Ukase

That would be fine, if the gang actually did any kind of damage. They're like a bunch of toddlers trying to take down The Big Show. I'm just running at +1/3, and their only utility is a distraction. Pretty much a useless pet which I hope I won't have to use much. I mean - what's the point? Granted, all I have slotted in them is a couple of recharge IOs, but they do nothing but get foot stomped and die as soon as they spawn. Sometimes, they just get tossed about. I don't see much utility. What the set needs is dps, and thus far, it's not damage per second, but damage per moment, lol. I get that my experience with it is a learning one. And if I slot differently, I should expect a somewhat different result - and playstyle enters into it as well. I'm learning, but so far, other than the bruiser, none of the pets are worth spawning. They just seem to run interference. Perhaps I need to experiment things outside of bodyguard mode - but man, the hp of an MM is ridiculously low, and I don't see the logic there. But, just hit 32, I may learn more as I go and will gain a better appreciation. It's hard to transition from SS/Fire Brute to an MM.

I should say - Props to those that play MMs. I played one before - but I had only teamed with it to 25 or so, then PL'd the rest of the way. Didn't learn much that way. Came across a post from someone who'd used it in a challenge of sorts, going up through Praetoria, solo. Figured I'd give it a try. (Thugs/Time) It's not as easy as it looked from the outside, for sure. Hats off to any of you who leveled one up solo without being defeated once on your path to 50. So far, I've suffered defeat 3x and I'm only level 31. Tempted to delete it and start over, but I figure there are other combos to try. Time at this level is just about useless. I can't at this point imagine why folks are proclaiming it to be so awesome. A weak heal and a slow is all I'm seeing out of it so far. But, it's still early. Still, even more reason to give you guys props. Playing one of these is quite the chore. Now if I can just get all the pets to come in on a motorcycle, and give them a decent haircut. But, they are punks. What could I reasonably expect?

So, let's take a step back and enter the wayback machine. In the old days, before the shut down, and before free to play...a new issues came ...how often? And let's be honest - how many of YOU left the game then, when you were paying for it every month because a full staff of paid developers couldn't keep up with your ability to go through content and new powersets, new zones, etc.? Can any of us actually be disappointed at the fantastic job the HC team has done? I will admit, I don't do well with change. Heck, when issue 4 hit, I was puzzled as to why they thought the game needed a change. They could have let it all as it was, would have been fine with me - like with no further changes to it, ever. You tell that to folks and they say, well, people will get tired of doing the same things over and over. And, I guess, now that I've got over 200 level 50's that are t-4'd, of which 80% of them leveled through content outside of the AE, I can see where folks would get tired of doing the same thing. But I have no expectations of our HC team. I sometimes wish they'd do less and not more. Badging is tedious! And when you have multiple badge characters, each time new badges are available, there's a lot to do - and some of it, it's damned tedious. But I digress. We have the game back. It may not have enough folks to suit you, but there's enough to do any content in game without waiting too long. Maybe not on your shard, but you can move shards easily and for free. You can't get any XP in an SG base, so just move to a busier shard. Two ways to increase player base: Retain the players that are here, and bring new players in. Some have said streaming is a way to bring in new players. Perhaps. Word of mouth has also been suggested. There's certainly not going to be any paid advertising, at least, not by the HC team. So, it is what it is. All any of us can do is what we're willing to do and able to do. I consider the matter closed, as everything else is just conjecture or opinions - which are all perfectly fine, but it's just you keeping you occupied when you could be doing something else - like playing the game. Maybe if we all spent less time typing, and more time playing, we wouldn't even be looking for more players. I dunno. Ha! Hypocritical of me with my post count! Anyways, I'm back in the game. Let's just give this a rest, and talk less about it and actually DO more.

Both of you are a couple of the reasons I remain in the SG. Along with a few others. I still use my own base, though. It's nice not suffering lag as soon as you zone into a base, lol.

