MistressOhm

Short Circuit and Power Sink together on an Elec/Elec (especially if you put the Energy Manipulator Stun proc in Short Circuit) make short work of anything that gets into melee range. of course if you have Power Sink, you also have several elec melee attacks along with immobs and a melee hold (Shocking Grasp), all good for finishing off those mobs who decided to make it personal. Namesake is an Elec/elec blapper build, and while there's hardly any 'armor' to speak of, if you can survive past the alpha OR immob/hold anything dangerous, no mob is safe, from snipe range to up close. That and End Drain is a perfectly viable strategy for damage mitigation. 😉

/Ice as a secondary would stack REALLY well with most of Kinetics debuffs, it puts a lot of Slow, -Def, -Res, and -Rech into the mix, with Kinetics already messing with -Dam and -Recovery. Practical upshot, the team gets faster and healthier, while the spawn gets slower and squishier.

You're going to need to show your work on that math problem. 😛 But hey, I'll help. As someone who main'd a Kin/Energy on Live, I fully understand that not everything in the Kinetics set is awesome. Repel? Skipped. A Kin shines brightest when in the scrap with the melee characters, and Repel just ... spoils the party. It's EXTREMELY situational, as well as expensive to run. Increase Density? Invaluable on teams as an anti-mez, but solo it's worthless. It's the ONLY power in the set that the Kin cannot get any direct benefit from. But, nearly everything else is awesome if you know how it works. Speed Siphon/Boost and Inertial Reduction are basically on-demand travel powers, as well as combat powers (altho most probably don't use IR as a combat buff). Speed Boost really shines with buffing Recovery and Recharge, the added run speed is a 'bonus'. Siphon Speed is not just a target Slow but a self +Speed, which makes repositioning that much easier in a fight. And a Kinetic is ALWAYS repositioning, to take advantage of the target-AOE heal and Recovery OR to include ranged characters on a Siphon Power or Fulcrum Shift. If you play a Kin as a ranged Defender, you're missing out on so much of what makes the set awesome... including the heal, which to Kinetics newbies might seem to be broken. No, it's supposed to work like that, don't be a shrinking violet, get in close! Most of the problems I've had running a Kinetic have been because teammates didn't understand how the set worked best. Ranged characters have this ... fear... of being in melee range, so as the Defender, I had to shuttle back and forth to keep everyone buffed and happy. I finally took Team Teleport so as to dump EVERYBODY into the middle of the spawn, then pop Fulcrum Shift so that everyone got a nice big damage buff. Transference to top everyone's End off, Transfusion to heal any alpha damage... ah hell with it, Team Teleport everyone, pop FS, and then pop my PBAoE nuke and let the team pick up what's left! "WTF did you just do?? Ahh!" At that point, 7 other people are just along to make me look awesome. 🙂

For a Defender, your mez protection is using your secondary's hold/sleep/disorient first. Figure out which mob is likely to try and mez you, and lock it down, THEN debuff the rest. If your primary is mostly debuff (Rad, Storm, etc), you might need to slot for ranged Defense, so that your target(s) can't alpha you (and then as your debuffs take hold, they have other things to worry about). I took Psionic Mastery epic pool to get the Hold as a backup to Tesla Cage, because even with a +Mag proc in Tesla, sometimes you need to stack the hold to hold the boss.

