High_Beam

The worst thing you can do? Step on a caltrop in bare feet. Have scissors in your hands near a Ruin Mage. Wear suede booties on a sewer mission. Eat Hellfire Tacos and expect stealth to remain effective. Take fashion advice from Clamor. Oh the worst is people who feel the need to make their political or social commentary statements in chat. Don't care who you vote for or who you wouldn't vote for. Don't care about your race, religion, gender (or lack thereof). I play the game to have fun. Want to tell bad jokes, cool. Bad musical puns, awesome. References to pop culture, excello. Rant about Political X or Religious Y or Gender Z --> Ignore. There are places for that you can go to to express yourself but its not in a fantasy game land of people who shoot lasers from their eyes.

I wasn't a fan either. Not a good franchise.

I love mine and only this weekend did I slot any Set IOs or actually take the time to do the Incarnate creation, that's how much fun I have had with Di Di Guns. Yes I have died a few times but I am a Blaster who is blapping, but to be honest, it hasn't happened a lot. A poster asked about attack chain and here is mine: Burst of Speed, Scorpions Tail, jump back Empty Clips, Bullet Rain, Repeat. If the Alpha is up then Burst of Speed, Hail of Bullets, Scorpion's Tail, jump back Empty Clips (and sometimes another Bullet Rain) the survivors then go from there. Melts most mobs then I engage the Boss with Dual Wield, Executioners shot and Eagle's Claw. And that was before I build up my Defense through Set IO. Its just a blast to play, pun intended. Remember there is a +DEF from firing off Hail so the quickness of BoS-->Hail prevents alot of the return fire from connecting then Scorpion's Tail puts them on their hinders while you flip back out and hit em with the cone. Its glorious. It makes me tingly!

This is where I sit. Are they a pain in the buttocks, sure. But the fact is I have a CoH server to play on that has a pretty decent number of players on to where I find more teams than I did on live (Freedom). Now the spamming of farming requests and such are annoying but a few mapserver incidents I can deal with because the HC people aren't doing this as their full time job. Now am I saying I am not moving a few of my more seasoned alts to another server so I can play when Excelsior goes Tango Uniform again, I am not. Most of the mapserver incidents were short, much shorter than the guy who decides to go AFK in mission just before completion or takes a billion years to zone for a TF start.

Cherry Pie is the only pie, all others are pie pretenders, especially any pie that includes a vegetable or nut in it. That's right pumpkin and pecan, you are sad pies, mournful pies really. Also it is the name of the greatest stripper anthem ever so its like getting extra cherry pie with your cherry pie. Imagine the sad panda version, "she's my pumpkin pie, nasty tasting veggie gonna make you die, tastes so bad make a grown man cry, ick pumpkin pie." Jani Lane (RIP) would be weeping.

Still southbound.

Wentworth's is now claiming global supply chain issues due to COVID. This is sounding more and more like a Nemesis plot.

I have one . . . for now.

Right now Wentworth's looks like a Walmart just before the Hurricane arrives in Florida.

Thank you for this. Much of it was news to me. I tend to build my characters in three phases. Level until 30 where I shift to IO, then level to 50 picking up Set IO's that will stay (most if not all show up in your guide) and finally the level 50 now it gets real build. This is why Builds I see in the various threads are at best "someday" builds and I wish more people would post leveling builds. But this guide helps enormously because of your points at levels before 30. I have some real thinking to do.

Right in front of my face. Thank you.

Forgive my ignorance here but where do you select "attuned" in the buy process, or how does that even happen. The Homecoming Wiki says But doesn't get into the how part.

I have seen and read a lot of things in my life. 20 years in the Navy pretty much dulled any WTF moments I could possibly have, but this post, it's mind bogglingly stunning because I cannot figure out what the hell is going on. There are like fifty different thought threads dangling and none of them, none of them correlate! Its the Lament Configuration Puzzle of CoH.

What I am going to say is only a commentary on my enjoyment of playing an EM Tank; I never played one before and don't have the history or PTSD associated with live nerfs. I have fun playing her. She's slow and thematically that's her deal. She's a slow tank, not the fasted girl and not the sharpest knife in the drawer. But when she drops the pom poms on you, you are cooked. I have fun playing her as she is. Now would I complain of things like animation times were adjusted or say some sort of increase in disorient duration from whirling hands (or at least a name change) was put in place where the masses would stagger around while I slowly ST finished the rest . . . nope, I would smile and continue slow crunching of bones.