This is emphatically true. I am in an SG. It's a large SG that has a lot of rules. Recently, some rules changed. Some for the better, some not so good. If it weren't for the few relationships I've formed within it, I would simply quit the SG, as their base is too large to be of any practical use. All those useless decorations - literally a costume shop - complete with Icon contacts - and yes, what appears to be racks of clothing - all for you to see before you can get to the workshop or teleporters. Interesting the first couple of times, but after that - move that crap out of the way and let the portals be much closer to the base entry. But - that's just me, and I'm digressing. The point remains - relationships, often built more easily over discord and other tools are going to be what glues the community together. These zone events like MSRs and hami raids - many people aren't comfortable with discord, and in fact, some folks detest it for their own reasons - but overall, you can build ties more easily using it in zone events than you might otherwise. Primarily because a number of folks find it easier to say something funny than to type it. If it's an event with any difficulty, you can require Push to Talk to limit the number of folks talking over the league leader. And there's no rule that says everyone or anyone has to talk - but if it's there, generally, it allows for social discourse, and that's going to go along way to building relationships.

No worries...but the use of quaint in reference to keyboard and mouse, tools that will be with us for at least another 20-40 years is hardly what I would call quaint.

Well...that's one way. An easier way is to get the invader badge on red side, then change your alignment back to hero or vig. Invader: +Max Health Hero equivalent: TFC Badge Earn all exploration badges in mayhem missions (9 in total, Atlas Park, Kings Row, Skyway City, Steel Canyon, Independence Port, Talos Island, Brickstown, Founder's Falls and Peregrine Island). TIP: Lord Schweinzer, contact in PO that will give you on-demand mayhems. He's unlocked by getting the Hero Slayer/Bloody Hands badge which can be earned by completing the RSF ~2 times. An easier way is to do the Brickstown SSA from Dakota Berg with the third mission on -1x8. If you're on a less sturdy character, you can simply start this arc, and when you get to the third mission, just log off before it's complete, back on, and re-do it with a lower notoriety, like 0/4, or 0/2, whatever your character can handle. It will still be faster than sludging your way through those task forces, and you can do them solo, at your own pace. Granted - you won't have those tasty merits - unless you actually complete the arc, then you get 20 merits for your trouble. I have a character on each account that has Schweinzer unlocked, and the process of getting invader is easily less than 10 minutes.

How in the blue hell do you consider a keyboard and mouse "quaint"? The game isn't old. It's just older. Pong is old. This game will have many years ahead if the current HC team continues to allow us to donate and keep it going.

I can't say you're wrong. But I can't say you're right. I do know that just anecdotally, many pvp-ers I've come across have been unpleasant. When they get clobbered, they whine and insult. When they win, they gloat and insult. It could be a great part of a game, but it really doesn't belong in CoH - at least, not the way it is now. I think a villain doing a mayhem should only happen when a hero is doing a safeguard. That is what pvp should be about, only instead of an npc, another player. How to do that? or something like that? No idea.

The shards don't need to merge. Just the players. Personally, I think Everlasting has its own flavor, as does excelsior. I think Indom and Torch are fairly similar - at least in my limited experience on both shards. Just have Saturday be Indom day and Sunday be Torch day, or vice versa, see how it pans out.

I think the best thing the HC devs could do would be to take the better story arcs made by players OUT of the AE system and implement them in game. The reason these arcs don't get noticed more is that they are in AE and they give no useful rewards. Tickets are only good for salvage or recipes. (and I guess threads now) - but I can buy salvage easily. Same with recipes, and they're recipes I'd actually want, instead of random. AE is good for PL, that's about it. Unless you're in it just for the story - and most are in it for the loot - there's no real purpose to go in there. These "dev choice" awards should be moved out into Paragon City or the Rogue Isles, or Praetoria.

So, I'm older. But if CoH required a link to my phone, my first question would be "Why?". There's nothing to be gained by this. Absolutely nothing. I mean, you want access to the AH from your phone? Why? Your phone would be way too small to do much of anything, I wouldn't think. And even if it could - what would be the point? To avoid logging in? Seems like a lot of code work to avoid logging in. I don't see the reason for this. Again, I'm older. Nothing says the way I think is the way anyone else should think, other than my over-inflated narcissistic ego. But, now Discord...that opens up some of what you're looking for. I know in a number of Discord (channels?) I belong to, I can see what game certain people are playing. So, I can send DMs to these players from there. I think Discord would help you do the communication side of things you're suggesting, but everything I know about the AH says the code is way too scrambled to implement something like this without building it from scratch - which would be a massive undertaking.

