ZekeStenzland

I’ve run the ToT gauntlet on my 20-odd L50s in PI. And from my small sample, it’s been fairly evenly distributed. I got 4 badges once before seeing a single Ancient Vampire. Got 4 badges once before seeing a single Hollow Reaper. I’ve also had it happen where I had 3+ progress on the others when I got my first badge. Much like converter roulette. Sometimes you get what you want on the first try, sometimes on the 30th. Random is random.

Some follow up thoughts if you choose to solo a mastermind. While all the primary and secondary sets are just fine, they may not play well together. In particular, whether the pets prefer melee or range can matter a lot on how useful your support powers are. (On a team, it doesn’t matter so much because you’ll almost always have a mix of ranged and melee teammates in addition to your pets) For one thing, if you have pbaoe buffs, you’ll want to be near the pets — ie, in melee range for the melee pets. Similarly, if you have enemy debuffs that are centered on pets (like the sonic -damres debuff), it is not as useful on ranged pets. Another thing is using knockback/repel (force field has several of these) is really useful for keeping range pets safe. But not as useful with melee pets. Finally, consider picking a set with a self heal of some sort. You will get aggro at some point, green inspirations don’t always cut it. My experiences would suggest nature and thermal are good for any pet set, force field is good with ranged pets, sonic with melee pets. Can’t speak for the other support sets.

Due to the nature of the question, I’m just assuming you’re not a long-time expert, and are just going to pick most of the powers in your primary and secondary, travel powers, and some flavor powers, and slot them to taste with SOs… The melee ATs will definitely be the easiest: Tanker, Scrapper, Brute, Stalker. Sentinel is also pretty safe to play. Almost every combination of power sets works. Blaster can be easy to solo, just expect to be defeated more often. I’d recommend a primary that does knockback (energy or assault rifle) and hover for extra survivability. Mastermind is also easy to solo, but managing pets takes some learning. I recommend checking out the MM Binds guide. But once you feel comfortable with pets, you can almost /afk a fight. If you want something controlly, the only set I recommend is Plant. The aoe confuse you get at level 8 really amps up your safety and damage output. I found that it ironically performs better with larger team size settings than against smaller ones. If you are soloing gold side (praetorian) I’d suggest only the ATs with offensive primaries. So, brute, scrapper, blaster, sentinel, stalker, mastermind. The mobs there tend to use more exotic damage types, more debuffs, and have higher status protection than on red or blue side, so being more defensive doesn’t buy you as much. Overwhelming offense, IMO, is more successful there. Especially at lower levels.

You guys aren’t doing enough to keep Yomo from drowning in his own inf! Things have gotten to such a desperate state that he was forced to make a recent appearance in Mercy Island on Indomitable and shovel inf on unsuspecting peeps. The entire server pop showed up, and after he twisted our arms and told us “here kids, have some lunch money”, he twirled his Mr Moneybags mustache and disappeared in a custom dollar bill swirl aura. The 3 of us hapless victims of his generosity just stared after him, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, and then raced off to the vendor to gorge on some tasty TOs. So, do not give up hope! A sudden, drastic increase in your tax bracket can still be yours if you act now!

I joined on day 3, because I was too cool to preorder like my friends. As I recall, my first enhancement drop in the game, I was so excited. I couldn’t slot it, but that meant I could probably sell it in /broadcast for big bucks! It was a level 2 Intangibility TO.

My recommendation is, if you have a particular play style in mind for your activity, announce it when recruiting your team. Announce it again once the full team is there before you start that activity. Once the activity has started, if people violate your restrictions, gently remind them zero or more times “as seems appropriate”. And if that fails, boot them. Your team, your rules, no apologies necessary. Fortunately, this isn’t a Holy Trinity game, and no one teammate is indispensable. 😉 I’ll note that you seem surprised that other people might assume speedy style, when it’s not specified as nonspeedy/killAll/killMost. Maybe instead of just assuming your preferred play style is the default, you’d get better results if you specified what you wanted up front? That being said, you seem inclined to let your biases try to justify your claims that other play styles create a toxic environment. By your own admission, most of the time, teammates gracefully respect your style requests when you ask/remind them. A more plausible case can be made for you inviting an inconsiderate player to your team and happening to stumble across one of his triggers. I.E., rude players gonna rude.

