Sir Myshkin

Out of curiosity, what did you run it on? I'd sooner solo Director 11 again!

What is wrong with you. Was it a lack of ice cream as a child? Why do you hate Regen so much? -Recovery, -Rech/Slows, Terrorize?! And then THIS?! Do you even know what it's like to be unable to exit a mission because you are getting indefinitely bounced around a map because you A) Cannot stand up, B) Have no Endurance, and C) CANNOT DIE T_T

No. CO actually struggled to contend with CoH after its first six months of activity, and it could easily be argued that the loss in traffic was players investigating the game before returning back to other haunts. Even after CoH terminated, CO didn’t really pick up much overflow, and it didn’t stay for long. And when I say “not much” we’re talking a few hundred users a month at best. All this information used to be public. They even went so far as to get integrated with Steam to try and capitalize on its infrastructure, but I digress we’re not talking about CO’s failures. 😏

I am still left pondering the most important of questions though.

I did hit 50 on mine @Gobbledygook, and have been traveling backwards to hit Task Forces with a fully enhanced build. Waiting to share the details until you've had a chance to hit 50 and collect your own thoughts. I've worked through Posi 1/2, Manticore, Kahn, and a couple of ITF's so far. I did technically do a Moonfire and a Market Crash while leveling with half-complete builds that I probably won't double back on. I definitely already have some very interesting takeaways and have even sat down and looked at a possible secondary build I'm calling "The Barrier Build" that could probably be a Hard Mode contender.

I'm still waiting for the totally viable and completely available to retool Whip Melee.

I remember the choice of using Galaxy City was entirely tied to the developers wanting to introduce a new/revised tutorial system into the game when it bounced into the F2P realm, and in the efforts of both stream lining where folks ended up post-tutorial/creation, and future story endeavors, GC was the one chosen because it has far fewer traffic points of Atlas and would allow for a much wider "blank canvas" to repair/reconfigure down the road. Removing GC as a stable hub also took one more thing off the servers to maintain a dynamic population in outside of a rudimentary tutorial.

For some reason I'm struggling to see this. A vampire... truck driver. But then I think about it being a relatively confined (coffin) space, and with appropriately tinted windows it could be fairly well sun-shaded... and suddenly I have this whole new vision of a remake for Smoky and the Bandit. Instead of Snowman, it'll be Snarky, and it won't be Coors, but product from a blood bank ala a Bank Robbery style film.

If the only thing to happen were to bring the game's graphics up to modern era, I'd be a happy snowmanperson. It made me think of an announcement I just finally caught today of a game I played way back in the CoH era on PS2: Armored Core. They're launching a sixth title soon and the graphics are just on a whole new level. AC3 from over a decade ago: AC6 preview trailer: Years ago there was also a project I did taking character prompts from players and mixing those concepts into an idea called Cascadia, a post-cataclysmic Paragon. I thought I had a little snippet of the original story prompt I wrote but it seems to be gone after all this time, but it was essentially an idea to follow the majority of Paragon City/Rogue Isles getting wrecked by a major event (be it the Coming Storm, or Hurricane, or whatever, we didn't really know about the Coming Storm at the time) and it would've been a direct jump-over from CoH. And no I don't mean something small like the Galaxy City thing, I mean like everything. Either start a new character or export an existing level 50 and the idea was to have a high-level story line that focused on how upper-heroes dealt with the tragedy, the outbreaks, protecting (or looting) the city, and how they personally fit in. The low-level story lines were more help-the-little-guy, prevent a neighborhood fire, stop a street flood, zone style events that would lead up to a bigger-bad coming down to cause havoc, less immediate focus on instance missions and more open-zone stuff that could lead into mini-gm style things (babbage level kinda). The long term idea was that would involve three or four zones that, after a year, would be "renovated" which for the characters/players just mean they would stop loading into the devastated zone, and load into a restored (or more work in progress) styled zone with the next wave of missions, and another couple new areas of Paragon opened back up that were part of the disaster that still needed help. Gradually every original zone would be back (or appropriately replaced/updated) in some new way with a fresh new modern look in the new zone/mission system. I had really liked the idea of something progressive like that.

I eagerly await your crest to 50! When you were around 25 I was intrigued enough after doing that build to roll one of these with the intention of doing as much under IO enhancement as possible (exact opposite approach), which has had me pushing to get him aggressively leveled over focusing so much on content performance so I can go backwards and play under better managed slot use. Right now mine is at 46.75, same power selection premise with his build 90% slotted. Once he hits 50 he’ll get catalysed and one set of purples before I go backwards and start running synapse and up at max potential.

