BlackSpectre

Hey! I didn't know we were showing pics! OK. Here's a serious one...

Putting aside crime for a moment and only based on how the neighborhood looks and feels... I'd live in Venice... er, I mean Founder's Falls. I've always felt it was the most gorgeous zone in the game. Lately, however, I've rediscovered Praetoria, and I have to admit I'm very taken by the night skyline in Nova Praetoria. Absolutely stunning. That said, knowing my bad luck and lack of income, I'd probably be stuck in King's Row. Sigh.

Wow. I've never noticed those messages. LOL I guess my point is, and it does nothing to fix your problem, is that the messages haven't seemed to have any impact on my gameplay. Are they useful enough for me to go looking for them?

Here's a popmenu for the new /roll command. The command has been designated a "role playing" command, but in all honesty I have no idea how it would be used in COH. I need to get over to the everlasting server and join a role playing group... Anyway, not knowing what to put into the popmenu, I went ahead and covered most of the bases as standard options. All the different dice from Dungeons & dragons, Champions, and I suppose Craps? LOL If there's anything more you'd like (or less, or different) please let me know. /macro "Dice Rolls" "popmenu DiceRolls" DiceRolls.mnu

I was just talking about this capability to friends this week! Crazy coincidence! I was saying it would be nice to have a chat filter like they have in Warframe. Very cool feature. I have no idea if this little app will work on a Mac, but I'm going to try! Thanks, Michiyo! 🙂

I'm thinking about it... The thing is, Black Spectre has a spirit form. He turns intangible and invisible. It's part of this concept. He's often hard to see in ghost form and disappears inexplicably all the time. "Where'd he go? I was just talking to him!" Turning on Shadow Fall to disappear doesn't seem like it would work. Too obvious. But still thinking about it... I figured out I could use the temporary power Ethereal Shift for intangibility, and put a Freebird stealth IO into Flight so he turns translucent whenever he turns into spirit form to fly. This made it so I didn't have to take Phase Shift in the Concealment pool, and that saved me a power slot. I'll look into possible invisibility temporary powers... maybe there's something like that?

It IS a neat power!!!!! In fact, my main has it... kind of. It's part of his concept. To approximate it, I use the Ethereal Shift temporary power available from the PW2 vendor for intangibility (and stealth) and normal Flight. I also put a Freebird stealth IO in Flight, so the he turns translucent whenever he flies in spirit form. 🙂

