Acyl

Well, there was this one TF...I forget which, but this was back before the 'speed TF' culture really took off in CoH, so it was an older TF and running into three hours or so.

Anyway. Leader announced a five minute break so we could all grab drinks and so on. I told the team I was gonna make some coffee. The tanker agrees, he's grabbing tea himself. Controller laughs, says something to the effect of caffeine being a good idea.

Blaster agrees with us. Blaster says he's low on energy too, and he's gonna grab some coke.

None of us think much about that. I mean, in context, we figure he's getting some cola.

Then he says he's got three straws in his desk drawer.

It eventually becomes apparent...he's not talking about coke the carbonated beverage, but rather the sort of coke that comes in lines of white powder that you inhale.

I mean, I know most of us on that team were using caffeine, and I suppose it's just a matter of scale, but...

I wonder if that guy would say no to Superadine.

Conversation I had a few years back, in another game. The other person in this little exchange usually has perfect typing. In this instance, it was all lowercase.

I'm reproducing this from memory, but it went something like...

"afk sec"
"No prob."
"sorry back"
"'s okay. What was it?"
"oh just injured myself"
"Uh, jeez, hope it's not serious."
"nah but may be slow typing with one hand bleeding"
"...wait, what?"
"well i slashed open my foot on my desk"
"Uh."
"then i jerked in my chair and hit back of my head on the shelf"
"Jeez, why are you STILL HERE? Go take CARE of yourself!"
"its okay not really painful just a lot of blood on my head"
"Yeah, scalp wounds do that. But seriously GO AFK AND STAY AFK."
"its okay i have tissues"
"Don't make me GO OVER THERE and MAKE YOU LEAVE THE KEYBOARD."

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Thanks all for the amazing advice. I ended up making a Fire/Energy Blaster and I'm loving it so far, fell asleep early last night so I didn't get much time to play but I'm off work this weekend so I can level him up a good bit. Virtue seems like a great server and even though this game doesn't have that same open and alive world as WoW, it's still fun as hell to play. I look forward to meeting everyone and if you see me around stop by and say hello

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Well, here's the thing about City of Heroes. Most folks do missions, and most mission content takes place within "indoor" instances. So there's less reason to move around the outside world.

Moreover...all characters in CoH can get travel powers. When you're superspeeding or flying around, there's less need to explore. We also have a lot of ways to teleport between city areas, and that just means even less travel.

Thus the zones can seem empty.

But - that doesn't mean there ain't cool stuff to see if you want to explore. This is a world where giant sea monsters attack the city harbour, where the ghost of a dead hero wanders the streets with a crowd of angry protesters...

I think this is especially true for the villain side of the game. There are some truly pretty bits of landscape out there. I love going through the casino district of St. Martial at night - it's a glorious riot of neon and glitz.

The heroside city is a bit more uniform, but there's some awesome things out there too.

Yes. The reason why we're recommending Scrappers (Hero) and Brutes (Villain) is because they are easier to solo. Both ATs do a lot of damage - not as much as a blaster, BUT...

...both Scrappers and Brutes have personal protection. They have secondary powersets that reduce incoming damage, let you heal damage, and so on.

I'd say run both tutorials, honestly. They have the same info.

But I think the villain tutorial is more fun.

Well, first of all - the game is actually easier at the lower levels. Especially at the very low levels. If you're finding that things are getting more difficult, they probably are.

Second...well, most players don't actually try to buy Training Origin enhancements. Everyone I know just slots whatever drops they get until level 12 - at which point they spend on level 15 Dual Origin enhancements, or craft level 15 Invention Origin enhancements.

Training enhancements give you very little benefit, and if you're levelling at reasonable speed, you should outgrow them very quickly anyway.

Okay. So. Influence flow.

You're correct - simply by KILLING things you may not get enough funds at the lower levels. However...

First of all, you should sell stuff you don't need on the market. Currently the prices for invention salvage are quite high. You can make a lot of money that way. Just make sure what you're selling is actually in demand - not everything is. But quite a lot is.

Second...

While many people use the Architect Entertainment (AE, MA) for farming and powerlevelling, it can be quite good for someone just running regular missions and stories. The reason is that instead of normal drops you get tickets.

