srmalloy

The Brandenburgers, and their predecessor unit, the Freikorps Ebbinghaus, was formed by and operated as part of the Abwehr until it was broken up in the late war, some personnel being transferred to an SS-Jagdverband under Otto Skorzeny, with the remainder redesignated as an infantry division, then given a panzer regiment and redesignated again as a panzergrenadier division -- a sign of the Reich's declining fortunes at the end of the war, with commando operations no longer being viable as an adjunct to normal operations. The standard WWII German infantry squad had one machine gun, one submachine gun, two pistols, and seven rifles. Initially the squad leader would carry a Kar98k, but this was replaced with an MP40. The machine gunner had a pistol as a secondary weapon, the assistant gunner had a pistol as his primary weapon, and the remainder of the squad, including the Munitionsträger (the ammo carrier for the machine gun), would carry the Kar98k. Squad members would also have some number of grenades, either the Stielhandgranate 24 'stick grenade' or the Eierhandgranate 39 'egg grenade'. (Sources: Buchner, Alex: Handbuch der Infanterie 1939-1945, S. 15-16; German Squad in Combat: p.1-3 ; Töpfer: p. 5-7; Bull: p.23-24)

I haven't been able to determine a consistent way of replicating the problem, but as I've been running my Fire/Dark Brute around one of the buildings in Kallisti Wharf knocking on doors and beating up whoever answers, I've noticed that sometimes I'll see the floating damage numbers from Greater Fire Sword float up over my target, but the 'hit' sound for the power doesn't play. It can be hard to visually verify this sometimes, as the floating DoT numbers from Incinerate can partially obscure the Greater Fire Sword damage number, but it's happened enough that I think it's worth reporting.

Oh, I certainly agree, but like a number of things with the CoH UI, the defaults aren't set up that way. I'd like to see an option added so that you could set your default to having your pet window controls to advanced mode, so you wouldn't have to adjust it for every character, but that's an "is this really worth programmer time to fix?" issue, since you don't have to worry about it until your character has pets to control, which for many of the ATs/powersets isn't until they make their first Lore boost.

Then you should be proposing that it, like many other of the powers that were originally "only on the ground", be altered to function when you're close to the ground, and can be used when you're in minimal-altitude hover or flight.

Or, as I describe it when someone asks me why I dislike open-world PvP, it's because it's a magnet for the sort of loser gamer whose sole measure of their "leet skillz" as a gamer is how fast their level-capped combat monster in BiS gear can gank newbies fresh out of the tutorial zone, and who run like scared chickens from anything that even might be close to an even fight.

Depends on circumstances. Playing solo, my Grav/Traps Controller uses Poison Trap regularly, putting down 3-5 Trip Mines, a Poison Trap (occasionally two) and sometimes an Acid Mortar, then Wormholing a spawn onto the mines. The Poison Trap helps ensure that any survivors of the blast don't react as they get a random piece of sculpture bounced off them. On teams, though, the team is generally fixated on speed, moving so fast that in the time it takes to put down Poison Trap and one Trip Mine, the team has already bumrushed the next spawn, so she normally uses Poison Trap and Trip Mine for preemptively mining the known approaches of ambushes (like in the Yin TF, when she plants several PTs in the antechamber of the reactor room, knowing that a Freakshow ambush will be coming through there). Since Traps doesn't have VG, though, I can't speak to it for that character.

Set the pet window controls to Advanced Mode, so you get both the Aggressive/Defensive/Passive and Attack/Follow/Goto icons.

Weirdly, when I took one of my characters to Annah just now, the "Supergroup Details" category was visible, with 'Candy Cauldron' as a non-available choice -- but because the character already had all the badges from earlier Halloween events and had been dumping the salvage into a storage rack for new characters to grab a set for the extra slot. Update: Checking with another character that did have the requisite salvage, both the category and the Cauldron were visible, with the Candy Cauldron a creatable choice, even though all of my characters belong to the same vanity SG, which already has a Candy Cauldron installed. Is the Candy Cauldron a 'buy once for each placement' item, or a 'buy once, place many' item?

They're resistant to psionics in general, making not just Confusion but Psi Melee and Psi Blast annoying to use against them.

Which way you're facing when you exit the portal appears to depend on your position relative to the portal when you click on it; I've been able to go through the portal and come out facing the stairs (both ways), but so far have not been able to do it consistently.

The fact that there was no PvP in City of Heroes (at least, not at the start of May 2004 when I started playing the game) was one of the things that made it more attractive to me. And since then, the greatest period of time that I've done PvP was shortly after the release of CoV, when I joined a few friends in taking the sun on the roof of the hero base in Bloody Bay; we cleaned off the turrets and hung out for about an hour, not doing anything but being an annoyance to the heroes, smacking the turrets as they respawned, along with any hero who came up on the roof and objected to our being there. More of a "We're on your base, catching some rays" situation than actual focused PvP.

The auction house lists enhancements running down from lowest level to highest level -- minimum level at the top and maximum level at the bottom -- but the recipes reverse this, with the highest-level recipes at the top and the lowest-level recipes at the bottom. Can this be made consistent, so that both enhancements and recipes are listed in the same order, so that those of us who, due to advancing age, sometimes have problems picking out the tiny number at the top of the enhancement symbol without leaning forward to peer at the screen don't have to scroll in different directions depending on where we're searching?

