ForeverLaxx

I'm going to preface this first by stating that, generally speaking, I'm a min/max player. I'm a PvPer. I tend to care a lot about fractions of a percent if those fractions mean I cross a threshold or not. Before anyone goes hunting, I gave up PvPing in this game back on Live because I'm a solo PvPer and Fight Clubs started getting boring. With that out of the way, worrying about raw DPS will only matter in this game if you're soloing content meant for a team or you're trying to compare your numbers to someone else doing the same thing. That is, the only time it matters is if you're trying to burn down Pylons (not generally a good use of your time for anything other than seeing what your numbers are), or outpacing an AV's regeneration (something that matters far, far less when you have a team). CoH isn't like other MMOs. There really aren't any functional "dps checks" in the game unless you go out of your way to create those scenarios. Sets like Fire, touted as "king of damage" will falter against fire-resistant foes and sets considered middleground like Energy can outpace its "betters" when fighting the correct enemies. What you should be asking is not how to maximize DPS, but rather, what enemies you're going to expect to fight the most often in the late game and picking powersets that either attack their weaknesses, or at the very least, don't suffer from their resistances. Maximizing your attack chain with proper IO slotting will just naturally give you the "leet deeps" you're looking for, assuming you execute your attacks properly. Which, by the way, is basically unnecessary in this game for previously stated reasons.

The closest I've ever gotten to giving "unsolicited" advice is when someone is bemoaning something about their powerset in team chat, which to me, is almost asking for help anyway. Like, a Mastermind complaining that his pets die too fast or don't hit hard enough and I notice they haven't taken any of the Upgrade powers or aren't running in Defensive (to which I also usually tell them how to change their auto-generated command buttons so they have a Follow Defensive one), or if they're complaining about missing all the time, running out of end after 3 attacks, etc. I never just send a message out of nowhere to people who don't say anything first or random people I happen to pass by. I make weird builds all the time and I know I'd hate having randoms sending me messages that I'm doing it wrong. Yes, even on my Petless Demon Mastermind with Cross Punch.

It's probably important to keep in mind, too, that Regen benefits much more from Attack Set CC than some other armor sets would. Any time a mob is stuck flopping on the ground or walking in circles is time spent regenerating. Other armor sets benefit from this, too, but generally to a much reduced degree. Since Regen is built around taking the full hit (barring Resilience) and healing the damage afterwards, not taking hits gives you time to actually heal the damage you did take, making CC more impactful for survival and causing certain Primaries to be much better when paired with Regen than others. Now I'm not saying that if you had taken some AoE crowd control on your Regen that he totally would have made it through, but it certainly would have made things easier. Of course, that sort of dichotomy might be hiding how bad things really are for Regen since performance can vary so wildly with the set as it is. That said, I think Regen is still strong in PvP, for whatever that's worth. It's a different animal out there but I'm sure any changes to the set that hurts its PvP performance might make a few people upset.

And here I am still running Win7 Ultimate.

It does, and I'm frankly not sure why. That said, it's only considered "the buffed Regen" when you're saturating its toggles for maximum gains. Willpower is actually kinda weak defensively if enemy saturation drops low enough. Maybe that's why it has a self-rez. Perhaps the devs thought that set could use something to make finishing off one tough target more likely, when Willpower is at its weakest. Plus it kinda-sorta fits the theme? I don't really agree in that aspect but I see what they were going for.

Consider the sets that have a self-rez, though: Regen, Fire, and Dark. Regen is very reactive, and if you can't out-heal what you're fighting then you're guaranteed to lose to it, which means a self-rez effectively forces enemies to take out 2 of your HP bars to put you down. It's meant to be used not necessarily as mitigation per se, but rather, a second chance once the enemies have "wore themselves out" taking you down the first time. Fire also has low mitigation overall to everything but fire damage and it tries to make up for this by bringing more damage to the table. That includes its own self-rez power; meaning that the set was "designed" to fall in tough fights, but stand back up after nuking the things that defeated it. Dark is a bit of an outlier, at least today. However, back in the day, you had to pick and choose which toggles to run as Dark which meant you weren't always mitigated against everything a mob could do. Since the set has so many toggles, its self-rez stuns foes which gives you time to get the toggle you want back up and running to finish off the weakened spawn. What I'm getting at is that these sets were "balanced" around the idea that their self-rez powers would be utilized. This usually means those sets were meant to be overwhelmed in some circumstances so that they'd have to take their self-rez power and use it in order to keep fighting. It's as much of a defensive tool as Elude or Unstoppable used to be, but they're used after a defeat to keep fighting instead of before a defeat to hopefully outlast the group before your endurance is drained and you die anyway. The game has changed dramatically without these sets being updated to reflect it, but I still feel that "no deaths" for sets literally designed to die as part of their balance is unfair.

Well, bear in mind that it's a design philosophy before IOs were considered mandatory by the majority of players. Obviously if you never die, you don't need Revive. If you're running SOs only, which the set was built around from the beginning, you might want to consider it.

