GastlyGibus

I didn't even read the part about prizes, so I have no idea if I'm being tagged for that reason or not! I just did this for fun, and it did very much turn out fun. If you need my global, it's @Gibs. Pacifist Unit is currently sitting at level 37, just got him into his Ancillary Powers. Went with Psionic Mastery for the extra stacking of confusion, and because it fits with his theme of "non-violent" heroism. Cheers for the game, Troo! Here's Pacifist Unit with the imaginary squad. 😉

There is.

I'm really loving the creativity I'm seeing from people with the asymmetrical costume options. Very well done! Anyways, while I'm here, I'll showcase my newest Peacebringer, and a costume I'm personally very proud of. Blinding Radiance, the newest Kheldian to hit Excelsior.

I can't answer which ones are "most popular" or not. As a fellow Excelsior player I can tell you Cosmic Council is seen a lot, mostly doing costume contests and their weekly "Really Hard Way" challenge runs on Saturday nights. As for the purpose of SG's, I can say they aren't a necessity like they are in other games, nor are they as needed as they were on live. However, there are still uses, and there are still some "serious" supergroups that you can join. For example, my supergroup does "The Bus of Random Content" every week or so, where we roll the dice, pick a Task Force at complete random, and try to complete it in the fastest time. SG's with active members can also take advantage of group storage for salvage, enhancements, and the like. At the end it really comes down to personal preference, and finding a supergroup that meshes with what you want. There's still plenty of supergroups for all kinds of things like Greycat mentioned: roleplaying, task forces, trials, costume contests, etc... They aren't necessary to enjoy the game, but they can still be very fun and handy depending on what you're looking for. Ask around the Excelsior forums, tell them what you're looking for, and see what turns up!

Okay, so maybe I'm slightly sadistic, but Scirocco just cracks me up. You beat him and he's just... so hopelessly, utterly defeated in all of his dialogue from then on. It's honestly some of the funniest stuff. "You do your work well, as always. I am certain that Vortigur will surrender his secrets in time. No one can resist. Why bother? All is meaningless, in the end." Like, man. You just broke him. It's that kind of writing that makes me love redside over blueside. Blueside writing is just... "yay! You saved the day again! You're the bestest hero ever!"

I honestly feel like the problem can be easily remedied by just forming teams of your own. Redside teams might take a little longer to fill up with seven other players, but there are a lot of players out there who do have villain characters. Once they see you posting your ad for a redside team, just give it a little more time, you'll be running with an 8-man group soon enough. A lot of people have villains they don't play because there aren't many teams. They see you in there advertising for a group? Some of them might say "Whoa, a redside group? Let me go grab my villain!" "If you build it, they will come."

There was also a reason that came up frequently in the thread linked earlier, the discussion for how to increase population redside. That reason was the issue of motive. It basically boils down to this: while every hero has their own unique backstory and history, as well a reasons for being a hero, a hero's motive is mainly reactive. A hero reacts to situations that come up. It doesn't matter if the Council is raiding some lab, if the Devouring Earth are trashing some office, or the Circle of Thorns have kidnapped somebody, the hero is going to have a reason to go to all of those areas and stop it, because the hero's motive is to help people and save the day, no matter the circumstances. For villains, it's quite different. It's a lot harder to write content for villains because, while they share the same intricacies and backstories of heroes, a villains motives are primarily proactive. The villain doesn't react to situations; the villain creates situations of their own, and a each villain's motive differs drastically. Let's say I get a mission redside: some contact wants me to go beat up a Council boss. What if I don't want to? What if my villain doesn't have beef with the Council? Maybe my villain is after chaos and destruction rather than money and infamy? It becomes much more difficult to write content for villains this way, since you have to take into account every player's own unique motives for being a villain. For me, personally, this isn't a problem. I can usually work around these things and invent a reason for my character to do it, even if it doesn't "fit" with their motivations, but for other players it's not so simple. Some players get really invested in their characters, and it becomes jarring to suddenly have a contact give you a mission that your villain would never have a reason to do. For heroes this issue never really comes up, because like I mentioned before, no matter what the situation is, the hero's motivation is always to save the day and protect the innocent. For villains, they each have their own reasons. Some villains want money, some want power, some want carnage and destruction, and some have a personal vendetta against society. Their motives are all different, and thus their actions differ as well, and it becomes more difficult to properly get into character for a villain when working within the confines of a video game.

