Mister Mass
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Posts posted by Mister Mass
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My first Praetorian on Homecoming was a Stalker, under the assumption that the combination of superior damage, good defenses, & Hide would take most of the bite out of the (what I remembered from Live to be quite annoying) Praetorian mobs. My choice was to reroll Gengetsu, my Dark/Ninjitsu Stalker from Live. I was concerned about the lack of mez protection until Level 16, but stealth & the ability to Assassinate the most annoying mob at the start of the fray (which I used to target mezzers when necessary) rendered most of my concerns moot. I carried some extra Break Frees just in case, but I really had few problems - I don't believe Gengetsu has even earned the first badge for being mezzed, & he is Level 33 now. I felt unconcerned enough about mezzes that my 3rd Praetorian is an Ice/Cold Corruptor, who uses holds as his preemptive mez protection. So my advice would be to go with the armor that you want to play the most, & not feel constrained to play one with early access to mez protection.
In terms of primary powersets, I can't really argue that any one set is any better for Praetoria than another. I haven't noticed that any particular damage type is inordinately resisted. But my opinion may be biased by the fact that my 2nd Praetorian was a Sonic/Sonic Corruptor, so he debuffed any RES the mobs had anyway. 😉
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Most of my inspiration comes from comic books, although other genres have contributed to some conceptions over the years. I grew up with superheroes, being old enough to have watched the 60's Batman TV series in its original run. (My bedtime was actually half-way through the show, but my parents always conveniently didn't notice that I was hiding under the coffee table watching the TV 😉) Between Batman, the syndicated Superman show from the 50's, & the plethora of superhero cartoons in the 60's, I got a lot of exposure to the genre from a young age. And I was reading comics from before I could really read. (I knew that the word "invulnerable" meant that Superman couldn't be hurt long before I learned the meaning of many much shorter & more common words.) The (mostly) DC comics I was reading in the early 70's were an amalgam of Silver Age & early Bronze Age material & concepts, but often included reprints from the Golden Age. I particularly enjoyed the Justice Society of America, which co-starred with the modern Justice League of America every summer in a JLA-JSA teamup - which was always an anticipated highlight of the summer. There was something about the Golden Age heroes that resonated with me from a young age, & they have remained an inspiration to me 50 years later.
When I got exposed to roleplaying games at college in the early 80's, I rejoiced in the opportunity to pay homage to my comic book inspirations. My first Champions campaign was a melange of the Marvel & DC Universes (which I dubbed "Earth-M" natch 😎) for the PCs to rummage around in. But that experience taught me something - that direct steals were unsatisfying, as my duplicates could never really be the originals. Also, as a GM, I realized that the players needed to be the center of the campaign & have agency, which was difficult in a world populated by well-known, popular established superheroes, who tended to end up as GM's pets. So I retooled the world, filed off the serial numbers on the copies & began reimagining the characters, taking inspiration from the source material, but trying to give each character its own life.
When I started playing CoH, most of my early characters were adaptations of concepts from the revised Champions campaign - Mister Wonderful (a tongue-in-cheek Golden Age Superman), Doc Willpower (Indiana Jones gets the power of Green Lantern), American Aegis (a legacy Captain America - & everyone's second favorite shield-slinging sentinel of Liberty!), Buck-Eye (Green Arrow/Hawkeye as the descendant of Natty Bumppo), the Grim Grey Ghost (the Spectre/the Gay Ghost), the Whizzz Kid (Flash/Kid Flash), & Baron Wonder (Black Adam/Baron Blitzkrieg) for example. Only the Baron has been recreated on Homecoming thus far.
