Parabola

Hey @Cipher, It's basically as I say, white text on a dark background is headache fuel. Googling it people talk about a blurring effect called halation, and also that it's particularly bad if you have astigmatism which fits as I do in one eye. Unfortunately I also get migraines and this is a definite trigger. Sadly I don't know of anything that helps other than rendering websites and documents in dark text on a light background... I have resorted to copying into blank word docs before but that's not really practical for a forum.

Without wishing to be 'that guy' I hope this is being looked into? I'd like to join in the current excitement but I can't comfortably use this website without the light theme (white text on a dark background is a headache trigger).

The light theme seems to have disappeared?

I remember back in the day joining a pug on a rad/something defender. I was promptly told by the team leader something to the effect of: 'couldn't find a real healer, you'll have to do, put your aura on auto and don't use any of your other pointless powers'. Ah, great days. *Wipes away a tear of misty eyed nostalgia*

Check out stilettos with the bio-organic pattern. With the right colouring they flow very nicely into the metal bottom pattern.

Or Barbie has been added to a banned words list and you got caught in a sweep?

And clear communication has the same value everywhere.

That's not the problem. People are having trouble with the op because you've left out the words that would make it read as a suggestion rather than a statement: Taunts do illusion damage that heal over a set time. This is a statement, and a factually incorrect one in the current game. I suggest we add illusory damage to taunts. This is now a suggestion.

Early levels on a /dark can be a little rough because you are hurting for recharge to get your important powers available for each spawn. But once you can get tar patch and fearsome stare up often enough it should become a breeze. The tactic is fairly simple: apply darkest night to something and retreat around a corner. Drop tar patch where you stand and wait for the mobs to group up in it. Step out and fearsome stare them, then attack with everything else. Rinse and repeat for most of the game. Defences are good to have but you can do enough tohit debuff that you should be able to handle mobs that aren't too much over your level.

Elec/dark corruptor would work very well. Toggle pull into tarpatch, fearsome stare and then drain both health and stamina. Should be very safe and will look great.

Aoes: The golden rule of course is to build and play in the way that suits you. A lack of aoe is an absolute deal breaker for me with any archetype and any build. Aoes do tend to have longer cast times than single target powers (and greater end costs, lower damage etc). But of course they can hit multiple targets so the damage per animation (dpa which is the most important measurement of power performance in the game) is actually higher as long as you are targeting a group. 6 slotting: Yeah the powers that jump out are tactics and the defensive toggles. Luck of the gambler for example is a great set but a blaster has very little to gain by 6 slotting it. The defence enhancement is nearly capped with just three pieces (def/end, def, def/+rech) and the later set bonuses aren't really worth it when you aren't stacking a lot of resistance. With both defence and resistance the more you have the more useful adding extra is up to the caps. Blasters start with nothing so they are well advised to focus their efforts narrowly on one or two things, generally ranged defence or s/l defence. Accuracy: The highest chance to hit that you can have while making any attack is 95%. There is always at least a 5% chance to miss. The general wisdom is to build with the goal of achieving this 95% against +3 enemies. This is because the alpha shift means that in level 45+ play you won't fight mobs over +3 (hard modes may be different(?) but you would be teamed for that), and at lower levels you generally don't crank the difficulty up anyway. In the options of mids there is a setting for relative enemy level, set that to +3 and then look at the accuracies of your powers. Anything over 95% is accurate enough for most content. I'm running out of time for the rest of it. I'll try to post a build a bit later to show you how I'd go about all this. Are you absolutely set on ice manipulation? It really is a very blappy secondary and other sets offer more if you are playing entirely at range.

A few thoughts: No aoe apart from blizzard?! Lots of six slotted support powers that aren't gaining you much. Way overboard on accuracy. Blasters are generally 'full attack set' type builds and so tend to have plenty of both slotted and global accuracy. I can't see what tactics is gaining you. Once you take vengeance out (which I'd drop altogether as it's the poster child for situational powers) defences are unfocused and lacking. Get ranged to the softcap, then whatever s/l you can muster, or just build for s/l. I don't see the steadfast protection proc anywhere which would help. I'd drop victory rush and slot some end mod in frigid protection, then remove all the extra slots in health and stamina. Blaster sustain powers are so powerful that's all the end you'll ever need. Freezing touch, ice patch and frozen aura are all good powers to consider but if you are going ranged only then they may be more situational. That said if you aren't completely set on theme and are determined to play only at range then other secondary power sets might have more to offer. Tac arrow is very good at range. Hasten isn't mandatory but it would certainly help to cycle your big hitters quicker.

Don't completely discount the idea of building for ranged defence on a squishy that plays in melee a lot. Particularly one that is running a slow field (not to mention the avoid effects). Melee attacks are very short range and you will in all likelihood be kiting a lot, even small movements (which you should probably be constantly making) will force enemies to use their ranged attacks. Ranged defence will also protect against quite a bit of Mez and it's a lot easier (and cheaper) to build for on a blaster.

Grav/traps troller? Maybe with quite a bit of the fighting pool (and a lot of imagination!).

Interesting combo. I like the use of sprit ward on rocky to make him even more tanky. Would you mind sharing your build?

