Taurus Maximus

This is my DB/Energy Stalker. I skipped Nimble Slash and Vengeful Slice because the couple points of extra damage from Attack Vitals doesn't really amount to anything. I skipped Placate because with the Stalker ATO and decent recharge, Build Up is up enough that Empower doesn't really add much either. My typical attack chain is Build Up -> Assassin's Blades -> Ablating Strike (Triggering Sweep) and then Sweeping Strike -> Power Slice -> One Thousand Cuts (Triggering Weaken). The second chain gets you enough stacks to crit with Assassin's Blades again and with good positioning, a large group is Weakened by the AoE, while your main target is debuffed by Ablating Strike, making your follow up still pretty devastating even when you're not Hidden. As for Energy Aura, I skipped Disrupt because the Stun doesn't add much compared to the utility of the Leadership Pool. I skipped Overload because I'm usually so far over the Defense softcap that it's overkill with the crash being a huge drawback. For pools, it's all utility. Fighting pool for Tough and Weave, Leaping for Combat Jumping and Super Jump, Speed for Hasten. You can trade out SJ for SS if you prefer that travel power. Leadership so I hit harder more often and keep that Defense high. Energy Mastery was thematic and Energy Aura, but I only took Superior Conditioning and Physical Perfection for the passive buffs. Focused Accuracy is an option, but IMO you get more mileage out of Tactics as a team buff. This is an older build, so the order in which I took the powers was necessary back then. Now you can take the primary and secondary powers sooner, but even as is, it comes fully online very quickly if you're slotting as you go. Hope this helps! Bloodgutter - Stalker (Dual Blades).mbd

I keep seeing complaints that Galaxy City isn't a good tutorial compared to the others and while it's not very informative on it's own, we need to remember that it was not intended to be the end of the tutorial. As soon as you load into Atlas or Mercy you're directed to Matthew Habashy or Operative Kuzmin whose arcs (and those of the contacts they introduce) continue to guide the new players along, slowly introducing them to new mechanics. Then, you're automatically introduced to Twinshot/Dr. Graves, who give you yet more mechanic learning missions. All these arcs are also quite cinematic compared to the standard blueside/redside fare, since they were all created at the same time as the Galaxy City revamp. All those contacts are completely skippable. I can't remember the last time I ran Twinshot because I don't need the information. But it's there, there's a great big pop up when she's unlocked that I ignore every time I hit level 5, and it's still part of the tutorial that the Paragon Devs gave us the ability to skip by dropping us in the open world that was already there. Just wanted to point out that Galaxy City is not the end of the tutorial, but rather just a climactic beginning.

Early levels on /Cold are rough, especially if you're solo. 3 of your powers only affect teammates. Until you have good end redux and recovery use Snow Storm sparingly as it will drain you fast. Arctic Fog is a great defensive power, Benumb is an insane debuff, and once you get Heat Loss at level 30 you can solve your endurance problems by fighting large groups and having good recharge. Cold Domination is one of my favorite sets thematically. Stick it out and it will be well worth it.

A family thing came up and I'll be getting home right at noon. Can you wait a few minutes for me to get over to my computer?

I'll join with Lady Gloria - Tanker for Red, White, and Blue. What time do you typically launch?

Hey everyone. Long time forum lurker, first time poster. As someone who plays exclusively on Indomitable, it's become increasingly hard to get big groups together. Our once nightly hami raids are down to 3 times a week and even then only 8-10 people show up most of the time and it's a bust. Same thing goes for iTrials and MSRs. We usually have enough to actually get those teams going, but we seldom have the numbers to do the bigger trials. Now, I know we can't change where people play (nor does anyone want to), but I think that the "unofficial PvP server" status of Indom is hurting our population, especially since the PVP community has long since migrated to Excelsior. Is there any chance of dropping that title so that maybe when new players have the choice of which server to join, they're less likely to completely avoid Indom because of the social stigma that many CoH players have towards PvP? I know that server transfers are free, but we kind of like our little server. Those of us who do play on Indom don't want to be on a big server like Excelsior or Everlasting or we already would be. It would just be nice to actually run some of the big group stuff on the regular like we used to. That's just my suggestion. What does everyone else think?