Jacke

What @Redlynne said. Build for the game now. And right now, I'd say Shadow Maul is not a power to skip. Even going back to @The_Gamemaster's article back in Issue 6, he mentioned people skipping Shadow Maul. But he only did on PvP builds. He also mentioned learning to move and use Shadow Maul to make it hit multiple targets was the way to fight with Dark Melee, putting out more damage. (That same positioning skill can also help Sands of Mu, both the Temporary Power and the more permanent one from the old Veteran Prestige Attacks.) And as @Sir Myshkin and @WillParkinson have said, the proposed changes for Dark Melee still include the changes for Shadow Maul, making it better for all ATs. Only the proposed changes to Dark Consumption turning it into Dark Equilibrium are being reverted to current Homecoming Live. Right now on my Katana-Fiery Aura Brute, I normally want to fire Fiery Embrace and Build Up to buff Burn and Lotus Drops (both PBAoEs), then going into my big ST attacks. But it leads to me tending to delay firing them to get the cooldowns to match. So it's FE plus BU, then BU (FE takes about twice as long to recharge). And they don't quite match the ST chains. As well, managing two damage buffs as well as a the self-heal Healing Flames and the enemy auto-target endurance restorer Consume gets complex on top of everything else. On a Fiery Aura Brute, I think dropping Build Up and just going with Fiery Embrace is better. Working in Assault in place of Build Up is likely even better, as @Werner showed even in the best case, Assault and Build Up are about the same in increasing overall damage output. That's likely the same for Tankers too. Scrappers and especially Stalkers with the chance to get extra damage from crits and some attacks having higher chances for crits can make a better case for Build Up, especially if there's a small number of click powers for a particular toon powerset combination to monitor. Stalkers have more synergy between Build Up and their big assassinate attack, so I'd say take it on them. However, I'd be tempted not to take Build Up even on Scrappers, especially if I could fit in Assault. It's likely keeping the focus on positioning and attacks can make the Scrapper perform better. This is certainly true of Shadow Maul.

Build Up appears to be about 6-7% of the enhanced damage. The 10.5% buff of Assault is 10.5% of the base damage. Build Up is still 80% of base and Assault is 10.5% of base. On a toon with usual amounts of slotted and global recharge reduction, Build Up is up for about 25 to 30% of the time so on a single toon, without other considerations, Build Up gives more long term damage enhancement. But is that worth it for monitoring another power to fire? Standard = Base + Slotting + Fury = 100% + 100% + 140% = 340% Builtup = Standard + 80% = 420% Assault = Standard + 10.5% = 350.5% Cycle of 35s Build Up Cycle = (10s x 420% + 25s x 340%) / 35s = 362.9% Assault Cycle = 350.5% Build Up can be triggered right before hard hitting attacks for stronger effect. But if those attacks are on cool down, then Build Up has either lesser effect or has to be delayed, for a lower duty cycle. It still may not be enough extra damage to be worth having to add it in as another power to monitor and cast as needed. Assault is turn it on and only worry about Endurance, which is already something to monitor. And as you mentioned, @Werner, there's the extra Taunt and Placate resistance from Assault and the benefit to the team (especially if more team members have it),

