Zhym

If you want cool, then it's a darn shame you've ruled out Martial Combat. Because Martial Combat is absolutely the most giddy, fun, "Whoa, that's cool!" secondary to go with the pistols. Just try it. If, after having punched an enemy into the air and shot them while they're still flying doesn't make you giggle with joy and want to do it again and again, go ahead and rebuild the character as something else. But IMO, the DP/MC combo is absolutely worth choosing MC again, even if you have it on another alt.

Any thoughts on how these builds would do for a Sonic/Kin Corruptor? I know (now) that the Defender version with these power sets is considered much superior. Alas, I only learned this after spending some time leveling my Corrupter to 50, which got more frustrating as she leveled (sooo squishy, partly because I didn’t know what I was doing when I was picking powers). So now I’m trying to figure out if the Sonic/Kin Corruptor can be salvaged with a respec, or if I should rebuild the character theme as a Defender. Apologies if this is a thread hijack or should go in the Corruptors forum, but every thread I’ve seen on the Kin & Sonic combination points here.

This, from another thread, got me thinking: What is the fewest number of badges a character could have at level 50? It's no lower than 5, obviously, since you get those just for leveling. I suppose you can avoid other badges, like those for milestones of doing or taking damage, by exclusively leveling up in AE. But you'd still have to get there while avoiding any exploration badges on the way. Without using AE, though, getting to level 50 with the fewest badges would be a challenge. Avoid exploration badges (no Long Range Teleporter!). Don't do the Task Force Commander task forces. Skip any other mission that awards a badge. Don't kill too many of any enemy faction. Trying to avoid all these incidental (or accidental) badges could be even tougher than getting them all.

Right. I’ve done all the content myself. But OP said they want to do all contacts. As you say, that would involve doing a lot of the story arcs multiple times because of the way heroes were originally set on origin-specific contact paths. And it used to be that you couldn’t even get missions from the initial contacts outside your origin. I don’t know if that’s still true, though. Running some of those Issue 0 arcs multiple times (soooo many kill-alls) just to do them from all the contacts who give them sounds like torture to me, but hey, everyone can play the game however makes them happy. ETA: I just checked with a level 4 hero and all the initial contacts were willing to give me missions, regardless of origin. So it looks like it's possible to do all the contacts now, if that's what you're into.

Is it even possible to do all the hero contacts? There are five level 1-4 hero liaisons in Atlas Park, one per origin, who used to be the initial contacts for new characters. It used to be that you could only get missions from the hero liaison for your origin, but I haven’t checked whether that’s still true. Although maybe the other origins can be done through Ouroborous?

BTW, the key to survivability is not the AT you choose, it’s IO enhancement sets. Outfit your toon with the right IO sets (or almost any IO sets, really) and almost any AT can kick copious amounts of butt.

This is what I'd pick for my first reasonably survivable character. Stalkers now do almost as much damage as a scrapper, with a good stealth ability that doesn't require taking another power pool. The first toon I ran through all the redside content was a Stalker; being able to stealth past most of the mobs makes a lot of the missions quicker. Or, if you choose to defeat all, then it's because you're choosing to, not because you have to (unless the mission requires it, of course). And, really, sneaking up behind an enemy without them even seeing you then taking them down in one hit? Never gets old.

I actually kind of enjoyed running all four arcs. I don't think I did them all in a row, but it was kind of interesting to see how they took basically the same story line and tailored it to each of the four patrons. In particular (spoilers in case any readers haven't done at least one of the arcs): Also, if you don't already have the Mu Guardian gladiator badge, running Scirocco's arc at x8 is a great way to farm them.

Where's that in the lore? All I see, admittedly just from the wiki, is that "Strongmen are recruited for their potential and are dominated by the Ring Mistresses" and are "promoted" after a certain amount of time. But I could easily have skipped over some big revelations in a story arc.

I see lots of love (well, lust) in this thread for the Carnies, but as a guy, I don't see a place for me there. The only men in that group are the strongmen, and I doubt Vanessa lets them play with the women. But even if she does, they look so pumped full of 'roids that I doubt they can, er, "perform" anyway. If I had to join a villain group, I'm guessing it would be Crey or Family. AFAIK, neither would require pumping weird substances into my body, undergoing massive body mutilation, or getting turned into something mindless and/or monstrous. The Luddites are also a strong choice, but they don't even carry cell phones! I just don't see myself going completely low-tech (now I wonder if there's a possible AE story in a Luddite getting busted sneaking out of AE in the wee hours one morning...).

I think this page is up to date on the Halloween event badges: https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Event_Badges There are also the Hell and Back and Meticulous accolade badges that award for getting all the Deadly Apocalypse and Halloween Tip Mission badges, respectively. As for badges that are easier during Halloween, I'm not sure about that—although you're right that ghosts should be easier. Maybe spectral pirates in Port Oakes?

