MistressOhm

So far the only character I have that carries 'something' that doesn't fit in pockets or pouches or utility belts is Stick Figure. She's a blind martial artist that uses various sticks/spears/etc so in her civilian guise she carries a cane ( sadly the costume has it rendered as a pool cue, yay). In combat, the staff is kind of RP'd as 'whatever is at hand', be it a mop, a shower curtain rod, a broom stick, a flagpole, et cetera. Storm Lotus is dual blades stalker, so she's got the full modern KoA derived ninja suit, with nightvision goggles, utility belt, and her sai and serrated KoA machete in scabbards on her back. Everyone else? Either has a nullspace pocket to keep everything from their cellphone to their supply of knockout darts, or they're magical and can manifest whatever's needed via a portal to a pocket dimension.

My old forum name was something trademarked, so I have abandoned it (and renamed the character that held the name). Oddly enough, CoH never generic'd it, this was a personal decision as I was thinking (and I still occasionally contemplate) writing a book featuring the character. My current forum handle was an alt, that got a lot of play on live, but was never a 'Main' identity either on the forums or in the game. If anyone is wondering who the character was... this will jog your memory, I'm sure.

Namesake: Mistress Ohm - elec/elec blaster "Try and resist, resistance is interesting." Character from Live, glad I got the name here. 🙂 And then there's : Auntie Freeze - ice/ice dominator - Praetorian cop turned vigilante. Basically a play on "Mother Mayhem" and the Big Brother vibe of Praetoria. Daisy Chain - MA/ninjutsu stalker, was my CoV Beta character Dame Demolition - robots/traps MM - ex Crey employee with an outstanding workman's comp claim. Annular Eclipse - warshade. Nuff said. 🙂 Multiball Bonus - rad/kin 'fender, basically a pinball-powered blastbot, was originally a short lived member of the Pinball Wizards back on Live Torch Juggler - Carnival of Light refugee from the original Portal Corp missions, NOT the Praetorian ones. A blaster on Live, now a Sentinel. Marketing Goddess - mind/psy dominator - social media influencer with mind control/psychic powers. She's REALLy good at getting people to buy stuff. I wanted to name my elec affinity defender "Dynamo Humm" but someone beat me to it. So I just couldn't do it. (Maybe I'll try her sister.)

Scourge is basically the Corruptor's Critical, and it only starts to kick in when the mob is at half health or less (chances of Scourge proc go up as target health approaches nil). Blasters get Defiance, which scales damage to the Blaster's previous attacks (it used to be Blaster health, but apparently someone decided this was exploitable). Of the two, the Corruptor can 'count on' their bonus damage as the battle progresses, as does the blaster. Plus, they can apply buffs or debuffs to either increase the damage or increase the chances to hit, OR heal themselves if the battle turns nasty. The Blaster is the artillery. It comes out hitting hard, but it's fragile and should avoid being downrange as much as possible. The Corruptor is the IFV. It doesn't crank out nearly as much destructive power, but it is a force multiplier to others and once the enemy is on the ropes, it's easy for the Corr to finish them off.

As I see it, it depends on the powerset and the playstyle. As stated, some archetypes get more out of Leadership than others, so it makes sense for them to devote power picks to the pool. As I often run Defenders, I find Leadership works decently well as a solo player, but really shines as a team player. Not only are you actively buffing/debuffing/healing, you're passively buffing just by being there. Not sure how it works with VEAT's (they all get variants of the Leadership pool in their secondaries as either passives or toggles) but that's because I rarely team on my VEAT characters. I suspect (?) it'd be significant, otherwise why put these things into the actual powersets right? As a Kinetic, I'm used to being in the dust cloud, along with all of the melee'ers. That's where I'm effective, that's where I can rejuice and repair easily. So Leadership's effective range is not an issue (until some sap of a scrapper goes charging off to another room because SCRAPPERLOCK! sorry bub, you get out of range, you're on your own.) Is running Maneuvers as an on-demand toggle just as effective as everyone slotting for Defense and/or packing a box full of Luck candy? Cool. Glad I could help. If not, then yeah, perhaps it's not as crucial a build element.

If someone's advertising for a GM team/league and I'm on the wrong alt, I say so, "Alting, BRT!" and then as soon as I've switched I hightail it to where the GM is and pop up on broadcast so I can get the invite. If the fight is in progress? Ok, that's fine too. But never is there an expectation to hold a team spot open, I'm just making sure to communicate.