My main is a dark/dark defender... have always loved his power sets. I agree with most of what everything that has been said, except with Darkest Night on a defender, I can floor the baddies' toHit with a -29% toHit debuff. In the beginning game the safest place is right next to the guy with Darkest Night on him. End game it's great to keep the team alive as they battle the AVs/giant monsters. And it's pretty good for pulling.... if you want big groups. The radius of darkest night is pretty big, and the baddie with it on him will pull every mob he runs past... up to the aggro cap, and even then they'll start streaming in as you kill. You don't get as big a -ToHit debuff as a corruptor or blaster, but it's close. Base for defenders is 18.75%, base for corruptors is 15%. So you're looking at a -23% toHit debuff. Not bad if you add in the -toHit debuffs from your other powers. Darkest night also has a -30% damage debuff. Howling Twilight is a major -500% regen debuff that lasts 30 secs. When going after AVs and GMs I make sure it's part of my attack chain. So is Twilight Grasp with its -50% regen that lasts 20 secs and STACKS! Their ability to rez and heal is secondary to their ability to debuff regen (although rezzing and healing comes in handy). Tar Patch has come in handy for more than just its excellent -resistance. For defenders, it's a whopping -30% Res. For corruptors it's -22.5% res. 23% is a decent amount of -res in the game. This power shines in situations where you need a lot of control. It's not just a -res, it's also an AoE slow power! More mobs in the game are affected by slow than any other mez, and that includes AVs! Shadow Fall is a key +def and +res power for you... and your team... but mostly for you. Helps a lot with getting up to the caps. For corruptors, +23% res and +5.85 def. Fearsome Stare is a great power. The fear is very useful for locking down groups and keeping the aggro off you, but it also has a -ToHit debuff that is as big as Darkest Night... -23% ToHit for corruptors and lasts 20 secs. Combine that with Darkest Night and you'll be smacking baddies with a -46% toHit debuff! They won't hit anything! Get its recharge down to 20 secs (base is 40 secs) and you'll have a perma -ToHit debuff that floors your enemies' ToHit. Petrifying Gaze is a decent hold. Useful, but skippable. Whether you take it depends on your play style and how much of a benefit you get out of a single target hold. I took it because I found it to be a survival tool while soloing, but that's me. Avoid Black Hole. The intangibility ends up preventing your teammates from killing them far more than it does protecting you or your teammates. Think of fighting Carnies and how annoying it is when they go intangible and there's nothing you can do except sit and wait for them to become corporeal again. It's annoying. The intangibility last for 30 secs and there's nothing you can do about it but wait it out. Dark Servant AKA "Fluffy". It's an OK pet. Not controllable like Mastermind pets, and it's blood thirsty! It has a large perception range, and will go attack anything it sees. I play strategically, and Fluffy does not, so I skip him. He just pissed me off too much back back on live for me to take him now... he frequently got my whole team killed by aggroing mobs we didn't want to aggro. That said, he comes with a decent set of powers... a 10ft PBAOE -30% toHit debuff that's always on. Twilight Grasp. Petrifying Gaze. Darkest Night, and Tenebrous Tentacles... but you'll notice no big attacks. DARK BLAST POWER SET: I took every power except Torrent. I don't need the baddies to stay away from me. They can't hit me! I do need them dead, though... so I took all the attacks. Someone above mentioned Life Drain... It's a great power. Does High damage and a decent heal. Super important for survival if you're soloing. If not, it's another heal that can save your life if the damage is coming in too fast and too frequent. And of course it's one of Dark Blast's most damaging attacks, third after Blackstar and Moonbeam (and tied with Gloom). Take it and love it. DARK MASTERY EPIC POOL: Oppressive Gloom is worthless and will get you killed. Avoid it. Dark Consumption is good for end troubles, and the dark sets are heavy on end, but I was forced to take it so I could get the other powers in the set. Otherwise I would have skipped it. Dark Embrace is a necessary +res shield, and with the newish Noir style it looks freakin cool! Soul Transfer is just a self rez power. You can get a temporary power for that if you really want to do that. Not worth the power slot. Soul Drain boosts your damage. Important... but... the downside to it is that is has to hit the baddies for it to work, and it's a PBAOE, which means you have to get close to them. Since Blackstar, your Nova, is a PBAOE, and you have to drop in the middle of the group of baddies to use it... might as well take Soul Drain and get the extra damage boost. On the other hand, it's useless if you like to stay away from baddies. Definitely not as useful a power as Build Up in other sets. It's also a moderate damage power, but its recharge is very long at 240 secs. Blackstar's recharge is 145 secs. So Soul Drain is not that useful as part of your attack chain. There's good and bad to this power. For endgame content, I need to say that I rarely use this power. And that's about all you need to know. My own build is extremely tight because I took 3 powers from the fighting pool, 1 power from the teleportation pool, and for thematic reasons 3 powers from the flight pool, and 1 power from the stealth pool. I wish I could take Hasten, but I just can't get rid of any of my pool powers for thematic reasons. I could get rid of Teleport Target, but it's such a useful power while playing with a team. Arrrrggghhhhh!!!!

@SecretCiscoI just have to comment, this is one of the most useful posts on pop menus that I’ve ever read. The research into Unicode symbols and characters by itself is genius and incredibly useful! Percent % symbols don’t show up in OptionName or DisplayName, but full width percent symbols do! I would never have known about this workaround without your work above… and that’s above and beyond all the cool symbols we can use! We can call submenus with the /contextmenu command. 🙂 I am so grateful you put in the time and effort to do this. Thank you!

