Ukase

Email goes across all servers.

Just goes to show you, perceptions will differ. I don't remember things ever being a grind. I don't recall things being slow. I cannot for the life of me imagine, leveling a character to the 20's and then stopping and rolling another character because it takes too long to get to the next level. That kind of talk just puzzles me. I simply can't wrap my head around it. That's like having a cake, but not icing it. But that's just my own limited ability to think outside my own experience. I still would love the game to go back to the way it was when I first started, in issue 3. I never knew what an MMO was. When I got the game, I had no idea there would be other people playing in the same instance I was in! Jack Emmert was all about teaming. I had ZERO interest in that. Group up with strangers? That made - and still makes no sense to me. Why? If I wanted to be social, I'd go out for a beer, wouldn't I? But, slowly, I began to figure things out, and the reasons why Jack directed the development in the direction he did. (opinions still vary on this!) I was so bothered by the change that I asked for my money back when issue 4 hit. Circuit City looked at me like I was crazy. I said, "I bought the game a certain way - now they've changed the way it's to be played! That's bait and switch!" I laugh when I think about it now. It really bothered me. The Arena had been introduced, and everyone had an opinion on pvp. Most everyone had been playing some other game - and continued to play those other games, while still playing CoH. That made no sense to me, either. You're paying $15 a month to play as much as you want - why would you dilute your time among other games? Just let your sub lapse until you're ready to commit. Again - just my limited, warped view of the world at the time. I still would love to go back to 1 acc, 5 damage. Or 1 acc, 4 damage 1 rech. But, I have the feeling that my characters now would make those older characters look slow and weak. Those IO bonuses add up. At level 28, should a blaster be able to solo Arakhn, the av in Moonfire? Back then? Not likely. Now? Success is a given. There's really no need to team up now at all, thankfully, except for hami raids and incarnate trials. Is that better? worse? Doesn't matter - we now have the option, which is fantastic.

Sadly, the things I want can't be given away. Like Windfall, Experienced and other buffs. You pluck them from character email to be used in that instant for one hour, in game or not.

It's clearly a ridiculous sale. Imagine...you buy them for 10m. You wait a month, and relist them for ...15M, or 20M? Going to be interesting to see how many do this and how low they'll go just to get that sale, losing millions in the process. What's more - it isn't so much the inf you might make, but the inf you might save by not selling them. Oddly, the packs that I have opened, almost all of them had 2 winter IOs. I was hoping for more windfalls, but there may be more in the remaining 200 packs I have. I certainly won't need to buy any more packs until maybe next year, lol. Also, interesting to me - the Superior Winter sets...they used to be the same price as the non-superiors. Then, this changed, but I'm not sure when. Maybe the AH prices were glitching when I looked. Could've sworn they were in the same bucket, but it doesn't seem to be the case anymore.

Sometimes, the forums will show the picture for me, and sometimes not...

We're all different. I see where you're coming from, but wouldn't it be easier to just do Posi 1&2 at level 20? Then do Synapse when you're level 22 or so? My madness & method for tfs is this: I try to wait until I'm 5 levels over cap for the tfs. That way, I have more slots than I would at the lower level to begin them. When you do Pen Yin, you're capped at level 25. So, if you do it at level 30, you have the few extra slots and powers - you may be exemped, but you lose no powers. The same with the rest of the tfs. No gimping of your character. And no useless busy work for the devs. Win/win! Additionally, many people take advantage of having 3 builds. If you PvP, you can have one build for incarnate play, one build for PvP, and one for lower level stuff. ALL of the tfc task forces are easily soloable. All of them are. Regardless of your AT. You just need to pack the right inspirations, an envenomed dagger and buffs from your sg base. As of now, if you discount bug hunter and the anniversary badges from Luna in Ouroboros in May, there are 1511 badges to be had. That's plenty. I'd be thrilled if no more badges were ever introduced again, so I could keep alting instead of working on them with the same character. (but that's just me, I'm sure) The game has millions of challenges. If you find one thing too easy, make it harder. If it's still too easy at the hardest difficulty, do it faster. Do it without inspirations. Do it without enhancements. There are tons of ways to make things harder. Nothing wrong with a wish list, though. I would just rather they spend time on more content - but revising Synapse wouldn't piss me off at all.

Perhaps it could be chosen as a power to choose? Personally, I found it worthless. With IOs and powers like Caustic and Frigid Protection, it would be a lot harder to stay below 25% (or whatever threshold you chose for the correlating damage boost). It seems a smarter play (but maybe not more fun for some?) to slot for more dps & recharge to dish out that damage faster.

