Shred Monkey

If there had been a scrapper Hero, they wouldn't have needed a team.

did a google search when this mission came up impossible to finish (after restarting multiple times) and found this post. It is still a problem. Mission map shows there's an enemy in a room named "????" but noone and nothing is there.

Back on Live I had a traps/dp defender. Once I joined an AE farm where there was 1 fire brute and a bunch of door sitters (never done an AE mission since, 'cause YUK!). After running around with the farmer buffing/debuffing I started running ahead, dropping seeker drones to absorb the alpha strikes while I stealthed in to set down a few traps and then soul drain -> hail of bullets to soften up the spawn while they were all bunched up. All the while I was basically taking no damage. The farmer watched me do that a few times and asked, "How are you doing that?"

This isn't directed at anyone in particular but I gotta get this off my chest. I'm probably in the minority saying this.... but does anyone else play this game anymore? I mean... the whole farm to 50 as fast as possible in AE while AFK farming the money you need to afford the build you copied from the forums? It's like buying a Superbowl trophy instead of winning one. What's the point? What's it prove? Why bother playing the game if you're not going to actually PLAY the game? OK... I'm done... I know I can't win that argument. Go do whatever floats your boat and makes you feel cool. We're all awesome in our own special blah blah blah Adele lyrics.

First of all the biggest thing to me is that CoH beats CO on min-max building. Even with CO having freeform builds where you can pick any power from any set, CoH still wins. The options CO has actually forces you to basically choose 1 of about 6 powers that you'll spam over and over for the duration of a fight and then fill in the rest of your powers with the optimal setup to optimize that one power. But that's more of a personal play style. I can play for hours in Mid's. CO doesn't have that. When it comes to game mechanics, personally, I prefer CO. I like the block mechanic, I like the lunge mechanic. I like the open world giant monster fights. I like the one endgame dungeon crawl better then the CoH Task Forces. The costume creator is better on CO, the travel powers are better on CO, the graphics are better on CO. There's really some great gaming there to be had in CO. The problem is there's just not enough content. You can finish everything you want to do for the evening in about an hour, maybe 2 hours if things go poorly. Then you have to wait for 3 hours because the content is on a 4 hour real-world timer. The next day, you do the exact same thing... and the next day... and the next. Oh.. there's 5-6 seasonal events that help break up the monotony. But they're just interesting for being novel, not for being good. CoH I can log in and do something different every night of the week for a month without repeating if I choose to. Plus, there's WAY more people playing, so it's much easier to get a team. There were nights when I'd log into CO and start trying to form a TA run and I'd give up after 30 minutes because I couldn't fill a team of 5. Furthermore, CO has 6-7 zones and about 20 contacts, half of which never get played, CoH has about 75 zones and hundreds of contacts, (3/4 of which never get played). CoH is just a way BIGGER game. More Content, More players, More fun.

My biggest problem finding teams isn't that I can't find them. It is that I can't reply to the team up ad fast enough to get a spot before the team fills up.

I often find myself making the level 40-50 run by exemplaring down to TFs and teams in their 20s and 30s rather than side-kicking up. It's more fun.

I don't think the responses have understood your question. You want to compare the regular Generic Health IO slotted in Reaction Time (a blaster toggle that gives absorb over time) versus slotting the preventative medicine proc, correct? Reaction Time's absorb is a base of 5% of your max health and it resets every 2 seconds. Adding a level 50 IO increases that by an extra 2.1% of your base health. If I recall correctly the preventative medicine proc is 3.5 times per minute for 5%. To compare the two you need to consider yourself how often you're getting hit. If the PM proc triggers between hits it's better because it's bigger. But if you're getting hit more frequently than that, the health IO is going to be better because it recharges every few seconds.

(psst... read the next line)

I slot brawl in a lot of my builds. Most commonly it is 4 kinetic combats for the S/L defense bonus.

I kind of like this idea, because... well.. Batman. But I don't agree with the underlying principle. I want the CoH we lost wholly preserved. Adding powersets and content is ok. Tweaking is powers is ok only if done well. Removing powers/content, is not ok.

Cobra strike and Assassination Strike need kick animations so the set can be all kicks and no hands (as an option).

I did this once. You can't boost an attuned purple. The trick is, you have to unslot it and sell it. Then use the money to buy an not-attuned purple or a recipe and boost the new one. (You know. I feel like I want to check that again in game because I'm still surprised... but I swear that happened to me.)

