Zolgar

The change of SB to a team buff made that so much better. Just toss it on the team when they're in a fight. :)

This drives me up the wall sometimes. If its one of those super crowded rooms and the team is struggling, then fine. But if we're loaded to the gills with Defenders, Corruptors or Controllers it just seems like a waste of time. The mob is already nice and bunched up in a hallway, why are we corner pulling exactly? Bonus face palm points if you have a trigger happy Controller who spams their immob. Causing the mob to be scattered to hell and stuck in place. ("Frontal Herding" is another matter entirely. Where the tank draws new groups of mobs into our pits of doom) I was on a team the other day, we're fighting Crey in one of their techy maps.. and the tank was constantly wanting to corner pull even if it was one solo group. After about the third one, I just beat him to the groups and didn't move.. since I was an AoE brute, everything stayed focused on me >.> If you have a strong party, and you want to practice your pulling, pull more groups on to the party. Your brutes will thank you.

Your naïveté is astounding. Of course Marvel could sue this fan based show, the same way for many years Lucas nuked any Star Wars fan site. If a company doesn’t protect its copyright then they can lose it. If you are going to argue copyright law, please show some familiarity with copyright law. Actually no. If you do not protect a TRADEMARK you can lose it. You cannot lose a copyright for not protecting it. Essentially, he is correct. My family is in patent law. Litigation in these matters is so astronomically expensive, that unless you have the financial clout of Disney, just defending against litigation is financial ruin. Why even risk it? I was just calling him out for making erroneous claims about copyright law, while saying "If you are going to argue copyright law, please show some familiarity with copyright law." I know full well that Disney doesn't need solid legal grounds to throw a suit at the server, they need only suspect they have legal grounds. I also know full well that should such a suit be thrown against the server, the server would be unable to fight it, even if it was completely bogus and had no real grounds. Granted, I don't think it would be a full on lawsuit, nor do I think it would lead to the server being shut down right away. It would probably just be a C&D which would lead to the devs here implementing a policy akin to the one that Paragon/NCSoft had about copyright characters.

Nothing like that exists yet, unfortunately. I was thinking it would be really cool if there were an archetype that had a primary akin to the Dominator Assault pool, and a secondary that was a mix of pets, and support (in place of the ranged attacks currently with pets). Kind of a little more aggro focused MM, ya know?

If you're covered on buff/debuff, you'll be doing plenty of damage no matter what the team consists of. So if your desire is to increase the damage output of the party, then support is, as others have said your only real option. You could go Corruptor so you can also deal damage pretty well. Something like a Fire/Kin corr is going to have good damage output and also increase the damage of the rest of the party.

Your naïveté is astounding. Of course Marvel could sue this fan based show, the same way for many years Lucas nuked any Star Wars fan site. If a company doesn’t protect its copyright then they can lose it. If you are going to argue copyright law, please show some familiarity with copyright law. Actually no. If you do not protect a TRADEMARK you can lose it. You cannot lose a copyright for not protecting it.

It should* be possible to at least do the following: Create a power with the Sprint animation that is mechanically the same as ninja/beast run. Make it mutually exclusive with the other two and available in the P2W. Create 2 additional Prestige Sprints, that are mechanically identical to Sprint, but use the Ninja/Beast run animation. This would sold both problems you posed. It would also allow ninja/beast run animations to be used with SS and SJ, which would be really nice. *I am not a coder. I know that calling the code for this game a mess is polite though, and sometimes things which should be simple will make the game explode. So I say it should be possible, but I could be absolutely dead wrong on that.

Disney once famously C&D'd a daycare with a homemade Mickey Mouse mural. So yeah. That's actually a bit different: A mural on the side of a for-profit business can be considered advertising for that business. While I may not agree with their interpretation, Disney saw the use of Mickey in the day care center's mural as the use of their IP in advertisement- which goes more to the realm of trademark than copyright, and trademark has to be protected or you lose it, unlike copyright. There is no profit to be made here, and nothing we are doing is used to advertise the game. The closest thing we can liken City of Heroes in its present state to, in terms of legal precedence, would be like Deviant Art (or any other similar site). If I make a Spider-man in game, I am essentially creating Spidey fan art. Sites like Deviant Art are still going strong, and are full of fan art of every IP known to man. I am personally completely confident that this is such small potatoes that the bear we're not supposed to poke doesn't even notice us. We're like a fly buzzing around Kin King's foot.

All part of Nemesis' plan though.

Um, OK, but, why? Just for people to have something to show off to the 'lessers'? I just do not understand why people have to have something 'written in code' here. If they want to add things as their character progresses, they can do that. What is the point of restricting things in code like this other than to give people access to an e-peen variable? Why do people have this need to show others they are 'better' and 'been through more' content? Because unlocking things gives you a sense of progression. When you have to earn things they're more meaningful to you once you have them. On live, I stopped bothering with the cape mission unless I needed a cape for concept, and if I needed a cape for concept I would sit down and reevaluate whether or not I wanted to build a character who would not be "complete" until level 20 when I had to go run the stupid Cape mission AGAIN. When they removed the cape restrictions, it opened things up for me. If I wanted to build a character who was basically Superman, I could. I didn't have to have an incomplete costume for the first 20 levels. If I wanted to make a character whos hands dripped blood in combat, I could. And here, with things like the Vanguard weapons being unlocked, if I want to make a character who fights with energy claws.. I don't have to have 'normal' claws until I get to 35 and can go farm my arse off for Vanguard merits to unlock the claws. (Which I did on live, I had a Claws/Fire brute whos claws were meant to be more akin to Psylock's psi blade). Aside from maybe the first time, unlocking these things never gave me a sense of accomplishment. They just gave me a sense of irritation at having an integral part of my character's look/concept locked behind some stupid gateway.

