Jacke

On Saturday, April 26th, 2025, Repeat Offenders will hold a wake for Alty, celebrating her life with RO. This post is a copy of one on the RO forums that can be read without an RO forums login. https://www.repeat-offenders.net/forum/topic/20488-wake-for-alty-2025-april-26-saturday-everlasting-echo-galaxy-city-check-1st-post-for-timings/ Pass on this message to as many Repeat Offenders and long time City Players as you can reach. The wake will be on the Everlasting Shard, where Alty spent most of her time on Homecoming. The wake will be in Echo: Galaxy City, in the courtyard in front of the Freedom Corp HQ, where Back Alley Brawler used to stand. The date is the week after Easter. This puts it well clear of any Time Zone changes to/from Daylight Saving / Summer Time in all Time Zones. Timing is challenging, as there are RO members at least across North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. The wake will start between 22h00 UTC and 22h15 UTC. Around the world, that'll be: North America PDT 15h00 North America EDT 18h00 Europe UK BST 23h00 The following Time Zones will be early on Sunday, April 27th, 2005. Europe CEST 00h00 Australia Perth AWST 06h00 Australia Melbourne AEST 08h00 New Zealand NZST 10h00 Please join Repeat Offenders as we celebrate our beloved leader.

The Daggers are -Regen. -Regen and -Res are two vital debuffs that when strong enough make the difference between not defeating some AVs/GMs and defeating them. Sometimes, -Def debuffs are needed too. My 2 Rules of Thumb to using Pets effectively in City, ie. get their final ToHit on +3 Level mobs (which the Pets see as +4 Level) to 95% or close, after digging through the actual numbers and preferring not to do that again. This is because the vast majority of Pets don't benefit from the Caster's Global Buffs (like +ToHit, +Acc, +Dam, or Incarnate Level Shifts). This is a huge bug in MRB, so big it is effectively unfixable. The Pet Summon Power needs to be slotted with ED-capped Acc (94% and up). If the Pet has critical Powers that have less than 1.2 Base Accuracy (have to look up the Pet in CoD2 to be sure), the Caster needs Tactics, even just the base Slot, even weak Mastermind Tactics. Or -Def applied to the targeted mob. That's when -Def debuff is vital. Normally for a Toon, can use IO set bonuses to get that final ToHit on +3L mobs to 95% without -Def debuffs. But for making Pets work their best, that -Def makes the difference. I just made a build for a Traps/AR Defender and didn't want to include Leadership, so no Tactics. Many of the debuff Powers use Pseudopets, so that matters to them. The T1 Power for AR is Burst: On a hit, it applies a -12.5% Def debuff for 8s. Which can make sure Acid Grenade gets a hit to apply more -Def and -Res.

That's what happens in Hard Mode TFs and some particularly difficult groups. They have a lot of debuffs and stack them. Worse case can see a Toon--even a Tanker--see its Defense and Resistances floored. And don't last long. As for Buffs, one good example is the RO Supergroup Green Machine, which stacks Empathy Toons. Get 8 of them on a Team and they just chew through any group of mobs.

As others have pointed out, using a full set of Knockback IOs is rare. (Except in cases like setting up for Bowling Hellions in Atlas Park. 😺) One case (maybe) of a full set of Sudden Acceleration being useful is making sure to KD a hard AV at +4 or worse. The 5 IOs boost the KB to high levels, then the KB>KD IO turns that into a KB of under 1.0, which is a KD. (There's also KU, some Power send the mobs up, and now in some newer and changed powers Vectored KB, which can be pointed Up, Down, or wherever the Dev in charge wants (but usually Up or Down).) There's KB Protection, which reduces the KB that affects a target (maybe your Toon) by subtracting from the KB Mag, eventually removing it. There's also KB Resistance, which multiplies to reduce KB Mag. Tough targets have both, so maybe that full set of Sudden Acceleration is useful...? I wouldn't do it, too situational. There's also another fiddly bit that can affect some KB Powers KB effects, the dreaded ReduceIfKD tag. Here's the Power from Blaster's Epic Pool Force Mastery, Repulsion Field: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=epic.force_mastery.repulsion_field&at=blaster Note this effect: Globe (PvE and PvP) 110% (will show why below) Yellow Tag (ReduceIfKD oh noahs!) Mag +4.985 to Knockback (all affected targets) for 0.5s Click on the Yellow Tag "ReduceIfKD" and get this page: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/tags.html?tag=reduceifkd&q=affects That listed the 3 IOs that provide a KB>KD effect if slotted into a Power that has KB. And there's a link to the Powers that have effects with that tag: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/tags.html?tag=reduceifkd&q=bears A whole lot of Powers. What happens to those Powers. Those KB effects tagged with ReduceIfKD, if they have that one of the IO that do KB>KD, get the % chance dropped by 100%. So that 110% chance of KB on Repulsion Field, gets reduced to a 10% chance to KD. How often? I'm not sure. It could be the Activate Time of the Power (for Repulsion Field, 0.5s), which hurts but may still work. But I think the vast majority of those checks for Auto Powers and Toggle Powers are only done every 10s (but this may only apply to PPM Procs, not sure). Which completely nerfs the KD. 10% chance every 10s ?!? So those very useful KB>KD IOs will change how often some Powers actually does do KB/KD.

