ZekeStenzland

I'm pretty good about writing bios, so these are the bios for my last 3 characters. Dragon Blade - Blue - Technology Fire/Ninja Blaster Mike the Pike - Blue - Natural Staff/Ninjitsu Stalker Berserkr - Red - Natural Ice/Titan Tanker

Regardless, SGs are server-specific. So he will get booted from the SG. If he also happens to be the SG lead, then the next SG member who logs in becomes the new SG leader. If there are no other SG members, the SG is forever dead. If you are the SG leader, you may promote someone else to be SG leader before you go. I highly recommend that.

So, I've participated in a number of speed runs (trials, task forces, strike forces, events, mission arcs, but not iTrials), so take this as a general commentary, not a mathematical law. A speed run is primarily done to get the completion reward as fast as possible. Folks are looking for the merit rewards, d-sync enhancements, whatever. Other incidental rewards are nice but not worth spending time on. That's it. The folks hosting the speed run have typically already recruited the minimal set of people/powers necessary to speed. They open the team for pug slots because they're hoping for warm bodies that can make things go even faster. For missions with limited objectives (kill boss, click glowy, free the hostage) one or more people will stealth through the map as fast as possible to find the objective. If they can solo it, they will. Otherwise they will teleport the team to take care of it. Kill only what's necessary for a speedy mission completion. As soon as the Exit button pops, everyone clicks Exit and moves on to the next mission. But I was in combat -- Nope. Exit. Move on. But the badge -- Nope. Exit. Move on. But the ambush -- Nope. Exit. Move on. But I need to avenge!!! -- Nope. Exit. Move on. That's the core of it. For kill all missions, or for missions with several widely scattered objectives (free 7 hostages, for example) it's common for the team to split up. Those who can solo a whole spawn typically head off alone. Those who can't.... either stick together or tag along with someone more durable. You will be expected to figure out how you can best contribute to mission completion speed. Door sitting doesn't help, but neither does getting dead. You know your character best, you figure out how best to contribute. It's also common, while sneaky dudes are off finding the objective, for those not sneaky to just kill mobs while waiting. It's free xp/inf/drops since you otherwise wouldn't be doing anything else. Just be aware that you will at some point be teleported away, possibly while in combat. Or possibly be the *last* person teleported away while you're in combat. Plan accordingly. For various reasons, I don't recommend speed runs for new players. It's not a great experience if you don't have any idea what's going out. No one wants to slow down the run to explain to you what's going on, or why. You'll miss out on all the lore. Etc. What you can do to be a more popular speed run teammate.... Get all the travel powers that you can, so that travel time between missions is as little as possible. And same for travel within large outdoor missions. P2W vendor has Team Teleport, Assemble the Team, Mission Transporter, flight packs. Monitor Duty day job power. Have Long Range Teleport and Oro Portal unlocked. Have access to a SG base with portals. If you can afford the power pick, Teleport Friend is really helpful. Be sure to announce before you use the powers on others. Some have 30 minute cooldowns. Be a waste if two people both used Assemble the Team at the same time in mission 1 and then no one had it available in mission 2.... Stealth is useful. The Celerity Stealth proc is okay if you're feeling frisky, but is one of the least effective stealth powers in the game. But if you do have stealth and are comfortable with it, you can help the leaders search the map for objectives. You can solo it or summon teammates to complete it. Or just announcing to the team that you've found it can save time because now everyone knows where it is. Or just be one of the people who *doesn't* have to be teleported to the final boss room. If you level during the run, hold off training if you can. No one wants to wait for you while you pick your powers, look up your build to see where to put enhancements, check the AH or vendors for the enhancements you want, sell your excess salvage and enhancements, touch up your costume, etc. If you ding 50, then sure, train up so you'll start getting threads and incarnate xp. The usual good teammate stuff: Follow directions from the team lead. Don't talk sex, politics, drugs or religion in team chat. Don't be a jerk. Don't be watching YouTube instead of contributing. Don't try hijacking the session into a kill all or kill most run. That's my take on speed running. It's not typically my preferred cup of tea, but sometimes it's either all that's going on or it's all I have time for. YMMV.

Not sure if there was a comic book, but it wouldn’t be unreasonable to claim Buckaroo Banzai as a mastermind: a smart, capable guy who surrounds himself with other capable guys.

It’s hard to overstate how much converters have improved the ability of all players to enhance their characters affordably and effectively. I would not look forward to going back to high value enhancements being traded off-ah to avoid the 2B inf limits. The only improvement I would like to see wrt converters is being able to use them on HamiOs, DSyncs, etc.

