MonteCarla

Agreed, Psyonico. Everyone I've asked in game has been having normal service from CoH this weekend. I'm suspecting it's a location thing.

I've had some incredibly bad lag all weekend on CoH, starting Friday night US time (Australian Saturday morning). I've often got stuck at the "Retrieving Character data from..." screen after choosing a server. When I do get through, performance varies from decent to a surreal slideshow of characters teleporting around mid animation pose. Nothing else has been affected, and other online games (eg Champions Online as a good control experiment) have played fine, so I doubt its anything on my end at this point.

Let me check in with the 5 Shivans in my bag.... see what they think.

I hear you! The costume creator is one of the best things in this game. And it kind of sucks when your teammates make you transparent, covered in ice or fire and look like they have colored dirty candyfloss coming off their feet. (eg Darkest Miasma with green or pink tints) ( My pink force bubbles are great though, and great at identifying which teammates are comfortable with their masculinity 😛 ) Oh, and Fade in Controller's Dark Affinity - wonderful power numerically, a shame it has to make your entire team almost totally invisible! As a solution, would it be possible to have a setting to "Ignore Buff VFX from other players?" so that I see my pink bubbles on everyone, but players who've selected not to don't see them? And don't get faded out. Each status effect knows who the caster is, so some client-based screening could take place? In theory.

What an awesome idea for a thread, Scarlet! 🙂 CoH is a masterpiece of game design. Teaming is easy and meaningful, and you're rewarded for getting over that social energy hump. The support powersets are the best I've ever come across, each noticeably impacting the entire team in different ways. And the other powersets are balanced but each with their own quirks and wonkiness that means I'm still exploring them after 90+ level 50s. And the invention system is equally balanced but wonky, with all sorts of strange patterns in it to explore. Homecoming have really added to this: - LFG channel as part of the default setup for every player. Putting task forces together is a joy here. - The economy is wonderful. The steady feed of low end salvage, converters and binning recipes and enhancements of different levels all make it function smoothly with a smaller population than Live had. The best way to riches is not Market PVP where you're undercutting other players and flipping items, but converter roulette where you're making the items other players want, essentially working for your money - Double XP. The grind is gone. I can now level an alt in around 24 hours of playtime. This and the economy make the game a great sandbox for making new characters the X-Men approach to superheroes. The Superman way still works too thanks to the Incarnate system. - New costume items. The costume creator is still world class. I'm happy that we no longer have items gated behind badges or task force completion. - Sentinels. A great character class of new players to flesh out some common concepts without advanced build-fu and millions of inf, and also a viable alternative for the old hands to play around with. - Powerset proliferation. No more of that "villains can't have Empathy, it's too nice. Here's a Pain-based set" nonsense! ( always a pet peeve of mine 🙂 ) - AT proliferation. So glad I can make a Hero Dominator without having to mess around villain-side or gold-side first. - Null the Gull. Talk to a seagull instead of doing 11 missions in case you want to do a quick strike force on the other side of the tracks. (and track your Portal Jockey progress) Yeah. I am stoked that this game survived, and thrived, and got better. And made gaming history as the first game to get official sanction for private servers after it was shuttered. It also had the best community, and still does.

Sonic/Mental gives you access to 4 cones, with some good fast recharges. Howl: 8s Shockwave: 11s Siren's Song: 16s (and does very good damage now) Psychic Scream: 12s You could easily get a all-cone attack chain going. I played one back on Live and did just that, with the only downside being that it didn't mesh great with Drain Psyche, the signature move of MM and now the sustain power.

Yeah... is City of Heroes a good simulator for what superheroes do in comics or movies? CoH combat has two modes. Most of the time you're steamrollering big packs of minions, like the Avengers infiltrating a Hydra base. Sometimes you stop to take on one (or maybe more) big tough bags of hit points that need 8 superheroes to beat them up through sheer persistence. That's like the Avengers beating up Thanos together. What you don't get much of in CoH is the team vs team action, like the X-Men fighting the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, or the airport fight scene in the Civil War movie. But, to capture that sort of action in a game, you really need to go turn-based to some degree. Freedom Force did a pretty good job of this, for example. (Or CoH PvP) CoH is basically Diablo II style combat dynamics with a superhero skin over the top. And I think it's this way for a number of solid game design reasons?

Very good question! I'm stinking rich, thanks to learning the art of converter-roulette. I never buy converters, but run task forces etc to get my merits. And I play a slightly different game from the average player. I barely know what being mezzed is thanks to the START vendor buffs I wear constantly. I have whatever I want in terms of set items on every character I make. Do I want 5 LotG +Recharges and both ATIO sets? Snap my fingers and make it so! I've never believed that my experience of this lifestyle is enhanced by other people not having it, so yeah, why shouldn't we make everything free? Plusses: People still struggle with affording basic gear, like SO's. The influence curve for them remains really badly balanced, so a new player with no specialist knowledge will find levelling up ruined by their hard-won enhancements going off. Suddenly when you get to 40, you have more inf than you need. Making these free would fix that bad experience. Minuses: I really enjoyed figuring out the auction house, and seeing theory become practice, and millions roll in when I worked out the way to get rich. It started with merits->converters->list at 1 inf to get 1,000,000 per 5 merits, and then I advanced on to using those merits to craft up batches of common recipes and flip them to rares. Working out the best sets for doing this was a lot of fun, and changed as I went. Memorising which enhancements sell well was fun. Knowing I wasn't just flipping and price-gouging, but making things my fellow players needed was awesome. This would have been a lot less fun if everything was free. (I also enjoy showing other players how to make a few mill from their merits if they're struggling) I'd hate to take that path away from anyone. Going to extremes: if we gave everyone the P2W buffs for free, then why not just make those buffs innate, like Fitness? Everyone gets Mag 4 mez protection, +5% Defence and +7.5% Resistance and so on. Everyone gets a Team Transporter. Probably not a great idea. Games work on a desire-satiation cycle. I need to defeat that enemy. Feels good to work a little on it by pressing buttons and see them fall over. I need to get to level 20 to unlock Power X. If I do missions this evening I'll get there, solo or teamed or whatever. Ah, feels good to have done that. I want to do all 6 task forces to get +5% Hit points. Ahh, did that today and it felt great! Similarly, amassing inf for some goal feels good, that state of wanting something and figuring out how to get it, and then getting it is really satisfying. Games provide simple little microcosms for us. I don't know how to become stinking rich or save the world in complex real life, but I enjoy doing both in this simplified little game world. It's not pointless at all, its entertainment. I made a character a while back and decided not to twink her with a big 200 million inf email, but earn everything from scratch. I had some backstory about her crunching expensive materials in her hands, like Superman doing the coal to diamond trick. 🙂 It felt really cool - with my market knowledge I was loaded after a couple of task forces. To conclude: - Make SO's free (and they don't go off). - Keep everything else as it is.

