Apparition

Mastermind pets tended to do that often with elevator doors, especially on Crey lab maps and with the doors in the last mission of the Tin Mage TF. I had to despawn them all *twice*, and then resummon and rebuff them all to fix it. I don’t know if that is still the case as I haven’t played a MM in over a year.

Tell me about it. It still boggles my mind. They were both in the Sewers already! What really honked me off was trying to form a DFB while mine was still forming and then trying to effectively drown me out of the LFG channel.

I tried calling out for badge runs red side a few times about a year ago, and got crickets. IIRC, the most I got was three people. I eventually gave up, and decided to try forming badge runs blue side in the Sewers and Talos Island, respectively. That worked. A year later, I decided that I would like the badges on a new level 50 character. I went to the Sewers again and tried forming a blue side DFB badge run. It's not red side, but at least it isn't Atlas Park and I meet people more than halfway. After about 20 minutes, I had three people. A fourth person joined the team, and entered the Sewers. He asked why he was level 49. I explained that I was level 50 and running it for the badges. He then asked why I was forming it in the Sewers. I explained that I dislike Atlas Park, and why not? It'd be like old times! He promptly quit the team, went to Atlas Park, and started forming his own DFB team. Another person on my team (who joined right after the fourth person), quit to go join his. So there I was, been forming for over 20 minutes, still had two people on my team, and now I had someone forming a competing DFB team. Meanwhile, this other person spammed LFG every thirty seconds with a recruitment message for his DFB, trying to drown out my own. I was tempted to wait until he finished to try to recruit more people because I'm sure this isn't fun for people seeing dueling DFBs in the LFG channel, but two other people had been waiting over 20 minutes with me already, and that wouldn't be fair to them. So I tried to recruit more people via LFG. For every recruitment message I sent, the other person made five. In the end, I believe that both DFB teams only had five people each. I managed to only get one badge, which means that I would need to run DFB again on that character. At this point, I would rather not deal with blue side in regards to the DFB and DIB and get the badges myself since they're pretty much unobtainable red side. Again, I realize that this will be extremely unlikely.

Unlike the Kronos Titan in the Lord Recluse Strike Force, the Arachnos Flier grants six reward merits upon defeat in addition to a badge. The Arachnos Flier in the MLTF is listed as a Transport, not a Giant Monster unlike its counterpart in Grandville. Per the Homecoming Wiki, it was apparently confirmed by Castle in early 2009 that the Arachnos Flier granting reward merits in the MLTF was a bug that he intended to fix, although the actual confirmation itself is lost to the sands of time. Just curious if this will ever be corrected, or if it has been deemed not a bug by Homecoming developers.

Titan Weapons/Bio Armor is a great combination and popular for a reason. Enjoy!

Welcome to Paragon City and the Rogue Isles! Scrappers will do more DPS than Brutes, especially with the Scrapper AT origin enhancement sets. That's just fact. So if DPS is all you care about, go Scrapper. However, as you alluded, DPS isn't the end all be all. Brutes have two advantages over Scrapper. Better survivability as you stated, and more importantly, better aggro management. Only a couple of Scrapper secondaries offers good aggro management: Bio Armor, Invulnerability, and Shield Defense. For all other secondaries, if you want to keep mobs on you and prevent them from running away, I'd go with Brute. You will do almost as much damage as a Scrapper, and not have to worry about mobs running away nearly as much. Also, the resistance based secondaries (Dark Armor, Fiery Aura, Electric Armor, and Radiation Armor), are better on Brutes due to the AT's higher resistance cap of 90% verus Scrapper's 75%. Primaries, Titan Weapons and Claws are pretty much tops for AoE and do decent single target damage. War Mace is a great all around contender for both single target and AoE. Energy Melee is probably now the single target damage king, and has okie AoE damage. Secondaries, Radiation Armor, Bio Armor, Invulnerability, Energy Aura, and Shield Defense are generally considered the top five melee armor sets in the game. All are quite good, in their own ways. You really can't go wrong mixing and matching any of the power sets I mentioned above on either AT.

Praetoria likes its smashing, lethal, energy, and psionic damage. With that, I'd go Electric Armor. Secondary? Probably Energy Melee.

