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The event is probably fun for people who want alts but don't want to admit they're farming or make a farmer. (That group is quite a bit larger than you'd imagine, judging from the never-ending wall of "MS WHERE I NEED PLESE" stuff in the lfg channel). I did try it, and took my new alt straight back to the farm after one run. It's a puzzle to me why people are so frothy over it, but to each their own. So hooray for boosting new players and leveling new alts! (Also looking forward to it being over so we can have the LFG channel back.) /If you're having fun, you're playing the game right

It recently came to my attention that I had been playing COH since launch, and I didn't know what any of the various types of Merits did, and I had piles of various mysterious types of them. Specifically, it was embarrassing to learn that if I'd known what an Empyrean merit was, I'd have saved billions in inf (125m per T4 power created) on my incarnate powers over the years. Thus humbled, I set out to learn what all the merit types are and what they're good for. MERITS Reward Merits Dating back to Issue 13, reward merits are what people usually mean when they say "merits". You get them from doing most content in the game. There's a ton of guides to raking them in here on the forums. What can I spend 'em on? Reward merits can be spent or converted at any merit vendor. Hit the link for a list of vendors and what they sell. What's the best way to use them? There are some great guides (and a mountain of discussion) on the forum. Start here! Empyrean Merits You get these guys just for leveling past 50, as well as doing various trials and raids (hit the link above for a list). What can I spend 'em on? In the Convert tab of your Incarnate window, you can spend them on T3 (Rare) or T4 (Very Rare) components needed to make T3 or T4 incarnate powers that would normally cost you 25m/100m inf. Luna cam also convert them to Astral and Transcendent merits. What's the best way to use them? Use them to build your Incarnate T3s and T4s. After that, you can give them to alts on the same account (convert to Transcendent merits), or if you really need to burn some, spend them on fancy inspirations or cosmetic items (convert to Astral merits). Astral Merits Astral merits are Incarnate content rewards. What can I spend 'em on? Visit Luna in Ouroboros. She sells fancy inspirations and vanity items. Transcendent Merits Transcendent merits are pretty much just a vehicle for trading Empyrean merits. What can I spend 'em on? Nothing! What's the best way to use them? Convert them to Empyrian merits at a merit vendor. Hero Merits / Villain Merits Alignment merits were introduced with the alignment system in i18. You may never see these guys, since you can just go talk to Null the Gull in Pocket D to change your alignment very quickly these days. What can I spend 'em on? No idea! What's the best way to use them? They can be converted to Reward Merits, which is apparently useful if you want to transfer Reward Merits between characters on the same account. Vanguard Merits A special currency revolving around Vanguard and the RWZ. Once you have the Member of Vanguard badge, you'll earn them for beating up aliens. What can I spend 'em on? All kinds of stuff, including converting them to Reward Merits! The wiki has you covered on this one. Hit the link above!

It's mind blowing to see Vista and Win 8/8.1 still running. (How is Vista beating XP?) I'm not amazed that win7 still has some die-hard users, though. I also want to meet the Win95 guy and see his computer. 😆

Do we really have people running 32 bit clients? What do those numbers look like? I know it's a 20 year old game, but 20 years ago is about the same time home PCs started going 64-bit, and I have a hard time imagining someone playing COH on a P4 with a CRT monitor when they could get a vastly more capable 10 year old PC for $25 on Ebay.

