Ukase

One thing I don't understand is why the pyronic has accuracy of 1.30, and Ionic has an accuracy of 2.0. (when I click on the t-1's detailed info)

For the folks that don't know: Until they fix it, (if?) you can slot an attuned perf shifter end mod IO at level 7. You can't slot the +end IO, but you can slot the regular end mod. Yomo - love the way you think.

So...let me shed my own experience with this armor on a ...you guessed it, tw/bio scrapper. I had a thought that it would be somewhat, somehow amusing to play a character only using what dropped. No AH except perhaps to sell something, no merits until level 50. I wouldn't team until I had at least an SO or IO in each slot, aside from brawl or boxing from the fight pool. This armor is crap. TW is even worse. At least, before level 25. After that, you finally have enough slots to actually fight. It was like waiting to level 14 to get stamina, only I had stamina. Now, I hear what you might say. "Dude, you had crap for enhancements. TOs at level 19? DO's past 22? WTF?!" I am fortunate to have learned how to make inf in this game. I could easily blow a billion on IOs - and I did make an identical scrapper only spend whatever it took to get my build as nice as I knew how. Because I farm sometimes, I can use those drops to fill most of it, and stashes from my base and email for the rest. Best guess 600m of patient bidding or maybe 800m of buy it NOW. The contrast is stark. I doubt most players who solo a lot would play this turd past level 25 solo. If they teamed, they'd certainly be shy or very nice, because they would be dying in any kind of large crowd without some buffs/debuffs or some other AT to help take alpha. Granted, I've never done this with any other character. The Offensive Adaptation and Beginner's luck (boosts the toHit until level 20) were the only thing that saved me. The levels 21-27, IO recipes started trickling in. I'd actually gotten a kismet 6% accuracy at level 11, but never got the salvage to craft it until I did the fortune teller through ouro at level 20 when I was desperate for accuracy. There's no question the TW/bio scrapper is phenomal when slotted well with the best IOs money can buy. Most of my characters are slotted well, and I do pretty good. Haven't tanked a normal MoTF run yet - though there was this one time when inspirations were disabled and some DoT on a +4 itf got me. I can live with that. My point is - we can't just test our uber builds and reach a conclusion that something is OP. We need to approach it like a new player and see how OP it is. While we're not all new players of course, we still need to keep that perspective in mind.

I remember this rumor. Nothing to it.

This may be my fault. I stopped bidding on the level 10 pvp IO recipes, simply because it got too tedious. I wanted to play more. I haven't been secretive at all about the fantastic margins even at the lower price points we saw recently...glad armor 3% def(all) going for 8-9 million, and the recipe might cost on average about 3.3M. So someone with time and inf decided to bid on all the recipes and seems to have also bought as many pvp IOs as they could just so they could relist some of them at higher prices. Or maybe it's been a combination of people doing these things without collaboration. Regardless, the result is the same. Fine by me, I get more than a few of them a day and have no issues selling them for a higher price. My base is already full of them. Even though I'd prefer they be attuned so my lowbies can slot them, the AH can handle that for me.

Back then, I was out of work, playing about 14 hours a day, if you can believe that. Honestly, the game closing probably saved me from diabetes and certainly obesity. When it shut down, I finally got to moving around instead of sitting on my keester all day. This game can be addictive for some. You sit and you invest in your character, instead of investing in yourself. So, I would probably be 320 pounds, instead of 210, and I certainly would have never taken up rowing as a form of exercise. And I certainly wouldn't be ranked in the top 100 of indoor rowers in my age group. So, yeah, I'm kind of glad it shut down.

Yeah, I noticed this happened right after the nerf bat on the double inf/no xp. As if they were suddenly less valuable. I will never really understand why someone would see the fast sale price of 7m, and then dump a bunch of them for 5M. Whoever they are/were, they lost a ton of influence by not going with the running price. Their loss, not mine. I was inclined to buy them all at 5m and relist at 6.7, but even though I had the resources to do that - I have no idea if the person behind this has 5 personal bases with nothing but storage bins filled with LotG or was leaving the game and just unloaded everything. It also seems to me to be a jerk move, even if it would have likely made me some serious inf over time. But it sure is frustrating seeing your stuff sit in the AH at what was the going price when you listed it, but someone thought it would be fun to make less, or no profit at all. Folks is crazy sometimes.

Now that you mention it...I seem to recall the old dev team adding some trays to the current number of 7. And ordinarily, I think it's plenty. I suppose deleting a level 50 character is a bit unusual, and likely not done often.

Please be aware, I use those things often. It's not an issue for me. But there are a number of players that have no idea SG Empowerment stations even exist. They don't have the resources a lot of us have to use many of these solutions. And I think that's part of the disconnect between folks who say the game is too hard and the ones that are looking for more challenge - experience and time played. Some have it, some don't.