My last posi1 we had 33 deaths. But the only real red flag was team composition. I think we had 3 blasters, 2 sentinels, 2 stalkers, and a warshade. All damage, no buffs, no debuffs, no control. It was pretty ugly when we got 2 ruin mages putting up force fields stacking with a ghost lieutenant’s darkest night. Only took us two tries to get through the shadow clones. Everyone was a good sport about it. We cleared city hall steps nicely. Folks followed plans well. We ate a ton of inspirations. But still tough to avoid being 2-shotted by a red eidolon. Or the warshade being 1-shotted by quantums.

IMO, the big winner for this is the Masterminds, who are otherwise shafted in ATO bonuses. The 2-piece bonus is a big global recharge bonus. Getting 3 copies of that is worth losing out on the other 4 set bonuses.

But you can’t do this if teamed. Hence why people will reject the first team invite, do the “lfg port”, and then ask for a reinvite once they’re in cimerora. Also, there’s no cooldown for it. So when solo (and not on a tf), you can just blip around the zones that way.

It’s worse than that. Echo: Atlas Park has the badge at the exit. Recluse’s Victory has the badge at the entrance.

That’s why you should play red side. The ferry entrance and exit is the same!

It used to be that the 4 PvP zones had minimum level requirements to enter. That requirement has been removed. Other requirements are still place. Praetorians, for example, still cannot enter PvP zones. What that means for you… Can trivially get Oro portal at L1 by just entering Recluse’s Victory from Atlas Park city hall. Or from Grandville, I don’t judge. Can now get Predator day job badge at level 1 Can now get the exploration badges and history plaques from PvP zones at level 1 Can theoretically get Shivan Shards and Warburg Nukes at level 1. Whether you’re beefy enough to do so is another matter. I haven’t tested this. The PvP contacts did not seem to have missions for me at level 1, so getting the PvP mission badges may have to wait until you hit the usual minimum level. Or maybe if you’re teamed with someone of an appropriate level. I’m not sure when this went live, but I’d guess probably when they added the PvP “temporal warrior” feature. It’s possible everyone already knew this and I was napping under a rock when this changed. If so, carry on. Nothing to see here…

But does The New Snarky (tm) sparkle in the sunlight? Inquiring minds need to know whether we should be swooning in terror or delight!

As I understand it, the devs did a fix for regen to make it better. It’s called Will Power. You might find it more to your liking. Also, regen on sentinels is mechanically a bit different than on melees. You might find that works better for you if you’re okay with a ranged AT. Mild disagreement on skipping blaster melee powers until later. While range is a good defense, there will be times when range is not possible: most cave missions and many office and warehouse maps won’t easily permit it. Your melee attacks tend to be better than your ranged attacks, so having one good hard hitter when stuck in melee range is helpful. Also, don’t skimp on slotting your T1 and T2 attacks. While they’re not generally as good as your other attacks you can still use them just fine while held/stunned/asleep. It’s not unusual for me to finish a fight and still have to wait for a hold or sleep to wear off.

Clearly your finances live up to your forum handle 😛 I usually do 5 at a time. 50M I can probably raise in a week. Also, the ATOs are random. And you can change them to another random AT for 3 converters per try. But there are 15 ATs. If you’re looking for ATOs for 1 specific AT, don’t be surprised if you have to convert 10-40 times before you get the one you want. For this scenario, I recommend converting to one of the better selling ATO (like stalker or something), selling that on the AH, and using the proceeds to buy AT of your choice. You’ll save a ton of converters that way. The WinterO pool only has 6(?) in it, so you’re probably good just doing regular conversions to get the type you want. Im sure actual market folks will jump in here if I’m giving bad advice…

In the auction house under the special tab. You’re looking for hero and rogue packs for ATOs and winter packs for WinterOs.

In the auction house, under Special, they sell hero and rogue packs for 10Million each. They show up under your special salvage tab. You click on them to open them. They have 5 random “cards” in them. Each card is some kind of random reward — converters, merit rewards, ATOs, team inspirations, etc. The packs contain on average 1.2 ATOs each. There’s also winter packs for 25Million each. Similar thing as the hero and rogue packs, but instead of ATOs, they have the WinterOs. I consider these a cheaper way to go than spending 100merits each for an ATO or WinterO. YMMV.

While I accept that you did not have fun on your scrappers and blasters, the idea that they are “weak” does not match my experiences playing those archetypes. Unfortunately, you didn’t really give us much to go on for what the real issue is. What sets were you using? What level were you at? How were your powers slotted? Was there a specific mission and/or boss that gave you noticeable trouble? What strategies worked or didn’t work for the fights? Without this kind of information, it’s difficult to give advice that’s useful to you. So, in game, if you type /buildsave, it will save a text file of your character called build.txt. You could post that file here or in one of the AT-specific forums to get more relevant advice.

