Lockpick

One of the things I absolutely hated about SWTOR was the bind on pickup and bind on equip mechanic. The entire time I played SWTOR I was wishing I could play CoH again. So happy that wish was granted...

/jranger

What restrictions are those? On another note, I had a suggestion in another thread to add story arcs to the game. My idea of AE rewards would be to allow AE authors to write their story arcs and if they are selected as Dev Choice the story arc would be propagated to Live content with standard rewards and be eligible for flashback. The author could be rewarded with badges or merits for getting their arcs published to Live content. You might have to put restrictions on the content to prevent farms from being propagated to Live and the Dev team would make the decision whether the arc fits their expectation of what should be Live content. Players that are running the missions could be rewarded with the AE rewards and badges for running different AE missions. Maybe as they get higher badge counts they could also get merits for playing the AE content. My thought was more about new content for people to enjoy, but the response was around AE rewards. I would love to see some of the lore friendly AE story arcs propogated to Live content. It would be cool and give players an opportunity to showcase their talent.

Anyone get any comments on the new set? Pros / cons? Best / worst AT? Best / worst primary / secondary? I was playing an ITF over the weekend and someone was using it and it looked cool, but never dug into the actual primary / secondary.

You beat me to it. Yin: 21:04 Starting Inf: 30,218,882 Ending Inf: 31,376,354 Gain: 1,157, 472 Inf/Sec: 915.72 Inf/Min: 54,943.29 Merits: 20 Converters: 60 Converters AH: 4,860,000 Gain: 6,017,472 (Inf for the TF and merits, does not include drops as I did not empty my inventory prior to starting) Inf/Sec: 4,760.66 Inf/Min: 285,639.49 (much less than the $400K/min for a sub-optimal farmer using AE# 125) Based on these numbers I can get a PVP IO in 2 runs (40 minutes) or a Purple IO in 4 runs (1 hour and 20 minutes). This is not including drops, so when adding drops the time will reduce. I don't think 30 to 40 minutes time investment for a PVP IO or an hour for a purple IO is unreasonable.

In a way, I tend to agree with this comment. It might have been a good idea to fix the exploit and then the abuse of the mechanic and then spend some time analyzing the impact on the economy. If it still wasn't where they wanted they could make further adjustment later. That being said, this is a volunteer team with limited resources. I expect they probably discussed all the scenarios and the difficulty of the implementation and decided that the easiest / fastest path that was best for the overall game was to do what they did. This team does not strike me as a team that make arbitrary decisions, so I think they deserve the benefit of the doubt when they make decisions that may be unpopular with certain segments of the population. I mentioned up thread that I took a sub-optimal farming build and sub-optimal farming player (me) and made $400K inf per minute which would give me $12M inf in 30 minutes. Anybody crying doom and gloom is not being honest. They were used to creating $2M inf/min using an exploit or abusing a mechanic and should have known that type of inf gain was extreme compared to the standard content. By the way, I am still seeing quite a few farmers in AE, so it doesn''t look like it killed the farming community by any stretch of the imagination.

Disagree. Casual players can kit out their character by simply earning merits. Even if they don't use the most optimal / cost effective methods of farming, conversion, or AH they can buy IOs for merits. Run 1 or 2 TFs and do one of the Who Will Die missions per week and they will continually make progress.

Quoting myself, how lame... I did 2 farming runs on my Spines/Fire Brute on Briggs Fire Farm (#125). The first run I didn't take into account drops. Prior to the 2nd run I removed all recipes and salvage from my character. I am a below average farmer. I have this one farmer who I leveled up through farming this one AE arc. I usually played once a week to let my patrol XP max and I would play the farm until my patrol XP was gone and then would do it again the following week. I have a mix of regular IOs and set IOs and have the tier 1 alpha. I have not finished this build and will probably not finish it. I don't have a baseline of earning because I never calculated it before. If I was to run this farmer and get the 2nd run numbers as my average (which seems reasonable), I would get over 400K Inf/Min. It would take me about 30 minutes to earn enough influence to get $12M, which is generally the price for a PVP IO. The option I often use when I need money is to run a flashback mission that earns me 12 merits every 10 minutes on average. I could get 36 merits in 30 minutes and exchange for 108 converters and sale those converters for $9.72M inf. This supposes I get $100K per converter and after AH cut. Of course, it will take more time because I have to wait for it to sell. Another option is to craft and play converter roulette, which will take longer, but could probably get me more inf. In any of these scenarios a strong farmer or a strong marketeer would leave me in the dust from an inf accumulation standpoint. That being said, the amount I can earn will easily be enough for me to fully kit a character I level from 1 to 50 and the difference between farming and merits doesn't seem that different to me, which is a good thing. I'm still not understanding all the doom and gloom. Anyway, numbers:

Can you earn $1M influence per minute in standard content? Does the $1M influence per minute include drops that can be sold? Not trying to be snarky, I really don't know the answers. My assumption is that you cannot earn $1M influence per minute in standard content except maybe for some exceptions. Even at $1M per minute you are earning $60M per hour and $300M over 5 hours. If you assume a quality build can be done for $300M it seems extremely fast to kit out a character. If you double that at 10 hours and $600M that still seems extremely fast. I am comparing the kitting out a character here to SWTOR, so maybe I am using the wrong measuring stick. I generally use merits / AH to kit out my characters and I have never estimated how many hours it will take me, but I know if I want a PVP IO I will need to run some TFs to get enough merits to use to either sale the converters or play conversion roulette to get enough influence to buy what I need. It may take me multiple sessions and multiple TFs to get that PVP IO (which could be a couple of hours depending on the team) where it looks like you could have it in 12 minutes (if it is a $12M IO). If you add drops and sale them it would seem the time to kit a character would go down even more.

So, you are quoting an explanation of an exploit to say it is not an exploit? That seems strange... In the post, "Then you change your XP While Exemplared setting to "Double Influence, No XP". This will actually double your influence and makes farming at level 49 more profitable than farming at 50." I remember reading this thread before I started my farmer (Spines/Fire) and thinking that if it is more profitable at 49 than 50 that would definitely be an exploit. I never used and got my farmer to 50 and haven't really touched him since. Farming just wasn't my thing. However, let's look at the chart in the quote: Inf Per Minute Inf Per Hour Clear Time Rad/Fire (New) 2,300,107 138,006,431 23:20 Spines/Fire 2,295,431 137,725,907 21:59 Rad/Fire (Old) 2,288,810 137,328,603 Unavailable Savage/Fire 2,250,996 135,059,786 22:28 Claws/Fire (Farm) 2,170,498 130,229,936 23:14 Claws/Fire (Content) 2,105,686 126,341,219 24:38 Elec/Fire 2,010,323 120,619,380 25:02 $2M influence per minute? How is that in any way rational? I would really be curious to see what it is now after the change because I would bet it is still extremely high.

I tend to come to the scrapper forum for my melee advice, so was hoping for some input. I want to create a new character that is going to Electric / SD, but I wanted to check on which AT I should make (Scrapper, Stalker, Tank, etc.). Anyone have any thoughts? I used to play Scrappers on Live, but on HC I think I have only leveled one to 50. I like Stalkers and have a couple at 50. I have never played a Tank, so have been curious about the Tank changes. I have only played on Brute to 50, but he is a spines/fire only used for farming. Any help on pros/cons would be appreciated.

On the one hand I agree and the other I don't. I think the AE concept is fantastic because it allows for unlimited content. However, players tend to play for rewards, so there would need to be some compensation for writing and playing the AE content. My idea of the rewards would be to allow AE authors to write their story arcs and if they are selected as Dev Choice the story arc would be propagated to Live content with standard rewards and be eligible for flashback. The author could be rewarded with badges or merits for getting their arcs published to Live content. You might have to put restrictions on the content to prevent farms from being propagated to Live and the Dev team would make the decision whether the arc fits their expectation of what should be Live content. Players that are running the missions could be rewarded with the AE rewards and badges for running different AE missions. Maybe as they get higher badge counts they could also get merits for playing the AE content.