Ever have trouble remembering a pesky name for a window you'd like to open or resize? Ever want an easy way to change the color of your windows? Attached is a popmenu for controlling and managing the windows in the game's Graphical User Interface. It contains every window name able to be used with a slash command that is available to players. Aliases for most window names have been left out of this popmenu. There's 3 basic functions to manipulate windows: 1. Show or open the window (/window_show) 2. Hide or close the window (/window_hide) 3. Scale or resize the window (/window_scale) and /window_toggle will both open and close windows. FEATURES: Open, close, or resize a window with just a few clicks! Standard sizes have been included as well as the ability to customize the window size to your liking. Resize the entire UI Color your windows Save your window setup as the default for all your characters Load a custom default setup Save a custom window setup for individual characters Load a saved custom window setup onto individual characters Close all non-essential windows in 1 click Reset your windows to the game's default. For advanced users, you can use this popmenu as a handy, in-game reference for the window names. Every name listed is the actual name the game uses to call up the windows. I'd recommend adding it to either the Quickchat menu or a Custom Window. Help would be a good place for it too. Lastly, a macro would do as well. To use this popmenu, copy the attached .mnu file into the following directory: <COH install directory>/data/texts/English/menus/ If these folders don't exist, then create them. Start or restart the game. Then make a macro: /macro "Window Control" "popmenu WindowControl" To be honest, I have no idea if people will find this useful. So let me know! 🙂 WindowControl.mnu

Forest Gump. When my dad saw that touching movie he blew up! Super angry. Took me a few moments to grasp why, but in essence the idea that luck and circumstance can play such a huge roll in wealth accumulation completely goes against the ideas of work ethic and that wealth is EARNED through hard work, intelligence, and talent.

Just FYI, I got the enhancement set information for my spreadsheets from this page on the Wiki https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Enhancement_Sets. After I made these spreadsheets, I discovered an amazing page at the Wiki that does almost everything my spreadsheets do. It breaks down enhancement set bonuses by their set bonuses (energy, smashing, lethal resistance & defense, healing, range, etc.). The page is sortable by columns too! If I had known about this page I might never have created the spreadsheets... https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Set_Bonus_Comparison_Tables I still use my spreadsheets over the wiki page, but only because sometimes it's very useful to see what the other set bonuses are on a particular enhancement when trying to choose between them. It doesn't come into play often, but when it does I'm grateful for the spreadsheets. Also, I put a lot of work into them! 🙂 A page at the wiki that I actually do use often is the Enhancements with Special Effects page. It lists all of the special enhancements that have global procs or other effects like healing or recovery granting, stealth, knockback resistance, etc. Very useful page! https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Set_Enhancements_with_Special_Effects

Sadly, no. It's a bug with the commands. Their code would need to be altered in order to fix that problem... and it's low priority for the devs. So I think we're out of luck.

Look a this weird moon that floated over the sky in my supergroup base...

Yes, this happens... but so what? The only downside to this is when your team includes one of these players and you NEED to rely on them to play strategically to help keep the team alive. There's not that many situations in the game where one useless player on a team can not be carried... especially if you're a veteran who has taken the time to design a great build. I don't sweat anything. Who cares if they don't know how to play the game? Let them be. If they care, they'll start asking questions. Otherwise, let people play they way they want, even if it's poorly. Trying to control others is not a great strategy in any game. Try playing with respect or kindness instead of control.

Well, they were 40% off, which is a fantastic sale. They could still reduce the % to something reasonable like 15% or 20%, and still have a sale. That wouldn't skew the market much. However, @Glacier Peak's answer that it was too much work behind the scenes to make it worthwhile might be true. Add the skewing of the market on top of that extra effort, and no more sale. OK. Well, bummer. Thanks for the answers guys. Appreciate it.

