RikOz

Nah, I mentioned stalker because I had recently done the Faultline arc on a stalker (and good lord, being a stalker is almost useless on the Captain Castillo mission where Doc Delilah tags along, given that she wants to run in and aggro the entire room). I mentioned Dark Melee because I had spent the day playing my DM scrapper, and had noticed her lack of a buildup. I was mainly bringing up this "issue" because I'm not entirely sure it's intentional. It started happening after one of the recent patches, at least this particular example of it. I currently have 84 alts and have probably run at least 40 of them through Faultline (I'd need to count Ouro portals to get a more exact number), and for most of them I saw a pretty fair map randomization on that mission and never encountered this "three Engineers within 15 feet of each other", or even this particular map. And then the last five or six alts who had done this mission before my post have gotten this same map with these same three Engineers in the same place. I understand that this is well within the realm of RNG, but it's still kind of odd that, across so many alts, to never see this configuration once, and then suddenly see it 5-6 times in a row. I've seen other odd changes to missions following patches. After the most recent patch, the second Jim Temblor mission started being strange. Going back to my time on live, that mission, regardless of which map spawned, always proceeded in the same order: Arbiter Sands up front, Fusionette in the middle, and Kurse at the end. After the last patch, those three NPCs have spawned in a different order in each of the three times I've run the mission. In one instance, Kurse spawned in the middle and I found Fusionette in the room after Kurse.

I have no idea if this kind of thing is even possible, but ... Would it be at all doable to tweak the code such that specific mob types can't spawn multiples within a certain proximity? Or, at the very least, stop specific mobs occurring more than once within a particular spawn group? I'm talking about Sky Raider Engineers. The ones that fire up forcefields. On the Faultline mission, "Recover Akashi Knight's Body" (from Doc Delilah), one of the possible maps includes a T-intersection, and at the intersection there are two spawn groups of Sky Raiders, one to the left and one to the right. Due to their positioning, there is no way to attack one group without also aggroing the other group (even with a Stalker, though at least a Stalker can just slip past them all). On top of this - and here is the biggest issue - one of these groups consistently spawns with two Engineers, and the other group contains one Engineer. At least at the level where this mission becomes available, it is quite impossible to interrupt more than one of these Engineers, so you're likely to end up with two of them activating their forcefields, and in the unfortunate event that your attack misses the one you wanted to interrupt, you'll get all three forcefields going. And when that happens, you're suddenly surrounded by six enemies that you can't land a single attack on due to the stacking nature of the forcefields. It's quite possible to arrive at level 20 without having your Buildup power yet (and Dark Melee doesn't have one at all). I know the standard strategy for this kind of situation is to pop a yellow, but at level 20 you only have 10 insp slots, and this kind of situation may occur multiple times in a mission and you still need other kinds of insps as well.

As I discovered when I tried to get rid of the Heightened Speed buff from Secondary Mutation. The character already had a major movement speed buff from a regular power, and the added speed from Secondary Mutation made navigating caves completely unmanageable.

That's what I was looking for! Thanks! I know, right? 84 alts and counting...

As we all know, 1023 characters is often just not enough for a good bio, and I have run up against that limit hard with the latest bio I'm writing. I have heard of people providing a link in the bio that people can go to in order to read a character's extended backstory. Alas, I no longer maintain my own website. Is there a site out there that provides this service? Or how do most people do it?

Alas, I was unfamiliar with the term 😞 Though once I selected the new name, it occurred to me that perhaps her real name is Nika. "I was a nice girl once, until I ended up in those Crey experiments. They turned me purple. Sure, the new mental powers are nice, but THEY TURNED ME PURPLE!" It all went downhill from there.

Psychonika, my Psychic Blast/Regen sentinel villain (originally named Psychosa on live, where she was a blaster, but I only got around to resurrecting her a couple weeks ago and by that time somebody else had taken the name). Not a particularly spectacular costume, but I discovered I could get some pretty cool shots in the character creator by clicking a power in the power customization screen and then clicking the Save button. Her other costumes are better, but I haven't grabbed screenshots of those yet.