I reluctantly agree. I'm really going to try and be concise - which is a struggle. But, here's the situation as I see it. It's hard to add anything of quality to what's already been said, but I'll try. Because our current cadre of developers are themselves unpaid volunteers, it's too much to ask for them to grind out new stuff every 3 months, even if it's small stuff, like a new story arc for an old contact, or a new arc for a new contact. (compared to a Page 3 type issue) So, it seems simple to me. Enjoy what we have. Stop sweating the server load or lack of it. Can't find a team? Be the teammate you want to find. (I am stealing that, sort of from someone else, I forget who.) There are still people who meet routinely and tackle whatever task/strike force or story arc that catches their fancy. The shard that's played on is irrelevant. It's all the same game. Now, if you want to read everything - you can read below, otherwise, skip it. *************************************************** Aging player base - we're mostly older adults, I figure between 35 and 50, some younger and some older. Still, in this demographic, with the restrictions from the pandemic easing off, there are more demands on our time. If we were still 15-25, not so much. What's more, and I could be sorely off base - as older adults, well, we're smarter. We know what's under the hood now. Folks like Bopper have taken that mystery and revealed things that we simply didn't know before, essentially making things a bit easier when it comes to building for dps and survivability. League/Team size requirements - these have been lifted for Task forces, but for incarnate trials and zone events like a hamidon raid, there's still a minimum. With Hamidon, the minimum isn't set by the game, but by the players' abilities and time to commit. Hamidon has been defeated with less than 8 if I'm not mistaken. And even if the lowest number he's been defeated with was 8, those 8 were specific ATs and powersets with specific builds and temp powers for that set purpose. In Underground and Magisterium - it's my understanding if the league size is less than 24, the HP of the AVs scale down to correlate with the league size. Doesn't make it easier, as you have fewer buffs and debuffs to go around, but there is some sort of system compromise for lower numbers. But for hamidon and msr - missing those dozen or so extra buffs/debuffs make things a little harder in the case of MSR, and a lot longer, in the case of Hamidon. A solution is possible, but if it were implemented, then you might have folks on the more populated shards able to take further advantage. (depending on the solution, of course) Fire farms, or more broadly, farms in general have become more of a norm than a treat. Farm is now pretty much a verb, rather than a place to produce livestock and/or produce. I can only imagine what the end result is for most players, if there even is an end. Massive piles of influence can and are obtained by farming. With HC's generous 3 accounts to a shard rule, there's nothing, other than your system's resources to stop you from making a total of 15 accounts and having an afk farmer on a map. Even with minimal outcomes, that's a chunk of inf. Bear in mind, you'd have to find the inf to build 15 farmers, but it only takes one farmer to do that. I remember making my first farmer. It was a fire/fire brute. I wasn't even aware of spines/fire at the time. And it sure wasn't afk. I had tried it, but I had to have healing flames on auto, not burn. Granted, it was July, just about 2 months after the servers opened, and folks were still figuring things out. I leaned more towards marketing for influence. But I didn't want to spend time sifting through the AH looking for bargains. I figured I could just use what dropped in the farm, and that has worked very well for me. Unfortunately, or not - I now have options. Because of the inf I have stored up, I don't feel this need to run Apex/Tin Mage over and over with a different alt just to get those tasty merits. I will on occasion for the fun of it - but it's not really about merits for me anymore. I'll use them, of course, but there are no "carrots" dangling by a string and stick over this donkey's gaping maw. So what motivates me to play? And is it really accurate to call it play? I "play" to try out different powersets and ATs to see if they are suitable to my playstyle. On occasion I'll play something completely out of my comfort zone - like an MM - to learn more about what it's like to team with MMs. I tend to only see things from my characters' perspectives. It's time I figured out the reasons why scrappers get PO'd when rain of fire scatters