Ukase

Many TFs be like that. And yes, Snarky. You have failed this city with your stupid new job. Now we have to wait until you have free time AND get sucky team experiences and the inclination to write about them.

So, I have nothing against this line of thinking. If those responsible for the upkeep of this site are also unopposed, I would encourage them to make visible some sort of donation link via paypal or some other secure funds transfer service. Someone asked me if I would promote the link, but I looked and didn't see the option to do so. I was genuinely surprised and super pleased to see the page 8 labyrinth tips and /locs were listed for most everything. That was the motivation behind my post. Once again, the wiki makes my life a little easier! It seemed only proper to give them thanks - but there's no way to do so that I'm aware of on the site itself.

Some folks play one character. Or mainly one. Maybe they have 1 level 50, several alts ranging from 1-49, but only one "Main", and they play that character more than any other. Some folks make a new alt daily. Whether they farm it up to 50 + 3-9 vet levels and get to 50+3 before they begin "playing" it. They do a certain amount of things with the character, or just try it on for size. Usually they park it, and then start over. Depending on free time to play, this could be a daily thing or a monthly thing. Some folks play only seldom. Maybe a mission or two a day. Some folks don't even do missions, but RP in some fashion or another. My question is directed mainly to folks that alt a fair amount, but typically reach 50 with most characters. When do you start a new one? Is there some objective like t-4 in all? All the accolades? All the badges? I've played enough characters where I know what I like. But I haven't played enough to know what else I would like. I've gotten a lot of utility out of my current character, a fire/atomic blaster. I don't usually keep playing a character to vet level 33. I usually stop after I get t-4. For whatever reason, I've kept playing this one a little longer. I can't seem to settle on a new one, so I'll keep playing this one for now. I actually leveled this one up in a farm, and began playing it at 50. I haven't done this for a character in a few years. There's pros and cons to doing things this way. It's certainly faster to get the accolades at 50 then organically as you level up. But, when you're doing content through Ouro, you can't really stop and join for a gm or hami raid without losing your progress. (thankfully, I have alts for such things, but still, I'd like the character I'm on to get those merits, too) When do you park it and start over? Is it just a "feel"? Or is there some goal you've reached?

The primary with mental manipulation can make all the difference. Just my own style of play being referenced ice/mental isn't as synergistic as fire/mental. I played a dark/mental, and if I'm being real, they weren't that synergistic. When you get drain psyche off on a group of 4 or so, it's incredible. better than regen on a regen scrapper. (seems better. May or may not be numerically better - hit points have a lot to do with this, because the 75% regeneration of the buff is going to look at your HP to do the math. It's fairly easy to get Drain Psyche perma with liberal pursuit of global recharge. Here's the rub - or at least it was for me. A lot of my attacks on a blaster are ranged. Only a couple are melee. I can get in melee when they're up, and open with drain psyche. Because if I open with the nuke, I don't get much utility cuz most are dead, or tossed out of range until I get the kb -kd proc in there. (depends on the nuke, of course) Fire, in my opinon, with fire sword circle, and the other PBAoEs is a better, synergistic fit than ice or dark, or really most of the other powersets. Drain Psyche is also a recovery and regen debuff, so it's useful against AVs, too. But...honestly, it can be fun, but it's not as fun as something you don't have to time properly and think about like frigid protection or caustic aura. But that's just me. If my role is dps, trying to ensure I'm in the mob first to get the most out of DP...in this age of people using judgements and fold space...nah, I don't think it's a great set. Really good in the right hands in the right circumstances. But I just don't see myself as the right hands, and the right circumstances are not that common.

