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I’d like a clear order of arcs and TFs too, and I don’t think Paragon Wiki really clears it up anywhere, unless I’m looking in the wrong places. It’s a bit muddy with arcs like Provost Marchand turning up at level 30 and insisting not to be done until after Dark Astoria. I’d say, though, that it makes sense to do Who Will Die early and before any Praetorian content. Most of the game has been altered to accommodate the events in that occur in there.

I agree that SOs should be the agreed baseline, but we’re talking about issues that can be resolved with relative ease. The stalker ATOs totally transform the dynamics of the AT, in my experience moreso than other ATOs. I struggled with a DB stalker on live (in a kinda enjoyable challenge, carried-by- concept sort of way), but I could see how the ATOs could really up the pace of the powerset. I’d also add to the ‘ignore the combos on a stalker’ crowd.

I second this, but maybe suggest a melee dps as your target through. As a tank, once we’re down to a few wounded stragglers, I’d be heading off into the next group to try and get them huddled up nicely before the immobs fire off. If everyone was targeting through me, we’d be leaving half-finished lieutenants everywhere.

As an Englishman, I resent this sentiment. Complaining about the weather is our schtick.

I think you’re right, and this was a pretty big contributor to me stopping playing the game on live. Not so much that I disagreed with the playstyle, but as a casual player who played a few months on and a few months off it was very hard to enjoy new content when I couldn’t afford a build that could keep up with the team, nor go at a pace that made the TF’s narrative feel coherent. But I think this is a general MMO issue anyway. It’s much worse in swtor, where a cutscene is only skipped if all players try and skip it, but many players get irate if you don’t. If you’re a month or two late to new content, you might not have the opportunity to enjoy it at a slower pace. HC’s soloable TFs and more affordable economy go a REALLY long way to solving that problem for me.

It sounds like you’re actually fighting the mobs around the cysts too, plus the ambushes. These individual munchkins were just hitting the ten cysts to complete the mission speedrun style, disregarding the nictus and the ambushes. (I could have been clearer) I’d not mind at all if I could see that you were taking your time in your direction; I still get a chance to play the game as well in a different direction. And I admit to probably being one of the melee grunts hacking down your confused EBs.

Oh absolutely. It’d be weird to meticulously pick off every roman in a speed ITF. If that’s what folks have agreed to, then absolutely play it that way. But the unsolicited speed runner is usually one rando in the PuG who’s decided to just take off. I’ve been in a case where the leader has asked them to stick with the team but they silently cracked on as if they think they’re doing everyone a favour. That’s my biggest bugbear with PuGs anyway. It doesn’t happen often, but I get sad when it does. I kinda wanna just play the game.

Without a doubt, the biggest threat in the game is a player who can’t be communicated with. The type I’ve seen regularly is on ITF, when one munchkin would run from cyst to cyst on the second mission and just assume that the rest of the team is following him or are capable of dealing with the ambushes. Capable or not, I’ve decided I’ll start leaving TFs when this happens. It’s just straight up rude.

The new MSR instance still has daytime. nearly godamn blinded me.

Try to make sure you can cope with psi. My invuln tanker can have hiccups herding on the MSR if I’m at the aggro cap for too long, so I give myself enough time betweens herds to make sure I have at least one of Dull Pain, Elusive Mind or Barrier Destiny recharged and ready. I have a fire tank in the works but I have no idea if he’d even be up for it unless I slot for it specifically. Definitely going to try that trick with grates, that sounds.... great!

I saw you doing this in action this weekend during a Zombie invasion and I gotta say it's one of the coolest dang things I've ever seen.

I've noticed exactly this and wondered the same. I seemed to get ECs sometime in the first mission or two of TFs and then never again. It can't be a coincidence at this point.

I'm so angry at this thread.

Actually, it's a bit different to this. The typing bubble is actually hijacking the afk flag. Usually that little bubble would read 'afk' when a player is stood still for a certain length of time or you can force it with the /afk command. You can give the little bubble custom text with /afk <custom text here>, and the bubble will read whatever you've written. So what you're seeing is people using it in a macro bind in conjuction with the startchat command when they hit the enter key to start typing. The bind might be something like: /bind enter "afk typing$$startchat" where 'enter' is the keyboard key being bound, 'typing' is the custom text in the afk bubble, $$ separates the two commands and startchat places the cursor in the chat box.

I should have mentioned your build formed the base of mine. There’s some small adjustment for theme and for how I found I was playing, but the biggest changes came in cost reduction. Patching up the defences without the winter sets took a lot out of the build. So I’m not trying to compete by any means, just being aware of my budget and using your outcome as a benchmark. When December roles around and the winter sets become available through playing the content (presumably), I’m sure the build will transform entirely, but this was my short-term aim. I definitely need to look back now and decide on new changes. Aid Self is very tempting if I could put up with the unthematic look of the pool. She dinged 50 last week and she’s quite a lot of fun when she isn’t mezzed. Urgently gotta get Clarion on her.

