Sanguinesun

Likely because the conditions that caused it to happen to others last time wasnt then or now applicable to you. According to the team last time, it was due to erroneous region block issues.

Nope

For a few days now, yet again, accessing the events calendars for servers brings up the error message and not able to be accessed.

Whatever you think you can cosmetically match best your concept, really.

Well sorta... City of Heroes RPG Quickplay Pack - Eden Studios | City Of Heroes RPG | DriveThruRPG.com But the early 80's Champions pen and paper rpg is also a good fit with a more fleshed out rules and play system imo.

About the same as HC has already done though with caveats. A city originally urban planned in 1950's has evolved and changed and expanded to where it is now in the 2020's. It is then challenged with supporters and dissenters for various neighborhood gentrification in the past and even now. How do you accommodate the wants of all? Answer not much more than now unless there's intent to ignore one or more or all segments of the community. That's essentially what you're asking perhaps. We very much then can be agnostic and armchair about this because ultimately we've no extensive say in those decisions. Unlike a live for profit studio beholden to subscriptions/profits, share holders, player base(per their keeping the lights on for the studio), the HC team isn't really. People will argue donations but the team's always had a management plan/exit strategy in place for potential changes in donations so its not a factor. This isnt to say that HC ignores the players and develop in a vaccum of sorts. They just tend to also be susceptible to how various business oriented studios have found themselves in the throes of development and evolution of things. One could present a whole talk at the GDC about the differences between a for profit game transitioned to a community run game and how features/meta/social attitudes and more affect or improve or are hamstringed by decisions made to transition various features of the game built in from the for profit model. (cite me if someone uses this in a future GDC or I will grr at you... :P) With that said, I think in part that HC isn't trying to chase player numbers and being more inviting intentionally. If it was, there'd be much more significant changes to what it is now. The current conditions reflect accommodations made to try to filter/groom the player base that it has and potentially may have. Is that good? Is that bad? Depends. Over the last 4 months I've talked to and assisted numerous returnees and new players alike. There are common denominators between them all regarding things they've found frustrating with play on HC servers. Most of it revolves around bringing preconceived notions and expectations(either from live days for returnees or other games from new people) coupled with disparities (knowledge gaps with much of the game) and a sense of over complications of play of the game. This can be sub categorized into leveling, influence earning, character optimization, social dynamics (be it teaming or soloing), etc. Basically nothing we dont see all the time debated endlessly on the forums here or in gen chat in game. Snarky also mentioned with his leveling method of what I think is pretty much the cultural norm for leveling now for years on HC. And like he iterated later, nothing wrong with it as letting people level as they wish and are happy doing is important. I only counter that I dont see a disservice in learning to play in that way if its what they enjoy doing. If they dont (and some recent returnees/new people I've talked with instead prefer to solo) that's their choice and nothing wrong with that either. Choices in my opinion are good. Some disagree. Some segments over the years have expressed that they want to remove choices because they want to gate/filter the community due to what amounts to elitist reasons... and to those folks I say, well, they pretty much just need to stick to playing villains as they're certainly not heroes :P. Id also counter that there can become a desensitization to story lines if one is also soloing as well as someone expressed with sentiments on the first page of the same ole same ole with mission objectives/maps etc. Sometimes folks just arent in it for the story at times, they're just in it for the cathartic enjoyment of killing/arresting/blasting/smacking away at stuff. The absent nature of things may be due to that. Sort of like someone repeat playing diablo and just not giving much thought into the quests and just wanting to progress through the leveling. I think its not exactly fair to say its due to not wantint to take initiative. Some people have anxiety over leading teams but are happy to be team contributors or a co-pilot. Also players new/returnees unfamiliar with things can get quickly discouraged leading teams to then prefer not to when teams fall into issues or fall apart. Running teams thus isn't necessarily easy for everyone because its not just an important game play role but can be a precarious social construct in game.

