Wilfred

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I'm jealous of the people who can make really great costumes. I either don't have the imagination or the time to really create something unique. I also almost never take screenshots so can't show anything.

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Join the club - most of my costumes are amalgams of things I've seen on other toons and thought 'oooh, shiny'. Costumes are the only reason I take screenies now - it's automatic. See a good cossie>Finger hits printscreen.

Sort of a carry-on from this thread over in creative.

I've been running for the title of 'Mr. Rogue Isles' over in the US, and what mostly struck me about a lot of the costumes was how unoriginal they can be.

All too often I've seen costume contests won by people using , say, all 'Justice' parts; to my mind that's not really creative at all; the developers should get a prize for implementing a really good-looking costume part. They can look fantastic, and use of colour/accessories can bring it to life; but it needs imagination and a concept.

What I like to see is original, creative thinking in a costume; putting costume pieces together to a concept that looks good, co-ordinates well, and brings something new to the table.

Seen any costumes that gave you a WITOTF (Wish I'd Thought Of That First) moment?

My top 3:
Psygon's Candy Cold 'retro' costume (far right)
Novastar's Captain Andromeda costume
and Mos Vox (third from left).

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something which has been slowly developing since the start of the game where first off certain enhancements were only available from contact shops, so you had to play to your origin (I cant remember which ones probably the moment speeds and tohit debuffs but I am very hazy on this)

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Jesus, I'd forgotten about the power-10 thing back in the day. That was awful.

The more open the economy in the game gets, the better.

[QR]

Selectable text.

Fox's ftw.

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hmm, so if your Xp ishalved between the two of you you'd be looking at something equating to maybe level 68

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Awesome! I could sell those level 70 recipes for a *mint*.

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Ahhh, cheers. That makes sense. Should've kept a copy of my guides - the kinetics one only needs a tiny bit of updating, and the Anti-tanking and Non-empathy guides shouldn't go out of date. Guess I'd best think about writing some new guides.

I seem to recall posting a few guides, most recently only a few months ago. Went to look at it, and it's gone! Are older threads being purged from the Guides board? Seems a bit of an odd idea...

It's something to do with the way that no matter how much you debuff defence, you'll still miss 1/20 hits.

Agree. Except...

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adding a 2nd end reducer isn't a waste if you can affoard the slots.

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You'll get far more mileage by slotting endurance reduction in your attacks rather than in your toggles. For instance, Fire shield uses 0.26 endurance per second. Nimble slash, if you fire it off every time it comes around, uses 1.1 endurance per second, 4-5 times as much. If you use nimble slash every 17 seconds or less, you'll get a lot more by dropping endurance reduction into nimble slash. The same applies to ablating strike and typhoon's edge.

As regards your build... still got that unnecessary accuracy in taunt. Replace it with taunt or recharge. At this level, while you're struggling for slots, I'd leave the two shields (Fire and Plasma) with just three slots, three resistances in each. I'd then use the four slots spare from that to either drop endurance reduction into your attacks or to max out the slots on consume and stamina.

Stamina's very important - try and get it three-slotted, if possible!

Looking good.

Recharge Debuffs are generally handled by Enhance Slow.

Recharge increase insps... I seem to recall they were on the to-do list in the very early days of CoH (along with teleport insps), but someone upstairs decided it would monkey about with the power balancing unless they were so feeble as to be useless.

Whenever this question's been asked previously, cleverer people than I have indulged in a bit of mathematical skulduggery to show how ludicrously overpowered enhancing the debuff on damage or resistance would be.

Do you know, I haven't checked. The Issue 13 Freespec was only good for one build though, so I'm guessing just one!

Sshh, don't tell them. I play Elec because it's less embarassing if you miss all the time -.-

Endurance modification is dark blue. It increases the amount of endurance you drain from the enemy, or in the case of stamina, the amount of endurance you regain every time it 'ticks'.

Endurance reduction is light blue. It decreases the endurance cost associated with using each power.

Blazing Aura's a matter of taste. It can do a lot of damage all told; I like an Accuracy, two Endurance reductions, Two Damages and a Taunt, if I've six slots to spare on it. I find for some reason putting a single taunt in it works really well; after that, it's all about the damage, baby.