I'd say you're both still stuck in the mindset "Me" and not "Team" when thinking about this. I posted a build that didn't even have Incarnates placed. No the build will not have endurance issues with Heat Loss on a 40/s timer, and Mid's also doesn't account for the recovery bonus when the power is flagged on. This is still thinking inside the box though. What's the Destiny? What's your team mate's Destiny? What're you running? Someone is bound to have at least one activation of Ageless in there, it could be you, why not? Even if I did stick Hasten in there, it still won't be perma, and it'll be strictly focused on trying to shave second off of three powers: Sleet, Benumb, and Heat Loss. Even if I flip the proc in Sleet to a Dam/Rech and +5 the set to get 81% Recharge in Sleet, adding Hasten still only gets it to 18/s downtime (as the build stands). To do both, and get each of those powers Perma, I would have to take Ageless and Hasten. Oh, and Heat Loss has just enough recharge to loop itself, just barely. And Benumb will drop for about a second and some change. So now you're the Ageless team member because your build got selfish, but you won't ever run out of endurance, I'll tell you what! 😉 How anyone approaches a build is entirely up to them. I can tell you I don't personally particularly like Focused Accuracy for its cost, but it would have its usefulness in Hard Mode, I'd rather swap for Tactics in most other cases for being cheaper and team-wide. There is a small discrepancy in existence that Nerve fixes from an Incarnate stand point and lets FA be turned off for most situations, and allows Benumb to get double-rech slotted without moving anything around. Sadly adding Hasten only shrinks another 8/s off Benumb, Heat Loss is still 16/s over, and Sleet is still 18/s if someone were to add it at that point. Again, that's a personal call really, I'd probably skip it personally knowing I'm likely to be running on a team using Ageless in one or two capacities. 🤷‍♂️ Did you know when someone does this in the pool nowadays a iridescent blue chemical reaction occurs warning others of the offender? Yeah, time for you to hop on out of the pool for a while until you can play nice with the other kids again.

Ah, no, when I flipped a few things around to put Pyre in I knocked it out of Tough, there should be three pieces of Gladiators in there, take out the Aegis and that puts it at 4pts which is sufficient for most stuff.

Heads up, if you're on a Windows PC that supports Win10 or Win11, the xBox game bar is available to use and has screen capture and auto-save recording built in to windows. This means no external software required, and no pesky watermarks on your videos. Hit your Win+G keys and it'll pop open; you'll see "Capture" in the top left. The files save to your Videos folder and can get somewhat hefty if they're long so manage accordingly!

You better start waxing the other direction dagnabbit or I won't have anyone to compare notes with cause I built a Brute to match yours but I'm slotting as I go to see how the experience differs from yours.

Radiation Blast is a great proc monster blast set which gives it incredible leverage to do more than normal when paired in the right way, but not every set allows it to take advantage of this ability. If you want more total coverage you'll get it better in a few other places to keep Radiation proc'd, but if you're willing to rely on team mates for a larger portion of your support then Mace will at least carry Cold up into the soft cap range. This build has just enough of everything. Avoids Hasten since there's not really a huge need for it, all the key components cycle in the right amount of time, and the global that exists is just enough for X-Ray > Cosmic > Small Gap > Proton Volley that any kind of +Recharge boost from another team member will eradicate.

This is technically a Tanker build, but just flip it around for Brute: Edit: Got ahead of myself on the submit button. This is a high-damage out put build but is still very much a casual-capable build too. It has capped S/L/E/N/F with a touch of universal defense to help soften to kickback from Rage so the build doesn't go negative on its own merits. I know you mentioned concern with funds so a key piece of advice I have for you on supporting something like this: Craft the uncommon IO drops you get and convert them into a rare IO, you don't have to jump far just enough to get something worth 2+ million influence and then sell it on the auction house. It may at first be a slow process, but if you're casually playing it'll be at your own pace anyway. Eventually those sales will build up for the larger pieces like Winter O's and Purples, but for everything else try buying the uncommon recipes at low cost (sub 100k) and crafting them yourself at whatever level you need/want, and rare stuff that has high surplus you should be able to get for 2-3 million instead of crafting, or you can use the converting trick to get the pieces that way. This entire build can be put together with zero starter influence.

Radiation/SS is going to be your ultimate go-to for getting those big numbers packed in while having a stable of good support for yourself just in case. Radiation easily Res caps itself, comes packed with several AoEs that can get proc'd out while they provide healing function (not just for you, but also your team mates). Time and Force Fields will easily provide all the defense you would ever want, so absolutely no need to worry about that, focus on damage, grab Meltdown and Adrenal Booster for their added long-term +damage boosts. If the team dynamic isn't set in stone yet, I'd even suggest the Sonic get swapped for an Electrical Affinity in order to bring a bit more +Dam to the group to stack with Time's Temporal Selection, plus ElecAff has Absorb to provide even better layering of mitigation.

In both cases they're most definitely just referring to a julienne cut, which is called (by Americans) a french cut in cooking, which is just length-wise thin strips. What we assume to be "potatoes served in the French manner" was probably just hash browns. Not as exciting eh?

So my kid comes home from school today and is like "Hey, it's national chip day!" And I'm like, "haha, funny, no it's not." And they're like, "Yes it is, the teacher said it was national chip day!" And I'm like, "No, it is most definitively Pi(e) Day." And then even my spouse was like, "Yeah, see," shows me phone screen, "national chip day." And I'm like "THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS!" And I'm about to storm off to the school and demand to speak to whatever Nazi-Chip-Psycho misinformed my kid... Eventually I calm down though and my spouse runs out for dinner and is like "What do you want?" And I say "I want Pie, something that can go into a pie shell, dagnabbit it's pie day!" And you know what they bring home? Crustless MINI quiche abominations. So I said "Fine! I'll go eat a chip." And this is what I grabbed:

I am not without saying that a small wee-Goblin part of me didn't consider this, but then exemplaring down is just insane with only one attack for sooooo long, the idea of it nearly made me cry tiny Goblin tears.