What @Redlynne and the others have said: Scrapper for more DPS, Tanker for more survivability. Brute comes in between them for both, but can have builds that approach the damage of Scrappers and the survivability of Tankers, sometimes close to both. But Tankers will still find it easier to be survivable and Scrappers will still find it easier to get the most out of certain of their own and team damage buffs. But why not both? Or all three? 🙂 I had planned and well started getting a Dark-Dark toon in every AT as well as many toons with one Dark powerset with an appropriate other powerset. Like @subbacultchas.... Dark powers go so well with others! I have a Dark-Invulnerable Scrapper and have plans for the Brute and Tanker. My badger toon is a Dark-Radiation Blast Defender. 🙂 Thanks for mentioning that, @Call Me Awesome. Jives with what I can recall from Live as well as my experience on Homecoming with 4 Protection. Thanks for that, @Werner. The running damage enhancement is even higher, I think. On the Combat Attributes display, on my Brute I see about +180% damage enhancement just from IO set bonuses and Rage; when I pop Build Up, I see around +260%. And the +90% or so from slotting is on top of that, so it's at around +270%, Build Up to about +350%. But that just makes your argument stronger. I'm going to do a new build for the Katana-Fiery Aura Brute that drops Build Up. I'll keep Fiery Embrace, as that's a longer buff (20s) and is extra damage outside of the enhancement cap (about 44% of base damage for all attacks, I think), as well as Fire Damage to boot. And Rage. Well... That still needs changing. The crashes were removed from the Blast powersets' Tier 9s that had them. I can see the reasons for crashes. But the game as played now doesn't handle hard crashes well, partly due to its speed. Even the minor crash in Radiation Emission's EM Pulse (floors Recovery for 15s) tends to make it a power easy to skip on Defenders, with only Controllers wanting it due to its large hold to leverage the double damage from Containment. And even the Tier 9 crashes, those removed and those still present, you can just plan to limit the use of the Tier 9. But Rage is the self-buffing power for attack for Super Strength. At least Brutes have Fury to make up skipping it. What about Scrappers and Tankers? 10 seconds every 2 minutes Defense gets a big debuff and the only attacks that do anything are the Veteran Prestige Powers. Wow. That's interesting. I'll think of giving that a try when I get to building a Dark Armor toon.

@Werner, I noticed in your Katana-Dark Armor build, you don't take Build Up. Wonder about your reasoning, perhaps a case of other power choices being better? I find on my Katana-Fiery Aura Brute it's awkward to add in both Build Up and Fiery Embrace at the right times while everything else is going on. You also slot for 12 Knockback Protection. How often is that much needed? (Though I've found 4 isn't enough against some AVs....) I remember that old Dark-Dark Scrapper post by @The_Gamemaster on the old Live forums (circa Issue 6) had a build ("Fear Meh!") with Touch of Fear and Cloak of Fear he'd tried out (see the spoiler below). I've thought of maybe including a 6-slotted Cloak of Fear with 3 each Endoplasm Exposure (Accuracy and Mez) and Enzyme Exposure (ToHit Debuff and Endurance Reduction), though there's likely a better way to slot it, hopefully with less that 5 extra slots. But what those slots could do elsewhere in the build. I like the rez powers as they're usually more effective for getting back upright in a pack of angry mobs. Rise of the Phoenix on my Katana-Fire Brute gets a real workout 🙂 (though less so after getting Incarnated and it's also there for the IO set bonuses). Though builds are tight and there's likely a power that could be substituted to prevent death. Still, I'm tempted to go with Dark Mastery on my Defenders partly for getting Soul Transfer, as I have fond memories of a crazy Zombie Invasion years ago when my Rad-Rad Defender has a Dark Mastery build and with Soul Transfer I just kept fighting. (Later had a better Scorpion Shield build that would have likely never died once.)

Back on Live around Issue 6, I read guides on the Dark-Dark Defender (toon name was "Blackest Night") and the Dark-Dark Scrapper (@The_Gamemaster) and knew I'd love both. Can't find the links to them, but I have Mids builds I made from them in 2008 to 2009, so they have issues loading in the current 2.6.0.7 Mids (due to fun stuff like non-inherent Fitness pool 🙂 ). Later joined Repeat Offenders who had a whole Supergroup dedicated to Dark Powers, Shadows of Salvation. What @Werner (who's one of the best City players ever) and others say about Dark Melee and Dark Armor being good, I'll second. Also read a study from those early days that showed in numbers of the 4 original Scrapper armors (Dark Armor, Invulnerability, Regeneration, Super Reflexes), Dark Armor was the best for survivability when run well because it had a decent share of all three main damage mitigations, Defense, Damage Resistance, and Healing. That's still true today. It's also one of those powersets you want to take most powers from it, with only Cloak of Fear being...situational (needs a full 6 slots, needs matching with another Fear power (like Touch of Fear in Dark Melee), and even then seems barely worth it). A suggestion for you, @crkohl, swap out Sting of the Wasp for Gambler's Cut. For Katana, it's the better power with a bit more damage/activation and lower recharge needed to get the best damage chain, GC - SD - GC - GD. (It's also one of the differences between Katana and Broadsword. Katana's faster T1+2 power, Gambler's Cut, is preferred. Broadswords slower T1+2 power, Hack, is very much better than Slash.)

