Acyl

Yeah, it really shouldn't be hard finding a team on Freedom. I'm on Virtue, which has comparable population to Freedom and I don't have issues.

Tealeaf's suggestions are all excellent.

Do join a global chat channel - I don't know about Freedom, but most servers have globals that are dedicated to folks looking for teams or forming groups.

Hanging out in Atlas is also good if you don't mind doing AE stuff...indeed it should be easier finding an AE team because they don't care about level so much.

This ParagonWiki Article has a description of all the servers, with a brief paragraph on each. What the community's like, how folks identify themselves, so on.

The irony of a die-hard Virtue player answering in this thread is probably astounding, I know. But what the hell, there you go.

Maybe the OP is allergic to catgirls?

Well, earlier in the thread Sardan pointed out that Rain of Arrows has a higher cap than Full Auto.

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OFT
i wish you got heavy burst instead of slug, nothing sucks more than being "AR/" and only having 2 attacks that use it, and like 4-5 that use the m-203.

OT
i think itll "rise above the noise" just make sure corr is in the title and im sure he will be thanking heaven as he opens it that its not another dom Q or QQ.

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The thing about the assault rifle attacks...it's hard to please everyone. I personally dislike the whole flamethrower and grenade stuff, but some folks love it. And...well, I like slug. I also love the sniper attack. Because to me, shooting a rifle isn't about burst and automatic fire. It's about single shots.

(Yes, even an assault rifle. I don't know about all militaries, but my own basic training was about precision shooting, not more dakka.)

But clearly you want more Rambo-style machine gun firing. And that's fine, really - it's a perfectly legitimate opinion, especially in a superhero game.

Can't please everyone. So we have a Swiss Army Rifle that annoys everyone equally. =D

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I believe that is precisely what Pain Domination is. They are the antithesis of Empathy. IMO, fallen Empaths would become Pain Doms, as fallen Jedi become Dark Jedi.

If Castle were to add the ability for Villains to be Empaths I would be very, very disappointed.

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Here's the thing. What you propose won't work for gameplay reasons.

Pain Domination and Empathy have different powers. That means they have different enhancement slotting.

If a character side-switches...and their powerset, in the process, changes from Pain Domination to Empathy (or vice-versa), their enhancement slotting is going to go wahoonie-shaped.

That means you'd probably need an immediate respec. Fine. That's doable.

Even so, it's a great and terrible inconvenience, particularly if you're a high-level character with significant IO set slotting and expensive enhancements in your build.

Sure, the devs could do it your way, but it'd be a nightmare for many players.

That's why I doubt the developers would go down this route. It's not very player-friendly at all, and in fact requires more technical resources.

It would in fact be easier to just shift a character directly from heroside to villainside. Indeed we've seen how this might go; there's been a few famous cases of characters created on the wrong side.

I still have a screenshot on my HD somewhere of that level 50 brute I ran into on a heroside Hami raid. His bio basically told the story of his adventures with customer support. =D

You say 'mature factions', so I take it you'd be more comfortable joining a large established supergroup rather than a small and newly-formed one.

Most of the SGs recruiting in Atlas broadcast tend to be freshly-formed outfits. It may be a better bet for you to post on the Virtue forums - describe your character concept, and I'm sure some SG leaders will swing round to talk to you.

Alternatively, check out the stickied supergroup directory thread in the Virtue forums.

1) Tanking and Staying Alive

In my opinion, most tankers only get really good once you have all your key defensive toggle powers, and have Single Origin enhancements in them. So around level 22+. It's possible to be quite tough before then, but that's my general rule of thumb.

As a lowbie tank, it's not that hard to get aggro - but it can be difficult to survive it. As for Enhancements as a lowbie, I wouldn't bother with Training Origin Enhancements, but Dual Origin Enhancements are definitely worth slotting. Or possibly IOs from the 10-20 range.

2) Salvage and Recipes

Because of limited storage space, you should sell most of what you find. Regular IO (non-set) recipes should probably be sold to NPC vendors at the low levels. Currently it's often worthwhile to sell at least your common salvage at Wentsworth and the Black Market.

Note that even at low levels you can get some drops that sell for a lot on the market, like Celerity +Stealth and Steadfast Protection Res/Def 3%.

All zones that have a market also have a Vault Reserve, the same as in Pocket D. It's one common storage inventory, no matter where you access it from.

You can also store stacks of recipes or stacks of salvage (up to 10) in your market slots. So long as you don't list a price, they won't be sold - thus this can act as a form of storage.

