Ironblade

It's Wincott. I tell ya, this guy gets no respect.

The wiki has a page that lists all the items and most have links to their descriptions. https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/P2W_Vendor

This. This is why my blasters usually take one of the ancillary pools that has a hold (if they don't already have a hold). On teams or soloing, having just ONE hold can make a big difference. On a side note, some of the hold IO sets have really good set bonuses.

Merits are always an option. Firstly, every week, three task forces or trials are designated the weekly strike target and will reward double merits once per character per week. Even without a powerful build, some of these are soloable. In fact, the weekly targets for this week include Positron TF part 1 and part 2. Part 1 is EASILY soloable as there is no arch-villain in it. Another source of merits are the Signature Story Arcs. These are two story arcs (one with 7 chapters, one with 5). The normal merit reward is 5. But again, once per week per character, you can get 20 merits. A strong build can solo the first chapter in about 6 minutes. My empathy defender can solo it in 10. Also worth noting, the first run on a particular character doesn't 'count'. So you can run it for 20 merits, run it again immediately for 20 more and then you have to wait a week to get the extra merits on that particular character. Someone already mentioned regular story arcs and that you can do (or repeat) them in Ouroboros. The real jackpot for a soloer, when it comes around every 13 weeks in the weekly target rotation, is the Dr Quaterfeld task force. It will take you hours to finish but you can do it solo (no arch-villains) at your own pace. It normally awards 122 merits. When it's the weekly, it awards 244. The last time I soloed it, it took me almost six hours (with a lunch break in the middle). Of course, you need to be level 40 or higher to do that one. And you need to make sure you FINISH it before the next week starts at 4:00AM UTC each Monday. Another one that's good is the Cavern of Transcendence trial. It has an AV, but you don't have to defeat him to finish the trial (but you need to be invisible or have teleport to bypass him). The minimum level is 12 and you have to do the Hollows arc from Talshak first to unlock the trial contact. But Talshak's arc rewards 30 merits and is easily soloed.

The channel name is Everlasting TFs Make sure you don't forget the S at the end. There is also Everlasting TF with just a tiny number of people on it. In case you, or someone else, are unfamiliar with joining a new channel, here is the procedure. Right-click in your chat window (on whichever tab/window you want to new channel to appear in). Select CHANNEL SEARCH (near the bottom of the menu). By default, it might bring up that channel. For me, it brings up five channels with Everlasting in the name when I'm on Everlasting. If it's not displaying the channel you want, search for it. Select the channel by left-clicking it in the list. Click the JOIN CHANNEL button. Done. NOTE: Joining a channel is a GLOBAL ACTION so it affects all characters on that account. HOWEVER, the new channel will only be in the chat window of the character that just added it. All other characters will need to add it. Personally, I have two keybinds set up to make this easier. One is "chatsavefile c:/1_data/text/CoH/chat_main.txt". That's the full path where I store my CoH bind and chat files. So, after adding a new channel, I hit that button to update my default file. On other characters, I can then use "chatloadfile c:/1_data/text/CoH/chat_main.txt" These both appear in my main keybind file. When I created a new character, I have to manually type bindloadfile c:/1_data/text/CoH/binds_main.txt That loads a file with something like 40 keybinds to make my CoH QoL so much better. From that point, everything else is one keystroke.

There's no right answer as this is really personal preference. Here's what I do. In my opinion, we level too fast for slotting ANYTHING to be worth my time until the low 20's (when we could previously first get SO's). Around level 20-22, I'll start slotting SO's and upgrade them as necessary. Meanwhile, I'll be planning out my build all the way to 50. At around level 32-33, I'll start slotting IO sets. Could be cheap, could be expensive, depending on my build plans, but that's when I start slotting my final enhancements. As I level up from there, I'll continue slotting IO's as new powers/slots become available. A lot of people will do a 'leveling build' and then respec at 50 for their 'final build'. I only ever did this on my main character. Everyone else IO's as they level up and, when they hit 50, that's their final build. And I don't retire characters at 50. I play them at least enough to get all tier 3 Incarnate powers. Funding advice: pick your favorite and get that one to 50. That will solve most of your money problems and fund the others. Money rolls in so much faster for high level characters.

I think you may be confusing them with geese, which are the spawn of Satan.

Do you do many task forces? I'm on the task force channels on Everlasting and Indomitable and they are very active.

On Homecoming - not yet. Back when the retail game was live - yes.