They are not useless. seeing the most common extreme Purple Patch reduction (to +3 Level targets) is to 65%, ie. loss of 35%. The rarer case of +4 Levels is 48%, a loss of 52%. What they are is situational. The more HP a target has, the more they impact play. A minion is still likely to drop after a few attacks one way or another. But the effect on say the worst case, a +4 Reichsman (which is +3 to Team members with at least a T3 Alpha boost but still +4 Levels (maybe +5) to Pets and worse to many MM Henchmen), those -Res Debuffs can make the difference between a brutal long slog and impossibility. The 3 IOs that provide -Res, Def Debuff IO Achilles Heel special (3.5PPM -20% Res for 10s) https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=boosts.crafted_achilles_heel_c.crafted_achilles_heel_c Targeted AoE IO Annihilation special (3.5PPM -12.5% Res for 10s) https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=boosts.crafted_annihilation_f.crafted_annihilation_f PvP PBAoE IO Fury of the Gladiator special (3.5PPM -20% Res for 10s) https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=boosts.crafted_fury_of_the_gladiator_f.crafted_fury_of_the_gladiator_f all just replace when an application of the exact same IO with a -Res Debuff is applied, putting the duration back to 10s. But that's 3 different effects that applied and will stack, if there's enough of them in use on a single Toon or a Team or League. So the usual Purple Patch of +3L means -20% and -12.5% get reduced to -13% and -8.125%. Assuming maybe a 50% Uptime, that's effectively -6.5% and -4.0625%. So weak on weak targets, but something on bigger bags of HP. Also all 3 IO's can stack. And the effect is as if that % was a multiplicative boost of Damage after and outside of the Enhancement System. And that's just the -Res on 3 special IOs. The bigger Power -Res debuffs still get hit with the reduction to 65% by Purple Patch, but these often start larger and can have greater Uptime, My Rules of Thumb here: Rarely use the -Res IOs unless they don't hurt getting IO set bonuses or the particular bonuses lost aren't needed that much. Always look out for and use -Res Powers especially the ones that can have high Uptime and on harder targets.

They are. From https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Purple_Patch : > These modifers apply to almost everything in combat: Debuff strength, Mez duration, Knockback magnitude, and Damage are all affected. and > A character's chance to hit is not directly affected by the combat modifiers, above. While Defense debuffs applied to the target affect chance to hit and are subject to the purple patch, and ToHit debuffs applied to the player affect chance to hit and are also subject to the purple patch, a character's base hit chance follows a different formula. (I can confirm this with the devs too.) To find the effective Resistance debuff, apply the appropriate Purple Patch multiplicative modifier. That -Res debuff, because -Res is resisted by Resistance,, effective becomes a multiplier on Damage outside of the Enhancement System. Example: A Boss target is also at +3 Levels. The +3 Levels is the only thing that matters in this case, not the being a Boss. That means debuffs are cut to 65% Magnitude. Say a -10% Res debuff is applied. Purple Patch changes that to -6.5%. Then the effects of the target's Resistances mean that effectively becomes a +6.5% Damage increase (after and outside of the Enhancement System). If that debuff was only to SL Damage, only SL Damage is increased.

4) Call the Sandmen to take care of the runners for you? 😺

I've tinkered and changed the builds of my most active Toons many times. (Also, there's a max of 6 available from the 3 Blue-side and 3 Red-side Respec Trials, 5 I think while levelling.) I've not even done new builds and respec'ed all my Toons affected by the Power Level Available changes in (I think) i27p5. And then there's at least a few changes in every Page that means I should at least review some of the current builds, perhaps do rebuilds and then respecs. Which could mean changing the Trays layout on several (screenshots after). Example: My main is an AR/Devices Blaster, of which I have...4 copies (1 each Primal and Praetorian, on both the CB and HC Shards), with the Primal Toons being L50 and having 3 builds. There's also my BR/Devices Blasters (1 each for CB and HC) that need a new build because the change is taking a Devices Power I previously skipped. Thus I'm in the middle of a minor revision--which though just swapping 1 Power for another, also needs changing the Levels at which a couple of Powers are taken and a redesign of the Trays layout. Turning into a major project. That's 10 potential respecs. Fortunately, 1 of them is for a Toon of a very low Level that doesn't need to respec, so down to 9. 3 of those remaining respecs are very simple. But 6 are very involved. Yesterday, I did the 4 needed on the CB Shard which also covered the Trays layout changes, so the 5 I need to do on HC (despite 3 of them for a L50 build) should go much faster. That's 1 minor change that just happened to affect many builds. It's why it would be nice to get an improved respec system, especially for simple changes. (But that may be technically very hard or impossible.)

