Curveball

I tried searching "teams" and "groups" but never thought of just searching for "experience." Sheesh. *headsmack* 😄 OK, so if my calculator hasn't failed me... Assuming Reward Scale 1 lvl 35, 10 minions 429 per minion, so 4290 but lets assume the minions are four levels higher than you, so level bonus 1.8, so: 772.2 per minion, so 7722 but TEAM SIZE OF 8: Team size bonus of 2.5! 1930.5 per mob, so 19305 total, but divided among each member it becomes 2413.125, rounded up to 2414 So assuming I can multiply and divide properly - jury is still out on that - yes, I see it now. You get less overall xp per kill in a team even with the bonus so it becomes an issue of "can the team kill fast enough to make up for it," which is definitely possible to do.

So someone asked the Help channel why there were "sitters" in farm groups. I don't farm but my assumption was that increasing the size of the team increases the overall xp you get while farming, so sitters, while not being as useful as hitters, were still allowing the hitters to collect more xp per kill. However, people who apparently had more experience pretty much said that the xp bonus was negated by the fact that you were still taking the same amount of time to clear map, because the sitter wasn't doing anything, and you were splitting xp with an extra body, so there was no net gain from having a sitter and farmers were basically just being nice. Which mostly makes sense to me, except that the longer I thought about it the more I started to question one of my basic assumptions of the advantages of grouping in game, which is that you got an xp bonus from grouping so that playing in groups, assuming the group doesn't just fall over and set itself on fire, is that you get xp faster and you get _more_ xp faster. I still feel like the math has to ultimately favor group size - if you were getting a net xp loss for being in a group than you were by soloing, there would be a lot more soloing. I can see that being offset by large groups tearing through mobs faster, but it can't be _just_ that, can it? I mean, maybe it can. I can't work it out.

I know FA is the go-to for farming builds, but how is it in the rest of the game? It has some obvious gaps but I think those can be patched over enough to work. I just don't really hear about it being used for anything other than farming, so I'm curious.

Here is the issue I'm having... certain text that NPCs use in missions have a weird fade out effect that keeps from reading it. I've attached a screenshot. You'll notice the [NPC] text is fine, but [Caption] fades out from bottom to top: Is there a way to change how caption text is rendered? I haven't found anything in settings - or if I have, I'm oblivious to it - and I don't think I can use /bind because /bind is focused on what keystrokes I use, not what the game is doing on its own.

Which content do you mean? CoH saves a number of configuration files locally, and if you don't manually copy them over you won't have access to them. Certain bind files, costume files, power customization setting files are all saved as text files on your computer, so if you just install a fresh copy on a new machine none of that will come over. You'll have to find those files on your old machine and move them to same file location on your new machine to keep using them.

If you have Steam for Linux, you can run CoH as a non-Steam app. I use Proton Experimental and have zero issues with the game whatsoever (running KDE Neon).

For Brutes it's 4%/9%/15%

It might not, since Combat Attributes reported 9% at two... but that could be some transient stat reporting weirdness. Also, it's different per AT - 15% is for my Brute; my Tanker only gets around 13% at 3.

Answering my own question, it's 15% at level 3. (I completely forgot that Combat Attributes breaks down all your bonuses so you can see where they're coming from. I'm so used to using the Attribute Monitor to see just the totals I'm out of the habit of opening up the big window)

What the heck is the basic damage buff you get when you have Perfection of Body level 3? I know Form of the Soul gives you about a 22% end reduction when you have 3 levels of Perfection of Soul, and I think you get 13-15% of recharge with 3 levels of Perfection of Mind, but I play a brute so rage keeps messing up my attempts to figure out what the damage buff for Perfection of Body is. City of Data either doesn't have the information or I don't know how to read City of Data. Honestly, it's probably the latter, but the end result is still "I don't know what this is." 😄

Ohhhh, OK. Thanks!

I'm about to display my ignorance, but what is MoT? I can't keep my acronyms straight in this game, and searching for "MoT" keeps bringing up references to Dark Astoria. 😕

When I think of the Tanker AT I usually don't think of SR, simply because I don't think of Tankers moving out of the way to avoid damage, and I don't think of Staff because... I don't think of staff. But I read something random about how it was a good tanker combo and decided to challenge my preconceptions. It feels unfair. This is not a complaint. 😄 Keep in mind this is still at low levels (he just hit 18) BUT at level 18 without any kind of set bonuses his basic positional dodge scores are already in the low to mid 30s, and with guarded spin melee is past the soft cap, and passes the incarnate soft cap when it stacks. And guarded spin is a decent cone attack, so I'm looking forward to see what eye of the storm can do as a proper pbaoe. Sure, no heals, but that's what greens are for...