Thoughts on a Storm/Elec: @Krimson's suggestion of the KB/KD conversion from Sudden Acceleration in Gale - DO EET. Turns this cheap cone into a "sit down right there" power whenever you need it... without the "throwing things away from your melee teammates" bit. Not sure on putting Bombardment set into it, mine's only double slotted for Accuracy/Recharge and Recharge/KB-to-KD. Damage has always been 'meh' on Gale so I don't use it for that. End management will be THE tuning linchpin. Nothing's worse than when Snow Storm AND Hurricane drop at the same time (letting your EB escape whatever wall you've stuck it to) because you fired off something expensive. You learn to keep an eye on the End meter and only use T1 and T2 blast attacks until the gas gauge climbs back up. Defense: One COULD slot Steamy Mist for extra Def, but aside from some lucky shots, my Stormie manages just fine with a full Dark Watcher's Despair -ToHit set in Hurricane. If they're in range of the windy whirlpool, they ain't hitting the wide side of the barn, much less you or any of your teammates. THAT's your Def, right there, and it covers the whole team. (That said, throw a LotG global recharge into Steamy Mist as a mule, so that if anything does drop due to end overusage, you can get it back relatively quick.) Snow Storm is your on-demand "Nerf Something" toggle. Slow, -Fly, -Recharge, all in one convenient mob-centered AOE. It's been invaluable when herding the ToT EB's of late (and turned Ghost Widow into Miss Weaksauce in the Daedalus arc). It is end-heavy, though. Ooof is it end-heavy. Need a little more? Drop Freezing Rain. -Recharge, Slow, -Def, and -Res, for as long as you can keep things in the area of effect anyway. The entire set pairs well with /Elec because of one thing: /Elec has trivial/decent End refunds on nearly everything that hits. So while you spend End attacking, you get a significant portion back. That's extremely helpful when toggle-juggling a Stormie, not so good for damage though. I put a full Bombardment set into Thunderous Blast, it doesn't modify End Drain on targets much (TB takes away a LOT even at base values) but it really kicks up the damage and also adds an occasional Fire damage proc. Great for culling adds, such as Nictus crystals or Rikti portals popping out more targets, and also deleting most if not all of the main target's Endurance along with a significant hit to the Health meter.

Congrats on the new RL Lowbie. Next 18 years are spoken for, more or less... but every moment you get with 'em is valuable. So it'd be a Storm/Water defender (the order you had was Corruptor version), and once you get past the "knockback everywhere!" mechanic you'll have a blast. Stormfenders are very tanky, in that you can wade right into the dust-up and if you don't get tagged by the opening salvo, once Hurricane debuffs the ToHit on nearly everything, it's just a matter of how much damage can you crank out, cos nothing's going to hit you consistently even if they stay standing long enough to get an attack off. With /Water you're going to see even more KB (and KU) so that'll be your soft interrupts/holds, keeping everything off their feet. Gale is basically an on-demand KB cone, which if you put Sudden Acceleration's KB/KD conversion IO in, becomes an on-demand "sit yer ass down!" with a trivial amount of damage. The downside : Lots o' toggles! Storm is an End hog with Snow Storm and Hurricane toggles, and the end cost of Lightning Storm, Freezing Rain, and Tornado don't help either. I just got my Storm/Elec to 50, and the ONLY saving grace has been the End refunds on the Elec blast attacks - /Water won't give you that, so triple-slot Stamina and/or put End Reduction everywhere you can. You might also need to spec for Cardiac as your Alpha Incarnate (as I am), again to eke out as much global End savings as you can muster. And yeah, Defenders don't damage as much as Blasters or Sents, or Corruptors, but they get better debuff numbers. Solo, you'll work harder, but teams you won't have to worry about the DPS numbers anyway. For teams, Storm can be a little ... chaotic. Your main debuff powers are Hurricane's -ToHit, the Slow from Snow Storm and Freezing Rain, and the -Defense and Stun from Tornado. Freezing Rain has KD, Hurricane has a constant Repel and occasional KB, and Tornado is a roller coaster ride of repeated KU and KB. All that together means that if you don't reposition yourself constantly, you're going to be scattering spawns all over the place - you have to learn to find corners to stuff things into, and then back up JUST enough not to shove them up the walls. Lightning Storm will kick things away from it (and they'll run away even if not being thrown) so learn to deploy it off to one side, perhaps as a screen for your squishies so no melee mobs can get close. EB's however can be locked down HARD by Storm - between Snow Storm's AoE slow, Lightning Storm's constant damage, end drain, fear, and knock effects, and Hurricane's -ToHit, most Elites have their hands full and won't be able to attack nearly as much. But, that's only if you follow the tank right up to them - if you stay at range you're toast. Lastly, Storm's heal (O2 Boost) is teammate only. You cannot heal yourself with it, so keep insps stocked and consider slotting +Heal procs in some of your powers to get a top-off now and again.