I have no idea; I’ve only ever used it on the hydra trial. It might be that it works when the map has no base portal or beacon. So the same thing might work in the Hollows tunnels for instance.

CoH also has beautiful world design compared with Champions. Champions seems mostly empty to me, with a few points of interest that don't really relate well to one another. Especially I-forgot-the-name city, where the city centre had those obnoxious, inescapably large, ugly skyscrapers and everything else looks like it could be 80's small scale architecture. Those skyscrapers were like a few shops (for superheroes) or an arena (for superheroes), it broke the immersion. Why were these hideous monuments erected? Why are significant buildings like the town hall and the superhero-group-I-forgot-the-name-again headquarters dwarfed and made to feel like a byproduct by these irrelevant monstrosities? I mean look at this nonsense. They don't even make sense against each other. One is future-art-deco and the next is a pair of long-ass tubes. I think there's a blimp on top or something. Paragon City, The Rogue Isles and Praetoria all hold together really nicely. The cities are designed with focal points in mind. The Atlas Statue, Cole's Tower and The Tangle are all great scales for the world around them and have the meaningfulness to back them up. Good world design goes a very long way to make the world feel engaging, regardless of the quality of the graphics.

I'm sorry if this is inaccurate information in any way. It's entirely possible that I've misunderstood the rules here, but here's my understanding: It's pretty circumstantial. Attuned means that any set bonuses you gain will sustain when you exemplar below the normal enhancement effectiveness range. For instance if you have level 50 sets, you'll lose those set bonuses once you exemp below level 47, but attuned sets will keep the bonuses. However if the set has a minimum level (Say, Obliteration, which has a minimum level of 30), then that cap is still in place and the bonus will stop working 3 levels below (level 27 for Obliteration). Usually, you will want to attune so that your bonuses come with you through as much of the game's content as possible. Boosted means that the effectiveness of that enhancement's normal properties are increased. A good application could be on hasten, where two +5 boosted recharge enhancements would do approximately the job of three unboosted recharge enhancements and saves you a whole slot. If you use this on a level 50 IO set, then their set bonuses will still only work down to level 47. You can't refund boosters or catalysts once they have been use.

They're the same thing. You use a catalyst to make an enhancement attuned. I guess some people might call that being 'catalyzed', but I've never heard that before. The catalyst can also make ATOs and WinterOs superior, but they were attuned in the first place. Maybe that's what people meant by catalyzed.

Taxibot MVP.

I replaced some of the Kinetic Melee sound effects with those from some of Reichsman's attacks, which are far more gentle to listen to but still have that 'momentum then whack' sound. Some trial-and-error later, they match up pretty well. However, after I got my KM/bio to 50, I just put them to bed and left them there. Even have half a mind to reroll them as a MA/Bio, just for how tedious the KM animations are. Having done it, I'd definitely not pick it for a speedster build.

If you're in an SG with a medporter in the base, the option to go to base will be available alongside the hospital option when you die. If you then leave the base through the normal entrance, it will plop you right outside the mission. This title gave me flashbacks to The Hollows in the early days.

I don't think it would improve quality of life at all. I for one would be lost all the time.

Phwoah, what a question... With infinite technical knowledge and infinite man-hours, I wouldn't say it's out of the question at all. Those are huge and obvious restrictions. I looked at the map for a while after reading this. There's a lot of space doing nothing in between the war walls and the zones don't actually tessellate. It could be resolved, but some stretching or extending of the zones might be necessary. Some new areas would be needed, such as the bridge/tunnel between Steel and Boomtown. If Peregrine Isle were added to this borderless city, then there are whole shores that would need to be considered. Thematically, some zones don't sit well together. Crey's Folly and Eden would be particularly odd zones to try to consolidate into their neighbours, right down to having a different 'tint'.

I usually 'feel out' a build up to 50 rather than plan ahead, with the exception of my Warshade who uses the popular human-only build found here and a nearly-petless MM where I wanted to make sure it could work. I usually eat through at least two respecs per character. That MM needed high end IOs slotted as soon as possible in order to be effective. She needed a respec around about lvl 38, but even so I could keep most of the stuff i had slotted and either store/sell anything that I'm no longer using. It's pretty expensive for a casual player, but it's really fun having access to bonuses and that extra 'oomph' from sets. I think my 50 defender, however, is yet to use a respec but since they were my first 50 on HC and I've barely touched them since, they're still on an SO build. They'd need a respec if I wanted to kit them out properly.