For any of those familiar with the I-series of modules from D&D (Tracy Hickman of DragonLance fame did a bunch in that series including the one's this relates to and the Ravenloft ones) The Lost Tomb of Martek module(I5 I believe and last of the Desert of Desolation series) made a perfect passing and humous reference that fits better for Snow White and the Seven Dwarves: Snow Dwarf and the Seven Wites. Perfect for a Necro/Cold mm 😛 Only other book from it I remember was Gone With the Air Elemental but there were more. 😛

1. A Battle axe shield brute wouldnt be an optimal contender for fire farming anyway. 2. What specific "end game" contend are you wishing to build for? That is a variable that has to be accounted for. 3. Learn to use mids. There's a discord for mids and you can ask and learn more there too. If you're not able to use mids, while people can provide build examples here (using mids often being the case), you'll perhaps not necessarily see fully the reasoning nor numerics as to whether their suggestions are effective for you or not. By learning how to use and understand mids information, this is going to help you in the long run. Powers and slotted enhancers are one thing in these regards, understanding too how incarnates and more are apart of your build is just as important. 4. There are lots of builds on here using shields and axe as well, you can then cross correlate the two to provide a build suitable for your play. 5. Just because you saw someone "smashing through" missions doesnt necessarily mean that its as you perceive it. A couple of weeks ago I had someone send me a tell on how a character I was playing was rocking it so well on a Perigrine Island 54 Radio mission. I said, "thanks". I didnt have the heart to tell them that the toon was level 15 at the time, and had nothing except the prestige enhancers slotted at the time(ie 5 damage enhancers only). What was making me survive was the rest of the team's buffs and heals but I was far from smashing through anything as they'd percieved me to be doing. So what you saw may have been strong but it also could've been due to a host of variables that you're unaware of.

"When you have the money"....Its a waste of money for multiple reasons. Slotting level 30 standard IO's from level 27 on is more economical. Also one can use tickets from running AE missions to redeem for Enhancements before that(though this too is really a waste for 2 reasons when there are better uses of tickets for profit.).

Agreed, he should've advertised that to begin with.

*Ryan Renolds voice*: "He was just resting... some people just sleep on their feet..."

In 2006 CoH had 189,000 or so subs during one of the financial reports listed that year. In 2008, it had 124k subs. Keep in mind that was active accounts that year and data in years before and up through 2012 before it shuttered obviously people joined, subbed, make multiple toons, and left. Not every sub filled their character slots mind you but could have 8 per server and 40 total while subbed not counting paid slots in later rmts. If you want to play the numbers game and just say that a sub had 8 characters made on a server in 2008(remember that's after the name clearing if level 5 and under), thats just shy of 1 million characters just in that snap shot of active accounts between the active servers then. Again given that there were years before and after that folks had subs and characters but inactive, the numbers would be much much higher of course. Then you can factor your freebie accounts from there in the later years. Then factor yes the 2 times they did the scrubs out of the entire existence of the game for the lower level names as mentioned before(which again last happened well before f2p happened. The point is, the likelihood that the most populous servers had well over 1-2 million names in their database over the course of 8 years that were reserved is rather plausible. So the likelihood that we've more than few million named characters in our data base on say for example excelsior( the most populous server) I'm rather skeptical of. And again, even if we do and it was comparable to that of the data bases of the live servers (as again only below 35 at one point and below 5 at another were purged), if live devs in that scenario didnt feel the need to purge more times/amounts than they did, I still dont see any compelling evidence that its warranted here. We're very much a fraction of the activity they had even with the ability to have multiple accounts and 1k per server per account in terms of characters.

Sadly, it hasn't been.

