Diantane

Have played RPG's since they were invented in 1977 (Apple II) and MMO's when they were invented in 1999. My favorite position is a tank. Unlike most tanks on this game where players use them the same way they would use a brute or scrapper, a tank is supposed to jump into a large group (Taking the ALPHA) and keep the baddies away from the team. If they can't do this, they aren't a real tank (just a melee character doing minimal dps (with their weaker secondary attacks). Taking the alpha is a tank's primary task. When the team moves forward, then stops right before a group, the tank runs ahead straight into them. When the tank has their full attention, the team can safely engage. Have played dozens of combinations for tanks in this game and most can take the alpha pretty well until their mid 20's. The sets that fail to take an alpha without dieing, can't be a real tank. COH is not like most MMO's where there is always a dedicated healer with the priority to protect the tank. So a COH tank set must be able to take the alpha and keep themselves alive to keep doing this. This why most sets will fail. From looking at the builds of other new players, I can see that most tankers train an even amount of attacks and defenses (a scrapper with more armor/health). An alpha tank puts everything into defense (including the fighting pool) well into their teens. The first attack I train is taunt. Then none again until tiers 7, 8 and 9. Later I wil train the rest as fillers. I have found that the most defensive pure alpha tank is one with a very high health absorbtion (1,000+ at 50 using SO's), a strong heal (based on the number of foes in melee range) and does not allow the melee baddies to touch them. This is raditation armor and ice melee (ice has the ice patch making the nearby foes to slip and fall). Many tanks have Super Strength for the Foot Stomp AoE. But Ice has Frozen Aura which does slightly more AoE damage as Foot Stomp (same 20 second base recharge), but also freezes the foes in place. There are more defensive sets like Invul, but they don't have both a large absorbtion and a heal.

I also play on Lord of the Rings Online. It's also not as strong as it was ten years ago, but I have a group that meets at our regular time.

What time was maintenance?

I've played on Excelsior shortly after coming to Homecoming about 6-7 years ago. It used to be a heavily populated server in the mornings (due to foreign time zones) and the evenings. The LFG chat was loaded with text flying up. You had to either read very fast or stop it manually. There were tons of TF's, trials, Farms, arc teams and players looking to join. The last couple years had seen a steady decline. Mornings are mostly dead and the evenings only see an hour or two of peak. Sundays don't see much action until the early afternoons. It seems that most players have moved on to the more popular and modern mmo's. Populations there soar in the tens of thousands on each server. I don't care for those mmo's because you have to stand in a long line to complete a single quest or mission. Builds are mostly "cookie cutter" with most players having identical characters of each class.

It wouldn't be that hard. Other shards have a population of like 20 or 30. Everlasting about 125. Excelsior is about 450

I play on Excelsior. the population used to be much higher here 2 years ago. If was fast and easy to put teams together for several hours every day. The LFG chat was extremely busy. Today it barely moves. Other mmo's have a lot more players -- in the tens of thousands per shard Because of this I have stopped forming teams (trying to). Today I am soloing a character on the red side. The red side population is extremely tiny.

When I try to fill up a team these days it is extremely hard except for only one hour in prime time on weekdays. They should be merging and eliminating shards. Not adding new ones.

Playing a new villain. Something I haven’t done since COV first came out on October 21, 2005. My mission is to kill Hellions but I can’t find any. Any ideas? Update: NVM -- the mission info said "Oil Spill." Knew where that was and completed the mission.

When you first come to RWZ you go see the npc Levantera. Then she sends you to Borea to do a few introductory missions with her. This is where the problem is. Half the time after those few Borea missions, she will send you back to Levantera to continue the arc. The other half of the time the mission to go to Borea from Levantera breaks and never completes. So you end up doing missions forever with Borea (there are only a handful of missions that are repeated over and over -- grinding). Note: If you want to stay in RWZ and grind these short (10 minute) missions forever, just go to Borea (good name (short for boredom). When it breaks, the only thing you can do to "fix" it is to tell Levantera to "Complete the Mission." Then you can go back to the normal storyline arcs that will eventually move on to the other NPC's.

I liked the electric on sentinels all except for the tier 9 attack. Takes almost three seconds to cast (too much for what you get).

I didn't know that about Blasters - thanks

I tried that when I first came to the emulator and was unsuccessful. Could barely afford training enhancements the the influence I was earning. Then I started to host teams doing arcs and received a lot of merits which were used to buy enhancement boosters and sold for a million each. Its been over 5 years and have saved up 1.2 billion. I get SO's at level 7 and upgrade them in seconds every 5 levels.

Went to MIDS and added up all of attacking powers to get a total to see which did the most damage: 1) Psychic - 951.28 2) Fire - 941.55 3) Energy - 937.21 But then I wondered if a Blaster would be worth it -- Their Psychic was only 1,002.72 50 more damage not worth having with no defense.

Saw two players on my team go to Atlas to train. We told them that there was a trainer in each zone. They said that they thought there was only one 🙂

Whenever I start a new character such as a Sentinel, Scrapper, Brute or other alt with both offensive and defensive slotting, I choose to put three defense or resistance SO's long before I think about adding damage SO's to the offensive powers (I also add two end-redux SO's to each toggle (yes, right way). What good is offensive damage SO's if you're dead or out of endurance? I generally slot up the first defense and add up to three attacks before adding another defense, but I only have an accuracy enhancement in the attacks. I continually add four extra slots (5 total) to defense toggles as a young alt. When leading a young team in mission such as the Hollows, I can easily tell that other characters like myself did the opposite when slotting. As they are have low health or die quickly. While I am still fighting without much of an issue. Now one thing that I will tell the others in my team is if you are a ranged fighter, distance is your friend. If the enemy comes after you, back away from them as far as it takes. I see melee fighters keep attacking with low health. This is a very bad idea. They should back away (don't turn and run) when they are greater than 50% of their health. Then rest in a safe spot before continuing. If you wait too long, you'll be talking with the nurse before you know it. So how do I know all this: Started playing PC games in 1977 with the Apple II. My first MMO was Asherons Call (AC) in 1999. My only AC character that ever reached the max level after the new expansion of 275 did so with quests only (no grinding). Took me almost 5 years of playing nearly every day to get the over 33 million XP. Many friends on AC wanted to quit the game as it was too hard. So I taught them about melee defense, shields, artificial intelligence and how to fight and stay alive to continue fighting.

