Ukase

A fool may be considered wise if he keeps silent. And yet, when they open their mouth, any doubt is removed. - a horribly botched version of a couple of bible verses. Allow me to confirm my stupidity by opining on this suggestion. The HVAS pet being available via VG merits is wise. It is the only reason I participate. That, and maybe some stale joke Okie is likely to share. And occasionally, I share my own, making players groan, and likely put me on ignore, which kind of makes everything worthwhile. To limit the rewards, how would I get my HVAS then? 250 vg merits is sufficiently high enough to kind of make the msr mandatory to earn them. The problem is - I seem to only use them in msrs, or maybe the labyrinth on a Sunday. (when we go the full hour) I've experienced some msrs when my level 44 would barely get a level, and others where my 46 would get 2 levels. It varies widely, because teammates kill speeds vary widely. (pet peeve of mine is one of the reasons why) What msr really needs is a reason for players to pay more attention so going afk results in league wipes. It's really that simple.

Being selfless, it sounds fine to me. But being self-absorbed, as I am prone to be, I really don't want to hunt these down to get another badge. It's kind of meaningless, like 1600 or so of the current badges are.

This very post just makes it clear how different things are for players, depending on where you're sitting. So many new and returning players in the past month. No idea if it's Halloween or something else bringing them in. Of the few I've chatted with, most of them have time limited to the weekends. And, as you might imagine, they don't get to just sit down and play for 14 hours. It's maybe 2. So for those players, maybe they catch a one event or another. But likely not. After all it's just 2 hours a week. Now, the way things are, they can certainly trigger a nem invasion, but anecdotally, I see 4 zones where nem invasions gain traction. PI, Kings Row, Founders, Talos. Maybe Skyway. I'm not saying they don't happen in other zones, but having 4-5 teams, where team leads telling players not to use fire ball against Nemesis, because killing the lieuts gives him vengeance, making him even harder to whittle down seems like a good problem to have (when you think about the times you couldn't 5 people to join you) . A nem event on red side rarely gains traction. And I think that's a relevant detail. People just don't want to go to various zones for these events for their own reasons. A player with limited time, triggers the event, and very few come to help. Now, I get that we can't change the game to revolve around people with limited play time. I don't know the solution, but I do see the varied differences between what the game is now, and what some folks would like it to be, and what other folks want it to be. Three really different game states, just by changing a few things. It's kind of scary, really. Small wonder most of my suggestions get shot down.

I'm oddly fascinated with the economy in the game right now. For the most part, while I still try to make most characters earn their way to a billion, it isn't as easy as it used to be. I've mentioned before that there's a lot of competition. One thing I find very curious right now is the pvp IOs. The panaceas...someone is clearly playing in that area. However they're getting them, they seem determined to price them higher for whatever reasons, if it's not just profit. And candidly, I can't blame them. The recipe competition seems to be heating up. Like 4-5M for these recipes, when the IOs make 8? That's still profit, but there's the salvage and the converters and the opportunity cost of what else you could be doing, and of course the AH fees. But in the panacea listings - for whatever reason, people are willing to spend north of 10M, but stick with 8M on the glad and shield wall uniques. It makes me think maybe someone's trying to do that last 5 trick, where they buy 5 for what they want everyone else to spend. It's interesting.

Pleased to announce Snarky led another successful Really Hard Way run!

Agreed.

No question, I was remiss in saying more, but I didn't want to write a wall of text. The bit about the defender buff - I knew about the 30%, but I didn't realize the defender kept some of it on teams of 2 and 3. I will almost always choose the corruptor because of scourge.

