Luminara

A video game. Noob.

Braggart.

I'm seeing that a lot of attacks used just after Mass Levitate tend to be corpse-blasts or massive overkill. I know the goal is verisimilitude, but at 2 seconds, we're more likely to waste endurance and time firing off an unnecessary attack than we are to be impressed at the synchronization... and since we're also likely to slot a KB -> KD IO to prevent everything from being hurled out of melee attack range (mag 4.154 KU on a melee attack? did the designer of the power learn absolutely nothing from the feedback that resulted in almost all melee attacks with heavy KB being reduced to KD before Issue 3 because players were ready to lynch the developers?), it's not even synchronized at that point. The rapid and sudden application of force to propel the subjects upward would be sufficient to cause internal hemorrhaging, and there's no visual indication that the power actively slams the subjects back down, so a delay isn't really necessary to provide verisimilitude. If there does have to be a delay, though, it should be shorter. I'd recommend a 1 second delay, at most.

There's a level 2?

So, basically, a proc which is useless for Defense-based sets and Willpower? Or anyone who builds well? How about no? Does no work for you? Because I've got some no you can have. Would you like a side of no with that? A tall glass of no to wash it down?

I'll also add that I believe some archetypal comic book characters can't actually be confined to a single Co* archetype. How they're defined is entirely dependent on the threat and whether they're teamed or solo. Let's look at Batman. You can argue whether he's a scrapper, a stalker, a brute, whatever, but that's only applicable to a limited aspect of his activity as a superhero. As a member of the Justice League, or leading the Bat Family, he's clearly a mastermind. He's the planner, the organizer, the character thinking ten steps ahead while everyone else is trying to figure out what just happened, and moving his pieces into positions which will ensure that his team wins. And against a lot of JL antagonists, he's outclassed as a fighter. In Batman/Superman: Apocalypse, Batman faces off against Darkseid, but he doesn't do it by throwing every kick, punch and Batarang he has, he out-maneuvers Darkseid. Everything the others were doing was a diversion to give him time to arm Darkseid's own planet-busters, which he threatened to use if Darkseid didn't relinquish Kara. That has mastermind plastered all over it. Essentially, defining established comic book characters within the boundaries of Co* archetypes isn't strictly a question of their power levels or basic skills, it's whether or not they're part of a team and how they fit into the framework of that team in the context of the threat they're facing.

In the Justice League animated series, I think it was the episode Secret Society part 1, the JL is bickering amongst themselves and attention turns to Superman. He's accused of being egotistical because he insists on being the first one in when there's a fight. Superman responds (paraphrased, because it's been three or four years since is watched any of the episodes (RIP, beloved portable HDD)), "It's my job to take the hits so no-one else has to!". Pretty sure that definitively qualifies him as a tanker.

Found a reproducible bug which causes a client crash every time. Two crash reports submitted, with details, but I'm also posting this so players can avoid it. If you dismiss tip missions, you're likely to encounter the bug which causes the police scanner/newspaper to disappear from your active Contacts list. I tried opening the Inactive tab as an experiment when this occurred a couple of days ago, wondering if it would restore the missing police scanner (changing zones (entering a mission, entering a base, going to a different world map, etc) restores the scanner/newspaper, but i was looking for a faster solution). Instead, it crashed the client. I repeated my actions the following day (dismissed tips, caused scanner to disappear, clicked Inactive), just to see if it was random. It's definitely not random. DO NOT CLICK THE INACTIVE CONTACTS TAB WHEN YOUR SCANNER/NEWSPAPER GOES ON VACATION. Don't. No click. That crashes the client.

