Ukase

So, before I go to suggestions/feedback, or even bug reports, I figured I'd ask here. The Draught of Fog inspiration says it's active for 15 minutes. And yet, for whatever reason, when I'm in the Font of Malevolence, I find it doesn't last nearly that long. More like 5 minutes. And sometimes only a couple of minutes. Is there some mechanic/debuff or something else at play that I'm unaware of?

Could have fooled me. It works in melee - doesn't work at range. Whether it's centered around the npc or the character doesn't really matter. If they won't relabel it as PBAoE, they might think about extending the range to make it a true Targeted AoE. Something like 40-60 feet.

I've been playing this game a long time. I wouldn't say I'm the best builder out there, but given some of the utter trash I see on these forums and the HC Discord and other discord channels, I definitively know I'm likely better than the average. Opinions will vary. So, there are many ways to build a character. None of them are wrong. None of them are right. Some will be optimal, some less so. Some much less so. The first thing in order for me to make a good build is to understand how I, the player, will use the character. If I make a character just to do one event, my build decisions are much simpler; if it's a character that I intend to experience as much as the game has to offer, I will likely need to use more than one build. But - before I talk about multiple builds, I'll share how I build my characters before Mids came out. First - am I hitting what I aim at? There's a thing called perception bias, and it's real. I remember the 2 misses against the EB when we're both left with a sliver of health far more clearly then when I froze the EB with my freeze ray for 1/2 a second. Mids is a tool that can aid in determining if you need to find a way to make your attacks more accurate, but if you're playing your character, if you're honest with yourself, your own eyes can tell you that. There's accuracy against npcs your own level, and there's accuracy against +5's. Both will require different amounts of accuracy. So, to start, I slot one accuracy SO in each attack. (this assumes you can afford them - not so cheap for a newer player) If I can't, I slot the best thing I can afford. If I can only afford Dual Origins, I'll slot 2 of them - to start. And I'll slot 1 damage, 1 recharge (or 1 end reduction) if the power uses more endurance than I might expect, like over 12 points of endurance. This is just for leveling up; And during the fighting, I'll look and see if my endurance use is a problem. I don't ever really assess damage because it doesn't matter - it's not enough. No matter what I slot in any attack, it will never do enough damage. So, I ensure I can hit what I'm aiming at, to the best of my ability, and it doesn't use so much endurance that I can't use the next attack. There are some passive accolades you may acquire to help with this, and before you get those, most public SGs will have base empowerment zones that will allow you to boost your end recovery for 2 pieces of common salvage, and one piece of uncommon salvage. The machine will tell you what those pieces are. I slot, I look and observe. Am I dying a lot? I should try to determine why. Did I join one of "those" teams where the team lead thinks a level 12 tank has enough armor to save the team from +4/8 mobs with no buffs or debuffs or sufficient dps? That can happen. Not often, but it can. But am I solo and set to +4/8 on a level 6 blaster? That's a great excuse to die early and often. But, if I'm dying because I can't kill them fast enough, I can look at my damage, or my defense and resistances. Since I know I'll never be able to boost damage that high without inspirations or external buffs, I might as well look to the fight pool or leadership pool. Or something else, like Sorcery for the Rune of Protection. It all depends on how often I'm landing in trouble. Just anecdotally, I was in Striga Isle trying to clobber Vampyri out in the wild. I only needed 23 more to get the slayer badge. And, I noticed I was missing a lot. This wasn't because of my build, it was because of getting debuffed by the Vamps. In those cases, I have two choices. Pop yellows as a reaction, or pop purple (lucks) to be proactive. If they don't hit me, they can't debuff me. It's better to use purples, imo. As for various debuff toggles like lingering radiation, I check to ensure I have the endurance to run them. If not, I increase my rate of recovery, or find a way to decrease my endurance use. Once I know I have my endurance use under control, then I can consider boosting recharge rates. That's how I would build my characters if I didn't have mids, or didn't trust it. (and there's evidence to suggest a "Trust but verify" approach with Mids would be best.

