ZemX

Interesting stuff. I think anyone's first instinct here would be to assume that you have to actively DO something in the raid. i.e. Assuming the game is somehow measuring your level of contribution to the raid. But that's REALLY hard to do. What metric would you use? Damage and healing are the two most obvious, but also obviously... wouldn't fairly apply to every possible AT and role in the raid. It would heavily reward the primary damage and healing ATs. What about debuffing and control? What if I'm just tanking some enemy while the rest of the raid deals with another one? Lots of problems trying to measure contribution. That list of stuff they are NOT measuring actually says a lot becuase damage, healing, and even just "hitting stuff" (i.e. "tagging enemies") isn't measured. And so... "participation trophy"! Literally. 🤪

Oddly enough, it's Common IOs I hardly use anymore. Between SOs being available now all the way down to Level 2 and that "Upgrade" button on the enhancement window, nothing is faster or more convenient than slotting SOs while leveling 1-25. Nor is anything else more effective except possibly frankenslotting multi-aspect set IOs which I think is hardly worth the effort or expense. Common IOs don't begin to equal SO enhancement values until around level 25, and from 25-30 is when I start moving straight to attuned set IOs, meaning I skip Commons entirely except for specific powers that will never get anything else (Recharge in Haste, Endurance in Focused Accuracy, stuff like that). And of course, like you said, those uniques and one-slot wonder procs are an exception.

Just before doing these, I highly recommend visiting the Gull and heading to Sharkhead for Dean MacArthur and Leonard's arcs. They are fun, involve cloning yourself, and end up linking to the arcs listed above in Talos. If you have done Leonard's arc all the way to the end, you even get a fun little extra dialogue choice when meeting Jenny Adair.

The advice here is that it's cheaper to sell catalysts and buy attuned IOs than to use catalysts to create attuned IOs. Obviously, it's faster to just use the catalysts and if you have more inf than you know what to do with, you don't care about "cheaper."

I am pretty sure it still makes sense for Winters/ATOs at least. I buy them as normal sets early on leveling and then catalyze them at 50. Unless prices on these have drastically changed since last I looked.

One of my favorite toons is a Staff/Ninja Stalker. "Dynasty" costume for the ninja look and a Naginata for the staff. I've done Staff on both Tanker and Stalker and like them each for different reasons. Staff starts with generously sized AoEs that become super-sized on a Tanker. Since I mostly tank on teams, the weakness in ST is not so bad for me. But it's then nice to switch over to the Stalker and play ninja boss-killer!

Good question. I generally only use attuned PvP IOs because I'm using them like any other set. They are unlike normal IOs in that their set bonuses function at any level but I've never looking into whether their enhancement strengths scale UP like you said. I'm only aware of exemplaring scaling IOs down. I know that the PvP IO level does affect when you are able to slot that IO. You can't for example, slot a level 20 PvP IO until you're 17, even though the set range goes down to level 10. Attune that IO (or buy an attuned version of it) and then you can slot it earlier.

Winter/ATOs are, I think, the only reason catalysts have any value at all. They are not bucketed together because superior/non-superior versions of these IOs are actually different. They have different enhancement values and set bonus strengths. You can even mix superior/non-superior versions of the same set in the same build to double-up on 2 or 3 slot bonuses if you want. (I do that most often for slow resistance in Winters). The only part where they are considered the same is the uniqueness requirement of each IO. You can't have both superior and non-superior versions of the same set member (e.g. the Acc/Dmg IO of the set) in a build at the same time.

Agreed. The OP is citing one anecdote and calling for change. I don't bump into clueless 50s left and right when I play. It does not seem a widespread problem to me either. I have noticed them from time to time, but that's about it. Also, the change called for is unrealistic. Farmers aren't all going to agree to stop advertising their farms and this would be tossing the baby out with the bathwater anyway. This is a small issue. It does not need convincing people to change their ways. Sometimes the "What can we do to make this game easier to get into" discussions are interesting, but ultimately I think the power this game has to hold anyone's interest isn't going to easily get around its basic design. It's a 20-year-old MMO and that's not changing drastically for a modern audience who may expect a more guided experience in their games.

Another way is to just select any text in any post and a button should appear at the end of the selection saying "Quote Selection". Hitting it will add just the selected text from that post to the edit box at the bottom of the page wherever the insertion point was at the time. Fast way to avoid quoting an entire rambling post. Assuming that works on all browsers, that is. Works on Chrome.