I also found it interesting that it was only the final bosses of those TFs that ran around. Other bosses, like Bertha, the Clockwork Lords, or Bulwark just fought as normal. Weird.

I didn’t take Entangling Arrow until very late in my build, so I didn’t have it available for these TFs. But I did have the blind, glue, ice, and -heal arrows. And later the disruptor arrow. Would be interesting to try the same TFs with my merc/thermal and beast/thermal mms to see how they compare…

I’ve got a L50 Beast/TA MM, and I’m soloing the lower level TFs for the badges. It’s Indomitable, so probably faster to solo the TF than to recruit a team for it. Anyway, I noticed some odd behavior I haven’t seen before. When fight the final boss, the instant I aggro him/her they just start running around almost nonstop. Jumping on storage containers. Jumping off bridges. Running from point A to point B. Dr Vahz, Clockwork King, Hopkins, Countess Crey were all like this. Normal bosses don’t do this when I solo. It’s really annoying and makes the fight take 2-3 times longer. I’m not soft-capped to anything. Anyone know what the deal is? The only one who didn’t was Vandal. I suspect it was because the room he was in wasn’t that big or tall (the council cave room with a wall across the entrance with a narrow gap in the middle).

The issue is that controllers have powers that typically control and damage. And unless you reeeeally need that 6th set bonus, the control sets themselves typically have much better damage procs to choose from (hold, immob, slow, fear, kb), that can proc multiple times in an aoe. Well, the sleep and confuse sets don’t. But slotting the orb will break sleep if it procs, and will otherwise agro in a (typically) non-aggroing power. And you can’t slot them n the pet powers. All in all, they seem worse in almost every aspect than a purple set. IMO.

I probably would have voted for controllers getting the worst ATO. Who doesn’t want to slot their damage dealing powers with a set that doesn’t enhance damage? Or the orb pet proc… Just like a %dam proc, except can’t proc more than once in an aoe. /smh

Also, CoH always saves your build as build.txt, overwriting any previous build file. I recommend renaming the build file so you don’t accidentally lose it, or have a permanent record.

Yes. Log into your character in CoH Type /buildsave in the chat window. It will save a build.txt file in the builds folder where CoH is installed. In Mids, File >> Import Build. Navigate to your builds folder. Be sure to pick all files (“*.*”) to see .txt files. Open your build.txt file. Profit! This works in the latest version of Mids. Never tried it on earlier versions. And providing the steps by memory, so it may not be strictly correct. But it is possible.

Surprised no one else mentioned it, but if you have nowhere else to put it, the Preventive Medicine Absorb proc in Health can be useful for those with low hp values.

Standing outside Icon in Independence Port, I saw I had (in a previous session) finished Ubelmann the Unknown arc from Laurie Pennington. However, my name is "Shadow Shaman", not "(HeroName)".

Whether you slot HOs or not is much like whether you slot damage procs or not. There’s not a unilateral right answer, it depends on what your goals are and depends highly on what the power is, what set bonuses you might be missing out on, and what you are getting in return. Particularly for powers that only have one slot, you’re not giving up a set bonus so HOs might be a much better option than a regular IO, especially if one doesn’t exist for the combo you want, or only exists in a set that’s not slottable in that power. For instance, the movement HO will buff run and fly, so you can put it in Swift, which doesn’t accept the Universal Travel sets. I think. I also like Acc/Mez and Dam/Mez HOs for powers that have multiple control abilities. This also covers pets that have multiple control abilities that dish out damage. An example might be the Symphonic Control pet.

