DSorrow

This isn't entirely true as there are several safeguards against hyperinflation already in place. To name a few: WW fees eating 10% of every transaction 1 merit can be bought for 1 million inf which puts a soft cap on all enhancement prices for any rational player Seeded salvage at 25k/100k/1m Enhancement converters stabilizing the price gap between low and high demand items Contrasting things to what we had back on the official servers, prices are actually incredibly low and stable, and with the safeguards in place, it's basically impossible for the prices to rise beyond certain plateaus.

As far as I know, you can't "lose" an Alpha ability. The only way to get rid of a Tx Alpha is to upgrade it to Tx+1 (e.g. crafting a T3 consumes a T2), so whatever T4 you had is still there even if you crafted a new T1 Cardiac. What your wife may be referring to is that by crafting and equipping the T1 Cardiac, you're unequipping and losing the benefits of the previous T4 until you re-equip it. You can only have one Alpha ability equipped at a time even though you can possess all of them at the same time.

The more costume options, the better, even if all of them don't work together 100% seamlessly due to clipping or other issues.

As many others have stated, red side just doesn't feel as villainous as I'd like. Most of my characters end up being vigilantes for convenience, but that's also the morality I'd mostly gravitate towards anyway: don't go out of my way to be the bad guy, but sometimes doing a morally dubious thing might be needed for the greater good. As far as game design goes, CoX doesn't really work with villainy anyway. The way I see it, being a hero is mostly reactive (new threat appears, you go and deal with it) while being a villain is proactive (you have your own goal which you want to further, heroes appear to stop you), but sadly both sides are limited to the same mechanics where the game dictates what you do and thus villains end up being lackeys. In addition there are a couple of personal reasons, but mostly I'd say I don't feel like progressing as a villain as much as I do as a hero. My heroes start their career fighting small time thugs such as Hellions and eventually end up fighting foes like Nemesis and the whole progression feels very natural. As a villain, it seems like I'm fighting Longbow/Arachnos most of the way 1-50. Still, my biggest gripe with redside is that I can't avoid feeling like my character is just an asshole with no will of his own who does bad things just because which is something that's really hard to relate to.

The Soulbound Allegiance chance for BU appears to be broken with Phantom Army, too. Usually it procs pretty often but I just ran a test against a Rikti Pylon and the phantoms didn't manage to proc it even once over several summons. I wonder if procs in pets are broken across the board.

Here's an Elec/Stone/Soul build I put together pretty quickly. It has capped S/L/E/F/C resists with respectable NE and Psi. Energize should be very close to perma with the Force Feedbacks. As an attack chain I'm pretty sure you should be able to run Seismic Smash > Gloom > Heavy Mallet > Stone Mallet > Gloom > Stone Fist > Stone Mallet. | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1462;695;1390;HEX;| |78DA65944B4F135114C7EF74A6F44191628B05A1508A7DD0D2692B881151A2528D4| |213921AB7CDA45EB1A1AF4C8704962EFC026EDCEAD28D9FC2B77B13F50BE00335F1| |BDAAA773FEA9249DB4FDCDFCCF3D735EF7B6B8BBE67B7CE5CEAA507C976A46BB5DB| |E6E34B6A5E92EEE5886556D3644F772D137CC86F29ABC251B6DA9176AB26299D54A| |F982596F9A63B016654D4ABD64351B92EF856FB3D9ACE91BD268551B5B43F6C3E5E| |AD66D8B9EBCF653A925E5CDA07D5BD86D49B35A970D8E1D2AB4AA15FDA2B963C972| |A9B9532B178DB625CDBD314A274EDF27C3F4A37413EC38C50F5588BC261C3FC15F4| |CED37F88739F09739EB15B83A9A2813129A9849B26D665BD83CD1763057E85953C5| |538AA7703C4D59E5B5C7CE83CBCCE30F35E603668CE2A81CC7A9BEE135DEF7CCA3E| |FC0B7CCE05D8E17443ECF289E93E3A94ED497457D59D495475DCF69AD0B6B5DD052| |F0C9C027039F17B4D6C36B154F886EC254F349B6BD24DB207A3AB8CF9AEF03F8917| |9E413F899E93F60C6A9D621AE550CA17709D2865953861FB1E64F737F5F91618463| |89910C6B495A1FC0FAC012F73D81BE84681F8EE2FDA313E83B69217E8723B4CEDAD| |8777054B1F99AE28CDB1BA523C623982DC599C05C26F0FE49E43CB9470C68620A73| |98C27E98C23E7050CC30F20877E8122A29D3E8FE34BA1F41F723E87E04DD4F51E42| |8765EF40C479C5D06CF822BD879E79869F28921DB589AB5F8551059C60D9E64A2CE| |5527906D85C226E19B9C679F391DCC8239662A0FEE3BEC7749F24D23D7F402DBE61| |7C153E01233739A19A55EE8D85DBA3D698FC8821AD97298560ED3C907413F7352EB| |9D4CFA74BB3BA7F5CE7927D567CDF529F93E65A14F59EC5336FA944D0D6149516CC| |5E3EF9DE6CE81B7F76F2014ECDEAFFF3587724DB1E7E2BEC175796778FE5F0EFB25| |D9EFDB61BF7BDCC781FB4C3776EC3A1D8B3CBAF00F1F59E8E5| |-------------------------------------------------------------------|