3) Scrapper: BS/SD

As other folks have suggested, check out the Scrapper forums. Try looking at the stickied thread listing Scrapper guides written by players. BS/SD is a popular combination and I think there's at least one or two good guides written for it.

Personally, I think your greatest challenge as a BS/SD is endurance management. Broadsword takes huge chunks out of an enemy's health, but huge chunks out of your endurance bar. Shield Defense has relatively heavy endurance consumption for a Scrapper secondary. Not as bad as Dark Armor can be, but not great.

This means you'll need to consider endurance cost reduction slotting in your powers. If you can get around that hurdle, however, BS/SD is a very effective combination.

4) Popular Servers

The two most popular servers are Freedom and Virtue.

Freedom is a general gamer server. It is THE biggest server. It has a bad reputation in some circles. Personally I don't think it's got a higher proportion of idiots and bad players. It's just that the server is so large, there's more of them by default.

Virtue is the unofficial roleplay server. Not everyone on Virtue is a roleplayer, but the RP community is big enough that it makes a significant difference for the community's personality.

However, here's the thing. Freedom and Virtue are so highly populated that during periods of high activity - like reactivation weekends, new issue launches, and special events... you may have problems getting into the server. The system does stop people from logging in after server activity hits a certain point.

If you choose Freedom or Virtue as your main server, be prepared to take your chances, and don't complain if that happens to you. =)

Infinity is the third most popular server, but I've never seen it get locked out. You could always make characters on more than one server, though.

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You should take pride in your work.

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You should take pride and proof-read your post, you missed a word......


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I know you were making a joke, but...

A post on a message board is quite different from a published piece of work.

I don't care when people make mistakes in chat or quick messages. That kind of fast communication doesn't need to be perfect.

A finished product like a story arc is different. That's basically a piece of published fiction. As such, a certain amount of polish and care is expected.

...and Infinity's reportedly the number three server for general population, so make of that what you will.

Though yeah, I've heard 'Infinity for villains' too. Doesn't seem like Infinity redside is any more active than Virtue redside, though.

(I dunno about Freedom, personally)

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so if i dont enjoy that I wont enjoy Dual blades? I like dual blade stalkers but they seem a little to squishy for my liking which is why I dont really wanna play one.

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ClawsandEffect is correct. Stalkers can go toe-to-toe, but you're absolutely right in thinking they are more fragile. That's the point. A properly built Stalker can be reasonably tough, but never solid like a Brute.

Dual Blades has one notable advantage for Brutes. DB attacks animate quick and recharge fast. You can throw out a lot of attacks in a short span of time. This makes gaining and keeping Fury somewhat easier.

What's the downside? Dual Blades lacks a big heavy attack. Pretty much all the DB attacks are fast, but they only do moderate damage. DB doesn't have a single attack that really uses Fury to do awesome damage (like Knockout Blow).

Is that a huge problem? No. It really isn't. Honestly any brute will be fine solo. My own 50 brute is an Elec/Will built for groups. It's a team-centric build, and Elec Melee is notoriously lousy for single-target damage (it's better for AoEs). But my brute still goes through solo missions much faster than most characters.

You're kinda looking at this the wrong way. You're asking which brute is the 'most dominating' in solo play. That's like asking what kind of grenade is the most explosive. All brutes solo well. You'll be a rampaging murder machine no matter what you choose.

The only limiting factor you'll encounter is your endurance consumption. At the early levels you'll probably run out of endurance way before you run out of health. Which is actually another reason why Dual Blades isn't a bad choice. The attacks are relatively endurance-light compared to end hogs like Stone Melee or Battle Axe.

So if you like Dual Blades, by all means, go with Dual Blades.

For your secondary, I suggest Willpower or Super Reflexes, because they're the easiest to get used to - most of the powers are toggles or passives, so there's not much you need to activate or watch out for. But honestly, just go with whatever sounds cool to you.

That's correct. Just chest symbols.

No - the Arachnos Cape is different. That's a cape that has the Arachnos Logo on the back. I think the only way to get that is the collector's edition.

The Arachnos chest symbol is included with the 30 month vet reward, but we can't put chest emblems on our capes.

Freedom and Virtue both have a high redside population, because they're the two most populated servers in general.

I wouldn't characterise Freedom as a 'PvP server'. It's more a general gamer server, just a particularly large one. It's Virtue where the culture is more distinctly different due to the high concentration of RPers.

If I'm not mistaken, the 'paid services' like character renames and such are free on the test servers. I've never tried it, but I would assume that a server transfer in the test client can move a character from TR1 to TR2...