Some like the super reliability. Especially if they don't know how much level 50 common IO recipes sell for to vendors. >.> I know if I run for tickets I can get 3 pieces of rare salvage ever 2 runs (and an extra piece every 7th run). Being only level 32, this translates to roughly 10mil an hour reliably for me, which is not bad for my level. If I run regular drops it's a bit of a gamble. A gamble that I have won so far (2 purples that earned me 65mil between the two, not to mention a few other nice drops), but a gamble none the less. So if you're under 50 but the AE mission is level 50 you can get purples? Any level 50+ enemies have the possibility to drop purples for anyone who participates in killing them.

Most AoEs is, hands down, without question: Titan Weapons/Fiery Aura combo, which can be found on Brutes, Tanks, and Scrappers. This has no crowd control effects. Spines/Fire and Rad/Fire also place well in this list. I think the most AoE CC abilities would be an Electric/Rad controller, but I could be mistaken there.

For the record, none of Empathy's buffs that were not AoEs were made in to AoEs. Clear mind is a mez resist buff, which none of those are AoE (Increase Density is not the exception, the actual target is the only on to receive the mez resist, the rest of the effects are AoE) Fortitude is single target. Adrenaline Boost is single target. You only AoE buffs are Regeneration and Recovery auras.

The reason there are not really leveling guides is two fold: One) The game is only recently resurrected. A lot of old information was lost or has gone out of date. Two) Unlike many other MMOs out there, there really isn't a "you need to go from this area to this area" or "you need to do this quest line, then this quest line." type progression. There are quest lines and leveled areas yes, but... you can disregard them all you want. In City of Heroes, level guides would be based on what your goal is in leveling. Example, the people saying to run all the old TFs? That's great if your goal is to be well stocked on merits, but it's not good if your goal is speed, because some of those old TFs are painfully slow slogs. If your goal is speed, and no door sitting in a farm? I would say a couple DFBs, Posi 1 and 2, Yin, deck yourself out in 25 basic IOs, and find a team running higher level content willing to take you on until you hit 35 (which won't take long if you're running double XP), then do the ITF and high level mission teams. If your goal is to do it all solo? Just follow your contacts. If they stop giving you missions, find new contacts or do tips. If speed is your ONLY concern? Befriend a farmer, ask them to let you sit in on whatever their favorite farm is. Yes, some of these could be written in to extended guides, but it would still basically be "team with people." or "follow your contacts." >.>

Base stuff is free, Prestige serves no purpose these days. Having your own private SG is well worth the effort, because you can now build it with teleporters and storage and stuff right off the bat, and have a super convenient utility base, and you can invite your own characters to it by typing /altinvite (character name). There's no reason not to do it.

You know what would be a really cool option? If there were a setting at character creation that allowed you to have the costume pieces that used to be locked behind missions and badges re-locked for that character. Now, I know what you're thinking, a player can just choose to not use those pieces. You're right, they can. But here's the thing, that adds the tedium of needing to keep track of everything that used to be locked, and remembering the situation that unlocked it... and it kind of hurts the sense of accomplishment of going "I finally unlocked Romulus' shield." It would allow those who want everything open from the get go to keep their fun. It would allow those who feel that unlocking things made it more special to keep their fun. It would also allow those in the middle the option to say "I want this character to be a true zero to hero, rise to power story with all that comes with it." and have them actually earn their cape and such. Yes, I realize this would probably a lot of work, and is not the best use of our devs time. Just something I think would be super cool as an option. Barring this option, I am 100% on the side of "keep it all unlocked." >.>

I've been playing a Bots/Empathy MM quite a bit recently, doing PUGs. I am a support build, for the character concept, there is no offense built in to the armor suit, only support. (Basically the power armor is built to provide all the services of the emergency teleportation network, outside of the reach of the network, there are then battle ready robots to provide defense for those 'ported in to or out of danger.) If things are going super smoothly, I break out my prestige attacks, because... well, why not? But usually, there's buffs to apply and people and robots to keep alive. I am trying with her to subtly help other support players figure out what they're doing, but using buffs, keeping everyone alive, usually if there's another support with a Clear Mind style power on the team I ask them to keep it up on me, along the lines of "If you can keep me under Increase Density, I can keep the rest of the party under Clear Mind." Also, side note: Tip for any MMs with heals- Heal your damn pets, they're basically extra hit points for you.