If you're going to play your toon after level 50, then of course you should upgrade to purple sets. What else are you going to do with the influence you get? They're absolutely better than oranges sets. If you're not going to play your toon after level 50, then I could see saving your influence for a new toon.

I wasn't around much the last few years of Live, so I had to look this up. If my research is wrong, feel free to correct me. It's my understanding that Titan Weapons was behind a pay wall when it was designed. Therefore, perhaps it was designed to over-perform intentionally to make it worth spending money on? Even if this is true, I think they overshot the mark. This logic probably also applies to many of the other sets and IOs released in the last few years of Live. I know personally I was very surprised by the power creep I had seen in everything that was "new" to me when I started playing homecoming. This includes the new Powersets, Winter IO sets, and ATOs. But now that I think about it through the lens of a micro-transaction business model, it makes a lot more sense to me. TW was over-powered when it was released. And it was probably by more than intended. But it would have been seen as "bait and switch" to nerf it back when it was something people paid for it in it's current form.

Actually, it is easy. You don't listen to the players. Players will always be biased toward being more powerful. To create balance, you look at the raw mathematical numbers (not popularity numbers) and tweak the outliers. You set some basic rules of design and then follow them. Nobody who takes a step back and forms an unbiased assessment of TW's performance will conclude that it's evenly balanced. You can't say the momentum mechanic is the price it pays for performance when it's the momentum mechanic is the bonus that gives it such extreme performance. It breaks all the rules of design this game had in place and has no penalty.

Try removing the sets and re-slotting them. I've had it do that to me in Mid's before as well. Re-slotting fixed it.

These two sets will grant maximum damage and recharge. If these are the only IO sets you're going to use, I would put them in your two highest DPA powers so you can use those powers as often as possible. This would be Blaze and Blazing Bolt. An alternative you might consider is to put them in Flares and Blaze then run an attack chain of: flares > Blaze > flares > blazing bolt > flares > blaze > flares > fireball. ( I'd put the attacks in my tray to so the chain is: 3 4 3 2 3 4 3 1 repeat) There's a lot of other things you can do with more set IOs, but this would a way to get started.

But they attempted two more live action shows anyway.

I have a tank that does +4x8 content without much fear and he can even do this exemplared down into the teens. But wow is it slow. I don't really play him. EVER. And I'm not sure I can really say he can beat *all* non-TF content at 54x8, because there are many AV's he'd fail to beat at +4. He probably won't die, but has no prayer in overcoming their regen. On the other hand, I have some blasters that can solo level 54x8 content also. (Can you believe, I still haven't built a scrapper to level 50 on homecoming?) My blasters, however, have some caveats to the said 54x8 content. Some enemies, they do absolutely walk though without any fear at all (Council, CoT). Some enemies they have to employ a little strategic targeting of threats and using inspirations (Malta, BP, Cimoreans, Knives of Artemis). And lastly, some enemies they have to do a lot of crazy stuff, popping inspirations, using terrain to kite and break spawns apart and slow incoming damage, and yes running back from the hospital (Arachnos, Longbow). But my blasters also beat level 54 AVs. (note, I put BP and KoA in the 2nd group, butit's worth noting that since they are in DA arcs, their 54x8 is only +1x8.)

I like how brawl becomes a kick when you're wielding a weapon. In a perfect world, I'd see alternate animations like this for other attacks so they can be done without putting weapons away. (Sands of Mu alt-ing into bicycling your feet into an opponent's face would be pretty sweet). But that'd be a pretty big project for not much gain.

First of all, water/storm was a good choice. I have a 9 year old son who sometimes logs in. I found that giving him a ranged toon makes it much easier for him to target. He doesn't have to worry about being in melee range to hit his target. I'm not sure on the best duo partner. But I recommend picking travel powers at level 4 together so you can just spend a lot of time running around exploring.

Several of the sustain powers have effects you would want to turn off in certain situations. Devices has partial invis, so with it on you couldn't lead a hostage out. Martial Combat has an AoE speed debuff, so with it you can cause agro and breaking stealth. (note, both of those powers also cost 0 endurance.) I don't see anything negative about Metabolic Acceleration but having it be a toggle instead of auto is consistent with other blaster sustain powers.

Take it a step further. Add a 50+ category and make it +4. And then restrict team size to 5. We'd still breeze through every TF, but with less of that "maybe I should get superspeed so I can get to the fight before it's 1/2 over" feeling.

I use a bind to activate at my target. I'm online with my toon right now. The range is longer than the range of my snipe. 200 seems right.