the few mobs they had in their AoE damage patch. It's time I figured out how to make a controller more useful. And, it's time I figured out if the MM pets are stupid, or the player behind the MM. (I suspect in some cases it's the pets, and other cases it's both, and in a few cases, it's me. ) But, because of my success, I now pretty much don't team up anymore with pugs. I'll do the odd tf or iTrial, but nothing like when I was struggling to fund a build. I can't tell you how many times I made the mistake of accepting a recruiting call for a free farm only to delete the character later because I simply didn't understand how to play it, or what the powers really did. A lot of that is my own fault, of course. But who doesn't want free XP? With the ease of making characters on the test server now, there's really no need to PL anything anymore, unless it's just the sub-50 content you're tired of. But, even so, after all these years, there's still content I'm not tired of. I am weary of the Hollows. Not yet weary of Faultline. Croatoa continues to interest me, but I do hate the initial hunt missions. Good excuse to get fold space, though. I port them into the very neighborhood I'm supposed to remove them from. The contact system, at least on blue side, needs major work. The idea of having origin contacts is outdated, and what's more - any contact that doesn't give a story arc should just disappear from the game, or be clear from the top that all they'll do is give random one-off missions. The only reason I play now is pretty much out of habit. Things are just too easy in this flavor of CoH. Even the master runs, without set bonuses, WHEN you're on a team of other competent players make things trivial; no sweat. Mind you - when I say that, I need to make it clear - we're not doing master runs at +4/8. The only reason they're being done is for the badges, and who would want to make the effort as difficult as possible? Certainly not me. I just want the shiny. Not complaining about it being too easy. I like easy. But many folks savor the challenge. Easy is dull and boring for them. There's something to be said for making things "as difficult as possible". I remember on live - The Really Hard Way. Accomplishing that was truly a big deal. Some of us even transferred servers to help other servers accomplish it. Here on HC - it's trivial. The ease of acquiring super inspirations certainly doesn't hurt the process. Farmers would always have trouble getting a donkey to work. So, they had a choice. Use a carrot, or a stick. I'm not real clear on the origins of the idea, but someone eventually tied the carrot to the stick, and hung the carrot in front of the donkey to get the donkey to move forward. If the donkey gets the carrot, he stops moving. A PL is pretty much giving the donkey the carrot. The problem is simply that with veteran players, they've run the early content into the ground. It's like Monopoly now. We all know that Oriental Avenue costs $100, rents for $6 unimproved and charges $550 with a hotel. And who doesn't know that Boardwalk will cost $2k with a hotel? Humans in this day and age require novelty from time to time. CoH simply doesn't have it. When Aeon came out, for 2-3 weeks, and a little bit more than that - Aeon was being run night and day, all day. Now...not so much. Still get some folks doing it on occasion, but even for new content, for most folks, it's every bit as stale as Flambeaux & Fusionette running off at the mouth. I understand that many of you simply want a larger, more vibrant community. It could happen, but that's highly unlikely. For one, now that we're all older, who's going to tell their friends that they play a video game in their spare time? Certainly not me. I'm an adult. I know my father would be rolling over in his grave if he knew that at 55, I've even spent time typing on a forum instead of taking out the trash or some other mundane household chore that can wait until the sun comes up. And I know my friends would have their palms out waiting on that gift of influence, and then quit playing due to real life being more challenging. This game was designed initially to get players to subscribe and follow the lore. But then they got smart and learned the free to play model would get them more money. But that meant new content coming out, routinely and regularly, as well as the "loot box", or super packs that you'd literally pay real world cash for. Our players want new powersets, new ATs and new content. But most of all, they want quick forming teams and leagues. More players. But it's not going to happen until we determine a proper method for player retention, if there is such a thing.

