_Ilr_

Gotta tell ya, that would be pretty Wack if ppl without CoV couldn't make Bases.

Villain Player1: "Hey, would'ya wanna do today?"

Villain Player2: "How bout we go raid some Hero bases?"

Villain Player1: "Can't yet, all the ones with a copy of CoV are still playing villains"

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...Quality Assurance Lead for Lineage II. While this is an exciting promotion...

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Exciting ... yep, like a 2nd lieutenant stationed in Fiji being "promoted" to a General in Behrut or Rwanda. (Hint: bring along a few rolls of TP and heavy
nerve sedatives).

And for the record... that sucks, whoever's replacing you better be damn good so we don't end up with more gaping holes in the QA like what happened with Toggle Powers and Suppression. ...stuff like that should never slip through.

Well.... Shame on ME for not checking it this month

No openings for a Pixel Monkey? I'm shocked ...SHOCKED I SAY.

In either case, it's nothing that a humble student without Mucho-Deneiro or a pirated copy 3dsMAX/Maya could hope to get in the next year. Sorry Kitty

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Oooh... You guys have any openings? Perhaps one of those entry level positions. I am an artist, but I can't meet the "industry standard" thing. Sort of ran out of money for college before I reached that point.

To bad my mom still doesn't realize we can't afford college anymore. I will have to convince her first then see if I have any real skills I can use for a halfway decent job. I am sort of only good at art.

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Sounds like me... Well I never had any money to go to college with and have been learning all this time. My Reccomendation is to learn to be a Texture Artist, that's what I plan to do since I'd rather color than "Pencil and Ink". Plus seems like the easiest Entry level position. Though for Cryptic, I used to check their homepage (which is different than NCSoft's) and I never saw anything for Artists. Infact given what they've said about new costumes, it sounds like they either get all the Artwork done at NCSoft Headquarters by a larger Art Studio that does all their work for All their games from Lineage to Guildwars and everything in between. ...Either that or they farm it out to China, Singapoore, Japan, whatever to get it on the Cheap...which would be Outsourcing and we know that would be very very naughty of them even if more than half of their market is in Asia. ...So I don't believe there's anyway to work exclusively for Cryptic as an Artist, they only seem to have in-house Coders, Designers, Writers, LevelDesigners, and QA. Everything else from Sound to Legal Dept. seems to be done by NCSoft itself.

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THANKS A LOT, LEGENDARY HEROES!


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All that crap is grey to me, no XP.

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Best Comeback EVAR!!

But then we see the "high quality" booth girls and forget anything we were going to talk to ya about. ...See THAT's why E3 is pointless

Great work CodeMonkey. My ill/KIN thanks you!

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FYI: ArenaNet, a wholly-owned subsidiary of NCsoft Corporation, was founded by key members of the creative teams that developed the hit games Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo, as well as the Battle.net gaming network.

-Gil

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Blizzard managed to vomit up folks who started Flagship AND ArenaNet? Says something about Blizzard, ya know?

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Yeah, it says that they've Screwed up a lot in the last 6 years (And I watched 'em do it, I fought against it, but they did it anyway). They had incredible talent(that got incredibly discusted with corporate-beuracracy) and they squandered their last opportunity for a great game on an EQ rip-off. ...So the real talent (Rob Pardo and Samwise Diddier being the last few remaining exceptions) said "We're going to where it's FUN again". ...And they did.

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I'd love to get Guildwars but my wife is comes from a relgious background and frankly its annoying that every fantasy games degenerates into involving demons and undead which she is very much against. It would be nice to have an fantasy MMO that just stuck to dragons, monsters and goblins.

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I have always wondered why on earth devout Christians are against games where you slay demons by the thousands (Diablo 2, etc) rather than cheering them on. After all, demons are evil, and so when you're fighting pure evil you're doing good. What's the issue?

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*shrug* Rejecting evil might extend to the point of not glorifying them in a vid game, even if they are on the opposing side...I dunno.

One thing I do know is, Tyrael is the most badass looking archangel to date. If there was a statue of him in front of a church I'd go everyday

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...More like Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil, See no Evil...

There's a Lot of confusing crud like this in that particular religion because people don't hold bliblical translations to a direct standard and meaning. Especially nowadays, it's become a matter of "I think that's icky so God must hate it too". Putting on a fascade of fighting and further demonizing the ills of the world while wimping out on the fight with the demons in one's own head....so to speak.