On my dominators, I just use H for hasten, as a key bind. That way I don't have to remember what key to use. It just makes sense to me. When I used a movement key, and it wasn't recharged yet, that sound drove me nuts! I tried playing without sound, but it's just not the same game without it.

This should be a known issue, but I've no idea. Just in case it's not, this makes no sense to me. Clearly, this is a PBAoE. So, my suggestion is this be properly configured for what it is.

Just for the sake of clarity for the OP, and anyone else, the term "softcap clamp" used by @aethereal is likely referring to this equation here:

I can respect the perspective, but try to realize some players don't have the free time to play that you might have. If you wanted all the badges in the event, and you only had a couple of hours a week to play, that might be enough time, depending on if you were lucky enough to catch the zombie apocalypse and the banner event. It all depends on how much they know about various events/badges. While I don't think we need to cater to people who only play sporadically, the past week I've just ignored Halloween, and candidly, across all levels, I haven't noticed it, other than having to choose which PI I wanted to zone into. That, and hami raids and msrs may take another moment or two to fill.

No; not really. I don't think it's a true bug; but a display error perhaps. I'm only reporting it because there may be some underlying issue you need to know about. Took my bane to the labyrinth. Used surveillance on the A of A, and saw that myself and about a dozen others had the Avatar's resistance floored, and then some. Easily in negative numbers. But, when I closed the window, I noticed I had zero influence. I wasn't too worried, I figure the Avatar of Achylus is still fairly new and not rolling with influence yet. Maybe I can get him to read Yomo's marketing guide. Anyway, I chose to wait until the avatar was defeated to stop using surveillance. And after he was defeated, I still had zero influence. I actually checked AH, just to be certain, and it was showing up there, just not in my combat attributes. Once I left the Font of Malevolence, the combat attributes began to cooperate and display the proper amount. I thought it amusing, but felt I should share what happened.

Sadly, I've found I have to visit a pylon and test each one and see it with my own eyes.

One thing I'd like to see in the labyrinth. No idea if this is feasible, or if there's a reason to not do it, or even a reason to do it. I see gladiators standing in this room or that. I know why they're there. For us to interact with. Maybe we get to fight them, maybe they give us some puzzling words of advice. But what if...there were a group of them, just roaming the different rooms? Maybe they're in pursuit of the mino themselves. Maybe they're in pursuit of some random person on the league. It just seems like it would be interesting/fun to run into multiple gladiators that fight as a team en route to the mini-benefactor temp pet. (well, that could be a reason to do it, or not do it, depending on your perspective) I know they spawn in groups in the labyrinth "arena" where we fight the mino, as well as in the Font of Malevolence. But why not in the mino hunt phase as well? Seems odd that they're always in groups during the last two phases, but not the first.

It's all a question of where the line would be drawn. Perhaps the easiest thing to do would be to remove the afk bubble, and that would likely put the afk-ers underneath the radar. To me, it's annoying, but I can always quit and do something else.

There are a number of solutions that could be tried, but invariably a solution to a problem usually ends up with collateral damage. Suppose the AFK timer in PI during the month of October were changed to 3 minutes? Well, that satisfies a good number of mooching afk-ers. Suppose it didn't matter if you were on a TF or AE arc, you still auto-logged after being idle?

Just anecdotally, how much the farmer gets passively depends on whether I have an alt or some other lucky player in the map with me. The only time I run the farm now is when I'm working on vet levels for an alt, or rarely, squeezing from level 30 to 35, as I find there's not much I want to do in those levels. The map I use is 44188. It's hit or miss. Sometimes, the npc travels inexplicably through a wall, leaving my farmer just standing there trying to follow it. Sometimes, it's caught in some trash barrels and the npc has disappeared, or is laying down on the ground several hundred feet around a corner. When it goes well, and it usually does, I can have anywhere from 1 to a dozen recipes. My best "haul" was four purples in one run. I checked my logs, and they all happened within 17 minutes. I thought I'd broken something, lol. Not used to that kind of luck. Even more rare than a purple is the respec recipe. I don't sell purples or pvp IOs, because most of my upcoming alts can use them, though I might burn through some converters to get them to be what I want. So, my proceeds may not be an ideal benchmark. Sans the purples and pvps, I get about 25M per map, before the first sale. It's tough to gauge how much I get from the sales of drops, because sometimes they sell fast, (by the next time I check) or instantly, and sometimes they take days to sale. I try to craft and convert within the map to be more efficient. If I had to guess, each IO I list gets me an average of 3M, so about 55-60M, discounting purples and pvp IOs. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less. It's all up to the rng, and the returning players who still think lotg 7.5% are 8M.