So, I took my rad/ss tank from my second account into RV and noticed that my resistances dropped over 30% upon entering RV. Toggles were all on, so not sure what the issue is, other than some kind of bug.

A little late to this discussion, but according to the npc I asked, I have already played my ice/ice blaster for 1500 hours. (that does include a lot of time farming damage - dished out, and taken) In live, I played more than one ice/ice blaster to level 50 and easily logged over 2000 hours with each one. (server transfers weren't a regular thing back then until the free to play concept with the vip server, if memory serves) I had read @olepi 's ice/ice guide and was immediately sold by his/her passion about the power sets. Briefly - Bitter Ice blast is a must have, and I also believe Freeze Ray is the defining power of the set. You don't "have" to get it, of course, but I highly recommend it. Blizzard is, of course, a must have. I like to use it before Judgement, or after. And I like to use Ice Storm on top of it to help clear the lts and bosses. On the secondary, I used to rely a lot on ice patch. Now, not so much. Very handy in the lower levels, but if properly motivated to do a respec, I might do without it to grab an extra slot (I have it two-slotted now, with recharge IOs), and maybe ice fists or tp ally or something else. Because I don't know what else I'd get, I'll just keep ice patch for now. Frigid Protection....I swear, I don't remember this power in live. I've no idea how I got to 50 without it. I recently respec'd after learning about it and I cannot endorse it highly enough. I would pick this power over every other one in either the primary or secondary. If you don't get it, you're just being foolish. The negative on it is that if you're stealthed, it breaks it. Mobs feel the chill, I guess, and see you. Ice sword is a nice finisher. I only two slotted mine with two hami-os (acc/dam). I would like to six slot it, but no idea where I could get the slots from. It's the most fun character to play in my "stable", with my fire/fire being a close second.

I have learned a fair amount in the forums back in live - and in these HC forums as well. Never noticed the %'s when the Crimson Prototype spat out generators, and frankly never noticed what type of damage or debuffs that were being applied. I have had mixed results soloing Market Crash. By solo, I would use two accounts because I was uncertain if one lore pet would be enough to help with the dps required. Then I discovered the summon pets from p2w. The tank version isn't nearly as effective as my second account that just sits there with foot stomp on auto, but it's enough to let me focus on my character and dish out the damage. But the ranged damage - in the form of an echo of Positron is outstanding. I don't know for sure, but I suspect there are strong debuffs with that damage Posi dishes out. On my primary character, my blaster Ukase (ice/ice/mu) has solo'd all the tfc task forces and a few of the red side ones. My farm brute has solo'd all the Maria Jenkin's AVs as well as all the tfc AVs on blue side. Soloing is what I do unless I see someone else wanting help to do the same thing - but if they want to kill most/all when I want to speed, I'll solo. I can solo Manticore faster than a good team of 8 - but that includes recruiting time for that team. Same with most tfs, except Synapse. There is one thing that I'd like to do with my blaster but have been unsuccessful, and that's solo the Freedom Phalanx Heroes in Recluse's Victory. There are 6 of them, they usually come out in pairs. I haven't tried to duo them yet with the help of my farm brute or tank, but It's something I'll have to try. I tried with my lore pets, and an HVAS and a summon pet from p2w against Pen Yin and Ms. Lib, and that didn't work out well. In that experience, I think if I'd had my second account, I might have had a better shot, but who knows. I'll get them eventually, but I'd rather do it solo so I don't have to wait for folks. I hate to wait!

Sorry to hear things are so dreary on Reunion. I've got to think that the "mob" mentality during your raid experience was an exception, rather than the norm. Also sorry to hear your not getting the shard drops. I have to wonder why it is that I get so many and others don't get many at all. It's not like it's only one character of mine that gets them, it's all of them. Maybe because I'm playing solo vs 8 on most characters when I solo. But I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person who plays at that setting. You should consider leveling a character on Torch or Excelsior, though - or maybe a transfer once they fix the transfer. They're practically every night. Torch fails slightly more often because of their aggressive approach - one sweep of mitos, where on Excelsior, it's more conservative with 2 sweeps. But overall, my characters have gotten rich with merits and fat with shards while doing them every night.

