Heraclea

I have started levelling a fire/regen scrapper who used to be my lowbie TF farmer. I have not noticed any differences.

You might try planting a 'rescue' NPC without any mobs somewhere away from the entrance. IIRC you can do that. The rescued civilian just turns into a panicked NPC of the type familiar in many missions. The patrol or encounter you want to speak your lines, then, does not spawn until the 'rescue' is complete. This may make it so that the players will never aggro that encounter and won't have to fight them; or the encounter might spawn on an already cleared floor or visited area on the map. But you should be able to delay their entrance until the 'rescue' is complete, and probably, force your patrol to spawn in front of the 'victim'.

Now that made me smile.

My supergroups operate as a collective. All yellow or orange salvage. and a good deal of lowbie white salvage. goes in the base. What is needed and not found there -- and the cataloging system is somewhat haphazard, and involves visiting all of the salvage racks -- will be bought either with MA tickets or with inf at Wentworth's. At this stage none of the salvage racks are dedicated to Halloween or Christmas event salvage. My crafters have several lowbie recipes memorized and a few mid level ones. A level 50 can easily make enough to kit out a level 17 or 22 character with generic IOs in an evening. (And the difference between 25 and 20 generic IOs is almost negligible; a level 20 IO will at minimum be preferable to an equivalent SO, will not expire, and will be placed in a lowbie power. You can graze the ED cap with three 20s. And they don't expire.) Enhancements are passed by the base as well. I typically don't worry about recycling generic IOs enough to waste respecs or merits to reclaim them. Making new ones pays off in the end in the form of more memorized recipes at this stage. Set IO inventions with small or low priority bonuses are used for frankenslotting, especially since the more valuable the set bonus is, the worse its accuracy rating, and accuracy is always a priority for me. These may be worth it to waste a merit to unhole them. Or maybe not. Some of the most useful enhancements -- your Kinetic Combst, your Karma, your Steadfast Protection -- are capped at 40 or lower anyways. A proc should be taken at the lowest level it is available. One of the characters I am currently working on is my lowbie TF farmer, who runs the Freedom Phalanx and Striga TFs for merits which may be useful to other characters. If I kit her out -- and it isn't really needful -- I will do so with all under-40 sets.

For Memorial Day I added a monument to the Unknown Soldier to the Amazon Army base.

It happens to every epic hero. Heraclea had been commanded by the inscrutable gods to spend seven years in the Underworld. There, she carried out a secret mission whose details cannot be revealed to mere mortals, one which landed her an extended tour of duty on Hyboria, and shorter visits to even stranger worlds. Her stay there changed her in fundamental ways. (Which is why she is now Dark Melee instead of Super Strength.) A few others survived this secret apocalypse intact. Grandma Gnosis made it, but she too had changed, and somehow merged with William Shakespeare during the process. (It wasn't comfortable.) Maiden Heaven has returned unchanged. Yansan returned as Oya Iyansan. But so many -- Melaena, Hypsiste, Damage Cushion, Toxotes, Mayahuel, Wolf Witch, Baroness Munchhausen -- vanished during the inexplicable event. Others, like Betsy Ross, seemed to have been pulled into parallel universes. But in the mean time, Heraclea made new allies: Carlos Rey, Catrina Calaveras, SheRo. There is no explanation for what happened. She remains determined to pick up the pieces and carry on.

One of my favorite things to do in the costume designer is to use costume pieces for concepts quite far from their intended use judging from the names. This one uses the 'Jester' head detail and the 'Lab Coat' jacket to create a character far removed from comedy or science. Witchfinder General of Excelsior. Founder of The Holy Office supergroup.

You might also try using one of the Hood back pieces with a simple hat like Bandana or Surgeon's Cap. This is Saint Dominic from 2012.

And even the melee damage sets that do exotic damage or debuffs also do smashing or lethal damage as well. So the problem does not go away. On the other hand, one of the best thing that debuffs in attacks do is to enable Frankenslotting: you can get your accuracy, endurance reduction, and recharge buttons from sets that are in very low demand and sometimes have interesting procs.