Mister Mass was originally designed in the mid-80's for a player in a Champions campaign I was expecting to GM. Since the player & his wife were uncomfortable with building their own characters in the Champions system, they asked me to come up with something for them. But they made it clear that roleplaying a husband & wife (or potential couple) team was "boring", so I opted to make them twins. I found inspiration in the 60's DC Hawk & Dove team, who would join the Teen Titans when their own title folded. I based Mister Mass on the conservative, aggressive, & hot-tempered Hawk, & his sister Aura on the liberal, pacifistic, & thoughtful Dove. The anticipated dynamic was the Mass would think with his fists & tend to get in over his head, while Aura would creatively use her powers to bail him out, which tended to capture the way that this husband & wife tended to play in our various D&D & Champions campaigns. 😉
Oddly enough, my reimagining of Hawk & Dove as a male & female team predated DC's revamp of the duo by a few years. (The original team were both males, with older brother Hank as Hawk, & younger brother Don as Dove.) Anyway, after building the characters, the husband decided to GM rather than play, & I ended up running Mister Mass. Roleplaying the character as designed, I played directly & aggressively, which tended to draw the GM's ire. Mister Mass would taunt the GM's villains as weak & unworthy, which would (predictably) result in the GM pummeling Mass into the pavement, leaving the rest of the team free to work up a viable solution to taking the villain out. While I had intentionally designed Mass to be able to take a ton of punishment, I had unintentionally prefigured the "tank & spank" style of play in this campaign. 😛
Anyway, I would end up playing variations of Mister Mass in several campaigns over the years. When I joined CoH in 2005 at the 1 year anniversary, Mass immediately became my main, with his primary costume being a homage to the Golden Age Hour-Man. During the Snap, I played a version of Mass on DCUO - but it never felt quite right. When I joined Homecoming last year, Mass was first out of the gate & my first 50. Incorporating the elements from various campaigns over the years into his backstory for Homecoming was fun. Most importantly, it felt like home. 😎
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Yeah, playing games is like a 2nd job for me too. When CoH was Live, my typical gaming schedule was 4-5 hours on weekday evenings & on 10-12+ hours on Saturdays & Sundays - so 40-50 hours a week. Playing a few dozen characters, 10 of them 50s (4 of those completely incarnated) took some time. During the Snap, other games filled that gap, when my job allowed it, but if never felt as fulifilling. Now I play a bit less, but playing games (particularly CoH) keeps me sane. Well, saner anyway. 😉
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1 minute ago, Sakai said:
Related question. Do I need to actually set the bomb to get credit for the badge or as long as someone in the team does I'm good?
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4 hours ago, MunkiLord said:
Last two times I've done Numina for some reason I volunteered for the Vahz hunt and it was terrible.
Fun note about the Vazh hunt in Numina - when the devs revamped Faultline, they didn't include any Vazh in the new version of the zone. When the change went live, players were unable to complete Numina, since there were no Vazh in Faultline to hunt. The devs had to roll out a fix & add some Vazh to the zone, just for the TF.
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One of my objectives on my main on Homecoming was to solo all of the door missions & story arcs in the game. That character would have done every door mission from Christine Lansdale, & I don't recall one which I couldn't complete solo. As far as I can tell, the SCORE devs removed the requirement for simultaneous clicking from any missions that had it. The mission language will still tell you that you need a team, but you don't.
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I love this concept! i love it so much that I already played on one on Live - Doc Darknight. Sadly, I made one of the costume slots of the character as close to an exact duplicate of the Golden Age Dr. Mid-Nite's costume as I could, apparently was so successful that I got reported for infringement, & was genericized. 😢
I do suggest the stalker, which is what I have here on Homecoming. But you might consider Dark Melee instead of Martial Arts. DM is very punchy, which was more of Dr. McNider's style than the kick-centric MA, alternate animations notwithstanding. Also DA's DEF debuffs help reflect the effects of the Dr. Mid-Nite's blackout bombs, which made it harder for his foes to hit him in combat.