You have all of the math right in front of you, and that's as far as I'm going with it. I know you just like to poke holes into things for the sake of the fire and I'm not much interested in following you into the flames. So that's that.

No it's not, I've done it long enough to just know, and you're not getting nearly 90% proc hit off of a 15/s power, especially if it has any kind of recharge enhancement in it. But since someone wants to bring math into it: 14 Activations, 2 Misses Touch of Lady Grey (PPM 3.5): 6 for a 50% Trigger Hecatomb (PPM 4.5): 4 for a 33% Trigger Now, obviously the misses don't count here, but I didn't redact from the report. Radiation Siphon has a 10/s base recharge with an animation time of 2.376/s Probability to Proc = PPM * (MRT+ CastTime) / (60 * AreaMod) The MRT of Radiation Siphone was 5.265374894692502, with cast time I rounded to 7.6397 Touch of Lady Grey: 44.56% Hecatomb: 57.3% Blanket statement that 10/s combined would be 58% proved: Incorrect in practice. You can't just plug in an assumptive full rounded number into that calculation as it won't come even remotely close. I used a base 10/s enhanced power and with a 3.5 didn't even come close to a 58% chance, neither in practice nor math. Those little trailing decimal points really drag you down. Now here I got really, really luck with those Lady Grey procs, and frankly one more attack without a trigger would've brought me closer to 44%, but those Hecatomb hits really reflect how fickle the nature of it is. I talk about guaranteed expectancy, not probability. Did I low ball the 33%? Eh, kind of, that could've really been 40%, 45% if I were talking 20/s, but when I say that I'm not looking at math, but hundreds of hours of testing to tell you "This is going to happen." Does the formula some times say things will be a little higher? Sometimes, but only when it's done accurately on a per-power basis, and not randomly broad spectrum.

Some powers, like the Seeker Drones and Trip Mine, can take the procs as a slotted option, but do not actually have causal effect from them. The reason behind this stems from the nature of how the power works against how Procs themselves work. When you cast the Seeker Drones as an example they become a pet with specific abilities, but their specific abilities don't take on the nature of the procs that you slotted the power with (they don't match, whatever, it's a code-based thing that they don't carry over). Some pets, like for Masterminds, do have associative and slottable abilities such as the Knockback Damage Proc for Robotics, their abilities register this proc and can actively "slot" it into their attacks and it will trigger based on their abilities that have KB effects. There aren't really that many abilities in the game where the procs don't carry over, unfortunately the bulk of them happen to be with Traps/Devices. Trip Mine, Seeker Drones, Time Bomb (Omega), but you did miss out on one Trap in the set that does use procs incredibly well which is Poison Trap. Poison Trap can take on all of the Hold damage procs and fire them off at tirgger and it is super nice.

I seriously thought you said mansplaining when I read this the first time, and was like "lol wut?!" Okay I didn't intend to start Axemageddon, but to be fair I did say "I couldn't fit it in." I do have the ability to run Swoop > Gash > Chop, and I have Pendulum and Axe Cyclone, but when it came down to deciphering a last final choice of a killer blow, it went to Shield Charge over Cleave. Yeah Cleave has some strong winning points, but Shield Charge puts me AoE heavy, Axe lets me vacuum the mess up, and Pendulum does good clean up work. By the time I want to finish a spawn I want immediate glorious danger in big fat numbers in the onsie-twosie category, not the dozens category, and Cleave is the slowest out of that, and thanks to Axe Cyclone runners are less of an issue. Plus the character is just a wee lil' Goblin, he's not exactly the Earth-splittin' type.

gets summoned http://media4.giphy.com/media/GBxUeCnzdgIHS/giphy.gif Oh fine, I have a few things laying around. This is Dual Blades/EnA, although it's set for a Stalker the way it's designed will translate easily to a Scrapper, and trading in Battle Axe shouldn't be a problem. It has minimum 45% defense pre-Energy Drain at its weakest source (Negative), and base utilizes Drain and Shadow Meld like tap-outs for debuffs. Realistically it's a Hard Mode build before Hard Mode was a thing, I more built it to hold up to Linea's nonsense >_> I don't have much for Bio Armor unfortunately. The set irritates me on a personal level; I hate building around it, and I hate the way it looks--yes I am aware it can be turned off for the most part, but then it's just a bland mess of a set. Fortunately most of what I do is translatable between partner ATs so this Stalker Staff/Bio will convert easily. It has as close to cap S/L resists, and 45% exotic Defenses: Now then, if you're looking for ways on how to slot Battle Axe in the new era, that's where this fun build comes in to play. It's on a Tanker cause I wants ALL the stats (and it does exclude Cleave because I ran out of space for it, but I don't feel like I'm missing out by not having it):