Fact of the matter is, it's only Art, it can't hurt you. Only a frail mind let's entertainment subject matter shake their faith, or for that matter alter the path they follow. Only a REAL person's REAL actions should affect that, yet more and more people seem to have closed their eyes to that reality. There's far more sinister things in store for humans in general supposedly born with original sin than can be provided with threats and temptations of damnation. Infact the Demons and devils in most fantasy games are more shallow than the CoT's in this game when all is considered.

...Atleast in the Video Games, the BadGuys rarely win.

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Guild Wars is alot of fun. I hope it stomps WoW into the ground. After Warcraft III, I just hate Blizzard. Stupid NightElf.

I think a NightElf had relations with the developers over there after seeing WoW and Warcraft III.

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Yeah, those goddamned Nightqueefs. Blizzard used to be a cool company until those things came along. "HUNT RUSH! HUNT RUSH!" Bleah. I think they were actually long lost cousins and ended up inbreeding.

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Me, Lord Recluse, Ravenshadow, Poz, Another programmer (no cool handle), Capt. Mako.

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Please, get that poor ******* a cool handle before E3. You dont want him to be embarrassed do you?



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Let's let the forum give her or him a cool handle.

I propose: Wintergreen. Or perhaps Salmonella Man/Gal. Or Flukebot. Or the Vole King/Queen. Or Poker Face. Or Vermicious Knid. Or Lord/Lady Celery. Or Spanktacular. Or Shuffle Broad (if female). Or Sir Didn't Want To Come To This Con Anyway (if male). Or Kublai Khan (if high on Opium).

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Needs to be something short and easily pronounced. Here's some more

--Hazmat
--Spooooon
--Bowling4PL
--Bob
--HandleSchmandle
--SpudCannon
--Fragenstein
--BlazinRaisin
--"Hey You"

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FYI: ArenaNet, a wholly-owned subsidiary of NCsoft Corporation, was founded by key members of the creative teams that developed the hit games Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo, as well as the Battle.net gaming network.

-Gil

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Hey I was gonna say that!
Anyone check out GuildWar's Rating in MMORPG.com? It's SOARING over WoW.
NCSoft has 2 games in the top 4 highest rated there and they're both 3rd party-Studio developed games. That officially means Gaffer's the Mack$@*#%nDaddy


-Ilr, oldschool Kali/BNet kiddie

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Now, I generally disagree with Heph on alot if things, but you're out of your mind if you think he wants a) Godmode or b) scrapper-level defenses.


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You totally misread what I wrote. If you must think of it in comparison with other ATs, I said almost specicially that I wanted it to be Scrapper or Controller level of Defense. But only for 5 or 6 seconds. ...To some Degree, Keldians already do what I've suggested all along, albeit it through a clunky Shapeshift process. What Heph wants is just to make blasters in general into self-buffing Defenders with Higher damage.

But Defender level, All the time? That doesnt jive with me, there's enough complaints already with ATs saying other ATs are redundant of their powers or playstyle. ...why make it worse.


...Not that I think it matters anymore. It looks like a lot of work went into their recent Scrapper retesting so I'm willing to bet Statesman forgot about this thread 5 minutes later, is going to keep focussing on Tankers and Scrappers because they Own PvP, and eventually do nothing about it anyway. Though DA might even get love before Blasters do.

It was good time spent in this thread I think, there's a lot more people interested in new ideas and new ways of playing than I expected, but I gotta be gettin back to my Controllers and Defenders now. GG All.

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I want to say this to the entire blaster community: scrappers have nothing negative to say about blasters. Scrappers are not asking to be more powerful.

What we are asking for is For Regen to be left Uber.

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You had a few spelling mistakes there, fixed 'em for ya.

I'm sure that Kali-Mag will agree with me that us Dark Armor scrappers are still waiting on the Devs to finish "looking at us". Same with SR, not EVERY SuperReflexes scrapper wants to dedicate all of their Slotting to defense toggles that pale so harshly in comparison to their L 38 power which is garnering them quite a bit of hate as well where PvP is concerend.

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Electric does cause endurance damage, which is probably quite useful in PvP,

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Guess again, all End-Drain suffers a 75% Nerf in PvP. And even if you do it just right and it drops some toggles, they regain it right back because almost everyone is 6-slotted for Stamina. Face it, End-Drain has no lasting effect, it doesn't prevent End-Recovery and that makes it just as worthless in PvE as when the Mobs would cast powers they didn't have the endurance to be using in the first place.