I am no clothes horse, nor a coh fashion plate. But I must be mis-reading something. I can zoom in on my character in the costume creator. I can rotate the character, too. All with a click of my mouse.

First, I applaud the sense of adventure. And the determination to face ignominious defeat (well, that's an exaggeration, lol) however many times your character did is creditable. The thing that sticks out at me is the X3 part of the equation. I'd have reduced difficulty after the 3rd defeat. Now, I'm off to make a Thugs/Time MM just to see how this plays out for me. Maybe I can find a tactic that would be helpful for others. Bear in mind - I have played an MM on live...but the servers shut down when it was somewhere in the teens. Made one on HC...but it had only teamed with others until the all MM team got distracted and it stopped meeting. So, leveling one up solo should be interesting. There's a LOT I don't know about MMs, so should be fun to be a rookie of sorts again.

I only started using procs a few months ago. And haven't played SS in a couple of years, so these were things of interest. But, it seemed to me that they probably shouldn't work during rage, which was my reason for posting initially. But, I guess I can take the good with the bad, lol.

Also of interest (to me, anyway)...the procs I've got in burn also work during the rage crash.

I still have a dozen or so characters on torch. A farmer, and my first fire blaster. I also have a character that was supposed to be a copy of one of my favorite characters on live - a spines/regen scrapper. Heh, I looked at it- and it didn't have ANY IOs in it. Level 26 and nothing but SOs. Small wonder the stats were really bad. I stopped playing it because it didn't seem nearly as robust as my scrapper was on live, post regen nerf. But my memories of that character are at 50, not 26. Still, I hate to PL it. As someone who gets the 4 passive accolades on each character, I already run Maria Jenkins at least twice a week, and that's really about 2x as much as I'd like to. Maybe Torch and Indom should join up. I had initially moved to torch because of some friends who reached out that had settled there, so I moved. I always felt like the folks at Torch were better speed runners, more of the min-max type. Excelsior slowly began to pick up some of these folks, or some of them simply "caught up". But there's no question with more players comes more casual players. And some of them are so casual, they genuinely have no idea what they are doing, and are quite blissfully ignorant and don't even know it.

We all know Rage Crash is no fun. But, Rage is fun, so we deal with it. While I noticed that Foot Stomp doesn't do any damage while Rage-crashed, I do get the damage mitigation. So, I figured I'd try to see if I can take advantage of the Nem Staff KB while crashed. Well, I missed, but Sands of Mu allowed for full damage, despite the rage crash still showing as active in Combat attributes. Perhaps this is WAI. Perhaps not. Figured I'd report it.

Anyone still using a motherboard that has a floppy drive connector is likely deceased, I'd think. I'm 55 now. I haven't played on a system that old even when coh was in its infancy.

Well, I think I heard that before, but I could never find anything to confirm it - and I am sometimes chronically lazy when it comes to investing time in what should be a leisure activity. I actually passed Statistics..but not by much, lol. Given that info, I will remove the Chance for heal from Superior Conditioning and add the slot in foot stomp.

No, I respectfully disagree. I could certainly be misunderstanding how this proc in particular works, but I plugged that in to the proc calculator. That's with NO recharges in it at all. That's just not worth the slot to me. Ordinarily, in a single target attack with this high a base recharge, that'd be worth it. (as evidenced in KO Blow) But since it's AoE, the odds of firing are just a smidge over 1 in 4 times. Some folks might think as often as it would be used, it would be worth it, and perhaps I should try it first - but my gut says the odds of firing are just too low. With the avalanche set in, and just adding the slot from....somewhere, lol, I encourage everyone to use Bopper's spreadsheet when deciding on if a proc is worth it or not. And also consider your alpha slot, as that does impact (negatively) if you've got an alpha that improves recharge. In this case, I think I'm going Cardiac - but more for the extra resistance that exceeds diminishing returns.

I find this interesting. And, I think if I were to PUG as often as you may have, I would probably see more of that. As it is, I read some crazy dialogue just yesterday before and during a speed underground. I can't quote verbatim, but the gist of it was: Player: I'm debating on whether or not to call off work and do this trial. Trial starts. Just after the first phase (explained below) is completed: Player: Sorry, I thought this was going to be fast. I gotta go. Player logs off. The first phase of Underground, as we all know is kind of slow, as there are two waves of two separate ambushes. And, no matter how quickly you clobber the first wave, you have to wait for the next, twice. It's like 3 minutes from entering the trial to finishing this part. The recruitment for this was for a "speed" ugt. I know UGT well enough to know there are parts you can speed, and parts you can't. Not everyone knows this, I get it. But at no time did the player in question ask "how long will this take?" And he quits after 3 minutes. Did we need him? No. Finished just fine without that silly person. If people had been turned away and he pulled that, I would have given him a proper verbal thrashing for being selfish and yes, stupid. He knew he had to work. And you've got to be some kind of stupid to think a UGT, even a speed one, is going to take less than 5 minutes. Even a speed lambda is going to be hard pressed to finish that quickly. So, yeah, I can see where this might happen more often than you'd appreciate. I've been social distancing in game as well as in real life, teaming only with players I know. If I don't know them, the moods gotta be right for me to take the risk. I do feel badly for the folks on Indom. While I farm there, I can see the questions in help and the lfg activity. Other than one player who moved from Excelsior to Indom because he burned too many bridges, I've never come across anyone that's a jerk. I've got a base there, more than a few characters leveling up. But man...as much as I'd like to be the character I want to see in game, I try to be patient, but sitting in a zone for 20 minutes with nothing to do just waiting for others just makes me angry and resentful. I'm just not a cheerful giver in this regard. I simply hate to wait.