But really, just go with whatever you like - the good Dr. is one of the hidden gems of the Golden Age, & is well worth homaging. Fun JSA fact: everyone knows that Hawkman never missed an issue of the original 40's run of the JSA in All-Star Comics, but once Dr. Mid-Nite joined the team when Green Lantern stepped down (after GL got his own title) McNider never missed an issue for 50 straight appearances, the only JSAer that could make that claim other than Hawkman. After Hawkman's 55 All-Star appearances & the Atoms's 52, Dr. Mid-Nite's 50 is #3, well ahead of GL's 38 & the Flash's 37. No bad for a man who was legally blind.
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8 hours ago, Acroyear said:
Stopped my XP gain at 9.9 as suggested, but after changing from Resistance to Loyalist, I was sent to Mr. G. in Imperial City. It does not matter if you turn off your XP, as now I have out-leveled all the content in Nova. Figured I'd just turn my XP back on and go through the arcs as normal. Oh well.
Receiving Mr. G as a contact does not stop you from continuing to do the Nova arcs. Yes, you will be given the "breadcrumb" or vector mission to higher level contacts, but you can still continue to work on the lower level arcs, as long as you don't outlevel them. In fact, as Apogee has noted above, you can continue to do all the Nova arcs while locked at level 10.9, instead of 9.9. I did that on my most recent Praetorian, General Zima, with no problems. Feel free to accept the breadcrumb missions, head to the next zone & talk to the contacts to complete the breadcrumb missions, but don't start running missions for those new contacts. Instead, head back to the lower zone, & continue running the story arcs & contact chains in that zone until you are done.
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2 hours ago, Rilude said:
Hello.
the badge - Midnight Doger What Doges At Midnight isn't on your database.
It looks like the poster was looking for the Venetian version of the badge.
SpoilerThe leader of the Venetian Republic was known as the Doge.
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Freaking Brisk
Our cross country coach in high school, no matter how low the temperature got, never admitted it was ever cold. The closest would be that he would remark that it was "a little brisk outside". Our response was always: "Yeah! Freaking brisk!" 😬
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12 hours ago, Myrmidon said:
Just do what I do and collect their tears for later use. Once you possess enough, they can be distilled into an elixir that renders the imbiber immortal.And is DELICIOUS! 🤤
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I'm way behind the true stars of this thread, but I'm on my way.
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Great guide. I led a trial team last night without taking the time to read this (because a friend wanted to run the trial & it was getting late) - but luckily one of the players on the team was familiar with the Trial & supplied us with good advice, & we got through under the 30 minute time challenge that I set. It was a struggle to get everyone to understand that dropping the FF pods as nearly to simultaneously as possible was a good idea, but we muddled through nonetheless. 😉
As a Tanker, I ended up with a particle cannon, so I was unable to taunt the head, since I was intent on laying down as much beam damage as possible when the FF was down. Your advice that you can ID which type of cannon is in a crate before you open it will be useful in future runs. 🙂
Having multiple incarnates really makes this trial less of a trial. We could just muscle through spawns & ambush waves without blinking an eye. But with a less high level group, all of the advice in this guide is worthwhile. Thanks! 😎
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I ran a Dark/Ninjitsu Stalker as my first Praetorian on Homecoming, & it went smooth as silk - much easier than I expected. The stalker's innate stealth from Hide, high damage, & decent defenses made me wonder why I thought goldside was so tough on Live. 😉
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The Mercy Island story arc badge comes up on a lot on this forum. There are several ways that a player can miss one of the required arcs. One that is commonly overlooked is Seer Marino, whose arc is lvl 15-19, long after most players expect to be working on a Mercy Island contact. Another is the higher level arcs by Dr. Graves, whose 3 arcs are lvl 5-9, lvl 10-14, & lvl 15-19. You need to complete all 3 of Dr. Graves' arcs to earn the badge.
But if you are a completionist who has done every contact in the game, the answer is probably back in the newer arcs in early Mercy Island. The newish chain starts with Operative Kuzmin, who will offer up choice of Fire Wire & Doctor Weber. Once you choose one, apparently you do not get offered the other contact. Both Fire Wire & Doctor Weber lead to Lt. Harris. So to complete all of the Mercy Island story arcs, you need to run the story arc of the contact (Fire Wire or Doctor Weber) that you didn't select through Ouroboros. That will net the badge, assuming you did everything else.
