Ukase

Hey, I'm a guy who named a character Broc Li using martial assault. (even if it was on a dominator) "I'm the vegetable with the best kung fu!" was my bio. And with that bio, the cheese was there, practically a given.

Ultimately, it's not a big deal; I start the Lab with two. I take one, and the other is for when it runs out, and since we can access the AH, I have a few more there if I need them. I was just wondering if something like the Awakened boss did some kind of mindswipe and stole the buff or something, even though I can't tell from the combat logs.

This is a fine question to ask, one I've asked before. There is no right answer, I'm afraid. I think @Yomo Kimyata with his give away that he tirelessly did for a year or more had the right amount. 20M. They could still get the luxury team teleport, if they even knew it existed, and have enough left over for basic SOs. But it really doesn't matter. Gifting them influence is pointless, because they have no idea how to get more. Most will park the alt after Halloween, or beg for a farm. Some will keep playing, but those would be in the minority. Anecdotally, I know I've given away entirely too much, because those players stopped playing (as far as I could tell) almost immediately after I gifted them large sums. In fact, there might be 5 people out of the hundreds I've gifted large sums that are still playing. I think the best gift of all is your time and your knowledge, if they're smart enough to ask the "how" question.

So, just to make it clear - when I play - my camera is zoomed out at max. So, I usually only see what's going on when I'm in a tight space and the camera can't zoom that far out. To me - given the description of the power, I just assumed it was PBAoE. (why did they chance PBAoE into melee aoe, and why change TAoE to ranged AoE? I know they had their reasons, but I don't like the change, but I digress - and that was a rhetorical question, because they're not going to change it back) After some chat with Rudra, I have come to see the light, so to speak. Now, I don't like it - mainly because I like the PBAoE invention sets better than the TAoE. Other than that, it's really not that big of a deal. This will be yet another character relegated to the back pages simply because it uses that combo sequence - which isn't bad, but I prefer consistent damage regardless of what order I mash the buttons.

Today, it worked like it was supposed to; but every now and then, I'll take it, and when I zip through a mob in search of a fog, I'll need to take another. And if you've been in a lab run with EG and Goddess Laucianne, it usually doesn't take 15 minutes to face the mino. And it's not like I lose track of time; It's seriously only lasting like 5 minutes. But sometimes it lasts the full 15. It's very odd.

Yes and no. There is a limit of 5 of the same kind of set bonus, and 5 LotG 7.5% would put you at that cap. But the kinetic crash would be a different category of set bonus. For whatever reason, the Paragon Devs decided LotG 7.5% was it's own special category of 7.5% recharge. So you can slot 5 lotg 7.% and your kin crash and still get the benefit of all 6 sets of 7.5% global recharge. The damage cap on brutes is very, very high. You can almost always benefit from more damage. Once you're past level 21, the cap is 700% if the HC wiki is to be trusted. The only way my brutes have ever hit this number has been to gobble a lot of red inspirations. I have a Shield/Mace tank, but not the brute. I thought about sharing it, but given the disparity of playstyles, and the ATs, it just seems like that would be a waste of time for both of us. If I were you, I'd just try to pay attention to what your character seems to need when fighting. If your endurance is too low, then slot some end reducers in the larger end using attacks. If you find yourself getting defeated, try to determine if it's because you're just biting off more than you can chew, or if you're getting debuffed to the point of a cascading failure. Certainly, hasten is not required, and on my tank, it doesn't have hasten for the same reason - one auto-fire for the mez protection is in use. And while I could use a key bind for hasten, I don't want to. And as you have noticed, there's plenty of attacks. As a brute, you might want to consider it, as you've got a huge damage cap. It kind of makes sense to maul the npcs with your largest damage attacks as often as possible. I would definitely skip bash or pulverize to take Build-up, but you and I don't play much alike, so that would naturally be your choice.

Thankfully, you did add "almost" as a qualifier. Dominators can benefit from perma-dom. But I would offer the premise that for some dominators, it's a luxury, nice to have, but hardly required or even needed. It all depends. If you team with a kin routinely, you're not sweating endurance and you're not worried about status protection.

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.