Endurance and attack/animation speeds are the key questions for me. If you want to play a defense set that has built in endurance mitigation, like Bio Armor, Willpower, or for a lowbie mission farmer, Regeneration, these are all factors favoring the Brute. The Brute is hampered more than other melee ATs by endurance issues. Fixing those is job 1 on a brute. On a brute you know you will be slotting for recovery even if you take one of those endurance friendly defense sets. A Dark Armor brute is going to have issues out of the box. Slow, hangy animations favor Scrappers over Brutes. If you want to play, say, Titan Weapons or Energy Melee, you should consider Scrapper. The other thing about slow animations is that they have an anti-synergy with defense sets that rely on click powers for survival, like Fire, Regen, or Bio. Set and forget defensive sets like Shield or Reflexes will work better there. If you are concerned with team utility features like aggro holding and durability, the answer, of course, is 'none of the above'. Make a Tanker.

ED was perhaps a necessary evil. But I did lose a lot of interest in the game when it went live, never got a villain from 40 to 50 until much later, and left for a series of games starting with WoW after i6. I learned to hate WoW and its progression raiding, its always on the clock statistical game, and the drama repair costs always bring, so I came back. Inventions piqued my interest briefly, but I didn't jump back in with both feet until i12 and Cimerora. Finally having the sword and sandal setting I always wanted piqued my interest a great deal. After that I dallied with other MMOs, mostly Age of Conan, but that went progression raidy as well and has an unpleasant community focused on the juvie nonsense of PvP. I started losing interest in CoH about the time that Incarnates went live when I had more than 40 level 50s. But I never unsubscribed. I figured this was the game I could always go back to. So it goes. :-[

I am a fan of unconventional mitigation. As an example, my current second-main project, a bio/spines tanker, plans to slot two Pacing of the Turtle buttons in all of the powers that take it, an acc/slow and the Chance for -Recharge Slow proc, which will be added at the minimum level for the power itself. Just picked up Quills yesterday, so it was first; that's where it does the most good. In 2012 I had a spines/WP scrapper that did this and became quite tough; she was my purple farmer and Roman wall worker. She put it in everything that took it, including Caltrops, which was her first line get out of trouble button. The mitigation it offers is real, though obviously it won't show up in Mids'. Likewise, Heraclea (mach II, Inv/DM rather than SS) will use a similar proc from the Dark Watcher's Despair set in most of her Dark Melee attacks. If your attacks have any debuff component look to the sets that support it consistently. If your attack set is Radiation Melee, for instance, you can add a (level 20!) proc that adds -resistance to all of your attacks. Look to Frankenslot these procs with other sets you want, and know what ones are available for the attacks you can use. My use of this stuff was also conditioned by my experience of the 2012 economy. Very simply, these recipes are not in strong demand. Most everyone wants the main positional damage sets in their attacks, and does not deliberately try to slot up the exotic elements. Likewise, in 2012 the most easy to get Kinetic Combat piece was the Knockdown proc. When I used that cheesefest I always include it; everything else but that would need to be bought with merits, but that one could be bought with inf. And it added valuable mitigation, rather like a randomized version of Air Superiority.

I often take Air Superiority on a tanker, especially if nothing else stands out. Not for the damage - for the control.

I am ordinarily happy to have any AT on my team. Positron 1 is an unfortunate exception. Don't even try to run it with a Mastermind on the team. The final mission is unfinishable with one there. Bad enough that I'm calling it a bug. This TF was not designed with blueside masterminds as a possibility. The Shadow Simulacra will summon endless XP-free adds and probably have an AOE heal besides. They're all black on my screen, which makes it hard to single out that particular boss. They're all bosses, so control will not work well even if you have it on the team.

Started putting together another one. The Holy Office, Witchfinder General's base on Excelsior. HOLY-1610

I assume you mean resistance softcaps. I don't see a need, mostly because I already have a 50 tanker kitted out for master runs on Ms. Liberty and the like. Also, my impression is that defense trumps resistance in the late game. The problem isn't so much your survival, as it is with the debuffs flying all over the place in the late game, which you only avoid completely by not getting hit at all. Also, positional defense (melee/ranged/AoE) is widely available from set bonuses and AFAIK is the only thing that makes it likelier that the Confuse from that succubus is going to miss. (Bringing those things blueside was a Bad Idea.) On the other hand, a mixture - by adding Weave and a few set bonuses to a resistance based set like Fire - is better than all one or all the other. When you need more defense, or more resistance, there's always insps.