In telco speak that is a Plant Operator Error (POE). Otherwise known as a procedural screwup, resume-generating event, or "teachable moment". 🙂

Keep in mind the complaints vs complements dynamic of nearly all social circles (and a cornerstone of "Customer Service" training). If someone is pleased with your work or product, they'll share the story for a few days. If someone is displeased with your work or product, they'll share it for a few weeks, months, or even years. I'm sure a psychologist could go into the reasons why, probably something to do with tribal "don't drink that water" protective behavior. But it does mean that people are much more likely to complain than complement. And if you're in any sort of customer-facing job, having to deal with that, you burn out on it. As volunteers? you'll burn out faster. And it's not like the HC team has Indeed on speed dial, to replace anyone that decides they've had enough.

Storm Kachina had to go far back in time, and ended up wearing a bit of armor and not much else. (It's too bad the Sybil costumes aren't available yet...)

It's known as "alpha clash" where the game engine can't figure out the layering order of multiple "alpha" (semitransparent) layers. So it only renders the most globally 'transparent' layer. The fix is to use "mask" alphas instead of "blend" alphas, but that treats all pixels that are not 0 (transparent) as 1 (fully opaque) and the textures get blocky. Newer engines that rely on raytracing do a better job (because every pixel onscreen is assumed to be created by light sources in the scene, and rendered accordingly) but those require high-end RTX-capable graphics cards. If your card doesn't have the processing power/code/chips to handle RTX, the engine defaults to the older modes.

Earliest Screenshot I can rustle up (since the original install has gone the way of all flesh... er, silicon):

Next year, they're making a zombified Lt. Tendaji spawn from doors randomly... as an AV.

Players: Please let us use mini-me avatars in gameplay! Devs: Fine, but we're doubling the size of their hitboxes.

I'm not sure who is running/writing/updating CityBinder, but I'd contact them with your changes, and they may incorporate into an updated release.

Don't forget, Beam Rifle has its own 'inherent' proc, Disintegration. It randomly throws on a DoT effect, and if you hit the afflicted target again while Disintegration is active, the effect spreads to other nearby mobs. There's at least one attack that specifically applies this (not as a random proc) but nearly every attack in the set has a chance to apply it.

My only experience with roleplay in STO was being part of a fleet that got "targeted" by Starfleet Dental, a fleet in the game that existed solely to troll, grief, and harass roleplayers. My character was an Orion. It wasn't a 'made up' race, there's even Orion ships available to purchase. I wasn't going around in a bikini or slave girl garb, the character had the full KDF uniform, rank sash, the whole bit. Yet "Oh you're one of those" and then the next thing I know, everywhere I went SD would show up and screw around. At that point I realized, that the only roleplaying 'safe' from the Giggly Giggety Teenager Brigade was aboard ships or on fleet space stations/planetary colonies. Effing ridiculous. (and yes, I found out that the fleet I'd joined had somewhat of a party-girl rep... which, considering they were all Orions, was perfectly in line with the lore anyway. That's what Orions do, they're essentially galactic pirates that got picked up by the Klingon Defense Force as privateers and slavers.)

Considering we have weapon scabbards, it WOULD be nifty to have a place to carry the shield when not using it. Otherwise, as Peter Parker said in Civil War, "That thing does not obey the laws of physics at all."