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You get the Abomination badge for completing the Synapse TF for no good reason - except that perhaps the Vazhilok fear the Clockwork King, & since you just helped out Synapse with his Clockwork problem
Spoiler& whipped the Clockwork King in the process,
the Vazh now rightfully fear you as well? 😉
In order to get the accolade you do need to switch over to blue-side, however briefly. You'll keep the accolade power when you switch back to redside.
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Fun thread! 🙂
Like many of the posters above, most of my characters on Live were builds of characters from my P&P Champions days. I immediately rebuilt my main, Mister Mass, as an Inv/SS Tanker - just the same as on Live. And American Aegis is a MA/Shield Scrapper, same as he ended up on Live (after starting as MA/Inv & rerolling when Shield became available). Gengetsu, my Dark/Ninitsu Stalker, is still the same, although he went from being a Villain on Live to a Praetorian who chose to go Hero this time.
But many of my characters have come through the process rather different. Baron Wonder went from a SS/Electric Brute to Electric/Electric, since I didn't want to have duplicate SS characters this time (I had at least 4 SS toons on LIve - 3 of them 50s). My Sonic/Sonic Corrupter rerolled as a Defender this time, started in Praetoria instead of the Rogue Isles, & got the name I wanted originally (Sound Byte) instead of the name I played under on Live (Sound Bight). I consider this one the Praetorian alternate to the Live character. And my Bots/FF Mastermind, instead of being a male green-skinned alien android is now a female green-skinned alien android, so that she can look like a cross between Sue Storm & Brainiac 5's mom. 😛
The biggest change was to my Gravity/FF Controller, Doc Willpower. As my Green Lantern homage character, he was a favorite to play, & was one of my 4 top Incarnates on Live, doing all of the iTrials & earning most of the badges. But I just couldn't see playing him as FF again, especially since I had the Bots/FF Mastermind too. Instead I built a redside Gravity/Time Controller instead - Doctor Wen - & developed a whole new character & backstory for him. So instead of rehashing the past, I made something new, interesting, & fun! 🙂
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20 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:
I would say that fungibility across salvage is a much more effective tool for keeping prices in line than the supply ceilings.
Agreed. I didn't want to confuse the issue by bringing up bucketing, but cerrtainly that dev innovation has been highly effective, as you noted.
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On 1/8/2020 at 11:29 AM, Chris24601 said:
Even better; it’s about 400k across the board then for rare salvage with seeded salvage listed at 1 million.
Which means as long as the salvage prices we see remain below that 1 million mark then ALL the transactions are actually player-to-player.
Thus, if the population stays stable or expands, it may be possible to stop seeding salvage entirely at some point (though a case can be made for continuing it, if only to prevent inflation... which is something I remember from live).
The seeding of salvage provides several benefits. First, it guarantees that there is always some of that item for sale, which was a problem for some rare items on Live. Second, it acts as a breakwater against artificial shortages induced by marketeers. On Live, marketeers could buy up all of the available salvage of a type & drive up the prices for that salvage for a time, making it difficult/impossible for normal players to purchase what they wanted/needed until the market normalized with the price bubble collapsing. With salvage seeding, a marketeer would need to buy through a million salvage seeded at artificially high prices in order to have his fun. While not impossible, this reduces the marketeer's profit incentive & probably would take most of the fun out of the exercise for them.
While these artificially-induced market bubbles never lasted all that long on Live, they did act as a disincentive for AH-wary players to use the system. I see no reason to end the seeding. It does no harm & may be doing some good by acting as a guarantee of a supplier of last resort on the AH. I applaud the HC devs for adding this mechanism to the flawed, but useful, AH.
