Android_5Point9

Just wanted to say: this thread makes me smile.

That's all.

Yeah, that's probably stuck away in a bunch of "generic" sounds. Me and a few friends have made a habit of picking out that particular police line in movies/shows/commercials just because of how often it shows up.

A lot of CoH's sound is "stock", actually. Believe the old Atlas Park theme was as well.

I assumed the reasoning was fairly simple: he doesn't have the powers of Zeus anymore. I'm paraphrasing like all hell here, but I believe it was Prometheus who said that whomever kills an Incarnate claims their power. You bring back Statesman sans Zeus powers, he's no longer effectively immortal, and he falls over in a slump and dies real quick from age. Rinse and repeat until he's fed up with you for trying, and just stays in whatever afterlife he's found himself in.

Sure, they could do something where they revive him, put him in stasis or something, and find a way to let him reclaim the powers of Zeus by striking down Wade or something like that. But then you'd all complain that it was lazy writing and he should have stayed dead. There's no "winning" here.

Hey. He told us what's going on.

Some people find damage procs a little more suited to the first tier of pets, especially if you can maximize the number of attacks the proc will go off from. Their damage is consistent, so giving each of the three a chance to fire it off in a majority of their attacks can be a good boost. It's the reason Interface is so good for Masterminds, since Interface works with every damage power each one of your pets uses.

Must be an error in Mids then, or something changed after i20. Believe Black Scorpion mentioned that nothing was going to affect Destiny because the base values were too high, and they didn't want to have to balance them around outside buffs. I think the only exception to that rule is PvP, where even the +recharge Alphas affect all the other slots.

edit: Either way, yeah I'd still go with the +regen.

It's subjective as all hell, sure, but I prefer the +regen way more than the +hp. The heals are identical on both Rebirths, so the real kicker to me is the smallest effect that lasts the full duration of the recharge (ie, 120 seconds).

For +regen that's 12.5hp/sec, and for +maxhp that's 53.5 hp.

Also, how are you getting to the Brute hp cap with the tier 4? Mids is showing a +375hp benefit for 10 seconds, leaving you a good 700ish short even at its best.

I can't speak for Dual Blades at all, since I've never played the set.

However, for Super Reflexes, you definitely want to take every power. The two "optional" ones are Quickness and Elude. Quickness is a minor movement speed buff, and a considerable boost to your overall recharge speed which is actually very helpful. Elude will give you exactly 45% (soft-capped) defense, which means you'll only get hit 5% of the time. However, after the timer is up, you crash to 0 endurance and won't recover any endurance for a while unless you use inspirations. Some people like it, some don't. If you can manage to get to 45% defense without using Elude, then it's almost entirely worthless. Thankfully, it's very easy to Super Reflexes to do that. Three slotting the passives with defense SOs, putting at least three defense SOs in all your toggles and Hide, and taking Combat Jumping and Maneuvers with one or two defense SOs should get you slightly under 45%. Alternatively, you can look into the Fighting power pool, and take Tough and Weave. 3 slotting defense SOs into Weave, and putting 1 defense SO into Combat Jumping (or Hover) will put you at the softcap as well.

For your Epic Pool, Soul is an ok choice, but Shadowmeld isn't needed as Super Reflexes. Snipes on a Stalker are a terrible choice right now since they take forever to go off, and your target will likely be dead on a team by the time it does (they're getting re-evaluated overall in a later patch). A hold can be useful, and Soul Storm's is the best looking of the bunch.

The other two you mentioned are both good picks, so it's really up to you. Body Mastery's +end is enhanceable and very useful, and with the Stalker changes in Issue 22, the extra endurance and the extra Recovery from Physical Perfection would be pretty helpful since you'll be using Assassin's Strike more often. Focused Accuracy and Targeting Drone both have very high endurance costs, but it might be worth it depending on your build. Right now, some of the Epic Pools' attacks crit from Hide, but some don't. They're getting normalized in Issue 22, though. Single target Epic Pool attacks will have 100% chance to crit from hide, and AOE Epic Pool attacks will have a 50% chance.

Someone else will have to offer you advice on the Dual Blades stuff, but hopefully that helps some!

As far as raw numbers are concerned without accounting for your secondary set, MA has the best single target damage, and SS has the best aoe damage. StJ is slightly under MA in single target and slightly better than MA in aoe.

It really depends on your concept what you might want to go for though. StJ is sort of Batman-style brawling, great for a vigilante themed character - it also looks awesome and flows well with the combos. Martial Arts is probably the best animated launch set, and it's more of a precise style, and a lot more kicks (you can use power customization to change some of them to punches, though). Super Strength is really Hulk-ish, fits the Brute archetype perfectly. You use Rage as a long lasting Build Up, but it has a lengthy crash where you can't do any damage for a little bit.