I lack the creativity that all of you display with the costume editor. Words are my medium, not graphics, so my characters tend to be comparatively plain. I use the Roman Sandals far too frequently, for example (but do not apologize. they're damn nice boots). Nevertheless, I did have a concept that I just couldn't stop thinking about. It gnawed at the back of my mind for months. I created, and deleted, several characters in an attempt to silence it. I kept one, an Ice/Stone brute, and revised the costume over and over again, but it just never worked. So, around the the release of Page 3, I took it back to the beginning, started with a clean canvas and a question: What defines the biome of the taiga? Beginning the process from there, I identified key aspects of the taiga. Mountains. Glaciers. Flowing rivers and streams. Stone and trees and mosses and evergreen plants. Something vast, towering, wild and inexplicably beautiful. A living mountain. This hair style makes a perfect snow-capped peak bringing water down to keep the forests thriving, the face pattern giving the impression of a solid mass of ice and snow on a mountain side. The animal fur top pattern helped me replicate the natural growth of a forest on a mountainside. We have evergreen plants growing at the foot of the mountain, areas of bare stone and tall tree trunks, like the great redwoods of the North American boreal forest (which lies in the taiga biome). The character is at the height slider maximum, so she's biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig. But it gets even better. With the Stone Armor toggles set to Crystal (minimal), I now have glaciers and frozen areas in the lowlands. Above, meteors tumble through empty space, waiting for gravity to draw them in, evocative of the Tunguska region (which experienced a comet airburst in 1908). Mud Pots makes a glorious hot spring, bubbling with deep-earth volcanic activity, rich with minerals giving the water that lovely color. I finished it off with the Earth Mastery APP, adding in that one little something which made it feel complete. Moss-covered stone. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the Spirit of the Taiga.

It's certainly made me want to gnaw off my own limb to escape. 😛

Oh, hey, that does look right now.

Moon base, soldier shoot butt.

IOs didn't alter archetype roles. Powers did that. Powers in primaries, secondaries and pools. The base game itself created the potential for players to cast aside archetype distinctions and play any way they wanted. And bland, flavorless mush is what we had before IOs. Standardized slotting, standardized power selections, standardized play, the only distinction between anyone was costumes. You complain about homogeny, and simultaneously complain because you're not being homogenized, and blame IOs for everything when IOs didn't do anything but give players the courage to explore the potential inherent in the game. If you want to be shoved into a box, labeled and expected to perform one function, like a printing press or a grain thresher, you picked the wrong game. Co* never forced that on players. The only reason we even have archetypes is because Cryptic didn't want to give players ways to completely gimp themselves, do something inane like take all Defense/Resistance powers and travel powers and no attacks. The original version of CoH had no archetypes, and the development team realized it wasn't going to work, so they took the free-form power selection and re-organized it into archetypes so players would have an assured way to progress. What you consider inviolable rules, they were never anything but suggestions.

Why would we need three trainers in AP? Do this in a zone without a trainer. Boomtown. Eden. Crey's Folly.

❤️

The very notion that out of control inflation was a factor in creating differentiation between archetypes is ludicrous. There were no IOs for the first three years, there was no inflation at all because there was no player economy, and players were bending and ignoring archetype definitions the entire time. The core mechanics of the game permit every archetype to perform in the role of every other archetype. This has been the case since launch. The Invention system may have allowed more players to (finally) recognize that, but it didn't create it nor will restricting IO availability prevent it. Over-availability. What a ridiculous thing to say. IOs were added to the game so everyone could use them, not to reward elitists and snowflakes. The entire idea behind the Invention system was to give players, all players, a way to improve beyond the level cap without raising the level cap, and suggesting that this freedom be curtailed and given only to a select few is abhorrent.

5 slots in Entangling Arrow for a "cheap" purple set. Attacks frankenslotted because the prices on Apocalypse and Ragnarok were so high that 5 of either of those required several months of farming a scanner mission at +2/x6. Only having a -KB enhancement on my main because it dropped for another character. Yeah. I remember.

Dragging this out of the dumpster to report that the Minerals graphics disappear when suppressclosefx is active. The veiny, pulsating lines graphic for Rooted also goes away. The other toggles' graphics remain visible on this character, using Minimal and/or Minimal Crystal.

Nothing but the purple patch and -Res affect proc damage. The Recharge Reduction applied by Alpha abilities isn't global +Recharge, it's Recharge Reduction added directly to each power. Exactly as though you slotted Recharge Reduction into powers. Consequently, it does affect proc rate in the same way slotting Recharge Reduction would. Mids' does still calculate PPM properly (as of 3.2.17), and display an average damage output by default (you can change that in the second tab of the Configuration window). As to why you might not see any change in the average damage displayed by Mids', if the power you're examining has a long base recharge time, Recharge Reduction enhancements won't necessarily reduce the proc rate. If the recharge time is very long, it will likely never show a reduction in proc rate. Proc rates are natively higher in single-target powers than in AoE powers, as well, so single-target powers will show less proc rate reduction than AoE powers when Recharge Reduction is applied.

The Council of Thirteen.

You've already posted about playing Co* with your wife, you doof burger. 😛

I hope your wife chases you around with a rolling pin. One of those nifty granite ones.