If I'm being over verbose, I only knew about this candy cauldron from one of my characters seeing the contact in Atlas, but the event has just started. And even bringing that character back to the contact in Atlas (after I got the event badges) the cauldron wasn't visible as an option any more. No idea how it's supposed to work, or what one should see if they have them or what one should see if they don't. But not a super big deal since I do have it in my bases now.

This is somewhat inappropriate. But a player had a name I wanted, and I asked for it, and they were kind enough to give it to me. 90% of the time, I never hear back from them, but this time, the player was in a discord channel I was in, Taskforce Junkies. So, a big thanks to @bunker hill for letting me have that name.

Silly stuff. Look, I won't sugarcoat it. There's a lot of silly stuff in CoH. But, I think the silliness is the draw. If I wanted to be analytical, or serious, would I really bother rescuing Fusionette multiple times? Would I chuckle at the Red Caps telling me "You not a prisoner!"? The problem is what's silly for some is not so silly for others. It's all subjective. Make it too serious, and some people will complain about that. So, silly? Yeah. Some of it is silly. But I don't care. I love it when I do Aeon and I am super pleased to see the silly banter from Becky. It made me stop and try to read more of the content. And I did. Most of it wasn't suited for me, but that's okay. Some of it's pretty funny. There's one or two stories that are compelling, and they're the newer stuff. But even so, once I read it once, I'm not going to read it again, other than a quick scan. If I want something good to read, I'll check my local library.

Rather than delete this, I'll just add to it, as it's resolved, and someone else may have the same issue. Apparently, once you get all the badges from Kane's Haunted House, this item is automatically awarded - so, since at least one of my characters did this, none of them could see it as an option.

Yeah, I've been in that room, but the way they worded it, made it sound incorrect.

So, there's a remote chance this is user error somehow. I go to Annah, click "Give Annah the salvage. I've got about 50 pieces of each costume in my inventory. There is no option to see "supergroup" items. Is this only available for select SGs or something? Or, only SG leaders? I've tried with multiple characters, and don't see the option. I did check the lower right to ensure both of those options to hide recipes for whatever reason were unchecked.

You're right! I recall a GM saying that one tip to increase times on the ski chalet was to be as short as you could be. I think we're just seeing the numbers as being the same, but perception is reality! Now I gotta come up with 250 prismatics for all my normal stature characters and make 'em tiny.

Next thing, I'll be reading that all travel powers should be inherent. Just kidding. I'm consistently amazed we're even allowed to use SG empowerment buffs. I would think once Invention set IOs came into being, these would have been disabled completely. I use the increase stealth multiple times a day for labyrinth and for my lowbies to zip around and grab explorations. And they're handy for the invention badges, too. And they're great for using surplus salvage that you'd rather not take the time to post on AH or vendor. Myself, I have a perception that some days, my SS is super, super fast. And other days, it's like I'm running through sand. Same character, same zone. The distinction seems to be the server. On Indom...fast. On Excelsior, not so fast. My combat attributes reflect the same values, so I know it's just a perception thing on my end for whatever reason. So, I'm not inclined to think SS needs any help, because it's just about as fast as TP, except in the larger zones without buildings in the path, like most of Nerva. During MSRs, my characters using SS will beat some tpers, and some other tpers will beat me. I think a lot has to do with who's driving the character with TP, and the binds/macros they're using. <shrug> That said, any increase in speed/range to any travel power is fine with me. I do not see any downside to doubling or quadrupling range or speed for any power. I would take flight more often if it were as fast as afterburner all the time and not just for a limited time.