And yes Muxley is a ref to Dastardly's dog Muttley (he of the wheezy laugh)

The Iliad is very much a 'war movie' wherein the exploits of Odysseus were documented, along with those of all the other heroes of the time. But the Odyssey is very much a "pissed off a god, now I'm paying for it" journey epic... not to mention the soap opera going on at home, wherein his wife is basically forced to open her home to a bunch of layabout suitors (who plot to kill Odysseus as soon as he appears) and it turns into a "does he get home in time or doesn't he?" drama. Penelope's test to him about "moving his marital bed" is always good for a chuckle - he made the headboard out of a living tree that the house was built around, so in order to move the bed, the entire house would need to be destroyed and the tree uprooted. THAT's someone who's committed to his marriage. A lot of the Greek tragedies are based on someone's ego (hubris, yes!) getting too big to be properly contained, and then the Gods arrange for 'correction'. As a society, they had a lot of great ideas, but their concept of just retribution for pissing off someone much more powerful than you? Chilling what could happen. 🙂

I'd think a floating power bar coupled with the "powexec_tray" method would be best. Either as a macro or as a keybind. Put the power bar off to one side, and use it as a dash display for recharge times, no need to click. if the powers change, then yeah, there's going to need to be some 'maintenance' keeping that tray updated. But that's not a big deal. If you want to see crazy macro/power tray manipulation, run a Warshade. Set up power trays for each form, and macros for form changes that both rotate the active trays AND load a bind file to change the keybinds to match the form's powers (attacks and travel forms). Done wrong, it's a mess... but done right, you can flip forms constantly and never worry about your trays being unsync'd or your binds being broken.

About all I can say (based mostly on recollection but also going up against other mob factions with similar status effects/debuffs) is kite from range, apply your own holds/debuffs before getting any -toHit on yourself, or recruit a Defender/Corruptor/Controller that can either help clear the effects off yourself, OR lock the spawns down so they don't hurt people. I am VERY glad that as a Claws/SR scrapper, I ran the 40's as a Scrap/Def duo. Having an Empath at my elbow was a godsend (Or in her case a goddess-send!)

I find it highly amusing that a change to the game to manage server load and instancing more efficiently is being perceived as an act of war.

This is the metric people should be using. If the servers are being kept running by the generosity of fellow humans regardless of whether they actually play, then the venture is a success.

[NPC] Desperate Guy: You've made me so nervous that I've totally forgotten my standard pick-up line. [NPC] Turndown Girl: That one MUST have hurt coming out of your mouth. On a character whose ID states they are basically an android: [NPC] Homeless Citizen: I swear I see robots everywhere. The "personal mission" from Eagle Eye has some great exposition and dialogue, but it's kind of an Easter egg. [Caption] Eagle Eye: Security tapes confirm that Deadlock slipped in through the submarine bay... [Caption] Deadlock: I'm gettin' too old fer this... [Caption] Eagle Eye: Somehow he didn't trip the alarms, he must have been cloaked from them somehow... If you go from the sub back toward the 'exit' you get this: [Caption] Eagle Eye: Deadlock wandered around for a bit, maybe he was disoriented or checking for other exits... [Caption] Deadlock: Where's the crapper in this joint anyway? And then you run across the Longbow 'guards'... [NPC] Longbow Flamethrower: I feel kinda worthless guarding Fort Trident. I mean, who would try to attack this place? [NPC] Longbow Flamethrower: Shut it, you're gonna jinx it, man. Cue Deadlock, stage center. Violence ensues! PC uses Athletic Run and Speed Siphon to run over the wall between Wentworths and the SC campus of Paragon U, landing on the roof of one of the buildings: [NPC] Campus Security: Don't think I won't ticket you for super leaping over the campus building because I will! Damn rent-a-cops... Also, Nemesis is indeed a villainous megalomaniac, but at least he has a sense of panache.

NCSoft needed the server hardware for Blade and Soul and didn't feel like ponying up the expense of building out a new datacenter. Plus I believe they didn't take the formation of Paragon Studios (out of NCSoft West) well. CoX was making a steady profit, both on cash shop microtransactions and subscriptions (Freedom 'unlocked' the ability to play for free, but you could still subscribe). It wasn't the new shiny, and it wasn't a runaway hit like WoW, but it was steady. Couple that with the fact that the parent company never really understood the Western design/play philosophy as evidenced by how badly "City of Hero" went over in Korea (this is where the trainer NPC's Foreshadow and Mirror Spirit came from), and it was summarily shuttered for something more in line with the Korean game market. It isn't the first time NCSoft yanked the game out from under the devs or the players. Auto Assault was closed down within a year of release, and Tabula Rasa similarly shut down. While fun to play, neither of them saw the success that City did. Also, considering that Homecoming (along with other SCORE iterations of the game) is run completely free to play, the idea that 'one does not piss off the farmers' is hogwash. No One Is Paying To Play This. In fact, one could posit that LESS players would mean less of a server load (less instances to be spawned for game zones) so getting the farmers to bail would help considerably. This IS why the AE buildings in Mercy and Atlas were blown up/repurposed, so that the game didn't have to spawn multiple instances of those game zones to accommodate all the players who showed up for AE only. Pocket D, being a much smaller zone, can be instanced with less computational impact. So while you have a preference on how to play, you're not the demographic keeping the lights on, and thus, your wishes on what is prioritized and balanced do not have the leverage you think they do.

