Pixie_Knight

Except maybe a /poison mastermind who uses Bodyguard, has Heal Other, and has Heal Self. All that -def, -res, and -regen is painful. I remember easily beating invuln tanks and regen scrappers in Siren's Call and Bloody Bay.

I did mention that Inf issues vanish by the mid 30's, right? I was leveling Madam Enigma and other characters long before Inventions were added. And my experience was that pre-30 you often couldn't afford to fully update all your enhancements at the same time, so might need to run a mission or in order to buy the rest. Starting at level 30 this was less of an issue. And by level 35 updating every enhancement at the same time was easy. Of course you'll be strapped for cash and under enhanced if you PL'd to fifty. But if you actually played the game that's not an issue. In fact, you may find that you're at least 50% of the way decked out with set IOs before you hit level 50. Especially if using generic IOs in the mean time and selling stuff you don't need on the AH. EDIT: Of course, it should be mentioned that you're only strapped for cash while leveling pre-30's if you completely ignore the auction house/black market as well.

My answers: #1. Wait, WHAT?! So you're telling me that my TA/A defender who had funded a full set of level 15 generic IO for what I'd need up through level 21 and a full set of level 25 generic IOs for my entire planned build before level 10 isn't real? No, money is not the issue. And a fire farmer isn't the only viable way to fund a character. In fact, no matter what your AT or power sets the only way for you to ever be strapped for Inf is if you're only using TO/DO/SO enhancements and you're still leveling to 50. And even then, money issues go away by the mid 30's. Generic IOs cost more upfront to make then it does to buy an SO of the same level, true. But that upfront cost offsets the fact that they are "once and done" enhancements. Once you have level 25 generic IOs slotted, you never actually need to replace them. Hell, even if you are never slotting an IO you can still easily fund keeping your DO/SO enhancements updated via selling salvage and recipes on the AH. Post them for 5 to 10 Inf each, and watch the Inf roll in. There's a reason gold sellers consistently failed to create a market in CoH, and that's because Inf is so laughably easy to get. #2. Like others said, step away from the Architect Entertainment building. There's some wonderfully written storylines in CoH. And even the one and done missions can have amusing writing for why your doing something or NPC dialog in the mission. Now, do you want to know the biggest secret about this issue you seem to be having? Those AE missions give crap XP/Inf because they are AE missions. Go out and speak to your contacts, get regular missions, and watch the xp and inf roll in. #3. As others mentioned, you can Convert set IO into other set IO. Or you can pool resources. Maybe character A got a recipe for something character B wants, meanwhile character C found something character A wants. Rather then deleting or selling these because the character you are playing doesn't want/need it, consider sending it to another of your characters that does want/need it. #4. That's rather amusing of you to say. You see, most of what you need to know for Inventions can be learned by doing the Invention tutorial quest chain and reading what is said. Got that? Great, cause this next part will blow your mind. When you first unlock Incarnate abilities you are taught how they work. Yes, this means you might have to read what the NPC is saying. Thus really, you are given almost all the information you need for IOs and Incarnate abilities without needing to google anything for even 10 minutes, let alone 8 hours. The only thing not mentioned I believe is the fact you can only benefit from 4 or 5 of a given set bonus at the same time. No, I don't mean the bonuses from a specific Set. I mean you can only stack 4 or 5 copies of a +3% Melee Defense set bonus at a given time. And as has already been explained, there's no need for a fire farmer to begin with so that's not even a step. No, really, the only thing you need to do once you hit 50 to get ready for the Endgame is... be willing to read what the game is telling you and having the patience to farm Incarnate mats. This last one was a HUGE roadblock back before the server shutdown. But these days I hear it's pretty much a non-issue. So the only thing you need to do before you can dive into the Endgame is... I guess decide you want to engage in the endgame?

Yeah, spike damage is a weakness. But the Vahzilok Wasting Disease story arc (and Vahz in generally) are a true pain for /regen due to it's gimmick being negated.

Evic has such a narrow cone that it may as well be single target. Getting more then 1 foe caught in it is rather unlikely usually. In fact, that's harder to line up for then melee cones usually are. Which leaves a single aoe and a ranged cone. Of eight attacks 5 are single target and one might as well be. This is primarily a single target attack set.

Hasn't Burn had a fear component since uhm... issue 2 (at least)?

This is true even if you're playing a claw scrapper, which is predominantly single target.

Oh sure, you knew that. But CoH was my first MMO. Hell, it was really my first PC game in general. Before CoH I was accustomed to console games on the PS1 and PS2. Which were already in their final state.

What, no love for the classic Claws/Regen scrapper? Endurance for days pairs nicely with fast and cheap (endurance wise) attacks. Focus and Shockwave can provide some nice mitigation via knockdown/back while also adding some ranged punch. And come on, it's a classic for a reason.

To be honest, I would have been more then happy with "exact state of the game at the time of the server shutdown" with no bug fixes, balance tweaks, or anything else. Just the ability to actually play the game. Mind you, when I first heard of Homecoming I was both excited and wary. After all, this is an old game. Would it live up to my memories? Hell, even by the point of the server shutdown I wasn't playing CoH anywhere near as much as I had in the past. Maybe it's because the game had gone Free to Play. Maybe it was just me moving on to other things. I don't know. And if I'm honest with myself, I don't really play video games in general as much as I did even seven years ago. I spend most of my time reading these days.