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Well, the rare salvage is seeded at 1 million each, so unless you are a really big spender, you aren't bidding for the seeded salvage. You are bidding for the unseeded salvage, put on the Auction House by players. And since you can only purchase salvage listed for less than or equal to what you are bidding, it is likely that none of the salvage listed when you bid is available for purchase at your bid price. But if you wait, plenty of players are usually listing their drops at cheap prices, so your bid finally completes.
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Interesting. Thanks for posting this. I get the feeling that this isn't a completely new revelation, but it is well worth bringing to a wider audience.
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I was not one of those holding my torch aloft on shutdown day. I had been playing the game faithfully since the 1st year anniversary (except for an 18 month diversion playing Lord of the Rings Online in closed & open beta & then live) usually playing about 40 hours a week - so City of Heroes was like my 2nd job. When the news of the shutdown came, I hoped for some reprieve & followed the available news closely, while continuing to play my many characters. But as the likelihood that the game might somehow survive dimmed, I found I could not bear playing the game knowing that it would soon be gone. It simply hurt too much. 😞
I searched for an alternative, cycling through various versions of Europa Universalis, Baldur's Gate, DC Universe Online, & LotRO, again & again, but nothing could fill the hole for long. I regretted that I wasn't there at shutdown for the game I had loved & lost, & would never forget. I had been playing LotRO again, completing the story line from the books, when I felt myself losing interest in the game again as I tracked through the darkness of Mordor. And then I found a light at the end of the tunnel - an old CoH buddy let me know that the game had been reborn somehow. I was back in a flash, & I feel like I never really left. So perhaps it is okay that I wasn't there holding my torch aloft at shutdown, as that end wasn't the final end. 🙂
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On 11/26/2019 at 12:30 PM, Kismette said:
After Thanksgiving then! The 29th 😉
I agree with you and Tahliah though, to at least start early on the month of December with the longer event run.
Ding-ding-ding! We have a winner! 😄
When I logged in Friday & saw the snow in Atlas Park, I wondered why it had never occurred to me that the perfect day to start the Winter Event would be Black Friday. Well played Kismette - well played! 😉
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38 minutes ago, Tahliah said:
I'm also interested. I would think that it will begin on Dec. 1st since the Halloween event started on October 1st, but that's just a guess. Using that same thought process, I suspect that the winter event will have all the glorious wonders it's always had . . . plus some happy surprises for all of us.
I. Cannot. Wait. So excited for this!!
If they follow the precedent on Live, the Winter Event will begin in mid-December & run into the first week of January.
According to the wiki, the Winter Event dates were as follows:
2004 01/12/05-02/08/05
2005 12/05/05-01/02/06
2006 12/14/06-01/02/07 & 01/08/07-01/15/07
2007 12/17/07-01/06/08
2008 12/15/08-01/04/09
2009 12/15/09-01/12/10
2010 12/17/10-01/02/11
2011 12/13/11-01/03/12
That said, I wouldn't be surprised if the event runs for a full month this year. There were always complaints that some people couldn't participate because of their holiday schedules, so a longer run time would allow more players to join in the fun.
Star Trek
in Comic, Hero & Villain Culture
Posted
The interracial kiss was in an episode ("Plato's Stepchildren") from the 3rd (& final) season of TOS in 1968, where the characters were being mind-controlled to do things. So the kiss was hardly portrayed as consensual. But the network executives were nervous about a negative response, particularly from the South, so they requested a non-kiss version of the scene be filmed as well, which would allow for a decicion to be made about which one to use. But since the actors knew that Roddenberry wanted the kiss in, Shatner as Kirk & Nichols as Uhura flubbed all of the non-kiss takes. With only the kiss takes usable, the network suits just went with it, rather than approve the expense to reshoot. 😛 Anyway, ToS was cancelled at the end of that season due to poor ratings, so likely few people ever saw or heard about the kiss at the time. Nichols states that the network received almost no negative comments. But when reruns of TOS turned into a star in syndication in the 70's, fans began to point to the scene as an example of the show's impact.