Moving away from a Super Stunner helps with the huge end drain when they self rez. They also have a Static Field power, a ranged location aoe that continuously drains end. This can be very hard to spot in busy areas, like the reactor room in Yin.

Only happening when you’re -2 to mission holder actually sounds plausible. Im often a level or two behind the usual team lead, and almost everyone else is higher than us. It would also explain why I see it a lot and nobody else does.

And yet... I was frequently running on a team with 5-7 other MMs. It was only happening to me. But it doesn't *always* happen. Yesterday, I was running my L48Beast/TA MM through an AE fire farm mission with the L50 Brute on my alt account. His pets all auto-dismissed when he leveled to 49. Today I rolled up a new L1 MM (Demon/Pain) for testing purposes, teamed up with the same Brute and ran the same mission. Naturally the MM dinged L2 while taking out the first spawn. But the pet did not auto-dismiss. I don't get it.

I don't run MMs often, but I've run 2 back to back (Merc/Thermal and Beast/TA) and I saw this happen several times. As far as I can tell, it happens when I'm in a group, and I'm in the mission, and I'm not the mission holder, and I'm lower level than the mission holder. Then, when I level, I get the level up toast, all the large inspirations are cast on me, and the pets are all immediately dismissed. So far it hasn't gotten me killed since I have teammates to pick up my slack. But it's really annoying to waste half the inspiration duration resummoning, retraining, and rebuffing the pets. I've never noticed it happening when solo, when it's my mission, or when I'm higher level than the mission holder. Of course, it stops happening forever after I hit 50. I know pets auto-dismiss when my effective level drops, and I'm used to it happening when the mission holder changes; starting TFs/SFs, trials, flashback missions, and AE missions; and entering pvp world zones. Teammates have suggested it's related to the "auto accept level changes" option, but I've had it set to auto accept up/down 50 levels for ages.

I’ve often heard motorcycles referred to as ‘crotch rockets,’ but this seems to take it a bit too literally…

I’ve specifically been detained by the Ascendant in Yin TFs before. It’s a lot rarer than when they bubble themselves, but it happens. And Super Stunners can easily drain your endurance dry in a couple different ways. Thing is, the Yin missions are either all Council or all Freakshow. There are no missions that have both. And neither group has confuse powers. So I don’t see how it’s possible to have a Super Stunner drain your endurance at the same time an Ascendant detains you, while on a Yin TF. Is it possible you ran out of endurance because you left on some toggles? It’s happened more than once that I detoggled myself because I left Sprint, Athletic Run, and Super Jump running during combat…

I know there’s at least one mob that can phase you out. Might be the Council Ascendant, might be one of the Crey Tanks that bubbles. Too hard to research from my phone. I don’t recall Council having mobs that drain end, but some of the Paragon Protectors have radiation support which give -recovery that might have the same results.

Good to know. I don’t have slots to burn. But I feel better now about going from 3 to 2 slots now and putting that slot somewhere more useful.

Yeah, I'm used to them going away when my level drops -- team lead changes, entering an uninstanced pvp zone, starting a tf. I don't know why it happens when I level when teamed. Someone on the team said my auto accept level changes options might be 0, but they're always at 50. I'm often the lowest level on the team. Not sure why that would make a difference. I don't remember it happening when I was running the Mercs MM through a fire farm when it was just me and my L50 brute from my alt account. The PGA thing was just hard to test. My typical use case would be firing it at an unaggrod group: they'd choke, then almost instantly chase after me and never choke again. Guess I'll need to put 2+ sleep enhancers on it before I can use it just as a sleep. And I'm not ignoring the -dam debuff, that's useful on it's own. I was just disappointed that the sleep part seemed more of a trap than a useful effect. My napkin math says I'll need ~66% for a +0 minion, ~86% for a +1 minion, and ~335% for a +4 minion. Is it even worth slotting for sleep? Also, do you think the Call of the Sandman %heal proc is better than the Fortunata Hypnosis %placate effect?