Redlynne

Build planner hosted on a website structured so that we can link to the page of the specific build ... kind of like what the old World of Warcraft build planners did ... so we don't have to keep mucking around in offline programs like Mids' (and its successors like Pine).

As advertised, the ONLY way to prevent the Crab Backpack from appearing FOREVER on your character is to NEVER EVER take ANY of the Crab powers at ANY point during your character's history ... not even on an Alternate Build. If you EVER complete a respec with even 1 Crab power ... primary or secondary ... that character will be FOREVER marked with wearing the Crab Backpack and you cannot remove it. So in order to get rid of the Crab Backpack, you will have to reroll and NOT take ANY Crab powers ... primary or secondary ... on ANY build of the (rerolled) character. This is not a bug, but it is a limitation of the branching of Soldiers of Arachnos and how the game engine handles them. Working As Designed. Granted, it may not be what you WANTED ... but it is functioning according to the specs for the game laid down by Cryptic and then Paragon Studios. If you don't like it, take it up with War Witch and/or Positron, since they were the developers responsible for this state of affairs at the end of Issue 23.

How combat "flows" will vary greatly between solo and group play. In group play, so long as you aren't going out of your way to draw aggro upon yourself, you can get by just fine with low Defense values by relying on your hard/soft controls to "neutralize" your opposition while the aggro magnets hold attention. Note that the combination of -ToHit debuffing from Time's Juncture and +Defense buffing from Farsight will often push you towards the defensive softcap, so if you find yourself taking too many hits, often the solution is to either move in closer to bring Time's Juncture to bear, or to "throw" your Singularity at your $Targets in order to give time someone (something?) else to unload their ... displeasure ... into. And when in doubt ... Wormhole. And yes, Ranged Defense makes a lot of sense, but so does Melee and AoE. Personally, I prefer to take the balanced approach to the question, since my first (and signature?) protection scheme was Super Reflexes back in Issue 2. Despite appearances, most Controller primaries are not going to be ideal places for finding AoE damage output. Some are better than others at it, but none of them are really spectacular at it. Gravity, like Mind, is one of the more single target focused powersets. It's just the nature of the beast. As for damage procs ... it's really up to you whether or not you think they'll be a big help to you. It's too much of a judgement call for me to Tell You™ either a yes or a no answer to that question, since HOW you play your Controller might be radically different from how I do, even with the exact same powers and build (to say nothing of costume design!). Best I can suggest is that you experiment and decide for yourself if the return on investment yields a superior option for your playstyle.

The Achilles' Heel proc NEVER stacks. Overwrite, sure. Stack ... NEVER. That's because the way the proc works is that it causes the $Target to cast the debuff ON THEMSELF. That means that the "caster" of the debuff is not your PC (or anyone else's PC), but is instead the $Target casting the debuff on themself. And guess what's built into that debuff that they cast onto themself? Effect does not stack from same caster. This means that if you had an entire LEAGUE of attackers all proc Achilles' Heel onto a target, simultaneously ... only ONE debuff from Achilles' Heel would appear on the $Target. So in that respect, if you slot Achilles' Heel into Creeper Vines, it might proc "more reliably" (higher chance) than in other powers, but it wouldn't create a "deeper stack" of debuff on the $Target.

The problem is the default keybinds. By default you have this: enter "startchat" Guess what happens when you hit ENTER at the end of a line of chat? Ding ding ding ding! You invoke the bind to open another chat! How do you "fix" this problem? Simple ... edit your bind file. enter "nop" shift+enter "afk Typing…$$startchat" What this will do is assign a "no operation" to ENTER, such that hitting ENTER will Do Nothing. You then swap that keybind functionality with using SHIFT+ENTER in order to start your chats (and cause an AFK message to appear over your head indicating to anyone nearby that you're typing) ... but then when you hit ENTER to actually "say" what you put into the chat line you aren't hitting SHIFT+ENTER to open yet another chat. In other words, you deconflict the functionality assigned to ENTER ... so you don't use it to both start AND stop chat lines, you instead only use ENTER only to stop them (and use SHIFT+ENTER to start them). It may take a little bit of muscle memory retraining in order to get used to the change, but you'll "learn" it quickly enough.