And CoH's code has always been notoriously complex. Anyone else remember some of the disastrous content updates? With one of them the game lagged so badly, you'd get DC'd after five minutes or five steps... whichever came first. The hotfix patch to fix that ended up removing the doors that allowed you to enter/exit Recluse's tower. And the fix to that bug trapped people in the elevators in Recluse's tower. It got to the point where I'd give up playing for a couple days when a major content patch came out due to it taking that long for the game to get back to a playable state. Oh, and scheduled downtimes for releasing content patches would always end up lasting all day due to problems cropping up.

I don't have characters that are badge hunters. I am a badge hound... to put it politely. Pretty much all my characters at some point or another (usually multiple times) spend entire days going around grabbing exploration badges, history badges, and the like. And if getting a hunt badge is too slow when doing it organically, my characters at some point end up farming mobs for those badges too. Never have I ever played a character with Invulnerability to level 10 or beyond. Back in issue 1 I rolled an /invuln scrapper, and by level 6 I was bored to tears with the character due to having to run on the highest difficulty to have any sort of real challenge. Granted, that probably would have changed right quick if I'd gone to the hollows. But when you're fighting +2 mobs at level 4 when solo, and the only question is if you have enough endurance? Yeah, not a fun character to me.

Until you mentioned this, I was all set to explain the joke. It still wasn't a funny joke. But then again rick rolling was never funny to begin with.

Ah, the good ol days, when you had to use different stations depending on where you were going, and sometimes it was actually faster to run... provided you knew the route.

So... The bar cried "OUCH" before keeling over dead, the hapless mob ran screaming, and the defender commented "I was looking forward to a drink. Why did you do that?" Sounds like a scrapper to me. Scrapper Fact: A scrapper can survive one hit instant kill attacks without the special inspirations. No, really. I remember the first time I ran the high level Devouring Earth trial. The Giant Monster at the end has an AOE attack which is a one hit kill, and the only way to avoid dying is to have used a special inspiration that drops during that trial which protects you from that attack for around 30 seconds at a time. Not knowing this, I kept handing them out to the rest of the team because they weren't Lucks, Catch a Breaths, or Respites. When we got to the GM I hit Elude, as I generally did for EB/AV/GM fights. And I went to town. Everyone else kept dropping like flies every time the aoe was used, and I got really puzzled by that because I was just fine. In fact, Elude crashed the second the final blow had been landed on the Giant Monster. Only afterwords did I learn about the one hit kill aoe that I kept dodging. And for a while the legend of Madam Enigma flourished on Protector server because she could survive the unsurvivable.

In honor of City of Heroes making it's triumphant return, how about a little diversion which use to be HUGE on the scrapper forums. As everyone knows, Scrappers are badasses. Even before IOs they were badasses. And we can be down right insane. Scrapperlock is real, and can get our non-scrapper alts killed fast after all. For those who don't remember the thread and jokes, Scrapper Facts are typically in the style of Chuck Norris facts, only Scrapper flavored. Such as "Scrappers don't get wet, water gets scrappered". I'll kick things off with a few. 1. Nemesis is positive it is all a Scrapper plot 2. A scrapper once sent Statesman a tee shirt with their image on the front. Statesman wears it to bed to protect him. 3. Legend says that a scrapper's tears can cure cancer. Too bad scrappers never cry.

Hurricane bowling can be great fun, although it does tend to anger teams too. Trying to ragdoll enemies into a corner is hilarious though. I've been known to do that, then repeatedly use /em Alakazamreact while on teams.

Be aware that Kelds make poor "tanks" until level 20 when they get Dwarf form. And even then they are more of an off tank since they lack Punchvoke, have only one (maybe 2) aoe attacks, and a single taunt. Human form peacebringers can be a decent backup healer, while human form warshades are a decent backup controller. At least they are at higher levels. And of course in Nova form they are flying squid based artillery platforms. I love the versatility of a tri-form keld.

What I do is slot as normal, then use a free respec around level 12 to move slots into Nova form since that's my primary damage dealing method at low levels. I then focus on human form slotting, with defenses and Stamina taking priority. Once I get Dwarf form I slot that up right away before going back to slotting human form powers. Remember that early on, you don't need to slot human form attacks if you're planning on using Nova form for basic combat initially. Later on having both nova and human attacks slotted up can give you versitility, but rarely have I seen a team that got mad at you for being a squid 🙂

Of course, people who weren't around at the time probably have no clue what FREEM is all about 🙂

I'm using thugs/poison. At level 20 there isn't any knockback Knockdown, yes. But no knockback... Yet. They specifically are running to the edge of the roof, then jumping off. Which causes half my thugs to follow after. It seems to be them deciding to run away for a bit once badly hurt. Which is fine, I can chase after them. But as soon as they jump off the roof they vanish. Possibly because they were never coded to leave the roof. I mean, I don't remember this behavior before the server shutdown. WHen I used gang war, Noble Savage started trying to run to the roof edge once at 1/4 health, but the mass of disposable thugs made moving difficult, and he couldn't jump over them due to (again) how many there were. That gave my thugs time to defeat him.

I thought the Epic AT do have access to the heroic epic pool powers. I know that the VEAT do at least. Not that kelds actually need an Epic pool to begin with. They already have a glut of powers to chose from, and a severe shortage of slots (if tri-form).

And on that note, let us raise a glass to GMs and Moderators of the past. May they continue finding work they enjoy, and godspeed.

I wonder how many people were disappointed that the upcoming FREEM update was an April fools joke?

Well, the lore is that Warshades have a bit different abilities then normal kelds because they've been experimented upon. Which in turn altered some of their natural abilities. As such, a peacebringer (normal keld) with one of the Warshade power sets doesn't fit the lore. Neither does a Warshade with one of the Peacebringer sets. In fact, the very existence of nictus and by extension warshades is specifically due to experimentation on kelds (either by a rogue faction or outside party, not sure).