There is a cue -- and one which I am slightly embarrassed to admit I didn't pick up on through the entire Live run (sometimes turning 270° the wrong way to find the stairs), and only discovered when I joined Homecoming -- if you look at the ground, there is a 'landing pad' that butts up against a raised walkway on one side (which is opposite the stairs, but that's not the cue), with the other three sides having a yellow-and-black caution stripe along them, forming a 'C', and the middle of the 'C' points toward the stairs, whether you have taken the portal in or out of the base. Just turn so that you see the stripes to your left, right, and in front of you, and the stairs are in front of you. You will always be able to see three sides of the landing plate, and if you see a side without the stripe, turn away from it. If you don't see the non-striped side, you're facing the stairs already:

As well as, for PUG solicitations, the "Essential: Must have T4 Barrier" gear check crutch so you don't have to have players that can actually coordinate in teams, just spam Barrier rotating through the team.

With my AR/EM Blaster that I built to test Jack Emmert's claim that "range was a Blaster's defense" (it's not, especially not after every mob in the game was handed a ranged attack that in many cases outranges a snipe attack with Boost Range active), I can hit targets that are actually too far away to see if I target through another character. It's kind of funny doing this -- the first shot, the spawn is "Frank fell down. I think he's dead. What happened?", and it's not until I take out a second mob with another snipe that someone has the "Oh, shit, someone's shooting at us!" thought and they aggro.

There doesn't appear to be a "Range Increase" or "Increased Range" buff from the Empowerment stations, though.

But there's nothing inherently stopping the HC staff from enabling it there; it just raises the risk some for the really low-level characters looking for a ToT league -- and they could sit at the zone entrance until they get invited and SK'd up to where they're not meat on the table on their way there.

There's a proper 'murder motel' in DA that could be used if that zone had ToTing enabled; it wouldn't be as attractive as the one in PI because it's close to the middle of the zone, much further away from the hospital, though.

She needs to lay off the doughnuts for a while. Or at least admit that she needs to get an outfit that's at least one size bigger.

Don't forget the idiotic render limit — I've forgotten how many times I've been attacking a mob on a ramp or the sides of the bowl and had them disappear because more Rikti were porting into the bowl, causing the game to recompute which mobs should be visible to you, and because the mob sixty feet away you're shooting at is farther away than the mob porting in thirty feet behind you, your target gets reaped from the 'visible mobs' list and becomes not only invisible but untargetable. Targeting through an HVAS isn't much use to melee ATs, though, so you're painting with an overly-broad brush here. And even when targeting through an HVAS, you do more damage (getting you more XP) by rotating through your ranged attacks than just standing there spamming your T1 attack.

Because it has the 'enemies will not notice this attack' flag, you can edge up, tag a minion, and know that they'll either help you take down their buddies or stand around and not attack while you take out their buddies — a useful 'soft kill' power, even if situational. And I need to add Telekinetic Blow to the "Insight-hostile" powers — its Knock Up tosses mobs up out of your attack range, forcing you to wait for them to land - not just fall back into melee range; they're 'out of range' until after they hit the ground and the internal range check updates - before you can continue attacking. Oh, yes — and the invisible guy with the drum standing behind you striking a beat every time you attack gets old. At least that one I can find the name of the sound that plays and replace it something more appropriate for a mental attack.

It's an old British food, dating from WWII (served in fish and chip shops as an alternative to fish when it was unavailable) -- slices of SPAM (the recipe says you should get eight slices from one can) dipped in a beer batter, and deep-fried, with optional mustard and a cheese slice on the SPAM before dipping in the batter; you can find recipes either on the SPAM website or a couple of other places on the net. I'll pass on the mushy peas they're traditionally served with, though, but the chips are okay.

While ToTing in KW, several of my characters will find themselves with nearby Blackwing while they're knocking, and I have to wonder what they think of the whole business... "What's he doing?" "He's going around knocking on doors, then beating up the people who answer the door." "Is this something we should be taking notice of?" "It's apparently part of celebrating a local holiday." "Oh. Just them acting like idiots again, then." "Right; just ignore it."

It's not just the ToT costumes, it's the idiotic way you receive other temporary power, too. Take the Valentine's event; deliver a valentine, and you get either an Arrow of Romance or an Arrow of Jealousy temp power — and an icon for it in the first open tray that doesn't already have one. The same happens with the temp powers from opening presents in the holiday event — you apparently need an Instant Snowstorm icon in each of your open trays, and the game will make sure you get them. Or Build Snow Beast. Or the temp powers from the anniversary event. Even though you only get one entry in your powers list no matter how many times you get one of these temp powers, the game keeps dumping more icons into your trays if there is a tray that doesn't already have an icon for it. The game should check to see if the character already has the temp power, and not create an icon if they do; if they don't have it in a tray, it means they removed it when they got it the first time, so cramming one in is counter to how the player wants the character's trays arranged.

It's not a horrible set, but I find it underwhelming in a number of ways — the randomness of Insight, its short duration and subsequent lockout, and the lackluster damage of Mass Levitate — which is listed as "+Insight", but even unenhanced for KB throws its targets up in the air out of range of your other melee attacks, wasting part of the limited duration of Insight; you can only get the full benefit from the Insight that using the power grants if your targets have KB protection and are unaffected by the Knock Up, which makes it useless for mitigation by keeping mobs knocked down. Boggle is highly situational, as it's only effective against low-rank mobs, and then not all of them — any mobs resistant to psi (more common in the late game) require two applications to affect them, forcing you to slot significantly for recharge to get it to come back up quickly enough — and resistant targets will still show the floating "BOGGLED" text even when they've resisted the first application.