Aluminum Man

Chiming in to join the haunted mansion chorus:

"Up to four players" = great

"Exactly four players" = bad

Especially since one of our 4 COH capable PC's is suffering from the "NCSoft launcher has stopped working" issue. Pretty sure it's a .NET thing, but the exactly 4 thing meant that the Aluminum Family couldn't run on their own.

I see it's a pretty varied mix of hardware, yet everyone seems to be able to find a setting they can live with, at least. That's comforting. Some of these are models I looked at during my research so I'm glad to see that they do work. I was thinking that since the engine has been around for a few years then it should run pretty well even on older hardware and it looks like that is the case.

Ultra mode is the real wild card here. I know a lot of it depends on resolution but I would love for us to be able to find the cutoff point for Ultra but I'm not sure that's really possible with laptops and their interesting configurations. Maybe we could at least get a 2011 guideline. The Nvidia 540 shows up a lot in newer systems and I wonder if it could handle UM at say 1300 X 700. On the Radeon side the 5650 and 6650 seem like fairly common mid to high end laptop cards. Looking at the specs I'm not sure if any of them could do it but it would be nice to have a current standard of "if you have at least an XYZ card then you can expect performance of ___". Just in case someone else is looking.

Hi all - I will be playing on a laptop for the first time as I am travelling on business for an extended period and I'm wondering how well they work for other people. I did a ton of research and I've already picked up a machine I like, but I'm curious about what other players use and how well it works for them.

CPU type, video card type, screen res, and frame-rates are all welcome but also what kinds of compromises you've made to make it run at a satisfactory level.

Also: Ultra Mode?

I'm not looking for buying advice, I just didn't see a recent discussion on practical experience with running Our Favorite Game on a laptop in the era of quad-core CPU's, SLI Vidcards, and SSD's. I'll be testing mine this weekend and I will share once I've had a chance to try it out for a few days. In the meantime I'd love to hear from others with more experience.

I've run a Martial Arts/Regen up into the 30's so far and he is a lot of fun. I think some of it depends on your plans for the character. Mine was built specifically to team with some friends so 90% of his time has been spent on a team with another scrapper, a tanker, a controller, a defender, and a blaster so it's a very different scene than a mostly solo character. To me /Regen is very much a 'live long enough to take them down first" powerset.

Based on that experience I can tell you Regen is awesome for a team character - on the rare times something overflows the tank I can take pretty severe damage before I even need to hit one of my heals as it grows back very quickly given any breathing room at all. I can usually take an alpha if I run into a spawn first although I will be hitting a heal shortly thereafter. On those unpleasant occasions where we run into something a little too strong for the entire team he is often the last man standing as it takes a fairly concentrated series of attacks to take him down and that won't happen until a) he is the last one up and b) I've used up all insta-heals and inspirations.

In my limited solo experience with him I know that bosses aren't the problem that big spawns or multiple spawn aggro are for him. Single big targets are fine as stuns and knockbacks can mitigate the damage enough to keep the regen ahead of the incoming damage. Running with bigger spawns can be more of a problem as the incoming damage keeps coming after the alpha as there's no one else to draw it off and he can't take them down fast enough all of the time to stop it. It's not so much a problem at even level or less but it ramps up noticeably with +1 or more level opposition. I have slotted some for defense and I have taken the fighting pool powers so he does have some resist and defense but he's nowhere near the softcap at his current level and vs. anything other than smashing & lethal it's not much.

So I would say /Regen is great for teams, probably less so for solo play. He can take significant amounts of stray or incidental damage while doing beastly single-target damage and the team healer will appreciate having one character they can safely ignore : )

As far as MA: Dragons Tail firing off right around the same time as the Electric Scrapper's Thunderstrike lands is beautiful thing, so I recommend it for tram play as well.

Thank You for getting the patch notes out in a timely fashion. It is appreciated.

I have a copy of the COH demo pack. It's interesting but not something you could really run a campaign with.

Has anyone done any work on running their own tabletop supers RPG set in Paragon City? I ran some searches and saw nothing so this seemed like a good place to ask.