So, as I understand it, this typically happens because the devs have changed the underlying costume data in a way that wasn't backwards compatible -- like maybe renaming a costume texture, or changing a piece's type (like it was Boot >> Sneakers, now it's a type of Boot >> Flat >> Sneakers). It doesn't happen often, but it does happen rarely every once in a while. Possible Workaround #1 If you have an old version (ie, has invalid parts) of the costume file laying around, you could pick a costume slot, visit the tailor screen for it, and save the costume file back out under a new name. The costume files are just plain text. So you could open them both up in, say, Notepad and compare them. Things that didn't change are probably okay. Things that did change might give you a clue to what was wrong and how to fix it. Did the old file have "EarFemaleElf" and the new one have "EarFemaleDefault"? Then yeah, probably good enough to pick Elf ears again. Or figure out whether it's really Ears >> Elf >> Pointy or Ears >> Elf >> Super Pointy that you had. Possible Workaround #2 Take a screen shot of your character in the world with good lighting. Then bring up the costume screen. Swap back and forth between the 2 to figure out what the differences are. Possible Workaround #3 Log into CoH on main account and alt account simultaneouly. Recreate the character on an alt account. Stand the characters side by side. Make a change on the temp char. Log out of tailor and see how it compares to original. Rinse, repeat. That's really all the advice I can think of.

Made a L1 Soldier, boosted to L20 for testing out Striga at level. So, during character creation, and if you are L23 or less, you can choose the bane mace or crab arm animations for some attack powers. If you pick bane mace, it looks like you draw an invisible mace, and then the attack comes from the end of that invisible mace. If you pick crab arm, you kind of hunch over and the attack comes from somewhere in front of you -- probably where a crab arm might end, if you had one. Maybe don't allow people to pick the alternate animations until they've committed to either bane or crab, sometime on or after L24? Maybe just live with the fact the animations are totally goofy? Maybe allow people to select mace and guns in costume screen even at L1 just on the off chance they want the bane mace animations? No easy answers I'm guessing. Also haven't tested yet what happens if you're crab and pick bane mace animations, or are bane and pick crab animations. Note that choosing the bane path you may or may not have crab arms, based on whether any of your other builds are crabs.... The tinted power option seemed to work as expected.

Have finished Straxt and am halfway through Francois so far. Started as L20 Soldier (Villain). Minor grammar nit: In Buried Secrets Part 1 mission text, the tenses seem odd in the sentence starting "The uncouth Warriors...". "... have been digging..." sounds like they were digging in the past and continue to do so, but "... absconded..." sounds like they just absconded at some time in the past and are no longer absconding with anything. I dunno, I suck as an editor. Changed to Rogue, picked up the Ghost Hunter plaque in Talos. Changed back to Villain. Picked up all the other Ghost Hunter plaques in Striga and was properly awarded the Ghost Hunter history badge. Also, picked up all the exploration badges there and was properly awarded the Striga exploration accolade and merits. Nice mix of mission maps and villain groups so far. I especially liked that they weren't all "kill all" missions, and was able to stealth one or two.

A small thing that no one else here has mentioned…. Common Crafted IOs. A fair number of folks make the common crafted ios for the crafting badges. You wind up typically having to craft way more than you need, and put them up for sale on the auction house. And generally price them to sell just to recoup some of the crafting costs as opposed to making a profit. You can often get a great deal on them, sometimes cheaper than what the equivalent TO/DO/SOs sell for. And the beauty of crafted ios is… they never expire, so you can upgrade them whenever — if ever — you feel like it. As opposed to Right Now because they all went red on you.

Yeah, happening on my staff/ninja stalker as well. If you have the weapon drawn when you start the attack, it all works correctly. If you don’t, then after the wind up, you unhide and draw weapon, all the mobs agro and attack, then your damage lands. If it makes a difference, my costume does not sheath the staff.

At +0/x1, on blue/red side you’ll typically encounter about 3 points of mobs — 3 minions or 1 lieut and 1 minion. On gold side, you’ll typically encounter 4-5 points of mobs — 4-5 minions or 1 lieut and 2-3 minions. It makes a difference at the under 20 range.

IP meaning Intellectual Property in this case. The terms of service disallow you from making characters that are copies of copyrighted characters. Or near copies. It would suck big time if the game had to shut down because Marvel sued it out of existence for letting people make Wolverine clones.

Next to the blaster, outside the effect of any of the aoes. I assume this is some kind of pvp exercise where everyone is just competing to see how much they can screw over all the other people on the team. Too bad the caltrops weren’t tossed into the arctic air. The slow and fear (and damage) effects would all stack.