This isn't that game, and that's precisely why we love it so much. This game emphasises other contributions; buffs, debuffs and controls, that wouldn't appear on these stats at all. Even if they could somehow be included it would still be a terrible idea for community cohesion. A player could have been statistically the highest contributor to a tf and still been the worst teammate; not following instruction, being rude, pulling too much aggro, running off alone, etc. I'd also much rather have people who are cracking jokes and chatting away in my team than seven efficient drones spamming powers to keep their averages up.

No it absolutely isn't worth it in kick. As said above it has a horrible chance to proc and if that's all you are slotting it will miss often and do very little damage if it hits. It also comes with the disadvantage of making global recharge look much better than it is in mids if you forget to toggle it off. I consider boxing to be by far the better pick because there is less temptation to put it in my tray and try to use it. FF+rech procs in general can be very powerful tools though. They are best used in aoes where the chances of firing are greatly increased. If you are going to slot in a single target power it really needs to have a longish cooldown and preferably no recharge slotted alongside it.

I'm quite amused by the idea of inverting the power order for primary and secondary power sets. Just how much of a massive nerf it would be in most cases. Imagine how badly a set would play if you only had access to your nuke at 1st level with no global recharge and precious little opportunity to slot recharge.

It very much depends. Lots of dots is a good reason to go corruptor, bigger buff/debuff modifiers are a good reason to go defender. But I've recently made more corruptors than defenders purely because I prefer the corruptor ato's.

When people talk about the game showing its age they are usually referring to the graphical fidelity not content like types of computer screen. A game set in the 80's could have bleeding edge representations of crt monitors and be completely up to date graphically. Personally I still think the graphics (as in fidelity) are fine, I don't find it important to have all the hdr, 4k stuff. It doesn't improve games as far as I'm concerned (actually far from it because time and money spent developing all that stuff seems to always come at the expense of the basics like gameplay ... But that's another argument). What I really love is the tone and feel of the game. The funny retro futuristic cars, the nonsense office layouts with old computers, all of it. If the Devs wanted to spruce it up with higher res versions of the existing assets then I wouldn't complain. Replacing those assets entirely with more modern versions? No. It wouldn't be coh anymore.

It's difficult to know how to feel about that. Losing stings obviously. The ashes always were going to be the acid test of England's new mindset because of the overwhelming importance of beating the Aussies. Against other countries the average fan has been reasonably happy to accept the risks of playing hyper aggressive cricket but the English cricket supporters psyche is built around beating Australia. Or at least not losing and there's the rub. This was a game that would in all likelihood have been drawn 99 times out of 100 between other teams. In my opinion it is a credit to England's approach that they engineered a situation where either side could actually win the thing. My worry is that there is a fairly vocal section of England's support that don't see it like that. They see reckless decisions and a team now 1-0 down when it didn't need to be. It'll be very interesting to see how that tension plays out. In no way do I expect a change in approach, I just expect the griping about it to get very loud indeed. Of course that will all change if we hammer Oz in the next one. The only thing with a shorter memory than a sports fan is a sports journalist after all! The test itself was frankly murder. Days 3 and 4 were tense, day 5 was stomach knotting terror. It was almost a relief that I've been dealing with an emergency at work for the last couple of days! I'm not convinced I'm going to make it through this summer if they are all like that... I thought we played well. We were hampered by lots of things, Jimmy was oddly out of sorts, Mo injured (unsurprisingly not test match fit after being retired for a couple of years) and Ben really isn't fit to bowl much. It is pretty remarkable we took 18 wickets considering. I strongly suspect we'll have to reshuffle the bowling pack for the next one. And the missed chances really hurt us. I'm a huge Bairstow fan but three drops and a missed stumping doesn't look good whichever way you cut it. I don't see what they do though. If you bring in Foakes you have to drop someone and the only candidate would be Crawley, but then who opens? Also Johnny might not take losing the gloves well, I seem to remember his batting suffering the last time we did that, in the short term at least. So overall it was disappointing but it could easily have gone the other way. On to the next!

As far as I'm concerned coh never was set in a real time period. It is a comic book version of recent past modernity and isn't meant to be viewed as an accurate representation of any given real world moment. Hence the anachronistic vehicles that grace the city and any number of other details that don't quite fit together. As said above: it's all part of the charm.

Day 2 was overall disappointing for England. They won the morning session but mistakes cost them the other two and Oz will be very happy with their day. Oz clearly have a plan; keep England in the field and try to break our bowlers, and sadly I think it could well work... My question from day 1 still stands, are we going to take 20 wickets? On this pitch possibly not (particularly if we waste chances).

Honestly the point of difference between brutes and tanks that I struggle to get past these days is aggro management. Brutes just aren't as sticky as tanks and the current mob ai being what it is has mobs peeling themselves off and running for the hills far too often. I actually really enjoy the way brutes play other than that, I certainly prefer them to scrappers for the most part. But every time I have to chase down a runner I'm thinking 'that wouldn't have happened on a tank'. I wish they would tone that down a bit...

Well that was intense. Couple of moral victories for England with the first ball boundary and an aggressive declaration before the end. Oz came at us hard and took wickets whenever it really looked like we were going to get away from them. But it was heartening to see them going defensive so early. Brook was so unlucky, Crawley, Bairstow and particularly Root were class. Scoring at over 5 certainly answers the question whether we would change our game for the ashes. The big question still remains though, are we going to take 20 wickets?