(I suspect it might be that the taunt effect lasts a certain time, then drops for a bit, then is reapplied; putting a taunt duration in must extend the taunt cover until it's reapplied, sparing the aggro drop. If I've time, I might look at the numbers someday.)

I think you're right to go for the middle ground; it's perfectly possible to make a solo-capable tank that works well in teams, and that's what I usually go for.

With Fiery Aura, it's easier to do as you get an extra build-up type power (powers that increase your damage and accuracy for a few seconds) compared to what most tanks get.

The other thing you could try is dual-building. When you see a trainer, he'll give you the option to switch to your second build. So you can have two at once, if you can afford to slot them. I use this to have one build specifically for soloing, and another that's mostly team-oriented.

Here's roughly what I'd be aiming for by level 24. All enhancements SO's, or more likely DO's if you haven't been very lucky selling salvage and are struggling for cash. If you've got loads of inf (2-2.5million) you could even go for IO's.

By the way, Taunt is autohit in PvE, so don't worry about accuracy unless you decide to indulge in Player vs. Player fighting.

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.4006
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Level 25 Natural Tanker
Primary Power Set: Fiery Aura
Secondary Power Set: Dual Blades
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Fitness

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Fire Shield -- ResDam(A), ResDam(3), ResDam(3)
Level 1: Nimble Slash -- Acc(A)
Level 2: Healing Flames -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(5), RechRdx(5), Heal(7), Heal(7), Heal(9)
Level 4: Ablating Strike -- Acc(A), EndRdx(19)
Level 6: Combat Jumping -- Jump(A)
Level 8: Consume -- Acc(A), RechRdx(9), RechRdx(15), RechRdx(17), Acc(17), Taunt(19)
Level 10: Taunt -- Taunt(A), Taunt(11), RechRdx(11), RechRdx(13)
Level 12: Plasma Shield -- ResDam(A), ResDam(13), ResDam(15)
Level 14: Super Jump -- Jump(A)
Level 16: Swift -- Run(A)
Level 18: Health -- Heal(A)
Level 20: Stamina -- EndMod(A), EndMod(21), EndMod(21)
Level 22: Typhoon's Edge -- Acc(A), EndRdx(23), Dmg(23)
Level 24: Acrobatics -- EndRdx(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Gauntlet
------------
------------


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Firstly, welcome to the game; I hope you're having a lot of fun tanking!

Respeccing at this level is a great idea; at the moment you have a lot of attack powers, which is a great idea early on when shields cost a lot of endurance to run and don't do much in terms of protection.

Once you hit level 22, Tankers tend to really come into their own. At level 22, you can start buying level 25 Single Origin enhancements to replace Training or Double Origin - each one of those is worth about four Training origin enhancements, so they're definitely worth stocking up on.

Depending on how you play, you can take a couple of routes; you can try to max out your defences and Taunt, and become a very team-oriented tanker (you'll be able to solo only very slowly), or you can try going for more offence, but you'll sacrifice your ability to tank without a fair bit of support.

Plasma shield is a good power - it comes into its own later in the game, when you start to face much more varied enemy damage types; it's also your protection against being Held and Slept (these get very common around your level, and you'll notice if you lose it!)

Your shields should generally be slotted with three resistances; any more won't confer a significant benefit. If you're struggling for endurance, add a fourth slot for Endurance reduction, too; you'll find what sucks up endurance is attacks, rather than shields, so it's generally ill-advised to put more of your precious slots into them.

You've made great choices with regards to power pools; Leaping is good as you can get Acrobatics soon (that'll stop you getting thrown around like a puppet in a washing machine), and Fitness is almost a must for Fire tanks. I'd advise putting three slots of endurance modification into stamina asap, and dropping Hurdle in favour of swift to help you move around the combat floor that bit quicker.

Healing flames will take all the slots you can give it; as you've no doubt figured out, it's brilliant. Put three recharges and three heals in there as soon as possible!

Consume is a tricky animal. If you like it, it's probably worth slotting up; in that case, go for recharge and accuracy. With any luck, there'll be enough mobs around you when you use it that endurance modification is less important, but you definitely want it up as often as possible and to hit as much as possible.