So, I went into purge mode, where, despite having 1000 slots, there are some characters I have that are 50 that I simply won't play again. So, why keep them? They just add to the clutter and I have to click through to find a certain hero I'm looking for. So, as I was prepared to delete one, I did a respec and got all the enhancements out. So...it would seem that I had more than 70 enhancements. I had to slot 26 or so into powers, planning on using unslotters - or even smarter, using another respec. But, I forgot. Deleted it anyway with about 26 IOs slotted in. Not a lot of inf lost, but it bugs me just the same. We have 96 slots, most builds. (not really sure, but more than 70!) Khelds have even more. Why don't we have enough trays to hold ALL the enhancements we can slot for these situations?

False logic. Nothing super about blasting away at gray mobs. When people say they want to be super, they want to be able to defeat mobs easily - mobs that are their own level or even higher. I don't suggest this makes sense for a super hero game like CoH. But there is a point to their argument when you're running out of endurance in the middle of a fight, or being perma-mezzed. The former can be handled with some enhancements. The latter, for some ATs, not so much.

Given this statement about wanting improvements to the teaming experience at the high end, can we try to nail down what it is people are looking for? I could be wrong, but on one end of the spectrum, I see people upset because their characters aren't "super". I also see others upset because they feel useless in various missions/task forces/iTrials, because they don't feel they're contributing in a meaningful fashion. I do understand this, having been on a water/kin and finding that the big group of mobs, an excellent opportunity for Fulcrum Shift, but I didn't get there first, and ka-blooey, they're all dead except a boss. I can use FS on this one guy, or wait until the next group, only for it to happen again with someone using pyronic judgement. So, I ask myself, what's the solution? I could move ahead, and wait while stealthed. Or, I could just forget about FS for the time being since it's obvious we don't need it. Is it ideal? Maybe not. But so what? I don't measure my worth on fulcrum shift. I just play my character as well as I can, in that moment. Some folks would prefer to have the action in game slow down, where one player would gather aggro/mobs, while another would dispatch damage, while another buffs/debuffs/heals. They don't like it when things are over so quickly, the rewards flash by in their system chat and they can't read the dialog. I think this is a playstyle issue more than a power creep issue. That's not to say we don't have power creep, we do. But I digress- to the point: What are you looking for in your teaming experience ?

I realize that in this day of IOs, ATOs, WInter-Os, Summer-Os (overwhelming force) - that many players are skipping most, if not all the level 1-49 experience. Nothing wrong with that. I also realize that some play through from 1-50, some even without 2xp buff from p2w. But, there IS a segment of our player base that don't have the connections or the experience or influence to do these things. When you're level 22, you can slot SOs, if you can't afford IOs. So why are level 20-25 contacts offering TRAINING ENHANCEMENTS instead of Single Origin enhancements? I do appreciate the information before I do a contact's missions, but when I'm introduced to the next contact, and all options only offer TOs...man, there's something wrong there. Yes, I know I can go to a store to buy them. But I'm asking for the folks that may not even know stores exist. These contacts at this level should offer SOs. That's all I'm saying.

I'd say this nails it on the noggin.

Clearly, there are some assumptions you're making about the folks that can handle an 8 man hami. Did you know that Hamidon dishes out untyped damage - no amount of s/l defense, or resist cap can help you against hamidon. Did you also know that the "air crackle" from Tyrant is auto-hit? No amount of defense is going to help you. Resist will help to a point, but if you remain in the same spot (and sometimes those crackles are invisible to a player for whatever reason) - you will be defeated, and quickly. While it's certainly true anyone with an inclination to spend time settling on a farm build can farm at +4/8 while they sleep, literally, placing a fire farmer and the folks that can do an 8 man hami in the same bucket is laughable. I don't want to take anything away from the first few farmers who figured out how to slot for cap resist and fire defense - it was clever. But planning to sit in the middle of a map where the npcs are specifically designed by the player to dish out damage you have the most protection against, compared to hami who dishes out damage you cannot mitigate, aside from going for max regen. max dps and timely use of EoE - I would say, if it's so easy, you do it. Get those 80 merits.

I know a player who has all 1531 on TWO accounts. I'm close to that myself. Badging distracts from alt-itis, lets you recoup some of the losses of crafting a zillion useless IOs that nobody wants, even for free.

No worries here. I was on the first league that got RHW on Torchbearer. I was essentially a pug, to fill in a spot simply because I was a blaster with all the right incarnate stuff. I've also been on hami zergs with no clearing of mitos after the zone cap, as well as Master of Magisterium in one run, under 5 minutes. I've done some of the speed runs, with the email open, snagging red insps as I went. (I'm only barely competent at that - my builds are built for speed-ish, but not on that level) The discussion preceding these activities - why this powerset is a better choice than that powerset for this specific purpose - really fascinating stuff, and if you have only a basic level of understanding, you learn a lot. I get that not everyone would want to dig into the math determining why one proc would be good in this power, but not that one, for example. The math just isn't fun for everyone, and the subjective fun, or amusement, or interest or entertainment, call it what you will - that's what we're all after. I just think if every player suffered through the math, they could have more amusement, interest, entertainment, whatever. Read the instruction manual before you build, that kind of thing. Granted, there's no wrong way to build a character, and playstyle preferences are real. But the difference between viable and optimal is noticeable.