I'm considering doing it for M&M for my kids as they know the City of Heroes background pretty well (an advantage over starting them off in my old home-brew worlds) but it's more "open" than a DC or Marvel setting. Best of both worlds in this case. Plus they could run some of their COH characters so concepts are good to go. Lots of known badguy groups, landmarks, neighborhoods, and some big bads to take down later. Seems like a win at the moment here so I'm curious if anyone else has done it.

If you're talking about comics and movies, to some degree you're right - the big guy usually hits hard too, he doesn't just suck it up. To go further, this type (Colossus, Thing, Hulk for example) is usually resistance based in COH terms - you can hit them fairly easily it just doesn't do anything.

The scrapper type (Nightcrawler, Captain America, various Kung-Fu types) tends to be damaging plus hard-to-hit, or defense based in COH terms.

Maybe the designers for COH2 can use those guidelines rather than reducing the offensive power of the "tank" versus other melee types. I think it would be an interesting way to go about it. Then you could throw a regen option in there as a 3rd path to survival and keep it interesting.

I think I19 unsettles the "standards" that have developed over the years of travel power/fitness/fighting/ 2nd travel power or whatever and makes things that much more interesting. Maybe more tankers end up taking taunt? Maybe the new standard tanker builds take a more offensive stance at earlier levels than they do right now as the need to grab stamina by 20 goes away. It will make the next year or so fun to be a part of anyway.

My mains are blasters but I'm becoming more attached to tankers as I play them more. I've mostly played Fire and Invuln tanks up into the mid levels and Fire just fits how I like to play - lots of offense, decent defense, a heal, and End recover - maybe it's easier to grasp than some but it's a lot of fun to play, especially with Burn turned back into a nice power from the fear patch that it was before. I'm slowly working some stone, shield, and electric tanks up with the kids but I already know Fire clicks with me.

I don't think any AT is useless on any team. Sure, at 50 a maxed out scrapper may be almost as tough as some tankers but on the way up there's not much comparison. It may be time to learn some new strategies if you're on a really sharp higher-up team as the traditional "gather aggro and take a beating" approach may not be needed but that doesn't mean there's not a job for you to do. At that point maybe you become "melee character built for defense" so get out front and go beat on something.

With the Incarnate system kicking off in a week or so I suspect the standards for high-level play are going to be in a state of flux comparable to that of low level play as inherent fitness becomes a factor. Time to unlearn some of what we have learned.

Somebody pick a server as this clearly demands a full supergroup - "Team Knockback" or "The League of Physical Mitigation" would be my suggestion.

Aluminum Man is an En/Elec blaster but my favorite knockaround power remains M30 Grenade - FOOMP! Boom! (numerous guys go flying ace over teakettle in all directions) it makes me smile every time.

Hey Grey - please do update this with I19 - I'm slowly leveling both a fire/SS tank and a Stone/fire tank and I always refer back to this after a break between playing them. After I18's tune-ups and I19's inherent fitness I see a ton of potential for them so I'd like to see your thoughts as well.

I'd just like to say thanks to the Devs for the server transfers in particular. With 4 kids, 2 parents, multiple accounts and 200 or so characters between us things get a little chaotic and this makes it very easy to sort things out. It was great back at the beginning of the year and it will help us keep things together now too.

...and that's on top of the anticipated greatness of GR...

Hey thanks for the tips all - I'll be saving some this conversation in my scrapper notes.

Alright I have a related question - is there a good reasonably up to date regen guide? I've run a MA/Regen scrapper up into the 20's now and I'm picking up low-level IO sets for +regen and +max health bonuses and I'm glad to see there's no cap, but I would like to see what other people think on how this all should work. One example - is taking fitness with a regen scrapper overkill or more of a good thing? Any guidance would be appreciated.

I can tell you as a noob and keeper of several noob-spawn that we have heard a lot about Halloween and are looking forward to it, especially with it being on a Saturday.

I joined in July and I have to say I feel the same way as the OP. Note to David - the good keeps coming!