Clearly, every player that does different things experiences drops differently. I get plenty of shards. Certainly not as many as threads, but consider this: there are 5 incarnate powers to slot that do not accept shards. Given the emp merits earned just by vet levels, obviously, one can t-4 everything without a single shard or thread, but it's very inefficient to do so. I certainly do not get 5 times more threads than shards. I don't know how often you play, how long or even what you do - but you don't get shards in iTrials. I do things besides iTrials, and I get plenty of shards. Anecdotally, I get about 10 shards an hour during hami raids. And half that time I'm just taunting a mito or hami. They seem to drop for me, for each yellow mito my team helps kill. They also seem to drop for every other bud. But that's just the way it seems to me. It might be -/+ 2 or 3. I know I got a dozen during synapse, compared to just 73 threads. I used those for my alpha and saved the threads for the things that don't take shards. Common sense! Obviously, if your drop rate isn't the same, you may not choose to do things the way I do - but let's shed a bit more light on things. If all you do is iTrials and you say you get no shards, that's because of what you're doing. Do non-incarnate stuff and the shards will drop just fine. And don't forget that vanguard merits may be exchanged once every 18 or 20 hours for a shard component worth 4 shards. Various tfs will also get you shard components worth 4 shards. If you're smart, you can get your alpha to t-3 the same day you unlock it, if you've got the time and inclination. But - that's just my opinion. It doesn't make my way better, but it's another way that may be more efficient for some players. Not all players - but some. Use the shards when you can. Save those threads for the incarnate things you can't use shards on.

Helpful hints with the sg buff station. I didn't use any of those, other than just Super Speed and Prestige Power Slide. And a LOT of practice. Kept falling off the slope the first few times.

Actually - this is apparently not the case. I did Sutter this morning, got my notice of the well, double merits. I did Manticore this afternoon and got credit for one more tf towards the partner badge.

With some of these weeks featuring multiple TFs as weekly's - do you have to repeat the same one to get credit, or does doing different ones also give you credit?

There is one thing I just don't get. Perhaps it was brought up somewhere else. Why is the animation for foot stomp not a foot stomp, but a fist smacking the ground? Can we either change the name, or change the animation to reflect what the power is called?

I would say make it a bit harder. One player - or a player's pet - is the one that gets that last kill shot in. That should be the person that gets the badge. I wrote it down, and already hate it, because I've been raiding nightly for some time, and it's getting dull. And that badge existing would cause many hardcore badgers to conduct raids all day every day until everyone in the league got that badge. But, given the nature of the mending mitos, it would make them longer, as you'd have to be sure there were no mending mitos while that one person chips away at his hp to get the kill shot. So that would be essentially having to clear the initial mito spawn, and the next 3 at 75, 50 and 25%. It would be a horrible time sink and I hate myself for suggesting it. So it really should be done!

I would go further and suggest we let people give reward merits and emp merits away to any other account we like. We earned them, let us do what we like with them. I do wonder tho - if my primary character could just give the thousands of threads and hundreds of shards stashed to my alts...I could probably t-4 out half a dozen characters as soon as they ding 50. While I would ike the ability to do that, I'm not sure how I feel about actually being able to do it.

Seems to me CoH already has a system in place to suit our needs - but for whatever reason, the original devs didn't want us to have it. The server can track each of my characters pieces of salvage, and badges, and influence, merits, etc. And, when we put stuff in the vault (which is the same as our "Vault Reserve" that we can all access at any time, it demonstrates the ability for clicking on a certain field to access various stored items. So why not simply turn the vault into an account based savings account? Instead of placing artificial bids on items (like, say, placing 1000 bids for 5 million inf hero packs as an example, or something that just doesn't exist in game but is in the AH for some reason), why not just stash it there? Any character on the same account can access...and to go one step further, if you have two accounts, you could make them joint accounts - but that may be asking too much.

I can tell you, depending on your AT and build, soloing the Task Force Commander TFs (Posi 1,2, Synapse, etc) are very simple to solo. You don't really even need the uber builds, although it certainly helps. What I do suggest - along with the envenomed daggers (get multiples) are the summon pets - The ranged damage for heroes is Positron, who dishes out some pretty serious debuffs as well as more than respectable damage. My brutes solo them without the pets - but my defender and tanks will take the summon pets for the dps. Imagine - doing Posi 2 - with a stealth buff from your sg buff station, or perhaps your stealth IO if you have one - and zipping through the tf faster than if you had a solid team of 8! You're stealthed, you've got your jetpack, and you go under the bridge where the bombs are, click them, and proceed inside. Inside -when you're set to 0/1, there are two goons at each bomb, and none of them are looking at the bomb. You click, lose your stealth, but it doesn't matter because they aren't looking at you. Wipe out Rollister and his two goons, wait 10 seconds for your stealth to kick back in, and zip outside, click all 4 chem barrels without having to clobber anyone. Take on Dr. Vahz and as long as you've got some decent Luck inspirations, and a few tier 3 rages and your envenomed dagger, depending on your AT, you're golden. 20 minutes, and you're done. Synapse will always be faster with a large decent team. Solo, however, will take about as long as a casual group that goes afk to train and tend to kids and such. About 2 hours. Sometimes less, sometimes more, depending on if you have the mission tp and team teleport and how wisely you use them. (The SG base macro is invaluable and a real time saver!) Yin is certainly faster solo. Maybe 15 minutes. 20 if you take your time and skip the freaks that rez. When you go into the ppd station, you head directly upstairs. Ez pz. Citadel - about the same as a team. Same with Manticore. Manticore is a bit tougher because you have two avs to contend with. Only my brute has been able to handle that without a pet. (As much inf went into that build, it should be able to!) Numina is so much faster solo - mainly because I know where to go to do the hunts quickly. A lot of folks just have no idea where to find certain npcs in the various zones and it slows things down. That said - teaming will almost always be a bit more fun with the right folks. But if you can't find the right folks, solo is a great option!