I could have sworn Twinshot reveals she's from Praetoria at the end of the Shining Stars arc, but I may be misremembering it.

This is my theory. It is mine.* *hem* Twinshot is Vagabond's daughter. Reasons: 1. They both call me "kiddo" when giving me missions 2. They both use dual pistols when they team with you 3. No, that's pretty much all I've got I'm sure you'll agree my arguments are flawless. -------------- *DISCLAIMER: Poster did not in fact attempt to verify that he is the first person to come up with this theory, and cannot claim ownership in either a moral or legal sense. He attempted no research, no forums posts, and only a very cursory search of the Homecoming wiki. Anyone else who has also come up with this theory is obviously a genius and poster salutes your clear-eyed forward-thinking ways.

It's interesting, but at least as far as range is concerned you're slotting for a Defender - Sentinel ranges are shorter than Defender ranges. I think it's 40' base for AOE and 60' base for single target. Except for the psionic set which I think is 80'.

If I could get Mids running on Linux that would make me very happy, but it requires dotnet which requires protontricks (for my specific setup anyway) which crashes every time I try to run it. But that's a good thing to remember for when I finally get all that worked out!

Are they really? I honestly had no idea, though I don't see how that could work with the dots.

So I have a DP/SR Sentinel (as well as my Fire/SR Sentinel, it's an interesting contrast) and I'd pretty much ignored the Piercing Rounds attacks without ever even trying it, because despite its great damage on paper (2nd highest in the set) it has a 2.5 second activation time and an unreliable and limited aoe (3 targets max, and it's hard to line up). But I figured I should at least try it out, so I respecced, dropped Pistols and took Piercing Rounds. And I've tried it for a while and... so far I'm not thrilled with it. It seems to take the middle ground between Executioner's Shot and Hail of Bullets, but it takes on all the qualities I like least about both. The animation time for Hail of Bullets is just as long, but it's a dot, and the animation lasts as long as the damage (and, you know, it looks really cool) so it's not a big issue to wait it out. Also, it has such a long recharge time it's not part of your regular attack chain so when you're using it, you're doing something deliberate. And its AOE is fantastic. The animation time fits with the power perfectly. Executioner's Shot is a little less satisfying. The animation is great, but it's a little longer than I'd prefer it to be, just because I'd prefer a faster attack chain. But the damage is nice and it's fine. Piercing Rounds... the damage is fantastic but I'm basically just sitting there watching my character flip his gun in the air for no reason. It's frustrating to use right now, though I suppose I could get used to it eventually. It claims to do the 2nd highest amount of damage in the set, though if you translate that to dps it might not be true due to the long animation time... but I haven't bothered to put it on a spreadsheet yet. Anyway. I'll give it another few days but so far no sir, I don't like it. A character's attack shouldn't be giving me attention span issues. 😄

You know, I avoided taking Blazing Blast in my initial build because I thought the knockback would be annoying... and maybe it still will be in groups, but solo that power is GLORIOUS.

I can see the advantages of more burnination, but I do like the idea of having a few extra layers of protection on hand for the inevitable times I screw up in ridiculous fashion... which is, sadly, a thing I do. 😄 Sort of side/tangential question, do you find psi/ is a problem in high level content? I remember a fair bit of discussion about psionic attacks that run along the lines of "the problem with psionic attacks is that at high levels everyone you fight has resistance to psionic attacks." I assume it's not as bad as the critics make it out to be?

I did respec last night and chose the powers in the recommended order because I was specifically curious about Oroborous missions. It made my not-really-obsessive-compulsive-disorder itch taking all those powers out of order 😄 but I have to admit it was nice having all those attacks on hand on a run where I was at 15th level, and there were enough defenses to keep me alive. It'll be a while before I can buy the expensive sets but what I have on hand is good enough to help me get there. Thank you for your suggestions! There are things in there that I really hadn't considered that I can see the benefit of now, in hindsight...

Oof, giving up Hover and Fly is a tough ask. Why do you recommend it? Thank you for the recommendations. I can't afford to implement them at this point 🙂 and I've already chosen a few different incarnates but I can see a path from where I am to where that build is.

Geez, it's right there. I'd been looking at it the whole time and it just wasn't registering... 😄

If I remember correctly there was a change in one of the last updates that allowed a combo to occur even if one of the chained attacks missed - that would imply that the combo triggers after all three attacks complete, rather than being partially applied by each.