And you can cash tickets in for enhancements. The rate of ticket gain to ticket expenditure, if you're spending it on regular enhancements...is quite good; you can outfit a character quite 'cheaply' that way.

I prefer the market method to the ticket method, but both work for me when I play lower-level characters.

(QR) Other folks have talked about the servers and stuff, so - well, powers! You've talked about playing an elemental character...

So you're doing a blaster? Well. Good choice. Fire blasters have the highest damage output in the game. That's debatable, of course, but even if folks disagree, they acknowledge it's still among the best. It does a lot of raw damage straight up...and it does a lot of AoE damage - AoE is very valuable on teams.

As for a secondary...well, the natural companion to the Fire primary is the Fire secondary. That might not be the best choice, however. It depends on your playstyle.

Soloing a blaster can be difficult. To solo, you need two things - one, you need to kill stuff reasonably fast, and two, you need to prevent enemies from killing YOU.

The /Ice secondary may be helpful if you're willing to mix-and-match elemental effects. It has extremely good crowd control, which is an excellent safety net when you're solo and still good on teams. In contrast, the weak control provided by the /Fire secondary isn't as useful.

On the other hand, /Fire does have some pretty awesome melee damage attacks - if your stock in trade is damage, then MORE damage can't hurt. But do you really wanna go into melee range? It depends on your playstyle. I don't like it, but I know a couple of excellent Fire/Fire Blasters who really are rolling engines of destruction, and make the most out of the limited control available to a /Fire.

But me, well. I'd also consider the Ice Blast primary. Now, Ice Blast loses out to Fire Blast in overall damage - because Ice Blast isn't as good at AoE. But Ice actually has an edge in single-target damage. And...Ice Blast has two ranged holds - you can freeze things solid with just your primary alone.

Ice Blast is probably the best attack set for a solo blaster. That might be worth it if you forsee soloing a lot.

I play an Ice/Ice blaster myself. I'm the sort of player who always makes characters that can solo well - and even among all my alts, my Ice/Ice is probably one of the best. My combination of damage and crowd control is also useful on small teams. I am, though, admittedly less useful on a large team when my control probably isn't needed at all - in which case, then, it becomes more evident that I'm doing less AoE damage than some other blaster types.

But I think it's a reasonable tradeoff.

I've talked about the Fire and Ice powersets here, because I imagine those are what you're most interested in. However, there are some pretty effective combos out there that can fit into the elemental Phoenix-inspired idea you're going for.

Fire/Energy and Fire/Mental blasters are pretty damn good, for example.

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How the hell am I supposed to give money to my lowbie toons??

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Well...you don't.

The obvious conclusion is that the developers don't want us to easily transfer funds between our own characters...else they'd give us a proper system to do so.

Personally, I just ask players I trust.

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Characters don't get deleted after X time around here. If they are below level 6 and the owner's account has been in-active for a time the names become available again, but the characters themselves won't be deleted.

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I was under the impression the name-release wasn't an automatic feature, but rather a script that NCsoft needs to specifically run. And IIRC they've only done this twice.

I could be mistaken, however.

I think Kitsune's right. There's no automatic deletion of trial characters. They should remain there indefinitely.

That said...

We've had name purges in the past - characters below a certain level, on inactive accounts, would get their names freed up.

They've done this twice. However, both name purges were very long ago...and there's been absolutely zero hints that they'll ever do this again.

So really, if you're waiting around for the characters to go poof...yeah, it probably isn't gonna happen. Try talking to NCsoft customer support, however. Maybe they can help you.

It's worth a shot.

There has been some discusion on the change. The fact is we don't know why the change happened, and I don't think it's mentioned in the patch notes.

The leading speculation is a) it's an anti-farming thing, or b) this is actually how boss spawns were supposed to work in the first place, and it's actually been broken all this time.

But we don't really know for sure, until a developer chimes in. I don't think one's commented on this yet, but I could be mistaken.

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Hehe yeah. I get the idea. Just knowing its a scheduled thing is enough for me. Now I know if I don't see any threads on it, it is "most likely" scheduled maintenance.