I've mentioned this before. As games go - other than Chess and Risk, this is really the only game I've ever played against/with other people (on a computer). That inexperience with other games - WoW, SWTO, Guild Wars, LotRO, etc - it can reveal itself when people use terms like "Quest" instead of "Mission". Or, "Dungeon". And my favorite, "enchantments", when they refer to enhancements. CoH can be as hard as you want to make it. But, in some circumstances, you can't make it super easy. The Labyrinth is a great example. I do not believe that it is possible to solo the Minotaur in the Labyrinth. You could probably try - with a league of players buffing you while you're solo, but that wouldn't really be solo. You could have the best made AT, and I just don't think it's going to happen. Not without some bug, like an apprentice charm doing some ungodly damage or locking the minotaur in place like a malevolent fog. If I want to make things hard on myself - I don't make the npcs more difficult. I make my character weaker. Occasionally, I might do both, but that's fairly uncommon. I did a "drop challenge" with a number of characters where I can't use the AH, I can't use a merit vendor, all I can slot is what drops. If I get some converters that drop, I can use those, but I can't exchange merits for boosters or catalysts or anything. And let me tell you - it's possible to get to 50 without being defeated, but it's really tedious. The only time I get excited is when an end mod enhancement or recipe drops. Those are more rare than very rares! The hardest part of CoH is not in the playing of the character. It's in the understanding of the terminology and the methods of outfitting your character, and understanding the non-combat parts of the game. The combat is super easy. You mash the buttons until they're dead or you're dead. It's the rest of it that makes the game interesting to me. I don't care about XP. I don't care about challenging encounters. I enjoy more of the management of the character and the resources. What to do with the salvage - stash/hoard vs sell/vendor. Craft/convert? Craft/Stash? Do I actually play this character to 50? Or table it until they change kinetic melee to be something worthwhile? Or just delete it? It's all the other things - not combat - that makes the game hard. Do I explain to people that mention global channels I should join that I have 4 accounts? That some accounts may or may not be afk-farming, and I'm actively playing on one? Do I join someone else's SG just because it seems to be the largest? And these guys can't ever seem to fill their teams, as large as they are? And your alts can't communicate with the SG unless they also join the SG? Which would make my own storage SG kind of useless and difficult to use? All that interplay between me and other players makes the game super hard for me. On one level, I really need these folks for GM kills and iTrials and some TFs. And on another level, they really slow things down with their wanting to kill everything. And that bunch of speeders always make me feel inadequate with their instant load times and ability to teleport through walls. (which was explained to me how to do this - but that's too much for my clumsy fingers) The people are the best and worst parts of the game. They make it super easy or super hard. As alluded to by Monty, playing is easy. Playing well or mastering it (which I really haven't, despite having all the badges) is very time-consuming and difficult, in my opinion. Nothing is so difficult that any one thing couldn't be done when properly explained. But by mastery, I refer to knowing when to use ouro to exit a map to make things more efficient, as opposed to hitting the exit button and seeing what the next objective is. Knowing to not use your TT because the next mission is a chat, not a mission door. Knowing not to use 7 lotg 7.5% because of the rule of 5. Knowing not to use 5 purple sets and your superior ATOs because of the same rule of 5. All of that stuff is a lot harder than button mashing and positioning of your character in a challenging fight.

There's a distinction between the two - at least in my head, if nowhere else. The alignment tip missions are where you're choosing which alignment you're heading towards. Hero, Vig, Rogue, Vill. The Morality is where you make the choice to trigger the change from one to the other. The game refers to the tip missions - in your contact/tip tab - as alignment missions. It refers to the Morality Mission, awarded after you complete 10 alignment missions from the rng, or your SG computer as a Morality mission. Although in our lazy American way of talking, the two can easily be used interchangeably and most will know what you mean, the distinction is in the game. Morality is the last one that awards 40 reward merits. Alignment missions are the ones you complete to get to the morality. For whatever reason, whether bug or WAI, the Morality counts as one of the 25 missions for the badge.

The morality missions also count towards the 25 for the new badge.

Interesting. Allow me to share an embarrassing moment. I was on a Numina with @blapperella a couple of days ago. For whatever reason, despite the team being level 50, they wanted to run it at +2. No big deal to me. Maybe they want to unlock some incarnates or whatever. But it was a speedy run. They clearly wrote in chat while doing a chat task in another zone - "Don't enter mission until I zone in, or the mission will bug low". (words to that effect, they were probably more clear) I read the words. But sure enough, when the mission posted, I entered. It was a speedy run is my only defense. And I really didn't save the team that much time with my ATT to the back room. I was ridiculed, mocked, fussed at for being illiterate and who knows what else. I thought it was a bit of a fuss over nothing - because who cares? It's a speedy run, and in speed runs, one doesn't wait around for everyone to enter zone. Still - it wasn't my speed run, and I should have heeded the request. For whatever reason, even though I read it - by the time the mission posted, I had forgotten it in those 90 seconds or so and didn't follow the instructions. So, that's on me. Days later, I'm still wondering why/how it happened. I can only conclude it was a combination of things. The scariest part is aging. Even though I'm in better physical shape now than I've ever been in my life. My dad died of a brain tumor. Maybe I have one? It would be a bit paranoid to get that checked out for something so innocuous. There are a lot of things that make new and/or new(returning) players do things that we might never think of. The chat window being closed. I remember about 3 years being on a baf with a guy who wouldn't pass the star to the league lead. On the surface, not that big of a deal. Not like we don't all know what to do in a BAF. But the league leader wanted that star back, and Siege was dead before we were able to get this guy to open his chat screen and see the messages before he finally passed the star. I know on retail - I would very often close my chat screen when solo, but never teamed. And I closed it because I was playing on a laptop and the screen was way smaller than what I have now. And I want to say I was playing 600X800, so everything was super big. Opening the chat screen just cluttered things up. So, as much as it amazes me, there are still people playing on machines as old as this game is. Why they don't upgrade...that's anyone's guess. Some folks feel like they can do the big computing on their phone, so a computer is now a luxury they needn't spend cash on. Silly casuals. I like the idea of a league/team leader being able to flash words across our screen if they can only do so a couple of times in a 30 second window or something like that. I dunno if such a feature would ever come to pass, though. I personally feel like any player that doesn't have their chat window up when teamed is simply an idiot. There's just no rational reason for it that I can think of. Maybe I'm the idiot, but I just don't grasp why anyone would do that. I do know that it's fairly easy for the chat windows to get messed up. On retail, I used to mess it up all the time. I don't know why it doesn't happen any more. Maybe my typing has gotten better. <shrug> I wish I had a solution, but I'm afraid the easiest solution for me is using stars and notes. I'll 2 star a player like this with a note like "non-responsive".

