Yomo Kimyata

a few years ago I made a villain group based on the seven deadly sins. Each server surprisingly had at least two of the basic names available, but none had all seven.

I'd say from my chart, it's hard to go wrong with Bio, Radiation, or Ice as an armor. After that, it's mainly up to what do you like looking at attack-wise. Staff/Bio; Ice/Radiation; Battle Axe/Ice are solid top 3s, but I'll throw in Dark Melee/Regen and Broadsword/Invulnerability as outliers that I have a special spot in my heart for.

I like this. It’s basically bringing back training origin enhancements without having people scream about how useless they are. if you are learning to play, learn. It’s not the devs responsibility to give you free access to powerful enhancements all the time. Remember that SOs at level 2 are not your god given right.

There is probably something to this. I look at the example of hero/winter packs, which were in very short supply on Live but were prevalent in very large numbers here on HC. The solution was, I believe, to put a governor on it to space out transactions and relieve pressure on the system. on the one hand, the overall /AH has far fewer individual users than live, and population at any given point in time is lower than live, so you would expect the system could handle the stress since it handled it on live. on the other hand, each of my characters has 150 to 200 market slots, versus about 20-30 on live, so was that decision by the HC devs short sighted? If you “claim all” on the /AH it hangs it you have more than about 25 items. Also, I think I recall that the /AH had its own server on Live, which I do not believe is the case on HC. That may explain so many ghost last 5s, but I’m not an IT person. I’m just a boxer dog swimming in a pool.

I'm not a dev either, but if I were, my fear in mucking around with the /AH code and breaking it would be paramount. My suggestion on that would be that they build an entirely new /AH from scratch with solid database code without dismantling the current one. Let them run concurrently for some time, get people to move items to the new one, then stop support for the legacy code.

A PUG is just like every group project you have ever had to work on in school or a work session. The weakest link will often define the overall success, and a lot of the time one person will shoulder everything simply because they can't stand the idea of someone else effing it up and having their reputation burnished. However, who cares?!? This is a simple game, and there is absolutely nothing at stake. If you are running a MoTF or +4 difficulty for rewards, sure, take your time and recruit wisely. Otherwise, who cares if someone hasn't made an optimized build, or are trying out a new build for the first time, or didn't realize that their immobilize power overrides knockdown, or a billion other things. When I have time to team, I will build it myself and choose the content. And I KNOW that if need be I can solo it by myself, so why get my knickers in a wad? If other people are having fun and hopefully learning things, that's a win in my book. However, I have no truck with griefers, and there are plenty of players out there who are classic dark triad personalities.

In before anyone talks about how much they hate regen! I'd go with brute for the better hp cap and better resists.

Scrappers. I've had a few. But then again,

If they want to allow "cheat codes", it doesn't make sense to gatekeep them to specific locations, in my opinion. That said, if I had my way the START vendor would only be found in the remains of a vanquished Hamidon.

Since I've joined HC, I've noticed a few different varieties of display bugs, and they *tend* to focus on specific items. I'm not sure if anyone has every complied a comprehensive list. Type 1: The item alternates between two different price histories, only one of which is accurate for that item. The other history may be for another item, but I sometimes see price points that I can't attach to any other particular item in the database. These also get confusing, because if you put in a high bid on the item and you pay way too much for it because of the prices you see listed, now the true price history will have an outlier in it as well. Type 2: The item's price history is more or less true, but with frequent outliers. I don't know if those outliers are from other items or not. In your picture, those sub-million prints might be for another item, like some random crafted IO, but if this were a Type 1 then than other IO would have had an 11mm print, and that might have been noticed. Maybe. There are probably a few other types if I spend some time thinking about it. There are also variations on how often the displays bug. Type A: Always Type B: Periodically, but not seemingly predictably so.

This specific item has always been affected by the display bug. I will bet an astonishingly large amount of money that trades 1,2,3,5 never happened on this item on that date.

I step out of Outbreak/Breakout and put my settings at +1/x1, bosses, AV (the last one I'll take back if it's too much, but it's generally doable). Regardless of AT. Then I will up things as I see fit. A reasonable progression is +1/x1 to +1/x3 to +2/x3 to +2/x5 to +3/x5 to +3/x8. I'm almost always at +3/x8 in my 40s and usually wait for +4 until I ding 50, but not always.

If I recall correctly is was 2mm inf to 1 prestige, and I'm amazed I remember that, and I hope it's even accurate! EDIT: oops, not even close, bud!

Dopplegangers cheat. Their powers are selected from your sets, and often are of higher levels than the "should" be. But then again, when your level 24 exemps down to 12, they also have access to powers they shouldn't have. I don't know the exact rules for dopplegangers, but this seems to be working as intended.