My two cents is based less on the kinds of fata points mentioned above but rather change in play-style. I have run up a Psi/Psi Blaster, a MC/Pain troller, Emp/Psi Defender so I naturally initially went Fortunate. But I then said, "Self, how about you try something different." So I respec'd her into a WIdow and have found it to be fun-ish. I am not a melee kind of person but there are moments when she is enjoyable. The point is, I was tired of ranged psionic characters so chose Widow. Make the fun from what you find fun.

I was a Freedom player exclusively on live and while there were plenty of ass hats to go around there, I rarely ran into a problem with the PUGs I ran with, really only when the OG Positron Task Force was the only Positron Task Force did I see players at their worst. Rollister would do that to you. I will also agree with Yomo Kimyata that there seems to be less ass hattery on HC and I do play on Excelsior. Societal norms are dependent on the society establishing, and enforcing the norms. If dickery is allowed because nobody has the stones to say "hey dude, stop being a jerk" then dickery becomes the accepted norm. The mindset of avoiding conflict is the reason we cant have nice things. As the immortal Patrick Swayze once said, "be nice until its time to not be nice".

I have one at level 38 and my only comment is that its a metric butt ton of button pushing.

Placate --> These are not the droids you are looking for. But don't take Presence Pool because that is the path to the dark side 🙂

I hate, absolutely hate the freaking Vahzilok! And that hate is for the same reason everyone else hates them. I love to hear carnies scream and hate Malta Sappers. I love punching Nazi's and related Fascists in their faces. But for me the ones I hate the most are the ones that I love the most because I respect them and their game. The Clockwork (Primal not Praetorian). It is so enjoyable smashing those little scavenging creeps, especially when they make that wind down and clank crash noise when dead. And because they are so prolific in King's Row and more notably in all of Positron and Synapses Task Forces, you are fighting them non stop. I especially am fond of this one mission where those clattering creeps actually say "I hate <character name>". You really feel that for a second you have truly put a dent in their world and you are like their life nemesis. But the kings of jerks I hate so much but love so much because of the satisfaction of beating them is the Circle of Thorns. You say Rollister and people cringe. Some have PTSD flashbacks of the original Positron Task force. Ruin Mages are so horrible early on because even tanks don't have their status effect shields yet so everyone is getting knocked on their buttocks. You see Ruin Mage and you forget strategy and attack him. Its Pavlovian. Madness Mages. Nuff said. An old friend in the Babes of War named Doctor Finetush once told me the three most scary powers in game are psionics, negative energy and Circle of Thorns. You fight them from low level, then in all of the Positron TFs, and Twilight's Son, and Sara Moore and Justin Augustine, and Ice Mistral. They have missions into the fifties and are a group with a deep and varied power set including some real painful types. The Envoy of Shadows is no joke. I hate them and their Oranbegan tunnels but when you beat them down you really feel like you have done good, that you are good.

This is an important thing to take into consideration. But what if you could prevent it from becoming that empty blue side hazard zone. Content generates short-term interest, like it or not. Story Arcs, Missions and badges all generate temporary interest. What generates long-term interest is reward or function. Atlas is crowded because it is where all newbies start now and has always functioned as the social hub of the game. That said if you go on several of the other HC servers you will find Atlas a relative ghost town as well. The same goes for other non-HC servers (but that a separate thing). There are a lot of people on Ouroboros because Incarnate stuff forms there. PI has crowds over by portal Corp because of end game mission running. But if you break the "phases" of the game up you have beginners who are running DFB and low level content in and from AP, then from there its straggler work in Hollows or Faultline and TF missions rolling out of SC and Skyway but its in and out. Similarly from the 20 to 30 range its running around doing TFs in Talos or IP. Then its FF and Bricks until finally Peregrine. Now what if you did as many have said and brought back GC as a cooperative hazard-like zone, in the late twenties to mid to late thirties range where there was something that allowed for a continual maintenance of interest. At level 25/26 is when IO enhancements at that level meet and start to exceed the benefits from SO's maybe its the perfect place to create some sort of improved drop rate window for IO recipes and salvage (like finding components in the wreckage) to help characters jump start changing out DOs and SOs with IOs as well as stimulate crafting. Or maybe create scenarios for greater drop chances for Set IOs at that level range. You couple that with a a Mid level trial akin to DFB that lets you work in components of the Shivans to establish soft content faster leveling rather than just farming to grind up. Maybe a better iteration of the buff enhancement rewards of the DFB. I mean after all, a lot of people simply run a DFB 4 times so they have the buffs before doing harder content. This is just spitballing here. My fondness for GC is ground in what it was on live before it was destroyed, I always started in GC not AP. But it would make for viable and cogent content to come back as a danger zone thats not as stupid as Boomtown (big, flat and boring except for Goliaths) but not as annoying (from a travel standpoint) as Faultline.