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Yeah - the Server Status page is quite helpful really ... like, I mean, right now it's indicating that the servers are already up. And technically speaking the two hour maint window isn't over yet. They're early.

They do that sometimes, so it's worth checking. It's even possible for them to be done and back online within half an hour or so, though that's rare.

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Scheduled weekly maintenance is twice weekly. 9 am to 11 am Eastern US time, Monday and Friday.

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Is it, now? It used to be scheduled daily.

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Correct. For the past year or two, they've only been doing maint on Monday and Friday.

Previously they had the two hour window reserved every day, but it was anyone's guess whether they'd actually use it or not. I recall an entire week where they didn't bring the servers down at all... and yet another week where they were pretty much going down every day.

Which, y'know, led to people getting very nervous around 8.30 am Eastern, waiting to see if the ominous red message would appear.

Nowadays the servers WILL go down on Monday and Friday. That's a sure thing. The only possible exceptions are if Monday or Friday is a public holiday or something - in which case they might reschedule or skip the maint period.

Well, all three of us provided different information.

The posts complement each other! =)

Scheduled weekly maintenance is twice weekly. 9 am to 11 am Eastern US time, Monday and Friday. The servers will always go down on Monday and Friday.

They can go down on other weekdays, but usually do not unless a) emergency work is needed, or b) they're putting out a new patch.

The downtime window is supposed to be two hours, but it isn't always that long in practice; it is possible for the servers to come back earlier. Check the Server Status page for live updates.

Personally, I'm still chuckling over how meow farms were fixed.

The devs are vets!

(QR)

To the OP:- Are we talking about PvE or PvP here?

I think there is a difference in PvP...but in PvE a Bane Spider's cloak should be just as good as a Stalker's hide.

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Ice/Ice will have even more survivability, but will lose out a bit on the damage, especially AoE. It's a great soloing blaster, though, the single best.

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Fixed.

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Agreed. Ice/Ice is the best soloing blaster I've ever played - and I've tried quite a few combos. Ice/Ice gives you up to three single-target holds, and you can get a fourth from APPs. You have a lot of slow effects as well - and slows are really good damage mitigation in PvE.

The holds are excellent when fighting bosses. The slows help, of course, all the time.

Elec/Elec is not bad, but it takes longer to hit its stride. An Elec/Elec only gets really good at end-drain and slapping holds down around level 35-38. Power Sink is at 35, Shocking Grasp at 38.

The Ice/Ice gets all the critical toys much sooner. So it's easier to level up an Ice/Ice.

Ice Blast is famous for its single-target damage, but it does have Frost Breath and Ice Storm. These aren't bad if used correctly. And of course the nuke is an AoE power.

Lightning Field is not useless, but it has limited utility for an Elec/Elec blaster. It won't help you kill stuff as such - don't expect it to be a major part of your damage.

See...while a damage aura is a big contributor to a tank or scrapper's damage, it doesn't really make a huge difference for a blaster.

But Lightning Field can work well as part of an end-drain strategy. Basically, once you have a spawn drained dry with Short Circuit + Power Sink, having Lightning Field will allow you to keep them at zero if you remain standing in melee range - since, y'know, it takes a little bit of end each time it ticks.

The thing is... since Power Sink only comes at 35, an end-drain build is a late-maturing one anyway. Until you get Power Sink, there's hardly any point in trying to drain end. You won't see the full benefits until you have Short Circuit + Power Sink.

Once you have THAT...you may wanna consider Lightning Field to keep things sucked dry. But it's really something to pick up late in the build, if you pick it up at all.

I don't have it and don't really miss it, but it works for some folks.

Yeah, check out the blaster forums, as other folks have said. You can probably get better advice there, maybe some specific example builds.

That said...

If you're not taking the melee attacks, what's left in the secondary are Electric Fence, Lightning Field, Build Up, Lightning Clap, Power Sink, and Shocking Grasp.

Now, we're forced to take Electric Fence and most blasters would take Build Up for damage reasons. So those are probably givens.

Lightning Field's utility is mainly for melee-centric builds that also emphasise endurance drain. Probably not a great idea for a ranged build.