I can't say that this exists, but on Rebirth, the population is so low (well, it was last month, I haven't been back) that there was almost nothing in the auction house to buy and sell. There I was, a fire/fire brute because spines/fire doesn't exist on that server, and I'm level 13 and still using training origin enhancements for my attacks because I can't afford DOs if I want to get SOs at level 22. It's quite nice, having to really work for what you want, until you realize that recruiting for a tf will take a lot of planning and commitment by several other players that you don't yet know. While you can get a level 23 rec/acc perf shifter for 2000 inf, even if you had the converters to turn it into a +end, nobody except the level 40's and up would have the influence to spare to buy it. It's an entirely different experience for someone like me who just flips things until I have enough to get what I want. But, it seems I've digressed a bit. The talk about balance is interesting. The problem I see with it is there are some players who are just exceptional. They have fast reflexes, they know the math and no matter what character they play, even with SOs and such, they are going to make you (or me) look just slightly better than mediocre. I don't think it's balance, I think some players are just better at playing the game, The player behind the avatar is the real enhancement.

Ah...so that's why my badge count on my character is the same as the badge count on the app, despite not being able to log the badge...ugh. I wish I'd known that. I pored over everything to see what I overlooked and didn't find anything. The web app is certainly easy to use, and I do appreciate your effort. I can't imagine the time it must have taken just in entering the names of the badges, not to mention the graphic and the locations, etc. Thanks!

Thank you! That explains a good bit. I did see Kitsune had worked on the web app, and it's odd. The Web app shows my total as what I have in game - but there's one badge I have in game that doesn't show in the web app. I did see that the spreadsheet is the same one I've been using, but maybe mine was an earlier version. It had, and I've done Master of Kahn Task Force, but it did not have Master of Kahn Strike Force, or what I would have called Mo'Cuda. It also showed an exploration in Cim I wasn't aware of. As for the Valentine badges...February isn't really that far away. I've got another 50M + damage to absorb, so other than brief moments while the server's reset, or the right folks doing the things I'd like to do, I'll just let him sit. Probably won't take but another 25 days. Glad I have a second account so I can actually play. 15 anniversary badges...those are going to cost ...100 reward merits each? Ouch! I can afford it, but I'd prefer they just give those out instead of such a wicked donation from me into the wind. I got 6 from the way the spreadsheet made it look...probably I misread it. The web app is more clear. Thanks again!

I have a badge, under Accolades, called "Flames of Prometheus Conversion". It's below Geas of the Kind Ones, and above Chronomaster. I don't see it on your spreadsheet, nor the Web app. Wish I'd known I could have traded it in for salvage when I was going down the incarnate path - had no idea.

I need some help. I'm missing something, but not sure what. I know for sure I'm missing the 6 anniversary badges from May. No way was I going to fork over reward merits for a badge back then. Merits are money! So, I've got to wait. No worries. I know I'm missing 7 pvp badges. Still need to take out the 6 heroes - a badge each, plus one for getting all 6. Need 2 more recipe rejection - those will come soon enough. Well, maybe not soon enough, but they'll happen. Need 2 more damage taken badges. Again, eventually. For Keyes, I have the hard one, lol. Just need the bunker buster and loves a challenge to get the MO - so 3 more I'm missing. 1 for the 50 task forces. I knew I should have done the COT ad nauseum. But I'll trim that down soon enough. Certainly not during these shard tfs. 1 for reaching 1500. 1 for bug hunter...well, I don't foresee that one happening unless I'm exceptionally fortunate. The ones I know about - 23. That would put me at 1504. Clearly our leader Sister Corruption has found 13 badges that aren't on the spreadsheet that I got from these forums. Is there a definitive master list to use?