I recently "finished" getting a water/natty corruptor to 50+3. I still need to fill out the judgement and interface slots, but those will come with time as I play. The important stuff, lore, destiny and hybrid are t-3, and I'll get them to t-4 soon enough. And that left me wondering what my next project would be. I opened up mids, and took a look, comparing the defender nature/ice with the corruptor ice/nature. Fun fact: I learned that the defender loses only 10% of the 30% buff when in a duo, and loses 20% of the buff in a trio, and if on a team of 4, loses all of it. Still, nice to see it keeps some of it for the smaller teams. And then, for whatever reason, Mids had the Experimentation pool showing, so I looked at it. I have a vague recollection of taking speed of sound, and then realized it was basically super speed in a different power pool. And then I saw Adrenal Booster. A strong buff, yeah. But 10 minutes? Even with perma-hasten, I figure that's at least every 5 minutes. Corrosive Vial looks nice. I like a good debuff, but this is just a defense debuff. I'd prefer a resist debuff. I generally go with the kismet and tactics, plus a few purple sets, so accuracy isn't often a concern. Does anyone use Adrenal Boost? It seems situational, like I'd use it for the fight with Ukon Gr'ai in an msr, and then maybe against the Minotaur, and later, Achylus....but after that...just avs as I go through MJ's arc, but even then it would be every other AV because of the slow recharge time. And..I generally take hasten, so I think I'll save this for a character that doesn't take the speed pool for hasten. Who uses this, and is it used in the manner I described, or is there some other utility I haven't figured out? It seems very situational, and with a horrible recharge time like that, I can't imagine why anyone would take it. I can use 5 inspirations that will last the same amount of time and provide the same or better returns. (aside from the recharge buff, but I'm forgoing the speed pool to grab this pool, so it's really a net loss) Is this worth making a suggestion to reduce the recharge time to 450 seconds instead of 600, to make this pool more attractive?

I'm understanding what the OP is feeling. I was in PI, trying to grab the Ostentatious badge for 50 costumes, and every 2 minutes or so, would get incan'd to fight jack or eochai. To me, that's a great interruption, and then I can click on the door without that stupid message telling me I can't enter. They really need to reduce the time allowed between clicks, or not let teammates take your click from you. Even solo, if a door has been clicked on, it seems you have to wait 10 seconds before you can click on it. It's the worst part of the event for me, that waiting. I think the easiest thing to do is just ignore it. Banner events and Zombie invasions are unlikely to have much of an impact on any non-halloween thing you're doing.

I appreciate the time folks are taking to explain and expand on their thoughts. I should probably share the context of my curiosity. Solo, I'm about getting something done. I don't often do +4/8, as I see no added value to it. More inf? Incarnate XP? That's not a driver for me. I want the merits and/or the reward table. So, in that context, I don't even use hybrid most of the time. I'm thinking mainly about Hamidon raids and MSRs. In both, there's generally a cluster of characters for buffs. Specifically with Hamidon, and the use of incandescence to bring the league together, I see the reliance on lore pets to get things done quickly. Now, that leaves me to explore Support Core, which provides this information: My fire/nature affinity character doesn't dish out anything but fire damage, 12% more of zero is still zero. Now, if suddenly my fire blaze attack which deals 100 fire damage, (as an example) now dealt 112 fire damage, and 12 damage of all the other types, well, that would just be OP and crazy, so that certainly isn't it. So, it's my thinking that this would just boost the fire damage my corruptor does by 12%, for all attacks, and 24% for the pets. (or is it something more convoluted like: Pet Damage = Base *1.12*1.12 No idea if that's right. They say the boost is doubled. My brain says 24%, but CoH math is weird to me. ) But radial is a different thing: Most of you have seen these snips before on your own characters. There's a part when you're figuring out which way to go, where you see the core side gives a stronger boost, but for a reduced area. Oh, and you can scroll all the way down - there's no mention as to how much of a passive boost to Endurance Discount is granted. And given all the end discounts my character's tend to have, finding it in combat attributes is just more trouble than it's worth - if it's even displayed there. So, it leaves me to conclude Support Core is better for the league than Support Radial if we're all snuggled within 50 feet, which seems to be the case during a hami raid. It would be nice to definitively know what "special" means. I sometimes think it means things like slows, and debuffs and such, but there's no evidence in these tabs what that means. And, given that Support Core extends to pets, it begs the question - does it only extend to mine, or the league's pets? It seems like it would, provided there's only 5 total active in the area. I am likely missing something. I hear that support radial is preferred for the hami raid, but I don't know why. The corruptor brings value to these with buffs and scourge; boosting the damage it does via assault doesn't seem like the right path, as it has no impact on pets that I can see. Am I missing something? What am I missing?