My bio/spines tanker just hit 34 this evening. I have not sat down to work out a build for her yet. What I am absolutely certain of is that each of the Spines attacks will be Frankenslotted with a Pacing of the Turtle Chance for Recharge Slow proc, starting with Quills when I get it. That proc enhancement was not in high demand in 2012, so I was able to get more than one working, and I remember it added quite a bit of mitigation on my Spines/WP scrapper. May sit down and work out a build sometime soon. EDIT - did not fall asleep, so.... Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.962 http://www.cohplanner.com/ Click this DataLink to open the build! Catrina: Level 50 Science Tanker Primary Power Set: Bio Armor Secondary Power Set: Spines Power Pool: Leaping Power Pool: Fighting Ancillary Pool: Energy Mastery Hero Profile: Level 1: Inexhaustible -- PrfShf-End%(A), PrfShf-EndMod(7), Heal-I(11), Heal-I(45) Level 1: Barb Swipe -- KntCmb-Acc/Dmg(A), KntCmb-Dmg/EndRdx(3), KntCmb-Dmg/Rchg(9), KntCmb-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(46) Level 2: Environmental Modification -- LucoftheG-Def/EndRdx(A), LucoftheG-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(3), LucoftheG-EndRdx/Rchg(9), LucoftheG-Def(50) Level 4: Spine Burst -- Mlt-Acc/Dmg(A), Mlt-Acc/EndRdx(5), Mlt-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(5), PcnoftheT--Rchg%(11) Level 6: Adaptation Level 8: Super Jump -- Jump-I(A) Level 10: Taunt -- Taunt-I(A) Level 12: Hardened Carapace -- TtnCtn-ResDam/EndRdx(A), TtnCtn-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(13), TtnCtn-EndRdx/Rchg(13), TtnCtn-EndRdx(45), TtnCtn-ResDam(50) Level 14: Evolving Armor -- TtnCtn-ResDam(A), TtnCtn-EndRdx(15), TtnCtn-ResDam/EndRdx(15), TtnCtn-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(25) Level 16: Ripper -- Obl-Acc/Rchg(A), Obl-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(17), Obl-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(17), Obl-Dmg/Rchg(21), PcnoftheT--Rchg%(42), PcnoftheT-Acc/EndRdx(46) Level 18: DNA Siphon -- TchoftheN-Acc/Heal(A), TchoftheN-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(19), TchoftheN-Acc/EndRdx/Heal/HP/Regen(19), Avl-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(21) Level 20: Build Up -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(25) Level 22: Ablative Carapace -- DctWnd-Heal/Rchg(A), DctWnd-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(23), DctWnd-Heal/EndRdx(23), DctWnd-Rchg(43) Level 24: Boxing -- Acc-I(A) Level 26: Genetic Contamination -- SprAvl-Acc/Dmg(A), SprAvl-Dmg/EndRdx(27), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(27), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(43), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(43), SprAvl-Rchg/KDProc(46) Level 28: Tough -- TtnCtn-EndRdx(A), TtnCtn-ResDam/EndRdx(29), TtnCtn-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(29) Level 30: Impale -- Rui-Acc/Dmg(A), Rui-Dmg/EndRdx(31), Rui-Dmg/Rchg(31), Rui-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(31), Rui-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(34), PcnoftheT--Rchg%(37) Level 32: Parasitic Aura -- ThfofEss-Acc/Heal(A), ThfofEss-Acc/EndRdx/Heal(33), ThfofEss-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(33), ThfofEss-Heal/Rchg(33), DctWnd-Heal/Rchg(34) Level 35: Quills -- PcnoftheT--Rchg%(A), Mlt-Acc/Dmg(36), Mlt-Acc/EndRdx(36), Mlt-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(36), Mlt-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(37), PcnoftheT-Acc/Slow(37) Level 38: Throw Spines -- Dtn-Dmg/EndRdx(A), Dtn-Acc/Dmg(39), Dtn-Dmg/Rchg(39), Dtn-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(39), PcnoftheT--Rchg%(40), PcnoftheT-Acc/Slow(40) Level 41: Weave -- Srn-EndRdx(A), Srn-Def/EndRdx(42), Srn-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(42) Level 44: Focused Accuracy -- EndRdx-I(A), EndRdx-I(45) Level 47: Physical Perfection -- EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(48), PrfShf-EndMod(48), PrfShf-End%(48) Level 49: Combat Jumping -- Ksm-Def/EndRdx(A), Ksm-EndRdx/Rchg(50) Level 1: Brawl -- Acc-I(A) Level 1: Gauntlet Level 1: Prestige Power Dash -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Slide -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Quick -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Rush -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Surge -- Empty(A) Level 1: Sprint -- Jump-I(A) Level 2: Rest -- RechRdx-I(A) Level 4: Ninja Run Level 2: Swift -- Run-I(A) Level 2: Health -- NmnCnv-Regen/Rcvry+(A), NmnCnv-Heal(40) Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A) Level 2: Stamina -- PrfShf-End%(A), PrfShf-EndMod(7), PrfShf-EndMod/Rchg(34) Level 6: Defensive Adaptation Level 6: Efficient Adaptation Level 6: Offensive Adaptation ------------ This is not about chasing the resistance caps. I am approaching Bio armor as an improved version of Fire or Willpower for scranky Tankers. No tanker's mitigation is inadequate out of the box before bonuses. Bio Armor has four different kinds of get out of trouble buttons. None are moments of awesome, but none have nasty crashes either. Being resistance based means you have a window of opportunity to foresee the need and use them. I already have a tanky tanker, that's Heraclea. This build uses chance-based unconventional mitigation as well, of a kind that doesn't show up in Mid's but IME is actually quite effective. This is also about the simple pleasure of running into groups of mobs and standing there watching them die. I have put Pacing of the Turtle Chance for Recharge Slows and usually one more from the set in almost everything that takes it. Choice of epic pools is provisional. So is slotting for Genetic Contamination.