Yes, I know - it's a dead thread. In a feeble effort to be helpful, I've looked at these builds - but was too lazy to manually insert them into the current version of mids. It can be a bit annoying for the player looking for ideas to see links that are out of date, or involve installing build planners that are not generally used by most folks. That's not to say they shouldn't used - but I know most folks I know use Mids Reborn, and the idea of using a different planner is an annoyance for me. So, since I'm currently playing an SS/Fire brute, I've made my own version. While it could fire farm, (I think, it's not even level 40 yet) that's not the purpose of this character. There are better primaries for a brute for that purpose. This was just about fun. I went with fold space more for foot stomp than burn. Burn is capped at 5 targets although anecdotally, the mobs are so clustered together, I find it pretty much impossible to tell how many are burning up. Fire is such a weak armor compared to other sets. No Defense Debuff resistance. No KB protection. Gotta burn slots to tackle the latter, and Ageless is the ONLY defense, aside from defense against getting hit from the debuffing attack in the first place. (aside from any teammates you might have...I dunno if any team buffs mitigate that) Focused Accuracy can address the -ToHit debuff, but not any other. But, in exchange for that, you get burn, glorious burn. Rage is essentially perma and stackable, just not quite all the time. There is the rage crash - but even then, the impact of foot stomp is enough to mitigate most incoming damage, as they're all bouncing in the air. At least, that's how I've dealt with it. Most of the time, the timing of the rage crash happens while taking an elevator or hopping from one fight to the next, so it's seldom a big deal. I really wanted to proc out burn - but when you do this - it's at the expense of set bonuses. I also considered not using procs in KO blow, but there will come times when you need single target damage more than AoE - as in the case of AVs. There is a trade-off with using them, and they're not for everyone. I lose out on set bonuses, and for that exchange, I get 130 more damage (comparing the current slotting vs 6 slotted hecatomb) I wouldn't have minded the extra recharge, but on the whole, I looked at the recharge for KO Blow, thinking that the hecatomb set might let it recharge a bit faster, but mids doesn't seem to notice a difference. I'll have to go to test and try it out to be certain, but for now, the KO blow stays proc'd. I make no claims that this build is better than any other. From a numbers perspective, the S/L resists are as high as I could make them, and even that comes at a cost of regen, hp, defense and dps. All characters have a balance between chaos (dps) and order (survivability). This build probably leans more towards order than chaos. But, so far, it's been quite fun. Roan Strong - Brute (Super Strength).mxd

So, I'm a bit disappointed in myself. I said I wanted to be helpful, but after a couple of times helping, I noticed that it isn't all that helpful. And, when I think about it, any player taken from one server to assist on another server is kind of like whack-a-mole, isn't it? Even on Excelsior, while the leagues do fill more quickly, they still take some time to do so. Even if I had the influence to sway a dozen folks or so to join me on indom ( I have the influence, but not the desire to spend it in that fashion) that would be at the expense of Excelsior. Then, instead of one league filling in 5-10 minutes and the other filling in 20-30 minutes, both would be waiting 15-20 minutes. That doesn't really resolve the problem. And really, as I look at my own behavior and inclinations, it's more a lack of patience problem on my end than anything else. That and a real lack of the block of time required when the wait to fill is longer than I'm accustomed to. My best advice is to simply forgo your wonderful bases and transfer. (Beyond SG bases, I see no reason why that's not a feasible solution...other than maybe alt names) Alternatively - consider a routine team up over on Excelsior or Everlasting, and entice players to join your group on Indom for various activities. And, over time, seduce them into joining you routinely. Because the shards are identical, other than players, it's a small matter to get folks in the habit of creating new characters on Indom in lieu of other servers. It would take some investment of time, of course. And you'd have to be somewhat friendly and fun consistently. But, if you build the relationships, no reason why that wouldn't be contagious.