It is running on two other servers structures (like Unity and Thunderspy I think), though one I think is broke because the Tier 9 Pet is actually obtainable at level 1. Its interesting to play but I didn't do it long enough to really get into building up pressure. Animations were fairly cool and in many cases appearend to be similar to say Lift or Tornado or Gust. The Pet was a orb like thing similar to singularity if I remember right. It had a lot of Knockup and down in it. I mean thematically it would be seksi with Storm Summoning.

This. PvP in specific zones was was more than enough for me and the player base as a whole when you look at the numbers (or lack thereof). PvPers can do their thing, I am not saying its evil or anything. How has incentivizing things worked out so far when the incentive is either a one-time thing (like a badge) or a powerful temp power (like a Warburg rocket). Incarnate powers made the powerful warburg rockets relative junk in comparison. Back on live we used to run SG events in Sirens to collect the badges or in Warburg to collect the rockets and would sometimes even shout out in Broadcast that we were there so the PvPers could attack and what happened was one or two would show, see a group of 8 and decide not to engage becuase most were built as or played as gankers. Again, they can do what they want and if I roll into a PvP zone for badges and get killed, fair play, I tip my hat to you because I knew the risks going in. This is why the concept of temp spawn PvP wont work. Eve Online has Security levels that in effect break it up into three different PvP zones. One is the "safe" zone (Hi-Sec) where there is almost no PvP. Gankers do exist but are immediately themselves killed by the security aparatuses in the region. Low-Sec is PvP zone but people are often more cautious and you can operate with some degree of ease, but don't fly what you cant afford to lose is the motto over there. Finally there is Nul-Sec which is the freaking wild west, you can get shot for snoring over there. But ultimately it was about accepting risks. I don't care for PvP and even though Eve is a PvP-centric game, I could generally experience the bulk of the content and therefore enjoy the game with little worry about getting blown up. BUt I wasnt complaining about it becuase that was the deal. In CoH PvP was bolted on after-the fact. Does it belong in the game? Sure. No online game shouldn't have the option to at least try it but the venue is important. Personally I despised the arenas becuase they enforced a concept of heroes dueling to bragging rights and that just isn't how heroes work, it broke concept. Now specific heroes fighting specific villains in duels (aka mano y mano) is very comic book and thematic which is why the PvP zones were more palatable to me. But with Going Rogue and the extreme ease by which characters can flip-flop between alignments (and I am not even talking about Null the Gull) it rendered the hero-versus villain duel irrelevant. It erased the line and therefore an incentive to go to the PvP zones. Ask yourself why Drowning in Blood is an instanced version of Bloody Bay and not the real thing? Because if someone said "Forming DiB team LF5M" this would be followed by "DiB Kill Team LF7M"

A little follow up. At 35, have the Alphas now and still remains fun. Now understand that I am just running SOs (other than an LotG in CJ) but have not face planted (except that one time I got a heel caught in a Council base floor grate). No real defense or Resist mitigation yet except Tough with two slots and CJ. Now I am not saying I saw through red and purple enemies but on a team I am still melting the enemy, flashing in, spinning and flashing out. It's a really fun set.

Big shout out of thanks to StrikerFox who met me last night in AP to transfer custody of "The Babes of War" This was on of those personal quest things that had really been bothering me (the other is getting High Beam back as a name). It shouldn't be such a big deal to me as those days are indeed gone but it was. For now I will build the base and then maybe actually try to build the actual supergroup back up vice just being a place for my alts (which there are many)

This. Totally agree. The Shard, the first time I went there seemed so daunting and alien and creepy at the same time. Of course it became tedious and painful but that was the point I suppose. Praetoria was nice the first time because of the clean nature but it sucks. But yeah, coming back, zoning into Atlas for the first time after the shutdown was the best, my heart was literally racing (maybe that was the coffee and amphetamines but whatever).