On Monday, January 27th, the beloved leader of Repeat Offenders passed away. EDIT: Wake details in this post below: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/56573-remembering-alty/#findComment-716151 Fellow City of Heroes Players: It is with a heavy heart that I must inform you of the passing of Repeat Offenders' beloved leader, @Alty, Stacie Pinkett. RO member @Ceejer had located her death notice. RIP Stacie Pinkett (1970 December 22 Tuesday -- 2025 January 27 Monday) https://www.hollywoodlanews.com/stacie-pinkett-dead/ Alty was pivatol in the first generation of Repeat Offenders. In August 2005, she and others brought together their Supergroups to create this beautiful coalition to enjoy City of Heroes even more. To have friends to share play and thoughts and dreams and laughter. I've know Alty since I joined RO in 2006. So much life. She loved City of Heroes, loved the great and small details of this other life that is a vital part of our experience. She helped make RO a wonderful community within our greater and marvelous City. After Shutdown, Alty was critical in keep RO going. She assisted many to connect to Homecoming in a City of Heroes Renaissance. She worked to make this renewed City a new home for us all. Gone now, we remember. Alty was a part of all RO is. She loved this game. It gave her a place to make her mark, to help in little ways and grand ones. Life always ends too soon. As we feel the sorrow of her absence, we should remember the love and joy Alty shared with us all.

Herm.... Now I'm thinkin' this may be the start of a 1970's Paragon City...Task Force, Echo Zone, something? Music from Funk to Disco, it's the time I really am fond of and because I was young, just didn't get enough of. I'm also imagining Back Alley Brawler in some cool threads with a huge afro. A Back Alley Brawler Time-Traveling Task Force? Dang! 😺

It would be so...on-brand for Sister Solaris. She currently may not move as far as Becky nor need to navigate as complex maps, but she works her hardest to avoid that altar! 😺 Maybe someday.... Thanks for all you've done and are going to do for our City, Cobalt!

Seriously, I read through all the entries and found something good in each one. I also had other thoughts. Inspired by @BassAckwards, I thought of a different change: Thinking of Becky the Tarantula Mistress from the Dr. Aeon Strike Force: Add an option to launching the ITF to make Sister Solaris like the Becky of the ITF. Get Sister Solaris through the ITF, get the Best Foes Forever Badge. On April 1st, Becky and Sister Solaris swap Task Forces! Totally topsy-turvy taskings! (Two more Badges...?) @Cobalt Arachne, what do you think? 😺 And then.... Finally, a worthy opponent. @Darmian, that's far too good. (And I also agree on the missing First Ward/Night Ward maps.) Finally, CARP MELEE! Or is it Carp Blast? Or...Carp Assault! MUH HA HA HAAAA!!! YOU'RE TOO LATE! (Seriously, there are good ideas there.) In 2022 in Discord. AND 2024 here!!! (Copied here for your convenience.) I also thought of Mimes and copying Gang War, but you had the genius of COMBINING THEM! There can be only one outcome! TO THE LAB!!! GIANT MECHA CLOWN MASTERMIND!!! (Any one got the number for Toho Co.?)

But what if it was one Extra Slot every 100 Vet Levels? Starting at VL100. A build normally has 67 Extra Slots to allocate. 24 Levelling Powers. Excluding Prestige Sprints, 7 Inherent Powers slottable (Brawl, Sprint, Rest, Swift, Hurdle, Health, Stamina). That's 24 + 7 = 31 Powers that can each take 5 Extra Slots. For 155 total Extra Slots. Less the normal 67 Extra Slots, that's 88 more Extra Slots. All Slottable Powers, 6 Slots each. When this baby hits 8800 Vet Levels, you're going to see some serious--hey! Wait a minute. Where do I remember 88 from? NOT THAT ONE! This one. 😺

I'd push forward a patch for a Mastermind Primary in development. Not quite sure what to tweak. But we all know what that Powerset HAS to have for target reaction. 😺

I agree completely, @Snarky! What's more. what's all this about so many doors on one side?!? BUT a different number on the other side!?! It's crazy!!! How does 2 doors become 4?!? Or 3 become 4?!? Or 2?!? Hey!!! All things considered...