And I don't think it's just healing that's the Issue.

In many a pickup game, I've witnessed many empaths spending just as much Endurance on Rezzing a Blaster as they do healing him. ...there's just not enough time to keep them alive when things go bad. Too bad the Blaster is too shortsighted to see that a different kind of Defender with Pre-emptive damage mitigation would prevent him from dieing so quickly.

..It's things like this that actually make me think that it's a GOOD thing if Blasters suddenly became a lot less popular. ...Then more people would Roll defenders, controllers, and tankers instead and learn what it's like to try and support a careless blaster who only looks for the big Green Numbers above his own head instead of learning what the Real Buffs and Debuffs in this game can do for the team itself and not just him.

...Unfortunately, most ppl are just Rolling Scrappers now instead of playing one of those other Support rolls which in Turn is NOT making life any easier for the Blasters who remain, infact it's making things worse.

I think there's a big difference between "What's your Primary" and "r u healer" and its not just Grammar. ...One leaves a chance that the other Defender set might still be of real help to them. The other one sounds really ignorant and puts the defender on the defensive or make a guess (well, except for ForceField who can't "heal" at all).


But we should move on to other things.

VERY well put, Doc!

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I have seen many a broadcast asking for "Team needs a defender!"

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No you haven't. You may have seen, "Team looking for a healer", but that translates to "Controller/Defender who is Empathy primary".

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Listen to Erratic about this one. Or better yet go look in the Defender Forum. Search Key Words: "r u healer?" It suprised me too, but a lot of Defenders are recruited for a team zones-apart and then kicked off a team as soon as they make the trek to the zone the team lead is in and the Lead finds out their Primary, especially Team leads who are blasters or building the team for their Blaster friend.

REDICULOUS...how hard is it to righclick a Defender's name in the 'Find' box and pick the "chat" option and ask them "What's your Primary?" first before inviting them and then crucifying them for not taking Empath?

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If Blasters aren't way better than Scrappers in teams, Scrappers and Blasters will be interchangable on teams because the Scrapper requires very little support.

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I've been arguing this case too. However if Range was changed to effect Accuracy, several things would happen: 1>Defenders could become Ranged-Tanks. 2>Blasters would miss Constantly and then Scrappers and Blaappers would Still totally outclass Ranged blasters in DPS. 3> RiktiDrones would eventually drive everyone insane.

So if Range effected defense/accuracy calculations, Blasts would need a MASSIVE accuracy boost that all Defenders except for Psionic and Rad would get.... and Psionic sucks bad enough in comparison as it is!

See it's one of those things that seems like a small tweak, but sets off a whole sucktacular domino effect that would eventually require another Free-Respec and gaw knows what else.

Actually, there WAS a very long thread in the Defender Forum a while ago that had tons of testimony on why most of them, myself included, prefer not to team with Blasters. If we needed AoE, it was much easier and Endurance-Efficient for us to get a BurnTanker or Spines/Rgn Scrapper, allowing us to take on tougher Mobs and avoid babysitting a Blaster who for all we know could be a total n00b since so many newer players "cut their teeth" on Blasters.


Eventually word got out to many Blasters that we had this thread going and it got real ugly when so many poor disillusioned Blasters suddenly realized that the AT's they thought were there just for their sake, hated playing with them because they were too Squishy and usually had to be Saved from Themselves.

Having a Team-Blapper myself, I know that's simply not the case, however the sheer amount of skill required to play a good Blaster who gives 100% in every fight at later game is simply not a realistic requirements for a build that is supposed to introduce newer players to the Wonders of CoH.

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It strikes me that a way of (1) making the blaster melee sets more interesting and (2) rewarding the extra risk taken by a blaster in melee is by adding something like the Katana Divine Avalanche parry into each blaster melee pool at relatively low level (with the possible exception of Devices, since it gets other goodies).

For those not familiar with it, its a fairly low damage (~2.2x Brawl IIRC?) but decent and reasonably quick attack that generates about 10 seconds of +20% melee only defense. If you are willing to use it for every other attack and use Hasten, you have somewhat lower dps but can stack it.

This allows you to build a much more survivable "blapper" if you like that, but doesn't give exceptional advantage to a blaster staying at range.

