Lazarillo

I appreciate the offer, I play on Everlasting, and you can hit me up as @Lazarillo if you've got something lined up, but don't feel too compelled, since I can go back later, if nothing else. And Yeah, I can find other teams, too, though it's kinda hard as it's a combination of the elements of [playing villainside] and [everyone outlevels stuff thanks to DfB].

The option doesn't seem to appear for MMs or Controllers, though, only for Defenders and Corruptors (probably just an oversight, but dunno what the odds are of it being fixed any time in the forseeable future).

Okay, so, got this guy, he's level 15, having a great time, but he needs the Kings Row badge from the Mayhem Mission for the Accolade. Unfortunately, the game won't let me take missions from the newspaper in Port Oaks, and in Cap au Diable, I'm now 0-for-3 in getting Kings Row, instead of Skyway. The wiki says it's possible if you turn down the Broker the first time, or you refuse to take a contact for them, but so far, that's not working. I know one of the "i25" upgrades will eventually let me replay the old missions. Should I just move on?

Since Savage has no redraw, and its secondary boosts recharge, my first thought would be "something with a lot of helpful click effects". I bet Savage/Fire would be nice, though that's just sorta theory/numbers.

Savage Melee synergizes nicely with Brutes, thanks to its quick attacks. Plus, Blood Frenzy is essentially fury for your Endurance and Recharge.

A bunch of handy story/contact indexes that were in the general "guides" section appear to have vanished during the rearrangement. Any chance they can be salvaged? These are a couple of the (now dead) links if it helps: https://score.savecoh.com/index.php/topic,1405.0.html https://score.savecoh.com/index.php/topic,1407.0.html

No, really? The i24 notes mention the level range on the Skulls was bumped up to level 24, and Eagle-Eye's arc ends with a lotta stuff unresolved: Morana's just kinda gone (and apparently with a plan to bust Chernobog out of jail), BABs is out for the count and possibly had something ambiguous done to him, and Veles is...beaten, I think(?)...but it's left really unclear. However, nothing happens after that arc, and nobody seems to follow-up. Did Morana hightail it to First Ward (which I've mostly ignored)? Was it lumped into Pitstop's TF when she took over for Sister Psyche? Or was this was a casualty of the game's original untimely demise, like there was a plan to do a couple more arcs to finish things off in i25 (the original one), and that never came?

It's nice! Perfect for when I wanna look frosty but not carry the whole igloo with me (which is usually).

So since the numbers in-game are all so vague (so many just tagged as "[special]damage") I just did a little bit of basic number running against a Pylon, and I definitely think my initial assessment was the result of misjudged assumptions and the set not being what I thought it would be at first. Hemorrhage, especially, gets a bunch of bonus ticks when you land a critical hit, and its total damage is pretty through the roof. Here are the numbers I got. Since the character I ran is pretty twinked out, I included a couple ancillary abilities for comparison's sake: Soul Mastery.Dark Blast: 103.82 Soul Mastery.Soul Storm: 72.82 Savage Strike: 80.04 base, 14.42-57.68 over time. Base is doubled on a crit, DoT is unaffected. Maiming Slash: 122.28 base, 22.02-88.08 over time. Base is doubled on a crit, DoT is unaffected. Assassin's Frenzy (exposed): 290.69 base. Doubled on a crit. No DoT. Assassin's Frenzy (Hidden): 737.27. No DoT. Rending Flurry (no Blood Frenzy): 121.88 base, 9.79-39.16 over time. Base is doubled on a crit, DoT is unaffected. Rending Flurry (max Blood Frenzy): 146.26 base, 9.79-39.16 over time. Base is doubled on a crit, DoT is unaffected. Now Hemorrhage does lots of different things based on how much Blood Frenzy you've got and whether it lands a Hidden/Critical hit, so I tried it a few different ways. The other "interesting" thing about Hemorrhage is that always does the same upfront damage and then appears to always register a Critical hit for the additional Frenzy-based damage (whether you have any to contribute to it or not). It then deals 2 simultaneous DoTs, both of which scale up with additional stacks of Blood Frenzy. If you do land a Critical Hit (or a Hidden one) the actual critical damage on the initial hit is lumped in with the faux-critical damage, but there's secret additional critical damage in the form of a third DoT that, like the other two, scales up. It can get pretty wild! Here's how the numbers came out: Non-Hidden, No Blood Frenzy: 80.11 base portion, 33.75 "critical" portion, 244.5 damage over time. Non-Hidden, Max Blood Frenzy: 80.11 base portion, 40.62 "critical" portion, 399.1 damage over time. Hidden, No Blood Frenzy: 80.11 base portion, 80.11 "critical" portion, 667.56 damage over time. Hidden, Max Blood Frenzy: 80.11 base portion, 80.11 "critical" portion, 996.89 damage over time. And for fun, I added a Build-Up to that last one: 134.21 base portion, 134.21 "critical" portion, 1401.88 damage over time. So, yeah, I was mistaken. Hemorrhage is happy time. Savage Leap is still kinda meh (I also played with it a little, got up to 174-ish damage at best range, but from too far away, it appears it bugs out and does no damage, so it's a gamble, plus, as noted in my first post, it breaks Hide, and has a 0% chance to deal Critical damage even when Hidden. And point-blank it only does around 105, so it's not suited to Stalking. Haven't messed with Rending Flurry yet. I'll have to give it a test drive when I have more time. ADDENDUM: Okay, checked on Rending Flurry. It works the same way as the basic ST attacks, just with the base damage slightly increased based on Blood Frenzy stacks. I included its numbers above as well; can't say I'm super impressed with them either, but it's better than Savage Leap, at least. Overall, I'd say the answer to the original question I posited was "I'm doing it wrong". For my "live" build, I'm thinking I'll replace Savage Leap with Spring Attack (the character in question is a /DA, so I'm already well into Leaping), assuming it does work like Lightning Rod, because even without the Blood Frenzy boost, a Hidden Hemorrhage is actually a touch more damaging than Assassin's Frenzy (providing you can give it five seconds to finish ticking) anyway, so it seems like a good, strong follow-up. Will probably keep Rending Flurry for a touch of AoE in groups, but the real shine of this set seems to be in the fast-and-furious approach to single target hits.