Skyway City, Kings Row, Steel Canyon, Talos Island, Brickstown, Galaxy City, and Atlas Park are, at least to me, just generic "cities with skyscrapers." The only visually distinct zones I can think of blueside are Independence Port and Founders Falls, and IP has the unique dishonor of being so goddamn huge I never, ever want to go there. If I'm playing redside, and I'm in any of those zones, I hardly ever have to look at a map because the zones are visually distinct and unique. Blueside I never remember where anything is because everywhere I look it's just more "generic skyscrapers." You can have your opinion. If you like blueside, go for it. I'm not saying people who like blueside are better or worse. I'm stating my reason for preferring redside.

I've always been an avid defender of redside, and I'm usually on there myself trying to get teams started. Many of the reasons stated here are, unfortunately, accurate, but I believe the biggest part of it is the simple human nature of conformity. "Everyone else plays heroes, so I'll play heroes too." I, personally, love redside far more than blueside. The content is written better, the missions aren't nearly as annoying, the zones are cool and unique, and the enemies are more varied. But some people just prefer heroside and feeling like a "good" character more, which means hero population is usually higher. Because of that, the majority of the people who don't have a preference for one or the other gravitate to the place with more people.

So, I made a thread about this already, but it was a little while ago, and rather than going back and editing the original thread and necro-posting, I've decided to make one single, uniform thread for all entries into this little project of mine. So without further ado, here we go! *ahem* So, one of the common complaints heard about the Villain Epic Archetypes, the Soldiers of Arachnos, is that their special story arcs kind of suck. And honestly, I agree with them. It is pretty sub-standard writing, and a really boring, forced way to try and explain why everyone is calling you a "Destined One."With that in mind, I had an idea, and I'm sure others have had it before. Why not use the Mission Architect to create a new, better story for Arachnos Soldiers to play? So that's what I'm doing. There are two arcs so far, and I plan to add more as I go along. I am always open to having feedback, and if you've got some ideas of your own, I'd love to hear them! The story so far... [Arc ID: 31187] Soldiers of Arachnos - Part One: The Arachnos Insider. After being sent on a suicide mission and left for dead, Alan Desslock has been looking for an agent to be his inside operative, and you're just the candidate. Designed for Arachnos Soldiers, level range of 1-10. No special bosses, one custom ally, four missions total. [Arc ID: 39268] Soldiers of Arachnos - Part Two: Manifest Destiny. After your mission rooting out an Arachnos mole, Desslock is calling in the favor you owe him, and the implications might be more grave than you thought. Level range 10-15. One boss and one elite boss with custom powers, scaled appropriately for the level range. Four missions total. More to come soon! Stay tuned! As stated before, any and all feedback is welcome and appreciated. I will be editing this thread in the future for any further additions based on feedback and critiques. I'd love to know what you guys think! Here are the known issues with the arcs that I've found. These are problems that I've found in testing that I do not know how to fix. If anybody has any advice or solutions, please let me know! This section is here so players know that I'm aware of them. It will be updated as well if any new unintended issues arise. KNOWN ISSUES: Part two, mission 3: ally to rescue starts in the "held hostage" animation, despite not actually being a hostage. Part one, mission 1: Ally sometimes spawns in the middle of mobs, doing nothing until the player finds them. Associated clue for finding them is given at mission start before finding them. Part two, mission 2: hostage and captors fire all dialogue at the beginning of the mission, despite being on the second floor. Part two, mission 4: the unique "snake infested Arachnos" base set fails to load the snake-skin props normally found in the map until the final room, causing it to look like a regular Arachnos set. Part two, mission 3: allied hero fights the PPD despite being a hero.

So, we're supposed to update at level 30, right? So, here's an update! Pacifist Unit, the level 31 Illusion/Sonic Controller. My god why haven't I tried illusion sooner? I don't think I even touched the Controller AT for a while. Back on live I only had one controller at 50, my first-ever character, a Mind/Empathy 'troller, and he was fun. Now, with my first controller in... who knows how long, I'm starting to remember the fun I had with my Mind Controller back on live. Gave him two new costumes, because I still like to pretend this is live and only give myself costumes at 20, 30, etc... Screenshots: Sonic Resonance is also pretty fun to play. It became a lot more fun once I realized you can cast Disruption Field on your illusionist decoys. It kind of sucks only having two whole entire attacks that deal damage, but plentiful use of Deceive is pretty easy to solve that problem. Of course, that's only when I'm soloing, and I've been running teams with him for the entirety of his career. So far, I'm having a lot of fun!