Ouch! So, to incorporate that into Mids, that would require an update to the database to incorporate the AT scales (similar to the game's internals), then an update to Mids to use the updated database version. A very non-trivial and broad change.

Thanks for all the work you and others do to keep Mids going. I was wondering when some of the strongly build affecting changes of the January 26 Issue 26 Page 4 patch could be incorporated. Specifically the Tanker power ordering changes quoted here. I know I could edit the database to incorporate these, as they aren't that complex to change. But I was hoping you could do so as you're more likely to get it right. 🙂

The beta shard Justin is where patches to the game are rolled out for testing and adjustment before they get deployed to the actively played shards (the other 5). Because it can be different on both the server and client side, it needs to be on its own shard and it uses its own client on the players' computers.

There's a pinned post in this very forum section. Read it to find out how to do stuff on the Beta Shard Justin. https://forums.homecomingservers.com/index.php/topic,3491.0.html

Paragon Wiki AFAIK is still fairly current. Follow the "Abilities" links for each Slot to see the options. https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Incarnate_System

This is due to limitations inherited from City of Heroes Live. Which included Kallisti Wharf, a zone under construction back then but not released. Kallisti Wharf is a Co-op zone like the Rikti War Zone, where Praetorians can't go either. And these character limitations aren't the first. When City of Villains was created, Heroes were Heroes and Villains were Villains and never mixed except in Co-op zones, first Pocket D, then others. And it took even longer and a major revision to the game to introduce alignment changing to allow one to become the other, as well as the Vigilantes and Rogues in between. Heroes still can't go to the Rogue Isles and Villains can't go to Paragon City. And Praetorians were added at the same time, with their own factions, and they were set apart from the Heroes and Villains of Paragon back then. And Praetorians are internally complex, with 2 factions each with 2 subfactions. They also had a process to become either a Hero or a Villain in the rest of the game at about level 20. That was in the initial design of their addition to City. It seems to be a significant part of the design and can't be changed without a lot of planning and work. These restrictions are locked in on a low level, even considering recent changes. For example, I can now /altinvite my Praetorian characters to my own SG. The Praetorians can enter the SG base via the Pocket D SG portal and use its facilities. I also have a full set of teleporters in my SG base. Use them to send a Praetorian anywhere, they get yanked to Nova Praetoria right quick. That very much seems to be a sanity check on flags on those characters to prevent them from going where their current character internal state wouldn't make sense and cause all sorts of issues. There's now the First Ward and the Night Ward, which allow Praetorians content at higher levels (roughly 20 to 40). But I've also heard (but not confirmed) that Praetorians should still leave Praetorian, become either Heroes or Villains, then return to First Ward and Night Ward. The reasons weren't made clear and I've yet to find a more authoritative comment. This isn't a limitation that is trivial. It also can't be changed without a lot of planning and work.

