Pixie_Knight

This is not the first time I've seen someone refer to CoH's combat as slow. Maybe I don't play enough games, but... slow compared to what? It's much faster-paced than combat in, say, WoW. One of my frustrations playing WoW is how slow and clunky everything feels. Maybe it's slow compared to FPS games? Other then racing to the next enemy right away, it is actually about the same speed as combat in most MMOs.

Here's some things that you might be forgetting. Dark Blast was not orriginally a blaster set, it was a Defender set. Then later Corruptors got it too. Paragon Stuidos ported it to Blasters because players kept insisting they do so. But there's factors you're not taking into account. Dark Blast has one of the least resisted damage types. This means it naturally was given lower damage. Blast sets that do all Lethal damage (the most resisted damage type) get the highest base damage to compensate. Like other Blast sets, Dark Blast has attacks which are more utility and damage mitigation then damage focused. It just leans more heavily in the Utility & Damage Mitigation front. Most enemies do less damage with their ranged attacks then their melee attacks. Thus having a cone immobilize provides some nice damage mitigation, even if it doesn't do as much raw damage as the other blasts. Then again, I'm not sure if you noticed this but all aoe and cone attacks do less damage per target then single target attacks do. It's been a while since I used dark blast, but as I recall the per target damage for Tenebrous Tentacles is on par with that of the tier 1 attack. Or at least, it is after all the damage ticks go off. But again, it's a utility power intended to mitigate damage. Or do you take offense that Archery also has abilities which do very little damage, but mez the enemy instead? And I suppose you flat out ignore any blaster secondary power which doesn't do damage? Wait, sorry. That was rude of me. But this has been argued about over and over again already. Knockback is again a form of damage mitigation. If the enemy is ragdolling through the air or standing up, they are not doing any damage to you. If they were pounding you in melee and got sent flying backwards, they are no longer using those hard hitting melee attacks. And Umbral Torrent isn't even the only example of blasters using knockback to mitigate damage. Hell, the Energy Blast power set specializes in it. It sounds to me @Solarverse that Dark Blast just isn't the power set for you. And you probably should avoid Energy Blast too. But that's okay. Not everyone has to like every archtype or power set.

Leveling was pretty easy to begin with. I got my first villain to 40 (the current cap) within a month of City of Villains launching, and to 50 within a week of the level cap being raised. And that only took so long because I was playing other characters too. I got Madam Enigma to level 38 within months, but that again also was because I had a lot of other characters I was also playing. Getting to 40 took longer, but that was mainly because Madam Enigma had ran out of missions and street sweeping for xp got boring. Especially when you've mostly out leveled the zones you have access to. The addition of Warburg let me power through the last two levels to reach 40, and I'd hit 50 within days after that. And that was without bothering with power leveling.

My newest character is a cowgirl themed dual pistols blaster villain. Name? Smith N Western.

It wasn't a vet reward. It was a change made to the main game. Everyone, even brand new players could get a full travel power by level 6.

Not in my family. Bad puns, yes. But mostly clever word play, sarcastic observations, and off the wall comments which make everyone around you screech to a halt and go "Wait, WHAT?!" One example is when I lost track of the time while doing some research and ended up staying up all night. My dad commented that he always preferred to do his studying late at night, because the answers would always dawn on him. Or the following exchange while watching one of those Dumbest ____ Caught On Tape shows. "Why would you have an alligator in your back seat?!" "Because if you put it in the front seat he'll want to drive." "..." Another one was when me and dad were looking at pictures of old bizzare inventions. One was a bicycle with no tires and a third wheel, designed to be ridden on railroad tracks. The comment made? Well, my brother asked why the bike had a third wheel sticking so far out. The response was "training wheels." Of course, neither me nor my dad realized the pun initially. But when we did... breathing suddenly became very difficult for both of us. And we continued to crack up about it for a couple hours.