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This is basically what I've been recommending for the last 7 months. No I don't think Blasters should have to use Melee just to keeping their Attack-Chain rolling. But I do think they should resort to Melee for some Real Defense because that melee is Brought to them anyway and that's when they're most squishy. ...Especially in PvP where going into Melee range against a Blaster is actually considered safer and a faster soultion to stopping their damage than getting out of Line-of-sight from them.

...No, a Blaster should have real defenses, real short defenses, but real defenses none the less when they do have to resort to Melee since it is a last-resort. Having a DA, I have extensive experience with this because at Range and having no self-Heal that doesn't require several mobs at melee range, I'm just as squishy as weaker Defenders or Blasters. ...And with the Endurance Costs for DA, I'm also unfortunately familiar with Medium-Defenses for Melee that fizzle fast and cannot be maintained. It IS balanced and it encourages you to Team more than solo.

With this kind of Setup that can't be sustained, I think it would be perfectly balanced to even give most Blasters' Secondaires some light Status resists early in the game(sleeps and disorients), and Medium ones at EndGame (Knockdown, Immboilzers, Holds, Mag-4 Disorients, EndDrains).

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Just a correction here. The immobilize on Crippling Axe Kick is practically 100% - but only stops minions. It slows LT's. Two applications will stop an LT. I used this power regularly for several levels of testing and it was extremely reliable.

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That's still your opinion. I was testing it as well in Talos for 2 hours when I reached that level almost exclusively against minions and it was definitely Random Immob then. It's not just a Mag-2 Immob either, it had to be a Mag-3 because when it actually did roll the Immob effect on Lt's, Mostly Juicer/Stunner Chiefs of all things which fly OUT of most status effects, it kept them stationary for a very short time.


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In defense of Heph, he is not asking for Godmode for Blasters or ranged Blasters, etc. He's specifically argued for a little defense, and no additional status protection. Though I don't share his view about adding defenses into the set, I don't feel it's in the best interest of anyone to bastardize what he's saying. (not directed at you aqshy)

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Unless he's finally started compramising from all the previous times, the bulk of his arguments have always been that Melee is instant suicide despite the fact that many other Blappers and myself have proven that to be untrue. ...Maybe against large mob groups Solo, yes it would be. But in teams, certainly not when you know the mobs you're fighting well enough to know how they'll behave. But he's not interested in Grouping, never has been. He wanted Blasters to have as much or more HP's as defenders and more ranged control powers than Defenders in place of all these Melee attacks. If you read his posts enough, you begin to realize he's an Alpha-Nuke Min/Maxxer who was only having fun back when SmokeGrenade was broken(Not saying he's ever used SmokeGrenade, just that at that time, AoE solved every Blaster's problems in Soloing), and that's what he wants Blasters to return to... Defenders(Ranged Defense) with higher Ranged Damage making them completely independant from needing to group to get their fastest rate of EXP.

Remember, that's what made this 'City of Blasters' in the first place. It wasn't because they did so well in Groups that they squeezed Scrappers ouf of groups which brought about Scrappers getting Criticals. ...no it was that the Mobs were too Easy for Blasters soloing from 1-40 throughout the beginning and 1st issue of this game making Blasters #1 b/c the right setup had them soloing faster than Scrappers. ....Now the Shoe's on the other foot, except that Scrappers were never built with a Handicap for Teaming so they're starting to push Blasters out of team games(especially in Team PvP) because there's just so many of them everywhere, they present No Burden on their Teams, and the Blasters population is starting to thin.

It's always cumulative power in everything the AT's do that helps decide the popularity. But the trick the devs need to pull off next is to make Blasters less helpless in PvP and 35+ game without making them Solo faster than they Team for all the levels before that. I personally believe that can be achieved by tweaking the Melee powers and putting StatusResist in the Damage-Field powers. And that's where Heph and me had always been at eachothers throats... I want to see Blasters have very brief and limited situations in each fight where they're almost as defensive as a Scrapper or Controller but with far more consistant High damage and superior Endurance-per-Damage. He wants them to have slightly less defense than that, but Always at range and in Perma-Mode.

And I believe only one of those options will still have Blasters needing to fall back on other Teammates most of the time.

Fire Secondaries are a sorted affair... Its damage is really pathetic for something with a longer animation and no secondary effects. Even in the CoH's own Comic book you have WarWitch 1-shotting Minions and Lt's with her FireSword which really does make atleast a little more sense.

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Me or him?

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apologies... Edited for clarity