On squishies I usually go for either S/L or Ranged depending on what's more convenient. I find both of them good enough, just with a few caveats: if I'm staying at range, a large majority of the attacks have the Ranged tag but the occasional AoE is still going to hit me with S/L Def you get to avoid most AoEs, but your Achilles' heel is in the form of pure elemental attacks: fire blast, dark blast, etc. Overall I'd probably prefer Ranged Def, but usually it's much more convenient to get S/L with stuff like Scorpion Shield / Frozen Armor. If you spend a lot of your time in melee range, then I'd go with S/L.

I like this.

I wish they did this. I have a concept for a character that's currently an STJ/Bio Scrapper, but SS would fit it so much better. The character would otherwise be a Brute, but Fury is a bigger concept violation than the switch from SS to STJ.

Most armor sets don't have protection against Confuse or Fear, so probably intentional.

I'd probably start with an Elec/Stone/Soul. Why? It's pretty easy to hard cap S/L/E/F/C Resistances on Elec Armor, especially on a Tank. +Res bonuses rarely require 5/6 slotting sets which also leaves room for procs. Elec also provides you with Endurance management tools and global Rech, both of which are pretty useful if you want to focus on slotting procs Stone melee gets a really good hold attack and it can slot several Force Feedbacks into an attack chain. Soul mostly for Gloom as it can take Apoc + proc or 3 damage procs + Decimation (4 + Deci if it can take taunt sets). You can also get Dark Oblit for a purple set opportunity.

Set bonuses are checked per power. 6 slot enhancements in one power, you get all the bonuses. Put 3 and 3 in two separate powers, you get the first two bonuses twice. As an additional note, you can get each uniquely named set bonus (e.g. "moderate ranged defense") up to 5 times regardless of whether it comes from 5 different sets or 5 copies of the same set. Edited to add, it's pretty easy to observe and verify this: fire up your alternative build (talk to a trainer to do this) buy 4 pieces of a really cheap set you can slot into two powers slot each power with 2 pieces check your combat attributes / character info and see which set bonuses you have (it's going to be the first bonus twice instead of bonuses 1 through 3 once)

I honestly disagree with the statement that there isn't such a thing as "playing an AT wrong". In my opinion you can definitely play an AT wrong, but fortunately it doesn't matter most of the time. I wouldn't send a tell to a player phrased "you're doing it wrong" because it's not constructive to be an ass about it, but I'd definitely think "yep, all sorts of wrong" and ask/advise if I felt like that would make a positive difference. CoX gives us an immense freedom to make characters both from a customization point of view and the difficulty level so there is room for all sorts of concept builds, but that just puts a responsibility on two parties: if you play a wacky concept build, don't get all pissy when your no attacks + Aid Other + Field Medic + Spirit Ward buffer Brute gets criticized if you're building a team, be up front about what you want and don't be an ass about asking/advising players with odd builds Generally if I'm leading a team, especially if on one of my finished level 50s, I don't have to care about most of my team. My characters are very optimized and there's pretty much a 100% chance I'll get at least 3-4 other good players in the team anyway and that's enough to finish just about anything in the game, no matter what the remaining couple of players are doing. I'll still check my teammates' builds to set my own expectations and appropriate difficulty settings as in my experience bad builds usually correlate with bad behavior and lack of awareness.

If it's a single target ability and not melee, I'm fine with chance for KB. If it's a melee attack, chance of KB is annoying most of the time. If it's an AoE, chance of KB is downright disruptive. +1 for removing chance of KB from AoEs, at least.

Frankly, anyone who would unpromptedly criticize a build that works is an idiot whose opinion in that particular context doesn't really matter much. Do most Tank builds take Tough? Yeah. Is it a requirement? Hell no, with set bonuses you can be several orders of magnitude tougher without Tough (heh) than you ever could with an SO build that incorporates it, and the latter is what the game is balanced around. If it was mez protection or a taunt aura, then it would make sense to take the initiative and point it out. This is coming from someone who actually spends time looking at teammates' builds. I'd probably question any melee character not having the Fighting pool only because I always take it, but if they had no problem surviving I would just stop caring.