You know, now that I think about it the success of CoH was kind of a fluke. The game that was released was nothing like the game that initially was being made. There were flaws and problems that the developers were still trying to fix years after release. Hell, they never did permanently fix the memory leak did they? Seemed like every major patch reintroduced it. In fact, the game was such a mess of spaghetti code that every time they tried to fix something or add a new feature, something else would break. The intended game balance was that a player was equal to three even level minions, one even level Lt and one minion, or a single even boss. But that's only actually true at low levels. And that's always been the case. Hell, certain melee builds broke that dynamic as early as level 4. And in a very niche market that only really wanted high fantasy games which all played pretty much identically, it was a superhero game that broke every single mold and convention. Instead of a level cap of 80+, the level cap was 40 initially. It later got raised to 50. Instead of having 50+ ways of doing the same three things each character gets 20 (later 24) powers total, each of which is unique and useful. Buffs are shorter duration, but have much greater effect then in the competition. Debuffs are strong enough to actually matter. And each player is powerful enough to quickly handle things that in other games require a full team to slowly work their way through. Thus negating the entire need for a team, most of the time. The game had all the ingredients of failure. It was too different, too ambitious, and too solo friendly to make it as an MMO in the market of the time. And yet, those exact same things are why it succeeded. People were growing tired of the Ultima Online and Everquest Online model of MMO. They wanted something new and different. And for all it's many flaws, City of Heroes arrived in that perfect moment. But most importantly, the game proved to be fun. And it still is today. Best thing in the industry I can think of to compare it to is the Nintendo Wii. When you think about it, the Wii should have been a flop. Motion controls are an interesting gimmick, but hardly something that can hold a person's interest for long. The system was massively under powered compared to it's competition. And yet, the system sold like hot cakes. The game for it range from amazing to PoS shovelware, with more falling in the latter category. But it was immensely successful. Unlike the attempts at motion control gaming Sony and Microsoft put out. Sure, I like the Kinect. But I'll be the first to admit the games for it are mostly unplayable messes with poor detection. The wii just came out at just the right time and was just different enough to capture the world's interest. And like with Nintendo's motion control system, City of Heroes spawned imitators. And while they can have their good points (I do enjoy DCUO), they just fail to live up to the magic that is City of Heroes.

So many memories made over the years. Granted, a lot of them are of doing bored figure eights through the arms of the statue in Steel Canyon while chatting in Broadcast at 3am. Moments of epic badassitude and ones of hilarious ineptitude both abound. Having the misfortune to deal with idiot teams who expected my defender to heal Stupid, then coming to the forums to rant about it. Joining the Devouring Earth trial and going through the climatic battle at the end without getting hit once, not even by the insta-kill aoe attack, then the second the Archvillain dropped having Elude crash. The jaw dropping amazement the first time I did the Midnighter Society intro arc and traveled to the past sticks out in my mind, although most of the time I spend in that zone blurs together into an unending stream of seemingly identical cave missions. The feeling of accomplishment when I completed my first Incarnate ability, before the tedious grind to craft the other ones became apparent. Just hanging out in Atlas Park chatting with others about whatever topic cropped up in the middle of the night, be it a surprisingly civil political debate or reminiscing about the cartoons we grew up watching. So many memories. This game helped me grieve when family passed on, and helped me deal with the frustration of fruitless job hunting.

Not even the Details tab?

Your dad and mine have very different styles of humor, I guess. Because I wouldn't have classified any of them as 'dad jokes'.

Oh yeah, forgot about that. It's also less then useful if you put it on a minion that prefers ranged combat over melee. It's a nice ability for big fights, but most of the time it's not exactly needed.

Not off hand, but if you right click the power and select Info you should be able to see them. That said, it's not so much a buff as it is a clicky anchored debuff.

To be honest, when I play a blaster I'd love to have a cone or aoe immobilize. Enemies tyically do less damage at range then they do in melee. So keeping them from getting closer to me is a Good Thing. And knockback again helps keep things away from me. That is still a good thing. But if you really hate knockback, there is a set enhancement that converts it to knockdown instead. No, what I've always heard regarding to what holds dark blast back is that it's got some of the lowest damage to make up for being the least resisted damage type. And if you're fighting certain things like Dark Pantheon, they heavily resist it so you'd better have other stuff like Prestige attacks to pick up the slack.

So, yeah. Still doesn't change the fact that how difficult or easy a given EB is depends a lot on what your AT and power set is. /Regen would struggle more against Silver Mantis then /Invuln would, for example. And to be honest, so far I'm finding sentinels to be underwhelming.

Cant' remember when exactly it happened, but all AVs and Giant Monsters got a buff to their regen rates. That said, he can be a pain if you don't have mez protection, and like all rikti bosses I believe he has psi damage abilities which cut strait through most defenses and resistances. Also remember that Sentinel isn't one of the original AT, so may not be balanced for various content. And not all AT or power combinations will handle various Elite Bosses and Archvillains the same. What one character finds easy, another character might struggle for, while a third one finds it impossible.

I think the Sentinel class was added post shutdown. the guys at Paragon Studios had been saying for years that they didn't want to make a ranged attacking AT with defensive sets due to that being considered too powerful. Players kept demanding something like it. Particularly players who played a blaster (likely badly) after extensively playing tankers and scrappers and concluded that blasters had zero chance at surviving without a defensive set.