I was in PI for a while yesterday, and oh my yes it was laggy. And most of the time I spent trick-or-treating was in PI. But I started noticing the weird badge behavior in Kallisti (where I moved my trick-or-treating due to the lag in PI). It's possible that the lag in PI was so bad that I didn't get credit for costumes I had picked up in PI until I was running around in Kallisti, but (1) the times when the badge counter did increment were all right after I'd clicked on doors, (2) I had done a Dr. Kane TF in between the PI trick-or-treating and finishing it up in Kallisti, and (3) I only had about 25 costumes or so and still only have 27 costumes even now that I have the badge for 50. So it definitely seems like something is giving credit for having gotten a costume when you don't. My wild-assed guess is that it has to do with what happens when you would get a costume you already have. Maybe you don't get the costume, but you still get badge credit? (ETA: I now see that you said something like this above. That's what I get for jumping straight to the post that quoted mine instead of reading all the new messages in the thread.) I'd have thought that the fallback would be a different Treat (salvage, maybe), but maybe the "oops, already have that costume!" routine goes all the way back to the "trick, or treat?" decision point. Oh, and there were three times—all in a row, all in Kallisti—when I got a "Treat!" result but didn't get anything. No costume, no salvage, not even a Rock. And the costume badge progress didn't move, either. But I suspect you're right that the explanation could be as simple as, "Strange things happen when shards get massively lagged, even on other shards."

But the weird part is that the counter was incrementing when I wasn't getting any costumes, from any source. It was incrementing when I got "Trick" results—i.e., mobs to fight, not costumes of any sort. And costumes didn't drop when the mobs spawned (of course).

I just had a weird path to getting the Ostentatious badge. It's supposedly for collecting 50 classic costumes. The progress tracker was at 41 when I bought a bunch of costumes from Annah—but the counter didn't increase. I ran Dr. Kane's House of Horrors, then went back to clicking on doors to trick or treat. I didn't get any more costumes, but I did get the badge! The counter increased when I got "trick" as a result, not costumes. Is something weird going on with that badge, or do I completely misunderstand how it's supposed to work?

The incarnate system is pretty arcane and hard to understand. Fortunately, there are some guides on the forums. Here are three:

Thanks. I'd given up on MIDS a while ago since I couldn't figure out a way to get it to upscale (old eyes, tiny fonts). FWIW, I pulled the trigger on the upgrade and Homecoming seems to be working fine (now I just hope I didn't jinx it by typing that out).

It's a security thing—basically, one more speed bump in the way of malware. You might be amazed how much admin access isn't needed day to day. On those occasions when admin access is needed, I have a separate admin account that I can enter the credentials for. For example, most software installers will pop up a dialog box asking for admin credentials. The Island Rum installer didn't really grok that, so I think I had to install under my admin account and then fiddle with permissions to let is update under my non-admin account, but that's all settled now. So: do you think I should do a backup before upgrading? ;)

Okay, so I've been slow to upgrade, mostly because I've wanted to make really really sure I didn't break CoH. But I'm thinking it's about time to pull the trigger. So: how does CoH handle the upgrade now? Everything's 64-bit, right? Anything else I should watch out for? FWIW, my everyday user account doesn't have admin access, so I had to play with the permissions in the CoH and Island Rum folders to get everything to update right. I'm guessing if anything breaks when I upgrade, it'll be because of that. I'd appreciate any guidance. Thanks!

Here are two excellent guides on one way to solo through the blue side and red side content. These aren't the only way, and they favor the "newer" (and, IMO, better designed) story arcs over the "classic" arcs, but overall I think they lay out pretty good plans for touring the CoH content via the slow path.

True fact. I got the Signature Villain and Hero defeat badges when I lucked into an actual RV team on Excelsior. I managed to get the rest of the way to Back From the Future and Temporal Soldier by sneaking into Recluse's Victory in off hours and taking down a pillbox or three at a time. I got ganked a handful of times doing that, mostly before I learned to have the Heavy attack first and keep an eye out for the gankers' favorite times to attack (usually, right after I'd destroyed all the turrets and was stuck in place trying to claim the pillbox). I tried going toe-to-toe with the attackers once or twice. It...didn't work out. After that, I got really good at running away.

The poll doesn’t really matter (I’m more interested in the discussion anyway), but FWIW I set it up to allow picking multiple answers. I guess I could have said that in the poll, huh?

I've gotten my badger to the point where he has almost all the badges except the event badges (really looking forward to Halloween and the Winter Event) and most of the PvP badges: specifically, the Arena badges and the ones for personally defeating other players (Forward Observer, Reinforcement, and Disruptor). It has me wondering: if you have a badger who got these badges, how did you get them? My guess is that most people just multibox, but are there lots of people who arrange duels or stalk the PvP zones for kills? And for those who didn't multibox, were the fights actual competitions, or were they badge-focused agreements to beat each other up enough times to get the badge?

Oh, right! I've saved the City Council (including one councilman with the on-the-nose name of "Alderman") enough times that you'd think I'd remember.

I'd like to see a plot where "villainous" factions—Arachnos, Crey, heck, maybe even the Family if they have the resources—come in and start rebuilding devastated areas of Paragon City. New Boomtown, brought to you by Arachnos? Faultline Reborn, a Crey Industries Development? What happens when an organization with evil goals mounts a PR campaign based on fixing problems that have festered under "heroic" leadership? Could be some interesting stories there. (Come to that, what is the leadership of Paragon City? Is there a mayor? A city council? Weird that the governance structure of a city of heroes never seems to be mentioned.)

My Dual Pistols/Martial Combat blaster was a hoot to level though nearly all the content (red, blue, then going back for gold in Oro). Getting Ki Push as a T1 power means you start with one of the most fun powers of the set: just try not saying, “Pull!” when you realize you can kick someone back and shoot them while they’re still in the air. The ability to swap ammo means you can choose knockback for crowd control when soloing in earlier levels, then opt for extra damage in teams or at higher levels without respeccing or reslotting. It’s just tons of fun.