Lightning Clap isn't a bad keep-away power - it's not a fantastic disorient, but it's a nice knockback for a blaster. I don't think it's that amazing though. For an Elec/Elec, endurance drain is better mitigation.

While Power Sink is a point-blank AoE, so is Short Circuit from the Elec Primary. Using Short Circuit + Power Sink means that the blaster needs to duck into melee range, but I think it's worth it because endurance drain on an Elec/Elec is excellent mitigation.

Moreover, having Power Sink's a great boon for a blaster - most blasters run out of end very easily, and the nuke drains all your end anyway... having Power Sink allows a player to pop a single small blue, fire Power Sink, and be back up to full.

Also, the Elec Blast nuke, Thunderous Blast, is a massive end drain on enemies. So you can use Thunderous Blast, and then hop in to Power Sink any survivors (probably bosses or LTs) -which will leave them helpless.

Shocking Grasp is pretty good to stack with Tesla Cage on bosses. It's less necessary if you have the Elec APP as well, which grants a second electric-themed ranged hold. But personally I like having three holds, in case one misses.

Ultimately, Elec/Elec as a power combo doesn't have a lot of raw damage potential. Elec Blast is a bit light on damage. The real strength of the combination is in the utility powers, so they're worth looking at...

...if they fit your concept, of course.

If you're hunting Rikti for the aura mission, you don't actually have to go to Crey's Folly.

The contact recommends that you do...because you can find Freakshow, Devouring Earth, and Rikti all near the entrance of Crey's Folly. So it's a good place to do it, but it ain't required.

It's just not easy to find Rikti elsewhere at level 30. They do spawn outdoors in Founders Falls and Peregrine Island also, but those would naturally be of higher level.

I think the count registers if someone kills Rikti inside instanced missions, though...so maybe it would be possible to get a radio mish with Rikti, or maybe do Montague's Midnighter arc or something. Dunno. Never tried that, but it should work.

Yeah, I was thinking of pretty much that...the fact that we could make pretty major changes to costume files in the past, and that's why safeguards were put in by the developers. Lothic said it better than I ever could, though.

Should be said that the 'Super Tailor' technology being part of the paid Science Booster is apparently because the devs simply couldn't think of anything better as the bonus power for this pack. If we accept that on face value, then it probably wasn't motivated out of a desire to force folks to pay for key functionality or anything.

I wasn't talking down to you. I was merely trying to be as clear as possible.

Nor was I accusing you of attempting to get something for free - rather, I was saying that concerns like that are why manually editing costume files doesn't work.

If I gave offence, I apologise. No insult was intended. I was only trying to be helpful. Sorry if my wording was poor - I tend to use rather strong phrasing when I'm attempting to make a point.

I also use the word "you" as a general reference to a hypothetical public, rather than specifically in reference to a particular person. I realise, in retrospect, that was unclear. Once again, I'm sorry if it came across badly.

37 already covered this.

You currently cannot alter the main height slider for characters in any way, shape, or form. The only thing you can do currently is adjust the leg slider, which will result in some height change.

And you might as well just do that at the tailor. I'm sure you COULD change the leg slider by hand-editing the costume file, but why would you want to?

Full-blown height slider changes aren't possible right now. They WILL be possible when the Science Booster launches - when you purchase the new pack, you'll have access to the Super Tailor and be able to change character heights and models.

Those are your only options. Manually editing the costume files is not a magic wand.

Note that since height changes are a feature of the new Booster... even if you COULD alter height by manually editing files, the GMs probably wouldn't be terribly amused. Because that would be, essentially, a free way of gaining access to a new paid feature.

The heroside 5th Column TF is essentially a side-story to the villain content.

The villainside 5th Column SF is the main story - that one has the awesome cutscene and stuff.

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Still don't know what sound to replace to disable that horrid activation sound.

[/ QUOTE ]I suggest the NBC chimes. I actually, on a lark, did that for Hasten before my computer needed a complete reinstall of windows. Was *really* amusing.

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I think what LuckySamurai meant was that he/she doesn't know what the name of the Peacebringer shield sound file is, and thus can't disable it.