I prefer skim milk, If they are out and I have to buy two percent, it looks like I'm pouring white gravy on my cereal. Whole milk is even worse (3.25 to 3.5% milk fat). Thanks -- btw... on an early Monday morning the server Excelsior will have between 300 to 450 players online. The more popular mmo's will have about 600,000 online during that same off-peak period. That's where all those players went that used to play this 20 year old mmo.

I've been playing Satisfactory for 5 years. I've also been playing this emulator for 5 years. It is possible to play more than one game as a time.

Well I surely missed out on that one (Heart of Darkness). Because that is an AoE from your position, I thought it was some sort of attack and I rarely casted it (currently level 32). But how am I supposed to cast it? I would have to be in the middle of the mob. Not as friendly as them in front and away from me (as "Psyonico" pointed out).

When LIVE first started everyone just had training, dual origin and single origin enhancements (possibly a HAMI if they did a very tough set of missions). Today many players use special enhancements that give them "sets" of buffs. Since I don't play a toon much past 50 (if I even get there at all), sets are worthless to me. So I always play "old school." Note: I'm 69 years old so I guess I'm an old dog that can't learn new tricks 🙂

Instead they "skim" the post. Not reading most of it and trying to formulate a response from very little information and usually get it all wrong. They just read "this" and then "this" and maybe "this" and then reply. Good luck with that.

Every controller that I played before this one had the ability to lock down the mobs with immobilization, sleep, etc. , but the creatures could still attack you at range. The Darkness controller's power to do this is "Living Shadows" available at level 2. I have it slotted with two single origin accuracy and one immobilization enhancements. According to MIDS, this gives me an accuracy of 125% and a duration of 37.24 seconds. That is of course.... if it worked. This power is definitely broken as it either does nothing at all or lasts less than a second. Now all controllers also get a stronger controlling power with a long 240 second base recharge; so it can't be using every time. On this controller that power is "Shadow Field" which is not available until level 22. But all it does is disorient the mob for a few seconds (which is just enough time for the team to run in and start attacking). The problem with all controllers is that they "can not" perform the alpha (first engagement to the mob). It doesn't matter in I use any lockdown or secondary power, they will retaliate and kill me every time. So I always had to wait for someone else to take the alpha. Here's where the Dark/Dark controller changes everything in the game after level 18 when they get "Haunt." I've seen many controllers use this power but just like any other one. They just keep spamming their powers with no purpose. However sometimes the team would be going through a cave and for some reason, they usually skip the side passages and go straight (thinking that they can skip most of the map), but always have to run all the way back. I never follow the tank. I always go up the side passages on my own. But what can I do as a controller? I reach a large mob. There's no one backing me up. Its just me. I simply cast Haunt at one of the creatures (an incredible dual pet range of 80 ft). This does not make the rest of them retaliate towards me. Their full attention is on the two shades that are attacking them. Then I hit them with "Darkest Night" which affects the entire group and is on a toggle. This power has had three single origin to-hit debuffs in it since level 8. So at this level, they just can't harm the shades or me. So I can take my time killing them even if the shades disappear (they did their job taking the alpha). Later when I train the Umbra Beast and slot it with 2 acc, 3 dam and one recharge single origin, they start doing "fair" damage as long as I keep them healed. If another thermal or cold domination teammate is around, they can put a shield on the Umbra Beast (yes it does work as I can see when I look at their attributes. They have an innate resistances as well). So if you play this controller correctly, you can easily solo with them -- with just SO's. (we were playing at a dif of +3)

Or the shades? Does anyone know how long these creatures will be visible after summoned?

So often I see players running across the map to train when they don't have to. I've been training at the mission or wherever I am for years. The first thing I did was to make sure there was a training NPC, vendor and nurse in my SG. Then I get the Long Range TP Accolade (there's a YouTube video showing how to get it). I get it at level 1 or 2 on every alt. Then when I need to train, I first go to the mission. Then click on the Long Range TP button, then select supergroup base. When I get there I train, buy enhancements and inspirations. Then run out the exit and I'm at the mission ready to go!

I was just joking about going to another account. I started looking for other games to play months ago. Like the game Satisfactory was released in September. I played the early access for over 5,000 hours (over 5 years). Usually play that during the mornings. There will be a time when any thought of this game from me and any memory of you seeing me appear within this forum or game will disappear. I stirred up the forums and game when players made Asherons Call into an emulator after it was canceled. Discussions got so heated that I left never to return; years ago. That time is quickly approaching here.

When choosing a controller you have to pick a secondary that complements the primary some way (not one that just adds more powers to over support the team. If you did that, you wouldn't have enough time to do both the Primary and Secondary at the same time. Like if you picked any primary and took empathy, pain, poison, etc. Those secondaries require so many actions that you won't have the ability to control at the same time. Like i made an Electric controller and augmented it with Cold Domination. This is because all I have to do with the secondary is buff the shields on the team every 4 minutes and use the other powers occasionally. If I picked a theme like Fire Control and Thermal, I would be too busy healing players that I wouldn't have time to control anything. I've made and failed several controllers because of this. Had to really think it through as I couldn't just pick any combination.