Laura Brunetti, hero contact in Independence Port. "They have been a plague on this for many, many years." On this what? This city? This planet? This dimension?! Tell me, woman! "...date back to it's founding..." Should be "its," not "it's."

I gave this a whirl. I only rolled for one character, not three. Roll #1: 25 - Controller Roll #2: 77 - Illusion Control Roll #3: 63 - Sonic Resonance Thought of it for a bit, went with it. So far, I'm having fun with it. Somehow I've never gotten around to trying out Illusion Control, and I'm liking it so far. Meet the Pacifist Unit Since virtually none of his abilities do any direct physical harm to people, I came up with idea of a "pacifist" type of hero. The working backstory I gave him is this: facing disaster after disaster in public relations, Crey decided to go for a strictly non-lethal form of self defense using illusions and sound waves to pacify enemies. Thus, they came up with the "Pacifist Unit." Of course, Crey is still evil, and they had evil plans for this "non-violent" suit of armor, so a researcher with a conscience stole the suit and now goes around doing hero work. Got him to level 18 so far, and I'm enjoying it quite a bit. I'll see what it's like at 30 and update here. Thanks for the cool idea!

There's a handful of sets that give you the illusion of custom colors, but without them actually doing anything. Dual Pistols is one of them, as well as a large amount of other "weapon" based powersets. Though I did notice that, for tankers at least, customizing the colors on weapon sets will affect your Gauntlet inherent, and change the colors of the taunt effect that appears when attacking enemies. If other AT's have similar kinds of effects, I could see the colors applying to those as well, but nothing comes to mind at the moment.

I'll give the same answer I give to every question about powerset performance. There are no bad sets. There are only good sets and great sets. Battle Axe is one of the good but not great sets. As others have noted, it's not the best, not by a long shot, but keep in mind that's coming from a perspective of min-maxing, which is not necessary in this game to be effective. Sure, you won't be putting out as much damage as other tanks, but that doesn't mean it's bad or worthless. My best suggestion would be to roll one yourself and see how it fits for you.

Ah, that crouch/walk thing enemies do. I call that "The CoH Shuffle." It's the latest dance craze in Pocket D! In all seriousness, the two biggest things that bothered me way back in the day were the animations for "Punch" and "Haymaker" from Super Strength. I don't know what world you're living in where a Haymaker looks like that, because it doesn't look like any fighting move I've ever seen. Punch isn't even a punch. It looks like someone angrily slamming the counter because the bartender got their drink wrong. The new animations are better, but still wonky and weird, and it's the only reason I've avoided Super Strength as a set to this day.

I found out about homecoming the same way, except I had a dream about CoH and I decided to look it up online for nostalgia, only to find these servers existed. Best dream I ever had, honestly. XD

There were on live, but Homecoming removed the unlock requirements for all costume pieces, so you have access to virtually everything from the get-go. I say virtually everything, because the only thing you actually can't use is the Crab Spider backpack, unless of course you are an Arachnos Soldier who went with the Crab Spider path.

