BlackSpectre

Here are the corrected numbers... Tank Smasher lvl 30 Attribute Results of Power Boost Boost% Attribute Results of Power Boost Boost % Before After Before After Twilight Grasp ToHit -6.3 -12.4 98.0% Heal 480.46 712.36 48.0% Life Drain ToHit -9.4 -18.6 98.0% Heal 109.87 209.92 91.0% Howling Twilight Run/Fly Speed -17.7 -26.5 50.0% Darkest Night ToHit -27.3 -45.7 68.0% Fearsome Stare ToHit -23.8 -42.8 80.0% Blackstar ToHit -24.6 -48.8 98.0% Night Fall ToHit -9.4 -18.6 98.0% Tenebrous Tentacles ToHit -9.4 -18.6 98.0% Gloom ToHit -9.4 -18.6 98.0% Moonbeam ToHit -9.7 -19.2 98.0% Weave Def 7.6 12.51 65.0% Tar Patch No Effect Shadow Fall No Effect

I looked but I didn't see any changes in those powers. I can look again... Bummer. That's cool. 🙂

Mostly due to the 15 second duration. Most of the dark powers only debuff ToHit for about 8-10 seconds. With an 8 second recharge time, Twilight Grasp would only be able to get 2 heals in. A couple more with hasten... but not much. The most I have been able to reduce Power Boost's recharge time is down to 42 secs, mostly using Hasten and Recharge IOs. That is correct, sir! Lvl 50 attacking a lvl 30 Tank Smasher. So yeah, the overall numbers are a bit boosted because of that, but their proportions or percent of boost should be the same. I did think about this when I wrote the comment about flooring an enemy's defense to zero, but I didn't know what boost the difference in levels would give. What do I do to get more accurate numbers? Divide them all by 3.1? OK. Looking at the numbers divided by 3.1, it wouldn't floor enemies' ToHit to zero without Power Boost while fighting even con enemies... and even less of a debuff if the enemies are above my level. Hmmmm.... 15-20 secs of "un-hittable-ness". Not bad! OK. I'm starting to see the light... Hitting Power Boost and then jumping into the middle of a group and using BlackStar would effectively floor their ToHit for 20 secs. That's a nice alpha strike avoider! The same for Fearsome Stare. Darkest Night would give 15 seconds of un-hittable-ness. The recharge time for BlackStar is too long to use in every battle, but Fearsome Stare at 24 secs recharge isn't bad! Against a single target, my Twilight Grasp (~4 sec recharge time) could get in 3 heals before Power Boost is over... that would be -37.19 ToHit debuff at that point, but each debuff would last for 20 secs which would let me get in another heal before the 20secs is over giving me -49.58 ToHit debuff for about 4 secs, -37.19 for 4 secs after that, -24.79 for 4 secs after that, and -12.39 for 4 secs after that as the debuff durations tick away. OK. Thanks for this! Looks like I'll be keeping Power Boost 🙂

Over on the villain side, there is an Epic Pool power called Power Boost. Its info page lists a whole bunch of "secondary" attributes that it boosts for 15 seconds. I decided to test out the usefulness of the power with my Dark/Dark defender. I used Power Analyzer to view the stats of the enemies I was targeting/hitting (usually a lvl 30 Tank Smasher). Here are the results: Tank Smasher lvl 30 Attribute Results of Power Boost Boost% Attribute Results of Power Boost Boost % Before After Before After Twilight Grasp ToHit -19.38 -38.43 98.0% Heal 480.46 712.36 48.0% Life Drain ToHit -29.06 -57.64 98.0% Heal 109.87 209.92 91.0% Howling Twilight Run/Fly Speed -54.82 -82.1 50.0% Darkest Night ToHit -84.51 -141.67 68.0% Fearsome Stare ToHit -73.8 -132.8 80.0% Blackstar ToHit -76.25 -151.23 98.0% Night Fall ToHit -29.06 -57.64 98.0% Tenebrous Tentacles ToHit -29.06 -57.64 98.0% Gloom ToHit -29.1 -57.6 98.0% Moonbeam ToHit -30 -59.5 98.0% Weave Def 7.6 12.51 65.0% Tar Patch No Effect Shadow Fall No Effect Conclusion: Overall, Power Boost doesn't appear to be very useful for a Dark/Dark defender. The most common attribute it buffs is the ToHit Debuff, but it's really not necessary. With the base values for Darkest Night or Fearsome Stare an enemy's ToHit will be floored to zero as is, so the buff from Power Boost doesn't give much benefit. Power Boost says it buffs defense, but it only buffs defense powers, not your base defense. Worse, it doesn't buff the defense in Shadow Fall at all! So it's not very useful even as an emergency power. The percentage that Power Boost buffs is not entirely consistent with the description in it's info page either, FYI. It's possible I don't see a way that Power Boost will help, and I'm open to consider other opinions. But sans any epiphany, I'll be RESPECing out of this power very soon.

Parodies and farces featuring exact copies of copyrighted characters are allowed under copyright law… That said, “inspired by _________” should be perfectly acceptable. Just use different names, costumes, and back stories… and most of the time the powers will not be an exact match anyway.