Sounds like that was the server after all!

Exactly! Culture is relative and familiarity breeds contempt.

What would you have said to him if he said to you, "Hey! I like Bud Light!"?

Looking around a bit, I have noticed that a blank price history when I call up an item is becoming more and more common. And by that I see it happening at least half the time. My old standby was to put in a low bid on the item and hit the Find button in order to refresh prices. This seems to still eventually work, but often it takes thirty+ seconds and thirty+ pushes of the Find button. I did recently switch out my antivirus protection, but I wanted to check to see if anyone else was noticing this as well. I've only noticed it post 27/7, but I'm open minded enough to consider it might be the update, it might be my system, it might be something else entirely.

Between Bio Armor and Shield Defense I am going to go with Bio Armor first and foremost simply because I like Bio Armor and I'm lukewarm on Shield. Mechanically, I'd probably make the same decision. The new and massively powerful Battle Axe set has a few things that characterize it: pure lethal damage, at least a chance of knockDOWN in every attack except Swoop which has knockUP, attacks that have been upgraded from cones to AoEs or targeted AoEs, and the reverse repel effect of Axe Cyclone which draws enemies close to you. Only lethal damage to me means I'm looking for other sources of damage that are not lethal; Shield has smashing damage, but that is going to be generally resisted the same as lethal, but bio has some minor toxic. Knock* means lots of opportunities to slot a Force Feedback +recharge, which means lots of global recharge; Bio has a bunch of clicks that really benefit from recharge, while only Shield Charge really benefits from the Shield side; AoEs and the reverse repel tell me that the set will benefit from PBAoEs; again, I see this helping Bio a lot more than Shield. Three factors outside of any synergies: Bio has heals but Shield doesn't; Shield is easy to soft cap defenses while Bio isn't; Shield is endurance hungry while Bio has a couple of endurance tools available. Two more I just thought of: Shield has repel resistance, which is becoming more and more relevant in the end game; Bio tends to have uglier graphics.

In your defense, we should all remember that the origins of Homecoming was a secret "illegal" server that hosted veteran players who played amongst themselves for seven years. Most changes the HC devs have made have been targeted towards veteran players and making their progress better by their own personal standards. Those standards have always seemed to me to be "make it easier and faster to do what I want to do" and since every last one of them was an experienced player, inf really wasn't an issue. So we get rules like getting signature powers earlier (so your 20s are filled with getting great new useful powers, but you can't slot them worth a damn until the 30s) and making SOs available at level 2. Level 2!!! Against your defense, why in the world are you buying SOs from the vendor? There are DOs right at the top, and they are so much cheaper. Your drops from defeating mobs will often be SOs that you can sell if you can't use, and selling SOs to buy DOs is simple. Could it be that not only do you want the overpowered goodies early (which I personally think was a terrible idea) but you also want to get all those overpowered goodies for cheap or free? (I think this too is a terrible idea). I absolutely agree that (maybe up until this recent issue) the devs have focused on giving toys earlier and earlier, but they haven't focused on making those toys cheap enough for people who (in your words) don't know how to play the game. Well, as you learn to play the game you'll learn how to get those toys, but until then, why not spend your inf on the cheaper ones that may not be the absolute top of the line?

Not a fan; possibly that's because I'm using it incorrectly but to me it feels like a mash-up between Craigslist and an internet chat room circa 1995. Very disorganized, very stream of consciousness. I can understand using it to try to put teams together on the fly, but for my purposes, good old LFG chat works fine. Nothing beats good old LFG chat, thinks Bart. Someone could be giving away gold bars on Discord, and I still wouldn't use it. Probably because I wouldn't know how to sort through it to find the gold bars in a timely fashion.

Happy Leap Day everyone! I'm going to be making some edits to the original post but here's the upshot -- I no longer consider myself obligated to respond to ingame emails in a timely fashion. When and if I log in, and there are requests, and you're not already on my list, I'll hook you up! However, I make no promises on timing -- maybe I'll see it right away, maybe it will take me a few weeks, maybe I forever leave the game and never see it. Who knows? That breathless antici---- pation should add a little frisson to the mix. Happy hunting!

This is completely pie in the sky and I don't expect anyone to spend even a second trying to make this happen, but: I would really benefit from some sort of in-game manager where I could leave myself notes and have reminder alarms pop-up in game. Like "Log in on Newby Noobface, Tuesday 9pm" Yes, one could certainly use management software or even a pad of paper and a clock to manage this. I'm just throwing out one of the wishiest things on my wish list.