If you are one of those that has recently updated the HC wiki - thank you! Give yourself a pat on the back!

So...someone either cannot do math, or they want to spend 1M per rare salvage. Never mind. Don't let what just happened to my brain happen to yours. The more logical play at work here is to obscure the price of the last 5.

I would think now the labyrinth would be the go-to for such things, with the 25% xp buff.

Just anecdotally, if you have a fairly reliable group of friends that log in around the same time - you will earn more doing an ITF than you will clearing a farm. Now, if you're just relaxing, and inf isn't your purpose, it probably won't matter if you run it at +3 or +4 - the powers used are the same.

My reply to this is a bit off-topic, but...<shrug> Depends on what you mean by weak. Slow, I'll reluctantly grant you. Slow is not necessarily weak. A player can still proc their character to the gills with very high global recharge and still have a rough time getting from point A to point B. I would argue the biggest factor in speedy runs is being familiar with the content. When it would be faster to Ouro out of the mission, as opposed to exiting and then realizing you have to board transit for the next mission. The duration within the missions are rarely going to vary much if the team's intent is just the mission objectives. Except for efficiency expert badge, there are very few circumstances where speed is required in any fashion. I like speedy. I'm just not great at it. Tiki torches in Orenbegan maps, having to go through the sewers where the original devs deliberately make me have to zig from left to right and try not get caught on those door frames...that's so humbling trying to zip through those as fast as I can.

HA! That's why you gave most of us a thumbs down. We were too polite and didn't spell it out.

You're missing the same thing I missed for quite some time - so don't feel badly. It's what yomo mentions - crafting costs. As an example: Obliteration:Chance for Smashing Damage, a level 50 recipe. (I actually used this example in another thread in this sub-forum, somewhere) The crafting cost, as you see, not counting for salvage is 490,400 for a level 50 rare recipe. At level 41, the recipe would require the same pieces of salvage, but the crafting costs are much cheaper: I use level 41, simply because if I'm to craft and convert, this level range is better for me to get the IOs that I want. There are many players who would simply sell the level 50 recipe on the AH for whatever they can get, or vendor it, if the bids aren't that good. Then, they may purchase the same recipe, only at a lower level to save on the crafting costs. This is a small part of the reason why marketers make so much more inf than farmers. The farmers are generally level 50, taking advantage of all the slots and set bonuses a 50 can get, to be as efficient at clearing maps as they can. But the drops they get, as I've learned, cost a lot more to craft. If the inclination is to craft and convert recipe drops, you're better off simply forgoing that at level 50, vendor it or sell it on the AH, and either purchasing lower level recipes and crafting/converting those, or just let your lower level characters do this, while your farmer does their own thing, which is clear maps and pray for purple rain. As for turning off these recipes, I don't do that, because I've never been full of recipes before, as I manage all my inventory frequently. And uncommons, rares - they still have value. And disabling them doesn't cause more commons or very rares to drop in their place. So, it's a loss. A small loss, but still a loss. May as well keep getting them and vendoring/selling them on AH - but that's me. Not everyone has the inclination to process their inventory so often.