I combined the Spectrum pieces, Bio Plasma aura Body+Eyes, and Fire Shield pretty effectively, I think, to make my fire/fire blaster main, Flaminatrix, look like she's actually made of fire. Though I'll admit the effect isn't quite as good in a still image.

Steel Canyon detectives will introduce you to Montague Castanella after completing a safeguard, if you haven't already met him.

"You shouldn't hang me on a hook, Creyzee Ex. My mother hung me on a hook once. ONCE!"

Hmm, the guy I'm fighting in the screenshot is on the roof of the Zig (I was there for the exploration badge), but the other two this guy encountered were "underground" way over at the eastern edge of the zone (where there's another badge).. All, though, were outside of the area where the event is active (I'm defining the area as where the event progress window pops up) and when I did pass through that area the window didn't indicate any progress - it was sitting at 0/20.

This isn't game-breaking by any means, but I have noticed several times, recently, that "Prisoner" mobs in open-world Brickstown are conning a level lower than they should. For example, as shown in the screenshot below, my level 35 hero is fighting a level 35 Prisoner minion, and the minion is conning blue instead of white. Similarly, I'm also encountering same-level Prisoner lieutenants that con white instead of yellow. The odd thing is that this isn't every Prisoner mob, just the occasional mob now and then. I haven't noticed this happening with any mobs in Brickstown other than Prisoners, and I haven't seen it happen in any other zone.

I'm not sure if this is exactly a "typo", but on the "Rescue Coldwell Heirs" mission (part of the Scroll of Tielekku arc), after rescuing Debbie I go back to find and rescue Duncan. As I'm leading Duncan out, the mission window text says, "Lead Debbie Out!".

I also use Windscribe, and I almost never turn it off. No problems so far.

I think this one was a sunrise rather than a sunset.

Thanks for explaining why my rare salvage bids were taking so long 🙂 I've actually found that if I need a particular piece of rare salvage right now, it's quicker to hit AE and run Bads in Space twice, which produces enough tickets to just get what I need from the AE vendor. Though the particular AT/PS I'm playing makes a difference in how long it takes.

This is my current desktop wallpaper, taken in Grandeville while running the hero morality mission, "One Good Spider". EDIT: It was nice to get a sunset that wasn't filtered through the war walls.

My level 50 fire blaster has the Devastation: Chance for Hold IO slotted into her Blaze power, and for some time now I've observed a consistent, odd behavior. In most situations, I start combat with Fire Ball, followed immediately by Blaze. This 1-2 punch consistently kills same-level Minions (and usually +1 minions as well). However, if Blaze triggers the Chance to Hold proc, the Minion is held ... but doesn't die. I have to hit it with a third attack to kill it. This behavior has remained consistent even as I have unlocked my incarnate slots and slotted incarnate abilities that increase my damage. This suggests that somehow or other, triggering the proc also decreases the attack's damage, or imposes some sort of limit such that the Held target takes only enough damage to reduce it to, say, 1 hit point above "defeated". I say "1" because once the target is Held, its health bar appears to be completely depleted, but the target still requires one more hit to actually defeat it. The description of this IO doesn't say anything about a damage modification, so I'm baffled by this behavior. Is it supposed to be doing this? This won't actually be an issue for this character for much longer, as I'm 4/6 toward replacing the Devastation set with Apocalypse, but I suspect I'll eventually be slotting Devastation on another blaster or sentinel in the future. EDIT: It also occurred to me that Fire Ball has a DoT component which, for me, currently does around 21 points of damage per tick, so I would think that even if Fire Ball + Blaze didn't instantly kill the target, the first DoT tick would finish the job. So that almost makes it appear that the Hold proc is canceling the DoT. That will require closer observation, though, since it's possible I'm just firing off the third attack before the DoT has a chance to tick.