Keep in mind that 'speed runs' that get padded with "non-essential personnel" (that'd be you in the example given) are basically a way for the speedrunning brute to add to the mob count but not the difficulty. It's a powerleveling tactic. The idea is that they get to whomp on more mobs, potentially get more drops, and you get the badge for completing the TF along with any XP/incarnate threads/whatever else drops for you. It's not supposed to be a challenge, all they need is an audience, to put it bluntly. But yes, the good part is, if the game seems 'too easy' there are many ways to crank up the difficulty.

Widow Umbra Name: REDACTED Age: Mid-30's Orientation: NOT DETERMINED Powers: Minor Psionic abilities Training: Arachnos Night Widow Identity: Arachnos Operative/Civilian Details Redacted or Not Known DESCRIPTION: Toned, but not overly muscled, dark skin, dark hair cut in a bob. Wears glasses or sunglasses. OBSERVED PERSONALITY: Hedonistic, amoral. Takes her job seriously, parties hard when not working. (( OOC: If she's not in a Widow uniform, she's either 'blending in' or off the clock. Make no assumptions as to which is which. )) Soundtrack: https://somafm.com/player/#/now-playing/secretagent

Yep this is still a thing. Looks like the "looping" portion of the emote is right as you 'pop' more cards in a fountain, rather than right after.

But but then they'd have to have a Weapon customization option! (I'd say render it as an effect outline, rather than as an actual object.) But yes, some effects call for a quick strum, others a neck-tight hammer-on solo riff.

You're Kinetics, right? Get in there!!

This is an awesome mod set! Question: does anyone have the file names/locations for the music in the Monkey Fight Club and the Tiki Bar?

With a Defender, you benefit the team. You're their force-multiplier. Yes you get some benefit from the team, besides more firepower - some powersets turn Godlike when you've a big spawn and a big team. But the primary may have a lot of powers that you can't directly use, so a soloist Defender is a bit ... gimped. With a Corruptor, the team benefits you. They are your force multiplier. Everything in your secondary toolkit can be used solo (except for Speed Boost), but having teammates makes those tools work better. Also, getting things to half health (where Scourge kicks in) is a lot easier with a bunch of helpers.

I'm not really sure, but I would think that any "Healing" procs would affect anyone who stands in the aura. Any debuff procs (-end, -regen) will affect the target since that's what it does. Worst case: slot it, see how it works, use an unslotter if it's not to your liking.

Link a Combat Aura to them (dual color?) that would turn them on and off. Kind of like this guy (only smaller!)

Here's a suggestion: Add "Soundtrack" objects to maps, or be able to change the soundtrack. I'm thinking of the Rave maps (Carnival and PDP) where it'd be cool to switch out to, say, the Studio 55 music instead. Additionally, there's sometimes "epic fight" or "run away now" music in some of the game missions, but we can't cue those in AE.

Storm Kachina Name: Isabella Yazzie Age: 28 - Gender: Female Orientation: Lesbian Classification: Controller Powers: Localized Weather Control, Electrical Control/Projection, Flight Source: Mutation Superhero Identity: PUBLIC History: Isabella Yazzie was born with her wings as fledgeling bone structure, but they didn't develop into full wings until she was in her early teens. Her powers manifested as a pre-teen, where the local weather often mirrored her moods. Her tribe is fully aware of her powers, and considers her an honorary Shaman of the Hopis. She has participated in many ritual dances to appease the Kachina Gods of the tribe, both as a Kachina (costume below) and as a young woman. As her powers grew in intensity, she was sent east to Paragon both to train, and to perform "civil service" under court order. RP Hooks: Very much a vigilante. Has no love for corporations in general, and holds certain Northern Arizona energy conglomerates in particular ill regard. Known Native Rights (AIM) activist and "monkeywrencher". Juvenile arrest records from her teen years are sealed. OOC Notes: RP is para/mature in scope. Art: https://imgur.com/a/TZW0s5H (NSFW) Music: "Ly O Lay Ale Loya"