I realize that this suggestion will be extremely unlikely, but here we go: Soloable Death from Below and soloable Drowning in Blood trials. Not even for XP, INF, nor drops, only badges. Obtaining the badges for these red side is virtually impossible. Back in 2019 and early 2020, I tried putting together red side DFB and DIB teams many times, and the most I could ever get was five people and that was when I was lucky. Many times only one or two. Sometimes none. Now in May 2021, the Homecoming population is substantially smaller, so I don't even bother.

That makes sense. When I run these missions while leveling, I only do x2 because I'm a lowbie. Running via Ouroboros Flashback, they're set at either x3 or x4. They also only spawn around the computer consoles. My guess is this also impacts the Twinshot story arcs, since they feature computer consoles in quite a few missions as well. I'll have to actually switch alignment to blue side and check later. All in all, this is a really low priority bug, so I understand if it doesn't get fixed anytime soon. It just makes no sense seeing Arachnos lounging around in Dr. Graves' arcs, considering Dr. Graves is trying to actively avoid Arachnos' attention, and Wyvern are out of nowhere.

First one was Gatekeeping App on Excelsior. The second and newer one is Polar Apparition on Torchbearer. This was all while running Dr. Graves’ first story arc via Ouroboros Flashback.

City of Heroes draws a vast amount of inspiration from super-hero comic books, television shows, and movies. But, in the end, City of Heroes is a video game. It has to function like a video game. In particular, it has to function like a massively multiplayer online video game. In those games, there has to be a sense of progression, of your character becoming more powerful and taking on bigger and more powerful threats. Otherwise, there's no real reason to play. If everything in the game didn't have levels, why even bother leveling to level 50? Wouldn't a level 50 PC feel like that he or she wasted time grinding all the way to level 50, knowing that someone at level one can do the exact same things? Game play and game narrative have to come before personal narrative. That's how you get a game and a game world.

Bumping up because this is still a thing. Also, it occurred in the first mission, "Healthy Competition," this time as well. Those three Arachnos agents were never there before. When the Identity Verification Console blew up, it took out the three Arachnos agents with it.

There's a lot of misinformation spread during MSRs that stealth auras like Shadow Fall negatively impact aggro. It's why you regularly see calls to turn off Shadow Fall, Steamy Mist, etc., during mothership raids. It's just not the case. The reason why you sometimes have periods of no Rikti in the bowl is because of either Brutes and Tankers not pulling, people fighting Rikti on the rim and on the ramps, or a combination of both. It's usually a combination of both. It's much easier to blame stealth auras.

Considering that that will absolutely never happen, no.

I hear you. A friend of mine and I wanted to do a speedy Lord Recluse Strike Force once just after midnight ET. None of our other friends were on, so we decided to fill the team with PUGs. This was on Excelsior, the most populated shard, so it shouldn't be too bad even if it is red side, right? :P After about a half hour of recruiting, I only managed to get four other people. So we decided to go ahead and do the SF with our team of six. My friend was on a Dark Miasma Corruptor, and I was on a Radiation Emissions Corruptor. Now, I always run level 50 TFs/SFs at a minimum of +2 (even speed runs), because I don't like seeing blue nor white conned mobs at any level. IMO, they're a waste of time. So this speedy LRSF was set at +2. At the end of the second mission, one of the PUGs grabbed the Orestes Rifle before my friend or I could. I thought, "Okie, this is a speed run, and he went to grab the Orestes Rifle, so I'm sure he knows what to do with it." Bwahahahaha. We got to Miss Liberty, and we're fighting her, and fighting her, and her health bar never budged. People on the team have started to drop. My friend used Howling Twilight to rez two people. "So and so, did you use the rifle on Miss Liberty?" "What's that?" Meanwhile two more people have dropped, including my friend. I used Mutation to rez her. By the time I finished explaining, I think every member on the team had died at least twice, and I used Burnout to bring Mutation up immediately after using it. I learned two valuable lessons from that: One, never ever have a mostly PUG team for the LRSF. Secondly, if there's a PUG on the team, be sure to have someone grab the Orestes Rifle before the PUG.

There are three Task/Strike Forces that you absolutely want to be level 50 for, and LRSF is one of them. The other two are MLTF and LGTF. Strategy for the Freedom Phalanx: Take down Numina first. Positron second. Penelope Yin third. Back Alley Brawler fourth. With those four down, the rest are easy.