I don't worry about it until after I hit 50. Once you get to 50 and do the iTrials plus Apex / Tin Mage, you'll have 14 of the 16 Praetorian AV's and just need two from regular missions (Dominatrix and Infernal). I often see people announcing on LFG when they're doing the mission arcs with the Praetorian AV's, just like people do with the Patron Pool arcs.

I think someone pointed that out.... oh yeah, it was ME! 😛

It should, but that's the painfully slow way for squishy AT's. If you have high hit points, you can use a Rikti lieutenant who hits for 1500 pts or more (depending on his level above yours) every few seconds.

I met my girlfriend in CoH, whom I live with now. Plus we have a number of mutual friends from the game who we meet regularly for dinner.

I was super active back when the game was live and agree with Grouchybeast, the community was very good back then also. I think another factor is the player base. The player base of loot shooters is mostly male and late teens / early 20's. Even back on live, CoH players were almost 50% female and the average age was in the 30's. NOW, many of the players are even older, but the average might not be higher since they are now introducing their children to the game - making the atmosphere even more 'family friendly'. And I do think it's your first point, about the game being cooperative, that resulted in the age/gender numbers being so different from other games.

Absolutely they fit. They're little colored balls of light. I like them a lot. I have them on a couple of tanks because my tanks are typically surrounded by enemies and they throw a ton of AoE. No Lore Pet can gimp you and they're fine for anything. If you end up playing the character a lot, you can always get another set of pets. My main (a scrapper) has the Seer pets with the one that gives Fortitude for soloing, and then he has the Banished Pantheon for iTrials because they are the highest single target DPS. Of course, he also has five Destiny powers at tier 4 because he has too much salvage. 🙂

Who forgot Rest? Certainly not Toggle Man. "Toggle Man goes through endurance 8 times faster than he recovers it. Toggle Man can only actually finish turning all his Toggles on before his blue bar empties out, if he turns on Rest first, and that makes Toggle Man uncomfortable even if Rest is a Toggle too. Toggle Man wants to know if he can mooch a couple blues?"

First, indulge my nitpicking as I point out that Dark Armor or Invulnerability *ARE* your primaries if you're a tank. I've taken dark/dark, invuln/dark, invuln/energy and invuln/staff to 50. I would agree Dark Melee is a good pairing with most tank sets as it has the -to hit and a self heal that cycles pretty fast and does decent damage. Staff is also good with invuln because invuln is a 'blend' set (both resists and defense) and staff has a defense power. Energy Melee, on the other hand, doesn't bring as much to the table. Sure, it stuns enemies, but that makes them wander out aura range and decreases your defense so it's a trade-off. Another set that's good with any armor but has lousy damage - ice melee. You can easily get Ice Patch perma (I think it only takes one recharge IO) and that will have anyone near you flopping on their backs. So the metric here is to look for a set that either heals you, or significantly impedes the enemy ability to hit you. Battle Axe has a ton of knockdown. Martial Arts has defense, stun and a really fun AoE knockdown attack. Etc. P.S. I see I took too long typing and Snarky got in ahead of me. As my second paragraph notes, I agree dark melee is really good with invuln.

Actually, the tweak for Katie was to change the task force so you are required to defeat Katie 10 times to complete it. No more exiting the mission and letting it fail. I run it every so often when it comes around for double merits. I start it with my girlfriend and then solo all but the final mission while she's at work.

Toggle Man is not such a connoisseur of toggles that he'd forget the granddaddy of 'em all. Toggle Man runs Sprint all the time. Because Toggle Man knows what's up. Toggle Man wishes he could run all four Veteran sprints too, at the same time. But we try not to remind him of it... Toggle Man dies a little inside every time he thinks about a Toggle he can't run... Don't cry for Toggle Man. He needs you to be strong. He needs you to Toggle On your Brave Face for him, ok? Ok.

This sort of already exists. When the task forces were originally created, there were no Reward Merits. When the merit system was added later, the devs datamined how long it took to run each task force and strike force and assigned the merit rewards accordingly. So, if you've run one task force and another gives slightly more merits, it should take slightly longer. Having said that, we didn't have so many fancy travel powers when they assigned the merits so some of them (Dr Q) now give an excessive number of merits compared to how fast we can actually complete them. P.S. I *THINK* the devs said that they scaled the system to award one merit per 3-1/2 minutes of effort.

There was actually a thread about this a while back. That's when I made Manny. He lives at the gas station and has Teleport and Teleport Target.

A TARDIS, you say?

Be sure to say hello to Manny.

I was going to post that again if someone hadn't linked to it. 🙂