I hesitate to get into the middle of this ePeen slapfight, but I'm pretty sure that sets which contained a self-rez were intended to use them as part of their suite of "defenses." By that I mean, a Regen character dying, but using Revive to get back in the fight, is how it's supposed to work. Whether that's a good thing or not is entirely up to interpretation, but putting a "no deaths" stipulation against a set that, at least on paper, is designed to shrug off a faceplant doesn't seem fair to me. All that said, Regen needs help. I like the Sentinel version, but I've seen more than a few people, both on the forums and in-game, that do not want Sentinel's version for their melee characters. Most of them don't like the Absorb mechanic.

All I know is that, until the authorities haul my heroes/vigilantes into court on charges, then I must not be doing anything they aren't sanctioning. If that means the villains are "legally" allowed to expire, then so be it.

It was originally a "code" for the earliest internet users in order to keep everyone else who wasn't an OG from knowing what they were talking about. Obviously it wasn't particularly strong code because it was fairly quickly adopted by kids and teens who wanted to look like they've been on the internet for a long time. Eventually it just got associated with script kiddies and other children who were trying too hard to fit in until it became a relic of the "old internet ways" and only ever used as a joke or reference. That said, I was always the weird kid that typed complete sentences with proper grammar in the middle of a fight and I attribute my WPM to that. You still see people today trying to shame those who use proper sentence structure online, usually to the tune of "this isn't English class so who cares" or something similar.

Can't say I've seen many complaints recently, but when they come up the answer is usually the same: if you like what another server is doing, then go there. No one is stopping you. There's no reason to stick around a place you don't like when you have the option to go somewhere you think you'll like more. CoH even has the "bonus" that you can just flat make your own place to hang out and change anything you want whenever you want. Homecoming's focus is primarily on stability of the service. While I don't agree with every change they do roll out (and I've been pretty vocal about specific topics and suspicions), I still value a stable product that's more-or-less the same game I was forced to leave all those years ago thanks to the shut down. If that's not something you want, you've got more than a few options that offer something different. No one will begrudge you for choosing something better suited to what you're looking for.

I almost exclusively solo so the only time I tend to be defeated is when my Purple Inspirations get ignored by Barracuda, Silver Mantis, or some other mid-20s/30s AV-turned-EB. When that happens I'm usually just annoyed, buy more purples from the hospital, and hope they aren't ignored a second time.

Pretty sure I have all of them as well as the two published novels. I still read them from time to time as they're not really "worth" anything.

I personally find it interesting that you take this one guy for his word, but when someone else posts information that runs counter to what PG said, you act like their words aren't enough to prove that's what happened. Instead you just default to PG's version of events. Why is it that you take PG for his word, but no one else? He doesn't exactly prove anything either beyond showing some /tells that he probably shouldn't have received. Everything he says is to put him in as much of a good light as possible because he's trying to vilify the people he doesn't like. Considering we have more reports that he intentionally crashed a Hami Raid under the "no one owns a zone" technically true clause and only his word stating otherwise, it at least makes him appear to be a self-important, antagonistic prick. I don't condone the practice, but doxing isn't illegal unless you used illegal methods to obtain that information. The information itself (name, address, even phone number/email, etc) is public information and posting public information isn't a crime. Again, I don't condone it, but I wanted to point this out as people love to associate the actions of those who use that public info for nefarious purposes with the act of posting it in the first place. It's like blaming the gun because some kid found it in an unlocked closet and shot his friend over a Pokemon card.

I'm probably coloring my experiences here, as I tend to fight these two without enhancements slotted as I run into them pretty early, but Barracuda and Silver Mantis, even as EBs, can be really nasty in the lower levels. Barracuda just does a ton of damage and Silver Mantis does a bunch of damage while sporting MoG and enough defense debuffs that popping purples sometimes feels entirely pointless.

Those set's auras only taunt because the player buff effects of said auras are dependent on enemy saturation. If they couldn't maintain enemy density, those powers would often provide little to no benefit. In addition to that, those auras also tend to debuff the enemies continuously which usually makes the AI run even more than a damage aura does. Auras that only contribute damage or some other effect that doesn't buff the player have no reason to taunt other than a player's desire to keep mobs clustered on the player. I can understand the desire to keep mobs clustered, and I'm a power gamer at heart myself, but this game isn't so dependent on optimization that you need to dismiss every set without a "taunt aura" regardless of what else the set does. Frankly, it's just not that hard of a game. To the thread itself, I'm running a Fire/Stone Scrapper. I can finally make my "granite-less" volcano-themed character without feeling like I'm giving up the entire point of the armor set thanks to Geode being there. I do wish I could swap out the swords for weaponless versions, and the strange sound it makes when summoned always throws me off.

I'm still used to the original Hover, and all the buffs Hover has received over the life of the game has caused me to not really mind current Hover speeds. That said, I don't use it for world travel, but in a mission, it's fast enough to let me keep up with the team.

