Ukase

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.

So...just thought I'd chime in. I am not a typical farmer. I do have 3 accounts. I have a spines/fire/fire on each. But, any of them can solo content outside the farm, albeit not as easily as in it. My farmers are all afk, though. What's lost on me is what you folks are after. Influence? There are more efficient ways - the market. Most of you know this, but don't like the market so you farm. You gotta do you, I can respect that. I don't understand why, but I can respect your thoughts on it just the same. This is what I do. Run #125 map until my salvage is full. Exit map, sell common recipes. Craft. Sell all SOs & common salvage not used from crafting. Tuck Rares in personal vault (different from on-hand inventory). Repeat for the other farmer(s). (sometimes, I play normal content on accounts 1 and 3. Account 2 is only for farming up to this part. ) I like the really big map, the one that I used to fight Dreck on. Some segment of Boomtown, maybe. Except it's got water, which Boomtown doesn't. I'll put all 3 farmers on this map if I feel like actively farming - which I don't often do. While in the farm, I will convert the IOs if they are cheap on the AH. I'm not looking to gouge anyone. If they sell for 1M, the rare is worth half that, plus crafting cost. People who sell IOs that cheap baffle me. I have opinions, but some of you may not agree with my evaluation of people who sell IOs at or below crafting cost. (when I say crafting cost, I consider what the salvage would sell for on the AH, in addition to the fees of crafting) I convert them into IOs that are worth 3-4 million on average, and sometimes get lucky with the defense set IOs that are converted to LotG, which sell for 4-7m, depending on the way the wind's blowing. I only deal in the level 50 stuff, as far as farming goes. Some of your builds are great for the farm, but absolutely reek outside of it. That doesn't make sense to me. I get it - you have no intentions of taking it outside the farm, but if you can expand the utility of the character, why not? Why spend influence on a build for a farmer, and then a second build for non-farm? Just farm with the build that can do all or most of it. That's the beauty of afk farming. You don't need to tweak a build to fit some procs in, because blazing aura and quills could do the job. Burn just makes it faster. This is my build on Apache Fog. Don't get confused by the copy cat corruptor out there with the same name, but using a hyphen. I promise you, my farmer was made first! (but I digress) Use this - and you can solo AVs, run any of the TFC task forces solo, but you will have a few issues in RV, and rularuu can make things a little difficult if you're not paying attention. I also noticed that when farming vampyri and wolves for my alts, when exemped to 28, the vamps can stack holds and turn off my BA. They don't come close to killing me...but it can be annoying, just a heads up. And msrs...I get about 1300-1400 vg merits per run. Unfortunately - afk for vanguard merits doesn't work with this build at +4/8. And the vg merits don't drop often enough for me to consider a respec. But, I've got a elec/rad tank that can handle that just fine. ApacheFog - Brute (Spines).mxd

I would have reported it, if I thought for a second it was an error. I have no doubt this tiny gap was intentional. I mean, let's think about that tiny little triangle for a moment. You have to LOOK for it. It's not obvious even if you know it's there! And to actually go through it...you can't fit through, just by flight. You have to use self-tp, incan, or maybe shield charge or something along those lines and place the reticle through the space. It's not an accident by any stretch in my mind.

So...what I learned in the past month is that there is a hole in the roof of the tiki room in Pocket D. You will need some sort of self-teleporting power to barely get through it. Once you're through it, you may feel like you're kind of stuck in the geometry, but you take a couple of turns and you're out in the open space, behind the "wall" that holds pocket D, and not only can you get to the mothership, there's even a gas station out there. You can see one of the motherships in the sky, above, slightly to the right.

I've gotten it after the Tuesday resets on 4 different characters in the past month and a half. So, if you're in a position to be able to play after the reset, it's a fairly quick and easy thing.

What kills me is the leader - who leads a LOT of these - asked if, as leader he would be allowed to ask people to turn off group stealth. I sent him a tell stating that it's his raid, he could certainly ask, but that if he did ask, he would be asking for no legitimate reason as group stealth doesn't impact aggro.

I find it...well, not amusing, but really interesting that there seem to be a LOT of people who see the value in the PvP set bonuses enough to want them...but they don't do simple math. Once you reach level 50, assuming a previous 50 granted you the catalysts, or you got them straight away from the AH or a merit vendor - the cats drop fairly often. At least once a day, anecdotally. My farmers certainly have a ton of them. While I understand why - I don't "get it" - they don't just buy a level 10 recipe (cheaper to craft), convert to what you want, slot it and catalyze it. Even though the cat is about 2.3m, 2.3+3M is still cheaper than 8-9M. (using average prices) As far as just listing the uncatalyzed level 10 IO, and then having an alt buy it at that price - that has never, ever, ever worked for me. Never. I mean, I'll list it at 1:00:00, and then tab out, and try to buy the attuned version at 1:00:04, and it has never been available at that same price, or even 1 inf over. Never. So, I just bid creep and often find myself paying about 1-2 million more. Suppose that's better than losing a catalyst, but catalysts aren't my market and they drop routinely and I have more than enough for new alts, so I will use them in this fashion to avoid putting my inf into the market. Last thing I want is to fund my competition!