Speaking of signature arcs, it would be really nice to have that Babylonian goddess wall from one of the villain signature arcs - think it was Ghost Widow's. In the mission you have to break it down IIRC - none of my villains are anywhere close to those levels.

I use frankenslotting to take advantage of exotic sets that do useful things that are in low demand. E.g. my bio/spines tanker will eventually have a Pacing of the Turtle recharge slow proc in every Spines attack that will take it. That recipe tended not to be in high demand in 2012. If four slotting an exotic like Pacing of the Turtle gives good bonuses I will use them as well, preferring accuracy, recharge. and endurance, and then slot maybe one accuracy and one damage IO for the other two slots. Powersets that take exotic debuff sets are the best candidates for frankenslotting.

It will be a while before I get the factory running again, but mighty strides have been taken in the month that Torchbearer has been out there. I have my main (Heraclea, Inv/DM, not Inv/SS this time) at 50+7 with all her Incarnate slots at least filled; team utility /rad in the low 40s, a second tankergal I am very much enjoying (Bio/Spines) just hit 30 tonight, a scrapper at 27, my Posi/Synapse farmer (fire/regen scrapper) has at least been made, as have a number of promising new alts. I have three story-oriented and all humorous AE missions to run for tickets. Because the devs have seeded the AH with salvage in a way that helps prop up the value of inf, I don't rely on AE as much any more. When a character needs rare salvage Hera buys it with inf if we don't have it in stock in the base. The 2012 factory was all about only selling and never buying at the AH. That's still what I do mostly, but I have been buying some salvage I need and don't have in stock. This fortunately is apparently needed less than once a week. What I miss most from 2012 was my stockpile of Halloween and Winter salvage. In 2012 I had at least 30 level 50s; now I have one. But I am too overwhelmingly happy that this game is back in any form to think of what was lost. What I used to miss most was my supergroup bases; used to go wandering through the Paragon Chat versions of my main bases until the sadness overwhelmed me. But my current base has options the old one never had (Roman columns! NPCs, inc. trainers and vendors), has max storage that's already filling up, and, of course, at least for the moment it's a living and breathing enterprise, not the preserved-in-formaldehyde Paragon Chat images. Bottom line: I am too overwhelmingly happy at this second chance to miss 2012 all that much.

This is Potnia Theron, yet another attempt at making a mastermind (Beasts/Time). The dogs and lions are easily the best looking and least annoying MM pets. The basic concept is an attempt to make a Minoan style snake goddess; oddly the best thing to make that skirt flap turned out to be one of the gunslinger buttcape pieces. The hair or hat is apparently your option, but there's none for a bird perched on your head; there's another version of the costume with the 'Princess' wimple that I don't quite like as much.