Every year it's something I really look forward to. It makes that holiday's a little more special. At 25 mil each, they are VERY pricey! With purples selling at 15 mil these days, the Winter packs are the second most expensive thing in the market (after Hami-Os)! If the sale price is an issue, just use real life examples. 20% off is a decent sale. 25% off is a good sale. 30-50% off is a fantastic sale! What about putting the Super Pack: Heroes and Villains on sale on Veteran's Day? Or D-day? Or any other holiday celebrating heroes? Or the Super Pack: Rogues and Vigilantes on sale on St. Patricks Day (cuz those leprechauns are treacherous!), or April Fools day cuz... well, it's full of tricksters? Just some ideas... but I really am missing my Winter sale...

Wow! Look at Nevermelting Ice! That salvage piece is a COMMON piece of salvage that should be going for no more than 250 inf! You can't get one for less than 3,000! Looking at how many are up for sale... almost 11 MILLION of them. Number of bids is 42,000. That's about 260 times (or 26,000%) more selling than buying! Something really does seem amiss here... with that many selling, and so few buying, the price should be bottomed out at 100 inf.

Thanks. I'm excited too! I think the significance is that a door that has been locked since the beginning of the game is now unlocked... for the first time ever. That's worth celebrating. Whether or not the door leads anywhere is up in the air, but now we have the chance to find out! 🙂

It depends on what we can do with it using binds/macros. /emailsendattachment definitely has advantages for specific applications over using the UI, but if you don't need to send the same thing multiple times, don't need to send multiple items with fast clicks, don't need to send one of any number of items in one click, or don't need to automate anything I totally agree. On the other hand, if you do...

It was a long, 6 month journey, but I've finally figured out how we can send recipes using the /emailsendattachment slash command! OMG! I tried so many things. Random numbers up to 5,000. Patterns of numbers in imagined arrays, columns, and even numbers correlated to the letters/characters in recipe names, and of course, a numerical representation of alphabetical order. I tried codes intended to represent enhancement types and levels. I experimented with over 100 different enhancement recipes. Through all of this receiving the same error message, "This recipe is not tradeable". Six months of experimenting and nada, zilch, nothing. Last week I all but gave up. I hadn't broken the code and thought I had exhausted all of my options. There was nothing left to try. So off to Reddit I went, and asked for help. In my post I mentioned that I needed some bigger brains than mine to look at this problem. Yep. I was stuck. No where left to go... or so I thought. I don't know what the dynamic is that makes this happen, but somehow the mere act of asking for help provoked a flood of new ideas to investigate and test out. This is nowhere near the only time this has happened. I used to think it was the act of talking with someone, the conversation, the following of conceptual threads and connected implications that spurred new ideas to pop up, but this time there was hardly any conversation. It's the weirdest thing. Anyway, it turns out my fatal mistake was thinking that recipes needed an "inventory" number in order to be attached to an in-game email. It wasn't a far out idea at all... both inspirations and enhancements use an inventory number, so it makes sense that recipes would too... except they don't. After many searches, I discovered a server file named InvRecipe.dbidmap that had these strange numbers in a huge list of recipes broken down by name and by level. Since my new idea was that recipes themselves had an ID number that didn't have any relation to any sort of inventory location, I started testing the numbers in the file... and BAM! To my surprise, I hit on the solution! Boo-yah!!!! Instead of an inventory number, recipes use a special AttribFileItem ID number. The list includes the ID number, the internal name for the recipe that includes its level, and a letter from A-F representing one of each enhancement in a set. The new problem was there was no way to know which enhancement "C" was, for example! If I had 6 recipes, one for each enhancement in the set, which recipe would match A, B, C, D, E, or F? Over the last 6 months, I have been reading through a lot of code found in the game's configuration files. I'm not going to pretend I understand everything I've been reading, but In those files I saw mention of placing recipes in columns and arrays, and warnings not to change their locations. To me, this meant that recipes had a fixed sequential order which the game used to search for the recipe... and I was right. I tracked down a file that listed the recipes and their aspects (End Red/Accuracy/Damage/Range, etc) and correlated the order in which they appeared with the alphabetical order of A-F. Then I wrote a little script that took each AttribFileItem and paired it with one of the enhancement aspects in the other list. After 2 hours of processing it still wasn't done. I wrote a bad script that was processing the data far too slowly, even it it was doing it all accurately. I rethought how to accomplish what I wanted, and ended up settling on using the recipie/aspect list instead and a REGEX to match all of the recipes with the correct aspects in the AttribFileItem list. Then I went through the new list several times, fixing errors, eliminating bad data, and tracking down recipes that didn't appear in one or the other list. I finished that process 2 hours ago, and posted the new list and the new information at the Homecoming Wiki. You can find it all here... https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Emailsendattachment_(Slash_Command) . I've been overflowing with excitement ever since I discovered the solution 3 days ago! I've figured out how to use a lot of new slash commands over the last 6 months and broken a lot of codes, but this discovery is the crown jewel! There was a part of me that felt we would never figure out how to send recipes with /emailsendattachment. Adversity can often make the successes we have far sweeter, and this is definitely true in this case. For the rest of you... well, consider this my Christmas gift to all of us. Merry Christmas, everyone! 🙂

