WumpusRat

I haven't made any characters with "multiple forms" yet or anything. Though I do have one that I COULD do something like that for. She's a bot/ff mastermind who pilots her bots remotely (she's a bit of a coward, and doesn't want to get punched in the face by some super-strong person intent on killing her, so she just controls all the bots from her little command center elsewhere), so the "main body" is just another robot, that I tried to make look as close to the tier-1/2 bots as I could. Same arms, legs, etc. It's just there to provide bubbles and buffs to the other bots, that deal all the damage. In theory I could have her create a singular bot (that would probably be much larger) that has a wider array of functions, and so could make it into a blaster, sentinel, or something else. Or a melee-version of the robot for a brute, tanker, or something else.

Redside definitely makes you feel (at least as far as what you're fighting within the missions) like you're getting to the point of making a real name for yourself among the powerful. You're going toe to toe with the Vindicators, the Freedom Phalanx, punching Big Named Heroes(tm) in the face regularly, etc, once you get into the 25+ range. Once you hit Nerva you'll get missions to go after individual named heroes like Aurora Borealis, Luminary, etc. On the hero side, you're generally just facing off against "Family boss mob with a name", "Carnie boss with a name", "Council Archon-of-the-week", etc, unless it's in a TF. It's only at 40+ that you really start fighting Big Names(tm) solo. Course, the downside is on redside a LOT of the contacts treat you like you're mud on the bottom of their shoe, rather than someone who could snap them in half. I actively try to avoid working with Hardcase because of that. And any time there's a mission where you get to punch him in the face, I'm all in. But then there's Dean. Everyone's favorite contact. Because D-Mac is awesome.

I was fiddling around with a "max sniper range" build the other day. On a psi/nrg blaster I could get a psionic snipe to reach out to around 400+ feet away. Further than max render distance. Though I'd often lose targeting beyond around 360ft or so. And stuff would still aggro me even from that range.

And of course neither of them dare say a word about old grandpa Newspaper, the one who points people towards them. They know what side their bread is buttered on, after all.

My personal favorite is introducing people who avoid Carnie missions (since few groups seem to actively pick missions with them) to just how fragile Carnies are to lethal damage.

I have a bunch of SGs that are just me (or just me and one or two other people), and a couple characters in larger groups. Generally when I start making characters, I'll end up with a "theme" that a lot of times kind of overlaps with other characters, so I'll lump them all into one SG. For instance, my aliens that are hunting Rikti are all members of a SG that is "Members of the Sanguine Dancer Crew". They have their own base (the ship) and such, and has around 15 characters in it. Another would be all my D&D/Pathfinder characters, who are part of "Greyhawk Adventurers", and likewise have their own base and such, and has around 30 characters. Plus a few more, but you get the idea. If they could turn the Vault into a mass shared storage facility for all your characters and divorce storage from SGs, that would be pretty cool. Would certainly make things more flexible. Though I'd probably still have several SGs of my own just for sorting all my characters into.

LotG isn't a proc, it's a permanent buff. Sudden Accel isn't a proc, it's a behavior change from knockback to knockdown instead. Not only that, but I actually mentioned KD procs in my post, which you snipped out in favor of cherry-picking that one half-sentence. And considering this thread is almost entirely about damage procs (which I was pointing out in my post), this seems like needless semantics on your part.

That sounds like it would be an interesting group for an AE arc. "The monsters that hunt the monsters." Basically some very, very black-ops group that even Malta is terrified of.

This is correct. If you have any patrol exp the debt comes out of that first. I THINK it was that way back on live, too. Though patrol exp built up more slowly. With the exploration badges granting patrol exp now, it's incredibly safe to faceplant. Just grab an exploration badge or two, and you're set.

"Don't heal me, my Defiance is at max right now!" Headbanging Blasters riding the redline of 10 hp.

I think part of the "problem" with procs is that when they first came out, there weren't all that many damage procs. There were a bunch of different types. Immob procs, stun procs, damage procs, etc. But since almost nobody bothers to actually USE the non-damage procs (other than the occasional use of Lockdown +2 mag or some knockdown procs), the procs that have been added have mostly been damage procs. And with more and more options to stack bonus %dmg onto powers, and the oddball way that the "proc per minute" thing functions (I put a proc into my enforcers on one of my thug MMs to test it, and the freaking thing went off 18 times in one minute), people found out they could just stack scads of global recharge and go wild with procmonkey builds. Seeing people argue that "the ideal" slotting for an attack power is like 2 hami's and 4 procs is kind of ridiculous, imo. I have a few characters have use procs. Mostly my trollers, to turn one power into a potential "thump" rather than grinding stuff down. But I can do it without procs, too. Just takes a few seconds longer. I think if they were going to "balance" procs they should just have them set for like "can only go off once every X" or something. That way procs are a nice bonus, but you don't RELY on them to do damage.

On the other hand, I absolutely LOATHE having to do that in other MMOs. The moment CoH created the exit mission button, every time I'd play another MMO that didn't have it I'd finish a dungeon and sit there at the end thinking "Man, now I have to slog all the way back to the exit to leave...plus there are going to be respawns in the way...ugh..." The instant-exit just feels more cinematic. After all, who wants to sit through ten minutes of watching the adventurers backtrack their way through the dungeon they've already cleared? "Hey, there's that pit we almost didn't see the hidden cover to." "Yeah, that would have been nasty." "Good thing we saw it." "So, anyone want to get a beer when we get back to town?" "Sure, sounds good." "...are we there yet?"

That actually reminds me, back near the end of live my bf at the time and I created a pair of characters named Bare Bear and Bear Bare, who had boots, gloves, bear ears, and a domino mask, with the chain wrapped waistband and shoulders, with everything else being "bare". Dark skin with the eden and bikini bits as close as possible to the skin color. It was silly fun. 🙂

I've barely done anything with the mapserver thing. I used it to finish off the incarnate unlocks on a couple of characters, got one from 49.5 to vet-1 with it, and out of curiosity hopped into it with a level-1 to see how far a single event would take me. Ended up getting to 16th with her. Beyond that, I've just killed a few of the mapserver monsters when they've popped on me when I'm wandering between missions or using the AH, but nothing much beyond that. Just "being 50" doesn't really matter to me if the character doesn't have a personality and a concept. I enjoy the leveling process and seeing how a character evolves, and how their personality evolves as I play them. Some I've started out with a particular idea and powersets, and after 30-40 levels thought "This isn't really working, I'll shelve this version and start a new one that better fits the concept and personality".

Oh, you sent a message? I never got it, sorry! Sometimes I go afk for a while while dealing with rl stuff. And if it's in in-game mail, mine's always packed full of recipes that I send back and forth between characters, so I never know if I've gotten something new. 🙂 I'm at work right now, so I won't be home 'til midnight pst. But if it's earlier in the day tomorrow (before 3:30pm which is around when I need to get ready to leave for work) then I could show up. Also, "she" btw not "he". 🙂