If you can get large amounts of regen or recovery, it’s better than having bigger hp or end pools. With enough regen or recovery you can be the energizer bunny and just… keep… going. But getting high enough values of regen is more difficult than high recovery. Ideally, you want enough end to be able to fire off your entire attack/power chain plus a little more, and enough recovery to restore it so that your attack/power chain can continue uninterrupted. Ideally, you want enough hp to weather an alpha strike, and enough regen to get your health back fairly quickly… but getting enough regen is hard to do. Just a small amount of any of those stats has a small impact if you’re looking at them isolation.

Team play vs solo play matters. Solo, high defense and resistances are important. Team play, it’s not as important because in most cases the rest of the team’s buffs, debuffs, heals, and damage strengthen all the individuals on a team. I do a mix of solo and team based play, so my toons are generally built to be useful in both arenas.. versatile. That said, I have not found that balancing offense was more difficult when attempting to balance defense except for a few archetypes/power sets. My dark/dark defender, for example, has always been a difficult balance to make. However, I have managed to build him so that he can solo most of the content in the game. His Achilles heal is lack of damage… and that’s not really a balancing thing as much as it is an AT/power set thing. So I guess my overall answer is “It depends”. LOL

Some players make the playerslot.txt file READ ONLY so that the game will not rewrite the file and mess up the order. Of course, if you do this any new characters would t be listed. So then you’d need to make the file able to be written over again. Then lock it down again. Kind of a hassle. However, for the most part my order has been retained after I edited the file. The game doesn’t seem to be putting my characters in random order like it used to. Could just be me though.

I e got 2 characters with bad pun names… Agent Snipe Hymn and Ice Scream Crone

Wait! I want to be smacked!!! What now?

And for any Devs who are reading this thread… https://askagamedev.tumblr.com/post/96091066151/understanding-the-angry-gamer/amp

@Snarky, please make sure you’re not taking this too far. Don’t let anyone run you out of the forums or a game you love… or anything you enjoy. It seems more like you’re punishing yourself more than anyone else. Of course, we will be punished as well because we won’t have your snarky face around to laugh with. Do you mean to punish us too? Further, your “consequence” should match the crime. An eye for an eye, not a beheading for an eye. Really, unless you don’t enjoy the rest of us anymore, it would be a good idea for you to continue doing what you enjoy with the people who are your friends. I understand you’re upset, and don’t dismiss that. Just keep balance in mind my friend.

OK! I've finished writing up the quick "Understanding Folder Paths" tutorial. Please look it over and let me know if it's easy enough for someone who knows very little about computers to understand. https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/User:BlackSpectre/Testthis

Well, I only added the most common folders players would create in the data folders. There are many more potential things players could add. They’re completely optional and the data folder is completely blank unless players mess around with it. I guess I could add links to the folders… the first could link to /customwindow, the second to /popmenu, and the third is a bit trickier as it is typically used to replace the maps but with the advent of the COH modding app, it’s been replaced by the \assets\mods folder. I thought about leaving the data folder blank, and I still can, but part of me thought it would be useful for people to know a couple things that would go in it. Maybe it’s more trouble than it’s worth though and it would be better to remove the sub folders? Most of the folder names tell you what is stored in that folder… screenshots in \screenshots, costumes in \costumes, \builds in \builds, etc. I didn’t think any additional description is necessary. However, I did note 4 settings files and their locations in the \live folder because what’s in the “live” folder is not self explanatory, and the playerslot.txt file is also not described by \account. The devs and current devs did and do a pretty good job naming files by what they hold or their purpose, so even describing the files that would go in \architect, for example, is a bit redundant. A guide might be better for something like that. More and more I’m trying to keep things simple and brief. Clear and concise. People’s eyes glaze over so easily when they see a lot of text… as your eyes are most likely already glazing over by the text I wrote here. LOL 🤪

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Veteran_Levels

What do you mean it looks weird? Is it the colors that are weird? The best way to show a folder structure is with a kind of flow chart, but this would be an image and not text. I tried to create the folder structure with only text... but maybe I should create a graphic? If I did that, technically I should put the root folder at the bottom, and then build the folder paths up... like a tree to stay with the analogy. However, the file browser apps show the tree sideways... the root folder is typically on the far left, and the sub-folders spread out to the right. My sense is to keep it sideways so that things are kept consistent, but what do you think? That would mean the tree is growing sideways... that OK? I tried to explain file paths once before in this article https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Default_Folder, but although accurate, after watching the youtube tutorials maybe the way I explained it is still a little too sophisticated and specific to the game. Thanks for the references and YouTube tutorials. I did grab some language and examples from the first one. The second one was fairly high level. And I think you're right. I should add a file path tutorial to the page. 🙂 P.S. I added line separators to the Folder/Directory Structure. Does that help?

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Homecoming_Installation_Folder_Locations I tried to write it so that anyone could understand it even if they don't have a lot of "computery" knowledge. I'm not sure I succeeded, but I hope it will help.

