Mr_Enigma

Back in early '04 I had just bought my first gaming computer (first-gen Athlon 64 and an ATI Radeon 9800! Swanky!). I didn't know much about PC games, but had been reading some gaming mags for a few months to get familiar with stuff. I bought the computer primarily for Half-Life 2 and Doom 3, but was very pleasantly surprised by a lesser-known FPS that came out at the same time: Far Cry. I had never really played online games so I took a chance and bought two MMOs: EverQuest 2 and City of Heroes. I played EQ2 for maybe a week before I dropped it for City of Heroes. I had no idea what I was doing and didn't know any online gaming etiquette, so I just kind of blundered my way through it. I distinctly remember playing my first character, an invuln/war mace tank and not knowing that I was expected to hold the aggro for the team. The team kept wiping while I survived and I kept expressing my disbelief that I was still standing. Fortunately someone on that team sent me a discreet tell that clued me in a little. I set that character aside until respecs were introduced, where I added taunt to my build. I'm grateful to that anonymous teammate who pointed me in the right direction rather than yell at me or kick me, lol. And that attitude was commonplace in early CoH, the idea that we were all working together, that helping others was just what one does in Paragon City. It helped me overcome my initial anxiety and introversion and I was hooked. And I am so grateful that the same approach has survived more than 21 years later! Huzzah to the best online gaming community!

Oh man, the blue cave "layer cake" room (although this one probably doesn't meet the thread requirement of hating it for trivial/silly reasons). Each layer has so many holes in the floor to fall down to a lower layer (either you or the mobs you're fighting). This room is better now that jetpacks are so available, but I wouldn't say that resolved my problems with it. Before jetpacks my characters with super speed hated that room. It was just an exercise in frustration.

Good info, thx lemming!

Thanks! That makes sense. Well, as much sense as Int'l Talk Like a Pirate Day makes. lol.

Anyone know the deal with Captain Bladehook the Red? Just fought him as an AV, plus his ghost-y hangers-on, in Talos island. Got 6 Reward Merits for defeating him. There was an announcement in Hero Event Messages when he spawned. I have never seen him before, nor have I heard of him, either. No one else present when fighting him knew anything, either. I have searched the forums and the Homecoming wiki, to no avail. Either my search-fu sucks or this is something new and as-yet unannounced?

Sorry, here it is with Incarnates so you can see the final numbersBlaster (Dual Pistols - Martial Combat)(2).mbd

Here's my current build (I hope i did the buildsave/import/post thing correctly!) Blaster (Dual Pistols - Martial Combat).mbd

Energy Manipulation is pretty melee-heavy, but its really great for just having access to power boost: it extends the length of your two holds (and stuns from EM attacks, if you end up using them), and lesser-known, it increases the -tohit in Blizzard and Bitter Ice Blast (shoring up any lacking defenses). Oh, it also greatly enhances the slows from ice attacks. I would suggest keeping an open mind on melee attacks. Energy Manipulation is very hard-hitting, and oh-so-satisfyingly "Bam! Pow! Crunch!". And with good defenses, Ice/EM blasters can be the quintessential blaptroller - blaster, scrapper, and controller. I LOVE the combo. Here's my build: Baron Arcanum - Blaster (Ice Blast).mxd EDIT to add: Power Boost also boosts your defense powers for 15 seconds (but not your defense bonuses from IOs, keep in mind). It can really help deflect alpha strikes if you have meaningful defense powers.

If you're set on hover blasting, consider re-rolling as energy/tactical arrow. TA is almost all self-buffs and ranged debuffs/soft controls. If you want to hoverblast as EN/EN, slot some flyspeeds in hover, if you can. That way you can zip in, pummel mobs with melee, and zip back to a safe height. My hoverblaast EN/EN approached this by just running hover and fly simultaneously and having Energize on autofire. That and hoping I don't run out of endurance, lol. My build is attached. I think it meets most of your requirements, but might be a little low on recharge for you. At minimum it's a good starting point to tweak as you see fit. Viscountess Victory - Blaster (Energy Blast - Energy Manipulation).mbd

See, you know what's up! DP/MC 4 lyfe!

