Mister Mass

I have a similar story. While my first name is fairly common, my surname is decidedly not. I was a grad student in Austin, then joined the Army Reserves & spent a year & a half in training. When I returned to Austin to join my Reserve unit, I moved into an apartment complex & I started to get mail in my name that clearly was not for me. It turned out that while I was in the Army, someone that shared my name had been living in that apartment complex (but had since moved out) - & that person had also been a grad student at UT, was apparently close to my age, & was military as well. It was a strange coincidence that 2 people with such a relatively rare name ended up living in the same apartment complex witihin months of one another. No wonder the post office was confused. 😕

Go talk to Levantera. She has 2 story arcs that she will offer you & will (at some point) introduce you to the next contact in the chain - Serpent Drummer. Serpent Drummer won't talk to you yet & tells you to go talk to Levantera because, until Levantera offers you an introduction to him, Serpent Drummer can't offer you any missions. You seem to be hung up on the fact that Levatera introduced you to Borea, who only offers infinite repeatable missions in the zone. You seem to assume that this means that Levantera has nothing more for you. That is not true - after you complete the mission to talk to Borea, Levantera has more missions, which will be offered to do you if you go talk to her. And Levantera will at some point offer an introduction to the next target in the chain - Serpent Drummer. tl;dr Go talk to Levantera.

All of the RWZ story arc contacts extend up to level 50, so they will talk to a level 46 character - but you will need to progress through the contacts in order. If Dark Watcher is telling you to talk to another contact, that probably means that is the contact to whom you need to talk in order to get the contact chain working. As I posted earlier in the thread, the contacts are as follows: Levantera (lvl 35-50) Serpent Drummer (lvl 40-50) Gaussian (lvl 45-50) The Dark Watcher (lvl 45-50) I would suggest checking in your contacts to see if you have any of these already. You should have Levantera & she should be either willing to give the next mission in her story arc(s) or to give you an introduction to the next contact in the chain - Serpent Drummer.

Borea is the contact in the RWZ that offers repeatable missions for players who don't want to deal with a contact with story arcs. Similarly there is Meg Mason in the Hollows, Marcus Valerius in Cimerora, Dr. Boyd in Firebase Zulu, & Ephram Sha or Maharaj in Dark Astoria. Police radio or newspaper missions are not available in these zones, so these contacts are the source of endless repeatable missions instead. The regular contacts in the RWZ are (in order of introduction) Levantera (lvl 35-50), Serpent Drummer (lvl 40-50), Gaussian (lvl 45-50), & The Dark Watcher (lvl 45-50). They all have story arcs. But these aren't new - they have been in the game since Issue 10 or so.

Okay, now I know what the 3 costume items in the thread title actually look like. (I had no idea.) And those costumes look cool!

Number 6: "I am not a number. I'm a free man!" Number 2: [Laughs]

Last night I ran back-to-back-to-back WST Posi1/2 runs on my Bots/FF MM, my Water/Regen Sentinel, & my Sonic/Sonic Defender, & I had the same feeling that I have experienced before - when I am on my buffers, I'm not a huge fan of constantly chasing down my (seemingly ungrateful 😛) teammates to buff them, but I really miss buffing them when I am on my non-buffers like the Sent. Watching the icons on the team & buffing the (soon-to-be) unbuffed adds a layer of investment in the run & is (perhaps strangely) more fun - probably because I feel like I am really involved in making the team better team rather than basically soloing within a team, which is what so many TF runs devolve into these days. 🤷‍♂️

We need double-breasted suits! 😍

Yup, I use the additional costume slots to show different eras of the character's career, along with costume variations for different alignments so that, when I swap sides to run missions on the other side, the character is dressed appropriately. The villain costume for my main Mister Mass is that of his Praetorian duplicate Master Mass - who is a character that actually showed up in our last P&P Champions campaign. When I ran the Praetorian arcs in Ouro on that character, I alternated between whether I was roleplaying Master Mass's history or whether I was roleplaying Mister Mass disguising himself to infiltrate Praetorian Earth, depending on just how despicable the actions required in the arc were.