There's so many factors. You get to feel like a super hero. You feel like you're making a difference. If one takes the time to read mission briefings and clues, what you're doing matters. And later story arcs actually reference earlier events in a sensible way. If your contact asks for you to patrol IP, you're actually patrolling IP. If you're asked to put a stop to The Family shaking down businessmen, you are actually fighting Family goons who were harassing businessmen. You work along side an uncover cop, and help rescue other cops from gang members. After which the undercover cop mentions that sometimes he has trouble remembering that he is a cop and things like what you just helped him achieve are what keep him from 'going native'. When you're doing missions, the bad guys recognize you. If you die you can opt to respawn in a completely safe location. Little things like that stand out so much. Especially when compared to other games. I mean, take Everquest. When I tried that game I got one quest where the quest giver made a big point of going on about how orcs were attacking a town to the west and the town needed help right away. So, you're thinking the quest sends you west to help that town, right? Wrong! The quest has you going east and hunting spiders for no apparent reason, and the quest giver wants you to bring back a bunch of spider rib bones as proof of your deed. Wait, WHAT?! Spider... rib bones?! Or when my ranger was making their level 20 Class armor, green steel armor. What is needed to make a suit of green steel armor? Uhm, let's see here... Copper (lots and lots of copper), orc ribs, orc eyes, orc livers... Why am I only getting copper off of dead orcs?! Why do I need ribs, eyes, and livers to make my steel armor?! This makes absolutely no sense!

Only in that she hits very hard, and will probably one shot minions when she connects. Which is... problematic. Lord Recluse is more dangerous due to him hitting hard and summoning bane spiders. Oh yeah, Poison Trap can be effective against an EB, but you need to stack 3 or 4 of them in one spot for it to even have a chance of helping. If it does however, that makes the fight a bit easier since you'll get some free damage in. But to be honest it's so situational that as I mentioned, I generally don't take it. When the situation crops up, it's handy. But 9 times out of 10 you're better off using something else.

Uhm, all of them?

Really, I think a large part of why CoH is so beloved is because of the community. For some reason the game has always attracted a playerbase that's friendly and helpful. The player base in MMOs generally tend towards being elitist a-holes and selfish jerks. People who would much rather insult and belittle then help others. But not CoH. People who come to this game by and large are genuinely nice to their fellow players. Maybe it's because the game is at it's heart about being a super hero? Or maybe it's because at the end of the day, you can do 90% of the game's content on your own (and always could)? No idea why it's true. Just that it is true.

*raises finger about to speak then lowers it multiple times* Uh, only one I can think of is Champions Online (with freeform builds). But that game isn't as good as CoH. And it never was.

It wont. Not against an Elite Boss anyway. So, yeah. You're goals against an EB are "try to keep my distance", "keep my debuffs on the EB", and "do my best to keep six upgraded henchmen in the fight". Your debuffs are possibly some of the best for dealing with a single tough enemy due to things like a strong -regen and being able to stack the most critical debuffs with only 2 to 3 powers. But Poison Trap isn't very effective against an elite boss. EDIT: Actually, truth be told I ended up dropping Poison Trap from my build back in the day. I found it wasn't usually worth it.

Vidiot maps use to be people's go-to. I personally used a site called Badge Hunter and just kept the game in Windowed mode while badge hunting. But I think Badge Hunter no longer exists, and the Vidiot Maps maps haven't been updated in years. The site it's self might only exist via Wayback Machine too. Not sure. If the site's still around and all that, Vidiot Maps hasn't been updated since (I think) before The Hollows and other zones got revamped.

Note that I've defeated her with a thug/trick arrow mastermind (with the First Aid and Leadership pools), but it was difficult. It was a lot easier with a Ninja/Poison mastermind, although even then I was resummoning a lot. I had more difficulty with a Ninja/Force Field mastermind due to having few ways to mitigate damage directed at my character. Masterminds are amazing at soloing, and can typically handle Elite Bosses. But it does take a different mindset and tactics then most enemies.

To start with, Elite Bosses are no joke. They're weaker then their Archvillain/hero versions, but still hit damn hard. That said, depending on your secondary they can be easier or harder. Here are some tips to help dealing with them as a mastermind. 1. You probably can't keep up with the healing. Even if you have macros or binds to make targeting each pet easier, an Elite Boss deals so much damage that they can 1 to 2 shot your tier 1 henchmen, and take out the tier 3 henchman in 3 to 4 hits (at most). As such, you'll be focusing on debuffing the enemy, resummoning henchmen (ideally as fast as they go down), and rebuffing the henchmen. Yes, that includes the pet upgrades too. 2. Leave your henchmen in Bodyguard mode for the fight. This means Defensive stance with the Follow order. This will help you tank any attacks that the EB sends your way, because you will be drawing aggro away from your pets on occasion. Actually, that can give you a chance to heal up your pets and/or rebuff them. 3. Inspirations are your friend. Specifically you'll want to go into the fight with at least one row (so 3 to 4) of Respites to heal up (if you don't have Aid Self), a couple rows (6-8) blue inspirations to quickly recover endurance due to the high cost of pet summoning and buffing, and the rest as Lucks. Use 2 Lucks, and try to keep 2 of them active as much as possible during the fight. This will help mitigate damage to you personally to manageable levels.