Mister Mass

April 25

22 minutes ago, Snarky said:

most of it.

I run concealment stealth a lot. With one LOTG 7.5% recharge /defense enhancer at 50 this gives 8.12% defense. When I attack this goes to 2.03%

Right, you lose 75% of the DEF value. Despite that I still find the power useful in many of my characters' builds. Like @Snarky I don't slot Stealth for DEF, other than with the LotG 7.5% piece. I do use it as a mule for other procs/globals occasionally. If I take this power, I am almost always taking it early in the build in order to be able to stealth missions when appropriate. Combined with a Stealth proc in Sprint or some other travel power, a character is effectively invisible to most enemies. That is worth more than the minimal unsuppressed DEF that the power grants - but that DEF does stack with other sources & can contribute to getting to softcap.

April 23

4 hours ago, srmalloy said:

As an example of how even huge coincidences can happen, some years ago when I was donating blood, I was asked if I'd ever used another social security number. I told them 'no', and asked why. Apparently there was someone with the same first and last name as mine, as well as my birthdate -- not just month and day, but year -- who was working at the same place I was. I confirmed that when I went back to work the next day, but never got a chance to meet him before he transferred out.

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. 😕

April 19

20 hours ago, Diantane said:

I spoke with Levantera, but all she does is introduce Borea

Serphent Drummer tells me to talk with Levantera

Gaussian send me to Levantera or Borea.

Now when I do Borea, she always gives me two missions. I've always selected the second mission since the first one is on all contacts is to kill 15 Outcasts or others. You do enough of them and the team breaks apart. I'll try doing the first mission selection. The second one is just a grind.

So it all stems from Borea, before you can move on.

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.

April 18

3 hours ago, Diantane said:

I had never been to this section before. Finally found it as well as Dark Watcher, but he just tells me to talk with someone else. Not interested in doing an infinite amount of repetitive missions for Borea, so now I'm at a standstill. She has zero rewards anyway.

So now my only choice is to grind PI Portals (which I hate and will never do again). So either find something in RWZ (or other place) or go play another game.

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.

April 17

3 hours ago, Diantane said:

Clicked on the link, That's funny.

I used to do other arcs in RWZ besides Borea. Don't think this one is a real arc. They keep repeating missions a lot. Seems endless too. It's just grinding (boring).

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.

April 16

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!

April 10

17 hours ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

73: There is no rule Number 6

Number 6: "I am not a number. I'm a free man!"

Number 2: [Laughs]

March 26

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. 🤷‍♂️

March 21

16 hours ago, Trike said:

I based my character Herr Wulf’s non-werewolf version on 1930s German fashions, which the game actually duplicates pretty well.

We need double-breasted suits! 😍

March 20

5 hours ago, cranebump said:

I'm with ya. I've made 3 different versions of Whipsmart, tracing how he might've developed as he matured. I abandoned the Bots MM early though, because Masterminds aren't in my fun zone.

Related note - and I'm POSITIVE people do this - I've made different costumes that reflect different eras in a character's career, especially if it is a long one. EX: My Patriotic Cap like toon is Major Victory. His basic rags are the ol' Red, White and Blue (predominance of colors in that order). I whipped up a WW2 version (greens & browns, to be more "camo-ey"), and a black and white version (to mimic his "Nomad" phase). He's SJ/WP, so no fiddling with a shield or anything (though I'd probably have him carry guns in his B&W gear, throw in Temp Revolver attack every now and then). If I reimagined all this as different toons I'd run, then I'd make some different powersets to reflect evolution. I can see Maj having to wear power armor late in his career. He might be a Sent by then, relying more on gadgets.

You know...this could be my next little stupid project...hmmmm...:-)

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.

March 18

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! 😎

March 11

5 minutes ago, temnix said:

I won't tell you why I think so, but it is the Paragon Dance Party.

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! 😁

March 11

3 hours ago, Shenanigunner said:

Well, there are stories of all alts being played badly, especially long ago and so forth. I guess I am still somewhat baffled why badly-played healers killed the breed, when all or most other mucky ATs survived.

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! 👍

March 11

16 hours ago, Anyad said:

So I noticed today in the LFG tab that the Assault on the Mother Ship instance requirements have changed.
[snip]
I just wanted to let the powers that be know the current Instance Raid is being used quite religiously. And hope instead of blowing it up to just add a second MSR option for the 1-50 and leave the current one as it is.

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.

March 8

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.

March 7

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. 😛

March 6

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. 🙃

March 5

16 hours ago, Lunar Ronin said:

I took a break from City of Heroes/City of Villains to go play Tabula Rasa in late 2007. I came back to CoH in late 2008 when NC decided to pull the plug on Tabula Rasa. I switched to a different server, and played red side entirely by myself, having fun soloing missions on Masterminds, Brutes, Corruptors, and Stalkers. The ITF came out around the same time, but I just ignored it as I'm not interested in the ancient past and Greece and Rome. (Sorry, it's a personal flaw, I know. I look towards the future.) After a few months of soloing red side, I made some friends.

One of them introduced me to (I didn't know this at the time), probably the top speed runner on the server and one of the top speed runners in the game period. He asked me if I wanted to join them on an ITF. Having never done an ITF before, and I mostly played Masterminds, I joined on my main Mastermind at the time. He graciously didn't say anything (although I imagine others on the team were rolling their eyes), and we started. I didn't know it was a speed run, and at the time I didn't really know what speed running was. Well, needless to say... after the ITF was over, I had no idea what had happened and what I just saw. But that speed runner and the others took pity on me and taught me their ways. I went on to speed run quite a bit (although to this day I prefer steamrolling/kill most), along with leading large events on the server.

I'm still friends with him and the others today, although he left Homecoming a few years ago as he accomplished quite literally everything there was to accomplish in the game at the time, and then some. He gave me his supergroup base, and everything in it when he left. I felt like Joseph Gordon-Levitt inheriting the Batcave at the end of The Dark Knight Rises. So not all "n00b" mistakes are bad. They're just learning experiences, and opportunities.

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. 😉

March 4

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.

February 28

Mister Mass sans supersuit.

February 28

28 minutes ago, Cpt. Caveat said:

So still getting my sea legs back here but I’m blanking on what LoTG stands for.

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.

February 28

On 2/27/2024 at 11:49 AM, ZekeStenzland said:

I’m guessing I run about 70% blue, 25% red, 5% gold.

But do I feel like rolling a new toon? That’s the question… Last weekend I put about 15 toons on the chopping block to make room for more. But I’m not sure I’m ready for new guys yet. We’ll see…

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.

February 26

22 hours ago, xeaon said:

Looks like it's fixed now.

And the new badges are in.

Sorry for the mess, I initially just wanted to fix a minor bug and ended up upgrading to .Net 8 and chasing my tail and braking everythign in between.

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

February 26

On 2/24/2024 at 6:02 AM, AboveTheChemist said:

Looks like the data was merged and the new badges I spot checked looked good, so Badger is now up-to-date. I also submitted a request to update the URLs to the HC Wiki (Badger was still using an older URL for the HC Wiki links) which was completed, so all the HC Wiki URL links from Badger should be current.

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

February 26

9 hours ago, Mentaxus said:

How long does it take to get each day job badge? Is it really 100 hours offline?

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

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