Lots of good stuff mentioned already, so I'll just add the Night Ward arcs. The atmosphere is amazing, including a very Grant Morrison Doom Patrol afterlife vibe, sentient spells, a knight contact to whom your character's response is always "the quest goes on", a version of Malaise that is almost sympathetic, & an ancient Mesopotamian divine couple with some serious relationship issues. The story arc is epic! 😎

Because nobody ever goes there? If so, wouldn't all of the Shadow Shard zones (except maybe the first one) be among the best as well? And the Hazard Zones (except the Hollows)? Oh, & ALL of the PVP zones? And Night Ward! The only characters that are ever in Night Ward (except briefly for a Day Job badge) are mine! I know it! 😁

People have already commented above that, past the mid-levels, groups started needing healing a lot less, so they began to be more interested in group members that added more of what they did need - buffs & debuffs, along with MOAR damage of course. "Healerz" got outperformed by debuffers like Rad & buffers like Kin, so they started to get a bad name. Meanwhile the game kept evolving. In Issue 0, it started as City of Blasters, then became City of Tankers once armors could be stacked. And after the "Global Defense Nerf" brought Tankers down to earth, it became City of Buffers/Debuffers. The game changed again when IOs were introduced & again when the Incarnate System came online. None of those changes made the old school Johnny One Note "Healer" more useful. And the good players evolved with the changes. That said, I want to tip my hat to all of the Empaths out there who helped carry PUGs through the dark days. I especially appreciate the ones who learned the value of the other buffs in the set. They made a lot of slogs less painful. Thanks! 👍

As someone who appreciates what @Anyad does on Torchbearer every Friday, I agree with the proposal. Removing the original (level-restricted) iMSR to replace it with one with no level requirement is taking away something that the present playerbase uses. Allow both side-by-side & let the players choose. Options are good.

I just wanted to add that, because RES resists -RES, mathematically -RES increases damage by the same percentage at every RES level. To demonstrate this, let's quickly look at some examples: Inflicted Damage = Power Damage x (100 - [adjusted] Target RES) Proc -RES = 20% At 0% Target RES, Inflicted Damage is 100% of Power Damage without the Proc active. With the Proc active, the Target's adjusted RES becomes -20%, so the Inflicted Damage is 120% of power Damage. 120% is 120% of 100%, so the Proc increases Inflicted Damage by 20%. At 25% Target RES, Inflicted Damage is 75% of Power Damage without the Proc active. With the Proc active, the effective Proc value is 15% after 25% is resisted, so the Target adjusted RES becomes 10%, & the Inflicted Damage is 90% of Power Damage. 90% is 120% of 75%, so the Proc increases Inflicted Damage by 20%. At 50% Target RES, Inflicted Damage is 50% of power Damage without the Proc active. With the Proc active, the effective Proc value is 10% after 50% is resisted, so the Target adjusted RES becomes 40%, & the Inflicted Damage is 60% of Power Damage. 60% is 120% of 50%, so the Proc increases Inflicted Damage by 20%. At 75% Target RES, Inflicted Damage is 25% of power Damage without the Proc active. With the Proc active, the effective Proc value is 5% after 75% is resisted, so the Target adjusted RES becomes 70%, & the Inflicted Damage is 30% of Power Damage. 30% is 120% of 25%, so the Proc increases Inflicted Damage by 20%. At 90% Target RES, Inflicted Damage is 10% of power Damage without the Proc active. With the Proc active, the effective Proc value is 2% after 90% is resisted, so the Target adjusted RES becomes 88%, & the Inflicted Damage is 12% of Power Damage. 12% is 120% of 10%, so the Proc increases Inflicted Damage by 20%. At 100% Target RES, Inflicted Damage is 0% of power Damage without the Proc active. With the Proc active, the effective Proc value is 0% after 100% is resisted, so the Target adjusted RES becomes 100%, & the Inflicted Damage is 0% of Power Damage. 0% is 120% of 0%, so the Proc increases Inflicted Damage by 20%. 😉 So while the amount of additional Inflicted Damage by the Proc decreases as Target RES increases, the percentage of additional Inflicted Damage by the Proc remains constant. This of course ignores the effects of the "Purple Patch" & the like, as other posters have noted previously in this thread.