What’s the deal with the purples like Armageddon? They used to sell for 25 mil each, for 2 years straight, but now they’re 15 mil. That’s a lot of lost profit. good for buyers but bad for sellers.

And behind every snarky remark is... Snarky. Hey! It's you!!!! 😉

There's just more people trying to sell more things. It has driven prices down, and cut profits by about 33% over the last 6 months, but 66% profit is still worth doing. You just have to refrain from being greedy. Set a steady pace and stick to it even if your stuff sells out in 2 hours. There's still room for everyone if you leave room for them, and then the prices won't shrink down even further. Otherwise, if you don't leave room for others, then your profit will plummet and you'll kill your own success, and everyone else's, just by being overzealous. Since there may be more people crafting and selling more things, there is less salvage available and higher demand, which has driven salvage prices up. But in all honesty, I just think there are less people selling salvage. I actually make more inf selling my salvage and recipes to the Store rather than offering them up in the auction house... and it's easier and takes less time to sell it than auction it. That said, every week I empty one of my alt's salvage and recipes into the auction house and sell all salvage for 100 inf and all recipes for 1,000 inf... yep, common, uncommon, and rare alike. I just dump it. So some people are getting things really, really cheap. I don't make very much inf doing this, but I think of it as a kind of community service... helping out the less fortunate or the new players. The probable reason you see things sold for 2 mil but you can never buy IOs for that price is probably because you're trying to buy it NOW instead of placing a bid and waiting a few days. Many people place bids and wait for someone to dump the IOs into the auction house on the cheap. It's one argument for planning out your builds ahead of time so you can place low bids for the items you need before you actually need them.

Yeah, back on Live the most common strategy for BAF was door sitting. There were too many variables that could go awry and often the BAF would fail. It was never certain. Always a craps shoot unless you had an amazing league. That said, it's definitely do-able. It was done for years. The choke-point strategy, however, takes nearly all of those variables and averages them across a huge group. Redundancies upon redundancies. It can work with almost any league regardless of whether players' builds are good or not, organized or not, in sync or not. Just about the only thing that can spell doom for a BAF using the choke point strategy is a lack of lore pets. And even then, if the players and their builds are awesome, they can totally compensate. So is door sitting doable? Sure. Is it better? Nope. That said, just have fun. If door sitting is fun for you, then do it. If the league leader wants you to do the choke point strategy, then start and lead your own door-sitting BAF. There's usually more than enough interest for more than one BAF. It's all good. You're totally right about other toons who can kill an entire door by themselves. I've see a few others now. My own fire blaster can do it. At the time I wrote this guide the only one I had seen shut down a door was a spines/fire brute. Doesn't mean no other toons can do it, merely that was the only one I had seen at the time. And in my BAFs, I'm happy to let people experiment by trying to shut down a door by themselves. Usually, there's more than enough lore pets to compensate for the lack of a player. P.S. This thread is old, but the guide is not. I keep it updated, so posting here is perfectly apprpropriate! 🙂