Get a good enough build for your toon. And I'd say don't bother with L15 common IOs for leveling. Find a way to level to 22. Only slot for Accuracy and little else, with what drops and avoid buying. Keep the salvage and recipes (having your own SG base and its storage helps here), sell the enhancements and at low level even inspirations to get an Influence float. 4 Death-From-Below's and some teaming will do it. Maybe a Positron TF #1 and #2, maybe a Synapse. Once you're level 22, take the Invention arc in either Steel Canyon or Cap Au Diablo and get a L25 Accuracy IO. Then craft enough common L25 IOs to slot your toon. If you'd running more than one alt, share the salvage and recipes (again a personal SG base helps) on one crafter. Have the crafter do enough L25 and L30 IOs to get those Invention Badges, as it increases your Invention salvage capacity and makes L25 IOs cheaper to craft (no recipes needed). Buy the recipes and the common and uncommon salvage you need but don't have off of the Auction House, but be sure to limit this to what you really need at this point. You're not crafting for a great build right now, just a good enough one to continue leveling. Don't find the buy-now price at the Auction House, put in a lower bid and wait. Avoid buying rare salvage. Craft some high priced IOs and sell them to finance things. Accumulate an Influence float so you can afford to post the stuff to sell at the Auction House for a good value and not just 1 to get whoever has the highest bid right now. Continue using L25 common IOs until you get to 50. Then think about accumulating the fancy IOs to slot the build then. Lots more detail to how to do things well, but this is a start. Final builds for a level 50 are complex. They should allow for some exemplaring, as you will be running task forces. Also, be careful how you spend Reward Merits, special Enhancement salvage, and Empies once you get to 50. There are a few best ways to use them and many that are a waste. Learn the better ways.

I'm not really a big PvP player, but I can see some merit to this idea. Besides being bought for reasonable amounts (ie. not too large) of Merits and/or Influence at the P2W vendors, it could also be based upon logged-out times in certain locations, just like Day Jobs. Right now I believe Day Jobs take 100 hours logged out in appropriate locations to earn. Also I believe the Day Job Accolade Powers charge from 0 to full in 7 days logged out in their appropriate locations. Back on Live in 2012 and before (with much longer times to earn and charge), I tracked this in my toon spreadsheet. So even for my least played alts, I knew when they were finished either earning or charging and could then log in on them to move them to the next one.

That's what Titan Networks says about what they will do right now. I'm asking whether CIT can be recreated by the Homecoming team on their webserver.

Remember City Information Tracker, AKA CIT? Where there was information on your toons that was very helpful as an overview. Is there anyway that this helpful tool can be brought back and made current for City of Heroes Homecoming?

There are several target dummies in the Vanguard base in the RWZ, right besides the firing range. Follow the noise of the gunfire to locate them.

FIXED. I thought about the Windows Registry. Ran regedit and looked around. Found the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > Tequila > Settings. Had a "params" string that was empty, "". Hmmm, if Tequila chose to use the Registery params over the Tequila.xml params, then Tequila would run SCORE without -noversioncheck..... Deleted the whole HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > Tequila key, then reran Tequila. Tequila asked for the directory to install City in, told it to use the one it was already in, and off it went. Updated a few .pigg's and started the City client. Logged in. And could go on all 4 Shards!!! I checked afterwards with regedit. That value HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > Tequila > params has not been recreated. And now I know to check there. And now I'm very happy I've fixed this issue.

The Tequila.xml generated by Tequila has "-noversioncheck". I attach it here. Ran with your Tequila.xml, Fifth Horseman, still getting the same issue. Note that the time field has changed. Previous errors it was "14:57:20". I'd also downloaded the game again (renamed directories) prior to testing your .xml. It still didn't work with the .xml created by Tequila itself. Will have to think this one over for a bit. tequila.20190429a.tequila.xml

I've been playing on Torchbearer and Excelsior since last week, Indomitable this morning. After the most recent server restart, when I attempt to connect to a Shard (any of the 4), I get this error popup. There's this post from Apr 25 that refers to changing the "tequila.xml" file to fix this. https://score.savecoh.com/index.php/topic,78.msg680.html#msg680 I renamed "tequila.xml" and tequila.exe recreated it exactly the same as before and still had the error. I compared my "tequila.xml" to the one above, lots of changes. But most important, there's a change in the "-auth" IP for the command line options. I'm not going to install that sort of fix without verification it's a safe fix.

There's an additional requirement for a secure launcher besides being compiled from verified source code. As Cipher explained in his post on the Discord earlier today, the manifest in the launch also has to be correct.

Sounds like it got set to the zero date of the database, some day in about 2000. Sounds like a possible (hopefully rare) error.

Power not recharging; zoning, /sync, relogging had no effect. Global: @Jacke Shard: Torchbearer Toon: Jacke Dark Power: Sands of Mu