Did they say they wanted it removed? Did they say how they'd do it? Was it even discussed? Answer: No to all. Look, if someone comes along in this thread and says straight up they want it removed so they can force everyone to play their way, I will JOIN you in disagreeing with them. The fact is, they haven't. Not saying no one ever said it anywhere on these forums ever. I would not be surprised if someone has. But it's not being said HERE at least that I have seen. Shit, this person you're talking about in this case... not my favorite person on these forums. Pretty sure I am on that ignore list they like to boast about in their .sig. But fair is fair. They used the word "suggest" when saying what they'd tell new players. And anyone is allowed to suggest. In fact, none of us can really do more than that anyway. What opinion of yours have I said you're not allowed to have? If you're willing to explain what X, Y, and Z are and what the advantages/disadvantages are to each then great. Otherwise this is not giving any useful information. You can still say whatever you like, but it doesn't sound helpful. And? First of all, not quite correct. I've said more recently I think playing at least some of the way from 1 to 50 is fine too. This is no more controversial than a tutorial or a game that gradually introduces abilities or game systems as you play. The whole point is not to drop you in at max. level and say, "Okay, here's the whole game! Good luck!" This is the advice I'd give people and they can take it or leave it. I don't have to TELL people that. If they are asking me for advice, it should be understood the decision is always theirs. I don't need to add legal disclaimers on my opinions.

Just can't stop making shit up, can you? I didn't call it an "honored path." It's nothing more or less than MY advice. Plain and simple. If someone chooses to ignore it, how is it unreasonable of me to say that person who ignored my advice shouldn't come back to me with their complaints? Sounds pretty reasonable to me.

Nobody in this thread has said, even once, that they want to "force" anyone to play their way. Prove me wrong by quoting the person who has done so. Maybe I just missed it. The thread HAS gotten quite long, after all. You are making this out to be absurdly more difficult and more important a decision than it really is. This is a freakin' video game. Not career advice. "What's the best way to learn a new video game?" isn't a terribly weighty life-altering decision to make. My advice is to learn the game from level one rather than from level 50. Why? Because nobody expects you to already know your way around at level one as they do at level 50. You have fewer powers to figure out and more time to figure them out. It's just simpler. And I'm not going around TELLING people they have to do this. It is what I'd say if I'm asked and they are free to do whatever they want with my advice including ignoring it completely. It's advice on how to play a game. Calling it "pushing a narrative" is just absurd. Do you write angry letters to game guide writers telling them to stop giving advice on how to play games?

Quoting and responding to people in a thread is not against policy. It's called... "discussion". If people are actually saying this then you should be able to quote them. Can you? Because you just, again, wrote another post where you get to tell us all what we think and then why we're all wrong. It's easy to do, I guess. Much easier than actually responding to things people are actually writing. It says nothing of the sort. I put it very simply, IF someone asks me for advice on how to get started playing this game or, as the person in the OP does, "What do I do next?" then this is what I tell them. It's not up to you to "leave the choice up to them". It's already up to them. Again, you keep wanting to pretend that people in this thread are attempting to do otherwise. They are not. They just have different advice they would give to new players on how to get started playing this game. Anybody I tell to level up from one on their very first toon at least as far as needed to become familiar with this game can always say, "Gosh, that sounds boring. This guy over here can make me 50 inside of an hour!" Then knock yourself out, chief! But don't come to me asking how to get to Peregrine Island after that to join some team. Don't complain about not being able to keep up with that team moving through the mission. Don't, in fact, complain about anything you could have learned for yourself quite simply. You followed someone else's advice. Ask them. Choice was yours... and so are the consequences.

I disagree that it depends all that much on the player. Starting out by leveling a character organically teaches you all the basics of the game which will come in handy later regardless of whether you intend to play on missions and TF teams or just exclusively endgame/incarnate trials. And you don't have to stick with it all the way to 50, like I said. You decide when you think you have enough of a handle on the game if you want to just skip to 50 in a farm. But you're doing so with a better idea now what the game is like. You're not gonna be the guy the OP mentioned who PL'd to 50 and then had no idea what to do next.

Wrong. But thanks for illustrating how this thread became such a mess of strawman arguments by... immediately employing another strawman.

Nobody seriously expects this. The only advice I'd give a new player is to actively play the game at least for a while before plopping their ass down at a door in a farm and letting someone else carry them to 50. That doesn't have to be missions exclusively. It doesn't even have to be all the way from 1 to 50. It just has to be something that requires you to actually play your character, learn your powers, and learn how the game works... none of which happens when you are door sitting. I don't know why this thread is such a mess of strawman bullshit arguments. It's really a very simple question: Do you think it's in a new player's best interests to be carried to 50 on their first toon and THEN try to figure out the game -or- should they try actively playing first to see if they like it and maybe learn something on their own first? And to be clear, this is not about forcing anything on anybody. None of us CAN do that, so we can drop that bullshit line of argumentation too. This is about what you'd suggest to a new player. They can always do what they want and ultimately they WILL do what they want. But if they asked you for advice... what would you tell them?

If you are primarily teaming, I'd guess it's probably less important to have -res in an AoE than an ST attack. The first things to drop on a fast moving team are the minions, then the LTs, then the bosses. Put a few -res in ST attacks, then walk over to smack the boss around a few times first thing. The debuff will help the team drop them a little faster and avoid having them linger around after the AoE salvos have 3x overkilled the minions.