Playing with this powerset tonight! My main concern with this powerset is that I hope no new players choose it; they're going to be forced to take a sleep for their first power and quickly conclude that the local gods are very cruel. It seems likely that their bitter shades will haunt the help channel searching in vain for a use case for a sleep power in COH. As an added barb, pretty much every other power in the powerset has a damage component. If you didn't already think sleeps were useless and not in a fun way, this is the powerset that will convince you. All that said, a penalty of 1 wasted power slot is not a big deal for a veteran player, so most of our playerbase won't mind. About the toon: I paired arsenal with poison secondary and psionic epic, didn't really think too hard about the build. I slotted it wrong and didn't fix it- so overall it was a somewhat random, poor job of building. I slotted it in the same price range as one of my regular toons (purples for all the 6-slots, lesser IOs for the rest). No accolades, no incarnates. I got about what I'd expect from such a control-heavy controller, though it was considerably stronger than I expected. No troubles locking down and soloing x8/+4 missions, very very slow dps. 🙂 Overall it was a fun trip into the land of a controller who is mostly just a controller (with a side order of debuffs). Obviously switching to a different secondary could get you a different playstyle. Overall, I found this toon to be hands down the most effective controller I've ever played for crowd control purposes, with some high quality debuffs thrown in to boot. On the down side, there's almost no DPS and very little buffs. Durability is probably low but it never got tested because the control is so strong. There are two single target mezzes, two AE mezzes, a pre-nerf Bonfire with knockdown already built in, an exceptionally solid ranged AE disorient, and a crazy AE Confuse combo that is a minimum of mag5 all the time and has no downtime. Plus a bunch of really solid debuffs. Just press some buttons, stuff will stop attacking. 😉 Observations on the new powerset: - Smoke Canister: I'll lead with the OP one. I only 2-slotted this as I expected a generic smoke grenade power. The -perception seemed to work like other smoke powers. I may not have found this to be an overwhelmingly strong power if I didn't take the psi epic pool, but it's a mag5-mag6 AE confuse when you stand in smoke with with World of Confusion running. In general I was able to smoke a group, stand in the middle of it, and not touch any other buttons to kill them all at +4/x8. Exceptionally strong combo there. You pay a heavy XP penalty for confusing everything when solo, but in a group you'd get the same control without the XP penalty. - Liquid Nitrogen might be the new Bonfire. Stuff has serious trouble staying upright, and it's not hard to perma it. - Cryo Freeze Ray worked fine. The effect is fun and clear as to what has happened to the target (I think it's the same one we already had for ice control). - Tear gas: How many controllers have wished their AE control power was ranged? More than one. This particular controller needs it less than some others I could name, though. - Flash bang: A button I probably won't press often, but it's nice to have one more control type in your pocket, and this power is a ranged AE with a solid duration disorient. -Gun drone didn't die in +4/x8, which was an unexpected level of durability (though there was a LOT of controlling going on). It was good that it stayed up, because it was my only DPS power that ticked in the double digits. XD - Gun Drone's summoning sound effect is loud gunfire, which does not coincide with any gunfire animations or any reason for it to be shooting. Small thing, sort of offputting. - Gun Drone left me with mixed feelings overall. The pet looks neat, and it's fun to have a controller pet, and this one seems to actually be on my side (looking at you, fire imps). On the other hand, its DPS is low, which is at odds with its appearance. (Please! Don't shoot me with the giant twin gatling guns for 19 damage!) It just seemed kind of out of place overall.

I'm using this post as a scratchpad as I build a test character, hopefully they'll prove useful to someone. A lot of this stuff wasn't clear to me from reading this thread. 🙂 Please note that I don't have access to the code so I can't see how any of this works. What's below is just from playing with it in the client. I'll update this if I play with it more later. Hopefully this adds accessibility for those helping to test the new issue. Notes on granting crafted enhancements: /boostset setname level (both paramaters are required) setname: The name of the set as written in its description (get that from /ah). Case insensitive. Omit apostrophes. Spaces are underscores. (s/'//g, s/ /_/g) level: >50 gets adjusted down to 50, 51-54 purples must have a different setgroup example: /boostset Luck_of_the_Gambler 50 -> L50 LOTG set example: /boostset superior_will_of_the_controller 99 -> L50 SWOTC set To discover: What is the setname of attuned sets? (The prefix isn't "attuned_", "attuned.", or "attuned" like /boost.) /boost itemname itemname level (all three parameters are required) itemname takes the format: setgroup_setname_X, where X is the character A-F. If the set has a UNIQUE enhancement, it tends to be F. setgroup: [ crafted: regular enhancement || attuned: attuned enhancement || superior_attuned: use instead of "attuned" for Superior AT enhancements] example: /boost attuned_Luck_of_the_Gambler_F attuned_Luck_of_the_Gambler_F 50 -> grants the attuned global recharge one example: /boost Superior_Attuned_Superior_Will_of_the_Controller_F Superior_Attuned_Superior_Will_of_the_Controller_F 50 -> grants the Superior/attuned PSI damage one It seems to be less typing to just do /boostset and then delete the ones you didn't want (unless you wanted them attuned) Boosted purple setgroup: Unknown. It's not "boosted", "boosted_crafted", or "crafted_boosted". Playing with the passed parameters shows that it is checking both itemname params, and checking to see if they agree. Passing duplicate valid parameters works; passing unique valid parameters generates the same error as invalid parameters ("Enhancement power doesn't exist"). Passing one valid and one invalid parameter (either position) generates the same error. Unclear why we're passing the same param twice, surely there's different checks against the two parameters?

I actually set it lower than it was last time. If I'm AFK for a month, somebody who's actually playing should be able to do the admin stuff. :P

Welp, for posterity, the answers to the above questions are: 1) Relog and thy auto-demotion shall be done 2) Yes, indeed Hope this now-mildly-embarrassing post helps someone someday. :)

I started a small themed SG some years ago. I am just now back from an approximately 1.5 year AFK (yeah, yeah). My character who was the SG leader is now in the #2 spot, and my old #2 (who is not my character) is in the Leader role. It's annoying because most ranks (including my new one) can't edit the base. I suspect I got auto-demoted (auto-demotion was set to 365 days). The new leader has been AFK over 300 days now. I am allowed to change the auto-demotion timer... so I set it to 300, and there was no immediate effect. 1) Does the auto-demotion timer get checked once a day or something like that? 2) I guess that following auto-demotion, the highest-ranking member gets promoted into the Leader spot? (That would solve my problem with base editing.) Thanks!