Well, there's nothing official - but there are player-created offline character builders.

Mids' Hero Designer is the most popular one right now. You can plan your character's powers and enhancements, view data on power effects, download and view other people's builds, export your build to the forums, and so on.

If you're playing a brute, what you can do is...before you get SOs, slot your attacks for accuracy and endurance reduction TOs and DOs - don't bother with damage slotting. Fury should be enough of a damage buff at the lower levels.

Freedom's high population also means you might not be able to log into the server during periods of high activity, such as reactivation periods, new issue launches, and double XP weekends.

Of course, there's nothing stopping you from keeping your characters on Freedom, but also making alts on different servers.

Depends on whether you want the DVD or not, and any other stuff that might be in the box. Having the DVD will make re-installing the game (or indeed installing it on another machine) easier.

However if you have a DVD burner or something, you can actually make your own backup of the game files - CoH takes up about 3 gb on your hard drive, which should fit comfortably on a single DVD. Copying the directory and all the subdirectories works fine - to 'install' on a different computer, just copy the files from the DVD and run the updater.

Really, that's the main benefit of having a physical copy of the game. The disc. If that's not important to you, then just the code from an online purchase will suffice. After all, you've already got the client downloaded.

I don't think the Architect Edition box has any really nifty physical objects inside it. City of Villains came with a HeroClix figurine, but AE has nothing like that to my knowledge.

Well, the tank and brute knockout blow is right-handed. I don't know about the mastermind one, but I'd imagine it's the same animation.

Well...you've already pointed out the lack of bonus XP for mission completion.

Patrol XP doesn't get used in architect missions either.

You can't get purple drops in the architect.

Yeah, this is Player Questions. Questions you ask other players to answer. The devs don't usually read this forum, y'see.

Unless you meant this as sorta a rhethorical thing and wanted to know what we think about it. And I agree with you, it's not a bad idea.

Even then, you still prob'ly want the other forum...

Well, you'd want the /cce command to change costumes with an emote, as opposed to the older /cc command, which just changes the costume.

/cce 0 ccspin versus /cc 0

There are a few disadvantages of leveling in the MA.

Normal missions give you an XP bonus at the end, and finishing a regular story arc gives you a significant chunk of XP as well. MA content does not have those XP bonuses - you only earn XP from killing things.

You do get ticket bonuses from finishing an MA mission, and that's profitable in and of itself - but we're talking levelling and XP here.

Secondly, I'm not sure how patrol XP interacts with the MA. While doing MA missions, you don't seem to burn through your patrol XP at all...as far as I can determine. I'm not sure about this, but that's certainly how it looks. The patrol XP bar still functions as a buffer for debt, though, so you're getting something from it.

Finally, there's the issue of custom critters. I love fighting custom enemies. But generally speaking, custom critters are harder opponents than canon enemy groups. This is particularly evident if you're a mez-using character, say a controller - NPCs with mez protection are rare in the regular game, but considerably more common in the MA.

Now. All that said, there's plenty of people who are going 1-50 in the MA. I know lots of folks running MA-only characters. Obviously the limitations aren't that big a deal to most folks.

Honestly, I'd just go ahead and try it. If you're careful with selecting what arcs to play, you should have a pretty good experience. Best advice I can give - see the ParagonWiki article on Mission Architect Tags. It's pretty hard to find lowbie-friendly missions the normal way - so using the LBMA (Lowbie MA) tag in search has been quite useful for me.

He is actually a boss, as the name suggests.

When you target the Boss Signature Pets version in-game, it may indicate he's something else.

I can't remember what the patron pets are labeled, but if you target the Boss Signature Pets Sister Psyche, for instance, it indicates she is a Hero. But she's actually just a boss.

I've you've done the blueside Mender Silos TF, as your post seems to imply ... remember all the Vindicators and Freedom Phalanx members you can get as pets? Remember how they all die very easily? That's because they're actually bosses like these. Except Citadel, he's a full-fledged Elite Boss for some strange reason.

1) Upgrading: You can upgrade at any point during the trial.

2) Info Source: ParagonWiki is the leading player-run source of information for the game.

3) RP server: Virtue remains the unofficial RP server. It is also currently the second most populated server in the game, after Freedom. This is not always a good thing; you may have difficulty connecting during surges in activity such as free reactivation weekends or double XP weekends.

There are RP groups on other servers, so you may wish to consider that. All that said, I'm an RPer and play on Virtue - the momentary inconvenience isn't that off-putting for me, at least.