Correct. Tankers get bigger AoEs with more targets and Brutes get Fury. There are various exceptions to the AoE size and target cap rules. Foot Stomp and Axe Cyclone for example, are 15ft radius for everyone. Most other Tanker AoEs that are 8ft or 10ft radius, however, become 12ft and 15ft respectively. So that makes a lot of tanker PBAoEs as big as Foot Stomp. Ice Melee's Frozen Aura is basically an Icy Foot Stomp. It's on a power-by-power basis, so best place to check it is City of Data. Look for this mouse-over icon in the power and see if Radius or Arc strength are disallowed. That means basically the Tanker inherent size increase doesn't apply (also, it's covered a bit by the mouse-over popup, but behind that is the statement about target cap: "Max Targets: 16 - 6 * Source.Mode?(kDisable_GauntletTargetCap)" (basically, everyone but Tankers has GauntletTargetCap disabled, so they get, in this case, 16-6=10 targets max. Tankers get 16. A bit backwards to read, but you get the hang of it). Anyway, in this example below, Axe Cyclone has disabled Radius strength, which means it ignores the Tanker +50% radius buff and keeps its 15ft radius it has for all ATs.

The PBAoE is the same size as other ATs but it hits up to 16 targets on a Tanker. Pendulum gets expanded to a 12ft radius around the chosen target and hits up to ten. Cyclone into Pendulum is just ridiculously effective. Then there's recharge. EVERY attack in Axe can slot FF:Rech. You don't have to. But you could. This greatly benefits either Rad or Bio where faster recharge on powers like the self-heal or absorb shield can mean immortality. Not to mention yet more damage output. And both have excellent endurance recovery and drain resistance tools to fuel a high-recharge monster.

My first tanker to 50 was a Rad/Staff. Staff generally gets looked down on for being a poor performer on damage... which is fair. But in my opinion it's a fantastic and fun tanking secondary because it had three AoEs that get super-sized by the Tanker inherent. Rad then adds its two proc-bombs for even more AoE and now you've got not just decent damage, but a lot of ability to spread that taunt around and grab attention and keep it. And that's the actual tanking part. What Staff adds to Rad is mainly that 13% +Res(All) from Sky Splitter's bonus in Form of Body stance. This makes it that much easier, combined with the Tanker ATO, to cap most/all resistances (except probably Cold). Very tough customer. The +def Guarded Spin is nice, but I generally only use that as a place to stuff another LotG. I generally ignore defense because of the lack of DDR. That said, my most player Tanker is easily the Rad/Ice. I love being able to drop Ice Patch on one group of enemies and then go deal with some other problem. It's a bit like being able to be in two places at once.

Oddly enough, as bad as my memory usually is, I remember this one vividly. I was about level 20 on my first character since joining HC and in Faultline, standing in front of the vendor near the trainer. I'd just run out of money to buy SOs. So I did a Google search, probably something to the effect, "How do I earn money in CoH Homecoming?" and found out about several methods, the easiest and fastest of which looked like buying converters at the reward vendor and selling them on the auction house for around 70k a pop. Reward Merits? Oh... you mean all these things I've been collecting for running story arcs? I was literally already a CoH millionaire and didn't know it. Haven't had a single problem buying enhancements since.

I think the best method is to first build with no (or few) procs and cram as many set bonuses as you can in there. THEN start proccing, because now you know what those procs are costing you for how much benefit they give. Will they allow you to do more damage? Sure. But they will cost you x% +res or +def, y% recharge, etc. etc. Going heavy on damage procs is great if you're building a soloist. Not so much, in my opinion, if you want your tanker to actually tank for a team. To build a tank that won't fold under heavy assault, you need one that's going to feel like is over-built 90% of the time. It's a choice.

I would second just reading that guide post. And I wouldn't view Incarnate System mechanics as "spoilers". This stuff wasn't meant to be organically figured out. You're not skipping the solving of some puzzle here. It's all very arbitrary and overly complex. There's no in-game path leading you through this, so you're not missing anything reading the guide.

Nobody is preventing people from making their own choices in this game. Nobody can, no matter what people suggest here on the forums. But with choices come consequences. If you're PLing to 50 after having already become an expert on the game, you know exactly what you're doing. If you drop in brand new and this is the first thing you do? Yeah, you're gonna end up 50 with no idea what to do next and maybe not enough resources to do it. That's not the community's fault. That's their fault. Volumes of information about this game are literally at anyone's fingertips. But you gotta lift that one finger first to find out. Am I really just being that much a cranky old man gamer here? Has gaming "culture" advanced to the point where people really expect to be lead around by the nose in tutorial after in-game tutorial these days or they have no idea how to proceed?