Good topic OP! 👍 I have been waffling about respeccing characters a lot lately. I'm not in OP's position of considering deleting characters & repeccing them just to take their stuff - I like & play all of my characters on a regular basis - but the game has changed enough since Homecoming launch that quite a few characters could use a new build. The biggest change for me is that the top tier powers in the powersets can be taken at lower levels now, & since I exemplar down a lot, having access to those top tier powers at lower exemplar levels would be cool. But every time I sit down to plan out the new build, I just can't follow through. I have too many competing priorities that I want to accomplish, & no build resolves them all to my satisfaction. And since my present builds still work as well as they always did, it is hard to generate the energy to decide on the new build - even it will be BETTER! 🙃 So I decide against respeccing & go play the game for awhile - until I am reminded why a respec would be an improvement. Then it is back to donkey-between-2-hay-bales time. 😛

I was shamefully slow to realize that the missions maps used in the tram missions were actually sections of regular game zone maps. And when I did begin to notice the similarities, I felt like the zone maps must be copies of the tram mission maps, probably because I had spent far more time on a tram mission map than in that section of a regular zone map. 🙃

I had a similar experience on Liberty server back on Live. I mostly ignored redside when it launched because I wanted to play a superHERO game, not play a superVILLAIN. But later I wanted to try a few CoV ATs & experience the new content, so I began to solo redside. The "redside is deadside" rule was in full effect by this point, as the huge influx to the Rogue Isles when it was the new shiny was far over, & I was usually the only player in the mid-tier redside zones as I soloed away. One day I got a tell asking if I wanted to run a Strike Force & was happy to say yes, since I was a completionist, & nobody ever seemed to be running SFs. Little did I know that I had hooked up with the best speed runners on the server, & I was rapidly left in the dust as they blew through mission objectives in a blink of an eye. While speedrunning is not my nature, I was impressed at just how indepth these players knowledge of the game was & how impressive their builds were. They clearly didn't need me there at all, but they seemed happy to encourage another redsider to stay the course. So as I leveled them up, my redside alts got to complete all of the redside SFs with these players. And when the Incarnate system came out, my 50s (red & blue) spent a LOT of time in Incarnate Trials led by these guys. I learned a lot about the game from playing with them, & eventually I may have even contributed a little to our mutual success. I'm not someone who likes to be carried, but I am willing to admit when I have met my betters - & yeah, they were WAY better than I was. 😉

We started using Discord for voice chat in our weekly D&D 5E sessions during COVID. So then our SG in CoH used it occasionally to coordinate when running TFs - but since most of us preferred to type (& typo) in CoH chat instead, Discord fell into disuse.

Mister Mass sans supersuit.

Luck of the Gambler is a Defense enhancement set which has a global Invention Origin (IO) piece that grants +7.5% to Recharge Rate - & up to 5 of these pieces can be used on one character, as long as they have 5 different powers that take Defense enhancement sets. Slotting 5 of these IOs is a 37.5% increase to Recharge. Many players plot their builds in order to be able to do this. The Concealment power pool has 3 powers that can take Defense sets, as @Groovy_Ghoul noted above.

At start, I run 33% blue, 33% red, & 33% gold. After level 20 it becomes 50% blue & 50% red. Rotating among the alignments keeps each new character's run a little bit fresher.

Heh. I noticed the outage, but figured it would eventually get resolved. Thanks for all your work on this! 👍

Yes, I noticed that the new badges got implemented on the site this weekend. Thanks for your work on this! 👍

Yup - so 4 days & 4 hours, while not playing the character.

The first thing I did do when Issue 27 Page 7 went live was to try to run the new Piecemeal personal story on my main. After a few minutes of wondering why the payphone contact wouldn't give me the darn mission, I realized that my main was the wrong alignment. 😄 I switched to one of my villains who had run the prerequisite arc & got the payphone to cough up the mission. I was occasionally confused as to where I was supposed to go next because I would be trying to follow the mini-map pointer instead of actually reading the mission objective. 🙄 But eventually my villain got through it all & I earned the badge, only to discover that the badge tracking site I use hadn't been updated with the new badges yet. It was like a whole hour after the issue dropped & the volunteers in the community who update the site hadn't done it yet? Shocking! 🤯 Seriously, thanks to the fine folks in the community who support my badge-hunting addiction. I know you will get this updated in time. I can wait while you do your good work. 👍 And thanks to the dev team for all of their hard work in putting this new issue together. I enjoyed Piecemeal's personal story & its hints about upcoming developments in the game - & I loved most of the dialogue. Truly hilarious at points! 🤣 The future of the game seems to be in very good hands! 😎