My niche (well, one of them) has been buying level 10 pvp IO recipes, crafting them, converting them to the usual ones that sold frequently for what I think is an excellent margin. I used to just bid a low-ish price on each recipe, for sale or not, hoping to snag what I could. As success ensued, I began to bid for more than 1, up to 5 of each recipe. Eventually, crafting all of these, despite my having the salvage stashed on the AH in tidy numbers of 5 each, I noticed a soft-limit that was difficult to manage - a limit of my time...crafting 100 recipes when you already have all the salvage in inventory is not time consuming. Converting them can take some time, depending on the rng. But due to the volume and the limit of what you can hold - and the number of AH slots, I would have to divide this one niche into a couple of characters at this volume - and further reduce my actual play time doing this. To what end? I have all I need, and the pile continues to grow, despite what I think are frequent sizeable philanthropic donations. While doing this, I would often notice my 3m bids would often be outmatched by 1 inf, or 10 inf. Since I know my costs of salvage and crafting, I know how much room there is on the margin, and I also am aware of opportunity cost. The margin has to be large enough or the time/inventory invested can be used elsewhere. Kind of like when they shut down CoH. Yeah, it was making money, but was it making more money than could be found in the market, given the investments of resources? So, at what level is the profit no longer profitable ENOUGH for you? There are some who delight in taking a niche and then leave it behind after a period of time. You don't know if it's an "ebil marketer" or some lucky soul who blundered into it after running Dr. Q multiple times on 3 different accounts and has now found themselves with 2100+ merits across three accounts and thought your niche was unreasonable and wanted to make it more reasonable. I see this all the time with Sudden Acceleration: KB to KD. They sell for 3-4m, then someone who I suppose hates to encounter KB unloads a good amount of them for about 1m. Soon, the market runs out, and the price goes back up to 3-4m. So, your choice is to wait, or increase your bid price to a point where the niche is no longer working. Doesn't matter who's on the other end. The smaller the margin, the less likely it's one of us, I would think. There may be some who aim for high volume, low margin, but I would guess most are looking for more margin with less volume. We'll never truly know for sure. Ebil Marketers may often lie to manipulate the less ebil so they can make more inf.

The thing is - just because you're stealthed doesn't mean you're not in the bowl. The game knows you're there. If this were true - the rikti wouldn't spawn at all when folks have steamy mist/arctic fog on. So, chalk that up to "bro-science" which is usually a complete fabrication based on misunderstandings.

HA! Like anyone can see costumes in the messy bowl of an MSR, stealth or not.

I think this needs to be resolved, if possible. But, I'm not quite sure if it can. I present this information as true to the best of my knowledge. It's anecdotal, not scientific. But if I can trust the combat attributes, what some people are telling me makes no sense. If you've done an MSR, you've likely heard/read this, or something close to it: "Turn off group stealth! We need the Rikti to see us!". Now, today, for the first time ever, I was playing a character with group stealth, Arctic Fog. It's a toggle, and I keep it on, the same way I would keep on Plasma Shield or Caustic Aura. This is what I know with certainty: A tank/brute with taunt is seen by the npc and others nearby when that tank taunts. But the taunt only lasts for about 6-8 seconds depending on the slotting of taunt, and perhaps the level of the npc. So, higher level foes may require more taunting to keep the attention on the tank (or brute). I say this because of my experience in playing a tank. When a tank is smashing an npc and taunting, only three things will stop that npc from continuing to attack the tank. 1. Another character is doing more damage than the tank. 2. The tank has moved too far away for the npc to see it. (sort of - hide in a dumpster, and they can still find you, even though they couldn't see you. ) 3. The npc is dead. If you monitor combat attributes, you can see your level of stealth. The higher the number, (which makes no sense to me), the greater your stealth. BUT - once you taunt, or attack an npc - you can see your stealth number drop to 0. I was in the bowl, and despite my having arctic fog on, my stealth dropped to zero. I'm dropping sleet, soul drain, blizzard, ice storm and burnout, and repeating the attack chain. So - why is it that people think the Rikti can't see them when group stealth is on? Are they not attacking? If not - why would they care? I would think if they are just buffing, they wouldn't want to be seen. If they are dishing out damage, they target and fire. If they are tanking - they are not staying in the bowl, they are leaving the bowl, herding 16 rikti, returning to the bowl, the rikti follow. The league kills them. It's baffling to me why people think this group stealth impacts a tank's taunt, or even a tank/brute's taunt aura. It doesn't. So, am I missing something? I've never had an issue bringing rikti to the bowl when group stealth is running. When I was tanking in my last msr, I heard the cry for turning off group stealth and stated in league it made no difference, keep it on. And it made no difference - at least, not to my tank. I got about 1000 vg merits, so it couldn't have been that bad. When I played my tank in msrs, I never had an issue with my celerity stealth in sprint and super speed running. When idle, my stealth is 65 feet. When I taunt or smack an rikti, it goes to zero. So why is it that people are continually believing that group stealth is a problem for tanks? Are these tanks just not slotting anything in taunt? So, if you're one of those who think group stealth impacts aggro - please explain your position so that I understand it. If I'm wrong, I can admit that - but I can't explain away my anecdotal experience.