I am super curious about this. Way back in maybe 2019, I probably earned close to 8K Reward Merits either taking turns leading the raids in the Hive or taunting hami. And then I just got kind of weirded out by some of the strange commentary by other folks in the league, so just figured I'd stop attending. Back then, a lot of the decisions on who would lead the raids was discussed either in chat on the Excelsior Discord (not run by anyone official as far as I know.) I want to say it was @foxfyre who started the discord, or some other former Justice player. Not sure how I squeezed into the rotation, but I did. It's not clear to me who the cool kids are now, calling these shots. And I guess my one big question is - why are we clearing mitos when it's clearly proven it's not necessary? One part of me likes it, because I always get some shards for my characters, which save me from having to use threads. And while it only takes another 2 minutes - it's time enough where we could squeeze in another round instead of just 3. Back then, the story went that folks were concerned about a nerf bat for us, or a buff to Hami, so we should play it slow. Well, I dunno. Okie & the Goddess and Maiden have been zerging hami for months on end. So why not zerg in the hive, too? Just wondering the why, more than anything else.

I think, your feet first approach into the deep end is a proper one. Even though you may not know much now - your teammates will likely teach you a lot, just from your observation. Now, it could be an observation of what not to do, but either way, you should learn quite a bit. I don't know very much at all about marine, but water is a very good set for blasters and corruptors. Water has a lot of knockdown; as such, it present an opportunity, if you're inclined, to tackle harder foes. It is probably the most survivable of all the blast sets, with ice being a close 2nd. (although, skill levels vary, and it could be vice-versa for some) I would encourage you to consider your approach to this character. Are you going to play it like a blaster, and consider buffs/debuffs as a secondary thing? If so, you may not wish to heed all the advice about not skipping any of the marine secondary. Since you're going to be teamed, I would suggest considering the leadership pool once you have the endurance to sustain it. Any/all but the Victory Rush. (I have nothing against it, I just have never used it, and can't speak to the utility) With a theme team, I suspect the fight pool will be largely unnecessary. Things will likely die before you're in a threating situation. But it may be useful as a mule here and there. That's your call. I already know you're going to have hover or some form of flight. Undead people don't change! Play the rest by ear. Your endurance bar and hitpoints bar will tell you what you need to slot if you pay attention. The only thing I would encourage you to strongly consider is six-slotting dehydrate. 5 procs and 1 acc/dam Hami-O. It's great for procs! You can rely on the base heal and not enhance the heal part at all, or you can do half and half, whatever you like. I just used damage procs and the HO. It has a funky sound when executed, but it works quite well.

I confess, I've not played a mastermind very often. I've got a couple at level 50, and they sit idle because there's too much work in way of pet management for me to have any real fun. I guess something must have changed. It makes perfect sense to me to use endurance for each pet spawned.

The prompt to accept teleport will only display if the character is within a small range. I looked in City of Data for more specifics, but didn't find anything useful. Anecdotally , you kind of have to be under it.

This is one of the nicer reasons to use various damage procs.

One of the hardest lessons that I tend to need to relearn is my way of thinking very seldom aligns with how others think. It's not lost on me why everyone doesn't think the way I do. Probably for the best.

So, with ice blast comes the opportunity to proc some of the longer base recharge single target powers, like Freeze Ray. You could lose burnout in favor of another travel power, as "They" recently nerfed the recharge to once a day. possible Ukase build - Blaster (Ice Blast).mxd

So, just a thought on the ice blast hold, Freeze Ray. Freeze Ray doesn't require hold set slotting - you can slot with ranged, or even damage procs. It even does more base damage than ice blast, albeit in a fast DoT. It's a super fast animation, too. What's not to like? As for bitter freeze ray, on one build, I have it. On the other two I skip it, because the animation is too long for the damage it provides (and doesn't insta-snipe the way other sets Snipes do, so although it's situationally useful, I can do without it) I would consider ice/fire, with an eye towards melee & ranged defense. Alternatively - fire/atomic is super nice.

I should also add...if you want more detailed, specific advice, feel free to send a tell to @ukase If I'm on, and at the keyboard, I can generally answer questions. Be warned tho - I tend to over-explain, and as a result, will chat your damned head off. During the days, I am often tabbed out for work, so it's a hit/miss proposition. I encourage you to look for names like @Yomo Kimyata @Andreah @Troo @Bionic_Flea in this market sub-forum, and even in the guides section. These and other players are very sharp and provide great tips and tricks for mastering the market. And there's a lot more than just those 4, those are just the names that come to mind when I think of the market and helpful, sharp players.

For inactive, I like 44188.