Looks like I haven't told this story in this thread yet ... So I was playing my Hunts(wo)man on a Strike Force (back on Virtue, in the day) and we had a Force Fielder and an Empath with us along for the ride ... and because of the combined effects of Force Fields and my Auras, the Empath basically had "nothing to do" and was just waiting for people to get damaged (which they weren't while they stayed with the group). So I pointed this out to the Force Fielder and the two of us decided to stick close to each other for best overlapping of Auras and just let the melee monsters go nuts (which they were THOROUGHLY ENJOYING doing!) ... while the Empath continued to have basically nothing to do, aside from tag along and watch. I figure the Empath kept thinking that there would be a sudden nasty situation that would demand tons of endurance to counter ... and it just kept NOT HAPPENING for them. So after another mission complete, I told the Empath (who was a Defender) in team chat that they should feel free to start Offending whenever they were ready. The Empath Defender Just STOPPED. They'd been moving with everyone, but the Empath just STOPPED moving. I figure the Player was so stunned by the suggestion that they had taken their hands off the keyboard. About 15 seconds later, the Empath replies in team chat with "What did you just say?" I pointed out that yes, they were an Empath and a Defender, but while everyone stayed within range of the stacked Auras of the Force Fielder and myself hardly any damage was being taken, leaving the Empath Defender a unique opportunity to go offensive and start dealing damage along with the rest of us. Yes, Empathy was their primary powerset, but they also had a secondary, and although they were a Defender there was no good reason why they couldn't be an OFFender right now on this team because they were MORE than JUST a DEFender. And The Empath Defender Just STOPPED. AGAIN. Finally, after about another 20 seconds of silence (while I politely waited for them to get it back together again) ... the Empath said in team chat ... "That may be the nicest thing that anyone has ever said to me." After that, the Force Fielder, Empath and my Hunts(wo)man were practically inseparable for the rest of the run. That Empath switched over into Offender Mode and basically never looked back for the rest of the run. The three of us became the "leaders" of the group, since anyone who got too far ahead (and out of range of our Auras) encountered a rude awakening faceplanting in relatively short order, followed by a side order of mockery from the Force Fielder and Empath. The Go Darwin Go factor kicked in, our overly ambitious melee monsters "learned" they tended to live longer by sticking with the group and we proceeded to lay waste to everything in our path ... wholesale ... rather than retail. And I swear, that Empath Defender had more fun being an Offender on that run than they had ever had before with that character, to the point of starting to succumb to Scrapperlock (or at least, Blasterlock) due to the amount of gusto on display at finally being "allowed" to Join The Team as a damage producer. Good times. *^_^* Needless to say, I got quite the Thank You from the Empath after all of that, especially since they'd assumed at first that I was insulting them, rather than inviting them to join the carnage so they wouldn't be bored following us around anymore. Yeah. Good times. *^_^* I'm still really proud of that one ... and at the time, what I was doing was about as "obvious" to the team as an Empath not needing to heal all the time. So yeah ... just because I make it LOOK easy doesn't mean it IS easy (without me) ...

The build was posted before I started playing. I've since rerolled to swap Snare for Bolt on my Warshade, in part simply so as to have a workable attack rotation worth a damn until reaching Level 6 and Nova. I was also convinced to make the switch after seeing the difference in attack chain performance with my Peacebringer. So this is definitely another instance of needing to PLAY the game in order to make the informed decisions that affect your builds (and learn from that experience). The thing is, at Level 50 when fully slotted out, Shadow Bolt falls off in usefulness for a Human Form attacking, simply due to how much global recharge is floating around at full build, such that swapping to Snare makes more sense then. The problem with Snare is that although it does more damage per activation, it's a DoT so it "takes a while" for that damage to stack up and out, resulting in wasted overkill factor. Still, the Immobilize factor is what drew me to Snare over Bolt to begin with, but the time where that's really an advantage is a lot smaller of a window than I'd been thinking. And then there's the Dwarf factor here on Homecoming, as you cite. Because after having played "aura killers" like my Ice/Ice Tanker back on Virtue (and my Warshade, too) I found that Orbiting Death actually offered a surprisingly high return on investment value. Your attacks will do more damage per activation, but Orbiting Death will deal more damage per endurance than almost anything else you've got (in Human Form) and it will do it nigh constantly while $Targets are around you. If I had more slots to spare, I'd put them into Orbiting Death. If you've got an aggro magnet on the team, wind up Orbiting Death and roll in close alongside them in Human Form to help them out by Scrapping with them. Your Mire will boost the damage dealt by Orbiting Death and the "chunks" it takes out of piles of $Targets CHEAPLY in terms of endurance cost (relative to other options) is damage you don't need to produce "later" using more expensive attacks. Even at low levels (4+) I use Orbiting Death a good deal so as to deal the coup de gras to $Targets that my T1+2 attacks don't finish off immediately. I let Orbiting Death take off those last slivers of the health bar while I'm already moving on to the next target, rather than trying to burn them down to 0 with active click attacks. So for the way that I play, Orbiting Death is a really good "support" damage power, either when soloing or when in a group. So for me, at least ... yes, it is that good.