On the flip side, there's no way of knowing what's going on in a person's life that prohibits them from logging in. True... I remember several players taking months (years?) off, and they were always grateful to come back to have access to all their characters. Like coming home.However, how do you address name camping? It's an old problem, for certain. A level 1 character that is just languishing on someone's account as a name holder is obviously not a major investment. I thought that was the secondary layer that they came up with back on live? character had to be low level... but how low? I mean, you can level a char to 17 with 4 runs of DFB now. so.... If I were to implement a name purge, I would probably do something akin to: Character must have been offline for at least 1 year. Character must have less than 1 hour total play time. In other words, if you want to squat a name, you need to dedicate an hour of your life do doing so, per character. If you roll a character, play them less than an hour, and never log back in to them... yeah, maybe something unfortunate happened, but odds are the character just didn't click and you never wanted to go back to them.

Wait a second! I played with Healbot 9000! And I coulda swore your Fortitude made my Ice/SS tank (SCP-2300) pretty damn tough. That must have been Healbot 8999.9 v2, he likes to try to claim he's 9000. ;)

Counter point: [me=Zolgar]waves to the person who just walked in with the purple spandex[/me] vs. [me=Zolgar]wave at the Purple Pumpkin[/me] One is very clear which character I am attempting to interact with, the other is a little more vague, and if chat is moving fast could be missed. In character, I may not know who the Purple Pumpkin is, sure, but using their name in non-spoken context is easier for everyone involved. Also, there is the point that... we're superheroes. If Superman walks in to a bar, people are going to know who it is. Personally, I read bios first to find out "is this person famous, if they're out of costume is their identity public or private" etc. and always assume the answer to both of those is 'no' unless otherwise stated.

But. My healz. Healbot 9000 has no attack powers, and only the heals from Empathy, none of that silly Clear Mind or Fortitude. For added benefit I also took the Medicine pool, because healz. I am the best healer ever. No one heals better than I do. I'll make healing great again.

I mean I did explain how to do it, without quite so much detail, so the "not giving away all my secrets" was mostly a joke. :) (It was more I didn't feel like typing that much) Also, thanks for the confirmation on the rarity types. :)

What this guide is: An introduction to what enhancement converters do, and how, in general to use them. What this guide is not: A guide on how to make billions with converters. What are enhancement converters? They are a type of special salvage which allows you to convert set enhancements, both crafted and Attuned, in to other enhancements. How do I get converters? They are a random, semi rare drop from mobs. You can also buy them on the Auction House (on Everlasting at the time of writing this they run 200-300,000 influence), or with Reward Merits at a rate of 3 converters to 1 merit. What are my options with converters? There are 3: In Set Conversion, this option takes the enhancement you are converting and gives you a random, different piece from the same set, it costs 3 converters per conversion. Out of Set Conversion, by type, this option takes the enhancement you are converting and gives you a random piece from a different set of the same type (meaning Defense, PBAoE damage, Healing, etc.), it costs 2 converters per conversion. Out of Set Conversion, by rarity, this option takes the enhancement you are converting and gives you a random piece from a different set of the same rarity (uncommon, rare, pvp, purple, Attuned, Winter, Universal Damage*), it costs 1 converter per conversion. *Currently only one set exists in this category, Overwhelming Force. How do I use converters? First, have a set enhancement you want to convert in your inventory, then open your enhancement tray, next to the 'manage' button there is a button that says 'convert' click that. Drag the enhancement you wish to convert in to the 'input' slot, set the type of conversion you wish to do, and click 'convert'. If you are not happy with the conversion, simply repeat the process. (Note, out of set defaults to rarity, so if you're doing by type you need to re-set it every conversion) What are the limitations of converters? The enhancements will all be the same level, so you cannot convert an enhancement to one that does not exist at the same level. For example, you cannot turn an Adrenal Adjustment to a Performance Shifter, nor can you convert a level 50 Obliteration to an Eradication. In my experience, you can only upgrade from uncommon to rare through conversion, so you cannot turn a Devastation to an Apocalypse, Gladiators Javalin, or Winter's Bite. (I will admit I may be wrong in this, but if it is possible to do so, it is EXTREMELY rare) You can get stuck in an endless loop between two enhancements and waste a ton of converters trying to get something. Are converters reliable? We don't call it 'converter roulette' for nothing. Granted, it's a game you usually win, but it's still a gamble. Can you give a basic example of how to use converters to go from a useless piece to a useful one? I have a Hibernation piece, level 30. This piece is pretty much worthless right? We're starting at 18 converters. We start by converting by rarity, it takes me a few jumps but I finally land on a Red Fortune piece. From there, I convert by Type, now since it's level 30 I have basically the entire Defense pool to get so it takes me a few more jumps to get to Luck of the Gambler. Ultimately I end up with 2 converters left and a Luck of the Gambler: Defense, Endurance piece. Not the proc, but I could probably get it with a few more converters if I wanted to.. I'm satisfied with the Def/end piece though since I need that in my build as well. People talk about using converters to make lots of money, how do they do that? I'm not giving away all of my secrets, but I gave you enough to figure it out.

I would be interested in a Homecoming CIT. I would guess that it is in their plans to get going at some point now that things are sort of pretending to normalize.