So, a couple things to point out for the OP. First thing, this is all completely false. Defenders using their attacks are not "weak blasters." In fact, the argument can be made that they're more beneficial than blaster attacks, since Defenders will get more use out of a power's secondary effects. The -ToHit debuffs from Dark Blast, for example, will be significantly more powerful on a Defender than a Blaster because of Defender modifiers. As a Defender, the primary function of your attacks is not to cause damage, but to debuff enemies and make them easier for your team to handle, thus filling the role of support rather well. With Tankers, there's a similar secondary use to their powers that's not directly stated, and that is the inherent taunt that comes with every Tanker attack. The Tanker's inherent ability of Gauntlet casts a short AoE taunt effect on critters within range with every attack they use. A Tanker running in fists flying will hold aggro significantly better than a Tanker just using Taunt, because every single one of their attacks is also taunting enemies. Finally, INF earned from defeated enemies is not at all based on damage dealt. This is 100% false, otherwise door-sitting and farming wouldn't exist. If you are on a team, any defeat made by any member of your team will evenly distribute all EXP and INF to every player on the team. Even if that Blaster one-shot a minion all by themselves, everyone on the team gets credit for the defeat. There is no participation threshold for INF or EXP. All EXP, INF, and drops are evenly calculated for every member of the team. Drops are the only instance where there will be variation, but once again, drops are based on random rolls and not on participation. So for example, if a recipe has a 10% chance to drop from an enemy, and the Stalker on the team defeats the enemy in one hit, every member of the team will roll that 10% chance for the recipe, and it may even be awarded to more than one player. All of this was designed to prevent kill-stealing, last-hitting, participation thresholds, and certain AT's being easier or harder to level on purpose. It's all intentionally designed this way to make the game fun for everyone, and to prevent arguments over loot, exp, inf, and what have you. As others have stated, City of Heroes is not like any other MMO you've ever played. It's for that reason this game has such a dedicated fanbase, because there really isn't any other game like it on the market. And as stated previously, Tankers hold aggro better when attacking, and in some instances can even be very good DPS in their own right. My Bio/Claws Tanker is a DPS monster, and that's without sacrificing any of his survivability. With this game, you eventually run into a point where you cannot take any other powers except for your attacks, and by the mid 30s, you'll have so many enhancement slots you won't know where to put them. I always pick and slot my attacks as a Tanker, and it doesn't harm my survivability in any meaningful way. In City of Heroes, a Tanker that is not using their attacks to generate aggro is not tanking as effectively as they could. Run in there and punch things! Make the bad guys mad! You're a TANK, and tanks are just as capable at offense as they are at defense. And this is one point where I will actually agree with you to an extent. If your gaining INF solely from defeats, then yes, you're going to have a bad time. This is why a lot of players in this thread are giving guides to using the Auction House. One of my only complaints with this game is that INF from defeats is so negligible in the early game that you're pretty much forced to use the market. But, despite that, the market isn't incredibly difficult or complex to learn, and you don't have to be a super-savvy marketeer to make decent cash off of it. On all of my characters, in the early game, I craft and sell all recipes and IOs that I can't use and sell them on the market. You'd be surprised at just how much INF you can make by just selling your drops at low price on the markets. My Fire/Fire Blaster on redside already has like 30 million INF in her account at level 25, and that's all from just selling drops. I'm not converting or using merits or buying things to flip them, I'm just playing the game and crafting the recipes I find to sell on the market. Even just a single piece of rare salvage sells for around 450K on the market, and I use that money to fund all of my enhancements and slotting. Once you get higher in level, the INF you get from defeats increases significantly, but in the early game, I will concede that INF generation is pathetic outside of selling drops. Luckily, selling drops is super easy and trivial, and you can make yourself a multi-millionaire in INF from just selling drops on the market. The guides posted here are super helpful, and I would recommend reading them to get a better understanding of how stuff works.

I can't say for certain as I've not tested it, but Tanker's Gauntlet increases the range on their AoE's with a few exceptions as part of the homecoming changes to Tankers. I don't know if that extends to power pools, but if it did, that would be why you're getting a longer range.

I mean, did you even get the "Entrusted With The Secret" badge? Have you even been to Ouroboros yet? 😄

Is there a prize for the youngest? Because out of the people who have posted so far, I win, being only 27. 😛 I remember playing this game at the beginning of High School, so even still this game has been with me a while. 😄

The physical numbers that you see are all shown after the calculations for stat modifiers. There is no invisible stat modifier that isn't shown. Scrappers and Brutes have lower modifiers for their armor powers. This is true and nobody is disputing that. A Brute or a Scrapper will get less out of their armor powers than Tankers because of base stat modifiers. This is also true and nobody is disputing that. This is why the end-result numbers for each archetype are different. For instance, a Scrapper/Brute will only get 22.5% Smashing/Lethal resistance from Fire Armor, whereas a Tanker will get 30% on the same power. Those numbers are the result of the calculations including the archetype's stat modifiers with the individual power's effects. There are no invisible numbers in play here. There isn't some secret or trick that the game isn't telling you. The numbers you see for each power are the final result of all the calculations the game does for each power. You are factually, objectively in the wrong here and you've provided no evidence whatsoever to back up your claims. Anecdotes are not evidence. We're sitting here trying to give you the actual, real numbers and you don't want to listen.

The point of scrappers is the same as every other archetype: to have fun. If you aren't having fun, play a different archetype.

I can only assume that, for tactical reasons, since the phantasm is an illusion meant to help you fight enemies, you'd purposefully make it really big and imposing, both to instill fear in foes and to draw their attention away from you and to the much bigger, scarier ghost man attacking them. 😛