Snarky

If you turn off experience and solo a lot of content at lower levels you will knock most of that nostalgia away pretty fast 🙂

Always comes down to how you play. Do you play "vanilla"? solo, x1/+0? You'll have a great time. Are you trying to keep up with badging speedrunners on +4/x8? You'll be miserable.

I think Dark Dark reaches its ultimate on the Brute. It is easier to be survivable on the Tank but achievable on the Brute. Like almost same survivability. Then there is the fact that the Dark Armor “Tanks” really poorly. Not in survivability, but in design. Part of the survivability of Dark is the stealth field. In survivability Def>Res>Heal. Dark literally stands this on its head. No defense or nearly none. No defenses debuff resistance so worthless to build. Instead Stealth, two toggles that do crowd control, massive to hit debuffs, and the best heal in the game. But that stealth, non suppressed stealth. Bad from a Tanker perspective. Great on a Brute

The yellow salvage wars also led me to reconsider how much I post on the boards. Which led me to spend most of my gaming time in another mmorpg except for two weekly SG events. Cosmic Council is just too chill to not stay connected. But, for now, I am just burnt on most of it

I tend to not PROC. My builds are extravagant things that chase set bonuses to achieve other goals. Sometimes even smart and worthy ones. I enjoy the smoothless feel of a high armor Brute or a high defense Blaster. I build Doms just because they are fun to chase bonuses on. Too bad they are meh at 50+ content. Sorry not sorry for any offense. Similarly I love building Sentinels, it i feel those start to lose gas 30+

I have a tax guy that can help you with that. It is all in what you call them and how you deduct. Also eliminating the peskier auditors helps

Most Redside maps are enclosed. There are a precious few that are wide open. In Port Oakes you steal something in one mission and then plant it in a big city map. 4 crates and one hero. Lot of LB. In GV there is one from TV. Also late game is a ruined city two island. Most of these you have seem on farm maps. On the virgil tarikoss SF there is a big map, which is also in a Cap mission somewhere Oh Dmitri Krylov in Cap has kidnap citizens for live vivisection by Vahz. Big map. Cheers

I tend to not be super helpful. Sorry not sorry 😢 Magisterium is the final Incarnate Trial. It has some interesting mechanics. If you want a tour on Excelsior the Cosmic Council SG does a Really Hard Way badge run of the Magisterium every Saturday at 9eastern 6Pacific. Discord required for listening. If you are a good player who can follow instructions from voice chat it is real easy. Cadd and the leadership carefully explain each step patiently and completely each week. Tier 4d Incarnates with full build required. But if you are a devent player who can follow instructions it should be fine. I brought a Dark/Dark Brute my first run. Word of experience….melee is tough in the final fight die to mechanics. We need to keep a crapton of DPS up and Tyrant keeps dropping lightning fields. I have a Beam Rifle Blaster built up and dedicated to the Trial. O Ya. The Magisterium is not run often by PUGs. It is a complicated trial made mysterious by lack of anyone doing it. I bet you would have better luck running it with an organized group on a serious run than a PUG without Discord trying to figure out WTF os happening in this new phase

Magisterium Incarnate Trial

And this “not reading/following instructions” thing is why a lot of people who PUG just want to run +0. Just get it done, badge/merits

Most TFs are done for merits/badges. Half of PUG teams are under powered, under enhanced, or people trying new things (not optimal) There are plenty of ads for +4 or you could start your own

It is still (from my experience) a hit or miss PUG event and a fairly quick SG event with Discord

I usually try for a real quick origin story and a touch of character attitude my main, Snarky the vampire’s bio is basically a couple sentences griping at people for assuming he might be related to the council non vampire abominations or even worse want to go to high school and date a teenager. Then he gives one last snark about “why are you still here?”

i'll give you that. i thought of cones after i posted. but cones are more target capped in general i believe? i think a lot (and this is by memory of blaster aoe and cones so may be wrong) of the circle AoE tend to have more generous target caps making an increase of footprint more functionally powerful

A quick note. Increasing AoE Radius is not equal to increasing range on a ST attack. Increasing ST range is a linear bonus. AoE radius increase would by definition be a geometric increase, and therefore way more powerful.

you can run it at really low difficulty as well. Do this with a SG team to learn a bit more. or run it a dozen times "speed" pug and slowly get the gist of it. good rewards

no

I do this as the core of some builds. Some builds/archetypes it favors. Others it is counterproductive. I never ignore build goals to do it. Dominators favor this due to chasing global recharge, but the last half to third of the build they dive into other sets, chasing global recharge A Ss/Inv Brute built for me by Hyperstrike is nearly all PvP, ATO, Purple and Winters. It still dallies with “lesser sets” to achieve build goals though

The Really Hard Way is….okay yeah deep end. I started with Cosmic on a Dark/Dark Brute. It was not pretty. Long animation melee class in that battle is just horrid. I play a Beam Rifle Blaster for that trial now. The rest of the Saturday night content is surprisingly easy if you are good at following instructions on Discord. And the instructions are very precise. Badges, fun, save the world, cause mayhem

Cosmic has a Discord that is used to join. It is in my posts on Excelsior board. (On a phone right now so not easy for me to grab). Basically read the rules and then post that you agree in the discord chat it says to do that in. Officers monitor that and will get you fitted in pretty quick

Any game someone does not like can be boiled down to this statement Crafting of some type in every game is enjoyed by a small community of OCD types and immersive players. Things exist for a reason You do not enjoy it. Get some Inf and buy what you want. Snarky solves another problem.

Last night at Cosmic Council social gathering (over a billion handed out in trivia prizes and mult winter/super packs as door gifts!) we had three new people say they had just recently found out about CoH I know most of us think everyone knows CoH is available. It is not well known

If you like cones Dark/Mental is a firehose

It still is a pain even with taunt because you have to actively get everyone’s attention (except Rikti drones, Rularuu eyes,etc). It is just plain more work, and has to be done every room. Where a regular Tank or Brute just meeds to waltz in before the team and is immediately the life of the party

Dark Armor has more problems than KB on a tank. I have a 50d Dark Dark Tank i never run. My main is a Dark Dark Brute…with no taunt. No room. Dark has the issue of a non suppressed stealth. Which works GREAT for the Brute. No defense? Not as much of an issue when you can kill everyone in your general area while everyone outside that circle ignores you. Not great for Tanking