For whatever it's worth, this used to be briefly possible when alignment was introduced. I'm not 100% certain, but I think a few hero/villain coalitions still exist as a result of the bug.

To name a few...

Super Reflexes: Something to bring it on par with Shields. I've always wanted a scaling taunt/damage aura power like Against All Odds or Rise to the Challenge that does damage, increasing the damage done with each enemy that comes near you. The rationale being that they're not hitting you, but everyone around you. Other than that, maybe tighten up the range that the passive +res comes into play. The mentality of being amazing at 1hp was sort of tossed out the window with Defiance 1.0.

Mercs/Assault Rifle: I rarely play MMs as is, and the first one I tried was Mercs and wowzers was it not fun. Left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. I'll extend the notion to all of the "gun" sets. It's not exactly superhero-y to shoot a gun. To carry a gun, a grenade launcher, a rocket launcher, a flamethrower, and have that "fully armed" feel can be fun if you do it right. Having 4 "shoot doodz" powers isn't, if you ask me.

Stone Armor: I kinda think the whole set could use a revamp, though that might not ever happen. I've got little to no experience with it, but all I've heard are horrible things. Do you really just drop everything and run Granite and that's it? 'cause that sounds horrible.

Battle Axe: Numbers wise, it always looked like a gimped War Mace. Which is sad, because Battle Axes are awesome. Another set I haven't played, but I've also seen nobody else play.

Martial Arts: Slightly biased here, but a smidgen more AOE wouldn't hurt (even more so on the Stalker version), and Storm Kick always looked like a cone attack to me. Cobra Strike and Crane Kick are literally identical powers with different secondary effects, so maybe a little bit more diversity there.

Peacebringers: I got one to mid-20s and just couldn't keep going. The attacks are weak, the secondary effects are "meh", and the overall feel and visuals are a bit lackluster. I'd hope that after Stalkers they're the next on the list to get a look at.

We might eclipse the patrons in power, but that doesn't mean they aren't important and powerful in their own right. I mean, why else would Recluse keep them around otherwise?

I don't see why future content couldn't involve you intimidating them for information, or just working alongside them. Tips are something I'd love to see more of redside. "Mako knows about a magic carp that will help you destroy the world, but he ain't talkin'. Go punch his face!"

Between two damage auras and a Spines/whatever's loads of AOE and -speed, going for Spectral might not be a bad idea. T4 has 25% for the 4 sec immobilize and the damage (negative, same amount as Reactive). Not sure how/if it stacks, though. Certainly worth looking into.

Yep. "Help Me!" makes it purple, "Helper" makes it yellow. The default is blue. Enemy players/dead players not on your team are orange. Teammates are green. Leaguemates are a teal-ish color.

The Tier 8 veteran reward (that you specifically mentioned) changes your title color, not your name color.

Yeah, I'm not sure that that CS Rep is entirely accurate either.

Once you went back to Premium, all your characters should have been locked, and you should have been able to unlock at least 2 characters on whatever server you want.

You also mentioned that you had 4 characters you unlocked from before you subscribed as a VIP, so I'm guessing you had slots unlocked on that original server. Now, if you moved all 4 to another server, you shouldn't be able to unlock them all. Just 2 on the more populated server (or any server, really), and 2 on the original one.

Once you've unlocked a character though, you can't re-lock them unless you go VIP for at least a month again.

Either way, I'd ask CS again if that doesn't answer your question.

When you first switch back to Premium from VIP, you should have at least 2 account-wide slots to unlock characters with no matter what server they're on. Any character slots you redeemed before the switch to Freedom stay on whatever server you used them on, even if you go Premium.

If you want more than that, the other option is to buy slots through the Paragon Market.

Yep. It's the only way to claim Character Items, actually. Account Items are given to every character and you can just hit Claim All though, so you might not have noticed that.

Right. That means every time you hit Claim, it's giving you one Enhancement Unslotter. In the lower half of the window it would say, "Available: 8" if you redeemed your reward token once. When you hit Claim, you'll get one Unslotter, and then it should change to "Available: 7".

Like I mentioned, sometimes they bunch up the totals. I know for the Super Packs on beta, you can get large quantities of Reward Merits as a prize, but you can only redeem them in increments of 25. So when you win 100 merits out of a pack, you have to redeem it 4 times to get all 100.

'tis a tad confusing, admittedly.