Make sure the CoH application is inside the Applications folder (and it's the only one) and then Reset Path in Island Rum. DONE. Locate the CoH app and click it once, and then click Select. DONE. Then Re-Scan to see if it patches up any more files. Why is it trying to download all 165 files from scratch now, even though that was done just fine BY Island Rum in the first place to create the CoH package in the first place? Why does it only get 48 out of a 165 files in and then suddenly crash/quit to desktop, killing off Island Rum without warning (or explanation)? And why do I still not have a homecoming.exe file in my coh folder? Y'know, I'm starting to think there isn't anywhere NEAR enough Fool Resistance built into Island Rum at this point (because as we all know, there's no such thing as Foolproof!).

Just noticed something. Why is there no homecoming.exe file in my coh folder?

Forced to clean load. Island Rum has downloaded everything into the CoH package in my Applications folder. Ready to Play. Click to play and get ... Instructions please. This is extremely anti-intuitive. Wineskin simply refuses to accept that there's a CoH package there with everything in it ready to go. NONE of these options allow me to point to the contents of the CoH package. None of these options help with getting the Homecoming client to launch. What do I need to do on any of these tabs to fix the MAJOR MALFUNCTION of using Island Rum to launch the Wineskin wrapper around the CoH package?

The player has to create/copy the files and put them into the folder. The computer isn't going to write those for you.

Look at the bottom left of the OP for a link that is labeled with: * TargetedGroups.xlsm (34.59 kB - downloaded 3 times.)

The usual way. Play game, earn levels. Speaking just for myself, I'd rather PLAY the game than powerlevel past it all in a race to get to 50. At the moment I'm prevented from playing the game at all due to this problem which I can't get an answer for. I provided 3 builds with slight differences in power picks. Choose one that looks/feels right to you and start from there?

At the moment, I'm basically prevented from playing the game until I can get an answer to this problem ... :/

Winter is coming. Stand in fire to warm up.

Because that's what the original devs at Paragon Studios decided ... and we still honor their design decisions, even though they're no longer "in charge" of the game ...?

Fortunately, there's a way to favorably resolve that issue ... it's called "slotting Accuracy enhancements" with a side order to ToHit Buffing from Tactics. Beyond that, you're on your own. Also, should any of your operatives be captured or faceplant, the Mastermind Club will disavow any knowledge of your existence. Good luck. This Contact window will auto-close in 5 seconds.

What this sounds like to me: "I fell in the river and got wet. Fix it so I don't get wet when I fall in." Sorry, you're going to have to do the Divide By 2 math in your head, just like all the rest of us, so as to intuitively know that a 120º wide cone is 60º to the left of center and 60º to the right of center for a 120º wide cone ... as advertised.

"I'm a Hero. And I'm a Villain!" ... ... Samuraiko Productions (disclaimer: Redlynne appears in a walk on at 2:44 in this one) (disclaimer: Redlynne runs in and "boots head" at 1:58 in this one, along with others of my alts at different times)

Help?

Forced to clean load. Island Rum has downloaded everything into the CoH package in my Applications folder. Ready to Play. Click to play and get ... Instructions please. This is extremely anti-intuitive. Wineskin simply refuses to accept that there's a CoH package there with everything in it ready to go.

Still wishing this kind of functionality could come "built in" with Island Rum ...