Fair enough, calling me out on my "ALL players" comment. I shouldn't have said it like that.

Why should they not share this very clear example of great strategy and well-executed plan? Who cares about "a ruckus on the forums"? If it wasn't this, it would be something else. There's always a ruckus. I find these players to be what ALL players should aspire to grow into when they play. Someone with a clear understanding of game mechanics. Someone with an obvious ability to create optimal builds. Someone with a clear understanding of how to generate enough influence where they can fund these optimal builds. These folks are brilliant. There is no room for debate. Granted, in many cases, it's the brilliance of a few who share certain tactics and strategies that the team/league execute, but they come together and overcome obstacles and solve problems. They should be given respect.

What you mean is it would be nice to have a server where a lot of people enjoyed playing the content the same way you enjoy it. I will concede the point that many don't play "godmode" because they lack the resources. I will concede the point that many don't play "godmode" because they don't understand game mechanics. I will concede the point that many don't play "godmode" because they haven't figured out how to use Mids. I will concede the point that many don't play "godmode" because for whatever reason they don't enjoy finishing a Master of Magisterium trial in one run which takes less than 5 minutes. But this distinction you make between "godmode" and "skill play" requires further explanation, because if you think for one split second that these "godmode" players aren't highly skilled, you are really missing the mark.

I would agree - at a minimum, someone feels their character could use some help/changes. And you make a fair point. But my thoughts are the changes to blasters were poised to go live - but hadn't yet. Perhaps they shouldn't have, and needed more testing. The tanker issue is something that was evaluated, and I believe evaluated quite thoroughly. Whether that is for the good of the game or not, time well tell. I suppose given the way my corruptors play, I don't think they require any further change. I'm quite happy with them. But, that's just my opinion. Hardly worth mentioning to some, I suppose.

I would need a bit more information. 1. Have you clicked on team tab - and ensured that you're not in a task force, ouro arc or AE arc? 2. Are you just seeing what you would expect to see - your character (assuming you're zoomed out to see it), the mission door, other parts of the zone map, but your cursor turns to an hour glass when you click on the first door mission of the Task Force? Which door mission of the task force if not the first? 3. Have you used discord and sent a DM to a GM - some days that's a better way to reach them. 4. Have you logged off your character and re-validated the manifest? Then try relogging in to see if that would fix it? Did you do anything crazy like switch your alignment in the middle of the tf? I think the game would just remove the contact from your active list, but have never done this, so don't know myself. Crazy question, but there may have been a badge opportunity on redside you wanted. <shrug>

As I was going to roll my next character, the game itself indicates the corruptor does 10% more damage. When you look at the game's sliding scales, that area where it ranks various categories, which I will hopefully display a picture below, it gives the corruptor a higher rank in damage. The trade off is in the strength of the buffs where the defender scores higher. This notion that any given AT or powerset needs "adjustment" is often times short-sighted. If you give increased DPS, then shouldn't we also decrease buff/debuff ability? And when we do that, why aren't we just playing a blaster? I think the defender and the corruptor are just fine as they are, at least in end game. Early and mid-levels - well, we'd have to do a lot of testing to get ALL the ATs to be balanced in that fashion.

I have been playing a lot of shield/mace tank lately; I liked the mace, but the shield with having to click for mez protection...well, that's just lame. I did like the Shield charge, but the recharge on it is entirely too slow to suit me. So, I've made an invuln/mace tank that's level 4 and has about 4 day jobs already. I'm not real sure when I'm going to start playing him...but probably after I t-4 a couple of the 50's I have, and finish a number of badges on red side on the shield/mace tank. I want to play another controller, likely a dark/dark. And, I think I will do some comparisons in mids between a dark/fire defender vs a fire/dark corruptor.

I have no idea how big of an ask this is, but I would like it if the next mission automatically posts when we're in the midst of a story arc, except of course - when the next mission is timed. In that context, we could call/visit the contact and abandon the mission to pick it up when convenient. It settled on me that I'm exiting a portal mission - clicking on the elevator door, clicking on the door out of portal corp, clicking on the next door to enter the other building, another elevator, and finally the next portal. It's not lost on me that I'm already spoiled with team tp and mission tp. But, when the arc is 10-11 missions long... If it's a quick easy thing to do, would love to have it. If it takes over 10 minutes of volunteer time - forget about it.