Because in nearly 100% of these cases, the "outside information" is from 3rd Party Sources/Programs that the devs generally have no control over. Not to mention that Mids went on hiatus for awhile (we're talking months), was "replaced" by Pines (which then also went defunct for awhile), before getting picked up by an entirely new group and began updating again under a new combined effort as Mids Reborn. How would you feel if the development team was telling you to go outside the game to get detailed information and craft a build with a program that is 6 months out of date? Even now that it's current, Mids still has quirks that mislead or even lie to you with regard to the numbers in-app when compared to in-game. Would the devs want to be pointing players to potentially inaccurate "helper" programs when those same programs aren't 100% reliable? At best, you could get a Loading Screen Tip pointing out the existence of the forums as a player knowledgebase resource and leave it at that. The in-game explore badges were probably never meant to be anything more than neat rewards for running around the zone and, you know, exploring, but when rewards were tied to them (ie: the Zone Teleporter), putting in a way to find them without relying on add-ons or mods became something worth including. So they did. If you notice, most MMOs, while acknowledging the existence and usefulness of some mods, will very rarely endorse or advise their players to go download and install them. With the explore badges example, you'll see that rather than tell players to "just download Vidiot Maps" they instead put an in-game method to be directed towards explore badges. The game isn't really set up to do the same for things like Mids or the various Sound File Replacement applications. I'm not sure what you mean by "subsequent updates" but there's usually a popup upon first login after a patch that either details what's changed, or has a link to the patch notes itself. If they're ignoring the popup, that's on them.

This happens all the time if you run through very quickly. I haven't had it happen if I take my time, though.

It seems that Spectrum for Asymmetrical Gloves was also an oversight. You can get Spectrum gloves, but only if you make both of them that way. Interestingly, you can do Asymmetrical Boots with one Spectrum and one not, so I'm sure you're supposed to be able to do this with the gloves too. EDIT: I only checked the female character model for this as that's the character I was on. I don't know if it holds true for Male/Huge.

You sure can. You're free to make your own server and run it yourself.

Likewise. My in-game experience is the same to my real-world one in this instance. Who says video games can't mirror real life?

I think the main problem regarding set bonus distribution and "attractive alternatives" that people don't seem to want to point out is that, from a power gaming perspective, there's no reason in-game to want anything other than Defense/Resist caps, piles of Recharge, and enough recovery to make it function. You can add all the "alternative build" slotting and set bonuses you want, but the game itself doesn't reward this kind of building and, in some cases, actively punishes you for it. In effect, some bonuses are purely for flavor that you'll almost never notice or appreciate. That said, I don't necessarily think that makes these bonuses bad when viewed in isolation. They're just "bad" due to how the game at large functions and without changing the game itself, these bonuses won't be considered valuable. The problem then becomes one of powercreep vs perceived uselessness and it's not really a battle you can win no matter which direction you go. If you make the bonuses "appealing enough" to warrant consideration in final build crafting, you've most likely just powercrept the game. If you leave the bonuses "nice" but inconsequential to end builds, the perception that they're a "useless waste of dev time/resources" goes up and people just ignore the set outside of potential unique IOs. It's not a great place to be in as a designer, though I'm on the side of "don't powercreep the game" and just let fun, flavorful, and "nice" bonuses exist for those who want to use them. Power Gamers will always use what's best, and if what's currently best is already trivializing much of the game, there's no need to contribute further to that problem. If some people want to pretend this means the effort on "pointless sets/bonuses" is wasted effort, then let them. Who knows -- maybe someone will try to create competitive leagues of not-capped players and these "useless" sets and bonuses suddenly find value in a twink market. Think the Level 19 Battleground bracket in WoW (which I know doesn't exist anymore thanks to level/stat squishing). With fewer slots and powers available at lower levels, decent bonuses in areas all characters have access to early become important.

I would roleplay with my primary character on Infinity and she ended up acquiring a small handful of people who were always super-willing to help her out. Until, that is, the day they all learned that "she" was actually a "he" and that character found herself completely alone, overnight. That was... interesting.

What are you talking about? Shocking Grasp is more of a damaging attack than it is a Hold, plus it's a T9. It only lasts 1.5 seconds longer than Tesla Cage but has a recharge rate that's 50% longer. On top of that, it costs almost 3 times as much Endurance per cast and is melee range. Shocking Bolt being "better" than Tesla Cage is just an opinion. Sure, Bolt lasts longer by default, but it also takes longer to recharge. It also costs more Endurance to use. They both deal so little damage that Bolt doing slightly more is meaningless. Other than having a bit more range, the only thing you get out of Shocking Bolt more reliably than Tesla Cage is that it's better suited to procs. It's not really fair to fault a power based on its procability, particularly in light of the fact both sets existed long before IOs were ever a thing. All of Elec Blast just got a boost with this Shocked mechanic. They didn't have to touch Tesla Cage at all and everything I said above would still be true. Despite that, it has some minor AoE added to it, further differentiating itself from your examples, but that's not good enough because... why? Because of your (in my opinion) bad opinion about how it compares to its "themed competition?"