Very Kobayashi Maru of you there. But a true hero is someone who finds a way to save the day no matter what, so I approve.

The Roy Cooling arc in the 20s for heroes. You end up fighting the Sky Raiders only for it to turn out the Malta Group is using them as a patsy and really the ones pulling the strings, which ticked me off for two reasons: one, Malta is supposed to be suuuuuper seekrit until Crimson and Indigo expose them later on, yet Cooling is like "oh, yeah, those guys, everybody knows those guys", and two, there actually is another high level faction that was already known to be secretly controlling the Sky Raiders and using them as patsies, and that faction would've worked in the arc just as well, just as a sort of alternative reveal of who it is. So yeah, I'd swap the faction that's secretly behind the arc, because it felt like the person who wrote it wasn't really familiar with previous mission lore. Does that count?

Prolly 'cause /Cold is an i25 thing and a lot of people missed it because it doesn't stand out quite as much as /Rad or /Kin?

Ah, found the command code. It's "/costume_ultra_tailor". I just changed it on my personal one to be available to any character, and once I logged into a character and used the command, it's now the default on all Tailors (including trainers). It does appear to be a leeeeetle buggy with regards to changing all costumes, though, so be careful with it and make sure you save any costumes before using them.

I had a Spines/Ninja Stalker back in the day, and she was pretty fabbo. Stalkers lose the damage aura, but getting the extra ranged stuff compared to other Stalker sets was nice, and it's a little similar, but more versatile, than Claws. That said, one of the big appeals of the set, I think, was probably being able to double-up on damage auras (I also played a Spines/Dark Scrapper, but only briefly, talk about sucking wind!), and Spines/Bio can get you that on the non-Stalker ATs.

I've got a LAN server set up. It's not nearly as much of an...experience as getting to play with everyone else (although the easy twinkage is nice), but I'm confident at this point that I will only go without CoX when/if I want to do so, going forward, one way or another.

Ah, yeah, I see what you're saying. Sorry for the misunderstanding. It's weird because it was working at one point, I thought, but now it seems to not be on our LAN server either. Maybe I'm just remembering wrong and did my checking on Homecoming. I can confirm it's not the Gold Club badge, though.

You can get the Overwhelming Force set from the Merit Vendor. 100 Merits per enhancement, IIRC.

Ah, cool. I knew there were a few late-introduced story arcs that I never got around to back in the day. Guess this is another one to look forward to. Thanks!

Just came upon a strange individual while moseying around Sharkhead Island. I don't remember this story arc...is it new?

Messed around with the set a bit earlier in a private setting where I could try a high-end build, and it seems like the set is not very Stalker-friendly. Savage Leap breaks Hide, unlike, say, Lightning Rod, so it doesn't work as well as an opener, and that's a problem, since it's meant to build up Blood Frenzy at the start of battle. The "big hit" Power of the set is Hemorrhage, which is mostly a DoT and similarly doesn't appear to Crit for very good numbers. That said, since I sorta jumped it up, it could be there's some more to the "flow" of the set that I didn't have a chance to learn. Has anyone else given it a try? Is there anything more to it, or is it just better suited to Brutes?

A note on (Bitter) Freeze Ray...it looks like they both got a damage buff (massive, in Freeze Ray's case). Regular Freeze Ray does almost as Bitter Ice Blast, and Bitter Freeze Ray does even more than BiB (though it's damage relative to time is still rather low). Regardless, Freeze Ray might be worth slotting for a bit of damage, too.

As I understand it, the way it works is that only specific tailors will change body types. These are the named stylists at Icon (Serge, et. al) blueside, Facemaker Surgeons redside, the woman standing outside the tailor building goldside (forget her name) and the "body seamstress" in the Tiki Lounge. None of these appear to be able to change VEATs in their default uniform, but I've tested several of the others with other characters and they seem to work. I don't think it's tied to a badge.

You can't "roll a villain warshade" (or a villain peacebringer, for that matter). Those archetypes are forced to start blueside and can only switch alignments later. You actually kinda can. Roll a Kheldian. Run to KR and go to Pocket D before starting any missions and talk to Null. Have him change your Alignment to Villain or Rogue. Go back out to Port Oakes, then to Mercy. Start Kuzmin's arc like any other new villain. Voila. Works for VEATs too. ...doesn't stop Voids and Quantums from spawning on Kheldians though.

Only beef with Bots/Rad is that Fallout doesn't work on the pets (or so I hear). How satisfying it would've been to be able to be, like "whoops, unstable power core!" and then blow up the bot your enemies thought they defeated. Outside o'that, yeah, it seems pretty grand, though I'm not far with mine, either.

So something I noticed today, which is probably a bug/glitch, but kinda interesting anyway: I just started trying a Fire/Ninja Sentinel, and sometimes after my Opportunity wears off, the bar was staying full. I suspect it's related to one or two possibilities (which may be connected). 1. I notice that there's a very short time, like a tenth of a second or less, when the bar switches back to its normal color at the end of Opportunity, but before it resets. Possibly triggering damage during this very, very short window is the cause. 2. Related to the above, being as I was playing Fire/, it's possible that the DoTs are having a similar effect to what I described in (1). Anyone else run into something like this? I can't seem to make it happen, but it's super gravy when it does.