way. I can't get to the inspirations behind them without mouse-clicking and I don't like mouse-clicking.