Hardmode content (ITF/Aeon) that are starred difficulties(1-4 difficulty ranges designed above that of the normal versions of them.) Have the mobs have increased difficulties and ignore more debuffs etc. Level 4, on a team not well prepared and with good team synergies can die on trash in seconds. Lots of discussions on what all that entails. Many of those afore mentioned teams favor resistance capped or close to it for their tanks and additionally having some amount of defense to boot. Defense buffs by a team for team mates is much much easier to build on tope of a solid resists. Team mate options that boost resistances are much less to be had and thus why the composition of your team(ie the AT's power sets they uses, and tons more) really define the capabilities of those teams. Then you factor player skill and strats those teams employ specific to their group dynamics and that's their ability to succeed. You're basically not building a toon for that and yes thats in part due to arguably the choice of SR..... UNLESS you've a crack team that builds their team's choices around yours. SR like any defense set, can eventually succumb to defense debuffs(even with resistance to defense debuffs... especially in hardmode or other difficult mobs). So what Im saying is its not impossible for you to do, but Im saying because you seemingly prefer to be working in random team dynamics situations, you're more beholden to the roll of the dice in terms of support/complement/supplement to your short comings. This then reflects the experiences you were having in non hardmode content as well that you outlined above and probably should be a good indicator then of the difficulty jump that you'd experience were you to participate on those starred hardmode content runs....

1. Dont worry on trying to respec whilst you're leveling 1-50 as a general rule. Wait to respec at 50 AND only once you've decided on the post 50 build you wish to use (ie with set enhancers ATO's etc) AND once you have a certain amount of those enhancers already ready to go. Only caveat to that would be if you made some horrendous mistake (like taking 4 travel powers or something similar causes your build's effectivity to dramatically suffer do to a lack of powers. 2. Yes if you switch at what level certain powers are taken via a respec, yes it will cause it to be unable to use those powers potentially if there's a mission/taskforce that is at a level below that of the level the power was taken. This is normal. 3. Per point 2... and somewhat related to point 1, low level Task forces and missions are pretty much not something most people worry on being optimal (or even close to being) optimal for. Almost everyone is devoid of individually strong effectivity in their builds not just in the early levels but even later levels due to a host of factors. Being on a team mitigates this and yes folks do die as they go. A lot of that too depends on both group dynamics and the specific missions being done. Posi 1 especially and posi 2 somewhat are very very common for causing challenges for teams, especially ones that the leader misjudges the dynamics of the team for as boneheadedly sets to a difficulty higher than the team is capable of handling and other factors. In other words, it is probably better to not be trying to match those missions in terms of skills taken in general. 4. Almost all AT's have significant end issues while leveling. This is very normal, even if you have decent enhancers. If you're slotting standard IO's before level 27, keep in mind that until you hit 30, those IO's are less in % than then benchmark of optimized SO's. Set enhancers do not meaningfully mitigate that issue. That said then, consider level 27 the breakpoint. Once you can slot 30 IO's n such, you're in the same boat as everyone else really. As for set enhancers, I would frugally recommend sticking with just standard IO's to save you costs, improve the effectivity of the toon etc once its hit 50 to start delving into set enhancers. Only caveat to that can be with certain proc enhancers that may be of benefit while you level that really wont change once you're 50(ie not needing to be changed out). Also at 24, you still do not have all your powers you'll be using. End will continue to be a challenge. Thus learn how to better mitigate end issues. For example, you do not need to be running sprint and stacking the p2w run with it constantly in mission and fighting. That's wasted end. Same with also remembering to turn off other travel powers like super jump, etc. Use them sparingly only when you need. Also, you do not need to constantly be hitting. Sounds contrarian but its true. Orange circle sets are rather infamous for making players feel obligated to click the powers as soon as the circle's up and ready to go. Since you know that you're not end optimal while you level, slow the pace of your dancing so to speak so you dont tucker yourself out. As a tank you're more in the lower levels an alpha strike soaker/have mobs initially focus on you to various degrees. A gungho blaster or similar of course is going to peel off real fast aggro from you but that's on them. Stamina. Slot up and put end mods properly in your stamina. People sometimes dont pay attention to doing that. Additionally sometimes putting more end redux in your toggles vs the the defense resistance etc more may be wiser too to start off, again, you're only effective if you're up and fighting. If you got no end and toggles crash and you cant hit, you're ineffective for the team. Inspirations. If you're not chewing your blue berries(ie the endurance ones) at a good pace, and you're not converting other ones you get into blue berries, you need to start getting into the habit of doing so. Keep some orange/purps as needed and a set of a rez/mind(lavender color) one if you die and none can rez on your team but the rest convert to blues for now if end is constantly dropping too fast(even after being mindful of the above). If your play style doesnt change, you may also need to consider going into the energy epic pool to help offset your end issues too before hitting 50 and or after post 50 with your post 50 build(unless you decide to park the toon at 50).