I've done both Apex and Tin Mage. No recollection of seeing Nemesis in either. Or are you talking about entering some tunnel while you're in the midst of one of the two tfs? So, I guess my answer is no, as I'm not clear on what you're talking about here.

That's fair. I shouldn't have stated it like that. In my experience, many players are quite up front about putting this or that power on auto. Mind you, I haven't been told that specifically in a year or so, it's entirely possible those players have moved on or have simply stopped telling me.

Some are doing just that. A fair number are not, only checking back in to keep from getting logged out. Sure. I just drop blizzard on a target and hit 2 or 3 critters. That's horribly inefficient. It's far better to see when a group are running in after a tank and drop it on them. If there are no larger groups, then sure, tab away. But in my experience, I have to look for the groups - because they don't come into the bowl. They stop at the rim and use ranged attacks, except for the ones that spawn into the bowl. Pulling the Rikti literally into the bowl is nigh impossible when I'm the tank. There tends to be multiple tanks per "alley-ways" so sometimes you have to go way out to try and bring the Rikti to the bowl. But they always stop at the rim, even when I would essentially crawl at a snails pace, taunting the whole time, slapping them with some ranged attack like Laser Beam Eyes. And that's with a tank with 6 slotted and +5 boosted taunt. I see an occasional ice tank have slightly better luck, but not much better. Now, that's just my anecdotal experience when I'm on a tank. On a ranged character, I will target through the hvas when tab is picking up the drop ship instead of a rikti npc. But I try to use tab, but usually those targets are way beyond the ramp and up at the next level by the grates. And for the ones on the rims, those are the ones I will smack with any attack that's handy. Generally the ones I have proc'd. And because I can only see them when I'm close to them, that means going up on the ramp. Perhaps there is some "approved" way to do an msr that I'm not hearing about. I do hear leaders/(and non-leaders) urging tanks/taunters/pullers to bring the rikti into the bowl. Fold space is largely useless against them in my experience. I guess you have to use an ultimate, but thus far when I've tried the ultimate, 1 showed up, the other 5 or 6 ignored it. So, I stopped trying to use ultimates. But while taunt gets their attention, they get too distracted in my experience at the rim with all the targets. And it's all good because they're all dead in a few seconds anyway. In the afternoon msrs, I generally get about 1400-1600 vg merits. Only when the team is short a couple of members or we have a couple of sub-20's do I not get a good amount of them. If I'm doing it wrong, so far nobody's said a peep. And I would assume that's because I'm not doing it wrong, or they're semi-afk. Many players who aren't afk are doing the same things I am, because I see them doing it. I'm sure there are some sharp players who stick it out in the center and maybe have better graphics and can see them well enough to tag them and continue to tab & fire, tab & fire. But I would venture these are less than half the people on any given raid. And I would also suggest that this can vary from raid to raid. Some raids, I've seen players get much better luck with fold space than I ever did. And when that happens, I don't need to go looking, they come to me. I can drop my AoEs to my heart's content. Maybe they had their fold space three slotted, or maybe they have better accuracy/toHit than my character did. To be transparent, I only tried the ultimate once, and had lackluster results. I can try again next time.

What are you saying here? What difference does it make where the players choose to stand to attack the rikti? The sole purpose of leaving the bowl is to engage the rikti. You should only return to the bowl for buffs, not remain in the bowl. The players in the bowl are generally the folks who are afk with powers on auto-fire. And it's not like you can actually target specific rikti like magus or priests within the central cluster, because they don't render visible until you're within 50 feet of them or so. Most players just spawn their HVAS, and target through it with an attack on auto-fire. Any player fighting on the ramps is a bonus, not a detriment. It means they're actually playing, unlike the lazy folks spamming that one power on auto-fire. At least, that's what I see when I msr. I'm always on the ramps because that's where the rikti are, except for when they spawn in the bowl - and that's when I use judgement and other nukes in the bowl. But the rest of the time - go out and clobber the rikti. There's no added value by sitting there and hoping you get to find and target one, except when they spawn on top of you - which isn't often enough.