I've created a new page for the wiki to help players understand where their game files are located, and which folders they need to save or backup. This is intended for players whose knowledge of computers is fairly limited, so if you think of a way I can improve it for people, please let me know. I'm talking to you @Snarky! (as well as anyone else including GMs). Also, if I've made any mistakes or omissions, please speak up. 🙂 https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/User:BlackSpectre/Testthis This is my test page or draft, so it's not really up at the wiki yet. P.S. Can you think of a better title, or is "Homecoming Installation Folder Locations" OK?

It’s very easy to do a fresh install. The only issue is saving the files that you want to save… screenshots, window, option, and keybind settings, builds, possibly logs. Homecoming has actually made that a lot easier than in previous installs by separating and laying out the data folders that players would like to keep. Hmmmm. Maybe that would be a good page to write up at the wiki… hasn’t thought of that before. 🙂

I know this comment is far too late, but just to add it here for reference's sake... RE: moving enhancements. I often use a trick to move a lot of enhancements from one tab to another and organize them at the same time. It uses the Auction House window, and you transfer enhancements back and forth between the Auction House window and your enhancement slots/window. Whenever enhancements are added to your enhancement window, they are always placed in the first available enhancement slot starting with slot 1 on tab 1. So you won't have complete control of where the enhancements are placed, but in many ways it's faster and easier than dragging the enhancement icons around. Here are the steps: 1. Open the Auction House window by typing /AH. 2. In your enhancement window/slots, double click on each of the enhancements you want to move/organize. When you double click, the enhancement will be transferred to the bottom of the Storage tab in the auction house window. You can organize your enhancements' order by double clicking on the ones you want grouped together. Or you can wait to do that in the next step. 3. Once you have all the enhancements moved into the auction house window, then claim each enhancement to put them back in your enhancement trays. You can click on the claim button(s) quickly. Remember, you can also choose which enhancements to put back into your trays so you can group them together if you didn't already do that in step #2. And that's it. It's not perfect, but if you want to move or organize a lot of enhancements, this method is very helpful.

I think it's just flowery language.

OK. To help overcome this open and close problem, I've created a rotating text bind. Essentially the bind will issue the command 3 times... once on key press, and then twice on key release. That will keep any window open and also offer the relief from tapping the key twice when trying to use interact with anything. Here's the files and command strings: interact1.txt X "+$$interact$$bindloadfilesilent /binds/interact2.txt" interact2.txt X "+$$interact$$interact$$bindloadfilesilent /binds/interact1.txt" You'll want to change the path to your bind files if you don't have a folder called "binds" in C:\Games\Homecoming\Settings\Live. To import it into your character, you can either copy and past the command string from the first file and then in game bind it to the X key, or whatever key you want. Or you could just use /bindloadfile /binds/interact1.txt to import it.

Aw man! This trick has some problems I didn't foresee. Turns out if you want to open a merit vendor, this "toggle bind" will open and close the window really fast and won't keep the window open. This will happen with any toggle window that will open and then close again when the same command is issued. Kind of a bummer. The toggle bind solution is not completely useless. It still functions better when clicking on doors, stores, and teleport portals; and we click on those much more frequently than other things. I'm going to keep my toggle bind for now, and see if I can get used to just using the mouse to click on things that the toggle bind won't work with. It still might be better than reverting back to using /interact just by itself...

I would like to give a huge shout out to @Dazl, @Hunter Smith, and @Nicodemous Bain for hosting NIGHTLY (and sometimes twice a night) Hami runs on Excelsior! Did I mention this has been every night at 9:45 EST for YEARS??? Their Hami raids have been consistent, professionally run, and darn fun!

For me, the best use of reward merits is to buy enhancement converters. Not to sell, but to use to convert various cheap enhancements into much more expensive enhancements and sell the converted enhancements on the market. Buy low, sell high. Other than that, new characters typically use a few merits here and there for enhancement unslotters when I'm in the middle of reworking a build, but really that's about it. For me, it appears that on average I earn about 30 merits per hour... but this number can vary widely depending on what kind of content is run. For example, Hami Raids have by far the best merits/time ratio of anything else in the game... about 160 reward merits per hour. If you don't count Hamis, the 30 merits/hr is a fairly good standard to determine the value of merits by how you use them, IMHO. The Merit Vendor offers to convert inf to merits at 1 merit per 1 mil inf. This is way, WAY too expensive. If you look at @Snarky's list above, the most you'd pay is 200,000 inf per merit. 5x better than 1 mil per merit, and in most cases you'd pay less. So how valuable a reward merit is really depends on how you use them, and how you earn them. If we use the 200K inf per merit as the baseline, then the value of 100 merits would be 20 mil inf. This means that you'd want to purchase a 20 mil inf item or greater with 100 merits. A Winter Origin or purple enhancement that sell for 25 mil inf would be a fair deal. You'd be essentially be getting a 25 mil inf item for 20 mil inf. Saving 5 mil inf over purchasing the winter packs from the auction house. It's only about a 20% savings, but hey it's something! At least you'd know that you'd be getting a fair value for your merits.