I've given up on using goto_tray commands and instead just keep all 9 trays open at all times in the bottom right corner of my 2560x1440 screen. Tray 1 is for alternate powers ... like Kheldian Forms (both of them) and Dual Pistols ammo types and so on ... while trays 2+ are used for the (regular) Human powers on every alt that I play. That way I can use a common "base" bind file as a default starting point for all of my alts, and then just have individual character "modifier files" to adjust things on top of that base. These are the bind files I use on my Kheldians. Note that the keybind files are rigged to work no matter which form you're in, thanks to how some powers are invalidated by which Form you have active at any given time. Since the powers with execute in reverse order (effectively), what the binds do is check for Dwarf form first, Nova form second and Human form last. The only adjustment that is needed with this layout is that I've got the "q" on my keyboard bound as Follow and so need to do a double click in Dwarf form of tilde+q in order to Select target and Follow target for melee stickiness to $Target. Other than that one bit of bother, everything else works using a single bindloadfile with no need to function call additional bindloadfiles dependent upon form shifting. PB.txt t "powexectoggleoff Bright Nova$$powexectoggleoff White Dwarf" y "powexectoggleoff White Dwarf$$powexectoggleon Bright Nova" g "powexectoggleoff Bright Nova$$powexectoggleon White Dwarf" tilde "targetcustomnear enemy alive$$targetcustomnext enemy alive Quantum$$targetcustomnext enemy alive Void$$targetcustomnext enemy alive Cyst$$targetcustomnext enemy alive Sapper" 1 "powexectray 2 2$$powexectray 1 2" 2 "powexectray 2 2$$powexectray 1 1$$powexectray 5 1" 3 "powexectray 3 2$$powexectray 2 1$$powexectray 6 1" 4 "powexectray 4 2$$powexectray 3 1$$powexectray 7 1" 5 "powexectray 5 2$$powexectray 4 1$$powexectray 8 1" 6 "powexectray 6 2$$powexectray 9 1" 7 "powexectray 7 2" 8 "powexectray 8 2" 9 "powexectray 9 2" 0 "powexectray 10 2" right "powexecname Energy Flight$$powexectoggleoff Quantum Acceleration$$powexectoggleoff Jump Pack" shift+right "powexecname Quantum Acceleration" down "powexecname Combat Flight$$powexectoggleoff Energy Flight$$powexectoggleoff Quantum Acceleration$$powexectoggleoff Jump Pack" shift+left "powexecname Quantum Flight$$powexectoggleoff Jump Pack" lshift+lbutton "powexecname White Dwarf Step" WS.txt t "powexectoggleoff Dark Nova$$powexectoggleoff Black Dwarf" y "powexectoggleoff Black Dwarf$$powexectoggleon Dark Nova" g "powexectoggleoff Dark Nova$$powexectoggleon Black Dwarf" tilde "targetcustomnear enemy alive$$targetcustomnext enemy alive Quantum$$targetcustomnext enemy alive Void$$targetcustomnext enemy alive Cyst$$targetcustomnext enemy alive Sapper" 1 "powexectray 2 2$$powexectray 1 2" 2 "powexectray 2 2$$powexectray 1 1$$powexectray 5 1" 3 "powexectray 3 2$$powexectray 2 1$$powexectray 6 1" 4 "powexectray 4 2$$powexectray 3 1$$powexectray 7 1" 5 "powexectray 5 2$$powexectray 4 1$$powexectray 8 1" 6 "powexectray 6 2$$powexectray 9 1" 7 "powexectray 7 2" 8 "powexectray 8 2" 9 "powexectray 9 2" 0 "powexectray 10 2" right "powexecname Shadow Step$$powexecname Black Dwarf Step" shift+right "powexecname Shadow Slip" down "powexecname Shadow Recall" shift+left "powexecname Nebulous Form" lshift+lbutton "powexecname Shadow Step$$powexecname Black Dwarf Step"

I've noticed that Twinshot in the Level 5-9 part of the arc is especially susceptible to this issue ... and by that I mean RELIABLY ... as in every single time, on every alt I've run through Proton's lab, Twinshot does this EVERY time. Curiously enough, the other NPCs don't have this problem (and there are multiple who ride the elevators with your PC). I'm thinking that the scripting on Twinshot's pathing might offer a useful clue for resolving this issue, if anyone is brave enough to go down into the guts of the coding with a flashlight, a #2 pencil and a surplus 286 processor (or words to that effect).

I was afraid that was going to be the answer (when in doubt, CLEAN LOAD!) but was hoping there might be an alternative or useful testing to assist any research on your side of things. +1 Inf anyway. Downloading fresh copy now.