ZekeStenzland

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?

I rolled up a new Beast/TA MM recently, and am leveling him up mostly with a all-MM group. This is my first time playing TA ever. Sometimes, when I level, all my pets die. I haven't narrowed it down, but seems to happen when I'm grouped, and my level is less than the mission holder's level. I haven't noticed it when soloing. I recall seeing this happen on Mercs a few times as well. Anyone else seen this before? Is this a known issue? Is there a workaround? So far it hasn't gotten me killed yet, but it's only a matter of time... Poison Gas Arrow. The power info says there's a 60 second -15% damage debuff and a 20 second sleep. I've never seen the sleep last longer than about a second, and I've never seen the mobs resleep after waking up. City of Data says it creates a 20 second pseudopet which casts a 1.5 second sleep. But I'm unsure how to interpret this as other similarly constructed powers (glue arrow, disruption arrow) have long lasting pseudopets that recast one-second debuffs continuously. Am I missing something? Am I using it wrong? Also, if it's really only a one-time 1.5 second base sleep, is there anything worth slotting here besides range, recharge and endred? chance to heal, maybe?

I don’t know about “hanging out” per se, but I’ve found (and been told) that if you need real time support, it’s best to go to discord rather than the forums. This would be for things like where the sorceress gets stuck on walls on the Katie Hannon tf, or defeat all missions where one or more mob has fallen outside the geometry, etc.

Wow, didn’t expect this to blow up so much. I guess if you have billions of Inf just laying around, like Yomo and Etched, there’s less value in stripping a character. That ain’t everyone though. And it certainly ain’t me. I’m not going to judge people on why they want to do this. Maybe they want to wave their Inf total in front of others. You do you. I’m doing it because I’ve invested tens of millions of Inf worth of effort that I could really find a better use for on some other character. And I get that ATs and power sets may get reworked in the future. And I have quite a few alts laying around in case Im ever in the mood again. But in this particular case, it’s an alt Im not super invested in, despite getting him up to 47. If I change my mind later, I can always recreate him and level him up again. For me at least, leveling up characters is most of the fun anyway! Also, for what it’s worth, I may try to capture these suggestions into a guide and post it.

For those who didn't know it (or forgot like me), on the Merit Vendor, under Conversion, is where you find the Vanguard Merit <-> Reward Merit Reward Merit <-> Hero Merit (account bound) Empyrean Merit <-> Transcendent Merit (account bound, I assume) conversions. Mailing the 8 hero merits to myself was a bit tedious, but I survived. Now just need to wait for my 15 or so enhancements to sell. FWIW, it's not that the sets need work, I just didn't feel good playing him. Mercs have almost entirely long range attacks, and Sonic buffs and debuffs are mostly pbaoes or ally-targettted aoes. It seemed like a poor fit. YMMV. Thanks again for the tips!

So, I've decided to delete a character. A 47 Merc/Sonic MM, two decent sets that don't have a lot of synergy. And he doesn't even have a bio yet. I want to recover as much stuff from it as I can. He's only 47, so I don't have to worry about Incarnate stuff. Inf - I can just email it to my global. Inspirations - vendor -> Inf. Invention Salvage common, uncommon - vendor -> Inf. rare - auction -> Inf or base salvage storage. "Good IOs" (pvp, ato, wintero, hamio, attuned, purples, procs) - unslot -> base enhancement storage. "Replaceable IOs" - auction -> Inf. Prismatic Aethers - base salvage storage. I've got 313 Vanguard Merits. Doesn't look like there's anything useful I can do with them to benefit my other characters. Correct? I've got 450 Reward Merits. In general, what's the thing to do with them? I don't want to find storage space for 1350 converters. Catalysts, maybe? PvP or purple recipes? Not sure what the general consensus is. Also, out of curiosity, what to generally do with Incarnate stuff? Anything you would do differently? I have yet to do anything with the merits or replaceable IOs, so there's still time to chime in before I make a horrible, irrevocable mistake costing me tens of millions of influence! In hindsight, would have been smarter to save the unslotters and burn a free respec to pull out all my slotted enhancements, but oh well.

I don’t think there’s a badge for Rogue Arachnos. Maybe “Gone Rogue”?

I saw something on YouTube as the secret server story was breaking. Couldn’t believe my eyes. Had to wait until I was able to make an account, log in, make a character, and see others in the Atlas Park before I could tell my friends that it was back. Would have been too heartbreaking otherwise.

It was a L2 character, fresh out of the gold tutorial. And I had the costumes saved. So it wasn’t that big a deal. I seem to recall I had a L25+ character on live whose description got mangled, and I did have to get a GM involved to fix it. Does anyone else even remember a guide to formatting a bio?

Yes, I know the character description editor is super buggy. Been that way since day 1. But I felt the need to push it today. I have this vague recollection that it's possible to have formatting in the description, doing font changes, size changes, and color changes. I accidentally did it this evening, but wasn't sure what I did. And corrupted the description bad enough with formatting changes I didn't want (I got larger text), that it was easier to delete the character and start a new description from scratch than it was to fix the description in the original character. Sigh... But my search fu is weak. Is there a guide somewhere on how to do this?

One other thing to mention. Speed runners optimize for speed first. It sounds like — and no judgment here — you optimize for other things (*cough* RP *cough*). If you want to up your speedrunning game, maybe talk to them on what they’re doing that you aren’t. Storing insps in email rather than AH? SS instead of Mystic Flight? More skilled at map navigation? I couldn’t say. I’ve only completed ASF 1*. And I’m not a speedrunner.

You can team, but (as I recall) you have to be teamed when you start the flashback. You can’t have people join once you’ve started.