Yeah, team XP is great. You get a team size bonus factored in, up to 2.5x for a full team of 8. https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Experience Combined with the number of bosses you get when teaming, and all the natural benefits of being on a well-balanced team, it can make the early levels fly by. I've often found myself in the low 20s after doing both Positrons, for example.

Early on in Homecoming I was having similar problems with affording basic gear, and met a very nice player who explained to me how to never want for money for SOs and IOs again. 1. Earn merits. 2. Buy Enhancement Converters 3. List them for 1 inf each and they'll sell for 50,000+ This makes 5 merits worth about 750,000 inf, at least. To earn merits: 1. Do story arcs. Croatoa, Faultline, Striga or the Hollows net you between 50-100 each. Older story arcs through contacts can be a bit tricky to get, but often pay out well. Or Ouroborus them. Freakalympics (level 25) is a good one for 57 merits. 2. Do Hero Tips. 10 missions + 1 alignment mission get you 40 merits 3. Join Giant Monster teams. Adamastor gives 10, Lusca 22 these days, and normal ones give 6. A group patrolling the city will easily get 50 merits 4. Do Task Forces, especialyy the weekly, which gives double merits 5. Get all the exploration badges in a zone for 5. Page like this on the wiki have little Copy tags next to each badge. Paste them into chat to get a thumbtack for the badge. https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Atlas_Park#Exploration_Badges This will keep you comfortably off while devoting your time to fighting crime.

There are a few sets that enhance both Defence and Recharge: Basilisks's Gaze (small Def bonus) Stupefy (but 6 slots means adding Knockback) Malaise's Illusions and Coercive Persuasion (6th slot can be a damage proc that aggros) Cloud Senses ( no downsides 🙂 ) But yeah, you're usually choosing between one or the other per-power.

The more global recharge you build up in Set bonuses, the better Hasten becomes. I'll typically have around +100% global, which means perma-Hasten, so +170% recharge on top of slotting in individual powers. This means: AoE stun is up every group for Controllers/Dominators Aim/Build up is up more frequently Nukes on Blasters/Defenders/Corrupters and Sentinel up more frequently Dominators get perma-Domination Powers loaded with damage procs can be left unslotted for Recharge to improve the proc chance, but still cycle quickly. Powerset specific buffs like Empathy auras and Fortitude, self heals in armor sets, etc. are up more frequently There are a few characters where recharge is not a big goal, but they're more the exception than the rule.

To follow up on this - after reading this thread I took Mary Alpha (39 MA/DA Brute with 90% S/L resists) out for a spin last night. Someone was requesting help with Nosferatu in LFG, and I signed up, and we beat his little EB ass, and then continued with this arc. The team of 6 had 3 Tanks - Shield, Rad Armor (he said he was testing a new build) and Ice Armor, a Corrupter, myself and a VEAT. In the final mission we faced three AVs at once: Maestro, Requiem and Vandal. I took down Requiem and Vandal, and mopped up maestro at the end. Everyone else's health bars went up and down considerably, with a few deaths, while mine stayed rock solid, with the occasional blip being corrected by Dark Regen. Not for lack of aggro either, I taunted 2 out of 3 AVs. I think the universe was trying to tell me how tough Dark Armor Brutes can be 🙂 I also took a peep at the other's builds and saw I alone had taken Tough. For these Resist/Damage Aura sets like Dark, Electric, Fire and Rad, Tough makes a big difference.

Always Idealist, and maybe a 4/2/1 split for Savior/Ambiguous/Destructive

I've made a couple of Dark Armor brutes, one at 50 (Rad Melee) and one currently abandoned at 39 (Martial Arts) They're both very solid and have 90% S/L and Psi resistance, 50%+ to most other damage types, and Dark Regen slotted for heal and recharge and the +End proc in there. I've clocked high defences on both too, 44% vs Melee on the Martial Artist by stuffing her attacks with full sets of Touch of Death! 😄 The set shines in amongst large groups - who are stunned from Oppressive Gloom, taking damage from your aura, and feeding Dark Regen for your end needs. You'll need to keep pressing that Dark Regen button when its up, but you've got a great layered defence of not taking much damage and having a big old heal on tap. I don't think you can judge any tanky set by level 16 - they take the longest to mature. Baby tanks (including Brutes) are not very tanky, and you can only judge really by 30 maybe? The essentials for me are: - Tough to bolster your S/L Resists - Slot both Brute IO sets for good resist bonuses - the two uniques (Shield Wall and Reactive Defences) for +8-18% extra resistance vs all. The guide in my signature has some details on numbers.