Thank you very much. Now, I'm wondering why I didn't think of that myself. Thank you again!

So, as much as the lazy jerk in me would love for someone to just say "Do this", I don't enjoy asking questions like that. I like to find the answers on my own. So, off the top of my head, for my specific question - I think the answer is assault radial hybrid. I'm on a water/natty core. And I want to dish out - not just the most dps for me, but for my lore pets as well. And the team/league, if applicable. So, the first thing I do is read the information for each description of the various hybrids. Some of you know exactly where I'm going with this. Do I seriously have to go to brainstorm to discover what the answer is? So as to not take up a bunch of room, this is what city of data has. And City of Data is appropriately named. All kinds of data, but it's not processed into information yet. How does one process this into useful information to make an informed decision? I'm going to have to go to Brainstorm, and that kind of reeks, because I've got other things I want to do. From what I know, a blaster typically wants Assault Core, unless they're routinely at the damage cap, and then they'll want radial. And since I expect this corruptor to be at that cap frequently, I would be inclined to go radial, but I cannot find any clear information that I'm smart enough to interpret from the data that's there. I don't at all grasp why the word melee is used as a variable, or constant, or whatever it represents. I do see the 100% chance, which is useful, because I know what that means. But 100% chance of what? The description says "a small boost". It would be truly amazing if the word "small" were replaced with a % value, so one could compare that value with the value in hybrid assault. But, we've got what we've got. I'm grateful I get to see this much, but I sure would like to figure out what this all means, without having to consult City of unparsed data.

I don't believe there is enough interest in pvp to consider spending time on it. If people were interested in pvp, they would pvp. Most do not. We spend 50 levels learning our characters, and when we get to the pvp zones, our defense, our resistance, many of our attributes are different. It's an entirely different character. So what kind of person enters into a fight having little to no idea what the strengths and weaknesses of their own character are? I have no desire to use mids to see these attributes when there are occasional problems with the numbers for pve. I've no reason to expect pvp numbers to be any more reliable. I've no desire to go Brainstorm and try things out for a pvp build when the interest in it is very small. The juice isn't worth the squeeze. And the idea of a reward merit or 2 for winning, what's to stop someone from defeating their alt account 100 times a day? I'm not saying PvP couldn't use some serious thought and attention. It could! The problem is what I said at the beginning. It just doesn't work the way it is. I don't see a path to make it work in its current form unless there are rewards to incentivize people to do it as it is. And given the state of the games economy, there are already plenty of rewards out there people can earn without having to relearn their character with new attributes in a pvp environment. I'm not smart enough to know what could, if anything fix pvp for CoH. I just know it's not a lot of fun the way it is. I would venture about 90% of the players wouldn't do pvp on a whim. Some might give it a try for a chance to win a provocation or something like that. The problem is it would be too easy for a multi-boxer to take advantage of such a prize, or even two players who are friends that could just trade off clobbering each other for the fat loot, whatever it might be.

I don't particularly enjoy playing a dominator. It's been hit or miss for me more than once. But the one thing I'd love to see is the domination power that I put on auto-fire - that should certainly look like something. I don't know what, but not just a grey button.

Hmm...I play in windowed mode. Top left, it's there.

Nothing is fishy about logging off character A on one account and logging in character B on a second account. This is normal and done by everyone that has more than one account which is likely half the players if not more.

The thing is, I do have multiple accounts. I have a number of fire/nature affinity characters in The Abyss. So, case in point, this Saturday, I think, there were close to 1100 players on Excelsior. Not quite. I was on my @ukase account, had left the reward table up so I could choose the full 80 merits instead of 40, if I'd chosen the day before. I chose the 80 merits, logged it off, exited the character selection screen to the log-in screen. Next, I logged in my @Ukase2 account to participate in Saturday's raid. Now, my concern is that the game may think my primary @Ukase account is still logged in, even though it's not; The game is up, but it's at the log in screen ,while I'm on @Ukase2.

Never saw that. Not saying they didn't, but I suppose there's a lot the devs say that I don't see.