From blue side, trying to get villain disruptor, I found that doing Provost Marchand's 2nd arc did it for me. If you look it up on the wiki, you'll see that you get 4, I think on the first mission and 7 on the second. I just reset it and redid it until I got it.

My rule of thumb is: if soloing, play the defender, else play the corruptor. Granted, I don't always play with just my thumbs. For whatever reason, up to this point, I prefer the corruptor. I will give the defender a second look, though. Thanks - I was wondering what the next project was going to be!

I just learned about this during the latest week during which CoT was the weekly. It saved a fair amount of time. All you have to do is be able to see the obelisk and you can click it. It never occurred to me to try before, and someone told me about it. It's likely a glitch, but I'm okay with it.

I think I understand the desire of some folks to go back to the way it was. I remember clearly, starting the game in issue 3. I was fairly ignorant of what to expect, in fact, I thought it was a single player game, not really paying attention to, or knowing what MMO stood for, if you can believe that. I eventually settled in to the game, and then issue 4 happened. I didn't understand why they took a perfectly good game and added things to it. After playing the game so long, now, I get it. I still thought ED was a mistake. I thought IOs were a mistake. But I don't think so anymore. The truth is - the old CoH model was geared to keep people playing - and paying. That's why you had to "earn" your way. It wasn't just so you would appreciate the reward at the end. It was to keep you subscribed and paying. After HC came out, I was quite pleased, if a little irritated that people had been playing all this time and didn't leak the code immediately. I mean, intellectually, I understand the code we're playing on is essentially stolen intellectual property. But - I rationalize it with having purchased my copy of the game. I paid for my right to play it. Of course, there's the mice-type in the EULA to shred my argument to bits, but I'm old and even with reading glasses, I'd be ignorant due to myopia. (Willfully ignorant) But, damn, you have the code, leak it right away! You think NCSoft would do more then than they're doing now? I don't. The cat would be out of the bag as it is now. But, I digress. After...I think, it was a year, I'd leveled up a good 30 characters from 1-50, at least 27 of them by doing a dfb, maybe two, then hitting the Hollows, Steel Canyon, Striga, Talos, Bricks, Founders & PI to tackle Tina Macs and MJ's arcs. It was getting dull. My badger had all the badges..so it felt like there wasn't much left. So, I went to Rebirth. I like to solo, and it was certainly easy to do there. The people on Rebirth are knowledgeable, and friendly for the most part. On a percentage basis - most of those players know more than our players. But, unless you're running with a group on a routine basis, Rebirth is going to be a true grind. There are no vet levels to give you emp merits and threads. Astrals don't combine to make emps, but you could use them to get PvP IOs, or other rare recipes. Hero/Villain Merits were earned by doing SSAs and tip missions. 65 of them to get ONE pvp IO, because they don't drop in pve. It was a lot to get used to. And you want your own base - better make some extra accounts and invite 15 more alts for that 20k prestige boost. It took me about a month to get a barely functional base with all the ports. Oh yeah, you have to get all the explorations in a zone before you get access to the beacon, too. Want an insp dispenser, you better roll a character that heals. And get used to earning less influence, because you need to play in SG mode to get that inspiration dispenser. After a month or so, when I got my base up and running and then got a villain base up and running, I came back here. I know what it's like to grind and I see no reason to do so. Do the same SSAs once a week for a hero merit; can only do 5 tip missions a day, so every two weeks, you can earn 7 hero merits. If you don't do iTrials, it's going to take you a long, long time to get ONE Glad Armor 3% def(all). And I needed a good dozen of those, the panacea +hp/recovery, and the shield walls. I really don't need to beat my head on a wall like that. The idea is to feel super, not inadequate. On HC, I feel super. On Rebirth, I felt like a hamster running in that spinning wheel in a cage. So, while I get it - HC is terribly easy - I don't want to go back to that grind.

I get what you're saying about getting in, getting out. I think the reason it's so large is because of the traffic that goes through there.