It's already a 'little crazy', but point made. Some of the set bonuses are... meh. But enough 'meh' stacked up becomes 'eh???' and suddenly the build is no longer average. Look, here's my thing with procs. I think they're great, when they go off. The problem I see with them is, they are designed to fire X amount of times per minute. That means you have to tune the recharge on those procc'd powers to not be faster than the proc cycle time, OR sometimes they won't fire. When? Who knows? That's the RNG's chance to mess with you. You can whale on pylons all you like and get an average proc rate, but when you're in a scrap, sometimes you want that proc to do its thing and ... it doesn't. RNG Wins. I would MUCH rather build to a solid buff/debuff percentage, including the 'gravy' you get from set bonuses, rather than mess it all up for what amounts to an extra four or five dice rolls every time you do something. Does that mean I'm missing out on those extra dice rolls? Yes. But that's my choice. I gamble often enough in real world, chasing 'procs' there (bonus rolls on slots) loses your money. 🙂

3M = worthless : This tells you all you need to know about the market economy at the moment. I had an old friend (someone whom I teamed with all the time on Live) roll up a new character, and we decided to do ToT'ing in Kallisti with them as sidekick. We got into a group, then that group joined a league, and next thing you know I've lost track of how many of the EB's we've dealt with. They dinged 25, leveled up at the end of the night, and 10 PAP's drop into their salvage. Even at the current price, that's 30m inf for them to get started on slotting their build. Nothing to sneeze at, esp. if we create all the IO's needed rather than outright buy them. Two things that are different about these EB spawns from 'regular' ones - you don't have to defeat them to complete an objective, and you're not on an enclosed map with the door at the other end. There is NO shame in running away if you're overmatched.

Wait... how the hell did you get your grubby paws on a 4090? Are you a cryptofarmer??? 😛 My desktop dates back to 2016, it's i5 based, with an ROG GFX1080 in it. But the P/s is 1300w, not cos I need the juice, but because the Antec HCP Platinum 1300 was the only one I could find that had multiple 12v rails instead of just one rail with multiple taps. That and the Antec Kuehler 120mm cooling AIO pretty much have kept this system nicely humming along for the past 6 years. I'd LOVE to upgrade it, even have a build specced on Newegg. Problem is... the RTX 3090 I wanted to build into it is 3/4 the cost of the whole rig... IF it's not sold out cos of cryptominers and scalpers!

Roleplayers will now accumulate a new leveling mechanic called "tenure" but only when talking around a watercooler, discussing fellow teammates and/or debriefs of missions recently run. Characters with higher tenure will assign missions and mission roles to those with less tenure. Being noticed by a Dev may give you a tenure boost... but it also may result in a complete loss of tenure, in which case the character's INF is refunded, all salvage sold off, and the character's base foreclosed upon. Watercooler "ERP" is right out, as it results in HR and Lawyers getting involved, and a likely loss of tenure will result.

They're text files, so you should be able to search for the one you want based on content. Look for "powexectoggleon Fly" and WinDoze should find the file that contains it.

Truth. I killed an AMD system back in the day because CoH pushed it into the red too much (and back then, AMD's tended to run hot anyway.) That's when I switched to Intel-based mobos with overengineered cooling systems!

The bind you are using assumes that turning Fly on also toggles Hover off. That is no longer the case. You're going to need to add a "$$powexectoggleoff Hover" to your "moving" bind, and a "$$powexectoggleoff Fly" to your "stopped" bind.

"account is already logged in" = client closed w/o logout. You get that on every hard crash. The first attempt to log back in 'resets' the account state, so you can log in on the following attempt. The 'account still active when client not present' bit is how the servers keep accounts active if the client experiences a short glitch in network connection. Ever see those momentary "mapserver lost" messages that disappear? If this weren't in place, you'd get disconnected and dropped every time those happened. So yeah, this isn't a client problem, just a server response to a client problem. Working As Intended. THAT SAID... I agree with Doc Ditko, overclocking can mess with older games like this. Keep in mind that this is using a 10-year-old graphics engine, that at the time was tuned to mid to high tier systems. So it works your GPU and CPU pretty hard (or did, back in the day) and likely isn't too tolerant of timing changes. I'd set up a 'normal' profile for running CoH, and if you have other apps where you get benefit from overclocking, switch to that profile for those.