Some things on this: Cross punch: Cross punch, even if you take kick and boxing, will not have the base damage comparable to smite. Its much less. This makes sense given one is a single target and cp is a cone.... Cross punch does give a short global +10% to hit and +10% recharge for a short duration if it successfully hits a target. This is due to the synergy with boxing/kick Cross punch yes can take the force feedback proc giving a chance for a +100% to recharge bonus globally also. Thus with point 2, that's a +110% bonus to recharge. Cross punch's activation is 1.67s Cross punch's cone arc is 50 degrees Cross punch gives a chance for a knockdown and a stun. Cross punch cannot take ATO sets. Cross punch gives your inherent brawl a -10% recovery and -10% regeneration on hit. (Brawl also gets a -10% recharge and -10% to hit due to boxing/kick(thus it has a higher -tohit % than shadow maul)... but most never use brawl anyway due to its low damage output nor use it for muling sets either necessarily.... just was worth mentioning on the synergies point). Cross punch is smashing damage, delivered at the end of the 1.67s activation of the power, and one of the higher resisted damage types in the game. Cross punch requires you to take multiple abilities in the Fighting power pool in order to choose/use it and is unable to be taken until a minimum of level 14. For some builds, this may not be practical. Cross punch's base endurance cost is 10.66 Shadow maul: Shadow maul has a higher base damage than CP.... even if you take cp with the boxing/kick synergy. Shadow maul has a cone of 120 degrees. That's more than double the arc/reach of cross punch. Shadow maul does a 5.63% -tohit debuff in line with dark's general focus of -tohit of course. Shadow maul has a 2.35-2.37s activation time(depending on whether you're looking at mids or in game base info respectively). Tied with soul drain in the set for the longest activation power in the set. Shadow maul is half a smashing and half negative energy damage ability delivered in ticks over 2 seconds of the 2.37 seconds of its activation. According to an older thread from years ago, dark energy damage type is one of the lesser damage types to be resisted. However smashing component is one of the more common resisted types. Shadow maul can be taken of course at any time from level 2 in the dark melee set. Shadow maul can accept ATO sets. Shadow maul's base endurance cost is 11.02 Observations then with comparisons of the two powers: If your needs are for more base raw damage, Shadow maul is going to deliver more. However, if you're looking at damage in an attack rotation, cross punch is going to allow a damage rotation (in theory) to be higher per target. This is due to the potential for an additional +110% recharge allowing other abilities(including cp) to recharge faster delivering more damage for the same amount of time. The only caveat is that in practice there is a potential for Shadow maul to actually --hit-- more targets due to its much, much, wider cone. In terms of damage mitigation against the player, cross punch is far superior to shadow maul due to a higher -to hit, knockdown, and stun, There aren't many attack powers in the game that apply that combination of damage mitigation (arguably, it may be the only one as a very skimming look at power's abilities, I couldn't find one that did). Arguably too cross punch allowing for +110% potential recharge can also be considered a damage mitigation too because if you're hitting more/faster and thus doing more damage, you're downing mobs potentially faster to prevent incurring damage.... but that too is also dependent on other variables. With Shadow maul, some people may find the 2.67s activation to be an activation lock in (ie cant do anything while locked into the long activation animation of the attack). Anyone who has done the lowbie DFB and activated Shadow maul just as a green pool drops on you from the end boss blobs knowns how the pain of that for example. This is a minor point but something that may be of consideration for some. For player's chasing +recharge potential, Cross punch is going to be attractive as pointed out already. Dark melee lacks any powers that help in improving recharge outside of set bonuses from enhancement sets (ie no dark melee powers with knockdown/knockback that can accept the FF +100% recharge proc). Cross punch's best case scenario (ie taking boxing+kick), for some builds is a lot of power choice making that as not necessarily being practical or optimal for some builds when other powers that output more damage(and or procs/slot choices) can be considered. In conclusion..... Making a choice between either is really going to boil down to the player because (as so often is the case with this game intentionally to prevent pigeon holing cookie cutter "bests") there are just too many variables to factor in conjunction with each individual player. Anecdotally, I can say that I rarely take CP on most AT's builds but I can see valid considerations for taking cross punch over that of shadow maul when considering dark melee.. OR simply skipping both in favor of patron pool options (be it for more single target or more aoe or other variables). Again, all depends. Main thing then is just having folks aware of the variables to improve making decisions on what to take of course.