Storm is a set much like Illusion in the sense that it's below average to average with just SOs, but it has an extremely high ceiling that can be achieved with IOs. I'd maybe look at reducing the endurance costs of some of the powers, but other than that I think the set is very good.

The good thing about CoH is that you really have to try to make a team / character that just doesn't work. I've had teammates who played /Rad without any of the debuff toggles, /Empathy with just the heals, Corruptors with none of their secondary and so on, but usually it doesn't really matter. Most of the time I'll just 3 star the player with "questionable skills" note or something similar so I can avoid teaming with them in content where builds might be impactful. However, if someone is playing their character "wrong" in the sense that they're disruptive to the team (e.g. excessive KB) or promising something they can't deliver (e.g. Tank without taunt or mez protect), I won't hesitate to let them know.

This is pretty much where I am. 6 50s with finished builds and a couple of billion on hand for any new ones that come up. I'll do a craft/convert/sell session once or twice a week to offset any inf spent on new 50s but other than that I don't see a point in getting more inf. For me, being wealthy basically means that couple of billion because it allows me to finish an IO build within an hour of the character hitting 50 and having 100 billion or more wouldn't change that situation at all.

I'd say a pair of Time/Sonic or Cold/Sonic Defenders/Corruptors would be pretty high up on that list. Time maybe slightly better given that Farsight affects you and your friend. With 2x PBU+Farsight and Maneuvers, you'll be at the incarnate soft cap all the time. Dual Chrono Shift for +100% Recharge. Temporal Selection + 2x Assault for ~80% damage boost 2x Time's Juncture for a significant -DMG on any enemies who do manage to hit you, stack with dual Distortion Field so they are either held or never get another chance to attack with all the -Rech Constant heal over time and heals available on demand You can stack -100% Res on every mob with 2x Slowed Response + Howl or if you have to, alternate Slowed Responses between mobs and stack with Howl for -70% Dual Time Stop to insta hold any boss If I hadn't already played Time/ and /Sonic to 50, I'd go and roll this duo with a friend right now.

Honestly, most of those powers are needed so infrequently I can't really see a need for macro changes. Most of my characters run an attack chain of 3-4 attacks with 1-3 AoEs and then another handful of clicky powers on top of that. Even my most click intensive character manages to fit every frequently used clicky in easily available slots (1-5, Alt+1-5). There's a saturation point when you should start considering if you actually need all the clicky powers you have, at least if you care about making good builds. If it's something like the Ouro portal, I can just get that from a sidebar with a mouse every 15 minutes. Besides, knowing how much of the code is literal spaghetti, it would probably be a huge undertaking for marginal benefit.

That is the primary complaint because the Defense crash is a clear balance concern. The damage crash part is anti-fun. Rethinking mechanics that aren't fun should be almost as important as fixing unbalanced mechanics, this game is supposed to be entertainment, after all. Considering that SS appears to be quite balanced with one stack of Rage at all times, I'm no longer convinced it needs to have a crash. If we allow it to stack then yes, obviously. That said, I can live with a 10s damage crash every 2 minutes, but I'm pretty sure the devs and community could come up with a better mechanic.

I still think Tankers should just get an across the board debuff resistance in their inherent to make any stats built on them (through IOs, insps, buffs, whatever) worth more as they'd be more difficult to take away. This would be especially noticeable against end-game enemies that are typically very debuff heavy.

You can save your GUI layout to a file in Options > Save Options To File. Then you can just use the Load From File option to use that. Setup something that works on the laptop, save it to a file and just load that when you log on, same thing for the desktop and you'll have local settings for both machines.

CoH macros and binds were specifically designed in a way that would prevent you from activating more than one power per button press.

Believe me, I have. I'm not trying to contest your point that other forms of secondary effects can be disruptive, all I'm saying is that KB is much more likely to do so. How often do I fight speed boosted Tsoo or Warwolves compared to literally anything that can be blown away? I have exactly zero issues playing with a competent KB user, but I know I'll get annoyed pretty quickly with a bad one. As for playing with KB, I find it pretty fun unless: it's a secondary effect on a melee character it's an AoE with a chance of KB meaning it'll just disperse mobs To get back on topic, for PBs it's basically both problems. A human form PB will want to be in melee a lot of the time because Radiant Strike, Incandescent Strike and Solar Flare are some of your most powerful attacks, but by default two of those push your targets away from you. Add in Gleaming Blast and the target AoE and it just gets worse. From a gameplay perspective, I don't think KB makes any sense for the PB's human / dwarf form attacks.