I'll just throw in another few plugs for Martial Combat, One not-widely-known perk to Ki Push is the fact that it's a short duration Mag 4 hold, so it will hold bosses with one application for a couple seconds. Basically, the hold lasts for the repel portion (where the mob is flying back in slow-mo, legs flailing). While that's not amazing as a hold per se, it is incredibly useful for detoggling mobs, or delaying them long enough to put them down before they fire a power - things like Masters of Madness (detoggling their psi armor), Dark Ring Mistresses (detoggling Darkest Night), Paragon Protectors (preventing them from firing MoG/Unstop or firing a nuke), Master Ills (preventing them from phasing). A fast-activating one-shot boss hold is amazingly useful on a blaster! It also does respectable damage if slotted for it, but I wouldn't make slotting it my highest priority. I would put a dmg in it before a knockback enhancer, personally. I find the base repel+knockback is of perfectly adequate distance to create space (especially with Reaction Time slowing a mob's return to melee distance). My Ki Push is one-slotted with a +5 Hecatomb Dmg, but I have decent +acc and +rech global bonuses. YMMV. Storm Kick has a 100% chance of knockdown (assuming no KB resists). It activates very fast and recharges quickly (and does good damage) Like Ki Push, it's also great for preventing mobs from activating annoying powers. I use it all the time for preventing Fake Nems from activating PFF. Eagle's Claw is one of my overall favorite powers across any set. First and foremost, it hits like a freaking truck. It's a 100% mag 3 stun, so it can take up to Lt. rank out of the fight for a few. And perhaps most importantly, it's stylish as hell, with a very satisfying "Pow!" sound when it connects. Dragon's Tail does decent Melee AoE dmg (more AoE is a always appreciated), and it has a 75% chance of knockdown. Like most of the /MA powers, It also activates pretty fast. Burst of Speed is great for the element of surprise. If you have the slots for it, it does decent (not amazing) AoE damage as an opener. When used to jump into a large group, it has pretty high odds of activating Reach for the Limit's +dmg/+tohit buff for your next few powers. I have the full Superior Avalanche set in it primarily for the enhancements and bonuses. I thought the Chance for KD proc would be really useful when opening a fight, given the long listed recharge of the power, but I think the really short recharge for the first three uses skews the proc rate (the long recharge only comes into play after three rapid uses) The KD proc fires here and there, but not enough to be a reliable soft control as a fight opener. Reaction Time slotted for a bit of slow is really nice mitigation. Obviously it hinders mobs from closing to melee distance. But it also seems that heavily slowed mobs freak out a bit and will spend a fair amount of time trying to flee rather than shooting at/punching you. Mine is 5-slotted with Miracle for the +absorb and the endurance proc, with a single generic +5 slow IO as the sixth slot. At lvl 50 it gets me 217 hp of fast-replenishing absorb. I find /MC is a great combo of fast-activating soft/hard controls and damage, plus a bunch of stylish flair. I really, really, really love my DP/MC for the great animations, varied damage types, and controls. And built for defense she is a bit of a steamroller. One caveat: My DP/MC has been lvl 50 and kitted out for a long time, so my memory of her effectiveness during the leveling process is faint. I do not recall having meaningful problems leveling her, though. Give it a try!

Oof. That's unfortunate. Yeah, it's easy to make it back, but that doesn't make it sting less.

I will say that I like the idea of upping the pets' base accuracy to be consistent. Perhaps also raising their base HP 10-15% so they are a little less squishy.. Neither of those seem particularly game-breaking, even in combination.. One change i would suggest that I don't think anyone could disagree with (although I'm sure someone probably will - it is the CoH forums, after all) would be to give Singularity's logic/AI to Phantasm There is absolutely no reason for a pet with no melee attacks AT ALL to be running in to melee range to get his ass pulverized by some boss/EB/AV/GM. Make the change if for no other reason than to keep me from blowing an o-ring and stroking out when I watch Sparkly the Moron run up to the Kronos Titan just to fire off his wimpy energy torrent from 3 feet away and get his s*** summarily wrecked. Singy (aka the Noisiest Pet in the History of Ever) just chills at range with its perma-repel/gravity power running, throwing powerful controls and doing damage. All while having 50% resists to everything. Well, everything except psi and toxic, that is. Singy only has 100% resists to those damage types. That disparity seems...excessive. I ain't askin' for all that for Phantasm, just the "chilling at range" part. That seems reasonable to me, even when considered in conjunction with the elephant in the set: Phantom Army. Have mercy on the cardio- and cerebrovascular systems of at least one of your donors, gracious devs! Port Singy logic to Phanty!

Visscale 15 is pretty freaking high, and high visscale is the factor most likely to crush your framerate, I believe. My rig is not bleeding edge or anything, but it's pretty beefy (liquid-cooled i7 13700, 32 gb DDR5 ram, a liquid-cooled 12 GB vram RTX 3080, and a 1440 resolution monitor) and I don't go much beyond visscale 5 or 6, depending on the zone. More than that and I start seeing too much choppiness for my taste when rotating my camera quickly (I am an insufferable framerate snob, though, lol). Considering that the World Detail slider in the GFX options only sets visscale to a max of 2, setting it even to 4 makes a big difference. Try knocking it down a bit from 15 and see if it gives you a better balance between render distance and performance.

A damn impressive update for a free, almost-20-year-old game. Nice job, devs! Well, for the most part, that is. Not a huge fan of some the nerfs (coughbonfirecough), but I can live with 'em. Having said that, for the love of all that is holy and good, please give us a way to disable the constant "Tip Found!" spam! For that matter, please give us a way to disable any/all of the loot drop spam (other than rejecting all drops, that is). Or at the very least make the text/animation smaller and not smack dab in the center of the screen. The constant "tip found" spam is wholly unnecessary. Seriously. It's painful during big battles to have a non-stop stream of floaty text interfering with my view of the battlefield. It was bad enough before this update with spam for recipes, salvage, catalysts, shards, etc. Adding a whole new source of it with the Tip changes was...not a great call. I'm fine with it all being turned on by default for the benefit of new players and having to turn it off manually. I've been playing since Issue Zero - I don't need or want to be informed of every. single. piece of common salvage as it drops. I'm perfectly capable of checking the Rewards feed in chat. Or just, you know, looking at my salvage and recipe windows. Any consideration of the proposal is greatly appreciated!