Was just grabbing some plaques/badges towards the Mark and Recall accolade this morning before maintenance. This is the first time I've ever seen this: It just showed up in my nav bar near #9 Headjuiced plaque. And, it goes away when you move too far away from the seed, but will return. I just clobbered the seed yesterday with this character, and didn't see this. Not a big deal at all, just curious about it.

I couldn't agree with you more. It's a pain in the butt - but the whole shape shifting the normal way is also a pain in the butt.

I would only consider it an exploit if the npcs I was fighting used it against me! Intellectually, I can see the issue, why it shouldn't be allowed/possible. But, from where I sit, If players 1-8 (khelds) can clobber something super fast - big deal. They killed something in 8 seconds that might have taken my team of "standard" players 14 seconds. Sure, that adds up. But no matter which way the butter is sliced, it's still going to take my standard team 14 seconds. I will cede the point that if someone doesn't want to do the quick change stuff (and I wouldn't blame them) and they do want to play a kheld, they may see themselves in a rough place. Can't do anything great, but can do a number of things competently. On the surface, I have no issue with the OP's suggestion. But the word exploit means to use, to take advantage. To me, it's clever. More power to them. It doesn't impact my game at all. The only players it might impact are the khelds that don't use the macros for whatever reason. Those players may feel, as the OP does, that the AT could use some love. And maybe that's true. Or maybe that love came in the form of these macros. I've no idea. So, while I feel bad for the other players that aren't enjoying the khelds as is, I'm in the same boat. I just play something else that's more fun for me.

Troo, I have no disagreement with you. I think what happened to you, the way you describe it is inexcusable, and that player needs to get some sort of therapy. What they did is a clear over-reaction, even if you were an afk-er. I think it's normal (and maybe I'm wrong) for a player to get irked or irritated with the behavior of another player. But to do what was done to you, there's no excuse for that level of spite. My beef is with the players that are afk simply to take advantage of the generous nature of others. Because they can. I have no beef with people tending to various needs on their time - like their boss, their kid, or even a pet. Most of the time, those issues are resolved quickly. Sometimes not. I'll make a note if I have no idea what's going on - but I'll never say or do anything. But If I look later in the day, or the next day, or even the next year and see the same behavior - well, to me, that's a pattern of being a jerk. Is it that important to me that I'm going to do what was done to you? Nope. I just make notes so I know not to deal with these kinds of people because they strike me as unsavory. But that's just me and my take. It's not going to get me elected to any political office or have a statue created with my likeness.

So, a player on these forums RandoHero had something in their signature. It's a link to a ChatGPT where you can give as little or as much detail as you want, and it will come up with something for you. As an example, I've been struggling with my new water/nature affinity corruptor - to come up with a decent name and all that other stuff. I've renamed it probably 5 times already. Now the ChatGPT thing came up with: Now, I'm not going to use it because the name Tideweaver was unavailable. For now, the character will remain a silly name: Snickerpants. Still, when you're having trouble what to play, this is as good a way to get a suggestion as anything else.

Some call this changeling thing an exploit. I would call it a feature.

So, when I first read this, I saw the logic. It bugged me a bit, but now that I've slept on it, I see the flaw more clearly. Best rewards are great and all, but by this standard, this means I can just head to a lower population instance of PI, join the teams, and do literally nothing, but nudge my character every so often to avoid auto-logging off. It's just wrong. And yeah, I completely get that if I'm the active player, I should mind my own business. I'm still getting to blast the npcs, I'm still getting my prismatics and if I'm very honest with everyone, the reason it bugs me is because I'd like to do this myself sometimes. But I don't. If you're afk long enough for the white AFK bubble to appear over your head, and your team/league doesn't know why you went afk or when you'll be back - you're wrong. It may be completely innocent on your part - kid may have fallen down and started screaming. That's justified reason to step away. And I wouldn't expect any parent to pre-explain the reason before they left - but - it's still creating an opportunity for a player get loot while doing nothing - and I am doing my part, plus some of yours. In some context, going afk for awhile is perfectly understandable. But when I see the notes I've made on a player from the year before, or the days before, yeah, it's pretty clear what's going on. These are people that do this kind of thing habitually. This is just my take. I don't pretend to think the way others do. Opinions vary.