If you want to be a good teaming tank, try getting Blazing Aura. It's your taunting aura, although it eats a LOT of endurance and affords you no protection. If you get it, slot it mostly for accuracy and endurance reduction.

Temperature protection is generally a bit pants, unless you're going to fight a lot of enemies that deal cold damage.

Now for Dual Blades.

I think I'd be tempted to go for the taunt, the AoE, the cone (later on), and enough attacks to make a combo out of.

For me, that means Nimble Slash, Ablating Strike, and Typhoon's Edge. The added benefit of Typhoon's edge is that you can use it as an aggro-grabber for mobs near to you. Another good thing about this is that if you then get Blinding Feint, you'll have a second combo available.

Attacks for Tankers generally get slotted with whatever you have left over from the shields. You'll want one Accuracy and one Endurance Reduction. After that, slot up to three damages and one recharge, depending on how many slots you have to spare.

So essentially, if it was up to me, I'd have almost the same build as you, with Power Slice dropped in favour of acrobatics, and the slots rejigged a bit.

Segway travel is the future.

Photobucket likes to resize big pictures, the cads. Best idea for decent display is to sign up to deviantart and post it there.

Helicopters fly. When they stop going forward, they are hovering. They may adjust their location a bit while hovering (jinking left or right, adjusting slightly to pick up hostages or fuel barrels, if I remember my Desert Strike), but they're still mostly static. Moving fast through the air is flying. Stopping without falling is hovering. Pushing a vacuum cleaner around the floor is hoovering. And so forth. I forget what I was saying. But, yeah.

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so whats next?

paying someone for slotting suggestions? or maybe paying to have someone complete TF's and getting merits so they can try and get that super rare recipe you want?

its a slippery slope into chaos and stupidity the moment people ok "mercenary" work like this in a game community...

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That's assuming *everyone* demands inf for those things. If even one person decides to give out build advice for free, who'd pay for it? If someone decides that running a TF on your behalf to get you some merits is worth x inf, then it's worth x inf.

There will always be balance; some people want more 50's fast; some people want to play the game for longer. Some want more inf for their collection of 50's. As long as there's a free(ish) market in-game for those things and people willing to pay for and be paid for them, where is the problem?

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A bit pathetic if you need to do this ain't it? Lets be honest, leveling up fast is so ridiculous easy in this game that I wonder why people bother to pay for it.

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That's exactly how this idea got started; Smurphy wanted to slow down his levelling (because he was getting to 50 in a couple of weeks even when playing casually, and wanted to extend the experience), so offered pacts; as he pointed out, why shouldn't he get some inf in return?

The ones selling the pacts were originally just heavy players; I'm not surprised to see this picked up by powerlevellers.

But it's not as if having a level 50 is an elite club, or a particularly stunning accolade; it certainly hasn't been a badge of a good player for many years. So in what way is it detrimental for there to be more level 50's about?

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There will always be 1 person who will look to exploit content to their own advantage.

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It's not really exploiting, or to their advantage. One party levels too fast for their own liking (look to Smurphy's original pact auction for his own reasoning); the other has more inf than they need but would quite like another character at 50 - why shouldn't he be compensated?

The way I see it, that's exchanging in-game goods for in-game services; it's no different (to me, at least) than paying someone a million inf for winning a costume contest, trading a rare drop for inf, or compensating someone with inf for helping them get a certain badge.

I've been involved in the discussion about the levelling pact for sale over on US side.

As I see, nothing wrong with it. The guy selling it levels so fast (He runs five computers with five accounts; this team will be a kin corruptor and four necro/pain MM's) that he wants to slow himself down a bit. Trading in-game services for in-game currency is, as far as I understand the GM position, absolutely fine.

Frankly, anyone with the inf to bid probably doesn't *need* powerlevelling.

I really like these ideas. I'm one of those uncommon few that'll stop for a zone event (unless I'm doing something important, like earning XP) - and the primary problem with them seems to be a lack of reward (remind anyone of GM's yet?). Who wants to risk the debt from a firefighting building explosion for a badge and temporary use of an (albeit amusing) fire extinguisher?

Offering a salvage (or better, an uncommon IO drop) gives a reason to do them - they can't realistically be farmed, since they can't be triggered and are just rare occurrences.

I think Z needs to SK the development team for a bit.

Moon