Good point.

What is your favorite build - do you think they compare with one another? I have only played a Huntsman build with a focus on the rifle attacks, although I do have Build-up from the Bane pool. I haven't played the Bane due to the slow attacks or the Crab due to the backpack issue. How do they compare with other damaging/Survival ATs? My defense is very good and he seems to survive okay. The damage seems low to me, but I haven't done deep dive number crunching. Are they underpowered/overpowered/okay at the moment? I would like to see the damage increase on the rifle attacks. What would you like to see changed? As a primary rifle build I would like to see Build Up not draw the Mace. I would like to see the crab backpack issue resolved. I would love to do a 2nd build and play a Crab Soldier. What do you love about them? I like the ability to be able to take one character and have multiple build options with all the options. I like the team utility https://guidescroll.com/2011/07/city-of-heroes-huntsman-arachnos-wolf-spider-guide/ Adding some additional comments: I have been playing my SoA today and I recall why I have been letting him sit idle. His damage seems low compared to other sets and the endurance drain with all the toggles seems high. I would suggest increasing the damage and the specs on Conditioning.

Damn, I got really excited and was about to start respeccing characters. On another note, I decided to do an AE mission today due to the thread on Dev Choice. I was completely surprised to see AE packed with characters running farms. With all the DOOM being presented here I thought there would be a farm strike or something. Nope, looks like farming as usual. Anyway, here is the link if anyone wants to support Dev Choice missions.

Did I miss this somehow?

I want to thank the dev team for all the work they do voluntarily. This patch looks great and you guys are doing a fantastic job. Thank you so much for all your efforts. CoH was my first MMO and I loved playing it. When it first came out it provided a welcome distraction that got me through some hard times. When it went away I was upset with NCSOFT and when HC brought it back my happiness was stratospheric and I was extremely grateful. It has been less than a year and already people have lost their sense of gratitude and seem to feel entitled. It is disheartening for me to see this thread devolve in this manner. It reminds me of 9/11 when everyone pulled together at first and a few years later everyone was back to their partisan bickering. Now we have a virus killing people and the economy is tanking. This game provides a welcome distraction during these trying times and instead of being grateful for the work that the dev team does voluntarily on behalf of the CoH community we have the arguments and bickering. It is unreal to me. Please take a deep breath and think about what is going on in the world now. Try to be understanding and compassionate and give these changes a try. I believe this dev team has earned some goodwill, so why not give the changes a chance? I hope all of you are staying safe and you and your families are staying healthy.

Here is a build I created some time back. This build was trying to recreate one of my characters from Live, but I have not tried to finish it here yet. I used to have Fly on Live, so I know this build is not the same as before. That being said, StJ/SD was a very good build and fun to play. I also had a MA/SD that was great as well. I only skipped Confront and One with the Shield in this build.

I'm not sure what is wrong with this. When I recruit for TFs I will post the count as the team fills, so that people that might be interested know the team is filling up.

I wouldn't mind seeing Executioner's Shot turned into a snipe. I would also like to see Swap Ammo as an inherent and that power replaced with an Aim power.

/jranger

I understand that if you use the 2nd build for a crab then the crab backpack shows up even for the other builds. I'm willing to do that and create the 2nd build, but was looking for a high end build. I did look at the SOA forum, but there were a number of builds, so couldn't figure out what was best. Probably doesn't matter much. I started a new job recently, so haven't been able to play.

Have you solo'ed TFs/AVs/GMs with this combo? I have a SOA Huntsman build I could switch to a Crab, but then I think it messes up my costume. Might be willing to make the sacrifice though. Do you have a build you could share?

I am currently working on an Archery/TA blaster and am pushing for 45%+ Ranged and S/L defense, but I am definitely interested in seeing your build. To get the 45%+ I had to skip Ice Arrow and slot Thunderstrikes, but I am only level 33. I would love to see a proc build that works for this combo.

This should be in the Brute forum. The Help and Support forum is for bugs and game issues. You'll get more feedback if you move it (probably).