Misunderstanding. Pocket D's AE doesn't grant the Clubber day job, it grants the Mission Architect day job. Log off somewhere on the dance floor, that'll get you the Clubber day job.

Exactly. If an entire zone is level one to 50, that gives people no incentive to ever do anything else, when already the vast majority of the game's content is rarely (if ever), touched. Not to mention that there's already been four mid-level story arcs added to the game since Homecoming went live, while the high end has gotten exactly... nothing.

After sleeping on it, I think this is two separate bugs. The first "bug" is that Provost Marchand will stop introducing you to Neutropolis Loyalist contacts at level nineteen instead of level twenty, unlike Calvin Scott who will happily introduce you to Neutropolis Resistance contacts at level nineteen. I see no reason why one will offer contacts at level nineteen and the other won't. There is nothing anywhere stating that Provost Marchand will stop introducing contacts at level nineteen. The second "bug" is that Calvin Scott seems to assume that you've unlocked his mission arc if his contact status bar is at or near full, even if you haven't started the Neutropolis Crusader Resistance story arcs yet, (I'm guessing that is the reason for this). This will block him from introducing you to Aaron Walker, the start of the Neutropolis Warden Resistance story arcs. You can still walk up to Aaron Walker and introduce yourself though. These are obviously low priority "bugs" with workarounds, but for people new to gold side, and especially for new players playing gold side (as few as they may be), these may throw up roadblocks as it did for me, requiring you to scour the forums and the wiki just to get contacts and missions. @Piecemeal, do you have any ideas?

There will be no mothership raid tonight. I will see y'all next week!

After some testing on Brainstorm, I've figured out some things that I've not really seen mentioned anywhere else. Be sure that you have all contacts in Nova Praetoria open by level seven. You will not be able to start them at level eight. Be sure that you have all contacts in Imperial City open by level fourteen. You will not be able to start them at level fifteen. Just to be on the safe side, I plan to make sure that I have them all open by level thirteen, as technically the contacts in Neutropolis start at level fourteen. Be sure that you have all contacts in Neutropolis open by level eighteen. You will not be able to start them at level nineteen.

@MTeague , I just did some quick and dirty testing on Brainstorm. I made a new Praetorian Loyalist character. Set my level to level 7 and trained up. Called Provost Marchand, and he offered me the Nova Praetoria Loyalist contacts. Set my level to level 8 and trained up. Called Provost Marchand, and he offered me the Imperial City Loyalist contacts. Set my level to level 13 and trained up, and he offered me the Imperial City Loyalist contacts. Set my level to level 14 and trained up, and he offered me the Imperial City Loyalist contacts. Set my level to level 15 and trained up, and he offered me the Neutropolis Loyalist contacts. Set my level to level 18 and trained up, and he offered me the Neutropolis Loyalist contacts. Set my level to level 19 and trained up, and... he offered me nothing. So, with the information gathered: To be absolutely sure that you get Nova Praetoria contacts, do not level past level 7. To be absolutely sure that you get Imperial City contacts, do not level past level 14. To be absolutely sure that you get Neutropolis contacts, do not level past level 18. Edit: To be thorough, I made a new Praetorian Resistance character, and did the same things. Set my level to level 7 and trained up, called Calvin Scott, and he offered me the Nova Praetoria Resistance contacts. Set my level to level 8 and trained up. Called Calvin Scott, and he offered me the Imperial City Resistance contacts. Set my level to level 13 and trained up, and he offered me the Imperial City Resistance contacts. Set my level to level 14 and trained up, and he offered me the Imperial City Resistance contacts. Set my level to level 15 and trained up, and he offered me the Neutropolis Resistance contacts. Set my level to level 18 and trained up, and he offered me the Neutropolis resistance contacts. Set my level to level 19 and trained up, and... he offered me the Neutropolis resistance contacts. So Calvin Scott will give you breadcrumb missions at level nineteen, but not Provost Marchand. Weird.

Yeah. Prior to Freedom, the hero to villain ratio was about seven to one. Now on Homecoming, it’s about 8.5 to one.

Jimmy, you should post about a thousand quick posts so Bionic Flea’s phone alerts a thousand times. Preferably at about 3 A.M. his time.

Hrm. That makes sense, except I'm pretty sure I remember doing an Imperial City breadcrumb mission at level fourteen both times. Perhaps I'm mistaken. I'll give that a try. Thank you!