Go play the Summer Block Buster (SBB) in game. You'll get all sorts of ninja fun then. And monkey shines too. 😛

In a faux Matrix's Morpheus voice, "What if I told you that one of the worst pieces of advice a live dev gave to a community run game set of devs was to always keep your player base 'guessing'?" Or maybe... there is no spoon.... 😎

The answer used to be more simple. Since the evolution of the game whilst it was still live AND the tinkering around the HC devs have done to change aggro (and fleeing) rules, it isn't necessarily a clear cut easy explanation to give you and hence why there's been more than a few answers of things given to you thus far. I highly recommend looking at last fall's aggro changes too as that's been the more recent one. Just as one example of how its complicated perhaps: Pulling- depends on the AT doing the pulling, depends on the power used to do the pulling with, depends on other powers that may have mitigations from players to that effort by the person pulling or from the team itself, depends on the Mob the pull was initiatited(ie their scripted response) on and the fail result actions too etc etc etc etc etc. Basically lots of variables that either people just make a basic note of or they just dont bother caring too much about and just deal with the results one way or another.

That looks more like a WoW peripheral choice/set up.... as that's what I used then. My razer tart is gathering dust in a box now as I prefer to keep it simple now. Left hand keyboard, right hand mouse.

If the live devs only ever ran the script twice because it never did make any meaningful name reduction situation AND if HC has but a mere fraction of the player base that live once had(ie meaning the volume of names taken is much less), this pretty much should make for compelling evidence that this name purge debate raising its seasonal head yet again is really moot. While sure there are names that I may have at times wanted for my characters, I just simply shrugged and made another name that ended up being just as good or later after consideration, better. It isnt hard. If ever there became a situation where our little infinitesimally small community exploded and became some major dominant mmo force once again....(ie never), Im quite sure the current dev team can be more creative at presenting a solution that would not potentially alienate past/present members of the community nor dishearten any future ones by playing a kansas city name shuffle. This whole thing is just silly.

Remember the database the market uses is for all servers and there are delays at some points that can cause variations in listings or even ghost sold listings. This is why you always click multiple times to make sure you look at things. As for what you're seeing regarding cheaper sales before your big one, think on it like this, that "magically" a large number of listings of them were.... loaded... into the market almost instantly, because of that, the bids were all batch sorted where the order of it isn't necessarily what you'd expect. This happens pretty much daily and is more easily seen with the seeding done with the salvage markets.

Given your wishes are for goals with hard mode content considerations, unless you have a very specialized team that has the capability(onus) to mitigate your build/choices' weaknesses, Im going to put forth the possibility that the wants may not match up here.

Strange you ask on this here in the general section vs architype section or the more apt brute section per your wants but ok. Few things to understand with your request. 1. Leveling solo or teaming almost exclusively? That can have a small bearing on choices. 2. Best to look for brute regen builds of various sorts and similar street justice ones. Then correlate from those a build that may suit you between the two. SJ/Regen isnt exactly a common/popular consideration on its own for various reasons obviously(else you'd've found your desired answer already...). 3. Most players (especially if teaming almost exclusively) just make their character and choose powers as they go with what they think will work. "Builds" you see listed on the forums in most all cases arent "leveling" builds.... they're builds mostly for considerations once 50 (as can be easily evidenced by their being enhancers only usable at level 50). Thus most just level, slot standard io's as they go as the expectation is that then at 50 either parking the toon and moving to something else or respec and kit it out with post 50 builds like you see on the forums for the post 50 play. In other words, its not a situation of needing to plan something out necessarily. However, if you want to refine your request based on the above, then providing more information may be of merit.

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