I'm sure, but I was hoping to find a source 🙂

So glad this is here! I just made a thread over in the Reconnect forum earlier today, asking if seebs was here, to see if this could be reposted, or if I could get permission to repost it. I've had the original post in my bookmarks all this time. Of course, the old link no longer works, but it helped me track it down on the Wayback Machine. In agreement with somebody else here, I've always considered " Ideally, the tank will die precisely as everyone else starts fighting, allowing aggro to be spread evenly among the blaster" to be one of the most brilliant things I've ever read, and I read a lot. One of my characters is a Battle Axe/Invuln brute named "Epic Gear" (everything he wears is purple). His backstory is that he was an "elite warrior" in a different universe (which is clearly World of Warcraft, without actually saying so in the bio) who arrived in Paragon City after bizarre portal accident that was obviously the fault of a noob, casual mage. His bio mentions that he is currently in search of some sort of large "epic" mount to park on the steps of City Hall. Mount-sitting in obnoxious places is, of course, the WoW equivalent of aura-spamming. I'm happy to say that, even though I don't seriously/formally RP, I'm always RP-ing in my head, and my personal RP in WoW was that I dismounted before entering buildings (I mean, I don't drive my car through the front door of the bank IRL), and if for some reason I actually needed to sit on a mount for an extended period I'd make sure I was out of everybody's way. I carry that into CoH, in that I turn off my auras before entering buildings or crowded areas.

Awesome! I did not spot it there! Thanks!

I've found that several of my old blasters from live work much better (for me) now as sentinels. I've also discovered I enjoy sets like DP and AR a lot more as sentinels, where I can just concentrate on spewing damage instead of needing to mix in mezzes that are so frequently ineffective. Sentinels are generally simpler than blasters. My main is a lvl 50 fire/fire/flame blaster and there are so many buttons between the power sets and pools. Sentinel secondaries are more "set and forget" passive stuff, and that works well for the way I like to play. Even in WoW, when selecting talents, I tended toward passives instead of actives that required me to find a way to insert yet another button into my rotation/toolkit.

You know those standard stick figure characters that are used on signage, like public restrooms, wet floor signs, etc.? Does anybody know if those are freely and publicly available for use? And available (legally) online? I was inspired by those amusing "taking care of baby" cartoons that illustrate the correct way, and a hilariously incorrect way, to perform various baby-care tasks. They gave me an idea for a CoH "Emergency Guide for Paragon Civilians" illustrating what to do and what not to do when their workplace is invaded by villains, or when they're personally taken hostage by villains. I want to base it upon the silly behaviors I see from hostages after I've rescued them, and the random "panicked civilians" racing around the mission maps. For example, showing a room with a group of villains on one side, and a clearly marked EXIT on the other side. In the center would be a standing figure representing a hero, a prone figure representing an unconscious villain, and a running figure representing the hostage. In the first panel, labeled with a big "YES", the civilian would be shown running toward the exit. The second panel, labeled "NO" would show the civilian running toward the group of villains. Another one would show a hero and villain locked in combat. The "YES" panel would show the civilian running past the two combatants; the "NO" panel would show the civilian trying to squeeze between them. I can't draw, but I'm pretty good at stitching existing pictures together in Photoshop (I used to design desktop wallpaper collages as a hobby), and think those "official" stick figures would be perfect for my idea.

Back on the old official forums, a player named "seebs" wrote a brilliant and hilarious "guide" called, "How to Suck at CoH/CoV". I still had the post bookmarked, but since it was to the old forums it obviously doesn't work any more. Fortunately, I was able to track it down via the Wayback Machine. I'd love to see it reposted here, but I won't do so without seebs' permission. So I'm hoping he/she is back for HC and might be willing to repost it, or give permission for me to do so.

Aha, we are in the same Facebook group! (I pointed out that his name is Eddie 😄 )